From Politico:

“There’s been a strong grassroots outcry over the attacks on Big Bird. This is something that mothers across the country are alarmed about, and you know, we’re tapping into that,” Psaki told reporters aboard Air Force One on Tuesday.

While some have questioned the campaign’s seriousness and intent to put money behind the ad in swing states, Psaki maintained that it is running on cable networks – albeit during comedy shows – that swing-state viewers watch.

“The larger point… is, aside from our love for Big Bird and Elmo, as is evidenced by the last few days, the point that we’re making here is that when Mitt Romney… was given the opportunity to lay out how he would address the deficit, when he said ‘I will take a serious approach to it,’ his first offering was to cut funding for Big Bird,” Psaki said. “And that is absurd and hard to take seriously his specific plan.”

Good.  While the world burns Obama in effigy, the “Arab Spring” turns out to be a ruse by the Muslim Brotherhood, we flee the failure that Afghanistan has become (and recently returned Tim Lynch tells me it will get a lot worse), the dollar crashes because we’re printing so much of it trying to pay our debts, Greece and Spain go into austerity measures, Iran figures out how to block the Strait of Hormuz, the ATF sends high powered rifles to the Mexican cartels in an effort to create a crisis to limit our second amendment rights, we go into ever more debt that our children and children’s children will have to repay, and we throw that borrowed money away on failed solar companies and other unnecessary entitlements – genius Obama talks Big Bird.

Every minute his campaign spends talking about Big Bird is a win for Romney and his campaign.  He is appearing the more serious candidate, and while the attacks at Benghazi, Libya, have Romney talking about personally meeting one former Navy SEAL who perished in the attack, Obama still hasn’t responded to the attack and has gone no further than to say that it is “under investigation.”  Who knew Obama would take the bait?

But the bait is spoiled.

President Obama has ruffled some feathers at PBS by putting Big Bird in a TV ad attacking Mitt Romney.

“We have approved no campaign ads, and as is our general practice, have requested that the ad be taken down,” Sesame Workshop, the PBS-affiliated non-profit behind Sesame Street, said today in a statement.

When Big Bird gets pissed at you, there is deep trouble afoot.

As precursors to my analysis, take note of the following inconsistencies and contradictions.  First, Dr. Steve Metz, Professor at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in response to Sharia is coming, left this comment: “Should we worry about the creeping influence of the Boy Scout laws? More people follow that in the United States than sharia.” Note well.  Steve is comparing Boy Scout law with Sharia law.  This Boy Scout law – compared to this sharia law.

On the other hand, because of political correctness, in the Spring of this year, US Army Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Dooley was condemned by the Joints Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and relieved of teaching duties at Joint Forces Staff College for teaching a course judged to be offensive to Islam.  The course he taught, Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism, was an elective course that Lt. Col. Dooley’s superiors judged as presenting Islam in a negative way. His superiors were persuaded to come to this conclusion after receiving an October 2011 letter in which 57 Muslim organizations claimed to be offended by the course.  The fact that Lt. Col. Dooley is a highly decorated combat veteran with  nearly 20 years of service under his belt apparently held little or no sway with the JCS.  As a matter of fact, JCS Chairman General Martin Dempsey “personally attacked” Lt. Col. Dooley on C-Span on May 10, 2012, during a Pentagon News Conference.

Next, take note of the fact that females are now matriculating at infantry officer training at Quantico.  This is certainly in line with Andrew Exum’s counsel concerning his own branch of the service: “I see no compelling reason why women should not be allowed to attend Ranger School. As far as I am concerned, if a woman really wants to run around a sawdust pit at two in the morning screaming “Ranger!” while periodically stopping to low-crawl for 50 meters, we have a constitutional — nay God-given — responsibility to allow her to do so.”

But now consider what Former Spook observes concerning women in combat MOS.

Almost 20 years ago, columnist Fred Reed published results of an Army study, comparing fitness levels among male and female soldiers. The data reaffirms that most women simply lack the upper body strength and endurance required by an Army infantryman, a Marine rifleman, or most special forces MOS’s.

The average female Army recruit is 4.8 inches shorter, 31.7 pounds lighter, has 37.4 fewer pounds of muscle, and 5.7 more pounds of fat than the average male recruit. She has only 55 percent of the upper-body strength and 72 percent of the lower-body strength… An Army study of 124 men and 186 women done in 1988 found that women are more than twice as likely to suffer leg injuries and nearly five times as likely to suffer fractures as men.

The Commission heard an abundance of expert testimony about the physical differences between men and women that can be summarized as follows:

Women’s aerobic capacity is significantly lower, meaning they cannot carry as much as far as fast as men, and they are more susceptible to fatigue.

In terms of physical capability, the upper five percent of women are at the level of the male median. The average 20-to-30 year-old woman has the same aerobic capacity as a 50 year-old man.

Finally, take note of the undercurrents in the suicide prevention department of the DoD.  We can trust our men with the most lethal weapons known to mankind, but the desire now is to give commanding officers authority over personally owned weapons.  As one commenter has noted, the concept of “at risk” is subjective, which is the same reason that such medical assessments cannot ever be allowed to preclude the right to own firearms in the civilian community.

My son routinely hauled 120 pound(+) kit off the line as a fleet Marine, including his time in Fallujah, Iraq, between body armor (including SAPI plates), backpack, weapon, SAW drums plus ammunition, hydration system, and so on and so forth.  Recall this picture from the assault into Helmand in the summer of 2009?

This Marine is carrying his kit plus a mortar plate.  He is probably crossing the line at greater than 150 pounds.

My son trained as a fleet Marine before the age of political correctness.  Strong, male Marines – not reserve Marines, but hard core regular duty infantry Marines – would need to take several shots of whiskey and 1000 mg of Ibuprofen to kill the pain prior to their twenty miles humps with full kit on 100 degree F (+) days at Camp Lejeune.  Negligent discharges brought a season in the so-called “room of pain.”  Laying back on the humps brought time in the room of pain.  Failing to qualify well on the range brought time in the room of pain.

Fun time involved laying down to sleep in the swamp overnight at Camp Lejeune (as ordered) and having to strip naked the next morning so that your buddies could burn the leeches off with cigarettes.  Or, how about that extended time at Fort A.P. Hill when the NCOs gradually removed everything the Marines had, from tent, to sleeping bag, to food, to winter clothing.  Then, it was time to sleep one winter night on that outing, and there was no way to stay alive unless Marines huddled, hugged, laid down together, shivered and threw leaves over themselves for the night.

You get the picture.  But my son left the U.S. Marine Corps because, in his own words, “the Corps is changing.”  He couldn’t train his boot Marines the same way he was trained.  He wasn’t allowed.  He had initially intended to extend so that he could go to Afghanistan with his boot Marines because he felt responsible for them.  But he believed that a lot of good men would perish in Afghanistan, and that he couldn’t make a difference in that.  So he left, along with all of the other Marines who had experience from Iraq.

If you have some sort of androgynous, genderless vision for the armed forces – if you believe that Navy Corpsmen should be able to treat the field diseases of both men and women and understand what mud and parasites in the various different cracks and crevasses and holes of men and women do, if you believe that men and women are on equal footing pertaining to physical abilities, if you believe that machines like the ridiculous Army future combat systems robotics and the silly machines like the big dog can ever replace mules and the backs of infantry Marines, if you believe that men and women will be able to interact socially as a cohesive fighting unit without the behavior that attends the opposite sexes – I think you’re weird and creepy.  Not that we can’t be friends, but just that you’re weird and creepy, at least to me.  Machines cannot replace strong men, and even the Russians found out in Afghanistan that women had a higher number of lower extremity injuries than men, causing severe under-manning of forces.  Exum believes that we have a constitutional and God-given duty to allow women in Ranger school.  I’m a constitutional aficionado with seminary training, and I don’t think Exum can prove either of those assertions.

As for Steve Metz, he isn’t stupid, he has just let his political and religious bigotry cloud his scholarship, leading to the stupid things he said about Sharia law.  But it’s okay to have Steve Metz saying those things as long as we don’t let contrary positions be taught.  We wouldn’t want to offend anyone, would we?

As for the personal possession of guns by Soldiers and Marines, how about this proposition.  We remove the ridiculous rules of engagement under which they operate and give them a coherent strategy, and see how our fighting men respond.  If not well, then I would be willing to spend some extra dollars to help assess PTSD.  But I’m betting I won’t have to spend a dime of that money.

As for the Army, I kind of expect this sort of thing.  But the Marines were supposed to be different.  They’re not, and political correctness proves it.  It’s a sad thing to watch the diminishing of the U.S. Marine Corps, once the greatest fighting and strike force on earth, to political hackery.  I hold the Commandant of the Marine Corps responsible, at least in part.  I also hold responsible a public who allows this kind of thing without pulling the plug on the absurdity of the use of our armed forces for every social engineering experiment that appeals to the self-professed intellectual elites.  And finally, it’s a shame that I have to mention the Commandant of the Marine Corps and the nations “intellectual elite” in the same breath.  How very sad is all of this?

From The Washington Free Beacon, there is this article on intelligence officials being angered by the Obama administration cover up of intelligence on Iranian and al Qaeda surge in Egypt and Libya.  But there is this interesting discussion up front.

Weeks before the presidential election, President Barack Obama’s administration faces mounting opposition from within the ranks of U.S. intelligence agencies over what career officers say is a “cover up” of intelligence information about terrorism in North Africa.

Intelligence held back from senior officials and the public includes numerous classified reports revealing clear Iranian support for jihadists throughout the tumultuous North Africa and Middle East region, as well as notably widespread al Qaeda penetration into Egypt and Libya in the months before the deadly Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

“The Iranian strategy is two-fold: upping the ante for the Obama administration’s economic sanctions against Iran and perceived cyber operations against Iran’s nuclear weapons program by conducting terror attacks on soft U.S. targets and cyber attacks against U.S. financial interests,” said one official, speaking confidentially.

The Iranian effort also seeks to take the international community’s spotlight off Iran’s support for its Syrian ally.

Note to the administration, and a future Romney administration.  Are you sure that you don’t want to take my advice and reverse executive order 12333, and assassinate General Suleimani?  It would make life a lot easier.

Not three days ago I linked and discussed a SWAT raid on the wrong home in Delaware.  In yet another installment in the war on common sense, it has happened again in Salt Lake City.

Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank has issued an apology after narcotics detectives raided the wrong home and pointed a gun at its 76-year-old female resident.

Burbank said the woman was not injured when the search warrant was executed late Wednesday night, but one officer was placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of an internal investigation.

“She’s certainly had the event of a lifetime, and one that I am very sorry that she had to experience at all,” Burbank said.

“This was a mistake. It should not have happened,” he added.

A police task force used a battering ram to knock down the door and execute a “no-knock” search warrant.

Burbank said his department has protocols in place to prevent such mistakes, but officers did not follow them. He declined to elaborate.

The chief said he met with family members, apologized and assured them the department would repair all damage to the home.

The woman’s adult son, Raymond Zaelit, told The Salt Lake Tribune that a police officer pointed a gun at her, then asked if she had a gun or drugs. His mother, who was home alone, answered no to both.

“She was petrified. She didn’t know what to think,” Zaelit said. “This was traumatizing for her.”

Stephen Cook, an attorney representing the woman and her family, told the Deseret News that they remain focused “on helping her deal with the consequences of the traumatic incident.”

The family is reviewing the official account of the events provided Friday by police and will make a statement when appropriate, Cook added.

Paul Fracasso, a next-door neighbor of the woman, watched as police raided the wrong home.

“I saw them going through the door, crashing through the door,” he recalled. “There were guns and flashlights going everywhere, (and police) telling them: ‘Get down. Get down. Get down.'”

Fracasso said he knew immediately that police had made a mistake.

“I knew they were there for no reason,” he said. “She’s a sweet old lady, just like my grandma. I think they should have done their homework. I can’t believe it actually happened.”

Burbank declined to comment on the actual target of the warrant other than to say it was “very close” to the woman’s home. Detectives did not go there after the erroneous search, feeling they had lost the element of surprise, the chief said.

As I’ve remarked many times, these tactics are voluntary.  They don’t have to utilize them, and they do so because they choose to, not because it makes it safer for the law enforcement officers.

This raid is “yet another example of poor muzzle discipline, and the incident may have included poor trigger discipline.  When anyone who doesn’t happen to be a law enforcement officer does something like this, it’s called trespassing, brandishing a firearm, and assault with a deadly weapon (a felony offense that generally includes ”the intentional creation of a reasonable apprehension of imminent bodily harm”).  And bodily harm often does result, as with the case of Mr. Eurie Stamps, prone on the floor after his home had been mistakenly invaded, and who was shot dead by an officer who had his finger on the trigger of his weapon and stumbled, firing as a sympathetic muscle reflex.

I’ve also remarked that based on my own friends who are law enforcement officers, one who is a Captain and who has effected hundreds of felony arrests, it just isn’t that difficult to ensure safety.  A little OC spray makes the worst offenders very compliant while officers maintain stand-off distance.  Furthermore, a little investigative work goes a long way.  Stake out a home, effect the arrests in driveways, ensure that it’s the correct address, and so on.

It’s not only the reasonable and sensible thing to do, it’s the moral approach.  Invading homes (when as far as the homeowner knows, the invader is posing as a LEO and intends his family harm) is the immoral approach, and pointing weapons at women and children is the behavior of cowards.”

It will continue as long as the courts defend these tactics, or as long as we tolerate judges exonerating such behavior, and as long as we hire LEOs who want to do this, and as long as we elect city councils and county commissioners who back this kind of behavior with policy statements and money.

A report from Delaware:

MIDDLETOWN, Del. — Steve Tuppeny was in the garage having a smoke at 6:15 a.m., Thursday his wife and daughter asleep inside, when the Wilmington SWAT officers made their move.

Dressed in black, several officers rushed Tuppeny, ordered him to lie face down on the ground and handcuffed him. Other SWAT officers smashed the storm door in the front of the Tuppenys’ two-story colonial-style home, then used a battering ram to break through the red front door.
Jennifer Tuppeny, an elementary school teacher, said she was asleep upstairs when officers threw open the door to her darkened bedroom and ordered her at gunpoint to get up.

The couple’s 8-year-old daughter was awakened out of a “dead sleep” by “men dressed in black with guns shining flashlights in her face,” Jennifer Tuppeny said.

Police carried out the early morning raid in search of a man whom they called a “person of interest” in a homicide. The man, in a Sept. 19 court appearance, had said he lived at the Tuppenys’ address. Police had a search warrant authorizing them to obtain a DNA sample.

The man was located later Thursday in Smyrna, given a DNA swab and released, said Wilmington police spokesman Officer Mark Ivey. Police did not release his name, and Ivey said late Thursday afternoon that the man is neither a defendant nor a suspect.

“The person of interest had resided at the residence and provided court officials with this address within the last month indicating he currently lived there,” Ivey said in a statement released Thursday afternoon. “In compliance with standard operating procedure, officers verified that the person of interest was no longer residing at the home and did not search the residence any further.”

By that time, Steve Tuppeny said, his family had been terrorized.

“I’m lying on the garage floor at gunpoint and they are invading my home terrorizing my family,” said Tuppeny, a line chef and general contractor. “This is America. We’re innocent people here.”

Jennifer Tuppeny said her family has lived in the home for four years. They purchased it from the father of the man who was the target of Thursday morning’s raid.

Analysis & Commentary

Make no mistake about it.  Ms. Tuppeny said that she was at “gunpoint” by the officers, and the child had lights pointed at her.  These lights weren’t cheap hand carry lights, they were tactical lights, just like I have, and they were attached to picatinny rails on weapons, just like mine are.  In other words, they were pointing their weapons at an eight year old child in bed.

As I’ve observed before, “this is yet another example of poor muzzle discipline, and the incident may have included poor trigger discipline.  When anyone who doesn’t happen to be a law enforcement officer does something like this, it’s called trespassing, brandishing a firearm, and assault with a deadly weapon (a felony offense that generally includes ”the intentional creation of a reasonable apprehension of imminent bodily harm”).  And bodily harm often does result, as with the case of Mr. Eurie Stamps, prone on the floor after his home had been mistakenly invaded, and who was shot dead by an officer who had his finger on the trigger of his weapon and stumbled, firing as a sympathetic muscle reflex.

I’ve also remarked that based on my own friends who are law enforcement officers, one who is a Captain and who has effected hundreds of felony arrests, it just isn’t that difficult to ensure safety.  A little OC spray makes the worst offenders very compliant while officers maintain stand-off distance.  Furthermore, a little investigative work goes a long way.  Stake out a home, effect the arrests in driveways, ensure that it’s the correct address, and so on.

It’s not only the reasonable and sensible thing to do, it’s the moral approach.  Invading homes (when as far as the homeowner knows, the invader is posing as a LEO and intends his family harm) is the immoral approach, and pointing weapons at women and children is the behavior of cowards.

Prior:

What Does A SWAT Team And Eight Children Have In Common?

SWAT Raids A Snake Shooting

SWAT-Capades

Continuing SWAR Raid Errors And Pranks

DEA SWAT Raid And Ninth Circuit Ruling

ATF SWAT Failure

D.C. Police Bullies

One Police Officer Dead And One Wounded From No-Knock Raid

Judges Siding With SWAT Tactics

The Moral Case Against SWAT Raids

Department Of Education SWAT Raid On Kenneth Wright

The Jose Guerea Raid: A Demonstration Of Tactical Incompetence

From Emily Miller:

After getting a message from someone who threatened to kill me, I was scared. I found myself in the ten-day waiting period before I could get my first gun for self-defense in my home. When the waiting was finally over, I felt a little safer.

Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) Detective Kim, who had taken my case, called once a week to check on me. One week I told her that Verizon refused to give out the blocked phone number. She called Verizon’s law enforcement line to get the number, but the phone company refused without a subpoena.

The next few weeks I was a bit more relaxed but kept a careful vigilance, avoiding being caught anywhere alone. I scanned my street every morning and night to see if anyone was hiding. I’m not the only one in Washington who wanted carry rights for self-defense outside the home.

A few weeks after the call, Mary Cheh, who represents Ward 3 in the city council, happened to hold a public safety hearing about the enormous spike in crime in her ward. At the meeting, a woman stood up and said that she had been targeted by a criminal on the street.

The D.C. resident said that she was walking home on Military Rd., N.W. when a man came up to her and tried to rob her. Thinking quickly,  she claimed to be armed. “Just because I said, ‘I have a gun and will shoot,’ he ran,” she reported at the community meeting.

If there were ever a perfect example of why having the right to concealed carry is a deterrent to crime, that was it.

“So I can’t have it on the street?” the resident asked, turning to her neighbors in the rows of chairs. Someone said, “No.” The woman turned back to Ms. Cheh. “You said, ‘You can go ahead and keep it at home,’ but [this resident] answered the questions directly — you cannot have it on the streets.”

She also added, “I understand the power behind a weapon, but by the same token I think law-abiding, tax-paying citizens, we need to have some other recourse.”

I would like to say that the ultimate solution to this outrage is simply to leave Washington, D.C., and head to a location that doesn’t adhere to communist doctrine.

But the problem runs deeper than that.  My solution is too easy, and people everywhere have a right and duty to self defense.  That’s the fundamental issue with Ms. Cheh’s counsel.  There is no other recourse, since the mission of the police is not to prevent crime, but to respond to it.

Ms. Cheh’s counsel involves, quite literally, forcing law-abiding citizens to disarm (a gun in the domicile is an expensive paperweight when the threat is on the street), while only the criminals – by definition – have the guns.

It isn’t simply silly, or confusing, or wrongheaded, and it isn’t merely a policy difference between otherwise well-intentioned people.  It’s immoral, because the D.C. legal framework is forcing people to abdicate their God-given responsibilities to prevent harm to themselves in favor of the social engineering visions of utopia so precious to people like Ms. Cheh.

If your state has a similar legal framework, your mission is to get it changed.

Prior:

Christians, The Second Amendment And The Duty Of Self Defense

The Rabbi Would Take My Guns Away

David Codrea notes that there is a way for Romney to score big in the first debate.

The Brady Campaign has asked Jim Lehrer, moderator of tonight’s debate between President Barack Obama and GOP challenger Mitt Romney, to deviate from the announced agenda and ask the candidates questions about “gun violence,” a press release issued yesterday by the group announced.

“Splendid idea,” Seattle Gun Rights Examiner Dave Workman agreed. “Romney’s first and best answer to such a question would be that within 24 hours after taking office, he would order his attorney general to enforce the contempt of Congress citation against Eric Holder. And, Romney could add, he would also order his attorney general to fire those responsible for Operation Fast and Furious, and if warranted, pursue criminal charges against them.”

That’s consistent with an open letter question asked a month ago in this column of Romney:

Will you pledge and commit, that if elected in November, you will rescind Obama’s executive privilege order and direct your Attorney General to fully cooperate with and assist the Committee in document production and whatever else it needs to finally determine and tell the American people the truth?

It’s also consistent with a question asked of some prominent Romney boosters in the gun rights community.

It seems especially appropriate now that Romney’s campaign is using Fast and Furious to raise funds (although The Washington Times should know better than to refer to the operation as “botched,” and the assertion that “Holder was not aware” is a gross misstatement of OIG report findings of “no evidence” in an investigation where key witnesses with administration and Justice ties refused to be interviewed, and the White House itself reminded the OIG of its restricted authority).

Yes to all of the above, but Fast and Furious isn’t the only issue, and the first debate isn’t the only time.  As I’ve noted before, Romney is better than Obama on gun rights, but the difference isn’t stark enough.  If there are questions on gun rights in the wake of recent events, Romney can go on the offensive rather than sit or stand blithely and rehearse talking points as if to apologize for our rights.  It’s what I would do.

Romney needs us, but does he understand how much?

Terry Madden weighs in on the issue of shooters in crowded places.

This past summer seems to have been a pretty violent three months. Between the Sikh temple shooting, the Colorado movie theater gunfire, the Empire State Building incident and others, guns have been in the forefront of the national discussion.

Firearms are a deeply ingrained part of the American fabric. We view firearms as a God-given right and some of the strongest lobbying comes from gun groups on both sides of the issue. I personally have no problem with the owning and use of pistols, rifles, shotguns or other similar firearms. I do have opinions on fully automatic weapons, but ultimately that isn’t the point of this article.

I have to admit it pains me to hear of a massacre like the one in Colorado happening, and the first thing many like to argue is that people in the theater would have been safer if there were more liberal laws allowing licensed owners to carry their guns. In other words, if someone else in that theater had a gun many people may not have died. We will never know for sure, but statistics tell us that, other people shooting as well is probably a recipe for disaster.

I don’t know why guys in particular buy a gun and automatically think they are marksmen. Any time these topics come up, many guys start preening about what they would have done if they had been in that theater. In Ramboesque bluster they claim they could pull their gun and put the shooter down. Isn’t that the main argument you get from those in favor of “open carry” and “concelaed carry” laws? The argument is we are all safer if others have guns. Let’s explore this.

The Virginia Coalition of Police and Deputy Sheriffs put out some interesting statistics regarding handgun accuracy when an officer discharges his or her weapon. Keep in mind these are people who are trained to shoot under pressure situations, not the average citizen.

According to the coalition, “in 1992 the overall police hit potential was 17%. Where distances could be determined, the hit percentages at distances under 15 yards were:

Less than 3 Yards — 28%

3 Yards to 7 Yards — 11%

7 Yards to 15 Yard – 4.2%”

This seems to indicate that the hit rate for highly trained officers is 15-25 percent. That ratio has been pretty consistent for the last 30 years according to multiple studies. That means they have a 75 percent chance or better of missing. This is not an indictment of the police as they do amazing work, but rather the inherent unreliability of a shooter in a pressure situation.

Using the movie theater as an example, not only was there imminent danger, there were people running in all directions as well as smoke and darkness. To believe an average person with a pistol would have stopped this massacre is Hollywood fantasy. Could they have? Potentially, but it seems as if the probability is pretty unlikely.

I believe people have the right to guns and if you want to own them, have at it. Please, however, don’t tell me I am safer because you have a gun on your hip. Statistics say you are as likely to shoot me as the bad guy. If I am in distress, please save your bullets.

When someone has to remark that he believes in the second amendment and the right to own guns, he usually doesn’t.  It’s usually just a ruse.

But take careful note of the silliness of Terry’s argument.  First of all, most of the gun owners I know make it to the range every week or two just like me, and practice their drills such as close quarters shooting, failure to stop, rapid target and sight picture acquisition, etc.  Also, many law enforcement officers I know make it to the range once per year to qualify with their issued weapon.  Terry is merely assuming the worst in trying to make his point stick.

I am not willing to concede at all that a concealed carrier would be so ineffective against someone trying to take his life.  But for the sake of argument, let’s stipulate his case, or worse.  Let’s assume that a law enforcement officer would be 30% effective against a shooter, that a shooter in a crowded place would be no more than 25% effective with his shot placement, and worst of all, that a concealed carrier would be no more than 20% effective.

Terry’s argument is this: I am willing to subject my family to a shooter at 25% effectiveness for the duration of time it takes a LEO (at 30% effectiveness) to arrive on the scene, usually 10 – 15 minutes, rather than have a concealed carrier attempt to deal with the shooter at 20% effectiveness, because of the fact that a concealed carrier might also harm me or my family just like the police might harm me or my family.

It’s worse than nonsense.  It’s irresponsible nonsense.  But hey, whoever said that I am not easy to get along with.  If I’m ever in this situation with Terry’s family and I have gotten my own out of harm’s way, I will oblige Terry’s edict.  I’ll leave the shooter alone for Terry to deal with unarmed.  As they say … as you wish.

Prior: Christians, The Second Amendment And The Duty Of Self Defense

Almost 2.5 years ago when the 26th MEU was in the Persian Gulf (or Gulf of Aden), I noted that:

During the 2008 deployment of the 26th MEU, an Iranian helicopter all but landed on the deck of the USS Iwo Jima.  The Marines could almost touch it from a standing position on the deck, but no actions were taken.  The Navy refused to allow the Marines to fire on the aircraft.

So much for the doctrine of force protection.  But that isn’t all for the 26th MEU.  I was talking to my son today about scooting through the Suez canal, and when the USS Iwo Jima was near Egypt, he told me that RPGs started pinging against the side of the ship, and Scout Snipers were stationed in the highest point of the ship because of the high risk to the ship and its souls.

If you think about it, all of the hand wringing that the “experts” did over Egypt and its well trained military forces – who were supposed to be so loyal to the U.S. – was just so much silliness.

For a country who incubated the likes of Sayyid Qutb and Ayman al-Zawahiri, and who today (and even in 2008) would incubate elements that send RPGs in our direction, for the U.S. to have ever wondered what would come of this wonderful “Arab spring,” which held out so much promise for the ignorant do-gooders and well-wishers, was wasted energy and even worse.  Our coupling with Egypt will show itself to be one of the worst foreign policy catastrophies in modern history.

Egypt isn’t so hard to understand.  Whoever thought it was?  Oh, and perhaps we will continue our aid to Egypt considering how vulnerable they are.  Such is the intransigence of ignorant people.

Here we go again.

Max Boot over at Commentary tells us that we need to support Obama’s plan to send an immediate aid package of $450 million to Morsi in Egypt in order to keep Egypt from slipping into economic collapse which will naturally result in all sorts of terrible, awfable things like more terrorists.  Or something.

I can see why some influential Republicans on Capitol Hill would be reluctant to support the administration’s request to provide $450 million in emergency aid to Egypt. The recent mob attack on our embassy in Cairo, and President Mohammad Morsi’s slowness in condemning the attack, are hardly an advertisement for the new regime. But ask yourself this: Is Egypt likely to produce more or fewer terrorists if its economy collapses?

The question answers itself, and to the extent that an emergency infusion of cash from the U.S. and IMF can tide over the Egyptian economy for a while, it is likely to promote stability and deter the potential radicalization of Egyptian youth. It may even buy time for the new Muslim Brotherhood government to implement some of the free-market reforms it promised during the campaign, if it is so inclined and if it can overcome intense internal resistance from many sectors including the army. Conversely if the Egyptian debt crisis blows up, a la Greece or Iceland, the results are likely to be much more serious than in those countries, given the number of Salafist radicals already present in Egypt and given Egypt’s important strategic position as the largest Arab state.

This is exactly wrong and upside down.  The fact that such an influential commentator like Boot is peddling such nonsense is deeply disturbing.

First, America finally and firmly needs to get off this Train of Fear that our refusal to provide truckloads of cash to failing Middle East states that hate us will result in a new wave of terrorists.   It is simply not true.  The waves of Islamist terrorists are being born and bred literally all the time with the sole aim of attacking the West and its allies.   It has nothing to do with whether the economy is good or bad.  Saudi Arabia has produced, for example, more Islamist thugs per capita than anyone and they are the definition of a social welfare state.   Even if a bad economy in Egypt might result in more Islamists, what is the upshot?  The U.S. winds up spending that money on U.S. military instead and we are better prepared to take them out.

Second, who says we want to “tide over” the Egyptian economy?  Why do we want to help President Morsi out?   He is no friend of the U.S. and is arguably a declared enemy with his rants about revising our Bill of Rights and hints about amending the peace treaty with Israel.  His unconvincing performance with regard to the attack on our embassy in Cairo is further incentive to let him sweat this one out on his own.   Morsi is an Islamist and is bent on radicalizing Egyptian youth regardless of whether we give him money or not.   The U.S. needs to stop this insane co-dependency where we pay money to those who hate and attack us.

Third, it could very well be in U.S. interests to let the Egyptian economy fail.  The clear pattern in authoritarian societies which undergo crises like this is to revert to outright military rule.  Compared to Morsi, the Egyptian military is a better friend to the U.S. and far more likely to serve our interests.   Economic collapse and unrest will convince the majority of Egyptians that Morsi is incompetent and unable to get the international aid to keep society afloat.   In desperate times, people turn to the military as the last resort.    The U.S. should make it quietly known to the Egyptian military that we would be supportive (or at least not condemn) a military coup that restores stability and pro-U.S. government to Egypt.   The only choice in Egypt is the lesser of evils:  the Muslim Brotherhood and the Military autocracy.   Clearly the military favors the U.S.

Bottom line: the U.S. is badly in need of a foreign policy that has real spine.  A dash of Machiavelli and perhaps Sun Tzu.  If that means allowing Egypt’s economy to hit the crapper, so be it.   If it means providing weapons and training to Kurdish rebels in Syria in order to buy influence on the outcome of that civil war, so be it.   If it means, in Afghanistan, isolating Karzai and cutting off aid while cutting deals with regional tribes and warlords in exchange for putting Taliban heads on pikes, so be it.   If it means turning up the unconventional pressure on Iran by sabotaging oil refineries and wells and providing covert aid to insurgents in Iran, so be it.