Right Wing Nut House

If, as Cicero wrote, “Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things,” then it is safe to say that the farther away our world moves from 9/11, the more our memories of that day should enrich us and keep us from taking actions that will make another equally devastating terrorist attack more likely.

Alas, the old Roman republican never knew a country like America. If he had, he would almost certainly have found an exception to his logic. For us, the past has always been an annoyance that gets in the way of our determined and dedicated march to the future. There is no malice in it, this flight, this mad dash from our history. In some ways, it is necessary for us to forget or ignore what has transpired in order to be free of the consequences the past sometimes imposes on those who would use our collective memory to keep the future at bay, standing in the way of progress in the name of hidebound “tradition” or “custom.”

So it has come for 9/11, a date but 6 years in the past and already seeing the effects of what James Earl Jones in the film Field of Dreams referred to as the erasure of history:

And they’ll walk out to the bleachers; sit in shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon. They’ll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they’ll watch the game and it’ll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they’ll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again.

Jones’ character was talking about baseball as a cultural touchstone by which each succeeding generation maintains contact with the past. But even here, that paean to baseball neglects the very real history of the game. Jones himself grew up during a time when members of his race were barred from playing the game. To say that baseball “reminds of us of all that once was good” ignores the fact that even a cursory glance at the historical record would flip those words and posit that baseball, in fact, also reminds us of all that once was bad about America.

It is this kind of schizophrenia - a duality of mind regarding our past - that so angers and fascinates many of us who love American history. We can glory in the words of the Declaration of Independence while realizing the hypocrisy of demanding freedom as we kept three million human beings in bondage ourselves. Similarly, we can marvel at the elegance and simplicity of the Constitution while acknowledging that its words still ring hollow for so many and have for so long.

Although aware of the dichotomies, the Founders gave these little discrepancies scant thought, believing it would be up to future generations to right the wrongs that they had neither the political or moral will to fix themselves. Right or wrong, much of American history is carelessly strewn about our national attic like a bunch of old steamer trunks and hope chests, examined (if at all) not for what the curios inside can teach us about ourselves but rather how their contents can be used in the present to propel us into the future.

And now this battle between the past and future has come for 9/11 as the open wounds of that day scab over and the emotional impact of the event becomes hard for even the vividness of searing memories to arouse in our breasts the same feelings of anger, outrage, and the terrible, aching sadness felt by virtually all Americans. For many of us, what remains is a determination not to forget and a realization that “The Long War” is upon us. For others, remembering 9/11 is an unwelcome intrusion or worse, a political construct to try and revivify feelings of patriotism and the war spirit. To these citizens who cling to the latter - most of whom could fairly be said are on the left - identification of 9/11 with their rabid opposition to the Administration of George Bush and the Iraq War builds an unreasonable resentment about remembering the attacks at all.

This excellent article in the New York Times by N.R. Kleinfield about the battle over how to best remember the history of 9/11 reveals both the pathos and the agony memories of that day engender as well as the desire by many to try and simply wish those memories away:

Each year, murmuring about Sept. 11 fatigue arises, a weariness of reliving a day that everyone wishes had never happened. It began before the first anniversary of the terrorist attack. By now, though, many people feel that the collective commemorations, publicly staged, are excessive and vacant, even annoying.

“I may sound callous, but doesn’t grieving have a shelf life?” said Charlene Correia, 57, a nursing supervisor from Acushnet, Mass. “We’re very sorry and mournful that people died, but there are living people. Let’s wind it down.”

Some people prefer to see things condensed to perhaps a moment of silence that morning and an end to the rituals like the long recitation of the names of the dead at ground zero.

But many others bristle at such talk, especially those who lost relatives on that day.

“The idea of scaling back just seems so offensive to me when you think of the monumental nature of that tragedy,” said Anita LaFond Korsonsky, whose sister Jeanette LaFond-Menichino died in the World Trade Center. “If you’re tired of it, don’t attend it; turn off your TV or leave town. To say six years is enough, it’s not. I don’t know what is enough.”

It isn’t just family members who wish to commemorate 9/11 as solemnly and fully as possible. However, the “moral authority” of those who lost loved ones that tragic day should be respected. They are stand ins for the rest of us who still see 9/11 as a day that changed America in ways that a mere 6 years after the event we are still trying to understand.

Superficially, there is the debate over increased domestic security. Even the wars currently being fought by our military in Iraq and Afghanistan are only surface manifestations of something fundamental that is altering our political and cultural landscape as I write this. In this respect, it doesn’t matter if Hillary Clinton or other Democrats want to take us back to a 9/10 world where the threat of terrorists and those who support and enable them occupies a much smaller space in our national politics.

Whether or not they realize it, the 9/10 Democrats can try all they wish to make 9/11 disappear into the mists of memory by downplaying its significance so that rather than a rallying cry it becomes a day marked by an inexpressible sadness with overtones of guilt that the attacks were actually our fault. They will not succeed because our enemies will not let them.

Sooner or later, our perfect record of preventing another terrorist attack on American soil will bump up against the reality that we can succeed a thousand times in thwarting the designs of those who contemplate mass murder but our enemies need to win only once. And then those memories that we have carefully stored in our national attic will come back in a rush and we will wonder if we shouldn’t have dusted them off every once and a while in order to glean whatever lessons in preparedness we might have missed the first time around.

To be sure, it is human nature to try and push unpleasant memories to the back of our minds lest the pain they cause become a part of our everyday lives. And we shouldn’t blame those who wish that 9/11 be relegated so soon to the status that other days of national tragedy have fallen:

Few Americans give much thought anymore on Dec. 7 that Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941 (the date to live in infamy). Similar subdued attention is paid to other scarring tragedies: the Kennedy assassination (Nov. 22, 1963), Kent State (May 4, 1970), the Oklahoma City bombing (April 19, 1995).

Generations, of course, turn over. Few are alive anymore who can recall June 15, 1904, when 1,021 people died in the burning of the steamer General Slocum, the deadliest New York City disaster until Sept. 11, 2001. Also, the weight of new wrenching events crowds the national memory. Already since Sept. 11, there have been Katrina and Virginia Tech. And people have their own more circumscribed agonies.

A strong argument could be made that none of those other days of tragedy had the raw, emotional impact of 9/11. Perhaps the Kennedy Assassination echoes the surprise of what happened on 9/11. And Pearl Harbor certainly aroused similar feelings of anger and determination.

But 9/11 stands alone as a date that tears at our souls and requires us to re-examine uncomfortable truths. We are at war. Remembering or not remembering 9/11 won’t change that fact nor will denying the reality of that statement make it less true. The reason is simple. It takes two sides to make war. And our enemies will find ways to remind us that our denial is silly, stupid, and self defeating as often and as painfully as we let them.

It may be a different kind of war but war it is and pushing the proximate cause of the conflict into the recesses of our memory because remembering is too painful, or too much a bother, or gives political advantage to one side or another is simply putting off the day of reckoning when those in denial will be forced once again to look 9/11 full in the face and realize the overwhelming truth that America is in danger. And if we are vouchsafed the time to allow the emotional scars of 9/11 to heal, we should also use that time to prepare for the next onslaught while doing everything in our power to prevent it.

Once again, America is steamrolling our history into a flattened state of forgetfulness. This time, it is happening in record time and partly being done so that any political advantage in remembering 9/11 can be neutralized by an opposition that plays upon the emotional weariness of the voters in fighting a war few understand and many wish would just go away. Part of this problem can be laid at the feet of the current Administration who has, at times (not as often as they have been accused), employed the imagery and played upon the emotions that 9/11 brought to the surface; feelings of patriotism and unity that seem somewhat quaint when we look back on them today. Not because they were not genuine but because the opposition has determined that these emotions are inappropriate and not germane to the political realities of today.

Instead, the dominant emotion we should be feeling about 9/11 is outrage. Not at Osama Bin Laden but at George Bush for using 9/11 as an “excuse” to get us embroiled in the morass that is Iraq and to skirt the limits of Constitutional authority in order to protect the homeland from further attacks. This is what the Democrats will run their campaigns on in 2008. It remains to be seen whether they will be successful or not.

Meanwhile, the 6th anniversary of 9/11 approaches and once again we will try and conjure up what it felt like to be alive and an American that day. Whether the exercise in remembrance is useful or not is immaterial to those who lost loved ones on that horrible day. For them, the war to remember 9/11 is irrelevant to their bereavement. They are beyond comforting and need only our understanding. I would hope that both sides in this battle for the degree of poignancy with which we recall September 11, 2001 keeps them in their thoughts and prayers as the history of that day fades into myth and legend, becoming a touchstone for all we hold dear as Americans.

After all the sound and fury, the bombastic rhetoric thrown around by Democrats over the supposed partisanship of Fox News, comes this stunner of a study done by the conservative Media Research Center about coverage of the presidential campaigns on the three biggest morning shows on television.

In a word; mindboggling:

The study found that 55 percent of campaign stories on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” CBS’s “The Early Show” and NBC’s “Today” focused on Democratic candidates while only 29 percent focused on Republicans. The remaining 16 percent were classified as “mixed/independent.”

The morning shows aired 61 stories focused exclusively on Sen. Hillary Clinton, 44 stories on former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, and 41 stories on Sen. Barack Obama, all of whom are seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. Former Vice President Al Gore, who is not officially running, was the subject of 29 stories.

Republican candidates received less attention, according to the study. Sen. John McCain was the focus of 31 stories. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was the focus of 26 stories and former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney was the focus of 19 stories.

Bring back the Fairness Doctrine!

And it isn’t just the number of stories being aired about Democrats that demonstrates an inherent bias bordering on cheerleading by the Big Three networks. Interviews with Democratic candidates or their representatives took up more than twice as much time on the air as those done with Republicans. What’s more, the tone and tenor of that coverage was almost worshipful; Hillary being referred to as “unbeatable” or Obama being called a “rock star” by grown up journalists would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

The effect of all this coverage is to make the Democratic candidates into celebrities, creating an aura of invincibility around their campaigns. By contrast, most of the stories on John McCain’s candidacy revolved around the sinking nature of the campaign - because of his support of the mission in Iraq according to the networks.

I guess his authorship of the immigration bill, his stubborn defense of McCain Feingold, and his tepid support for conservative judges had nothing at all to do with the collapse of his campaign.

No doubt McCain’s imploding campaign is newsworthy. But contrast the death watch nature of McCain’s coverage with the worshipful devotion to Silky Pony’s equally hopeless effort. Edwards got his very own Town Hall meeting broadcast live on ABC.

Gee. No favoritism there.

More subjectively, MRC tried to measure the way questions were framed to candidates or their representatives and came away with the conclusion that they were “friendly” to Democrats and “actively promoting the liberal agenda.” I’m not really concerned about that kind of criticism. Politicians go on those morning programs because they are generally treated in a more “friendly” fashion in the first place. And as far as questions “promoting” a liberal agenda, that very well may be in the eye of the beholder.

But that kind of partisan critique pales next to the very real discrepancy - huge discrepancy - in time devoted to coverage of Democrats versus that given Republicans. It appears to me that the morning shows on the network haven’t even made an effort to be fair and balanced. The thought never entered their heads.

A case can be made for slightly unbalanced coverage in favor of Democrats due to the historic nature of the Clinton and Obama candidacies. But clearly not on the scale uncovered by the MRC study. In fact, a good case can be made the the Giuliani candidacy has as many newsworthy/gossipy elements to report on as any Democrat in the race. And the Romney campaign has many compelling storylines to it as well.

Nearly 12 million Americans still tune in to the morning news shows to tell them what is happening in the world, dwarfing the audience on cable shows for the same time slot. One would think that the Big Three news shows might take their responsibilities as journalists a little more seriously and cover the campaigns in order to inform the American people of the choices they will have to make on election day. Instead, the perception that the network news departments have become an extension of the Democratic National Committee and mouthpieces for liberal candidates is fostered by the doting coverage they give presidential candidates belonging to only one of the two parties.

Somehow, I don’t think we’ll hear yelps of fake outrage from the netnuts and their minions about this kind of bias. After all, the Democratic party brand of favoritism has been the hallmark of network television since at least the 1960’s. To them, it must seem as if all is right in the world. God is in the universe, the sun is rising in the east, setting in the west, and network news is showing a ridiculously biased face to the American people.

I have made no secret on this blog of my distaste for the Republican strategy of pushing opposition to abortion and gay marriage as litmus tests for GOP candidates and as “wedge” issues to use in campaigns.

While I acknowledge there are many millions of sincere, devout Christians (and other social conservatives) who see these issues as vital to the moral fiber of the nation and thus worthy of standing them up front and center as the party’s main identity, from a personal standpoint, I strenuously disagree.

Abortion, I can understand. The religious underpinnings that can rationalize life at conception are well known to me, having grown up Catholic. But the Republic or the “sanctity of marriage” being in danger because two people in love want to get married? That’s a stretch. There may be other reasons to keep gay people from marrying but the more I think about it, the more I believe that it’s really no body’s business who loves who and what sex they are. There may be sticky legal issues involved but I’m no lawyer and can’t speak to them. All I can look to is common sense. And common sense tells me that gay people should be able to do anything in this free country that anyone else can do.

Beyond common sense, there is politics. And while I am not calling for dropping these planks from any GOP platform, these issues are no longer “wedge” issues. They are “loser” issues. They are “recipe for electoral disaster” issues. They are driving people away from the Republican party.

Another time I might make the argument that they are not even conservative issues but such a post is not in my pen tonight. Instead, I want to talk about the regularity with which conservative Republicans seem to get themselves into trouble over sex. The latest is Idaho Senator Larry Craig who was arrested in a Minneapolis restroom for “lewd conduct.”

“At 1216 hours, Craig tapped his right foot. I recognized this as a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct. Craig tapped his toes several times and moves his foot closer to my foot. I moved my foot up and down slowly. While this was occurring, the male in the stall to my right was still present. I could hear several unknown persons in the restroom that appeared to use the restroom for its intended use. The presence of others did not seem to deter Craig as he moved his right foot so that it touched the side of my left foot which was within my stall area,” the report states.

Craig then proceeded to swipe his hand under the stall divider several times, and Karsnia noted in his report that “I could … see Craig had a gold ring on his ring finger as his hand was on my side of the stall divider.”

Karsnia then held his police identification down by the floor so that Craig could see it.

“With my left hand near the floor, I pointed towards the exit. Craig responded, ‘No!’ I again pointed towards the exit. Craig exited the stall with his roller bags without flushing the toilet. … Craig said he would not go. I told Craig that he was under arrest, he had to go, and that I didn’t want to make a scene. Craig then left the restroom.”

The conduct doesn’t seem lewd to me and the whole story reeks of something very fishy. But the fact is, the Senator pled guilty and probably thought that it would stay out of the papers if he didn’t make a fuss.

The point really isn’t whether he’s guilty or innocent. The point is that this sort of thing becomes a huge issue because of the way the party talks about gays and the way many GOP stalwarts like Reverend Robertson and James Dobson talk about sex. The perception that Republicans are a bunch of bigoted blue noses stuck in the 19th century with Victorian sensibilities about the bedroom turns off a lot of voters - especially the young.

A brief look at this eye popping poll that shows the vital 18-29 year old group turning up their noses at Republicans is very significant. I was in that age group when I became a Republican and many of my fellow Reaganites were also young, eager conservatives who drank in the enormous intellectual ferment that bubbled up from dozens of places in Reagan’s Washington. We were on the cutting edge and we knew it.

Nowadays, I don’t blame young people for turning off the GOP. The corruption, the hypocrisy, the sanctimony, and the tired old men pushing tired old ideas to an ever shrinking number of wealthier, whiter, men has the GOP in deep, deep, trouble. If I were that age again, I probably wouldn’t support Republicans either.

Perhaps the predicted disaster in 2008 will wake a few people up. Not likely based on what happened in 2006. As the left did for 30 years, the push will be for more ideological “purity,” more fealty to what passes for conservative issues today.

Just at the moment that our country needs the right’s commitment to fight a war against an implacable, unyielding foe, our own stupidity is going to allow the milquetoast left to ascend to power. For that, our children and grand children may curse us for our folly.

/off

UPDATE

Ed Morrissey also sees disaster for the GOP in 2008 - at least in the Senate.

The Republicans already have a 21-12 disadvantage in next year’s Senate contests. His was one of the seats the GOP hoped to hold, and his party had been pushing to keep him from retiring. I suspect they’re looking for Plan B at the moment.

And Allah gets off the line of the day.

(From the Roll Call article) “At one point during the interview, Craig handed the plainclothes sergeant who arrested him a business card that identified him as a U.S. Senator and said, ‘What do you think about that?’ the report states.”

(Allah): I think he can probably start throwing away those cards now.

Dear Constituent,

As your Congressman, it is sometimes my duty to travel to far off, exotic places in order to inform myself on the issues of the day.

As you may know, these trips usually involve strenuous and exhausting activities. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten sunburned from brutal rounds of golf played in Caribbean sun or pruned hands from spending too much time in the resort swimming pool. But as your Representative, I feel it necessary to bear any burden and pay any price in order to familiarize myself with issues on which I will have to vote in your name.

Just recently, I returned from a very different kind of fact finding mission. I would like to report on my visit to Iraq and what I think is going on there was well as inform you of how I am likely to vote next month on whether to continue funding the war.

First of all, as fact finding missions go, I found out a lot of interesting facts. Did you know that it gets very, very hot in Iraq? So hot it “feels like a hair dryer on the back of your neck.” And I found out that wearing a flak jacket and Kevlar helmet when going outside the green zone is not very flattering from an aesthetic standpoint but looks terrific on television and in the newspaper photos. Oughta be worth 10,000 votes next election.

Of course, the highlight of the trip was the very pleasant “nice napkin lunch” with General Petreaus. He certainly sets a fine table and I particularly approved of his wine selection. Then the General showed us all sorts of charts and graphs with incomprehensible acronyms and even more puzzling numbers that he said pointed to the surge giving our troops “tactical momentum.”

What kind of momentum can be considered tactical? I wish I had thought to ask him at that point but I was on my third glass of Pinot Blanc and really wasn’t in any shape to ask that kind of probing question. I guess it has to do with a drop in violence in some areas of Iraq as well as some interesting political developments in Anbar Province and other parts of the Sunni Triangle. It seems a lot of the Sunnis in those areas are switching sides and joining us in our fight against the terrorist from al-Qaeda in return for arms and help in reconstructing their infrastructure.

Now I hate to be a worry wart about these things but considering the fact that until recently, many of these same Sheiks that we’re now embracing were trying to kill us, giving them arms might seem to be something of a risk. After all, just because they’re buddy buddy with us doesn’t mean they’ve gained any great love for their Shia masters in Baghdad. And if we’re seen as allied too closely with Prime Minister Maliki and his sectarian mob, they just might have another change of heart and start using those guns on us again. Especially after we start drawing down our forces, which we are going to be forced into doing in March when many of the units face the end of their deployments. If the Shias take advantage of that by upping the pressure on the Sunnis by escalating sectarian warfare, anything is possible.

All of this is fine as far as the surge goes. It is doing what the President said it would; improve the security situation in order to give the government of Prime Minister Maliki the time to try and effect a reconciliation with the Sunnis. But then I talked to Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih, a Shia, who told me “There’s not going to be political reconciliation by this September; there’s not going to be political reconciliation by next September,” and I thought if this is true, why bother? If the Shias aren’t interested in living in a free, united Iraq with their Sunni countrymen, what possible reason is there to continue to prop up such a government?

But then, there is the “bottom up” reconciliation being carried out in many areas and you have to say to yourself “Here are a people worth helping.” For all their faults, their petty jealousies and hatreds, there may be just enough Iraqis - both Shia and Sunni - dedicated to trying to heal their country and bring it together that it makes sense to continue with the surge as long as we are able to maintain it.

What happens when we’re forced to draw down our forces? Given the change in many places in Iraq over the last few months that the surge has been fully operational, anything is possible - anything except movement toward peace by the Maliki government. There’s only so much our soldiers are able to do. But what is possible (and beyond), they are doing.

General Petreaus and the troops have earned the opportunity to carry on with their mission - at least until we start bringing the boys home in March. And that’s why I will vote to continue funding the mission as it currently stands.

Iraq will be a wretchedly violent place for many years to come. But if by our actions we can start them firmly on the path to peace and reconciliation, we should try. It may take a change at the top of the Iraqi government to begin the process in earnest. It may not. But whatever happens, much of the history that will be written in Iraq in the future will be penned by Iraqis and not Americans. Of this there is no doubt.

No doubt this issue will be revisited again. And circumstances might very well change - circumstances that would cause me to reverse my vote that I will be making in September. But as long as we are making progress, however small or even ephemeral, we should continue.

Perhaps it is too much to ask that President Bush just once try to be a little more realistic about what is going on in Iraq and the prospects for that nation becoming what he has defined as “free.” But if he was ever going to soberly address the enormous problems facing the Iraqi people and government - problems that must be addressed before we can claim any kind of “triumph” - he might not have been able to find a friendlier, more receptive audience than yesterday at the VFW Convention in Kansas City.

Bush delivered a well written speech to the supportive group of vets, touching all the familiar bases about 9/11, al-Qaeda, and the need for supporting General Petreaus and our military. But the closest he came to acknowledging the extraordinary challenges facing the Iraqi government was here:

A free Iraq is not going to be perfect. A free Iraq will not make decisions as quickly as the country did under the dictatorship. Many are frustrated by the pace of progress in Baghdad, and I can understand this. As I noted yesterday, the Iraqi government is distributing oil revenues across its provinces despite not having an oil revenue law on its books, that the parliament has passed about 60 pieces of legislation.

Prime Minister Maliki is a good guy, a good man with a difficult job, and I support him. And it’s not up to politicians in Washington, D.C. to say whether he will remain in his position — that is up to the Iraqi people who now live in a democracy, and not a dictatorship. (Applause.) A free Iraq is not going to transform the Middle East overnight. But a free Iraq will be a massive defeat for al Qaeda, it will be an example that provides hope for millions throughout the Middle East, it will be a friend of the United States, and it’s going to be an important ally in the ideological struggle of the 21st century. (Applause.)

There is no “pace of progress” with regards to political reconciliation in Iraq. There is, quite simply, no progress at all. And it might be an arguable point that Iraq is, in any sense of the word, a democracy - not when 15% of the population is frozen out of power sharing and hunted down like animals to be slaughtered.

That latter point is the direct result of Mr. Maliki’s inability (or unwillingness) to do anything about the Shia death squads inhabiting the Interior Ministry of his own government as well as their enablers on the Iraqi police force and in the army. The symbiotic relationship between Mr. Maliki’s government and the thugs, militia men, and criminal gangs that make life in the Capitol and elsewhere a living hell for ordinary Iraqis (while giving him the support he needs to maintain his position) will never be addressed as long as the President of the United States keeps his mouth shut about them.

Not a word in the President’s speech about the British withdrawal from the south which has already precipitated a civil war within a civil war between rival militias for control of that vital area. The hand of Iran is most prominent here and there is little doubt that the mullahs will try their best to back the winner in this conflict thus giving them effective control of nearly one third of the country.

And what of our friends, the Kurds? They recently threw in their lot with the Shias by signing a power sharing agreement that froze the Sunnis out of effective representation in Baghdad. Hailed by Maliki as a triumph, the agreement is a recipe for disaster in that it gives the Sunni insurgents a reason to fight on.

I could go on with the familiar litany of catastrophes waiting to happen, missed opportunities, “beat the heat” vacations by the parliament (which never has a quorum to pass anything anyway), the inexhaustible supply of insurgents and their sympathizers - numbered in the hundreds of thousands by our own military - and the hopelessness of most ordinary Iraqis about the security situation.

Does all of this overshadow the genuine progress being made against al-Qaeda as well as some encouraging news about some of the Sunni tribes switching sides? I think any rational, fair minded person who doesn’t have a partisan agenda would have to agree that despite the relative success of the surge to date, the daunting task to make Iraq “free” and achieve any kind of “victory” remains a pipe dream.

The most controversial part of the President’s speech came when he warned against a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq leading to another “Viet Nam” aftermath. Here, the President is on firmer ground - except if you’re a reporter for the New York Times:

In urging Americans to stay the course in Iraq, Mr. Bush is challenging the historical memory that the pullout from Vietnam had few negative repercussions for the United States and its allies.

The speech was the beginning of an intense White House initiative to shape the debate on Capitol Hill in September, when the president’s troop buildup will undergo a re-evaluation. It came amid rising concerns in Washington over the performance of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq, who has made little progress toward bridging the sectarian divide in his country.

I had to read that amazing passage about our pullout from Viet Nam having “few negative repercussions for the United States and its allies” several times before I could believe it. Is the Times actually trying to argue that there were no “negative repercussions” for Thailand or Cambodia, both of them close US allies at the time? And the fact that the collective security group, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, was destroyed by our pullout from Viet Nam didn’t have repercussions for the United States itself? Or that our pull out didn’t damage our ability to deter the Russians?

Our mad rush out of Viet Nam certainly emboldened the Soviet Union to meddle in Africa by using their flunkie Castro as a proxy in Angola as well as giving direct aid to groups like the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the El Salvador rebels. To say that our pull out didn’t have negative repercussions for the US or many of our allies is insane.

The President spelled out what some of those “negative repercussions” were:

The world would learn just how costly these misimpressions would be. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge began a murderous rule in which hundreds of thousands of Cambodians died by starvation and torture and execution. In Vietnam, former allies of the United States and government workers and intellectuals and businessmen were sent off to prison camps, where tens of thousands perished. Hundreds of thousands more fled the country on rickety boats, many of them going to their graves in the South China Sea.

[snip]

There was another price to our withdrawal from Vietnam, and we can hear it in the words of the enemy we face in today’s struggle — those who came to our soil and killed thousands of citizens on September the 11th, 2001. In an interview with a Pakistani newspaper after the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden declared that “the American people had risen against their government’s war in Vietnam. And they must do the same today.”

I think the New York Times, as most on the left in this country, have failed to come to grips with their abandonment of Southeast Asia to the communists. They have washed their hands of the bloodbath that followed, saying it wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t gone in militarily in the first place. That is pure sophistry. The aftermath of Viet Nam - like the aftermath that will occur in Iraq - would have been manageable if we hadn’t pulled out so precipitously and completely. If we had made it clear to the North that bombing would have resumed the moment they reneged on the treaty and if we had kept a substantial residual force in Viet Nam with the promise that our troops would return if they broke the peace agreement, I doubt very much that Saigon would have fallen.

Now this position was not politically viable at the time. Ford was hamstrung by Congress in protecting the South from the North’s cynical refusal to abide by the Paris accords. The result was catastrophe.

Can we avoid a similar fate in Iraq? No one knows. But this quote from an unarmed official commenting on a much more pessimistic report than the President gave to the vets, highlighting the dire situation we face over the next 9-12 months seems to sum it up for both Democrats and Republicans alike:

The new report also concludes that the American military has had success in recent months in tamping down sectarian violence in the country, according to officials who have read it.

The report, which was intended to help anticipate events over the next 6 to 12 months, is “more dire in its assessments” than the administration has been in its own internal discussions, according to one senior official who has read it. But the report also warns, as Mr. Bush did on Wednesday, that an early withdrawal would lead to more chaos.

“It doesn’t take a policy position,” one official said. “But it leaves you with the sense that what we’ve been doing hasn’t been working, but we can’t let up, or it’ll get worse.”

If that doesn’t sober up both supporters of the war and those who wish a quick exit from Iraq, then nothing will.

I can’t stand the sight of spinach.

All my life, I’ve wanted to be like Popeye and eat my spinach. But the sight, smell, texture, and consistency of Spinach makes me want to puke.

If I walk into a house where cabbage is being cooked, I feel physically ill at the smell.

The thought of eating oysters makes me gag.

I am sure that I’m not alone in any of those powerful dislikes. And if I sought out my fellow spinach haters, cabbage bashers, and oyster despisers and we all got together and decided to tax those of you who love and cherish those foods, there would be a hue and cry throughout the land guaranteed to effect a swift repeal of any such tax.

Why then, do many of you wish to pick on smokers and take my property - my hard earned money - in the form of a monstrously discriminatory tax simply because there are more of you than there are of us?

Granted, smoking is extremely hazardous to the user and not so good if you’re standing next to someone puffing away. Banning smoking indoors everywhere is something we smokers must come to accept - although I would love to see the law altered so that entrepreneurs could open “smokers only” bars and restaurants. Everyone from the owner down through the employees and customers would have to either be a smoker or sign a waiver to the effect that they don’t mind the smoke.

I can even see the efficacy of banning smoking at the ballpark or other places where large numbers of people are in close proximity to each other.

These are accommodations I am willing to make. What I am not willing to do any longer is sit still while the rest of you bully me around and take my money for exorbitant taxes while sanctimoniously weeping about it being for “the kids” or “for health care.”

I could give a good goddamn what it’s for. As long as smoking is legal, you have absolutely no right to target me and my property for excessive, ruinous taxes whose expressed purpose is to force me to change a behavior you find objectionable.

If smoking is such a health hazard, so much a threat to children, you have only one option; ban it entirely.

I don’t want to hear about Prohibition and the problems enforcing the Volstead Act. Smoking is portrayed by government and activists as evil - thus making those of us who choose to smoke an easy target for what under any other circumstances would be considered theft at the hands of government and a bunch of health Nazis. If you want to save me from what you see as my own folly, keep kids from starting smoking, cut health costs associated with smokers that is putting such a drain on resources, then for God’s sake have the balls to ban cigarettes!

Instead, you enjoy the exercise of power too much over your fellow citizens - and the use of funds associated with your ill gotten gains - to stop now. Government is on a rampage not against tobacco but against its users. And that is unconscionable in a free society.

The state of Illinois will most likely add nearly a dollar to the cigarette tax in a few days. The extra 20 bucks a week Zsu Zsu and I will have to pay to indulge our habit and pleasure is nothing compared the affront to our rights as citizens to be secure in our property from unreasonable taxes. Targeting a minority for such treatment would not be tolerated if we were talking about religion, race, sex, or sexual preference. But since smoking is frowned upon by society, that disapprobation is transferred to the smoker and any indignity becomes possible, even desired.

I enjoy smoking cigarettes. It makes no difference to me whether you accept that or not. There are things about you, I’m sure, that I couldn’t understand or stomach. Perhaps you’re an oyster eater or cabbage lover. So be it. You have no fear of having an excessive amount of your property taken from you in taxes just because you enjoy those slimy mollusks. Perhaps if I started a campaign to demonize oysters and tax the processing, selling, and eating of them beyond all reason and fairness, you might get an idea of how I feel.

I’m not asking for the elimination of cigarette taxes nor even a reduction. I am asking for a moratorium. Either that or a ban on the growing, selling, and consumption of tobacco. It is time to stop treating smokers so unfairly.

The post could be book length, but it won’t be. That’s because in order to examine the notion of the US being an imperialist power, I don’t need more than a couple of paragraphs.

Glenn Greenwald (objecting to Drezner’s characterization of him as a “pacifist”) says case closed:

For those who actually understand what the term means, there is no reasonable ground for objecting to the term “imperial” to describe America’s role in the world. Even our Foreign Policy Community elites have begun acknowledging that we are acting as an empire and are openly debating the best forms of imperial management. And the seemingly endless string of military interventions over the last several decades under a whole slew of “justifications” leaves no doubt that we see ourselves as world rulers who violate sovereignty and use military force at will, whenever — as Drezner himself said — we perceive that it promotes our interests to do so. That is what an empire does, by definition.

As I have said in the past, the notion that the United States is a peaceloving nation is belied by the facts. Since Viet Nam, we have intervened in Grenada, Panama, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iraq again, and numerous air raids carried out against Ghaddafi, Saddam, and Slobodan Milošević.

Trouble just seems to follow us around, I guess.

Actually, the use of military power does not necessarily make a nation “imperialistic.” Rather, the reasons for those interventions are what determines whether a nation is building or defending an “empire” or not. And in each intervention I listed, US motives for using military power could be defended as a response to chaos, tyranny, or despotism.

Face it, people. We are “it.” History, geography, and the efforts of our forefathers have all combined to make the United States a superpower. For most of our existence, we ignored our potential to dominate world affairs - even though we could have done so easily from the turn of the 20th century on. Even after World War II when our victorious armies in Europe and Asia could have remained in place and dominated those continents as they had never been before, we chose to bring the boys home and - unprecedented in world history - actually disarm.

From an army of 8 million men we contracted to just over a million by 1949. From an astonishing 80,000 planes at the end of the war, we barely had 5,000 by the end of the decade. The same with our 50,000 tanks that were reduced to 2,000. An 800 warship navy was cut to around 300.

Now, it would be a silly imperial power who would do such a thing. Of course, we had the bomb but it wasn’t clear at that time what kind of a military weapon the bomb might actually be. Until the Soviets got their very own nukes, Truman didn’t know quite what to do with the gadget. He used it as a threat but it is not clear if he would have followed through and made good on those threats. Nuclear doctrine did not mature until the early 1950’s. And when it did, reliance on conventional forces for almost all conflicts - save the Big One with Russia in Europe - was the accepted strategy of the US.

I give this little history lesson in order to make the point that even today when we are the only superpower with an $11 trillion economy producing nearly a quarter of all the goods and services on the planet and a pop culture that people can’t get enough of, by virtue of our size alone, we dominate the planet.

There are those who are uncomfortable with that fact. Perhaps you can give us all the benefit of your wisdom and tell us how we could stop “dominating” the planet without tearing our economy to shreds, destroying our culture, causing a worldwide economic catastrophe, and give free rein to every cutthroat, thug, maniac, and butcher who would then seek to take advantage of the fact that the only thing between them and their sick goals is the United Nations.

Oh, you can work around the edges of the problem. The US must work more within the international framework. Fine. Tell it to the people of Darfur where we have consistently tried to the get the United Nations to refer to what is happening there as “genocide” only to be rebuffed. We may yet be forced to intervene there considering the ongoing slaughter and because of every ineffectual and counterproductive thing the UN has done.

Perhaps you think we should radically disarm. Okay, for the sake of argument let’s cut our military by 90%. Just a few jets for air defense, a couple of divisions for homeland security, and perhaps a couple of ships to evacuate our citizens when the world inevitablly blows up. Happy? Good. And the next Tsunami that hits Indonesia or some other natural disaster that the world needs to tend to, we’ll fly a couple of UN bureaucrats out there to help with morale. Since that’s all the help victims of those disasters are going to get for a couple of weeks, let’s hope too many people don’t die because of it.

Nor should we worry about the little wars where the bigger neighbor will invade the smaller nation just because there’s no one there to stop them. The idea that UN sanctions would scare off any of these cutthroats is laughable.

What else? Get Hollywood to stop making crappy movies? Or maybe make it impossible for other countries to purchase our music, our movies, TV programs, and other manifestations of the most wildly popular cultural exchange in human history.

Now we’re where the Greenwalds of the world want us to be. No more of this runaway globalization, no more militarism. No more cultural dominance. Just the US taking its rightful place as subservient to the UN and other international bodies. Let the Europeans run the world. They’ve been doing it a long time and experience has to count for something.

I put it to you; for all our faults, foibles, stumbles, good and bad motives thrown in for good measure, the world cannot do without us as we are now. You can have a president that grovels before the UN or the EU. But that won’t change the fact that when the EU’s chestnuts are in the fire, they won’t turn to the French to bail them out. Love us, hate us, spit at us - you can’t ignore us.

Are we an imperialist power? The only people who seem to care are those who wish to call us “imperialists.” For the rest of the world, the US is a fact of life, a force of nature. And, I might add, a welcome sight when the boogyman is knocking at the door or Mother nature goes on a bender.

Can we do it while acting more humbly? Must we be so “arrogant?” Next tyrant we overthrow, we should be sure to apologize before having our military rip his regime a new one. Maybe that will satisfy those who see anything relevant at all in this stupid argument.

Amidst whispers that his campaign has stalled, that he has waited to long to announce, and that there is disarray at the top staff levels of his operation, Fred Thompson made a pilgrimage of sorts to visit one of Washington’s old wise men.

David S. Broder is the dean of Washington political columnists. Beyond that, Broder has been a sounding board, father confessor, straight man, and sometimes the fool for politicians from both parties for nearly three decades. When the high and mighty find themselves in trouble or in need of an honest broker in the press, they frequently seek Broder out (or Broder, the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist in him sensing a good story seeks them out) to have their ideas exposed in a forum that gives them instant credibility.

Thompson recently sat down for coffee with Broder and in a column in Thursday’s Washington Post, the candidate made it clear that he was going to “go bold” in his presidential campaign by addressing issues that none of the candidates from either party were talking about.

Specifically, he wants his campaign to talk about the two 800 pound gorillas in America’s living room; entitlement reform and the underlying deficit which threaten the fiscal health and economic well being of the next generation. And his desire to be president, he says, goes beyond personal ambition:

“There’s no reason for me to run just to be president,” he said. I don’t desire the emoluments of the office. I don’t want to live a lie and clever my way to the nomination or election. But if you can put your ideas out there — different, more far-reaching ideas — that is worth doing.

It is those ideas that will almost certainly set him apart from other candidates running. Whether they will bring him the victory he desires is, as Broder points out, “a gamble:”

The difficulties outlined in federal procurement, personnel, finances and information technology remain today, Thompson said, and increasingly “threaten national security.” His second sourcebook contains the scary reports from Comptroller General David Walker, the head of the Governmental Accountability Office, on the long-term fiscal crisis spawned by the aging of the American population and the runaway costs of health care. Walker labels the current patterns of federal spending “unsustainable,” and warns that unless action is taken soon to improve both sides of the government’s fiscal ledger — spending and revenues — the next generation will suffer.

“Nobody in Congress or on either side in the presidential race wants to deal with it,” Thompson said. “So we just rock along and try to maintain the status quo. Republicans say keep the tax cuts; Democrats say keep the entitlements. And we become a less unified country in the process, with a tax code that has become an unholy mess, and all we do is tinker around the edges.”

High risk, indeed. There is a reason no one is talking about these issues. They tend to divide the voters. A presidential race is all about uniting as many people under your banner as possible without making too many others mad at you. Angry people vote. And fiddling with entitlements, the tax code, and restoring fiscal sanity (which will almost surely touch many programs favored by the middle class), is a recipe to get a lot of people very, very mad at you.

But for Thompson, no guts, no glory might just be the bywords of his coming campaign. And looking at the political landscape as August begins to turn into September and his expected formal announcement to enter the race around Labor Day, Thompson is seeing a very steep hill to climb in order to overtake his rivals for the nomination.

Governor Mitt Romney, fresh off his expected straw poll victory in Ames last weekend, is comfortably ahead in both Iowa and New Hampshire. His impressive organization raised $20 million in the last quarter reported to the FEC. He also loaned his own campaign more than $2 million which highlights the very deep pockets Governor Romney will have going into the caucuses and primaries next January.

Thompson’s other main rival, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani didn’t compete in Ames, finishing a distant 6th. But he is comfortably ahead in most of the primary states including Florida and California where he is beating Thompson and Romney by almost a 2-1 margin. Giuliani also has an top notch organization and has raised almost as much as Romney - $15 million in the last quarter reported to the FEC.

Thompson has been hampered in his fund raising by an FEC rule that prohibits him from asking for more money than he can reasonably be expected to use on his exploratory committee. His $3.5 million raised last month was slightly below the $5 million he expected to raise. The real questions will be answered once he begins to campaign and raise money in earnest after he announces. Can he keep pace with the Giuliani/Romney juggernauts?

Probably not. This is why his gamble in taking on divisive issues may be his only chance at success. In effect, he will be running almost outside the party establishment, trying to appeal to conservative Republicans and right-leaning independents to stitch together a winning coalition. The odds are long but at this point, Thompson must feel he has little choice.

Fred Thompson’s “front porch” internet campaign is now over. It accomplished as much as could be expected - taking him from relative obscurity and placing him in the top tier of Republican presidential contenders. It laid the groundwork for his coming campaign by exciting some on line activists and bloggers who will prove valuable once he announces next month.

But the next stage of the Thompson campaign will prove to be a much different proposition. It will be an ideological high wire act where he will seek to outline a very different vision for America than his opponents while trusting that the American people will be able to see beyond their own narrow interests and vote for an uncertain future.

A tall order, that. If he is able to pull it off, it just might change the face of American politics. If not, he’ll be remembered as just another political Cassandra, destined to fail in his quest to sound the alarm about the fundamental direction in which the country is headed.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker.

It is an axiom in politics that “Winning is better than losing.” That obvious conclusion can be deceptive in certain circumstances - such as when finishing second or third is just as good as winning. Or not playing the game at all is as good as losing. All depends on perception - that artificially generated instant conventional wisdom bequeathed to the public by people who think they know more about politics than the rest of us.

But do they? The trick in being a good political pundit is not in formulating wildly original analysis or penetrating insights into “what it all means.” Rather, it is much better to say exactly what everyone else is saying except be meaner, or funnier, or more serious, or more dismissive than the next fellow. A good turn of the phrase and an attitude will bring you stardom in punditland.

This is important to keep in mind when looking at the gigantic block party the Republicans threw in Ames, Iowa on Saturday. Known by pundits as the Ames Straw Poll, it pitted Mitt Romney not against any other candidate but against the expectations set up beforehand by the punditocracy. What were those expectations? Romney must “do well.”

Okay, can we define “do well?” In order to “do well,” Romney must “exceed expectations.”

See how easy it is to be a political pundit?

A little more serious pre-block party analysis would be that Romney should receive at least as much of the vote at the straw poll as he was getting statewide. In this. Mr. Romney succeeded in exceeding expectations. The latest University of Iowa poll has Romney getting 27% of the vote, comfortably ahead of Rudy Giuliani who trails with 18%. At the Ames Hoe Down, Romney walked away with 31% of the 14,000 votes cast. And since his two main rivals - Giuliani and former Senator Fred Thompson - weren’t competing, it could be said that Romney won big in Ames while Giuliani lost. Thompson, not formally declared as a candidate yet, gets a pass from pundits on this one.

So what to make of Romney’s win. The clever pundit will point out that Romney spent scads of money on advertising and to bus thousands of his supporters to the party - probably in excess of $3 million. It works out to more than $600 per voter which is a steep price to pay in order to “exceed expectations.”

But hold on for a minute. Finishing second in Ames was none other than the former governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee. The Huckster spent next to nothing and captured 18% of the vote. To say Mr. Huckabee “exceeded expectations” is just not good enough, not if you want to be a complete pundit. The correct response when querried as to how Mr. Huckabee did in the Ames Straw Poll is he pulled off “a surprise.” This is one step below “a shocker” which is a rarely used term in the pundit vocabulary. “A shocker” is reserved for those delicious circumstances when the front runner fails to exceed expectations and is defeated by someone the punditocracy had previously considered “a surprise.”

Then there are those who exceed expectations but nobody cares. Third place finisher in Ames Sam Brownback fills the bill perfectly there. Brownback mounted a negative telephone campaign against front runner Mitt Romney, accusing him of flip flopping on abortion and touting his own credentials as the truest social conservative available. Governor Huckabee might have something to say about that claim but the tactic worked. Brownback finished with 15% and while he was hoping for second place, he crowed about his 3rd place finish that it made him a “viable” candidate. The term “viable” is used by politicians when they don’t think the pundits take them seriously. In Brownback’s case, he is correct.

Finally, there are those politicians who don’t exceed expectations, don’t meet expectations, and don’t even get a whiff of what an expectation might be. They are not important enough for pundits to bother with setting expectations. They have no chance of being a surprise or a shocker.

They are the walking dead of the campaign, zombies who don’t even rate a press pool on when they’re going to drop out - that is, if anyone is covering them. Poor Tommy Thompson, former governor of Wisconsin and one of the smartest pols running for president in either party was the designated wraith at this event. His 5th place finish put him behind GOP gadfly Ron Paul and just in front of Fred Thompson who hasn’t even been to Iowa yet. Not even able to exceed his own expectations of finishing first or second, Thompson gracefully bowed out of the race on Sunday.

And after all the analyzing and judging, all the serious and unserious dissections of what happened and what it all means, the pundits all got together and decided that the entire exercise was a waste of time. It doesn’t mean anything they assure us. We’re still five months from the caucuses. Plenty of time for one or more of the also rans to challenge Romney and his deep pockets in Iowa.

To sum up; after creating expectations for the candidates and giving plenty of ink to both the build up to Ames and the aftermath, the pundits have sagely informed us that it doesn’t mean squat.

See? Anyone can be a pundit. All you need is unbelievable arrogance and the ability to take yourself too seriously.

Bill O’Reilly was in high dudgeon over the weekend, writing an Op-Ed in the Boston Herald in which he takes Hollywood to task for being “anti-American” based on his take of the new Jason Bourne flick that just opened:

I knew this movie was trouble when I read the reviews. Almost all the critics liked it. The only way American movie critics would like a violent car-chase film like this was if it bashed the USA, which, of course, it does.

The CIA guys are bad, bad, bad. And just to make sure Indonesian and Pakistani audiences get the picture, the CIA chief issues his evil orders with the American flag clearly seen on his desk. No language barrier here, no sir. The U.S. intelligence agencies are fiendish enterprises that want to hurt Damon and actually force Stiles to cut her own hair. How could they?

Actually, neither Damon nor Stiles has to do much acting. Damon does work for the far-left MoveOn organization and is on record as requesting that the Bush daughters serve in Iraq. The actor also told the Idaho Statesman that the CIA’s use of water boarding is an erosion of our American values.

Guess what? There’s a water-boarding scene in the flick. What a coincidence!

Stiles is also down with the far left. On a cable program she explained why she missed a MoveOn event by saying: “I was afraid that Bill O’Reilly would come with a shotgun at my front door and shoot me for being unpatriotic.”

First, for all you Ludlum fans out there, I will not name this new flick because you and I both know that the only relationship between the movie and anything Robert Ludlum ever wrote is the name of the title character. It is an insult to fans of that excellent series of novels to title those films the way they have. What happened to that extraordinarily rich and complex relationship with Marie? And what happened to The Jackal? How could you even think of doing a movie on the Bourne series without including Carlos the Jackal - the nemesis and motivation for everything he does? What about the settings from the novels? Expect Kowloon and you get Berlin.

Perhaps most egregiously, it is the character of Jason Bourne himself that, in typical Hollywood fashion, was absolutely butchered. For those not familiar with the novels, Bourne was never an assassin! He was trained as one but he was created for the sole and exclusive purpose of bringing Carlos the Jackal out of hiding by taking false credit for his kills! To make the man Marie fell in love with an assassin who loses his memory and then upon reacquiring his mind regrets his past life is outrageous even for Hollywood.

Yeah…but Matt Damon is cute.

At any rate, Bill O’Reilly must not have gotten out much lately. Perhaps he’s been taking care of a sick aunt for the last 50 years or so for him not to have noticed that there are precious few movies where the CIA aren’t the bad guys. Or the military. Or conservatives. Or religious people. Or CEO’s of big businesses. Or anyone and everyone in American society that might be admired by conservatives.

Is it that Hollywood is anti-American as Billy O says? Or anti-Conservative?

No to the first, although their idea of what sort of nation America actually is might be a little hazy - or wrongheaded. As for Hollywood being anti-conservative, surely you jest. Conservative heroes like Rambo or Arnie Schwarzenegger are always portrayed as not part of any ideological movement but rather loners who kill bad guys that threaten America, or little kids, or puppy dogs. They are also very careful to utter at least one, vapid, liberalesque line in every movie - just to show they’re human.

The answer to the question is not whether Hollywood hates America. The answer is Hollywood hates to lose money much, much, more.

Ask the average American and they are completely unaware that the CIA is forbidden by law to spy on Americans here in America. It might surprise most moviegoers that the CIA is also prevented from killing Americans in this country. But to Hollywood, those strictures don’t apply and they have the CIA murdering more Americans than Osama Bin Laden.

Why? Because it sells. It feeds the popular perception of the CIA as a bunch of cowboys who have nothing better to do with their time than kill you if you threaten to expose one of their nefarious plots by taking the story to the newspapers. Chances are that the New York Times or Washington Post would have already published every detail of those plots in real life but that doesn’t seem to count for much in Hollywood.

About the only films I can think of that have a positive portrayal of our intel agencies are those based on books by Tom Clancy; honorable men doing an honorable job of protecting the country. But those Clancy films are certainly the exception to the rule.

Then there are the films that portray an intel agency so secret, so evil, that no one knows about them. And they will kill to keep that secret. Usually, the more improbable the film’s premise, the more powerful this super secret organization is.

I’ll leave it to some of the intel experts who comment here (Andy? Dale?), but I find it highly implausible that such organizations exist in real life. Rogue elements of one agency or another I can believe. We’ve seen them in the news. But whole agencies not on the books? To my mind, its laughable.

Clearly, Hollywood has a grudge against the CIA. But does that make them anti-American? As I said, if Hollywood could make a lot of money with a picture that features conservatives as heroes and businessmen as the good guys, they would do it in a heartbeat. There is no red or blue in Tinseltown, only green. And this singular fact seems to escape Mr. O’Reilly who seems concerned that moviegoers in Pakistan will get the wrong idea about the CIA.

If they’re stupid enough to believe any old thing about the CIA, the flip side of that coin is that they would stay away from a film with a positive portrayal of our intel agencies in droves. It doesn’t fit their worldview ergo, it doesn’t exist. Same holds true for the more “sophisticated” audiences in Europe.

Hollywood has been making money for a very long time and they’re very good at it. They anticipate trends and movement in the electorate better than politicians. O’Reilly believes they should stop all that and simply make good old fashioned propaganda films as they did in World War II or at least ones that have a pro-American story and characters.

He and I would go so a film like that. But how many others? The director of the new Bourne film, Paul Greengrass, is also the director of United 93, the best movie about 9/11 to date and which portrayed those ordinary American heroes on Flight 93 in a positive and uplifting light. But Greengrass’s searing film experience made only $30 million at the box office. In these days where blockbusters rule Hollywood, that kind of box office doesn’t generate any excitement at all.

It’s not bias, Bill. It’s the money. It’s all about the money. These are people who would sell their grandmothers for money. Selling out their political principles would be nothing. For that reason, you know that if they believed that Bill’s kind of movie would be a blockbuster, they’d be rushing the projects into the theater as fast as possible.

Instead, we have bad guys who in real life are good guys. Par for the course in a place that for the last 40 years or so has had an enemy identification problem.