Day By Day Cartoon


Saturday, December 31, 2005

..between the crosses, row on row.

If putting up a "memorial" to the soldiers in Iraq that lists nothing but numbers the dead and wounded servicemen, then posting the numbers killed on the highways of this land in a given year is a valid acknowledgement of the Interstate highway system.

A TRUE memorial would humanize them, and try to make their sacrifice noble, and not just list them off like ingredients on a cereal box. Even the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C., soundly criticized when it was first built for it's somber look and lack of bravado, brings an element of humanity into remembering the servicemen of that war.

But humanizing the casualities of this war is exactly what those who are vehemently opposed to it DON'T want, because unlike Vietnam, this war is being fought by a military that believes in the cause, that wasn't drafted but volunteered. They signed up because they wanted to, because they saw military service as valid and a benefit, not because their number came up and they were forced to join.

That these men and women died because of their choosing to serve, and their belief in a just war is something that hardcore opponents of the war and the military cannot and will not accept.

Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Opinions vary

The Atlantic Monthly's Robert Kaplan on troop morale:

"My commentary is that...and I just came back from Iraq, and I spent six months a year in the barracks, is that I've only met two kinds of Army Special Forces and front line Marines: Those who have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, and those who are pulling every bureaucratic string to get deployed there."


Too bad that we're losing, and it's unwinnable. Someone should really let the troops fighting the war know this, because they seem to think otherwise. But they're just the ones doing the job, why believe them over politicians in Washington or reporters whose idea of combat is fighting over the last cold Heineken in the hotel bar?

Read the whole thing.

1994, and then some

Jim Geraghty looks at some of the Senate races next year, and while I'm not going to comment on his handicapping on how they might go for Democrats or the GOP, one number in particular leapt out at me.
"...they (the Democrats) would need to win 76 percent of the Senate seats at stake this year...For comparison, in 1994, the gold standard for landslides, the Republicans won 21 out of 35 seats, 60 percent."

Shine on, you crazy dreamers.

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Live, or Memorex?

When your enemy is resorting to this, you know you're winning.

Monday, December 19, 2005

One man's hit song,

is another man's torture instrument.

So the terrorists are alone in a dark room and loud hip-hop music is blasted at them 24/7? We have a word for that here:

College.

And just think of the wealth of information we could have gotten had we played, oh, this song at 'em instead (iTunes link).

They'd have given up bin Laden, Jimmy Hoffa and the secret formula to Coke.

Sunday, December 18, 2005

"...dogs and cats, living together,"

"...mass hysteria!"

Sunnis in the western Anbar province of Iraq voted overwhelmingly for a secular Shi'ite candidate.

My, my, what a quagmire, when people put aside religious and tribal differences to vote for someone who has their best interests at heart. Yep, this democracy in the Mid-East thing is definitely doomed, doomed I say.

Friday, December 16, 2005

Oh, THAT liberal media


UCLA and the University Of Missouri agree: There's a left-wing slant to mainstream news.

Colour me not surprised.


"Greater love...


"...has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."

Rest in peace, Spc. Pugh.

This is what heroism is all about.


Thursday, December 15, 2005

Keep hope in power

"Politically speaking, the American people will never select a party to lead them that appears infected with a Tourettes like rage. They will always opt for strength and optimism over weakness and pessimism. Think FDR,Truman and JFK."

From Bull-Moose Blog.

Ah, you say, what about 1994 and the Contract On America?

For all the anti-Clinton rage in that movement, it still fundamentally was a movement *for* something, in this case smaller government and a host of other GOP wishlist items.

America was founded on hope. And Americans naturally gravitate towards politicians who give them that hope. Reagan, Bush 1 and Clinton understood this. For some reason, the harder-left branch of the Dems don't get it.

World turned upside down

Ba'athist insurgents urge Sunnis to vote, will defend polling places against Al-Zarqawri's terrorists.

Yes, you read that right.

Remember, to some people, this is a quagmire, a war we can't win.

Fortunately, the Iraqi's don't seem to be listening...

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

A good start

Apart from there only being three strategic airlifters, I like what Harper's proposing so far.

But.

Would it kill things to double that number of airlifters? Can we at least agree that Canada, the world's third-largest country, should have the military force of, say, Spain, right?

So where is the V/STOL carrier? Why aren't we upgrading from F/A-18's to the F-35 or Eurofighter? What about an MBT, at least something like the AMX-30?

The fact is, within NATO, Canada is second only to Luxembourg in least amount of per-capita spending on defence.

Yay us.

Monday, December 12, 2005

Good luck, and God Bless

Iraqi elections start today.

Meanwhile, this can only be good news.

And this is fantastic news.

No retreat but victory.

Sunday, December 11, 2005

Open mouth,

insert not only the foot, but all the leg up to the lower thigh.

Nice one, guys.

I, for one, wouldn't blow the $2,400 from my two boys on "beer and popcorn" ("popcorn"???! - ed), but rather on a trip to Disneyland or similar, if I still lived up north.

Saturday, December 10, 2005

Your Freudian slip is showing

Hidden towards the end of this story (Reg. required, use Firefox and BugMeNot) on Joe Lieberman is an interesting quote, attributed to a "Senior Democratic analyst":

"Senator Lieberman is past the point of being taken seriously in the caucus because everything he does is seen as advancing his own self-interest, instead of the Democratic interest."

And here I was thinking the business of the Democratic party was to advance the best interests of the American people, and not just play political games.

Apparently, I was wrong.

And I find it interesting how McCain is praised for independent streak, yet Lieberman is a reactionary in disguise.

Huh.

Via The Corner

Friday, December 09, 2005

OODA in action

OODA what?

This.

"The greatest skill of the American military is not technical; it is the ability of soldiers to adapt."

Read the whole thing.

Via Instapundit.

I like this.

Ohio judge sentences a woman to a night alone in the same forest where she abandoned 35 kittens.

This, my friends, is what's known as effective punishiment of criminals. Since when did humane and usual punishment change anyone?


Thursday, December 08, 2005

A-yup.

"It makes little sense to sue an executive-branch agency for implementing the will of Congress -- unless your real goal is to strike an anti-military posture."

The anti-military (no, not anti-war) crowd has wised up since the '60's. Instead of throw bags of crap at cops, they're launching lawsuits.

Via BullMooseblog.


Wednesday, December 07, 2005

49-1

"The Moose concurs with Rick Perlstein's assessment that the GOP has become a corrupt throwback to the days of Tricky Dick. However, Democrats, embodied by their National Chairman, are McGovern retro. And we know who won that confrontation."

I'm not sure if the corruption mentioned is anything unique to the GOP or rather is endemic to Washington, but there certainly has been a a fast backpedal from the fiscal conservatism that was a hallmark of the Reagan-era GOP. Either way, Barry Goldwater wouldn't be too happy with the GOP as it is now. 

 


Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Once again, Lileks says it better than me

This is becoming a pattern…

I’d been thinking about the last successful Presidential campaign built on gloom and doom, and drawing a blank. Heck, even Carter ran as a “breath of fresh air” candidate, and was all set to rip off a great post here on that very theme.

Then I found this:

“The Democrats have convinced most Americans that they'd have left Saddam chuckling in his palaces after 9/11, that they'd oppose any war against a sworn enemy of the United States unless Richard Clarke personally saw its president give a ticking nuke to terrorists and lead them in a stirring rendition of "New York, New York."

Worst of all, they seem to want it to be 1973 again -- as if the nation yearned to bob for horse-apples in the vat of shame.

Granted, the loss of Vietnam was great for the Democrats. But it really wasn't very good for the rest of the country, to say nothing of the Vietnamese.”

Read the whole thing.

Via Ed Driscoll.

Monday, December 05, 2005

Dilbert's creator on the war on terror


Scott Adams has a few thoughts on the recent deatch of Al-Qaida's #3 man.

"There are a lot of jobs that I wouldn’t want, and “third highest ranking al-Qaida leader” is right at the top. But I can tell you for sure that if I ever got that job, the first thing I’d do is narc out one of the top two guys so I could move up a notch. Apparently one of the perks of being in the top two is having a really, really good hiding place"

Read all of it

Via Rexblog


Saturday, December 03, 2005

This seems like good news

The Navy's bringing back the Cyclone-class patrol boat.

Now, if they're only update this, instead of messing with this.

Got him

Al-Qaida's #3 man killed by a Predator in Pakistan.

One of the ways to tell who's winning a war is to look at the attrition of experienced leadership. When Germany lost dozens of their planes and pilots in The Battle Of Britian, it made a difference in the invasion of Normandy and beyond, as their air forces didn't have the quality combat leadership that the Allies had.

Quick: Name a Coalition leader above, say, major that's been killed in the war on terror. Our leaders live and learn, theirs fight and die.

Sounds like a winning strategy to me.

Friday, December 02, 2005

Heh.

Details matter

I love Ridley Scott's Blackhawk Down. Okay, so they combined several of the actual people involved into composite characters and stretched the timeline a bit. But the basic details, the loadout, vehicles and weaponry of both the American and Somali forces was dead-smack on. There was one scene where the Somalis were arming up in a bazaar to attack the stranded Rangers and Delta Force operators, and one of them grabs a Heckler and Koch G3, rather than the near-ubitquious AK.

GREAT touch. It would have been easier just to give all the Somalis AK's as it's shape is recognizable and it's acknowledgmentas the Official Gun Of The Bad Guy by previous movies. But the reliable and accurate G3 was widespread in Somalia, though not as much as the tougher and popular AK.

Attention to details like that show me that the people involved researched the subject and know and understand it well enough to speak intelligently.

So when moveon.org doesn't know the difference between British and U.S. soldiers, that speaks volumes to me as to their knowledge of the military and what it's doing in Iraq.

From my cold, dead hands!

"If you think we've (the Democrats) been damaged as a party by culturally conservative working-class perceptions of us as people who want to take their guns away, you ain't seen nothing yet if we become perceived as the party that wants to take Wal-Mart away."

Read the whole thing.

Via The Corner.