"He will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces.." Isaiah 25:8
"For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8:38,39
Amen.
Please pray for the families. God be with the families.z
45 comments:
We should all pray for them and all our people over there.
Amen Z.
We need to get out of Afghanistan. We cannot fight that war the way it needs to be fought. In the old days, we would have brought in B-52s and flattened that village and everything around it as a lesson to others who would harbor the enemy.
this was just too devastating Z..........have a fabulous Sunday my friend~! :)..God bless our troops always.
I wish Obama would say something, don't you? It's so unusual he hasn't because presidents usually address something this horrid rather quickly. Or did I miss it? I hope so.
Jacqueline, we should.
SF: I think it's time, too. By this time, they must be laughing at us. Some big, powerful America which can't even allow its soldiers to fight to win. I think if we'd taught a lesson ONCE, we'd have saved a lot of OTHER lives, but our leftists can't fathom that and so we're stuck with our OWN dead soldiers now, which seems to me doesn't carry the same weight somehow. "God forbid we do collateral damage ...when our enemy's GOAL is 'the more collateral damage to Americans, the better'"
WHT...so devastating and we're not HEARING that much on the news! THIRTY OF OUR BEST GONE and WHERE IS THE COVERAGE? They're mentioning it so perfunctorily... THAT is devastating, too.......and, as I said above, that Mr. Obama hasn't seen fit to address it yet. perhaps he did this morning?
I am with you Z, May God Bless all our military and their families.
The very idea that "our" president has not addressed the nation, and particularly the families, over our fallen heroes is absurd and infuriating. That the MSM has basically ignored the particulars of this tragedy is appalling, Yet, I am becoming so jaundiced about the "powers that be" in America that I now believe we will probably never know what rally happened here. Anything, and I mean anything, that can conceivably put a poor light on this administration is sanitized and rearranged for public conception until it has nothing to do with Obama but does has to do with everything and everyone else. At this point i don't necessarily believe that bin laden was actually killed. And buried at sea before anyone could see the body? Really?
Fight to win? Bomb a village, civilians and all? "We had to destroy the village to save it."
An eye for an eye till we go blind.
And when the names scroll by on the In Memorium during Newshour do we ever stop to think what this is supposed to accomplish.
Bomb the village, even though there may have been nobody of interest there and it was just an ambush that our intelligence couldn't sniff out.
Bomb an innocent village to honor the fallen. I don't get it.
You don't get it, Ducky?
How surprising!
Ducky: The point is you don't go in with your hands tied behind your back.
All this George Bush neocon Global Community Organizing was bs. I wish I had seen it sooner.
When the Norther Alliance took Kabul we should have turned over the keys and wished them good luck.
We cannot fight a war the way it needs to be fought, so for this and other reasons I am now anti-war.
Is that too nuanced for you?
SF: "We cannot fight a war the way it needs to be fought,"
I'd like more on that....if you've got the time; I think it's really important
Obama did put out a written statement immediately. Its on DOD website.
Z: First off, we have no vital national interest in community organizing Afghanistan. If we do, then we also need to be in Yemen, Somalia and a number of other fetid hell-holes where America-haters plot western destruction while mutilating their daughters' genitals, keeping their society uneducated, and executing homosexuals.
Secondly, if we are fighting for our vital national interests, there are no rules. I understand the Geneva Convention (I had to take annual training on it) but that treaty is for a bygone era. Nations realized that the fighting would not go on forever and everybody would eventually need to make up and start trading with one another. Such rules theoretically kept atrocities down thereby making it easier to forgive and forget once the war was over. A quaint western idea.
General William Tecumseh Sherman didn't say "War is hell" because he thought it would make a pithy statement for the ages. Like all military men, he hated war and believed the belligerents should be made to suffer hell on earth as a punishment for starting the fighting. This would also serve as a deterrent to others.
The people in Afghanistan do not like us, they do not respect us, and they do not fear us.
We issue apologies on a daily basis while Karzai and his gang of thieves steal billions from US and international aid.
Afghanistan is a sinkhole of corruption and ignorance. There is no hope.
Why is the Pakistan-Afghanistan border more important than the US-Mexican one?
We are in Yemen and Soljmalia
We're not in Somalia, and whatever presence we have in Yemen is covert and probably more CIA.
God bless and keep them.
If we're not there to win, we shouldn't be there.
Our troops are not fodder for politicians, they're heroes who deserve to be allowed to do their job, and not with one hand tied behind their backs!
This is the biggest loss of our men in one day since the war began, and the President releases a statement?
Maybe he didn't want to be late for a golf game.
We may not have a huge presence but there is one in both countries.
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jul/18/world/la-fg-bin-laden-somalia-20110718
SF: "Needs to be fought" I thought you meant more along the lines of "either FIGHT or LEAVE" because our poor soldiers have been so stymied by ridiculous political correctness (like they can shoot our guys FROM what are supposedly 'holy' mosques (tho they're killing from them) but we can't shoot back because they're 'holy') or even the mere IDEA of terrorists over there getting Miranda Laws, remember?
I feel we were there with gloves on and weren't able to take them off and do anything meaningful and really scare them into STOPPING.
Elbro; most presidents go on TV and talk to the public when we lose that many and, especially, when it's our SEALS, Team 6, who we are all so fond of and are have such respect for, you know?
Are we still in Libya in any way?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/09/world/middleeast/09intel.html
I'm not defending him I'm merely pointing out that he hasn't ignored the issue. Honestly I don't feel the need for him to address the nation about this
Technically we've never left Somalia and Yemen was and is a port of call for US Navy ships
There's no way to salve a wound this big with a speech no matter who the president is.
There's no magic number for when a speech might seem appropriate. Even the loss of one should cause us to pause.
Elmers Brother: The link says nothing about us being in Somalia, because we are not, officially anyway. And yes, we've always docked ships in Yemen.
Now, do you or don't you want to go into the hellholes the way we did in Afghanistan? That's my point for bringing it up.
Z: Yes. My point was fight it right or get the heck out.
Elbro, of course even one should cause us pain. But the size of this loss and the fact that they were our SEALS who got Bin Laden does make a difference and should to him....if for interest sake at least.
And yes, I think for a president like this one, it would at least be a hollow attempt at making AMericans feel he feels our pain.
Maybe it's wrong for me to giving that man advice. Good point, Elbro.
SF: thanks....
SF, I'm not going to do all the leg work here but the articles absolutely spell out that we have military there. The one article speaks of a command post in Yemen. how many military stationed there would satisfy you? Do we have 100,00 like in Afghanistan? No. Do we have a military presence there? Absolutely.
Z, I mean no disrespect. As you know my brother is in Afghanistan. He's in an Aviation Support Battalion like those who fly the SEALS around.
If he is killed tomorrow will Obama give a speech? Will anyone demand a speech from him? Is the pain of losing one any different than losing 31?
The UN authorized military force to chase Somalia pirates in 2008
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/16/AR2008121602848.html
and since then we've conducted raids to capture Islamists
http://www.france24.com/en/20090914-us-commando-kills-al-qaeda-target-helicopter-raid-somalia-ali-saleh-nabhan
France has denied other raids that have been attributed to US military forces
EB: I'm not asking you to do my legwork. I'm asking you where you stand.
As for Somalia, I doubt we have a presence there. If you look at a map, Djbouti is close, and we do have a base there, so I assume we launch raids from there vice actually having a base in Somalia. We could also be launching them from Navy ships.
I've been out for a few years, so I may be mistaken
All I'm saying is that we have a military presence in both these countries. They carry out targeted strikes. Our government has been giving weapons to the Somali gov't...in an effort to stave off the Islamists. We also carry out targeted strikes in Yemen. You said if we had considered them a vital interest we'd have troops there. I'm simply suggesting that we have been carrying out military operations both of these countries.
Perhaps they are more vital and we are conducting operations to some degree..(maybe not to your satisfaction) but nonetheless we are doing it.
I have no beef with you...I'm simply suggesting that your point may need to be rethought.
At the very least we have ships in its territorial waters (I know it's a technicality)...the UN in 2008 authorized both LAND and sea operations. When Ethiopia invaded Somalia in 2006 we used it as a base of operations to track down and hunt Islamists. We took out Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan who was in Somalia with SEALS in 2009.
OK. I see what you're saying.
The limited strike stuff can work if you have limited objectives, e.g. taking down specific targets when the opportunity presents itself.
Unfortunately, at some point, some yahoo in the US government, who's never been in a war, will start beating the war drums and blathering on about how if we could just go in and win their hearts and minds, make them like us...
So yeah, I am all for helping others help themselves. We've been quietly doing that in the Philippines this past decade. We did it in Central America in the 1980's before the Commies' best friends in the US Democratic caucus shut it all down.
If someone shares our values and is willing to shed their own blood and do all the heavy lifting then, yeah, I see no problem giving them assistance.
Unfortunately, that is not the case in Afghanistan. We want it more than they do, and that is never a good situation.
Time to cut sling and leave it to the Pakistanis, Russians and Chinese.
@EB: I have no beef with you...
Same here. I'm not trying to pick a fight. Clarity is important.
Elbro; I already said the pain is no greater for 1000 than for 1....
And no; no president can mention every single death, sadly. No, if a brother dies, I'm afraid presidents don't make public announcements.
When 30 SEALS die and many of them were on the Bin Laden hit, then yes.....it would have been especially nice for this president who's ruining the country to at least feign an interest in an amazing and well known group of people who lost their lives so tragically.
Yes, prayers for them.
But were they sacrificed for politics?
Go here to find out.
You tell me.
BZ
thanks, BZ... a LOT of people I know are contemplating that information.
I do wonder that Bush didn't know bin Laden was dead, if he was 10 years or so before, and why nobody took credit for it, even if he did die from kidney disease.
Something STINKS about the absolutely amazing coincidence that that SEAL TEAM was on that CHinook, that's for sure. it just doesn't pass the coincidence test, but I hope we're all wrong because I just saw a video of one of the wives with very tiny children who lost her husband....
When 30 SEALS die and many of them were on the Bin Laden hit
---------
Just as a point of order, none of the "bin Laden" team was on the helicopter.
Sorry z. I understand how you feel. It just feels like an empty gesture at some point.
Al queda learned how to use RPGs to take out helos a long time ago. And the rest of the team would not have to have been sent a message because they're debriefed and sworn to secrecy regardless. Seems like a bunch of conjecture to me.
Ducky, thanks for that; first reports made it sound like they were.
Z: Also, this is not the first time this has happened. They've gotten pretty good at shooting RPGs through the back when the ramp drops.
There were so many SF on that chopper because they were going in to rescue another team that was in trouble, which is also a common thing. It all jives.
from my brother this morning:
I watch these guys take off from the air strip where I'm at - at all hours, they give a lot and don't get much in return. I've sat and ate with a few and had a chance to just chat about life. I know a few that I've seen here are gone now,... did their last mission, we did their memorial service and I cried realizing how much they gave and not enough will be done to help make their sacrifice worth it. One note - we didn't lose these guys only, around the theatre we lost another dozen making one day total over 50. Continue to pray for the many that still got up at 11pm and went on a 25 min trip not knowing their flight may be the last for them. To the families of those lost, thank you for your sacrifice.
Thanks, SF.
Elbro, it's all too sad; we need SOME kind of encouragement anywhere we can get it. So do those soldiers...some thanks, some word to the families.......as if that's enough.
There was a SEAL on this morning, very early on TV, saying we had to stay in Afghanistan because of the "Good Afghans" who are counting on us and who we'll seriously jeopardize for leaving.
Silverfiddle, if you see this, I'll bet your disagree??
Obama just did mention the deaths in his speech...."time to reflect upon losses.." "they served this nation as a team" "Our responsibility is an America which reflects their commitment.."
I wish he'd listen to that.
At least he said something.....does it really help anything? Probably not. But, it had to be said, in my opinion.
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