Crossposted from Flopping Aces

While the world waits breathlessly for any innocent civilian collateral death by Israel’s surgical strikes, the media world turns an almost complete blind eye to what is happening within the Gaza Strip. Hamas’ has quietly launched it’s 2nd civil war against the Palestinian Authority.

Amid the Israeli defense, Hamas has murdered/executioned, tortured Fatah supporters and put dozens under house arrests.

The Hamas government has placed dozens of Fatah members under house arrest out of fear that they might exploit the current IDF operation to regain control of the Gaza Strip

~~~

Fatah officials in Ramallah told The Jerusalem Post that Hamas militiamen had been assaulting many Fatah activists since the beginning of the operation last Saturday. They said at least 75 activists were shot in the legs while others had their hands broken.

Wisam Abu Jalhoum, a Fatah activist from the Jabalya refugee camp, was shot in the legs by Hamas militiamen for allegedly expressing joy over the IDF air strikes on Hamas targets.

“Hamas is very nervous, because they feel that their end is nearing,” a senior Fatah official said. “They have been waging a brutal campaign against Fatah members in the Gaza Strip.”

Meanwhile, sources close to Hamas revealed over the weekend that the movement had “executed” more than 35 Palestinians who were suspected of collaborating with Israel and were being held in various Hamas security installations.

“We will kill them all if they try to help Israel bring down our government,” the official said. “We will hang Mahmoud Abbas and [former Fatah security chief] Muhammad Dahlan in the public square if they try to enter the Gaza Strip aboard Israeli tanks.”

The Hamas official said that his security forces had launched a massive “preemptive” campaign aimed at thwarting Fatah’s attempts to “spread anarchy and chaos.” He confirmed that many Fatah operatives had been shot in the legs over the past few days by Hamas “to make sure that they don’t help Israel.”

I’d say this was most definitely against “international law” for “humane warfare”…. a phrase that seems oxymoronic at best. Where’s the outrage by the international community?

The press fails to point out Hamas atrocities, deliberately inflicted against citizens it considers political enemies, and instead gives press coverage to Hamas parading the bodies of Nizar Rayan, his four wives and 10 of his children thru the Gazan streets.

Rayan is one of Hamas’ five top decision makers and mentor of suicide bombers. One of his proteges included his own son, whom he sent on a Gazan mission to kill two Israeli settlers back in Oct 2001. Rayan is no fool. He recognizes that dead Palestinians make for good press, and his irreverence for his own family’s lives provides him with obedient victims to use for media fodder.

Rayan deliberately ignored the Israel advance warnings to go underground with his family. His home, suspected of being a munitions storage facility, was on the list of targets. There seems little excuse for his family’s deaths, as the army admitted there was a tunnel under his home, used as an escape route.

As I pointed out in my post yesterday on the proportionality principle, the Hamas control of Gaza is illegitimate…. obtained by violence in a 2007 coup. Per agreements, the only recognized representative of Palestine is the Palestine Authority. Hamas may have a majority of seats because of their dedication to welfare social programs… but they do not own the entire PA.

In fact, even Newsweek’s Daniel Klaidman - in a piece today coauthored by Dan Ephron, Christopher Dickey and (oddly enuf) Michael Hirsh - points out that the biggest stumbling block to the two-state solution for peace is Hamas itself. From their article, A Plan of Attack for Peace:

At the moment, the greatest impediment to peace is Hamas, the terrorist group that won power in Gaza through elections in 2006. The rise of a rejectionist “Hamastan” in Gaza has left Palestinians divided between Abbas’s more moderate Fatah government and radical Hamas leaders who encourage violence and believe Israel itself should not exist. Hamas rose by exploiting the misery and grievances of the Palestinians. The challenge for Palestinians and Israelis who desire peace is to make Hamas irrelevant in the eyes of its supporters by offering them something more tangible than revenge.

While an anti-Israel world is quick to believe that Israel is attempting to occupy and hold Gaza in violation of the roadmap to peace, nothing could be further from the truth. Israel has made it clear publicly they have no intentions to reoccupy Gaza.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni says there are no plans to occupy Gaza, after two days of airstrikes in the Palestinian territory and the callup of 6,500 Israeli reserve soldiers.

Speaking Sunday on “Meet the Press,” Livni says the Israeli assault came because Gaza’s Hamas rulers were smuggling weapons and building up “a small army.”

But, she said, “Our goal is not to reoccupy” the Gaza Strip.

Fact is, Abbas had warned Hamas to cease the attacks on Israel…… something Hamas chose to ignore. And now, with the PA “standing by” to reassume control, some Palestinians celebrating Israeli’s assault against the terror group, and Hamas’ death threats against the PA leadership, there are some unlikely allies with Israel that dare not speak out too loudly.

In the meantime, the UN Security Council - that int’l body of anti-Israel fools - found themselves thwarted by the US when attempting to issue a statement demanding immediate ceasefire. Or, as the front page “must read” tongue in cheek subtitle from Lucianne’s site says:

Someone found some stones over at the UN.

From the Jerusalem Post article linked:

US Deputy Ambassador to the UN Alejandro Wolff said the US saw no prospect of Hamas abiding by last week’s council call for an immediate end to the violence. Therefore, he said, a new statement at this time “would not be adhered to and would have no underpinning for success, would not do credit to the council.”

~~~

Arab nations demanded that the council adopt a presidential statement calling for an immediate cease-fire following Israel’s launch of a ground offensive in Gaza earlier Saturday, a view echoed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

~~~

Before the meeting, Ban telephoned Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and said he was disappointed that Israel launched a ground offensive and “alarmed that this escalation will inevitably increase the already heavy suffering” of Palestinian civilians, the UN spokesman’s office said in a statement.

Welll someone better start bringing Secy-Gen up to speed on the “suffering” of Palestinians at the hands of the thugs who keep peace from coming to fruition… right along with Iran, who keeps supplying Hamas with bigger and better weaponry.

Shall I repeat the words of Hamas as they declared civil war?

“We will kill them all if they try to help Israel bring down our government,” the official said. “We will hang Mahmoud Abbas and [former Fatah security chief] Muhammad Dahlan in the public square if they try to enter the Gaza Strip aboard Israeli tanks.”

…. “bring down *our* government”?? The Palestinian Authority and Abbas *is* Gaza’s legitimate representative of governance. Not Hamas.

It is time the UN blowhards and the history deficient biased media woke up to reality, and started advertising this conflict for what it really is… a tacit group effort between Israel and the Palestinian Authority to overthrow a bunch of thugs who will never negotiate for peace and shared territory.

Also:

Sanity Invading Obama’s Presidency?

Whoa boy, get ready for the left’s head to really explode.

President-elect Barack Obama and congressional Democrats are crafting a plan to offer about $300 billion in tax cuts to individuals and businesses, a move aimed at attracting Republican support for an economic-stimulus package and prodding companies to create jobs.

The size of the proposed tax cuts — which would account for about 40% of a stimulus package that could reach $775 billion over two years — is greater than many on both sides of the aisle in Congress had anticipated, and may make it easier to win over Republicans who have stressed that any initiative should rely relatively heavily on tax cuts rather than spending.

President-elect Barack Obama and congressional Democrats are crafting a plan to offer as much as $310 billion of tax cuts.

The Obama tax-cut proposals, if enacted, could pack more punch in two years than either of President George W. Bush’s tax cuts did in their first two years. Mr. Bush’s 10-year, $1.35 trillion tax cut of 2001, considered the largest in history, contained $174 billion of cuts during its first two full years, according to Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation. The second-largest tax cut — the 10-year, $350 billion package engineered by Mr. Bush’s in 2003 — contained $231 billion in 2004 and 2005.

The largest piece of the overall tax relief would involve cuts for people who pay income taxes or who claim the earned-income credit. It would serve as a down payment on the “Making Work Pay” proposal Mr. Obama outlined during his election campaign, providing a credit to offset Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes of $500 per individual or $1,000 per family.

On the campaign trail, Mr. Obama said he would phase out a similar tax-credit proposal at around $200,000 per household, but aides said they haven’t settled on an income cap for the latest proposal. This part of the plan is similar to a bipartisan initiative launched in early 2008, which sent out checks worth $131 billion.

As Scott has written about extensively, Obama can now see the reality of the world and is now not only copying President Bush’s policies he is going further then Bush with this tax cut.

I’m telling ya, while it was a sad day seeing this inexperienced political tool get elected President at least we get to watch as the drama unfolds within his own party.

More here.

Finally:

Why Our Military is So Hated Around the World

Ted Turner and Jane Fonda must be political soul mates.

From a transcript of Bill O’Reilly’s interview with Ted Turner:

O’REILLY: All right. Is America a good country?

TURNER: Oh, it’s a great country.

O’REILLY: Are we exploitative overseas? Is the war on terrorism largely our fault?

TURNER: No, I wouldn’t say largely. But I think if we stopped bombing people and sent doctors and scientists and engineers around the world that we’d make a lot more progress, and we wouldn’t have near as much terrorism in the world as we do. I think bombing just makes people angry, and they want to bomb you back.

Uh…yeah…that’s all our military does is carry out American foreign policy objectives of “bombing people”; not bombing terrorists…not bombing America’s enemies…but “people”.

Here’s a little education for Ted Turner, by way of a Hugh Hewitt interview with Robert Kaplan:

HH: You know, I want to begin in the 9th chapter of this, your second book on the American military, as you were driving out of Timbuktu, 11 hours beyond the gates of Timbuktu. Use that as a metaphor for what you were doing and why you went the places you have gone.

RK: Well, Timbuktu is not the edge of the Earth. The edge of the Earth is miles beyond Timbuktu, north into the heart of the Sahara desert. And I was with a company of American Special Forces officers, about twelve of them, all non-commissioned officers except for a captain. And you would think what is the U.S. military doing in the heart of the Sahara desert. Well, we’re not only in the heart of the Sahara desert, we’re all over the Pacific ocean, we’ll all over South America, and all this is occurring while we are fighting a war in Iraq and in Afghanistan. And what I tried to do in the course of the years in which I embedded with the military was to show the whole thing. Not to ignore Iraq, but not to be limited by it, either, because one big deployment might overstretch us like Iraq, but dozens upon dozens of smaller deployments will do no such thing. So I was with a company of American Special Forces officers who were investigating just what was in the center of the Sahara desert in terms of al Qaeda movements, humanitarian, prospects for humanitarian relief, just getting to know Africa. Because in this global world war on terrorism, really is a global war.

HH: Now your accompanied by, extraordinary in the course of this book, an extraordinary array of Americans, one of which on this particular trip is an Evangelical staff sergeant from Oklahoma who doesn’t want to be identified, because he doesn’t want his deeds to serve himself. I thought that was another metaphor for the extraordinary people you’ve spent the last many years with.

RK: Yeah, the people I…what I did was I didn’t report on anybody in this book. I befriended a lot of people, and revealed them to the reader as they revealed themselves to me. And the best of these people didn’t want any publicity, not because they were afraid of being written up badly, but because they were afraid of getting public recognition for anything they do. For them, the real sweet thing is to do it and not get recognition, if you can believe it. And this Evangelical staff sergeant, he drove most of the way through blistering sandstorms, he slept only six hours, which was interrupted by an hour and a half of guard duty, and he got up the next morning to fit little African children for eyeglasses as part of a civil affairs project that this Special Forces A-team was doing. And just, you know, just dealt with one child, one woman after another throughout the morning without any complaining about lack of sleep or anything.

HH: Let me tell the audience, this is a remarkable read, you’re going to want to get Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts, and just an example of detail, “Following sun up, Captain Tory, an Evangelical staff sergeant from Oklahoma, set up an eye clinic inside one of the ruins. They unpack little boxes of adaptable eyewear, an ingenious, low-tech device manufactured by the U.S. Agency for International Development. These were round, Harry Potterish horn-rimmed glasses of zero prescription which increasingly strengthened as you pumped a clear gel solution attached to the frame inside the glass. The SF, Special Forces guys called them, ‘never get laid again glasses,’ because of how they made you look.” Now that has got an eye for detail, pardon the pun, Robert Kaplan, but I guess it is in those very small things, as well as the B-2’s that we’ll talk about later, that the genius in the American military lies.

RK: Yeah, it all lies in the details. For the price of one F-22, you could populate all of Africa with SF-A teams doing humanitarian relief. But that is not necessarily a criticism of an F-22, because I get that later in the book when I talk about the B-2 and other expensive bombers, which are sort of an expensive form of health insurance to keep the Chinese honest about their intentions in Taiwan. But you know, we get bargains in our military budget, and we don’t. The B-2’s, the F-22’s, there’s no bargains there. But in terms of what we can do on the ground in a place like Africa, we get a lot of bargains like this deployment that I embedded on.

Extracted from a post targeted at Paul Bearers:

In an interview with Hugh Hewitt, Robert Kaplan says,

people have this image of the U.S. military going all over the world as a busybody, propping up dictatorships. It’s so false. In fact, the only regimes we prop up through training missions are of certified democracies, certified by Congress, which we have not imposed on them, that they’ve evolved organically on their own as democracies.

Far from being isolationist before World War II and the formation of NATO, America from the very beginning of the Republic intervened in a nearly continual series of civil wars, coups, and hostage rescues. Starting with attacks on the Barbary Coast pirates between 1801 and 1805, the nation has always interfered in other nations’ business far from home.

Two generations of college students have been taught that all such “adventurism” is nothing but imperialism and running-dog capitalism–and Boot does not deny that states naturally send in their forces out of national interest rather than mere idealism. But he shows that the majority of the time the Marines intervened to stop the slaughter of civilians, to retaliate against the killing of Americans and destruction of their property, and to prevent chaos from spreading beyond a country’s borders. While such incursions often served the local property-owning elites and corrupt grandees, such interventionists as Thomas Jefferson, Chester A. Arthur, and Teddy Roosevelt assumed that order and stable governments were usually preferable to mass uprisings, constant revolution, and mob rule.

When natural disasters strike, what does America do? Take advantage of another nation’s misfortune, or come to its rescue, using American military might while draining American taxpayer coffers and making private donations to charities? We did this for earthquake relief in Iran, 2003 just being one year’s example of this:

In the latest U.S. shipment, an American military plane carrying 80 personnel and medical supplies landed early Tuesday in the provincial capital of Kerman. The team reached Bam, 120 miles to the southeast, by midday.

Seven U.S. Air Force C-130 cargo planes have already delivered 150,000 pounds of relief supplies — including blankets, medical supplies and water — making the United States one of the largest international donors.

Pakistan:

Pakistan earthquake relief, the ‘Great Satan’s’ military has delivered 94 tons medical supplies, 1,939 tons of humanitarian supplies, 1,582 tons of equipment, evacuated 15,794 victims..provided doctors, nurses, medicine…..

In addition, we donated a mobile hospital:

WASHINGTON, Feb. 16, 2006 – The United States today transferred the 212th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, the last unit of its kind in the U.S. Army, to the Pakistan government for continued use in earthquake relief efforts, a Defense Department spokesman said.
The 84-bed hospital, which arrived in Muzaffarabad shortly after the earthquake struck the country on Oct. 8, is valued at $4.6 million, according to the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan.

The hospital consists of the following:

* Primary health care and emergency medical treatment section;
* Surgical suite with two operating tables and sterilization equipment;
* Two intensive care units; I
* Intermediate care ward;
* Minimal care ward;
* Pharmacy;
* Laboratory;
* Radiology units;
* Medical maintenance work area with a supply of repair parts;
* Power-generation system for the entire hospital; and
* Storage containers for packing and moving the hospital.

The hospital has treated more than 20,000 patients and provided about 20,000 vaccinations to about 8,000 patients since October. After the transfer, the American medical personnel will return to their home base in Miesau, Germany, and the Pakistani military will take over the hospital, according to the embassy.

In further progress toward the end of U.S. military relief efforts in Pakistan this spring, the U.S. Navy turned over $2.5 million worth of construction equipment to Pakistan military engineers Feb. 13. The equipment includes three D-7 bulldozers, a 15-ton dump truck, nine 20-ton dump trucks, seven 100-kilowatt generators and four generator skids, according to the embassy.

The U.S. also is donating its two forward-area refueling point systems to the Pakistan government to increase helicopter efficiency during reconstruction.

The U.S. military has been on the ground in Pakistan since Oct. 10, providing relief after a 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck the Kashmir region in northern Pakistan Oct. 8, killing more than 70,000 citizens, injuring more than 60,000 and leaving more than 3 million homeless. At the peak of initial relief efforts, more than 1,200 personnel and 25 helicopters provided vital transport, logistics, and medical and engineering support in the affected areas.

Today, 600 U.S. servicemembers continue to provide aviation, medical and engineering assistance to relief and reconstruction efforts.

the 2004 tsunami…

WALL OF WATER
U.S. Troops Aid Tsunami Victims

American forces began 2005 by helping people on the other side of the globe. Within hours of the Dec. 26, 2004, earthquake and tsunami that devastated large swaths of the Indian Ocean region, U.S. troops were mobilizing to help. Thousands of servicemembers rang in the New Year in the region or were mobilizing to go there.

U.S. Pacific Command had immediately begun planning the U.S. and international response. Military leaders communicated directly with U.S. ambassadors and senior military officers in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand, among other countries.

As Jan. 1, 2005, dawned, the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group was afloat off the Indonesian island of Sumatra , and the ship’s 17 helicopters and aircrews were flying relief supplies to survivors in devastated areas. The USS Bonhomme Richard Expeditionary Strike Group, with support ships and 25 helicopters, had almost arrived from Guam. Pre-positioned ships full of supplies had left Japan, Guam and Diego Garcia en route to the region. And Joint Task Force 536, soon to be renamed Combined Support Force 536, was already operating in Utapao, Thailand.

“Like in so many places, those who wear our uniform are showing the great decency of America . I appreciate your compassion. I appreciate your love for your fellow human beings and thank you for the work you do.”
President George W. Bush

“One thing the Indonesians are never going to forget is who was there first,” U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia B. Lynn Pascoe said a few weeks later during a visit to the Lincoln.

Within days, more than 15,000 U.S. military members were in Southeast Asia assisting relief and recovery efforts under Operation Unified Assistance, the name given the post-tsunami relief efforts focused on Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

“If you look at the front pages of many papers, you’ll see pictures of U.S. military people rescuing people, delivering food and water, assisting with emergency medical types of assistance,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in a Jan. 4 radio interview.

The U.S. response was massive, immediate and comprehensive. At least 17 Navy ships and a Coast Guard cutter were in the region or en route within a week.

“Like in so many places, those who wear our uniform are showing the great decency of America, ” President Bush said Jan. 10 of the humanitarian efforts. “I appreciate your compassion. I appreciate your love for your fellow human beings and thank you for the work you do.”

Military medical assets proved invaluable in many ways. USNS Mercy, a floating trauma center with the capacity to house up to 1,000 hospitalized patients, departed its home base in San Diego Jan. 5. For six weeks the ship was supporting the operation with more than 500 U.S. Navy and nongovernmental organization medical staff, volunteers, uniformed Public Health Service members, and Navy support personnel. Mercy’s personnel conducted a wide range of medical and dental assistance programs ashore and afloat, performing 19,512 medical procedures, including 285 surgeries.

Many more were helped through the efforts of environmental and preventive medicine specialists. Military epidemiologists, entomologists, hygienists, microbiologists and others tested water, soil and air samples

for diseases and contaminants to ensure the safety of aid workers and displaced local residents. The teams helped identify and treat contaminated wells, killed flies and mosquitoes in large areas, and trapped and removed rats from displaced-persons camps.

“We know that we touched many, many people – more than 50,000 directly, with a larger lasting impact – with efforts of the preventive medicine unit … and the friends that we made,” Navy Capt. Dave Llewellyn, Mercy commander, said as the ship was transiting home.

Navy oceanographers conducted safety and navigation surveys of the ocean and coastlines in the region. “The tsunami wiped out tons of shoreline,” said Forrest Noll, a scientist with the Naval Oceanographic Office in Stennis, Miss. “It changed the landscape drastically.”

In a more colorful description of the devastation, Navy Petty Officer 1st Class David Loiselle said, “It looked like somebody had just taken a giant Weedwacker to the entire coast.”

Loiselle, an aviation warfare systems operator aboard the Lincoln , said the relief work was one of his most rewarding experiences. “My single biggest gratitude is rescuing people,” he said. “I’d much rather do that than (be) shooting people.”

Other military support included:

• USS Fort McHenry, a dock landing ship that left Sasebo , Japan , Jan. 2, delivered more than 1.2 million pounds of water, food items and clothes. Fort McHenry also delivered more than 2,000 pounds of supplies personally collected by communities within Fleet Activities Sasebo.

• Hundreds of Marine Corps engineers and Navy Seabees helped Sri Lankans repair infrastructure and clear debris. Some debris cleared from the island was used to reconstruct a sea wall.

• Army engineers deployed to Thailand to help rebuild roads, bridges and power infrastructure.

• Several teams of military forensics experts, including anthropologists, dentists and mortuary affairs specialists, helped manage the overwhelming numbers of bodies.
Officials estimate roughly 300,000 people died in the disaster, and more than 1.1 million people were displaced. The statistics regarding U.S. relief efforts are also staggering. According to U.S. Pacific Command information, U.S. military flights in the region included:

• About 70 reconnaissance-assessment flights, resulting in roughly 570 hours flying time;

• More than 1,300 fixed-wing aircraft flights, resulting in more than 4,635 hours flying time; and

• More than 2,200 helicopter flights, resulting in more than 4,870 hours flying time.

In all, U.S. Pacific Command assets delivered or coordinated delivery of more than 24 million pounds of relief supplies and equipment into the region by Feb. 14, when Combined Support Force 536 ceased operations.

time and time again, America has used its military interventionism on behalf of humanity.

“Like in so many places, those who wear our uniform are showing the great decency of America . I appreciate your compassion. I appreciate your love for your fellow human beings and thank you for the work you do.”- President George W. Bush

Ok, maybe Ted Turner was referring to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan where al-Qaeda and the Taliban brutalized the populace, and we “stayed the course” there to train native security forces and serve and protect innocent civilians and budding democracies at the expense of American blood and treasure, along with our Coalition partners.

Here are examples of the evil that American soldiers do, terrorizing the “native brown people”:

The Best Medicine

A U.S. Army Soldier from Charlie Company, 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment, 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, from Ft. Lewis, Wash., shares a laughs with an Iraqi army soldier at a U.S. and Iraqi Army security checkpoint in Tarmiyah, Iraq, Sept. 25, 2007. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication 2nd Class Summer M. Anderson.

Pride

U.S. Army Sgt. Quenton Sallows hands out Iraqi Flags to Iraqi children beginning their first day of school in Lutafiyah, Iraq, Oct. 1, 2007. Sallows is assigned to Civil Affairs, 2nd Battalion, 15th Field Artillery Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry). U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Quinton Russ.

Nice to Meet You

U.S. Marine Corps Cpl. Julia Venegas, from 2nd Marine Logistics Group, shakes hands with a little girl in the village of Kabani, Iraq, while on a security patrol Sept. 28, 2007. U.S. Marine Corps photo taken by Lance Cpl. Robert S. Morgan.

One Size Fits Most

A U.S. Army Soldier of 1st Battalion, 38th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division plays with a young Iraqi boy in Mufriq, Iraq, Oct. 8, 2007. U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Shawn Weismiller.

School Days

Iraqi girls walk to a primary school in the Andaloos district of Fallujah, Iraq, Oct. 17, 2007, to receive school supplies from U.S. Marines and Iraqi police. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Robert B. Brown Jr.

Junior Heroes

The students at an elementary school in Jerf Al-Mila hold up their ‘Junior Hero’ stickers after taking an oath to become honorary Junior Heroes during a visit to the school by Iraqi Army Soldiers from the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Brigade, 9th Iraqi Army Division (mechanized), Oct. 17. The Junior Hero program was designed by the Iraqi security forces to teach children about the roles of the Iraqi Army and Iraqi police who work in their communities and ways in which they can volunteer to keep their villages free of crime. Photo by Staff Sgt. Jon Cupp, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division Public Affairs

A Sucker for Children

U.S. Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Patrick K. Mason, a squad leader for 1st Platoon, Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, hands a lollipop to an Iraqi boy during a security patrol in Dulab, Iraq, Sept. 25, 2007. The Marines are working with Iraqi police in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom in the Al Anbar province of Iraq. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Shane S. Keller.

Check out the American soldier menacing an Iraqi girl:

Gee…is that Iraqi boy running to the terrible imperialist occupier for any particular reason?

It seems the boy understands who to run to for protection…

To paraphrase Ted Turner, “All we do is bomb people“…

Thanks, Mike (my post):

Check out the American Air Force medic bullying the Afghan boy:

Back to the Turner interview:

O’REILLY: Because there is, you know, there’s one man who’s done more for the continent of Africa than any other man in the history of civilization. Do you know who that man is?

TURNER: Nelson Mandela?

O’REILLY: No. President Bush has saved more lives, sent more money, and provided more medical care for the citizens of all the countries of Africa than any human being that’s ever lived. Yet, you just said send the doctors, send this, send that and the world will like us better and there won’t be as much terrorism. We have done that. And not only in Africa, but around the world. The world does not look upon George Bush as a hero and neither do you.

TURNER: No, I think he made a lot of mistakes, too. But you can’t — but he did some good things, and I think basically he’s got a good heart.

I mentioned some of Bush’s liberal accomplishments in Africa, before. Danny Huddleston at American Thinker says President Bush’s approval rating in Africa is 80%:

Also, few people are aware of the help Bush has provided to Africa. He has an astonishing approval rating of 80% on that continent. The NY Sun reported on this back in February:

President Bush’s sense of mission to improve the lives of the people of the Middle East has attracted so much attention that the Wall Street Journal called him “Bush of Arabia” the other day over an article by Fouad Ajami. Less widely appreciated are Mr. Bush’s achievements in Africa, which are worth marking as the president embarks today on a visit that is scheduled to include trips to Benin, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana, and Liberia. Mr. Bush has committed $15 billion to fight AIDS and HIV in Africa, and the result is that the number of Africans benefiting from anti-retroviral drugs has soared to 1.3 million today from 50,000 a few years ago. A similar effort is under way to fight malaria, with similarly promising results.

Mr. Bush hasn’t gotten much credit for this among the American public, but, as a BBC interviewer noted yesterday, his approval rating in Africa is in the 80% range, which is astonishingly high. [….]

Asked about all this yesterday, Mr. Bush characteristically looked beyond the poll numbers to the broader principles. “I believe to whom much is given, much is required. It happens to be a religious notion. But, it should be a universal notion as well,” the president said. “I believe America’s soul is enriched, our spirit is enhanced when we help people who suffer.”

President Bush, America, our military interference “policing” the world, has done more good on behalf of the “global community” than harm.

“You give him back his son,” says Steve Muth. “His son’s going to be fine. You can see it in their eyes. They’re not going to forget you. They’re not going to forget you’re from where you’re from. It will be two generations. They’ll still be saying, ‘you know, when you were a kid, it was the Americans that came after the earthquake.’ They won’t forget.” -Bob Simon 60 Minutes segment reporting on NYC Paramedics Saving Lives in Pakistan, in wake of the 2005 earthquake.