re: "Ending America: The Slaughter of Free Speech, Congress to "explore the need to limit some forms of freedom of speech" "

Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs ("Evil is made possible by the sanction you give it. Withdraw your sanction.") takes her (and your) freedom of speech seriously.

Money quote(s):

"The very idea that our legislators would restrict free speech and impose the sharia (blasphemy laws) as a response to inhuman barbarity is an act of sedition and treason. When did we ever shred America's golden, historic principles in submission to bloody savage totalitarianism? If America really understood what was happening here and was not psy-oped by an enemedia, they would take to the streets with pitchforks and torches."

Whoa. She had me at pitchforks and torches.

(Everyone always forgets the hayrakes.)

"The idea that this will threaten American troops is just another terror tactic. This is based on the assumption that they are fighting us because we are doing things they don't like. Actually they are fighting us because of imperatives within the Islamic faith. They will never like us unless we convert to Islam or submit to Islamic rule. If we stop doing things they dislike, where will we draw the line? How far will Sharia advance in the U.S., with Americans afraid to stop its advance for fear of offending Muslims and stirring them up to violence? This is incompatible with American freedom. We have to draw the line."

It helps if one takes into account what ones enemies claim they are doing, and why. Attributing some other set of motives (poverty, anti-colonialism, environmentalism) based upon ivory tower precepts generated in Western think tanks betrays some serious mirror-imaging cognitive bias.

"Limiting free speech won't stop the jihadis from killing people. It will have just the opposite effect, but serve as reinforcement of their murderous actions. More people will die. Many more." (Bold type in original. - CAA)

re: "Victory defined"

Crush at Blackfive does something no one else has managed to do.

Money quote(s):

"In the case of our current conflict, the U.S. military is defending against (albeit with either one or sometimes both hands tied behind our backs) a supremacist movement that wants to kill/convert/subjugate those who don't practice their form of Islam.

And why should this struggle be so "confusing?" Our enemies have done us the favor of identifying themselves. All we have left to do is acknowledge their declarations of war and return the favor. We aren't fighting Muslims as many have wrongly suggested, otherwise we would have long since bombed U.S. mosques and Islamic centers. We are fighting jihadists. It's just that simple."

re: "Military must trash jihad coverup policy"

Crush at Blackfive is much vexed by pointless political correctness in the military.

Money quote(s):

"One of the things helping jihadists attack this country the most could be the policy Obama signed last year forbidding our military from mentioning jihad, Islam, or any such terms that could anger our enemies. Granted, this nonsense started under the Bush administration. But when it comes to our national security, which is government’s primary responsibility, it doesn’t matter who is to blame. What matters is that we fix it."

"When a non-Muslim commits a violent act, such as the man who killed the abortion doctor “Tiller the killer,” journalists pass along everything there is to know about the man. However when the perpetrator happens to be Muslim, and especially when the crime is an act of jihad, we don’t see a name or any religious connection until the last few paragraphs – if they are reported at all.

Why is this right? What kind of Mickey Mouse leadership stands by while Maj. Hasan spouts his jihadist rhetoric for years before murdering 14 innocent Americans, then says they have no freaking clue as to the alleged assailant’s motivations? And then has the audacity to warn of anti-Muslim backlash rather than have soldiers be on the lookout for other jihadists in the ranks. And then has the audacity to say that the loss of the Army’s “diversity” would be a greater “tragedy” than the 14 Americans that Hasan murdered.

Let’s not “jump to conclusions” my ass, Army! How about let’s not jump FROM conclusions."

&

"Regardless what our Commander-in-Chief thinks, the U.S. military is not there to soothe the feelings of our enemies, or to become a proving ground of diversity. The military is there to deter our enemies from attacking us. When all else fails, the military KILLS our enemies. And while the forces on the ground have been working miracles, our leadership has been undermining their work at home with asinine policies that prevent us from looking into religion or ideology."

re: "We’ll See If The “Perfect” Record Continues"

Robert at Expat Yank ("One American living in the south of England") made a point that seems to be nearly universally overlooked (except by soldiers).

Money quote(s):

"As we know, most in media are perpetually wilting over the fact that the U.S. actually detains enemy who fall into U.S. hands alive. Moreover, they have little to n0thing to say about how nearly all of those the U.S. detains survive to be released."

&

"Insofar as this blog is aware, every single U.S. or coalition soldier captured by the jihadist enemy, has been murdered in captivity. That is a 100 percent record of barbarity unequalled by any enemy in all of human history."

re: "A lefty blogger eyes the Gitmo flip-floppery"

Tigerhawk ("thoughts of the day on international affairs, politics, things that strike us as hilarious and personal observations") remarks on the absurdity of trying Gitmo detainees in federal courts.

Money quote(s):

"There is lots of "information" in the world, but very little admissible evidence, a distinction essential to many politicians and to all courts. The difference is also at the heart of the argument over whether jihadis detained on the battlefield by soldiers ought to be treated as illegal combatants or as criminals. One needs evidence (as opposed to mere information) to detain the latter, but not the former."

&

"Soldiers are not trained, ordered, or even gently encouraged to gather evidence, and if they should happen to come into possession of some their own institution lacks the procedures to maintain a chain of custody suitable to admit that evidence in a United States criminal trial."

re: "Not To Compare Bataan To Baghdad, But…"

Robert at Expat Yank ("One American living in the south of England") reminds us about the nature of the enemy. And does so exceedingly well.

Money quote(s):

"(F)or years we have endured bemoanings about “lack of proof,” unfair trials and above all, “torture.” And not just from every released prisoner (Allied forces have evidently “tortured” EVERY captured jihadist) and their lawyers. We’ve also heard it endlessly from many politicians, “activists” and much media.

Ironic all that. For coalition behavior towards this enemy in the War on Terror, 2001-2009, had actually been far better than its behavior in any previous conflict. In fact, it has inarguably been the best treatment ever meted out policywise to captured enemy in all of human history.

Consider this: imagine any enemy held previously engaging in a “hunger strike“? Those held in the past didn’t hunger strike: that’s a “privileged captive’s” jail tactic."

U.S. service members are given some training on how they are expected to conduct themselves if taken prisoner. Unlike our enemy, that indoctrination does not include how to wage lawfare against our captors by making false accusations of mistreatment.

"(A)fter page upon page of Mr Hastings’s having shared numerous examples of Japanese mistreatment (to be polite) of Western and Chinese PoWs and civilians. They ran the horrific gamut from of course starving and working them to death, to beheadings, tying them to trees and bayoneting them, leaving them to drown in the sea, kicking them into latrines and drowning them in excrement, casually pushing them over cliffs, and even subsequently noting how Japanese doctors engaged in the murderous vivisections, without anaesthesia, of eight living (at least, they were at the outset), captured U.S. pilots.

Another source tells us, for example (and no doubt Mr Hastings would not be surprised), of two downed U.S. pilots having been plucked from the sea and “rescued” by Japanese submarine and interrogated — but not harshly. Yet after questioning, their personal effects were parcelled out among the crew and the unfortunate PoWs (men captured in uniform, clearly engaged in military activity against another military) were taken up on deck, (and without even a “military tribunal” finding) weighted down with water-filled gasoline cans, and thrown overboard. And the barbaric list could go depressingly on."

Whole library shelves can attest to the barbaric treatment received by Allied prisoners of Imperial Japan. As it happens, my own family included a Baatan survivor. I grew up listening to his stories, when he would tell them. It's the sort of thing that forever innoculates one from developing an overly-optimistic or romantic view of warfare or defeat.

"(D)id any of that sort of treatment regularly happen at the hands of coalition forces in Iraq or to Guantanamo detainees? For example, was Khalid Sheik Mohammed “waterboarded” (which would have likely been considered a holiday “swim” to many an American or Briton tortured by the Japanese) . . . and then removed to shark-infested waters by U.S. submarine and unceremoniously tossed into the ocean?

During WWII, Western media rightly made much of Japanese atrocities. Yet today Western media has almost nothing to say of the last eight years’ enemy’s."

"(W)hile the Japanese were indisputably brutal in the extreme, even they never reached the all-encompassing depths of depravity and viciousness of the current enemy?"

"(I)nsofar as this blog is aware, not a single coalition serviceman, over the last eight years, has been released alive willingly by the current Islamist enemy.

That bears repeating: not one.

Nor are any now held alive anywhere."

&

"(H)ow such now almost Spartan-obsession to leave no one behind stems from the foreknowledge that every single one captured might just as well be tallied with the rest of the dead?

However one gets there, that means the current Islamist enemy has murdered 100 percent of coalition military personnel (primarily Americans, Britons, and Australians, coincidentally enough) who have fallen into their hands. No enemy has ever engaged in such barbarity in the entire history of warfare. That is to say nothing of the fate of nearly all Western non-combatants who’ve been taken.

Thus the most damning perspective of all is almost universally overlooked. That level of murderous brutality makes Japanese atrocities pale in comparison. And it makes Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and a few hours in a dog pen, look like child’s play.

Do we even want to think that in this conflict the Islamist enemy is even more inhumane that WWII Japanese? One suspects we’d rather not."