Right Wing Nut House

Hall of Fame Middle Linebacker Mike Singletary personified the ‘85 Bears defense.

The roar would start even before the team ran out from the tunnel to take the field. It was a primal sound, the kind of noise one might hear at a gladiatorial contest where the crowd anticipated blood being spilled or animals loosed upon unfortunates tied to stakes in the middle of the arena.

And then, as if shot from the mouth of a cannon, Mike Singletary would lead 1985 edition of The Beloveds on to the field at full gallop. The crowd, already working themselves into a fevered pitch, would scream even louder. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that this Bear’s team was something special. And people appreciated the fact that the contest that was about to unfold would prove as entertaining an afternoon of football as had ever been seen in Chicago for all the long history of this team in this town.

This team. This town. The 1985 Bears were a team for the books. Not just sports record books mind you. The 1985 Beloveds could have provided fodder for tomes from a couple of academic disciplines. There was the sociological phenomenon that were the 1985 Bears - a team that united a city as it perhaps had not been united before. The influence of the football team permeated all levels of society in Chicago, all income groups, all races, creeds, ethnicities, and classes. Then there was the economic impact of that team. If you had something with a Chicago Bear on it or the Bear’s logo, it sold out. Retailers couldn’t keep the stuff on the shelves. The city also estimated that year that each home game brought an additional $20-30 million dollars to Chicago businesses.

One might be tempted to even explore the religious angle to the story of the 1985 Bears although prayers offered for victory by priests, ministers, rabbis, imams, and clergy from every faith on gameday might be stretching my point a little too far.

The team’s march to the Super Bowl that year was filled with some of the most memorable moments in the long and storied history of Chicago sports. There was that incredibly dramatic performance by Bears quarterback Jim McMahon against the Vikings on September 20th. On the sidelines at the start of the game due to a sore shoulder and infected leg, McMahon convinced Da Coach to send him into the game in the middle of the third quarter with my beloveds trailing 17-9.

The very first play from scrimmage, the punk QB threw a 70 yard TD to speedster Willy Gault. Then, following an interception by Wilbur Marshall, McMahon’s first play in the series was another TD pass, this time a 25 yarder to WR Dennis McKinnon. Finally, getting the ball back after a Vikings punt, McMahon coolly led the team down the field, topping off his third quarter effort with a 43 yard strike once again to McKinnon.

Three touchdowns in 6:40, turning a 17-9 deficit into a 30-17 lead and an eventual 33-24 victory. It is the stuff of legends. And the nearly speechless ABC crew televising the rare Thursday night contest began to talk about the Bears as serious contenders.

There was the 49′ers game a few weeks later with the defense swarming, darting, and burying the Super Bowl Champs 26-10, avenging the humiliation of the 23-0 drubbing meted out by San Francisco in the NFC Championship game the previous January.

Then there were the Green Bay Packers. Ditka hated the Packers. He hated everything about them. He most of all hated their coach Forest Gregg. In the team’s 23-7 victory, Da Coach sent in “325 pound” defensive lineman William “The Fridge” Perry in goal line situations for the offense. I put Perry’s weight in quotes because it was obvious to all that Perry may have been 325 pounds at some point in his life - high school perhaps - but weighed closer to 380 that night.

Lining up in the backfield as a blocker for Walter Payton, Perry made Packer linebacker George Cumby the answer to a trivia question by knocking the poor unfortunate halfway to Peoria and opening a gaping hole for Payton to walk into the endzone. Later that year, Perry would actually run the ball for a touchdown in the Super Bowl and later in his career, catch a pass for a TD. But it was that magical night against Green Bay that started the Perry legend that has endeared him to Bears fans to this day.

There was the 44-0 blowout of Dallas and the playoff wins in the cold and snow against New York and the Rams before the lopsided 46-10 triumph in Super Bowl XX - all memories cherished by fans for the last 21 years.

That team was as unique a group of players who ever suited up together. The disparate and clashing personalities somehow all seemed to meld together to form an unbreakable bond - a bond that extended to the fans as well. There were quiet ones like Fencik and Gayle. There were loud ones like McMichael and McMahon. There were funny ones like Perry and McKinnon.

And presiding over the mayhem was the fiery Ditka who was at war with everyone - his own players at times, his own coaches (especially defensive coach Buddy Ryan), the press, the opposing players and coaches. One would think that if he could swing it, Ditka would take on the popcorn vendors at the game so combative he was. And the city ate it up.

It was the defense, of course, that brought out the beast in fans. Much has been made of the 2007 version of the Bears defense in comparing it to the 1985 crew. This is silly. The Buddy Ryan led group were nothing like this year’s cat quick, cerebral, position-conscious crew. That 1985 bunch were like animals in a zoo that Ryan kept locked up for 6 days without food and then opened the cages on Sunday afternoon to feast on opposing players. The flew around the field like madmen - ravenous beasts swarming, grappling, fighting, and hitting like a ton of bricks. Opposing teams were terrified and it showed.

This year’s defense is good and will be better with the return of safety Mike Brown and defensive tackle Tommie Harris next year. But even when they were playing lights out the first 8 or 9 games of the season, they relied more on deceiving the other team’s offense than frightening them to death. The NFL will be a long time before they see the likes of that 1985 crew again.

They are all in their late 40’s and 50’s now. Recently, the plight of some of them has been highlighted, shining a light on the crime that is the NFL pension and health care system for retired players. A couple of them are suing the league and the NFL Players Union for what they consider unfair treatment. But most of the 1985 Bears who survive are fit and reasonably well off. We lost Sweetness in 1999 to a liver ailment and Todd Bell to a heart attack at age 43 in 2005. The remainder pass in and out of memory as they appear here and there on television, calling to mind a glory that will always be remembered but can never be recaptured.

No matter what the 2007 Bears do on Sunday, they too will enjoy a modicum of immortality. And judging by their quality coach and the quality ballplayers he has assembled, I feel confident in saying that no matter what happens this year, the Chicago Bears will probably not take 21 years to get back to the Super Bowl.

But Lovie Smith could win a Super Bowl every year between now and the time he retires and it will not dim the memories or the rub the luster off that 1985 squad - the most beloved of all Bears teams.

Actually, if Smith wins on Sunday, it wouldn’t hurt. No sir…wouldn’t hurt at all…

The strange and bizarre saga of William Arkin endures as the Military Affairs columnist and blogger for the Washington Post continues to offer up explanations for what he really meant in his January 30th post savaging the American military.

Yesterday, Arkin posted an incoherent defense of his position that referred to his critics as “arrogant and intolerant” while furiously trying to backtrack from his original thoughts by lying about what he said in the January 30th post.

Not surprisingly, this didn’t work very well. In fact, a couple of hours after the response to his critics was posted, it was hastily taken down. Someone somewhere at WaPo may have seen Arkin’s response as not only inadequate but insulting as well and subsequently removed the offending post from Arkin’s webpage.

Arkin proved himself nothing if not dogged by posting a second, less inflammatory but still incoherent response to his critics that still contains obvious falsehoods about what he said in the original post while saying that he knew all along that his words would draw a huge negative reaction and that he did it on purpose to get a dialogue started on the issue of the military being put on a pedestal:

I knew when I used the word “mercenary” in my Tuesday column that I was being highly inflammatory.

NBC News ran a piece in which enlisted soldiers in Iraq expressed frustration about waning American support.

I intentionally chose to criticize the military and used the word to incite and call into question their presumption that the public had a duty to support them. The public has duties, but not to the American military.

So I committed blasphemy, and for this seeming lack of respect and appreciation for individuals in uniform, I have been roundly criticized and condemned.

Mercenary, of course, is an insult and pejorative, and it does not accurately describe the condition of the American soldier today. I sincerely apologize to anyone in the military who took my words literally.

Long time readers of this site know that I rarely use profanity in a post but Arkin’s words impel me to make an exception:

What a crock of shit.

Everything he writes rings hollow. I don’t believe for one minute he could have possibly sensed the firestorm of controversy that erupted over his insults. And his “apology” - that he’s sorry anyone in the military took his words “literally” - is a shocking prevarication.

He didn’t just use the word “mercenary” in passing. He used it as part of what passes for humor on the left. It was a deliberate smear - the kind that keeps you in good standing with the anti-war crowd. It is a wink and a nod at the hard left, telling them that he agrees with them but that the mask must stay on so that the slack jawed, goober chewing, shotgun toting, mouthbreathers in the hinterlands don’t get their panties in a bunch:

But it is the United States, and the recent NBC report is just an ugly reminder of the price we pay for a mercenary - oops sorry, volunteer - force that thinks it is doing the dirty work.

In effect, he was telling his friends on the left to take the insult literally while maintaining a certain deniability by making an awkward bon mot out of the phrase.

Where Arkin refuses to back down is in his belief that the American soldier shouldn’t be dissing the home folks - not when patriots like him “support” them:

Those in uniform who think about and speak out about this predicament are rightly frustrated and angry. Many seem to find some solace in blaming the media or anti-war “leftists” or the Democratic Party or the liberals, or even an ungrateful or insufficiently martial American public.

But if those in the military are now going to argue that we are losing in Iraq because the military has lacked for Ssomething, then the absence of such support should be placed at the feet of the Bush administration, Rumsfeld and company, and a Republican Congress — not on the shoulders of the American public, who have been nothing but supportive, even those who have opposed the war…

In the middle of all of this are the troops, the pawns in political battles at home as much as they are on the real battlefield. We unquestioningly “support” these troops for the very reasons that they are pawns. We give them what we can to be successful, and we have a contract with them, because they are our sons and daughters and a part of us, not to place them in an impossible spot

Is it “solace” those men on the NBC report were seeking? It sounded to me like they were seeking an answer to a very good question - a question that Arkin refuses to even try and answer (except by muddying the waters by saying they shouldn’t be asking questions in the first place): How can you “support the troops” without supporting their mission?

Arkin is silent on this point except to say that of course you can be supportive of the men while opposing the war! How dare you even raise the question!

No explanation. Just platitudes about free speech - a curious defense given his scolding of the soldiers themselves for speaking out. I agree with Arkin that it is possible to be a patriotic American and oppose the war and agitate for bringing the troops home now. And while we shouldn’t question their patriotism, we damn well can question their judgement. Of course, they can similarly question the judgement of those of us who support our continued deployment. This is called democratic debate. Perhaps Arkin has forgotten how that works and that the soldiers also have every right to participate.

All of this comes back to the mask being worn by Arkin and many on the left and how it hides their true feelings about the military and the United States in general. At the beginning of the war, we heard much from our lefty friends about how this time, unlike what happened in Viet Nam, they wouldn’t blame the war on the troops. No spitting please. No calling them “baby killers.” Of course, this doesn’t mean that they don’t really think that. They’re just not going to make the political error this time around of getting the rest of the American people angry at them for what they truly believe.

This why it is impossible for Arkin and others to answer the simple question posed by the soldiers. There literally is no answer because the soldiers are correct. But for very good political reasons, most of the anti-war crowd will obfuscate and set up straw men about “free speech” rather than give a direct response. Simply saying that it is possible to support the troops while opposing their mission doesn’t cut it. By putting the onus on the troops for asking it, Arkin tries to shift the focus from the obvious answer - he doesn’t “support” the troops or the war effort - to why the interlocutor was wrong for inquiring in the first place. They are “intimidating” the American people or they are “blaming” the citizenry for our failures in Iraq by asking the question.

We got a glimpse of Arkin’s mindset yesterday from this exchange that Michelle Malkin transcribed from an interview conducted by Fox’s John Gibson on his radio show yesterday:

GIBSON: The general tone of this piece is that the troops owe us, that we continue to support them through the war that they are losing.

ARKIN: Oh, come on, John, that’s your characterization! (Voice rising) I don’t say they owe us anything! I just say that when the troops start to express their dissatisfaction with the American public, they should look in the mirror and ask themselves whether or not the American public is their servant or they’re the servant of the American public. (Voice louder) I nowhere suggested that the troops shouldn’t have the right to speak up. I merely said we shouldn’t put them on such a pedestal that they are above criticism IF THEY SAY STUPID THINGS!

GIBSON: Well, what is so stupid about…[plays NBC segment...Staff Sergeant: "If they're going to support us, support us all the way."]

GIBSON: What is so wrong…

ARKIN: (Going bananas, sputtering at top of his lungs) HE’S JUST TOTALLY WRONG, JOHN. PEOPLE CAN SUPPORT THE TROOPS AND NOT SUPPORT THE WAR. AND THE FACT THAT THESE GUYS IN UNIFORM DON’T UNDERSTAND THAT TELLS ME THAT THEY ARE BADLY SCHOOLED IN THE REALITIES OF [unintelligible]…

Note that Arkin still makes no attempt to answer the question of how one can support the troops without supporting the war. He simply states it as fact - as if it were as much a part of the natural world as the sun rising and setting. No explanation needed. And his contention that he never asked the troops to shut up is patently false. In his original post, he hoped that their commanding officer took them aside and read them the riot act:

I’m all for everyone expressing their opinion, even those who wear the uniform of the United States Army. But I also hope that military commanders took the soldiers aside after the story and explained to them why it wasn’t for them to disapprove of the American people.

He is clearly saying - despite his caveat about his supporting the idea of “everyone expressing their opinion” - that it “wasn’t for them” (not their place) to disapprove of the American people.

This does indeed sound like he thinks they shouldn’t be able to express an opinion on the subject despite his hollow nod to the First Amendment. No amount of explaining. No attempt to set up additional straw men will change that singular fact. The only thing he can do is apologize - something Mr. Arkin seems intent on avoiding at all costs.

In my post yesterday, I wrote that I was going to email the editor and publisher, asking them to fire Mr. Arkin. I didn’t do it because of this post by Don Surber that made me change my focus. I don’t think it’s necessarily “stupid” to ask for his resignation but I get Don’s point about not stifling debate. Arkin didn’t quite go far enough in his insults to warrant removal. But I don’t think it too much to ask for his apology - a full, honest, and complete mea culpa for the disrespect he showed to our people in uniform.

The most recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq contains few, if any, surprises regarding the situation on the ground in that bloody country but offers “a glimmer” of hope that things can improve significantly:

A long-awaited National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, presented to President Bush by the intelligence community yesterday, outlines an increasingly perilous situation in which the United States has little control and there is a strong possibility of further deterioration, according to sources familiar with the document.

In a discussion of whether Iraq has reached a state of civil war, the 90-page classified NIE comes to no conclusion and holds out prospects of improvement. But it couches glimmers of optimism in deep uncertainty about whether the Iraqi leaders will be able to transcend sectarian interests and fight against extremists, establish effective national institutions and end rampant corruption.

The document emphasizes that although al-Qaeda activities in Iraq remain a problem, they have been surpassed by Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence as the primary source of conflict and the most immediate threat to U.S. goals. Iran, which the administration has charged with supplying and directing Iraqi extremists, is mentioned but is not a focus.

Reading between the lines of what was leaked to the Washington Post, the NIE nevertheless seems to me to make the correct judgements and draws the right conclusions:

Sources familiar with the closely held estimate agreed to discuss it in general terms yesterday on the condition that they remain anonymous and not be directly quoted. But Negroponte and others in the intelligence community have made frequent references to its conclusions in recent testimony.

On Tuesday, Negroponte referred to the NIE in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “Iraq is at a precarious juncture. That means the situation could deteriorate, but there are prospects for increasing stability” that depend on the commitment of Iraqi government and political leaders to take steps to end Sunni-Shiite violence and “the willingness of Iraqi security forces to pursue extremist elements of all kinds,” he said.

Congress, which requested the Iraq NIE last August, has pressured the intelligence community to complete it in time for consideration of Bush’s new strategy. Intelligence officials have insisted that their best experts were working on the project at the same time they were meeting the demands of policymakers for current intelligence reports.

In the end, we can send 10 times 21,000 troops to Iraq. But if the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki continues to avoid tackling the political problems that are fueling the sectarian violence, then all is for naught and we might as well redeploy our troops to Kuwait or some other base now.

I don’t envy the task of the Prime Minister but to date, he has been his own worst enemy. His cozying up to Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army is only one of his problems. The fact is, the Sunnis see Maliki trying to establish Shia hegemony over the rest of the country and indeed, this is what has been happening. The coalition of political parties that governs Iraq are dominated by Shia nationalists who refuse to back Maliki in taking the steps necessary to broaden participation of the Sunnis and Kurds as well as adding the secular parties to the mix. Every plea we have made, every attempt to engage the Shia parties in the kind of nation building that will take the fire from the hearts of both Shias and Sunnis and start the healing process which would begin to reduce the violence has been rebuffed.

The Shias, by their lights, don’t see the need. They point to their victories at the polls and have expressed the fear that if they give up too much power to the Sunnis and Kurds, their own voters will turn on them. Then there is the threat of assassination by one of the dozen or so militias. Sadr has made it clear that Iraq will be a nation dominated by Shias and any politician that advocates sharing power with the Sunnis does so at their own peril.

Meanwhile, the Sunnis are trapped by history and by the blood on their hands from generations of oppressing the Shias and Kurds. The only way out for them is amnesty. And at the moment, amnesty is a non-starter for Maliki who would have to please both the radical Shias represented by Sadr and the Americans who would not look kindly on pardoning insurgents who killed our soldiers.

So the insurgents believe they have no choice. They must fight or die - either at the hands of Shia death squads or in battle against the Americans. Getting the Americans to go away may seem to be the height of stupidity since the American Army is the only thing standing between the Sunnis and a human rights tragedy that could dwarf what is going on in Darfur - a bloodletting and refugee crisis that would involve more than 5 million people. But the insurgents, who have made common cause with al-Qaeda in Iraq in some instances, feel that their only play is to try and reclaim power. And they know the Americans would never allow that to happen.

This Gordian Knot cannot be cut by American troops no matter how spectacularly they perform in the field. It won’t be cut simply by reining in the militias or killing Shia and Sunni extremists, although this would be extremely helpful and give the Iraqi government some breathing room to initiate at least some political reforms. It might not even be possible for the Iraqis to cut it alone. I can understand the resistance by the Administration to a regional conference on Iraq that would include the Iranians and the Syrians. But the Saudis are apparently going to start taking a more active role in defending their Sunni brethren while Iran shows no signs of slacking off in their support for the militias. It would make sense that a regional conference, with a well defined agenda, could come up with solutions that would use the influence of those two nations (and possibly Syria) in helping the Iraqis achieve a consensus on how to move forward toward political stability.

This most recent NIE, if it does nothing else, will, I hope, disabuse those who are inclined to believe that the application of military power alone by America can do much to solve the long term, systemic political problems that keep the insurgency going. At this point, we can do little more than act as a buffer between Shia extremists who seek revenge and Sunnis who are being hunted down and killed by both regular and irregular forces. For this reason alone, our continued presence in Iraq is well worth the effort.

But if the government of Prime Minister Maliki continues on its course and refuses to engage the other factions in a dialogue that would lead to a truly non sectarian government of national unity, we should look very hard at exploring other options up to and including a redeployment of our troops outside of Iraq.

UPDATE

Allah points to this McClatchy dispatch from yesterday that blames the US for the rise in influence of the Mahdi Army. The story quotes American troops on the ground in Baghdad saying that the the Iraqi army is lousy with Sadrists and that their plan is to wait for us to leave and then carry out a nationwide massacre of Sunnis.

Bryan points out in an update that this is not entirely accurate, that Sadr appears to have lost total control over his own militia and that there are several agendas at work among Sadrists.

First of all, there is nothing very new here. Perhaps the idea that roughly half the Iraqi army in Baghdad is made up of Sadrites would be news - if it were true. Maliki has deliberately tried to sprinkle Kurdish units in with the Shias to head off just such an eventuality. The problem is, in the past, the Kurds have been reluctant to go to Baghdad and have gone so far as to mutiny against the idea - probably because they realize all too well the truth in some of what has been reported here. I agree with Bryan that it is the local police who are truly lousy with Sadrites and that the army is trusted to a much greater degree by all Iraqis.

Bryan’s take below sounds about right:

The case of JAM is, as I’ve mentioned before, not as simple as the press usually makes out. Of the entire JAM militia, probably half are truly loyal to al-Sadr. The other half joined up for various reasons from needing the money to being threatened if they don’t join to having a grudge against Sunnis to wanting to tamp down local petty crime, etc. JAM isn’t a monolithic force in the way that Al Qaeda is, all joined by one ideal. There are factions within it, and those factions can be and are being exploited politically by the US forces. That also takes time. I will say that all the panic in Washington these days strengthens the hand of Sadr, since he seems to be on the winning side right now and everyone who chose to side with us seems to be on the losing side. The momentum right now is undoubtedly with the Sadrists, not because of the infiltration, but because anyone who is on the fence in Baghdad is being compelled by events to choose a side, and one side appears to be running away. The rational choice for an awful lot of people will be to join the side that is staying and looks like it will have a great deal of power after we’ve withdrawn. Had we stayed and not shown so much panic over the years, those who sided with us would be in a stronger position in Iraqi society than they may be in the coming months and years–if they survive that long.

None of this is to minimize the threat of militia infiltration into the ISF. But stories like the one above present the negative gotchas–see here, the whole Iraqi military is nothing but JAM–while leaving out the positive things our troops might have said about the ISF or how they see the infiltration being dealt with. The same troops at FOB Justice who were candid with us about JAM infiltration in the ISF also noted that some units are standing up fairly well and some are taking their missions very seriously and doing them well. You’ll hear about that in a bit more detail in tomorrow’s Vent, actually.

The votes are in from this week’s Watcher’s Council and the winner in the Council category is “On the Possibility of an Embargo of Iranian Oil” by American Future. Finishing second was “Teacher Merit Pay” by The Colossus of Rhodey.

Finishing first in the non Council category was “Because the Language They Use Is Killing” by INDC Journal.

Time to welcome our newest Council member Bookworm Room replacing Andrew Olmsted who has been called up.

If you’d like to participate in the weekly Watchers vote, go here and follow instructions.

French President Jacques Chirac shrugs off Iranian nukes in response to a question at a press conference held yesterday.

The last time I did a post on French President Jacques Chirac readers walked away with the impression that I hate the French people and treat them unfairly when I make fun of some of their national peculiarities.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Like P.J. O’Rourke, I have a soft spot in my heart for the French:

The French are a smallish, monkey-looking bunch and not dressed any better, on average, than the citizens of Baltimore. True, you can sit outside in Paris and drink little cups of coffee, but why this is more stylish than sitting inside and drinking large glasses of whiskey I don’t know.
O’Rourke, P.J. (1989), Holidays in hell. London (Picador), 199

Perhaps if the French drank more whiskey and tried harder not to undermine the United States on Iran, we would quit calling them “cheese eating surrender monkeys” and simply refer to them as weasels:

President Jacques Chirac said this week that if Iran had one or two nuclear weapons, it would not pose a big danger, and that if Iran were to launch a nuclear weapon against a country like Israel, it would lead to the immediate destruction of Tehran.

On Tuesday, Mr. Chirac summoned the same journalists back to Élysée Palace to retract many of his remarks.

Mr. Chirac said repeatedly during the second interview that he had spoken casually and quickly the day before because he believed he had been talking about Iran off the record.

“I should rather have paid attention to what I was saying and understood that perhaps I was on the record,” he said.

I shouldn’t have insulted weasels so.

To say that the French are being unhelpful with regards to Iran wouldn’t be true. They have been of enormous help to the Iranians. The only possible way to convince the Iranian government to cease enriching uranium or, at the very least, allow for intrusive, on site inspections of the enrichment process is for the Big Three in Europe - Great Britain, France, and Germany - to stand shoulder to shoulder and speak with one voice along with the United States on the question of Iranian nukes.

The United States worked extremely hard last summer and early fall trying to reach a consensus with our European partners on Iran. We worked even harder to bring the Russians and Chinese on board for even the limited, watered down sanctions that were eventually passed by the Security Council. All the major players in the game seemed to agree on at least one thing; no nuclear weapons for Iran under any circumstances at any time.

This united stance actually seemed to be having a limited effect in Iran as prices for basics went through the roof because speculators were worried that even harsher sanctions would be in the offing thanks to the unity of the major powers. Ahmadinejad lost some prestige and perhaps even some support as a result of the sanctions regime being passed by a united Europe and America.

And now Mr. Chirac has detonated a bomb right in the middle of this coalition. It doesn’t matter that he tried to take it back. What matters is that the Iranians know that when push comes to shove at the United Nations, the chances are good that France will abandon consensus and once again pursue its own agenda. Not out of any over riding national interest but because they feel it their duty to oppose the Americans while pretending that France still has influence in the world beyond their former colonies and certain segments of what we used to call the “Non-Aligned Nations.” By giving a wink and a nod to Tehran on their nuclear program, Chirac has almost single handedly guaranteed that someone - either the Israelis or us - will have to go in and take out the Iranian nuke program before it can build a bomb.

Granted the chances of the Iranians giving in to the Security Council demands were remote even before Chirac’s casually stupid remarks. But Chirac’s comments guarantee that those chances now sink to near zero.

Chirac will be gone in a couple of months. It will be interesting to see if his successor continues the game of “now you see our support and now you don’t” that Chirac has played for years on a variety of issues. Just about anything would be an improvement over this insufferably arrogant man.

In Stanley Kubrick’s wildly funny and depressingly dark comedy Dr. Strangelove, Peter Sellers, playing several roles including both the President and the title character, just can’t help himself as Dr. Strangelove. The more Strangelove talks about the end of the world and nuclear annihilation, the more his Nazi instincts try to take over. He struggles to keep his arm from flinging upwards in a Nazi salute. His feet desperately want to do the goose step despite his being wheel chair bound.

Finally, almost swooning with ecstasy over the possibilities in a post nuclear world, Strangelove loses the battle and his arm shoots up in a Nazi salute, calling the President “Mein Fuhrer.” In the end, he forgot that he was trying to fool people about his true feelings and gave in to his natural inclinations.

In similar fashion, try as they might to suppress their natural proclivities regarding the American armed forces, many on the left get so carried away sometimes they forget that they are trying to fool the American people into believing that they are but simple patriots, concerned about the lives and welfare of the troops and, in a spasm of hate and loathing, reveal exactly what they think of the young men and women who have volunteered to serve.

Of course, some never try and hide their contempt for our military. One of the major players in the anti-war movement, Code Pink, picketed Walter Reed hospital where many of our wounded vets are being treated. They even accosted and razzed some soldiers who were out-patients coming in for further treatment on wounds suffered in battle.

The press was extremely careful not to report these demonstrations. Gather half a dozen anarchists, greens, or moveon.org types on a street corner asking people to “honk for impeachment” and that will get you a page 3 write up in most newspapers. But somehow, there were no reporters available to cover these demonstrations at Walter Reed that showed such monumental disrespect for the volunteers who have suffered wounds in service to their country.

But the Democrats and their allies on the left have largely been successful in subsuming their real feelings about the military with only a couple of exceptions marring the record. Predictably, John Kerry’s “botched joke” about the intelligence of soldiers serving in Iraq was one such example of this subsurface hate for those in the military. It apparently sank his presidential ambitions and probably saved the Republicans a couple of House seats in the election. But at the time, it was generally felt that Kerry’s revealing anecdote was just a demonstration of his long time loathing of active duty personnel. Like Strangelove, Kerry just couldn’t help himself.

Now we have William Arkin of the Washington Post revealing in spectacularly ignorant fashion, his own contempt for the men and women who currently wear the uniform. In what can only be described as a shockingly inappropriate post on his blog, Arkin complains that the men and women in the military who speak out in favor of the mission in Iraq and complain about the lack of support from the American people are a bunch of ungrateful wretches who who should shut up and do their jobs - a job that Arkin believes is akin to one that a mercenary does:

So, we pay the soldiers a decent wage, take care of their families, provide them with housing and medical care and vast social support systems and ship obscene amenities into the war zone for them, we support them in every possible way, and their attitude is that we should in addition roll over and play dead, defer to the military and the generals and let them fight their war, and give up our rights and responsibilities to speak up because they are above society?

I can imagine some post-9/11 moment, when the American people say enough already with the wars against terrorism and those in the national security establishment feel these same frustrations. In my little parable, those in leadership positions shake their heads that the people don’t get it, that they don’t understand that the threat from terrorism, while difficult to defeat, demands commitment and sacrifice and is very real because it is so shadowy, that the very survival of the United States is at stake. Those Hoover’s and Nixon’s will use these kids in uniform as their soldiers. If I weren’t the United States, I’d say the story end with a military coup where those in the know, and those with fire in their bellies, save the nation from the people.

But it is the United States and instead this NBC report is just an ugly reminder of the price we pay for a mercenary - oops sorry, volunteer - force that thinks it is doing the dirty work.

You can put your hand down now, Arkin.

For those who can’t fathom why Arkin would write such a post in the first place, I would say that these are obviously feelings he has suppressed for a long time for so much bile and hate to spill out so nakedly and in such a public way. The entire post reeks of self serving hypocrisy as Arkin sets up one straw man after another, posits logical fallacies again and again, and then, most shockingly, questions the motives of the troops who volunteered to keep him safe in his bed at night.

For a specific refutation of Mr. Arkin’s execrable ideas and statements, I would visit first Blackfive. Although this is the kind of post that is emotionally satisfying to read and write, if you get beyond the name calling, the author does indeed make several valid points answering questions raised by Arkin’s writing as well as easily knocking down several of the strawmen propped up by the Post blogger.

Hugh Hewitt has some background info on Arkin as does Marc Danzinger. Apparently, WaPo hired a raving, anti-military lefty loon to write about military affairs. Ben Domench anyone?

Michell Malkin has her usual thorough round up and posts some of the comments left at Arkins blog - 504 and counting as of 6:30 AM Central time this morning.

John Hinderaker wonders where WaPo’s editors were prior to the publication of Arkins blog post.

AND IF YOU READ ANYTHING TODAY ABOUT THIS ISSUE, YOU ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY HAVE TO READ THIS ARTICLE BY JOHN AT OP-FOR:

And with that piece, every frustration that I’ve felt over America’s new fifth column, every insult that smug anti-war pundits have hurled at the silent stoics in our armed forces, all the false pity, all the overused meaningless cliches (”we support the troops but not the war”) that we in the military have endured, every bit of anger that I’ve suppressed in the name of good manners and honorable debate, reaches a fist-clenching apex…

If there is a war that’s unwinnable, it’s the war on this type of horrid ignorance. The type of uniformed, intellectually lazy thinking that can only exist in the sheltered bubble of cocktail parties and classrooms. Arkin is a gazer. A man forever condemned to peering out the window into the real world, watching the exertions of men better than himself. And yet he fancies himself the educated one. Any logical human being would trade career in journalism for the expertise gained by serving a mere one month in the box, yet this slime fancies his opinion so informed, so expert, so utterly irrefutable that even the very soldiers who are fighting this war are shamefully ignorant for daring to challenge his infallibility.

Go. Read. Now.

If, as Dan Reihl speculates, the press is now in open opposition and is making no effort to hide their bias, then we should expect to see more of this kind of truthiness coming from the left. After all, the election is over. They won. They successfully fooled enough of the American people into actually believing they cared a tinkers’ damn about the troops or about the United States for that matter. They successfully allowed people to believe that they had no intention of cutting and running in Iraq before some semblance of victory could be achieved all the while planning to do exactly the opposite.

But with the moves afoot to not only cut off funding for “the surge” but also attempts to micro manage troop levels, mission goals, and benchmarks that must be achieved by the Iraqi government, a sick sense of defeatism and helplessness is running through our political class, weakening any remaining resolve to bring the Iraq adventure to some kind of honorable conclusion. The politicians - both Republicans and Democrats - simply want the issue to go away. And with it, the hundreds of thousands of American servicemen who have served courageously, honorably, and despite what Arkin says, with few complaints. They have done all that they have been asked to do and then gone beyond that and heroically done much more.

And this is the thanks they get. Not just from the Arkins of the world and other leftists who, after all, just can’t help themselves. But also from people who should know better.

I don’t know where these young men and women will be in two years. But I hope that wherever they are, they are at least given credit for carrying out their mission with honor and that sense of duty that only a true calling to serve others brings to life.

UPDATE: ARKIN RESPONDS TO CRITICS

Michelle Malkin has the gist of Arkin’s response. Basically, he’s a liar:

Contrary to the typically inaccurate and overstated assertion in dozens of blogs, hundreds of comments, and thousands of e-mails I’ve received, I’ve never written that soldiers should “shut up,” quit whining, be spit upon, or that they have no right to an opinion.

I said I was bothered by the notion that “the troops” were somehow becoming hallowed beings above society, that they had an attitude that only they had the means - or the right - to judge the worthiness of the Iraq endeavor.

I was dead wrong in using the word mercenary to describe the American soldier today.

These men and women are not fighting for money with little regard for the nation. The situation might be much worse than that: Evidently, far too many in uniform believe that they are the one true nation. They hide behind the constitution and the flag and then spew an anti-Democrat, anti-liberal, anti-journalism, anti-dissent, and anti-citizen message that reflects a certain contempt for the American people.

Beggin’ your pardon kind sir, but where in God’s name in the original post do you write, hint, or dream of anything you claim you were saying? Where, for instance, do you posit the notion that our soldiers believe they are “the one true nation?” Or that they “hid behind the constitution?”

In fact, after an obligatory nod to their constitutional rights, you then attempted to take that right away:

I’m all for everyone expressing their opinion, even those who wear the uniform of the United States Army. But I also hope that military commanders took the soldiers aside after the story and explained to them why it wasn’t for them to disapprove of the American people.

Sounds pretty clear cut to me. You don’t think it “was for them” to disapprove of the American people. How do you get around the fact that you hope that their commanders shut them up? Or that they should just keep their criticisms about the American people to themselves?

William Arkin is a bald faced liar. His “response” is replete with instances like the one above where he claims he’s just some poor, misunderstood newspaper guy with people making death threats against him and saying he should leave the country.

Welcome to the blogosphere, chum.

His meaning in the initial post was clear. Trying to muddy the waters with this response will not wash away his rhetoric about “obscene amenities” and the ridiculous and insulting scenario where our robot-like troops would follow a General James Matoon Scott in some kind of military coup against the government - all because the troops were mad at the press and politicians.

Doesn’t he realize what a monumental insult that is to the honor and integrity of every member of the United States military both living and dead to intimate that any of them would violate their oaths to the Constitution so cavalierly?

Sorry Mr. Arkin. If you had left well enough alone and not tried to throw sand in our eyes about what you truly meant to say with your original post, the issue may have faded away on its own.

But since you have seen fit to compound your monumental errors in judgement by trying to school your readers in what you really meant - equally reprehensible in any case to what you originally wrote - I am going to write a letter to the editor and publisher calling for your resignation.

And if you had an ounce of decency, you’d beat them to it.

UPDATE II

Allah has some audio from Arkin’s appearance on Fox last night.

I wonder what Picasso would have said?

Living in Chicago and its sprawling suburbs and ex-urbs this week has been an experience that any long time resident will never forget and will relish for the rest of their lives.

This is especially true if the sun rises and sets only for Our Beloved Bears. Always much more than a sports franchise and something slightly less than a religious icon, The Beloveds in many ways have defined the city of Chicago for more than three quarters of a century.

Chicago has always been a working class town whose immigrant population prided itself on displaying a tough, no nonsense, hard working personae. The poet laureate of the working class, Carl Sandburg immortalized that personae in his incredibly descriptive and strangely lyrical poem Chicago:

Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:

And the lesser known stanza that has spoken to Chicagoans for generations:

Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning
as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with
white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young
man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has
never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse.
and under his ribs the heart of the people,
Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of
Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog
Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with
Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

Tough words. Tough town. Is it any wonder that the city so desperately loves its football team? Sandburg may as well have had the Bears in mind when he wrote that poem. “Stormy, husky, brawling” could describe any Bears defense of the last 50 years.

Those of you who live in other great American cities where sports teams play for championships on a more or less regular basis will, I hope, forgive the excess of civic pride which has morphed into a kind of fevered insanity over The Beloveds and their trip to the Super Bowl. Each day that passes brings the city closer to nirvana - that blissful, dreamlike state where all cares and concerns are set aside and visions of Bears linemen doing a sack dance over a prostrate Peyton Manning dominate the figments of fans all over town. A euphoria beyond drugs, beyond revelation, beyond the moment your divorce became final has captured the city and turned ordinarily logical and reasonable Chicagoans into raving lunatics. Consider:

1. The world famous lions that grace the entrance to the world famous Art Institute of Chicago were fitted recently with football helmets bearing the insignia of the Chicago Bears:

2. A Chicago resident, Jennifer Gordon, sold advertising space on her pregnant belly to Ubid.com. Her asking price? Two 50 yard line tickets to the game in Miami.

3. Bears at the Brookfield Zoo were treated to a pinata in the shape of an Indianapolis Colt’s football helmet. After utterly destroying the enemy symbol, the Ursus arctos toyed with the remains to the great satisfaction of onlookers.

4. The CNA Building in the loop configured its lights to spell out “Go Bears” after dark. Several other office buildings also programmed messages of support including “Da Bears” lighting up one building on Lake Shore Drive.

5. Both local sports talk radio stations sent their entire contingent of on air hosts to Miami. That means that more than 50 big mouth, arrogant, opinionated, and truly dumb Chicagoans who don’t know jack about football are living it up in the sun while the rest of us are freezing to death.

Hizzhoner, Da Mayor got into the swing of things. The traditional bet between mayors of the competing cities usually involves an exchange of some kind of tasty cuisine that each city is noted for.

You can see Daley’s dilemma immediately; what is there to eat in Indianapolis that any Chicagoan would recognize as food?

Not always known for his tact, Daley graciously gave Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson an out by ignoring tradition and substituting volume for quality:

Dozens of delicacies from the city’s finest culinary establishments are offered including, the world’s finest coffee roasted and blended right here in Chicago. Several tins of Stewart’s Coffee will be delivered along with cheesecake, ribs, burgers, sausages, nachos, pizza, beer, wine, nuts, hot dogs, Italian beef, popcorn, pretzels, candy and cinnamon rolls.

Peterson has yet to offer anything to eat in return from Indianapolis which isn’t surprising. When you live in a city that boasts a famous sandwich joint known as “Illinois Street Food,” there isn’t much you can say or do to erase the ignominy.

Chicago sports fans have learned to savor these moments of success. And for Bears fans especially, who have been able to dance a victory dance only once in the last 44 years, this year’s incarnation of destiny’s heroes is particularly sweet because of its unexpectedness. No one in town really thought The Beloveds would make it all the way to Miami back in August when the season started. But here they are. And as much as the locals have gone over the edge of sanity and decorum in showing their pride in the team and the city, all of this is but a pittance compared to what would happen if the Bears actually win on Sunday.

The shoulders of this city wouldn’t be big enough to handle the weight of unadulterated joy which would pour forth and spillover into the streets if that were to happen.

UPDATE

LiMack in the comments reminds me that the Field Museum placed Brian Urlacher’s #54 jersey on one of the dinasours on display. I wonder if it was put on the T-Rex Sue?

The largest T-Rex ever found intact, Sue was a cause celebre in the scientific community due to the unusual circumstances surrounding her discovery. A seven year court battle that brought up issues of academic science vs. commercial fossile hunters as well as federal vs. private ownership of land made Sue’s journey to the Field Museum an epic trek indeed.

The size of Sue is beyond belief. She’s 42 feet long and an astonishing 13 feet high at the hip. It is unclear how T-Rex got around but if she were to have settled on her back legs, it is estimated that her head could have been 25 feet from the ground. Only Gigantasoraus, a South American therapod was a bigger meat eater.

Background on the case can be found here.

Following up my post from Sunday where I linked Bill Roggio’s piece on the possibility of the Karbala attack that killed 5 Americans being an operation carried out by the Qods Force of Iranian Revolutionary Guards, it appears that the Pentagon is indeed taking a closer look to see if the Iranian footprint can be detected:

The Pentagon is investigating whether a recent attack on a military compound in Karbala was carried out by Iranians or Iranian-trained operatives, two officials from separate U.S. government agencies said.

“People are looking at it seriously,” one of the officials said.

That official added the Iranian connection was a leading theory in the investigation into the January 20 attack that killed five soldiers.

The second official said: “We believe it’s possible the executors of the attack were Iranian or Iranian-trained.”

Five U.S. soldiers were abducted and killed in the sophisticated attack by men wearing U.S.-style uniforms, according to U.S. military reports.

Both officials stressed the Iranian-involvement theory is a preliminary view, and there is no final conclusion. They agreed this possibility is being looked at because of the sophistication of the attack and the level of coordination.

“This was beyond what we have seen militias or foreign fighters do,” the second official said.

The investigation has led some officials to conclude the attack was an “inside job” — that people inside the compound helped the attackers enter unstopped.

One of the commenters from my Sunday piece offered some interesting speculation; that the attack was carried out by former Iraqi Special Ops members. It makes sense since what the Pentagon is looking at is the level of training and planning that went into the operation. And while not indicative of militia or insurgent participation due to the operation’s sophistication, it might point the finger at units in the old Revolutionary Guard who were among Saddam’s most effective troops.

After some investigation, I had to conclude that this is not likely. We haven’t seen many operations that showed the kind of intensive training and discipline that would be the hallmark of Special Forces. In fact, the insurgents and militias are so ill trained and undisciplined that whenever they stand toe to toe with our boys, we win easily. Unless one speculates that this is among the first operations carried out by a Special Ops force that has been in hiding for nearly 4 years, it just isn’t likely that Saddam era commandos were involved in the Karbala attack.

The possibility of a traitor operating inside the compound would partly answer one question I had when I first read of the attack; how could the enemy penetrate our security? But for these guys to have talked their way past a couple of checkpoints is still a mystery. Unless security was just so lax that the cruised through based on the color of their uniforms. If that were the case, I hope some heads are rolling in that command.

But what of Iran? I speculated on Sunday, based on reports I linked to from Bill’s site, that it may have been a hostage situation gone bad. The enemy seized our soldiers and took off toward the Iranian border with them. After acting suspiciously at a checkpoint, Iraqi troops gave pursuit. It was during the chase that the Americans were apparently executed by their captors. And there was a report that 4 suspects had been arrested, although we haven’t heard anything since then about their nationalities or whether they were even involved.

Time’s Robert Baer speculates that the motive may have been revenge:

The speculation that Karbala was an IRGC operation may have as much to do with Iraqis’ respect for IRGC capacity for revenge as it does with the truth. Nevertheless, we should count on the IRGC gearing up for a fight. And we shouldn’t underestimate its capacities. Aside from arming the opposition, the IRGC is capable of doing serious damage to our logistics lines. I called up an American contractor in Baghdad who runs convoys from Kuwait every day and asked him just how much damage.”Let me put it this way,”he said.”In Basra today the currency is the Iranian toman, not the Iraqi dinar.”He said his convoys now are forced to pay a 40% surcharge to Shi’a militias and Iraqi police in the south, many of whom are affiliated with IRGC.

Mindful of the spreading chaos in Iraq, President Bush has promised not to take the war into Iran. But it won’t matter to the IRGC. There is nothing the IRGC likes better than to fight a proxy war in another country.

This also makes sense. The Qods Force has a clandestine arm that has been involved in several assassinations of Iranian dissidents in Europe and the Middle East. Our buddy President Ahmadinejad cut his bones as a senior commander in the Force and it has been charged but never proven that he participated in the assassination of Iranian Kurdish leader Abdorrahman Qassemlou in Vienna in 1989. I have no doubt that Ahmadinejad sees our raid on the “consulate” in Irbil and the taking and holding of 5 Qods Force members as a personal affront and a national humiliation. It would make sense that he would send some of his old friends into Karbala to avenge this blow to Iranian honor.

On a related note, it appears that the Bush Administration will not reveal specifics of Iranian involvement in the violence in Iraq after all. The press conference that was scheduled for today which would have supplied chapter and verse of Iranian assistance to the militias and the insurgents has been postponed:

A plan by the Bush administration to release detailed and possibly damning specific evidence linking the Iranian government to efforts to destabilize Iraq have been put on hold, U.S. officials told FOX News.

Officials had said a “dossier” against Iran compiled by the U.S. likely would be made public at a press conference this week in Baghdad, and that the evidence would contain specifics including shipping documents, serial numbers, maps and other evidence which officials say would irrefutably link Iran to weapons shipments to Iraq.

Now, U.S. military officials say the decision to go public with the findings has been put on hold for several reasons, including concerns over the reaction from Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — as well as inevitable follow-up questions that would be raised over what the U.S. should do about it.

This stinks of State Department meddling. Their concern is that there is a possibility Ahmadinejad is on the ropes in Iran thanks to his spectacularly incompetent rule and the restlessness of some of his supporters and any serious charges made regarding Iranian complicity in the violence in Iraq will only strengthen the President and unite the Iranians behind him.

I will admit to not knowing enough about internal Iranian politics to enable me to make an informed judgement as to whether that is true or false but I know enough to believe that reports of President Ahamdinejad’s demise could be greatly exaggerated. He’s not going anywhere anytime soon. Most of these reports about unrest regarding his rule are coming from predictable sources - ex-Presidents Ayatollah Ali Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami. Rafsanjani’s lists did very well in local elections last month and Khatami has been a font of criticism of Ahmadinejad’s foreign policy for a long time. The only person Ahmadinejad has to keep happy is Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. Only the Big Tuna could engineer his ouster in the Iranian Majlis.

This from an Iranian insider:

“I don’t think Ahmadinejad will leave the presidency before his mandate expires but I am also convinced he will not succeed in winning a second term,” added Saharkhiz. “Many factions and personalities who supported Ahmadinejad’s candidature at the 2005 presidential elections have already abandoned him and don’t spare criticism, even harsh and direct, of the president and his government.”

One other possibility for the delay in releasing the evidence of Iranian perfidy in Iraq may be that they want to complete the investigation into what happened in Karbala. The problem there is that could take weeks. And I assumed that one reason the Administration wanted to get this information out there was to stiffen some Congressional spines about our involvement in Iraq. With Iran contributing to the deaths of Americans and Iraqis, it makes pacifying the country even more of an imperative.

This situation with Iranian meddling in Iraq has grown intolerable. Despite cries from some Iraqi quarters to stop the round up of Iranians, as long as Maliki supports it (and perhaps even if he doesn’t) we should continue to aggressively pursue them.

Perhaps a better headline for this post should have been: Is there anything to be done about Iran?

But since I am an inveterate warmonger and fire breathing neo-con - at least according to some of my more unbalanced critics - the idea that there actually is something to be done militarily about Iran appeals to my militaristic soul.

Unfortunately, warring with the Persians would not solve any of our problems in Iraq and would probably even make things worse in the Middle East. The thought of not only fighting an insurgency against Sunni Islamists, al-Qaeda terrorists, and unreconstructed Baathists but adding to the mix several tens of thousands of enraged Shias joining the revolt against our occupation would make any troop increase in Iraq a futile exercise. And like it or not, Iran is now a regional power in the Middle East - an inevitable outgrowth of their own growing aggressiveness over the past decade and not as a result of anything the US has done in Iraq - and an attack on Iran would have unforeseen and unintended consequences for the region.

Since I firmly believe this to be the case, allow me to let my softer, feminine side dominate this discussion. Who knows. Maybe they’ll let me join the “Glenn Greenwald Fan Club” or perhaps even invite me to a shindig sponsored by Code Pink.

In truth, we are in a bind when it comes to doing anything about Iran. I reject the notion that one course or another proposed so far would “solve” anything. “Diplomatic overtures” made to the insular, treacherous, and fanatical mullahs who currently are in control of Iran would only reveal our weakness and, in the end prove futile. This is because Iran has absolutely no reason to talk to us. When negotiating, it is usually a prerequisite that both sides could benefit by coming to some kind of agreement - unless you’re a liberal or a denizen of Foggy Bottom. Then negotiating simply for the sake of talking becomes a goal in and of itself.

In the case of negotiating with Iran, there is nothing the US can concede consistent with our national interest while the issues we want resolved with the mullahs - a halt to nuclear enrichment and their assistance in stabilizing Iraq - are both non starters with the regime. Those who advocate negotiations to resolve these matters are delusional dreamers. It is much more likely that any bi-lateral talks we undertake with Iran will end up in delay, stalemate, and total failure. Iran will build their bomb and come to dominate Iraq no matter how long we negotiate or what we give up in return for any vague promises of cooperation by the mullahs.

We can’t bomb them. We can’t talk to them. Can we contain them?

As unsatisfactorily a course of action it may appear to be on the surface, containment would seem to be the only viable option open to the United States consistent with our interests in the region. For this, we have history and tradition on our side - elements that for once can work for us in the Middle East instead of against us. The fact is, Arab states have a laundry list of grievances against the Iranians going back hundreds of years not to mention the fear of Shia nationalism that the mullahs have unleashed in Iraq, Lebanon, and among the Shia minorities in other Arab states. The major powers in the region - Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia - would welcome our assistance in trying to block Iranian ambitions to dominate the Middle East with their nuclear weapons and unsavory brand of Shia hegemony.

Would we have to arm those countries with nuclear weapons or allow them to develop their own nuclear program to counter the Iranian threat? Not necessarily. Extending America’s nuclear umbrella to include protecting our friends in the region from Iranian nuclear blackmail would be considered a radical escalation but, at the same time, better than the alternative of going to war. The question would be whether nations like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and the Gulf States would welcome such a guarantee of their sovereignty. And at the moment, that would appear to be unlikely. Our slow, painful egress from Iraq is not instilling much confidence in our friends regarding American steadfastness or staying power.

More likely, we could work to upgrade the conventional militaries of our Arab friends. This will not sit well with the Israelis but they will probably acquiesce without too much grumbling. They should realize that our efforts to stymie the Iranians would benefit their strategic position as well. And most of the Arab states at risk would welcome our relaxing the stringent rules against exporting some of our more advanced weapons systems.

But of overarching importance would be to get the Europeans on board with any containment effort. It isn’t a question of sanctions although more stringent penalties meted out by the United Nations would be helpful. By having our NATO allies signing on to a policy of containment as they did during the cold war, the west would be presenting a united front to the Iranians. This would probably not convince them to halt enrichment or deter them from meddling in Lebanon or Iraq. But it would definitely affect their calculations if they attempted to interfere in other states where Shia minorities are growing increasingly restless - largely at Iranian instigation but also as a result of a rise in Shia pride and Shia nationalism.

This is an historical movement that has been rising since even before the Iranian revolution and many of the states affected, especially in the Gulf region, are already dealing with Shia aspirations in the political sphere in one way or another. Change comes slowly but change is coming. And the last thing countries like Yemen, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia need is Iran flagging the latent mistrust and feelings of oppression felt by Shias all across the Middle East.

I realize how unsatisfactory a policy containing the Iranian menace is seen by many of my friends on the right. But when the alternatives are unacceptable or would cause more problems than they solve, there are times when only bad choices present themselves and we must choose the least awful among them.

UPDATE

What about fomenting revolution in Iran?

This, unfortunately, is also a non starter at this point. As in Russia during the reign of communists, the Iranians have brutally suppressed and eliminated democratic organizations and individuals with the potential to lead them. Any effort to supplant the mullahs would take many long years of carefully laying the groundwork for democratic groups to gain any ground at all. With the stranglehold on elections the mullahs enjoy (they say who runs for office not to mention their practicing fraud, intimidation, and outright stealing of elections), any peaceful transformation of Iranian society is a long term project with an uncertain outcome.

How about funding an insurgency? I suppose if we want to support groups already fighting the regime like the MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq), we could take them off the State Department list of terrorist organizations and give them money and arms. But the question is what kind of leaders would be thrown up by backing such groups? Our efforts in eastern Europe succeeded because we supported a democratic opposition that, in the end, was in favor of a peaceful transition of power. Needless to say, it worked beyond anyone’s expectation although it took a quarter of a century to bear fruit.

I don’t think it would take that long in Iran but I do believe it will happen as a result of a combination of forces - death of the old guard, rise of material expectations that the mullahs can’t meet, and an opening of Iran to new ideas - all of which could take a decade or more.

By all means we should be supporting freedom in Iran. But to expect results anytime soon is unrealistic.

One of the things I love about writing these 24 recaps is finding literary and historical parallels to the plot twists, especially those that mirror classical themes that have been used for many hundreds even thousands of years in western culture. Of course, the writers don’t consciously use the same plot devices used by Sophocles or Shakespeare. But the reason they don’t have to think about it is because many of the conflicts, the moral choices confronted by the characters, and even the characters themselves are so ingrained into our oral and literary traditions that it becomes second nature for any writer - even one who writes for a weekly TV drama - to use the threads of history and literature supplied by the masters.

Take last night’s episode, for instance. For some reason, the effort of Philip Bauer to save his son Graem from jail reminded me of Arthur Miller’s first successful Broadway play All My Sons. Miller himself used themes as old as drama itself; retribution, purification, and responsibility to your fellow man, themes he would explore even more boldly with his next play, the American classic Death of a Salesman.

But in All My Sons, Miller tells the story of a father whose overweening greed causes the company he runs to ship defective airplane parts to the army during World War II that results in the death of 21 pilots. The father convinces himself that what he did was right because he was building the business for his son and that he had a responsibility to the future of the family - even though he lied about his true involvement in the matter and covered up the fact that he had actually signed off on the shipment of the parts that he knew were going to get young men killed.

Returning home from the war, the son is unaware that his father let his business partner take the fall for what actually was his decision and he believes him when he says that he had no knowledge of the defective parts. As the play unfolds, we discover that the other son, a pilot who died during the war, actually committed suicide when he found out that his father was the one responsible for killing the 21 pilots. And the fiancee of the son who returned from the war (a powerful “messenger” character found in plays and literature from the Greeks through Chaucer) has the truth of what happened in the form of a letter from the dead son that, once revealed, causes an emotional upheaval that has the father finally being able to admit to himself that he is responsible for the deaths of the pilots.

The father talking about his dead son and the 21 pilots who perished as a result of his greed and pride:

“Sure, he was my son. But I think to him they were all my sons. And I guess they were, I guess they were.”

The universality of these themes is what attracts us to drama in the first place. Yes we like to watch things blowing up and we love to experience the tension that builds as the clock ticks and Jack races to save the country. But on a deeper level, what engages our emotions are the classical themes that have made audiences think and react for more than 2,000 years.

Philip Bauer was faced with a dilemma (or so he thought); save his son Graem from prison by covering up his “incompetence.” Most of us have already guessed that Graem is involved in this plot up to his neck but Philip can’t even imagine the evil that Graem has perpetrated on the country and his own family by facilitating the sale of nukes to a terrorist as well as his efforts to kill his own brother. In this respect, Philip’s ignorance is reminiscent of the son who returned from the war convinced that his father was innocent. And while Graem doesn’t have the conscience or the moral fiber (we think) to face up and admit to himself how evil has actions have been, it is clear that there will come a time of reckoning where Jack confronts his brother not only for his involvement in this terrorist act but also for his sins committed last year as well.

Ironic convergence as Philip realizes too late he has a bad seed for a son, recognizing a singular responsibility to mankind, and what is shaping up to be a tragic and complex denouement to the relationship between Jack and his father all call to mind the best that drama has to offer. It’s why we watch the show and get so emotionally involved in the characters. And it is what keeps us coming back week after week to experience the universal themes that the show explores, always with a silent nod to the masters whose imprint on our culture and traditions can never be erased.

SUMMARY

President Palmer continues his rather earnest and empty speech to the nation, upsetting Tom to no end because he thinks that the President isn’t facing reality. By reality, of course, Lennox means a Muslim round up and loosing Big Brother measures on American citizens.

Once again, we are treated to a dialogue on civil liberties and this time, the writers make absolutely no attempt to disguise their contempt for those who advocate an aggressive security posture:

TOM: The Constitution is wonderful, Karen, but back in the days of the Founding Fathers, the weapon at hand was a single shot musket. It took a half a minute to load and fire. Fayed just killed 12,000 people in less time without even taking aim. I love the Constitution. But I won’t be ducking behind it when the next nuke goes off.

KAREN: I’m a realist too, Tom. And I am willing to do what it takes to protect the country.

TOM: No, you’re not.

KAREN: But I’m looking a little farther down the road. These warrantless arrests and detention centers will cause irreparable damage to this country.

For the record, I would like to point out that here, as in every other civil liberties argument on the show so far, Karen has not offered one alternative action above and beyond what we assume would be normal peacetime procedures for law enforcement for either trying to track or catch the terrorists who are operating in our midst. All we get from her are platitudes and high falutin calls to honor the Constitution.

This raises some interesting questions that the show - and indeed the country itself - has failed to discuss. Are there any measures the civil liberties absolutists would endorse beyond what law enforcement is currently vouchsafed by law? If no “Patriot Act,” what then? Business as usual and a “so sorry” to the families of victims who might still be alive if measures were taken to protect the citizenry?

Obviously, Lennox’s draconian ideas about security are so broadly drawn, so cartoonish, as to be useless in this debate. But the question remains unanswered by those so vociferous in their opposition to anything and everything the government has done since 9/11 to make us safer: What would you do, if anything, to protect the people of the United States from getting killed by terrorists?

Lennox, meanwhile, has had it with Karen and plots her downfall.

At CTU, Nadia discovers that Homeland Security has flagged her because she is of Middle Eastern descent. In what I thought was a rather realistic conversation, Bill reminds Nadia that he told her at the outset that because of her background, she would be subject to unfair measures. He promises to do something about it after the crisis has passed.

Jack is really starting to party down with brother Graem, keeping a plastic bag over his dear brother’s face for nearly 6 minutes. It doesn’t surprise us that Graem is a wuss, that any physical discomfort or the threat of torture will make him spill the beans. When Jack threatens to give Graem more of the baggie treatment, the lickspittle breaks down and tells all.

Apparently, the company contracted with the Russians to decommission some small nukes and Graem didn’t vet one of the contractors thoroughly enough. The contractor - Mr. McCarthy, tooling around LA with his dizzy blond girlfriend looking for a scientist who can build a trigger for the other nukes - absconded with some of the nukes and sold them to Fayed. Jack’s father is staking out McCarthy’s office to apparently get the contractor to hide any involvement by Graem and the company in the stolen nuke caper. Anyway, that’s his story and he’s sticking to it. We know it’s a lie and that Graem knew full well that the nukes would end up in Fayed’s hands. What we don’t know yet is why. Is Graem just a greedy, amoral, slimeball or does he have another agenda at work?

Jack immediately calls CTU despite Graem’s protests that he’ll go to jail if it comes out that he was negligent. But Jack doesn’t tell Chloe (or Bill who calls later) that his father is trying to fix it so that Graem stays out of jail and that both men knew the nukes were stolen for 24 hours prior to the blast in Valencia. Disgusted, Jack takes Graem to McCarthy’s office to see if he can pick up any leads while telling Chloe to send two TAC teams to the area.

Meanwhile, McCarthy is having a devil of a time trying to find another scientist who can build a trigger that will set off the remaining nukes. To make matters worse, his stupid girlfriend is bored and wants to go to Vegas. Is she really that dumb or, as we are led to believe, does she only care about the money? And why does she remind me of a much older Kim Bauer? (Don’t go there.)

At the detention center, Walid continues to play secret agent under the admiring and not so watchful eyes of the FBI. His girlfriend, the President’s sister Sandra, is having a cow. She realizes the danger he is in but the FBI is adamant about using the businessman as an undercover operative in order to get information from what they believe is a terrorist cell in the detention center.

Back at CTU, Milo confronts Bill about how slow Nadia’s work output has gotten. Bill tells Milo about Nadia, who has been here since she was 2 years old, being flagged for her Middle Eastern origins. Of course Milo knows exactly what to do; he covers for Nadia with Morris (who has a pitch perfect sense of sarcasm and irony about everything) and then logs on to the computer using his own screen name and password so that Nadia doesn’t have to deal with the restrictions.

You know what this means, don’t you? If there is a mole at CTU this season, Nadia will almost certainly fill the bill. She’s perfect because 1) We like her; 2) She’s gorgeous; and 3) She’s such an obvious choice for the mole that we dismiss any chance of her being a traitor.

How’s that for logic?

When Bill calls Karen to get Nadia’s clearance reauthorized, Karen is shocked that a Muslim working in such a sensitive position would be flagged like this. She calls such security measures “The paranoid delusions of Tom Lennox” which very well might be true but seems a little harsh given what’s been happening recently. The mushroom cloud over Valencia can still be glimpsed if you look out the window.

And to make Lennox even more the villain, he has found a way to pressure Karen into resigning. Apparently when Bill was head of the Seattle office of CTU, they rounded up some of the usual Muslim suspects and detained them briefly before letting them go for lack of evidence. The problem for Bill is that Fayed was one of the detainees. The problem for Karen is that when she was at Homeland Security, she evidently made the file that contained that information disappear.

Lennox is a devious lout but he has a point of sorts. Can you imagine in the real world if the Washington Post got a hold of that information? Realizing that, Karen reluctantly agrees to resign.

The President is mightily displeased at Karen’s decision and tries to talk her out of it, saying that he needs opposing points of view. Karen responds that the President is his own best counsel. “You know what to do,” she tells him. She requests reassignment to CTU and the President agrees, approving her for military transport which means that we’ll see Karen again in a couple of hours.

At the detention center, Walid discovers that the inmates have been able to track what’s going on outside the fence because of a smuggled cell phone. Tasked by the FBI to steal the phone, Walid pulls a pretty nifty trick, feigning illness while falling against the inmate with the phone and taking it out of his pocket.

The idea that the FBI missed the phone in the first place is pretty farfetched. But where would Walid have developed his pick pocketing technique? Must be something they teach at Harvard Business School.

The Feds tell Walid to call a special number that allows Chloe to work some of her geek magic and download all the numbers called (and perhaps called into) the phone. This was the easy part. Now Walid has to return the phone to the owner before he discovers it’s gone. This apparently was something they didn’t teach at Harvard because as the seconds tick by and Chloe tries to decipher the encoded information, Walid doesn’t even attempt to return the item.

What’s worse, we discover that the phone has been used as a browser that accessed a radical jihadist website where the information about the additional nukes was in the open for all to see. Too busy spying on innocent Americans, the NSA, the FBI, the CIA, and the rest of our vaunted intelligence community missed the message that an inmate at a federal detention center knew exactly where to look.

But the real bad news is that we are informed that the men that Walid is spying on are not dedicated terrorists but simply, as Chloe so politically correctly informs us, “spectators” and, by inference, shouldn’t even be locked up.

Okay, I surrender. It is not a crime to read about killing a lot of Americans. It is not even a crime to talk about killing a lot of Americans. But what do we do with people who have demonstrated an interest in this sort of thing? According to the civil liberties absolutists, we can’t even keep track of them without getting a warrant. And no judge in America would issue one under those circumstances. Hence, potential terrorists are allowed to operate with impunity. Is this the price we pay for freedom? If those potential terrorists have 4 suitcase nukes ready to blow, I guess so. Better that tens of thousands of Americans die than people who have demonstrated an interest in facilitating that act be watched carefully.

This is an argument that has been glossed over by the civil liberties absolutists. They can never quite bring themselves to come out and state the obvious; it is better that thousands of people die or even that the US as we know it is destroyed rather than stretch the Constitution to keep track of people who may or may not be innocent but share an interest in seeing that happen.

In the end, Walid pays for his inability to sneak the phone back to the inmate and he is attacked and brutally beaten by detainees before the FBI can intervene.

Jack makes it to McCarthy’s office with Graem in tow and starts to search for clues. He discovers McCarthy has shredded a number of files in the past 24 hours which is suspicious but he fails to uncover any useful information. Just then, Jack hears someone entering the outer office. Handcuffing Graem so that he can’t escape, Jack investigates only to get cold cocked by one of the intruders. It is here that Jack’s father Philip (played by the impressive James Cromwell) enters the scene.

Although they haven’t seen each other in 9 years, Jack and his father skip the small talk and wade right into the issue at hand; namely, McCarthy, the nukes, and why he didn’t report them stolen the moment he found out. Philip’s explanation is plausible. He didn’t want Graem to go to jail, a sentiment Graem shares enthusiastically.

When Jack tells Philip that he’s going to call CTU to get the investigation going, his father pleads with him to hold off, only relenting when he sees how determined Jack is to get to the bottom of things:

PHILLIP: We’re talking about prison, Jack. He’s your brother.

JACK:Graem knew what he was doing was wrong. He was responsible for the nukes. He should have been more careful. And the second he knew they were stolen he should have reported it.

GRAEM: Oh you always do what you should Jack. What about when Dad needed you and you disappeared?

PHILIP: C’mon, Jack. Give us a chance to clean this up.

JACK: Dad, there are four more bombs out there. I cannot - I will not be responsible for thousands and thousands of lives just to protect the family.

GRAEM: Wrong. And I think your dead wife would agree.

JACK: (Lunging for his brother’s throat) Why you Son of a…

At this point, Philip relents and tells Jack to call CTU. And in a chilling transformation that reveals just how much of an amoral scumbag Graem truly is, the security men that came in with Philip, after a signal from Graem, suddenly pull guns on both the father and the brother.

McCarthy meanwhile discovers the name of someone who can build the nuclear triggers. And unless I was hearing things, he got the name of the scientist from one of Graem’s men. This means that Philip is probably their man and will be forced to accede to the terrorists demands to help them with the nukes or watch Jack die before his eyes.

Being led away, Philip sees the car that had the CTU TAC team full of bullet holes, the two men inside dead. He realizes this is Graem’s doing and asks in a plaintive voice “Good God! What have you done?” Graem’s chilling response was “They forced my hand. Call me when its done.”

And we are left hanging, wondering exactly what “it” means and whether Jack and Philip are headed for an emotional crisis. His father was willing to save his son Graem from jail. Will he be willing to save his other son who abandoned the family so many years ago?

BODY COUNT

The Grim Reaper took a brief respite from his vacation, just to keep his hand in, I’m sure. Two CTU agents taken out by Graem’s thugs.

TOTAL:

Jack: 3

Show: 351

CHLOEISM OF THE WEEK

Chloe better start getting more face time or this feature will cease to be relevant. In lieu of anything Chloe uttered, I thought Graem’s zinger directed at Jack about his dead beloved wife was particularly cruel.