Redstate

Posted at 6:35pm on Jun. 23, 2008 Stunning, sudden, total, American defeat in Iraq!

One that even *I* have to admit to. And I can see sunshine anywhere.

By Moe Lane

But not now. This defeat is total. The shame and horror of it is epic, and only possibly approached by the fact that McClatchy gets to gloat about it, and in such a comprehensive fashion. As will the rest of the planet, probably. They've always known that we were doomed.

Oh, yes: I admit it, now that the magnitude of these losses have been revealed - this is not the first incident, you see; we're only just starting to hear about it now. I always feared that this day would come. No, I lie: I always knew that this day would come. We could never hope to win this sort of struggle...

You know, it feels so good to finally say that, you know? We've pretended for so long that we could do this, when everything about our history told us that we couldn't...

Moe Lane

Posted in American tradition | Breaking News | Iraq | Our Hands might as well be tied — Comments (20)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 12:53pm on Jan. 15, 2008 The defiance we need

And the oppression we've got

By Paul J Cella

It is my firm view that the most vital problem of American national security, the question upon which hinges our fortune in the war that came to our shores on September 11, in short, nothing less than the most pressing issue before the Republic, is whether or not we will comprehend the ineradicably Islamic character of the enemy.

Are we or are we not a people capable of embracing hard truth about the war that is made against us — the hard truth that the enemy finds his motivation, his inspiration, his justification, his rhetoric, even his strategy and tactics, in the authentic and primitive traditions of the religion of Muhammad? Are we or are we not a people possessed of the fortitude equal to this challenge? As the cliché goes, can we handle the truth?

It is an open question, I’m afraid; and I am convinced that it is one whose answer will tell for or against this Republic for generations for come.

It is in this context that we ought to read with alarm and indignation of the dismissal of Major Stephen Coughlin from the Pentagon. Coughlin worked as a counterterrorism analyst, and took an unsparing view of the Jihad. The document he authored concludes that a “working threat model” of the enemy must begin with “an unconstrained, undelegated, systematic, factual analysis of the threat doctrine that the enemy self-identifies as being driven by Islamic law.” The pulverizing fact is that our current model begins with an unthinking rejection of such analysis: it begins with a deliberate closing of the mind, enforced by the standard methods of intimidation and vilification. Coughlin, for instance, has been publicly castigated as a “Christian zealot with a pen.”

Read on.

Posted in American tradition | Islam | Pentagon | Stephen Coughlin | the Jihad | War — Comments (42)/ Email this page » / Read More »