A Coat of High Gloss

Continuing on from the point in the novel mentioned in a previous post I came across a much different scene in the book.

In this one the wounded Union soldiers have been evacuated to Mound City, IL where they are in a military hospital.

The scene revolves around a visit by a couple of U.S. Senators on a fact finding mission.

The first testimony they elicit is from a black soldier about the behavior of Confederates after the fall of Fort Pillow.

The soldier mentions the murder of unarmed black soldiers by Confederates but also mentions Confederate officers trying to halt the murder.

He is told in no uncertain terms that the visitors don't want to hear anything at all about Confederates trying to prevent butchery. The message is understood by the rest of the soldiers and no one else offers up testimony that mentions anyone attempting to stop the slaughter of unarmed men.

What this brings to mind for me is the way the mainstream media behaves today as opposed to how they behaved in times past.

Can you imagine winning WWII if the U.S. press had not mentioned German and Japanese atrocities? If they had played up or even invented atrocities committed by U.S. forces?

Can you imagine the result of the Civil War if Union atrocities were played up in the northern press and Confederate atrocities allowed to slide under the radar?

Today we have a media which completely ignores atrocities committed by Muslims, unless those Muslims are supposed allies of the U.S. "Palestinians" or Lebanese rockets landing in Israel is glossed over. Israel targeting true military targets are portrayed as war mongers.

No one in the U.S. has avoided hearing of Abu Gharaib. Yet how many mentions in the mainstream press exist about the slaughter of Iraqi civilians, many children, by the "insurgents"? Michael Yon is the lone voice in the wilderness telling the truth while tales of wholesale destruction and atrocity by U.S. forces or those aligned with them get reported ad nauseum.

The United States is being handicapped in the war against Islamic fascists by our own media and the Democrat party, their political allies.

I would have no issue with the mainstream media if it deal with atrocities from both sides equally. Instead the forces of the Muslim horde are given a free pass to murder, rape, loot, steal and shit in the living room while forces of Israel and the U.S. are humiliated, denigrated and sabotaged at every turn, even when they remember to say "please" and "thank you" when exchanging bullets with armed terrorists.

There is no fair and balanced view. Not on Fox. Not on PBS. Not on CNN.

And even if our side did lead the race to commit atrocities do you know what?

I don't care.

They are OUR side and I want them to WIN. Loosing isn't optional. It won't mean a small inconvenience, it will mean continued war against a people that seek to destroy and/or enslave my nation.

If we have to beat them by being nastier sons of bitches than the people we are fighting then so be it.

Deja War

I'd recently been reading Harry Turtledove's novel about the fall of Fort Pillow during the U.S. Civil War.

For those who haven't read his other works Turtledove is real historian who branched into writing science fiction and fantasy. While his professional area of history is the Byzantine Empire he has a passion for the events of the Civil War.

He's visited it so many times from so many angles I half expect him to appear in portraits alongside Lee or Grant, or both together.

It was in the latest book that I'm reading that I ran across a passage that has real meaning in today's world. I don't know if Turtledove was incorporating thoughts of past soldiers later entered on paper or if he was thinking of today when he wrote it.

"What can we do about it?" Anderson echoed. "Keep fighting the Yankees as hard as we can. Keep licking them. Keep making them sweat. Keep making them bleed. Abe Lincoln is up for reelection this fall. If we make the North decide the war is more expensive than it's worth, if we make it decide the war is more goddam trouble than it's worth, they'll throw Lincoln that son of a bitch out on his ear. Whichever Democrat they put in will make peace and send the bluebellies home. And we'll have our own country then. That's what we can do, by God."

"I understand, sir." Ward looked respectfully at the officer, who wasn't that much older than he was. "I really do understand. When I joined up, I did it so I could fight the damnyankees."

"Who doesn't?" Anderson said.

"Yes, sir. But that was all I thought about, you know what I mean? What you said, I didn't think about that even a little bit. How the war and politics fit together, I mean. And they do. They truly do."

"You'd best believe they do," Charles Anderson agreed. "Way things are no, we won't ever drive the United States off our land with guns. Maybe we could have once upon a time, but we lost too many chances. But if we can make those Yankee bastards sick of fighting us, they'll give up and go home. And we win that way, too. So that's what we've got to try and do."

Though there are references and slang that are particular to the time and place, the thoughts are the same. This is the mind of the enemy we face today in Iraq.

They can not win any battle. Lee won more battles than any Iraqi ever got close to winning. In the book the two characters are both Confederates discussing the war after they finished winning one small battle of the Civil War, Fort Pillow.

The Iraqi insurgents can't win battles. Nor can the Iran or Saudi backed terrorists from outside win any battles. We win all the battles, yet our politicians keep talking about the "price" of this war.

The United States stood firm against defeat in a war that cost HUNDREDS of times the lives we have lost in Iraq. This at a time when our national population was only a tiny fraction of what it is today. On the battlefields armies nearly equaling the size of our total deployment in Iraq fought.

The cost to our nation then was staggering. Both in lives and money our nation hemorrhaged like no other time in all its history during the Civil War.

Why, suddenly, are we so hesitant to do unto those who attacked us on 9/11/01 what we did to those who shot at Fort Sumter? May I remind the ladies and gentlemen of the Left that when the South fired on Fort Sumter there was no loss of life. On 9/11/01 there were 3,000 dead, all civilians. People like you.

Get past your hatred of George W. Bush. Get past your clinging to "he lied" speeches. What we face now is far, far worse than letting the South break away from the Union. The Confederates weren't going to be coming to Chicago and forcing blacks into slavery who had never been slaves. Al Qaeda will.

But you can trust that if we do not halt the Islamic terrorists we will be having Muslims enslave those of us who are not. Literally.

Remember the fictional conversation between those two Confederates. That is how those we fight are thinking. If they can just hold on until a Democrat gets into the Presidency then they can finally win. They will have their own country.

Five years

I did not support entering into Iraq. I did not believe that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. I did not believe that he was partying with Osama.

Now that you are through cussin' me out read on.

Today I am of the opinion that the only course for the U.S. is to win in Iraq. To win that means that all forms of terrorism there must be crushed. If that means turning Tehran into a glass crater, well, better there than Jerusalem.

This war is not Vietnam. The Vietnamese were and have not followed us back to attack us. The powers that keep up the fighting in Iraq have already visited destruction on our own shores and will do so again if they win in Iraq.

I support using any and all means necessary to win this war. If that means a draft then Uncle Sam knows where to find an RN who can also shoot and salute. I'm many years older than when I had U.S. Army stamped on my chest but I'm also trained to give medications, change bandages and other valuable skills. I don't have to be able to run fast to patrol a ward full of wounded.

I say this because we face an enemy more lethal than any we have ever faced before. Time was distance was our ally. We found out that distance has shrank a great deal back in 2001.

We must become the sort of nation we never were. Hardened to war. We face an enemy with no head so we must kill all the tentacles. We must burn them out when and where we find them. We must not let sentiment or sympathy stay our hand. Our enemy uses that to weaken us so he may strike when our backs are turned.

We must win in Iraq to give our nation time to wake up. To throw off the lazy dream of "liberalism" like a too heavy comforter and face the cold dawn.

If we do not win in Iraq and we do not throw off that too heavy comforter it will become our burial shroud.

Too Important To Ignore

Up until now I've kept CZ the day on the topic of firearms.

I'm not going to be breaking any news but rather than consign my thoughts on this story to comments on other blogs I wanted to post them here.

This original story begins at Talisman Gate. It is further explored at Hot Air, complete with video so simple even a liberal can understand it.

This is the story of a CBS reporter using footage that Al Qaeda claims as it's own. There is no mistake. Watch the video and you will see that the footage was shot by the same camera.

The footage did not air on network television. Instead it was orignally relegated to extra content on CBS News' web site. The reporter, Lara Logan, began a campaign to get the footage aired. She was the one who called this story "too important to ignore." She has spoken the truth, but not for the reasons she meant.

It is too important to ignore that a member of the U.S. press would accept any video shot by Al Qaeda as being from a reliable source. It is too important to ignore that she would try to conceal the source for the video. It is too important to ignore that she would include with this footage a masked person claiming that the battle was the fault of the United States.

The United States did not attack New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. That was Al Qaeda. I don't care whether Al Qaeda was in Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion. The fact is that they are there now and we can not afford to give up that fight on that battlefield.

CBS needs to decide which side they are going to be on in this fight. Either they are with the United States or they are with Al Qaeda. Having the enemy supply your reportage isn't truth. It isn't fairness. It isn't the way one wins a war.

You won't see 60 Minutes shoving microphones into Lara Logan's face asking her where this footage came from. You won't see Katie Couric doing an expose on how their reporter was acting with deliberate treason. The disgusting thing is you won't see the other networks tearing down CBS for this, either