tossing darts at a map...

Alan Sullivan thinks the recent headline: Terrorism Down: Lowest Number of Attacks Worldwide Since 1969 is a case of cooking the books:

...In the New World Disorder some definitions need changing. If suicide bombers blow up a hundred Iraqi civilians and two on-duty American soldiers, that's a terrorist attack. What matters is not the identity of the victims but the identity and methods of the perpetrators. Perhaps some politically-sensitive functionary wanted to make the Bush Administration look good by clinging to a prediluvial definition that conceals what's really happening...

I tend to agree.

But either way you look at it, it puts paid to the notion that Iraq has distracted us from the GWOT. Either terorism is just down, presumably because we are doing something right (which also torpedos the idea that we shouldn't act, because that will stir up terrorism)...

OR, a lot of terrorists have packed up and gone to Iraq. In which case Iraq is not a meaningless quagmire, and not a sideshow. Iraq is where it's happening, baby. And wouldn't you really rather have terrorists attacking where we just happen to have a hundred-thousand superb troops with itchy trigger fingers? And no Gorelick memo?

Or would you prefer Osama & Co tossing darts at a map, and then hopping a plane?

Lance Cpl. Gabriel Shumway, 22, of Sacramento, Calif., a member of Weapons Platoon, Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, keeps watch on an alley in Fallujah, Iraq.
M. Scott Mahaskey / Military Times staff (pic from Army Times 4-13-04)

There's never enough straight-talk, but...

... there's more than there used to be, and it's usually coming from the Bush Administration...

April 30, 2004 -- WASHINGTON - The State Department's No. 2 official said yesterday that those guilty of corruption in the U.N. oil-for-food program "ought to hang."

The blunt remarks by Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to a House subcommittee were the strongest comments the Bush administration has made since accusations surfaced in January that Saddam Hussein ripped off $10 billion from the program...

...Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, appearing at the same hearing of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, also expressed alarm at the scope of the scandal...

... "And there is every reason to think that some of it was used to buy influence with the Middle Eastern media, with a whole variety of recipients of that money. It was a money-laundering operation that was designed to buy influence, it appears," Wolfowitz added...

Reason #11 for invading Iraq. When you hear that we shouldn't have gone to Iraq because it might endanger "stability," oil-for-food is part of what they wanted to preserve...

...In a world beset right now by terrorist threats--which depend on terrorist financing--it's time to acknowledge that the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food program was worse than simply a case of grand larceny. Given Saddam's proclivities for deceit and violence, Oil-for-Food was also a menace to security. -- Claudia Rosett

#157: It's getting pathetic...

KRUGMAN TRUTH SQUAD

There is little doubt that President Bush's aircraft carrier landing a year ago was a political blunder. So why can't the Democrats capitalize? For the answer see Paul Krugman's column In Front of Your Nose (04/30/04). As with most of the anti-war left, Krugman sees all foreign conflict from the perspective of a Vietnamese war template. He simply can't get beyond the quagmire syndrome. Consider these gems concerning the Iraqi war:

"And all of the proposals one hears for resolving this ugly situation seem to be either impractical or far behind the curve."

And,

"I don't have a plan for Iraq. I strongly suspect, however, that all the plans you hear now are irrelevant."

Is it any wonder Kerry crowd can't get a coherent message together? How do you deal with a situation you consider hopeless?

Krugman has the temerity to throw in the obligatory "did I mention North Korea is building nuclear weapon" line. This is how the left tries to inoculate itself from being seen as total wimps. But are we to think Krugman would support a ground war on China's border???

It's getting pathetic.

[The Truth Squad is a group of economists who have long marveled at the writings of Paul Krugman. The Squad Reports are synopses of their discussions. ]

I'd have to disagree with the Truth Squad on one point. I don't think the carrier landing was a blunder. What was the message conveyed? That Bush can fly a jet, that he can mingle easily with the troops, that he's joyful over our victories, that the war is a top priority? What's to not like? And that a lot of prissy hate-America Democrats were stung into incoherent frenzies of loathing and frustration? That's bad? That he's conned all the sob-sisters into criticizing him for being war-like in a time of war?

When I heard about that carrier landing, my very first reaction was to grin, just thinking about how bozos in Berkeley would be shitting ice-cubes...I bet a gazillion ordinary Americans felt just the same thing. Even if it was a blunder, it was worth it!

To restore the centrality of civil society

Orrin Judd wrote this as part of a comment on a fascinating essay about the possibility of reformation in the Islamic world. It's a good summary of what is happening, or trying to happen, here. [By the way, a good rule-of-thumb: Anyone who uses the term "theocracy" to describe the Religious Right is clueless.]

...Perhaps the most interesting way to approach the argument here is to reverse the entire thing and look at the Renovatio in the West. Well, really it's just in America, but that's the point. Just as the kind of totalitarianism that Islam has tended to require inevitably fails, so too does secularism as excessive as that adopted by most of our allies--and nearly by us until, the reversal came in 1980. What the conservative movement in America has been about for some time now and what has been greatly accelerated by President Bush is the project to diminish the state and restore the centrality of civil society--and with it the domination of daily life by religion.

Critics who perceive some inkling of this grand project will sometimes worry that it is an attempt to move America towards theocracy--nothing could be farther from the truth. It is a far more radical endeavor, seeking not to gain access to state powers but to remove power from the State. Thus creation of a "culture of life" to restore the rights that pre-exist the State; tax cuts to bleed the State of revenue; an Opportunity Society to make men independent of government as regards health and retirement; school vouchers to break the State monopoly on education; the Faith-Based Initiative to return the provision of social services back to churches and charities; etc.; etc.; etc

In effect, conservatism in America is attempting something not too different from what Mr. Vlahos credits New Islamists with attempting. The question as regards Islam is: do the New Islamists understand that it is best for them to eschew governmental power and allow both government and economics to be relatively secular and quite free? Or are they destined to establish totalitarianism? The rapidity with which the Iranian experiment with totalitarianism collapsed would seem to give us some reason to hope that its example can generally be avoided in the future.

The question as regards America is: can the secular State, once created, successfully have its powers devolved back to civil society? Or are we destined to keep sliding into the same kind of suicidal secular decline that we see in Europe? The coming election will go some considerable distance to determining whether the counter-revolution will continue.

What both groups are groping towards is pretty much the republicanism of the Founders, with a fairly minimalist, somewhat liberal, kind of democratic central government but then a tightly knit civil society that depends for its continued health on the virtue of its citizenry...

To get up and walk from the table...

Armed Liberal takes on the Fifty British foreign policy "experts" who wrote a scathing letter to Prime Minister Blair.

...The basic failure of this cohort of diplomats - in the UK, US, UN, and elsewhere - is that for twenty years, they were silent and ineffective while Islamism grew in power and hatred.

They believed that by negotiating the terms of 'stability' - because, after all, when you negotiate for a living, a successful negotiation is the major thing you're looking for - even as one side made it clear that stability wasn't what was being sought - they were accomplishing something...

...In fact, they not only let it grow unchecked, but stood by, supportive and silent, as any real peace process was undermined by oil bribes.

One of the keys of any successful negotiation is the willingness to simply go 'basta!' - no more - and get up and walk from the table.

The problem with a policy of engagement and continuous negotiation supported by this crew is that you preclude that possibility.

Bush and Sharon have done just that in Palestine, and Bush and Blair have done it in Iraq.

That's infinitely preferable to a policy in which diplomats confer in luxury while suicide bombers murder innocents...

The evidence is there, the danger is obvious...

Do read this article in OpinionJournal, on the Jordanian poison gas plot:

...Abu Musab al-Zarqawi--the man cited by the Bush Administration as its strongest evidence of prewar links between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, and the current ringleader of anti-coalition terrorism in Iraq--may be behind the plot, which would be al Qaeda's first ever attempt to use chemical weapons. The targets included the U.S. Embassy in Amman. Yet as of yesterday, most news organizations hadn't probed the story, if at all, beyond the initial wire-service copy. [my emphasis]

Perhaps the problem here is that covering this story might mean acknowledging that Tony Blair and George W. Bush have been exactly right to warn of the confluence of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. Jordan's King Abdullah called it a "major, major operation" that would have "decapitated" his government. "Anyone who doubts the terrorists' desire to obtain and use these weapons only needs to look at this example," said Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer....

The evidence is there, the danger is obvious, but they don't cover the story!

How I despise those lackwits of the press. The War on Bush is much more important to them than the War on Terror. They would gladly sacrifice our nation's security to put Democrats back in power.

...The terror cell's ringleader, Jordanian Azmi Jayyousi, said he was acting on the orders of Zarqawi, whom he first met at an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan: "I took courses, poisons high level, then I pledged allegiance to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi." Mr. Jayyousi said this attack had been plotted from Zarqawi's new base of operations in Iraq. A Jordanian court sentenced Zarqawi to death this month for plotting the 2002 murder of U.S diplomat Laurence Foley in Amman...

Zarqawi ordered the murder of an American! And if Clinton/Carter/Gore/Kerry had been in charge we would have done nothing. That's disgusting beyond belief. Not to mention suicidal.

But now it's different. We are killing Zarqawi's thugs and murderers on the streets of Falluja. Now! Finally! Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is reason #12 to be in Iraq.

If we had been willing to fight a decade or two ago, the death toll would have been far less, both for us and various brown-skinned people the Democrats care nothing for. And because we are willing to fight at last, we are avoiding a probable war in the future, where millions die...The press and the Democrats are trying to create that war, by undercutting our efforts now. And by lying. Obscuring important facts is a form of lying, and that's exactly what the mainstream press is doing now--refusing to cover an important story because it might hurt their party, and might wake us to the danger they have helped put us in.

Bush lied! But who knows, maybe he didn't...

Here's a bit of Mr Kerry on Hardball doing some fancy footwork at the cliff's edge. D'you think maybe he suspects something?

Matthews: "If there was an exaggeration of WMD, exaggeration of the danger, exaggeration implicitly of the connection to al Qaeda and 9/11, what's the motive for this, what's the 'why?' Why did Bush and Cheney and the ideologues around take us to war? Why do you think they did it?"

Kerry: "It appears, as they peel away the weapons of mass destruction issue, and --we may yet find them, Chris. Look, I want to make it clear: Who knows if a month from now, two months from now, you find some weapons. You may. But you certainly didn't find them where they said they were, and you certainly didn't find them in the quantities that they said they were...

"Ideologues" forsooth. WMD's were pushed forward from among the many reasons just to please those ideologues who continue to believe in the UN despite all evidence.

Hugh Hewitt writes:

...The major point is that WMDs alarm us not only or even primarily when they are in artillery shells but when they are in the hands of terrorists. Had Chris Matthews been interested in actually asking a question that would have obliged the senator to show some thought, he would have inquired as to how much ricin is too much, or how great a biological threat has to exist in the lab before we take action.

Kerry's answer tells us that he fails to grasp the crucial issue of this campaign: the threat to America has changed, and our response has to change with it...

Earth to clueless lady senator...

Others have criticized Senator Clinton for choosing the wrong place, the London-based Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat, to say the the US "is in trouble," and is "endangering stability in the Middle East." [link] It's certainly not the action of a "loyal opposition."

But my thought is, can she really be so clueless as to think our goal in the Middle East is stability? President Bush has been very open and frank about our intention to bring change. Our plan is to endanger stability...

Blehhh...

I was feeling depressed at the thought of 6 more dreary years of Arlen Spector. Polipundit offers some comfort...

...And "moderate" Republican senators have just had a loud warning shot fired across their bow. The next time they're voting on a bill, they should remember not just the ultra-liberal Washington press corps, but their conservative constituents back home. If a 4-term incumbent in a swing state can almost be defeated by a young challenger who's outspent 3-1, then no Republican senator is safe from a conservative primary challenge...

I'm not optimistic.

As for Specter, he's old, he won't be running again. He doesn't have to ever again do anything for conservative Republicans. Or Republicans, period. And I bet he doesn't.

#156: Nasty insinuations

KRUGMAN TRUTH SQUAD

A Vision of Power (04/27/04) is another "Cheney bash" by Paul Krugman in which he rants against the administration's attempts to keep the participants in the Vice President's 2001 energy task force confidential. For Krugman the combination of Cheney and the energy industry sets off fulminations that can last for weeks. Remember the ten or so columns on the California electricity crisis a couple of years ago?

At first we were going to pass on this column, but then we spotted one segment so outrageous we changed our minds:

"Could there be a smoking gun in the [task force] records? Well, maybe Mr. Cheney was already divvying up Iraq's oil fields in 2001, but I'd be surprised to find anything that clear-cut."

The phrase "already divvying up Iraq's oil fields" gives the clear impression that the fields were in fact divvyed up at some point LATER and the only question is when the divvying began. But there never was any divvying. This is an unsupportable attempt to evoke images of colonial powers dividing the spoils of war. Instead, the overwhelming coalition effort was to get the Iraqi oil fields up and running again ASAP. They may have favored coalition companies with contracts and, at times, they may have sacrificed cost effectiveness for speed, but overall the effort was effective.

If Krugman wants a modern day parallel of a colonial rip-off he has to look no further than the Oil-for-Food program administered by none other than the UN Secretariat. This is a record-setting scandal involving theft from an oppressed people that is just now being fully comprehended. We have yet to find out who stole the Iraqis' money, but we will know soon enough. Companies and politicians with close ties to French and Russian interests in the Middle-East are good bets.

Meanwhile, will Krugman ever write a column on THIS historic scam?

Never! It doesn't fit his anti-Bush agenda.

[The Truth Squad is a group of economists who have long marveled at the writings of Paul Krugman. The Squad Reports are synopses of their discussions. ]

A page-turner...

For some reason histories of the American Revolution always seem dull to me. And George Washington likewise, though I'm well aware that he was a fascinating and great man. Perhaps it's an attitude left over from school days.

But Washington's Crossing, by David Hackett Fischer, is anything but dull. It's thrilling! Charlene and I have been snatching it away from each other to read it. It focuses on several crucial months of the Revolution, from the disastrous American defeats at New York, the retreat through New Jersey into Pennsylvania with Washington's army melting away and a British army settling into winter-quarters in New Jersey. Then the very difficult crossing of the Delaware river in a winter storm and the famous attack on a Hessian brigade at Trenton, NJ. Then Washington fights another battle at Trenton a week later (I'd never heard of it) and then slips away at night from the growing British force at Trenton, to attack Princeton, where the British had marched from. And all the while New Jersey is changing drastically, as the ugliness and looting of the occupation arouse the population into something like guerilla war. (The Hessians had many military virtues, but were horrid plunderers.)

The people and institutions involved come alive. I had no idea General Cornwallis was important in so many other spheres. The famous Hessian soldier-trade is explained, and a number of interesting Hessians appear! The terrain comes to life, you feel the agonies of night-marches in rain and mud and ice. Gullies too steep for teams mean cannon must be lowered on drag-ropes by muscle power, then hauled up the other side.

We listen in on meetings and watch the flow of communications. The German and British junior officers who skirmished with the retreating Americans knew we were still dangerous, but their superiors weren't listening. Warnings that British forces were too widely dispersed went unheeded. The Hessians at Trenton were not drunk, as legend would have them, but they were exhausted with skirmishing and patrolling and night-alerts.

And the Americans were driven by ideas. Tom Paine's pamphlet The American Crisis was published a week before the Battle of Trenton. He marched with the Army across New Jersey, scribbling by campfires. He rode to Philadelphia, found the city in chaos, and struggled for ten days to get his pamphlet published. A day later it was having an electrifying effect on the army, and soon on all the colonies.

THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value...

This is the book for your summer vacation. I give it my highest recommendation.

"Karol Wojtyla needs no introduction."

Dr Weevil reminisces on the quandary of a scholarly journal accepting a paper by a not-well-known churchman. But before the paper can be published, the author is promoted to be the Pope.

Quandary: how to write the biographical blurb...

Results from NCLB

Some interesting results.. from the No Child Left Behind Act.

Kids who won highly prized transfers out of failing Chicago public schools averaged much better reading and math gains during the first year in their new schools --just as drafters of the federal No Child Left Behind Law envisioned, an exclusive analysis indicates.

And, contrary to some predictions, moving low-scoring kids to better-performing schools didn't seem to slow the progress of students in those higher-achieving schools.

Even kids "left behind'' in struggling schools generally posted better gains in state tests once their peers transferred elsewhere...(Thanks to Judd)

Very pleasing. But I think in a way the study misses what is most important. What would be really interesting would be to learn how the teachers and administrators are reacting and changing.

The study covers students transferring to good schools, as if good and bad schools just happen for no reason. But what we really hope is that the poor schools are going to start improving, like businesses which are losing sales to rivals. I suspect it's happening already, but under the radar...

Something like an apology

I think I've been a bit too hard on various people.

The political shift that we seem to be in the midst of, with Republicans now holding House, Senate, and the Executive Branch, and many state governments, is something people like me have seen coming for the last 20 years or so. And we view it as embedded in a larger pattern of 70-year cycles in American politics.

But to many, what's happening now is the world turned upside down! It's like going outside one day and discovering that the sky is pink! No more blue sky, get used to it, pal!

We grew up in a world where Dems controlled Congress and most state legislatures as a matter of course. Where Democrats, liberals, were considered to be the "party of reform." The party of progress. The good guys! The "grown-ups" who naturally decided the nation's agenda, set the tone, and spoke with authority as of right. Their gerrymanders and committee-chairmanships were time-honored parts of political life, not shocking innovations.

I've been thinking about these lines from the Jonathan Rauch article I mentioned a couple of days ago:

...In today's era of Saint FDR, people forget that Roosevelt was, in his own day, a bitterly polarizing figure. To his adversaries, he seemed no ordinary opponent but a larger kind of menace, a radical whose determination to aggrandize Washington and himself portended an American dictatorship. Behind the mask of geniality, they saw a ruthless partisan who intended not to govern alongside the Republicans but to obliterate them...

Obliterate them! I'll bet that's just how it feels to be a Democrat right now. "Vast right-wing conspiracy" probably seems to fit the facts.

In truth, I think the changes are driven by an inevitable build-up of pressure. The article talks about how the Republicans seem to be choosing to pursue those reforms that will harm the Democrat coalition. But I think that's got things backwards.

Republicans aren't choosing the reforms, the reforms are choosing the Republicans! The reforms that are most pressing, most exciting, are precisely those the Democrats could not effect, because they would harm members of their coalition. Democrats are boxed in. The things they can do, they've already done, or at least tried. The things they can't do are becoming increasingly urgent.

I've criticized the Bush-haters for being totally negative, for being only against, and not for anything. But that's exactly how Republicans were in the 1930's. Stunned and bewildered and bitter. (Dems may be getting a bit of luck. The Republicans of the 30's endured a decade of the New Deal, and then, just then the New Deal was probably running out of steam, they got our nations' biggest war, with FDR as a splendid war-leader! No fair.) The only thing they were for was for life to return to "normal."

By the way, if anyone knows of a good book or article on how Republicans were thinking and reacting around 1932, I'd love to hear about it. All the books seem to be written about the winners.

Atavistic emotions

REMEMBER, when you hear the press complaining about not being allowed to photograph coffins arriving at Dover AFB, that there are lots of pictures of coffins and funerals and grieving loved-ones available...

I see them almost daily at Army Times. I have the Frontline Photos page bookmarked. I recommend it. Many are wire-service photos, available to any newsmedia.

A caisson carries the casket of Lance Cpl. Torrey Stoffel-Gray in a procession through Patoka, Ill., on Monday. The 19-year-old Marine was killed April 11 by hostile fire in Iraq’s Anbar province. He was stationed at Twentynine Palms, Calif
Robert Cohen, St. Louis Post-Dispatch / AP photo

So why don't we see more things like this? And what's the big deal about Dover?

Dover AFB is where large shipments of coffins with our war dead arrive. They are then forwarded to various localities. The press wants to show coffins en mass because they think it will help their party in the next election by causing Americans to lose heart. (A side-effect like undermining their country in time of war is too trifling to worry about.)

And they are not too keen on pictures like the one above, because they suspect that those waving flags might betoken strange atavistic emotions they don't understand. (Sort of like the "I don't know what it is but I'm sure I don't like it" response of so many Hollywood types to The Passion.)

I think the press seriously underestimates the American people, and how we will respond to the price of war. Picture of coffins arriving at Dover would not have the effect they hope for

Gerard Van der Leun thinks Dover is preferred because it's near DC, and the press is lazy. To get the real stories ...would entail a long series of assignments in the small towns and dusty backwaters of America. There would be lots of short hops on small commuter airlines, many nights in Motel 6, many days in cheap rented cars, and a host of meals snatched at Waffle Hut...I lead a sheltered life here...I've never even encountered 'Waffle Hut."

The Myths of Iraq

From StrategyPage, The Myths of Iraq (this is my condensed version)

The country is in flames! Actually, most of the country continues to rebuild and is at peace. The fighting is restricted to a few areas, but this is where the reporters and cameras go. Construction and commerce do not make for dramatic news stories and so are rarely covered...

Americans are hated in Iraq! Not according to the polls that have been conducted, nor according to the experience of most Americans working in Iraq...

U.S. troops are fed up with the war and leaving in droves! New recruits, and people wanting to stay in are at record levels in the armed forces. This applies to reservists as well as active duty troops...

The Iraqi Governing Council is despised by most Iraqis! Any 25 Iraqi leaders would be despised by most of the population.... But Iraq has lots of constituencies, including over a hundred tribes and dozens of religious leaders with large followings...

The U.S. Army doesn't have enough troops to handle current combat operations! Although combat commanders feel that "too much ain't enough" when it comes to troops, they learn how to go with what they got. ... Sending more troops won’t help with the basic problem; gathering intelligence. That requires people who speak Arabic and have police experience. More American troops won’t solve that problem, more trained Iraqi police will. 

The effort in Iraq detracts from the war on terror! Arab countries are where al Qaeda comes from, they were just using Afghanistan as a base. Invading Iraq forced al Qaeda to come and defend its Arabian heartland. The Iraq operations inflamed al Qaeda members in Saudi Arabia to start attacking Saudis and other Arabs. This cost al Qaeda a lot of support among Arabs, and would not have happened if Iraq were not invaded.

The war on terror is mainly a police and intelligence function. The troops that are needed most for counter-terrorism are special operations (Special Forces and commandoes.) Special operations forces were pulled out of Afghanistan for the Iraq campaign, but most of the action in Afghanistan is best handled by regular coalition troops, Afghans and the Pakistanis. After 2001, the war in Afghanistan was mainly political, not military. Special Forces troops specialize in a particular part of the world, and they are all over the planet chasing down terrorists. The war in Iraq gave the Special Forces an opportunity to work intensively, and without restraint, in an Arab country. 

U.S. Army should be expanded! It takes several years to recruit new troops, train them and organize them into new units. By then, the army leadership feels they won’t be needed. But the army will still have to pay for them. This will mean less money for training and new weapons and equipment. To the army leadership, that strategy will get more soldiers killed in combat in the long run....

Iraqi army should not have been disbanded after Saddam fell! The Iraqi army has been, for over half a century, the chief source of tyranny and oppression in the country. Army commanders overthrew the government time after time, and used their soldiers to brutalize the population. By keeping all, or part, of the army intact, and armed, coalition risked a quick return of the warlord attitude that gave the Iraqi people dictators like Saddam (and several others who preceded him.)...

Iraqi security and army troops, and police cannot be relied on! About half the police and security troops have worked well with coalition troops when put under pressure (attacked by al Sadr militia or Sunni gangs). Another 40 percent simply fled and about ten percent went over to the rebels. This was because the screening and training process for Iraqi police and security troops is still a work in progress....

Oh, to be 18 again...

Peggy Noonan's article, Privileged to Serve, on pro football player Pat Tillman who died in combat in Afghanistan yesterday, has been reprinted. It's good.

...Except for this. We are making a lot of Tillmans in America, and one wonders if this has been sufficiently noted. The other day friends, a conservative intellectual and his activist wife, sent a picture of their son Gabe, a proud and newly minted Marine. And there is Abe, son of a former high aide to Al Gore, who is a lieutenant junior grade in the Navy, flying SH-60 Seahawk helicopters. A network journalist and his wife, also friends, speak with anguished pride of their son, in harm's way as a full corporal in the Marines. The son of a noted historian has joined up; the son of a conservative columnist has just finished his hitch in the Marines; and the son of a bureau chief of a famous magazine was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Army last month, on the day he graduated from Princeton.

As the Vietnam-era song said, "Something's happening here." And what it is may be exactly clear. Some very talented young men, and women, are joining the armed forces in order to help their country because, apparently, they love it. After what our society and culture have been through and become the past 30 years or so, you wouldn't be sure that we would still be making their kind, but we are. As for their spirit, Abe's mother reports, "Last New Year's, Abe and his roommate [another young officer] were home and the topic came up about how little they are paid [compared with] the kids who graduated from college at the same time they did and went into business.

"Without missing a beat the two of them said, 'Yeah--but we get to get shot at!'...

What a great time to be alive. It's marvelous, almost unbelievable, but the poisonous residue of the 60's seems to diminish year by year.

Fun to do...

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

And when the ducks stood on their heads suddenly, as ducks will, he would dive down and tickle just under where their chins would be, if ducks had chins, till they were forced to come up to the surface again in a hurry, spluttering and angry and shaking their feathers at him, for it is impossible to say quite all you feel when your head is under water.
-- Wind in the Willows

(Via Caterina, by way of Judd)

the miserable trends turned around...

Fascinating article in City Journal, Morning After in America by Kay S. Hymowitz. It's especially amazing about the the way young people have changed:

...Wave away the colored smoke of the Jackson family circus, Paris Hilton, and the antics of San Francisco, and you can see how Americans have been self-correcting from a decades-long experiment with “alternative values.” Slowly, almost imperceptibly during the 1990s, the culture began a lumbering, Titanic turn away from the iceberg, a movement reinforced by the 1990s economic boom and the shock of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. During the last ten years, most of the miserable trends in crime, divorce, illegitimacy, drug use, and the like that we saw in the decades after 1965 either turned around or stalled. Today Americans are consciously, deliberately embracing ideas about sex, marriage, children, and the American dream that are coalescing into a viable—though admittedly much altered—sort of bourgeois normality. What is emerging is a vital, optimistic, family-centered, entrepreneurial, and yes, morally thoughtful, citizenry.

To check a culture’s pulse, first look at the kids, as good a crystal ball as we have...

...Yet marketers who plumb people’s attitudes to predict trends are noticing something interesting about “Millennials,” the term that generation researchers Neil Howe and William Strauss invented for the cohort of kids born between 1981 and 1999: they’re looking more like Jimmy Stewart than James Dean. They adore their parents, they want to succeed, they’re optimistic, trusting, cooperative, dutiful, and civic-minded. “They’re going to ‘rebel’ by being, not worse, but better,” write Howe and Strauss...(via Betsy)

"Mencken's condescension would turn to hatred..."

This article, The Accidental Radical by Jonathan Rauch, is very interesting on what Bush is up to. (Bush haters might like it also; it includes a possible scenario where all Bush's reforms fail, and he retires to obscurity!) You may have already read it, it's from last summer, and I just encountered it again.

Fascinating to me are the parallels between Bush and FDR. I've been writing about the similarities between the rise of the Democrats in the 30's and the rise of the Republicans today. But the personal similarities between the two men surprised me.

"I was a lightweight trading on a famous name, they said." That was George W. Bush, then still governor of Texas, writing in his 1999 book, A Charge to Keep. He might have been pleased to know that "they," the purveyors of conventional wisdom, had said the same of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. "A pleasant man," the pundit Walter Lippmann famously called Roosevelt, "who, without any important qualifications for the office, would very much like to be president." H.L. Mencken dismissed him as "Roosevelt Minor."

When he sought the presidency, FDR had been governor of New York for all of four years. In that brief time, he had used his natural amiability to good effect, working the state's political machinery to pass some modest but significant reforms, but he had also taken care not to be seen as radical. In the presidential race, his views appeared to be eclectic bordering on confused....

...Quite early in his presidency, as it became clear that Roosevelt would press the powers of his office to the limit and beyond, Mencken's condescension would turn to hatred, an enmity that many Americans shared. In today's era of Saint FDR, people forget that Roosevelt was, in his own day, a bitterly polarizing figure. To his adversaries, he seemed no ordinary opponent but a larger kind of menace, a radical whose determination to aggrandize Washington and himself portended an American dictatorship. Behind the mask of geniality, they saw a ruthless partisan who intended not to govern alongside the Republicans but to obliterate them...

I occasionally heard some of that hatred of FDR in things my dad said. And he was a very thoughtful and reasonable man. Once he said something about Roosevelt treating the employees on his estate very badly. Perhaps he did, but it had the flavor of an urban legend, something cherished and passed on like people now pass about some ugly quote from Rush Limbaugh...

Falluja, Mosul, two cities...

Wretchard quotes this backgrounder on Fallujah from the Department of Defense:...

While Iraq is laced with antiquities, Fallujah isn't one of them. Just after World War II, the population of the town was around 10,000. The city, about 40 miles west of Baghdad, is on the edge of the desert, and now has about 300,000 citizens. It is a dry and arid landscape, made productive only because of extensive irrigation from the nearby Euphrates River. It was, however, located on the main routes into Jordan and Syria. And in crime, as in real estate, location is everything. The city was on the main route for smugglers, and sheltered a number of very successful crime lords...

And Andrew Sullivan has a a fascinating letter from a chaplain in Falluja:

...Nonetheless, in Faluja, the supposed hotbed of dissent in Iraq, countless Iraqis tell our psyopers they want to cooperate with us but are afraid the thugs will slit their throats or kill their kids. A bad gang can do that to a neighborhood and a town. That's what is happening here...

If you believe news reports, anywhere things are going badly is the real Iraq. And where they happen to be going well isn't considered "news."

But in fact, there are signs of things moving in the direction we hope them to go. If people like me think we should not panic yet, and not turn things over to the brave protectors of Rawanda, it's because of stories like this:

...Like the rest of Iraq, residents of Mosul had seen what was happening in Fallujah and had demonstrated. Unlike in the rest of the country, their demonstrations remained peaceful. "That was due to the early involvement of religious and government leaders, members of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps and the Iraqi Police," Ham said.

But when the attack came later that night, it was not Task Force Olympia's Stryker combat vehicles that answered the call. Instead, the men of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps and the Iraqi police responded. "They stood strong," Ham said. "It was those forces that repelled the attack."

The galvanizing force was the governor of the province and the city, Ham said. "He never left the building, and his personal courage made a big difference," the general noted.

"The Iraqi people in Mosul got the message that here is a strong, democratic leader with a competent security force." Ham said.

He pointed out that the Iraqi Security Forces had to call on U.S. forces to help in only one incident that night, but all the heavy lifting was done by the Iraqis.

Ham said it was Iraqi leadership that made the difference with the security forces. He said he is very proud of them for the way they reacted...

I'm proud of them too. I've come to care about these people. Unlike the "anti"-war activists, who would dump them down the sewer if it would hurt Bush.

Mosul shows what Iraq could be. That's what we are fighting for. Not out of altruism, but because such a transformation in the very heart of the enemy realm, will be a blow more devastating to our enemies than any number of nukes. The "enemy realm" is not a place, but a culture that repeatedly brings forth terrorist groups. And we are planting a counter-culture in the midst of it.

One of these days Charlene and I (if we ever make any money) will vacation in Iraq. And feel smug. We will wear our Bush/Cheney pins, and be popular...(And if you think that sounds optimistic, reflect that we could do it right now in the Kurdish north. Those guys have made tremendous progress in just ten years, both in prosperity and freedom and democracy. I would make much of them, but the prune-faced crew would just sneer that Kurds are different, and that Arabsstill aren't suited for freedom, and would rather be ruled by strongmen. )

we would have dozed through the news reports...

CTV News: The Sun newspaper reported Tuesday that the suspects planned to set off bombs during a match between Manchester United and Liverpool this weekend -- one of the biggest games in the English soccer calendar. 

The paper quoted an unnamed police source as saying the suspects had bought tickets for seats in the 67,000-capacity Manchester United's Old Trafford stadium.

The arrests reportedly made after months of surveillance and eavesdropping on cell phone calls, the paper said....

...Britons have been especially wary of a terror attack since last month, when police arrested  nine men and seized more than half a ton of potentially explosive fertilizer in raids throughout London...

That a number of plots have been foiled recently is good news, and also evidence that the WOT is not being neglected. (And I'm sure a lot goes on that isn't publicized. I've heard rumors of us fingering Al Qaeda leaders in obscure places and then sending Jordanians in to kill them. I hope it's true, but imagine how the old grandmas would shriek if we publicized it!)

But what I'm thinking about is the thin ice that guys like Kerry are skating on [Cliché! --I.C. So suggest something better --JW] . Implicit in their endless carping, though they haven't the nerve to say it outright, is the idea that we are not really quite quite at war. Maybe a limited war against Al Quada, And that if Bush hadn't stirred the hornet's nest, things would be almost "normal."

But suppose the recent plot in Jordan had succeeded? 20,000 dead in Amman was the estimate. With poison gas from Syria—presumably originally from Iraq. It would be hard to ignore. Who's going to look wise? Bush, who's offered us a long and difficult struggle, and promised to see it through? Or Kerry, who's offering...well, I'm not sure what he's offering, but it doesn't seem to be blood, sweat, toil and tears....(thanks to Alan for the links.)

And the lack of popular excitement about the attacks that didn't happen was on my mind when I read this:

... But if that had happened, guess what? Even if the government announced, "Major Terrorist Threat Blocked by Quick Action," we would have dozed through the news reports, wouldn't we?

And the civil libertarians would have kept the courts tied up for years, because of course the government had no right to spy on the airline ticketing system and so they "shouldn't" have found any information about ticket purchases by anyone...

It's easy to ask, there's this thing called the Internet...

Francis W. Porretto writes

...In the many assertions from the anti-war camp that the Iraqi occupation is "turning into a quagmire," there's a common thread: the implication or outright statement that the morale of American forces in Iraq is low and sinking. That this claim is contradicted by statements from the troops themselves, who see their job as a necessary one, albeit arduous and dangerous, is seldom discussed. Moreover, the most recent reports on enlistment and retention rates from all the armed services have been better than satisfactory; all of them have met their quotas in all areas, except for a handful of technical specialties...

It's interesting how often those who claim to feel deeply the plight of our soldiers show little evidence of having actually asked any of them what they think.

It would be easy to do, The guys in Iraq and Afghanistan have e-mail. And there are many military bloggers, and various web sites for military units, with forums. Heres a sample (and again, this time facing bad news)—This brigade is in the thick of it. Or here's Sgt Hook, who took a little survey...

When you read someone's lament that our hapless troops are stretched to the breaking point, bogged down, beleaguered, battered, bewitched, bothered,...notice whether they asked any of the people most involved.

let's get on with the job

After being drowned in a tidal wave of all who didn't do enough before 9/11, I have come to believe that the Commission should issue a report that says: 'No one did enough in the past. No one did near enough.' Then thank everyone for serving, send them home and let's get on with the job of protecting this country in the future. --Sen. Zell Miller

The draft is purely a political idea...

Cori writes:

...Let me tell you something: the draft is purely a political idea. I've been briefed by plenty of generals on recruitment and retention problems. Now, granted, this was several years ago, before the GWOT, but there were plenty of problems in recruitment and retention at the time, and not once did the draft come up. Why? Because from their perspective it makes absolutely no sense. We field a highly technical force. It takes up to 18 months to train a soldier for the most basic of specialties. So by the time you get a draftee in, and train them to a reasonable level of competence, you might get to use them for 6 months before their term of service would end. It's in no way cost effective. In fact it's so utterly and completely expensive to pay for these people, to train, dress, house, feed them, that it just makes absolutely no sense...

We are killing the jihadis at a ratio of about 50-to-one precisely because we have the most highly trained and motivated and professional military in the world. If we sent draftees to Iraq, our losses would be much much worse. One wonders...

One wonders if there is more to 60's nostalgia than unbelievably unflattering pants for women?....maybe some unconscious nostalgie de bodybag?

Lord knows the jihadis are doing their part. They are concealing themselves among civilians just like the Viet Cong did. Committing atrocities. And, like Vietnam days, the anti-war types do not criticize them at all, but stand ready and eager to excoriate the evil Americans if another My Lai Massacre occurs. Just like then we hear that Americans are "monsters," but the people who are trying (and failing) to turn them into monsters get a pass.

It must be very frustrating for our Ultras...They've been cranking the Iraq-equals-Vietnam engine for two years now, but it just won't start up. No My Lai, no huge marches, no triumphant Democrats selling out hapless people to tyranny after the war has been won. What's the matter? Something's missing...maybe a few hundred-thousand scared trigger-happy draftees?
.

It's easy to become angry about the ceaseless America-bashing we get. But put yourself in the other guy's shoes. Feel a little of the frustration of the gray-haired "activist," trying to regain the golden sonnenreise of his youth, when America was bad and communists were good. He may claim to have "ended" the Vietnam War, but he really can't point to any Vietnamese who are grateful for the re-education camp. He probably feels like life hasn't quite given him what he deserves. And now, a second chance! Another American war to sabotage, another hapless people whose hopes for freedom can be betrayed. An excuse to avoid thinking about what it is he believes, if anything.

But it just isn't quite working...

Here, via Mindles, is what four Vietnam vets think about draftees. A small sample, but interesting...

Woodward book...

Various people have been wondering why the Administration would even talk to Bob Woodward, when it was inevitable that he would portray them as lackwits who ignored the counsel of Neville Chamberlain the wise.

But think for a moment how stupid Woodward is. From his inside-the-beltway perspective, he thinks he's hurting Bush by letting the us know he's a Christian! And that Americans will recoil in horror and disgust when they learn that the administration was planning war even while diplomatic negotiations were going on!

Horrifying. Actually planning a war ahead of time. Oh, the shame of it.

And guess what:

...Campaign advisers are so convinced that national security issues play to Bush's strength that they have posted a link on the Bush-Cheney reelection website to the new book by Bob Woodward, ''Plan of Attack," despite several disputes they have over facts and a portrayal of Bush as driven to war by an unrelenting Vice President Dick Cheney without input from Secretary of State Colin L. Powell...

Woodward has exposed the truth. Those right-wing moonbats seem to think there's a WAR going on. Next you know, they'll start talking like JFK...

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. . . . The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it--and the glow from that fire can truly light the world

Us Republican insects wonder...

Jonah Goldberg::

...For generations, Democratic candidates and liberal journalists have asserted with impunity that Republicans, by their very nature, hate blacks, gays, children, the poor, the environment, animals and immigrants.

Al Gore ran as a champion of the "people against the powerful," claiming he cared about Americans more than Bush. His campaign manager declared that Republicans "have no love and no joy. They'd rather take pictures with black children than feed them." [For the reality, read this!] Clinton routinely said that the GOP wanted to "punish" children. The organizers of the Million Mom March insisted that "good" moms support gun control.

Again: Why is it fair game to question conservatives' love or loyalty to children or to their fellow man, but beyond the pale to question liberals' love of country?...

I like how he puts it...

David Cohen writes:

...The ABC slant on the poll is "Iraq is a quagmire, so why isn't the President tanking?" There are a lot of assumptions built into this, but I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that the American voters may actually be adults. Shocking, I know, but there you are. The downfall of these polls is always the pollsters unspoken assumptions, and here ABC is misled by its assumption that Americans hate military casualties most of all, and that stability in the mideast is a good thing. The idea that we might be willing to take casualties in order to destabilize the current Arab regimes never occurs to them...

More disgusting religious stuff from the President...

And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe—the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.
-- John F. Kennedy on Jan. 20, 1961

(Thanks to Henry Hanks )

Ghost of Scoop Jackson seen walking at night...

This sounds good. Via OxBlog, a new Democrat foreign policy group:

...For those of you who feel you are Democrats longing for a party that takes national security more seriously, (or even borderline Republicans discontented with both parties) a new group has formed that would love to have you as members.  The Truman National Security Project (www.trumanproject.org) is a group of young foreign policy professionals dedicated to creating a strong foreign policy platform for the Democratic Party, and working to move the national security debate beyond the tired battles between Cold Warriors and Vietnam-era liberals, to create new ways of thinking about foreign policy for an age of transnational threats and terrorism...

This sounds good, and I wish them all possible success.

My guess is that the Democrats won't recover electorally until a new generation arises. But the time to start is NOW. And the means is ideas! Thinking and questioning. There's a common cliché that Republicans are slow-thinking and unreflective, (or stupid and backwards, as some would say). Nothing could be farther from the truth. In fact the world of American conservatives (similar though not exactly the same as the world of Republicans) is a place of intense intellectual activity and constant debate.

It wasn't always so. The truism once had a lot of truth. The Republican Party that was swept out of power in the 1930's was complacent and hidebound. And had for a long time been coasting on the momentum of the Civil War and the economic triumphs of the latter 19th Century. It was anti-intellectual, anti-New Deal, and not excited about much, except balanced budgets.

Serious thinking about conservative ideas only became common here in the 1960's, and even then it was very much under the radar. (It's pleasantly ironic that "officially" the 60's was the decade when intellectual life moved leftwards.) It had little effect on established politicians like Nixon or Rockefeller or Ford.

Ronald Reagan was the first important Republican politician who drew on the emerging conservative think-tanks and intellectuals. He was also, in the words of Irving Kristol, "...the first Republican president to pay tribute to Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the first Republican president since Theodore Roosevelt whose politics were optimistically future-oriented rather than bitterly nostalgic or passively adaptive." And he was influential in wooing the neo-cons away from Henry Jackson and Hubert Humphrey.

"bitterly nostalgic or passively adaptive." That's today's Democrats. I remember hearing about some other new "Democratic think-tank" last year. But it's purpose was apparently to provide talking points and clever arguments for Democrat congressmen. There was no suggestion that there might be a wee something lacking in the ideas for which talking points were needed. Or that anyone might be receptive to new ideas if they were provided. I didn't find that very impressive...

As to why I would want the Democrats to make a comeback...if you have to ask, you don't know me.

I'll bet this is disinformation...

From Rantburg:

...However, the source revealed that IDF helicopters also had "human" assistance on the ground. The Israeli claimed that his government has "been successful" in obtaining the "assistance" of Palestinians within Hamas. In short, the official claimed that individuals "sympathetic" to Israel have been key in helping Jerusalem "eliminate" the two former Hamas leaders.

The official hinted that the "sympathetic" Hamas individuals may have actually planted homing devices in the cars of the two leaders, allowing the IDF to attack with stunning success. "Do not be surprised, we know more about their (Hamas) activities than most people know. And now, they (Hamas) have begin to realize it themselves...

Suppose Israel just got lucky in killing two terrorists in a small space of time.

When better to "leak" that you have informers inside the organization? With any luck, instead of murdering women and children in Israel, they will start murdering each other...Couldn't happen to a nicer buncha guys.

#155: No and no!

KRUGMAN TRUTH SQUAD

The historically low long-term interest rates as reflected currently by the yield on the 10-year US Treasury bond are an embarrassing problem for Paul Krugman and Democrat economists. At a lethargic 4.3%, the long bond yield continues to be "the dog that won't bark" and greatly complicates his assaults on the Bush administration's fiscal policies. In Questions of Interest (04/20/04) Krugman gives that dog a kick to see if he can't at least get a yelp out of it. We didn't hear anything yet.

Here's Krugman's problem. Under orthodox Rubinomics (named for former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin) an omniscient bond market is the ultimate arbiter of economic well-being. Governments pursuing reckless fiscal policies are quickly brought to heel by higher yields in the bond market which sees right through their chicanery. Hence, a cogent argument for economic gloom and doom based on "irresponsible tax cuts for the rich", "fiscal deficits as far as the eye can see" and looming "banana republic-hood", requires some sort of a red flag coming from the 10-year bond. But the bond market is not cooperating. Instead yields are just lollygagging around near a 40-year low.

So Krugman tries a new tack. WHAT IF, he asks rhetorically, interest rates and inflation go back up to their long-run averages of, say, 7% and 3% respectively? Isn't that terrible? Won't the dog be barking then?

No and no! It's not bad at all. And it might even happen – Krugman has been right before on occasion. However, his larger problem is that to get us to that point he has to assume that the economy either recovers fully or is perceived to be recovering fully. Contrast that with the current perception reflected in polls showing that the economy is under performing. If that perception changes toward more optimism in the next 6 months Bush will be reelected with growing legislative majorities. Rates may rise some, but the dog still won't bark.

[The Truth Squad is a group of economists who have long marveled at the writings of Paul Krugman. The Squad Reports are synopses of their discussions. ]

Some corrections to the Woodward book...

...Speaking with Fox News' Sean Hannity, Powell said that he was not semi-despondent at any time.

"The fact of the matter is, my responsibility to the president is to give him the best advice I can," Powell told Hannity. "And the first bit of advice I gave him was, we should take this issue to the U.N. The U.N. is the party that's offended. The whole world is offended by what Saddam Hussein has done, so take it to the U.N."

Powell said that President Bush agreed with this recommendation, as did Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and National Security Advisor Dr. Condoleezza Rice.

"And when [Bush took the case to the U.N.] I knew that we had two roads ahead, and I'm not sure which one we would follow: Road one was that the U.N. was able to solve this. But I also knew that there was a second road, and if the U.N. didn't act, the president would act. And he would take it to war, if that's what it took, and ask like-minded nations to join us," Powell explained.

Powell said that because the U.N. did not act in a timely manner, President Bush took "that second road."

"I knew that it might happen, and I knew that when he took that second road, I'd be with him for the whole way," Powell said. "I don't quit on long patrols."...

Context missing...

Dave Trowbridge slams Rush Limbaugh's Fort Marcy Park comment. He'd be right to do so, except what doesn't get included with a bare quote is that, according to those who were listening, Rush was laughing throughout, and it was obviously a joke. I'd call it a joke in bad taste. (I actually sent an e-mail to Rush saying he was way out-of-line. I should have guessed it was a joke. Anyone who actually listens to Rush, as I do occasionally, knows he's not into conspiracy theories.)

But now it will circulate endlessly, and give the close-minded an excuse to stay close-minded. (Much as if I used some loony comment from the DU to characterize people on the left, and ignore what they have to say.)

“But you killed all those jobs!”

This is fascinating, on governmental reform in New Zealand:

...When we started this process with the Department of Transportation, it had 5,600 employees. When we finished, it had 53. When we started with the Forest Service, it had 17,000 employees. When we finished, it had 17. When we applied it to the Ministry of Works, it had 28,000 employees. I used to be Minister of Works, and ended up being the only employee. In the latter case, most of what the department did was construction and engineering, and there are plenty of people who can do that without government involvement. And if you say to me, “But you killed all those jobs!” – well, that’s just not true. The government stopped employing people in those jobs, but the need for the jobs didn’t disappear. I visited some of the forestry workers some months after they’d lost their government jobs, and they were quite happy. They told me that they were now earning about three times what they used to earn – on top of which, they were surprised to learn that they could do about 60 percent more than they used to! The same lesson applies to the other jobs I mentioned...(via BrothersJudd Blog)

You Big Government lovers ought to stop bitching about Bush. Things could be much worse for you...

Actually, the article is so amazing, I'm wondering if it's true! Maybe it's a utopian fantasy...anybody know? I should Google it, but I'm feeling lazy...

More thoughts on the previous post...

In 1944 we investigated the intelligence failures that led to our being surprised at Pearl Harbor. But the whole exercise was futile, because the world where those failures happened vanished utterly on December 7, 1941. The investigation was a little like the reverse of those reenactments of Civil War battles. A glance now is enough to tell us that our plump suburbanite re-enactors are far removed in spirit from the slaughter-lands of Cold Harbor and Petersburg and the Jerusalem Turnpike...

Same with 9/11. The investigation only makes sense if we believe that 9/11 was a one-off, a fluke, and if it hadn't happened we would still be in the world of 9/10. Or that we are in the world of 9/10. The alternative view is that some other attack would have happened if 9/11 hadn't, and that 9/10 was a dream-world we can't return to, and which has precious few lessons for us now. Like soft Sunday mornings on the golf links in Honolulu. Time will tell which view is right. But the plan of the John Kerry types, to slide past the issue, to not take a clear position--unh unh. It's too late for that.

One characteristic of the Isolationists was that they talked of WWII as "Roosevelt's War," not our war. It's interesting to watch now as the same sorts try to make this "Bush's War." One of the less appetizing of the Isolationists was Joe Kennedy. Bad feelings about him were later overlaid by the heroic war service of his sons, and the popularity of JFK. But who is now claiming that the Iraq campaign was concocted in Texas to gain votes? Joe's youngest son Teddy! I suspect the overall view of the Kennedy Family in history is not going to be good.

Speaking of Civil War reenactors, there are some guys who really do it right; living on corn meal and rancid bacon, and huddling together under ragged blankets at night to keep from freezing. If you are interested, read Confederates in the Attic.

Trying to avoid the implications

Thinking about the previous post...I'm hearing various interpretations about Gorelick --but it really doesn't matter.

The commission should be derailed, because it's useless partisan bullshit (Dems will succeed in pinning 9/11 on Bush like they succeeded in pinning Enron on Bush, which is to say not-at-all.) --but it doesn't matter.

What matters is that on 9/11 Bush and his Administration realized that we were at war. Not limited war, not narrow-war, not sort-of-war, not war-unless-we-can-prevent-it. War.

And ever since then many people (notably many Democrats, but not all) have been wriggling and squirming and writhing trying to avoid the implications of that. Trying to avoid taking a position. Or avoid admitting they don't have a position, or do have a position, but one that's not exactly on our side...John Kerry is really the perfect leader of his party.

Mostly trying to avoid the implications.

Such as that squawking and flapping and finger-pointing when things get tough is wrong! Is encouraging the enemy and endangering our forces.

That it is their duty to support their country and the President. (And part of that duty includes constructive criticism.)

That concepts like duty and honor and patriotism aren't so dead as some people have hoped.

That people can no longer slide by with vague tranzi world-will-be-better-with-more-UN mushy thinking anymore.

That in a war you can't win all the battles.

And one thing that history teaches is that even those who are pro-war don't get all the implications at first. It takes time to sink in. After a while the McClellans are sidelined, and the Grants and Shermans move to the front. If you are not reading Belmont Club, you should be. Read this post, on how we are really just starting to realize we are at war. "The United States has been dragged unwillingly into war and mentally at least the pro