Saturday, April 10, 2004

 

Thomas Barnett has an interesting column in the Washington Post arguing that we should be focused on "new" allies in the War on Terrorism. Instead of Western Europe, Barnette urges that we look to countries like India, China, and Russia.

The United States would find far more realistic partners in China, India and Russia, because none of those states is foolish enough to believe that its future strategic security can be bought by distancing itself from the Middle East's chronic conflicts. Until Washington effectively enlists globalization's new core powers in the war on terrorism, our historic reliance on Old Europe will remain our Achilles' heel, easily exploited by an al Qaeda whose strategic vision currently exceeds our own.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 2:37 PM 0 comments

 

The New York Times focuses on the help that Kennedy is giving Kerry and how Kennedy's prominence pleases the GOP. As someone I heard somewhere said, the Democrats already have the Kennedy vote. They should be focusing on winning over the middle. And those are exactly the people to whom Kennedy does not appeal. I would guess that the majority of people found his "Iraq is Bush's Vietnam" speech distasteful, wrong, and inappropriate at a time when the fighting is getting worse in Iraq. Kennedy says that he knows there are parts of the country where he doesn't play well so he'll target his speeches to places where he's popular. Hasn't he ever heard of cable TV or the Internet? There is no such thing as only appearing in one part of the country, anymore.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 2:32 PM 0 comments

 

Debra Saunders also makes the point that should be obvious to everyone. The climate before 9/11 wouldn't have tolerated a military response of sufficient strength before 9/11.

But in the context of the times, it is not realistic to have expected more from either administration. No one with a memory would suggest that President Clinton could have been considerably tougher on al Qaeda. While the losses at the embassies in Africa were deplorable, al Qaeda had not inflicted enough damage to outrage the American public to the point where voters would accept boots on the ground.

Ditto after the Cole. If Bush had called for war within months of taking office, after a bitter election finale, critics would have called him a warmonger and warned darkly that he was only fueling the fires of Muslim martyrdom. The outrage wasn't there. He would have failed.

Simply put, the death toll hadn't hit the tipping point.

Commissioner Bob Kerrey, the former Democratic senator from Nebraska, has been the man to watch during the commission hearings. Kerrey has been tough on both administrations. And unlike almost everyone else in Washington, Kerrey was pushing for a military response to the Cole attack -- against Iraq, no less -- when it wasn't a popular move. You have to respect the man and his convictions.

That said, Kerrey's not being realistic if he thinks Bush could have won support for a military response -- other than ineffective aerial bombings -- to the Cole. It was hard enough for Bush to win support after al Qaeda thugs attacked Washington and New York, killing 3,000 people and leaving a smoking hole in the American landscape.

That's what makes the whole exercise of the commission hearings so revolting.

Critics who fault Bush for being pre-emptive on Iraq do not hesitate to fault Bush for not being pre-emptive when it came to attacks that were unexpected and unimagined. Some behave as if they believe the president is supposed to be a superhero who can smell threats, including risks that intelligence staffers haven't been able to pinpoint.

Kerrey faulted the Bushies for having a phobia about their "m-word" -- mistake. Granted, Bush League has been too slow to release information, too defensive and not very savvy in its refusal to simply say that the administration wishes it had known more and acted on it.

The Bushies also can't come out and say what everyone knows -- that America was too busy, too happy and too peace-loving to pounce on al Qaeda.

It's an old story that a country's strengths are its weaknesses. It is a national strength that Americans are reluctant to go to war. It is right that America has been slow to use its unmatched clout as a club to bend others to our will. It is just and admirable that the world's most powerful nation has to be provoked before it counterattacks.

It was an approach that worked. Until it didn't.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 10:31 AM 0 comments

 

Why is Bush going out of his way to campaign for Arlen Specter? Read Robert Novak's column for news on this as well as some other political news such as how some in the Democratic party wish that Kennedy would shut up, but that the Kerry people like having Kennedy out there saying things that Kerry can't say such as how Iraq is Bush's Vietnam.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 10:13 AM 0 comments

 

Great minds think alike. Here is Kathleen Parker's contrafactual fantasy.

At Rice's and Clarke's urging, Bush called a meeting of principals and, after "connecting the dots," decided to wage war against Afghanistan. What did the dots say? Not much, in retrospect. Apparently, the president decided to bomb a benign country on the basis of "chatter" that hinted at "something big."

With no other details on the "big," and weaving together random bits of information from a variety of questionable sources, Bush and company decided that 19 fundamentalist Muslim fanatics would fly airplanes into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon on 9-11.

Under questioning by the "9-10 Commission," Clarke denied that his memo was anything more than a historical overview with a "set of ideas and a paper, mostly." The bipartisan commission concluded, therefore, that Bush's "dot-connecting" had destroyed American credibility and subjected the United States to increasing hostility in the Arab-Muslim world.

Last week, Saddam Hussein and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat joined French and German leaders in condemning Bush and urging the American voters to cast their ballots for regime change in America. President Kerry was the clear response to that call.

In a flourish of irony and the spirit of bon vivant for which the new president is widely known, Kerry gave his acceptance speech from Windows on the World, the elegant restaurant atop the World Trade Center's Tower One.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 10:03 AM 0 comments

 

John Hawkins links to an excellent post by Gregg Easterbrook. Easterbrook does a counterfactual story or what might have happened if Bush had acted preemptively based on the vague intelligence we had before 9/11.

AN ALTERNATIVE HISTORY: washington, april 9, 2004. A hush fell over the city as George W. Bush today became the first president of the United States ever to be removed from office by impeachment. Meeting late into the night, the Senate unanimously voted to convict Bush following a trial on his bill of impeachment from the House.

Moments after being sworn in as the 44th president, Dick Cheney said that disgraced former national security adviser Condoleezza Rice would be turned over to the Hague for trial in the International Court of Justice as a war criminal. Cheney said Washington would "firmly resist" international demands that Bush be extradited for prosecution as well.

On August 7, 2001, Bush had ordered the United States military to stage an all-out attack on alleged terrorist camps in Afghanistan. Thousands of U.S. special forces units parachuted into this neutral country, while air strikes targeted the Afghan government and its supporting military. Pentagon units seized abandoned Soviet air bases throughout Afghanistan, while establishing support bases in nearby nations such as Uzbekistan. Simultaneously, FBI agents throughout the United States staged raids in which dozens of men accused of terrorism were taken prisoner.

....Bush justified his attack on Afghanistan, and the detention of 19 men of Arab descent who had entered the country legally, on grounds of intelligence reports suggesting an imminent, devastating attack on the United States. But no such attack ever occurred, leading to widespread ridicule of Bush's claims. Speaking before a special commission created by Congress to investigate Bush's anti-terrorism actions, former national security adviser Rice shocked and horrified listeners when she admitted, "We had no actionable warnings of any specific threat, just good reason to believe something really bad was about to happen."

The president fired Rice immediately after her admission, but this did little to quell public anger regarding the war in Afghanistan. When it was revealed that U.S. special forces were also carrying out attacks against suspected terrorist bases in Indonesia and Pakistan, fury against the United States became universal, with even Israel condemning American action as "totally unjustified."

Speaking briefly to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House before a helicopter carried him out of Washington as the first-ever president removed by impeachment, Bush seemed bitter. "I was given bad advice," he insisted. "My advisers told me that unless we took decisive action, thousands of innocent Americans might die. Obviously I should not have listened."

Announcing his candidacy for the 2004 Republican presidential nomination, Senator John McCain said today that "George W. Bush was very foolish and na?ve; he didn't realize he was being pushed into this needless conflict by oil interests that wanted to seize Afghanistan to run a pipeline across it." McCain spoke at a campaign rally at the World Trade Center in New York City.

Read the whole thing and ponder how absolutely right Easterbrook is about the reaction there would have been if Bush had taken the actions necessary to fight Al Qaeda before 9/11.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:52 AM 0 comments

Friday, April 09, 2004

 

Lileks now wishes that Al Gore were president.

Listened to Dr. Rice’s testimony today while cleaning, doing puzzles, coloring – the usual morning routine. I thought she did okay. But the 9/11 commission has changed my view of the administration. I now believe that if Al Gore had been president, he would have invaded Afghanistan right away, fortified the cockpit doors, issued an executive order that made the CIA and FBI share intel, grounded all planes the moment “chatter” started mentioning “a winged victory, like the bird of righteousness,” and subjected all young Arab males to full-body searches in airports. Pakistan would have come around to our point of view right away.

Yep.

Lileks is also sick of all the Vietnam analogies. Aren't we all?

am struck once again by the incomparable hold VIETNAM has over some people. They don’t seem to realize how the use of this inapt example demonstrates their inability to grasp the nature of new and different conflicts. When I was in college, El Salvador was Vietnam. When I was in Washington, Kuwait was Vietnam. Afghanistan was briefly Vietnam when we hadn’t won the war after a week. It’s Warholian: in the future, all conflicts will be Vietnam for 15 minutes.

Vietnam was an anomaly. Vietnam was perhaps the least typical war we’ve ever fought, but somehow it’s become the Gold Standard for wars – because, one suspects, it became inextricably bound up with Nixon, that black hole of human perfidy, and it coincided with the golden glory years of so many old boomers who now clog the arteries of the media and academe. A gross overgeneralization, I know. But it’s a fatal conceit. If you’re always fighting the last war you’ll lose the next one. Even worse: Vietnam was several wars ago.

James Bennett in the New York Times says that the appropriate parallel is really Israel's occupation of Lebanon.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 11:35 PM 0 comments

 

Robert Alt looks at the real similarities between what is going on today in Iraq to the Tet Offensive. Seeing that I'm going to be teaching the Vietnam War in a week, this is very apropos for me and my students. Be sure that my students will see the connections between Tet and today's events.

In the Tet offensive, the North Vietnamese forces abandoned guerilla tactics to launch a massive coordinated assault across South Vietnam. (This is admittedly a cursory review of North Vietnamese strategy. Those interested seeking a more detailed analysis of this subject should see Mac Owens.) They engaged hard targets, including the United States embassy, which they stormed but never actually entered. While U.S. casualties were high, the military scored a major victory, putting down the offensive in a matter of days, and inflicting astronomical casualties on the opposing North Vietnamese forces. However, the images of the fighting at the embassy and the media's emphasis on U.S. casualties led Americans to believe that the U.S. had suffered a major setback.

In Iraq, anti-Coalition elements likewise abandoned guerilla warfare this past Sunday for a series of coordinated attacks on hard targets designed to be spectacular — or, more precisely, media spectacles. In one attack on a Coalition base outside Al Najaf, the insurgent numbers were large enough to justify calling in air support, although the aircraft quelled the crowds without firing a shot. And in the Al Sadr region of Baghdad, members of the Al Sadr's so-called Mehdi Army temporarily seized three police stations and claimed control of the city. These incidents preceded Operation Vigilant Resolve, an intense crackdown by Marine forces in the Sunni Triangle cities of Ar Ramadi and Fallujah which began on Monday, but which notably had been planned for several weeks.

The U.S. sustained eight casualties and more than two dozen wounded in Sunday's attacks, as well as twelve casualties in a seven-hour firefight in Ramadi on Tuesday. The sacrifice of these fallen heroes should not be forgotten, but neither should we forget that which their sacrifice purchased. By Sunday night, the U.S. regained control of all seized police stations and checkpoints in Sadr City. The challenge to Al Najaf was put down without the loss of a single U.S. soldier. After months of operating as "the wild west," the outlaw cities of Ramadi and Fallujah are now finally subject to U.S. scrutiny, including checkpoints and curfews. The number of Iraqi insurgents killed, injured, or captured is staggering — with conservative counts numbering in the hundreds. And Muqtada Al Sadr is in hiding, running like a common criminal from an arrest warrant issued for his role in the murder of a rival cleric. All this was done by a military which has scrupulously avoided collateral injuries while fighting a foe whose policy seems to be to maximize the collateral harm to its own people.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 4:54 PM 0 comments

 

Victor Davis Hanson looks at the political cannibalism that we're enduring now while we're still at war.

Now, in the middle of this terrible conflict, unlike the postbellum inquiry after Pearl Harbor, we are holding acrimonious hearings about culpability for September 11. And here the story gets even more depressing than just political opportunism and election-year timing. After eight years of appeasement that saw repeated attacks on Americans, Pakistani acquisition of nuclear weapons under Dr. Khan, and Osama's 1998 declaration of war against every American, we are suddenly grilling, of all people, Condoleezza Rice — one of the few key advisers most to be credited for insisting on using our military, rather than the local DA, to defeat these fanatics.

Over the last two years, each time a U.S. senator in panicked and wild-eyed passion screamed that we could not win in Afghanistan, she proved resolute and confident. On every occasion that an ex-general, a dissatisfied bureaucrat, or a wannabe journalist-strategist pontificated about what the United States could not do, she was unwavering in her determination to take the war to rogue regimes in the Middle East with a history of hostility against Americans and a record of providing easy sanctuary for terrorists. This present charade would be like holding public hearings on the eve of the 1944 election about the breakdown of intelligence and missed opportunities before Pearl Harbor — and then blaming Harry Hopkins and Secretary Stimson for laxity even while the country was in the very midst of a two-front war.

Then we have the creepy outbursts from commentators and screams from Democratic senators. We are told by Senator Graham that we smashed al Qaeda only to discover that we had hit a mercury-like substance that now has hopelessly scattered. Well, yes, that is what happens when you strike back in war. The alternative? Allow this elemental terrorism to remain cohesive and united? War is not a decision between good and bad choices, but almost always between something bad and something worse — and so it really is preferable to have toxic mercury scattered than to have it concentrated and pure.

Another pundit assures us that terrorists after American action in Iraq are more active now than before. Well, again yes — in the sense that Germany was messier in 1944 than in 1933, or that Japan was more dangerous for Americans in 1943 than in 1935. Danger, chaos, and death are what transpire for a time when you finally decide to strike back at confident and smug enemies.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 4:47 PM 0 comments

 

George Neumayr thinks what I thought, that John Lehman was the only one in yesterday's hearings who asked questions that got to the real reason why more wasn't done to catch terrorists before 9/11.

THE ONLY PANELIST WHO seemed aware that political correctness had made America a sitting duck for Al Qaeda was John Lehman. While most of the other panelists attitudinized, he got down to brass tacks. "Were you told that there were numerous young Arab males in flight training, had taken flight training, were in flight training?" he asked Rice. She wasn't.

The questions continued: "Were you told that the U.S. Marshal program had been changed to drop any U.S. marshals on domestic flights?" "Were you aware that INS had been lobbying for years to get the airlines to drop the transit without visa loophole that enabled terrorists and illegals to simply buy a ticket through the transit-without-visa-waiver and pay the airlines extra money and come in?"

"Were you aware that the INS had quietly, internally, halved its internal security enforcement budget?" "Were you aware that it was the U.S. government established policy not to question or oppose the sanctuary policies of New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, San Diego for political reasons, which policy in those cities prohibited the local police from cooperating at all with federal immigration authorities?" "Were you aware that it was the policy and I believe remains the policy today to fine airlines if they have more than two young Arab males in secondary questioning because that's discriminatory?" "Were you aware of the extensive activities of the Saudi government in supporting over 300 radical teaching schools and mosques around the country, including right here in the United States?"

Of course, you can imagine the outcry if Bush and (gasp!) John Ashcroft had recommended changes in this situation before 9/11. People still don't get it. I saw one of the relatives of 9/11 victims criticizing Condi after the hearing as being ignorant and incompetent because she didn't know any of these policies and facts when Lehman asked her about them. Even if Rice had known all about this, there was nothing that could have been done in the PC atmosphere we live in now. They're still not allowed to profile on airline passaenger lists. No one is proposing stopping immigration from Middle East countries as might have been proposed in the 19th or the first half of the 20th century.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 4:24 PM 0 comments

 

Libertaria at Social Justice Friends links to this funny, yet depressing story about what the British citizens know and do not know. In honor of the 300 year anniversary of the Battle of Blenheim, they were surveyed on what they thought had happened and what they though was fictional. Apparently, the British can't differentiate between fact and fiction.

Real people that some believe never existed
Ethelred the Unready King of England 978 to 1016 - 63 per cent
William Wallace 13th-century Scottish hero - 42 per cent
Benjamin Disraeli Prime minister and founder of the modern Tory party - 40 per cent
Genghis Khan, Mongol conqueror - 38 per cent
Benito Mussolini, Fascist dictator, 33 per cent
Adolf Hitler - 11 per cent
Winston Churchill - 9 per cent

Real events some people believe never took place
Battle of the Bulge 52 per cent
Battle of Little Big Horn Scene of Custer's last stand - 48 per cent
Hundred Years' War 44 per cent
Cold War - 32 per cent
Battle of Hastings, 15 per cent

Fictional characters who we believe were real
King Arthur , mythical monarch of the Round Table - 57 per cent
Robin Hood - 27 per cent
Conan the Barbarian - 5 per cent
Richard Sharpe , fictional cad and warrior - 3 per cent
Edmund Blackadder - 1 per cent
Xena Warrior Princess - 1 per cent

Fictional events that we believe did take place
War of the Worlds , Martian invasion - 6 per cent
Battle of Helms Deep , Rings Trilogy - The Two Towers - 3 per cent
Battle of Endor , The Return of the Jedi - 2 per cent
Planet of the Apes , the apes rule Earth - 1 per cent
Battlestar Galactica , the defeat of humanity by cyborgs - 1 per cent

Okay, those who thought the Planet of the Apes or Battlestar Galactica were real were just goofing on the pollsters, weren't they? What's up with those who think that Hitler was a fictional character? I'm just wondering what type of world we would be living in if all the fictional people were real and all the real people were fictional.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 10:02 AM 0 comments

 

I'd like to give a plug to a blog run by several students at my school and a friend of theirs, Social Justice Friends. At school, there is a club that meets once a week at lunch, Social Justice Club, to discuss current issues. They've now expanded their discussions to this blog. If you have any doubts about the seriousness and erudition of today's teenagers. (full disclosure, my daughter is the superhero, Dynamic Uno. She's been overloaded with homework the past few months so her posting has been light. The other kids have made up for her absence with witty and intersting posts.)

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:51 AM 0 comments

 

James Robbins has a funny column up mocking the 9/11 Commission and how it would have played if it were a Middle Ages hearing investigating the Saracens.

Many view Lady Condoleezza's testimony as a palace response to Richard the Clerk, who testified before the commission last week. The clerk maintains he warned the king about the nail. He recalled vividly going to His Highness with his hair on fire, lit by a Moor hiding behind a tapestry. Richard has served many kings, and developed a reputation for being able to spot a goblin in every woodpile, as the saying goes. While Richard has asserted he had consistently worked to secure the realm throughout his career, others have pointed out that the Saracens had slowly encroached on the Kingdom on his watch. During the reign of bawdy King William, periodic enemy attacks were met with scattered flights of arrows, to no discernible effect. The response plan Richard submitted shortly after King George's coronation — which called for "bigger arrows" — was dismissed as inadequate. Richard was not in the hearing room during Lady Condoleezza's testimony, but stood outside, hawking pamphlets to the crowd of spectators, performing minor feats of acrobatics, and juggling.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:43 AM 0 comments

 

DNA clears Neil Bush.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:37 AM 0 comments

 

The USA Today notes the partisanship in the hearings yesterday.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:33 AM 0 comments

 

The American Mind has up a new House of Ketchup.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:23 AM 0 comments

 

Professor Bainbridge highlights how Chris Matthews mischaracterized Condi Rice's testimony. (Link via Instapundit)

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:20 AM 0 comments

 

You know Condoleezza Rice must have done well if snarky, anti-Bush Tom Shales gives her a good review.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 8:57 AM 0 comments

 

Amir Taheri calls for the iron fist in Iraq and maintains that, even with suitcases of Iranian cash, Sadr hasn't been able to make headway in Iraq.

As things stand, the Coalition does not need large numbers of fresh troops because the overwhelming majority of Iraqis still support its policy, including the promise to end the occupation by the end of June. If the Coalition lost that support, no amount of troops would be able to control a country of 27 million.

Both the Saddamites and the Sadrites fear elections and will do all they can to prevent them. Their fears are not groundless. In every one of the 17 cities where municipal elections have been held so far, victory has gone to democratic and secularist parties and individuals. And it is no accident that these are precisely the cities where attempts at fomenting insurgency have failed.

Democratic and secularist figures have also won all the elections held by professional associations representing medical doctors, lawyers, teachers, academics and businessmen.

Despite the fact that Sadr and his friends have spent vast sums of Iranian money, often entering Iraq in the form of crisp notes in briefcases, even the theological seminaries of Najaf and Karbala have kept their doors shut to his brand of religious fascism. Numerous opinion polls, including some financed by the opponents of the liberation, show that in any free election the overwhelming majority of the Iraqis will not vote either for the Saddamites or the various brands of Islamist fascism.

The scoundrels trying to prevent the handover of power to the Iraqi people may pose as Arab nationalists and/or defenders of the Islamic faith. But the truth is that they are making a naked bid for despotic power for themselves.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 8:46 AM 0 comments

 

Is it really helpful while we are at war to have former PResident Carter going around criticizing the war in Iraq and blaming our problems in the Middle East on Israel? We are at war, sir, and patriotism should demand that you just keep quiet if you don't like the policy.

"President Bush's war was ill-advised and unnecessary and based on erroneous statements, and has turned out to be a tragedy," Carter said. "And my prayer has been that brave young American men and women, and others who are there, that their lives will be spared and there will be some peaceful resolution of the war."

Carter, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, also blamed what he called Bush's pro-Israel policies for engendering animosity against America.

"The prime source of animosity towards the United States is the lack of progress in dealing with the Palestinian issue," Carter said, adding that past U.S. administrations since Harry Truman's have maintained a "balanced position" in dealing with the rights of the Arab population within the Jewish nation.

He is hideous and an embarrassment.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 8:41 AM 0 comments

 

I'm so tired of looking forward to some big historic epic movie such as Pearl Harbor and Gods and Generals and then being terribly disappointed when they come out. I was looking forward to The Alamo, but now that seems like a turkey. Why can't Hollywood make good historic epics like The Great Escape or Patton anymore?

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 8:35 AM 0 comments

 

Mona Charen asks if we are tough enough to do what needs to be done in Iraq.

But the question of the moment is not whether we've done enough good, but whether we've been tough enough. We Americans hate being occupiers. We are liberators. But Iraq cannot be truly liberated until it has been transformed. And it cannot be transformed if the bad elements are not afraid of American soldiers. Those gleeful faces in Fallujah make the point: They think we are patsies.

Are we? Moqtada al-Sadr, the 30-ish cleric who only now has been issued an arrest warrant for a murder committed (supposedly on his order) a year ago, has been handled with kid gloves until now. His newspaper has printed the vilest incitement, accusing the United States for example, of using an Apache helicopter to bomb 50 police recruits on Feb. 10 in front of an Iraqi police station. In truth, the attack was actually the work of terrorists.

Why would the U.S. bomb Iraqis attempting to cooperate with the coalition in building a new police force? It doesn't matter that it defies common sense. The rumor mill churns on. Al-Sadr has used his newspaper, Al Hawza, to urge "terrorism" against American forces. And what has been the result? Several stern warnings. Only when Sadr's "Mahdi Army," a mob of criminals, former Baathists (ironic since Saddam executed Sadr's father) and Islamists, began firing at Americans did the civil administrator shut Al Hawza down.

Perhaps they stayed their hand because they knew closing a newspaper would provoke criticism stateside. And it did. Editorials across the nation, from The New York Times to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, to the Detroit News to The San Francisco Chronicle scolded the administration for hypocrisy.

"Shutting down a newspaper," explained the Hartford Courant's editorial, "even an anti-American publication, doesn't teach democracy."

Well, hold on a minute. Baghdad is not Boston. You can't teach democracy until you first have order. And you cannot have order if people like Al-Sadr think they can bully you.

Paul Greenberg agrees that people shouldn't get their panties all in a knot about closing down al Sadr's newspaper.

But when Al Hawza printed a phony story about an American missile killing innocent Iraqis - just the kind of canard most likely to incite violence - Paul Bremer suspended its publication for 60 days. He finally got serious.

"That paper might have been anti-American," an Iraqi newspaperman said in defense of Al Hawza, "but it should be free to express its opinion."

But Al Hawza wasn't shut down because of its opinions, but because it was passing off fiction as fact. Fiction that was sure to stir the mob. Mistaken opinions may be debated; false information may be impossible to counter.

As the late senator and sage Daniel Patrick Moynihan once put it, everybody's entitled to his own opinion but not to his own facts.

The line between fact and opinion isn't always easy to establish, as many an American periodical has discovered in court, but in this case Al Hawza was clearly on the far side of it, printing rumors sure to incite.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 8:22 AM 0 comments

 

My husband guest-posting on Marginal Revolution lists the best econo-blogs, in case you're interested in economists blogging. Since I live with one, I find the topic fascinating. He's modest enough not to list his own econo-blog.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 8:15 AM 0 comments

 

George Will has been watching the hearings.

The processes of the federal government, and especially of the many agencies in its national security apparatus, had before Sept. 11 -- and Rice says they still have -- a thickness, a viscosity that are normal aspects of bureaucracies. But in these abnormal times this coagulating river of fudge unacceptably compromises national security.

So Rice's testimony was invaluable pedagogy for a public that thinks it knows what a blunt and cumbersome instrument government is but that doesn't know the half of it. The commission's public hearings give viewers a glimpse of the texture of institutional life within which presidents struggle to process information and defeat institutional inertia. The hearings frame a -- arguably, the -- great question of this election year: Both presidential candidates want to keep America safe, but which one has the attributes -- the world view and sheer orneriness -- needed to stir the fudge and make it flow?

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 8:08 AM 0 comments

 

Charles Krauthammer says that the Democrats have come a long way from where they used to be when they wanted to feed the world.

We now know that the secret to curing hunger and poverty is capitalism and free trade. We have seen that demonstrated irrefutably in East Asia, which has experienced the greatest alleviation of poverty in the history of man. In half a century, places like Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea have gone from subsistence to First World status. And now free markets and free trade are lifting tens of millions of people out of poverty in India and China.

And what has been the Democratic reaction to the prospect of fulfilling Humphrey's (and their party's) great dream? Fear and loathing. Democrats today thunder against the scourge of ``outsourcing'' -- American firms giving (what would otherwise be American) jobs to Indians and Chinese and other menacing foreigners.

The anti-outsourcing vogue is part of a larger assault on free trade, which until recently -- meaning the Clinton administration -- Democrats had supported. Remember Al Gore's televised debate with Ross Perot, in which Gore demolished Perot's anti-free-trade arguments? Which makes the recent Democratic assault on free trade so jarring, never more so than when John Edwards and John Kerry competed with each other before Super Tuesday to see who was against more trade agreements with more Third World countries.

Edwards boasted about his opposition to trade agreements with the Caribbean, Chile and Africa. Who would have thought we would hear a Democrat attacking his opponent for supporting a measure that would help millions of Africans to emerge from poverty?

Unions are a powerful Democratic constituency, and Democrats are genuinely trying to protect workers from foreign competition. But whatever the merits of the argument, the effect is startling: a radical reversal of the older liberal vision of America as helpmate for the poor and suffering of the world.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 8:05 AM 0 comments

 

Dale Franks compares how we were able to act differently during World War II than we're able to act in Iraq because the country was united in World War II and wasn't busy with partisan criticism.

Roosevelt and his successor, Harry Truman, did have one advantage that George W. Bush does not have: a nation united across party lines to prosecute the war with vigor. In today's radically different domestic and international political environment, the president's every action is watched carefully -- and criticized -- by his opponents.

Criticism can, of course, have useful results. It is helpful if it prompts honest reappraisal of the country's goals and methods, and increases the effectiveness of its policy. Unfortunately, criticism -- especially the constant, and, at times, extreme criticism the Bush Administration has faced -- can also prompt timidity, and an unwillingness to take necessary risks. It is the latter effect that appears to have led us into the current situation in Iraq.

The administration has faced unceasing criticism because of its ties to various business interests. The term "Halliburton" has become shorthand for an all-too-cozy arrangement between the administration and big business. The response of the administration, stung by such criticisms, has been to become bogged down in trying to ensure that rebuilding contracts in Iraq are above reproach. Despite the billions of dollars Congress has authorized for reconstruction assistance in Iraq, hardly a penny of it has been spent. We are one year into the occupation of Iraq, and somewhat less than 3 months until the handover of sovereignty to the Iraqis, and major reconstruction funding hasn't reached the country at all.



A similar timidity seems to have characterized the administration's conduct of military operations during the occupation. In order to forestall criticism from both domestic opponents and the international community, the administration has failed to take several necessary steps that would have conceivably prevented the current unrest in Iraq. Pursuing a more hard-line and rigorous approach to the occupation would have opened the administration to general condemnation for insufficient attention to the rights of the Iraqis. Failure to do so, however, has led to a dangerous lack of security and stability in some parts of the country.

Unlike the Germans or Japanese in WWII, the Iraqi army did not stand and fight. For the most part, Iraqi units simply disbanded themselves, and their members returned home. At no time after the conclusion of the war was any serious effort made to cordon off the Sunni Triangle, root out former regime soldiers, or to conduct large-scale, house-to-house searches for weapons or contraband.

In contrast, our first priority in the occupation of Germany was to round up everyone who had served in the Wehrmacht and place them in POW camps. Intense searches were made to root our former regime hardliners like SS and Gestapo members. Our failure to take similar measures in Iraq has allowed the Sunni Triangle to fester as a constant security problem, and has given Ba'ath party loyalists an impression of indecision and weakness. This has, to put it mildly, not been helpful.

You can just imagine the howls if we had tried to treat Iraq like we treated Germany and Japan.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:58 AM 0 comments

 

I just saw John Lehman, a Republican on the 9/11 Commission, shrugging his shoulders and saying that the democrats are under tremendous pressure on the commission to develop a plotline that will help John Kerry. Lehman seems sweetly naive by saying that the Democrats are much different when they're not before the cameras and they're all working together well and will come up with a nonpartisan response. Sure. That is how Republicans always get sucked in and then they're so surprised when partisanship trumps everything else.

John Podhoretz explores the partisanship on the committee.

THE liberals and Democrats on the 9/11 commission are using the public hearings to develop a plotline about the months leading up to the attacks - a plotline whose purpose is to harm George W. Bush's chances for reelection, help John Kerry's chances and whitewash the Clinton administration's failures.
The liberal plotline was on display yesterday in the questioning of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, whose refusal to capitulate to the partisan goals of her Democratic cross-examiners resulted in some shockingly inappropriate behavior on their part.

Memo to Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste: The last Democrat who sighed, rolled his eyes and shook his head when he didn't like what he was hearing was Al Gore in his catastrophic debate with George W. Bush. Not a good role model.

Memo to Commissioner Bob Kerrey: Don't complain about Condi Rice "filibustering" when she's trying to answer your questions after you spend minutes of your supposedly precious time yelling at her about the situation in Iraq. Also, Bob, you might consider anger management. And new glasses: You called Condi Rice "Dr. Clarke."

According to the liberal plotline, the Bush administration knew that attacks were coming and failed to act. Had it acted, the 9/11 plot might have been "interrupted," to quote one of the commissioners.

No matter that even Richard Clarke was forced to acknowledge during his testimony that even had his every proposal become law at the beginning of the Bush administration, 9/11 would not have been prevented.

It's an election year, and the Democrats want voters to blame Bush - or at least to muddy the administration's reputation in the eyes of voters.

If you have any doubts about the Democrats' motives, ask yourself is their questions were more prosecutorial and appropriate to a court proceeding or if they were more aimed at getting information that would help the Commission determine how to improve our security against terrorism and avoid the mistakes that led to 9/11? Do you ask yes/no questions when you want information or when you want to trap someone?

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:48 AM 0 comments

 

I agree with Andrew Sullivan

We have a war on. We used to win them before we engaged in elaborate blame-games as to who was asleep at the wheel when they broke out.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:39 AM 0 comments

 

Neil Steinberg has a good column looking at the fallacies of judgying what might have happened in the past and using that to criticize the present Steinberg revisits the Bay of Pigs fiasco for that lesson.

Since Kennedy invaded Cuba, and failed, we ask why he didn't call it off. Yet, had he called off the invasion -- he was tempted to -- it would have then been seen as a lost chance: If only we had acted....

Invading Afghanistan might have wrecked al-Qaida's plans. Or it might not have. And even if it had -- even had the FBI arrested all 19 hijackers, box cutters in hand -- we have no idea what new forces would have been put into play. We assume it would have been better. But we don't know.

Strong, pre-9/11 U.S. action would certainly have been viewed by the world as a sign of Yankee imperialism. I'm certain about this because a lot of the world viewed it that way after 9/11. For all we know, the Afghan invasion would have prompted more terror than it prevented. Some believe that is true for our actions now.

There are many valid reasons to criticize Bush, but to blame him for not avoiding the 9/11 attacks in the nine months his administration had to work with means blaming it for not pursuing every perceived threat with all possible force -- a lesson we certainly don't endorse today. We only want that done in the past, to avoid disasters that we know happened. But we don't want it in the present. In the present, we worry about profiling.

If only Kennedy had lived



Part of the agony that greeted Kennedy's assassination was the belief that all the bad stuff that came in later years -- Vietnam, Nixon, Watergate -- would have been avoided had he lived. We don't know that. For all we know, had Oswald missed, Kennedy would have survived and, distracted by some sex scandal, touched off a nuclear war with the Soviets that would have killed us all. That is as plausible as any other scenario.

Anachronism is a peril when confronting the past -- we take today's knowledge and damn those for not acting in the ways we now believe might have been better.

Castro turned out to be a bigger threat to his own people than to the United States. There was no urgent need, for our sake, to topple him -- we know now -- since he has been there for 45 years. But the Bay of Pigs reminds us that decisive action is not always a good thing. Action also must succeed. Given that, given the myriad unintended consequences in history, to postulate hypothetical courses of action and wring our hands because they weren't taken is a distraction from the far more difficult, far more pressing question: What are we going to do now?

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:35 AM 0 comments

Thursday, April 08, 2004

 

Captain's Quarters tells the story of a church-inflicted Easter Bunny violence. Geesh. Bunny Abuse is not the best method of teaching little children about the story of Jesus.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:40 PM 0 comments

 

Last week, I took my AP Government students to the computer lab to let them play around with a federal budget simulator to see if they could balance the budget. It was fun to see how a bunch of teenagers, most of them 15 or 16 years old, would balance the budget. They were ruthless. The liberal kids happily cut away at military spending, NASA, and foreign aid. They were then dismayed to find that they hadn't cut very much of the deficit. The conservative kids whittled away at social welfare and increased the tax cuts. They too were unable to make substantial headway on the deficit. However, the cut that both the liberals and conservatives agreed on was whacking away at Social Security and Medicare. Cries of "throw Granny off welfare" and "buy your own drugs" were heard. They were ruthless. Some of them reduced Social Security down to zero, cackling cheerfully all the while.

My conclusion is that, if younger voters had more pull in Congress, we could get some serious reform of Social Security and Medicare accomplished. Unfortunately, they'll never equal the strength of AARP.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:10 PM 0 comments

 

Clifford May says that the 9/11 Commission is not fulfilling its assignment to recommend ways to prevent another devastating terrorist attack because of partisanship.

President Roosevelt waited until after World War II to put in place a commission to investigate what mistakes led to Pearl Harbor. That was a wise move, but then Roosevelt did not face the kind of hyper-partisanship that plagues America these days. (Washington Post columnist David Broder recently pointed out that when FDR ran for reelection during World War II, he emphasized his record as a war leader. Broder might have added that FDR's Republican opponent, Thomas Dewey, declined to criticize the president in regard to foreign policy during a time of war. It's almost hard to believe that there was a time when Americans knew the difference between their foreign enemies and their political adversaries.)

Increasingly, it seems the 9/11 Commission is losing its way. Its mission is to learn lessons — not to lay blame. Its mission is to come up with recommendations for a more effective antiterrorism strategy.

Its mission is not to stage a reality-TV show, not to hold an inquisition, not to promote books (and, no doubt, movie deals), not to scold Rice as though she were a student who claimed her dog had eaten her homework.

Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton are all over the TV preaching for nonpartisanship and complimenting everyone in sight. I expect to see them interviewed by Sponge Bob Squarepants next.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 8:47 PM 0 comments

 

Andrew Sullivan posts a letter from a Marine ready to go into action in Fallujah. His optimism and faith in the corps is inspiring.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 8:42 PM 0 comments

 

If you missed Condoleezza Rice's testimony, you can check out Powerline. John H. Hinderaker live-blogged her testimony. What strikes me is what a Rashomon experience it was. Conservatives and those sympathetic to the President thought she did a wonderful job and liberals think that she failed to answer the panel's questions.

The meme that I'm noting is the same one that emerged in the fuss over the President's National Guard records. No matter what Rice or Bush say, the Democrats can always say, "Questions remain...." Well, of course "Questions remain...." They keep asking them no matter what. By asking them they create their own reality. And then the media uses that as the CW on whatever Bush's people have said or done. They can go on Hardball or the Lehrer Report or whatever and say, "Rice did well, yadda, yadda, but questions still remain....."

Of course, questions never seem to remain about Kerry's positions. What would he do now in Iraq? How is he going to really pay for his proposed programs? Why did he throw someone else's ribbons over the wall? Why won't he release his medical records? How many properties do he and his wife own abroad? Which foreign leaders have endorsed him? Why didn't he report discussions of assassination plots against senators that were aired at a meeting he attended? Why did he really vote against the $87 billion supplemental bill? Why did he oppose the First Gulf War and vote for the War in Iraq? Questions remain.....

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 8:32 PM 0 comments

 

A National Security fellow at Harvard sat in on Richard Clarke's class there and reports about how Clarke misled the class and obfuscated about who ordered that we pull out of Somalia and tried to say the military ordered it rather than the President. (Link via Command Post)

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:30 PM 0 comments

 

Just as critics of the administration fault the White House for not doing enough to figure out that Al Qaeda was planning to attack us, people, often the same people, are stopping any move to make investigations of terrorists easier. Heather MacDonald has a detailed study of all the attempts to gather more information that have been blocked.

Immediately after 9/11, politicians and pundits slammed the Bush administration for failing to “connect the dots” foreshadowing the attack. What a difference a little amnesia makes. For two years now, left- and right-wing advocates have shot down nearly every proposal to use intelligence more effectively—to connect the dots—as an assault on “privacy.” Though their facts are often wrong and their arguments specious, they have come to dominate the national security debate virtually without challenge. The consequence has been devastating: just when the country should be unleashing its technological ingenuity to defend against future attacks, scientists stand irresolute, cowed into inaction.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:09 PM 0 comments

 

Instapundit posts what Senator Byrd has said about the cause of the Civil War in his defense of the Confederate flag. Byrd said that the Civil War was not fought over slavery. Here is what Instapundit's correspondent uncovered that Byrd said in 1993.

Many informed people believe that the 11 states that comprised the Confederacy stood on solid constitutional ground.

Abolitionist sentiment in the North changed the terms on which legal questions had originally been settled in the old Union. John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, in what is now West Virginia, made a peaceful settlement of the slavery question nearly impossible.

Interestingly, only an estimated 5 percent of the population of the South owned slaves. Yet, hundreds of thousands of Southern men - most of them slaveless and poor - answered the call of the Confederate government to defend the sovereignty of their states. In West Virginia, it broke down about 2-to-1, I suppose, with about one-third supporting the Confederacy and the other two-thirds supporting the Union. Those men - brave and patriotic by their rights, almost to a fault - are the ancestors of millions upon millions of loyal, law-abiding American citizens today.

In the classic Ken Burns Civil War series on public television, historian Shelby Foote recounted a discussion between a Confederate prisoner and his Yankee captor, who asked the Confederate soldier, "Why are you fighting us like this?" To which the Confederate soldier replied, "Because y'all are down here."

That was not racism. That was not a defense of slavery. That was a man protecting his home, his family and his people.

We are who we are today largely because of the War Between the States.

Americans of Southern heritage need not defend slavery in order to memorialize the legacy of which they are a part.

Was that what Christopher Dodd was praising. Perhaps that is why Byrd was so happy to portray a Confederate general in the movie, Gods and Generals.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 12:57 PM 0 comments

 

The Corner was simul-blogging Condi's testimony and makes several great points. For example, Jonah Goldberg points this out

I might write about this later when the transcripts are available, but from listening to this constant back-and-forth between the Democrats and Rice on the August 6 PDB it sounds like the Democrats want to assert that it said there was an imminent threat to the American homeland by al Qaeda. Rice, it seems, wants to claim that the PDB only laid out a general, non-specific, but definitely not imminent threat. Of course Bin Laden wanted to attack America, goes Rice's reading of the PDB, but the specific threats were vague and un-"actionable."

Again, I'd need to study this a bit more. But it sounds like the Democrats want a standard for imminence about the threat from pre-9/11 al Qaeda that they were unwilling to grant for post-9/11 Iraq. Do I have this right?

And Tim Graham makes fun of Kerrey's whining that her answers were taking too long.

The really ridiculous part of Kerrey's questioning was when he complained about only having ten minutes to get answers out of Rice after his long digression of his opinions on Iraq.

And Katherine Jean Lopez has this addition to Graham's blogging on Kerrey's questioning.

Kerrey accusing Rice of filbustering for answering his questions, telling her she can elaborate in closed session? Makes one wonder why Rice had to testify on live TV in the first place. More for the commissioners, guaranteeing them a little TV love, than anyone else?

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 12:49 PM 0 comments

 

John Hawkins has come up with a ranking of the most influential political blogs.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 12:41 PM 0 comments

 

Steven Malanga looks at the war on Wal-Mart.

Here is a story you’re unlikely to read in the spate of press attacks on Wal-Mart these days:

When Hartford, Connecticut, tore down a blighted housing project, city officials hatched an innovative plan to redevelop the land: lure Wal-Mart there, entice other retailers with the promise of being near the discount giant, and then use the development’s revenues to build new housing. Wal-Mart, after some convincing, agreed, and city officials and neighborhood residents celebrated a big win—better shopping, more jobs, and new housing in one of America’s poorest cities.

But then, out of nowhere, outsiders claiming to represent the local community began protesting. Astonished city leaders and local residents quickly discovered the forces fueling the campaign: a Connecticut chapter of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union; and ACORN, the radical community group. Outraged residents fought back, denouncing outside interference, but opponents persisted, filing three separate lawsuits that have delayed construction, including a ludicrous suit claiming that the development would destroy unique vegetation that has sprouted since the housing project came down. “These people looked for every possible reason to stop a project that the community wants,” says Jackie Fongemie, a frustrated community activist who has fought for the store. “Where were the environmentalists when rats were running wild around this place?”

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 12:27 PM 0 comments

 

Andrew Sullivan also links to this report by Debka about the Syrian and Iranian involvement with al Sadr's militia group.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 10:31 AM 0 comments

 

Andrew Sullivan, in his discussion of the violence going on in Iraq links to this free-lance writer's experiences in Baghdad.

The strongest counter-argument, I guess, would be to say that, once the Americans left, Sadr's ability to command respect with his anti-American rhetoric would have disappeared, and more moderate voices would have prevailed. But from what I've seen and interviews I've done there are quite a few people in Sadr City who will follow Moqtadr because of who his father was, or because he's from Sadr City and Sistani's from Najaf, or because he's from Iraq and Sistani's from Iran. To top it off, it's widely known that Sistani and Sadr despise each other.

I won't hold my breath waiting for a "conviction" from an "Iraqi" "jury," but it seems highly likely that Moqtadr and his deputy are guilty of the murder they've been charged with--the murder of a moderate Shi'ite cleric in the war's immediate aftermath. That alone ought to color one's opinion of what Moqtadr would have been willing to do to his co-religionists if his militia and his authority had survived the occupation intact.

All in all, provoking Moqtadr, smashing his militia and aresting or killing him, all while the US Army is still officially in charge of security, doesn't seem like an imprudent thing to have done. We're dealing with bad options here, and the benefits of getting rid of this guy and his militia outweigh the bad reputation we'll get among Shi'ites. We already have a bad reputation among Shi'ites--even Sistani hasn't denounced al Hawza's claims that the US is behind terror attacks against Iraqi civilians. If getting a bad reputation among Shi'ites is a deal-breaker for you, I think it would have been wise to have opposed
the war.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 10:24 AM 0 comments

 

Andrew Sullivan, in his discussion of the violence going on in Iraq links to this free-lance writer's experiences in Baghdad.

The strongest counter-argument, I guess, would be to say that, once the Americans left, Sadr's ability to command respect with his anti-American rhetoric would have disappeared, and more moderate voices would have prevailed. But from what I've seen and interviews I've done there are quite a few people in Sadr City who will follow Moqtadr because of who his father was, or because he's from Sadr City and Sistani's from Najaf, or because he's from Iraq and Sistani's from Iran. To top it off, it's widely known that Sistani and Sadr despise each other.

I won't hold my breath waiting for a "conviction" from an "Iraqi" "jury," but it seems highly likely that Moqtadr and his deputy are guilty of the murder they've been charged with--the murder of a moderate Shi'ite cleric in the war's immediate aftermath. That alone ought to color one's opinion of what Moqtadr would have been willing to do to his co-religionists if his militia and his authority had survived the occupation intact.

All in all, provoking Moqtadr, smashing his militia and aresting or killing him, all while the US Army is still officially in charge of security, doesn't seem like an imprudent thing to have done. We're dealing with bad options here, and the benefits of getting rid of this guy and his militia outweigh the bad reputation we'll get among Shi'ites. We already have a bad reputation among Shi'ites--even Sistani hasn't denounced al Hawza's claims that the US is behind terror attacks against Iraqi civilians. If getting a bad reputation among Shi'ites is a deal-breaker for you, I think it would have been wise to have opposed
the war.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 10:20 AM 0 comments

 

Ralph Peters celebrates what has been going on in Kurdish Iraq.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:58 AM 0 comments

 

Thomas Sowell explains the statistic that people have been dropping out of the unemployment numbers because they are discouraged and have stopped searching for jobs.

Although the unemployment rate has been at near record lows, despite the slow growth of employment, this has been because of people who simply dropped out of the labor force, and were therefore not counted as unemployed. But think about it. Can you or I simply drop out of the labor force?

Of course not. We have bills to pay. Who can drop out then? Usually either those who are rich, those who are willing to live on handouts or young people still living with or off their parents.

According to the March 22nd issue of BusinessWeek magazine, "almost all" of the decline in the number of people seeking work "has occurred in the 16- to 24-year-old age group." Labor force participation among people older than that has continued to be what it usually is.

In other words, people who have to support themselves and their families were not the ones dropping out of the labor force. When things get tough for younger people, they can turn to mom and dad. Others turn to the taxpayers.

There is another aspect to this, however. Jobs have long been harder for young people to find. Some might say that this is due to their lesser skills and experience. But there is no inherent reason why low-skill people should be any less employable at low wages than high-skill people are at high wages.

The difference is that the government sets a lower limit to the movement of wages and also mandates working conditions and other benefits that are the same for everyone. All these things cost money and in effect make the minimum wage higher.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:49 AM 0 comments

 

Stuart Benjamin proposes a game of Hardball Bingo of the buzzwords that the pundits will use in dissecting her testimony. Or, he proposes that you can have your own Hardball drinking game. (Link via Instapundit)

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:32 AM 0 comments

 

Lileks has a wonderful entry today. First he compares what Ted Kennedy said in 2002 to what Kennedy is babbling about now. Then, Lileks attempts the difficult task of trying to decipher what John Kerry thinks about events in Iraq and what he'd do if he were president.

If I may coin a new term: diplobabble. We have a stark choice: Bush’s blunt and frequently inarticulate remarks, versus Kerry’s prolix, labrynthic diplobabble. Which legitimate international entity? Not the coalition we have now, obviously. He can only mean the UN, whose dealings with Iraq have not exactly been characterized by high-minded noble intentions. Incidentally: If the US pressured Israel to make peace with the PA and grant massive concessions, would anyone be complaining that the agreement hadn’t been run through “a legitimate international entity”?

Beneath all the diplobabble is a clear tenet of the Kerry Doctrine: Actions are legitimized solely by the quantity of allies. (In the case of Rwanda, Sudan et al, inaction is legitimized by the number of other Great Powers disinclined to act.)

Read the entire column. It's a keeper.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:27 AM 0 comments

 

More good news on the jobs front.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:23 AM 0 comments

 

The Boston Herald has some tough words for its senior senator.

Imagine the pain that the families of those latest casualties - like the family of Providence native Matthew Serio, a 21-year-old Marine killed in a firefight in Fallujah Monday - are already coping with. And then imagine the pain of knowing that at the moment their son was fighting and dying for his country, Ted Kennedy was in Washington calling Iraq a ``misguidedwar'' that has ``made America more hated in the world and made the war on terrorism harder to win.''

In a more civil era, it was considered political suicide to say the kind of things Ted Kennedy said this week while young Americans were dying on foreign soil. But no such sense of propriety or sympathy for the families of the fallen enters into Kennedy's thinking - not when there are political points to be scored against George W. Bush.

``A year after the war began, Americans are questioning why the administration went to war in Iraq, when Iraq was not an imminent threat,'' Kennedy said, conveniently forgetting that it is not an administration that goes to war, it is a nation - this nation in a move authorized by the Congress. Today some 135,000 U.S. military men and women are still on the ground in Iraq.

Yet in his unrelenting effort to put John Kerry [related, bio] in the White House, Kennedy belittles the efforts of those troops, while giving aid, comfort and his best lines to the likes of a murdering thug like al-Sadr

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:03 AM 0 comments

 

Peter Roff has an idea for an ad that the GOP of their supporters could run to counteract Moveon.org and the other Soros-funded ads.

Open on a black screen, ominous music playing softly and then building as the ad progresses. From the center spins up a picture of George Soros, the Hungarian-born billionaire who has promised to contribute millions of dollars to the 527 groups working to defeat George W. Bush in the election.

As Soros' picture fills the screen, a grim-voiced announcer intones, "Why is this foreign-born billionaire trying to buy an American presidential election?

"Billionaire George Soros, a Hungarian-born financier and hedge-fund operator who made millions betting that the British pound would crash, throwing thousands of people out of work," the announcer continues over a montage of pictures bringing visual life to his words.

"The same George Soros who was fined $2.2 million by a Paris court after he was found guilty of insider trading and who, through his various charitable efforts, bankrolls pro-assisted-suicide campaigns and pro-marijuana efforts throughout the world, leading one former U.S. cabinet official to label him 'The Daddy Warbucks of drug legalization,'" the ad continues.

"This is the same George Soros whose millions are now being used by left-wing groups like MoveOn.org and the Media Fund to run TV ads attacking George W. Bush, trying to buy the White House for John Kerry and the Democrats," with a picture of Kerry spinning up next to the one of Soros.

"So," the announcer asks at the climax, "when you are thinking about how you are going to vote in November, ask yourself one question: Just what is George Soros buying?"

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 8:58 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, April 07, 2004

 

John Hawkins has these comments on quotes from Senator Byrd in 1944. Remember that Christopher Dodd said,

"I cannot think of a single moment in this Nation's 220-plus year history where he would not have been a valuable asset to this country."

Oooooh, ooooh, I can think of a moment! How about the moment Byrd wrote this back in 1946...

"I am a former kleagle of the Ku Klux Klan in Raleigh County and the adjoining counties of the state .... The Klan is needed today as never before and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia .... It is necessary that the order be promoted immediately and in every state of the Union. Will you please inform me as to the possibilities of rebuilding the Klan in the Realm of W. Va .... I hope that you will find it convenient to answer my letter in regards to future possibilities"

...Or better yet, how about the moment Byrd wrote this back in 1944...

"Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds."

Someone should run those quotes by Senator Dodd and see if he'd like to revise his comments...

Of course Dodd would say that Senator Byrd had grown beyond where he was in 1944 and we shouldn't hold that against him. And that's fine. But, Republicans never get cut such slack for anything they ever said or did. That is what is so aggravating.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 10:13 PM 0 comments

 

There's a mild kerfuffle in the conservative blogosphere about Senator Christopher Dodd's praise of Senator Robert Byrd as a man who would have been a great leader for our nation in any period of our country's history including the Civil War. Remember that Byrd is a former Kleagle of the Ku Klux Klan and voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Hmmmm. I wonder what side he would have been on in the Civil War. If you have an doubts, check out this picture from Senator Byrd's guest appearance in the movie, "Gods and Generals." And yes, he played a Confederate general. I'm sure that if he had protested playing a Confederate officer, he could just have easily made a cameo as a Union officer. But for some reason, Byrd agreed to portray a member of the rebel army. Is that the kind of leadership Dodd was referring to in his evocation of Byrd as a great leader during the Civil War? Was he just free associating?

A black conservative group even protested his appearance in the movie. Armstrong Williams expresses what a lot of people are thinking about the idea that Dodd beleives that Senator Byrd is a man for all seasons.

And yet, there is Dodd, on the Senate floor, demanding that Sen. Byrd "would have been a great senator at any moment. He would have been right at the founding of this country. He would have been in the leadership crafting this Constitution. He would have been right during the great conflict of civil war in this Nation. ."

Really? A former Klansman would have been great during the Civil War? Great for whom? I'm not aware of many Klansmen who fought to free the slaves, or to uphold the union or to protect basic rights.

Had a Republican praised a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, the Democrats would have been up in arms. But when one of their own makes racially-insensitive remarks, they avert their eyes. Some things should not be ignored. Some things should not be subject to the whims of partisan politics. When our elected leaders spew racist remarks, they need to be held accountable - regardless of their political affiliation.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 10:05 PM 0 comments

 

Justice Stevens has some nice memories of justices that he's served with. It is pleasant to think that they really do get along.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:54 PM 0 comments

 

Al-Sadr agrees with Ted Kennedy that Iraq is becoming Bush's Vietnam.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 4:55 PM 0 comments

 

Steven Den Beste says that there is truly a silver lining to what has been going on in Fallujah.

But they are going to actively resist. They have attempted to turn Falluja into an armed camp and will defend it against the eventual reoccupation by the Marines and by Iraqi troops working with them.

That decision is a blunder of the first order.

The primary goal of guerrilla action is to use control of initiative to select time and place for attacks against an enemy which is much more powerful, and then to fade away and hide. To give the enemy a stand-up fight permits the enemy to use his superior power, and that's the opportunith the insurgents in Falluja are permitting us.

That means there will be a lot of fighting in Falluja, and sadly it means that quite a few Marines will pay with their lives. But it also means that the opposition in Falluja has transformed itself from "political dissident" to "rebel". Now we can kill or capture the lot, root and branch.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 4:45 PM 0 comments

 

Read what John Kerry said on NPR about this punk al-Sadr who has been preaching violence against Americans.

Speaking of al-Sadr's newspaper, which was shut down by coalition forces last week after it urged violence against U.S. troops, Kerry complained to National Public Radio, "They shut a newspaper that belongs to a legitimate voice in Iraq."

In the next breath, however, the White House hopeful caught himself and quickly changed direction. "Well, let me ... change the term 'legitimate.' It belongs to a voice — because he has clearly taken on a far more radical tone in recent days and aligned himself with both Hamas and Hezbollah, which is a sort of terrorist alignment."

But Kerry again seemed to voice sympathy for the Shiite terrorist when asked whether he supported al-Sadr's arrest. "Not if it’s an isolated act without the other kinds of steps necessary to change the dynamics on the ground in Iraq," Kerry told NPR, in quotes first reported by the New York Sun.

"If all we do is make war against the Iraqi people and continue an American occupation, fundamentally, without a clarity as to who and how sovereignty is being turned over, we have a very serious problem for the long run here," Kerry added. "And I think this administration is just walking dead center down into that trap."

This guy is seriously out of the loop. He thinks we're making war against the Iraqi people. I guess that is like he thought that our troops in Vietnam were carrying out atrocities against the Vietnamese civilians. He really does have a warped view of what our military does. And he doesn't seem to take as strong a stance against terrorists like Hamas and Hezbollah and al-Sadr as he does against Bush.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 4:38 PM 0 comments

 

The new Pig Book is out.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 4:22 PM 0 comments

 

Zev Chafets has been listening to Air America and isn't that impressed. He'd like the previous black talk radio station back.

After listening to Air America for a week, I now know what liberal radio is. It is Janeane Garofalo bantering with her co-host about swallowing her own saliva, and then dismissing the American victims of the Fallujah lynch mob as a pack of mercenaries. It is a woman named Randi Rhodes talking dirty and cracking on Condoleezza Rice's "plastic hair."

I just can't imagine any conservative getting away with making fun of a black woman's hair texture. And then Gary Trudeau calls her "Brown Sugar" in a Doonesbury strip today. (link via Drudge) That is truly shameful.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 4:08 PM 0 comments

 

Eileen McNamara of the Boston Globe explains why picking McCain as a running mate would accentuate all the worst about Senator Kerry.

Far from elevating Kerry as a bold, bipartisan thinker, the choice of McCain would enshrine forever Kerry's reputation for political equivocation. The question his campaign has spent months sputtering to answer (what does John Kerry stand for?) would only be amplified by such a selection.

McCain, the crowd-pleasing "straight shooter" who lost the Republican nomination to George W. Bush in 2000, has had no such record of vacillation in his 17 years in the Senate and four in the US House of Representatives. He is a social and economic conservative and proud of it. As McCain said himself when asked about speculation that the two Vietnam war heroes might join forces to deny Bush a second term, "It's impossible to imagine the Democratic Party seeking a prolife, free-trading, nonprotectionist, deficit hawk."

The trouble is, it's not that hard to imagine the self-destructive Democratic establishment doing just that. Having convinced themselves that presidential politics is less about ideas than about money and personalities, the Beltway crowd is more than capable of underestimating the intelligence of the people.

She makes a very good point that such a choice would show that Kerry cared only about winning and had no fixed beliefs that mattered to him. Remember when the rap on George H.W. Bush was that he wanted to be president simply because it was the next space to fill in his resume but that he had nothing that he wanted to accomplish as president? Wouldn't that apply in spades to Senator Kerry? And the fact that his staff is musing about a Kerry-McCain ticket shows that none of them have any real ideology other than winning.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 3:59 PM 0 comments

 

William Safire, who has always been able to turn a good alliteration, offers up a new one, Quakering Quagmirists. I like that.

And we should coolly confront the quaking quagmirists here at home.

Does Ted Kennedy speak for his Massachusetts junior senator, John Kerry, when he calls our effort to turn terror-supporting despotism into nascent liberty in Iraq "Bush's Vietnam"?

Do the apostles of retreat realize how their defeatism, magnified by Arab media, bolsters the morale of the insurgents and increases the nervousness of the waverers?

Does our coulda-woulda-shoulda crowd consider how it dismays the majority of Iraqis wondering if they can count on our continued presence as they feel their way toward freedom?

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 11:50 AM 0 comments

 

Catherine Siepp wonders what is so bad about cowboys, anyways.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 11:47 AM 0 comments

 

This is what happens when you treat terrorism as a legal, not a military, problem.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 11:39 AM 0 comments

 

California Yankee points to the efforts that the Heinz company is making to separate itself from the Kerry campaign. I wonder if they've been seeing some effect from customers not wanting to purchase their products. I plead guilty.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 11:37 AM 0 comments

 

Thomas Sowell has a great example of how do-good regulation in San Mateo County in California has a whole lot of hidden costs that don't get considered when local officals like to pass regulations that sound good to the economically illiterate. Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution and my husband have posted on the importance of people understanding economics.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 11:32 AM 0 comments

 

Some consumer watchdog nuts have their panties all knotted up about Google offering free e-mail that will involve ads and thus some electroning scanning of content to match ads to content.

What part of FREE do they not understand? If they're creeped out, sign up for one of the many free e-mail services out there. If people are upset about the scanning, they won't sign up. That's how the market works, guys.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 11:22 AM 0 comments

 

Here's an article about political bias, except for a few token award-winners, in the Pulitzer Prizes.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 11:19 AM 0 comments

 

John J. Miller profiles Bob Schaffer, the likely GOP candidate to replace Ben Nighthorse Campbell.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 11:17 AM 0 comments

 

Michele Malkin looks at the spread of Tawana Brawley-type hoaxes on college campuses.

As is typical in these cases, the perpetrator and her loyal supporters are in denial. Dunn, who was involved in past tangles with the law over shoplifting charges, blames the police for being irresponsible and "irreparably damag(ing) her reputation and emotional health." Minority students shrug at the fraud. "I'm not concerned with whether it's a hoax or not," said Pomona College junior Adam Briggs of the Pan-African Student Association.

Of course not. When it comes to smearing America, as Tawana Brawley taught us all so well, the end always justifies the manufactured means.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 11:12 AM 0 comments

 

ABC's The Note, which is an excellent round-up of the day's political stories, has now started its own headline service on political news that it wants to replace the Drudge Report. Drudge obligingly links to their effort.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 11:04 AM 0 comments

 

Michael Ledeen refuses to believe that democracy is doomed to failure in the Middle East.

To those who say that democracy cannot be introduced in the Muslim Middle East, where it has never existed, there is an easy answer: If that were true, then there would be no democracy at all, since tyranny is older than democracy, and oppression has been far more common than freedom for most of human history. We all lived under tyranny before we became free; freedom has had to be wrested from the hands of kings, caliphs and nobles, and imams and priests — and it has invariably been a tough battle. But that is quite different from saying it cannot be done at all.

The history of the Muslim world abounds with example of successful self-government, from the high degree of autonomy granted to some of the lands of the Ottoman Empire to the remarkably modern Iranian Constitution of 1906, and the contemporary Middle East is currently bubbling with calls for greater freedom, often from surprising sources (such as the son of Libyan tyrant Muammar Khaddafi). It is hard to believe that the peoples of the Middle East are bound and determined to remain oppressed, when millions of Iranians have demonstrated for freedom, and, just within the past few months, pro-democracy demonstrations have erupted in Saudi Arabia and Syria.

Yet those in Iraq who are killing us and our allies, along with Arab civilians — and even themselves and their own children — are also part of the culture of the Middle East, and they draw upon it to justify their actions and inspire others to do likewise. Do we not have to change at least those elements of the region's culture? Can we expect to defeat terrorism without also discrediting the ideas and passions that underlie it? And does that not automatically mean a long process, in which political and military weapons are largely irrelevant?

I do not think so. Nothing so discredits an idea as its defeat in the real world. Had we not defeated the fascists in World War II, the heirs of Tojo, Hitler, and Mussolini would most likely still rule Japan, Germany, and Italy, and some version of fascism would most likely remain a potent force in many other societies, just as it was in the Twenties, Thirties and early Forties. But our victory in war defeated both the enemy regimes and their evil doctrines, and fascism is no longer an inspiration. If we defeat the terrorists and remove the regimes that support them, we are likely to find the appeal of bloody jihad dramatically reduced. There is undoubtedly a connection between the pro-democracy demonstrations (and Libya's surrender) and the liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 10:51 AM 0 comments

 

I've been working on my lesson plans for the Vietnam War. Thankfully, the fighting in Iraq does not seem to have launched the type of defeatism that turned the Tet offensive into an American defeat. Neil Munro argues that we need to make sure that that doesn't happen.

Lawrence Kaplan writes that elites are much more concerned about military casualties than the American public. They are afraid that the public will lose faith in the operation. But, as long as the nation's leaders continually express their resolve and the rationale for our involvement in Iraq, the public will support it.

What do these numbers tell us about Iraq? For one thing, that the public may be less fearful of casualties than America’s political and military elites assume — and, indeed, less fearful than the elites themselves. In 1999 a massive opinion poll conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates for the Triangle Institute for Security Studies asked various groups what level of casualties they would be willing to tolerate in the event of war with Iraq. The survey found that military leaders consistently show less tolerance for casualties than civilian leaders, who in turn show less tolerance for casualties than the public at large. (In Iraq, the survey showed the public would tolerate, as a mean figure, 29,853 American fatalities; civilian elites would tolerate 19,045; and their military counterparts would tolerate 6,016.)

The data have obvious implications abroad, where Osama bin Laden boasted that the collapse of American resolve in Somalia “convinced us that the Americans are a paper tiger,” and at home, where 78 percent of officers and a nearly identical percentage of their civilian counterparts agree with this statement: “The American public will rarely tolerate large numbers of U.S. casualties in military operations.”

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 10:44 AM 0 comments

 

The American Thinker ponders the Democrats taking the Torricelli option. I don't think it would happen, but it's fun to think about.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 10:41 AM 0 comments

 

Condoleezza Rice is the most extraordinary woman. Read this profile in the New York Post. No wonder Republicans dream of her running for office though she always insists that she is not interested. That's a shame.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 10:38 AM 0 comments

 

Here's a nice fisking of Kerry's huffing and puffing about questions about his Catholic faith.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 10:32 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, April 06, 2004

 

Ramesh Ponnuru says that the GOP is fielding more conservative candidates this year than ever before in the recent past.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 8:20 PM 0 comments

 

Mark Steyn thinks the media is exaggerating everything about what is going on in Iraq.

Fewer people are being killed in Iraq right now than in Syria, Iran or Saudi Arabia. The only difference is the western media are in Iraq and not in any of those other dumps, and, as I’ve pointed out before, they’re still using their old Baath Party translators. As to Fallujah being “scarcely governed at all”, yes, it’s a fetid dump and I had a lousy lunch there last year, as the only westerner in a restaurant full of surly Arab men who no doubt would have liked to kill me but didn’t quite dare. But 300,000 people live in the city. In all the pictures of the lynchings, can you add up more than a hundred? And half of them are punk kids under 11. Four brave men died in vile circumstances. A few score are depraved enough to cheer on their killers. 299,900 of the town’s population were either disapproving or indifferent. And in the Arab world indifference will do.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 8:15 PM 0 comments

 

Powerline has discovered another Kerry have-it-both-ways flip flop.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 8:06 PM 0 comments

 

Amir Taheri has some detailed background information on Sadr, the Khomeini-wanna-be inciting violence now in Iraq. Apparently, he's upset that he's been closed out of the coalition government and so wants to disrupt it and the US occupation in order to carve out his own power. And he wants John Kerry to win the election.

Sadr lacks the strength to disrupt plans for the handover of power to an interim government, but he may produce headlines that neither President Bush nor Prime Minister Tony Blair wants to see - each is coming up on an election.

As one Hassan Nasrallah, a Sadr relative and leader of the Lebanese Hezbollah, succinctly put it: "We may be unable to drive the Americans out of Iraq. But we can drive George W. Bush out of the White House."

Is it too crass to put him down as one of Kerry's foreign supporters? (Link via James Taranto)

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 8:00 PM 0 comments

 

Scrappleface has the rejoinder you wish Scott McClellan could say about Ted Kennedy.

Kennedy: Kerry's Actions Prove Iraq is Bush's Vietnam

(2004-04-05) -- In a major policy address at the Brookings Institution today Senator Edward M. Kennedy said that Democrat presidential candidate John Forbes Kerry's actions prove that "Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam."

"The parallels between Vietnam and Iraq are stunning when seen through the actions of one man who lived through both eras," said Mr. Kennedy. "Thirty-some years ago John Kerry fought in Vietnam, then later protested U.S. involvement in Vietnam. In October 2002, John Kerry voted to support war against Iraq, then later protested U.S. involvement in Iraq. Clearly, Kerry's actions and public statements demonstrate that Iraq has become a quagmire for Bush."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan responded to Mr. Kennedy's remarks by saying, "Ted Kennedy is John Kerry's Chappaquiddick."

James Taranto had a similar follow-up to his comments on the Kennedy tirade.

Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:41 PM 0 comments

 

Here's Lileks on the whole tiresome Daily Kos controversy.

Cut back down to the bone: Americans strung up and burned. Big-time blogger says “screw them.” Blogger suffers blowback, just as a mainstream columnist would suffer if he wrote that it was time to nuke Mecca or pave Fallujah. And there are consequences? Welcome to the real world.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:37 PM 0 comments

 

Some liberals are not pleased about Air America.

Franken now has his own show o­n Air America, which he has mischievously titled The O'Franken Factor. Somehow I doubt black people will be tuning in to hear Al Franken deliver cheesy o­ne-liners about Bill O'Reilly. A brief scan of the reviews of Franken's first show indicate that most found it disappointing and boring. They should not have expected anything better from Franken, who has been telling the same 5 jokes for the past 2 years or so. The show featured a bland interview with war criminal Bob Kerrey about the 9/11 commission followed by an interview with sellout filmmaker Michael Moore. The show reached its climax when former vice president Al Gore called in. Moore used the opportunity to grovel. He issued a pathetic apology for backing Ralph Nader in the 2000 elections and promised to "throw a big party" for Al Gore if Bush loses the next election.

(Link via Instapundit)

Byron York goes into the numbers to explain how miniscule Air America really is in the realm of radio.

As the new liberal talk-radio network finishes its first week in operation, industry insiders say the most impressive thing about the effort is not its performance — that has gotten mixed-to-negative reviews — but the fact that the network, Air America, has received such extensive press coverage relative to the tiny size of its audience.

"It was off the charts in terms of how much ballyhoo and hoopla it generated, considering what it is," says Michael Harrison, the editor and publisher of Talkers magazine, which tracks the talk radio business. "It's a modest startup, and it was treated like some kind of revolution."

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:22 PM 0 comments

 

You can tell that the GOP are serious in South Dakota. Now, they're trying to chip off a fraction of the Democratic vote.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:14 PM 0 comments

 

Do you get the feeling that Colin Powell is getting a little fed up with some of the wacked-out Democratic criticisms of the war in Iraq and the administration's anti-terror efforts? Now, he's slapping down Ted Kennedy.

"I was in Haiti and didn't see the whole speech, but I must say that Senator Kennedy, I think, should be a little more restrained and careful in his comments because we are at war," Powell said in an interview on a nationally syndicated radio broadcast.

"Debate is appropriate, and that's the beauty of our open, democratic system, but I think this is also the time that we rally the nation behind the challenge that we face in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places in the world," he said on the "Tony Snow Program."

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:07 PM 0 comments

 

It's a great idea to split up the 9th Circuit, but I don't think it's going anywhere.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:04 PM 0 comments

 

Poor Ralphie didn't get the needed 1000 people to show up in order to get a fast ticket onto Oregon's ballot. It's going to be a long slog for him to qualify for each state's ballot. I bet that he won't get on most of them.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:02 PM 0 comments

 

The American Thinker writes on the clear evidence of media bias.

A perfect recent example of this phenomenon is the press coverage afforded to the launch of the liberal talk radio network Air America, a very modest outfit by any broadcast industry standard. The New York Times gave it the most powerful boost the newsprint media can offer: a cover story in the Sunday New York Times Magazine, along with repeated articles on other days. Other daily newspapers followed suit, as did the television networks. The San Francisco Chronicle went to the absurd length of headlining the “news” that Bay Area listeners would have to wait, because the network had no San Francisco outlet as it hit the nation’s airwaves.

All of this fuss over a network whose outlets numbered five low-powered, low-rated AM stations, whose airtime was purchase in blocks by the network. Not one program director in the entire country decided on his own that the potential listenership was attractive enough to merit carriage of the network as a commercial venture. Even worse, Air America’s radio outlets in the two largest markets, New York and Los Angeles, formerly served black and Hispanic ethnic audiences. There has already been one protest rally in New York, as “community leaders” protest the loss of their ethnic broadcasts.

Not since Howell Raines published dozens of stories about Martha Burke’s efforts to force Augusta National to admit women members, while she was only able to muster a handful of demonstrators at the climax of her campaign, has there been such an obvious case of obsessive-compulsive coverage.

The way the media covers the economy is another example.

The key code word has become “outsourcing.” Jobs are supposedly being shipped to China and India by the boat load. When all the jobs are gone, we will all be flipping hamburgers for each other, or so we are being led to believe.

The problem with this line of reasoning is that it is easily refuted with both numbers and pictures. For every call center, with its low paying jobs, outsourced to India, there is a Mercedes Benz factory, in-sourced to Alabama, or a Nissan factor in-sourced to Mississippi. The workers at these plants are making some of the highest wages in their region, and they are rather happy about the outsourcing trend hitting Germany and Japan. In-sourced jobs actually outnumber outsourced jobs

In-sourced jobs are worked by people who have faces and personal stories. Given that a Presidential campaign is underway, it will be short work for the Republican ticket to arrange visits to the Honda, whose Ohio factories employ 14,000, or the vast Michelin tire factory in South Carolina. President Bush might even want to take the wheel of one the Kentucky-made Toyota Solaras as it is loaded for shipment back to the Japanese market.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 12:54 PM 0 comments

 

One of the bits of information that my Quiz Bowl team has to memorize is the list of important popes. Apparently, John Kerry wouldn't do well on our team.

He added: "I'm not a church spokesman. I'm a legislator running for president. My oath is to uphold the Constitution of the United States in my public life. My oath privately between me and God was defined in the Catholic church by Pius XXIII and Pope Paul VI in the Vatican II, which allows for freedom of conscience for Catholics with respect to these choices, and that is exactly where I am. And it is separate. Our constitution separates church and state, and they should be reminded of that."

Mr. Kerry apparently meant John XXIII, as there is no Pius XXIII.

Can you imagine if Bush made such a mistake? (link via Drudge)

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 12:46 PM 0 comments

 

Kenneth Starr finally got the job he had been wanting all during the Whitewater investigation: Dean of Pepperdine Law School.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 12:41 PM 0 comments

 

Guess what, Spanish appeasement of terrorists is not working? What a surprise.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 8:32 AM 0 comments

 

Gregg Easterbrook has done the tough work of slogging through the long New York Times Magazine article trying to trash Bush's environmental policies without any real data.

ANOTHER OVERSTATED NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE STORY: "Up in Smoke: The Bush Administration, the Big Power Companies and the Undoing of 30 Years of Clean Air Policy." So blares the cover of yesterday's New York Times Magazine. Author Bruce Barcott isn't responsible for the headline, but might not it have occurred to some editor somewhere at the Times Magazine that there is nothing in the 13-page article that supports a claim of "undoing" clean air policy? All pollution regulated by the Clean Air Act is declining, has been declining for years, and continues to decline under George W. Bush. That's not mentioned in the 13 pages, since it would more or less spoil the entire premise of the story and the dramatic cover. No factual statement in the Times Magazine piece appears wrong, but the article systematically ignores counter-arguments and counter-facts in order to create a picture that is, overall, inaccurate.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 8:22 AM 0 comments

 

It is really depressing that the Democrats are filibustering the renewal of the Welfare Reform legislation. This has been an outstanding success despite all the gloom and doom by welfare's supporters. Remember the predicted millions of starving children? Well, it didn't happen as Rich Lowry details in today's column.

How is this for a historic reversal? Last week, Senate Democrats successfully filibustered the nation's most important anti-poverty measure -- welfare reform. It is thus Democrats who are effectively opposed to lifting people out of poverty and, in the process, make insulting assumptions about minorities, particularly minority women.

The success of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act is now so well-established that its liberal doubters are increasingly pathetic flat-earthers. Welfare rolls nationwide have fallen by roughly 60 percent since the mid-1990s. Rolls have continued to decline despite the 2001 recession, in some states significantly. Since January 2001, when the downturn was taking hold, the number of families on welfare has dropped 45 percent in Illinois and 39 percent in New York.

This data has left liberals dazed and confused. As an official at the Center for Law and Social Policy said, "One of the great mysteries of social policy in the last few years is why welfare caseloads have stayed essentially flat or declined in much of the country, despite the economic downturn." If we apply Occam's razor to this "mystery," the explanation is that single moms are perfectly capable of caring for themselves and their children, if that's what is expected of them. Young minority women aren't as helpless as their liberal advocates would have us believe. Mystery solved!

Critics of welfare reform had argued that the boom of the late 1990s, not welfare reform, sent former recipients into the work force. This was always implausible. In the previous nine economic booms since the 1950s, caseloads were stagnant or increased. Why would that suddenly change in the mid- and late-1990s? Hmmm.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 8:13 AM 0 comments

 

Perfectionism is becoming a real concern at universities. So, they're offering lots of services and driving the cost of college up. Of course, it's a vicious cycle that starts in high school as kids overschedule themselves in order to compile the perfect set of leadership, outside activities, and community service. It was a lot easier when they just looked at GPA and SAT scores.

Some college officials see the contradiction inherent in their new efforts to offset stress and encourage the joys of reflection and unstructured time. After all, it was multitasking, hyperorganized, résumé building behavior that helped some students get admitted to their schools in the first place.

"We admit only the most over-scheduled children and we boast of how many sports they play, how many clubs they organize, how many hours of volunteer service they provide," said Elaine Hansen, president of Bates College, in Lewiston, Me., in her inaugural address two years ago. How then, she went on, could Bates encourage those same children to risk "moments of woolgathering, daydreaming, improvisation" that she viewed as an essential component of a liberal arts education?

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 8:04 AM 0 comments

 

Thomas Sowell has some common sense recommendations on how to avoid another Tyco jury fiasco.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:58 AM 0 comments

 

Gee, the Clinton team didn't even mention Al Qaeda in its final report on security.

The scarce references to bin Laden and his terror network undercut claims by former White House terrorism analyst Richard A. Clarke that the Clinton administration considered al Qaeda an "urgent" threat, while President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, "ignored" it.

The Clinton document, titled "A National Security Strategy for a Global Age," is dated December 2000 and is the final official assessment of national security policy and strategy by the Clinton team. The document is publicly available, though no U.S. media outlets have examined it in the context of Mr. Clarke's testimony and new book.

Of course, no U.S. media outlets have looked at the actual report. They'd rather have things spoonfed to them by Richard Clarke without doing any reporting or analysis of their own.

Ed Feulner says that Clarke is trying to have it both ways by criticizing Bush for what Bush didn't do and what he did do.

It's like the old Chinese finger prison — President Bush is stuck no matter what he does. Mr. Clarke says September 11 was his fault because he wasn't aggressive enough before we were attacked. But Mr. Clarke also would blame the president for any future attack, because it would result from Mr. Bush's aggressive leadership since September 11.

Yet Mr. Clarke is surprisingly reluctant to criticize President Clinton, who also ignored Mr. Clarke's advice to kill bin Laden. In 2002, Mr. Clarke told PBS' "Frontline" it was almost impossible for Mr. Clinton to hunt bin Laden down. After all, "There was the Middle East peace process going on. There was the war in Yugoslavia going on. People above my rank had to judge what could be done in the counterterrorism world at a time when they were also pursuing other national goals."

Oh. So in Mr. Clarke's mind, President Clinton gets a pass for ranking Yugoslavia ahead of al Qaeda, but September 11 is President Bush's fault.

Just for the sake of argument, let's assume Mr. Bush had aggressively targeted bin Laden in the spring of 2001. What would international reaction have been?

Consider the outcry when Israel assassinated Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin, who was a terrorist, directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people. One might expect his passing would be celebrated.

Instead, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Israel's act "is unacceptable, it is unjustified, and it is very unlikely to achieve its objectives." Mr. Straw called Yassin "an 80-year-old in a wheelchair." And he added Israel "is not entitled [to] this kind of unlawful killing, and we therefore condemn it."

All that from our staunchest ally in the war on terrorism. Now imagine the international outcry if we had killed bin Laden in early 2001.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:53 AM 0 comments

 

It's official: John Kerry's leadership has led his party into a quagmire. When he was a warrior fighting in Vietnam, he learned to take incoming fire and to fight back. He'll need those skills now.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:44 AM 0 comments

 

Dennis Prager bravely looks at the correlation of terrorism and Muslims.

Islamic terror is caused by Muslims, not, as Islamic and leftist apologists would have it, by the non-Muslims against whom it is directed. In our morally confused world, Spain, Israel and America are blamed for having their men, women and children blown up: What did these countries do to arouse such enmity among otherwise tolerant Arabs and Muslims?

Palestinian terror provides the answer. About 25 percent of Palestinians are Christian, yet if there are any Palestinian Christian suicide bombers, I am unaware of them. Now why is that? Don't Muslim and leftist apologists incessantly tell us that the reason for Palestinian terror is "Israeli occupation and oppression"? Why, then, are there no Palestinian Christian terrorists? Are Christian Palestinians less occupied?

The answer is obvious. There is Palestinian terror for the same reasons there is Muslim terror elsewhere. A significant part of the Muslim world wishes to destroy those non-Muslims -- Americans, Israelis, Filipinos, Nigerians, Sudanese blacks -- who prevent Islam from violently attaining power.

Palestinian Muslim terror emanates from a desire to destroy Israel, not to end Israel's occupation of the West Bank. Other Muslim terror is aimed at weakening the West, America in particular, so that militant theocratic Islam can dominate Muslim-majority societies and then take over other societies, as it is slowly doing in Western Europe.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:34 AM 0 comments

 

It looks like Lynne Cheney's steamy romance novel won't be re-released.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:30 AM 0 comments

 

If you ever wondered what the job of a First Lady was, here are some answers.

First lady Laura Bush has received a stack of letters from a group of kindergarten students, whose teacher posed the question: "What do you think Mrs. Bush does all day?"

Shelby replied: "She helps the president with his paperwork and then helps him clean his office. She takes care of him when he's sick and puts cold cloths on his head."

Megan said: "She feeds the dogs and she plants the daffodils and she does the president's speeches when he isn't feeling well."

While Todd noted: "She wears pretty suits and she has to shovel the snow and feed the birds."

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:22 AM 0 comments

 

Stephen Milloy looks at the junk science behind the scare about the lead in Washington D.C.'s water.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:12 AM 0 comments

 

The Houston Chronicle has an encouraging letter from a sloldier in Baghdad about how he perceives things are going.

Our mission is vital. We are transforming a once very sick society into a hopeful place. Dozens of newspapers and the concepts of freedom of religious worship and expression are flowering. So, too, are educational improvements.

This is the work of the U.S. military. Our progress is amazing. Many people who knew only repression and terror now have hope in their heart and prosperity in their grasp. Every day the Iraqi people stream into the streets to cheer and wave at us as we drive by. When I'm on a foot patrol, walking among a crowd, countless people thank us — repeatedly.

I realize the shocking image of a dead soldier or a burning car is more salable than boring, detailed accounts of our rebuilding efforts. This is why you hear bad news and may be receiving an incorrect picture.

Baghdad has more than 5 million inhabitants. If these people were in an uprising against the United States, which you might think is happening, we would be overwhelmed in hours. There are weapons everywhere, and though we are working hard to gather them all, we simply can't.

Our Army is carrying out 1,700 convoys and patrols each day. Only a tiny percentage actually encounter hostile action. My unit covers some of the worst and most intense areas, and I have seen some of the most tragic attacks and hostility, such as the bombing of the United Nations headquarters.

I'm not out of touch with the negative side of things. In fact, I think my unit has it harder than many other Army units in this whole operation. That said, despite some attacks, the overall picture is one of extreme success and much thanks.

The various terrorist enemies we are facing in Iraq are really aiming at you back in the United States. This is a test of will for our country. We soldiers of yours are doing great and scoring victories in confronting the evil terrorists.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:03 AM 0 comments

Monday, April 05, 2004

 

William Safire says that the 9/11 Commission hearings are a "Floo Floo Bird."

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 8:58 PM 0 comments

 

Michael Barone writes of how the shadow of Vietnam hangs over much of Democratic foreign policy.

You know it's true when you read about Ted Kennedy's repugnant speech today where he called Iraq "Bush's Vietnam." Does that mean that he wants to cut and run from Iraq and leave them to devolve into chaos and terror as happened in Vietnam? Is that the policy that Kerry supports. After all, Kennedy is Kerry's attack dog spokesman now until Kerry makes a vice presidential pick.

Here is what Michael Graham had to say about Kennedy's speech.

Was I the only person who experienced a "suck-in-air" moment of horror when Kennedy announced "Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam?"

What bothers me isn't the political attack on Bush, but how the senator's idea is a slashing blow to the support for the troops. How does he think these soldiers feel being told they are now part of a "Vietnam," a word which translates into "immoral military action doomed to defeat?" I can't think of a statement more likely to undermine American soldiers than that claim.

What makes Kennedy's vicious attack even more outrageous is that it is demonstrably untrue. The progress on the ground in Iraq has been amazing, given the conditions in Iraq one year ago. We aren't losing in Iraq at all. We are in a war that we have the ability to win.

And Kennedy wants us to surrender. To declare "defeat" and go home. If we keep fighting, and fight smart, we are almost certain to win this war. Bush understands that, which is why Iraq won't be his Vietnam.

But if the Democrats continue to push defeat as an American policy, it could be theirs.

I wonder if Bush is happy now that he made all those nice good will gestures towards Kennedy earlier? Kennedy has sure repaid Bush by kicking him in the teeth every chance he gets. When will Republicans learn that there is no way to make liberals like them and so there's not point in making all kissy face with them?

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 8:56 PM 0 comments

 

I think I might have posted a link to this web ad for Bush before, but I'll do it again. I'd like to see this on the air.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 8:44 PM 0 comments

 

Jews have given up their control of the world. That's such a relief. It was getting to be quite a burden to have to run everything.

In a press release, Jews stated, “Although we have thoroughly enjoyed the challenges of world domination for the last 300 years, we feel it's time for gentiles to take control of their own affairs. We plan to spend more time with our families and pursue other interests.”

....Many Jews expressed relief that they could give up burdensome responsibilities. Retired accountant Jerry Friedman, who controls all media in Montana, said, “I would just as well let the citizens of Montana manage their own TV and newspapers. Don’t get me wrong, Montana is a fine state. But it gets awfully cold, and there’s nowhere to get a good bagel.”

Attorney Allen Franks said he's glad he no longer has to manage Bulgarian monetary policy. “It was getting to be quite a hassle,” he said. “I already have a full time job and can’t even balance my own checkbook, let alone control the finances of an
entire nation.”

Homemaker Judith Levine said she would “...miss the hustle and bustle of setting the international price for magnesium every day. But my son is about to be Bar Mitzvah'd, and oy! Such a party we're gonna have you wouldn't believe!”

(Link via Volokh)

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 8:36 PM 0 comments

 

Kerry's wife has traded in her passion for the pashmina for a new scarf that she designed herself. What a clever little woman she is.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 8:33 PM 0 comments

 

Aaron's Rants has found a new advertiser on Daily Kos.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 8:29 PM 0 comments

 

Mark Steyn has a field day making fun of a sick new comedy show in London that cheerfully makes fun of Bush, Blair, Christianity, and the United States, but has nothing to say about real terrorists.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 8:21 PM 0 comments

 

This is what Richard Clarke said in 2000 about developing a comprehensive plan to fight terror.

Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism chief who contends the Bush administration was unprepared to deal with terrorism in the United States, told a House of Representatives panel in 2000 that it was "silly" to think the government could develop a comprehensive strategy to fight such threats.
He made those comments at a private House National Security subcommittee meeting, a 90-minute classified session on June 28 of that year.

According to unclassified staff notes from the meeting, Clarke said that instead of a coordinated strategy against terrorists, the White House had a policy of chasing what he called the "vermin du jour." As the person in charge of counterterrorism in the Clinton White House, he said, he was confident that he knew where the threats were and had the tools to act accordingly.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 8:13 PM 0 comments

 

Tom Curry looks at the history of Veep choices and how they really make little difference. The consensus is that a choice can only hurt, not help a candidate. At least, since 1960 and LBJ's helping Kennedy to win Texas.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 4:09 PM 0 comments

 

James Taranto looks at the kerfuffle about Markos Zuniga's rant on Daily Kos about the four security guards killed last week in Fallujah. Zuniga regards them as merely mercenaries and said "Screw them" in response to their murders. Taranto is tired of soldiers being regarded as victims.

Somewhere along the line, it became politically incorrect on the liberal left (as distinct from the radical left) to disparage members of the military. The operative principle became: We support the troops, though we oppose their mission. Members of the military thereby achieved the status of accredited victims, entitled to liberal "compassion." And in a February interview with CNN's Judy Woodruff, Kerry reinterpreted his 1971 views to absolve soldiers of any guilt: "I was accusing American leaders of abandoning the troops. . . . It's the leaders who are responsible, not the soldiers. . . . I've always fought for the soldiers."

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 4:03 PM 0 comments

 

Elizabeth Bumiller looks at the women who surround the President from his wife and mother to Karen Hughes and Condoleezza Rice. But, apparently, they don't really count as women because they're not pro-abortion.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 3:52 PM 0 comments

 

One San Francisco writer thinks that Clarke's book actually helped Bush.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 2:11 PM 0 comments

 

John Miller has up his analysis of the Senate races. It doesn't look as good for the Republicans as it looked a few months ago. However, it still seems an uphill battle for the Dems to retake the Senate. If things fall out right for the GOP, they could gain a couple of seats. However, things could still go the other way. That's the type of trenchant and brave analysis that you could get from a high-paid TV pundit.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 2:06 PM 0 comments

 

Scrappleface has a heads-up on Kerry's new campaign strategy.

Kerry Unveils 'Dispassionate Liberalism' Agenda

(2004-03-28) -- After enduring criticism for his failure to make his mark on the Democrat party, or even have a blueprint for his own presidential campaign, John Forbes Kerry today unveiled a platform he called 'Dispassionate Liberalism: An Agenda for America."

Taking his lead from President Bush's successful "compassionate conservatism" platform in the 2000 campaign, Mr. Kerry said his "dispassionate liberalism" similarly blunts the usual assaults on Democrats.

"Just like Bush reversed conventional wisdom by proclaiming that Republicans actually care about people," said Mr. Kerry, "my agenda declares that it's okay to be a bleeding-heart liberal without the bleeding heart part."

Democrat National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe said it's all part of the "New Aloofness," a Democrat sensibility that says "It's okay to be for big government and higher taxes without having to justify it by claiming to care about people who are many rungs below you on the economic ladder."

"It's really a very liberating philosophy," said Mr. McAuliffe. "We can be millionaires, seek to extend the reach of government into the personal lives of Americans and not even have to pretend to relate to the ordinary proletarians."

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 1:45 PM 0 comments

 

Carl Cannon has a quiz for those of us who were political junkies during the primaries. Point of pride: I only missed one. I need a life.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 1:42 PM 0 comments

 

Funny non-political post: In my other life, I coach our school's excellent Quiz Bowl team. My co-coach, Eric Grunden e-mailed me this entry from a Quiz Bowl bulletin board discussing best wrong answers given to a question.

I think the best I've ever seen was at 2003 MLK when a girl on our team buzzed in after the question started something like "He wants his mother to take him to Bennigan's for his birthday..." and said "Remembrance of Things Past." The answer was "Butters" (from South Park, for anyone who doesn't know).

Also, at last year's TRASHionals, one of our players won the worst neg title for ringing in with "Dorf" when the correct answer was "Kim Jong Il."

The best I heard was on Jeopardy. They showed a picture of a doll showing a blonde guy with glasses and the clue was "He was one of the most prominent artists in America's Pop Art Movement." The contestant rang in and guessed Harry Potter instead of Andy Warhol. I'm just imagining Harry Potter at one of the trendy New York parties Warhol frequented. Or Warhol at Hogwarts. The mind boggles.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 1:31 PM 0 comments

 

Howard Kurtz profiles the wonderful Carl Cameron of FOX News. Even Democrats admit that the politics-loving reporter is truly "fair and balanced." Even the Kerry people like him.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 12:03 PM 0 comments

 

I suspect that it is too late to recover the debate on outsourcing. Once, an economic issue gets demagogued, it seems impossible for an economically illiterate populace to comprehend how the world really works. That's why it would be nice to see conservatives proactively defending and propounding the econmics behind their beliefs. For example, Bruce Bartlett looks at some new data that show how outsourcing has really helped the economy.

The most important finding of the Global Insight study is that the cost savings from outsourcing don't just flow into higher corporate profits. They contribute significantly to higher output in the U.S., which leads to job increases elsewhere in the economy. The study estimates that the gross domestic product was $34 billion higher last year because of outsourcing and that this created over 90,000 net new jobs. These figures will continue to rise in future years. By 2008, GDP will be $124 billion higher and the number of new jobs created by outsourcing will rise to 317,000.

It's important to recognize that these new jobs are almost entirely outside IT. According to Global Insight, the largest beneficiary is construction, which will gain 75,757 net new jobs due to outsourcing. Other industrial gainers are transportation and utilities (63,513), education and health services (47,260), and wholesale trade (43,359).

Additional benefits of outsourcing are lower inflation, lower interest rates, and higher real wages, which flow to all Americans. Global Insight gets these results because it looks at the ripple effects of outsourcing throughout the entire U.S. economy and not just on IT, as other studies often do.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 11:58 AM 0 comments

 

Read P.J. O'Rourke's first encounter with Senator Kerry in 1986 when the Senator was part of a delegation to oversee the Filipino elections. You will not be impressed with the courage and character of Senator Waffle.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 8:19 AM 0 comments

 

Robert Novak details some of the atrocious pork that is in the Highway Bill. I hope Bush vetoes this loser of a bill.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 8:12 AM 0 comments

 

My husband is guest-blogging on the economics blog, Marginal Revolution. He has a post up today about "Two Things," based on a post by Glenn Whinton on the Two Things that sum up various fields. It's a great parlor game. Here is my contribution.

The Two Things about American History

The US starts small and weak and becomes big and powerful.
The US starts East and moves West and beyond.

I'm not sure what sort of grade that would get my students on an AP test, but I think that about sums it up.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 8:10 AM 0 comments

 

J. Quinton notes now the Kerry campaign may be bordering on copyright infringement of the NCAA Final Four logo.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:58 AM 0 comments

 

Polipundit looks at all the ways that McCain-Feingold has backfired.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:54 AM 0 comments

 

John Hawkins at Right Wing News polled 46 conservative bloggers on whom they'd like to have dinner with. He has posted the results. Some of my choices from the pundit/blogger world made the list. I forgot about PJ O'Rourke. He would have made my list. Here were my choices.

Pundits/Columnists

Mark Steyn
Jonah Goldberg
Charles Krauthammer
Michael Barone
Thomas Sowell

Bloggers

Jim Lileks (and Gnat)
Mickey Kaus
Eugene Volokh

Historians/Political Scientists

John Keegan
James McPherson
James Q. Wilson

Humor

Tony Kornheiser
Jon Stewart

TV

Brit Hume
Brian Lamb

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:53 AM 0 comments

 

Oh, gosh. Now we have to worry about Uzbekistan .

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:50 AM 0 comments

 

John Leo explains mission creep in interest groups.

Many previously neutral and unassailable groups are now ripe examples of O'Sullivan's First Law. The League of Women Voters calls for the defeat of the gay marriage amendment and the repeal of the partial birth abortion law. It continues to call itself as "non-partisan, community based." This implies detachment and evenhandedness, but in truth, the League is now committed to the cultural left and is part of the abortion lobby.

Though most people still think the YWCA is a sort of health club or urban spa, it too is part of the cultural left. It joined the National Organization for Women's "Fight the Right" campaign, backed Martha Burk's campaign against Augusta National Golf Club and opposed school vouchers in D.C. It denies being pro-abortion, but supports Roe v. Wade and supports public funding for abortion.

The leftward migration of the Girl Scouts came to light with the recent flap over the cozy relationship between Planned Parenthood and the Bluebonnet scout council in Waco, Texas. The council gave a "woman of distinction" award to the local chief of Planned Parenthood, who runs an abortion clinic in Waco, thus dragging the local scouts into the abortion wars on the pro-abortion side. The Bluebonnet council also endorsed and helped to staff Planned Parenthood's "Nobody's Fool," an annual half-day sex-ed program. The program uses a booklet, "It's Perfectly Normal" offering sympathetic treatment of abortion, masturbation and homosexuality. The booklet lists nine reasons for having an abortion, including "the female feels she was not ready to become pregnant" and "The female did not intend or want to become pregnant." The Waco council unendorsed the sex program, quieting protests, but the national CEO f the Girl Scouts, Kathy Cloninger, said on NBC that the scouts conduct many programs with Planned Parenthood around the country and would continue them.

Leo's amendment to O'Sullivan's First Law: any organization with "women" or "girls" in its title will tend to become part of the cultural left in general and the abortion lobby in particular.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:47 AM 0 comments

 

Scott Norvell examines how stupid it is for the British left to blame Britian for the fact that some young men want to blow up British citizens.

Most of the men arrested have yet to be identified publicly, but those so far fingered do not seem like poverty-stricken boys who were bullied within inches of their lives on council flat playgrounds in their early years. Most of them lived in Crawley, an industrial town near London's Gatwick airport, and images from the scene were of relatively middle class existences.



Except for the fact that at least one of them spent time learning the finer art of mass murder at a camp in Pakistan, they were just your average Joes.



Contrary to what The Guardian and other guilt-ridden liberals profess, it is not evil headmasters or surly shopkeepers or institutional racism in the National Health Service that are turning these young men's minds to thoughts of terror. The fault lies squarely with the likes of al-Muhajiroun and the Abu Hamzas of the world.



Funny, though, whenever the government talks about giving people like Hamza the boot or shutting down sects whose sympathies lie with terrorists, it is the human rights activists and immigrant advocates of the Guardian-loving left that scream racism.

I think this is one of the real quandries facing America and European countries. Are they going to tolerate these terrorist-preaching so-called religious leaders in their midst? There are real civil rights concerns and think we are all squeamish about the thought of the government listening in to what religious leaders are saying and then arresting those leaders. But, are we going to allow our very freedoms to provide the platform for those who want to kill people?

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:45 AM 0 comments

 

Clinton still is a big player in the Democratic Party. I guess he is preserving his influence for 2008. That must worry Kerry who is forced to appear with Clinton and kiss the ring.

"Kerry needs help, and that's the problem," said John Pitney, a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College in California. "When Clinton appears with Kerry, the punch line is 'Who's that guy with Clinton?' A candidate cannot afford to be in the shadow. But Kerry can't do without the man who casts that shadow. As Spider-Man said, 'This is my gift, my curse.' "

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:25 AM 0 comments

 

I'm sorry that I missed Dennis Kucinich Day in Carrboro, NC. How lame of the mayor to decide that this would be a city-wide celebration.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:23 AM 0 comments

Sunday, April 04, 2004

 

The Blogging Caesar is back after the death of both his parents in Iraq. Our hearts all go out to him and the rest of his family.

He has returned to projecting the election just in time to note that Bush, after falling behind Kerry for a few weeks, is back on top, narrowly.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:53 PM 0 comments

 

Reuel Marc Gerecht examines the proposition that the Bush administration has messed up the war on terror and that the war in Iraq is simply a distraction. it's long, but worth reading. Here's an excerpt.

NEXT CRITICISM: George Bush's war in Iraq has inflamed Islamic opinion, radicalized more Muslim youth, and created a new legion of anti-American holy warriors. This is probably the most damning, if the most ethereal, of the charges against President Bush. Odds are, this will be the charge that Senator Kerry and his minions hurl most often at the president (the possible exception being the gravamen that George W. has neglected homeland defense).

Now, the first thing that ought to be said is that we really don't know how many jihadists got born during the first Bush presidency and the eight years of Bill Clinton. Al Qaeda slowly evolved from the Maktab al-Khadamat ("The Office of Services"), an organization started during the Soviet-Afghan War to transport Muslims, primarily Arabs, to Pakistan to join the battle against the Red Army. We really don't know how many Muslims went. If one tracks down the figures for the Maktab, all one can say for sure is that the sources on the numbers are all Pakistani and that Pakistani sources are notoriously unreliable. We have no firm idea how many of the Muslims who did go actually ever crossed into Afghanistan and fought, or how many of them stayed in Pakistan, living lives often more comfortable than those they'd had at home. (This was particularly true when it came to having wives. The cult of the Afghan woman--and there were hundreds of thousands of Afghan women in distress in Pakistan during the war--was very popular among the "jihadists.") And it is difficult to say precisely when al Qaeda became an independent, self-conscious organization developing anti-American holy warriors. This may have happened as early as 1989, or it could have been only two or three years later that a real organization developed with a clear raison d'?tre and a full-time staff.

The afterword of Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon's The Age of Sacred Terror, which is easily the best book about the rise of bin Ladenism and the Clinton administration's response to it, tells us the following: "U.S. officials have spoken of 'tens of thousands' of individuals who were trained in the camps of Afghanistan, and Germany's intelligence chief put the number at seventy thousand, though many were trained as soldiers to fight alongside the Taliban, not as terrorists. Still the number of operatives at large is probably multiples greater than that on any other terrorist group in memory."

Benjamin and Simon were once the director and senior director for counterterrorism in the Clinton administration's National Security Council, and they, too, are highly critical of the Bush administration. I strongly suspect the numbers above are grossly exaggerated. When I visited Ahmed Shah Massoud, the legendary Tajik leader of the Northern Alliance, in the fall of 1999, he told me that he was then facing around 700 Arab Afghans. This figure fluctuated a bit, perhaps, but the Taliban never deployed more than 1,000 Arab Afghans against him.

But, for the sake of argument, let's accept the numbers suggested by Benjamin and Simon. In other words, during the eight years of Bill Clinton's presidency, when the United States studiously avoided invading Iraq, the number of Islamic holy warriors fully formed in the Afghan training camps skyrocketed. Let us recall these were the glory years of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, when the president often worked night and day to bring conciliation and settlement to the two sides. These were the years, too, when the Americans went to the rescue of the Bosnian Muslims. And these were the times when President Clinton tried to make nice-nice with President Mohammad Khatami of Iran (of course, Sunni Muslim holy warriors might not care for this too much; but since bin Laden knew he hadn't blown up the American barracks at Khobar Towers in 1996, and since his contacts inside the Saudi royal family were pretty good, he might have drawn the right conclusion when the Clinton administration didn't retaliate against the real perpetrator of the Khobar bombing, the regime in Tehran--to wit, Clinton wasn't tough).

So, during the best of years--or at least, according to Clarke and Kerry, vastly better years than what followed--al Qaeda grew from scratch to an umbrella organization, drawing into its apocalyptic designs holy warriors from the Middle East, America, Europe, Africa, Latin America, and the Orient. These were the years when bin Laden promised the faithful that they, not the Americans, were the "stronger horse."

And now, according to the "realists" and antiwar Democrats, the Bush administration has made things worse. It's theoretically possible, of course. It's possible the Clinton years were less energizing to the enemy than the Bush years, when the Taliban were destroyed, bin Laden was put to chase, and al Qaeda as an organization was badly battered. It is possible that America's invasion and (temporary) occupation of Iraq will galvanize holy warriors as did the first Gulf War for an earlier generation. Professor Bernard Lewis's textual analysis showing that bin Laden used the first Gulf War as a clarion call for holy war is undeniable. (And was not the first Gulf War worth angering Islamic militants?)

But we should be enormously cautious in suggesting, as Bush's critics eagerly do, that apocalyptic holy warriors come into being primarily because of specific American actions. We know this is certainly not true for the deadliest of the Wahhabi jihadists--the highly Westernized ones reared or educated in Western Europe. These men are born from their troubled assimilation into Europe's secularized societies. And killer Sunni fundamentalism predates the first Gulf War by decades. Its evolution is attached to no specific Western event--certainly not to the creation of Israel, which in fundamentalist literature is just one more proof, a particularly painful proof since Jews are among the weakest of people in Islamic history, that civilization has gone to hell. But the primary culprits for this fall are not Europeans or Americans--"Christendom," to the fundamentalists. Christendom has been there, in one shape or another, since the beginning of the Islamic era. The real villains, according to the first few generations of fundamentalists, are the Muslims who ape Western ways. The new breed of Muslim activists, the killer elite of bin Laden's deracinated young men who know not love of country or father, have elevated the old disgust at the despotic Westernizing rulers of the Middle East--the men many "realists" still see as our friends--into a global hatred of the West and its cutting edge, the United States. These young men were coming for us, regardless of whether the Bush administration invaded Iraq. Or whether the Clinton administration quarantined and bombed Iraq for eight years. They live to kill. The most devout live to die. It is not surprising at all that Americans, particularly those who work in Washington, who are mostly good secular sorts, view so mundanely the causes of holy war.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:44 PM 0 comments

 

Linda Chavez notes that the 9/11 Commission has never been nonpartisan and Richard Clarke's testimony unveiled that little secret.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 4:02 PM 0 comments

 

Newsweek says that a photograph of FDR's Chief of Staff testifying before a commission investigating Pearl Harbor may have gone a long ways to convincing Bush to let Condoleezza Rice testify before the 9/11 Commission. Of course, the Newsweek writers seem to lack some knowledge of historical chronology. The date on the picture is November 22, 1945, several months after Japan's surrender and almost four years after Pearl Harbor. We were smart enough in World War II not to beat ourselves up over intelligence failures before Pearl Harbor while we were in the midst of fighting the war.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 3:49 PM 0 comments

 

Meanwhile, John Hinderacker from Powerline has been spending time in South Dakota and reports that, despite Tom Daschle having spent beaucoup bucks running ads there, Daschle is just within the margin of error in the lead against Thune, who hasn't been running any ads yet.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 3:32 PM 0 comments

 

Powerline links to this NY TImes story about a poll showing that John McCain is the lead choice for Kerry's VP choice. While I agree with Powerline that McCain would shake up the race in a way that could be determinative, I don't think that he would accept it. McCain just likes to be in the mix and be talked about. I also discount the other results for Edwards. This is pure name recognition. Once Kerry picks someone, there will be scads of publicity and, suddenly, that person will seem like the perfect and exciting choice. I don't know for sure, but I bet no polls were showing that Joe Lieberman or Dick Cheney were the lead choices in 2000, but once they were chosen, everyone seemed to agree that these were good choices for their respective candidates.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 3:30 PM 0 comments

 

Here's a powerful story about a reunion of survivors of the Bataan Death March and Japanese POW camps.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 3:13 PM 0 comments

 

Apparently, instead of outsourcing jobs overseas, we're now insourcing jobs behind bars.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 3:11 PM 0 comments

 

Craig Weiss looks at the silly obsession that many in the West have with "Arab anger." There is this fear that we shouldn't do anything that may cause Arabs to get angry with us. That is the essential argument that Richard Clarke had with the war in Iraq. He feels that it is just creating more anti-American feeling in the Middle East. But Weiss makes some very good points that often get lost in the dismay at the sight of Arabs protesting in the street.

a serious look at the numbers shows that Israel's policy of targeted assassinations has had the effect of decreasing, not increasing, terrorism. Israel began a serious campaign of targeting terrorist leaders in early 2003, resulting in a 50 percent decrease in the number of Israeli victims of terror as compared with the previous year.

Israel's policy has also saved Palestinian lives, as the number of Palestinian dead decreased by 30 percent over the same period. Without terrorist ringleaders around to send unwitting Palestinian children and adolescents to murder Israeli civilians, the region will continue to become less tense and more peaceful.

Yet, the world maintains its obsession with Arab anger. The most common tactic used by those who wish to legitimize Arab rage is to stress the need to explore the "root causes" of terrorism.

According to this view, terrorists who murder children have some reason for doing so, which, after investigation, will lead the rest of us to better understand them. Of course, no perceived or actual wrong can justify the targeted, mass slaughter of innocent civilians.

In the case of Israel, the accepted view is that Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are the root cause of Palestinian terrorism. This position not only legitimizes terrorism, but it condones racism and genocide. We should not respect or cater to the emotions of people who are moved to kill because they do not like the religious persuasion of their neighbors.

Tellingly, while world leaders are preoccupied over rage in the Arab world, there seems to be no concern whatsoever about the emotional stability of Westerners. Is anyone worried that if there is one more suicide bombing in Israel, Jews will start blowing themselves up in Palestinian pizza parlors? Was the world concerned that after 9/11, enraged Americans would fly planes into Saudi Arabian buildings?

A more sensible evaluation of Arab anger should consider those things that do not rile Arab emotions. We should ask why Palestinians do not seem to mind that while their economic situation is desperate, Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat has embezzled more than a billion dollars. (Just last month, French authorities discovered that Arafat had wired $10 million to his wife so she could rent an entire hotel floor for herself at $16,000 a night).

We must ask why Palestinians are angry enough to blow up Israeli children, yet unperturbed that local terror leaders seduce their young sons into committing murder with the absurd promise that such acts will grant them 72 virgins. The lack of Palestinian anger over self-inflicted crimes highlights the dysfunction of Palestinian anger directed at Israel's efforts to defend itself.

By catering to the murderous rage of Arab terrorists, we only promote more rage. Arab anger is an internal Arab problem that we cannot tame, and that only they can solve. They must free themselves from a murderous fury that, in the case of the Palestinians, prevents them from building positive communities based on laudable values. We cannot do this for them.

If the West is going to win the war on terror, we need to stop becoming distracted with what may or may not enrage Arab radicals, and start focusing on the most effective way to defeat Arab terrorists. Israel's targeted killings of terrorist masterminds is a good start.

Why don't people worry more about American anger than Arab anger. Because 9/11 made a lot of very angry and we're not over it yet.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 3:09 PM 0 comments

 

John Carlson explains why we shouldn't get our panties all in a knot about outsourcing and realize that any attempt to stop companies from moving jobs overseas could backfire and prevent foreign countries from outsourcing to the United States.

Americans with long memories might remember that in the late '50s and early '60s, another economic trend had Americans worried -- automation. When he was campaigning for president, Jack Kennedy warned that automation could mean higher unemployment and deeper poverty.

In the late '60s and '70s another emerging innovation threatened the American way of life -- computers. In the '80s yet another dark force appeared on the horizon-- Japan's economic might. And of course in the '90s Ross Perot was warning us that freer trade would spell economic disaster for America.

Somehow, America survived all these changes. In fact, America generated more growth and prosperity in the last 40 years, particularly during the Reagan '80s and Clinton '90s, than any country in world history -- 60 million new jobs since 1970.

Outsourcing is bound to cause some pain and dislocation, just as cars ruined the buggy whip industry and supermarkets made dairy stores obsolete. But what exactly should we do about it? Some politicians call business executives who outsource ``unpatriotic.'' They want the government to use its taxing or regulatory powers to punish companies that try and save money by moving jobs to where they get the best return on investment, i.e. value. They say that ``getting tough'' on these companies would save hundreds of thousands of American jobs.

Be careful what you wish for, because other countries might do the same thing. And if they do, it would cost this country dearly. To put it bluntly, there are far more jobs created here by overseas companies than are created overseas by American firms.

A little known entity called the Organization for International Investment tracks the number of jobs in America that are created here by foreign companies. In 2001, according to Walter Wriston, nearly six and a half million jobs were created here by companies like Honda, BMW and Novartis. Not only does America benefit from outsourcing, we get more jobs from it than any other country. In some states, more than one in 20 jobs is ``outsourced'' from foreign firms. Foreign firms now create more new jobs in America than American firms create. If nobody outsourced, all those jobs would be gone.

The American economy is stable, and its tax and regulatory burdens comparatively lighter than most European and some Asian countries. If we focus on those twin objectives: lower taxes and fewer meddlesome regulations, more jobs will be created here by homegrown and foreign companies alike. And more jobs will stay here as well.

Someone should explain these basic economic facts to John Kerry. His plan would end up hurting jobs in the U.S. But, of course, he may not be as interested in the economics of his proposal as in the demagogic possibilities of talking about Benedict Arnold companies.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 3:04 PM 0 comments

 

The Dallas-Fort Worth Star Telegram has done a long study of how they label conservative organizations and politicians and don't label liberal groups and politicians as liberal as often. Their defense is that conservatives label themselves as conservatives proudly, but liberals don't. And the lazy reporters don't do any more research or thinking to supply the appropriate label. So, in conclusion. the Star Telegram says that labels themselves are meaningless these days.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 11:54 AM 0 comments

 

Stan Sager looks at the part of Richard Clarke's testimony that got little play in the media.

The media almost uniformly let the public know about Clarke's apology, and about his belief that the war in Iraq has been a distraction from the War on Terror. But there was almost complete silence when it came to his other confession.

Under hostile questioning, Clarke admitted that nothing he said or suggested while he was at the White House could even conceivably have prevented the 9/11 attacks.

The press corps top priority, it seems, was getting out word that Clarke implicitly blames President Bush for 9/11. But somehow his confession that Bush would have had virtually no way of preventing 9/11 was not only not urgent - it wasn't even important enough for most media outlets to mention.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 10:54 AM 0 comments

 

Stan Sager looks at the part of Richard Clarke's testimony that got little play in the media.

The media almost uniformly let the public know about Clarke's apology, and about his belief that the war in Iraq has been a distraction from the War on Terror. But there was almost complete silence when it came to his other confession.

Under hostile questioning, Clarke admitted that nothing he said or suggested while he was at the White House could even conceivably have prevented the 9/11 attacks.

The press corps top priority, it seems, was getting out word that Clarke implicitly blames President Bush for 9/11. But somehow his confession that Bush would have had virtually no way of preventing 9/11 was not only not urgent - it wasn't even important enough for most media outlets to mention.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 10:52 AM 0 comments

 

Ronald Radosh has been at the convention for the Organization of American Historians where the convention is concerned that historians are being silenced if they oppose the war in Iraq. Give me a break.

Feeling their oats, the outgoing OAH President Eric Foner and the incoming OAH President James Horton endorsed yet another HAW petition for consideration. This one states that "as historians . . . we oppose the expansion of the United States Empire," the doctrine of "pre-emptive war that have [sic] led to the occupation of Iraq" and the "distortion of history" that has "violated international law, intensifies attacks on civil liberties and reaches towards domination of the Middle East." It ends calling for "restoration of cherished freedoms in the United States," and an "end to the U.S. occupation of Iraq." This will undoubtedly be passed by the board at next year's conference.

The assembled historians fail to see the irony in their argument. Here they are gathered in Boston, meeting freely at their own convention, where they loudly proclaim that all historians oppose the war in Iraq and the Bush administration, as well as the disappearing freedoms at home. At the same time, they yell about how their views are being silenced and that they are victims of massive repression.

Clearly, they know the meaning of chutzpah.

This same organization, the OAH, once refused to even consider a resolution introduced on behalf of Soviet dissident intellectuals - board members argued it was no concern of the organization. Yet they did consider and pass a resolution calling for an end to the apartheid government of South Africa, and endorsing the call for boycott.

Today, the boards show no awareness of those suffering real repression in our own hemisphere - let alone concern. Not a word on the jailing of Cuban dissidents for demanding free elections or on behalf of those brave librarians jailed for the "crime" of seek the right to allow Cubans to have free access to officially forbidden books.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 10:50 AM 0 comments

 

Kirk Victor in the National Journal has a detailed and interesting article about the history of senators who run for president, why they don't do well, and what happens to those senators who run and lose. The trend doesn't auger well for Senator Kerry's plans, but rules were made to be broken. What is amazing is that despite this history, so many senators still see themselves as future presidents.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 10:43 AM 0 comments

 

David Brooks has a long rather purposeless, yet amusing, article in the New York Times Magazine about American suburbs and how large, sprawling, and diverse they are.

I prefer his weekly column about increased productivity.

If you were obsessed with the political campaign over the past year, you would have gotten the impression that there's no such thing as a service sector of the economy — it's all manufacturing — and that the U.S. is getting trounced by China and India in the competition for global business.

That's a distorted view of reality. Since 1995, the U.S. has enjoyed a productivity renaissance. The McKinsey Global Institute breaks the economy down into 60 sectors. U.S. workers are the most productive on earth in at least 50 of them. Productivity gains cause standard of living increases. Productivity gains lead to employment gains. If history is any judge, yesterday's excellent job numbers could mark the beginning of another surge in job creation.

As William W. Lewis, a former McKinsey partner, writes in "The Power of Productivity," about half the U.S. productivity gains have occurred in just two sectors, wholesale and retail trade. We've gotten really efficient at getting stuff from the hands of manufacturers to the hands of consumers. These innovations have had more important effects on how people really live than anything done in Washington.

Some of the effects have been entirely positive. In part because of scanners, companies now know how much stuff they are selling. Inventory-to-sales ratios shrink; companies are less likely to overproduce. That helps reduce the boom-bust cycle, which disrupts lives. During the first half of the 20th century, the U.S. economy was six times more volatile than it is today, according to a study by Bill Martin of UBS Global Asset Management and Robert Rowthorn of the University of Cambridge.

Other effects are double-edged. WalMart, a productivity powerhouse, gives middle class folks access to great products at great prices. It also decimates small merchants and contributes to the uglification of American suburbia.

Over the next seven months, the politicos are going to argue about the economic merits of the Republican years versus the Democratic years. That's a crime against intelligence.

The reality is that since about 1977, administrations from both parties have undertaken a series of policies, starting with deregulation, that have leveled the playing field and hence led to the period of intense business competition we enjoy today. That's the environment that fosters innovation.

Yesterday's good economic news — and the generally good news we've seen over the past 20 years — owes more to innovators like FedEx's Fred Smith than to any of the many fellow Yalies who have sat or will sit in the Oval Office.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 10:21 AM 0 comments

 

Jack Kelly looks at how the media is talking down the economy.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 10:07 AM 0 comments

 

My US history classes have just finished studying the New Deal and its opponents, among them the American Liberty League, a group of bankers and businessmen who opposed FDR. The American Liberty League was derided in the press and FDR's term, "malefactors of great wealth" stuck. Now, Arnold Beichman is comparing the American Liberty League of the 1930s to George Soros.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 10:05 AM 0 comments

 

Real Clear Politics looks at why the Clarke hearings didn't damage the President much in the polls.

The reason is that I just don't think the public puts much stock in what the Commission is doing. I know I don't. The way the hearings are being conducted - in public and during the middle of a heated Presidential campaign - has one side trying to revise history, the other side trying to spin details, and both sides trying to hunker down in the weeds and avoid blame. Right or wrong, that's the way Washington works.

The bad news for Democrats is that the public doesn't give a rip about who saw what memo when in early 2001. Everyone knows that for many years prior to 9/11 the government wasn't as fully focused on al-Qaeda and terrorism as it should have been. They also know there is a significant difference between 8 years and 8 months. But that's all water under the bridge.

I think we're seeing a recognition that hindsight is easy, at times cheap and of limited value in general. Yes, we care how and why 9/11 happened. But we care more about making sure it doesn't happen again.

The one thing the Commission has accomplished is to reconfirm in the public's mind that 9/11 was a cataclysmic, watershed moment in American history that (as cliche as it sounds) changed everything. Of the two candidates running for President, only one shares that belief.

It was a strategic mistake for Democrats to think the 9/11 Commission would be fertile political ground for them and for failing to recognize how the Commission would ultimately play to Bush's strength.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 10:01 AM 0 comments

 

The Washington Times looks at the unemployment rates in the so-called key battleground states.

The states with unemployment rates in the 4 percent range include: Florida, 4.6 percent; Iowa, 4.1 percent; Minnesota, 4.7 percent; Nevada, 4.4 percent; and New Hampshire, 4.2 percent.

States within the 5 percent range include: Arizona, 5.3 percent; Arkansas, 5.5 percent; Maine, 5 percent; Missouri, 5.1 percent; New Mexico, 5.6 percent; Ohio, 5.9 percent; Pennsylvania, 5.1 percent; West Virginia, 5.4 percent; and Wisconsin, 5.2 percent.

Only three big battleground states exceeded the current 5.7 percent national average: Michigan, 6.6 percent; Oregon, 7.1 percent; and Washington 6.1 percent.

These numbers aren't so bad for Bush, but I'd be interested in knowing what individual things each of the states is doing that affects their state economies. How do the tax rates in these states compare? What about the regulations on businesses in that state? What per cent of their economies are devoted to which industries?

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:59 AM 0 comments

 

Daniel Twining looks at what Clarke's book says about the Clinton actions against Al Qaeda.

BY FAR THE MOST FASCINATING PART of Against All Enemies, and the bulk of the book, chronicles the rise of al Qaeda as seen by the Clinton White House. As with Iraq and Iran, the best of intentions and initially sound instincts achieved brief tactical goals without defining a strategic course for victory. In sketching an image of an engaged president who, in his own words, believed that the United States was at war with al Qaeda, but who failed to weaken the organization, Clarke paints a portrait of Clinton in some ways more devastating than the caricature created by his political opponents.

The critique comes down to this fact: President Clinton, who commanded the world's most powerful military and presided over nearly a decade of peace between the world's great powers, knew al Qaeda was operating in fifty countries, running agents and sleeper cells inside the United States, seeking weapons of mass destruction, churning out terrorists from its Afghan training camps, attacking targets around the world, and planning major terrorist offensives against the United States.

Full awareness of al Qaeda was not some slow awakening that came only late in the Clinton presidency. Clarke explains that "because of the many known terrorism events of 1993, the Clinton team, from the president down, was seized with the issue by 1994." Presidential Decision Directive 39, the "United States Policy on Counterterrorism" issued in 1994, called for both offensive and defensive actions to "reduce terrorist capabilities" and minimize the nation's vulnerabilities. It stated that U.S. policy would have "no greater priority than preventing the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction" by terrorists.

By 1995, the Clinton administration had witnessed the World Trade Center bombing, for which it had "a lot of evidence" pointing to bin Laden's organization. It had discovered Ramzi Yousef's plots to assassinate President Clinton and Pope John Paul II. It had learned of Yousef's plot to blow up eleven American airliners over the Pacific. It had witnessed a terrorist assassination attempt against Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. And it had seen the hand of al Qaeda at work in Bosnia, which Clarke calls "a guidebook to the bin Laden network, though we didn't recognize it as such at the time." According to Clarke, "There were signs in 1995 of [bin Laden's] money and support in Bosnia, Chechnya, the Philippines, Egypt, Morocco, and in Europe. Rumors connected him to attacks in New York, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen."


SO, ACCORDING TO CLARKE, "Clinton talked incessantly about what it would be like if terrorists used a weapon of mass destruction to attack a United States city." Between late 1995 and April 1996, Clinton gave a series of speeches about the terrorist threat. Equating the threat to that we faced in World War II and the Cold War, the president said, "Terrorism is the enemy of our generation, and we must prevail." In 1996, the work of a newly created bin Laden station at the CIA revealed a "widespread and active" al Qaeda organization with bin Laden as its "mastermind." In 1996, Clarke's Counterterrorism Security Group was already developing plans for a covert operation to snatch bin Laden from Afghanistan.

This is where things stood at the end of Bill Clinton's first term as president. Clarke succeeds in demonstrating that, by 1996, the administration was deeply aware of the threat al Qaeda posed, and that Clinton himself was "seized with" the issue. The administration was putting in place a domestic program to respond rapidly in the event of a terrorist attack with weapons of mass destruction. The administration had conducted covert operations against suspected terrorists and was discussing an operation to snatch Osama bin Laden himself. In short, Clarke successfully makes the case that the administration was fully engaged and ready to take the offensive against al Qaeda--by the end of Clinton's first term.

So what happened? It is true that the bureaucracy failed Clinton in some ways, but the more complete answer is that the president was unable to impose his will on a reluctant government, including his senior cabinet officials responsible for national security affairs. Unlike their successors in the Bush administration, they were not willing to risk other American interests, and public and world opinion, for the sake of defeating al Qaeda--and unlike President Bush, President Clinton was unwilling to force the issue. In November 2001, after he left office, Clinton said, "I tried to take bin Laden out . . . the last four years I was in office." He must be judged by the fact that he failed.

....CLARKE'S DECISION to write what he means to be an indictment of the Bush administration's counterterrorism policy, at a time when the president he served is still in office--and, particularly, to record the president's conversations with him on sensitive matters of national security--is unprecedented. By his act, Clarke has made it difficult, if not impossible, for future presidents to retain senior national security staff members from previous administrations. In Against All Enemies, Clarke laments that political appointees often move aside career national security officials who possess valuable institutional knowledge on national security matters. Clarke's decision to release his memoirs in an election year, and to do so in a way that violates confidentiality and transparently benefits the political opponent of the last president he served, makes it more likely that future administrations will not retain people like Dick Clarke.

The tragedy of recent American politics is not that President Bush acted to end the threat of terrorists acquiring weapons of mass destruction from rogue states like Iraq, at the cost of angering allies and subordinating secondary American interests. The tragedy is that President Clinton, knowing al Qaeda was at war with us and understanding both its global reach and its plans to kill Americans, did not act in a similarly bold manner.

Against All Enemies is too serious to be called a farce, for it highlights the tragedy of American foreign policy in this age of terrorism. Clarke's deep anger with the current administration notwithstanding, he has performed a service by reminding America of how the Clinton administration failed to protect us from the terrorist threat.

Read the whole thing.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:40 AM 0 comments

 

Here's a nice story about what a success Magic Johnson has become by investing in retail stores in urban areas. He's making lots of money and doing his part to revitalize some blighted sections of many cities. He's also serving as an inspiration to other athletes thinking about a rewarding retirement where they can make money and give back to their communities. Sounds like a win-win to me.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:31 AM 0 comments

 

Gosh, who cares what John Dean thinks about anything? But, I'm sure he'll be trotted out on all the shows because he's saying that Bush is more corrupt than Nixon.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:25 AM 0 comments

 

Now they're growing stem cells from baby teeth. The tooth fairy may be a savior for many people with terrible diseases.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:23 AM 0 comments

 

Apparently, the Kerry campaign is misleading when it says that he has raised a record amount from small donors. They've raised a lot of money, but there is no way to tell what the per person contribution is.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:16 AM 0 comments

 

Mark Steyn looks at Kerry's claim that he's a fan of rap.

The fads and fashions of the world aren't confined to the Billboard Hot 100. All over the planet, men in late middle age are pretending to like stuff just 'cause it's what the likes of Maureen Dowd tell them people want to hear. John Kerry pretends to like gangsta rap. Russia pretends it supports the Kyoto Accord. The European Union pretends Yasser Arafat is committed to peace with Israel. The Security Council pretends its resolutions mean something. Kofi Annan pretends the Oil-for-Fraud program is a humanitarian aid effort for the Iraqi people. The International Atomic Energy Authority pretends the mullahs in Tehran are good-faith negotiators on the matter of Iranian nukes.

It's easy to pander to fashion -- whether on pop music, the environment, the Middle East ''peace process'' or sentimental transnationalism. But on MTV, Kerry wasn't done yet. After coming out for hip-hop, he managed to blame the Bush administration's ''behavior'' for making terrorists become terrorists. I guess that terrorism's just a ''reflection of the street,'' too. Doubtless there's ''a lot of anger, a lot of social energy in it.'' The MTV crowd loved the line, and no doubt Jacques Chirac and the Arab League will as well. Welcome to John Kerry's hip-hop foreign policy: Ask the multilateral gang what's hip, and hop to it.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:13 AM 0 comments