In the article which I linked two days ago, we were told that Muslims would be highly offended to find that US Military personnel had scripture references on their Trijicon sighting systems. Now, we have the following:
Muslim groups reacted angrily Wednesday after it emerged that the U.S. military is using combat rifle sights inscribed with coded Biblical references.
Army officials have said they will investigate whether a Michigan defense contractor violated federal procurement rules by stamping references to Bible verses on the gun sights used by American forces to kill enemy fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations on Wednesday said the continued use of the sights with the religious references would send a negative message to the Muslim world.
“The use of military equipment with hidden Bible references sends the false message to Muslims worldwide that we are at war with Islam,” said CAIR Legal Counsel Nadhira Al-Khalili. “In addition, these sights are a potential recruiting tool for anti-American forces, endanger our troops and alienate our Muslim allies. They should we withdrawn as soon as logistically possible.”
Of course CAIR is angry. They were told they should be and encouraged by the media to respond in such a way as to make Trijicon, the military and anyone who might either support this or even be ambivalent about it look like the bad guys. This organization has never turned down an opportunity to help Muslims become the victims.
People, we are fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq–against real people with real weapons. The possibility that this manufactured outrage might help to ensure that our warfighters do not have some of the best optical equipment around to help them is a sad lesson in “tolerance” run amok.
Seventh and eighth grade students at Baltic Middle School are folding 1,000 paper cranes to send to U.S. soldiers deployed in Baghdad. The students say the cranes symbolize peace, and they want to bring as much peace as possible to those soldiers.
Excuse me? Bringing “as much peace as possible” to individuals engaged in fighting a war?
The way one brings peace to the soldiers in these situations is by giving them the materiel, tactics, strategies and leadership required to win–not by sending folded up pieces of paper. I’m hoping that KELO got the focus of the story wrong and that this is just the overtly weird component of an otherwise encouraging effort on the part of these students.
That is what Victor Davis Hanson lays on President Obama and the failed policies of the executive branch.
Oil is climbing back over $80 a barrel; the dollar is falling against the Euro to 1.50. The annual deficit is already over $1.6 trillion and may go well over that. The tab for health care will hit right under $1 trillion. Unemployment may be headed over 10%. The people who voted for Obama were mad over Bush’s bailouts, unemployment, deficits, and supposed divisiveness. And?
They got greater bailouts, higher unemployment, larger deficits, and Chicago politics.
VDH shows us that instead of providing the leadership our country needs, President Obama has chosen to spend his time trying to stomp out those who dare question his authority. As Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds, likes to sarcastically say, “the county’s in the very best of hands”.
I am reminded of the well-known line from Luther’s hymn “A Mighty Fortress is Our God”: One little word shall fell him. Only this time, it wasn’t a word which felled anyone, but a word which brought him back from his fall. Here’s the video which tells the story of the word and the man. (I apologize in advance if an advertisement autoplays when you load this page.)
One hears so many negative stories of immigrants and immigration. It was with joy that I read the following:
Sarah Abdalkreem left her native Iraq as the target of insurgents. Now, she is returning to that nation as a United States soldier.
Spc. Abdalkreem saw her brother killed and her father kidnapped — never to be seen again — from their Iraq home. She and the rest of her family barely escaped with their lives, relying on others to get them out of the country.
The family was targeted because Abdalkreem’s mother, Mayasa Abass, translated for U.S. and coalition forces. Maj. Lyle LaCroix of Yankton, who worked with Abass, pressed for her family’s safe departure from the country under a special Immigration program for Iraqi interpreters. LaCroix then welcomed the family into his home while they resettled in Yankton.
Nearly 18 months later, Abdalkreem has joined the South Dakota National Guard. Following in the footsteps of her mother, Abdalkreem will serve as a translator during her 400-day deployment in Iraq.
[...]
Abdalkreem said she sees her military service as payback for the new life and freedom found in the United States. Her mother is working at a Yankton hotel and attending school to become a certified nursing assistant. Her younger sister and brother attend classes in the Yankton School District.
“Everything seems good since our move from Iraq,” she said. “I feel we have changed (as a family). Life here has been so great. We have all the opportunity to do whatever we want.”
Freedom and opportunity coupled with a desire to pay back the country which (despite the title of the linked article) is now called home.
In part we fight to ensure a chance at “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” for folks like Bishop. Michael Yon has the details. If you are able, read this one to your family over Thanksgiving. Be warned, you might end up with a bit of saltwater on your cranberry sauce.
Michael Yon is doing excellent though dangerous work in Afghanistan these days. Unlike many reporters, he has a background in the military which gives him great respect for the work which is being done as well as a understanding of what he needs to do to stay out of the way when things get hairy. And, unlike most other reporters, he wants to be in the middle of what is happening and not simply rely on the official story (which may well not be the whole story).
I’ll not include a photograph in this post, as I normally would, since Michael has requested that images not be used without express permission. However, since Yon is a photojournalist of the first order, I cannot do justice to what he has written without telling you to go to his site and view his work– all of it.
He has spent not a little time in Iraq over the last few years, but is most recently in Afghanistan. He believes the war there is of critical importance, not that Iraq seems to have turned the corner and is becoming increasing stable. In part, he is in Afghanistan to draw attention to the war being fought there and the fact that we (US and allies) need to do much more to ensure that things can move in a productive direction.
I’ll close with these brief excerpts from one of his most recent dispatches:
We cannot win a war of attrition in Afghanistan.
[snip]
Back in 2003, General David Petraeus realized that the Iraq War was as much about politics and money than anything else. After he took command in early 2007, we saw victory in Iraq. (General Petraeus will not declare victory in Iraq, but I will do it for him.) General Petraeus also realizes that the AfPak war will largely be fought in the politosphere.
Michael Yon is an independent who is largely supported by people like you and me. His work is worth supporting.
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