May Your Voice Be Heard

"Angel Annunciating" by Lorenzo Lotto 1527, Church of St.s Vincent and Alexander, Ponteranica, Italy

 

Victor David Hanson echoes my progressively bemused sentiment: "what is it about George Bush that seems to reduce once sober and experienced liberal pros to infantile ranting?"

I mean, if this sorry display of pure aggression and absolutely zero substance by Cliff Schecter is elevated by his fellow Lefties as handling "the talking heads perfectly"; if such a performance of almost pure thuggery on national TV is the kind of reference card to be celebrated as "by far one of the best strategists the Democrats have going from [sic] them", all rationality is indeed lost.

Maybe it is this very 'Anything-Republican Derangement Syndrome', which is causing voters to feel increasingly nervous to hand over the reigns, "as they realize that no matter what the problem is, the answer can't be more Democrats".

After all, maybe it isn't such a good idea to be entirely "Under the Influence of Liberalism":

I find it interesting that, in today's maniacal media world, conservatives are taken to task for every syllable they utter, but liberals are given a pass.

A GOP gaffe will be replayed ad nauseam on news broadcasts, news magazine programs, and comedy shows. Then, it may get a second round of play on liberal talk radio and ripped-from-the-headlines TV dramas.

But when a liberal makes a rhetorical blunder, he or she is excused because, after all, he or she really didn't mean to say it. The guilty party is too erudite or too compassionate for the remark to be taken at face-value.

Sen. John Kerry is the latest case in point. Kerry indicated this week that if you’re a student who does not study hard and do your homework, you will end up “stuck in Iraq.” It should be evident to every American that this is an insult to the fine men and women who have put their lives on the line to try to rebuild Iraq and keep us safe from Iraqi-sponsored terrorism.

But a number of journalistas are telling us that no, the Democrat from Massachusetts couldn't possibly have meant what he said, given the fact that he himself is a veteran of war. No, we’re told, he just botched a joke. After all, Kerry is no David Letterman.

It seems to me that a more likely excuse is that he was speaking under the influence of liberalism. [...]

Free speech is, indeed, priceless. But when it is misused, the costs can be high for our democracy and our security. It’s one thing for a radio talk show host to spout off—it’s quite another for a Senator to criticize our troops in wartime.

And that's the problem. The utter erosion of any remnants of any kind of civility and reasonableness is, if not caused outright, at least compounded by a generation, which according to Derek Bok, Harvard's current president, doesn't understand the first bit about quantitative reasoning and has failed to acquire "the knowledge needed to be a reasonably informed citizen in a democracy".

Suzanne Fields elaborates in today's must read and connects this sad phenomenon to John Kerry's remark:

An honest embrace of diversity and multiculturalism would require inclusion of the military. But in the Ivy League not all diverse cultures are equal. Faculty and students share John Kerry's contempt for the military man and woman.

But the senator's inadvertent insight hasn't received the notice it deserves: A college education doesn't necessarily make someone smart. [...]

Worse, they don't know what they don't know. Surveys show these naive relativists, destructive deconstructionists and superficial sophomore philosophers, incapable of analyzing and dissecting even their own ideas, to be immensely pleased with their educations. Maybe it's just as well they don't serve in the military.

But problems emerge when the schism mentality expressed by John Kerry fuses contempt for military service with a sense of superiority for not serving. In "AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America's Upper Classes from Military Service -- and How It Hurts Our Country," Kathy Roth-Douquet and Frank Schaeffer expose the core of such elitism. "When those who benefit most from living in a country contribute the least to its defense, and those who benefit least are asked to pay the ultimate price, something happens to the soul of that country."

A prejudice against the military, coupled with grade inflation and lack of intellectual discipline, combine to create spoiled and pampered students who lack the will to defend their country from those who would destroy it. It was not always thus. In World War I, a draft was established in part to prevent the nation's most privileged young men from volunteering, compelled though they were by a sense of honor and a desire to serve. They were needed more, so it was argued, for civilian jobs and leadership at home.

Fewer than a third of the current members of Congress have worn the uniform, down from three-quarters in 1971. Congressmen of the future are even less likely to be veterans, and some of the veterans in Congress today are like John Kerry, infatuated with the politics of protest. [...]

First Lt. Vincent J. Tuohey, Class of '01, is one of the Harvard exceptions. He graduated to serve in Iraq and learned more in the military than he ever did on the banks of the Charles. "Decisiveness, discipline and focus were not skills that I honed in college," he tells the Harvard Crimson. "Understandably, Harvard did not prepare me for the stresses of combat or the skills needed to fight an insurgency. The Army did."

Instead of rallying behind those, who recognize the threat to our way of life and who are committed to protect it from the likes of Thug-In-Chief Ahmadinejad, the 'educated' jostle to form a national lynch mob -- traditionally not the brightest bulbs.

I give you the wisdom of my friend Ed Morrisey as the last word before tomorrow's vote:

The mission has had its failures, but it has had tremendous successes as well. If the US turns its back on the Iraqis now, Somalia will pale into insignificance in comparison to the disaster, both militarily and strategically, we will have brought upon ourselves. Native populations will never -- never -- trust us to stand by and protect them after risking everything to assist us. Tyrants and terrorists will laugh at our threats, knowing they can outlast us, especially if they can create enough propaganda to distract American voters.

The soldiers and Marines understand that victory cannot be replaced by "phased redeployment". If the tactics need changing or adjustment, then bring in better ideas -- but we cannot allow retreat and capitulation become the only other option for Iraq.

May your voice be heard against retreat and capitulation in the face of adversity and suffering.

Comments

[Sandy P]

Yet there's that Reid scandal and nary a peep.

[ckreiz]

I have Frank Schaeffer's AWOL, and am enjoying it immensely. One of the staggering quotes is from a Los Angeles doctor, who says: "I've raised my sons to be sensitive to others, and to be critical thinkers, so I don't think they'd be well suited for the military." That about sums it up, doesn't it?

[Joe]

I don't know if you are familiar with Bill Whittle's essays, Alexandra, but he's on a similar tack:

We live in a sea of information, an Information Age: and yet, it has been almost half a millennia since mankind has been so unwilling or unable to use critical thinking to separate the intellectual wheat from so…much…chaff! Critical Thinking -- the ability to analyze data, determine it’s usefulness and fidelity, to learn how to asses reliability, question methodology, weigh expertise and all the rest – is in shockingly short supply these days. It’s not just a shame; it’s an epidemic, it is a fatal metastasizing disease in a democracy where information is used by the public to make the decisions that steer the ship of state. For the ability to think critically allows us to see the unseen; to find the truth behind the falsehood, as well as the falsehood behind the truth.

Today, it seems that legions of people – growing legions – are falling victims to ideas and beliefs that on the face of it are patently false…things that are so clearly and obviously nuts that you really have to wonder what deep, mighty engine of emotional need could possibly drive a brain so deep into a hole. Seriously now, there are millions and millions of people on this planet who will torture logic and reason to mind-bending extremes in order to believe monumentally ridiculous “theories” … theories drawn from an emotional need so warped and debased that you are catapulted beyond anger and disbelief directly into pathos and the desire to call 911 before these people hurt themselves.

It's a long one, but well worth the read.

[Red Violin]

The New Middle East
Richard N. Haass
From Foreign Affairs, November/December 2006

Summary: The age of U.S. dominance in the Middle East has ended and a new era in the modern history of the region has begun. It will be shaped by new actors and new forces competing for influence, and to master it, Washington will have to rely more on diplomacy than on military might.

Richard N. Haass is President of the Council on Foreign Relations.

THE END OF AN ERA

Just over two centuries since Napoleon's arrival in Egypt heralded the advent of the modern Middle East -- some 80 years after the demise of the Ottoman Empire, 50 years after the end of colonialism, and less than 20 years after the end of the Cold War -- the American era in the Middle East, the fourth in the region's modern history, has ended. Visions of a new, Europe-like region -- peaceful, prosperous, democratic -- will not be realized. Much more likely is the emergence of a new Middle East that will cause great harm to itself, the United States, and the world...more.

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20061101faessay85601/richard-n-haass/the-new-middle-east.html

Who is this person? He seems to be content in parroting the official line of the Jihadists.

[Ghost Dansing]

Darrell, I'm a Yellow Dog Democrat; my apologies if I seemed even-handed with the Republicans. :) Woof.

Patrick, it's the same old story from the Republicans (I won't call them conservatives anymore because they are not).

They have to feel persecuted... they have to be the "picked on" even if they have all of Congress, the Presidency and the Supreme Court.

The "mean ole' media" just keeps picking on them... sorry, I just don't buy it. Vietnam had all kinds of problems, and the revelations of the Pentagon Papers demonstrated quite the conundrum: How do you keep a war going when you know it is no longer in the best interest of America?

The biggest problem in Vietnam was that we couldn't stand up and support a government in the South that was worth a crap... we even turned a blind eye toward the coup against Diem!

We kinda have the same problem in Iraq.

The Press is Liberal... that means it is difficult keeping secrets from the press... unfortunately, modern Republicanism (which is in many ways a throw-back to the Nixonian era) is all about secrets and manipulation.

It is just really tough when the Press keeps revealing your Abramhoff scandals, Sex scandals, hyposcrisy and general skull duggery.

I can see why the Liberal Press (Media) might not be the favorite of the Republican Party.

[Darrell]

I'll join Ghost Dansing and Joseph Marshall in voting Republican today--I think that's what they said they were going to do. Join us. Don't sit this one out! Too much is at stake!

[Crusader.NoRegrets.]

Yes, apparently the implications of that disgusting orgy of American self-loathing and navel gazing that was the "Vietnam Experience" were not lost on Bin Laden and the gang.

Heck Nasrallah has just told the world what a profound impact the pictures of US helicopters fleeing rooftops in Saigon had upon him.

Oh boy. Like I say, the Chinese and the Russians watch this Kerry-esque crap, and they concluded America is a two-year old with a chainsaw and a bad case of "where's my mommy?". Dangerous toys, indeed, but very easy to deal with...

[Patrick]

Sorry Alexandra for drifting off topic with Ghost...

Patrick

[Patrick]

Ghost, Ghost, Ghost...

Let me see if I get this right... You do not claim that material is wrong, just that the current administration is so inept, anything good happened by mistake? Well, as an old friend always told me, I will take lucky and right over smart and wrong any day.

If you will look into Orson Scott Card (SciFi author among other things) you will find that he is a democrat who disagrees with republicans on many things.

Now as to the Pentagon Papers, I can quote others also. How about this:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/federation/feature/?id=110009203
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A watershed of the new attitude is the New York Times's coverage of the Pentagon papers in 1971. These documents, prepared by high officials under the direction of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, were leaked to the Times by a former State Department staffer, Daniel Ellsberg. The Times wrote major stories, supposedly based on the leaked documents, summarizing the history of our Vietnam involvement.

Journalist Edward Jay Epstein has shown that in crucial respects, the Times coverage was at odds with what the documents actually said. The lead of the Times story was that in 1964 the Johnson administration reached a consensus to bomb North Vietnam at a time when the president was publicly saying that he would not bomb the north. In fact, the Pentagon papers actually said that, in 1964, the White House had rejected the idea of bombing the north. The Times went on to assert that American forces had deliberately provoked the alleged attacks on its ships in the Gulf of Tonkin to justify a congressional resolution supporting our war efforts. In fact, the Pentagon papers said the opposite: there was no evidence that we had provoked whatever attacks may have occurred.

In short, a key newspaper said that politicians had manipulated us into a war by means of deception. This claim, wrong as it was, was part of a chain of reporting and editorializing that helped convince upper-middle-class Americans that the government could not be trusted.

Reporters and editors today are overwhelmingly liberal politically, as studies of the attitudes of key members of the press have repeatedly shown. Should you doubt these findings, recall the statement of Daniel Okrent, then the public editor at the New York Times. Under the headline, "Is the New York times a Liberal Newspaper?," Mr. Okrent's first sentence was, "Of course it is."
------------

Or at the beginning of his article he talks to the "support" of the War in Iraq from the media perspective.
------------
------------
Between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30, 2005, nearly 1,400 stories appeared on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening news. More than half focused on the costs and problems of the war, four times as many as those that discussed the successes. About 40% of the stories reported terrorist attacks; scarcely any reported the triumphs of American soldiers and Marines. The few positive stories about progress in Iraq were just a small fraction of all the broadcasts.

When the Center for Media and Public Affairs made a nonpartisan evaluation of network news broadcasts, it found that during the active war against Saddam Hussein, 51% of the reports about the conflict were negative. Six months after the land battle ended, 77% were negative; in the 2004 general election, 89% were negative; by the spring of 2006, 94% were negative. This decline in media support was much faster than during Korea or Vietnam.
------------

At the end of his article we see what the press-government relationship is...
-----------
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Most of what I have said here is common knowledge. But it is common knowledge about a new period in American journalistic history. Once, powerful press owners dictated what their papers would print, sometimes irresponsibly. But that era of partisan and circulation-building distortions was not replaced by a commitment to objective journalism; it was replaced by a deep suspicion of the American government. That suspicion, fueled in part by the Vietnam and Watergate controversies, means that the government, especially if it is a conservative one, is surrounded by journalists who doubt almost all it says. One obvious result is that since World War II there have been few reports of military heroes; indeed, there have been scarcely any reports of military victories.

This change in the media is not a transitory one that will give way to a return to the support of our military when it fights. Journalism, like so much scholarship, now dwells in a postmodern age in which truth is hard to find and statements merely serve someone's interests.

The mainstream media's adversarial stance, both here and abroad, means that whenever a foreign enemy challenges us, he will know that his objective will be to win the battle not on some faraway bit of land but among the people who determine what we read and watch. We won the Second World War in Europe and Japan, but we lost in Vietnam and are in danger of losing in Iraq and Lebanon in the newspapers, magazines and television programs we enjoy.
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One other part from him on reporting from Vietnam itself....
---------------------
---------------------
One veteran reporter, S.L.A. Marshall, put the real difference this way: once upon a time, "the American correspondent . . . was an American first, a correspondent second." But in Vietnam, that attitude shifted. An older journalist in Vietnam, who had covered the Second World War, lamented the bitter divisions among the reporters in Saigon, where there were "two camps": "those who wanted to win the war and those who wanted to lose it." The new reporters filed exciting, irreverent copy, which made it to the front pages; the veteran reporters' copy ended up buried way in back.

...

The changes came to a head in January 1968, when Communist forces during the Tet holiday launched a major attack on South Vietnamese cities. According to virtually every competent observer, these forces met a sharp defeat, but American press accounts described Tet instead as a major communist victory. Washington Post reporter Peter Braestrup later published a book in which he explained the failure of the press to report the Tet offensive accurately. His summary: "Rarely has contemporary crisis-journalism turned out, in retrospect, to have veered so widely from reality."

Even as the facts became clearer, the press did not correct its false report that the North Vietnamese had won. When NBC News producer Robert Northshield was asked at the end of 1968 whether the network should put on a news show indicating that American and South Vietnamese troops had won, he rejected the idea, because Tet was already "established in the public's mind as a defeat, and therefore it was an American defeat."

In the opinion of Mr. Braestrup, the news failure resulted not from ideology but from economic and managerial constraints on the press--and in his view it had no material effect on American public opinion.

Others do not share his view. When Douglas Kinnard questioned more than 100 American generals who served in Vietnam, 92% said that newspaper coverage was often irresponsible or disruptive, and 96% said that television coverage on balance lacked context and was sensational or counterproductive.

An analysis of CBS's Vietnam coverage in 1972 and 1973 supports their views. The Institute for American Strategy found that, of about 800 references to American policy and behavior, 81% were critical. Of 164 references to North Vietnamese policy and behavior, 57% were supportive. Another study, by a scholar skeptical about the extent of media influence, showed that televised editorial comments before Tet were favorable to our presence by a ratio of 4 to 1; after Tet, they were 2 to 1 against the American government's policy.
---------------------

So yes... I agree that we still did not learn adequately from Vietnam. Can we trust the media that has a stake in embarassing and opposing any conservative in office? After all Jayson Blair does not mean all reporters just fabricates entire stories from within their imagination, but we know that all conservatives are evil manipulators that only get things right by chance.

If you have seen the Rome series on HBO (raw reflection of the times), remember that Caesar kept the two soldiers around even though they disobeyed orders, because fortune favored them. They were obviously someone's "pet" to keep getting things right in spite of how they got there... So if you believe the current administration is only getting things right by luck, shouldn't you still support them?

By the way,

This information has been researched and provided by the PNCF Foundation which is an organization that has many years of experience of governmental analysis and only seeks to relieve the suffering of those traumatized by the combative interaction of the US government and various media corporations. Please give generously to continue this important work. The PNCF would greatly appreciate your support.

(That would be the Patrick's New Computer Fund...I obviously have not been adequately compensated)

Regards,

Patrick

[Joseph Marshall]

"The utter erosion of any remnants of any kind of civility and reasonableness is, if not caused outright, at least compounded by a generation, which according to Derek Bok, Harvard's current president, doesn't understand the first bit about quantitative reasoning and has failed to acquire 'the knowledge needed to be a reasonably informed citizen in a democracy'."

It's always somebody else, isn't it? The ignorant voters, the biased media, the uncivil liberal crazies, the ACLU...

It's never Donald Rumsfeld, Tom DeLay, Bob Ney, Michael Brown, Dick Cheney or any of the whole host of the corrupt, the thuggish, and the inept who have taken the greatest position of political advantage in America in over forty years and turned it into an ongoing train wreck.

It's never the people who, with a little political savvy, a little political flexibility, and a little common sense, could have parleyed that political advantage into a permanent popular consensus and Conservative victories far larger than Ronald Reagan's. My gosh, what The Gipper would have done with a completely Republican Congress and a galvanizing event such as 9/11!

It's never the candidates stupid and immature enough to call the opposition in the audience "makacas" while looking straight at a video camera [!] or who make scabrous and racist television commercials aganist Democratic candidates to everybody's later embarassment.

It's never the people who so pack the President's speeches with "the faithful", that they have no chance to persuade anybody else to support their initiatives. And it is never the President who seems to have no conception of the need to persuade anybody of anything at all in order to govern or to have any real influence beyond America's borders.

All you gotta do is keep trying to scare them with Osama, never, all the while, considering that the more you use the events in a war for political advantage the more cynical you make all but "the faithful" about your real motives for fighting it. And this whether the motives are noble or not.

It's never the Senators and Congresspersons who spent far less time working than any in recent history and also voted themselves a $30,000 pay raise when virtually all the voters' wages are stagnant and their company pension funds and health insurance plans are going south. After all, a voting public incapable of "quantitative reasoning" will never notice a little thing like that!

And it's never a President who, just like his Congress, takes more "working vacations" than anyone in recent history, either.

And, of course, it's never, never, never the Conservative pundits and bloggers who spend so much time gassing about political philosophy and [invisible] military strategy that they can't be bothered to get their hands dirty with grubby and unaesthetic real politics.

Far better to retreat to the high ground of the Olympian view and encourage everybody to vote against "retreat and capitulation" rather than for particular candidates, or even against particular candidates.

Except, of course, John Kerry, who isn't even running. You defeated him ignominiously two years ago, remember? We Democrats do, which is why most of us will never take him seriously again.

After all, why demean yourself by buying into that horrible Liberal remark that "all politics are local" and the Liberal belief that people vote for actual candidates and real reasons.

Anything else would degrade you to the level of the ignorant, paranoid, flaccid minded, and uncivil hysterics over on Kos.

And what could be Beautiful about that?

[Ghost Dansing]

"Daniel Ellsberg, a former marine and analyst with the Rand Corporation, was recruited in 1964 to serve in the Pentagon under the then secretary of defence, Robert McNamara. In 1965 he volunteered to go to Vietnam, where he spent two years at the US embassy in Saigon. In 1971, he made headlines around the world when he leaked the Pentagon Papers – the department of defence’s top-secret, twelve-volume, 7,000-page history of United States involvement in Vietnam."

"The papers were published in a series of articles in the New York Times and the Washington Post, despite President Nixon’s attempt to suppress them. With their publication, the American people could learn, for the first time, the truth about the origins and the conduct of the war."

"Daniel Ellsberg knew that the war in Vietnam had begun, and was continuing, in a thick fog of official deception. He also knew that the war could not be won at the then level of US engagement and those who died, therefore, were sacrificed to no military, strategic or moral purpose."...

"By the mid-1960s it was widely understood at official level in the Pentagon and the state department that Vietnam, as Ellsberg put it, “was not the place where we could plant our flag” – yet the war continued until 1975. openDemocracy asks Daniel Ellsberg: why, if the experts knew that the policy was failing, did successive United States presidents not know it?"...

“What I learned was that men in power will kill any number of people or allow any number of Americans to be killed to avoid an otherwise certain short-term loss. They’ll do anything. Including, as I’d seen it happen in the Cuban missile crisis, take the world to the absolute brink of an all-out nuclear war. And they will get obeyed, by people who think it’s crazy.”

http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article.jsp?id=3&debateId=33&articleId=3101

In Robert McNamara's book "In Retrospect", he writes, "We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why. **I truly believe that we made an error not of values and intentions, but of judgment and capabilities."**

The difference between the current Republican administration, and the administrations that presided over the Vietnam War... there was plenty of Democratic and Republican support for the war... both parties were trying to "out hawk" each other in their opposition to the spread of communism... is that Dubya and his guys had the benefit of the Vietnam history, then proceeded with many of the same mistakes of judgment and capabilities that were made then.

In other words, they learned NOTHING from history. And while some will say their "intentions" were good, and the selection of Iraq as the second front (central front) in the war on terrorism was sound... I would question that as well.

It is almost as if the Republican leadership that so nimbly avoided military service and the risk of combat duty during Vietnam, subconciously recreated the environment of the Vietnam years... as if to re-live it, and maybe "get it right" this time? Hard to say.

Here's a Libertarian think-tank in 2003:

http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0306d.asp

"The mission of The Future of Freedom Foundation is to advance freedom by providing an uncompromising moral and economic case for individual liberty, free markets, private property, and limited government."

[gringoman]

(Alexandra, thanks for the angelic vision, yet another discovered gem of the Western civilization which even its defenders may be ignorant of. You really hit the 16th Century Lotto!)

My trackback to ATB still not tracking, so here is this, which also explains the competence/incompetence theme promised in a previous comment: DEM COMPETENCE? PUB INCOMPETENCE?

Foto. gringoman at the FCC (Foreign Correspondents' Club) Phnom Penh in 2005. (Wait! Was that 2004?) This overlooks the Mekong where (another war, another time) as Dems, and some Pubs too, were cutting and running from Indochina, he sailed on a Filipino freighter supplying the beseiged capital, and suddenly heard a huge thud that shook the whole ship. It was a Khmer Rouge B-40 rocket from the far shore, blowing a big hole in the ship's portside, near the water line (luckily just above, rather than just below water line, so we did not sink. Those were the daze, my friend. [Story and foto in Newsday and Chicago Sun-Times. © 2005, gringoworks

[Ghost Dansing]

Welcome back Patrick... the fella you quote is citing the classic neoconservative thought process...

It's an astonishingly twisted game -- and as long as we don't do anything really, really stupid, like withdrawing from Iraq, all these various treacheries will inevitably lead to the fall of the tyrants in Iran, and therefore in Syria, and therefore the taming of Hezbollah in Lebanon.

"Bush's game is to keep from letting any of these faction unite, while preparing to deliver strategic blows that can bring down the ayatollahs at relatively little cost. Every action has repercussions. Just as our withdrawal from Iraq would terrify and silence our allies everywhere, and embolden our enemies, so also would the fall of the ayatollahs -- particularly if it is as the result of an American intervention in the Gulf -- make waves everywhere. Democracy would be perceived as the wave of the future. Our friends in many countries would feel free to speak up for democracy and pro-American policies -- and their enemies would be afraid to silence them."

Fine... but somebody said this Republican adminstration is playing checkers, while Iran is playing chess.

Both the author you cite and Ricardo are attributing far too much competence and effectivness to Dubya and his gang that can't shoot straight.

If you take big strategic gambits per the neocons... you must succeed. Everybody is having a hard time seeing where Dubya has delivered the goods in the war on terror.

Your author and Ricardo are talking like "if we withdraw..." our credibility will be undermined.

I would say again...damage is already done. Then Ricardo is saying something like "gee, if you think the Iraqis aren't better off now..."... I would have to stretch things pretty far to say the Iraqis are better off now, and I think any sober spectator would come to the same conclusion.

I absolutely LOVE the Lorenzo Lotto... it is fabulous.

[Jeremayakovka]

Should the Dems prevail tomorrow, it'll be the legacy of a fading generation of an elite baby boomers effectively endorsing a rising generation of Islamic booming babies.

[Red Violin]

Most Excellent, as always.

My new blog:
http://fleetingperusal.blogspot.com

[Ricardo Rodriguez]

Anybody who says Iran is the big winner in this mess just needs to look at a mapof Iran. Iraq on the Western border. Afghanistan in the eastern border. Turkmenistan in the Northeast. Many, many US bases surrounding Iran. Secondly, there is the issue of the Sunni/Shia division. Now that the Arab "Brotherhood" has shown its murderous sectarian/historical schism, don't think that this is not a fissure that can be exploited by the west.
The "Iraqui experiment", while not yielding instantaneous results, is far from being a failure. To criticize US policy for not controlling events in Iraq is specious at best. Can Bush even control events in the US? The plan from the beginning was to let Iraquis find their own way. That's what they're doing. The main issue now is control/disarming of the militias. It will happen when the army and police reach critical mass. If we had gone in with overwhelming force and dictated outcomes, as many experts advocate, the one thing we'd have for sure would be a unified populace- against us. That was Zarquawis plan. It didn't work out that way. Plan B- start a civil war. That ain't working either. What is working beautifully is a propaganda song directed at western media consisting of a drip-drip-drip of murder that has Liberals DANCING in a trance with the GHOST of VietNam. Ah, when we were virtuous and the Army and Government were BAD, Oh, and how we brought them to their knees, Perchance again to hold the TRUTH so securely in our HEARTS, when Behold the people, they loved us as it was us the enlightened who delivered them from our evil government! Keep dancing that tune, ghost, it is comforting to hear the same old song. Perhaps if the Jihadists are succesful we'll redeploy and the Jihadists will be free sing a new and more spectacular song of death and mayhem to the Iraquis.
GD, are you more turned on by blaming Bush and proving that he's a jerk or by improving the lot of the Iraquis? Are you ready to assert their lot was better before we went there? If that is your position, well, what can I say...
re Perle, keep reading the LA Times to be sure you get the "truth". Perle's, Frum's, Cohen's, Gaffney's, Ledeen's rebuttals are already online.

[Patrick]

Alexandra,

As always, a very well written and beautifully illustrated piece.

I apologize to everyone for not participating in this forum recently for a number of reasons.

To further discussion on the vote and on BDS. I would like to recommend thoughts by two different writers. The second is a piece by Orson Scott Card on what voting means for the future. It is a very cogent piece on the stakes in this election and it fits well with Alexandra's post. (I sure some of you have read some of his books.) The other is a piece on civility. It makes a very good point about the lack of civility amongst our leaders and the difficulties involved.

The first piece titled "Bush's Decency Highlights Democrats Incivility" is at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seth-swirsky/bushs-decency-highlights_b_33055.html

Yes, you read that correctly. I had a friend point that out to me. Needless to say, most of his audience over there did not treat him well. It will not take very much time to read (about the size of the quotes from OSC I include below).

Orson Scott Card's article can be found at:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/11/the_only_issue_this_election_d.html

It is also here:
http://tinyurl.com/y4xh6k (very long address over 125 characters)

OSC provides a much better analysis (lenghty, but worth the read) than I would be able to provide in the time I have available. He has raised some interesting points that I had not considered before and many of them ring true. As a sample, I have included some quotes from his article about Iraq and President Bush's handling of the problems:
-------------------------

The "War on Terror"

I recently read an opinion piece in which the author ridiculed the very concept of a "war on terror," saying that it makes as much sense as if, after Pearl Harbor, FDR had declared a "war on aviation."

Without belaboring the obvious shortcomings of the analogy, I will agree with the central premise. The name "war on terror" clearly conceals the fact that we are really at war with specific groups and specific nations; we can no more make war on a methodology than we can make war on nitrogen. However, there are several excellent reasons why "War on Terror" is the only possible name for this war.

1. This is not a war that can be named for any particular nation or region. To call it "The Iraq War" or the "Afghanistan War" would lead to the horrible mistake of thinking that victory would consist of toppling certain governments and then going home. In fact, it is precisely the name "War in Iraq" that is leading to the deep misconceptions that drive the Democratic position on the war. If this were in fact a war on Iraq, then in one sense we won precisely when President Bush declared victory right after we occupied Baghdad. And in another sense, we might not see victory for another five years, or even a decade -- a decade in which Americans will be dying alongside Iraqis.

For a "War in Iraq" to linger this way is almost too painful to contemplate. But we are not waging a "War in Iraq." We are waging a world war, in which the campaigns to topple the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan were brilliantly successful, and the current "lukewarm" war demands great patience and determination from the American people as we ready ourselves for the next phase.

2. We cannot name this war for our actual enemies, either, because there is no way to name them accurately without including some form of the word "Islam" or "Muslim." It is our enemies who want to identify this as a war between Islam and the West. If we allow this to happen, we run the risk of achieving the worst of all possible outcomes: The unification of one or both of the great factions of worldwide Islam under a single banner.

President Bush and his administration have shown their grasp of our present danger by stoutly resisting all attempts to rename this war. We call it a "War on Terror" because that allows us to cast it, not as a war against the Muslim people, with all their frustrations and hopes, but a war in which most Muslims are not our enemies at all.

That can be galling for many Americans. When, after the fall of the towers on 9/11, Palestinians and others poured into the streets, rejoicing, it was tempting to say, A plague on all of them!

But it is precisely those people -- the common people of the Muslim world, most of whom hate us (or claim to hate us, when asked by pollsters in police states) -- whom we must treat as if they were not our enemies. They are the ones we must win over for us to have any hope of victory without a bloodbath poured out on most of the nations of the world.

...

It's an astonishingly twisted game -- and as long as we don't do anything really, really stupid, like withdrawing from Iraq, all these various treacheries will inevitably lead to the fall of the tyrants in Iran, and therefore in Syria, and therefore the taming of Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Bush's game is to keep from letting any of these faction unite, while preparing to deliver strategic blows that can bring down the ayatollahs at relatively little cost. Every action has repercussions. Just as our withdrawal from Iraq would terrify and silence our allies everywhere, and embolden our enemies, so also would the fall of the ayatollahs -- particularly if it is as the result of an American intervention in the Gulf -- make waves everywhere. Democracy would be perceived as the wave of the future. Our friends in many countries would feel free to speak up for democracy and pro-American policies -- and their enemies would be afraid to silence them.

North Korea might go through a paroxysm of defiance -- but they would still understand the lesson. America will not be bullied by tyrants. We will stand for democracy, destroying our enemies at the "time and place of our choosing." Negotiations with North Korea would instantly take on a very different tone; and China's attitude, too, would become considerably more cooperative with us.

This is the victory that awaits us -- and it remains possible for two reasons only:

1. America's brilliant, brave, and well-trained military, which projects not just power but decency and compassion wherever our soldiers go, and

2. President George W. Bush, who, regardless of his critics and detractors, has steadfastly pursued the only course that holds the hope of victory without plunging us into a worldwide war with a united Islam or isolating America in a world torn by chaos.

Those are the scylla and charybdis that threaten us on either hand. If we do not win this containable war now, following the plan President Bush has set forth, we will surely end up fighting far bloodier wars for the next generation.
And the rhetoric of this election proves that we have precious few politicians in either party who have the brains, will, or courage to be taken seriously as alternatives to George W. Bush in the guidance of our nation through this dangerous, complicated world.

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While I do not agree with everything the author has in his article, I find it very important to read.

Vote your beliefs. The worst thing we can have is an electorate who is too "busy" to voice their opinions at the polls.

I regret that for a number of reasons I have not been active in Alexandra's domain recently. I promise that this will change soon. We are coming out of the woods and I will be able to devote some time. I have not abandoned the Baronness, Kenny, Ghost, JCC, gringoman, CNR and the all the other regular denizens of ATB...

Regards,

Patrick.

[Ghost Dansing]

"So now Iraq, where brave men and women make sacrifices, and others criticize their sacrifice as a waste of time. How cold. The actual "war" phase of Iraq was among the most brilliantly planned and executed operations of all time. I believe we lost more men to accidents than to enemy fire."

Whew!... thank God the actual "war" phase is over!

No WMD... No Saddam! We're outta there! Thanks Steve... once everybody realizes the actual "war" phase is over, even Dubya will know what to do!

And once one realizes we didn't "accomplish that much" in WWI and WWII, heck the Iraq war becomes a no brainer!

"...the Germans and Austrians of the early 20th century were very much like us and shared our ideals..."

True... they were rabid anti-semites with authoritarian, corporatist leanings... there was sympathy for fascism right here in the United States... I see your point.

"Many people said to Churchill that the enemy was Communism - that Hitler represented a bulwark against Communism. His answer was that both Nazism and Communism were equal dangers to democracy and civilisation. As he said to an Oxford University audience in 1937, Communism and Facism remind me of the North Pole and the South Pole. They are at opposite ends of the earth, but if you woke up at either Pole tomorrow morning, you could not tell which one it was."

http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=579

Many today seem to feel that fascist tendencies should be indulged as a bulwark against Islamic extremism and terrorism...

It is the Center that must hold; Liberalism that must be preserved... if it does not, all is lost anyway, and it really matters little what totalitarian ideology is espoused... it all looks the same.

[Steve]

Well that's sure a tough act to follow...who can argue with that kind of quantitative reasoning from Ghost Dansing? Not the grossly undereducated products of this nation's public schools and liberal university system, which of course explains why people like John Kerry can receive even a single vote in a Presidential election.

But back to the topic, there's a concept disguised in all this that is sadly lacking in the secular left and that concept is sacrifice. The U.S. elites understood sacrifice in in WWI and WWII. Today, I doubt most liberals would sacrifice an hour of their time to help bring a stable government to Iraq. I doubt many would sacrifice their lives for ANYTHING. In the modern secular world, nothing is so important as the needs of the indiviudal. Quick and easy divorce...a must have! After all, why stay in a marriage that bores you just so that your children can be well adjusted and happy? Abortion is a must have! Who can bother to be inconvenienced with carrying and then raising a child (after all, it may complicate that divorce you'll be getting not to mention your career). The inconvenience of it all! In fact, the only thing I can see that the modern, liberal, secularist is willing to sacrifice is my money.

So now Iraq, where brave men and women make sacrifices, and others criticize their sacrifice as a waste of time. How cold. The actual "war" phase of Iraq was among the most brilliantly planned and executed operations of all time. I believe we lost more men to accidents than to enemy fire. The U.S. lost 126,000 in WWI, a fight in which we had virtually no vested interest, and which lead directly to a vast increase in instability and many more dead in WWII. In Iraq, we deposed a murderous fanatic. In WWI we didn't even accomplish that much. We're now killing fanatical Muslim zealots who have declared war on our very way of life. In contrast, the Germans and Austrians of the early 20th century were very much like us and shared our ideals. We should have been buidling cars together, as we do today. We've lost 2800 good men in Iraq and for that I'm truly sad. But put in historical context, it's hardly the "fiasco" the left is claiming.

[Ghost Dansing]

"The mission has had its failures, but it has had tremendous successes as well. If the US turns its back on the Iraqis now, Somalia will pale into insignificance in comparison to the disaster, both militarily and strategically, we will have brought upon ourselves. Native populations will never -- never -- trust us to stand by and protect them after risking everything to assist us. Tyrants and terrorists will laugh at our threats, knowing they can outlast us, especially if they can create enough propaganda to distract American voters."

"The soldiers and Marines understand that victory cannot be replaced by "phased redeployment". If the tactics need changing or adjustment, then bring in better ideas -- but we cannot allow retreat and capitulation become the only other option for Iraq."

This fiasco brought to you by Dubya and this Republican administration.

Nice rhetoric... however the damage is already done and while he (Morrisey) can allude to "victory", I would defy him to articulate what "victory" would look like at this point.

Shia-dominated, Iran infiltrated Islamic Republic?

Sunni Baathist dictatorship?

Certainly not going to get a Liberal, Secular Democracy out of this mess... and American troops are just standing in the frag pattern.

The fact is there is nobody in Iraq right now that America can legitimately back that has anything to do with the idealistic neocon vision of a Western-leaning Liberal Democracy... nobody... and we will be lucky if the Maliki government doesn't kick us out on our ear, just to add insult to injury.

Iran has been and continues to be the big winner in Dubya's foreign policy... across the board. Dubya made a bad choice, executed poorly, and ultimately failed, bringing about the conditions Morissey is suggesting... Withdrawing the troops cannot do any worse... and it at least saves the lives of troops.

But why listen to a Liberal (aka "real American)... here's one of the chief neocons:

"Richard N. Perle, the former Pentagon advisor regarded as the intellectual godfather of the Iraq war, now believes he should not have backed the U.S.-led invasion, and he holds President Bush responsible for failing to make timely decisions to stem the rising violence, according to excerpts from a magazine interview."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-neocons4nov04,1,1461704.story?track=rss&ctrack=1&cset=true

Dubya knows quite well that America is going to have to extricate itself from Iraq very soon... actually, he's been wanting to "declare victory" and depart for some time, but he couldn't even achieve sufficient security on a temporary basis to do that.

Now it is simply a "manhood" issue... The troops will be withdrawn, just not on his watch... and then they'll try to blame the mess on Democrats... but this has been a Republican show from the get-go, and the Republican adminstration simply fired any General Officer that stood in their way with good advice.

[Mike Anderson]

Thanks for the link on quantitative reasoning. I teach such a course, and it's good to see what the Original Thinkers had in mind--it's too easy to wander off in some weird direction. If I'm not careful, I could even become a Democrat!

[Huan]

It all makes sense if the mainstream media is biased for the left. And it is.

Between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30, 2005, nearly 1,400 stories appeared on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening news. More than half focused on the costs and problems of the war, four times as many as those that discussed the successes. About 40% of the stories reported terrorist attacks; scarcely any reported the triumphs of American soldiers and Marines. The few positive stories about progress in Iraq were just a small fraction of all the broadcasts.

When the Center for Media and Public Affairs made a nonpartisan evaluation of network news broadcasts, it found that during the active war against Saddam Hussein, 51% of the reports about the conflict were negative. Six months after the land battle ended, 77% were negative; in the 2004 general election, 89% were negative; by the spring of 2006, 94% were negative. This decline in media support was much faster than during Korea or Vietnam.

Also interesting read