Presidential nominee John Kerry salutes during the Democratic National Convention at the FleetCenter in Boston, Thursday, July 29, 2004. Via CBS News. (Photo: AP)

The beginning: “I’m John Kerry and I’m reporting for duty.” Ahem. We get it, OK? You served in Vietnam. We get it. Sheez. This beginning was lame.

I agree with Andrew Sullivan. When Kerry said, “I was born in the West Wing,” this was a bit much too. How many times do you think he’s used that lame line in his life? About a million? I think that may be right.

He thanks the WWII generation for their service. I can’t help but wonder why he is so reluctant to give support to American military campaigns now. Sure, it’s easy to support U.S. miliary actions 60 years after they’re successful. Supporting them when the fighting is actually happening creates a little more credibility, I think. What would his Air Force Dad have thought of partisans during WWII who said, “Roosevelt Lied, People Died”? Not much I think.

Next followed some cheap shots about Bush misleading us into war, Cheney letting polluters write national energy law, and John Ashcroft eroding Constitutional freedoms. All punch-list items in any DNC speech I suppose.

He says “There’s nothing more pessimistic than saying America can’t do better [on the economy].” A rather lame formulation - and of couse the Republicans never said that. Whoops - I suppose I’m not supposed to expect logic or honesty if they get in the way of a good line. But it was a lame line anway.

He accepts the nomination. Shouldn’t the whole sad affair end now? I guess not.

He says kind words about John Edwards and Theresa Heinz Kerry. Is it just me? Every time I see Theresa on camera she seems to be acting a little weird. It’s kind of like she’s trying to act normal but doesn’t quite make it.

He says kind words about Cleland. I like Cleland although I disagree with his politics. I can’t help but think that Kerry’s using the gravely injured Cleland as a poster boy to remind us of Kerry’s military service for the umpteenth time. (I get the feeling that Kerry considered coming out on stage in his dress military uniform, but his advisors talked him out of it with a little difficulty and a lot of nervous laughter). I think that Kerry’s use of Cleland is kind of cheap and tawdry. But I guess Cleland is a big boy. I suppose he’s OK with being used that way.

“Saying there are weapons of mass distruction in Iraq doesn’t make it so.” Well no duh. But, of course, Kerry said the same thing about WMD. I guess he’s only seeking the vote of people who can’t use Google. Sheez.

In the next section he says he will only send soldiers into battle to protect the American people or vital American interests. This is the right formulation, but his phrasing makes this seem to be an implicit rejection of Bush’s pre-emption policy.

Next he tosses in something about “getting the terrorists before they get us” - so it’s unclear - maybe he’s for a pre-emption policy, after all.

He says to the armed forces, “Help IS on the way.” The fact that he voted against every major weapon system during his Senate career gives this line little credibility. Maybe he means help is on the way to America’s enemies. (Well this would make his record and this statement consistent). OK - sorry - I’m was trying to be logical again.

He says he’ll implement all the recommendations of the 9-11 Commission. Cheap, easy, feel-good, no-thought-required, cheers.

“When Americans speak their minds … that’s not a challenge to patriotism … that’s the heart and soul of patriotism.” This is perhaps the favorite straw-man of the modern Democratic Party. Whenever you disagree with them on substance, they say, “You’re tring to censor me!” Um - no - we’re just disagreeing with you. That requires a substantive response - not a debate trick. I think most people see through this.

Kerry next equates “family values” with government programs. This is classic Democratic thinking … which was soundly rejected in the Reagan-Carter election of 1980 - over 20 years ago. I suppose I should be glad they’re trotting out this failed pitch yet again. It hasn’t worked for over 20 years. I don’t see any reason why it’ll work now.

I shouldn’t tell them this, I suppose - but if they haven’t got it yet, I don’t think they will. Newsflash to Dems: most Americans between the coasts equate family values with families doing things on their own without government help or interference - NOT with government programs.

The next section of the speech is a series of riffs based on the theme “help is on the way.” It’s kind of lame and predictable. Also, after hearing Laura Ingraham play clips of Robert Byrd repeating this tired phrase over and over again, this part just seems like an echo of the increasingly untethered-from-reality Robert Byrd.

Here’s the economic plan: incentives, investment, close tax loopholes, fair playing field in world trade, return to fiscal responsibility (cut deficit in half in 4 years), pay as you go for gov’t spending. “What we won’t do:” raise taxes on the middle class. Kerry pledges to cut taxes on the middle-class and small businesses, but to raise taxes on people who make over $200,000 per year. That sounds nice, but I’m pretty sure those numbers won’t add up (the rich already pay most taxes anyway).

The health care plan: cut down on fraud and abuse. Medicare will negotiate lower drug prices. He pledges that health care is a “right for all Americans.” I hate to be a, you know, conservative - but that’s just wrong. The right formulation, of course, is that I have no legal duty to pay for my neighbor’s doctor visits. Sorry - but it’s true.

He directs words to George W. Bush: Let’s be optimists, let’s respect one another, let’s never misuse the Constitution for political reasons. Nice - but didn’t Kerry just violate all of those pledges immediatly above? Oh, right - nobody remembers that far back.

He sees us as “one America.” He should coordiante better with John Edwards for consistency.

Nitpick: During the speech, his chin was shiny. I suppose it was just perspiration - but it kind of seemed like spittle.

Next he goes through a a riff using the phrase “what if” over and over again. This just seems formulaic. First “help is on the way” - and then “what if” - as speech-making building blocks. The substance of the speech almost seems to be secondary to the speech-making structure.

“The sun is rising” and then “our best days are still to come,” are the phrases closing the speech, before the obligatory “God bless the United States of America.” The first two phrases seem to be an attempt to latch onto Reaganesqe optimism. Kerry doesn’t seem to really believe it like Reagan, though.

Overall rating: long on formulaic paragraphs, short on substance. I give it a C: standard politico fare.

The complete text of the John Forbes Kerry Democratic National Convention speech is here. Jeff Jacoby’s analysis of the speech is available here and here.

I intend this to be my last blog post for the foreseeable future. I think I need a break like my friends Rodger and Rachel. Best wishes to the blogosphere - it is truly an expression of what all of us Americans value - freedom.

The link to the nikita demosthenes post is here. See, also, Red State.

JK: The aftermarth of the 9/11 Commission needs to step beyond the beyond the petty partisanship that both Gary Farber and “Sgt. John Stryker” have written about here. In response, I committed Winds of Change.NET to follow-ups that would feature intelligent, non-partisan commentary from both sides of the aisle. Amitai Etzioni is a professor, blogger and founder of The Communitarian Network, a very interesting liberal/centrist group. This open letter was circulated to network members for commentary, and is reproduced here with permission.

He argues that “The focus on past experience — which has other sources, but which is further fostered by the Commission’s hearings — drives the government and the public to focus on two fronts in the war against terrorism while grossly neglecting the third and most important front.”

Dear Mr. Kean,

As a sociologist who has studied American society for the last 40 years, I am deeply concerned about the impact of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States on the public, federal agencies, and the White House. The cumulative and considerable effect seems to be to encourage one and all to better prepare themselves against the kind of attacks that we had faced in the past rather than focusing on the greatest dangers that we next face. The 9-11 Commission hearings so far indicate that the Commission presumes a symmetry between what we lacked last time — for instance, open communication between the CIA and FBI and domestic spying of the kind MI-5 provides in the UK — and what we need to parry major new attacks. Thus, the Commission unwittingly is contributing to a malaise that military historians have long studied: fighting the last war rather than preparing for the next one.

Read the Rest…

Atrios - the lefty blogger at “Eschaton” that all the “progressives” love to read - is revealed. He’s a foot-soldier in the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy led by George Soros and David Brock.

CBS News: “Billionaire Bankrolls Bush Bashers.” George Soros provides funds to far left organizations like Media Matters - which bashes Bush while it pays the bills for Duncan Black. Duncan Black writes as the anonymous “Atrios” at the heavily-read Bush-bashing weblog “Eschaton.”

Via JustOneMinute:

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Who Is Duncan Black?

Not the economic historian (but we wonder…).

I’m talking about the Duncan B. Black formerly known as Atrios.

I can’t say I care, but…

It turns out that Mr. Black works at Media Matters, the new David Brock media watchdog group, which is kind of interesting - he is doing paid media commentary on one site, and a lot of anonymous media criticism on the other… and I’m still not that concerned. Yes, there is the potential for a self-serving echo-chamber effect, but what else is new in the willd, wild blogosphere. Maybe I would care if I could take the Brock group seriously.

- - - - - - -

And from Instapundit:

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I PROMISED HIM THAT I WOULDN‘T OUT HIM a long time ago, but now Atrios has been unmasked as a guy named Duncan Black who, among other things, works for David Brock’s Soros-funded Media Matters operation. Nothing wrong with that, but if I were working for, say, Richard Mellon Scaife, I think somebody — like, say, Duncan Black — would be making something of it.

- - - - - - -

As CBS News has reported, Media Matters is just one of the hard-left organizations funded by billionaire leftist George Soros.

George Soros provides funds to far left organizations like Media Matters - which bashes Bush while it pays the bills for Duncan Black. Duncan Black writes as the anonymous “Atrios” at the heavily-read Bush-bashing weblog “Eschaton.”

Geroge Soros has funded other hard-left organizations like MoveOn.org - to which he recently gave $2.5 million.

The link to the nikita demosthenes post is here.

Well, the comments to my two posts below confirm that one shouldn’t blog under the influence of dextromethorphan - cold tablets and la grippe make for fuzzy thinking in my case, it appears.

So let me clarify a few things.

First, I do think we’re at war. But it’s not the traditional ‘mobilize the nation’ kind of war, it’s a war that will, sadly, be long-lasting, relatively low-intensity, and messy. Because it’s that kind of a war, many of the historic responses to a more intensely focussed, limited in time war - like those to World War II - aren’t appropriate.

They aren’t appropriate for two reasons; because they won’t do much good, and because by themselves, they won’t help us win.

Read The Rest…

Saudi Arabia and the Inevitable Choice
by Tarek Heggy of Cairo, Egypt [column archive]

Following a lecture I had given at the Department of the Middle Eastern Studies at one of the top world universities, I was told by one of the professors: “In most academic circles here in the US, we take it for granted that the Arabs’ hatred of the West is the result of the intrusion of western powers into the lives of Arab peoples, beginning with the colonization of Algeria in 1830, Egypt in 1882, Morocco in 1912, and so on. But it’s quite clear that you see things quite differently?”

I replied, “It’s not that simple. There are several sides to the issue and what you just said lumps them all together in the same basket, as it were.”

Read The Rest…

One of my co-workers forwarded the e-mail I’m posting below. After reading it I did a little research and found that some of the factual information in it was outdated and the disinformation was too easily fact-checked. The e-mail points fingers at the Bush Administration, trying to paint a picture that is anything but accurate, something I’ll cover after you get a chance to read the e-mail as I received it.

The Dreaded “D” Word

The “D” word is out and, with the latest on-line report from Congress.org, it is spreading fast. The subject is the draft. The one run by the nation’s Selective Service System (SSS). The one that drafts America’s sons and daughters into the military to fight protracted wars.
We call it the “D” word because so few like to speak of it. In political campaigns it is taboo. It would even seem that this White House has forbidden military commanders from even mentioning the idea, even though existing forces are stretched far too thin and National Guard Reserves are serving on the front lines of battle, often with too little preparation.

And yet, twin bills have been introduced in the House and Senate that would reinstitute the draft in late spring of 2005, just months after the fall election. The bills, S. 89 and HR. 163, are part of legislation titled the Universal National Service Act of 2003, which intends “to provide for the common defense by requiring that all young persons (18-26) in the United States, including women, perform a period of military service or a period of civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, and for other purposes.” According to Congress.org, the bills currently sit in the committee on armed services.

Here are a few interesting facts about the bills, cited by Congress.org:

The bills are sitting at the ready so a draft system would be set to go by June 2005.

$28 million has been added to the 2004 budget of the SSS to carry out the work needed to implement the draft.

The Pentagon has already begun a campaign to fill all 10,350 draft board positions and 11,070 appeals board slots nationwide.

Skirting active duty will be more difficult than in the Vietnam era for two primary reasons: There will be no educational deferments, and the U.S. and Canada signed a “smart border declaration” in December 2001 (did Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld really plan this that far ahead?) that could be used to keep would-be draft dodgers from leaving the country. As for students already enrolled in college, underclassmen would only be able to postpone service until the end of their current semester. Seniors would have until the end of the academic year.

As said above, but with added emphasis here, women (ages 18-26) would be included in the draft.

Most of this information should not be shocking, except for a couple of things: It’s been kept awfully quiet, and, when questioned, the Bush administration and the military planners decline any notion they are about to reinstitute the draft.

Are such denials simply more lies coming from the Bush administration? Or, perhaps, they sincerely don’t think a military draft is needed or politically viable? Certainly, the latter is true - and that explains why nothing will be set in motion until after the election.
Reporter John Sutherland of The Guardian newspaper in London, offers some insights about the lack of general awareness by the American public and makes a few interesting points:

“All this (the twin bills) have been pushed ahead with an amazing lack of publicity,” he wrote in a recent column. “One can guess why. American newspapers are in a state of meltdown, distracted by war-reporting scandals at USA Today and the New York Times.”

“The American public just wants the war to go away. One thing that would get their attention (but not their votes) would be their children being sent off to die in foreign lands. Best not disturb the electorate until after November, seems to be the thinking.”

“The strategic case for the draft is overwhelming. If, as Rumsfeld promises, Iraq turns out to be ‘a long, hard slog,’ who will do the slogging? If others follow the Spaniards, and Tony Blair goes, the U.S. may find itself a coalition of one. What then if something blows up in North Korea?”

Sutherland’s final point is a direct hit: “Panic stations, which is where Attorney General John Ashcroft placed America this summer (with his controversial and questionable warnings of likely terrorists attacks to strike U.S. soil again), serves two purposes. It distracts the electorate and, like any state of emergency, it sanctions tough measures, like the draft.”

It’s an issue, at the very least, that deserves public debate. Congress and the President should come clean on their intentions long before the November elections.

Angelo S. Lynn

Sounds ominous, doesn’t it? The Bush Administration is going to reinstitute the draft, according to Angelo S. Lynn. But there’s a couple of problems with Angelo’s conclusions and accusations.

First, the Bush Administration has nothing to do with the bills cited. Both bills were submitted and sponsored by Democrats, not Republicans.

The senate bill, S. 89 was submitted and sponsored by Senator Ernest Hollings (D-SC). As far as I can ascertain, he’s the sole sponsor. The bill was filed on January 7, 2003, read twice, and referred to committee, where it’s been ever since. If it’s been sitting in committee that long, to all intents and purposes it’s dead. There’s been no action on the bill in over 18 months, meaning the committee chair wants nothing to do with it. And since Ernest Hollings is retiring at the end of his term (this coming January), there will be no one else to try to push the bill through committee. It’s stillborn. To quote a famous line from a TV show I like: “It’s dead, Jim.” (Full text of the bill can be found here. The bill summary and status can be found here.)

The other bill, H.R. 163, was submitted and sponsored by Representative Charles Rangel (D-NY), filed on the same day as S. 89. The House bill has 15 co-sponsors, all Democrats. As far as I can tell, none of them are friends of the Bush Administration. The only movement on the bill took place about a month after it was filed. Since then, like S. 89, it’s languished in committee, going nowhere. (Text of the bill can be found here. The bill summary and status can be found here.)

If you recall, Charles Rangel called for reinstating the draft because he felt that the all-volunteer Armed Forces were racist, putting too many minorities in the front lines. This claim seems to make sense at first, until one looks closer and finds that his claim isn’t exactly true. As well, there have been those opining that Rangel’s bill is meant to do nothing more than stir up anti-military feelings within America.

While at one point the Pentagon was making arrangements for staffing draft boards, it appears that it may have been in anticipation of one of the two bills making it all the way through to the President’s desk for signature (assuming George Bush didn’t veto it out of hand). After all, the draft isn’t something that can be easily cranked up overnight. But once both bills stalled in committee, the Pentagon ceased its activities as they weren’t needed.

November 5, 2003 - In a notice posted on the [Defense Department’s] Defend America website, Americans over the age of 18 and with no criminal record are invited to “serve your community and the nation” by volunteering for the boards, which decide which recruits should be sent to war.

Thirty years have passed since the draft boards last exerted their hold on America, deciding which soldiers would be sent to Vietnam. After Congress ended the draft in 1973, they have become largely dormant.

However, recruitment for the boards suggests that in some parts of the Pentagon all options are being explored in response to concerns that the US military has been stretched too thin in its occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Although Pentagon officials denied any move to reinstitute the draft, the [Defense Department] website does not shirk at outlining the potential duties for a new crop of volunteers to the draft boards.

[…]

Pentagon officials were adamant that there were no plans to bring back the draft.

“That would require action from Congress and the president and they are not likely to do that unless there was something of the magnitude of the second world war that required it,” said Dan Amon, a spokesman for the Selective Service department.

So, is it likely that the draft will be instituted by the Bush Administration? In my opinion, no. Is the information I received in the e-mail accurate? While there are factual accuracies, the tone the e-mail is trying to set is false, pointing fingers at Bush for this action rather than at Congress, and specifically at the Democrats within Congress.

This e-mail was a slick bit of disinformation, trying to ‘place the blame’ on George Bush , but not on the actual perpetrators.

(Originally posted at Weekend Pundit)

Andrew Sullivan: a “slow-motion David Brock”?

Andrew Sullivan, a great (if lately confused) blogger, has alas let one issue dominate all others. This, inevitably, has led to his fisking from the quite capable keyboards of VodkaPundit and Mark Steyn. (And, yes, I do like alliteration).

There’s a lot of good writing in the above links - between Michelle Malkin, VodkaPundit, and Mark Steyn. But Steyn still wins the flat-out funny conservative writer award (he’s in the same league with P.J. O‘Rourke - high praise) with riffs like this:

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There’s a bumper sticker I see on a lot of Vermont cars these days: “BE PATRIOTIC – VOTE GEORGE BUSH OUT”. The trouble is you can’t vote Bush out, you have to vote the other fellow in. And convention week marks the point when Americans begin to get to know the challenger the way they know the incumbent. I find it hard to believe that getting to know John F Kerry can possibly work to his advantage.

He was in Wisconsin the other day, pretending to be a regular guy, and was asked what kind of hunting he preferred. “I’d have to say deer,” said the senator. “I go out with my trusty 12-gauge double-barrel, crawl around on my stomach… That’s hunting.”

This caused huge hilarity among my New Hampshire neighbours. None of us has ever heard of anybody deer hunting by crawling around on his stomach, even in Massachusetts. The trick is to blend in with the woods and, given that John Kerry already looks like a forlorn tree in late fall, it’s hard to see why he’d give up his natural advantage in order to hunt horizontally.

Possibly his weird Vietnam nostalgia is getting out of control. Still, if I come across a guy in the woods in deer season inching through the undergrowth with a mouthful of bear scat, at least I’ll know who it is.

Conversely, if you’re a 14-point buck and get shot in the toe this autumn, you’ll know who to sue.

Crawling around on your stomach is a lousy way to hunt deer, but it’s proved a smart way to campaign for president. For months now, George W Bush has been up there getting fired on from all directions. Meanwhile, down in the scrub, John Kerry was crawling forward on his stomach, a stealth candidate advancing slowly, off the radar, prone alone.

Sadly, the stealth candidacy has come to an end. This week the real John F Kerry has to stand up, and, judging from the way those Senate and House candidates in tight races are staying away from the convention, a lot of bigshot Democrats aren’t too sure Americans are going to like what they see.

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“…if I come across a guy in the woods in deer season inching through the undergrowth with a mouthful of bear scat, at least I’ll know who it is.” Tough to beat that.

Back on topic, the David Brock references above might be helped by a little background from places like this, this, and of course, this. In fairness, and because I don’t think Sullivan is nearly as bad as Brock, I should add this: I don’t think Sullivan is bald-faced dishonest like Brock - I just think the big pendulum swing from righty pundit to lefty pundit (now occuring on The Daily Dish in slow-motion real-time) has to leave a certain amount of credibility behind. (I mean - gee - he now has a donkey next to his blog title).

The link to the nikita demosthenes post is here.

UPDATE: The righty blogosphere strikes back!

“Skankettes”?

Our “News from the Blogosphere” segment today focuses on our new word for the day. Today’s word: “Skankette.”

I suppose Michelle Malkin is right. Ana Marie Cox and Jessica Cutler are Skankettes. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

To provide that oh-so-fleeting quality that the network news anchors never quite get - context - Michelle Malkin has posted her entire Clare Booth Luce Institute speech, “Standing up to the ‘Girls Gone Wild’ culture,” which aired on C-SPAN2 yesterday, here.

But this IS still America - where nothing succeeds like skankiness:

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MTV’s newest correspondent here is Ana Marie Cox, better known as the foulmouthed blogger Wonkette. She appeared with Colbert on “Sunday Today” and boldly told NBC’s Campbell Brown that young people get their news from “The Daily Show” and Web sites “because they think the real news is also fake.”

Colbert stuck to his position that “no one gives you fake news any faker than we do.”

It’s come to this.

Cox is considering segments on delegate fashion — such as the wearing of credentials as a carefully placed accessory — and the e-mailing addiction of those who (like her) are always tapping at what they call their CrackBerry.

“Fluffy stuff is important because politics shouldn’t be like eating your spinach,” Cox says, sitting on a bench in the FleetCenter hall. “I’m dessert. But politics is a full meal.”

Cox dismisses much programming aimed at the youth demographic as “either high-minded civility — you should vote because it’s important — or you should vote because Madonna does.”

Her wardrobe orders from MTV were “anything but a suit — don’t look like a grown-up.” Accordingly, she is wearing a white T-shirt, jeans, black jacket and Converse sneakers.

“If terrorists attack, I’ll be able to run out of the building,” Cox says. “Surviving a terrorist attack is the new black.”

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I can’t help but wipe a tear from my eye. Everything is OK. After all, what is more quintessentially American than going from skank to celebrity? Madonna wrote a how-to catalogue on the subject with every over-the-top 1980’s bubble-gum pop-rock video.

In this great country it’s still possible - nay probable - that any average American (who happens to be a good-looking girl who can spice-up a tank top) can go from skank to star.

Land of the Free. Home of the Brave. Stage of the Skank.

This is (honestly) one of the many, many reasons I love the U.S. of A. Freedom isn’t always pretty. But, sometimes, it IS pretty - and kind of hot.

The link to the nikita demosthenes post is here.

Does this fit here? I don’t know. I post, you decide. Here’s a link to the Ann Coulter column that USA Today refused to run. (Personally I think it IS funny. They wanted an edgy, conservative, humorist. That’s what they got. Duh.) If I was a Democrat - and accordingly didn’t care about the logic or honesty of what I said - I would cry, “Censorship!” But, I’m not a Democrat, so I’ll just give you the link for your reading pleasure. (And - for that context thing again - here’s the Jonah Goldberg column that USA Today did publish). Enjoy.

UPDATE: The nikita demosthenes Word of the Day ripples through the blogosphere … as it were.

In the spirit of today’s convention sessions, the following Op/Ed page post is:

A. Timely…. as Ron Reagan gets ready to appeal to the nation tonight to lift the Bush ban on stem cell research.

Fair-minded… showing that Dems need not be strident nor inaccurate about Bush-bashing.

Remiscent …of Bill Clinton’s line last night: “Strength and Wisdom are NOT opposing values.

George Bush did NOT use the term “feces” for “fetus” in a speech in Tampa June 17 as supposedly reported by Newsweek. Dems all over Boston and the nation are getting this email:

NEWSWEEK reports that President Bush, appearing before a right-to-life rally in Tampa, Florida on June 17, stated: “We must always remember that all human beings begin life as a feces. A Feces is a living being in the eyes of God, who has endowed that feces with all of the rights and God-given blessings of any other human being.” The audience listened in disbelief as the President repeated his error at least a dozen times, before realizing that he had used the word ‘feces” when he meant to say “fetus.”

This is an urban legend, debunked at:

http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_bush_feces_speech.htm

Newsweek never printed this story and Bush was not in Tampa on June 17. He was on June 16, according to the White House sked, but said nothing of the kind.

Keep this in mind while Ron Reagan speaks tonight. Bush does know the difference between the two words and may actually be capable of changing his mind on stem cell research.

Then again…

These “Bushisms” are not urban legends:

“I’m the master of low expectations.” — President Bush aboard Air Force One, June 4, 2003

“I’m also not very analytical. You know I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about myself, about why I do things.” — President Bush aboard Air Force One, June 4, 2003.

(The above Bushism are courtesy of Jacob Weisberg: http://slate.msn.com/id/76886/)

Bill Clinton may have been wrong last night. With Dubya, “strength and wisdom” just might be opposing values.

Cross-posted at www.ohiodems.org

The more details come out of the investigation into the Madrid bombings of March 11 of this year, the more I am beginning to get the feeling that I’m walking around with a big target pinned to my back, while the government seems to be calling ‘over here!’ to our enemies. The first stages of paranoia? Mmm, maybe. I’ll try and explain, then you tell me if I’m sliding.

When Italian police arrested Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed in Milan, considered to be one of the masterminds behind the Madrid attacks, they had been tapping his phone conversations for three months. The wealth of information about the planning and motivation of the attacks, is just starting to come out now. Yesterday, Spanish newspaper El Mundo (link in Spanish, local copy kept here)
published new details from the transcripts of Rabei Osman, aka ‘Muhammad the Egyptian’, in which at the end he mentions a weapon they devised, which looks like a blow dryer and would cause convulsions and high fever (translated, emphasis mine):

Rabei Osman El Sayed Ahmed, aka ‘Muhammad the Egyptian’, considered to be the brain behind the terrorist attacks of March 11, and arrested in Italy, said that “Madrid is a lesson to Europe, they need to break with the US” and praised the head of the Spanish government, Rodríguez Zapatero, “for valuing Arabs”

‘The Egyptian’ also called for a large-scale attack in Italy like in Madrid, he assured that Berlusconi is “a dictator” and that his government “will have the same ending as that of Aznar”, for following “the American dog”, as he referred to George Bush.

[…]

“Madrid is a lesson to Europe, which must understand that they need to break with the Americans. The Berlusconi government is following the same methods as the dog (referring to Bush) and I hope that God will eliminate this government of Berlusconi because it’s dictatorial and a destroyer of Islam. We hope that God will give them [Berlusconi government -ed.] a disaster, and that so Italy will have a disaster”, stated ‘the Egyptian’.

[…]

They’re slaves, now that the dog (Bush) comes [this was on the day of President Bush’s visit to Rome -ed.] they put all these controls in place which serve nothing, if we want to strike, we can. It’s Berlusconi’s fault, who is a great dictator”, states the terrorist. ‘The Egyptian’ adds that according to him, all countries that follow the US “will have the same fate as Aznar”.

He underlines that after the Madrid attacks, which caused 192 victims, “all the Arabs and all the Spanish went onto the streets, calling Aznar a murderer”.

Continuing his conversation, ‘the Egyptian’ has words of praise for the president of the Spanish government, stating that José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero “inmediately understood the importance of the Arabs, and his rise to power has opened a dialogue”.

He attacks Berlusconi again, and they are talking about if what happened in Madrid would take place in Italy, the blame would be on Berlusconi, “whoever follows this dog (Bush) will hurt himself”.

On the same day, but later, ‘the Egyptian’ returns to talk with his friends and he talks with them about a weapon, “in the shape of a hair dryer”, which “causes a lot of damage to your health”.

He adds that when this weapon, of which more details are lacking, starts to blow hot air, “it heats the temperature a couple of degrees, the body will start to suffer convulsions and it weakens [the target -ed.]and the (body) temperature starts to rise”.

My first instinct says Ricin, don’t know why, but it may also be Anthrax, but that tends to take longer to cause effect. I’m not a toxin expert here, but Ricin in powdered form, distributed by blow dryers?

Now, this is bad enough, but look at this recent Reuters report about the same terrorist. During his stay in Paris, he was directing the cell(s) in Madrid by phone, masking his calls by hacking into a local bank’s phone switch:

Prosecutors this month began a probe into a flurry of calls to Spain and Morocco from a bank in the Val-de-Marne area.

The calls increased significantly in the days before the attack and stopped a few hours before the bombs ripped through a series of commuter trains on March 11, killing 191 people, according to the daily newspaper Le Parisien.

Police have established that the calls were made by “phreaking” — a practice similar to hacking that bypasses the charging system.

The paper said Rabei Osman Ahmed es-Sayed, alias Mohamed the Egyptian, a suspect in the attacks who was arrested in Milan in June, spent several months in Val-de-Marne last year.

I tried this myself for a while, back in the eighties, but never got it to work, it is hard to do, even though the average techie will snuff at it. This is an enemy using low-end means in a counter-counter terrorist fashion, which absolutely worked.

There’s one tidbit of information more I wanted to share. This week it came to light in the local press here, that a second car was used to bring the terrorists to the train stations. It was detected in June, three months after the attacks. On the first day they found a minivan, with detonators and tapes with coranic verses. This time, the police were alerted by the rental company Hertz, who recovered a stolen car from the same spot where they found the minivan, and while cleaning it, they came across a box with clothes, and again tapes. DNA testing proved two persons had been in touch with the items, one a presumed cell leader who blew himself and six other terrorists up, when their hideout was stormed in a suburb of Madrid (they started tearing down the building yesterday), and the other one, well his DNA was found in the other car, but he remains at large.

And now the politicians are calling each other names, because the government decided to keep this under wraps until this week. Recall if you will the whole setup by the Socialists directly after the attacks, inmediately spreading rumors that Aznar’s government was lying, (leading exactly to all these Spaniards flooding the streets calling for Aznar’s head, to the joy of the terrorists we now know). The PP is fuming that they were forced to inmediately make everything public right after the first attack, while the Socialists are now claiming that they didn’t want to harm the ongoing investigation.

I said it right after the attacks, the real-time reporting of progress, by the Interior minister and heads of police, directly endangered the investigation itself, but the PP government felt itself cornered, defending against rumor mongering to which there really was no defense.

Meanwhile, there are intelligent and tech-savvy terrorist cells and at least one plotter of the Madrid attacks out there, and they’re working on some Doomsday Weapon.

So, am I being paranoid?

first published at Southern Watch.

Today marks the first one hundred days in office of Spain’s Socialist government.

Today also marks one hundred days until Election Day in the United States.

One hundred days ago, a free election in Spain was marred by terrorist attacks, just three days before, and the then opposition Socialist party jumped on it with demagogic fervor, to win. People were led on by emotions and fear. A regime was changed, instigated by terrorist action, followed up by politics.

One hundred days from now, the American People will choose their President, who will have to see them through the tough road ahead in the War on Terror. Will it be George W. Bush? Will it be John F. Kerry?

An attempted attack may be in the works, it may not be. Will the American People see preparations to avert one, as prudent or politics?

And in the case of a successful attack, will the American People cower, or will they prove the world they will not allow to be tread upon? Will the next President lead his nation, or return to politics, spurred on by cognitive dissonance among terrorized voters?

From afar, freedom-loving people everywhere are silently hoping and praying. One hundred days.

via Southern Watch.

Haaretz carries an amazing report of EU’s foreign policy chief Javier Solana to Israel, where both prime minister Ariel Sharon and foreign minister Silvan Shalom warned him that because of the EU’s vote at the UN last Wednesday condemming Israel’s separation fence, they don’t see how the EU could take an impartial stance.

“Israel has an interest in integrating the international community, especially Europe, in a [peace] process with the Palestinians,” Sharon told Solana, according to a statement issued by his office. “But without a radical change in the European position, especially in relation to Israel’s security and its need to defend itself, that will be difficult to do.”

Shalom was even blunter, delivering his message at a joint press conference in Tel Aviv, with Solana standing alongside. “I find myself challenged to convince the Israeli people that the European Union is a [diplomatic] partner we can trust,” he said.

But Solana did not seem alarmed. “We will be involved whether you want us or not,” the EU foreign policy chief told Shalom.

It’s no secret that without the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to meddle in, there’s not a whole lot of ‘EU foreign policy’ left for Solana.

Solana defended the EU’s support for the resolution, which called on Israel to comply with the advisory opinion issued by the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The ICJ said that Israel should dismantle the fence throughout the West Bank and compensate the Palestinians.

“The United Nations and international institutions such as the International Court of Justice are in our view important components in the campaign to attain peace and security around the world,” Solana said. “A majority of 150 states supported the court’s decision. We know what you think about the UN, but you can’t stop us from honoring the decisions of the ICJ or the General Assembly. We will continue to support the UN in the future.”

Note how every island state, dictatorship and other undemocratic entity with a seat at the UN’s table does get counted this time by Solana. The EU will continue to support the UN in the future, taking itself two steps back from the world’s stage of the coming fifty years than closer to it, in my opinion. Rather than changing course now, the EU’s desparatation to cling to this idea of a self-fulfilling prophecy of World Peace through courts and the UN will drive them more and more towards alignment with this and the next generation’s bad guys.

First published at Southern Watch.

The media is playing a very dangerous game in their continued softball handling and spoon feeding of John Kerry on foreign policy issues. This partisan setup question on Iran lobbed to John Kerry by Tom Brokaw is so condesending that it makes my hair hurt.

Brokaw: …in moving through that part of the world. There’s strong evidence that Iran is in pursuit of a nuclear weapon at some stage. There’s also strong evidence that it’s now meddling in Iraq. So was President Bush wrong to characterize it as part of the Axis of Evil? Iran?

Kerry: I think that the term Axis of Evil is a misapplied term, frankly. Historically and in terms of the president. Iran is a problem. Iran in fact was a greater problem than Iraq at the time that the president started the war in Iraq. North Korea was a greater problem than Iraq at that time the president started the war in Iraq.

I believe this administration has ignored some of the things we could have done with respect to Iran. Look at what the British, French and Germans did with respect to their initiative. The United States should be leading that initiative, Tom.

The United States of America should have long ago offered the following deal. If Iran is serious about not pursuing nuclear weapons, we’ll supply you with the nuclear power and we’ll contain the nuclear material that’s created as a result. And therefore you get your power if it’s really only for peaceful purposes. We also could have pursued a far more aggressive and thoughtful counter-proliferation effort on nuclear and chemical and biological weapons internationally than this administration has.

So I believe the president took the license given him in Afghanistan to fight al-Qaida. And frankly has ignored some of the most critical challenges to the security of our country. I will provide a greater security — to the United States by pursuing more aggressively those opportunities than this administration has.

Iran sits atop one ofthe world’s largest reserves of gas and oil, it has no need for nuclear power to generate electricty. Why Kerry would parrot such a useless meme is puzzling and insulting to informed voters. One also wonders how Kerry will get France on board given that Clinton had little success, even after pandering to France’s oil and gas interests.

“French Scoff at U.S. Protest Over Gas Deal With Iran”

The French government warned the United States on Monday not to
retaliate, but the Clinton administration vowed to “take whatever action
is appropriate under the law.”

A spokesman for the European Union in Brussels said any American
retaliation would be “illegal and unacceptable.”

The exchanges underscored the marked divergence between Europe
and the United States over how to approach Iran. They also revealed
the recurrent French irritation — intermittently shared by other
European nations — at what is sometimes seen as an American attempt
to impose its policies in the post-Cold-War world.

Defending the contract signed with the National Iranian Oil Company,
Jacques Rummelhardt, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said Monday
that it was “compatible with our policy toward Iran.” He described the
French policy as based on frank political exchange and the conviction
that “it is counterproductive to impose restrictions on the development
of commerce with Iran.”

In April of 1998 Lee Hamilton opined:

Second, the policy of “dual containment” of Iran and Iraq is not working, and is not sustainable. Seven years after the Gulf War, friends and allies have little enthusiasm for open-ended U.N. sanctions against Iraq. At least with Iraq, the international community agreed to impose those sanctions. On Iran, there is no such basis for agreement, and no prospect that we can persuade our allies to accept broad-based sanctions. No country in the world has followed the U.S. lead in sanctioning Iran.

Our efforts to isolate and contain Iran have not only been unsuccessful, they have been counterproductive. They have caused great strains with our allies in Europe, and our Arab friends in the Gulf.

Key Arab states boycotted the U.S.-backed economic summit in Qatar, but all Arab states attended the Islamic summit in Iran. The Saudis sent no one to the Qatar meeting, but they just hosted former President Rafsanjani for two weeks in the Kingdom. Our policy is not isolating Iran—it is isolating the United States.

Third, the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act is harmful to U.S. interests. Given the politics of an election year, it was easy in the summer of 1996 for the Congress to vote to impose sanctions on foreign companies that invest in the energy sectors of Iran and Libya. ILSA passed the House on a unanimous, recorded vote—including mine. I supported the bill with many reservations, which I explained at the time, and I now believe that my vote was a mistake. The administration also had strong reservations about this sanctions bill. It secured some improvements, but the bill was still bad. In a political season, the president signed the bill into law. Now he is struggling mightily to avoid applying it.

Because of last September’s announced investment in Iran’s South Pars gas field—involving the French firm Total, the Russian firm Gazprom, and the Malaysian firm Petronas—the president now confronts a series of unacceptable choices. If he decides to impose sanctions on these firms, he takes an enormous gamble. A decision to sanction will:

• Create a huge fight with our European allies;
  
• Undermine the already difficult effort to maintain international support for U.S. policy toward Iraq;
  
• Weaken international support for efforts to contain Iran;
  
• Harm our efforts to draw Iran’s democratically elected president into a dialogue;
  
• Jeopardize our ongoing efforts to persuade Russia to shut down missile cooperation with Iran;
  
• Make it more difficult to gain access to Caspian oil;
  
• Force the European Union to take disputes on ILSA and Helms-Burton back to the World Trade Organization, threatening the integrity of that vital organization; and
  
• Provoke retaliation against U.S. exports and investment—costing U.S. jobs.
  

But, if the U.S. decides to impose and waive sanctions, the costs are also high:

• The president would face a firestorm of public criticism, especially from the Congress;
  
• Even if waived, the impact of sanctions on U.S. relations with the EU and Iran would be almost as harmful;
  
• An improvement in policy toward Iran would be even more difficult than it is; and
  
• U.S. energy firms would complain bitterly. Foreign competitors would be allowed to go forward with investments in Iran, while U.S. firms could not.
  

Right now, the administration is carrying out the most rational policy: to study the question, and to do nothing. But the job of the president is to carry out the law, and ILSA puts him—and keeps him—in a terrible box. In our effort to isolate and sanction Iran, we are harming a wide range of other U.S. interests. Our current policy toward Iran is deeply flawed.

Deeply flawed indeed, Albright’s waiver of the ILSA signaled that the US was not serious in containing Iran and gained us little in the way of support from our European allies, as France continues to run interference for Iran’s Atomic Ayatollahs.

Kerry voted to extend the toothless ILSA in July 2001, but how will he enact real sanctions against Iran, and it’s client states such as France, without deepening the rift betwen the EU and the US?

Kerry’s vague response is not satisfactory in the dangerous waters we find ourselves treading since 9/11. Kerry cannot finesse foreign policy issues, such as Iran and North Korea with sound bites. In this election voters must have a clear understanding of his policy and intended implementation. Should Kerry be elected, he must hit the ground running, as the 9/11 commission report proves, we can no longer gamble on a President-elect’s learning curve.

Are bloggers at conventions deluding themselves into thinking they’re “real” journalists because they’ll be out in the fray, reporting from the field?

Are they in fact “the sizzle, not the steak” and nothing but glorified “Internet gossips,” journalistic wannabes who use dirty language, name call, don’t care about accuracy and in some cases even take money to express certain opinions?

To hear Alex S. Jones explain the bloggers’ unique role in the two upcoming conventions that is indeed the case. Jones is director of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. And he seemingly doesn’t think much of bloggers.

But before we get to his truly remarkable and strangely disdainful commentary in the Los Angeles Times Op-Ed section — revealingly titled “Bloggers Are the Sizzle, Not the Steak
Convention seats do not turn Internet gossips into journalists” — here’s a view of what is really at the heart of his criticisms:

In every profession there is a certain amount of dues paying. As someone who worked in the news media as a freelance, a fulltime contributor overseas, and on the staffs of two chain-owned newspapers, I can attest that there are certain hoops the journalistic establishment expects those who will be blessed with a forum to comment must jump through.

I always tell people about when, a few years after I left journalism school, I was in Spain writing for the Chicago Daily News, the Christian Science Monitor and other publications. A major news magazine hired me to help them out on legwork and sidebars on the last few months of the Franco regime. By then I had written for some two years in India and five months in Spain. One of the magazine’s big correspondents looked at me and said: “That’s a good story you wrote. But you can’t cover this if you haven’t covered City Hall.”

I almost said “What do you mean I can’t cover this? I AM COVERING IT NOW..” (Today I would say it). But he was resentful that I hadn’t gone through “the system” yet. That’s what Jones is basically suggesting about bloggers at conventions:

Bloggers will be covering the conventions WITHOUT jumping through the hoops. Without the editors (for better or for worse). Without being under the corporate pecking order which may entail advancing through layers of political gamesmanship. Without having gone through the organizational advancement required to be given a prominent forum to comment on big issues. And with freedom — and an instant audience not provided for by a big corporation.

So there’s lots of RESENTMENT on the part of some because bloggers (perceived as nobodies without journalistic status) are doing it, not through the normal channels…and they will HAVE AN AUDIENCE. Writes Jones:

The Democrats and the Republicans are inviting a limited number of bloggers — those witty, candid, irreverent, passionate, shrewd and outrageous Internet chroniclers — to their 2004 conventions. It’s a gesture of respect for the growing influence of the blogosphere, and if ever there were events ideally suited to bloggers, the heavily scripted and tensionless conventions top the list.

But make no mistake, this moment of blogging legitimization — and temporary press credentials — doesn’t turn bloggers into journalists.

Political conventions have become festivals of faux harmony and candidate image-building, which makes them marvelous targets for blogging’s candor, intelligence and righteous wrath.

However, bloggers, with few exceptions, don’t add reporting to the personal views they post online, and they see journalism as bound by norms and standards that they reject. That encourages these common attributes of the blogosphere: vulgarity, scorching insults, bitter denunciations, one-sided arguments, erroneous assertions and the array of qualities that might be expected from a blustering know-it-all in a bar.

He notes that the “mainstream media” has cut back on its coverage and that there could actually be a big audience for blog provided convention news, then adds:

Presumably many Americans, especially young ones, will look for something with more spice and feistiness, which means they may well be looking at blogs and no doubt adding their own kibitzing via the medium’s famed interactivity. This can be fun, and it can also be important. It was political bloggers and their fans who insulted and harassed and eventually embarrassed the major media into paying attention to the comments suggesting racism that Mississippi’s Sen. Trent Lott made at South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party. Media coverage forced Lott’s resignation as Republican leader in the Senate, but it was bloggers who badgered the media until they did their job.

Journalists increasingly read blogs to pick up tips. Blogs have become a network of capillaries that feed the nation’s veins of information. For that reason, blogging’s freewheeling, unfettered style makes it a juicy target for manipulation.

In these early days, blogging still has the charm of guileless transparency, which in the blogosphere means that everyone — no matter how cranky or hysterical — is presumed to be speaking his or her mind with sincerity. It is this air of conviction that makes bloggers such potent advocates.

However, if history is any indicator, such earnestness will attract those who would exploit it, and they include some canny, inventive people. There is already talk of bloggers who would consider publishing items for cash and commercial blogs that tout products.

Oh really??? Where has THAT been a widespread practice? How many bloggers are taking money from parties or candidates for tailor-made posts? Is there an isolated case? Is this a practice that is widespread or even moderately-spread? Baloney.

That statement suggests Jones basically does not like to see bloggers getting the status of journalists who had to jump through the hoops of journalism schools, go through the “dues paying” at the tiny newspapers and magazines, and work (or brown nose) their way up the corporate ladder to get a shot at covering the conventions — and expressing opinions, whether they be of the right or the left.

Indeed, he increases his criticism of bloggers as his piece progresses:

Blogging is especially amenable to introducing negative information into the news stream and for circulating rumors as fact. Blogging’s fact-checking apparatus is just the built-in truth squad of those who read the blog and howl loudly if they wish to dispute some assertion. It is, in a sense, a place where everyone has his own truth.
With the status conferred by convention credentials, blogging has arrived as an engaging, important new player in the information carnival. But should blogging displace traditional reporting and journalism, as some in the blogosphere predict it will, then the steak will have been swapped for the sizzle. It’s better to have both.

That’s a cop-out ending that is supposed to ease the bite of previous assertions. But it certainly appears as if Jones is annoyed that bloggers are being given the status of “mainstream” journalists at the convention — and that he wants to make sure that a distinction is clearly maintained.

In one sense he’s right: the rules of journalistic confirmation, printing of rumors, etc. don’t apply to and are basically not followed by some bloggers. But the diversity of perspective, the infusion of non-group-think-media reporting (there’s LESS DANGER of Pack Blogging at the convention than Pack Journalism), and writers who have not been whipped into shape by corporate organizations (of the left and right) will be a welcome development.

The same as degree-holding, corporate journalists? No. Deserving of the same attentive reading? Most assuredly YES.

FOOTNOTE: I’m not writing this because I’m covering the conventions. I won’t (I’ll be doing family shows in Wyoming during the Democratic convention and probably be in Connecticut during the Republican one).

It was Courage versus Hate….from the moment they stormed the cockpit to the second they brought down the plane.

Some in the Arab world will make the case that hate won — that Al Qaeda’s merciless terrorists, after murdering the pilots, brought down Flight 93 before the rebelling passengers could get to them. But, in reality, Courage won — because the passengers weren’t going to take it and signalled in that instant that the days of passive passengers trusting thugs who take over their airplanes were definitely over.

The bipartisan 911 Commission report contains a chilling account of what went on board on that plane. It’s a story for the ages.

But it won’t need the impact of ages: as soon as you read it you realize that in that moment when the passengers rebelled, the terrorists job became that much more difficult forever more. You can read it all here but we offer these key highlights from a New York Times report:

——(After Captain and passengers knew about the other hijackings and got warnings about possible attempts to enter the cockpit..JG)Two minutes later, the hijackers attacked Captain Dahl and his first officer.

Unlike the three other hijackings, Flight 93 continued transmitting over the radio during the struggle in the cockpit. The captain or first officer declared “Mayday,” and 35 seconds later, one of them shouted, “Hey, get out of here get out of here get out of here.” Later, passengers reported seeing two bodies outside the cockpit, injured or dead, probably the pilots….

—-A lot of the passengers used cell phones to call the ground.

—They were stormed by the passengers. And they knew it. And they knew they were losing…so:

At three seconds after 10 a.m., Mr. Jarrah is heard on the cockpit voice recorder saying: “Is that it? Shall we finish it off?”

But another hijacker responds: “No. Not yet. When they all come, we finish it off.”

The voice recorder captured sounds of continued fighting, and Mr. Jarrah pitched the plane up and then down. A passenger is heard to say, “In the cockpit. If we don’t we’ll die!”

Then a passenger yelled “Roll it!” Some aviation experts have speculated that this was a reference to a food cart, being used as a battering ram.

Mr. Jarrah “stopped the violent maneuvers” at 10:01:00, according to the report, and said, “Allah is the greatest! Allah is the greatest!”

“He then asked another hijacker in the cockpit, `Is that it? I mean, shall we put it down?’ to which the other replied, `Yes, put it in it, and pull it down.’ “

Eighty seconds later, a hijacker is heard to say, “Pull it down! Pull it down!”

“The hijackers remained at the controls but must have judged that the passengers were only seconds from overcoming them,” according to the report, which seems to indicate that the hijackers themselves crashed the plane. “With the sounds of the passenger counterattack continuing, the aircraft plowed into an empty field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at 580 miles per hour, about 20 minutes’ flying time from Washington, D.C,” according to the report

.

So there you have it: hijackers consumed with hatred for the West and the United States, determined to use an airplane as guided missle, in control of a plane after murdering the pilots and seeking their own and the passengers’ deaths. Courageous passengers of all backgrounds and sexes, not sitting back and taking it. THOSE PASSENGERS launched the war against terrorism…in that plane.

In the end, the hijackers — knowing they would lose control of the plane — in their final contemptuous act thinking they would “win” by crashing it into the ground and killing everyone. So they aimed the plane down. And when it was over, the passengers’ souls ascended and the terrorists souls descended into eternal damnation.

And the story of Flight 93 lives on in history.

Over at Spanish blog HispaLibertas, Manel writes on an interesting commentary by a former Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden, Per Ahlmark. I found a copy of his commentary in English, which shows that not all Swedes are neutered Germans. Ahlmark writes on the rise of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism (if you care to make that distinction) and the linkeage he sees with the also rising and rabid anti-Americanism. Steven den Beste wrote on this subject before, and I added some thoughts of my own here.

Ahlmark opines that the rise of anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism alike, is formed by a kind of blindness, combined with a strange mixture of alienation, guilt, and fear toward both Israel and America

Millions of Europeans resist seeing Israel as a country fighting for its survival. Israel cannot afford to lose one major war, as it would mean the end of the Jewish democratic state. But huge numbers of Europeans believe that something is fundamentally wrong with the Israelis: they never compromise; they prefer using military means to solve political problems.

Something similar is at work in the European attitude to the US. Look at Europe, many Europeans say, we have eradicated wars, dangerous nationalism, and dictatorships. We created a peaceful European Union. We do not wage war; we negotiate. We do not exhaust our resources on weapons. The rest of the planet should learn from us how to live together without terrorizing each other.

It is sadly true. It is frustrating discussing with an average European on the matter, and moreso if you hold up the theory that their lack of experience or remembrance (for Eastern Europeans luckily, this is far less the case) to ever having to fight for their freedom and democracies, makes them out of touch with the realities of this world. Inevitably it gets greeted by looks of utter disbelief, leaving you inmediately discarded as a war-loving right-wing nut. Ahlmark addresses this sentiment as follows, and explains how it is fictional:

As a Swede, I have heard such pacific boasting all my life: that neutral Sweden is a moral superpower. Now this bragging has become the EU’s ideology. We are the moral continent. Call this the “Swedenization” of Europe.

Yes, today’s EU is a miracle for a continent where two modern totalitarian movements - Communism and Nazism - unleashed rivers of blood. But what Europe forgets is how those ideologies were overcome. Without the US Army, Western Europe would not have been liberated in 1945. Without the Marshall Plan and NATO, it would not have taken off economically. Without the policy of containment under America’s security umbrella, the Red Army would have strangled the dream of freedom in Eastern Europe, or brought European unity, but under a flag with red stars.

To deal with the threat of terrorism, and other world events where freedom is pitted against totalitarianism, Europeans have constructed their own world, Ahlmark notes.

Instead of supporting those who fight international terrorism, many Europeans try to blame the spread of terrorism on Israel and the US. This is a new European illusion. Spain’s latter day appeasement à la Munich arises from this thinking.

It explains why Europe seeks to align its policies with this illusion, more and more openly calling for the ‘War on Terror’ to be seen as a judicial affair, with more attention to root causes. The same is happening in Spain as official government policy, just recently.

To explain the roots of all this, Ahlmark turns to British writer Ian Buruma, who claims that Europe’s anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism stem from guilt and fear, leading to ‘fat guts’ at home and pacifism abroad. He sees the visible merger of the two in the term ‘neocon’, something I absolutely subscribe to and I resent the term fully because of it.

The two world wars led to such catastrophic carnage that “never again” was interpreted as “welfare at home, non-intervention abroad.” The problem with this concept is that it could only survive under the protection of American might.

Extreme anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism are actually merging. The so-called peace poster “Hitler Had Two Sons: Bush and Sharon,” displayed in European anti-war rallies, combines trivialization of Nazism with demonization of both the victims of Nazism and those who defeated Nazism.

Much of this grows from a subconscious European guilt related to the Holocaust. Now the Holocaust’s victims - and their children and grandchildren - are supposedly doing to others what was done to them. By equating the murderer and the victim, we wash our hands.

This pattern of anti-Zionism and anti-Americanism returns again and again. “The ugly Israeli” and “the ugly American” seem to be of the same family. “The ugly Jew” becomes the instrumental part of this defamation when so-called neoconservatives are blamed both for American militarism and Israeli brutalities and then selectively named: Wolfowitz, Perle, Abrams, Kristol, etc. This is a new version of the old myth that Jews rule the US.

Europe needs to stop and take a close look at where it is heading. It needs to revisit the idea that ‘History is over’, and the concept of ‘Just War’. It needs to accept its history, and understand that its reaction to it has been flawed, setting Europeans up to repeat it, rather than avoid making the same mistakes ever again.

As for the US’ part, they need to get tough with Europe. I guess that’s why I’m in favor of replacing NATO with new, purpose-oriented alliances with separate European nations. Like a parent that after fifty years decides it’s time for Junior to move out of the basement and get a life of his own, The US need to push Europe out into the real world. Junior won’t move out by himself.

Winds Of Change just now posted on the same subject, which makes for a good accompanying read.

First published at Southern Watch.

The most underreported and unexplored story of the entire presidential campaign has been John Kerry’s time as an anti-war protester. Here’s a guy who is selling himself to the American public as Sgt. York reincarnated and yet the same press which spent weeks hyperventilating over the unsupported & insubstantial “George Bush AWOL” story has shown scant interest in digging into Kerry’s Post-Vietnam days.

However, there are a plethora of great angles for front-page stories out there. Kerry spoke from the back of the same pick-up truck as hated anti-war protester Jane Fonda, Kerry was present at a VVAW meeting where they “discussed and voted (against) an assassination plot against pro-war U.S. senators”, Kerry’s first Purple Heart turned out to be an accidentally self-inflicted scratch that was fixed with a band-aid which is particularly significant since his three purple hearts got him out of Vietnam and into the anti-war movement well before his tour of duty should have ended, all of Kerry’s former commanding officers think he’s unfit to be President, Kerry claimed that he committed atrocities in Vietnam, etc, etc, etc.

If Kerry were a Republican instead of a Democrat — which would mean that the press would really go after him on this stuff instead of burying it — all the baggage from his time as a Vietnam War protester would be enough to torpedo his campaign.

Think I’m exaggerating?

Well, imagine what would happen if Kerry’s war record got the scrutiny it deserved. Think about what a month of articles featuring devastating quotes, like the ones compiled by groups like Swift Boat Veterans For Truth, would do to the Kerry campaign if they regularly appeared on the front pages of the “A list” papers like the New York Times, the WAPO, USA Today, & the Chicago Tribune…

“In 1971, when John Kerry spoke out to America, labeling all Vietnam veterans as thugs and murderers, I was shocked and almost brought to my knees, because even though I had served at the same time and same unit, I had never witnessed or participated in any of the events that the Senator had accused us of. I strongly believe that the statements made by the Senator were not only false and inaccurate, but extremely harmful to the United States’ efforts in Southeast Asia and the rest of the world. Tragically, some veterans, scorned by the antiwar movement and their allies, retreated to a life of despair and suicide. Two of my crewmates were among them. For that there is no forgiveness.” — Richard O’Mara

“I served in Vietnam as a boat officer from June of 1968 to July of 1969. My service was three months in Coastal Division 13 out of Cat Lo, and nine months with Coastal Division 11 based in An Thoi. John Kerry was in An Thoi the same time I was. I’m here today to express the anger I have harbored for over 33 years, about being accused with my fellow shipmates of war atrocities. All I can say is when I leave here today, I’m going down to the Wall to tell my two crew members it’s not true, and that they and the other 49 Swiftees who are on the Wall were then and are still now the best.” — Robert Brant

“In a whole year that I spent patrolling, I didn’t see anything like a war crime, an atrocity, anything like that. Time and again I saw American fighting men put themselves in graver danger trying to avoid… collateral damage. When John Kerry returned to the country, he was sworn in front of Congress. And then he told my family — my parents, my sister, my brother, my neighbors — he told everyone I knew and everyone I’d ever know that I and my comrades had committed unspeakable atrocities.” — David Wallace

“I served with these guys. I went on missions with them, and these men served honorably. Up and down the chain of command there was no acquiescence to atrocities. It was not condoned, it did not happen, and it was not reported to me verbally or in writing by any of these men including Lt.(jg) Kerry. In 1971, ‘72, for almost 18 months, he stood before the television audiences and claimed that the 500,000 men and women in Vietnam, and in combat, were all villains — there were no heroes. In 2004, one hero from the Vietnam War has appeared, running for President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief. It just galls one to think about it.” — Captain George Elliott, USN (retired)

“(Kerry) encouraged our enemies to rebuild and hang on when they were near defeat, as they were after the tet offensive in 1968. Did you know our POWs had John Kerry’s words quoted to them by their interrogators?” — Retired U.S. Navy SEAL captain with service in Vietnam, John Bailey

“John Kerry’s recent admissions caused me to realize that I was most likely in Vietnam dodging enemy rockets on the very day he met in Paris with Madame Binh, the representative of the Viet Cong to the Paris Peace Conference. John Kerry returned to the U.S. to become a national spokesperson for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, a radical fringe of the antiwar movement, an organization set upon propagating the myth of war crimes through demonstrably false assertions. Who was the last American POW to die languishing in a North Vietnamese prison forced to listen to the recorded voice of John Kerry disgracing their service by his dishonest testimony before the Senate?” — John O’Neil in May, 2004

The fact that John Kerry, a man who trashed the military so badly in his testimony before Congress that the Vietnamese played Kerry’s words to our POWs in an effort to break their will, is now portraying himself as a champion of the military who can be trusted to lead America because of his Vietnam war experience, is practically beyond belief. As Mark Steyn once said of Kerry, “He spent the Seventies playing Jane Fonda and he now wants to run as John Wayne.”

If Kerry wants to play up his combat time and his medals, I have no complaints. He did put his life in danger, he did win medals, and he deserves credit for that. But, there were a lot of soldiers who fought in the Vietnam war who fit that description and Kerry smeared their good names, trashed their reputations, and stood shoulder to shoulder with anti-war protesters who thought our soldiers were human garbage. As far as I’m concerned that in and of itself makes John Kerry unfit to be the President of the United States.

Gary Farber’s home blog is Amygdala.

Transcript here of the press conference of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, better known as “the 9/11 Commission.”

Will you listen, or will you be partisan?

GOVERNOR KEAN: As we said at the outset, we look back so that we can look forward.

Our goal is to prevent future attacks. Every expert with whom we spoke told us an attack of even greater magnitude is now possible and even probable. We do not have the luxury of time. We must prepare and we must act.

Read The Rest…

Media Research Center has a great bias alert today regarding the coverage of the Sandy Berger investigation, particularly regarding the shift of coverage from what Berger did and what the investigation reveals to the timing of the leak.

This article in this morning’s Boston Globe caught my eye:

The article is subtitled “Kerry tries to deflect Republican attacks” where it might just as easily subtitled “Republicans try to deflect Kerry attacks” or “Republicans and Democrats trade attacks.”

The author consistantly spins the language of the article to imply that Kerry and his advisors are innocents being baraged by Republican attacks, while a careful reader might pick up on the fact that many of the attacks by Republicans are responses to attacks on the President by Kerry or Kerry advisors and surrogates.

The article begins by repeating a Kerry claim that the White House leaked the Berger investigation. The author doesn’t mention until the tenth paragraph that Kerry has offered no proof at all for his allegation, apart from the fact that several high-level Repubicans had lunch together beforehand. I’ve heard several high-level Democrats will meet next week in Boston. Will the author consider that meeting “proof” that every attack by every person who attends the DNC is part of a coordinated effort conceived by Kerry, for which Kerry is responsible?

It continues: “President Bush, meanwhile, used the White House bully pulpit yesterday to elevate the Berger controversy to ‘a very serious matter,’ prompting Democratic outcry that the president was hyping an ongoing criminal inquiry into Berger’s actions to deflect attention from an independent commission’s report on the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which is expected to be released today.”

Without having the context, you might think the President went out of his way to make a statement about the investigation, and that this statement was part of some action on the part of Bush playing up this scandal. In fact, Bush did not bring this topic up — it was the first question asked by a reporter at an unrelated, routine press availablity with a foreign leader:

“Q Thank you, Mr. President. President Clinton suggested that perhaps politics was behind the disclosure of the Sandy Berger investigation. Do you have anything to say about that? And, also, when did you learn about this probe?

PRESIDENT BUSH: I’m not going to comment on this matter. This is a serious matter, and it will be fully investigated by the Justice Department.

Q When did you learn, sir, if I may?

PRESIDENT BUSH: I’m not going to comment on it. It’s a very serious matter. It will be fully investigated by the Justice Department.”

The author might easily have rewritten the paragraph to reflect that Democrats has already begun making allegations of a political timing to the leak, and Bush, when asked about the Democrat attacks, said “This is a serious matter, and it will be fully investigated…” rather than implying that attacks began with Republicans and Democrats were merely answering these attacks. The author never mentions that Bush didn’t initiate the topic. It hardly seems like use of the “bully pulpit” to promote a story.

The article goes on to recap and quote Kerry campaign advisors attacking Republicans for allegedly attacking Kerry campaign advisors. For example, there is a laughable paragraph from Joe Wilson:

“‘The Republicans are trying to tar me as a surrogate to John Kerry, just like they’re trying to tar Sandy Berger, because they can’t beat Kerry on the issues,’ said former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who is involved in a dispute with the Senate Intelligence Committee about his investigation of Iraq’s prewar nuclear weapons program. ‘Right now, I’m a member of Kerry’s foreign policy advisory group, but I’m spending most of my time fighting against the Bush camp.’”

No mention is made of the unanimous, bi-partisan findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee, or the Bulter Report, both of which would put Wilson’s allegations in their proper light. If Wilson was “tarred”, it was a bi-partisan, even international, effort.

The author later states: “Another chief target is a close Kerry friend and