Amen: “Not for nothing do we call this our ‘Greatest Generation.’”

So says Ed Morrissey as he recounts the heroism of the men who landed on the Normandy beaches.

He recounts the losses:

Sixty-seven years ago, free men of America, Great Britain, Canada, and Poland-in-exile stormed the shores of Normandy into the teeth of Adolf Hitler’s Fortress Europe.  The losses at Omaha Beach especially were astounding; over 4400 Allied servicemen died in the assault, and 7500 more were wounded or went missing. Americans made up almost two-thirds of the overall casualties (over 6600). The German casualty figures were never known, but estimates range from 4000 to 9000. But that was just the first day of the Battle of Normandy. By the time Normandy was secured, over 425,000 casualties had been inflicted on both sides, 209,000 by Allied forces. Another 200,000 troops were captured by the allies. The French paid a price, too; over 15,000 civilians were killed in the Battle of Normandy.

 All we asked for in return:

A fascinating profile of a famed war photographer, Robert Capa, and the story behind his Omaha Beach photographs, including this one:

&A gallery from LIFE.  They look so young. They were. They are: I met an old student of mine who came home last week on leave from Afghanistan.

 

 

 

 

UPDATE: linked by Pundette. Thanks!

If GW had ever allied himself with sworn enemies…

Liberals would have mocked him mercilessly.

Via Pajamas Media, the Libyan rebel leader fought against us in Afghanistan.  John Rosenthal writes:

Shortly after unrest broke out in eastern Libya in mid-February, reports emerged that an “Islamic Emirate” had been declared in the eastern Libyan town of Darnah and that, furthermore, the alleged head of that Emirate, Abdul-Hakim al-Hasadi, was a former detainee at the American prison camp in Guantánamo. The reports, which originated from Libyan government sources, were largely ignored or dismissed in the Western media.

Now, however, al-Hasadi has admitted in an interview with the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore that he fought against American forces in Afghanistan. (Hat-tip: Thomas Joscelyn at the Weekly Standard.) Al-Hasadi says that he is the person responsible for the defense of Darnah — not the town’s “Emir.” In a previous interview with Canada’s Globe and Mail, he claimed to have a force of about 1,000 men and to have commanded rebel units in battles around the town of Bin Jawad.

“I have never been at Guantánamo,” al-Hasadi explained to Il Sole 24 Ore. “I was captured in 2002 in Peshawar in Pakistan, while I was returning from Afghanistan where I fought against the foreign invasion. I was turned over to the Americans, detained for a few months in Islamabad, then turned over to Libya and released from prison in 2008.”

Whoopsie!

At NRO, Jonah Goldberg adds:

I don’t think this is a bombshell, but I hope somebody in the White House is on top of this.

I disagree with the first assertion, and I can hedge my bets on the second: doubtful!

We need ground troops–of the Special Ops variety–if this “kinetic action” is to have any quick or lasting effect. Considering our guys were fighting these dudes in Afghanistan, then … yeah. Likely? Doubtful.

Pundette has more on Libya this morning, especially a lovely tidbit about the brilliant telling operational name of our days, no ”weeks, not days,” kinetic action. Didn’t they say Obama and his minions were so smart that we’d see genius at work all over the place! Turns out they were right. Heh.

3 am phone calls? He just doesn’t answer the phone [update]

I’m reminded of a tale my grandfather used to tell about Vietnam: He ascribed the biggest reason for the failure of the Tet Offensive was the inability of the Armed Forces to act in specific situations without approval from the Commander-in-Chief, Lyndon Johnson. Why no approval? The time difference. Johnson loved his sleep and refused to be summoned from bed until morning. He wouldn’t take the calls. Hands were tied until LBJ crawled out of bed.

I wonder if BO is the same way, so starved for rest with his stressful, stressful job that he just can’t crawl out of bed to you know, act like a president.

There’s no need to offer links to the latest on the bloodshed in Libya. Or that our President doesn’t feel it’s necessary to comment. Check Drudge for the former. Ed’s position  on the latter sounds reasonable, but reason isn’t a word that ever comes to mind when describing actions of this Administration.

If you need a few reminders of what our foreign policy has been like over the last two years, here’s Bill Whittle.

H/t: Instapundit.

So true:

There comes a point where no matter how hard you try to offer the benefit of the doubt, evidence builds up to such a degree that you can no longer deny that the evidence is trying to tell you something. And half-way through his first term, the foreign policy decisions made by Barack Obama and his administration are so appalling, so destructive in the long-term, that they can no longer be credited to inexperience or even incompetence. They’re so consistent that they must be due to ideology.

UPDATE: Oh lookie, The One said something while I was out to dinner: yada yada full range of options yada yada. This jaded after two years of meaningless chatter. Two. More. Years.

Exit question: will nations speak with “one voice” when the rockets start landing in Israel? Oops!

“Every time I think Obama can’t shock me anymore, BAM!”

You and me both, Pat.

What’s the cause of the latest shock-and-awe from the Obami? What could possibly be that bad?  Jim Hoft writes:

We knew Barack Obama was inexperienced. We knew he was weaned on Marxism. We knew he believed in redistribution of wealth…
But, we had no idea he was this dangerous.

How about selling out your allies?  To the Russians.

The START Treaty was already a bad deal. We are now bound to reduce the size of our nuclear arsenal. The Russians would be bound to do the same, but they don’t have the same volume of weapons. So they reduce nothing. What a gig, right? We show you how many weapons we destroy and you continue to laugh at us openly. It’s called Diplomacy in the Era of Hope and Change.

J.E. Dyer, a retired Navy intel Officer writes over in the Green Room:

This seems to have been done in a particularly shabby manner. Obama began pressuring the British government in 2009 to authorize release of this information itself. Encountering resistance, Team Obama went ahead and agreed to give Moscow the information without permission from London.

It’s not that US administrations haven’t unilaterally undercut the nuclear deterrence posture of our European allies before.  John F. Kennedy did it as a way of resolving the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.

But if the Telegraph’s is an accurate depiction (which is probable; the communications in question reportedly involved giving the Russians Trident missile serial numbers), it’s still a rotten, low-down thing to do.

Rotten and low-down accurately describe most of the administration’s actions thus far.  At least we know what to expect for the next two years.  Our allies know, too.

Or as Ann Althouse put it,

Obama proved his mettle! What’s more important? Our relationship with the UK or proof of Obama’s mettle after the crushing 2010 elections?

We’re going to need more than a ”RESET” button with our allies to repair the damage done by this administration.