Title: “Shooting an unarmed man in the face is consistent with American values.” — Tom Donilon, President Obama’s National Security Advisor. Source:
[None] URL Source:http://fredhenstridge.blogspot.com/ ... has-turned-into-debate-on.html Published:May 9, 2011 Author:fredhenstridge Post Date:2011-05-09 14:09:19 by no gnu taxes Keywords:None Views:25316 Comments:47
On Sunday on Chris Wallace of Fox News asked National Security Advisor Tom Donilon; “Why is shooting an unarmed man in the face legal and proper while enhanced interrogation, including waterboarding of a detainee under very strict conditions controls an limits, why is that over the line?” (You can see the question and Donilon’s reply beginning at 05:45 into the video clip)
To paraphrase Donilon’s reply: Shooting of an unarmed man at the a time of war is consistent with our values while enhanced integration is not. (Note Donilon’s consistent eye blinking as he attempts to spin the admiration’s position of enhanced integration).
When has shooting an unarmed combatant in the face consistent with our values? Had this been done by a soldier in the field he or she would have faced a courts material. This is the double speak to the highest degree — George Orwell would be pleased with Donilon’s performance.
The killing of Osama bin Laden has created a series of dilemmas for the left. Bloggers on Human Events Red States have detailed the debt owed the Bush Administration which the current administration juvenilely and churlishly refuses to acknowledge (here | here). And many on the right are willing “to give the president credit” for doing his duty. According to reports bin Laden’s location has been known to the administration since March with the same degree of certainty that existed on May 1, so I fail to see what credit is really due unless we are saying that indecisiveness is a virtue.
Bin Laden’s death will eventually be seen as the unofficial end of the U.S. assault on al Qaeda. We will leave a war not won and forsake a victory that would make the world a safer place simply because Barack Obama doesn’t have the guts to prevail. What is worse, he wants to give the impression of being serious.
Intelligence is the key tool in fighting any war. Technical means are valuable but the only way you can obtain insights into the enemy’s operations and intentions is through prisoners.
As Sun Tzu stated in the Art of War:
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
Taking prisoners and getting intelligence from them carries with it three implications: 1) you have a place to keep them, 2) you have a means to extract the information from them in a timely fashion, and 3) you have a plan for what to do with the prisoners when their intelligence value is exhausted.
Even though Obama has backed off his efforts to close the prison at Guantanamo this does not mean he is supportive of its presence. In fact, the easy way to close the prison is to simply stop adding new prisoners while releasing those prisoners held. If you aren’t going to vigorously interrogate the prisoners, because as Leon Panetta reminds us waterboarding does work, why bother taking them in the first place. Lest anyone think this administration will relent on an policy that succeeded in keeping us safe you need look no further than this exchange at Ground Zero between Obama and a member of the 9/11 families group, Debra Burlingame.
Debra Burlingame, the sister of Charles "Chic" Burlingame (pilot of the hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 that was flown into the into the Pentagon on 9/11) told Fox News Thursday that President Barack Obama turned his back on her during the 9/11 memorial when she attempted to engage him about the prosecution of the men who interrogated Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
“Burlingame said she confronted Obama about Attorney General Eric Holder's prosecuting the men, who probably produced intelligence leading us to bin Laden.”
“Burlingame describes the encounter with Obama: "As a former attorney, I know you can't tell the attorney general what to do, he said, 'No, I can't.' But I said 'we — that shouldn't stop you from giving your opinion. We wouldn't be here today if they hadn't done their jobs. Can't you at least give them your opinion.' And he said 'no I won't,' and he turned around and walked away."
As Jennifer Rubin notes in the Washington Post:
“In addition to eliminating the very techniques that allowed us to track down and kill bin Laden, Obama has permitted the Justice Department to reopen investigation of previously cleared CIA operatives. Muskaey explains: “ I say ‘reopening’ advisedly because those investigations had all been formally closed by the end of 2007, with detailed memoranda prepared by career Justice Department prosecutors explaining why no charges were warranted. Attorney General Eric Holder conceded that he had ordered the investigations reopened in September 2009 without reading those memoranda. The investigations have now dragged on for years with prosecutors chasing allegations down rabbit holes, with the CIA along with the rest of the intelligence community left demoralized.”
Having an animus against both holding and interrogating prisoners, the administration has developed a novel means of reducing prisoner intake while giving the illusion of actively pursuing al Qaeda. We have simply started killing people who we should be taking prisoner. First, let me say that I do not fault the SEALs for killing Osama bin Laden. In my view he falls into a unique category of prisoner whose continued presence would cause problems far beyond the value of any intelligence he could provide. Yet we hear, almost on a daily basis that some “high value target” has been killed by a missile attack from a UAV in Pakistan or some other country know to harbor Islamic terrorist.
The Washington Post reports:
“When a window of opportunity opened to strike the leader of al-Qaeda in East Africa last September, U.S. Special Operations forces prepared several options. They could obliterate his vehicle with an airstrike as he drove through southern Somalia. Or they could fire from helicopters that could land at the scene to confirm the kill. Or they could try to take him alive.”
“The White House authorized the second option. On the morning of Sept. 14, helicopters flying from a U.S. ship off the Somali coast blew up a car carrying Saleh Ali Nabhan. While several hovered overhead, one set down long enough for troops to scoop up enough of the remains for DNA verification. Moments later, the helicopters were headed back to the ship.”
“The strike was considered a major success, according to senior administration and military officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the classified operation and other sensitive matters. But the opportunity to interrogate one of the most wanted U.S. terrorism targets was gone forever.”
“The Nabhan decision was one of a number of similar choices the administration has faced over the past year as President Obama has escalated U.S. attacks on the leadership of al-Qaeda and its allies around the globe. The result has been dozens of targeted killings and no reports of high-value detentions.”
To say the least, this is not a man who has learned anything about fighting the War on Terror from the death of bin Laden, rather he sees the death of bin Laden as nothing more or less than a monkey that is no longer on his back and it gives him good reason to declare victory both in Afghanistan and in the War on Terror in general.
Our ability to kill or capture terrorists, roll up their networks, and interfere with their operations is being degraded by the lack of fresh information while the administration continues to act like a T-Ball team, all the while talking about its “gutsy call.”
During World War II two of the most critical achievements were the Allies’ ability to break the German and Japanese naval codes. Due to the British and American code breakers the Allies were able to win the Battle of The Atlantic, The Battle of Midway and the shoot down of Admiral Yamamoto. This was one of the best kept secrets of the war and gave the allies much needed intelligence to defeat the axis powers.
While we celebrate the death of bin Laden, as we no doubt should, the Obama administration, with its policy of missile strikes is violating Sun Tzu rule of “knowing the enemy”. You can only do this by capture and the extraction of valuable intelligence. It’s time for the Obama administration to grow up and act like adults and stop campaigning on the War on Terror with their numerous and blabbering press conferences and TV appearances.
Donilon’s reply: Shooting of an unarmed man at the a time of war is consistent with our values ...
Wait until the government JBTs decide that WE are the enemy, and take such measures.
It WILL happen, sooner or later.
We're mirroring history, dontcha' know... think of pre-WWII Nazi Germany, where the state is all-knowing, all-powerful, and anyone who says "no" is a traitor...
It matters not one whit whether the people controlling you call themselves R's or D's, liberals or conservatives, socialists or even (I hate to admit it) libertarians. It doesn't matter whether they vote for these horrors because they're not paying attention or because they actually like such things.
What matters is that the pace of totalitarianism is increasing. And it is coming closer to our daily lives all the time. Once your state passes the enabling legislation (under threat of losing "federal welfare dollars"), it is YOUR name and Social Security number that will be entered in that employee database the moment you go to work for a new employer. It is YOU who will be unable to cash a check, board an airplane, get a passport or be allowed any dealings with any government agency if you refuse to give your SS number to the drivers license bureau. It is YOU who will be endangered by driving "illegally" if you refuse to submit to Big Brother's licensing procedures.
It is YOU whose psoriasis, manic depression or prostate troubles will soon be the reading matter of any bureaucrat with a computer. It is YOU who could be declared a member of a "foreign terrorist" organization just because you bought a book or concert tickets from some group the government doesn't like. It is YOU who could lose your home, bank account and reputation because you made a mistake on a health insurance form. Finally, when you become truly desperate for freedom, it is YOU whose assets will be seized if you try to flee this increasingly insane country. As Ayn Rand said in Atlas Shrugged, "There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws." It's time to drop any pretense: We are no longer law-abiding citizens. We have lost our law-abiding status. There are simply too many laws to abide. And because of increasingly draconian penalties and electronic tracking mechanisms, our "lawbreaking" places us and our families in greater jeopardy every day.
STOPPING RUNAWAY GOVERNMENT
The question is: What are we going to do about it?
Write a nice, polite letter to your congressperson? Hey, if you think that'll help, I've got a bridge you might be interested in buying. (And it isn't your "bridge to the future," either.)
Vote "better people" into office? Oh yeah, that's what we thought we were doing in 1994.
Work to fight one bad bill or another? Okay. What will you do about the 10 or 20 or 100 equally horrible bills that will be passed behind your back while you were fighting that little battle? And let's say you defeat a nightmare bill this year. What are you going to do when they sneak it back in, at the very last minute, in some "omnibus legislation" next year? And what about the horrors you don't even learn about until two or three years after they become law?
Should you try fighting these laws in the courts? Where do you find the resources?
Where do you find a judge who doesn't have a vested interest in bigger, more powerful government? And again, for every one case decided in favor of freedom, what do you do about the 10, 20 or 100 in which the courts decide against the Bill of Rights?
Perhaps you'd consider trying to stop the onrush of these horrors with a constitutional amendment -- maybe one that bans "omnibus" bills, requires that every law meet a constitutional test or requires all congresspeople to sign statements that they've read and understood every aspect of every bill on which they vote. Good luck! Good luck , first, on getting such an amendment passed. Then good luck getting our Constitution-scorning "leaders" to obey it.
It is true that liberty requires eternal vigilance, and that part of that vigilance has been, traditionally, keeping a watchful eye on laws and on lawbreaking lawmakers. But given the current pace of law spewing and unconstitutional regulation- writing, you could watch, plead and struggle "within the system" 24 hours a day for your entire life and end up infinitely less free than when you began. Why throw your life away on a futile effort?
Face it. If "working within the system" could halt tyranny, the tyrants would outlaw it. Why do you think they encourage you to vote, to write letters, to talk to them in public forums? It's to divert your energies. To keep you tame.
"The system" as it presently exists is nothing but a rat maze. You run around thinking you're getting somewhere. Your masters occasionally reward you with a little pellet that encourages you to believe you're accomplishing something. And in the meantime, you are as much their property and their pawn as if you were a slave. In the effort of fighting them on their terms and with their authorized and approved tools, you have given your life's energy to them as surely as if you were toiling in their cotton fields, under the lash of their overseer.
The only way we're going to get off this road to Hell is if we jump off. If we, personally, as individuals, refuse to cooperate with evil. How we do that is up to each of us. I can't decide for you, nor you for me. (Unlike congresspeople, who think they can decide for everybody.)
But this totalitarian runaway truck is never going to stop unless we stop it, in any way we can. Stopping it might include any number of things: tax resistance; public civil disobedience; wide-scale, silent non-cooperation; highly noisy non- cooperation; boycotts; secession efforts; monkey-wrenching; computer hacking; dirty tricks against government agents; public shunning of employees of abusive government agencies; alternative, self-sufficient communities that provide their own medical care and utilities.
There are thousands of avenues to take, and this is something most of us still need to give more thought to before we can build an effective resistance. We will each choose the courses that are right for our own circumstances, personalities and beliefs.
Whatever we do, though, we must remember that we are all, already, outlaws. Not one of us can be certain of getting through a single day without violating some law or regulation we've never even heard of. We are all guilty in the eyes of today's "law." If someone in power chooses to target us, we can all, already, be prosecuted for *something*.
And I'm sure you know that your claims of "good intentions" won't protect you, as the similar claims of politicians protect them. Politicians are above the law. YOU are under it. Crushed under it.
When you look at it that way, we have little left to lose by breaking laws *creatively and purposefully*. Yes, some of us will suffer horrible consequences for our lawbreaking. It is very risky to actively resist unbridled power. It is especially risky to go public with resistance (unless hundreds of thousands publicly join us), and it becomes riskier the closer we get to tyranny. For that reason, among many others, I would never recommend any particular course of action to anyone -- and I hope you'll think twice before taking "advice" from anybody about things that could jeopardize your life or well-being.
But if we don't resist in the best ways we know how -- and if a good number of us don't resist loudly and publicly -- all of us will suffer the much worse consequence of living under total oppression.
And whatever courses of action we choose, we must remember that this legislative "revolution" against We the People will not be stopped by politeness. It will not be stopped by requests. It will not be stopped by "working within a system" governed by those who regard us as nothing but cattle. It will not be stopped by pleading for justice from those who will resort to any degree of trickery or violence to rule us. It will not be stopped unless we are willing to risk our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honors to stop it.
I think of the words of Winston Churchill: "If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves." Claire Wolfe, "Landmine Legislation in the 104th Congress"
As with the vast majority of leftist/socialists, you THINK you think.
You don't.
With every post to me, you PROVE that, beyond any measure of doubt.
Wanna' continue demonstrating that you're a worthless, mindless piece of shit?
Go ahead, show me how SMART you think you are... (you're not)
Show me how WITTY you are (you're as witty as a bowling-ball is "sharp")
Come on, SHOW me something...
DEMONSTRATE that you don't have your head firmly planted up your ass!
Come on, PROVE IT!!!
Don't worry... I won't hold my breath. AKA should have flushed your pathetically-ignorant-yet-shockingly-arrogant ass LONG ago... After all, you don't bother to THINK, you emote.
You're a worthless steaming pile of cow-shit. Every post you put up, simply demonstrates that.
I wouldn't piss on your face, if you were on fire.
