Right Wing Nut House

Evidently, this report yesterday that the bombs used by the London terrorists were “crude” and not very sophisticated was incorrect.

The report came from someone identified as an explosives expert who “consults” for Jane’s Defense Weekly. The “expert,” Andy Oppenheimer, is a distant relative of brilliant physicist and Father of the atomic bomb Robert Oppenheimer, and is more often identified with nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons threat assessment at Jane’s rather than “homeade” explosives analysis. It’s only interesting in light of this statement today by police spokesman Brian Paddock:

Each device is said by the police to have contained less than 10 pounds of “high explosives.” He also said the devices were “not homemade.” He added, “But whether it was military, commercial, plastic, we don’t want to say at this stage.”

Other reports also indicate a degree of sophistication that was previously dismissed:

The new details match the leading theory that is emerging among investigators, analysts said: that the bombings were a technically competent and well-coordinated attack planned and overseen by at least one experienced and well-trained operative using commercially manufactured explosives, and carried out by local people.

Such a pattern would fit previous bomb attacks in Casablanca in May 2003 and Madrid in March 2004. In each case, an operative from outside the country trained in Islamic extremist camps in Afghanistan or Pakistan used local people with no known links to terrorism to carry bombs to their targets. Irish Republican Army guerrillas used similar local helpers — known here as “lily whites” because they had no police record — in their decades-long bombing campaign against British rule in Northern Ireland.

Much has been written in the last few days about the growth of Islamic fundamentalism in Britain and how radical jihadis are operating with impunity in British society. In fact, London has come to be known as “Londonistan” for the wave of Muslim immigration that is changing the politics of not only England but nations on the continent as well:

Radical Muslims soon learned to ask for asylum for political persecution, to guarantee a long, taxpayer-supported vacation in Britain. London became “Londonistan,” the biggest European haven for Islamist indoctrination and recruitment. The terrorist enablers are the hard Left and its propaganda organs, notably the hallowed British Broadcasting Corporation. British ratepayers recently paid for the BBC to produce a “documentary” to peddle the bug-eyed notion that the terrorist threat was just a right-wing plot to scare people. That was pure disinformation, just one piece of a daily BBC propaganda stream that nurtures, protects, and rationalizes yesterday’s murders.

The question is what, if anything can be done about it. The howls of rage that would result in a crackdown on either immigration or radical Islamists from both Muslim “civil rights” groups and their left wing enablers in the media would seem to make any solution to the problem of inviting terrorists to take up residence in Britain - or the US for that matter - problematic. Richard Fernandez points out the dangers of doing nothing:

A politically correct policy that requires Europe not to know who is in the 5th column will will inevitably force it to assume guilt in those of a certain persuasion in a moment of mortal danger. Internment and mass deportation is what governments resort to when they don’t know who the real spies are. Political correctness is the practice of requiring ignorance indefinitely against the calculation that the moment of moral danger will never come because nobody knows what the hell they are going to do then. It’s at that moment, as Steyn observes, that farce, farce and farce becomes tragedy.

As western Muslims continue their campaign to portray our War on Terror as a war against Islam, it will become more and more difficult to crack down on the radical Imams who are not only actively recruiting for al Qaeda but also poisoning the minds of other Muslims to America and the west. And until the MSM wakes up to the danger and begins to broadcast the truth about these terror apologists and fellow travelers, we’ll continue to experience more numerical nightmares like 9/11, 3/11/ and 7/7.

The blogger known as Wretchard from the Belmont Club, whose incisive commentary on war and international politics makes him one of the most widely read sites in the sphere has decided to “out” himself:

The Belmont Club, or Wretchard rather, was cited in the Times of London in connection with “Downed US Seals may have got too close to Bin Laden”. It’s pretty strange since I’ve neither met Bin Laden nor ever been in Afghanistan, and makes me feel something of a fraud at being cited in connection with something I have no direct knowledge of. (Though the analysis is probably correct). It also reopens the question of whether Wretchard should continue to blog anonymously. Anonymous blogging has proved a good buffer against the petty vanities of authorship. The deal is you don’t do radio interviews, signed articles etc. The upside is that you have no ego to protect. The ideas you articulate are separated from your own personality.

This model is only partially functional now. People who knew me in the past, as well as my colleagues at Pajamas Media, know perfectly well “who” I am, although I think that information is totally irrelevant. Since the model of anonymity is failing, I’ll disclose the boring details. My name is Richard Fernandez, of Filipino birth and Australian citizenship. My interest in history probably began at Harvard, from which I graduated with a Masters in Public Policy. Wretchard is the name of an imaginary cat, the symbol of that entire race of stoic, yet somewhat foolish creatures. Belmont is the name of a suburb I roomed in while at Cambridge, Mass.

I know how it feels to lose that cloak of anonymity. It’s like losing a good friend. And it leaves one feeling exposed and vulnerable.

I would give one piece of advice to Mr. Fernandez. Resist the temptation to pull your punches now that your name is associated with your writing. I was surprised at how my attitude toward criticizing others changed drastically once my name was attached to what I was writing. It took me a while to get over the feeling that someone might not think well of me if I castigated them for something they wrote or said.

I also find it interesting that he chose the name of an imaginary cat for his nom de guerre. I would, however, protest his use of the adjective “foolish” to describe them. I’d like to see Mr. Fernandez jump off the kitchen counter 3 times higher than his height, land on his paws, and walk away as if he didn’t do anything wrong. I submit that takes a modicum of quick-wittedness not often seen in the animal kingdom.

Anyway…one more mystery in the sphere is cleared up. Now if we could only get Ace to out himself….

E.J. Dionne is a weeny.

Not very grown up of me, I’ll admit. But what else do you call someone who, when it comes to elections and governance, decides to make up the rules as we go along instead of adhering to to time honored traditions and history?

Should a temporary majority of 50.7 percent have control over the entire United States government? Should 49.3 percent of Americans have no influence over the nation’s trajectory for the next generation?

Like a spoiled brat of a child, Dionne is throwing a tantrum because the Republicans are seeking to (gasp!) control all three branches of government by putting a conservative or two on the Supreme Court. Evidently, Mr. Dionne has a novel view about elections: The Republican majority isn’t large enough to justify governing the country.

Many Republicans are already saying that since Bush won the last election and since Republicans control the Senate, the president’s choice should be confirmed with dispatch. But as former judge Robert Bork wrote recently in the Wall Street Journal, the Supreme Court “is the most powerful branch of government in domestic policy.” Today’s Republican majority, based on Bush’s 50.7 percent of the vote in 2004, has no inherent right to exercise near-total control over that “most powerful branch.”

Of course, Mr. Dionne’s thesis begs the question - um, just how large a majority would justify Republican governance? Since Mr. Dionne doesn’t answer the question, I’ll do it for him.

Exactly one more vote than your guy got.

We call this democracy. If your guy had gotten one more vote than our guy, then he would be the one sitting in the Big Chair making the selection that would have a minority party controlling two thirds of the federal government.

See how this thing cuts both ways?

Of course, if the situation were reversed I doubt whether we’d hear you caterwauling about “consultation” or other Democratic code words for obstructionism. Then again, if the confirmation shoe was on your foot, I have no doubt that you would use these numbers to justify nominating the most far left judges imaginable:

Consider that since 1992 the Republican presidential vote has averaged only 44 percent and the vote for Republican House candidates has averaged roughly 48 percent. In 2004, with large margins in some of the largest states, Democratic candidates for the U.S. Senate received nearly 5 million more votes than their Republican opponents.

Those numbers don’t change the fact that the GOP controls both the White House and the Senate. But they do suggest that the Republicans owe a decent respect to the opinions of the Democratic minority and have no mandate for pushing the court far to the right. Yes, this is a “political” assertion. But debates over Supreme Court nominations have been political throughout our history.

Mr. Dionne now refuses to reveal what his threshold for “mandate” would be. I recall following President Reagan’s electoral slaughter of Walter Mondale in the 1984 election, Democrats refused to acknowledge any mandate for the winner of 58% of ballots cast and 525 out of 538 electoral votes. After all (their logic went) , if one were to include every American eligible to vote (along with every dog, cat, and bunny rabbit) Mr. Reagan received less than 50% support of the American people. This was a time when Americans still took the Democratic party seriously unlike today where Democrats have become the punchline to a national joke.

A “mandate” in a democracy is when your guy gets one more vote than the other guy. This is based on the simple idea that governments derive their power from the consent of the governed. If one more of the governed gives their consent to be governed by the winner of an election, that’s as big a mandate as any landslide in political history. Any other formulation will not work. To try and make up new rules simply because your ideas and candidates have been rejected by 50% plus 1 of the electorate may be emotionally necessary but hardly a sound basis to conduct the business of the republic.

Yes, the minority has “rights” - or rather the minority view is “protected.” This protection takes the form of procedural rules like the filibuster in the Senate and (formerly) a strong federalist bent that gave certain powers to states that didn’t vote for the majority candidate. I find it interesting that Democrats are talking about “checks and balances” in the Senate as “Constitutional.” As every 12th grader in my day had to know before they could graduate high school, the “checks and balances” in the Constitution referred to the 3 separate but equal branches of government and had no relationship whatsoever to the transient nature of political power in one branch or another. This seems to have escaped the attention of the clueless Mr. Dionne.

Finally, Mr. Dionne advocates the Borking of any nominee as a last resort to keep the dastardly Republicans from seizing control of the government altogether and exercising the power granted them by the electorate in the last election:

Those who say that politics, philosophy and “issues” shouldn’t be part of the confirmation argument typically bemoan the prospect of a mean and dirty fight. But if the only legitimate way to stop a nominee is to discover or allege some personal shortcoming, all the incentives are in favor of nasty ad hominem attacks. If senators disagree profoundly with the philosophy of a nominee who happens to be a perfectly decent human being, isn’t it far better that they wage their battle openly on philosophical and political grounds? Why force them to dig up bad stuff on a good person? Paradoxically, denying that politics matter in confirmation battles makes for uglier politics.

A “legitimate” way to stop a nominee is to “discover or allege” (lie) some personal foible? One would hope that shooting the nominee would at least fall under Mr. Dionne’s definition of “illegitimate” because throwing crap against the wall to see if anything sticks is a helluva way to fight the nomination of a Justice to the United States Supreme Court. This tactic is not only beneath contempt, it reveals how desperately the Democrats and their gaggle of interest groups need to stop a conservative from being confirmed. The apocalyptic rhetoric of NOW, ANSWER, and the alphabet soup of special pleaders who call the Democratic party home makes a little more sense when placed in the context that it would be perfectly legitimate to make something up about a nominee in order to defeat them.

Mr. Dionne has given us fair warning that the coming fight over the next Justice to the United States Supreme Court is going to be a bloody one. And it also appears that the Democrats may be perfectly willing to filibuster any nominee who would reflect even a moderate conservative philosophy - especially if that philosophy was disagreeable to the interest groups whose hold on the elected officials in that party is now total and complete.

UPDATE

Polipundit also takes Dionne to task for his curious ideas regarding democracy:

So I guess we should all just forget about that election thingy. I’m sure Dionne would say the same thing if Kerry had won, and if Democrats - rather than Republicans - had gained four seats in the US Senate in 2004. Right? Right?

Not to belabor the point, but Powerline’s Paul Mirengoff also sees the hypocrisy dripping from this aricle. It says something revealing about the MSM that liberal columnists still feel secure enough that they can write this drivel with impunity.

UPDATE 7/12

David Limbaugh makes many of the same points that I do in his royal reaming of Mr. Dionne and adds this:

The answers to E.J.’s questions are these: No, a relatively narrow majority (nor an overwhelming majority, for that matter) does not have an inherent right to exercise near-total control over the “entire U.S. government” or “that ‘most powerful branch.’” It is entitled to precisely that amount of influence it is able to muster under the Constitution. Under the Constitution, the president is entitled to appoint judges, and the Senate has the advice and consent power.

Senators of the majority party are not required to push their agenda with only 50.7 percent intensity. It’s an adversary system — they may promote their views with 100 percent of their energy, and it is up to the minority party to advocate their dissenting views.

Elections have consequences E.J. - except when Republicans win, eh?

There are times I truly feel sorry for Markos Moulitsas Zúniga AKA “Kos.” His fans and worshipers number in the millions. He has the top political weblog in the country. He gets thousands of dollars a month in advertising.

Well, okay. I don’t feel that sorry for him. After all, his nickname, “Screw ‘em” Kos, was given for the curious epitaph Mr. Zúniga’ directed at those unfortunate souls in Fallujah two years ago who were murdered and then hung from a bridge while a crowd danced a jig in celebration. I’m told the offending post has mysteriously disappeared from his archives. Too bad he didn’t go ahead and delete most of what he wrote during the last election cycle.

But let’s give credit where credit is due. Kos has had it with the tin foil hat crowd:

Today I did something I’ve never done before (not even during the Fraudster mess), and wish I’d never had to do.

I made a mass banning of people perpetuating a series of bizarre, off-the-wall, unsupported and frankly embarrassing conspiracy theories.

I have a high tolerance level for material I deem appropriate for this site, but one thing I REFUSE to allow is bullshit conspiracy theories. You know the ones — Bush and Blair conspired to bomb London in order to take the heat off their respective political problems. I can’t imagine what fucking world these people live in, but it sure ain’t the Reality Based Community.

So I banned these people, and those that have been recommending diaries like it. And I will continue to do so until the purge is complete, and make no mistake — this is a purge.

A purge! A purge! Oh, really?

Update: I’ve been reinstating some of the banned accounts as they email me. Some people wondered why there wasn’t any warning. There have been warnings from others — repeated pleadings for people to ground themselves in reality.

It’s telling that I have NEVER done something like this before. Because this has been an extreme situation. This isn’t about disagreeing with what people are saying. If that was the case, everyone would’ve been banned by now. The myth of the “echo chamber” is just that. A myth.

But as for warnings, well, this has been my warning. I wanted it clear that I was serious, and I think that has come through. I am reinstating those who ask to be reinstated. But the message has been sent.

The message has been sent…but has it been received? Here’s one of the first commenters on this “Purge Post”:

Who decides which conspiracy theories are acceptable?

The American people were lied to repeatedly in order to go to war against Iraq. Conspiracy theory? Nope, fact.

Don’t know enough about either of the last two to decide either way. That’s up to the individual.

This “Emily Litella” moment is predictable and, as Kevin at Wizbang points out, it “makes one wonder how many Kossites will be left?”

Because once you get down to it, the modern Democratic Party is little better than a third world conspiracy mill that constantly feeds its wild eyed members ever more bizarre and outlandish intrigues in order to assuage all the slights - both real and imagined - received at the hands of their political opponents.

This flight from reality would be amusing if we weren’t fighting a war for our survival and trying to overturn centuries of oppression in the middle east. The sad fact is, as I’ve stated many times on this site, we need the left in order to win this war and succeed in the middle east. But like Tom Cruise in Top Gun following his crash that killed his best friend, the left simply is incapable of engaging the enemy. They are standing on the sidelines like a bunch of old men at a shuffleboard tournament, kibitzing and criticizing while not lifting a finger to help.

To say that they were obstructionists would be incorrect because they’ve made themselves totally irrelevant in the national security debate. The harm they do is that their conspiracy theories and overinflated rhetoric about Nazis and death camps are used as propaganda by our enemies to provoke and inflame the passions of the Arab street. In short, while they hate it when I say it, their rhetoric gives aid and comfort to the people we’re fighting. It gives them the only thing they have at this point - hope. Hope that the people who really want to fight this war and win will be thrown out of office and people who have no stomach for the fight are put in. It’s the only chance they have and like a drowning man hanging on to a piece of driftwood, the terrorists have latched on to it and are hanging on until help arrives…

The Democrats and their apologists who make up the community of Kos.

UPDATE

Michelle Malkin:

Wouldn’t it be something if the Democrat Party took a hint and tried draining its own fever swamps, too?

Now that would be a public works project that I could support enthusiastically. The only drawback would be the size and scope of the endeavor. Maybe we should start with something a little more manageable.

Like draining the Everglades.

Charles Johnson is also noticing and has a thought about Kos’ deliberate use of the word “purge”:

Once this revelation dawned upon him, in true reactionary fashion he carried out a “purge” to get rid of some of the nuts—and then had to un-purge and let them back in.

You ever hear a conservative use the word “purge” to describe an ideological cleansing? Hitler “purged” the S.A. and had his buddy Ernst Roehm murdered after dragging him out of the bed he was sharing with his male lover. Stalin “purged” the Red Army by having tens of thousands of officers executed, many of whom committed no crime whatsoever. It seems that the word has meaning and usage for only the most despicable tyrants in history.

That would place Kos in familiar territory.

Charmaine Yoest has been “Janey on the Spot” this week, first blogging the G8 Summit and then becoming an eyewitness to history as she arrived in London immediately after the bombs had gone off. Her nose for a story had her interviewing young Brits about the bombing. What she found was both depressing and expected:

Directly outside I saw Davy D, a hip-hop DJ from Oakland. Together we went over to interview a group of young men standing together by the barricades. After they recognized Davey, they were happy to speak right up. We asked them why everyone seemed to be reacting so calmly and they all just shrugged. One said: “I was expecting this — sooner or later it was going to happen. I knew something was going to happen.” Then he continued: “Everyone thinks they know why it happened. . .”

Why?

Well, because George Bush and Tony Blair need to make it easier to go to war.

Davey and I glanced at each other. The interview moved on to other topics. Finally, as we wrapped up, I stopped the young man, just to clarify his comment. Did he mean, I asked, to imply that there was some sort of conspiracy by the government involved in today’s attacks? Just to generate support for the war?

“Definitely,” he said. “Definitely.”

Charmaine and her companion moved on and interviewed two young women:

It’s Tony Blair’s fault! They’ve killed 100,000 people — it’s like a boomerang.” Later she repeated this, talking about “killing innocent people” and “invading other peoples’ country . . .”

When we asked her the question about the calm, she shrugged too. “We’re used to it,” she replied. “Americans get patriotic over anything silly.”

We were starting to see a pattern

After another “Blame Blair-Bush” interview, Charmaine approached the “quintessential” British businessman and asked similar questions:

Spied him talking on the phone near the barricade and moved in. Warily, he agreed to talk.

No, he wasn’t surprised. “It’s been due to happen. Sooner or later.” He got the talking points, too.

Bu then he pointed out something very interesting that I had noticed only on a subconscious level. “This is the heart of Little Beirut” he said. We were indeed surrounded by people, like the young men, who appeared to be Arab. A strange and exceptionally cold-blooded choice of targets for Al Quaida, even by terrorist standards.

Finally, I asked him the Tony Blair question. He looked at me puzzled: “How can you blame Tony Blair?”

Those young Brits were mouthing the slogans and regurgitating the tripe they hear everyday from pop culture icons, left wing politicians and media, and a host of personalities whose ever escalating rhetorical flights of fancy with regards to the War on Terror have evidently done enormous damage to the spirit and ability to resist the Islamists among the young.

Too small a sample? Here’s more:

Four young British Muslims in their twenties - a social worker, an IT specialist, a security guard and a financial adviser - occupy a table at a fast-food chicken restaurant in Luton. Perched on their plastic chairs, wolfing down their dinner, they seem just ordinary young men. Yet out of their mouths pour heated words of revolution.

“As far as I’m concerned, when they bomb London, the bigger the better,” says Abdul Haq, the social worker. “I know it’s going to happen because Sheikh bin Laden said so. Like Bali, like Turkey, like Madrid -I pray for it, I look forward to the day.”

“I agree with you, brother,” says Abu Yusuf, the earnest-looking financial adviser sitting opposite. “I would like to see the Mujahideen coming into London and killing thousands, whether with nuclear weapons or germ warfare. And if they need a safehouse, they can stay in mine - and if they need some fertiliser [for a bomb], I’ll tell them where to get it.”

(HT: Junkyard Blog)

All day long on Sky News, the refrain was repeated over and over. The attacks were Bush-Blair’s fault. If we weren’t in Iraq this wouldn’t have happened. Charmaine noticed something else; a curious lack of outrage and sorrow:

As our group re-assembled and walked back toward the hospital in a sudden grey London rain, we compared notes. We all agreed that we were observing a striking difference between English and American reactions to this kind of disaster. Perhaps later the impromptu teddy-bear memorials that characterize our American communal grief in the wake of tragedy will appear.

But, for now, the English we met were putting on the stiff upper lip.

I certainly hope so. From much of the reaction I’ve seen, with the exception of most politicians (who will probably wait until after the funerals to begin their Bush-Blair bashing) the reaction of the average Brit has underwhelmed me and left me with a sense that the Great Britain of today is a far cry from the Great Britain of my father’s day.

Would the British population of today stood up to Hitler? Would they have stuck with Churchill? Or would they have accepted Hitler’s “peace” offer that the Nazi dictator gave prior to the start of the Battle of Britain which guaranteed British sovereignty?

The Brits back then didn’t even bother to respond. In fact, the BBC gave an eloquent response rejecting Hitler’s offer without even consulting the government. Now that was a spirit of resistance.

Blair’s government won’t fall as a result of this tragedy. Nor will British troops be pulled from Iraq. But unless we see some signs over the next few days that the British people are beginning to wake up to the fact that George Bush didn’t bomb them but rather implacable, bloodthirsty Islamists, it may be time to start worrying about our best and closest ally in the War on Terror.

UPDATE

The quotes from the four Muslim youths wishing for nuclear armageddon in London were NOT given in the aftermath of the 7/7 bombing. As I just discovered, the quotes appeared in NRO’s The Corner on 7/7 and were taken from an Evening Standard article from April, 2004.

I regret the error and apologize for the confusion.

The bodies strewn in the street at Euston in London as a result of a bus being blasted to smithereens weren’t even cold when the first of the “Blame Bush” threads at Daily Kos and the Democratic Underground appeared. The tone of the commenters was triumphant, cheering each lurid detail of the attacks and speculating about what this dastardly deed, apparently carried out by a European offshoot of al Qaeda, would mean for the President and Prime Minister Blair’s political support for the War in Iraq at home.

There was also an obscenely unhealthy dose of speculation that the attack was planned and carried out by President Bush in order to (wait for it) distract the people from Karl Rove’s supposed outing of Valerie Palme as a CIA agent in the Joe Wilson imbroglio.

After wading through this conspiratorial muck, I felt unclean - almost as if I had crawled on my hands and knees through a dank basement full of cobwebs and roaches. The bile rising in my throat resulted in a post where I highlighted several of the more disgusting comments from the left on the tragedy.

But then last night, I got a comment taking me to task thusly:

Nearly 4 years after 9-11 Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda organization commits wholesale murder in the capital of a major Western power, and all you can find to talk about is what people are saying on blogs?

It’s a good question and I’d like to respond to it.

The reason it’s important what the left is saying is that their reaction both to the War in Iraq and the terror bombing in London is part and parcel of the overall War on Terror. This is a war fought on many fronts and one of them is right here at home. Not with terrorists, but with the terrorists primary enablers; the far left in Europe and America who are so besodden with defeatism and paranoia that it has deadened their natural instinct for self-preservation and endangered the lives of the rest of us.

What is driving this impulse to self destruction? I believe it to be a self-loathing so profound that it manifests itself as a pathological hatred for the very things that you and I love about America and admire in Western Civilization. It’s isn’t just flush toilets and electric lights. It isn’t the material largess which drives many to strive to better themselves and all of us to enjoy a level of comfort undreamed of since the time mankind crawled out of caves to organize themselves into civilizations. It isn’t even the unbridled freedom - freedom to speak our mind, worship our god, to read, to write, to breathe, to choose, to dream.

At bottom, the left’s hatred reflects a lack of trust in the ability of ordinary human beings to live their lives according to their own lights unencumbered by the dictates of a government or the diktats of an overweening superset of wise men whose self important worldview allows them to believe they can meddle in the lives and life decisions of everyone else.

True, this tendency is not confined to the far left. Many on the far right are also afflicted with the malady of self-righteousness. But I would argue that the culture war being waged between the two is, at its heart, a battle for the human soul. And while the methods and personalities on the right can sometimes grate like a fingernail being run slowly across a blackboard and I violently disagree with many of the the cultural conservative agenda items, I believe that in toto, the right is generally on the side of the angels. Not so much in their desire to legislate a morality or behavior, but in their effort to pull civilization back from the brink the left has pushed us toward.

That said, the left’s compulsion to ally itself with the radical Islamists - either knowingly or through stupidity, unknowingly - is the greatest challenge facing Western Civilization in its War on Terror. The very people who should be leading this fight; the intellectuals, the educators, the editorialists, the journalists, and the literati are absent without leave in this life and death struggle. Instead, we find a an overwhelming majority of the left trying to “explain the root causes” of terrorism instead of getting up on their hind legs and fighting it. And instead of drawing clear, unmistakable intellectual and moral battle lines - a function their ancestors fulfilled more than admirably during World War II and much of the Cold War - we’re treated to an exercise in moral equivalency so profoundly disturbing in its sophistry and intellectual cowardice that our enemies don’t know whether to laugh before they slaughter us or simply shake their heads in bemused silence.

When otherwise reasonably intelligent people can find an intellectual justification for wholesale murder (”We’re killing civilians in Iraq so why shouldn’t we be a target?”) it’s time to start asking some very tough, very pointed questions directed at the purveyors of such twaddle. Who is killing civilians in Iraq? What would have been the consequences of doing nothing about Saddam while he bought off our European “allies” with Oil for Food bribes so that he could reconstitute his WMD programs? What alternative strategy should we follow in the middle east in order to not contain, not lessen, not simply fight, but win the war against the Islamists?

Hard questions these and no answers have been forthcoming nor will any answers be given soon. A gigantic pair of blinders has been placed over the eyes of the western left. And if the obstruction were to be removed, they would find themselves poised precariously on the edge of a moral precipice with nothing with which to hang on to. They have abandoned the traditional anchors of Western Civilization found in religion and reason and instead indulged themselves in a Bacchanal of hatred and loathing for the society that nurtured them. It has left them marooned on a barren wasteland of an island with no rescue in sight and no way out of the intellectual morass they have made for themselves.

The kind of moral equivalency that can blame the United States for the attacks in London yesterday is as much a part of this war as the car bombs and homicide bombers butchering the citizens of a free Iraq or the secretive men hiding among us planning the next attack.

What will it take to clear their heads and awaken them to the mortal danger in which we find ourselves?

For most of us who live in the real world, the terrorist attacks in London today were a sad reminder that the Islamist jackals who seek to destroy us may be weakened but are still capable of carrying out sophisticated assaults on our civilization.

Then there are the rest of us:

After all they have been setting us up for this since September 11, 2001, with the PR machine going into overdrive since Blair jumped into Bush’s lap the summer prior to the invasion of Iraq. And who are they going to pin it on? Our favourite CIA asset, Osama bin Laden…

That’s right. The “black helicopter” nuts and 9/11 denial crowd are already weighing in. I find it fascinating to dissect this stuff only because it reveals a mindset that has totally lost touch with the real world, preferring instead to exist on a planet where evil forces are at work and a cabal of conniving, manipulative men are puppet masters, pulling the strings and making us dance in order to fulfill this conspiracy’s long sought goal of…what? Well, that depends on which nutcase you’re talking to. For some, world domination isn’t enough. Nothing short of control of the entire human population of the planet will satisfy the lust for power of these evil manipulators.

Of course, not everyone can see this conspiracy. No, you don’t need those special glasses like you’d need to see a 3-D movie. And no, this isn’t some kind of religious revelation where a bolt of lightening hits you and you’re suddenly made aware of this sinister danger.

The way to enlightenment is knowledge. You have to be able to divine the signs, read between the lines of news reports - reports from a media totally controlled by these men - and recognize the evidence that’s sitting right in front of you. Evidence that only a select few have been granted the ability to see.

The rest of us, of course, are just sheep. We’re asleep. We’re dumb brutes who are unwittingly giving this conspiracy money and power to further their goals.

Here’s a taste of what passes for “evidence” from these folks:

Comment: Firstly, as evidence of how the mainstream press is in no way “free” or “impartial” but rather infiltrated by extremist right-wing thinkers and government lackeys, the above mentioned so-called “terrorism expert”, employed by Rupert Murdoch’s Sky News, is ex-British parliamentarian and Professor of Marketing at London City University, Eirc Moonman, who just also happens to be President of the Zionist Federation of London.

Surely everyone would agree that the opinion of the President of the Federation of Zionists on Arab terrorism is anything but objective, yet we note that Sky News did NOT inform their viewers of Moonman’s extremist Pro-Israel background, stating only that he is a “terrorism expert” and even then neglecting to provide any credentials that might support his claim to terrorism expertise

First of all, the idea that Sky News “employs” a terrorism expert is absurd. The producers of the piece have a Rolodex full of “terrorism experts” who they can call and get a quote fr0m any time they want. And not revealing the Professors religion or political beliefs is irrelevant. I would challenge the writer of this piece to point to any statement made by the “expert” that wouldn’t have been echoed almost verbatim by any other terrorism expert. That’s the reason he’s an expert. He’s a spokesmen for a point of view generally accepted by those who have made their life’s work a study of the issue of terrorism.

Having to explain something that simple is tiring. Let’s amuse ourselves a little:

Another most interesting aspect to today’s London bombings is that right next door to the scene of one of the attacks on the London Metro, the Great Eastern Hotel was hosting a conference on the Israeli economy, attended by Israeli finance minister Benjamin Netanyahu, one of the most extreme right-wing “Zionist” members of Sharon’s Likud party and a staunch opponent of next month’s Gaza pullout plan. Most bizarrely of all, one initial report claimed that the Israeli embassy had received advance warning of the attacks from British police, a claim that Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom later denied, while another report had British police denying that they had received advance warning of the attacks from the Israeli embassy, which then THEY denied! What seems clear is that one or other or even both DID know of the attacks in advance and now both are attempting to cover up that fact.

This leads to the inevitable Israeli connection to the bombings. I’m sure you recognize the stench of anti-semitism emanating from this site. If not, don’t worry. They get much more graphic and nauseating later in this piece.

As for the charge of Israeli complicity, the original wire service report that I covered here very early this morning did indeed say that British authorities had contacted the Israeli’s prior to the blast. In fact, this was an error. The Israeli’s aren’t denying they were contacted as the author of the piece says. The Israeli’s said, later confirmed and corrected by AP, that Scotland Yard called the Israeli’s after the first bomb went off.

No one is denying anything. The AP simply got the story wrong. Gee…I didn’t know it was possible for AP or any MSM outlet to be wrong about anything, did you?

I predict that this AP story will live on forever. I base this prediction on something very similar that happened during the Kennedy assassination also involving AP.

The legendary UPI reporter Merriman Smith was beating the tar out of AP during the first crucial minutes of the assassination story. In the days before satellites, the wire services were king. And the way you got on top was being first with the story. It was a job where seconds counted and Smith had the drop on the AP from the get go.

Since AP couldn’t catch up, the editors were pressing their correspondent in Dallas Jack Bell for more information. They were desperate. After Bell left Parkland hospital following Kennedy’s death, he collared every policeman within his grasp begging for news. At around 3:15, he cornered a Dallas policeman who told him a secret service agent had been killed in the motorcade. Without getting any confirmation, Bell sent it over the wire. Within minutes, NBC had reported it as fact. Of course, there was no dead secret service agent. NBC had to retract and to this day, the conspiracy nuts point to this story as proof there was more than one assassin.

Finally, we come to the nub of their thought processes. It’s a form of contrarianism where white is black, up is down, and the surest sign that the cabal is at work is how obvious the answer to any question is:

Contrary to the headlines on mainstream news sources and claims by the British government, the attacks today in London bear all the hallmarks of yet another false flag operation carried out by the intelligence apparatus of the UK, the US or Israel (or a combination of all three). Perhaps now is a good time to talk about the fact that, on many, many occasions in the past, US, British and Israeli intelligence agencies have employed “false flag” operations to further their political and military goals. Indeed, the idea of attacking oneself or the population of one’s own country and then blaming it on your enemies is as “old as the hills” and is a core element of covert intelligence agency tactics.

Take, for example, the Madrid train bombing of March 11th 2004. 191 people were murdered, supposedly by al-Qaeda, yet all of the victims were simple, working class people, many of whom had protested against the Iraq invasion and the then Spanish government’s decision to send troops to Iraq. So why would al-qaeda, an organisation that claims to represent the interests of the Islamic people, want to attack innocent people who to some extent share their opposition to pro-American European governments?

That last question would be laughable if placed in another context. It’s the same rant made by Michael Moore the day after 9/11 when he said:

If someone did 9/11 to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him! Boston, New York, DC, and the planes’ destination of California - these were places that voted AGAINST Bush!

The ignorance is breathtaking. The whole point of terrorism is random violence with a great big emphasis on random. So in answer to the author’s question, al Qaeda is not crazy or stupid. The psychological effects of random death are incalculable. Unlike Michael Moore and the author of this piece, the rest of us know that we live in a democracy. If you make the people - ordinary blue collar, average people - uncomfortable enough your chances of affecting the policy of that government increases with the level of violence.

Notice also the “false flag” charge which is not only impossible to prove but gives the reader the impression the author knows something about the subject of intelligence. What the author doesn’t explain is where his proof for these prior “false flag” operations is and, more importantly, how these activities are at the “core” of intelligence agencies.

The fact is that the “core” of intelligence agencies today is analysis. More than 95% of our intelligence budget goes to analyzing information that pours in from an endless variety of sources, most of them overt like newspapers and books. And while there has been a massive effort to increase our human intelligence gathering capabilities since 9/11, the fact is our efforts have met with limited success.

But what about the other 5% of the budget spent on “black ops?” Here’s a story illustrative of how unlikely a conspiracy like 9/11 could be kept secret.

In 1982, the navy began one of the most secretive operations in the history of the United States. We sent a sub into Soviet territorial waters to tap into an undersea cable that connected the Soviet far east fleet with Moscow. The sub was on station for months at a time. If they had been discovered they would have been sunk.

Bob Woodward of the Washington Post had the story less than a month after the operation started. Thankfully, Mr. Woodward and the Post editors resisted the temptation to go with the story. Otherwise, that sub would have been lost.

The point? It’s virtually impossible to keep a secret in Washington. Think of some of the conspiracies that have been revealed in the last 50 years. Watergate was outed less than 2 years after the plumbers started their work. Poor Ollie North had his arms for the contras conspiracy exposed in less than a year. The fact is that if it’s juicy enough, the secret eventually gets out.

And that’s the problem with the conspiracy mongers. The kind of false flag operation envisioned by the writer involving three governments(!) would necessarily need dozens of people to set the operation up and then, more importantly, leave a false trail that only the enlightened ones who can read the signs will be able to follow back to the original perpetrators.

Up is down. Black is white. Don’t believe your eyes and make sure your tin foil hat is screwed on tight.

John Cole has similar thoughts.

UPDATE

Ladies and Gentlemen! Direct from Armadillo Headquarters, please welcome The Amboy Dukes (and Jeff Goldstein).

update 16: Predictably, Justin Raimondo is already seeing Joooos in the Shepherd’s Pie. Now, I’m not one to tell the Zionists how to run their international cabal, but if it were me who was in charge of running the world, I’d sacrifice up a few Hebes at each of these bombings, just to keep Justin Raimondo and his tireless investigators off my ass. Hell, I might even throw in a Likudnik from time to time, just to really confound the Truth Seekers.

Um…I think he put one too many “o’s” in Joooos.

I swear to God I ought to go into the palm reading business.

At about 4:30 this morning, as the news was first trickling in about the terror bombings in London, I predicted that the left would find some way to blame Bush and accuse him in the process of trying to make political hay out of the tragedy.

Sure enough, it wasn’t long before Kos, the DU moonbats, and lefty bloggers all over the sphere were jumping all over this story bashing the President unmercifully and offering the attack as proof that the President’s war on terror is a failure.

From Daily Kos:

One has to wonder if we were not physically encroaching in the middle east whether these travesties would be taking place against us. Certainly they would be less common.

If only Bush and Blair would have allowed the inspectors to complete their job this barbaric act today would probably never have happened…

Do you believe that Karl Rove isn’t plotting how to spin the London attacks at this very moment?

I agree we should mourn the dead from today’s attack. Perhaps many of us are cynical but it comes from experience of seeing how our so called leaders behaved after previous attacks

Democratic Underground:

Yes, Blair, “barbaric,” just like the daisy-cutter bombs you and yours dropped on innocent people in Iraq. As Richard Clark had predicted, your preemptive attack on Iraq–and your little buddy’s, the Chimp–has brought more terror on the world, not less. Wake the hell up. You brought this on all of us.

This is the post I looked for to make sure someone else pointed it out. Thank you. We can never make ourselves safe by killing people elsewhere and then expecting ourselves to be immune.

Thank you for remembering Crazy Reason #7 for killing brown people who live over oil in the ground

(HT: Michelle Malkin)

What can you say to such idiocy?

And remember George Galloway? He’s the British MP up to his neck in the Oil for Food scandal who came over and testified before the Senate committee? Here’s his reaction to today’s bombing:

We argued, as did the security services in this country, that the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq would increase the threat of terrorist attack in Britain. Tragically Londoners have now paid the price of the Government ignoring such warnings.”

Talk about predictable.

The only question I have for you, oh gentle readers, can you imagine what the reaction from these moonbats would have been if the bombs went off here?

Oh the moonbats would have been barking then.

WE ARE ALL BRITS TODAY. RULE BRITANIA!
Thanks to Jeff Harrell of Shape of Days for the great idea.

London just got hit…bad.

Early reports, now confirmed, say that a double decker bus was the target of a bomb that witnesses say completely destroyed the vehicle. No word on dead and injured yet.

There were apparently 7 other blasts that hit the subway or “tube” system in London.

This has al Qaeda written all over it although I suppose I should hold off on speculation until more is known. Al Qaeda, you may recall, specializes in multiple attacks carried out in a short period of time. Witnesses on MSNBC are saying that the subway blasts occurred one after another in rapid succession.

One note: while the G8 Summit is being held in Edinburgh, Scotland it is improbable that the anarchists who are protesting there have anything to do with this. This kind of coordinated attack would seem to be beyond the capabilities of the unorganized group of violent mischief makers in the anarchist movement whose very nature precludes any kind of large scale cooperation. That plus I would guess that the anarchists may be one of the most infiltrated groups worldwide when it comes to police and domestic security agencies means that any large scale attack would probably be discovered in the planning stages.

The IRA? It’s a possibility but of late, the nationalist terror group has sought to work within the political system. An ultra-violent off shoot of the group? Again a possibility. Many of the most violent terrorists received their training from al Qaeda back in the 1990’s so it would make some sense that they would adopt some of the jihadists methods. But it would be a radical departure for the IRA to target civilians in their attacks. Their bombs are usually preceeded by warnings so that civilians can clear out of the danger zone. And IRA bombs in the past have been directed against symbols of British authority like police, army, the government, and even the royal family.

I’ll keep this at the top of the page all day so watch for updates.

UPDATE I

First report of “90 casualties” in the blasts. Here’s a AP eyewitness report via Drudge:

LONDON (AP) - An explosion destroyed a double-decker bus in central London during rush hour Thursday, police said, and several blasts also went off on the London subway. There were reports of casualties.

People covered in blood stumbled out of the subway, and a witness said the entire top deck of the bus was destroyed.

“I was on the bus in front and heard an incredible bang, I turned round and half the double decker bus was in the air,” Belinda Seabrook told Press Association, the British news agency.

She said the bus was packed with people.

“It was a massive explosion and there were papers and half a bus flying through the air,” she said.

Another report, now confirmed, states that another explosion rocked the square where the double decker bus exploded.

London is at a standstill as the entire public transportation has been shut down. The London Police Commissioner has just gone on TV and told people to stay home.

I hope that American officials in cities across our country are on a heightened state of alert and are taking measures to protect our public transportation this morning.

UPDATE II

Officials are saying that at least 3 buses have been the target of bombs. Since it was rush hour, the loss of life could prove to be large.

One witness, Darren Hall, said some passengers emerging from an evacuated subway station had soot and blood on their faces. He told BBC TV that he was evacuated along with others near the major King’s Cross station and only afterward heard a blast.

Police confirmed an explosion destroyed a double-decker bus at Russell Square in central London and said they suspected a bomb caused the blast. Dow Jones Newswires reported that police said there were explosions on two others buses.

And more from AP:

Police said incidents were reported at the Aldgate station near the Liverpool Street railway terminal, Edgware Road and King’s Cross in north London, Old Street in the financial district and Russell Square in central London, near the British Museum.

London Ambulance Service said several vehicles had been dispatched to the area near Liverpool Street station.

Also a report from the Israeli’s (unconfirmed) that Scotland Yard approached the Israelis minutes before the explosions and told them that they had received warnings of a terror attack. If true, big trouble for Blair. Depending on what the authorities knew and when they knew it, this kind of thing could bring down Blair’s government.

We’re waiting anxiously for the first posting on the Democratic Underground website blaming Bush/Rove for the attack to gin up his support. Maybe they’re still asleep.

CNN has a Timeline of events and is now reporting that there were 6 blasts at subway stations (some people are apparently still trapped underground) and 3 other attacks on double decker buses.

The communication network is completely overloaded as everyone is using their cell phones at once to call loved ones to assure them that they’re all right. This phenomena is reminiscent of what happened all over America on November 22, 1963 when the telephone system in Washington, D.C. was completely shut down when it was overloaded. This led to some speculation by conspiracy theorists that the assassination was a coup de tat by the military. What happened in London proves that even sophisticated and technologically advanced systems are vulnerable.

Tony Blair confirms that the attacks are in fact, “terrorist attacks.” He’s leaving the G8 summit to return to London.

UPDATE III

Looks like officials here - at least in Washington - are in fact ratcheting up security in anticipation of something similar happening here:

The explosions on London’s transit system are prompting heightened security in the U-S.

Metro riders in Washington, D-C, should expect to see increased patrols. A Metro spokeswoman says officials are “ramping up security immediately.” She says officials will be using bomb sniffing dogs and officers will have a higher visibility and will be carrying machine guns.

The spokeswoman says officers will also be searching buses

I’m going to hold off on more updates until the picture gets clearer. So far, 2 confirmed dead and 90 injuries but that number is sure to rise.

UPDATE IV

Now that more information has been confirmed and some things clarified, here’s what we know.

Four bombs exploded in downtown London. Three devices went off in subway cars and one took out a double decker bus:

LONDON - Four blasts rocked the London subway and tore open a packed double-decker bus during the morning rush hour Thursday, sending bloodied victims fleeing in the worst attack on London since World War II. At least 40 people were killed, U.S. officials said, and more than 360 wounded in the terror attacks.

A clearly shaken Prime Minister Tony Blair called the attacks “barbaric” and said they were designed to coincide with the G-8 summit opening in Gleneagles, Scotland. They also came a day after London won the bid to host the 2012 Olympics. A group calling itself “The Secret Organization of al-Qaida in Europe” claimed responsibility.

The explosions hit three subway stations and a double-decker bus in rapid succession beginning at 8:51 a.m. (3:51 a.m. EDT) and ended about 40 minutes later when a blast ripped the top off a bus. Implementing an emergency plan, authorities immediately shut down the subway and bus lines that log 8.4 million passenger trips every weekday.

As of now, 40 are dead with hundreds injured. A European offshoot of al Qaeda has claimed responsibility.

What will this do for the war on terror? Hopefully, the major effect of this attack will be in a hardening of positions by the so-called E3 - Germany, France, and Great Britain - who are negotiating with Iran to stop them from enriching uranium so that the radioactive mullahs will be prevented from building a nuclear weapon. If we can put a little spine into Chirac and Schroeder when it comes to our coming showdown with Iran, all the better.

By the end of summer, the mullahs will have a decision to make; confront the west or acquiesce to our demands that they abandon their enrichment program and submit to regular and close inspection of their facilities. It would help when we go before the UN to try and get that body on board for any sanctions regime that would certainly be a first step in any confrontation. And while the probability that both Russia and China would veto any sanctions effort in the Security Council, Germany and France would be valuable allies in any military confrontation with the mullahs.

The Boston Globe’s James Carroll has evidently decided that the conventional history of our effort in the Pacific theater in World War II just doesn’t cut the mustard. He has taken it upon himself to not only invent an alternative history of those events, but to also accuse the troops who fought in that war of being inhuman monsters:

Even as the valor of what they did on one beachhead after another is properly honored, the American fighters of the Pacific War were not heroes. The desperation of island combat included exchanged barbarities of which no one would willingly speak for a generation. On the American side, there were foul racism, vengeful refusals to take prisoners, a generalized brutality that extended to a savage air war.

To deconstruct such idiocy would require one to ignore the actual history of that “savage” conflict and instead, travel with Mr. Carroll down the rabbit hole of obfuscation and ignorance and emerge in a world where moral equivalency has acheived supremacy over common sense and rational thought.

The theme that Mr. Carroll clumsily tries to advance - that American GI’s in the Pacific were somehow motivated by racism and revenge that led to a “generalized brutality that extended to a savage air war” is breathtaking in it’s discounting of Japanese war aims and the way that the Japanese military waged war.

The militaristic government of Japan launched wars of agression against China, Malaysia, the Phillipines, the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), Korea, Viet Nam, Singapore, and the United States to name a few. Their purpose was to unite all of east Asia in a “Co-Prosperity Sphere” where Japan would rape those nations of natural resources and use the inhabitants for both slave labor and sex slaves. Without exaggeration, it can be said that the Japanese army raped its way across the continent of Asia.

Only one thing stood in the way of Japan’s dream of empire; the United States Navy. Hence, the attack on Pearl Harbor. In the six months following the Pearl Harbor catastrophe, the Japanese attacked and occupied several island chains that served as forward bases both for defense and for future operations we now know were planned for New Zealand and Australia. In order for the US Military to win the war, it was believed that we would have to invade Japan proper. To do that, we had to defeat the Japanese military who were occupying the island chains that ran roughly southwest to northeast from New Guinuea to Okinawa.

Two things made the island warfare in the Pacific different from the kind of war being fought on the western front in Europe against the Nazis. First, the distances involved were staggering. From Pearl Harbor to the Philipines was 4,500 miles. These vast distances meant that any offensive operations against Japan would be totally dependent on the navy’s ability to carry troops and resupply outposts captured in our drive across the south pacific.

The second huge difference involved the way that the individual Japanese soldier fought. Subscribing to an ethical code known as “Bushido” or “way of the warrior,” these beliefs all but insured that any confrontation with western soldiers would result in combat that would confuse, frighten, and even overwhelm those unfamiliar with the strict tenets of the code’s “moral” precepts. These precepts included frugality, loyalty, mastery of martial arts, and honor to the death.

A perfect example would be the battle for Okinawa. Approximately 25,000 Japanese soldiers faced off against more than 100,000 Americans. Using tactics that disoriented and frightened the Americans - including night ambushes, firing from caves and prepared underground positions, suicide attacks against vastly superior forces, and mass suicide by civilians and military - our soldiers quickly realized that in order to stay alive, it was best to shoot first and keep shooting until all the Japanese were dead. Out of 25,000 Japanese troops engaged at Okinawa, 129 surrendered. The rest either committed suicide or died in combat.

How to deal with such fanaticism? Is it racism to kill an enemy before he kills you? There’s no evidence that Japanese POW’s were treated with any more malice than German POW’s. There were a heck of a lot fewer of the former for reason’s I’ve described. And as far as the “savage air war” that was carried out one has to look at the Japanese war industry and how they had made workers’ houses the hub of industrial activity that kept that Japanese war machine in business. By locating factories in residential areas, the Japanese military planners were able to disperse industrial production so that workers’ dwellings became mini-workshops contributing to the factory’s productivity. The only way to effectively bomb the factories was to destroy the housing for the workers as well.

All of this information is not a secret. It’s not locked up in a closet somewhere and guarded by CIA agents. The fact that Mr. Carroll didn’t bother giving any perspective to his screed cannot be due to a lack of available information. One must surmise it was a deliberate omission.

The racial overtones to the war in the Pacific were contained in the propoganda fed to the American people and soldiers who fought in that theater. But to say that the soldiers themselves were motiviated by racisim and revenge is ridiculous. One would have to be a psychic to be able to glean those kinds of intentions from our military.

Were some individual soldiers racist? Obviously yes. But to tar and feather the millions of fighting men who fought in the Pacific theater with such a baseless charge is either a sign of complete ignorance or of a virulent anti-Americanism that ignores history and circumstance and descends into hyperbole.

I’ll leave it to the reader to decide which explanation illuminates Mr. Carroll’s motives.

UPDATE

I came late to this party. Here’s Jeff Godlstein’s excellent takedown:

Leaving aside the idiocy of a formulation that insists that because war itself is hell, all those involved in fighting it are equally deserving of both its glories (such as they are) and its shames, Carroll’s real rhetorical transgression here—over and above the shots he takes at veterans—is to insist, against all reason and in the face of the billions of words spilled in its defense, that no one is able to say why we are fighting in Iraq. Which, like the rest of his piece, is utter nonsense.

And Ace weighs in with this:

There is a certain sort of person whose intellectual vanity causes him to reject what he considers the low-class and uneducated “standard” form of patriotism exhibited by his cutlural and moral inferiors. It’s the impulse to differentiate oneself from one’s (putative) lessers and thereby elevate oneself into the ranks of the elite.

The same shallow impulse that causes eggheads to reject good movies, such as Dumb & Dumber, because they’ve got mass appeal.

Paul Geary at The New Editor:

This isn’t even moral equivalence with fascists. At least they killed for a reason. We’re worse.

Why write this for publication on July 5? Why not publish this on Memorial Day, when we hapless Americans are busy honoring our dead non-hero racist savages who make war for no reason?