Tag: Terrorism

Nick Spencer lectures world on refugees; Marvel writer silent on how many he’ll accept into his home

November 14, 2015November 14, 2015by Douglas Ernst19 Comments

Marvel’s Nick Spencer used the Paris terror attacks on Friday as an opportunity to remind the world of its duty to accept millions of refugees from the Middle East and North Africa.

His conclusion: Refusing to force towns like Sumte, Germany (population: 100), to accept 750 people from Syria, Iraq, and Libya is a win for the Islamic State group. Strangely, he refused to say how many he would take into his own home. How about five? Does five work? If Smute,Germany, can be outnumbered 7-to-1 overnight, then Marvel’s Captain America scribe should be able to handle a Syrian family of five.

We don’t know exactly where the thousands of refugees that make it to the U.S. will wind up, but Business Insider assures us they will be able to eventually make contact with Nick Spencer — if he’s willing to put his money where his mouth is.

Business Insider reported Sept. 12:

Those who have relatives in the United States will sometimes be assigned to live near them, and most go to cities like Atlanta, San Diego or Dallas where rents are more affordable than in New York or San Francisco.

Others end up in smaller cities like Boise, Idaho or Erie, Pennsylvania, but regardless of where they are taken they are free to move once they find their footing.

Sure, Mr. Spencer will have to buy less tweed jackets from J-Crew or Banana Republic, but he’ll finally be able to rest easy. He’ll know in his heart that he’s finally doing more than self-righteously pontificating on his social media moral pedestal.

Mr. Spencer, an activist masquerading as a comic book writer, says the “goal of ISIS” is to get countries (what about Captain America writers?) to stop accepting migrants. The odd thing about liberal activists like Mr. Spencer is that they only take Islamic radicals at their word when it suits the liberal-activist agenda.

It is not hard to find Islamic radicals who say they plan to achieve their long-term strategic objectives through various means (e.g., migration coupled with high birth rates). One needs to only look at London and Paris — and soon Berlin — to see Islamic radicals are masters at playing long-ball.

If you get a chance, let Mr. Spencer know that you can’t wait until he starts taking single men off Germany’s hands. It’s always nice to see comic book writers practice what they preach.

Exit Question: Nick Spencer is the type of guy who likes to take shots at Christians with comments like, “42 percent of Americans believe the world was created in six days.” Sure, time to God is not like time to man — and it is understandable that smarmy writers will not get that humans use imperfect language to describe the actions of a perfect being beyond our comprehension — but I digress.

What are the chances Nick Spencer would ever tweet something along the lines of, “78 percent of all incoming refugees believe the death penalty is appropriate for those who reject Islam“?

In Mr. Spencer’s world, taking weird pot-shots at Christians is totally acceptable, but voicing concerns about mass Islamic-migration on the day of a giant terrorist attack in downtown Paris is out of line. Telling.

‘Relentless Strike’: Sean Naylor tells the breathtaking history of Joint Special Operations Command

October 3, 2015October 3, 2015by Douglas ErnstLeave a comment

I heard about a book called “Relentless Strike: The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command” in early September. Pentagon officials were not thrilled that author Sean Naylor wanted to shed light on the Herculean efforts required to keep Americans safe. Given that special operators tend to work in the shadows, the Pentagon’s position makes sense — but I bought the book anyway — and found myself relentlessly reading it until the finish.

It is incredibly hard to review a book that spans the entire history of JSOC. Perhaps the best way to approach the book is to say how painful it was to read of all the many successes these elite operators had since Sept. 11, 2001, only to see much of their work squandered since 2008.

Towards the end of the book, Naylor discusses the rise of the Islamic State group and what its gains in Iraq meant to JSOC.

The list of Iraqi cities the Islamic State had taken by the end of the summer was a roll call of places where the JSOC task force had engaged in hard, vicious fights to dislodge Saddam Hussein’s forces and then to eviscerate Al Qaeda in Iraq: Haditha, where the Rangers withstood a fearsome artillery barrage to take a vital dam during the 2003 invasion; Tikrit, where Task Force Wolverine and Team Tank fought it out with the Fedayeen; Fallujah, where Don Hollenbaugh had earned his Distinguished Service Cross by holding off an insurgent assault single-handedly in April 2004; Rawa, where Doug Taylor’s Delta troop had impersonated farmhands to snare Ghassan Amin in April 2005; Al Qaim, where Delta operators Steven Langmack, Bob Horrigan, and Michael McNulty had died in the bloody spring of 2005; and Mosul, where the Rangers killed Abu Khalaf in a perfectly executed assault in 2008. (Sean Naylor. Relentless Strike. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015, 437)

By the time this summery occurs, the reader has been familiarized with details of every one of the hard-fought battles mentioned. It is tough to read without wincing.

The vast majority of Americans will never comprehend the amount blood, sweat, and tears shed by special operators. Naylor’s work, as prolific as it is, scratches the surface in terms of heroic tales known only to a select few.

Regardless, if nothing else, “Relentless Strike” makes it obvious that while millions of Americans are watching cat videos on YouTube or mindlessly uploading selfies to their social media page, shadow wars are raging all around them.

There is a thin veil of peace and tranquility over most Americans’ eyes, and it is only kept in place by the rough hands of those who are willing to fight and die on the other side of the globe.

I highly suggest “Relentless Strike” for anyone who wants to know what, exactly, it takes to provide national security to 350 million Americans on a daily basis.

Ben Affleck is Batman, but he can’t even confront Bill Maher on Islam without almost crying

October 4, 2014December 17, 2018by Douglas Ernst32 Comments

When it was announced the Ben Affleck would be the Dark Knight in 2015’s ‘Superman vs. Batman: Dawn of Justice,’ I said that if director Zack Snyder were smart, then he would tell his new hire to stick to movie-talk. I said Mr. Affleck lives in a Hollywood bubble, where everyone thinks along the same lines and tells each other how smart they are at cocktail parties, and that he generally has a hard time discussing politics without alienating fans (e.g., When he sees a Republican actor on screen he thinks, “I probably wouldn’t like this person…”). His near-meltdown on Bill Maher’s Real Time on Oct. 3 proves nicely that Mr. Affleck doesn’t know how to deal with smart people who disagree with him.

Consider this discussion between next summer’s Bruce Wayne, Bill Maher and author Sam Harris.

Sam Harris: Liberals have really failed on the topic of theocracy. They’ll criticize white theocracy. They’ll criticize Christians. They’ll still get agitated over the abortion clinic bombing that happened in 1984, but when you want to talk about the treatment of women and homosexuals and free thinkers and public intellectuals in the Muslim world, I would argue that liberals have failed us.

Ben Affleck: Thank God you’re here.

Sam Harris: The crucial point of confusion is that we have been sold this meme of Islamophobia, where every criticism of the doctrine of Islam gets conflated with bigotry towards Muslims as people, and that’s intellectually ridiculous.

Ben Affleck: Are you the person who understands the officially codified doctrine of Islam? You’re the interpreter of that?

Same Harris: I’m actually well-educated on this topic.

Ben Affleck: I’m asking you. So you’re saying that Islamophobia is not a real thing?

Sam Harris: I’m not denying that certain people are bigoted against Muslims as people.

Ben Affleck: “That’s big of you.”

Bill Maher: “Why are you so hostile about this concept?”

Ben Affleck: “Because it’s gross! It’s racist! It’s like saying ‘you shifty Jew.’”

Bill Maher: You’re not listening to what we are saying.”

For almost ten minutes, Ben Affleck responded to a serious discussion about Islam by giving angry little sniffs of his nostrils, fidgeting in his chair, making sarcastic little side-comments, interrupting, waving his hands around and slamming them down on the desk in front of him. He generally gave off body language that said, “I’m Batman! I should be beating these ‘racists’ up, but I can’t because I’m in my Bruce Wayne clothes on live television…”

In short, Ben Affleck was a petulant man-boy.

Faced with actual statistics about female genital mutilation in the Middle East and Africa, the percentages of Muslims who believe a man should be killed for leaving the religion, and troublesome data regarding opinions on free speech — in Western countries — Ben Affleck’s response was to call Bill Maher a “racist,” to say he “doesn’t understand idiots,” and that “we’ve killed more Muslims than they killed us by an awful lot,” (as if George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama all just have a thing for militarily engaging Muslim countries for no other reason than to kill Muslims). Ben Affleck says that the Islamic State group couldn’t fill a “AA ballpark in West Virgina,” while ignoring the fact that it only took 19 al Qaeda terrorists to bring down the World Trade Center Towers on Sept. 11, 2011. Shall I go on?

In less than 10 minutes, the man who will play Batman next summer makes it close to impossible for millions of moviegoers to see Zack Snyder’s film with an open mind. The so-called defender of Gotham is, in real life, a man who can’t even defend his own political position without looking like he might cry on national television. He had no problem mocking Catholicism in Dogma, but yet he and his buddy Kevin Smith would probably consider it “racist” to appear in a similar film titled “Fatwa.” Telling.

Next summer I will see Superman vs. Batman, but I won’t be able to stop thinking, “Clark can end this right now. All he has to do is start talking about Islam.”

Related: Egyptian Muslims in Pew poll: We support religious freedom, but we also support killing you

Editor’s note: Hat tip KMT

If you see ‘Man of Steel’ and a cop, you’ve really only seen one hero; Just ask Boston

April 18, 2013April 18, 2013by Douglas Ernst1 Comment

The new ‘Man of Steel’ trailer is out, and it looks mighty good. And, truthfully, it couldn’t come at a better time.

Jor El says of his son: “You will give the people an ideal to strive towards. They will race behind you. They will stumble. They will fall. But in time, they will join you in the sun. In time, you will help them accomplish wonders.”

The problem with ideals is that once you establish them, the people who “stumble” will be on full display for all the world to see. The smart stumblers don’t like that. And so, over the years the purveyors of popular culture have sought to do away with ideals, hoping to hide their fallibility in the process.

The easy wrong is always more popular than the hard right, and millions of Americans are seeing that over time too many easy wrongs only lead to heartache and despair. The United States as a whole is culturally lost, and a well-made Superman film just might get a few people to look for ways to right the ship.

Regardless, when trying to make sense of a world where lunatics detonate bombs amongst throngs of innocent civilians watching a marathon, we need not go to the movie theater to find a hero. They’re all around us if we’re willing to look.

Bill Iffrig, 78, lies on the ground as police officers react to a second explosion at the finish line of the Boston Marathon in Boston, Monday, April 15, 2013. Iffrig, of Lake Stevens, Wash., was running his third Boston Marathon and near the finish line when he was knocked down by one of two bomb blasts. (AP Photo/The Boston Globe, John Tlumacki)

On Monday, April 15, The Associated Press’ Jonh Tlumacki responded to the Boston Marathon terror attack not by running for his life, but by freezing; he then captured the men and women who spring into action when disaster strikes. It’s an amazing photo, one that shows just how instinctual it is for some individuals to protect and defend their fellow citizens during a time of crisis.

There are always those who run away from danger — and those who run towards it. Those who run toward the flames aren’t inherently better people than those seeking safety, but at the same time a healthy civil society holds its law enforcement personnel in high esteem.

It’s sad that even in the initial moments of such a gruesome event that there were newscasters who chose to speculate in divisive and sick ways. Only seriously warped minds would watch a bomb blast that left three people dead and scores wounded, only to wonder how the political calculus of it all would play out.

Regardless, if you see a cop, a fireman or and EMS working in the near future you might want to stop them and say “thanks” just like you would a soldier returning home from overseas. Given that modern day terrorism has erased the traditional definition of a battlefield, it’s increasingly likely that local authorities will find themselves caught up in the fog of war. Luckily, we have men like Mr. Tlumacki who are willing to chronicle the heroics.

Black Hawk Dumb: Terror haven Somalia likely to get U.S. taxpayer cash

January 17, 2013by Douglas ErnstLeave a comment

It was only two years ago that then-CIA Director David Petraeus testified before Congress on the dangers posed by Somali terrorists, saying “extremist networks over the past two decades have made southern Somalia one of the world’s most significant havens for terrorists. Al Qaeda’s affiliate there — al Shabaab — is large and well-funded relative to most extremist groups, and it has attracted and trained hundreds of foreign fighters, including scores of Americans and dozens from other Western countries.”

Today the U.S. is preparing to formally recognize the Somali government, paving the way to send taxpayer dollars to the place that will forever be associated with “Black Hawk Down,” where a U.S. Army Ranger was dragged through the streets in 1993.

Bloomberg reports:

The U.S. will formally recognize the government in Somalia tomorrow, a step that paves the way for the U.S. and international finance organizations to aid the war-torn African nation.

“It’s the start of a significant process that underscores the return to stability that has occurred in Somalia over the last four years,” U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson said [told] reporters. …

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton plans to exchange diplomatic notes with Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud … in a meeting at the State Department.

Americans watched as the Obama administration gave weapons and aid to Libyan rebels. Our reward? U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and former Navy SEALs were slain in the Benghazi terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2012. Now the American people are supposed to believe that with a few U.S. dollars and some help from the CIA, Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud can transform Mogadishu into Club Med.

Most Americans don’t know about the importance of the clan in Islamic culture. They are unfamiliar with women like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who grew up in Somalia and says she was beaten until she learned 800 years of her father’s ancestry, or that strangers in the country will often trace their lineages until they find a common ancestor. But the State Department does know this. Yet Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is planning to exchange “notes” with Somalia’s president, which will in all likelihood lead to dollars. And that cash will go to a clan culture riddled with African members of al-Shabaab, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Boko Haram and other terrorist groups.

If the State Department thinks it can cozy up to Somalia and not get burned, maybe it should ask French intelligence agent Denis Allex for advice. Or maybe not, since the French government believes members of al Shabaab executed him on Jan. 11.

The question before Americans isn’t whether we should be engaged in Africa, because we should (to what extent can be debated). The question is, who are we going to hold accountable if this goes horribly wrong?

If Clinton’s aversion to answering questions about the Benghazi terrorist attacks and ensuing cover-up is the model for how this administration does business, conservatives should make oversight of any cash transfers to Somalia a priority. If something goes wrong in Mogadishu, the most likely scapegoat will be Republican members of the 113th Congress.