0 comment Monday, August 4, 2014 | admin
The spirits of your fathers
Shall start from every wave�
For the deck it was their field of fame,
And Ocean was their grave:
Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell
Your manly hearts shall glow,
As ye sweep through the deep,
While the stormy winds do blow!
While the battle rages loud and long
And the stormy winds do blow.
-Ye Mariners of England - Thomas Campbell
I have been reading a lot of commentary on the British Navy hostages, and as always I am as much interested in the strange responses among many 'conservatives', on the web forums and blogs, as in the event itself.
A lot of questions occur to me in connection with the whole incident: were the British in Iranian waters, as their captors claim, or in Iraqi waters? Was this a 'provocation' meant to escalate the situation between Iran and the Coalition, as some are claiming?
I always start from the premise that whatever our Moslem foes have to say is false or deceptive; that cynical assessment is based on reality. Given that the Moslem ideology/religion encourages lying to the Infidel, how are we to accept at face value anything they say, especially when it is in their interests to lie?
And why were the British so ill-prepared for this encounter with the Iranians? Was this not a contingency that was considered? Apparently their rules of engagement did not allow for them to resist in any way, but it is also true that they were outnumbered and outgunned, apparently.
Still, given the leftist, appeasing tendencies of the Blair government (and no, my friends, he is not the modern Churchill; he is a leftist and a dedicated multiculturalist globalist) it is not surprising that the rules of engagement would not allow the British to fight back. Now, I have heard a lot of sneering comments from the usual neocon hawks about what 'wusses' the British are, since they did not resist capture, but let's think back to a few months ago when our National Guardsmen at the border retreated from armed drug smugglers and paramilitary thugs. Not to condemn our National Guard here; it seems their rules of engagement did not allow for self-defense, so we are really not in a position to jeer at the British here; we are the proverbial dwellers in a glass house. And remember, our country is being invaded by thousands of unknown people, many of them dangerous and armed, every day. We are not exactly Fortress America. So this wussiness is not something that afflicts only our British cousins. Again, though, I blame the elites, not the troops; they merely follow orders. All of us in the West are afflicted with appeasing, weakling leaders, who are more concerned with not giving offense than in protecting the citizenry.
The other controversial aspect of the story is the presence of the female 'seaman', and her being paraded before the cameras wearing a headscarf (I believe it is called a 'hijab' but I don't know all the terminology of the Moslem customs, nor do I want to know. None of us should have to know a hijab from jilbab from a niqab.)
I found the whole headcovering fetish to be insulting; why is it that whenever they capture a Western woman, they have to shroud her in their barbaric headcoverings? Surely that is an indignity, subjecting them to the benighted, backward customs of their stunted culture. And what if we removed the headcoverings from their women here in the West? They would consider it an outrage, and an infringement on their 'freedoms', while they can impose their medieval ways on our people, unchallenged.
And here comes the next aspect of the story: the presence of this woman in a combat situation. I am still amazed by the ferocity with which many 'conservatives' defend the presence of women in combat. Conservatives these days are amazingly quick to seize on recent liberal innovations and to defend them. Conservatives are getting very good at conserving liberalism these days. So if you criticize the presence of women in these situations, you will get savaged by people who claim you are sexist, or you are diminishing the bravery of the women who volunteer for military service. I don't deny that women are capable of bravery and strength; there are plenty of stories, true ones at that, of brave women in the colonial and pioneer days in our country, women who defended their homes and families when it was necessary to do so. But that is different from women being sent to the front lines, into harm's way, knowing that they may be subject to capture, and to rape and torture. And many are like this British 'seaman', a mother of a young child. In some instances, married couples with children both go to war, and the children are farmed out to relatives for the duration. I don't see how a real conservative can favor that arrangement. It goes against long-established standards of Western history. Even some of the more warlike peoples in Western history did not send women into combat, notwithstanding those apocryphal or semi-apocryphal stories of 'Amazon women' who lived in separatist female societies and outfought men. This is all a feminist fairy tale. I think those stories are in the same realm with those Chinese martial arts movies featuring female martial arts masters who could whup all the men. Maybe such women existed somewhere, but in all my study of Asian history I never came across any accounts of such female warriors.
I have heard people say that it's 'sexist' to imply that going to war should be an exclusively male pursuit. How dare we value boys less than girls by decreeing that they have to fight for their country, while females are coddled and excused? Sexism!
How do you argue against such twisted reasoning? It shouldn't even be necessary to explain why war has traditionally been a male pursuit, and women have tended to the home and hearth. While allowing for the rare exceptions of women who are exemplary soldiers (remember those stories of women during the Civil War who dressed as men and fought alongside the men, unbeknownst to everybody? Or the women who cut their hair and went to sea, and became pirates?) These oddities are supposedly meant to prove that women are just as tough as men, just as warlike, and just as brave. Oddly, however, the feminists always point out that women are far less violent than men, more pacific, and less likely to be territorial. Still, in the next breath, they will say that women are the equals of men, and only 'societal conditioning' and sex-role expectations make women weaker than men. So now we have the ridiculous situation of female police officers who are not big and strong enough for the job guarding large male prisoners and arrestees. (In the case of Brian Nichols, a fifty-something grandma was hardly able to hamper his escape and his subsequent murder of a couple of people.) And we have female schoolbus drivers unable to control rowdy, violent students who are in their charge, and innocent children are hurt as a result. Women are just not the equals of men in situations requiring force, physical size and strength and aggressiveness.
And unfortunately most of the women who have been captured by the Moslem enemy have been sexually abused; in the first Gulf War, the first female pilot to be captured apparently was, but this was hushed up at the time. Apparently, Jessica Lynch, the much-lauded soldier who was held in captivity while injured was also abused in this fashion. But the defenders of women in combat will say that men can be raped or abused also, and why should we protect women more? Don't we care about our sons in combat? Let's not coddle women and put only the men at risk.
Again, this is just liberal talk; no matter which way you twist and turn, you can't deny history; women have traditionally not been warriors. Women are not as fitted emotionally or physically for warfare, and there is no denying that women are vulnerable in ways that men might be less so. The presence of women tends also to weaken male bonding and trust, with sexual rivalries and jealousies playing out, and there are other complicating factors: sexual tensions, sexual harassment, pregnancies. All of this distracts from the mission. The sexual aspect should not be introduced into an already highly-charged setting. And we have all heard how the standards in the military have been PC-ized and dumbed down so as to compensate for and to downplay the obvious disparities between men and women. This harms us overall.
From a cultural perspective, do we really believe that putting women in combat situations against the Moslems in particular is a good thing? The Mohammedans surely respect us less for sending our women up against them. Yet, perversely, lots of conservatives are in favor of it for exactly that reason: if it angers or insults the Mohammedans to have females fighting them, then good; let's keep on doing it. That seems like an especially weak reason for putting women in combat. Do we use them just to tick off the Moslems? How childish.
Another twisted bit of reasoning by these 'conservatives' is that if we remove women from combat, we are just as bad as the Moslems, because they keep their women at home and in a subordinate position. So, we have to flaunt our female soldiers just to prove how much more enlightened we are than they are. Well, yes, we are more advanced than they are; I'll say it. But if we are, it's not because of idiotic leftist egalitarianism like putting women and girls in combat.
I sincerely hope these hostages are released quickly, and that they come to no harm, especially the woman. Now is that sexist to say so? I hope that the UK government takes any steps necessary to ensure that their people come home safely, but at the same time, the British should maintain their tradition of strength and honor, and not allow themselves to be humiliated and degraded by the Iranians or anyone else. The Moslems are testing us repeatedly, and with each capitulation and accommodation, their contempt for us increases. Only standing up to them will stop their depredations; appeasement just emboldens them.
Shall start from every wave�
For the deck it was their field of fame,
And Ocean was their grave:
Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell
Your manly hearts shall glow,
As ye sweep through the deep,
While the stormy winds do blow!
While the battle rages loud and long
And the stormy winds do blow.
-Ye Mariners of England - Thomas Campbell
I have been reading a lot of commentary on the British Navy hostages, and as always I am as much interested in the strange responses among many 'conservatives', on the web forums and blogs, as in the event itself.
A lot of questions occur to me in connection with the whole incident: were the British in Iranian waters, as their captors claim, or in Iraqi waters? Was this a 'provocation' meant to escalate the situation between Iran and the Coalition, as some are claiming?
I always start from the premise that whatever our Moslem foes have to say is false or deceptive; that cynical assessment is based on reality. Given that the Moslem ideology/religion encourages lying to the Infidel, how are we to accept at face value anything they say, especially when it is in their interests to lie?
And why were the British so ill-prepared for this encounter with the Iranians? Was this not a contingency that was considered? Apparently their rules of engagement did not allow for them to resist in any way, but it is also true that they were outnumbered and outgunned, apparently.
Still, given the leftist, appeasing tendencies of the Blair government (and no, my friends, he is not the modern Churchill; he is a leftist and a dedicated multiculturalist globalist) it is not surprising that the rules of engagement would not allow the British to fight back. Now, I have heard a lot of sneering comments from the usual neocon hawks about what 'wusses' the British are, since they did not resist capture, but let's think back to a few months ago when our National Guardsmen at the border retreated from armed drug smugglers and paramilitary thugs. Not to condemn our National Guard here; it seems their rules of engagement did not allow for self-defense, so we are really not in a position to jeer at the British here; we are the proverbial dwellers in a glass house. And remember, our country is being invaded by thousands of unknown people, many of them dangerous and armed, every day. We are not exactly Fortress America. So this wussiness is not something that afflicts only our British cousins. Again, though, I blame the elites, not the troops; they merely follow orders. All of us in the West are afflicted with appeasing, weakling leaders, who are more concerned with not giving offense than in protecting the citizenry.
The other controversial aspect of the story is the presence of the female 'seaman', and her being paraded before the cameras wearing a headscarf (I believe it is called a 'hijab' but I don't know all the terminology of the Moslem customs, nor do I want to know. None of us should have to know a hijab from jilbab from a niqab.)
I found the whole headcovering fetish to be insulting; why is it that whenever they capture a Western woman, they have to shroud her in their barbaric headcoverings? Surely that is an indignity, subjecting them to the benighted, backward customs of their stunted culture. And what if we removed the headcoverings from their women here in the West? They would consider it an outrage, and an infringement on their 'freedoms', while they can impose their medieval ways on our people, unchallenged.
And here comes the next aspect of the story: the presence of this woman in a combat situation. I am still amazed by the ferocity with which many 'conservatives' defend the presence of women in combat. Conservatives these days are amazingly quick to seize on recent liberal innovations and to defend them. Conservatives are getting very good at conserving liberalism these days. So if you criticize the presence of women in these situations, you will get savaged by people who claim you are sexist, or you are diminishing the bravery of the women who volunteer for military service. I don't deny that women are capable of bravery and strength; there are plenty of stories, true ones at that, of brave women in the colonial and pioneer days in our country, women who defended their homes and families when it was necessary to do so. But that is different from women being sent to the front lines, into harm's way, knowing that they may be subject to capture, and to rape and torture. And many are like this British 'seaman', a mother of a young child. In some instances, married couples with children both go to war, and the children are farmed out to relatives for the duration. I don't see how a real conservative can favor that arrangement. It goes against long-established standards of Western history. Even some of the more warlike peoples in Western history did not send women into combat, notwithstanding those apocryphal or semi-apocryphal stories of 'Amazon women' who lived in separatist female societies and outfought men. This is all a feminist fairy tale. I think those stories are in the same realm with those Chinese martial arts movies featuring female martial arts masters who could whup all the men. Maybe such women existed somewhere, but in all my study of Asian history I never came across any accounts of such female warriors.
I have heard people say that it's 'sexist' to imply that going to war should be an exclusively male pursuit. How dare we value boys less than girls by decreeing that they have to fight for their country, while females are coddled and excused? Sexism!
How do you argue against such twisted reasoning? It shouldn't even be necessary to explain why war has traditionally been a male pursuit, and women have tended to the home and hearth. While allowing for the rare exceptions of women who are exemplary soldiers (remember those stories of women during the Civil War who dressed as men and fought alongside the men, unbeknownst to everybody? Or the women who cut their hair and went to sea, and became pirates?) These oddities are supposedly meant to prove that women are just as tough as men, just as warlike, and just as brave. Oddly, however, the feminists always point out that women are far less violent than men, more pacific, and less likely to be territorial. Still, in the next breath, they will say that women are the equals of men, and only 'societal conditioning' and sex-role expectations make women weaker than men. So now we have the ridiculous situation of female police officers who are not big and strong enough for the job guarding large male prisoners and arrestees. (In the case of Brian Nichols, a fifty-something grandma was hardly able to hamper his escape and his subsequent murder of a couple of people.) And we have female schoolbus drivers unable to control rowdy, violent students who are in their charge, and innocent children are hurt as a result. Women are just not the equals of men in situations requiring force, physical size and strength and aggressiveness.
And unfortunately most of the women who have been captured by the Moslem enemy have been sexually abused; in the first Gulf War, the first female pilot to be captured apparently was, but this was hushed up at the time. Apparently, Jessica Lynch, the much-lauded soldier who was held in captivity while injured was also abused in this fashion. But the defenders of women in combat will say that men can be raped or abused also, and why should we protect women more? Don't we care about our sons in combat? Let's not coddle women and put only the men at risk.
Again, this is just liberal talk; no matter which way you twist and turn, you can't deny history; women have traditionally not been warriors. Women are not as fitted emotionally or physically for warfare, and there is no denying that women are vulnerable in ways that men might be less so. The presence of women tends also to weaken male bonding and trust, with sexual rivalries and jealousies playing out, and there are other complicating factors: sexual tensions, sexual harassment, pregnancies. All of this distracts from the mission. The sexual aspect should not be introduced into an already highly-charged setting. And we have all heard how the standards in the military have been PC-ized and dumbed down so as to compensate for and to downplay the obvious disparities between men and women. This harms us overall.
From a cultural perspective, do we really believe that putting women in combat situations against the Moslems in particular is a good thing? The Mohammedans surely respect us less for sending our women up against them. Yet, perversely, lots of conservatives are in favor of it for exactly that reason: if it angers or insults the Mohammedans to have females fighting them, then good; let's keep on doing it. That seems like an especially weak reason for putting women in combat. Do we use them just to tick off the Moslems? How childish.
Another twisted bit of reasoning by these 'conservatives' is that if we remove women from combat, we are just as bad as the Moslems, because they keep their women at home and in a subordinate position. So, we have to flaunt our female soldiers just to prove how much more enlightened we are than they are. Well, yes, we are more advanced than they are; I'll say it. But if we are, it's not because of idiotic leftist egalitarianism like putting women and girls in combat.
I sincerely hope these hostages are released quickly, and that they come to no harm, especially the woman. Now is that sexist to say so? I hope that the UK government takes any steps necessary to ensure that their people come home safely, but at the same time, the British should maintain their tradition of strength and honor, and not allow themselves to be humiliated and degraded by the Iranians or anyone else. The Moslems are testing us repeatedly, and with each capitulation and accommodation, their contempt for us increases. Only standing up to them will stop their depredations; appeasement just emboldens them.
Labels: Feminism, Iran, Moslems, Political Correctness, Western Culture
0 comment Wednesday, June 11, 2014 | admin
Weaker than advertised
Victor Davis Hanson thinks the Iraq Study Group is foolish to recommend that our government have talks with Iran, the reason being, that according to him, Iran is weaker than believed, and Ahmedinejad is a paper tiger.
The world of publicity-hungry Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not expanding, but shrinking. Despite his supposedly populist credentials, his support at home and abroad will only further weaken as long as the United States continues its steady, calm and quiet pressure on him.
In Iran's city council elections last week, moderate conservative and reformist candidates defeated Ahmadinejad's vehemently anti-American slate of allies. At a recent public meeting, angry Iranian students -- tired of theocratic lunacy and repression -- shouted down their president.
Hanson recommends instead that we shun or marginalize Ahmadinejad, since he is already discredited among his own people, and on the way out. Hanson thinks we should give him the 'Gaddafi treatment' and boycott Iran, or at least isolate the regime.
Hanson then invokes the spirit of Ronald Reagan, and suggests that we emulate Reagan, who 'reached out' to dissidents in the old Soviet Union, people like Anatoly 'Natan' Sharansky and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn; creative dissidents, people who could help us bring about needed change.
As usual, Hanson is reaching, and he is making rather ill-fitting analogies. The old Soviet Union, 'Evil Empire' that it was, was not equivalent to the Islamic world, or to Ahmedinejad's Iran. The Soviet Union, despite its totalitarian ideology, still had roots in Christendom, and the larger European culture, from which matrix we in America also come. And many people within the old Soviet Union did not believe in the ideology which was imposed on them; they obeyed the outward forms of it while no longer believing in what they were taught. The whole system was a crumbling facade, bound to fall of its own weight. While it may be that Ahmadinejad's regime is also a teetering edifice, (I don't claim to be an expert on Iran), the underlying influence of Islam is still the force that we must reckon with. While there seem to be secular dissidents in Iran, they are not all of a mind to discard the Islamic rule there, or to make common cause with the infidels.
It appears that while there are numbers of dissident groups in Iran, they represent disparate philosophies and political allegiances; they seem to be unified only in their opposition to the existing regime, while they disagree on many other things. There is little likeness to Soviet dissidents like Sharansky or Solzhenitsyn, who were Western in their beliefs and philosophical orientation.
And I don't share Hanson's pollyannaish belief that
The larger Middle East that surrounds Iran is in the throes of a messy, violent three-stage transition: from dictatorship to radicalism and chaos to constitutional government. Thugs and terrorists like Mr. Ahmadinejad ("We did not have a revolution in order to have democracy") want it to stop and return to the old world before September 11. ''
I somehow can't subscribe to this essentially liberal view: the idea that everybody has this innate yearning for 'freedom' and constitutional government. I don't buy that everybody has an 'inner American' just waiting to be freed. I also don't buy that the only problem in the Middle East is just a few bad guys who are keeping the good guys, the 'moderates' from emerging. It used to be said by the usual suspects that 'when Yasser Arafat is gone, then we can make peace with the Palestinians.' I heard that line countless times: 'Arafat is the problem; just wait till he is gone, then we will negotiate a peace.' Well, Arafat is long since pushing up daisies, and how much nearer are we to 'peace' in the Middle East? No; the 'bad guys' are not the problem, but merely the symptom.
I still believe that Joseph de Maistre was right in saying that people get the government they deserve. People who truly 'yearn for freedom' don't constantly produce dictators and tyrants, and bring them to power. Tyrants don't arise in a vacuum. The Islamic culture is one in which tyrants and authoritarian personalities thrive.
Hanson, like so many other pundits, seems to project what he wants to see on the Islamic world. For some reason, maybe because he was rather hawkish on the Iraq invasion, Hanson is held in reverence by mainstream Republicans, who see him as a great sage. His essentially liberal views are hailed by the neoconnish faithful, who refuse to believe that the Middle East may be impervious to our efforts to 'fix' it. So we go on spending more lives and more billions on the forlorn hope of establishing democracy in the Islamic world.
The neocons and the mainstream GOP faithful, who have bought into the neocon ideology, think that a naive optimism is obligatory for 'real conservatives', and they often cite Ronald Reagan and his optimistic approach. In that sense, I think the constant harking back to Reagan is misleading. Because the Berlin Wall fell, and the Eastern Communist bloc regimes toppled, the neocons insist that the same is bound to happen in the Islamic world. So, in the vain belief that the Islamic world is just full of Sharanskys and Solzhenitsyns, if we but reach out to them, we will be pulled farther into the turmoil of Islam. The hope of 'moderate Muslim' dissenters who will naturally ally themselves with us is a foolish one. But reality has never been the strong suit of the neocons.
Victor Davis Hanson thinks the Iraq Study Group is foolish to recommend that our government have talks with Iran, the reason being, that according to him, Iran is weaker than believed, and Ahmedinejad is a paper tiger.
The world of publicity-hungry Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not expanding, but shrinking. Despite his supposedly populist credentials, his support at home and abroad will only further weaken as long as the United States continues its steady, calm and quiet pressure on him.
In Iran's city council elections last week, moderate conservative and reformist candidates defeated Ahmadinejad's vehemently anti-American slate of allies. At a recent public meeting, angry Iranian students -- tired of theocratic lunacy and repression -- shouted down their president.
Hanson recommends instead that we shun or marginalize Ahmadinejad, since he is already discredited among his own people, and on the way out. Hanson thinks we should give him the 'Gaddafi treatment' and boycott Iran, or at least isolate the regime.
Hanson then invokes the spirit of Ronald Reagan, and suggests that we emulate Reagan, who 'reached out' to dissidents in the old Soviet Union, people like Anatoly 'Natan' Sharansky and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn; creative dissidents, people who could help us bring about needed change.
As usual, Hanson is reaching, and he is making rather ill-fitting analogies. The old Soviet Union, 'Evil Empire' that it was, was not equivalent to the Islamic world, or to Ahmedinejad's Iran. The Soviet Union, despite its totalitarian ideology, still had roots in Christendom, and the larger European culture, from which matrix we in America also come. And many people within the old Soviet Union did not believe in the ideology which was imposed on them; they obeyed the outward forms of it while no longer believing in what they were taught. The whole system was a crumbling facade, bound to fall of its own weight. While it may be that Ahmadinejad's regime is also a teetering edifice, (I don't claim to be an expert on Iran), the underlying influence of Islam is still the force that we must reckon with. While there seem to be secular dissidents in Iran, they are not all of a mind to discard the Islamic rule there, or to make common cause with the infidels.
It appears that while there are numbers of dissident groups in Iran, they represent disparate philosophies and political allegiances; they seem to be unified only in their opposition to the existing regime, while they disagree on many other things. There is little likeness to Soviet dissidents like Sharansky or Solzhenitsyn, who were Western in their beliefs and philosophical orientation.
And I don't share Hanson's pollyannaish belief that
The larger Middle East that surrounds Iran is in the throes of a messy, violent three-stage transition: from dictatorship to radicalism and chaos to constitutional government. Thugs and terrorists like Mr. Ahmadinejad ("We did not have a revolution in order to have democracy") want it to stop and return to the old world before September 11. ''
I somehow can't subscribe to this essentially liberal view: the idea that everybody has this innate yearning for 'freedom' and constitutional government. I don't buy that everybody has an 'inner American' just waiting to be freed. I also don't buy that the only problem in the Middle East is just a few bad guys who are keeping the good guys, the 'moderates' from emerging. It used to be said by the usual suspects that 'when Yasser Arafat is gone, then we can make peace with the Palestinians.' I heard that line countless times: 'Arafat is the problem; just wait till he is gone, then we will negotiate a peace.' Well, Arafat is long since pushing up daisies, and how much nearer are we to 'peace' in the Middle East? No; the 'bad guys' are not the problem, but merely the symptom.
I still believe that Joseph de Maistre was right in saying that people get the government they deserve. People who truly 'yearn for freedom' don't constantly produce dictators and tyrants, and bring them to power. Tyrants don't arise in a vacuum. The Islamic culture is one in which tyrants and authoritarian personalities thrive.
Hanson, like so many other pundits, seems to project what he wants to see on the Islamic world. For some reason, maybe because he was rather hawkish on the Iraq invasion, Hanson is held in reverence by mainstream Republicans, who see him as a great sage. His essentially liberal views are hailed by the neoconnish faithful, who refuse to believe that the Middle East may be impervious to our efforts to 'fix' it. So we go on spending more lives and more billions on the forlorn hope of establishing democracy in the Islamic world.
The neocons and the mainstream GOP faithful, who have bought into the neocon ideology, think that a naive optimism is obligatory for 'real conservatives', and they often cite Ronald Reagan and his optimistic approach. In that sense, I think the constant harking back to Reagan is misleading. Because the Berlin Wall fell, and the Eastern Communist bloc regimes toppled, the neocons insist that the same is bound to happen in the Islamic world. So, in the vain belief that the Islamic world is just full of Sharanskys and Solzhenitsyns, if we but reach out to them, we will be pulled farther into the turmoil of Islam. The hope of 'moderate Muslim' dissenters who will naturally ally themselves with us is a foolish one. But reality has never been the strong suit of the neocons.
Labels: Iran