Twisters
rip through Midwest, South, killing 12; Branson theater district gets heavy
damage
By now, you’ve seen all the video
footage of death and debris that you need to see for the coming year. Check this website morning and night. It may make a big difference in your day!
Two NATO
troops gunned down on NATO-Afghan military base
“More than 70
NATO troops are estimated to have been killed by rogue Afghan colleagues or
insurgents who have managed to infiltrate in the ranks of security forces in
recent years.
The
killings are seen as a major challenge for the NATO coalition, which plans to
withdraw all combat troops by 2014 and wants to focus on training and equipping
the nascent Afghan army so it can stop the resurgent Taliban and stabilize Afghanistan.”
Fantasy
and reality in Afghanistan
By Fareed Zakaria,
“The United States tends to enter wars in
developing countries with a simple idea — modernize the country, and you will
solve the national security problem. An articulation of that American approach
came from none other than Newt Gingrich during a 2010 speechat the American Enterprise Institute. We are
failing in Afghanistan, Gingrich argued, because “we have not flooded the
country with highways, we haven’t guaranteed that every Afghan has a cellphone,
we haven’t undertaken the logical steps towards fundamentally modernizing their
society, we haven’t developed a program to help farmers get off of growing
drugs.”
Cassi Creek:
Although it
is only the 1st day of March, the national news is announcing that
the season of whirling winds is upon us.
It seems to have descended upon us in full fury, somewhat earlier than
normal.
The National
Severe Storms Center in Norman Oklahoma is the primary source of predictions of
severe weather, watches, and warnings.
The daily convective report is a technical wonder that discusses the air
masses that will provide or prevent the national weather for that day and
two-three follow on days. It explores
the causation of severe storms and the factors that contribute to greater or
lesser severity.
We’ve managed
to expand our understanding of the physical factors and global scale fluid
mechanics that drive the atmospheric cauldron over the last half-century. In my youth, tornadoes happened and you found
out about them by means of such crude methods as looking out the window. Everyone understood the meaning and feel of “tornado
weather” but predicting tornadic storms and their path was still science
fiction. As a result of our inability to
predict days such as last year’s 27th April, deaths due to tornadoes
were much higher than they are today. Our abilities to forecast, find, and track
may be giving us a more true picture of frequency and severity than we’ve ever
had before.
In
Afghanistan, our troops are dying at the hands of mobs of religious fanatics
who are unable to separate 7th century behaviors from modern
behaviors. We’re trying to modernize a
nation that does not care to be and likely cannot be modernized.
As part of
this process, we are exposing out troops to grave risk at the hands of Afghan
troops and police who consider our men and women infidels, and as such, fair
targets. The evidence that proves we are
placing our troops at un-necessary risk is mounting with each passing day. Afghanistan is never going to be a democratic
nation with modern infrastructure. The
tribal nature of the populace will prevent any form of unifying government such
as we would wish to leave behind. The religious
leaders are not interested in modernization.
The primitive tribal makeup of the population allows the mullahs to more
easily incite mob actions and violence; while the underlying fanaticism of
those tribesmen who do join the army or police force makes them more easily
convinced to target our troops for close-in assassination or to carry and deploy
a concealed satchel charge or IED.
Nothing we
can do is going to modernize Afghanistan or Pakistan. We need to block all access to Pakistan’s
nuclear weapons and bring our troops home asap.
If Gingrich
and his chicken hawk buddies want to play nation-building games, there is a lot
of bad road, a lot of old wiring, and a lot of unprotected infrastructure right
here at home that needs to be repaired, rebuilt, and replaced.
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