Andrew Sullivan takes exception to my observations that we are on a fool’s errand in Libya and a dangerous one. The other day I took issue with neo-conservatives who had learned nothing from failed attempts to create Western-style democracies in Muslim cultures. I had pointed to recent experiences in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Gaza (let alone Turkey) and warned that our military invasion of Libya could lead to the creation of an al-Qaeda aligned totalitarian state. Here is how the Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan characterized these thoughts:
“It looks as if David Horowitz has left the neocons and become an anti-Islam nationalist; …. he looks at the eruption in the Middle East and wants the dictators back.”
Nice spin Andrew.
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If Caroline Glick is correct in this analysis of what is happening in the Middle East, and in particular that Egypt has shifted into the camp of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and Iran, then the launching of Hamas rockets into Israel and the trip of Mahmoud Abbas to reconcile with Hamas signals the beginning of the next war against Israel.
There are brave Americans out there defending our freedoms. Here’s one of them:
Marine Lance Cpl. Kyle Carpenter, gets support from his fiance Jordan Gleaton, in the state senate chambers, where Sen. Jake Knotts, R-Lexington, presented a proclamation honoring Marine Lance Cpl. William Kyle Carpenter
Marine Lance Cpl. Kyle Carpenter, flanked by his parents, Robert and Robin Carpenter of Gilbert, recounts his experience of being injured in a combat zone in Afghanistan during a press conference Wednesday at the statehouse.
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Jordan Gleaton helps her fiance, Marine Lance Cpl. Kyle Carpenter with a sip of water after a press conference..
Marine Lance Cpl. Kyle Carpenter, flanked by his parents, Robert and Robin Carpenter of Gilbert, laughs during a press conference
Marine Lance Cpl. William Kyle Carpenter, his face missing an eye and crisscrossed with deep scars, stood on the floor of the S.C. Senate on Wednesday to receive the thanks of his state.
Carpenter, 21, of Gilbert lost the eye, most of his teeth and use of his right arm from a grenade blast Nov. 21 near Marjah, Helmand Province, Afghanistan.
Friends and family say he threw himself in front of the grenade to protect his best friend in Afghanistan, Cpl. Nick Eufrazio.
Carpenter just remembers seeing the grenade. Then a white flash. Then a fellow Marine telling him he would be fine.
Then, four weeks later, he woke up in a hospital in Germany.
“The second I woke up, I saw my family by my bedside,” he said.
The Senate resolution noted Carpenter “suffered catastrophic wounds in the cause of freedom” and “has shown himself worthy of the name Marine.”
Carpenter shook almost every senator’s hand — with his left hand — after the reading.
He said his experience was nothing unusual in war. People back home, worried about the economy and gas prices, he said, should remember Marines and soldiers are still being maimed and killed.
“The light is on me right now,” he said. “But I’m hoping what happened to me will help remind people that things like this happen every day and people don’t see it. I’m proud of what my fellow Marines have done there and are doing there now.”
Helmand Province is one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Carpenter and a 12-man squad from his 9th Regiment, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force, were on patrol outside Marjah. They were in the fifth month of a seven-month deployment.
They were in a village they called Shadier, between two other villages they named Shady and Shadiest.
They had been in hard combat, he said, as the Marines were pushing out farther from their base, expanding the territory they controlled.
“For two days we had been hit pretty hard,” he said. “We moved into (enemy) territory, and they didn’t like it.”
He was fighting on a rooftop when the grenade hit.
“I took 99 percent of the blast,” he said. “But one little piece of shrapnel got by me and went into (Eufrazio’s) brain.”
According to Sen. Jake Knotts, who sponsored and read the proclamation, Eufrazio suffered a serious brain injury and is recovering in Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland. He is now speaking and talking.
Carpenter also spent most of his recovery time — which so far has included 25 surgeries and more than 100 hours of physical therapy — at Bethesda.
There, he said, he was inspired by the other patients, many of whom had no legs or no eyes or no arms.
“I’m lucky,” he said.
Knotts said that Carpenter has been nominated for the Medal of Honor, adding, “And I think this kid deserves it.”
But Carpenter said that “people saying they are proud of me is enough.”
That doesn’t surprise his 20-year-old fiancee, Jordan Gleaton.
“I haven’t heard him complain one time,” Gleaton said. “I would be a mess.”
“It’s been a tough three months,” she added. “I don’t feel like I’m 20 anymore.”
Carpenter’s parents, Robert and Robin Carpenter of Gilbert, say they are proud of the way their son has handled his horrific injuries.
They call him “our miracle.”
This report by Glenn Beck on the the Palestinians’ massacre of a Jewish family on the West Bank gets it right — and he is the only major media figure who has. The silence of the rest of the media is a tribute to the success of the Islamic jihad in America in preventing the truth about Islamic Nazism from being told lest teller be accused of Islamophobia. Regarding the rest of the press, Mark Steyn as usual has written the last word: ”Dead Jews Is No News”:
On Friday night, twelve-year old Tamar Fogel came home to find both her parents, Ruth and Udi Fogel, two brothers Yoav (11) and Elad (four), and her three-month old sister Hadas murdered in their beds. They had had their throats cut and been stabbed through the heart.
That’s not shocking: There is no shortage of young Muslim men who would enjoy slitting the throat of a three-month old baby, and then head home dreaming of the town square or soccer tournament to be named in their honor.
Back in Gaza, the citizenry celebrated the news by cheering and passing out sweets.
That’s not shocking, either: In the broader Palestinian death cult, there are untold legions who, while disinclined to murder Jews themselves, are content to revel in the glorious victory of others.
And out in the wider world there was a marked reluctance to cover the story.
And, if not exactly shocking, that was a useful reminder of how things have changed even in a few years. On 9/11, footage of Palestinians dancing in the streets and handing out candy turned up on the world’s TV screens, and that rancid old queen Arafat immediately went into damage-control mode and hastily arranged for himself to be filmed giving blood. This time round there was no need for damage-control, because there was no damage: The western media simply averted their eyes from their Palestinian house pets’ unfortunate effusions. The Israeli Government released raw footage from the murders, but YouTube yanked the video within two hours. The hip new “social media” are developing almost as exquisitely refined a sense of discretion as the old Social Register.
