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May 2013

DANIEL GREENFIELD: THE WARRIOR’S TALE

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

The warrior’s tale is a simple enough thing. Strong as steel, but fragile as chance. It is the wind in his soul and the wall we build around ourselves to tell us who we are.

Before there were cities or nations, and railways and airports, computers and telephones– the tale was told around campfires. Acted out in pantomime, dressed up in animal furs and cave paintings. But the tale was the same. The people were confronted with a threat and they called upon the best and strongest of their men to go out and fight it. These were their warriors. What they did in the face of that threat is the tale.

The tale has many variations. Sometimes there are many warriors, sometimes only a handful. They march into the village of the enemy in triumph, or they make a last stand on a rocky outcropping, spending the last of their heart’s blood to buy time they will never know. There is the weak man who becomes strong, the strong man who becomes weak, the woman who mourns the man who will never return, and the man who goes off to battle with nothing to lose. These tales have been told countless times in the ages of men, and they will be told again for as long as men endure.

It is not only the warriors who need the tale, or those left behind. Future generation learn who they are from this tale. “We are the people who died for this land,” is the unseen moral of each tale. “We bled for it. Now it is yours to bleed and die for.”

The warrior’s tale tells each generation that they stand on the wall against a hostile world. And that the wall is made not of stones, but of their virtues. Their courage, their integrity and their craft. Theirs is the wall and they are the wall– and if they should fail, then it will fail. And the land and the people will be swept away.

DANIEL GREENFIELD: LONDON BEHEADER ARRESTED IN 2010 FOR ATTEMPTING TO JOIN AL QAEDA

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/london-beheader-arrested-in-2010-for-attempting-to-join-al-qaeda/

Predictably enough this is the Somali issue again. The UK is chock full of Somali Muslim refugees who support al-Shabaab, which is the local Al Qaeda franchise.

Michael Adebolajo, one of the London beheaders, was arrested for attempting to join al-Shabaab and deported to the UK. At which point a sane country would have denaturalized him and sent him packing.

The Sunday Telegraph can disclose that Michael Adebolajo was held by police close to the Somali border with a band of “radicalised” Muslim youths who wanted to join the notorious al-Shabaab group.

He was deported to Britain after he appeared in court in Mombasa in November 2010.

Two months previously the head of MI5 had warned that Britons were training in Somalia and it was “only a matter of time before we see terrorism on our streets inspired by those who are today fighting alongside al-Shabaab”. It also emerged that the other suspect in the soldier’s murder, Michael Adebowale, 22, was detained by police in London two months ago after shopkeepers complained about a group of Muslim activists.

The disclosures raise further questions about the monitoring by the security services of Adebowale and Adebolajo, 28, whom sources have said was known to MI5 but not assessed as a “threat to life”.

What exactly makes a Muslim an official “threat to life”? Is there any possible way that one can attempt to join a terrorist group and not be a “threat to life”?

Or do you actually have to sign an affidavit stating that you intend to kill non-Muslims before you make the list? We had the same problem with the Boston bomber.

Once you attempt to join a terrorist group, it should be assumed that you are willing to commit acts of terror. Any further fine distinctions only get innocent people killed.

DAVID PRYCE JONES: BRITAIN’S APPROACHING SHOWDOWN

http://www.nationalreview.com/david-calling/349282/%5Btitle-raw%5D-david-pryce-jones On Wednesday, two young Muslims butchered a serving British soldier in the London district of Woolwich in the early afternoon in front of bystanders. Shouts of “Allahu Akhbar” were heard. One of the murderers was caught on film, holding a weapon, his hands dripping blood. He said to the camera, “We swear by almighty […]

FRENCH SOLDIER STABBED IN THE THROAT OUTSIDE PARIS

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/25/french-soldier-stabbed-throat-outside-paris/

PARIS — France’s military spokesman says a soldier has been stabbed in the throat in the French commercial district of La Defense outside Paris.

The stabbing comes just days after a British soldier was hacked to death on a London street in broad daylight in a suspected terrorist attack that has raised fears of potential copycat strikes. However, there was no immediate confirmation of any link to the France attack on Saturday.

SEE RELATED: Lethal lapse: London machete attackers were probed by U.K.’s MI5 anti-terror investigators

The France military spokesman, Col. Thierry Burkhard, said the French soldier was wounded but that his life was not in danger. He had no immediate further details on the stabbing.

ANDREW HARROD: DEVLISH DETAILS PART 1

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/05/devilish_details_–_part_1.html A conference on religious freedom offers disturbing glimpses of Islam’s reality. The Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim Christian Understanding (ACMCU) at Georgetown University hosted on April 24, 2013, a conference on “The Boundaries of Religious Pluralism & Freedom: The Devil is in the Detail” (conference video here). Conducted within the framework of the […]

Hezb’allah: A Chicken on the EU Terror List By Shoshana Bryen

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2013/05/hezballah_a_chicken_on_the_eu_terror_list.html The United States, Canada, Israel, the Netherlands, and Bahrain designate Hezb’allah a terrorist organization; Britain and Australia outlaw only Hezb’allah’s “terrorist wing” but permit its “political wing” to organize and raise money (only for political activity, of course).  A motion by Britain will put the British/Australian formula on the agenda of the European Union, […]

EILEEN TOPLANSKY: YOU THINK YOU’LL GET A FREE PASS?

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/05/you_think_youll_get_a_free_pass.html Our empathetic president and his vice president took time out to see well-dressed individuals “who are in the country in violation of U.S. immigration laws but who have received “‘deferred action’ allowing them to stay in the country,” as per Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.  On the other hand, President Obama refuses to meet […]

LEIF BABIN: A Tradition of Sacrifice, From Yorktown to Ramadi It was not the Declaration of Independence that Gave us Freedom But the Continental Army.****

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323475304578503110141945172.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Mr. Babin is a former Navy SEAL officer who deployed three times to Iraq.

In 2006, my SEAL Task Unit deployed to Ramadi, Iraq. Among the rubble-pile buildings, bomb craters and burned-out hulks of vehicles, we experienced firsthand the harsh realities of war. We fought alongside the U.S. Army’s Ready First Brigade of the First Armored Division to take Ramadi back from a brutal and determined insurgency.

Combat is hard. It is alarmingly violent, ear-shattering, dirty, exhausting and ugly. It is marked by chaos and confusion and self-doubt. But combat also highlights the determination and sacrifice—and courage—of those who persevere. Through such times, an unbreakable bond is formed with brothers-in-arms.

Those bonds were tested greatly as our task unit suffered the first SEAL casualties of the Iraq War: Marc Lee and Mike Monsoor. Later, Ryan Job died of wounds received in combat. These men were three of the most talented and capable SEALs I have known. They were also loyal friends. Their loss is deeply personal to their families and to their SEAL teammates. As Marc’s and Ryan’s platoon commander, I bear the crushing burden of responsibility. I will forever wish that I could somehow take their place.

As a result, Memorial Day is deeply personal—to me, as it is to any veteran, to any military family. It is a time of mixed emotion: solemn reflection and mourning, honor and admiration for those who made the ultimate sacrifice in the service of their country.
Let’s remember on Memorial Day—and every other day, for that matter—that America did not become a nation without a fight. Last week, I found myself in Washington, D.C., admiring a bronze statue of George Washington. The statue shows him as a general, astride a horse, sword drawn at the ready. This was Washington as a true American leader, inspiring those around him by showing that he too was willing to risk death for the cause of victory. The statue brought to mind the thousands of soldiers who marched with him into battle against the British, facing seemingly impossible odds.

It was not the Declaration of Independence that gave us freedom but the Continental Army. America was born from conflict, delivered by soldiers willing to pay with their blood the tremendous cost of freedom.

The dead did not wish to be martyred. They no doubt longed to return to their homes and families. But they believed in the “glorious cause,” something far greater than themselves. Despite knowing the dangers before them, they followed Gen. Washington into the fray even when victory seemed hopeless and the cause all but lost.

In America today, there are those who believe that under no circumstances is war the answer. Violence only begets more violence, we’re told. The unstated message: Nothing is worth fighting and dying for. History disagrees.

OBAMA’S CYNICAL WAR SPEECH: ANDREW McCARTHY *****

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/349313/obama-s-cynical-war-speech
Islamic supremacism is not based on a lie.

Two plus two equals five. I mean, I really want it to be five. So let’s just pretend it’s five and, before you know it, it’ll be five. After all, we are the ones (or is it the fives?) we’ve been waiting for. My narrow-minded opponents, stuck in the mathematics of a bygone time, would have us make a false choice between elementary addition and our values. But as James Madison or James Rosen or somebody said, “The arc of arithmetic is long, but it bends toward, um . . . five.”

That, it seemed to me, was about what President Obama was saying in his wag-the-jihad speech on Thursday at the National Defense University in Washington. Poetic justice would not give social justice the time of day, so it is tempting simply to ignore this cynical exercise — the speech was less about national security than about changing the subject. But the otherworldliness of Obama’s meanderings on war and the enemy is worth mulling over.

Why this speech at this time? Because the president is embroiled in not one but three scandals (and counting), involving his derelictions of duty in connection with the Benghazi massacre, as well as his administration’s serial abuses of prosecutorial and regulatory power (siccing the Justice Department on the press and the IRS on the Tea Party). All this malfeasance was for the benefit of Barack Obama, and occurred in an anything-goes climate created by Barack Obama; but, we are told, it happened unbeknownst to Barack Obama, for whom leading from behind is apparently not just a foreign policy but a management style.
The immediate aim of Thursday’s hour-long drone on drones was to turn the news page just before the holiday weekend. From the president’s perspective, it must have seemed a better idea than dispatching yet another of his bumbling emissaries to implode on the Sunday shows.

Longer term, Obama knows who he is and where he is from. When past presidents have gotten into hot water, their instinct has been to mollify the opposition: The monthly Clinton scandal would hit, and next thing you knew a budget was balanced, welfare was reformed, or the era of big government was suddenly over. In marked contrast, Obama is a movement leftist, so when the going gets tough, back into the fever swamp he dives. Thus the speech was like old times: as if it were 2008 again and we were back to Bush’s Iraq War, Bush’s crimes, and Bush’s gulag at Gitmo.

On these accounts, the speech was a yawn. Iraq is in flames, but the Left never cared about that, and most of us who supported toppling Saddam Hussein never shared Bush’s fantasy of a stable “Islamic democracy” that would be a reliable American ally. That Shiites and Sunnis have reverted to their default position, internecine butchery, is a dog-bites-man story. As for Bush’s notorious “crimes,” the public largely supported the interrogation practices the Left demagogues as “torture.” After all, these practices generated the intelligence responsible for the very triumphs — notably, killing bin Laden — Obama ceaselessly brags about. And Congress is not going to close Gitmo when two-thirds of the country (a) strongly supports keeping it open, (b) does not believe it causes terrorism, and (c) couldn’t care less that Obama and his Code Pink base say “history” will judge us harshly. Truth be told, we’re more concerned about how history will judge Obama’s plan to repatriate scores of Gitmo detainees to al-Qaeda’s safe haven in Yemen.

The consequential part of the speech dealt with Obama’s views on the nature of the war. On even this, the president is nothing if not cynical. He proclaimed himself the scourge of what he freely called “violent jihad” — evidently figuring no one would remember he’s the guy who purged words like “jihad” from the government’s counterterrorism lexicon. But when it came to the ideology of our enemies, the speech really did get interesting.

For one thing, the president actually acknowledged not only that the threat to the United States is ideologically based, but also that the adherents of this ideology are Muslim extremists. This was a refreshing change from his wont of calling the threat “violent extremism” (violence being a consequence, not an ideology), and pretending that its adherents are anti-Islamic.

BARRY RUBIN: OBAMA’S HEAD IN THE SAND SPEECH ABOUT TERRORISM

http://pjmedia.com/barryrubin/2013/05/24/obamas-head-in-the-sand-speech-about-terrorism/?print=1 President Barack Obama’s speech at the National Defense University, “The Future of Our Fight against Terrorism,” is a remarkable exercise in wishful thinking and denial. Essentially, his theme: the only strategic threat to the United States is posed by terrorists carrying out terrorist attacks. In the 6400 words used by Obama, Islam only constituted three of […]