Friday, November 12, 2004
Tentative Optimism in Iraq
_________________________
by George Will writing for Newsweek and the Washington Post
CENTRAL COMMAND HEADQUARTERS, Tampa: By following the movements, updated every eight minutes, of blue icons on a screen here displaying a satellite photograph of Fallujah's streets, a four-star general could monitor, in real time, the movements of a squad through an intersection in that city.
He could, but Gen. John Abizaid does not, having many more worries. As commander of Central Command, he is director of the military responsibilities -- especially the war on terror -- in 27 nations from the Horn of Africa to the Middle East, and through South and Central Asia, including Afghanistan and Pakistan.
But operations in Fallujah, and perhaps in three or more other Iraqi cities, may determine whether elections scheduled for late January midwife the birth of a viable state. And as the operations began, there was an expectation here that of the eight Iraqi military units collaborating with U.S. forces, three or four would perform reasonably well, two or three might reveal significant inadequacies and one might flunk the test.
Military professionals have a realism born of familiarity with military history -- America's (e.g., the U.S. Army's poor performance in its first major engagement of World War II, at the Kasserine Pass in February 1943) and others' (e.g., the disintegration, along ethnic and religious lines, of the Lebanese army in the 1970s).
As events unfold in Fallujah, the two great questions are: In a region where there is little tradition of armies loyal to the state, can Iraq's military be reconstituted while a new Iraqi state is being constituted? And can this be done before Americans' patience is exhausted by the suspicion that the current Iraqi government is prepared to "fight to the last American"?
Such loss of patience might infect the morale of U.S. Reserve and National Guard units in Iraq. American impatience would be exacerbated if Iraq's government, partaking of an Arab culture of alibis, blamed failures of the new Iraqi military on American trainers.
Officers here believe that the problem of foreign fighters in Iraq has been vastly exaggerated -- that only a few hundred of 10,000 people detained in Iraq are foreigners. In Fallujah, a Darwinian dynamic may be at work -- survival of the most dangerous. That is, many insurgents fled before the Marines came, while the stupid ones stayed. The core of the insurgency -- former regime elements -- may include a few who want to return to the good old days of the seventh century, but many more who want to return to the good old days of power in Baghdad and shopping at Harrods in London.
Abizaid believes radical Islam today is roughly akin to Bolshevism in 1890 and fascism in 1920 -- there is time to stop its rise, but it must be stopped. Military success is certain. The enemy dare not mass. In Vietnam, American battalions suffered defeats. In Iraq, there has been no platoon-size defeat, and regular U.S. infantry units perform tasks that would have called for Delta Force skills a decade ago.
Abizaid laconically dismisses the idea that U.S. military energies are being depleted by "nation-building" duties: "We're doing more fighting than fixing. The enemy gives us ample opportunity to fight." But while almost 3,000 Americans died on 9/11, there have been fewer than half that many military deaths in three years since the post-9/11 fighting began, in Afghanistan. And one reason why terrorists have killed no Americans in America since 9/11 is that, as one officer puts it, "we're so much in their knickers abroad."
Success in Iraq, people here believe, is contingent on three ifs: if Iraqi military and security forces can stay intact during contacts with the insurgents; if insurgents are killed in sufficient numbers to convince the Sunni political class that it must invest its hope in politics; if neighboring states, especially Syria, will cooperate in slowing the flow of money and other aid to the insurgency. If so, then America can -- this is the preferred verb -- "stand up" an Iraqi state and recede from a dominant role.
Abizaid, who speaks Arabic and has studied the region (and in the region, at the University of Jordan) believes that the Fallujah operation begins a 12-month period from which America will learn the parameters of the possible. When a visitor suggests that in two weeks we will know much, another officer tersely replies: "Two days."
That was said on Monday. So far, the performance of Iraq's apprentice military, now working with U.S. units denoted by the blue icons on that screen, permit tentative -- very tentative -- optimism.
___________________________________
by George Will writing for Newsweek and the Washington Post
CENTRAL COMMAND HEADQUARTERS, Tampa: By following the movements, updated every eight minutes, of blue icons on a screen here displaying a satellite photograph of Fallujah's streets, a four-star general could monitor, in real time, the movements of a squad through an intersection in that city.
He could, but Gen. John Abizaid does not, having many more worries. As commander of Central Command, he is director of the military responsibilities -- especially the war on terror -- in 27 nations from the Horn of Africa to the Middle East, and through South and Central Asia, including Afghanistan and Pakistan.
But operations in Fallujah, and perhaps in three or more other Iraqi cities, may determine whether elections scheduled for late January midwife the birth of a viable state. And as the operations began, there was an expectation here that of the eight Iraqi military units collaborating with U.S. forces, three or four would perform reasonably well, two or three might reveal significant inadequacies and one might flunk the test.
Military professionals have a realism born of familiarity with military history -- America's (e.g., the U.S. Army's poor performance in its first major engagement of World War II, at the Kasserine Pass in February 1943) and others' (e.g., the disintegration, along ethnic and religious lines, of the Lebanese army in the 1970s).
As events unfold in Fallujah, the two great questions are: In a region where there is little tradition of armies loyal to the state, can Iraq's military be reconstituted while a new Iraqi state is being constituted? And can this be done before Americans' patience is exhausted by the suspicion that the current Iraqi government is prepared to "fight to the last American"?
Such loss of patience might infect the morale of U.S. Reserve and National Guard units in Iraq. American impatience would be exacerbated if Iraq's government, partaking of an Arab culture of alibis, blamed failures of the new Iraqi military on American trainers.
Officers here believe that the problem of foreign fighters in Iraq has been vastly exaggerated -- that only a few hundred of 10,000 people detained in Iraq are foreigners. In Fallujah, a Darwinian dynamic may be at work -- survival of the most dangerous. That is, many insurgents fled before the Marines came, while the stupid ones stayed. The core of the insurgency -- former regime elements -- may include a few who want to return to the good old days of the seventh century, but many more who want to return to the good old days of power in Baghdad and shopping at Harrods in London.
Abizaid believes radical Islam today is roughly akin to Bolshevism in 1890 and fascism in 1920 -- there is time to stop its rise, but it must be stopped. Military success is certain. The enemy dare not mass. In Vietnam, American battalions suffered defeats. In Iraq, there has been no platoon-size defeat, and regular U.S. infantry units perform tasks that would have called for Delta Force skills a decade ago.
Abizaid laconically dismisses the idea that U.S. military energies are being depleted by "nation-building" duties: "We're doing more fighting than fixing. The enemy gives us ample opportunity to fight." But while almost 3,000 Americans died on 9/11, there have been fewer than half that many military deaths in three years since the post-9/11 fighting began, in Afghanistan. And one reason why terrorists have killed no Americans in America since 9/11 is that, as one officer puts it, "we're so much in their knickers abroad."
Success in Iraq, people here believe, is contingent on three ifs: if Iraqi military and security forces can stay intact during contacts with the insurgents; if insurgents are killed in sufficient numbers to convince the Sunni political class that it must invest its hope in politics; if neighboring states, especially Syria, will cooperate in slowing the flow of money and other aid to the insurgency. If so, then America can -- this is the preferred verb -- "stand up" an Iraqi state and recede from a dominant role.
Abizaid, who speaks Arabic and has studied the region (and in the region, at the University of Jordan) believes that the Fallujah operation begins a 12-month period from which America will learn the parameters of the possible. When a visitor suggests that in two weeks we will know much, another officer tersely replies: "Two days."
That was said on Monday. So far, the performance of Iraq's apprentice military, now working with U.S. units denoted by the blue icons on that screen, permit tentative -- very tentative -- optimism.
___________________________________
Yasser Arafat: AllahFather Of Terror
__________________
by Jeff Jacoby Boston Globe
YASSER ARAFAT died at age 75, lying in bed surrounded by familiar faces. He left this world peacefully, unlike the thousands of victims he sent to early graves.
In a better world, the PLO chief would have met his end on a gallows, hanged for mass murder much as the Nazi chiefs were hanged at Nuremberg. In a better world, the French president would not have paid a visit to the bedside of such a monster. In a better world, George Bush would not have said, on hearing the first reports that Arafat had died, "God bless his soul."
God bless his soul? What a grotesque idea! Bless the soul of the man who brought modern terrorism to the world? Who sent his agents to slaughter athletes at the Olympics, blow airliners out of the sky, bomb schools and pizzerias, machine-gun passengers in airline terminals? Who lied, cheated, and stole without compunction? Who inculcated the vilest culture of Jew-hatred since the Third Reich? Human beings might stoop to bless a creature so evil -- as indeed Arafat was blessed, with money, deference, even a Nobel Prize -- but God, I am quite sure, will damn him for eternity.
Arafat always inspired flights of nonsense from Western journalists, and his last two weeks were no exception.
_____________________________
Derek Brown wrote in The Guardian that Arafat's "undisputed courage as a guerrilla leader" was exceeded only "by his extraordinary courage" as a peace negotiator. But it is an odd kind of courage that expresses itself in shooting unarmed victims -- or in signing peace accords and then flagrantly violating their terms.
_____________________________
Another commentator, columnist Gwynne Dyer, asked, "So what did Arafat do right?" The answer: He drew worldwide attention to the Palestinian cause, "for the most part by successful acts of terror." In other words, butchering innocent human beings was "right," since it served an ulterior political motive. No doubt that thought brings daily comfort to all those who were forced to bury a child, parent, or spouse because of Arafat's "successful" terrorism.
Some journalists couldn't wait for Arafat's actual death to begin weeping for him. Take the BBC's Barbara Plett, who burst into tears on the day he was airlifted out of the West Bank. "When the helicopter carrying the frail old man rose above his ruined compound," Plett reported from Ramallah, "I started to cry." Normal people don't weep for brutal murderers, but Plett made it clear that her empathy for Arafat -- whom she praised as "a symbol of Palestinian unity, steadfastness, and resistance" -- was heartfelt:
"I remember well when the Israelis re-conquered the West Bank more than two years ago, how they drove their tanks and bulldozers into Mr. Arafat's headquarters, trapping him in a few rooms, and throwing a military curtain around Ramallah. I remember how Palestinians admired his refusal to flee under fire. They told me: `Our leader is sharing our pain, we are all under the same siege.' And so was I." Such is the state of journalism at the BBC, whose reporters do not seem to have any trouble reporting, dry-eyed, on the plight of Arafat's victims. (That is, when they mention them -- which Plett's teary bon voyage to Arafat did not.)
And what about those victims? Why were they scarcely remembered in this Arafat death watch?
How is it possible to reflect on Arafat's most enduring legacy -- the rise of modern terrorism -- without recalling the legions of men, women, and children whose lives he and his followers destroyed? If Osama bin Laden were on his deathbed, would we neglect to mention all those he murdered on 9/11?
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.
____________________________
by Jeff Jacoby Boston Globe
YASSER ARAFAT died at age 75, lying in bed surrounded by familiar faces. He left this world peacefully, unlike the thousands of victims he sent to early graves.
In a better world, the PLO chief would have met his end on a gallows, hanged for mass murder much as the Nazi chiefs were hanged at Nuremberg. In a better world, the French president would not have paid a visit to the bedside of such a monster. In a better world, George Bush would not have said, on hearing the first reports that Arafat had died, "God bless his soul."
God bless his soul? What a grotesque idea! Bless the soul of the man who brought modern terrorism to the world? Who sent his agents to slaughter athletes at the Olympics, blow airliners out of the sky, bomb schools and pizzerias, machine-gun passengers in airline terminals? Who lied, cheated, and stole without compunction? Who inculcated the vilest culture of Jew-hatred since the Third Reich? Human beings might stoop to bless a creature so evil -- as indeed Arafat was blessed, with money, deference, even a Nobel Prize -- but God, I am quite sure, will damn him for eternity.
Arafat always inspired flights of nonsense from Western journalists, and his last two weeks were no exception.
_____________________________
Derek Brown wrote in The Guardian that Arafat's "undisputed courage as a guerrilla leader" was exceeded only "by his extraordinary courage" as a peace negotiator. But it is an odd kind of courage that expresses itself in shooting unarmed victims -- or in signing peace accords and then flagrantly violating their terms.
_____________________________
Another commentator, columnist Gwynne Dyer, asked, "So what did Arafat do right?" The answer: He drew worldwide attention to the Palestinian cause, "for the most part by successful acts of terror." In other words, butchering innocent human beings was "right," since it served an ulterior political motive. No doubt that thought brings daily comfort to all those who were forced to bury a child, parent, or spouse because of Arafat's "successful" terrorism.
Some journalists couldn't wait for Arafat's actual death to begin weeping for him. Take the BBC's Barbara Plett, who burst into tears on the day he was airlifted out of the West Bank. "When the helicopter carrying the frail old man rose above his ruined compound," Plett reported from Ramallah, "I started to cry." Normal people don't weep for brutal murderers, but Plett made it clear that her empathy for Arafat -- whom she praised as "a symbol of Palestinian unity, steadfastness, and resistance" -- was heartfelt:
"I remember well when the Israelis re-conquered the West Bank more than two years ago, how they drove their tanks and bulldozers into Mr. Arafat's headquarters, trapping him in a few rooms, and throwing a military curtain around Ramallah. I remember how Palestinians admired his refusal to flee under fire. They told me: `Our leader is sharing our pain, we are all under the same siege.' And so was I." Such is the state of journalism at the BBC, whose reporters do not seem to have any trouble reporting, dry-eyed, on the plight of Arafat's victims. (That is, when they mention them -- which Plett's teary bon voyage to Arafat did not.)
And what about those victims? Why were they scarcely remembered in this Arafat death watch?
How is it possible to reflect on Arafat's most enduring legacy -- the rise of modern terrorism -- without recalling the legions of men, women, and children whose lives he and his followers destroyed? If Osama bin Laden were on his deathbed, would we neglect to mention all those he murdered on 9/11?
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.
____________________________
Thursday, November 11, 2004
Victory in Fallujah
_____________________
by Ralph Peters New York Post
November 11, 2004 -- IN the Second Battle of Fallujah, military operations are ahead of schedule. Our casualties have been blessedly light. The terrorists who haven't fled are being killed by the hundreds. Our troops will soon achieve their goal of eliminating Iraq's key safe haven for terrorists.
Our Marines and soldiers have carried the ball inside the 10-yard line. The media's response? Move the goalposts.
The legions of pundits ("Will talk for food") now suggest that a win in Fallujah will be meaningless because we failed to kill or capture the terrorist leadership, because some of the thugs ran away and because Fallujah won't resemble Darien, Conn., by next Sunday.
On Tuesday, as our troops handily pierced the defenses terrorists had spent months erecting, The New York Times carried two front-page stories implying that our forces were facing possible defeat. The Times' military analysis was incompetent and just plain wrong. And the photo its editors ran above the fold showed a Marine curled in a ditch under enemy fire.
It wasn't reporting. It was a mix of anti-American propaganda and wishful thinking. Al-Jazeera couldn't have done it better.
Now that our troops are winning so lopsidedly that it can't be denied, the Times likely will tell us that Fallujah didn't matter, anyway, that our efforts were wasted. Then Seymour Hersh, the New Yorker's greatest living fiction writer, will follow up with a fairy tale called "Failure In Fallujah."
What's really happening?
We're winning a critical victory. Since the political decision to stop short in Fallujah last April, the terrorists had bragged to the world that the city would never fall to the infidel. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his thugs turned Fallujah into a vast dungeon, complete with torture chambers and execution halls. The terrorists stockpiled weapons and ammunition, welcoming thousands of international "Jihadis" and using the city as a base to spread terror across central Iraq.
Fallujah became the new world capital of terror. And Allah's butchers proclaimed that they'd slaughter U.S. troops in the streets, if they tried to enter the city.
Guess who's dying now?
By fleeing without fighting to the death as they promised they would, the terror-masters discredited themselves. After Coalition leaders lost their nerve last April, the terrorists portrayed themselves as having faced down America's military might. This time, they ran away, leaving untrained recruits to take the bullet-train to paradise.
The swift fall of Fallujah is not only a practical disaster for the terrorists, but a massive loss of face for them throughout the Muslim world.
Plenty of tough street-fighting remains, but three-quarters of the city is under the control of Coalition and Iraqi forces. Contrary to smug media predictions, the Iraqi units didn't run away. They did their part to free the city and save their country.
What have we found in Fallujah? Hostage slaughterhouses — butcher shops for human cattle. Stockpiles of ammunition and explosives in mosques. And a city scarred by all the marks of an Islamic reign of terror.
Talking heads may smirk and say that we'll still have to fight the terrorists elsewhere. True enough. But no one claimed that Fallujah would be the last battle. Of course, the terrorists who ran away will try to refurbish their image with more bombings, assassinations, kidnappings and beheadings.
But they've lost their greatest stronghold. They've lost their sole tangible symbol of success. And they've lost their image as dauntless warriors able to stand up to the U.S. military.
In this imperfect world, where results are never what amateurs demand, the Second Battle of Fallujah is already a huge win for the good guys — even before the shooting's over.
In the coming weeks, the terrorists will try to re-infiltrate the city. They'll stage photogenic car bombings and assassinations. Then we'll be told that we still don't control Fallujah, that we've failed. But a city where terrorists have to sneak in to plant a bomb is a far better place than one in which they rule.
Meanwhile, our troops and their Iraqi allies remain engaged in brutal street-fighting. The remarkably low friendly casualty list is bound to grow. But no one need doubt the outcome. Our troops will complete the mission they were given.
But the media need to stop inventing missions of their own, then blaming our troops for not accomplishing them.
Ralph Peters is the author of "Beyond Baghdad: Postmodern War and Peace."
by Ralph Peters New York Post
November 11, 2004 -- IN the Second Battle of Fallujah, military operations are ahead of schedule. Our casualties have been blessedly light. The terrorists who haven't fled are being killed by the hundreds. Our troops will soon achieve their goal of eliminating Iraq's key safe haven for terrorists.
Our Marines and soldiers have carried the ball inside the 10-yard line. The media's response? Move the goalposts.
The legions of pundits ("Will talk for food") now suggest that a win in Fallujah will be meaningless because we failed to kill or capture the terrorist leadership, because some of the thugs ran away and because Fallujah won't resemble Darien, Conn., by next Sunday.
On Tuesday, as our troops handily pierced the defenses terrorists had spent months erecting, The New York Times carried two front-page stories implying that our forces were facing possible defeat. The Times' military analysis was incompetent and just plain wrong. And the photo its editors ran above the fold showed a Marine curled in a ditch under enemy fire.
It wasn't reporting. It was a mix of anti-American propaganda and wishful thinking. Al-Jazeera couldn't have done it better.
Now that our troops are winning so lopsidedly that it can't be denied, the Times likely will tell us that Fallujah didn't matter, anyway, that our efforts were wasted. Then Seymour Hersh, the New Yorker's greatest living fiction writer, will follow up with a fairy tale called "Failure In Fallujah."
What's really happening?
We're winning a critical victory. Since the political decision to stop short in Fallujah last April, the terrorists had bragged to the world that the city would never fall to the infidel. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his thugs turned Fallujah into a vast dungeon, complete with torture chambers and execution halls. The terrorists stockpiled weapons and ammunition, welcoming thousands of international "Jihadis" and using the city as a base to spread terror across central Iraq.
Fallujah became the new world capital of terror. And Allah's butchers proclaimed that they'd slaughter U.S. troops in the streets, if they tried to enter the city.
Guess who's dying now?
By fleeing without fighting to the death as they promised they would, the terror-masters discredited themselves. After Coalition leaders lost their nerve last April, the terrorists portrayed themselves as having faced down America's military might. This time, they ran away, leaving untrained recruits to take the bullet-train to paradise.
The swift fall of Fallujah is not only a practical disaster for the terrorists, but a massive loss of face for them throughout the Muslim world.
Plenty of tough street-fighting remains, but three-quarters of the city is under the control of Coalition and Iraqi forces. Contrary to smug media predictions, the Iraqi units didn't run away. They did their part to free the city and save their country.
What have we found in Fallujah? Hostage slaughterhouses — butcher shops for human cattle. Stockpiles of ammunition and explosives in mosques. And a city scarred by all the marks of an Islamic reign of terror.
Talking heads may smirk and say that we'll still have to fight the terrorists elsewhere. True enough. But no one claimed that Fallujah would be the last battle. Of course, the terrorists who ran away will try to refurbish their image with more bombings, assassinations, kidnappings and beheadings.
But they've lost their greatest stronghold. They've lost their sole tangible symbol of success. And they've lost their image as dauntless warriors able to stand up to the U.S. military.
In this imperfect world, where results are never what amateurs demand, the Second Battle of Fallujah is already a huge win for the good guys — even before the shooting's over.
In the coming weeks, the terrorists will try to re-infiltrate the city. They'll stage photogenic car bombings and assassinations. Then we'll be told that we still don't control Fallujah, that we've failed. But a city where terrorists have to sneak in to plant a bomb is a far better place than one in which they rule.
Meanwhile, our troops and their Iraqi allies remain engaged in brutal street-fighting. The remarkably low friendly casualty list is bound to grow. But no one need doubt the outcome. Our troops will complete the mission they were given.
But the media need to stop inventing missions of their own, then blaming our troops for not accomplishing them.
Ralph Peters is the author of "Beyond Baghdad: Postmodern War and Peace."
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
How Democrats Support Religious Fanatics
____________________________
by Christopher Hitchens in Slate
The left apologizes for religious fanatics. The president fights them.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2004, at 7:34 AM PT
Many are the cheap and easy laughs in which one could indulge at the extraordinary, pitiful hysteria of the defeated Democrats. "Kerry won," according to one e-mail I received from Greg Palast, to whom the Florida vote in 2000 is, and always will be, a combination of Gettysburg and Waterloo. According to Nikki Finke of the LA Weekly, the Fox News channel "called" Ohio for Bush for reasons too sinister to enumerate. Gregory Maniatis, whose last communication to me had predicted an annihilating Democratic landslide, kept quiet for only a day or so before forwarding the details on how to emigrate to Canada. Thus do the liberals build their bridge to the 20th century.
Who can care about this pathos? Not I. But I do take strong exception to one strain in the general moaning. It seems that anyone fool enough to favor the re-election of the president is by definition a God-bothering, pulpit-pounding Armageddon-artist, enslaved by ancient texts and prophecies and committed to theocratic rule. I was instructed in last week's New York Times that this was the case, and that the Enlightenment had come to an end, by no less an expert than Garry Wills, who makes at least one of his many livings by being an Augustinian Roman Catholic.
I step lightly over the ancient history of Wills' church (which was the originator of the counter-Enlightenment and then the patron of fascism in Europe) as well as over its more recent and local history (as the patron, protector, and financier of child-rape in the United States, and the sponsor of the cruel "annulment" of Joe Kennedy's and John Kerry's first marriages). As far as I know, all religions and all churches are equally demented in their belief in divine intervention, divine intercession, or even the existence of the divine in the first place.But all faiths are not always equally demented in the same way, or at the same time. Islam, which was once a civilizing and creative force in many societies, is now undergoing a civil war. One faction in this civil war is explicitly totalitarian and wedded to a cult of death. We have seen it at work on the streets of our own cities, and most recently on the streets of Amsterdam. We know that the obscene butchery of filmmaker Theo van Gogh was only a warning of what is coming in Madrid, London, Rome, and Paris, let alone Baghdad and Basra.
____________________________________
So here is what I want to say on the absolutely crucial matter of secularism. Only one faction in American politics has found itself able to make excuses for the kind of religious fanaticism that immediately menaces us in the here and now. And that faction, I am sorry and furious to say, is the left.
____________________________________
From the first day of the immolation of the World Trade Center, right down to the present moment, a gallery of pseudointellectuals has been willing to represent the worst face of Islam as the voice of the oppressed. How can these people bear to reread their own propaganda? Suicide murderers in Palestine—disowned and denounced by the new leader of the PLO—described as the victims of "despair." The forces of al-Qaida and the Taliban represented as misguided spokespeople for antiglobalization. The blood-maddened thugs in Iraq, who would rather bring down the roof on a suffering people than allow them to vote, pictured prettily as "insurgents" or even, by Michael Moore, as the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers. If this is liberal secularism, I'll take a modest, God-fearing, deer-hunting Baptist from Kentucky every time, as long as he didn't want to impose his principles on me (which our Constitution forbids him to do).
One probably should not rest too much on the similarity between Bin Laden's last video and the newly available DVD of Fahrenheit 9/11. I would only say that, if Bin Laden had issued a tape that with equal fealty followed the playbook of Karl Rove (and do please by all means cross yourself at the mention of this unholy name), it might have garnered some more attention. The Bearded One moved pedantically through Moore's bill of indictment, checking off the Florida vote-count in 2000, the "Pet Goat" episode on the day of hell, the violent intrusion into hitherto peaceful and Muslim Iraq, and the division between Bush and the much nicer Europeans. (For some reason, unknown to me at any rate, he did not attack the President for allowing the Bin Laden family to fly out of American airspace.)
George Bush may subjectively be a Christian, but he—and the U.S. armed forces—have objectively done more for secularism than the whole of the American agnostic community combined and doubled. The demolition of the Taliban, the huge damage inflicted on the al-Qaida network, and the confrontation with theocratic saboteurs in Iraq represent huge advances for the non-fundamentalist forces in many countries. The "antiwar" faction even recognizes this achievement, if only indirectly, by complaining about the way in which it has infuriated the Islamic religious extremists around the world. But does it accept the apparent corollary—that we should have been pursuing a policy to which the fanatics had no objection?
Secularism is not just a smug attitude. It is a possible way of democratic and pluralistic life that only became thinkable after several wars and revolutions had ruthlessly smashed the hold of the clergy on the state. We are now in the middle of another such war and revolution, and the liberals have gone AWOL. I dare say that there will be a few domestic confrontations down the road, over everything from the Pledge of Allegiance to the display of Mosaic tablets in courtrooms and schools. I have spent all my life on the atheist side of this argument, and will brace for more of the same, but I somehow can't hear Robert Ingersoll* or Clarence Darrow being soft and cowardly and evasive if it came to a vicious theocratic challenge that daily threatens us from within and without.
________________________________
by Christopher Hitchens in Slate
The left apologizes for religious fanatics. The president fights them.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2004, at 7:34 AM PT
Many are the cheap and easy laughs in which one could indulge at the extraordinary, pitiful hysteria of the defeated Democrats. "Kerry won," according to one e-mail I received from Greg Palast, to whom the Florida vote in 2000 is, and always will be, a combination of Gettysburg and Waterloo. According to Nikki Finke of the LA Weekly, the Fox News channel "called" Ohio for Bush for reasons too sinister to enumerate. Gregory Maniatis, whose last communication to me had predicted an annihilating Democratic landslide, kept quiet for only a day or so before forwarding the details on how to emigrate to Canada. Thus do the liberals build their bridge to the 20th century.
Who can care about this pathos? Not I. But I do take strong exception to one strain in the general moaning. It seems that anyone fool enough to favor the re-election of the president is by definition a God-bothering, pulpit-pounding Armageddon-artist, enslaved by ancient texts and prophecies and committed to theocratic rule. I was instructed in last week's New York Times that this was the case, and that the Enlightenment had come to an end, by no less an expert than Garry Wills, who makes at least one of his many livings by being an Augustinian Roman Catholic.
I step lightly over the ancient history of Wills' church (which was the originator of the counter-Enlightenment and then the patron of fascism in Europe) as well as over its more recent and local history (as the patron, protector, and financier of child-rape in the United States, and the sponsor of the cruel "annulment" of Joe Kennedy's and John Kerry's first marriages). As far as I know, all religions and all churches are equally demented in their belief in divine intervention, divine intercession, or even the existence of the divine in the first place.But all faiths are not always equally demented in the same way, or at the same time. Islam, which was once a civilizing and creative force in many societies, is now undergoing a civil war. One faction in this civil war is explicitly totalitarian and wedded to a cult of death. We have seen it at work on the streets of our own cities, and most recently on the streets of Amsterdam. We know that the obscene butchery of filmmaker Theo van Gogh was only a warning of what is coming in Madrid, London, Rome, and Paris, let alone Baghdad and Basra.
____________________________________
So here is what I want to say on the absolutely crucial matter of secularism. Only one faction in American politics has found itself able to make excuses for the kind of religious fanaticism that immediately menaces us in the here and now. And that faction, I am sorry and furious to say, is the left.
____________________________________
From the first day of the immolation of the World Trade Center, right down to the present moment, a gallery of pseudointellectuals has been willing to represent the worst face of Islam as the voice of the oppressed. How can these people bear to reread their own propaganda? Suicide murderers in Palestine—disowned and denounced by the new leader of the PLO—described as the victims of "despair." The forces of al-Qaida and the Taliban represented as misguided spokespeople for antiglobalization. The blood-maddened thugs in Iraq, who would rather bring down the roof on a suffering people than allow them to vote, pictured prettily as "insurgents" or even, by Michael Moore, as the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers. If this is liberal secularism, I'll take a modest, God-fearing, deer-hunting Baptist from Kentucky every time, as long as he didn't want to impose his principles on me (which our Constitution forbids him to do).
One probably should not rest too much on the similarity between Bin Laden's last video and the newly available DVD of Fahrenheit 9/11. I would only say that, if Bin Laden had issued a tape that with equal fealty followed the playbook of Karl Rove (and do please by all means cross yourself at the mention of this unholy name), it might have garnered some more attention. The Bearded One moved pedantically through Moore's bill of indictment, checking off the Florida vote-count in 2000, the "Pet Goat" episode on the day of hell, the violent intrusion into hitherto peaceful and Muslim Iraq, and the division between Bush and the much nicer Europeans. (For some reason, unknown to me at any rate, he did not attack the President for allowing the Bin Laden family to fly out of American airspace.)
George Bush may subjectively be a Christian, but he—and the U.S. armed forces—have objectively done more for secularism than the whole of the American agnostic community combined and doubled. The demolition of the Taliban, the huge damage inflicted on the al-Qaida network, and the confrontation with theocratic saboteurs in Iraq represent huge advances for the non-fundamentalist forces in many countries. The "antiwar" faction even recognizes this achievement, if only indirectly, by complaining about the way in which it has infuriated the Islamic religious extremists around the world. But does it accept the apparent corollary—that we should have been pursuing a policy to which the fanatics had no objection?
Secularism is not just a smug attitude. It is a possible way of democratic and pluralistic life that only became thinkable after several wars and revolutions had ruthlessly smashed the hold of the clergy on the state. We are now in the middle of another such war and revolution, and the liberals have gone AWOL. I dare say that there will be a few domestic confrontations down the road, over everything from the Pledge of Allegiance to the display of Mosaic tablets in courtrooms and schools. I have spent all my life on the atheist side of this argument, and will brace for more of the same, but I somehow can't hear Robert Ingersoll* or Clarence Darrow being soft and cowardly and evasive if it came to a vicious theocratic challenge that daily threatens us from within and without.
________________________________
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
Atheist Vote Pushes Bush Over Top
by John Hood Reason Online
______________________________
Few reporters or commentators appear to have gone back to examine the 2000 exit polls, which would seem to be necessary if one wishes to assert a trend.
I did. I found that the percentage of voters sampled who said they attended church at least weekly was the same—42 percent—in both 2000 and 2004. The percentage never attending church was also the same, at 15 percent. The middle group, those attending occasionally, was, you guessed it, 42 percent each time.
Interestingly, while Bush slightly improved his standing among frequent churchgoers, by about a point in 2004, his support grew by 3 to 4 points among those attending seldom or never.
Yep, it was the atheist vote that really put Bush over the top in 2004.
http://www.reason.com/hod/jh110804.shtml
hee hee
_________________________________
______________________________
Few reporters or commentators appear to have gone back to examine the 2000 exit polls, which would seem to be necessary if one wishes to assert a trend.
I did. I found that the percentage of voters sampled who said they attended church at least weekly was the same—42 percent—in both 2000 and 2004. The percentage never attending church was also the same, at 15 percent. The middle group, those attending occasionally, was, you guessed it, 42 percent each time.
Interestingly, while Bush slightly improved his standing among frequent churchgoers, by about a point in 2004, his support grew by 3 to 4 points among those attending seldom or never.
Yep, it was the atheist vote that really put Bush over the top in 2004.
http://www.reason.com/hod/jh110804.shtml
hee hee
_________________________________
Government Crack v. National Security
by Mark Steyn Daily Telegrah (UK)
We weren't dumb enough to vote Kerry
(Filed: 09/11/2004)
Last week, you may recall, I quoted Bob Kerrey - not the Kerry who was running for president, but a fellow senator and Vietnam veteran and a big backer of his near-namesake. This Kerrey was on television a couple of days before the election and claimed to have the pulse of the man in the street.
"I was in Gallia, Ohio, down in the southeastern part of Ohio," he said. "They don't give a damn about the war in Iraq. They're terrified about the loss of their job, health care, their pensions. That's what's bothering them."
I begged to differ: "In fact," I wrote, "the people - in Gallia, Ohio and many other places - understand the relevance of Iraq and Afghanistan to their well-being rather more clearly than the Democratic leadership do."
Just for the record, on Tuesday, in Gallia County, Ohio, George W Bush won 62 per cent of the vote.
It wasn't the economy, stupid. It was the stupidity, stupid. No man is an island, but the Democrats expect voters to act as if they are. Don't think about national security and war and Iraq and Iran and North Korea - that's all way beyond a loser like you. You're too "terrified" about your job to be bothered with the foreign pages. It's practically the Depression out there.
OK, it's not. But it's a recession. OK, it's not. But there aren't any jobs out there. OK, there are. But they're not like the jobs you used to have, when you could go to the mill and do the same job day in day out for 45 years, and it made it so much easier for us come election time because there were large numbers of you all in the same place when we flew in for the campaign stop. But the point is: you are an island, stick to "pocketbook issues", think about yourself.
The Left always used to accuse the Right of appealing to the voters' selfishness, but this year the Dems did and it got them nowhere.
I think there are a couple of lessons here. First, when you're cursed to live in "interesting times", a party has to have something interesting to say. It has to stand for something; it has to have a core identity, not just wonkish programmes.
______________________________
The Dems do have core beliefs - abortion, racial grievances, gay marriage, etc - but unfortunately they're not the kind of thing you can talk about at election time.
______________________________
In Britain, alas, it's the Tories, under their current Kerrykaze pilot, who are distressingly Democrat-like: full of itsybitsy policies for this and that, irrelevant on the big picture, deeply evasive on Europe. They're also far too timid on the British equivalent of America's "cultural values" - crime and the other "quality of life" issues.
Secondly, assume for a moment that Bob Kerrey was right - that voters in Gallia County really were "terrified about the loss of their job, health care, their pensions". Even if that's true, do you want the government to do anything about it? In many Continental countries, it's all but impossible to lose your job - which is why so many companies are reluctant to hire anyone and Germany's unemployment rate is twice that of America. And once healthcare and pensions are the province of the government, the basic relationship between the citizen and the state is altered. By 2040, Greece's government pension liabilities will be 25 per cent of GDP, as opposed to 6.8 per cent for America, which is quite colossal enough, thank you.
So even if I was "terrified" of losing my job, healthcare, pension, etc, I'd be reluctant to let the government relieve me of my terror. On the Continent, the mainstream parties of Tweedleleft and Tweedleright, having spent half a century ruling more and more issues beyond the subject of debate, can't quite bring themselves to tell the truth to the voters about the looming crisis.
They reckon that the masses have become too used to 35-hour work-weeks, two months of holiday, you leave college at 36, take early retirement at 47, etc, and that they won't take kindly to being told the jig's up. The Daily Mirror may think American voters are "DUMB", but I'll bet in the chancelleries of Europe there are plenty of officials who wish their own electors would occasionally disdain "pocketbook issues".
__________________________________________
Once you've turned citizens into junkies for government crack, it's very hard to wean them off it.
__________________________________________
Thirdly, after listening to John Edwards's Dickensian tales of "two Americas" for months on end, I'm convinced that any red-state county knows more about business than your average Massachusetts senator, tenured Harvard professor or Boston Globe editor. When John Kerry gets his hair done at Cristophe's in Washington for somewhere north of $75, that high-priced stylist is an employee. If he'd ever stopped to have it done for $10 by DeeDee in a hair salon in a small town, he'd discover that she's a one-woman business.
When he goes to his favourite restaurant in Washington, the waiter's an employee. When he drops by a diner on Main Street in some nowhere burg to pretend to eat a hot dog for a photo op, the waitress might well be like the lady who served me lunch on Sunday: she has her own house-cleaning business, but does some part-time work at the local school and a couple of shifts at the diner for a bit of extra cash.
She's a small business, and she knows more about her tax return than Teresa Heinz Kerry knows about hers. Mrs Kerry farms it out to the best advisers money can buy, and they do a grand job: she's one of the richest women in the world and she paid 12 per cent tax last year. It makes no difference whether the tax rate is 20 per cent, 50 per cent or 88 per cent: the Kerrys of the world will still pay 12 per cent.
The American people don't want to be condescended to by ketchup heiresses, billionaire currency speculators, $20-million-a-picture Hollywood pretty boys, and multi-millionaire documentary-makers posing as bluecollar lardbutts.
The Democrats keep talking to people as if they're like John Edwards's 40-year mill-workers, but that's not what work is any more, and a 23-year-old hairdresser can know enough about starting and running a business to be unimpressed at a few footling tax credits dangled in front of her by a 60-year-old lifelong "public servant" lucky enough to be living a grand old life thanks to his billionaire wife's first husband.
____________________________________________
We weren't dumb enough to vote Kerry
(Filed: 09/11/2004)
Last week, you may recall, I quoted Bob Kerrey - not the Kerry who was running for president, but a fellow senator and Vietnam veteran and a big backer of his near-namesake. This Kerrey was on television a couple of days before the election and claimed to have the pulse of the man in the street.
"I was in Gallia, Ohio, down in the southeastern part of Ohio," he said. "They don't give a damn about the war in Iraq. They're terrified about the loss of their job, health care, their pensions. That's what's bothering them."
I begged to differ: "In fact," I wrote, "the people - in Gallia, Ohio and many other places - understand the relevance of Iraq and Afghanistan to their well-being rather more clearly than the Democratic leadership do."
Just for the record, on Tuesday, in Gallia County, Ohio, George W Bush won 62 per cent of the vote.
It wasn't the economy, stupid. It was the stupidity, stupid. No man is an island, but the Democrats expect voters to act as if they are. Don't think about national security and war and Iraq and Iran and North Korea - that's all way beyond a loser like you. You're too "terrified" about your job to be bothered with the foreign pages. It's practically the Depression out there.
OK, it's not. But it's a recession. OK, it's not. But there aren't any jobs out there. OK, there are. But they're not like the jobs you used to have, when you could go to the mill and do the same job day in day out for 45 years, and it made it so much easier for us come election time because there were large numbers of you all in the same place when we flew in for the campaign stop. But the point is: you are an island, stick to "pocketbook issues", think about yourself.
The Left always used to accuse the Right of appealing to the voters' selfishness, but this year the Dems did and it got them nowhere.
I think there are a couple of lessons here. First, when you're cursed to live in "interesting times", a party has to have something interesting to say. It has to stand for something; it has to have a core identity, not just wonkish programmes.
______________________________
The Dems do have core beliefs - abortion, racial grievances, gay marriage, etc - but unfortunately they're not the kind of thing you can talk about at election time.
______________________________
In Britain, alas, it's the Tories, under their current Kerrykaze pilot, who are distressingly Democrat-like: full of itsybitsy policies for this and that, irrelevant on the big picture, deeply evasive on Europe. They're also far too timid on the British equivalent of America's "cultural values" - crime and the other "quality of life" issues.
Secondly, assume for a moment that Bob Kerrey was right - that voters in Gallia County really were "terrified about the loss of their job, health care, their pensions". Even if that's true, do you want the government to do anything about it? In many Continental countries, it's all but impossible to lose your job - which is why so many companies are reluctant to hire anyone and Germany's unemployment rate is twice that of America. And once healthcare and pensions are the province of the government, the basic relationship between the citizen and the state is altered. By 2040, Greece's government pension liabilities will be 25 per cent of GDP, as opposed to 6.8 per cent for America, which is quite colossal enough, thank you.
So even if I was "terrified" of losing my job, healthcare, pension, etc, I'd be reluctant to let the government relieve me of my terror. On the Continent, the mainstream parties of Tweedleleft and Tweedleright, having spent half a century ruling more and more issues beyond the subject of debate, can't quite bring themselves to tell the truth to the voters about the looming crisis.
They reckon that the masses have become too used to 35-hour work-weeks, two months of holiday, you leave college at 36, take early retirement at 47, etc, and that they won't take kindly to being told the jig's up. The Daily Mirror may think American voters are "DUMB", but I'll bet in the chancelleries of Europe there are plenty of officials who wish their own electors would occasionally disdain "pocketbook issues".
__________________________________________
Once you've turned citizens into junkies for government crack, it's very hard to wean them off it.
__________________________________________
Thirdly, after listening to John Edwards's Dickensian tales of "two Americas" for months on end, I'm convinced that any red-state county knows more about business than your average Massachusetts senator, tenured Harvard professor or Boston Globe editor. When John Kerry gets his hair done at Cristophe's in Washington for somewhere north of $75, that high-priced stylist is an employee. If he'd ever stopped to have it done for $10 by DeeDee in a hair salon in a small town, he'd discover that she's a one-woman business.
When he goes to his favourite restaurant in Washington, the waiter's an employee. When he drops by a diner on Main Street in some nowhere burg to pretend to eat a hot dog for a photo op, the waitress might well be like the lady who served me lunch on Sunday: she has her own house-cleaning business, but does some part-time work at the local school and a couple of shifts at the diner for a bit of extra cash.
She's a small business, and she knows more about her tax return than Teresa Heinz Kerry knows about hers. Mrs Kerry farms it out to the best advisers money can buy, and they do a grand job: she's one of the richest women in the world and she paid 12 per cent tax last year. It makes no difference whether the tax rate is 20 per cent, 50 per cent or 88 per cent: the Kerrys of the world will still pay 12 per cent.
The American people don't want to be condescended to by ketchup heiresses, billionaire currency speculators, $20-million-a-picture Hollywood pretty boys, and multi-millionaire documentary-makers posing as bluecollar lardbutts.
The Democrats keep talking to people as if they're like John Edwards's 40-year mill-workers, but that's not what work is any more, and a 23-year-old hairdresser can know enough about starting and running a business to be unimpressed at a few footling tax credits dangled in front of her by a 60-year-old lifelong "public servant" lucky enough to be living a grand old life thanks to his billionaire wife's first husband.
____________________________________________
Sunday, November 07, 2004
Fighting Evil
_________________________
by Bob Clasen
The terrorists and anti-democratic forces in Fallujah are about to be crushed, together with the remaining opposition forces.
Free elections remain on the near horizon in Iraq, just as they were successfully held a short time ago in Afghanistan.
Terrorists in North Korea and Iran must look on the re-election of George Bush with a new kind of terror -- their own. As well they should. If North Korea refuses to take part in the six country negotiations, Bush is not going to follow the lead of Clinton and pay blackmail to North Korea to enable it to continue its illegal development of nuclear weapons in secret.
Iran is not going to be permitted to develop the capacity to create nuclear weapons, as would undoubtedly be the case if the U.N. is allowed to decide the issue, as Kerry wanted.
The continued necessary internal security created by the Patriot Act is not going to be sabotaged by people who worry more about the civil liberties of terrorists than they do the lives of Americans.
If Democrats are to ever win the hearts and minds of the majority of Americans, they must prove themselves willing to defend their own country and the principles upon which it was founded, and not side with the enemy in time of war. There was a "peace" protest yesterday in Los Angeles demanding that Bush stop the assault on Fallujah. What is the reasoning? We must stop trying to defeat those who are murdering our soldiers , who are planting car bombs and killing their fellow Iraqis in the name of a return to a Baathists style government? Whose side are these peace protestors on? Whose side are the Democrats on? Peace at any price? Surrender to the forces of Fascists government or the type of Islam that cuts dissenters heads off?
It is one thing to be secular. Secularists bristle at the accusation that they have no moral principles. But Democrat secularists lean towards pacifism. The "war only as a last resort" argument practically means no war is moral. There is always some kind of appeasement that can precede war. If an intellectual movement does not have the backbone to believe in the moral right to defend oneself, it will not survive. If Democrats do not believe in democracy enough to fight for it, they do not deserve the name of their party. Perhaps at the next meeting of the Democrat party they should change their name to "World Socialist Peace Party."
Radical Islamicists are certainly willing to fight and die in order to impose by force their concept of civilization on the world.
Republicans respond to this use of force by force, as they have the perfect right to do.
When Osama Bin Laden, on behalf of a world-wide coalition of Islamic fanatics, bombed the World Trade Center, he declared war on America. Republicans fought back.
Democrats would respond by means of toothless U.N. resolutions, international peace conferences and increased funding for fire departments to be able to more quickly clean up the rubble after the next attack.
That is the real reason Bush won. Bush stands for the basic principle of self-defense. Not the principle of gay bashing, as Democrats would argue. The principle that a country has the right to defend itself when attacked. The principle that democracy is superior to slavery; that freedom is better than theocracy; that people or countries or religions who allege the right to enslave others thereby lose their moral legitimacy. The moral response to a criminal is to arrest him or kill him to make the world safe for people who respect the right to be free from the use of force.
If you will not fight evil in the name of good, evil will win.
Democrat secularists claim that they do have moral principles, but then they scoff at people who talk of good and evil. How can you have principles if you scoff at the concept of good and evil? I will give you a simple black and white example of good and evil:
If a murderer takes up a sword to cut off your head, that is evil.
If you kill him first, that is good.
And you don't give up the fight because fighting is dangerous, or because you experience some casualties. You perservere until you win because you know that your cause is just. That is, if you believe in good and evil.
If everything is a gray moral sludge, then nothing is worth fighting for and all who talk of good and evil are idiots like George Bush, people with the intelligence of a chimpanzee. Nothing is worth dying for. Life is a a meaningless joke. People who believe in good and evil are dolts and simpletons.
Republicans and Democrats?
__________________________________
by Bob Clasen
The terrorists and anti-democratic forces in Fallujah are about to be crushed, together with the remaining opposition forces.
Free elections remain on the near horizon in Iraq, just as they were successfully held a short time ago in Afghanistan.
Terrorists in North Korea and Iran must look on the re-election of George Bush with a new kind of terror -- their own. As well they should. If North Korea refuses to take part in the six country negotiations, Bush is not going to follow the lead of Clinton and pay blackmail to North Korea to enable it to continue its illegal development of nuclear weapons in secret.
Iran is not going to be permitted to develop the capacity to create nuclear weapons, as would undoubtedly be the case if the U.N. is allowed to decide the issue, as Kerry wanted.
The continued necessary internal security created by the Patriot Act is not going to be sabotaged by people who worry more about the civil liberties of terrorists than they do the lives of Americans.
If Democrats are to ever win the hearts and minds of the majority of Americans, they must prove themselves willing to defend their own country and the principles upon which it was founded, and not side with the enemy in time of war. There was a "peace" protest yesterday in Los Angeles demanding that Bush stop the assault on Fallujah. What is the reasoning? We must stop trying to defeat those who are murdering our soldiers , who are planting car bombs and killing their fellow Iraqis in the name of a return to a Baathists style government? Whose side are these peace protestors on? Whose side are the Democrats on? Peace at any price? Surrender to the forces of Fascists government or the type of Islam that cuts dissenters heads off?
It is one thing to be secular. Secularists bristle at the accusation that they have no moral principles. But Democrat secularists lean towards pacifism. The "war only as a last resort" argument practically means no war is moral. There is always some kind of appeasement that can precede war. If an intellectual movement does not have the backbone to believe in the moral right to defend oneself, it will not survive. If Democrats do not believe in democracy enough to fight for it, they do not deserve the name of their party. Perhaps at the next meeting of the Democrat party they should change their name to "World Socialist Peace Party."
Radical Islamicists are certainly willing to fight and die in order to impose by force their concept of civilization on the world.
Republicans respond to this use of force by force, as they have the perfect right to do.
When Osama Bin Laden, on behalf of a world-wide coalition of Islamic fanatics, bombed the World Trade Center, he declared war on America. Republicans fought back.
Democrats would respond by means of toothless U.N. resolutions, international peace conferences and increased funding for fire departments to be able to more quickly clean up the rubble after the next attack.
That is the real reason Bush won. Bush stands for the basic principle of self-defense. Not the principle of gay bashing, as Democrats would argue. The principle that a country has the right to defend itself when attacked. The principle that democracy is superior to slavery; that freedom is better than theocracy; that people or countries or religions who allege the right to enslave others thereby lose their moral legitimacy. The moral response to a criminal is to arrest him or kill him to make the world safe for people who respect the right to be free from the use of force.
If you will not fight evil in the name of good, evil will win.
Democrat secularists claim that they do have moral principles, but then they scoff at people who talk of good and evil. How can you have principles if you scoff at the concept of good and evil? I will give you a simple black and white example of good and evil:
If a murderer takes up a sword to cut off your head, that is evil.
If you kill him first, that is good.
And you don't give up the fight because fighting is dangerous, or because you experience some casualties. You perservere until you win because you know that your cause is just. That is, if you believe in good and evil.
If everything is a gray moral sludge, then nothing is worth fighting for and all who talk of good and evil are idiots like George Bush, people with the intelligence of a chimpanzee. Nothing is worth dying for. Life is a a meaningless joke. People who believe in good and evil are dolts and simpletons.
Republicans and Democrats?
__________________________________
