Hangin’ Out In Jihadistan

Two items from the mainstream media this past week have turned me from my normal, placid, tolerant, loving self into a sputtering troglodyte (you do believe me, don’t you?). The first was the publication in the Los Angeles Times of some rather gruesome photos taken of US troops holding Taliban body parts (taken in 2010).

The other was the call for investigation of rocker and Second Amendment advocate Ted Nugent for “threatening” President Obama. Both items are proof positive that the MSM are in bed with the left wing of the Democratic party and are fully dedicated to skewing the “news” to fit their own agenda of painting the American military and angry conservatives as out-of-control mobs. The double standard is both palbable and obnoxiously left-loaded.

Let’s discuss the photo issue first. Despite ardent pleas from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta asking that the Times not print the photos, the paper did so anyway. Panetta did not demand anything, but simply pointed out that the photos were not newsworthy (they’re nearly two years old), would stir up more hatred and violence by the Taliban at a crucial juncture in Afghan-American discussions of exit strategy, and would further endanger already-endangered American lives.

The Times metaphorically shrugged its shoulders and asked “so what?” If it bleeds, it leads. And if it causes more unnecessary bloodshed, so much the better. If the incident had been unknown until now (which it was not), there might be some justification for publication of the photos. But it’s what the photos don’t show that makes the publication at this time so reprehensible. Like the My Lai massacre of the Vietnam War, this would be a major revelation of US troops behaving barbarously by murdering innocent civilians and then celebrating what they had done.

But that isn’t even close to the truth. What the photos show is young men, frustrated by a war they’re not allowed to win, holding body parts of Taliban terrorists blown up by their own people. Dumb, uncivilized, and perhaps repulsive. But unexpected given the surrounding circumstances? I think not. This sort of excess and unthinking behavior has occurred in every war in history. The Times has succeeded only in making a bad situation worse without having contributed a thing to the cause of peaceful withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. What they have succeeded in doing is handing Hamid Karzai and his friends in the Taliban another propaganda victory.

So where was the Times, and its willingness to print gruesome photos, from the beheading of Daniel Pearl, to the hanging of American workers on a bridge over the Euphrates River, to the burning-alive of Christian churchgoers in Egypt and Nigeria? The paper suffers from a very bad case of selective sensitivity. Worse still, the political generals played fellow-traveler by immediately denouncing the soldiers rather than the publication of the photos. They essentially convicted the soldiers of war crimes without trial and without context.

The soldiers didn’t kill the Taliban whose body parts were being handed around. They are at most guilty of bad behavior after the fact. But the Taliban and their jihadist friends throughout the Middle East do the barbaric killings then celebrate by displaying their “prizes.” There is simply no comparison between the two situations. The Times doesn’t care. The paper and TV news refused to show taped film of innocent civilians jumping to their deaths from the World Trade Centers rather than be burned alive because repetition of the live shots would be insensitive. But showing testosterone-fueled and frustrated soldiers holding dismembered body parts that they didn’t cause is somehow necessary and newsworthy. Aw, horse manure.

And then there’s the Secret Service’s rush to talk to Ted Nugent about “violent” remarks Nugent made about Barack Hussein Obama. Clearly, Nugent is planning on assassinating Obama because he made some over-the-top statements about what he would like to happen in the future. Here are the “threats”: “Obama is a piece of s***, and I told him to suck on my machine gun. We’ve got a president and attorney general who don’t even like the Constitution. We’ve got four Supreme Court Justices who don’t believe in the Constitution. If you can’t galvanize and promote and recruit people to vote for Mitt Romney, we’re done.”

And now for the money quote: “Our president and our attorney general, our vice-president, Hillary Clinton, they’re criminals. They’re criminals! We are Braveheart. We need to ride into that battlefield and chop their heads off in November.” Aha! Got it. Nugent is planning on beheading the entire Obama administration. Well, even I haven’t gone that far, but somehow I wish I had. Because, like Nugent, I would have been making a metaphorical comment on what Americans should do at the ballot box in November. And by the way, have I mentioned that I hate Obama?

When a jihadist says he wants to behead you, you had better be wearing a thick metal collar. But that’s another story altogether. The MSM now have a double-shot of pro-Obama vitriol to work with. They can now point to a potential mass murderer and tie him to Mitt Romney. Prior to Romney appearing to have sewed-up the Republican nomination, he was their favorite moderate. Now he’s a fascist and close friend of a dangerous wild man who wants to kill the president and his entire administration.

Somehow these alleged news outlets can tie Nugent’s statements directly to the Romney campaign, but see no connection between the vile and misogynist comments of million dollar contributor Bill Maher and Barack Obama. They can’t see the Nugent comments as angry but metaphorical remarks about getting Obama out of office, but they can entirely ignore MSNBC’s Ed Schultz saying that he’d like to rip Dick Cheney’s heart out. When they did mention it at all, they called it simple rhetorical zeal, missing the exact words: “Dick Cheney’s heart is a political football. We ought to kick it around and stuff it back in him.”

The Schultz venom was spat out nearly two years ago, but according to the L.A. Times standard, that’s newsworthy today. Still, as vile as those remarks were, I didn’t seen the Secret Service rushing to the MSNBC studios to question Schultz about his threat to a former US vice-president who still has Secret Service protection. Quite simply put, a threat that can’t be carried out is no threat at all. A thousand years of Anglo-American jurisprudence firmly establishes that. In the case of first instance, an English knight, angered at what another man had said, shouted “were it not for Assize time, I would lop your head from off your shoulders.” The ancient English court called it a “conditional” threat, dismissed the charges, and that has remained the law ever since.

Could any sane person honestly believe for a second that Ted Nugent is planning on donning a kilt, painting his face with blue stripes, mounting a horse, adopting a bad Scottish accent and charging into the White House to lop off Barack Obama’s head? Apparently, the MSM and the Secret Service think so. I do have to wonder if the Secret Service will bring Colombian prostitutes with them to the Nugent meeting. “We need to ride into that battlefield and chop their heads off in November,” sounds a lot like “Were it not for Assize time,” in other words a conditional threat which is no real threat at all.

Furthermore, we have gone England a step farther. It’s a thing called the First Amendment. It protects Schultz and Nugent equally. Most significantly it requires that if a threat actually has been made, it must also be a clear and present danger. By precedent, and even the standard of the questionable anti-terrorism statutes, neither Schultz nor Nugent poses a clear and present danger. More recently, on Thursday MSNBC “host” Martin Bashir used the Book of Mormon to condemn Mitt Romney to hell for “lying.” Good thing there are never more than twelve or thirteen viewers of MSNBC at any given time or we might have to take that as a serious threat.

Schultz concluded his diatribe with “I don’t want Cheney to go to hell, I just want him to get the hell out of here.” Allow me to up the ante. I want Obama and his entire gang of subversive crooks the hell out of here, and I want him and the whole left wing of the Democratic party to go to hell, the sooner the better. @#X$%F@#$%!

End of rant.

Note: Subsequent to the writing of this article, Nugent met with the Secret Service, and it appears this will go no farther. Nugent described the meeting as "solid and professional."