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Don't mean to minimize the dangers of Islamic terrorism or anything, but the latest round of travel warnings and temporary embassy closings has an especially bogus "Shark Week"-level hype to them:
The United States will temporarily shut down its embassies and consulates around the world Sunday -- including those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Egypt -- as a precautionary measure over terror-related concerns, State Department officials said.
State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf did not say how long the international installations would stay closed -- only that the decision was taken “out of an abundance of caution and care for our employees and others who may be visiting.” Officials would not describe the nature of the threat.
Sunday is a normal workday in many Arab and Middle Eastern countries, meaning that is where the closures will have an impact. Embassies in Europe and Latin America would be shuttered that day anyway.
“We have instructed all U.S. embassies and consulates that would have normally been open on Sunday to suspend operations, specifically on August 4,” a senior State Department official said Thursday night. “It is possible we may have additional days of closing as well.”
Hey, maybe there's really a bunch of terrorists massing somewhere, ready for Benghazi II, but I just don't believe it. And, why the heck are we closing embassies, even for a second? If you don't want a repeat of the attack on the Libyan consulate (which was actually a "mission," or some such), then maybe post some Marines with actual weapons containing actual bullets and see how far your typical terrorist gets. But, that's not how things work under the Obama Doctrine, where concepts like "Defending Yourself" and "Refusing To Knuckle Under To Vague Threats" are now verboten for being the tools of imperialist running dogs. Anyway, one of Obama's two big talking points last year was that "Osama was dead and al-Qaeda on the run," so what's the problem?
I will have no problem repudiating the above should there be a massive, fatal terrorist attack sometime in the next couple weeks, but how likely is that to happen? Not very. But, this grand display of weakness and duck & covering will encourage the next "out of nowhere" attack.
Breaking news from the Kabul desk as more Americans, this time two officers of unknown rank, have been killed in the aftermath of the wayward disposal of some Korans.
A gunman killed two American advisers inside a heavily guarded government compound in Kabul Saturday, officials said, as protests against the burning of copies of the Muslim holy book roiled the country for a fifth day.
U.S. officials said the assailant remained at large as neither an apology from President Barack Obama nor gunfire from Afghan police could quench public outrage over what NATO insisted was an inadvertent desecration of the Quran.
Two Afghan officials said the ministry shooting did not involve any Afghans. They spoke anonymously to discuss a NATO incident. One of the officials noted that the shooting occurred inside a secure room at the ministry that Afghan staff do not have access to.
NATO confirmed that two service members were killed, but spokesman Lt. Col Jimmie Cummings said "initial reports say it was not a Western shooter." He declined to provide further information.
A U.S. official in Washington confirmed that the two killed were American. The official spoke anonymously to discuss information that had not been publicly released.
"The assailant is unknown, and an aggressive search is under way to determine who is responsible," Pentagon press secretary George Little said.
At this point, we've moved past the point of passionate displays and are now seeing the calculated use of "outrage" to attack American military personnel in the hopes there will be no retaliation from quailing Americans. Looks like it's working just great if you are into whipped up frenzies.
When the US originally invaded Afghanistan, most thinking people - obviously this excludes fifth-column leftists - knew that the country would never be pacified entirely so that walking in you could guess that there would be some low level of conflict no matter what we did. And that's what we ended up with. While Iraq burned, Afghanistan was about as quiet as you would expect. But that wasn't good enough for wise-guy Democrats who declared the Afghan war to be some sort of "dropped ball," based on what I have no earthly idea. It's not as if an anti-war party would have any idea how and when to fight a war.
While a surge in Iraq was necessary to pacify a war-torn country, the completely unnecessary surge in Afghanistan looks to have destabilized a pacified country. Heck of a job.
Pres. Obama took time from his vacation to sign the defense authorization bill. In doing so, he issued a signing statement expressing "serious reservations" about provisions dealing with the prosecution, detention, and interrogation of terrorist suspects.
President Barack Obama signed a wide-ranging defense bill into law Saturday despite having "serious reservations" about provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation and prosecution of suspected terrorists.
The bill also applies penalties against Iran's central bank in an effort to hamper Tehran's ability to fund its nuclear enrichment program. The Obama administration is looking to soften the impact of those penalties because of concerns that they could lead to a spike in global oil prices or cause economic hardship on U.S. allies that import petroleum from Iran.
In a statement accompanying his signature, the president chastised some lawmakers for what he contended was their attempts to use the bill to restrict the ability of counterterrorism officials to protect the country.
Administration officials said Obama was only signing the measure because Congress made minimally acceptable changes that no longer challenged the president's terrorism-fighting ability.
"Moving forward, my administration will interpret and implement the provisions described below in a manner that best preserves the flexibility on which our safety depends and upholds the values on which this country was founded," Obama said in the signing statement.
Jesus, just sign the f***ing thing! But, don't go trying to give yourself a fake civil liberties fig leaf over civil rights for terrorism suspects. Military tribunals and the law of war should have been more than enough for the KSM's of the world, and their foot soldiers. Instead, Democrat politicians - from then-Senator Obama on down - whipped up hysterics over "torture," such that common sense Bush-era terror prosecution rules became a hopeless muddle. Yet, when the time came to change course, Obama and virtually the entire left adopted Bush's policies in their entirety.
This signing statement isn't just an impotent distraction; it's a sign that the left would themselves prefer to be tortured, rather than admit that Bush was right all along.
It's one of those days when I can't pick just one thing to write about, but don't have time to write about everything:
If you were wondering how Michelle Obama's "secret" trip to Target (did she ever go to Target pre-2008? Does Chicago even have a Target within the city limits?) was memorialized on film, well it's because the White House tipped off the AP. Pretty pathetic.
Chris Christie is the man of the hour. Some say that he is the only (GOP) man for the times: a tough talker who can appeal to Reagan Democrats, and face down the public employee unions. Could be, but unions are only a sliver of the left coalition, and Christie has a lot of political sympathy for virtually every other element of the Democrat base. Among other things, he is as dumb on the environment as Joe Biden (or any other green). We can do better.
Paul Ryan reviews Jeffrey Sachs's new book, describing it as having "veneer of economic analysis cannot conceal what is essentially a crusade against the free enterprise ethic of our republic." Nice to see at least one GOP politician try to take on the intellectual heavies on the left.
This guy wants to believe that the present Wall Street protests are "like Egypt." The protesters are more than just the usual hippies, communists, and nose-ringed college students, says he. There are unions and "grannies" there! Very middle class! (pictures at the link). Right, well any union presence is going to be bused-in astro-turf. As for the "grannies," I think we're all hip to the truth, which is that old leftists like to grasp the mantle of respectable seniors, knowing the media will treat them as cuddly old folks, rather than as socialists who hate their country. Anyway, these protests not "like" Egypt; they are like Greece.
On the other hand, the apparently unprovoked pepper spraying of a couple protesters by a normally desk-bound "cop" is just the sort of thing the blame-America-first crowd loves. You'd think every police officer in NYC would be hip the way leftists use this sort of thing for their own propaganda. San Francisco cops sure do. But, as JFK used to say, there's always one dumb son of a bitch who never gets the word.
The al-Awlaki drone strike was a just result. He may have been "American-born," in the words of media style-books, but he left the US as a small child and was not acting in America's best interests. Obama's been getting this 100% right, but his ambivalence has been undermining his strategy.
An inside view of the intimidation of the health insurance industry during the passage of Obamacare. For all the talk of the "right wing noise machine," if a GOP president and his allies had tried something this heavy-handed, there would have been all sorts of "brave" dissidents rushing to the microphones. But, let Democrats do it, and everyone's all STFU. Has to be because they were worried about unflattering stories published by the White House's media allies - meaning the media - right?
Herman Cain's rise is due entirely to his being the only optimistic candidate. People clearly want to hear his message, yet Cain is held to be "unelectable." OK, assuming he's unelectable, that doesn't mean the "electable" candidates can't learn something from him and his methods.
Btw, I thought Cain (or Santorum) would "shock the world" by running strong in Iowa, but it seems Cain's moment is now, and not four months from now. That means the media will be "vetting" him. In other words, they'll be seeking damning quotes from every disgruntled employee, disappointed corporate rival, and bitter stripper ex-girlfriend (I kid, I kid) that they can find. These are never our republic's finest hours. In fact, they are some of our worst as the elites among us broadcast rumors and innuendos as if they were dispatches from the Somme. Hope Cain is ready for it. I also hope he is ready to fight back in the manner of Clarence Thomas, rather than flinch away in the manner of virtually every other GOP politico unfortunate to have gone through this process.
Michael Wilbon asks a damn good question about a new Walter Payton biography: "what is the exact purpose of writing a book, 12 years after Payton's depressing death at 45, that goes to agonizing lengths to tell us essentially that Payton was flawed?" Supposedly, it's because Payton's public persona was that of a solid citizen when in private he cheated on his wife and used, get this, pain killers. It's that darn hypocrisy, again! Really, a professional athlete who sleeps with women not his wife? That's news? What about a look at Mrs. Payton. Maybe she was a pain in the a**? And since when was pain killer use a scandal? What's really galling is knowing that journalists who love to flog this sort of information probably couldn't stand up to a similar level of scrutiny.
