The people of the Fifth Congressional District sent Keith Ellison to Congress.

That’s how democracy works.

I don’t care that he was the most “progressive” candidate for the job; people have the right to vote for anyone they want.

I care not in the least that he is Moslem.  It is entirely possible that electing a Moslem to that most mainstream of American institutions, the Congress, is exactly one of the messages we need to send to Islam around the world – the ideal that in America, through work and study and peaceful (if, in Ellison’s case, often irate and prickly) coexistence with one’s fellow man, one can achieve liberty, comfort and spiritual freedom and fulfillment.  Granted, this would have been a lot more convincing had Ellison had cuddled up with the likes of CAIR, and people associated with funding terrorism, before and during the election.

I do care that Ellison, like most of the Democrat majority in Congress, is Ka danger to the long-term peace in the Middle East and, eventually, America:

The people of Fifth District sent me to Washington to end the war in Iraq and bring the troops home. On Friday, I voted to end the U.S. occupation of Iraq by voting to prohibit the building of permanent U.S. bases and setting timetables for the withdrawal of our troops. I voted to oppose the presidents policy of war without end.

Let’s be perfectly clear here; Ellison voted to opposed the president’s policy of war until the job is done.

Look – even conservatives are upset about the way much of the last few years of this war has gone.  The surge would seem to be meeting at least encouraging initial success; it seems to be answering some questions left long unanswered in Iraq (I remember one commenter in this space, grinning like a toddler who’d just made a big pants; “what do you mean, reign Moqtada Al-Sadr in?  He’s in control!  There’s nothing we can do about it!”  Sic transit gloria thug).  Why didn’t we do this two years ago?  Three years?  Suffice to say, many of us are looking for answers.

Keith Ellison and his voters aren’t among them.  They have a much simpler “solution”:

Residents of the Fifth District made the war the most important issue in the November election. For the first time since the war began in 2003, the war has an end date and Congress is confronting the president. This Congress has held over 90 oversight hearings on Iraq; the previous Congress held none. Folks who phoned and wrote their legislators, attended vigils, marched and prayed for peace made this possible.

Unlike most anti-war Democrats, Ellison may actually be right.

For most of the Democrats in Congress, my question remains – if you had such an all-fired mandate from the people to get us out of Iraq, then why haven’t you forced the issue?  Why wasn’t it in your first 100 hours, if it was such a statistical sure thing?

Because it wasn’t, of course.  American people are dissatisfied with the war.  That dissatisfaction takes many forms.  The smug plush-bottom Unitarian yoohoos I met last week at the pro-terrorism rally, the ones who wouldn’t fight if a group of thugs pointed AK47s at the crowd, want to not only bring the troops home, but discharge them from the service and pound their rifles into plowshares (which they’d use to decorate the walls of their condos, since none of them knows which end of a plow you milk a tofu cow with).

And then there are people who are deeply dissatisfied with the way the war itself is being carried out – who wondered if today’s surge, as welcome a development as it’s been, shouldn’t have been done first, rather than last.

Y’know – people like me.

People who look at statements like this, and realize that one of the two major parties can’t be trusted with the keys to the car:

Now, we must keep up the pressure to turn our country away from arrogance and death toward promise and life. This vote is only one more step toward peace.

Disengaging in Iraq would not mean peace…oh, wait.  Ellison is going to say something factual:

We have a lot of work to do to make this step meaningful.

Finally, the sweet waft of truth.

Yes, there is a lot of work to do to make the step meaningful.

First, there’s the little matter of convincing the Sunni Ba’athists and Al-Quaeda – the people who saw other peoples’ heads off – that the day after our withdrawal date isn’t a fine day to come back from Chechnya and pick up the job where they left off.

There’s the complicated bit about figuring out how not to have the parts of Iraq that aren’t  Sunni or Al Quaeda – the Shi’ites –  form immense militias for their own protection, and start ethnically-cleansing the parts where the two groups meet.  Y’know – the part we’re just starting to gain control of right now.

There’s the matter of having our departure not followed by money, toys and activists from Iran, it’s proxy Syria and, for that matter, Saudi Arabia flowing into the country to keep Iraq nice and unstable, and to take pressure off their own regimes.

Finally, there’s the ultimate bit – figuring out how to co-exist with the terrorist safe haven that Iraq would inevitably become if we pulled out before the job (killing terrorists) was done.

Given that any thought, Representative Ellison?

President Bush intends to veto this bill. His veto will be an admission that he plans to establish permanent military bases in Iraq and continue the war without end. By his veto, Bush will prove that he has no intention of letting the Iraqi people run their own country and has no intention of honoring the lives and service of the sons and daughters, wives and husbands, mothers and fathers who are fighting his war. His veto will mean that the deaths, American and Iraqi, mean little to him.

I want to save that bit there for the next election.  I want to print it on signs and wave it around outside the next batch of Ellison rallies.   This statement shows that Ellison is either an idiot, or that he’s cynical enough to think that his voters are.

When the president calls for a “clean” appropriations bill, he is asking for a blank check to continue current policy. I will absolutely oppose any “clean” appropriation bill.

Good.  You keep that up.  It’s good to have some Democrats putting their cards on the table.  Granted, most of the rest of  Pelosi’s majority doesn’t have the guts to do that – because they know the real facts behind the polls.

Americans dislike the war because they dislike not winning.  We – and I’m one of them – dislike sacrifice without result.

We also dislike sacrifice in vain.

There is still much to do. People working for peace have led us this far. Some of us disagreed on strategy this time, but I assure you I have not wavered from doing all I can to stop this war. Together, we must carry the soldiers and their families at the top of our attention at all times and demand the same from our leaders.

Great message, Rep. Ellison.

Let’s see how it plays outside the Fifth CD.

 A German judge cites the Quran in handing down a verdict:

A German judge has stirred a storm of protest here by citing the Koran in turning down a German Muslim wife’s request for a fast-track divorce on the ground that her husband beat her.

In a remarkable ruling that underlines the tension between Muslim customs and European laws, the judge, Christa Datz-Winter, said the couple came from a Moroccan cultural milieu in which it is common for husbands to beat their wives. The Koran, she wrote, sanctions such physical abuse. 

Here’s my prediction; given that radical Islam in America is using the Twin Cities as its testbed for slipping Moslem religious law into American life – the Flying Imams, Target Cashiers Against Pork, and the cabbies who won’t carry booze – I have to wonder if we’re not going to see someone trying to push a case just like this, right here, and very soon.

 (Via David’s Medienkritik)

With the release last week of the transcripts of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s trial transcripts, I started a countdown; how long would it be until the Mainstream Media turned him into either a benign figure, or even something akin to a clever folk hero?

The first bit was Saturday, on some NPR news show or another (you know – the one featuring the arid, personality-free anchors. That one.  They noted about KSM that he felt bad about killing children!  That he seemed to be quite the magnetic personality!

They were humanizing a person who has murdered thousands!
And now…

WHAT TIMING! Just when the attorney general and the president were coming under fire for the politicized dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys, the Pentagon released a transcript of a March 10 hearing in which Guantanamo detainee Khalid Shaikh Mohammed confessed to masterminding the 9/11 attacks. Now we can get back to the Bush administration’s preferred topic: What a heck of a job it’s doing in the war on terror.

No, it’s not some fringe-left dolt like Cucking Stool or Jesus General. It’s a newspaper.

Question: When should the administration have released the transcripts?

Or are your attention spans that short?

Almost three years ago, I wrote this piece, which generated a ton of traffic. 

The main part:

If You Believe: that America has problems – huge problems – then dissent is American.
But If You Believe: …that America’s problems make it an inherently rotten concept, then maybe you should think about whether you’re living in the right place.

 

If You Believe: …that America’s projection of power around the world is immoral – then dissent is American.
But If You Believe: …that any projection of American power is inherely unjust because it’s America, then maybe you should be living in, say, Sweden? Just an idea.

If You Believe: …that capitalism is wrong because its inequalities are inherely unjust, then dissent is American.
But If You Believe: …that the free market is inherently, irrevocably evil, perhaps China would be a better fit? Just suggesting…

If You Believe: …that invading Iraq was wrong, then dissent is American.
But If You Believe: …that our temporary administration of Iraq is worse than Hussein’s 30 year reighn of horrors, then perhaps you should rot in hell we need to have an attitude adjustment.

And I’ll reiterate – while I question those who dissent from the administration, I certainly will defend their right to do it (which is more than some of them will do for me, but then such is life).

But let me add to the above:

If you believe: …that the war in Iraq is wrong, and you want to pull out now and bring the troops home, then yes, while I think you’re wrong (and most of the troops clearly agree), but your dissent is certainly American.

But if you believe: …that this isn’t deeply intensely sick, then no.   Your dissent is not “patriotic”, and you do not “support the troops”, and your opinion is worthy of scorn at least, but only if we’re in a really good mood.

That is all.

The Strib, pro forma, notes:

A much smaller group of counterprotesters held signs and shouted slogans supporting the troops, the war and Bush.

They left out “dominated every argument with calm style”.

And while our numbers were certainly small, I called my friend from Citizens for a Supine “Safer” Minnesota for an estimate.

“You had close to 1000 people there”, she said upon looking at the group picture.

I always feel better about numbers after I talk with her.

On Saturday, Washington Senator and embarassment Patty Murray delivered the response to President Bush’s address on Saturday:

Senator Patty Murray said the nation needs a new direction in Iraq, “not more of the same failures.”…She blamed “Senate Republicans and a president who stubbornly refused to listen” for blocking a Democratic plan to narrow the mission in Iraq. The Senate rejected a measure this week that called for a withdrawal to begin within 120 days.

Thank goodness.

Nothing quite like giving the enemy a date on which they can operate with impunity. Nothing like telling the Iraqis – the majority – that want the insurgents removed or killed that it’s time to shut up if you want to be alive 130 days from now.

Democrats: Still not ready to run a nation.

Many of us in the counterprotest noted the absence of regular commenter “Doug”, who last week fantasized about bringing his “veteran” “friends” to “bitch-slap” me for exercising my First Amendment right to free speech.

Oh, well. Maybe next time.

So we followed the demonstration up to Lagoon and Hennepin.

We stood at the corner, flag and signs in hand, as the crowd of “protesters” swelled around us. Oh, we got some good response – an MTC bus driver honked and gave us a thumbs up – as well as some anger (a few middle fingers).

“So why didn’t you join the Army?”, yelled one vapid/drunk-looking thirtysomething decked out in Patagonia.

“Um, because on 9/11 I was a 38 year old single parent with two bad knees, offhand?” I responded.

Patagonia stood there, flummoxed, not really thrilled with the whole “eye contact” thing. “Oh, yeah? Are you on the Halliburton payroll?”

Observation: At their best, the typical anti-war protester is incapable of maintaining a discussion of longer than one statement, maybe two, without changing the subject. If you follow these things in my comment section, of course, it’s no surprise, but it’s interesting to see how flummoxed they get when they’re not in complete control of the discussion (as they no doubt are on campus).

On the other hand, at their worst…

Oh, we had the usual – one red-faced guy bellowed “F*CK YOU!” at the top of his lungs (yes, there were kids present). Another, obviously intoxicated, staggered down the bus/turn lane in front of us, bellowing “YOU MOTHERF*CKING HYPOCRITES” (yeah, still kids present) before staggering in front of someone’s car.

The lowlight of the day?

A shrivelled little husk of a “person”, probably 5’6 with a ill-trimmed fringe of white hair and a tumorous white goatee framing what looked like ill-fitting dentures, walked up to us. “What IS the mission?” he bellowed, sounding mildly intoxicated.

“Win the war”.

“How do we do that?”, he yelled, with a voice whose vocal cords sounded calloused by years of bellowing along on cue at demonstrations.

“Kill the terrorists, make the country safe for the law-abiding Iraqi”.

“What if there’s a million of ’em?”

“There aren’t”.

He upped the ante; “What if there’s ten million of ’em?”

“There aren’t”.

“Are you on some oil company’s payroll?”

“Um, yeah. Does it show?”

He put his hand on my left shoulder. Then, with his left hand, he reached over and grabbed my crotch, then staggered away into the crowd.

My hands were in my pockets – partly to keep warm, largely to make sure I couldn’t react to provocations. That little leprechaun’s dentist can be thankful for this.

I’ll be going through any photos I find of the event. If I find him on film, anywhere, I’m going to give the little perv his fifteen minutes of fame.

Got film? I’d love to take a look.  I’d love to make sure his co-workers get some idea of his predilections…

…but then, from the looks of him his only job for the last forty years has been “protester”.

The “protester” bumped – intentionally – into Amendment X.

A string of profanities – from the protester, bellowed at full volume – ensued.

I looked at the four little kids in strollers and wagons that the passersby were pushing/dragging.

“Dude, there’s kids here”.

I don’t think he skipped a beat.

I went down to the Dunn Brothers at Lake and Bryant this morning, and was gratified to meet some people; Amendment X from Savage Republican, regular commenter BillH, a photographer whose name eludes me, and Mark, a charter member of “Old Friends of Mitch going back about thirty years. Fortified with Dunn’s finest, we walked over to Lake and Lyndale, by the Army Recruiting station (to the relief of the capo di tutti barristi, who clearly was not in favor of completing the mission.

There, we met Diamond Dog from Freedom Dogs and American flag, and Doug (missed the last name), who brought signs. Finally, walking up Lake Street from the other side of the protest, of all people, James Lileks – bearing video and still cameras and the pithiest counterchants in the business.

We stood in front of Greek To Me, across the street from the main body of the protest.

Most of the media must have been concentrated up at Loring Park, where the protest was supposed to end; all we had at Lake and Lyndale was a single cameraman from Channel 5 who, to Stanley Hubbard’s credit, crossed the street to film and talk with us.

After half an hour of highly-scripted chanting (a nice girl walked around at the beginning of the gathering, handing out a photocopied sheet of “Antiwar Chants by MN Socialist Alternative).

A cute redhead with a pierced nose and a carpenters apron festooned with fascist flair walked through the crowd selling buttons. Among them were a bunch of Che Guevara buttons.

“One dollar”, she said, perkily.

“You do know that Guevara was a mass murderer, don’t you? He ordered the execution of children?”

She grinned, looking a little dazed, and walked away to more fertile sales ground.

After half an hour or so, the “protesters” began walking down Lake Street toward Hennepin. After a block or two, their organizers – equipped with bullhorns – began urging the crowd to move out onto the westbound lane of Lake Street, causing a big, carbon-guzzling traffic jam behind them.

We counterprotesters, being ecologically conscious, stuck to the sidewalk.

The entire mob of them walked through Calhoun Square, chanting at the top of their lungs (Lileks and I followed them), and then came out the Hennepin side, heading north . The counterprotest met them at the corner, and as the bullhorns bellowed “Who is the terrorist?” we answered “Ahmadinejad!” over their feeble “Bush Is The Terrorist”.

More observations as they return to me…

Michelle Malkin has the blogburst coverage of yesterday’s Gathering of Eagles counterdemonstration Vietnam Vet’s memorial – which, according to many observers, matched the well-funded ANSWER-sponsored protests against the war:

A pure, grass-roots effort, the Gathering of Eagles’ volunteers matched the massive Soros-funded anti-war machine sign for sign, chant for chant, and marcher for marcher. The contrast was most stark right before the entrance to the Memorial Bridge, where Eagles gathered with a field of American flags–while anti-Bush, 9/11 conspiracy nuts wrapped themselves in a figurative blanket of yellow “Out of Iraq” placards. Several of the vets shouted, “Yellow! How appropriate!” in between spirited chants of “U.S.A! U.S.A!” While the classless Cindy Sheehan ranted profanely, the Eagles raised their voices in polite, but roaring disapproval and raised their American flags in answer to the ANSWER socialists’ Che banners and peace pennants.

Why did the Eagles come? One common refrain: Vietnam veterans, some fighting back tears, told us they came to show the kind of support for the troops that they did not receive when the surrender lobby marched on the Pentagon 40 years ago today.

Mission accomplished.

Read the whole thing.

The American cultural right – with families and day jobs and mortgages – doesn’t do a lot of picketing in the streets; we don’t have people who’ve been organizing the kind of stuff since the Johnson Administration.

So the turnout – in DC and here – is gratifying and encouraging.

I’m thinking about stopping by the protest at Lake and Lyndale tomorrow.

I’m thinking about stopping by the Dunn Brothers at Lake and Aldrich – a block west of Lyndale – at 11:30 or so.

Let me know if you’re interested.

Lassie over at The Dogs on tomorrow’s local anti-war pro-dictatorship demonstrations:

12:00 PM – Books Not Bombs Youth Bloc
Gather at military recruitment station on Lake & Lyndale followed by a youth march to the…

1:00 PM Mass Community Antiwar Demonstration
Gather at Hennepin and Lagoon then march to Loring Park for a rally

On their flyer, these fine groups are in collaboration: Socialist Alternative , Anti-War Organizing League and Yo! The Movement 

You’ll find indoctrinated kids becoming active. These are the anarchists – kids – who are trashing military recruitment property and harassing military exhibitors at events. I’ve attended Iraq anti-war protests for the last three years, and found many supposed “peaceniks” who are anything but. The kids have a history of throwing paint and breaking windows at recruiting stations. If you are in the area Sunday, check ’em out. Better yet, speak up for our soldiers in Iraq and those who’ve returned and remind them that the adults are in charge.

If you have the time on Sunday – what, SUNDAY?    Not Saturday? 

Oh.  I’m so there.

Anyone want to meet up and do a counterprotest?

Maybe frequent commenter Doug can send some of his veteran friends to “bitch-slap” me.  That oughtta be good!

We’ll be talking again with the Minnesota contingent at A Gathering of Eagles – the counter-protest in Washington tomorrow.

Here’s a little taste of what and who they’ll be facing:

 

Via Smash, thence via Michelle Malkin

Check out the GOE website.  Help out, even if you’re not on the bus to go to DC today.

Like I wish I were.

I could hardly care less that Keith Ellison is Moslem.   Oh, I think he’s going to be a terrible representative – as, indeed, pretty much any dogmoleftist will be – but his faith really has nothing to do with it.
This, however, could be useful:

Now, two months in office, the Minnesota Democrat plans to meet with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other top State Department officials to talk about showcasing his story as part of their public diplomacy efforts in the Muslim world.

“Hey, my country first. We can work out our political differences later,” said Ellison, an outspoken critic of the Iraq war. “I’ve said I’m willing to do whatever I can to make some friends for America.”

Adding to the cachet he’s built since taking his oath of office on Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an, Ellison has been profiled three times by the State Department’s overseas press bureau.

I’m not so sure that he’s “adding to his cachet” as he is “finding something he’s useful at”.  A little bird in Washington tells me Ellison and his staff are developing a reputation for being “less gifted” than most other staffs. 

But let’s leave that aside for now.  Good for Representative Ellison.  This is the sort of thing I and many other conservatives – people who believe that there is a moderate wing to Islam – have been wanting Moslems, especially leading American Moslems, to do.

On Monday he did a Voice of America interview from his office, where an American flag was placed conspicuously behind his desk for the cameras.

He’s scheduled to follow up on Thursday in a teleconference with Karen Hughes, the State Department’s undersecretary for public diplomacy. The White House has asked that the teleconference promote American values and confront ideological support for terrorism around the world.

I haven’t seen any other comment on this – and while I’m sure there’s an ulterior motive behind it, whatever.  So let me be the first to say it; kudos to you, Rep. Ellison.

Girl on the Right notes an anniversary I’d sadly forgotten:

On this day three years ago, 191 innocent people were murdered in the name of Allah while they were on their way to work in Madrid. That is Islam. That is the religion of Allah and the Prophet Mohammed.

Well, it’s wahabbi extremism, a sect that all too few Moslems have overtly rejected…

…but yes.  It was three years ago today that the terrorists brought Europe into their war.

We talked with Janet from SCSU Scholars about the drive get conservatives, veterans and other pro-Americans to go out to Washington next week to counterprotest the big lefty demonstrations scheduled for that weekend – to shield the Vietnam Memorial from their depredations.

Call 651.983.1431, or go to this site for more information.

If you’re interested, they’re organizing a bus ride to get interested Minnesotans out there.

Wish I could make it…

Representative Kline,

While I’m not a constituent of yours, Learned Foot is.  And I gotta go along with the Foot on this one.  He’s talking about the gabbling cretins that are continually occupying your office, demanding “dialog”, soaking up your staff’s time and polite ministrations, streetwalking in front of a carful of partisan-media johns.

I say – give ’em what they want.  Or as Foot says:

 I say do it. Hold that town hall meeting they keep demanding. Get these freaks to talk – on tape (and it wouldn’t be hard since they do tend to love the sound of their own voices). Just let them yammer on and on. And then, make sure everyone gets a chance to see them for the vacant narcissistic eliminationists they are.

Lest anyone think that Rep. Kline is dealing with rational people here, Foot excerpts a clip:

 “If Iran would drop a nuclear bomb on Israel, I would ask myself if Israel had it coming, and I would say they did.”

Represenative Kline, here’s what you should do:  have the forum.  And make sure you invite every conservative blogger you can find, especially those with video cameras.   Have a staffer bring a wireless router in from home.  Let us videotape the proceedings, and liveblog ’em, and make sure the exact nature of the creeping cretinism you and your staff face is on full display (as opposed to the gauzy, earnest soft-focus that the Strib presents them in). 

Shine the light on the cockroaches, Representative Kline.  Hell, for that opportunity, I’d take the day off from work.

Have your people call my people.

 Michele Bachmann – newly-minted Congresswoman from the Sixth District – has always been catnip for the nutbars. 

Going back to her time with the Maple River Education Coalition (now EdWatch), which was (if memory serves) her stepping-stone to the legislature, she’s been a lighting rod for all manner of loonies, spazzes, AV-club marxists, conspiracy-mongering dimbulbs, spittle-flecked wannabee pundits, personality-deficit-disorder-plagued schlemiels (and a few gay people with legitimate gripes about her uncompromising opposition to gay marriage).  She beat Patty Wetterling last November, as I predicted (and the Strib did not) by eight points; I remain convinced that her unhinged, deranged detractors were responsible for at least a point or two of that total.

Someone asked in the comment section last week why I hadn’t commented yet on Bachmann’s seeming malaprop regarding Iran’s plans in Iraq.  The simple answer was, I really had nothing to say, yet.  I hadn’t really paid much attention; I figured if the mainstream media is attacking Bachmann or, indeed, any conservative, it’s either:

• a hatchet job on their part (see Rochelle Olson’s coverage of Alan Fine)
• a real reach (see the Strib’s coverage of Rod Morgan Grams)
• A slip of the lip, mistatement or flub that gets blown up, with the help of a local news establishment that is in active connivance with the DFL, into a major event.

The answer?  Well, it’s Bachmann, so “all three, and a little drool to boot” is probably the correct answer.

Jay Reding writes the post I would like to have:

The Star-Tribune is questioning Rep. Michele Bachmann when she said that Iran was planning to partition Iraq and create a terrorist state. Rep. Bachmann is actually correct, except she’s confusing Iran and al-Qaeda.

Al-Qaeda did indeed declare their own Islamic State of Iraq. There is also some evidence that the Iranian government has supported Sunni militias in the past and would continue to do so if they thought it would serve their tactical aims.

Bachmann’s statements were imprecise, but the Star-Tribune could have done a small amount of research and figured out what she meant — there is an “Islamic State of Iraq” presently operating in Iraq, and it is quite possible that the Iranians would either support them directly or end up creating a de facto partition of Iraq through their influence of the Shi’ite militias. Bachmann’s statement at most may have confused Iranians with the Majlis Shura al-Mujahideen fi al-Iraq (Mujihadeen Shura Council — the umbrella group for Sunni militants in Iraq).

Now, Representative Bachmann has never been one of my go-to people on foreign policy or defense; taxes, education and social policy are her turf. 

But as Ed and I discussed on the show this past weekend, Bachmann’s statement actually got most of the situation right; Iran does want to see the US get defeated in Iraq; they do want to establish a sphere of influence in the new country; it is obviously they want to use that sphere as a safe haven for their own terrorist proxies.

So did Bachmann muff the facts about who did what to whom in Iraq?  Possible.  Hell, Silvester Reyes, the Dems’ choice to run the House Intelligence Committee, didn’t do so hot at that either, and that is putatively his turf.

With any other Minnesota representative, it would have been treated as a simple flub – a molehill.  Since it’s the poster-child for everything the DFL and the Strib loathes, on the other hand, it shall be treated as a mountain.

NOTE TO THE HATRED-ADDLED:  There’s nothing “difficult” about defending Bachmann – because I’m not.  Merely pointing out facts. 

And noting someone’s comment doesn’t imply any form of consternation.  At least, not for most of us…

Does the title describe the Dems’ latest proposal – to try to repeal the President’s war powers from 2003? 

Or does it describe the Democrat senators themselves? 

You be the judge.

Here’s the grimly-funny part (emphasis mine):

While these officials said the precise wording of the measure remains unsettled, one draft would restrict American troops in Iraq to combating al-Qaida, training Iraqi army and police forces, maintaining Iraq’s territorial integrity and otherwise proceeding with the withdrawal of combat forces.  

“Showtime Six, this is Showtime Four Two, we’re taking fire from those buildings north of the highway.  Say again?  Er, roger that.  Sergeant Lonsdale!  Ask them if they’re Al Quaeda!”

[muffled arabic sounds in distance]

SGT. LONSDALE: “I think that means ‘no, nobody here but us Ba’athists, sir…”

“Negative, Showtime Six.  What?  Oh…Roger that, Showtime Four Two Out.  Cease fire!  Cease fire!”

Just a note to all of you who sat out last November’s senate election, or voted Libertarian, or figured that was no difference between the candidates because Mark Kennedy supported ethanol subsidies:  Thanks.

Barack Obama digs at Australia, via Scott Johnson:

Australian Prime Minister John Howard criticized Obama’s call for immediate American withdrawal from Iraq. When Obama was asked to respond, he declined simply to express respectful disagreement with a loyal American ally. Instead he insulted Australia’s contribution to the war effort, belittling the 1,600 Australian troops in Iraq. He said that if Australia was so dedicated, maybe it should raise its contribution to 20,000.

Obama not only insulted our ally, he formulated the insult in the inelegant fashion of an intellectual thug. CNN reports that Obama said if the Australian prime minister was “ginned up to fight the good fight in Iraq,” he needs to send another 20,000 Australians to the war. “Otherwise, it’s just a bunch of empty rhetoric,” Obama said.

Not as empty as Obama’s.  Australia doesn’t have 20,000 combat troops.  The 1,600 men they currently have in Iraq are a very large share of their active military. 

Please, Democrats;  nominate this hamster. 

Prof. David Bell, in his piece “Was 9/11 really that bad?”, shows us, yet again, why the left can’t really be trusted with national security:

IMAGINE THAT on 9/11, six hours after the assault on the twin towers and the Pentagon, terrorists had carried out a second wave of attacks on the United States, taking an additional 3,000 lives. Imagine that six hours after that, there had been yet another wave. Now imagine that the attacks had continued, every six hours, for another four years, until nearly 20 million Americans were dead. This is roughly what the Soviet Union suffered during World War II, and contemplating these numbers may help put in perspective what the United States has so far experienced during the war against terrorism.

On the one hand, he’s right, in the sense that there’ve been wars that have killed hundreds, even thousands of times as many people as 9/11.

It also raises several questions. Has the American reaction to the attacks in fact been a massive overreaction? Is the widespread belief that 9/11 plunged us into one of the deadliest struggles of our time simply wrong? If we did overreact, why did we do so? Does history provide any insight?

It might indeed – we’ll get back to that in a moment – but a more interesting question is “if fighting a war over 3,000 is an “overreaction”, where exactly is the threshold.  How many lives are too many to lose before we as a nation act?

We learned in the eighties that one paraplegic in a wheelchair, Leon Klinghoffer (murdered on the Achille Lauro by boatjackers) wasn’t enough. We learned that six (first WTC bombing), dozens (Khobar Towers, USS Cole, Kenyan and Tanzanian Embassies) and even hundreds (the Beirut Marine barracks) weren’t enough to push this nation to take serious, concerted action against terrorists.

So is 3,000 still too low?

Certainly, if we look at nothing but our enemies’ objectives, it is hard to see any indication of an overreaction. The people who attacked us in 2001 are indeed hate-filled fanatics who would like nothing better than to destroy this country. But desire is not the same thing as capacity, and although Islamist extremists can certainly do huge amounts of harm around the world, it is quite different to suggest that they can threaten the existence of the United States.

Now we’re making progress; the “existence of the United States” is too high a price to pay.  It’s a start.

Yet a great many Americans, particularly on the right, have failed to make this distinction. For them, the “Islamo-fascist” enemy has inherited not just Adolf Hitler’s implacable hatreds but his capacity to destroy. The conservative author Norman Podhoretz has gone so far as to say that we are fighting World War IV (No. III being the Cold War).

But it is no disrespect to the victims of 9/11, or to the men and women of our armed forces, to say that, by the standards of past wars, the war against terrorism has so far inflicted a very small human cost on the United States. As an instance of mass murder, the attacks were unspeakable, but they still pale in comparison with any number of military assaults on civilian targets of the recent past, from Hiroshima on down.

True.  But damage to a nation isn’t purely measured in lives and property, even though our peoples’ lives are of paramount importance.

Let’s act like liberals for a moment:  if we assume the fringe left is really correct about Bush’s infringements on civil liberties, then isn’t our nation irreparably harmed?  And if you remember who actually started the war, you can see where the damage is coming from – right?

To move into the rational world; it’s possible that terrorists could cause immense damage to this nation without killing a single person.  As the threat, or perception of a threat, escalates then the liberties that make this nation more than just Germany with better cable can erode to the point where a terrorist “takeover” would be more or less irrelevant.  Worried about attacks, the government could mangle the Constitution, infringing free speech, free worship, confiscating firearms, violate equal protection over ethnic differences, change the rules of evidence to speed up terror trials…

This isn’t even partisan; even if you do accept every fringe-left claim about the Administration’s record on civil liberties in the war on terror (and no rational person should), it is a fact that war is hell on liberty; the “War on Drugs”, a bipartisan effort, caused immense erosion in civil liberties, against a threat that is a piker compared to terror (more people die in drug turf wars in a month than die from overdosing on all illegal drugs).

It is overreacting, to counterattack a foe who wants us to either adopt Sharia under duress, or something just as bad out of bipartisan contingency?

Even if one counts our dead in Iraq and Afghanistan as casualties of the war against terrorism, which brings us to about 6,500, we should remember that roughly the same number of Americans die every two months in automobile accidents.

But the only rights we’ve lost to that toll are the ones to drive drunk and without seatbelts.  As absolutist about liberty as I am, even I don’t mourn either.

Terrorism is different, no?

Of course, the 9/11 attacks also conjured up the possibility of far deadlier attacks to come. But then, we were hardly ignorant of these threats before, as a glance at just about any thriller from the 1990s will testify. And despite the even more nightmarish fantasies of the post-9/11 era (e.g. the TV show “24’s” nuclear attack on Los Angeles), Islamist terrorists have not come close to deploying weapons other than knives, guns and conventional explosives. A war it may be, but does it really deserve comparison to World War II and its 50 million dead? Not every adversary is an apocalyptic threat.

In the early 1930’s, a news article in the New York Times noted that a certain political movement had perhaps a few thousand members in a population of 80 million, that their impact was minimal and long-term outlook not very interesting.  They were writing, of course, about Hitler’s Nazis.  In 1932, they were not an “apocalyptic threat”.  Seven years later, after tapping into the hatreds and bigotries of a first-world nation, they were. 

So no.  Not every adversary is an apocalyptic threat.  Yet.

So why has there been such an overreaction? Unfortunately, the commentators who detect one have generally explained it in a tired, predictably ideological way: calling the United States a uniquely paranoid aggressor that always overreacts to provocation.

The World Trade Center I (1993).  The Khobar Towers. The Embassy Bombings. The USS Cole.  All passed without riposte.  Hardly “always overreacting”. 

The author’s claim is patently absurd, and the rest of his article should be viewed with that in mind.

Or, for that matter, this next bit here:

In a recent book, for instance, political scientist John Mueller evaluated the threat that terrorists pose to the United States and convincingly concluded that it has been, to quote his title, “Overblown.” But he undercut his own argument by adding that the United States has overreacted to every threat in its recent history, including even Pearl Harbor (rather than trying to defeat Japan, he argued, we should have tried containment!).

Which is a plainly silly argument.  Containment would have left us with an intractable enemy (who killed thousands of Americans in Hawaii and the Phillippines in the weeks after December 7) in control of most of the Pacific Rim, able to conquer and exploit China and Indonesia with impunity, able eventually to challenge us in the two areas that failed it during the war we actually had – resources and industry…

…but what’s the point of arguing when one is dealing with those invested in such deep silliness?From The American Mind

The lefties are commencing their Vietnam-fantasy foreplay:

Barack Obama is introducing binding legislation mandating the phased removal of combat brigades from Iraq to start in a few months, with the goal of getting “all” — we repeat, “all” — removed by March 2008. From a release just sent out by his campaign:

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) today introduced binding and comprehensive legislation that not only reverses the President’s dangerous and ill-conceived escalation of the Iraq war, but also sets a new course for U.S. policy that can bring a responsible end to the war and bring our troops home.

“Our troops have performed brilliantly in Iraq, but no amount of American soldiers can solve the political differences at the heart of somebody else’s civil war,” Obama said. “That’s why I have introduced a plan to not only stop the escalation of this war, but begin a phased redeployment that can pressure the Iraqis to finally reach a political settlement and reduce the violence.”

The Obama plan offers a responsible yet effective alternative to the President’s failed policy of escalation.

I entitled this post “The Suicide Commences” for a reason.  I’m not sure whose suicide it is.

If the nation keeps its head about itself – if it heeds its troops in the field, follows a sensible (read: hands-on, dead-terrorist, whether-Shi’te or Sunni-focused) course, and focuses its efforts on protecting the vast majority of Iraqis who do want a peaceful, stable, vermin-free country, then it’s the beginning-of-the-electoral end for Obama.  If the GOP can refocus the national agenda on what matters – the war on terror – among the many cleanups, and getting-back-on-messages they need to do (and yes, that’s going to be a tall order), and appeal to the common sense and lingering social memory of the American people, then this is a total loser after the Democrat convention.

On the other hand, if the GOP doesn’t present the people a solid alternative to the Democrat agenda – if we continue to appear like Democrat Lite, as we do right now – then it’s the suicide of the nation as a whole that I’m most worried about.  If you accept that we are in a war against a terrorist movement – a real, hot war, as opposed to an ongoing investigation, like some distended RICO manhunt – then, for all the double-talk about “responsible effectiveness”, this would be vastly worse than the disengagement from Vietnam.  The North Vietnamese Army didn’t follow us home in 1975, after all. 

Being ever the optimist, I choose to work for the former, and against “Neville” Obama.

So the Iraqi military hammers, apparently, a group of militants planning to attack Shi’ite pilgrims:

Iraqi officials claimed Monday that at least 200 militants were killed in a fierce battle between U.S.-backed Iraqi troops and a religious cult allegedly plotting to kill pilgrims at a major Shiite Muslim religious festival, while bombings and mortar attacks targeting Shiites elsewhere killed at least 15 people.

…and what did CNN cover?

A  helicopter shootdown.

Counterinsurgency warfare is a long, slow slog; dealing with a war where the divisions have been baked into a society by centuries of hatred, and then forced into a deep, crafty underground by decades of top-down authoritarian rule is harder still. The British – who have more years of experience with counterinsurgency war than the United States has years, took three decades to quell the worst of the violence in Northern Ireland, and never entirely extinguished it in India in 300 years.

Winning, in these wars, is never a matter of dragging the enemy to the deck of the USS Missouri and signing a treaty. The job – according to any number of sources with knowledge of the topic – involves a complex mix of protecting and helping the friendly locals, persuading the locals that are on the fence what is the winning bet, and finding the enemy and either killing him or convincing him that there’s a better way.

It’s not a job for the faint of heart. It’s also, by all accounts, a job we have never really carried out successfully. We were, by some accounts, on our way to at least an acceptable stalemate in Vietnam in 1962, before John F. Kennedy – eager for a “drag the enemy to the deck of the Missouri” victory after his Bay of Pigs debacle – upended years of progress by special forces advisors in quiet back-country “hearts and minds” operations by sending in the Marines, followed by hundreds of thousands of troops from a regular Army that had been trained to serve as a nuclear tripwire in Europe.

We’ve learned a lot since then – chief among those lessons being the switch at the end of the Vietnam era to a volunteer military. But there are more to learn.

Via Miss Attila, an interesting piece by Nibras Kazimi on how that war is actually going, and how those lessons are being learned: