A Democratic Congressional candidate from Iowa is canceling a campaign event later this week with Senator John Kerry.Brucy Braley says Kerry's recent comments about the Iraq war were inappropriate.A Des Moines Iowa TV station report.
Senator Kerry owes an apology to the many thousands of Americans serving in Iraq, who answered their country's call because they are patriots and not because of any deficiencies in their education. Americans from all backgrounds, well off and less fortunate, with high school diplomas and graduate degrees, take seriously their duty to our country, and risk their lives today to defend the rest of us in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. They all deserve our respect and deepest gratitude for their service. The suggestion that only the least educated Americans would agree to serve in the military and fight in Iraq, is an insult to every soldier serving in combat, and should deeply offend any American with an ounce of appreciation for what they suffer and risk so that the rest of us can sleep more comfortably at night. Without them, we wouldn't live in a country where people securely possess all their God-given rights, including the right to express insensitive, ill-considered and uninformed remarks.UPDATE:Sen. Bill Frist. Hat tip Allahpundit at Hot Air.
While America’s servicemen and women are fighting and dying against our adversaries in the global War on Terror, John Kerry has the gall to criticize their intelligence, their education, and their motivation for service. His comments represent the absolute worst in Democrat scare tactics and present a grave insult to our all-volunteer Armed Forces.
Senator Kerry clearly owes an apology to our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines serving in Iraq. But Mr. Kerry has refused to do so. Instead, he’s claiming that Republicans are “desperately distorting” his comments. Watch the video yourself … it is perfectly clear what Mr. Kerry said … what’s unclear is whether Mr. Kerry ever means what he says. Perhaps he was against his comments before he actually made them.
But here’s the problem. In his moment of high dudgeon, he may have made matters worse. It probably wasn’t a good idea to accuse everyone who saw the video of his campaign appearance and thought he was disparaging the IQ of U.S. troops of being “crazy.”.....
You don’t have to be a right-wing radio talk show host to look at the video from Kerry’s campaign appearance yesterday and believe that he was indeed implying that those serving in Iraq are academic losers, there because they had no other choices.
It’s a safe guess that millions of Americans, including many Democrats, who saw the initial Kerry video have been shaking their collective heads all day wondering what was on his mind.....
John Green, a political scientist and director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute at the University of Akron, has a good summation of the dynamic on this between the two adversaries."Sen. Kerry has a history of saying unfortunate things and then not being able to explain them, because they are inexplicable,'' Green said.
To have the audacity to be both a baby boomer and question the prevailing baby boomer liberal wisdom, to actually agree with middle America on the most important issues of the day is to risk sheer, unmitigated fury from one's generational peers.So, as Lord refers to them, to all the "foaming furies" of the Left, ---to Barbra, Hillary and Rosie, and more Rosie, and the bad tempered Alec Baldwin and penitent (?) George Soros (apparently NOT ever) ---
The story is as follows for the those of you who didn't hear about it: It was the first day of Eid, and a new film was opening downtown. Mobs of males gatherd trying to get in, but when the show was sold out, they decided they will destroy the box office. After accomplishing that, they went on what can only be described as a sexual frenxy: They ran around grabbing any and every girl in sight, whether a niqabi, a Hijabi or uncoverd. Whether egyptian or foreigner. Even pregnant ones. They grabbed them, molested them, tried to rip their cloths off and rape them, all in front of the police, who didn't do shit. The good people of downtown tried their best to protect the girls. Shop owners would let the girls in and lock the doors, while the mobs tried to break in. Taxi drivers put the girls in the cars while the mobs were trying to break the glass and grab the girls out. It was a disgusting pandamonium of sexual assaults that lasted for 5 houres from 7:30 PM to 12:30 am, and it turns my stomach just to think about it.I called my father when I heard of that happening, and he informed me that he didn't hear of it at all. They watched Al Jazeerah, CNN, flipped through opposition newspapers, and nothing. Nada. Nobody mentioned it. As if it didn't happen.
But it did.
.....
That The Police forces didn;t came from another planet, that they were born and raised egyptians, amongst the egyptian people, the same egyptian people who have produced those mobs who found it in their right to attack girls in middle of crowded downtown for 5 houres under the police's watchdul eyes. The ones who approached the police asking them to do something were told : "what do you want us to do? It's Eid. Happy Eid to you too!"
And in one of the more notorious examples, inspectors estimated that as many as 1 in 10 ballots cast in Chicago during the 1982 Illinois gubernatorial election were fraudulent for various reasons, including votes by the dead.The Journal indicates other states are cleaning up their voter rolls, though not New York officially.
New Iraq has many vicious enemies because it is a success. It is not a failure to be jettisoned quickly, but a victory that must be defended within the timeframe needed to crush its enemies.So far, those enemies have failed to derail the political process in Iraq or to extend their initial constituencies. Yesterday's column detailed how these forces failed to achieve any of their stated goals for the bloody Ramadan just concluded. Their only success has been in the field of perceptions in America and the West in general.
It is largely the hope of breaking the will of the American people that keeps the insurgency alive.
But the close contests in two districts drawn to favor Republicans is significant as Democrats try to pick up the 15 seats they need to topple Hastert out of the 30 or so in play across the nation. Ironically, those very changes in long-standing suburban voting patterns could end up costing the suburbs' significant clout in Washington, D.C., if Hastert no longer is there to wield it as speaker.As much as Republicans can be favored in this Dem-dominated state, with these districts so close to Chicago. We have got to keep our independence and fight off the corrupt Chicago and Cook County Dem incursions.
Smartmatic was a little-known firm with no experience in voting technology before it was chosen by the Venezuelan authorities to replace the country’s elections machinery ahead of a contentious referendum that confirmed Mr. Chávez as president in August 2004.Seven months before that voting contract was awarded, a Venezuelan government financing agency invested more than $200,000 into a smaller technology company, owned by some of the same people as Smartmatic, that joined with Smartmatic as a minor partner in the bid.
In return, the government agency was given a 28 percent stake in the smaller company and a seat on its board, which was occupied by a senior government official who had previously advised Mr. Chávez on elections technology. But Venezuelan officials later insisted that the money was merely a small-business loan and that it was repaid before the referendum.
With a windfall of some $120 million from its first three contracts with Venezuela, Smartmatic then bought the much larger and more established Sequoia Voting Systems, which now has voting equipment installed in 17 states and the District of Columbia.
Simply the fact of foreign ownership is not damning. But these are American elections. And given Chicago and Cook County's history, extra oversight is welcome.
Quite the checks and balances among Chicago, uh Evanston, uh that other district Democrats for Dan Seals. Check out the Demnet and you'll see they're bringing in "campaign crusaders" from Chicago and Evanston to take over, uh, take their message to the suburbs.Looks like Demnet doesn't want Byrne to know who is paying for their efforts. Here's Byrne, Tribune:
IllinoisDemNet asserts that it has no connection with the Chicago organization or any other Democratic organization, that it's just a bunch of progressives, liberals and moderates who are passionate about their cause. Except that the volunteers are picked up at the 44th Ward Democratic Organization, in the district of Democratic U.S. Rep. Rahm Emanuel (the guy who parachuted outsider Duckworth into the 6th District race) and the Democratic Party headquarters in Evanston, in Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky's district. After I inquired, the Web site deleted the fact that pick-up sites were connected to party offices. Not deleted were some destinations, such as the Duckworth and Bean field offices.Read the whole column.
Creamer, 58, of Evanston, apologized in court for his conduct but maintained that he had merely been overzealous in his support of a good cause.And if he's lucky enough, he'll get the same judge and the same testimonials---why not---many of the same people who attested to Creamer's crusading character were at the fundraiser. Gee, maybe it won't even be luck, ya think?:
"I will never again allow my passion for that goal to overwhelm my good judgment or my respect for the law," Creamer said in a short statement after the hearing.
Schakowsky said in her own statement: "More than anything, I am proud of who Bob is. ... He has been a constant crusader."
More than 200 people wrote letters of support on Creamer's behalf, including U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Cook County Clerk David Orr, state Sen. Carol Ronen (D-Chicago), Chicago Ald. Joe Moore (49th), former State Sen. Dawn Clark Netsch and former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator Carol Browner.Political consultant David Axelrod and Rev. Jesse Jackson also wrote letters on his behalf.
Creamer's ties to the Democratic community are so deep that Moran considered recusing himself from the case. The judge, a former Democratic state representative from Evanston, said he had a potential conflict of interest because his son-in-law, political consultant Peter Giangreco, had worked with Creamer and Schakowsky and had sat on the board of one of Creamer's organizations.
Was it the one? Don't leave us in suspense. Quite the checks and balances among Chicago, uh Evanston, uh that other district Democrats for Dan Seals. Check out the Demnet and you'll see they're bringing in "campaign crusaders" from Chicago and Evanston to take over, uh, take their message to the suburbs.
Since he'll be out of jail before the election, and since her district is in the bag, maybe "top fundraiser" Schakowsky and her husband "Constant Crusader" Creamer will pull out all the stops and come up here to campaign for Seals. And give the "$73,000-a-year employee of the Chicago office of the attorney general's criminal enforcement division" a ride.
After all, he's not in jail yet. And Chicago liberal, uh "independent" candidate Seals thankfully is not in Congress.
(Another reason to vote for Mark Kirk.)
UPDATE: Another Schakowsky "fundraiser", under investigation, another on behalf of Seals. Tribune:An FEC spokeswoman confirmed that the agency is looking into a complaint that Seals failed to properly disclose who was paying for a fundraising solicitation letter on his behalf that was written by Rep. Jan Schakowsky, an Evanston Democrat. Richard Ringer, Seals' campaign spokesman, called it "a minor staff error" that had been corrected.
The Social Security program also contributes to the gap in wealth between blacks and whites in America. "Because Social Security taxes squeeze out other forms of saving and investment, especially for low-income workers, many African Americans are unable to accumulate real wealth," writes the director of health and welfare studies at the Cato Institute, Michael Tanner. "And, since Social Security benefits are not inheritable, that wealth inequity is compounded from generation to generation."And, read the full IWF report, "Social Insecurity". We need to start now to reform Social Security to avoid the crushing tax burden our children and grandchildren will bear, as there are fewer of them to support upcoming retirees. In fact, reform is the only way to ensure benefits will be there for all.
Some also see AARP's opposition to diverting Social Security funds to private accounts -- which it criticizes as too risky -- as the height of hypocrisy. Says American Enterprise Institute scholar James K. Glassman: "They are selling mutual funds, which by any conventional standard are far riskier than anything anybody has contemplated" for Social Security.WSJ:
At the same time, AARP's role in the Social Security debate has focused new attention on the hundreds of millions of dollars the group makes by endorsing and co-branding health insurance, financial products, and travel services that are sold to its members. Some of those products suffer from lackluster performance....
It's also worth mentioning the hypocrisy of AARP's deriding diversified bond and stock investment as too "risky" in other ads, while at the same time profiting by putting its brandname on various investment funds of its own. AARP sells 38 mutual funds, and makes north of $300 million annually by such co-branding of financial products.We need a fresh and honest approach on the issue. So let's toss the AARP letters in the recycling.
This kind of financial muscle--along with the group's semi-plausible claim to represent 35 million seniors who join for the discounts--allows AARP to sit across the table from its interlocutors at the White House and pretend to be sincere about its desire for compromise. And it's almost enough to make us long for an intrepid antitrust lawyer to take on the senior lobby. One thing's for sure: We're never going to have a reasonable debate about policies for an aging society as long as AARP has an effective monopoly on that role.
Police confirm that the M.O. used by French youths now includes the intention to kill using violence which is not only directed against police but against the general population. In last night's attack of a bus in Marseille where a young woman was seriously burned (she is still between life and death in a Marseille hospital), no warning was given to passengers. They were not forced to get out of the bus as during previous attacks.And this.
The invaluable Brussels Journal recently translated an interview with the writer Oscar van den Boogaard from the Belgian paper De Standaard. A Dutch gay "humanist" (which is pretty much the trifecta of Eurocool), van den Boogaard was reflecting on the accelerating Islamification of the Continent and concluding that the jig was up for the Europe he loved. "I am not a warrior, but who is?" he shrugged. "I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it."Of course it was in the tolerant Netherlands where the filmmaker Van Gogh (yes a descendent of Vincent) was knocked off his bike and had his throat slit. You see, he had made a film protesting the vile treatment of women in the name of Islam.
Too many of us are only good at enjoying freedom. That war-is-never-the-answer 25 percent are in essence saying that there's nothing about America worth fighting for, and that, ultimately, the continuation of their society is a bet on the kindness of strangers.....
And on Iran the two candidates agreed on seeking sanctions, but Seals attacked the president.Video, "Seals Would Not Defend Israel From Iran" via this post.
"When the president talked about the axis of evil in Iran and Iraq and North Korea, I don't think any of those places are in a more stable position today than they were when the president was elected," Seals said.
(BC NOTE to SEALS: Why would we want to promote stability for, and embolden, evil dictators?)
And Kirk attacked Seals.
"And unlike my opponent who was asked 'If Iran attacks Israel, what side would you be on?' He said he would be on the side of peace. And I say I would be on the side of Israel," said Kirk.
To Republicans, the lessons of 9/11 are clear. We are at war with Islamist extremists and have been since at least as long ago as the first World Trade Center bombings in 1993. More to the point, they are at war with us. The goal of our enemies - global domination through murder, terror, and, at the earliest possible date, the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction - was stated long before 19 young men hijacked four planes five Septembers ago. They have no political agenda or list of grievances. Their perversion of a decent religion has left them with no incentive to pursue either peace or progress. They want, quite simply, to terror-bomb us and our values back to the Dark Ages. As far as we are concerned, our enemies present to us a choice not between war and peace but between war and chaos. They will fight us whether we choose to fight back or not. As far as Republicans are concerned we are in a fight for our freedom and even our lives.
The Democrats disagree.
At a fundamental, instinctive level, Democrats think that there must be something we're doing to exacerbate all this; that there must be something they could do that would make Islamist suicide bombers pack up their bomb vests and stop threatening us. If only, they say, Republicans could address the "root causes" of their troubled psychology - if only we could sit down and talk to them -- they wouldn't hate us so much. If only America would abandon its tough-talking, uncompromising stance, we could immediately spark the dawn of a kinder, gentler jihad.
They think, in short, that 9/11 was an aberration, not part of a pattern. This is nothing short of insane. After the first World Trade Center bombings in 1993, America was terrorized in quick succession: the Khobar Towers bombings in 1996, the African embassy bombings in 1998, the 2000 attack against the USS Cole. All of these attacks - more brazen and costly than the one before - were launched against the United States while we pursued the weak, indecisive, pre-9/11 policies the Democrats still support.
Whatever else anyone can say about the Republican security agenda, it has achieved its objective. Despite all predictions to the contrary, we have not witnessed a repeat of the 9/11 attacks on American soil. The Afghanistan Taliban, Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime, and tens of thousands of their most dangerous leaders and soldiers around the world have been erased. Libya's terrorist regime has disarmed. Democratic movements have sprung up across the Middle East. Iran has been isolated. Three separate elections have been held in Iraq. We have taken the fight to the enemy before they can take the fight to American neighborhoods.Our heroic troops are still in harm's way; more of them will be wounded and killed in action before the job is done. But our policy is clear and our resolve unbending: America will not abandon the Iraqis; we will not abandon our allies; and we will not go back on our word. Our national security policy will not rely on the kindness of terrorists. We are criticized for our lack of an exit strategy in Iraq, but our exit strategy has been clear from day one: winning.
The divisions between these ideas and those espoused by Democrats on the campaign trail could not be deeper. Democrats have called for the immediate removal of troops from Iraq. They have opposed any effort to seal America's borders from infiltration. They have voted to cut our intelligence and defense budgets and against a missile defense shield. They opposed the Patriot Act and recent legislation necessary to allow our troops to interrogate terrorist prisoners.
In short, Democrats do not believe in the Global War on Terror. I don't mean that they don't support it, though they don't. What I mean is Democrats don't believe the war actually exists. While Republicans believe the biggest threat to American freedom and security is the evil ideology that planned and executed the murder of 3,000 of our countrymen five years ago, and continues planning today, Democrats think the biggest threat to America is... Republicans.
The choice, as I said, could not be clearer.
But come to the hot-button issue of abortion, which she raised and ... wow. She voted against the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act, which prohibits taking a minor across state lines to obtain an abortion without the consent of a parent or legal guardian. It protects children from exploitation by boyfriends and others who would pressure girls into having an abortion. It protects the right of parents to guide, protect and safeguard their children. It supports the time-honored concept, which left-wing extremists would unravel, of family cohesion and support.Byrne goes on to spotlight the rest of her LIBERAL VOTING RECORD.
Yes, yes, I know the tiresome response: You can't legislate love or good parenting. You can't bring back Ozzie and Harriet. You can't leave the decision in the hands of an abusive parent. You can't criminalize doctors who perform abortions.
Except: Doctors who treat your children without your knowledge or consent deserve to be treated like criminals. Even so, the legislation provides exceptions and judicial bypass for abused children. That's because we must prevent abusive parents from using this law against the best interests of their child. But most children's best interests are served when their parents are loving, informed and involved. What are such parents to do when their pregnant girl is further victimized by getting pressured to travel elsewhere in secret for an abortion she may not want? By male predators hoping that they can eliminate obvious evidence of their crimes? Who does Melissa Bean think is protecting them? Maybe that's why she doesn't mention abortion on her Web site.
You can't get more "extreme" than this. There is no political position to the left of it. Polls typically show that 70 or so percent of Americans surveyed support some form of parental notification.
But it is obvious that he regards the threat to the American people as palpable.
"My biggest issue that I think about all the time," Mr. Bush says, "is the next attack on America, because I am fully aware that there are people out there that would like nothing more than to have another spectacular moment by killing American people. And they're coming. And we've got to do everything we can to stop them. That's why we need to be on offense all the time." This, he insists, is the justification for the terrorist wiretaps, the Patriot Act, the interrogations and the Iraq war.Mr. Bush goes on offense himself in the kind of plain speech that maddens his detractors but may endear him in the heartland: "Maybe it's not nuanced enough for some of the thinkers and all that stuff--that's fine. But that's exactly what a lot of people like me think."
Plain speaking. Reminds me of another president from the heartland, who said, "I never did give them hell, I just told the truth and they thought it was hell." Harry Truman also said "Carry the battle to them. Don't let them bring it to you."
Gov. Rod Blagojevich's wife earned more than $113,000 in real estate commissions this year through a woman who holds a longstanding, no-bid state contract and whose banker husband has business pending before state regulators.Ms. Blagojevich has also had dealings with family friend, fundraiser for the governor, and now indicted figure Tony Rezko:
The four real estate deals involving the Chicago couple Anita and Amrish Mahajan, the last of which closed Sept. 28, account for the only commissions Patricia Blagojevich has earned this year.
Rezko and Blagojevich met in the early 1990s when Blagojevich was a state representative from the Northwest Side, Rezko said last year in an interview with the Tribune. The two families also became close personally, with Rezko and Blagojevich's wife, Patti, a real estate broker, working on several deals together and earning Patti Blagojevich at least $38,000 in fees.The banker husband, Mr. Mahajan, has also lent millions to Rezko.
Victor Davis Hanson, RCP:
We have the elite Fifth Columns, who do not know what it is to be American any more. Or what it will take to keep us free.The most frightening aspect of the present war is how easily our pre-modern enemies from the Middle East have brought a stunned postmodern world back into the Dark Ages.
Students of history are sickened when they read of the long-ago, gruesome practice of beheading. How brutal were those societies that chopped off the heads of Cicero, Sir Thomas More and Marie Antoinette. And how lucky we thought we were to have evolved from such elemental barbarity.....
The Goths and Vandals did not sack Rome solely through the power of their hordes; they also relied on the paralysis of Roman elites who no longer knew what it was to be Roman - much less whether it was any better than the alternative.
Claypool responded that he supported Washington when Daley ran against him and said, "It's a real disservice to the memory of Harold Washington for the mayor to compare him to Todd Stroger.Dan Proft, Peraica's spokesman, pointed out the significant number of Democrats, former Claypool supporters who are working for Peraica.
"I didn't run against Todd Stroger, I ran against John Stroger, who the mayor assured us was recovering and would be on the ballot in the fall," Claypool said.
Remember how Chicago's Democratic bosses lied to voters earlier this year? Remember their assurances that John Stroger would return after his stroke to lead the Cook County Board? Once the deadline for other candidates to file papers for Stroger's seat passed, the bosses did what they'd plotted all along: They put Stroger's lightweight son, Todd, on the ballot to cement their control of county jobs and contracts. But it turns out that wasn't the end of their disdain for voters--especially African-American voters:Contempt for voters. What a surprise. Taking the African-American vote for granted, and betting that suburban Cook County voters won't care enough to turn out. Tribune:
The Tribune's story Sunday about 11th-hour efforts to mobilize black turnout for Todd Stroger and Gov. Rod Blagojevich included a revealing quote from a Democratic strategist: "You don't have to do anything but get them out, and the time to get them out is the weekend before the election."
The alternative the bosses dread is four years of Tony Peraica, teaming with other reformers on the County Board to redirect money spent on patronage to improving services for poor people.Vote for Tony Peraica, and a give those smug, Cook County Bosses a slap in the face. Say no to the thug bosses and their friends who line their pockets with hard-earned taxpayer dollars while Cook County crumbles around us.
Peraica said the electorate feels "dissatisfaction . . . with the secrecy surrounding John Stroger's unfortunate stroke and that that process was kept secret to get past the filing deadline on June 25 to allow his son to replace him."The least qualified one was picked to replace his father in a monarchical transfer of power."
Cady Gibbons, executive director of the Cook County Democratic Party, said the suburbs will not play more of a role in this election.
Excellent piece by Tom Bevan, RCP on the Illinois 6th race, where Republican Peter Roskam is fighting Rahm Emanuel's handpicked candidate:
Roskam has grown up in the district and has served constituents in both houses of the state legislature, so he knows it well. He also understands the stakes for our country.Roskam is also quick to point out that while most of his money comes in the form of small checks from district residents, more than 95% of Duckworth's money comes from out of the district and her list of contributors is a veritable who's who of the liberal elite: George Soros, Barbara Streisand, and Rosie O'Donnell, to name just a few, have all given money to the Duckworth campaign.
There's also the issue of Duckworth's residency: she lives more than a mile outside the boundaries of the sixth district. Her home in Hoffman Estates actually sits in the adjacent eighth congressional district.
Mary Davenport, MD (an obstetrician and gynecologist, and a Fellow of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology), via RCP, "The Unconscionable Claims of Michael J. Fox:
So Democrats, who claim Republicans are anti-science, are the ones who are spreading ignorance and confusion, and shamefully demagoguing this issue. They hold out false hope for many of our most vulnerable, and smear those who make honest and important ethical distinctions to protect fragile and innocent human life.Mr. Fox and his ads' sponsors are guilty of conflating embryonic stem cell research, which the GOP candidates and many Americans oppose for destroying a human life in the name of curing other people's diseases, with stem cell research in general, which includes adult stem cell research and umbilical cord blood stem cell research.....
Flim-flam is a charitable description. Why would federally-funded research be more promising than state- and privately-funded research? And on what possible basis can the claim be made that embryonic stem cell research is more promising than adult stem cell research?The plain fact is that embryonic stem cell research is proving to be a bust. There are currently 72 therapies showing human benefits using adult stem cells and zero using embryonic stem cells. Scientifically-minded readers can review this medical journal article on the status of adult stem cell research. Adult stem cell therapies are already being advertised and promoted while no such treatments are even remotely in prospect for embryonic stem cell research.
The fact is that adult stem cells have already produced remarkable cures, whereas embryonic stem cells have failed. This should come as no great surprise to anyone with a background in high school biology.
In Illinois, an estimated 210,000 young people ages 16 to 24 are not in school and do not have a high school diploma, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data. In Chicago, almost half the students who begin high school never finish.Most of them are boys. You have to read almost to the end of the story to find out that the school is part of a charter school--the Youth Connection Charter School.
Anybody who thinks Illinois' public school children don't live in a segregated land of economic educational disparity, has not been to North Lawndale and compared its classrooms with New Trier's.Anybody who thinks that is a useful comparison is deluding themselves.
He said his schools’ research showed boys were stronger in math and girls were stronger in literacy. But in recently released test scores, he said, his schools did better than any other public schools in Albany. “Paradoxically, by educating them separately,” he said, “we were able to do much to reverse the gender gaps that typically leave girls behind in math and boys behind in literacy.”All we are saying, is give choice a chance.
Thomas Sowell, RCP:
But elections are not about which politicians get to keep their jobs, though the media cover the news as if the political horse race is the issue. Elections are about the fate of 300 million Americans and the future of this nation.
That fate hangs grimly in the balance as two irresponsible regimes in North Korea and Iran seek to gain nuclear weapons. Neither leader of these regimes can be deterred by threats of nuclear retaliation, as the Soviet Union was deterred.
Both are like Hitler, who was willing to see his own people decimated and his own country reduced to rubble rather than quit when it was obvious to all that he could not win. If you can imagine Hitler with a few nuclear weapons to use to vent his all-consuming hatreds in a lost cause, you can see what a nuclear North Korea or a nuclear Iran would mean for America and the world.
Jed Babbin, RCP Blog, of a talk with Sec. Rumsfeld and Gen. Pace. on North Korea, Iran, the danger of nuclear proliferation, and then Iraq, in a dangerous area of the world:
Rumsfeld elaborated. He said that Americans were raised - "socialized" was the word he used - to believe that our military can win any war by going out and defeating a nation or an army. But times have changed. He said of Iraq, "There's no way the military can lose. There's also no way the military can win all alone. That isn't the nature of it...There's no major army, navy, air force to go and attack and destroy." In wars like this, there will be no "clean wins."
How long will it take? How will the American people support a war such as this? Rumsfeld said, "We have to be smart enough and wise enough as we were in the Cold War to recognize the danger, and to recognize that it takes perseverance."
Gen. Pace added, "We're back to the common understanding of the threat. The American people are willing to withstand a long-term challenge as exemplified by the Cold War and the Soviet Union...The good news is that since 9-11 we haven't been attacked here at home. What that means is that some Americans don't yet grasp fully the very real nature of this threat to the survival of the nation."
Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe, RCP, quoting Jonah Goldberg, NRO:
Reuters, "West can't abandon Iraq, says deputy PM":"If we had known then what we know now, we would never have gone to war with Iraq in 2003."
Is that really how this war -- or any war -- should be judged?....
The point is that we don't know. Like earlier Americans, we have to choose between resolve and retreat, with no guarantees about how it will end. All we can be sure of is that the stakes once again are liberty and decency vs. tyranny and terror -- that we are fighting an enemy that feeds on weakness and expects us to lose heart -- and that Americans for generations to come will remember whether we flinched.
He stressed that Iraqi forces were gradually taking over responsibility for security but said Iraq needed the "enduring support" of the international community to combat what he called "a difficult onslaught by terrorists".And what would be the fate of Iraq if we left? It would be a bloodbath, with the most reasonable and gentle being murdered first.
Asked about a pledge by Australia's opposition to pull the country's troops out of Iraq if it wins the next election, Salih said: "I do believe there is no option for the international community to cut and run."
"The fate of Iraq is vital to the future of the Middle East and the world order," he told reporters.
What's more, if the Middle East evolves democratically--and the democratic conversation, amplified by the deposing of Saddam Hussein, remains vibrant--anti-Americanism will shoot through the roof. Fundamentalists will enter the public conversation even more loudly than they have already. Unless one believes that the regimes in place can kill off Islamic militancy and squash Islamic organizations that have terrorist movements within them, then the only solution to bin Ladenism is for Sunni fundamentalism itself to kill it off. Throughout much of the Islamic world, fundamentalism is now mainstream thought. But holding power will deprive militants of the luxury of mere opposition. In power and out, fundamentalists and more moderate Muslims will focus more seriously on Islamic political thought and practice. Under representative government, Muslims will have a harder time avoiding the rot--the ethics that allow young men to kill so easily.Resolve or retreat. The Democrats would like us to take another holiday from history, like they did in the 90's. But we can't do that. These are serious times, and we need to step up in a serious way.Muslims' questioning of their own world has gained steam since 9/11. Perverse as it is, the carnage in Mesopotamia, like the slaughter in Algeria and Egypt in the 1990s, has forced some reflection among Muslims about their faith and the hideous abuse it has suffered at the hands of some believers. It would be wrong to call this widespread, but it is a start. If the United States gets driven from Iraq, the soul-searching necessary to combat Islamic extremism will also suffer a rout. When Hezbollah appeared victorious over the Israelis this summer, even moderate and liberal Arab Muslims began to rethink their accommodationist stance toward the Jewish state. The very liberal Mustafa Hamarneh, director of the University of Jordan's Center for Strategic Studies, who has welcomed Israelis to Amman, jumped for joy when the Israelis bogged down in Lebanon. He referred to the Israelis as Nazis. Can one ever compromise with Nazis? Intellectually honest, and unquestionably voicing publicly what many moderates were thinking privately, Hamarneh wondered why Arabs should seek peace with Israel if in fact the Zionists were beatable on the battlefield. If we withdraw from Iraq, expect Muslim liberals and moderates to once again nose-dive throughout the Middle East.
When Islamic activists become more responsible for governance, the fundamentalist civil wars will begin. (This process is starting in the Palestinian lands.) The introspection, debates, and fall from grace will be painful and quite possibly violent, as devout Muslims who incorporate the community's popular will into God's law fight it out with fundamentalists who view man-made legislation as an insult to Allah.
This contest is not what the Bush administration foresaw when it espoused democracy in the Middle East as part of the solution to the evil that struck us on 9/11. But the president's democratic reflex was correct. And as faithful Muslims decide how much of Western political thought to incorporate into their own, anti-Americanism will skyrocket. Indeed, rising anti-Americanism will be a pretty good barometer of how serious the democratic-religious debates are in the Muslim Middle East. The more serious the debates, the more furious the flailing out against America by the hard-core militant Muslims will be.....
Leaving Iraq will not make our world better. We will be a defeated nation. Our holy-warrior and our more mundane enemies will know it. And we can rest assured that they will make us pay. Over and over and over again.
