"Jews? We don't need no stinkin' Jews!"

(Apologies to John Houston for the paraphrase from "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.")

Following President Bobama’s “Middle East” speech yesterday, I was hard-pressed to remember when I ever heard such a stream of hot, steaming puke pour out of the mouth of America’s Chief Executive. I think it might have been during Watergate, or maybe when Willie the Zipper was denying having any sort of meaningful sex with Monica, and parsing the meaning of “is.”

Israel is our only friend in the Middle East. They would have flown nuclear suicide missions on Moscow for us during the Cold War, if it heated up. My father told me about liberating the Nordhausen concentration camp, where the Nazis were building V-2 rockets with slave labor. The Israelis are the most intrepid people on earth. Like America, they haven’t been perfect in forging their nation, and some of their actions—like demolishing homes in the Gaza Strip—made me wonder if they were becoming like the Nazis who tried to exterminate them, but the question was more rhetorical than anything else.

I have never been able to wrap my mind around the persecution of Jews. It has been going on for a millennium, and is still a twisted sort of international sport with most of the world. I have intimate intellectual associations with a variety of Christian “fundies”—an oxymoron if I ever heard one!—but I don’t buy into that business that “the Jews killed Jesus.” Saying that is like saying the Westboro Baptists represent all of that denomination—and I’m a “Babtist” by religious orientation. I’m also conversant with all the conspiracy theories about the Rothschilds and their control of the world’s monetary system, and all the rest of that crap. If Jews run anything, they do so on the basis of merit, creativity, and productivity, not because of some sinister hidden agenda in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. What I initially assumed were Israeli emulations of Nazi “solutions”—in the sense that abused children often grow up to become abusers—was instead an application of Mitchell WerBell’s maxim that “it takes terror to break terror.” Unlike the theologically-driven caliphates of Islam, Israel is guided by the moral center of Judaism, and that has a direct link to the teachings of Christ. I’ve never had a Jewish person tell me I have to convert to their belief system or die. No Hebrew has ever tried to enslave me.

Before there was an Israel, and the rest of the world was down on Jews either as matter of daily business or just to see the look on their faces, America was—as always—the shining city on the hill where they could find refuge. There was some ugliness and denial in the early years of War II, but when the facts came out, America made an irrevocable commitment to the rights and protection of Jewish heritage. (In telling me about Nordhausen, my father touched on the fact that a number of German soldiers trying to surrender to the Allies ended up dead on the side of the road. I don’t think he was ever a party to a black-flag mentality, but there were a lot of GIs who saw what happened, and weren’t too concerned about taking prisoners.)

Ah, but as usual, I digress.

The bonds between Israel and America are deep, and should be insoluble. Instead, they have become another poker chip for The Manchurian Candidate. He has already played his ace, banking on the legend of becoming “the man who killed Osama bin Laden,” and now he is betraying our friendship and support of Israel for the sake of appeasing those Muslim countries and satraps that will never “like” us under any circumstances. So now, he raises the stakes in the game, and makes his true agenda more obvious. We should have gotten a clue when he left the Israeli Prime Minister sitting in the Oval Office while he—Bobama—went to eat dinner during a summit conference. (Later the gentleman was shown out of the White House via the back door; another clue.)

Okay, show of hands. Who can name one other true ally of America in the Middle Eastern region of the world? Saudi Arabia? Jordan? Turkey? Pakistan?

Yeah, the Saudis like us because we buy their oil. Let’s try trading them food for oil, and see what their response is. Places like Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria are a joke. Turkey tolerated us during the Cold War because they lived next door to the USSR. Pakistan is double-dealing us faster than a back-alley three-card-monte shark, because they like the billions of foreign aid we are trading for passage rights for supplies to our troops in Afghanistan.

Speaking of which, are the Afghanis friendly to anyone? When the Brits were omnipotent empire-builders, they couldn’t do much in there. The ubiquitous, all-powerful Soviets came to bad end in their hopes of conquest, or assimilation, or whatever.

I’m sure the people of Iraq are grateful to us for rebuilding everything we broke in removing Saddam Hussein, but their tribal loyalties are much stronger than the secret treaties that created the country following War I. They fought a stalemate war with Iran for a decade in the ‘80s, but now that we have decimated their military, we will have to be there forever, or relinquish the oil fields to Iran. The Iranians were our buddies when the Shah ran things, and the Cold War was “our” dictators against “their” dictators, but we sold him out, and they became the world’s most dangerous theocracy.

So, who’s our buddy now? Libya? They have a trickle of oil, and the Qattara Depression. If The Manchurian Candidate has his way, their claim to relevance in the 21st century will be as the re-arming point for Al Qaeda, and the irony is that Bobama will be giving them the ordnance.

Israel is our only friend in that region, and to quote Mitt Romney, Bobama has thrown that nation “under the bus.” The Red Herring’s speech was one of the most egregious repudiations of an ally since Winston Churchill gave his “Iron Curtain” speech, and Churchill’s cynical assessment of the USSR had a lot more validity than Bobama’s claptrap about returning Israel to its 1967 borders. Watching him on TV, I started cussing and muttering “Why don’t you just bring them [Hezbollah, Hamas, and Al Qaeda] to the Lincoln Bedroom and [perform oral sex on them]?”

When our relationship with Israel chills, as it certainly will, we will be the poorer for it. The Israelis are no strangers to political turmoil, and I suspect they’re trying to bear with us until we can restore competent, rational leadership to our country. However, they have never depended upon the largesse of other countries, and are big kids who can take care of themselves. They are certainly not going to depend on the cult of personality that has taken precedence in America, despite our mutual history.

If bin Laden was an “ace of spades,” then Israel is the ace of hearts. Bobama has upped his ante, and this ain’t no TV poker tournament.

Ace in the hole?

As is often the case, I get my best focus from e-mails. With slight revisions, this is my take on the bin Laden situation:

I'm thinking strangely since Sunday night, and folding a new tin-foil hat since I wrote that last blog post about what a "mistake" it was to dump Osama's body.

Here's a notion for you:

What if bin Laden has been an "ace in the hole" since, say, 2007? Word is beginning to leak out that there was a CIA "safe house" nearby the Abbottabad mansion, although the time frame isn't specific yet. We're taking it as a given that the Pakis knew Osama was "hiding in plain sight" and the common belief is that they didn't mention it to us out of sheer obstinacy and bet-hedging.

What if they were cooperating with us the whole time? Emerging details suggest that Osama was under a form of house-arrest since the compound was [mostly] completed and he moved in. Like Howard Hughes, it is being suggested that he never left the top floors of the main building. One "common tater" went so far as to state bin Laden had constructed his own prison.

Is it even plausible that the Paki ISI was holding him under a form of "house arrest" for the past few years? Let's pre-date this notion to GWB's administration; bin Laden was under control, his whereabouts were known, and his continued communication with the outside world was constantly monitored and mined for information yields. Let's assume that GWB was too decent to play the trump card and order the trigger pulled; he was already in his second term by the time Osama was corralled in Pakistan. The cooperation of Pervert Mushrat and the Pakis was more vital than pressuring them into a quick turn-over or a midnight double-tap.

So, bin Laden becomes a Bush inheritance that The Red Herring can't snivel about. His value as an intelligence asset is enormous; he's still allowed to release his ranting audio tapes, and communicate with his acolytes. It's a win-win; the bad boy is right where we want him, and we are tracking his people down every time he reaches out to touch someone. As long as he doesn't leave the compound, he can carry on as a little tin god, and can be snuffed if/when political exigencies demand it. GWB is secure enough with his place in history, his ego, and the insulting allegations of The Far Left that he's too stupid to find Osama. Let's assume Bush knew exactly where he was, but kept his finger off the trigger because he's seen "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" and decided he had nothing to gain.

When The Manchurian Candidate takes office, he gets the information in that legendary classified "inauguration" notebook that bin Laden is a husbanded asset in Pakistan. Suggestions were made for years that Osama was hiding out there somewhere. The fact that he was under house-arrest in Abottabad was a closely-held secret. The Red Herring does nothing besides his public pronouncement that it's "priority number one" that bin Laden be apprehended.

Then Bobama's approval ratings hit record lows. The economy is getting worse, and Donald Trump is giving him hell about that pesky birth certificate. Trump is a wild card; he has enough money to pay investigators indefinitely on the "birther" issue. So, The Red Herring collects on the quid pro quo he spelled out to Leon Panetta upon naming him DCI [Director of Central Intelligence]; dig that agency-forged document out of your desk drawer, and collect your bump to Secretary of Defense.

The approval ratings remain unchanged, as does the belief index. 68% of people still believe Bobama is a socialist, and 34% still think he's a closet Muslim. Time for drastic action...

BOOM! Osama bin Laden is dead. He's given an ostensible hurry-up DNA test, a ritual cleansing and a hasty burial at sea "according to Islamic tradition" even though he's a poster-boy heretic. Bin Laden knew he was a dead man walking from the moment the first plane struck the WTC; why not become a martyr so the greatest sleeper agent in Islamic history can continue his calculated destruction of Great Satan America? The Manchurian Candidate is in a position to cause much more long-term damage than Osama ever could, and a re-election might just be the impetus required to push the nation over the brink into dhimmitude. Re-election frees up The Manchurian Candidate to promote his true agenda, and if a nine-point ratings boost can be sustained, along with the propaganda legend of "the man who killed Osama bin Laden", it's another win-win situation. Bin Laden wanted a final walk in the sun; his legend is he went out like a gunfighter, shoving his fifth wife at the SEALs while he ducked for cover. Bobama's legend is that he killed the most despised man of the 21st century. Losing the body, and the appeasement of not releasing a death photo, just enhances Bobama's legend and conveniently covers the facts.

For all I know, the SEALs threw a black bag over bin Laden's head, and he's being waterboarded at Gitmo as I write this. I'm sticking to the "ace in the hole" supposition until I see a photo of bin Laden's brain leaking onto the deck. The true believers will never buy any of this, and I know chapter and verse about matching meta-data in PhotoShop™ and CGI, so the skeptics will always have something to gripe about regarding verification, and the most clever forgery might be detected if a photo is released. The whole appeasement business about not releasing some sort of photo is suspect, and dumping Osama into the ocean after a 45-minute "Islamic burial ritual" is starting to sound fishy. [No pun intended...or maybe it was.]

By the way, the tail section of that super-Blackhawk is a moot point. By now, the Chinese have taken it apart, re-assembled it, and are reverse-engineering the technology. We'll get it back in a public display of "cooperation" by the Pakis. The real "cooperation" was that they kept bin Laden on a short leash for years. Their current mantra is "don't do that again" regarding the raid, but they knew at the highest levels that one day a kill team would walk into Osama's mansion and stop his clock. The "borrowed" SEALs may think the mission was a straightforward raid, and only the agency tag-along who actually pulled the trigger knew better. One in the face and a good-bye shot in the X-ring is my sort of professionalism.

Bobama's played his ace, and he better hope no one calls him on it.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. (I don't even want to raise the sticky Constitutional question of the president being able to order the murder of anyone the "democratic" lynch mob considers worthy of death; I think the French Revolution gave us a good example of where that road ends.)

I have my tin-foil hat firmly in place, and am immune to alien orders. I hope I see something forthcoming that'll convince me I'm in need of therapy, but until our "transparent" leadership does something affirmative, I thought I'd float the notion.

"The Man Who Shot Osama bin Laden"

Okay, the boogeyman is dead. In the hours following the telephone call last night, watching the news coverage until dawn, I felt a surprisingly huge weight lifting off my chest. A strange transcendental peace descended. I’ve been madder than a midget with a yo-yo since 9/11, but I didn’t realize that bin Laden’s very existence constituted such a burden on my psyche until it was lifted.

Still, there were some disparate thoughts and impressions that immediately attached to this historic moment. These wildly divergent notions ranged from elation to cynicism. The details of the operation are still coming in, so some of what follows may be subject to revision or reconsideration at my discretion. However, these are first impressions as I listen once again to “The Concert for New York City”—Madison Square Garden; 20 October 2001—at high volume:

It was a mistake to “bury” Osama bin Laden at sea “according to Islamic tradition.” Only a true adherent of the righteous tenets of Islam should be afforded the care and considerations of his religion. Bin Laden forfeited those considerations when he started organizing Al Qaeda in 1988. The moral nature of terrorism precludes acceptance as a civilized human being.

Like the “Elvis sightings” that plagued us after Presley’s death, there is now going to be a hard-core following of jihadists who will insist their little tin god is alive, and immortal. Instead of tossing him into the drink, we should have brought bin Laden’s bloody corpse to New York and put it on display for a week. This would have given the rest of the world a chance to see and believe that he is truly discorporated. The true believers could have filed past, smelled the blood and decay, and accepted the fact that their spiritual guru was dead. Now, no matter how many gruesome death photos are displayed, the hard-core heathens will simply dismiss them with the assertion that they are PhotoShop™ or CGI products.

If anyone took umbrage that bin Laden wasn’t buried within 24 hours of his demise, they could be referred to paragraph three above. Islam is a valid religion, and true believers should be treated with respect and dignity. Those who abuse and twist the Islamic belief system should be shunned and treated as pariahs. If postponing a burial and displaying the corpse of an Islamic heretic will convince others that he has truly received a measure of justice, then Muslims should be just as amenable to this as anyone else.

Feeding bin Laden to the fish was also justified as not establishing a “shrine” for his adherents. Personally, I would have buried him somewhere here in America, in an easily accessible location, and set up full-time surveillance cameras to record and identify all those who came to pay their respects. That would give the Ministry of Homeland Security something to do besides groping grannies at the airport.

Tossing Osama overboard was a mistake.

I was slightly taken aback by the bloodthirsty nature of the spontaneous demonstrations that broke out following the news that Osama had been killed, but only slightly. Watching the—mostly—young celebrants, and deducting ten years from their median age, I wondered how many of them realized the import of what was happening back in 2001. Still, they have grown up for nearly a decade with the specter of jihad, so they’re entitled to revel a bit. Like the cataclysm that made bin Laden the most despised and wanted man of this new century, his death has had a unifying effect on the American people, and this is never a bad thing. In this post-post-modern age of class warfare, partisan political dissonance, and old-school careerist politicians versus a new wave of sincere reformers, a little unity in the general population is a much-needed nostrum.

That being said, what’s with the “I…me…my” rhetoric that overloaded the Manchurian Candidate’s speech last night? A couple of minutes into it, I was talking to the TV, muttering “Hey! You didn’t strap on a cape and fly over there to kill him yourself!”

Osama bin Laden was finally brought down by nearly ten years of hard work by intelligence professionals and dedicated military personnel. The path to Osama’s mansion led straight through the Guantanamo Bay detention center, where our “torture” of known terrorists yielded vital information as to bin Laden’s whereabouts. The existence of “Gitmo” is totally vindicated, despite the Manchurian Candidate’s empty promise to close it down.

Mr. Bobama has done exactly two things that I consider semi-presidential, since he took office. The first was green-lighting the takedown of the Somali pirates who hijacked the Maersk Alabama and held the captain hostage a few years ago. That ended quite badly…for the pirates; thanks to the Navy SEALs. Giving the go-ahead to this black-flag operation that finally leveled bin Laden’s karma was the second executive decision I can unequivocally support. The rest of his administration remains a vacuum of incompetence and a morass of sinister suppositions. Life-and-death decisions, and sending others into harm’s way, are the day-to-day obligations of leadership, not some comic-book heroic grandstanding undertaken for the aggrandizement of the office-holder. Signing off on a risky and morally troubling decision for the greater good should be treated with modesty and self-effacement. Instead, we got a trumpeting of the sprained arm Bobama suffered from patting himself on the ass for finally doing his job.

Finally: I have already splattered this notion all over FaceBook™ comment threads, because I sense it to be at the core of this incident. This is where the cynicism kicks in. The image emerged fully-formed when I saw a makeshift sign one of the “death celebrants” was waving in the pre-dawn hours: “Obama—1, Osama—0.”

I went so far as to post a $100 bet on FaceBook™. When the next Democrat convention rolls around, and the Designated Liberal introduces Barack Hussein Obama to accept his anointment, I am already certain that the rote list of his achievements will be topped by the accolade that he is “the man who killed Osama bin Laden.”

I refer you to a 1962 John Ford movie: “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.” The three stars of interest here are John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, and Lee Marvin as Liberty Valance, a thoroughly unbalanced and nasty outlaw. I don’t want to give spoilers if you haven’t seen this, but after being victimized repeatedly by “Valance”, Jimmy Stewart forces a confrontation that ends with “Valance” dead in the street. Stewart’s “Ransom Stoddard” character is hailed as a hero and goes on to elicit much political mileage from his exploit, eventually becoming a US Senator and considered for higher office. There is a plot twist involved, because in fact, “Stoddard” didn’t shoot anyone. The story is told in flashback, and quite involved.

If you’ve never seen this classic, try to figure it out. I urge you to rent the DVD, as it applies to what I’m saying here. The “punch-line” of the movie is this:
Ransom Stoddard: “You're not going to use the story, Mr. Scott?”
[Newspaper editor] Maxwell Scott: “No, sir. This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

“I…me…my…”

In spite of his repudiation of Guantanamo Bay, the Afghanistan mission, the Iraq adventure, and a whining insistence that his failures are an “inheritance” from the Bush administration, Barack Hussein Obama will become legendary as “the man who killed Osama bin Laden.” Maybe Michael Moore will even make a movie about it.