Nowadays it seems that everybody’s offended, all the time. And great deference is given to the offended, the presumption being that their preferences are privileged. Thus if you use a term like “spear carrier” in conversation and this give offense to a person of color, the fact that it’s sourced from opera rather than racism matters not at all. You have given offense. You must apologize. You must, in fact, rend your garments, sprinkle ashes on your head and crawl on your belly like a palace slave before the throne of the Shah of Persia. 

Well, anyhow, that’s what liberals, progressives and lefties want you to do—and quite often they do succeed in getting people to do it. The ideology of offense has gained such credibility that it’s easy for the Left to guilt-trip some poor chump who uttered the word “niggardly.” No doubt you’ll remember that highly revealing affair.

Here’s the thing, though. In many if not most of these cases the parties professing to be offended know quite well that no offense was intended. So it’s reasonable to conclude that they’re playacting: pretending to be offended so they can behave like scolds and bullies. Thus the use of the term “spear carrier” or the word “niggardly” becomes the excuse for another one of those supercilious lectures about the legacy of slavery, the evils of institutional racism, etc, and so forth, blah, blah, blah. And of course we’re all expected to nod along.

There’s another option, however: When someone charges you with racism or sexism or homophobia for using this or that word you can respond: “Take a hike.” I more or less did that several years ago when I used the term “spear carrier” in a casual workplace conversation and found myself charged with uttering a racial slur. As is typical, my accuser didn’t confront me directly but ran off to HR to tattle on me. I was called in for interrogation. When it transpired that the “racial slur” in question was a term derived from the world of opera, I just laughed. When it was suggested to me that one must nevertheless be “sensitive” to the feelings of others I asked for a complete list of banned and problematical words so as to avoid giving offense to anyone in the future. The interview was terminated a few minutes later and that was the end of the affair.

Now of course there are words and terms, once common, that have fallen into disuse because they actually do give offense, e.g. “gyp” for “cheat,” an unflattering, stereotypical commentary on the business practices of Gypsies. We used that word thoughtlessly when I was a kid—in fact, I’m not at all sure that I knew from whence it derived. Just as it’s insufferable nosebleedery to take offense at innocent words, it’s impermissibly crude to give offense by using guilty ones. Grownups should understand this. But the ideology of offense, so assiduously promoted by the Left, assumes that we’re a nation and a world of adolescents.

Adolescent the obsession with giving and taking offense may be, but it’s not frivolous. For the illiberal Left—more and more synonymous with the Left as a whole—it’s a way of shutting down debate and suppressing opposition. Why bother to refute a conservative’s argument when you can squeal and whine about his use of “niggardly” or “queer” or “bossy”? Being offended is a way of plugging one’s ears and covering one’s eyes and chanting “Nah, nah, nah.” Come to think of it, I’m rather offended to hear people with such a mind-set describing themselves as “liberal” and “progressive” and “enlightened.”

Posted by tmg110 at 3:03 PM EDT

Updated: Wednesday, 1 July 2015 12:14 PM EDT

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Some people wonder how an empty suit like Barack Obama could possibly have been elected President of the United States. Surely the American people are smarter than that! Well, as Winston Churchill once remarked, the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. And no, I don’t mean that people are generally stupid. But they are generally ill-informed and for that the news media deserve a supersized share of the blame.

Liberals, progressives and lefties squeal with outrage at every error or omission of Fox News Channel, which they claim isn’t a legitimate news organization at all but the Republican Party’s propaganda machine. (This, incidentally, makes it OK for the Left to indulge its taste for misogyny by mocking and stereotyping the women of FNC as dumb blondes, bimbos and worse.) Ah, but when evidence surfaces that a supposedly genuine news organization has been somewhat less than fair and balanced they’ll say just about anything to change the subject. Example: During an exchange of comments on Quora I mentioned the CBS/Dan Rather debacle—only to be told that Rather’s transgression was nothing compared to those of Chimpy McBushitler and Darth Vadercheney, so there! And I have to say, that prize piece of idiocy absolutely made my day.

So I’m wondering how the Left will respond when this is pointed out to them. It’s ABC’s 2008 weather forecast, in which the network informed us that by 2015—that’s right now—climate disaster will have overtaken the world. In a one-hour special, “Earth 2100,” (produced in 2008 but not aired until 2009) ABC informed its viewers that by 2015 global warming will have caused economic chaos and widespread natural disasters—gas $9 a gallon, milk $13 a gallon, Miami wiped out by a superstorm, New York disappearing beneath rising seawater, etc. Peering further ahead, ABC saw a huge human dieback with global population falling to less than 3 billion. Sample scare quote: “We're going to see more floods, more droughts, more wildfires.”

If you look out the window you’ll note that none of ABC’s dire predictions have come to pass. I don’t buy milk by the gallon so I’m not sure of its price but I do know that if I fill up today I’ll be paying about $2.75 rather than $9 for a gallon of gas. And though I haven’t checked this morning I’m pretty certain that both Miami and New York are still there. In short, “Earth 2100” wasn’t scientifically rigorous good reporting or even a serious exercise in prognostication. It was climate alarmism, pure and simple—a specimen of propaganda that would have excited the admiration of Joseph Goebbels.

Now recall for a moment how the media treated presidential candidate Barack H. Obama in 2007-08. Though it’s true that media coverage of Obama had its ups and downs it was very positive on the whole. There was, indeed, scant inclination to question Obama’s fitness for office on grounds of experience and temperament. While the straight journalism side of the media didn’t succumb to the adulation and hero worship in which he basked, news coverage was certainly influenced by those over-the-top hosannas. Perhaps too it was colored by reporters’ reluctance to take shots at America’s first serious black presidential candidate. Whatever the reason, though, they didn’t ask the hard questions. And the American people received, as we can see now, a totally false impression of Barack Obama. The candidate they voted for was a wooden titan. The real guy turned out to be a small, tiny person.

As with candidates, so with the climate. In the fantasy land of climate alarmists and their numerous media enablers, disaster is always just around the corner. In the real world, though, things are quite different. In recent years it’s become more and more evident that we know a lot less than we thought we did about the dynamics of the planetary climate. Not to put too fine a point on it, the Al Gore School of Climate Catastrophe, ABC’s apparent inspiration, has been outed as malarkey, baloney, twaddle, rot, stuff and nonsense. So if you watched “Earth 2100” in 2009 and were frightened by it, well, I regret to inform you that you’ve been misinformed. Again. And not by Fox News Channel.

Posted by tmg110 at 10:57 AM EDT

Updated: Saturday, 13 June 2015 10:58 AM EDT

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Another shot has been fired in the War on Women—not by a Republican, though!

In a characteristically demented rant, leftie nosebleed and former Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader took a nasty shot at Hillary Clinton, decrying her “corporatism” and “militarism.” The latter particularly exercised him, apparently because women are supposed to act as peacemakers. “This is the problem of women trying to overcompensate in becoming more aggressive and macho so they are not accused of being soft on the need to kill and war, right? Instead of taking the tradition of women of peace, and turning into a muscular waging of peace of conflict and prevention, she did the reverse.”

So Hillary is just one more uppity broad who doesn’t know her place! Well, at least Ralph didn’t go so far as to call her “bossy.”

Now I get why Nader doesn’t like the Pants-Suited One. Her blatant opportunism, her inauthenticity, the sleaze and dubious foreign cash that trail in her wake, have disquieted many inhabitants of the leftie fever swamp besides him. In their eyes she’s hardly the model of a modern progressive. So who is? Why, Ralph Nader, of course—Ralph Nader, who thinks nothing of mouthing a lowdown sexist slur but would spin into a three-foot hover if you called him on it. After all, back in 2008 when the odious Bill Maher went off on his notorious Sarah Palin rant, Nader called him a sexist to his face on the air and was hailed for it. It takes one to know one, I guess…

This incident, unimportant in itself—for who really cares what a chump like Nader thinks about anything?—is nonetheless telling. It can be taken for granted that if a conservative, male or female, had said something similar about Hillary Clinton the Left would be up in arms. But aside from a squawk on this blog and a bleat on that one…crickets. Okay, sure, it’s understandable that the Left prefers to pass over such incidents in silence. The Right wasn’t all that eager to discuss the rhetorical transgressions of Todd Akin or Richard Murdoch. But there’s more to it than that.

The Left’s outrage over sexism and misogyny is highly selective. Remember when Rush Limbuagh called Sandra Fluke a “slut” and was roundly excoriated for it, up to and including demands that he be taken off the air? Well, there were some at the time who wondered whether Bill Maher, who had called Sarah Panin a “dumb twat” and a “cunt” among other pleasantries, should not be taken off the air as well. None other than Obama minion David Axelrod stepped up to Maher’s defense: “Understand that these words that Maher has used in his stand-up act are a little bit different,” he claimed. “Not excusable in any way, but different than a guy with 23 million listeners using his broadcast platform to malign a young woman for speaking her mind in the most inappropriate, grotesque ways. Nor does Bill Maher play the role in the Democratic Party that Rush Limbaugh plays in the Republican Party, where he’s really the de facto boss of the party.”

Oh, I see: “not excusable in any way” except the way you just excused them. Thanks for clearing that up, Dave!

Feminists are always whining and crying about gender stereotyping and the like, blind to the fact that the ideology to which they pledge their allegiance is a great offender in that regard. Progressive sexism displays itself not only in the stupid comments of people like Maher and Nader but also in the often-voiced charge that conservative women aren’t “real women”—because, you know, real women have all the right progressive opinions. It’s one of the least attractive facets of an ideology that grows uglier by the year.

Posted by tmg110 at 8:30 AM EDT

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A recent book by former New York Times reporter Judith Miller lays bare one of the most egregious scandals of the Bush Administration—and no one’s paying attention.

The Story: A Reporter’s Journey recounts Miller’s part in the Valerie Plame affair, a cause célèbre that led to the prosecution and conviction of Lawrence “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff.  Libby was supposedly the man who “outed” Plame, a covert CIA agent, after her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times alleging that the Bush Administration had lied about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

When the Plame affair went public the Bush Administration decided to hand the case over to a special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald. This turned out to be a bad move. Fitzgerald proved to be a zealot and he became fixated on collecting the scalp of Vice President Cheney. In order to do so he put the squeeze on Libby, obviously hoping to elicit testimony that would enable him to bag Cheney.

There was just one problem: Neither Libby nor Cheney had “outed” Valerie Plame. The culprit was one Richard Armitage, Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief deputy, who leaked Plame’s identity to the late Robert Novak. He’d admitted as much to the FBI before Fitzgerald was ever appointed. Moreover, the special prosecutor became aware of all this at a very early stage of his own investigation. Nonetheless Fitzgerald passed over Armitage and fingered Libby, alleging that he’d leaked Plame’s name to Miller.

Libby was eventually convicted of lying to the FBI, and it was Miller’s testimony that sank him. But now she says that the special prosecutor deliberately withheld crucial evidence from both her and the defense, evidence that would have blown up his case. Virtually everything that Fitzgerald alleged about Libby was false. In short, the prosecution and conviction of Scooter Libby was a gross miscarriage of justice resulting from a glaring act of prosecutorial misconduct.

Scarcely less gross was the false narrative—Bush lied, people died—that evolved out of the Plame affair. Relying on the story told by Joe Wilson—that on an investigative trip to Niger at the behest of Cheney he found no evidence that Saddamite Iraq was trying to obtain yellowcake uranium—Bush Administration critics and many in the media charged that the President and his close advisers knew there were no WMD in Iraq but elected to go to war anyway. But Wilson had not been sent to Niger at Cheney’s behest. The person who suggested him for the assignment was Valerie Plame—his wife. Nor did he return from his junket with conclusive proof of Iraqi innocence. Indeed, the report he wrote for the CIA suggested the opposite. And in fact an Iraqi trade delegation had visited Niger, a country whose sole export is yellowcake.

As for Plame’s “outing” being a heinous crime, it later emerged that dozens if not hundreds of people in Washington knew that she worked for the CIA. Nor was she any longer a covert field agent. In no way, shape or form had the mention of her name in the media threatened Valerie Plame’s safety. Anyhow, we may be fairly certain that the outrage on her behalf was highly selective: Recall how Left has embraced the dubious likes of Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and, er, Chelsea Manning.

If anyone deserved to be prosecuted over the Plame affair it was Patrick Fitzgerald, who behaved throughout in an unethical, illegal and dishonorable manner. Scarcely less dishonorable was the silence of Richard Armitage and his boss, Colin Powell. Though aware that Libby was innocent they kept their mouths shut and left him to twist slowly, slowly in the wind. That a man like Powell, admired for his probity, enabled the railroading of Scooter Libby is one of the most shocking aspects of this scandal. Since, though, it’s a scandal that reflects poorly not on the Bush Administration but on its critics and opponents you won’t find too many Democrats, liberals, progressives, lefties, etc. who care about it.

Posted by tmg110 at 4:07 PM EDT

Updated: Wednesday, 3 June 2015 4:08 PM EDT

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Of the many contradictions in progressive practice, none is more striking than the defense of Islam. 

It must be admitted, I think, that as a rule progressivism is allergic to religion. The latter, with its stress on faith, received wisdom, traditional morality, etc. is naturally offensive to proponents of progress who believe that humanity is the measure of all things. So on any number of issues—abortion, same-sex marriage, sexual morality—progressives and religious believers find themselves at odds. Hence the ongoing progressive effort to push religion out of the public square.

Quite often this effort is accompanied by the most crude and offensive expressions of bigotry, e.g. the anti-religious diatribes of Bill Maher. It so happens that a good number of progressives are atheists of a particularly obnoxious strain: the kind of atheists who, as George Orwell put it, don’t merely disbelieve in God but bear him a personal grudge. Radical feminists, for instance, are always going on about religious patriarchy, supposedly a mechanism for the oppression of women. And of course if one takes a long historical view of the matter the feminists have something of a point. Times have changed, however, and there are vanishingly few believing Christians around today who regard women as second-class citizens or chattel.

But it so happens that there’s one real, existing religious patriarchy that does regard women as second-class citizens or chattel and treats them as such: Islam. A good case can be made that the number-one human rights issue in the world today is the oppression of women and that a leading (though not the sole) offender in that regard is Islam. Female genital mutilation, forced marriages, honor killings, flogging and execution for sexual immorality, denial of education and legal rights—the list of abuses is long and infamous. Nor can it be said that Islam’s attitude toward homosexuality is particularly enlightened. Finally, Islam’s claim to temporal as well as spiritual authority directly challenges the progressive principle that religion has no place in public life.

Yet when Bill Maher—give him credit for being consistent—uttered some inconvenient truths about the nature of Islam he was roundly condemned as an “Islamophobe” by progressives who’d nodded along with his hateful anti-Christian rants. Maher’s observations about Islam, which though offensively phrased were factual enough, sent these people into a three-foot hover.

You can see why. Islam isn’t a Christian family, offending progressives by joining hands and saying grace in a restaurant. It’s not a Catholic speaking out against abortion. It’s not an evangelical Christian church refusing to conduct a same-sex wedding ceremony. Islam, in the eyes of progressives, is the faraway Third World, oppressed by Western capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, etc., etc.

Here again progressive have a point—historically. Much of the Islamic world has experienced the heavy hand of Western domination, either directly or indirectly. For a culture with a proud imperial past, the decline in Islam’s fortunes that set in around 1800 was painful indeed. Islam went from ruling a large chunk of Europe to being ruled by European countries. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the Great War completed this shameful turnabout. Carving knives in hand, the victorious European powers gathered around the Ottoman carcass.  To some extent, therefore, the condition of the Islamic world today is the legacy of European imperialism.

And here we come to the contradiction. The narrative of the oppression of women by a religiously sanctioned patriarchy is one theme of progressivism. The narrative of the oppression of Third World peoples by Western imperialists is another theme of progressivism. Islam is the point at which these narratives intersect—and something had to give. Thus it is that the same people who wring their hands over the (largely phony) issues of equal pay for women and the rape culture close their eyes, plug their ears and cry “Bigot!” when Islam’s long list of crimes against women is flourished. Think about that the next time you hear some nosebleed feminist fulminating about the patriarchy.

Posted by tmg110 at 7:30 AM EDT

Updated: Tuesday, 2 June 2015 7:33 AM EDT

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An Amazon “review” of the new book by Kirsten Powers, The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech, virtually makes her case. Here’s the first paragraph: 

Numerous scientific studies have found that today's conservative “thought” processes are derived from the brain's more primitive fight-or-flight amygdala that essentially overrides the higher brain functions of the cerebral frontal lobes. This book offers an excellent window into such “thought” processes for scientists and future historians dissecting the behavior of today's amygdala-dominated—particularly of value to the future given that the amygdala-dominated are destined to expire eventually—at least as a political force.

 And it gets worse. Toward the end we’re told that:

The only question here is whether Powers is actually one of the amygdala-dominated sheeple or just another of the Right's “thought” leaders trying to take advantage of the amygdala-dominated sheeple to make a buck, just like Rush, Bill-O, Sean, Murdoch, and all the multi-millionaires that have made millions of dollars fully-practicing their free speech for profit?

The “reviewer” does not of course bother to grapple with Powers’ copiously documented argument. No, instead he resorts to the pseudo-scientific babble quoted above, which would no doubt have delighted the author of “Politics and the English Language.” In fact he provides a fine example of how an illiberal leftist (Powers’ term) reacts to criticism, opposing views or instances of thought crime. One could, indeed, characterize such behavior as “primitive fight-or-flight amygdala that essentially overrides the higher brain functions of the cerebral frontal lobes.”

Pretentious malarkey, adolescent name calling, bullying, shaming, stereotyping, even vile sexist smears and physical violence constitute the debating style of that faction of progressivism—a large and dominant faction—that is the subject of The Silencing. The sheer number of such incidents that Powers cites is eye-opening. From the imposition of totalitartian speech codes at public and private universities to the sexist stereotyping of women who don’t toe the feminist line, list is long and dishonorable. Take, for example, the illiberal left’s jihad against Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a woman whose bioigraphy should make her a feminist hero. Born in Somalia, she was subjected as a girl to genital mutilation, then forced by her family into an arranged marriage with a distant cousin. Hirsi Ali fled to the Netherlands, eventually becoming a Dutch citizen and member of parliament. She not only renounced Islam but became a bitter critic, focusing on Islam’s treatment of girls and women. Threats against her life multiplied and she left the Netherlands for the US after Theo van Gogh, her collaborator on a documentary film about Islam’s abuse of women, was murdered in the street by a radical Muslim.

So do illiberal leftists celebrate Ayaan Hirsi Ali as a champion of women’s rights against the abuses of a patriarchal religion? No doubt they would if the religion in question was Roman Catholicism or Orthodox Judaism. But Hirsi Ali is excoriating Islam, which the illiberal left simply cannot abide. So this courageous woman is reviled as “dangerous,” an “Islamophobe,” an “extremist,” a “bigot,” etc., etc. Closing its eyes to what could well be called the world’s number-one human rights issue, refusing to grapple with the uncomfortable facts about Islam upon which Hirsi Ali shines the spotlight of truth, the illiberal left takes refuge in personal insults and doublethink. Meanwhile there are no restrictions on the illiberal left when it comes to jeering, mocking, vicious, bigoted, even scatological lampoons and denunciations of Christianity.

Then there’s the charge, a favorite of the feminist wing of the illiberal left, that opposition to abortion is “anti-woman.” A black, female, liberal, pro-choice Democratic candidate for Congress in Pennsylvania was sandbagged in this manner when as a state legislator she (along with some forty other Democrats) voted for a bill to impose regulations on abortion clinics—this in the wake of the horrifying Kermit Gosnell case. Margo Davidson had a particular interest in the issue: a young cousin had been one of the women who died as a result of Gosnell’s butchery. But neither this nor the obvious need to subject abortion providers to at least minimal oversight deterred the National Organization of Women and Planned Parenthood. In the Democratic congressional primary the two groups backed Davidson’s male opponent. Planned Parenthood went so far as to send out mailers saying that Davidson opposed screening for breast and cervical cancer—a total lie. Thus does the illiberal left treat those whom it regards as apostates.

And so it goes. Take a look at Kirsten Powers’ Twitter feed for some choice examples of the hateful sexism and misogamy that the illiberal left directs against women who don’t have all the right thoughts. Sample:  “fascist twat who thinks she gets to control others and decide who speaks.” Nice. Stay classy, comrades, stay classy. With every Tweet, you're making Kirsten's case for her.

Posted by tmg110 at 1:04 PM EDT

Updated: Saturday, 30 May 2015 1:13 PM EDT

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Trigger warning! We’re supposed to have our knickers in a twist of outrage over some movie called Aloha that—wouldn’t you know it?—disrespects native Hawaiian culture. And if you’re not offended on behalf of the downtrodden Proles of the Paradise Island. then you’re a bigot, a racist and, probably, a homophobe. (That last one always gets tacked on.) Why, I’ll bet you don’t even like pineapple!

Here’s the deal: It seems that the cast of the movie is too heavily weighed down Caucasians like Bradley Cooper, Emma Stone, Rachel McAdams, Bill Murray, John Krasinski, Danny McBride and Alec Baldwin. And this has the effect of rendering native Hawaiians invisible. Eeven the movie’s title constitute an offense: “The ongoing appropriation and commercialization of all things Hawaiian only makes it clearer as to why it is inappropriate for those with no ties to Hawaii, its language, culture and people to invoke the Hawaiian language. This is uniquely true for aloha—a term that has been bastardized and diminished with its continual use,” moans author Janet Mock, a native indigenous Polynesian person of the Hawaiian Islands whose ancestry actually predates colonialism and the arrival of Captain Cook in 1778, as she describes herself. How dare we Ice People even use the word?

Well, Janet, if I ever catch you eating corned beef and cabbage on Saint Patrick’s Day I’m going to bash you with my shillelagh, then have you arrested and sent to sensitivity training. Put that in your poi and ponder it! 

I know, I know, this multicultural uproar over title of a chick flick is ludricous and stupid. But it’s revealing as well, owing to the number of non-native indigenous Polynesian persons of the Hawaiian Islands who are nodding along with the aggrieved Ms. Mock and her cohorts. But of course, to progressives the notion that words can be “stolen” is compelling. It’s a neat way to manufacture victims—without a copious supply of whom progressives just couldn’t get through the day.

Posted by tmg110 at 11:44 AM EDT

Updated: Thursday, 28 May 2015 11:46 AM EDT

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Some people in the media are thrilled that Senator Bernie Sanders, Bolshevik of Vermont, is running for president. The country needs a “progressive voice at the level of presidential politics, don’t you know. Well, fine. So what are we hearing from this progressive voice? This, for example: “You can’t just continue growth for the sake of growth in a world in which we are struggling with climate change and all kinds of environmental problems. All right? You don’t necessarily need a choice of twenty-three underarm spray deodorants or of eighteen different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country. I don’t think the media appreciates the kind of stress that ordinary Americans are working on.”

Nor I think, does the media appreciate how deeply, deeply idiotic Senator Sanders is, at least when he’s thinking and talking about economics. Who suspected that consumer choice is the underlying cause of all our social ills or that pudding-bowl haircuts, blue overalls and Victory Gin constitute the solution? But what do I know? Oldthinkers unbellyfeel Ingsoc.

That progressives are allergic to choice (except, of course, when it comes to partial-birth abortion or sex-change operations) is a fact often overlooked. But that’s what it means to be a member of the enlightened elite: Replacing choice with compulsion lies at the root of the progressive project. Craft a policy proposal including the word control and progressives will swoon for it: birth control, gun control, rent control. Take Senator Sanders. He’d like to limit, i.e. control, the American consumer’s choice of casual footwear and underarm deodorant. Bernie didn’t actually explain how this would help to reduce poverty for fight climate change but you can bet he believes that it would. Concentrate enough power in the hands of those who know what’s best for us all and anything is possible! Such are the ambitions of the self-described reality-based party.

Bernie Sanders claims that he’s in touch with “ordinary Americans.” (The fact that he uses that particular term tells you what he really thinks of us.) It’s news to me, and probably news to you, that we ordinary Americans are yearning for a world in which there’s only one brand of toilet paper. But if that’s what it takes to get to the Radiant Future…

Posted by tmg110 at 9:38 AM EDT

Updated: Thursday, 28 May 2015 10:21 AM EDT

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A major Iraqi city falls to ISIS and the Obama Administration calls it a “tactical setback” while insisting that its overall strategy in the war against ISIS is on track. Or to put it another way: “They may be winning—but we’re not losing!”

Such is the Community Organizer-in-Chief’s conception of war. With their trademark superciliousness, Obama, his cabal and his media-based enablers lecture America to the effect that there’s no “military solution” to the threat posed by ISIS. This is a convenient claim for a man who’s allergic on ideological grounds to military solutions. But the fact that it’s convenient doesn’t necessarily make it false. Is there, in fact, no military solution to the ISIS threat?

Well, obviously an armed invasion can’t be opposed by non-military means alone. I doubt that any number of UN Security Council resolutions or State Department hashtag campaigns would deter the advance of ISIS. As long as the Islamofascists have no effective military opposition, they’ll continue to advance and continue to win. And if they’re winning we’re losing, for in war an ironclad principle of polarity applies: What’s good for A is bad for B. So when ISIS routed the Iraqi Army and captured the city of Ramadi it was a clear defeat for the United States—a defeat that could only have been staved off by military means.

Now it’s true in a general sense that the problems of Syria and Iraq can’t be solved by military means alone. But it’s also true that they can’t be solved at all without a decisive military victory over ISIS. That’s the only way in which the declared policy of the Obama Administration—the rollback and destruction of ISIS—can be successful. The Administration’s avoidance of this uncomfortable truth explains the comically disconnected rhetoric that emanates from the White House and the State Department whenever the issue of ISIS is raised. Barack Obama is simultaneously too cowardly to do what’s necessary to win against ISIS and too cowardly to admit that he’s not willing to do the necessary. So he and his people are conducting a day-to-day damage control operation in the vague hope that some deus ex machina will appear to bail them out of their predicament.

It’s a sad and sorry situation but, after all, President Obama did this to himself, first by pulling out of Iraq and abandoning that country to its fate, then by bragging about the great success of his Iraq policy and finally by allowing the crisis in Syria to spin out of control. Too late did he realize that war isn’t like youth soccer: Not everybody gets a trophy.

Posted by tmg110 at 11:15 AM EDT

Updated: Tuesday, 26 May 2015 11:30 AM EDT

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Marie Harf, the Propaganda Barbie of the State Department, said when asked what the US government proposed to do about the destruction of Iraqi antiquities by of ISIS that she wasn’t sure. The question and Harf’s lame answer followed the appearance of video footage showing ISIS goons smashing sculptures and other precious antiquities to bits in a Mosul museum. On the video one of them is heard explaining that the antiquities are blasphemous idols that must be destroyed in the name of Allah. And this lamentable episode is but one of many. In the areas it controls, ISIS is working systematically to erase Iraq’s pre-Islamic past by demolishing its physical fabric. What’s not being destroyed outright is being marketed by ISIS on the black market. Much the same thing appears to be happening in the ISIS-controlled areas of Syria.

But aside from various experts around the world, nobody outside Iraq seems particularly troubled by these desecrations. If Barack Obama has condemned them, I haven’t heard about it. As has become typical, Western progressives and leftists prefer to avert their eyes from the evidence of radical Islam’s viciousness. The destruction of antiquities certainly exercised them in 2003, when antiwar activists tossed blood clots over the looting of the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad. The United States was roundly and furiously condemned for its failure to protect the museum and other archeological sites around the country. The President of France called it “a crime against humanity.” Admittedly these condemnations were to some degree merited, though the losses and destruction proved much less extensive than originally thought. Since then, however, the Left seems to have lost interest in the welfare of Mideast antiquities.

Now you’d think that the destruction of precious artifacts and archeological sites in the name of religion would produce an outcry among progressives and leftists. And I have no doubt that it would—if the agents of destruction were fundamentalist Christians or ultra-Orthodox Jews. Radical Muslims, though, are not to be condemned for fear that “Islamophobia” might be sparked. Besides, the whole thing is Bush’s fault! And Cheney’s! And the neocons’! Anyhow, what do you expect Barack Obama and Marie Harf to do?

At least the Obama Administration hasn’t mounted a hashtag campaign—#SaveOurAntiquities or some such foolishness. We saw how well that kind of thing worked when a radical Islamist group calling itself Boko Haram kidnapped 276 schoolgirls in Nigeria, most of them Christians. More than 200 remain accounted for and many are feared to have perished. Spare us another such descent into frivolity! Marie Harf’s all but open admission that the US government is prepared to stand idly by while ISIS continues its rampage at least has the pallid virtue of honesty.

But can you imagine what will happen to the National Museum of Iraq if ISIS takes Baghdad?

Posted by tmg110 at 10:00 AM EDT

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