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"The stream of Time, irresistible, ever moving, carries off and bears away all things that come to birth and plunges them into utter darkness, both deeds of no account and deeds which are mighty and worthy of commemoration. . .Nevertheless, the science of History is a great bulwark against the stream of Time; in a way it checks this irresistible flood, it holds in a tight grasp whatever it can seize floating on the surface and will not allow it to slip away into the depths of Oblivion. "
- Anna Comnena (1083-1153), The Alexiad
"I have taken all knowledge to be my province."
- Francis Bacon, 1592
Friday, September 5, 2003
Campaign For the EU Constitution Begins
This article contains two phrases that are perfectly emblematic of the solid grounds on which the "pro-Europe" campaign will be waged to get the EU Constitution (see Part I and Part II and Part III, as well as revisited) passed. Here's the first one they're trying out in order to persuade people to support it:
"the passage of the draft treaty would not represent a national catastrophe!"
A little bit long for a bumper-sticker, but perfect for a sound-bite in a commercial, I'd say. If you like that one, then try this one on for size:
"it is probably not exactly impossible for us to live with!"
Well, anyone who doesn't support the Draft EU Constitution after compelling arguments like that is simply a xenophobic europhobe, anti-Europe to the core.
It is an odd world when your spirits get lifted by Jacques Chirac. He and his alter-ego, Gerhard Schroeder are behaving according to type, to the point which even the BBC took notice that their pronouncements:
hardly sounded like the words of firm allies of America, which France and Germany claim to be.
I've long since (if six months to a year is "long", which in the blogosphere, it is) resigned myself to the fact that they aren't, in this case, allies.
One can see that these people remain uncommitted to the idea of democracy and civil society in Iraq. They want to move very swiftly to an Iraqi government - put together by the UN, too swiftly for it to develop from the grass roots. That will insure that it is made up of those Iraqis which they have maintained strong bonds to and which they are comfortable working with: the Ba'athist National Socialists. I have no patience for the idea, by the way, that Iraq is a bag to stick them with. It is important that we succeed in our goals in Iraq, and this means not transferring responsibility for it to those who have consistently opposed those goals and furthermore do not believe that they are realistic.
The champions of UN authority in Iraq want control so they can meddle, not help; they believe, along with the American State Department that the goal of a true democratic civil society in Iraq is unrealistic, and they will exercise their superior wisdom and expertise to re-direct things to more "reasonable" objectives. This power simply must be denied them. The Frankenreich is offering nothing to the Iraqis, nor any offer of "burden sharing", except in extending their authority and expertise, as even the BBC had to take note of:
Strikingly, while the French and German leaders present themselves as urgently concerned for the Iraqi people they said nothing at this news conference to address their urgent practical needs, for security and a fresh start.
I hope that the Chirac-Schroeder axis continues in this vein. I am now depending upon their intransigent and tactless diplomacy as the means of thwarting their pretensions.
The UN as currently constituted is dedicated to making the world safe for Dictatorship ("stability"), not Democracy. We need something better, like a Commonwealth of Democracies that infuses the two principles I mentioned in Part V of the "America's 21st Century Foreign Policy" series.
This USS Clueless post on the subject is worth reading, as is this. Also, if you are puzzled as to how Part IV of the America's 21st Century Foreign Policy series, the one focusing on generations and reform of institutions, applies to foreign policy, this is one connector.
France and Germany are rejecting the proposal as "inadequate" (defined as not giving them enough power in exchange for nothing - since neither France nor Germany planned on contributing anything except their leadership over what happens in Iraq, anyhow, and that leadership, guidance, and authority they want will not just be worthless but exercised mischievously).
Now all we have to do is not go wobbly - again - and make concessions to get their approval.
In related news, there is a survey of U.S. and European relations, and Nelson Ascher analyzes it. Very good post, go check it out.
I'm going to wait and see what Bush's next move is, following the Frankenreich's rejection. If the Bush Administration follows with reasonable sounding musings about "willingness to listen" but doesn't compromise on essentials (see also Resolution 1441) regardless of any veto threats, then I'll be relieved.
So I'm going to watch and see what happens over the next week or so.
Extending what I said in this post, it is not that I think Kurtz was wrong in pointing to the larger problems we have in this era, it is that he so completely absolved Bush of any responsibility. In my opinion, that makes the Kurtz piece an expression of the political divide he points to rather than a step towards repairing it. That's what makes Kurtz's piece a example of partisan hackery - their is no reflection about "our guy", the role our side plays in decisions leading up to and including this decision to go seek greater involvement by the UN, including ceding at least some authority to it. Likewise, though Armed Liberal is absolutely correct in excoriating Kurtz for this, and in pointing out that Bush is not blameless, Armed Liberal is incorrect, in my view, in laying the blame exclusively with Bush.
This is not triangulation on my part. I have been consistent on this, if you check out those past pieces I linked to. Yes, I have been understanding of more Bush's position than A.L. has been, and also cut him more slack. But if one believes what Armed Liberal wrote here to be correct, especially this:
I'm unhappy because the one thing I know we need to succeed in this war is an iron butt...the patience and solidity to just stick it out long after it stops being comfortable.
then one has to be more than a little concerned.
I have cut the Bush Administration considerable slack because they seemed to be getting that right. Amid all the criticism, they looked like they were hanging tough and sticking it out. They may not have been doing everything perfectly, but they appeared able to ignore the carping and deceptive criticism and carry through. Going to the UN now seems like folding.
If you believe that ceding authority to the UN in Iraq means ceding authority over the mission to those who oppose and will try and undermine and undo what we're trying to accomplish, then you cannot be happy. If you believe that the UN is not competent in these fields, that introducing the UN means introducing a greater level of corruption and people who enjoy power without accountability, then you cannot be happy. If you believe that caving in puts the entire effort in peril of defeat, then you cannot be happy. If you believe that, yes, it does not insure defeat, but it will not make it more likely, then you cannot be happy. I believe all those things. I am not happy.
I am unhappy with anyone who thought this way on Monday but on Wednesday had Sudden Newfound Respect for the the wisdom of UN involvement simply because the Administration changed - or seemed to change - its position on it. Principles, ideas, and issues should trump partisanship. Otherwise you're just contributing to the "A house divided against itself cannot stand" problem Kurtz laments but absolves "us" for; you're just maneuvering in a partisan fashion for domestic political reasons and that makes you no better than the Democrats that Kurtz points all his fingers at.
Meanwhile, I'm left praying for a French veto. Yes, praying - I mean that literally, not as a figure of speech. And any time you're stuck praying for help from the French, you're in trouble. I'm also praying that I'm over-reacting and that the news reports are making out the Administration's proposed Resolution as more significant than it will turn out to be; that they aren't compromising and ceding authority to those who never supported what we are trying to accomplish in Iraq, have not changed their minds, and will thus work against its success if we give them the chance. It wouldn't be the first time that news reports made it seem like Bush had given in when he hadn't, and for the most part I did not fall for those. But this feels different - it looks like he has done just that.
If I'm proven wrong and these posts are over-wrought and premature, then I'll be happy, not sad. But one thing I won't do is give people a pass who come to the same conclusion about this as I have, but rationalize it when they never would if it was done by "the other side" in the culture war. That is the category I put the Kurtz piece - he isn't saying "well, the media is reporting that Bush has finally caved to the UN and gone back hat in hand seeking their help, but thats not what he's doing, they're misportraying, again, what Bush is seeking and he isn't giving away what they're saying he's giving away." Kurtz reaches the same conclusion about that as I do, that this is a major thing. But he absolves Bush.
Additional: Turns out both A.L. and I were wrong when it came to the President's role in the budget. It is not a Constitutional mandate, I was right about that, but there is a legal mandate, not "tradition" alone. He corrected his post to reflect that.
So, poor civics education bit us both in the ass, I guess.
Further: Also at Winds, don't miss Dan Darling's post on Saddam and al-Qaeda.
Ok, perhaps the title of this post is a tad melodramatic? You're right. Well, I'm keeping it anyhow.
In response to my lamentation of yesterday, Beets wrote, via e-mail, telling me to "hang tough". I will. Weebles Wobble but they don't fall down, you know (no, I'm not fat in the can). Beets also sends a link to this post of his, well worth reading. Go check it out. The rest of this post will still be here to finish reading when you get back.
Ok, back? In response to Bush's decision to seek the blessings of the International Community in the form of the UN, Stanley Kurtz wrote a piece of partisan hackery. That seem too strong a condemnation to you? Ok, well Kurtz is on "my (our?) side" from a partisan standpoint. But some things are just unswallowable on the merits. I can prove it's a piece of partisan hackery. Here's how:
A thought experiment. Lets say that everything up to now has been exactly as it has - all the events unchanged. But we'll change one thing. On Sept. 1st, Bush vanished, by magic, and a Democratic President *poofed* into office in his place (remember, this is a thought experiment, not reality). Because its magic at work, everyone accepts that the new Democratic President is the President and there is no ill-will over the magical replacement. With me so far?
That Democrat President does what Bush has done. Does anyone out there think that Stanley Kurtz would be writing the same piece? Anyone at all? Even though it would, in some respects, be more justifiable? I mean, it would be really true that, since this new President only took office four days ago, he hadn't any opportunity to push for increased funding to beef up our troop levels. But Kurtz would be all over him. Instead, Kurtz is treating our current troop levels as if they were an Iron Law of Nature, outside of political influence by the White House. Bush can find room in the budget to spend hundreds of billions on an unnecessarily and largely unwanted Prescription Drug program that no one is clamoring for except the political class - and billions for tax cuts that sure, may be a good idea in general but he couldn't find a way and the time to push for an increase in the size of our military force structure? Puh-leeze.
That's just risible.
That said, Armed Liberal has a post on the UN decision, lamenting it in a detailed way that I couldn't manage to do myself yesterday. It is a post I wish I could have written myself if I had been up to it. Except for the fact that "crowing" is the wrong term. "Crowing" is what someone does when they're preeningly jeering over a victory. A.L. does mean "lamenting" or "decrying" here. And he's mostly right. I'll give people on the Right a few days to a week because some might be waiting to see what actually happens - after all, there have been "faux panics" that Bush was going to cede too much to the UN before. I didn't fall for most of those but I think this one is real, thus my upsetness. If it turns out to be real but "Right-Wingers" who have been arguing against ceding authority to the UN suddenly begin to see wisdom in doing so with nothing having changed except Bush is doing what we've been arguing shouldn't be done, well then like Kurtz they're hacks too.
If it turns out that Bush isn't going to the UN to give away too much, well then to that extent I will have over-reacted. But I'm not about to praise the idea of resuscitating the "central" role of the "authority and legitimacy" of a institution I've spent the last lifetime of this blog pointing out the flaws to, just because "my guy Bush" makes a decision that, if it turns out to be what it is looking like, we would all deplore if Bush were that Democratic President instead of a "R".
By the way, I hope that as things unfold it will be the case that I am over-reacting. But I'm not going to let hope be self-delusion, nor am I going to suddenly accomodate myself to the sanctification of the corrupt UN as the arbitrar of moral legitimacy just because a Republican promotes it - if that is what ends up happening. Anyhow, please go read Armed Liberal's post, then come back. The rest of this post will still be waiting when you're done, even though this will be the second time you've spurned it for another. This is a patient and forgiving post, willing to accept Prodigal Sons and Daughters back.
Back? Ok, good. Because here's Armed Liberal's retort to Stanley Kurtz. You can go read that, too. But this time keep one eye on this post while the other wanders (shameless of you!) By and large and for the most part, on the main issue, I agree with Armed Liberal here, too - as indicated, above, in my own slam of the Kurtz piece.
However. A.L. is wrong in two things. One seemingly small but more important than it will seem at first, and the other somewhat petty. I'll start with the petty one. Kurtz wrote:
The choice was either to break the budget, eliminate domestic spending and lose the claim to a compassionate conservatism, or repeal the tax cut.
To which Armed Liberal's response was:
Damn right. Can't let national security get in the way of a tax cut!! Can't make any demands on the American people, or lead us in any way whatsoever. Let the other generations sacrifice, we're on Atkins.
Well, from "my side", I have written of my willingness - desire even - to let the tax cut go if the money would go to the military. In this post in June and this post in July, to note just two examples. But my petty reaction to Armed Liberal is that he doesn't make the same point as clearly and decisively when it comes to spending programs. It shows there is a bit of a blind spot when it comes to putting "their" oxen on the table. (For posts I've made related to this, see here and most recently here. But that brings me to my more substantive quibble:
I'm sorry, I thought the President was the one who made decisions about the size of the military; it is after all, his Constitutional duty to propose a budget. I wasn't aware that it was a consensus activity; no one's asked me, for example.
Poor American Civics education comes back to bite Armed Liberal in the ass. The President has a Constitutional duty to report to Congress on the State of the Union, but no Constitutional duty when it comes to submitting a budget. That is tradition, especially since FDR, but not a Constitutional mandate and Congress is, of course, under no obligation to look at it. The budget a President submits only becomes "official" for Congressional consideration if and when some Congressbeing(s) will sponsor it (and then it is properly and officially "their" legislative proposal).
This is important because I part with Armed Liberal not in that I let Bush off the hook but because we have always differed in one sense. He tends to hold Bush personally and apparently solely responsible. But I do think there is a kernel of something in Kurtz's otherwise dodgy piece, when Kurtz writes that "But it is a sign that our internal divisions have finally exacted a cost", because our President is not a dictator and we all play a role. Congresspersons could certainly have proposed and passed an increase in the Defense Budget to fund additional forces. This includes Republicans who run both houses and even in the immediate wake of Sept. 11th could have imposed a "working majority" on this issue in the Senate if they pushed it. This included Democrats who are quick to call for sending more troops to wherever (Afghanistan, Iraq, Liberia) but who do not propose committing resources to increasing force levels to make this possible.
It is not absolving Bush of a failure of leadership to point out that others in America share responsibility. This includes "We the People". Perhaps not the readers of this Blog, who probably disproportionately favor an increased military. But it does include America as a whole. We could have been pushing this as a priority, and influencing our Congressbeings. That's what a civil society and civic participation Democracy is all about. I think had that happened, Bush would have been there, with it.
Again, I hope I'm perfectly clear - Bush is not absolved of his own role in this shortfall in troops. If he could push a tax cut through the Democratic Senate in the first few months of his term after a rocky and contested election, then he should have been able to push an increase in the size of our armed forces through a Republican Congress during a time of war. Or at least try.
But. . .but. . .I can't help feeling that there's something unhealthy to democracy about an attitude that "he leads, we follow. If he doesn't, we have no responsibility ourselves." We live in a polity, a Federal Republic, that is not supposed to depend on one man. Any one person is flawed and one of the philosophical underpinnings of democratic theory is that democracy is an improvement on Sole Rule in no small part because it is hoped that the decisions of the many will produce better results than relying on the decisions - and leadership - of one man, be it a monarch or otherwise. But this goes away if we decide that the President, even an elected one, "he says, we do. He doesn't say, his fault. The President Proposes, the President Disposes."
Well, thats it. In every other respect I concur with what Armed Liberal wrote in the two posts I link to, and where I quibble here it isn't because I disagree, per se, it is just that I think he treated one facet of the problem as if it were the whole - it's not that Bush is without responsibility, it is that he is not alone.
Ok, A.L. *was* wrong on the "crowing" thing. But in the big picture, a minor point. That and the assertion that "the hawks did a piss poor job selling this war to the general public". That's incorrect revisionism - the war was supported by the general public, the relentless and contemptibly dishonest propaganda campaign on the part of the Dems and their willing accomplices in the media since then is what is eating away at things. But that's an argument we've already gone into elsewhere and when we take it up again, it'll be another post for another time.
''To be quite honest about it, I'm expecting a great reward in heaven for my obedience,'' [Paul] Hill told 40 newspaper and TV reporters in a visiting area inside the prison where he is scheduled to be put to death by injection at 6 p.m. for the 1994 shotgun shooting deaths of Dr. John Britton and his driver, retired Air Force Col. James Barrett. ``God put me in extraordinary circumstances and under those circumstances I needed to act.''
''I'm looking forward to glory, no doubt about it,''
I guess he'll be in the same line that Mohammed Atta and the rest of his 9/11 homies are in. In hell.
I'll write about this more later as things unfold. Anything I wrote now would be like Old Faithful: it would both suck and blow at the same time. I'm in the wrong frame of mind for writing a post worth reading.
Update: I'm sorry for the craptacular quality of posts so far this week. It's easy to be glib when you aren't convinced grave mistakes are being made but you don't care one way or the other or you're just interested in how it will work out for your partisan "side", putting it before the issues, merits, and what is at stake.
But it ain't me. It ain't me. I aint no fortunate son.
*Sigh* This is just a BS issue, the Right's version of Bush = Hitler. move along, there's nothing to see here. Just the usual if hardly uplifting Democratic insider machine politics. The Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan has nothing to do with any of it. That's right, return to your simple lives. Just forget this ever happened. Forget. Forget.
Ok. Fine. Whatever.
Fine.
Roll credits. Fade to black.
Run rerun "Arnold's Father(land)'s relevance to the California Electon: Don't Vote NAZI" (Producer: The Usual Suspects) instead.
An unfair reaction? Well, what the Left needs isn't "MoveOn.org" - after all, since when have they moved on from anything, including the Clinton Impeachment (in my experience, they bring it up more than anything). What they need is "MoveAlong.org", an accurate description of their reaction to anything like this when it's their oxen getting gored.
MEChA may let its public statements be written by extremists and rife with racial, ethnic separatist rhetoric - something from the keyboard of Armed Liberal (scroll to comments), btw, not some "google search" (btw, when did I say I learned anything I know about MEChA from a google search? Balagan hits it on the head). The fact that they let their public statements be written by the extreme fringe but don't believe that responsibility or accountability ever attaches at any stage is of a piece with all that is wrong with Liberalism today. A.L writes in in the comments section here that:
to be associated, in this day and age, with a truly racist organization is in fact a kiss of death.
Right. And such political death-sentences are, in our Kultur today, reserved for figures on the Right. The system can't abide treating associations with extreme Left organizations (or organizations that let their extremists be their spokesman, seeing nothing wrong with that) carry the same weight. Much better to just hold the Right accountable and responsible for what the extreme Left says in the name of ya'll, too, if it's ever brought up. Our bad. Move Along.
The larger point that MEChA is not tracked by any of the organizations that track hate groups stands.
The fact that one hand washes the other is not, to me, an impressive argument. A.L. thinks a mechanistic, external process, a social process, will take hold:
I think we're seeing organizations like MEChA begin to sag under the middle-class experiences of many of their students.
but apparently this is to be an Immaculate Discorporation, "Untouched (and untouchable) by Human Hands" - whereas I agree with Balagan:
lets help them along a little by calling them on the beliefs they claim for themselves.
Or allow to be claimed for themselves and then get vexed and irritated when someone takes the organization's statements at their word.
its all front and center. read what they say. i dont see where they are unclear about their racial exclusivity in their language, or in their embrace of really rotten smelling things ideogically. . .what i am saying is that they should not be given the kind of pass on responsibility for what they are putting foward which so many would give them . . .
MeChA and bustamente deserve their own attention for different reasons. not everything is about the recall.
MeChA has more to do with the current state of higher education and politics. . .
what a.l. sees as "strident" i see as a sad excuse for undermining the hope of students through empty radicalization. for those of us who live with the results, its a very big deal.
But apparently not big enough for it to be a legitimate subject of discussion.
Armed Liberal is, in my mind, making rather strained comparisons with respect to the "this is the Right's Bush = Hitler issue." A more apt analogy, in my opinion, might be with the anti-War set letting A.N.S.W.E.R. do their organizing and decide who can and can't speak at the rallies, or put extremist radicals at the head of the supposedly more moderate new front group, but then get worked up not over having extremists as their spokesmen but instead offended when someone points out that "hey, you have extremists as your spokesmen!" - it's Beyond Reason to expect them to say "you know, you're right. I don't agree with the kinds of things they're saying on my behalf. I condemn it" and too much to expect for Bustamante. Too much to expect that they might think "you know, perhaps it is time to take a stand, ourselves, on this - not against the Right-Wing critics who are, perhaps, overheated about this. But against the extremists who we've let be our spokesmen, because, yah, if that's what the group is all about, what our extremists are portraying it as, then the 'overheated' reaction of the Right isn't overheated at all, and if the organization isn't represented by this then, you know, we shouldn't let them speak for it."
But, ok, whatever. I should realize by now that it is, after all, pointless and futile. It pretty much moots out efforts like these on the larger question (more here and here also, interestingly check this post out, too), of which this particular thing is just a piece of the whole. Which, I suppose, is why the Liberals and Left tend to see it as no big deal, just part and parcel of the political atmosphere they are used to inhaling. Trying to roll this boulder up the hill just causes friction without accomplishing anything. So, the implication of the critiques of the critics of MEChA are right in one sense: be resigned to it; making a stink about it is uncouth, in bad form. Well, ok then. "In the meantime, it is possible to live well". And another night passes with darkness but no rest.
Well, it's semi-official. Andrew Sullivan compares Bush to Nixon for his liberal spending proclivities, something I did here back in early July ("in many ways, Bush's domestic policies increasingly resemble those of Nixon, not Reagan's"). Maybe Bush is JFK, but he's certainly not a limited government Republican. Neither, it seems, is the Republican Party. New RNC chairman Ed Gillespie had one of those "sit down and talk with the editors" type meetings with the editors of the Manchester Union Leader, and they came away from the discussion with the following impression:
During a cheerful and pleasant meeting (that’s the kind of guy Gillespie is) at The Union Leader offices, the party’s new chairman, energetic and full of vigor, said in no uncertain terms that the days of Reaganesque Republican railings against the expansion of federal government are over.
No longer does the Republican Party stand for shrinking the federal government, for scaling back its encroachment into the lives of Americans, or for carrying the banner of federalism into the political battles of the day.
No, today the Republican Party stands for giving the American people whatever the latest polls say they want. The people want the federal government to tell states how to run local schools? Then that’s what the Republican Party wants, too. The people want expanded entitlement programs and a federal government that attends to their every desire, no matter how frivolous? Then that’s what the Republican Party wants, too.
I'm not a Libertarian. I'm not opposed to all social spending. But c'mon! Clinton declared "the era of big government is over" and now the Republicans, controlling the White House and Congress, are declaring its back. The simple fact is that this is a complete reversal; indeed, during the Bush Administration, non-defense discretionary spending has increased faster than it did during the Clinton Administration. He'd rather support a vast, unnecessary new entitlement than beef up military resources for the war.
If this is part of the "new tone" of cooperating with the other side, or if it's done for political gain, it obviously isn't working. Bush can let Ted Kennedy write the education bill and vastly increase domestic social spending, but here's John Kerry using an aircraft carrier as a photo-op backdrop for a political event, throwing red meat and preening before a crowd of fawning, unquestioning reporters (oh, and the usual Bush-haters who pass as rank and file Democrats today):
I reject George Bush's radical new vision of a government that comforts the comfortable at the expense of ordinary Americans...
As if Bush is cutting domestic spending programs rather than increasing them faster than the previous (Democratic) President did.
Indeed, if it were a Republican Candidate saying such things, in such a harsh and angry tone (remember the "angry white male") about a Democratic President, the press would be all over it. So, well, since we dipped a toe in, I guess I'll go ahead and do the analysis that the Press would do if they were honest and cut the pie down the middle (by the way, Eric Alterman is Full of It).
turns its back on the very alliances that we helped to create and the very principles that have made our nation a model to the world for over two centuries.
The most important alliances are clearly maintained; ties with the French have been weak since de Gaulle. Kerry is either ignorant of this or deliberately misleading the audience. It isn't the first time in this speach (see above) and won't be the last.
As for principles, it's pretty absurd to claim that in overthrowing dictators and trying to expand democracy at the expense of tyranny Bush is overthrowing America's foreign policy of at least the last hundred years. But perhaps Kerry is a Chomskyite who thinks that our "principles of the last two centuries" were support for dictatorship, and he wants to return to that.
First, we must restore a foreign policy that is true to our ideals. We will defend our national security and maintain a military that is the strongest armed force on earth.
Says the man, Kerry, who voted repeatedly during the last decade plus to slash military spending and as a Senator proposed numerous cuts in military spending.
I voted to threaten the use of force to make Saddam Hussein comply with the resolutions of the United Nations.
Kerry is either deliberately misleading the audience about what he voted for less than a year ago, or he doesn't remember. In either case, it doesn't say much about his fitness to lead.
Neither does this campaign slogan:
Kerry: Return to Empty Threats
Because what Kerry leaves out in his statement about "threaten[ing] force to make Saddam Hussein comply with the resolutions of the United Nations" is that in spite of the threat, Saddam did not comply. What then? Kerry has no response - he hopes his audience will overlook that, and of course they, including the Press, will, because they share the same viewpoint: empty threats are better than backing them up with resolve and action.
I believe that was right, but it was wrong to rush to war without building a true international coalition and with no plan to win the peace.
The "rush to war" canard; it was the slowest "rush" ever, with over a decade of "last chances" being extended to Saddam.
So long as Iraq remains an American intervention and not an international undertaking, we will face increasing danger and mounting casualties.
A common fallacy of the Left that if only we got the nod of the French and others in the UN, then flower petals would rain from the heavens and Americans and Iraqis would stop dying and being wounded. But you have to be impervious to reality to really believe that, or willing to just not think too much about the banality of such an assertion.
Even - perhaps especially with "international" troops, we would still face dangers and indeed our men and women would have to be the tip of the spear, handling the most dangerous operations and assignments. To claim otherwise is to be deliberately deceptive or ignorant. Choose one to describe Kerry, who makes much of his military background.
For the Bush administration to reject the participation of allies in the U.N. is a miscalculation of colossal proportions.
Again, deceptive to imply that the French, for example, are offering to support a UN Resolution of the kind Kerry wants, given their openly expressed position on such Resolutions. Kerry is being misleading in implying this, that all the blame rests with America.
In Iraq and across the world, we must share the burdens with our international allies and the international community.
But the threats today don't just come from gun barrels, they come also from oil barrels. The dollars we spend at the pump can too easily fund the terrorists who seek to destroy us. America will only be stronger if we never have to send our sons and daughters into battle for oil half a world away. We have to disarm that danger by making America independent of Mideast oil within the next 10 years.
So, Kerry, I take it you're in favor of expanding domestic production? No? So, you're again misleading people about the possibilities, then.
And I will cut the budget deficit in half in the first four years of our administration.
How? Planning on passing those defense and intelligence cuts Kerry proposed while you were a Senator? Because it's clear that he's not going to cut domestic spending - quite the contrary, you want to expand it even faster than Bush. When Republicans talk like this, the Press analysis guys are quick to say "his numbers don't add up." With Democrats, they nod like the bobble-head dolls they are. But this was the doozy:
It is time to return to the United Nations, not with the arrogance of Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, but with genuine respect.
I have neither the time nor the patience right now to undertake the Sisyphean task of restating all the facts about the UN and the degree to which that organization, which sees Libya as fit to preside on a Human Rights Commission and scheduled Iraq to chair the Disarmament Commission earlier this year deserves or does not deserve the sort of deference Kerry and the other Democratic candidates believe we should accord it. Kerry is either deluding himself or deceiving his audience with the rhetoric and imagery he is invoking here. The UN, as it is currently constituted, is certainly not a body dedicated to advancing the American principles Kerry invokes - it's a body dedicated to giving an equal voice to the non-principles of Syria and China. For just a few of the posts on this, in reverse order of their posting:
So, here we are. My confidence in Bush and the Republicans is ebbing, but the alternatives are despicable cretins like Kerry, who are for all practical purposes autistic (to be charitable) when it comes to the real world in the post 9/11 world.
A grain of truth in Will's argument: The Muslim world has been little affected by the tide of democratization. Of 22 Arab states, none has an elected government. Among the other 25 predominantly Muslim countries, however, nine are electoral democracies (although only two are "free"). This suffices to disprove that Islam is incompatible with democracy. Might Arab culture be?
Perhaps. But the same was said once of others. The State Department warned President Truman during World War II that "experience [has] shown that democracy in Japan would never work." In the 1920s, as Latin America and southern and Eastern Europe lapsed into dictatorship, analysts pointed to the sense of obedience and hierarchy inculcated by the Catholic Church. Today more than 90 percent of predominantly Catholic countries are electoral democracies.
Until now the United States has refrained from lending its weight to democratization in the Arab world the way it did with considerable success in Eastern Europe and Latin America. We won't know what we can achieve until we try. The reason for doing so there, as elsewhere, is not "duty" but to make the world safer -- not least for ourselves.
In related news, Ramsey Clark (oh, sorry, I meant Wesley Crusher - oops, mistake again; that'd be Wesley Clark (D-CNN), the General who had to be relieved of duty in the Balkans) is about to announce his acceptance of the Democratic Vice-Presidential Nomination, draping a uniform over the same old fecal matter the other candidates are spewing. "Howard Dean with a dubious military record" may work on people who are fixated on the superficial rather than the substance of policy, but that won't cut it with me.
Clark (D-CNN) is famous for correctly predicting how the military campaign in Iraq would go, every hour on the hour on CNN. Or maybe his qualification was that his predictions were all wrong, like the other Bush-haters, but he had stars on his shoulders so it gives cover to the same old fecal matter. At least with Clark, we would abjure Bush's dangerous policies and return to the sound policies of the Clinton era and leave all this behind. After all, nothing we do matters anyhow with that asteroid. Right?
“CURRENT MEChA CHAPTERS STILL USE THE 1960s SYMBOL of an eagle clutching dynamite,” reported the August 30 Los Angeles Times, “but do not subscribe to separatist or nationalistic ideas, according to members and faculty who work with the organization.”
“Yes, MEChA went through a nationalist period,” acknowledged Rodolfo Acuna, a professor of Chicano studies at California State University Northridge near Los Angeles, “but most people in this country went through a nationalist period.”
Interesting for two reasons. First, it implies MEChA left all that behind, but from my own campus experiences, MEChA was a extremist, radical racial/ethnic group into the '90s and I haven't heard that they've changed for the better in the last ten years. Secondly, interesting because Acuna's rationalization
Implies that Bustamante was a member during the "nationalist period", so rather than absolving him, Acuna's statement indicates the reverse.
More personally interesting, it contradicts what Armed Liberal wrote regarding its tone back then in for example the comments section of this post. He equates how it was back then with being little more than a social club, not a radical/nationalistic "identity politics" organization.
Meanwhile, most of the Left is showing their hypocracy by focusing on rather dubious, dodgy and desperate guilt-by-association smears of Schawrzenegger as both a way to distract from Bustamante's activities and simoultaniously Tu Quoque the issue away. The only thing they are proving is they are utterly lacking in principle when it comes to racial issues.
So on Saturday I wrote this post and since then, nothin'. Right now I'm very sleepy - not because I partied all weekend (I didn't), but I just haven't been able to sleep much lately. Coffee's no solution to me since I don't drink coffee (blech!) Anyhow, the dog ait my blog ideas. Actually, she didn't; I have a few things I want to write, but they're involved posts.
Used to be, whenever I was hard up and needed something easy to hang a post around, I'd turn to the editorials in the Financial Times (go ahead, enter "Financial Times" or "FT" into the search engine). But ever since The Great "American Freedom Divisive" debacle (see here and here and the letter I sent them), they've taken all the good fiskage materiel of their comment & analysis section and made it "subscriber only".
So that leaves us with a blog post about writing blog posts this morning. Yay!
People who read both Saturday's Post, Leonard Part V and the comments I wrote in the discussion of Armed Liberal's post will note that there are major similarities between what I said over there last week and what I posted here on Saturday. With some exceptions.
The Blog post is better organized, makes the main points, leaves out some clutter, and has some (IMO) kewl additional stuff, especially at the end. Though it's a long post, it's shorter and less wordy than the cumulative length of the comments it is based on. So why didn't I just write the blog post straight away, post that, and send a link to it to Winds?
The answer's simple, really. It has to do with mental processes. At least my mental processes. The blog post is the result of the various comments posts; ideas that were developed there then made it into the post, with a dash of things that came to mind on Saturday. The blog post wasn't possible till Saturday, when I drew everything together. I wouldn't have been able to write it without first going through the mental processes of the comments exchanges.
Some posts come together differently. The vast majority come without something like that. Others simply have to wait awhile for whatever reason, till ideas reach the stage where I can express them.
Well, that's that. Rather than string out this post I'll just let it peter out there, point you to this post on how the French government is trying to come up with some ideas to keep an attribute of the French national character that is very vital to them "fresh", and say that there should be some good (real, non-boring, non-naval-gazing) posts over here later on today.
