Right Wing Nut House

This review originally appears in The American Thinker

There is a moment in the film United 93 where director Paul Greengrass takes a small step backward from the unrelenting intimate universe into which he has boldly thrust the audience and allows a glimmer of the larger truth of September 11 to be revealed.

Having committed themselves to their heroic effort to take back the cockpit, the passengers are in position in the back of the plane, the larger, stronger men occupying the first three rows closest to the terrorists. Then, it hits you. The look on their faces as they steel themselves to make the attempt mirrors exactly the looks on the faces of the hijackers just prior to their attack as the terrorists also had to summon up the courage to carry out their dastardly deed.

Whether intended or not, Greengrass reveals the faces of men at war. And even though there are no grand, overarching truths about humanity, or good and evil, or the superiority of one set of beliefs over another in U-93 (there is a short scene toward the end of the film that shows both passengers and terrorists praying), the singular fact that “they” attacked us and “we” fought back cannot be denied, cannot be hidden despite the desperate attempt by some over the last 5 years to do so. We are at war.

And for those who insist that we are not, that the War on Terror is some gigantic plot of the Bush Administration to win elections, or seize power, or exercise some kind of monarchical control over the American people, United 93 at bottom, shows this kind of 9/10 thinking to be seriously deluded.

Indeed, there has been an attempt by many on the left to make war on the War on Terror itself, as if the enemy is not thousands of fanatical Muslims hell bent on killing Americans but rather a domestic ideology that seeks to prevent such a catastrophe. For at bottom, what many on the left seek to obscure is the simple necessity of acknowledging that a conflict exists in the first place. On an existential level, they can deny the reality of war by turning cause and effect on its head by justifying terrorism as a logical outgrowth of US policies in the Middle East or toward Muslims in general. It is this intellectual dishonesty that is successfully countered by U-93 in its brutally simple yet deeply emotional subtext; a reminder of what it was like to be an American that day.

There is no overt political context to the film which is why it succeeds so brilliantly. Its unflinching look at the failures of government on that day points no fingers, takes no names, assigns no blame. Instead, the almost documentary nature of the movie allows Greengrass to explore a particular theme that the 9/11 Commission tried to bring out but failed miserably in doing so due to the intrusion of partisan politics in its public hearings: The United States of America was fast asleep on September 11. And the wake up call found us all in a state of denial so profound that the resulting paralysis by the military, by the government - by all of us - contributed in no small way to the scope and dimension of the tragedy.

This is where the psychic pain for the audience is at its worst; watching first the disbelief, then the concern, then the near panic of total confusion as the FAA, air traffic controllers, and even the military all watch helplessly as their operations sputter and limp, eventually grinding to a muddled halt. The Air Force Colonel’s plaintive cry to his superior, “I have two planes to defend the entire east coast” while watching the Twin Towers burning on the wall sized monitor in front of him elicits empathy for his plight while at the same time engendering outrage that our $300 billion military could be reduced to such impotence.

Similar feelings are evoked watching as the FAA tries to understand what is taking place in the skies over America that morning. Operations Manager Ben Sliney (playing himself in the movie) does not stint in portraying himself as befuddled as the rest of his staff as reports start coming in from all over the country about hijacked airplanes, whether or not they are still in the air, and where they are. There are times when their confusion becomes almost farcical as they are first unable to talk to anyone at the “Hijack Desk” except a janitor who happens to be cleaning the conference room and then their all important military liaison is nowhere to be found.

But it was in the air traffic control rooms in New York, Boston, and Cleveland where the confusion was at its most chilling. The New York controller handling United 175 that eventually crashed into the second tower grew more and more frustrated as the drama unfolded, the tension in his voice rising the closer the plane got to the city. As the plane dropped off the radar, the audience knowing it had plowed into the North Tower, he pathetically kept trying to raise the plane on the radio, unaware of the enormous tragedy that had just engulfed the country. Similar scenes in the other control rooms were equally heartbreaking as one by one, the aircraft dropped off the radar screens, the full import of the aircraft’s disappearance from their flickering monitors lost in their disbelief and utter confusion.

A large part of the film’s success can be attributed to Mr. Greengrass’s spare and unemotional script. By writing and filming in cinéma vérité , Greengrass avoided many pitfalls that a more traditional approach would have opened up, not the least of which would have been the temptation for including declaratory speeches by hijackers and passengers alike. As it was, the sheer ordinariness of both the characters and the dialogue contributed immensely the horror of what was happening on the plane as well as the heroic nature of the passengers.

From a technical standpoint, the film succeeds brilliantly on several levels. The extensive use of the hand held camera by cinematographer Barry Ackroyd often gives the unsettling feeling that the viewer is in the middle of the action on the screen. This is especially true at FAA Headquarters and the various air traffic control rooms in Boston, New York, and Cleveland. As the controllers struggle to understand what is happening in the skies over America and desperation begins to creep into their discussions, the audience finds themselves in the middle of these conversations as the camera pans quickly back and forth, focusing on the puzzled faces of the technicians as the horrible reality of what is happening begins to dawn on them.

The editing by Clare Douglas and Christopher Rouse is clean and crisp, approaching a sublime level of near perfection during the attacks on the cockpit by first the terrorists then the passengers. The claustrophobic setting of the film - the inside of a commercial airliner - presented enormous problems, especially sequences filmed in the cockpit. It is a testament to the editors’ skill that both attacks elicited searing, emotional responses from the audience.

The percussive and synthesized score by John Powell was mostly unobtrusive, jarring us awake at appropriate places in the film with hammer-like percussion blows to the heart as when the terrorists rose from their seats to begin their attack - a perfect low-key compliment to the film’s intimate setting.

And it is that intimacy that draws us in and nails the audience to their seats. We do not get to “know” any of the characters in any traditional sense. There is very little exposition since everyone knows what the outcome will be. Instead, Greengrass allows the events themselves to simply unfold in as close to real time as possible, making no judgements about either the hijackers or the passengers. Even the one passenger who sought to warn the terrorists, fearful that any attempt to take back the plane would kill them all, is portrayed in a neutral manner (although the fact that the gentleman spoke with a vaguely European accent is an interesting aside nonetheless).

In the end, Greengrass lets the story do all his talking. A wise choice since the it would have been a relatively simple matter to have made a histrionic, flag waving spectacular instead of the intensely personal drama U-93 turned out to be. For some, that intensity will open old emotional wounds from 9/11 making it very difficult for them to see this film. I would urge them to make the effort anyway. For United 93 will not heal the hurt but rather recall in a vividly personal, emotionally charged manner who and what caused our souls to be scorched that terrible day.

The farther we get from 9/11, the more urgent that reminder becomes. We’ve already had one wake-up call. Is it necessary for the fanatics to give us another?

UPDATE

Libertas has an excellent review of the film, echoing many of the themes I touch on here, although the reviewer is disappointed that Greengrass failed to provide much in the way of a moral context.

It is very tempting when looking at Mary McCarthy’s fascinating connections to heavy hitters in the Democratic party national security establishment to try and connect the dots to form what Varifrank has called “The Grand Unified Conspiracy Theory.” And while not entirely dismissing out of hand such a possibility, I believe such thinking neglects a much more mundane and common explanation.

Mary McCarthy is part of a very exclusive community of like minded Democrats numbering at most 200 experts in national security and foreign affairs who staffed the Clinton Administration’s Departments of Defense and State (and the much more exclusive National Security Council). These were the undersecretaries and assistant secretaries that flesh out any administration and get their jobs thanks to both their political connections and their experience in foreign and military policy.

This experience comes from a variety of places including our intelligence agencies, military staff jobs, foreign service postings, think tanks, and Capitol Hill staff positions. They provide an invaluable service to the party by constantly developing policy prescriptions and position papers that bubble and froth by being debated and shaped at conferences and forums until a consensus of sorts is reached.

In McCarthy’s case, she was running with an exclusive club indeed if Sandy Berger and Rand Beers were her patrons at the NSC. But that alone doesn’t prove that her actions in leaking were part of conspiracy nor does it make it probable that those worthies mentioned above even knew she would violate her oath of secrecy so brazenly. Her contacts with Berger and Beers were probably confined to seeing them at the numerous conferences and scholarly forums where the rest of the Democratic contribution to the military industrial complex meet.

The Republicans, of course, have a similar group albeit much larger but perhaps more disciplined. Where the Democrats have a half dozen major think tanks with another dozen or so small but influential policy groups, the Republicans have a remarkable network of scholars, ex-military, ex-intelligence and foreign service as well as former bureaucrats who work through long established think tanks like The Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute.

I read a few years back where the turnover of scholars at Republican think tanks is much quicker than their Democratic counterparts which allows for more voices to take part in the policy debates that both of these institutional networks depend on to clarify and formulate the party’s positions. For McCarthy, her stint at The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) was the result of a common practice in the national security establishment of making sure that the agency’s “voice” was heard in the upper reaches of a political party’s councils. There are similar sabbaticals granted to Republican employees so that they can fulfill a similar purpose.

Whether she volunteered for the CSIS assignment or chosen is unknown. But the fact that the CSIS is generally thought of as a Democratic party organ made her return to the CIA in 2003 a problem given that a Republican Administration was running things. As has been pointed out, her being assigned to the Inspector General’s office could be considered a demotion from the position she had prior to leaving the CIA in 2001 (the NSC staff). An interesting question would be did she volunteer for the assignment knowing that she would have access to a wide variety of classified information?

Several former intelligence officials said they were particularly alarmed about McCarthy’s alleged involvement in any leaks because of where she worked at the CIA. L. Britt Snyder III, who was CIA inspector general from 1997 to 2000, said if McCarthy leaked information while working in the IG office, “we would have considered that a fairly egregious sin.” The IG, he said, “gets into everything, including personal things. That makes it a little different than other places.”

Consider this: Is it coincidence or conspiracy that Mary McCarthy, partisan Democrat, was placed in exactly the right position to scan a massive amount of intelligence about a wide variety of political hot button topics that, if selectively leaked, could cause the Bush Administration enormous embarrassment and damage?

Just thinking out loud…

In all the rush of the last few days, I failed to post a link to my debut appearance on C-Span’s Washington Journal on Sunday.

Just in case you were waiting with bated breath in anticipation of seeing my munificent presence on the telly as I fought the good fight against the lovely Taylor Marsh, the liberal bias of C-Span, and the earpiece that kept trying to fall out of my ear…

Here’s a link to the video page at C-Span. My segment can be found under the Sunday, April 2 show.

(Hint: I’m the fidgety one)

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

Coming soon to a theater near you – whether you’re ready or not – will be the first mass market attempt by Hollywood to insert the tragedy of 9/11 into the American narrative. United 93, a Universal Studios project set to open April 28, tells the story of the ill-fated airliner whose passengers heroically attacked the cockpit and foiled the hijackers’ plans to fly the plane into the White House.

The question isn’t whether or not the film should have been made, but rather whether or not the people of the United States are ready for Hollywood to do what Hollywood does best: breathe life into myth and employ marketing skills honed over a century of huckstering to fold 9/11 permanently into the fabric of American culture.

The industry is watching very closely how U-93 does at the box office. Set to open later this summer is Paramount’s Oliver Stone blockbuster World Trade Center, which, unlike the Universal production, will feature big name actors and a very big budget. At bottom of course, it’s all about the money. And a good showing by U-93 will encourage other studios and other producers to jump on the 9/11 project bandwagon while the subject is “hot.”

By various accounts, there are half a dozen or more 9/11 projects on the boards awaiting final approval by the hard-eyed money men who rule Hollywood. And the question uppermost in their minds is the simple bottom line calculation of how many Americans are truly ready to accept our searing national nightmare of 9/11 played out on the big screen, with all the concomitant emotional and psychological baggage inherent in an event that all but the youngest among us lived through and shared.

Trailers for the movie shown in theaters have elicited some gut-wrenching responses. Newsweek tells of one such incident in New York City where the theater actually pulled the trailer after several complaints:

The AMC Loews theater on Manhattan’s Upper West Side took the rare step of pulling the trailer from its screens after several complaints. “One lady was crying,” says one of the theater’s managers, Kevin Adjodha. “She was saying we shouldn’t have [played the trailer]. That this was wrong … I don’t think people are ready for this.”

A similar reaction occurred in Los Angeles when the trailer was shown there:When the trailer played before “Inside Man” last week at the famed Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, audience members began calling out, “Too soon!”

(Here’s a link to the trailer. It will upset you.)

“Too soon” may be a legitimate complaint for many, many people. The trailer is absolutely devastating. For many Americans, 9/11 is still a raw, open wound that refuses to close despite the passage of time. It is these people who will most likely recoil in horror at the images of planes flying into buildings and desperate people taking desperate chances.

But does this mean that U-93 will flop?

Ultimately, the success or failure of U-93 will hinge on the ability of the American people to embrace the tragedy as a part of our history and not shun it because the memory of that day lingers in the shadow world of nightmare.

No medium is more suited to this process of turning history into myth than film. The secret of the cinema has always been its ability to draw us into a story while at the same time allowing us to remain as a semi-detached observer, both in and out of the narrative. Where 9/11 is concerned, the emotional bombshells that will be at the film’s heart will be somewhat tempered by the realization – often deliberately fostered by the director using subtle tricks of camera angles and scene cuts – that we are, after all, watching a movie.

It is, of course, part of the film-going experience to be frightened, or thrilled, or titillated, or moved to tears. A director manipulates our feelings throughout his creation, conducting our emotions like Lorin Maazel before the New York Philharmonic. Good directors can play us like an instrument so that we never realize that we are held in thrall until we are jarred awake by a climax or plot twist. Alfred Hitchcock was a master at playing his audience, almost lulling them to sleep until he chose to hurl them out of their seats with a few seconds of terror.

The magic of movies is how very much like a dream they are; a third person excursion into a world created by the artistry and imagination of some very talented people augmented by a gee-whiz technology that can make the dream almost too real. For writer/director Paul Greenglass (The Bourne Identity) the challenge is obvious; try to immerse the audience in a film where everyone knows the details of the plot from beginning to end. We know who the protagonists are. We know what happens to the plane. The only question in the mind of the audience is will the story that unfolds match expectations of what it would have been like to actually be there.

Director Ron Howard had a similar problem confronting him when he chose to make Apollo 13. Everyone knew the bare outlines of the story – that the spacecraft got into trouble and only through the hard work of NASA and the grace of God did the astronauts survive. Howard chose to weave a narrative of unusual power by interspersing scenes from the damaged space ship with the scrambling technicians at NASA working against the clock and the human drama of the families of the astronauts in crisis. The result was an emotional blockbuster of a movie that had the audience cheering at the end despite knowing the outcome in advance.

Greenglass is not vouchsafed the luxury of a completely uplifting storyline. However, the raw material he has to work with is dramatic enough. And if the trailer of the movie is any indication, he will be able to use several dramatic devices to advance his story without resorting to cheap theatrics and special effects wizardry.

But there is a question that begs to be asked and answered; is it necessary and proper to make a movie about 9/11 now, less than 6 years after the tragedy?Hollywood has been known to stoop to unfathomable depths of exploitive degeneracy in the past when it came to tragedies. Movies about serial killers like David Berkowitz (Son of Sam), Jeffrey Dahmer, and Ted Bundy were all rushed into production and into theaters within months of their stories appearing on the news.

But 9/11 is different. There are people alive today whose flight from the doomed Towers has so altered their perceptions that the smell of the burning flesh of their comrades still resides in their nostrils and they can still hear the horrible, shattering sounds of people hitting the courtyard in front of the Towers after jumping out of windows far above to escape the flames.

For these and perhaps millions of others whose souls were seared by the horrific images of that day shown live and in color on our TV screens, 9/11 is not an historical event as much as it is a part of their life. In that respect, any film about 9/11 becomes an autobiographical portrait, more documentary than drama. It is almost like opening a personal diary, peeking at the contents, and showing all the secrets of one’s personal life to the rest of the world. For many Americans, it will be an intrusion so invasive that they will instinctively turn away. These are the walking wounded from 9/11 and they deserve our sympathy and understanding.

But for the rest of us, it is time to confront the evil and place it into the great narrative story of American history. The way events pass from history into myth often determines how future generations relate in an emotional way to the times. Pearl Harbor, an attack more devastating militarily but without the immediate emotional impact of 9/11, was mythologized almost immediately thanks to the brilliant propaganda work done by director John Ford, whose 1943 production December 7th: The Pearl Harbor Story was so iconic that Hollywood borrowed battle sequences from the film for years.

The film, however, never showed the true nature of the American Navy’s disaster that day because the military refused to allow Ford to show several sequences critical of the naval commanders, as well as scenes that offered analysis of what went wrong. It was left for later films like From Here to Eternity and the joint American-Japanese production Tora! Tora! Tora! to tell that excruciating story.

I would hate to see something similar happen to films about 9/11. The story of that day includes not only snippets of unparalleled heroism and base cowardice but also confusion, ineptness, and a fatal refusal to acknowledge the scope of what was taking place in the skies over America that day. Leaving these painful yet vital facts out of the myth will cheapen the sacrifice of those who gave their lives as well as allow people to draw the wrong conclusions about what kind of country America was that day.

A large part of the narrative of 9/11 has to be America asleep at the wheel, careening toward disaster for most of the previous decade, oblivious to the dark clouds of fanaticism and hate that were building on the horizon. The paralysis of all who could have either prevented or minimized the tragedy can only be explained in that context. And Hollywood is particularly well suited to tell that story in all its glory and shame.

Movies about 9/11 will be difficult to watch for all of us. Some may go to the theater fully expecting to view the movie but will be forced to get up and leave in the middle of it because the rush of memory will be so painful as to make it unbearable to watch. For others who stay until the end, let’s hope they are rewarded with a cinema experience that is both sobering and uplifting at the same time.

It’s going to be a long war. In order to fight it and win, we must be able to put the tragedy of 9/11 in a box and be able to view it as we would a sad memento as from the funeral of a loved one. And one way we Americans can put these memories into that kind of context is by allowing our greatest cultural gift to the rest of the world – Hollywood movies – to close one chapter of our national history book and begin another.

Would someone please give Matt Stoeller of MyDD a lollipop and tell him to STFU?

There’s a discussion over at The Moderate Voice about whether the Jill Carroll affair damages the credibility of bloggers. I find this discussion irritating, because it cuts to a basic problem with the nonpartisan new media blog pontificators who don’t want to deal with the fact that the right-wing movement is populated by creepy racists. As such, they ignore the AM talk radio circuit and mainstream conservative publications, as if they weren’t part of the charge on Carroll, and pretend like this episode reveals something about ‘the blogs’. It doesn’t.

So let me spell it out. The Carroll thing is a fairly standard storyline that predates blogs. Right-wingers tend to hate a free media. Right-wingers tend to say creepy and racist things. Right-wingers tend to hate reporters who say that all isn’t apple pie in Iraq. This is true on the AM talk radio circuit, at the RNC, in the Oval Office, and on right-wing blogs. I mean the GOP.com blog even has a tag ‘good news from Iraq’.

This has NOTHING to do with blogs. Zero. This has to do with a flat-out racist and warmongering right-wing movement that doesn’t like a woman whose survival cuts against their narrative. So please stop lumping progressives like me in with the right-wing just because we both use a similar web-based publishing platform. NEENER, NEENER, NEENER, NEENER…

(Okay. That list bit was mine. But it isn’t entirely out of place, is it?)

I think at the moment I’m “tending” to throw up.

Actually, this one is an award winner. How many baseless (as in unspecified and unproven), scurrilous, laughably ignorant, witless, jaw-droppingly idiotic charges can one drooling, mouth breathing refugee from the cuckoo land that calls itself the “Reality Based Community” make and still be taken seriously by anyone over the age of 4?

This cannot be serious. There simply is no way that adults of any ideological stripe can read this drivel and say “I think the lad is on to something here.”

Besides being an execrable piece of writing (kinda cliche heavy there Matt, dontchya think?) one wonders what Stoeller had for breakfast. Whatever he ate that causes this much bile to rise in his throat, I suggest he switch to something a little more bland like bacon and eggs smothered in Tabasco sauce. Or perhaps a little Eggs Benedict with a side of raw Hungarian Peppers.

It wouldn’t do any good to try and “rebut” these “charges.” But of course, Mr. Stoeller is not making “charges” so much as he is annunciating a credo. And, like the Islamists he and his compatriots on the left continue to unwittingly and stupidly assist, their beliefs control their lives. Such inflexibility of thought brooks no opposition, no deviation lest their worldview collapse in a heap of broken verities and allow for the truth to blow away all their silly, stupid pretensions of moral superiority.

To quote Bugs Bunny, a philosopher and thinker as brilliant as Mr. Stoeller himself:

“What a maroon.”

UPDATE

Pat Curley has his own thoughts on Stoeller’s idiocy as well as some artwork that describes our buddy Matty to a “T.”

UPDATE

Jimbo in the comments reminds me of the #1 rule in journalistic combat: If you are going to attack someone, make sure you spell his name right.

I apologize to Mr. Stoller for spelling his name wrong. I guess that lets me out as a left wing Hollywood publicist who wouldn’t care about whether his client’s publicity was good or bad just as long as the actor’s name was spelled correctly.

As you can imagine, the loony lefties who visit here constantly spell my name wrong, insisting on spelling it Moron rather than the correct, Irish spelling which is Moran.

I don’t have the heart to tell them that the last time someone consistently spelled my name that way was back in the third grade when I was sitting next to Judy Pignataro who used to pass me notes with nothing but the word “Moron” written on it about a dozen times. The comparison holds up pretty well.

So many things going on today that there’s no time to give them the “Ricky Treatment” - the soulful, meandering, almost coherent ramblings that are the hallmark of this blog in its ongoing defense of the values found in Western Civilization…

Yeah, so? It’s Friday already.

Anyway, here are some items catching my eye this afternoon..

JILL CARROLL: 15 YARD PENALTY FOR PILING ON?

What is wrong with my fellow right wing nuts?

Here we have this poor woman held captive for three months and the page at Memorandum is full of people criticizing her for 1) wearing Muslim dress, 2) praising her captives for their fine treatment of her, 3) not condemning same, 4) and even some criticism of a statement she made with a gun to her head about how bad we Americans are.

That last was figuratively written as some - Macsmind for one - smell a rat. Mac, a former intelligence professional, is not one to go off the deep end so his blog bears watching on this subject. Alexandra however, is willing to give the reporter the benefit of the doubt as is Rusty Shacklelford.

I can see the Italian communist propagandist Guiliana Sgrena , who gave so many versions of her ordeal that they could have made 3 different Mini-series out of it, having herself kidnapped for political purposes but not a serious journalist like Carroll. Let’s wait a few days and see what she has to say when she gets her feet back on the ground before judging her for any real or imagined transgression.

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: STRANGE BUT TRUE

From what I understand, Representative McKinney has been involved in 4 other similar spats with security guards in the House all because she refuses to wear her Member’s pin. Is it asking too much that our guards be able to recognize the 535 faces of lawmakers?

That’s an awful lot of faces. Unless the guards have been given a course in memory retention, the average human can remember 200 - 300 faces , which means that there is a likelihood that Representative McKinney will not be recognized. This is especially true if she changes her hair style, something she complained about earlier.

In defense of McKinney, she is one of only 14 black members of the House which should mean that this visual clue of skin color should make remembering her face that much easier. Unfortunately, the probability is that officers are trained to check first for the pin without even looking at the face. And since she said she was in a hurry, it is also probable that the guard never saw her face at all.

Blaming racism, as her lawyer does here is unfortunate. When what was apparently an honest mistake on the part of the guard is turned into a political hot potato in order to deflect attention from the issue of Representative McKinney’s possible assault charge, everyone loses. It would have been much better if 1) the guards are given a refresher course in memory retention, and 2) McKinney grow up, act like an adult, and wear her damn Member’s pin.

Perhaps then we can get back to the people’s business in the House…

WALKING THE PLANK ON IMMIGRATION

House Republicans are apparently intent on walking a very short plank in their showdown with the Senate over immigration reform. Standing firm on making it a felony to enter the country illegally, the bitter enders seem intent on either getting their way or killing the bill altogether:

Representative Dana Rohrabacher, Republican of California, dismissed arguments made by President Bush and business leaders who say the United States needs a pool of foreign workers. He said businesses should be more creative in their efforts to find help and suggested that employers turn to the prison population to fill jobs in agriculture and elsewhere.

“Let the prisoners pick the fruits,” Mr. Rohrabacher said. “We can do it without bringing in millions of foreigners.”

Good thing convicted felons can’t vote, Danny. You’d be in trouble. And most migrant workers - about 1.3 million - are actually US citizens. The seasonal need for additional workers brings about 300,000 illegal immigrants over the borders, a proverbial drop in the bucket.

While it may be hugely satisfying to make illegals into felons, the fact is you can’t round up 11 million people and put them…where? Concentration camps? Not enough room in the jails. And thanks to several controversial court opinions, you just can’t load them onto a bus or plane and send them back where they came from without a hearing.

Yes enforce the law as it is on the books. No to amnesty. No to “guest workers.” And a great big yes please to doing a better job of securing our borders.

Read also, VDH on the subject. Well done as usual.

UPDATE

Kender points out in the comments one other thing I strongly support - jail time for employers who knowingly hire illegals.

Hard to prove but would be an excellent incentive for employers to get fanatical about making sure they hire legal residents.

I will be appearing on C-Span’s “Washington Journal” on Sunday morning April 2 from 8:30 AM - 9:15 AM Eastern Time.

You might want to remember to set your clocks the night before one hour forward due to daylight savings time (where applicable).

My left wing foil for the show will be Taylor Marsh, a relatively sane liberal who is a great writer and excellent blogger. Steve Scully will host.

“Our Lady of perpetual Moonbats…Pray for us…”

Today’s column by Richard Cohen in the Washington Post is an interesting read not only for its attempt to twist the facts in order to fit a disingenuous narrative of what happened in the lead-up to the War in Iraq but also, achieves the dubious distinction of making Richard Clarke an unbiased source for relating what the President was thinking regarding Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

The latter point in and of itself is typical of a curious kind of myopia that liberal commentators have developed about both Mr. Clarke and that other poster boy for proving perfidy in Administration intentions about going to war Joe Wilson. Why the left has latched on to a preening peacock and a prevaricating poseur in order to “prove” that the President lied about going to war with Saddam is one of those mysteries of the universe that we’ll probably not solve in our lifetimes.

In truth, Cohen has always been at the lower end of the Loon-O-Meter when it comes to the kind of one-dimensional thinking most liberals use to critique the Iraq War. But today, the columnist throws caution (and logic) to the four winds and jumps into into the vat of Kool-Aid without his water wings:

…So common is the statement “Bush lied” that it seems sometimes that I am the only blue-state person who does not think it is true. Then, last week, the indomitable Helen Thomas changed all that with a single question. She asked George Bush why he wanted “to go to war” from the moment he “stepped into the White House,” and the president said, “You know, I didn’t want war.” With that, the last blue-state skeptic folded.

“I would not go so far as to say that Bush wanted war from Day One in the White House, but there was plenty of evidence he had Saddam on his mind and in his sights from the very moment he got the news of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. We have it from Richard Clarke, formerly the White House’s chief anti-terrorism official, that within a day of the attacks Bush was inquiring if Saddam might have had a hand in them. When told no — “But, Mr. President, al-Qaeda did this,” Clarke told him — it became instantly clear that this was not the answer Bush wanted. “‘Look into Iraq, Saddam,’ the president said testily,” Clarke writes in his book, “Against All Enemies.”

First of all, referring to Helen Thomas as “indomitable” is like calling a pig in a dress a prom queen. Thomas may be a lot of things - loud, obnoxious, disrespectful, kooky - but “indomitable” as a descriptive should be reserved for battleships, cancer survivors, and some race horses; not doddering old reporters who waddle around the press room talking about the glory days when Jack Kennedy prowled the White House looking for his next sexual conquest in the steno pool.

And Cohen bases his thesis that the President had Saddam “on his mind and in his sights” following 9/11 based on the storytelling of Richard Clarke who says the President reacted “testily” when our hero tried to tell him that it was al-Qaeda and not Iraq who carried out the attacks.

Less than 24 hours after the Towers fell, and the President should close his mind to the possibility that someone besides al-Qaeda was involved in the attacks? If the President did indeed react “testily” - a pejorative that a more objective observer would question - could it be because bureaucrat Clarke was constructing a narrative of the attack that would have him as the point man in advising the President rather than the Neo-con cabal at the Pentagon who were agitating for the overthrow of Saddam?

There is little doubt in reading Clarke’s book that the former Counter-Terrorism official felt slighted by the Bush inner circle. His access to the President was restricted. And he was further humiliated (in his own mind) by having to go through National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice in order to make his voice heard. Consciously or unconsciously, Clarke was taking out his frustrations on a President who simply would not listen to his brilliant analysis and dire warnings of catastrophe. The reality of the situation was that Clarke rubbed everyone the wrong way and was a pretentious lout to boot. No one likes a Cassandra. And Clarke would play that part perfectly.

Cohen doesn’t stop with Clarke to prove his point about the President’s “fixation” on Iraq. He quotes from Bob Woodward’s excellent book Plan of Attack in which the President ordered Secretary Rumsfeld to come up with an invasion plan for Iraq around Thanksgiving, 2001. This brings up an interesting point about the genesis of the pre-emptive war doctrine and the Wilsonian vision of a democratic Middle East that started to dominate the President’s thinking by at least the first half of 2002.

It will be interesting to read a book in the future that details the arc of decision making that went into formulating the Bush Doctrine. Some will point to the President’s evangelical outlook and try to marry it with a proselytizing impulse to bring freedom to peoples under the oppressive yoke of religious fundamentalism and corrupt kleptocrats. This is a shallow analysis in that it ignores the singularly American tradition regarding the natural rights of man. When Bush talks about all people wanting freedom, he is referring back to the founding of the United States, that certain rights are “self-evident.” These rights exist independent of governments and that people are born into freedom by virtue of their humanity and a just, caring God. While not entirely secular in origin, the natural rights argument could in no way be confused with any kind of evangelical Christian drive to spread the “Good News” about the savior.

In this sense, Bush is a natural inheritor of the Reagan legacy and the belief that Communism was an evil not because of what it did to prevent people of faith from exercising their belief in God but rather because of how it tried to destroy the individual’s natural right to freedom by setting the state up to be the final arbiter of what rights a person might exercise.

This is important in trying to understand why, so soon after 9/11, the Bush Administration’s thoughts were turning to Iraq. The outlines of the Bush Doctrine were already being drawn. The President was thinking about the future and how to prevent an even more devastating attack that, if successful, could destroy what had taken more than 200 years to build. Unless one is willing to posit the notion that the President of the United States went to war in Iraq to personally enrich himself and his friends with monies from war contracts and oil, then the only other explanation that makes sense is that Bush was serious about making Iraq an example by which democrats all across the Middle East could rally to and help reform their own governments.

This notion - breathtaking in its audacity and, in hindsight something of an overreach - has never been acknowledged by the left as the proximate cause for war with Iraq despite the President talking about several times before the invasion. Saddam Hussein was an enabler, financier, and as we’re finding out with the release of the Saddam papers, a booster of terrorism throughout the Middle East and probably the world as well. If some kind of coherent strategy were to be followed after the destruction of the Taliban, the end of Saddam would have to figure in to it.

Cohen trivializes this momentous decision by according the President precious little credit for any kind of forward looking thinking:

There remains, though, the little matter of what was in Bush’s gut — not his head, mind you, but that elusive place where emotion resides. It was there, in the moments after 9/11, that Bush truly decided on war, maybe because Saddam had once tried to kill George H.W. Bush, maybe because the neocons had convinced him that a brief war in Iraq would have long-term salutary consequences for the entire Middle East, maybe because he could not abide the thought that a monster like Saddam might die in his sleep — and maybe because he heard destiny calling.

Whatever Bush’s specific reason or reasons, the one thing that’s so far missing from the record is proof of him looking for a genuine way out of war instead of looking for a way to get it started. Bush wanted war. He just didn’t want the war he got

By brushing aside the Bush Doctrine with a slap at the “Neo-cons” and trivializing the decision even more by playing amateur psychologist regarding the President’s motives for revenge, Cohen shows that he just doesn’t get it. Like many liberals, the idea of a sustained effort to defeat al Qaeda and the historical forces that drive their murderous ideology is an anathema. Trying to “understand” the brutes and deal with the “underlying causes” of terrorism is their battle cry. In this respect, it points up competing notions about the significance of 9/11. How much did or should 9/11 change America? Many of us believe it was a shattering event that demanded a response that encompassed a grand strategic vision that would change the planet. Others think it a horrible tragedy that the Republicans are using for political purposes and thus, a more reactive policy is in order, responding to terrorist threats as they arise (or happen) rather than pre-emptively combating the menace.

And to say that Bush didn’t try to find a way out of the war is stating the obvious. The Woodward book makes clear the President would have much preferred that Saddam take the way out offered by several nations and abdicate (no mention of that fact by Mr. Cohen, of course. It wouldn’t do to interrupt his earth shaking change of heart). Saddam was a gone goose once 150,000 Americans were ready sitting in Kuwait waiting to invade. The question in the President’s mind was whether Saddam would take the hint and go or stay and make a fight of it. After 15 UN resolutions and violating the 1991 cease fire accords on a daily basis for 11 years, Saddam was out.

It is amazing that anyone thought otherwise, that there was a hope for….what? Cohen, along with the President and everyone else did not want to have to fight to get rid of Saddam Hussein. But that was the option Saddam took, not the President. To suddenly discover the President “lied” when he said he “didn’t want war” is being disingenuous. It was always up to Saddam whether he would exit the stage peacefully or not. But exit he would.

I don’t think it ever occurred to Mr. Cohen that the President would honestly balk at taking an action that would result in the death of thousands of people. In this, he is no different from any other liberal who, when they look at the President, sees horns and a tail.

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

Moral of the story: Don’t write mad…

Can you stand one more “Where we stand” post on Iraq?

Your humble host almost decided not to do such a post for several reasons. After all, it is the height of hubris to believe that lil’ ole me would have anything original or insightful to say about matters of war and peace. And why should my opinion be more perceptive or matter more than the any other internet pundit?

I am a reasonably intelligent human being who spends 8-10 hours a day on the internet reading for the most part everything I can on the situation in Iraq. My sources are left, right, government, anti-government, Middle East media, American MSM, former government officials, Iraqi bloggers, and dozens of other sites who have proved themselves if not non-partisan then at least honest in their assessment of the situation.

I believe that anyone who says that Iraq is a lost cause is dead wrong. I also believe that anyone who says things are going reasonably well is also incorrect. The situation in Iraq today is balanced on a knife’s edge. There are some signs that are encouraging. Many more are not. In the end, there is little more the US military can do combat wise to materially affect the outcome. From here on out, it’s up to the Iraqis.

The problems with the Iraqi security services are daunting. Not only are most units not ready to take over without American back-up, but there are signs that both the NCO’s and officers are not taking to their responsibilities in such a way as to inspire confidence of either the Americans or the Iraqi soldiers serving under them. The good news is that this is slowly changing for the better as unit cohesion improves and officers gain experience in leading their men in the field. It is impossible to say at this point when these units will be able to stand on their own. The best guess of our military is 2 years.

As for the police, it is an entirely different story. There are disheartening signs that the militias have infiltrated the police and are acting independently of their local commanders, answering instead to either their militia leaders or directly to the Interior Ministry which is controlled by an ex leader of the Badr Brigade Bayan Jabr. There is some anecdotal evidence that these police units that are dominated by one of the many Shia militias are helping in the massacre of Sunni civilians. This could be misinformation being put out by al Qaeda propaganda cadres as was the case in the immediate aftermath of the bombing of the Shrine in Samarra. But such reports are troubling nonetheless.

The good news is that the situation is redeemable. The political factions have just brokered an agreement to create a National Security Council to oversee the army and police. It will be Shia dominated but - and there are going to be a lot of “buts” when talking about Iraq - the Sunnis, the Kurds, and the secular parties will, if they band together, be able to outvote the Shiites.

Something similar is going on in Parliament. One of the reasons for the delay in convening the legislative body is that the Shiite choice for Prime Minister, current interim Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafari, is unacceptable to all the non-Shiite factions and have promised to vote him down if his name is put forward. This is extraordinarily encouraging in that it shows that on the big questions facing the legislature, the Sunnis, Kurds, and secularists are capable of acting together to outvote the Shiites.

The Shiites themselves are fractured with nationalists like Sistani at odds with fundamentalists allied with Iran like Muqtada al-Sadr. But as the violence continues (egged on partly by al-Sadr’s Mehdi militia) Sistani’s influence wanes. The Americans have rightly given Sistani a wide berth trying not to make it appear that he is “our man” as much as we would like him to succeed. But the clock is ticking on Sistani who is old and tired and he may be losing the respect of the very people who Iraq needs to find a way through to peace.

The insurgency is alive but has never been very organized which makes it that much harder to stamp out. Much of the violence directed against Americans comes at the hands of small cells of rebels acting with only the loosest connection to any unified whole. Tribal based rather than ideological or sectarian, there is a chance that the new government could negotiate to bring them into the political process. We probably won’t like the amnesty program that will allow the killers of American soldiers a free ride but it will be one of the costs of a peaceful, stable Iraq.

The militias are the real sticking point. As it stands now, it is still possible to disband them and integrate their members into the army and police with a minimum of friction. But the longer the militias are patrolling the streets, manning checkpoints, carrying out revenge killings, and working to make things worse rather than better, the less likely the country can avoid a bloody civil war. Only time will tell the story here. And no one is looking at their watch.

Of course, all this boils down to improving the security situation. Which won’t happen until the army improves. Which won’t happen until the political situation improves. Which won’t happen until the militias are reigned in. Which won’t happen until the security situation improves.

If it sounds like all depends on improving the safety of people in Baghdad and the Sunni Triangle, you’re correct. That has always been the key. And all the reconstruction and school building and hospital stocking and neighborhood outreach put together will be meaningless unless that one disheartening problem can be dramatically changed.