Sarkozy Ordered Assault to Rescue French Family.
The U.S. Navy awaits orders after the report that Maersk Alabama skipper Richard Phillips tried and failed to escape his captors in the lifeboat. Will the Seals deploy? Will POTUS discover the order that John Hay once received from TR in June 1904 and sent in a telegram to the American admiral on the scene: "We want Pedicaris alive or Raisuni dead!" Re the French victim: On April 4, pirates captured a French private yacht Tanit, carrying two couples and a small child, 400 miles off Puntland, and held the young families hostage until President N. Sarkozy, refusing to bargain, gave the go order. One hostage is dead. Not the child, so a guess at this time is that it may be the father. Other hostages unhurt. No report on pirates. The major worry now is that the pirates with Phillips will learn of the French rescue op and panic that they are to be assaulted. How will they learn? They have a radio onboard, because this is a fully equipped Maersk craft. The FBI may be speaking with them now, if they have a translator, if Phillips is still alive.
TR Sent In The Marines.
John Milius's cantankerous 1975 "Wind and the Lion" is loosely based on the June 1904 incident in Morocco when TR responded to the shenanigans of the sheik Raisuni, who had grabbed the American mining engineer Pedicaris as a ploy for ransom. Also because there was a long standing family feud over the control of Morocco, dating back to the usual foggy Ummah family relations. The scenarios came to a head the week of the 1904 Republican convention. TR and his Secretary of State John Hay (Lincoln's private secretary and a heroic melancholic) seized the chance to make headlines and boost their election campaign. The GOP celebrated. Recall that TR was an accidental president, inheriting the office from the assassinated William McKinley in September 1901, so the nomination and campaign were his first ever run for the presidency. Now POTUS Obama has an opportunity. POTUS has the magical TR chance. Does he follow (TR) Sarkozy? Or does he negotiate with pirates? "We want Phillips alive or the pirates dead!"
THIS IS NOT REAL:
"I am Charles Chas with the news and we go straight to Chuck Charlie who is traveling with the SSS group on their fact finding mission to determine the fate of yet another group of Euromericans who were just minding their own business somewhere in the world when they were abducted by extreme factions of a relatively loose coalition of freelance fanatics desperately seeking to live the good life and become good capitalists by extortion, kidnapping, or any means possible. Bear in mind these are adult themes and that no one gets to choose their parents."
"Chuck, is that you?"
"Yes, Charles, I'm here, but, I don't know where here is. They blindfolded me on the way as part of this exclusive interview."
"That's understandable, isn't it, Chuck"
"Easy enough to not quibble about it, for sure, when an AK47 is pointed at your head, Charles... hahaha. Just some nervous humor here to help ease the tension I feel right now."
"Alright, let's get to the crux of the matter- what do these people want for the release of the Euromericans, Chuck?"
"That's easy enough, too, Charles. According to Soleka Myboot, uh, the leader of this AsYet named group, they are demanding the immediate halt to the growing of all grapes. Specifically, French vineyards are directed to torch their plants and turn the fields and, uh, abandon the enterprise. Forever. And they say they want seven refrigerators, too. To, to, to my understanding, they want to change the landscape here in their own country by monopolizing the grape industry and reaping the bounty of the worldwide wine trade. The refrigerators are for the wives."
"Hmmm, interesting set of demands, don't you think, Chuck? Do these people have any experience in grape production or operating a winery?"
"Charles, I did ask that and Soleka replied, rather hostilely, too, I might add, that if the stupid, dirty French can do it, then it will be no problem for the AsYet!"
"Chuck, how do they think the Euromerican State Department will react to this outlandish---mmmm, wait a minute, my earpiece is vibrating and I'm getting word that the abductors have released the captives in an expression of goodwill. Can you verify this, Chuck? Have you any word of these developments? Can you ask Mr. Soleka Myboot why he decided to release the hostages? Chuck, are you there? Chuck? Can you hear me? Chuck?"
Well, we apparently have lost the feed from Chuck Charlie's cellular. We're trying to reestablish the connection and let's all hope he is okay and will not come to any harm."
THIS IS REAL:
Roxana Saberi, an independent journalist who was arrested by Iranian agents in January has been charged with spying by prosecutors.
What will POtUS and SoS do with this one?
FREE ROXANA!!!
My heart sank when I heard that an FBI Hostage Rescue Team was called in. Unless their training has improved considerably since Waco, poor Captain Phillips' chances just got a lot worse.
I read the AM that the pirates tossed overboard their comm gear fearing US was sending secret messages to the captive captain.
The captain has a great book to write--if he lives.
You go Sarkozy!
Move over, John Hay (and M. Sarkozy) -- serial know-it-all Hillary Clinton has promised to provide a "twenty-first century" solution to the Somali pirate "crime" problem. What the heck does that mean, suing them on Judge Judy? Seriously, it probably does mean interminable legalistic palaver instead of prompt and effective military action, and that yet another "peace process" will rule while the nature of its results, if there are any, will not. Secretary Clinton, this is an eighteenth century-type problem which is best addressed by an eighteenth century-type solution, i.e., treating these pirates like the international outlaws they are -- which, by the way, is how we should have been treating Islamist terrorists all along -- and ruthlessly wiping them out, no lawyers necessary or wanted. That, and that alone, is what constitutes bringing international outlaws to justice. And how ironic it is that leftists like Hillary and Obama continually trumpet the need for international legal consensus when they are apparently on the verge of ignoring or negating one -- that piracy is outside both the substance and usual process of law -- that has existed for centuries.
What was it? Within six months of assuming the Presidency, the administration will be tested with a what was it now? Did I get this wrong? I'm sure there was talk of some kind of test.
No fair piling on!!!
Novanglus- If a President resigns under duress or due to some other incapacity that jeopardizes the competency of the office, does the VP assume the position or is there another remedy described?
Obama will never give the order. At best, he will punt the problem down the road. He has never had to make a decision involving the possibility of real consequences. The best he can do is rearrange some words on a page (or on a teleprompter). It is the academic approach to any problem. It is how academics create problems after having convinced themselves that heretofore non-existing problems can be made to exist simply by structuring arguments in support - like 'global warming'.
What we have off the coast of Puntland is an example of a real problem. It is Obama's first test. Will he follow in the steps of Carter and let it drag on until another Reagan is elected? Will Sarkozy or any of the others intercede and grab the handlebars before Obama's pink, training wheels equipped bike hits traffic? Will a tsunami strike and wipe out that particular part of the game board just in time for the next White House rave party to begin?
I'd give a lot to know just how the media is handling this. Over here, Obama is still tops. The press still treats him as the second coming. Everything he does is new and good; a welcome break from America's rouge behavior in the past. Also, don't look for academics to ever take off their rose-colored glasses. They're well versed in persuading themselves of anything as long as it suits their Bertrand Russell inspired deconstructionist inclinations.
Novanglus- Oh sorry, I forgot about the Nixon saga and G Ford. How could I forget? I must be slipping /\* weeeee on a slippery slope myself.
What if a President resigns and then a Vice President resigns for any number of good reasons?
When it's day here, it's night over in the States. This gives me time to mull over your posts and try to get a sense of the lay of the land while you sleep. Again, as I see it, we are still faced with a divergence in Weltanschauung. We argue, as we always have, for reason and proper redress - all this under the rubric of a pre-Obama mindset. Many of us do not yet realize how much the paradigm has changed. (I don't think that Biden has realized it yet.) Do catch today's Caroline Glick opinion column in The Jerusalem Post. She's nailed it, suggesting that America is no longer the policeman of the world; that the world - including Israel - will now have to begin fending for itself.
Obama owes no allegiance to America. He sees himself as a world leader. He is quite willing to sacrifice our nation for some impossible global utopia that has clearly taken root in his academic half-mind. Then too, there is his clear bent towards favoring the Islamists. The pirates are simply Islamist terrorists by another name. Understand the pirates, and you understand the essence of Islamist movements all over the globe. They all are driven by greed and blind hatred of all that we have traditionally defined as ‘success’. They despise civilization. They have no sense of family just as Obama has no sense of America.
It's the international news outlets who have given us Obama. These, likewise, have no allegiance to anything beyond an appearance, however contrived, of being alive. By ‘appearance’ I mean fast-action movie clips and video games; as well as canings, stonings, limb severing, and beheadings, all recorded digitally on cheap cell phone cameras. They are soulless. They will take no side beyond that which will secure the highest ratings.
By pushing for a black president, they hoped to ignite race wars which many progressives think are overdue. They’d provide excellent footage for a nation (they think is) starved for some honest stimulation. “Nothing is real; and nothing to get hung about; strawberry fields forever…”
The only thing wrong with the narrative is that it fails to mention that Pedicaris indeed was released ;but Raisuni was also $70,000 gold richer.
My favorite slogan to deal with this is "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute" spoken by Congressman Robert Goodloe Harper ,Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means. Would that the current chair Charles Rangel had the same resolve. He only sees pirates on Wall Street .
Obama is a puppet like Bush/Clinton/Bush Sr before him. i heard on an alternative radio station from this extremist black radio host that if Obama betrayed them 'African Americans" there would be blood in the streets.
Obama has been sold out to the Council of Foreign Relations, Bilderburg Group and The Trilateral Commisson all front groups for the Globalist. Biden or Hillary Clinton will take over if Obama can't cut it or is assisinated.
Obama's test I believe will either be 1) a second American Revolution, 2) a bird flu plague which will sweep the nation (check out those FEMA camp plastic coffins) and 3) a war with Iran. It will one or all of the above.
I believe the Somali pirates are the symbolic verisons of the International Bankers who are pillaging the American taxpayers and the rest of the world.
Peter K.:
Your last two posts are outstanding, although that's not uncommon with you. Great stuff! And Caroline Glick often nails things in her column, as she has now. In this case, Ms. Glick gives us a chilling vision of what the world is rapidily coming to be without the so-called "American hegemony" that President Obama is so eagerly condemning and surrendering. There will be no control over very much by anyone -- never mind the laughable UN -- and state actors and non-state actors alike will follow "every-actor-for-itself-and-devil-take-the-hindmost" policies that will yield not Obama's hopey-change but a continuous global barroom brawl.
Ooops, pardon me -- one state actor will proclaim itself above the ugly brawl, i.e., Obama's version of America, and we will be as pathetically ineffective as the weak or bought off or superannuated sheriff in a Western movie who cannot or will not protect his town from the local rustler gang save by talk he will not walk, as the outlaws well know. In the movies, a tough gunslinger eventually arrives and restores order the hard way by doling out rough justice. Alas, this will not happen with hopey-change Obama. He is a congenital egghead whose chief relationship with reality is to spurn it as unworthy of his own intellectual brilliance. Consider his reaction to the Nork missile launch. Obama cries out, "Words must mean something!" Is this pathetic bleat a principled statement of fact or a mere velleity? I think the latter; in any case, it begs the question, "President (or Sheriff) Obama, what do you propose to do about international actors who care nothing for fine words, not even yours?"
Is there a "no confidence" clause in the Constitution anywhere stipulated/ mentioned that would cause a vote to occur on the competency of a President and/ or Administration?
Every once in a while a nice dose of crazy goes a long way.
I learned some important lessons in elementary school, both in America and overseas, as a child. The bullies will come at you. It is inevitable, it is their nature. At some point, we all have a threshold above which we will not tolerate their nonsense.
Then when I was 15, I saw Apocalypse Now. I did not understand why they wanted Col. Kurtz terminated with extreme prejudice. He was the only one that understood how to win, how to keep the evil at bay. He was learned and accomplished in the art of war. Sure, he was crazy - but that was exactly what the enemy needed to come up against to stand down.
With respect to the pirates, they have yet to learn the correct lessons and this administration (and the one before it) has and will continue to fail to understand what needs to be done to put an end to it. It's time for a little crazy. Captain Philips is a brave man for putting himself in danger to save his crew and ship. He is doing his duty, demonstrating a little bit of crazy himself. He knew when he made that move that the probability of survival was low. So, here's my dose of crazy. Napalm. Burn the pirate dingy and the hostage. Film it. Broadcast it on al Jazeera. Make it known to the pirates and their backers - you attack our trade routes, we burn you alive. Make it known to the merchant marines, protect your ships to the death or death will come looking for you. This nonsense will stop within 90 days, when the message gets out.
Which is crazier? Sending an unambiguous message that no quarter will be paid to pirates or to watch four uneducated thugs stand off a US Navy Destroyer? What use is a blue water Navy if we can't take down a handful of dirt bags in a dingy?
I wrote up an elaborate comparison of today's events to those of 15th century Constantinople; it took me the better part of 20 minutes to write and proofread; then just as I was about to click "Submit" the internet crashed and I lost it. You'll all just have to trust me that I managed to prove strong parallels between President Obama and the latter-day emperors of Byzantium. Maybe Indiana Jones will find the draft someday .... sigh.
novanglus:
While I agree with your substance, I don't think we need to napalm the Captain to make your point, just rescue the poor man by force and give the pirates no quarter. And, yes, let's put it all on YouTube.
Unfortunately, it's academic -- those high seas FBI guys aren't there just as negotiators but to "build a criminal case" against those four little vermin! Coming to a criminal court near you, four khat-chewing terrorists whose boss-pirates can, if so inclined, use some of their stolen millions to hire them some substantial lawyer talent. What a legal circus it will be, as Obama and Hillary forge ahead in this ideologized attempt to render the US armed forces obsolete and irrelevant, not part of a "twenty-first century" solution to terrorist problems.
Burn an innocent American citizen alive to look tough? What a singular idea, Novanglus. The original John Adams was not blessed with cable television as his primary source of historical and moral instruction, but with you that lack has clearly been remedied.
Where are the sharpshooters? Where are the navy seals at 3:00 AM local time?
Where is our backbone? Where is our government spline?
You're right, Obama can't run from this one. You suppose they're poling this one in order to know what to do?
I purposely spent the greater part of this day avoiding any news info based programs. Nada, nothing, zilch... don't want to hear it.
When I came back to get informed, I fully expected that Cap Phillips would be safe aboard a USN vessel after a successful rescue op and that there had been an undeniably clear message "relayed" to these brigands concerning the hapless choice of enterprise they are engaged in.
Was I shocked to find what I found? Not really.
Novanglus, oddly enough, I too had thought of Kurtz pass through my mind today and his reflection on the ideal of "Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure." That complete nihilism could be considered normal as sharks in a frenzied feeding.
Undisturbed, I watched the 'The Bridge on the River Kwai'-
Col Nicholson "Without law, Commander, there is no civilization."
Com Shears "That's just my point; here, there is no civilization."
Col Nicholson "Then we have the opportunity to introduce it."
Col Saito "Be happy in your work"
Kurtz "The horror... the horror"
Nicholson "What have I done?"
Maj Clipton "Madness! Madness!"
Clearly Mr. Batchelor errs when he writes that the GOP is "dead like Lehman Brothers and Robert E. Lee." No, the Republicans are simply downstairs watching television. Big-screen, made-in-China television. Lots and lots of television, with uncredited dialogue by John Milius. Think I'm kidding? Hold a tiny mirror in front of one them and observe how it fogs up. There, you see? Not dead at all.
Kenneth - I respect your disgust at my suggestion. I share it. It is outrageous and nearly unthinkable. That's why I called it crazy up front. I also know that were I in the captain's shoes, I would understand (though loathe) that my life might be forfeit to make a larger point in the hope that the loss of one life in a callous manner would give pause to those who would put more innocents at risk. Remember, these are pirates - that is a term that means that they operate outside legalities, laws of war, and even civilization. They are animals. Animals understand one thing and one thing alone. Survival. How do we teach them that continuing their antics leads to death, unforgiving? A clean SEAL team hit would do fine by me, but I don't think it demonstrates the kind of crazy that would make a sufficient impression on these hyenas and stop them from further attacks.
The horror...the horror...All mariners are at risk each day that we fail to convince the enemy that their actions result in their death. The legalisms and the half measures only embolden them. Each time we delay and obfuscate, we up the ante for the amount of crazy that will be required to put these dogs down. I'd rather it be one man than a hundred, a hundred than a thousand, a thousand than a million. Instead, I only see our appeasement hurtling us at an ever accelerating rate to something so horrible that it will make the 20th Century experiences of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot looks like a nouvelle cuisine appetizer in comparison. What were they responsible for - tens of millions of deaths? Was it the Indian foreign or defense minister who said a few years ago that he did not fear a nuclear attack from Pakistan, because although they projected it would kill 100 million Indians, the counter strike would kill 100 million Pakistanis - but that India would still have well over 1 billion people remaining, while Pakistan would be finished. Again, the horror. We have the luxury of not having to make such horrible decisions and of having to live with the consequences. But those decisions will be forced in time. Someone will make them. The stakes wlll get progressively higher.
In the words of Col. Kurtz: "You have to have men who are moral and at the same time were able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling, without passion, without judgment--without judgment. Because it's judgment that defeats us."
Show me a better way - I don't see things improving on the current path.
Oh yeh, that's a good one Kenteth. Clear, succinct, and to the point.
What was the point, now? Bad Republicans watch TV? Good Republicans don't? You yourself don't watch TV? Good Democrats don't watch TV?
Or maybe... no, I just don't get it. But, there are people in the world who dictate to others that they can't enjoy a movie or participate in internet tomfoolery or even read books. But, I know you didn't intend to say that.
Anyone know or heard the latest on the two peeps in Afgha recently who translated the Koran and got 20 years prison time for mispeling som wurds? Or was it that it is forbidden to translate the Koran (did I spell that right? I've seen it Q'uran, too, haven't I?) Anyway, their lawyer was going to appeal to the highest courts. The prosecutor sought the death penalty in the case. I guess they got lucky.
By the way, I'm Independent American and I enjoy the movies and entertainments of my choosing. Don't need a mirror here yet.
And I really appreciate John B and all you good people!