Appalling Interesting news from Haiti, where US forces got there firstest with the mostest after a devastating earthquake:
The many nations helping Haiti recover from the devastating earthquake that struck there have set up their own military compounds and fly their flags at the entrances.
France’s tricolor, Britain’s Union Jack and even Croatia’s coat of arms flap in the breeze.
But the country whose contributions dwarf the rest of the world’s — the United States — has no flag at its main installation near the Port-au-Prince airport…
The Obama administration says flying the flag could give Haiti the wrong idea.
I am – uncharacteristically – speechless.
Update: Maybe I’m being ungenerous. Perhaps the Haitians – and the Obama administration – don’t understand what that flag stands for. Timestamp 5:44 shows what it means to those of us of the service.
Sure don’t look like Haiti to me. There was one of these going around that showed a similar (identical?) scene similarly characterized. Turns out they were playing Hail To The Chief so, of course, he wouldn’t salute himself. You sure thats not what’s going on here?
Bill Richardson and Hillary Clinton on the same stage – along with the date (30 OCT 2007) leads me to believe this was during the primaries.
Only the military salute during Hail to the Chief.
Yep – during the primaries. Photo went around a lot then. That’s what worries me most about President Obama’s heritage and upbringing – it’s not a birther thing, it’s that due to some of his seriously formative years having been spent outside the US, he doesn’t have the reactions and habits of an American.
As a child of a an evil multi-national corporation employee (an oil company) I never lived in the US until I went to college. We visited every year for 3-5 weeks, but that was about it.
Living overseas all those years made me appreciate the US even more when I finally did move here. Of course, I didn’t have a hippie mother and a foreign father. (Both parents midwest born and raised.)
I think you may be on to something. It’s not only that Mr. Obama is our first post-racial president. It might be that he’s also our first post-national one. A bloodless technocrat in the Brussels style.
That whole “one world” thing…..
It’s a nice ideal, but one that fails to realize that there really ARE bad guys out there.
Different picture, apparently the same circumstance.
http://factcheck.org/2009/11/whats-wrong-with-this-picture/
Tell the PM we can leave pretty damn quick if he doesn’t want us there.
Clueless. It’s what happens when the adults leave the room and these folks get their hands on the car keys and the remote.
And the liqour cabinet.
Heard a snippet of this on the radio in the car today and started thinking, “there they go again”. Initially I thought they were saying that we were not flying our flag on a military installation, which would boggle the mind. Any military installation of ours, anywhere, for any reason, would have our flag up for very basic and historical reasons.
The linked story refers to military compounds and their flags being up. The reference to ours is “no flag at its [United States] main installation near the Port-au-Prince airport.
So I guess I’m just confused. Installation, military compound, quasi-military facility, whatever. The crux of it was not lost on me in that some dumbass thought it appeared we were taking over the airport, and some other dumbasses listened to him and complained to some other dumbasses who recommended we TAKE IT DOWN, and some top-level dumbasses said, “yeah, we probably oughta vet this upline, resulting in direction to from some other dumbass to TAKE IT DOWN”.
for chrissakes. we are now officially the evil empire.
That would make the Obamanation the Evil Emperor.
LOL!
The Grand Apology Tour continues. What are we afraid of this time? The the Haitians will begin to despise us for our ability to provide aid and comfort? How about the fact that that flag represents proud Americans everywhere, and our willingness to help where and when we can!
If I were an ally of the US I would seriously begin to wonder why this is happening everywhere. Is America no longer proud of their contribution to the world?
Sickening… I wonder when we are going to be given the order to not fly the stars and stripes from our masts for fear of being perceived as imperialistic.
Personally I think every American, who is suspicious of the continued questionable actions and policies of this administration needs to fly an American Flag. My personal choice is flying from my staff right now, and will continue to fly at least until November 6th 2012. The Navy Jack!
Funny, I just hoisted the Navy Jack on my front porch this weekend as well!
John, for the past 30 years without fail, the USA has reliably punished its allies and rewarded its enemies. If I were a US ally (as opposed to a US welfare recipient, such as Haiti or Pakistan), I’d be hedging my bets, too.
I don’t care for the clip, given its context, but the rest, I certainly agree.
Care to expand on the, QM? I’m curious as to what you mean by “given its context.”
But, in that era the colour bearer had a life expectancy somewhat less than an officer going ‘over the top’ at the Somme or Verdun. But it was an honour that was highly sought after. I also like that it shows a proper charge, not a wild half mile or mile long sprint, but working up through the stages.
What can we expect from a man who spent most of his adult life sitting in a pew listening to a modern black liberation theologian spouting of the evils of the United States? Married to a woman who had not been proud to be an American until her husband was nominated to be a parties candidate for President? His whole adult life has been spent contemplating only the negatives of our Republic.
Joes, it is set in the War between the states, or war of Northern Aggression, if you will. I can approve of valor, just as I do the German Soldier, but the service to which that valor was put, not so much.
Capt. (later LtGen) Ron Christmas commanded the company of Marines that made the final assault that captured the Capitol Bldg in the Citadel at Hue. Here is a vignette that is apropos:
On taking the Capital building and raising the American Flag
Christmas said the raising of the American flag is not political. It wasn’t political that day, it was a matter of morale. The Marines had fought 7 days for this objective. The American flag to an American solider is just a symbol of pride in his and his men accomplishing their mission.
A Major gave him heck about flying this flag over the capital building and told Christmas to take it down. Christmas said he wasn’t taking it down until they left the next morning. He told the Major, if he wanted it down, he could take it down himself, but Christmas couldn’t guarantee what the Marines would do if he did.
The flag was left up until they left in the morning.
Credit: scuttlebuttfuzz blog.
Remember, Obama wouldn’t wear a flag pin until campaign exigences demanded it.
The flag has ALWAYS meant that to those of the service. It means nothing to him.
I always respected the flag, even before joining the military. But have to tell you, that couple of things happened over the years, in addition to getting older that make it that I can’t help getting a tear in my eyes when I hear the anthem playing or see the the colors. One was the end of SERE School. I’ll leave it at that. Second is the funerals and memorials for friends, coworkers, shipmates all.
Hard to throttle back the tendency to just punch the you know what out of someone who is so disrespectful. But I remember that I don’t have to like it. Part of those freedoms we fight for. Some people just use them differently.
Claudio, you have spoken like a brother. I have the exact same feelings. The hardest thing I ever have to do is attend the funeral of a veteran, especially a friend. It’s almost to the point that I hate the sound of TAPS. We all know what it signifies, and the saddest part, I fear, is that so few do.
TAPS at night is ok – it signifies the end of the day. TAPS during the daylight hours brings me to my knees.
Went to France in November for the first time and made it a point to visit Normandy. Had a bit of an Ugly American moment at the American Cemetery off Omaha Beach. A school group of High School aged French Kids was there on an outing with a teacher. They were cutting up way more than was tolerable to me, so I ambled over to them and asked “Sprechen Sie Deutsch”. They replied with a denegrating “non”. To which I replied with a sweep of my hand across a headstone. “Yes, well……” Probably didn’t make any difference, but they seemed a bit more subdued.
HomefrontSix,
I agree. Taps is more effective than teargas at making my eyes water.
I never bled for our nations colors. But I have steamed under them in Harm’s way, on a “fast ship” with the battle ensign proudly unfurled, anouncing to any and all that we were a Untied States Navy ship of the line.
I have also seen grown men and women in tears, dressed in their Sunday best, waiting pierside, or riding ferrys out to our anchorage to greet us as we brought those colors into port in the newly liberated Baltic states. For most, the only english they knew was ‘thank you’; they said it over and over as they embraced any sailor they encountered. I’m as proud of those moments today as I was years ago.
You’re damn skippy this nonsense gets my dander up. You want the US military and all the capability we bring to bear to bail your ass out of a jam? Tough noogies, the flag comes with us.
You’d be amazed at the reactions I and other old hands at Mayport get when we tell people to shut up, take that rag off your effing head and face the flag, because if you don’t, I’ll put 10 pds of steel toe boot up your ass.
I was in the hangar bay of the Forrestal once just as morning colors went off. Everone locks up, faces aft, uncovers (for us snivilians). Along comes this sailor who was just waltzing through the hangar bay.”Psst! Colors!” several times till he walked past this Lt. CDR. The CDR tackled this statement-making douche bag to the non-skid, put a knee in his back, and resumed saluting. Whistle blows, he hauls this kid up and hands him to the MAs. Straight to the brig. Bread and water, out the Navy.
Means that for many of us who never served this country in that capacity. Obama and his minions are asses – and this great country will pay for that for generations to come.
ALCON
I too am uncharateristicly speechless…and throughly disgusted.
Ditto, SK1.
If his birth certificate is legit or not, matters not to me anymore. I see a man who is at war with America, and it’s economy, and it’s history, and the service, all in very subtle ways, with “plausible deniability” rolled out by his press secretary and others.
*Cough* Ahem, it has not been lost on several observers today that while the decision was supposedly made so as not to look like colonialist “occupiers” in light of America’s history of involvement with Haiti, the French, the ORIGINAL colonialist “occupiers” have had no such compunctions. Even as I type, the Tri-Color proudly flies over the French Haitian compound. This guy never stops being ashamed, never stops apologizing for America’s existence. Only when America is transformed into OBAMA’s multi-culti, PC proto-socialist, statist ideal will Obama truly be proud to raise the flag and salute it… flag…
And I suspect he will have the entire design changed, in honor of his historic accomplishment. Maybe we should have a contest on what it will llok lke, or an anchor pool, to augment what little capital is left in the economy.
You speak true, shipmate. You speak true.
I’m sure the new Obama flag will have White Stars in a Field of White, and alternating White and White stripes!
I don’t know – seems to me there might at bit of yellow on it somewhere. Totally disgusting…
@^*&^^#*algo-trolls!!!
What is it about us VX? I think Lex has it in for us. Two harmless ol’ Geezers who just want to speak our minds. Just because we wanna nuke Bambi and we get zapped by the moderation trolls. We ain’t moderate, so what gives?
Speechless, yet. Anything that this behavior would inspire me to say could and would be used against me.
I am proud to be an American, but ashamed of my President, who is unworthy.
Hillcrest if you can believe it. Drove up next to a pick up truck with an American flag image spread across the tailgate. I would have honked as I pulled alongside and given him a thumbs up but I played soccer with Iranians in High School.
You know, this has become such customary behavior on P. Bo’s part that I’m not sure how to react any more. I simply can’t afford the blood pressure spikes, and my neighbors and friends are gonna have me committed if I unleash another top-of-the-lungs burst of Chief/Gunny talk on account of this guy.
I neither hate nor despise many people on this planet, but I am past being there with this selfish, ungrateful b@$t@rd of a creature. So help me, in front of God and country, I would take a baseball bat and demolish this son of a b!t*h without.one.single.regret.
OT: WunWhoWon and Bret Baier on Fox News, Wednesday at 1800EDT. Submitted your questions yet? Not that there will be any forthright responses, I made the effort.
For most of the past decade, I have flown the Stars and Stripes (except for right now when a green, “Erin Go Bragh” flag flies, for obvious reasons), 24/7 and spotlighted at night.
So what is wrong with that, one might ask?
Unfortunately many neighbors wrongly assume that I must be a conservative, because of my background and my U.S. flag flying in front of our home for a decade. (I always avoid discussing politics with close friends or neighbors.)
As a liberal who voted for and still supports our President, I also love my country, and our flag as much as any on the Right.
And what is seriously wrong I think, is that many on the Right have stolen my/our flag (if not impinged upon my patriotism), not for our country, but for their own political purposes. For the record, it is our flag; not solely and politically yours.
There. I now feel better.
PS: I’d love to raise the Navy Jack as some have. But I can’t. Although I want to, it would give the wrong impression. And how sad is that?
Funny, in my little enclave of coastal, gated liberalism, I was tempted to worry that my neighbors might misconstrue my Navy Jack for the Gadsen Flag.
They are only tangentially connected.
In the end, I blew them off. It’s my house.
Fair enough.
Oh, I would like to fly the Gadsen flag too, at times (I admire it)… and the other importantly related and historic ones. But I refrain.
It may also be my house, but I value long-term neighborhood friendships more than making – or implying (political) statements. (I only do that here, unabated.
) Most of our cul de sac are original, or nearly original owners, pre-Prop. 13, and some for as long as 34 years. We are all long-term friends. All our kids grew up together, and now have their own kids. We neighbors often do things as a group, still, like last weekend – the theater and post theater dinner.
If cornered, I could only guess at their politics. And I like that! Politics can sometimes ruin long friendships. I don’t really know, but I suspect the majority of my neighbors are conservative. That’s OK. I value their friendship more than their politics. But I am the only one who flies the flag in my neighborhood. Go figure.
Flit, I knew you were a liberal, so I don’t begrudge you the constant worry about what the neighbors might think. If that’s what you care about, that’s what you need concern yourself with, then it’s you who have to live with them. But you seem to care about their friendship.
There’s an old saying around here. If you loan a man $100 and you never see him again, it was probably worth it.
If your neighbors are conservative and gripe about you flying the colors, they’re either not conservative or not your friends. That they do not fly the colors leads me to believe
they’re going to be fair-weather friends, all lip and no guts.
There are ways to test this theory. Hosting a party with your ensign in full display is a good start. It will allow you to weed out those $100 friends and the posers in short order.
– Max
I think it’s more sad that you worry about it than what the others think. Navy Jack or Gadsden, the message is the same. The others can go hang as far as I’m concerned.
Lex, you ever get that F-18 in the garage sticker? Or is too soon?
Nice slam at only the right hijacking the flag for their own purposes…yeah, never, never, never has a Democrat done it. Inculcated so deeply in a belief of the conservative way is true evil that you can’t even notice he’s taking your future and your tax money, just like mine. And let’s not forget that Lincoln guy who used it for his own ends, to hell with the people. Truthfully, I think FDR and Truman used it wisely. JFK, maybe, but Johnson…no, he screwed the pooch for his gain, and the lives of many on both sides. Clinton? Yeah, he Tomahawked a few baby formula factories, to we’d forget he didn’t have sex with that woman. Carter: No foul (clueless), but lots of harm by lack of design.
Welcome to the future that will hit you harder than those who see it coming.
More importantly, you don’t object to the President telling the US Military mission, doing humanitarian work, not to display their affiliation, then say it’s the right hijacking the symbol for its own evil intent. I guess in your mind, not associating the flag with the US by his own administration (which, he could spin as “Look at me! Now we’re the nice guys!”) is a big plus.
Maybe you blood runs red/white and bluer than mine, which you perceive is overly tinged with green for greed, and that’s why I cannot comprehend your convoluted positions.
Flit – I don’t believe anyone here is hijacking the flag for their own political purposes, or claiming that they hold a moral high ground to use it.
What we are saying is that Obama is an ass for not allowing this country’s symbol to be flown in a place that needs to know we are present for the long-haul, as we always have been.
With every breath he takes, P.BO dishonors this country and the men & women who served under the nation’s flag.
Please don’t turn this issue into a political football – it dishonors all of us.
Filterman, my observation is not that the right has appropriated the flag. What I have seen is that the left has abandoned it. The right loves the U.S. despite it’s faults, as they believe it to be the last, best hope of mankind. But the left sees the U.S. as represented and defined not by it’s ideals and it’s attempts to live up to them but by the bad things that have been done in it’s name. They see the U.S.’s faults not as exceptions but as the inevitable results of it’s structure and ideals and see the U.S. flag as symbolizing those faults. They are ashamed of the U.S., degrinate it’s ideals and have thus laid the flag aside.
Don’t blame the right for this – it is the actions of the left that have led to this. If the left would proclaim themselves proud of the U.S. and would pick the flag up it would lose it’s identification with one political philosophy.
Love the title of this post.
Yeah, took me a second to figure out what Majors/LtCmdrs were doing that caused something of Lex’s to ache also.
The President is my age and I agree his upbringing has a lot to do with things he says ringing false with me. He just doesn’t have the cultural references that I have and almost everything he says either sounds scripted or fake. One thing I loved about the traditions of the Navy was participating in colors and doing it sharply. I live in a town with a huge American flag over the Welcome sign and it makes my heart swell when I drive past it. I don’t think it means the same thing to him. He is a hollow man with no foundation as an American.
On a side note, I was a pallbearer at funeral for a vet. The preacher said, “In a few minutes they will be playing Taps for our brother, but where he is now, they are playing Reveille!”
jdgjtr, I am 21 August 1961, what are you? He Embarrasses us 1961 models, doesn’t he?
He embarrasses us all.
My mother scoffs when P.BO prattles on about Indonesia, having spent the first 15 years of her life there; daughter of a Dutch plantation manager.
Update: Maybe I’m being ungenerous.
Nup. You’re being *overly* generous in not pointing out that, so far, all his actions indicate that this POTUS despises the country he was elected to lead.
Maybe it is just me (probably so) but that photo just scream “clueless dweeb” to me.
Lex … If any idiot comes to my door and tells me to take down my American flag, I plan to ask him where he wants the shotgun pellets — in front or in back. Here in Texas, “a Man’s home is his castle,” is the rule of law. And I don’t suffer fools gladly, or at all.
Too little time left, too many fools…
Marianne
May I go live next door to Marianne please?
(Fliterman, as our resident liberal who fights fair (mostly) this is not a dig at you or your patriotically flying our flag.)
Here is the flag that will soon be flying over the base in Haiti and liberals homes everywhere.
http://cgi.ebay.com.sg/BARACK-OBAMA-USA-FLAG-3-X-5-BANNER_W0QQitemZ150390014584QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item2303f18278
For $12.95 you too can have an American flag desicrated with a picture of the won in place of the stars. That’s another “O 4 FUX ACHE” thing.
OMG! That’s disgusting!(but I suspect it would look more like this one, don’t you? http://www.coverups.com/photos-media/Obama-Commie-Blogger.jpg )
That one’s more accurate, and probably much closer to the truth.
They are both so utterly repellant that I actually gagged a little upon viewing each of them.
The look on P.BO’s face on the eBay version is classic – condescension in every muscle with disdain thrown in for good measure.
Joe, if I buy that flag and publically burn it in protest with news cameras rolling on the side-walk in front of the WH gate will I get A-rested by the thought police?
O-rested maybe
It’s free speech to burn the American Flag (they say,) but adding the O’s likeness automatically makles it sacrosanct. But I’m tempted to buy one for my next backyard barbecue anyway.
Idaho Joe,
Maybe best to resist temptation? Just ’cause some on the extreme left need to publicly express their emotional and intellectual incontinence do we need to mirror image them? President Obama is the Commander-in-Chief in time of war. It is one thing to oppose him politically (and to gently mock the cult of personality that he has done little to discourage), but why go any further? Let the men- (and women-)children of the left think of themselves as transgressive by burning flags (wonder when they’ll get around to books?) – the money spent buying such a flag would be better used as a contribution to a Republican candidate or a Tea Party.
The real emotional catharsis will be seeing President Obama off to retirement in 2012 after having limited the damage that his misguided policies will do to our country.
David/
You’re taking us FAR too seriously/literally. Conjectural snarking about EVERYTHING large and small is pretty much SOP for military types–occupational hazard, as it were–be they active-duty or otherwise. That’s OUR emotional catharsis….serves to relieve the frustration.
It was a number of years before I realized that when we recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag at Troop meetings, for many of the kids that’s the only time of the week they do so.
enjoyed this blog!