Right Wing Nut House

So, Barack Obama has finally revealed himself as an elitist? This is news?

I daresay anyone who has been paying even a smidgen of attention to this presidential campaign knows that Obama’s appeal to the Democratic party is as a kind of patrician wise man whose soaring rhetoric places him on a pedestal far above the faithful, looking down on the rest of us with a benign smile on his face. The unspoken message of Obama’s candidacy is that he is better than the rest of us and that we should aspire to emulate his “post racial,” “post partisan” example.

Let me emphasize that there is nothing inherently wrong with this notion that our president is a better man than the rest of us. Hell, you couldn’t put yourself on the line and run for that office unless you had a supreme confidence in your own abilities not to mention a raging ego that kept telling you that you were the only one in America who can deal with the problems that face us.

But the question of our leaders being out of touch elitists is one that’s been debated since the beginning of the republic. The patricians who dominated the presidency for the first 36 years of our existence as a nation felt themselves entitled to make decisions for the benefit of the “mob” - the great mass of people that so terrified many of the Founders including Jefferson. The Founder’s reaction to Shay’s rebellion in 1786 - where ordinary citizens rebelled against unjust tax and debt policies - was to convene the Constitutional Convention, partly to make sure that the chaos of the mob did not threaten men with property.

The convention did not allow for direct election of the president and placed the election of senators in the hands of state legislatures because at bottom, our Founding Fathers had a profound mistrust in the ability of ordinary people to make reasoned judgements about such weighty matters as politics.

Talk about elitism.

They were very well meaning sorts, our Founders. They sincerely believed that they were serving the people by looking down on them as a bunch of morons. It was part of what historian Page Smith calls the “Classical Christian Consciousness” of many of the them. They saw man as born into mortal sin and therefore an imperfect being who couldn’t be trusted with too much power over others. Our balance of powers among the three branches of government is derived from this mindset.

Strangely enough, the Classical Christian Consciousness collided with the very beginnings of the Enlightenment in America which saw humans as perfectible creatures with the potential to perfect institutions like government - a vision eventually embraced by the Jeffersonians who took a significantly different view of people and their role in a free society.

While the Jeffersonians placed a little more trust in the masses, they were far from being supporters of pure democracy - allowing for the people’s “betters” to still make the big decisions that affected ordinary people’s lives. It wasn’t until the election of Andrew Jackson that the common man developed a political consciousness of his own and found a man they could elevate to hero status.

Elitism has a long and honorable history in the United States so the question is why come down so hard on Obama? Or other liberals for that matter. Democratic strategist Kirsten Powers is brutally honest in why liberals feel Obama’s comments are no big deal:

“It comes off very badly,” Democratic strategist Kirsten Powers said of the small-town America remarks. “They are things that I think in a liberal world sound totally normal, and outside of that world I don’t know that he appreciates how it sounds. And it just sounds very elitist, and it sounds like he’s looking down on people.”

Ann Althouse also thinks that Obama’s elitism is nothing unusual:

I must say that the original statement sounded like a typical law-school-liberal remark. I think it was quite sincere, and I’m rather sure he believed he was being admirably intellectual and raising politics to a new, higher level. Within a liberal law school environment, that statement would be heard as a thoughtful, compassionate insight. Some of your colleagues might think you were excessively, squishily tolerant of what they see as ignorant, bigoted people, but I don’t think they’d push you to be more understanding of the alien culture you were observing.”

Are liberals then the intellectual descendants of the Founding Fathers?

I’m sure they’d find the comparison somewhat flattering but they’d be offbase if they believed it. At bottom, liberalism is about control - controlling markets to make them “fairer,” controlling businesses to make sure they follow acceptable practices in labor relations, marketing, and environmental policy, and controlling ordinary citizens to make sure that their thinking is correct about anything and everything they deem important.

The Founders, on the other hand, were interested in granting as much freedom to the masses as their patrician hearts felt was safe. The Jeffersonians felt the Constitution didn’t go far enough in granting ordinary people liberty. The Federalists felt it may have gone too far. And therein lay the first divisions in American history - two sides made up of elitists arguing over how much power with which folks could be trusted. Not very edifying nor does it reflect well on our national icons. But as in most things at the beginning of the United States, our leaders meant well.

Here we are 220 years later and we’re still discussing elitism. I find it amusing that this argument has exploded across the internet - surely one of the most elitist of all American venues that such a conversation could take place. Both right and left have been known to denigrate the tens of millions of ordinary citizens who don’t read blogs, barely know the internet, and eschew the minutia of political debates in favor of following every twist and turn on American Idol. Both sides see this mass of uninformed, easily misled voters as a beast to be moved and manipulated with images, propaganda, and the white hot rhetoric of political combat.

It is not only elitist but also delusional to believe that this great amorphous mass of citizens cares a whit about the daily goings on here in blogland or the internet. What whispers might come their way is the result of these internet foo foo rahs spilling over into the mainstream media. Even then, if it doesn’t appear on Entertainment Tonight or if Jay Leno doesn’t make a joke about it, it simply doesn’t exist.

Does that sound elitist? You betchya. So what’s the difference between our putting on airs of superiority over the rest of the population and Obama’s belief that many middle class whites don’t vote their interest but their values, “clinging,” in his words, to guns, religion, and bigoted notions of immigration and the dreaded “other” in their communities?

The difference is that Obama is running for president and we are not. And no man who wishes to be president can be so ignorant, so insensitive, so denigrating of the deeply held values of the American people. Obama may not like it that ordinary people use a different criteria to decide who to vote for than he and his liberal friends use. But recognizing its legitimacy is at the very least smart politics and at most the mark of a man who can connect with the average voter at more than a superficial level.

Both John Hinderaker and Ed Morrissey believes this incident finishes Obama as an electable candidate. I would say that such talk is premature. After all, as an elitist, I believe that most people will accept the candidate’s explanation and move on because they don’t understand the egregious nature of Obama’s remarks.

I suppose come November, we’ll find out.

Even a rabid sports fan like myself recognizes the Olympics for what they are - a plot by starry eyed one worlders, striped pants internationalists, filthy rich do-gooders, and anachronistic royalists to take over the world and force their saccharine sweet, brotherhood of man crapola on the rest of us.

I’m kidding, of course - mostly. The part about filthy rich dilettantes with nothing else to do, putting on an athletic extravaganza for their own amusement is not far from the truth. The International Olympic Committee has shown through the years that the fake European royalty, the decadent descendants of fabulously wealthy European commercial houses, and the group of genuine shady characters who are the real power in that body believe they have a gold mine and plan on milking the games for all they’re worth.

And to give the lie to the very idea of an “Olympic spirit” that the IOC and the “Olympic Movement” try to foist upon unsuspecting rubes and leftists the world over, the entire point of the games has been lost - gentleman (and gentle lady) amateurs competing in an atmosphere of competition free from politics and other mundane considerations.

The Olympic torch relay is part of the lie. Forced by the prospect of thousands of pro-Tibet protestors who might get violent, San Francisco authorities changed the route of the relay at the last minute, running the relay through streets empty of onlookers thus defeating the whole purpose of the exercise in the first place.

That didn’t stop one enterprising American athlete from ruining the day even more for the Chinese:

A New Yorker bearing the Olympic torch staged a rogue anti-China protest Wednesday even as cops took extreme measures to thwart demonstrators in San Francisco.

As she ran with the flame, Majora Carter, 41, a South Bronx environmental activist, whipped out a small Tibetan flag to condemn China’s human rights abuses in the Himalayan province.

Carter, who hid the flag in her sleeve, was quickly hustled off the route by surprised police who seized the torch.

The image of American police stifling free speech at the behest of communists made Allah’s blood boil:

[O]ne of the American cops shows her how they do it in Beijing, giving her a gratuitous shove into the crowd to keep her away from the communist propaganda pageant she was momentarily a part of. She’s wrong on the law, to be sure; her free speech rights don’t entitle her to violate the contract she signed before participating. But watching U.S. cops enforce Chinese policy is so disgusting, Newsom should have simply canceled the event lest he be forced to do it.

Free speech is one issue that makes the Olympics a cesspool of corrupted ideals. How about the idea that the athletes should compete solely for the thrill of the competition with no thought of renumeration?

The fact that almost all the western athletes who will be competing are being paid by their home grown sports federation (which usually receives its money from the nation’s Olympic Committee) means that the very meaning of the word “amateur” has been corrupted beyond recognition. And from the beginning of the revival of the games in 1896, politics has been a constant companion.

When Eastern European athletes began to outshine the west due to superior training, a drug regimen that built superior bodies, and the fact that their athletes were given make believe jobs by the state so that they could train full time, the US and other western countries decided to change the way they approached the Games.

While athletes from the west were previously struggling to combine training and making a living, most western Olympic Committees made a decision to adopt the communist model. Of course, the state didn’t give the athletes make believe jobs. It was corporations who, in return for hiring top flight athletes they could feature in commercials, paid the US Olympic Committee so that the company could become an “official sponsor” of the games.

The point being, of course, that these guys are about as amateur and pure as a hooker on Welles street in Chicago. These days, the Olympics don’t even require the fig leaf. They openly encourage professional athletes to compete. Most of the world class track and field athletes have been making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and a gold medal will set them up for life. Olympic soccer uses professional league players on the national teams. Others who participate in lesser known sports receive a healthy stipend from their sport’s governing body in order to train constantly for the big show that occurs every 4 years.

As a sports fan, I could care less if they pay the players or not. But as a former hopelessly incurable romantic, there was something to be said for an event that brought the world together for a fortnight to celebrate athletics and compete peacefully. One of the most cherished memories of my youth is watching American Dave Wottle on TV round the last turn of the track in the 800 Meter finals in Munich and with a spectacular final kick in the last 25 meters, overtake the Russian to win an improbable gold medal.

Those were the Olympics marred by the death of 11 Israeli athletes who were kidnapped and murdered at the hands of Black September. In spite of pleadings from many around the world, the crotchety head of the IOC at the time, Avery Brundage, declared that the show must go on.

And the show has gone on despite boycotts, corruption (bribe taking in connection with the 2002 Winter Games), and the discovery that the East German teams that garnered such an extraordinary number of medals featured not only blood doping and steroid use, but also taking the transgender revolution to new heights by turning women into men, feeding their female athletes steroids when they were as young as 11. Two coaches were later found guilty of giving steroids to athletes and not telling them what they were (they told them they were “vitamins”).

All of these issues with the Olympics pales in comparison to the straitjacket the IOC puts athletes in so that any expression of individual political thought is forbidden. The most famous example was at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics when two black American athletes - John Carlos and Tommie Smith - who medaled in the 200 meter dash, raised their clenched fist salute to black power during the playing of the national anthem during the medal ceremony.

One might question the gesture but to punish them by sending them home and stripping them of their medals was so foreign to our idea of freedom of speech that it raises the question of why we should participate in such a hypocritical and oppressive event.

And that goes double for the Olympics in China:

Athletes who display Tibetan flags at Olympic venues — including in their own rooms — could be expelled from this summer’s Games in Beijing under anti-propaganda rules.

Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), said that competitors were free to express their political views but faced sanctions if they indulged in propaganda.

He accompanied those comments with an admission that the Games were in “crisis” after pro-Tibet protests engulfed the Olympic torch relay.

Mr Rogge’s call for Beijing to abide by its promise to address human rights was given short shrift by Beijing, which bluntly told him to keep politics out of the Games.

Riddle me this: How is it possible that competitors are “free to express their political views” but will get kicked out for displaying the Tibetan flag? This kind of doublespeak is worthy of the communists and poor, naive, earnest Mr. Rogge - who actually believed the Chinese would improve their human rights if their Olympic bid was successful - is tying himself into an intellectual pretzel in an attempt to reconcile these two radically different notions:

Addressing concerns about free speech, Mr Rogge described the scenario of a Spanish athlete doing a lap of honour in the Olympic stadium with Spain’s national flag and his provincial flag as “perfectly legitimate”.

He said: “We have had many examples of mixed flags where the athlete is proud of that. Is there a will to demonstrate propaganda or is it a desire to demonstrate joy in his victory?”

Apparently, if your political views don’t offend anyone - most of all the host country - then you are perfectly free to express them. (I wonder what Rogge would have said if that same Spanish athlete had grabbed a Basque flag instead of a “provincial” one?)

But Rogge, the Chinese, and the rest of the whole bloody Olympic “movement” just doesn’t get it. They have no clue what “free speech” might be. The point is that any display of nationalism is by definition propaganda and that there is no difference in making a political statement about your own country or someone else’s - not to anyone who cares a tiny bit about “free speech.”

Going back to 1968, no one complained a few days after the Carlos-Smith protest when George Foreman, after winning his gold medal in boxing, grabbed a miniature American flag and walked around the ring celebrating. The fact that Foreman’s political statement was a response to a political gesture by others made Foreman equally guilty of disseminating propaganda. But it was nice propaganda, the kind that the American Olympic Committee (who pressured Brundage to seize the gold medals of Carlos and Smith while kicking them out of the Olympic village) heartily approved.

It is this kind of rank hypocrisy that makes the Olympics such degrading venue for Americans. If it were up to me, I’d pass out Tibet flags to every single athlete marching under the American flag during the opening ceremonies and force the Chinese to kick them all out. The Olympic boosters - corporations, sports federations, and especially governments - who harp on the “spirit of brotherhood” present in the games are selling a poisonous idea; that freedom is separate from the notion that we are all equal and that therefore, we should all get along in peace.

 I’m all for that. Just don’t expect me to kowtow to any government that oppresses its people and then tries to use the Olympic games as a perfume to remove the stench of their rotten human rights policies. The athletes should feel that way as well which is why perhaps we should be handing out those Tibetan flags to anyone and everyone who sides with freedom against tyranny.

Such a move might ruin the Olympic games. But it would be one helluva statement of solidarity with the oppressed peoples of the world and would usher in an era of true “brotherhood” for the Olympics.

There are some issues that you just don’t write about if you’re a conservative blogger looking to maintain or build your site. And one of those issues is torture and this administration’s blatant violation of the law in approving interrogation techniques that are universally recognized (outside of the right in America) as illegal.

I say universally recognized because the “enhanced” techniques that were apparently a topic of conversation many times by Bush Administration aides are clear violations of the UN treaty against torture (as amended) and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I won’t mention the Geneva Convention which may or may not apply as a governing instrument in this case.

But we needn’t worry. Those interrogation techniques violated US law as well - war or no war - and only by stretching the executive powers of the president farther than they have ever gone - beyond Lincoln, beyond Wilson, beyond Roosevelt - could even a fig leaf of legality be placed over this gigantic open wound that will continue to fester until we resolve to purge those who brought this evil upon us.

Bill Clinton may have sold the Lincoln bedroom for campaign contributions and used the White House for his carnal romps. But I don’t think that grand structure ever bore witness to the kinds of discussions held by Bush Administration aides as they coldly weighed the options of using various torture techniques on al-Qaeda suspects in our custody:

ABC reported that the so-called “principals” discussed interrogation details in dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House.

Then national security adviser Condoleezza Rice chaired the meetings, which took place in the White House Situation Room and were typically attended by a select group of senior officials or their deputies, ABC said.

“Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects — whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding,” ABC reported.

In addition to Rice, the principals at the time included Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft, the report said.

Ashcroft, in an Albert Speers-like moment of moral clarity, knew perfectly well what future generations would think of those involved in these discussions:

Citing sources, ABC said Ashcroft agreed with the policy decision to allow aggressive interrogation tactics and advised that they were legal but was troubled by the discussions.

Ashcroft argued that senior White House advisers should not be involved in the grim details of interrogations, sources were cited as saying.

ABC cited a top official as saying that Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting: “Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly.”

Marc Ambinder ponders the unthinkable. He titles his post “War Crimes:”

A provocative headline, I know, perhaps needlessly so, but it remains one of those hidden secrets in Washington that a Democratic Justice Department is going to be very interested in figuring out whether there’s a case to be made that senior Bush Administration officials were guilty of war crimes. Stories like these from ABC News — Top Bush Advisors Approved ‘Enhanced Interrogation’ — will be as relevant a year from now as they are right now, perhaps even more so.

Michael Goldfarb sees only the politics of the issue:

I’d love to know who’s whispering that in Ambinder’s ear. If this is a secret among Democrats, it certainly is well kept…I’ve never heard a conservative seriously entertain the possibility. But if that’s the plan for an Obama administration, let the healing begin!

I always thought that there would be a Pinochet type move to get at Rumsfeld or Bush if they ever went to Europe after the Administration was out of office. Rumsfeld has already faced such pressure and Bush will be a marked man wherever he goes - if he ever leaves his Texas ranch after his term is ended.

But it is unlikely that any such charges will be brought. JB at Balkinization:

Remember that sections 8 and 6(b) of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 effectively insulated government officials from liability for many of the violations of the War Crimes Act they might have committed during the period prior to 2006. Moreover, as Marty has pointed out, there’s a strong argument that a later Justice Department would not prosecute people who reasonably relied on legal advice from a previous Justice Department. Perhaps the Justice Department could argue that the officials’ reliance was unreasonable, but that might be difficult to show.

And putting aside the purely legal obstacles to a prosecution for war crimes, there’s also the political cost. Why would an Obama or Clinton Administration waste precious political capital early on with a politically divisive prosecution of former government officials? One can imagine the screaming of countless pundits arguing that the Democrats were trying to criminalize political disagreements about foreign policy. Such a prosecution would make politics extremely bitter and derail any chance for bipartisan cooperation on almost any significant issue. Obama or Clinton would rather get a health care bill passed, deal with the economy, or try to solve the Iraq mess, than have the first several years of their Administrations consumed by a prosecution for war crimes by officials in the Bush Administration.

JB also points out that any trials in venues like the Hague or other international criminal courts would be resisted by a Democratic Administration for the same reason and others as well.

Now certainly there is a strain of anti-Americanism at work in Europe and elsewhere overseas with regard to this issue as well as a smug, self-righteousness on the part of the European left that nauseates me.

For more than 70 years as the Communists murdered, tortured, starved, beat, and raped their way across Europe, killing upwards of 20 million - people whose only crime was that they didn’t believe they were living in a workers’ paradise, the European left gave the thugs a pass and even supported them in their efforts to cow the populations of Eastern Europe into submission while doing their damnedest to see the west defenseless against communist aggression.

How dare they. They do not have the moral standing of a jackrabbit. For them to all of a sudden get their panties in a twist over American violations of international law when they spent decades ignoring the greatest, most heartless human butchers in world history is an example of monumental hypocrisy and moral blindness that a thousand years from now will be the shame of western civilization. And for the anti-American European left to climb atop this moral high horse now speaks of a selective outrage that should sicken anyone with an ounce of historical perspective and a modicum of human decency.

No. This is an American problem. And we Americans must deal with it. Perhaps it would be worth the political war for a Democratic president to at least initiate an investigation by the Justice Department into the question of war crimes committed by the highest ranking members of the Bush Administration. The results of that investigation may conclude that the principals are innocent or just not prosecutable.

But the consequences of doing nothing are equally problematic. Somewhere along the line, a majority of Americans must be made aware of what these men have done and why what they approved is wrong. The damage is deep. But I disagree with hysterical liberals that our reputation and moral leadership is gone, never to be seen again. How we deal with what has been wrought in our name says volumes about us as a people and how determined we are to clean up our own house.

I have given up trying to convince most of my readers of the necessity in speaking out against what has transpired these last several years with regards to the approval of torture at the highest levels of our government. But I will continue to write about it because it is something about which I feel very strongly. I will not, as many liberals do, berate those of you who disagree with me. This is a matter of conscience. Each of us must examine our own beliefs, our own mind and come to our own conclusions in this matter.

Anything else would be un-American.

It’s true. Obama actually said it. Here’s the exact quote:

Do we feel confident that the Iraqi government is behind the aid to these “special groups” or do we believe they are just tacitly tolerating it?

Still don’t believe me? It’s about 1:15 into this video:

THIS IS THE MAN THAT MIGHT GET ELECTED PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES? A MAN WHO BELIEVES THE IRAQI GOVERNMENT IS BEHIND A GROUP BENT ON ITS DESTRUCTION?

No. Of course Obama doesn’t believe that. But if this site were named “Think Progress,” (whose motto is “When you Think Progress, think idiocy”) we could create a nice, splashy headline screaming across the page accusing Obama of having exactly one more brain cell than the morons who who write for the most easily debunked lefty website on the planet.

Not surprisingly, other lefty blogs have picked up on McCain’s brain cramp and are trumpeting the idea that the Arizona senator is some kind of dunce when it comes to foreign policy. Given their own paltry understanding of how the world works (hint: gathering in a circle with the thugs of the world and singing “Kumbya” is not a foreign policy), it is laughable that they would accuse a senator who has sat on the armed services committee for 17 years, visited more than 90 countries, met dozens of world leaders, and written on the subject for some of the most prestigious foreign policy publications around of having an inferior understanding of events compared to a former street organizer and lawyer for a slumlord.

Even with all his gaffes, Obama makes McCain look like George Fricking Marshall when it comes to knowledge of matters regarding national security. And yet, the ignoramuses at Think Progress believe every time McCain proves he’s human and his mind gets ahead of his mouth, this bespeaks someone as ignorant as they are about the world around us.

Truly remarkably, unbelievably ridiculous.

Unlike McCain, who misspoke about al-Qaeda earlier in the day (and corrected himself immediately - something that the dolts at Think Progress just couldn’t bring themselves to include in either the transcript or video of McCain’s gaffe), Obama never corrected himself with regards to his belief that the Iraqi government is behind the Iranian “special groups.”

Using a single, operating brain cell as the marmosets at Think Progress, we can only deduce from Obama’s words that he actually believes the Iraqi government is bent on its own destruction and is in charge of “special groups” of terrorists who are murdering their own citizens not to mention members of their own government.

Thankfully, most of us use considerably more brainpower than the nincompoops at Think Progress. Otherwise, the world of Idiocracy would move from the realm of fantasy to the reality of left wing Utopia.

It will be a media circus when General David Petreaus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker take their seats before the Senate Armed Services Committee today to give an update on progress in Iraq - from their point of view. The caveat is important because objective reality when it comes to Iraq is about as solid as a dish of warm jello. By any measurement, the place is still a mess - a hash of armed to the teeth militias, a still weak central government, an army of questionable fighting ability, a too long delayed reconciliation between the sects, and the ever present handprint of those merry mullahs in Tehran.

How all those ingredients are mixing together and what is emerging is a matter of dispute. You can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs but neither can you put a pig in a prom dress and expect people to compliment you on your choice of dates.

I have come to the inescapable conclusion that no one knows what is really happening in Iraq - including the Iraqis themselves. And that goes double for the United States government and triple for the anti-war left. If anyone did have a solid understanding of the reality of what is happening there both on the ground and in the subsurface strata made up of the perceptions, opinions, fears, hopes and dreams of the Iraqi people, a way forward would have revealed itself.

Instead, we get a multiplex spinorama from all parties. Hell, even the Iranians are spinning which tells you something about their understanding of the modern media. That little dog and pony show in Iran where a “cease fire” was reached between Moqtada al-Sadr and the Iraqi government is a perfect example of the learning curve of the Iranians when it comes to dealing with the western press. Mookie has the anti-war left convinced that he asked for the cease fire because he was beating up on the Iraqi army and wished to save civilians in Basra. The Iranians were very helpful in spinning this little fable as were several Iraqi politicians.

The problem, as we found out later was that Maliki agreed to no such cease fire and continued operations in Basra and has escalated his crackdown on the Mehdi Army in Baghdad:

Sharp fighting broke out in the Sadr City district of Baghdad on Sunday as American and Iraqi troops sought to control neighborhoods used by Shiite militias to fire rockets and mortars into the nearby Green Zone.

But the operation failed to stop the attacks on the heavily fortified zone, headquarters for Iraq’s central government and the American Embassy here. By day’s end, at least two American soldiers had been killed and 17 wounded in the zone, one of the worst daily tolls for the American military in the most heavily protected part of Baghdad. Altogether, at least three American soldiers were killed and 31 wounded in attacks in Baghdad on Sunday, and at least 20 Iraqis were killed, mostly in Sadr City.

The heightened violence came on the eve of Congressional testimony in Washington by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the senior American commander in Iraq, and Ryan C. Crocker, the American ambassador here, to defend their strategy for political reconciliation and improved security in the country.

Mookie has made a habit over the years of unleashing his militia to engage the Americans (and this time, the Iraqi Army), getting a bloody nose (as in Najaf and Fallujah), and then grandiosely announcing that he is willing to talk peace thus raising his standing with the people as a reasonable sort of fellow who wants to play politics with Maliki.

The fact that this gambit worked beyond his wildest dreams with the US media and anti-war left when he lost 300-400 of his best fighters in Basra while fighting the Iraqi army is an astonishing testament to the myopia of the left with regards to any news coming out of Iraq. As J.D. Johannes said on my radio show last week (and has been repeated by many observers), the winner of a fight does not ask for a cease fire. The idea that Mookie requested an end to the fighting in Basra because he wanted to pull Maliki’s chestnuts out of the fire is silly, stupid, and worse, counterintuitive. What happened is a little more complicated.

According to Bill Roggio, some cowboy politicians from Maliki’s Dawa party journeyed to Iran (without authorization from the government) and asked the Iranians to get Sadr to stop fighting. Sadr released his 9 point statement demanding the government withdraw from Basra, stop targeting his forces, and release prisoners.

The left celebrated Mookie’s forbearance while completely ignoring one glaring fact; Maliki never authorized the overture in the first place and secondly, he rejected Sadr’s 9 points outright:

Just as the Iraqi security forces began to address the shortcoming in the operation and the situation in the center-south began to stabilize, Sadr decided to pull his fighters off the streets. Members of Maliki’s Dawa political party approached the leader of Iran’s Qods Force asking him to get Sadr to stop the fighting. Shortly afterward, Sadr ordered his troops to withdraw from fighting and issued a nine-point statement of demands for the Iraqi government.

By this time, the Mahdi Army took significant casualties in Basrah, Baghdad, and the greater South. “Security forces killed more than 200 gunmen, wounded 700, and arrested 300 others, since the beginning of the military operations in Basrah,” said Major General Abdul Kareem Khalaf, the director of operations for the Ministry of the Interior. The Mahdi Army suffered 173 killed in Baghdad during the six days of fighting.

Spokesmen from the Mahdi Army claimed the Maliki government agreed to Sadr’s terms, which included ending operations against the Mahdi Army, but the Iraqi government denies this. “I refuse to negotiate with the outlaws,” Maliki said on April 3. “I did not sign any deal.”

The fact that operations continue in Basra gives to the lie to the idea that Maliki agreed to anything.

Meanwhile, Maliki got busy on the political front and lined up an impressive coalition of parties, sects, factions, and personalities to demand that Sadr disarm.

The position of Hojatoleslam al-Sadr, whose fighters fought government forces to a standstill in Basra, was looking precarious. His former erstwhile ally Nouri al-Maliki, the Shia Prime Minister who personally led the Basra crackdown, saw his standing bolstered by his tough approach to the militias.

Despite the inconclusive results of his Basra offensive, Mr al-Maliki has refused to back down and this weekend stitched together a rare consensus of Kurds, Sunnis and Shias to back a law banning from future elections any party that maintains a militia.

That united stance has put the Sadrists on the back foot, and support for the militia was waning even in Sadr City itself as official forces pushed ever deeper into al-Mahdi Army territory.

No, the Iraqi Army still did not perform very well in Basra. There were defections (nowhere near 1,000 as reported), there was greenness, there was a lack of coordination, there was confusion and there was a lack of battlefield leadership. But as Roggio points out, the army did much better elsewhere in the south and is doing just fine in Baghdad (with Americans backing them up). Call it a mixed bag with causes for both concern and optimism.

Sounds like the testimony that Petreaus is going to give today.

In a reprise of their testimony last September, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker plan to tell Congress today and tomorrow that security has improved in Iraq and that the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has taken steps toward political reconciliation and economic stability.

But unlike in September, when that news was fresh and the administration said a corner had been turned, even some of the war’s strongest supporters in Congress have grown impatient and frustrated. Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, and Crocker will face many lawmakers who had expected more by now and who are wondering whether any real change will occur before the clock runs out on the Bush administration.

And that, my friends, is the problem in a nutshell. Petreaus will pretty much give a rehash of his September testimony, pointing to incremental improvements since that time, but the fact is he doesn’t know a way forward that would bring the bulk of American forces home except continuing current strategies and policies.

This may be fine and dandy for some. But the majority of the Congress - including Republicans - are finding that a bitter pill to swallow:

“I think all of us realize we’re disappointed at where we are,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said at a hearing last week. Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) asked, “How do we get out of this mess?” While the cost in U.S. lives and money increases, said another senior GOP senator, who spoke on the condition of anonymity: “We cannot . . . just say we’re coasting through and waiting for the next president.”

Among the questions these and other lawmakers said they plan to ask Petraeus and Crocker is why the United States is still paying for Iraqi domestic needs ranging from military training to garbage pickup when the Maliki government has $30 billion in reserves — held in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Bank for International Settlements in Switzerland — as well as $10 billion in a development fund, significant budgetary surpluses from previous years and a projected 7 percent economic growth rate for 2008.

Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and Sen. John W. Warner (Va.), the panel’s ranking Republican, who projected that Iraqi oil income would reach $56.4 billion this year, asked the Government Accountability Office last month to investigate how much money the Iraqi government has.

“I think it’s a very significant issue that has not had sufficient exposure,” Levin said in an interview. “They’re perfectly content to watch us spend our money while they build up these huge cash reserves from oil windfalls. It’s a real stick in our eye, as far as I’m concerned.”

Despite Maliki’s recent success in pulling together society to call for Sadr’s evisceration, the effect will probably be transitory. The factions and sects are not going to break out into songs of brotherhood and sit down to hammer out the details of meaningful reconciliation. They can barely stand being in the same room together. Self-interest will eventually prevail and some kind of modus vivendi will emerge. But if anyone thinks that such a goal can be achieved in the next year or two, they are kidding themselves.

As I said at the top, no one really knows what is actually happening in Iraq. And because of that, we look at the good news about al-Sadr’s imminent demise as some kind of breakthrough moment in the history of post-Saddam Iraq. I’m sorry but history doesn’t work that way. Only the passage of time will prove out that theory.

And time is something the American people and Congress are not likely to grant the Iraqis who are struggling to re-invent their fractured society with guns and bombs still going off on a regular basis.

The progress of the Olympic torch which snakes its way around the world after being lit in Greece to end up in the host country and carried into the stadium at the opening ceremonies where it is used to light the Olympic flame for the duration of the games is followed with great interest by many around the world. It is a symbol of the Olympic spirit and ideally, should not be extinguished from the time it is lit to the end of the games.

The Olympic torch relay was disrupted Monday by protesters in Paris demonstrating against the Chinese government, causing authorities to twice extinguish the flame and put the torch on a bus, according to The Associated Press.

The torch was being carried by a wheelchair athlete when it was halted and extinguished for a second time due to demonstrators shouting, according to AP. Backup flames, also lit from the birthplace of the ancient games in Olympia, Greece, are on call with the relay at all times to relight the torch.

Agencies report that the relay has now resumed.

The incidents came one day after human-rights activist demonstrators made the torch’s journey through London more like running the gauntlet than a journey of celebration, with UK police making more than two dozen arrests

This is an enormous embarrassment to the Chinese government. The progress of the torch is supposed to be triumphal. Instead, it is turning into a constant reminder of the government crackdown on the Tibetan people and their continued occupation of the tiny country.

Paris police have conceived a security plan to keep the torch in a safe "bubble," during its 17-mile (28 km) journey, with a multi-layered protective force to surround the torch as it moves along the route.
 
French torchbearers will be encircled by several hundred officers, some in riot police vehicles and on motorcycles, others on rollerblades and on foot. Chinese torch escorts will immediately surround the torchbearer, with Paris police on rollerblades moving around them.
 
French firefighters in jogging shoes will encircle the officers on rollerblades while motorcycle police will form the outer layer of security. The relay route in Paris is also significantly shorter than that in London Sunday.

Police rollerblading around the torchbearer is probably not the visual the Chinese government would wish to see carried around the world when reporting on the progress of the Olympic flame.

There have been attempts made to disturb and sabotage the Torch Relay by a small number of "pro-Tibet independence" activists.

The Olympic Torch Relay embodies the Olympic spirit and represents the earnestness and excitement with which the world awaits the Olympic Games. A small number of "pro-Tibet independence" activists have attempted to sabotage the event. During the Greece leg of the relay, a few activists attempted to stop the relay by lying on the street. In London, a few protesters planned and carried out several destructive actions. One "pro-Tibet independence" activist tried to grab the torch and another attempted to extinguish the flame when well-known U.K. television presenter Konnie Huq was carrying the torch in northwest London. Their actions were stopped by local police, although Konnie Huq sustained a slight injury. During a lunch break, several "pro-Tibet independence" activists got past security in an attempt to clash with torchbearers and disturb the relay. The British police were successful in preventing these efforts.

Local people in London strongly opposed the attempt to sabotage the Torch Relay. And the behavior of "pro-Tibet independence" activists has aroused resentment and received condemnation in London.

Press reports had thousands of protestors in the streets of London and Paris while little in the way of condemnation has come their way - except from Chinese officials. But the above is what the Chinese people are seeing and reading about the torch and its torturous passage through the free countries of the world.

Organizations that oppose China’s human-rights record said Tuesday that they’ve been denied demonstration permits at large outdoor gathering areas on April 9, the day of the torch relay.

They will instead be forced into certain areas, possibly far from the main torch route. City officials said that the restrictions are necessary to ensure security at the event but that those precautions shouldn’t limit the protesters’ rights to gather, a right guaranteed in the First Amendment. Tens of thousands of protesters are expected, organizers said.

The event will be open to everyone, said Mayor Gavin Newsom, including "those who want to see this as an opportunity to raise the flag of concern about issues of disagreement with the Chinese government. That is something that is sacrosanct to us." But that opportunity will be limited in ways uncommon for the city that hosts myriad rallies and protests.

Protesters will be restricted to "areas set up for First Amendment rights issues," according to Sgt. Neville Gittens, spokesman for the San Francisco Police Department.

Maybe they should have asked President Bush to carry the torch. You can bet Newsom and his crew would have bent over backwards to make sure there were tens of thousands of protestors following the flame then.

Our guys can outblade the French any day of the week.  

This blog post originally appears on The American Thinker

I have a special column up at PJ Media on the passing of Charlton Heston:

Charlton Heston will not be remembered as one of the best actors who ever lived. But he is right up there with the greatest movie actors of all time.

But Charlton Heston, who died yesterday at the age of 83, could overcome almost any of those drawbacks by the sheer force of his gigantic personality that filled up the big screen to overflowing, making his co-stars, extras and the film itself seem small by comparison. It wasn’t his intensity but it was. It wasn’t his physique, but it was. It wasn’t the tilt of his head, the granite jawed profile, the steely eyed glares he gave everyone from the Pharaoh of Egypt to a “damn dirty ape” but it was.

There are many times over the years I have seen an historical figure portrayed on film and wished they had cast Charlton Heston instead. Heston filled up the screen with his dominant personality and whenever I see George Washington on film I find the portrayal lacking in stature. Heston may have been the only American who ever lived who could do justice to Washington’s presence when in a crowd which was said to be electric and humbling. It’s a shame he never played our first president.

Heston is one of the last of the great Hollywood movie stars of the 50’s and 60’s. His passing is a reminder of what movies used to be and will probably never be again; epic journeys into the human imagination.

Perhaps gunning down unarmed monks can be added as an Olympic sport. The Chinese, so concerned about the games later in the summer, could solve their “image problem” by simply including the practice in the Olympic program. This would result in a sure gold medal for the home team.

A small village high in the mountains was the scene of what can only be called a massacre by Chinese police. The authorities entered a monastery and began confiscating pictures of the Dalia Lama - photos of whom have been banned since the 1990’s. Then the police deliberately incited a reaction by throwing the pictures of the Lama on the ground which was considered a sacrilege by the monks.

One old monk protested the affront to his god-king and was arrested. This was a bad move by the police because apparently, the ancient monk was very well regarded by the villagers as a man of wisdom and piety.

That brought both villagers and monks to the camp of the police with predictable and tragic results:

About 6.30pm, the entire monastic body marched down to a nearby river, where paramilitary police were encamped and demanded the release of the two men. They were joined by several hundred local villagers, many of them enraged at the detention of the elderly monk, who locals say is well respected in the area for his learning and piety.

Shouting “Long Live the Dalai Lama”, “Let the Dalai Lama come back” and “We want freedom”, the crowd demonstrated until about 9pm. Witnesses said that up to 1,000 paramilitary police used force to try to end the protest and opened fire on the crowd.

In the gunfire, eight people died, according to a local resident in direct contact with the monastery. These included a 27-year-old monk identified as Cangdan and two women named as Zhulongcuo and Danluo.

Eight people were reportedly gunned down with many more injured. Predictably, the Chinese government spun the massacre as a “riot” with an invisible “government official” getting beat up:

State-run Chinese media confirmed that the police resorted to force but insisted that it was only after a government official was attacked and seriously wounded by protesters.

“Local officials exercised restraint during the riot and repeatedly told the rioters to abide by the law,” they reported. The use of live rounds was a last resort, the Xinhua news agency said, without specifying how the Tibetan demonstrators had injured the official. It said: “Police were forced to fire warning shots and put down the violence, since local officials and people were in great danger.”

Perhaps the Chinese could tell us how 8 people were killed by “warning shots?”

If the Chinese keep this up, the games themselves will be in trouble as western nations contemplate a full boycott in response to the crackdown. At the moment, such a move would not be popular. But if the Chinese government continues to use the people of Tibet as targets for the police, most decent nations will probably find it impossible to send their athletes to participate in games hosted by this murderous regime.

This blog post originally appears at The American Thinker

My latest column at PJ Media is up and it deals with a subject near and dear to my heart; baseball.

A sample:

The mists of time are sure to shroud some of my memories in an unrealistic haze that makes the game of my youth a little more glorious than it actually was, elevating that period in American history above the squalid, grasping cynicism of today’s spectacles. But there is little doubt that America’s love affair with baseball has cooled, and it is hard to see how it can ever be re-ignited.

They do not play softball — either the 12” or 16” variety. This isn’t “Beer Ball” or some variation of a Saturday afternoon lark by drinking buddies. They play what we used to call “league” ball or “hardball.” And I can testify to the fact that they play for keeps — games come complete with brush back pitches, head first slides, and even the occasional bench clearing “rhubarb,” where the dignity and wisdom of age is replaced with the white hot emotion of competitive ballplayers.

There’s only one thing I’d change about my life if given a chance; I’d have pursued my dream to be a sportswriter. I love writing about politics but sports is where my heart lies.

The votes are in from last week’s Watchers Council and the winner in the Council category is “Get Your Grim Milestone Today?” by Done With Mirrors. Finishing second was “What Would You Do?” by Bookworm Room.

Finishing first in the non Council category was “Stake Through Their Hearts” by Michael Yon.
If you would like to participate in the weekly Watchers vote, go here and follow instructions.