Right Wing Nut House

When I wrote back in September about Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s “Faustian Bargain” with the tribes of North Waziristan, counterterrorism experts predicted disaster. I summarized their concerns for The American Thinker:

In effect, the Taliban has carved out an independent enclave in ‘The Islamic Emirate of Waziristan,’ a safe haven for al—Qaeda terrorists, and a base of operations secure from interference by the Pakistani military to better carry out their murderous raids across the border into Afghanistan. They have already established their own harsh brand of Sharia law in the area and allowed training camps for various extremist groups to be set up. And most importantly, they have humiliated the government and weakened Musharraf’s tenuous hold on power.

More ominously, another country now has a terrorist state within a state operating virtually free of the control of the central government but with one potentially catastrophic difference:

This nation has at least 60 nuclear weapons that could potentially fall into the hands of Islamic extremists.

Now the New York Times is reporting that the worst fears of the experts have been realized and al-Qaeda has regained much of its strength, using Waziristan as a safe harbor to rest, refit, and plan their next moves:

Senior leaders of Al Qaeda operating from Pakistan have re-established significant control over their once-battered worldwide terror network and over the past year have set up a band of training camps in the tribal regions near the Afghan border, according to American intelligence and counterterrorism officials.

American officials said there was mounting evidence that Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, had been steadily building an operations hub in the mountainous Pakistani tribal area of North Waziristan. Until recently, the Bush administration had described Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahri as detached from their followers and cut off from operational control of Al Qaeda.

The United States has also identified several new Qaeda compounds in North Waziristan, including one that officials said might be training operatives for strikes against targets beyond Afghanistan.

Musharraf has been trying to to do the impossible since 9/11. He has been trying to appease radicals, his base in the military and Pashtun tribe, and the United States - all without getting assassinated. He is dealing with an incipient revolt in Boluchistan, a stagnant economy, a push among the people for free elections, pressure from the military to give up his Chief of Staff position, a shadowy intelligence service that created and nurtures the Taliban, agitation from religious political parties to distance himself from the United States, and a restive, radical, anti-American population who is plenty angry at the Pakistani President for helping the US in the War on Terror.

And that help has not been insignificant. For all of Musharaffs trimming and outright lies to us about how well he is fighting the Taliban and al-Qaeda, the fact is he has done the best he can in impossible circumstances. At our insistence, he went into Waziristan in the first place looking to battle the Taliban and al-Qaeda only to get bogged down and watch as his military suffered regular casualties without making much headway in the mountainous, nearly impassable country. The treaty that led to the current catastrophic situation was a necessity - at least from Musharraf’s point of view. His fragile hold on power is dependent on his enemies not being able to coalesce in opposition to him. And his military moves against the northern tribes was extremely unpopular.

Just recently, he has bombed the camps in the northern territories, once again at the insistence of the United States:

Al Qaeda is fighting back against the Pakistani tactic of bombing terrorist camps along the Afghan border. In the last few weeks, terrorists bomb attacks have killed over a hundred people. Police have also prevented several additional bombings, capturing bomb making materials and documents proving the al Qaeda connection. Some of the captured bombers were actually preparing for attacks on Shia religious festivals next month, but most were revenge hits ordered up by al Qaeda.

Pakistan is in a tough position. With most of the population either enthusiastic, or supportive, of Islamic radicalism, it’s difficult for the government to declare open war on the tribes providing bases for the Taliban and al Qaeda along the Afghan border. Officers have already reported that up to a third of their troops might be “unreliable” if there were sustained military operations in the tribal territory. Yet, if the government does not go after these bases, the people in them have vowed to continue building their strength until they can topple the government. Such a headache.

Our leverage over Musharraf is simple; $2 billion in direct aid every year since 2002 and help in restructuring Pakistan’s massive debt burden. Beyond that, Musharraf knows what will happen if Pakistan becomes another base for al-Qaeda terrorists to strike western interests with impunity. For the moment, the US and NATO is obeying Musharraf’s absolute restriction on “hot pursuit” of Taliban fighters who have infiltrated into Afghanistan and move effortlessly back across the border into Pakistan. But Musharraf cannot be insensitive to the fact that the patience of the US is wearing thin and that taking matters into our own hands is an option that is not off the table.

Musharraf has also banned air operations against the Taliban (although he has relented on a few occasions when a high value AQ target was sighted) and denied entry even by Special Forces - although there have been hints that he has simply turned the other way with regards to both American and French Special Operations that have been run in the northern Afghan-Pakistani border area.

Ed Morrissey sums up our dilemma with Musharraf pretty well:

Western intelligence and military agencies are unsure how to proceed. American military strikes on these bases will violate Pakistani sovereignty, but Musharraf has not been willing to take on the task himself. The West cannot allow AQ to operate so easily, and the Bush doctrine certainly would apply here. However, if people thought Iraq was such a “meatgrinder”, as one CQ commenter recently put it (and later retracted), it would be a walk in the park compared to an invasion of Waziristan and an occupation of that region. It would almost certainly pull down the Musharraf government in Islamabad, and its replacement would almost certainly be Islamist. Its army and intelligence services would immediately begin to attack American positions in the mountainous country, and we would then be at open war with a nuclear power. Plus, the lines of communication would make it difficult to resupply our troops even if that war went reasonably well; we could not hope to hold Waziristan for a significant period of time.

Besides, given the nature of AQ, even targeted American strikes could not guarantee that they could be “surgical”, ie, not create collateral damage to civilian populations. We also could not be sure that we had destroyed the core AQ targets, although the camps would be enough for now. Escalation of the war in Afghanistan would have to get NATO’s buy-in, and it would open up the White House to more attacks from Congress, including another defunding threat.

Allah adds this:

The stupider, more reactionary types among the nutroots will try to blame this on Chimpy’s Iraq gambit, but one has nothing to do with the other. The issue here is Pakistani sovereignty, not troop levels, and in any case there aren’t enough men and women in the U.S. military to occupy a country of 160+ million people with nuclear weapons and a jihadist power base that’s the envy of the Wahhabist world. We might have enough troops to invade and occupy the tribal areas if Musharraf was willing to cut a deal on that, but (a) what could we possibly offer him to get him to effectively cede territory, (b) how could he hope to survive the irredentist backlash among Pakistanis, and (c) if you think 3,000 dead in Iraq is bad, what would the numbers look like with U.S. troops fighting Iwo-style cave-clearing warfare in the mountains of Waziristan with jihadis from every shinolahole in the Middle East streaming in as reinforcements?

Truly, remarkably, ignorant is the reaction from much of the left. Bush has been blamed for Tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, and a variety of societal ills that the rational among us recognize as not being the responsibility of government. But the delusion that the United States government - run by anyone - should be able to find a way to help Musharraf or mitigate his problems is beyond stupid.

Pakistan is a sovereign country. Those anti-American feelings among the population were there long before Bush took office. And the fiercely independent tribesmen in the north have been fighting the central government in Pakistan since the partition with India 60 years ago. The Taliban, as I mention above, was created by the ISI who has a vested interest in seeing that they survive. Musharraf himself was a big Taliban booster until 9/11. And Pakistan has always taken a proprietary interest in what happens in Afghanistan, seeing that country as part of their sphere of influence.

Taking all that together, only a monumental idiot would blame President Bush for the state of affairs in Pakistan. Here’s one:

So while our Great Decider Bush was busy deciding whether he wanted Osama dead or alive, or didn’t care about him anymore, the real terrorists weren’t waiting around to for his final answer. And now we have a hell of bigger problem. Musharraf’s government is holding on by a thread as it is. He can hardly afford to rile up the Islamic extremists without risking a major coup. The US can hardly go in and start bombing the place willy nilly without triggering the same reaction and possibly riling up a bunch of countries in the region whom we are sure possess nuclear weapons. Not to mention the inevitable civilian deaths in such a strategy would really get the people in terrorist recruiting country even more energized.

It surely would have been better if Bush had finished the first war he started before he expanded the front all over the globe. It couldn’t be anymore screwed up if he did it deliberately. Makes you wonder if creating international chaos wasn’t the goal from the beginning.

“Finished the first war…?” Who, pray tell, would we have been fighting? Goats? Sheep perhaps?

The Taliban had been driven out of Afghanistan. And the sovereign country of Pakistan refused to allow us entry to finish them off. Of course, if we had violated Pakistan’s sovereignty and gone in anyway, Mr. Impolitic would have had apoplexy. Nor does our deranged lefty cousin say anything about the responsibility of the Pakistanis in the aftermath of the War in Afghanistan. We had been assured by Musharraf that the Taliban would be held in check and that al-Qaeda would be dealt with. Given the circumstances and the alternatives, we had very little choice but to believe him.

No, I blame Bush for much of the debacle in Iraq as well as the fact that there are still too many soft targets here in this country. But I cannot stand by and watch truly ignorant, reflexive, bashing of President Bush over a situation that is not his or the government’s fault. The problem of Pakistan is one of geography. It is one of sovereignty. It is one of history that occurred long before George Bush became President. It is about radical politics that Iraq has only marginally affected - that, in fact, our invasion of Afghanistan (you know, the one that our super patriotic liberals say they supported) roiled the streets of Pakistan far more than anything that happened in Iraq.

None of this matters. The left is in a comfort zone when blaming Bush and I daresay they will continue to do so long after his term of office is over.

Britney Spears new look.

Yes she has a gazillion dollars. And yes she’s one of the most famous people on the planet. But from what I can tell of Britney Spears, she is also a human being in great pain and in danger of falling down a deep, dark hole from which it is very difficult to see the light.

First, the story - if you’ve been hiding in a cave the last day or so:

Britney Spears checked into a rehab facility and then abruptly checked out, a source confirms to PEOPLE. And then on Friday, she returned to Southern California – and she shaved her head completely bald.

Video of the newly bald Spears, 25, was captured at a Sherman Oaks, Calif., tattoo parlor by KABC-TV in Los Angeles and posted on its website.

The pop star checked herself into Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Centre in Antigua “two or three days ago” but left after just one day and headed to Florida, the source tells PEOPLE.

TV’s Extra first reported that the singer had entered a treatment facility. TMZ.com later reported that she checked out less than 24 hours later.

That’s from the MSCM (Mainstreatm Celebrity Media) publication People Magazine. This “report” is from a site with even less credibility but, judging by Spears’ actions, rings true:

Britney went to a hair salon on Ventura Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley. Apparently she had called someone from the salon, which was closed, to come back and open the doors just for her. Our photographers say she was crying in the car for 10 minutes before she went inside - you can even see the wet tear stains on her sweatshirt. She then went inside and did the deed herself - picking up the shears and shaving her head.

Despite what Drudge and others are referring to as a “cry for help,” I can tell you that Spears’ actions are no such thing. I have been in the dark place that Spears now finds herself. I have been where she is - looking up the huge mountain she must climb to get her life back from addiction and saying to yourself, “I can’t do it. It’s too hard.” To be told on that first day of rehab how the journey she will embark on is one she will travel the rest of her life, that she will have to fight the demons that now possess her every day forever is the hardest thing anyone can ever hear. The feeling of utter and complete helplessness that engulfs you when you realize exactly what you are giving up, what you are asking of yourself is too much for most people.

That’s why recidivism rates top 70% for most substance abusers who have gone through rehab after two years. For cocaine, it is more than 90%. For Alcohol, slightly less than 60%. The problem isn’t that the programs aren’t good. The problem is one of the patient not being ready to change. And for that to happen, most addiction experts agree that in the overwhelming majority of cases, the patient must first hit rock, solid, bottom. Only when in the depths of despair and bereft of hope will the patient finally come to realize that rehabilitation is the only road to salvation and begin to make an effort to do the things necessary to free themselves.

Spears’ flight from rehab is the classic first impulse of the addicted. The feeling of panic is real, almost irresistible. You realize they want to take away everything that is familiar and comfortable - how you feel when you take that first hit or gulp or shot or even how you feel when you get up in the morning regretting the night before. Indeed, subconsciously that is the nub of the matter. You have been feeling bad for so long that it’s like a comfy old shoe. Dragging it out of its little box and looking at it in the mirror, glorying in it, revelling in it, is so much a part of your self identification that you dread having to put the box away forever.

Hence, the haircut. She doesn’t like what’s staring back at her when she gazes into the mirror. The cirumstances call for desperate reasoning: Maybe if she changes the person in the glass, the rest of her will change as well and she can go on carrying whatever monkey has jumped on her back. That’s the important thing. Maybe she can fool herself into believing she has changed simply by shaving her head.

Awesome denial.

In the meantime, all of us gawk away and watch as a young woman falls into the pit. For those who dismiss Ms. Spears ordeal by saying “she can afford it” or “serves her right” or some other stupidity, you are probably one of those whose empathy meter barely wiggles when you see an injured doe by the side of the road writhing in agony or shut your ears to the pathetic mewlings of a lost kitten. Nothing can be done for you. The part of your soul that registers human has been compromised to the point that only when something bad happens to you or to one of your loved ones does the arrow on the meter jump to levels where most of the rest of us are familiar.

I include in this group the gaping, scrambling subset of the MSM that makes a living as our eyes and ears to the world of celebrity. It is our national guilty pleasure, this obsession with the rich, the beautiful, the oh so sad and lonely creatures whose private lives and public personae have merged so seamlessly that it is impossible to tell where one leaves off and the other begins. To say that this phenomena has never been seen before in the history of civilization is a given. More problematic is how this obsession affects our politics, our culture, and our daily lives.

We are drenched in celebrity, drunk with it really. And the louder we complain about it, the more obsessed we become. This is what drives the “weevils” of Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff - the writhing mass of photographers and reporters who hung on every word and with popping bulbs and clicking cameras, catalogued every action of the Mercury astronauts for the American public.

And their handsome, photogenic boss - President John F. Kennedy - did nothing to discourage the weevils from giving he and his family the same treatment. If the celebrity culture has a granddaddy, it was JFK who rightly believed he could capture the American people’s obsession with Hollywood stars and graft it on to the White House, using it to his own political advantage. The marriage of Hollywood and politics began with Kennedy and each heightened our awareness of the other until today, especially for the Democratic party, the two are hard to tell apart. Politics imbued celebrity with an importance far beyond its true impact on our national life while celebrity made politics more interesting.

A symbiotic relationship that no one knows where it will end up taking us.

The weevils will not leave Ms. Spears alone to suffer in private. They will continue to hound her, to give us all front row seats at her self destruction. I may be old fashioned but somehow, that doesn’t seem right. And I hate to be a stick in the mud but don’t you think this is one aspect of Ms. Spears’ celebrity that we can afford to miss? Will it kill us if we’re not in on Spears drama as she tumbles toward rock bottom?

Maybe we should just let her be. Heresy I’m sure. But in the words of the old Joe South hit

Walk a mile in my shoes, walk a mile in my shoes
And before you abuse, criticize and accuse
Walk a mile in my shoes.

Words that Ms. Spears’ would grant all of us heed. Words of wisdom we can all walk to and live by.

UPDATE:

The inimitable Jim Rose:

Only in America can a celebrity’s complete meltdown be televised from start to finish.

Yup.

And I see where the salon that hosted Ms. Spears scalping party is selling her hair on Ebay.

An event for the multiverse.

Allah: Spears - Judy Garland comparison?

I know what he’s getting at but consider:

1. Spears nice little voice vs. Garland’s shattering vibrato.

2. Spears wiggles and thrusts on stage vs.Garlands enormous presence.

3. Spears best known songs vs. Garlands classics.

4. Spears “acting” vs. Garlands Academy Award nominations for her towering performances in A Star is Born (1954) and Judgement at Nuremberg (1961).

5. Spears flashing vs Garland…are you kidding?

Am I hitting this too hard?

Even Garland’s dissolution was more spectacular but perhaps less public. So perhaps both our points are valid after all.

I got an earful from some of my friends on the left for taking Representative John Murtha and the Democrats to task for their moral cowardice in not directly trying to defund the war but rather slink in the shadows and attempt to sabotage deployments and readiness. Some of the emails I got tried to explain that Murtha’s strategy of strangling the Defense Department by mandating shorter tours and longer periods at home between deployments as well as going so far as to require troops to train with all their equipment (despite the fact that the troop’s equipment is either already in theater or is shipped to Iraq ahead of time) represents a “realistic” approach to the problem of defunding the war.

They point out that an up or down vote wouldn’t pass because Democrats don’t want to be saddled with the inevitable Republican charge of undermining the troops in a time of war. One commenter went so far as to explain that the American people wouldn’t understand the “nuances” of defunding the war so Murtha’s “brilliant” plan not only accomplished the task of ending the war but also left Democrats blameless!

Well, I’m glad we cleared up those points about moral cowardice, aren’t you?

Today, I was gratified to see that the Washington Post mirrors my thoughts on Murtha and his “slow bleed the troops” plan:

REP. JOHN MURTHA (D-Pa.) has a message for anyone who spent the week following the House of Representatives’ marathon debate on Iraq: You’ve been distracted by a sideshow. “We have to be careful that people don’t think this is the vote,” the 74-year-old congressman said of the House’s 246-182 decision in favor of a resolution disapproving of President Bush’s troop surge. “The real vote will come on the legislation we’re putting together.” That would be Mr. Murtha’s plan to “stop the surge” and “force a redeployment” of U.S. forces from Iraq while ducking the responsibility that should come with such a radical step…

Mr. Murtha has a different idea. He would stop the surge by crudely hamstringing the ability of military commanders to deploy troops. In an interview carried Thursday by the Web site MoveCongress.org, Mr. Murtha said he would attach language to a war funding bill that would prohibit the redeployment of units that have been at home for less than a year, stop the extension of tours beyond 12 months, and prohibit units from shipping out if they do not train with all of their equipment. His aim, he made clear, is not to improve readiness but to “stop the surge.” So why not straightforwardly strip the money out of the appropriations bill — an action Congress is clearly empowered to take — rather than try to micromanage the Army in a way that may be unconstitutional? Because, Mr. Murtha said, it will deflect accusations that he is trying to do what he is trying to do. “What we are saying will be very hard to find fault with,” he said.

Is Murtha in complete control of his faculties? This brazen admission of political and moral turpitude points up how truly cynical the Pennsylvania Congressman and his partners in this calumnious plan have become. Not only that, Murtha is also apparently woefully ignorant of what is going on in Iraq and some of his statements call into question whether the 74 year old is mentally sharp enough to occupy a position of leadership in the Democratic party:

Mr. Murtha’s cynicism is matched by an alarming ignorance about conditions in Iraq. He continues to insist that Iraq “would be more stable with us out of there,” in spite of the consensus of U.S. intelligence agencies that early withdrawal would produce “massive civilian casualties.” He says he wants to force the administration to “bulldoze” the Abu Ghraib prison, even though it was emptied of prisoners and turned over to the Iraqi government last year. He wants to “get our troops out of the Green Zone” because “they are living in Saddam Hussein’s palace”; could he be unaware that the zone’s primary occupants are the Iraqi government and the U.S. Embassy?

It would be nice to believe that Mr. Murtha does not represent the mainstream of the Democratic Party or the thinking of its leadership. Yet when asked about Mr. Murtha’s remarks Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) offered her support. Does Ms. Pelosi really believe that the debate she orchestrated this week was not “the real vote”? If the answer is yes, she is maneuvering her party in a way that can only do it harm.

Couple these bizarre statements with Murtha’s weird contention that we should redeploy the troops in Iraq to Okinawa and a troubling picture is emerging of a man who may not be as sharp as he was a decade ago when he was known rightly as a strong proponent of military preparedness and a champion of veterans benefits.

But the Democrats need Murtha for those very reasons - even if his mental acuity is not as it once was. That’s because there’s no one else in their caucus with the national security credentials to lead the retreat from Iraq. As the public face for surrender to the terrorists, the Democrats need Murtha as a front man to reassure the public that running away and leaving the people in Iraq - especially the Sunnis - to the tender mercies of the death squads, criminals, thugs, kidnappers, beheaders, and al-Qaeda terrorists who would be unencumbered in carrying out their massacres isn’t solely the product of left wing loons. In effect, Murtha mainstreams defeat and is therefore necessary to the Democrat’s plan to leave Iraq before the Iraqi government is ready to stand on its own.

Yes, it’s a low blow to call into question Murtha’s mental state. But considering the stakes and considering the statements he’s made above as well as his appearances on Meet the Press and other talk shows which have shown a sometimes confused and incoherent man, I believe it’s a painful but legitimate question to ask. I say painful because I always liked and admired Mr. Murtha. At a time when precious few Democrats were standing up for Ronald Reagan’s defense build up, he was a tireless proponent of strengthening our national defense while the rest of his caucus stood four square against increasing defense spending.

That was then. This is now. And Murtha, for whatever reason, has started down a road that I believe is a gigantic mistake. And the means by which he seeks to achieve his goal is so underhanded, so morally reprehensible that it does a huge disservice to his past standing as a passionate advocate for American security.

I sincerely hope the Republicans can torpedo this plan before it can be implemented. And I hope that Murtha and the Democrats can be convinced to schedule an up or down vote to defund the war. Win or lose, at least that would be a principled way to achieve their aims rather than sneaking around in the dead of night, stabbing the military in the back.

UPDATE:

Ed Morrissey:

Has John Murtha ever been anything more than incoherent on Iraq? He talks loudly but says next to nothing other than reiterate the need to declare defeat and bug out of Iraq. He can’t even get his facts straight despite having spent the better part of two years making himself the leading Democratic voice on the war. Even the Washington Post can’t help but notice that this Emperor has no clothes.

It’s going to be a long two years.

Got that right, dog.

Dan Riehl:

If the Washington Post is willing to call BS on the Democrats in the House, it should be heeded as a strong warning. This will be worse than the way they McGovern-ed themselves in ‘68. At least then they took a principled stand. What they are about today is far from that. Ultimately, they could easily be exposed for the shallow, power happy mob that they are.

Agreed - if the Republicans have the balls to call them out on their cowardice.

A. Jacksonian (Founder and sole member of the Jacksonian party) has some thoughts on Murtha circa 1994.

UPDATE: 2/18

Britt Hume of Fox News notices the same thing I did about Murtha’s diminished capacity:

HUME: That sound bite from John Murtha suggests that it’s time a few things be said about him. Even the “Washington Post” noted he didn’t seem particularly well informed about what’s going on over there, to say the least. Look, this man has tremendous cachet among House Democrats, but he is not — this guy is long past the day when he had anything but the foggiest awareness of what the heck is going on in the world.

Allah has the video.

CHIEF ILLINI IS NO LONGER THE MASCOT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

HE IS TO BE REPLACED BY THE MORE POLITICALLY CORRECT “SOY BOY”

In what observers are calling a “victory that will bring the buffalo back,” the University of Illinois has dropped Chief Illiniwek as its official mascot and replaced the white-boy-dressed-up-idiotically-like-a-Native-American with the more dignified “Soy Boy.”

The University of Illinois will drop its 81-year-old American Indian mascot, Chief Illiniwek, following the last men’s basketball home game of the season on Wednesday, officials said.

The move makes the school eligible to host postseason NCAA championship events.

The NCAA in 2005 deemed Illiniwek — portrayed by buckskin-clad students who dance at home football and basketball games and other athletic events — an offensive use of American Indian imagery and barred the university from hosting postseason events.

American Indian groups and others have complained for years that the mascot, used since 1926, is demeaning. Supporters of the mascot say it honors the contributions of American Indians to Illinois.

Rumors are flying that the next target of the multiculturalists will be changing the name of the state itself. “Illinois” is a white man’s bastardization of the Native American confederation known as “Illini” which included the Cahokia, Kaskaskia, Michigamea, Moingwena, Peoria and Tamaroa Indian tribes. Acceptable alternatives to “Illinois” would be “Soyland,” “Cornhole,” “Flatland,” and “Mostly White.”

As for the team nickname, the Culture Police are accepting for now the rather lame explanation given by the Board:

Illinois still will be able to use the name Illini because it’s short for Illinois and the school can use the term Fighting Illini, because it’s considered a reference to the team’s competitive spirit, school officials said.

The new mascot will be “Soy Boy” in reference to the state’s #1 crop. However, there may be trouble brewing already. Vegetarian groups are said to be up in arms about the insensitive portrayal of the soybean and its use as an irreverent symbol relating to athletic events. Anna Moonbeam, President of People for the Ethical Treatment and Worship of Plants, has threatened a lawsuit against the University unless a ceremony is performed before each appearance of the plant with “appropriate chanting and the burning of dill weed.”

In other news, under pressure from various Irish groups in the United States (and following threats by the IRA), the University of Notre Dame is preparing to drop the “Fighting Leprechaun” as its mascot and replace it with “The Golden Domer.” The news drew immediate fire from People United Against Laughing At Bald Men who objected to the new mascot’s polished noggin…

UPDATE

John Avarosis is under attack for bemoaning the loss of tradition at Illinois.

I give him about 15 more minutes before he does a 180 and apologize for being so politically incorrect.

I always knew politics in Texas was, well, different than other states. Larger than life characters pepper the history of of the Lone Star State, their peccadillos and peculiarities the stuff of legend.

But reading about what was in a memo that the chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee passed around to his fellow lawmakers; a memo that highlighted a group that posits, shall we say, an alternate view of cosmology as well as a counterintuitive reason why this alternate view has been suppressed, takes the adjective “colorful” to a whole new cosmic plane:

It’s not surprising that the earth doesn’t move for Warren Chisum, and maybe it’s not surprising that he blames a Jewish conspiracy for it.

Still, it’s enough to set the world a-spinning that the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, the most powerful committee in the House, distributed to legislators a memo pitching crazed wingers who believe the earth stands still — doesn’t spin on its axis or revolve around the Sun — that Copernicus was part of a Jewish conspiracy to undermine the Old Testament. That would be the same Old Testament that was written by the folks Chisum’s friends say are conspiring to undermine it.

Indeed, I had to check my calendar to make sure I wasn’t living in the 14th century. After reassuring myself that in fact, the year was 2007, I clicked on this link and couldn’t stop laughing:

“An electromagnet and computerized sensor hidden in its display stand cause the Earth to levitate motionlessly in the air.”

Could God have engineered something like that for the real Earth?

Um…I suppose so. If God were a jokester.

The Earth is not rotating…nor is it going around the sun. The universe is not one ten trillionth the size we are told. Today’s cosmology fulfills an anti-Bible religious plan disguised as “science”.

The whole scheme from Copernicanism to Big Bangism is a factless lie. Those lies have planted the Truth-killing virus of evolutionism in every aspect of man’s “knowledge” about the Universe, the Earth, and Himself.

Do you think we should tell these folks to stop using telephones and watching TV? You see, most communications are relayed through space satellites that are in geosynchronous orbit above the earth. That means that the satellite is in an orbit about 26,000 miles above the earth travelling at orbital velocity of about 17,500 MPH. This positioning allows the satellite to maintain a nearly constant spot above the earth. It sort of puts the kibosh on the idea of a fixed earth in that the satellite sure is in a hurry going absolutely nowhere if the earth indeed didn’t rotate.

And perhaps it best that we not wonder about how the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. I’m afraid of the answer these folks might give.

These people are even loonier than their cousins in the creationist movement. I’ve heard creationists talk about the universe being 6,000 years old which by definition, would make the cosmos a considerably smaller place than it is for the rest of us. But a non-rotating earth? A non solar orbiting planet? Truly, remarkably dumb. Do these folks realize that we’ve actually been up there to see for ourselves, that we’ve sent thousands of satellites into orbit while hurling dozens toward the sun and the planets? What kind of trickery do they think is at work?

As far as what should be done with Mr. Chisum, I think if everyone in the country pointed their finger at him and laughed, that might approach a punishment that befits his stupidity. Calling for him to resign would only make him a martyr. Directing ridicule and scorn in his direction would be more effective in countering his bizarre beliefs.

UPDATE

Joshua Marshall fleshes out the whole rancid story, including tracing the memo I linked above back to a Georgia House member with peculiar beliefs.

David Broder is:

It may seem perverse to suggest that, at the very moment the House of Representatives is repudiating his policy in Iraq, President Bush is poised for a political comeback. But don’t be astonished if that is the case.

Like President Bill Clinton after the Democrats lost control of Congress in 1994, Bush has gone through a period of wrenching adjustment to his reduced status. But just as Clinton did in the winter of 1995, Bush now shows signs of renewed energy and is regaining the initiative on several fronts.

More important, he is demonstrating political smarts that even his critics have to acknowledge.

His critics will never acknowledge anything positive about this President so we can safely throw that last sentence in the wastebasket - along with most of this piece.

Broder is an old Washington hand who knows all the right people, attends all the right parties, and is an expert at the Washington rumor and gossip mills. He’s made a good living telling us what the high and mighty really think about each other as well as offering some excellent “inside politics” insights into how personalities and issues interact in our capitol city and how this affects the way things get done.

But he’s reaching here:

When Bush faced reporters on Wednesday morning, he knew that virtually all those in the Democratic majority would be joined by a significant minority of Republicans in voting today to decry the “surge” strategy.

He did three things to diminish the impact of that impending defeat.

First, he argued that the House was at odds with the Senate, which had within the past month unanimously confirmed Gen. David H. Petraeus as the new commander in Iraq — the man Bush said was the author of the surge strategy and the man who could make it work. Bush has made Petraeus his blocking back in this debate — replacing Vice President Cheney, whose credibility is much lower.

Second, he minimized the stakes in the House debate by endorsing the good motives of his critics, rejecting the notion that their actions would damage U.S. troops’ morale or embolden the enemy — all by way of saying that the House vote was no big deal.

And third, by contrasting today’s vote on a nonbinding resolution with the pending vote on funding the war in Iraq, he shifted the battleground to a fight he is likely to win — and put the Democrats on the defensive. Much of their own core constituency wants them to go beyond nonbinding resolutions and use the power of the purse to force Bush to reduce the American commitment in Iraq.

Where the non-binding resolution will have no teeth, Bush himself will have little influence over the “slow bleed the troops” strategy that leaked on Politico yesterday. House Democrats are in dead earnest to undermine the President’s surge plan. Just because they don’t have the moral character or political guts to call for an up and down vote on funding the war doesn’t mean Bush has trapped them in the slightest. They will get both their resolution going on record against the surge and an end to the war on their terms regardless of what Bush says or does.

Jeralyn Merritt recognizes this:

Sure the Dems support with the base is going to suffer if that happens. But more than that, Dems will join Bush in being blamed on Iraq if that happens. The Dems must see that a position on Iraq can not be avoided. And the choices are binary - in or out. Vote funding for the war and the Iraq Debacle becomes your Debacle too. Vote against it and it does not. It is that simple.

It is “cut and run” all over again. In 2006, the Dems were smart enough not to bite on Rove’s gambit. I smell them biting this time, and taking the Iraq Debacle on their shoulders. Incredibly stupid politically as well as being bad policy.

And when that happens, Bush will look better relatively in comparison. Call it an Einstein Bounce.

I disagree with Ms. Merritt in that I don’t think the Democrats will “bite” this time. Murtha and his “slow bleed the troops” strategy will give a nice cover to even those Democrats who might be wary of voting to cut off funding directly for the war. That’s the genius of Murtha’s cowardly proposals. While his party believes the war is lost and our men and women should be “redeployed,” Murtha and the Democrats are perfectly content to allow our soldiers to bleed in the field while they stay politically safe by gradually undermining the ability of the Pentagon to carry out the orders of the Commander in Chief rather than advocate an up or down vote to defund the war immediately.

Republicans will gripe about it but in the end, Democrats will probably get a sizable number of them to vote for at least some elements of the Murtha plan. So much for a Bush “comeback.”

And that makes the rest of Broder’s musings ironic in the extreme:

In other respects, too, Bush has been impressive in recent days.

He has been far more accessible — and responsive — to the media and public, holding any number of one-on-one interviews, both on and off the record, leading up to Wednesday’s televised news conference. And he has been more candid in his responses than in the past.

While forcefully making his points, he has depersonalized the differences with his critics and opponents. He has not only vouched for the good intentions of congressional Democrats, he has visited them on their home ground, given them opportunities to question him face to face, and repeatedly outlined areas — aside from Iraq — where he says they could work together on legislation: immigration, energy, education, health care, the budget.

With the public eager for some bipartisan progress on all these fronts, Bush is signaling that he, at least, is ready to try.

The question that echoes through everyone’s mind is what the hell took so long? Why did it take a massive defeat at the polls for Bush to reach out and attempt a little bi-partisanship?

If he had tried from the beginning of the War in Iraq to make the Democrats partners rather than playing political games with the AUMF vote (Authorization to Use Military Force) and then rejecting the advice of wise Democrats on war policy for three years, I daresay we wouldn’t find ourselves in this mess today. I know I’m going somewhat against the grain here when it comes to how my conservative friends view the history of the last few years but for every slight, every insult, every bric-a-brac thrown at the President, there has been one returned. It takes two parties to poison the political atmosphere - just like it takes two parties to fashion bi-partisan consensus. And now, in this country’s hour of need in Iraq, when we desperately need a bi-partisan consensus in order to avoid catastrophe, it is impossible to find.

Instead, we have one side trying to undermine the other - Democrats seeking to undermine the President’s plan while Republicans seeking to make Democrats partners in defeat; an Alfonse and Gaston dance that if the stakes weren’t so unbelievably high, it would be fodder worthy of a Shakespearean comedy - or perhaps tragedy. For in the end, there are 150,000 men and women in Iraq who will be doing Murtha’s “slow bleed” while surging in futility unless the Iraqi government can find a way to bring all the factions together to live in peace.

I frankly don’t care if Bush gets a “bounce” for being clever about placing the onus of defunding the troops on the Democrats. He shouldn’t care either. What they should all care about is salvaging something from this debacle short of a humanitarian and strategic disaster.

And that, gentle readers, would give a bounce to everyone.

More evidence that this ain’t your daddy’s surge:

A U.S. military spokesman on Thursday hailed a joint American-Iraqi raid on Baghdad’s leading Shiite Muslim mosque as proof of that the Baghdad security plan is being applied evenly against all sides of the country’s sectarian divide.

The raid, which took place Wednesday, angered the mosque’s imam, who took the unusual step of canceling Friday prayer services at the historic Baratha mosque, where, Shiites believe, Muhammad’s son-in-law, Ali, converted a Christian missionary to Islam in the seventh century.

Sheik Jalal al-Din al-Saghir, a member of parliament from the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, denounced the raid, which the U.S. military said had turned up a cache of illegal weapons. The Supreme Council is one of Iraq’s largest political parties and part of its governing coalition.

Searching mosques has been a particularly sensitive issue since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. In delivering the decree that legalized the security plan earlier this week, Iraqi army Lt. Gen. Aboud Qanbar said soldiers would enter mosques only if they were used “for illegal purposes” or to protect citizens from harm.

Our intelligence is so good that the problem isn’t so much finding the weapons as finding the will to confiscate them. To do this, we are going to have to confront the militias, raid mosques, arrest government officials, purge the army and police, and in the process, try and avoid civilian casualties.

A tall order all of that. And I suspect we will continue to hear complaints from some of the beneficiaries of the sectarian violence:

Al-Saghir said he’d called the defense and interior ministries and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s office, demanding to know who’d authorized the search.

“All of them denied any knowledge about the raid,” Saghir said. “One of the Iraqi officials told me that the U.S. officials in Iraq are confused.”

Iraqi government spokesmen didn’t return calls Thursday.

U.S. Army Lt. Col. Chris Garver, a spokesman for the coalition forces in Iraq, said American soldiers had entered the mosque only after the search had been completed and then only to help Iraqi special forces haul out the weapons.

The search showed that the security forces would target Shiite militias, even if they had to enter mosques, he said.

Sounds to me like a case of “plausible deniability” on the part of Iraqi authorities. To prevent al-Maliki from throwing a monkey wrench into politically sensitive ops like raiding a mosque, they have been deliberately kept in the dark, only being told of the broad outlines of the plan.

I can see where this might lead to some complaints that al-Maliki is not in control and has zero influence on what happens in his own country. But you don’t need a surge or Baghdad Security Plan for that statement to be true. The whole point of the operation is to give al-Maliki that control - at least in Baghdad. What he does with it will determine how quickly we can draw down our forces.

Will going after the most important Shia mosque in Baghdad allay some of the fears by Sunnis that we will only target their militias and deaths squads? Not until we directly confront the Mahdi Army will the Sunnis believe that the surge will be an equal opportunity destroyer. As if to highlight that point, American aircraft bombed a Sunni-dominated part of southern Baghdad near Dora. The Sunnis in Dora have practiced a little faith-based cleansing by ejecting Shias and Christians who have lived in the area for generations, killing dozens. The use of aircraft is an escalation that we will almost certainly see more of as fighting intensifies around the city.

I wish I could summon up some outrage over this “comic book” that is being distributed to San Francisco high school kids but every time I look at some of the panels and try to think of something serious to write, I break out laughing.

The introduction by the author, Joel Andreas, reveals a member of the paranoid left in good standing:

The September 11 attacks provided an opportunity for George W. Bush to declare a “War on Terrorism,” which in practice turned out to be an endless binge of war-making. The second edition was published in early 2002, following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. The Bush Administration then turned to preparing for a new war against Iraq. A thin rhetorical veneer about combating terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction hardly concealed its underlying aim: to impose a new U.S. client regime in the Middle East and assure control over a country that has the world’s second largest known oil reserves. As the present edition goes to press, the U.S. is occupying Afghanistan and Iraq. In an effort to quell armed resistance, the U.S. military is taking harsh punitive measures against the civilian populations of both countries, feeding a spiral of violence that has repercussions around the world and is placing us all in greater danger.

Holy Smokes! It’s like trying to fisk Chomsky! So many exaggerations, misinformed non sequiturs, and out and out falsehoods that all a sane person can do is throw up their hands and laugh at the utter stupidity on display.

As for the comic book itself, the reference notes explain much: Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Peter Wyden, William Blum, Robert Fisk, Charles Bergquist - an honor roll of leftist historians whose writings are colored to this day by a discredited Marxist worldview involving economic determinism (although Marxists reject the idea of determinism ever being a Marxist concept - now that it’s an abject failure), reductionism and other tried and true hyper liberal historical/sociological concepts that survive only in the dusty offices and even dustier heads of leftist academics.

This worldview enjoyed much popularity for more than 100 years because it purported to explain human behavior by looking at class and macro-economic factors. The problem, of course, is that determinism doesn’t do a good job of describing human motivations at all. It has never done a good job of doing so and never will. In fact, if the collapse of Communism proved anything, it showed that leftist scholars who adhere to this worldview have been more wrong in interpreting and commenting on historical events than any similar group of scholars since perhaps the Greeks who ascribed divine intervention to historical occurrences.

But don’t tell leftist academics this. Their heads might explode.

But beyond the author of this comic book and his sources, there is the weird, almost casual disregard for context that makes the book - which is supposed to be used as a supplemental text - little more than the kind of rant you might hear from brainless, uneducated goofs like Cindy Sheehan or Dennis Kucinich. Case in point: Chapter Two “The Cold War:”

Aside from the gross exaggerations and lack of context given regarding those 200 military “interventions” - the overwhelming majority of which were to protect American citizens and property in times of revolution or civil unrest in countries that could not guarantee such protections - I would call your attention to the panel in the upper left of the screen where the young boy is reading what the leftists see as sanitized American history that promotes militarism while keeping our young people ignorant of “the truth.”

Leftists believe that American history is locked in a closet guarded by CIA agents 24 hours a day. If a history textbook somehow fails to show how truly evil the United States is, the obvious reason is that we are suppressing the “true” history of slavery, or depredations carried out against Indians, or oppression of women, or some such arbitrary yardstick of historical accuracy that textbooks deliberately leave out to promote a mindless, patriotic agenda.

I will be the first to take American history textbooks to task for being incomplete, simplistic, and these days, full of politically correct narratives that reflects the desire of textbook companies to sell more books rather than any genuine effort to tell America’s story. But in the end, the kind of “history” promoted by the left is, in fact, anti-history. The schizophrenic nature of our national story - a nation that loves liberty above all else but kept millions in bondage for the first 80 years of its existence among other dichotomies - cannot be illustrated in any single textbook or even series of textbooks and certainly not in a comic book where context is deliberately excluded in order to promote an agenda. In short, the comic book becomes a parody of itself. That panel in the upper left above could show the young man reading the comic book in which his picture appears.

What kind of high school would purchase comic books in the first place, especially when trying to facilitate discussion on such an extraordinarily complex subject? It is apparent that either San Francisco is full of ignorant high school kids who can only learn by being exposed to reading material the level that a kindergartner wouldn’t find challenging or that school authorities themselves have precious little confidence in the cognitive abilities of students under their care.

My guess is the latter. This country is full of clueless school officials who not only fail to challenge students in developing curricula that would give them a fully rounded education, but also seek to promote their own agendas and foist their own ideas upon students with little thought to developing their critical thinking skills - the ability of the student to think and reason for themselves. This includes liberals in San Francisco and conservatives in Kansas.

Stupidity among school boards knows no ideological limits.

Most Americans are familiar with the heroic narrative involving New York city mayor Rudy Guiliani and his actions on 9/11. As the horror unfolded on that tragic day, Rudy was everywhere; walking the streets covered in dust and ash from the fallen towers, before the cameras trying to both assure the citizens of New York while hammering home the fact that casualties from the attack would be “more than we can bear.” His presence - both commanding and calming at the same time - established a public personae of a no-nonsense, take charge guy with compassion and empathy for the victims and a cool, unflappable style that assured Americans far beyond the borders of New York city.

That’s because, for all intents and purposes, Rudy Guiliani was the face of the United States government for those first few hours in the aftermath of the attacks. While the President was being shuttled around by the Secret Service to secure locations across the country, the calm visage of the New York Mayor appearing on television before the press or walking the devastated streets of his beloved city was the only connection the American people watching at home had with someone in charge.

This part of the narrative is what Guiliani and his handlers will want the American people to see and remember once the former mayor announces his candidacy for President of the United States. No one can take this away from Guiliani. By any standard, he performed magnificently in his role as the voice of sanity and reason when everything around him seemed insane and unreal.

But there’s more to the story, of course. And beyond what Guiliani did or didn’t do before and after 9/11 is the question regarding the propriety of using the attacks as a launching pad for a Presidential campaign. Would Guiliani, a high profile mayor of the second largest city in the country, even be considered presidential material if not for his actions on that awful day?

And what about Rudy’s actions in the years prior to 9/11 that some say contributed mightily to the death toll in the towers that day? The antiquated New York emergency services communications system shattered under the city-wide disaster - some say as a consequence of the mayor’s inattentiveness and shortsightedness.

There are also questions swirling around the mayor’s decisions in those first critical minutes after the planes hit the towers. Arriving near the scene of the tragedy, Guiliani, (some believe while using 20/20 hindsight) should have worked harder to establish better coordination of all the first responders. The lack of a unified command structure between police and firefighters at the scene may have contributed to the high death toll say critics.

The 9/11 Commission, cognizant of the political ramifications of being too hard on Guiliani (and the New York authorities in general) ended up glossing over this “two post” command structure where the firefighters and police had separate command centers on scene. But the questions remain. And herein lies Guiliani’s dilemma.

If Rudy makes his 9/11 narrative the centerpiece of his campaign, he opens the door to the kind of scrutiny of his actions that day which will almost certainly tarnish that legend. Questions he has been successfully able to fend off for 6 years will now demand answers. Why were firefighter radios inoperative in the chaos? Why was the emergency service command post set up at the World Trade Centers? Why were there no protocols for responding to a high rise fire or terrorist attack?

These questions were asked in a book by two liberal New York writers for the Village Voice in Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11. Dan Collins and Wayne Barrett, using information from several authorities including the 9/11 Commission, detail nearly a decade of inattention to the threat of a terrorist attack by the Guiliani administration as well as some disturbing actions following that tragic day regarding the safety of workers tasked with cleaning up at Ground Zero. A spokesman for the Mayor countered that more than 25,000 people were evacuated safely on 9/11 due in no small part to Rudy’s leadership.

What, if anything, can Rudy do to both frame his candidacy using 9/11 as a backdrop while avoiding the pitfalls that the inevitable increased scrutiny of his actions would engender?

Apparently, Rudy is going to try and maximize his 9/11 personae to the fullest, even going so far as to recruit families of 9/11 victims as supporters:

Supporters of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani have started discussions with relatives of 9/11 victims about backing him if he runs for president in 2008, some family members told The Post.

The conversations have taken place in recent weeks, according to some victims’ families, who described the talks as “casual.”

Marian Fontana, who lost her firefighter husband on 9/11, said she got an invitation to go to a Giuliani exploratory committee dinner last week from a former firefighter working with Giuliani’s committee. She described the invite as “last-minute.”

Fontana said she was appreciative of what Giuliani did after 9/11, but would want to know a lot more about any candidate’s stand on a variety of issues.

I see nothing inherently wrong with this strategy. Especially since the opposition is already lining up to savage him on the issue:

But some relatives who are anti-Giuliani are already planning “Swiftboat”-type attacks against the ex-mayor - modeled on the negative campaign against John Kerry in 2004 by his fellow Vietnam vets. It seems likely that 9/11 kin could help Giuliani counter that criticism.

Some 9/11 family members have been deeply critical of Giuliani, blaming him for communications failures the day of the attacks.

Others have faulted his administration for allegedly not doing enough to protect rescue and recovery workers from polluted air at Ground Zero.

And it is a dead certainty that the 9/11 “Truthers” - the paranoid nutcases who posit all sorts of conspiracy theories surrounding that terrible day - will be out in full force, piggybacking their crackpot ideas on the opposition to Guiliani wherever and whenever they get a chance. This may actually play into Guiliani’s hands in that the Truthers may discredit some of the opposition to his candidacy.

But the press will almost certainly be relentless in their pursuit of Guiliani - especially in the matter of the post-9/11 health issues of workers at Ground Zero. The question of adequate safeguards for those workers and the subsequent rash of respiratory ailments and deaths was even highlighted by President Bush in his State of the Union Speech. Did Guiliani sacrifice workers’ health in the interest of getting the site cleaned up? This question and others will dog his campaign unless he is willing to address the issues frontally.

And this is something he may be unwilling to do. Rudy will be walking an extremely fine line between exploiting 9/11 and downplaying his role in that day’s drama. Americans don’t like braggarts for president so Guiliani will probably have others touting his positive contributions in the disaster. It is ironic however, that he himself will probably have to deal directly with the criticisms, answering questions early on in order to tamp down any possibility that the criticisms will get in the way of his message. Whether he can use this platform to sharpen his message regarding his leadership and competence as well as his toughness and willingness to make big decisions remains to be seen.

He will also have to deal with the perception that using 9/11 as a catalyst for his campaign may be taken as unseemly. If he goes too far, his opponents will let him have it. If he doesn’t go far enough, he risks having the narrative disappear from the campaign altogether.

The press as referee will collectively decide what is appropriate and what isn’t. Given their penchant for creating controversy and knocking down frontrunners, it wouldn’t surprise me if the attacks on Guiliani’s 9/11 legend started immediately following any formal announcement of his candidacy. As we are seeing with Senator Obama, once you throw your hat in the ring, it’s open season and may the devil take the last reporter who jumps off the bandwagon.

Fair or not, ready or not, Guiliani will be dealing with these issues in the coming weeks. How he responds will not only determine whether he can become President but also what kind of a President he might end up being.

Last June as the Senate was debating various proposals for withdrawing American troops from Iraq, I wrote the following:

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.

As House Democrats prepare to open debate on the Iraq war resolution, we have further evidence that when it comes to having the courage of their convictions, the House Democratic leadership has feet of clay:

Top House Democrats, working in concert with anti-war groups, have decided against using congressional power to force a quick end to U.S. involvement in Iraq, and instead will pursue a slow-bleed strategy designed to gradually limit the administration’s options.

Led by Rep. John P. Murtha, D-Pa., and supported by several well-funded anti-war groups, the coalition’s goal is to limit or sharply reduce the number of U.S. troops available for the Iraq conflict, rather than to openly cut off funding for the war itself.

The legislative strategy will be supplemented by a multimillion-dollar TV ad campaign designed to pressure vulnerable GOP incumbents into breaking with President Bush and forcing the administration to admit that the war is politically unsustainable.

As described by participants, the goal is crafted to circumvent the biggest political vulnerability of the anti-war movement — the accusation that it is willing to abandon troops in the field. That fear is why many Democrats have remained timid in challenging Bush, even as public support for the president and his Iraq policies have plunged.

A “slow bleed strategy?” Whose blood? I daresay it won’t be any of the Democratic leadership.

There is nothing noble about war. There is nothing uplifting or heroic about fighting one. Individual acts of heroism notwithstanding, war ultimately represents a failure of some kind. For the United States, sleepwalking during the 1990’s while al-Qaeda gathered strength and states like Iraq trained terrorists with utter impunity, it was a failure of intelligence, of diplomacy, of will, and finally a failure of imagination that led to the catastrophe of 9/11.

There is nothing moral about war except its quick and decisive ending. And whether or not you believe Iraq was a war of choice or whether you think it was thrust upon us by the exigencies of the times, the fact of the matter is we either fight to win - and win as quickly as circumstances allow - or we admit defeat and leave, accepting the consequences of our folly while holding harmless the young men and women who sacrificed much in service to the government and the people.

I say to you that whether you believe this war to be moral or immoral, the actions of the Democratic leadership in deliberately drawing out our withdrawal because they lack the political courage to take a stand on what they believe and cut off all funding for the Iraq War to bring the troops home now constitutes a towering act of moral cowardice rarely seen in Congress. Perhaps the debates over the Dyers Anti-Lynching Bill of 1918 would find an echo in today’s craven attempts by Democrats at avoiding responsibility for the moral consequences of their loudly proclaimed position on the war.

Instead of leadership, we get glitz and smoke and mirrors. Instead of a sober, serious approach to this issue of life and death, war and peace, we get the circus of a meaningless, degrading resolution that states opposition to sending more troops. And instead of bold, clear cut, up or down votes on whether we should stay or go, it appears we are going to get the tactics of the saboteur and assassin; cowardly end runs that seek to undermine the military in ways that even an enemy of this country could only dream:

Murtha, the powerful chairman of the defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, will seek to attach a provision to an upcoming $93 billion supplemental spending bill for Iraq and Afghanistan. It would restrict the deployment of troops to Iraq unless they meet certain levels adequate manpower, equipment and training to succeed in combat. That’s a standard Murtha believes few of the units Bush intends to use for the surge would be able to meet.

In addition, Murtha, acting with the backing of the House Democratic leadership, will seek to limit the time and number of deployments by soldiers, Marines and National Guard units to Iraq, making it tougher for Pentagon officials to find the troops to replace units that are scheduled to rotate out of the country. Additional funding restrictions are also being considered by Murtha, such as prohibiting the creation of U.S. military bases inside Iraq, dismantling the notorious Abu Ghraib prison and closing the American detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

President Bush, the lamest of lame ducks, whose approval ratings are in the low 30’s, apparently still frightens cats, little children, and the House Democratic leadership:

Pelosi and other top Democrats are not yet prepared for an open battle with the White House over ending funding for the war, and they are wary of Republican claims that Democratic leaders would endanger the welfare of U.S. troops. The new approach of first reducing the number of troops available for the conflict, while maintaining funding levels for units already in the field, gives political cover to conservative House Democrats who are nervous about appearing “anti-military” while also mollifying the anti-war left, which has long been agitating for Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to be more aggressive.

“What we have staked out is a campaign to stop the war without cutting off funding” for the troops, said Tom Mazzie of Americans Against Escalation of the War in Iraq. “We call it the ‘readiness strategy.’”

Perhaps if Mr. Bush were flat on his back and tied down, the House Democrats would feel up to challenging him over war funding. As it is, they must slink along in the shadows, applying the “slow bleed strategy” while making up clever nomenclature to describe their perfidious behavior.

I hope the Republicans expose this strategy for the immoral cowardice it represents. Because there is very little nuance when it comes to war. This is why I say support the war and fully fund the troops and the surge or oppose the war and seek to defund the conflict. The Democratic strategy in this case gives us the worst of both worlds; no commitment to victory while refusing to acknowledge that their monkey wrench strategy - their “slow bleed the troops” strategy - does nothing except prolong the agony of the war just so that they can avoid the political pain and risk a stand up strategy would entail.

The Democrats say they ran on a platform of bringing new leadership and new ideas on the war. All right then. Lead. Give us new ideas - even if those ideas involve forcing the President to remove the troops from Iraq. Cowering in the face of tough political choices only reinforces the notion that you don’t have the guts to lead this country in its hour of greatest need.

Simply put, this “strategy” is unworthy of a majority party. Perhaps if you start acting like you run the place, you’ll grow a pair and wake up one day national leaders who can stand on two feet rather than sneak your agenda for the war through using legislative tricks and sleight of hand.

For shame, I say. Shame on you.

UPDATE

Bryan at Hot Air:

If they do what they’re apparently planning to do, “slow bleed” will be a very apt description. Those doing the bleeding, slowly, will be US troops.

Got that right.

Hinderaker:

So the Democrats will do their best to make the United States’ effort in Iraq fail, but without taking responsibility for that action, and then try to benefit politically from the country’s defeat. Nice.

Don’t know if I’d go quite so far. After all, there is very little chance anyone will see the loss of the war as anything but the President’s fault. But the political strategy sounds about right.

UPDATE II

Even the netnuts are getting antsy. Matt Stoller:

Is it time to work to run primary campaigns against Democrats who won’t argue for ending the war? There are immense incentives in DC that play into the status quo. Democrats think that Bush is going to be blamed for Iraq, and he will be. But Democrats have power, and that means that Democrats have some responsibility. It’s obvious that no Democrats in DC, with a few exceptions, feel any pull towards withdrawal. So they are screwing over us, who voted them into office to end the war, and we’re enabling them with cheerleading.

We must put incentives in place to stop this madness. And believe me, it’s madness. I live here. This is full of crazy people in suits who think that spending $1 trillion on defense a year is a good thing. And those are the progressives!