“Their Muscles Remind Us of Rambo!”

A French soldier’s view of US soldiers in Afghanistan

by  Thomas Lifson  at American Thinker:

 

A reader who, in this day of blacklists, must remain anonymous, sends this observation about our soldiers in Afghanistan:

It’s not unusual for the French to comment on anything American and normally in the negative.  What is rare is a Frenchman saying something positive about Americans; in this case heaping praise on our soldiers in Afghanistan.

Blogger and veteran Wes O’Donnell has translated an editorial in a French newspaper from a French soldier serving with a prestigious U.S. infantry battalion.  I recommend reading the whole thing.  Here are some excerpts:

US soldiers are in top physical shape compared to the French, and it appears much better in infantry tactics.  The soldier notes:

Heavily built, fed at the earliest age with Gatorade, proteins, and creatine — they are all heads and shoulders taller than us and their muscles remind us of Rambo.  Our frames are amusingly skinny to them — we are wimps, even the strongest of us — and because of that they often mistake us [the French] for Afghans. [snip] Even if some of them are a bit on the heavy side, all of them provide us everyday with lessons in infantry know-how.  Beyond the wearing of a combat kit that never seems to discomfort them (helmet strap, helmet, combat goggles, rifles etc.) the long hours of watch at the outpost never seem to annoy them in the slightest.

U.S. Soldiers depart Forward Operating Base Baylough, Afghanistan.
Photo credit: US Army.

In combat, US soldiers go on the offense in every encounter with the enemy in contrast to soldiers of other nations who have been taught to first defend and await orders:

And combat? If you have seen Rambo you have seen it all — always coming to the rescue when one of our teams gets in trouble, and always in the shortest delay. That is one of their tricks: they switch from T-shirt and sandals to combat ready in three minutes. Arriving in contact with the enemy, the way they fight is simple and disconcerting: they just charge! They disembark and assault in stride, they bomb first and ask questions later — which cuts any pussyfooting short.

And finally:

To those who bestow us with the honor of sharing their combat outposts and who everyday give proof of their military excellence, to those who pay the daily tribute of America’s army’s deployment on Afghan soil, to those we owned this article, ourselves hoping that we will always remain worthy of them and to always continue hearing them say that we are all the same band of brothers.

Maybe the socialist candidates for president should be given a copy of this editorial, but they likely wouldn’t read it, and if they did, they wouldn’t acknowledge our brave warriors in the field.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/09/a_french_soldiers_view_of_us_soldiers_in_afghanistan.html

Pocahontas’ Fundraising Tactics’ Story!

WHO IS ELIZABETH WARREN? HER FUNDRAISING TACTICS PROVIDE A CLUE

by Paul Mirengoff  at PowerLine:

It’s not easy to distinguish the policy positions of Elizabeth Warren from those of avowed socialist Bernie Sanders. Yet, the establishment fears Sanders and seems comfortable enough with Warren.

Why? I think it’s because they suspect that Warren’s radicalism isn’t nearly as sincere as Sanders’s.

This New York Times article about Warren’s fundraising confirms both the establishment’s comfort with Warren and her lack of sincerity. The Times documents that Warren raised large amounts of money from establishment donors during her campaign for reelection to the Senate in 2018:

On the highest floor of the tallest building in Boston, Senator Elizabeth Warren was busy collecting big checks from some of the city’s politically connected insiders. It was April 2018 and Ms. Warren, up for re-election, was at a breakfast fund-raiser hosted for her by John M. Connors Jr., one of the old-guard power brokers of Massachusetts.

Soon after, Ms. Warren was in Manhattan doing the same. There would be trips to Hollywood and Silicon Valley, Martha’s Vineyard and Philadelphia — all with fund-raisers on the agenda. She collected campaign funds at the private home of at least one California mega donor, and was hosted by another in Florida. She held finance events until two weeks before her all-but-assured re-election last November.

Bernie Sanders has never raised that kind of money from this donor class. He hasn’t wanted to, and couldn’t if he did.

Soon after securing reelection, Warren announced her bid for the presidency. She funded her campaign, in the first instance, with the money she had raised from big donors when running for the Senate. At the same time, Warren made a splash with the Democratic left by announcing that her presidential campaign would not raise money from big donors:

The open secret of Ms. Warren’s campaign is that her big-money fund-raising through 2018 helped lay the foundation for her anti-big-money run for the presidency. Last winter and spring, she transferred $10.4 million in leftover funds from her 2018 Senate campaign to underwrite her 2020 run, a portion of which was raised from the same donor class she is now running against.

The early money Warren transferred to her presidential campaign has made a big difference. According to the Times, Warren was able to invest early in a massive political organization — spending 87 cents of every dollar she raised in early 2019 — without fear of bankrupting her bid. The money also gave her a financial backstop to lessen the risk of forgoing traditional fundraisers.

Ed Rendell, the epitome of an establishment insider, says of Warren: “Can you spell hypocrite?” Rendell recruited donors to attend an intimate fund-raising dinner for Warren last year at a Philadelphia steakhouse where the famed cheese steak goes for $120. He said he received a “glowing thank-you letter” from Warren afterward.

But when Rendell co-hosted a fundraiser for Joe Biden this spring, the Warren campaign derided the affair as “a swanky private fund-raiser for wealthy donors.” Says Rendell:

She didn’t have any trouble taking our money the year before. All of a sudden, we were bad guys and power brokers and influence-peddlers. In 2018, we were wonderful.

Warren’s hypocrisy bothers Rendell and, I assume, certain other donors who are supporting Biden. But there’s little evidence that they fear what she would do in the White House.

Sure, they would prefer Biden, whom they see as safer and more likely to defeat Trump. But Warren doesn’t alarm them the way Sanders does. Otherwise, presumably, they would not have been so generous to her in 2018.

Who is the real Elizabeth Warren, the friend of the Democratic establishment or its scourge? To me, she’s just an ambitious pol who, if elected president, will try to straddle the line. Just as she has with her fundraising.

 

Who is Elizabeth Warren? Her fundraising tactics provide a clue