Monday, March 16, 2015

Headhunting for headhackers.

Many years ago I did a small research job for the New York Observer. I did such an awesome job that the editor never called me again.

The Observer was always an interesting weekly paper, although predictably left-leaning as most NYC-based publications are. Or at least it used to be. They've been under new ownership for a while, and maybe they've moved right. I came across a piece they ran last month about the Obama Administration's "Jobs for Jihadis" program. Maybe you've seem the graphic the government released.




Yeah, America! Get off the freaking stick! 

"The Real Problem with Harf's Jobs for Jihadis Program" is the headline, referring to U.S. State Department Dumbbell Marie Harf. "Much of the well-deserved criticism of Ms. Harf’s gaffe has focused on the insinuation that what is really needed to defeat ISIS and ISIS-like movements is some serious job creation in the relatively poor countries from which ISIS attracts followers. But according to a recent UN report, the Islamic State has attracted some 15,000 fighters from 80 different countries, including western democracies.

"So, even if poverty were a valid excuse for lighting caged prisoners on fire – which it is not – it would remain true that the movement is not monolithically poor, uneducated, and third world. The contagion may have begun that way, but it has spread beyond geographical and socio-economic borders."

Of course, the geniuses at Hope n' Change Cartoons were on this right away:





"What? What the hell?!"
Maybe it's just not such a good idea. 

Jonathan Greenberg's piece in the Observer continues: "Despite tremendous evidence pointing to the fact–and it is a fact–that the people we are fighting are zero-sum barbarians who glory in brutal war motivated by religious fanaticism, our leaders are more comfortable thinking that, deep down, they’d be happier manning the check-out lane at Wal-Mart."

I only wish the Administration would view the nation's enemies with the cynicism and cunning with which it views its political enemies. ISIS-occupied territory would be glass by now. 

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