Disgusting and that’s not strong enough a word for this blatant effort by the Islamic terrorists to make even more people cringe and turn against the war in Iraq. In fact, they want you to step back from the entire GWoT. The only problem is as you step back, they step forward.

I have regularly asked (in a virtual rhetorical format via this blog) just where are all the NOW women, and I now call to the male “feminists” as well. What’s your response to the throat slitting of Atwar Buhjat?

At some point, you whiny liberal, “peace loving” people, I have bad news for you:

If you persist in your efforts to derail the free world from taking this group of criminals and sadists down, who have not perverted their religion, they are just strict adherents of the teaching of Mohammed, one day your back will be against the wall and your throat will be next.

How ironic, you call for peace, it is peace through weakness. These people were breed in a part of the world where to show a lack of strength is not only losing face, but also designates you as a target for attack. You have to study the cultural issues before you pontificate from your safe place, having grown up in a society that is full of compassion for those around them and that doesn’t resort to killing anyone who sends a signal that they are a threat to the current person in power.

Most unfortunately, you cannot stop improperly used strength by having none of your own. It’s a nice thought that one day we could, but while the president of Iran threatens to build nuclear weapons, and use them for no other reason then to destroy a culture he has been raised to blame for his own countries ills (sound familiar? Yep, same argument Mr. Hitler used to get into power in Germany in the 1930s….study it…it is happening again), I’d think you’d be buying plane tickets to go to hold up your daiseys in Teheran and also Sadr City, but there haven’t been any news reports of a mass migration of “peace loving people” in the news. What’s wrong? Afraid you’ll be carted off to prison and your lawyer friends won’t be able to get you out on bail before you are tortured (maybe with an electric drill) before you are summarily beheaded or shot in cold blood?

Go ahead…keep it up, they’ll be sure to thank you by shaking your hands for your efforts to defeat George Bush, and any other president who will do the hard and right thing to protect us, before they place a hand around you, in order to keep you still while they take their 8″ blade to your jugular arteries.

Now, a solution, for I hate “idea men” who can only complain, but not give you a way to fix it:

Your only hope, in the long run, is to not only support the troops, but to support the war. Thank the young men and women who daily sit 6000 miles from their family just for you. They may not know you, but they know you love freedom as they do, and they have the courage to raise their right hand and make the commitment for all of us.

In the short term, get your letter writing campaign to the terrorist leaders and the president of Iran. Tell them to stop, and boycott their products and services (oops! Pardon me, but just what is it they produce other than death, slavery and mahem?). How about booking your plane tickets to Israel, where you can be human shields to prevent another major event of genocide.

As for the women of the world, and Alan Alda, time to (SU)³!

Little Green Footballs reports the same story, but the comments on posts there are always good reading.

H/T: Mudville Gazette.

It was on this day, May 7th in 1954 that the French forces in Vietnam surrendered to General Giap, culminating the “57 Days of Hell,” at a place now burned into the collective military knowledge, as a seminal battle, Dien Bien Phu.

The official website for the battle is here.

There is much to study and much to learn from this battle. Some might argue that we (the US) should have been supportive the man we call Ho Chi Minh in the aftermath of WWII and the subsequent strife in the region could have been avoided. Certainly, William Lederer, a retired Navy Captian with significant experience in SE Asia, tells an interesting story in “Our Own Worst Enemy”. I first found this book while at the Naval War College in 87-88 and I have recently purchased a used copy and begun re-reading it. The book was published in 1968, and he prophetically listed a number of major factors that were not going well for us. The most striking, in my reading, was our lack of our understanding of the culture and history of the Vietnamese, and the great regional history, added to the exceptionally limited number of Americans who were literate in Vietnamese. Bill Lederer, on page 54 of his book describes a chance meeting in a bomb shelter in China, while waiting out a Japanese bombing raid, with a Jesuit priest and his assistant , Mr. Nguyen. After the raid, they went to the river gun boat and provided a copy of the US declaration of Independence to this oriental gentleman, at the request of the priest. The story seems to hold together well, when you read this document from Sept 2, 1945 (less than a month after VJ Day).

It begins thusly:

All men are created equal; they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights; among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense, this means: All the peoples on the earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and free.

The Declaration of the French Revolution made in 1791 on the Rights of Man and the Citizen also states: “All men are born free and with equal rights, and must always remain free and have equal rights.”

Those are undeniable truths.

Other reading tells us Ho Chi Minh actively supported the OSS in conducting guerilla warfare against the Japanese forces in the French Indochina region.

The net result, at the end of the war, is we didn’t support freedom for all, but President Truman responded to the request of the French to allow them to return to their SE Asian colonies. The Japanese prisoners were armed and put to work ferreting out the Vietnamese nationalists, and assisting the French in re-establishing control.

Back to William Lederer. His book describes a people who once fought 1000 (yes, ONE THOUSAND) years agains the Chinese conquerors. I’d say that shows a cultural mentality of long term thought. By the way, the Vietnamese fought until they prevailed. That’s a lesson in “stick to it-ness” if I ever read one.

Along the way to our effective withdrawal from the region in 1972, the French felt the fury of a people determined to be their own controlling authority. The French were overcome in a valley base of Dien Bein Phu. Bernard Fall wrote the early story of the battle, “Hell in a Very Small Place: The Seige of Dien Bien Phu”. Obviously, because of the significance of a battle, where a large industrial nation’s defeat by peasant farmers occured in the post WWII period, many other documents and studies have been conducted.

Miscalcualtion? Entangling alliances? Over confidence? Arrogance? Greed? It happened, its still a story in heroism and strong wills in battle.

Thanks to Mudville Gazette for the Open Post.