Category: Uncategorized

I agree with VDH. The notion that Rumsfeld should resign over Abu Ghraib is absolutely absurd. I think that the Secretary of Defense has done yeoman’s work in what I consider to be an impossible task, and although I believe the Iraqi occupation is doomed to ultimate failure, I have not forgotten the brilliant campaigns that conquered Afghanistan and Iraq in an amazingly short period of time.

Where Rumsfeld has been weak is in the areas not historically central to his responsibilities. As he admitted, he hasn’t “been focused on the war of ideas, to be honest with you.” That single comment reveals why he has not recognized the impossibility of the task he and the administration are undertaking. The secretary is an intelligent man, and as it becomes increasingly clear that semiotics count more than soldiers in this particular conflict, he will adjust his thinking accordingly.

The occupation will fail, but it will fail less disastrously and with less cost to the United States in prestige and blood if Donald Rumsfeld is in charge. If nothing else, I suspect he is a man who will recognize when the situation becomes impossible and have the courage to change course.

The United Nations’ decades-old scheme to set up an international authority to tax Americans at the same time they take control of over 70 percent of the Earth’s surface — the Law of the Sea Treaty — is getting a lot of attention in Washington. That attention is what we fought to achieve, and it is exactly what the internationalists behind Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) wanted to avoid. They hoped to sneak this flawed treaty through the Senate while no one was looking.Since our last update, March 16, 2004, both the Senate Committee on Armed Services and the House Committee on International Relations have held hearings on LOST.

Congressman Ron Paul and 13 of his House colleagues sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist pointing out threats to American sovereignty and national security problems contained in this “terribly flawed treaty.” The Bookings Institution sponsored a briefing.The gloves are off! Pro-LOST forces are fighting back with display ads in Capitol Hill newspapers urging ratification of LOST. Pro-LOST lobbyists have picked up their pace in the halls of Congress. House members who favor LOST have circulated a letter urging quick ratification by the Senate, and the pro-U.N. Citizens for Global Solutions (formerly known as the World Federalist Society) is pushing hard for ratification.Hearing first hand what the pro-LOST forces said in their formal presentations, as well as overhearing some “off-the-record” comments, I can tell you that they are not happy. They expected the Senate to have quietly ratified LOST by now. They never expected Americans who live outside Washington’s Beltway to know what was going on and get in their way….

Those same Senate sources have asked us to continue urging our U.S. senators to oppose ratification as a countermeasure to the pro-LOST campaign.Learn why, as Steve Forbes recently wrote, “Sensible senators should strangle this resurrected beast.” Then, take action to counter the pro-LOST propaganda.

I have an idea. How about simply throw LOST, the UN and the Senators who support both into the sea. It seems a good place for them. I’m thinking somewhere in the Marianas Trench.

Just got an invite from the Fraters Libertas, and I’ll be on the Northern Alliance Radio Show at AM 1280 in the Twi Cities on Saturday at 2 o’clock. It should be an interesting show, as Joe Carter from the Evangelical Outpost will be on as well for a last hurrah before heading out to Saudi Arabia. The topic will likely be Abu Ghraib, as Joe was one of the first people to point out that the reservist factor was a strong element in the prison scandal.

GS writes: You are the only person with half a brain that may understand what I am trying to say. I submit to you that nothing, nothing, is as important as the ongoing debate about the abuses in Iraq and the fight against terrorism. We are at a turning point, and although I find your pontification about the intellectual ineptitude of the media, clever and entertaining, if not repetitive; I ask that you turn your vituperative abilities to clarifying the inequities of the moral equivalencies propounded upon us by the left.

If that’s a compliment, I shudder to think at what GS would come up with were he in the mood to sling insults. However, I will have to disappoint him as this is one of the rare cases where the left, in its focus on the apalling breakdown of military discipline at Abu Ghraib, is correct. Not, of course, for the reasons it thinks it is correct, but only because its mindless, kneejerk opposition to the Bush administration happens to have landed it, accidentally, in synchronicity with the truth.

Any attempt to defend the American abuse of prisoners on a basis of comparison with Arab atrocities is short-sighted. It is correct, to be sure, as very little of the abuse rose to the level of torture, much less the wholesale massacre of the innocent in which Arab terrorists revel. Nick Berg’s death was disgusting, even more outrageous was the murder of the pregnant Israeli woman and her little girls. But being better cannot be equated with being harmless.

For what these myopic American cheerleaders forget is that success in Iraq, as defined by the President and the administration, depends entirely on convincing the Iraqi people that the American way is desirable. In this cause, the non-abusive pornographic behavior of the troops is as problematic as the abuse itself. The President and the Secretary of Defense realize this, which is why they were so quick to apologize for the actions of the troops. It was not a Clintonian exercise in self-flagellation, but an attempt to defang a massive PR debacle. Needless to say, it failed, but their attempt to do so was a sign of perspicuity, not weakness.

Because the administration has chosen not to fight the clash-of-civilizations war, (a legitimate choice, if one that does little but buy time), it is engaged in what is essentially a public relations war between Islamic-fascist culture and secular Western culture. The significance of Abu Ghraib is huge due solely to the symbolic nature of the war. If we were fighting the clash-of-civilizations war, Abu Ghraib would be an insignificant issue; the very fact that it is a big deal indicates that this is, sopratutto, a war of semiotics, not soldiers.

The American media’s impact is not terribly important in the Arab world. In that fever-swamp of Zionist-haunted imaginations, the fake porn pictures are a bigger outrage than the pictorial record of the real abuse. For all my contempt of the mainstream media, I believe it has unwittingly done the American people a real service in drawing attention to the daunting, if not impossible, challenge presented by the administration’s arrogant Wilsonian goal of nation-building. And remember, that previous attempt at nation-building made the subsequent round of conflict much worse, not better.

This phase of the battle against the global jihad was lost the moment that the president declared that Saudi Arabia was our friend and that Islam is a religion of peace. What happens in Iraq now, one way or the other, is almost irrelevant, which is why I have been arguing that the troops should have been brought home after the fall of Bagdad and the capture of Saddam Hussein. The wise general does not enter a battlefield on which he cannot win.

The good news, however, is that the war is not lost, indeed, like John Paul Jones, we have not yet even begun to fight.

Ilana Mercer writes: Although many insist the crimes at Abu Ghraib are an aberration, others, including the Red Cross, Amnesty International, scores of detainees, and Maj. Gen. Taguba, tell a different story. Taguba underscores that although he found no evidence of specific directives from higher authorities, the abuses, nonetheless, were systematic and widespread, involving a “quarter of the military-intelligence officers and civilian contractors.” Our chastened lawmakers agree that the involvement of a wider circle of jerks than previously posited now seems likely.

While it is quite reasonable to argue in favor of using deprivation techniques to extract information that may save lives, it is quite another matter to use sexual crimes, practiced and chronicled with pride by mugging soldiers, as a form of interrogation. Ultimately, however you slice it, the photographs tell a tale, not of fleeting youthful indiscretion, but of abiding degeneracy.

It looks as if MI was involved after all, although it doesn’t sound like this fit the official and approved method of interrogation, since only a quarter of them got into it. I don’t believe there was any serious purpose behind most of the activity, it sounds to me more like a group of bored men and women getting their rocks off by taking advantage of a total absence of military discipline.

Although if conducting Late-Roman style bacchanalias is actually an MI duty, I expect they won’t have any problem finding recruits in the future.

Joseph Farah writes:What can one say about such sloppy journalism? Does it make you angry? Were the editors at the Boston Globe repentant? Guess what? The staff at the Boston Globe was furious at WorldNetDaily for exposing their gaffe. Within minutes of the posting of the story, the Globe reporter and editors were angrily demanding WND editors retract the story, pull it from the website, make it go away.

Why? The reporter first told WND editors that our reporter, Sherrie Gossett, had not identified herself as a journalist. After Gossett produced e-mails in which she clearly identified herself as a journalist and offered up links to four previous stories she had written on the subject of the bogus rape photos in an effort to help the Globe, the story changed….such was the level of embarrassment at the Boston Globe that staffers were grasping at straws this week in an effort to cover their own shame.

This tells you all you need to know about the mainstream media. First, their reporters and editors are too dumb to even recognize basic Internet porn. You’ll notice I never once wrote about those “rape” pictures, mostly because I figured that Iraqi women seldom have blonde hair or implants. Second, they’re dumb enough to think that maybe if they ignore it, they can make it disappear. No doubt they were planning to have their ombudsman make a circumspect statement on page 28 six weeks from now. This head-in-the-sand response may have worked back in the pre-Internet era, but it won’t cut it now.

The arrogance of demanding that someone else hold his tongue about your own blatant mistakes is breathtaking. Here’s to Mr. Farah and his willingness to tell the Globe to take a hike.

We hear a lot today from the mainstream media about jihad. Usually, it’s a happy-face jihad, congenially rendered as “the internal struggle to become a better person,” or “the struggle of communities to drive out drug peddlers,” or “the struggle against disease, poverty and ignorance.” In many ways, these reflect admirable efforts to reconstruct a very troubling concept, with an eye toward an Islam that blends into the modern world.

But let’s be clear: these are reconstructions. Jihad, in its seventh-century origins, is a forcible, military concept. I realize politesse frowns on saying such things out loud, but one of the main reasons it is so difficult to discredit the militants — to say convincingly that they have hijacked a peaceable religion — is this: when they talk about this central tenet, jihad, as a duty to take up arms, they have history and tradition on their side. As Abdel-Rahman, the influential scholar with a doctorate from the famed al-Azhar University in Egypt, instructed his followers: “There is no such thing as commerce, industry, and science in jihad…. If Allah says: ‘Do jihad,’ it means jihad with the sword, with the cannon, with the grenades, and with the missile. This is jihad. Jihad against God’s enemies for God’s cause and his word.”

So rich is the military pedigree of this term, jihad, that many of the apologists concede it but try a different tack to explain it away: “Sure, jihad means using force,” they say, “but only in defense — only when Muslims are under attack.” Of course, who is to say what is defensive? Who is to say when Muslims are under attack? For the militants, Islam is under attack whenever anyone has the temerity to say: “Islam — especially their brand of Islam — is not for me.” For the militants who will be satisfied with nothing less than the destruction of Israel, Islam is under attack simply because Israelis are living and breathing and going about their lives.

Read this article. It is one of the most cogent arguments against the absurdities of the war on method that I’ve ever read. The comparison of the wars on Drugs and Terror is particularly apt, as I expect about as much success in the latter as the former.

Shocking shots of sexcapades involving Pfc. Lynndie England were among the hundreds of X-rated photos and videos from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal shown to lawmakers in a top-secret Capitol conference room yesterday. “She was having sex with numerous partners. It appeared to be consensual,” said a lawmaker who saw the photos. And, videos showed the disgraced soldier – made notorious in a photo showing her holding a leash looped around an Iraqi prisoner’s neck – engaged in graphic sex acts with other soldiers in front of Iraqi prisoners, Pentagon officials told NBC Nightly News.

“Almost everybody was naked all the time,” another lawmaker said. Many members of Congress left the 45-minute viewing session early, thereby missing the porno performance by England, but there were enough other images of torture, humiliation and intimidation to sicken anyone. “It was pretty disgusting, not what you’d expect from Americans,” said Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.). “There was lots of sexual stuff – not of the Iraqis, but of our troops.”

Not what you’d expect from Americans? In what country does Norm live? We invented the Internet, for Pete’s sake! If we’re going to continue with this idiotic policy of allowing women in the military, why not just go all the way and name Jenna Jameson to the Joint Chiefs of Staff? At least then we’d be putting our best pornographic foot forward.

These latest revelations should shut up all those see-no-evil Pentagon defenders who have been arguing that the whole Abu Ghraib situation was a cunning plan to intimidate the Arabs. There was quite likely some MI involvement in the abuse, but the overall theme, from the beginning, has been one of idiotic and unprofessional behavior by a bunch of reservists “commanded” by a terrible woman general. If Rumsfeld is going to resign for anything, it should be for continuing to allow women in the military to destroy discipline in the armed forces.

David Frum exposes the limits of his imagination: The Arab Middle East has spawned murderous ideologies that threaten the peace and security of the whole world. You can’t “withdraw” from the Middle East: not when millions of Middle Easterners live in the West, not when the Middle East produces one-third of the world’s oil, and not when you can get from Riyadh or Baghdad to Boise, Idaho, in less than 24 hours. So our options resolve themselves to basically four:

1) Try to find some way to calm the extremists down. This was the policy the US followed in the 1990s – it was the ultimate justification for Clinton’s Palestinian diplomacy. By now it should be obvious that the people we are concerned about won’t be calmed. The appeasement option isn’t an option: It’s a wish.

2) The Bush approach – try to deal with the sources of extremism by promoting democratic change in the region. By curbing tyrannies that foment extremism to justify their hold on power – like Iraq’s, like Saudi Arabia’s – the US and its allies can promote what the president calls “the peaceful pursuit of a better life.”

3) But let’s suppose that the Bush policy fails too. Let’s suppose policy-makers decide that the Middle East cannot be changed any more than it can be calmed. What then? Then I’m afraid we are going to see the emergence of a harsh new pseudo-realism that will in effect try to seal the Middle East off from the rest of the world. Hire new dictators to police the region, lock the people in, and “let them kill each other” as they say in the line at my supermarket.

4) But any policy so self-consciously dismissive will be anathema to the soft spirit of American liberalism. And so the likeliest consequence of a Bush defeat and a turn away from his policies will be: nothing at all. We’ll end up averting our eyes, telling ourselves that we can protect ourselves by chasing down al Qaeda fugitives, and basically forgetting about the whole problem – until of course it strikes again.

This is either incredibly shallow or incredibly disingenuous. We certainly can withdraw from the Middle East. Millions of Middle Easterners can be easily deported, as simply enforcing existing immigration laws and sending home the illegals would eliminate half the problem. The US uses very little Arabian oil and isn’t even drilling in its largest reservoirs.

The Bush policy will fail. It is absolutely doomed to failure. Democracy as we understand it isn’t even in the cards, since anyone who’s actually paying attention knows that a true representative democracy would lead to a one-vote, one-time election of Shiite jihad-sympathizers. Indeed, many of the administration’s champions support the president precisely because they see the occupation of Iraq as a charade meant to cloak the foundation of an undercover low-intensity WWIII. If option one is not an option because it is just a wish, that goes doubly for option two.

We are not responsible for the world. If we try to play that role, it will complete the destructionn of our country as quickly as it destroyed the Roman and English empires. Neither empire was truly bad, not compared with the alternatives, but that doesn’t change the fact that empire and nation-building is a late-stage societal development. We cannot hope to bring freedom to the world while simultaneously and systematically eroding it at home. We must lead by example, not by force.

I fully support crushing those who have declared war on America. Unfortunately, we have chosen to ignore most of our enemies while manufacturing new ones in a stupid and futile cause. You cannot build a nation where one does not exist.

It was good to see that Space Bunny inspired someone to quote one of my favorite poets. Of all his poems, this is the one I like best; I once read it at an event in which a string quartet was playing pieces from various eras and I had selected poems from each period.

Lines Inscribed Upon a Cup Formed From a Skull

Start not -nor deem my spirit fled:

In me behold the only skull

From which, unlike a living head,

Whatever flows is never dull.

I lived, I loved, I quaffed like thee;

I died: let earth my bones resign:

Fill up -thou canst not injure me;

The worm hath fouler lips than thine.

Better to hold the sparkling grape

Than nurse the earthworm’s slimy brood,

And circle in the goblet’s shape

The drink of gods than reptile’s food.

Where once my wit, perchance, hath shone,

In aid of others’ let me shine;

And when, alas! our brains are gone,

What nobler substitute than wine?

Quaff while thou canst; another race,

When thou and thine like me are sped,

May rescue thee from earth’s embrace,

And rhyme and revel with the dead.

Why not -since through life’s little day

Our heads such sad effects produce?

Redeemed from worms and wasting clay,

This chance is theirs to be of use.