There has been a debate in Britain these last few years over whether or not the “special relationship” that has existed for more than 100 years between England and the United States has any real advantages in a post-cold war world. Some of Great Britain’s best thinkers on the left feel that the country’s close identification with the United States has not only been inimical to Britain’s need to integrate their economy, currency, and domestic policies into the greater European whole but also that the Anglo-American alliance has actually made England less safe, largely as a result of what they see as the Bush Administration’s aggressive policies in fighting terror and the War in Iraq.

This “anti-Americanism by default” position is shared by a broad spectrum of the left including Old Labour, Liberal Democrats, and even many of New Labour’s social democrats. In fact, it could fairly be said that only the dominant personality of Tony Blair has kept the “special relationship” intact and as strong as ever over the last 3 years despite enormous domestic political pressures on the PM to pull back from his steadfast support of President Bush and carve out a more independent road in foreign policy.

There have been few British Prime Ministers since the end of World War II who have been as loyal a friend to the United States and supportive of its interests as Tony Blair. At great personal and political cost, he has continued the deployment of British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan while deflecting charges that he is President Bush’s “lapdog.” For Blair’s part, his actions are hardly altruistic nor are they based on the kind of close, personal connection with Bush as was enjoyed by Lady Thatcher with President Reagan. Those two twentieth century titans bonded at an emotional level rare for leaders of great nations. Blair and Bush on the other hand seem to have developed an excellent working relationship based on trust and and genuine friendship. This has held both in good stead as the progress in Iraq and Afghanistan has proved to be fitful and at times, ephemeral.

In truth, while Bush could be considered the “senior partner” in the alliance, it is Blair who has often given the best defense of the coalition’s decision to go to war in Iraq and stay until the job of securing democracy is achieved. Where Bush’s speeches can sometimes be dry recitations of progress made in securing and rebuilding the country with clear, logical justifications for going to war, Blair’s talks always seem to strike just the right rhetorical notes of Churchillian denunciations of evil and a Thatcheresque optimism about the future that seems to elevate the cause to the level of a crusade.

And Blair has also spoken forcefully about the importance of the Anglo-American alliance to the future of not only Europe but the rest of the world as well. He has consistently warned against the unreasoning anti-Americanism that threatens to turn the world away from the United States at a critical juncture in world history.

Speaking before the Australian parliament yesterday, Blair issued a rhetorical slap to those in Europe and around the world whose casual hatred of the United States threatens the future of the world on a wide variety of issues:

“I do not always agree with the United States – sometimes they can be difficult friends to have,” he said.

“But the strain of frankly anti-American feeling in parts of European and world politics is madness when set against the long-term interests of the world we believe in,” he said.

[...]

“The danger with America today is not that they are too much involved, the danger is that they decide to pull up the drawbridge and disengage. We need them involved. We want them engaged,” he said.

“The reality is that none of the problems that press in on us can be resolved or even contemplated without them. Our task is to ensure that with them we do not limit this agenda to security.”

Blair’s warnings are directed toward his European counterparts who too often use the rhetoric of anti-Americanism as a cheap way to garner votes. Blair’s point – that this attitude does damage to the domestic political consensus in America for international engagement – is spot on. The strain of isolationism, never far below the surface in American politics, could re-emerge with a vengeance in either 2006 or, more likely, 2008 as voters in the United States react to the virulent anti-American rhetoric of France, Germany, and others with a “to hell with them” attitude and turn their attentions to concerns more domestic in nature.

Blair’s recognition of this danger is one of the reasons he is the indispensable man in the alliance of English speaking nations that includes Australia’s John Howard. Blair’s longevity has earned him respect around the world as he has been a leading spokesman for taking action on global warming as well as issues as diverse as third world debt relief and nuclear non-proliferation. But since his announcement that he plans to leave before the end of his third term in 2010, the questions about what will become of this alliance once he is gone have occupied the State Department and our military planners.

The prospect of Blair’s resignation coming sooner rather than later was given a boost last November when the Prime Minister’s comprehensive anti-terrorism bill went down to an ignominious defeat. Oddsmakers put his staying in office past 2006 at 5-2 against although Blair himself has recently said that he regrets saying that he would stand down before the next election. But the clock is definitely ticking on the Tony Blair era and the implications for the alliance are already being assessed.

As a practical matter and for the sake of his party, Blair will have to decide within the next 2 years when he should exit the stage. That’s because he will want to give his almost certain successor Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown time to get settled into 10 Downing Street before the election in 2010. So the question is, what kind of fellow is this Gordon Brown and how will the ascension of this life-long left wing activist affect the “special relationship” between England and America?

First, it should be noted that Blair has taken steps to tie Chancellor Brown more firmly to his policies by making him the front man in Parliament on a variety of issues. While it is whispered that Brown resents this role somewhat, he sees this kind of loyalty as his ticket to the top. But how the Chancellor would deal with America is the real question and for that, it may be helpful to examine his background for clues.

Asked during the General Election of 2005 what Britain would look like under a Brown Premiership, the Chancellor replied ‘more like America’. Brown is a passionate Americanist, having studied economics at MIT and regularly vacationing on the East Coast. American business practice is held in reverence by him. A consistent theme has emerged in Brown’s key economic speeches; he wants the British and European economy to become more like the United States. More competitive, entrepreneurial and dynamic, but combining free-market capitalism with social justice. The Chancellor’s first foray into foreign policy, last autumn, with a EU/G8 trip to Palestine, gives us an insight of Brown’s approach to international policy. Brown intends to bring his economic expertise to the aid of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, by attempting to reduce the poverty and unemployment experienced by Palestinians, which makes them ripe for transforming into Jihadists.

Mr. Brown has been a staunch supporter of the Iraq War and has praised America’s ‘courageous leadership’ in the fight against Islamist terrorism. There has never been a hint from his camp that he would have done things differently, and on several tense occasions when Mr. Blair has been under fire over Iraq, Mr. Brown has intervened to offer his backing.

Clearly, Brown is positioned to maintain British commitments in Iraq and elsewhere for the near future which is good news. What is unknown is how resistant Mr. Brown will be to calls from his own party to reduce those commitments the closer to 2010 we get. It seems probable that a large troop presence will be absolutely necessary beyond 2008 and perhaps even beyond 2010 although it is doubtful that the domestic political situation in either Great Britain or the United States would allow for that kind of commitment. What is more likely is that Brown’s Labour party will be forced by electoral necessity to drastically reduce England’s commitment of troops in Iraq prior to the election even if events on the ground do not warrant it.

There is hope that those events on the ground will begin to turn in the coalition’s favor as more and more Iraqi troops and police demonstrate competence in dealing with the insurgency and domestic unrest. This may allow for more than token drawdowns of forces even before 2008 which would be good news for both Brown and Republicans here in the United States. But at present, with sectarian violence simmering at high levels and threatening to burst out into full scale street fighting, there is little talk of reducing the presence of coalition troops.

Which brings us back to Mr. Blair. While Chancellor Brown will continue his policies, the question always asked when evaluating this “special relationship” between the two great nations is how well do the two leaders get on personally? Brown was accused in the past of being something of a cold fish with a single minded determination to become Prime Minister that rubbed many of his colleagues the wrong way. But he appears to have softened considerably since his marriage in 2000 at the age of 49 to his longtime sweetheart Sarah MacCauley and then the tragic loss of his 10 day old child in 2002. He has since settled into a happy domestic situation with his 3 year old son John and wife which most observers agree has done wonders for his public face.

It appears that Brown would probably be personally comfortable with either a Democrat or Republican in the White House given his admiration for Republican free market principles and his commitment to Democratic social justice issues. How that would translate into forging a working relationship on the alliance’s continuing efforts in the Middle East and elsewhere is the mystery. Much depends on how the situation in Iraq resolves itself over the next 2 years. A bad outcome there could make both countries pull back from engaging other nations in the region like Egypt and Saudi Arabia in building more free and open societies. And in the background, looming ever more dangerous, is the specter of Iran and its quest for nuclear weapons. It is hard to imagine that the alliance would not agree that Iran cannot be allowed a nuclear option. For that reason, American-British cooperation there will be of paramount importance.

I have a feeling that once he is gone from the scene, we will greatly miss Tony Blair’s clarity of thought on the War in Iraq as well as his personal commitment to maintaining the “special relationship” that Great Britain and America have enjoyed for so long. He has left his mark on all of us and I personally will be saddened to see him go.

POLICE IN BELARUS BEAT DANGEROUS COUNTERREVOLUTIONARIES DEMONSTRATING FOR FREEDOM. SEAN PENN MUST HAVE BEEN UNAVAILABLE THIS WEEKEND.

My goodness but don’t liberals exhibit some curious logic at times? At the drop of a hat, they’re off to some of the most exotic locales in the world, braving rotten hotel food and less than first class accommodations in order to demonstrate their solidarity with the goons, loons, and poltroons who are standing up to US “imperialism.” We saw them bravely offering themselves as human shields to that famous humanitarian and lover of kites Saddam Hussein. And they were seen doing the grip and grin with that jolly old radioactive elf in Tehran President Ahmadinejad.

Their secret, of course, is that the chances of them being in any danger are about as good as the next film they’re in making any money.

But in other, more out of the way places where there are no calls for using human shields to assist murderous thugs in “resisting” the US government, when the truncheons start to fall and the blood begins to flow, and where the people could really use some of that celebrity to keep the police from bashing their heads in (dictators being enormously shy as, like cockroaches, they scurry away from the light when it is shone on their methods of control) the Sean Penns, Susan Sarandons, and Tim Robbins, as well as their lesser known comrades are inexplicably absent.

Imagine what a bunch of film stars and washed up musicians could have done here!

They tried to demonstrate for freedom in Belarus today. They didn’t quite make it. Robert Mayer has the grim details including links to about a dozen sites that give a blow by blow (literally) description of the police actions against the grandmothers, the teenage girls and boys, the shopkeepers, and all the other usual suspects – the ordinary people of the world who are changing the face of the planet one dictatorship at a time.

They got bloodied today. They’ll be back.

In that respect, they show a helluva lot more staying power than the pampered leftists here and in Europe who weep about terrorist detainees having to listen to Christine Aguilera CD’s and wail about “oppression” whenever the government does anything to try and protect us.

The irony of course, is that these hand wringers and faux martyrs don’t have a clue what “oppression” really is. In this country, if you stand up and say “I’m oppressed” you get book deals, appear on TV where you are lovingly fawned over by unctuous, blow dried lickspittles like Matt Lauer, and end up getting invited to the best cocktail parties in Washington and New York. Your every utterance – as long as its anti-American enough – is dutifully recorded and repeated ad nauseum by an obedient and agreeing press.

Here’s what happens in Belarus if you stand up and say “I’m oppressed!”

Just a little perspective for your Sunday afternoon…

UPDATE

See also Gateway Pundit who not only has an excellent round-up but shows where our true priorities lie: “Democracy Babes Get Clubbing in Belarus.”

It’s a lazy Sunday here at the House. Winter’s grip is still vise-like in the Midwest, but if I open my door, I can hear the satisfying crrrack of stitched horsehide striking green ash – a sure sign that Spring is, if not around the corner, at least within tobacco spitting distance .

My World Champion White Sox are trying to get the kinks out of a lineup and pitching staff that will once again vie for the title while the Cubs… The Cubs??? Well, it is almost Opening Day and the best that can be said is that the Cubs are still undefeated in the regular season. The Northsiders are presently going through their annual fantasy camp, pretending they are a major league team with a shot at making the playoffs while giving their long suffering (and completely clueless) fans hope that this will be the year that the curse of the billy goat will be lifted and the national leaguers will win the World Series.

Perhaps they should start wishing for something more realistic. Like a Republican mayor of Chicago.

Be that as it may, I thought it would be a nice idea to give my readers something to do while they were visiting besides being subjected to one more tiresome, tedious rant against lefty lickspittles, government waste, bloodthirsty jihadists, or the usual fiddle faddle about the endlessly fascinating but maddening game of politics.

How about another kind of game? Great! Let’s play “Who Said It?” Simply guess who said the following quotes. To make it real easy, I’ve made it a multiple choice game so be careful of trick answers.

• Look. While Domenech’s violations were blatant, it is status quo for the conservative movement. Quite frankly, intellectual dishonesty is what these people do for a living (there are entire organizations dedicated to documenting and rebutting their ooze). Whether it’s cooking the books on environmental data, changing their stories to suit a new set of facts, or just straight up and up lying, cheating, and stealing, the conservative cause is simply a fraud.

a) Oliver (“Like Sh*t to Shineola”) Willis
b) a homeless street lunatic
c) a baby marmoset passing gas
d) all of the above

Okay…so I started you off with an easy one. If you guessed “d” grab yourself a cookie and celebrate.

• Yes we do have Michael Moore, and when did he ever suggest blacks are genetically inferior to whites (Republican David Duke), that Supreme Court justices should be assassinated (Republican Ann Coulter), and when was he ever indicted (Tom Delay, Jack Abramoff, Scooter Libby, and oh so many more)?He hasn’t, because Michael Moore is someone conservatives simply disagree with, and that makes him per se hateful. Kind of like the Dixie Chicks, except they have boobs too, which makes it an even bigger crime in Republican circles that they have opinions.

a) John Aravosis
b) Michael Moore’s roll of belly fat
c) The lint in Oliver Willis’ navel
d) John Aravosis’ lesbian lover

Obviously, the answer is once again “d” because everyone knows that if someone is going to tell as many lies as Mr. Trichinosis does about politics, they will lie about anything, including their real gender and who actually writes the twaddle that appears on their blog.

• I blame the illegal (but not immoral)immigrants no more for coming to this great nation than I would blame first grade children for becoming addicted to Heroin that a drug dealer (who stands across the street from their school)methodically sells to them every day.The Republicans and some Democrats who are for this present immigration bill have become that drug dealer while they themselves have also become addicted to the money from corporations and the hate that can get them their votes.

a) a 3 year old boy
b) a 5 year old girl
c) one million chimpanzees scribbling on pieces of paper
d) a typical Democrat commenting at The Democrat Daily Blog

This was your first trick question and I hope you said “b” although if you said “d” you would have been given credit for a valid comparison. (Note: It would have taken far less than one million chimps to produce that kind of idiocy).

• The President is a political maestro. When his poll numbers are down, he walks on stage, gets behind the podium, raises his baton, and conducts away. The media follows his tempo, his song. No, no, the violins are much too sad! Stop the chorus of sorrow! Drums, drums, we need more war drums! Bring the oboe forward, haven’t you heard Iran is going nuclear, we need something more foreboding! And the spellbound media plays along, altering its performance to appease the maestro. It is at its core a merciless, orchestrated assault on truth. The performance always has the same ending: a stabilizing of a ratings free-fall, then a two or three point uptick in Bush’s approval ratings that is then lauded as the resurgence of a “popular” President.

a) The Brother From Another Planet
b) Leonard Bernstein
c) Daily Kos writer Georgia 10
d) Yankee Doodle Dandy

If you guessed “a” you would be absolutely correct. No one on planet earth could actually believe that 1) the media is manipulated by Bush, and 2) that anyone would read such overly dramatic, hyperbolic claptrap.

• I don’t believe bush is a religious man at all. He’s a man who exploits the tragedy of others for profit, and that has been the story of him since day 1, and will be forever more.
  There are no religious people behind that aggressive war, behind that roman fervor of the angry crowd; bush is entirely secular, selfish, greedy, and fastidiously ignorant. He has proven time and again, a gullible killer, and his grave will aways be remembered for the hundred thousand he killed in his great leap forward.

a) A commenter at the Democratic Underground
b) A commenter at the Democratic Underground
c) A commenter at the Democratic Underground
d) Are you kidding? I’ll give you 3 guesses and the first two don’t count.

How did you do? Now that wasn’t so hard, was it? I guess I didn’t figure in the predictability factor when dealing with the leftwing idiocies…

I’ve never written about immigration reform before largely because the subject barely interests me as a policy issue and also because I have nothing new to add to the debate over what to do about it.

But 500,000 people in the streets of Los Angeles (and tens of thousands in the streets of other cities) is politics. And regardless of where you come down on the issue of immigration, the political implications of such a large group of people feeling strongly enough about something to turn off the TV, get up out of their easy chairs, and march are huge, so big in fact that where the majority of American people come down on this issue may indeed decide the fate of the Republican majority in Congress.

Since there exists the probability that the loss of Republican dominance would mean the almost certain attempt to impeach President Bush as well as some kind of limit or even a cut-off of monies to fund the War in Iraq, the stakes couldn’t be higher. (Doubters of the latter will please note that both Presidents Nixon and Ford never believed for a moment that the “Class of ‘74” Congress would cut off aid to South Viet Nam and allow the regime to fall. They were wrong).

Despite what many Republicans think, the immigration issue has numerous pitfalls for the party. It’s an easy issue to demagogue as well as being as divisive as many social issues. Ezra Klein:

I’ve argued before that immigration is to the GOP as trade is to the Democratic Party. The base is strongly in favor of quasi-xenophobic crackdowns while the party’s intellectual and business elite is overwhelmingly internationalist, focused on the coming electoral power of the Hispanic bloc and the cheapness of immigrant labor. And when it comes to elections, the political crosscurrents grow even more violent than that. On immigration, what’s good politics in the primary is often deadly in the general. Ask Pete Wilson, whose support of Proposition 187 (which denied undocumented immigrants government services) proved initially popular but demolished the Republican Party in California for the next decade. A Republican candidate who demagogues the issue to win the primary will find himself screwed in the general, as even slight swings in the massive Hispanic electorate can easily toss an election, and an anti-immigrant push could, as it did in California, activate the heretofore underperforming Hispanic electorate. As Mike Buttry, spokesperson for Chuck Hagel, complains:

“The short-term politics of this are pretty clear. The long-term politics are pretty clear. And they’re both at odds.”

That just about sums it up. Any issue that highlights the fissures in the party between “Main Street” conservatives represented by groups like The Chamber of Commerce and “movement” conservatives whose spokesman at the moment is Representative Tom Tancredo means that it will be that much harder to maintain Republican majority status come November. Main Street congressional candidates could find activist money and shoe leather either being denied them as a result of their stand on immigration or even transferred to a primary challenger.

The Democrats seem intent on making the issue a moral choice between “justice” and “racism.” My oh my, where do you think we should come down on the immigration reform measure currently before Congress given that choice?

Senator Hillary Clinton has called H.R. 4437 a “mean-spirited” piece of legislation which “literally criminalizes the Good Samaritan and probably even Jesus himself.” The “Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005” (H.R. 4437) is a Republican piece of legislation which would not only makes felons out of the millions of undocumented immigrants already in the United States, but it would also make it a crime to provide any assistance to those immigrants, if you know they are undocumented. “Mean-spirited” doesn’t come close to describing this bill.

Does anyone else find it just a little bit absurd that the left, who have been ranting for 5 years about Bush placing himself above the law, now wish to put millions of people not only above the law but beyond the law as well?

I am 100% for legal immigration. And I would hope that we triple the number of people who could legally emigrate from Mexico and other places. But the idea that anyone who can sneak across the border is automatically granted a special class of citizenship replete with a shopping list of goodies courtesy of the American taxpayer is just plain wrong. It isn’t a question of “criminalizing” illegal immigrants because they are already criminals. That’s why the demonstration in Los Angeles yesterday was so perplexing; just what were the marchers demonstrating for?

Jose Alberto Salvador, 33, came here illegally just four months ago to find work to support the wife and five children he left behind; in his native Guatemala, he said, what little work he could find paid only $10 a day. “As much as we need this country, we love this country,” Salvador said, waving a stick with both the American and Guatemalan flag. “This country gives us opportunities we don’t get at home.”

A fine and noble sentiment worthy of any immigrant who has ever come to America. To my mind, the question is not whether he should come here or whether he has a right to come here, the question is how he gets here. Any nation that can’t control its own borders in the age of terror is asking for trouble of the cataclysmic kind. And what Mr. Salvador represents – as badly as we need that kind of spirit and willingness to take advantage of the opportunities that America gives the rest of the world – is a denial of our sovereignty.

I am not enamored of the idea of placing a wall up to keep Mr. Salvador and other illegals out of the country but the sad fact is we are in a crisis situation. Desperate measures are called for. Here are some of the grim statistics:

• By historical standards, the 33.1 million immigrants living in the United States is unprecedented. Even at the peak of the great wave of immigration in the early 20th century, the number of immigrants living in the United States was only 40 percent of what it is today (13.5 million in 1910).

• Immigrants account for 11.5 percent of the total population, the highest percentage in 70 years. If current trends continue, by the end of this decade the immigrant share of the total population will surpass the all time high of 14.8 percent reached in 1890.

• Immigration has become the determinate factor in population growth. The arrival of 1.5 million immigrants each year, coupled with 750,000 births to immigrant women annually, means that immigration policy is adding over two million people to the U.S. population each year, accounting for at least two-thirds of U.S. population growth.

And, there is little evidence that the bulk of these immigrants who come illegally are making any effort to assimilate. The very fact that they are illegal places them outside the channels that immigrants have historically used to adopt the United States as their homeland. Instead of assimilating, an entirely separate culture complete with government services, benefits, and a support system has grown up around the idea that people here illegally should be coddled and stroked, largely for their votes.

You cannot force people to assimilate. But you can make it easier for those who want to. And by setting up enclaves of illegal immigrants where the rule of law is made a mockery of and people are rewarded for not integrating into society, the government assures that there is no incentive to add one’s unique and fascinating cultural qualities to the great American melting pot. When “diversity” rules, “unity” suffers.

All of these issues go to the heart of immigration reform. President Bush’s proposal – cribbed from the playbook of the US Chamber of Commerce – is a mish mash of enforcement propositions and a “guest worker” program that many experts believe would do nothing to stem the tide of illegal immigration and may in fact encourage it. The Republicans are split on how draconian the enforcement provisions should be. The Democrats are united in opposition to the entire plan, seeing an easy way to demagogue some votes. Given that the President’s plan would do the least amount of damage to the GOP’s image with their growing number of Hispanic adherents, it seems likely that some kind of a guest worker program along with a few enforcement bones thrown to the Tancredo faction in Congress will emerge from Committee.

What kind of law that would make seems to be lost in all the political calculations both sides are making this election year.

UPDATE

Michelle Malkin:

We are not a “nation of immigrants.” This is both a factual error and a warm-and-fuzzy non sequitur. Eighty-five percent of the residents currently in the United States were born here. Sure, we are almost all descendants of immigrants. But we are not a “nation of immigrants.”

And if the open borders advocates would actually read American history instead of revising it, they would see that the founding fathers were emphatically insistent on protecting the country against indiscriminate mass immigration.

Also, here’s an Op-Ed from today’s Washington Post that makes the case rather well that guest workers are a very bad idea.

Dan at The Glittering Eye is making sense today (as usual):

Almost everything I’ve seen in the blogosphere today on the subject has been romantic claptrap. The fact is that illegal aliens have broken the law. That many come here seeking a better way of life is irrelevant. All criminals want a better way of life and see their crimes as a means to that end. It’s no excuse.

Why did the Bush Administration drag its heels for nearly 3 years in releasing the millions of document that fell into its hands after the fall of Saddam?

This is why:

BAGHDAD, Iraq — The Russian government had sources inside the American military command as the U.S. mounted the invasion of Iraq, and the Russians passed information to Saddam Hussein on troop movements and plans, according to Iraqi documents released as part of a Pentagon report.

The Russians relayed information to Saddam during the opening days of the 2003 war, including a crucial moment before the assault on Baghdad, according to the documents in the report Friday.

The unclassified report does not assess the value of the information or provide details beyond citing two captured Iraqi documents that say the Russians collected information from sources “inside the American Central Command” and that battlefield intelligence was provided to Saddam through the Russian ambassador in Baghdad

There are two broad hints that answer the question above. One, the investigation (and perhaps similar investigations like it) into possible espionage activity by individuals in the US military and intelligence community has now been compromised. In such investigations, it is always best that the targets don’t know they are under investigation lest they become more cautious and fail to reveal contacts and other members of their network.

The second hint is the great big headache the release of these documents has now given everyone in the national security and foreign policy establishment in the Bush Administration. Something has got to be done about Russia and this betrayal by an ally.

As long as the information was secret, the State Department could pretend that it didn’t exist (even though we can be almost certain they were aware of it) thus allowing us to work with President Putin on a variety of other issues unrelated to Russian perfidy in the lead up to the Iraq War. But Ed Morrissey is right when he writes of the consequences the release of the documents have for our diplomatic offensive against Iran:

After finding out that Putin has a habit of supplying tyrannical enemies of the Western nations with military intelligence to use against us, the last country we should trust with Iran’s nuclear program is Russia. We can also kiss off the UN; as long as Russia has its veto, that route will lead nowhere. Russia has revealed itself to be a major part of the problem in the Middle East, and we should stop pretending that they are part of the solution.

At least now we know why the CIA and John Negroponte wanted these documents to remain sealed.

In fact, these revelations have probably thrown a monkey wrench into our overall policy to contain Iranian nuclear ambitions. Any deal on sanctions with Russia that would have been in the works is now out the window which means the UN route – problematic at best with both China and Russia opposed to our sanctions policy – has been blocked. And with our “allies” in Europe kibitzing on the sidelines and waffling back and forth between talking tough and mouthing platitudes about a peaceful resolution, it appears that once again, the US will have to act unilaterally in order to safeguard the security interests of all concerned.

It is a very nice luxury that the Germans, French and other EU members have that they can benefit from American military actions while playing the anti-American card at home by denouncing US “imperialism” in order to cater to their pacifist and clueless populations.

Expect more revelations of this type, especially regarding the French who sold weapons to Saddam even while American tanks were rolling toward Baghdad.

SEE UPDATE BELOW BEFORE READING

After first defending himself at RedState in what I will charitably call a curious fashion, Mr. Domenech has finally come clean and done the right thing:

I want to apologize to National Review Online, my friends and colleagues here at RedState, and to any others that have been affected over the past few days. I also want to apologize to my previous editors and writers whose work I used inappropriately and without attribution. There is no excuse for this – nor is there an excuse for any obfuscation in my earlier statement.

I hope that nothing I’ve done as a teenager or in my professional life will reflect badly on the movement and principles I believe in.

I’m deeply grateful for the love and encouragement of all those around me. And although I may not deserve such support, it makes it that much more humbling at a time like this. I’m a young man, and I hope that in time that I can earn a measure of the respect that you have given me.

I was unaware of Mr. Domenech’s enormous talent as a writer as evidenced in this piece he did for the New York Press:

I walked out of the bright Friday sun and into the Capitol Bldg.’s Document Entrance two hours before the gunman arrived. The back of my collar scratched sweat against my skin, and I loosened my tie in a vain effort to find relief from the sultry July heat. I remember nodding hello to the tall black policeman who was standing at the metal detector in front of the Document Entrance door. I don’t remember if he smiled back. From what friends tell me now, he usually did.

At 3:40 that July afternoon, Russell Weston Jr. stepped into the air conditioning of the Capitol Bldg. through that same door. He took five short steps across the tiles to where the officer on duty, 58-year-old J.J. Chestnut, was writing down directions for a group of tourists who had just finished the official tour. Weston raised his gun with speed and silence and put a .38-caliber bullet through the back of Chestnut’s head.

I don’t care whether you’re right wing, left wing, or a chicken wing, if you can’t recognize that the boy plays music with words there’s something wrong with you. And this makes his word thefts all the more mystifying. Plagiarism is the crime of hacks, those of little talent and an indolent nature whose imagination and vision are as limited as their intellectual acumen. When someone blessed with such obvious gifts gives in to temptation like Mr. Domenech now admits he did, there must be other reasons than simple laziness.

In the heart of every artist, there is a gnawing sense of inadequacy, a belief that at bottom, they are just not good enough to deserve the plaudits and encomiums they receive from their peers and the public. In one respect, this makes many artists insufferable louts as they seek to cover this inadequacy with bluster and braggadocio. But in a more uplifting aspect of this phenomena, it drives the artist to excel. Writing, being part artistic endeavor and part journeyman’s craft, opens itself to practitioners who exemplify the best of creativity while requiring the attitude of a bricklayer. Carefully laying down ideas in a logical and coherent fashion (if indeed that is the writer’s goal) can be a chore at times and it is this facet of the craft that can be irksome.

That irritation can lead to temptation, a desire to shortcut the process by not re-inventing the wheel. There is also the unwritten rule that a nice turn of the phrase or a play on words can be copied and pasted – a curious form of flattery of which I have been guilty in the past (use the site search here to look for references to “dirty necked galoots” which I first saw used by R. Emmett Tyrell). Put it all together and plagiarism becomes an easy trap to fall into unless one is firmly grounded with a strict moral sense and strong ethical standards.

Jeff Goldstein, who for some reason has recently come under attack by some pretty heavy hitters on the left for…well, being Goldstein, I guess, places the imbroglio in context:

Having met Ben last month, I can report that I found him to be a very bright, very articulate, very glib young man. He is also a very gifted writer. On the charges of plagiarism, I’ll accept Ben’s explanation—whatever it is—because I also found him to be quite a forthright gentleman, which means that I expect he will admit to any wrongdoing.

What is most distasteful about this episode from the perspective of the blogosphere, on the other hand, is the palpable glee with which many on the left set out after Ben and are now luxuriating in his resignation. And, of course, they have taught the WaPo the lesson they wished to teach it: that rightwing commentary will be scrutinized in direct inverse to the acceptance they give to the obvious biases of leftwing media figures.

There has been a concerted effort by the left in the past year to try and knock down the idea that there is a liberal bias in major media. In fact, liberals are attempting to portray the media as nothing more than a mouthpiece for the GOP and conservatives. They believe if they say “Rush Limbaugh” and “Fox News” often enough and loud enough, people will actually start believing that Chris Matthews is a conservative masquerading as former Chief of Staff to Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill or that Katie Couric is a closet Republican.

This from the Reality Based Community.

The furious reaction by left wing blogs to the very idea of a page on the Washington Post website devoted to conservatives represents a recognition by the left that their once total dominance of the flow of information (and hence the power to set the national agenda) is under serious challenge. And as Goldstein points out, the next conservative blogger hired by the Post better have a thick skin:

Because make no mistake: their entire schtick has become political theater—and often of the most hateful variety. In recent months, we’ve seen a ratcheting up of attempts to undermine the credibility of writers who don’t toe the progressive line (for my part, I’ve been called an idiot, a failed academic, a pill-popping hausfrau, untalented, uncreative, pretentious etc., etc.). But of course, it’s the right who engages in the “politics of personal destruction.” That’s just, well, an established given.

Ben Domenech is not Dan Rather; but no matter. The scalp is the thing. And the left has theirs today.

Which brings us to a double standard on the left so unfair, so obvious that one can easily question the personal integrity of people who perpetrate it, as Goldstein does here:

[T]hose on the left who have been braying all day over Ben’s downfall have two choices, as I see it: they can continue to gloat and carry around his scalp as a trophy to their own viciousness (they went after him for a host of other things, from his schooling to his family to his supposed “racism” before they got around to the plagiarism charge)—showing themselves to be the very fetishists of schadenfreude I accused them of being; or they can now explain to us why they don’t hold their own to the same ethical standards. Ben has owned up to his mistakes. He has, as I anticipated he would, taken that most difficult first step to rehabilitating his credibility. Now it’s time for other folks to do the same: Molly Ivins; Larry Tribe; Stephen Ambrose; Dan Rather; Jason Leopold; Joe Biden; Micah Wright; Ward Churchill; Eason Jordan; CNN’s agreement with Saddam’s Iraq; Joe Wilson; Steve Erlanger—we’re looking at you.

Surely, our principled guardians of publishing ethics could use their newfound momentum to prompt similarly intensive investigations into the ethical lapses of those mentioned above, yes? Or is it only conservatives who are to be publicly pilloried by the reality based community.

You know—because of the nuance.

Ever so slowly, the attack memes carefully knitted together by the left over the past 3 long years to form a devastating narrative that puts the President in the most evil, unflattering light are unravelling before our eyes. The Saddam documents promise to do what thousands of right wing bloggers could never do; change the tone and tenor of the debate over the Iraq War (and thus the President) by giving the lie to all of the myths, half-truths, exaggerations, and outright falsehoods perpetrated by hateful, spiteful, jealous liberals whose irritation at losing elections has reached the point that they will do anything and say anything, even to the point of bringing shame and humiliation to the United States, in order to achieve power.

Yes, they brought down a conservative blogger. But later this summer, as the revelations continue about not only Saddam but the conspiracy involving our erstwhile allies against our efforts at both the UN and on the battlefield in Iraq becomes more generally known, the decision by Democrats and the netroots to make the election about George W. Bush could very well seem in retrospect to be a blunder of monumental proportions.

UPDATE

My jaw is on the floor and I am royally pissed off.

After Anne informed me in the comments that the piece I linked to from the New York Press above was actually cribbed from an article from the Washington Post I initiated a search of lefty blogs and sure enough, Domenech had copied almost word for word a piece that appeared in the Post on July 26, 1998 on page one!

It appears that my praise for Mr. Domenech was given for a piece in which he had lifted large segments of someone else’s beautiful work and claimed it as his own.

I apologize to my readers for 1)implying that Ben Domenech has any proven talent, and 2) misleading them about the author of the piece I linked above.

Domenech has come far and fast in life. It is apparent that he took many shortcuts to reach the height from which he has now fallen. It is also apparent from reading RedState and Jeff Goldstein that he has many friends who care about him and will stand by him in his hour of trial. This is a good thing because judging by the sheer volume of work in which he has shamelessly stolen others ideas and words, he will never write professionally again. And anyone who would hire him as a writer is a fool.

BTW - as of 7:00 PM Central on Saturday night, the list of plagiarized cites at Daily Kos are 7 pages long in MS Word.

This just in from Post.Blog, Jim Brady’s site:

In the past 24 hours, we learned of allegations that Ben Domenech plagiarized material that appeared under his byline in various publications prior to washingtonpost.com contracting with him to write a blog that launched Tuesday.

An investigation into these allegations was ongoing, and in the interim, Domenech has resigned, effective immediately.

When we hired Domenech, we were not aware of any allegations that he had plagiarized any of his past writings. In any cases where allegations such as these are made, we will continue to investigate those charges thoroughly in order to maintain our journalistic integrity.

Brady tips his cap to lefty bloggers:

We appreciate the speed and thoroughness with which our readers and media outlets surfaced these allegations. Despite the turn this has taken, we believe this event, among other things, testifies to the positive and powerful role that the Internet can play in the the practice of journalism.

We also remain committed to representing a broad spectrum of ideas and ideologies in our Opinions area.

I certainly hope that last is true. More than most media outlets – including all the biggies – WaPo has made a concerted effort to integrate their news coverage with the new media on the web. I applaud their efforts to make conservatives “feel at home” at a news source that in the past has shown open hostility to conservative ideas and personalities.

That said, all this incident has done is further erode confidence in the press. Already ranked by the American people at the bottom of the list for trustworthiness (right there with the Congress) and suffering from a concentration of power at both the local and national levels, the media is in real danger of trailing off into irrelevancy. And that would be a disaster for our democracy.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

It appeared to be the beginning of something new and exciting for the mainstream press. The Washington Post hires a conservative blogger ostensibly to give the view from the right on issues covered by the paper’s news department. The Post has proven itself innovative in other ways when it comes to the use of the web having recently included a Technorati listing of blogs covering specific articles. It has also increased its on-line content to include other blogs on culture and politics as well as extensive internet live chats with personalities from media, politics, and entertainment.

In fact, it was Dan Froomkin’s political blog White House Briefing that had conservatives calling for a blog to reflect the views of the right at the Post. The laughable bias of Mr. Froomkin contributed in no small way to the eventual decision by Executive Editor Jim Brady to hire Ben Domenech, founder of the blog RedState and at the tender age of 24, a seasoned political operative having worked at the White House and on Capitol Hill as a speech writer.

No sooner had Mr. Domenech gotten his feet wet than the attacks by the netnuts began. Apparently believing that the Washington Post was their exclusive preserve, a place where they hunt down and destroy conservatives not where they give them jobs, lefties went ballistic. The first attacks were for some pretty stupid things Domenech had said blogging at RedState as “Augustine” such as calling Coretta Scott King a communist the day after she died (for which he apologized) and making an ignorant remark about lower crime rates the result of a high number of abortions among blacks (although he didn’t put it quite as matter of factly as I just did). He tried to explain away the remark by claiming he was only quoting pro-life Pastor Neuhaus who was disgusted with using such “evidence” to support abortion. A pretty lame explanation but understandable if not acceptable.

There is not a blogger on this planet who has not written something and then regretted hitting the “publish” button. The immediacy and speed with which blogs cover and comment on issues sometimes leads to writing stupid, emotional posts full of ad-hominem attacks and vituperative digressions from the facts. I’d hate to think what someone doing a hit piece on me would find when I was venting against the latest outrage from the MSM or some idiot lefty.

So Domenech can be excused – barely – for what he has written in haste or otherwise on his blog. Chalk it up to the nature of the beast and forgive him for writing without thinking.

But what simply cannot be tolerated in any venue where the written word is revered and opinions respected is plagiarism. And according to material dug up by several lefty bloggers, the shocking fact is that Domenech is a word stealer of epic proportions, someone who has lifted entire articles from other sources and claimed the words and ideas as his own.

The issue of why the Washington Post couldn’t have found this out before hiring Mr. Domenech is another question entirely and will not be dealt with here. Suffice it to say that this incident along with recent stupidities at the New York Times regarding a fake hurricane victim and a bogus Abu Ghraib poster boy shows how lazy the media has gotten about fact checking.

Writing, being a combination of art and craft, is an extraordinarily personal way to express oneself. So when a plagiarizer lifts entire paragraphs containing ideas that are not his own, he in effect, takes a little of the writer along with the words. It is a personal affront to the originator of those ideas as well as being acts of selfishness and dishonesty.

The plagiarism of Mr. Domenech cannot be chalked up to youthful indiscretion nor to some kind of unconscious parroting of something he read before putting words to paper. The examples unearthed so far – and bloggers are finding more examples almost by the hour – are so clearly copied verbatim from other sources as to constitute an unusually good case for plagiarism against Mr. Domenech. Most plagiarizers will subtly change the wording of what they intend to copy so as to disguise their crime. Mr. Domenech didn’t even take the time and effort to do that. Here is just one example, a review of the film Final Fantasy that appeared in the National Review Online:

Ben Domenech in National Review Online in July of 2001:

“Translucent and glowing, they ooze up from the ground and float through solid walls, wriggling countless tentacles and snapping their jaws. They’re known as the Phantoms, alien thingies that, for three decades, have been sucking the life out of the earthlings of “Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.” Swollen nightmares from a petri dish, they’re the kind of grotesque whatsits horror writer H.P. Lovecraft would have kept as pets in his basement.”

Steve Murray (Cox News):

“Translucent and glowing, they ooze up from the ground and float through solid walls, splaying their tentacles and snapping their jaws, dripping a discomfiting acidic ooze. They’re known as the Phantoms, otherworldly beings who, for three decades, have been literally sucking the life out of the earthlings of the human.”

There is beauty in the imagery evoked by Mr. Murray’s description – a juxtapostion of words that are pleasing when listened to by our inner voice as well as exciting to our imagination when conjuring up a picture drawn with such clarity.

For Mr. Domenech to steal those words and ideas is like slapping Mr. Murray in the face and laughing at the same time. For at bottom, the plagiarizer fully realizes what he is doing and thinks he is being clever by getting away with it. This is not a case where some graduate assistant helping with research on a book for some famous academic lifts entire passages from someone else’s thesis or an obscure article in an scholarly journal as has happened in recent years with several historians. This is a case where Mr. Domenech was using the platform provided by NRO to advance his own career and pad his credentials, the result being he was shortly thereafter hired by the White House as a speech writer.

Dan Reihl is a conservative blogger who gives voice to sentiments that should be echoed by conservative writers across the country:

No one with a healthy respect for original ideas, or the written words of others could do what it seems Domenech has done. If he’s guilty, his judgment displays a profound lack of moral and ethical grounding. Ambition is no excuse for theft. And that’s precisely what plagiarism is.

I’m assuming the WaPo will act, if it hasn’t already. If guilty, allowing him to continue representing the Right would be terribly wrong.

If we conservatives have any claims to promoting honesty and decency, there will be more calls on the right for Mr. Domenech to do the honorable thing and save himself and his employer the embarrassment of being fired by resigning immediately. Little can be gained from his continuing to blog at the Washington Post as I for one never plan on linking to anything he writes and would hope that other conservatives would join me in such a boycott.

Ben Domenech is not the kind of writer we want representing the conservative viewpoint at the Washington Post or anywhere else. With so many eloquent and able conservative writers, I’m sure the Post will have no problem finding someone else to take over a blog that should be espousing honesty and decency as the principles by which we on the right live by.

Anything short of that just won’t do.

UPDATE

The Political Pit Bull has the best round-up – right or left – of the plagiarism issue. Patterico has some more thoughts here including a personal experience he had with a plagiarizer.

I can’t help but thinking that with these and other conservative bloggers already weighing in on this matter -coming out four square against Domenech’s plagiarism – it would be an interesting thought experiment to think of what kind of reaction lefty bloggers would have if one of their own was accused of something similar. Given the left’s penchant to close ranks for the likes of Joe Wilson (a proven liar) and Bill Clinton, I daresay that there would be nary a peep from the netnuts if the shoe were on the other foot in this case.

John Cole defends Mr. Domenech from the charges of racism (because he called a black person a communist?) as well as other blathering charges from the left. In a comment in the same post, Cole gives his views on the plagiarism issue.

UPDATE II

Michelle Malkin, for whom Mr. Domenech was an editor on her last book, weighs in:

As someone who has worked in daily journalism for 14 years, I have a lot of experience related to this horrible situation: I’ve had my work plagiarized by shameless word and idea thiefs many times over the years. I’ve also been baselessly accused of plagiarism by some of the same leftists now attacking Ben.

The bottom line is: I know it when I see it. And, painfully, Domenech’s detractors, are right. He should own up to it and step down. Then, the Left should cease its sick gloating and leave him and his family alone.

And James Joyner has a thoughtful defense of Domenech here:

I am not ready to toss Domenech under the proverbial bus or call for his firing at the moment. There may, indeed, be perfectly reasonable explanations for these charges. But while Erickson is probably right that “Facts have never been debate winners among the haters,” they should damned well be debate winners among the rest of us. Let alone, I should add, the side that so loudly heralds traditional virtues like honor.

Ordinarily I would agree with Mr. Joyner. However, the examples of Mr. Domenech’s plagiarism ferreted out so far are so egregious, so obvious that the only possible “reasonable explanation” is that either Mr. Domenech’s work is being copied by people like P.J. O’Rourke or Mr. Domenech has been caught red-handed.

Due to the onset of information overload along with unhealthy feelings of homicide toward liberals, I am taking today off to watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy.

It didn’t help that I had to wrestle with government forms most of the morning trying to get Sue’s residency situation ironed out. Several times in the last few days, she has informed me that she wished she could go back and live under Communist oppression – at least those guys had a good idea of what bureaucracy really was. Our immigration paper pushers are apparently amateurs compared to what they could accomplish forms-wise in the old Soviet bloc.

At any rate, I will self-identify with Faramir, the misunderstood son, and see the cave trolls as liberals – both seem to share about the same level of intelligence. And I will be back bright and early tomorrow with more scintillating commentary and uproarious dismemberment of the the left.

Disgusted with the draft of an article I was working on that highlighted the cluelessness of the nutroots, I inadvertently deleted my post from this morning “A Racial Slur? Or a Slip of the Tongue?” instead of the draft I was working on.

Moral of the story: Don’t write mad…