America’s victory in Iraq broke the back of Al-Qaeda and left Osama bin Laden’s dream in ruins. He died a defeated fanatic in his Abbotabad hideaway; his dream was crushed in the Mesopotamian flatlands where he swore it would win…The tragedies of Iraq are real and well known. The victory is equally real—but the politically fastidious don’t want to look. The minimum we owe our lost and wounded warriors is to tell the story of what they so gloriously achieved.
I walk my dog in the local park, and last year on Veteran’s Day I came across this memorial bench for Cpl. Chad Eric Oligschlaeger, which I had seen before, but which this time was festooned for the occasion:
Here’s a closeup of the plaque on the bench:
I thought doing a post on the late Cpl. Oligschlaeger might provide a somber but uplifting story for Memorial Day, but in researching him, I found his story was a lot sadder than most. He didn’t die in combat (despite doing two tours in Iraq), but died due to “accidental death due to multiple drug toxicity,” the drugs in question being various prescription drugs he was taking to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder while waiting (over half a year) for a spot to open up in a PTSD treatment center.
A list of Texas casualties from Operation Iraqi Freedom can be found here.
One Texas Medal of Honor recipient who died recently was David H. McNerney, who died October 10, 2010. His citation reads:
Rank and organization: First Sergeant, U.S. Army, Company A, 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry, 4th Infantry Division. place and date: polei Doc, Republic of Vietnam, 22 March 1967. Entered service at: Fort Bliss, Tex. Born: 2 June 1931, Lowell, Mass. Citation: 1st Sgt. McNerney distinguished himself when his unit was attacked by a North Vietnamese battalion near polei Doc. Running through the hail of enemy fire to the area of heaviest contact, he was assisting in the development of a defensive perimeter when he encountered several enemy at close range. He killed the enemy but was painfully injured when blown from his feet by a grenade. In spite of this injury, he assaulted and destroyed an enemy machinegun position that had pinned down 5 of his comrades beyond the defensive line. Upon learning his commander and artillery forward observer had been killed, he assumed command of the company. He adjusted artillery fire to within 20 meters of the position in a daring measure to repulse ??enemy assaults. When the smoke grenades used to mark the position were gone, he moved into a nearby clearing to designate the location to friendly aircraft. In spite of enemy fire he remained exposed until he was certain the position was spotted and then climbed into a tree and tied the identification panel to its highest branches. Then he moved among his men readjusting their position, encouraging the defenders and checking the wounded. As the hostile assaults slackened, he began clearing a helicopter landing site to evacuate the wounded. When explosives were needed to remove large trees, he crawled outside the relative safety of his perimeter to collect demolition material from abandoned rucksacks. Moving through a fusillade of fire he returned with the explosives that were vital to the clearing of the landing zone. Disregarding the pain of his injury and refusing medical evacuation 1st Sgt. McNerney remained with his unit until the next day when the new commander arrived. First Sgt. McNerney’s outstanding heroism and leadership were inspirational to his comrades. His actions were in keeping with the highest traditions of the U.S. Army and reflect great credit upon himself and the Armed Forces of his country.
It turns out that, despite initial reports, Bin Laden was unarmed when the SEAL team sent him to Allah. I’ve got absolutely no problem with that, but you know there are some liberals who will get their panties in a knot over the very thought.
Little did I know that this untested young Commander-in-Chief would muster the courage to read his weekly Gallup numbers and, in one daring unilateral extra-judicial targeted hit job, toss aside every single idiotic foreign policy principle of his election campaign. Perhaps most satisfyingly, it was a mission made possible thanks to information extracted by methods he previously banned as “illegal torture.”
Ironically the circumstances surrounding the death of Osama Bin Laden tends to confirm the theory that terrorism, rather than being a spontaneous meme that floats above the planet, is in fact deeply rooted in the intelligence agencies and regimes of certain states. Thus, neither Hamas nor Hezbollah are creations of some kind of rage any more than than September 11 was wholly the result of some kind of amorphous resentment. Osama Bin Laden had backers; people with uniforms, ranks and the resources of bureaucracies behind them. Those who believe that the War on Terror is nothing but a law enforcement problem must ask themselves whether it is really rather larger than that.
Old and Busted: Birthers. The New Hotness: Deathers. That’s right, Cindy Sheehan (remember her?) doesn’t think than Bin Laden is dead. Oh, she also refers to The United States of America as “This lying, murderous Empire.” Remember when all the left was crowing about her “absolute moral authority”? Whatever happened to them?
David Pryce-Jones says that Bin Laden’s death marks the end of his monstrous fantasy of a 21st century Islamic caliphate. I’m not so sure. Dreams, even wicked, impossible dreams, have a way of lingerong on long past their expiration date, and both Saudi Arabia and Iran have smaller-scale versions of that dream as part of their national strategy.
And now I need to embed the totally sweet Tiawanese animation on the event:
(Hat tips: Ace of Spades, Instapundit, the Right Side of Austin.)
This was an important victory, but the war against terror continues. Al Qaeda has a decentralized command structure, so cutting off the head won’t kill the beast.
The fact that it took us just under a decade to track Bin Laden down does not reflect well on the CIA. Human intelligence takes a while to develop, but ten years is ridiculous. We’re lucky he hadn’t died from natural causes already.
It proves, once again, that Pakistan is not our friend. I suspect, fairly strongly, that members of the Pakistani ISI (and possibly higher levels of Pakistan’s government) have been sheltering Bin Laden ever since we routed the Taliban.
Unlike Dwight, I do not believe that Bin Laden’s death ensures Obama’s reelection. It certainly doesn’t hurt, but it’s over a year and a half before the election in a horrible economy upon which stagflation is now taking a firm grip. If the Misery Index is at Jimmy Carter levels come November 2012, Osama’s capture will be a very distant memory indeed.
Why has the picture of Bin Laden’s corpse not been released? Nobody cares how gruesome it is, we want to see it to silence doubters and those who will rave about “Zionist plots” to claim he’s still alive.
Why on earth did we afford Osama bin laden a “proper” Islamic burial at sea? He’s Osama Bin Freaken Laden. We should have stuck it on a spike with a dead pig carcass and let it rot a few days. Those who would get upset at such treatment for the murderer of over 3,000 people aren’t the sort we can win over anyway.
Richard Cohen says the Bosnian no-fly zone was a sham to assuage the west’s guilt over genocide and asks: “Should President Barack Obama lead a coordinated, Arab League-backed Western military intervention in Libya to stop Qaddafi?”.
There’s one unqualified success story in the Middle East that Arab countries could use as a template to improve their societies. The problem? It’s Israel.
Geert Wilders: “All over Europe multicultural elites are waging total war against their populations. Their goal is to continue the strategy of mass-immigration, which will ultimately result in an Islamic Europe – a Europe without freedom: Eurabia.”
The big Jihad news this week, of course, was the Moscow bombing. But that was hardly the only thing of note:
The Moscow bombers were evidently trained in Pakistan. “An al-Qaeda linked website said that the group Islamic Caucasus Emirate, led by the rebe Doku Umarov, was poised to claim it had staged the attack. It said that Russia’s harsh military measures against independence activists in the Caucasus had provoked the attack. It said: ‘You disbelievers are the firewood of Hell. You will enter it.'” (I’m guessing “rebe” is short for “rebel,” though I have not heretofore heard it used.)
Dokka Umerov has repeatedly made it very clear that he wants nothing to do with al Qaeda, or bin Laden.
The latter point reveals the following about the global War on Terror. First, the US and British efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq have succeeded in destroying al Qaeda’s reputation amongst Islamist organizations. If an Islamist cause as major as the Caucasus Emirate wants to stay clean of al Qaeda, it means that al Qaeda equals trouble. Al Qaeda involvement means interference from the world’s great powers.
Second, Russia’s situation reveals that the US and British efforts have failed to do significant damage to the ideology of Islamism. If a nationalist movement turns itself into a movement with Islamist objectives in order to make itself stronger, then it proves that the ideals to which al Qaeda subscribes have not been significantly damaged.
Australian artist receives death threats from left-wingers and islamists for anti-burqua mural. Once again we see the alliance of the left and radical Islam.
New Imam of Ground Zero Mosque says that all apostates from Islam should be jailed. This is a great improvement from the standard clerical opinion that they should be killed…
All you Islamophobes who say Mohammed was a pedophile are way off base. Sure, Mohammed married a 6 year old, but all Islamic experts agree that he refrained from having sex with her until she reached the ripe old age of 9.
Islamic man in Buffalo texts his wife that he can’t live without her. Twenty minutes later he beheaded her.
This is not good news. Imagine if the governor of California or Texas were assassinated in broad daylight by his own bodyguard. Well, that’s what happened to Punjab Governor Salman Taseer in Pakistan. Of course, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was also assassinated, and Indian PM Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her own bodyguards, in large measure due to policies regarding Sikhs in the Indian portion of Punjab.
As for who is responsible, who knows? It could be a freelance jihadist, it could be al Quada, it could be Taliban, or it could be some of the Islamist elements of the Pakistani ISI. (Given the circumstances, I’m assuming it wasn’t Kashmiri nationalists, though stranger things have happened.) In any case, it’s bad news for a nuclear-armed nation that always seems to be inching ever closer to become a failed state.
I don’t have any particular insight into Pakistani, so I direct you to the odd piece by the ever-interesting Christopher Hitchens, which are long on insight and short on hope. Sometimes, as in the Middle East, there are simply no good options.
(Hat tip: The usual suspects under “Jihad” on your right.)
As a side note, I would be interested to hear if anyone actually finds these weekly roundups useful. I put these up and get very little feedback on them…
