Saturday, March 08, 2003
Protest - Went to the capital today with the kids. We got there late - about fifteen minutes before the protest was over - but caught the tail end of the "Liberate Iraq" meeting on the capitol mall.
One of the organizers told me they'd given away hundreds of "Liberate Iraq" signs. I saw quite a few people walking around with them.
My kids and I each grabbed one, and stood on the median on Constitution Avenue for a bit. One lice-eaten cretin took the liberty of flipping off my 11-year-old daughter. Classy folks, those liberals.
Hopefully the Liberate Iraq group will be posting photos soon.
And - please pass this along - there's going to be a protest on the 494/France Overpass from 4:30-6:30PM this coming Thursday - liberals aren't the only ones that can take over bridges! I plan on being there. Hope to see you tehre, too - let me know if you plan on attending, maybe we can have a "Blog Corner" and get some pictures taken!
posted by Mitch Berg 3/8/2003 08:29:54 PM
Jitters - The Great National Self-Doubt has set in. It's everywhere:
However you read the tea leaves, these are hairy days for the administration.
And yet they have a lot of great role models to choose from in getting their agenda, and the nation they govern, through these times.
Some pundits, like Minnesota's Jeff Fecke, talk about the president's approval rating, not remembering the depths to which Ronald Reagan's approval dipped; in January of 1983, his approval ration was 42%, while his negatives were up around a phenomenal 54%, according to a contemporary ABC/WaPo poll.
His victory in the Cold War was eight years in the future - and by no means assured; most pundits declared the USSR here to stay. The economy was still sweating out the biggest correction since the Depression, punctuated by oil prices that, in 2003 dollars, were around $90 a barrel (again due to Iraq!). The media, in those days when "talk radio" didn't mean "conservative", "Fox News" was a British hunting magazine, and the Internet just connected universities, was stacked against him like Persians against Leonidas. My own liberal beliefs were starting to crumble at the time, but I still feared Reagan - and remember rejoicing at the thought that he was looking like a one-term president at the time. Things looked that dire for Reagan back then.
22 months later, he won the biggest landslide in American history. What happened?
He stayed on message. Free Enterprise works. Tax Cuts will improve the economy. We'll thank ourselves for confronting the USSR later.
Freedom Works.
Two years later still, Reagan faced an equally grave test; at Rejkjavik, he confronted Mikhail Gorbachev; he refused to draw down US battlefield nukes in Europe, waved the Strategic Defense Initiative in the Russians' (and his critics') faces, and stood his ground against the most intense criticism of his career. Some liberals predicted imminent nuclear holocaust.
Four years later, after his successor won in one of the five biggest landslides in American history, the USSR collapsed. Freedom broke out throughout Eastern Europe, and much of the rest of the world as well. Why?
Because Reagan stayed on message. We'll thank ourselves for confronting the USSR, and soon. Screw the pundits, Communism's done for. Rumors of their long-term survival are greatly exaggerated.
Freedom Works.
Bush's challenges are immense. But the same answers still apply. Hold the line on tax cuts. Press the line forward on those who'd kill us. Don't write off a huge chunk of humanity because they're ruled by Islamofascists. Stand up for America.
Freedom works.
Bush isn't Ronald Reagan. It doesn't matter. He doesn't have to be Reagan. He just has to remember the message.
Freedom works.
Ugly Gringoes - Glenn Reynolds has this wonderful quote on the ugly-American blunderrings of...
...the NYTimes and the "internationalist" anti-war movement:It's interesting to contrast Bush's careful courtesy toward nations who don't deserve it, with the language that the antiwar folks -- who are supposedly the internationalists -- use to describe the rather large coalition that Bush has put together. Remind me again -- who is supposed to be blundering and insensitive here?
posted by Mitch Berg 3/8/2003 09:33:59 AM
Hey, Ho, Let's Go - As I've noted often in this space, it's sometimes very strange being a conservative rock and roller.
That's why I periodically throw my hands to the heavens and thank my creator for the National Review's Kevin Cherry. This week; his review of the new Ramones tribute album:The Ramones were unlike other punk bands in that they, especially Joey, had a real sense of melody. Their favorite artists included Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, Phil Spector's stable of groups, and the Beatles...(Spector would also produce the album, End of the Century, when he shot at Dee Dee, a fact noted repeatedly this year.) This separated them from the other raucous bands of the time, like the MC5, the Velvet Underground, Iggy, and the Stooges. The Ramones were tough, but they were hummable, too. In addition, they had a sense of humor about themselves and about their lives. Their early material was a reflection of the times in which they lived: songs about mental illness, apathy, boredom, drugs, and girls were the norm. They would have the occasional political outburst — conservative Johnny vetoed Joey and Dee Dee's attempt to release a song called "Bonzo Goes to Bitburg" (it was retitled, "My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down") — but for the most part, their songs were simply about life in America, as dysfunctional as the nation had become. They were, in a way, rock journalists: neither approving nor decrying, always describing, in very short bursts of melodic energy.
It's hard to describe to people today exactly what the Ramones were to someone growing up in the late seventies, especially in a place like North Dakota, where only the most commercial, commercial radio fare ever saw airplay. Fun, liberating, utterly un-"Rock".
"Like Green Day, only fun", I used to tell my stepson.
posted by Mitch Berg 3/8/2003 09:00:12 AM
Wanker Alert - As if on cue, there's an Impeachment movement.
No, not among PETA members. In Congress:At least one senior House Democrat has produced a draft impeachment resolution. It accuses Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Attorney General John Ashcroft of more than a dozen "high crimes and misdemeanors," including bombing civilians in Afghanistan and constitutional violations in the domestic war on terrorism.
The motion is specious, of course - it's a protest, "sending a message" as liberals are wont to do.
The resolution also charges Bush with "threatening the independence and sovereignty of Iraq by belligerently proclaiming an intention to change its government by force while preparing to assault Iraq in a war of aggression." A congressional aide provided the resolution's text on the condition of anonymity.
Rep. Danny K. Davis, a Chicago Democrat who has discussed impeachment with his colleagues in the congressional black and progressive caucuses, said a resolution probably would be introduced in the event of "a full-fledged military effort" that occurs without new congressional war resolutions.
"There are some [lawmakers] who obviously are more eager to jump hard, and then there are others who probably aren't even thinking this way at all" about impeachment, Davis said. "I'd probably be in the middle."
But it's such an obvious payback for the Clinton years. One wonders if they're looking for a blue dress as we speak.
posted by Mitch Berg 3/8/2003 08:26:20 AM
Friday, March 07, 2003
Lame - Big day of job-hunting today.
I'll post more tonight, and/or one of my customary weekend salvoes.
Til then, please accept Jeff Fecke's excellent fisking of Syl Jones as a token of my esteem...
posted by Mitch Berg 3/7/2003 03:07:14 PM
Quote Of The Night - Lileks, on the Press Conference:
My favorite question came from Terry Moran - and whoever named him bought the wrong vowel.
posted by Mitch Berg 3/7/2003 04:14:10 AM
Thursday, March 06, 2003
Press Conference - The President looked and sounded tired. He should. This has got to be an amazingly difficult time.
He was on the most important message, though; before one talks about "final chances", one must remember that Resolution 1441 was a final chance - the last of many final chances.
I think it was the right message - and I think (at first blush) that it was delivered the wrong way. Perhaps it's just me and my own situation - I think Bush needs to deliver a ringing, rabble-rousing barn-burner of a speech sometime before the shooting starts; something like his speech to Congress after 9/11, a neo-Churchillian oration that clearly sets out the job to be done and the means we'll use to do it.
I'm sure he'll get his opportunity.
posted by Mitch Berg 3/6/2003 08:54:34 PM
Weekend Agenda - I'm going to the capitol on Saturday. I hope to see you there.
posted by Mitch Berg 3/6/2003 08:24:35 PM
Mood Swings - So I took a rare half hour of listening to Limbaugh on my way to an appointment today. He was practically climbing through the mic with a rumor that a US/Pakistani raid had captured Osama Bin Laden, and that tonight's press conference was to announce the apprehension.
"Has to be bogus", I said to myself, although there was a hopeful swing in my step as I got out of the car a few minutes later. But if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is...
My suspicion? While the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was quite a coup, I'd suspect he's using his position to set up quite a smokescreen, on the chance that he does know anything about his boss' whereabouts.
But a guy can hope.
Dedicated to Martin Sheen - Rightthinking.com has gotten a couple of artillery guys to dedicate some 105mm rounds, not only to his blog - but to Martin Sheen as well.It reads Hey Martin Sheen, how does it feel to have this dedicated for you? Now, one of you reading this must know how to get ahold of someone associated with Martin Sheen. Anyone know the email to his publicist? Let's make sure that old Marty knows just what the ground-pounders think about his politics.
I know I get the occasional .mil address in my hit log.
posted by Mitch Berg 3/6/2003 02:40:26 PM
Rumor of War - I've been hearing snippets of rumors all day day.
Might today be the final ultimatum?
We're approaching the new moon (next week). Most of the troops that really need to be in position, are. We've hit that critical mass of 250,000 troops that we'll supposedly need to prosecute the campaign.
What do you think?
Sex For War! - I've been reading for the last few weeks about the Lysistrata Project - a takeoff on the classical Aristophanes play in which a nation's women (all apparently pacifists) protest their menfolks' hawkishness (uniformly so, natch) by withholding sex. The "Project" will involve roughly 1,000 readings of the play in 56 countries (which means, if they use the same math as used by the Million Man and Million Mom Marches, we can expect about 75 readings in six countries, but I digress).
Like "Poets Against War", it smacks of the sort of pretentious, self-important diddling that artists have always embraced to try to "send messages" about life and death events.
I'd love to comment - but this one, by blogger Asparagirl, is too good to pass up:And it's not enough for these "feminists" that sexuality, or even specifically female sexuality, be used as an oxymoronic anti-war weapon, but that it must be denial of female sexuality that is the weapon, that very special tool for keeping their social order and their status quo intact. Sex, after all, should only be given up in the appropriate manner and to the appropriate person, and woe to they who disagree...waitaminute, this is starting to sound kinda familiar...
The whole article is worth a read, as are the various links to it.
What also galls me is that these women are claiming not only sex, but femininity itself as a uniformly passive, gentle, loving, pacifist attribute. What rubbish. I shouldn't support waging war on a mass-killing dictator because as a woman, my place is to elevate discourse and consensus and eschew "manly", messy action? They're even implying that if I am not a peaceful, good-mannered, right-thinking woman like them, a woman for peace, then perhaps I am not really a woman at all? And these are the women who are telling me this?
As far as I'm concerned - while I support the war, as a military historian I do observe a fairly high standard of proof for whether a war is just or necessary. And I find the left-feminist notion that war is just a symptom of a masculine culture - a form of societal testosterone poisoning - as offensive as any racial epithet. Any feminists who want to debate the point are hereby invited to try.
(via Jeff Fecke)
Insane - What is it about Ohio's congressional delegation?
Democrat Marcy Kaptur, who represents the Toledo area, has compared Bin Laden with our own founding fathers.One could say that Osama bin Laden and these non-nation-state fighters with religious purpose are very similar to those kind of atypical revolutionaries that helped to cast off the British crown," Miss Kaptur said.
That Rep. Kaptur ignores the completely different aims of the different "people of faith" - liberal democracy versus fascist theocracy - is...
In Iraq and other Arab nations where revolutions are potentially brewing, religious fervor will play a vital role in shaping political events, she said, and the United States must be careful "not to get caught in the crossfire."
"I think that one thing that people of faith understand about the world of Islam is that the kind of insurgency we see occurring in many of these countries is an act of hope that life will be better using Islam as the only reed that they have to lean on.
...depressing. After 227 years of independence, centuries of political tradition and a solid (if far from perfect) educational tradition, and two world wars, that anyone - much less a US Representative - could compare James Madison with Khalid Mohammed or Mullah Omar is enough to render one catatonic with despair.
posted by Mitch Berg 3/6/2003 11:29:35 AM
A Jug of Wine, a Block of Feta... - It seems to be striking much of the liberal media as a huge revelation - but the US is quite popular in Eastern Europe.
Last month, when the governments of most of the members of the former Warsaw Pact sided with us versus Iraq, much of the media acted like it was news to them - although if you've worked with any Poles or Ukranians in the past decade, you'd wonder what rock the media'd been hiding under.
MSNBC's Gersh Kunstman lauds Bulgaria's wine, feta...and friendship:Bulgaria actually seems to like us. I mean really like us—in that Sally Field way.
Yes!
And I like them right back. In fact, the mere mention of Bulgaria brings to mind Will Rogers’s famous axiom: I have, indeed, never met a Bulgarian I didn’t like. Think about your own experiences with these exotic people of the East(ern Europe). I’ll bet you’ve never met a Bulgarian who wasn’t charming, demure and, to top it off, a fantastic dancer.
So that’s why I’ve started showing my support through copious consumption of Chateau Boriana. Sure, you French-wine-drinking snobs may scoff, but repeated tastings of Chateau Boriana revealed an extremely drinkable red—and when I say “extremely drinkable,” I mean that exactly the same amount of Chateau Boriana merlot was required to get me as messed up as I get on the genuine French stuff. At $5.99 a bottle, you do the geopolitics.
I met this Bulgarian woman at a coffee shop last year...all I can say is, let's hear it for the new world order.
posted by Mitch Berg 3/6/2003 11:26:03 AM
War For Oil! - Duke University's Joseph Grieco makes the case why the war should be about oil.
Opponents of a possible war with Iraq say such oil will be used to fuel cars, especially gas-guzzling SUVs owned by Americans. But oil is also the lifeblood of modern industry. For example, 25 percent of all oil used in the United States goes to manufacturing operations, particularly in the plastics and pharmaceutical sectors.
It's not about oil company profits. It's the economy, stupid - just just ours, but the one on which most of the world's poor depend.
Oil resources located in the Middle East are vital not just to the prosperity of rich countries, but for the prospects of growth in developing nations [emphasis added]. According to the IEA, future increases in demand for oil will come largely not from the world’s rich countries, but from fast-growing developing countries, especially China.
This trend highlights a link between oil access and world peace. According to the IEA, China over the next 30 years will become a "strategic buyer" in international energy markets. If those markets are periodically thrown into turmoil because of supply disruptions in the Middle East, China might decide to take control of the oil reserves thought to be under the South China Sea. That would bring it into serious conflict with such neighbors as Vietnam and Indonesia, and ultimately with the United States.
(Via Instapundit)
posted by Mitch Berg 3/6/2003 07:54:19 AM
Connecting the Dots - Sullivan makes what is I think the key point about endless inspections and cascading resolutions:
But what Saddam has shown - rather brilliantly - is that even the slightest concession from Baghdad is enough for the appeasers to claim that the "inspections" are "working" (even though 1441 doesn't stipulate that the inspections should have any effect except verifying Saddam's complete and immediate disarmament). There is in principle nothing to stop this process from going on for ever. De Villepin has claimed that inspections cannot go on for ever, but has never proposed an end-date, or even a simple criterion by which one could measure whether they had failed. The truth is, I fear, that France, Russia and Germany simply want to keep Saddam in power and to humiliate the United States in order to build their own relationship with the Arab satrapies and pursue their own priorities in the region. If that's their game, no compromise will satisfy them, whatever the British think. So let them veto.
Indeed - none of this is about "peace". It's about a macchiavellian jostle for power in a realigning world. France and Germany team up to jostle us - and millions of Iraqis, and potential millions of future US and Euro terror victims - will be the ones trampled underfoot.
Veto away, indeed.
posted by Mitch Berg 3/6/2003 07:39:50 AM
Blame Canad...er, France - If the blogosphere doesn't have something for everyone, it will soon.
Itwas only a matter of time before we got this one ....
posted by Mitch Berg 3/6/2003 07:34:06 AM
Terror Setback - The captures over the last few months of Ramsi Bin AlShibh and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were all important.
But no victory against terrorism is quite as key as this; art shows can go on.
Yes, I'm being sarcastic.
While museums are pretty scarce on lists of potential terror targets, the price of insuring museums and the works of art they house (whose values have been immensely inflated over the past decade) has skyrocketed.
My congressional "representative", Betty McCollum of St. Paul's Fourth Congressional District, is on the job:Since the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. museums have struggled to obtain works for major exhibitions from overseas due to skyrocketing insurance rates and jittery art lenders who fear losing their pieces in a terrorist strike.
So in other words, McCollum has spent her last two years opposing most effective military and intelligence responses to terrorism, she will go all-out to support subsidizing the payment of inflated premiums to cover museums in the event an attack happens anyway?
As more museums are unable to afford to insure exhibitions on their own, they are increasingly turning to the federal government.
Supporters of the arts, including Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., say the federal indemnity program that insures artworks is overwhelmed and needs to be expanded.
She has introduced legislation that would raise the amount of indemnity coverage that can be provided at any particular time from $5 billion to $8 billion. It also increases how much coverage the program -- run through the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) -- can provide to one exhibition, from $500 million to $750 million.
"It's incumbent upon the federal government -- this is a role that they've undertaken since 1975 -- to help make art available to citizens throughout the United States," McCollum said.
posted by Mitch Berg 3/6/2003 07:16:49 AM
Wednesday, March 05, 2003
Walkouts - Students at Saint Cloud State, Moorhead State University, Hamline University, and Hopkins High School are planning walkouts from school today.
I don't care so much about Hamline; while the students there are rapidly vying with MacAlester for the title of "most specious college students in the Twin Cities", it's a private school, and they're adults.
The students at Saint Cloud and Moorhead are (nominally) adults as well - but they attend a state-funded institution. The time they spend mincing about the quad on their specious protest costs me, the taxpayer. As long as I'm subsidizing their education, they can damn well either stay in class, or reimburse the rest of us for the money they're wasting.
As far as Hopkins High School goes; no way. No high school kid has any "right" to waste an hour of taxpayer-funded time. Not one second. If I were a Hopkins parent, I'd gather a posse of other parents to counterdemonstrate not only the waste of money, not only the vapidity of the education that has students participiating in such specious wastes of time, but also tracking the whereabouts of every single student.
Because you just know that every "protesting" student is getting of of school to "protest". Right?
The liability issue alone should get Hopkins High to wake up and smell the coffee.
posted by Mitch Berg 3/5/2003 08:39:13 AM
Blogger, Heal Thyself. Again. Please - Serious bloggus interruptus yesterday - blogger.com is having more spasms of downtime, which ate a few posts.
I'll try to catch up, as the day goes on today.
posted by Mitch Berg 3/5/2003 08:27:35 AM
Tuesday, March 04, 2003
Behind Hills' Switch - Why could Hillary! break ranks with the rest of the Dems?
It's in the Polls!
posted by Mitch Berg 3/4/2003 10:58:18 PM
Legalize Torture? - Blogger Rick Heller of SmartGenes is kicking off a campaign to legalize the use of torture in the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, recently-captured Al Quaeda capo.
I have never before advocated torture, but I do now, for this one individual. There are strong reasons to believe that a massive Al Qaeda operation is immanent. MEMRI reports on indicators of an operation in Asia and one in the United States. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed would be likely to know of impending attacks, and had probably surfaced in order to facilitate them. His arrest might even cause the remaining Al Qaeda leaders to advanced the zero hour of the operations for fear of them being compromised.
There's a certain deep-down satisfaction that comes from demanding something like this. But it'd be disingenuous of me - one who pleads "slippery slope" on so many other issues of galloping government power - to really endorse an idea like this, even though there's a perverse, purely utilitarian logic to it. I'm not the only one.
Considering this man is suspected to be the Mastermind of 9/11, I doubt that any American jury would convict anyone who caused this man serious pain. I don't advocate torture for purposed of retribution. I'd leave that up to God. But in the classic case of a ticking time bomb, which this appears to be, violating the law to save lives is morally justified.
This has all the makings of a first-year law-school question.
posted by Mitch Berg 3/4/2003 03:21:44 PM
Why We (Don't) Fight - Sullivan issues a shopping list of everyone's agendas:
For some it's about "war" in general - a newly empowered new age pacifism. For France, it's about ... France, and its eclipse as a power of any significance. France's crisis is deepened by the fact that a successful war against Saddam could also accelerate the end of the Franco-German bloc as the power-house of the European Union.
People in the US, dealing with our byzantine and often self-flagellating State Department, aren't used o living in a nation that acts, openly and brazenly, in its own self-interest. It's interesting to compare our diplomats (the foggy bottom stealth pundits, not appointees like Colin Powell) with those of countries like France, China or Vietnam; nations whose self-interest is waved like the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima. For Russia, it's about money.
And, I suggest, Putin's desire to set a national diplomatic identity, separate from that of the US. For the Germans, it's about a new national identity. The Germans have never been able to sustain a moderate polity on their own. They veer from extreme romantic militarism to romantic pacifism. Their current abdication of all strategic responsibility for Europe or the wider world is just another all-too-familiar spasm from German history.
Germany's like one of those guys you knew in high school; used to be a party vegetable, dealt some pot, a couple of illegitimate kids, who got saved at a revival meeting, and is now just a little too ardently born-again; you may like the change, but you wonder if a little moderation wouldn't help. For the broader anti-war forces in Europe, it's about American uni-polar power - and the need to counteract it, even if it's being put to good use. For still others, especially in the Vatican and France, it's the old Jew-hatred again.
This part scares me. I think he's right. I think there's a lot of ambient anti-semitism that got papered over after the Holocaust, during Vatican II. I think the paper's wearing thin.For the Democrats, it's about getting back to prescription drugs. For the anti-war left in America, it's really about Bush. The pent-up fury they felt after Florida never found expression or even validation in the wider culture. It was repressed in the first months of a new presidency - and then made irrelevant by 9/11. Finally, they have a chance to demonstrate their hate - which is why so much of the demonstrations' focus has not been on Saddam, Iraq or even war, but on Bush.
Yeah!
I've been wondering when a recognized pundit would pick up on this point, one I've been harping on (of course, far from alone) for a year now; hatred is a serious motivation for many on the Anti-Bush left (note I didn't say "democratic party"; although most Bush-haters are Democrats). The only battle that matters is the one that'll be fought at the polls next fall. The anti-Bush left knows that a successful war will only strengthen the president further and marginalize them even more - hence their utter desperation and viciousness today. This is their moment; and the demonstrations are their therapy. Meanwhile, a real and actual problem in global security is being addressed.
That's the part they never can quite handle.
posted by Mitch Berg 3/4/2003 08:04:01 AM
I'm a Bad Dad - James Lileks writes about a handout he got at his daughter's play group, about what to tell your kids about terrorism:
If your children ask, “What if another country attacks us?” tell them that by working with as many countries as possible, eradicating hunger, poverty, and preventable diseases, it will be less likely that this will happen. Tell them that is very important that all of us work to prevent the conditions that lead to war, and these are some of the root causes.
Hm. Tha'ts not what I told my kids.
Other things we can do are: Be willing to not build as many nuclear weapons so that other countries don’t feel they have to build them to keep up with us.
Also let your children know that there may be certain instances where we have no choice but to protect ourselves like if we were directly attacked, but this isn't happening now.
I remember the night of September 11. I told my kids that the world was full of people, most of whom love us, many of whom say they love us but put on like they hate us to impress their neighbors (being elementary school students, that made perfect sense to them), and some - a tiny minority - that hate us for being what we are.
I told them that we've made our mistakes over the years, but that we try to be the kind of nation people love; that we are the kind of nation the people who pretend to hate us mostly want to move to someday; and that the people that hate us, largely hate us not because of what we do, but because of what we are: Christians, Jews, or just free people in a society where people of all faiths and philosophies get along without blowing each other up (much).
And I told them that we try very hard to get along with those that hate us; we bend over backwards, in fact, more than does any other country in the world (which is true). We have entire branches of our state department that do nothing but apologize for our past, for crying out loud.
But there are people whose hatred is so deep, so intense, so unreasonable that there is no apology, no restitution, no reasoning that will make them stop. They're the kind of people that fly planes full of innocent people into skyscrapers full of other innocent people. And for them (or the ones they leave behind), we have cops and satellites and spies that go out and find the bad guys; planes that can fly halfway around the world and drop bombs down their chimneys; we have soldiers that drop out of the night to find the bad guys and haul them off to jail and leave all kinds of mayhem in their wake.
And they have a daddy that knows how to do everything from build a safe room to shoot a teeny tiny, tight little group with a Colt .45, and who has declared our yard a terrorist-free zone. Y'know - a daddy who doesn't feel helpless. Either should they.
Real terror - the kind of thing that gives people Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, the real kind - comes from feeling absolutely helpless in the face of an intractable threat. I think it also comes from relying on unreliable people and institutions, like the United Nations, to protect you from the evil that walks the earth.
So I don't tell my kids about the UN and our culpability for all the world's ills and 34 flavors of mealy-mouthed phony diversity; I tell them that the United States is usually what I'm trying to raise them to be; thoughtful, fair, avoiding violence as far is is morally practical - and if someone just won't let it drop, and threatens you that badly, capable of thumping that person so hard that they reconsider their ways (and if they thump anyone that doesn't genuinely have it coming, Daddy's going to have some big words with them...)
Note to the Minneapolis Public Schools; I'm available for speeches to students. Feel free to call.
posted by Mitch Berg 3/4/2003 07:48:27 AM
Monday, March 03, 2003
Concealed Carry Reform - Over the past couple of years, the Star/Tribune's Conrad deFiebre has provided something that's been exceedingly rare in the concealed carry debate - coverage that has been largely balanced, admirably thorough, and fair. Minnesotans of all political stripes are lucky to have had this issue in particular covered so well.
Today's piece is an exceptional analysis of the two women - Senator Pat Pariseau of Farmington and Rep. Lynda Boudreau of Faribault - who've broken the issue's normal gender stereotypes to drive Concealed Carry Reform for the past seven years.
As this issue approaches its endgame this session, I'll be covering it a lot more thoroughly than I have been. Stay tuned.
posted by Mitch Berg 3/3/2003 08:03:33 AM
Ready, Fire, Aim - Powerline, on the first "anti-war" movement to precede any war it could be against.
Hindrocket quotes a WaPo piece on the subject:"In Britain, according to organizer John Rees, several hundred activists first got together the weekend after Sept. 11. Most were from the hard core of the British left -- the Socialist Workers Party, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the anti-capitalist organization Globalized Resistance, along with Labor Party legislators Jeremy Corbyn and George Galloway. Within weeks, they had combined with representatives from two more important elements -- Britain's growing Muslim community and its militant trade unions. By October they had a name: the Stop the War Coalition."
That pretty much says it all. The "antiwar" movement precedes the war by a year and a half. No opposition to the murder of thousands of random, innocent people; just opposition to freeing the world from the threat of terrorism. No opposition to the war being made on the U.S. and other free countries by the Islamofascists; just opposition to our self-defense.
posted by Mitch Berg 3/3/2003 07:20:30 AM
Turkey, Again - The situation in Turkey is not only not as simple as the knee-jerk media (and blogophere) puts it - it's not even as simple as my own relatively convoluted perception.
We all know about last weekend's vote against US troop deployment in Turkey against Northern Iraq. As a result, a fair chunk of the US 4th Mechanized Infantry Division is lying at anchor off the port of Iskendren, instead of off-loading and getting ready to move into Kurdistan.
So what's behind all this? Why did this happen in a country that is not only a traditional US ally, but that owes us, big-time?
Several things to remember about Turkey:
How convoluted? Well, the defeat of the US troops initiative over the weekend...
...was actually a victory that was turned back on a technicality!The activity today followed the dramatic vote on Saturday in which more Turkish legislators voted in favor of the American deployment than voted against it. After a chaotic interlude, Turkish officials announced that the measure had been defeated because it had not been approved by a majority of those present, as required by the Turkish Constitution. Nineteen Turkish lawmakers abstained from voting [Emphasis mine].
By the way I'm presenting a summary - read the whole article for the details. They're fascinating.
The final vote was 264 votes in favor to 251 against. Passage would have required 267 votes.
Turkey's lawmakers were confused as well, with some leaving the Parliament and boarding planes to return home, thinking the measure had passed. Only later, Turkish officials said today, did they learn that it had been rejected.
So what conclusions can we draw from this?
Turkey is a strange place - but fundamentally supportive of the US. There are chinks in this support, but there always have been.
And Turkey will come down supporting us, I think, soon. The troops will land, and drive on through.
Turkey will face a period of intense wrestling with its strong islamist minority - a struggle it will eventually win, partly because of the defeat of Iraq and eventually Al Quaeda that its upcoming action (I predict) will help to bring about.
These are not, as some bloggers put it, a bunch of döner-eating surrender monkeys.
posted by Mitch Berg 3/3/2003 04:23:27 AM
Dobry Dzien, Po Polsku - Although most of the nations of Eastern Europe are openly backing the US as re Iraq, the support is as polychromatic as is the opposition in places like Germany (where a significant portion of the population supports us under certain conditions).
And that polarization is causing problems between the newly-freed nations and "Old Europe":In Central and Eastern Europe, there's irritation in the countries about to join the European Union that they have not been invited to this Monday's emergency summit on Iraq. The mostly ex-communist candidate countries feel it is their openly expressed support for President George W. Bush on the Iraq issue that has made them unwelcome guests at the summit. In the meantime, police in Central European capitals are preparing for mass peace demonstrations this Saturday.
There's a deep reservoir of support for the US in most of Eastern Europe - in my experience (years of conversations with Russian, Ukranian, Belorussian and Polish emigres), many of them realize the debt they owe the US for their own freedom, as reflected in this bit here:The most interesting Central European capital as far as turnout at Saturday's peace demonstration is concerned will be Warsaw. Poland has a large army and a deeply engrained military tradition; and the country has long been one of America's staunchest supporters, for a variety of reasons. Polish émigrés in the US (Chicago) have always seen to it that under communism, the plight of the Polish citizens was never forgotten – and that successive US governments followed the rise of the independent trade union Solidarnosc, and the arrival of democracy with special interest. In return, the Poles have always been aware of strong US feelings for their country.
It's interesting - some people from the left credit Germany and France's anti-war feelings to their experiences in World War II. So - what nation was more grievously mauled by the war than Poland?
As a result, Poland has always been the most outspoken pro-American country now about to join the European Union. Fashionable anti-American feelings have never taken root here. Even so, recent opinion polls show a majority of Poles oppose war against Iraq and 76 percent feel Polish soldiers should not take part in it.
posted by Mitch Berg 3/3/2003 03:49:59 AM
The Regular Schmoes Strike Back - The media lavished much attention on the worldwide series of "peace" rallies last month.
You'd never know about the growing series of pro-America, pro-liberation rallies that are breaking out around the world from watching the media. So I guess it's up to the blogosphere and talkradio to tell you about:
So we're not completely alone out there.At the pro-US rally, about 200 Zamboanga residents thanked the US soldiers and asked them to stay longer.
"We love America," one placard read, with others slamming the anti-US group, while a band played American pop songs.
Various victims of the Abu Sayyaf gang declared their support for the US presence.
"We need (the US troops) here for the meantime," said Lydia Ibanez, a Basilan resident whose husband was among about a dozen Filipino farmers kidnapped and beheaded by the Abu Sayyaf last year.
"They have helped us a lot," she said in tears.
An elderly woman, Gliceria Ramirez, recalled the Abu Sayyaf "killed my two children. They chopped off their heads."
"If (the Americans) go, the rebels will come again and harm us."
"We want US troops to join the Filipinos in combatting the Abu Sayyaf," she added. - Nampa-AFP
(Some of these via Instapundit. The rest via Google)
posted by Mitch Berg 3/3/2003 03:39:47 AM
Human Shield Alert III - Someone Gets It! - The major Swedish "Peace" group finally gets it right:
On Friday, the head of Sweden's largest peace organization urged human shields to leave Iraq, saying they were being used for propaganda purposes by Saddam Hussein.
The first installment in a litany of sanity.
Maria Ermanno, chairwoman of the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society, cited reports that Iraqi officials were arranging transportation, accommodations and news conferences for the human shields.
"To go down to Iraq and live and act there on the regime's expense, then you're supporting a terrible dictator. I think that method is entirely wrong," Ermanno told Swedish Radio.
posted by Mitch Berg 3/3/2003 03:19:14 AM
Sunday, March 02, 2003
Reader Mail - I just got this one:
Nice to see that you haven't eased up on Clinton even though he has been out of office for a couple of years now.
So what? We're still dealing with fallout from administrations going back to the early 1800s. Race relations in this country are affected by administration policies going back to the founding of this country. The situation in the Middle East that we face today is in some ways a direct result of Woodrow Wilson's policies.
If the policies of James Polk (who set in motion many of the dynamics that affect us with Mexico to this day) or Harry Truman (who left us, for fair reasons or foul, with our current situation in Korea) or Richard Nixon (whose foreign policy still affects us to this day) are all up for discussion, why is it that you expect to suspend discussion of Bill Clinton's record?
Perhaps because it's almost unalterably abysmal?You remind me of those ever backward looking people in the Reagan administration who blamed everything on Carter, from the day they entered the oval office till the day they left.
What, the economy? The only part of that blaming that wasn't fair was that some of the problem predated Carter, going back to Lyndon Johnson. Other than that, though, Reagan was right.
And we're the "backward looking people" who could look far enough ahead to see a world without a Communist Bloc, without the imminent fear of superpower conflict, without the nuclear sword of Damocles hanging over mankind.
You're welcome. When does George start taking some of the blame for the state of the Union?
What blame did you have in mind? If things were in such an awful state when G dubya came on board doesn't he bear some of the blame for not fixing it?
It took Ronald Reagan - the greatest president of the second half of the twentieth century - three years to enact his policies - at that against a Congress that was, despite being totally controlled by Democrats, less obstructionist than the Senate that President Bush faced in the first two years of his administration. And Reagan didn't have a shooting war and 3,000 dead Americans to deal with. Ah well but then that would mean conservatives would actually have to take responsibilities for their actions rather than blaming past administrations for our present state ( see their always rib tickling explanations of how the Clinton surplus actually led to the current recession and deficit).
Liberals never - never - back up such statements with specifics.
For what are we supposed to "take responsibility"? For creating the speculative bubble that buoyed the economy through Clinton's last term? That was a near-direct result of Clinton-era tax policies regarding stock options and corporate accounting. Part of the difficulty Clinton faced in confronting terrorism was how to do so while respecting US and international law.
So that Sudanese aspirin factory was Tomahawked in accordance with international law?
Seriously - how did "US and international law" stand in the way of having Sudan capture Bin Laden? Or lead to the FUBAR that led to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed escaping from Quatar?
Specifics? I'll give you a hint; there are none. The "international law" plea is a smokescreen Clinton's apologists use to try to draw attention away from the fact that the Clinton Administration was a pack of blundering amateurs at foreign policy. Of course since George cares not a whit for either of these he doesn't run into that obstacle.
That's why he's completely ignored the United Nations, and charged straight into Iraq with nary a nod to world opinion; why we began carpet-bombing Baghdad six months ago; why a CIA hit team landed in Abu Dhabi last August with Hussein's family's heads on sticks. Right? As to the Democrat.com site being a hate link, how would you describe yours?
I describe my site as Minnesota's Only Legitimate News Source. I also describe myself as Marisa Tomei's soon-to-be husband.
Seriously, if you can find anything resembling Democrats.com's frothing hatred of all things with which one disagrees anywhere in this site, chime on in. With specifics, if I could trouble you to provide them.
Thanks for the email. Keep writing!
posted by Mitch Berg 3/2/2003 01:33:30 PM
The Just War - Sullivan states the case:
...war against Hitler killed millions - but it was also just. And no sane person, after all, is opposed to peace as such. The question is: Peace at what risk? Peace on whose terms? Peace for how long? Looked at this way, war is not only sometimes a moral option - as theologians have long argued. Sometimes, it's the only moral option we have.
The American Bishops - famous for supporting Daniel Ortega against Ronald Reagan - posted their criteria for a "just war":
It's the last one that most of the US "Peace" movement harps on - if you think about it, there is always one more resort to which one may turn before war; England could have sought terms after Dunkirk; the US, UK and Netherlands could have given Japan the control they sought, over the Philippines, China, Indonesia, Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific; the West could have written off Europe, and its Jews in the bargain. You can keep backing up a long, long way, if you don't consider anything worth fighting for.
But by any reasonable measure, we've exhausted all rational steps short of war:Have we exhausted every single alternative to war? Well, we've spent the last twelve years trying to find peaceful ways to get Saddam to live up to his promises. Waves of inspections; countless resolutions; occasional use of targeted force under the Clinton administration; crippling economic sanctions; and finally a last attempt under U.N. Resolution 1441 to give Saddam a last, last chance to disarm. He was told three months ago by unanimous U.N. agreement that he had to disarm immediately and completely. He still hasn't. I can't think of any recent war that tried so hard for so long to give peace a chance. This isn't so much a "rush to war" as some have bizarrely called it. It's been an endless, painstaking, nail-biting crawl.
Indeed. There comes a time when seeking one more "last resort" is, itself, immoral:War is an awful thing. But it isn't the most awful thing. No one disputes the evil of Saddam's brutal police state. No one doubts he would get and use weapons of mass destruction if he could. No one can guarantee he would not help Islamist terrorists get exactly those weapons to use against the West or his own regional enemies. No one disputes that the Iraqi people would be better off under almost any other regime than the current one - or that vast numbers of them, including almost every Iraqi exile, endorses a war to remove the tyrant. If we can do so with a minimun of civilian casualties, if we do all we can to encourage democracy in the aftermath, then this war is not only vital for our national security. It is a moral imperative. And those who oppose it without offering any credible moral alternative are not merely wrong and misguided. They are helping to perpetuate a deep and intolerable injustice.
I'm far from a warmonger. I have friends in Southwest Asia as we speak, getting ready for whatever comes. I - to say nothing of their families and friends - don't want them to go through this for frivolous or gratuitous reasons.
We as a nation need to search our souls over these sorts of things. But huge crises are great catalysts for the searching of one's soul. September 11 was that event. I think we're in the right. I'm not going to speak in terms of ass-kickings and walkovers when war finally comes - war is far too solemn an event for that. The lives of those that will die - ours and theirs - are too important to trivialize with jingoistic sloganeering.
But the opposite - the sloganeering of pacifism at any price - has come to the point of trivializing even more. It's not about oil, or patronymic loyalty, and to claim so over the bodies of 3,000 of our fellow citizens merely showcases one's intellectual bankruptcy.
Read the article. Get back to me.
posted by Mitch Berg 3/2/2003 10:12:17 AM
Smear, CounterSmear - The London Observer went public with an email it claimed was a smoking gun, "proving" the National Security Agency (our ultrasecret crypto-eavesdropping organization) is spying on UN members.
The leaked memorandum makes clear that the target of the heightened surveillance efforts are the delegations from Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Mexico, Guinea and Pakistan at the UN headquarters in New York - the so-called 'Middle Six' delegations whose votes are being fought over by the pro-war party, led by the US and Britain, and the party arguing for more time for UN inspections, led by France, China and Russia.
But almost immediately, the Drudge Report raised questions about the language used in the memo.
Here it is. See if you can spot the clinkers:To: [Recipients withheld]
I added the italics. Look at them. They are British spellings (or, in the case of the 31/01/2003, European date formats).
From: FRANK KOZA@Chief of Staff (Regional Target) CIV/NSA
on 31/01/2003 0:16
Subject: Reflections of Iraq debate/votes at UN - RT actions and potential for related contributions
Importance: High
TOP SECRET/COMINT/XL
All,
As you've likely heard by now, the Agency is mounting a surge particularly directed at the UN Security Council (UNSC) members (minus US and GBR of course) for insights as to how to membership is reacting to the on-going debate RE: Iraq, plans to vote on any related resolutions, what related policies/ negotiating positions they may be considering, alliances/ dependencies, etc - the whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers an edge in obtaining results favourable to US goals or to head off surprises. In RT, that means a QRC surge effort to revive/ create efforts against UNSC members Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria and Guinea, as well as extra focus on Pakistan UN matters.
We've also asked ALL RT topi's to emphasise and make sure they pay attention to existing non-UNSC member UN-related and domestic comms for anything useful related to the UNSC deliberations/ debates/ votes. We have a lot of special UN-related diplomatic coverage (various UN delegations) from countries not sitting on the UNSC right now that could contribute related perspectives/ insights/ whatever. We recognise that we can't afford to ignore this possible source.
We'd appreciate your support in getting the word to your analysts who might have similar, more in-direct access to valuable information from accesses in your product lines. I suspect that you'll be hearing more along these lines in formal channels - especially as this effort will probably peak (at least for this specific focus) in the middle of next week, following the SecState's presentation to the UNSC.
Thanks for your help
Drudge adds:GOVERNMENT SOURCES TELL DRUDGE CLASSIFICATION LEVEL WRONG ON MEMO -- 'TOP SECRET/COMINT/XL' -- IS BOGUS, DOES NOT EXIST.
Then, Drudge asks:HOW ABOUT IT, GUYS, LET'S SEE A SCAN OF THE ORIGINAL 'MEMO' NOT YOUR RECREATED ONE.
My question isn't so much "is it a hoax". The real question is, how long after it's proven a hoax will elements of the left be treating it as gospel truth?
Like, for example, here - on Democrats.com, a hysterical Democrat-party linked hate site on which Minnesota democrat campaigns have bought thousands of dollars worth of advertising? (Scroll down - they link, with utter ingenuity, to the Observer article).
UPDATE: The Observer is now claiming that it altered the spelling in the email. So - where's the original?
Note To Franken - Al Franken, in talking about a potential all-liberal talk-radio network, famously said ""People on the left -liberals- don't want to hear simplistic demagoguery."
Someone needs to tell the good folks at Democrats.com. We've spotlighted these people before - a site that would challenge the hate-mongeriest fever dreams of the fringiest ultra-right web scribblers.
But Democrats.com isn't the fringe! They're quite proud of how connected they are with the Democrat mainstream! And among their biggest supporters was...the campaign of the late Paul Wellstone!
So read the site. Tell me how simplistic and demagogic these people aren't. Look at the list of media and politicians - mainstream as well as lunafringe - who link to Democrats.com.
Then tell Al Franken.
Sometimes I think I could do an entire blog on nothing but Democrats.com's content.
posted by Mitch Berg 3/2/2003 09:33:43 AM
Human Shield Watch - This article - by Charlotte Edwards, in the relatively conservative London Telegraph - is hilarious. It describes the blinding flash of epiphany that some of the "Human Shields" had; they were being used! By Hussein's govement!
The article all but screams "No! Duh!"At the Andalus hotel five kilometres away, Dr Abdul Hashimi, the official overseeing their mission in Iraq, had issued the shocked group with an ultimatum: deploy to the "strategic sites" hand-picked by the government or leave immediately.
The article is rife with examples of the group's dithering, frivolity, and paranoia:
It was a chilling twist in the saga of the human shields' mission to stop a war in Iraq. It was also inevitable. I accompanied the first wave of shields throughout their 3,500 mile, three-week journey aboard three double-decker buses from Europe to Baghdad and remained with them while they battled unsuccessfully with Iraqi officials to be allowed access to the civilians most thought they had come to protect.Among the catalogue of dramas they experienced en route were numerous breakdowns of the creaking 1967 Routemasters, bickering over the preferred route and acrimonious departures and illness.
As an interesting note, the article makes mention of Ken O'Keefe, whom the left triumphantly describes as "a former US Marine who fought in the Gulf War", as if the presence of a former Marine renders the administration illegitimate. The article pounds a nail through that notion:
During one cold, rainy night in Milan, we were left without our sleeping bags after an Italian went AWOL with the support bus. Later, a £500 donation from a well-wisher in Istanbul was squandered on boxes of Prozac in a misguided attempt to cheer up the war-weary Iraqi civilians.
Conspiracy theories spread like a contagion through the ranks. Whenever a puncture occurred it would be blamed on the CIA. "It's sabotage," Peter Van Dyke, 36, had whispered to a bemused mechanic as he removed a thick screw from a flat tyre in a garage outside Naples.
Sue Darling, 60, a former diplomat from Surrey, had been eager to demonstrate her civil service credentials: most importantly, she confided in one shield, she knew how to recognise a spy. Her first suspect turned out to be The Telegraph's photographer.
Little surprise then that so few were alert to the real nature of the regime that welcomed them to the Iraqi capital two weeks ago. After a propaganda lecture from Dr Hashimi, one young American told me: "It's so interesting to hear what is really going on in this country." He scoffed at any suggestion that their good intentions might be misused by Saddam's regime: "All we have seen here is continuous kindness and hospitality." Not everyone was upset by the latest turn in events. Ken O'Keefe, 33, the founder of the human shields movement who served as a US marine during the Gulf war, had always planned to protect Iraqi "installations" should bombs rain down on the capital.
It goes on...and on. Read it, and know that if this is the bleeding edge of the "peace" movement, then the left is in truly dire straits.
During the journey, the heavily-tattooed O'Keefe, who earned the title "black Ken" on account of his penchant for the colour and outlook on life, had alienated his companions who felt he had developed both a death wish and a messiah complex. Prone to tantrums and mood swings, his credibility had not been helped by the fact that he had, for much of the journey, been accompanied by his mother, Pat.
In Baghdad, Ken came into his own. Dressed in a thick, grey dishdash, he took to ambushing me in the Andalus corridors to brief me on his latest soundbites. "Dark forces have worked against me," he said, "but I have survived. My mission is hard core, in-your-face activism."
(Via Instapundit and Tim Blair)
posted by Mitch Berg 3/2/2003 09:11:20 AM
The Clinton Legacy - First, Clinton passed on a chance to have Sudan hand Osama Bin Laden over to us.
Now, it turns out that he could have had Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, too, according to the WaPo:The object of a U.S manhunt for years, Mohammed narrowly escaped capture in 1996. At that time, he was staying with a member of the Qatari royal family at a farm outside Doha. The FBI wanted to snatch him, but others in the U.S. government balked. The Qatari government was notified instead, and by the time an agreement to turn him over was reached, Mohammed was gone.
We, as a nation, need to hold the Clinton Administration responsible for their legacy; terrorists allowed to roam free, pacification of North Korea, focus-group-driven responses to attacks, and military responses that were worse than useless, merely exacerbating the situation.
(Via Powerline)
posted by Mitch Berg 3/2/2003 08:49:18 AM
In attacking the reasons for war, no liberal commentator is capable of addressing more than one of the justifications at a time; to do so would introduce a context in which their argument can not survive
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