Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.
Posted on 11/07/2009 7:45:08 AM PST by Congressman Billybob
Until the mass murder at Fort Hood intervened, I’d intended to write about Thursday’s bingo night to benefit the Girl Scouts.
It was a cold and stormy night. Almost all of the summer visitors are gone. We thought there’d be sparse attendance at the monthly charity bingo game put on by the Rotary Club. But the place was packed, wall to wall. Dozens of Brownies and Girl Scouts in uniform were scurrying about, serving the players.
Final figures weren’t available on the spot. From prior experience, however, I’m sure more than $1,000 was raised for the Scouts.
How ordinary is that? Rotary sponsoring bingo to benefit the Girl Scouts in a small town 12 miles south of Nowhere? And yet, as Alexis de Tocqueville observed in his1831 masterpiece, Democracy in America, we are a nation of joiners. We get active in thousands of organizations to help ourselves, and each other. That is the ordinary majesty woven into the fabric of our nation.
Events intervened. A devout Muslim, or a radical Muslim, take your pick, went onto the Fort Hood base Thursday and shot 43 people, killing 13. The shooter was an Army officer and an Army-trained psychiatrist. But the most important thing in his life, when he started shooting people, was that he was a Muslim.
In a press conference, the Secretary of the Army gave an incredibly inappropriate speech about “policies and programs” to “prevent things like this.” The press coverage was equally inane. The very first question was whether this shooting “shows that the Army was to small to deal with the crises facing it?”
There’s no excuse for the Secretary’s remarks. There’s no excuse for the press on scene. But there is especially no excuse for what President Obama said about the shootings in his weekly radio address, a day later. Keep in mind that all Presidents have speech writers and advisors tasked with making the words of the President appropriate to events. Plus, the President had a full day to think about this before saying it.
President Obama praised “Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus and nonbelievers” as serving equally and well in the armed forces of the United States. That statement of equality is patently false. Only Muslims have been charged with killing their fellow soldiers, for religious reasons. This is not the first time. (Look up the incident years ago where a soldier rolled a grenade into his officers’ tent.)
But the Obama comment that jumped off the page was this: “We cannot fully know what leads a man to do such a thing.” An enemy of the United State shoots almost four dozen Americans, mostly soldiers, and the President of the United States is concerned with understanding what was going on in the murderer’s mind?
Doesn’t the Army have security personnel who deal with possible threats from soldiers or officers who go off the rails? Doesn’t anybody pay attention to what active duty personnel post on the Internet? I’ve read this Muslim’s internet posts. Anyone who merely glanced at those would realize this Muslim was about to go off.
Put President Obama’s comment in historical context to see what a failure it was. When General George Washington discovered that General Benedict Arnold was about to betray the garrison at West Point, did he say, “We cannot fully know what leads a man to do such a thing.”?
When the British commander captured and burned Washington during the War of 1812, did President Madison say, “We cannot fully know what leads a man to do such a thing.”? After John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Lincoln, did anyone in Lincoln’s Administration say, “We cannot fully know what leads a man to do such a thing.”?
Did President Roosevelt say of Admiral Yamamoto, after Pearl Harbor, “We cannot fully know what leads a man to do such a thing.”? You get the idea. In fact, Yamamoto is an especially instructive example. After the Americans broke the Japanese naval code, they tracked Yamamoto. When they found him making a transfer by air, they sent out long range fighters to kill him.
The job of the military in time of war is to identify the enemy and stop them in advance if possible, or kill them after the fact if not possible. The President is the Commander in Chief whether he is good at the task or not. He should be leading this process, rather than pretending it does not exist.
Do we really have a President now? Or merely someone who plays the President on TV?
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About the Author: John Armor practiced in the US Supreme Court for 33 years. John_Armor@aya.yale.edu His latest book, on Thomas Paine, is available here: www.TheseAreTheTimes.us (Note the suffix, .us)
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But not impossible. Hope you find this worthwhile.
John / Billybob
“Events intervened. A devout Muslim, or a radical Muslim, take your pick, went onto the Fort Hood base Thursday and shot 43 people, killing 13.”
I am still unaware of the distinction...IMNSHO, these soldiers were killed in combat...
Indeed! This administration has long since proven it cares naught for America, the extraordinary decency of its citizens, and the Patriot Heart that beats within.
Second Generation muzzie born in the Westt of immigrant parents. Turned "devout" to the religion of Jihad. Sold on the Islamic tenets of Jihad, Moslem running dog imperialism and global hegemony by non-bomb belt wearing Whabbist imams. Buys weapon and trains for Jihad at the range. Performs Jihad.
Happens all the time these days.
MSM can't connect the dots.
When Gen. Washington was faced with desertions he actually resorted to having some of his soldiers tried & shot. It was an emergency. His army would have melted away had he not taken extreme action, and he took it.
Today ‘General’ Obama is faced with a similar situation. We have some 15,000 Muslims reportedly serving in the US military. At the very least a general review of those personnel records needs to be done. Malcontents need to be separated, fast. New Muslim recruits need to be carefully screened.
I would suggest going even further. In light of the Koran’s countenance of oath-breaking where obligations with infidels are concerned, I would probably bar Muslims from military service entirely. It would probably take a nuclear explosion for us to reach that point. I’m not even sure that would do it.
--we all know the answer--
What could happen in a man’s mind to make him take Islam’s dictates seriously. This is what the liberales are asking. This is the punch line of the joke on the liberales. How long until Glenn Beck takes this up?
In more recent history, Japanese-Americans were never sent to fight Japan in WWII because of questions about where their loyalties might take them should direct combat occur.
Do we really have a President now? Or merely someone who plays the President on TV?
Yes, and poorly at that. (Shout Out to the Failure-in Chief! )
"Had the shooter yelled “Go to hell you N*gger” or “Die you jew b*stard”, finally “Go live in hell you f&ggot” we would have known “fully” what the motive was. But since it was a muslim, yelling a familiar phrase that suicide terrorists yell, or head lopping off terrorists, some how it’s a mystery."
Maximum BUMP!
No, we do not have a president at this time. Nor will we as long as he remains in office.
Also, they served with great distinction in Italy as the “Christmas Tree” Regiment because they were the most honored regiment in WW II.
P.S. My book, Manzanar, concerns the Japanese-Americans in WW II.
John / Billybob
Thank you for clearing up some details. Yes that would make sense, to have Japanese speakers available in Japan. And of course they could serve elsewhere.
It was not always clean and neat; due to the fear of Japanese-American collusion in Japanese attempts to attack the mainland, fear which was borne out by intelligence programs secret then but public today, the Japanese-Americans in some geographical areas had valuable property seized and corralled with only token compensation. When Congress made a blanket apology payout years later, ignorant of this intelligence which was still classified at the time, it enraged thousands of Pacific veterans who had seen vicious cruelty at the hands of the Japanese. These were not exactly connected issues, but the very term Jap had become a curse word for a reason.
Anyhow, back to this guy, it seems that we were PC blind to the signs of trouble brewing. And I’d bet that Bummer tries to cover over any similar signs rather than ferret them out.
Sadly, I think your final remark is right on. The Obama Administration will most likely try to sweep the missed clues under the rug, rather than fire people who missed the signs and seek to spot others in the future.
John
We have enemies within the parameter.
BROKEN ARROW..!!!
Good post and spot on.........
Thanks!
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