Excellent, meaningful and a deep correction. Thank you, Jim (hope Jim is ok with you).

I saw this domain for sale, according to the appraisals, its worth over $5000.00 usd. It has just the perfect amount of keywords….

Too many snotty little Lefties here with deep pockets donating to HAMAS and Hezbollah. Too much adoration for CODE PINK and Company.

My money is on a flyover country state, major metro area chemical plant or nuclear plant. Less flash but highly lethal killing power- slow killing power beyond the intial event.

And disorienting to all the survivors because so few of the major population centers will feel any connection to it, so “it wasn’t so bad”. Destructive, lethal, costly, but not significant enough for the “Toad in the boiling water” to mind the heat it has become accustomed to.

Friday, August 10, 2007

Nuking Cleveland won’t help [Mark Steyn]

Our pal Michelle Malkin responded:

He wants more Americans murdered on American soil to “sew us back together?”

We don’t need healing. We need the half of the country that doesn’t believe we are under threat from global jihad to wake up and smell the suicide bomb smoke.

And that’s right. But there’s another point to be made.

I get a ton of mail every week along Bykofsky lines: “Oh, this country won’t get serious until there’s another attack.” Sorry, but don’t look to a big smoking crater in Buffalo to save us.

For a start, the author overstates the immediate unity post-9/11. Even then, there was a big difference between the “righteous rage” crowd and those who wanted to wallow in bathetic weepy let’s-hold-hands-and-drone-”Imagine” candlelight vigils and retreat into antiquated tropes about “root causes” like global poverty (notwithstanding the middle-class backgrounds of Mohammed Atta and co). The second time round, there won’t even be a momentary veneer of unity. The angry left will be demanding by lunchtime “What did Bush know and when did he know it?” and citing eminent scientists such as Professor Rosie O’Donnell to demonstrate that it couldn’t possibly have been anything but an inside job. The less angry left will demand not a punitive military response but a 12-month blue-ribbon commission co-chaired by Lee Hamilton to call witnesses and investigate where the Administration went wrong. Less motivated types will be convinced – like British public opinion after the Glasgow attack and the sailor kidnappings – that it’s blowback for Iraq. And a big chunk of the rest may even plump for the Spanish option post-Madrid: Oh, dear, we seem to have caught your eye. What would it take for that not to happen again?

The split in this country is real. The so-called “singular purpose” of Fall 2001 was mostly illusory. Lightning won’t strike twice, even if the Halliburton Tsunami-Hurricane Machine wants it to.

08/10 04:34 PM

Mark Steyn never disappoints.

Well stated.

NY police receive “unverified radiological threat”

The islamic death cultists are always listening, learning, plotting. Their defeat must be total and unconditional.

No.

Nope. All it will take is for the US make an official declaration of war on specific nations when their aggression warrants such a declaration. A Syrian attack on Israel is a good example of something that might trigger an official declaration of war.

Why is the official declaration of war what it will take? Because it gives the Office of the President of the United States sweeping powers to legislate the American economy into a mode of production referred to as “ a war footing”.

The war effort at home in WWII wasn’t borne out of the goodness of American hearts. The sacrifices people made were made because laws were passed making certain forms of consumption and political association *ILLEGAL*. Rationing and curfews out here on the west coast were the law. Lights out at a certain hour out of fear of Japanese air attacks. Limited wages were paid to ship builders to control costs so the ships could get built quickly for immediate deployment- aircraft, vehicles, etc. as well. Steel, concrete, copper and other precious metals were not readily available for civilian use: priority went to the government’s priorities. Citizens both volunteered for war and they were drafted for war. The morality debates about killing and violence and peace were going on- but the war was law.

As far as international support was concerned, the French were being crushed by the Nazis. America’s entry into the war wasn’t up for debate. The Chinese weren’t upset about America’s entry into the war- Japan was raping the civilian population at will. Russia? The children of the slaughtered Russian armies of WW1 were on the slaughter block 19 years after the Bolshevik Revolution. Did they care the US declared war on Germany and Japan? They hardly knew their own names, to use a figure of speech.

This Nation is known as a sleeping giant. The question is at what point will the US martial what is left of its industrial base, spend some of its gold, and pass laws to build a standing army with a specific mission to kill the Islamic Fascist enemy and destroy the governments of Iran, Syria, and Libya to signal the end of theocratic militancy in the Middle East?

That action will not be based on some absurd popular consensus. Some of us will get it and go with it, do our share and then some. Barbara Streisand, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, George Clooney, Angelina Jolie, and the rest of the elites in Hollywood probably will not. And they will seal their fate in history despite their fame and their pet hobby horse engagements for “world peace” or “making a difference in the life of a child”.

They will remain non-interventionist in their political views. But what are those when thousands of us are dying? Not much. What meaning will their views have to the maimed and broken? Not much.

And as for the politicians- what relevance will Bill Clinton or his wife Hillary and their daughter Chelsea have once this Nation finally goes into all out war? The pictures of the USS Cole, the Oklahoma City Bombing, the US embassy bombing- these pictures will have a whole different meaning to the public than they do now or did when the attacks occurred. THAT family will be dismissed as the posers they have always been- and they will be prosecuted for their many crimes. The idiots the Clintons depended on not to judge them will be losing loved ones for crimes the Clinton’s committed while in office (Kosovo Anyone?).

It won’t take an attack on American soil to put the country on an all out war footing. Keep an eye on what the Kurds and the Israelites do. Recent funding cuts (probably cut in principle only) to Israel have put pressure on the Israelites to fend for themselves. The timetable has been sped up supposedly because the US had to ship $800 million worth of improved armor to Baghdad. Mmmm-hmm. Sure.

The conflagration is upon us. The Nation is distracted by the arbitrary “Petraeus Report” coming up in September about the surge. Three carrier battle groups in the Gulf Region are a signal to me that there is more in the wind here than whether or not this “unpopular war” will continue.