Patterico's Pontifications

4/14/2015

It’s Now Been One Year

Filed under: General — JVW @ 8:44 pm



[guest post by JVW]

On this day one year ago the evil Islamic militants of Boko Haram abducted 276 schoolgirls from a government school in Nigeria. Though 53 of them later managed to escape, to date the other 223 remain unaccounted for. Our own Dana covered the issue a couple of weeks later. In addition, sympathetic parties here in the U.S. led by our influential celebritocracy responded with a massive hashtag campaign waged on social media to convince the militants to return the girls.

BringBackOurGirls 2

Amazingly enough, Boko Haram has turned out to be unusually resistant to this coordinated tactical maneuver conceived by the cream of the Washington-Hollywood power elite.

Sarcasm aside, the facts are this: the world can be an ugly place, and is probably at its ugliest where Islamic radicals feel they have free rein to impose their backwards beliefs upon all whom they encounter. Whether it is the kidnapping of schoolgirls or the slaughter of Christians, this crisis can’t be addressed with snappy hashtags delivered by actors who are practiced at looking dour and concerned as they flit their way from exclusive event to exclusive event. And that should go double for our elected leaders who ought to have no real excuse for such perfunctory theatrics except for the fact that today we seem to elect them based upon the most superficial of criteria.

As Dana reminded us last year, these girls deserve to remain in our prayers.

– JVW

11 Responses to “It’s Now Been One Year”

  1. Islamophobe!

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  2. Puts one’s problems into perspective.

    Dustin (2a8be7)

  3. “Whether it is the kidnapping of schoolgirls or the slaughter of Christians”

    Why did you have to call them Christians? What are you, trying to be inflammatory?

    . . . and truthful?

    Patterico (9c670f)

  4. “Puts one’s problems into perspective.”

    Patterico (9c670f)

  5. #1 was for nk’s benefit.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  6. Obviously we did not have enough hashtags back then. Maybe a couple thousand more might have worked. We didn’t give it a serious try. Maybe if some famous people tried. (snark)

    Jim (84e66d)

  7. i think the top photo of the montage perfectly illustrates the problem with fighting by hashtag proxy.

    seeRpea (d1cf05)

  8. I’m more a fan of #BringBackOurGirlsByKillingTheirKidnappers , but that’s just me.

    Crabtree (890957)

  9. Greetings:

    I get some of my TV news from the France24 English broadcasts. One of their segments is called “The Debate” which is usually hosted by M. François Picard who rides herd on a bunch of cats from a broader political spectrum than American TV seems interested in baring. Last evening’s show was centered on the #BringBack-ers and included a Michael Kirtley (?) as breast-beater in chief, a Paris-based Nigerian woman for a bit of non-local color, and, my personal favorite, former French and UN General Dominique Trinquand.

    Now, I know that there is a certain degree of acceptance in America that nos freres Francais can be rather easily confused with cheese-eating surrender monkeys but I’m afraid I can’t agree with that assessment in toto, and I don’t mean that cute little doggie.
    One of the things that drew me to France24 initially (besides its good over the air reception) was its coverage of its former colonies, most notably, North Africa, the Sahel, and regions proximate thereto. And, if you all haven’t been keeping up, La Belle France has been quite active in those areas of late and by active I mean militarily and by militarily I mean boots on the ground and random necks in addition to that Progressive ideal of militarily “advising”.

    So now, back to Le General for a bit. Now being a general in these benighted post-Patton days, implies not just a fair amount of generalship but, unfortunately, at least a soupçon of politicianship, if you get my drift. So, le bon General, graciously endured the aforementioned breast-beating spectacle and ethnically appropriate opining from way afar as the discussion made its way around the very square table. And then, in one of his, you know, I probably could have gone to war with this guy regardless, he cut the rambling progressiveness of the discussion to its quick. Nigeria’s newly elected President is a Muslim, a former general and from the northeastern part of the country where Boko Haram is running wild so he is probably a significant upgrade from his predecessor in terms of joining the battle.

    And then, he recommended that significant attention be paid to killing off the Boko Harum leadership as soon as possible. Or, as one might parlez in the 21st Century #KillBokoHaram.

    11B40 (0f96be)

  10. Yes, they and the Russians and the Germans were on the skim, France is an inveterate steward of their former colonial charges, like Algeria and points south, companies like Areva are big in the yellow cake trade, paging Joe Wilson, a subsidiary of same, Soderfin, set up the first frameworks of the Iranian nuclear trade,

    narciso (ee1f88)

  11. “Sarcasm aside, the facts are this: the world can be an ugly place, and is probably at its ugliest where Islamic radicals feel they have free rein to impose their backwards beliefs upon all whom they encounter. Whether it is the kidnapping of schoolgirls or the slaughter of Christians, this crisis can’t be addressed with snappy hashtags delivered by actors who are practiced at looking dour and concerned as they flit their way from exclusive event to exclusive event.”

    Nailed it.

    A lot of people have done very well out of the current peace in the west. But they’re so out of touch with the non-peaceful parts of the world that they think they can use the methods that apply in their world to fix problems in the vastly different world outside it.

    So instead of fixing the problem, they make it worse and look like fools to everyone who sees more than their peaceful bubble.

    And of course, they don’t just *look* like fools.

    scrubone (c3104f)


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