Mark Steyn nails the entire idiocy of the 9-11 "Truth" movement in a single sentence:

There’s a kind of decadence about all this: If 9/11 was really an inside job, you wouldn’t be driving around with a bumper sticker bragging that you were on to it.

Exactly.  If George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were as evil and ruthless as the nutroots often claim, there wouldn't be any nutroots - because their leaders would have long ago had then names jotted down on a list and then dissappeared or, alternatively, been placed on a list nailed to the door of the Capitol and proscribed.

Jihadist Welfare Queens

Mama Khadr is at it again – demanding her and her family’s “rights” as “Canadians.”

The quotation marks in the above paragraph are used advisedly. The fact that we allow this woman and her odious family to continue to masquerade as citizens of this country is living demonstration of just how gutless we truly are. That we haven’t yet run this Jihadist welfare queen and the rest of his disgusting family the hell out of this country tells me (and should tell you) pretty much everything one needs to know about why the Islamist advance against the West has yet to be checked or even effectively countered in most of the West.

For those who are late to the party, I’ll briefly review the history of the Khadr family. Papa Khadr was a senior member of al-Qaeda who took his family to Afghanistan where they hung out with Osama Bin Laden. During the 1990’s, he was arrested for his part in a terrorist attack in Afghanistan, but he was kindly sprung from jail through the intervention of Jean Chretien.

Mommy and Daddy al-Qaeda raised their children to be good little martyrs. The eldest daughter’s wedding was attended by Bin Laden – and she’s reportedly under investigation by the RCMP. Two of the sons – Abdul and Omar – ended in Guantanamo Bay after being captured while fighting on behalf of the terrorists. Abdul flipped and managed to get out of Gitmo by working for the CIA. Omar, who killed an American in combat, is about to be tried for murder. Another son is in jail in Canada, awaiting extradition to the United States.

Eventually, Daddy Khadr was killed while fighting alongside al-Qaeda forces. In the same battle Abdulkareem, the youngest son, was seriously wounded. It was at this point – with her son in need of extensive (and expensive!) medical care that Mommy Khadr discovered her secret affection for Tim Horton’s and the National Hockey League and began to first demand her and her children’s “rights” as “Canadians.”

So, to summarize: the elder Khadr came to Canada in the mid-1970’s and then returned to the Islamic world in the early 1980’s – thereafter returning to Canada only sporadically (most notably for a year of free health treatment when he was wounded by a land mine). Since then he – and his progeny – have devoted themselves to waging war against the West. But, somehow, we are supposed to simply accept that these people – citizens of convenience who have waged war against our nation and civilization – are legitimate “Canadians” and to grin and bear it while they, being natural parasites with no respect for our nation, suck tax dollars out of our system to pay for the surely expensive medical treatment for someone wounded while standing alongside our enemies.

Not only this – after all, this outrage has been allowed to pass practically unnoticed – but now we are supposed to have sympathy for (as the media and the left obviously does) an al-Qaeda solider who, while fighting as an unlawful combatant, treacherously wounded one Allied solider and killed another. Indeed, we are not only supposed to have sympathy – we are actually supposed to devote time and resources (read: my and your money) into freeing him from a fate which is far less than what he has earned. (Once again, I would emphasize the stupidity of, in dealing with terrorists, not simply following the traditional procedure established for dealing with pirates, bandits, spies, and other unlawful combatants captured in combat).

As I see it, if the Khadrs insist on being treated as Canadians, then they ought to bear the full consequences of their actions as Canadians. If they insist that they are Canadians and subject to Canadian law – that is to say, if they admit that they owe a duty of allegiance to Canada – then the whole lot ought to be brought up on charges of High Treason for levying war against Canada and assisting our nation’s enemies. Regrettably, the highest punishment for such a crime would be life (no justly earned rope in sight) and the odds are that our candy-assed Supreme Court would throw out the charges and that then some future government would end up handing each of them a cheque for $10 Million or whatever – so this course is obviously less than ideal.

Failing a successful treason prosecution, the next-best alternative would be to strip the Khadrs of their citizenship and to deport them to wherever we can get to take them. I see no reason why this is impossible – after all, we still spend time stripping eighty-something ex-Nazi camp guards of their citizenship and shipping them off.

What kind of cowards are we? These people are no more Canadian than I’m Armenian. It may well be good that we are, as we are so often told, a kind and generous people. But in this case we are being obscenely abused by some crafty people who understand that we don’t have the courage to act against people who wage war against us, insult us, and defile our country – if they happen t be able to claim the status of fashionable victims.

It makes my blood boil to thing that Abdulkareem Khadr gets to go to high school in Canada and gets “free” medical care (well, I suppose we can forget the quotation marks in this individual case – I somehow doubt that these people have much earned income) to treat the injuries he sustained as a result of his family’s active participation in the cause of our enemies. Every time I think that even a cent of my money has been forcibly taken to go to this terrorist family I turn red with rage.

Rights? The only right that Omar Khadr deserves is that to a strong knot and a short drop.

Wrongfully Convicted Man Sued for Back Child Support

As one of the commenters on this story suggested, Dwayne Dail ought to be nicknamed "Lucky."

In summary: a man is wrongfully convicted of raping a child.  After twenty years in prison, he is finally exonerated and released.  For those twenty long years, he's given a paltry $360,000 in compensation.  He moves to Florida.  His now-adult son moves to live with him.

What happens next?  The mother of his now-adult son (who now lives with him, I might add) sues him for back child support for all of the years he was unjustly jailed.

Not only that, but she asks the court to order Mr. Dail to pay for her to sue him.

The Truth About the Jena Six

For some time, I've being trying to explain to people the absurdity of the uproar about the "Jena 6" - six criminals who assaulted an entirely innocent man and then, somehow, managed to make themselves into victims.  But this article, from the Assistant Editor of the Jena Times lays out the case far better than I ever could.

Here is the most striking portion:

The event on Dec. 4, 2006 was consistently labeled a "schoolyard fight." But witnesses described something much more horrific. Several black students, including those now known as the Jena 6, barricaded an exit to the school's gym as they lay in wait for Justin Barker to exit. (It remains unclear why Mr. Barker was specifically targeted.)

When Barker tried to leave through another exit, court testimony indicates, he was hit from behind by Mychal Bell. Multiple witnesses confirmed that Barker was immediately knocked unconscious and lay on the floor defenseless as several other black students joined together to kick and stomp him, with most of the blows striking his head.

Let's review: this group of thugs ambushed an innocent individual and savagely beat him unconcious.  Yet they're the ones who are getting songs written about them and who are being held up as heroes of civil rights?  What brave martyrs they make!  Though, they're more likely to make Bull Connor than Martin Luther King proud.

The Price of Reasonable Accommodation?

At the Western Standard’s blog, Ezra Levant is taking heat from some for discussing the media’s disgusting (but hardly surprising) failure to ask necessary questions about the driver in the recent Calgary bus crash.

To wit: that the bus driver’s vision may have been obscured by a Hijab or other head scarf which, given the mysterious causes of the accident, might well be particularly relevant.

Unsurprisingly, Bigcitylib is accusing Ezra of racism and making wild allegations. Well, let’s judge for ourselves.

Here is a pair of screen-grabs of footage of the scene:




Naturally, the mavens of political correctness will seek to push this issue to the sidelines and to ignore it altogether because it raises questions which make them uncomfortable. Does any reasonable person really think that wearing a face-obscuring garment and driving a bus full of children are compatible? This is a question which we uniquely must deal with, insofar as I somehow doubt that the Saudis and others have to worry too much about Hijab or Niqab-wearing women driving buses or, well, pretty much anything at all.

I’m curious to see how anyone can defend someone driving a school bus (or any vehicle for that matter) is compatible with wearing something – anything – which obscures their vision in such a manner.

Arar: The Missing Pieces

Once again the odious Maher Arar is in the news, continuing his endless saga of public weeping over his extremely remunerative and allegedly torture-filled stay in a Syrian prison. I would note that I use the word “allegedly” advisedly: so far as has been established, the evidence that Mr. Arar was in fact subjected to “torture” in Syria is entirely circumstantial and based upon the claims of an individual (that is to say, Mr. Arar himself) with an obvious persona and financial interest in exaggerating the hardships that he faced to the greatest possible degree.

As one might expect, Democrats – and Republicans of a certain bent – staged a contest to see who could kow-tow more thoroughly to the alleged victim. To say that the sight filled me with unutterable loathing would be putting it very mildly. My own Grandparents were, despite total innocence, actually deprived of their liberty entirely on account of their race. They had no shady connections or questionable associates. No pattern of suspicious activity. And they were not only imprisoned for substantially longer than Mr. Arar was, but they were also deprived of all of their property. They were unreservedly innocent – but they didn’t get millions of dollars, nor did they spend the rest of their lives attacking the government and undermining its ability to go about its business.

To tell the truth, despite endless news stories – and millions of dollars spent – for some reason we still don’t know the full story about Mr. Arar and why he underwent what he did. The conventional narrative is that, without any basis in fact, the RCMP, CSIS, and American authorities sent an innocent man off to be tortured by the Syrian government – presumably simply on accounts of his religion. The problem I have with this story is that it doesn’t explain why the RCMP, CSIS, and others – who have shown, how shall I say, an unusual solicitude towards those who practice the faith of Mohammed – would single out this particular innocent Moslem for such cruel mistreatment.

On page fifty-one of the factual background to the Arar Commission’s report, we get our first bit of information: Arar first came to the attention when he was observed meeting with Abdullah Almalki on October 12th, 2001. Who is Mr. Almalki? The Arar Commission’s report describes him as a “very religious man.” He also happens to have worked, during the 1990’s, in Afghanistan under the direction of Ahmed Said Khadr, a senior member of al-Qaeda. Of course that doesn’t imply that simply being the employee of a terrorist makes one a terrorist – far from it. One could very well be the employee of a known terrorist, who was at that very time staging terrorist attacks, and be a wholly innocent man. And, most definitely, one can meet with a man who once worked for a terrorist and be wholly innocent of anything altogether.

At roughly the same time, a man named Ahmad Abou El-Maati was also detained in Syria. According to Amnesty International, a well-known source of neocon propaganda, Mr. El-Maati admitted to being acquainted with both Mr. Almalki and Mr. Arar (the former he claimed to have once asked for advice on obtaining a visa, the latter he said he once met at a garage). Later, by Mr. El Maati’s account he claimed – under duress – to have met with both of them in Afghanistan. Given that we can factually establish that such a meeting did not take place, we can ignore the second piece of information. But the first – that Mr. El-Maati, a truck driver by trade, just happened to be acquainted with both Mr. Arar and Mr. Almalki (and, in fact, when shown pictured picked them out) does not seem to be in dispute. More interesting is the fact that Mr. El-Maati’s brother is Amer el-Maati, a known member of al-Qaeda named by the FBI as an individual involved in planning acts of terror against the United States.

Of course, some people believe that Amer el-Maati is innocent. He was defended by Aly Hindy, a long-time friend of the El-Maati family who just happens to be the leader of an Islamic centre founded by a member the terrorist group Ansar al-Islam.

Now, I suppose some will suggest that one can be associated with a suspected terrorist who is the brother of a known terrorist whose family associates with organizations founded by terrorist groups and still be an innocent man. This is undoubtedly true. I am also sure that there will be some who will suggest that the RCMP in some way convinced the Syrians to coerce El-Maati into naming Arar in the first place. However, given that – as late as January of 2002 the RCMP didn’t even have enough evidence to gain a search warrant against Mr. Arar I, for one, remain a sceptic in this area.

And what of those searches? According to the Arar Commission, on January 22nd the RCMP executed searches at seven locations, including the residences of Mr. Almalki, Mr. Almalki’s brother, and Mr. El-Maati. Among the items uncovered during this search were computers, CD’s, and diskettes hidden in walls and rafters (this is all on page seventy-three of the factual background). For some reason, the report fails to disclose the exact content of these items. But, personally, I don’t know that we should read too much into it – plenty of innocent people hide computers in their walls and CD’s in their rafters.

What was on the Arabic tapes and in the Arabic documents that the RCMP found? Shopping lists? Love letters? Or something else. While I, of course, recommend against jumping to any conclusion I would merely say that, if their contents were wholly innocent or otherwise exculpatory, I find it hard to imagine that they would not be discussed.

Significantly, during this period, Almalki’s brother told the RCMP that his brother had a business relationship with Arar. Further, the search uncovered evidence that, “Mr. Almalki and Mr. Arar communicated from time to time, and relied on each other, to some extent, for business information and advice.” Of course, there’s nothing wrong with any of this. In fact, this information appears to be absolutely innocent.

When interviewed a week later, Arar would claim that he was “not a direct friend” of Almalki, despite their being observed spending time together, despite their communications, and despite the fact that Abdullah Almalki had witnessed the lease on Arar’s apartment when he moved to Ottawa in 1997. Of course, that too could all be perfectly innocent – many innocent people, for one reason or another, provide misleading information to the authorities during terrorism investigations.

Amidst this continuing investigation, Arar and his family left for Tunisia towards the end of June 2002. Arar was detained – returning from Tunisia alone – on September 26, 2002. Not, of course, to suggest that this means anything in and of itself. I’m quite sure that plenty of gainfully employed Moslem men and their families took three month vacations in the Islamic world less than a year after September 11th and then returned, alone – leaving their family with their family. A long sojourn in the Tunisian desert can be, I am assured, both relaxing and innocent.

Still: this was barely a year after September 11th. In such an environment, even the innocent ought to be careful. If you get yourselves shot by running around in front of some police officers who’ve just been shot at while shoving your arm inside your hoodie to simulate the shape of a gun… Well, you can’t expect anyone to feel all that sorry for you.

Of course, at this point the Arar Commission throws a bit of a game-changer into their own narrative. On page one hundred and fourteen of the factual background, they suddenly declare that, ‘It is quite possible that the Americans were investigating Mr. Arar prior to 9/11.” They decline to elaborate upon or further explain this observation – even though, if true, it would mean that the United States had some reason to be suspicious of Arar before his October 12th, 2001 meeting with Almalki was observed.

So, who is Maher Arar really? The honest answer is that we still don’t know. It is, of course, entirely possible that an innocent man just happened to be connected to two separate terrorist suspects – and was possibly already under investigation in the United States. It’s possible that some innocent reason exists for Mr. Arar’s effort to disguise his connection to Almalki. It’s possible that the Arar family simply decided that the summer after 9-11 would be a good time for a three month vacation in Tunisia. None of these things are entirely inconsistent with the image of innocence. But, at the same time, they also weave a web of circumstance the authorities could not possibly responsibly ignore.

Arar wasn’t singled out because of his name. He wasn’t chosen because of his race. He wasn’t victimized on account of his religion. What happened to Arar occurred because he was a man with numerous suspicions connections and jarring background details who behaved in suspicious fashion when asked about them. In my opinion, this holds true simply based upon the facts we know that we know – the known knowns, in Donald Rumsfeld’s words.

That still leaves, of course, the unknown knowns which, for numerous reasons, have yet to be disclosed to us.

First – was Arar under investigation in the United States before 9-11? If so, why?

Second – what was on the material recovered during the searches of January 22nd, 2002? In particular – did the RCMP discover Jihadist material of one sort or another?

Third – is there any undisclosed reason why Canadian authorities were suspicious of Arar in the time after 9-11? In particular, were there any comments that he made which indicated Islamist sympathies which were then reported?

The last two items are, I suspect, the missing pieces here. While I believe that the publicly disclosed information about Arar would have been more than enough for me to act against him were I in a position of authority I have trouble believing this to be the case wherein the Canadian authorities are concerned. Given that we know of the searches – but not of the exact contents of what was recovered and given that we know for a fact that the RCMP were asking people as to what they had heard Arar say about the United States and other things – there is ample reason to suspect that, in addition to the connections already established, that the Canadian government might have had other reasons to be concerned about Arar. Moreover, it makes perfect sense that they would decline to disclose this fact, insofar as revealing that they acted, at least partially, on such information would lead to accusations to Islamophobia, political censorship, and so forth.

It may well be that Mr. Arar is, as his supporters claim, an innocent man. But this is no Hollywood tale.

John Howard: He's Still Got It

In Australia, John Howard has managed to get the Liberals back into the fight. The latest polls show the (good) Australian Liberals closing the gap on Labor from 56-44 to 53-47.  Even better news is that the Liberal numbers in marginal seats are looking pretty good.  In 1998, the Coalition (the Liberals and a few other parties) beat Labor despite losing the popular vote 51-49.

It's worth noting that Labor led the polls in the run-up to the elections in 1998, 2001, and 2004. In fact, in 2004, an Australian nemesis of mine took great delight in spending most of the year assuring me that Howard was doomed to defeat.

How does he do it?  It's really very simple: Howard ignores the bleating of the media and, instead, goes in for the kill on key issues time and time again.  And, of course, his Liberals are also relentless in their assault against the opposition.

Anti-Indie Pop Fascism Marches On

So basically, the other day U.S. Customs seized a hard drive that a courier was attempting to carry across the border with some new songs by Death Cab for Cutie on it. Now, naturally, the paranoid elements of the left are suggesting that it was a case of fascist censorship, or whatever.

It's probably worth noting that, apparently, for whatever reason the employee who was carrying the hard drive was refused entry into the United States - for reasons which aren't made at all clear in the article. Having crossed the U.S. border many, many times at the same crossing (the Peach Arch) I feel confident in saying that, in general, the US border guards don't turn people away without a reason and insofar as there was some reason why the person carrying the hard drive was refused entry the seizure of said hard drive is probably somehow related.

But, anyways, this really stood out in the article itself:

Walla said he believed the confiscation was random, but Barsuk and some music publications hinted it may have been more than a coincidence that such a political album -- it includes songs criticizing the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina, the Iraq war and the firings of U.S. attorneys by former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales -- was seized.

Political protest music is one thing - but, really - a protest song about the firing of a few US Attorneys? WTF? Never mind that, if you've ever heard anything by Death Cab, this is all the more bizarre.

In general, this is yet another sign of the global left's descent into insane paranoia. Is it reasonable for any sane person to believe that American border guards sit around listening to audio files on computer hard drives for anti-George Bush lyrics? Really? Never mind - are there no editors at the Associated Press? No one to ask if there's a newsworthy angle in offering an outlet for the narcissistic delusions of some emo musician?

There’s no story here, other than the non-story that these people are obviously, clinically speaking, crazy. It’s pretty hard to have a reasonable argument about anything with people who seriously believe (and report!) that the government is working overtime to attempt to suppress the revolution which might otherwise be incited by indie pop protest songs about Alberto Gonzales.

The article is worth reading, insofar as it provides an archetypical example of the "false balance" technique which the leftist media loves to adopt. Namely - print a bizarre and entirely unverifiable allegation, then seek balance by quoting someone denying said allegation halfway through the article. Typical.

The Cold Civil War

In Maclean's, Mark Steyn wonders if America is engaged in a "Cold Civil War" - that is to say, a civil war without direct confrontation.  I've been wondering the same thing for some time.

Indeed, I've been asking a simple question without getting a good answer: what if 2008 ends up being like 2000?  What are the chances that it would result in blood being spilled?  I would guess that they're pretty high - certian elements of the left are growing daily more violent and more distanced from reality.

I think that there's another - partially hopeful, partially gloomy - analogy to describe the present situation.  While we hear a lot of loose talk about "the fall of the American Empire" a la the fall of Rome - I think that the United States today is far closer to the Roman Republic at the end of its life than it is to the Roman Empire.  Niall Ferguson likes to call the United States an "empire in denial."  I think that's actually very apt.

Like Rome, circa the first century BC, the institutions of the Republic have been corrupted by a toxic brew of extreme personal ambition and misguided populism.  Few, deep down, have confidence in their ability to fairly and correctly settle the problems of the day.  Similarly, like Rome, the United States posesses great latent power which it is unable to effectively use because of the failure of its political institutions.

I'd note, in the interest of full disclosure, that this argument - to some extent - is raised in Orson Scott Card's novel "Empire" without really taking a position for or against or going into detail.

Dealing With Communism and Missing the Point

My friends at the National Review have an extended discussion going on the Long Telegram, the present state of the Global War on Terrorism, and the advisability and logistics of confronting the Soviet Union in the period immediately after the Second World War.

It began with a related question – why has there been no “Long Telegram” in this war? That is to say, no galvanizing and transcendental document which lays out simply and clearly the path of victory. In short (I mean it, because the rest of this is very long) there’s been no “Long Telegram” in this war because there was one in the last war. Kenan’s document and the strategy that it laid out – and how it was followed in the years thereafter – exhausted the American people and left them incapable of following such a simple and direct strategy in a state of relative unity.

Political life, I’ve often said, is kind of like a locked steering wheel. When parked, you can shift it only slightly from one side to another – and that with a high degree of force. When unlocked, however, one can spin the wheel wildly to one side or another before choosing to lock it again. When so locked, it will again move only slightly – but from its new centre.

The choice here wasn’t between either ordering Eisenhower east in June 1945 and the “Long Twilight Struggle” of the Cold War. The other option – the best option – runs somewhere in-between. In the day, they called it Rollback.

What could have been doing in 1945-1946? Nuclear production could have been ramped up. Military production could have been vastly increased – many of the weapons which were due at the end of the war were, frankly, amazing. Another two to three years of research and development within the West at the rate of 1945 would have put the weapons of 1955 or so into Allied hands by the end of that period of time. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union – cut off from foreign assistance – would be lucky to get as far as they did in our timeline.

Yes, the American and British people were exhausted. And so, just like in 1918, they made a conscious decision not to finish the job – not to put the screws in while they had the chance and, thus, they paid a terrible price in the years that followed. “Republic’s cant fight wars,” lamented the Civil War diarist Mary Chestnut. She was at least half right.

Combine high-level military spending, a far more aggressive approach to Soviet espionage, constant covert warfare against communism wherever it might be found, and finally an ultimate policy of waging a war of liberation against the Soviet Union itself and you get, in the end, a chance – if things move fast enough – to create the kind of world order – a true Pax Americana – which could have lasted for centuries.

Of course, it probably wouldn’t even have been necessary to launch a war against the USSR itself without provocation. A sufficiently aggressive policy would have pushed the Soviet Union into a corner from which war seemed the only escape and, failing that, any of a thousand clashes along the bloody frontiers of communism could have provided a chance for war.

Imagine it as a more aggressive version of the Truman Doctrine: “The United States will resist, by the use of force – including all of the weapons in its arsenal – the expansion of communism anywhere in the world.”

Such noble words would, of course, have had to be backed by force. This would have been simple enough. Get a map, find an encampment of communist insurgents somewhere in the world, and then drop a nuclear bomb on it. Too often, we forget the psychology of war. People don’t fight because they’re machines – people fight because they think they have something to gain out of it or, alternatively, because they think that they have no choice. Give people a choice of practically-certain death or relative peace and, in general, most will opt for the latter. Those deranged individuals who will continue to struggle in the name of odious and despised causes even when death is the only possible reward will, in general, sort themselves out easily enough.

My point is that, with sufficient will, communism could have been defeated far earlier and more easily than it was. And, if it was done sufficiently early, it might well have been done in time to preserve the greatest force for civilization that the world has ever seen: the British Empire. Had the British Empire survived – and indeed been revitalized and enriched in a post-war world – who knows what troubles might have been saved.

Delay affords us nothing, but psychological comfort for the cautious. What could have been settled with a couple of dozen nuclear bombs in the 1940’s instead took fifty years to sort out and left a bigger mess than mere radioactive fallout in its wake.

Had the United States adopted a more aggressive posture, thousands of problems could have been ended before we were even aware of them. Imagine the trouble that a more-assertive Truman might have saved us during Korea! I sincerely believe that history will record that the failure of the United States to use nuclear weapons against China when their forces entered the conflict in Korea was one of the greatest mistakes – and the greatest tragedies – in history. Not only might the Cold War have been shortened, but the regime itself – and the Chinese power we face today – might also have been forever destroyed.

If you think about it – taking the long struggle as a model for this war is kind of defeatist. Taking forty-five years to defeat an enemy – and in the end achieving victory largely through economic attrition – is the very definition of winning ugly. God help us if we give Islamism four and a half decades to accumulate power within safe sanctuaries.

Our response in 2001 – also in retrospect a tragic error – was driven by both the caution built into our statesmen and institutions by the Cold War and, further, by the various cultural pathologies that the long fight against the disease of communism has left us fighting with. Imagine our enemies as viral or bacterial. If we beat them early on – using the maximum measures available to us – we’re likely to pass through the threat unscathed. If, on the other hand, for some misguided reason we allow the disease to ravage the body and, in the end, defeat it largely because we’re larger and stronger than it – some effects are likely to be long-lasting.

Yes, we won that long war but, in so doing, we hollowed ourselves out and were stripped of much of our own faith in ourselves. Even by September 11th – a decade after the Soviet Union itself passed into history – we continued to struggle with the lingering after-effects of the disease. Most notably, the Cold War had left us with a situation where a large part of our political and cultural elites had been turned against the nations and civilization to which they nominally owed allegiance. The fifth column, built up by years of communist propaganda and subversion – even if most of its adherents are nothing more than useful idiots exploited by other, more malicious, individuals – has proven to be one of our most deadly foes in the years since.

Moreover, the long years had built into us a caution and slowness to move and anger which resulted in a failure to effectively exploit the immediate aftermath of the assault. The immediate instinct in the hours after September 11th in many of the most responsible minds in the land was to make sure that no one blamed any particular group – and to prevent hate crimes and the like. Thus was it that the true nature of the enemy was distorted and omitted by those who piously adhered to multicultural dogma. Here were the needs of the many sacrificed for the needs of the few.

While I’ve yet to read “World War IV” – I think that the gravest mistake in using the Cold War as a model for this war is thinking that we have another forty years in which to fight it. The monster growing on the other side of the Pacific is going to have to be confronted sooner or later – and I don’t see any way that that match is going to be postponed anywhere close to that long.

What we need to be looking for here is a chance to unlock the wheel and to kick this war into a higher gear. What is needed now is raw and decisive force.

None Dare Call It...

"Timing of genocide resolution questioned" is the headline of an article in Time Magazine on the Democratic House resolution about the Armenian genocide.  That's a mild way of putting it.  Why, you might ask, has this resolution come up now?  Time doesn't quite come out and say it - but I will.  This is a deliberate attempt to insult Turkey in order to cause a breach between the United States and that nation which will, in turn, undermine the ability of the United States to win in Iraq.  As I recall, there used to be a name for acts designed to give aid and comfort to the enemies of a nation.

An Afghanistan Commission? Bah.

Frankly, I’m deeply disappointed by the reports that the Prime Minister will be appointing a commission to examine Canada’s options in Afghanistan. In particular, I have a strong aversion to the idea of warfighting by consensus – that’s just asking to lose. Seriously, while I’m sure Pamela Wallin is a (insert generic complement here), does anyone seriously think that she has anything of value to contribute in the field of military strategy?

Of course, perhaps I’m being overly harsh. We can’t forget how General Grant’s military plan was devised by a committee led by Horace Greeley and Charles F. Adams – or how the plans for Operation Overlord were originally drawn up by Walter Winchell.

I’m deeply mystified by the idea that the government ought to consider the Afghan mission a political liability. Last I checked, the Tories were (at their highest) at 35% in the polls and the Afghan campaign stood at around 50%. Even if the campaign’s popularity were to descend to the level of the Iraq War in the United States – that is to say, with support somewhere in the high 30’s or low 40’s – amid our present political topography an election fought amid such numbers would probably still yield a Conservative majority or, at the very least, a stronger minority.

Not, please God, that I am suggesting that we ought to fight wars according to the dictates of Ipsos-Reid. It is a continuing source of amazement to me that we consider the views of a homemaker and part-time hairdresser from Peoria, Illinois on Iraq or the angry and ill-informed opinions of some electrician’s apprentice from Langley, British Columbia on Afghanistan to be in the least bit worthy of consideration.

Then Sue, Johnny

Now, I'm not a lawyer like some people but, so far as I know, a story which is "false" and "made up"  rises to the level of actual malice on the part of a news organization.  One might think that a highly-successful litigator might well take action against a news organization which was spreading a vicious and entirely untrue libel across the entire world.

I'm just saying.  It's probably also worth reading his exact words carefully:

"The story is false. It's completely untrue, ridiculous"

"I've been in love with the same women for 30-plus years and as anybody who's been around us knows, she's an extraordinary human being, warm, loving, beautiful, sexy and as good a person as I have ever known"

Just reading it very carefully - I don't see anywhere where he specifically denies any sort of relationship with the woman in question.  And, further, reading all of this in a lawyerly way, "the story is false" could mean any number of things.  Similarly, telling us how much he loves his wife isn't actually all that relevant to the accusation at hand.

The Best (Expletive Deleted) Interview Ever

James Oddo for Mayor - that's all I can say about this wonderful, wonderful interview. I had a bad day - but this put a smile right on my face. Warning - the video probably isn't for the easily offended.

But, yeah, right on. The blonde isn't bad either.

John Edwards Scandal?

So, we have a story which is slowly seeping into public life - rumours of an affair by Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards.  Now, naturally, the National Enquirer isn't, in and of itself, sufficent proof of anything - but there's a little more on this.  Just for a start, Mickey Kaus seems to be pretty sure of it .

Most of the speculation swirls around a woman named Rielle Hunter (a forty-four year-old filmmaker, formerly named Lisa Druck).  A few weeks ago, Sam Stein over at the Huffington Post began asking questions about the odd disappearance of a series of web videos that she directed for the Edwards Campaign - making $114,461 in the process. 

All of this is interesting in that it ties back into a brief item that ran on Page Six in the New York Post about a month and a half ago:

WHICH political candidate enjoys visiting New York because he has a girlfriend who lives downtown? The pol tells her he'll marry her when his current wife is out of the picture.

Leaving aside the grim implications of anticipating a moment when "his current wife is out of the picture" - there's this from an interview posted on Ms. Hunter's recently-deleted website ("RH" is Ms. Hunter):

JM: But I'm saying it's more extreme. I'm just curious why...

RH: ...I'm in New York?

JM: I suppose our reasons could overlap. Let me give you an example. Here in New York, a premium is placed on what I do. It's one of the few places in the country where being a writer is respected and admired.

RH: Oh so you're here for the love�for the recognition and the love?

JM: It's not why I'm here. I'm playing devil's advocate. But I like being here more than in LA, partly because in LA what I do is not terribly highly valued. So you tell me what you're doing, and I would think it's not particularly valued here in New York.

RH: What you were just saying is very human. We're naturally going to be drawn to places where we're loved.

Now, obviously, there are a lot of women in New York - and this is nothing more than circumstantial.  But, still, it's interesting.

The Enquirer article, which holds back the name of the woman alleged to be involved, mentions that:

"The affair started about 18 months ago," a friend says the woman confessed to her. "When they met at a bar, sparks flew immediately.

Now, of course, there are a lot of politicians and women that this could apply to.  But, what's interesting, is in a Newsweek article from last December:

The Webisodes are the brainchild of Rielle Hunter, a filmmaker who met Edwards at a New York bar where Edwards was having a business meeting.

Actually, in view of what's being discussed now, this (from the same article) is probably even more amusing:

In the midst of a short theme sequence that begins each Webisode, the camera lingers over the former senator's behind as he tucks a starched white shirt into his pants.

So, what we have here is circumstantial - but it strikes me as pretty strong.

1) We have rumours of an affair going back sometime.  The first public hints appear as far back as August.

2) What circumstantial details we have - New York, meeting in a bar, wife anticipated to be out of the picture - match up here.

3) We have a strange and rushed effort to cover up these entirely innocuous videos - with the Edwards campaign attempting to control access to them.

4) We have a mystery party archiving these videos and then later anonymously releasing them - indicating that someone knew enough about something to decide to keep a copy of these things lying around just in case.

Now, I'll note, I don't think that this has any real bearing on John Edwards ability to be President.  I think that John Edwards should't be President because he's a scum-sucking, ambulance chasing fraud and phony, not because he might be cheating on his cancer-stricken wife. 

Health Care for Millionaires

Unsurprisingly, the left has responded to the revelation that the “needy” family showcased by their recent radio address on health care actually owns assets approaching $1 Million with utter rage at the idea of anyone “attacking a twelve year-old.”

To which, the obvious responses are:

1) No one’s “attacking a twelve year-old.”
2) If you don’t want a twelve year-old to be even remotely within the line of fire, then don’t employ them as political human shields.

As a side note – it seems possible that this blog actually helped to move the story. My personal blog entry is the first item to pop up (chronologically) on the Google blog search for “icwhatudo.” And, speaking of our enterprising anonymous reporter, he’s back with some comments on a New York Times story on the issue.

In summary:

1) It’s impossible to dispute the central holding of the original story – namely, that the Frost family holds substantial assets whose value exceed, at the very least, half a million dollars – and which, looking at the numbers, probably approach $1 Million.
2) The Times and others are seeking to dishonestly spin this story by, among other things:
- Disguising the true value of the Frosts’ assets by presenting old “property assessments” as reflective of the real value of their property.
- Performing rhetorical slights of hand, such as noting that the claimed granite countertops in the Frost home are actually concrete – without noting that concrete and granite countertops are substantially the same price.

This whole exercise demonstrates the inherent absurdity of so many government programs. Just like farm subsidies meant to help struggling family farmers end up going to the boutique ranches of celebrities, here we see how a program supposedly designed to help those who cannot afford health insurance instead is used to underwrite the lifestyle of a fairly well-off family who, for some reason, made the choice not to buy health insurance and are now asking the rest of America’s taxpayers to pay the price for their own personal irresponsibility.

Of course, in a sense, this should remind us just how fortunate Americans are – they’re only compelled to pay taxes for some free riders, instead of the whole bloody lot.

Dion's Surrender

My earlier prediction of a fall election was predicated on the idea that M. Dion was, at the very least, a man with a modicum of courage and sense. And, indeed, while it's still possible that Dion will vote for the Throne Speech - and then bring the government down over some specific issue - it now seems likely that the fall will bear witness to an unending series of humiliating surrenders by our friend Stephanie. Though, for the time being, I suspect that the Liberals will grin and bear it. A rougher and more cynical person than I might suggest that the Liberals should have expected such a fate when they elected an unrepentant citizen of France as their leader.

In all seriousness, though, if Dion really backs down as proposed here, he’s done. He’ll be safe through Christmas, because no alternative leader wants to be stuck in his strategic position over the long fall session. Like the Confederacy in 1865, the Liberals are now demoralized and divided – and Harper means to crush each pocket of resistance. Ignatieff, Rae, and the rest will leave Dion to preside over the ceremonies at Appomattox. But, at Christmas or shortly thereafter, a consensus will be reached (if it hasn’t already) that Dion will have to leave more or less immediately. And then he’ll go because, if this is any indication, he’s not likely to fight particularly hard for his job.

If they fall down on the Throne Speech, we’re done with the threat of an election for the year – barring events. Dion – a poor communicator with a reputation as indecisive – is going to have a very hard time explaining to anyone during the course of an election campaign why, if whatever measure he opposed was so odious, he voted for it before he voted against it.

It’s fight or fold for Dion, now.

“Poor” Family Owns Home, Business, Etc.

So, in a typically cynical bit of sappy and brainless emotional indulgence, the Democrats recruited some twelve year-old kid to deliver their Saturday radio address. His name is Graeme Frost and his family is from Maryland. Predictably, he told a sob story (written for him by Senate staffers) about how his hard working parents need other taxpayers to pay for his health coverage.

Then icwhatudo on Free Republic decided to pull some records.

So, to summarize –what he found out about this poor and needy family. It:

- Sends their kids to an expensive private school.

- Own a commercial building which was purchased for $190,000 in 1999. Even using modest figures, it would have to be worth at least $300,000 today.

- Owns a 3000 square foot home, in an area where a 2000 square foot home recently sold for $500,000.

Indeed, working from a Baltimore Sun article on the subject – which mentions that their mortgage payment is $1200 – we can guess that their mortgage on the house is roughly $200,000.

In other words – taking into account the value of the home, the value of the father’s business, the value of the commercial property they own, and so forth minus their mortgage and whatever they might owe on the commercial property (and other sundry debts) an educated guess would suggest that this family has a net worth of somewhere in the neighbourhood of $500,000.

And they want the rest of the American people to foot their bill for their health care?

These People are Crazy

Captain Ed reports on a simply bizarre incident that occured in Pennsylvania the other day.

But for nearly three dozen youngsters from the U-Gro child care center, located just off the president's motorcade route on Stony Battery Road, it was all about waving hand-drawn flags, singing songs and holding banners welcoming to Lancaster one of the most powerful men in the world.

"What an opportunity this is for our children," center director Liz Burkhard said while herding children ages 4 to 6 into a compact, orderly row behind the yellow police tape lining Stony Battery at Church Street.

One group of protesters quickly descended on the happy cluster, however, chanting and singing their own songs to drown out the children's voices.

"Stop brainwashing children to support a president who doesn't deserve our support," one man yelled through a bullhorn. Others told the kids to "educate yourselves" and said "your parents are killing you" by supporting Bush and the war.

These "people" are fucking crazy. There's no nicer way of saying it. How utterly deranged and depraved do you have to be to descend upon children whose offense was to greet the President of the United States with hand-made flags and to start SCREAMING AT THEM WITH BULLHORNS? This is so utterly beyond anyone's definition of acceptable political discourse that I'm really just staggered.

I'd also note that he article's headline is, "Bush visit draws vocal mix of supporters, protesters" - can you imagine how the media would have covered the story if it was a group of conservative protestors so foully abusing children who turned out to greet a liberal politician?

Enough, Mother

When did it become possible for politicians to pick up votes by emulating the behaviour of the overbearing mothers of children we all pitied in school? Whenever I see politicians vow to address obesity or ‘bullying” or whatever else is the fashionable cause of the day I just inwardly shudder. “Shut up and go away,” I think. Well, not quite – I had to clean up the language quite a bit to make it family friendly.

Though, even if one believes that governments ought to focus on such urgent issues as getting kids to run in circles, McGunity’s proposals and claims are astonishingly pathetic. Twenty minutes of physical exercise each day? I’d like to hear from some parents how that works out in practice. Being just eleven years removed from elementary school (and assuming that not too much has changed) I imagine that the time is mostly eaten up in the exit and re-entry into the school and, in any case, isn’t marked by anything resembling useful exercise.

Now I see that he’s promising to fight obesity by expanding high school intramural sports. That would be an effective strategy, if the people inclined to participate in expanded sports were, you know, not the kind of people who already participate in sports. The only way that they’re going to get the rest of those kids to join in is if they add Halo, Facebook, and text messaging to the list.

Of course, some wag will respond to this by linking one of my pictures on Facebook and some place and pointing out that I’m fat myself, which I will fully concede. Though, I note, I myself have lately begun to attend the gym on a substantially more regular basis – motivated by the news that Jenna Fischer and her husband have separated. Perhaps there’s something to be taken from that. Though, I admit, that’s probably a highly individualized form of motivation without any general applicability.

Ron Paul: Modern Copperhead

We have a problem here.

Of course, many of you know it already. But, I think the time has come to make it official: Ron Paul’s campaign for the Presidency now presents a serious challenge to those who love liberty and seek its preservation against the Islamist assault on our civilization. It is no longer sufficient to simply dismiss those who support him as a motley collection of nuts and morons. It’s not that I deny that many of them are – it’s just that nuts and morons get to vote too.

It is fashionable for conservatives to dismiss Ron Paul, citing his flat poll numbers – just a few percentage points in most polls. I believe this to be a mistake – not only are national polls worthless in assessing the results of individual primaries, but they also fail to consider support that polls – especially polls partisan primary polling – might fail to pick up. While there’s absolutely zero chance that Paul is going to win the Republican nomination, there is a very high probability that he will be able to raise enough money to remain in the race and get enough votes to continue to receive media coverage. Worse still, it is entirely possible that he will win a sufficient number of delegates to cause trouble during the Republican National Convention (even, say, thirty could be a serious annoyance and disruption) and that he will go on to run as a third party candidate. There is also, if Senator Clinton secures the Democratic nomination early, the possibility that the internet-savvy leftist nutroots might organize in order to give Paul the illusion of more support.

Of all opposing forces, fifth columnists are the hardest to defeat. And that is what makes Ron Paul such a serious threat – because he is nominally a “Republican” he gets to go up on stage with the serious candidates for the Republican nomination and to spew his garbage all over the stage.

Who is Ron Paul? For a name that we hear so often (at least online), I don’t think most of us know much about him. He’s been a member of Congress for twenty years. In that time, he’s failed to achieve a single item of note. Instead, he’s dedicated himself to fringe causes – such as abolishing the Federal Reserve and returning to the Gold Standard. In the meantime, he’s helped to ensure his own re-election in part by securing pork projects for his own district while maintaining his ideological purity by voting against them on final passage.

In short, in three decades in public life, Ron Paul has shown himself to be a nothing more than a kook politician noteworthy primarily for his uselessness and pointless lectures. He is, it must be conceded, a strange vessel to contain such support as he now commands.

So? Why have many chosen him? Simply put, because he’s the candidate who has managed to capture the imagination of a certain sort of person on the war. The thing to remember about Americans – and watching Democratic debates it is easy to forget – it is that they are an unusually patriotic people. Even many (though not all) of the people working to bring about the defeat of the United States in the War on Terrorism (and before that in the Vietnam War – and long before that in the Civil War) think of themselves as American patriots. What Ron Paul – and all of his declarations about George Washington, non-intervention, the Constitution, and so forth – offers is a way for some people to feel that they are patriotically seeking to bring about the defeat of the United States and the victory of its enemies in a war.

When the Copperhead Democrats sought to undermine the Union during the Civil War they, much like Ron Paul today, claimed that they were acting in the defense of the Constitution – which they accused Abraham Lincoln of destroying. Like Ron Paul, the leader of the Copperheads, Clement Vallandigham, railed against debt, taxation, and the loss of rights under the Constitution. Lincoln responding by having Vallandigham exiled to the Confederacy but, alas, I don’t think there’s any chance of President Bush handing Ron Paul a one-way ticket to Tehran.

Who does support Ron Paul? I am told that the “Don’t Tase Me, Bro” guy is one of his Legionaries. The base of his support, it is not at all difficult to conclude, is drawn from the vast ocean of “slight unmeritable men” about whom it is hard not to wonder, as Antony did of Lepidus in Julius Caesar whether it is really fitting, political power being divided such as it is, that they ought to have an equal share.

Obviously, individual political equality is a basis of modern democracy but, nonetheless, it is probably worth wondering why we ought to consider the beliefs and views of, for example, 9-11 Conspiracy Theorists to be of any merit at all. It is not really possible to reason with people who adhere to a worldview for entirely irrational reasons.

Whenever I see Ron Paul’s supporters, my mind flashes (though not for any pharmacological reason, I assure you) back to a time that I saw pro-drug crusader Marc Emery speak during the 2001 provincial election. Every time the man spoke his dirty and confused supporters – who uniformly reeked of pot – would scream their approval, even when he made statements (abolish welfare, radically cut taxes, and the like) which would not ordinarily meet with the approbation of dishevelled hippes. In each case, an unlikely figure was grabbed onto by a motley crowd of fringe fools because of the appeal of their position on a single issue. In one case, drugs and in this case the war.

But, we cannot simply dismiss the fringe. In that 2001 Election, the Marijuana Party got 3.2% of the vote across the Province of BC and that was without a galvanizing issue like a war. Well-organized kooks can cause problems. It is tempting to simply dismiss the 9-11 Truthers, the people who see Black Helicopters’ everywhere, and the rest of that crowd as irrelevant. But, sadly, they aren’t. Individually they don’t matter but, if they can gather in once place, they are… Well… A problem.

Why We’ll Have a Fall Election

I think that the conventional wisdom these days is that the Liberals will find some way of dodging voting against the Throne Speech, regardless of what it contains, in order to avoid fighting a fall election on what can only be described as disadvantageous terms for the Liberal Party. Frankly, as is so often the case, I think that this wisdom is wrong – the efforts of some (such as MP Byron Wilfert to float ways of avoiding an election) notwithstanding.

You might ask how I arrived at this opinion, as you are entitled to do. Put simply, I would sum up my belief as follows: while it may not be in the interests of the Liberal Party to have an election this fall, it is very much in the interests of Stephane Dion to have an election this fall – and he’s the one who ultimately gets to make the call.

Why would Stephane Dion want an election now? Put simply – it’s probably the only chance he has to ever become the Prime Minister of Canada. Perhaps more, it’s the only way he can solidify his tenuous grasp on the leadership of the Liberal Party. While, at the moment, I don’t see any scenario for a General Election that ends with M. Dion in 24 Sussex, we cannot forget the old dictum that anything is possible during a campaign. At the moment, Dion’s best plan is Napoleon’s battle plan (by way of Aaron Sorkin): show up and see what happens.

After all, what’s the alternative? Dion was the fourth (and much further down the list if you count the many people who declined to run) choice of the Liberals, selected without much thought or consideration simply because all of the other major candidates were in some way unacceptable to a large group within the party. In essence, he’s the movie that they rented at 11PM on a Saturday when all of the bestsellers were out. If he doesn’t pan out, most Liberals won’t hesitate before they pop him out, slap him in the case, close him up, and never think of him again.

If Dion tries to wait a year, the odds are pretty good that he will be out. His opponents barely even sheathed their knives before they drew them again. A lot of his supporters are already looking for cover. For Dion, this is now or never. He must not stand still. He cannot step backwards. So it must be forward.

In addition to the possibility that Harper will stumble in some spectacular way (see Tory, John), there’s another pair of linked thoughts which must already have crossed his mind. Simply put, Dion’s greatest weaknesses as a leader are probably fixable over time. True, at the moment he’s hobbled by his inability to communicate effectively in the English language – but he’s a smart guy, and I’m sure he can get better with time. The same hold for his management of his own caucus and his general abilities as a leader. Given enough time, these problems can be dealt with.

Dion probably doesn’t even have to win a fall election to come out a winner. At this point, with expectations having been sufficiently lowered, it seems probable that – with some skilful manoeuvring – Dion might well be able to hold onto the leadership after holding the Tories to another minority – an act which might buy him some serious time insofar as it seems likely that, after yet another election, every party would be in need of several years to recover.