When I read of the Islamic terrorists attacking an Hasidic Chabad Center in Mumbai, India, I thought of Chabad House at the UT campus where I enjoyed a Passover seder with another likewise-unattached journalist, and a few young bachelor musicians, one very humid spring night more than twenty years ago.
It’s not hard to imagine that place being invaded by Muslims with grenades and AKs or for them to find people like Rabbi Holzberg and his wife. I’m sure they were as welcoming as the Chabad Lubavitchers of Austin and, of course, they paid for it with their lives. There’s a story now that the attackers cased the Mumbai center in advance, where they must have met the young couple they would later slay. The Austin rebbe, whose name I don’t remember, led our all-male seder (the women cooked and served) in so many toasts and regaled us with so many scholarly jokes that the evening still is a warm, alcoholic blur. But I don’t recall the food being as bad as Roger Simon remembers the cuisine at his daughter’s Chabad Sunday School in Los Angeles. The Austin ones did then and still do the outreach to Jews and non-Jews that Roger, and some of his commenters, speak of here, which makes them vulnerable.
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Posted in The War
Tagged Chabad Lubavitcter, Gavriel and Rivka Holzberg, Mumbai
The Seablogger points to his own and some other recent posts on the logic of Al Q eventually setting off a nuke in D.C. Seems right to me, especially since they have a history of second tries on missed targets and they pretty much failed on their first big D.C. strike in 2001. On the other hand, does the sea-attack "commando" assault on Mumbai, India, not portend a similar strike on the ports of Miami, Boston or San Francisco?
UPDATE: The Jews and Israelis taken hostage in Mumbai were tortured before they were slain.
MORE: More, nonspecific, support for the nuke idea. But the report’s lack of specificity regarding the "terrorists" is pathetic.
Independent correspondent Michael Yon on Bush’s major achievement with little to no Dem help:
"I’m with the 10th Mountain Division, and about half of the guys I’m with haven’t fired their weapons on this tour and they’ve been here eight months. And the place we’re at, South Baghdad, used to be one of the worst places in Iraq. And now there’s nothing going on."
Glad to see our troops did it before Barry and Hairplugs Joe could foul it up. The Afghan campaign will be enough for them.
Posted in Afghanistan, Iraq, Obamalot, The War, Troops
Tagged Bush's Legacy, Iraq is won
President-elect Barry backtracks a bit on Iran at his first news conference since the election:
"Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon I believe is unacceptable. And we have to mount a international effort to prevent that from happening. Iran’s support of terrorist organizations I think is something that has to cease."
No talk at all of welcoming the loudmouth Iranian dictator to the White House. But these are still early days.
MORE: Barry’s apologizing already for a careless joke. That was fast.
Possibly the best, via Jay Nordlinger at National Review Online, in a remark about Reagan:
"Reagan spent his entire life standing up to the bully. From boyhood on, he interposed himself between the bully and the innocent. He stood up to the bullies in his schools. He stood up to the Communists in Hollywood, and to the coercive unions. He stood up to the student radicals and their abettors. He stood up to the Soviets. He simply stood up.
"In the world today are a lot of bullies to stand up to: al-Qaeda, the mullahs, the North Koreans, the Chinese Communists, the Castro brothers, Chávez. John McCain will almost certainly do it. Barack Obama will almost certainly not."
No surprise here. If you were on active duty would you want to be commanded by a guy (Barry) who pointedly never served, and was seconded by (Biden) a Vietnam War draft-dodger? I’m reminded of scifi writer Robert Heinlein’s conception: only veterans should be allowed to vote and only mothers should be eligible for office. Works for me.
Via BlackFive.
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Posted in Afghanistan, Iraq, The War, Troops, Viet Nam
Tagged American troops want McCain, Biden, Obama
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 