- Prometheus: The Swindle Letter Archives

- Prometheus: The Swindle Letter Archives: "When members of the scientific community call for silencing of others in political debates, at best it demonstrates that they believe that they cannot win arguments on their merits, and at worst is demonstrates a complete disregard for democracy and the ability of the public to participate in important political debates. Positioning oneself n opposition to fundamental principles of democracy is always a losing proposition."

American Successes in Iraq

There really are thousands of them and the Iraq Reconstruction Report has provided a consistant means of assessing measurable progress in realizing objective successes that may have a lasting impact on Iraq. Every project run by the Corps and/or the ground commanders brings Iraqis into contact with a system that actually functions. Quite a few of the CERP projects are actually of the rent a sheik variety but they're still important because some of the money spent does dribble down to the workers, providing them for a reason to not participate in planting IEDS.

It's good to see that the school construction and reconstruction projects will be the first to be completed at 100%. There have to be tens of thousands of teachers who will bear some very good will towards Americans for putting schools first and some of that good will is going to be transmitted to the students and their families.

While I don't believe that actual democracy is possible under a constitution that elevates sharia to the position of primacy, I do believe that Iraq has the potential to be a model for the ME.

It would be shameful to abandon the Iraqis to AQ and its allies in the Democratic party. I don't think much of the Petraeus surge and I hope that the President demands more from him than he offered last week. I've found Alaa at The Mesopotamian to be the most consistant of the Iraqi bloggers and the linked post presents a more rational view of a strategic rather than tactical focus than does the Petraeus 'surge without end'. The only clear addition that I would make to Alaa's ideas is that turnover of specific areas would occur 'ready or not'. The IP and the IA have the manpower advantage to take and hold any area in Iraq - if they have to.

The Winograd Report

Israel continues in the ancient Western tradition (instituted by the Greeks some 2,500 years ago, albeit with some curious results) by publishing an audit report of Israel's campaign in Lebanon last summer. Both the Jerusalem Post and Haaretz treat the report respectfully. The reports summary conclusion:

10. The main failures in the decisions made and the decision-making processes can be summed up as follows:

a. The decision to respond with an immediate, intensive military strike was not based on a detailed, comprehensive and authorized military plan, based on careful study of the complex characteristics of the Lebanon arena. A meticulous examination of these characteristics would have revealed the following: the ability to achieve military gains having significant political-international weight was limited; an Israeli military strike would inevitably lead to missiles fired at the Israeli civilian north; there was not other effective military response to such missile attacks than an extensive and prolonged ground operation to capture the areas from which the missiles were fired - which would have a high "cost" and which did not enjoy broad support. These difficulties were not explicitly raised with the political leaders before the decision to strike was taken.

b. Consequently, in making the decision to go to war, the government did not consider the whole range of options, including that of continuing the policy of 'containment', or combining political and diplomatic moves with military strikes below the 'escalation level', or military preparations without immediate military action -- so as to maintain for Israel the full range of responses to the abduction. This failure reflects weakness in strategic thinking, which derives the response to the event from a more comprehensive and encompassing picture.

c. The support in the cabinet for this move was gained in part through ambiguity in the presentation of goals and modes of operation, so that ministers with different or even contradictory attitudes could support it. The ministers voted for a vague decision, without understanding and knowing its nature and implications. They authorized to commence a military campaign without considering how to exit it.

d. Some of the declared goals of the war were not clear and could not be achieved, and in part were not achievable by the authorized modes of military action.

e. The IDF did not exhibit creativity in proposing alternative action possibilities, did not alert the political decision-makers to the discrepancy between its own scenarios and the authorized modes of action, and did not demand - as was necessary under its own plans - early mobilization of the reserves so they could be equipped and trained in case a ground operation would be required.

f. Even after these facts became known to the political leaders, they failed to adapt the military way of operation and its goals to the reality on the ground. On the contrary, declared goals were too ambitious, and it was publicly states that fighting will continue till they are achieved. But the authorized military operations did not enable their achievement.

11. The primary responsibility for these serious failings rests with the Prime Minister, the minister of defense and the (outgoing) Chief of Staff. We single out these three because it is likely that had any of them acted better - the decisions in the relevant period and the ways they were made, as well as the outcome of the war, would have been significantly better.

That is a statement of facts which were obvious within a week of Olmert's decision to initiate military action.

AP's headline: Olmert Will Not Resign After Report indicates a detachment from reality that is Clintonian in nature.

I wonder how Hezbollah is treating the Israelis whose kidnapping was the causus belli for the fracas? Someone should ask Olmert how Ehud (Udi) Goldwasser and Eldad Regev are doing these days. Just to see if he remembers their names.

Kurds to Baghdad - Go Fish

The KRG is rejecting the oil compact on the basis that it is unconstitutional. That might be a negotiating bluff but it might be absolutely sincere - the KRG minister was certainly eloquent in his rebuttal and quite detailed in his analysis of the various fields.

If the Baghdad government attempts to go forward with the proposed centralized monstrosity outlined in the Dubai Annexes then we can rest assured that the average Iraqi will gain the same benefit from new fields that they enjoyed under Saddam from the old ones - or that the average Iranian or Saudi peasant enjoys.

Buddy made an excellent point concerning democracy's chance for success in Iraq being improved considerably by the average Iraqi having an actual stake as a citizen of Iraq rather than as a serf controlled by some petty desert despot. It could make a very significant and favorable difference in the probable outcome.

Using Kurd oil money to pay extortion to Sunni Arab sheiks shouldn't be acceptable to anyone and using a state owned monopoly which hasn't a hope of transparency to do so may be enough to move the Kurds from autonomy to a declaration of independence. Who could blame them? They've never had a real stake in the fiction of Iraq since the Brits drew the boundary lines on a map.

Current Iraqi production is around 2.3 million bbls per day which (at $50 bbl) translates to a per capita income of $1,500 (total per capita income today is around $2,900). If the KRG minister is correct in his computation that total output could rise to 8 miilion bbls per day then per capita oil income would move to around $5,600 per year.

One might wonder if most of the violence in Iraq isn't driven by speculative investment concerning control of that oil income stream.

Which side will Washington support? If democracy is really an objective, the Kurds should be in good shape.

Run Away, Run Away

Is it not one of the deepest themes of American history, of the American consciousness, the notion that no matter how bad things become we can always escape? We can always go further west, over the next ridge, disperse across the prairies. We can always move on. We can always find our way into the Sunset, or California, which ever comes first. We can always quit the job. "You can take this job and shove it" was once the title of a perennially popular song. We believe that when we quit our job everything will be fine, much better in fact. Is this not one of the most enduring elements of our national mythology, so deeply embedded in our consciousness that we are not even cognizant of its power over us, not even aware of the gross distortion of reality which this mythos represents?

Such at any rate is the fundamental if banal theme upon which the movie The Devil Wears Prada (IMDB Rating: 6.70) revolves. The plot on this level is common if not commonplace in American movies and literature. Jejeune hero (in this case heroine) finds himself in bad circumstances, said circumstances having been caused by the maleficence of an evil character ("The Devil"), hero learns the hard way about reality, hero simply quits and—mirabile dictu—all is well, life is golden.


Movies and novels interest me for a number of reasons, one of which is the glimpse they sometimes offer into other worlds, other milieus which would in the course of quotidian life completely escape my experience. The world of high fashion holds very little intrinsic interest for me; yet a portal into this alien microcosm can't help but hold some interest. If a portal into other worlds appeals to you as well, then that's the first reason to see this film.

Celebrated though it may be in certain circles, there aren't many such reasons to see it. As one review on IMDB has it: "Let's see, it goes something like this; basically decent, idealistic, young (man/woman) goes to (New York/Chicago/Los Angeles/D.C.) to make his/her mark in (writing/business/music/acting/government) only to be temporarily seduced by the very environment/person they are the antithesis of, alienating his/her(boyfriend/girlfriend/family/friends/all of the above) in the process until he/she stumbles on to the revelation, "To thine own self be true." Devil is all of this. . . again. Only the trendy names being dropped have been updated for those who find that sort of thing significant enough to make them believe this is somehow a different story."

That assessment is a little harsh. There is actually one overwhelming reason to see this film: it provides the only contemporary and au courant portrayal of one of the oldest, and most misunderstood by contemporary Americans, pillars of social organizations, despotism.



Despotism is so alien to the American Mind that we foolishly believe we have banned it and outgrown it, and that, like slavery, horse-drawn carriages, and smallpox, it is a forgotten relic of the distant past never to be seen again. But though it is contrary to our national mythology to say so, despotism is ubiquitous in human relations, if not uniform. I personally have suffered through two tyrannical work situations, one in academia and one in private industry. Until you have been inside one, you can't quite imagine how bad it can be, indeed, cannot quite believe in the reality of tyranny at all. The essence of tyranny is not the threat of violence or unknown gulags. As depicted well in this film, tyranny succeeds because the victims become "willing executioners" in the absence of better choices. It is an odd and unpleasant state; one is slowly converted by the ineffable but very real power of the despot into simultaneous victim and fellow perpetrator. Though I have personally experienced the reality of the process, I have never been able to adequately convey the situation to others, and so, like a rape victim, I have remained silent and guilty. This movie manages to convey the willing and yet unwilling transformation of innocent into guilty fellow traveler.

The star of this performance is Meryl Streep, whose character Miranda Priestly (based on the real-life editor of Vogue magazine) manages to perfectly capture one of the two tyrants I have worked under. The quiet voice, never raised, coupled with the ever-present nebulous but potent threat is the essence of the method used. I have never seen this discussed in public, let alone captured so perfectly in any form. No doubt many who have never experienced it themselves will dismiss it as mere fiction. But surely anyone who has risen to any height in Hollywood, a major corporation, or government knows better.



The ending of this movie is Hollywoodized, by which word we usually mean brought into pleasant conformance with the prevailing optimistic American spirit. When the main character runs away by quitting the job, Miranda Priestly actually helps her get her next job, and even smiles at her. Would that it were so. Real-world tyranny is different. In the real world, the main character would "never have worked in this town again". While it is nice to have pleasant endings, we undoubtedly do ourselves, our society, and our foreign policy an enormous disservice by downplaying and belittling the real-life cost of resisting tyranny, of preserving freedom. Generations raised on soothing Hollywood pabulum can never begin to comprehend the harsh reality that running away is not always an option.

Will the Turkish Army Act?

The recent Turkish elections provide an excellent example of mob rule democracy being subverted (or simply used as a tool) by islamists intent upon returning Turkey to the halcyon days of yore when every man knew his place (and if his place was at the bottom - well, he could always beat his wife with impunity).

The polite fiction of democracy has been upheld by the autocrats running the Turkish army since the days of Ataturk, whose own success was based upon military rather than political prowess. After the ethnic cleansing (which came very close to genocide) of the Armenian Christians in Turkey, Ataturk was able to use the gentle art of persuasion by sword and bayonet to convince the clerics (those whom survived) that safety was only to be found outside of government - no matter what the Koran says. In order to insure that this understanding was passed on to their sucessors, Ataturk made sure that the schools which turned out the sucessor generations were controlled by the 'government' and that the theology taught was properly shaped to encompass secularism.

The system worked very well for seventy-five years, the people got to vote, the generals got to rule and the clerics got to live. Over the past ten-fifteen years the islamists have made inroads - actual islamic theology is being taught and the imams have been preaching about the wondrous, idyllic life that can be achieved through submission. While Turks are somewhat smarter than Arabs, they're not that much smarter and so a mob majority has voted themselves back under the heel of religious tyranny. True 'democracy' in action.

Turkey does have the largest secular movement in the ME. It is making its voice heard but it is definitely a minority voice. To whom will the army listen? More importantly, if the army acts in time honored fashion and slaughters the imams fomenting a return to darkness, which side should the West support?

Mob rule or a 'modernity' maintained by force?

Petraeus Takes....

a break?

a nap?

a walk?

After reading the complete transcript of his presser, the word that wouldn't fit is 'charge'. If this is the best he can do, then the President has replaced McClellan with McClellan or Westmoreland with Westmoreland. When a military commander talks about how 'complex' the situation is, the next step is generally a request for more resources.

I can draw the correct conclusion from his remarks concerning the democracy project - the elected government is a corrupt shambles, unable to to do a damn thing without American (or NGO) minders holding their hands and very intent upon stealing any money that passes within reach. That's unsurprising. I was a bit dismayed to read about the apparently recent discovery that the tribal links and methods of operations were actually of some import. It really shouldn't have taken four years to figure out how sheiks accrete and maintain influence. In fact, Machiavelli provided a precis on muslim power structures about five hundred years ago. Montesquieu amplified Machiavelli's efforts some 250 years later and both men's analyses hold true today.

Petraeus is no fool and I really can't fault him for his focus on the inconsequential because I don't believe that he has been given any mandate whatsoever to do more than exchange pawns at an advantageous rate. The problem is that even at a 1,000/1 ratio, the sheiks, mullahs, ayatollahs and oily princes still retain a tremendous advantage. An individual muslim is a liability in every single islamic country - the more killed, the better for the leaders. Every American killed is a loss to the US.

The game won't change until we start putting the sheiks, mullahs, ayatollahs and oily princes in the ground on a wholesale basis. Petraeus knows it. Maybe some day he will say it.

UPDATE: The White House does a good job of "tightening" Petraeus' remarks. I wonder where shelling Baghdad fits into his plan.

Where is Bono?

Call me cynical but it seems to me that there are a lot of people out there who like to talk about saving Africa, but when one man...namely Paul Wolfowitz, not Bono...actually does something to help the poor people who live there...well he gets shafted for his trouble. Time and again the good old boys find a way to turn institutions like the World Bank or the United Nations into some sort slush fund account for international thieves and parasites. If they do not allow people like Wolfowitz or Bolton to bring reform to these institutions, will the time come when the American people refuse to support them any longer? Will they kill the golden goose?

From the Opinion Journal:

"I would say that Wolfowitz's performance over the last several years and his leadership on African issues should certainly feature prominently in the discussions . . . . In the Liberian case and the case of many forgotten post-conflict fragile countries, he has been a visionary. He has been absolutely supportive, responsive, there for us . . . . We think that he has done a lot to bring Africa in general . . . into the limelight and has certainly championed our cause over the last two years of his leadership, and we look forward to it continuing."

The deputy prime minister for Mauritius, Rama Krishna Sithanen, then piped in that "he has been supportive of reforms in our country . . . . We think that he has done a good job. More specifically, he has apologized for what has happened."

Sub-Saharan Africa is the world's poorest region, and Mr. Wolfowitz has appropriately made it his top priority. On his first day on the job, he met with a large group of African ambassadors and advocates. His first trip as bank president was a swing through Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Rwanda and South Africa. He also recruited two African-born women vice presidents, a rarity at the bank.

If you're surprised by that last fact, then you don't appreciate that the World Bank has always been a sinecure for developed-world politicians. They get handsome salaries, tax free, and their performance is measured not by how much poverty they cure but by how much money they disperse.

Mr. Wolfowitz has upset this sweetheart status quo by focusing more on results, and especially on the corruption that undermines development and squanders foreign aid. Yet many of the poor countries themselves welcome such intervention. At the same April 14 press conference, Zambian Finance Minister N'Gandu Peter Magande endorsed the anticorruption agenda:

"We should keep positive that whatever happens to the president, if, for example, he was to leave, I think whoever comes, we insist that he continues where we have been left, in particular on this issue of anticorruption. That is a cancer that has seen quite a lot of our countries lose development and has seen the poverty continuing in our countries. And therefore . . . we want to live up to what [Wolfowitz] made us believe" that "it is important for ourselves to keep to those high standards."

Good luck with that.

Canada Joins the 3D World

The first 3D Canadian city, Calgary, has gone live on Virtual Earth tonight. Way to go Canada!

P.S. Don't miss Britain's favorite seaside resort:

Mr. Popularity he ain't

I am talking about Harry Reid, Surrender in Chief. From Don Surber:

Senate Plurality Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, said: “I’m not going to get into a name-calling match with the administration’s chief attack dog (VP Cheney). … I’m not going to get into a name-calling match with somebody who has a 9 percent approval rating.”

This just in: Cheney is more popular than Reid.

Reported the Wall Street Journal: “Among other individuals included in the poll, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) saw her approval rating fall to 30% in April from 38% in February, shortly after her swearing-in as the first female House speaker. Approval for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) slipped to 22%, from 23% in February but up from 19% a year ago.”

Cheney’s approval rate? 25%.

Well Reid just got his Surrender bill passed with a 51-46 vote. Not exactly veto proof.

Don't it make ya proud?

From Captains Quarters :

The House rejected the message from General David Petraeus, the man the Senate sent just three months ago to command the American forces in Iraq, and voted for a supplemental spending bill that will require the start of an American withdrawal by October 1. It passed on the barest of majorities and has no hope of surviving a veto, but the Democrats insist that they will play this game of chicken all the way to its conclusion:

The House on Wednesday narrowly approved a $124 billion war spending bill that would require American troops to begin withdrawing from Iraq by Oct. 1, setting the stage for the first veto fight between President Bush and majority Democrats.

Only hours after Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander in Iraq, told lawmakers that he needed more time to gauge the effectiveness of a troop buildup there, the House voted 218 to 208 pass a measure that sought the removal of most combat forces by next spring. Mr. Bush has said unequivocally and repeatedly that he will veto it.

“This bill is a statement that Congress will no longer fund the war as it exists today,” said Representative Louise Slaughter, the New York Democrat who is chairwoman of the Rules Committee, as she opened the debate. Republicans accused Democrats of establishing a “date certain” for America’s defeat in Iraq.

“There will be no greater event to empower radical Islam than our retreat and defeat from Iraq,” said Representative Jeb Hensarling of Texas, leader of a conservative wing of House Republicans.

The Democrats want to send the bill to the White House on Monday, April 30th, one day before the fourth anniversary of his appearance on an aircraft carrier flying a banner that read, "Mission Accomplished". Never mind that the banner referred to the carrier group's mission; the Democrats want to use the bill to score a few more political points, on top of declaring defeat and funding some of their pet pork projects. They have even coordinated with outside groups to use the anniversary for television advertisements.

Well Generals Pelosi and Reid have spoken. I bet AlQaida and the mad mullahs are getting a real kick out of this. I espeically like the provision that would allow for a small number {how many?} of Americans to stay and protect American interests or fight some terrorists in some places. You betcha. Can you imagine being one of a handful of Americans left in Iraq when these people get done surrendering. Might as well put a bulls eye on those boys.

QUIZ

Which of the four men shown above is most worthy of the trust of the American people?

(answer below)
D - Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini became completely trustworthy on June 3, 1989. The rest of them are still alive and equal in ethical and moral stature.

Will Murtha apologize?

If this story posted by Clarice Feldman is true, will we be hearing an apology from Congressman Murtha for slandering the Marine Corps by calling the soldiers cold blooded murderers following an attack in Haditha, Iraq which left several Iraqi civilians dead? And will the media take a break from attacking the US Army for the mistakes surrounding the friendly fire death of Pat Tillman three years ago and admit that in this case, they were the ones who got it wrong?

In a nutshell, the case exploded when an intelligence officer dropped a bombshell on prosecutors during a pre-hearing interview when he revealed the existence of exculpatory evidence that appears to have been obtained by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) and withheld from the prosecutors.
This officer, described by senior Marine Corps superiors as one of the best and most dedicated intelligence officers in the entire Marine Corps, was in possession of evidence which provided a minute-by-minute narrative of the entire day’s action — material which he had amassed while monitoring the day’s action in his capacity as the battalion’s intelligence officer. That material, he says, was also in the hands of the NCIS.
Much of that evidence remains classified, but it includes videos of the entire day’s action, including airstrikes against insurgent safe houses. Also included was all of the radio traffic describing the ongoing action between the men on the ground and battalion headquarters, and proof that the Marines were aware that the insurgents conducting the ambush of the Kilo Company troops were videotaping the action — the same video that after editing ended up in the hands of a gullible anti-war correspondent for Time magazine.
When asked by the prosecution team to give his copies of the evidence to the prosecution, he told NewsMax.com that he was reluctant to do so, fearing it would again be suppressed or misused, but later relented when ordered by his commanding general to do so.
Confronted by the massive mounds of evidence that Marine Corps sources tell NewsMax proves conclusively that the cases against the Haditha Marines are baseless, the prosecutors were forced to postpone the Article 32 against Lt. Col. Chessani and two of the enlisted men in an attempt to regroup.[/quote]
Clarice Feldman

Lookin' Out My Front Door

After Sunday's hailstorm. Still too early for locusts....

Is Anyone As Disgusted With Harry Reid As I Am?

Just asking for an opinion.

His assertion, in response to a question by CNN's Dana Bash, he is merely agreeing with Petraeus that the war is lost is the last straw for me:

BASH: The phrase "the war is lost" really touched a nerve.Do you stand by
that — that — that comment?

REID: General Petraeus has said that only 20 percent of the war can be won
militarily. He's the man on the ground there now. He said 80 percent of the war
has to be won diplomatically, economically and politically. I agree with General
Petraeus.Now, that is clear and I certainly believe that.

BASH: But, sir, General Petraeus has not said the war is lost.I just want
to ask you again...

REID: General — General Petraeus has said the war cannot be won militarily.
He said that. And President Bush is doing nothing economically. He is doing
nothing diplomatically. He is not doing even the minimal requested by the Iraq
Study Group.So I — I stick with General Petraeus. I have no doubt that the war
cannot be won militarily, and that's what I said last Thursday and I stick with
that.

Reid's cynicism is breathtaking. Nevada needs to get a grip.

Cold as ice

Teen girl 'slaughtered two kittens before friend'

A TEENAGE schoolgirl slaughtered two kittens in preparation for the cold-blooded and premeditated murder of her friend, a Perth court has been told.

In what has been described as a callous and vicious attack on 15-year-old Eliza Jane Davis, her two "friends" strangled her with a piece of speaker wire while holding a chemical-soaked cloth over her mouth...

...there appeared to be no motive for the frenzied attack on the teenager.

One of the girls had told police: "We knew it was wrong, but it didn't feel wrong at all, it just felt right."...

...Eliza was... grabbed from behind and a piece of speaker wire was wrapped around her neck twice and pulled tightly.

"The only thing I was thinking about was trying to pull it as tight as I could," the girl told police.

Once Eliza was dead, her body was pushed down a stairway and covered with sand in a 40cm grave underneath the house.

One of the girls reported her missing and even helped Eliza's mother in efforts to find her.

"As our friend, we did not really want her to suffer," one of the girls told police.

What am I missing about the effects of ice? I have a machine that makes the stuff and even grinds it up if I push a button. Maybe I better get rid of it.

[Prosecutor Simon Stone] said one of the girls and Eliza had taken ice the night before the murder but it was not an amount that would affect the girls' sense of right and wrong.

"At best there may have been a slight intoxication by the residual effects of the ice that was taken the night before.

We need to get control of ice and speaker wire!

I don't know if any of you saw Extreme Makeover Home Edition tonight but my brother was on the crew that built the new house for SFC Gene Westbrook and his family of Lawton, Oklahoma. Gene was wounded in Iraq and confined to a wheelchair. After his return the family was in a car wreck which left his 9 year old son James paralyzed as well. The town of Lawton, home of Fort Sill, came together and helped get this much deserved assistance for the Westbrook family. God knows, they earned it.

French Election Results

So, where do the Bayrou and Le Pen voters go two weeks from now? Everyone to the right of Sarkozy in the graphic is on the left, well, except for maybe Le Pen, who is something of a national leftist. Hey, looks like someone got the sides reversed! It looks like the pre-election polls were pretty accurate, so we will probably get a good idea of the runoff results before the voters vote.

h/t : No Pasaran

Why do they do it?

Why do the Democrats stand for defeat? John at Power Line says the answer is hatred:

In truth, the Democrats have needlessly put themselves in a rhetorical hole with their talk about "losing" in Iraq. They would be much better served to argue (as some do, of course) that the game is not worth the candle: that our security interests are not sufficiently at stake in Iraq to justify more than a year's worth of further costs. This argument would avoid the valid charge of defeatism. Moreover, it would be consistent with the Democrats' policy of setting a deadline for withdrawal.

If we have already lost in Iraq, then it is irrational to continue funding the war for another year. On the other hand, it is logical to say that we haven't yet lost in Iraq, and that we have enough security interests there to justify some further effort and some additional costs, but that those interests are sufficiently peripheral that if another twelve months aren't enough to bring success, the costs have exceeded any potential benefits, and we should pull the plug.

So why do so many Democrats persist in defeatist rhetoric which alienates millions of voters, has little empirical basis, and is inconsistent with their own policy prescription? I think this is another case where the Democrats' Bush-hatred has gotten the better of them. To take a rational approach to evaluating our progress over the coming months, the Democrats would have to acknowledge that we do have security interests in Iraq and that President Bush's policy may yet be vindicated. This, they cannot bring themselves to do. Rather than arguing for a policy that a substantial majority of Americans may well accept, they prefer to antagonize millions of voters while at the same time making nonsense of their own Congressional votes.

Hate can do funny things to politicians.

I think it is more than that. There is a commercial I have seen in which some old baby boomer sitting in a fancy office says he is going to use some service {I forget what it is} so that he can stick it to the man. His young assistant says But sir, you are the man. To which the old boy responds, Maybe.

I think liberals have found themselves in a world in which they are the man. They are the people running the World Bank with all of its phenomenal corruption. They are the people responsible for the United Nations with its corruption and incompetence on display every day. They are the people who railed against the likes of Saddam Hussein for years, only to rail against the United States even more. The truth is if they have to choose between the leader of the free world, the President of the United States and some tin pot dictator with a swiss bank account...they are more than likely to choose the dictator.

For years, they played the rebellious teenager speaking truth to power and now they find they are the power. And guess what? They are no better than the other guy. That is what is eating at them. They know they can't reason with the Iranians or the Syrians or people like Hugo Chavez or that nutcase in North Korea. They have shown time and again that all they can do is declare defeat and demand reform. They are good at the defeat part, after all it is some other poor bastard who is sitting out on that limb they are sawing off, but the reform part...not so good. They will spend a lot more time complaining about Wolfowitz than they will the 800 billion lost to corruption at the World Bank. After all, if they go after the Mugabes of the world they will lose the support of those dictators. Better to let them line their pockets and pretend not to notice the kickbacks. Just blame the poverty on capitalism and free trade and ignore the obvious thievery.

They will not demand anyone go to jail over the Food for Oil scandal even though it made a mockery of the United Nations, an institution they show reverence for. No, they will go suck up to Assad and pretend he did not kill the political opposition in Lebanon. They will turn their back on democracy in Iraq. They will whine about the Patriot Act, but they will demand we talk to the Mad Mullahs who are proud of the fact that they publicly execute women of ill repute. They will worry over global warming and the supposed end of the world, but they will not deal with the threats that face us in the here and now. They don't know how.

The Democrats woke up in the world of the 21st century and discovered they are the man. And all they know how to do is bitch. And while bitching might be fun, it doesn't fix a damn thing.

Copperheads

I saw this over at Best of the Web:

Latter-Day Copperhead

* "I believe . . . that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is shown by the extreme violence in Iraq this week."--Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, April 19, 2007

* "Resolved, that this convention does explicitly declare, as the sense of the American people, that after four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war, during which, under the pretence of military necessity, or war power higher than the Constitution, the Constitution itself has been disregarded in every part, and public liberty and private right alike trodden down, and the material prosperity of the country essentially impaired, justice, humanity, liberty, and the public welfare demand that immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities, with a view to an ultimate convention of the States or other peaceable means, to the end that at the earliest practicable moment peace may be restored on the basis of the federal Union of the States."--1864 Democratic platform