VDH on Calling a Swede a Swede and the News you Didn't Read in the newspaper or see on TV

Anyone who reads this blog is familiar with my love of what Victor Davis Hanson writes.
Today he has hit it out of the park again.

Calling a Swede a Swede
Imagine an alternate universe where terrorists are Scandinavian — Swedes, to be specific.

Imagine, if you will, an alternative universe where perception is slightly altered to reflect a different reality. In this universe, terrorists are Scandinavian — Swedes, to be specific.

We should not generalize, and it is clear that not all Swedes are terrorists, but all terrorists are Swedes. These radicals have perverted the beautiful Nordic religion of peace and turned it into an ideology of hatred.

The facts clearly show that the men who try to smuggle bombs onto airplanes have blond hair, blue eyes, are between twenty and forty years old, believe in the supreme god Odin, and carry names like Ingmar Johansson.

They talk funny and they love smorgasbord, which is a traditional Nordic meal with lots of raw fish, and every Swede can drink alcohol in amounts that would kill six reindeer within three minutes.

How do we make sure these bomb-laden Swedes don’t board our airplanes? How can we recognize these radical Nordic terrorists? Should we check dark-haired Asians called Honda? Italians called Ferrari?

Would it be acceptable to single out Swedes trying to travel by air? Or should we, trying to avoid offending Swedish sensibilities, check every person with an airline ticket in general and especially focus on inspecting their crotch? After all, Swedes love to wear their bombs in their underwear, so maybe non-Swedes also wear bombs in their underwear, right?

Read the rest here.

And now for the news you didn't read:

When News is No News

Here are a few important developments that remain strangely ignored. I say strangely, but most readers understand why some news becomes news and some does not.

1) Iraq. The United States military between 2007 and 2009 crushed al-Qaeda in Iraq. It destroyed cadres of radical Islamists and Baathists. It stabilized the country. It was one of the most stunning military performances in modern history, and helped to destroy the image of a competent and scary al-Qaeda. Yet everything from the recapture of Fallujah to the sheer number of Islamists that were taken out of Anbar Province was largely ignored. It is as if we went to sleep in 2007 with “Iraq is lost” and then woke up in 2010 with “Of course, it is quiet now. Why wouldn’t it be?” — but with little thought of what transpired in between. We know few names, fewer stories of the heroic Americans who turned Iraq around after 2006 — or kept it from imploding from 2003 onward.

But wait there's more:

2) Chinese Roguery. China’s Communist Party predicates foreign policy on mercantilism — period.
3) The Gulf Oil Hysteria. We were told that aquatic life in the Gulf of Mexico would be ruined for generations.
4) The Great Obama Flip-Flop. For over a year of hope and change, we were told by Obama that renditions, preventative detentions, and tribunals were anti-constitutional, that Guantanamo was synonymous with a gulag, that Iraq was lost, that Predators were a sort of airborne terror, that KSM and other terrorist killers should be tried in civilian courts — and what happened? Suddenly the world was turned upside down and what was once bad was now tolerable. And not a whimper about why, just the quiet assumption of “that was then, this is now.”
5) The Europe-America Cool-Off. Europe wanted Obama, got Obama, and now its elites are quietly whispering: “Why did you fulfill our childish wishes?”
6) The EU Meltdown. Surely the great story of the age is the serial meltdown of Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Greece and the furor of Germany and more Protestant northwestern Europe — all at a time when the September 15, 2008 ,Wall Street implosion supposedly had proved the triumph of socialism over the free market system.
7) The Implosion of the Green Movement. (be sure to read all of this one.)
8) The Nexus between California’s Financial Plight and Illegal Immigration. The state has the highest income, sales, and gas taxes and the largest deficits — and the largest number of illegal aliens.
9) The Implosion of Debt. There is very little said about the failure of Keynesian economics to restart the economy.
10) Obama and Race. We read of occasional slips from Obama and his associates, but never of the effect of lots of slips in the aggregate.

Be sure to click this link to read ALL of these listed topics.
If you have not read Victor Davis Hanson before this will show you why I think so highly of his intellect and reasonings.

Wikileaks- the real truth is what we already knew

This is the opinion of an editorial in the Washington Post today.  They say, "Wikileaks's leaks mostly confirm earlier Iraq reporting," and then go on to explain how. The only thing they left out is that the leak confirms what we already knew, they did find chemical WMD's.  Anyone who was actually paying attention and reading all the blogs, especially the military blogs, would have known that all along.  And as for the rockets, early on one or more of the Iraqi bloggers wrote of seeing trucks with missiles rolling on into Syria in the dark of the night. 
Go read the article for all they confirm that we already knew. 

Another "Gee, Who Knew?" Moment on Iraq

From the Washington Post, it does seem to be behind the curve on quite a lot.
U.S. plans for possible delay in Iraq withdrawal
By Craig Whitlock

The U.S. military has prepared contingency plans to delay the planned withdrawal of all combat forces in Iraq, citing the prospects for political instability and increased violence as Iraqis hold national elections next month.

Under a deadline set by President Obama, all combat forces are slated to withdraw from Iraq by the end of August, and there remains heavy political pressure in Washington and Baghdad to stick to that schedule. But Army Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said Monday that he had briefed officials in Washington in the past week about possible contingency plans.

 Read the rest.

Did you Hear This Good News?

Just another of the good news stories for us this week.
Shhh…US Marines Wrap Up Mission in Iraq– Victorious

Shhh… Don’t tell anyone. It may make George W. Bush look good. It may make Republicans look good.
It may shine light on the democrat’s awful record on national defense....  
The US Marines pulled out of Anbar Province today victorious....
  ...If we had a responsible media in this country this would be front page news.
Sadly, we don’t.
Thank you US Marines.
Thank you US military.
Thank you Republicans for standing strong.
Thank you George W. Bush.

This is from Gateway Pundit. I'm only putting some of it here, for more and photos go here.

Wack-a-Mole

Jules Crittenden had this in his blog yesterday, but I didn't get it put up. A very interesting article.

Double Reverse Wack-A-Mole

It’s the latest in Democratic strategic thinking. Sen. Russ Feingold in the Wall Street Journal. Bear with me, because this is really complicated, and also doesn’t make any sense. But I think this is how it works.

Remember when the Dems said the Iraq war was bad, we needed to get out, because all we were doing was making al Qaeda stronger? That didn’t entirely turn out to be true, but they wanted us to stop wacking the mole in Iraq and go wack it in Afghanistan, where the mole had been keeping its head down.

OK, we wacked the daylights out of the al Qaeda mole in Iraq instead, which the locals really appreciated, because they had had it with the AQ mole at that point. Then, because the mole was popping up again in Afghanistan, we ramped up mole-wacking operations over there … with new, improved rubber mallet wielding tachniques, thanks to our mole-wacking experience in Iraq. At the same time, we applied increasing pressure on the Paks to wack the mole on their side of the arcade.

Feingold explains that wacking the mole in Afghanistan will just make it pop up even more in the Paks’ tippy nuclear-armed wack-a-mole machine. This is actually convenient in terms of long-term Democratic strategy, to set aside the wack-a-mole analogy for a minute and speak plainly, because if you don’t have troops on the ground in a place, Pakistan for example, then you don’t have to withdraw them. It makes abandonment a lot easier.

Go to Jules Crittendem.com to read the rest of his post, then click on over to the Wall Street Journal to read the article by Russ Feingold.