TO ARMS! TO ARMS! The forces of darkness are gathering to strike a blow against liberty, justice, the American way, and…and…THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE!

The Electoral college?

Yes, it’s true. Not content to simply posit conspiracy theories about how Republicans steal elections, liberals have now set their sights on stripping America of one of her oldest and most cherished institutions. Now, gentle reader, before you scratch your head and ask the obvious question of who cares if we give the Electoral College the heave-ho, perhaps a little history lesson is in order. And who better to give it than I, Professor Moran, BFA, MS, and VAH (Very Amateur Historian).

WHAT IS THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE AND DO THEY HAVE A FOOTBALL TEAM?

I’ll take the second question first, Mr. Trebek. Not that I’m aware of although I understand they’ve had some pretty wild keggers over the last 217 years. And starting in 1920 when the college went co-ed, it’s rumored that Toga Parties became all the rage.

Notwithstanding such juvenile shenanigans, the Electoral College is a product of one of the more divisive debates that took place during the Constitutional Convention. For a very educational and thorough examination of this history, I recommend you go here since I’ll be dealing with only the bare bones of what the institution is all about.

The College consists of electors, chosen by the states in various ways, that (ideally) reflect the outcome of the popular vote for President in that particular state. The number of electors is what’s important. That number is determined by how many Senators (2) and Congressmen (proportionally awarded based on most recent census) the state has. So Pennsylvania has 21 electoral votes because they have 2 Senators and how many Congressmen? Class? CLASS? WAAAAAKE UUUUP!. Thank you. Nineteen Congressmen is the correct answer.

The kicker is that it’s a winner take all competition. Whoever wins the popular vote gets all the electors from that state.

ISN’T THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE KIND OF ARCHAIC?

Depends what you mean by archaic. Given that liberals have voted against every major weapons system currently in use by the military (an exaggeration, but hey! We don’t call this site the RIGHT WING Nuthouse because we’re impartial!), perhaps they wants us to fight terrorism using bows and arrows…or spears. Do you mean archaic in THAT sense?

The answer is no. And like my sainted father used to say “Old things are best.” Many of the reasons for the electoral college are still valid today. Look at the election of 2000. Al Gore would have been President if he had carried one more state. That would have given him a grand total of 18 states voting Democratic. George Bush would have won 32 states and gotten nothing, nada, zip-i-dee-doo-da. This is exactly what the electoral college was set up to prevent. Al Gore, if he had won Florida, would have captured 8 of the 10 largest states and won the election by appealing mostly to urban and coastal constituencies. George Bush demonstrated broader support in the electoral college appealing to states in the north, south, east, and west. Bush, even though narrowly losing the popular vote, proved himself a much more national candidate.

And there are other issues to consider when thinking of ditching the electoral college:

First, the direct election of presidents would lead to geographically narrower campaigns, for election efforts would be largely urban. In 2000 Al Gore won 677 counties and George Bush 2,434, but Mr. Gore received more total votes. Circumvent the Electoral College and move to a direct national vote, and those 677 largely urban counties would become the focus of presidential campaigns.

Rural states like Maine, with its 740,000 votes in 2004, wouldn’t matter much compared with New York’s 7.4 million or California’s 12.4 million votes. Rural states’ issues wouldn’t matter much either; big-city populations and urban issues would become the focus of presidential campaigns. America would be holding urban elections, and that would change the character of campaigns and presidents.

Recently, California passed a law that would award the state’s 55 electoral votes to the winner of the most popular votes nationally rather than the winner of the state’s individual race for President. This is apparently part of a national movement to marginalize the electoral college and give the larger states (mostly liberal and Democratic) a bigger say in who is President.

To say this would be catastrophic to American democracy would not be overstating the case one bit. Done under the guise of the “one man, one vote” battle cry which is largely responsible for the permanent incumbency found today in the House of Representatives, the so-called “direct election” of the President would radically alter not only the way we choose a President but the presidency itself.

WHAT WOULD BE THE PROBLEM WITH DIRECT ELECTIONS FOR PRESIDENT?

Pete Du Pont sums up a couple of the major arguments:

Second, in any direct national election there would be significant election-fraud concerns. In the 2000 Bush-Gore race, Mr. Gore’s 540,000-vote margin amounted to 3.1 votes in each of the country’s 175,000 precincts. “Finding” three votes per precinct in urban areas is not a difficult thing, or as former presidential scholar and Kennedy advisor Theodore White testified before the Congress in 1970, “There is an almost unprecedented chaos that comes in the system where the change of one or two votes per precinct can switch the national election of the United States.”

[snip]

Third, direct election would lead to a multicandidate, multiparty system instead of the two-party system we have. Many candidates would run on narrow issues: anti-immigration, pro-gun, environment, national security, antiwar, socialist or labor candidates, for they would have a microphone for their issues. Then there would be political power seekers—Al Sharpton or Michael Moore—and Hollywood pols like Barbra Streisand or Warren Beatty. Even Paris Hilton could advance her career through a presidential campaign.

If we were to simply go by the popular vote to decide who’s elected President, several other major alterations would occur that would permanently change the landscape of our political culture.

• Candidates would concentrate on big states in their campaigns. Whoever the party nominees were, they would move to California, set up residence, and try to shake 40 million hands. An exaggeration of course. But a politician who already lived in California – say a Governor or Senator – would have an enormous advantage in any race for the Presidency. If such a candidate could run up a huge majority in California the task of getting 50.1% of the vote would become much easier. This begs the question; should one state have such an enormous say in who gets elected President? The state already supplies fully 20% of the electoral votes necessary to get to the magic number of 270. Can you imagine what a 5 million vote lead would mean coming out of California to a national candidate based on directly electing a President?

• Minorities would become marginalized. If you think candidates ignore the concerns of minorities now, you’ll love direct elections for President. More than ever, Democrats would take the minority vote for granted and Republicans would continue their half-hearted attempts at outreach. the rationale being, why spend time and money preaching to (or begging from)) the converted?

• Small states and rural areas would be slighted in national elections. Would a campaign that never visited Bucktooth PA or Watchoutforthatcroc FL be any fun at all? I doubt it. I think that we’d lose something if Presidential candidates only visited big states and big state TV markets. Somehow, watching a candidate interact with these simple folk gives you a handle on what kind of person they are, hence what kind of leader they’d make.

Finally, there is this to consider:

Finally, direct election would also lead to weaker presidents. There are no run-offs in the Interstate Compact—that would require either a constitutional amendment or the agreement of all 50 states and the District of Columbia—so the highest percentage winner, no matter how small (perhaps 25% or 30% in a six- or eight-candidate field) would become president. Such a winner would not have an Electoral College majority and therefore not be seen as a legitimate president.

So rather that trying to eviscerate the Electoral College, we should be embracing it. It was put in the Constitution to allow states to choose presidents, for we are a republic based on the separation of powers, not a direct democracy. And the Electoral College—just like the Senate—was intended to protect the residents of small states. As James Madison said, the Electoral College included the will of the nation—every congressional district gets an electoral vote—and “the will of the states in their distinct and independent capacities” since every state gets two additional electors.

What Mr. Du Pont doesn’t say and what the proponents of abandoning the Electoral College never tire of pointing out is that the Electoral College was put in place because our Founding Fathers didn’t trust Jefferson’s yeoman farmers any further than they could throw them – literally. They saw us common folk as rabble, a dangerous mob and in great need of guidance by men better suited to the task of governing by virtue of their superior breeding and education. The Electoral College was originally seen as a brake on popular passions and allowed for the wisest men in the country to gather once every four years to pick our national leader.

How the Electoral College has evolved over the years to reflect the will of the people in the various states in Presidential elections is one of the more fascinating aspects in studying the American government. In fact, since the choosing of electors is up to each individual state, the system is a hodge-podge of processes and procedures that functions largely out of respect for tradition:

Here is a list of how the different states have political parties choose who will be their electors. It also shows whether or not the electors’ names appear on the ballot in November. Finally, it indicates which states have passed laws to bind their electors. Not too many do, and even fewer have defined penalties for an unfaithful elector. Yet, of more than 16,000 electors in U.S. history, less than a dozen have ever voted contrary to the wishes of the people who elected them. Don’t you wish we could say the same about our other elected officials?

The evolution of the College from something akin to the College of Cardinals to a body that reflected the democratic will of the people didn’t take long. Electors running in each district usually made it clear who they would vote for President when the College convened. But the federalist impulse behind the invention of the college remains to this day, a demonstration of the recognition that we are indeed a federal republic. And getting rid of the Electoral College would go a long way towards destroying that idea.

WILL WE TOSS THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE ANY TIME SOON?

Not as long as the current political party situation remains unchanged. Republicans would be at enormous logistical disadvantage under such a system. Think of it like a war. Republicans have a lot more territory to defend than Democrats and thus, their resources would be stretched much thinner. To get to the magic number of 50.1% of the popular vote, Democrats would be able to expend a lot less energy and money to defend their own turf thus freeing them up to raid Republican strongholds. Republicans would have to fight off Democratic insurgencies in red states while carrying on an expensive battle in blue states to pick off a few voters here and there.

No wonder the idea is popular with liberals. It would maximize the influence of their strategic assets while diminishing the power of most of the people who disagree with them.

But hey! All for a good cause, right?

UPDATE

Good Lt. blogging a the Jawas:

Yes. The Democrats want the dense inner-city populations and their infinitely successful approaches to problems like education, crime and corruption to run the national government without regard to what anybody else outside of the large population centers might think.

Times have changed so much under the long dark night of Bushiburton fascism that the very democracy that was perfectly acceptable a decade ago has collapsed entirely and needs to be replaced with procedures favorable to urban liberal constituencies.

Du Pont puts the issue correctly. Mucking with the electoral college will basically disenfracnchise rural voters. Campaigns will not only ignore them but it is likely that Administrations will also give their concerns short shrift.

If Jimmy Carter didn’t exist, our enemies would have to invent him.

How the world avoided unmitigated catastrophe on this man’s watch is one of the great mysteries of the universe, on a par with finding proof that dark matter exists and how in God’s name Britney and Kevin are still married. His stewardship of our government in the late 1970’s will go down as one of the more curious episodes in the history of the American experiment, made all the more surreal today by his status as global nag and international defender of thuggish brutes.

How this man found himself on January 20, 1977 sitting in the oval office rather than the back porch of his peanut farm has to be considered one of the biggest accidents of history of all time.

It was Watergate, of course. And Gerald Ford’s perceived clumsiness. And the sour end to Viet Nam. And a turning inward by the “Me” Generation – all of which created a perfect storm of stupidity and a feel-good self righteousness that allowed a one term governor of Georgia (whose style over substance campaign entranced a media ready to be entranced by an “outsider”) to ascend to the highest rung of power in our democracy.

It wasn’t just incompetence, although he and his befuddled advisors never could get a handle on inflation, the economy, and most especially, the dirty necked galoots who ousted the Shah of Iran. And thankfully, the Soviet Union at the time had their own leadership problems with an old, infirm, and nearly senile Brezhnev, thus moving cautiously until they were absolutely sure they could get away with murder in Cuba, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, and other points on the globe that were subsumed by the March of History.

In fact, it wasn’t until the last two years of this mountebank’s presidency that the Russians got rolling. If they had begun their assault on western interests a year or two earlier, God knows what the result would have been.

In this, we can look at Jimmy Carter whose very existence is the answer to the age old riddle “Is there a God?” This atheist is almost convinced that the only reason the United States and indeed the world survived the Carter presidency was because of the intercession of a Supreme Being who took pity on the American people and directed events in such a way as to mitigate this living representation of the Peter Principle’s ignorance and incompetence.

Since his ignominious landslide defeat at the hands of Ronald Reagan in 1980 (that Carter never acknowledged as a rejection of his policies or personae), this strange and curiously myopic man, who flits and scurries around the world like a fruit fly in search of a rotting banana, has turned down the covers of his bed for some of the most unattractive and tyrannical despots on the planet. Arafat, Mugabe, the mullahs in Iran, Hugo Chavez, Kim Jong Il – the list includes dictators with the blood of hundreds of thousands on their hands. It is almost as if, unable to purge the demons of his past in America, he is attracted to and defends those who have proven perfectly capable of some real life purges – men who are leaving a bloody trail in history and who owe much of whatever legitimacy they have to the need for this fakir to dance in the international limelight.

The most recent evidence showing how lucky the world was that this man was not vouchsafed 4 more years by the voters, thus saving the denizens of planet earth the nightmare of having to deal with a potential Superpower confrontation thanks to an emboldened Soviet Union challenging a hesitant and weak United States comes to us via an interview Carter gave to the Daily Telegraph.

His words drip with self righteousness when he talks about Britain’s Tony Blair:

Tony Blair’s lack of leadership and timid subservience to George W Bush lie behind the ongoing crisis in Iraq and the worldwide threat of terrorism, according to the former American president Jimmy Carter.

“I have been surprised and extremely disappointed by Tony Blair’s behaviour,” he told The Sunday Telegraph.

“I think that more than any other person in the world the Prime Minister could have had a moderating influence on Washington – and he has not. I really thought that Tony Blair, who I know personally to some degree, would be a constraint on President Bush’s policies towards Iraq.”

Projecting Carter’s own weaknesses onto Blair by accusing him of not “moderating” American policies is the heighth of hubris. Could it be that Blair was not interested in “moderating” Bush’s policies and, in fact, agreed wholeheartedly with them? This thought evidently never crossed Carter’s mind. This could be why most of his contemporaries in Europe held him in such complete and utter contempt.

And that contempt felt by European leaders was the result of Carter’s failure to understand the nature of a threatening world – especially when it came to countering Soviet moves all over the globe. The Europeans saw Carter’s hesitancy, his inconstancy and made their own decisions about American power. Their was a general softening of support for the US as European leaders like Helmudt Schmidt of Germany moved perceptively away from America and Mitterand of France openly courted the Russian bear by making favorable trade deals with the Soviets. Carter’s paralysis in the face of Soviet aggression was altering the balance of power in favor of Russia.

Has he learned anything since then?

But had he still been president, he says that he would never have considered invading Iraq in 2003.

“No,” he said, “I would never have ordered it. However, I wouldn’t have excluded going into Afghanistan, because I think we had to strike at al-Qaeda and its leadership. But then, to a major degree, we abandoned the anti-terrorist effort and went almost unilaterally with Great Britain into Iraq.”

This, Mr Carter believes, subverted the effectiveness of anti-terrorist efforts. Far from achieving peace and stability, the result has been a disaster on all fronts. “My own personal opinion is that the Iraqi people are not better off as a result of the invasion and people in America and Great Britain are not safer.”

It is very generous of Mr. Carter to inform us had he been President on 9/11 that he “wouldn’t have excluded going into Afghanistan” to go after al-Qaeda. The problem is in what he isn’t saying. Please note he does not mention regime change nor does he mention rousting the Taliban so that they would be unable to grant sanctuary to the remnants of al-Qaeda or any other terror group. Presumably, the terrorist training sites would still have been in operation as would the Taliban’s Sharia law which would have continued to treat women as dirt and the modern world generally as a plague. One might ask what the point would have been to attack al-Qaeda without attacking the Taliban but why make the poor fellow tie himself in knots trying to justify the unjustifiable?

And while it may be his opinion that the Iraqi people aren’t better off with Saddam gone, 80% of the Iraqi people themselves disagree which goes to prove that Carter has lost none of the minuscule amount of political acumen he was born with.

As for whether Britain and America are safer as a result of the Iraq liberation, it is impossible to answer that question. It is fashionable to say we are in greater danger but I would posit the notion that thanks to Iraq, we have greater awareness of the dangers we face hence are better prepared to meet them. In a world where Islamists are trying to kill as many of us as possible, there is no such thing as “safe” with or without the Iraq invasion. In the end, the question is irrelevant except as a political construct by the President and his opponents. And how you measure “safety” is completely subjective and hence irrelevant except in this political context.

Finally, we get this outrageous bias from the Telegraph along with some more Carter lunacy:

Asked why he thinks Mr Blair has behaved in the way that he has with President Bush’s belligerent regime, Mr Carter said he could only put it down to timidity. Yet he confessed that he remains baffled by the apparent contrast between Mr Blair’s private remarks and his public utterances.

“I really believe the reports of former leaders who were present in conversations between Blair and Bush that Blair has expressed private opinions contrary to some of the public policies that he has adopted in subservience.”

Bush’s “belligerent regime?” Freeing 50 million people from tyranny in Iraq and Afghanistan is hardly the actions of a “belligerent” administration. The term was deliberately used by the reporters and the depiction of the Bush administration as a “regime” which is more descriptive of a dictatorship than a democracy is outrageous. Only lefty loons believe the US has descended into dictatorship and to have it appear on the pages of a supposedly respected newspaper is despicable.

And so are Carter’s remarks about Blair. The British Prime Minister timid? In what universe? And Blair has disagreed with the Administration privately but not gone public with those disagreements which is the sign of a loyal ally, something Carter would know nothing about since his betrayal of the Shah of Iran (and others) which threatens to haunt is all for a long while and is indicative of the messianic streak in his personality. The man’s self righteousness knows no bounds which is why his lecturing of foreign leaders became so tiresome.

I just wish the world itself would tire of this jackanape. His performances have become parodies of themselves because with each appearance, he must become ever more strident and hateful to the President and to American policies. And as a genuine danger to human liberty, he should be denied a platform from which to spout his inanities.

Don’t hold your breath, though. He is a godsend to the anti-American European press and will always find a ready audience here as well for his rants. In that, as with other indignities we are forced to suffer with – like hang nails and crotch rot – we will not easily find a cure.

Join me this morning from 7:00 AM - 9:00 AM Central Time for The Rick Moran Show on Wideawakes Radio.

Today, we’ll look at a new front that has just opened up in the War on Terror. Somalia is in danger of going the way of Afghanistan and that country’s neighbors don’t like it. We’ll also examine two excellent articles on Hizbullah that define where that group fits in the War on Terror. And we’ll look at the 2006 midterms from the perspective of Republicans coming back slightly. Is it enough? Can it continue?

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The important thing, obviously, is that Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig have been freed from their captivity. And in an interesting twist that makes one think that their kidnappers knew all too well what Fox News is and what the attitude of the rest of the world media is toward them, they forced the two journalists to “convert” to Islam.

AND JUST LIKE JILL CARROLL, THEY WERE FORCED TO MAKE A PROPAGANDA TAPE CONDEMNING AMERICA:

Fox Television journalists held for 13 days in the Gaza Strip were released Sunday after they were shown on a videotape saying they converted to Islam.

The two journalists, American Steve Centanni, 60, and New Zealand cameraman Olaf Wiig, 36, “have liberated themselves” by converting to Islam, according to the statement accompanying a videotape from a group calling itself the Holy Jihad Brigades.

Gaza journalists confirmed that Centanni and Wiig arrived at a hotel in Gaza shortly after noon local time.

[snip]

Parts of the latest six-minute tape, aired on al-Jazeera television, showed Centanni and Wiig seated cross-legged. Both read from written statements condemning the American policy in the Middle East. In one scene, both men were shown eating.

“It is Apache helicopters firing Hellfire missiles made in America that kill the residents in Gaza,” Wiig said on the tape.

Their statements were punctuated on the tape with screens of written verse from the Koran, and scenes from Abu Ghraib, the prison in Iraq that was the site of abuse of Muslim prisoners by American soldiers.

This “conversion” wrinkle is certainly personally humiliating for the two reporters. I say this not disparaging Islam but rather pointing out the obvious; conversion at the point of a gun points up the total control the kidnappers had over the lives of their captives. That is the message the kidnappers were sending. And it appears to me that the kidnappers may also be very aware of the fact that Fox News is seen by most of the western press as a “conservative” news outlet. Since it is no secret where the most vigorous opposition to the agenda of radical Islam comes from, one wonders if these particular jihadists were trying to send a message to conservatives; resistance is futile.

Are they that sophisticated? Think Reuters and then tell me they are not. Radical Islamism is the most media savvy enemy America has ever faced. For whatever reason, the old Soviet Union was clumsy and at times, laughably off target in their attempted media manipulations.

But these guys have studied the western mind, studied western politics, and most importantly, studied the process of how the modern collection and dissemination of news is done. They are aware of news cycles and feeding frenzies. We already knew they were very good at creating irresistible images for the wire services and other independent news sources whose reporting the major nets depend on during a war. What their manipulation of images of these particular hostages may mean is that they are aware of the politics of media coverage as well.

It almost appears as if the kidnappers had been reading the blogs over the last week. If there was one way to embarrass their tormentors in the right wing blogosphere, it would be to show that no one can resist the power of their religion. Whether they realize what the reaction by lefty blogs will be – gratitude for their release followed by a lecture on tolerance and some pointed remarks equating this hostage release with the way righty blogs handled the Jill Carroll imbroglio – is impossible to say but given the sophistication of their media relations as well as how internet savvy their cells have proved to be, I wouldn’t put it past them.

And even if the kidnappers don’t know what blogs are, the lefty blogs would have a point regarding Jill Carroll. If you haven’t read it, I strongly suggest you read her gripping story that will be out in book form soon, excerpts of which have appeared in the Christian Science Monitor. (HT: Bill Roggio). Carroll’s ordeal should remind all of us that no matter what one’s politics, all Americans are held hostage when one of us falls into the hands of these thugs.

Carroll was targeted for kidnapping for the exact same reason the Fox News reporters were taken; to influence and terrorize the American public. This is also the reason both were required to make a tape spewing anti-American propaganda. The thugs are not concerned with our petty political squabbles except as a way to divide us. They didn’t “like” Jill Carroll any more than they were fond of Steve Centanni. Carroll’s alleged sympathy for Islam didn’t do her any more or less good than Centanni’s connection to Fox News denoting hostility to radical jihadism. It just didn’t matter.

Maybe the good that comes out of this incident is that conservatives will realize that it doesn’t matter to our enemies whether reporters write sympathetic pieces about them or whether they do highly critical new stories on their movement. What matters is that they are American. That’s all that matters. The rest is so much chaff.

UPDATE

Michelle has links to all the video as well as her transcription of this from Centanni:

I just hope this never scares a single journalist away from coming to Gaza to cover this story because the Palestinian people are very beautiful, kind-hearted, loving people who the world need to know more about and so do not be discouraged. Come and tell the story. It’s a wonderful story. I’m just happy to be here. Thanks for all your support.

Ed Morrissey thinks the conversion ploy shows that the jihadists are amateurs:

The Holy Jihad Brigade apparently wants to include themselves among the Big Three of Palestinian terrorism. They have a strange way of applying. Besides forcing the conversion of the two to Islam, they made them play dress-up and recorded a degrading video of the pair denouncing the West in Arabic robes. I’m not sure who they thought such a display would convince, but Centanni and Wiig wisely played along with the demands, and now this laughable statement gives evidence of the childish and intellectually stunted nature of Palestinian terrorism. Even Haniyeh will be embarrassed by that show.

This could be. “Holy Jihad Brigade” could be a bunch of guys who hang out together after Friday prayers and who decided to get a little attention by kidnapping some westerners. It’s possible they didn’t know the significance of the Fox News connection nor that their motives in releasing the videos were anything more than, as Ed says, a “childish and laughable” exercise in propaganda.

If so, they sure got lucky picking a journalist with ties to a news organization that is closely identified with an ideology that has given the Islamists the most sustained and unrelenting opposition in the west.

Also, be sure to check out the videos at Ms. Underestimated.

Holy Mother! The aforementioned Mr. Russell Shaw is either a publicity glutton or a total nutcase.

Doesn’t this guy know when to shut up?

Not content with making a fool of himself on Friday with a post where he idly wonders if a terrorist attack in October wouldn’t unseat the Republicans and lead to “regime change” in 2008 for the Democrats, Shaw proves today that it wasn’t a fluke, that he is indeed a certifiable loon:

It strikes me as more than a little ironic that some self-regarded patriotic conservatives would somehow interpret my analytical, “what would happen if” I Hope And Pray We Don’t Get Hit Again BUT…post as a call for the enemies of America who hit us on 9/11/01 and cost the lives of nearly 3,000 innocent people to hit us again.

Not only because I wish for the death of no one, but because many of these same people are among the first to agree with Ann Coulter that for speaking out against the way the war on terror has been conducted since they lost their husbands, some of the 9/11 widows are “harpies.”

First of all, the only place on earth that Shaw’s article from yesterday would be considered “analytical” is in perhaps the third grade where the 10 year olds would have very little trouble picking it apart.

But Ann Coulter? Where in the wide, wide, world of sports did THAT come from. Not only is the Coulter thought left dangling like a lone strand of spaghetti at the end of a fork, but the fact is there was a massive backlash against Coulter in the conservative blogosphere for her tirade against the 9/11 widows. This is worse than “analytical.” This is incoherent.

To compare the way that some conservatives cheered Coulter on in her blaspheming the widows with the way they piled on Shaw is, well, nuts. If one were to give me a thousand choices for comparing the way conservatives have come down on Shaw for his idiocy yesterday, Coulter wouldn’t even be on the radar.

Besides, most conservatives pretty much ignored the premise of his article about his “almost wishing” for another massive terrorist strike in favor of tearing into his vision of a liberal Utopia if the Democrats are handed the reins of government by the voters. That and his notion that conservative policies are killing people deliberately. These go unmentioned in today’s installment of the Shaw Chronicles.

Unbelievably strange.

After pouting that he has been misunderstood, Shaw then compares the morality of a terrorist attack against civilians with losses in the Iraq War as evidence of conservative’s moral relavency.

Okay…do your own fisking of that. I think the premise fisks itself quite nicely.

This kind of hopeless stupidity (where sane people just kind of laugh and throw up their hands in resignation that nothing will ever get through to this guy) could simply be chalked up to someone who may have been dropped on his head as a child or the product of some horrible scientific experiment that went wrong. Except Shaw then proceeds to inform us that there are many forms of terrorism – and most of them are carried out by Republicans and conservatives against the American people:

But on the broader scale, some critics may fail to realize that for millions of Americans, terrorism is a frequent presence. Not the terrorism of a shoe-bomber, or of trumped up orange alerts based on intercepts of guys shouting “Jihad” in an Internet chat room, but the real psychological and economic terrorism often visited on Americans in the guise of:

The sight of two uniformed service members approaching your home, and the knowledge that your worst fears after not hearing from your son for two weeks are about to come horribly true;

The “please help us” screams from the victims of Hurricane Katrina- their plight unaddressed by an incompetent FEMA headed by an appointee of the same administration that is keeping us safe from terrorism;

The fourth call you have received this morning from the bill collector, who cares not that you have been put out of work by the greed of a multinational corporation who shipped your job overseas last year (and thanks in most part to the GOP, no longer have bankruptcy as an easily available option).

It’s all there, isn’t it? State sponsored terrorism courtesy of the Republicans.

I have dealt many times with this liberal compulsion to take the English language and bend it to their will by using or inventing words and then defining them not according to general usage or out of any desire to improve clarity but rather in order to appropriate their secondary value as emotional talismans to be stroked and fondled in order to elicit the appropriate response.

Using the word “terrorism” to describe government incompetence or the results of government policies is one such example. Equating what terrorists did on 9/11 with what Shaw considers FEMA incompetence is so far beyond the pale of rational discourse that it beggars belief. It would do no good to point out that you don’t rebuild a major American city that was 80% destroyed in one year even with a Bill Clinton led FEMA. Facts are irrelevant and indeed impediments in Shaw’s construct. What matters is using the word “terrorist” to elicit an emotional response regarding a host of government actions or inactions.

And the left accuses conservatives of fear mongering?

The litany of terrorist acts by the government and conservatives continues:

The need to wait two hours for three buses to take you to work because the price-gougers in the oil markets have made it too expensive to put gas in your car until you get paid again in two weeks;

The baby your niece will be forced to have after being impregnated by her no-good, meth-addled ex boyfriend because the only doctor who performed abortions within 200 miles has decided he doesn’t want to be terrorized by the “pro-lifers” anymore;

The moans from your cancer-ridden aunt in your upstairs guest bedroom- moans that the government won’t let you palliate with medical marijuana or even mercifully cease should she be at peace with her God about that option;

How can you respond rationally to irrationality? How can you debunk someone who thinks that marijuana is a pain killer? How can you explain to someone that anti-abortion protests are legal in the United States and that 76% of women need to travel less than 50 miles for an abortion (slightly farther than the average cancer patient needs to travel for treatment with rural areas skewing both numbers).

As for the vagaries of the oil markets or eeeeevil corporations sending jobs overseas (while 11 million have been created here at home), how can you explain capitalism to a nincompoop? Or explain that if you are getting calls from bill collectors because you have lost your job, you can still file for bankruptcy, that Shaw doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Shaw is an ignoramus. Any doubt erased here:

All of these events happen every day- as the consequence of policies promoted or sanctioned by the same government who is “keeping us safe against terrorism.” And while these events of our daily lives most often do not lead to sudden deaths as with terrorism, they can promote stress and slow death by 1,001 cuts. Cuts as a consequence of what it means to be poor and vulnerable in a nation ruled by the rich and powerful.

And sometimes, it is not only we humans who are victims of terrorism. The polar bear marooned on the ice floe due to global warming, the tiger who futilely scampers away from high-powered rifle fire at the game ranch owned by rich Republican contributors- well, they are victims of terrorism too.

I wish for a nation free of the fear of terrorism- not only the kind that visited our shores nearly five years ago to this day, but for a nation where the indignities of social, economic and environmental injustice strike terror in so many hearts and minds.

Stress = terrorism? Polar bears? Game ranches “owned by rich Republican contributors” victims of terrorism too?

Shaw forgot blades of grass on Republican controlled golf courses that take a beating because conservatives tend to wear spikes while liberals don’t.

Let me tell Mr. Shaw what I wish for: A nation free from myopic idiots like him who give rational thought a bad name. Any more “analytical” pieces like this one and his Friday post and Shaw just might achieve the coveted position of having his name turned into an internet verb.

Russell Shaw has made a lot of people angry with this post at HuffPo about his desire for another 9/11, which he believes would show the American people that George Bush can’t protect them and thus cause a Democratic stampede at the polls in November that would bring the left to power.

First of all, I should amend the above statement slightly to reflect the fact that Shaw has made a lot of conservatives angry. The netnuts either agree with him or have yet to catch up to the blogswarm. Their reaction should be interesting. My guess is they will condemn his premise while agreeing with his version of America under Democratic rule.

And that is where Shaw’s real stupidity shows itself. I can’t believe he is actually serious about the premise of this article:

What if another terror attack just before this fall’s elections could save many thousand-times the lives lost?

I start from the premise that there is already a substantial portion of the electorate that tends to vote GOP because they feel that Bush has “kept us safe,” and that the Republicans do a better job combating terrorism.

If an attack occurred just before the elections, I have to think that at least a few of the voters who persist in this “Bush has kept us safe” thinking would realize the fallacy they have been under.

If 5% of the “he’s kept us safe” revise their thinking enough to vote Democrat, well, then, the Dems could recapture the House and the Senate…”

We all know that being provocative in the blogosphere is the quickest way to fame. Shaw used so many qualifiers and caveats in his post fantasizing about rivers of blood flowing in American streets that the poor dear nearly tied himself into intellectual and moral knots. It proves that rather than really wishing for an attack, he wanted the widest possible audience for his vision of mass death leading to an electoral landslide. Shaw simply posits this outrageous premise to highlight what America would look like with the Democrats in charge.

In Shaw’s Utopia, the thousands of deaths in another 9/11 attack would be offset by many times that number “saved” by Democratic policies. In short, Shaw is intimating the jaw dropping idiocy that Republican policies kill people already and that if it takes a terrorist attack that kills thousands more in order to remove the Republican blight, so be it.

One might wonder about the gentleman’s sanity except this is standard fare for the left when it comes to critiquing conservative governance. It isn’t enough that Republican policies might be wrong, or misguided but rather they are unhealthy and are formulated with the idea of deliberately killing people.

Here’s an example of Shaw’s Utopia righting all wrongs with liberals riding to the rescue on a white horse:

Block the next Supreme Court appointment, one which would surely result in the overturning of Roe and the death of hundreds if not thousands of women from abortion-prohibiting states at the hands of back-alley abortionists;

It should be noted that getting rid of Roe V Wade would not end abortion in the United States. States would be free to pass their own laws regarding the right of a women to an abortion. This, of course, is how the issue of abortion should have been settled in the first place – through the democratic expression of voters not the diktats of a judge. In fact, prior to Roe, most states had relaxed their abortion laws and were moving toward the kind of legalization favored by the majority of Americans – abortions permitted in the first trimester with exceptions for the life and health of the mother and in cases of rape or incest.

The problem for abortion advocates is that instead of only having to deal with one entity – the US Supreme Court – to get their way, now they would have to deal with 50 state legislatures and all that messy democracy stuff. This is hugely expensive not to mention fraught with the danger that people might not agree with you and pass an abortion statute that reflects their own thinking on the matter rather than the thinking of their betters.

The world with the Democrats in charge gets even better:

Be in a position to elevate the party’s chances for a regime change in 2008. A regime change that would:

Save hundreds of thousands of American lives by enacting universal health care;

Save untold numbers of lives by pushing for cleaner air standards that would greatly reduce heart and lung diseases;

More enthusiastically address the need for mass transit, the greater availability of which would surely cut highway deaths;

Enact meaningful gun control legislation that would reduce crime and cut fatalities by thousands a year;

Fund stem cell research that could result in cures saving millions of lives;

Boost the minimum wage, helping to cut down on poverty which helps spawn violent crime and the deaths that spring from those acts;

Be less inclined to launch foolish wars, absence of which would save thousands of soldiers’ lives- and quite likely moderate the likelihood of further terror acts.

Would universal health care really save “hundreds of thousands” of American lives? I guess one of the advantages of blogging at Huffpo is that you can throw out any old sh*t about any subject and not have to prove it to anyone.

How about funding stem cell research that would save “millions of lives?” Doesn’t Mr. Shaw know that adult stem cell research is more than adequately funded and that the debate over whether embryonic stem cells would cure anybody of anything is hardly conclusive either way? Again, no need to prove anything. He’s blogging at HuffPo.

Would gun control save thousands of people a year? Cities with the strictest gun control seem to have the highest rates of homicide. But Shaw doesn’t have to prove anything. He’s blogging at HuffPo.

It appears that Mr. Shaw doesn’t have to prove either his critique of conservative governance or that his prescriptions would actually address any shortcomings. After all, he’s blogging at HuffPo.

Be that as it may, this fake controversy generated by Shaw is extremely helpful in exposing the left’s curious detachment from reality regarding the War on Terror. I guess as long as it happens to someone else, as long as someone else is incinerated or drops out of the sky in an airplane that has been blow to kingdom come, the war is only a domestic political battleground and not a life and death struggle with fanatical jihadists.

Why do people pretend that the United Nations is a place for the countries of the world to solve serious problems?

In order to solve serious problems, there must be a serious effort. There must be serious people who approach problems with a serious attitude. There must at least be agreement that what is decided will be taken seriously by the people who make the decisions. And finally, there must be a seriousness of purpose by the world community in order to if not enforce then certainly enjoin the parties involved to obey the mandates of the world body.

Anything less than this – anything that comes up short means that the United Nations is a failure as an institution where deadly serious conflicts are addressed in a serious manner by serious people with serious solutions proposed.

I want to hear no more about “They’re doing the best they can.” An attitude like that can get a lot of people – many of them Americans – killed.

I don’t want to hear any more platitudes like “As long as they’re talking with each other, they’re not shooting at each other .” That kind of stupidity presupposes that an enemy doesn’t use the “talking” part of the equation to get ready to shoot while the rest of the world that opposes him actually thinks that talking will solve the problem.

And I will brook no more nonsense from starry eyed idealists who see the United Nations as the “first stirrings of world government.” The UN has had nearly 60 years to “stir” and all it has done is dry up, harden, and ossify into a brittle, broken down bureaucracy so patently corrupt and full of hatred and envy that its towering cynicism in claiming the diplomatic high ground is used by the thugs of the world solely as a way to sway western public opinion so that they can continue on their genocidal way without interference from the only people that can stop them.

The United Nations is not a serious place. It is a place where people pretend. It is a place where people pretend to address the serious issues of the day when they have no desire to do so nor seriously engage any process that would begin to solve them. It is a place where people pretend that what they do or say matters one whit to the gimlet eyed thugs whose murderous designs on the rest of humanity are downplayed and even rationalized. And it is a place where people pretend that all of this is so despite knowing full well that it is not.

Adults do not pretend. Adults deal with the world as it is not as they would like it to be. In this, the UN then has become a playground, a fantasyland for childish notions of “peace” and “stability.” It has become the number one enabler of genocidal maniacs, brutish aggressors, and fanatics with an eye on Armageddon. And since the consequences of facing down the evil is too painful, they pretend the evil doesn’t exist.

There may have been a time in the bi-polar world created by the rivalry between the USA and USSR when the UN served a purpose. In this one instance, it was indeed better to pretend that what the world body did mattered, that the talking-shooting scenario was important to the continued existence of life on the planet. The alternative was unthinkable.

But that was when both superpowers recognized the efficacy of the UN fig leaf. They could climb down from confrontation without loss of prestige or face. In this case, it was mutually assured pretending that kept the peace and prevented the missiles from flying.

Such calculations are lost on our adversaries today. To them, the UN exists as a PR adjunct, a useful tool to massage western media and sap the will to resist among the populations of the only people with the wherewithal to stop their mad designs from coming to fruition. In this, the UN has become part of their media strategy.

Witness President Ahmadinejad’s response to the UN Security Council on his nuclear program. He is defying the will of the Council by not halting the Iranian enrichment program. But he has successfully paralyzed the world body by agreeing to talk about the Iranian nuclear program in the context of possibly ending it. No one really believes he has any intention of ending the program nor stop the Iranian’s quest to build a nuclear device. But the UN will pretend that he does and more talks will ensue with pressure placed on the negotiating parties to give in to the mullahs in order to avoid conflict. The original resolution ordering him to cease enrichment activities by August 31st conveniently forgotten.

We have seen this pattern many times; in Darfur, the Saddam fiasco, and now the continued demands for the disarming of Hizbullah. If one resolution doesn’t work, another one is passed as the world body basically pretends that the other resolutions do not exist. In any other context, such activity would be sufficient cause to commit the lot of them to a hospital mental ward for an examination to determine how much in touch with reality the members are. But in the case of the UN, this is reality.

Am I exaggerating? Not by much. This is part of the game of diplomacy as it is played out in the early 21st century. Process trumps results. And as long as that is true, the UN will remain an impediment to world peace and a place where the enemies of civilization will continue to press forward, secure in the knowledge that stopping them will entail a radical shift in the way that the world community deals with such threats.

Isn’t it therefore time to take the question of whether the United States should remain in the UN out of the fever swamps inhabited by right wing wackos and place it squarely in the mainstream of conservative thought for serious discussion.

It’s not the money. The $3 billion or so we give to the UN (about 27% of the UN’s total budget) is a pittance, a hiccup in our $2 trillion budget. Congress gobbles up $3 billion as an appetizer. It’s about what we spend on elections every 4 years. I could care less about the money or even if the UN gives us our money’s worth which is an extraordinarily dumb yardstick to decide whether or not we should remain a member.

And forget all the good the UN does in the fields of refugee assistance or world health. Those worthy and necessary functions could be handled out of Zurich or Geneva. The bureaucracy is already there and the United States should continue to support the humanitarian goals of these and other vital world agencies. But using these agencies as an excuse to remain beholden to an organization that has proven its uselessness time and time again in the face of determined evil seems irrational to me. Better we form regional alliances and “Coalitions of the Willing” to confront and control both the state and non-state entities that threaten us. This does not mean war. It means showing resolute strength in the face of aggressive nation states and extra-state actors. While it may not deter them it could cause them to alter their plans, always a good thing in diplomacy or war.

We have reached a point where the UN no longer serves the interest of the United States in any meaningful way – at least not in any way that we would miss. If others wish to continue to play pretend with the fate of the planet, let them. For our part, we should withdraw from the United Nations unless and until they reform themselves so that they can seriously address the problems that now threaten our civilization.

Any other course smacks of suicide in my book.

Join me this morning from 7:00 AM - 9:00 AM Central Time for The Rick Moran Show on Wideawakes Radio.

Today we’ll look at Mookie al-Sadr and his growing political strength in Iraq that does not bode well for the future. We’ll also have a little bit of lefty lunacy as well as some Iranian chest thumping.

And at 8:30 AM central, I’ll be joined by The American Thinker’s Doug Hanson. Don’t miss our discussion about Iraq WMD’s and the CIA’s war against the White House.

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UPDATE

Here’s a link to a zip file that you can download and play. The interview is in two parts.

DEMOCRATS DISCUSS THE THREAT OF TERRORISM AGAINST THE UNITED STATES

I remember the good old days when liberals would place the War on Terror in quotation marks as if the “war” only existed as a political ploy to elect George Bush and Republicans. In this universe, talk of terrorism against the United States was a gigantic trick, a distraction that was used to establish King George’s kingdom while surreptitiously savaging our civil liberties and readying the concentration camps for occupation by regime opponents.

There was something comfortable about this idiotic construct. After all, by denying there was a “war” in the first place, one could blithely go along secure in the knowledge if they were right, liberals had a hook they could use to reel in gullible voters on election day. And if they were wrong and al-Qaeda or some other terrorist group struck, they would simply point out that Bush once again failed to protect us despite their opposition to every single measure the government has taken to do so.

Of course, the left would be banking on the media to help the American people forget that they demeaned the very idea of a War on Terror in the first place. In this, they would probably be successful given the general apathy and short attention span of most voters. But no matter. For the left, it’s “heads I win, tails you lose” when it comes to national security posturing.

Now for reasons having to do with their failure to elicit the proper outrage by the voters against the President’s anti-terrorism efforts – the foolish American people actually support the President’s trying to protect them – the left has switched gears and have taken a “Don’t worry…Be happy” approach to the threat of sudden death from fanatical jihadists:

Most of all, though, we should recall that what’s scary about, say, al-Qaeda isn’t the number of people it has killed, or even the number of people it can kill—it’s the number of people it would like to kill. Terrorists armed with liquid explosives are a problem on a par with lightning strikes or peanut allergies. Terrorists armed with a nuclear bomb is a legitimate nightmare.

I don’t know about you but after reading that I feel much better. I mean, leave aside the fact that dead is dead no matter how the depressing event happens. I would certainly feel worse if I went to the hereafter as a result of eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich than if I met my demise as a passenger on a plane that was blown to smithereens by a liquid bomb planted by some Islamonut. I happen to adore my P & B (Skippy Creamy, of course, with gobs of Concord Grape Jelly) and would be loathe to give it up for anything.

Then again, we don’t ban peanut butter from airplanes. Authorities however, take a rather dim view of liquid bombs being brought on board passenger aircraft, correctly deducing that while peanut butter is sticky and could ruin the upholstery of airplane seats, a liquid bomb might do considerably more damage and should therefore be confiscated before boarding.

According to Mr. Yglesias, however, we should be expending the same amount of resources and attention to terrorism as we do on the pressing problem of overdosing on Skippy. Or perhaps on educating golfers about the fact that the 2 million volts of electricity contained in a bolt of lightening is attracted to an upraised metal golf club the same way that Osama might be attracted to Whitney Houston. If saving lives was the only goal in preventing terrorism, the left could have a point, couldn’t they?

Philip Klein:

Furthermore, terrorism is a different type of threat because in addition to the human carnage it leaves behind, it targets symbols of American power and prosperity (such as the World Trade Center and the Pentagon). Were we to have a nonchalant attitude toward terrorism because it mathematically presents a lower fatality risk relative to other dangers, it would not only put us at risk for attacks worse than Sept. 11, but it would demonstrate weakness to current and potential adversaries. As the 9/11 Commission reported, Osama Bin Laden was inspired by the U.S. withdrawal from Somalia in 1993. How would our enemies and allies view America today were we to brush aside dastardly attacks on prominent symbols of our financial and military might?

Personally, I prefer nonchalance to all this preparedness crap. That way, no one can accuse you of having an “inordinate fear” of terrorism. I’m sure you’ve heard the latest slings and arrows coming from our liberal friends; conservative “bedwetters” and “chicken littles” who quake in their boots about dying in a terrorist attack – as if there was any chance of that happening. Better to brush off the threat and put on macho airs (Do liberals had anything down there that would give them real courage in the first place?). This impresses females and also has a salutary affect on the left’s facial acne eruptions what with all those hormones being released in response to their primal chest thumping and declarations of fearlessness.

And just in case we haven’t quite gotten the message about terrorism being no more of a bother than allergies and thunderstorms, up steps Ron Bailey in that bastion of reasonableness Reason Magazine:

Even if terrorists were able to pull off one attack per year on the scale of the 9/11 atrocity, that would mean your one-year risk would be one in 100,000 and your lifetime risk would be about one in 1300. (300,000,000 ÷ 3,000 = 100,000 ÷ 78 years = 1282) In other words, your risk of dying in a plausible terrorist attack is much lower than your risk of dying in a car accident, by walking across the street, by drowning, in a fire, by falling, or by being murdered.

So do these numbers comfort you? If not, that’s a problem. Already, security measures—pervasive ID checkpoints, metal detectors, and phalanxes of security guards—increasingly clot the pathways of our public lives. It’s easy to overreact when an atrocity takes place—to heed those who promise safety if only we will give the authorities the “tools” they want by surrendering to them some of our liberty. As President Franklin Roosevelt in his first inaugural speech said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself— nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” However, with risks this low there is no reason for us not to continue to live our lives as though terrorism doesn’t matter—because it doesn’t really matter. We ultimately vanquish terrorism when we refuse to be terrorized.

For the record, I stink at math so we’re going to have to take Mr. Bailey’s descent into the statistical wilderness at face value. Besides that, Mr. Bailey actually has a point. There are other things besides terrorism to be afraid of in America – and one of them is Bailey and his ideological ilk.

To say that Mr. Bailey gets first prize for sophistry and jaw dropping idiocy is to let him off too easily. I would first make the request that the next terrorist attack that occurs – and we know that one is coming and will be successful – Bailey, Yglesias, and the entire crew of lefty head cases who are advancing this meme should be forced to pay a visit to the families of the dead and comfort them with their statistics, graphs, and the law of averages. And when queried about why their loved one died, they could always say “Stuff happens.”

I’m sure that will ease their pain and suffering.

But the truly dangerous nature of Mr. Bailey’s (and others) statistical approach to national security lies in its deceptive call for a “return to normalcy.” While I shouldn’t make fun of their obvious sincerity and concern over the government’s aggressive anti-terrorism efforts, the point is that enduring terrorist attacks on a regular basis because we failed do everything possible to prevent them due to the low probability that any one American will die is loony. Not only is it politically unsustainable it is a disheartening effort to cheapen individual human lives. The intellectual gymnastics performed by people who think like this are breathtaking. It turns everything about America that we admire and that others have fought and died for on its head; that the individual is and must be supreme over the state.

For when the state begins to think like Bailey et. al., it becomes easier to treat Americans as an amorphous mass of humanity rather than individuals with rights, privileges, and responsibilities. Their admirable concern for the state’s overreach in its anti-terrorism efforts loses any relevance when one can turn their argument around and say less than .01% of 1% of people’s civil rights have been egregiously violated. Thus, the anti-terror programs that they find objectionable can be justified using their own logic against them.

We are closing in on 5 years at war in this country. We have yet to reach any kind of a national consensus on the liberty vs. security issue, a prerequisite for our survival as a free country and national entity. This argument being made by Bailey, Yglesias, and others is extraordinarily unhelpful in this cause and serves only to undermine our efforts both to protect our selves and our rights.

I kind of liked it better when they didn’t think we were at war at all…

Stung by international criticism regarding their paltry offer to add a mere 400 troops to their force serving in the United Nations International Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) Jacques Chirac promised to add an additional 1600 men to the French commitment:

In a nationally televised address, Chirac said France will increase its deployment from an already announced 400 troops, and hopes to retain command of the force. He said the United Nations had provided the guarantees France had sought involving the mandate of the force.

“Two extra battalions will go on to the ground to extend our numbers within” the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), Chirac said. “Two thousand French soldiers are thus placed under blue helmets in Lebanon,” he added, referring to the colored headgear that members of UN peacekeeping forces wear.

“These 2,000 soldiers include the 400 military personnel already present on the ground,” he added after meeting with Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, as well as his foreign and defense ministers and military chiefs.

Italy has agreed to take on the thankless task of commanding the force which will have a mandate to “defend themselves” and civilians” in the likely event they get shot at:

Potential contributors to the force have expressed concern about the lack of a clear and strong mandate, which could hinder troops on the ground and leave them unable to defend themselves if they come under fire, like the existing UNIFIL force in Lebanon.

But the United Nations has now authorized the force to use weapons in self-defense and to defend civilians.

Evidently Bush has been busier than many people realized in pushing the recalcitrant Europeans to fill out the bulk of forces that will be sent to implement Resolution 1701:

In Rome, Prime Minister Romano Prodi said President George. W. Bush had told him by telephone of his “positive” view of Italy’s offer to lead the force. He added Bush was also leaning on allies to offer troops.

“I expect that reluctant or not, smiling or not, there will be an ample European contribution,” Prodi said in an interview with RAI state radio. “Bush is making a strong effort to put pressure on friendly countries in order to broaden the number of participants in the mission.”

The European commitment will become clearer after a meeting tomorrow in Brussels. It appears that the bulk of the 15,000 man force will therefore be made up of real soldiers and not drawn from the armies of nations that believe Israel has no right to exist:

Greece, Finland, Poland and Spain have all indicated that they will contribute, prompting European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso to say Thursday he was “confident that Europe will provide the necessary support to expand UNIFIL.”

In addition, Turkey, Malaysia and Indonesia have said they will participate, though Israel is resisting the offer from the latter two because of an absence of diplomatic relations.

And someone should tell the Italians that they should get with the program and not try and disarm Hizbullah. Their Foreign Minister didn’t get the memo:

D’Alema said that the international force would “assist” the Lebanese Army in disarming Hizbullah and restoring the government’s sovereignty over the southern region.

He said some form of assistance could also be extended to help Lebanon control its border with Syria and stem the flow of arms destined for Hizbullah, but ruled out deploying the international force along the Lebanon-Syria border. “That would require an enormous number of troops and is not called for in the resolution,” D’Alema told a joint news conference.

Livni said Hizbullah could play a role in Lebanese politics but insisted on the enforcement of 1701 in order for “Hizbullah not to be an armed militia at the end of the process but to take part in Lebanese political life.”

D’Alema said that the disarmament of Hizbullah was “in large part” up to the Lebanese government

Will there come a point where someone, somewhere, insists that UN Resolutions 1559 and 1701 be fully implemented? Both resolutions call for Hizbullah’s disarmament in the clearest language possible. How many times will the UN “insist” the terrorists disarm before someone does it?

And what about the stipulation regarding the interdiction of Syrian and Iranian arms to Hizbullah? Are we just going to let that one drop? Are they hoping that Israel is going to forget that they agreed to a cease fire with that very important stipulation as part of the deal? Will they prevent Israel from doing their job for them?

Many questions and few answers as the new force is deployed. If past history is anything to go by, the force will not be effective at doing anything save hunkering down when the going gets tough. The UN has yet to deploy a force that has been able to stop determined adversaries from killing each other. And given the mandate applied to this one, I don’t expect anything different.