Category ►►► Opinions: Nasty, Brutish, and Shortsighted

March 12, 2008

Transformative Elections vs. Kicking the Can: a Sermon

(Follow-up to "Romney: My Fave for the Nomination, But a Mistake for VP")

Picking up on our last post, let me clarify the philosophy behind our call for a "flamboyant," "galvanizing running mate," rather than one of the "usual suspects," like Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty. I don't know whether John McCain understands this; I hope he does, or that he figures it out before selecting his running mate.

Simply put, if Republicans care about the future of the party, we cannot afford yet another narrow presidential victory. Of course it's better than a narrow loss; but it does nothing to build the brand. People are drifting away, because there is no longer anything exciting or daring about being Republican -- as there was in the 1980s.

We're losing the vision edge to the Democrats in the twenty-first century. You always must bear in mind that the Left has an automatic edge on "vision," because they're entirely defined by their vision of utopia and bringing about heaven on earth, right here and now.

This is a huge draw, especially to the young, as Jonah Goldberg argues in Liberal Fascism: Yutes always want to believe there is something sui generis about them that makes them uniquely qualified to rule the world. We on the anti-liberal side must first batter down this autogenerated conceit before showing them why our philosophy is more exciting.

Narrow victories like 2000 and 2004 do little to awaken people to the implicit failure of progressivism, and to the alternative philosophies out there... Capitalism, conservatism, and individual and family responsibility, as opposed to statism and "it takes a village (or a nation) to raise a child." With an unorthodox candidate like John McCain, we have the opportunity to wrench this election out of the normal mode on the Republican side... and we're fools if we don't roll those dice.

This can either be an ordinary election -- or a transformative one. We can choose to just kick the can down the road, or we can establish what Republicanism will mean for the next several decades. McCain is the gateway to 21st-century Republicanism; but like Moses, he can see but not enter the promised land. To make this election transformative, we need someone who exemplifies the future of the party... and the vice presidency is one good way to highlight such a person.

The last transformative election was 1980. Reagan galvanized America and flipped eight decades of progressivism and liberal fascism on its head. Alas, however, George H.W. Bush certainly did not exemplify Reaganism... which was precisely the reason he lost in 1992. The transformation of 1980 continued under Clinton in some areas (economic, for example); but in other significant ways, notably national security and individualism, it petered out over eight years of mudpacking by a follower of Huey Long and a disciple of Saul Alinsky.

Imagine how the last four elections would have gone had Reagan eschewed the normal political calculus (name your nearest rival as running mate) -- and instead reached deeper into the well to draw out somebody young, exciting, and a thoroughgoing Reaganite; someone who could truly have carried the torch in 1988 and 1992, perhaps founding a party dynasty.

In an ordinary election, political calculus should prevail; the nominee should pick a Republican whose turn it is, or someone who can bring one or two specific states over to the GOP side. But this is not an ordinary election; and I don't believe for one second that there is any specific state that Mitt Romney, or any other VP pick from the usual suspects, can bring to McCain.

To put it another way, McCain himself, by his very nature, is already transformative; he already does the job, as much as it can be done, of bringing in traditionally knife-edge states -- those that went for Kerry by less than 5 points in 2004: Michigan (17 ev), Minnesota (10 ev), New Hampshire (4 ev), Oregon (7 ev), Pennsylvania (21 ev), and Wisconsin (10 ev). McCain also will do a better job holding narrowly held red states, like Iowa (7 ev), Ohio (20 ev), and (nowadays) Virginia (13 ev), than would a Southern conservative nominee. I believe McCain will hold all the reds except Virginia (I think the Ohio hemorrhage is over); and he'll get some of the blues; but no possible running mate will make him get more of those.

Take Mitt Romney, for example. Despite having a father who was a very popular governor of Michigan, Romney wouldn't help McCain win Michigan. Now, if the nominee had been Fred Thompson, then Romney might help; Thompson is just a mainstream conservative Southerner. But McCain will either win or lose Michigan all on his own; Romney won't help.

But much more interesting to me, in crafting a transformative election, are what I call the Nine-Pointers: blue states that aren't razor-close, but also are not deep, double-digit azure. States like Delaware (7.5 points, 3 ev), Hawaii (9 points, 4 ev), Maine (9 points, 4 ev), New Jersey (6 points, 15 ev), and Washington (7 points, 11 ev). Maybe even Connecticut (10 points, 7 ev) and Illinois (10 points, 21 ev). And of course, the granddaddy of all Nine-Pointers, California (9 points, 55 ev).

The bluish purples add up to 69 electoral votes; but the Nine-Pointers add up to 65 evs, not counting California; add in the Golden State, and that's 120 evs. Put both purple groups together, and you have a potential haul of 189 electoral votes.

If the ticket of McCain-[fill in the blank] can grab any substantial portion of those, then we're talking blow-out. Not a total wipe-out, like Reagan/Mondale in 1984, Nixon/McGovern in 1972, or Roosevelt/Landon in 1936; but a substantial enough victory that only the most froth-at-the-mouth left-liberals can try to claim the presidency is "illegitimate," or that McCain is the "commander in thief."

This is the kind of win that cows Congress; this is the kind of win that can have coattails; this is the kind of win -- if the new president represents a break from the norm -- that actually brings new, young voters to the GOP... similar to Reagan, though not quite that substantial, I would expect. This is big enough to be a transformative election, if the winning ticket calls the young to follow... and I believe McCain does that, to some extent.

But a younger, more exciting, more futurist running mate would magnify that call tenfold.

Bill Clinton's back to back minority victories didn't move the masses, and neither did Bush-43's back to back narrow (spread less than 4%) wins. 9/11 was a screaming smoke-detector for many Americans, including many young Americans; but there was no solid, ideological follow-through by George W. Bush to counteract the Democrats' droning cry of, "Nothing to see here, let's just MoveOn."

That lack of communication and a coherent, post-9/11 ideology is Bush's biggest failing as president; but realistically, he never meant to be a transformer; he ran as a technocrat administrator. It was America's ill-luck the attack happened when it did, and not a year earlier, when it could have helped John McCain in 2000.

(I voted for Bush in the 2000 primary. Though I'd been warning about the danger of militant Islamism since 1990 -- in print! -- I had no idea what was just around the corner when I voted. I now believe McCain would have made a better post-9/11 president than Bush.)

But a Nine-Pointer victory with a transformative ticket will actually move people, those who ordinarily would just vote the faith of their fathers, to switch to the other team -- our team.

So we should search for a running mate who can compliment and augment McCain and help drive this election into a Nine-Pointer win in the popular vote, thus winning a substantial number of the Nine-Pointer states. There's no rush to name one; McCain has months. In fact, if he makes no decision but drops hints of these criteria, that would generate much more interest than quickly naming a yawner.

I don't just want a narrow victory, where we squeak past Obama; I want Obama (or Hillary) crushed... and crushed badly enough that the socialist hydra is driven deep underground, perhaps even freeing the Democratic Party itself from enthrallment by the philosophies of Woodrow Wilson, FDR, LBJ, and Saul Alinsky.

So that's the kind of running mate we should be looking for: One who can magnify McCain's voice, then follow McCain as president and be a bellwether for the future of the Grand Old Party.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, March 12, 2008, at the time of 6:41 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

February 14, 2008

She Needs a Man

Bear with us for a bit...

Hillary Clinton is our first serious (?) female candidate for president.

From Day-1, her campaign has been run by Patti Solis Doyle, Hillary's longtime -- uh -- friend:

But Solis Doyle was just ousted, and now Hillary's campaign is run by Margaret "Maggie" Williams, Hillary's former chief of staff and loyal to the core:

What do these three people have in common, besides being fanatically loyal to Hillary? Let me give you a broad hint... it has something to do with gender.

Of course, she does have pollster Mark Penn working for her, along with other males; but they are subordinated to the folks above... and Penn, at least, appears to be growing increasingly frustrated by the inept campaign.

But let's step back a bit in time. Most accounts I have read say that it was Hillary who insisted that President Bill Clinton name a woman -- one willing to be a sock puppet for Hillary -- as attorney general. First he tried Zoe Baird, but she turned out to have hired an illegal alien to be her chauffeur and another to be nanny to her child, not even paying Social-Security taxes on their wages.

The second try was Kimba Wood; she too turned out to have an illegal-alien problem.

The third time was the not very charming Janet Reno. Reno had no illegal-alien nannies -- probably because she had no children -- so she was confirmed. She subsequently transmogrified, a few years later, into the de facto counsel for Bill and Hillary Clinton, while still remaining on paper the attorney general... but that is beyond the scope of this post.

Reno's top deputy was Jamie Gorelick; she was also generally considered Hillary's "political officer" (in the Stalinist sense) within the Justice Department. Certainly Justice staffers were more afraid of Gorelick's wrath than that of the attorney general herself.

Gorelick, you will recall, published a memo in 1995 directing the US Attorney and the FBI, then investigating the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, to essentially erect a wall between intelligence-gathering and law-enforcement, not allowing side either even to communicate with the other. This stupid idea went far beyond the law's requirement (as she admitted in the memo) and almost certainly led, in part, to many terrorist attacks on the United States, including the 9/11 attacks themselves (which she continues to deny to this day).

It became clear during the run-up to the 9/11 Commission (on which Gorelick served) that Hillary, not Reno, was behind the memo that created "Gorelick's wall."

Then there was Susan Thomases, a New York corporate lawyer with little government experience and but a small bit of political experience -- but Hillary's closest friend from the 1970s.

Thomases had a slightly better political resume than others in "Hillaryland" (Patti Solis Doyle's term): She had been a scheduler for Vice President Walter Mondale and had run the Senate campaign of Bill Bradley in 1978, and she was a successful Manhattan attorney. Still, this seems a bit slim to qualify her for her role as Hillary Clinton's closest advisor, troubleshooter (mainly on Whitewater allegations), personal lawyer, scheduler to the President of the United States, and unofficial "enforcer" of Hillaryland.

She later became famous for testifying more than 180 times during the congressional Whitewater investigation that she did not remember key facts or incidents, so couldn't answer whatever question she had been asked. (Pundits called it the "Alzheimers defense.")

I asked before what these Hillary appointees have in common; let me be more specific about the answer: It's not just that they are all women; the real similarity is that they were all chosen by Hillary Clinton precisely because they were women. she appears to have only two criteria for her appointments. The appointee must...

1. Be fanatically loyal to Hillary Clinton;
2. And be a woman.

Does anybody imagine that in 1993, the top three candidates for Attorney General of the United States were all women? Does anyone believe that the best choice Hillary could have made for campaign manager was Patti Solis Doyle... who had run a (virtually unopposed) mayoral campaign for Richard Daley in Chicago and two (virtually unopposed) Senate campaigns for Hillary, but who had never, ever held a significant position in either a presidential campaign, or even in a campaign of any sort against a tough opponent -- but who just happened also to be a woman?

Maggie Williams is now running Hillary's presidential campaign. So far as I can tell, she has never served on any other campaign; she was a "senior advisor" to the campaign before Solis Doyle was ousted... but Williams was earlier Hillary's chief of staff (fanatical loyalty); and of course, she is a woman.

Zoe Baird, Kimba Wood, Janet Reno, Jamie Gorelick, Susan Thomases -- pretty much the same evaluation: Not particularly qualified, except in the all-important loyalty and gender checkboxes.

Hillary Clinton has always been proud to call herself a feminist (one of those feminists who owes everything she has or is to a man, her husband), but she is a particular kind of feminist: She is not what Christina Hoff-Sommers would call an equity feminist, one who wants only equality of opportunity for women; Hillary is what Hoff-Sommers calls a gender feminist... that is, a tribalist whose "tribe" is women.

Hillary enthusiastically supports anything that helps women or girls, whether fairly or unfairly; thus, she still applauds university admissions standards that give preference to women, even though women outnumber men on college campuses by a substantial margin. Likewise, a gender feminist like Hillary champions any policy that hurts or retards men and boys relative to women and girls.

Contrast Hillary's female appointees to George W. Bush's appointment of Condoleezza Rice first as National Security Advisor, then as Secretary of State, and his nomination of Harriet Miers as Supreme Court justice. Or for that matter, with Bill Clinton's appointment of Madeleine Albright as Secretary of State. Bush certainly did not pick Rice just to pick a woman; she had previously served as special assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. William J. Crowe, Jr; then she served on the National Security Council as the senior advisor on Soviet and East European Affairs. She was Bush's senior foreign-policy advisor during the campaign; so it was perfectly natural that he name her his NSA.

Harriet Miers was the president of a large Dallas law firm; then president of the Dallas Bar Association, then the Texas State Bar Association and chairman of the Board of Editors of the ABA Journal. Most important, she was chief counsel to Governor Bush's transition team in 1994, and she became Bush's personal attorney while he was governor. She headed the Texas Lottery Commission, a fairly large bureaucracy, and reportedly did a very good job.

Yet despite the fact that she was well qualified and a very close friend of the president, he did not name her Attorney General of the United States; that honor went to Sen. John Ashcroft. She did eventually become White House Counsel in 2004... and it was from that position -- and her role as head of Bush's selection committee to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor -- that Bush's eventual nomination came of Miers herself to replace O'Connor.

He said at the time he specifically wanted to pick someone who did not come from the appellate courts. When conservatives objected, he withdrew Miers (after a long struggle) and picked Judge Samuel Alito... from the Third Circus Court of Appeals. So it goes.

And even Madeleine Albright had a stellar academic career, and served as Clinton's Ambassador to the United Nations for four years, before he named her Secretary of State. There is no indication that Bill Clinton named her just because she was a women, though I'm sure he was not blind to the PR aspect. (Bill Clinton has a rather different set of political sins than does his wife.)

But Hillary Clinton is determined that her campaign will be run by and for women, regardless of whether there are better qualified and more experienced campaign managers who happen, sadly, to be male. And we see the consequences of Hillary's tribalism today: Despite every institutional advantage one can imagine, she is being slowly ground into hamburger by a complete lightweight no-name with even less experience than she has.

Her campaign is in free-fall not because it's run by a woman, but because it has all along been run by people selected primarily because they are women. Hillary's gynocentrism has probably thwarted her political aspirations, unless she gets amazingly lucky -- and both Barack Obama and John McCain make catastrophic, career-killing mistakes ("Macaca!").

The only way I can think for her to turn her candidacy around would be to hire a male campaign manager... not because a generic man would be better than Maggie Williams or Patti Solis Doyle (although that's probably true), but because such an appointment would signal that Hillary had actually changed her own psyche from gender feminism towards an equity position, selecting not "the best woman" for the job but "the best person."

But considering the psychology of the individual, I consider that a very slim possibility indeed. Hillary would rather lose while surrounded by a pavillion of women than put a man in charge -- and win.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, February 14, 2008, at the time of 7:24 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

January 16, 2008

Kids... Those Darn - Kids!

I was reading a piece on AP which reported that in the United States, births are significantly up; fortunately, AP gave us the benefit of its anointed, elite-media analysis of the looming catastrophe -- a rising fertility rate -- that will positively dwarf the pending disaster of global climate change:

Bucking the trend in many other wealthy industrialized nations, the United States seems to be experiencing a baby boomlet, reporting the largest number of children born in 45 years.

The nearly 4.3 million births in 2006 were mostly due to a bigger population, especially a growing number of Hispanics. That group accounted for nearly one-quarter of all U.S. births. But non-Hispanic white women and other racial and ethnic groups were having more babies, too.

Good heavens! More children; don't these people know that we're destroying the Earth as it is? What can be causing this aberrant behavior?

Experts believe there is a mix of reasons: a decline in contraceptive use, a drop in access to abortion, poor education and poverty.

Zounds, have things gotten so bad that women are forced to start having babies again? Quelle horror!

One of those religious fanatics might suggest that more people are simply deciding to have more children, perhaps because they believe in the future here -- as they certainly do not in the socially conscious European countries. (Since there is no future, believing in one is a sign of desperation, delusion, or senility.) But even if the religious explanation is true, it just proves what unsophisticated boobs red-state Americans are:

"Americans like children. We are the only people who respond to prosperity by saying, 'Let's have another kid,'" said Nan Marie Astone, associate professor of population, family and reproductive health at Johns Hopkins University.

Those crazy Americans. Don't they understand the danger the human population poses to this planet? And will this boomlet continue? AP turns to the most appropriate subject-matter expert to ask about this freakish rise in childbirth:

Demographers say it is too soon to know if the sudden increase in births is the start of a trend.

"We have to wait and see. For now, I would call it a noticeable blip," said Brady Hamilton, a statistician with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Yep, when I want to learn more about the causes of an inexplicable increase in fertility, my first choice would certainly be to contact the Centers for Disease Control. And Prevention.

At least there is a dark lining to this silver cloud:

To many economists and policymakers, the increase in births is good news. The U.S. fertility rate - the number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime - reached 2.1. That's the "magic number" required for a population to replace itself....

But the higher fertility rate isn't all good. Last month, the CDC reported that America's teen birth rate rose for the first time in 15 years.

Aha! So the increased fertility rate reflects nothing more than rampant unmarried teen mothers. We always knew the evil of the anti-family Republican regime would eventually catch up with us; this must be the explanation for the putative "boomlet." Oh, wait:

The same report also showed births becoming more common in nearly every age and racial or ethnic group. Birth rates increased for women in their 20s, 30s and early 40s, not just teens.

Oh. Ah, nevermind.

Demographers say there has been at least one boomlet before, around 1990, when annual U.S. births broke 4.1 million for two straight years before dropping to about 3.9 million in the mid-1990s. Adolescent childbearing was up at the time, but so were births among other groups, and experts aren't sure what explained that bump.

It's just totally counterintuitive: Why on earth would anybody want to have children? For God's sake, a Republican is in the White House! Shouldn't this be a time to protest by refusing to have babies, thus denying the regime the cannon fodder it needs to threaten the world?

Unless... maybe it's a result of all those union-job-stealing illegal immigrants swarming in with their crazy foreign ideas that there's something good, in some mysterious way, about having a family:

The high rate probably reflects cultural attitudes toward childbirth developed in other countries, experts said. Fertility rates average 2.7 in Central America and 2.4 in South America....

Some complain that many illegal immigrants come here purposely to have children.

"The child is an automatic American citizen, thus entitled to all benefits of American citizens. This gives a certain financial incentive for people coming from other countries illegally to have children here," said John Vinson, president of the Virginia-based American Immigration Control Foundation.

There you go: Even those hardline, anti-immigration, militia-joining, federal-building-bombing, Buchanan-supporting, white supremacist, hood-wearing members of the Taliban wing of the Republican Party agree with us that having kids is unAmerican.

So what can we do about this scourge of spawning? Isn't there some sort of international "Protocol" we can join against childbirth? One must exist, because the European Union and Japan have clearly negotiated just such an agreement. How else to explain their refreshingly low fertility rates?

Here are some possible solutions we can consider:

Fertility levels tend to decline as women become better educated and gain career opportunities, and as they postpone childbirth until they are older. Experts say those factors, along with the legalization of abortion and the expansion of contraception options, explain why the U.S. fertility rate dropped to its lowest point -- about 1.7 -- in 1976.

Sadly, however, it appears that the contrarian American public just doesn't get it, like they just don't understand the peril of unbridled Capitalism and the immorality of having a strong military:

But while fertility declines persisted in many other developed nations, the United States saw the reverse: The fertility rate climbed to 2 in 1989 and has hovered around that mark since then, according to federal birth data.

Kohler and others say the difference has more to do with culture than race. For example, white American women have more children than white European -- even though many nations in Europe have more family-friendly government policies on parental leave and child care.

More proof, as if any were needed, of the greater enlightenment of women on the other side of the pond.

Finally, there is one other dark side to this that we will never talk about. Except we have to let you know about it, because how else would you know what we're not going to talk about?

The influence of certain religions in those latter regions is an important factor, said Ron Lesthaeghe, a Belgian demographer who is a visiting professor at the University of Michigan. "Evangelical Protestantism and Mormons," he said.

Either Professor Lesthaeghe was cut off in mid-sentence, or else Catholics have finally come to their senses. Maybe next they'll go all the way and start supporting a woman's right to choose!

In any event, surely you can see the dilemma here: How on earth can we cure this problem of excess births? What external controlling factor is forcing more and more women back into the baby quagmire... women who should be in the vanguard of freeing themselves from biological servitude?

It's a serious problem. We'll need some major research grants to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to finally reverse this epidemic of new life.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, January 16, 2008, at the time of 5:36 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

December 3, 2007

Venezuelan Strongman Throws Hissy Fit - the Rest of the Story

This is by way of an update to our previous post, Venezuelan Strongman Throws Hissy Fit.

As most of you know by now, in an amazing and joyous slap in the face of the pudgy premier, the voters of Venezuela appear to have actually turned down Oogo Chavez's bid to become El Presidente for Life... and the concomitant bid to consolodate all governmental power within his bloated fist:

Voters in this country narrowly defeated a proposed overhaul to the constitution in a contentious referendum over granting President Hugo Chávez sweeping new powers, the Election Commission announced early Monday.

An opposition group celebrated after the referendum. Venezuela had remained on edge since polls closed Sunday afternoon and the wait for results began. More Photos >

It was the first major electoral defeat in the nine years of his presidency. Voters rejected the 69 proposed amendments 51 to 49 percent.

I say "appears to have" because with Oogo, you never know for sure; he could do an about-face tomorrow, declare a recount, and pronounce that the recount showed he had really won... once the Election Commission (controlled by Chavez) and the Supreme Court (controlled by Chavez) rejected a few tens of thousands of "fraudulent" ballots cast by traitors and American dupes.

He has already threatened to cut off our oil supply if we "interfered" with the anti-constitutional election; and of course, interference is clearly "proven" by Chavez's loss. This is, however, a particularly feeble punishment, considering that oil is basically fungible: If Venezuela sells the U.S. less oil, instead selling to China, then other members of OPEC on the world oil market will (necessarily) be selling less to China by that same amount -- and will happily sell it to us to make up the difference.

Of course, we could simply bypass all the malarky by drilling for our own oil in the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Santa Barbara, and yes, even in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR); that would yield more oil per year than we currently get from Venezuela.

If only the Democrats would deign to let us use our own oil, rather than forcing us to buy from Wahabbis and Venezuelan communists. If you don't want to be paying $5 - $6 a gallon for gasoline -- then vote Republican.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, December 3, 2007, at the time of 3:41 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

December 2, 2007

Venezuelan Strongman Throws Hissy Fit

President Oogo Chavez of Venezuela has threatened to nationalize (that is, confiscate) the Venezuelan subsidiaries of two Spanish banks, Banco Santander SA (BS) and Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA (BBVA).

BBVA purchased the Venezuelan Banco Provincial a decade ago; BS purchased nearly all of Banco de Venezuela in 1996 for about $350 billion. Both transactions occurred before Hugo Chavez was first elected president of Venezuela in 1998 -- but after he attempted to overthrow the government by coup d'état six years earlier.

So why is Chavez threatening to seize the Spanish banks? Let's allow him to tell it in his own words:

"Are we going to turn the page, are we going to forget? No!" Chavez told hundreds of thousands of supporters at a campaign rally ahead of a vote Sunday on changes to Venezuela's constitution.

"The only way this is going to be fixed is for the king of Spain to offer an apology for having attacked the Venezuelan head of state," Chavez said.

Otherwise, "I'll start thinking about what actions to take," he continued. "Spaniards bought some banks here, and it doesn't cost me anything to take those banks back and nationalize them again, and put them in the service of the Venezuelan people."

So... how exactly did King Juan Carlos of Spain "attack[] the Venezuelan head of state," as Chavez said, speaking about himself in the third person again? Why, King Juan told Chavez to "shut up" at a conference in Chile?

And why did he do that, other than the obvious (that Chavez is a pissant bully whose very forte is boorish behavior)? Because the thuggish Chavez called former Prime Minister of Spain Jose Maria Aznar a "Fascist."

I see the adults are once again running things in South America. Meanwhile, word from the electoral front is that voting is strangely light in areas known to be friendly to Oogo:

The referendum, which follows several weeks of street protests and frenetic campaigning around the 69 proposed amendments, appeared to unfold largely without irregularities and violence. Still, turnout in some areas was unexpectedly low, particularly in poor districts that are traditional bastions of loyalty for Mr. Chávez.

We don't know yet whether the Venezuelan people are going to vote today to allow Oogo to essentially remain president for life, without having to worry about future elections or recalls, and to give him a Castroite level of dictatorial power to "formally establish a socialist state". We can only hope the Venezuelan people have finally come to their senses; we should find out late today or early Monday.

Nobody knows how the tyrant-in-waiting will react if his referendum fails. Perhaps he can threaten to nationalize the entire electorate if they don't give him what he wants.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, December 2, 2007, at the time of 2:04 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

November 16, 2007

More Qwik Hits - Sleepless in Senate, Desert Desertions, and John Kerry

Heh, I'll bet you thought the title all referred to the same person, didn't you? Nope, three separate stories...

Sleepless in the Senate

Majority Leader Harry "Pinky" Reid (D-Caesar's Palace, 90%) is irked that President Bush has decided to exercise his constitutional authority to make recess appointments when the Senate refuses even to hold hearings on those men and women he has appointed through the normal route.

So in the Democrats' never-ending quest to cripple the presidency itself, stripping as many powers and duties away from the Executive as they can gobble up into the Legislative, Reid has decided not to recess the Senate over the Thanksgiving Day weekend, as has been customary for decades. Possibly even since President Lincoln created the holiday.

Reid's stroke of genius is that, if the Senate isn't in recess, Bush can't make recess appointments:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has decided to keep the chamber in session over the Thanksgiving break to block President Bush from making any unsavory recess appointments while Senators are out of town. ["Unsavory?" Not that Roll Call would be at all biased in its coverage of this issue...]

In a statement inserted in the record Friday, the Majority Leader said he will hold the Senate in a series of pro forma or nonvoting sessions to prevent the controversial practice. ["Controversial?" Who has ever before denied the president has this power -- which is explicitly granted in the Constitution?] In the statement, Reid argued that nominations need to get on track, and that Bush has not met the Democrats “halfway” in agreeing to Democratically backed nominees to “important commissions.”

First of all, Sen. Reid of all people is a fine one to talk about not being met "halfway" on appointments. Does the phrase "blocked judges" ring any bells?

But second, I would love to see Bush call the bluff: When the GOP and most of the Democrats are out of town (as they will be), and there isn't even a quorum in the Senate (as will happen at some point at 3:00 in the morning), Bush should just quietly sign and time-stamp all the recess-appointment papers, whether the Senate is formally in recess or not. A Republican senator should stand outside the chamber, quietly videotaping the virtually empty room -- and showing the clock on the wall -- for future evidentiary use.

Then let Reid spend the next year plus duking it out in the courts. Republicans can run on the issue, noting how many recess appointments President Clinton made -- and demanding to know why Minority Whip Reid didn't object to any of them.

(Reid was Assistant Minority Party Leader, a.k.a. Minority Whip, of the Senate from January 1999 to January 2001, during which President Clinton certainly made recess appointments, including James Hormel as ambassador to Luxembourg and Roger L. Gregory to the Fourth Circus Court.)

Run on the scandal of the Democratic Senate trying to seize power from the office of the presidency itself, not just from Bush. Don't they trust future Democratic presidents?

The Democratic Party: It's not just a job; it's an ongoing criminal enterprise!

Desert desertions

According to AP:

Soldiers strained by six years at war are deserting their posts at the highest rate since 1980, with the number of Army deserters this year showing an 80 percent increase since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003.

This might be more startling if one did not recall that since 1980, we have barely had any sustained hot wars; it's hardly surprising that more soldiers unprepared to serve in combat would desert during wartime than peacetime, when the military often becomes just a jobs program.

The only long confrontation (more than a few months) we had during that time was in Bosnia; and we were not handling the brunt of the ground action. We had a peacekeeping presence in the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR), but mostly we were there in our NATO capacity... and NATO's involvement was mainly aviation.

The point is that the last major American war before the Afghanistan and Iraq wars was Vietnam... and as even AP admits:

While the totals are still far lower than they were during the Vietnam War, when the draft was in effect, they show a steady increase over the past four years and a 42 percent jump since last year.

So the AP has discovered, amazingly enough, that major wars with long deployments lead to an increase in the desertion rate -- from 0.7% in 2006 to 0.9%. Shocking!

But they signally fail to tell us what we really want to know: How many of those deserters were Democrats taking their cue from Harry "Pinky" Reid?

John Kerry -- still searching

This one is just amazing. Reporting by the Associate Press tells us that John Kerry (D-MA, 95%) is still trying to disprove the allegations of the Swit Boat Veterans for Truth -- years after he lost his presidential bid largely on the issues the SBVT raised:

Sen. John Kerry, whose 2004 presidential campaign was torpedoed by critics of his Vietnam War record, said Friday he has personally accepted a Texas oilman's offer to pay $1 million to anyone who can disprove even a single charge of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

In a letter to T. Boone Pickens, the Massachusetts Democrat wrote: "While I am prepared to show they lied on allegation after allegation, you have generously offered to pay one million dollars for just one thing that can be proven false. I am prepared to prove the lie beyond any reasonable doubt."

So what is the one Swiftie allegation Kerry has vowed to prove "beyond any reasonable doubt" was a lie? AP doesn't say; presumably, John Kerry hasn't figured that part out yet.

AP is still carrying water for Kerry, by the way; consider this howler:

While fellow veterans and reporters disproved many of the group's claims at the time, Kerry refused to air ads responding to the criticism. His own response was muted for fear of legitimizing his critics' attacks. The senator conceded after losing to Bush that his lackluster response likely cost him the election.

Which claims were disproven "at the time?" AP doesn't say; presumably, they havn't figured that part out yet.

I have read many of these so-called disproofs; none impressed me with its logical or evidentiary acumen. Typically, by "disprove," they mean the same witnesses who took Kerry's side earlier took it again later, insisting that he really did so perform whatever feat of heroism he claimed to have performed. Each failed to respond to the SBVT's evidence, simply sweeping that aside as irrelevant.

This reminds me of the very recent (past few decades) redefinition of the verb "to refute." According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage (my version is from 1989), until very recently, to refute always meant "to prove wrong; show to be false or erroneous." This is what they call the "uncontroversial" definition.

But in the past few decades, a new definition has been grafted onto the word -- a definition that is universally condemned by grammarians (especially the British) but is increasingly common nonetheless: merely "to deny the truth or accuracy of."

To quote from the Dictionary of English Usage:

Its most frequent use is by journalists in reporting the emphatic denials issued by those accused of wrongdoing. Hardly a day now goes by, it seems, without one goverment official or another refuting a new set of allegations.

I reckon "disprove" now joins the ranks of "refute" as simply meaning to forcefully deny an allegation.

Meanwhile, John Kerry is still desperately seeking the real medal-faker... across every golf course in America. Perhaps he should team up in doubles matches with O.J. Simpson.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, November 16, 2007, at the time of 6:47 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

November 5, 2007

Dems On the Rampage, Dennis On a Tear

For this entire year, the Democrats have been stung by repeated legislative embarassments; they failed to:

• Force defeat in Iraq;
• Let the camel-nose of SCHIP into the tent (with the body, socialized medicine, to follow);
• Pass even one, single appropriations bill through Congress and to the president's desk;
• Follow through on their promise to make the 110th Congress "the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history" by passing meaningful ethical reform with either a ban on earmarks altogether, or at least complete transparency of the earmarking process -- shining a spotlight on the earmarking roaches in the system;
• Make a decision on the soon-to-expire Bush tax cuts for the middle class;
• Do anything at all about illegal immigration, and so on.

Their perennial, whiny complaint is that the Republicans in Congress keep filibustering Democrat-sponsored legislation, and that President Bush vetoes the trickle that does get through. But navigating that needle is part of the process of leadership.

Neither party has had anything like a veto-proof (or even unfilibusterable) majority in ages; neither has the luxury of completely dominating the legislative conversation and burying the other side's objections.

During the Republicans' tenure, they actually managed to pass significant pieces of legislation, from tax cuts, to allowing faith-based organizations to vie for charitable governmental spending, to beefing up the border with double fencing, to a couple of declarations of war, to easing environmental regulations, etc. The Republicans were largely successful at legislating because they found issues where even the bulk of work-a-day Democrats agreed with the GOP and disagreed with the Democratic leadership; thus conditions were ripe for Democrats to join with Republicans to provide enough votes to invoke cloture, thus preventing a filibuster.

But the Democrats of the 110th loudly announced, even before they assumed office, that they considered congressional Republicans to be mere speed bumps -- and the president an anachronistic irrelevancy. Their "negotiation" style consists of a lengthy series of take-it-or-leave-it ultimata... and evidently, the GOP's response has been not only to "leave it" but to show just how much power a unified minority party has. And of course, the president has the constitutional authority to veto legislation; it's not something dirty or underhanded, as the Democrats seem to believe.

Ergo, the Democrats find themselves at a crossroads. Two paths open before them:

1. They can change their tone and begin working with the Republicans to craft bipartisan legislation, supported at least by the GOP rank and file, if not necessarily by the GOP leadership;
2. Or they can retreat from the world of legislating into the comforting zone of endless investigations of the Bush administration, in order to create the illusion of progress when in fact all they're doing is loudly burning rubber at the starting line.

With all that as prologue, we come to a couple of articles. From the Associated Press...

House Democrats threatened Monday to hold President Bush's key confidants in contempt of Congress unless they comply with subpoenas for information on the Justice Department's purge of federal prosecutors last winter.

The White House shrugged off the ultimatum, saying the information is off-limits under executive privilege and that the aides in question - White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten and former presidential counselor Harriet Miers - are immune from prosecution.

"It won't go anywhere," predicted White House press secretary Dana Perino.

Congressional Democrats nonetheless submitted their 102-page report, and a Republican rebuttal, to the House clerk on Monday afternoon. The report accused Miers of contempt for failing to appear and testify as subpoenaed. She and Bolten were charged with failing to produce documents on whether the prosecutors were fired at the White House's behest.

The essential absurdity of this investigation is found in a couple of short, quiet sentences buried in the middle of the article:

If the report is passed, the House would forward the citation to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia for prosecution....

It's not clear that contempt of Congress citations must be prosecuted.

That's quite an understatement. In fact, the courts have made it very clear that they will not force the Executive branch to prosecute itself on orders from the Legislative branch. Thus, the most at Chairman John Conyers (D-MI, 100%) can do is shake his fist and demand that President Bush prosecute his own aides for carrying out his own policies... which seems implausible on its face. So beyond congressional self-abuse, what is the point?

The plain and simple fact is that the "fired" U.S. attorneys -- who were not fired, by the way, but mostly just not reappointed to another term -- were sent packing for purely performance-based reasons: They had their own private, political agendas, which they insisted upon following rather than following the agenda of the President of the United States. As they serve at the pleasure of the president, and the president was not pleased, they were gently encouraged to find employment elsewhere.

When next a Democrat is elected president, he will have the same authority: He need not keep reappointing U.S. attorneys, or any other appointed officials, who march to the sound of a different drum. It's as simple as that.

I don't think even the Democrats believe that once the president names someone to a position, he is obliged to retain that person forever, no matter what he does. I think this is just another way for Democrats to investigate -- which requires no negotiation whatsoever -- rather than legislate, which requires actually listening to the opposition and making some effort to accomodate their views in order to gain their support... an odious, Herculean labor that the Democrats simply cannot bear to undertake. (Actually, it's the Democrats, not the Republicans, who remind me of the Stymphalian birds.)

And while we're on the subject, we also have this: Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Venus, 100%) has decided to use some obscure House rule to force the entire House of Representatives to formally cast a roll-call vote on impeaching Vice President Dick Cheney...

"The momentum is building for impeachment," Kucinich said in a Nov. 2 news release. "Millions of citizens across the nation are demanding Congress rein in the Vice President's abuse of power."

House Resolution 333 says Cheney should be impeached for "high crimes and misdemeanors," because he "purposely manipulated the intelligence process to deceive the citizens and Congress of the United States by fabricating a threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to justify the use of the United States Armed Forces against the nation of Iraq in a manner damaging to our national security interests."

Kucinich insists that Vice President Cheney continues to violate the U.S. Constitution by insisting on the supremacy of the Executive Branch....

"Congress must hold the Vice President accountable," Kucinich said last week. He accused Cheney of using his office to advocate the "continued occupation of Iraq and prod our nation into a belligerent stance against Iran."

Which raises an interest question that itself demands an answer: Does Dennis Kucinich actually believe that opposing an Iraq pullout and advocating we be more "belligerent" towards Iran constitute "high crimes and misdemeanors?"

Meanwhile, Senate Democrats must now grapple with the confirmation vote for Attorney General designate Michael Mukasey; with several Democrats jumping ship and supporting Mukasey, including Dianne Feinstein (D-CA, 90%) and Charles Schumer (D-NY, 100%), while the bulk of the leadership still opposes him, the ironic possibility exists that the majority in the Senate, led by Majority Leader Harry "Pinky" Reid (D-Caesar's Palace, 90%), may try to mount a filibuster!

As we close in on the end of the first session of the 110th Congress, the stunning paucity of legislation makes this not just the majority that couldn't shoot straight -- it's the majority than cannot even shoot crooked. Rather, the Democratic congressional leadership, at least so far, resembles Ralphie Parker in a Christmas Story -- daydreaming about shooting Black Bart and his gang with Ralphie's Official Red Ryder Carbine Action Two Hundred Shot Range Model Air Rifle, felling the the GOP gang left and left with unbelievable but wholly imaginary accuracy.

The Democrats had better be careful: They'll shoot their eye out!

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, November 5, 2007, at the time of 5:07 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

October 8, 2007

What's All This I Hear...

...About a brutal military junta in Miramar? What are all those flyboys doing down there in San Diego?

Are their flightsuit jockstraps too tight? Has that good Navy chow gone to their heads? These jet-jocks have every advantage: a college degree, hundreds of dollars of training, and those lovely scarves and goggles they wear while flying their aeroplanes.

But do they appreciate all that? No... instead, they have to set up a junta -- and they can't even pronounce it right! That's a J, not an H; how could college-educated men not be able to read?

But the "junta" isn't bad enough: They have to run out and oppress a bunch of monkeys! What have those sweet, innocent monks done that our fighter pilots at NAS Miramar have to arrest and beat them? That's animal cruelty... and where are the ASCAP and PTA and all those other so-called "animal warfare" groups? Those poor, shivering monks always look so cute in their little caps and uniforms, tipping their hats when people toss a few pennies to the organ grinders. It's a crime that grown Navy pilots feel like they have to start a war against them!

And for what? Just for demanding civil libraries! I mean, who wants libraries that are uncivil, with people saying coarse things about each other and making faces?

I'm with the monkeys. I want my libraries to be civil places, where people can go in peace without having to worry about...

What's that? A military junta where -- in Myanmar? Fighting against Buddhist monks?

Oh! That's very different.

Never mind.

[With some apologies to -- and lots of snickering at -- the poor sap of a newsreader at Fox News Channel Friday, who reported a new crackdown by the "military junta in Miramar;" and in fond memory of the late, great Gilda Radner, the funniest woman who ever lived.]

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 8, 2007, at the time of 2:44 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 6, 2007

Why I No Longer Have Many Liberal Friends

I realized a little bit ago that I used to have a lot of liberal friends -- we disagreed on politics, but we still kicked around and hung out. But now I have virtually none: They all departed, either by drifting away or more explosively.

I found out the same thing happened to several other Republican friends of mine; perhaps some of you have noticed this effect too. For years, I wondered why; but back when I was guest-blogging at Patterico's Pontifications, I had an epiphany (which I didn't write about at the time, I don't think). Let me illustrate with a more recent personal reminiscence...

A few months ago, I realized I hadn't talked to my two former housemates from UC Santa Cruz, J. and A., for several years. Since I like to keep in touch, I tried contacting them.

I tracked down J. first, via e-mail; I discovered that, notwithstanding his major in PoliSci, he had become a computer programmer! So I sent him a friendly e-mail saying that was pretty strange, as he'd had no interest whatsoever in computers back at UCSC. I was hoping to open a conversation in which he would tell the story of how he changed from a politics guy to a computer guy.

Instead, I received a one-word reply: "Indeed." J. made it blunt that the conversation was over before it even began.

Blinking, I called or e-mailed A. (I honestly cannot remember which I did). A. and I had always been somewhat closer. He condescended to respond... but only on grounds that this would not become an ongoing conversation. A. tersely updated me on J. and several other mutual friends... then told me never to contact him again.

I'm still a bit stunned by this. It's not like we had a fight; we literally hadn't spoken since the 1990s. Nor had we had any unpleasantness back then; I went up and visited Santa Cruz, met J. and A. and some other mutual acquaintences (A. had relocated to Berkeley, where he lives now with wife and child), and we kicked around for a while, chatting about the G.O.Ds of the early 1980s. We parted amiably.

Since then, we've had no contact by phone, e-mail, or in person. We're not on any bulletin boards together; I haven't published any articles or suchlike that could have ticked them off; and there was nothing remotely contentious about my contact e-mail and/or call.

I can think of only one event that intervened that could have changed them so thoroughly: The election of George W. Bush in 2000.

I lost three other liberal friends when that happened, one of them reasonably close; that last (from SFWA, not UCSC) was railing against Bush and denouncing him throughout the campaign. Then after the long count, when Bush was declared the victor, he demanded that I "admit" that Bush had "stolen the election" -- or he would never speak to me again.

I refused, of course; I don't react well to extortion. True to his word, we have never spoken since.

The other two became moodier and more sullen after the election (though they did not put it quite so starkly). Within a year or so, both drifted out of my orbit, and we don't speak anymore.

But all three first became noticibly hostile towards me immediately following the 2000 election... although my politics were identical before and after; the break occurred because of Bush's election, not 9/11, the Afghan war, or the Iraq war.

In 2005, I finally had my "epiphany": Back in 2000, after eight years of Bill Clinton skunking the Republicans and weaseling his way out of being removed from office, the Left -- broadly defined, from liberal to socialist to Green to Naderite to Communist -- decided that the presidency was theirs by right. And more specifically, sometime back in August or September of 2000, they literally came to believe they had already won the election -- and the actual vote was a mere formality, rubber-stamping what "the people" had already decided.

This was not based on polls, which all showed Bush leading narrowly; Democrats disdained polls that summer, dismissing them as nonsense. Rather, the election of Algore was an integral part of what Thomas Sowell calls "the Vision of the Anointed."

When the confirming vote was held, and it appeared as though Bush had somehow won (and by a handful of votes in Florida), Democrats, liberals, and the rest of the Left reacted the way Cain did when Abel "stole" his birthright.

[This is, as commenter Jauhara Al-Kafirah notes, a complete mishmash: Cain did kill Abel (so they say), but it had nothing to do with a birthright; that was Esau and Jacob, and nobody killed anybody in that story. I can only plead early-onset dementia... but you get the general idea: Cain and Abel meets Esau and Jacob and Ted and Alice, and I'll be in Scotland afore ye. -- the Mgt.]

This, in my earnest opinion, is why Gore tried to sue his way into the White House: He, too, believed that he had already won, and Rethuglicans had criminally deprived him of what was rightfully his. Thus, he forced the long count to recover his stolen property.

Nationally, the Democrats took their lead from Rantin' Al: The only way that George W. Bush could be sitting in la Casa Blanca in January was that he had stolen the presidency from them. Like Cain, they did their best to slay President-Select Abel... not literally but by character assassination.

And then, the reckoning with the minions began. Democrats turned on their Republican friends with the ferocity that you would turn on your best mate, if you found out he had aided and abetted a burglar to break into your house and ransack the joint. Democrats felt doubly betrayed: first by the American electoral system, and then by their Republican friends, who inconceivably defended that betrayal -- thus outing themselves as unindicted co-conspirators.

And that explains, in my nasty, brutish, and short-sighted opinion, why J. and A. -- both "men of the Left" -- had no further interest in speaking to me. It's a sad state of affairs, similar in structure (though not violent effect) to the Civil War, when friend broke with friend and brother fought brother. But unlike that national crisis, this one originates entirely in the delusions of the Democratic Party.

They've yet to recover or even heal. I'm afraid that even the election of Hillary Clinton (God forbid) wouldn't mollify them; they would see it instead as vindication, their final triumph over the wretched betrayers.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 6, 2007, at the time of 3:16 PM | Comments (28) | TrackBack

August 30, 2007

Next Time, Listen to Your Mother

When I was a little lizardine growing up in Southern California, my mother had three pieces of advice that she trotted out on every appropriate occasion -- and several that were wildly inappropriate... but that's a tail of a different reptile. Mom said:

1. Never show your cards unless called;
2. Trust but verify;
3. Never cut a deal with terrorist hostage-takers.

Sadly, the entire western world has now found out why #3 was so urgent...

Taliban militants released the last seven South Korean hostages on Thursday under a deal with the government in Seoul, ending a six-week drama that the insurgents claimed as a "great victory for our holy warriors."

We know very little about the deal; South Korea evidently promised to pull its 200 troops out of Afghanistan on schedule, and also (this part is vague) "vowed to prevent missionaries traveling to the country." I'm not sure what they mean by that; how do you stop missionaries from, say, leaving Korea for Japan -- and then leaving Japan for Afghanistan? Will the Republic of Korea institute a mass crackdown on Christians on orders from the Taliban in Afghanistan?

South Korea and the Taliban both deny that money changed hands; but that has not quelled the accusations, based upon past deals with the Taliban:

Speculation in Kabul remained rife that the South Korea had paid a ransom for the release of the hostages. But South Korean and Taliban officials continued to deny that a ransom was paid. Afghan officials have said that paying ransom to the Taliban would only increase the taking of foreigners as hostages....

Across Afghanistan this year, the Taliban have increasingly used the kidnapping of foreigners as a tactic to garner publicity, the release of prisoners and, most likely, large ransoms.

In a much criticized deal this spring, the Afghan government freed five senior Taliban prisoners in exchange for the release of a kidnapped Italian journalist, Daniel Mastrogiacomo, after coming under intense pressure from the Italian government. In a separate case, aid workers have said that the Italian government paid $2 million for the release of a kidnapped Italian photographer last year. Italian officials have declined to comment on the case.

So what's the point? And what's all that about my mother? Only this, from the AP story linked above:

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi vowed to abduct more foreigners, reinforcing fears that South Korea's decision to negotiate directly with the militants would embolden them.

"We will do the same thing with the other allies in Afghanistan, because we found this way to be successful," he told the Associated Press via cell phone from an undisclosed location.

And there you are: What you subsidize, you inflate... and that's true whether the "payment" is money or just prestige. As sources in the article point out, the mere fact that a real government -- the Republic of Korea -- sat down and negotiated with the formerly moribund Taliban tremendously raises the stature of the latter. It will probably help in recruiting, it might force President Hamid Karzai to take them more seriously, and if we're really, really unlucky, might even lead to some kind of power-sharing arrangement. Thank you, Mr. Roh.

And when all that happens, it won't be the Koreans who have to pay; it will be all the rest of us.

The Korean government, of course, had a perfectly rational explanation for their actions:

South Korea has denied doing anything wrong, saying it was normal practice to negotiate with hostage-takers.

Well... for them, it probably is. That's reason number 273 why I'm glad I don't live in Korea (either one).

As an aside, I loved this little snippet, the continuation of a long-running and deliberate mendacity by the elite media. What (as I am wont to ask) is wrong with this picture?

The hostage crisis unfolded at a time of soaring violence in Afghanistan despite years of counterinsurgency operations by international troops and millions of dollars spent in equipping Afghan security forces.

Not to keep you in suspenders, the answer is that the "soaring violence" to which they refer is primarily the wholesale slaughter of Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters at the hands of NATO and Afghan forces, as Sachi pointed out some time ago: Up to that point, in the recent "surge" of Taliban, the bad guys had killed 150 NATO forces and 850 innocent, unarmed civilians... and NATO forces had killed over 3,000 Taliban fighters... or in many cases, fleers.

The Taliban's reversion to type -- back to being Neolithic trolls and hill-bandits -- is quite understandable under the circumstances of their complete failure to engage the enemy successfully; and exactly the same can be said of the drive-by media.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, August 30, 2007, at the time of 7:24 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

August 23, 2007

Quick Hits - They Say That Ginning Up Is Hard to Do

Now I know, I know it's untrue -- if you're in the elite media, that is; if so, then ginning up a controversy, contradiction, confession, corruption, or calamity is as easy as π, no matter how irrational it may seem to ordinary, non-journalist humans.

Our reading material for today's lesson is the short article sent out over the wire (well, over the internets, anyway) about newly hatched Secretary of the Army Pete Geren's insistance that the Pentagon is not going to extend tours of duty in Iraq from 15 months to 18.

I don't know if this is good or bad; Geren has the figures in front of him and I don't. But what caught my eye like an errant fishhook (yes, I know... "eew") was this little attempt at legerdemain... transforming two completely unrelated statements into a "contradiction gotcha":

Asked about comparisons between the current Iraq conflict and the Vietnam War -- a parallel that President Bush drew Wednesday -- Geren said the current conflict is unique.

In a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention, Bush linked the U.S. pullout from Vietnam to the rise of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and he said the history of U.S. conflicts in Asia have shown that critics of the day are often wrong and that withdrawing from war should never be done for short-term gain.

While saying that "historical analogies help illuminate the present" Geren said the Army "can't be guilty of fighting the last war." The Army, he said, has to consider the unique circumstances of the Iraq conflict and train and equip the soldiers and leaders accordingly.

Oooh, snap! Caught the Bush administration red-fisted in a whipsaw of a contradiction...

• On the one hand, Bush says that Vietnam taught us that withdrawing in unnecessary defeat leads to terrible consequences;
• But when the shoe is on the other hand, Secretary Geren says that our soldiers should use different tactics and equipment fighting terrorists in the Iraqi desert than they used fighting Communists in the jungles of vietnam 40 years ago -- completely the opposite of what Bush said!

"John says Mary is too short, but Mary insists the dress is blue, not red. How do you reconcile those two statements... 'Berto?"

We've seen this moonbattery before, of course: The "contradiction" between FBI Director Robert Mueller quoting Deputy Attorney General James Comey saying the Justice Department had trouble with the legality of a classified intelligence-gathering program that had been much talked about -- and current Attorney General Alberto Gonzales saying that the objection was not to the specific element called the Terrorist Surveilance Program, but to a different intelligence-gathering program.

Perjury, obstruction, contempt! Five Democrats sent a referral to the Justice Department, demanding an indictment and investigation -- in that order, I believe -- of Gonzales... but not of Mueller, oddly enough. A couple of days later, when sources came forward to confirm that all three men told the truth (the objection was to the data-mining element, not the TSP), the Democrats quietly dropped the substance of the charge and began rummaging around for a brand new cause of action:

"Well there's yer problem right there... ya got a malfunctioning cause of action; have to remove and replace it with a spanking-new one from the factory!"

Here are some more "contradictions" -- tomorrow's AP stories today!

• Under intense cross-examination, President Bush finally admited that Saddam Hussein did not plan and execute the September 11th attacks; but then, amazingly, Bush turned around and claimed that al-Qaeda operatives did meet with Iraqi Intelligence Service officers to discuss operational cooperation.
• Although the president has said that FEMA did everything it reasonably could have or should have done before and after Hurricane Katrina, several of his own fellow travelers in the GOP have instead argued that Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco and the Grand Nagus, mayor of Nawluns, failed to evacuate people quickly enough.
• President Bush has praised the all-volunteer American Army; but apparently, he doesn't like it enough to send his twin daughters into military service.

Evidently, our fine president, like Mr. Whitman, is large and contains multitudes.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, August 23, 2007, at the time of 3:58 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

August 15, 2007

Horrific Nineveh Bombing Shows Counterinsurgency Working

Contrary to the line many elite media are taking, the coordinated quadruple suicide bombings in Nineveh yesterday -- which appear to have killed between 250 and 500 Yazidis, making it the single worst terrorist attack of the entire Iraq war -- have not "dealt a serious blow" to the claim that the new counterinsurgency strategy is working.

In fact, they emphatically demonstrate that it is.

Geography lesson

Consider where the bombing occurred:

The red dot marks the approximate area of the four explosions. This is about as far as one can get from our counterinsurgency and still remain in Iraq.

We're fighting heavily in Anbar province in the west; in Najaf in the southwest; in Diyala and Baghdad in the east; and we have a lot of forces in Sulaymaniyah in the northeast, hard up against Iran. The Kurds are very strong in Kirkuk in the north; and the Brits have not yet left Basra in the southeast.

Just about the only place left for al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) to operate with any degree of impunity is in the northwest, in the remote desert inhabited by a smattering of Yazidis. In fact, even the New York Times has noticed this geographic reality, though they try to spin it into a negative:

All three towns [Sinjar, Amerili, Tal Afar] lie north of the main areas affected by the increase in American troop strength that began in March, supporting the notion that, as in numerous earlier American offensives, insurgents have moved from where they are being attacked and restarted their operations elsewhere....

Asked why insurgents would pick such simple villages in the desert for such a colossal attack, General Bergner said: “Perhaps their vulnerability. Perhaps they were a target that they could attack.”

The Times wants readers to believe this shows that the "surge" is a failure. After all, al-Qaeda is simply moving "from where they are being attacked" and "restart[ing] their operations elsewhere."

But that is precisely what the counterinsurgency aims to do: Unlike the previous "attrition" strategy, we don't just attack higgledy-piggledy following the terrorists, allowing them to set the operational tempo; instead, we began by defining an area of control -- the "white" area, using the terminology of French Lt.Col. Galula in Algeria, one of the recent architects of modern counterinsurgency theory. Then we expand from the "white" areas into the adjacent "pink" (contested) areas.

As we invest pink areas and turn them to white, that automatically makes what had been adjoining, enemy-controlled (red) areas into contested pink areas. That is, rather than chase al-Qaeda up and down Iraq, we start in one or two spots and expand outward -- like oil expanding across troubled waters.

"Victory" occurs as we push the enemy farther and farther away from the military, political, and economic centers of the country... which is precisely what we see happening in Iraq today. This attack is a perfect example.

Propinquity

Even more interesting about the geography of this attack: It's virtually on the Syrian border, over which AQI has been smuggling weapons, fighters -- and suicide bombers -- for several years. From the AP story linked above:

"This is way out by the Syrian border, an area where we do think in fact some suicide bombers are able to come across the border. It's an area that is very, very remote - quite small villages out there - and it was disheartening for us, too, obviously," [Gen. David] Petraeus told The Associated Press in an interview.

In the past, prior to the Coalition's new offensive strategy, al-Qaeda had little trouble smuggling suicide bombers across the Syrian border -- either in Anbar or Nineveh provinces -- and then transporting them to Baghdad, or any other location in central Iraq, where the blasts can be more spectacular (and, they hope, visible to the American elite news media parked in the Green Zone) and affect far more mainstream Iraqis. But in this bombing, while they likely got the murderers across from Syria, they were unable to move them very far. So instead, they tried to make lemonade by bombing a tiny sect that lives right at the border: the Yazidi.

I'm absolutely certain that al-Qaeda in Iraq would much rather have killed 250 people in Baghdad (capital of Baghdad province), Ramadi (capital of al Anbar), or Baqouba (capital of Diyala), where our counterinsurgency is actually focused... rather than a pair of villages in Nineveh so tiny, they're not even represented on most maps of Iraq. For that matter, al-Qaeda would almost certainly have rather blown up Kirkuk or Mosul... which, while not being part of the "surge," are at least major cities in the north and eponymous provincial capitals.

The only thread AQI can hang their rampage on (other than "that's the best we could do") is the infamous Yazidi stoning on April 7th, 2007. On that day, between one and two thousand Yazidi men stoned to death a 17 year old Yazidi girl, Du’a Khalil Aswad, for the crime of loving a Moslem boy and planning to elope (and possibly convert to Islam; that part is unclear). After Aswad was murdered, her body was burned and buried with the remains of a dog.

In "retaliation," AQI launched a reprisal massacre of 23 Yazidi men on a bus 13 days later... but that was in Mosul, the capital of next-door Mosul province. Since then, the Yazidi have not been singled out by AQI.

Again, I find it very unlikely that this was planned all along for two obscure Yazidi villages. We know the plan is at least a week old, because AQI distributed leaflets warning about it; but that was likely after they had already smuggled in the bombers... and realized they couldn't move them anywhere where an attack would be more visible and intimidating.

The overwhelmingly likely explanation is that the target was picked primarily for propinquity: The bombers could get to those villages; they could not get even as far as Mosul, let alone Baghdad... the American Army and Marines were in the way.

Religious profiling

Another reason the Yazidi are a curious target is that they are not, in fact, considered Islamic. They are an offshoot of an offshoot of an amalgamation of the pre-Islamic Middle East, archaic Levantine (descended from Crusaders) and Islamic religions, Kurdish culture and language, and bits and pieces of Sufism. They seem to me to occupy a similar position in the Middle East to the Mormons here... I don't mean the mainstream, late 20th-century Mormonism of Mitt Romney; I'm referring to the violent, polygamous version of Mormonism in the 19th century -- the Mormons that initiated the Mountain Meadows massacre, for example.

Those Mormons were driven from pillar to post in the United States; typically, they tried to immigrate west, out of the country (which did not yet extend "from sea to shining sea;" there was a big gap of wilderness in between Missouri and California). But as America kept catching up to them, they found themselves more and more in conflict. Christians tended to consider them heretics back then; some remnant of that prejudice exists today, with many otherwise ecumenical Christians angrily asserting that even present-day Mormons are not Christians.

Similarly, as AP puts it:

Some Muslims and Christians consider an angel figure worshipped by Yazidis to be the devil, a charge the sect denies. The Islamic State in Iraq, an al-Qaida front group, distributed leaflets a week ago warning residents near the scene of Tuesday's bombings that an attack was imminent because Yazidis are "anti-Islamic."

Why is this significant? Because typically, AQI wants to target its ghastly and spectacular bombing attacks against mainstream Shiite targets... such as the al-Askari "Golden Dome" mosque in Samarra. In a pinch, they may punish "rebellious" Sunni tribesmen in Anbar or Diyala. But what impact would result from bombing an obscure, non-Islamic sect that most Iraqis only associate with the stoning of Ms. Aswad? Iraqis (even mainstream Kurds) will likely just shrug. And the distance from there to the nearest front in the war is so great that it will be hard even for Sen. Russell Feingold (D-WI, 100%) to argue that this constitutes a failure of Gen. Petraeus's strategy.

Bottom line

Again, I think this shows that AQI is reduced to striking whatever target is nearest to hand, out by the Syrian border, where they're hiding; and they must take "pot luck" when selecting victims. More than anything else, this reminds me of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, where rampaging bands of black and Hispanic youths burned down a thousand buildings -- almost all locally-owned and run businesses in their own neighborhoods. Why? Because those were the only buildings they could get at. Buildings in Beverly Hills, the west side, Palos Verdes, and even many Korean-owned stores and restaurants were too heavily guarded by homeowners and shopkeepers.

This is not to say that AQI will never get lucky again with a terrible attack on an important target in the heartland of Iraq. But such attacks have become fewer and fewer as the counterinsurgency continues:

The number of truck bombs and other large al-Qaeda-style attacks in Iraq have declined nearly 50% since the United States started increasing troop levels in Iraq about six months ago, according to the U.S. military command in Iraq.

The high-profile attacks -- generally large bombs hitting markets, mosques or other "soft" targets that produce mass casualties -- have dropped to about 70 in July from a high during the past year of about 130 in March, according to the Multi-National Force - Iraq.

In 2006, AQI destroyed the al-Askari mosque; in April of this year, they bombed the Iraqi parliament; in June, they knocked down the two remaining minarets of the al-Askari mosque (which few realized were still standing anyway). And yesterday, they bombed an obscure pre-Islamic sect of Kurds living right on the Syrian border, in the extreme northwest corner of the country.

In the counterinsurgency war we're fighting, that's exactly what victory looks like.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, August 15, 2007, at the time of 6:23 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

July 10, 2007

Is "Treasonous" Really Milder Than "Nativist?"

A quick drive-by...

Hugh Hewitt never tires of telling us that it was the supporters of the immigration bill who tore the GOP apart by their inflammatory rhetoric. But how is one supposed to respond to anti-bill rhetoric like this? Here is Arizona State Representative Russell Pearce, speaking on last Saturday's Beltway Boys:

KONDRACKE: OK, did you -- I saw you quoted somewhere as saying that Jon Kyl and John McCain, the former prisoner of war and war hero, were traitors. Did you mean that to the country or how did you mean that?

PEARCE: Well, that was taken out of context. What I talked about and have no regrets for is the bill that was run through Congress was treasonous. Actually, it was the sellout of America. It was amnesty to law breakers. It ignored the damages of the crime. It allowed gang bangers to stay here. It allowed convicted felons to stay here. It allowed terrorists to stay here.

In fact, the bill explicitly excluded all three of those categories from consideration for provisional Z-visas. Someone could argue that the prohibition wasn't strong enough; but to say the bill "allowed" them to stay is a flat, vicious lie.

However, I'm more interested in the fact that, according to Rep. Pearce, I am a traitor to my country, because I supported treason against the United States of America. I see no other way to read that, and the distinction he purports to draw is nonsense on stilts: By definition, anyone who supports treason is a traitor.

I agree that many of the bill's supporters had ham-fisted tongues. But it's time that the bill's opponents acknowledge that the rhetoric of many on their own side was at least as vile, as vicious, as truth-impaired, and as divisive within the party as anything said by supporters.

For heaven's sake, crying "treason!" is at least as egregious as calling someone a "nativist;" and there were plenty others, including other public office-holders, who did exactly that.

Neither side had a monopoly on speaking the inexcusable, and neither side was an innocent victim. Until bill opponents admit that, we cannot "move on" and try to heal the wounds.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, July 10, 2007, at the time of 2:56 PM | Comments (19) | TrackBack

July 8, 2007

High Noonan

In a comment on a previous post, commenter Terrye said the following:

I know I am an Independent and I voted a straight Republican ticket in 06 while real true blue Republican conservatives like Noonan were telling people to stay home and let the Democrats win.

This started me thinking. This post began as a comment; but like Topsy, it "just grew," and I decided to promote it to the rank of blogpost. So here goes...

First, a whiff of heresy to start the day: Peggy Noonan is not a "true blue Republican conservative;" she is instead a "Reagan conservative," and thereby hangs a tale...

I cannot tell what her political position was BR (before Reagan), but I wouldn't be surprised if she grew up much more liberal than she became later. Regardless, she glommed onto Reagan during his 1980 campaign (or perhaps a little earlier) and hasn't let go since.

Now, many Republicans will argue that conservatism is entirely defined by WWRD ("what would Reagan do?") The problem is that Ronald Reagan -- who was himself eclectic -- chose to define his presidency on only two big (urgent) ideas:

• Economic policy reform: lower taxes and lower interest rates, though he never carried through to privatizing "entitlement" programs such as Social Security and MediCare, and he never quite understood the importance of small business -- especially independent (non government-subsidized) technological innovation;
• Confronting Communism around the globe.

Strangely, his eagerness to engage in "foreign adventures" to hit Communism never seemed to spill over into a general theory of active military and diplomatic engagement on behalf of other urgent foreign-policy goals. For example, after Libya committed the Berlin disco bombing, Reagan decided a response was necessary; but his response was limited to a single bombing raid. He made no attempt to get at the root cause -- in Libya, Arabic nationalism rather than extreme Islam -- and resolve it.

Qaddafi pulled in his horns, but not for long; and his subsequent attacks on America (such as the Lockerbie bombing) were more subtle than the Berlin attack had been. He also waited until Reagan was nearly out of office: Because Reagan had set in place no anti-pan-Arabist policy that would survive his own presidency -- he thought Libya a nuisance, not a new anti-American front -- Qaddafi simply outwaited him.

Reagan treated pan-Arabism, and the pan-Islamism of Iran, as annoying distractions to the "real" problem of stopping Communism, rather than as separate, distinct, and very serious threats to America in their own ways. Destroying the Soviet Union was vital, and Reagan was both prophet and general (like Mohammed!) on that front. But he was AWOL on the Arab/Moslem threat.

Today, there is a strong strain of conservatism that loyally plays follow the leader down that same blind trail; they typically oppose the Iraq war as the very sort of "foreign alliances, attachments, and intrigues" that George Washington warned against in his farewell address.

That was good policy... in the 18th century. But that was then, this is now: 2007 is not 1796, and the world is far too interconnected and integrated today to retreat behind the walls of "Fortress America" and let the rest of the world rot. (See the Pentagon's New Map, by Thomas P.M. Barnett, for further information.)

Such Reagan conservatives were willing to go along with the first stage of the Iraq war, invasion followed by the swift collapse of Hussein and the Baathists; but when the war evolved to the counterinsurgency, reconstruction, and diplomacy of today, they lost interest.

For some reason I cannot ken, many "Reagan conservatives" are allergic to an activist foreign policy -- except insofar as it applies to Russia, Red China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, and now Venezuela (anyone detect a pattern here?) In particular, they deride any response anywhere that goes beyond "killing people and breaking things," as if America were a blundering ogre whose only weapon is a massive tree trunk in one hand.

Thus, many -- most definitely including Noonan -- hated the post-war attrition strategy, and now they hate the counterinsurgency strategy... or even the fact that we have a post-war strategy at all. Their preferred plan would have been to smash Iraq flat, bounce the rubble, and then toddle off with a quiet glow of satisfaction at a job well done. Putting the rubble back together again makes the job seem overdone, in their minds, like trying to put the firecracker back together after exploding it.

They deride swamp-draining as "nation-building," which appears to be a term of opprobrium: Either they believe building something is inherently inferior to tearing it down, or they believe our enemies do not deserve (e.g.) the Marshall Plan or the rebuilding of Japan, or else they judge America to be utterly incompetent at doing so... which is a harsh and ahistorical judgment to make, considering our mixed but not at all catastrophic record of achievement at reconstructing the conquered in our own image.

Curiously, this reticence does not carry over to the remnants of the former Soviet Union; we are expected to make them capitalist democratic republics. I believe this to be an example of taking a prophet's action (or inaction), which may have been driven entirely by personal, secular, human considerations, and imbuing it with almost religious significance: We visit the house where George Washington once slept the night; we avoid broccoli because the prophet always hated it.

Reagan never took seriously any foreign policy threat beyond world Communism... so who are we mortals to run where the great man feared to tread? Remember, Khomeini took over Iraq the year before Reagan was elected; yet in Reagan's entire eight years in office, he never did a thing about the rise of the regional superpower and its terrorist arm Hezbollah -- not even when they attacked us and killed 241 Marines and 58 French paratroopers in Beirut in 1983.

For many Reagan conservatives, Reagan himself becomes not merely the greatest president of the twentieth century, which most of us would agree he was, but a Mohammed-like figure who both defines and limits modern American conservatism: Just as many extreme Moslems will not do anything unless the prophet did it first, it seems that a typical Reagan conservative like Peggy Noonan is suspicious of any action that goes beyond what Reagan did -- and what she imagines he would do today, were he only still alive.

Thus, at core, Peggy Noonan is angry at George W. Bush for not allowing the Salafist and Shiite fever swamp to fester, as "the prophet" did: To move beyond the divine master is to become apostate.

Because Bush has actively tried to dismantle the irhabi hirabah infrastructure by a combination of war, diplomacy, and reconstruction or "nation building," which the entire region desperately needs, Noonan feels he has abandoned Reaganism and become just like George H.W. Bush, the first man to jilt her at the ideological altar. (Unlike Jeanne Kirkpatrick -- whom Noonan wishes she were -- Noonan is more of a "feeler" than a "thinker.")

Bush-41 personally betrayed her: She wrote his "read my lips, no new taxes" speech. I think Noonan, like many Reagan conservatives, was always chary of Bush jr., breathlessly waiting for him to "betray the legacy," just as his father did. Thus, at the first sign of deviancy -- whether it's nation-building, immigration reform, or a more robust integration with the outside world, working with other countries rather than dictating to them (as Reagan conservatives falsely remember Reagan doing) -- Noonan, et al, instantly cried "havoc" and let slip the dogs of Reagan orthodoxy.

I have never had much respect for Noonan as a thinker; now I despise her as a spineless defeatist. I fully expect her eventually to find a home in Pat Buchanan/Bill O'Reilly socially conservative populism (as Buckley appears to be doing), thus completing the dawn-to-dusk cycle from naif to Reagan acolyte (Noonan's high) to aging Mother Superior of the First Church of Fundamentalist Reaganism.

She will end her days as an embittered Maureen Dowd of the Right, endlessly railing against the modern and clinging to her narrowing tunnel-vision of Reaganism as if it were poor King Charles' head.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, July 8, 2007, at the time of 3:25 PM | Comments (47) | TrackBack

June 19, 2007

Why I Won't Call the Iraq Violence a "Civil War"

I noted in the previous post that Michael Yon used the phrase "civil war" to describe what is happening in Iraq; a commenter to that post, BigLeeH, suggests that the definition used (when Democrats hurl the term) is very simplistic:

When the American left applies the term "civil war" to a modern conflict the operative definition is "any war that is none of our d**n business and we should just butt out."

BigLeeH went on to suggest that when conservatives argue that it is too our business, they in essence foment "a needless conflict with the plain meaning of the words."

I have repeatedly objected to that definition of civil war. It's not "the plain meaning of the words;" it's one side's definition of the term, a definition I reject:

• Neither al-Qaeda nor the Shiite insurgents have fielded an army;
• Neither of them controls any significant territory;
• Neither has formed a national front;
• And neither has set up a shadow government.

These four elements are critical to any civil war, by my definition. I offer for my examples England in the 1640s, America in the early 1860s, and Spain in the late 1930s.

Nothing like that is happening in Iraq, which is why I dispute Michael Yon's conclusion that there is a civil war there:

• Rather than fight to install a different government, al-Qaeda is fighting to destroy all government in Iraq, leaving it a wasteland of chaos -- in which environment al-Qaeda thrives.
• And the Mahdi Militia is fighting, not to install a different goverment, but instead to crush Iraq so that Iran can take over.

What is happening in Iraq is no more a civil war than Chicago in the 1920s or Colombia in the 1980s -- or the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or the Red Army Faction in Japan. Those conflicts, in fact, suggest the correct term (rather, pair of terms): Iraq is suffering a simultaneous gangland war and insurgency.

It's a gangland war, sez I -- like the Medellin and Cali Cartels' violence against the Colombian government -- coupled with a classical insurgency, as in Algeria, the Philippines, or Kashmir.

This is not to minimize the violence in Iraq; but fighting a civil war requires a completely different strategy than fighting a gangland war -- which is an expanded law-enforcement operation -- or an insurgency, which requires a counterinsurgency strategy.

Labels should clarify rather than obscure. The "civil war" label is used far more often to obscure critical differences than to consolodate different elements of a single class.

Thus, Democrats say, "it's a civil war, so obviously the Iraqis don't want us there. Let's leave!" But in fact, if it's a gangland war and an insurgency, they very likely do want us there to help. The Democrats deliberately cover up the distinction so that they can trick us into withdrawal.

As for Michael Yon, he's just being sloppy; I don't think he has any ulterior motive.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, June 19, 2007, at the time of 6:51 PM | Comments (16) | TrackBack