May 24, 2005

THANK YOU FOR OUR FREEDOM, TOMMY

Yes, making mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap;
An' hustlin' drunken soldiers when they're goin' large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit.

Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy 'ow's your soul?"
But it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O, it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll.
--Rudyard Kipling

Major Tommy Pitman

Major Tommy Pitman, who has died aged 90, won an MC in Palestine in 1936 while serving with the 11th Hussars.

In September that year, the 11th Hussars were rushed to Palestine to help suppress the First Arab Revolt, and C Squadron was deployed in the northern area along the border with Lebanon. One afternoon, Pitman's troop was called out to support a platoon of the York and Lancashire Regiment that had been ambushed on the Acre-Safad road by an Arab force many times their number.

On arriving at the scene, Pitman found that three members of the platoon were dead, four were wounded and there was a man lying out in the open whom no one had been able to reach because of the intense Arab fire. Pitman ordered his armoured cars to give him maximum covering fire while he and a comrade tried to rescue the man.

The pair ran forward while bullets hummed around them like angry wasps and ricocheted off the boulders. They found the casualty, dressed his wounds and carried him back to safety. Pitman was awarded the MC and received the decoration from King George VI, who was Colonel-in-Chief of his regiment.

Thomas Islay Pitman was born on February 11 1915 in Edinburgh and educated at Eton before joining the 11th Hussars as a supplementary reserve officer. An excellent golfer, in 1934 he won the Southern Command and Army Championships.

After passing out of Sandhurst, Pitman was commissioned into the 11th Hussars and joined his regiment in Egypt. In July 1940, soon after the start of the Desert campaign, he was dropped behind the Italian lines to carry out a hazardous reconnaissance of the Tobruk-Bardia road.

His troop hid up during the day, but they were observed by Italian fighter-bombers and knocked out. Another troop was sent to look for him, but without success, and he was captured by the Italians while trying to walk back to the British lines. Pitman was incarcerated in a succession of PoW camps, the last of which was Fontanellato, near Parma.

In September 1943, after the Italians declared an Armistice, the prisoners were allowed to escape and scattered into the mountains. Pitman hid in a charcoal-burner's hut until the snow melted, but he was then recaptured by the Italian fascists and imprisoned at Perugia. He was in civilian clothes and had no identification. Many of his fellow prisoners were under sentence of death, and the fact that a few were taken out each day and never reappeared was a source of no little anxiety.

In May 1944, Pitman was moved to Camp VIB at Warburg, near Kassel. Despite ill treatment and spells in solitary confinement, he never missed an opportunity to remind his captors that they were losing the war. A fellow prisoner said afterwards that, but for Pitman's humour and fortitude, many of them would have perished in the bitterly cold winter.

Pitman was liberated by the Americans in April the following year and rejoined his regiment in Berlin to take command of C Squadron.

In April 1948 a Russian MiG fighter shot down a BEA plane bringing service families from London. The aircraft fell in the Russian Zone, and there were no survivors. C Squadron was ordered to surround the plane and deny the Russian forces access to it. After a stand-off lasting two days, the Russians retired.

Pitman was posted to RMA Sandhurst as an instructor. He subsequently took over Blenheim Company, which became Sovereign's Company, before he left in 1953 to return to his regiment. He commanded C Squadron in Malaya for a year. The Governor, Sir Henry Gurney, had recently been assassinated, and Pitman had the task of protecting visiting VIPs.

After a spell in Seremban as second-in-command, in 1958 Pitman retired from the Army and set up a malting business in North Yorkshire. He bred cattle and sheep and for many years enjoyed golf and shooting. For 10 years, he was chairman of the Northern Horse Show and raised substantial sums for paraplegic charities and for Stoke Mandeville Hospital.

Tommy Pitman died on March 26. He married, in 1948, Sheilah Westropp, the daughter of Major-General Victor Westropp; she survives him with their four daughters

AYAN HIRSI ALI: WAR HEROINE

Horsefeathers thanks John Rosenthal at Transatlantic Intelligencer for translating Ayan Hirsi Ali's interview in L'Express. In it she describes the alliance between the Left and Islamo-Fascism: "...the left is exactly like the Muslims! I wanted to give priority to the defense of immigrant women who are victims of domestic violence. They said to me: “No, that’s not a priority! The problem will take care of itself when the immigrants have jobs and are integrated.” It is exactly what the Imams say who demand that we accept oppression and slavery today because tomorrow, in Heaven, God will give us dates and raisins…. I think we need first to defend the individual..." She also makes the very important point that "The left is afraid of everything..." Pure fear and intellectual cowardice, make 'multiculturalism' the 21st century version of Chamberlain's appeasement policy. Ayan Hirsi Ali is a Churchillian voice boldly speaking out despite knowing she is an everyday target of the Islamic death cult. For extended excerpts of the interview read here. For the full interview in French see Le problème, c'est le Prophète et le Coran.

May 22, 2005

CULTURE WAR: THE NYTIMES VS. 24

        If Shakespeare wrote Hamlet in 2005, would the New York Times argue that it "normalizes" murder? Probably so, unless their critic was too busy condemning the "abusive" treatment of Ophelia and the unfair oppression inflicted by the Western patriarchy through the incest taboo. One of the small, delightful pleasures offered by Fox TV this year, has been the series 24, featuring our man, Jack Bauer, fighting Middle Eastern jihadis seeking to destroy infidel America. The bad guys are our enemies and are dealt with as such. There has been little handwringing, no apologies for our imperialist crimes against "the other", and the working assumption is that America is worth defending by any and all means, including killing. Little handwringing that is, on the program, but the shock to the New York Times's sensibilities has apparently been too much. In today's 'Arts' section they offer up a steaming helping of Liberal utopian cant- chin-pulling, oh so seriously troubled ruminations on how the program 'normalizes' torture. Horror of horrors; in a fictional drama written during a contemporary war launched against us by Middle Eastern jihadis, torture applied to murderous enemies may occasionally be necessary. But to the New York Times, the way to deal with beheaders and Paradise seeking killers, is to make sure their legal rights are protected. One of the funnier satirical moments in this year's series was the appearance of an ACLU style lawyer who intervened to protect a bad guy possessing information that could save the lives of millions. Going after such a threat by all means necessary wasn't amusing to the NYTimes. How dare 24 mock such icons of Liberalism? The Times is so consumed with hatred for George Bush's America, the America that produces patriots willing to kill and die for the rest of us, that every event is filtered to yield the highest concentration of anti-Bush propaganda. I hate to tell the metrosexual utopians at the NYTimes but it is normal to use all means necessary, including torture, to extract vital information from someone on a mission to destroy you. Even in their coverage of a program like 24, their focus is not on the depradations of the bad guys, the Middle Eastern Jihadis; instead it's on what can be found to delegitimize the war effort. No Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo for these wordsmith sophisticates. As between Osama bin Laden and George Bush, they're playing it even handedly.

HOW NOT TO GO CRAZY OVER SADDAM'S UNDERPANTS

There is an old clinical anecdote, probably apocryphal, that teachers in medical school sometimes use to illustrate the compelling power of delusions to medical students. It goes something like this: A young, inexperienced psychiatric resident, in the course of interviewing a patient, discovered that the patient suffered from the delusion that he, the patient, was dead. The young psychiatrist then proceeded to try gently and tactfully to reason with the patient to see the reality and give up his delusion. The psychiatrist tried everything he could think of to dissuade the patient but still, after twenty or thirty minutes, the patient remained calmly convinced that he was a corpse. Frustrated, and by this time impatient and irritated, the psychiatrist whipped out the small pin he used to perform some of his neurological tests and stuck the tip of the patient’s finger, drawing a drop of blood.

“There, you see, would that happen if you were dead? What does that show you?”

The patient smiled and said quietly, “That dead men bleed.”

Delusions are fixed, false beliefs that are out of keeping with the patient’s cultural background. But anyone who has practiced psychiatry or psychotherapy for more than a few days can tell you that there are many variations of delusional thinking that are not as extreme as the case above, but are in fact found in everyday life. They are called by various names—obsessional ideas, preoccupations, over-valued ideas, ideologies—but they all have one thing in common—“stickiness.” These ideas or beliefs cannot be changed or gotten rid of easily. Like the patient who can’t believe that his behavior or attitude has anything to do with the fact that no one likes him and that he has no friends. Or the CEO of a high-tech corporation who believes that every word in the Old and New Testament is literally true.

Every analyst encounters a variety of these ideas every day, and finds that they are not susceptible to reason or the techniques employed in ordinary discourse because they are held in place by passions that serve some important psychological function.

In the last few weeks our press has inundated us with the Newsweek story that became a scandal and the presumed reason for rioting and the deaths of ten or twenty people in Pakistan. In the current New York Times we are now told that in practically every part of the Muslim world America and Guantanimo are one and the same. America is the great white satan who wants nothing more than to humiliate Muslims whenever they can. And just to prove the point there’s Saddam in his skivvies all over the front pages of the world.

It is hard for a sensible person to find his or her way between the moronic exploiters of bathroom sensibilities and the hand-wringing victim-lovers of the press.

The fact is that there are some people who never really grow up. If you were to go to any American nursery school and observe the kids at work and at play you would find that most of them find it hilarious to say doo-doo. So they become extremely imaginative in making combinations of words with doo-doo, e.g. doo-doo-head, doo-doo-chair, doo-doo-teacher, etc. It’s your average expectable kid when he’s three or four, but when he gets to be 23 or 24 and still gets a big charge out of primitive toilet humor and its various undisguised derivatives, then it’s time to recognize such people for what they are, emotionally retarded, stupid, moronic, and if they go as far as they did at Abu Ghraib, psychopathic as well. Same thing goes for Saddam’s underpants and its exploiters—the photographer, and the publisher of the London Sun.

These folks are everywhere and it would be like trying to kill cockroaches if you tried to get rid of them or wasted very much moral energy on them. They’ll be around for the duration in free countries.

The trouble in our free country is that our press, led by the Hand-Wringer-in-Chief, the New York Times, is so drunk with hatred of the Bush Administration, and so attuned to anything that will justify their hatred and so in love with the victims of the world (unless they happen to be Jews, Israelis, low-church Christians, and white people from Red states), that they fear that the envious and misguided peoples of Europe and the Middle East will say more nasty things about us than they have already.

It is true that the United States of America is imperfect, but it is the most successful nation in the history of the world, and it has shared its success with the nations of the world throughout the twentieth century more generously than any other nation in history. That notwithstanding the fact is that we will never be acknowledged for our success or thanked for our leadership, guidance, or generosity.

And the good and sensible people of this country and their representatives and the leaders of the country should not expect the delusions of the victim-paranoids of the world or the delusions of the victim-lovers of the world to diminish—they never will no matter how many apologies they get.

As long as there are psychopathic morons around who still get a charge out of looking at people’s underwear and hand-wringing journalists who are excited by such infantile exploits and make them into causes celebres there will be “trigger events” to rouse the hatreds of those who wish us ill.

It is enough for the government to understand that human nature will go on being human nature, and all that it is necessary for the government and the sensible people of this country to do is to say that this country has no governmental policy to torture or victimize people and does have a policy to apprehend and punish those who do. Period. That’s it. Case closed.

May 21, 2005

GUARDING US WHILE WE SLEEP

Thanks to Little Green Footballs for this first hand account of Operation Matador. You won't find this in the MSM. It deserves the widest possible circulation. And thanks to Marine Col. Bob Chase and all his fellow Marines. The man's forbearance with the media is extraordinary.

On Operation Matador

LGF reader Joe G. forwarded this letter from Marine Colonel Bob Chase, about his experiences in Operation Matador; note the section about his interview with NBC News:

Was talking to Gino and he asked for some details on the MATADOR fight. Figured, by now since many of you might have caught some of the interviews, you’d like to hear, ‘the rest of the story...“

Not sure that will get on the tube. Unfortunate, because I think we should all be such Marines when our time comes.S/F, Bob

ON THE DECLINE OF INVECTIVE

        Horsefeathers has taken note of the numerous signs of cultural decline evident in the visual, written and popular arts. Authors devote themselves mostly to navel-gazing memoirs, when they're not writing idiotic agit-prop denunciations of President Bush. 'Visual artists' create works devoted to display of their own excrement, and are hailed for 'creativity'. Popular music has become unlistenable for anyone who appreciates melody and lyrics. Movies are unwatchable, and even the art of invective has declined to the juvenile level of a Michael Moore. One of the few remaining practitioners worth reading is Christopher Hitchens. He does a solid job on the Jew hating British buddy of Saddam, George Galloway, not allowing his own ambivalence towards Israel to cloud his judgment. However, reading Hitchens lengthy piece(see here), Horsefeathers' eyes glazed over and we skipped to the well wrought conclusion: "And now... there struts a little popinjay who defends dictatorship abroad and who trades on religious sectarianism at home. Within a month of his triumph in a British election, he has flown to Washington and spat full in the face of the Senate. A megaphone media in London, and a hysterical fan-club of fundamentalists and political thugs, saw to it that he returned as a conquering hero and all-round celeb. If only the supporters of regime change, and the friends of the Afghan and Iraqi and Kurdish peoples, could manifest anything like the same resolve and determination."
        This is good, but we couldn't help longing for the sort of invective hurled by Shakespeare in King Lear--and he didn't require 3000 words to make his point. This is how it's done, Chris: "...A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, super-serviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir to a mongrel bitch: one whom I will beat into clamorous whining if thou deniest the least syllable of thy addition..."

May 19, 2005

IN DEFENSE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION

"The worst difficulties from which we suffer ...come from within. They... come from a peculiar type of brainy people always found in our country, who, if they add something to its culture, take much from its strength. Our difficulties come from the mood of unwarrantable self-abasement into which we have been cast by a powerful section of our own intellectuals.... Nothing can save England if she will not save herself. If we lose faith in ourselves, in our capacity to guide and govern, if we lose our will to live, then indeed our story is told."
--- Winston Churchill

Donald Kagan's Jefferson lecture (see below) is a bracing corrective to the pusillanimous self-abasement of a Lawrence Summers and the intellectual dishonesty of a Lee Bollinger. In the war of ideas currently being waged, Kagan, unlike Summers and Bollinger, takes his stand in straightforward opposition to the PoMo wordsmith intellectuals.

IN DEFENSE OF HISTORY

May 17, 2005

RELIGION OF PEACE: HITLER'S HEIRS

When Mahmoud Abbas, darling of Western utopians, holds hands with our President, will someone mention last week's sermon on Palestinian Authority TV?

The Moslem cleric, Ibrahim Mudayris, told Palestinians, “The day will come and we shall rule America, Britain, we shall rule the entire world, except the Jews.” According to Mudayris, unlike the Christian countries, Jews cannot be placed under subjugation. He told Palestinian television viewers that the only fate awaiting Jews is death by extermination...See the rest here.

May 16, 2005

ISLAMO-NAZISM AND ITS ALLIES: THE CASE OF NEWSWEEK

        Horsefeathers wonders, were Nazi prisoners of war given copies of Mein Kampf to help them through the harsh rigors of imprisonment? Somehow we don't think so. Why then are prisoners at Guantanamo given the Koran? The Koran is the source and inspiration for Jihadis eager to torture and kill infidels. We could do without the phony apologies from the Dhimmis at Newsweek. The alliance between the left and Islamo-fascism has been apparent for a long time. The Jihadis are apparently too ignorant to realize that Newsweek is working toward a shared goal: the weakening of America's will to wage pitiless war on our enemies. Newsweek's endless eagerness to inculpate Amerika for disrespecting Islam, serves instead, to remind us what primitive savages we're fighting. Stuffing Korans down a toilet? We don't recall mass rioting and killing by Christians when Andres Serrano displayed Christ on a Cross immersed in urine. That was, after all, 'art'. Neither did Jews go on a mindless rampage when Jordanians desecrated ancient Jewish holy sites in Jerusalem. Nor was there an eruption of violence by Buddhists when the same Islamists now screaming for holy war on America destroyed the ancient Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan. To that end it's fine for Jihadis to behead 'infidels' on camera, but a terrible desecration to cut up pages of a book. This is insanity. We're at war folks, and explaining over and over how much we respect Islam will not work. Trying to reason with someone in the grip of a violent delusional belief system is not just futile, it's dangerous. The same is true for shared group psychoses. Human nature wants to turn away, to assert that if only we clear up their frustrations, our enemies will come to recognize our benign motives. However, there's really just one way to deal with primitive, destructive rage: the application of superior force.
        As to actually flushing books down toilets, we doubt there's a toilet in existence that could do the job. Still, Horsefeathers can recommend Kohler's plumbing supplies as certainly adequate to the task of flushing Newsweek down the drain.

May 15, 2005

OUR HAND HOLDING FRIENDS, THE SAUDIS

In case you're thinking of taking a high paying job in Saudi Arabia, here's an Englishman's account of his experience:

'They will burn in hell for what they have done to me'
By Alasdair Palmer
(Filed: 15/05/2005)

'I'm self-sufficient now. I earn enough to support my family and I'm not dependent on benefits." The pride in Sandy Mitchell's voice is unmistakable. Given what he has been through, it is also justified.

Five years ago, the tough Glaswegian was earning his living working in a hospital in Saudi Arabia as an anaesthetic technician, putting in canulas, checking doses and weighing patients before they had operations. He and his Thai wife had just had a baby. He was happy and prosperous. Then, on December 17 2000, he was kidnapped by Saudi Arabian police as he got out of his car to walk into the hospital. Handcuffed and thrown into a police van, he was taken to an interrogation room in a prison in Riyadh. At that point, his nightmare began in earnest.

Mr Mitchell's two torturers eventually told him they wanted him to confess to planting a bomb that had killed another Briton named Christopher Rodway. "They said my wife and son were involved too. It sounded like a joke: my son was a year old." The two interrogators were in deadly earnest. "They kept on hitting me. The only time they broke off was when they went to pray..."
See the rest here.

May 14, 2005

ISRAEL: BEACON OF CIVILIZATION STILL SHINING IN A SEA OF BARBARISM

Israel was born 57 years ago today. Horsefeathers remembers a car ride from Rehovot to Jerusalem in the summer of 1949 punctuated by the sound of gunfire echoing around the hills of Jerusalem. Arab armies having been soundly beaten by the tiny Israel Defense Forces, turned to attacking unarmed civilians. Fifty seven years later, Arabs are still trying to kill innocents.

Friend of Horsefeathers, Ruth King, looks back:

On VE day in May 1945, Jews paraded in Jerusalem with a banner which stated :

They did and do defend them without ever stooping to the barbaric norm of their enemies. Israel deserves credit and blessing and gratitude and support. All Israel’s enemies deserve a corner in hell and those Jews who turn on Israel with specious self serving criticism deserve nothing but scorn.