Tag Archive 'Afghanistan'
Bookworm on Feb 01 2013 | Filed under: Open Threads, Uncategorized
Tweet I’m back with more. Did you know that Afghanistan was declared a gun-free zone? Well, if you didn’t, you’re right. But this is a great satire anyway. Have you heard of a site called Patriotic Voices? (I do seem to be full of questions, don’t I?) It’s a forum for conservatives. It’s got very [...]
Bookworm on Dec 11 2012 | Filed under: Afghanistan, Military, Political correctness
Tweet The rule of war used to be that you hated your enemy. That made it easy to fight your enemy. Then, starting with the first Gulf War, the new rule was that you felt sorry for your enemy. By the Iraq War, the rule had become, you’ve got to like and respect your enemy. [...]
Bookworm on Aug 23 2012 | Filed under: Afghanistan, Military
Tweet In the last two weeks, Afghan forces under American mentorship have killed ten NATO troops. Now, you and I might think this is because we are at war with Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, and these enemy forces have had their agents infiltrate the ostensibly American-friendly Afghan forces. In other words, our [...]
Bookworm on May 14 2012 | Filed under: Afghanistan, Barack Obama
Tweet Somewhere between yesterday and today, my brain went AWOL. I had a wonderful idea for a short and sweet post yesterday but never got the chance to write it down. Today, I have the chance, but absolutely no ideas, neither short and sweet ideas, nor long and boring ones. I’ve been reading the news, [...]
Bookworm on Feb 06 2012 | Filed under: Afghanistan, Military
Tweet BUDS trainees during Hell Week Special troops are, by definition, small in number. If everyone could do what they do, they would be special. They are made up of men with unusual mental and physical strength. Again, by definition this is a subset of all men. (No disrespect meant to the majority of men [...]
Bookworm on Jan 20 2012 | Filed under: Media matters, Military
Tweet Ever since Obama became president, the war dead have vanished. During the Bush presidency, enemy deaths filled that papers as we were accused of mass slaughter; during the Obama presidency, I think our troops are just out there having nice cups of tea with the bad guys, because none of the latter seem to [...]
Bookworm on Jan 18 2012 | Filed under: Afghanistan, Military
Tweet My post caption is not a joke: According to USA Today, the newest NATO tactic in Afghanistan is, in essence, to pretend there is no enemy: Military commanders in Afghanistan have stopped making public the number of allied troops killed by Afghan soldiers and police, a measure of the trustworthiness of a force that [...]
Bookworm on Jan 11 2012 | Filed under: Afghanistan, Iraq, World War II
Tweet A friend sent me a link to an editorial bemoaning the fact that, by abruptly pulling out from Iraq and, soon, Afghanistan, the Obama administration is ensuring that we’re leaving a job undone — something that invariably means one has to do it again. If history is going to keep repeating itself, why can’t [...]
Bookworm on Dec 19 2011 | Filed under: Afghanistan
Tweet Sadie played connect the dots for me: Dots begin here . . . . After 10 months of secret dialogue with Afghanistan’s Taliban insurgents, senior U.S. officials say the talks have reached a critical juncture and they will soon know whether a breakthrough is possible, leading to peace talks whose ultimate goal is to [...]
Bookworm on Mar 29 2011 | Filed under: Afghanistan, Media matters, Military
Tweet Years ago, in another life, I dated a man who had worked for Rolling Stone and personally knew Jann Wenner. (My ex-boyfriend claimed that a well-known Rolling Stone photographer was the one who introduced him to and got him hooked on cocaine. I have no idea if he was telling the truth or not, [...]
Danny Lemieux on Feb 10 2011 | Filed under: Afghanistan
Tweet Will Democrats once again snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? Here’s a very encouraging report about the latest NATO (mostly American forces) offensive in Helmand province, one of the last redoubts of the Taliban. I don’t know how much play this will get in the Mass Media, as they generally don’t like to [...]
Bookworm on Jun 23 2010 | Filed under: Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Military
Tweet I feel I should say something, so I will. Being me, of course, what I say will be discursive. Re McChrystal: An excellent general who didn’t hit it off with Obama from the git-go (blame lies, I believe, with Obama), and who failed utterly in the diplomatic discretion category — something that’s true whether [...]
Bookworm on May 31 2010 | Filed under: Afghanistan, Military
Tweet [I'll keep this at the top through Memorial Day. Scroll down for lots of new posts.] Several years ago, as part of a 9/11 commemoration, I wrote the following words as part of a post I did about Lt. Brian Ahearn, one of the New York fire fighters who perished on that day: My [...]
Bookworm on May 31 2010 | Filed under: 9/11, Afghanistan, Leftist morality, Military
Tweet As I’ve mentioned just a few times, I just read, and was very moved by, Marcus Luttrell’s Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10. A liberal I know flipped through the book’s first few pages and had a very different reaction. The following passages bugged [...]
Bookworm on Feb 28 2010 | Filed under: Afghanistan, Military
Tweet I meant to post this yesterday, but time got away from me: many, many, many congratulations to the Marines and their Afghan allies for the Marjah victory. I never doubted that they would win, but I certainly understood that each Marine and Afghan soldier faced the risk that he would make the ultimate sacrifice [...]
Bookworm on Jan 29 2010 | Filed under: Afghanistan, GBLT
Tweet I don’t have a comment here. I just think this story is interesting: An unclassified study from a military research unit in southern Afghanistan details how homosexual behavior is unusually common among men in the large ethnic group known as Pashtuns — though they seem to be in complete denial about it. [snip] In [...]
Bookworm on Dec 02 2009 | Filed under: Afghanistan, Anti-war, Barack Obama
Tweet Despite giving the generals almost 75% fewer troops than the 80,000 they really wanted (and even significantly less than the 40,000 they sort of wanted), and despite telling the Taliban and Al Qaeda exactly when the field is theirs, and despite dwelling morbidly on death in front of the men and women at West [...]
Bookworm on Dec 01 2009 | Filed under: Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Pakistan
Tweet As I write this, Obama hasn’t spoken yet, but he has released excerpts from his speech. These are my first thoughts on his words: “The 30,000 additional troops that I am announcing tonight will deploy in the first part of 2010 – the fastest pace possible – so that they can target the insurgency [...]
Bookworm on Nov 30 2009 | Filed under: Afghanistan
Tweet One of the best things George Bush did during his presidency was to appoint the late, great Tony Snow as his press secretary. Snow was a dream press secretary, straight out of central casting: handsome, intelligent, erudite, informed, charming and witty. Even the savagely anti-Bush press appeared to enjoy his statements and, once he [...]
Bookworm on Nov 16 2009 | Filed under: Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Military
Tweet Here’s our Commander in Chief speaking of the situation in Afghanistan while he was running for office: “We’ve got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there.” This post is not [...]
Bookworm on Nov 12 2009 | Filed under: Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Media matters, Military
Tweet Obama has known for more than 12 months that he was going to become CIC, with responsibility for Afghanistan. This means 12 months of presidential advisers able to give this neophyte help in figuring out the best strategy for the war that he declared, during the campaign, was the essential, central battlefield in the [...]
Bookworm on Nov 11 2009 | Filed under: Afghanistan, Islam, Political correctness, Socialism
Tweet American Thinker is a site I check regularly, at least twice a day. It’s not just that the editors are kind enough to publish my work occasionally. It’s because the articles that appear there routinely range from really good to out-of-the-park stupendous. Today, there are two that fall in the latter category. These are [...]
Bookworm on Nov 11 2009 | Filed under: Afghanistan, Barack Obama
Tweet On October 22, 2008, I wrote this: The MSM has been remarkably cavalier about Joe Biden’s bizarre statement regarding the “fact” that America will be attacked six months into a Barack Obama presidency and that people will be shocked and disappointed by Obama’s response (meaning that he’ll either collapse in a sobbing heap, thereby [...]
Bookworm on Nov 10 2009 | Filed under: Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Media matters
Tweet I saw a headline at Drudge, to the effect that there is a photo of Afghan “insurgents” with U.S. ammo. The story, although I’m sure it’s interesting, interested me less than that word “insurgent.” We’ve all talked about the fact that “insurgent” a word that allows a politically correct, liberal media to avoid such [...]
Bookworm on Nov 01 2009 | Filed under: Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Military
Tweet It’s like standing in line at the check out counter: You find yourself peering into the cart in front of you to see what people are eating. The obviously overweight person in front of you has filled his cart with junk food, sugary cereals, ice cream, no vegetables, lots of frozen pizza, no fruit, [...]