Universities and Colleges may now bar military recruiters from their campuses. The New York Times is reporting that the United States Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit (in Philadelphia) has now said that these institutions of “higher learning” have a First Amendment right to keep recruiters off their property.

Ironically, the schools get to keep all the federal funding that they are now receiving.

The rationale? The Idiot Court says that because the military does not allow practicing gays (don’t ask; don’t tell) in the military, then colleges may prohibit recruitment activities in protest.

To add insult to injury, the appeals court cited a Supreme Court Decision (2000) that allowed the boy scouts to bar gay scoutmasters.

We here think that this is judicial activism at its worst.

Specifically, this despicable act can be laid at the door of several law schools, some of which did not have the courage to “go public,” with their asinine lawsuit.

Some might say that obstructing military recruiters from seeking volunteers during wartime is tantamount to treason.

Note To Academia: Has anyone told you people that our nation is at war?

Cross posted from: The Education Wonks

NewsMax offers a roundup of Hillary being to the “right” of Bush on immigration matters: “Hillary Eyeing Immigration as Top 2008 Issue”. There’s no outright statement from her saying if she ran she’d make it a key part of her campaign, but some of the things she’s said might make people think she’s got that in mind. If she makes reducing illegal immigration a key part of her campaign, who would support her and who would oppose her?

On the opposition side would be the de facto left-right alliance that supports massive legal immigration and massive illegal immigration. You can see this alliance at work in the opposition to Arizona’s Prop. 200 or in the categorized list of the 400 companies and organizations that support the AgJobs amnesty program. The members of this alliance include:

• The media. They smear those who oppose illegal immigration as “nativists”, they write editorials supporting illegal aliens taking education dollars from U.S. citizens, they publish “pro-illegal immigration puff pieces”, they ignore the elephant in the room, and on and on.


• Big business: banks, growers, money transfer companies, sweatshop operators, etc. etc. It’s all about the “cheap” labor and the new consumers.


• The Ethnic Industry. All of these are far-left, and many are quite simply anti-American. It includes college professors, politicians trying to increase their power by bringing in new constituents of the same race, and “grassroots” organizations like MALDEF, NCLR, and LULAC. Believe it or not, behind many of these groups you’ll find Ford Foundation money. For instance, UCLA published a “study” advocating voting rights for illegal aliens. The school at UCLA it came from was founded by the Ford Foundation, and the “study” was written by a former president of MALDEF. MALDEF had been more or less created out of whole cloth by the Ford Foundation. (On the other side, 47% of Arizona Hispanics voted for Prop. 200)


• Immigration lawyers. Here’s a tangible example involving Rep. Chris Cannon (R-UT). After reading about his funding, see this.


• The government of Mexico. Partial control of our immigration system has been turned over to a foreign government; what Mexico wants is apparently more important than what American citizens want. For its part, Mexico receives almost as much from remittances (money sent home from workers in the U.S.) as it does from oil; remittances are Mexico’s second greatest source of income. Even if someone is ignorant of our history with Mexico, it should come as no surprise that they claim part of our population as their own, they threaten us with civil unrest if they don’t get their way, their agents criss-cross the U.S. selling ID cards to their citizens despite many or most of the recipients being here illegally and despite the FBI calling those ID cards a terrorist threat, and they are allowed to or encouraged to meddle in our laws.


• Non-corrupt ideologues. A small percentage of Americans support illegal immigration despite not being paid to do so. Almost all of them are far- or very far-left. For a small example, see the comments here (especially those by ‘m berst’) or see this thread. Some libertarians support Open Borders, but even Michael Badnarik opposes illegal immigration despite supporting massive legal immigration.

What about the other side of the ledger?

Here’s who Hillary would get support from:

• The 75% of the American public who support a reduction of illegal immigration. (Pew PDF)

If handled correctly, I think she’d find that the support would far outweigh the opposition, despite the opposition’s clout. For every member of the far left she lost, she’d gain at least one and probably more from the center or the right.

In the words of the Sacramento Bee’s Daniel Weintraub:

I wouldn’t be surprised if immigration became a major issue again, and it will happen overnight if we are attacked by terrorists who are found to have entered the country through the Mexican border. Right now both parties are reluctant to address it. The Democrats seem to believe that illegal immigration is really no different from legal immigration, and the Republicans are afraid that if they focus on it, they will suffer a backlash from Latino voters, as they did in the 1990s. I have always thought that a leader willing to take a calm, rationale look at illegal immigration while lauding legal immigrants would do fine. Seems to me that illegal immigrants hurt legal immigrants by “cutting in line” in front of those who are waiting and by bidding down wages in the entry level jobs that many legal immigrants hold as they try to climb up the economic ladder. Handled carefully, this should be an issue that appeals across party lines.

Thanksgiving in the U.S. is a day of traditions. Here’s one of mine.

Each year since 1961, the day before Thanksgiving in the U.S., the Wall Street Journal has published the same two pieces on it’s Op/Ed page—The Desolate Wilderness, an excerpt by Nathaniel Morton, keeper of the records of Plymouth Colony, describing what he and other Pilgrims saw in 1620—And The Fair Land, a piece by the Journal editorial board. My tradition has been to take time on Thanksgiving morning to read these pieces back to back, reflect on their meaning, and share them with others.

I now extend that tradition to my Command Post family. Enjoy.

The Desolate Wilderness

Here beginneth the chronicle of those memorable circumstances of the year 1620, as recorded by Nathaniel Morton, keeper of the records of Plymouth Colony, based on the account of William Bradford, sometime governor thereof:

So they left that goodly and pleasant city of Leyden, which had been their resting-place for above eleven years, but they knew that they were pilgrims and strangers here below, and looked not much on these things, but lifted up their eyes to Heaven, their dearest country, where God hath prepared for them a city (Heb. XI, 16), and therein quieted their spirits.

When they came to Delfs-Haven they found the ship and all things ready, and such of their friends as could not come with them followed after them, and sundry came from Amsterdam to see them shipt, and to take their leaves of them. One night was spent with little sleep with the most, but with friendly entertainment and Christian discourse, and other real expressions of true Christian love.

The next day they went on board, and their friends with them, where truly doleful was the sight of that sad and mournful parting, to hear what sighs and sobs and prayers did sound amongst them; what tears did gush from every eye, and pithy speeches pierced each other’s heart, that sundry of the Dutch strangers that stood on the Key as spectators could not refrain from tears. But the tide (which stays for no man) calling them away, that were thus loath to depart, their Reverend Pastor, falling down on his knees, and they all with him, with watery cheeks commended them with the most fervent prayers unto the Lord and His blessing; and then with mutual embraces and many tears they took their leaves one of another, which proved to be the last leave to many of them.

Being now passed the vast ocean, and a sea of troubles before them in expectations, they had now no friends to welcome them, no inns to entertain or refresh them, no houses, or much less towns, to repair unto to seek for succour; and for the season it was winter, and they that know the winters of the country know them to be sharp and violent, subject to cruel and fierce storms, dangerous to travel to known places, much more to search unknown coasts.

Besides, what could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wilde beasts and wilde men? and what multitudes of them there were, they then knew not: for which way soever they turned their eyes (save upward to Heaven) they could have but little solace or content in respect of any outward object; for summer being ended, all things stand in appearance with a weatherbeaten face, and the whole country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage hew.

If they looked behind them, there was a mighty ocean which they had passed, and was now as a main bar or gulph to separate them from all the civil parts of the world.

And the Fair Land

Anyone whose labors take him into the far reaches of the country, as ours lately have done, is bound to mark how the years have made the land grow fruitful.

This is indeed a big country, a rich country, in a way no array of figures can measure and so in a way past belief of those who have not seen it. Even those who journey through its Northeastern complex, into the Southern lands, across the central plains and to its Western slopes can only glimpse a measure of the bounty of America.

And a traveler cannot but be struck on his journey by the thought that this country, one day, can be even greater. America, though many know it not, is one of the great underdeveloped countries of the world; what it reaches for exceeds by far what it has grasped.

So the visitor returns thankful for much of what he has seen, and, in spite of everything, an optimist about what his country might be. Yet the visitor, if he is to make an honest report, must also note the air of unease that hangs everywhere.

For the traveler, as travelers have been always, is as much questioned as questioning. And for all the abundance he sees, he finds the questions put to him ask where men may repair for succor from the troubles that beset them.

His countrymen cannot forget the savage face of war. Too often they have been asked to fight in strange and distant places, for no clear purpose they could see and for no accomplishment they can measure. Their spirits are not quieted by the thought that the good and pleasant bounty that surrounds them can be destroyed in an instant by a single bomb. Yet they find no escape, for their survival and comfort now depend on unpredictable strangers in far-off corners of the globe.

How can they turn from melancholy when at home they see young arrayed against old, black against white, neighbor against neighbor, so that they stand in peril of social discord. Or not despair when they see that the cities and countryside are in need of repair, yet find themselves threatened by scarcities of the resources that sustain their way of life. Or when, in the face of these challenges, they turn for leadership to men in high places-only to find those men as frail as any others.

So sometimes the traveler is asked whence will come their succor. What is to preserve their abundance, or even their civility? How can they pass on to their children a nation as strong and free as the one they inherited from their forefathers? How is their country to endure these cruel storms that beset it from without and from within?

Of course the stranger cannot quiet their spirits. For it is true that everywhere men turn their eyes today much of the world has a truly wild and savage hue. No man, if he be truthful, can say that the specter of war is banished. Nor can he say that when men or communities are put upon their own resources they are sure of solace; nor be sure that men of diverse kinds and diverse views can live peaceably together in a time of troubles.

But we can all remind ourselves that the richness of this country was not born in the resources of the earth, though they be plentiful, but in the men that took its measure. For that reminder is everywhere-in the cities, towns, farms, roads, factories, homes, hospitals, schools that spread everywhere over that wilderness.

We can remind ourselves that for all our social discord we yet remain the longest enduring society of free men governing themselves without benefit of kings or dictators. Being so, we are the marvel and the mystery of the world, for that enduring liberty is no less a blessing than the abundance of the earth.

And we might remind ourselves also, that if those men setting out from Delftshaven had been daunted by the troubles they saw around them, then we could not this autumn be thankful for a fair land.

As some of you know, we’ve formed a team called “A Mighty Wind” (we’re also considering “Pajamahdeen”, let us know what you think) for Spirit of America’s blogosphere challenge.

Why that name? Because the focus of our efforts is the project to create Arabic blogging tools and hosting, so that more bloggers like Alaa, Zeyad, Big Pharaoh, The Religious Policeman, Chan’ad Bahraini et. al. can work to join us and make “citizens media” and the blogosphere a tool of freedom in their own societies.

Together, we and they can be a mighty wind for change. You can contribute money here.

We strongly believe that having one unified, thematic team of bloggers promoting the “Viral Freedom” blog tools project will really raise its visibility and give it the momentum it needs to succeed.

If you have a blog, we’re asking you to become part of our team. Make a difference. Click here to join the team, and help our friends in the mideast join the pajamahdeen!

Blogosphere Akbar!!!

Seen on a professional forum, this article by Patrick E. Proctor, President, ProSIM Company. It was written immediately before the assault on Fallujah, and the “embedding” of journalists in US units.

There are three vital ways in which Iraq is COMPLETELY different from Vietnam.

1. South Vietnam was being invaded by another country, that was openly at war with it. Iraq, by contrast, is at war with a radical ideology (violent Islamic fundamentalism), which is anathema to the history of the country over the past two hundred years. One could make the case that it is at war, covertly, with Iran, but I would make the counter-argument that the first time we saw a battalion of Iranian regular infantry in Iraq, it would trigger an invasion of that country. They, of course, know that, so it would never happen. So, while Iran might be supporting the insurgency, and feeding it with zealots, Iraq is NOT at war with Iran.

2. 80% of the people in Iraq (Kurds and Shiites) want, basically, what we want: Iraq to be a successful, prosperous democracy, and the US to leave.
(I base this on the fact that we have NEVER had problems with the Kurds, and we have successfully defeated the brief Shiia insurgency). If the DoD estimate of 20,000 people actively participating in the insurgency is to be believed, then maybe 25% of the Sunnis (and that is being generous) support the insurgency, philosophy, and only 3% of those actually take violent action against us or provide logistical support to those that do. That’s a net 0.08% of Iraqis. By contrast, in South Vietnam, there was a high degree of apathy as to the fate of South Vietnam. While there were those who were fighting for the same thing we were, the vast majority of the country was resigned to its eventual fate.

3. The main effort in Iraq is the information war, and inside Iraq we are winning it. We have successfully transitioned authority to an interim Iraqi government. We have actually deferred or forgone military actions that would be tactically advantageous in deference to the strategic main effort of information warfare: supporting the interim government and increasing the legitimacy and responsibility of the Iraqi Army and Police. By contrast, in Vietnam, information warfare, as a concept, did not even exist. The main effort was killing insurgents, and, later, the North Vietnamese Army. The
resources and effort that went into this main effort dwarfed the “hearts and minds” campaign that was taking place in the country. There was never in instance, of which I am aware, where America deferred in ANY operation to the desires of the South Vietnamese government.

This is not to say we have not made any mistakes in Iraq. In fact, I think that all of the wailing and gnashing of teeth we hear in this country is an indicator of the BIGGEST mistake we have made in this effort.

The strategic center of gravity of the United States, and, to some degree, the strategic efforts of any free country, is public support for its policies and actions. If the populace of a free country does not support its government’s strategic efforts, that country will fail. This is why a handful of evil zealots can go toe-to-toe with the most powerful country in the world. Let’s face it. The enemy is never going to defeat the US Army with car bombs and RPGs. But the true power of these acts does not lie in their tactical impact (which is insignificant), but in their strategic impact, which is profound.

Every dead soldier erodes public support for the war. It breeds more
hand-wringing defeatists that decry the futility of our efforts. And the worst thing is, the US military is, to some extent, making it EASIER for the enemy to hurt us.

Right now, the vast majority of the press covering Iraq sits, fat and happy, inside the green zone, in plush hotels. They pay Iraqi cameramen to go out and get the most gruesome, horrific pictures they can find that day. The more gruesome, the better the pay. And those images get beamed back to the US, where they feed the impression that Iraq is chaotic and out of control.
All it takes is one car bomb a day.

Let’s say, one day, that the US Embassy announces that the American media is right. Iraq just isn’t safe enough for reporters to stay in the green zone.
The only way to insure reporters are protected is to move them out of the green zone and back into an imbedded state in Army units. The 1/3rd of reporters that didn’t run screaming for the airport would get a much different view of Iraq. And that view would put car bombs and mortar attacks in context. Such a viewpoint couldn’t help but get translated to the American people.

That’s my two cents.

Published with the permission of the author.

After the successful approval of Proposition 200 in Arizona, conservatives in California are looking at putting their own proposition together severing services for illegal aliens.

Even with businesses, politicians and churches against the Proposition in Arizona, which requires proof of citizenship when seeking public benefits or registering to vote, it was passed with a fifty-six percent vote approval. An astounding statistic within that approval percentage is that forty-seven percent of Hispanic voters voted in favor of the proposition. This reinforces the fact that the legal Hispanic community is sick of the bad name illegal aliens are giving them and that they are also sick of their taxes being wasted and people jumping ahead of those trying to come to the United States through legal channels.

In Arizona the proposition, which will be ratified on November 22nd, will face a lawsuit by the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund attempting to bar its enforcement.

In California Republicans are more positive on the mandate passing this proposition has delivered.

San Bernardino County Sun

"It's clear there is public support for cutting off benefits to people here illegally,' said Mike Spence, president of the California Republican Assembly, a group pushing a similar proposal in California. "What happened in Arizona is definitely a benefit because it keeps the issue at the forefront.'

...

"This serves as a model for what can be done around the country," Mehlman said. "If government isn't going to be responsive to concerns about illegal immigration, then this is a way of going over their heads."

This is not the first time that a Proposition has been put forth, and approved, in California. In 1994, Proposition 187 was passed with a fifty-nine percent approval rating and went into effect on November 9, 1994.

Proposition 187, Section I.

"provide for cooperation between state and local government agencies, and to establish a system of required notification by and between such agencies, to prevent illegal aliens in the United States from receiving benefits or public services in the State of California."

A preliminary injunction was approved against Proposition 187 on December 14, 1994 -- just 34 days after the people spoke. The preliminary injunction is still in force. ( more info on the injunction ).

There of course are opponents to bringing the issue back up again.

"The passage of Prop. 200 in Arizona obviously gives them media momentum and energizes their political base,' said Nativo Lopez, president of the Mexican-American Political Association. "That's part of the challenge we face."

Lopez agreed: "California is definitely different than Arizona because of the history of Prop. 187."

The real question, he said, is "whether the party leadership and the moderates in the Republican party are going to risk the future of the party by getting behind this type of initiative."

Ahh the shear arrogance of his statement! I would like to direct Mr. Lopez to the forty-seven percent of Hispanic voters that voted for restricting this in Arizona. It is no longer simply a "Racist Issue" as these pro illegal alien groups would have you believe. It is not a racial issue it is an issue of law and taxes. People who are paying taxes for their families services are getting fed up with those taking and taking without giving back.

Politicians in California are of course worried about a potential backlash from the Hispanic community if they support such an initiative, but the people have spoken. They spoke in 1994 with approving Proposition 187 in California and they spoke again in 2004 with Proposition 200 in Arizona. Politicians need to stop fearing this issue and realize that the people want these issues addressed and will support leaders who step up and take on the challenge.

Thomas Galvin tipped me off to this issue.

Originally posted at Diggers Realm

Another attempt at peace in the Sudan has been signed in Nairobi. The Associated Press report passed on by the NY Times offers a glowing account of its prospects, but it doesn’t realize how far its reporting misses the mark. I’ll try and explain a few of the issues I have with the AP’s characterization of the fighting in the Sudan.

Rebel officials and the Sudanese government committed themselves Friday to ending the 21-year civil war in southern Sudan before January, signing an agreement at a special meeting of the U.N. Security Council in Africa.

The 21 year figure they are referring to is the amount of time it has been since former President Nimairi dissolved the Southern Regional government and began moving harder to implement Sharia law throughout the country. This angered many in the South, causing a massive split in the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) between those interested in working with the Khartoum based government for a solution and those interested in seceding from it. But the issue that the peace treaty is trying to address— and the reason that there has been as much attention from the United Nations Security Council as there has been— is the violence in the Darfur province of the Western Sudan. In actuality, that conflict is related only tangentially to the Second Sudanese Civil War, which most experts agree began on a low level in 1983, but escalated dramatically in 1985/1986 after Nimairi was thrown out of power.

Historically, Arab pastoralists in the Sudan (who are essentially nomadic camel herders) have always gone South- where the land is richer- during the dry season. I don’t have a physical map I can put up for you to see, but Northern Sudan is all desert with a very low altitude, and the Northern and Southern Darfur are much more fertile and have land that ranges from 1500 feet above sea level to 3000 feet above sea level, with some isolated areas (like the Nuba Mountains) reaching heights of 6000 feet. Having Arab pastoralists come South during the dry season to use the land was always a source of contention, but the tribal system was usually effective at resolving these disputes by getting the Arabs to pay some sort of tribute to the local tribes for use of their land.

In the 1980’s, with the proliferation of automatic weapons and other light arms, the tribal system of resolving these problems broke down entirely. The Arabs were refusing to pay for what they were taking, and were using violence to ensure they were not challenged. Many of the Africans fled the area, but many more stayed. They began arming themselves, and for several years there were a series of seasonal small-scale engagements between the Arab pastoralists and the African tribal members. By 1989, most estimate that around 5000 members of the Fur tribe (the dominant African tribe in the region) had been killed, and over 40000 displaced.

When the conflict in Darfur began to become entwined in the Sudanese Civil War is when the SPLA split in August 1991 over, among other things, the issue of self-determination. The Nassir faction- led by Riek Machar and Lam Akol- saw an independent Southern state as essential, and the Torit faction- led by John Garang- wanted a unified central government that granted the South degrees of autonomy. Over the years, the Torit faction steadily established itself in the Western area of the Sudan (including Darfur), and the Nassir faction stayed in the East by the Ethiopian border.

In November 1999, Hassan al-Turabi (the Islamist Kingmaker in Sudan, and President of the Sudanese Parliament) introduced constitutional amendments that would have restricted President Bashir’s power. This was the first in a series of spats between the two power-players that culminated when Turabi was imprisoned in 2001- where he still languishes today. But, despite being imprisoned, Turabi is still a powerful figure, and he managed to strike a kind of the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend deal with Garang against the Bashir’s government in Khartoum.

Ultimately, the SPLA came out worse from the deal with Turabi. The fighting force he promised to deliver for Garang’s SPLA faction was never created, and the Southern diaspora was furious at Garang for striking a deal with Turabi- who is viewed as the chief architect of the devastation in the South. But, regardless of the political fallout, last April the SPLA launched an attack against an airport in al-Fashir that killed 75, destroyed four military aircraft and resulted in the kidnapping of the Sudanese Air Force Chief. The increase in violence against the Africans in Darfur that we’ve seen since last year- over 20000 janjaweed militiamen armed by the Bashir government, around 75000 killed and over 1 million refugees- is not the central front in the civil war, then, but rather it represents a) the continuing effort of the Arab government to carve out new territories for its nomadic pastoralists, and b) revenge against Turabi.

Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Taha and southern rebel leader John Garang, the main negotiators for the two sides, made a similar pledge last year that never came to fruition. But this is the first time the warring sides have put a deadline in writing before the U.N. panel.

As I’ve just established, Garang doesn’t have the power to negotiate because he is politically weak after alligning himself with Turabi and because there is another faction of the SPLA to contend with (as well as several other militias that must be considered), and the Bashir government simply doesn’t want to negotiate. Right now, Khartoum has the military initiative and the political and economic advantages. That is why the peace accord last year broke down so miserably, and those underlying factors have not changed at all in the last year.

Garang, in a rare address by a rebel leader to the council, said the only way to avert tragedy is “to install a broad-based coalition government of national unity.”

There are some in the SPLA who believe that to be true, but there are many who simply refuse to negotiate with Khartoum and demand independence. The remnants of the Anyanya forces from the 1950’s and 1960’s are part of this group, as are many of the disparate elements. One of the reasons the conflict in the Sudan has been so intractable over the last 60 years is because the debate over independence in the South has not been settled amongst Southerners. The North knows just where it stands, and has been unified- more or less- in its pursuit of an Islamic state and the subjugation of the South for material gain. And the South’s divisions have made it weak and incapable of mounting a really effective response against the North.

Creating the framework for a solution to the conflict in the Sudan is a near impossible task at this point, but any progress depends on violence being halted, and that depends on the insertion of a foreign military force designed to keep the peace while the political solution is hammered out. And when I say “foreign military force,” I’m not talking about 300 Nigerians under the flag of the African Union. I’m talking about a couple battalions of Americans or Europeans, or some other disinterested modern fighting force. From a political standpoint, I believe that it would be hard to enforce a two-state solution in the Sudan because the North would never accept international borders that denied them access to the South’s considerable oil wealth, hydro-wealth, and rich soil. Because of this, if there is to be a settlement, it must be a jacked-up version of the Addis Abba accord of 1972 that granted the South and the North large amounts of regional autonomy. One of the reasons that treaty unraveled is because it didn’t address issues important to Southerners- like the structure of the economy, the presence of Islamic Banks, the over population of administrative positions in the South with Northern bureaucrats, and the existence of Northern Army garrisons in the Southern territory- and because it didn’t foresee the 1978 oil discoveries by Chevron and Total. All of these factors would need to be seriously addressed in any new agreement. And the North would also have to accept secularism, which would be a tough thing for the National Islamic Front to handle.

We’re a long way off.

UPDATE: The New York Times’ Mary Lacey and Christine Hauser have done some original reporting on the Nairobi accord. They do make the distinction between Darfur and the broader Civil War, but, without challenging, they pass on the belief of some UN Security Council ambassadors and create the false impression that a North-South resolution would resolve the conflict.

But hanging over the meeting was another military clash, the war in Darfur, in western Sudan, which has continued unabated. On Darfur, the Council continued to hedge. Council ambassadors believe a north-south peace accord for Sudan could serve as a blueprint for Darfur.

As I went over above, no “North-South” blue print will succeed because no matter how far North the regional borders are drawn, the Arab pastoralists will still insist on going South during the dry-season, and Bashir’s government- which officially declared the violence against Africans in the Sudan a jihad several years ago- will still foment violence in Darfur, under the auspices of an Islamic fatwa, to punish Turabi’s allegiance with Garang. And no matter how far South the regional borders are drawn, a significant and well armed portion of the SPLA- using an absurdly complicated labyrinth of backchannels to take funding from Bashir to fight against Garang- will still advocate secession.

There is no way to resolve this conflict without military intervention. That should be abundantly clear at this point, and it should also be clear that the failure of the international community to live up to the commitments it made in the wake of the Second World War, and reiterated time and again throughout the last 50 years, is an embarrassment on a scale we will only begin to understand when the results of Bashir’s policy towards Darfur is exposed as the holocaust that it is.

Cross-posted at Mayflower Hill.

Liberals’ Veneer of Patriotism Collapses Again

You all know the story. A Marine was in Fallujah in a room with dead and wounded terrorists. He shot one to death. It looks like—“looks like”—the terrorist was unarmed. And the liberal establishment media response? “Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!” The coverage is almost universally unfavorable, as was the premature airing of the video.

Val Prieto has a great collection of links you can click, if you want to see the blogdom response. He linked to blogs of soldiers and veterans, which was a good idea. You know. Blackfive, Sgt. Hook, Baldilocks, and so on.

Now, here is my simple question: what ever happened to “WE SUPPORT OUR TROOPS!”?

Hmm…here we have a grunt in the field. Not Donald Rumsfeld. Not Paul Wolfowitz. Not George Bush. And he made a split-second decision to kill an enemy combatant, in an environment where terrorists have been pretending to be dead so they could ambush and kill coalition soldiers. Isn’t he…part of our “TROOPS”?

No, I guess not. I guess he’s a BABY-KILLER! Come on, say it, liberals! You know you want to! BABY-KILLER! I mean, granted, the guy he killed was a dirty old terrorist, but “DIRTY-OLD-TERRORIST-KILLER” just doesn’t roll off the tongue, especially after a few dozen puffs of the herb.

People, the left does not support our troops. They don’t really see the troops as helpless, uneducated dupes who can’t see through George Bush’s magical screen of smoke and mirrors. They know perfectly well that soldiers and sailors are overwhelmingly conservative, and the smarter leftists also know that without military votes, George Bush would never have been elected President. That’s why Bill Clinton and Al Gore worked so hard to prevent military personnel from voting and from having their cast votes counted.

I have to tell you—and I am truly sorry I didn’t write about this earlier, because I wanted to, and I have no excuse—I am floored by the selflessness and courage of our troops in Fallujah and Mosul. I’m always awed by the courage of our soldiers at war, but in my mind, these troops are even more impressive. We are taking dozens of casualties, and we expected that beforehand, and by all accounts, our fighting men and women were not just willing but eager to get in there and get started.

God bless every one of them. Quite simply, they are better people than I am.

How do you thank people with hearts like that? The thought of it actually brings tears to my eyes. How do you thank someone who accepts low pay and unbearable working conditions in exchange for marching into hell’s very mouth?

The very idea that spoiled liberal brats are condemning this brave soldier before they know the facts—it makes me wish we could flog them.

In the video of the incident, it’s clear the Marine feared for his life. He shouted that the terrorist was faking death. To any sane, reasonable person, that is prima facie evidence that the shooting was justified. If you love our troops so much, why won’t you let this man make his case before you air the video and condemn him? You’d do that for the Fedayeen Saddam, you America-hating morons. Implicitly, you’re doing it for the dead terrorist in this story. Why can’t you do that for for a man who is risking his life so you can have the right to sit here on your fat, comfortable asses and criticize him?

And what exactly is the brain deformity that caused NBC reporter Kevin Sites to air this video in the first place? He was in the room when it happened, depending on the accused Marine to keep him alive. Is this liberal gratitude? If you hired a brain trust and had them sit down for a month with nothing else to do, could they imagine a more egregious example of biting the hand that feeds you?

In World War Two, to name but one example, journalists witnessed military errors and misdeeds all the time. But they understood that war is not peacetime, and that a certain degree of wartime self-censorship was necessary, morally correct, and patriotic. Our modern liberal press has no such understanding. They sniff that journalists are supposed to be “above” patriotism. And so we end up with G.I.’s losing their lives because our treacherous press insists on airing items like the shooting video and the Abu Ghraib photos.

Don’t perpetuate the lie that news has to be reported quickly. If that’s true, why did Dan Rather wait until fall of an election year to unveil his bogus anti-Bush documents? That story was in the work for months. There was no reason to air the Fallujah video before the facts were known. In truth, there was no reason to air it at all. NBC could have reported the story using objective speech instead of an inflammatory video our enemies will use as a recruiting tool.

Remember how furious MSM flunkeys were back in 2001, when American flags started appearing on the lapels of newsreaders and analysts? That should have told us something. That should have told us these people had the moral fiber of babies with wet diapers.

If there is a silver lining to this story, which will needlessly subject our country and our troops to more violence, it is that it will serve to expose and irreversibly confirm the left’s hatred of our men and women in uniform.

Blog it all you can. We whipped Dan Rather’s ass, and we’ll whip NBC’s, too.

This OpEd was written by Jay Bagley and originally appeared here. It is reprinted with permission of the author.

Recent military battles have been party to unprecedented media coverage. I believe that while this media coverage has been great for television ratings, media has in fact hindered the military operations that it has been covering.

William Tecumseh Sherman once said “War is hell” and quite often the acts of man fighting in wars are hellish. That hellish side of war is at times a necessary evil.

Recently an embedded pool reporter witnessed a Marine in Fallujah, Iraq shoot an apparently unarmed and wounded terrorist without cause.

Why would someone commit such an apparent atrocity without reason, other than finding pleasure in killing the enemy? I will give one possible explanation.

There were recent reports of insurgents’ booby-trapping corpses of the fallen. It is possible that the Marine, most likely was aware of this new tactic, was acting in self defense against the possibility of the wounded terrorist detonating some type of explosive device. This would go a long way to explain the Marine shouting “He’s faking he’s dead!” before shooting him.

I believe that what the media, whether intentionally or not, has portrayed is a callous soldier murdering an unarmed enemy purely for the joy of the kill. They reported that the previous day the same Marine was shot in the face by the very terrorists he encountered a day later.

Why is this story even being told?

The U.S. military has always allowed journalists to go to the front lines of battle to cover the bravery and valor of our fighting men. Yet, recently the media has become increasingly biased in their reporting of the battlefield, foregoing the stories of bravery for stories of barbary.

Where are the stories of the heroic acts that these men are performing on a daily basis? Where are the heart-warming stories of the good that these men are doing? Those stories don’t get reporters noticed, they don’t get ratings. The media plays to an American society that has become so overly sensitive to being politically and morally correct that they are beginning to hinder the operations and safety of the very troops they are reporting on.

Maybe that Marine did just shoot him for the hell of it, but by creating such a ruckus over it, he has endangered the lives of others serving our country. What happens when the next Marine or Soldier comes across a booby-trapped body of a terrorist and hesitates for a split second because he doesn’t want to go through the bureaucracy of justifying his actions, and in that split second the booby trap goes off killing him and others around him. What will the reporter report then?

I believe that reports like this are causing the military to fight a politically correct war, a war that puts the lives of our young men and women at risk from being overly cautious.

The media, in my opinion, is doing a great disservice to our servicemen and women, by constantly reporting on the atrocities of war, and not on how they are attempting to better the lives of the people they are fighting for both home and abroad.

These men and women aren’t savages; they are sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, fighting to survive in a savage environment. The savages are the media exploiting the environment in search of nothing more than to make a name for themselves as the one who broke the big story.

——

Jay Bagley writes at Bagley Familiar.

Have you ever “blue-skyed” about an uninvented technology, or thought of a way that a current technology could get even better?

Even if you aren’t “technical”, please read the following press release from Siemens and imagine the possibilities:

The Siemens Industrial Solutions and Services Group (I&S) has received an order from Puget Sound Regional Council, Seattle, in the U.S. state of Washington, to implement a satellite-supported road pricing system as a pilot project, during which around 500 vehicles are to be fitted with on-board units (OBUs). With the help of the Global Positioning System (GPS), the position of the vehicle is detected in real time. The OBUs use GSM technology to communicate with a management control center where the user accounts are kept. The aim of the pilot project is to assess the feasibility of a use-dependent electronic pricing system. Another objective is to investigate the levels of acceptance encountered by the new system among motorists and the American public. Introduction of this system, unique in North America, is scheduled for the middle of 2004.

Using this system, drivers could be charged by the mile depending on how they use the roadways. States currently have gas taxes, but new, more fuel-efficient cars mean less gas tax revenue. Plus, there’s a difference between driving a gallon’s worth on an uncongested freeway and driving the same distance on the same freeway during rush hour. And, heavy trucks pay the same gas tax as small passenger cars, yet they cause much more damage to the roadways. Why shouldn’t they pay their fair share?

This new system could allow a true, fair, level playing field for drivers. Those drivers who spend a lot of time on a freeway downtown during rush hour will pay more; those who drive during off-peak hours will pay less. Drivers could start allocating how much time they spend on each type of street. You don’t leave your tap running all day because you don’t want to pay a high water bill. In fact, some utility companies charge a higher rate for peak usage. Why shouldn’t driving be the same?

Bear in mind this isn’t “rocket science”. GPS and GSM (cellular) are both here now and they’re very widely used technologies.

And, it’s only going to get better! Insurance companies could use this system to lower rates for safe drivers. The GPS could be used to determine how fast a driver goes and even if they change lanes too often. Coupled with data from computerized traffic signals or central traffic control centers, the insurance company could determine whether someone frequently runs red lights or commits other traffic infractions. If you’re a safe driver shouldn’t you pay a low rate even if you happen to live in a certain zip code? After all, fair’s fair, right?

In fact, the police could even use these systems to automatically fine those who speed or park in handicapped parking spaces. And, what if a heinous crime is committed in your neighborhood or against a loved one? The police would be able to subpoena the records of all those drivers who were in the area at the time. The innocent would be eliminated from their list of suspects, and the guilty would be quickly caught. These systems could lead to a very sharp decrease in crime and make our streets very much safer.

Or, imagine if there’s a possible terror attack. The police or other authorities could focus in on those drivers in affected areas, and tell them to evacuate immediately and what routes to take. Traffic could be routed on various roads to make sure everyone was safe. The cars of suspected terrorists could be monitored without the need for costly and error-prone physical surveillance.

But, bear in mind, the data recorded by these devices would only be used by those authorized to receive the data. The computer systems can be programmed to only give out information to the various departments of transportation or law enforcement agencies. It’s only a few “Nervous Nellies” and “Worried Wilberts” who care about things like “usage creep.” To be frank, while some people are concerned about civil liberties, most people are not. Let’s face it: if the government wanted to track you, they have other ways to do it.

This is simply a smart - and cost-saving - use of technology that’s already available. I applaud its use and I strongly encourage everyone to do the same.

For further reading, see:

“[CA] DMV Chief Backs Tax by Mile”

“At 87, [WA] state’s transportation guru still a driving force”

“Travel Value Pricing: Better Traffic Operations Management and
New Revenue for the Puget Sound Region”

“Speakers say value pricing could ease Twin Cities congestion”

You can also contact the CA DMV and tell them you fully support this proposal here or by calling their Executive Office at 916-657-6940. Or, call Arnold Schwarzenegger at 916-445-2841. While he hasn’t yet seen the light and come out in favor of the wonderful new proposals of his new DMV appointee, it can’t hurt to tell him what you think.

UPDATE: From the LAT article “[CA] DMV Chief Backs Tax by Mile”:

“[Arnold’s appointment to head the CA DMV, Joan Borucki, is] devoted, and she’s knowledgeable about the state’s situation,” said Elizabeth Deakin, a policy expert with the UC Transportation Center who has known her for 15 years. “She understands the state’s concerns about wanting good service, and she understands technology.”

…Still, privacy advocates worry about “usage creep” — like how the driver’s license has evolved into official identification for nearly everyone. The information collected about mileage potentially could be subpoenaed in a court case or used to track someone without their knowledge, they fear.

But Pozdena and Deakin, the transportation experts, said most people don’t care about this issue as much as privacy advocates, especially when presented with the possibility that as much as 25% of the road could be used by hybrids in the future. Drivers of non-hybrid cars have said it’s unfair to pay the larger burden of gasoline taxes, they said.

“While some people are concerned about civil liberties, most people are not,” Deakin said. “One of the things we found from focus groups and surveys is that most people said if the government wanted to track you, they have other ways to do it.”

Falluja has pretty much been liberated. There are some “diehards” holed up in al-Shuhada, but they have been completely cut off from the outside world, and the Marines are dealing with them harshly.

So, assuming that we accept the Battle of Falluja is at its end, we must ask ourselves where we go from here? Before that, though, we need to figure out where we are now.

Presently, the insurgency is limited to Sunni Muslims- most of them Iraqi- from predominantly Sunni areas of Iraq. The popular analogy is that it takes the shape of a “triangle,” but that seems slightly misleading. A more appropriate way of looking at the physical shape of the insurgency is as a “V” that extends North out of Baghdad along the Tigris and the Euphrates.

One line of the insurgency goes through Falluja, Ramadi and Haditha and over the border to Syria. The other line goes North through Baqubah, Samarra, Tirkrit and eventually Mosul. The main reason it is important to see the insurgency in this way is because it simplifies the strategy of military defeat. When dealing with a “triangle,” considerations have to be made for isolating a vast region of the country on all sides- which is a tremendously difficult task when you have too few troops to begin with. When you see the insurgency as two distinct lines that follow Iraq’s main water-arteries as they snake through the desert, then you begin to see that the insurgency is not a regional phenomenon so much as it is a supply line phenomenon.

One of the things we are now learning in Falluja is that insurgents have been using the city as a final staging ground for launching attacks into Baghdad. Explosives and other bomb making materials were obtained out of the country, smuggled over the border and then delivered to Falluja where IED’s and car bombs were assembled. They would then be “distributed” to Baghdad and other cities in the “Sunni Triangle.” In a way, this kind of process is a lot like an assembly line in a factory. Imagine being able to disrupt the end of a factory line, and imagine killing most of the workers at the same time. The factory wouldn’t be able to produce the same amount of product. In this case, the product is violence.

Until we secure the border with Syria near the Euphrates, there will be a somewhat steady stream of explosives and money entering Iraq. But by taking Falluja, you have immediately forced the enemy to launch attacks from 75 miles further West of Baghdad. And if any effort is made to pacify Ramadi (which doesn’t offer the insurgents a lot of the amenities Falluja did), you can further that distance by another 125 miles and force insurgents to operate out of Haditha (which is a tiny little backwater at least 5 hours away from Baghdad by car).

One of the things we noticed after taking Samarra a month ago is that the level of violence declined in Baghdad. At the same time, violence increased in Mosul and other cities North of Samarra along the Tigris river. We can infer that Samarra was a way-station en route to Baghdad for insurgents and terrorists looking to foster violence in the capital. Expect a similar effect once activity in Falluja settles. There will still be some violence within the capital, and within areas around the capital, but we can start to see a bubble being constructed to the North and West of Baghdad.

Violence in Ramadi and Mosul is still a troubling thing, but it is far less troubling- given the prospect of trying to organize national elections in January- than violence in Baghdad. For Americans to capitalize on their successes in Falluja and Samarra, they must make sure they plug all the holes and prevent violence from leaking into Baghdad again. It will be a difficult thing to accomplish, but it is possible- particularly considering that it will soon be possible to open up meaningful negotiations with the ex-Baathist Iraqi Nationalists who make up a full 75% of opposition forces (that percentage is probably a little low now that the Marines in Falluja have dealt with a great number of foreign fighters).

After the Battle of Falluja, it should be clear to the ex-Baathists, who have solid negotiating leverage, to begin with, due to their economic status, that the foreign fighters are curses, not enablers. If Zarqawi and his friends are allowed to stay and fight for a new Taliban state then every city in Iraq will soon lie in rubble the way Falluja now does— and the way Afghanistan did after the Russians had had enough of the jihadist ideology. The blueprint for negotiations has already been established by Moktada al-Sadr, and I don’t think it will be long now before we see some secular insurgent leaders follow his suit.

Cross-posted at Mayflower Hill.

I’ve already used the CNN exit polling data to demonstrate that “Moral Values” were not, in fact, the deciding factor in the 2004 election. If you looked at the issues most important to voters, National Security and the economy were weighed more heavily than the categories that fall under the heading of “Moral Values” by a ratio of roughly 3-1. Further, if you look at the distribution of votes by people’s ideological compositions- liberal, moderate or conservative- you see that 45% of Bush’s support came from self-described “liberals” or “moderates.” Kerry lost the center, and he was doomed because of it.

Now the Pew Research Center is taking on the conventional wisdom. Pew found that when respondents were given a choice of seven items for their “most important issue,” 27% chose “moral values” and 60% chose something related to National Security or the economy. When the question was open-ended (which Pew defines as “an unprompted verbatim response to an open-ended question”), “moral values” got 14% of people’s first choices and National Security and the Economy combined for 47% of people’s responses. The “other” category jumped from 4% to 31%.

What does this tell us about how voters made up their minds on November 2? “Moral values” were important, to be sure, but not nearly as important as the War on Terrorism, Iraq or the economy. The whole narrative that the media has constructed since the election about not being “in touch” with Red America is therefore a confused and muddled one. Kerry didn’t lose because he was perceived as “out of touch” with people in the fly-over states. He lost because those people didn’t think he would protect the country from terrorists as well as George W. Bush. He lost because Bush convinced more Americans that he could improve their economic lot than Kerry did.

It won’t hurt the Democrats to speak in more moralistic terms, but they shouldn’t simply pander to religious groups. The Democrats of the 1930’s, 1940’s, 1950’s and 1960’s (an era of unquestioned Democratic dominance) spoke not in terms of “faith,” but in terms of “right” and “wrong.” Reinhold Nhiebur was their guiding philosopher. The Democrats of today- and no one embodies this more than Kerry- equivocate and speak in shades of gray. Bush is certainly not an equivocator, and that was enough to get him re-elected- despite so many obvious short comings.

I can think of very few Democrats these days who can articulate “right” from “wrong” on foreign policy issues and still be taken seriously. Joe Biden comes to mind and Joe Lieberman does as well. Neither of these men- for very different reasons- could win a Presidential election, but the next Democrat who does win one will do so by co-opting their rhetoric and, more importantly, by adopting their ideas.

Cross-posted at Mayflower Hill.

John Kerry was a terrible candidate who did everything wrong, a real Michael Dukakis version 2.0. In fact, Kerry ran such a poor campaign that I think we in the GOP should examine the Kerry campaign and try to learn from it, so we don’t make the same mistakes. With that in mind, here are what I believe were the top eleven reasons why John Kerry lost the election…

I’m Talking ‘Bout The Man John Kerry Sees In The Mirror: Put simply, John Kerry is an awful candidate for the Presidency in almost every way imaginable. He’s a dovish Massachusetts liberal who originally made a name for himself as an anti-war protestor, he has a mediocre Senate career, and JFK isn’t especially charismatic or likable. The fact that the Democrats chose this stiff in the first place was bad enough, but when you consider that the general consensus after the Democratic primaries was that Kerry was the most “electable” candidate in the field, you have to go, “Whoa, just what were these people thinking”?

Vietnam Part 1: Could You Shut Up About Vietnam Already? One of the poorest decisions the Kerry campaign made was to try to make John Kerry’s Vietnam experience the centerpiece of their campaign. While Americans certainly admire military service, it’s not enough to carry someone to the presidency. That should have been obvious to everyone given that Bill Clinton beat George Bush Sr. and Bob Dole.

Moreover, how Kerry thought he could go though an entire presidential campaign running as a war hero without the public ever being truly informed about some of the despicable things he did while he was protesting the war is beyond me. It would be like running Mike Tyson for President because he was heavyweight boxing champ of the world and expecting that the time he bit off part of Evander Holyfield’s ear would never come up. It just doesn’t work that way.

Vietnam Part 2: Friendly Fire The Swift Boat Vets for Truth spent all of August savaging John Kerry and they continued to hammer away, albeit not as effectively as they did initially, until the end of the campaign. And the damage they did to Kerry’s likability ratings, particularly among veterans, was significant. In fact, I think it’s entirely possible that had the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth not come along, John Kerry might have been the 44th President of the United States.

The conventional wisdom among Democrats today is that Kerry was too slow to respond to the Swifties, but the real problem is that Kerry was never able to mount an effective response. Kerry didn’t release his military records, spent more than a month dodging press conferences, and to the best of my knowledge never personally tried to refute any of the charges against him.

That’s despite the fact that the campaign had to do major backtracking about Kerry’s mythical trip to Cambodia and how he behaved in the battle in which he received his bronze star. This is an issue that SHOULD HAVE been brought up and explored during the Democratic primaries and the fact that it only became a big issue in August of this year, after it had been talked about incessantly on talk radio and the net, gives you an idea of what lapdogs for Kerry the mainstream media were this year.

A Pretty Smile & A Great Head Of Hair Do Not A VP Make: At the time he was picked, John Edwards seemed like about as good of a choice as anybody Kerry could have selected short of John McCain. But, Edwards turned out to be a dud — a pretty dud with a great head of hair mind you — but a dud nonetheless. Edwards was beneath the media radar practically from the time he was chosen onward, only surfacing to get schooled by Dick Cheney in the VP debate and to produce the most ridiculous quote of the entire campaign,

“If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is President, people like Christopher Reeve will get up out of that wheelchair and walk again.”

While elections don’t generally hinge on the selection of a VP, I‘m sure Kerry wishes he would have at least selected someone who could carry his own state.

Convention Of The Damned!: Ok, maybe that title is overdoing it a little, but the Democrats’ fake dog and pony show of a convention was a major failure that barely boosted Kerry in the polls at all.

Part of the problem was that the Democratic Party lacks star power these days. Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, Howard Dean, Max Cleland, Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton? This is not a group of people in whose hands you want to place your political life.

On top of that, the convention was bland, wasn’t heavy on the issues, was free of attacks on Bush, centered entirely too much on Vietnam, and featured a stunningly dull, yet long speech by Kerry in which he barely even discussed his 20 years in the Senate.

This was a golden opportunity squandered and Kerry’s campaign never truly recovered from it.

I’m Against Gay Marriage — Sort Of: While John Kerry did say he thought marriage was between a man and woman, most people sensed he was at best straddling the fence on the issue. That’s because Kerry didn’t support a Constitutional Amendment to protect marriage, he wasn’t for any of the 11 state bans on gay marriage that were on ballots across the country, and he had little to say to those in his party who insisted that anyone who was against gay marriage was a backwards homophobe.

Well, when you get on the wrong side of 5,000 years of human history, you’re going to turn a lot of people off. Bill Clinton understood that and told Kerry to back the local bans on gay marriage, but Kerry chose not to take Clinton’s advice and paid for it at the polls.

I’ll Take Dick Cheney’s Daughter Is A Lesbian For $1000 Alex!: After John Edwards went off on a tangent about Dick Cheney’s daughter Mary being a lesbian in their debate, it drew a lot of attention. In fact, when Saturday Night Live did a parody of the debate, that’s something even they focused on extensively.

So when John Kerry brought it up AGAIN in his third debate with George Bush, it stood out like a sore thumb. People perceived it, quite correctly I might add, as an attempt by Kerry to use Dick Cheney’s daughter against him — the idea being to appeal to homophobes who Kerry thought might vote for him if they knew Dick Cheney’s daughter was a lesbian. As John Kerry found out to his dismay, going after the other guy’s child is not something the public generally appreciates.

When Kerry made his remark, it didn’t seem like the big quip that everyone would be talking about later, but past debates have often hinged on exactly such small turns of phrase. In this case, it stopped the momentum Kerry had been building by winning all three debates and left him a couple of points behind Bush in the polls, where he essentially stayed for the rest of the election.

Flip-Flop? I got Your Flip-Flop Right Here! Look, all politicians change their minds about certain issues. But Kerry’s positions on the issues seemed to depend almost on who he was talking to, especially when it came to the war. We’re talking about a guy here who said it was the “right decision to disarm Saddam Hussein” but that it was the “wrong war, wrong place, wrong time,” that we’d be “better off without Saddam Hussein” before the war & that we shouldn’t have invaded afterwards, and who claimed Iraq was “critical to” & also a “distraction from” the war on terror.

If you want to be President of the United States, especially during a war, you’ve got to be willing to take a firm stand on the major issues. John Kerry never did.

War, Domestic Issues, & Shrum: This is going to be hard for a lot of liberals to accept, but from day one, John Kerry never had the slightest chance of being competitive with George Bush on security issues. Bush is a hawkish conservative who led the country through 9/11, knocked off Saddam and the Taliban, and wrapped up 2/3rds of Al-Qaeda’s leadership among other things. The idea that a dovish liberal, who wasn’t a cold warrior, who voted against the Gulf War, and who voted not to fund the war in Iraq was going to beat George Bush on security issues was pure fantasy. Yet, the Kerry campaign focused incessantly on national security which ironically helped to convince voters that it was the most important issue of the campaign. Why did the Kerry campaign try to keep picking a fight that they could never win? Someone ask Bob Shrum because I don’t have an explanation.

Why Did Kerry Want To Be President? Who Knows?: Like him or hate him, people had a pretty good idea of why George Bush wanted to be President. He wanted to continue to fight the war on terror, to make his tax cuts permanent, and to amend the Constitution to protect marriage.

Now, why did John Kerry want to be President? No one’s really sure, but I think it had something or another to do with Vietnam. The Kerry campaign didn’t center the campaign around any big issues, instead they simply latched on to whatever the issue of the moment was and that just wasn’t enough for the voters. At some point, John Kerry needed to give people some compelling reasons to vote for him and not just against George Bush, but Kerry wasn’t up to the task.

It’s The Lawyers Stupid!: I firmly believe that in 2002 and 2004, all the talk by Democrats about bringing in hordes of lawyers to “make sure every vote is counted” has ironically cost them a lot of swing votes.

Americans absolutely HATED the contested election of 2000, they loathe the idea of lawyers being involved in the process at all, and they find the concept of a candidate trying to win in the court room after failing at the ballot box to be repulsive. By so publicly “lawyering up,” John Kerry undoubtedly turned off a lot of potential voters and helped to give Bush a little boost right before people went to the polls.

John Kerry was a terrible candidate who did everything wrong, a real Michael Dukakis version 2.0. In fact, Kerry ran such a poor campaign that I think we in the GOP should examine the Kerry campaign and try to learn from it, so we don’t make the same mistakes. With that in mind, here are what I believe were the top eleven reasons why John Kerry lost the election…

I’m Talking ‘Bout The Man John Kerry Sees In The Mirror: Put simply, John Kerry is an awful candidate for the Presidency in almost every way imaginable. He’s a dovish Massachusetts liberal who originally made a name for himself as an anti-war protestor, he has a mediocre Senate career, and JFK isn’t especially charismatic or likable. The fact that the Democrats chose this stiff in the first place was bad enough, but when you consider that the general consensus after the Democratic primaries was that Kerry was the most “electable” candidate in the field, you have to go, “Whoa, just what were these people thinking”?

Vietnam Part 1: Could You Shut Up About Vietnam Already? One of the poorest decisions the Kerry campaign made was to try to make John Kerry’s Vietnam experience the centerpiece of their campaign. While Americans certainly admire military service, it’s not enough to carry someone to the presidency. That should have been obvious to everyone given that Bill Clinton beat George Bush Sr. and Bob Dole.

Moreover, how Kerry thought he could go though an entire presidential campaign running as a war hero without the public ever being truly informed about some of the despicable things he did while he was protesting the war is beyond me. It would be like running Mike Tyson for President because he was heavyweight boxing champ of the world and expecting that the time he bit off part of Evander Holyfield’s ear would never come up. It just doesn’t work that way.

Vietnam Part 2: Friendly Fire The Swift Boat Vets for Truth spent all of August savaging John Kerry and they continued to hammer away, albeit not as effectively as they did initially, until the end of the campaign. And the damage they did to Kerry’s likability ratings, particularly among veterans, was significant. In fact, I think it’s entirely possible that had the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth not come along, John Kerry might have been the 44th President of the United States.

The conventional wisdom among Democrats today is that Kerry was too slow to respond to the Swifties, but the real problem is that Kerry was never able to mount an effective response. Kerry didn’t release his military records, spent more than a month dodging press conferences, and to the best of my knowledge never personally tried to refute any of the charges against him.

That’s despite the fact that the campaign had to do major backtracking about Kerry’s mythical trip to Cambodia and how he behaved in the battle in which he received his bronze star. This is an issue that SHOULD HAVE been brought up and explored during the Democratic primaries and the fact that it only became a big issue in August of this year, after it had been talked about incessantly on talk radio and the net, gives you an idea of what lapdogs for Kerry the mainstream media were this year.

A Pretty Smile & A Great Head Of Hair Do Not A VP Make: At the time he was picked, John Edwards seemed like about as good of a choice as anybody Kerry could have selected short of John McCain. But, Edwards turned out to be a dud — a pretty dud with a great head of hair mind you — but a dud nonetheless. Edwards was beneath the media radar practically from the time he was chosen onward, only surfacing to get schooled by Dick Cheney in the VP debate and to produce the most ridiculous quote of the entire campaign,

“If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is President, people like Christopher Reeve will get up out of that wheelchair and walk again.”

While elections don’t generally hinge on the selection of a VP, I‘m sure Kerry wishes he would have at least selected someone who could carry his own state.

Convention Of The Damned!: Ok, maybe that title is overdoing it a little, but the Democrats’ fake dog and pony show of a convention was a major failure that barely boosted Kerry in the polls at all.

Part of the problem was that the Democratic Party lacks star power these days. Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, Howard Dean, Max Cleland, Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton? This is not a group of people in whose hands you want to place your political life.

On top of that, the convention was bland, wasn’t heavy on the issues, was free of attacks on Bush, centered entirely too much on Vietnam, and featured a stunningly dull, yet long speech by Kerry in which he barely even discussed his 20 years in the Senate.

This was a golden opportunity squandered and Kerry’s campaign never truly recovered from it.

I’m Against Gay Marriage — Sort Of: While John Kerry did say he thought marriage was between a man and woman, most people sensed he was at best straddling the fence on the issue. That’s because Kerry didn’t support a Constitutional Amendment to protect marriage, he wasn’t for any of the 11 state bans on gay marriage that were on ballots across the country, and he had little to say to those in his party who insisted that anyone who was against gay marriage was a backwards homophobe.

Well, when you get on the wrong side of 5,000 years of human history, you’re going to turn a lot of people off. Bill Clinton understood that and told Kerry to back the local bans on gay marriage, but Kerry chose not to take Clinton’s advice and paid for it at the polls.

I’ll Take Dick Cheney’s Daughter Is A Lesbian For $1000 Alex!: After John Edwards went off on a tangent about Dick Cheney’s daughter Mary being a lesbian in their debate, it drew a lot of attention. In fact, when Saturday Night Live did a parody of the debate, that’s something even they focused on extensively.

So when John Kerry brought it up AGAIN in his third debate with George Bush, it stood out like a sore thumb. People perceived it, quite correctly I might add, as an attempt by Kerry to use Dick Cheney’s daughter against him — the idea being to appeal to homophobes who Kerry thought might vote for him if they knew Dick Cheney’s daughter was a lesbian. As John Kerry found out to his dismay, going after the other guy’s child is not something the public generally appreciates.

When Kerry made his remark, it didn’t seem like the big quip that everyone would be talking about later, but past debates have often hinged on exactly such small turns of phrase. In this case, it stopped the momentum Kerry had been building by winning all three debates and left him a couple of points behind Bush in the polls, where he essentially stayed for the rest of the election.

Flip-Flop? I got Your Flip-Flop Right Here! Look, all politicians change their minds about certain issues. But Kerry’s positions on the issues seemed to depend almost on who he was talking to, especially when it came to the war. We’re talking about a guy here who said it was the “right decision to disarm Saddam Hussein” but that it was the “wrong war, wrong place, wrong time,” that we’d be “better off without Saddam Hussein” before the war & that we shouldn’t have invaded afterwards, and who claimed Iraq was “critical to” & also a “distraction from” the war on terror.

If you want to be President of the United States, especially during a war, you’ve got to be willing to take a firm stand on the major issues. John Kerry never did.

War, Domestic Issues, & Shrum: This is going to be hard for a lot of liberals to accept, but from day one, John Kerry never had the slightest chance of being competitive with George Bush on security issues. Bush is a hawkish conservative who led the country through 9/11, knocked off Saddam and the Taliban, and wrapped up 2/3rds of Al-Qaeda’s leadership among other things. The idea that a dovish liberal, who wasn’t a cold warrior, who voted against the Gulf War, and who voted not to fund the war in Iraq was going to beat George Bush on security issues was pure fantasy. Yet, the Kerry campaign focused incessantly on national security which ironically helped to convince voters that it was the most important issue of the campaign. Why did the Kerry campaign try to keep picking a fight that they could never win? Someone ask Bob Shrum because I don’t have an explanation.

Why Did Kerry Want To Be President? Who Knows?: Like him or hate him, people had a pretty good idea of why George Bush wanted to be President. He wanted to continue to fight the war on terror, to make his tax cuts permanent, and to amend the Constitution to protect marriage.

Now, why did John Kerry want to be President? No one’s really sure, but I think it had something or another to do with Vietnam. The Kerry campaign didn’t center the campaign around any big issues, instead they simply latched on to whatever the issue of the moment was and that just wasn’t enough for the voters. At some point, John Kerry needed to give people some compelling reasons to vote for him and not just against George Bush, but Kerry wasn’t up to the task.

It’s The Lawyers Stupid!: I firmly believe that in 2002 and 2004, all the talk by Democrats about bringing in hordes of lawyers to “make sure every vote is counted” has ironically cost them a lot of swing votes.

Americans absolutely HATED the contested election of 2000, they loathe the idea of lawyers being involved in the process at all, and they find the concept of a candidate trying to win in the court room after failing at the ballot box to be repulsive. By so publicly “lawyering up,” John Kerry undoubtedly turned off a lot of potential voters and helped to give Bush a little boost right before people went to the polls.

From the Boston Globe :

It would take an encyclopedia to catalog all of the evil Arafat committed. But that is no excuse for not trying to recall at least some of it.

Perhaps his signal contribution to the practice of political terror was the introduction of warfare against children. On one black date in May 1974, three PLO terrorists slipped from Lebanon into the northern Israeli town of Ma’alot. They murdered two parents and a child whom they found at home, then seized a local school, taking more than 100 boys and girls hostage and threatening to kill them unless a number of imprisoned terrorists were released. When Israeli troops attempted a rescue, the terrorists exploded hand grenades and opened fire on the students. By the time the horror ended, 25 people were dead; 21 of them were children.

Thirty years later, no one speaks of Ma’alot anymore. The dead children have been forgotten. Everyone knows Arafat’s name, but who ever recalls the names of his victims?

So let us recall them:

Ilana Turgeman.
Rachel Aputa.
Yocheved Mazoz.
Sarah Ben-Shim’on.
Yona Sabag.
Yafa Cohen.
Shoshana Cohen.
Michal Sitrok.
Malka Amrosy.
Aviva Saada.
Yocheved Diyi.
Yaakov Levi.
Yaakov Kabla.
Rina Cohen.
Ilana Ne’eman.
Sarah Madar.
Tamar Dahan.
Sarah Soper.
Lili Morad.
David Madar.
Yehudit Madar.

The 21 dead children of Ma’alot — 21 of the thousands of who died at Arafat’s command.

Amen.

This is a Rant.

(One Commenter described it as “PJ O’Rourke turned up to 11 and armed with an acid-soaked chainsaw” - a masterpiece of understatement)

Arafat’s body isn’t even cold yet, and the Palestinians have come up with yet another gambit to create an independent state without making peace with their neighbor…

AP: Jailed Palestinian Wants to Succeed Arafat

Imprisoned uprising leader Marwan Barghouti has decided to run for president in upcoming Palestinian elections, a source close to the popular politician said Saturday.

Barghouti, widely seen as the strongest candidate to replace Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, will only bow out of the race if his ruling Fatah movement selects a different candidate in internal voting, the source said on condition of anonymity. That is unlikely as Fatah is not expected to hold a primary.

Barghouti’s wife, Fadwa, said she was unaware of her husband’s plans.

Under Palestinian law, elections are to be held within two months to find a successor to Arafat, who died Thursday. Rauhi Fattouh, a virtual unknown, was sworn in as temporary president of the Palestinian Authority, the self-ruling power in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He will serve as caretaker president until elections are held.

Barghouti is serving multiple life terms in an Israeli prison after being convicted of involvement in terrorism. Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom told reporters this week that Barghouti “will remain in prison for the rest of his life because he’s a murderer.”

The principles that President Bush laid out in the summer of 2002 as well as within the Roadmap clearly state the two basic initial responsibilities of the Palestinians:

1. Democratically elect leaders who are uncomprimised by terror.

2. Ending terrorism and incitement to terror.

By rallying behind Barghouti, an unapologetic organizer of murders of both Israelis and “collaborator” Palestinians, the Palestinians will demonstrate that they are not serious about peace or putting the love of terrorism behind them.

Just as Bush refused to accept Arafat’s Nobel Prize false front behind which Arafat continued to organize, fund, and reward the murder of innocents, Bush must not accept Barghouti as a “leader uncomprimised by terror” as well. Even if Jimmy Carter watches and approves every ballot cast in Barghouti’s name, it’s just proof that the Palestinians themselves are still in the thrall of Arafat’s decades of indoctrination of murder and hate.

Based solely on their both being in prison by “colonial” regimes for working towards self-rule, some call Barghouti the Palestinian Mandela. If Nelson Mandela has no argument against such a comparison, then it may be time to try Nelson Mandela for multiple counts of homicide, conspiracy to commit homicide, and war crimes.

By the way, the future of Arafat is Full Of Crap is now in your hands with a new poll.

I’d like to know if this eVoting system is used already, and if someone can point out flaws:

It’s a two step process.

The voter first fills out a normal paper ballot using some standard technique: filling in circles, connecting arrows, etc.

Then they walk over to a scanner with a monitor and insert the ballot into the scanner. The monitor displays their selections. If the voter sees everything is OK, they press “OK” and the ballot is ejected from the machine. The monitor (or keyboard) only has two choices: “OK” and “Cancel.” The voter can’t use the scanner/monitor to change their votes, they can only accept or reject the selections shown. If the voter chooses “OK”, the voter then puts that ballot into an envelope and puts that envelope into the ballot box.

Poll workers make sure no one can put a ballot into the ballot box without first putting it through the scanner; perhaps the ballot could be marked by the scanner with a mark identifying the exact machine but not using a sequential number that could be used to identify the voter.

The scanner records a preliminary count which stands as the official count unless something unexpected happens. A memory card in the scanner is physically transported to a central tabulator and the votes are read and published. The scanner would not have a modem. (Someone switching in a fake memory card here would need to be addressed in some way).

Random samples of precincts are done to ensure that the machines worked OK and the data on the memory card(s) from that precinct matches the votes on the physical ballots.

There would be a possible series of random samples of widening sizes, depending on errors found. If, in the first random sample no errors are found, then the preliminary count is assumed to be correct. However, if a certain percentage of problems are found, then a larger sample is taken. At some point, the whole state would be recounted if enough problems are found in the preceding samples. When doing a sample, the physical ballots would be counted by hand using a group of observers from all major parties.

In the case of a recount, the physical ballots are counted and they take precedence over the electronic count.

If, during the voting procedure, the voter says the scanner’s output doesn’t match how they voted (i.e., they press “Cancel”), that ballot is placed in a special bin, perhaps together with a note about the specific discrepancy. Then, the voter is given a completely new ballot and has to go through the process from the beginning. These “canceled” ballots could be inspected later to investigate problems or to correct flaws in the system.

If enough voters notice discrepancies, then we have first warning of a problem with that scanner or the ballot or other things.

Today is Veterans Day in the USA, and Remembrance Day in the British Commonwealth countries. Too many others have said it better than I can, so I’ll just let them do so:

• Armed Liberal’s 2003 post about Veterans Day, liberalism & patriotism is exceptional. Be ye left or be ye right, you needed to read it. Then, in 2004, he improves on it.

• This is the best page for Canadian Remembrance Day resources. The famous poem “In Flanders Fields” is here, along with the poetic reply to it and many informative links. My favourite: please scroll down a bit and read the “Wear a Poppy” poem on the right.

• What an outstanding post by John of Castle Argghhh!, on marching in his first Veteran’s Day parade, and the depth of the bonds veterans share, and why. His closing salute from an American vetran to Canadian veterans was classy as hell, the capper to an outstanding post. May those 13 toasts to absent friends go down smooth, John - and know that we, too, salute them today.

• Want to support your country’s currently-serving troops? Our compiled How to Support the Troops post gives you lots of options, for a number of countries. Including a few options you would never have imagined.

• More Winds of Change.NET items about Remembrance Day in Canada…

• …and Veterans Day/ Remembrance Day elsewhere