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 the liberal:

My name is Marcus.  Marcus Luttrell.  I’m a United States Navy SEAL, Team Leader, SDV Team 1, Alfa Platoon.  Like every other SEAL, I’m trained in weapons, demolition, and unarmed combat.  I’m a sniper, and I’m the platoon medic.  But most of all, I’m an American.  And when the bell sounds, I will come out fighting for my country and for my teammates.  If necessary, to the death.

And that’s not just because the SEALs trained me to do so; it’s because I’m willing to do so.  I’m a patriot, and I fight with the Lone Star of Texas on my right arm and another Texas flag over my heart.  For me, defeat is unthinkable.  (pp. 6-7)

[snip]

[As they're taking off from Bahrain to Afghanistan:] There were no other passengers on board, just the flight crew and, in the rear, us, headed out to do God’s work on behalf of the U.S. government and our commander in chief, President George W. Bush.  (p. 12.)

[snip]

[Of the Taliban/Al Qaeda enemy in Afghanistan:]  This was where bin Laden’s fighters found a home training base.  Let’s face it, al Qaeda means “the base,” and in return for the Saudi fanatic bin Laden’s money, the Taliban made it all possible.  right now these very same guys, the remnants of the Taliban and the last few tribal warriors of al Qaeda, were preparing to start over, trying to fight their way through the mountain passes, intent on setting up new training camps and military headquarters and, eventually, their own government in place of the democratically elected one.

They may not have been the precise same guys who planned 9/11.  But they were most certainly their descendants, their heirs, their followers.  They were part of the same crowd who knocked down the North and South Towers in the Big Apple on the infamous Tuesday morning in 2001.  And our coming task was to stop them, right there in those mountains, by whatever means necessary.  (pp. 13-14)

The liberal felt that the above passages showed that the writer was simplistic and primitive in his thinking.  The whole notion of simple patriotism offended the liberal, who also thought it was just plain stupid to seek revenge against guys who weren’t actually the ones who plotted 9/11.  My less than clever riposte was, “so I guess you would only kill Nazis who actually worked in the gas chambers?”  Frankly, given the differences in our world views, I’m not sure there is a clever comeback or, which would be more helpful, a comeback that actually causes the liberal to reexamine those liberal principles.

UPDATE:  Here’s an apt quotation, written by John Stuart Mill, in 1862, as a comment upon the American Civil War:

A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

My liberal friend is a headline reader.  That’s why we had a ridiculous conversation in which he wondered about the Fort Hood shooter’s motives.  To the reader who scans, headlines that say “motives a mystery” trump even those articles that add, under the headline, little facts such as Muslim death cries (“Allahu Akbar!”), radical mosques, jihadist internet postings and FBI scrutiny.

I thought of this when a scan of my local paper led me to yet another completely misleading headline today: “Filipino militants behead captive schoolteacher.” The incurious reader, with the MTV or CNN approach to news gathering, is left with the impression that there’s some sort of civil war in the Phillipines, with some of those nasty Filipino’s acting out.  The slightly more inquisitive reader will discover that Al Qaeda lies at the heart of this brutal murder:

Suspected al-Qaida-linked militants in the southern Philippines beheaded a schoolteacher after kidnapping him last month, officials said Monday.

The severed head of Gabriel Canizares, 36, was left in a bag at a gas station on Jolo Island, three weeks after suspected Abu Sayyaf militants stopped a passenger minibus and dragged him away in front of his colleagues, said regional military commander Maj. Gen. Benjamin Dolorfino.

The militants, notorious for bombings, ransom kidnappings and beheadings, were reportedly demanding a ransom of 2 million pesos ($42,000) for his release.

What’s fascinating is that the word “Islam” never appears in the article, while the word “Muslim” appears only in what seems to be an irrelevant aside, in the very last paragraph, about student populations in the region:

He said his department was at a loss how to ensure security for public schoolteachers in high-risk areas and feared that the kidnappings would discourage others from teaching underprivileged youths in Muslim areas.

I’ll readily concede that you’d have to have lived under a rock for a long, long time not to appreciate that organizations such as Al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah (described in the same article as a “Southeast Asian terrorist group”) are Muslim in nature.  Nevertheless, the AP’s deliberately unwillingness to acknowledge that Al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah aren’t just coincidentally Muslim, but have as their central tenet the violent advance of their Muslim faith, goes beyond a writer’s desire to avoid larding prose with the obvious.  Instead, the news service is manifestly trying to unlink the groups from religion in the public mind.  To this end, the report carefully carefully gives out the groups’ names, while describing them as “militants” or “terrorists,” the genesis of whose terror or militancy clearly has no known cause.

This obfuscatory, almost fraudulent writing* matters, as we know, because of the media’s frantic effort to de-couple the murderous Hasan of Fort Hood** from his faith.  Jeffrey Goldberg, whose tenure at the Atlantic is going to get shorter and shorter as he keeps stating honest truths,*** has this to say on that subject:

A consensus seems to have formed here at The Atlantic that the Ft. Hood massacre means not very much at all. Megan McArdle writes that “there is absolutely no political lesson to be learned from this.” James Fallows says: “The shootings never mean anything. Forty years later, what did the Charles Whitman massacre ‘mean’? A decade later, do we ‘know’ anything about Columbine?”  And the Atlantic Wire has already investigated the motivation for the shooting, and released its preliminary findings. Of Nidal Malik Hasan, the Wire states: “A 39-year-old Army psychiatrist, he appears to have not been motivated by his Muslim religion, his Palestinian heritage (he is American by nationality), or any related political causes.”

It seems, though, that when an American military officer who is a practicing Muslim allegedly shoots forty of his fellow soldiers who are about to deploy to the two wars the United States is currently fighting in Muslim countries, some broader meaning might, over time, be discerned, especially if the officer did, in fact, yell “Allahu Akbar” while murdering his fellow soldiers, as some soldiers say he did. This is the second time this year American soldiers on American soil have been gunned down by a Muslim who was reportedly unhappy with America’s wars in the Middle East (the first took place in Arkansas, to modest levels of notice). And, of course, this would not be the first instance of an American Muslim soldier killing fellow soldiers over his disagreements with American foreign policy; in 2003, Army Sgt. Hasan Akbar killed two officers and wounded fourteen others when he rolled a grenade into a tent in a homicidal protest against American policy.

Please do read the rest of Goldberg’s thoughtful, intelligent and intellectually honest post.   Then think about everything else you’ve read.  And then wonder if the Fort Hood massacre will be the breaking point for the American people, because it will stand as the moment when they can no longer stomach the cognitive dissonance of a media that so assiduously avoids the hard facts playing out in real time before our eyes.

______________________________

*And it is fraud, as a matter of law, the the speaker deliberately fails to disclose material facts in order to deceive.

**I promised a military friend I wouldn’t use his rank and name together, since he doesn’t deserve that honor.

*** I see Goldberg pulling a John Stossel and seeking a more salubrious and intellectually honest work environment.

I just copied the following from Drudge:

Possible Swine Flu Outbreak At NYC Prep School…
Most fatal flu victims aged between 25-45…
Swine flu could infect trade and travel…
Schwarzenegger has ‘rigorous’ plan…
WHO ready with antivirals…
The mysterious respiratory illness…
CDC says too late to contain…
60 DEAD: Mexico City launches huge vaccination campaign…
CLOSE TO 1,000 SUSPECTED CASES…
Heighten Risk of Pandemic…
Concerns in California, Texas…
Mutated from pigs, transmitted to humans…
Mexico has not suffered serious flu epidemic before…

Considering the last headline, and considering that flu epidemics have always originated in the Far East, my conspiracy mind thinks only one thing:  Al Qaeda/biological warfare on our borders.

UPDATE:  And if you want more stress, Laer has more for you.

Drudge‘s headline:  Trash Talk:  Al-Qaida Insults Obama In New Message.

The underlying story, here, explains that:

Al-Qaida’s No. 2 leader used a racial epithet to insult Barack Obama in a message posted Wednesday, describing the president-elect in demeaning terms that imply he does the bidding of whites.

The message appeared chiefly aimed at persuading Muslims and Arabs that Obama does not represent a change in U.S. policies. Ayman al-Zawahri said in the message, which appeared on militant Web sites, that Obama is “the direct opposite of honorable black Americans” like Malcolm X, the 1960s African-American rights leader.

In al-Qaida’s first response to Obama’s victory, al-Zawahri also called the president-elect—along with secretaries of state Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice—”house negroes.”

Speaking in Arabic, al-Zawahri uses the term “abeed al-beit,” which literally translates as “house slaves.” But al-Qaida supplied English subtitles of his speech that included the translation as “house negroes.”

The message also includes old footage of speeches by Malcolm X in which he explains the term, saying black slaves who worked in their white masters’ house were more servile than those who worked in the fields. Malcolm X used the term to criticize black leaders he accused of not standing up to whites.

As we’ve known since Mark Fuhrman and the OJ trial, there is no surer sign that someone is irredeemably evil than his use of racial epithets.  With that in mind, I wondered whether the nutroots, who always had a sneaking fondness for Al Qaeda (the enemy of my enemy [that would be George Bush] is my friend) might suddenly realize that Al Qaeda is, in fact, evil.  This latest Al Qaeda message would be a pathetic excuse for the nutroots finally to recognize the evil of an organization that gleefully and brutally slaughters civilians, but I’ll take it any way I can for the nutroots finally to figure out that Al Qaeda is, in fact, irredeemably evil.

UPDATE:  Here I thought I was being original, only to discover that Charles Johnson had the same thought I did!

I must work, but I have to give you a couple of quick links, one of which you may want to act upon and one of which is just nice to know.

On the “you might want to act” (by contacting your representatives in D.C.), Right Wing News offers useful information about the expiration on a major drilling ban:

Yesterday, the fine folks over at Americans for Prosperity alerted me to the fact that the election issue of all election issues has been dumped into the GOP’s lap.

You see, on October 1st, 2008, “the existing bans on Outer Continental Shelf drilling and oil shale leasing expire — unless Congress specifically votes to extend the bans.”

What will likely happen, according to AFP is that “Congressional leaders will likely try to sneak an extension into supposedly ‘must-pass’ last-minute spending legislation.”

Republicans, including most importantly, John McCain, should refuse to support ANY legislation that extends the drilling ban. That means they should speak out against it, they should vote against it, and George Bush should veto it if it comes across his desk.

This should not be a issue in the 2008 election, the GOP should make it THE ISSUE of the 2008 elections.

Even with gas prices as high as they are, the Democrats want to keep a drilling ban in place while Republicans want to take action that will help reduce prices, in the short and long term. What do you think the American people are going to think about that news if the GOP has the guts to make it a centerpiece of their electoral strategy?

The GOP, John McCain included, is already talking the talk on this issue and if they walk the walk and the Democrats predictably, yet foolishly, fight to keep us from drilling, this issue alone could literally make the difference in the presidential race and save multiple seats for the GOP in the House and Senate.

So, take a look at what I have written and take a look at the letter the AFP has been sending around to Congress that follows and call your senators and congressmen, call your favorite talk radio host and get them talking about this, write your favorite bloggers, and email your friends. If the Republican pols on the Hill see that this is taking off, they will get on board, too, and it can change the face of the political landscape in 2008.

Read the rest here.

Also, I thought I’d pass on to you some excellent news I learned from Steve Schippert (who blogs at The Tank and Threats Watch).  It seems that Al Qaeda, once famed for its tight, practically impermeable network, is falling apart:

This Washington Post report that Abu Ayyub al-Masri has, according to the Iraqi interrogation of captured al-Qaeda in Iraq leaders, fled Iraq for Afghanistan is perhaps the most significant report to come out of Iraq since the fall of Baghdad. It may not readily jump out at readers as such, but trust me when I stress that it is, and will prove such without doubt in due time for those who may question or doubt. Read it all and read it carefully.

The insurgency has collapsed, an implosion brought about by the clear splintering of what was once a cohesive al-Qaeda in Iraq. Each of the new leaders for the various splintered groups spoken to by WaPo in the article presents a different view on the status of al-Masri’s intent in leaving Iraq and his status as overall leader, but the differences themselves evidence a splintering, no matter what each believes. And the key to breaking and defeating an insurgency is to fracture cohesion. Done. Meaning: Don’t get too hung up on one guy saying he is keeping the seat warm for the Egyptian to return from the Mother Ship in Pakistan. If others refuse it, it’s fractured. Game over.

Now, that does not mean we’ll be hosting the Sundance Film Festival in Baghdad or Ramadi any time soon. The various disjointed cells are quite capable of and will carry out lethal acts of terrorism through bombings and the like. but the cohesive insurgency’s concerted run at the Iraqi government is finished.

Read the rest here.  It’s quite heartening, although I’m sure the MSM will miss its significance and ignore it too.

UPDATE:  And one silly link regarding another Obama lie.  (H/t:  Thomas who blogs here.)

Britain’s Telegraph has three interesting articles, and the London Times one:

Read about the vast difference between Britain’s and France’s socialized medicine. I’d certainly like to know what accounts for the difference before I start making changes to the American system. Color me skeptical, but I bet Obama, who shows himself to be remarkably ignorant about so many things, doesn’t know.

Speaking of the NSH, here’s one man’s story of what happened to him when he tried to improve his treatment for cancer. It’s a reminder that a whole bunch of socialism is less concerned with getting a good deal for all and much more concerned with making sure that some guy over there doesn’t get a better deal.

One British columnist offers a good analysis pointing to a McCain victory in November.

And some good news: Although it’s for the wrong reason (shock collateral damage in the form of Muslim deaths), some of the most outspoken clerics in the Islamic world are starting to turn on Al Qaeda. (H/t Danny Lemieux, who read it at Flopping Aces.)

UPDATE: You have to read this one too: Melanie Phillips’ marvelous op-ed about the way in which the British body politic is trying to bamboozle Brits into ceding all national power to the European Union (and the way in which plucky little Ireland is the one thing that stands in the way).  Phillips also disclosed the really dirty little secret, which is that the horses have already left the barn:  the EU controls most of British day-to-day life already.

WARNING: British bloggers — do not write about this story.

In England, a convoluted case played out in which the government froze funds in British banks that were to be sent to Al Qaeda, the funds’ owners challenged that action, and the court held against the government. As a result of this successful court action, the court further ordered that the individuals who brought suit couldn’t be named, because they’d be “smeared” with the Al Qaeda brush (never mind that they were voluntarily financing Al Qaeda and using British funds to do so).

As Dr. Rusty Shackleford explains:

Under U.N. Resolution 1267 and its subsequent addendums, the Security Council:

obliged all States to freeze the assets, prevent the entry into or the transit through their territories, and prevent the direct or indirect supply, sale and transfer of arms and military equipment, technical advice, assistance or training related to military activities, with regard to the individuals and entities included on the Consolidated List.

The British papers have known who these individuals are but the gag order has meant they have to keep their mouths shut. All they can do is issue broad, broad hints, in the hopes that others will figure it out. As Shackleford again explains:

For instance, this Times piece:

The man, who can be identified only as G, is one of five people who challenged the Treasury’s powers to freeze terrorist suspects’ bank accounts in a successful High Court action…The judge banned publication of G’s name but The Times is aware of his identity, which is published on a United Nations Security Council list of terrorist suspects linked to al-Qaeda and the Taleban.

However, Americans are not bound by this Court order, and Shackleford now reveals who the mysterious “G” really is: MOHAMMED AL GHABRA.

You and I, of course, probably don’t know a whole lot about this man — or even anything at all. The Treasury Department, however, is pretty well-informed about Mr. Al Ghabra and, from the point of view of Western security, it’s not a pretty picture:

Al Ghabra has organized travel to Pakistan for individuals seeking to meet with senior al Qaida individuals and to undertake jihad training. Several of these individuals have returned to the UK to engage in covert activity on behalf of al Qaida. Additionally, Al Ghabra has provided material support and facilitated the travel of UK-based individuals to Iraq to support the insurgents fight against coalition forces….

Apart from the financial and logistical support activities that led to his designation, Al Ghabra maintains contact with a significant number of terrorists, including senior al Qaida officials in Pakistan…

Al Ghabra is also in regular contact with UK-based Islamist extremists and has been involved in the radicalizing of individuals in the UK through the distribution of extremist media.

You can read the rest here, at the Jawa Report.  I’ll just leave you with Shackleford’s last word on the subject, which is well worth thinking about:

The fact that I was able to identify G so easily makes one wonder if these kind of gag orders are effective? And, in fact, doesn’t the public have a right to know who the UN has designated a terrorist? Especially when that terrorist may be living next door or down the street?

Niall Ferguson, whose book Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power was an excellent primer about the virtues of the British Empire (a tough argument in an anti-imperialist age), has written a rave review about Philip Bobbit’s newest book, Terror and Consent : The Wars for the Twenty-First Century.  Bobbit, who supported the Iraq War, argues that you can no longer wage wars in a nation-state mold.  This is a concept I tried, and failed, to get my mind around some time ago — indeed, I have a folder labeled Non-Government Organizations that never turned into either a post or an article.  What I really wanted to say, and never could, was this:

In his last book, “The Shield of Achilles” (2002), Bobbitt advanced a bold argument about the history of international relations since the time of the Treaty of Westphalia (1648). His central argument was that, in the aftermath of the cold war, the traditional post-Westphalian ideal of the sovereign nation-state had become obsolescent. In the increasingly borderless world we associate with globalization, something new was emerging, which Bobbitt called (and continues to call) the “market-state.” This state’s relationship to its citizens resembles that between a corporation and consumers. Its counterpart — and enemy — is the terrorist network. The central problem raised in “The Shield of Achilles” was how far the market-state could and should go to defeat such networks, particularly when they were in some measure sponsored by traditional nation-states.

[snip]

Bobbitt’s central premise is that today’s Islamic terrorist network, which he calls Al Qaeda for short, is like a distorted mirror image of the post-Westphalian market-state: decentralized, privatized, outsourced and in some measure divorced from territorial sovereignty. The terrorists are at once parasitical on, and at the same time hostile toward, the globalized economy, the Internet and the technological revolution in military affairs. Just as the plagues in the 14th century were unintended consequences of increased trade and urbanization, so terrorism is a negative externality of our borderless world.

The difference, of course, is one of intent. The rats that transported the lethal fleas that transported the lethal enterobacteria Yersinia pestis did not mean to devastate the populations of Eurasia and Africa. The Black Death was a natural disaster. Al Qaeda is different. Its members seek to undermine the market-state by turning its own technological achievements against it in a protracted worldwide war, the ultimate goal of which is to create a Sharia-based “terror-state” in the form of a new caliphate. Osama bin Laden and his confederates want to acquire nuclear or biological weapons of mass destruction. Precisely because of the nature of the market-state, as well as the actions of rogue nation-states, the key components and knowledge are very close to being available to them — witness the nuclear Wal-Mart run in Pakistan by A. Q. Khan. With such weapons, the terrorists will be able to unleash a super-9/11, with scarcely imaginable human and psychological costs.

Bobbit mixes an intelligent understanding of the diffuse and dangerous nature of the enemy we face, along with a practical realization that traditional warfare is no longer a useful approach to dealing with this enemy — or, at least, is not the sole useful approach.  It’s hard to believe he’s a Democrat, although I guess he comes by it honestly enough, since he is (if I recall) a blood relative of LBJ.  In any event, of his Democratic leanings, Ferguson has this to say:

To summarize: Bobbitt believes that there is a real war against terror; that civil liberties as previously understood may need to be curtailed to win it; that we must nevertheless fight it without violating our commitment to the rule of law; and that the United States cannot win it alone. This is certainly not a combination of positions calculated to endear Bobbitt either to the left or the right in the United States today.

Yet it is striking that, despite being a Democrat, Philip Bobbitt so often echoes the arguments made by John McCain on foreign policy. He sees the terrorist threat as deadly serious. He is willing to fight it. But he wants to fight it within the law, and with our traditional allies.

Perhaps — who knows? — this brilliant book may also be an application for the post of national security adviser. In times of war, stranger bedfellows have been known than a Democratic Texas lawyer and a Republican Arizona soldier.

The only thing that bewilders me about the book (or, at least, the book review) is Bobbit himself.  He was my Con Law professor and, while an elegant individual, he didn’t strike me as “A dapper Southerner, renowned almost as much for his sparkling literary allusions as for his acute thinking,” which is how Ferguson describes him.  As a teacher, he was, well, dull.  I guess he saved his brilliance for his books.

I will never again complain about having to throw away my unfinished drink before going through airport security:

A gang of alleged British Muslim fanatics plotted to cause “carnage on an almost unprecedented scale” with simultaneous suicide bombings on up to 18 transatlantic airliners, a court has heard.

Bombs made from hydrogen peroxide liquid explosives, and disguised as soft drinks including Lucozade and Oasis, were to be taken on board and detonated mid-flight, causing thousands of deaths “in the name of Islam”, it is alleged.

If the alleged plan had been carried out, it could have led to the worst terrorist atrocity since the attacks on the US on September 11, 2001.

It was as a result of the alleged plot being uncovered 18 months ago that authorities tightened security at airports in the UK, banning people carrying liquids on to planes.

The long awaited trial started today amid high security at Woolwich Crown Court in south-east London.
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Jurors were told that the accused were only interested in one way flights from Heathrow airport and possible target cities included New York, Washington, Chicago, Denver, Miami and San Francisco, as well as Montreal and Toronto in Canada.

***

They aimed to inflict “heavy casualties” on an “unwitting civilian population”, jurors were told.

The result would have had a “violent and deadly, global impact”, the court heard.

Peter Wright QC, prosecuting, in his opening speech, said that the men had planned to smuggle liquid explosives – disguised in drinks bottles – aboard selected flights in the summer of 2006.

The men and others were prepared to board the aircraft carrying their “deadly cargo” and detonate it in flight, he said.

“They are men with the cold-eyed certainty of the fanatic, prepared to board an aircraft with the ingredients to construct and detonate a device to bring about the loss not only of their own life but all those around them.”

Mr Wright claimed the alleged plot was foiled when police arrested two men in east London in August, 2006.

“The disaster they contemplated was not long off,” he said.

The court was told that intelligence suggested the alleged plotters may have recruited as many as 18 suicide bombers, who would have set off on flights from several Heathrow terminals at once.

I will also be very clear in my own mind that, when Al Qaeda’s number two assures the West that Al Qaeda would never harm “innocent” people, he defines “innocent” in a very narrow sense to mean himself, and maybe a good friend.  Everyone else, especially everyone who is not a fanatic Muslim, does not fall within that category and is, accordingly, fair game.

Dr. Rusty Shackleford has carefully examined the “new” Bin Laden video that Al Qaeda released on the War’s 5th anniversary and he concludes that Bin Laden’s voice is coming from the grave.  You can see the video and Rusty’s analysis here.  If this is indeed the best Al Qaeda has to offer, I too think that Bin Laden is dead.  I’m actually not quite sure how much that will matter to the fanatics though.  Invested as they are in their Islamic imaginings, they’ll find another ranter around whom to rally.