The Treepers over at The Conservative Treehouse have outdone their exhaustive and excellent investigative work on #Ferguson with just a week’s worth of digging for information on the horrific murder of 19 year-old Jessica Lane Chambers in MS last weekend. They’ve uncovered gang-related links to her ex-boyfriend and even the chatty, gas-station owner, who provided the CCTV video of Jessica’s stop there for gas the night of her murder, has turned out to be a radical Muslim from Yemen, who also happens to be involved in the local black gang. Surprise, surprise, his gas station is the hub of drug-dealing in the community. Read their excellent reporting and then consider the little picture/big picture possibilities with this small-town story suddenly sprouting international wings… Let’s keep connecting the dots. One can only wonder how far radical Islamists have penetrated poor, black communities in America.
Category Archives: Culture Wars
Mississippi Burning – Day #6 – The Murder of Jessica Lane Chambers Exposes Massive Problems In Panola County Mississippi…
Filed under Culture Wars, General Interest, Islam, Terrorism
Bill Whittle: Lena Dunham, Al Sharpton, Eric Holder and the New Barbarism | Truth Revolt
Filed under Culture Wars, General Interest, Politics
Doomed?
From National Review Online, “Progressives Gnaw at the Curriculum”, Mona Charen writes:
“Only about 18 percent of American colleges require a survey course on U.S. history or government. Then again, when they do teach U.S. history, they tend to do so in a highly tendentious fashion. As my colleague Jay Nordlinger has observed, “It’s all slavery, racism, and the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II.”
This is deadly serious business. Civilizations are not self-sustaining enterprises. People must believe that their society and culture are worth preserving. If we don’t teach our children the fundamentals of American history and government, they will not have the knowledge or perspective necessary to maintain it.”
Her article offers dismal statistics on how young Americans fare at understanding US history, with the educational system mired in grievance politics. This brought to mind an old LB post, “A few thoughts about the Lewis and Clark expedition”, where I offered my views on teaching history:
“In recent decades so much hot air has been expended over how to teach history and just about every other subject. Truly discouraging battles continue to be waged over textbooks, where politically charged combatants wrestle over every single entry. The Texas textbook fights have garnered national media attention. With so much information available, it seems to me that instead of fighting over whether to include this or that historical figure and how many lines get devoted to each, the time might be better spent teaching kids how to explore history – it should be a journey, or an expedition into uncharted territory not a political mud-wrestling match. Just look at a few of the entries in the Lewis and Clark journals, where they charted maps and terrain features, they drew pictures of the flora and fauna, talked to the natives, they wrote as many detailed entries as their harsh conditions allowed. They did this so that they could come back and share it with others. This is what education should be – sharing knowledge.”
On a tangential topic, teaching kids to be survivors, let me once again recommend Gladius’ essay, “Gimme a Knife” and a wonderful exploration of the Lewis and Clark journals from an American Thinker article by David L. Lenard, “Looking Back at Lewis and Clark”. Lenard takes you on a rich trip through the journals, offering up fascinating tidbits that contrast survival techniques like caching supplies (burying them) for later use, which will make modern-day, hide and seek, geocaching using GPS for entertainment seem rather silly. Lenard contrasts the abilities of the Lewis and Clark explorers to our modern-day culture:
“What a difference from today, where the handwringing of nervous housewives (“God forbid little Jimmy should encounter peanut traces in his food”) dominates our daily existence, and the liberal imperative of nanny-state overregulation promises the illusion of lives lived in perfect safety and perfect comfort, without risk or suffering or even unpleasantness. Self-sufficiency is anathema to this mentality, but the Lewis and Clark expedition was self-sufficient to an almost unbelievable degree: they not only hunted their own food, but, when necessary, built their own boats; sewed their own clothes; and when it was too cold to travel, built their own forts — not once, but twice.
In our modern republic, where large segments of our population compete to be declared helpless victims so they can receive government handouts, one cannot help but think that little Jimmy might benefit from being sent out with Drouilliard: “Here’s a musket, son — now go kill that deer, and don’t miss, because if you do, there’s a strong possibility you might starve.””
“Survival is more a mind-set than a setting. Attitude is everything.” – Gladius, “Gimme a Knife”
Filed under American History, Culture Wars, Education, Food for Thought, General Interest, Politics
Crime in black and white…. not really
If you want an objective character reference, let’s all agree that parents and family members should be excluded. Here, in black and white, are two horrendous murders with some disturbing similarities, yet in all likelihood no easy pop culture, politicized race banner waving connection exists. Yes, both victims were set ablaze inside their cars and died unimaginably gruesome deaths, on that point there’s no debate.
The night of the Ferguson grand jury decision, Deandre Joshua, 20 was murdered – shot in the head while inside his car and then his car was set on fire. Details related, please take with a few extra grains of salt, because the facts might be completely different than the reporting. So, a photo of a much younger Deandre hit the press (Trayvon Martin anyone), and reporters gathered all sorts of quotes from assorted family members… “employed at Wal-mart”, “never in trouble”, “good kid”, etc., etc., etc. Here’s that photo from the Huffington Post.
Most of us don’t have the time to research new reports, in fact, there’s a presumption that the professional journalists would employ an ethical standard, whereby scrupulous fact-checking would be the rule. This sweet-faced young man’s face stuck with me, leaving a feeling of deep sadness, and I wanted there to be some connection, as the blogosphere buzzed, with Joshua’s death being because he was a grand jury witness. Officials in Ferguson stated Joshua was not a grand jury witness. Yet, Joshua, the good kid with a job, was friends with Dorian Johnson, who was present with Michael Brown during the commission of a strong arm robbery and also at the scene during the confrontation between Brown and Officer Wilson.
Alas, today, weeks later, I came across other photos of Deandre Joshua, ostensibly gleaned from his social media. A very different picture emerged as I reviewed these photos of Joshua, the Wal-mart employee, flashing big wads of cash. According to GotNews:
“Media outlets all over the planet reported on the death of DeAndre Joshua as the “First Ferguson Riots Fatality.” They ran with a years-old photo of Joshua taken in high school.
He was, in fact, a drug dealer, according to both law enforcement sources and his Facebook page.”
Now, the next crime up, that has the press once again talking to the grieving parents, is the horrific death last weekend of Jessica Lane Chambers, 19, from MS. Details to emerge assert she was doused with lighter fluid and set ablaze. The blogosphere’s been abuzz with assertions that she had ended an abusive relationship with a black boyfriend. Her mother stated that Jessica was just going to wash her car and pick up fast food Saturday night – perfectly innocent. Maybe that’s true. The Treepers over The Conservative Treehouse blog once again are putting together all the loose threads about this case. They offer photos of the crime scene, aerial view of the area and a timeline they’ve pieced together, with the missing data that might reveal what really happened:
“Her vehicle entered the gas station from North, headed South. Her model car (2005 Kia Rio) gas tank access is on the drivers side of the vehicle.
She then leaves the gas station headed again in a Southbound direction at approximately 6:32pm. Her home is in the opposite direction, North.
Approximately 90 minutes later the fire department responded to the call at Herron Road. What happened between 6:30 and 8:00pm is the unknown timeframe.
According to her mom, Lisa Chambers, either she called home -or her mom called her- at 6:48pm. Prior to that call when Jessica left home she stated she was going to “clean her car”, and then “get something to eat”. Jessica was wearing PJ style camo (black and white) pants, possibly flannel, and a dark zip-up hoodie.”
The press ran with photos of this young woman, provided by family, show a younger, very innocent-looking blond girl. Perhaps the truth will support neither the racial angle to the story some are promoting nor the completely hapless victim angle. There’s more to why she was at this isolated area. Time and more digging will uncover the facts, but my hunch is that instead of race or politics, maybe drugs played a central role in both crimes, providing that link that crosses racial, socio-economic and political boundaries. Just a thought…
Filed under Culture Wars, General Interest, Politics, The Media
Monster mash…
Watching these ever-increasing national media circuses vie for center-ring attention, a constant theme remains that age-old battle of truth vs. lies. All those memorable quotes on lies, like the Oliver Wendell Holmes, “Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle that fits them all.”, come to mind, yet truth doesn’t seem to matter to many of the purveyors of rabid, partisan political agendas. Moral relativists scream louder that the truth about the event doesn’t matter, with even elected national leader, Eleanor Holmes Norton heatedly arguing with Sean Hannity a few days ago (Mediaite video here):
“My interest is not in what happened, my interest is in what should happen!”
Finding left-wing examples of this disturbing disregard for the truth about the events that transpired doesn’t take much effort. The deafening silence from the vast, right-wing conspiracy of elected Republicans, squirming and slithering away from openly discussing matters where race plays a role, screams of a moral cowardice, quaking with fear of awakening the wrath of race hustlers like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. They adopt generic, milk toast sound bites, carefully avoiding, by word or inflection, anything that might offend the PC gatekeepers on the left. The left does not hold a monopoly on “leading from behind”!
If I were an alien intercepting American electronic data, from TV to the internet, well, I suspect I would decide, “Skip them, there’s no intelligent life left there!” If I were a human being somewhere far beyond America’s boundaries, likewise, I probably would wonder how such a sleazy, mendacious, morally-bankrupt culture still invents so much of the world’s technological marvels, discovers amazing medical treatment advances, and fields a military that is the envy of the world. Yet, being an American, I know the pop-culture doesn’t represent the large portion (not sure if it’s still a majority) of America, who struggles to fight against the tide of the negative, pernicious reach of moral relativism that seeps into our daily lives, gradually lulling people into accepting warped reasoning, meaningless slogans and deliberately deceptive “narratives”.
Words carry meaning. That is why the moral relativists devote so much effort to creating new phrases that turn Judeo-Christian morality, from which America’s cultural mores grew, on it’s head, leaving a zombie like acceptance and regurgitation of the lexicon of the left. With each submission to the new phrases, reasoning recedes, mindless, emotion-driven narratives fill that deafening silence left by cowardly Republicans, leaving us with the Zombie Apocalypse upon us. Yes, we should fear our demise from mindless, political zombies rampaging on the streets of America! Life imitating fiction, somehow fitting for the moral-relativist script for our national “narratives”, replete with cannibalistic monsters who feed on human flesh…
Filed under Culture Wars, General Interest, Politics, The Media
Militarization in America – except for the US Armed forces
I didn’t really want to jump into the Ferguson mess, but being libertybelle, it’s hard to remain silent. Enough already! President Obama and all his friends in the far left activism circle are pulling a fast one on our incurious, gullible mainstream media and playing the race card to silence any who dare question them. President Obama met with leftie radicals,like La Raza, race agitators like Al Sharpton, along with assorted leaders from the NAACP, hip-hop, and select law enforcement folks (those who support President Obama’s agenda). President Obama wants to create a federal police force and he’s using the Ferguson situation to move toward that. Naturally, he’s already at work on another executive order to nudge more federal controls and oversight of local police forces around the country. President Obama, through his community organizing friends, staged this entire national crisis.
Frankly, a lot of bad stuff has happened to black folks in America since our country’s founding – that is a fact. Racism still exists, also a fact. To pick a thug who robbed a convenience store as the poster boy for all that is wrong with the police rubs many law-abiding Americans the wrong way – Michael Brown was a suspect for a strong-arm robbery. His mother and her husband/boyfriend (not sure which) are inciting riots, which is a crime too. The husband/boyfriend is a two time convicted drug dealer. Yet, the professional race agitators descended on Ferguson and keep trying to bury the facts, rewrite the narrative and do complete character makeovers for this decidedly unscrupulous cast of characters.
The altercation between Darren Wilson and Michael Brown, unlike the Zimmerman/Martin situation, took place in broad daylight. Plenty of eye witnesses exist. Some, who the Brown lawyers and professional race agitators presented, were obviously coached. Now, in modern America cell phones are everywhere. I work in a store where customers will whip out their cell phones and snap photos of incorrect labels, misplaced merchandise behind the wrong label, etc. The Brown handlers first tried to pawn Michael Brown off as an innocent child until the convenience store robbery videotape emerged. With all these eyewitnesses, most, if not all, who had cellphones, photos and videos of the altercation must exist. I’ve been wondering who has suppressed those from hitting the media.
While President Obama looks into the militarization of police forces around the country, who is looking into his militarization of the executive branch of the federal government? President Obama has armed even the Department of Agriculture, but he’s disarming a whole bunch of the US Armed Forces….. Odd!
Filed under Culture Wars, Food for Thought, General Interest, Politics, The Media
Another home truth
The Ferguson, MO rioting in the wake of the Darren Wilson grand jury decision, with the usual cast of professional purveyors of divisive racial politics and race-hustling, showcases not only America’s continuing racial struggles, but even more basically the sharp divide in how “civil rights” lies far removed from “civic duties” among political factional lines and also down racial lines too. Trying to find a root cause for racial discord in America takes pretty clear-cut explanatory paths, depending on individual racial identity and political lines. The problem with expecting solutions from highly-charged polar opposite political factions boils down to a home truth – politics can’t change hearts or offer a safe place to ford the raging river of racial animus in America. More government programs, more politically-motivated awareness campaigns, more in-your-face punditry battles, more riots can not ever help us find common ground, common hopes, common dreams for a real “United States of America”.
In past blog posts I’ve written about Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, oft-referenced, “I Have A Dream” speech. While the line: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”, gets recited often, another line, perhaps harkening to my Pennsylvania roots with the city of brotherly love, resonates as the simple goal we can all strive for in our daily lives: “I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.”
With Thanksgiving thoughts still warming my heart and memories of pumpkin pie for breakfast this morning (yes, I baked my own this year) creating a pleasant, all-is-right-with-the-world glow, or perhaps that’s my blood sugar peaking, who wants to think about all the ugliness that surrounds racial politics in America, right? Often the answers, so simplistic as to sound too easy, are, in fact, the truth. Yes, the way to unite America is not a political endeavor, but a matter of winning hearts and minds. Sadly, we have role models, like President Obama, who invest enormous efforts to be “community organizers”, devoted to political action, but completely unwilling to roll up their sleeves and invest in the hard work of helping the individuals in their communities find paths to successfully achieving prosperity in America, rebuilding their shattered communities and families and most importantly winning their hearts to the belief that moving beyond America’s ignoble history on issues of race is not an insurmountable obstacle.
Rioting fuels hate and oddly enough, Maya Angelou, a very unlikely choice for conservative ol’ me to quote, said it best:
“Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.” –
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/26244-hate-it-has-caused-a-lot-of-problems-in-the
Although we had a busy week at work, some ladies decided we should have a potluck on Wednesday, because my store provides Thanksgiving dinner to those of us who have to work on Thanksgiving Day. My store, due to being outside a large Army post, with the requisite very diverse ethnic make-up, results in potlucks that are an around-the-world culinary experience. As everyone eats, there are always questions about some new dish that gets rave reviews and we have certain people who get special requests for dishes, like Marcia from Jamaica usually brings her Jamaican jerk-chicken, Doris makes an excellent German chocolate cake, and the list goes on and on. Tawanna makes some outstanding collard greens. Some new associate brought egg rolls that received high praise.
I’m always amazed at how when people sit down to share a meal, the petty squabbles subside, conversations almost invariably turn to family and home. A friendly dinner table is the world’s most under-tapped peacemaking tool. The simple act of breaking bread together at a table of brotherhood doesn’t seem all that hard and once people can come together and peacefully share a meal and conversation, then all the other politicized barriers fall to the wayside. Community potlucks could rebuild communities and not cost taxpayers a dime. Believe it, because it’s true and with so much animosity and hatred in America, at the very least neighbors might make new friends, so there’s no downside to the endeavor.
PS: Here’s an old LB post on the dangers of factions, “The duty of a wise people“, from my hero, President George Washington.
Filed under Culture Wars, Food for Thought, Politics
Kitchen knives and such
My kitchen is filled with that horrid pre-Thanksgiving smell of charred grease wafting from my “self-cleaning” oven and I’ve used that reserved energy from having to scrub and scrape the oven to sit here, sip hot tea and browse the internet. Aside from the foreign policy and political sites, Pinterest has become one of my favorite sites. With 72 boards and over 2,000 pins, I feel like a pro at pinning ideas to my boards. Naturally, Pinterest gets flooded with seasonal recipes, craft, and decorating ideas, which replaced much of my magazine browsing from years gone by. A new slow cooker sweet potato recipe caught my eye and I am going to try it out with my Thanksgiving meal, since I’m the only one who eats sweet potatoes and the new recipe, Orange-Sage Sweet Potatoes with Bacon, has a whole lot less sugar than my traditional candied sweet potatoes and might be a good change. Life in a modern kitchen cooking traditional meals has become so much easier and I enjoy the melding of the two.
In recent years, “brining the turkey” became a trendy new idea among American chefs, despite the fact that brining goes back into antiquity and my PA Dutch ancestors have been devotees for centuries. My mother brined all poultry before cooking and I do likewise. Now, I read a worrisome piece by The Thinking Housewife, “The Decline of Chopping”, on the demise of vegetable chopping due to pre-cut, ready-to-use produce that has come into vogue. She offers chopping vegetables as therapy, an idea that sounds like it fell from the lips of my own mother, who would give us something to do, if we uttered those words, “I’m bored” or “there’s nothing to do”:
“There is perhaps another reason for the decline of chopping. At the cutting board, one is sometimes alone with one’s own thoughts. Some people in our vain, heavily mediated and distracted world, perhaps through no fault of their own, have no thoughts at all. They only have sensations and emotions. Thus they discover at the cutting board that there’s no there there. For these people, much to be pitied, chopping would be therapeutic. Doctors should perhaps send some of the depressed home with prescriptions to chop so many onions and cabbages a day.”
In large families chores are often assigned by ability over strict rules of “fair distribution of labor” and I became the loyal chopper, peeler, mashing stuff through a sieve person. Between my mother and my oldest sister, who gained culinary artistry skills in her teens, there existed no room for any more management in our kitchen, so I was the one who would just ask what size they wanted the various vegetables chopped, diced, minced, etc. and then I found a quiet spot at the kitchen table to focus on uniform size and think about how someday I would like to pick my own recipes to cook and not be under their tyranny. Yes, I dreamed of revolting and trying my own culinary ideas, but to this day, I remain a very precise and diligent chopper and while my thoughts don’t quite plumb the depth of “there’s no there there”, most assuredly lofty thoughts on edifying topics never crossed my mind either. And really, a food processor can perform a wider variety of chopping functions than I ever dreamed of with a paring knife and chef’s knife (my two go-to knives) or even with this amazing Cutco Santuko-style knife. A neighbor’s daughter took to selling Cutco knives door-to-door years ago as one her first jobs, thus my one truly marvelous knife.
Frankly, most of the people buying fresh produce know how to handle it in its full state and while the pre-cut and ready-to-use stuff offers convenience, most shoppers do consider the cost and opt for the less costly whole vegetables. Farmer’s markets across America are thriving too, so I don’t share The Thinking Housewife’s worries on the demise of chopping. Yes, I use crinkle cut fresh carrots in my soups and stews if I get off from work late and want to throw a meal together, just don’t waste your money on frozen diced up onions and assorted peppers, in hopes of speeding up Tex-mex recipe preparation. I tried them, so you don’t have to have mushy onions and peppers in your chili.
My store sells a bazillion (yes, really we do) cans of sweet potatoes, but there are plenty of folks like me, who always buy fresh, whole sweet potatoes, and we sell through a bazillion of them too. That’s what I like about America, you are free to choose and for me, I love the traditional, but some years here in the Deep South, I have been known to rework my holiday menu to more summery foods like potato salad, if it’s one of those very warm Thanksgivings here. I don’t care if we have turkey or ham and one year the kids asked me to prepare roast beef. We always have plenty to eat, but being a Yankee at heart, I just can’t adopt sweet potato pie, no matter how many years I live here. Pumpkin pie, made from fresh cooked pumpkin (which used to be a must) to nowadays canned pumpkin, doesn’t matter a bit to me, and if I’m in too much of a hurry, I might even sink to a store-bought pie altogether. Yes, my mother is turning over in her grave, but there you have it – I opt for easy quite often in recent years.
This whole issue brought to mind a conversation with one of my sons years ago, after he had visited my very busy sister, who was still a full-time state trooper in PA, with a husband and two kids, involved in too many after-school activities. After his visit we were talking and my sister’s driving skills came up in conversation, because she can traverse the winding mountain roads back home at breakneck speeds. She also whipped through a lot of fast food lines while he was visiting, as she rushed between work, shopping chores, carting her kids around, etc. My son told me she told him not to tell me, the stay-at-home-cook-dinner every night-mom, how much fast food she buys. I didn’t judge her, because I didn’t know how she managed all the stress of her work, plus taking care of her family and all of the housework too. I admired her for working so hard all the time and rarely taking any time for herself. And I certainly wouldn’t think less of her if she opted for pre-packaged, ready-to-use vegetables from the produce department. Feminists make up straw man arguments to attack men, conservatives and anyone else who disagrees with them. I’ve noticed that vocal “housewives/homemakers/stay-at-home Moms” often do the same thing, heaping grave societal value on trivialities like the demise of chopping. Homemade, semi-homemade or store bought matters not a whit, it’s the time you make for the people in your life that really counts:-)
Filed under Culture Wars, Food for Thought, General Interest
Asking the right questions
As a parent, one of the most difficult kinds of children to deal with is the one who doesn’t accept your answers without asking, “why”. Being one such child myself and having not one, but four, yes, FOUR, such children of my own, who refused to accept pat answers, decades ago I realized that sometimes these questions served as pieces to a larger puzzle. Defining that larger puzzle revealed answers to important questions we weren’t even aware needed to be asked.
A couple of weeks ago, I came across a website called BookBub, where you can enter your email address, select categories of books you’re interested in and which type of e-books you want – kindle, b&n, etc. Then you receive a daily email with great e-book deals. So, I’ve been reading one of these BookBub deal books called, “Great Work: How to Make a Difference People Love”, which explores how to create great work, by being willing to ask the right questions. Here’s an example from this book on how a three-year old’s question led to an iconic American invention:
“It was 1944. The Land family was on vacation in New Mexico, hitting some sights and snapping photos. Three-year-old Jennifer had a question that was really bothering her. As described by her father, Edwin, “I recall a sunny day in Santa Fe, New Mexico, when my little daughter asked why she could not see at once the picture I had just taken of her.” Edwin explained to his little girl that the film had to be developed in a special place called a darkroom, and that the negatives had to be printed on special paper. Translated from the perspective of a three-year-old: blah-blah, blah-blah.”
“We all do this in our own way—explain why things are the way they are to someone who questions the expected— as if the current solution is some foregone conclusion, a done deal. Thank goodness Jennifer was a strong-willed kid who was not satisfied with her dad’s answer. She still wanted to know, “Why can’t I see my picture right now?” And that sulky disgruntlement got Edwin to thinking: “As I walked around the charming town I undertook the task of solving the puzzle she had set me.” Three years later, the camera, the film, and the physical chemistry came together as Edwin and Polaroid introduced the concept of “instant” to the photography world.”
Sturt, David (2013-09-02). Great Work: How to Make a Difference People Love (Kindle Locations 531-540). McGraw-Hill Education. Kindle Edition.
Reading about asking the right question leading to new ways to approach a problem led me to wondering if we haven’t asked the right questions in regards to our American foreign policy. The Great Work book offers this bit of trivia about queries:
“When early scholars wrote in Latin, they would use the word quaestiō at the end of a sentence to signal that it was a query. That took up too much space. So in the Middle Ages, quaestiō got abridged to qo, with the q appearing above the o. Then, over time, natural refinements shaped that stacked q and o into the well-known squiggle and dot that we use today. It’s a fitting symbol for all the curious hunches of a difference-making quest. Each is a journey that’s oriented and navigated, from departure to destination, by the question mark itself.”
Sturt, David (2013-09-02). Great Work: How to Make a Difference People Love (Kindle Locations 728-733). McGraw-Hill Education. Kindle Edition.
Perhaps we need to ask more questions before we can find the “right” questions to ask to realign American foreign policy with American national interests. As President Obama’s initial half-baked “strategy” to defeat ISIL/ISIS/IS falters, the larger question, “why does American foreign policy seem to benefit a whole host of foreign countries, disparate interest groups and even our adversaries more than it benefits America?”, seems to be one such big picture question that might illuminate the larger puzzle. Finding the pieces to solve this puzzle might lead us toward a more coherent foreign policy spanning the globe, not just dealing with the ISIL/ISIS/IS quandary.
Back in September, President Obama announced his “strategy”, stating, “we will degrade and ultimately destroy ISIL”. Here we are in November and his “strategy” isn’t working. We (the American taxpayers) have invested somewhere between 4-6 trillion dollars, not to even count the cost in American lives lost in the fight to defeat al Qaeda and it’s affiliates. Along the way the strategy veered into nation-building, replete with trying to build western-style armies and police forces amongst people who have no understanding of western secular governance. All sorts of tangential programs blossomed from drug eradication programs in Afghanistan to the tune of 7.5 billion dollars yielding an increase in poppy production, yes, an increase to misappropriated or unaccounted for spending on private contractors, bribe money to buy locals, etc., etc., etc. We (our government and US Forces) tried to downplay that anti-American sentiment grew the longer we stayed and the more we tried to help. We overemphasized small short-term successes, while ignoring large long-term failures. And at the big picture level, we never pinned down what victory really was. We went from 8 years of hearing that we mustn’t leave safe havens for terrorists to even more feckless announcements that al Qaeda was defeated and that walking away from the fight and declaring victory is the same thing as really winning the fight.
To expect coherence in American foreign policy at this late date seems to be more wishful thinking than realistic, but let’s ask more questions. Supposing we actually defeated al Qaeda, ISIL/ISIS/IS, and all the other big Islamist terrorists, would the Islamist Ascendency come to a crashing halt? Would the power vacuums in the region be filled by more moderate factions? Are we viewing “victory” myopically by focusing on smaller parts of the Islamic world’s power struggles, without considering the larger battles between Shia and Sunni and between them and secular factions? Do we even really have a good grasp of the power structure of these factions and of the “hearts and minds” of the people whom we’re ostensibly trying to help? Is negotiating with Iran in America’s national interest and how does this impact our dealings with the Shia-aligned powers in Iraq or with our Sunni allies in the region? Does removing Assad really open the door for those elusive “Syrian moderates” to crawl out of the woodwork and end the brutal civil war or will it be a green light to the most determined zealots to fight harder to seize power? ISIL seems to be gaining allies (“Islamic State leader claims ‘caliphate’ has expanded in new audio message“), while John Kerry is mum about the size of our “coalition”, should we be concerned? And now the most basic question of all, “Is an American team, where the President of the United States does not listen to his own top generals on how to employ American military might, a larger national security threat than ISIL?”
Before we can figure out a strategy we need to define the strengths and weaknesses of the various leaders, the political alignments of the various, expanding number of factions, and the people (both at home and abroad). We need to define America’s national interests in the Muslim world and to do that requires asking the troublesome questions about that “religion of Peace”, with its many faces of jihad. And just maybe, we need to set our partisan blinders aside and take a good, hard look in the mirror and ask ourselves if after spending trillions of dollars on this “war on terror”, “American democratization project” or however you want to define the past decade we expect to defeat anyone with such a muddled, misguided, delusional foreign policy, while our enemy remains committed to the same clear strategic goals? Can an America that remains divided by rancorous partisan politics ever be successful at agreeing on “American national interests” or piecing together a unified, coherent foreign policy?
Often I sit here looking at my bookshelves as I think about what to write and this morning, prodded by the focus on questions most assuredly, my eyes kept returning to Samuel Huntington’s, “Who Are We?” sitting beneath “Discourses on Livy” in a stack of books on my children’s little rocking chair near my desk. Let’s hope the answer to all these questions isn’t the book underneath Huntington’s……… Colin Gray’s “Another Bloody Century”….
As a young child watching the news, I used to ask my mother why there’s so much fighting in the Mid-East and her answer made more sense than some of the most brilliant analysis by renowned foreign policy experts. She would sigh and say, “They haven’t moved past throwing stones yet.” She often followed that with little lectures on tolerance and turning the other cheek. One can hide behind secular academic blather, but perhaps hate is the driving force behind the Islamic Ascendancy and that is a question to ponder long and hard upon.
Filed under Culture Wars, Foreign Policy, General Interest, Islam, Military, Politics, Terrorism
A “squatters rights” movement squashed in Detroit
Rick Moran at The American Thinker posted a story with a link to a very amusing video from a reporter in Detroit on the so-called “squatters rights” movement – “Watch this Detroit squatter get what’s coming to her”
Filed under Culture Wars, General Interest, Politics, The Media, Uncategorized
libertybelle diaries 