Demolishing War Memorials Destroys Our National Character
Posted by editor on 30 May 2010 at 4:46 pm UTC
By Carol A. Taber
Thieves stole the cross-shaped Mojave Desert War Memorial during the night of May 9, less than two weeks after the Supreme Court ruled that the 76-year-old memorial could stay. Because the memorial was on U.S. property, the thieves committed a federal crime; worse, they desecrated a national war memorial that was erected by the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) to honor American service members who have died in battle.
A combat-wounded veteran and recipient of our nation’s third highest medal for bravery - the Silver Star - immediately contacted my nonprofit foundation to offer anonymously a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the criminals. When asked why such a generous reward, the donor simply said, “I wanted to do the right thing.”
The right thing is what the Founding Fathers did when they created the Establishment Clause, which prohibits government from establishing a national religion. The Establishment Clause has generally been interpreted to prohibit the establishment of a national religion by Congress, or to prefer one religion over another.This Clause is at the heart of the Supreme Court case (Salazar v. Buono) concerning this very memorial. The opposition maintains that a cross on federal property - even one erected in the middle of the California Mojave Desert before it moved into federal control and regardless of motive - violates the separation between church and state.
I disagree, and it is clear that the intention of our Founding Fathers never was to remove all things religious from all things government. In their 5-4 decision to remand the case back to the lower court, it would appear the Supreme Court agrees as well.
Congress attempted to solve the issue by allowing the government to trade the one acre memorial site in exchange for five acres of privately-owned property elsewhere within the 1.6 million acre Mojave Desert Preserve, so that the new home of the memorial could stand on private land. A lower court ruled that land swaps may not be used to remedy a challenge to the establishment clause.
But this is about more than protecting just a single memorial. The pending court decision on the final status of the once prominent Mojave Desert War Memorial also has the potential of protecting - or demolishing - thousands of similar veterans’ memorials with religious symbols that reside on federal, state and municipal lands across the country. It seems that every American town has one.
Congress was sensitive to the issue of the cross representing to some a preference of one religion over another notwithstanding that it’s long stood as a memorial to America’s war dead. And they were also sensitive to how such mass destruction of our war memorials would be so devastating to our culture and national character. That’s why Congress attempted to authorize the land swap back in 2002.
But first things first: Let’s put these thieves in prison and win Salazar v. Buono.
We as a nation fight wars at great cost to life and national treasure, specifically to keep our enemies from destroying our national character, our values and our sovereignty. We as a people also need to fight unrelentingly to keep those people within from causing us the same harm, to include losing our identity and our history.
And we must always honor those whose service to our country paid the ultimate price to protect and preserve our way of life.
To do any less is simply un-American.
Carol A. Taber is founder and president of FamilySecurityMatters.org.
RECIPE FOR DISASTER: Increasing Risk of Terrorism, Decreasing Resources
Posted by editor on 30 May 2010 at 12:59 am UTC
BY THOMAS S. MULLIKIN
Americans are witnessing a spike in direct-threats and acts of terrorist-violence from Islamic extremists both at home and abroad. In 2009, a substantial number of terrorist organizations were uncovered, and numerous attacks and attempted attacks were directed at the United States. Many of the attacks were “homegrown” albeit with direct ties to the Middle East, such as the Little Rock recruiting center shooting and the attempted bombing in New York’s Times Square.
According to Patrick Poole, a U.S. military and law enforcement counterterrorism consultant, “this international nexus [of] domestic terror plots or attacks directed at Western targets seen both recently and historically has been the rule rather than the exception.”
Even in cases of so-called “self-radicalization,” the influence of recruitment videos produced by foreign terrorist organizations seems to be the underlying catalyst. Of the terrorist plots and actual terrorist attacks in the West since the 1980s, an underwhelming percentage is purely “homegrown,” says Poole.
Offer Baruch, a former member of Israel’s Shin Bet, highlights the reasoning behind the uptick in domestically produced, foreign-influenced terrorism: “The Taliban, al-Qaida [and] any affiliate radical Islamic organization would love to make some points in the war against the west. The biggest reward they can gain is conducting some kind of attack on American soil,” says J.J. Green, writing for the Washington, D.C.-based WTOP Radio website.
Additional sources of violence have increased for Americans living outside major metropolitan centers as the drug trade – and the international organized crime that goes with it – moves from urban areas into our communities.
How long will it be before we see the terrorist threat move in this same direction?
While the danger increases, we are feeling the financial pinch associated with greater deficits in both federal and state budgets.
One reason for shrinking tax dollars is the years of failed trade enforcement and onerous burdens on manufacturing across America. We have witnessed the exodus of nearly six-million manufacturing jobs from the U.S. in less than 10 years, significantly decreasing national and state tax revenue bases. The result is shrinking federal allocations for domestic protection, as well as decreasing state budgets to cover many of the same threats.
Furthermore, the worst recession since the 1930s has caused the steepest decline in state tax receipts on record. As a result, even after making deep cuts, states continue to face large budget gaps. New shortfalls have opened up in the budgets of at least 41 states for FY 2010, totaling $38 billion at mid-year. Initial indications are that states will face shortfalls as big as or bigger than they faced this year in the upcoming 2011 fiscal year.
Counting both initial and mid-year shortfalls, 48 states have addressed or still face such shortfalls in their budgets for fiscal year 2010, totaling $196 billion or 29 percent of state budgets — the largest gaps on record.
Similarly decreasing federal tax revenues prevents adequate assistance to states. The federal financial support for the South Carolina Military Department has seen dramatic cuts. There has been a decrease in financial support since the 2006 peak of $36.2 million to $18.6 million this year.
From 2008 to 2010, the lack of available funds parallels the economic recession as it directly correlates to federal budget cuts. The defense cuts send “a very clear signal that this administration is not going to be as forceful on national security issues as the previous administration. I think that’s pretty clear,” said Sen. Saxby Chambliss, Georgia Republican, as reported in the Washington Times.
At the same time state and federal budgets have been cut, domestic terrorism has seen a dramatic increase. Clare Lopez, Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Policy and a professor at the Centre for Counterintelligence & Security Studies, explained that “we have seen a jump not only in foreign-born jihadis, but American converts to Islam as well as naturalized citizens from Muslim countries of origin. Recent cases would include: Najibullah Zazi, David Headley, Jihad Jane/Jihad Jaime, Arkansas recruiter’s station shooter, Maj. Nidal Hasan, Abdulmutallab, and now Faisal Shahzad.”
“Knowing it’s harder to penetrate American defenses,” terrorist regimes have recruited American-born representatives “who understand our society’s strengths and vulnerabilities and who use the Internet to exhort people already living in the U.S. to launch terrorist attacks from within,” White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan said, according to Laura Rozen in Politico.
While many people believe the U.S. should use military resources as a major protector against domestic terrorism, they may not realize that the federal military is somewhat limited by statute. Therefore, state and local law enforcement agencies will no doubt be forced to play a larger role in the security and protection against increased threats in part due to the “Posse Comitatus Act” (18 U.S.C. § 1385). The Act prohibits most members of the federal uniformed services, including the Army, Air Force, and state National Guard forces when such are called into federal service, from exercising state law enforcement or police powers that maintain “law and order” on non-federal property (states and their counties and municipal divisions) within the U.S.
Taken together, this increased risk of terrorism and decreased domestic force protection expenditures could increase our country’s vulnerability to devastating attacks by any number of means—powerful explosive assaults against our people and infrastructure; merciless biological or radiological attacks; and cyber attacks on our critical financial and military information infrastructure. State and local planners working in conjunction with federal authorities need to heed the wake-up call of security experts and continue their efforts to vigorously coordinate Operational Security planning.
W. Thomas Smith Jr., a nationally recognized counterterrorism expert, said “the answer broadly speaking is fivefold. First, intelligence-sharing and coordination-of-effort between government agencies — though far improved since 9/11 — must be constantly refined. Second, the physical-security infrastructure — from static technology to the armed man — must keep ahead of the enemy’s ability to breach it. Third, information and intelligence gleaned from open sources must never be dismissed as somehow less-valid than classified intelligence. Fourth, counterterrorism and law-enforcement officials must gain and maintain subject matter proficiency. And fifth, public threat-awareness must be expanded.”
One thing is certain: attempting to solve a growing problem with shrinking resources is a sure journey to disaster. Let us hope and pray that we can solve the growing challenges of international terrorism before more American men, women and children lose their lives.
— LTC Thomas S. Mullikin – deputy director, Legal Directorate, Joint Services Detachment (JSD), S.C. Military Department – serves as civil affairs officer for the Counterterrorism Advisory Team, JSD. Mullikin previously served as Assistant Judge Advocate for the 360th Civil Affairs Brigade (Airborne) USAR, United States Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations, U.S. Army Special Operations Command.
South Carolina stands up Counterterrorism Advisory Team
Posted by editor on 26 May 2010 at 4:20 pm UTC
By Carol A. Taber
The Joint Services Detachment (JSD) of the South Carolina Military Department (SCMD) has established a Counterterrorism Advisory Team, a 10-plus member council composed of nationally recognized military, counterterrorism, and intelligence experts responsible for providing information to - and briefing - the JSD, and through JSD disseminating information to the broader S.C. Military Dept. The information used and the analysis presented in the briefings is public – based on open sources – and pertains to terrorism and terrorist threats to the state and nation.
The team - whose experts include retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely (a former FOX News military analyst), Dr. Walid Phares (a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies), two retired CIA operations officers, and one retired FBI special agent for counterintelligence - is somewhat unique among military and paramilitary organizations, though there are groups like the Lower Manhattan Counter-Terrorism Advisory Team, a multi-agency team which includes among others the New York Police Department.
But S.C.’s Counterterrorism Advisory Team may best be described as a blue-ribbon panel of experts on international terrorism , and - though still in its developmental stages - it is certainly an elite organization; its members having already substantially increased the national awareness of threats facing the U.S. homeland.
The S.C. Military Department is composed of various elements, including the S.C. Army National Guard, the S.C. Air National Guard, the S.C. State Guard, the JSD, the Emergency Management Division, and the Adjutant General’s office. In addition to its counterterrorism initiative, the SCMD’s missions range from Guard units deployed in Afghanistan to Hurricane preparedness to the oversight and planning of the national Medal of Honor Convention to be held in Charleston, S.C. this year.
— Carol A. Taber - founder and president of FamilySecurityMatters.org - is a frequent guest on FOX News, and her work has appeared in The Washington Times, Accuracy in Media, and other publications.
CONNOR SCORES MAJOR ENDORSEMENT
Posted by editor on 25 May 2010 at 4:16 pm UTC
By W. Thomas Smith Jr.
Lt. Col. Bill Connor - one of only three post-9/11 combat veterans seeking statewide office in South Carolina (Connor is campaigning for the office of LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR) - has today been endorsed by the Spartanburg Herald-Journal, a major S.C. daily newspaper, making him the first post-9/11 combat veteran seeking statewide office in S.C. to receive such an endorsement.
The headline reads, “Connor for lieutenant governor - Combat veteran has the fresh outlook, leadership skills necessary for the job.”
A U.S. Army infantry officer (Airborne, Ranger), graduate of The Citadel and the University of S.C. School of Law; Connor has been described by his military superiors as “a fearless, consummate combat leader” and an American soldier who, while serving in Afghanistan, “performed well under intense enemy fire and always led his men from the front.”
The Spartanburg Herald-Journal says Connor has “fresh and specific vision for the office [of Lt. Gov.]” and “unique leadership qualifications.”
The Republican primary is June 8.
Read story here.
— Visit W. Thomas Smith Jr. at uswriter.com.
South Lebanon will be liberated from Hezbollah
Posted by editor on 23 May 2010 at 2:44 pm UTC
Despite Ehud Barak’s unforgivable betrayal
By Charbel Barakat
Today, is the 10th anniversary of Israel’s withdrawal from what used to be known as the “security zone.” On May 23, 2000 – on the instructions of then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak – all Israeli units operating north of the border inside Lebanese territory were pulled back inside Israeli territory.
According to Barak it was in implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 425 issued in 1978 after an Israeli incursion into Lebanon (in response to PLO attacks across the border).
So, 23 years after it had entered the country to fight its enemies, Israel’s government decided to pull its troops back from Lebanon abruptly. Barak at the time said he was complying with UN resolutions and that he believed Lebanon was no longer a threat. That was the Israeli version of the Labor Government then.
But as IDF forces were pulling back, Iranian-backed Hezbollah militias were entering every single village and town evacuated by the Israelis. According to Hassan Nasrallah, the commander of Hezbollah, Israel withdrew because of the strikes by the so-called “resistance,” which in fact was the Iranian-backed militia. The Hezbollah story is that southern Lebanon was occupied by the Israelis, who had a proxy militia known as South Lebanon Army. And that Hezbollah struggled to liberate the land from its “Zionist occupiers.”
But there is a third version rejecting the first two and claiming it represents the struggle of the people of southern Lebanon who struggled against terror and were removed from their ancestral lands because of Barak’s policies on the one hand and the abandonment of western Lebanon last resisting free people against the hordes of Hezbollah and their Iranian and Syrian backers on the other hand.
Unfortunately, the third story has no tellers these days. Barak has Israel’s media at his service, so he can boast about his betrayal of southern Lebanon and his own Israeli people; and Nasrallah has his Iranian-funded media to claim his victories against the population that resisted him in southern Lebanon.
On this 10th anniversary of the betrayal of the people of south Lebanon, the truth is going to be blanched. It will take time for the witnesses of that drama to share the facts with the world, but it will happen no matter what.
The people within the so-called “security zone” are Lebanese citizens who have suffered at the hands of Palestinian terrorist groups since the 1970s and at the hands of Hezbollah since the 1980s. They are the sons and daughters of the land for centuries. The PLO then and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards today are foreign occupation forces. Israel entered Lebanon twice, first in 1978 and again in 1982, to strike back against terror forces shelling its territory from inside Lebanon.
The Lebanese citizens living in the border towns wanted the Lebanese Army only, neither the Israelis and certainly not the terrorist forces. But Lebanon’s government collapsed in 1975, and by 1990 it was controlled by Syria. The people of the south had no choice but to accept aid and support from Israel’s occupation forces. To be clear between the terrorists and barbarians who were slaughtering civilians and aiming at establishing a Jihadi regime and the forces of the state of Israel, an ally to the United States and at Peace with Egypt and Jordan, the choice was made against Hezbollah and the Syrian-Iranian axis.
The South Lebanon Army, under control of Israel, was by far better than ending up in the detention camps of the Iranian Pasdaran or in the torture facilities of Hezbollah and Syria. Hence, a large segment of the population of south Lebanon, Christian, Druse, Shia and Sunnis adhered to the SLA and stood by Israel’s forces as a common front against the terrorists. Israel’s successive governments stood in solidarity with the people of south Lebanon. A brotherhood between the IDF and the SLA was the cornerstone of the common defense against Hezbollah and Syria.
South Lebanon’s civil society would have preferred to be under the direct protection of the UNIFIL, a UN force dispatched to protect the Peace and the local population as of 1978. But UNIFIL’s bureaucrats refused to take the southern Lebanese under their auspices leaving them to strive for themselves. The SLA and the local population did the right thing by defending themselves and they did so under international law which grants them the right to fight for survival, hoping that when the Israelis wanted to leave, they would allow them to defend themselves and seek UN protection.
In 2000, then Israeli Prime Minister and Labor Party leader Ehud Barak betrayed an Israeli tradition of solidarity with the SLA and an Israeli natural friendship with the southern Lebanese. He not only ordered the abrupt withdrawal of IDF from the security zone but also a dismantlement of the SLA.
All that the southern Lebanese people wanted – as villagers living on their ancestral lands – was to defend it until they were free or die trying. Barak took away their most sacred right, the right to resist. He ordered his forces to shut off the borders as south Lebanon’s border populations were disarmed and about to be overwhelmed by the Jihadi barbarians. We know that a majority of the Israeli people were frustrated by that move, and we know that many in the IDF resented Barak’s stab in the back of the only population in the Middle East that actually stood by the Jewish people of Israel.
The southern Lebanese were forced to march during the night in a dishonorable exodus into Israel. In one night, Barak and his political allies in the government and abroad killed the last free enclave in Lebanon. In one night, he invited Hezbollah to the international borders. In on night, he terminated the only fighting force that was shedding blood shoulder-to-shoulder with the IDF in defending that part of the Middle East against the Jihadi terrorists. He took out the only friendship that could have told the world that Israel itself should not be betrayed or abandoned because it had not betrayed its own allies. Unfortunately, Barak’s reckless stab in the back of Israel’s only allies in the Middle East opened the path for the Jihadist forces to surround Israel further from the north and from the south. A few months later, the Aqsa intifada was shattering the myth of invincibility in Israel and from then on Israel was alone in a region filled with hatred. Barak took away the southern Lebanese people’s own ability to testify that Israel was doing good in the region, it was protecting its small and weak neighbors in southern Lebanon.
Today when Israel’s image is assaulted by the lethal propaganda machine of the Iranian petrodollars worldwide and in the United States, and when anti-semitism is running high in Western capitals, the only underdogs who would have told the world that Israel had been defending Christians, Druse, Shia and Sunni in that free enclave of Lebanon; those underdogs uprooted from their homes and lands because of the arrogance of a few politicians who thought they had it figured out, cannot testify to save the honor of their former allies. Blame Barak and his elitist friends in Israel and the United States for that.
This had to be said and it will be repeated as long as needed until some courageous leaders in Israel and the United States will apologize to the population of southern Lebanon for what has been done to them. History is unique in the ways it sends its messages. Three months after abandoning the people of south Lebanon, Israel was hit by a Jihadi war that has not stopped since, neither across the Lebanese border nor across the frontier of Gaza. And one year after that, America was hit by the beast of terror on 9/11. Offering the small villages of southern Lebanon to the Jihadists didn’t appease them. Just the opposite, it emboldened them. We hope the free world learned the lesson.
However, we do know that the majority of Israelis do not believe in Barak’s pragmatic miscalculations and they do want a friendship with their neighbors from the north. Naturally, it would have been better to have the SLA fending off the Iranian assault waves than having the enemy roaming the borders. Now they have to deal with Hassan Nasrallah’s 40,000 missiles to the north, Assad’s chemical forces, Hamas terror from the south and Ahmedinijad’s forthcoming nukes. Had Israel not dismantled the southern Lebanese resistance against terror, Hezbollah would have been dealing with a strong indigenous force to reckon with. Let’s see if Israel’s basic instincts correct the mistakes of its own leaders.
Meanwhile, we the people of southern Lebanon haven’t lost hope. We continue to struggle politically around the world for the liberation of Lebanon. We are now part of a vast Diaspora that stands firmly with the United States and the international community including Europe, Russia and the Arab moderates, in a campaign to defeat the terror forces. Our commitment to freeing Lebanon persists from generation to generation. We are still committed not only to peace with Israel but also to a friendship with the Jewish people in the Holy Land. Despite the betrayal by some of its politicians, Israel has a full right to exist in the region and all nations have right to freedom and democracy. We hope that the democratic forces among Arabs and other nations of the Middle East would soon rise against dictatorship and fascism and we will return to our occupied land and live in Peace.
May 23, 2000 was a hard benchmark in our history, but it is certainly not the end of it. We will return and we will live all in peace.
– Col. Charbel Barakat, Lebanese Army (Ret.) is an historian and a former civil society leader in south Lebanon. He is now a counterterrorism expert in Canada.
NOTE: The opinions expressed in these articles are solely those of the author, and do not represent the opinions of World Defense Review and its affiliates. WDR accepts no responsibility whatsoever for the accuracy or inaccuracy of the content of this or any other story published on this website. Copyright and all rights for this story (and all other stories by the author) are held by the author.
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