re: "September 11"

The DiploMad at The DiploMad 2.0 ("long time US Foreign Service Officer; now retired") speaks to some basic truths many are unwilling to face.

Money quote(s):

"We in the West refuse to understand that simple fact, to wit, when Islam says it seeks to conquer us, it means it."

&

"It seems from the  limited reporting on it, that we are successfully pursuing a policy of turning large numbers of AQ, ISIS, Al Shabab, etc., into bloody jelly. As we have always known, the Islamists are good at torturing and killing flight attendants and other unarmed civilians,  but they don't do well when confronted by Western military know-how employed as it's meant to be employed."

re: "A Death in Texas"

DiploMad at The DiploMad 2.0 ("Wracked with angst over the fate of our beloved Republic, now in the hands of Morons who (mis)govern it, the DiploMad has returned to do battle on the world wide web, swearing death to political correctness, and pulling no punches.") shed some light on the Leal execution and the issue of consular notification/access.

Money quote(s):

"Just reading that last night the State of Texas put to death "Mexican" national Humberto Leal Garcia for the 1994 rape and murder of a sixteen-year-old girl. This execution took place despite efforts by the White House, the Government of Mexico, the UN, the OAS, a host of NGOs, and others to halt the execution because Leal had not been notified at the time of his arrest that he had the right to consult the Mexican consulate. He reportedly died yelling, "Viva Mexico!"

I agree that the execution of Leal last night is an outrage. He should have been executed about fifteen years ago.

In the course of my career I have had to deal with stories such as the Leal case. Almost always they involve somebody here illegally who commits a heinous crime, and is not even particularly aware that he has the right to contact his consul. In many cases, the Leal case seems to be one, the criminal is not even aware that he is the national of another country, as he has been in the US for many, many years."

On the one hand, you have arrestees who are unaware of (or actively concealing) their (illegal) alien status from law enforcement officers.

On the other hand you have law enforcement officers who are actively investigating a rape/murder case and who (justifiably) might view an inquiry into a suspect's nationality and/or immigration status to be either/both an investigative dead-end or a waste of limited manpower.

"The access to the consul issue only arises late in the process when slick appeals attorneys, looking for anything to save a murdering scum client, discover the matter of the consular access. This is a bogus issue. Some Texas sheriff does not have the obligation to advise a detainee that he has the right to his nation's consul. That is something for which the detainee needs to ask: IF he asks, then the police have the obligation to pass along the request to the appropriate embassy or consulate. There is no evidence that Leal asked, and, of course, none that Texas law enforcement denied his request to see a Mexican official. Should the police notify the German, Irish, or Italian Embassy every time somebody with a German, Irish, or Italian name is arrested? Should they automatically assume that anybody arrested who "looks" Mexican is a Mexican? Anybody with a Jewish name should have the Israeli Embassy notified? Can you see the law suits over racial profiling? Lawyers would get rich (er)!"

In our border states, where the otherwise (deliberately) misleading "we didn't cross the border, the border crossed us!" slogan actually might have some validity, dialing up the local Mexican consulate every time someone who might have Mexican nationality is a non-starter. As industrious as the Mexican consular officials of my own acquaintance have been, there's a lot more Texas (and Arizona, and New Mexico, and California) cops than there are of them.

(7/8)

re: "Why Republicans really want a louder Obama"

Joshua Keating at PASSPORT ("A Blog By The Editors Of Foreign Policy") is usually smarter than this.

Quote(s):

"This doesn't really make any sense. Bachman (sic) thinks the Libya intervention is a disastrously misguided mission, but America should be taking a more prominent role in it? ("We may be going straight to hell but damned if we're going to let the French get there first!")"

Actually, that's not what she said, as Mr. Keating's excerpt makes clear:

"Our policy in Libya is substantially flawed. It's interesting. President Obama's own people said that he was leading from behind. The United States doesn't lead from behind. As commander in chief, I would not lead from behind.

We are the head. We are not the tail. The president was wrong. All we have to know is the president deferred leadership in Libya to France. That's all we need to know. The president was not leading when it came to Libya."

What Mr. Keating missed here is the decision-making aspect of leadership. France has taken the lead with respect to what can laughingly be referred to as NATO's "Libya policy." Not the U.S. Rep. Bachmann said nothing about the U.S. taking a more prominent role in the Libyan intervention. In fact, she seems to be implying that that U.S. leadership might have headed off there being any intervention there at all.

Sadly, this sort of thing was predicted by diploblogging legend Diplomad just yesterday:

"(T)he liberal elite attacks on her will be unrelenting; any minor flub, slip, or inconsistency will be headline news and fodder for the dopey late night "comics." The libs will go through her life with a microscope. This will get ugly. She is going to be abused, maligned, and "Palined" because she does not fit the mould the liberal elite and their MSM pets have decreed for politically savvy and smart women politicians. She is a conservative, a real one, and that's something the libs just cannot abide. To make matters worse, she fights back, and doesn't apologize for being conservative. Women, blacks, Hispanics, and Jews are supposed to be liberal, if they're not, it's OK to call them anything you want: Misogyny or racism in the service of liberalism is just free speech or funny."

re: "Islam, Is It like the others?"

DiploMad at The DiploMad 2.0 ("Wracked with angst over the fate of our beloved Republic, now in the hands of Morons who (mis)govern it, the DiploMad has returned to do battle on the world wide web, swearing death to political correctness, and pulling no punches.") takes us around the bases on the subject of Islam (for those who haven't been paying attention since 2001) (or 1998) (or 1993).

Money quote(s):

"We, however, must ask, is our commitment to freedom, to the Constitution and its Bill of Rights a suicide pact? What do we do when faced with powerful organizations here at home that don't believe in freedom? Organizations motivated by hatred precisely for those freedoms and the practice of tolerance? Organizations that openly seek to use our freedoms to destroy them?

During the Cold War we faced such a foe, Soviet Communism. We adopted common sense measures at home to limit the ability of Communists to undermine our nation. Communists, for example, could not hold certain sensitive jobs; they were denied security clearances; the CPUSA was treated as the agent of a hostile foreign power and was subject to penetration and surveillance by the FBI. Foreign Communists were ineligible for visas to the US or for citizenship. Did we infringe on the freedom of Communists? Yes, no doubt. Given, however, what we all should now know about the extent of Soviet espionage against the USA, and the role that the CPUSA played in efforts to undermine America, those measures seem eminently reasonable. We have had similar restrictions on Fascists, Nazis, and KKK members. All infringements, all justifiable."

This is one of those historically proven facts, well known in literate circles, that tends to cause cognitive dissonance among those indoctrinated to see no enemies on the Left, to believe Sen. McCarthy was a wrong-headed monster, to believe Alger Hiss (and the Rosenbergs) were innocent.

All of which was proven, again and again, to be counterfactual; i.e., lies and untruths.

Google "venona papers" or "mitrokhin archive" if these assertions trouble you.

"Those of us who have served in Muslim states know that when we go to those countries we must respect their culture -- OK, fine. But it turns out that when they come to our country, we also have to respect their culture -- or at least the Disney version they peddle. As I have said on many occasions, try to build a church or a synagogue in Saudi Arabia, not possible; try to prevent Muslims from building a mosque in your home town, not possible. We all, especially those of us in government, have to recite the mantra of "Islam is a religion of tolerance and peace.""

A long time ago, before becoming a diplomat, I had a very interesting interview with an officer and a gentleman whose task that day was to evaluate me for "a position of trust and responsibility with the U.S. Government." Actually, it wasn't anything to do with my security clearance (for those of you who recognize the phrasing) but everything to do with whether I was fit or suitable to lie, cheat, and steal for my country.

(As some of our special operators will tell you, "if you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'.)

To shorten an overlong story, I was able to convince the gentleman that, despite my Eagle Scout background, I was willing to do what was necessary on behalf of my country, to do very un-nice things to un-nice people.

Fast forwarding, I recently found myself getting into a semi-public debate about whether American diplomats should tell lies. One party (who was not a diplomat) assumed I was accusing a fellow diplomat, who was our mutual acquaintance, of being a liar. Au contraire.

The mutual acquaintance, a senior FSO for whom I have boundless admiration, is someone in whose word I would place great confidence. On the other hand, I also understand the truth in the saying "A diplomat is an honest man sent abroad to lie for his country."

Pres. Bush (#43) understood (even if he never articulated it particularly well), that getting into an existential struggle with a world civilization a la Huntington, wasn't a particularly good idea.

It's still not a very good idea, but it may be one which we are unable to finally avoid.

So I'm not all that troubled by having to say the mantra. (I'm more troubled by people who know me thinking I'm stupid enough to believe it.)

"We are at war with a totalitarianism as much as we were with Communism and Fascism. It's going to be a long, long war, one in which we have to inflict repeated defeats on the Islamists"

"The Soviet Empire in practice was a social, economic and human disaster by just about any measure you care to use. Islam, likewise, as it is practiced in the modern world has produced some of the most retrograde, repressive, and violent regimes and organizations in existence. Nearly all Muslims might not be terrorists, but nearly all terrorists are Muslims. And they draw their inspiration from somewhere." (Bold type added for emphasis, primarily because this can't be said too often. - CAA)

&

"Bottom line: Do we have the right and obligation to defend ourselves against a brutal and totalitarian ideology, or do we have to put up with it because it has the label "religion?""

re: "On Military Intervention, the National Interest and the American Left"

DiploMad at DiploMad 2.0 ("Wracked with angst over the fate of our beloved Republic, now in the hands of Morons who (mis)govern it, the DiploMad has returned to do battle on the world wide web, swearing death to political correctness, and pulling no punches.") explains why inconsequential military interventions have consequences.

Money quote(s):

"(O)nce the United States, the world's preeminent military power, intervenes in a military crisis, even if there were no U.S. interests before that intervention, U. S. national interests get created by the intervention. Yes, once we intervene, committing our people, treasure, and prestige, we have a national interest in obtaining success. We now have to win, and the other side has to lose, or our enemies around the world will be emboldened to act against us."

To put it less professionally (or rather in the terms of a different set of professions), once you've got skin in the game, you've got skin in the game.