We could learn a little from the French about how to deal with #terrorism

As I was watching the Republican debate Tuesday night, I wondered once again what the men and women who went through the Depression and World War II would think of their country now, which seems to be in full-scale panic mode about the prospect of a terrorist attack.

What would the Greatest Generation think, for example, about whole school districts closing merely because of threats from questionable e-mails (Los Angeles Unified) or because of something someone scrawled on a bathroom wall (our own absurd Eastern KY University).

What would they think about a whole population that can be brought to its emotional knees by one relatively minor terrorist attack?

Fourteen people died in San Bernadino, California at the hands of Islamicist terrorists. The attack was, of course, frightening. 

 

I'm sure that the deaths of the fourteen people in San Bernadino was the most important thing in the world to their family and friends, and that's as it should be. But the rest of us need to get a grip. As an occasion for the personal grief among the people who knew the victims it is cause for grief and outrage, and as a policy matter it is something we surely need to consider carefully and to take sober measures of preventing it from happening again.

 

But ants kill 30 people a year and falling out of bed kills about 450 people a year. Coconuts kill 150 people per year, icicles in Russia 100. In fact, tap water kills 100 people per year. But these things are not covered in long repetitive segments for days on end on CNN.

But in this day and age when full-time newscasts take every outrage and magnify it 100-fold, it is sometimes hard to maintain the proper perspective.

Now this will be received as hard medicine by those of us who are slaves to the news-cycle, where every little event is blown into mammoth proportions and becomes the excuse for hasty and heedless policy prescriptions which are urged on us in urgent tones—and which must be implemented now or we'll all die.

I attribute all of this also to the simple fact that we are spoiled, soft people who live in easy conditions that, in any other place and time, would be thought lax and effeminate.

No one up until our time would have considered a terrorist act of such a limited magnitude to constitute the kind of crisis we now think it is. And anyone suggesting that it was would been told that they need to get a grip and to think about how minor this was in the total scheme of things in a world in which a war (WWII) had just killed from 50 to 80 million people and caused the devastation and homelessness of millions more and where in the decade before that millions were impoverished by bank closures and loss of jobs and where a decade before that some 38 million people were killed in the war (WWI) that was supposed to "end all wars."

Heck, even Korea and the Vietnam War are still within living memory.

People need to stop watching Anderson Cooper and start reading William Shirer. They need to start reading history to give them some kind of context to current events. Of course, that assumes that people can still read, and, if they can, even know that there is history to be read.

Unfortunately, our schools today have performed the cultural equivalent of a lobotomy on a whole people. Now that's a crisis. Somebody ought panic about that.

I'm with the French on this one: Find out who committed the atrocity and kill them. Otherwise, continue to lead your life normally. It's the worst thing you can do to the terrorists.

In fact, the next time I hear about how wimpy the French are, I'm going to remind the imbecilic American person saying it how we, as a matter of course, react to these things compared to the French.

Au revoir.

Why Spelling Matters: L. A. school district didn't notice capitalization error in terrorist threat

This is beautiful. The entire Los Angeles Unified School District shut down today because of an e-mail terrorism threat from someone who identified himself as a jihadist. But New York schools received the same threat and considered it a hoax.

Why? Because of a spelling error.

Here is NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton, explaining one of the reasons New York decided not to close its schools:

Bratton said one reason authorities believed the email was a hoax was because the word Allah was not capitalized: "The language in the email would lead us to believe that this is not a jihadist initiative... That would be incredible to think that any jihadist would not spell Allah with a capital 'A.'"

So the literate police in New York noticed something that the semi-literate educators in L.A. missed, causing the huge West coast school district to lose a whole school day.

Flying the unfriendly skies

Ann Coulter on the increasingly ridiculous security procedures travelers are forced to endure in the nation's airports:

For the past eight years, approximately 2 million Americans a day have been subjected to humiliating searches at airport security checkpoints, forced to remove their shoes and jackets, to open their computers, and to remove all liquids from their carry-on bags, except minuscule amounts in marked 3-ounce containers placed in Ziploc plastic bags -- folding sandwich bags are verboten -- among other indignities.

This, allegedly, was the price we had to pay for safe airplanes. The one security precaution the government refused to consider was to require extra screening for passengers who looked like the last three-dozen terrorists to attack airplanes.

Since Muslims took down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, every attack on a commercial airliner has been committed by foreign-born Muslim men with the same hair color, eye color and skin color. Half of them have been named Mohammed.

Read the rest here.

How to Become a Major in U. S. Army Without Really Trying

More from those right-wing wackos over at NPR trying to embarrass the Obama administration:

Two years ago, a top psychiatrist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center was so concerned about what he saw as Nidal Hasan's incompetence and reckless behavior that he put those concerns in writing. NPR has obtained a copy of the memo, the first evaluation that has surfaced from Hasan's file.

Officials at Walter Reed sent that memo to Fort Hood this year when Hasan was transferred there.

Nevertheless, commanders still assigned Hasan — accused of killing 13 people in a mass shooting at Fort Hood on Nov. 5 — to work with some of the Army's most troubled and vulnerable soldiers.

Read the rest here.

One place where "Diversity" isn't practiced by liberals

Ann Coulter on the application of "Diversity":

Among the worst aspects of America's "diversity" is that liberals' reaction to a heterogeneous population is to create a pecking order based on alleged victimhood -- as described in electrifying detail in my book, Guilty: Liberal 'Victims' and Their Assault on America.

In modern America, the guilty are sanctified, while the innocent never stop paying -- including with their lives, as they did at Fort Hood last week. Points are awarded to aspiring victims for angry self-righteousness, acts of violence and general unpleasantness.

But liberals celebrate diversity only in the case of superficial characteristics like race, gender, sexual preference and country of origin. They reject diversity when we need it, such as in "diversity" of legal forums.

After conferring with everyone at Zabar's, Obama decided that if a standard civilian trial is good enough for Martha Stewart, then it's good enough for the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. So Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is coming to New York!

Read the rest here.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the Obama administration's contradictory policy on terrorism

If Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is a captured enemy combatant, then why is being tried in federal court? And if he is not a captured enemy combatant, they why are we still calling it a "War on Terror?"

Pat Buchanan hones in on the central contradiction in the U. S. policy on terrorism:

[I]f we are at war, why is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed headed for trial in federal court in the Southern District of New York? Why is he entitled to a presumption of innocence and all of the constitutional protections of a U.S. citizen?

...Enemy soldiers who commit atrocities are not sent to the United States for trial. Under the Geneva Conventions, soldiers who commit atrocities are shot when caught.

When and where did Khalid Sheikh Mohammed acquire his right to a trial by a jury of his peers in a U.S. court?

Read more here.

Gen. Casey in need of further Diversity training

Further evidence that Hasan did everything but send Army officials a notarized written announcement that he was going to start shooting:

“Diversity” is one of those words designed to absolve you of the need to think. Likewise, a belief in “multiculturalism” doesn’t require you to know anything at all about other cultures, just to feel generally warm and fluffy about them. Heading out from my hotel room the other day, I caught a glimpse of that 7-Eleven video showing Major Hasan wearing “Muslim” garb to buy a coffee on the morning of his murderous rampage. And it wasn’t until I was in the taxi cab that something odd struck me: He was an American of Arab descent. But he was wearing Pakistani dress -- that’s to say, a “Punjabi suit,” as they call it in Britain, or the shalwar kameez, to give it its South Asian name. For all the hundreds of talking heads droning on about “diversity” across the TV networks, it was only Tarek Fatah, writing in the Ottawa Citizen, who pointed out that no Arab males wear this get-up -- with one exception: Those Arab men who got the jihad fever and went to Afghanistan to sign on with the Taliban and al-Qaeda. In other words, Major Hasan’s outfit symbolized the embrace of an explicit political identity entirely unconnected with his ethnic heritage.

Mr. Fatah would seem to be a genuine “multiculturalist”: That’s to say, he’s attuned to often very subtle “diversities” between cultures. Whereas the professional multiculturalist sees the 7-Eleven video and coos, “Aw, look. He’s wearing#...#well, something exotic and colorful, let’s not get hung up on details. Celebrate diversity, right? Can we get him in the front row for the group shot? We may be eligible for a grant.”

Read the rest here.

Will victims of Ft. Hood receive a Purple Heart?

Was the Ft. Hood massacre an act of terrorism--or was it merely the result of stress? If it was the result of a terrorist act, which the Obama administration is loathe to admit because it could damage the progress of Diversity in the Army, then the victims should receive the Purple Heart. But if it was only an act of stress relief, which seems to be the preferred theory of the military (and of the largely anonymous posters to this blog), then they should not receive Purple Heart.

Of course, since, according the Terrorism Denialists it is really Hasan who is the victim here, maybe he deserves an award of some kind.

HT: Roger's Rules

News Flash: At least Hasan wasn't engaged in sexual harassment

This just in: The Fort Hood massacre could have been worse: Hasan could have gotten drunk with his buddies and groped a females soldier or two. We have to put these things in perspective. In fact, why hasn't General Casey thought of this?

Now we go to Ann Coulter, on location:

Far less offensive speech has been grounds for discipline or even removal from duties in the military. In the aftermath of the Tailhook scandal, for example, two Navy officers were reprimanded and reassigned after putting up a sign with the words of a nursery rhyme altered to include a vulgar sexual reference to liberal congresswoman Patricia Schroeder.

But a Muslim Army doctor can go around a military installation somberly advocating the beheading of infidels, and the girls running the military treat him like he's Nicole Kidman and they're press junket reporters.

Read more here.

The Tailhook scandal, which involved the sexual harassment of several female soldiers who were allegedly groped by some drunken Navy aviators, destroyed or damaged the careers of fourteen admirals and about 300 aviators.

Now let me grab my calculator here, hang on ... Okay, so you add fourteen to three hundred and you get ... you get 314. Now then, let's subtract zero from 314, and that's ... 314. That's 314 more careers damaged or destroyed as a result of sexual harassment of several females soldiers than careers damaged or destroyed as a result of the idiotic worship of Diversity by Gen. Casey and his Diversity warriors that resulted in the deaths of 13 people at a military base.

Will any heads roll? We're not holding our breath.

Not getting any respect

All of this criticism on my blog of my controversial theory that a Muslim guy who shoots up a military installation shouting "Allahu akbar!" was an act of terrorism is really stressing me out. It's enough to cause a guy to go out and shoot up some place and kill a bunch of people.

At least then I could gain the respect of my critics.

America's new Shariah law

Pamela Geller at the American Thinker:

Shariah law forbids criticism of Islam. And here we are.

We are witnessing an Islamized America. This is well beyond political correctness. We are enforcing Shariah law. We will not insult Islam -- that is Shariah law. We self-censor -- that is Shariah law. We disrespect ourselves and our nation so that we might respect Islam. This is dhimmitude ...

Read the rest here.

Gen. Casey: threat to diversity worse than Ft. Hood massacre

Here's George Neumayr of the American Spectator, a journalist in serious need of sensitivity training:

General George Casey's staggeringly inane comment after the shooting captures the atmosphere that explains it: "Our diversity, not only in our Army, but in our country, is a strength. And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that's worse."

Diversity at this point is a synonym for mindlessness and self-hating hypocrisy. Were Hasan a virulent and outspoken Christian military chaplain, he would have been branded a hate criminal and whisked away. But since he is a Muslim, since Obama isn't at "war with Islam," and since Islam is so obviously a religion of peace, he was given a wide swath.

Under the paralysis of a PC culture, all Muslims are moderate Muslims and anyone who says otherwise is a bigot. If Hasan didn't define Islam as a religion of peace but as a religion of jihad, that was okay; he would come around in time to the superior liberal understanding of Islam as non-violent...

Read the rest here.

Doesn't Neumeyr understand that Diversity demands not offending people who want to destroy us? Next thing you know, he'll by arguing that a guy shooting a bunch of people because of his religious ideology is terrorism.

Sheeez.

Osama bin Ladin: Uncle Sam wants YOU!

I am reminded of the scene in the movie "Stripes" in which Bill Murray's character and two friends go into an Army recruitment office for an interview before joining. The recruiter asks whether any of them are homosexuals. "No sir," says Murray, "but we're willing to try."

One thing you can say about women in positions exposed to combat (including pregnant women) and gays in the military: at least they're loyal. But now the politically correct agenda that has already turned the military into a giant maternity ward and a field for social experimentation has been extended to include people who, like, aren't even on our side.

More about how the politically correct chickens came home to roost at Ft. Hood:

It is becoming increasingly apparent that Nidal Hasan was not only unhinged, but also an entirely inappropriate character to counsel U.S. soldiers on war-related stress and injuries. The wingers are exaggerating much of this--the fact that he attended the same mosque as two of the 9/11 hijackers is guilt by association, at best; the fact that he communicated with an Al Qaeda leader is more troubling, but the emails were monitored and judged to be non-threatening.

What is very troubling is that his colleagues at Walter Reed seem to have had grave doubts about the guy (it'll be interesting to see the evaluations he received from superiors)--and yet he was allowed to continue to counsel American troops, troops who were in an extremely delicate psychological state. That seems beyond careless. And the question has to be asked: Was this a matter of political correctness? Was the Army reluctant to discharge a Muslim in a sensitive position because it might be portrayed as an act of bigotry or censorship--that he was fired for his views?

Read the rest here.

More disappointing news for the Hasan denialists

More on the kinder, gentler treatment given radical jihadists in the military from that bastion of right wingnutism, NPR:

Starting in the spring of 2008, key officials from Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences held a series of meetings and conversations, in part about Maj. Nidal Hasan, the man accused of killing 13 people and wounding dozens of others last week during a shooting spree at Fort Hood. One of the questions they pondered: Was Hasan psychotic?

"Put it this way," says one official familiar with the conversations that took place. "Everybody felt that if you were deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, you would not want Nidal Hasan in your foxhole" ...

Read the rest here.

While federal officials are still asking, "Gee, what happened" with Nidal Hasan ...

More on Nidal Hasan from journalists outside the military who, with out any trouble, are diagnosing the problem that military investigators still seem unaware of:

Hasan's classmates at the Uniformed Services University, the military college where mass killer Nidal Malik Hasan recently took graduate courses, claimed to have repeatedly complained to their superiors about his persistent anti-American tirades.

According to the New York Post, one said he cautioned those in charge that the ranting Hasan was a "ticking time bomb" after he gave a presentation defending Islamic suicide bombers. Another classmate stated he voiced his complaints to two civilian faculty members and five officers.

Read the rest here.

Federal officials investigating Fort Hood shooter: Okay, so they're not Sherlock Holmes

Thomas Joscelyn at the Worldwide Standard, wondering why federal officials investigating Fort Hood shooter are scratching their heads:

The FBI and other federal authorities are reportedly still trying to figure out Maj. Nidal M. Hasan’s motive for opening fire at Fort Hood.

Let’s take a look at Hasan’s June 2007 50-slide presentation to senior Army doctors to see if we can unravel this mystery. According to the Washington Post, Hasan was “supposed to discuss a medical topic during” the presentation, but instead “he lectured on Islam, suicide bombers and threats the military could encounter from Muslims conflicted about fighting wars in Muslim countries.”

Hasan’s presentation was titled, “The Koranic World View As It Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military.” It is fairly obvious that Hasan endorsed the jihadist view of the world in which believers are rewarded, while the infidels are punished. And only those believers who truly follow Allah’s commandments will be rewarded in the afterlife. Allah’s demands, according to Hasan, included participation in an offensive jihad against Islam’s enemies...

Read the rest here.