Why We Need to Remember that War Is Hell

" . . .But the greatest monument to unnecessary mass killing by the Allies was built with the blood and bones of Dresden, what Johnson calls “the greatest Anglo-American moral disaster of the war against Germany.” Pedro Gonzalez 

The ruins of Dresden, 1945

Pedro Gonzalez

No one living bears any responsibility for the actions committed by others in the past, least of all for the folly of the world’s elites. It is, however, our duty to recall the real cost of war.

 "As British bombs fell on the German port city of Kiel, Karl Berchim scrambled with reckless self-abandon to usher as many women and children as he could into a schoolhouse that had been converted into a shelter. Berchim was a member of the Luftwaffe, the aerial warfare branch of the Wehrmacht during World War II.

"Just as he secured a group of civilians in the bomb shelter, a massive piece of ordnance dropped by the Royal Air Force found its mark near Berchim, killing him instantly. Because of his actions and sacrifice, a little girl named Elise was saved from obliteration. Because Elise lived, she grew up, married, and had a son. That son eventually had a daughter who is now expecting her first child—my child, by my wife, because of the heroism of her great-grandfather, Karl Berchim.

"I don’t care that Karl stood “on the wrong side of history” in life; he died a hero, striving to protect the life and liberty of civilians. For all we know, he was an American born in the wrong place.

"According to Dennis Saffran, however, Karl and the rest of the war dead cannot be regarded except with scornful indifference. We may as well strike his name from the memorial book in the townhall of Kiel.

" 'I have absolutely no problem with the killing of German civilians in World War II,” wrote Saffran as the United States toed the line of war with Iran, urging Americans to get over their queasiness at the thought of killing civilians, “even in cases where hindsight may see it as ‘unnecessary.’” In other words, even if you could prove to Saffran that civilians were needlessly slaughtered, he would have absolutely no problem with it." . . .

In 2001 we had good friends, Hans and Herta Borm, who attended our church in Santa Maria, CA. They were both survivors of the war in Europe; Hans, a five-times wounded veteran of the German army and Herta, a citizen of the much-bombed Magdeburg. They were both stoic about those years and commented little until after the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks. The group conversation was about the Muslim's desire to simply kill people and suddenly the Borms memories burst forth as they brought up Dresden. They agonized over this bombing of such an historical, cultural city that had not been touched by bombers until they said "We were beaten! The war was about over and there was no need for this! They only wanted to kill Germans!"
The pain of this act haunted Hans and Herta the remainder of their lives.  The Tunnel Dweller

Democrats consider oppressors to be "the oppressed"

http://www.terrellaftermath.com/

Democrats Always Choose America’s Enemies Over America  "Here’s an idea that our Democrat politician friends might want to try if they want to stop being back-stabbing garbage people. It’s kind of a radical notion and a little outside the box, but here goes: How about, just once, you stop sucking-up to the foreign bastards who are attacking our country and take America’s side?
"Maybe you should not back and excuse the gay-hanging, women-stoning, airline-downing, Obama check-cashing, Israel-threatening, American-murdering cultists ruling Iran. Just a thought." . . .

Couple That Went To Iran To Show It’s Not That Bad Are Now in Jail

. . . Obama and Kerry were essentially embracing the idea that “evil is a make-believe concept.” That the mullahs were perhaps “self-interested sometimes, myopic sometimes,” but ultimately good-hearted. The Leftist intelligentsia was and still is unanimous in applauding that initiative.

Likewise, it is a matter of dogmatic certainty for the Left that Islam is a religion of peace, and that only racist, bigoted “Islamophobes” think otherwise. Why should King and Firkin have had any reason to be concerned about traveling through the Islamic Republic of Iran? All it had was a “bad wrap.” . . .

"It’s too bad states and counties weren’t allowed to reject resettlement of refugees when Somali Muslim invaders like Ilhan Omar came to this country". . . Minnesota statistics released in July 2018 showed that incidents of violent crime including murder decreased compared to 2017, but rape and involuntary sex trafficking rose to the highest rate seen in almost a quarter-century, The Duluth News Tribune reported

In February, the FBI said Somalis in Minnesota remained vulnerable to recruitment by terrorists.

"FBI numbers showed 45 Somalis in the Minneapolis area left to join the ranks of either the Somalia-based Islamic insurgency al-Shabab or the Iraq- and Syria-based ISIS combined. And as of 2018, a dozen more had been arrested with the intention of leaving to support ISIS. Both numbers are far higher than those who allegedly left or attempted to leave the country to join terrorist groups abroad from other areas in the U.S. where Muslim refugees have been resettled." . . .

Democrats become first national party to hate the nation they wish to lead

American Thinker   "Democrats have now officially become the first national political party to actually detest the country they wish to lead.

Democrats have openly sided with America's enemies and even sympathize with the world's most heinous terrorists rather than take the side of the president of the United States, as can be seen by their reaction to the death of Iranian mega-terrorist Qassem Soleimani.

"Barack Obama must have succeeded in "fundamentally" transforming the country, because, in days of yore, this would have universally been considered a priori treason.  I honestly believe, if Democrats had their way, American flags would have been ordered to fly at half-staff out of respect and appreciation for the bloodthirsty Iranian general whose death they thought would make Trump look bad.  Democrats and their supporters are so crazy, they applaud white supremacists if they dis Trump, as Joy Behar on ABC's The View did recently.  Many in the media immediately said Trump's drone strike on Soleimani would quite possibly cause World War III to break out.  Some give the impression that they would prefer to have their characterization of the strike as "reckless" be proven correct, even if it meant death and destruction on a massive scale.  That's reckless.  And sick.

"Former donkey party greats such as Andrew Jackson, Harry Truman, JFK, and even liberal Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan would be shocked and appalled at what the party they once led has become.  The party is now the bastion of full-fledged socialists, anti-Semites, transgender-worshipers, and God-haters.  It respects no moral code or law, abhors tradition, the Founders — and those who have the temerity to live in rural areas of "fly-over country" (i.e., the "deplorables") — and is actively aiding and abetting the abolition of American history.  It tolerates no dissent from its political correctness and is aggressively attempting to strip Americans of their constitutionally guaranteed rights — and babies from their lives as it ironically tries to invent a "right" to abortion.

"There is an old saying, that something or someone is "as American as Mom, baseball, and apple pie."  The Democrats are rapidly rewriting that phrase to better suit their Depraved New World.  It will likely read, "as American as non-binary, childless attraction units, soccer, and tofu.' "

AF Branco 

The Ugliness That Is Political Correctness

By: Diane Sori and Craig Andresen

. . . "Remember, it's not part of what's called “human nature” to randomly change one's opinion simply because a politician mandates it to be so nor is it in “human nature” to blindly accept something as fact when there's no evidence of proof, thus rendering "political correctness" simply the tangible equivalent of religious blind faith. And religious hatred itself has so dominated the tome of "political correctness" that misguided religious fervor has become the devil itself in the eyes of the left.

How so...both Christianity and Judaism are but a political albatross that must be cast aside while islam...a political system masquerading as a religion...has now been taken under the Democrat's politically correct protective wing as being something one must never criticize nor mock. And while violent attacks on Christians and Jews are steadily increasing with but cursory reporting on at best, the facts surrounding who perpetrated said attacks are hushed up if said attackers are black or muslim. And why...because to say anything against blacks and especially muslims, even if it's just a means by which to identify the attacker, is now considered to be a “hate crime,” with the fallout being that the victim is turned into the instigator of their own attack just for being of the lefts deemed politically incorrect faith.
. . .

From a literary standpoint, we have the time honored writings of great authors like Harper Lee and Mark Twain just to name a couple. Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” is a true classic, as is Twain’s “Huckelberry (sp) Finn,” but both have come under assault by "political correctness." In the case of Lee’s classic, it is now deemed politically incorrect to have a black character accused of a sex crime, and due to that supposed stereotype libraries have been encouraged to pull the book from their shelves.

Mourning Soleimani, from Hollywood to the Campus

UPDATE: COLIN KAEPERNICK Drone Strike On Iran ...U.S.A. IMPERIALISM AT ITS FINEST  

Colin wrote on Twitter, "There is nothing new about American terrorist attacks against Black and Brown people for the expansion of American imperialism." He didn't stop there.

Sort of a male Megan Rapinoe, eh? Watch for his appearance on CNN and Colbert shows.

National Review

The terror general’s postmortem fan club members are all denizens of the Left — media figures, celebrities, politicians, and academics.

McGowan

"Now that Qasem Soleimani’s mortal coil has reached room temperature, and he is enjoying the fruits of his martyrdom, sympathizers everywhere are mourning him and praising him. His postmortem fan-club members are all denizens of the Left — media figures, celebrities, politicians, and especially academics. Their somber, cliché-ridden eulogies range from stupid Twitter commentary to well-written articles, with praise for Soleimani, unalloyed contempt for Donald Trump, and dire predictions of retribution in the days ahead.

"In the stupid Twitter category, celebrities take the lead. Rose McGowan’s “Dear Iran” tweet got the ball rolling, with “Dear #Iran. The USA has disrespected your country, your flag, your people. 52% of us humbly apologize. We want peace with your nation. We are being held hostage by a terrorist regime. We do not know how to escape. Please do not kill us. #Soleimani". . . .
. . . "Meanwhile, exaggerations of Soleimani’s greatness and the depth of his intellect are common. Time magazine compared him to Cardinal Richelieu and Machiavelli. Prompted by Fareed Zakaria’s claim that Soleimani was “regarded in Iran as a completely heroic figure, personally very brave,” Anderson Cooper compared him to Charles de Gaulle. Rosanna Arquette compared Trump to Hitler for killing the great Soleimani." . .  .

Dems unhappy: Iran is not following the script

The Left, so committed to its script, is left trying to convince the American people that their villain (Solomeini) is a hero, and our hero (Donald J. Trump) is a villain.  Sadly for the Left, the American people are watching events play out in real time.

2020 Democrats risk backlash in trashing Trump’s Iran strike

Democrats have a poor track record in supporting those who stand up to the Mullahs.
2018: OBAMA ABANDONED IRANIANS WHEN THEY FOUGHT FOR FREEDOM—TRUMP MUST NOT DO THE SAME  . . . "The Obama administration, obsessed with rapprochement with Tehran, abandoned Green Movement protesters, but America recently sought support for Iran's spontaneous demonstrators at the U.N. Security Council. Russia, China, economically motivated traders and others chastised Washington for attacking internal Iranian matters." . . .

Other persecuted groups outside America see things differently:

Banned! Thousands Of Iranian Actors, Filmmakers On Secret Blacklist  "Thousands of Iranian filmmakers, actors, and other artists are on a secret government blacklist that bans them from working or having their work shown in public." . . .

BPR:  Remarkable video shows Iranian students avoid stepping on USA and Israeli flags out of respect   . . . "Amid all the tension between Iran and the United States, another incredible thing is taking place in the country — Iranians are refusing to accept America as the enemy.
"This was seen in a viral video of Iranians refusing to step on U.S. and Israel flags that have been painted on the ground at Shaheed Beheshti University.
"Journalist Mohammad Mozafari shared the video clip, tweeting: “The people do not disrespect the flag of USA and Israel. They say all over Iran: We are not the enemy of the USA and Israel. Our enemy is the people of the Islamic Republic of Iran' ” . . .

Capitol Hill mood shifted as lawmakers were briefed by the CIA on Suleimani’s planned attack on US personnel. Congressional mood was tense following the Iran missile strike before it was revealed no US soldiers were hit. Nancy Pelosi had her plastic surgeon put a worried look on her face  Comedian Argus Hamilton

 Parody, sarcasm, satire: Here's some parody from the parody site, The Babylon Bee:
Iran Declines To Sign Colin Kaepernick After Reviewing Workout Video

TEHRAN—Colin Kaepernick sent his workout video to Iran after learning they may have recently opened up a position but has yet to receive a phone call.Kaepernick condemned American attacks on Iranian terrorists last week, inciting rumors that he may have found a team interested in him in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. But Iranian officials have dispelled the rumors, stating clearly and unequivocally that "we have no interest in signing Kaepernick at this time, but we wish him well in his future endeavors." "It's disappointing to see that Iran is as hateful as America," a downcast Kaepernick said in a press conference. "I expected to be welcomed as a hero over there, but apparently, they too are biased against people with dark skin." Kaepernick plans to protest Iran's hate by continuing to kneel during the American national anthem.Iran has clarified that they agree with Kaepernick ideologically, but they need someone who can throw.

Iran's only female Olympic medalist reportedly defects

Yahoo News  DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) -- Iran's only female Olympic medalist said she defected from the Islamic Republic in a blistering online letter that describes herself as “one of the millions of oppressed women in Iran.”

"Taekwondo athlete Kimia Alizadeh posted the letter on Instagram as Iran's semiofficial ISNA news agency said she had fled to the Netherlands. She criticized wearing the mandatory hijab headscarf and accused officials in Iran of sexism and mistreatment.

“Whatever they said, I wore," Alizadeh wrote in the letter posted Saturday. "Every sentence they ordered, I repeated."
"She described the decision to leave Iran as difficult, but necessary." . . .

How McConnell Outplayed Pelosi

Matthew Continetti

The Republican leader unified his caucus by relying on precedent.

"Mitch McConnell was clear when he addressed the Senate on December 18: Any impeachment trial of President Trump would follow the precedent established by the trial of President Clinton 20 years ago.
"Clinton’s trial was divided into pieces. The Senate agreed unanimously to begin with a briefing, opening arguments, questions from senators, and a vote to dismiss. Whether to hear witnesses or introduce additional evidence were questions decided later. “That was the unanimous bipartisan precedent from 1999,” McConnell said. “Put first things first, lay the bipartisan groundwork, and leave mid-trial questions to the middle of the trial.' ”
"The arrangement satisfied Chuck Schumer back when he was a recently elected junior senator from New York. Funny how times change. Now Senate minority leader, and looking to damage Republicans in a presidential election year, Schumer demanded that McConnell call witnesses and ask for additional documents at the outset of the proceedings. Pelosi followed his cues. After the House impeached Trump on December 18, she said she wouldn’t transmit the articles of impeachment until McConnell gave in to Schumer’s demands.
"McConnell refused. He continued to point to the (relative) bipartisanship of the Clinton era. “The Senate said, 100 to nothing, that was good enough for President Clinton,” he said on January 6. “So it ought to be good enough for President Trump. Fair is fair.” The following day, McConnell ridiculed the idea that Pelosi had “leverage” over the Senate: “Apparently this is their proposition: If the Senate does not agree to break with our own unanimous bipartisan precedent from 1999, and agree to let Speaker Pelosi hand-design a different procedure for this Senate trial, then they might never dump this mess in our lap.” Fine with him. The Senate has plenty of other things to do.
"The reliance on precedent is one of McConnell’s most effective strategies. In 2016 he invoked the “Biden rule” to prevent confirmation hearings for Judge Merrick Garland, President Obama’s nominee to replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, until after the election. The following spring, when Senate Republicans voted to end the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, McConnell noted that former majority leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, had done the same for lower-court nominees in 2013." . . .

The Humpty Dumpty Fate of Post-Reagan Consensus

Conrad Black

The bipartisan political consensus of the 32 post-Reagan years has been unmasked, debunked, and overthrown. The political establishment will require a long time to reconstruct itself after this re-enactment of the fate of Humpty Dumpty.

"The predicted has happened in Iran and more quickly than had been expected. On the evening of the day on which the Iranian authorities managed to bungle the funeral of their late terrorist chief, Qasem Soleimani, at least 50 people were trampled to death in their grief, and the crisis over the supposed escalation of hostilities subsided. (At least, unlike during the funeral of the Iranian theocracy’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the coffin did not fly open, spilling the corpse on the mourners.)
"Nothing could be more obvious than the point made here and elsewhere, but particularly by President Trump, that Iran was in no position to do serious damage to the United States, and could not aspire to more than squalid and cowardly terrorist action against embassies and civilians and other relatively vulnerable targets, while the United States had already identified every significant military target in Iran and could obliterate them all within 30 minutes.
"These are military facts that no one sought to deny or could deny; the president had made it clear in his remarks and demonstrated in his actions that any attack on Americans would elicit a severe and disproportionate response.
"So the only possible scenario that justified the wails of alarm the floundering assortment of Democratic presidential candidates could muster to bring about the war they quickly foresaw was if the Iranian leadership were, like some of their operatives, on a suicide mission.
"Obviously, defanged, psychopathic, and primitive though they are, the Iranians are not so filled with a supernatural inferno of misplaced piety and fervor that they wish to precipitate themselves into eternity prematurely. Tuesday night’s launch of 12 missiles from Iran into Iraq apparently at Iraqi targets and which did not injure any Americans and was styled by the Iranian government information service as the regime’s response to the death of Soleimani, does not require an American military response and evinces a desire to de-escalate." . . .

It is indicative of the creeping irresolution of the Democratic Party that almost all of its spokespeople have embraced the disgraceful Obama-Iran agreement and have tried to petrify the country with fear that if anything other than Carter-Obama style appeasement of evil were engaged in, America would be plunged into an inexorable, sanguinary, and hopeless war.

Toon added by TD

Conrad Black has been one of Canada’s most prominent financiers for 40 years, and was one of the leading newspaper publishers in the world as owner of the British telegraph newspapers, the Fairfax newspapers in Australia, the Jerusalem Post, Chicago Sun-Times and scores of smaller newspapers in the U.S., and most of the daily newspapers in Canada. He is the author of authoritative biographies of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Richard Nixon, one-volume histories of the United States and Canada, and most recently of Donald J. Trump: A President Like No Other. He is a member of the British House of Lords as Lord Black of Crossharbour.

Good thing we didn't have this media at the time of Pearl Harbor

Has Hollywood lost touch with American values?  "The contentious presidential campaign was filled with accusations of elitism and bias by the media -- from the news to entertainment. Many supporters of Donald J. Trump saw his victory as a repudiation of the so-called liberal elite." . . .

Malkin: Leftist entertainment is losing viewers

. . . • Emmy emetics. Who wanted to see smirking Stephen Colbert lead a cast of Botoxed starlets and men in hot pants, handing out TV industry awards to diamond-draped elites hoisting up their gilt statues as emblems of victory on behalf of the hegemonically oppressed? Not as many as the boob-tube titans had hoped! The show’s overall viewership of 11.4 million tied an all-time low; the key ratings demographic of 18-49 adults sunk 10 percent lower than last year’s historic low. Most of America had better things to do than watch a privileged cabal of left-wing, coastal one-percenters preening indulgently about their progressivism. Conservative actor James Wood had the response of the night to the Emmy ego-thon, noting that “the stunning lack of political diversity in Hollywood is interesting, when you consider their consumer base is so evenly divided.”
• Oscars’ abyss. Earlier this year, the Academy Awards show earned the second-lowest viewership ratings in its history. Program host Jimmy Kimmel and other celebs turned their stage and red carpet into Trump-bashing soapboxes for anti-cop rants, open borders pleas and Quran promotion. . . .

 Maps show how CNN lost America to Fox News  "Over the course of no more than a decade, America has radically switched favorites when it comes to cable news networks. As this sequence of maps showing TMAs (Television Market Areas) suggests, CNN is out, Fox News is in." . . .

Check out who owns California.

Fake News Media Faces A Reckoning For Political Bias

. . . At a Democratic Party primary debate on July 31, 2019, for example, Lemon – who was one of the debate moderators – asked one of the candidates what he would do to heal the divide which “has been stoked by the president’s racist rhetoric.” Posing another question, later in the debate, Lemon referred to “the president’s bigotry.' ” . . .

By: Graham J Noble  "No-one is above the law. This was probably the most overused phrase of 2019. Whether it is true or not is certainly open to debate, but one formally great American institution – the media – has discovered that, contrary to what it appeared to believe, it is not above the law. Nick Sandmann, a student at Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky, was falsely maligned by several media outlets as a racist who, in January 2019, confronted and obstructed a Native protester at the Washington Monument. Sandmann sued CNN for defamation. After failing to have the case dismissed, the news network settled with the student for an undisclosed but likely substantial sum."
. . . 
"The problem, for the left-wing establishment media is that they long ago set themselves up to be hoisted by their own petard, to borrow from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. When certain individuals in the media, such as CNN’s Don Lemon or countless other anchors, columnists, and contributors, call people they disagree with “racist,” “homophobic,” or any of these other overused, derogatory terms, they are not clarifying that the accusations are opinions – rather, they are stating those accusations as fact; assertions that are, for any reasonable person, not open to dispute." . . .  Read the entire article here
Via Whatfinger News

Donald Trump Jr. Considering Congress Run Against Jerry Nadler

Analyzing America

"The word is that Donald Trump Jr may challenge Jerry Nadler for his job in Congress.
"Nadler has been a key figure in the impeachment of President Trump.
"More from The Buffalo Chronicle:
"He represents New York’s 12th congressional district, comprising the West Side of Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn.
"The district has a Democrat enrollment advantage of 23 points, according to the Cook Political Index (CPI).
"But for New York State, that’s a middle-of-the-pack district — there are nine districts in the State that are even more strongly Democrat-leaning.
“Nadler is the quintessential career politician and has exposed himself as a petulant political hack, not a statesman,” one longtime New York County Republican committeeman explains." . . .

Mark 'Oz' Geist: Trump's decisive leadership would have saved my Benghazi team

Fox News  "The attack on our embassy in Baghdad and President Trump’s reaction are in no way comparable to the events in Benghazi, Libya on Sept. 11, 2012.
"I fought to defend the American diplomatic post and CIA annex in Benghazi for more than 13 hours against a determined, organized assault by dozens of Al Qaeda fanatics armed with belt-fed machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and heavy mortars.

"The Obama administration’s mishandling of this attack — which resulted in the first murder of a U.S. ambassador in the line of duty since the 1970s — was a far cry from the Trump administration’s decisive response to threats against our embassy in Iraq.

"The basic facts should be enough to dismiss any serious comparison. My team and I were told to “stand down” no fewer than three times in the face of what the media later called “protesters” — even as Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, were being killed and maimed by the terrorists. No U.S. military reaction force was sent, despite our numerous requests for help. Only by our own tenacity and courage were more than 30 Americans able to escape with our lives.

"Compare that to the recent attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. When Iran-backed militias and their supporters stormed the embassy grounds and Iraqi forces refused to do their duty to defend American lives and property,

"President Trump reacted forcefully. In roughly the same amount of time it took to the Obama administration to get an unarmed American drone over our heads as we fought for our lives in Benghazi, more than 100 U.S. Marines were on the scene to defend the Baghdad embassy and two Apache helicopter gunships were in the air asserting American sovereignty." . . .

This computer voice claims Soleimani Involved in Planning Bengahzi Attack that Killed 4 Americans