Heritage Quote

"Where liberty dwells, there is my country."

-- Benjamin Franklin (letter to Benjamin Vaughn, 14 March 1783)

How To Deal With Good News From Iraq

StrategyPage has an interesting article outlining what may be the reason for the negative news that is coming from Iraq -- despite all of the good things that are going on over there.

June 26, 2006: One of the more interesting types of stories exchanged by Iraq veterans is how their embedded reporters get screwed by their editors. The basic problem is that reporters tend to get close to the troops they are embedded with, and the troops form a good sense of what kind of story is being written. But then, when the story appears, it often has no connection with what actually happened, other than the names of the reporter and the soldiers or marines. The troops get curious about how this can be. Reporters have learned to dread inquiring emails from the troops they were recently embedded with. Sometimes the reporters are still embedded when some of their reporting appears in print or on the air. The troops note the discrepancies and ask questions. The answer to all these queries is simple. The reality of Iraq is too positive for the editors back home. Good news doesn't sell. The reporting has to be darkened a bit and a negative spin added. The troops tend to shrug their shoulders, and shake their heads. There's always the "alternative media" (blogs and web based stuff in general), and occasional accurate reporting in some mainstream outlets. But, in general, it's as if there were two worlds; the real one the troops live in, and a more "media friendly" one created by editors back home.

It certainly fits the profile . . .

Horse hockey stick

Dr. Roy Spencer, Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama, has an article up about the recent National Academy of Science report that basically debunks the "hockey stick" temperature curve that is trumpeted so widely as proof of catastrophic global warming. Here's how he starts:

Last week's release of a National Academies of Science (NAS) report entitled "Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years" was the result of a congressional request to look into the controversy surrounding the now-famous "hockey stick" temperature curve. The media portrayed the findings of the NAS review panel as some sort of new statement about how warm the Earth is at present, and totally missed the real news: that the original claim of Mann et al. of unprecedented warmth in the last 1,000 years -- based mostly upon tree ring data, especially from the southwest U.S. -- was dubious at best.

For the last several years, the hockey stick has been a poster prop for manmade global warming. For instance, it figures prominently in Al Gore's new movie, "An Inconvenient Truth." But the statistical and data analysis methods that Mann et al. used to arrive at their 1,000 year temperature reconstruction were strongly criticized by some. The hockey stick played down the warmth of the "Medieval Warm Period" of 1,000 years ago, as well as the later coolness of the "Little Ice Age."

Go read the rest.

Our fight

Jules Crittenden has an excellent essay wherein he discusses the cluelessness and self-centeredness of many of this country's elites. Like the editorial staff at the New York Times, for example.

Some people just don’t get it. Five years on, some people remain unaware that this is war; that we are facing an enemy that will do anything in its power to destroy us.

The fact that on any given day we are free to fly around the world, drive our cars without restriction and buy as much food as we like in rich variety seems to have confused them.

The lack of U-boats attacking the shipping lanes has lulled some people into thinking this is not actually a war. Not a real war, certainly not a good war, not like World War II. They mock the very notion that it is a war, having fun with the name “Global War on Terror.” They put forward the notion that, like almost everything else in our American lives, this thing that has been called a war is a choice. A bad choice.

He does a good job of summing my thoughts on the subject. Much better than I could do.

Highly recommended.

Heritage Quote

"Nothing more than a change of mind, my dear."

-- James Madison (responding to his niece asking what was wrong, 28 June 1836)

Taliban offensive fizzling

StrategyPage has a post up about the lack of success of the 'Taliban 2006 offensive'.

June 25, 2006: Battles with the Taliban have left 80 of the rebels dead in the last few days, and over 150 dead in the last two weeks. Afghan and Coalition dead have been much lower (a few dozen). While the Taliban claim to have over 10,000 armed men in action across southern Afghanistan, it is believed that there are only about 2,000 of them. Actually, there may now be less than that, since morale among the Taliban is getting shaky. Traditionally, Afghan warriors will simply go home if they feel their side has poor chances of success. This is how many Taliban gunmen are beginning to feel, as it becomes obvious that the Taliban tactics for the big 2006 offensive are not working. The groups of Taliban cannot stand up to Coalition firepower, and Afghan soldiers and police fight the Taliban on at least equal terms. Worse, many of the tribes in southern Afghanistan are actively opposing the Taliban, and Taliban terror tactics are not working to change minds. Most Taliban gunmen are in it for the money, but the Taliban isn't paying enough to justify the increased risks.

Compromised program

Byron York talks to Thomas Kean, a co-chairman of the September 11 Commission, about the intelligence program that the New York Times deep-sixed when they betrayed America by revealing its details.

Thomas Kean, the co-chairman of the September 11 Commission, was briefed several weeks ago about the Treasury Department’s terrorist-finance program, and after the session, Kean says, “I came away with the idea that this was a good program, one that was legal, one that was not violating anybody’s civil liberties…and something the U.S. government should be doing to make us safer.”

Kean tells National Review Online that the New York Times’s decision to expose the terrorist finance effort — Kean called Times executive editor Bill Keller in an attempt to persuade him not to publish — has done terrible damage to the program. “I think it’s over,” Kean says. “Terrorists read the newspapers. Once the program became known, then obviously the terrorists were not going to use these methods any more.”

I guess the NYT no longer considers integrity or patriotism to be important.

Oil supplies highest this century

Economist Larry Kudlow has an encouraging column up at Townhall about the very real possibility that the price of oil will drop dramatically.

Prince Turki al-Faisal, the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the U.S., recently told the United States Energy Association that any U.S. conflict with Iran would threaten the Strait of Hormuz and triple the barrel price of oil. Of course, such language could be an attempt to get President Bush to rule out the military option as Iran pushes to weaponize its uranium-enrichment program. But the administration will not rule anything out as it grapples with this belligerent power. That said, I’d like to challenge the prince’s assessment of the potential direction of oil prices, and the idea that the Middle East necessarily holds all the cards.

Go read the rest. The outlook is very positive.

Heritage Quote

"The deliberate union of so great and various a people in such a place, is without all partiality or prejudice, if not the greatest exertion of human understanding, the greatest single effort of national deliberation that the world has ever seen."

-- John Adams (quoted in a letter from Rufus King to Theophilus Parsons, 20 February 1788)

Extremism

Author Fouad Ajami has an op-ed up at OpinionJournal about the bigotry of extremism. He is talking about terrorists, but I think his premise easily applies to all extremists.

I've reprinted the article in the extended entry.

The Extremist Is Never Alone
Zarqawi is history, but the bigotry on which he thrived lives on.

BY FOUAD AJAMI
Sunday, June 25, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's tribe in Jordan, the Al-Khalayleh, claimed last November that they had disowned the man who had sown havoc in Iraq. They made that public declaration in the aftermath of his attack on three Amman hotels. That day, Nov. 9, 2005, was dubbed by the Jordanians as their own 9/11. But blood has its claims, and in truth Zarqawi had been, and remained, a man of high standing in Jordan and in other Arab lands. After his death, the regime in Amman may have announced that his corpse would not "stain Jordan's soil," but his clan held a "martyr's wedding" for him, and four members of Jordan's Parliament turned up at that funeral ceremony. Grant Jordan's rulers their due: They know that a Zarqawi grave on Jordanian soil would become a shrine to his cult.

The four parliamentarians were rounded up by Jordanian security forces and hauled off to prison. But the matter of Zarqawi cannot be written off as the "embarrassing" scandal of a prison bully and enforcer given to macabre videotapes and grim beheadings. For in the way he lived and died, Zarqawi illuminated much of the Arab reality from which he hailed. The bigotry of Zarqawi was not his alone. He came to Iraq to war against Shiite heretics (al-rafida) and Americans, and countless Sunni Arabs shared his aversion to the new order in Iraq. He saw a noble war that had deposed a tyrant as an alliance between "heretics" and "crusaders." America had dared give liberty to the Shiite majority of Iraq, as well as to the Kurdish people, and this perpetrator of terror shared the wider judgment of the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf, and of Egypt, that the Shiites were "collaborators" in an American project bent on securing dominion over the Arabs. Modern Iraq had been an Anglo-Sunni dominion when it was cobbled together in the 1920s. The Shiites had been the rebels then, and paid dearly for their purity: British hegemony shattered their autonomy and delivered power to the Sunni political class of the towns. Now the Sunni Arabs feared that this new order would be an American-Shiite edifice.

The extremist is never alone; the terrorist on the fringe of political life always works with the winks and nods of the society that gives him cover. Forgive the likes of Zarqawi their belief that the world around them shares their aversion to the Shiites. From the commanding heights of the Arab states around Iraq, to the storefront mosques of Finsbury Park and Toronto, the claim of the Shiite Arabs to a measure of their world's bounty and power has never been recognized. It was in that vein that King Abdullah of Jordan warned of a "Shia crescent" that stretches from Iran to Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, while jihadists from his own country were bringing calamity to Iraq. And it was of a piece with this moral obtuseness that the Egyptian ruler recently said that the loyalty of the Shiite Arabs was to Iran. The regimes in Amman and Cairo were bidding for American patronage, holding out the promise that they would--and that only they could--lead the foreign power through the labyrinth of Araby.

---

Here is a glimpse of these self-appointed guides in America's awkward journey. It comes from Paul Bremer's chronicle of his stewardship of Iraq. It is June 4, 2003, at an American base in Qatar, and President Bush wants to know from his man on the scene if this American project in Iraq will work. "Will they be able to make a free country?" the president asked. "Some of the Sunni leaders in the region doubt it. They say 'All the Shia are liars.' What's your impression?" A whole world of bigotry, a culture that had never found its way out of sectarianism, was being passed onto the Pax Americana, with the distant foreign power being asked to partake of the phobias of the Arab ruling stratum.

The Jordanians are now eager to claim that they were helpful in the hunt for Zarqawi, that their intelligence had found its way to the Sunni Arab tribes of western and central Iraq. In their recent statements, though, the Jordanians tell us much about the ways of our allies: The collaboration with U.S. intelligence, they add, had begun in earnest in the aftermath of the hotel bombings of last November. But Jordanian jihadists had been at work in Iraq long before they struck Amman. For the rulers in the saddle in Arab lands, jihadism has been a commodity for export. There has been a covert and subtle understanding with the perpetrators of terror: The order would avert its gaze from them so long as they took their furies beyond their homelands.

Jordan is not unique. The Saudi realm awakened to the terror only when its perpetrators struck within the peninsula itself. This happened in the spring of 2003. All that had transpired before was sanctioned and perhaps admired. Pamphleteers and preachers had praised the zeal of the jihadists, took their brutal deeds as evidence of youth's purity and faith. In the same vein, the Egyptian regime, merciless in the way it deals with challenges to its power at home, has never owned up to the darkness of Egyptian terrorists operating the world over. No one in Egypt has accepted responsibility for Mohammed Atta; nothing has been said in official life about the culture that shaped Ayman al-Zawahiri, who took out on other lands the wrath bred in him by the violent struggle between the Egyptian Islamists and the military autocracy.

---

It is fitting that the early intelligence has identified Zarqawi's successor as an Egyptian, one Abu Ayyub al-Masri (who goes by another nom de guerre, Abu Hamza al-Muhajer). From Jordan to Egypt: We are still in the darkness of regimes in the orbit of American power. With the torture and murder of two young American soldiers, Kristian Menchaca and Thomas Tucker, who had been kidnapped at a checkpoint south of Baghdad, Zarqawi's successor has sent a grim, cruel reminder that the end of this terrible darkness in the Arab world is not yet at hand.

Yet the identity of this successor will be of little consequence: He and his ilk emerge out of a broader context that ought to be familiar to us. Doubtless, they are misfits in their homelands who have come to Iraq to kill and be killed because they were not given a dream of normalcy, nor modern skills, nor a place in the world. Zarqawi epitomized the jihadists: Life in Jordan offered him little. He had been unable to find work that would sustain him. He hit his stride and found his calling in the "fields of battle" in Afghanistan and Iraq. There would come his way fame and money; the "charities" would find their way to him. Devotees would give him--a one-time prison thug--the honorific title of sheikh, acclaim him for picking up the Sunni standard against crusaders and apostates. His was no solitary campaign. He was a witness to his own glory: He no doubt watched his own videotapes on the satellite TV channels of the Arab world.

By accounts available, these jihadists are junkies of the Web and the Arabic press: They can read between the lines, and know of the unease in their world at the emergence from serfdom of the Shiites. They partake of the antimodernism and conspiracy theories on the loose in Arab lands. They are virulently anti-Semitic, but anti-Semitism is a familiar weed on contemporary Arab soil. They may be "embarrassing," those jihadists, in their talk of "crusaders" bent on plundering the Arab world, but the respectable Arabic press out of London, and out of Arab capitals, is now filled with anti-Americanism.

No one wishes the distant Great Power well in Arab lands, and the beneficiaries of American largesse are no exception. Zarqawi and al-Masri did not descend from the sky: One was formed by the world of his native Zarqa, east of Amman, the other joined the Egyptian Islamic Jihad in 1982, and his odyssey must duplicate that of countless young men who flooded the Islamist movements after Anwar Sadat's assassination in 1981. Egypt has been reduced to a terrible standoff between a plundering autocracy and a vengeful Islamist opposition. The regime in Cairo has nothing to offer the young. Embittered Islamists take to the road bereft of mercy, for none has been shown to them on their own soil. A cynical ruler winks at the chaos, and in his silence about his country's breed of radicals, he speaks volumes about the terrible bargain America has struck with his regime. He picks our pockets and sends our way--and the way of the Iraqis--the angry outcasts of his domain. <

---

In the aftermath of his surprise trip to Iraq, President Bush has returned to an old theme: He has called on the Arabs, yet again, to come to the aid of Iraq. On the face of it, this is the most natural of requests, for the fire in Iraq, and a failure in Iraq, is sure to spill into neighboring Arab lands. But here we are face-to-face with the ways of the Arab world. No Arab cavalry shall ride to Iraq's rescue; no Arab development funds--in a region wallowing in oil wealth--shall be committed to Iraq. The foreign leaders who have visited Iraq were from Britain, Australia, Poland, South Korea, Bulgaria, Denmark, Ukraine and Spain. No Arab king or president has deemed it fit to turn up in a show of solidarity with Iraq's people. (A prime minister of Jordan came to repair the breach between the two countries, but prime ministers in Jordan come and go; political power is the king's prerogative.) The Arabs who cross into Iraq are jihadists, and "mules" who bring money to keep the insurgency alive. In the main, Arabs are content to pronounce on Iraq's "innate" violence, and on the errors of the American war. No greater sense of responsibility can be expected from the custodians of political power in the Arab lands.

We should be under no illusions about Iraq's Arab neighbors: They are content to see America bleed, and they see this great struggle as a contest between American power and the region's laws of gravity. True cynics, pessimists through and through, they see the American mission in Iraq as one of extravagant optimism and hubris. The mere claim that the Shiite step-children and the Kurdish highlanders can find a way out of darkness galls them. The Arab ruling elites are invested in the insurgents and the jihadists in Iraq. The more these forces of mayhem engage American power, the more time they buy for the entrenched order. There is no "Arab solution" for Iraq, as there was none for Lebanon in its long Syrian captivity. The Iraqis understood the great Arab silence which attended the death of Zarqawi. A clerical leader of Najaf, Sadr al-Din Qabanji, noted the sorrow with which the men of Hamas responded to the hunting down of Zarqawi. Addressing neighboring Arabs, Qabanji asked the question: "Why do you accept the shedding of our blood?"

The borders of Iraq, examined closely, tell of a powerful but overlooked truth. The borders with Arab lands--Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait--are borders with harsh deserts. The more natural borders--across population centers, contiguous human habitations--are with Turkey and Iran. In the face of these stark facts of ecology and demography, Arab nationalism and Arab legend, insisting on the "Arabness" of Iraq, declared it the "eastern gate of the Arab world." This willfulness falsified Iraq's life: This was a borderland across Arab-Turkish, and Arab-Persian, divides. And within, there was a Kurdish nation with its own separate memory, its own dream of autonomy and independence. Now this Iraqi order, delivered through American sacrifices, struggles to take hold. The cabinet of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was long in coming, fought over, and divided across sect and ethnicity--a Shiite interior minister, balanced by a Sunni minister of defense, a Kurdish foreign minister, two portfolios given to the forces of Moqtada al-Sadr, etc. But this is Iraq today, and better this diversity, and the ways of the bazaar, than the pharaonic regime of Hosni Mubarak and the servile culture of his court.

---

A gap has opened between Arab jihadists and the Sunnis of Iraq. As a celebrated Iraqi intellectual, Hassan al-Alawi, put it: The former have their gaze fixed on the green fields of Paradise, while the latter have theirs fixed on the Green Zone. A balance of fear has been arrived at in Iraq between the Sunnis and the Shiites, a development that issued out of a bloody struggle, and this has altered Iraqi politics for the better. For the first time in their history, Sunni Arabs have come to accept that their old hegemony has been irretrievably shattered; this new order gives them a claim to their country's bounty that is, also for the first time, not indecent.

President Bush took with him to Baghdad the right message: a reaffirmation of the American commitment mixed with a reminder that Iraq's salvation lies in the hands of its new government. The Arabs nearby will say, as they have, that the American leader traveled into an occupied country, that he did not venture beyond the Green Zone, that the place he visited was more his domain than Nuri al-Maliki's. But President Bush called on an elected government, a rare plant in Arab soil. This new government should be strengthened by the promise of American resolve. But it should also take to heart that it is reckoning-time for Iraq's leaders, that it is their country, and their history, that lies in the balance.

Mr. Ajami, a 2006 Bradley Prize recipient, is author of "The Foreigner's Gift: The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq," forthcoming from the Free Press in July.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Snow job

Marc Sheppard, over at The American Thinker pulls together several different perspectives on the "global warming crisis". And he does a pretty good job of debunking Ozone Al's new movie.

Phineas Taylor Barnum, the greatest 19th Century showman and huckster, taught the world that by craftily combining equal parts entertainment, science and sensationalism, our natural sense of wonder and curiosity can be exploited to convince the gullible masses of almost anything. Albert Arnold Gore, Jr., the 21st Century showman and huckster, employs a similar recipe to achieve equally misleading results.

Recommended.

Abuse of confidence

Austin Bay does a good job of outlining why the is guilty of traitorous acts against the USA.

A lot of what passes for reporting and analysis in Washington and New York is merely passing on government and academic gossip. That’s why the leap to leaks is but a nudge and a puddle jump. The government officials and employees participate; some of them are legitimate whistle blowers, but folks, those are rare and when they occur they are Pulitzer material. Most of the game is simply incestuous Beltway conversation and the rapacious media demand for a “headline.”

But some headlines hurt– they damage our government’s Job One: national security. Perhaps the Times’ editors don’t believe we are engaged in a global counter-terror war against Islamo-fascism. We are. At one time there was hole in south Manhattan they could not ignore.

Read the whole thing.

Heritage Quote

"This gave me occasion to observe, that when Men are employ'd they are best contented. For on the Days they work'd they were good-natur'd and chearful; and with the consciousness of having done a good Days work they spent the Evenings jollily; but on the idle Days they were mutinous and quarrelsome, finding fault with their Pork, the Bread, and in continual ill-humour."

-- Benjamin Franklin (Autobiography, 1771)

Mistakes

Robert Pollack has a column up at OpinionJournal about an interview with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari. Mr. Zebari discusses American successes and failures in Iraq. This is straight from the horse's mouth and well worth reading.

I've reprinted it in the extended entry.

The Voice of Iraq
"Nobody is for a withdrawal, even a timetable," says the foreign minister.

BY ROBERT L. POLLOCK
Saturday, June 24, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

NEW YORK--"That was the center of all that happened in Iraq after the war. The people who were meeting there are the new leaders of Iraq, but nobody took them seriously in those days."

So says Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari. He's talking about an unassuming little hotel in central Baghdad called Burj al-Hayat, where his Kurdistan Democratic Party set up headquarters in the heady days immediately following Saddam Hussein's fall from power. And his recollection of the period is vivid enough to include the hour or two he spent with your humble correspondent in early May of 2003. Perched on bar stools, we drank only water then to combat the heat of a sweltering afternoon. And Mr. Zebari held forth expansively and optimistically about the future of Iraq.

Portly, with penetrating eyes and a kind smile, he exuded intelligence and decency. And with leaders like him waiting on the wings, it was hard to imagine that things wouldn't turn out pretty well in the months and years ahead. On the streets of Baghdad, too, there were good reasons for hope. Not only was the tyrant who had tried to wipe out Mr. Zebari's Kurdish people gone, there was also a genuine feeling of liberation in the air. The looting--always exaggerated in any case--was done, and Americans (journalists and soldiers alike) mixed freely with Iraqis at kebab stands and ice-cream shops. The main worry was not avoiding a kidnapping or roadside bomb but how to politely turn down the day's sixth invitation for tea.

---

But even those of us who suspected that such peace--which former U.S. regent Paul Bremer remembers as "chaos" in his recent memoir-- would be challenged by extremists have been shocked by the extent of the violence that grew and grew after the U.N. headquarters was attacked that August.

Now at least the perpetrator of that evil deed is dead. Not enough people understand that what's just happened is a "breakthrough," Mr. Zebari tells me. It shows "that Zarqawi's terror network was penetrated, that those groups are not invincible, especially through hard work and patient work. Fighting this terrorist insurgency really in the end is an intelligence operation."

"That was the difference between many of us Iraqis and our American friends," he adds, suggesting the coalition has too often preferred to try "overwhelming force." In fact, the fundamental flaw in our approach, he says, was our reluctance to let Iraqis get on with political reconciliation and their own security and intelligence efforts earlier than we did.

This time we're meeting on another sweltering day. It's only 9:30 a.m. and the thermometer is headed toward what will be a muggy 90. But we are much more comfortably ensconced in a room at the Council on Foreign Relations on East 68th Street in Manhattan. He's just addressed a breakfast meeting of the group. And the day before saw him in meetings with the U.N. secretary-general and The Wall Street Journal's editorial board, among other commitments.

Mr. Zebari has established himself as the great survivor of postwar Iraqi politics, holding his post through four governments--the Bremer period, and prime ministers Ayad Allawi, Ibrahim al-Jaafari and, now, Nouri al-Maliki. That alone bespeaks a great deal of diplomatic skill--though Mr. Zebari is hardly afraid to offend where justified. Just ask the likes of Arab League head Amr Moussa, or others with whom he has publicly tangled. But neither does Mr. Zebari seem to delight in contrarianism like his friend and longtime colleague in opposition, Ahmed Chalabi. Perhaps that's why the same criticisms of U.S. policy that would put Mr. Chalabi on President Bush's bad side starting in late 2003 never seemed to hurt Mr. Zebari's standing.

Mr. Zebari's critiques, it should be emphasized, are always offered with a liberal dose of thanks for the coalition's "sacrifice" in "a noble cause." But he also seems eager that Americans and others learn the right lessons from what's happened over the past three years. And he clearly doesn't buy the lazy journalistic trope that the main mistakes were the failure to stop the looting, disbanding the Iraqi Army, and excessive de-Baathification. Instead, he seems to think many problems could have been mitigated had Iraqis been allowed to move toward self-government much, much sooner.

"The biggest mistake, honestly, if you go back, was not entrusting the Iraqis as partners, to empower them, to see them do their part, to fill the vacuum, to have a national unity government," he says. According to Gen. Jay Garner, who briefly ruled Iraq before he was peremptorily replaced by Mr. Bremer in May 2003, that was exactly the plan. His provisional government probably would have included Kurdish leaders Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani, secular Shiites Ahmed Chalabi and Ayad Allawi, religious Shiite Ibrahim al-Jaafari and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, and the Sunni Adnan Pachachi. The idea was that free elections would soon follow.

But "if you read Bremer's book ["My Year in Iraq"], when he came, one of his tasks was to stop these 'exiles,' " Mr. Zebari says. "I think the biggest sin was to change the mission from liberation to occupation. That is the mother of all sins, honestly."

With his use of "exiles," Mr. Zebari is deploying--with some irony--the derogatory term many U.S. diplomats used to refer to the leading anti-Saddam opposition figures. Never mind that the term hardly fit the Kurdish leaders, who had already built what amounted to an autonomous state in Northern Iraq under cover of a U.S. "no-fly" zone. But there was an idea that the group was somehow too "unrepresentative" to serve even as a temporary government.

Where did Mr. Bremer get the idea to slow things down? I ask. "Many people collaborated. It wasn't his idea as such. There was Security Council Resolution 1483 that changed the whole thing. The Americans and British collaborated on that, relying on advice from international lawyers that one way to rebuild this country is to free it from the sanctions--from the U.N.-imposed sanctions--and sanctions can only be lifted when you have an Iraqi authority to negotiate. There isn't. And these bunch of people sitting in that hotel are not up to that job, so let's make ourselves the authority. . . . I think that was the big mistake."

Mr. Zebari is reluctant to name names. But the drivers of the anti-"exile" policy included Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Richard Armitage and former Bremer aide (and current deputy national security adviser) Meghan O'Sullivan. In the end, U.S. attempts to empower "indigenous" Iraqis proved worse than a failure. Not only were the "exiles" overwhelmingly victorious in Iraq's two elections (all three prime ministers have been "exiles"), but our attempts to "level the playing field" needlessly delayed the development of Iraq's institutions of self-government.

No doubt this has slowed security-forces development. Which brings us to the next topic: the continuing necessity of coalition forces in Iraq. Mr. Zebari's primary mission in New York, in fact, was to review the U.N. mandate of coalition forces. He tells me about a fascinating discussion among Iraqi political leaders shortly before he left for New York. He told them, he says, that the new government was perfectly within its rights to ask for the departure of foreign troops. But he says he found no takers. In fact, the loudest objection to the idea came from Adnan al-Dulaimi, who represents a Sunni community generally thought to be most hostile to the "occupiers." They know only too well that coalition troops are their best protection against shadowy Baathist thugs who would like to lay claim to the Sunni leadership mantle. "Before the Sunnis were raising the flag for a withdrawal of all occupying forces immediately, that they are the sources of all the ills. Now they are the ones asking that they should stay," Mr. Zebari says.

Intimidation "is a problem," he continues. "That is, an intimidation campaign carried out primarily by the Baathists." He also says he believes the Baathists are behind the majority of terrorist attacks: "Identifying the enemy is very important. I personally believe the incubator of this so-called 'insurgency' is the Baath Party, is the remnant of Saddam's regime. Even with Zarqawi and al Qaeda, who are very lethal. But without them [the Baathists] providing the infrastructure, the support, the intelligence, the hideouts--then the attacks would not happen."

---

What about the war debate here in the U.S., I ask him. Are Iraqis worried that U.S. troops will leave too soon? Does the Iraqi press pay attention when people like Congressman Jack Murtha call for troop withdrawal?

"It does. Yes, it does. This is one of things actually. The freest media in the world I think is in Iraq. Honestly. There is no censorship or restrictions or restraint whatsoever. Now you have about 15 or 16 satellite channels run by Iraqis and I don't know how many hundreds of newspapers." So "people have become more politically conscious and aware. . . . Nobody is for a withdrawal, even a timetable, for the troops."

I decide to move the topic back to Mr. Zebari's own experience on the job. How did he get it? "We were active in the Iraqi National Congress," he tells me. "I was then the person responsible for the foreign relations. It became very natural when the first government happened. I was recommended by many friends, by Ahmed [Chalabi], by Allawi, by Mr. Talabani."

What's surprised him most about the job? "We've learned many, many things. In the opposition we were struggling to open doors and to get to decision-making people in governments. Now you look from inside out it's a different world. It's much easier to work officially in a government than to work in the opposition."

Is he perplexed that international attitudes haven't been more helpful? Particularly the U.N., where he's just seen Kofi Annan? It was actually "one of the most amicable, friendly atmospheres," he tells me. "We've come a long way." But I can well remember Mr. Zebari's withering criticism of the Oil for Food program in 2003, long before the scandal ever broke. I guess he is a diplomat now, after all. And he does understand there's still a long way to go in Iraq--and that the country needs all the support it can get.

As we part ways, he offers a message for those in the international community and in the U.S. who would give up on the mission while there's still everything to play for: "There is too much at stake. Failure in Iraq means reversal of all democratic reforms throughout the region. Failure in Iraq means the power of the United States and the coalition cannot be used elsewhere in the same manner. Failure for democracy here would suggest that really these people are not used to this so its better to have one-man, one-party rule, a strong man to control this bunch of Kurds and Shia and militias and so on. Failure is a reversal of everything we've built."

Over to you, Mr. Murtha.

Mr. Pollock is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Good news from Iraq

Bill Crawford published this article about various encouraging developments in Iraq back on 12 June. I just now found it.

Apologies!

Here's a quote from General Barry McCaffrey following his visit to Iraq in April:

1. The morale, fighting effectiveness, and confidence of U.S. combat forces continue to be simply awe-inspiring. In every sensing session and interaction - I probed for weakness and found courage, belief in the mission, enormous confidence in their sergeants and company grade officers, an understanding of the larger mission, a commitment to creating an effective Iraqi Army and Police, unabashed patriotism, and a sense of humor.

2. The Iraqi Army is real, growing, and willing to fight. They now have lead action of a huge and rapidly expanding area and population. The battalion level formations are in many cases excellent - most are adequate.

3. The Iraqi police are beginning to show marked improvement in capability since MG Joe Peterson took over the program. The National Police Commando Battalions are very capable - a few are simply superb and on par with the best U.S. SWAT units in terms of equipment, courage, and training. Their intelligence collection capability is better than ours in direct HUMINT.

There's much more in the article, including a link to General McCaffrey's entire report.

Recommended. Highly.

Working for the enemy

Andrew McCarthy, formerly a federal prosecutor and currently a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, has an op-ed up at NRO that explains how the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times knowingly revealed a classified program for no good reason. Unless you consider undermining our national security a good reason.

It was in view of the TFTP’s [Terrorist Finance Tracking Program -- ed.] palpable value in protecting American lives, its obvious legal propriety, and the plain fact that it was being responsibly conducted that the administration pleaded with the newspapers not to reveal it after government officials despicably leaked it. Exposing the program would tell the public nothing about official misconduct. It would accomplish only the educating of al Qaeda — the nation’s enemy in an ongoing war; an enemy well-known to be feverishly plotting new, massive attacks — about how better to evade our defenses. About how better to kill us.

Appealing to the patriotism of these newspapers proved about as promising as appealing to the humanity of the terrorists they so insouciantly edify — the same monsters who, as we saw again only a few days ago with the torture murder of two American soldiers, continue to define depravity down.

The newspapers, of course, said no.

It disgusts me to see U.S. newspapers aiding and abetting terrorism like this.

Recommended reading.

Heritage Quote

"The State governments possess inherent advantages, which will ever give them an influence and ascendancy over the National Government, and will for ever preclude the possibility of federal encroachments. That their liberties, indeed, can be subverted by the federal head, is repugnant to every rule of political calculation."

-- Alexander Hamilton (speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, 17 June 1788)

From the politico's perspective

Peggy Noonan has an interesting essay up at OpinionJournal about our politicians' perceptions of their constituents.

She may be right.

I've reprinted it in the extended entry.

Off Base
Washington Democrats think their core voters are barking mad.

Thursday, June 22, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

It has occurred to me that both parties increasingly dislike their bases, but for different reasons and to different degrees. By both parties I mean the leaders and representatives of the Democrats and Republicans in Washington. I believe I correctly observe that they feel an increasing intellectual estrangement from and impatience with the activists who people their base of support.

And this is something new.

In the past, Republican leaders in Washington bowed either symbolically or practically to the presumed moral leadership and cleanness of vision of the people back home. They understood the base wanted tax cuts and spending cuts, and for serious reasons. The base had deep qualms about abortion. The base intuitively recoiled from big government: They knew the best arrangement was maximum possible power to the individual and limited, policed, heavily checked power to the state. Or, as some back home might have put it, Don't put your faith in governments, which are made by men; put your faith in individuals, who are made by God.

Republican leaders in the capital bowed to this wisdom--if not in their actions, at least quite often in their hearts.

Now they seem to bow less. They know the higher wisdom on such issues as immigration. They feel less fealty to the insights of the base. They know more than the base, are more experienced than the base, have a more nuanced sense of reality. And as for conservative social issues groups, the politicians resent those nagging, whining pushers-for-the-impossible who are always threatening to stay home or go elsewhere. (Where?)

Some Washington Republicans have been in leadership so long they've learned--they've learned too well!--that politics is the art of the possible. It is. But this is not an excuse to be weak, or ambivalent, or passive, or superior.

---

On the Democratic side, it is not just as bad but worse. They don't only think they're more sophisticated than their base, more informed and aware of the complexities. I believe they think their base is mad.

You can see their problem in their inability to get a slogan. Which, believe me, is how they think of it: a slogan. "Together for a Better Future." "A Future With Better Togetherness." Today for a better tomorrow, tomorrow for a better today.

A party has a hard time saying what it stands for only when it doesn't know what it stands for. It has trouble getting a compelling slogan only when it has no idea what compels its base. Or when it fears what compels it.

I got a sense of the distance between Democratic leaders and the base a few years ago when I met up with a Democrat who was weighing a run for the party's 2004 nomination. He hadn't announced but was starting to test the waters, campaigning out of state.

I mentioned to him that the press gives a great deal of attention to the problems of Republican leaders and their putative supporters on the ground in America, but I was interested in the particular problems a D.C. Democrat has with his party's base.

His eyebrows went up in the way people's eyebrows go up when they're interested in what they're about to say. He said--I write from memory; it was not an interview but a conversation--that he was getting an education in that area. He said when he spoke before local Democratic groups they were wildly against the war in Iraq and sometimes booed him when he spoke of it. It left him startled. He had supported the president for serious reasons: He thought Saddam a bad actor who likely had weapons of mass destruction. He wanted to talk about it, but they didn't want to hear him. They were immovable.

But there was something else. He didn't say it, but something in his manner suggested he thought they were . . . just a little crazy.

I thought of him the other day when I saw Howard Dean say something intemperate on TV. I actually can't remember what it was, one intemperate Dean statement blending into another as they do. I was standing near a small screen with recent acquaintances, all of them relatively nonpolitical, and as I watched Mr. Dean speak I blurted, "Why does he say things like that?" A middle-aged woman--intelligent, professional--answered, "Because he thinks they're stupid."

He thinks who's stupid? I asked. The press? "His party," she said. We both laughed because it sounded true.

But today I'm thinking that's not quite it. Howard Dean is actually the most in touch with his base of all D.C. Democrats because he speaks to them the secret language of Madman Boogabooga. Republicans are racist/ignorant/evil. This is actually not ineffective. It's a language that quells the base and would scare the center if they followed it more closely, but they can't because it's not heavily reported because "Dean Says Something Crazy" is no longer news.

---

I watched the Senate debate on Iraq yesterday. I happen to respect the Democrats' attempts to debate the war, argue it out, bring it again to the floor of Congress. I am impressed that the majority of them seem to oppose calling for a date-certain pullout. There was a lot of administration-bashing, some strange rhetorical sallies. But bottom line they seemed to be saying that while new management for the war is desirable, declaring "it's over, we're tired, we're gone" is not.

This struck me as essentially sane, and as I watched I wondered if these Democrats would take major hits from the base because of it. Or if John Kerry, who is pushing for a declared date certain for withdrawal, would greatly benefit.

Here is my read on a lot of Democratic senators: They think they know more than their base and they think they're more--how to put it?--stable in their view of the world than their base. In their hearts, in fact, they don't really like their base. (They like--they love--the old base: old union guys who drink Schlitz and voted for FDR and JFK. But today those old union guys are mostly dead, dying or Republican.)

Democratic leaders in Washington are in a worse position than Republican leaders in Washington. Neither likes their base, really, and both think they are smarter. But the Democrats think, deep down, that their base is barking mad. The Republicans don't. They just think their base is a bore.

Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father," (Penguin, 2005), which you can order from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Thursdays.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Heritage Quote

"[I]t is the reason alone, of the public, that ought to control and regulate the government."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 49, 5 February 1788)

Remember voodoo economics?

Well, Rich Lowry over at NRO says that they really work.

I think he's right.

Recommended.

Sleeping giant

Frederick J. Chiaventone, a retired Army officer who taught counter-terrorism at the U.S. Army’s Command & General Staff College has an interesting piece at The American Thinker about how the torture and murder of two American soldiers may not have the results that the terrorists were hoping for.

If they have not already figured it out, and it is highly unlikely that they have, the murderers in Iraq have made yet another egregious error. Perhaps even a fatal one for their own cause. Americans don’t react to barbarity in the way in which our enemies hope. Americans still remember the Alamo.

Consider the aftermath of the Little Bighorn.

Consider the evidence of Pearl Harbor.

I certainly hope he is right.

Heritage Quote

"I now make it my earnest prayer, that God would have you, and the State over which you preside, in his holy protection, that he would incline the hearts of the Citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to Government, to entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another, for their fellow Citizens of the United States at large, and particularly for their brethren who have served in the Field, and finally, that he would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all, to do Justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that Charity, humility and pacific temper of mind, which were the Characteristicks of the Divine Author of our blessed Religion, and without an humble imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy Nation. "

-- George Washington (circular letter of farewell to the Army, 8 June 1783)

What makes this country great

Gerard Van der Leun has a good post up in which he recounts a conversation with a [legal] Russian immigrant to the USA.

So I was surprised last Tuesday when I was standing in the laundry room of my home and Paul entered to say, "The election, today, right?"

"That's right. The election is today," I said and waited.

"You vote?"

"Always. It is the duty," I said dropping quickly into the pompous, "of an American to vote. Your one duty above all others."

"I will be American by the next election and I will vote always."

"Great." And then it got sort of quiet.

After a long moment of just looking carefully at my face, Paul said, "So.... who?"

"Bush."

Go read the rest . . .

Once more into the breach

The global warming breach, that is.

Robert Pollock, over at OpinionJournal makes some interesting remarks about how there is scientific evidence that the current global warming is not caused by carbon dioxide emissions.

I've reprinted the whole thing in the extended entry.

Recommended reading for anyone who prefers a more in-depth treatment of this issue.

Confessions of an 'Exx-Con'
MediaMatters and The New Republic get the science of global warming wrong.

BY ROBERT L. POLLOCK

Wednesday, June 21, 2006 2:00 p.m. EDT

Global-warming alarmists take it for granted that they have the "scientific consensus" on their side. The truth is that their views can be as much an article of faith that avoids or elides basic facts.

I was reminded of this recently after suggesting on our weekly television show--"The Journal Editorial Report" on Fox News Channel--that "everyone agrees there has been some warming over the past century, but most of it happened before 1940."

"Not true," declared a subsequent editorial in the New Republic magazine. "The last three decades have seen the sharpest rise." TNR suggested I was what they've dubbed an "Exx-Con"--that is, a conservative whose views on climate change are so unmoored from reality that they can only be explained by a slavish devotion to Exxon and other big oil firms.

But it is TNR that's having trouble with the facts here. I'll grant that my off-the-cuff remarks could have been worded a bit more precisely. I probably should have said "more than half" instead of "most." But that doesn't change the fact--as the NASA charts nearby illustrate--that the early 20th century saw a rise in global and U.S. temperature, followed by about three decades of declining or stable temperatures that global-warming alarmists have a hard time trying to explain. (Don't let the slope of the chart scare you either; we're looking at small variations here.)

---

The relevant part of TNR's May 25 piece seems to be based on an innumerate May 16 attack on me at the far-left Web site Mediamatters.org. Mediamatters said almost identically that "the last three decades (1976-2005) have seen a sharper rise in global air temperature." But rather than fess up to its source, TNR responded to my complaint with the pretense of assigning a fact-checker to the case before deciding there would be no correction.

The Mediamatters attack suggests I'm wrong because the difference between the coldest early-20th-century year and the warmest mid-century year is very slightly smaller that the difference between 1976 and 2005. But if the issue is by what date "most" of the warming occurred, there are three relevant data points, not four--the 1970s trough doesn't matter. And the difference between 1907 (the coldest year) and 1944 (the warmest mid-century) is .59 degrees Celsius, while the difference between 1944 and 2005 is .42 degrees. "Most" of the warming that has taken place over the last century had indeed occurred by about 1940.

One could leave it at that. But I want to avoid the other mistake my critics make, which is thinking that long-term temperature trends should be measured by the difference between single, and possibly anomalous, years. That's why the NASA graphs contain a line representing the five-year rolling average. Looking at things this way still supports my point, admittedly a bit less so.

In any case, the graph at issue presents a challenge to those who claim that the recent warming trend is primarily caused by carbon dioxide and is not part of a natural rebound from a cool 19th century. The early 20th century saw a rise in temperature rise at least as great. And far, far more CO2 has been pumped into the atmosphere in the years following 1940 than the years before.

What's more, there's a debate over whether recent global data is biased upward by the fact that many measuring stations are located in or near cities around the world that have grown rapidly over the past half-century. Anyone who's ever crossed the George Washington Bridge can understand the concept of the urban "heat island" effect.

In that regard, a recent study of Greenland--where allegedly melting glaciers are allegedly threatening a catastrophic sea-level rise--published in Geophysical Research Letters is fascinating. It finds that Greenland is no warmer today than it was in the 1920s, and that "although there has been a considerable temperature increase during the last decade (1995-2005) a similar increase occurred during the early part of the 20th century (1920-1930) when carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases could not be a cause." The U.S. temperature graph shows much the same. The U.S. inarguably produces more reliable data than most other countries, or the sparsely sampled oceans that cover most of the globe, and we've seen very little warming since the 1930s.

---

Finally, a word about motive. Why wouldn't I want to be on the safe side and embrace the Kyoto Protocol? Not because of an attachment to oil companies, but because meaningful CO2 cutbacks would entail drastic reductions in energy use by billions of people in places like China and India who are finally getting a chance at a better life. The New Republic doesn't seem to have addressed such consequences in any serious way. Attempting to wave someone out of the argument by calling them an Exx-con is much easier than confronting the difficult facts beneath the global warming debate.

Mr. Pollock is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Heritage Quote

"Perhaps the strongest feature in his character was prudence, never acting until every circumstance, every consideration, was maturely weighed; refraining if he saw a doubt, but, when once decided, going through with his purpose, whatever obstacles opposed."

-- Thomas Jefferson (on George Washington in a letter to Dr. Walter Jones, 2 January 1814)

Oil regulation

Pete du Pont has an interesting op-ed up at OpinionJournal wherein he maintains that American politicians are addicted to regulating oil. And that has been the biggest cause of our current dependence on foreign oil.

I've reprinted the whole article in the extended entry.

Addicted to Regulation
The real reason for America's foreign-oil dependence.

BY PETE DU PONT
Wednesday, June 21, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

In his State of the Union Address, President Bush said that "America is addicted to oil." But it would be more accurate to say that America is addicted to opportunity, and oil and its products help us seize it.

American oil consumption is indeed rising, from more than 15 million barrels a day in the early 1980s to more than 20 million today. It is likely to continue to increase--another 33% over the next 25 years, according to the U.S. Department of Energy--because crude oil is a useful substance. Some 40% of our oil consumption is for cars and light trucks; 32% for buses, railroads, ships, trucks and agricultural machinery; and another 17% goes into petrochemicals to produce products from plastic to paint. These uses represent opportunities, not addictions.

The problem is that America's domestic petroleum production has significantly declined, from 10 million barrels a day in 1970 to about 5 million today. Our response has been increasing importation of oil, now more than 12 million barrels a day.

So expanding America's energy production is the obvious priority. Common sense would suggest that we should begin tapping into the estimated 102 billion barrels of oil sitting under America's Outer Continental Shelf and in Alaska. That domestic supply could replace America's importation of foreign oil for some 25 years.

---

But our country's political establishment, from Congress to the press and the presidency, has worked for a quarter century to prevent increases in our energy supply.

In 1980 President Carter imposed a "windfall profits" tax on oil companies, which raised $40 billion rather than the $227 billion promised. Rather than easing energy shortages, the tax reduced domestic oil production by between 3% and 6% and gave imported oil from foreign countries a competitive advantage that increased imports of foreign oil by about 10%.

In 1990 the first President Bush issued a presidential directive forbidding access to about 85% of Outer Continental Shelf oil and natural gas reserves. In 1998 President Clinton extended the moratorium through 2012.

In 1995 Mr. Clinton vetoed a budget bill that would have allowed oil exploration and drilling in part of the Alaska Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. Prudhoe Bay fields, just to the west of ANWR, have delivered 15 billion barrels of oil through the Alaska pipeline to the U.S. market without damage to Alaskan land, caribou or other wildlife. ANWR contains 10 billion barrels of oil, so Mr. Clinton's veto today is costing America about a million barrels of oil each day. Yet Congress has repeatedly defeated efforts to open ANWR to exploration.

As the Heritage Foundation points out, the U.S. "is the only nation in the world that has placed a significant amount of its potential domestic energy supplies off-limits."

Congress has also limited the capacity to refine our oil. After Hurricane Katrina, a bill to streamline the refinery permitting process--we have not built a new one since 1976--and encourage the building of refineries on closed military bases was blocked in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee when every Democratic senator, along with Jim Jeffords (I., Vt) and Lincoln Chaffee (R., R.I.) voted "no."

---

We could reduce our importation of, and "addiction" to, foreign oil in various ways.

Nuclear power is one. We have 104 nuclear power plants in operation in America that provide clean energy and decrease by 700 million tons the CO2 released into our atmosphere each year. But we have stopped building nuclear power plants: Construction of the last one began three decades ago. President Bush has proposed the Nuclear Power 2010 Initiative to facilitate plant construction. Sixteen companies have expressed interest, and 25 new nuclear plants are under consideration.

Offshore drilling for natural gas is another way. There are some 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas on the Outer Continental Shelf. We currently consume about 23 trillion cubic feet per year, so that amounts to a 19-year supply. But the House last month voted 217-203 to block the opening of some Outer Continental Shelf areas to natural gas exploration and drilling.

Then there is ethanol, the heavily subsidized energy produced from crops like corn, soybeans and sunflowers. Ethanol producers receive a 51-cent-a-gallon federal subsidy, which cost the government $1.4 billion last year, and are protected from international ethanol imports by a 2.5% tariff and an import duty of 54 cents a gallon.

But it is not clear that ethanol is a good economic or energy bargain. Producing it requires diesel fuel for tractors to plant and harvest the corn and fertilizers, and pesticides to allow it to grow, so it takes about seven barrels of oil to produce eight barrels of corn-based ethanol. But then more truck or rail fuel is required to deliver it, since there are no pipelines from corn country to urban areas, making shipping ethanol about double the cost of shipping gasoline. In the end ethanol may be a more expensive fuel. Sen. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.) says there is no policy reason for ethanol: "If the ethanol producers and the corn growers weren't benefiting from this, we wouldn't be doing it."

Cleaner coal technology--we have 200 years worth of coal--is being pursued, as are other energy sources such as wind and solar power that may ultimately be some help in meeting our energy needs.

So what does the political establishment think of all these energy alternatives? Except for ethanol, wind and solar power, not much.

Sen. Hillary Clinton's energy speech to the National Press Club last month perfectly (and politically correctly) makes the establishment's point. Yes, she is for wind power, solar power and increasing the amount of oil stored in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, all good things. But she is also:

• For a windfall profits tax on oil (though she doesn't call it that), which would, as in 1980, reduce domestic oil production; and for higher taxes on oil companies so government, rather than the market economy, can regulate energy production.

• Against the construction of additional nuclear power plants--America's cleanest source of energy--because of her "real concerns" about the "quality of the oversight provided by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission." That translates into not enough governmental control over an industry that is too hot to touch politically.

• Against ANWR drilling (she has voted against it half a dozen times), and against additional offshore drilling.

• For greatly expanded--and greatly subsidized--ethanol production.

Her overall goal is "reducing our dependence on foreign oil by at least 50% by 2025." But expanding nuclear power, drilling for the proven reserves of oil and gas off our coasts, and even eliminating the ethanol import tariffs and subsidies all are politically incorrect energy policies that the Washington establishment will not permit.

That's too bad, because they are the correct policies that would help a great many Americans enjoy greater opportunity. But that's the political establishment's thinking, which makes government control--not oil--the addiction that is misdirecting our national energy policy.

Mr. du Pont, a former governor of Delaware, is chairman of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis. His column appears once a month.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Symbiotes: Terrorism and the News Media

James Pinkerton has a provocative article up at Newsday describing research results indicating that news coverage of terrorism leads to a win-win situation for the news media and terrorists.

But the problem raised by Frey and Rohner is the same problem that many observers have intuited all along: In portraying violence, especially terror violence, the media are unwittingly - or maybe wittingly - encouraging such violence.

So we are reminded of that old line from the "Pogo" comic strip: "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

Go read the whole thing. This guy hit it right on the head.

Sometimes we get it right

A federal court ruled that Arizona can require proof of citizenship from people who register to vote.

This should have never become an issue in the first place, but at least it was resolved the way it should have been.

Heritage Quote

"Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?"

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 51, 8 February 1788)

Good question

Betsy Newmark asks: Why is there a federal requirement for bilingual ballots? And she makes a good point:

. . . in order to get naturalized as citizens, immigrants must take a test on American civics and history. If they can answer simple questions about how our government works then they can probably figure out which box to check when there is a list of candidates for a federal position. If you can answer a question about what is in the Bill of Rights, you should be able to read the difference between Bush and Kerry's names on the ballot.

There's more . . .

On shame

Mary Katharine Ham has a column up at Townhall about the benefits of shame and how our PC culture is trying to eradicate it.

Unfortunately, in today’s society, we spend so much time making sure no one is “stigmatized,” that we tend to forget that some things deserve a stigma. A good old-fashioned stigma can be useful.

An L.A. Times editorial claimed this week that criticizing Katrina refugees and Katrina conmen for spending their FEMA debit cards on strip clubs and vacations is tantamount to “blaming the victims.” Well, no.

Read the whole thing.

Error of omission

Frank Schaeffer has an editorial up at The L.A. Times about the dearth of reporting about the war heroes in afghanistan and Iraq.

The prominence of stories about military malfeasance, absent stories about military heroism, creates an out-of-whack impression. When it comes to reporting on the military, it's as if we're back in the 1950s, only this time the media prejudice and insensitivity are aimed at military service rather than race. In the 1950s, you rarely saw a story about an African American unless he or she committed a crime or was portrayed with condescension as a victim.

Recommended.

Heritage Quote

"With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare, that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live as slaves."

-- John Dickinson and Thomas Jefferson (Declaration of the Cause and Necessity of Taking up Arms, 6 July 1775)

Road map

Iraq's national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, has a column up at washingtonpost.com outlining a road map to success in Iraq.

Taleban = yellow-belly

More evidence of the true nature of the type of people we are fighting came to light when Taleban fighters in Afghanistan used women and children as shields while fighting British troops this week.

And there are some that consider them noble freedom fighters.

Disgusting.

Heritage Quote

"Industry is increased, commodities are multiplied, agriculture and manufacturers flourish: and herein consists the true wealth and prosperity of a state."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Report on a National Bank, 13 December 1790)

First step

An Iraqi journalist, who has been against the U.S. military being in Iraq, has re-evaluated since Zarqawi was killed.

When I saw Maliki in the conference, I wished I could shake his hands to thank him and tell him how I want his government to be strong. I have a feeling that this man is really serious in taking Iraq to the safe side. I really feel that he is doing his best to do a better job than the ones preceded him. Killing Zarqawi is a good omen that Maliki’s government is no longer silent.

It occurred to me that this time, Maliki and the U.S. officials did not let us down when the criminal Zarqawi appeared on TV in his latest video that provoked all Iraqis. They all said his days are numbered and they will get him dead or alive and they did. Thank you all. Afiya [good job]…

It's worth reading . . .

Web of terror

Michael Ledeen makes a good case for treating disinfecting Iran in the same manner we disinfected Saddam's Iraq.

. . . A week ago Director of National Intelligence Negroponte gave a very interesting interview to the BBC in which he reiterated what everybody knows: ‘(the Iranians) are the principal state sponsor of terrorism in the world.’

So how come we’re not going after them?

Read the rest . . .

Spirit Builders

I missed this.

Darn it . . .

Heritage Quote

"The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have past at home in the bosom of my family."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Francis Willis Jr., 18 April 1790)

We're Baaaaack . . .

Just wanted to let you know that we have returned from our very successful choir tour. We are very tired and a week behind on chores and stuff, but I will resume blogging tomorrow.

Oh, and by the way, I am counting on the Mavericks winning the NBA championship this week. (I hope I haven't jinxed them by stating that.)

Heritage Quote

"The Declaration of Independence...[is the] declaratory charter of our rights, and the rights of man."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Samuel Adams Wells, 1819)

Heritage Quote

"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

-- Thomas Jefferson (Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 17, 1782)

Heritage Quote

"The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations."

-- George Washington (Farewell Address, 1796)

Heritage Quote

"It is necessary for every American, with becoming energy to endeavor to stop the dissemination of principles evidently destructive of the cause for which they have bled. It must be the combined virtue of the rulers and of the people to do this, and to rescue and save their civil and religious rights from the outstretched arm of tyranny, which may appear under any mode or form of government."

-- Mercy Warren (History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination
of the American Revolution, 1805)

Heritage Quote

"Whoever attentively considers the different departments of power must perceive, that, in a government in which they are separated from each other, the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 78, 1788)

Light or nonexistent blogging

My family and I are embarking upon a youth choir trip to Georgia tomorrow that will last through next Saturday.

You will be relieved to know that I will not be singing. I am serving as driver/mule for the duration of the trip.

I may have some opportunity to blog during this time, but cannot really commit to that.

This announcement is a public service for my two regular readers and for those unsuspecting souls who have accidentally stumbled upon this blog.

Thank you . . .

Heritage Quote

"In our progress toward political happiness my station is new; and if I may use the expression, I walk on untrodden ground. There is scarcely any part of my conduct wch. may not hereafter be drawn into precedent."

-- George Washington (letter to Catherine MacAulay, 9 January 1790)

Sincerity

Peggy Noonan has something to say to politicians: Mean what you say.

I've reprinted it in the extended entry.

PEGGY NOONAN

Mean It
Voters want sincerity. If they can't get it, they'll settle for simplicity.

Thursday, June 8, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

A thought today about complexity and politics.

The American people right now are not in a mood to trust any political plan, proposal or policy that seems complicated--highly involved, technical, full of phased-in elements and glide paths and Part C's.

They are against complexity not because they don't think life is complex. They know it's complex. They know it because they live it every day. They assume public policy issues are also complicated. They know there are facts they don't know, which probably have to be factored in as policy is developed. But more and more they recoil from complicated, lengthy, abstruse proposals.

Why?

Because they think--they assume, at this point, reflexively--that slithery, slippery professional politicians are using and inventing complications to obfuscate and confuse. They think politicians are using complexity to create great clouds in which they can make their escape, like a cartoon character, like Road Runner.

They think modern politicians hide in complexity. They think politicians evade responsibility with it. We can't do the right thing, it's too complicated! Americans don't trust "comprehensive plans," because they don't trust the comprehensive planners.

This, I think, is the essential problem with Congress's immigration proposals. All the phased-in-partial-assimilation-glide-paths-to-guest-worker-status stuff seems like a big 500-page con. It's all too complicated to be understood by anyone who's not a tenured political science professor with a second degree in accounting.

What people will trust, and understand, is this: We will close the border tomorrow, and then figure it out from there.

---

People resist complicated proposals for realistic reasons.

First, they have a natural and healthy skepticism toward the political class. They think the Senate and House are in effect using public anxiety about our collapsed borders to sneak in--I use that term deliberately--their own party-favoring addendums and amendments. People sense Washington is using public concern as a plaything to get what will serve the political class.

Second, people know that while much of life is complicated, some of it is simple, such as what you can see with your eyes. They would believe a bill that closed the borders worked when they saw that it worked. They will know when the border has been closed. No one will be coming across it. It will be adequately patrolled. Those seeking illegal entry will be turned away.

No one, on the other hand, believes he will be able to know with certainty whether a phased-in guest-worker plan is working in the short term, or the long term either. They'll only know if it was a disaster after the disaster is done. And they will have to rely for some of their data on government figures--about which they will be dubious, for one of the great modern American understandings is that statistics don't lie but liars use statistics.

And the third reason is they know everyone in Washington is not trustworthy in terms of basic normal human commitment on the immigration issue. They're not reliable.

---

The other day Rep. Tom Tancredo won a straw vote. A small vote, but, as Tom Tancredo is not exactly a longtime famous Republican party leader, it was interesting. Why would Republican voters choose Mr. Tancredo? Because they know where his heart is on immigration: Stop it, now. It's where he's been for years. He was out there alone on the issue. Now some have joined him. But you know where his heart is and his position is clear.

The irony is that this makes Mr. Tancredo one of the few among Republicans who would be given some leeway by his voters in fashioning an ultimate immigration plan. Why? Because they know he'd be doing his best. Because he means it. They know this because of his past: He was doing his best when there was nothing in it. He's committed to getting as much progress as possible. Which means his supporters would give him flexibility. They'd even allow him to get complicated. "If he gets complex, you must have to."

Democrats have the same problem on the same issue--who believes a word Hillary Clinton says when she speaks of immigration?--and on more.

Democrats use complexity as a thing to hide behind when they talk about taxes. Republicans can say, and can mean, "I hate taxes and will cut them." Democrats can't say that, because they don't hate taxes and in fact will raise them. Though they will not say it. They will say, "Tax cuts on the top 10% of income earners are nonprogressive and unhelpful, and I will cut their tax cut, or hike their taxes, and in turn make commensurate cuts on the taxes of the most deserving lower income taxpayers, though not in a way that will negatively impact the deficit."

When voters hear this they know exactly what it means: We will raise taxes.

---

What is the answer to the public's skepticism about complexity, and a modern leader's need to look at complicated problems in a way that sometimes involves complicated solutions?

Mr. Tancredo knows. Ronald Reagan knew. Mean it.

Reagan's overhaul of the tax system in 1986 was rather complicated. It wasn't complicated for tax policy, but it was complicated for normal humans trying to figure out what they owe. Why did Reagan's base support a complicated plan? Because they knew Reagan meant it. They knew Reagan hated taxes, built his career in part on opposing high taxes, pushed for lower taxes, had cut them in his career. They trusted Reagan to get the best deal he could. The base did not doubt his sincerity. They didn't think he was using the tax issue to finagle advantages for his party. Because he wasn't.

It has been said in politics that sincerity is everything, and once you can fake it you can do anything. But people can tell when you're faking sincerity--on immigration, on taxes, on our very safety as a nation. Faking it isn't working anymore.

Message to political leaders: You better mean it, or they'll never let you do your phased-in multitiered comprehensive plan anymore

Absent sincerity, the future is simplicity.

Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father," (Penguin, 2005), which you can order from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Thursdays.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Ode to al-Zarqawi

And not in a good way, either.

The world's highest-profile mass killer has finally gotten what he had coming. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi rose (which is to say sunk) to a level of squalid wickedness not even mastered by Osama bin Laden, whose stately visage belied a desire to keep his hands out of the muck of murder. For Zarqawi this was not a problem. He killed among the people. The killing he orchestrated, as much as a devil can orchestrate pandemonium, brought the dilemma of the entire war in Iraq into the flesh. The mere presence of a man like Zarqawi heartened the defeatism of those whose crisis in moral confidence cannot tolerate a situation of misery and injustice touched off by American military action. As for Zarqawi's tactical attitude of nihilism -- played out in the lurid dehumanization of random beheadings and detonations -- it seemed as if the terrible price to be paid for U.S. intervention in Iraq was a living nightmare itself, drawn from the same irrational evil as the statist totalitarianism of the 20th century.

It's worth reading, though.

Honor

Josiah Bunting III has an interesting essay up at OpinionJournal about a noble virtue that is under seige in America. William Bennett calls it our sacred honor.

It's in the extended entry.

A Noble Virtue Under Siege
Do Americans still understand the meaning of honor?

BY JOSIAH BUNTING III
Tuesday, June 6, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

In our culture of therapy, self-absorption and celebrity, "honor" has very little cachet. An abuse of honor--say, by perpetrating a public fraud or acting duplicitously in private life--is but the occasion for the administration of comforting words of understanding, the application of medicines to assuage lingering anxieties and the invitation to appear on "Oprah," the better to explain the forces that, overwhelming meager resources of conscience and character, impelled a dishonorable act. Next may come an invitation to undertake the labor of a book, more fully to explore and expiate the fall from grace. Closure (as it is called) will then, at last, be obtained.

In short, there is no shame in actions once known as dishonorable, and the virtues that supported honor seem moribund. Chastity and modesty--so important to honor in social relations--are treated as relics from Jane Austen and "Little Women." When a high-school girl defends a sexual encounter on the grounds that an American president said that her particular act was not really sex, both she and her role model are, if not completely forgiven, understood to be, as members of the human family, subject to the same vagaries of uncontrollable temptations as you and I.

Things used to be so different. James Bowman's "Honor: A History" offers a brilliantly astringent accounting for the disappearance of honor as a normative standard of conduct in American society. Mr. Bowman traces the idea of honor from its classical origins to its aristocratic and democratic forms. Along the way, he discusses religious teachings (in Christianity and Islam), philosophical definitions (e.g., Aristotle and Nietzsche) and literary treatments (Arthurian legend, Shakespeare, Hemingway). Throughout, he cites the emblems of honor--or dishonor--in current events and popular culture. Perhaps most pertinent to the present moment, he surveys America's use of honor (and prestige) as causes (and justifications) for going to war, indeed for serving in the armed forces.

---

As late as the mid-1960s, lest we forget, members of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations prized "toughness" in foreign affairs and considered national honor a principal justification for fighting in Vietnam. There was a need, the architects of foreign policy felt, "to avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat (to our reputation as a guarantor)." What was on the line, Mr. Bowman writes, "was the 'prestige' that was really old-fashioned honor under a different name." Yet the war was not always justified to the American people in such terms, and when Richard Nixon promised "peace with honor," few believed him: Honor was, by then, understood as a slipshod synonym for "this is all we can take. We've done all we reasonably could for our ally."

In the West, the identity of personal with national honor was part of the fighting spirit in World War I, though it nearly sank in the slime of Passchendaele and the Somme. Its last florescence was in World War II, Mr. Bowman observes. And even then, "honor" and "duty" in the stiff, upper-class sense of the terms gave way, during the war, to a democratic ideal: the average guy "just doing a job." For America, this antiheroic theme was part of a national self-definition. "We were still, surely, different from . . . those old-fashioned jingoist or imperialist forebears who had been able to speak unashamedly of honor and its demands."

The rhetoric surrounding war changed over time--in Korea, in Vietnam, in the Balkans and now in Iraq. Governments came to feel, Mr. Bowman argues, that appeals to national honor, prestige and reputation for toughness no longer worked. The Marines may remain determined to keep their honor clean, but no such justification seems to animate the country as a whole in its role in the world. When terrorists took over Fallujah in 2004 and the Marines moved in to take them out, Mr. Bowman remembers a commentator saying: "This isn't about national security anymore: it's about pride and credibility." True enough, but the words were rare and tell-tale. Mr. Bowman notes that only in a post-honor society would such an explanation be necessary: Pride and credibility, he argues, are "commonly used substitutes for the old-fashioned sounding 'honor.' " They imply "jealousy for reputation" and the respect that countries and armies once demanded and expected.

---

Can honor be resuscitated? As Mr. Bowman notes, "honor is stark and unforgiving," and early-21st-century America does not like stark choices. ("Then it is the brave man chooses / While the coward turns aside," in the words of the old hymn.) "Character," meaning resolution, the persistence in right action whatever its costs, seems a quaint and Victorian crotchet. Citizens feverishly, fitfully, deplore the inadequacies of body armor for their Marines and soldiers; three days later, they have moved on. Did you say 32 Iraqis were blown up this morning, and a soldier killed, north of Baghdad? Shame. Let's see what that does to the president's poll numbers.

How well America understands its enemies' notions of honor--and how prepared the country is, itself, to act honorably--will be tested between now and the fall elections. A failure to understand, though not inevitable, may be writ large in a headline like this one: "Administration Announces Withdrawal of 28,000 American Troops by End of Year." As Vo Nguyen Giap and Ho Chi Minh must have smiled the first time they heard the word "Vietnamize," radical Islamists will rejoice at such a development, irrefutable evidence that America neither understands their own misbegotten notions of honor nor has the will, if it does understand, to act honorably in confronting them.

Mr. Bunting is president of the H.F. Guggenheim Foundation in New York. You can buy "Honor: A History" from the OpinionJournal bookstore.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Heritage Quote

"It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please. Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It [the Constitution] was intended to lace them up straightly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect."

-- Thomas Jefferson (Opinion on a National Bank, 15 February 1791)

Jihadignorance

Michelle Malkin has a good op-ed up at Townhall about the West's penchant for ignoring the origins of almost all modern terrorism.

Many clueless North Americans remain shocked, shocked, that jihadis live among them -- despite the open secret of our northern neighbor's reputation as an Islamic terrorist safe haven. A cloud of befuddlement looms. The Toronto Star reports, with jaw-dropping dim-wittedness, that "it is difficult to find a common denominator" among those who would kill us.

Pass me a clue-by-four: It's the jihad, stupid. It's been going on since before the Crusades. And it continues under our noses.

Recommended.

Dixie Chicks Vanquished

It seems that Phoenix, over at Villains Vanquished, has dropped all pretense of tolerance for foolishness and vanquished another set of villains.

And she renamed them, to boot:

Hehe. I'm still cleaning up spewed coffee . . . bad timing there . . .

[Note to self: Don't drink coffee while reading Phoenix's punchlines.]

'Lawfare'

David Rivkin and Lee Casey have made the case that Americans are helping the terrorists in Iraq.

It is worth reading.

I've reprinted it in the extended entry.

'Lawfare' Over Haditha
The administration's domestic opponents play into the enemy's hands.

BY DAVID B. RIVKIN JR. AND LEE A. CASEY
Wednesday, June 7, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

The unfolding investigation of last November's events in Haditha reveals much more about the Bush administration's critics than it does about the U.S. armed forces. Although the inquiry is ongoing, it appears that 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians were deliberately murdered, allegedly by American Marines seeking revenge for a fallen comrade. If true, the episode was a war crime, something that must be--and no doubt will be--severely punished. However, the administration's critics are already cynically leveraging the Haditha killings as a means of undercutting the president, heedless of the effect this may have on American national interests.

Here is an outline of the emerging anti-Bush thesis: Haditha was the fault not of a handful of Marines, but of an administration that has refused to honor international law. As support, critics point to the administration's refusal to grant Geneva Convention rights to al Qaeda or the Taliban, to the use of aggressive interrogation techniques to obtain intelligence from terrorist detainees, and to a determination not to treat these individuals as ordinary criminal defendants. All of this is claimed despite the fact that the most fundamental aspects of administration policy--that the U.S. is at war, that individuals captured in this war can be held without trial as "enemy combatants" or tried by a military commission--have been vindicated so far by the courts.

Nevertheless, the killings at Haditha and a handful of other incidents in which U.S. troops have violated the laws of war (and are in the process of being punished) are already being cited as evidence of a systematic problem with American forces abroad and American leadership at home. In fact, although scores of atrocities have been alleged in Iraq and Afghanistan, the vast majority have been false claims. Most recently, for example, charges that U.S. forces executed civilians during a March 15 night-time raid on an al Qaeda safe house in Ishaqi proved to be groundless.

---

To put things in perspective, it is worth noting that abuses and violations of the laws of war have occurred in every armed conflict in human history, regardless of how well-led or disciplined were the troops involved. Indeed, by the standards of past conflicts, U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have behaved in exemplary fashion, using force in combat with unprecedented precision, minimizing collateral damage and civilian deaths--often at risk to themselves and to their mission. In Iraq, this has been the case even though American forces are fighting in the toughest possible urban insurgency environment.

Overall, all U.S. forces, including the Marines, have used deadly force in a proportionate and discriminate manner, fully in accord with the laws and customs of war. By contrast, our enemies engage in war crimes on a daily basis as a matter of policy. For them, targeting civilians is not the exception but the rule--it is the essence of the "asymmetrical" warfare they practice.

Throughout history, irregular forces have used the surrounding civilian population in two distinct ways. First, guerrilla fighters do not wear uniforms or carry their arms openly--critical elements of lawful warfare--so as to hide among the civilian population. In effect, they use civilians as shields. Second, like the insurgents in Iraq, they seek to goad opponents into mistakenly, or deliberately, attacking civilians--as a means of mobilizing the population against the regulars. The killings at Haditha show how this strategy can work.

However, the advent of modern media coverage--coupled with a growing and valid concern among democracies about humanitarian norms during warfare--has provided a new tactical innovation, increasingly known as "lawfare." Al Qaeda and the Iraqi insurgents thus routinely claim that American forces systematically violate the laws of war by targeting civilians and abusing prisoners. These claims are not targeted at the Iraqi people (although similar claims regarding insults to Islamic believers are so directed) but at public and, especially, elite opinion in the U.S. and other democracies. With Vietnam as its model, the Iraqi insurgency well understands that it can win only by undermining America's political will to win, and the center of gravity in this conflict lies in Washington, not Baghdad or the Sunni Triangle.

These lawfare tactics have several other important consequences. If the Pentagon's investigation of Haditha was delayed, it was most likely because similar massacre allegations are made virtually every time American forces take to the field. The fact that, in Iraq, IED explosions are so often followed by insurgent attacks launched from civilian structures also clearly gave credence to the initial--and evidently incorrect--reports from Haditha. When civilian buildings are used in insurgent operations, civilians often are killed in the crossfire, and so the report that a number of civilians had been killed by small arms in Haditha would not have appeared exceptional to the U.S. commanders.

---

Ultimately, the Haditha incident must remind American policy makers--and the American people--of the challenges of modern warfare. Although the individual actions of U.S. forces on that day may have been exceptional, the surrounding circumstances are not--and our enemies will look more and more to such irregular tactics. The Pentagon's emphasis on exhaustively training American troops in the laws of war is a good first step. U.S. forces already are the best equipped and trained in history, and it is only through a constant emphasis on duty, discipline and American values that our armed forces will prevail in Iraq and similar conflicts.

At the same time, should the Haditha incident mature into a full-fledged war crimes drama prompting a premature U.S. withdrawal, the damage would not be limited to Iraq. If the U.S. cannot fight and win against a brutal urban insurgency in Iraq today, its ability to defeat any determined foe willing to sacrifice the civilian population in irregular warfare will be in question. This can only benefit the most vicious regimes and movements. The Bush administration's critics should pause a moment, and reflect, on whether this would really be worth it.

Messrs. Rivkin and Casey, lawyers in Washington, served in the Justice Department under Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

On facts

Thomas Sowell has an enlightening review of a book about fact and fiction in the political arena.

If you think that the Constitution of the United States provides for "separation of church and state," that George W. Bush is not as smart as either Al Gore or John Kerry, or that the big-money donors to political campaigns give more to the Republicans than to the Democrats, this book provides documented facts showing the opposite.

Go read it. He shares a few surprising facts.

Heritage Quote

"In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."

-- Thomas Jefferson (fair copy of the drafts of the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, 1798)

Zarqawi's death: reaction in Baghdad

Iraqis' reaction to Zarqawi's death may not be completely understood by some Westerners who oppose the war against terrorists.

The scene around Baghdad today is quite familiar. Iraqis are huddled around televisions , listening to radios and, of course, firing celebratory volleys of automatic gunfire into the air. This morning there is a little something extra in the air, hope.

Mid-morning local time the news broke, Abu Musab al Zarqawi has been killed. The celebrations on the street and the cheers at the press conference announcing this news may seem odd to some in the comfortable confines of the west. While a BBC reporter today referred to al Zarqawi as a “controversial leader of the resistance” the reaction among most Iraqis lacks such nuance, they are glad for one simple reason, al Zarqawi is dead.

The people who have the most to lose in Iraq, the Iraqi's themselves, are celebrating al-Zarqawi's demise. I think we should follow suit.

Recommended.

Hijacking Haditha

Michael Yon, a veteran who served as an embedded reporter in Iraq, has a thought-provoking essay about what we do and do not know about Haditha. He recounts several experiences he lived through while embedded with the Deuce-Four in Iraq. He also puts things in a context that is much more rational than the hyper-ventilating "reporting" surrounding the Haditha incident right now.

We do not know if our Marines massacred those Iraqis. In war, things like this can and will sometimes happen, which is not to say it is acceptable. After almost four years of conflict, involving more than 100,000 military personnel, this clearly is not the norm or we would have heard about many such cases. But the difficulty of fighting a counterinsurgency mission in a shifting political environment is something about which our military leaders are mindful. . .

Read the whole thing. It will make you weep.

A forward strategy for freedom

Austin Bay has a good column up at Strategy Page that discusses the the need for a multi-administration strategy to defeat terrorism.

A "forward strategy of freedom" means fostering the development of states where the consent of the governed creates legitimacy and where terrorists are prosecuted, not promoted. Implementing that strategy means nation-building. Since the 2000 presidential campaign, the Bush administration has done a necessary 180 on nation-building. Bush entered office disdaining it. Sept. 11 changed that calculus.

It makes a lot of sense. Recommended.

English: the national language of America

Charles Krauthammer makes a very good case in favor of making English the official language of the United States of America.

One of the major reasons for America's great success as the world's first "universal nation," for its astonishing and unmatched capacity for assimilating immigrants, has been that an automatic part of acculturation was the acquisition of English. And yet during the great immigration debate now raging in Congress, the people's representatives cannot make up their minds whether the current dominance of English should be declared a national asset, worthy of enshrinement in law.

Recommended reading.

Heritage Quote

"Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Wilson Nicholas, 1803)

Iranian protests

A not-very-widely-publicized series of protests are going on in Iran:

They are protesting against the Iran Daily publishing a caricature insulting entire Azerbaijanis.

The Iranian authorities brought 20 thousand guards and police forces to Tabriz to disperse the protesters. The South Azerbaijan National Revival Movement (SANRM) Baku bureau spokesman Aghri Garadaghli told APA that there are about ten thousands of protesters in Tabriz. Bloody clashes started between the forces and demonstrators accompanied by firing gun. It is not ruled out that special provokers among the protesters fired gun.

Garadaghli also said that Iranian law enforcement bodies are using torture on the detained Azerbaijani demonstrators making them say that the US and other Western states are behind these protests. Four protesters died of severe torture in the past two days.

There was an armed clash between the Iranian military forces and the demonstrators during the protest action in Miyane city. There is no exact information about number of the killed and injured. According to the latest reports, law enforcement bodies arrested 1,700 Azerbaijani protesters in Tabriz, 1,500 in Ardabil and 1,000 in Tehran. The SANRM reports that demonstrators Ms. Hajar Sultani and Sirus Huseyninijad underwent severe torture and they are in bad health now. However, they have not been hospitalized yet.

The Gateway Pundit has the story. Recommended.

Dichotomy in reporting

Bill Crawford, over at All Things Conservative points out an interesting fact: in reporting mass killings, the word "massacre" is saved for the Marines, but is not used when terrorists are the perpetrators.

The mainstream media seems opposed to using the word "massacre" unless Marines are involved:

Masked gunmen stopped two minivans carrying students north of Baghdad Sunday, ordered the passengers off, separated Shiites from Sunni Arabs, and killed the 21 Shiites “in the name of Islam,” a witness said.

I am not a professional journalist, but that sure sounds like a "massacre" to me.

Hmm. He may have a point . . .

War on Terrorism

Widespread terror incidents in the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and now Canada tend to support the premise that it's not about settling some differences, or redressing some grievances. It's about the survival of western civilization.

What follows is this truth: the options this leaves Canada and other free nations are, in other words, either defeating their enemy or surrendering to it. Concessions short of surrender won’t satisfy the enemy, as the example of Canada demonstrates.Nor will a crackdown on immigration entirely solve the security problem for the West — it appears that many of those arrested over the weekend were Canadian-born.

Recommended.

Heritage Quote

"First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen, he was second to none in humble and enduring scenes of private life. Pious, just humane, temperate, and sincere; uniform dignified, and commanding; his example was as edifying to all around him as were the effects of that example lasting; correct throughout, vice shuddered in his presence and virtue always felt his fostering hand. The purity of his private charter gave effulgence to his public virtues;. Such was the man for whom our nation morns"

-- John Marshall (official eulogy of George Washington, delivered by Richard Henry Lee, 26 December 1799)

June 6, 1944: Operation Overlord

Sixty-two years ago today, tens of thousands of Allied soldiers invaded the beaches of Normandy to liberate an occupied Europe.

There are many sites that provide information of that day, like this one, this one, and this one.

To honor those soldiers from England, America, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand who put their lives in jeopardy in order to defeat the tyrannical Nazis and restore freedom to Europe, please spend some time today learning more about this day in history.

Prayer request

Please pray for "Captain" Ed Morrissey and his wife, the "First Mate". She is having some serious and scary health problems right now, and they both need our prayers and support.

Good news from America

Deputy assistant to the president and director of the White House's Office of Strategic Initiatives, Peter Wehner, has an encouraging op-ed up at the Washington Post about good stuff happening in terms of cultural, economic, and national security in America. He starts with:

By now Americans know the litany: The nation is engaged in a difficult and costly war in Iraq; Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon; gas prices are high; the costs of reconstructing the Gulf Coast region are huge; illegal immigration is a major problem -- and more.

These issues are real and pressing. But they aren't the whole story -- and they ought not color the lens through which we see all other events. We hear a great deal about the problems we face. We hear hardly anything about the encouraging developments. Off-key as it may sound in the current environment, a strong case can be made that in a number of areas there are positive trends and considerable progress. Perhaps the place to begin is with an empirical assessment of where we are.

And takes it from there. Recommended.

Well said

Marshall Wittmann, as the Bull Moose, has some excellent words to say about the need for balance and impartiality in media reporting of the Haditha incident.

If Americans committed a war crime in Haditha they should be tried and punished. America abides by certain ethical standards, and prosecutes those who violate the rules of war - and that includes those who might cover-up misdeeds.

At the moment, there is a press frenzy over the Haditha incident. It is the duty of the press to uncover wrongdoing and they are doing their jobs. However, it is also their responsibility to avoid a rush to convict before all of the facts are known.

Go read the rest.

[Via Michael Barone's blog.]

Holding on to the vision

Thomas Sowell has an interesting piece up (in three parts) about how some folks are desperately preserving a vision that does not conform to the facts.

In Preserving a vision, Sowell discusses the vision so dearly held by some people.

Before we turn to facts, we need to understand the vision. This is a vision of the world more precious than gold. To those who believe it, this vision is a treasure beyond price because it is also a wonderful vision of themselves -- and they are not likely to give it up for anything so mundane as grubby facts.

For those liberals who lived through the 1960s, that was often also the springtime of their youth, increasingly treasured as a memory, as the grim realities of old age settle down upon them today. It is expecting an awful lot to expect them to consider any alternative vision of the world, especially one that shatters the beautiful picture of themselves as wise and compassionate saviors of society.

But what are the facts?

In Preserving a vision: Part II, Sowell addresses the dichotomy between our country's current economy, and our perception of it.

Even Americans in the bottom 20 percent in income have higher real incomes than in the past and such staples of middle class life as microwave ovens and motor vehicles are now common among "the poor."

[ . . . ]

In general, people earning the minimum wage have been a declining proportion of the population during the past quarter century. In absolute numbers, they have declined from 7.8 million to just over 2 million, even though the population as a whole has been growing.

[ . . . ]

But you would never guess this, judging by media hype.

In Preserving a vision: Part III, Sowell points out how rationally administered tax cuts have been a boon to America.

For years -- indeed, decades -- the Wall Street Journal's editorial page has repeatedly been arguing that cutting tax rates increases tax revenues. Nor did this idea originate with them. There is a whole school of economists who have been saying the same thing even longer.

There is nothing "unanticipated" about the increased revenue. It was unanticipated by the Congressional Budget Office's estimates but that is why the CBO has come under fire from economists. But apparently none of this has yet registered on the Wall Street Journal's front page reporter.

More than 40 years ago, President John F. Kennedy got Congress to cut tax rates, with the idea that this would provide incentives to change economic behavior in a way that would increase economic growth and individual incomes, and therefore lead to even more tax revenue coming into the Treasury than had been the case under the higher tax rates. That is exactly what happened.

Years later, Ronald Reagan made the same argument and his "tax cuts for the rich" produced the same result. Tax receipts during every year of the 1980s were higher than they had ever been in any year before. Moreover, taxes paid specifically by "the rich" were higher than before, because their incomes rose so much as the economy boomed that they paid more total taxes despite the reduced tax rate.

How surprised should we be that exactly the same thing has happened after tax cuts under the Bush administration?

I highly recommend all three for good information on America's economy.

UPDATED & bumped up:

In Preserving a vision: Part IV, Sowell discusses an apparent attempt to suppress some inconvenient facts:

Still, facts are a danger to the vision. In recent times, those on the left have increasingly sought to suppress facts that go counter to the vision.

Heritage Quote

The whole of that Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals...[I]t establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of.

-- Albert Gallatin (letter to Alexander Addison, 7 October 1789)

The downward spiral

Daniel Henninger, deputy editor for The Wall Street Journal, has a sobering column up about our country's impending loss of confidence in our military's ability to achieve success in Iraq.

I don't particularly care for what he has to say, but I am afraid he may be right.

It's in the extended entry.

Haditha
The indictment of U.S. troops was inevitable.

BY DANIEL HENNINGER

Friday, June 2, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

You knew it had to happen. Haditha, an "incident" involving American troops in Iraq, is now part of the erosion of support for the war in Iraq. The Iraq Syndrome has finally arrived.

---

This past Monday, Memorial Day, a driver down Manhattan's fast West Side Highway would have slowed at 46th Street to allow the crossing of a constant stream of visitors heading to the USS Intrepid, the aircraft-carrier museum on the Hudson River. It was a beautiful day but a hot day to stand on long lines in the open sun. A small squadron of planes flew up the Hudson in the solemn missing-man formation, with one plane trailing. Amid the sunshine, the chairman of the Intrepid museum, Arnold Fisher, said something to the gathered crowd no one could have expected to hear.

Mr. Fisher, whose family runs the Fisher House Foundation for the military, suggested that the men and women at arms were being forgotten. And he apologized to them. "I apologize to you for carrying the burden of this nation's commitment to freedom and liberty alone." Mr. Fisher's bitterness over the troops is a Cassandra cry, a portent. But why now?

Opinion polls put support for the war below 40%. Still, it has become obligatory now as a nod across the political spectrum to the corrosive Vietnam Syndrome, to reassure that one's opposition is only to the war, not to the men fighting it.

Really? How does that work?

Arnold Fisher said the troops were forgotten, but they are very much on the minds of the news cycle just now. This Memorial Day week the news is preoccupied with stories of the Marine squad that allegedly killed civilians at Haditha, a town in Iraq. The narrative of this story has pretty much set in already: It's another My Lai, we all know they did it, the brass covered it up, and prison sentences for homicide are merely a formality.

Haditha is indeed the new Abu Ghraib. What this most importantly means is that any U.S. military action overseas now, no matter its level of justification, can be taken down by the significance assigned to events by the modern machinery of publicity. This explains why the U.S. commanders in Iraq announced yesterday that all soldiers in the next 30 days would take what the headlines are calling "ethics training." Of the some 150,000 U.S.-led troops there, Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the U.S. combat commander in Iraq, said "99.9% of them perform their jobs magnificently." Yes, and 99.9% of them, after all they've been through, will deeply resent the clear inference they lack "core values." Is that different than standard "Corps values"?

Stories of apparently malfeasant U.S. troop behavior are arriving daily now. A military truck whose brakes failed from overheating crashed and killed Afghan civilians. Press reports are now fly-specking whether the troops shot over or at the rock-throwing mob of more than 300 that surrounded them. Every one of these troops surely knows the story of Mogadishu. Been there, never again. But there will be investigations of their behavior.

Finally came the even more lurid pregnant-woman shooting. As transmitted around the world by the BBC: "A pregnant Iraqi woman in labor and her cousin were shot dead by U.S. forces as they rushed to a hospital along a closed road, police and relatives say." The BBC's next four sentences neatly sum up the common story line now in play around U.S. troops: The soldiers said the car failed to heed a stop warning in a prohibited area; the driver said he heard no warning; U.S. troops will be "trained in moral and ethical conduct" and this "comes in the wake" of the Haditha allegations.

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In El Paso, Texas, the father of Marine Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, whose death from a roadside bomb is the event said to have precipitated the Marine shootings at Haditha, said simply: "I don't even listen to the news." This may be the widespread reaction as the Haditha story overwhelms all else--enough, I don't want to hear about it.

And there begins the Iraq Syndrome.

Some elements of the newly ascendant Democratic left may welcome it, but no serious person in American politics should.

The Vietnam Syndrome, a loss of confidence in the efficacy of American military engagement, was mainly a failure of U.S. elites. But it's different this time. This presidency has been steadfast in war. No matter. In a piece this week on the White House's efforts to rally the nation to the idea of defeating terrorism abroad to thwart another attack on the U.S., the AP's Nedra Pickler wrote: "But that hasn't kept the violence and unrest out of the headlines every day." This time the despondency looks to be penetrating the general population. And the issue isn't just body counts; it's more than that.

The missions in Iraq and Afghanistan grew from the moral outrage of September 11. U.S. troops, the best this country has yet produced, went overseas to defend us against repeating that day. Now it isn't just that the war on terror has proven hard; the men and women fighting for us, the magnificent 99%, are being soiled in a repetitive, public way that is unbearable.

The greatest danger at this moment is that the American public will decide it wants to pull back because it has concluded that when the U.S. goes in, it always gets hung out to dry.

Two major military reports will come out soon on the Haditha incident, and no one will gainsay justice if that is required. But the atmosphere around this event is going to get uncontrollably manic, and that will feed the dark, inward-turning sentiments already poisoning the country's mood over issues like the immigration debate.

Good for Democrats? Don't count on it. After this, the public appetite for a Democratic president's "humanitarian" military intervention in a Darfur or East Timor will be close to zero.

One suspects that U.S. troops were party to some awful events in the Pacific and European theaters of World War II, all gone in the mists of history and the enemy's defeat. Not now. Gen. Chiarelli's magnificent "99.9%" notwithstanding, it's the phenomenon of the so-very-public 0.01%--at Abu Ghraib, on an Afghan street, at Haditha--that is breaking America's will this time.

Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. His column appears Fridays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.

International Iranian oil embargo?

William Kucewicz, editor of GeoInvestor.com has an interesting column up at OpinionJournal about the economic impact of an international trade embargo of Iran.

It's not as bad as you'd think . . .

I've reprinted the whole thing in the extended entry.

Over a Barrel
Trade sanctions could prompt regime change in Iran.

BY WILLIAM P. KUCEWICZ
Friday, June 2, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

Condoleezza Rice, in signaling a new U.S. willingness to negotiate with Iran, also warned that "international isolation and progressively stronger political and economic sanctions" would follow if Tehran defies its international obligations by continuing to develop nuclear weapons. Although the likelihood of those sanctions increased yesterday after the Iranian regime rejected the U.S. offer, it has been the threat of such sanctions, and the crippling effect an international embargo would have on Iran's economy and exchequer, that have always been the likely catalysts for any possible negotiation.

There's simply no getting around the fact that you can't eat petroleum. Iran's 132.5 billion barrels in proved oil reserves--10.2% of the world total--are of little benefit unless they're earning money. A trade embargo would hit Iran especially hard, because its economy and government budget are inordinately dependent on petrodollars. Oil shipments account for about 25% of GDP, represent 90% of total export earnings and provide as much as 50% of fiscal receipts.

Further, the country imports about one-third of its gasoline. Additional gasoline supplies and other oil products are refined in Tehran from 60,000 barrels a day (bbl/d) in imported crude that arrives via pipeline from the Caspian Sea in a swap arrangement. In Iran, gasoline, like foodstuffs, is heavily subsidized--to the tune of $3 billion this year--as part as the regime's strategy to buy off public opinion. With gasoline retailing at just 40 cents a gallon, consumption, not surprisingly, has been growing by 8% to 10% a year.

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The regime already feels the pinch of unilateral sanctions, first imposed by Bill Clinton and extended by President Bush, that forbid U.S. companies and their subsidiaries from doing business with Iran. Additionally, the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act of 1996 authorizes mandatory and discretionary sanctions against non-U.S. companies investing more than $20 million a year in Iran's oil and natural gas industries. The effectiveness of the restrictions can be measured by the volume of Iranian crude oil output. In the six months ended March, Iranian production was down 1.3% from a year earlier versus a comparable gain of 1.5% for OPEC, excluding Iran and Iraq. Compared with the six months ended March 2002, Iran's output in the latest six-month period was up 13.4% against a 21.7% increase for the eight members of OPEC sans Iran and Iraq.

Iran's below-average oil production is explained by a shortage of investment capital. Its 40 producing oilfields need modernizing. Recovery rates are a meager 24% to 27% compared with a 35% world average. But Iran doesn't have the capital to pay for upgrades. In fact, it has been counting on foreign investment to help it boost production from last year's 4.2 million bbl/d (of which 3.9 million bbl/d was crude oil) to a targeted five million bbl/d in 2010 and eight million bbl/d by 2015. Tehran further hopes, with foreign help, to expand its oil refining capacity by 50% to 2.2 million bbl/d by 2008. Sanctions would put the kibosh on these ambitious plans.

U.S. bans on technology transfers also have frustrated Iran's efforts to develop its massive natural gas reserves, the world's second largest. U.S. companies dominate natural gas liquefaction, and most liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants in the world use U.S.-licensed processes. Iran is limited to non-U.S. technology and so far hasn't built a single LNG facility. The cost: $11 billion in foregone annual earnings from one natural gas field alone.

What Tehran knows, and what the outside world has yet to grasp, is that an international trade embargo would hurt Iran infinitely more than it would hurt the U.S.

For oil-importing countries, even though Iran exports roughly 2.7 million bbl/d in petroleum, a complete cutoff of these shipments could be offset in large measure by increased OPEC and non-OPEC output, greatly diminishing the dreaded prospect of $100-a-barrel oil. Saudi Arabia has the most untapped capacity, in the order of 1.3 million to 1.4 million bbl/d. Other OPEC members, according to the International Energy Agency, have spare capacity of 1.1 million bbl/d, not including Iraq's estimated 700,000 bbl/d. With a total of 2.4 million to 3.1 million bbl/d in idle capacity, OPEC alone could offset a loss of Iranian exports. Furthermore, global oil consumption is anticipated to grow in the range of 1.4 million to 1.6 million bbl/d this year, while new supply is expected to increase by 1.2 million to 1.3 million bbl/d. Much of the imbalance is expected to be covered by OPEC exports of LNG.

Oil's fungibility notwithstanding, Asia in general and Japan in particular would be hardest hit by a cutoff of Iranian crude. (The U.S., Canada, Britain and Germany, among others, no longer import Iranian oil.) China has already taken steps in response to high oil prices that could lessen the effects of an Iranian trade embargo. It has eliminated tax rebates on gasoline exports, raised gasoline, diesel and jet fuel prices by 3% to 5% and levied higher taxes on larger vehicles. Chinese electric power generators, too, are scaling back on oil use.

Besides, it's not like we haven't been through this before. Following the 1991 Gulf War, Iraqi oil exports fell by some 2.3 million bbl/d to a mere 61,750 bbl/d between 1991 and 1996. Even now, Iranian exports are way below their pre-revolution high of 5.5 million bbl/d, which was equal to 19.2% of OPEC's 1974 crude and products shipments. Thirty years later, Iran shipped three million bbl/d, or 11.7% of OPEC exports.

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To be sure, there are other risks to global oil supply--notably in Nigeria, Venezuela, Ecuador, Chad, Russia and Iraq. But should it be necessary, the U.S. could always play its trump card--namely, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Established after the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, the reserve has a current inventory of 688.6 million barrels of oil, sufficient to provide about two months of U.S. import protection. Were, say, 500,000 bbl/d to be siphoned off to partially offset a loss of Iranian crude, the stockpile would last more than three-and-a-half years.

Iran doesn't have the world over a barrel. It's the other way around. The economic and fiscal squeeze of new trade sanctions could indeed become so painful as to prompt regime change.

Mr. Kucewicz edits GeoInvestor.com.

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(Editor's note: Iran's proven oil reserves are 132.5 billion barrels, not trillion as this article originally stated.)

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Heritage Quote

In observations on this subject, we hear the legislature mentioned as the people's representatives. The distinction, intimated by concealed implication, through probably, not avowed upon reflection, is, that the executive and judicial powers are not connected with the people by a relation so strong or near or dear. But is high time that we should chastise our prejudices; and that we should look upon the different parts of government with a just and impartial eye.

-- James Wilson (Lectures on Law, 1791)

Good news from Iraq

Bill Crawford's latest column with good news from Iraq is out at NRO. In it, he quotes Ambassador Khalilzad:

I am more optimistic now than I have been at times in the past, now that we have the Sunni Arabs participating in the political process, now that we have a government of national unity, but I am, of course, realistic enough to know that there are significant challenges that still are part of the picture. We need a good Defense Minister that has to be still appointed, a good Interior Minister that has to be appointed, and the security situation has to be dealt with. But I think that fundamentally, with the political participation of all communities in the political system, that Iraq has been put on the right trajectory.

Read the whole thing.

On Iraq reporting

Command Sargeant Major Jeffrey Mellinger, senior enlisted soldier in Iraq, has a post over at Michael Yon's Frontline Forum wherein he comments on the virtually non-existent reporting about Iraq by the mainstream media.

There is still an insurgency being fought as we build a government and work to provide unity, safety, security and jobs. Haven’t read a story yet on us spraying the date palms. Iraq was once the number one producer of dates. We are working aerial spraying to rebuild the crops. Where’s the story? Oh, sorry. It’s not got any sex or blood in it. Let’s see. How about the huge civil affairs festival in Irbil last week? Hmmm. No story in hundreds of kids singing and dancing, adults laughing and competing in sports. And surely no story in learning how to operate and program computers, operate tractors, dump trucks, or repair generators and motors. What was I thinking?

I can certainly understand his sarcasm. I recommend you read his entire post. In fact, you should spend some time reading the othere posts in Michael Yon's Frontline Forum. They show you a glimpse of the struggles in Afghanistan and Iraq that you rarely get to see.

Heritage Quote

"There are certain social principles in human nature, from which we may draw the most solid conclusions with respect to the conduct of individuals and of communities. We love our families more than our neighbors; we love our neighbors more than our countrymen in general. The human affections, like solar heat, lose their intensity as they depart from the centre... On these principles, the attachment of the individual will be first and for ever secured by the State governments. They will be a mutual protection and support."

-- Alexander Hamilton (speech at the New York Ratifying Convention, June 1788)

Commencement address at West Point

Our President's commencement address at West Point.

The field of battle is where your degree and commission will take you. This is the first class to arrive at West Point after the attacks of September the 11th, 2001. Each of you came here in a time of war, knowing all the risks and dangers that come with wearing our nation's uniform. And I want to thank you for your patriotism, your devotion to duty, your courageous decision to serve. America is grateful and proud of the men and women of West Point.

Go read the whole thing. It's worth it.

Stranger in a strange land

Marine 1LT Jeffrey Barnett, currently deployed in Iraq, provides context to the Haditha incident. He is not seeking to justify any criminal actions by our Marines, but to show how this highly unusual behavior might actually occur.

Examine the following hypothetical example: During a vehicular patrol, you drive though a small neighborhood of four houses around 0800. Everything is kosher. Women are making breakfast, children are playing, and men are talking to each other near the road. You drive through the same area two hours later at 1000 and things are vastly different. Nobody is outside. As the second vehicle in the patrol rounds a corner just past the four houses it is hit by an IED. The magnitude of the casualties can be left to the individual imagination. Whether it killed everyone inside the vehicle or just peppered the doors with dirt, the intent was the same. Someone wanted to kill you. Someone looked at your truck and said to themselves “Those men should die, and I’m going to make it happen,” It—pisses—you—off.

Go read the whole thing.

Above the law

Or so Congress would have you believe. Robert F. Turner has a good column up at OpinionJournal about the Constitution and Congressional assertion that their legislative offices are immune to search and seizure.

It is increasingly rare to find a spirit of bipartisanship in Congress these days. So a display of the spirit would have been a good thing to see--especially in a time of war--but for the fact that the issue now uniting Republican and Democratic leaders is an outrageous assertion that members of Congress are above the law, and that the Constitution immunizes legislators who betray their public trust in return for bribes from investigation by the executive branch.

I've reprinted the article in the extended entry.

Congress Isn't Above the Law
And bribery isn't "speech or debate."

BY ROBERT F. TURNER
Sunday, May 28, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

How strong is the case against Louisiana's Rep. William Jefferson?

According to numerous press accounts, after videotaping Mr. Jefferson receiving a $100,000 bribe from an FBI informant, the government executed a search warrant of his home and found $90,000 of that money hidden in his freezer. In another case, a Kentucky businessman pleaded guilty to paying Mr. Jefferson $400,000 in bribes for official favors; and one of the congressman's key staff members has already entered a guilty plea to aiding and abetting the bribery of a public official.

Based upon such compelling evidence and Mr. Jefferson's refusal to comply with a subpoena to surrender key documents for eight months, a federal judge issued the search warrant that was executed in the congressman's Capitol Hill office last weekend. The FBI took exceptional measures to ensure that no privileged documents would be surrendered to investigators, with any close calls being made by a federal judge.

One might expect that others in Congress would be grateful that a scoundrel in their midst has apparently been caught red-handed. But there is obviously a more fundamental issue here, as House Speaker Dennis Hastert quickly joined forces with Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, not to commend the FBI for its outstanding work, but to vehemently denounce its actions on the theory that members of Congress are above the law.

Specifically, they accused the FBI of violating the constitutional principle of separation of powers and the "Speech or Debate" clause of the Constitution. House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner has scheduled hearings for Tuesday on this "profoundly disturbing constitutional question."

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The "Speech or Debate" clause is contained in Article I, Section 6, which provides that members of Congress "shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place." The provision was designed to protect legislators from civil law suits and unwarranted harassment by the executive branch, such as charges of defamation stemming from criticisms of the president during congressional debate.

Put simply, only Congress can inquire into the motives or content of votes, speeches or other official legislative acts.

But as the Supreme Court observed in the 1972 case of U.S. v. Brewster, the clause was never intended to immunize corrupt legislators who violate felony bribery statutes--laws that have expressly applied to members of Congress for more than 150 years. In Brewster, the court noted the clause was not written "to make Members of Congress super-citizens, immune from criminal responsibility," adding: "Taking a bribe is, obviously, no part of the legislative process or function; it is not a legislative act. It is not, by any conceivable interpretation, an act performed as a part of or even incidental to the role of a legislator."

Such behavior is therefore not protected by the Constitution. The purpose of the Speech or Debate Clause was to protect the integrity of the legislative process, and the court noted that bribery, "perhaps even more than Executive power," would "gravely undermine legislative integrity and defeat the right of the public to honest representation."

A dozen years ago, I testified before the House Committee on Administration on this same basic issue. Newt Gingrich and other reformers were trying to bring Congress under the same ethics laws it had imposed upon the rest of the country, and some indignant legislators seemed confident that the laws were not supposed to apply to them. The hearing was held in a small room in a part of the Capitol Building off-limits to the public, with exactly enough chairs for members, staff and the three witnesses.

Two members of the public who managed to make their way to the room were turned away on the grounds that there was "no room" for public observers.

Critics of the Gingrich proposal did not hear what they wanted. Some seemed genuinely shocked when I informed them that, in Federalist No. 57, James Madison noted one of the constraints in the Constitution to prevent legislators from enacting "oppressive measures" was that "they can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as on the great mass of the society."

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It is increasingly rare to find a spirit of bipartisanship in Congress these days. So a display of the spirit would have been a good thing to see--especially in a time of war--but for the fact that the issue now uniting Republican and Democratic leaders is an outrageous assertion that members of Congress are above the law, and that the Constitution immunizes legislators who betray their public trust in return for bribes from investigation by the executive branch.

In light of the attitudes held by so many of our legislators, it is no wonder three times as many Americans disapprove of Congress's job-performance as approve, according to a recent Gallup Poll. Those are Congress's lowest numbers since the Democrats were last in power a dozen years ago.

According to Gallup, 83% of Americans view congressional corruption as a serious problem. There is an election coming up in five months, and legislators who wish to survive it might wish to step back and permit the FBI to do its job.

Mr. Turner is a co-founder of the Center for National Security Law at the University of Virginia School of Law and a professor on the university's general faculty.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Heritage Quote

"Liberty is a word which, according as it is used, comprehends the most good and the most evil of any in the world. Justly understood it is sacred next to those which we appropriate in divine adoration; but in the mouths of some it means anything, which enervate a necessary government; excite a jealousy of the rulers who are our own choice, and keep society in confusion for want of a power sufficiently concentered to promote good."

-- Oliver Ellsworth (A Landholder, No. III, 19 November 1787)

Memorial Day address at Arlington Nat'l Cemetery

President Bush honors our noble dead at Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day.

Our nation is free because of brave Americans like these, who volunteer to confront our adversaries abroad so we do not have to face them here at home. Our nation mourns the loss of our men and women in uniform; we will honor them by completing the mission for which they gave their lives -- by defeating the terrorists, by advancing the cause of liberty, and by laying the foundation of peace for a generation of young Americans. (Applause.) Today we pray that those who lie here have found peace with their Creator, and we resolve that their sacrifice will always be remembered by a grateful nation.

Recommended.

An alternative

Peggy Noonan discusses America's readiness for a third political party. When faced with the choice between "the party of corruption" and "the party of treason", many Americans might want to opt out.

It's in the extended entry.

Third Time
America may be ready for a new political party.

Thursday, June 1, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

Something's happening. I have a feeling we're at some new beginning, that a big breakup's coming, and that though it isn't and will not be immediately apparent, we'll someday look back on this era as the time when a shift began.

All my adult life, people have been saying that the two-party system is ending, that the Democrats' and Republicans' control of political power in America is winding down. According to the traditional critique, the two parties no longer offer the people the choice they want and deserve. Sometimes it's said they are too much alike--Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Sometimes it's said they're too polarizing--too red and too blue for a nation in which many see things through purple glasses.

In 1992 Ross Perot looked like the breakthrough, the man who would make third parties a reality. He destabilized the Republicans and then destabilized himself. By the end of his campaign he seemed to be the crazy old aunt in the attic.

The Perot experience seemed to put an end to third-party fever. But I think it's coming back, I think it's going to grow, and I think the force behind it is unique in our history.

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This week there was a small boomlet of talk about a new internet entity called Unity '08--a small collection of party veterans including moderate Democrats (former Carter aide Hamilton Jordan) and liberal-leaning Republicans (former Ford hand Doug Bailey) trying to join together with college students and broaden the options in the 2008 election. In terms of composition, Unity seems like the Concord Coalition, the bipartisan group (Warren Rudman, Bob Kerrey) that warns against high spending and deficits.

Unity seems to me to have America's growing desire for more political options right. But I think they've got the description of the problem wrong.

Their idea is that the two parties are too polarized to govern well. It is certainly true that the level of partisanship in Washington seems high. (Such things, admittedly, ebb, flow and are hard to judge. We look back at the post-World War II years and see a political climate of relative amity and moderation. But Alger Hiss and Dick Nixon didn't see it that way.) Nancy Pelosi seems to be pretty much in favor of anything that hurts Republicans, and Ken Mehlman is in favor of anything that works against Democrats. They both want their teams to win. Part of winning is making sure the other guy loses, and part of the fun of politics, of any contest, of life, can be the dance in the end zone.

But the dance has gotten dark.

Partisanship is fine when it's an expression of the high animal spirits produced by real political contention based on true political belief. But the current partisanship seems sour, not joyous. The partisanship has gotten deeper as less separates the governing parties in Washington. It is like what has been said of academic infighting: that it's so vicious because the stakes are so low.

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The problem is not that the two parties are polarized. In many ways they're closer than ever. The problem is that the parties in Washington, and the people on the ground in America, are polarized. There is an increasing and profound distance between the rulers of both parties and the people--between the elites and the grunts, between those in power and those who put them there.

On the ground in America, people worry terribly--really, there are people who actually worry about it every day--about endless, weird, gushing government spending. But in Washington, those in power--Republicans and Democrats--stand arm in arm as they spend and spend. (Part of the reason is that they think they can buy off your unhappiness one way or another. After all, it's worked in the past. A hunch: It's not going to work forever or much longer. They've really run that trick into the ground.)

On the ground in America, regular people worry about the changes wrought by the biggest wave of immigration in our history, much of it illegal and therefore wholly connected to the needs of the immigrant and wholly unconnected to the agreed-upon needs of our nation. Americans worry about the myriad implications of the collapse of the American border. But Washington doesn't. Democrat Ted Kennedy and Republican George W. Bush see things pretty much eye to eye. They are going to educate the American people out of their low concerns.

There is a widespread sense in America--a conviction, actually--that we are not safe in the age of terror. That the port, the local power plant, even the local school, are not protected. Is Washington worried about this? Not so you'd notice. They're only worried about seeming unconcerned.

More to the point, people see the Republicans as incapable of managing the monster they've helped create--this big Homeland Security/Intelligence apparatus that is like some huge buffed guy at the gym who looks strong but can't even put on his T-shirt without help because he's so muscle-bound. As for the Democrats, who co-created Homeland Security, no one--no one--thinks they would be more managerially competent. Nor does anyone expect the Democrats to be more visionary as to what needs to be done. The best they can hope is the Democrats competently serve their interest groups and let the benefits trickle down.

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Right now the Republicans and Democrats in Washington seem, from the outside, to be an elite colluding against the voter. They're in agreement: immigration should not be controlled but increased, spending will increase, etc.

Are there some dramatic differences? Yes. But both parties act as if they see them not as important questions (gay marriage, for instance) but as wedge issues. Which is, actually, abusive of people on both sides of the question. If it's a serious issue, face it. Don't play with it.

I don't see any potential party, or potential candidate, on the scene right now who can harness the disaffection of growing portions of the electorate. But a new group or entity that could define the problem correctly--that sees the big divide not as something between the parties but between America's ruling elite and its people--would be making long strides in putting third party ideas in play in America again.

Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father," (Penguin, 2005), which you can order from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Thursdays.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

The military has been on top of Haditha

And, in fact, was in the midst of conducting an investigation into the incident weeks before Time broke the story:

The Haditha investigation started earlier than previously thought after a Marine Corps investigator noticed key discrepancies between the physical evidence and the reports from the Marines involved. The New York Times reveals that the Pentagon had already referred the matter to criminal investigators weeks before Time Magazine reported the alleged atrocities at the end of March . . .

Go read what Captain Ed is reporting . . .

Heritage Quote

"Nothing...is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to John Cartwright, 1824)

Never forget

Gerard Van der Leun has a moving essay posted about his family's sacrifice to freedom during WWII. An uncle he never knew -- who's name he carries proudly.

Remembering these long ago moments now as we linger on the cusp of the Long War, I still cannot claim to understand the deep sense of duty and the strong feeling of honor that drove men like the uncle I've never known to sacrifice themselves. Lately though, as we move deeper into the Fourth World War, I think that, at last, I can somehow dimly see the outlines of what it was. And that, for now, will have to do.

Highly recommended.

Israeli disengagement

James Woolsey, a former director of Central Intelligence, has published an op-ed over at OpinionJournal wherein he makes a case against Israeli disengagement in the West Bank.

I have not been able to come to a conclusion as to the best course of action over there (not that my opinion really matters), and I'm not sure I agree with Mr. Woolsey's assessment of the consequences of continuing with disengagement. However, he makes some good, rational arguments that make a lot of sense.

I've reprinted the whole thing in the extended entry.

West Bank Terrorist State
The folly of Israeli disengagement.

BY R. JAMES WOOLSEY
Monday, May 29, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

What does one say to a good ally who seems determined to reinforce failure? That the U.S. will pay for the undertaking?

Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was in Washington last week, where he asked for advice and assistance in financing the withdrawal of 50,000 to 100,000 Israeli settlers from 90% to 95% of the West Bank and major portions of Jerusalem, and for the Israel Defense Forces to be repositioned largely near the security barrier Israel is constructing. Most Americans are inclined to believe that such disengagement may be a reasonable step toward a two-state solution, even if some territorial disputes remain to be negotiated. It is also widely assumed that Palestinian hostility to Israel is fueled by despair that can only be reduced by Israeli concessions. Both assumptions, however, may be fundamentally flawed.

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The approach Israel is preparing to take in the West Bank was tried in Gaza and has failed utterly. The Israeli withdrawal of last year has produced the worst set of results imaginable: a heavy presence by al Qaeda, Hezbollah and even some Iranian Revolutionary Guard units; street fighting between Hamas and Fatah, and now Hamas assassination attempts against Fatah's intelligence chief and Jordan's ambassador; rocket and mortar attacks against nearby towns inside Israel; and a perceived vindication for Hamas, which took credit for the withdrawal. This latter almost certainly contributed substantially to Hamas's victory in the Palestinian elections.

The world now needs to figure out how to keep Palestinians from starving without giving funds to a Hamas government in Gaza resolutely focused on destroying Israel. Before his massive stroke last year, Ariel Sharon repeatedly said he would not replay the Gaza retreat in the West Bank. With good reason: Creating a West Bank that looks like today's Gaza would be many times the nightmare. How would one deal with continuing launches of rockets and mortars from the West Bank into virtually all of Israel? (Israel's Arrow missile defense will probably work against Iranian medium-range ballistic missiles but not against the much shorter-range Katyushas.) A security barrier does no good against such bombardment. The experience in Gaza, further, has shown the difficulty of defending against such attacks after the IDF boots on the ground have departed. Effective, prompt retaliation from the air is hard to imagine if the mortar rounds and Katyushas are being launched, as they will be, from schools, hospitals and mosques.

Israel is not the only pro-Western country that would be threatened. How does moderate Jordan, with its Palestinian majority, survive if bordered by a West Bank terrorist state? Israeli concessions will also make the U.S. look weak, because it will be inferred that we have urged them, and will suggest that we are reverting to earlier behavior patterns--fleeing Lebanon in 1983, acquiescing in Saddam's destruction of the Kurdish and Shiite rebels in 1991, fleeing Somalia in 1993, etc.

Three major Israeli efforts at accommodation in the last 13 years have not worked. Oslo and the 1993 handshake in the Rose Garden between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat produced only Arafat's rejection in 2000 of Ehud Barak's extremely generous settlement offer and the beginning of the second intifada. The Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000 has enhanced Hezbollah's prestige and control there; and the withdrawal from Gaza has unleashed madness. These three accommodations have been based on the premise that only Israeli concessions can displace Palestinian despair. But it seems increasingly clear that the Palestinian cause is fueled by hatred and contempt.

Israeli concessions indeed enhance Palestinian hope, but not of a reasonable two-state solution--rather a hope that they will actually be able to destroy Israel. The Iranian-Syrian-Hezbollah-Hamas axis is quite explicit about a genocidal objective. When they speak of "ending Israeli occupation" they mean of Tel Aviv. Under these circumstances it is time to recognize that, sadly, the Israeli-Palestinian issue will likely not be the first matter settled in the decades-long war that radical Islam has declared on the U.S., Israel, the West and moderate Muslims. It will more likely be one of the last.

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Someday a two-state solution may become possible, but it is naive in the extreme to believe that this can occur while the centerpiece of the radical Islamic and Palestinian agendas is maximizing Jewish deaths. A durable compromise will be achievable only when we no longer, to borrow from Daniel Patrick Moynihan, "define deviancy down" for the Palestinians.

Today we cannot envision the 250,000 Jewish settlers who live outside Israel's pre-1967 borders being permitted to live at all, much less live free and unmolested, in a West-Bank-Gaza Palestinian state. But some 1.2 million Arabs, almost all Muslim, today live in Israel in peace among some five million Jews--about double the percentage of Jews now in the West Bank as a share of the Muslim population there. Israel's Arab citizens worship freely--one hears muezzins calling the faithful to prayer as one walks around Tel Aviv. They vote in free elections for their own representatives in a real legislature, the Knesset. They give every evidence that they prefer being Arab Israelis to living in the chaos and uncertainty of a West Bank after Israeli withdrawal.

A two-state solution can become a reality when the Palestinians are held to the same standards as Israelis--to the requirement that Jewish settlers in a West Bank-Gaza Palestinian state would be treated with the same decency that Israel treats its Arab citizens. Until then, three failures in 13 years should permit us to evaluate the wisdom of further concessions.

Mr. Woolsey, a former director of Central Intelligence, is co-chairman of the Committee on the Present Danger.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

In your face

Ted Nugent certainly has an interesting outlook on life:

"You want to know how to get peace, love and understanding?" he replies. "Who doesn't know this? The Ku-Klux-Klan? The Black Panthers? Child rapists? How do you get peace, love and understanding? First of all you have to find all the bad people. Then," Nugent adds, "you kill them."

The reporter who interviewed him for this article seemed to be on the edge of outrage the whole time. It is an interesting read, to say the least.