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Saturday, July 31, 2004
The Democratic Flop
Frankly, I think he lost the election when he opened his speech with a jaunty salute and a chipper, “I’m John Kerry and I’m reporting for duty.” Politicians can generally get away with looking evil, stupid, and clueless- because everyone expects that- but looking silly is typically a career-killer. Frankly, I suspect that the line must have been inserted into the speech by a Republican operative because I can think of no better way to get at least half of the people watching the speech to think “man, what a Jackass” just a few seconds into the speech.
While we’ll probably have to wait until next week to know for certain, all early indications suggest that this year’s Democratic National Convention was a complete flop with the public. The Rasmussen Tracking Poll’s rolling average shows no bump whatsoever for Kerry from the convention: on Sunday, convention-eve, the results were 47% for Kerry and 46% for Bush. Today, with a full day of post-convention polling, the results remain the same. Zogby’s convention poll, touted by the left, showed Kerry failing to gain a single point as a result of the convention and Bush losing just three (within the margin of error). When Ralph Nader is added to the mix, Kerry’s actually lost a point from where he stood in Zogby’s last pre-convention poll. The post-convention Newsweek poll, a poll notoriously skewed towards Democrats, showed a four point bounce for Kerry- easily within the margin of error. Unless anything changes in the coming days it will be impossible to conclude anything other than that this year’s Democratic convention was a failure on a tremendous scale- the worst convention since the Republican convention in 1992. At this point, barring unforeseen events (the bane of all politicians) the election is Bush’s to lose. John Kerry had a chance to sell himself to the American public, and he appears to have utterly failed. His convention, whose message can be summed up as “Democrats are Patriots Too!” had a cloying and desperate feel to it. So far as I can tell the sole point which the Democratic Party sought to drive home was that, yes, John Kerry was a Navy Lieutenant some thirty-five years ago. The only other Presidential candidates I can think of who have leaned so heavily upon their military records have been those such as Ulysses S. Grant and Dwight Eisenhower who, you know, commanded great American armies in two of the most fearsome wars in world history. The Silver Star and a few Purple Hearts is enough to earn someone a seat in Congress, perhaps even the Senate, but the Presidency? If you weren’t paying close attention to proceedings you could be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that, after Vietnam, Lieutenant John Kerry jumped into a time machine and arrived in the year 2003 to begin campaigning for President. No reference at all appears to have been made, in all of the convention, to his service as Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts and no more than a few words were dedicated to his two decades in the Senate in which he’s managed to introduce an astonishing four bill and four resolutions which have passed through Congress (including two designating various periods as “World Population Awareness Week”- what a life story!). I think that more time was devoted to John Kerry’s few years as a prosecutor in the 1970’s than were to all of his time in the Senate where, even his staunchest defenders concede, his record is the weakest of any Senator to be a major party candidate for President since Warren Harding in 1920. So far as I can tell the crux of the entire Democratic case is that, since John Kerry served in Vietnam, he’s fit to be President. If that’s the sole criteria for the Presidency they ought to run Colonel David Hackworth for the job who, since he won ten Silver Stars to Kerry’s one, must be ten times the potential President that Kerry is. What other message did this Convention seriously try to convey: that a President Kerry (or: John Kerry, President as his personal plane bills him) will seek to “restore relations” with America’s “allies”? To which I ask: which allies? Last I heard Britain, Australia, Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands, Poland, and Italy all had major units of their armed forces deployed into Iraq. Even Russia, apparently, has offered to send troops if asked (and if, undoubtedly, they are paid off in some way). So, which allies does he mean to “restore relations” with? France? Germany? Canada? Spain? Because they, frankly, are pretty much the only major Western nations now outside of the Coalition. If you weigh the numbers and consider the relative strength of the nations, they ought to be seeking to repair their relations with the United States, not the other way around. In any case, it was a serious error for the Kerry/Edwards campaign to stake so much upon Kerry’s Vietnam service. At this moment the public has an idealized view of Kerry’s time in combat- as good a view as they’re ever going to have. When they begin to hear about both the questions which revolve around Kerry’s actual time in service and his later anti-war activism the waters are going to, at the very least, be muddied a little bit. For example, when the general public finds out that of the twenty fellow Swift Boat commanders featured in a picture being used by the Kerry campaign (and used in his little movie at the convention) eleven consider him unfit to be President, two are dead, four are neutral, and two support him: well, that raises a few questions to say the least. As well, I think that we’ll hear a lot about band-aids in the weeks to come. I doubt if more than 1% of the public knows the story of John Kerry’s first Purple Heart and, when they learn it, it’s going to have an effect. The image of a young John Kerry lobbying for a medal for a wound which was treated with a band-aid is a telling one. In this case, it might be the band-aid that will do him in. In any political story it’s often a little detail that sticks in people’s minds- like Sandy Berger’s socks. Now I know that people are going to say, “Well, Bush was AWOL” or whatever else they want to say. Well, that’s not the point: everyone knows that already and, upon the whole, the popular perceptions of Bush’s service in the National Guard are much worse than the truth of the matter. In any case, we’re not talking about George Bush at the moment: we’re talking about John Kerry. George W. Bush hasn’t based his campaign upon his National Guard service. Now that Kerry’s raised the issue of Vietnam, we’re also going to have to have a real talk about his anti-war activism which, while known, has yet to be explored in any depth. If was extremely foolish of John Kerry to think that he, one of the leading members of the anti-war movement, could get away with now running for President on the basis of wartime heroism in a war which he denounced as immoral and atrocity-filled. Voters are stupid: but they’re not quite that stupid. Perhaps the best indicator of the failure of the Democratic Convention is the performance of the Iowa Electronic Market in recent days. The IEM is a project of the University of Iowa where individuals lay down actual money on political and world events. In the Winner-Take-All Vote Market, where individuals buy shares which pay out at a dollar if their candidate wins the election, Kerry shares have dropped from $.524 on Friday to $.481 at the present time. In other words, people willing to put their money where their mouth is experienced a sharp loss of confidence the moment that the convention ended. Now we’ve got a month in which, for lack of money, the Kerry campaign is going to have to “go dark” just as the Bush campaign kicks into action. Then we’re going to have a Republican National Convention whose star speakers (other than the President) are going to be John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Colin Powell- collectively men who are probably the four most popular politicians in the entire country. Something tells me that Governor Terminator is more likely to move someone’s numbers than President Malaise and that the hero of 9-11 has more credibility with the American people than President Blow Job and Vice President Nutjob combined. The best thing about the coming Bush victory is that it’ll crush any chance that John Edwards will ever be President. The baby-faced Southern demagogue may think that even a losing campaign will make him the front-runner for the Democratic Nomination in 2008, but he’d be wrong. When Kerry loses that’ll put Edwards effectively out of politics for four years. By the time 2008 rolls around he’ll be a nobody. Perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps polls next week will show John Kerry with a massive bounce. Perhaps next week President Bush will tell a national television audience of how he accepted Satan into his heart. I don’t know. But, before you taunt remember this: seven months ago virtually every Democratic partisan online was looking forward to the certain inauguration of President Howard Dean. Thursday, July 29, 2004
Five Facts About John Kerry in Vietnam
1) To the best of anyone’s knowledge, John Forbes Kerry was the only Swift Boat sailor to be reassigned under Navy Instruction 1300.39 during the entire war.
2) Of the twenty officers shown with Kerry in a famous photo, only two openly support John Kerry for President while eleven have signed a letter questioning his fitness to be Commander-in Chief. 3) In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971, John Kerry claimed that, American soldiers had “personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan.” 4) The first wound for which John Kerry received a Purple Heart was treated with a band-aid. Kerry’s commander at the time of the incident denied his request for a medal, but somehow one was awarded for the incident some three months later. 5) In 1971 John Kerry personally flew to Paris and contacted the negotiators for the Vietnamese Communists. Afterwards he called for the United States to accept all demands made by the Communists, including leaving behind US prisoners of war until such a time as the Communists decided to release them. Wednesday, July 28, 2004
The Silliness of Democratic Foolishness
Silly. That’s the best word I can think of to sum up the first three days of the Democratic National Convention. “Unserious,” would probably do as well. I dare any person to watch the whole of this convention and then tell me, “Yep, these people are ready to run the country.” More than anything else this convention has served as an extended demonstration of the essential goofiness of the Democrat Party and to their amazing ability for deceit, dishonesty and simple, old-fashioned, dumbness.
On the third day of the convention, with the full consent of John Kerry, Al Sharpton, a man whose voice has incited race riots and murder, got up on stage and declared that President Bush wanted to turn the clock of women’s rights back a century (or, in other words, claimed that he wanted to take away the vote from women) and then claimed, to wild cheering, that, had Bush been President in the 1950’s, that Clarence Thomas wouldn’t have got to go to law school. In other words, he called the President of the United States a segregationist and, therefore, a racist. Then, about an hour later, Mr. Edwards, the choice of the Democratic Party for the Vice President, had the astounding nerve to get up on stage and decry “negative attacks.” This from a party who, earlier in the night, applauded a speech from Baltimore’s Mayor, who claimed that he was more worried about the Bush Administration than he was about al-Qaeda. Do they really expect people to believe them when they talk? Democrats, especially in the light of the present crisis, just seem silly to me. They’re the real dinosaurs, unprepared for the modern world. They keep droning on about repairing relations with America’s “allies” to which I ask: which allies? Frankly, I doubt if even they know. They claim that America is “alone” in Iraq or, if forced to discuss the subject at length, mock the coalition by pointing out some of its less-important members. Some of the larger nations with troops in Iraq are the United Kingdom, Italy, Poland, Australia, South Korea, Japan, and the Netherlands- and those are just the nations with forces of Battalion strength or better. Word is that even Russia’s offered to deploy troops if needed. So whose support, exactly, is President Kerry going to get? France? Germany? Red China? I fail to see why, beyond the mythical attachment of Democrats to two of those nations, anyone should care what they think about Iraq at this point or why anyone would think that they are suitable allies of the United States. Hell, when the United States went to war against Serbia- a war in which France ostensibly participated- the French were passing intelligence to the Serbs, something for which no one in France has ever been punished. Democratic ramblings about “repairing our relations” aren’t serious, they’re gobbledygook that’s tested well in polls. The same goes for the “Declaration of Energy Independence” nonsense spouted off by Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell. If Democrats were really interested in “Energy Independence” they’d support oil drilling in both ANWR and off both coasts, rather than using every means at their disposal to obstruct it. Instead the Democrats propose to offer $10 billion in subsidies to automobile manufacturers in order to get them to make Hybrid cars. This subsidy will putatively solve the “problem” of waiting lists for people to buy hybrid cars in the United States. As well, they’re going to offer people subsidies to buy these cars. All of this merely shows the economic stupidity of the Democratic Party. If there are massive waiting lists to buy a product offered in the free market, what do manufacturers do? Do they keep making the same product at the same wait and hope that eventually demand will go down, allowing them to catch up? Of course not: they make more of whatever the public wants and do so quickly. There’s no bottleneck preventing the manufacture of more hybrid cars save the car companies poor estimation of the public’s demand. By this time next year the market will surely be flooded with hybrid cars of every type, at prices the public can afford. Any supposed tax credit could not be enacted until at least some time in the middle of 2005 and probably wouldn’t pay any money to anyone until sometime in 2006 and, even then, probably would take a little bit of time before in effected patterns of production and purpose. In other words, by the time the Democrats’ proposal could be enacted, it would be little more than a solution to a problem solved three years before. But don’t worry: they don’t mean to actual do any of this, it’s just stuff that tested well with the married, middle-aged, and middle-class mothers in some focus group. The same goes for Rendell’s discussion of “alternative energy” and attack upon the high price of energy in the same speech. The one abiding advantage of oil is that it’s notably cheaper than the other options. You might think that wind or solar or tidal energy is a great thing because it’s environmentally friendly (except to birds, in the first instance), but cheap it is not. Not to worry, however, even if the Democrats were to somehow win the Presidency and super-majorities in both Houses of Congress the chance of any serious action (beyond plenty of money spent on studies conducted in the districts of senior Democratic Congressmen) is essentially zero. There’s a wonderful moment in the Simpsons episode where Bart gets an Elephant. The elephant, named Stampy, goes on a rampage which passes through both the Democratic National Convention (where he’s booed) and the Republican National Convention (where he’s cheered). One of the signs at the Republican convention declares, “We’re Just Plain Evil,” while one at the Democratic convention says, “We Can’t Govern.” That, I think, sums up some essential truths about the two parties, truths which are on display here. Democrats live in airy-fairy land and Republicans live in the real world where real (read: evil) choices must be made on a daily basis. Democrats do their best to see the good in everyone, including serial killers but excluding Republicans (leaving the minority of serial killers who happen to be Republicans in a difficult position). In Democrat-land words are meaningless tools, things to be twisted and manipulated to suit whatever the situation and then to be twisted again the next day. This is how otherwise-sane appearing Democrats can sit though Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 and not come away mystified that any person with an IQ higher than the mean temperature of Alaska in winter would believe any of the movie’s self-contradictory arguments. Like a pot-smoker dazzled by their own hand, Democrats view facts like shiny objects to be dazzled by for a moment before moving on. Republicans may be tough and occasionally unpleasant (or “evil” to liberal souls), but they know how to fight like men. If you punch them, they’ll punch you back and fight to win. Democrats fight like little girls, whirling their arms about and scratching with their nails. There’s a wonderful anecdote about Lyndon Johnson’s fighting style in Robert Caro’s fine multi-part biography. When it appeared a fight was imminent, LBJ would (and I’m not making this up) flop onto his back, flailing his legs wildly and shouting, “If you hit me, I’ll kick you!” That’s how a Democrat fights, and the public knows as much. Now, there are some individual Democrats who may be competent administrators- who run successful businesses and the like. The problems really start when you gather two or more Democrats together and they start thinking of ways to be inclusive and to ensure that no one gets their feelings hurt. Government-by-Democrat is typically bad. Government-by-Democratic-Committee is the sort of thing which leads to urgent multi-day conferences called to redefine mission statements and set diversity agendas. All this may or may not (I incline towards the latter) be a good way to run a Kindergarten, but it’s certainly no way to run a war or, for that matter, the government of a great country. I don’t know how any person of reasonably good taste could have watched last night’s butchering of the national anthem in some strange Indian language and not have laughed. These are people so deeply committed to multiculturalism that they’ll happily laugh and sing along at the Star Spangled Banner is butchered by two ugly Indians singing in some screeching and indecipherable tongue. Do you really think that any of them have the capability to make the sort of hard choices that are necessary to fight what is, in many ways, an essentially religious war? And I know that President Bush and other Republicans have had nice things to say about Islam (the “Religion of Peace” and all of that) but the difference is that the Democrats believe it. Think back three years, to the Afghan War. At that time it was seriously debated whether or not we ought to stop bombing our enemies out of respect for Ramadan, one of the primary holidays of their heathen faith. In 1998 Operation Desert Fox, Clinton’s only major campaign against Iraq, was halted so that it would not drag on into the month of Ramadan and therefore offend Moslems. At one point in the 1990’s the Clinton Administration had a chance to kill Bin Laden but didn’t take the shot because of a remote possibility that doing so might possibly cause as many as sixty civilian casualties among our enemies. When Clinton finally bombed Iraq after it attempted to assassinate former President Bush in 1993 he did so at night so as to ensure he wouldn’t actually kill any of the people who planned the assassination. Are these the sort of men to which we now wish to entrust the fate of the Republic? Democrats may or may not be nice people, but they’re not ready to defend America from its enemies. When the Democrats try and talk tough about “dealing” with North Korea and Iran, just what do you think that they mean? When John Edwards says that a new President will ensure that Syria and Iran don’t interfere with the establishment of democratic government in Iraq, what do you believe that he’s talking about? Certainly he’s not talking about threatening or using military force. After all, for all of their tough talk, the Democrats have made it perfectly clear that they’re never going to use military force as it has been used in Iraq and any serious action against either Syria or Iran would require at least as much of (and, in the case of Iraq, substantially more of) an effort than that which has been expended in Iraq. So when they say that they’re going to “deal with” our enemies, they use choose their words advisedly: in this one case, the Democrats mean what they say. And what kind of deal can we expect the Democrats to cut with Iran, to choose one example? I’d rather expect one like that which was reached with North Korea: keep on bribing them to shut up about their developments in order to keep the problem under wraps until a Republican comes to power and refuses to pay protection money. Then, when the cessation of appeasement upsets the hostile power, blame the Republican President for the problem you caused. That’s Democratic foreign policy wisdom. The question that the American people (or at least the tiny minority of the American people who’ve actually bothered to watch this thing) are going to have to ask themselves is this: do they want these people running the country the next time our enemies attack? Do they trust them to, when a terrorist threat emerges, act? Or do you expect them to tie themselves up arguing about the legality of detaining Ahmed Terrorist? I’d suggest that the latter is more likely. When there’s a hijacked plane flying towards the Capitol, do you want a President who will authorize a shoot-down or one who will get into a debate with his lawyers, an Islamic theologian, and his human rights advisor? Do you want a President who will kill terrorists or one who will worry about their civil rights? First Rate Anti-Kerry Video
When I was talking about long-form political ads, this is what I was talking about:
http://media1.stream2you.com/rnc/072304v2.wmv Watch this. Really watch it. This is the ad that's being talked about which chronicles John Kerry's many, many, many different positions on Iraq. Monday, July 26, 2004
The Wisdom of Jimmy Carter
It’s common these days for people to say that while Jimmy Carter might have been a poor President, he’s a “good” or “decent” man. What garbage. Carter wasn’t only a bad President; he was one of the worst in the entire history of the country. He says that America’s credibility has been “shattered” by how President Bush has let a handful of subhuman Islamist savages hold fifty-two Americans hostage for four hundred and forty-four days and then how President Bush botched his sole attempt to rescue them, leading to the death of eight American servicemen and further shame and humiliation for the United States. Oh, wait: that was all Jimmy Carter’s doing.
In my opinion the only real contender for the title of “worst President” is James Buchanan who (not coincidentally) is widely believed to have been a homosexual. All James Buchanan did was to sit and twiddle his thumbs as the secessionist disease spread across the land, in so doing he gave up all chance to avoid the Civil War and, in all probability, made the war much worse than it otherwise needed to be. This should give you a good idea of the scale of the folly of James Earl Carter. In his speech to the Convention, Bill Clinton declared that, “strength and wisdom are not conflicting values.” This is certainly true. However, wisdom without strength- without the will to act- typically manifests itself as a sort of worldly cowardice. Democrats like Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and John Kerry have exactly enough wisdom to convince themselves that inaction in the face of danger is strength after all. Jimmy Carter wants to act an aged wise man who knows exactly what those who have come after him must do. Yet, for all his intelligence, what were the results of Carter’s wisdom? It was the Carter years which saw the Soviet Union reach the zenith of its strength. The USSR built up its armed forces and spread its evil creed while the Carter Administration busied itself with making trouble for American allies that the white flag liberals of the Carter Administration found to be ideologically distasteful. One of those allies was the Shah of Iran, as stalwart a friend as America ever had in the Middle East. The Shah, while occasionally brutal, was also a modernizer who was dragging Iran into the modern world. When the Iranian Revolution came, Carter foolishly refused to support him or otherwise intervene, thus setting in motion the events which have brought us to our present crisis. In that moment, the moment in which Jimmy Carter sat in the Oval Office and decided that, for whatever noble and high-sounding reason he could dream up, the Shah would be allowed to go, our time of troubles began. Can you imagine how different our world would be if we’d supported the Shah and saw to it that Khomeini and the rest of his fanatics ended up swinging from every lamppost and tree in Iran? Two decades of evil might have been stopped by some mild violence right then and there. No Beirut Bombing. No Iraq-Iran War. No Gulf War. No 9-11. All of it might have been stopped, had Jimmy Carter been a strong man, rather than merely a “wise” one. How can Jimmy Carter, the man who told Americans that they had an, “inordinate fear of communism,” now claim that the Cold War was won based on, “sustained bipartisan support”? Does Mr. Carter, the man who sent pro-communist businessman Armand Hammer to ask for Soviet help in his re-election effort, really believe the words that he speaks? The Cold War was won not because of him and his ilk but in spite of them. During the Carter years communism was allowed to advance on every single front. We were saved, not by “bipartisan cooperation” but by the providential ascent of Ronald Wilson Reagan to the Presidency. How dare Jimmy Carter, a man who was willing to ask the sworn enemies of all decent men to help him retain his power, now stand there and have the nerve to lecture us about morality. When Jimmy Carter stands there, before the American people and the world, and claims that the nuclear weapons possessed by North Korea are a threat that we should have acted against rather than Iraq, does he really expect everyone to forget that he is the one who, in 1994, brokered the deal which gave the North Koreans the time to build nuclear weapons without interruption? Ought we forget that Carter was so desperate to appease the North Koreans that he flew to Pyongyang and then, acting without authority, brokered a deal in which we offered the DPRK over $4 billion in exchange for their vague assurances that they would stop trying to build nuclear weapons sometime after we handed them the loot? In any case, there’s only one way to actually “deal” with North Korea now and Jimmy Carter, who was too weak to even seriously contemplate spilling Iranian blood when a band of savages held Americans hostage for more than a year, would never consent to it. When Jimmy Carter calls for something to be done about North Korea, he’s saying that we should write Kim Jong Il another cheque and kick the problem forward ten years, at which point the ninety-year old Mr. Carter will be awarded a second Nobel Peace Prize for his strenuous efforts to build homes for the survivors of Honolulu. When the day comes that a North Korean nuke is used to kill millions, I want you to remember who did it, go to Georgia, and spit on his grave. Carter also attempted to argue that John Kerry’s four months of service in the Vietnam War somehow gave him the requisite military experience to be President. Leaving aside the very real issues which surround the true circumstances of Kerry’s service, let’s (for the moment) accept all the assertions of his supposed bravery at face value. Even if all that were true how would that, in any way, qualify him for the Presidency? The logic which holds that “John Kerry served gallantly for four months in Vietnam so he’s qualified to be President” makes us much sense as my asserting that because I worked for Safeway at two years (and received Safeway awards!) I’m therefore obviously qualified to be the CEO of the company. Yes, John Kerry is Jimmy Carter’s man. I believe that much. Jimmy Carter didn’t ever stand up for America during his four years in office, unless you count his decision to boycott the Moscow Olympics, an act of supreme personal courage and patriotism which should, in and of itself, qualify Carter for a retroactive place amongst the Founders. Why should we expect President Carter to try and stand up for America now? If you long for a return to Carterism then, by all means, vote for John Kerry. Hell, if you lock in your mortgage for five years now, you might even be able to make a handsome profit off of the whole thing. Sunday, July 25, 2004
Andrew Sullivan and the Buggery Patriots
Andrew Sullivan and the Buggery Patriots
So he finally did it. After months of hinting that he’d do so, Andrew Sullivan came out of the closet for John Kerry. This completes his conversion into what I’ve dubbed a “Buggery Patriot.” In The Crisis, Thomas Paine spoke of “sunshine patriots” who had abandoned the cause as victory began to appear doubtful. A “Buggery Patriot” is an individual who believes (or, at least, claims to believe) in the success of the United States of America and its victory in the War on Terrorism but who is also fully willing to abandon the cause to advance the perversion of marriage or, to put it another way, to sanctify buggery under the law. I use the word “buggery” advisedly, as it is what we’re really talking about when we’re discussing homosexual marriage (at least, insofar as gay men are concerned). Now I know that Andrew Sullivan (and the rest of his lot) has a whole laundry list of complaints about the President. But, I ask you this: did they view these complaints as sufficient to warrant a break with the President before the issue of gay marriage jumped to the top of the national agenda? The obvious answer is no. The even more obvious answer is that they adopted a number of miscellaneous liberal talking points in order to hide the true cause of their defections. Let’s consider the following scenario. “Person A” believes that the United States is in a war against monsters who will, if given the chance, murder millions of Americans. Further, be believes that the incumbent President is the man to take this war to the enemy. Then the President takes a position on a social issue (any social issue) the opposite of that held by Person A. Afterwards, Person A violently attacks the President over their position on said social issue and, all of a sudden, is a supporter of the President’s opponent, an individual who they’ve already declared is unfit to wage the war in which Person A formerly believed. What are we to conclude from all of this? Well, let’s review a little but of what Andrew Sullivan had to say about John Kerry before the gay marriage issue arose in earnest: “Here's the choice we may face in November. It's how John Kerry understands the threat of terrorism…. Back to the 1990s or post-9/11 Bush. Law enforcement versus war. It's a clear and important distinction. Let's put it at the center of this debate, where it belongs.” -Andrew Sullivan, January 30th 2004 “Noam Scheiber unearths two constituent letters John Kerry wrote before the first gulf War. Kerry's position? Pro and anti. Just like this time. Can you imagine if he actually has to make a call as president?” -Andrew Sullivan, January 29th, 2004 So, what changed? The war certainly didn’t change: we’ve made the transition in Iraq and we appear to be on the way forward. The terror threat remains. So what changed? In a word: buggery. The President began to speak out more strongly on the gay marriage issue, so Sullivan bolted. What does this mean? One thing is obvious: it means that, to Andrew Sullivan, gay marriage is more important than winning the War. That says something important. The Party of Michael Moore
The sudden shift of the Kerry-Edwards campaign towards an “optimistic” and “positive” tone suggests that Kerry’s advisors are probably saying what I’ve been thinking: there’s a real potential for the whole Democratic Convention to turn into an out-of-control display of the collective psychosis which has come to grip much of the party in the last few years. I put “optimistic” and “positive” into quotations marks because I’ve seen no evidence that the Democratic campaign is either beyond the fact that these words are regularly inserted into pessimistic and negative statements, leading to press releases with titles like “Positive Tone of Kerry-Edwards Campaign Demonstrates that George W. Bush is a Soulless Asshole” or “Optimistic John Kerry Warns of America’s Humiliation, Bankruptcy, Destruction.”
The problem is obvious to me: the only thing unifying the Democratic Party is an abiding hatred of George Bush. Howard Dean’s followers are still seething over what they perceive as the political assassination of their beloved candidate, hard core anti-war activists are mostly ignored by the party, Democratic leaders run from openly embracing liberal positions on social issues, instead using the sort of “code words” that they once accused Republicans of using when they talked about race. A quick survey of various Democratic publications reveals that the beliefs of the average Democratic activist (as opposed to the average Democratic voter) go something like this: George W. Bush and all other Republicans of any note are evil. The “War on Terrorism” is unjustified and should be discontinued. Full-on gay marriage is a “human right” and anyone opposed to it is a bigot. Abortion on demand, under any circumstances whatsoever, is a right guaranteed by the Constitution. Israel is, at worst, an evil Apartheid state and, at best, an unnecessary drag on US foreign policy. Rich people should pay substantially more in taxes. These are just a few of the readily apparent core convictions of a great deal of the Democratic Party’s activist base. These aren’t the things the party generally says for public consumption or what many of its voters think, but they’re certainly close to what your average delegate to the Democratic National Convention thinks. The heart and soul of the party does not, in other words, belong to Bill Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards or anyone else trying to win on the DLC-model. It belongs to Howard Dean, Al Gore, and Michael Moore: the angry, paranoid, manic (or “Democratic”) wing of the wing of the Democratic Party. Herein lies the problem: what happens if, on Thursday night, John Kerry vows to “stay the course” in Iraq, as he has been doing as of late, and is greeted with silence or boos? Frankly, I think that it’s a definite possibility. What happens if frenzied Kucinich and Dean delegates try to pull some sort of stunt with regards to the platform? Anyone who thinks that they’re not crazed enough to give it a shot hasn’t been reading enough Democratic Underground. In such an atmosphere, even the most responsible politician might be drawn, by the general enthusiasm, into over-heated rhetoric and unwise statements. What Al Gore or Howard Dean might say under such conditions is a problem of an entirely different order to magnitude. Word is that the Democratic National Committee won’t be trying to make any changes to Al Gore’s speech. If this is the case, they’d better hope that someone force-feeds him his meds before he speaks. Were Gore to give a performance tomorrow like the ones he’s given the last two times he’d made major speeches, the overwhelming reaction of most sane Americans would be to get down on their knees and thank God that the man didn’t win the election. Before I used to picture Al Gore responding to 9-11 with appeasement and a cynical effort to advance his domestic policies, now I begin to wonder if his response wouldn’t have been more like the character played by Martin Sheen in the film version of Stephen King’s The Dead Zone, who orders a sudden nuclear strike in a mad effort to fulfill his destiny and then greets his Vice President by announcing, “The missiles are flying. Hallelujah, Hallelujah!” The problem that John Kerry has is this: he’s not leading the Democratic Party; he’s simply running out in front of them. There’s a big and obvious difference here. Someone who’s leading a mob can get them to stop if necessary. Someone simply running in the front will be trampled if they slow. What happens in the days ahead will matter a great deal. If the Democratic Convention turns into a disaster on the level of the 1992 Republican National Convention, with almost no bounce at all for the candidate, John Kerry’s campaign is pretty much dead. Once John Kerry secures the nomination he’s got just $75 million he can spend between then and Election Day. The Bush campaign has almost that much money that it has to spend in August alone. And of course, the media being the media, if the Kerry Convention does flop, there’ll be a whole month for every to dissect why. Saturday, July 24, 2004
Messed Up Canada
Here's a pleasant flash from modern Canada.
We have to wait sixteen months for a hip replacement, but we're more than happy let hundreds of refugees with AIDS (many of them gays) into the country to leech off of our failing public health care system. Yep, that's wonderful. The Minister thinks it's a wonderful example of "compassion." Well, perhaps it is compassionate for some. But I don't see what makes it "compassionate" to ensure that World War Two veterans are made to queue up for care, while some Third Worlder sucks up his health care. Thursday, July 22, 2004
The Terrorist Will Always Get Through
Abstract: We must take ground vital to the enemy and refuse to yield it under any conditions. No security measure is perfect save death for the terrorists.
I’ve managed to wade through the first hundred and fifty-odd pages of the 9-11 Commission’s final report and, I must say, I’m actually impressed. From what I’ve read (both here and elsewhere) it seems to me that, despite the ugly tone of its public hearings, the Commission has actually done a fair and impartial job. More than anything else, I think the report reinforces one fundamental point: sooner or later, the terrorist will always get through. All internal security measures, whether they may be, are inherently imperfect. In order for any homeland defense to prevent all terrorist attacks, one would have to design a system that is 100% effective or, in other words, which cannot be stopped by human error, technological failure, deception, evasion, or disruption. We can spend a trillion dollars on homeland defense and yet it remains highly likely that some clever Jihadist with a box cutter, a book of matches, or some other previously benign object, will get through and murder our people. Think about this for a second: what, today, stops al-Qaeda from sending a half-dozen men with butane lighters and buckets of accelerants into our dry forests? What, conceivably, could stop them? The answer is simple and frightening: pretty much nothing. By the time that we realized any given fire was arson, the Mohammed al-Firebug will be preparing to burn down the town fifty miles down the road. If all of the law enforcement officials Virginia, Maryland, Washington, DC and the Federal Government couldn’t track down a pair of bumbling nutcases killing people at a prodigious clip with a car-mounted sniper rifle, what makes you think that California, Oregon, or Washington cops are going to have any better luck with a half dozen Jihadist arsonists? That, of course, is just one (already widely speculated upon) scenario of terror. Yes, stern measures may well be able to stop Islamists from hijacking planes and crashing them into tall buildings again, but they’re not likely to stop them from buying a pair of M-60’s and taking it to an Elementary School or embarking on a campaign of assassination against local politicians. When terrorists go up against a democratic society, the terrorists tend to operate with impunity unless the society they face ceases to behave in a democratic fashion. Terrorism works because it is perfectly designed to exploit the weaknesses of freedom. If terrorists did take to shooting up, say, schools and shopping malls, then how exactly would we stop them? Ban all guns? Well, someone might try, but they wouldn’t do any good even if they did since terrorists would still be able to acquire the weapons they need with impunity while honest citizens would be deprived of their means of rapid response. Set up check points every five miles along the road and deploy troops everywhere? That’d require any army of millions. Ultimately, the best solution to such a conundrum would probably be to encourage neighbourhoods to form local militia units and arm them with some serious firepower but, even then, the terrorists would simply move on the next exploitable weakness. If everywhere Abu Blow-up goes there are people with guns and a willingness to use them he’ll just try something else. He’ll fill a micro-syringe with deadly poison and visit every supermarket in the area or go home, put on his warmest exploding court, and go to a hockey game. If the terrorist is here and wants to attack, he (or one of his friends) will find a way. The only possible way to stop them would be for the United States to resort to totalitarian measures of the most extreme sort: random searches on the streets, internal passports, and the like. This may sound pessimistic, but it isn’t, for there’s another solution and it is, in fact, the option that we’ve chosen: we have to confront the terrorists overseas and kill them. It’s really a very simple thing: either we kill them in Baghdad or we let them kill us in Boston. The problem that we deal with is foreign in origin and it can only be solved on foreign battlefields. It was a very foolish move, I think, on the part of the Bush Administration to not pitch the case for Iraq in these terms as well as others. Since terrorists, by nature, seek to hide the only option available to us is to force them into the open and then meet them in battle. Since al-Qaeda and the other various manifestations of modern Islamism claim to represent all of Islam and to be fighting for a restoration of the glories of the old Caliphate, they can only command the allegiance of the people so long as they can bring the promise of victory. The people will care not at all to hear of any but the most extreme strikes against the West if the United States and the rest of the Crusader nations can take and hold Moslem lands. The entire credibility of al-Qaeda rests upon its ability to pitch itself as a successful defender of Islam against the Infidel West. If the Jihadists can do nothing but senselessly murder innocent Iraqis and get killed while attempting to kill Americans, who will then rally to their cause? We place too little emphasis on the psychology of terrorism. It is silly, and fundamentally dangerous, for us to present that terrorism is simply a result of some irrational, insane, or otherwise deranged impulse. The plain truth is that, based upon decades of recent evidence, terrorism works and, in most cases, works very well. After all, how was Israel forced to withdraw from Southern Lebanon? Why does a “Palestinian Authority” now exist? How has Britain been forced onto the defensive in Ireland? Why did the United States leave Somalia and Lebanon? Why does FARC control a third of Columbia? Terrorism works, especially against democracies where leaders cannot see the future beyond the next month’s opinion polls. People in the Islamic world (and elsewhere) side with al-Qaeda, in large measure, because it is perfectly rational to believe that, in the long term, Islam will win its war against America. That’s why going into Iraq (and staying there) is so important to our security in the long term. If the Moslem comes to see that al-Qaeda, despite losing thousands of its own, has achieved nothing in Iraq but the murder of countless innocents and galvanization of support for the new, American-approved, regime among the Iraqi public as a whole, they will turn against the monster that they have created and cheered on. Though it has not been much reported upon in the West, there are numerous cases of those foreign contingents of Jihadists who marched so proudly into Iraq a year ago now pulling out, battered, humbled, and meeting a hostile reception in the nations to which they are retiring. Consider this for a moment: only a very tiny percentage of people are willing to engage in terrorism under any circumstances. Only a fraction of that is willing to engage in suicide terrorism. Of that fraction, only a handful is prepared to engage in suicide terrorism on behalf of a losing cause and, among that handful, are a group of people who are, for the most part, very prone to getting themselves killed elsewhere. Wherever the lands of Islam are perceived to be encroached upon (Israel, the Kashmir, Chechnya, etc.) the Islamists appear with arms and tend to die in great numbers. They, as the most stalwart defenders of their cause, are as determined to defend their lands as we would be if foreign nations marched into Washington, Florida, Texas, and Maine. Call it Dien Bien Phu with better tactics, better weapons, and better logistics. You cannot let the enemy simply strike where he wishes, responding as he wishes. The only option is to take and hold ground that he cannot possibly yield to you, forcing him to give battle and divert his resources. In speaking of this war, I am fond of quoting something Abraham Lincoln once said of the Civil War. The Union would prevail, he said, once he found a General who could comprehend the terrible arithmetic of the situation. The North outweighed the South in both men and materiel. All that was necessary to bring victory was to find someone who could bring those advantages to bear in a crushing campaign of attrition, as Grant eventually did in 1864 and 1865. There’s only one way to stop the terrorist: to kill him, and to do it sooner rather than later. By forcing battle in Iraq and elsewhere we are making another 9-11 less likely because we are killing in battle the very people who would execute such an attack and, as our endeavour appears increasingly successful, we are discouraging others from following them. Wednesday, July 21, 2004
Talking Sense to the People
Surely I am not the only one who thinks that the hundreds of millions of dollars being sunk into thirty-second television ads this year by both sides is a colossal waste of time, money, and effort? The Bush campaign has spent (figuring that about 2/3’s of money spent goes for paid ads) about $100 million on television ads to date. The Kerry campaign has spent a little less, probably $80 million or so, but this has been more than made up for by the additional $50 million or so spent by Democratic 527’s like MoveOn.org. Plus, earlier this year and last year, I’d guess that the various defeated Democratic primary candidates spent another $50-$100 million on paid media. So, in other words, a total of something like $250 million has been spent on paid ads in the Presidential race alone. And, of that $250 million, did any of it make any sort of real difference? Whenever I see a political ad (for anyone) I typically hit mute or change the channel: and I like politics.
Frankly, I think that the television ads have become more of a pissing contest between competing factions that any actual bid to win votes. They remind me of the signs posted on public property during any Canadian election. Since individual candidates for Parliament in Canada don’t have enough money to advertise on television like candidates for Congress, the local “sign war” becomes an obsession of the various campaigns, with each side spending great sums of money and unbelievable amounts of time placing, maintaining, and safeguarding their signs. Yet, to the best of my knowledge, not a single person has ever decided to vote for someone based upon a lawn sign. It isn’t a productive effort: it’s merely something that everyone is expected to do. A ritual of sorts. Political ads, especially those in Presidential campaigns, have ossified into a boring mess of nonsensical accusations and claims that no serious person believes. The only time an ad can get any real attention is when it’s so negative and extreme that it stands out from the crowd (the NAACP ad linking President Bush to the killers of James Byrd and Saxby Chambliss’ ad featuring a picture of Max Cleland along with Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden being notable examples). What seems to lay beneath the sort of simple, cookie-cutter ads that each Presidential campaign pushes through the door with startling regularity is a single shared premise: the people are too stupid to understand even slightly sophisticated arguments. This has been one of the main problems with the PR side of the Iraq War: the Bush Administration deliberately choose to overemphasize the idea of Weapons of Mass Destruction because they figured that they were a point that the public could easily grasp. In so doing, they essentially abandoned several of the better (and, in my opinion, more convincing) arguments in favor of the war. Sooner or later a major candidate for national office is going to try an alternative strategy. We’re already seeing a little bit of that on the left, with Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 and the liberal Air America radio network. But these aren’t really focused or well co-ordinated. They’re outside efforts and, they’re ones mainly with an appeal to people who were going to vote for John Kerry anyways. Think about this for a moment: it’s been an age-old ritual that every Presidential candidate writes (or, rather “writes”) a book at campaign time that no one reads. Why doesn’t a major Presidential campaign take $10 million or so and use it to hire a first-rate director and produce a campaign film for commercial release? The film could be produced in the spring, released in the early summer (with plenty of advertising) and then given out for free on DVD in the fall. Another proposal: someday a Presidential campaign should examine British “party political” broadcasts as a model for extended paid television ads. Design two and a half-minute television ads in which a serious pitch is made about a serious issue and buy up entire commercial breaks on various cable and local stations. Hell, if Presidential candidates can get various musicians to endorse them, why don’t they get them to write them campaign songs as well and then create “music videos” and run them as extended commercials? Anything to break up the sameness of every single campaign. I know that some people would protest that such carnival antics would take away from the discussion of “serious issues”, to which my response is as follows: ha! Everyone knows that campaigns are not the time for the discussion of such matters. The last few decades have poisoned the well of American politics. The level of hatred felt by Democrats against President Bush long ago slipped the atmosphere of absurdity and soared into the stratosphere of insanity. Don’t get me wrong: I have little doubt that most Republicans would feel the same way about a President Kerry from the first day he enters into office. Because of this politics have become too much about shouting and not enough about talking. This sickness has infected the Democratic Party more than the Republican Party, largely because events of recent years have left Democrats with a feeling of being under siege. The monotone sameness with which virtually the whole Democratic Party speaks is, to say the least, a frightening thing. It smacks of a sort of voluntary totalitarian rule of mental conformity. It’s as if the Democrats have all become Stepford politicians, programmed to spit out talking points on command. Conservative Republicans (such as myself) are often frustrated that the efforts of our party are impeded by our own internal disagreements and the way they tend to be manifested in public. To that I say: well, at least we can still have such discussions. The Democratic Party has reached a state of ideological uniformity which has troubling implications for the future of democratic government. Gradually, over a period of years, all offending thoughts have been purged from the mainstream of the party, leaving behind a hard-core whose unity has hardened into a sort of strange fanaticism. Look at the Sandy Berger case. By his own admission, the former National Security Advisor removed (and his in his jacket, pants, and socks) handwritten notes containing ultra-classified information. He admits to have committed this act, a probably criminal offense, knowingly. He also (“inadvertently” he claims) grabbed several drafts of the same thirty-page classified report and then (“accidentally” according to his lawyer) discarded them. Yet Democrats still doggedly defend the man with every weapon at their disposal, just as they defended Bill Clinton when he took Red Chinese money for his re-election, and just as they’d defend some future Democratic President whose hobby was sodomizing little boys in the Oval Office (“It’s all just about sex!”). The only way I see out of this quagmire is for some candidates to try another tack. Instead of quick attack ads, let’s use extended ads to pitch real arguments. Instead of trafficking in paranoia and dull talking points, let’s talk some sense. Let’s put the nation first and make politics exciting again. Racism at CBS
The following is from a recent CBS poll of blacks:
WHO HAS MORE SOUL? (Registered voters) John Kerry 64% George W. Bush 11% Both equally 2 Neither 12% Come on, get real. What kind of person would ask white voters (or voters as a whole) which candidate has more "soul"? That's pretty much the most absurd question I've ever seen put in a poll. What utter nonsense. Tuesday, July 20, 2004
Sandy Berger’s Adventure
Some Democrats are already trying to spin the news of the criminal investigation into former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger as a Republican plot to disrupt the Democratic convention. In fact, if anything, the manner in which the news was released that Berger, while preparing for his testimony before the 9-11 Commission, stole several classified reports appears to have been leaked by the Democratic side. I base this assertion on two things. First, the first Associated Press report on the issue deliberately sought to fudge the matter of whether or not the documents in question were copies or originals (something which remains unclear and will certainly be so in the reports that will hit newspapers tomorrow). Second, if I were a Republican planning on leaking this, I wouldn’t leak it today; I’d leak it a week from today, on the eve of the convention, with Berger in Boston as John Kerry’s senior foreign affairs advisor.
This is a serious matter and it’s one, I think, that the media will have little choice but to pay real attention to. Simply put: this one doesn’t pass the smell test. First of all, it seems truly odd that Berger, who surely knows the procedures for the handling of classified documents, would be stuffing his pants and jacket with notes (an act he knew to be in defiance of proper procedure) without some sort of reason. Even more obviously, it’s pretty much impossible to “accidentally” put classified documents into a leather folder and then carry them out of a room. Something is up here. Later reports, which claim that Berger somehow managed to accidentally take copies of the same document on two separate occasions, make the story that this was somehow an accident, the act of a forgetful man, even less believable. Same for the claim that Berger somehow, after grabbing a sheaf of these papers, managed to somehow “accidentally” lose exactly three of them. The claim that this is somehow all just a strange mistake is so absurd that even a majority of the Kool-Aid drinkers on Democratic Underground wouldn’t buy it. That brings us to the obvious question: why on Earth would he do something so obviously fraught with danger? The value of the secret must be proportionate to the risk and, this being such a big risk, the secret must be equally big. It seems significant that the reports Berger apparently pinched were draft versions of a report on the attempted Millennium terror attacks. My best guess would be that the drafts must have contained some major bit of information that was not contained in the final report and, presumably, not passed on at a later date. I can only think of a few things truly explosive enough for Berger to take such a big risk. The draft could have discussed some of the chances that President Clinton reportedly had to kill Osama Bin Laden and turned down for various, legalistic, or otherwise silly reasons. It’s possible that, for some reason, it might have contained a reference to Clinton’s turning down of the Sudan’s offer to turn Bin Laden over in the mid-1990’s. It could have contained a discussion of the possibility of suicide hijackings of planes that was later deleted from the final version of the report and not passed on to the next administration. It might have held something that has remained heretofore unknown or which, while not obviously incriminating in and of itself, could lead to startling revelations upon further investigation. Really, we have no idea exactly what it might have been. In all probability it was something that we’ll never be able to dream up ourselves. The real test will be how big a media firestorm this creates. Can you imagine what he reaction would be like if one of the Republicans who testified before the 9-11 Commission had done the same thing? The resignation of that person would be required immediately and, quite frankly, I suspect Democrats might be aroused to try to impeach President Bush over the issue. This is not a little matter, it ought to be a big deal. This (among other things) will probably blunt the force of any criticism of the Bush Administration contained within the final report of the Commission. It ought to call into question whether members of the Clinton Administration cooperate fully with the panel. What’s left for us to do now is to sit back and watch. Monday, July 19, 2004
Josh Marshall is Worried
And, Democrats, when Josh Marshall is worried, you know you're in trouble.
First he tried to dodge on the grounds that he only took copies, but then the second version of the AP Story came out with this: Breuer said Berger believed he was looking at copies of the classified documents, not originals. Which, of course, suggests that he took (and lost) the original copies. Accidents Happen...
But, I think, not this sort of accident.
Berger and his lawyer said Monday night he knowingly removed handwritten notes he had made while reading classified anti-terror documents he reviewed at the archives by sticking them in his jacket and pants. He also inadvertently took copies of actual classified documents in a leather portfolio, they said Seriously, I mean, really. What the fuck?Frankly, it's so blatant and stupid that I'm almost inclined to take him at his word. But then, I really don't see how anyone could accidentally take classified documents and stick them into a leather portfolio. When asked, Berger said he returned some classified documents that he found in his office and all of the handwritten notes he had taken from the secure room, but said he could not locate two or three copies of the highly classified millennium terror report."In the course of reviewing over several days thousands of pages of documents on behalf of the Clinton administration in connection with requests by the Sept. 11 commission, I inadvertently took a few documents from the Archives," Berger said."When I was informed by the Archives that there were documents missing, I immediately returned everything I had except for a few documents that I apparently had accidentally discarded," he said. Does Mr. Berger, who I'm sure has handled plenty of sensitive information, generally discard documents without looking at them? I'm sorry, this doesn't pass the smell test. UPDATE: Even DU thinks this sounds like really bad news for the Democrats. Why Abortion Should Make You Sick
This article about how a woman aborted two of her three babies is so digusting, so cold, that it ought to make any feeling person physically ill.
Sunday, July 18, 2004
Distortions in FH 9/11 Sources
Michael Moore has published a list of sources for his "facts" in the film Fahrenheit 9/11 on this site. Below are a number of cases where the cites and the facts don't synch up. I've deliberately avoided arguing about if the citations are wrong or not. These are simply cases where the citations contradict the statement they're supposed to support:
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: Fox was the first network to call Florida for Bush. Before that, some other networks had called Florida for Gore, and they changed after Fox called it for Bush. YOSHIDA: Once again, as in the movie, Moore deliberately omits the fact that all of the networks CALLED BACK THEIR PREDICTIONS in the interim. FAHRENHEIT 9/11: Gore got the most votes in 2000. YOSHIDA: This, of course, is true. But, given the citations listed thereafter (all of which deal with the Florida voting), Moore apparently means in Florida. Now, look at the title of one of the articles cited as "proof" of this claim: Martin Merzer, “Review of Ballots Finds Bush's Win Would Have Endured Manual Recount,” Miami Herald, April 4, 2001. YOSHIDA: No, I'm not kidding. FAHRENHEIT 9/11: “For the next eight months, it didn’t get any better for George W. Bush.” Let's consider a summary of what George W. Bush did in his first eight months, from Charles Krauthammer: Moreover, by any fair assessment of the first six months of his presidency, W. has earned his vacation. Given the thinness of his victory, the fragility of his mandate and the loss of the Senate in midstream, he's had a remarkable string of achievements. The centerpiece of his economic program, the tax cut, has already been enacted. His education reform is now in conference. He broke decades of taboos when the House passed his faith-based initiative. And just before the August recess, two stunning political victories: The House passed his version of the patients' bill of rights and an energy plan that includes drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. For icing, it passed an airtight anti-cloning bill too. But the most significant achievement of the administration is its radical reorientation of U.S. foreign policy. During the first post-Cold War decade, the Clinton administration carried on as if nothing had changed. Its entire nuclear and strategic posture was Russocentric. Bush introduced a foreign policy based on the glaringly obvious reality that Russia is no longer either a superpower or an enemy. Accordingly, he announced a new strategic doctrine, unilaterally cutting American offensive weapons while at the same time developing defensive weapons. American forces would henceforth be reconfigured to meet threats from new enemies, not from a nonexistent Soviet Union. Russia, Europe and what passes for the American intelligentsia are now scrambling to catch up with this return to strategic sanity. Bush's other foreign policy achievement is freeing us from a decade of frivolous, near-delusional multilateralism. A host of poison pill or useless treaties left behind by Clinton have been unceremoniously and deservedly junked: o The International Criminal Court, an idea so bad that Clinton said he opposed its major provisions even as he signed it. o The Kyoto protocol, which would have done nothing to curtail climate change but would have done serious damage to the U.S. economy. o A biological weapons convention that does nothing to prevent Iraq and Iran and others from developing biological weapons but gives them inspection rights to our anti-biological warfare facilities. o A land mine treaty that seriously damages America's ability to meet its unique security needs, such as stopping an invasion by North Korea's million-man army. A tax cut, progress on education reform, a beginning on faith-based charities, energy and a patients' bill of rights, a ban on cloning and a new foreign policy. We'll come back to Charles Krauthammer in a second. FAHRENHEIT 9/11: “In his first eight months in office before September 11, George W. Bush was on vacation, according to the Washington Post, forty-two percent of the time.” YOSHIDA: I love this one. Moore cites, of all people, Charles Krauthammer to back it up. Here's the full article in question which, for some reason, Moore chooses not to link to. Want to guess why? Here's what follows the passage that Moore cites: The reason the president is going away in August is that nothing happens in Washington in August. Sometimes something happens overseas that might bring him back to Washington -- an invasion of Kuwait, a coup in Moscow. But with the exception of such uncouth violations of August repose, there is no point staying in Washington. It's hot, it's humid and everybody's gone. (Except the occasional columnist, left behind to chronicle the indolence.) Oh, and the summary of all that George W. Bush did in his first eight months in office is also contained in the article that Moore cited to "prove" that George W. Bush spends too much time on "vacation" (as though the President ever actually goes on vacation). FAHRENHEIT 9/11: “Maybe Mr. Bush was wondering why he had cut terrorism funding from the FBI.” YOSHIDA: This is false, and his own cite shows it to be so: "(C)ut the FBI's request for new counterterrorism money by 12 percent." Maybe Michael Moore doesn't understand the difference between cutting funding and giving someone less money than they asked for, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. FAHRENHEIT 9/11: The security briefing that was given to him on August 6, 2001, said that Osama bin Laden was planning to attack America by hijacking airplanes. YOSHIDA: Again, Moore is distorting the very information that he goes on to cite. Here's the text he cites from the August 6th PDB: We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a ... (redacted portion) ... service in 1998 saying that Bin Ladin wanted to hijack a US aircraft to gain the release of ‘Blind Shaykh’ 'Umar 'Abd al-Rahman and other US-held extremists. Of course, technically you could make the case that, in hijacking planes to demand the release of a terrorist al-Qaeda would be launching an "attack" on America, but that's clearly not the way that Moore is attempting to show it (that the President was warned of suicide attacks with hijacked planes). FAHRENHEIT 9/11: Bush was investigated by the S.E.C. The James Baker law partner who helped Bush beat the rap from the SEC was a man by the name of Robert Jordon, who, when George W. became president was appointed ambassador to Saudi Arabia. YOSHIDA: Bush didn't "beat the rap" from anything. From one of Moore's own sources: SEC staff members investigating the stock sale concluded there was insufficient evidence to recommend an enforcement action against Bush To "beat the rap," you'd have to be charged with something. FAHRENHEIT 9/11: “Another group of people invest in you, your friends, and their related businesses $1.4 billion over a number of years.” YOSHIDA: Watch these numbers closely. Here's some of Moore's cites: In 1994, Carlyle owned military contractor BDM was “awarded a contract to provide technical assistance and logistics support to the Royal Saudi Air Force.” Worth: $46,200,000. PR Newswire, “BDM Federal Awarded $46 Million Contract To Support Royal Saudi Air Force,” October 27, 1994. During the 1990s, the Vinnell Corporation (a BDM subsidiary) held contracts to train the Saudi Arabian National Guard, worth $819,000,000. Robert Burns, “US Advises Saudi Military On Range Of Threats—Including Terrorism,” Associated Press, November 13, 1995. In 1995, BDM collected a contract to “augment Royal Saudi Air Force staff in developing, implementing, and maintaining logistics and engineering plans and programs.” Worth: $32,500,000. Defense Daily, “Defense Contracts,” June 23, 1995, as cited by Craig Unger. In 1996, BDM was awarded a contract “to provide construction of 110 housing units at the MK-1 Compound, Khamis Mushayt, Saudi Arabia, for Technical Support Program personnel assisting the Royal Saudi Air Force…. This effort supports foreign military sales to Saudi Arabia.” Worth: $44,397,800. Department of Defense News Release, “BDM Federal, Incorporated,” April 1, 1996. During the late 1990s, Vinnell was awarded a contract “for the Saudi Arabian National Guard (SANG) Modernization Program. The three-year contract, awarded competitively, calls on Vinnell to continue to support SANG training operations and related activities.” Worth: $163,300,000 . PR Newswire, “Vinnell Selected for Award of $163.3 Million Contract for Saudi Arabian National Guard Modernization Program,” May 3, 1995. Kashim Al-An, “Saudi Guard Gets Quiet Help from US Firm with Connections,” Associated Press, March 22, 1997. In 1997, BDM was awarded a contract “to provide for 400 contractor personnel to support the Royal Saudi Air Force in developing, implementing, and maintaining logistics, supply, computer, reconnaissance, intelligence and engineering plans and programs.” Worth: $18,728,682 (note: this is a “face value increase to a firm fixed price contract”). Defense Daily, “Defense Contracts,” February 4, 1997. Note: Carlyle purchased BDM and its subsidiary Vinnell in 1992 and sold it to TRW in Dec, 1997. In other words, $1.12 billion of the "$1.4 billion" figure Moore uses comes from contracts between BDM and the Saudi Government from the early 1990's to 1997. Well, here's the thing (from Michael Isikoff's article on the film): (F)ormer president Bush didn’t join the Carlyle advisory board until April, 1998—five months after Carlyle had already sold BDM to another defense firm. In other words, here, Moore provides the citations to prove his distortion. The "$1.4 billion" figure thus becomes "$280 million" which, of course, assumes that somehow the rest of the numbers are good. Oh, and of the remaining "$280 million" (again from Moore's own citations): In November 2001, Dick Cheney’s former company Halliburton was awarded “a contract to provide services for the Saudi Arabian Oil Company’s (Saudi Aramco) Qatif Field development project in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia.” Worth: $140 million. So, in other words, another $140 million of the "Bush-Saudi business" involves contracts between Halliburton (one of the major oil field companies in the world) and Saudi Arabia which occured roughly a year and a half after Dick Cheney left the company. So, what's left? $140 million? Well, from Moore's cites again: The same month, a consortium of three companies led by Halliburton subsidiary KBR won a “contract for engineering, procurement, and construction of an ethylene plant for Jubail United Petrochemcial Company, a wholly owned company of Saudi Basic Industries Corporation.” Worth: $40 million. Another contract in November 2001? A year and a half after Cheney left the company? Well, that leaves about $100 million to find. So, what's left? $80 million in Saudi money "estimated" to be invested in the Carlyle Group and $25 million invested in Harken by an individual who happened to be a Saudi Arabian. And what else?
Yes, that's the "$1.4 billion". Moore gives us all the data with which to hang him here. FAHRENHEIT 9/11: "He proposed cutting $1.3 billion in veterans’ health care and closing seven veteran’s hospitals. He tried to double the prescription drug costs for veterans and opposed full benefits for part time reservist." YOSHIDA: That's simply wrong, and his own sources say the same: "The White House had expressed its ‘strong opposition’ to the Senate’s effort to expand military health benefits to reservists and National Guard members, and boost 'veterans’ health care spending by $1.3 billion." Jonathan Weisman, "Bush Aides Threaten Veto of Iraqi Aid Measure," Washington Post, October 22, 2003. Again, Moore fails to understand the difference between "cutting" and "not spending more than has been proposed."
Sullivan Gets One Wrong
Attacking Rich Lowry, Andrew Sullivan writes:
Santorum, he argues, is not in favor, as I argued, of direct application of Vatican principles to the civil law. Give me an example. On what issue does Santorum dissent from Vatican teaching on civil law? And by what principle would he draw that distinction? Please show me where Santorum has upheld secular values over theological ones. Santorum is for the death penalty, which the Vatican, of course, is against. Friday, July 16, 2004
The Coming War with Iran
With the situation in Iraq coming under control, it’s well past time to begin to consider our next target: Iran. North Korea, for all of its threats, remains relatively contained by the combination of South Korea, Japan, and China. Additionally, North Korea already has nuclear weapons, whereas Iran is merely closing in on them. However, we have more reasons for war with Iran than its rapidly-advancing nuclear program.
Iran is sheltering al-Qaeda and, by most accounts, has been doing so for quite some time. At this very moment, Saad Bin Laden, Osama’s eldest son and a senior member of the terror network, is in the country. So are many other senior leaders of the group. The 9-11 Commission is even set to report that, in the year prior to 9-11, eight to ten of the 9-11 hijackers were allowed to pass through Iran and that, after the bombing of the USS Cole, that nation offered to form an alliance with al-Qaeda in order to attack America. Worse still (and largely unknown to the American people), Iran is one of the prime movers behind the “insurgency” which has caused the United States so much trouble in Iraq. Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical cleric who caused the Coalition so much trouble, is an Iranian stooge. Various other radical Shiite groups have been aided by Iran. In short, Iran has American blood on its hands. The Iranians are getting uppity. They think (possibly correctly) that once they get nuclear weapons the West will be unwilling to challenge them. Perhaps even they think that we are already too frightened to do anything about their flagrant support for terrorism. The recent seizure of eight British sailors was quite clearly a test on the part of the regime. A nuclear Iran will begin making demands of the West very quickly and the more craven of our leaders, as we have already seen, will be inclined to grant them. If the Phillipines can be persuaded to withdraw from Iraq by the threat of a single beheading (and the Spaniards by one bombing), how do you think the limp-wristed democracies will respond to the actual live threat of nuclear terror? Faced with an Iranian bomb, chances are the Democratic Party will finally come to support a policy of pre-emption. Pre-emptive surrender, that is. So what, then, is to be done? Frankly, an invasion of Iran is probably out of the question for the time being. To do so would require the full mobilization of the reserves and the National Guard, a step which would denude the rest of the world of American troops and leave the United States unable to respond to challenges which might arise elsewhere. This does not mean, however, that the United States is incapable of action short of an invasion. We would do well to recall that the real rulers of Iran are not its puppet Parliament and President. The Ayatollahs still run the country and, upon the whole, they are hated by the people. Massive protests against the regime have been stopped only with the use of extreme force. The moment the first American bomb falls upon Iran, you’re going to have massive civil unrest in that country. I’m not saying that the people will overthrow their oppressors overnight. However, with the right sort of incentive they just might. What’s needed is something like this. Park two or three heavy divisions somewhere near Iraq’s border with Iran (just in case Iran tries to respond to any attack with an incursion into Iraq) and then use the US Air Force and Navy to hammer every Iranian target of any worth while, at the same time, US Special Forces move about the country distributing cash and weapons. If necessary, send the Corps in Eastern Iraq across the border into Iran in order to secure Iraq against rocket attack and the like. Do not advance into the heart of Iran, however. Let the Iranian Army come and meet the United States Army and Marine Corps in fortified positions. Sink the entire Iranian Navy and blow up every other site of military significance. After the first few days of heavy fighting the Iranian Air Force will be effectively destroyed and the United States ought to possess near-total air supremacy over the entire nation. Commence heavy bombing and keep it up for weeks or even, if necessary, months. Specifically target clerics and other leaders of the regime for assassination. Simply keep up the pressure until the regime cracks up. Iran must be dealt with. It is the central point of this War on Terrorism. While many nations sponsor our enemies, virtually all of them are tied in one way or another to Iran. Al-Qaeda? Yep. Hezbollah? Uh-huh. Hamas? Sure thing. Deal a devastating blow to Iran and you will hurt the terrorists very badly by removing their leading patron. Time is of the essence. The clock is ticking on the Iranian nuclear program. Remember this: while some of our intelligence about Iraq may have been flawed, our intelligence services are far more inclined to under-estimate our enemies than they are to over-estimate them. Their failure in Iraq was largely the result of a very successful Iraqi program of strategic deception and, in all probability, extremely effective concealment. Until the Libyans handed the materials over to us, we had no idea that they had anything more than a small program in the earliest stage. It turned out that they were probably no more than a year or so from finished weapons. This is an intelligence failure which ought to be considered far more alarming than that in Iraq. After all, we’re far more likely to be hurt by underestimation than overestimation. In one case, a dangerous regime turned out to be (perhaps) slightly less dangerous than thought. In the other a seemingly benign regime turned out to be a deadly threat of which we were almost totally unaware. To me the lessons of the aftermath of the intelligence failures in regard to both 9-11 and Iraq are perfectly clear. First of all, intelligence is unreliable and cannot be reasonably expected to predict the unpredictable. Second, that it’s far better to act against perceived threats than it is to await them. We forget this now, but with a little more luck on September 11th it’s entirely possible that al-Qaeda could have killed many more people. But for a few brave passengers, there’s a good chance that the Capitol would have been destroyed. With slightly different timing and different impact points, it’s entirely possible that the death count in New York City could have been many thousands (or even tens of thousands) higher. There is no guaranteed way to stop terror, but there is one way to guarantee that it will come: to sit idle and await the next blow. Our only option is to continue to take this fight to the enemy, wherever we might find him and however hard it may be. Allawi Akhbar!
I'm sure we're going to hear more about this story that new Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi personally executed six terrorists. If so, great: I think that Allawi is exactly the right man to be the first leader of a free Iraq. I already knew he had guts, now I'm sure of it.
They say Dr Allawi told onlookers the victims had each killed as many as 50 Iraqis and they "deserved worse than death". I've got exactly zero problem with this. After all, these are the sort of measures I've long advocated for destroying the insurgency. One of the witnesses claimed that before killing the prisoners Dr Allawi had told those around him that he wanted to send a clear message to the police on how to deal with insurgents. This guy is awesome. Seriously. But in a sharp reminder of the Iraqi hunger for security above all else, the witnesses did not perceive themselves as whistle-blowers. In interviews with the Herald they were enthusiastic about such killings, with one of them arguing: "These criminals were terrorists. They are the ones who plant the bombs." Before the shootings, the 58-year-old Prime Minister is said to have told the policemen they must have courage in their work and that he would shield them from any repercussions if they killed insurgents in the course of their duty. The witnesses said the Iraqi police observers were "shocked and surprised". But asked what message they might take from such an act, one said: "Any terrorists in Iraq should have the same destiny. This is the new Iraq. I love it. "He told them: 'We must destroy anyone who wants to destroy Iraq and kill our people.' "At first they were surprised. I was scared - but now the police seem to be very happy about this. There was no anger at all, because so many policemen have been killed by these criminals." Michael Moore's "new Minutemen" aren't exactly winning the hearts of their countrymen, are they? Wednesday, July 14, 2004
Thinking Through the Drug War
I’ve been mentally wrestling with the issues of the War on Drugs for quite some time. As a Vancouver native I am, quite naturally, closer to this issue than many. The neighbourhood in which I live has one of the highest concentrations of marijuana grow operations on the continent. At the same time, I’ve seen close up the destructive effects that drugs can have on individual lives. The present situation is intolerable: drugs are everywhere, bringing massive profits to criminals, while some individuals are punished massively for minor offenses and others are not punished at all. It is entirely clear to me that we have reached a point in the Drug War in which we must either advance or retreat.
I am a firm believer in the idea that the law should have a certain majesty to it. Punishments and rewards should be public and spectacular in order to discourage antisocial behavior and encourage virtue. Drug laws bring the law as a whole into disrepute because, for the most part, they go entirely unenforced and, when they are enforced, it is in such an arbitrary and capricious fashion as to make the law seem an irrational and random force. Either we must have drug laws that can (and will) be fully enforced, or we should have none at all. This leaves us with three broad options. Either we launch an extreme crackdown in an effort to bring the public into compliance with the present laws and standards, we repeal the laws altogether, or we devise and entirely new set of laws which are simple and enforceable. I must admit that, for me, the approach taken towards drugs by some of the more authoritarian Asian nations (Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand) holds a certain appeal. I’ve yet to meet a drug dealer who wasn’t the sort of scum who would improve the gene pool by his death. The swift hanging of drug dealers and traffickers makes a great deal of sense and would probably be, for the simple reason that it would massively raise the streets price of drugs, very effective. Thailand’s response to its own drug crisis (launching a “Drug War” in which it simply shot those involved with the drug trade), while emotionally satisfying to a degree, would simply not be practical in the West. Neither, I suppose, would the hundreds of drug-related executions which would be required to satisfy the broader approach. While I admit that I possess a certain affinity for the occasional use of totalitarian methods, I don’t expect that people would tolerate either the mass round-up and forced treatment of street drug users or the necessary imposition of Martial Law in those areas most blighted by drugs. This (executions of dealers and round-ups of users) sums up the general impracticality of taking a much harder line against drugs. In order to eradicate drugs, we would have to take measures too strong to be considered tolerable in a democratic society. In truth, I am also attracted to the idea of total drug legalization. In my experience, most of the people who do enough drugs to seriously damage their lives (or, perhaps, to kill themselves) wouldn’t much be missed by anyone other than their immediate family (and in many cases not even them). In this light, heavy drug users might be simply seen as individuals fulfilling the Darwinian impulse, making the best contribution to society that their feeble minds and limited talents will allow. If we were to let the market flood with cheap and legal Heroin and Crack Cocaine, I imagine that half of the welfare cheques issued two months later would go mysteriously uncashed. Of course that too, I think, would be unacceptable to most people, including most of the non-libertarian advocates of drug legalization. If I can be convinced that drug legalization can be made cost-neutral, I might take a closer look. However, frankly, I’m quite sure that any savings made from reduced policing against drug offenders would be taken up searching for people smuggling drugs to avoid taxes (inevitably any government legalizing drugs would tax them so highly as to ensure that the illegal drug market remained a lucrative one), increased social service spending, and massively increased spending on anti-drug education (which, surely would be a pre-condition among certain groups for the legalization of drugs). Those libertarians who would advocate total drug legalization should remember this: they may well be prime advocates of such a move but, inevitably, any such process would be hijacked by the government and the alphabet-soup of non-governmental organizations who would, I’m quite sure, respond to legal drugs in just as statist a fashion as they do illegal ones. Drug legalization, under present conditions, is unlikely to bring any sort of freedom from the state, just a different form of (probably equally or more expensive) prohibition. Instead of paying for jail cells you’ll pay for more state-funded treatment beds. Instead of police officers you’ll pay for enforcement officers and inspectors. The only option left open to us it would then appear is a mixed approach. Forget about trying to stop drug use or sales altogether: trying to stamp the menace out. Instead, look for ways to drive it underground. Drugs will always be with us, but they are only an affront to society if they are seen in public and thus in defiance of the law. Legalize private possession and use of drugs while, at the same time, creating new penalties for public drug use of any sort. At the very least, anyone seen using drugs on the streets should spend a few days in jail. Additionally, increase the penalties on those who sell drugs, with the idea of driving up prices to the maximum degree possible. Finally, any new drug-related laws need to look at hitting hard the side-effects of drug crime: burglaries, car theft, and robberies. A serious and violent crackdown on this sort of drug-related crime is essential to arresting the present breakdown in societal order. It’s time for new thinking on the matter of drugs. Our present policies are manifestly unworkable. We can slam shut our eyes and shove our fingers in our ears for only so long. The present policies are not working and, because they are obviously not working, they are bringing the law as a whole into disrepute. Tuesday, July 13, 2004
There’s No Room for Partisanship When it Comes to Survival
Reports that some elements of the Federal Government are examining the steps necessary for the postponement of the Presidential election in the event of a terrorist attack have sent the radical left (and some elements of the far right as well) into a predictable frenzy. Gripped as they are by an extreme form of delusional paranoia the far left sees in any delay of the election, however sensible and necessary, a neocon plot to impose a dictatorship upon the country. In fact, the possibility that it may be necessary to delay or modify the structure of elections under some circumstances is something that should have been looked into and worked out a long time ago.
Some will inevitably, as Senator Dianne Feinstein has, invoke the false example of the Presidential elections which occurred at the height of the Civil War and the Second World War. We aren’t talking about delaying elections indefinitely; we’re simply talking about ensuring that they may be safely and fairly conducted. If the Germans had been bombing New York City or the Confederate Army storming Philadelphia on Election Day in 1944 or 1864, then it seems certain to me that the elections would not have gone on that day as planned. In recent memory, the New York Mayoral Primary was postponed on September 11th, 2001 and the dark night of fascism did not descend upon us. It would be pure insanity to go ahead with an election as planned in the midst of a biological attack. I ask the Democrats screaming about a “Bushitler conspiracy” to calm down for a minute and imagine the following scenario. On November 2nd, a suicide bomber walks into a polling station in the most Democratic section of Miami and kills seventeen people. Voter turnout drops nationwide (and in a largely uniform fashion), but in Florida it falls to 30%. In Miami, it falls even lower than that. Bush wins the election by 100,000 votes and holds an electoral majority which is sealed by Florida’s twenty-seven votes. What would you say then? Should the election have been allowed to go forward? Of course, if the election does go forward from that point, there’s no do-over. You can’t look at what happened afterwards and cry, “It wasn’t fair, out voters were more frightened than yours!” The election will be done. John Kerry will have lost and George W. Bush will be President for four more years. To Republicans who would welcome the scenario, I’d point out it could happen as easily in reverse. Suppose a pair of marauding snipers hold an entire Republican neighbourhood in Ohio hostage on the afternoon of the election, causing John Kerry to win the state by a few hundred votes. Would that result be considered fair and free? It’s time to go into this in some more detail. Not just elections, but the entire continuity of government process. Terrorists, if they’re smart, will launch attacks in a deliberate attempt to disrupt and paralyze the American government. Certain elements of the present arrangements made to ensure the continuity of government are laughable and, in other ways, extremely dangerous. For example, the present order of Presidential succession leaves us with the very real possibility that, in the worst crisis in American history, we might end up with either a ninety year-old Senator or a bumbling Secretary of Agriculture as the President. Moreover, the concentration of government leaves the very real possibility that, in a nuclear attack, virtually all of the legislative and executive branches of the government could be wiped out. What I propose is this: the creation of an American “Privy Council”, a group of elder statesmen who will have no formal role in government under ordinary conditions, but which will be entrusted with certain extraordinary powers in the event of a national emergency. This council would consist of all living former Presidents, Vice Presidents, House Speakers, and Senate Majority Leaders. In the event of the destruction of the Congress, the Privy Council would be temporarily invested with all legislative powers including, in the event all Presidential successors were to be killed, the power of selecting a new President. Additionally this group would, in the event of a national emergency, have the right to postpone a Presidential election by a week at a time, up to a maximum of four weeks, at which point the power for the selection of Presidential electors would revert to the states. However, the possibility of the elimination of all Presidential successors would be greatly reduced by another innovation. The Presidential Succession act of 1947 would be superseded by a Constitutional Amendment which would grant the President the power to choose a number of designated successors who would take office if both the President and Vice President were to be killed. Subject to confirmation by the Senate, the list would presumably include a number of eminently qualified men of the sort who are left out of the present list. (A list today might include Senator John McCain, Colin Powell, Rudy Giuliani, former President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, former Senator Bob Dole, former Senator Sam Nunn, and other individuals with obvious qualifications to assume national command in the event of an emergency). Presidential successors would, once confirmed by the Senate, also become life members of the Privy Council (though, I suppose, in deference to those with less Anglophilic tendencies than I, we’ll have to come up with a new name). Additionally, as part of any amendment, provisions for the survival of Congress should be made. The most obvious solution would be to allow every single member of Congress to select a few prominent citizens from his or her own district as their temporary successor (until new elections could be scheduled and held). The survival of the Federal Government while under attack by a foreign enemy is essential to the survival of the United States. This is an issue on which all sides should be able to work together, instead of playing in an effort to score partisan points. Sunday, July 11, 2004
Another Patriotic Democrat
For a Democrat, Orson Scott Card isn't a bad guy.
Let America be America Again
I will let pass the fact that, for his campaign slogan, John Forbes Kerry chose words penned by an open communist who praised Stalin. While, of course, no Republican could choose a slogan originally authored by a Nazi and get away with it (and rightly so, I might add), it seems to be the unanimous decision of the mainstream media that it’s a-OK to praise to the rafters people who openly supported an even more monstrous ideology. It isn’t fair but, then, neither is life. Instead, I want to talk about what the slogan means and what it says about John Kerry and the modern Democratic Party.
“Let America be America again.” It, despite its origins, actually captures the essence the present Democratic campaign very well. By “America” they mean the “America” of the Clinton years which, in their vision, was a utopia, with the Republic on the road towards the creation of true social justice and a new internationalist order. This march forward, in their view a process as inevitable as any that Marx ever described, would leave behind the dinosaurs of conservatism, whose irrelevance had been fully demonstrated when they failed in their effort to impeach President Clinton. This process, in their minds, was suddenly and unnaturally disrupted on January 20th, 2001. History, in their view, stopped on that day and we entered into a strange interregnum which will end only when a Democrat is again in the White House and the world is safe for Barbara Streisand to sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom. Of course, in truth, America can never be “America” again. We can never go back to the 1990’s any more than we can follow the wishes of some conservatives and go back to the 1950’s. The security and prosperity of that decade were, if anything, more illusory than real. The giant growth of the stock market was created through a combination of fraud and irrational exuberance furthered by said fraud. As for security: as Bill Clinton was serviced by an intern under his desk and spent a year defending his actions, the threat from al-Qaeda grew. As Bill Clinton guided Israel into a foolish “peace process”, Yassir Arafat and the other leaders of the Palestinians used the time they bought to arm and prepare for another war. The Democrats are tempting the people with the promise of something they can never really have. What they really offer is botox for America, a quick-fix solution to recaptured the glories of an imagined past. The solutions they offer are temporary and can never be made to fully stick. They’re not entirely real. But they can be made to fool some. At least, for a little while. After September 11th, President Bush led this nation into a great crusade, a struggle which may, if we are stalwart, redeem the nation’s honor and make America safe once more. It wasn’t the obvious choice. The more obvious option would have been to bomb areas where al-Qaeda was believed to be, send in some Special Forces, and leave well enough alone. It would have been popular with most of the people, and the President could have used the political capital accumulated to pursue other political initiatives dearer to their hearts. But George Bush didn’t do that. What the President saw was this: he had two alternatives before him, he could “manage” terror and watch it slowly get worse, or he could seek to wipe it out. He opted for the latter. Not because it was the easy course or the politically expedient one, but because it was the right thing to do. The basic strategic concept of the war goes something like this: terrorism occurs because repressive regimes in the Middle East, in order to ensure their own survival, channel all dissent into the form of religious extremism and then they direct that extremism against external enemies (Israel, the United States, Europe, etc.). Terrorism will never slacken so long as those regimes remain in place. So? How do you replace those regimes? You systematically overthrow them and replace them with new, democratic, governments which will, in turn, provide an example to the other peoples of the region. It’s a new domino theory: turn Iraq and, sooner or later, the Ba’athist regime in Syria and the Islamist one in Iran will fall. Eventually, from there, democracy will spread outwards to Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Libya, and, yes, to the Palestinian territories. This is a mission which will be undertaken with American force but in which the Moslems themselves will have to play the prime role. And, as we’ve seen in Iraq, they’re ready to play that role. Given a free choice, the Iraqi people have chosen secular and non-violent politicians to lead them. With ten years under American protection, the Iraqi people will be busy arguing about whether taxes are too high and funding for public schools is sufficient. If we turn away now and abandon this effort (and, make no mistake, that’s what we’ll be doing if we elect John Kerry and John Edwards), we’ll be sending a signal to liberty-loving people all across the Middle East: you can’t trust America, for a turn away is just an election away. To be sure, it’s doubtful if a President Kerry will abandon Iraq. By the time he might enter into office, events there look as though they will be rather firmly settled. However, it is equally certain that he will decline to provide the force which might be requited to give the necessary shove to the regimes in Damascus and Tehran. Iraq will probably be safe, but what of the rest? If John Kerry is elected our enemies will be greatly encouraged and emboldened. In their view, they will have changed the course of an American election. Make no mistake, al-Qaeda, the Iraqi “resistance”, and all of our other enemies (such as the French) will believe they have won a great victory, perhaps their greatest victory. And that is how the world will see it too. John Kerry promises that, if he is elected, America will rest happily upon the idle hill of summer. And yet, elsewhere, others will not be so idle. Those who vote for John Kerry in the hopes of letting, “America be America again,” will get their wish, for a little while. And then it will end. Again. And, the next time, it will be worse. Saturday, July 10, 2004
Yoshi on the Radio
If you want to hear me, I'll be on KSFO San Fransisco at 4PM this evening with Barbara Simpson.
Here's the link: http://www.ksfo.com Just click the "listen now" button. Friday, July 09, 2004
Charge Michael Moore!
When, during the recent Canadian Federal Election, Michael Moore called for people to not vote for the Conservative Party, he violated Canadian elections law.
Wednesday, July 07, 2004
Democrats Heading for Twin Convention Disasters
(Abstract: The Democrats are likely to blow their own convention by allowing the radical voices within their own party to roam out of control, while the Republicans are likely to be strengthened, rather than hurt, by mass protests by the far left at the GOP convention).
It’s clear to me that, unless things are carefully stage managed (and there’s no sign that they are) by John Kerry’s campaign, this month’s Democratic convention in Boston (and the Republican National Convention in New York a little more than a month later) are likely to be serious setbacks to hopes for a Democrat victory this November. From the look of it, the Democratic Party is headed for its own version of the calamitous 1992 Republican convention in Houston, where media attacks on the “extremism” of the tone essentially nullified whatever minor boost George HW Bush gained from the proceedings. Similarly, plans for mass protests at the GOP convention are likely t |