Right Wing Nut House

As host of the Carnival of the Clueless, I can tell you that putting on a Carnival is hard work. You have to put out a call for submissions. Then you have to read all the entries, come up with something interesting to say about each of them, and finally physically place the links on the blog post. For my little Carnival (about 30 links), I usually spend 3-4 hours painstakingly going through the process. The reward is a few links, a few laughs, and some eye opening glimpses into how human beings can be so screwed up.

As most readers of blogs are aware, there are literally dozens of carnivals out there. But until now, there was no carnival for the radical-progressives among us.

That’s because this cheeky fellow has, in the best traditions of American capitalism, seen a need and filled it. The very first “Carnival of the Radical-Progressives” is off and running, to a rather auspicious beginning. Carnival lover Glen Reynolds linked to this blockbuster which means the guy will get thousands of readers anxious to sample words of wisdom and outrage from the far left.

I hope they’re not too disappointed that there is a grand total of two - that’s right - 2 entries in the inaugural Carnival of Radical-Progressives.

And one of them is from the guy hosting it.

Perhaps his problem is in the way he defines a “Radical-Progressive:”

Welcome to the first Radical Progressive Carnival, a place where people who self-define as feminist,anti-racist,queer,or who dedicate themselves to progressive politics in any manner and who hold a sincere and firm respect for humanity in all its forms.

Pretty tame for a radical. No bomb throwers? Whatever happened to good, old fashioned, socialists? Or commies? Christ almighty, my Aunt Mildred would qualify as a “radical progressive” with this fellow!

And as far as holding a “sincere respect for humanity in all its forms,” this would probably let me out because as far as I know, there is still only one form of human life - at least on this planet. Do the radical-progressives know something I don’t? No doubt their expanded consciousness allows them insights that even just plain old vanilla progressives are not privy to.

I suppose it is mean and cruel of me to make fun of someone who is obviously sincere in his beliefs (misguided though they may be) and who seeks to use the internet to spread radical progressive thought far and wide. But somehow, when the stars align so perfectly and all the universal tumblers click into place, galactic justice demands that it be noted and commented on that the very first “Carnival of the Radical Progressives” drew exactly one entrant.

Now maybe if he changed the name to “Progressive-Radicals”…

Although this story comes to us via the far left British rag The Guardian, much of the information about what happened to $12 billion dollars in Iraqi reconstruction funds is a matter of public record gleaned from court cases, pending criminal trials, and other more reliable sources.

The short answer to what happened to $12 billion in Iraq is that it was stolen. And for the most part, the US government knows it and refuses to prosecute the thieves.

At the start of the Iraq war, around $23bn-worth of Iraqi money was placed in the trusteeship of the US-led coalition by the UN. The money, known as the Development Fund for Iraq and consisting of the proceeds of oil sales, frozen Iraqi bank accounts and seized Iraqi assets, was to be used in a “transparent manner”, specified the UN, for “purposes benefiting the people of Iraq”.

For the past few months we have been working on a Guardian Films investigation into what happened to that money. What we discovered was that a great deal of it has been wasted, stolen or frittered away. For the coalition, it has been a catastrophe of its own making. For the Iraqi people, it has been a tragedy. But it is also a financial and political scandal that runs right to the heart of the nightmare that is engulfing Iraq today.

[...]

Because the Iraqi banking system was in tatters, the funds were placed in an account with the Federal Reserve in New York. From there, most of the money was flown in cash to Baghdad. Over the first 14 months of the occupation, 363 tonnes of new $100 bills were shipped in - $12bn, in cash. And that is where it all began to go wrong.

“Iraq was awash in cash - in dollar bills. Piles and piles of money,” says Frank Willis, a former senior official with the governing Coalition Provisional Authority. “We played football with some of the bricks of $100 bills before delivery. It was a wild-west crazy atmosphere, the likes of which none of us had ever experienced.”

First of all, a good question to ask would be what nincompoop authorized the shipping of 363 tons of cash to a place where there was absolutely no chance of keeping track of it? With no banking system, it is laughable to think someone actually believed that corruption and thievery wouldn’t be rampant with so much cash lying around.

In fact, they probably knew and didn’t care:

The environment created by the coalition positively encouraged corruption. “American law was suspended, Iraqi law was suspended, and Iraq basically became a free fraud zone,” says Alan Grayson, a Florida-based attorney who represents whistleblowers now trying to expose the corruption. “In a free fire zone you can shoot at anybody you want. In a free fraud zone you can steal anything you like. And that was what they did.”

A good example was the the Iraqi currency exchange programme (Ice). An early priority was to devote enormous resources to replacing every single Iraqi dinar showing Saddam’s face with new ones that didn’t. The contract to help distribute the new currency was won by Custer Battles, a small American security company set up by Scott Custer and former Republican Congressional candidate Mike Battles. Under the terms of the contract, they would invoice the coalition for their costs and charge 25% on top as profit. But Custer Battles also set up fake companies to produce inflated invoices, which were then passed on to the Americans. They might have got away with it, had they not left a copy of an internal spreadsheet behind after a meeting with coalition officials.

Not only brazen crooks but stupid ones as well. Sounds like the cat burglar who dropped his wallet inside the house he was robbing.

The spreadsheet showed the company’s actual costs in one column and their invoiced costs in another; it revealed, in one instance, that it had charged $176,000 to build a helipad that actually cost $96,000. In fact, there was no end to Custer Battles’ ingenuity. For example, when the firm found abandoned Iraqi Airways fork-lifts sitting in Baghdad airport, it resprayed them and rented them to the coalition for thousands of dollars. In total, in return for $3m of actual expenditure, Custer Battles invoiced for $10m. Perhaps more remarkable is that the US government, once it knew about the scam, took no legal action to recover the money.

This is just one company. And it’s not the worst of it either:

But this is just one story among many. From one US controlled vault in a former Saddam palace, $750,000 was stolen. In another, a safe was left open. In one case, two American agents left Iraq without accounting for nearly $1.5m.

Perhaps most puzzling of all is what happened as the day approached for the handover of power (and the remaining funds) to the incoming Iraqi interim government. Instead of carefully conserving the Iraqi money for the new government, the Coalition Provisional Authority went on an extraordinary spending spree. Some $5bn was committed or spent in the last month alone, very little of it adequately accounted for.

One CPA official was given nearly $7m and told to spend it in seven days. “He told our auditors that he felt that there was more emphasis on the speed of spending the money than on the accountability for that money,” says Ginger Cruz, the deputy inspector general for Iraqi reconstruction.

Certainly some corruption was bound to occur with all that money being thrown around. But it is depressing to see the hogs and vultures in a feeding frenzy at a time when a small fraction of what was stolen or lost or wasted might have made a difference in the lives of ordinary Iraqis and given them something to hope for following the fall of Saddam.

Instead, they got more of the same kind of corruption and thievery that sapped their confidence in the Coalition Authority and its ability to make their lives better.

Read the entire article. Along with the usual Guardian anti-war blather, there are some other eye-opening examples of malfeasance that should cause your blood to boil.

When it was first announced that the Administration had ended its inexplicable opposition to the release of the Saddam documents, I believed that they would be of more value to historians than contemporary chroniclers of the Iraq War. That’s because even if the nearly 2 million documents and hundreds of hours of tapes confirmed everything the President had said about Saddam prior to the war, it would be too little and too late to counter the numerous myths, falsehoods, and outright lies spread by George Bush’s political foes.

Judging by what has been discovered already, I may have to alter that belief.

Simply put, there is political dynamite contained in these documents. The Iraqi government made no effort to obfuscate or hide their intentions, their connections to al Qaeda, their obsession with WMD, nor their desire to attack America using terrorists trained in Iraq as well as their own intelligence operatives. Saddam was a threat to the peace and security of the United States. And he stands convicted out of his own mouth.

Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard has been in the forefront of the effort to get these documents released:

Up to this point, those materials have been kept from the American public. Now the proverbial dam has broken. On March 16, the U.S. government posted on the web 9 documents captured in Iraq, as well as 28 al Qaeda documents that had been released in February. Earlier last week, Foreign Affairs magazine published a lengthy article based on a review of 700 Iraqi documents by analysts with the Institute for Defense Analysis and the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia. Plans for the release of many more documents have been announced. And if the contents of the recently released materials and other documents obtained by The Weekly Standard are any indication, the discussion of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq is about to get more interesting.

Indeed. In Hayes’ article on Saddam’s connections with the Philippine offshoot of al Qaeda (started by Osama Bin Laden’s brother in law) we discover that the Iraqis were one of the terrorist group’s sponsors. And while there is no evidence of “operational cooperation” there is plenty of evidence that Saddam was funding a group that targeted Americans for death in the Philippines.

Other documents reveal an Iraqi state immersed in plans for sabotage, assassination, and terror. Several different departments of the Iranian intelligence agency Mukhabarat were concerned with exporting violence outside of Iraq and maintaining ties with terrorist organizations.

And this is from just a few dozen documents. Ray Robison, a former member of the Iraq Survey Group, has some fascinating analysis of other documents including some shocking information about Iraqi anthrax stocks and some tantalizing hints about Saddam’s nuclear program. (Keep scrolling and follow the links).

Will this evidence that retroactively justifies the American toppling of Saddam Hussein matter to the American people in the long run?

Much depends on whether or not Republicans wish to make debunking Democratic myths about the Iraq War a campaign issue. If they do, the press would be forced to cover the unearthing of the documents if only to explain to the American people what all the fuss is about. They may put their own spin on what the documents say (even though many that have been released so far have been very straightforward and unambiguous in laying out Saddam’s connection to terrorists). But just getting the document’s existence before the public will raise questions about the “Bush lied, people died” theme that has been a large part of the myth making Democrats have deliberately used to undermine support for the war.

At bottom, the documents could alter a political dynamic that has been trending against Republicans even before the 2004 Presidential election. There has been great unease in America, a nagging feeling that even if the President didn’t lie about Iraq, the threat from Saddam may have been exaggerated. And the Administration’s efforts to connect the Iraq War to the general War on Terror has suffered as a result. If there is one question these documents may finally answer it is that going after Saddam was indeed the next logical step in fighting and winning the larger conflict with al Qaeda and radical Islam.

If the documents accomplish this, it will not be because of anything the Bush Administration has done to explain and justify its policies in Iraq and elsewhere. The President has had his political head handed to him time and time again because he has allowed the war’s naysayers to have an open field with which to run wild with accusations about why we went to war in Iraq. For a while, it appeared that the President believed that by keeping a low profile on Iraq, the American people wouldn’t think about it as much. The period immediately following the 2004 election until November of 2005, the President spoke of the War infrequently and with no coherent strategy to counter the myth making of his opponents. When he did start to fight back on Veterans Day, support for the war began to climb.

But today, with public disenchantment for his War policies at an all time high, the President once again appears ready to make a campaign style effort to bolster support for our efforts in Iraq. He and the Vice President will be making several high profile speeches throughout the next two weeks talking up the progress made and the work that still needs to be done. It’s not enough. It’s never been enough. What’s needed is an effort much more sustained and risky.

The President must first get over his reluctance to face the press. Yes, they are a pack of jackals. But one thing the President apparently doesn’t realize is that at these press conferences, he has the last word on every question. And if the press misbehaves (as they almost certainly will), the President underestimates the anger it arouses in ordinary people when they see the White House press corps being arrogant and disrespectful. Many people may not agree with Bush. But attacking the President on live television only serves to generate sympathy for him. (For you doubters out there, I suggest you look at Reagan and Clinton press conferences after Iran-Contra and Monicagate came to light when their support shot up after the press pack misbehaved badly).

The second and equally important thing the President can do is not run away from the War when campaigning for Republican candidates during the upcoming mid-term elections. It would be patently ridiculous to ignore an issue the President has staked his Presidency and his legacy on. And Republicans who think that by not mentioning the war or downplaying its significance they will come out ahead will look equally foolish.

In the coming months, the President will have a fresh opportunity to rally public support for the war. With the release of the Saddam documents, he has been given a new lease on life to frame the war on terms that are politically advantageous to him and Republicans. Whether or not that translates into electoral success is an open question. But it’s a better alternative than trying to sweep the war under the rug and not talk about why we overthrew Saddam Hussein and what we hope to accomplish with the liberation of Iraq.

UPDATE

Read Dean Esmay’s fantastic post on the cycle of deception we are in from the press and the Democrats. Dean also has some links about what people were saying prior to the war and what they’re saying now.

The lastest edition of the Carnival of the Clueless proved to be a resounding success. With 22 entries from both the left and right side of the Shadow Media, the Carnival proved that there’s plenty of cluelessness to go around.

Here’s what we’re looking for:

Each week, I’ll be calling for posts that highlight the total stupidity of a public figure or organization – either left or right – that demonstrates that special kind of cluelessness that only someone’s mother could defend…and maybe not even their mothers!

Everyone knows what I’m talking about. Whether it’s the latest from Bill Maher or the Reverend Dobson, it doesn’t matter. I will post ALL ENTRIES REGARDLESS OF WHETHER I AGREE WITH THE SENTIMENTS EXPRESSED OR NOT.

C’Mon everyone! Join in the fun!

Entries are due Monday evening by Midnight central time. You can enter two ways:

1. You can send me an email with a link to your post to elvenstar522-at-AOL-dot-com.
2. Or, you can take advantage of the easy to fill out carnival submission form at Conservative Cat.

Here’s the orginal post on the Carnival with a more detailed explanation.

So the Abu Ghraib poster boy turns out to be a ringer. And the New York Times in its eagerness to bash the war and the Bush Administration falls for the guy’s carny act hook, line, and sinker and then tries to blame the Administration anyway for not warning them off the story. Of course, that kind of whining brings to mind the efforts of Scooter Libby and Karl Rove in trying to warn the Times and other news organs off the Joe Wilson fantasy. We know how that turned out, don’t we?

But in the end, after giving the New York Times its just helping of crow, what do we have? Is the Abu Ghraib incident and dozens others like it going to disappear into the sort of “non-history” that the left has become famous for? Are we going to pretend they didn’t happen?

The US Army has investigated more than 400 torture allegations. As of today, 24 US military men and women have been convicted of abusing their captives with investigations on going that could up that number considerably. We’re not talking about ACLU fantasies here. These are cases discovered by the military and being investigated by the FBI and military police.

Andrew Sullivan, over the top and hysterical as always, nevertheless makes some salient points:

To recap: we have a president who for the first time decrees that torture and abuse is legal in the U.S. military if “military necessity” allows it; we have White House memos saying that anything short of death and major organ failure cannot be categorized as “torture”; we have “cruel, inhuman and degrading conduct” at Gitmo, conduct that is subsequently declared within military guidelines; we have the head of, in John Podhoretz’s phrase, the “excesses at Gitmo” assigned to Abu Ghraib to “Gitmoize” it; we have an outbreak across every theater of war of brutal torture and abuse practices; and we have what is a clear directive from Washington to get better intelligence on the insurgency - and fast. We now have much clearer evidence of an elite, secret unit setting up what can only be called a torture camp, and no one in authority seems able to put an end to it.

A couple of things about that rant that should be corrected for the record:

* The memos Sullivan refers to were exploratory in nature and most of the recommendations - including the definition what constituted torture - were not adapted.

* The “cruel, inhuman and degrading conduct” at Gitmo occurred after the Commander who set up the successful interrogation program at the camp was transferred to Abu Ghraib. In fact, General Geoffrey Miller set up what many consider the most professional interrogation regime in American military history at Guantanamo. It employed “stress techniques” that are recognized around the world as legitimate means to acquire information from military prisoners.

As for the rest, the fact is that there have been 21 cases classified as “homicides” at American detention centers - most of which are still under investigation - as well as the hundreds of reports of routine beatings and other out of bounds actions by interrogators shows that a culture was created where guards and interrogators believed they had leeway to mistreat prisoners.

Sully hits the nail on the head when he lays the blame for the torture directly at the feet of the civilian leadership. Once the insurgency got rolling in Iraq, pressure was applied by the Pentagon to elicit more and more information from prisoners. And with a limited supply of professional interrogators - men and women highly trained to use the stress techniques of physical discomfort in conjunction with psychological pressures - local commanders were forced to rely on less qualified personnel with predictable results; Abu Ghraib and numerous other examples of brutal treatment.

With word that the same unit in charge of interrogations at Abu Ghraib was simply moved down the road and allowed to set up camp elsewhere where they continued to abuse prisoners, we have at the very least the prospect that high ranking members of the military not only approved interrogation techniques totally at odds with the standards set forth in our own military code but also in violation of the Geneva Convention - a standard that President Bush said we should follow in our treatment of prisoners.

I am not one to believe every allegation of mistreatment spouted by lawyers for detainees nor am I inclined to hold military interrogators to standards that we don’t even hold our own police departments to as the ACLU would have it.

But we have to face up to this mess: Torture is being carried out as a matter of military routine and it must stop. This can only happen when we start prosecuting up the chain of command and hold responsible commanders who either look the other way or actually give orders allowing physical brutality.

It may be satisfying to pile on the New York Times for their cluelessness and partisan stupidity. But pointing out the Times’ foibles will not make the issue of prisoner mistreatment go way nor will it redeem our military. Only the application of sensible guidelines on prisoner interrogation and the swift punishment of transgressors can do that.

Blood and treasure. Sons and daughters. And the truth.

This is the price we pay when making war. And as the third anniversary of our invasion of Iraq approaches, it is perhaps fitting and proper that we remember most of all that the cost is being borne disproportionally by those whose loved ones sacrifice all to serve their country.

It says something wicked about our society that usually, the only chance we get to meet their sons and daughters is by reading about their death in the obituaries. It is here we find out that they were loving brothers or sisters, or parents, or grandkids who loved life and were determined to live each day with a zest that some of us are envious. But if you read enough of these sad devotionals, one is struck by the overwhelming numbers who volunteered for the armed forces because they wished to “serve.”

This gives the lie to criticisms that most soldiers join the military because they can’t do anything else in civilian life, or for the educational benefits, or out of sheer boredom. While I’m sure there are some who join for those reasons, the idea that the United States military is a “mercenary army” is absurd. The all-volunteer force is perhaps the most astonishing success story in American history. Born out of necessity, nurtured through its infancy by a cadre of dedicated professionals who inculcated a sense of esprit de corps and a pride of mission into those who chose to serve, the volunteer military today is the most lethal fighting force in the history of human civilization largely because most of its members recognize a higher calling than the rest of us.

It does little good to place a technologically sophisticated piece of equipment into the hands of someone with no motivation to use it as part of an integrated whole. And that motivation comes from a desire to step outside of oneself, one’s own little corner of the world, and serve a purpose larger than the personal. For so many to do so leaves me grateful and not a little awestruck.

But the toll of this war is paid not just in the blood of the fallen nor in the psychological stress and terror borne by their surviving comrades, but also in the emotional carnage endured by the parents, spouses, and children who are either left behind to grieve their loss or who wait and wonder about their ultimate fate in the war zone. It is here that purgatory on earth can turn to either the heavenly blessings of a safe return or the hellish nightmare of the knock at the door, the chaplain, and the knowledge before a word is said that a world of pain has descended and life will never be the same.

H. Barry Holt and Joe Johnson have never met and do not know each other. What they have in common is that they are the fathers of soldiers. Both served in Iraq. One is dead. One is now home. But the stories of both fathers speak to us through the pain and anguish of separation.

Joe’s son Justin had been in Iraq a month when the dreaded knock on the door shattered their Easter Sunday 2 years ago with the news of sudden death. Joe was not there to comfort his family. He was at Fort Lewis in Washington trying to qualify to serve in a National Guard unit that was headed for Iraq. For you see, Joe too wanted to serve. And he wanted to be close to his son.

With the death of Justin, Joe concentrated on being with his family. But then a year ago, he changed his mind:

But last April 11, a year and a day after his son was killed, Johnson told his Iraq-bound Georgia National Guard unit, the 48th Infantry Brigade, he was ready to join them. They ended up at this dustblown base in Iraq’s far west, pulling escort duty for fuel convoys on the bomb-pocked desert highways from Jordan.

Why did he do it? The wiry lean Georgian, an easy-talking man with a boyish, sunburned face, tried to answer the question that won’t go away.

“It’s a lot of things combined,” he said. “One, a sense of duty. I was pissed off at the terrorists for 9/11 and other atrocities. Second, I’d only trained. I wanted combat.” And then, he said, “there’s some revenge involved. I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t.”

Mr. Johnson’s passion for duty and revenge places him in a unique position - that of a participant and victim. One may wish to judge Mr. Johnson harshly for his feelings about Muslims of which he says he “has no love” for. But walk a mile in his shoes before answering whether or not you think him not worthy of your understanding and even admiration:

Somewhere along the way, however, the righteous passion cooled, as the over-aged corporal, like tens of thousands of other American soldiers here, faced the reality of Iraq.

Was it last Christmas morning, when roadside bombs rocked his convoy one after another, and Johnson thought he was next? Or was it when speeding civilian cars passed the Americans’ Humvees and Johnson failed to level his gun and open fire, which “I think anyone else,” fearing car bombs, “would have done.”

“I really don’t want to kill innocent people,” he now says. “I don’t want to live with that the rest of my life.”

For Mr. Holt, there was only feelings of helplessness and anxiety as he saw his boy off the war:

Although his first deployment to Iraq may have been inevitable, my wife and I were terrified when he received his orders, less than a year after he had enlisted as an uncertain and directionless 18-year-old and less than six months after basic training. Uncertain information from the Army meant we couldn’t be there to see him board the plane to war. But we managed to be there the week before, full of parental stoicism and quiet terror demonstrated through hugs and tears.

I generally accepted the reasons we went to war and worried about terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. Like many Americans, I believed that America had a moral duty to protect the oppressed of Iraq. But with my son in that war, my interest became much more parochial. Policy meant less than facts.

It should not surprise us that Mr. Holt’s focus regarding the war’s justification narrowed considerably once his precious creation shouldered arms and went into harm’s way. What is remarkable to me is the way he approached his pain and anxiety at being separated from his son:

I filled time between infrequent e-mails scouring the Internet for local newspapers showing pictures of his unit’s equipment being shrink-wrapped and loaded on transport ships. Think-tank Web sites gave information about bases in western Iraq, where he was headed. I devoured bits of information he gave me through e-mail and telephone calls, and slowly his story unfolded. I shuddered when he described his terrifying 36-hour convoy race from Kuwait to Anbar province. His girlfriend told us (he tried to protect us from such news) about the attack on his convoy and his using his newly minted “expert” qualification on the SAW light machine gun to kill an attacking Iraqi soldier.

I anguished over his descriptions of random mortar attacks on his base, and I chastised him for volunteering for “shotgun” duty on missions conducted by the combat unit he supported. But hearing nothing for long periods was so much worse. I had persistent nightmares about improvised explosive devices, mortar rounds, snipers and accidents, knowing nothing but fearing the worst. Every report of an attack triggered frantic efforts to unearth the latest news, each time followed by guilty relief that my son was not hurt and by shame that I was relieved that someone else had died. But I cried every time I saw lists of casualties as I scoured the names for soldiers and Marines from his home base or our hometown. Now they were my children, too.

It is perhaps most admirable that Mr. Holt could have room in his anxious, troubled heart to feel for the parents of those not coming back from Iraq. It speaks of a largeness of spirit that seems to be shared by so many parents, and wives, and husbands, and brothers and sisters of those who march to sound of the guns in the name of service. It is something that those of us who do not have a loved one serving seem to forget whether we support the war or oppose it; after all the talk, all the debate about policy and timetables and force structure and “cut and run” and “chickenhawks” there is the father, and the son, and the fear of separation and loss.

For Joe Johnson, his trial is almost complete. And while his service may have fulfilled some atavistic need in his soul, it is clear that he has come to terms with his loss:

“She’s ready for me to come home,” Joe Johnson concludes.

He will. His battalion exits Iraq in early May, when Johnson’s own enlistment term, coincidentally, expires. “That’s it,” he said, no re-enlistment for him.

But what about revenge?

“If I go home and didn’t kill a terrorist, it’s not going to ruin my life,” he said. “Maybe I’d just as soon not. I don’t know what it would do to my head.”

Once back home among the northwest Georgia pines, he has one last ceremonial act in mind, removing the silver-toned bracelet he’s worn on his right wrist throughout his deployment, bearing Justin’s name and date of death. Joe Johnson’s mission will have been accomplished.

For Mr. Holt, anxiety is his constant companion as he awaits word on whether or not his son will be redeployed to the war zone:

My view of the war hasn’t changed. I am concerned about mistakes made and whether it will be worth all the bloodshed. I wonder how long the troops will remain — will my son have to go back? Even though our thoughts are full of visits with son, daughter-in-law and grandson, in the back of my mind the worry persists. Rumors are that his unit will return to Iraq next fall. Will he survive?

Anxiety resurrects itself each time I see casualty lists, and I still cry over each soldier’s death. I am one with all the parents who lie sleepless every night worrying over their soldier children. Their children are still my children, and that feeling will never end. We are U.S Army and Marine parents, proud of all our sons and daughters who protect this country. But they have seen far too much for people so young, and I don’t want any of them to die.

My son is home and alive. He has done his duty and I don’t want him to go back.

Two men. Two fathers. Two sons. One dead, one alive. And yet they seem connected to something larger than the sum of who they are and what they have sacrificed. It is the special love a father has for his son. Beside that, all the issues of the war and the role of the United States in the world pale in comparison.

Love enduring, never faltering, from now till the end of our time here on earth is what makes life worth living. It is a love a father can understand whether his son is alive or dead. It is a love born of service to something higher than life itself.

And that may be something worth fighting for.

Yesterday, the left was beside itself with joy when a poll conducted by American Research Group showed that a narrow plurality of voting age adults - 48-43 - favored passing a resolution censuring the President. Since there was a margin of error of plus or minus 3%, that would make opinion on the matter just about evenly split.

Here is the exact question:

Do you favor or oppose the United States Senate passing a resolution censuring President George W. Bush for authorizing wiretaps of Americans within the United States without obtaining court orders?

If a pollster asked me a question like that, I would probably answer in the affirmative.

But of course, the question has little to do with what the NSA intercept program was actually about. First of all, as I’ve pointed out on numerous occasions, there is a difference between authorizing “wiretaps” (listening directly to conversations) and the way that we think that the NSA intercept program worked. That’s because as I’ve also written numerous times (and will continue to do so till the cows come home) 1) we don’t know how the program worked and 2) the NSA program apparently captured thousands of private communications at a time, sloughing off the overwhelming numbers of them without ever having examined them. What was left over were conversations or other communications that either originated or ended up overseas. As for whether FISA warrants were sought and granted for these specific conversations is still, to this day, not clear.

While the Bush Administration has argued they don’t need warrants for these conversations, they have not said whether or not they got them for all the targeted communications. And from a purely practical standpoint, the idea of being able to listen only to the overseas portion of these calls is ludicrous. Equally stupid would be to forgo listening to these communications altogether given that the entire reason for the program is to listen in to suspected al Qaeda communications between their operatives in America and their overseas contacts.

The question asked was loaded. By not mentioning the national security aspects of what the President was doing as well as using the misleading term “wiretaps,” all the question reveals is that Americans don’t like the idea of a President spying on Americans (or, more accurately, people who are visiting or residing in America for it is not clear at all whether those intercepts were from American citizens) for no good reason. Neither do I.

I find it interesting that even with a loaded question like this, that the country divides pretty much as it has for the last 6 years - right down the middle. At bottom, the question reveals a polarized electorate that appears not to be in the mood to unite on anything anytime soon.

This is the first in a series of 6 articles examining the issues and questions raised in Edwin Feulner and Doug Wilson’s book Getting America Right. Each article will examine one of the six questions the authors think we should be asking of every piece of legislation being considered by Congress.

The six questions can be found in my review of the book here.

*******************************************************************

How can it be determined if a proposed piece of legislation is the business of government?

The question is deceptively simple. For contained in that interrogatory is the confluence of government and politics. It highlights the clash of desire and necessity. It defines what kind of a people we want to be. And the answer to it is the permanent divide between liberals and conservatives.

A good starting point for looking at the history of the growth of what has been the “government’s business” would be the Civil War. It was here that “the arm of the federal government first reached out and tapped the ordinary citizen on the shoulder” as Bruce Catton put it when the great Civil War historian wrote about the first national draft in American history. Up until that time, the closest that the overwhelming majority of American citizens came to dealing with the federal government was in mailing a letter. Now the government in Washington could bypass the state and local government and affect the life of the individual American citizen directly.

The Draft Riots in New York city as well as in other places were not entirely the result of this radical measure taken by Lincoln to supply the northern army with much needed troops. In New York especially, there was a nasty element of racism and class involved. The government allowed that a draftee could purchase an exemption for the sum of $300. This amount was far beyond the means of most poor people. Couple that with a simmering resentment against free blacks among the almost equally oppressed Irish and the occasion of the draft simply supplied the kindling for a conflagration that killed hundreds.

But the very thought that the government in Washington could affect the life of the individual American was so radical that even supporters of the Conscription Act hastened to assure people that this was a wartime measure only and that such power granted the federal government would be taken away once the emergency had passed. Such was pretty much the case until the progressive movement burst upon the American political scene in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The existence of the progressive movement was a testament to the American belief in the perfectibility of society. Progressives believed that by applying scientific principles to government and couple it with technological progress, all of the ills afflicting society could be cured. The “March of Progress” was on and the government juggernaut began to role. Income taxes, business regulation, and an alphabet soup of new agencies and departments in the Executive Branch to deal with the new spirit of government intervention all came to pass even before the Great Depression.

It was Roosevelt’s New Deal, born out of dire necessity occasioned by a starving, nearly bankrupt country that finally placed the federal government at the forefront of radical intervention in the lives of individual citizens. With the massive expansion of public works and other measures like Social Security, the depression era federal government was for the first time taking on responsibilities that most Americans up to that time had reserved for themselves, their families, and their communities.

World War II brought unparalleled interference by government as rationing proved to be the most intrusive program ever enacted, telling people how much of a commodity one was entitled to and when they could buy it. And the War Planning Board was able to dictate to corporations what they could make and how much simply by controlling the supply of raw materials. Steel for washing machines was out. But if you wanted to make tanks, that was a different story.

In the immediate post war years, even though direct government control of the economy had been ceded, the left sought to influence both economic and social policy using incentives in the tax code to affect change. The result was an ever-expanding role of government in the decision making of average Americans.

The 1950’s saw no slackening to the pace of interference as a host of new agencies were born and the government entered the highway building business in earnest as the Interstate Highway System began to spread its ribbons of concrete across the country. Fueled by a gas tax, the building of the national interstate system could be considered one of the most necessary and successful government programs in history. What it has become in recent years is a repository for pork barrel politics and wasteful spending.

The explosion of social services offered by government in the 1960’s and 70’s altered the landscape of American society forever as we are still dealing with the consequences of many of these destructive programs that fostered dependency, hopelessness, and the break-up of millions of families. The addition of several executive departments such as CPSC, EPA, and the Departments of Energy and Education spread the influence of government until it touched every aspect of American life and commerce.

The 1980’s to the present has seen the growth of the corporate lobbying industry whose goal is simple; wrest as much money from the federal government as possible through tax breaks, incentives, and even direct grants. Giant companies whose only need of government is to help them destroy competition or fatten up the bottom line now feed at the federal trough with impunity.

I felt this short history of the growth of government was necessary if only to illustrate a simple point; it doesn’t have to be this way. And Messrs. Feulner and Wilson argue that it was our failure to ask that simple question “Is it the Government’s Business” that has gotten us into this mess in the first place.

When asking that question, we can obviously answer in the affirmative when it comes to national defense. We can also say with a reasonable amount of certainty that it probably isn’t a good thing to have 50 different standards for air and water quality. It is probably necessary to have some kind of a national social safety net involving programs that fill elementary human needs like food and shelter (the authors believe that such programs could better be handled by “state governments, neighbors, family, and local churches” which is true but unrealistic in that most poor people are cut off from society because of government dependence). Given time, there are probably dozens of areas where even a conservative could answer “yes” to the question at hand such as regulation of the stock market, anti-trust protections, and other measures designed to prevent us from returning to the turn of the 20th century when corporate trusts held sway over government and politics.

From my point of view, the question is not trying to create a “small” government which is, I believe, and impossibility in a 21st century industrialized democracy of nearly 300 million people. Rather, by asking if a law or regulation is the government’s business, we can certainly make government “smaller” thus making people and companies more self-reliant and give them more control over their own destiny.

The authors believe that “government bureaucracies are no match for the speed, creativity, and innovation that privately based free marketeers bring to problem solving” which is certainly true up to a point. The recent experiment in privately owned prisons is a good example. While praised for cost-effectiveness, the facilities have been cited for everything from poor nutritional programs to substandard rehabilitation efforts involving remedial education and job training. And studies have shown that recidivism rates are higher from these privately run prisons than from state and federal facilities (although many argue that there simply isn’t enough data yet to make those kind of determinations).

At bottom, what the question “Is it the government’s business” does is force us to keep decision making about what is best for society as close to the grass roots as possible. Would this engage the interest of a larger proportion of Americans in politics and government? And if it didn’t, wouldn’t that mean that the same activists who now drive the political agenda would be the only ones who seek to answer that question?

It’s my belief that even if we can only marginally affect legislation and regulation by asking that question every time a law is proposed, it would improve our lives. For that reason alone, the question should be enthusiastically embraced by the Republican party and especially Republican candidates for office.

Want to have some fun?

What’s the quickest way to get a Frenchman stuttering mad? Tell him that French “values and its global vision” will be broadcast around the world in English:

France’s television dream of mounting a challenge to CNN and the British Broadcasting Corp. has suffered an embarrassing setback after reports that the new channel would broadcast most of its output in English.

Starved of realistic funding for a 24-hour news station, CII is scheduled to go on-air in December for transmission initially to Africa, the Middle East and Europe. Its annual budget, met by the French taxpayer, will be $88 million, about an eighth of CNN’s.

President Jacques Chirac promised a “CNN a la francaise” in the 2002 election campaign and is committed to a station that will “spread the values of France and its global vision throughout the world.”

It was always known that part of the channel’s output would be in English and Arabic, but champions of the French language were appalled at suggestions that its output in French be less than four hours a day.

The reaction among the Guardians of All Things French has been predictable. Back in 1994, the Assemblée Générale passed the Loi Toubon (named after the Cultural Minister at the time Jacques Toubon) that actually banned the use of about 3500 mostly English words that had seeped into general usage. Called “Franglish” by the cultural overseers, the law actually called for fines or prison terms if one were to use foreign words in business or government communications, in broadcasting, and in advertising if “suitable equivalents” existed in French. To make sure that suitable equivalents in fact existed, a committee was formed to come up with French alternatives.

Thus, Ford Motor Company found itself in the ridiculous position of having to remove the term “air bags” from its advertisements and substitute instead, the culturally mandated “coussins gonflables de protectio.”

It is in broadcasting that the law is most draconian. French must be used exclusively in all forms audio or visual broadcasting, with the exception of movies shown in their original language with sub-titles. And God help you if you try to start a business and have any of the banned words in the name of your new company. No person or society, the bill says, can set up a company in France that contains a foreign word or expression, unless they can prove that there is no way of expressing the concept in French.

They are serious about enforcement, too. Police and other agents of the state are authorized to raid business premises and seize offending texts, and the bill threatens heavy fines and imprisonment for anyone attempting to impede these officers in their duty.

With so many being so hostile to English, one can imagine the reaction on the part of the purists to this assault on French sensibilities not to mention their high falutin pretensions about anyone on the planet caring very much about French “values” and their “global vision.” After all, nearly all countries know how to surrender and act like insufferable fools:

Marc Favre d’Echallens of the Association for the Defense of the French Language expressed outrage that a station designed to give a “French vision” of world affairs would contain so little in French.

“After celebrating Trafalgar with the English and making light of our own great victory of Austerlitz, it probably follows that a publicly funded French television channel should end up broadcasting in English,” he said.

“If all we get is a poor man’s version of what is already available, what is the point of doing it at all?”

What does it say about a country that would celebrate their “great victory” at Austerlitz, a battle that brought the Austrians to their knees in slavish homage to one of the greatest tyrants in history, Napoleon Bonaparte?

If French nationalists have to go back in time to 1806 to find justification for their continuing delusions about global leadership, we shouldn’t be holding out much hope that the government will come to its senses about the danger it’s in with regard to radical Islam anytime soon. That’s bad news for the French and for Europe as a whole. After all, if the people who invented “western values” in the first place are more concerned about a “threat” to the purity of their language than the real threat of Islamic radicalism and aren’t willing to defend those values now, who will?

I think we should start a grass roots movement to get Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg appointed to the World Court at The Hague. Judging from her remarks made at a conference in South Africa last month, she sure as hell doesn’t belong within 3000 miles of the Supreme Court building:

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsburg gave a speech in South Africa last month, which, for some reason, is just now being publicized. Ginsburg’s speech was titled “A Decent Respect for the Opinions of [Human]kind.” In it, Ginsburg argued explicitly for the relevance of foreign law and court decisions to interpretation of the American Constitution. Ginsburg did not try to hide the partisan nature of this issue; at one point, she referred to “the perspective I share with four of my current colleagues,” and she specifically criticized Justice Antonin Scalia, Judge Richard Posner, and the two bills that were introduced in Congress in 2004 and were broadly supported by Republicans. And she indulged in an outrageous bit of demagoguery, suggesting that those who disagree with her are somehow aligned with Justice Taney’s infamous defense of slavery in the Dred Scott case.

Ginsburg contrasted our Constitution (unfavorably, I think it’s fair to say) with the Constitution of South Africa, which specifically provides for the use of foreign law in interpreting its provisions.

You really should read the entire speech, but its argument is most concisely stated here:

To a large extent, I believe, the critics in Congress and in the media misperceive how and why U.S. courts refer to foreign and international court decisions. We refer to decisions rendered abroad, it bears repetition, not as controlling authorities, but for their indication, in Judge Wald’s words, of “common denominators of basic fairness governing relationships between the governors and the governed.”

Hinderaker offers a devastating critique of both the implications contained in Ginsburg’s words and the consequences of keeping this simpering internationalist on the court. Even if “foreign law” is not a “controlling authority,” what troubles me most is her notion that we can learn anything from other countries about “relationships between the governors and the governed.”

In America, that relationship is simple, straightforward, and proudly displayed right up front in our constitution, ostensibly so that even idiots like Ginsburg wouldn’t miss it:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

I know it to be rather old fashioned of me, but when our Basic Law says that the document is ordained and established for the United States of America, I believe we should like, you know, take the framers of it at their word.

Call me a fuddy-duddy but I also seem to recall something about those governors she speaks of deriving their legitimacy from the consent of the governed and not the other way around as it is in every other country on planet earth. That would seem to put the kibosh on Ginsburg and her fellow black-robed Gods using any legal principle promulgated in countries (or in any supranational legal body) that take a dim view of the governed having any rights except those defined by the governors.

I like this analogy by Hinderaker:

Take, for example, the issue of homosexual sodomy. The Supreme Court recently ruled, in Lawrence v. Texas, that there is a constitutional right to commit acts of homosexual sodomy. Was this ruling informed by reference to foreign jurisprudence? If not, why not? On Ginsburg’s approach, the justices apparently get to pick and choose when they will look abroad for guidance. And, if foreign guidance had been sought in the Lawrence case, would the justices have looked to the law in Muslim countries where commission of such acts is a capital crime? If not, why not? There is no coherent answer to these questions, and, needless to say, Ginsburg does not offer one. In reality, reference to foreign law is nothing more than an ad hoc tool to be invoked or ignored at will by justices who want to advance a left-wing agenda.

I’ve tried to be measured in this critique of Ginsburg’s speech, but the truth is that it is more reprehensible than I have suggested. You really have to read it to appreciate how far removed it is from American laws and traditions, and how demagogic it is in both tone and substance.

What is it about liberals that when they leave the country, they say such outrageous things? Is it simply a matter of pandering to anti-American sentiment that is so widespread among the intelligentsia worldwide? Or is it something more atavistic - perhaps a feeling deep down inside that they really don’t like America very much and wish that we were more like France or Holland or, as Ginsburg seems to be saying, South Africa?

What I do know is that Ruth Bader Ginsburg should not be deciding cases on our Supreme Court. She, and her fellow Justices who think as she does, must be prevented from allowing foreign law or precedent to influence their decisions in any way. By doing so, they drive a stake through the heart of the concept of American exceptionalism - that we consciously do things differently here because of who we are and what kind of people we see ourselves as.

Readers of this site know how often I bemoan the downgrading by the left of American exceptionalism, the natural rights of man, and the idea that there is a “higher law” that we are all answerable to (including members of the Supreme Court). The essence of these conceits is America. They define our history. They animate our present. They are the meat and potatoes of American society. They are so ingrained into our culture, our political system, and our everyday life that we barely notice them - until Justices like Ginsburg attack them. It is then that we realize how very precious these conceits are and how without them, we lose something so valuable that it diminishes the very idea that is America.

For what else is America but an idea? Our sovereignty is not defined by recognizable borders, or a King, or any standard measure other countries would use. Our sovereignty is bound up in our Constitution which is the purest expression of how we see ourselves. And when the Ginsburgs of the world attack the ideas that define us by saying that we should take cues on how to live from foreign lands, I say enough. It should be the other way around. Foreign governments could learn a hell of a lot about freedom from copying what goes on here and not the other way around.

Paul Mirengoff believes that a case could be made for impeaching Justice Ginsburg (although he also believes it will never happen). Let us hope that President Bush gets at least one more opportunity over the next 2 1/2 years to name at least one more conservative justice to marginalize and diminish the influence of this wicked woman.

UPDATE

Michelle Malkin reminds us that Ginsburg napped through recent oral arguments made at the Supreme Court. Maybe she should be sent to the Hague. I understand the Judges got plenty of rest when trying Milosevic for his unspeakable crimes against humanity.