Tag: war crimes

Think Progress inadvertently sums why the Clinton Foundation is problematical.

Obviously, they were trying to debunk. The problem is that… well, it’s that the Clinton Foundation is a pretty suspect shop. There’s no way around it.

Also: I harp on Buzzfeed a lot, but it was pretty helpful of Ben Smith to present this in a nice, concise chunk for later dissemination. I didn’t have to do anything except scoop it out of the box, and onto the plate. Thanks, guys!

Today’s anti-Israel depravity from Vox.

I’ve decided not to put this up at RedState [My colleagues have persuaded me to put this up at RedState: personally, I think that after a certain point you shouldn’t give valuable front-page space to attacking hate sites, but the aforementioned colleagues were pretty vehement that I should do so in this case] I’m pretty close to writing Vox off as an openly anti-Semitic website, and we don’t give those things any traffic. Still… dear God but this article reeks: “Yes, Gaza militants hide rockets in schools, but Israel doesn’t have to bomb them.”

…I submit to all of you that when the first half of your headline concedes that one side is committing war crimes (a phrase that does not appear anywhere in that article), the second half of your headline should not try to find balance. There is no ‘balance.’ PJ Tatler summed it up pretty starkly: ‘Hiding weapons of war in schools is a war crime, straight up. Targeting civilians intentionally, as Hamas does, is also a war crime.’ If ordinary Palestinians don’t want to get bombed in retaliation for these war crimes, then I suggest that they start shooting on sight the malignant sons-of-bitches in Hamas who keep using them as human shields. Because that’s the only way this is going to end: Hamas cannot survive in Palestine without the good will of the Palestinians. Continue reading Today’s anti-Israel depravity from Vox.

ISIS reportedly engaged in mass murder, other war crimes in Iraq.

I do not know whether the pictures found at this link [have been] authenticated, but if these pictures do end up being authenticated so then it needs to be stated for the record that ISIS (or ISIL) is engaged in war crimes and that its members are most emphatically not lawful combatants.  Barack Obama and the rest of the Left aside, this means that if local authorities decide to have a quick (as in, that afternoon) trial and hang any ISIS member they catch, they actually can do it.  And frankly, they should.

And even more frankly?  If we had hanged some of these people when we had the chance, ISIS wouldn’t be doing as well now.  A lot of Iraqis are going to die for the sake of a lot of European/American antiwar-liberals’ delicate sensibilities.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: I see no particular reason why anybody fighting ISIS should accept any surrender offered by ISIS’s rank-and-file. Because God help whoever ISIS captures, apparently.

Jan Schakowsky (D, IL): SEALs are criminals!

Rep. Schakowsky, attempting to explain why photos of the military operation that killed Osama bin Laden would not be released, had this to say:

“These are pictures of a violent crime scene. This is a dead person. A dead Osama bin Laden,” she said.

Now, I will readily grant that normally a statement like this should be subject to Occam’s Razor.  The simplest way to explain the problems with the first sentence* would be to simply postulate that the person who uttered it is a semi-literate buffoon who is so unthinkingly programmed to parrot outworn and exploded progressive agitprop that she is truly unaware that even suggesting that Navy SEALs are criminals for killing Osama bin Laden is offensive.  Or that she has not contemplated that her aforementioned parroting handily confirms every not-nice said about the average progressive antiwar politician’s judgement, character, and native mother-wit.  Or that (by extension) Schakowsky is accusing fellow-Democrat President Barack Obama of war crimes, given that he gave the order.  Yes, really, if this had just been uttered by some nobody then you could simply chalk the comment up to pig-ignorance, coupled with thee utterer being a natural-born damned fool. Continue reading Jan Schakowsky (D, IL): SEALs are criminals!

Europe starting to talk about ‘war crimes?’

Pajamas Media took a survey of various European media sources and their evolving reaction to the Osama bin Laden excision.  It will not surprise anyone in the slightest to hear that the level of disapproval has been increasing all week, with many an envious sneer along the way.  The German response is particularly telling  (they’re usually a leading indicator of Left-wing antiwar thinking*): even the center-right (hah!) magazines want international tribunals and investigations and whatnot.  So we should probably see the first calls for that over here in about… a week or so.  Probably followed with the leaking of the SEAL team’s names by some fellow-traveler in the Executive Branch with a grudge against the military and an iPad, so I hope that the SEALs are taking my advice and getting a lawyer now.

I’m also going to give some free advice to the White House: and I actually hope that they’ll take it, because this is an American issue, not a Right/Left, Republican/Democrat, or Competent/Incompetent one.  Let’s just say that I don’t really care what’s on the tapes that we’re suddenly now saying that we don’t actually have.  This is because I’m reasonably sure that there’s nothing drastically awful on them, given that they weren’t suppressed from the get-go: so there’s nothing like an actual noncombatant being molested or shot out of hand or anything like that.  If there is something like that on them then I would have to wonder why the administration didn’t react with horror at the time, but never mind that right now: the point is, I expect that the video record doesn’t show an actual atrocity. Continue reading Europe starting to talk about ‘war crimes?’