For me, the best thing on earth is the toppling of dictators.
Those
rare, glorious moments when good triumphs,
and evil is humiliated,
just like in the movies.
In real life,
evil normally wins.
Evil normally stays in power for years,
sits at the UN,
is never punished,
grows fat and rich,
and retires to the South of France.
But sometimes - all too rarely - evil loses,
and is forced to face justice on earth.
This site
(or here)
finds date-stamps in the digital photos
that correspond to the night of the raid.
The image above has the date-stamp:
Date/Time: 2003:12:13 20:35:46
Also, the soldier pictured has
come out in public,
so I can print the unblurred version.
The soldier is Samir, an Iraqi Shiite
who fought against Saddam in the failed 1991 uprising,
fled to the US, lived there for years,
and, when he saw America was going to take down Saddam in 2003,
volunteered to go back with the U.S. military as an Arabic interpreter.
The article describes how he came
"face to face with the tyrant who killed his loved ones".
"He called me a spy. He called me a traitor.
I had to punch him in face. They had to hold me back. I got so angry I almost lost my mind.
I didn't know what to do. Choke him to death. That's really not good enough."
Iraq the Model
- "God bless that fist Samir. That punch was from ALL Iraqis."
"He smelled bad, like a homeless person, and had the long beard and hair,
but I knew it was Saddam. I told everyone, 'It's Saddam. It's Saddam!'
...
I was so angry.
I began cussing at him, calling him a motherfucker, a son-of-a-bitch
- you name it. I told him I was Shiite from the south and was part of the revolution against him
in 1991. I said he murdered my uncles and cousins. He imprisoned my father.
All these years of anger, I couldn't stop. I tried to say the worst things I could.
I told him if he were a real man he would have killed himself.
I asked him: 'Why are you living in that dirty little hole, you bastard?
You are a rat. Your father is a rat.'"
Earlier in 2003, Samir had returned to his hometown with the U.S. military,
to see his family for the first time since 1991:
"The next morning Samir hopped on a Humvee for the half-hour drive to his parents' home.
The entire neighborhood, some 700 residents, poured into the streets to greet him.
'It was an awesome feeling,' he says.
'I felt like I was coming with the U.S. forces to free my family. It was the best feeling of my life.'"
Bill Whittle
- "I was very happy today when I heard the news that these two murdering bastards have been wiped off the face of the earth. This is a
great victory in the ongoing battle in Iraq, and it is more than that. It is a victory for the Iraqi people, a victory for all those children
buried with their dolls in shallow graves. It is a victory for the 300,000 unmarked graves, for the unidentified skulls with a single bullet
hole in the back of the head. It is a victory for justice, and ultimately, it was a day of redemption"
Iraqi celebrations
- "My aunt's husband was killed by Saddam. That morning, she was sitting
on her own, very quietly, and she just said to me,
"Now that bastard
knows how we felt", and she cried."
4:01 AM - PLEASE GOD LET IT BE TRUE
- If the news we are just hearing about the capture of the Monster is true then I thank God for letting me live to this day to see this. Will report to you later.
6:50 AM - MOTHER OF DAYS
- That I, and the Iraqi people should see this day! This, surely, is the mother of all days for us. The heroes of our valiant Pesh Mergas, and
the heroes of the U.S. Fourth division have done it.
.... I am too overwhelmed with emotion to write coherently; please excuse me. The foul mouths of the
enemies of our people everywhere and the neighboring vultures and hyenas be stuffed with dirt; we will come after you; your time will come.
Long live the great alliance of Mesopotamia and the United States of America and her allies.
....
God Bless Iraq; God Bless America; God bless the Allies.
9:37 AM -
you should all be here now. What fireworks! You should be here. The Baghdadis are expressing what they really think again. Can you hide this now CNN & others?
18:10 -
The big brother in a small hole.
Horrraaaaa.
It's the justice day.
I'm speechless.
I'm crying.
The tyrants' hour has finally came. I went down to the streets to share the joy with my brothers.
This is our day, the day of all the oppressed and good people on earth.
Tears of joy filled the eyes of all the people.
....
It's indeed an inauspicious day for all the tyrants. Let them know that their days are near too.
This is the day of all Iraqi martyrs who were slaughtered just to please his sick lust for blood.
Rest in peace my brothers. The paradise is yours and the disgrace and hell is for all the tyrants on earth.
Thank you American, British, Spanish, Italian, Australian, Ukrainian, Japanese and all the coalition people and all the good people on earth.
God bless the 1st brigade.
God bless the 4th infantry division.
God bless Iraq.
God bless America.
God bless the coalition people and soldiers.
God bless all the freedom loving people on earth.
I wish I could hug you all.
18:21 -
The past 24 hours were full of joy and happiness beyond description.
Tens of thousands of Iraqis all over Iraq demonstrating and celebrating the capture of the tyrant. For as long as that monster was free, a lot of Iraqis were afraid of the tiny chance that he my make a
comeback. It seems silly and very coward to think like that. For me and you, maybe it's, but for millions of Iraqis that wasn't so hard to believe. One had to live those horrible 35 years to understand
that. Now this illusionary danger is gone forever and justice is on the way.
18:23 -
Dear Arab and Muslim tyrants.
Dear Bin Laden and Al-Quaeda.
Dear Ba'athists and fascists.
Dear terrorists of the world.
Dear al-Jazeera
and al-Arabia and all independent Arab media.
All the truly evil people in the world.
All those who loved Saddam.
All freedom haters.
Please accept my sincere and deepest contempt to you and your hero.
....
May you follow your Godfather through his glorious path to hell.
....
May your idol rest in hell.
God curse you all.
18:43 -
Some news from Baghdad..
- The GC proposes to announce the 14th of December a national anniversary and an official holiday. The idea is much welcomed by the majority of Iraqi people.
"Americans can't quite grasp the psychological power this event holds for Iraq, for the Middle East - and for the
world. We take our freedom for granted.
Much of the world has had to take oppression for granted. For thousands of years. Now America and her allies
have changed the rules."
All over the unfree world, "hundreds of
millions of other human beings instinctively understood
the importance of the event, even if they could not
articulate all they felt."
This is a huge event.
"Vitally important, in ways too great to quantify or fully describe.
The effects will reverberate
for decades, if not far longer.
...
As the image of a humbled Saddam flashed on millions of screens, thousands of years of the armed few tyrannizing
the suffering masses came to a symbolic end. And America stood taller than it has since the spring of 1945.
...
The capture of Saddam was a far greater matter than any image can capture or any words can suggest. This was
a turning point in human history."
"2003 [was] the greatest year for freedom since the Soviet Union's
collapse
...
Future historians will regard 2003
as one of the dates when history made a great turn, as a global 1776."
Rejoice, rejoice
The capture of Saddam is
a time for pure joy.
For everyone who cares about human rights,
this is a glorious day,
the best day in the world since
that fantastic day the Berlin Wall came down.
This is a day for laughing at tyranny
and laughing at all the
enemies of human rights
who are gutted today.
"We got him!"
As
Andrew Sullivan
says, this is
"a moment
when some kind of cosmic justice breaks through the clouds".
There is no God to bring justice on this earth.
But there is America, and the U.S. military.
Whose Justice?
by John Derbyshire
- Don't put dictators on trial. Just execute them.
What is the point of a trial?
Once their identity is established, what more do we need to know?
"My own belief is that putting Saddam up against a wall and shooting him
within hours of his apprehension would have been exactly the right thing to do
...
We have lost our chance to do the right thing with Saddam Hussein,
but there is still Osama bin Laden to dispose of. I very much hope that when
that rat is cornered, subsequent events will follow the admirable and correct Romanian model,
not the absurd Yugoslav/Iraqi one"
The Injustice of Saddam's Trial,
by Elan Journo,
expresses how I feel:
"A trial that presumes Hussein's innocence can achieve nothing but a travesty of justice.
Saddam Hussein is not a private citizen, whose guilt requires proof in an objective court of law,
but a dictator whose incontestable evil was manifest to any rational observer of his tyranny.
The Bush administration, after all, determined that Hussein was so vicious
that we had to go to war to topple his regime.
Once we defeat and capture a militant dictator like Hussein, he deserves to be definitively condemned as evil
and then executed - immediately, or after any valuable information is extracted from him. Prior to his execution,
there can be a legitimate reason to hold a public hearing
- not to establish his guilt,
but to fully expose his secretive dictatorship by publicly cataloguing its myriad vile deeds."
"Allahu Akbar!"
shouts the old butcher impotently,
as he is sentenced to death, Nov 2006.
The execution of Saddam was disturbing.
This should have been a moment for universal justice.
Justice at last for the hundreds of thousands of innocents
he had
callously put in mass graves.
For the children he
raped, tortured, set on fire,
mutilated and gassed.
The execution of this monster should have been a great day for the world.
And yet the execution was attended by al-Sadrist scum,
chanting the name of the new torturer,
the heir to Saddam,
the man who by all rights should be executed next:
Muqtada al-Sadr.
Shame on the Iraqi government for this fiasco,
for turning this noble event (the killing - at last! - of a dictator)
into
a seedy, sordid Shia Islamist sectarian killing.
Comment:
"Good that they hanged him, but for the life of me I can't figure out why the Iraqi government would allow the image of a well-dressed and fairly composed Saddam getting executed by a bunch of Sadr-followers in street clothes who seemed to be improvising the execution.
It's a little like seeing Ted Bundy killed by Charles Manson
... you're glad that one bad guy got it, but there seems to be other bad guys in the room."
Allahpundit:
"it looks like a hit instead of a state execution"
Healing Iraq:
"It utterly disgusts me that Sadr's supporters have infiltrated every level of the state, and that the witnesses, including Iraqi government officials, have made this look like a sectarian issue. They were doomed to repeat Iraqi history by hanging their former oppressor and labeling it as justice. In a perfect situation, Saddam's execution would have united Iraqis, but thanks to the actions of the new Iraqi rulers, it will only serve to divide further."
"At one level, this should be a great moment for the Bush administration.
All over the world, genocidal thugs ought to be staring slack-jawed at the TV and thinking:
"Wow! The cowboy did it.
He went in, kicked the President-for-Life off his solid gold toilet,
tossed him in jail and then had him tried and hanged like a common thief."
Unfortunately, when the US handed him over to the Iraqi authorities,
the "authorities" did their best to look entirely unauthorized.
Saddam was dispatched in some dingy low-ceilinged windowless room of one of his old secret-police torture joints
by a handful of goons in ski masks and black leather jackets.
It looked less like the dawn of a new Iraq than a Russian mafia mob hit.
A couple of guards gleefully yelled out, "Moqtada, Moqtada, Moqtada"
- as in Moqtada al-Sadr - to which Saddam added a disbelieving echo: "Moqtada?"
As well he might. It's one thing to be done in by Bush
but by forces loyal to the punk son of some nickel-and-dime cleric you had murdered years ago .."
Steyn blames both the Iraqis, and the Americans for not helping them stage it:
"How come we have a political culture that can produce a content-free party convention
down to the nano-second but gives not a thought to hinge moments of history?
The reality is that Saddam Hussein is dead because of George W. Bush
and a fledgling Iraqi justice system, not Moqtada al-Sadr.
But that's not the impression you'd get watching the final moments of this evil man's life.
And to permit some pipsqueak warlord wannabe to snaffle the credit
is a very foolish thing to do"
"My bottom line ...
The king is dead. Moqtada al-Sadr should be, too."
My take:
The execution should have been done outdoors, in daylight,
in a courtyard (not in public,
but filmed).
There should only have been disciplined, silent, government and military present.
No one should be hooded or in civilian clothes.
It should have been a solemn ceremony, with the reading of some of the names of Saddam's victims,
and a list of some of his crimes.
Perhaps a personal account by someone whose children were tortured.
Perhaps a poem, or some video or images
(e.g. of mass graves, or the Halabja poison gas attack).
Saddam should have been given a last chance to express regret and say his prayers
(though not to make political speeches).
There should have been a speech by the government,
making a commitment to ensure tyranny never returns to Iraq,
a commitment to democracy and debate,
and not militias and tribes.
Then a minute's silence for Saddam's victims,
and then his execution.
The execution should have been followed by total silence,
and then the removal of the body.
If anyone has any brains in the Iraqi government, they will regret blowing this moment.
It was one of the great wasted opportunities of the century.
Perhaps we should be more positive.
When all is said and done, the butcher was executed.
And this almost never happens:
J.R. Dunn
points out that dictators almost never get executed.
He misses out some examples (e.g. Tojo)
but his basic point remains:
"Most of the great butchers of the 20th century died of old age, in their own beds, some of
them honored by millions.
...
The state of Iraq has succeeded where the rest of the civilized world has failed. It is a singular achievement, and it will stand."
The disrespect that should be shown to all dictators:
A rare sight in Hollywood:
Slagging off a real life butcher while he is still alive.
Saddam has sex with Satan in hell in the movie
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999).
And search for copies.
See script: "Satan: Behold. The first signs of my reign have all come true: the fall of an empire, the coming of a comet. And now, when the blood of these Canadians touches American soil, it will be our time to rise!
Saddam: [arousing himself] Yeah! Yeah! Man, I'm gettin' so hot! Let's fuck!
Satan: [insulted] Do you always think about sex? I'm talkin' about very important stuff here!
Saddam: Ah, I'm just excited about taking over the world! Come on!
Satan: [slips back into bed] Is sex the only thing that matters to you?
Saddam: I love you.
Satan: I want to believe that.
Saddam: So whaddaya say we shut off that light and get close, huh?
Satan: [having sex] Uh!
Saddam: Yeah, you like that, don't you, bitch?"
Also as a result of the successful US invasion of Iraq,
the 1980s Islamofascist killer
Abu Abbas
died Mar 2004
in US custody,
rather than in freedom.
Symbolising the heroism of the entire Palestinian struggle
to kill Jewish women, children and elderly,
Abu Abbas shot a wheelchair-bound Jew
in the
Achille Lauro
hijacking in 1985
(also here).
In March 2004, justice finally came calling for the evil mass murderer of innocents,
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin,
when
an IDF
Boeing AH-64 Apache
helicopter gunship
fired three
Lockheed Martin AGM-114 Hellfire missiles
at his wheelchair.
I prefer the response in the satirical magazine,
The Onion:
Killing Wheelchair-Bound People With Missiles Is Awesome.
"I heard about the Israeli rocket attack on that old handicapped Hamas guy,
and I'm sure a lot of people had the same reaction I did: Whatever reason the army had for doing it,
blowing up a guy in a wheelchair with a missile is unbelievably, absolutely fucking awesome!
....
The point is they totally fucking launched a missile at the guy's wheelchair
from a helicopter! That's some grade-A Bam Margera video-game shit,
and I for one am fucking stoked that they did it."
The mass murderer
and unelected dictator
Yasser Arafat
died in France in 2004,
surrounded by family and friends.
He never faced justice for his crimes.
Arafat the monster
by Jeff Jacoby
- "Yasser Arafat died at age 75, lying in bed surrounded by familiar faces.
He left this world peacefully, unlike the thousands of victims he sent to early graves.
In a better world, the PLO chief would have met his end on a gallows,
hanged for mass murder much as the Nazi chiefs were hanged at Nuremberg."
"There was no excuse for anyone to flatter or appease this monster, in life or in death.
...
The hushed tones of respect
- whether from the CBC
and affiliates,
or from Kofi Annan, Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter, Jacques Chirac
- is indicative of a posturing moral attitude that stinks to heaven."
"And yet, what is new about it? The whole 20th century was a story of the charnel house,
yet throughout, the self-appointed moral elect worshiped the icons of mass-destruction
- Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Fidel, Che Guevara. "Islamism" appears ready to provide the 21st century
with what Communism gave the one before; and the seedy old Marxist fellow-travellers of our media and academy
have long since begun making their adjustments, and genuflecting
to the cool new revolutionary gods.
Their rhetorical hitlist consists of the same old suspects
- the decent bourgeois politicians trying to defend their peoples from harm:
the Bushes, Blairs, Berlusconis, Howards, Aznars."
"It should be said that the person who spits at the mention of George W. Bush,
but weeps for Arafat, is beyond twitting. Such a person is sick in the head."
Supporters of the Palestinians sometimes claim that
the dictator Arafat
was "elected".
Arafat, Elected?
by Joel Mowbray
- "Yasser Arafat has never been fairly elected the leader of anything,
let alone the Palestinian people."
Yasser Arafat and the
Myth of Legitimacy
by Daniel Polisar
(and extract)
- The Palestinian Authority under Arafat
had no free speech, no freedom of political opposition,
no independent judiciary,
and never held a free election.
R. James Woolsey
says:
"Arafat was essentially elected the same way
Stalin
was, but not nearly as democratically
as Hitler, who at least had actual opponents."
Fatah were not the voice of the people:
The
Palestinian election, Jan 2006
(after Arafat's death)
was obviously a disaster in that the people voted for Hamas.
But it did interestingly show that
Arafat's Fatah were not the voice of the people,
as they had claimed for decades.
This is the only time that Fatah ever really tested this,
and the people rejected them.
When I heard the rumours in 2004 that Arafat died of HIV,
I thought it was urban legend. Imagine my surprise:
So if he was bisexual
and died of AIDS we might be sympathetic to him,
if not for the fact that:
(a) he was a murdering terrorist bastard,
and: (b) his regime tortured and killed homosexuals.
Now this is funny:
"Dedicated to Yasser Arafat and All The Men He Loved".
Airport security,
Arafat's gift to the world.
Millions of people suffer through these checks every day
at every airport in the world
because of this bastard.
Image from here.
Shed No Tears for Milosevic
by Christopher Hitchens
- "Milosevic began and ended, as all such dictators do,
by ruining his own people and degrading his own country.
...
By the end of it, the Serbian minorities in whose name he had launched a regional war
had been ignominiously expelled from their ancient homes in the Krajina region
and in Kosovo itself. Only a Serb can truly feel the depth of
the cultural and political and economic damage that he did".
The religious psychopath
and butcher of Iraq
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
was killed by the
U.S. Military
in June 2006.
He was killed by two 500-pound laser-guided bombs,
dropped by two U.S.
F-16
jets,
laser-guided home by awesomely brave U.S. special forces on the ground.
"after much inquiry and discussion, we have narrowed our enemy to four groups:"
"Americans"
"Kurds these are a pain and a thorn,
and it is not time yet to deal with them. They are last on our list"
"The Iraqi troops, police, and agents"
"The Shi'a in our opinion, these are the key to change.
Targeting and striking their religious, political, and
military symbols .."
"the only solution is to strike the religious, military, and other cadres of the Shi'a
so that they revolt against the Sunnis.
... Souls will perish and
blood will be spilled. This is, however, exactly what we want
... the religion of God is worth more than lives.
... we have to make sacrifices for this religion, and blood has to be spilled. For those who are good,
we will speed up their trip to paradise, and the others, we will get rid of them."
He describes the Shia Muslims as "vile infidels":
"If we are able to deal them blow after painful blow so that they engage in a battle, we will be able to reshuffle
the cards
...
This is what we want. Then, the Sunni will have no choice but to
support us ...
When the Mujahidin would have secured a land they can use as a base
to hit the Shi'a inside their own lands
...
As far as the Shi'a, we will undertake suicide operations and use car bombs to harm them.
...
So if you agree with it and are
convinced of the idea of killing the perverse sects,
we stand ready as an army for you"
Zarqawi was alive when U.S. forces arrived at the bomb site
(and here).
Iraqi police dug him out of the rubble and put him on a gurney.
He tried to escape once he saw he was being taken into custody by U.S. troops.
They provided medical care to him
but he died of his wounds.
"He mumbled something, but it was indistinguishable and it was very short"
Reaction
President Bush:
"Special Operations forces ...
delivered justice to the most wanted terrorist in Iraq
...
Now Zarqawi has met his end, and this violent man will never murder again."
Bush makes surprise visit to Baghdad and addresses the troops
after the killing of Zarqawi:
Tony Blair:
"In Iraq and Afghanistan, Al Qaeda has taken a stand.
...
Defeat them in Iraq and we will defeat them everywhere."
Maj. Gen. William Caldwell:
"Iraqis can rejoice today. They have earned it with their blood, their sweat, their tears.
...
The days of Zarqawi are over,
and now Iraqis, from their neighborhoods
to the halls of their government,
can rejoice"
Frank J. Gaffney:
"When the history of the global conflict of our time
- I call it "the War for the Free World" -
is written it seems likely that June 7, 2006, will be seen as an important moment,
perhaps even a tipping point, in that war's Iraqi front."
Andrew C. McCarthy:
"Simply stated, the killing of Abu Musab Zarqawi by U.S. forces in Iraq is more vital
to ultimate success in the war on terror than would be snuffing out any other terrorist
alive right now. Period.
...
We began the war on terror with the clear-eyed understanding that Islamic militants
cannot be reasoned with; they have to be eradicated.
...
Today reminds us that we have the power to get the job done."
Rich Lowry:
"Killing Zarqawi is the equivalent of averting a Haditha every other day
in Iraq, indefinitely.""this loathsome man who so needed killing"
Richard Waghorne:
"I'm delighted that they've managed to kill this man.
It's justice at last and a great boost for morale.
This man was the beheader, the bomber of hospitals and schools, of markets and public places,
of indiscriminate brutality against a democratic government and its people.
He was a man of immense evil and it's healthy and fitting that Iraqis and the rest of us
find relief and great joy in the news, at last, of his death."
Oliver Kamm:
"an incomparably better outcome than a war crimes trial."
Democrat hawk:
"A Triumph for Civilization
...
today and tomorrow and the days after that we should repeatedly praise the bravery,
courage and professionalism of our soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen
who are the liberators of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Yesterday, they removed a moral monster from the face of the earth."
The blog "DPGI":
"The American military's persistence, sense of duty, and hard work in the face of
open and subtle opposition from many sectors here in our country and abroad have shown to be successful,
again. Our military's detractors and the anti-war/Bush folks are shown to be
nothing more than but spectators to history."
U.S. soldier calling his family:
"I know it is the middle of the night there, but have you heard the news?
We got Zarqawi. We bombed his place just outside of Baqubah and got a lot of them.
It is so great! The guys really needed this. We are all so proud."
"The man was an animal and he deserved what he got - and may he rot in hell."
- Paul Bigley,
brother of Ken Bigley.
Iraqis celebrate:
Iraqis celebrate Zarqawi's death
- "Joy filled Baghdad's hot streets, as gun shots sounded through the air,
and cars packed with overjoyed Iraqis roamed the streets.
Iraqis were sharing sweets with people outside their homes.
Civil organizations paraded as they condemned violence chanting "death to Zarqawi and Saddamites.""
Iraq the Model
- "CONGRATULATIONS TO IRAQ, CONGRATULATIONS TO THE WHOLE WORLD ON THIS VICTORY."
An Iraqi comments:
"My sincere admirations and thanks for the American Airforce pilots
who had carried out this surgical strike without a great deal of collatoral damage to the area.
Soldiers, we (the silent majority of Iraqis) are all very proud of you.
We thank your good US mothers for you. They should be very proud of you all."
Iraq the Model
is disgusted by the reaction of his fellow Arabs (outside Iraq).
"It is totally unimaginable why someone would describe the head chopping,
children murdering terrorist as a hero. It's disgusting and infuriating beyond words.
This wrongful description of evil
is a major reason for misery in this region
and it only contributes to justifying more unjustifiable death and violence.
This makes one sometimes wishes that Iraq is somehow lifted away from
these perverted sociopaths who surround us."
Hilarious video by
pointfiveblog.com:
"Brokeback al Zarqawi"
- The Zarqawi - Bin Laden love story.
"It was a cause that brought them together ..
It was a war that tore them apart .."
This is very sad. Zarqawi must take moral responsibility for bringing his wife and child
into a war zone, and having them stay in a house full of terrorists.
(No doubt his wife had no say in the matter,
given what we know about Zarqawi's fanatical conservative religious beliefs.)
Zarqawi is to blame.
His people even
opened fire
from the house,
without trying to remove his wife and child from it first.
Zarqawi is to blame.
But still, this puts a damper on celebrations.
Ethics
It is very hard knowing what the rules of engagement in war should be.
I do not think the Americans did anything wrong in destroying Zarqawi's house,
but it is hard to work out the principles we should use in all situations.
Richard Fernandez
gives no neat answers,
but demands that we face the questions:
"There's no need for a hypothetical like "what if you could save Europe by targeting Hitler?"
or "what if you could save the lives of hundreds of children by torturing a terrorist?"
In this case the hypothetical is actual. ...
Would it be justified not to resort to unlimited measures in order to hunt down a person
responsible for killing thousands of individuals?
Can one ever allow a person like Zarqawi to live a single day more
knowing that hundreds and perhaps thousands of innocents will die for our scruples?
How many lives is a punctilious observance of the Geneva Convention worth?
One, one hundred, one thousand, one million? And if a million is the price, what are our principles except for sale.
The only question being the price."
"Our willingness to fight by the strictest legal standards
must be matched by a corresponding willingness to sacrifice in order to uphold those standards.
It may be necessary to bleed and to bleed at home to uphold our beliefs. Or change them.
Talk Left merely poses the dilemma. But the choice is ours.
The tragedy of the West is that it is simultaneously impatient for safety;
intolerant of hardship and unable to bear guilt. The demand for no body bags;
no protracted war; no inconvenience; no painstaking effort also means,
in it's own way, a secret demand for no law."
Deterrence - The only language that Islamists understand.
Don't Wanna Be Zarqawi
- Palestinian terrorists kidnap a Jew.
When they realise he is an American, they decide to hand him over.
""Apparently, the kidnappers did not want to end up like Zarqawi," a defense official said."
Whether this is true in this case or not,
it is true that seeing Zarqawi killed from the air on TV
is a good thing to see
for tyrants and terrorists all over the world.
They should be nervous.
As with the Nazis and Soviets, appeasement will only make the Islamists grow stronger.
Deterrence and fear is what they need.
They should be afraid of the West.
They should be afraid of Israel.
They should be afraid of America.
As
General William T. Sherman
said:
"My aim .. was to whip the [enemy], to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses,
and make them fear and dread us. Fear is the beginning of wisdom."
Who's sad about Zarqawi?
- "Hamas, Hizbullah, Iran and al-Qaida come from different sides of the Sunni-Shi'ite divide,
but they agree on the need to wage jihad against the West, particularly Israel and the US.
The death of Zarqawi saddens all of them, just as it is cause for
encouragement for free peoples everywhere."
Other targets:
Alan Dershowitz points out the hypocrisy of those
who condemned Israel for similar targeted killings, such as that of
Yassin:
"When Israel targeted the two previous heads of Hamas, the British foreign secretary said:
"targeted killings of this kind are unlawful and unjustified.""
And yet:
"Now Great Britain is applauding the targeted killing of a terrorist
who endangered its soldiers and citizens.
...
I applaud the targeted killing of Al Zarqawi. His death will save many innocent lives.
But I also applaud the targeted killings of anti-Israel terrorists whose deaths save numerous lives.
...
It is nothing short of bigotry to approve this tactic when used by the
United States and Great Britain but to condemn it when it is used by Israel."
I agree.
Bush administration official:
"This should give heart to those who think we'll never get bin Laden. It's just a matter of time."
The danger in asking this kind of question is that
it seems like making excuses for Pinochet.
If we accept that Pinochet should have been tried and executed
however, then we can go on to
ask the question why not the other dictators -
and this may reveal some problems in thinking on the left.
Daniels says the answer is that:
"Alone of the dictators, Pinochet was stunningly successful.
He found his country an economic disaster
and left it ..
more prosperous than it had been in all its previous existence."
And he did this by following free-market economics.
That was the problem.
"Pinochet was thus an existential reproach to [the left].
Had his regime confined itself to torturing and "disappearing" its opponents while the country staggered from economic crisis to
economic crisis, Pinochet would have been the object of mild theoretical reproach, but not of the strident and emotional obloquy that
leads to demonstrations outside embassies."
Sadly, Daniels is right.
The left is very selective about which dictators they get
worked up about.
I'm against them all.
Could anything be greater for a warrior than putting a bullet in Bin Laden?
Imagine being the unknown, professional hero that did that.
Will we ever know his name?
Peter Kirsanow
says this will inspire young men everywhere:
"Is there any doubt that today there are far more brave, tough young men who aspire to earn the trident of the Navy SEALs than there were just a few days ago?"
Bin Laden was, as people had said for years, in Pakistan:
It turned out, after all these years, that he was living peacefully in the
terrorist state of Pakistan.
Ed West, 2 May 2011, says Abbottabad looks like a lovely place to get away from it all, but obviously
"the only downside is that, being only a few hundred yards from Pakistan’s equivalent of Sandhurst, it would be almost impossible to do anything without the Pakistani army’s knowledge."
Christopher Hitchens, May 2, 2011:
"If you tell me that you are staying in a rather nice walled compound in Abbottabad, I can tell you in return that you are the honored guest of a military establishment that annually consumes several billion dollars of American aid. It's the sheer blatancy of it that catches the breath.
There's perhaps some slight satisfaction to be gained from this smoking-gun proof of official Pakistani complicity with al-Qaida, but in general it only underlines the sense of anticlimax. After all, who did not know that the United States was lavishly feeding the same hands that fed Bin Laden?"
Pakistan arrests those who betrayed Bin Laden to the Americans, reported June 2011. It's pretty clear which side they're on.
"instead of hunting down the support network that allowed Bin Laden to live comfortably for years, the Pakistani authorities are arresting those who assisted in the raid that killed the world’s most wanted man."
If anyone had sent this URL
to the Americans before 2011,
it was worth $52 million:
Next:
Mullah Omar, leader of the Taliban,
is said to be living peacefully in Pakistan under ISI protection.
Time for another US special forces raid on suburban Pakistan.
The Somali Islamofascist terrorist group
Al-Shabaab
offers a quick lesson in Islamist morality.
President Obama targeted and killed ... not random civilians, but the leader of the enemy fighters.
In reply, these Islamofascist scum are
threatening to kill ...
President Obama's entirely innocent
step grandmother
Sarah Obama,
who is 89 years old, Muslim, and lives in nearby Kenya.
You attack our fighters.
We attack your family.
That's the Islamist way of war in a nutshell!
No morality. No honour.
"I would like us to kill bin Laden every Sunday night. It makes for a much brighter start to the week."
– Comedian Jimmy Kimmel.
Bin Laden's Abbottabad diary:
"The wives all started laughing and keep calling me “The Strong Horse.” If I could leave here to get a stick to beat them with I would.
...
March 12, 2011: You know what I miss? The ocean. I sure hope I get a chance to go swimming again soon."
Celebrations at U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis.
Captain Robert E. Clark gives a rousing speech.
He says that on 9/11:
"I remember getting my crew together.
.. I told them, 'I don't know when, I don't know how, but someday we're going to get that son of a bitch.'
...
Today we made a statement to the world, that you can hit us, you can knock us down, but we're gonna get up, and when we do we will find you and kick your ass."
The future generation of young jihadi-killers start chanting:
"I Believe That We Have Won!
I Believe That We Have Won!"
Look out Ayman al-Zawahiri
and Anwar al-Awlaki, you're next!
It is the mission of these young men and their space age technology to kill you.
And most of the world supports them and cheers them on.
And search
and search.
When Seal Team Six come into your house,
you should adopt a posture of total submission if you want to live.
You would have to clearly demonstrate no possible threat,
no suicide belt or hidden weapon.
Bin Laden clearly did not do this.
He was more like the bad guy at the end of the movie
Taken,
with a similar result.
"Leon Panetta, the CIA director, said .. he did not believe bin Laden had a chance to speak before he was shot in the head."
There are conflicting claims about the moment Bin Laden was shot.
Nicholas Schmidle
says Obama always planned to kill him.
There was never any intention of capturing him.
"A second SEAL stepped into the room and trained the infrared laser of his M4 on bin Laden’s chest. The Al Qaeda chief ... froze; he was unarmed. “There was never any question of detaining or capturing him — it wasn’t a split-second decision. No one wanted detainees,” the special-operations officer told me. ... Nine years, seven months, and twenty days after September 11th, an American was a trigger pull from ending bin Laden’s life. The first round, a 5.56-mm. bullet, struck bin Laden in the chest. As he fell backward, the SEAL fired a second round into his head, just above his left eye. On his radio, he reported, “For God and country — Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo.”"
Chuck Pfarrer
however says there was no order to kill.
Rather, Bin Laden went for a weapon and was then shot.
Bin Laden is killed in South Park's
"It's a Jersey Thing"
(2010). "Tango is down. Tango is down."
And search.
Bin Laden's safe house in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
Click to drag and zoom.
Ignore all other claims.
This is the correct location.
From Google Maps.
There are now lots of comedy
"reviews"
of the location.
My favourite comment is:
"So it was on Google maps the whole time, why didn't the CIA check there first?"
The future: Can the whole world become democratic?
"Think of every moment when
some poor soul believed he was about to die, every moment spent in hellish prisons, every person
tortured beyond imagining, every child dumped in a mass grave, every person of faith treated as an
enemy of the state. To watch the perpetrator of this extraordinary evil brought low - into a rat-hole in
the ground - is a privilege. It happens rarely. It is a moment when some kind of cosmic justice breaks
through the clouds, and all the petty wrangling and mistakes and political jockeying fall away in the
face of liberation from inescapable fear and terror and brutality. It was a day of joy. Nothing remains to
be said right now. Joy."
- Andrew Sullivan
(back when he was good)
on the capture of Saddam.
"God bless that fist Samir. That punch was from ALL Iraqis."
- The Iraqi blogger
Iraq the Model
on the US soldier
(an Iraqi exile from Saddam)
who captured Saddam
and gave the dictator his first (and only - until his execution)
physical assault
after 30 years of genocide.
"Oh, how I wanted to cheer!
I wanted to jump up and down!
To whoop with joy!
To throw a party!
To hug the very man who had given me the news!
...
Everybody in the prison camp wanted to cheer when we heard Che had been killed.
...
You could see everyone trying to stifle their joy,
because the guards were watching us all very carefully"
- Emilio Izquierdo,
an 18 year old prisoner in the Cuban gulag,
after a guard informed them of the killing of
Che Guevara
in Bolivia in 1967.
Quoted in [Fontova, 2007].
"Congratulations, America. Congratulations, Mr. President: You got bin Laden. Good riddance! [Cheers, applause.]"
- Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu, Address to U.S. Congress, May 24, 2011.
shouts the old butcher impotently,
as he is sentenced to death, Nov 2006.
Since 1995.
