First of all…
It is long past time for us to decide exactly what we are fighting for in Afghanistan. And when it comes to that, the infamous lefty rag, Rolling Stone, does all it can to add to the confusion.
Awhile back, Rolling Stone caused a major brouhaha by exposing the internal dissention between Gen. McChrystal and the Obama Administration regarding the war in Afghanistan. Though the problems were real, the intent of Rolling Stone was to undermine our military and thereby help our enemies.
To give the devil his due, the US was, and is, on a self-defeating path. I would be the first to admit that I am no fan of the way in which the war in Afghanistan is being fought. The difference is that Rolling Stone wants the US, and Judaeo-Christian civilization, to lose the war against the jihad, while I want us to win.
I am fundamentally opposed to the Wilsonian pipe-dream of “nation-building.” No country can bestow give liberty and a functioning civil society to anyone else; they have to be earned, and they can never be earned by a predominantly Muslim population. That is because Islam is not a religion in the sense that we understand it, but rather, it is an expansionist, enemy, totalitarian political philosophy that requires perpetual warfare against unbelievers, and that seeks to rid the world of everything but itself. Any people espousing Islam cannot govern themselves without bringing in a totalitarian system of shari’a law. They regard it as sinful to do otherwise. Enacting this as part of a new constitution simply sets it in stone. The new constitutions enacted under US hegemony in both Afghanistan and Iraq are specifically Islamic and implement shari’a law. Why did we send our troops to fight for this?
The purpose of warfare is to defeat enemies so that they cannot and will not do us any further harm. It will always be beyond our power as a nation to turn foreign evildoers into decent human beings.
The current US “rules of engagement” (ROE) are nothing short of suicidal. It makes no sense to run what amounts to a day care center for our enemies who are stuck in a mindset that reflects the worst that the seventh century has to offer. Our enemies (including those who are supposedly “civilian”) do not play by any rules whatsoever, while our side is hogtied by rules that make it impossible to retaliate effectively or even to protect our own troops from enemy attack.
Rolling Stone beclowns itself again
Rolling Stone has made one more attempt to undermine and smear the US military in Afghanistan. But it turns out that they believed an ex-officer who is, to put it bluntly, an openly adulterous, self-promoting, and disloyal ignoramus. So now Rolling Stone has egg on its face.
Posted by Jim Hanson Feb 28th 2011 at 4:34 am
…Rolling Stone is out hunting for Generals again and they have found a willing dupe in LTC Michael Holmes. Although calling him a dupe is unfair, he is a willing participant in this grotesque farce. Let’s tee this up in case you missed it. He claims that while on the staff of LTG Caldwell in Afghanistan he was tasked with coming up with ways to influence the opinions of visiting Senators. Seriously, that’s it. The massive outcry from the media was over something that anyone with an above room temperature IQ, including the Senators, knew happens all the time. The problem is that Holmes’ IQ is well below room temperature.
Before we explore the sad little world of LTC Holmes let’s remember that Michael Hastings, the Rolling Stone Jackwagon, also wrote the hit piece that took down Stan McChrystal…
Back now to Holmes. He pitched this story to a newspaper or two, but couldn’t get them to bite. But he threw it at Rolling Stone and it stuck to their wall and obviously fit their agenda. Sadly keeping their rag afloat with tabloid level journalism is their only real option. So we have this spy movie sounding scenario where our Generals are plotting a la Dr. Strangelove and using psychological operations against visiting Senators. The reason they can conjure up this fiendish plot is because of a lack of understanding about Psy Ops, which is one part of Information Operations (IO) and the separate field of Public Affairs (PA). The simplest explanation is IO works to affect the enemy and the theater of operations and PA tells our stories to Americans and the press. Holmes was part of the IO staff and so normally he would have been working on information aimed at the enemy. But the mission he was part of on LTG Caldwell’s staff was to train the Afghan Army, so there was no need for IO operations. Consequently LTC Holmes was given a new assignment, part of which involved helping influence the opinions of visiting Senators.
…Holmes was sent home from Afghanistan in disgrace for multiple violations of orders and military law. Even worse, he was planning on cashing in on his experience with a civilian strategic communications company he had formed with a female officer who worked directly for him. That cunning plan crashed and burned when he and this officer, MAJ Laural Levine, made such a public nuisance of their “inappropriate relationship” that it became common knowledge among the staff. In addition to that, they were regularly heading off base in civilian clothes and were either weaponless, had surrendered them to the restaurants they frequented, or worse had carried them concealed. The first two are offenses against the General Orders for Afghanistan, the last is a violation of the Laws of Land Warfare. If they had been captured while carrying concealed out on the town, they would have been unlawful combatants.
Now how did we find these things out? Well in addition to being as discrete as Lady Gaga, Holmes is also an ultra maroon (yes I just quoted Bugs Bunny). He posted photos of he and his “far-too-intimate-female-associate” on Facebook. Then they go ahead and flirt like Junior High Schoolers in the comments while discussing photos that show them violating their orders. That’s right, a guy and gal who think they are smart enough to advise the government and corporations on strategic communications, busted themselves out on Facebook…
Read it all.
The bottom line? Never trust Rolling Stone or anything you read in it.
What has been missing from public discourse so far are constructive suggestions about how we should address the very real Islamic threat from a political and military perspective. Counterjihad blogger Sultan Knish offers some excellent ideas:
By Daniel Greenfield – Thursday, July 22, 2010
…The Fourth Way is Accountability and it is simple enough. Stop arguing over who will rule in which Muslim country. That is a decision that only the inhabitants of that country can make. And they won’t make it through elections, so much as through dealmaking among their oligarchy, tribal leaders and occasional outbursts of armed force. It would take a massive project of decades to have any hope of changing that. But we don’t need to. What we need to do is make very clear the consequences of attacking us to whoever is in charge.
Rather than trying to shape their behavior by shaping their political leadership, we can use a much more blunt instrument to unselectively shape all their leaders. A blunt instrument does not mean reconstruction. It doesn’t mean Marines ferrying electrical generators. It doesn’t mean nation building. It means that we will inflict massive devastation on any country that aids terrorists who attack us. If they insist on using medieval beliefs to murder us, we will bomb government buildings, roads, factories and power plants to reduce them back to a medieval state. We will not impose sanctions on them, we will simply take control of their natural resources and remove the native population from the area, as compensation for the expenses of the war.
Accountability means no more aid to tyrants or terrorists, and no grand democracy projects either. It means that we stop trying to pick a side, and just make it clear what happens when our side gets hurt. We gain energy independence and never look back. And when we’ve done that, the Muslim world will no longer be able to play America against Russia, against Asia and Europe. Instead it will suddenly find itself stuck with a predatory Russia looking for an energy monopoly, a booming China expanding into their part of the world, and no Pax Americana to protect them from either one.
America has provided the stability that kept many Muslim countries from imploding. It has protected others directly and indirectly from being conquered more times than anyone realizes. All the treachery and terrorism that has been carried out, has been done under an American umbrella. Now is the time to furl up the umbrella, and let the rain fall where it may.
It will be a cold day indeed, when Russia and China realize that they can do what they like in the Muslim world, without the US to stop them. And a colder day still, when European countries realize that there is nothing standing the way of deporting their insurgent Muslim populations, because the US will not lift a finger to protect them, as it did in Yugoslavia. That is accountability. And in both its active and passive forms it will exact a high price from the enemy, and none from us. To employ it, we must be prepared to use massive force casually without considering any collateral damage. We must achieve energy independence at any cost. And we must be prepared to realize that everything else we have tried has failed. Only by disengaging from the Muslim world, can we ever be free of it.
Daniel Greenfield is a New York City based writer and freelance commentator. “Daniel comments on political affairs with a special focus on the War on Terror and the rising threat to Western Civilization. He maintains a blog at Sultanknish.blogspot.com.
Daniel can be reached at: sultanknish@yahoo.com
Read it all.
Originally published on 1389 Blog.
