The offer Erdogan couldn't refuse

Via Billy

President Trump’s surprise announcement that the United States was pulling all its troops out of Syria caught everyone by surprise. He quickly backed off of an immediate withdrawal — or seemed to — and then the Pentagon announced that the withdrawal was underway.

Or not. Both Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton spent a week visiting our Middle Eastern allies (with one notable exception) to assure them that we weren’t going to leave unless certain conditions were met.

The principal condition was that the Kurdish forces would not be abandoned to the murderous intentions of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Mr. Erdogan refused to meet with Mr. Bolton during his swing through the Middle East.

Publicly, the steadiest hands in these debates are Messrs. Pompeo and Bolton. But their voices only translate what Mr. Trump’s policies really are. Such was the case on Jan. 10 when Mr. Pompeo gave what was, so far, the best foreign policy speech of the Trump era.

More @ The Washington Times

The Decline of the Scholar and the Decline of Academia

Via Cousin John

The academic scholar, along with the great teacher, is vanishing from the faculties of the universities.

Specialists occupy the places that they leave. The first victims of this process are the students. When the professorial specialists hold a lecture, they have little else to teach that goes beyond their tiny field of expertise. About the areas other than the field of specialization, the one-dimensional expert is as ignorant as the students. When the experts teach their specialization, the content is too advanced for the students to understand and should the experts go into the wider area of the discipline, their discourse becomes amateurish. The decline of wisdom in academia that has happened over the past decades results from this change.

Scholars, Teachers, and the Specialists

More @ Mises

TRUMP WALL Shutdown - CIVIL WAR Is Coming!

Via Gleason Long via The Feral Irishman

Trump Puts Schumer and Pelosi in a Brilliant Vise Grip

Via Billy

Like posted before but this article has more information.

The federal government shutdown has presented a unique opportunity for President Donald Trump to clear out the deadwood in the federal bureaucracy, saving U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars in salaries, perks, and rented office space for people who aren't doing anything productive.

At the same time, Trump can get rid of dozens, possibly even hundreds of Deep State operatives in the government, handpicked by Barack Obama and Bill Clinton for their loyalty to the Democratic Party, not their country or the law.

These people leak like a screen door in a submarine, mainly to CNN and MSNBC, the twin headquarters of Trump-hatred on cable TV.  Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were choreographing their leaks to the media via text messages.  Even though Strzok was fired and Page resigned, it's clear there are many others.  They actively resist Trump and the Republicans at every opportunity.  This is the core of the Resistance.

More @ American Thinker

Communist bombardment of civilian refugees escaping between Quang Tri and Hue 1972.....

Via Ngô Đình Bảo

****************
........which was milk-toast compared to 1975 below:



"A pregnant lady" – abandoned by her lover to face...

 By noon on March 16, a mass of humanity; troops, dependents and civilians was clogging the old road. Some 400,000 civilians, 60,000 ARVN, and 7,000 Rangers began the attempted escape to the sea.

By the time that the last straggling men, women, and children had reached Tuy Hoa on the coast; 300,000 civilians, 40,000 ARVN, and 6,300 Rangers were missing, never to be accounted for.

The Kurds Deserve Better (And Yes, It Is Our Business)

The Siren Song of appeasement has always been difficult to resist. It justifies silly fallacies, such as the existence of a binary choice between "peace in our time" and a third World War. It breeds many delusions, like confusing our allies for enemies and our enemies for allies. Most significant of all, it prevents us from doing what is right, for our security and for our honor.

The Kurds of Iraq and Syria bore the brunt of the battle against ISIS, a terrorist organization which has among its goal to kill every American man, woman, or child who will not bow to their dictates.

Thomas S. Kaplan and Bernard-Henri Lévy wrote in The Washington Post:

More @ The Daily Wire

History’s Greatest Sniper Duels

Sniper duels are the stuff of which legends are created and movies are produced. But from a historical perspective, it’s often hard to differentiate between fact and myth. There are more than a few entertaining films—JFK and The Untouchables come to mind quickly—that are fun to watch but bear only a slight resemblance to the historical reality that inspired them.

So, what about two movies that are arguably the greatest sniper films ever made: Enemy at the Gates and American Sniper? Is there more than just a grain of truth in them or has Hollywood followed a long tradition of not letting the facts get in the way of a good story?

Here’s a look at some five of history’s greatest duels. All of them are factual but with at least a sprinkling of fiction to add flavor. The first of these occurred at the Battle of Stalingrad, one of the most brutal confrontations of World War II.

More @ Wideners

Native Activist Who Harassed Catholic Teens Identified As Actor

Nathan Phillips, the Native American radical activist who confronted the MAGA hat-wearing Catholic teens at the March For Life, starred in a 2012 Skrillex video called “Make It Bun Dem,” in which Phillips does some spiritual warfare connected to a violent attack on a police officer. Phillips was identified as the star of the video in his speaker bio for Tribal Hemp & Cannabis Education and discussed the role in a 2017 interview.

More @ Big League Politics

Higher Education Is Drowning in BS: And it’s mortally corrosive to society

I have had nearly enough bullshit. The manure has piled up so deep in the hallways, classrooms, and administration buildings of American higher education that I am not sure how much longer I can wade through it and retain my sanity and integrity.

Even worse, the accumulated effects of all the academic BS are contributing to this country’s disastrous political condition and, ultimately, putting at risk the very viability and character of decent civilization. What do I mean by BS?

BS is the university’s loss of capacity to grapple with life’s Big Questions, because of our crisis of faith in truth, reality, reason, evidence, argument, civility, and our common humanity.

BS is the farce of what are actually "fragmentversities" claiming to be universities, of hyperspecialization and academic disciplines unable to talk with each other about obvious shared concerns.

More @ The Chronicle of Higher Eduction

The Heritage of the South

This essay served as the concluding chapter to Page’s biography of Robert E. Lee, published in 1908.

I stood not a great while ago on the most impressive spot, perhaps, in all Europe: beneath the majestic dome of the Invalides where stands the tomb of Napoleon. It was a summer evening, and we descended the steps and stood at the door of the crypt where repose the ashes of him who was doubtless the greatest soldier of all time; who by his genius took France from the throes of a revolution and lifted her while he lived, to the head of the nations. Just then the hour came for closing, and suddenly in the marble rotunda above us began the roll of a drum, which swelled and throbbed until the whole earth seemed reverberating to its martial tone. It was the long roll which had sounded before so many hard-fought fields, and as it throbbed and throbbed in the falling dusk of that summer evening, there seemed to troop before the mental vision the long lines that had fought and fallen on so many a glorious field: the soldiers of Lodi and of Austerlitz, of Friedland and Wagram and Borodino.

More @ The Abbeville Institute

Charlie Daniels: Do You Know What Would Happen in Schumer-Pelosi’s Ideal America?

The degree that the Schumer and Pelosi-led Democrats will go to prevent Donald Trump from having the promised wall is truly disgusting and appalling.

They say they want border security, but they sidestep the details, citing lofty pie-in-the-sky technology, drones and electronic sniffing devices, most of which have been on the job for years but have only detection and no deterrent properties against a couple of thousand determined illegals who rush in and overwhelm our border security.

More @ CNS