Moral Dwarf: Terror Laws Are Baaaaaaaaad!

John Le Carre thinks the war is, like, a total fraud being used by The Man to steal all your freedoms, and you know you can trust the judgement of a guy who admits to considering defection to the USSR.

As I understand it, Le Carre was curious about the true nature of Marxist dictatorship, but thinks fighting terrorism is definitely an attack on our freedoms. Not to put to fine a point on it, but when it comes to assessing the threat from Islamofascism, I wouldn't put to much stock by the opinion of a guy who spent the Cold War fantasising about life in the Soviet Union.

He's Reporting The Stuff British Journalists Just Won't Report

Michael Yon with British troops in Helmand Province.

Back When Adults Ran Foreign Policy

For an example of how transnational lunacy has stripped us of the ability to confront evil, consider how pop history deals with the US decision to nuke Nintendoland totally for no reason at all.

Shocka! EUnuchs And Thugs Opposed To Air Power

EUtopias experiment with post-modern warfare continues. All of which means the left's latest talking point doesn't quite have the impact they might be expecting. It's like Sir Elton coming out of the closet.

Ditto, with the rest of these nations. Are we really supposed to be impressed with the news that Fourth World hell holes are trying to hobble western air power ? They're opposed to the use of ballot boxes too. When exactly did we start letting North Korea dictate allied strategy ?

But Simon Conway, a former soldier and the Director of Landmine Action, said: "Every time these weapons are used, they have killed large numbers of civilians."

The M85 killed 300 civilians when used in the Lebanon by Israel in 2006, while M73s launched by US helicopters were used in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Yep, they're using evidence from the Lebanon war. What could go wrong ?

Mr Conway said: "The Government needs to take a much harder line on these issues. We need to prevent these weapons from proliferating. We need to stop the arms race developing and the way to do that is if we come up with a strong treaty that stigmatises these weapons."

That'll do it! If only we'd manage to stigmatise sawing heads off, suicide bombing and flying aircraft into buildings.

But no: it turns out that the folks in Beijing somehow manage to go on, even in the face of whiny criticism from Eurotrash liberals. Indeed, this campaign is something of a smart bomb itself, perfectly targeted to hinder western powers, even as they leave the Republic of Insania's war-fighting capabilities intact. Or, to put it another way, the left's position is objectively pro-totalitarian. Again.

British Aid Workers Provide Very Late Term Abortions To Suffering, Third World Peasants

Who'd have thunk it ? Apparently, our troops in Afghanistan aren't just a bunch of hapless Elmer Fudds being chopped to pieces by the Talibunny after all.

I guess the left will have to switch back to Plan B - claiming that all the dead were guests at a really big wedding.

Honour Our Glorious Dead (Terms & Conditions Apply)

Not the least weird thing about the left's Pavlovian hatred of the Daily Mail is that the Mail's position on the war is identical to the left's (surrender now!). Doesn't that, in some sense of the word, make them spiritual Daily Mail readers ?

Ditto, in so far as leftists keep issuing forth pious sermons about the Mail's demagoguery, I trust they will be suitably outraged at the Mail's attempt at grave robbing. True, the DM would doubtless claim to be paying tribute to the sacrifice of our troops, but I'm pretty sure there's something missing here.

I guess the tributes to the guys killed in Helmand Province will have to wait until the Mail can work them into a call for surrender.

More MSM Non-Reporting

Another brilliant dispatch from Michael Yon, this time with British troops engaged in heavy fighting in Basra. What heavy fighting ? Ah yes: stuff the MSM didn't get round to reporting.

To return to a point I made earlier, for all that the MSM likes to wax pompous about how they produce original reporting - unlike mere bloggers - a lone, self-supported, US blogger has managed to produce more, and better, coverage of the British Army in Basra than the whole of the British MSM.

It's not as if these events lack news value. Not only is there the intrinsic drama, there's the deeper questions. Where are the RAF's Apaches ? Is Iran supplying IEDs ? And what's with all those jams ? But no: the MSM were not only not covering these events, in so far as they claim to be covering Basra, but don't, their coverage has been positively misleading, suggesting that things are far more peaceful than they are.

The bottom line is this: actual reporting has become a lost art in the MSM. Doubtless, some will say that's just the public getting what the public wants, but what of our multi-billion pound national broadcaster ? Couldn't they fit a report or two in amongst the half-hourly Gitmo update.

Our Noble Allies

Aside from all the other reasons why the European Rapid Reaction Force/European Army/Corps D'Elefant Blanc is a terrible idea, there's the fact that Britain pooling defence assets with old Europe is like Arsenal sharing players with Accrington Stanley. The traffic's all going to be one way. For proof of that consider recent events in Afghanistan.

Don't miss too the folks in the comments claiming that Afghanistan - the war the left was so anxious to fight they didn't want to risk being distracted by going to Baghdad - should now be abandoned as an irrelevancy. Further proof that the war liberals want to fight is always the one we're not talking about at any particular time.

Outrage D'Jour

Who says libs are fired by a kneee-jerk hatred of any form of manly endeavour ? Oh right - everyone.

So much for 'supporting the troops, but not the war'. Can't we even get an admission that World War II was worth fighting ?

Coulter D'Jour

Coulter on the MSM's preference for certain types of whistleblowers:

According to a Military Times survey taken in September 2004, active-duty military personnel preferred President Bush to Kerry by about 73 percent to 18 percent. Sixty percent describe themselves as Republican and less than 10 percent call themselves Democrat (the same 10 percent that MSNBC has on its speed-dial). Even among the veterans, Republicans outnumber Democrats 46 percent to 22 percent."

So there aren't a lot of anti-war military types for the media to turn into this month's "It Girl." (If conservatives ran the media, there would be a constant stream of government employees admitting to sloth and incompetence, welfare recipients admitting to being welfare cheats and public schoolteachers who support school vouchers.)

How To Go From A Nazi Neadathal To A Courageous Whistleblower In One Easy Step

Actually, I think I've worked out what the left means by 'community hero' - they mean someone like Sir Mike Jackson. Back when he was General Sir Mike Jackson, he was a liar and an edgy weirdo, but now he's become the pin up boy for standards in public life. That's what slagging off the Great Satan will do for you.

See, this is further proof of my theory that the Ladder of Victimhood is matched by the Ladder of Hate. Two minutes ago, leftards were prepared to believe even the most ludicrous libels against British troops. Click onto this thread and feel the love! But now one of the knuckle-dragging murderers has opened up on uSS troops, the left is ready to canonise him - or at least whatever the liberal equivalent may be. Chair at an Oxbridge college ?

For that matter, consider the deeper humbuggery of the liberal reception to Jackson's remarks. The MSM has spent months telling us that Basra was the worst place in the world. Now it turns out that Baghdad is the even more worst place in the world, and those damn Yankees are idiots for not implementing the very policies which made Basra what it is today.

As EU Referendum reminds us, Jackson is hardly blameless for events in Basra. However bad US planning was initially, they learned and adapted. Meanwhile, the British Army under Jackson treated the whole 'war' thing as a dreadful distraction from the business of acquiring cool new toys. Not that the MSM noticed though - they were too busy kerb crawling for atrocity stories. It'd be interesting to hear what Mike thinks about that, but I'm guessing there are only some whistles worth blowing.

BBC Misses The Target

Uh oh - the BBC's reporting that 50 Afghan civilians have been wounded in a US air strike on a market place. So which brand of screw up is it this time ? Did one of the Good Ol' Boys decide hitting the same post code was close enough for government work, or did the intelligence geeks screw up and confuse a pile of bananas with an RPG stockpile ?

Well, since you mention it, neither. The strike was bang on the money. Apparently, the civilians just happened to have stopped off to get some fags and a lottery ticket in the exact same place a shed-load of Taliban were meeting. Not only that, but the demographic spread seems a little off.

In other words, the BBC's report was unmitigated rubbish. As ever, there's a wider point. The BBC maintains an attitude of constant scepticism towards any statement from allied forces, but airs even the loopiest Taliban propaganda without a qualm. This is what they call impartiality.

Who Said The Left Isn't Concerned About The Forces ?

So, run this by me again. For the past six years, British forces in Afghanistan have been fighting people who believe women shouldn't work, be educated or even leave the house without a male relative accompanying them, with nary a word from the femiloons. But suddenly they've found something that really offends them: naughty noseart. Yep, the RAF has been ordered to paint out any risque images on the front of their aircraft. See ? That's how sofisticayted Liberals are: they've found a way to invent a kinder, gentler kind of bombing.

Yes, It's True: The Sequels Do Get Worse

Conservatism is a pathway to many abilities, some considered to be unnatural. Consider the fact that merely seeing the headline "Coroner attacks 'inexcusable' US", I was able to guess just who it was.

I'm not sure where the line is between 'disinterested seeker after truth' and 'media whore' but, once you been back to the well for the third time, you're no longer 'crusading', you're 'branding'.

Lest it be argued that Andy Pander is just doing his job, let's just check up on what even dyed-in-the-wool Leftists admit is the role of an inquest:

Proceedings at an inquest are inquisitorial, rather than adversarial. This means that there are no opposing parties setting out to prove a particular version of events. This reflects the fact that the inquest is a fact-finding exercise and not a means of apportioning blame for the death, or trawling for book deals

Actually, I added that last bit myself. Still, it's at least as valid as any of the Sun Tzu of Oxfordshire's contributions to military strategy. Indeed, the defining feature of Walker's output - apart from girly hysteria - is the lack of any real insight. Consider Walker's comments on the death of Sgt Roberts. There were no Americans around at the time, so Walker had to content himself with piously complaining about 'unforgivable and inexcusable' delays in providing body armour to the troops. Now, read what Mr FM had to say about the same case. So which one is the blogger and which the officer of the court ?

Of course, some will point out that Mr FM is ex-Army, while Mr Walker is a current Liberal no-nothing. Well, yeah, that would be the point. Seriously, we need someone to draw up the rules here. On the one hand, we can't mock Mr Bean, Jabbah Turney and the rest of the 'frightened 15' because we don't know what they went through, but operating a military aircraft under wartime condition, over water and at night ? Jus' common sense, init ?

But even on the legal system's own terms, Andrew Walker doesn't make the cut. Liberals wax lyrical about the importance of judicial independence, but here we have a guy whose whole reputation is built upon issuing soundbites slamming the troops. Take this latest case: it's 'inexcusable' that those damn Yankees won't release evidence to Squeally Andy. Hey, Andy, would that be evidence much like the cockpit videos they released last time, the ones that were leaked approximately 3.5 seconds after they were handed over ? So it looks like the US can either hand over classified material, and see it published by the MSM the day after, or it can keep hold of the evidence, and be criticised for being reluctant to see military data splashed all over the front page. It's great politics, but this kind of stupid GOTCHA! does tend to rule you out of the 'impartial finder of facts' stakes.

Back to the death of Sgt Roberts: Mr FM's description gives us a real insight into the compromises and judgement calls involved in deploying an Army, while Walker's output can be summed up as a squealing, foot stamping cry of 'Not Fair!'. So Walker's achieved his ambition after all: he is a Liberal icon. Can you think of a better pin-up for the Liberal approach to life ?

Screw-Ups Yes, Heroes No

The saga of the Iranian hostages having easily made the transition from potential tragedy to certain farce, I have a confession to make: in some respects it’s a weight off my mind. See, I’ve run into a few Naval folks, and 90% of the time I think ‘what a tosser!’, closely followed by a vague guilt about thinking badly about one of the people defending my right to call them tossers. So, naturally it’s a relief to find that they are tossers after all.

Well, yeah, you can’t say how you’d handle a situation like that until it happens, but just how much worse could it have been handled ? Seriously, just what exactly did these professional warriors do that couldn’t have been done by Joe Public ? But let’s not lump all the blame on the Navy. The Romans knew that an Army reflects the society from whence it came. Need I say more ?

For proof of the real pathology affecting the Forces, consider that while the MSM was offering huge deals to the Navy’s answer to Jade Goody, the BBC was busy spiking a drama about VC winner Johnson Beharry as ‘too positive’. What more can you say ? Well, other than ‘against the war but for the troops’ must mean something different in Liberalland.

Then there’s the many specific policy decisions that have damaged efficiency. Take the PC recruitment policies that lead to people like Jabbah Turney being on an (alleged) warship in the first place. In fact, it goes further than that. The innuendo-proof RAF sent a team to a Manchester gay pride festival, complete with a mock up of the front end of a Eurofighter, so gays could climb into their cockpit, grab the joystick and fantasise about thrusting upwards. What could possibly go wrong ?

But that’s not the worst of it. Aside from the specific idiocies, there’s the logic that underlies it all, the belief all this talk of the ‘art of war’ and the like is just macho blather designed to prevent members of the headless lesbian community from getting their fair share of the cake. Ditto, the same idea underpins the Left’s determination to subordinate the Forces to the courts, via ‘human rights’ legislation and the like. Once you accept that dogfighting with a Mirage is just another job, sort of like working in a bank, why not have m’learned friends picking over every high-G roll ?

Well, here’s the news: if you remake the Armed Forces as a uniformed branch of the civil service, don’t be surprised when the troops act like the average civil servant.

Part of the impetus for the founding of the welfare state was the Boer War – or more specifically, the lousy physical condition of recruits for that war. Maybe history is repeating itself: could there be a better barometer of just how far our society has fallen than this case ? So don’t be too harsh on the Navy. After all, they’ve done what the Left wanted, look at these obese, whining chav scum and tell me we don’t have a Navy that ‘looks like Britain’.

It’s Déjà Vu All Over Again

Now that the Ethiopians have forced the Islamopaths to hit the road, the US has been able to use its air power against the enemy columns to excellent effect. What could go wrong ? Well, there's this:

Helicopter gunships attacked suspected al-Qaida fighters in the south Tuesday after U.S. forces staged airstrikes in the first offensive in the African country since 18 American soldiers were killed there in 1993, witnesses said.

Witnesses said 31 civilians, including two newlyweds, died in the assault by two helicopters near Afmadow, a town in an area of forested hills close to the Kenyan border 220 miles southwest of Somalia's capital, Mogadishu.

I dunno, call me cynical but that all rings a bell. I can't help feeling I've heard it somewhere before. Ah yes:

The US military has denied allegations that its forces in Iraq killed dozens of people celebrating a marriage in the west of the country.

Initial reports suggested that a wedding party near the Syrian border was the target of a US air strike.

No wait: that wasn't it. Maybe it was this one ?

Reports from Afghanistan say the United States air force has mistakenly bombed a village wedding party, killing many of the guests.

A witness from the village, in Uruzgan province, told the BBC the overnight raid left scores of people - many of them women - dead.

You know, I'm starting to see a pattern here. Maybe it's some as yet unidentified capability of US ordinance: 'yeah, it can home in on heat sources, electromagnetic emitters or really overpriced venues and dull speeches' ?

The same MSM which can't report MI-5's views on whether or not it'll rain tomorrow without deconstructing it to the nth degree, swallow this stuff whole. Wedding parties getting hit every time the US goes to war with Islamopaths ? Sure, why not ? Police warning of potential terrorist attacks ? What's their agenda ?

See, this is what we mean when we talk about media bias.

Theocracy Warning!!!!!

Everyone panic! The Christianists are trying to lecture us again. When will these weird cultists stop trying to foist their warped values on us sane people ?

Oops. Turns out the Hippy was talking about Iraq, doubtless quoting the famous parable about the Good Samaritan who realised he had no right to interfere in other people’s business. Anyway, let’s check the scorecard here. Church talking about sexual mores: evil attempt to impose their values on people. Church talking about military strategy: valuable contribution from the nation’s conscience.

But that’s not the best of it. Not only does the Bible include previously overlooked hints on waging war, it also includes tips on education. Hey, we should ask him if there’s anything in there about setting or practical work.

Actually, now I think about it, the Church of England is the ultimate example of my theory that there is a positive correlation between how bad an institution is at its core mission, and how much extraneous nonsense it devotes itself to. Let’s talk about education: back in the day they taught the three Rs and anything less than 90% literacy was a scandal. Now, schools seem to spend half their time talking about taking drugs anally in the rainforest (I admit it’s a while since I’ve read the curriculum), and a third of the kids couldn’t read the side of a cornflake packet. Or take Mr Plod: he might not be able to catch the clap in Amsterdam, but he’s got a nifty line in outreach. And so on….

So it is with the Anglicans. Their success at promoting Christian values in the wider society speaks for itself, but even on purely parochial issues they’re pathetic. Consider that new legislation means C of E schools will be forced to teach the glories of rampant butt banging. An observer might think that the Hippy was rather better qualified to speak out on this issue rather than the intricacies of national defence but no, he’s been rather more circumspect here. Apparently, Jesus’ teachings coincide exactly with the agenda of the Guardian.