XDA

My memory of the quality of our attorney generals during the near 58 years I've lived is spotty at best. Janet Reno was horrible, making up from whole cloth an unspecified imminent danger to the children in the Branch Davidian compound to justify a poorly planned assault thereon which resulted in the burning to death of, well, all the children she said she was trying to save. But there may have been worse ones in the 60s or 70s. Ramsey Clark couldn't have been any great shakes. Still, for general horribleness, it is difficult to think of a worse attorney general than Eric Holder.

The left cried a river when the second Bush Administration got rid of a handful of US Attorneys, saying he was politicizing the Justice Department. President Clinton fired all of the US Attorneys but of course, as a Democrat, he was held to a different standard. As Al Jolson used to say: You ain't seen nothing, yet. Under Holder, the Justice Department has become nearly fully politicized--the race based decisions to forego prosecution of the New Black Panthers and other voting act violations (by blacks); the decision not to prosecute Islamic money gatherers for Jihadists; the decision to give full, citizen like protection to those waging war as illegal combatants, and the witch hunt against CIA interrogators, who should be receiving medals, are just the lowlights of the myriad, idiot decisions by Mr. Holder.

I wrote yesterday about Holder's inability to see the war footing nose on the front of his face. Andrew McCarthy writes today about how fully foolish our current AG is. Behold:

In 2004, Mr. Holder chose to file an amicus brief on behalf of Jose Padilla, the al-Qaeda terrorist sent to our country by bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to carry out a post-9/11 second wave of attacks. In the brief, Holder argued that a commander-in-chief lacks the constitutional authority to do what his boss, the current commander-in-chief, has just done: determine the parameters of the battlefield. By Holder’s lights — at least when the president is not named Obama — an al-Qaeda terrorist must be treated as a criminal defendant, not an enemy combatant, unless he is encountered on a traditional battlefield.

The more-rights-for-illegal-combatants crowd seems to think that unless Congress uses the words "declare" and "war" back to back, it is powerless to authorize military force. The Constitution, unfortunately, did not come with forms for Congress to use. I submit, as Mr. McCarthy does, that an authorization to use military force declares war just as effectively as an honest to God declaration. You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think. As an antidote for Holder's failure to grasp the bloody obvious, here's more of the rigorous logic of Mr. McCarthy:

But hold on: Bin Laden was not confronted on a battlefield. Nor was he, like Admiral Yamamoto, in an aircraft, which theoretically can be a military asset — or even used as a missile, as al-Qaeda has demonstrated. To the contrary, al-Qaeda’s emir was targeted in a residential neighborhood. Though he had some bodyguards, he was in the company of noncombatant women and children.

For most Americans, that does not detract at all from the legitimacy of bin Laden’s killing. This enemy has declared a global jihad against the United States. Al-Qaeda reserves to itself the prerogative to turn any place of its choosing into a battlefield. In fact, it would be perilous not to assume, when encountering al-Qaeda operatives, that this is exactly what they are up to. Their m.o., after all, is to target civilians for mass murder and to hide among civilians in order to frustrate retaliatory strikes. Consequently, it should make no difference that bin Laden was not found on a traditional battlefield — that he was in a residential compound inside a country with which the United States is not at war.

Nevertheless, what is not a problem for most Americans is a problem for Mr. Holder — at least if we’re talking about Eric Holder the prominent Democratic lawyer who filed the Padilla amicus brief, an action that he failed to disclose to the Senate during his confirmation process.

The idea is not to reward those who flaunt the few rules of war that civilized nations agree exist, by treating them the same as those who follow the rules and, worse, by giving them more rights than POWs. A blind man can see the wisdom of summary execution (after thorough interrogation) of illegal combatants. There is none so blind...

Fortunately, Mr. McCarthy chooses to see things as they are.

Labels: Eric Holder, Global War Against Muslim Extremists

I ask because his explanation of self defense as justification for the shooting of bin Laden is simply idiotic. How about Osama declared war on America twice and then waged war against various military and civilian targets as justification for our soldiers and sailors killing him? And he is an illegal combatant. Whenever anyone declares war on us and wages war on us as an illegal combatant, we ought to pay him a visit and put two in the brain.

In fact, that ought to be the fate of everyone who makes any move to take down the Great Satan.

Labels: Global War Against Muslim Extremists

Now that al Qaeda has verified that we put two in the brain of Osama bin Laden, the Deathers should suffer the same fate as the Birthers have from the release of the long form, namely, they should diminish. I don't recall, however, any of the 9-11 Truthers (Orwellian name) complaining that we shot an innocent man. Anyone remember that? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Labels: Global War Against Muslim Extremists

We are talking about people who live in sharia states where they still stone women for adultery, apostates for daring to abandon Islam, and homosexuals for breathing. We are talking about people who riot and murder over cartoons--people who who use mosques to hide weapons and Korans to transmit terrorist messages and them murder non-Muslims for purportedly defaming their religion. It makes no difference to these people that we detain Muslim terrorists in military brigs under the laws of war rather than detaining them in civilian prisons after trial in our criminal justice system.

Andrew McCarthy, destroying the idea that the housing of illegal combatants in Guantanamo Bay has any deleterious effect on the war being waged against us by Muslim extremists

Labels: Global War Against Muslim Extremists, Misdirected Concern over Guantanamo Prison

Roger Cohen at the ever declining New York Times has an editorial today where he states that President Obama has declared that the war on terror is over. Really? Has anyone asked the opinion of the terrorist? It seems to me that there a word for a unilateral cessation of hostilities, it's called surrender. Lowlights from Mr. Cohen include:

The war on terror is over.
Yes, the with-us-or-against-us global struggle — the so-called Long War — in which a freedom-loving West confronts the undifferentiated forces of darkness comprising everything from Al Qaeda to elements of the Palestinian national struggle under the banner of “Islamofascism” has been terminated.
What’s left is what matters: defeating terrorist organizations. That’s not a war. It’s a strategic challenge.

Semiotics aside, have the undifferentiated Islamofascists stopped waging war against us here in the Great Satan? If not, I fear the war strategic challenge is still on.

Regarding Iran, Mr. Cohen writes:

Carrots and sticks will lead nowhere. Nor will an exclusive focus on the nuclear issue that fails to examine the whole range of American and Iranian interests, some shared, some hotly contested.

Let me translate that. Iran will get nuclear weapons and we will do nothing but bitch and moan. What Israel will do depends on the rapidly approaching elections.

Well, it certainly is a change.

Labels: Global War Against Muslim Extremists, Surrender

Despite the title, this is about Pakistan and not the Leone movie with Eastwood et al. The good is that the Pakistani army and airforce are doing what they should in the ungovernable provinces along the border with Afghanistan, namely, attacking and killing the al Qaeda and Taliban types. More, please.

The bad is that President Asif Ali Zardari is warning that if his military has to shift men and materiel to the Indian border in order to respond to Indian troop movements, the war against the Taliban types will be hurt.

And the ugly is that the 10 attackers in the city formerly known as Bombay last week used Pakistani weapons (except for the rifles). Their semi automatic pistols and grenades were manufactured in Pakistan. The rifles were AK 47 types (in 7.62 x 39 mm) manufactured in Russia, specifically in Izhevsk, the city where Mr. Kalashnikov copied the Nazi Sturmgewehr 44 developed the AK-47.

Below are pictures of the grenades manufactured in Pakistan under license from the Austrian firm of Rheinmetall Waffe Munition. The ones with ridges are fragmentation types, although the metal case of the grenade shatters at random in the explosion and not along any lines raised or incised in the case.

The pistols were 7.62 mm (30 caliber) and were described as automatic, but I believe, from the accounts, they were semi automatic.

The Wall Street Journal had a heart breaking account Monday.

Labels: Global War Against Muslim Extremists, India

Although I do not doubt the guys who are there in Afghanistan, like Michael Yon, who say we are losing in the same way we were losing in Iraq before the Surge change in tactics there, I look to the changes in Pakistan with a real sense of relief and hope. It makes sense that the new leaders in Pakistan want to crush the fundamentalist extremists in the ungovernable border provinces just to protect their jobs and, uh, backsides. It also makes sense that, if there is no sanctuary for the Taliban in Pakistan, the sole non suicidal option left to the Taliban is to join in the non (mainly) violent political fray they are being invited to join. Stranger things have happened. Such a path has been trod before.

If the Taliban gives up violent overthrow and joins in the non bean bag of politics in Afghanistan, al Qaeda is horribly exposed to the wrath of American, NATO and Pakistan forces. Sucks to be them, then.

Labels: Global War Against Muslim Extremists