Posts Tagged ‘Military’
Monday, December 14th, 2015
Congressional Medal of Honor winner Tibor Rubin, who went from being a prisoner at Mauthausen concentration camp to being one of the baddest bad-asses in the Korean War, died at age 86 last week.
In summer 1950, Mr. Rubin was “volunteered” to defend a strategic hill while the rest of his company withdrew to safety near the Pusan Perimeter amid an onslaught by North Korean troops. He armed himself with grenades and guns and waited, knowing the sergeant had no intention of relieving him, ever.
The enemy attack began at dawn, and Mr. Rubin said he became “hysterical” as they swarmed the hill “like ants.”
He fired helter-skelter, lobbing grenade after grenade to create the impression of more than one man. “Pull the pin, boom, pull the pin, boom,” he said. Unable to see through the resulting smoke, he kept up the defense for a full day, defending his post until American-manned Corsairs repelled the remaining North Koreans from the air.
“He inflicted a staggering number of casualties on the attacking force during his personal 24-hour battle, single-handedly slowing the enemy advance and allowing the 8th Cavalry Regiment to complete its withdrawal successfully,” read his citation for the Medal of Honor, the military’s highest award for valor.
Later he was captured by the communist Chinese, and repeatedly risked his life sneaking out to find food for his fellow prisoners.
And after all that, he got screwed out of his medal until George W. Bush set it right in 2005.
Also, the book about his life just came out this year: Single Handed: The Inspiring True Story of Tibor “Teddy” Rubin–Holocaust Survivor, Korean War Hero, and Medal of Honor Recipient.
(Hat tip: Legal insurrection.)
Tags:Congressional Medal of Honor, Military, Obituary, Tibor Rubin
Posted in Military | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 24th, 2015
More links from the big bucket of Jihad news:
Obama’s Pentagon: We’re winning the war against the Islamic State! Whistleblowers: That’s because you’re cooking the books.
Scenes from the Pretend War: Obama blocks 75% of airstrikes against the Islamic State. Forget dying for a mistake, Obama is willing to risk American lives for a sham war he has no intention of winning.
Greeks say that it’s virtually impossible to screen terrorists out among incoming “refugees.”
Ayaan Hirsi Ali says that feminists are focused on “trivial bullshit” rather than fighting real threats to women like radical Islam.
Third Paris stadium jihadist identified as a “refugee” who came through Greece.
Syrian refugees: neither Syrians nor refugees. Discuss…
Obama’s approach to the Islamic State is entirely too wimpy for that noted right-wing troglodyte war-monger Dianne Feinstein.
MSNBC’s poster boy for how horrible the no-fly list has been arrested in Turkey for being part of an Islamic State cell. It’s almost as though the liberal media have been lying to us about Islam being a religion of peace…
Must be frustrating for the Islamic State to repeatedly detail the Koranic justifications for their actions, only for liberals to go: “No, this has nothing to do with religion. You guys are just using religion as a front for social and geopolitical reasons.”
Larry Correia doesn’t foresee a happy ending:
Europe has been following the liberal, progressive, pseudo-socialist path a lot longer than we have. Instead of doing little things that make sense all along, they’ll let the problem get really big and stupid, and then it is guillotines, gulags, and cattle cars. There’s a lot of really pissed off Europeans right now, and over the centuries we’ve got plenty of examples of what masses of pissed off Europeans do when pushed.
Tags:11/13 Paris Attacks, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Border Controls, Dianne Feinstein, Greece, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Larry Correia, Military, MSNBC, Paris, Syria, Turkey
Posted in Border Control, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Media Watch, Military | No Comments »
Friday, October 30th, 2015
Right now Austin is enjoying our traditional “two weeks of flooding following three months of drought” fall. Enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm:
“In Iraq, Obama took a war that we had won at a considerable expense in lives and treasure, and threw it away for the callowest of political reasons. In Syria and Libya, he involved us in wars of choice without Congressional authorization, and proceeded to hand victories to the Islamists. Obama’s policy here has been a debacle of the first order, and the press wants to talk about Bush as a way of protecting him.”
Paul Ryan elected Speaker of the House. If Ryan decides to govern as an actual Republican, he could be a very effective Speaker…
The IRS has Stingray cell phone surveillance gear. Get ready for a whole new round of Tea Party audits…
Speaking of the IRS, the House of Representatives is justified in impeaching IRS chief John Koskinen.
At the most recent Republican Presidential debate, Sen. Marco Rubio said the H1-B visa program is badly in need of reform. One tiny problem: Sen. Rubio’s own H1-B bill doesn’t implement any of the reforms demanded by Presidential Candidate Rubio. “It does not require recruitment of American workers. It does not require employers to ‘pay more than you would pay someone else’…Rubio’s bill would provide Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and his comrades ‘a huge increase in the supply of lower-cost foreign guest workers so they can undercut and replace American workers.'” Indeed, Rubio’s bill “would triple the number of H1-B foreign workers admitted.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Get ready for steep ObamaCare price hikes for 2016.
Angela Merkel’s ruling coalition is starting to come apart thanks to the refugee crisis.
Venezuela is selling gold to cover bond payments. (Hat tip: Commonsense and Wonder.)
Al-Shabaab Islamic militant group in Somalia pledge loyalty to the Islamic State.
The Islamic State schools ban: “math, music, philosophy, history, French and geography as incompatible with Islam.”
Not news: Journalist in Sweden gets stoned. News: The wrong kind of stoned.
Teacher’s hate Common Core. The only people that seem to love it are Washington bureaucrats and Jeb Bush…
Speaking of Jeb, He has not succeeded this year, and there is no particular reason to believe he will…Jeb just isn’t very good at this.”
“Even beyond the fact that Bush has spent almost a year and ended up among the statistical noise despite all of his organizational and financial advantages, this all but proved that he’s simply not a good enough candidate to run in the general election.”
Jeb Bush’s campaign also hasn’t knocked on any doors in Iowa.
Ben Carson’s campaign is working with other Republican Presidential campaigns to extract their debates from the liberal clutches of the MSM.”
How to fix the Republican debates: “First, cancel the rest of the debates. Instead, announce that the RNC will host the debates and pick the panel of questioners. Allow any news organization that wishes to broadcast it.”
A look at the Russian BMD-2 infantry fighting vehicle.
John Wiley Price trail delayed again.
Reminder: Most acts at SXSW don’t get paid.
Feminism is “a War Against Human Nature aimed at using the coercive power of government to bring about an androgynous ‘equality’ that ignores the actual differences between men and women. Feminism is a totalitarian movement to destroy civilization as we know it — and feminists say so themselves.”
Salon’s pro-pedophile agenda:
How to stamp out Cultural Marxism in a single generation.
Flash is dying. Netcraft confirms it…
Tags:Ben Carson, BMD-2, Bush43, Common Core, Cultural Marxism, debate, education, Facebook, feminism, George W. Bush, Germany, Glenn Reynolds, Iraq, IRS, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Jeb Bush, John Koskinen, John Wiley Price, LinkSwarm, Marco Rubio, Media Watch, Military, Obama Scandals, ObamaCare, pedophilia, Republicans, Robert Stacy McCain, Russia, Salon, Social Justice Warriors, Venezuela
Posted in Austin, Elections, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, Obama Scandals, ObamaCare, Texas | No Comments »
Friday, October 16th, 2015
Enjoy a complimentary Friday LinkSwarm, on me!
Kentucky ObamaCare exchange goes out of business, the fifth one to do so nationwide.
Or maybe the sixth, since Tennessee’s is pining for the fjords as well.
Why Hillary’s email scandal (still) matters: “Ignoring the fact that ordinary people are deciding that Hillary Clinton is an untrustworthy liar won’t actually make that issue go away for the Democrats.”
Debbie Wasserman Schultz continues to work her special brand of magic at the DNC. “I’ve begun to deeply question whether she has the leadership skills to get us through the election. This is not just about how many debates we have. This is one of a series of long-running events in which the chair has not shown the political judgment that is needed.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Bernie Sanders supporters are shocked to find their pro-Sanders/anti-Hillary comments being deleted from CNN.
A majority of American Muslims want Sharia law, and 60% of young Muslims are more loyal to Islam than America.
You’re a Muslim scholar who lost to a Christian in debate. Do you: A.) Shrug, B. Practice, or C.) Kill the Christian?
Has the Obama Administration noticed that Iran’s parliament has actually rejected the text of his treaty? (Hat tip: Jihad Watch.)
Obama withdraws last U.S. carrier group from the Middle East. Evidently even pretending to fight ISIS has just gotten too hard for him…
Why does does the town of Alvin, Texas (population 25,000) want to put it’s property holders on the hook for $1 billion to build the most expensive schools in the state?
Another anti-gay hate crime turns out to be a hoax. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Journalists continue their lazy, inaccurate reporting on #GamerGate.
Tags:#GamerGate, Alvin, Bernie Sanders, CNN, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, DNC, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton Scandals, Islam, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, ObamaCare, Texas
Posted in Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, October 6th, 2015
The problem with doing an update on Syria is that I’m not sure anyone knows what the hell is going on there.
The motivations of the major local players are clear: Assad wants to survive and maintain power, while his paymasters in Iran want to back him and the Shia against the Islamic State and other Sunni groups. The Islamic State wants to establish its brutal medieval caliphate over first Mesopotamia and the Levant, then the entire Ummah, then the entire world, exterminating Shia and subjugating Christians and Jews to dhimmitude along the way. The Saudis want to back Sunnis (possibly including the Islamic State). The Kurds just want to survive. Etc.
However, what Barack Obama and Vladamir Putin want is considerably less clear.
Obama, after royally screwing Iraq by pulling U.S. troops out after Bush had largely stabilized it (at great expense in money and lives), seems to want to fight a pretend air war against the Islamic State and a pretend insurgency against Assad in order to keep reporters from asking him about it, thus kicking the can down the road for the next President to deal with. (Then again, perhaps this gives Obama too much credit. Maybe, like Jeremy Corbyn’s desire to give the Falklands back, Obama screwed up Iraq just for the pure leftish joy of undoing the achievements of a conservative leader he loathed…)
What does Putin want to accomplish in Syria? Prop up a military equipment-buying client state in Syria? Support a more important client state in Iran? Give Obama a black eye? Keep Russians distracted from domestic economic woes with military adventurism abroad? Make Russia the dominate political power in the Middle East, filling the vacuum Obama left with America’s withdrawal and betrayal of regional allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia? Actually destroy the Islamic State? Take the Shia side in a the wider Sunni-Shia conflict?
Here are some links on Syria:
Zero Hedge sees the beginnings of a regional war.
If Russia ends up bolstering Iran’s position in Syria (by expanding Hezbollah’s influence and capabilities) and if the Russian air force effectively takes control of Iraq thus allowing Iran to exert a greater influence over the government in Baghdad, the fragile balance of power that has existed in the region will be turned on its head and in the event this plays out, one should not expect Washington, Riyadh, Jerusalem, and London to simply go gentle into that good night.
Sure enough, some experts now predict Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey will move to counter Russia militarily if Moscow continues to rack up gains for Assad.
Andrew McCarthy comes out against U.S. intervention:
The Syrian mess has gotten messier
because Vladimir Putin, with all the unpredictability of the morning sun, has invaded Syria on behalf of Assad and Putin’s more important ally Iran — Assad’s longtime string-puller. The Russian strongman’s claimed purpose is to fight the Islamic State — a pretext no more real than was the supposed need to protect indigenous Russian populations that Putin cited in invading Georgia, Crimea, and Eastern Ukraine.
Putin, with China’s indulgence, is obviously attempting to fortify a sphere of anti-American influence across the Middle East. Anti-Americanism in this Islamic-supremacist region long predates Putin, of course. What has changed is that the United States is governed by a man of the hard Left — a president who is sympathetic to the Islamist narrative about American imperialism, ambivalent at best about American power, and determined to diminish America’s regional commitments, and thus American influence.
Disclaimer: Newsweek.
The move provides a foothold in a part of the world that the Soviet Union was kicked out of four decades ago. At a moment when the United States appears to be washing its hands of the increasingly bloody and chaotic region, it gives Russia an expanding military presence in the Mediterranean on the doorstep of a NATO ally (its newly established airfield at Latakia in eastern Syria sits just 75 miles from the border with Turkey), and the gambit may yet serve as leverage with the West as Putin seeks to get out from under economic sanctions imposed as a result of Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in Ukraine.
Vladimir S. Patton.
“Putin’s policy is ugly — Russian airstrikes produced immediate reports of civilian casualties — but effective for its purpose. Obama’s policy is high-minded and prudent, but it has been painfully ineffective.”
And there are already reports that Russian planes have already violated Turkey’s airspace. And remember that Turkey is still a member of NATO…
“The pathetic failure of the Pentagon’s efforts in Syria indicate that if anything, this culture of self-congratulation and failure [in Obama’s Department of Defense] is getting more entrenched.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
The problem for America is that a logical Middle East policy is impossible as long as Obama is President and Kerry is Secretary of State.
Can Putin achieve long-term victory in Syria where Obama’s fecklessness couldn’t? Maybe. Can Iran and Russia together crush the Islamic State? If Russia wanted to commit serious ground combat forces (think Operation Iraqi Freedom), probably, but that would be an exceptionally expensive move that would spread Russian forces dangerously thin elsewhere. But considering that does not appear to be Russia’s immediate goal, which seems to be crushing the Free Syrian Army and allied forces in Western Syria, expect the war against the Islamic State to drag out indefinitely.
Except for the Kurds (which Obama’s feckless policies have refused to adequately support), the Syrian Civil War is bad guys vs. bad guys all the way down. Assad surviving, or a long-running war between Russia and the Islamic State, are far from the worst possible outcomes…
Tags:Andrew McCarthy, Bashar Assad, Foreign Policy, Free Syrian Army, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Jihad, Kurds, Military, Obama, Russia, Syria, Vladimir Putin, Walter Russell Mead
Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad, Military | 2 Comments »
Friday, October 2nd, 2015
How about a short LinkSwarm to get the Friday LinkSwarm back on Friday?
Bernie Sanders roughly matches Hillary’s fundraising total. Man, she’s going to need to start raking in a lot more foreign bribes…
This just in: Jeb Bush’s poll numbers suck.
“So we know that 99% of the data has been adjusted, and we know that over 80% of the reported warming in the lower 48 States over the entire 20th Century was due to adjustments – the raw data simply do not show this warming.”
Mark Steyn offers another dispatch from post-Jewish Europe. Bonus: Facebook is going to “do more” to suppress anti-“refugee” posts.
Islamic State fighters start defecting because ISIS can’t make payroll. Time to consider marrying Len Trexler…
Obama Administration grants asylum to 1,519 foreigners with terrorist ties.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas says he’s no longer bound by Oslo Accords. Because why should you let a little piece of paper get in the way of the all-important task of exterminating the Jews?
Dear Brookings Institute scholars: Please note that you’re not allowed to have opinions different from those of Elizabeth Warren. (Hat tip: Moe Lane.)
The Oregon shooter was a mixed race skinhead who targeted Christians. By the time the media gets done, he’ll be an “angry white man.”
Five benefits from owning guns. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll on Instapundit.
Eight members of Iran’s women’s soccer team are actually men.
Tags:2016 Election, 2016 Presidential Race, Bernie Sanders, Brookings Institute, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Elizabeth Warren, Facebook, Foreign Policy, Germany, Guns, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton Scandals, Illegal Aliens, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Israel, Jeb Bush, Jihad, Mahmoud Abbas, Media Watch, Military, Oslo Accords, Palestinians
Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Media Watch, Military | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 29th, 2015
Another LinkSwarm. And if you’re live in Austin, don’t forget the meetup/blogshoot on October 10th.
Theory: The people flooding into Europe are innocent families of refugees fleeing war. Reality: “young men [heaving] rocks at the authorities and showing up on YouTube videos shouting Allahu Akbar.”
“There is something shallow and decadent about a pontiff who prioritizes “climate change” even as every last Christian is driven from the Archeparchy of Mosul. What will they say of such a pope? That he fiddled with the thermostat while Rome burned?”
If the illegal alien crisis threatens to collapse the EU, it wasn’t very strong to begin with, was it?
Why are liberals in love with radical Islam?
One theory:
I increasingly think the Democrat/Muslim union has to do with old-fashioned relativism. Democrats don’t actually believe that women’s rights and gay rights apply to everyone; white people: sure. Arabs? Well, who am I to judge? And Muslims know this.
When Robby George is just dumbfounded as to why all these Muslims support the party of abortion on demand and gay marriage, the answer seems pretty clear to me: They’re supporting the party of abortion on demand and gay marriage for infidels
Another:
I think the issue is more that they see Muslims as a new potential mascot group that they can champion and therefore obtain that cheap sense of moral superiority that comes with riding in like a white knight. I think a lot of liberal attitudes towards minorities aren’t actually based on the good of the minorities, but how good it makes the liberals feel to champion them. Muslims are (as of now) a tiny, insignificant minority. They’re mostly kinda swarthy, so the “it’s racism” meme is easily transferable, and a significant chunk of liberals loathe Christianity.
A map of worldwide Islamic State attacks.
In the little town of Bethlehem/Things have gotten quite scary/Islamists have gotten out and torched/the local monastery.
You might want to hold onto your hate for this shocking revelation: Hillary Clinton lied under oath about her secret e-mail server.
And polls show that Vice President Joe Biden is way, way more popular than Clinton.
Reminder: Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign started the “birther” movement.
Ten times John Boehner caved into liberals.
Pacifica radio station institutes socialist democracy and promptly starts to spiral down toward bankruptcy. (Hat tip: Powerline.)
Dealing drugs while on the DEA payroll? Automatic firing? Ha! Remember: Obama Administration. 14 day suspension.
“Cobynite solutions belong in the realm of fantasy.” Keep in mind that I disagree with possibly three-quarters of the writer’s analysis, but still share his conclusion….
The World According to Xi Jinping. Sounds like a whole lot of vague platitudes…
“German Rheinmetall shows off 80 kilowatt naval combat laser with four 20 kw laser barrels.” Though until they can demonstrate the system through actual field testing, I wouldn’t get too excited.
How did I miss the fact that McGruff The Crime Dog is currently doing 16 years for possessing a marijuana grow operation and a grenade launcher?
Tags:2016 Election, 2016 Presidential Race, Bethlehem, China, Christianity, Communism, Crime, DEA, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Germany, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton Scandals, Islam, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Jeremy Corbyn, Jihad, John Boehner, Labour, McGruff The Crime Dog, Military, Pacifica, Texas, Xi Jinping
Posted in Border Control, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Military, Texas | No Comments »
Saturday, September 19th, 2015
Anyone paying attention has long known what a miserable failure Obama’s Syrian strategy (such as it is) against Bashar Assad has been. But only recently has it come to light just how ridiculously expensive that miserable failure has been:
The aim was to identify reasonably secular moderate fighters in Syria, transfer them to third-party countries in the region, train them, equip them, and reintroduce them into the theater of operations. By August of this year and $500 million later, the Pentagon acknowledged that only 54 Syrian rebels had been prepared for combat. Less than a month later, almost all of them had been killed or captured.
$500 Million for 54 guys? What were they, hand-crafted artisanal rebels? Where did the money go? Did they hire Damien Hirst to make each of their 54 uniforms? Did each of the 54 make a $1 million donation to the Clinton Foundation? Even by the pathetic standards of the Obama Administration that’s a ridiculous amount of graft, fraud and waste. You could easily have trained and equipped an effective mercenary brigade for that much money.
There were actual reasons to support the removal of Assad early in the Obama Administration, but the rise of the Islamic State rendered most of them obsolete. Now that Obama and Kerry have rolled over to let Assad’s paymasters in Tehran rub their furry bellies, there’s no point in pretending to equip opposition fighters beyond Obama’s desire to keep up the facade of a Syrian policy as a sop to his wounded vanity.
Since Obama can’t topple Assad and is singularly unwilling to fight a real war against the Islamic State, at this point we should probably just let Iran, Syria and Russia try their hands at crushing Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s barbaric caliphate. A long, grinding Sunni-Shia civil war in Mesopotamia is probably among the least bad outcomes available for the region after Obama’s serial bungling…
(Hat tip: Ed Driscoll on Instapundit.)
Tags:al-Baghdadi, Bashar Assad, Foreign Policy, Iran, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Jihad, John Kerry, Military, Obama, Russia, Syria
Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad, Military | No Comments »
Monday, August 31st, 2015
Welcome to the final week of traditional summer. Of course, it used to be that everything (school, football, the new TV year, etc.) started after Labor Day Weekend, but that’s not the case any more…
“it’s cute to pretend that Black Lives Matter is actually about making policing better when it’s really just another Democratic party constituency agitprop group.”
Texas mandates E-Verify for all state employees.
Ten questions about the Iran deal.
Indeed, the Iran deal stinks so badly that even Debbie Wasserman Schultz wants to keep the stink of Eue De Failure off herself and the DNC. (Hat tip: Moe Lane.)
Europe has begun to reform its welfare systems. (Hat tip Instpundit.)
Thanks to government efforts, heroin is now cheaper than cigarettes in New York City. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
McCarthy critic turns out to be a Soviet spy. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
UK Labour leader candidate Jeremy Corbyn: Apologist for oppressive dictatorships.
Oh, and he wants to give the Falkland Islands to Argentina. Why, it’s almost as if the hard left yearns for nothing so much as undoing every conservative foreign policy triumph out of spite…
And he also called Osama Bin Laden’s death “a tragedy.”
Criticizing Muslim antisemitism? That’s a $750 fine in Denmark.
Widespread street protests in Kuala Lumpur over corruption and embezzlement by Malaysia’s Goldman-Sachs-underwritten Prime Minister.
Still another reason not to use Ashley-Madison: “For every 7750 men, there were 3 women.” “Sausage Fest” doesn’t even begin to cover it…
Speaking of sausage, San Antonio woman steals $3000 worth of sausage.
Conservatives push back on victimhood identity politics guidelines from the College Board and win.
Austin Bag Ban backfires. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
A look back at 1945 plans for the invasion of Japan. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
Ten years of Tam.
Tags:Austin, Border Controls, college, College Board, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Denmark, E-Verify, environmentalism, Falklands, Guns, heroin, Iran, Japan, Jeremy Corbyn, Jihad, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Military, Osama bin Laden, San Antonio, terrorism, Texas, tobacco, UK, victimhood, Welfare State, World War II
Posted in Austin, Border Control, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Texas, Welfare State | No Comments »