Since It's So Obvious that Iraq = Vietnam...

Let's look at the results of pulling out of that war. Lawrence Haas does, and look what he discovers:

In 1975, a Democratic Congress cut off funds for the U.S. effort in Vietnam. The public, disillusioned over Vietnam and Watergate, elected Jimmy Carter, who promised honesty and applauded the end of “our irrational fear of Communism.”

As America turned inward in the late 1970s, enemies sensed our vulnerability and dangers mounted. The fear of communism was not so irrational after all. In Ethiopia, Angola, Rhodesia and elsewhere, the Soviet Union or Cuba worked to stoke Third World revolution. The Soviets more openly laid bare their expansionist agenda in late 1979 by invading Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, the Islamic Revolution in Iran of 1979 toppled a staunch U.S. ally. The student seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, leading to a 444-day hostage crisis, painted a picture of American impotence.

All of which resulted in the election of Ronald Reagan and a new belligerent American foreign policy, which further institutionalized the belief that Republicans are the hawk party and Democrats the dove party. Note as well the connection between the post-Vietnam era and the rise of current enemies.

The fact that this is penned by Gore's former communications director gives me hope that someone on the other side of the aisle appreciates that the post-Iraq situation will need to be handled by something other than blaming Bush for all our troubles. As I've recently been bothering the Commisar at Politburo Diktat, a conservative who's changed his mind about Iraq, I've been waiting six years for the Democrats and the Left to come up with alternative strategies to defeat the jihadis. So far, zilch. If that changes, I'll be the first to applaud it, and the courage of any Democrats to push against their extremists in doing so.

Blog Stuff

Updated a few links, and in adding Pajamas, found Camille Paglia's return to Salon. I'm nowhere near as interested in her as I was in my college days, and more or less made my departure from her obvious back in 2003 with a post at the Notion that I can't link because I can't get the archives to display (grrrrr....). Also, I'd like it if she wrote about pop culture without working over things I'm tired of hearing about (Anna Nicole Smith, Madonna), and was able to discuss the Iraq war without sounding like a Kossite (and that she would finish the second volume of Sexual Personae already), but she backs me up that Romney will be a formidable candidate and that Obama is not ready for prime time. So maybe I'll pay some more attention.

For What it's Worth...

Here's what USA Today says about civvy casualties in Iraq.

Like I've said, this is the sort of thing that's been promised before. And I think it's a bit early to talk about a monthly trend when the month isn't over. And even if it's true, we've seen things dip and peak with tedious regularity. But, there it is.

I have a problem...

This post made me actually laugh at the prospect of the Dixie Chicks being assaulted. I think I need to vent on this issue.

Al-Sadr, Where is he? I don't know, I don't know...

Not Iraq! (cheers)

I think I can pierce the mystery:

1. Sadr is one of the bulwarks of PM Maliki of Iraq.
2. Maliki has been under pressure from Bush to man up and start dealing with all the militias.
3. Sadr leaves the country before the American and Iraqi army start to bring the pain.
4. The reason we didn't wack Sadr back in 2004 was because he had the protection of the Shi'ite religious establishment, whom we did not want to offend.

Conclusion: a deal was reached with the al-Sistani, the Iraqi Ayatollah, that we would be permitted to go after Sadr's army provided that Sadr himself was not harmed. Sadr conveniently blows town and lets his lieutenants take the fall. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he returns post-surge and remains a noisy, albeit non-paramilitary force in Iraq for decades to come.

Empires Rise and Fall, Cultures Diffuse, Religions are Born and Die...

...but Chicago is still a bucket of sleaze, wrapped in a box of corruption, floating in a sewer of apathy. Gatewaypundit has the skinny.

And the comments suggest that Obama might be one of their peeps.

More Obamalamadingdong

Is the country ready to accept a black president? Probably.

Is the country ready to accept a woman president? Don't see why not.

Is the country ready to accept a Mormon president? It'll take a touch of salesmanship, but yes.

But the country is not ready to accept a smoking President. Hence, MoDo and the whole crowd now feel fully justified in sending him down the river.

One Man's Inconvenient Truth...

...is another man's rebellious editorial. Further evidence to my theory that we're all revolutionaries, or think we are, nowadays.

I remember a few years ago, thinking, surely activity on the Sun would make as big an effect on global temperatures as anything we do? Had no science to back it up, though. Not sure if I have it now, either. All I know is I do not trust the people who tell me that there is no debate.

Obama vs. the Great Australian Chickenhawk

I leave the appropriateness of John Howard's remarks to another man to decipher. But it seems to me that Obama's retort is a little un-just.

Australia's population is estimated at about 20-21 million people, far less than one-tenth of the United States. Moreover, Australia's military only numbers about 51,000 full-time troops and 19,400 reservists. With this force, Howard must keep commitments in Iraq, Afghanistan, East Timor, The Solomon Islands, and Malaysia, plus, you know, defend the sixth-largest country in the world.

By comparison, the U.S. Armed Forces (all five branches) has 2,685,713 members. Our troops in Iraq thus constitutes approximately 5.2% of our total military strength. Australia's? 2.7%. Factor in the budget support (US$522 Billion vs. A$22 Billion), each military recieves, and I think it's fair to say that the Aussies are pulling their weight. At any rate, the 20,000 more that Obama suggests would be, at this juncture, an unmanageable strain.

I'm going to assume that Golden Boy just didn't know this.

Further Essayist Useless 2008 Presidential Predictions

Or, Hail the Wounded Elephants

Pollster.com:

Collectively, these results support an intriguing possibility: Both Republican frontrunners may end up with problems with conservative, religious and/or committed Republicans, leaving a huge opening for a third candidate in the early primaries.

Duh. Meaning Romney, who's been working at this for a while, will have the advantage down the stretch. Also that true-blue cons like Tancredo and Huckabee will grow stronger as the race progresses.

George I, William I, George II, Hillary I?*

Michael Barone's take on the burgeoning dynasticism of our politics offers an interesting explanation: that the politicizing of First Ladies leads increasingly to the politicizing of families, and thus, the current War of the Roses.

Not that this is the first time Powerful Families have taken the top job: Before the Bushes and the Clintons were the Adamses, the Harrisons, and the Kennedys. But both Adamses were one-term presidents (and from different parties, at that), as were both Harrisons, and the Kennedy dynasty is at best still-born. The fact that George W. became president but eight years after his father left the post, that another brother waits in the wings for his chance, that Hilary may be poised to repeat W's feat, that is a horse of rather a different color.

All of which is depended on Hillary actually winning. If she doesn't, then the spell of dynastic power will be broken. I think the revulsion to Royal Presidencies may rear its head even if Hillary should win; monarchs are something Americans enjoy other countries to have.


*I am fully aware that George I should really be George II, and George II, George III, because of George Washington. Also, Bill Clinton would really be William IV (after William Henry Harrison, William McKinley, and William Howard Taft. For that matter, we've had four Johns, six Jameses, two Andrews, and two Franklins. I am a geek.

The Essayist's Useless '08 Presidential Predictions.

Following another Instapundit link like the truffle-drunk pig I am, I happen upon this holding-of-breath over the Romney bid, which typically devolves into a WTF over the Obamalamadingdong bid. For the latter, I write this in the comments section:

Obama is running on his SuperStar! power, nothing more. As soon as he's asked a question of any weight, he'll reveal himself for the mountain of inexperience he is, and sad-eyed true believers will cherish the Lost Hope like Bobby '68ers, for decades.

For the former, I'll say that I've thought him the man to beat for at least a year, ever since I saw him on C-Span2 Late one night, talking to a Republican gathering in Iowa. In 2006. And what's more, he was an interesting and intelligent speaker. I said then, "He's way ahead of everybody in the field."

The New Tipping Point

Let's say that this article in the New York Sun is overstating it's case. We've been promised "turnaround" in Iraq a couple of times before, only to see more bombings. But note the criteria of promised victory: enemy demoralization. We have been told it is impossible to demoralize our enemy, that they are driven by an inscrutable fury. Is such an assumption truly supportable? If not, how may we convince our political class of it?

Thanks for the Day Off, Martin...

Martin Luther King Day sucks.

When I was in elementary school, every year we watched the same video about him. How he couldn't play with a white friend when he was little. About how he became a preacher. About how he stood up to the man non-violently, got arrested time and time again, and won a victory paramount to Ghandi's. And about how he was killed by a stupid little three-named cracker just because. By the time I was in fifth grade, I had it memorized.

I found out when I was in college was a player he was, and was actively nauseated. But if we can forgive Jefferson, we can forgive King and arguaby lesser offense. Nevertheless, I am weary of the noise about him, and especially about his "day".

The Examiner yesterday had an editorial about how MLK day should be a "day on," instead of a "day off." I didn't read it. I've heard that tune as many times as I heard "killing the man who said 'Love your enemies'" in elementary school. It's the same old routine every year: We mention the guy in passing and proceed to talk about his "legacy" and whether there's been "enough" "progress" since he died, and what "he would have done" had he not. I've yet to hear anything truly meaningful arouse from these. They've become ritual, an act of contrition: Bless us Martin, for we have thought insufficiently about what it means to be Black in America.

Jeff Goldstein tries to dismiss race, and raises a hydra of nonsense. What it "means" is whatever we decide it means, except we haven't decided. Unless we have.

I'm a pasty white honky with a nasal tinge to my voice. I haven't the foggiest notion of what it means to be Black in America, and I don't care either. As long as it means that you can vote and own property and sue and raise your voice like everybody else, I'm uninterested. I don't feel and particular obligation to help them, any more than I would help any other person. Whatever's "wrong" with the "black community" (euphemisms are fun!), I'm going to leave for that community to sort out for itself.

To my mind, Black Americans are in a position roughly analogous to Irish Americans, who were the original unwanted immigrant group, who also grabbed for political power as a way out of their troubles, and who also grew economically more slowly than did other groups that "came up" around their time. That's sad, but it also means that they too will have their day in the sun, to the extent that they haven't already. And it will happen from their own labor and their own freedoms, regardless of what MLK would have said or done, and regardless of what the Man thinks about it.

And if such be true, then I thank the man for his labors, and the day off.

Hip Pappy Nuh Yr

2007. This bizarre, un-nicknamed ("aughts"? Please.), decade of interesting times is running to a close. It will be 2010 before we know it.

I'm celebrating the new year by hooking up my computer at my new house to my new DSL via wireless and waving bye-bye to dial-up, hopefully forever. I plan on cleaning up this site a little, re-focusing, re-commenting, etc. but I'm still working to jobs and won't have a lot of time to post. With a bit of luck, elbow grease, and good old-fashioned frenzy, by the mid-point of the year all this will have settled down some.




Saddam strung up like a horse-thief. Huzzah. No need for the blog devoted to his trial then. Snipped lively. On we go.

"We can walk away from this enemy, but they will not walk away from us,"

That's General Abizaid talking at Harvard. The fact that I still feel the need to make that argument is suggestive either of my paranoia or my accurate sense of the coming betrayal. I dearly hope it's not the latter.

Pelosi says, "Kitchen Girl, Make Me a Dacquiri..."

More She Who Does Not Blink coverage, courtesy of Protein Wisdom.

The Dumping of Bush

Or, "All Breath Returns to the Father..."

Sniff around on some of the righty blogs, and scan the comments, and you'll see the continuing fed-up-ness with W, who, having won the second term that his father was denied, seems bent on having the second term his father would have had, which is to say, a term of rubbery befuddlement and betrayal of those that elected him (here and here are good examples).

All of which means, that if a candidate can be found who promises to fight them on the beaches, in the mountains, wherever the last dregs of them are to be found, who wants to expand the military and train it in Advanced Jihadi Scalp-Taking, then that candidate will be difficult to defeat in '08.

And if he/she delivers, we might even get somewhere. But it will be no thanks to the socialists among us, who are busily making the world safe for fascism.

And The Pelosi-Watch Begins...

A handful of my fellow wingnuts have already laid into She Who Does Not Blink, for beginning her presumptive-Speaker election with a does of Orwellian Obfuscation not seen since "the meaning of 'is'":

"The point is this isn’t a war to win, it’s a situation to solve. And you define ‘winning’ any way you want, but you must solve this problem."

See now, all this time we thought we were fighting a war. We thought that what with the soldiers and the bombs and the death and killing and the hurting that some kind of armed conflict was going on. But that's because we're a bunch of crazy wingnuts who believe anything we're told by a guy who says he likes Jesus. These smart, post-modern, nuanced folks clearly know better: it's just a "situation." There is no "victory" or "defeat," merely a set of phenomena for which a presumably creative "solution" will be sought.

And we can define "winning" any way we want! Isn't that great? No need to worry about whether handing Iraq over to Iran will have any consequences several years down the road, why, we can just blame Bush for that! Now, back to squeezing more money out of the public fisc and doling it out, like the spoils of war, on our favorite designated victims groups!

What makes it all truly, deeply, glamorously suck is the fact that our President seems to have lost all backbone. Sure, I suppose finally accepting Rummy's resignation was in order, but did he have to dig back into his father's bullpen? Does he really believe that, at this point in the political cycle, that the wisest thing to do is to emulate the first Republican since Herbert Hoover NOT to get re-elected? That we need Jimmy Expletive Carter's National Security Adviser to guide us to mending fences with the Ayatollah?

So, by all means, let's roll out, pretend there's zero difference between the Soviet Union and Iran, and welcome those soldiers returning from that strange situation (Psst! Don't mention the war)!

So it Goes...

A right jolly spanking administered to my party. And deserved, too. Too much spending, too much pork, too little of the things we voted for two years ago delivered, et cetera, et cetera.

The loss is personally disappointing to me, because I had hoped to help turn my home state of Maryland into an actual two-party state, and instead find myself facing the the twin prospects of Cardin the Faceless growing barnacles in the Senate for the next thirty years and Pretty Boy O'Malley in the Governor's Mansion (pending absentee ballots, but that be a forlorn hope at best). Back to the People's State of Baltimorea it is then.

As for the Dems in Congress, congratulations on campaigns well run. Now...What...Are....You....Going...To...DO?