Defeating Islamofascism

There is much hand-wringing about the appropriate strategy to defeating Islamofascism.  This isn't surprising, on the one hand, because the people running this country don't listen to those who know how to wage war.  Political considerations overshadow the sane suggestions made by the military men because polls might lessen the popularity of the POTUS or the Democrats might lose seats in Congress if they vote in favor of continuing a very necessary war.

It's not that we don't have the wherewithal to defeat the terrorists.  Militarily, we are the strongest the world has ever known.  Our technology is the best.  We are experienced at war, having been at work almost continuously since 1941, with very few breaks.  What we lack, however, is perspective and will -- or at least our leaders do.

Years ago I watched Pork Chop Hill, a movie starring Gregory Peck about a particular ridge in the Korean War that was of little consequence strategically.  While the bombs and bullets whistled overhead, the negotiators in Panmunjom were shown trying to get a deal with their Communist counterparts.  For whatever reason, I remember a particular sequence where one American negotiator is fuming about the intransigence from the Communists and the other negotiator explains to him that this wasn't a battle about land, but about will and patience.  The Communists wanted to see how long the Americans would fight over that meaningless hill to determine what other concessions they could wring from the Americans, so they continued trying to take Pork Chop hill no matter what the cost in blood and treasure, because its true value was measured in political capital.

This was brought home to me last week as I finished The Korean War written by the excellent British military historian Max Hastings.  In his summary chapter about the war, Mr. Hastings wrote:

Senior Chinese soldiers  -- if not their leader -- emerged from Korea having absorbed the central, critical reason lesson for future Asian conflicts:  that they must never face a Western army on its own terms.  They must seek to fight when Western resources and technology count for least.  They could exploit the West's greatest single weakness:  the impatience of democracies.  It had proved difficult for the United States and her allies to maintain public tolerance and support for the Korean War for three years.  Apathy and exasperation with a national effort which was yielding no evident result became apparent in the American electorate long before the armistice....The message the Communists surely absorbed:  never again should they provide the West with so unclouded and comprehensible a reason to resist, and time must always be against the democracies in arms.

Asymmetrical warfare is the terrorists only advantage.  Given the tremendous advantages in hardware the democracies enjoy, it would be madness for the Islamofascists to meet them in a set-piece battle unless they were only interested in propaganda battle.  IED's, beheadings, burnings, hostage taking, hitting soft targets -- these are the only ways they can hope to level the playing field so that they can arrive at the result they want.  In the meantime, our leaders seem to think that conventional means will bring the terrorists to heel, forgetting the old saw that our military has to be ready to fight the next war, not the last one.

Underlying all of this is the will of the American people to eliminate the threat of ISIS, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram and the Taliban any way we can.  The MSM says we're war weary.  This feeds into the terrorists' strategy and emboldens them.  

It's easy for me, someone who never served, to recommend that we bring all our military weight to bear on the Islamofascists.  I have no sons who could be killed in the war.  But if this country is going to regain its primacy in the world, if we are going to be feared such that no one will trifle with us, we have to be willing to pay any price to defeat those who would do us harm.  Patience is key.  We have to be willing to bear the burdens that come with a war, because this is a war of survival.  Like the Communists some sixty years ago, the Islamofascists are counting on our impatience to be our weakness.  Once they sense that we are no longer willing to fight, they'll extend their advantage. Like the Communists, this is an ideological war the Islamofascists are fighting.  Territory and possessions are secondary to their ultimate goal.  They won't be bought off.  They must be exterminated.

I fear, however, that the political will is lacking.  Given that this administration believes that a deserter served with honor and distinction, I doubt it will agree with the military on how to fight this war.  I doubt it even recognizes the nature of the fight.  It wants to use distant means to fight the war and not put men on the ground to confront the threat.  Instead, it allows unarmed Americans to be slaughtered.  What's troubling is that most Americans either don't care or can't get their Congressman to oppose the policies in place.  I have no doubt that, unlike the unpopular war in Iraq, most Americans would not oppose a fight with ISIS and its cohorts.

To be a great nation again we must confront evil and extirpate it.  As someone very wise once said to me, it's a privilege to be born free but an obligation to die free.

I don't intend on dying at the hands of Islamofascists unless it's in defense of this country.

(c) 2015 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Random Entertainment

Lately, I've been pondering some things about general entertainment.  Since there are too many disparate thoughts for a single blogpost, I'm going to go with random entertainment musings:

-- Just what was Blondie rapping about in its song Rapture?  Were they on drugs when they wrote it?

--  It's interesting that an American rap artist who enjoys the freedom to express herself freely and dress in scanty clothing while she performs would lash out at the country and white people, many of whom probably pay a pretty good penny for her trash.

-- Tom Bergeron is probably the funniest, quickest and nicest host of any show on television.

-- On the flipside, Alex Trebek is annoying in the extreme, especially when it comes to pronouncing foreign words, most notably when they're French.

--  I'd heard the Rolling Stones' son Sympathy for the Devil for years, but it wasn't until recently that I actually listened to the words.  Interesting.

--  I wonder if this Paul McCartney dude's career has taken off now thanks to his collaboration with Kanye and Rihanna.

--  Horatio Saenz is an idiot.  For him to suggest that conservatism controlled Saturday Night Live at any point or even exerted superior control to ridicule liberal politicians much to his chagrin is laughable.

-- If I didn't watch Ultimate Survival on the National Geographic channel, I never would have known what a bublick was.  And even though I've now seen it, I still don't believe it.

-- It escapes me how anyone can determine who the best singer on The Voice is past a certain point. There are so many good singers it seems insane to me to try to pick out the best one.

-- Why on earth would women interested in a career in broadcast journalism shoot pin-up shots and have them displayed on the internet?  If one is going into entertainment, perhaps, but what is it with these women on Fox News have Vargas-like pin-up photos in various stages of undress?  I thought they were paid for delivering and opining on the news.

--  Karen doesn't agree with me, but did The Following inspire any of ISIS' brutality?

--  For a crowd as socially conscious and allegedly cosmopolitan as is Hollywood, one would think that it would have learned to pronounce Alejandro Iñárritu's name by now.  Then again, if it never learned to pronounce the comparatively easier Oscar de la Renta's name properly, why would it learn to pronounce Iñárritu's?

--  Did Kevin Bacon make the egg industry wait to hire him as a pitch man, or did it never occur to the industry to approach him until now. Then again, why didn't the bacon industry approach him years ago, or did he reject their overtures?

--  For the life of me, I don't know why I like Grimm so much -- but I do.

--  Karen and I have heard a lot of jabs directed at Nickleback recently, but neither of us is in on the joke.  I'm not huge Nickleback fan, so what's the deal?

--  Since when was Bobbi Christina considered a singer?

--  Sadly, Lara Logan's back in the hospital due to complications arising from the savage sexual assault perpetrated on her a couple of years ago in Cairo.  I wonder if CBS feels bad at all for putting her on suspension awhile ago, knowing that perhaps she returned from the assault too quickly.

--  The View, The Talk, The Chew, The Five, Outnumbered, The Real.  One of these shows has no white people on it.  Can you guess which one?

--  I think Wicked Tuna jumped the tuna, um, shark, a season ago.

--  One has to admit that Titus Welliver is one heck of a name.

--  The Amazing Race is still one of the best reality game shows on television.  If nothing else, I get to see places that I'll never get to visit in person.

--  Piers Morgan, John Oliver, James Corden, Craig Ferguson, Hilary Farr -- did we lose the Revolutionary War?

(c) 2015 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Fraternities and Sororities

So Sigma Alpha Epsilon at the University of Oklahoma really blew it this past weekend.  A video went viral showing the fraternity brothers singing a vile and reprehensibly racist song on a bus which led to its expulsion from the university at warp speed.  To compound the problem, CBS News sent a black reporter out to interview the house mother (why do frat rats need a house mother, anyway?), who condemned the behavior...until another video was released later that day showing the house mother, all seventy-eight-years-old of her, repeatedly saying Nigger with a big, broad smile.  Not surprisingly, Beauton Gilbow (I swear, you can't make these names up...) hasn't been heard from since.

I wasn't the least bit surprised by the revelation of the racist behavior of these elitist punks. Saddened, that this type of behavior still exists, but hardly surprised.  Because if one has been around these boys and girls born to expect worship for any length of time, this behavior isn't at all surprising.

Parker and Levi -- those are typical frat boy names, by my count -- have apologized, sort of.  Parker has thrown his fraternity under the bus, saying that it taught him that song and his performance was rooted in alcohol, of which I have no doubt.  Levi didn't even apologize; his parents did.  Boo frigging hoo.

As for Ms. Gilbow, I guarantee she wasn't in Selma fifty years ago.

Students are protesting, an OU football recruit has decommitted and the MSM is feasting on this (for once) true story of racism run amok.  There's little that I can add to the racist angle; it is, as they say, what it is, and no matter who taught whom or who drank what, it's indefensible.

But from my perspective, this isn't shocking in the slightest.

I attended, proudly, the University of Illinois, reputedly where the Greek system either got it start or where it's the largest in the nation or some other noteworthy achievement.  I can say without a hint of jealousy that in my experience, the Greek system sucks.

Let's start with the girls who, at least for now, are blameless in the OU mess.  When I attended Illinois, the Kappa Alpha Theta house had probably the most beautiful women on campus. Homecoming queens, cheerleaders, beauty pageant contestants -- you name it, the most unattainable women in the middle of the country.  Rumor had it, however, that to be considered for the KAT house, a pledge had to submit daddy's income tax returns to show how rich he was.  So much for sorority.

The Kappa Kappa Gammas were populated by blonde cheerleader types.  All of them has long blonde hair and were preternaturally peppy.  Think Christie Brinkley with more brains and less boobage.

The frats were insufferable.  We used to say that we didn't need calendars because we could just walk by the Pikes' house to see the new model cars in the driveway to know what year it was.  Whereas the rest of the campus football leagues played in the mud behind the old but venerable Huff Gym, the Greeks got to play on the pristine surface of Memorial Stadium.

This notion that they exist to promote fraternity and do good works is pure bunkum.  They exist to promote themselves and make their trek through college easier.  Fraternity?  Why, if that lofty goal is on the first page of their charters, are Jews and minorities not more represented in the traditionally white fraternities?  Why do so many frats do things like the Sammies at Michigan and trash places, then thumb their nose at the victims?  It's because they are elitist and have always gotten away with things, from the time they were wet behind the ears to when they got their driver's licenses to the minute they pledged their houses.

And the cost?  Even if I'd been inclined to join a fraternity, I couldn't have afforded it.  Where's the money coming from?  That's right -- they check daddy's income tax returns.

Parker and Levi will suffer for this for a year or two, then it will blow over and some forgiving Greek will help them out and put them back on their pedestal.  Some sorority girl will feel sorry for them, marry them because they're so cute and then breed perfect little Greek wannabes.  And the world as they know it will continue virtually unchanged.  Ms. Gilbow will be bailed out by some old time SAE who remembers the good old day when they were liquored up and got the old bat to say Nigger repeatedly.

The superficial nature of the Greek systems masks its true intent:  These are modern day drinking societies that allow the monied classes to stick to their own.  There's little difference between the Skull and Crossbones and SAE and KKG other than income tax bracket.

But their behavior feeds the illusion that whites are all racist, and that's what ticks me off.  I can't possibly feel the anger or humiliation a black person feels hearing the SAE boys singing, but they can't possibly feel my anger and disgust at a fellow white person, in 2015, singing as if the Jim Crow era were alive and well.

(c) 2015 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Cankles

Just how does this woman run as a viable candidate for President?

That she's a politician and one of the first viable female candidates I'll stipulate.  But if her record belonged to a man, he wouldn't be so viable.  To wit:

Just what are her accomplishments?  What business or government did she lead?  As Secretary of State or as U.S. Senator, what are her accomplishment?

On the flipside, what has she done that, when scrutinized, raises questions about her fitness to lead?

She tried, as First Lady, to bring health care reform to the country, but failed. She stood by a liar who was our President, then used him after they left the White House to get elected to the Senate using his political capital.  Once in the Senate, she ran for President, but accomplished virtually nothing else of note.

In her autobiography, she wrote that she had to dodge sniper fire when her plane landed in Sarajevo, a claim that was debunked quickly.  As Secretary of State, she handed the Russian foreign minister a reset button as a means of showing that the two countries would try to renew normal relations, but that fell flat.  Her role in the Benghazi consulate attack is shrouded in misstatements, misrepresentations, obfuscations and shrugged shoulders.  That she presided over a department but had little knowledge of what was going on, or what should have been done, belies her earlier campaign ad asking who the electorate wanted in charge when that early morning phone call came in. Four men, including our ambassador, died due to her ineptitude.

Once freed of the restrictions of working for the government, she wrote a book that was panned.  She infamously declared that she and Slick Willy were broke when the left the White House, despite the fact that he had an $8M advance for a book deal waiting for him.  Now, the couple is estimated to be worth over $100M, yet she had the audacity to claim they were broke in 2001.

Now, revelations that she accepted donations to her foundation from foreign governments and used her own private email and server instead of using the one provided by the governmentwhile she was Secretary of State have come to light.  The dogpaddling has begun in earnest.  Apologists are fearful that her candidacy may be sunk before it's even formally begun, with one half-wit concerned that if tainted by these revelations, a third party candidate may win.

As Catholics voted for Kennedy and blacks voted for Obama, I understand the pull Cankles has for women.  Besides being historic, it would be progressive to have a woman as president.  I have no objection for the right woman leading this country, but Cankles is not that woman.  The list of indiscretions with which she's been associated are evidence of that.  She is a consummate politician without any track record, essentially.  She's good at getting elected for positions and then doing nothing.  In effect, her career is the political manifestation of The Seinfeld Show.

Add to all this that, even among her supporters, she's not regarded as particularly likeable, and it's a wonder she's even discussed as a presidential candidate.  She reminds me of a highly active student council candidate who aspires to something beyond her capabilities.  In Peter Principle terms, she's attained already her highest and best use.

This woman should not be president.  Find someone better.

(c) 2015 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Hollywood and War

An interesting article appeared in this week's Entertainment Weekly entitled Hollywood Goes to War. The first line of the article is interesting:

              On Oscar night, the Academy overlooked American Sniper in every category except for sound editing, which doesn't do much to disprove stereotypes about show business being full of liberals with an antigun bias.

Frankly, I was surprised by this, but continued reading where it listed movies, their domestic box office grosses and the timeframes in which they were made:  Before 9/11, after 9/11 but before the death of Osama Bin Laden and after his death.  The article suggests that war weariness led to the disappointing showings of the movies made between 9/11 and OBL's death, but after his death, Hollywood suddenly found a greater interest in war movies now that we seemed to be winning. Perhaps there's something to that logic, but I think there's another element to this.

The article cites seven movies that were made during the 9/11-OBL death period:  Black Hawk Down, Jarhead, In the Valley of Elah, Rendition, Stop-Loss, The Hurt Locker and Green Zone.  Of the seven, only Black Hawk Down made more than $100M ($109M).  That movie had nothing to do with Iraq and 9/11; the other movies were related to Iraq and 9/11 one way or the other.  Most of the others -- although I've only seen Green Zone -- deal with decidedly anti-war but mostly anti-Bush themes.  This I've gleaned from reading about the movies.

Amazingly, movies without either an anti-war or anti-Bush theme did better with the public.

It should be pointed out that this analysis included four World War II movies -- Saving Private Ryan, Fury, Unbroken and Pearl Harbor (if that's really a war movie) -- that don't or really shouldn't factor into the analysis.  These four movies have nothing to do with the public's perception of wars that we believe we can win, because we've already won that war.  From Black Hawk Down to American Sniper, the basic subject is radical Islam, an asymmetrical warfare unknown to us even after Vietnam.

The true problem, in my opinion, is that Hollywood is out of step with the rest of the country.  When Ben Affleck shouts down Bill Maher and says that labeling it Islamic terrorism is racist, that just doesn't resonate with the rest of the country.  The public is dumbfounded, in large measure, by the administration's cognitive dissonance on the subject and abject unwillingness to do what is necessary to defeat it.

New movies are in the works, according to Entertainment Weekly, but sadly they're centered around special units.  Although this is asymmetrical warfare, there are still conventional forces fighting.  A movie on Fallujah would be exciting, showing the terror of house-to-house fighting in an urban setting.  There are any number of stories that could be used for movies that don't revolve around special units, but for Hollyweird, that's not sexy enough.  Besides, it couldn't be as surgically precise about its tales.

The other concern I have about this is how politically correct Hollyweird will treat the terrorists for fear of alienating the billions of Muslims in the world.  Let's face it:  Hollywood was wrong to caricature the Japanese and Nazis during World War II, but we've come a long way since then.  To portray an Islamic terrorist the way he really is isn't wrong.  The truth is what should be offered, not a sanitized version that Hollyweird wants the world to believe.

It will be interesting to see if the likes of Liam Neeson, Ben Affleck and Michael Moore have any roles in these movies, although I doubt it.  Even moreso, will conservative Hollyweird get its chance?Or will the leftists change their colors and spin the story as some sort of political rallying cry for the 2016 elections?

(c) 2015 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles