“See tape as boost for Prez”:

“In final hours, Bush mailings display images of burning World Trade Center”:

One Nation Under Bush:

Bush-backers-only policy riles voters at RNC rallies:

Uniform Standard:

The Last Straw:

Last Wednesday, Liberal U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (Dem.California) came to my hometown trolling for votes. Since our town is only about 9 miles from the border, our continuing lack of border security is of great concern. I went down to the local Eagles’ Lodge, got credentials, and managed to ask the senator a couple of questions. Boxer’s recorded responses are transcribed below:

EdWonk: Senator, why doesn’t the Democratic Party support using our military to help seal our borders against the waves of illegal immigrants that continue coming accross?

Boxer: Well, actually, we have a much stronger border patrol than we ever had, and I have in the past said that we should use whatever assets that we have….

EdWonk: Would that include our military?

Boxer: Unfortunately, if you talk to George Bush, he doesn’t have enough military now..ah..in Iraq…and so we’ve got major problems.

EdWonk: So, are you saying that you support using our military?

Boxer: No I didn’t! That’s what you said..I said…I said that we need enough people to make sure that we secure the border and I have always had that position.

Having said that, Boxer abruptly turned away and returned to her talking points about the upcoming Presidential election.

Boxer’s non-answer is just another example of Washington’s continuing neglect of our southern frontier. Some have mentioned The Posse Comitatus Act as a reason why the military can’t be mobilized to defend our border. However, as with any other federal law, that Act may easily be amended to allow for border defense.

While Washington ignores the problem, illegal immigrants continue flooding across our practically undefended border. What is to stop a group of terrorists from infiltrating that wide open frontier? Only after a catastrophe will we (once again) hear the words that are always said afterwards, “Why wasn’t something done?”

Transcript cross-posted from, “The Education Wonks”

The German Picture Magazine “Bild” has covered the US election - and endorsed Bush.

The UK “Guardian” has infamously tried to sway the vote against Bush in a battleground state.

But neither the UK, nor Germany can possibly match the intense excitement that all Australians feel at what’s going to happen on November 2nd, 2004. This contest is one of the most important events this year from Australia’s viewpoint, and many Australians would say it’s more important than our own elections, held in October.

Australians everywhere will be glued to their TV sets and radios, and in this, one of the great gambling countries of the world, literally millions of people will be betting on the outcome. Some only a dollar, others (literally) millions. Virtually every Government and Commercial Office will be running sweepstakes on this crucial issue, who is going to win and by how much. It’s that important to us.

My personal prediction of the winner of the race ? Well, let’s put it this way : the winner will have a face like a horse, and not be from Texas. I’m not going for the favourite, as I think it’s way too close to call.






I’m going for Vinnie Roe, by a nose.

Oh yes, and in the other race that day? Hopefully, like the election we had that the MSM said was “too close to call”, the incumbent by a landslide. But I wouldn’t bet on it.

The following is a small extract from an article over at AEBrain, the Blog.

It helps when reading this to be familiar with the album “War of the Worlds”.

Now imagine a certain Democrat candidate for the US presidency singing it…

Take a look around you at the world we’ve come to know
Does it seem to be much more than a crazy circus show
Maybe from the madness, something beautiful will grow
In a brave new world, with guidance from the UN,
We’ll start… we’ll start all over again!
All over again! All over again! All over again!

The US domination of the Earth is fading fast,
And out of the confusion a chance has come at last,
To build a better future from the ashes of the past,
In a brave new world, with guidance from the UN,
We’ll start all over again!

Look, man is born in freedom, but he soon becomes a slave,
In cages of convention from the cradle to the grave,
The weak fall by the wayside but Progressives will be saved,
In a brave new world, with guidance from the UN,
We’ll start all over again!

I’m not trying to tell you what to be,
Oh no, oh no, not me…
But you’ll see at a glance, that we should learn from France,
They’re gonna have to build this world anew
And it’s going to have to start with the EU … OUI!

I’m not trying to tell you what to be,
Oh no, oh no, not me…
The proles with feeble SATS, they NEED aristocrats,
They’re gonna have to build this world anew
Yes and we will have to be that chosen few…

Just think of all the poverty, the hatred and the lies,
And imagine the destruction of all that you despise,
Slowly from the ashes the phoenix will arise,
In a brave new world, with guidance from the UN
We’ll start all over again!

Take a look around you at the world you’ve loved so well,
And bid that aging empire, AmeriKKKa farewell
It may not sound like heaven but at least it isn’t hell
It’s a brave new world, with guidance from the UN,
We’ll start, we’ll start all over again!
All over again! All over again! All over again!
I’VE GOT A PLAN!

It’s unfair, unjust, grossly exaggerated, satirical, and I fear all too accurate.

Beldar, a notorious solicitor and participant in unpublicized horatory activities, has a tongue-in-cheek post that’s worth a read in these hyper-partisan times:

“What’s more, his daughter Alex is a self-admitted practicing thespian, and has even accepted money for public performances of such acts! Indeed, you can purchase videos of her public exhibitions of thespianism on certain internet websites, which modesty forbids me to link.”

There’s a serious subtext to this, and it sits in an historical reminder of elections and political games that my American friends might benefit from. So set a spell and let me tell you a funny story about George Smathers and the 1950 Florida Democratic Primary for the Senate, a story that Beldar links to at the end of his spoof post. Let’s get a good look at some real political hijinks… and maybe get a bit of perspective on the current election, too:

Continue Reading “Elections, Slander, Hijinks… & Perspective”

For me, there’s one bothersome aspect to the entire ‘debate’ about stem cell research swirling around currently.

It isn’t discomfort that the proponents of the research are making pie in the sky claims of potential cures for people that cling to any possibility of relief from devastating conditions. The claims may be much more science fiction than science probability - but their point about ‘who knows what research may turn up’ seems a valid point of debate.

What bothers me is the way that the issue is framed in the misleading fashion of intimating that no federal funding means a ban on the research altogether.

Which is not the case. There is no ban on a private firm that wishes to invest the money to conduct embryonic stem cell research. The research can take place.

The proponents of federally funded embryonic stem cell research just want the government to pay for it.

Not that the proponents of the research (and this method of funding) want that (the issue that it’s a money trick) to be the forefront and central point of discussion.

Which to me indicates a massive campaign of basic deception on the part of people supposedly seeking truth and knowledge. The may be seeking it, but is it such a great idea to start this entire ‘quest for truth’ on a disingenuous basis? Also, with indications beginning to appear that embryonic stem cells may not be the all curing panacea golden miracle solutions their advocates claim them to be raises this question - to me at least - if this avenue in fact holds as much promise as they claim, why haven’t the major pharmaceutical research outfits plowed tons of money into something that would be a tremendous profit generating vehicle? Where is the free market interest in it? It’s extremely crass, but ultimately the bottom line - how much would someone pay to get up out of a wheelchair? Or how much could their insurance be made to pay? Quite a lot, I would think.

No, the argument isn’t really about conducting the research at all, it’s about having the taxpayers foot the bill for it. And a lot of those taxpayers do, in fact, have fundamental moral objections to this type of research. But federal funding, particularly in the forms such as Prop 71, is a whole lot easier way to get cash in the short term than from a corporation or investors looking for results.

To the researchers, it is merely a question of ease of funding, and job security. Proposition 71 - 300 billion over 10 years. A 10 year revenue stream? You don’t have to explain anything other than ‘we’re working on it!’, and there’s no requirement to offer a guarantee of a useful end product? What a deal! Little wonder the scientists are clamoring in favor of the idea.

But it doesn’t make it any more fundamentally noble or moral than somehow convincing a host of desperate people to vigorously campaign that I should be given huge sums of taxpayer money to go to Vegas and work a craps table.

Heck of a proposition if you can swing it, but it doesn’t make it right, and it doesn’t make you noble, either.

This isn’t a struggle over morality, or an effort to rob the sick of hope. It’s a money trick. Using Quadriplegics, Paraplegics, Diabetes patients, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s patients as the poster images of the argument.

Being against using federal dollars for this goose chase isn’t the heinous part - using those patients to pull on the public slot machine of government is.

The latest and apparently last theory that Kerry and his media allies have settled on is to attack Bush’s execution of the War on Terror, including both the Iraq war and Afghanistan; the theme of the attacks has been that Bush is incompetent, which is taken now as received wisdom beyond challenge by fact. Go read Greg Djerejian’s long essay on this point, and yesterday’s shorter Wall Street Journal op-ed (for a similar analysis, see Dan Darling on the Washington Post’s effort to argue that the Iraq war and anti-Iran hardliners undermined the al Qaeda manhunt). Both contribute to a few of the key points that need to be borne in mind in evaluating the Bush Administration’s performance:

1. War is a difficult and complex endeavor, requiring the making of scores of decisions large and small. Many of those decisions are, by their very nature, made on the basis of severely incomplete information, fraught with uncertainty and likely to have lethal consequences if they go wrong - and often if they go right, as well. The military acronym SNAFU got that way for a reason. Bush, by leading the nation in wartime, is certain to make more mistakes, and with worse consequences, than any peacetime president.

2. The history of wars, in fact, is almost unbroken in the making of catastrophic misjudgments by even the best of wartime leaders. Certainly if you review the records of Lincoln, FDR and Churchill, three of the models of civilian leadership in war, they and their generals and civilian advisers made numerous errors that cost scores of lives, many of which in retrospect seem like obvious blunders. I’d like the critics who formerly supported Bush and have now abandoned him to at least admit that on the same grounds, they would have voted for Dewey in 1944 and McClellan in 1864.

3. More specifically to the issue at hand, in almost all cases, the decisions by Bush and his civilian and military advisers involved avoiding alternatives that had their own potential bad consequences, and the critics are judging these decisions in a vacuum. The decision to disband Saddam’s army and undergo a thorough de-Ba’athification is a classic example, cited incessantly by critics on the Left. But what if Bush had kept that army together, and they had acted in the heavy-handed (to put it mildly) fashion to which the Ba’athists were accustomed, say, by firing on crowds of civilians? Isn’t it an absolute certainty that all the same critics would be singing “meet the new boss, same as the old boss,” accusing Bush’s commitment to democracy as being a sham and a cover for a desire to set up friendly tyrants to keep the oil pumping, that we’d hear constantly about how we’ve alienated the Iraqi people by enabling their oppressors, how we showed misunderstanding of the country by leaving a minority Sunni power structure in place over the Shi’ite majority? Wouldn’t we hear the very same things we hear now about Afghanistan, about using too few US troops and “outsourcing” the job, or the same civil-liberties concerns we hear when we turn over suspects for interrogation to countries without our restraint when it comes to torture? Don’t insult our intelligence and try to deny it.

The same goes for many decisions. More troops? We’d hear that this is a heavy-handed US occupation. I mean, we heard something like that when Giuliani put more cops on the street in New York, let alone a foreign country. Like most conservatives, my preference would have been to go hard into Fallujauh in April. But even if the alternative decision to hold off until there could be significant Iraqi participation in the assault was wrong, it was not an illogical one, but rather a decision made with the patience and foresight to consider the long-range political consequences in Iraq of differing military approaches.

4. Many of the decisions at issue here, from specific ground commanders’ decisions to secure particular sites to Tommy Franks’ call on Tora Bora, were decisions principally made by people lower in the chain of command, many of them in the military. This is not to say that Bush, as the head of that chain of command, is not ultimately responsible to the voters for those decisions; he is. But it is to remind people that they are not second-guessing solely the judgments of a small coterie of the president and civilian advisers, but the entire chain of command. Tom Maguire makes this point explicitly with regard to Tora Bora:

5. Much of the criticism has focused on the idea that Bush needs to admit more errors, and that Kerry would be better at recognizing and admitting mistakes. Djerejian zeroes in on an argument made by David Adesnik and Dan Drezner:

As a professional researcher, I think I simply find it almost impossible to trust someone whose thought process is apparently so different from my own.

In theory, I am sure that Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld all believe in evaluating the relevant data and adjusting their decisions to reflect reality. Thus, when I say that I object to the way that this administration makes decisions, I am saying that I do not believe that it has lived up to the intellectual standard it presumably accepts. [emphasis added]

As an initial matter, admitting mistakes, especially in wartime, is overrated, particularly if that means (1) admitting a decision was wrong before you have all the information to reach a final conclusion about it, or (2) making a public self-analysis that gives useful information to the enemy. How often did Churchill, battling daily to keep up the fighting spirit of the British, go on the radio to say, “sorry folks, I blew it again and got a bunch of people killed”? I tend to think that Bush made a big mistake of this kind when he conceded the point last summer on the inclusion in the State of the Union Address of British charges that Saddam was trying to buy uranium in Africa; as it turned out, the Brits stood by their report, and Saddam really did send an envoy there to do precisely that.

The more important point in wartime is the ability to recognize what’s not working and change tactics or, if appropriate, strategies. Djerejian cites several examples of Bush doing precisely that, most notably with the firing of Jay Garner but also extending to expanding the number of troops on the ground.

In any event, where, I would ask, is the evidence that Kerry is better at admitting mistakes than Bush? This is a guy who brought all sorts of political grief to himself by stubbornly refusing for three decades to admit that he was wrong to repeat false charges, under oath and on national televison, that smeared his comrades in Vietnam as guilty of pervasive war crimes. Has Kerry admitted he was wrong to oppose nearly every aspect of the foreign policy strategy that President Reagan pursused to great effect in the closing and victorious chapter of the Cold War? Has he admitted he was wrong to oppose the use of force to kick Saddam out of Kuwait in 1991? Maybe I missed something, but I don’t even recall him admitting he was wrong for trying to slash the intelligence budget in the mid-1990s following the first World Trade Center bombing. Indeed, one of the most common threads throughout Kerry’s behavior in this campaign has been his unwillingness to take any personal responsibility for mistakes, from blaming his speechwriters for things that come out of Kerry’s own mouth to picayune things like blaming the Secret Service when he falls down on the slopes. As Jonah Goldberg notes, Kerry’s “liberal hawk” backers may argue that the decades of bad judgment in Kerry’s past are rendered inoperative by September 11, but Kerry’s stubborn insistence that he hasn’t changed in response to September 11, and that he had the right answers all along even when he wrote a book in 1997 that barely mentioned Islamic terrorism, gives the lie to the notion that Kerry is a model of self-reflection. Even the man’s own supporters can’t seriously defend the proposition - on which many of them heaped well-deserved scorn during the primary season - that Kerry has been consistent from the start on whether Saddam was a serious threat that justified a military response. Yet there Kerry stands, insisting to all the world what nobody believes, that he hasn’t changed his position. Preferring Kerry to Bush because Bush won’t admit mistakes is like preferring fresh water to salt water because salt water is wet.

In any event, will Kerry somehow change, grow in office, shed a lifetime of bad judgments and blanching at the use of American power, suddenly stop valuing diplomacy as an end and the status quo as the highest virtue? Just because Bush changed in office means nothing. First of all, Bush was a guy who had already proven his willingness to change and admit his problems when he quit drinking, had a religious awakening and basically overhauled his whole approach to life in his forties; Kerry can show no similar example of a willingness to change. And Kerry is now in his sixties, six years older than Bush in 2000, and while Bush may count September 11 as a life-changing event, Kerry had already had his, in Vietnam. Kerry’s foreign policy world view was set decades ago, both by the example of his diplomat father and by Vietnam. The fact that Kerry has been malleable and vascillating over the years, clear a pattern though that may be, is no reason to think that he will suddenly re-examine his approach to accept the need for the United States to lead a continuing effort to overturn the corrupt, rotten and deadly status quo in the Arab and Muslim worlds.

6. The final charge is that Bush’s errors would be forgiveable if he had done more, earlier, to explain the risks and burdens of war to the American people. Of course, this has nothing to do with the execution of the war, but political leadership is important, and in many ways it’s much more the president’s job than is the decision to use X number of troops to seal off a particular location. First off, the charge that Bush argued the war would be easy is refuted by virtually all his speeches, in which he said over and over and over again that we were in for a long haul, and there would be difficult times ahead. Of course, that has long since become obvious from events, and in any event we really were not in a position before the war to know precisely how it would all play out. But I will agree that he never gave a Churchillian “blood, toil, tears and sweat” speech specifically about Iraq, and that many hawks in and out of the administration underestimated in their public arguments the difficulties of a post-conquest insurgency (then again, many doves told us that we’d be bogged down with thousands of casualties taking Baghdad). Of course, the war itself, up to and through the fall of Baghdad, was as much of a “cakewalk” as a real life shooting war against a substantial enemy can ever be; the problem is simply that we didn’t broadcast the coming insurgency (which, by the way, would have had the effect of greatly encouraging the insurgents).

In the end, that’s what this argument is all about - not the difficulties of war, which are well-understood, but simply a political argument about the use of speeches to predict the unpredictable. Moreover, on that ground, again, there’s no reason to think Kerry would be better; after all, Kerry is the guy who won’t even admit to this day that his war vote was a vote for war. Kerry’s the guy who wasn’t able to predict that his campaign would have to prepare for attacks by people who’d been holding a grudge against him for 30 years.

No, Bush hasn’t been a perfect war leader, but show me who was. He’s had tough calls to make, and unlike Kerry he can’t shift with the wind without consequence. Progress has been frustrating at times, because our overall enemy - the forces of terror and tyranny, of radical Islamism and fascist gangsterism - have recognized that an American victory in Iraq would be a defeat for them in the war on terror. You know that, I know that, they know that. But that just makes it all the more urgent to stick with a guy who believes in the mission, and who has proven that he will keep on trying new approaches until the job is finished, rather than looking for the door.

I am honestly amazed that the race appears to be so close. There is a very real possibility that Senator Kerry, who I consider to be one of the worst Democratic contenders for a very long time, might get elected.

So let’s assume that he does.

First, let’s look at what happens in Iraq. Now, a lot of Iraqis will be very dissapointed, but perhaps some good will come of it - if they can see that an orderly transfer of power is possible, and that Americans of goodwill, both Republicans and Democrats, accept the results. It may bode well for the Iraqi elections in January.

On the other hand, it will certainly give Al Qaeda a much-needed boost, both in Iraq and elsewhere, even more than the fiasco in Magadishu did. Still, it would be a sad day for the USA if they let terrorists dictate policy.

And Kerry has A Plan.

A Plan to get everybody together, just as he got the Security Council together before the war, a plan that would lead to Peace.

Except he didn’t. The claim of a meeting with the whole Security Council was, let’s be charitable, a little exaggerated. In fact, he did meet with some (not all) of the permanent members, and some (not all) of the others. And not at the same time, these were individual pow-wows, there was no Grand Meeting. If you look carefully at Kerry’s statements, he never said there was - quite. It’s a bit like his earlier claims to have been in Paris to meet “both sides” to talk Peace back in the 70’s. I’m reminded of the Blues Brothers quote:

“We like both kinds of music, Country and Western”

Because it turns out he met with Both Sides all right - the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong. Literally. They were the two sides he was referring to when he said it.

So Kerry convenes a meeting to extort, sorry, exhort help in Iraq, via the UN. But how is he to pursuade those not already in Iraq? After all, during the campaign, the DNC and even Kerry’s sister has been roving around the world telling everyone how dangerous Iraq is, and how any involvement there would make the nation concerned a bigger target. Every country would ask, simply, what’s in it for them? Well, one of the very few policies Kerry has made clear is that he’s against this “free trade” rubbish. Perhaps threats of a new set of tariff walls, subsidies and taxes on imports might do the job. This would also help shore up his support with the AFL-CIO etc. and re-animate, for a short while at least, the inneficient industries of the rust belt. Taxes on offshore jobs would also be quite popular, especially in Silicon Valley. Bribery and coercion are the tools the US uses, at least, according to Kerry’s own speeches. He can be expected to use both, that’s the way he genuinely believes the US operates. Historically, he’s been at least partially right. Kerry wants to get the USA back to business-as-usual, after all. The Good Old Days of the 1990’s, where Terrorism was just a nuisance (unless you were in a US warship or Embassy). A matter for the courts to handle.

Now would this be sufficient to get military forces in Iraq? I’d say, probably yes, especially from the third world. Donations of a few million to various Swiss Bank accounts would no doubt be very pursasive to many “Maximum Leaders” and “Presidents-for-Life”. US Marines would be replaced by even larger numbers from places like Sierra Leone, Belgium, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe. Some, like the Belgians or Indians, would be professional - though the Professional Dutch watched helplessly the massacre of Srebeniza. But others would be rather less able, and as hopelessly corrupt as the Kleptocracies that spawned them. Or the UN itself, for that matter.

Given such nations’ past record in “peacekeeping”, this does not bode well for the Iraqis. There have been UN successes - such as the liberation of East Timor. But those have all been accomplished by nations already in the Coalition of the Willing. They at least know where Bush stands. But Kerry? It is, as they say in Paris, to laugh.

Kerry also says he will raise a brace of new Divisions, some 40,000 troops. This may well be doable - Bush is adding 30,000 new troops, after all. That’s as many as the US armed forces say they can handle and still retain their professional edge. The question is, who’s going to volunteer? Kerry’s anti-military attitude is so well known that over 70% of the US military is voting against him. Bush may be able to inspire enough people to join up, but will Kerry? In fact, the US Military, should Kerry be elected, is going to face its greatest test. Here’s someone who openly consorted with the enemy in time of war, who appears to have had a general discharge rather than an honourable one as the result, is a self-confessed war criminal (though possibly innocent despite that), and whose team has stated quite blatantly that they don’t care what the soldiers’ morale is, they have to do as they’re told. And he’s the new Commander-in-Chief.

Kerry’s voting record appears to be the most anti-military (though he’d say anti-militaristic) of any Senator - though some Representatives (for example, Barbara Lee) beat him there. Not by much though.

I’d expect the number of people serving in the US military to, not exactly implode, but re-enlistments would dramatically decrease. And new enlistments? What new enlistments?

Kerry would not re-introduce the draft - no way he’d get the legislation through Congress, for one thing, and because the US military is absolutely dead-set against the idea. One area he might look at is the scandalously low pay of people at the lowest end of the spectrum in the military. An across-the-board increase of, say, $10,000 (before tax) for every person in the military might do it. Given a target troop strength of ~1 million, this would cost only $10 Bn a year, (assuming tax witholding and additional bureacracy would balance out). Now of course, this might mean a few corners would be cut. Instead of people joining to defend the nation, they’d be in it to “be all they can be”, not actually fight anyone. And should there be a real risk that they may get hurt, say, by terrorist actions, then they might join, but would they fight? Maybe. If they don’t believe in what they’re fighting for though, I’d say it’s likely they’d be a lot less effective than the current personnel mix.

As for Kerry’s domestic policy - I don’t know. And being Australian, I frankly don’t care too much I’m afraid. It doesn’t affect me, as long as there’s no great economic disaster (because if the US economy sneezes, the World economy catches cold). From what I’ve read of the Republican and Democrat platforms, in the US I‘d almost certainly vote Democrat in the main. Americans reading this article should bear that in mind, I’m only talking what a walking Foreign Policy Disaster Kerry is, not what he’s like on domestic issues.

As for Bush, has he been so conspicuously incompetent that he should be thrown out anyway? Again, on domestic issues, I don’t know. But on Foreign Affairs - including Defence - he’s got the “runs on the board” as we say in Oz. He’s pursued Free Trade agreements, giving a little where he had to (e.g. the disgraceful Steel subsidies) but getting back on course at the earliest possible opportunity. More to the point, his mettle was tested like that of no other President (with the arguable exception of FDR) by 9/11. He didn’t nuke anyone. He caused the liberation of Afghanistan, something even Kerry didn’t vote against (though Kerry voted against going to war over Kuwait). He finally lanced the dangerously infected boil that was Saddam Hussein’s regime, and did so with unbelievably low casualties. I mean, really, how much more successful could he have been? How many major terrorist attacks have taken place on American soil since 9/11?

Jeez, I’m against Bush’s policies on Gay Marriage, I’m against his policies on Drugs, I’m against his policies on Abortion, and Stem Cell Research, and… but let’s get a sense of proportion, shall we?

One criticism that the DNC has made was that Bush had no plan to “Win The Peace”. Well, exactly which Peace are we talking about? The one where there was an Iraqi Civil War? The one where there were millions of civilian casualties streaming over the borders? The one where large parts of Iraq were contaminated with radioactivity and/or persistant chemical weapons, anthrax spores and smallpox?

All of these were possibilities, as far as we knew. Plans were made to deal with them, as best we could. Had we known, been 100% sure, that we’d have the “Catastropic Success” that we did have, less time would have been spent searching for great arsenals of WMDs and ignoring comparitively trivial issues like museums and conventional ammo dumps. But would that have been wise, given the terrible consequences if we had been wrong?

The Dirty Little Secret of the Republicans, and the Bush Administration, is that the planning for the Post-War phase was very, very sketchy. It had to be, as they couldn’t know even remotely what would happen during the conflict. It may have been just a few guiding principles: try to install an interim administration under a known friend (Chalabi seemed a good bet). Prevent a Civil War. Aim for elections in 2006, earlier if possible. Rebuild the infrastructure, and install a Democratic Base in the region, one that would hopefully spread virally. De-fang the WMD stockpiles and arrange for safe disposal.

As events took their course, Chalabi was a bust, and so the plan was altered in detail, though remained on track in the large. How many people would have predicted Iraqi elections taking place less than 2 years after hostilities opened? How many people would have predicted an interim Iraqi government would be in power less than 18 months after the war began? There were two major surprises - the lack of stockpiles of WMDs (only one WMD was ever used against US troops), and the intensity of the post-war Terrorism from outside forces. We got suckered by at least one Iranian disinformation campaign. Our intelligence was worse than we feared, even worst-case (though in the right direction - we thought there were large quantities of WMDs when there were only a few, rather then the reverse). Mistakes were made that shouldn’t have been, like not getting enough body armour and up-armoured vehicles. But despite this, the plan for elections was adhered to, a plan that had been announced very early on in the post-war phase. The troops now have the body armour, because Kerry got out-voted.

Ye Gods And Little Fishes, people, what the hell more do you expect? Things have gone wrong - looting, devastation of infrastructure, but what about the tens of thousands of military casualties we didn’t incur? What about the hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties that just did not happen, that should by all military norms and expectations have occured? What the Bush administration, and the US military, has done is little short of miraculous, and you are bitching about it because it’s not perfect? Well, it’s your country, and your right to do that, and I have no right to criticise you if you do. But I don’t understand it, that’s for sure.

As a concluding remark, I’d like all readers to ask themselves an honest question. It doesn’t matter whether you’re Republican, Democrat, or Independant. My question is - if a Democrat had been in the White House, and had done what Bush has done, would you vote for him?

Unlike many in the GOP, if Kerry gets in, I don’t predict disaster, ruin and catastrophe. Thanks to Bush, the Iraqi forces may just be strong enough to stand unaided (they’ll have to try, that’s for sure). The UN Kleptocracy will get a boost, but although that offends my sense of justice, that may do no great harm in the long term, just represent a missed opportunity. Assuming China doesn’t go after Taiwan, or North Korea stage a nuclear showdown, or Iran decide to match its rhetoric with action and incinerate Israel - none of which I think is likely - then Kerry may be fine in the job. He may even do a better job than Bush. As for attacks on the US mainland, well, 95% of containers don’t get inspected on entry currently, but that’s because they’ve been evaluated before they leave for America. Only the ones with any possibility of a terrorist content get manually searched, in fact, that’s where the resources are concentrated, as they should be. This policy was introduced under Bush, and I don’t see Kerry changing it any time soon. The encouragement that Al Qaeda would receive would increase the risk of losing a few cities in coming decades, but not by much, and the risk is low.

It would make as little difference as if the anti-war Wilkie had defeated Roosevelt in 1940. A few years added to the war’s duration, a few million more dead, a few tens of millions denied democracy for an additional decade, no great effect in the long term. Wilkie became FDR’s greatest ally after Pearl Harbor, just as Bush, Rice, Cheney or Powell would be for President Kerry should disaster occur. We’ll still win - despite Kerry, rather than because of him, but win we will.

Now please go read James Lileks on the subject.

So this is how it ends … defying all probability there’s been no break for either candidate. We’re as evenly divided today as we were four years ago. Fitting isn’t it. The punditocracy is frantically scrambling to put together last minute predictions … but all we can find are a few scenarios.

If Bush wins Florida but loses Ohio … If Kerry wins in Pennsylvania but does not win in … If there’s an upset in Michigan … If there’s an upset in Iowa … and on and on and on.

Full Article

Documentary evidence has been uncovered that ‘connects the dots’, as it were, regarding John Kerry’s Vietnam era publicity grabbing antics against the Vietnam War.

These documents indicate that there was a much closer relationship between the leadership of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, the group Kerry played front man for along with proven fake Al Hubbard, and the Communists actively seeking to defeat the United States.

While the known public record has indicated that Kerry returned from meetings in Paris and became an advocate for the very same demands the Vietnamese Communists were publicly demanding from the US Government as terms for withdrawal from the conflict, these documents indicate that the activities of the VVAW, and other groups, including the American Communist Party, were taking their lead from the Vietnamese.

John Kerry as a Communist agent provocateur during the Cold War? His pattern of behavior during this time doesn’t seem to make this too hard to swallow - his advocacy of nuclear freeze (a movement and idea heavily promoted and supported by the Communists in the West); his seemingly unwavering opposition to the actions of President Reagan; his visit with, then advocacy for the nascent Communist regime in Nicaragua, his lambasting of the removal of Marxist murderers and their Cuban muscle from Grenada; and his 1991 opposition to the removal of the psuedo-Stalinist Ba’athist strongman Saddam from Kuwait.

Sort of makes his mid-90’s “hawkish” period look almost like an opportunistic attempt to jump ship on the losers of the Cold War struggle.

Appears to be only three possibilities here - that John Kerry is either an aging active Communist Agent - that John Kerry is a willful idiot and was a willing puppet of the Communists during the Cold War - or that John Kerry is a shallow political opportunist riding whatever wave he perceives is heading towards the beach at the time, regardless of the consequences other than his own personal advancement.

The end result is pretty much the same - America now has the opportunity to vote a man into the highest executive office in the land that was apparently blatantly acting, for substantial portion of his public career, as a de facto agent for a foreign power.

So is this election the first election of the Age of the War on Terror, or one of the final epilogue struggles of the Cold War? Either way, Kerry needs to lose.

Nov. 4 will mark the 25th anniversary of the start of the Iran Hostage Crisis – a day when Iranian extremists and militants seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and captured several dozen U.S. diplomats, servicemen and civilians and began a 444-day siege that captivated Americans and the world.

Command Post contributor Ed Moltzen interviewed the youngest of the 52 hostages who had been held for that period, Kevin Hermening, who at the time was a 20-year old Marine assigned to guard the Tehran embassy. Since 1981, Hermening has become active civically in Wisconsin, becoming a school board and twice running unsuccessfully for U.S. Congress as a Republican.

CP: Does it seem like 25 years ago?

Hermening: From my perspective, there is so much that has occurred in my life since then. It rarely is given a second thought by me. It doesn’t mean that it’s ignored – especially in the context of current events. Obviously there are a lot of current events that have affected the way that our country has – and in many aspects hasn’t – dealt with the threat of state-sponsored terrorism.

CP: What are your most vivid memories of your time being held against your will by the Iranian students?

Hermening: Probably the uncertainty of knowing how it would all end, or if it would come to an end. There was so much emotion and drama and trauma during that time. Of course, the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan, the Iraq-Iran war began. There was the failed attempt to rescue us, resulting in the deaths of eight men who perished in the Iranian desert.

CP: Being a marine, did it make it more difficult for you?

Hermening: There were many aspects of it - including being young - that were involved. There was an element of adventure and excitement surrounding it. It doesn’t mean we were any less fearful. But when you’re 20 years old and you’ve been through military training you kind of feel invincible. How quickly that false image is shattered. Bravado is important, but only if it doesn’t result in your getting yourself foolishly killed. I tried to escape once – I never really had an opportunity later – that resulted in 43 days in solitary confinement.

CP: Hostage and then-CIA agent William Daugherty wrote a book two years ago in which he describes 444 days of mostly solitary confinement, and suggested he and the other military personnel taken hostage had it worse out of any Americans. Were you mistreated?

Hermening: After the failed escape attempt by a few of us, about a week later they had a mock execution that occurred in which they stormed into our rooms in the middle of the night, strip searched us and had us standing out in the hallway. Some of the most radical elements ran up and down in the hallway – we were spread eagle – and they were shouting out execution commands at the top of their lungs.

Meanwhile, others were in our rooms searching out for anything we may have had, including weapons. Although we know now anything can be a weapon.

CP: How did you plan the escape?

Hermening: Joe Subic, Steven Lauterbach and I – in my case, I never made it out of the room. They had taken us to a different building for showers. They put me into the only room in the ambassador’s residence that was a safe-room….I never made it out of the room. They immediately handcuffed me and put me into another room, in which I was put into solitary. Five feet by ten feet.*

CP: Were you able to form a bond, or friendships, with any of the other U.S. diplomats and civilians that lasts today?

Hermening: Alan Golancinksi was one. Don Cooke and I, we kind of became friends for the short time we were together. I was roommates with Alan right after I got out of solitary. That was a real relief to me to get out of solitary confinement. Some of the other guys in Vietnam who were in POW camps for seven years – my experience pales in comparison. It doesn’t mean it was easy, but I would never try to suggest our (situations) were similar.

CP: You’ve spoken of your admiration for Ronald Reagan and your opportunities to meet him. But some hostages, in returning from Iran, have said they were measurably cooler toward President Carter – whom you also met after you were freed. What’s your assessment of Carter?

Hermening: I would describe it that way, too. But for me, it was in my pre-political days…I would describe it – there was a cool reception given to him. For me, I would describe it as being honored to meet a president. I do think that President Carter is one of our best ex-presidents, though I would describe his presidency as a failed presidency. I fail, personally, to see the merits of putting the interests of 52 individuals ahead of the nation’s national security. I really do believe our situation was one of the first terrorist acts in a series that have victimized Americans worldwide. I would further say that when President Carter agreed to return $9 billion of frozen Iranian assets to the terrorist government under the Ayatollah Khomeini, as Charles Scott said, Iran walked away with no cost in blood or treasure. In essence, the terrorist organizations, those who put a face on terrorism – al Qaeda, Hamas and others – they get their support from governments. By not extracting a penalty, or anything punitive, I think it simply encouraged more acts against Americans.

CP: Looking at Iran today, some of the students who took over the U.S. embassy are now in positions of power, including Tehran Mary – who is an Iranian vice president – and one of the leaders who the New York Times has even described as a reformer…

Hermening: I just read recently that some are in the government, some are in the opposition – today – and some are in prison. That’s, in my opinion, what you get when you look at a group of anarchists which is really what terrorism is. Anarchy.

CP: Many of the same people who took you hostage are now seeking to expand a nuclear program for Iran. Is this something that angers you? What are your thoughts?

Hermening: That should scare the heck out of every American and anybody in the West and, I would submit, their Muslim neighbors. The other thing lost in the broader context is, that Iranians are not Arabs. Except or Israel and Iran, every other country over there is Arab or Arabic. Iranians are Aryans. Despite their common interest in a religious background, Islam, they do not share a cultural connection. Hence the acrimonious relationship between Iraq and Iran and some of their neighbors to the east. I was one of the few people I know, I think, who understood why (Gen. Norman) Schwarzkopf and Colin Powell decided not to take out Saddam in 1991. We weren’t prepared to deal with, as a country, militarily or diplomatically, creating a vacuum in Iraq where Syria and Iran could consumer that country. And with all the difficulty this President Bush has had in winning the peace, at least he is willing to fortify the forces. There are 16,000 forces whose job is to protect the oil fields from sabotage. I personally don’t see that as a bad thing.

CP: Do you believe there are enough pragmatists in Iran to ever see a successful reform movement?

Hermening: I think there are some forces over there that are interested in breaking the stronghold the mullahs have on their country. I don’t know. They’ve had, I believe, about two dozen government buildings burned by government protesters in the last two months.

CP: Anyone under the age of 25 – including what could be millions of voters – weren’t even born yet when you were held captive. If you could have them understand one thing about that time, what would it be?

Hermening: I think it would have to include what I consider to be a reality: that there are individuals and entire governments who are so opposed to Western values and freedom that they are willing to use every means possible to bring about our destruction. Even to the point they are willing to support financially those who are willing to come into our own country to make us fearful and uncomfortable without our own borders.

CP: Do people still stop you, and ask questions about your experience?

Hermening: It’s become less and less, just by virtue of the fact that I am more active in other things. I’ve done a lot of public speaking. I speak on Veterans Days and Memorial Days in schools. I make civic appearances. The sad irony is that people care more about what we had to eat (while being held hostage) and whether I’ve had any nightmares since I got back – which I haven’t – than they do wondering how did this happen to begin with, and how can we protect Americans here and abroad in light of what they’re trying to do today?

CP: Yet at the same time, the same holds true in Iran: Anyone under the age of 25 doesn’t remember what happened back then – they weren’t yet born. How does this work in our favor?

Hermening: I think that there is some hope, because young people do not have a historical attachment to the Ayatollah Khomeini…

Once you open up the Freedom Genie, the Technology Genie – whether it’s satellite dishes, or the Internet, I think it’s next to impossible to put it back. And that’s why I personally hold out a great hope for many of these Middle Eastern nations to become more democratic. Even for China to try to contain what is likely to spread like wildefire – and that’s economic development and recognition of personal liberties and civil liberties – I don’t think you can permanently keep that down.

In Iran, it was a very strong sense that the United States was meddling in the internal affairs of their country. The mullahs were very fortunate. They almost had the perfect storm: the Shah was getting ill, President Carter being a particularly weak president not standing by our ally, and we left (the Shah) and all of his supporters out to dry. This is the big concern that somebody like myself would have in a change of the administration in Washington right now. – would be people like the president of Pakistan, who has really gone out on a limb at the risk of his own political survival (although he has the iron hand of military power), Musharraf is using (the military) to support the war on terror. If we have a total reversal of policy, what’s it going to mean for the folks who have gone out on a limb? Personally, I think it’s going to mean an even more unstable world over time.

I hate to sound like a partisan – even though I am – but I think in the big scheme of thigns I think it is more in our nation’s advantage to stand for something principled in a part of the world that only understands force and, I should say, respects strength.

CP: Is there any one solution for the U.S. to have a normal relationship with Iran?

Hermening: The problem is we are not in the cold war nay more. Countries such as France and Germany, and some of the more longstanding alliances, play less of an important role to our national security, and our way of life for that matter, than they once did. After all, 25 years ago and prior to that, most of our international trade and international exchange students came from largely western countries. Our economic interaction occurred mostly with Western nations. That’s because that’s where most of the wealth of the world was located…

Egypt and Pakistan play much more of a role to us today. They are the new France and Germany as an example - economically, politically, culturally perhaps not yet. I don’t think it’s a bad thing for us to have as an objective to spread freedom around the world.

Many, of late, have spoken of the disintegration and desperation of the Democrat party. Democrats such as Zel Miller look and ask, “Where has my party gone?” The party increasingly reveals itself as an embattled coalition of dogmatic single-issue focused groups practicing gender politics, racial politics, sexual-orientation politics and defining themselves along whatever narrow lines allow themselves to claim a sufficient modicum of victim hood to guarantee their bona fides. How has the party of Jackson, FDR and JFK come to this point, where open partnership with the most crass of propagandists and collaboration with avowed enemies of the state are seen as legitimate paths to power? It may, at first blush, sound a paradox, but the Democrats have found themselves at this point by a simple path. They won.

Let’s turn the situation around, and posit a typical Republican contemporary of Eisenhower or Roosevelt (the Teddy variety) peering into his crystal ball at 2004. It is they, I believe, who would cry, “Where has my party gone?” After almost a half-century of control, the social conscience and ideals of men such as FDR have become so universally and subconciously accepted by successive generations that these once “Democratic” ideas are now common in both parties. That a Republican majority would not debate how to remove the government dependency created by Medicare but, rather, to only debate how much the benefits will be increased is all that needs be said. Some might attribute this sentiment to crass pandering by politicians to their constituency, but these ideals are honestly deep in the heart and soul of many a Republican. So, Democrats, in the dawn of the 21st century, have a real party, because your victory over the Republicans is confirmed. And, if this were a movie, this would be the triumphant celebration at the end. Little dancing Democrat Ewoks singing their obnoxious little song as the patriarchs of the Democrat Force, Jackson, FDR and JFK, look on approvingly.

The problem, though, is that unlike a film life goes on. And so, unfortunately, do the Democrats, rapidly becoming an anachronism that, having won the major battles and war of ideas now find themselves, instead, more like the apocryphal stranded Imperial Japanese soldier, unaware the War is over, left fighting their own isolated insignificant battles. As evidence, look only to those individual groups mentioned earlier and evaluate the “vitally important” work they are doing today. At the turn of the last century, the NAACP had to do all it could just to guarantee that a man of color could exercise his right to vote without ending up dead the next morning. They fought the scourge of violent racism embodied by the KKK. In the ’50s and ’60s they marched in the face of dogs, fire hoses and hostile police to say, “I AM A MAN!” Today they trouble themselves about a silly flag and insensitive language. In the 1900s women even trying to vote were harassed, often beaten and jailed. Some died. In WWII women, as a group, began to gain the respect as people that society, as a whole, had long denied them. Today, feminist groups emphasize latent sexism in a patriarchal society and push to change words like “councilman.” The Democrats have been too successful for their own good.

The conversion of what are called “neo-cons” is not so much a winning of Democrats by the conservative argument as it is a logical political realignment of Democrats to the “new-Democrat” party. People who used to identify themselves as Democrats but now call themselves Republicans echo the same thought over and over again. “I didn’t leave the Party, the Party left me.” As I said, life goes on. Since the life of the Democrat Party relies upon fighting the Republicans, as the Republicans move more left so, too, must the Democrats. But, while there are still true believers, more and more rank and file Democrats find themselves looking at the Party’s “important” issues and end up just shaking their heads.

I’m not a political scientist, but I’ll go out on a limb here and say that this year’s election, like the past two in 2000 and 2002, will end up shocking the Democrat Party. They will see a big win for a President they envision as the embodiment of evil itself (at least that brand of evil that doesn’t actually jail, kill, torture or otherwise ruin its opponents’ lives). They will see a significant minority vote for the Republicans (I’ll go on a limb and call it >20% based upon nothing other than anal extraction). They will see Republican gains in both houses of Congress. And they will pull out their hair and rend their clothes and cry to the heavens “why?” never realizing what it really means. Because in the defeat of today’s Party, the ghosts of the Democrat Jedi masters of the past will celebrate their victory.

The following was written by Alex Epstein of the Ayn Rand Institute and originally appeared here. It is reprinted with permission of the author.

Every Election Day politicians, intellectuals, and activists propagate a seemingly patriotic but utterly un-American idea: the notion that our most important right—and the source of America’s greatness—is the right to vote. According to former President Bill Clinton, the right to vote is “the most fundamental right of citizenship”; it is “the heart and soul of our democracy,” says Senator John McCain.

Such statements are regarded as uncontroversial—but consider their implications. If voting is truly our most fundamental right, then all other rights—including free speech, property, even life—are contingent on and revocable by the whims of the voting public (or their elected officials). America, on this view, is a society based not on individual rights, but on unlimited majority rule—like Ancient Athens, where the populace, exercising “the most fundamental right of citizenship,” elected to kill Socrates for voicing unpopular ideas—or modern-day Zimbabwe, where the democratically elected Robert Mugabe has seized the property of the nation’s white farmers and brought the nation to the verge of starvation—or Germany in 1932, when the people democratically elected the Nazi Party, including future Chancellor Adolph Hitler. Would anyone dare claim that America is thus fundamentally similar to these regimes, and that it is perfectly acceptable to kill controversial philosophers or to exterminate six million Jews, so long as it is done by popular vote?

Contrary to popular rhetoric, America was founded, not as a “democracy,” but as a constitutional republic—a political structure under which the government is bound by a written constitution to the task of protecting individual rights. “Democracy” does not mean a system that holds public elections for government officials; it means a system in which a majority vote rules everything and everyone, and in which the individual thus has no rights. In a democracy, observed
James Madison in The Federalist Papers, “there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention [and] have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property.”

The right to vote derives from the recognition of man as an autonomous, rational being, who is responsible for his own life and who should therefore freely choose the people he authorizes to represent him in the government of his country. That autonomy is contradicted if a majority of voters is allowed to do whatever it wishes to the individual citizen. The right to vote is not a sanction for a gang to deprive other individuals of their freedom. Rather, because a free society requires a certain type of government, it is a means of installing the officials who will safeguard the individual rights of each citizen.

What makes America unique is not that it has elections—even dictatorships hold elections—but that its elections take place in a country limited by the absolute principle of individual freedom. From our Declaration of Independence, which upholds the “unalienable rights” of every individual, among which are “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” to our Constitution, whose Bill of Rights protects freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the freedom of private property, respect for individual liberty is the essence of America—and the root of her greatness.

Unfortunately, with each passing Election Day, too many Americans view elections less as a means to protect freedom, and more as a means to win some government favor or handout at the expense of the liberty and property of other Americans. Our politicians promise, not to protect the basic ights spelled out in the Declaration and the Constitution, but to violate the rights of some people in order to benefit others. Today’s politicians want subsidies for farmers—by forcing non-farmers to pay for them; prescription drugs for the elderly—by forcing the non-elderly to pay for them; housing for the homeless—by forcing the non-homeless to pay for it. The more “democratic” our government becomes, the more we cannibalize our liberty, ultimately to the
detriment of all.

This Election Day, therefore, we should reject those who wish to reduce our republic to mob rule. Instead, we should vote for those, to whatever extent they can be found, who are defenders of the essence of America: individual freedom.

——

Alex Epstein is a writer for the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, CA. The Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

As the election draws closer more thoughts from concerned citizens show up in my inbox. This was forwarded to me by a friend, written by a woman he met on a mission to Israel, who describes herself thus:

I am a physician in the Baltimore area. This will be the first election in which I will vote for a Republican president since I was first eligible in 1984. I do not agree with the overwhelming majority of Mr. Bush’s domestic policy, but that currently takes second place to the issues discussed in the essay [or, below].

— Judith Weiss

We are nearing the end of the bitter campaign season, and I am writing to offer what will be my final thoughts. If anything, my views on this matter have intensified.

While a historical perspective leads one to take campaign promises in general with a keg of salt, one of the few constant themes reiterated by the Kerry campaign is his belief that he will be more successful than Bush in recruiting other nations to our cause, and his reliance on the international community as a desirable arbiter of American policy. The former belief has been almost uniformly refuted by the very nations he plans to call upon; Kerry will receive no significant assistance from any nation that has thus far failed to contribute to the Iraq war effort.

Reliance on the international community, specifically the EU and the UN, sounds like a wonderful policy but is equally problematic, particularly when elements of both institutions have other priorities, and some consider restriction of the American “hyperpower” to be a prime policy goal. Thus the justice of America‚s claims, like the justification for Israel‚s security fence, will be considered secondarily, if at all.

The US will continue to encounter instances where we may feel it necessary to engage in (hopefully limited) military action to defend ourselves and others, but those in the EU and the UN, who believe that military action is always wrong, and that talking will inevitably result in a just solution, whatever the dispute, and whoever the parties to that dispute, will always endeavor to block action, or to delay it to the point where talk is overtaken by action, and reaction becomes considerably more dangerous. This, unfortunately, is the same mentality of the 1930s that led to the realization that Germany was a threat only after Germany had fully rearmed, and then continued to appease hoping Germany would be satisfied. History has shown that this only delays the inevitable, it does not prevent it, and that death on both sides may be exacerbated as a result.

Despite Kerry’s statement that he will not allow another nation to have a veto over American policy, this is effectively in contradiction to his idea of a “global test.” It is difficult to understand at what point Kerry would be willing to take action. Would he, for example, be willing to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities before they are capable of producing a nuclear weapon, even in the absence of UN support? If not, is he willing to risk an Iran supporting terrorist networks like Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah from behind a nuclear shield? An attack on a nuclear Iran would be infinitely more dangerous.

Any physician will tell you that denial and delay in dealing with a serious disease will not make it go away, but will often make it more difficult to treat. I simply do not have confidence that Kerry is prepared to take action without the consent of the global community, and the global community I am certain will never give it. I am not prepared to take the risk that Kerry might, or might not, defend America‚s vital interests based on whether he feels he has tried hard enough to win international support. I respect my friends‚ opinions, and I listen to them, but I do not take a poll every time I make a major decision in my own life. Some decisions simply need to be made because I know them to be right.

Some have ridiculed Bush’s refusal to admit mistakes, his alleged insistence that he is always right. I don’t know whether Bush believes he is entirely right, or whether he prudently refrains from admitting to error from the knowledge that the Kerry campaign would use any admission against him. (The admission of “miscalculation‚” in regards to the Iraq war suggests the latter.)

Supporters of Kerry, on the other hand, boast that he offers a more nuanced policy and (according to the NY Times), takes an in-depth prosecutorial interest in minutiae.

The President of the United States, however, is not equivalent to a third string CIA analyst. The president is a decision maker. One can be brilliant, highly nuanced, and absorb infinite shades of gray, but in the end one must come to a decision. Too many details can sometimes lead to paralysis. It is possible to see many sides of every question, but in wartime - and we are certainly at war with Islamic terrorism - paralysis can be fatal. We have had intelligent presidents in the not too distant past who simply were unable to take decisive action˜and American foreign policy suffered for it. Similarly we have had presidents who many believe were not too bright - perhaps even slipping into dementia - who had a very clear idea of their goals, and were able to put them into effect, to America’s ultimate benefit.

Kerry’s support for Israel has been boilerplate. He has not taken a leadership position on this issue and has made a few troubling statements in the past. The indications so far are that Kerry’s policy towards Israel will be the customary words of support, with harsh pressure administered. There are several reasons to believe this.

First, Kerry has indicated a desire for the US to get “more involved.” Presumably he does not mean pressuring the Palestinians, since Bush is already trying to do that. “More involved” always means pressuring Israel. We saw the result of being highly involved during the Clinton era. Maximal effort on the part of the Clinton administration, coupled with pressure on Israel and maximal Israeli concessions led absolutely nowhere, because the Palestinians were unwilling to make a deal. The Palestinians have shown absolutely no change in their stance, so it is absurd to think that becoming more involved alone will solve the problem. It is also absurd to think that further Israeli concessions, even under duress, will resolve the problem, since the Palestinians have again shown no indication of retreating from their maximalist positions.

Second, the names the Kerry campaign has put forward for possible envoys are extremely troubling. Jimmy Carter, James Baker, Martin Indyk. The first two are not liked in Israel, and all three are associated with previous attempts to pressure Israel. If these men are the indicators of a Kerry policy towards Israel (or at least, are indicative of the positions of those advising him), we are sure of more pressure being put on Israel at a time when this is not at all the appropriate course of action.

Third, it is natural for a new administration to define itself on certain issues by doing the opposite from its predecessor. Bush did this with the Israel-Palestinian issue at first as well. Failure of the Camp David summit led to a sense of futility that a solution could be found, or at least was to be found with intense US involvement. Kerry presumably will want to distance himself from Bush’s policies, which he has so harshly criticized, and this mean more pressure on Israel.

Fourth, given Kerry‚s reliance on international opinion, it is not unreasonable to assume he will be swayed by European insistence on being more “even-handed” in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, and to give the EU and UN a larger role in negotiations, which Israel clearly does not want. It is also likely that Kerry will be asked to offer some gestures of good will to heal the breach with Europe (which, as I indicated above, is not wholly the fault of the US, nor are disagreements unique to the Bush administration), and one of the most likely, and easiest to offer, is a US promise of “even-handedness and increased EU input on the “peace” process.

In a related matter, the Palestinians have delayed submitting a resolution to the Security Council on Israel’s security fence. Bush has made his position on one-sided resolutions very clear. Kerry‚s position is not at all clear. A change in US policy, a series of abstentions, another means of pressuring Israel, could have catastrophic implications for Israel’s future. Needless to say, what passes for “even-handedness” in the EU and the Arab world might be considered suicidal, if not genocidal, in Israel.

Lastly, Kerry appears to have won the endorsement of Arafat and a number of other non-allied Arab dictators. While this certainly does not mean Kerry has espoused their ideology, it does indicate a belief that he will be friendlier to their cause. Now that some pressure is actually being brought to bear on the Palestinians - for the first time - they are understandably upset. But why would we wish that to change? Bush’s policies have certainly had a part in the nascent self-criticism now underway in the Arab world. This can only be a healthy thing for both them and us. Reverting to a European pattern of enabling bad behavior, excusing themselves and blaming others for same, is not at all desirable.

In the past, pressure on Israel would not have been a voting issue for American Jews. Events of the past four years should have changed this assessment. Inappropriate pressure on Israel is now a matter of life and death. Palestinians have made it clear their aspiration of eliminating Israel has not changed; Israel has made all reasonable concessions: there are no more to offer without endangering its existence.

While there are certainly grounds for disagreement on the Iraq War (a whole separate argument), very few rational people would now disagree that this is a war that has to be won, at the risk of allowing Iraq to become a failed terrorist state. Bush has made his intent to win it very clear. Kerry‚s statements have been vague, uncertain, and fluctuant. This in itself is of some concern. At present, Iraq bears no resemblance to Vietnam. But indecisiveness as to our commitment there could very well make it one. An attitude of “setting a timetable” or looking for an “exit strategy,” is implicitly a strategy of defeat. Such a strategy is necessary only once you have decided you have already lost. If Kerry sets his sights solely on withdrawal, he will miss the target entirely: the goal of making Iraq a viable, secure, hopefully democratic state. He will overlook opportunities that may exist to further that goal, and will have created a self-fulfilling prophecy that will endanger Americans and other Westerners for years to come.

Many Jews vote for the Democratic candidate because of concerns regarding civil rights issues and belief that the Democratic Party stands for tolerance, and is therefore inherently friendlier to Jews. Sadly, I no longer feel this is the case. In the name of protecting the rights of free speech, Democrats and many liberals are loathe to denounce the virulent Jew-hatred coming from Muslims, the far left-wing, and the flagrant anti-Semitism festering in many universities. The most outspoken anti-Semitism now comes from the left - rarely from the right, where it is almost unanimously denounced. It is not necessary to give up a belief in free speech to disavow and refute the statements of those preaching hatred, and I have not seen expressions of this on the part of the Democrats.

We are now at war with Islamic terrorism, whether we wish it or not. This war was declared on us in 1998, (1) but we only realized it in 2001. There are many domestic issues important to all of us, but virtually none of these will kill us in the next four years. Terrorists can.

(1) Bin-Laden / Al-Qaeda declared jihad in May, 1998. It was not reported at the time. No one was listening. The embassy bombings in Kenya/ Tanzania were less than 3 months later, on Aug 7, 1998. HOPEFULLY, after Kenya/ Tanzania, intel picked up on it, but it still did not become public knowledge until after 9/11.

The tape of a May 26, 1998, news conference is among 64 obtained in Afghanistan from a source, who said the tapes were found in an Afghan house where bin Laden had stayed. Experts say the collection of tapes sheds new light on al Qaeda’s training, capabilities and mindset.

“By God’s grace,” bin Laden says on the tape, “we have formed with many other Islamic groups and organizations in the Islamic world a front called the International Islamic Front to do jihad against the crusaders and Jews.”

“And by God’s grace,” he says at another point in the tape, “the men … are going to have a successful result in killing Americans and getting rid of them.”

CNN terrorism analyst Peter Bergen, who interviewed bin Laden a year earlier, believes the tape depicts a key moment for al Qaeda.

“They’re going public,” Bergen said. “They’re saying, ‘We’re having this war against the United States.’”

In its latest edition of NEA Today, The National Education Association has strongly endorsed the candidacy of John Kerry for President. Speaking in the name of its 2.7 million members, NEA President Reg Weaver warns,"A vote for the current road will bring more of what we've seen these last four years... School budgets strained to the breaking point by unfunded mandates, more testing, and lack of respect for educators." This message of fear is directed at public school teachers, who constitute a large majority of this union's membership.

Like all other endorsements by the NEA, there is just one problem. It never bothers to ask its gigantic rank-and-file membership who they would like to endorse. In its long history of advocating the Liberal Agenda, the National Education Association has never polled its membership before taking a stand on any issue. The union pleads that effective polling cannot be done due to the enormous size of its membership. They "brush aside" any suggestions to implement such advancements in technology as telephone or computerized polling.

In a form of paternalism that harkens back to the early days of unions, a conclave of leaders endorses a candidate only after the "top bosses" have made their preferences clear.

Unlike other organizations, the top leadership of the NEA is a self-appointed cabal; the rank-and-file never have an opportunity to vote for any of them. Therefore, none of these people enjoy the mandate of the dues-payers. Without this mandate, the union's leadership cannot truly say that they are representative of the membership at large.

Contrary to prevailing stereotypes, all educators are not uniformly liberal in their political viewpoints. Like all other Americans, they adhere to a variety of ideologies. In fact, many of those that teach in k-12 public school systems are surprisingly conservative. Many belong to the NEA simply because they are forced to pay membership dues as required by "closed shop" laws in many states. Witholding payment of dues as a method of expressing disatisfaction is not an option.

Do conservatives actually constitute a majority of the NEA membership? The National Education Association would prefer that we do not know.

If legendary journalist H.L. Mencken was alive today and just starting out, what would he do?

Would he try working his way up the ladder in the newspaper business? Or would he, instead, work for himself and start blogging?

Maybe this is one of those pointless mental exercises, but it provides the chance to look at the real difference today between newspapers and blogs. It provides the chance to figure out who are the real keepers of the legacy of men like Benjamin Franklin and Mencken.

It was Mencken who said the job of a newspaper is to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” But who’s really doing that now? Bloggers or newspapers?

First let’s take a look at the gold standard of American journalism: The Pulitzer Prize.

Last year, the New York Times and PBS’ Frontline collaborated on a piece that ran in print and on TV. (You can read it here.) It’s hard to argue against this piece winning the Pulitzer. The examination of how a large, profitable corporation – McWane Inc. - paid such little regard to its workers’ well-being has all the elements of what in-depth journalism should be. The paper gave it time, resources and space. The writing is compelling and flows. It absolutely comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable:

In the last decade, many American corporations have embraced such a vision of capitalism — cutting costs, laying off workers and pressing those who remain to labor harder, longer and more efficiently. But top federal and state regulators say McWane has taken this idea to the extreme. Describing the company’s business, they use the words “lawless” and “rogue.”

The company’s managers call it “the McWane way.”

Only the people involved in crafting this story know how long it took to put those four sentences together. A good bet: a very long time.

It’s journalism like this that inspires kids in high school and college to get into the business. But is it the exception or the rule? It’s probably not quite either. Here are some more examples of great journalism. Each one of these stories and series must have taken a grueling effort. When you work for an organization with deep pockets, libel lawsuits are always an issue – more so when you’re exposing wrongdoing, corruption or human suffering. You want to make sure you don’t get sued. But these reporters also want to get it right.

It’s easy to rip “MSM” for being biased, self-serving and loathsome. Often, it is. But, come on. There’s more to the story as those stories show. The problem is that these stories aren’t every day events. That’s why they win awards. They stand out.

Now let’s take a look at the best of the blogs. What would Mencken think of them? Do they afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted?

You can’t argue with Strengthen The Good, a collaborative effort of a number of bloggers to put the spotlight on people who need help. Blogs like this even go a step further: They deliver that help.

Who can forget Chief Wiggles efforts to bring toys to kids in Iraq war zones? The effort was even noticed by President Bush.

How about afflicting the comfortable? You can find examples of this faster than you can say, “Rathergate.” Or “Trent Lott.” Or “Ted Rall.” Or the name of anyone ever mentioned on Gawker.

So which wins, newspapers or blogs? Right now it looks like a tie. Newspapers still can hold true to the Mencken rule. But they don’t nearly often enough. There still seems to be too much newsroom bureaucracy and lawyering going on when it comes to important stories.

Blogs don’t really match the depth and texture of good newspapering – yet. But, man, every day bloggers are pounding it.

So where would Mencken turn, as a kid out of school, trying to break into journalism and writing? He would probably still opt for newspapers. He loved the prestige. He loved the access. He would probably be miserable inside today’s politically correct newsrooms. Editors would not even want him today if he couldn’t keep his bigotries under control. But Mencken loved newspapers.

One can only imagine, though, how he would have liveblogged the Scopes Monkey Trial.

(Cross-posted at Late Final.)

— Ed Moltzen

This past week The Truth Laid Bear has been promoting a “blogburst” where individual bloggers channel their favorite heroes of fiction and reality to state why those heroes are voting for President Bush. It’s called Heroes for Bush, and the response has been great: over 25 heroes have appeared on weblogs across the Blogosphere to endorse President Bush’s re-election thus far, including such widely diverse notables as King Henry V, The Tick, Captain James T. Kirk, Rhett Butler, and even Rin Tin Tin!

The effort continues through end-of-day Friday, November 22, so there is still time left to send in a submission if you so choose. Drop by, and check it out!

Last week I posted an essay by a friend, a liberal Jewish New Yorker who is voting for Bush. You can read it here. My friend has more to say.
— Judith Weiss

“Never again.”

As Jews, we teach these sacred words to our children.

We raise millions of dollars and build Holocaust museums throughout the country to spread the message.

We form committees, spearhead educational initiatives, and aggressively reach out to the non-Jewish world to lecture them about their moral responsibility to fight anti-Semitism.

Do we then turn around and vote for the candidate who’s allied with forces intent on Jewish destruction?

Yasser Arafat has endorsed John Kerry.

So has Mahathir Mohamed, the ex-Prime Minister of Malaysia. You remember him. Last year, he hosted the Organization of the Islamic Conference, where he said, “Today the Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them.” and “1.3 billion Muslims can not be defeated by a few million Jews.” He urged his audience of Arab leaders “to plan, to strategize and then to counterattack,” and they leapt to their feet in an ecstatic standing ovation.

These endorsements by Jew-haters and Jew-murderers are not meaningless background noise, as some would you have believe.

They are the logical outgrowth of John Kerry&