Bloodthirsty Liberal

Don’t let me interrupt your reading of the Goldstone Report about Israeli war crimes in Gaza (I especially loved the part where the Jewish soldiers harvested the pancreases of an entire Palestinian elementary school—those are some crazy Jews!).

But if you haven’t read it yet, be sure to look for it in your local library or bookostore under fiction:

The former commander of British forces in Afghanistan said on Friday that the IDF took more precautions during Operation Cast Lead than any military in the history of warfare.

Col. Richard Kemp made the comment in an address to the president of the UN Human Rights Council, Alex Van Meeuwen of Belgium, at its special session on the Goldstone Report in Geneva. Kemp’s address is printed below:

I am the former commander of the British forces in Afghanistan. I served with NATO and the United Nations; commanded troops in Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Macedonia; and participated in the Gulf War. I spent considerable time in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, and worked on international terrorism for the UK government’s Joint Intelligence Committee.

Mr. President, based on my knowledge and experience, I can say this: During Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli Defense Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.

Israel did so while facing an enemy that deliberately positioned its military capability behind the human shield of the civilian population.

Hamas, like Hizbullah, are expert at driving the media agenda. Both will always have people ready to give interviews condemning Israeli forces for war crimes. They are adept at staging and distorting incidents.

The IDF faces a challenge that we British do not have to face to the same extent. It is the automatic, Pavlovian presumption by many in the international media, and international human rights groups, that the IDF are in the wrong, that they are abusing human rights.

The truth is that the IDF took extraordinary measures to give Gaza civilians notice of targeted areas, dropping over 2 million leaflets, and making over 100,000 phone calls. Many missions that could have taken out Hamas military capability were aborted to prevent civilian casualties. During the conflict, the IDF allowed huge amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza. To deliver aid virtually into your enemy’s hands is, to the military tactician, normally quite unthinkable. But the IDF took on those risks.

Despite all of this, of course innocent civilians were killed. War is chaos and full of mistakes. There have been mistakes by the British, American and other forces in Afghanistan and in Iraq, many of which can be put down to human error. But mistakes are not war crimes.

More than anything, the civilian casualties were a consequence of Hamas’s way of fighting. Hamas deliberately tried to sacrifice their own civilians.

Mr. President, Israel had no choice apart from defending its people, to stop Hamas from attacking them with rockets.

And I say this again: The IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.

Yeah, yeah, we heard you. What are you, some kind of philo-semite?

For an oak tree to sprout, a squirrel needs to eat and s**t an ACORN. Make of that what you will:

ACORN may be down, but don’t count it out.

The elaborate propaganda apparatus erected to support the Obama agenda is already at work spinning the downfall of the community organization into a vicious right-wing plot to destroy the presidency of Barack Obama, who sprouted from ACORN.

The group was cut off from some of its taxpayer dollars after conservative bloggers duped ACORN staffers into offering advice on setting up a child prostitution ring. ACORN had no defense — it was caught on tape and posted on the Web.

But ACORN is too important to Democrats and Obama in particular to allow it to wither away. Much of the taxpayer money that funds ACORN’s activism ends up benefiting Democratic interests.

Stories are showing up about ACORN’s diligent efforts to purge itself of bad apples. News reports document how ACORN’s ability to help foreclosure victims has been hamstrung by the misdeeds of a few gullible staffers.

…

Obama’s conversion of his election team to a permanent network of campaign offices to advocate for his policies — the latest opened in Detroit on Saturday — is unprecedented.

The administration gets away with such ruthless manipulation of public opinion because the media are derelict in watch-dogging this White House and its backers.

He had me at “elaborate propaganda apparatus”, but with mention of the dereliction of the media, I know I’m in the presence of greatness.

That is what underlies all that is wrong with this administration. They couldn’t get away with any of their socialist sleaze if the media weren’t a wholly owned subsidiary of David Axelrod. To say that they are in the bag for Obama is an insult to bags everywhere.

President Obama is trying to concentrate:

Obama is no Harry Truman. At best, he is reprising Jimmy Carter. At worst, the real precedent may be Ethelred the Unready, the turn-of the-first-millennium Anglo-Saxon king whose reputation for indecisiveness and his unsuccessful paying of Danegeld — literally, “Danish tax” — to buy off Viking raiders made him history’s paradigmatic weak leader.

…

Finally, Obama’s agonizing, very public reappraisal of his own 7-month-old Afghanistan policy epitomizes indecisiveness. While there is no virtue in sustaining policy merely for continuity’s sake, neither is credit due for too-quickly adopting policies without appreciating the risks entailed and then fleeing precipitously when the risks become manifest. The administration’s stated reason for its policy re-evaluation was widespread fraud in Afghanistan’s Aug. 20 presidential election. But this explanation is simply not credible. Did not the administration’s generals and diplomats on the ground, not to mention United Nations observers, see the election mess coming? Was the Hamid Karzai administration’s cupidity and corruption overlooked or ignored during Obama’s original review and revision of his predecessor’s policy?

The unmistakable inference is that Obama did not carefully think through his March Afghan policy, or did not have full confidence then or now in Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal or Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke, or that it is now politically inconvenient among increasingly antiwar Democrats to follow through on that policy.

None of these explanations reflect credit on the president. He is dithering. Whatever decision Obama reaches on Afghanistan, his credibility and leadership have been badly wounded by his continuing public display of indecisiveness.

With respect to my co-blogress, Aunt Agatha, who was the first person I heard call Obama the next Carter, John Bolton deserves a standing ovation for seeing in our president the unmistakable double-helix of Ethelred the Unready.

And if you liked Bolton on Ass-stan, you should read what he has to say about this administration’s policy toward Russia, Iran, and the rest of the crooks, theives, and thugs in the world. Can an armadillo and an opossum breed? Their offspring is setting foreign policy these days.

I agree with them.

- Aggie

Sweden has qualms about burning bunnies to heat Bjorn’s bungalow:

Residents in Stockholm are divided over reports that rabbits are being used to make biofuel.

The bodies of thousands of rabbits are fuelling a heating plant in central Sweden, local newspapers say.

The city of Stockholm has an annual cull of thousands of rabbits to protect the capital’s parks and green spaces.

The rabbits, not native to Sweden, are mainly the offspring of pets released by owners, and are said to be destroying parks in the capital.

Since they have no natural predators, the city administration of Stockholm employs hunters to kill the rabbits.

Tommy Tuvunger, one of the hunters, told Germany’s Spiegel website that 6,000 rabbits were culled last year, and another 3,000 this year.

“They are a very big problem,” he said. “Once culled, the rabbits are frozen and when we have enough, a contractor comes and takes them away.”

The frozen rabbits are then taken to a heating plant in Karlskoga which incinerates them to heat homes.

…

“In the town where they are burning them the reaction of the residents is quite relaxed,” Mr Savage told the BBC World Service. “But in Stockholm there’s the big city attitude of the rabbits being cute.

But they are quite all right with mistreating animals not quite as cute as bunnies, Jews:

No recent media infraction captures the dangers of abandoning journalistic standards as vividly as the August 17, 2009 Aftonbladet story alleging Israel plunders and trafficks Palestinian organs. Appearing in its Culture section, the account was a concoction of baseless innuendo, false charges and guilt-by-association conspiracy theory, weaving disconnected events from past and present. Within weeks, the claims metastisized in Middle East media into lurid variations on the old blood libel of Jews plundering organs and drinking the blood of non-Jews. Incendiary cartoons and fantastic stories of Jewish child-snatching appeared.

It’s one of the oldest libels in the storied tradition of anti-Semitism, and the Swedes have merely dusted it off and put a good dance beat underneath it. And they don’t seem bothered in the least to have done so.

Okay, fine. Here’s one Jew who’s cute as a bunny.

It’s like the high-minded, well-meaning, proper-thinking shapers of opinion are watching a stage show and coming to the realization that what they thought was high art—Shaw or Shakespeare, say—is instead the lowest, bawdiest burlesque show, with the President stroking a pole in the middle of the stage, shaking his G-string in the faces of the pervs in the front row, and grinding his hips in time to the suggestive music.

Such an unpleasant image (at least I meant it to be unpleasant) is brought to mind by this editorial in the Los Angeles Times:

As part of the $787-billion economic stimulus package enacted in February, Washington sent a $250 check to every adult on Social Security. The same amount went to those enrolled in Veterans Administration, Railroad Retirement and Supplemental Security Income benefit programs. The purpose of the one-time payments was to boost consumer spending and help revive the economy. But in President Obama’s view, once was not enough. On Wednesday, he urged Congress to spend $13 billion on a second round of $250 checks, saying, “Even as we seek to bring about recovery, we must act on behalf of those hardest hit by this recession.”

The next morning, the government announced that Social Security benefits would not go up automatically next year. For the first time since Congress tied benefits to the consumer price index in 1975, there was no increase in the cost of living. In a masterful bit of spin, the head of the Social Security Administration said that the lack of a cost-of-living adjustment made it all the more important for Congress to approve another $250 bonus.

…

Living on a fixed income is tough for many Americans. But so is being unemployed, or maintaining a business when sales are slow and credit is hard to come by. And although the average Social Security payment isn’t much — it’s less than $1,200 a month — there’s no cost-of-living justification for increasing it. If the president wants to try again to stimulate the economy, all options should be on the table. He should explain why paying $250 to this group of beneficiaries would do more for the economy than other uses of the money. And if lawmakers agree, they should find a way to pay for the next round of checks out of the $787 billion already approved but not yet spent.

They thought they elected JFK, but what they got was Gypsy Rose Lee. He’s brazen, shameless, and unrepentant. You geezers don’t like my health plan? Who wants $250? How do you like me now?

Instead of our tucking fives into his waistband, he’s tucking fifties into the Depends of the elderly and hoping he buys their favor (or favors).

And the intelligentsia in the media can’t hide the disgust they feel at the tawdry display. To paraphrase Rush Limbaugh, the media is desirous that a black president succeed. (Chris Matthews said so explicitly.)

Trouble is, he’s the next Lovelace, not Lincoln.

UPDATE

Another disappointed shopper:

President Obama was too quick to please China’s leaders when he recently put off meeting with the Dalai Lama. The spiritual leader of the long-oppressed Tibetan people was visiting Washington, but Obama said he did not want to meet with the exiled monk until after meeting President Hu Jintao of China next month. Obama’s consideration for foreign leaders’ sensibilities can be a virtue, but in this case the president showed China’s leaders and Tibetans alike that he is more susceptible than recent predecessors of both parties to pressure from Beijing. The informal chats presidents Clinton, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush held in the White House with the Dalai Lama had no adverse effects on US-China relations. Obama should be using his persuasive powers to convince China’s leaders that their interest would be best served if they granted cultural autonomy and religious freedom to Tibetans.

Not that I agree with Obama but at least he, unlike the Boston Glob, recognizes there’s squat-all we can do about Tibet, and that empty moralizing to the Chinese is a waste of everyone’s time.

Speaking of empty moralizing, check out this letter to the Glob today:

Since America has rejected the vain approach of Bush Jr.’s administration, the world has recognized that President Obama’s humility and humanistic outlook is restoring America’s role as a world neighbor and great nation.

Obama’s humility—oh, that’s rich. The phrase is a walking, preening oxymoron. The census can’t come fast enough. Massachusetts needs to lose a seat (or more) in the House, like, yesterday.

We’re getting soaked by a nor’easter (though try telling that to the Bloodthirsty Puppy), so I’m looking for stories to make everyone feel good.

This is not one of those stories:

The body of a man slumped over patio furniture on his balcony in Marina del Rey was mistaken for Halloween decor last week and remained undisturbed for five days. Sheriff’s deputies were called to the complex Thursday evening and found the man, Mostafa Mahmoud Zayed, 75, dead. He had been shot through the eye. Sheriff’s deputies believe that Zayed committed suicide, said Steve Whitmore, a department spokesman.

I’m glad the caught it when they did. Imagine how bad it would have smelled if kids disappointed at his having no candy had egged his house.

Isn’t he inspiring? Wow.

Sadly, Ben’s cancer returned and he passed away just shy of his seventeenth birthday.

- Aggie

During the Bush years, everything was Bush’s fault. Bad day at work? Bush’s fault! Craziness in the Middle East! Bush’s fault!

Times have changed and the Iranians are blaming a suicide attack on Obama, or more specifically, on the United States.

A man wearing an explosives-laden belt blew himself up during a conference between Shia and Sunni groups in southeastern Iran on Sunday, killing at least 29 people.
Iranian parliament Speaker Ali Larijani calls a suicide bombing “the result of the U.S. actions.”

The blast in Sarbaz in the province of Sistan-Baluchistan wounded 28 others, the semiofficial Fars news agency said.

While no one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, Iran pointed the finger at the United States without disclosing its reasons.

“We consider this recent terrorist act to be the result of the U.S. actions and this is a sign of their enmity,” said parliament Speaker Ali Larijani.

U.S. officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

Five senior officers of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps were killed in the attack, Fars said. Among the officers was Nour-Ali Shoushtari, the deputy head of the Corps’ ground forces, who was in the province to mediate between the two sides, Fars reported.

The province, which borders Pakistan and Afghanistan, has a large minority presence of Baluchis, who are Sunni Muslims.

Other media outlets offered conflicting figures for the number of dead and wounded.

In the past, the predominantly Shiite central government in Tehran has accused the group Jundallah — also known as the People’s Resistance Movement of Iran — of fomenting unrest in the province. Iran has alleged that the United States and Saudi Arabia are funding the group.

Jundallah says that it is fighting for the rights of Sunni Muslims in the country.

It is just so bizarre to imagine that they really believe this nonsense, but who knows? I have a fantasy of sitting down with one of these guys, either Iranian or Saudi Arabian, after a suicide attack on their leadership. I want to delicately ask them if they really believe that there is a difference between someone blowing themselves up in order to kill people that they happen to like, and someone blowing themselves up in order to kill people that they don’t like? Do they understand that the underlying activity is identical? Just once, I’d love a straight answer to that question.

- Aggie

Code Pink now loves the war in Ass-stan, can’t get enough of it, will soon be wearing pink camouflage and pink Mike Dukakis helmets (don’t knock it till you’ve tried it):

If the rumors are true about Biden spearheading a movement inside the administration to scale back in Afghanistan, then we’ve actually reached the point where Code Pink is more hawkish than the vice president of the United States.

…

During their weeklong visit here, in which they met with government officials, politicians, ministers, women activists, and civil society groups, the small team of Code Pink members had hoped to gather evidence to bolster their call for US troop withdrawal within two years, and capitalize on growing anxiety back home about the war.

…

“We would leave with the same parameters of an exit strategy but we might perhaps be more flexible about a timeline,” says Benjamin. “That’s where we have opened ourselves, being here, to some other possibilities. We have been feeling a sense of fear of the people of the return of the Taliban. So many people are saying that, ‘If the US troops left the country, would collapse. We’d go into civil war.’ A palpable sense of fear that is making us start to reconsider that.”

Clear? Didn’t think so. What I think Ms. Benjamin is trying to say, delicately, is that she and her whole crew are full of pink s**t.

But that’s okay. Whatever it takes to get them to stop betraying their country is okay with us. Welcome aboard, ladies. Strap one on, and smoke ‘em if you got em.

Only I think here you and Cindy Sheehan part company. The girl may be crazy (grief, as opposed to grandstanding, can do that), but she’s consistent.

By the way, President Peace-nik: Where’s that change? I’m still hoping. (But that’s no change.) I began wondering about civilian casualties in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I saw there’s no easily located public informatioon. I found good data on Afghani casualties and very interesting information on Pakistani casualties. So I ask whether ratcheting these casualties up is really what a good litle Nobel laureate peace-nik President should be doing? (Oh well - same as it always was.) Guess I’ll just go away. What the *bleep* do I know anyway?

Don’t you go anywhere, Cindy. With your former compatriots abandoning you in droves, we need you now more than ever.