What if John F. Kennedy had lived?

Such questions used to be the province of novelists. Only recently have historians begun to take such questions seriously.

As Niall Ferguson points out in his remarkable book “Virtual History” these “what if” questions or counterfactuals were considered little more than a parlor game until it became clear that scholars could, in fact, measure some of the impact one man or one event had on the historical timeline. (This book is a must read for its introduction alone which, in 90 pages, covers the history of historical philosophy in the western world from the time of Homer.)

This kind of alternative history is always fun. Let’s begin with a few basic alternative scenarios involving Oswald.

1. Suppose Roy Truly, Oswald’s employer at the book depository, had known or been told by the FBI that Oswald had been a defector? Oswald would have been fired and thus prevented from using the book depository as a sniper’s perch.

2. Suppose Oswald’s wife Marina hadn’t rejected his attempt at reconciliation the night before the assassination? This one’s sort of a stretch, but it’s clear Oswald was despondent over his failure to patch up his marriage. Marina also certainly would have made Oswald promise not to do “anything crazy” as she termed the attempted assassination of General Walker.

3. Suppose the FBI had told the secret service that Oswald was in Dallas? Agent Hosty of the FBI never thought of informing the secret service that Oswald was a threat. His reason? He didn’t know Oswald had left his job at the photo lab (which was nowhere near the motorcade route) and went to work at the book depository.

4. Suppose any one of several witnesses who saw Oswald in the 6th floor window of the depository had told a policeman or the secret service prior to the motorcade’s arrival in Dealy Plaza? Oswald sat in full view of the crowd below sighting his rifle for more than 20 minutes prior to the assassination. All the witnesses assumed he was a secret service agent.

What about Kennedy and his aides?

1. Suppose the Kennedy people had decided not to have the luncheon Kennedy was on his way to at the Dallas Trade Mart? There were two other possibilities that were rejected. If they had held the event somewhere else, Kennedy would have avoided the ambush.

2. Suppose Kennedy hadn’t gone to Dallas in the first place? John Connally didn’t want Kennedy interfering in the ongoing war he was waging against the liberal wing of the Texas Democratic Party and his nemeses Rep. Henry Gonzalez. Connally (among others) urged Kennedy not to go.

3. Suppose Secret Service Agent Roy Kellerman had floored the limo after hearing the second shot hit the President? The bullet, which entered Kennedy’s back and exited right below his adams apple was serious but not fatal. Kellerman had almost four seconds between that shot and the third and fatal shot. Instead of speeding up, Kellerman slowed to about 6 miles an hour giving Oswald an almost stationary target 88 yards away. Kennedy’s head looked as big as a pumpkin in Oswald’s telescopic sight. He could hardly have missed.

This is all well and good. But what if Kennedy had lived?

Conventional wisdom is that we wouldn’t have gotten bogged down in Viet Nam and that civil rights legislation would have moved through the Congress earlier. This assumes that Kennedy would have won the 1964 election against Goldwater. But, is all of that true?

1. There is a myth that Kennedy was enormously popular at the time of his death and would, like Johnson, have buried Goldwater in 1964. Both suppositions are wrong. Kennedy’s approval rating was at barely 50% in November of 1963. And the entire purpose of his going to Texas was to patch up the political feuds that threatened to give the state to Republicans in 1964. It seems probable that Goldwater, who ended up being very competitive in the south against Johnson would have had a real shot at cutting into what, at the time, was a solid base of support for the Democrats in the old confederacy. Couple that with the loss of the “sympathy vote” Johnson got in 1964 and all of a sudden Goldwater looks like a serious competitor.

2. No myth has been more resilient than the belief that, if Kennedy had lived, America wouldn’t have gotten bogged down in Viet Nam. Kennedy apologists have advanced this theory for years. Unfortunately, history tells a different story.

First, if Kennedy had tried to withdraw from South Viet Nam after the election, his own party would have turned against him. All the major committees in Congress (yes, ALL of them) were chaired by Southern Democrats. At the very least, these southerners would have demanded some kind of quid pro quo on civil rights in return for Kennedy sticking it out in Viet Nam.

In addition, whoever was President in the Spring of 1965 would have faced the same decision that President Johnson faced; the imminent collapse of the South Vietnamese military in the face of communist aggression. Such a clear defeat of a US ally would not have been tolerated by the American people at the time and would have handed Republicans an election winning issue in 1968.

3. Detente with the Russians. This “what if” is cited most often by conspiracy buffs when trying to pin the assassination on the CIA or the military. Frankly, I can’t imagine where this kind of liberal fantasy came from. The fact is that John Kennedy was the best friend the CIA and the military ever had (until Reagan). He gave the CIA absolute carte blanche in wide swaths of the world including Latin America and Viet Nam. He almost DOUBLED the defense budget in less than 4 years.

And as far as detente with Russia, this is the President that said at his inaugural that “we will bear any burden, pay any price” in the cause of freedom. Kennedy was, in fact, the coldest of cold warriors. And while the Cuban missile crisis sobered him somewhat, he never the less made it clear that he would confront Soviet expansionism wherever he could.

4. How serious was Kennedy about civil rights? The history of the Kennedy administration and civil rights was one of reaction. Kennedy’s proposals were only made after Birmingham made it clear that the civil rights movement was determined to achieve equality. His somewhat modest proposals were in fact expanded by Lyndon Johnson and presented to the country as part of JFK’s legacy. It remains one of the great mysteries of the Kennedy administration as to whether or not Kennedy could in fact have even gotten his modest proposals through the Congress. Johnson’s legendary lobbying prowess would have been not have been utilized to the fullest if one were to go by how the administration used Johnson in the first term.

Now, wasn’t that fun? Send me an email or leave a comment if you have any other interesting “what ifs” about Kennedy. I’ll post as many as I can.

Forty-one years ago tomorrow, Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots in 8.2 seconds from the six floor of the Texas School Book Depository wounding the Governor of Texas and killing the then President of the United States John F. Kennedy.

These are the facts of history. No amount of wishful thinking, twisting of reality, or outright falsification will change this.

For thirty five years, I have devoured every major book postulating a conspiracy in the murder of President Kennedy. I’ve waded through the fever swamps of the hard left, the hard right, and everywhere in between. I’ve read the Warren Report, the House Select Committee on Assassinations Report, the Report by the National Academy of Sciences, which debunked the House Committee contention of a second gunman.

And I managed to sit through Oliver Stone’s “JFK.”

No…I will not link to this movie. If it were up to me, this piece of trash like its sister tissue of lies and distortions “Fahrenheit 9/11” would be consigned to the ash heap of history and both of its makers sued for damaging the American psyche.

For Oliver Stone to make a hero of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, as he did in “JFK” is as big a disservice to history as Michael Moore trying to destroy the reputation of the President of the United States in F9/11. In Stone’s case, his motivations were unclear. I would guess that, like many Americans, Stone’s perspective has been poisoned by the conspiracy theorists…who turn out to be the oddest, the strangest bunch of gadflys, malcontents, and misanthropes to ever try to place an imprint on history. The fact that Stone gave free reign to these nuts says more about Stone and his beliefs than anything else.

Stone’s lionization of Garrison needs to be clarified. Jim Garrison was a homophobic, self promoting, politically ambitious DA who saw his prosecution of Clay Shaw as his ticket to the governorship of Louisiana. Don’t believe me? Here’s Jim Phelan of the Saturday Evening Post who interviewed Garrison for an article on the prosecution:

“In an effort to get Garrison’s story into focus, I asked him the motive of the Kennedy conspirators. He told me that the murder at Dallas had been a homosexual plot.

“They had the same motive as Loeb and Leopold, when they murdered Bobbie Franks in Chicago back in the twenties,” Garrison said. “It was a homosexual thrill-killing, plus the excitement of getting away with a perfect crime. John Kennedy was everything that Dave Ferrie was not — a successful, handsome, popular, wealthy, virile man. You can just picture the charge Ferrie got out of plotting his death.”

I asked how he had learned that the murder was a homosexual plot. “Look at the people involved,” Garrison said. “Dave Ferrie, homosexual. Clay Shaw, homosexual. Jack Ruby, homosexual.”

“Ruby was a homosexual?”

“Sure, we dug that out,” Garrison said. “His homosexual nickname was Pinkie. That’s three. Then there was Lee Harvey Oswald.”

But Oswald was married and had two children, I pointed out.

“A switch-hitter who couldn’t satisfy his wife,” Garrison said. “That’s all in the Warren Report.” He named two more “key figures” whom he labeled homosexual.

“That’s six homosexuals in the plot,” Garrison said. “One or maybe two, okay. But all six homosexual? How far can you stretch the arm of coincidence?”


Garrison had conducted several high profile sweeps of the French Quarter rounding up gay men and prosecuting them. The sweeps were conducted prior to his re-election campaigns and designed to bolster his image as being tough on “morality crimes.”

His prosecution of Clay Shaw is considered to be one of the most egregious examples of prosecutorial misconduct in the history of American jurisprudence. For months, Garrison had been telling the press he was “close” to cracking the JFK conspiracy. He tried to entrap various people by planting evidence, including anti-castro Cubans and two men loosely connected to the FBI-David Ferrie and Jack Martin. When it became clear that he would have to charge someone or look like a fool, he latched on to Mr. Shaw, a prominent citizen in New Orleans, who led a secret life as a homosexual.

Mr. Garrison’s one “witness” was a 25 year old insurance salesman with a history of mental illness. It took less than an hour for Shaw’s attorney’s to destroy his credibility and it took the jury 52 minutes to find Shaw not guilty. (One of the jurors said afterward that the reason it took so “long” to reach a verdict was that most of them had to go to the bathroom before they deliberated.)

Below, I’ve listed some books that I believe are fairly representative of the conspiracy mindset as well as books that support the Warren Commission’s findings.

One note on the Commission: There’s no doubt the Commission did some sloppy work and that they were programmed by Johnson to whitewash, to some extent, any conspiracy ideas. The reason was simple and, fairly innocent: Johnson believed that there WAS a conspiracy and it involved either Moscow or Havanna. If the Commission had found such evidence, Johnson would have been forced by an outraged country to act on that information, i.e. go to war.

DEATH OF A PRESIDENT by William Manchester

One of the preeminent historians of the 20th century, Manchester’s book is THE STARTING POINT for anyone who wishes to investigate the assassination. Manchester found himself shadowing the Warren Commission; interviewing witnesses sometimes before and sometimes after the Commission attorneys. His description of that weekend is, to my mind, the most moving of any I’ve read. Absolutely essential to understand the death of Kennedy and put it in historical context.

CASE CLOSED by Gerald Posner

Posner has done an enormous service to historians as his book debunks both Stone’s movie and the major conspiracy theories that Stone based his movie on. What’s remarkable, is that Posner started his 5 year investigation by believing in a conspiracy of some kind to kill Kennedy. What he found was, that while the Warren Commission made several glaring errors in accuracy and omission, to still holds up well to this day. I might mention that Posner has some admiration for some of the more serious conspiracy theorists and only faults their conclusions.

ENEMIES WITHIN by Robert Goldberg

A major work on the history and motivations of conspiracy theories in western society, Goldberg’s work deals with the JFK conspiracy theories from a scholarly point of view. I found this book fascinating because it reveals WHY people WANT to believe in conspiracies.

FATAL HOUR: THE ASSASSINATION OF KENNEDY BY ORGANIZED CRIME by Robert Blakely

Blakely, who as Chief Counsel for the House Select Committee has written a thoughtful book fingering both Ruby and Oswald as having ties to organized crime, specifically the Marcello family in New Orleans.

Like the other conspiracy books I’ll list below, it suffers from one major flaw; no evidence to support the facts. In this case, the links between Ruby/Oswald and Marcello are tenuous at best. And other investigators who specialize in organized crime have categorically denied the mob would have been so stupid as to use two losers like Oswald and Ruby for ANYTHING.

BEST EVIDENCE by David Lifton

Lifton’s 800 page tome is a perfect example of an author’s enthusiasm for his subject matter getting the better of his common sense. Extremely well researched, Lifton’s book falls short for a variety of reasons, too many to list here. The book postulates that Kennedy’s body was spirited away (At the hospital? Maybe. Before it boarded AF 1? Perhaps. On the way to Bethesda? Could be) and “surgically altered” to make the wounds appear to have come from behind.

The entire premise for the book rests on one assumption; that Kennedy’s body was left alone long enough for it to be stolen. Members of the Military who read this will know that wasn’t possible. General Godfrey McHugh, Kennedy’s air force aid, stayed with his fallen CIC from the time he was pronounced dead until the honor guard received the casket in front of the White House. How does Lifton get around this? He says that McHugh is “mistaken.”

CROSSFIRE: THE PLOT THAT KILLED KENNEDY by Jim Marrs

There’s something for everyone in this conspiracy book that Oliver Stone relied on so heavily to write the screenplay for JFK. The CIA, the FBI, Lyndon Johnson, big business, even the secret service. The only thing I’ll say about this book is refer the reader to two other books written by Marrs: Alien Agenda: Investigating the Extraterrestrial Presence Among Us and Inside Job: Unmasking the Conspiracies of 9/11.

‘Nuff said?

RUSH TO JUDGEMENT by Mark Lane

Lane is the grandaddy of conspiracy theorists. Rush to Judgment was a runaway best seller and inspired an entire generation of buffs, not to mention Jim Garrison himself. He was the first serious researcher who pointed out problems with the Warren Commission. Lane does not offer any final conclusions. He only offers evidence for two claims; 1.) that if Oswald killed JFK, he couldn’t have done so alone, and 2.) the Warren Commission was a scam, dedicated to finding only Oswald’s guilt, more concerned with “healing an ailing nation” than with presenting the facts.

We know now that Lane’s contention that the Warren Commission was a “whitewash” is not entirely accurate (see above). And his “evidence” about a conspiracy involving Oswald has largely been discredited. But if you want to know where many of the ideas for conspiracies came from, look no further than this book.

I’m sure you assassination buffs out there have your own favorites. And, if you leave a note in the comments section, I’ll gladly read whatever book you think would convince me otherwise.

But facts are stubborn things. And unless you’ve got something besides strange coincidences or nebulous dots that are connected with something other than hard evidence, I’ll probably take the belief to my deathbed that Oswald acted alone.


UPDATE: WHATEVER HAPPENED TO CRITICAL THINKING?

Dean at Dean’s World has a post on a new JFK assassination video game as well as some thoughts from “Bull Durham.” I must say it’s refreshing to find someone who is equally passionate about the truth involving the assasination.

What makes the conspiracy buffs so implacable in their beliefs has a lot to do with their counterfactual claims about a second Kennedy Administration and how Viet Nam, civil rights, and every crackpot moonbat idea of a socialist paradise would have come about if only JFK had lived. I’ll deal with this issue tomorrow.


ARE YOU BAD?

The Dante’s Inferno Test has banished you to the Second Level of Hell! (HT: Llama Butchers)
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Light posting today. Significant Otherhawk has ordered me to keep my feet up due to swelling. Apparently, when one sits for 12-14 hours at a computer desk, one retains water in the feet (better there than my head).

I first posted this last month and it received perhaps the most hits of any posting I’ve had.

Friday, October 22, 2004
TOWARDS CONSERVATIVE GOVERNANCE

I’m exhausted.

This race, with its ups and downs, surges and collapses, resembles not so much a rollercoaster but rather a modified version of the rack with John Kerry tightening the screws one day and George Bush the next.

Today, I’d like to get away from this torture and delve into something I’ve been thinking about for going on well nigh 25 years; the idea of conservative governance.

What brought this on was a thoughtful article by Mark Schmitt who writes for his blog “The Decembrist,” named for a group of early 19th century liberal Russian aristocrats who briefly rebelled against Tsar Alexander I. Scmitt is a former aide to Senator Bill Bradley, another thoughtful man (who proved to be just a little TOO thoughtful to be President).

The thesis of Mr. Schmitt’s article is that the Presidency of George Bush has destroyed modern American conservatism. This is a large indictment for so small an article. And while Schmitt makes many interesting points about the fumblings of Bush and his advisors with regards to budget busting social programs and intrusive federal social engineering projects, I believe Mr. Schmitt is looking in his rear view mirror rather than at the road ahead. The ideas of Hayek, Buckley, Goldwater, and to a certain extent Reagan, have crashed on the shoals of real politik formulations in foreign affairs as a result of 9/11 (an event Mr. Schmitt deems not important enough to mention) and, more importantly, the political necessity of governance in a liberal democratic society. All of this begs the $64,000 question:

Can conservative ideas and values achieve majority status in a nation governed for nearly 100 years by liberal ideas and values?

Mr. Schmitt starts off his article by pointing to three well-known conservatives on various pegs of the conservative plinko board who will not be voting for President Bush on November 2. Since elections are about choice, one shouldn’t begrudge people their opinion of who will serve best as a vessel for their ideological predilections. Hence, while revealing an interesting schism in current conservative thinking (that everyone EVERYWHERE believes will erupt into a full blown war after the election, Bush win or lose) it’s hardly a basis for trumpeting the end of conservatism as we know it.

Mr. Schmitt then delves into what he sees as the essence of conservatism and its cohesive nature:

“For the last several years, liberals have bemoaned the idea that conservatives seemed to have a coherent, relatively simple philosophy: small government, low taxes, free trade, strong defense but non-interventionist foreign policy. But what is left of conservatism now except tax cuts, especially tax cuts that benefit particular financial interests? Tax cuts are not conservatism. They are not a coherent worldview.”

“Non-interventionist foreign policy?” I had to scratch my head and wonder where Mr. Schmitt may have been hibernating for the last 25 years. In order; Grenada, Panama, Kuwait, Bosnia and Kosovo. (The latter two interventions not possible without STRONG conservative support in Congress). The list does not include the odd MIG shot down over the Gulf of Sidra or the occasional cruise missile lobbed in the direction of Mr. Bin Laden. Leaving all that aside, the major argument that Mr. Schmitt and many conservatives seems to be making is that George Bush has abandoned the principle of small government. There’s a very good reason for this:

The principle of small government is as dead and outmoded as the horse and buggy.

President Reagan, God rest his noble soul, was perhaps the last Republican President to actually believe he could completely roll back the idea of of a large, centralized government. Unlike the crash-and-burn, do-or-die Goldwaterites of the 1960’s, Reagan, according to his hagiographer Dinesh D’Souza, believed the key to victory was a “wily and opportunistic” effort in “finding issues that allow(ed) him to neutralize his strongest opposition and allow(ed) him to find his greatest common ground with his popular constiuency.” This common ground included, but was not limited to restoring America’s national defense posture and status as the preeminent superpower on the planet.

Reagan’s national security stance drove a stake through the heart of the old Democratic Party coalition by stealing white urban ethnics from key battleground states. These working class voters were opposed to Mr. Reagan’s economic policies but disgusted with the McGovernites who had captured the party and turned it towards pacifism and surrender. Most of these ethnics were first or second generation immigrants from Eastern Europe who were outraged at what they saw as the Democratic Party’s abandonment of their friends and relatives in Warsaw Pact countries. Reagan appealed to these voters with a combination of patriotic sentiment and realistic confrontation with the old Soviet Union.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, these ethnics returned to the party of their fathers and helped elect Bill Clinton to the Presidency. By necessity, the Republican party was forced to change tactics and try to appeal to some of these same voters while trying to expand a narrow base of so-called “Main Street” Republicans, whose bread and butter issues were economic, and social conservatives, whose activism on issues like abortion and school prayer scared the bejeebeez out of many potential voters who ordinarily would lean Republican.


Enter Newt Gingrich. It’s a shame that Mr. Gingrich was such a polarizing figure. Blessed with a first class mind, Mr. Gingrich was cursed with a partisan streak a mile wide. It was his partisanship that doomed his attempt to try and fashion a governing majority of conservatives housed under a big tent Republican party. This partisanship, while it led to a political majority in Congress, proved to be an impediment to fashioning a one party super-majority of conservatives that could implement the kind of radical restructuring Mr. Gingrich had envisioned.

Mr. Schmitt rightly questions the last 10 years of Republican majority rule in Congress by asking the “what if” question of a Bush loss:

“If Bush loses, serious conservatives, with the possible exception of extreme social conservatives, will have to ask themselves what they gained from four years of unfettered power, and ten years of domination of American politics. Government is “bigger” by every measure, and more intrusive. A pet idea, Social Security privatization, was actually discredited by their president’s incompetence. Younger voters are increasingly turned off by the social conservatism, so the movement is not expanding its base. A huge new entitlement was created. The federal role in education expanded.”

All of the above is true. And what Schmitt calls “Bush-DeLayism” (an odd but revealing combo given that Schmitt passes over mentioning the Republican Speaker Dennis Hastert who is known for his efforts at cross-party coalition building while highlighting the lightning rod DeLay) has failed utterly and miserably to restrain the growth of federal spending while using high-handed partisan tactics (reminiscent of tactics used by Democrats in the 1980’s) to ram through the Republican’s agenda.

But what Mr. Schmitt fails to realize or refuses to acknowledge is the truly transformational nature of Mr. Bush’s policy proposals. What he so blithely dismisses as a “contrivance,” the idea of an “ownership” society is a truly radical departure from the idea of “dependency.” It is an attempt to overturn and radically alter the social contract in America that exists between the governed and the governors. Mr. Schmitt doesn’t think so:

“Bush-DeLayism’s greatest betrayal of conservatism is in its rejection of this modesty about social scheming. Because of its corruption and incompetence, their practice has consisted of ever more complicated schemes of incentives and penalties to change behavior: No Child Left Behind, for example, whose main flaw is not that its underfunded, but that it tries to micromanage local schools through pokes and prods from a set of rules set in Washington. The Medicare bill and the Bush health plans, which attempt to incentivize one thing or another, and are horribly contrived even if you believe that the combination of Health Savings Accounts and catastrophic plans will improve American health care and not destroy it.”

I reject Mr. Schmitt’s gratuitous use of the words “corruption and incompetence” as they relate to the Bush administration’s efforts to fix an educational system near total and complete collapse as a direct result of his party’s being beholden to the most radical group of social engineers in the country today; teachers and their bloated and misguided unions. As far as Medicare reform, all one can say is that it’s a small step towards much-needed reform. Beyond that, may I request of Mr. Schmitt that he at least wait until the damn program is fully up and running before he judges it a failure? And if he has a crystal ball that allows him to see the future so clearly , perhaps he’d allow me to borrow it for a few days as I wish to purchase some stock options.

Whither then conservatism? I’m not alone in believing that George Bush is a transformational figure in American politics. Norman Podhoretz’s September, 2004 “Commentary” article entitled “World War IV” not only gives the best rationale for the war in Iraq I’ve seen to date, but also lays out a compelling argument that, forced by circumstances following the attacks of 9/11, Bush transformed American foreign policy by radically altering the conditions and intellectual underpinnings regarding the use of American power to the point that future President’s will only be able to change this policy in the margins, not overturn it.

Kerry can brag all he wants to about coalition building. But, to borrow a recent line from one of his campaign speeches, “Look behind you, Mr. President…there’s no one there.” It is beyond belief that Mr. Kerry actually thinks he can revive a moribund trans-atlantic alliance as long as France, Germany, and Russia work towards an EU (or somebody…anybody) that can act as a counterweight against American power. It is, to my mind, delusional. “Old Europe” as Donald Rumsfield indelicately called them, will cooperate with the US as it suits their national interests, and not much beyond that. It would take someone with considerably more charm and diplomatic skill than Mr. Kerry to alter this. For the forseeable future, our allies will be found in tradition (England and Australia) and in the emerging democracies of eastern europe and Asia.

As for domestic policy, Mr. Bush’s prescriptions presage broader reform involving not only health care and education, but also housing, welfare, scientific research, and perhaps social security. I’m surprised Mr. Schmitt did not mention social security, given that the President’s proposal to allow younger workers to invest part of their contribution in private accounts is perhaps the most radical of all Bush “ownership” society ideas. Budget shortfalls as a result of such a change in the retirement system may doom its passage…but that doesn’t mitigate it’s revolutionary nature.

Finally, Mr. Schmitt closes with an apology of sorts:

“I recognize, though, that I am not a conservative, and have about as much right to offer my opinion about what American conservatives should think or say as I do about whether the Catholic mass should be in Latin or English. But I’ve learned a lot from conservative writing and thinking, and I am very serious in believing that we will be worse off without its insights.”

Mr. Schmitt’s ideas and criticisms are always welcome. Reasoned discourse among people is what’s missing from today’s political climate. Schmitt, who has a first class mind, is I believe, wrongheaded in his thesis. But his civility is a breath of fresh air in the poisoned partisan atmosphere that permeates the body politic.

CORRECTION:

I stated incorrectly that Mr. Schmitt did not mention social security reform in his article. Mr. Schmitt used the phrase “social security privatization” and says that it’s discredited.

I don’t think any responsible politician has advocated scrapping the current federal retirement system for wholesale “privatization.” The rather modest proposal regarding younger workers would be voluntary and has hardly been discredited.

Recently, Jay Tea over at Wizbang has taken on some tough topics. With an honesty and forthrightness not seen very often by one of the “mortal humans” of the blogsphere, Jay Tea’s latest target is the Geneva Convention.

As I pointed out in my post on the Marine killing in the Fallujah mosque, the incident was at worst, ambiguous as it related to whether or not the Geneva Convention had been violated. Jay Tea takes that a step further and says the entire document should be re-thought:

“The Conventions were passed in a simpler time, when wars were much more clearly defined. One nation would attack another, and then they’d fight back and forth until one side won or both sides got tired of fighting. But it retained the “personal” touch—it was one government or head of state against another, and there was a certain element of peerage involved. The good guys dressed one way, and the bad guys another, and you could tell them apart at a glance.”

He points out that the current conflict involves “terrorists (who) fall into a gray area between criminals and soldiers, having elements of both but being fully neither.” He points out the shortcomings of treating criminal acts of terrorists as crimes:

“Clinton especially treated terrorism as a law-enforcement problem, and threw cops and lawyers at it. It had it’s moments of successes, but failures as well. We locked up the people behind the first World Trade Center bombing, but that didn’t prevent 9/11.”

He calls for a new Convention />
“So it’s time for a new Convention, where the United States can outline just how it will deal with such people. And this one shouldn’t be held in Geneva. Geneva is a resort community—people go there, go to the spas, eat chocolate, ski, and what not. We need this new convention to be somewhere that has seen terrorism up close and personal, where the wounds are still fresh and the delegates will be constantly reminded of just what this new enemy is. My suggestions are places such as New York City; Fallujah, Iraq; Beslan, in Russia; or perhaps Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where Flight 93 fell to earth.”

What Jay Tea doesn’t point out is that while the Geneva Convention is “easy” to violate when your enemy is in civilian clothes and using civilians in the cowardly manner of a shield for your nefarious crimes, it did work reasonably well when fighting the Iraqi army and, will work if and when we fight the Iranian army. He’s correct for being concerned about the Convention’s use against the terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere, but my reading of it (and I’m no expert) leads me to believe that it’s protocols can be stretched to cover situations like the Marine found himself while in the mosque without scrapping the whole deal.

Besides, getting 192 nations to agree to ANYTHING these days is well nigh an impossibility. And can you imagine nations that sympathize with the beheaders, disembowelers, torso splitters, eye gougers, tongue slitters, ear loppers, and hand choppers at a summit to try and make the laws of international conflict more humane?

In his book “America in Search if Itself,” Theodore H. White lays down some rules he thinks relate to what makes a good speech.

1. A moment in time
2. A backdrop for the words
3. The words themselves.

Could Martin Luther King have given his “I Have a Dream” speech anywhere else but the Lincoln memorial and have the words echo down to us today? Suppose he had given the speech in 1958 rather than 1963?

White thinks the best political speech he ever heard was Ted Kennedy’s speech at the 1980 convention (“The dream will never die”). He thought the moment-the last of JFK’s generation of Kennedys conceding defeat-and the backdrop of the Democratic National Convention with 80 million people watching acted as a megaphone and rallied the liberal wing of the Democratic party.

I bring this up because Rand Simberg reminded us that today is the 141st anniversary of the Gettysburg Address.

“In a small town in southeastern Pennsylvania, a war-weary president commemorated a new military cemetery, few of which’s first honorees had to travel far to interment, having laid down their lives on that ground just a few months before. It’s useful to remember the words, in light of the recent election, and all the angry talk of Blue and Red, instead of Blue and Gray.”

In Gary Wills’ book “Lincoln at Gettysburg” the author writes that “the address completes the work of the guns,” and talks of “how Lincoln wove a spell that has not yet been broken.” Bruce Catton in “Glory Road” speaks of the address in terms of meaning for BOTH North and South. Catton’s point is that no battle, no war was worth the kind of carnage witnessed at Gettysburg. But Lincoln’s words, by expanding the very definition of freedom, made a start towards binding the nation’s wounds.

Do we give too much credit to Lincoln for saying exactly the right thing at exactly the right time? I think not. Like all good politicians, Lincoln was instinctive. He knew full well his words would have great import, even though he was scheduled to speak following the greatest orator of the age Edward Everett. The fact that the speech was written on the back of an envelope means little. It’s clear that Lincoln had given a great deal of thought to what he was going to say at this event and how he wanted to say it.

I remember having to memorize this speech in 7th grade. I wonder if kids these days have to memorize anything?

The above question is known as “The Fermi Paradox.” It refers to the fact that in a universe of hundreds of billions of galaxies, each containing hundreds of billions of stars and therefore, hundreds of billions of planets, how come there’s no evidence for extraterrestrial life?

So, where are they?

Why aren’t they here now? Why haven’t they been here already for millions or even billions of years. Why hasn’t anyone been here before? If they are here now (or have been in the past) why aren’t we stumbling over their artifacts? Are they really that clever? Or are we not looking in the right places or for the right things?

A conference of Sci-Fi writers a few years ago came up with some possible explanations:

1. We are the first on the scene or at least we are so early that there is nobody around to visit us or to try to communicate with us.

2. Technological societies have a negligible life span. There have been a lot of other races but they have all died off.

3. Interstellar travel is impossible.

4. Interstellar travel is possible but is not very economic. We have not been visited because the cost is much higher than any potential return.

5. Interstellar communication is impractical. (We know enough now to rule out the impossibility – barring, of course, a rather startling level of cosmic perversity.) In the absence of knowledge about where anybody is, the problem of establishing interstellar communication, even for a mature technology, may simply be too formidable.

6. Communicating with immature races is simply not very interesting for mature races. The grownups will talk to us when we have something interesting to say.

7. We may simply be well out of the center of action. Stars (and planets?) are sparser in our neck of the woods than they are in the central regions of the galaxy. In short, we are hicks.

8. Reason X – a favorite of mine. The motives of mature societies are not comprehensible to us. We are in the position of children trying to speculate about the motives of adults of another culture.

Whatever the reason, it’s not stopping us from searching for life-any life-close to home.

It’s becoming more and more apparent that life can and will exist wherever it’s even remotely possible. Over the last decade, we’ve found life existing in places thought to be completely inhospitable to living organisms; bacteria found two miles beneath the surface of the earth, microbes found in the permafrost of Antarctica. And now life has been discovered in what was once thought to be the most unlikely place on the planet; a place so barren that NASA uses it as a model for the Martian environment. Chile’s Atacama desert gets rain maybe once a decade. In 2003, scientists reported that the driest Atacama soils were sterile. But now:

“We found life, we can culture it, and we can extract and look at its DNA,” said Raina Maier, a professor of soil, water and environmental science at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

The work from her team contradicts last year’s widely reported study that asserted the “Mars-like soils” of the Atacama’s core were the equivalent of the “dry limit of microbial life.”

Maier said, “We are saying, ‘What is the dry limit of life?’ We haven’t reached it yet.”

It’s possible that the microbes in Atacama’s soil actually hibernate between rainfalls and reanimate when the rainfall reaches the layer of soil where the dormant microbes reside (about 3 feet).

The study holds some rather exciting prospects for future rovers on Mars. The Viking landers of the 1970’s barely scraped the surface soil in their analysis looking for the chemical reactions of life. The next generation of rovers may have to dig several meters beneath the surface of the red planet so that a thorough analysis can be done.

“The top Marine officer in Iraq declared yesterday that victory in the battle of Fallujah has “broken the back” of the Iraqi insurgency, while another commander in the war on terror said Osama bin Laden is all but cut off from his terrorist operatives.” (WA Times, 11/19)

Far be it for me to question the motivations of our commanders on the ground in Iraq, but the above statement seems to me to be a little bit too optimistic. I base that assessment on posts like this from American Soldier and this post from Kevin Sites Blog (the NBC stringer who just took the video of the Marine shooting in Fallujah).

Maybe I’m letting the “Viet Nam Syndrome” color my analysis but the quote IS eerily familiar, harkening back to a time when we could “see the light at the end of the tunnel” and “peace is just around the corner.”

Apparently, even some in the Pentagon aren’t quite sure either:

“Some Pentagon officials say privately that they do not share Gen. Sattler’s optimism.

They said this week that the countrywide insurgency has shown itself to be an adaptable band of dedicated killers that likely will be able to recruit new members and sustain some level of violence for years, not just months.”

What the Pentagon isn’t talking about is the 2000 pound elephant in the room; Iranian and Syrian assistance to the terrorists.

Sometime soon, we’re going to have to confront both of those countries about WMD and their financial and material support to people who are killing a lot of our guys over there. Syria, whose internal weaknesses could be exploited much easier than the mullah’s problems with a mini-insurgency of students and democracy activists, would seem to be a logical choice for immediate pressure by the US State Department. (Why we’ve done so little to date is a complete mystery to me.)

Iran, will be a much tougher nut to crack as the theocratic thugs continue their march towards acquiring nuclear weapons and the launch systems capable of delivering them. The fig leaf agreement that the EU Big Three (France, Germany, and Britain) have just negotiated may succeed in driving a wedge between the US and some of our allies when it becomes apparent that Iran has no intention of honoring the pact and we or the Israeli’s are forced to take military action to stop the mullahs from threatening the peace.

As I posted here, I’m not particularly optimistic about our chances in stopping Iran from fully realizing their nuclear ambitions.

When Donald Rumsfeld called the countries of western Europe “old Europe” he was roundly criticised in the press for his insensitivity. After all, we’re talking about the cradle of western enlightenment here; 200 years of liberal democratic thought on everything from the nature of man to the nature of government.

Too bad they never got enlightened about racial hatred.

Deacon over at Powerline has a thoughtful post about racism and anti-semitism in Europe. His point involves how European soccer still to this day is home to some of the most casually obscene racism that disappeared (for the most part) from America more than 20 years ago-even in red states.

I remember seeing an interview with US World Cup soccer player Tony Sanneh who played in France for a few years and said that even the HOME TEAM fans would call him monkey. And the rise of extreme right parties in Holland, Austria, Germany and Luxemburg is directly related to European sentiment not only towards moslem immigrants, but also newcomers from former African colonies who are fleeing war, famine, and oppression.

In the 1930’s, the anti-semitism in Europe was based on now discredited theories of racial purity. Today, the Europeans don’t even bother with an excuse…they just expose themselves to be the ignorant peasants that they really are.

There is something so anachronistic about royalty.

The basic tenet of it is revolting to republican sensibilities; that one human being is better than another simply because of who his father was. It bespeaks a breathtaking arrogance to believe that you can breed human beings like dogs or horses and expect one’s progeny to be superior to that of another.

That’s why I always thought the American fascination with Princess Diana was so troubling. Here was this nice woman of average intelligence with a little bit of style (bought and paid for with the taxes of hard working Brits) who not only achieved iconic status while she was alive, but whose tragic death turned her into some kind of Kennedyesque martyr.

A martyr to what? Evidently, she held babies afflicted with AIDS…but so do tens of thousands of nurses, aid workers, mothers and fathers around the globe.

They, however, don’t wear Christian Dior dresses and date Arab playboys.

And then there was that lionization of Diana for her “work” with clearing land mines around the world.

Our military, along with volunteers from all over the planet have been doing this for going on thirty years.

Yes, but they don’t have a son who’s going to be the next King of England.

It caused barely a ripple of anger back in 1982 when Nancy Reagan curtsied before Queen Elizabeth. If it had been Abigail Adams, I’m quite sure that John would have been impeached and poor Abby would have been subjected to that fine old all-American tradition of being tarred, feathered, and run out of town on a rail. (‘Tis a pity we gave up on that tradition…I can think of a few moonbats who’d look rather good in feathers.)

The reason for this diatribe against royalty is something the man who would be a would-be King said about those of us unlucky enough not to have had a Queen for a mother. Here’s Prince Charles in all of his regal glory:

“People think they can all be pop stars, high court judges, brilliant TV personalities or infinitely more competent heads of state without ever putting in the necessary work or having natural ability. This is the result of social utopianism which believes humanity can be genetically and socially engineered to contradict the lessons of history.” (Courtesy of Drudge)

As opposed to having the “natural ability” to be…what? A Prince of the royal blood? A Dumbo-eared dilettante whose insufferable pronouncements about art, architecture, and the culture have shown him to be an elitist of the first order?

The quote came in a memo written by the Charles formerly known as Prince in response to a request by a Secretary for more training at work. The secretary in question, Elaine Day, is claiming sex discrimination and unfair dismissal against the prince’s household and described it as “hierarchical and elitist”, an institution run in an “Edwardian fashion” where everyone knew their place and those who did not were punished.

“Edwardian fashion” may be too generous and off by about 500 years. It seems more like the England of Henry VIII. My God! Even in this day and age, the British press referred to Diana “having done her duty” when she bore this lickspittle a male child to continue the bloodline. (As an aside, Charle’s great-Uncle was Kaiser Wilhelm who fought a little war against his relations at the beginning of the 20th century. The current occupants of Winsdor Castle used to go by the name Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, only changing it to Winsdor to placate patriotic sensibilities.)

The web of connections involving past and present royalty in “old Europe” has been fodder for conspiracy theories for years. Thanks to the influence of the old Hapsburg dynasty that ruled first, the Holy Roman Empire and then the sprawling Austro-Hungarian empire, most of the old royal families of Holland, Spain, Russia, Belgium, Germany, and England are related in one way or another. What has always united them is money…and lots of it.

Thank goodness their political influence has been reduced to next to zero.

I’ve often felt that in addition to the recently diagnosed psychological syndrome PEST (Post Election Stress Trauma), moonbats are afflicted with something I’ll call Stupidly Hysterical Irate Twaddle; a condition that prevents the afflicted from accepting reality while forcing the poor unfortunate into paroxysms of hate-filled spite until, exhausted from the effort, they collapse into a heap of drooling, gibbering, quivering jello-brained mush.

This moonbat (who comes to use courtesy of David Limbaugh has a full blown case:

“The exit polls told the truth in 2000 and in 2004. Bush lost both times, but you repulsive republicans have stolen this country. You say we are fighting for democracy in Iraq yet you don’t trust it here. You have to rip off the American people to get your guy in…..your ends justify the means. You lie and steal. You should be ashamed.”

In a clinical sense, I suppose one could say that this particular moonbat also suffers from a regressive form of SHIT in that she reverts to a past hallucination and channels it forward to her fantasy of today.

“I just hope you wake up to the truth before our country, which I love so much, is totally destroyed. Every free thought curtailed, every spark of ingenuity thwarted. If America could speak to the world we would say we’re embarrassed. Embarrassed by the actions of the minority, the small minded, war mongers who have stolen our democracy. You are one of these folks and I hope you live to see the results of your insanity.”

As is obvious, the moonbat also suffers from Bi-locative SHIT as she obviously doesn’t think she lives in the same place that ordinary, sane Americans do. I’m not sure this moonbat can be helped until we find the root cause of her malady.

Maybe Michael Moore and Whoopie Goldberg could host a telethon…


HOW’S YOUR MOVIE IQ?

Pat over at Brainster’s has a great movie trivia quiz. Also, scroll down for the 70’s trivia teaser.

Great stuff, Pat!