Right Wing Nut House

Trying desperately to spin the meager bits of good news coming out of Iraq into more proof of failure and defeat, the Democrats and the left have completely left our plane of reality and embarked on a sight seeing trip to La-La Land.

How else can you explain their laughable contention that their immoral, milquetoast resolutions on Iraq have been vindicated by news that the Pentagon plans on drawing down our forces in Iraq 5% by September (conditions on the ground permitting) with another 15% by the end of 2007 being able to come home (again, conditions permitting).

Of course, John Kerry’s resolution would not have had 20% of the troops home by the end of 2007 but rather 100% with nary a word contained in that dubious document about whether or not or boys should stay if they were needed by the Iraqi government. That little detail must have slipped his mind.

And, the so-called Levin alternative resolution was even murkier on the subject, although the floor speeches made by Democrats gave the game away before they even voted. Universally (and this is the mercifully short version) they believe the War is a failure, George Bush is incompetent, and it’s time to leave so that we can blame him for the defeat in time to get enough Democrats elected in November in order to take control of Congress.

An immoral, cynical ploy ’tis true. But then, when it comes to our national security, never let it be said that anyone cut in front of the Democrats when it came time to surrender.

The problem with the Democratic “Plan” is that it has always existed in a vacuum. The primary argument made by Republicans is that basically, you can’t run the war from Washington (Too bad Rummy didn’t take that advice very often). Any draw down of American forces must be tied to some kind of real-world, on the ground progress by Iraqi forces to deal with the violence. Do the Democrats think it a coincidence that 2 weeks and more than 500 operations after the death of the Merry Beheader al-Zarqawi that the military feels that we can reduce our troops strength? We captured or killed more than 1000 al Qaeda in Iraq operatives, sympathizers, and jihadists. We smashed their logistical infrastructure. And this is after the not-so-dearly-departed Zarqawi had written that the situation in Iraq was “bleak” for his terrorist buddies.

Or had we forgotten all that?

Surely there is a political element involved in reducing our troop strength. But to say that would be the only reason is ridiculous and, I might add, disingenuous in the extreme. Do the Democrats wish us to believe that their little dog and pony show last week with the Iraq resolutions was done solely for altruistic reasons? Who are they trying to kid?

Senator McConnell laid out the argument quite well:

Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell said lawmakers discussed the situation in Iraq with Casey before votes taken by Congress last week. But he said the point of the debate was that “Congress ought not to be dictating to the generals what the tactics are.”

“We want the conditions on the ground and the decisions of our commanders, in conjunction with the new Iraqi democratic government, to dictate the process, not the Congress trying to act like armchair generals,” the Kentucky Republican told ABC’s “This Week.”

Senator Boxer, on the other hand, is clueless:

“Here we have a situation where Democrats, 80 percent of us, voted to say we ought to start reducing our troop presence there — and again, we got pummeled,” Sen. Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat, told CBS. “And now, it turns out, we’re in synch with General Casey.”

I would say Babs was more in synch with Zarqawi than General Casey. The fact is, the plan has always been to draw down troops in coordination with the Iraqi’s ability to defend themselves. As Iraqi National Security Adviser Sherwan Alwaeli revealed, there is an unofficial withdrawal plan heavily dependent on not only the numbers of Iraqi troops trained but also their combat capabilities. That kind of judgment cannot be made by Democratic Senators counting fingers and toes in order to come up with a cool sounding number for the voters in November.

It is unbelievable to me that despite the Republicans doing everything possible to lose in November that the Democrats haven’t virtually locked up control of at least the House and perhaps even the Senate. I think it indicative of how much the American people truly distrust the Democrats on national security. And judging by their statements this past weekend about possible withdrawals by American forces from Iraq, they have a long way to go to convince anyone that they are dead serious about protecting the United States from attack.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

There are many observers of the New Media who believe that blogs or other on-line communities will one day replace the mainstream media as the best way to transmit news and information to the American public. The rationale behind this revolution is that collectively speaking, bloggers are wiser, less prone to error, and when that error is discovered, ruthless in correcting the mistake.

The key, as new media herald Jeff Jarvis preaches, is content. With millions of on-line participants in the process, content will cease to be of paramount importance and instead, the community itself will emerge as both arbiter and disseminator of what we now consider “news.” No more gatekeepers. No more “reporters.” In this brave new world, the act of sharing information itself through “linking” and other technological innovations will supplant the old paradigm of a small elite who writes, edits, and prints (or broadcasts) the news.

I have tremendous respect for Jarvis and others of his ilk who have devoted considerable thought to the new media and where it might be headed. And in the end, he may be proved a true prophet of the new age, a voice in the wilderness who pointed the way toward a bright future of citizen participation in the political conversation of the nation as we’ve never seen before.

Frankly, I don’t buy it. And judging by the burgeoning controversy surrounding Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos, the biggest liberal blogger on the planet, we may in fact be witnessing something of an earthquake that will alter the blogging landscape, changing the public’s perception of these on-line journals from fiercely partisan, independent voices to little more than pale echoes of the political parties they support.

More than 50 million Americans get most of their news and information from the internet with 13 million people counting themselves as readers of blogs. What makes politicians salivate about bloggers and blog readers is simple; they are comparatively rich. Surveys show that 43% of this group make over $90,000, with almost 70% enjoying annual incomes in excess of $50,000.With that kind of money to be had for the taking, insiders from both parties have begun to reach out to bloggers in earnest. And it isn’t just politicians. Adapting the adage “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” mainstream media outlets have begun to cater to bloggers as well. Most on-line editions of major newspapers now feature one or more blogs of their own as well as blog friendly features like tags for articles that help with identifying issues as well as listings on blog aggregators like Technorati.

The result of all this attention has been a phenomenal increase in advertising revenues for bloggers from a variety of sources. Herein lies the makings of controversy for Kos and I suspect other influential bloggers. All of that ad revenue has brought increased scrutiny of the Daily Kos universe by the mainstream press. And what they are beginning to uncover smacks of influence peddling, “pay for play” by politicians on the Kos website, and perhaps most interestingly, a network made up of the biggest, most influential liberal blogs with Moulitsis himself cracking the whip and ruthlessly enforcing a kind of orthodoxy of thought thanks to his control of a liberal ad network to which bloggers subscribe.

As with any media story, one must look at the sources and motivations of the people and outlets digging up this kind of dirt. If these revelations came only from right wing media outlets or talk radio, they could be more easily dismissed as just part of the normal background noise indicative of the usual partisan bickering. But some of what is being reported comes from the nominally liberal New Republic and the New York Times – hardly bastions of the right wing noise machine. And the details that are emerging, while revealing nothing illegal, certainly call into question Mr. Moulitsas’ ethics and thus, the ethics of all bloggers.

The controversy centers mostly around Moulitsas’ relationship with his friend, business partner, and recent co-author Jerome Armstrong. As the conservative site RedState has reported, there appears to be a correlation between candidates who hire Armstrong to work on their campaigns and favorable attention paid to those candidates on Daily Kos, a blog that garners more than 500,000 readers a day. Normally, this wouldn’t raise many eyebrows. Kos himself worked for the Howard Dean campaign and fully disclosed the fact that he was being compensated by the candidate. But what has some tongues wagging is Kos’s apparent support for the Presidential aspirations of Virginia Governor Mark Warner, a moderate Democrat who recently hired Armstrong as an internet consultant.

Further, during the recent YearlyKos convention in Las Vegas, Governor Warner spent a reported $50,000 on an open bar reception for attendees while delivering a rousing speech denouncing President Bush and the Republicans. Moulitsas, whose support of far left candidates have included other Armstrong clients like Representative Sherrod Brown who is running against Senator Mike DeWine in Ohio, has recently said that the moderate Governor Warner “bears watching” while praising his electability for President.

There is no evidence that any money changed hands between Armstrong and Moulitsas as a quid pro quo for pimping Brown, Warner, or any other politician’s candidacy on the Daily Kos website. But the appearance of impropriety is there. And legitimate questions arise in this regard when examining the background of Jerome Armstrong and his history with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In a complex stock touting scheme, Armstrong was paid $20,000 to push a stock on investment message boards without disclosing he was being paid to do so. The SEC got Armstrong to cease his activities on behalf of the stock and had him agree to a permanent injunction that forbade him from touting stocks in the future. In addition, the SEC is still considering whether or not to levy monetary penalties against him.

The connection between Armstrong’s stock touting and Kos’s candidate pimping is made by RedState:

It’s hard to say that Armstrong’s conduct in the BluePoint case can be separated from his employment by the Warner campaign – if anything, what he did in 2000 bears a striking resemblance to what numerous people have noted in the netroots with candidates: money goes to Armstrong, and hype emerges around his favored candidates, and – if the Howard Dean campaign is any indication – what’s left at the end is a bunch of promoters and consultants who made a bunch of money and an audience of true believers who got left with nothing. In other words, it appears that Warner may be using Armstrong for a function similar to one which ran Armstrong afoul of the law in the first place.

If this were Moulitsas’ only problem, he could probably brush it off as a media campaign carried out by conservatives to discredit him. But the revelations about an email list of top liberal bloggers with Moulitsas as putative leader, as well as his board membership on the top liberal blogad network, could really have an impact on his credibility outside of his leftist readership.

The New Republic’s Jason Zengerle has uncovered a network of liberal bloggers who keep in touch through an email list known as “Townhouse” and who, according to Zengerle, coordinate their blog activities. He quotes from an email sent by Kos about the Armstrong controversy where Kos asks the group to keep quiet about it:

My request to you guys is that you ignore this for now. It would make my life easier if we can confine the story. Then, once Jerome can speak and defend himself, then I’ll go on the offensive (which is when I would file any lawsuits) and anyone can pile on. If any of us blog on this right now, we fuel the story. Let’s starve it of oxygen. And without the “he said, she said” element to the story, you know political journalists are paralyzed into inaction.

Thanks, markos

This kind of coordination in and of itself is not shocking. What is apparently out of the ordinary is the fact that Moulitsas sits on the board of directors of an blog advertising group known as Advertising Liberally, a group that pays liberal bloggers for ads.

Along with Armstrong and MyDD’s Chris Bowers, Kos runs a BlogAds advertising network called Advertising Liberally, to which a number of “Townhouse” members belong. (If you want a fuller understanding of how BlogAds advertising networks operate, and how they allow lower-traffic blogs to gain more clout with advertisers by combining their traffic, read this piece.) Therefore, Kos (along with Armstrong and Bowers) gets to decide which blogs belong—and don’t belong—to Advertising Liberally, which means a lot of these blogs’ financial health hinges upon staying in Kos’s good graces. Is it any wonder they’re so obedient?

That may be true, although from my own personal experience, very, very few people are going to get rich by featuring advertising on their blogs. That said, it is the appearance of control that is the issue here. And even though there may be some bloggers on the Townhouse list who have criticized Moulitsas in the past and not suffered any consequences, there is the very real possibility that many of the smaller liberal blogs would feel compelled not to upset their blog patron lest they lose whatever meager earnings they squeeze out of their websites, or their imaginative dreams of future success as a major blogger.

In short, this is not so much Kos cracking the whip to keep people in line but rather the reluctance of many on the left to challenge his position and authority.

From my own perspective as a blogger, I think that while appearances are important, Moulitsas has done nothing wrong nor has he operated in an unethical manner. The email list is titillating but hardly the stuff of conspiracy. And as far as the blogad controversy, unless your blog has a fairly large presence, your remuneration will be so small that most bloggers wouldn’t think twice about speaking their mind if they believed Kos was wrong. The threat of Moulitsas pulling their ads is therefore not credible.

What all of this does point to is the imminent demise of blogs as we have come to know and love them. Blogs are about ready to hit the big time. It is expected that most competitive campaigns will spend tens of millions of dollars on internet advertising before the November elections, a large chunk of that on political blogs. What will all of this money do to Blogland?

We will probably see a stratification process as money flows to larger blogs and smaller websites scrambling for the remainder while the owners harbor dreams of making it big. And this presents a whole series of problems with blogs themselves and what we who write them are becoming.

In order to get a nice chunk of that ad money, smaller sites must grow. And the surest way to grow one’s blog is by being a good writer and participating in controversy. I don’t deny that one of my motivations for writing this piece is that people who read this site and others are interested in the Kos case. But what this kind of thinking reveals on my part and on the part of political bloggers in general is a thirst for the controversies and scandals that rock politics on a regular basis and appeal to the lowest common denominator in readership.

In this respect, we are little better than the “old” media in that the drive for readership and notoriety is becoming paramount. Gone are the days when many of us simply blogged for the sake of writing and sharing information. And while there are still thousands of bloggers who enjoy blogging for its own sake, for many of us, it has become a competitive enterprise, a stepping stone to bigger and better things.

Will success spoil the blog and the blogger? Even if it does, there will be someone and something to take its place. The only thing we can be certain of is that the pace of change in this on-line world is greater than in any other mass medium in history. Where it will be five years from now is anyone’s guess.

blog posts on Kos at The Truth Laid Bear

For a party that has made a lot of noise over the last three years about what a mistake we’ve made in Iraq, how immoral it is being there, how Bush lied and misled the country into war, and what a tragedy all our young men dying in a lost cause is, the Democratic party in the Senate rolled over and whimpered today like the whipped curs they truly are.

In an 86-13 vote, the Senate turned back a proposal from some Democrats that would require the administration to withdraw all combat troops from Iraq by July 1, 2007, with redeployments beginning this year.

Minutes later, the Senate rejected by 60-39 the proposal more popular with Democrats, a nonbinding resolution that would call for the administration to begin withdrawing troops, but with no timetable for the war’s end.

As I pointed out here, their position is immoral. Not having the political guts to declare that the war is a total failure, a massive defeat for the US and that we should leave immediately before another American soldier loses his life, they opt instead for the kind tortuous withdrawal that hides their belief that the war is lost while at the same time giving aid and comfort to the enemy and demoralizing our troops.

In short, they are giving us the worst of both worlds; defeatism and cowardice.

If the war is lost, what is the point in staying one minute longer? Iraqi stability? Baloney! If you’re going to set an arbitrary timetable for withdrawal regardless of what the security situation is in Iraq, what in God’s name is the difference between withdrawing immediately and withdrawing one year from now? I’ll tell you the difference. The difference is more dead American soldiers one year from now while you’re slapping yourselves on the back, congratulating yourselves for having put one over on the electorate.

Both resolutions presented by the Democrats were exercises in wishful thinking. Kerry’s resolution calling for withdrawal a year from now is a chimera, a fantasy that seeks only to embarrass Bush and is not grounded in either reality or military strategy. The Levin alternative was even worse. It was such a milquetoast resolution, it was in danger of disintegrating while the clerk was reading it.

Both resolutions failed to note the most important consequence of enacting them; Democratic Senators going on record believing that the war is lost. Funny how that got lost in the shuffle. There is nothing wrong or even unpatriotic in believing the war is lost. It is dishonest not to come out and say so - especially when your rhetoric over the last 3 years has made it absolutely crystal clear that you believe the war has been lost already.

If you believe that the war is not lost and are still supporting this resolution, then one can come to no other conclusion that you wish the US to be defeated. We used to call that treason but today, it guarantees you an appearance on Meet The Press.

War is about victory or defeat. Those are the choices. When history came calling today, the Democrats tried to split the difference between the two and hope at the same time that by November, either the voters will have forgotten or that things will have gotten worse in Iraq as the insurgents, emboldened by the thought of a Democratic takeover, ratchet up the violence there in hopes of swinging the election to their patroni in the Senate.

It would have been politically unpalatable to do so, but if the Democrats had insisted en masse on an immediate pullout of American troops, they at least would have been standing on firm moral ground. But their weasel resolutions only served to make them look like spineless jellyfish, unwilling to stand up for their true beliefs.

The lot of them - those that are running - should be soundly defeated in November.

UPDATE

Allah has the Senate roll call and points out that Kerry’s resolution gained 6 votes compared to last week for pushing back the deadline for withdrawal six months.

Now that’s what I call a “nuanced” vote.

Also, surprised to see “Dugout” Mark Dayton voting against his own caucus and siding with the Republicans. The other Dem defectors are all predictable including poor Joe Lieberman who is in the primary fight for his life with the Kos Kreature Ned Lamont. Joe has been bleeding lib support (despite a very high ADA rating) thanks to the netnuts who are stinking up the Nutmeg State like they were cartons of rancid egg nog left over from last Christmas, flooding the airwaves and phone lines with anti-Lieberman ads. It seems to be having its intended effect as Lamont - a nobody that Kos has apparently anointed in his “Anybody but Lieberman” campaign - creeps into the high 30’s and low 40’s.

I expect Lieberman to win whether he runs as a Democrat or independent. As a member of the truly loyal opposition, he is an indispensable man. I know that if I lived in Connecticut, I’d vote for him myself.

Senator Rick Santorum is in a race for his political life. This could explain why he is trumpeting a 2 year old report he requested to have declassified that confirms the fact of chemical weapons found in Iraq.

There are several caveats that have to be listed when discussing this report. First, there’s nothing new in it:

The U.S. military announced in 2004 in Iraq that several crates of the old shells had been uncovered and that they contained a blister agent that was no longer active. Neither the military nor the White House nor the CIA considered the shells to be evidence of what was alleged by the Bush administration to be a current Iraqi program to make chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

Last night, intelligence officials reaffirmed that the shells were old and were not the suspected weapons of mass destruction sought in Iraq after the 2003 invasion.

Secondly, I agree with Allah who says simply “WMD is WMD, but finding a shell here and there when Iran’s about to get the bomb next door leaves me somewhat … underwhelmed.”

Third, the WMD argument ended years ago. Despite tantalizing evidence that Saddam moved his stockpiles to Syria and Lebanon prior to our invasion as well as anecdotal evidence of Russian collusion in spiriting WMD out of the country, from the standpoint of making a difference in the minds of the American people, this most recent evidence of Iraqi WMD will hardly be a blip on most people’s radar.

To be sure, the MSM at least gives the appearance that it is taking no chances that this story will change anyone’s mind on the war or on the President. One would think that a Senator reading from a declassified report on the Senate floor that our forces found 500 artillery shells containing deadly chemicals might be considered in some quarters to be news. The New York Times doesn’t even mention it. And even more curiously, the Washington Post buried the story by their national security correspondent Dafna Linzer on Page 10 (I wonder when the last time Linzer had his byline buried that deep in the paper?). And just to feed my conspiratorial nature even further, WaPo no longer links to the story in their on-line edition. I had to retrieve it by going through my “history” this morning.

But even if this was front page news, the political impact would be negligible. The politics of the war have moved beyond WMD and the liberation of Iraq and now center on the ongoing occupation and insurgency. We could find hundreds perhaps even thousands more of these pre-Gulf War chemical munitions and there still would be no impact on the President’s popularity or Republican chances in November. The fact is, the narrative of the war has been appropriated by the President’s political enemies. “Bush lied, people died” still resonates with a sizable portion of the electorate, judging by the numbers we see about support for the war as well as the fact that a majority of Americans see the war as a mistake and not worth the cost. And for that to change, the political and security situations in Iraq will have to improve dramatically. Or, underground bunkers filled with WMD created after the Gulf War would have to be discovered in Iraq or elsewhere.

This is the unfortunate dynamic at work when the politics of the war is assessed by voters. I am heartened to see Republicans standing behind our troops and the President this week as they beat back attempts by the Democrats to cut and run. I think it reflects good instincts about where the American people stand on the war. Even if they think it may have been a mistake to invade in the first place, I think that voters still believe that there is no substitute for victory and that the Democrat’s plan smacks of defeatism. I also think that the debate this week in Congress shows that the tipping point is far from being reached and that Democrats who seek to make their critique of the war an issue in November do so at their own peril.

This may change over the summer and into the fall if the Iraqi government fails to get its act together and the carnage continues. But at the moment, the Democrats, it seems to me, may have miscalculated. It should be interesting to see how many of them support Kerry’s resolution on withdrawal in the Senate. If Reid can’t get half his caucus to support the measure, it would indicate to me that the Democrats also see their harsh critique of the war as a loser of an issue and will back off unless the situation on the ground changes for the worse.

From an historical standpoint, the issue of WMD may be important. But politically, it’s a non-starter. What the American people want is not confirmation of the justification for going into Iraq but rather progress by the Iraqi government that would help get us out.

That spells victory both for our troops and for Republicans in November.

UPDATE

Michelle Malkin links to Powerline who received an interesting email from NRO’s Michael Ledeen:

Please point out to your readers that Negroponte only declassified a few fragments of a much bigger document. Read the press conference and you will see that Santorum and Hoekstra were furious at the meager declassification. They will push for more, and we all must do that. I am told that there is a lot more in the full document, which CIA is desperate to protect, since it shows the miserable job they did looking for WMDs in Iraq.

The CIA may not be very good at intelligence work. But when it comes to protecting their behinds in turf wars, there appears to be no agency better at putting their own narrow interests ahead of the national good.

This will be something of a confessional post in that I have seen the error of my ways and wish to make amends.

For all the times I referred to liberals as “loons,” I am heartily sorry for having offended thee.

For all the times I have called liberals “lickspittles,” I am heartily sorry for having offended thee.

For all the times I have referred to the left as “a gaggle of idiotic, self-important nitwits,” I am heartily sorry for having offended thee.

I could go on and on, of course, But like a sex addict who has forgotten the names of most of their scores, the herculean effort required to recall all the slights, the insults, the downright nasty things I’ve said about liberals over the years would tax the memory of an elephant and the patience of a conservative trying to explain capitalism to a lefty.

OOOPS! There I go again. I’m sorry, that one kind of slipped out. I wonder if there’s something I can take to help with the withdrawal symptoms…

If only I had realized how thin skinned my leftist brothers and sisters truly were, I would never have tried to marginalize them politically by coming up with ever more hurtful and inventive invective to describe their cockamamie ideas or unpalatable personalities in such a way as to cause the kind of psychic pain evinced in this post from Hume’s Ghost at Unclaimed Territory.

This is life altering stuff. Maybe I’ll run away in shame and join a Zoroastrian monastery. Maybe I’ll join the Peace Corps. Or the Foreign Legion.

I’ll have to stop laughing first:

Not too long ago a friend of mine told me she was trying to become more politically informed. To do so, she continued, she had begun reading Ann Coulter’s How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must). Think about that for a moment. This was an individual who did not know much about politics, was a non-ideological independent and the first person she could think of to learn more about politics from was a hate-mongering hack. This should have never happened, because Coulter should have been exposed for the vile, bigoted, intellectually bankrupt propagandist that she is by journalists a long time ago. In this regard, my friend was failed by a mainstream media which is more interested in using Coulter as a figure to drive up ratings than they are in doing their jobs of promoting a responsible national discourse.

First of all, I’m calling out the poster as a prevaricator. If there is anyone in America so stupid, so naive as to think that they can become “more politically informed” by reading Ann Coulter, I will eat my size 11B Floresheim Wingtips. How about picking up a frickin’ newspaper? Or a magazine?

No, sorry - I don’t buy it. That “friend” is a figment of the poster’s imagination. And only an idiot liberal would believe that anyone with half a brain would fall for such a transparent literary device.

Yes Coulter is vile. Bigoted? Perhaps. Intellectually bankrupt? Hardly. Coulter may be many things but even her enemies concede she has a first class mind. Certainly she’s smarter than the bozo who wrote this post in that Coulter would never underestimate the intelligence of her readers the way this fellow has by simply making stuff up.

But why invent someone so stupid? Why someone who has the brains of a marmoset and the political awareness of my pet cat Aramis?

SO THAT THE LIBERAL CAN RIDE TO THE RESCUE AND SAVE HER!

This is why I respond to Coulter and her apologists like Malkin, because I don’t want their hate corrupting people like my friend. In the comments of Glenn’s post, I linked to this entry I had previously written about why eliminationist rhetoric is not a joke as an explanation of why I write about extremists. You’ll notice that it contains a link to a post that Alonzo Fyfe wrote after his wife was sent an e-mail from a co-worker which fantasized about the deaths of liberals. The co-worker thought it “too good not to pass along.”

We must answer Coulter and her ilk, because unanswered their hateful rhetoric creeps into society, meant to divide us from our friends, family, and fellow Americans. The reason these pundits are incapable of disagreeing with someone without first labeling an opponent as liberal, Democrat, socialist, far left, moonbat, communist etc. (and the same can go for those who do the reverse) is because their tribal binary logic requires them to identify an outgroup, a “them” to be excluded, or worse, eliminated.

Wait a minute….hold the phone. My tribal binary logic circuits are corrupted. I wonder if Rush Limbaugh has a spare?

I should point out that there is nothing hateful in calling someone a liberal, or a moonbat, or a socialist, or even a Democrat. And while “eliminationist” rhetoric is vile and disgusting, only certain types of polemicists use it - those without the intellectual gifts to form complete sentences or close their mouths when breathing. As for the vile “jokes” coming from the likes of Coulter, Savage, Randi Rhodes, and half the posters at the Democratic Underground, poor taste in humor is not a danger to the republic. I would suggest the poster grow up a little and recognize that jokes about assassinating the President or Supreme Court judges are impolitic and ignorant - not yet crimes in America, though give liberals 20 years and they very well could be.

Few people on the web are more shallow in their thinking than Glenn Greenwald, quoted admirably here along with “The Propaganda Critic” who instructs us What It All Means:

This is why Glenn discovered that he was a “leftist” and/or a “liberal” for his opposition to the Bush administration. Sarcastically explaining this tactic, Glenn wrote

[T]hey label the argument and the person making it “leftist” and “liberal” and - presto! - no more need to address the arguments or consider its substance because it’s all been shooed away with one fell swoop of name-calling cliches.

In a post commenting on this I noted that the name-calling tactic is actually a common propaganda technique. The Propaganda Critic website describes name-calling thusly:

The name-calling technique links a person, or idea, to a negative symbol. The propagandist who uses this technique hopes that the audience will reject the person or the idea on the basis of the negative symbol, instead of looking at the available evidence.

Sorta like calling me a “racist” or a “fascist” because I disagree with you. But liberals are above that sort of thing, right? I mean, it’s not like calling me a racist in order to delegitimze any countervailing arguments made in opposition to the dominant leftist worldview is the same thing. Coming from someone who obviously speaks with superior moral authority on the subject of race having felt the black man’s pain and sympathized with the oppressed, any arguments that run counter to the prevailing liberal position on race can automatically be tossed into the intellectual dustbin.

What. A. Crock.

And then, to prove how really clueless the author of this shallow piece of drivel truly is, I present Exhibit 15:

The rhetoric of these media transmitters, both by repackaging extremist views for mainstream consumption and by engaging in the ritual defamation of those with whom they disagree, serve to shift mainstream political discourse towards the extreme. I’m passing over this subject briefly but will direct your attention to Dave Neiwert’s seminal essay Rush, Newspeak, and Fascism: An exegesis (from which the transmitters link is taken) which exhaustively explains why and how American values are being transformed and corrupted by the right-wing extremism that the likes of Coulter and Malkin help to diffuse into every day discussion.

That’s right. No, you did not read it wrong. The author of a post skewering conservatives for name calling has approvingly linked to a post that refers to conservatives as fascists.

I am at a loss for words in trying to describe that kind of ignorance. It is beyond belief, beyond rationality. What’s worse, is that the post he links to by Dave Neiwert contains the jaw dropping notion that modern conservative issues have been stolen (or “transmitted”) from neo-Nazis and the Kluxers.

I took the time to debunk Neiwert’s idiocy here. I’ll give you the money grafs:

It is monstrous calumny to accuse conservatives thusly. Especially dressing his screed up, as Mr. Neiwert does in this piece, as some kind of psychological analysis of the motivations and deeply held beliefs of conservative bloggers. At bottom, the way conservatives are attacked in this piece says more about the arrogant, smug, self-righteous, self congratulatory left than it does about the people it seeks to deliberately defame.

What are we really discussing here? Nothing less than the ability to debate public policy issues without one side having recourse to use blood libel terms like “racist” in order to delegitimatize the thoughts, words, and deeds of one’s opponent. This is the reason “race” as a matter of public policy cannot be discussed rationally. The left starts with the premise that any deviation from its base assumptions on race is non-negotiable – an advantage they see as set in stone as the Ten Commandments. Hence, one cannot discuss reforming affirmative action because to do so is, by definition, racist.

Finally, not content with throwing a tantrum about conservative name calling (and then identifying conservatives as fascists) only one thing remains to be done in order to completely legitimize his argument; he must make liberals victims:

Coulter talks about “liberals” the way racists talk about blacks, the way the Nazis talked about Jews. Her “jokes” are predicated on the notion that the elimination of a set of humans are funny, her “jokes” are funny the way anti-Semitic “jokes” like this were funny, which is to say, they are not not funny. They are disgusting and deadly serious.

In the clip of her appearance on the Tonight Show, Coulter mentioned that she let her “smartest liberal friend” whom she told would be “smarter than any liberal I’m going to be on tv with” read her book. Could her bigotry be any plainer? Substitute in any other group that’s been hated against in history and see how that sentence sounds.

Where does one begin to deconstruct this bilge? Why would we want to substitute the word “liberal” for the word “Jew” or “black” or any other racial or religious group ? How can anyone be so incredibly arrogant and self-righteous to think that mocking someone for their political beliefs are in any way, shape, or form similar to making fun of one’s race?

This is identity politics run wild. It should now be out of bounds to criticize or make fun of a liberal because he’s a…a…LIBERAL!

I’m convinced that the author of this piece is not serious, that all this highfalutin language and flowery rhetoric is just an exercise in comedy writing. May I suggest that if the poster wants to audition for the Stephen Colbert show that he pick another subject, something more illustrative of his talent and peculiar intellectual gifts.

I hear they have an opening at Hallmark Cards.

UPDATE: 6/22

To all those who have taken me to task in the comments (and especially Mr. Ghost who authored the the original piece) you have a point of sorts when you criticize me for engaging in the very thing I am criticizing in the author’s piece.

The point of my piece was not to point out that “liberals do it too” - and if you could put yourself in my shoes for a few hours and have to read the vile, disgusting, ignorant claptrap I get in comments and emails you’d know that, in fact, they do it in spades. What disgusted me about Mr. Ghost’s piece was his puerile attempt to put a psychological gloss on his critique. That, and the usual liberal whining about mean, nasty Republicans spreading hate when all the left wants to do is spread love and understanding.

BULLSH*T!

Politics is a game for grown ups. To equate making a joke about the intellect of liberals (people laughed at that statement on the tonight show - it was a joke Mr. Ghost) with the stereotyping of blacks and Jews is outrageous demagoguery and an extraordinarily cynical attempt to piggyback the faux, hand wringing, whining left on the victimhood of the truly oppressed. It is wrong. It is identity politics at its worst. Not content with calling people Nazis, now people like Mr. Ghost wish to enable the left to do it and then be able to cry “Victim” if someone dares respond.

It won’t wash. And even though most conservative bloggers don’t bother with in-depth fisking of people like Glenn Greenwald, Jane Hamsher, Bilmon, Neiwert, and the cadre of liberals who regularly accuse conservatives of being hateful, seeing it as an exercise in futility, I firmly believe that a record must be made that attempts to counter their illogic, misrepresentations, and even out right lies. At the very least, it lets them know that someone besides their fawning, drooling, mouth breathing fans are watching.

UPDATE II: BOZO SPEAKS

Dave Neiwert has joined the fray with a typical post that misrepresents everything I say while claiming that he doesn’t think conservatives are fascists - they just walk, talk, think, breathe, eat, and fornicate like them:

Moreover, as I went on later to explore in depth, mainstream conservatism is not fascist in the classic sense; what it has done, instead, is gradually adopt a series of appeals and memes that are classically fascist, but overall it lacks certain major traits, especially the violent thuggishness that really is the beating heart of fascism.

Note, also, that while Moran is grossly mischaracterizing what I wrote, he neglects to provide his readers any link to the work in question so that they may judge for themselves the accuracy of his charge. This kind of brain-dead dishonesty is something I’ve encountered before with right-wing bloggers, and again lays waste to the rosy-lensed notion that the blogosphere is “self-correcting.”

Did I mischaracterize what he wrote here?

What was most disturbing was, even in 2000, the way the mainstream conservative agenda was beginning to resemble the politics of longtime racists like David Duke and Richard Butler, the Aryan Nations leader: bashing welfare recipients, attacking affirmative action, complaining about “reverse discrimination,” calling for the elimination of immigrants. Since then, this trend has only accelerated, to the point that old-fashioned haters like Duke and the National Alliance are finding their ranks thinned by followers who just become Republicans.

I see the error of my ways. I’m just not nuanced enough of an intellect to detect the subtle differences in logic on display here. Republicans believe what David Duke believes but hey! They’re not racists. Even if Duke defectors are now mainstream Republicans, I’m still not calling Republicans racists, says Davey.

What a joke.

And, of course, I linked to the post that quote came from at the very top of my piece debunking his childish, amatuerish, and vapid attempts at psychoanalyzing conservative motivations. The fact that Davey and Mr. Ghost both are oblivious to their stupidity only makes their earnestness and seriousness all the more laughable.

“There is no substitute for victory.”
(Douglas MacArthur)

Anytime, anyplace Americans are sent to fight, there must be clearly defined strategic goals that, once reached, constitute the essence of victory. Any other reason to put our men and women in harm’s way must be considered immoral. You cannot ask people to fight and die for anything less than recognizable and measurable strategic yardsticks which would constitute ultimate triumph.

The Iraq War has always been, to my mind, a close call which is why readers of this site have seen my support waxing and waning over the last two years. Achieving the goals of overthrowing Saddam and negating his ability to deliver WMD to terrorists (or, originally, to find and destroy the WMD) were noble and achievable goals, met in spectacular fashion by our military. But that third strategic goal of creating a democracy smack dab in the middle of jihad country to serve as an example to others in the region (its very democratic nature posing a threat to the autocracies and dictatorships in the Middle East) has proven to be depressingly elusive.

The litany of mistakes made by the Administration of George Bush in trying to achieve this last goal is long. But that statement is made with 20/20 hindsight. Each step taken seemed reasonable at the time. As in every war ever fought, mistakes are too numerous to count. And I daresay that there is ample evidence that for every mistake ever made in any war, there were voices warning of dire consequences if that particular plan were followed. Just as there were voices warning of catastrophe when there was a spectacular success. Funny how we never hear of the naysayers when that happens.

Viet Nam was, at bottom, an immoral war because the United States was asking its young men to fight and die not to win but to avoid losing. This was clear as early as 1968 when President Johnson halted the bombing and sought peace talks. In practical terms, it meant that 22,000 more American soldiers were killed between 1968-73 in a war that we had no intention of achieving victory. Our leaving in 1968 would not have altered the final outcome. All we did was kill hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese civilians and those thousands of additional American boys. The “peace treaty” that the North Vietnamese broke the minute they thought they could get away with it only put a disastrous coda on a war fought in what we can see with 20/20 hindsight was the wrong place at the wrong time.

Would it have been better to leave in 1968? My own personal feeling is that if we had pulled out then, we would have saved lives and perhaps avoided the worst of the rending, tearing battles that made the 1960’s and 70’s so turbulent. As long as we had no intention of fighting through to victory - and there was no definition of victory ever announced in the first place - there was no sense keeping men there to die.

This is apparently the rationale being used by anti-war Democrats as they seek to put a “timetable” for withdrawal before the Senate this week:

Trying to bridge party divisions on the eve of a Senate debate, leading Democrats called Monday for American troops to begin pulling out of Iraq this year. They avoided setting a firm timetable for withdrawal but argued that the Bush administration’s open-ended commitment to the war would only prevent Iraqis from moving forward on their own.

Coming the week after partisan and often angry House debate over the war, the Senate proposal, a non binding resolution, was carefully worded to deflect any accusations that the Democrats were “cutting and running,” as their position has been depicted by Republicans. The Democrats behind the measure did not even use the word “withdrawal,” and talked about how to guarantee “success” for Iraq, not about any failures of the war.

Weasel words from weaselly men and women. Using as a cover the idea that the Iraqis can get along without us if only we tell the government when we’re leaving and how many of us will be going (strangely forgetting that the insurgents will get the exact same information and adjust their activities accordingly), the Democrats are engaging in an exercise of breathtaking immorality.

Any timetable for withdrawal necessarily obviates any thought of victory. And if you don’t believe that victory is achievable then clearly you believe we have lost already. Trying to split the difference between victory and defeat in war is not possible. One side wins and one side loses. Hence, by offering this “timetable,” the Democrats are saying that we have lost the war and should leave in order to cut our losses.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with this position, by the way. It is defeatist. It is cowardly. But there is nothing necessarily incorrect in admitting defeat and pulling out.

But what makes the Democrats position immoral is that they are not advocating this timetable to get our troops out of harms way as fast as possible. In fact, they are terrified of the political consequences of doing so. Instead, they opt for the Viet Nam approach. According to them, the war was a mistake to begin with, it was fought incompetently, it was illegal, and we’ve already lost since there’s no way we’re ever going to say that George Bush won the war. But instead of advocating an immediate withdrawal of all American forces, we are going to advocate that more young men die in a losing cause just so that we don’t appear to be “cutting and running” and thus, lose badly at the polls in November.

If there has been a more cynical, immoral ploy in the last half century of American politics, I can’t think of it.

The Democrat’s supporters on the far left have no such timidity. They state in no uncertain terms that the war is lost and that the troops should come home immediately. Bully for them. In this, they show more guts than their representatives in Congress. Of course, it’s easy to have guts when your sitting on your fat ass in an air conditioned room at mommy’s house pecking away at a keyboard about how the country is turning into a dictatorship and whining about the war. Real patriots would have been off their duffs long ago, filling American jails to overflowing with their bodies as they did everything in their power to stop what they considered an immoral war.

Why are the Democrats so scared of cutting and running? Are they afraid the Republicans will make political capital out of this position? It’s not like they can make a case that they want to “win” the war. In fact, their advocacy for withdrawal before the job of helping the Iraqis with their security problems is done proves that they have no interest in victory. Their leading spokesmen have declared the war “unwinnable” and therefore already lost. Not standing behind that principle smacks of both political cowardice as well as having a depraved indifference to the lives of American soldiers.

Are they right? Is the war already lost?

What is happening in Iraq at this moment is deadly chaos. A memo from our embassy in Baghdad tells the horrific details of life in the capitol city:

* Two of the three female Iraqis in the public affairs office reported stepped-up harassment since mid-May….”some groups are pushing women to cover even their face, a step not taken in Iran even at its most conservative.” One of the women is now wearing a full abaya after receiving direct threats.

* The overall environment is one of “frayed social networks,” with frequent actual or perceived insults. None of this is helped by lack of electricity. “One colleague told us he feels ‘defeated’ by circumstances, citing his example of being unable to help his two-year-old son who has asthma and cannot sleep in stifling heat,” which is now reaching 115 degrees.

* Another employee tells us that life outside the Green Zone has become ‘emotionally draining.’ He lives in a mostly Shiite area and claims to attend a funeral ‘every evening.’”
Fuel lines have grown so long that one staffer spent 12 hours in line on his day off. “Employees all confirm that by the last week of May, they were getting one hour of power for every six hours without.

While all of the “evidence” in the embassy memo is anecdotal, the information jibes with other sources about the almost total breakdown in society that has occurred in the last several months since the bombing of the Samarra Shrine. Hundreds of thousands have either fled the country or have left their homes in fear of being murdered or kidnapped. There are problems with militias, with training Iraqi security forces, with corruption, with the dual loyalty of some to both Iraq and Iran, and of course, the insurgency itself.

Daunting problems, indeed. But do they add up to defeat with no prospect of turning the situation around? Emphatically no. And while there may be days where Iraq takes one step forward and two back, there are also days where the opposite is true and real progress is made. The point is, that some trends - especially political ones - are moving in a positive direction. And I have a hunch about this fellow Prime Minister Maliki. I think he will surprise. He seems very determined to succeed as well as being committed to the Constitution. If we can stay long enough, I think there is a very real chance that by election day, there will be ample evidence that things are flowing in the right direction.

So what the Democrats want to do is snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Just when most of the political pieces to the puzzle are in place, they want to yank the rug out from underneath the Iraqi government and leave them to the tender mercies of the insurgents. And the way they advocate doing it will only mean more Americans dying in what they consider a lost cause.

Having the courage of one’s convictions seems to be lacking on the Democrats’ side of the aisle. Will none of them stand up for what they truly believe? Or will they hide behind weasel words in hopes that no one notices how truly wretched they are

John Murtha’s sad descent from honored Viet Nam war veteran to anti-war shill for the ideological left is now complete. For many of his 32 years in Congress, Murtha was a reliable Democratic vote for vital funding of the military as well as an advocate for veterans rights and benefits. He resisted the trend in the Democratic party toward defeatism and spineless hand wringing, oftentimes breaking with his caucus to support President Reagan’s military buildup in the 1980’s.

But Murtha, a decorated Marine Colonel, was also horribly scarred by his Viet Nam experience (as were many high ranking officers from that war). For many of his generation, the prospect of sending young men into battle without an “exit strategy” became an anathema. One can certainly admire his obvious concern for the troops. But when “exit strategy” is substituted for victory, one has to call into question Mr. Murtha’s judgment.

I will not descend to the level of some of my friends on the right and accuse Murtha of cowardice or anti-Americanism. I think the Congressman has proved on the battlefield as well as in most of his many years of service in the House that this is not the case. Rather, it is entirely appropriate to question his judgement on matters of national security as well as allowing the hard left of his party to hijack his persona and reputation for their own electoral ends.

Certainly with statements like this one, we can question the Congressman’s grasp of military knowledge. In response to a criticism by Presidential adviser Karl Rove regarding Murtha’s “Over the Horizon” plan to withdraw American troops, host Tim Russert wondered just where those troops would be positioned in order to take advantage of the kind of intelligence that led to the Zarqawi raid:

REP. MURTHA: There’s many countries understand the importance of stability in the Middle East. This is an international problem. We, we use 20 million barrels of oil a day. China’s the second largest user. All these countries understand you need stability for the energy supply that’s available in the Middle East. So there’s many, many countries.

MR. RUSSERT: Who?

REP. MURTHA: Kuwait’s one that will take us. Qatar, we already have bases in Qatar. So Bahrain. All those countries are willing to take the United States. Now, Saudi Arabia won’t because they wanted us out of there in the first place. So—and we don’t have to be right there. We can go to Okinawa. We, we don’t have—we can redeploy there almost instantly. So that’s not—that’s, that’s a fallacy. That, that’s just a statement to rial up people to support a failed policy wrapped in illusion.

(HT: Michelle Malkin)

The Milblogs jumped on this instantly:

The straight yellow line extending across the middle of China and Iran is the distance from Okinawa to Baghdad as the crow flies which is approximately 4200 nautical miles. Obviously, the Chinese and the Iranians wouldn’t be cool with that, but let’s just roll with it. The max combat range for the F-16 with external fuel tanks and 2000 lbs of ordnance is 740 nautical miles so that’s like a minimum of SIX midair refuelings in EACH direction.

This little display is hardly worth putting together, but I did it to demonstrate that this man is dangerously deluded and not at all serious about an issue of critical national security significance. He is out there in the MSM just winging it and not being called to account whatsoever for statements that are so outlandish and absurd that they defy all attempts at comprehension.

The New York Times and liberal blogs failed to note that fantastical misstatement. Oliver Willis - in this jaw dropping piece of idiocy - actually praised Murtha for articulating a “coherent” policy:

The right again demonstrates their capacity for selective hearing. The current target of their ire is Rep. John Murtha, about the only Democrat around who’s been able to articulate a coherent assessment and policy for Iraq.

Willis then cites conservative criticisms of Clinton for withdrawing from Somalia, a strategy supported by Murtha and a move that the 9/11 Commission said contributed directly to the attacks on 9/11. He also curiously notes Vice President Cheney’s criticism of Reagan’s withdrawal from Lebanon following the bombing of the Marine barracks in 1983 and the wonders why conservatives aren’t criticizing Reagan (?) for getting out of Beirut!

No mention, of course, of the Okinawa redeployment suggested by Murtha. In fact, most lefty blogs concentrated on Murtha’s description of Karl Rove on the same program:

MURTHA: He’s in New Hampshire. He’s making a political speech. He’s sitting in his air-conditioned office on his big, fat backside, saying stay the course. That’s not a plan. … We’ve got to change direction. You can’t sit there in the air-conditioned office and tell troops carrying 70 pounds on their backs, inside these armored vessels hit with IEDs every day, seeing their friends blown up, their buddies blown up — and he says stay the course? Easy to say that from Washington, DC.

Since we can assume Rove is speaking on behalf of the Commander in Chief, I fail to see Murtha’s point except as an attempt at partisan sniping. And given the Congressman’s statement regarding Okinawa, perhaps it best that he keep his mouth shut about any alternative to “staying the course” since his prescriptions have made him a laughingstock to all except the left wingers in the Democratic party who are desperately trying to hide the fact that they support a cut and run strategy in Iraq. Why the Democrats insist on obscuring their defeatist strategy given the level of dissatisfaction with the President’s handling of Iraq in the electorate is beyond me. Why not just come out and say that the war is lost and we should pull the troops out?

This is the crux of Murtha, Kerry, and the Congressional Democrat’s critique of the war. If they honestly believe that keeping troops in Iraq is a futile exercise, why not run on that idea in November and see if the American people agree with it? What are they afraid of? They constantly tell us that the American people agree with them in the polls. Well, let’s put that idea to the test and have them run on their belief that every American who dies in Iraq is a waste and that the troops should hightail it out of there.

They won’t do it, of course. Already, Senator’s Feinstien and Kerry are crafting a resolution that would put Democrats on record calling for “phased withdrawals” over a set period of time. This would be fine except why draw out the agony? If we’re not going to stay as long as it takes to achieve victory, it smacks of immorality to me to keep our troops there one minute longer. Why not admit defeat and bring the boys and girls home now?

Murtha’s “coherent” Iraq policy is a crock. As is the Democrat’s plan for “phased withdrawal.” This is electoral gamesmanship played at with the lives of our troops. Unwilliing to stand on principle (as I pointed out here) and run on their defeatist policy in fear that the American people, tired and dispirited as they are of the war, would reject their fancy strategy of cut and run and opt for achieving our goals in Iraq of sheparding the nascent Iraqi government through its infancy until it is able to defend itself and create a democratic government in the heart of the Middle East. This is victory, any which way you cut it. The “plan” of the Democrats means defeat.

Let’s give the American people a clear cut decision to make in November.

The debate in Congress this past week over the War in Iraq has fleshed out for all to see how hypocritical and cynical the Democratic party has proven to be about America’s national security.

After spending much of the preceding two years lambasting the Administration over how we got into the war, harping about the immorality of the conflict, deriding the nature of the enemy, and demanding a quick termination to the war, when push came to shove - when it came time to put their votes where their mouths have been - the Democrats showed themselves to have spines of jello.

Only six Democratic Senators and 149 House members had the intestinal fortitude to stand by their principles and vote against Republican efforts to continue the war. This despite their using the most apocalyptic rhetoric over the last few years to describe the futility, the horror, and the illegality of the conflict. This despite the overwhelming majority of their party putting up a drumbeat of unending, defeatist criticism that has served to give heart to the insurgency and demoralize our own troops.

It was a nauseating display of crass cynicism and electoral hypocrisy. Moaning about how Republicans use the war for political purposes (something they have done quite effectively to bring the President’s popularity to historic lows), when it came time to stand up and be counted, history has found them wanting.

How can Americans trust our national security to such a bunch of cold, politically calculating Jacobins? Such fecklessness. Such craven opportunism.

The debate, or more accurately, the speechifying and posturing by both sides, revealed the Democrats to be a party driven by their hard left ideologues and a leadership whose campaign to use the war issue and ride it to electoral victory in November once again fell victim to the Republican’s ace in the hole; the GOP’s ability to hold their opponents feet to the fire and force them to vote to run away from Iraq.

Curiously, the Democrats cry foul when Republicans use this strategy, as if requiring an elected representative to declare his position on a question of war and peace was somehow unfair. But the resolution is not “nuanced” enough, says the party of surrender. We need to amend it, to water it down so that the American people will still be in the dark on where we truly stand.

No such grace was vouchsafed Congressional Democrats. The non-binding resolution was as clear as any political document of its kind could be. Support the troops. Reject any timetable for withdrawal. And (this must have really stuck in the craws of most Democrats) congratulate the new Iraqi government - a government made possible by American force of arms.

Fully 20% of the Democrats in the House failed to vote with their party and reject the Republican effort to force them to declare their true intent to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory . Another 10 didn’t even bother to vote (with three Democrats voting “present”), including two of the more outspoken critics of the war John Dingell of Michigan and Henry Waxman of California.

The Senate vote was a slightly different story. Senator John Kerry proposed a resolution that would set a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. While Kerry worked to rally his caucus to support the resolution, Republicans pulled a fast one and presented the resolution almost verbatim, substituting Kerry’s name with that of Republican Whip Mitch McConnell and offering it for debate.

Furious that Kerry wasn’t given the time to water down his amendment with qualifiers and “nuancy,” all but six Democrats voted to shelve the resolution. Minority Leader Harry Reid announced that “[t]here are two things that don’t exist in Iraq: cutting and running, and weapons of mass destruction.” While the latter may be true, the former is certainly in the offing as Democrats promised to revisit the issue next week complete with their cut and run “exit strategy” that will probably include a timetable to withdraw the troops.

Try as they might, Democrats cannot escape the consequences of their two year long agitation against the war. And when the time came to go on record against what they pretend to hate so much, they proved that their bellyaching and gutter sniping was nothing more than cynical political expediency.

There is much to honestly criticize about this war. And there can certainly be doubts about whether going to war was the correct decision. The patriotism of war opponents is not the issue. It is a question of making clear to the American people where the Democratic party stands. And by failing to stand together, the party proved to one and all that they cannot be trusted to protect the country when the chips are down. The American people don’t want political weasels running the country. For that, Republicans - who have their own transgressions to worry about - should be grateful. In the end, it may save their majorities in November.

UPDATE

John Hinderaker has the text of the House resolution as well as a brilliant, point-by-point rebuttal of Democrat Intel Committee Vice Chair Jane Harmon’s speech in the well of the House opposing the measure.

As John points out, the speech was basically a listing of Democratic talking points on the war from the last two years. The ease and power with which Hinderaker brushed aside the critique begs the question:

WHY THE HELL CAN’T THE WHITE HOUSE DO THE SAME THING?

If there were any doubts as to whether the best man won the election for President in 2004, they were dispelled by the announcement by once and future candidate John Kerry that he is now “sorry” for his vote authorizing force in Iraq back in 2003:

U.S. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts on Tuesday told an audience at the liberal Take Back America conference that he was sorry for voting to authorize the war in Iraq, calling the entire mission “a mistake.”

“We were misled, we were given evidence that was not true,” Kerry said. “It was wrong, and I was wrong to vote [for it].”

Kerry, who led an unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 2004, said it was necessary to admit mistakes because “you cannot change the future if you”re not honest about the past.” He criticized supporters of the war, who label anti-war activists and politicians as unpatriotic and pessimistic.

Given Kerry’s numerous statements during the campaign in 2004 that he didn’t “regret” his vote to authorize force, one wonders what has changed in the intervening two years. There have been no formal findings that Bush “misled” the country about WMD’s or that Saddam didn’t pose the same kind of threat that Kerry had been talking about for 10 years prior to the war. Hell, Kerry even voted for regime change as a goal of US foreign policy in 1998.

The only “evidence” that has surfaced since 2004 has been in the wild imaginings and conspiratorial nuttiness of the far left whose rantings fly in the face of the known facts as presented by 2 committees of Congress and the 9/11 Commission. Surely Kerry can’t be basing his decision to apologize for his vote based on the selective leaking of cherry picked classified documents by Bush opponents at CIA and other intelligence shops in the government.

What has changed is the attitude of a vast majority of Democratic party activists who have stated flatly that they will not work for a candidate who voted for the war in 2003. This includes the lucrative block of netnuts who can be counted on to raise enough money to give the candidate of their choice a decent shot at upending Hillary Clinton’s drive for the nomination.

These are weasel words from a weasel of a politician who has proven time and time again that he will do or say anything to curry favor with those who can help him politically. It is one thing to do this kind of thing with issues like taxes or spending or some domestic issue. All politicians do it to some degree. But to try and weasel out of a vote taken in 2003 that was based on his past positions regarding regime change and the danger Saddam posed, one should look very carefully at this calculating, changeable man who apparently would sell the security of the United States down the river in return for a few measly bucks.

The spate of good news being enjoyed by the White House this week has been a welcome respite from the gloom and doom of the previous months. And while the death of Zarqawi, the frogless non march of Karl Rove, and Bush’s surprise trip to Baghdad have lifted the funeral pall from the White House, there remain the same problems and issues that have led Republicans to their current perilous state and which must successfully be faced if the Bushies are going to turn GOP fortunes around.

But like an addict on the rebound, the Administration would be best served if they took things one day at a time and not try and get too far ahead of themselves. In other words, it is probably best not to start planning the victory party for November until some major mileposts are passed on several issues.

THE WAR

The death of Zarqawi and, more importantly, the naming of the rest of the Iraqi cabinet has been a catalyst for hope. But the task faced by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki would tax the abilities of a Nebuchadnezzar. The sectarian violence has caused more than 100,000 Iraqis to flee their homes in terror. Kidnappings are rampant. In the south, Shias have begun to carve out an independent enclave where Sharia law rules and militias have joined with police to enforce the will of bodies not answering at the moment to Baghdad. In the north, especially around the oil city of Kirkuk, Kurds and Shia Arabs are jostling for control of that oil rich area with the feuding sometimes erupting into open gunfire.

Then there is the endemic corruption that has engulfed the oil and other ministries as well as a problems with electricity and water, the solving of which would go a long way toward instilling confidence in the government.

All of this does not include the problem with the insurgency and with al-Qaeda in Iraq who, while apparently not cooperating to any great degree, nevertheless pose a very serious threat to public confidence and order.

On the plus side, there’s Maliki himself. The picture that is emerging of the PM is one of a tough pragmatist, a perfect compliment to the religious leader Ayatollah al-Sistani. They seem to be in agreement on several vital issues including trying to keep Iraq as secular as possible under a constitution that recognizes some aspects of Sharia law. Al-Sistani’s reputation is being rehabilitated following a rough patch after the bombing of the Shrine in Samarra where many Shia Iraqis saw his calls for calm and brotherhood a betrayal of sorts. But with both Miliki and al-Sistani on the same wavelength, there’s a very good chance that some very touchy issues regarding the Shia militias (which after all, are at bottom, religious militias) can be resolved fairly quickly.

What won’t happen quickly is an end or even a beginning of the end of the violence. The problems relating to criminal gangs who are more interested in kidnapping and ordinary theft will be the easy part of the security puzzle. Much more problematic will be reining in the militias and their allies in the police (Interior Ministry) who seem to never tire of murdering ordinary Sunnis. This results in revenge killings and the cycle continues. The fact is, the Sunnis will never stop fighting until they can be assured they won’t be murdered in their beds by Shias. And for that to happen, Miliki will have to do some serious bridge building to the Sunni community.

How much can the Americans really do to help? The problems in Iraq have been of a political nature almost since Saddam’s statue fell. All we can do is pretty much what we have been doing; training the police and army to fight crime and the insurgents until enough of them become competent so that we can start drawing down our forces. On the political front, we can help with reconstruction but, as the cabinet crisis proved, there is very little we can do about telling the Iraqis how to manage their affairs.

So with the war, at least, Bush is at the mercy of events and the competence (or lack thereof) of the Iraqi leaders.

IMMIGRATION

If Bush wants an immigration package, he will probably have to give up his amnesty plan, at least in its present form. Speaker Hastert has made it clear that substantial changes will have to be made in conference for the bill to pass muster in the House including the adoption of the House’s much more stringent border security measures.

Bush will give a little on amnesty but not entirely which means that the entire issue will either die a very public death with recriminations being hurled back and forth between the White House and GOP lawmakers or, the amnesty provision will be so watered down as to be meaningless, in which case Bush gets zero credit from the very constituencies he’s trying to please while continuing to anger the GOP base.

Heads they win, tails you lose, Mr. President.

“CORRUPTION”

While this issue is currently a loser for both sides, there’s a real possibility that this could change as Abramoff continues to sing and two other prosecutors are sharpening their knives. Why the Republicans are so inert on the issue of ethics is beyond me. I put it down to poor leadership by Hastert and Frist. Somehow, I can’t imagine Bob Michel and Bob Dole putting up with this tomfoolery.

Are the Republicans and Democrats in Congress so in love with their perks and privileges that it has blinded them to the outrage felt by good citizens of both parties who see the trips, the meals, the boxing matches, and the golf games as little better than outright bribery?

A GOP led ethics reform movement would help. But this is a long term process that also needs to address “earmarks” and other blatant gifts to the powerful that will have to stop before people start trusting anybody in Congress again.

One final thought. At present, the demographics favor the Republicans so much that even with their horrific performance in Congress and the White House, their chances of losing both Houses of Congress are slim. But those numbers could easily change prior to the next census which could spell real trouble for Republicans when districts are redrawn in 2010. The country is restless under Bush and the GOP. Every major indicator that measures how satisfied people are has gone down over the last 5 years. And the siren call for change is getting stronger. If not this year, then certainly the election of 2008 could be seen as a watershed unless Republicans can somehow regroup and re-energize both their base and their wellspring of ideas.

One week of mildly good news will not affect the future substantially. And that’s why for the foreseeable future, Bush and the Republicans are going to have to take things one day at a time.