Music of the Day: Michael Lington, Fragile

Before I permit today’s eruption to make its way onto this fine space, I want to mention a couple of other things that filled my heart with gladness and joy.

First, MLB is on the road with her sisters to assorted locations and climes around the nation, but she calls me two or three times every day and that makes my heart feel good. She’s enjoying her low-key travel and sisterly shenanigans and I’m glad for that, but I’m more glad that she keeps me in her heart and her thoughts when she travels.

Second, both of her sons called me yesterday to wish me a happy father’s day; that coupled with my daughter’s call and my son’s visit made this year’s father's day truly wonderful and memorable. My Wonderful Son (MWS) and I sat around and watched the Tiger and Rocco show yesterday and then we stuffed ourselves with Mexican food and beer and by 10:00pm we were both too tired to keep our eyes open any longer. We spent more time together today before he drove back to his tiny mountain town, with a new (old) rifle in the trunk of his Subaru, so in sum it was a pretty cool couple of days. I am more grateful for being in and having a wonderful family than I can express.

Okay, now for the other thing which is not much more than quick observation. We have all watched both the Dems and the Reps go through their primary seasons, sometimes with glee and sometimes with trepidation and occasionally with revulsion (Dennis Kucinich comes immediately to mind). Now comes the run-up to the general election in November, which will get more interesting (I suppose) with each passing day. Who will commit the biggest gaffe? Which staffer of which candidate will be exposed for what impropriety? And so forth. . . .

All of which leads me to today’s title. The Dems have already begun taking shots at Senator McCain (which they should do) and Mr. McCain has already taken shots at the stripling nominee of the Dems, Mr. Obama, which I hope continues with no let up until Mr. Obama concedes defeat the morning after the election in November. Here is what I think is interesting so far: the nomination of Mr. McCain has robbed the Dems of one of their favorite tactics vis-à-vis Republican presidential contenders—they cannot claim, as they have done previously with Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush (and of course poor Dan Quayle), that Mr. McCain is “stupid.” They might remind voters of Mr. McCain’s poor showing as a student at West Point (Ha! Just kidding! Just checking to see if you’d notice! We all know he went to the Naval Academy, all of us, except of course, the people at Reuter’s and Fidel Castro.), but that poor showing hardly seems relevant in 2008. Mr. McCain’s willingness to “reach across the aisle” to political foes in order to achieve (misguided or otherwise) compromise means that if they call him stupid, they’ve called some of their own leaders stupid, too, so I think that page of the playbook is going to have to be put on the shelf this time around. This will be a welcome change, but I suspect it will leave the Dems scrambling to find some new canard to hang on Senator McCain—keep your eyes peeled, folks.

AJ

TO LIVE IN FREEDOM’S LIGHT IS THE RIGHT OF MANKIND.

Music of the Day: Chris Standring, Love and Paragraphs

Here's the latest from the superb Charles Krauthammer. Let's hope that someone on Mr. McCain's staff is paying attention:

"Friday, June 13, 2008; In his St. Paul victory speech, Barack Obama pledged again to pull out of Iraq. Rather than "continue a policy in Iraq that asks everything of our brave men and women in uniform and nothing of Iraqi politicians, . . . [i]t's time for Iraqis to take responsibility for their future."

We know Obama hasn't been to Iraq in more than two years, but does he not read the papers? Does he not know anything about developments on the ground? Here is the "nothing" that Iraqis have been doing in the past few months:

1. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki sent the Iraqi army into Basra. It achieved in a few weeks what the British had failed to do in four years: take the city, drive out the Mahdi Army and seize the ports from Iranian-backed militias.

2. When Mahdi fighters rose up in support of their Basra brethren, the Iraqi army at Maliki's direction confronted them and prevailed in every town — Najaf, Karbala, Hilla, Kut, Nasiriyah and Diwaniyah — from Basra to Baghdad.

3. Without any American ground forces, the Iraqi army entered and occupied Sadr City, the Mahdi Army stronghold.

4. Maliki flew to Mosul, directing a joint Iraqi-U.S. offensive against the last redoubt of al-Qaeda, which had already been driven out of Anbar, Baghdad and Diyala provinces.

5. The Iraqi parliament enacted a de-Baathification law, a major Democratic benchmark for political reconciliation.

6. Parliament also passed the other reconciliation benchmarks — a pension law, an amnesty law, and a provincial elections and powers law. Oil revenue is being distributed to the provinces through the annual budget.

7. With Maliki having demonstrated that he would fight not just Sunni insurgents (e.g., in Mosul) but Shiite militias (e.g., the Mahdi Army), the Sunni parliamentary bloc began negotiations to join the Shiite-led government. (The final sticking point is a squabble over a sixth cabinet position.)

The disconnect between what Democrats are saying about Iraq and what is actually happening there has reached grotesque proportions. Democrats won an exhilarating electoral victory in 2006 pledging withdrawal at a time when conditions in Iraq were dire and we were indeed losing the war. Two years later, when everything is changed, they continue to reflexively repeat their "narrative of defeat and retreat" (as Joe Lieberman so memorably called it) as if nothing has changed.

It is a position so utterly untenable that John McCain must seize the opportunity and, contrary to conventional wisdom, make the Iraq war the central winning plank of his campaign. Yes, Americans are war-weary. Yes, most think we should not have engaged in the first place. Yes, Obama will keep pulling out his 2002 speech opposing the war.

But McCain's case is simple. Is not Obama's central mantra that this election is about the future, not the past? It is about 2009, not 2002. Obama promises that upon his inauguration, he will order the Joint Chiefs to bring him a plan for withdrawal from Iraq within 16 months. McCain says that upon his inauguration, he'll ask the Joint Chiefs for a plan for continued and ultimate success.

The choice could not be more clearly drawn. The Democrats' one objective in Iraq is withdrawal. McCain's one objective is victory.

McCain's case is not hard to make. Iraq is a three-front war — against Sunni al-Qaeda, against Shiite militias and against Iranian hegemony — and we are winning on every front:

We did not go into Iraq to fight al-Qaeda. The war had other purposes. But al-Qaeda chose to turn it into the central front in its war against America. That choice turned into an al-Qaeda fiasco: Al-Qaeda in Iraq is now on the run and in the midst of stunning and humiliating defeat.

As for the Shiite extremists, the Mahdi Army is isolated and at its weakest point in years.

Its sponsor, Iran, has suffered major setbacks, not just in Basra, but in Iraqi public opinion, which has rallied to the Maliki government and against Iranian interference through its Sadrist proxy.

Even the most expansive American objective — establishing a representative government that is an ally against jihadists, both Sunni and Shiite — is within sight.

Obama and the Democrats would forfeit every one of these successes to a declared policy of fixed and unconditional withdrawal. If McCain cannot take to the American people the case for the folly of that policy, he will not be president. Nor should he be.

Give the speech, senator. Give it now."

Please, wonderful AJ readers, also find Peter Wehner's National Review piece about the most recent decision by The Supremes--it is appropriately entitled Supreme Disgrace and you can find it at National Review Online.

AJ

TO LIVE IN FREEDOM'S LIGHT IS THE RIGHT OF MANKIND.

Music of the Day: Norman Brown, Let’s Take a Ride

We had a spectacularly beautiful day out here in the hinterlands today; while other Americans were struggling with tornados, flooding, and wild fires, we had near-perfect temperatures, blue skies, light winds, and 100-mile views in every direction. We know how lucky we are to live in a (mostly) temperate climate with fantastic scenery as far as the eye can see.

This evening is perfect; we have some very good jazz on the stereo, Max the Wonder Dog is snoring like a crazed chainsaw, and the excellent wine from the Brooks winery in the Willamette Valley had a perfect color and taste. Public thanks, by the way, to Steve for the gift of the Brooks wine—it is really very good to receive a shipment every now and then of nice wine and a hand-written note from the owners. We know how lucky we are to live in a place where peace is the norm.

MLB went back to the pulmonary specialist this afternoon and received a clean bill of health; it has been a long haul for her, with an extended hospitalization, medication that made her feel weird (and, in her opinion, made her look weird), medical leave from work (which was both appropriate and more than a bit disconcerting for someone who never, I repeat, never misses a day of work), and some concern about the possibility of long-term deleterious health implications. Now the report is good and, to stick with today’s theme, we know how lucky we are to have a goodly share of excellent health.

To get away from the theme of today’s post for just a bit, the other day, after my second cup of strong heart-starting coffee, I had an idea—this only happens every now and then, so it was somewhat remarkable in and of its own self, but it seemed like a good idea at the time (never mind what I wrote about that earlier), so I think I’m going to go with it. Here ‘tis: Average Joe plans to publish in this space (if that’s the right word) a series of interviews with better than average people. Maybe that’s what I’ll call this new section of Average Joe: Better Than Average People. Please be patient; I have to approach some of these folks, get their permission for an interview, and then begin the process of writing appropriate interview questions and writing everything up before any actual product will appear here in print. I’m enthused about this and hope that both of my loyal readers (ha!) will find the interviews, and interviewees, interesting.

As always, thank you for reading this reader’s ramblings.

AJ

TO LIVE IN FREEDOM’S LIGHT IS THE RIGHT OF MANKIND.

Music of the Day: Orange Factory, Body Tight

One of my recent eruptions here had to do with the new book by Douglas Feith, which my newspaper-reporter-acquaintance Ken (not his real name) was so dismissive of before having read it. I'm working on reading it, along with a few other things, but I came across this piece by Christopher Hitchens today that I thought most of you might find interesting and thought-provoking. Remember, please, that dear Christopher is no neo-con, but he is a first-rate wordsmith and he knows BS when he spots it. The piece excerpted here appears in Slate.com and has to do with the new book by Scott McClellan and Mr. Feith's book; Hitchens is dismissive (that's the nicest word I can think of) of McClellan's book, but has this to say about Feith's book:

"If you want to read a serious book about the origins and consequences of the intervention in Iraq in 2003, you owe it to yourself to get hold of a copy of Douglas Feith's War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism. As undersecretary of defense for policy, Feith was one of those most intimately involved in the argument about whether to and, if so, how to put an end to the regime of Saddam Hussein. His book contains notes made in real time at the National Security Council, a trove of declassified documentation, and a thoroughly well-organized catalog of sources and papers and memos. Feith has also done us the service of establishing a Web site where you can go and follow up all his sources and check them for yourself against his analysis and explanation. There is more of value in any chapter of this archive than in any of the ramblings of McClellan. As I write this on the first day of June, about a book that was published in the first week of April, the books pages of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Boston Globe have not seen fit to give Feith a review. An article on his book, written by the excellent James Risen for the news pages of the New York Times, has not run. This all might seem less questionable if it were not for the still-ballooning acreage awarded to Scott McClellan.

Feith was and is very much identified with the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party, and he certainly did not believe that Saddam Hussein was ever containable in a sanctions "box." But he is capable of separating his views from his narrative, and this absorbing account of the interdepartmental and ideological quarrels within the Bush administration, on the Afghanistan and Guantanamo fronts as well as about Iraq, will make it difficult if not impossible for people to go on claiming that, for instance:
There was no rational reason to suspect a continuing Iraqi WMD threat. Feith's citations from the Duelfer Report alone are stunning in their implications.
That alternatives to war were never discussed and that the administration was out to "get" Saddam Hussein from the start.
That the advocates of regime change hoped and indeed planned to anoint Ahmad Chalabi as a figurehead leader in Baghdad.
That there was no consideration given to postwar planning.

It's also of considerable interest to learn that the main argument for adhering to the Geneva Conventions was made within the Pentagon and that the man who expressed the most prewar misgivings concerning Iraq was none other than Donald Rumsfeld. Feith doesn't deny that he has biases of his own. One of these concerns the widely circulated charge that his own Office of Special Plans was engaged in cherry-picking and stovepiping intelligence. Another is the criticism, made by most of the neocon faction, of Paul Bremer and the occupation regime that he ran in Baghdad. In all instances, however, Feith writes in an unrancorous manner and is careful to supply the evidence and the testimony and, where possible, the actual documentation, from all sides.

Without explicitly saying so, Feith makes a huge contribution to the growing case for considering the Central Intelligence Agency to be well beyond salvage. Its role as a highly politicized and bewilderingly incompetent body, disastrous enough in having left us under open skies before Sept. 11, 2001, became something more like catastrophic with the gross mishandling of Iraq. For these revelations alone, this book is well worth the acquisition. (I might add that, unlike McClellan, Feith is contributing all his earnings and royalties to charities that care for our men and women in uniform.)

I don't know Feith, but I can pay him two further compliments: When you read him on a detail with which you yourself are familiar, he is factually reliable (and it's not often that one can say that, believe me). And his prose style is easy, nonbureaucratic, dry, and sometimes amusing. If a book that was truly informative was called a "tell-all" by our media, then War and Decision would qualify. As it is, we seem to reserve that term for the work of bigmouths who have little, if anything, to impart."

As for me, I'll reserve judgment on the book until I have completely read it and then I'll comment on Feith's work, Hitchens' review, and a review I recently read in the Claremont Review of Books by Victor Davis Hanson.

AJ

TO LIVE IN FREEDOM'S LIGHT IS THE RIGHT OF MANKIND.

Music of the Day: Greg Adams, Burma Road

Remember that slogan, “image is everything,” from the commercials Andre Agassi did for some camera company (Canon, maybe?) back when Andre still had hair? Apparently the notion has been absorbed by leaders in various rogue and failed states around the world, most recently Iran and Burma.

The Iranians have contemplated and perhaps decided to sue the United States because we’ve been saying bad things about Iran—not UNTRUE things about Iran, just bad, true things about Iran. They want to sue to improve their tarnished image around the globe. Who would have thunk that, among other things, threatening to kill everyone in Israel would turn out to be a public relations gaffe for the Iranians and their government? Certainly not the Iranians. Instead of jettisoning the avowed policy of eradicating the state of Israel and completing the work of the Holocaust, those crafty ayatollahs have decided that a lawsuit makes more sense, and certainly it DOES make sense to people who cannot make sense of these sorts of things. Somewhere, somebody is thinking, “Oh yeah, we’ve gotta’ stop saying hurtful things about Iran, like how their acquisition of nuclear weapons represents a giant step away from any possibility of peace in the Middle East, and maybe if we start saying nice things about them they won’t really hurt anybody, like the Jews they’ve threatened to kill in mass numbers.” Who that person might be, I do not know—everyone I know is smart enough to call this what it is—idiocy.

And now those wild and fun-loving guys in Burma, no danger, really, to anyone but their own people, have decided that various outlets of world media have tarnished the image of the country that refused international aid for the suffering survivors of the recent cyclone. Yep, the media tarnished the image of Burma, no question about that—they reported the regime’s intransigence when it came to accepting donated food and supplies to help the people of Burma, whose own government refused to help them. Naturally, it isn’t the fact that the government of Burma, and its heartless policies towards the people, caused the problem of a bad image around the globe—NOOOOOO! It’s the media reports that tarnished the image of Burma.

Yikes, holy cow, and as Rocky used to say to Bullwinkle, “hokey smoke.” Things are upside down in Iran and Burma, where nuclear weapons and starving people aren’t the problem, but where image and reputations are the problem. It’s amazing, aint’ it? What is more amazing, and far more disconcerting, is that some number of people in this country and elsewhere will think these (I was going to use the word “frivolous,” but that’s not strong enough) lawsuits have merit.

AJ

TO LIVE IN FREEDOM’S LIGHT IS THE RIGHT OF MANKIND.