Thoughts on Paris - From Someone Who Remembers Pearl Harbor

My Dad was old enough to remember Pearl Harbor and its effect on this nation.  After the Paris atrocities, he said some things that seem like such common sense, but in an age of uncommon stupidity, they need to be said.

From Pops:

My wife had just read The Fall of Japan and we were having a discussion with Dean about our feeling over the dropping of the bomb.  I told him that the number of people killed at Hiroshima meant nothing to us [Americans].  Our only thoughts were a giant sigh of relief and “its over, we won’t be getting any more telegrams.”  Those telegrams always started, “We regret to inform you that your son has been killed ...”  Each telegram sent a shock wave of grief through our community. 

Pearl Harbor was vivid in our memories and I think there was a feeling of “you finally got what you asked for,” though I never heard it expressed exactly that way.  The remembrance of the announcement of Pearl Harbor is still vivid in my mind 76 years later.  On that day, our family was going to a funeral in Fremont and the newsboys on the corners were shouting the news.  As a boy, I didn’t really know what it was all about but there was still a feeling in my mind of “We’ll get you guys for this.” 

Several years ago I heard a commentator pontificating on the use of the atom bomb on the Japanese.  It may have been Mike Wallace.  He said that the number killed at Hiroshima shocked the American consciences and is etched on our psyche to this day.  I could only think, “Fella, you weren’t there for Pearl Harbor or the telegrams.  You never felt the pain.” 

What brings this up now is that the attacks on Paris is their Pearl Harbor.  Their feeling and those of much of the rest of the world must be no different from ours on that Sunday in December.  I don’t think the number of ISIS killed in retaliation will grieve any Frenchman or leave a mark on their psyche.  I was glad to see our president declare war on Japan.  I wonder how long it will be before our media and our leaders realize that we are in a war and it must be treated as such.  Will it take a Paris in America to wake them up?

First Signs of Stupidity

I posted yesterday about the futility of our security measures.  Right on cue, the city of Indianapolis and the Indian Pacers are doing the following: (H/T Reason.com)

The Indiana Pacers, after consulting with the Department of Homeland Security, will remove all trash cans outside of Bankers Life Fieldhouse for all events, said Greg Schenkel, vice president of public relations for the Pacers.

This will reduce the chance of terrorism at a Pacers game by exactly zero.  Meanwhile, you have to believe that those trashcans served a purpose.  Will a build up of trash obscure a small package of poison powder that would have been noticed and contained if a trashcan had been present?  Gestures of futility just inconvenience ourselves and do nothing to fight terrorism.  

Bruce Schneier has a nice article about fighting terrorism based on movie plots and the last attack.

Terrorists don't care if they blow up subways, buses, stadiums, theaters, restaurants, nightclubs, schools, churches, crowded markets or busy intersections. Reasonable arguments can be made that some targets are more attractive than others: airplanes because a small bomb can result in the death of everyone aboard, monuments because of their national significance, national events because of television coverage, and transportation because most people commute daily. But the United States is a big country; we can't defend everything.

Asymmetric Retaliation

Yesterday, I wrote that Islamic jihadists are only capable of killing a few of us; so in today's news, they did. The killing of the American ambassador to Libya is not really because of alleged blasphemy to (((:~{> . (There, I drew an emoticon of the bearded one, is that going to provoke a riot too?) These attacks were long planned. So much for providing aid to overthrowing Qaddafi and continuing aid to Egypt even after the Muslim Brotherhood effectively took power.

What's to be done? On the TV, there was much talk on the left of bringing the perpetrators to justice and on the right of destroying al Qaeda. I don't think either course of action really helps. Killing the perpetrators, while noble, only provides martyrs and is a tricky proposition. Look how long it took to get bin Laden and he was the world's most wanted. No one is in the mood in this country for another war with al Qaeda on any front. And frankly, grotesque and heinous as the killing of Ambassador Stevens was, it is not cause for war by itself.

However, we have the means to retaliate in ways that can be effective in stopping the spread of this sickness. In most of the s***holes where these terrorists abide, they are suffered to live because the governments are unwilling to do much about their presence for political reasons that time does not permit me to analyze. The proper response is to cut off the flow of money to the government and the leaders of the government. In most cases, this means taking action to stop their oil exports. This can be done by blockade, sabotage of pipelines, destruction of shipping ports or any number of other means. My favorite would be to put Hugo Chavez in charge of Libya's oil industry, but that would be TOO obvious a ploy. The economic forces are likely to topple the regime or seriously inconvenience those in power. Further, it would have the salutary short term effect of driving up oil prices. The political clamor to increase drilling in this country and to approve the Keystone XL pipeline would result in more jobs. I could see a President Romney unleashing a jobs explosion if he chose such a path. This sort of thinking could work against the Iranians as well. To date, we have been too timid about short term economic shocks. But gasoline is already at $4 per gallon with little effect on the President's re-election chances. It's time to take on these terrorists and their enablers by denying them the wealth they need to stay in power.

It was all such a lovely and groovy experience

The Associated Press is spinning so feverishly on behalf of KSM’s civilian trial, we’re afraid they might hurt themselves.

Zacarias Moussaoui (pictured) was a clown who could not keep his mouth shut, according to his old al-Qaida boss, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. But Moussaoui was surprisingly tame when tried for the 9/11 attacks - never turning the courtroom into the circus of anti-U.S. tirades that some fear Mohammed will create at his trial in New York.

And that wasn't the only surprise during Moussaoui's six-week 2006 sentencing trial here - a proceeding that might foreshadow how the upcoming 9/11 trial in New York will go.

Skeptics who feared prosecutors would be hamstrung by how much evidence was secret were stunned at the enormous amount of classified data that was scrubbed, under pressure from the judge, into a public version acceptable to both sides.

Prosecutors were surprised when they failed to get the death penalty - by the vote of one juror.

No one was more surprised than Moussaoui himself: At the end he concluded an al-Qaida member like him could get a fair trial in a U.S. court.

"I had thought that I would be sentenced to death based on the emotions and anger toward me for the deaths on Sept. 11," Moussaoui said in an appeal deposition taken after he was sentenced to life in prison. "(B)ut after reviewing the jury verdict and reading how the jurors set aside their emotions and disgust for me and focused on the law and the evidence ... I now see that it is possible that I can receive a fair trial."

(italics, ours)

And isn’t that really the goal of the war on terror? That Islamo-jihadist terrorists become convinced that we’re not the blood-thirsty, bent-on-revenge, running dog infidels we’ve been portrayed as in those circles? And that because of our exceeding compassion there may be hope that Moussaoui and others of his ilk may be set free to kill again?

Unfortunately, the AP’s sunny disposition doesn’t quite square with the recollection of the man who prosecuted him. The following from Andy McCarthey (via the Corner):

AG Holder's testimony has resumed, and Senator Durbin claims that no one complained about the Moussaoui trial being in a civilian court. In fact, many of us complained — I pointed out several times that Moussaoui was the "poster child" for commissions.

More importantly, though, Senator Durbin and the attorney general fail to point out that the Moussaoui trial was a three-ring circus, that the district judge actually tried to dismiss the indictment, and that we don't know what would have happened had Moussaoui not surprised everyone by pleading guilty. When the Court of Appeals reinstated the Moussaoui indictment, it also said it was sensitive to the trial judge's concerns and would look very carefully to ensure that the government made available to Moussaoui all the information he needed to present his defense. What would have happened if Moussaoui had continued to press his demand for access to classified information and testimony from al-Qaeda captives like KSM? We don't know.

If Moussaoui is their shining example of how well the civilian courts handle international terrorism cases during wartime, they're in trouble.

An even greater three-ring circus avoided because Moussaoui pled guilty. Think we'll be as lucky with KSM? Again, the potential downside of this whole thing so overshadows the upside, we remain baffled.

The Limits of His Personal Charm

In a widely publicized trial balloon, presidential team advisers have indicated that Obama is preparing an executive order to close the terrorist holding facilities in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In a little noted excerpt from the article:

"...many nations have resisted Bush administration efforts to repatriate the prisoners back home. Both Obama advisers said it's hoped that nations that had initially resisted taking detainees will be more willing to do so after dealing with the new administration."

Stepping aside from the wisdom of bringing the most dangerous terrorists in the world onto U.S. soil, is Mr. Hope and Change really going to cajole other countries to take back terrorists through his charm? This reflects two strains of fallacious thinking that will be exposed. First, that hatred of America is all about Bush and as soon as he is gone the world will just love us. I made a facetious comment to this effect on DailyKos and was lauded for my thinking. Second, as I (and others) have discussed here and here, Mr. Obama seems to have a stratospherically high regard for himself.

To quote P.J. O'Rourke, "Is it too soon to talk about the failed Obama presidency just because Obama isn't president yet?"

Mumbai and Gun Control

So why is the terrorist gunman, pictured at right, in the Chatrapathi Sivaji Terminal railway station in Mumbai, able to walk around with impunity, no protective cover, so much so that a photographer can get a clear picture of him? American Thinker has a solid piece on the failure of poorly paid police and a regime that actively discourages ownership of guns by its citizens and the comments of the photographer, Sebastian D'Souza who took this photo:

There were armed policemen hiding all around the station but none of them did anything. At one point, I ran up to them and told them to use their weapons. I said, "Shoot them, they're sitting ducks!" but they just didn't shoot back. I told some policemen the gunmen had moved towards the rear of the station but they refused to follow them. What is the point if having policemen with guns if they refuse to use them? I only wish I had a gun rather than a camera.

American Thinker lays out the long history of the Indian government's hostility towards gun ownership by it's citizens. The end result:

At the Jewish outreach centre, bystanders pelted the terrorists with stones in a vain attempt to ward off the attack, but had to retreat when the terrorists opened fire with automatic rifles. Our citizens were trying to ward off the terrorists with stones! I cannot think of a more extreme example of how helpless the government has rendered it's own citizens.