Category Archives: morality

“War Crimes”

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As Eugene Kontorovich’s (of Jerusalem-based Kohelet Policy Forum and George Mason University Scalia Law School) in his lede notes,

[A]s Israel fights Hezbollah’s army in Lebanon, it has found a new foe: the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon. Having failed at its mission of neutralizing the Hezbollah threat, Unifil is now actively interfering with Israel doing the job.

Never mind that, per the UN’s Security Council, UNIFIL’s mandate includes

ensuring that no “armed groups” operate in southern Lebanon

Those barred armed groups include Hezbollah. Instead, UNIFIL

has allowed Hezbollah to entrench itself in southern Lebanon over the years, storing arms in many of the homes and building a network of fully stocked attack tunnels and small outdoor weapons depots in preparation for an Oct. 7-style assault. Israeli troops have found a tunnel about 100 meters from a Unifil outpost.
For 11 months Hezbollah fired more than 8,500 rockets and missiles at Israel, mostly from southern Lebanon, under Unifil’s nose. The area, militia-free by order of the UN Security Council, was soon crawling with the world’s best-armed terrorists. But the peacekeepers said little and did less.

Not just 100m away. In the IDF’s current move into southern Lebanon,

Israeli forces discovered Hezbollah tunnel entrances abutting Unifil posts.

Kontorovich is being generous. UNIFIL has not failed. It has been succeeding, in its internally defined mission to support Hezbollah and to operate against Israel.

Thus, war crimes. UNIFIL, via its conscious decision to abrogate its assignment of keeping Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon, and its equally conscious decision to shield Hezbollah politically and lately to attempt physical shielding, is the one committing war crimes. UNIFIL’s guilt is made manifest by its decision to allow Hezbollah to build tunnels for attacking Israel right up against UNIFIL buildings to contribute to those tunnels’ disguise.

UNIFIL is not the only entity guilty of war crimes, though. UN Secretary General António Guterres shares that guilt with his open support for UNIFIL, and for UNRWA, many of whose members are part of the planners for Hamas’ 7 Oct 23 atrocity and ensuing atrocities throughout the last year, and through them his personal support for terrorists and the terrorists’ atrocities.

More…Misguided…Pressure Against Israel

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Once again, the Biden-Harris, or Harris-Biden, administration is targeting Israel rather than the terrorists bent on Israel’s destruction. This time it’s through their SecDef and SecState, Lloyd Austin and Antony Blinken, respectively.

In a letter to senior Israeli officials, dated October 13 and signed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, the US blamed Israel for a drastic drop in humanitarian aid into Gaza that contributed to starvation and widespread suffering, particularly in the enclave’s north….

This Progressive-Democrat administration went on to threaten Israel with a cutoff of American support, including cutting off “security aid:”

Blinken and Austin specifically cite a part of Foreign Assistance Act that bars the US from providing security aid to any nation that “prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance.”

They don’t care that it’s Hamas that’s applying the “restrictions”—directly, and through stealing the aid coming in, and by threatening the aid flow and the corridors for transporting the aid that Israel is trying to protect.

It’s telling that this Executive Branch isn’t applying a single minim of pressure on Hamas delaying, reducing, and outright blocking the flow of aid into Gaza.

Not Black?

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Now ex-President Barack Obama (D) is making plain (as if it hasn’t been for some time) the Progressive-Democratic Party’s contempt for Americans ignorant enough not to buy Party’s line.

You’re coming up with all kinds of reasons and excuses; I’ve got a problem with that. Because part of it makes me think—and I’m speaking to men directly—part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that.

Because, after all, it couldn’t possibly be that Progressive-Democrat Vice President and Party Presidential candidate Kamala Harris is a lousy candidate. It couldn’t possibly be that Americans who happen to be black men don’t like the Party candidate for economic, border, foreign policy reasons having nothing to do with her skin color or gender.

Those characteristics were the explicit reasons for which then-Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden picked her for his running mate. It’s apparent that, Obama’s contempt to the contrary, black men are smarter than that when they consider who should get their vote.

This is Obama echoing then-Party candidate Joe Biden’s 2020 racist claim that if a black American doesn’t support him that person isn’t really black.

Disinformation Purveying

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Randy Manner (Maj Gen, ret) accused, in his Wall Street Journal…op-ed…former President and Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump of spreading disinformation regarding the Federal government’s response to Hurricane Helene. Tellingly, he opened his jeremiad with his own disinformation.

Donald Trump’s Project 2025 would dismantle these lifelines and force communities to face disasters on their own.

There is no connection whatsoever between Trump and Project 2025. Both Trump and The Heritage Foundation, authors of the document, say so. The only ones who claim otherwise are the press’ imaginary “folks who know” and Progressive-Democratic Party politicians who quote that press.

Manner’s disinformation extends into Project 2025 itself.

Project 2025 would push the privatization of disaster-relief functions currently managed by FEMA….

It’s instructive that Manner chose not to quote the project where it proposes that. He cannot because the project proposes no such thing. Project 2025 itself (pgs 133-134) actually proposes dismantling DHS, which it says is dysfunctional, while saving FEMA by alternatively moving it to the Department of the Interior or combining it with CISA and moving the combination to the Department of Transportation.

Regarding Manner’s dishonest claim regarding privatizing FEMA, what the project actually proposes (pg 135) is

privatizing…the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) National Flood Insurance Program….

This is far from privatizing FEMA. Beyond that, letting insurance entities compete in a free market would bring down the costs to insurees, and to us taxpayers regarding government insurance entities, of insurance.

Manner’s distortions and disinformation peddling brings dishonor on the uniform he used to wear.

Regarding shifting FEMA spending, the project does propose

shift[ing] the majority of preparedness and response costs to states and localities instead of the federal government….

But that’s where the responsibility should lie in our republican democracy. The State and local governments are the entities on the scene (on-scene command is a concept with which an ex-flag officer should be familiar), they know far better than the Federal government what the needs of their citizens are, and being closest to the scene of the disaster area and to those citizens within it, they are far better positioned to provide the immediate aid and targeted support those citizens need than is the Federal government. The Florida State and local governments are empirical demonstrations of this.

Only a Big Government enthusiast, who sees States merely as districts to facilitate the purposes of the central government (as John Jay would have had it at our Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia), would act as though we’re not a republican democracy, not a republic.

Manner should be ashamed of himself for writing such a jeremiad.

Lies of Progressive-Democrats

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This time centered on their support for terrorists in the Middle East. An all-too-typical example is given by Massachusetts’ Progressive-Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Instead of securing the release of the hostages, however, Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu has unleashed unthinkable violence on innocent civilians in Gaza. More than a million Palestinians are facing starvation. We see videos of dead children held in the arms of their parents. Violence is escalating throughout the region, including most recently in Lebanon, threatening even more human suffering.

No, Netanyahu and the Israeli Defense Force have been at pains to minimize civilian deaths to the point of broadcasting their next target area and encouraging civilians to leave before an attack goes in—an advance warning that runs up IDF casualties as terrorists who don’t leave with the civilians dig in and are better prepared to resist the attack.

Those civilian deaths, contra Warren, are caused by the terrorists, who work to prevent civilians from leaving the targeted areas so as to use them as shields for the terrorists remaining to fight; caused by the terrorists who use, as a matter of course, civilians as shields as whenever and wherever they fight; caused by terrorists who use civilian churches, mosques, schools, and hospitals for weapons storage and command/control centers; caused by terrorists who use those facilities and civilian residences as sites from which to launch their rockets, which are targeted against Israeli civilians.

Far from naïve, as the Wall Street Journal editors close their piece with, Warren most certainly knows better; she’s lying about the responsibility for the civilian deaths in Gaza and Lebanon as Israel fights for its survival.