Yes, the Commander-in-Chief was so pleased and impressed to be handing out a Medal of Honor last November to Staff Sgt.Salvatore Giunta (2nd Battallion, 503rd Infantry, 173rd Airborne Brigade -- still serving), he got him confused with a dead man -- the late Sgt.1st Class Jared Monti, 71st Cavalry, 10th Mountain Division, killed in Afghanistan June 2006, MOH presented September 2009.
An easy mistake -- anybody could make it. After all, there have been two Medals of Honor awarded by the current President, in 2.5 years -- that can get confusing, man. I mean, it's only a Medal of Honor, for cripes' sake -- it's not as if it's the Nobel Peace Prize or something.
It's one of those days, folks, when I think the only thing about this President that isn't fake is the fact that he's an effing JACKASS -- a man who put the froid in sang-froid. He's like a droid with an electoral reflex and little else zipping through his wires. C-Creepy-O. Who knew that Michelle's White House garden could grow such a 24-carrot phony?
We salute our Medal of Honor recipients, living and dead, and we hope their Commander-in-Chief will make a concerted effort in the future to tell one from the other. Or at least a convincing effort, for the sake of their families, to pretend that it matters -- that brand of fakery would at least be a sort of compliment.
Friday, September 11, 2009
SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 + 8
Once again Project 2996 honors the victims of the September 11 terrorist attack on America.
Project 2996 was conceived by Dale Challener Roe, who has tried to repeat the tribute annually over the years. I haven't been part of it since 2006, but I decided to play my part again this year, by repeating my tribute to Jack Aron, and taking on couple of others. The Project assigned me another WTC victim, John Thomas McErlean, and I requested the opportunity to pay tribute to Rick Rescorla.
In 2006 I volunteered to write a tribute to one victim, and was privileged to be introduced to Jack Charles Aron, who died in the offices of Marsh & McLennan in Tower 1 of the World Trade Center. A man I had never met or even heard of before was brought to fleeting life again through the words of his friends, colleagues, and family -- my contribution was to collect and sift through them to bring his portrait into focus. He left behind him a wife, Evelyn, a son Timmy, who is now a young man of 19, and a host of heartbroken friends and relatives. He was one of 295 employees of Marsh & McLennan whose lives were taken that day.
Beth McErlean was looking forward to celebrating her 14th anniversary on September 12th. In 1987 she had married John Thomas McErlean, a high-school sweetheart, now father of her four children and a vice-president and partner at the brokerage firm Cantor Fitzgerald. But when her anniversary day dawned, her husband was missing and presumed dead, his office having fallen from its lofty perch on the top floors of World Trade Center 1 into a disintegrated chaos of twisted metal, ash, and fire.
John McErlean had survived the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. On that day he had carried a woman down 80 flights of stairs. No one knows what he was doing when he met his end in 2001, but his brother Tom figures he was probably engaged in the same sort of service to others.
John Thomas McErlean Jr., a handsome, dark-haired and square-jawed Irishman, grew up in Larchmount, New York. He formed an attachment to that community which drew him there to bring up his own family. He attended Iona, the Catholic boys prep school run by the Irish Christian Brothers in New Rochelle, and then St. Michael's College in Vermont, where he earned his business degree.
In the turbulent years since 9-11, the public has been forced to endure the foul spewings of wretches who need not be named, to the effect that those who died in the towers were symbols rather than human beings, that they represented all the grotesquerie and rapaciousness of American society, even to the extent that they were "little Eichmanns".
Imagine how such a slander would sit upon the relatives of a John McErlean, whose life outside of Manhattan's financial centre made room for being an athlete, a sailor, a coach of children's sports teams, and active member of St. Augustine's Parish. He spent his last summer vacation on Nantucket, flying kites, riding bikes, and building beachside bonfires. John bought a t-shirt that was corny, but whose motto spoke what was for him a profound truth: "Life is Good". "It seems so simple," he said, "but it's true. I've been blessed with a wonderful family and everything I wanted from life." He was 39 years old.
John's son Ryan is now 19, son Timothy 17, daughters Mary and Allie 16 and 12. In their sorrow they have known the generosity of the Larchmont/Mamaroneck Friends in Need organization, which has supported them and, in their mother's words, helped to "remind us all that there is much more good in our world than evil."
Of the nearly 3,000 people who were murdered on September 11 in all three locations, 658 of them were employees of Cantor Fitzgerald -- every single employee who happened to be at his or her desk that morning; the handful who were late, or on vacation, or going about their business out of the office that morning were the only ones left from the entire New York head office. It has been a long road back.
Nearly 3,000 people died on September 11. If not for the heroism of one man, that figure might well have been DOUBLED.
I refer, of course, to the indispensable Rick Rescorla, British/American soldier, hero of Ia Drang at Landing Zone X-Ray in Vietnam, and roly-poly oracle managing security for Dean Witter/Morgan Stanley, who had predicted BOTH World Trade Center bombings (predictions to the Port Authority obviously falling on deaf ears).
You've seen his picture --the iconic pose [taken by the once-reputable and PulitzeredCNN veteran Peter Arnett] on the cover of the best-selling military history, We Were Soldiers Once...and Young, by General Hal Moore, (made into a thrilling film starring Mel Gibson as Moore -- Rescorla is not mentioned in the film despite his key role in the book -- not quite enough room for two heroes!) The book gives an account of a pivotal battle in 1965, which marked the escalation of U.S. involvement in Vietnam to real all-out war.
It is almost pointless to try and memorialize Rick Rescorla, to pile word upon word after all the words which have been written, by people far closer to Rescorla's reality than myself. I've learned most of what I know about him from military blogs like Mudville Gazette [excellent video there] and Blackfive. There are numerous websites devoted to him and his story -- his many stories, since the several phases of his career are each worth their own book. The skeleton of the history goes thus:
Born: 1939 Hayle, Cornwall, the old Celtic kingdom at the far southwest reach of England.
British Service: 1956-1963 Paratrooper, Cyprus and Northern Rhodesia
American Service: 1963-1990 Colonel, U.S. Army, 1st Cavalry Division
I saw Rick Rescorla come swaggering into our lines with a smile on his face . . . saying, ‘Good, good, good. I hope they hit us with everything they’ve got tonight. We’ll wipe them up,’ " recalled Lt. Larry Gwinn in the 1993 book, We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young. Rick took a bullet in the arm and fought for six hours before the battle he called "a long, bloody traffic accident in the jungle" ended.
More than 300 men died at Ia Drang. Rick earned a Silver Star, a Purple Heart and Bronze Stars for Valor and Meritorious Service..."We were flown away," Rick said to the authors [of We Were Soldiers] "but the stench of the dead would stay with me for years after the battle." [more here]
Security work: 1985 -- joined Morgan Stanley to manage and advise on corporate security
1990 -- concluded from a security review of the WTC that it was vulnerable to terrorist attack, most likely a truck bomb in its underground parking garage
1993 --predictions fulfilled -- Rescorla "jumped on a desk in the middle of the firm and threatened to drop his pants if his people didn't chill out and listen. In the stunned silence that followed, he launched an orderly evacuation, refusing to leave until the entire tower was empty." Following this attack he became convinced that there would be another, more deadly, probably involving airplanes. He advised his employers to move their offices to New Jersey, but they were not persuaded.
September 11, 2001 -- After the north WTC tower was hit by an airplane, Rick Rescorla initiated a timely evacuation (punctuated by his bouts of folksongs and patriotic anthems through a bullhorn) of thousands of Morgan Stanley employees from the south WTC tower, ignoring assurances from the Port Authority that his people were safe and need not move. He went back and back again, to clear as much of the building as he could, for long enough that there are at least a dozen stories of "sightings" and phone calls made while he did his duty protecting his charges. In the end he went in for a last round-up, and was not seen again.
Rick Rescorla was one of only SIX Morgan Stanley employees who did not survive on 9/11. He saved the lives of nearly 2,700 people in the south tower. [Another 1,000 from Building 5 also evacuated safely at his order.]
Rick Rescorla gave his life doing what he had always done, with the dedication and skill he had acquired during his military career. Many of his fellow soldiers have signed on to the effort to award him the Congressional Medal of Honor, for which he is technically ineligible because he had retired from the reserves and did not die in military service.
Surely he is a proper candidate for America's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In any case, the living recipients of the Congressional Medal awarded him their own honor, the Above And Beyond Citizen's Medal, in March of 2009.
Other military personnel have honoured Rescorla in their own way. FOB Rescorla (forward operating base) was established near Farah, Afghanistan. Blending the sublime and the ridiculous, in a way that the honoree would no doubt appreciate, a fitting mural decorates one of the FOB latrines.
Likewise, a beautiful bronze statue, based on Arnett's photograph, has been unveiled at the National Infantry Museum at Ft. Benning Georgia.
Heroes come in all shapes and sizes and vocations. The heroism of a man like Rick Rescorla deserves monuments and wide public recognition. But every good father is a hero to his children, and does heroic service to society by being just that. We throw that word "hero" around a little promiscuously, even as applied to the victims of 9/11. I count myself lucky to be given the opportunity to salute and remember on this day three men who seem to me to deserve that title, for services large and small.
Jack, John, Rick -- in your name, and for all the others
They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun, and in the morning We will remember them.
[For the Fallen, Laurence Binyon, September 1914]
Saturday, November 07, 2009
THUNDERSTRUCK.
AGAIN.
AT THE ENEMY WITHIN.
It is a difficult task to collect one's thoughts, to try and paint a picture from the trickle of news, and to formulate a response to the freakish nature of the massacre at Fr. Hood. I expect it will come into focus over the next week or so, despite the best of efforts of a perverse media establishment and the President they worshiped into office to spin and wring and mangle the data so as to steer us away from the obvious conclusions. I have but one thought so early in the story: how delicious it is that a homicidal devotee of the one of the [if not THE] most misogynist cultures in human history was halted in his murderous tracks by a gun-totin', pants-wearin', ass-kickin', baby-makin', soldier-lovin' W-O-M-A-N.
Meet Sgt. Kimberley Munley.
Hear her roar. Take your burqa, and shove it, Major Jihad, you tiny little man.She even took a through-and-through bullet of yours, but it didn't stop her from putting a stop to you. May you recover enough from the ass-whoopin' she gave you, just to up and die of shame.
SPEAKING OF TINY LITTLE MEN
...anybody home?
The Procrastinator-in-Chief acquitted himself with hiscustomary 'cool' -- that charming mixture of icewater in the veins and stumble-bum incompetence we have come to expect, as he mounted the podium after the massacre, and addressed the crisis as about (you should pardon the expression) bullet-point 4 in the notecards -- after due deference to our 'first Americans' (a new blended term for the multicultural lexicon) and their convention, and a friendly 'shout-out' to someone he personally had pinned the Presidential Medal of Freedom on only last August -- Dr. Joe Medicine Crow -- except the President called it the Congressional Medal of Honor. Honor, freedom, whatever...
After several minutes of this self-ingratiating b.s., Mr. Obama finally remembered to pull a long face and talk about the "tragedy" at Ft. Hood. Except it wasn't a tragedy -- tragedy would be if 13 people died in an avalanche. It was an act of jihadist slaughter, sir. The murder of our nation's defenders within what should be the safe confines of their own home base, in their own home country. And all you can say, little man, is that we shouldn't "jump to conclusions." Aw, go ahead, Mr. President -- jump.
Jump into that nice dark suit. Put away the nine-iron. Another photo op, comin' your way.
Another baker's dozen of The Best of Us -- requiescant in pace.
Saturday, March 24, 2012
POST UP FROM THE UNDERGROUND
Blogger has identified this post as having jumped on somebody's copyright, and duly removed it, then pointed me towards the billboard where such violations are posted (called "Chilling effects"). I haven't figured out which side of the conflict C.E. is taking up, but in any case by the time I checked it all out, the complaint is no longer to be found there, so I don't know which item in the post is the offender.As they say on Sesame Street, 'one of these things is not like the other' (i.e., my use of the other two didn't bother anybody). So I'll try to re-post in a way that will keep all the respective knickers out of a twist.
LAUGH TILL YOU CRY
It's calledVeteran Inner Monologue (things veterans are thinking but can't say out loud when asked a lot of dumb questions).
SMILE -- maybe LAUGH a little -- in a ST. PATRICK'S DAY SALUTE TO ONE OF HISTORY'S GREATEST MURPHYS
[Hat-tip: Blackfive ]
Medal of Honor winner Lt. Michael P. Murphy, USN 1976-2005
Also taken from the Seal of Honor FB page -- just because.
If there's any copyright on this picture being violated, I detect no signs of it at the Seal of Honor Facebook page. If there's any doubt of my respect for Lt. Murphy, check out my contribution to his film biography (and find a way to make your own) at MURPH.
So I'll try to post again, and see if the web cops make another raid. Boo-yah.
Monday, March 26, 2012
THE PASSION OF THE SEAL
Before seeing the film I saw last night, called Act of Valor, I had watched the trailer, and had read bits and pieces of reviews, most of which (in good journalistic inverted pyramid style) pack their brass-knuckled punch into the first sentence.
My personal favourite: from Nick Pinkerton at the Village Voice -- "Act of Valor is, according to the opening titles, 'based on real acts of valor,' whatever that means."
A strong second place finish going to: Robert Koehler at Variety -- "A mechanically efficient yet soulless dramatization of the U.S. Navy SEALs in action, Act of Valor ultimately misses its target: The hearts and minds of American audiences."
"At turns tasteless and nauseatingly patriotic, but also somewhat entertaining. I have to admit, I wasn’t having a bad time watching the movie until the last act, which is so grossly blatant in its preachy message and saddled with an overwrought closing voiceover, (“Put your feelings in a box. Lock them away.”), that it left a truly bad taste in my mouth...
Maybe it’s cynical, but I feel like this is [I'm not making this up. -- ed.] a really sugar coated view of what really goes on...Act of Valor was a surprise hit, topping the box office it’s [sic] first weekend and making nearly twice it’s [sic] budget back in three days, grossing $25 million. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the movie did great guns in middle America, where it earned $18 million, but on either coast Act of Valor only made a combined $7 million... I can’t say I’m shocked, because this movie is tailor made for the whole middle of America."
Must say, this is not the same movie I saw. Now, granted, being a military mom, I'm going to take certain aspects of it differently -- harder -- than the keyboard-jockey in his paper-strewn lair, but at least I won't come out disgruntled because the directors didn't make the film I thought they should make. It's simply comic to read critical complaints about the fact that the character of the SEAL team was emphasized at the expense of the individuals, coupled with some nasty barb about the film's failure to be sufficiently "authentic" -- because, of course, who knows better than a film critic what the authentic character of a highly trained military squad involved in chaotic, split-second life-or-death situations, during which they must maintain focus and pursue their objective, should look like?
That question answers itself.
The view through rose-coloured news-hack glasses sometimes had difficulty accepting the plot-line. Wrote Peter Travers in Rolling Stone, "The action, involving Chechen rebels, Mexican drug cartels and assorted terrortists, is staged."
Really? Nothing like a Russian/Al Qaeda/Mexican three-way could ever happen? And the reason you know this is because it looked too much like something you'd see on 24? Holy wow -- you're just the guy we're looking for at the National Security Agency.
A number of critics thought that the most dismissive comment they could make was to call the film nothing more than a naked military recruitment movie [Peter Travers again: "I don't know what to make of Act of Valor. It's like reviewing a recruiting poster."] and we can watch those for free, right?
At the risk of coughing up a giant SPOILER, these journo hacks would have us believe that the way we recruit (read: hoodwink) young people into joining the military is with an exciting, suspense-filled movie that ends with... [spoiler!!!!]
one of the most sympathetic principal characters falling on a grenade and being buried with full military honors in front of his pregnant wife.
Wow! -- you mean I can do that too? Sha-ZAM!!
My nephew claims he warned me about the film -- about a month ago he saw it in sneak preview and said he cried. I guess that wasn't enough to prepare me for what I saw. It was tense and exciting and believably sentimental and occasionally oddly funny (the interrogator is a genius).
Since (unlike many a journo hack) I not only know some real military people and have watched more than my fair share of genuine combat footage, but I have also met a lot of ordinary, real people from "flyover country," I found the film remarkably real -- yes, there was a bit of wooden acting here and there, but the critics make the fatal mistake of thinking that the Stanislavsky-inspired navel-based intensity they see on screen from professional thespians actually constitutes a portrait of reality rather than a close-up of the kind of self-absorbed neurosis that is decidedly lacking in the true warrior.
In my family circular, I indulged in some less than charitable remarks, with a soupçon of hate speech, about politicians and journalists. I will refrain here. But I can't muffle myself when it comes to what may be the ultimate finger in the eye to Act of Valor delivered, as only a Canadian can, by Rick Groen at the TorontoGlobe and Mail.
...Unfortunately, in the name of drama, they’re shipped out to the usual bogus plot – in this case, something about saving America from the clutches of suicidal terrorists doubly wrapped in their beliefs and their bombs. [emphasis mine -- ed.]
But say this for the real Seals. As performers, they are to the action genre what the male stars are to porn flicks – laughably wooden in the dialogue department, yet pretty impressive wielding their weapon of choice.
...As played by Alex Veadov, a professional thespian, the charismatic Christos [sic] steals every scene he’s in, especially the one set on his luxury yacht adorned with a full crew of female admirers in uniformly skimpy bikinis. [Sorry -- no objective viewer can watch the scene between Christo and real SEAL interrogator 'Senior Chief Miller' and say that Veadov stole it. -- ed.]
Suddenly, that recruitment poster takes an inadvertent but enticing turn into shallower waters: Join the Christos [sic] Navy, be all that you can be.
...it’s easy to make out the moment when the code of honour meets an act of valour, prompting a brave lad to take one for the team, falling on a grenade in order to save his comrades.
Finally, some otherwise reliably conservative bloggers at Atlas Shrugs and Ricochet see anti-Semitism as not only the core of the villain "Christo" [you can't make this up], but as the core of the entire film. Oh please. I'm done here.
It's not an ordinary film to be measured by ordinary standards. But it's a fine piece of work. See it, unless you can't take films that end with the folding of a flag at Arlington.
Monday, March 29, 2010
TWO RUMORS:
President Obama's speech to the troops in Afghanistan:
GREAT ~ EFFECTIVE ~ COMMANDER-IN-CHIEFLY
[or was it....]
AWFUL
Instapundit told me that the speech was being praised at National Review Online, which was, er, at odds with what I had heard. So I watched the five-minute video version (limp) and then went in deeper search for the full twenty-minute monty, and made my assessment to the delightful but misinformed Kathryn Jean Lopez. Here's my letter:
Let me preface my remarks by saying that I am a double military mom, with one in the Marines (veteran of two Iraq tours) and one in the Navy (NFO training on F-18's); and my sister has one in the Navy, currently deployed on Individual Augmentation in Khost, Afghanistan. I first caught a ten-second cut of the President's speech to the troops and found it lacklustre, but my sister had seen the whole thing and gave me her take on it: AWFUL. So I looked for the video: there's the 5-minutes of edited highlights, again lacklustre, but also a distorted fraction of the full 20-minute performance.
The fact that it was 20 minutes says a lot -- that's about 12 minutes too long for cheering up the troops, and they responded as could be expected, with prolonged, deafening silence through most of it. But 20 minutes did give the President ample time to say the word "I" fifty-one times, plus variations of "me" and "my". It also allowed for seemingly endless and, in that context, weirdly extraneous references to all the civilians and politicians and members of every army not in the room, hard at work on the only aspect of the campaign that Mr. Obama appears to relate to, "international relations". Because, believe me, he does NOT relate to the troops.
It's hard to decide what was worse: was it the repeated (albeit more subtle than usual) slaps at Bush's "war of choice" in Iraq, through characterizations of this war that Mr. Obama has now chosen to adopt as his own being one with a "clear mission and the right strategy...and the equipment you need"; where America's institutions will not fail its military and we won't be "meddling in other people's business" [yeah, that happens a lot]? Or was it all the references to the "suffering...on your second or your third or your fourth tour of duty"? -- all the while oblivious to the fact that some of those in the room on their fourth tour of duty spent their earlier ones in that pointless, meddling war of choice in Iraq -- sucks to be you, guys.
No, I think the worst part was his litany of images borrowed from Tokyo Rose. I really want my kid to be sitting in a hall on the other side of the world, surrounded by evil men with bombs, listening to his president drone on about PTSD, traumatic brain injury, fighting to stand or walk again, flag-draped coffins, headstones, and a deceased comrade whose parents just received the (incorrectly named) "Medal of Honor" -- to say nothing of how much I miss my wife and children. Ooh-rah!
Robbed of his teleprompter, the President was forced to head-bob towards his text on the podium, which he did with reasonable success, but increasingly, as the minutes wore on, without heart and sometimes without sense -- his delivery broke up in strange places, and words written for emphasis got lost (though the "Tahleebahn" and "Pahkeestahn" got their customary careful enunciation). By minute 18 he looked bored.
Maybe you just have to be a military parent, mindful of how carefully you speak to your kid just before deployment, or when he or she gets to a war zone phone, or how carefully you write emails, letters, and Facebook shout-outs, always on full mental alert to sound confident and encouraging without being a Pollyanna, editing your accounts of spending time with his family back home, wondering just how many videos of his little boy at the beach or his birthday party to put on that flashdrive you're sending to Iraq, or how much to talk about that kid he graduated with whose helicopter crashed in Afghanistan and whose name is now on the college monument and his football number retired.
There has been much long-distance psychoanalysis of Mr. Obama, even by licensed professionals who have never met him, and I don't approve of that. But from my seat in the amateur section, having waved goodbye to my kid a couple of times now before his imminent deployment to Anbar, I feel more than qualified to declare that President Obama has a breathtaking empathy deficit. Additional criticisms are easy to make, based on his clear record of personal alienation from the American project, and continuing adolescent romance with the failed Socialist (hell, let's call it Communist) project. He is, as Rush has wisely put it, the least experienced and least qualified person in any room he walks into these days. That accounts for some of it. But the rank obtuseness of his speech to the troops last week is one for the books.
Looking ridiculous in his flight costume, more Club Monaco "blouson" than Bomber Command, he could not have drawn a more stark contrast between himself and that bungling Chimpy McBushHitler who had the troops shouting the roof off in Baghdad a few years ago, speaking briefly and from the heart, and giving so much heart where it was needed.
Sorry, K-Lo -- Mr. Obama looked like something, but Commander-in-Chief it was not.
Down the memory hole:
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
LIFE ON THE ROCK
Elsewhere in our neighbourhood. Bay watch.
Let's all go lupins.
How delightful it was to lose myself in the hinterlands of Newfoundland for 10 days—to be transported to a small (technically dying!) community, with lots of work to do to settle into the old house, no satellite TV and no time to waste in cyber-space. There was the detachment from reality owing to distance and local concerns, plus the detachment from present time represented by reminiscences at every turn, of the days of 70 years ago when the house was once before in present family hands. There was a little spare time to take in undiscovered beauties, all of which harken back to even earlier times—like half a billion years ago when the plates shoved this rock up from the depths of magma to break the surface of the seas.
Back home, drinking up the news and reading the wires, it is tempting to get depressed about a whole world of things. Much healthier, I think, to select just a few and become monumentally depressed about only those.
OH, GRANDMA, IS IT ALWAYS ABOUT POLITICS?
I did something this week I haven't done in more than a decade-- visited a TOYS'R'US. It was all in the name of the Mommet and the Teufelpuppy, expected this year. The store has changed a lot, seems more crowded and a bit run-down, way too much room devoted to video-games. Man at the check-out has a long body, a long ponytail, and spoke as if he had a long acquaintance with magic mushrooms. I got a few good necessaries, but on the side picked up one of the handful of small football [soccer] action figures left, a little but remarkably accurate statuette of Zinedine Zidane, of ignominious red-card head-butt fame. (Re-live the moment with this ridiculous time-waster from Addictinggames.com-- I've only ever done a couple of these things, and this is the first one I haven't been killed at.) The little figure is in the act of lifting the ball upwards and seems to be preparing for a header, so it's especially appropriate.
I, however, being terminally perverse and politically jazzed, saw it as fitting nicely into my other arrangement of mini-figures, purchased at the exchange on Marine Corps Base Quantico. It's a little grouping of high-quality miniatures produced by one of those makers of model soldiers (notBritain's but something equally good), which I bought and set out to remind myself who it was who changed history by engineering the attack that finally delivered the message about Islamist terrorism-- the late 20th-century evil that may dictate the future of generations long past my kid who was then training at Quantico. So I gave Zizou the opportunity to put his own Algerian pride to better use. And there he stands, poised to make that red card a thing worth having. It's still great to be a TOYS'R'US Kid.
BACK IN THE REAL WORLD: I watch, so you don’t have to.
The news finally surfaced that there was indeed graphic/photographic evidence of what was inflicted upon our kidnapped soldiers, Privates Kristian Menchaca and Thomas Tucker, by the twisted butchers who took them. Websites which felt duty-bound to be heralds of this horror to a complacent citizenry posted them for a short time, but thought better of it and removed what they came to consider too horrible to disseminate. Even the site that offered just still screen-captures backed off pretty quickly.
But there’s always somebody who’s prepared to stiffen public resolve, or just exploit the sensational, and the video and stills are out there to be found. In keeping with my previous decision that some among us need to bear witness to the harshest realities, I checked it out.
Fortunately it is of the usual poor quality, probably recorded by a cell-phone camera, so that at first one is not quite sure what one is seeing. The overwhelming image, it should be said, is one of blood-- it is fair to call the video "The Passion of Menchaca and Tucker." One can only hope, as has been speculated, that they were both dead before the mutilations were carried out, killed or severely wounded at the same time their comrade Spc. David Babineau died, whose body was left behind-- this seems a distinct possibility, as Menchaca is clearly dead in the video but still intact, even as he is subjected to what is, to Muslims, the maximum human indignity: a bystander presses the bottom of his running shoe against Menchaca's face and grinds it.
We learned at the time of the fall of Baghdad in 2003, as Iraqis throughout the country slapped or threw their shoes against images of Saddam Hussein, that this was considered the greatest possible insult in their culture, presumably because shoes come into contact with all the filth of an underdeveloped society. It is one of the many peculiarly, one might even say "pervertedly," puritanical characteristics of Muslim culture that they have all sorts of what we would call "hang-ups" about personal defilement associated with dogs, pigs, and women (not necessarily in that order), which manifest themselves in, among other things, hypersensitivity to what's on the soles of one's shoes. Yet, as this and other videos of human slaughter make clear, there seems to be no taboo against bathing oneself in enemy blood-- in picking up a dripping head or wearing the backwash of a jugular puncture. Odd, that.
This week we have witnessed the spectacle of tough talk, ultimatums, and unqualified support for military retaliation issuing from the lips of the American President on the subject of two Israeli Defense Force soldiers kidnapped by Hezbollah. If I had to make a guess, it would be that the soldiers will end up being returned, probably alive, or maybe killed inadvertantly during the battle to shut down Iran's terrorist proxy in Lebanon. I would be mightily surprised if the soldiers are returned to Israel in the condition in which we found Privates Menchaca and Tucker. Were that to happen, I'm thinkin' Hezbollah could reasonably expect their Lebanese turf to be flattened into moonscape. Al Qaeda, however, has learned that it can reasonably expect no such response from the United States. The butchery of our two Privates seems to have had little effect on the digestive tranquility of the inhabitants of the West Wing.
I doubt the President has watched the video (he should)-- but even if he has had a look, and even if his stomach did churn and his heart did ache, it SEEMS to have had little effect-- the public has not been permitted to PERCEIVE anything. If this is stoicism on the President's part (which would be giving him much more credit than I'm inclined to do), it is NOT what the moment calls for. It would NOT be appropriate in the mayor of the soldiers' home towns, the governor of their States, the commander of their unit. It is NOT appropriate from their Commander-in-Chief. I have previously called him the "Delegator-in-Chief", and this is not a compliment. In this case, he seems to have delegated the appropriate OUTRAGE so far down the chain of command that it is only to be perceived among the right-wing media and blogosphere.
At some point, Mr. President, we're going to get tired of doing your job for you-- chew your own food, do your own spellcheck, and find a corner in which to lodge your own emotions instead of leaving them to others. This was the time for battle-cry-- GOD FOR MENCHACA! GOD FOR TUCKER! GOD FOR AMERICA, IRAQ, AND FREEDOM! GOD FOR HARRY, ENGLAND, AND ST. GEORGE!
Mr. Bush was caught on tape this week, in private conference with Tony Blair at the G-8 meeting in St. Petersburg, opining that Syria should press Hezbollah to "stop doing this sh*t." Leftists pretended shock (puh-h-h-le-e-e-ze), and rightists gushed kudos. I found it more disturbing that Mr. Bush was caught displaying the table manners of a coarse hillbilly (mouth half-open, lips smacking) and couldn't manage the politeness of a lowered voice. Mr. Blair's remarks were often discreetly unintelligible on tape, while Bush's were at a slightly subdued holler, aided by the fact that he couldn't be bothered to look Blair directly in the face much of the time, but was looking out at the business of the room. (Perhaps that was his method of pretended insouciance, of covering for the semi-official gravity of the conversation-- I'll give him that, though I'd buy it more if he'd kept his voice down.) All in all, it was not a pretty picture. I'm perfectly content with the locker-room vocabulary. I just wish he could speak so bluntly, and act with the forcefulness it represents, on behalf of our own troops in their separate battle. Maybe I'd appreciate the tough talk if the Delegator-in-Chief had heard and acted upon the answer to L. Paul Bremer's $64,000 (or rather, 35,000-troop) question to General Ricardo Sanchez in 2004: Q-- "What can you use?" A-- "Give me two more divisions and I can control Baghdad." Message never received, troops never delivered.
Private Thomas Tucker and Private Kristian Menchaca were kidnapped, murdered, and hacked up like... I can't even say it. IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE COME TO THIS.
Having come to this anyway, IT SHOULD NOT STAND.
Yet it seems to have passed into the history of the war like just another day in the Sandbox. Two more flag-covered coffins will come home, but this time inside they will contain the most taxing mortician's cosmetic re-assembly, after the most complicated autopsy, of this entire war, or perhaps any war, ever-- because it's probably the first time in history that a people primitive enough to inflict such damage have committed it against a people who care enough to deliver home their dead in some semblance of peaceful repose, with as clear a picture as possible of the circumstances of their death.
SPEAKING OF BEHEADINGS -- THIS JUST IN: BRAD PITT does DANIEL PEARL
I haven't read any details about how the deal went down, but somewhere along the road between Kandahar and Candyland (read: Hollywood) Brad Pitt obtained the movie rights to Marianne Pearl's account of the life and death of her husband, reporter Daniel Pearl, who was lured to his gruesome death (our first filmed beheading of the GWOT) while reporting on the invasion of Afghanistan in 2002.
Actually, the rights belonged to the production company of the then husband-and-wife team of Bradifer Pittaston or Jennad Anistipitt or whatever the moniker was for the ill-fated couple. The company and its properties were handed over to Brad in the divorce settlement, and he is now slated to do the film with his new squeeze (are they married? I forget) the flabby-lipped, adoptathon, glam-humanitarian Angelina Jolie. (Aniston is apparently FUMING that her potentially Oscar-winning role is now going to the OTHER WOMAN-- film at 11:00.....).
So Brad has recently announced his operating principle for the film project by gushing, “We hope the film can increase understanding between people of all faiths and portray the story and the people involved as honestly as possible without anger or judgment.”
Daniel Pearl was...kidnapped by Islamic fundamentalists, bound, beaten, terrorized and finally beheaded — all with cameras rolling. In the last moments before Daniel Pearl was brutally decapitated, his killers demanded that he identify himself. Not as an American, not as an infidel, not as a journalist. He was forced to define himself one way and one way only — as a Jew — and then his head was removed from his body.
I had but one thought while reading this article (Schachter had it too, making it her closing lines), and that was: I don't need to buy a ticket for this movie-- I've already seen it. If Brad Pitt can make this film without anger, he is a heartless automaton. That he can make it without a scintilla of judgment he has already amply demonstrated.
MEMO TO BRAD: HEROISM LOOKS LIKE THIS
Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute posted an entry on National Review'sThe Corner consisting of the account nominating SSG David Bellavia for the Medal of Honor, for conduct during the battle for Fallujah, November 2004. Ledeen's only comment is "Who could comment on this?"
I'll give away the ending: "SSG Bellavia single handedly saved three squads of his Third Platoon that night, risking his own life by allowing them to break contact and reorganize." I wrote to thank Ledeen for the posting, and suggested someone should undertake a psy-ops mission to leaflet the congressional Democrats with it. See what you think-- READ IT ALL. (I'll give away another ending-- I expected to learn that Bellavia had died in the action-- he survived, has retired, and was on FoxNews last night with some insights about what's happening with Hezbollah. More about him here.)
CATHOLIC MOMENT The Anchoress passed on a pretty funny bit from the Colbert Report, with comments about Colbert's up-front (albeit liberally diluted in all the right places) Catholicism. I'm in the habit of saying that there is no such thing as a liberal or conservative Catholic-- there are just orthodox Catholics and pretend Catholics. That's not to say that the pretenders haven't one sincere or devout belief in their whole person-- they may well have many-- they just believe in something different from Catholicism. That having been said, Colbert openly gives it everything he's got (and it's sad that he hasn't got everything), and that's rare enough. His take on Unitarianism is BRILLIANT. Watch and grin.
PAGE SIX SCANDALS from the New York Post Richard Johnson reports:
ELIOT Spitzer's campaign for governor has received a major boost from celebrities like Barbra Streisand ($1,000), George Steinbrenner ($15,000) and Christie Brinkley ($1,250). The Post's Kenneth Lovett reports Spitzer raised a hefty $10.7 million during the past six months, with contributions also from Don Henley ($10,000), Edward Norton ($15,000), Ben Affleck ($1,000), Jets owner Woody Johnson ($10,000), NBA Com missioner David Stern ($5,000), Ivanka Trump ($1,000), Robert (son of George) Soros ($25,000), John Kerry's stepson Chris Heinz ($1,500), Robert Kennedy Jr. ($200), public relations powerhouse How ard Rubenstein ($11,000), and Laurie David, the activist wife of "Seinfeld" co-creator Larry David ($2,400).
What can I say but...can you believe how cheap some of these rich libs are?!!! Haven't they ever heard of putting their money where their mouth is? Chris Heinz can't borrow more than than 1500 bills from the Ketchup Goddess?!!!
TUCK IT AWAY -- MIGHT BE USEFUL ONE DAY: "BUSH LIED" myth DEMOLISHED Absolutely everything you'll ever need on this subject found neatly packaged and shipping your way on the USS Neverdock blog. Captain Jack Sparrow never scored such a treasure trove of truthiness, such B.S.-blasting booty. HAR-R-R-R. Lots of good links from the Neverdock deck.
Oh, and, just in case you ever wondered which side God might be on, this apparition was made manifest deep inside the Battleship North Carolina recently.
Hm-m-m-m-m.
Friday, January 30, 2009
OBAMA PONTIFICATE, DAY 9:
HOW'S MY DRIVING?
Well, let's see -- we've got a tax-cheat running Treasury, one Chicago croney refused entry into Canada for his criminal record, another cog in the Chicago machine kicked out of the Governor's mansion for trying sell the former senator's seat, a couple of other croneys set to be called as witnesses in the guberatorial criminal prosecution, an FALN-terrorist-booster heading for Attorney General, a defense contractor lobbyist hired in a supposedly lobbyist-free zone, a woman who called Hillary Clinton a "monster" now working under her at State, a headlong rush into Islamofascist hobnobbing via Al-Arabiya TV and overtures to Madmood (The-only-good-Jew-is-a-dead-Jew) Ahmadinnerjacket, and a colossal Ugly Betty glob o' pork fat laughably referred to as a Stimulus Package that lumbered through the House without even being able to get all the Democrats behind it.
Having gotten 'the new era of bipartisanship' off to a good start by failing to see that Republicans had any input whatsoever on the economic recovery legislation, and then 'splaining it to them by spurting out 'I won!' in a meeting, the new Communicator-in-Chief thought it would be a good move to attack by name yet another private citizen employed in the media, exchanging his fixation on Fox's Sean Hannity for the chance to take public pot-shots at the far more intelligent, clever, and influential Rush Limbaugh -- thereby setting himself up for a much more difficult job of sleazing the Fairness Doctrine (by any other name) past the American people without a huge ugly fight.
And then there's the I'm-too-COOL-to-wear-a-suit-to-work portrait of the president at work in an Oval Office heated up like a sauna, when he's been preaching to the rest of us to turn the thermostat down, even as he has teased Washingtonians for being wimps in the face of a little ice -- trying simultaneously to be imaged as a rugged Chicagoan and a Hawaiian hot-house flower all within about 48 hours.
Not to mention the 9/11 widows & families who are offended by his intention (it doesn't deserve to be called a 'plan') to close Gitmo, the military families who are cheesed that he's the first president in the history of the Medal of Honor Inaugural Ball to blow it off in favor of ten other more important events, and all of us who wanted to smack him for the ungenerous and falacious characterizations of what's been going on the past eight years, as recounted in his mooshy mess of an inaugural address.
ARE WE HAVING FUN YET?
Honest to God, in my worst imaginings of the unpreparedness of Barack Obambi for the position of Chief Executive, I never dreamed he could prove himself such a rank amateur in less than two weeks. I wish I could even enjoy it a little, but anyone with a half-decent survival instinct wouldn't be so foolish as to do that.
DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT...DA-DEE-DAH
If there's one thing Mr. Obama proved about himself during the Long March to the White House, it was that, despite his prep school and high-falutin' college eddication, he is, um, as 'history challenged' as just about any kid stumbling out of an American high school these days.
So is it any surprise that the guy who thought that the Kennedy/Khruschev summit debacle of 1961 was a model of international relations outreach, and who didn't seem to know who the enemy was at Yalta or Potsdam, now thinks it a good idea to return to that 'respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago'?
Now let's get more specific, Mr. President -- was that 30 years ago when we were cozy with the Shah of Iran (until we stepped aside to let him get overthrown), or was that 20 years ago, when some of us remember this:
YEAH, 'BAMA'S GONNA PARTY LIKE IT'S 1989!!!!
The formidable Max Boot puts the boot to this clap-trap and gives the cliff-notes to those decades of history, vis-a-vis our partnership with those who were torturing Marine Col. William Higgins to death, issuing fatwas against the life of Salman Rushdie, hanging Ali Bhutto, and nurturing the seed of the Taliban. Ah, yes....
THOSE WERE THE DAYS, MY FRIEND WE THOUGHT THEY'D NEVER END
(441, 442, 443.......).
[Who was the unmasked man?]
AND WE ALL KNOW HOW WELL IT ALL TURNED OUT:
President Jimmah Carter -- wasn't he just the pea-nuttiest?!!!
(442, 443, 444-------------and, POW!)
To think I actually felt kinda sorry for that schmuck, Carter, when the split-screen tv showed his final limo ride on Reagan's inauguration day on one side, and the hostages coming home on the other. The bad guys didn't score quite that big again until September 11.
Well, we can't look for a knight on a white horse to come riding out of the west to save us this time -- but at least there are signs of hope (in the genuine, non-bumper-sticker sense):
I broke into the blogosphere in 2003, via a letter to andrew sullivan (made me a minor celebrity in my family for a week) Call it my bio: My grandfather came to the US from Greece around 1905, alone, age 10, sailing into New York Harbor and entering at Ellis Island, like the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather. Before settling down he spent a couple of his teen-age years "hobo-ing" around the country. He insisted to me that a hobo is not a bum. He looks for honest work to earn his food and a place to sleep - he is NOT looking for a hand-out... When you (Sullivan) used the word "hobo" to describe Saddam Hussein in his spider hole, I thought "Saddam should be so lucky as to be a hobo--he could wish for so much dignity." My grandfather finished third grade, and spent his life as a railroad mechanic. He raised four sons, three of them old enough for WWII. The four earned two M.A.'s and two Ph.D.'s, and produced 15 accomplished grandchildren. Among the many great-grandchildren are two Naval officers and a Marine Corps Captain...the legacy of a hobo. Saddam, master of the palaces and father of the lion-cubs, is just a bum.
't fake is the fact that he's an effing JACKASS -- a man who put the froid in sang-froid. He's like a droid with an electoral reflex and little else zipping through his wires. C-Creepy-O. Who knew that Michelle's White House garden could grow such a 24-carrot phony? 
