Congratulations, President Elect Barack Obama, on your historic victory in yesterday’s US Presidential election. That’s a singular accomplishment, given your path through life and a grueling 2 year campaign.

Congratulations, fellow citizens who voted for and placed so much hope, treasure, and dedicated effort to have your Man win the White House, and for the near-equal accomplishment of increasing majorities in Congress. The people have spoken, for whatever change they hope for, expect, or otherwise anticipate, and placed a special trust in your party. This, at a time of extreme economic uncertainty and grave threats and dangers to US National Security.

I was a reluctant supporter of John McCain, but regret that he and Governor Palin were unsuccessful in their uphill battle against a juggernaut of disenchantment, obvious political acumen, and even more obvious mainstream media complicity. I considered them preferable candidates over an inexperienced but charismatic Obama and an erratic Senator Biden.

The events of 9/11 have dictated most of my political positions since. Democratic Party reactions to the challenges of global terror, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, gross disrespect shown by antiwar Democrats towards US service men and women have further caused me to feel totally estranged from 50% of my fellow citizens, including the entirety of my family and many people I had respected and admired.

I remember being a reluctant supporter of one George Bush in 2000, and suffered through the five weeks of turmoil that events in Florida engendered. Reasonable people may disagree on what 2000 symbolized for America, but the protracted fight over the election poisoned political discourse in the US ever since.

I am greatly relieved that we will not be replaying such a political transition this year. I can appreciate how joyous, excited, gratified, and justified feel the supporters of the President Elect.

As an American, I am also very proud of my fellow citizens, who through a consensus of those who felt obliged to vote for the “minority” candidate, or out of racial solidarity, with complete color blindness, or with an imperfect collection of prejudices chose Obama as either the best of options or the lesser of evils. Motivations are varied, and often complex, but judged by results, America affirmed its promise and its better nature in electing President Barack Obama.

On January 20^th, 2009, he will become my Commander in Chief. I won’t submit my retirement papers, and I will strive to show him the respect to which he is entitled. I will follow orders, however much I may disagree with them, just as I did with the two prior Commanders in Chief.

I offer the following recommendations to the new President before his new position might make that inappropriate.

The United States has been hated, resented, and opposed throughout the world for the past 50 years and more. President Bush became a lightning rod for enmity, scorn, insult, and opposition, but did not create anti-US animus, nor will it abate with you at the helm. You don’t have to take my word for it, you’ll find out. We have not caused all the problems in the world; rather, we are one of the few forces for good, and one of the only true Western Democracies that has lifted so much as a finger for oppressed Muslims the world over. Don’t believe the propaganda, because it will offer you precious little comfort when history resumes.

Ruthless opportunists will use any pretext to advance their own interests at the expense of ours. Everyone will have their hands out. Place US interests above the interests of others, and see how fast you become the new poster child for US imperialism, and your figure the model for effigy.

Your military is the finest, most professional military in the world. If you demonstrate that you value our achievements, preserve our victories, allow us to win, and reward us with true fidelity and respect, we will follow you anywhere you ask us to go. We will get the job done, without respect to party or person.

Before you and your compatriots launch the New New Deal, take some time to reconsider the Old New Deal, even if throughout your academic and political career you’ve never seen the need. Try to make it through Liberal Fascism or The Forgotten Man, or even review the latest study from UCLA, estimating the FDR prolonged the Depression an extra 7 years. (Quite a feat, making the Great Depression Great, when it might have been merely bad.)

Raising taxes, sharing the wealth, redistributing income, punishing economic activity, constraining business, all at a time of economic recession and retrenchment: these will all be recipes for financial chaos, diminished economic activity, falling standards of living for all, and political ruin.

Reward good behavior and allow consequences to punish bad. Doing the opposite will create incentives for more bad. It will also discourage and distress those who will most faithfully do the right thing, even if it’s not in their immediate interest.

You are a testimony to accomplishment, to opportunity offered, and taken, to great effect, with the highest of achievement. Don’t discount or diminish your own accomplishment by assuming that others need more of a helping hand than you did. If it was too easy, if others made all the effort for your reward, would you have accomplished what you have?

Columbia is the key to the enigma who is Barack Obama, and you won’t find any mainstream media kicking over any stones within a hundred miles of the place.

Andy McCarthy, writing at National Review Online, reflects on the real significance of Obama’s abiding radical relationships. (These aren’t “associations,” which suggest that you may know a person’s name or occupation. When you form a mutual admiration and support cooperative, you have a relationship.)

Read the whole thing. Here’s McCarthy’s conclusion:

In short, Bill Ayers and Barack Obama moved in the same circles, were driven by the same cause, and admired the same radicals all the way from Morningside Heights to Hyde Park. They ended up publicly admiring each other, promoting each other’s work, sitting on the same boards, and funding the same Leftist agitators.
You could conclude, as I do, that it all goes back to a formative time in his life that Obama refuses to discuss. Or you could buy the fairy tale that Bill Ayers first encountered an unknown, inexperienced, third-year associate from a small Chicago law-firm over coffee in 1995 and suddenly decided Barack Obama was the perfect fit to oversee the $150 million pot of gold Ayers hoped would underwrite his revolution.

Columbia explains it all. Forget drill, baby, drill. Dig, dig, dig, or we’re going to end up with The Manchurian President come 2009.

A CBS News outlet in Albany reports that NY Governor David Paterson in essence accused Republicans of making racist overtures in “code”:

"I think the Republican Party is too smart to call Barack Obama 'black' in a sense that it would be a negative. But you can take something about his life, which I noticed they did at the Republican Convention – a 'community organizer.' They kept saying it, they kept laughing," he said.

Wow, that’s the end for Sen. Obama’s campaign, when all the white trash out there starts listening to Republicans and wake up to discover Obama’s black.

Gov. Paterson went on to clarify:

"I think where there are overtones is when there are uses of language that are designed to inhibit other people's progress with a subtle reference to their race," he said.

"At this point, Americans wouldn't tolerate a racial appeal. What I'm saying is that there are sneaky ways to try to hurt someone," he said.

Geez, Governor. You sound just like the pathetically ingratiating person of pallor trying to talk jive, smack, or gangsta’.

Take it from a Conservative Republican. “Community Organizer” never has been, isn’t, and never will be “code for black.” But you’re right, it is code. Anyone with a fair to middling experience with Marxism or liberal Academia knows that Community Organizing is what Unionists, Communalists, Activists, and demagogic populists do.

I’ll give you another hint. Lenin and Mao were Community Organizers. Castro was a Community Organizer. Venezuela’s increasingly strong-armed dictator Chavez was a Community Organizer, as was Ho Chi Minh. So was Saul Alinsky, a source of some of Sen. Obama’s inspiration (and most of Sen. Clinton’s).

Community Organizers organize and (temporarily) empower communities -- that’s the source of their power. They accomplish what they seek when they have successfully motivated and energized their targeted mass audience. Their stated ends aren’t even important, for in harnessing the means, the collective will of the community, they achieve another end that consumes: their own power and influence. That personal end will always justify their means, and Obama is no different, as his long-abiding Presidential ambitions attest.

Community Organizers are by and large Demagogues. To be successful in their task, they need to enflame, anger, manipulate and motivate communities to action. They tend to exaggerate, and their rhetoric is heavy on hyperbole. They rouse rabbles. They generate mass hysteria, if they are successful. They’re all about the masses, washed or unwashed.

Here’s how Conservatives view the whole concept of the need to Organize. Community Organizers are the Conservative equivalent in all major respects to the Communists, Socialists, and Marxists whose reason for living is organizing communities.

Sure, Union Organizers organize working communities, and partisan political operatives like the infamous ACORN organize voter communities for electoral purposes. But these represent very temporary organizations. Once constructed, their architects are “out of a job,” and on to the next non-union shop or electoral project. Not so the professional Community Organizer.

Presidential Candidate Obama seemingly appeared out of nowhere after the briefest of Senate and state legislative careers, and touted his Community Organizing as a major component of his leadership experience. He served his Community, even if his accomplishments were transitory and their importance tangential to his political ambitions.

Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska appeared out of nowhere: a woman of real, personal accomplishment who didn’t need to mobilize a community to reach and wield power. And yet, from the moment of Sen. McCain’s announcement of Palin as his Vice Presidential nominee, Obama spokespeople and Obama himself ridiculed her “small town mayor-ship and ignored her Gubernatorial experience.

So Vice Presidential Candidate Palin had the pluck and combativeness to observe that, as the mayor of a small town in one of America’s last frontiers, yes, a mayor was kind of like a Community Organizer, except for having actual responsibilities.

That’s still a really funny line. Here’s why, Gov. Paterson, and it has nothing to do with racism.

Contrary to the idealistic but unfettered by gritty reality Community Organizer, a Mayor (or any other Executive) has specific, distinct responsibilities, which when not satisfied or fulfilled, can generate an awful lot of hell to pay. Community Organizers can keep finding communities (real or virtual, like classes of aggrieved persons) to organize, but a Mayor or Governor has to run one, with all that that entails.

Progressives (Marxist-inspired or otherwise) are really big on organizing communities, getting people to vote “in accordance with their economic interests.” Which itself is code word for “voting for their Class.” Yet, they do not officially or formally represent the communities they manipulate, and overwhelmingly take advantage of those they mobilize as stepping stones for their own personal enrichment or advancement. Sadly, much of what Community Organizers “accomplish” either turns out to be a whole lot less than advertised, evaporates after the Organizer moves on (or steps up), or engenders a whole new level of exploitation and corruption.

That’s why the small-d democratic model creates political constructs in which an individual is elected for a specific term, with a specific set of responsibilities, with a very real accounting at the end if he or she (or their party) seeks re-election. As opposed to Alinsky’s theories of Community Organizing, or similar Manifestos, which all too often in the real world create a tyranny imposed by the masses, but run by a chosen few.

Absolute power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, however much that power started out “of the people.”

That’s just some of why Republicans laughed so heartily with Gov. Palin, when she contrasted her executive experience with a boastful, self-proclaimed Community Organizer.

(Via Drudge Report)

Etcetera

For added insight into Obama’s time as a Community Organizer in Chicago, the ideas of Alinsky, and other nuances of progressive history in Chicago, see John Judis’s fascinating history in the The New Republic.

(Via Online Journal)

Many among us are disappointed that Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal will stay home from the Republican National Convention, to attend to preparations and potential emergency response to Gustav.

Fortunately, Jindal gave us a taste of what he would have said at the Convention, writing at the Wall Street Journal.

The true fiscal conservatism embodied in Jindal’s remarkable administration in previously basket-case Louisiana represents the kind of change our Nation should really be seeking. In stark contrast to the corrupt and helpless Democratic administrations he displaced, Jindal has greatly enhanced Louisiana’s business climate and dramatically re-architected a moribund, political spoils-driven bureaucracy.

How did Jindal do it? Cutting government waste and fraud, imposing real ethics reform -- in contrast to the Chicago-style phony reforms that let party bosses line their pockets – and most of all, making Louisiana the place people want to do business and create jobs.

Jindal speaks to the results:

Thanks in large part to these reforms and our aggressive efforts to attract new business investment, our economy today is strong. Compared to the nation as a whole, Louisiana's economy is growing substantially faster, and our state has considerably lower unemployment levels.

The rest of the country is starting to take notice. Citing strong fiscal management, three major credit-rating agencies -- Moody's, Standard & Poor's, and Fitch -- recently upgraded Louisiana's bond ratings. The Center for Public Integrity noted that Louisiana's new governmental ethics laws regarding legislative disclosure will increase our ranking to first in the country, from 44th. For the first time, U.S. News & World Report ranked LSU in the top tier of its list of America's Best Colleges. And Forbes magazine increased its growth-prospects ranking for Louisiana to 17th from 45th.

What do the New Democrats offer? Based on Obama’s Convention Speech, much, much more of the same old, same old. So much for change.

New Republicans? Sarah Palin and Bobby Jindal. Who’d have guessed?

(Via The Corner)

Sully thinks Sen. McCain should have picked a VP with more foreign policy experience than Sen. Obama.

Other Dem commentators are piling on, a terrible choice, rapid pro-abortion gun nut, all politics, do they think Hillary’s supporters will pick just any woman, lots of other sexist trash talking.

Think OODA Loop. She’s pro-life, the mother of a Downs Syndrome baby who refused to consider abortion, aggressively reformist and anti-pork spending, and grew up hunting moose. Lined up against the 40 year Washington Insider, blow-hard Biden. Outscores Obama on Executive and real-life managerial experience. Can attack Obama directly on his infanticide vote and 100+% NARAL rating (he out radicals the radicals and should get bonus points).

I want to see this dogfight play out, because the outcome’s already certain.

McCain nailed this one.

(Via Memeorandum)

Victor Davis Hanson critiques Obama’s Coronation Speech, writing in two pieces short pieces at The Corner.

On Obama as plucky Horatio Alger:

Obama, who gained his education and found opportunity in the awful Reagan and Bush I years, lives in a mansion, has prep school and Ivy League degrees, made several millions of dollars last year, and was the offspring of two PhD candidates — and is thus a firsthand witness to America's greed and unfairness?

If this is failure, can we have some more please?

If Obama were to win, no one would infer from the desolation he described in America, that he may well inherit an economy, in a downturn, that just grew at 3.3 in the last quarter, an unemployment rate of 5.7%, and record levels of exportation, one that did not go into recession with $140 a barrel oil, with more students in college than at any time in its history and more than any other nation in the world, with a war in Iraq nearly won, and both the Taliban and Saddam Hussein gone and replaced with constitutional governments — and Europe, whether in France, Germany, or Italy, with strong pro-American leadership.

We’re Here to Help You, we promise:

The convention's final workmanlike message: The country is wrecked. Our freedoms are lost. Our soldiers are victims, not triumphant heroes. We are all impoverished except for a parasitic few. All bad news is not due to globalized changes in a radically different world, but to the nefarious greed of Bush-Cheney-McCain nexus. The Obamas, Kerrys, Pelosis, Gores, et al. who make millions a year and live in mansions, are populists uniquely called upon to tax, expand government, and think of ever new programs, as if the United States doesn't have the largest government and the most ineffective programs in its history.

For those who would argue that this is a “glass half full, glass half empty” dichotomy, I say that’s a false one.

More apt, the perfect is the enemy of the good. For Obama and those of his liberal ilk –in complete control of today’s Democratic Party – the glass must be rejected because it’s not completely full to overflowing, its head is less puffy than we prefer, and it doesn’t have those attractive bubbles coming up from the bottom.

AP triumphantly proclaims, Clintons throwing a one-two punch at McCain.

If that’s true, I think the Fix is in.

I also think the AP is trying to carry water for the DNC and the Presidential Candidacy of Sen. Obama, based on their straight-faced portrayal of the Clintons as gone all pugilistic against Sen. McCain. McCain’s not the guy staggering at the ropes with his eyes starting to swell.

Completely ignoring insider complaints, and supporter controversies swirling around the Clintons, tepid support for Obama, and numerous Clinton affronts and insults to the presumptive Democratic Party nominee, the AP sticks to the script:

Clinton closed the book on her 2008 presidential bid Tuesday night with an emphatic plea for the party to unite behind Barack Obama.

The Democratic convention spotlight was turning to her husband, the former president, as he prepared to take the prime-time television stage Wednesday night. He is expected to launch attacks on McCain and on the Bush administration, particularly on the state of the U.S. economy.

I guess you could say that Clinton is expected to launch those attacks, at least by some, but what’s really worrying Obama supporters and campaign staff is the obvious resentment Bill exudes over the rejection of Hillary by Democrats.

I suspect that AP Editors chose the headline, and framed the story, but the AP reporter Philip Elliott couldn’t help himself stray:

Hillary Clinton, who won 18 million votes but still failed to earn her party's nomination, planned to meet with delegates who still want to cast ballots for her during the nominating roll call Wednesday evening — a symbolic move before Obama is nominated, presumably by acclamation. Clinton has not indicated whether she would have her name placed in nomination or seek a formal roll call vote.

Clinton's aides said it remained unclear how exactly the meeting with the delegates would play out, or how her supporters will react.

I have no doubt the Clintons are playing to win, but I don’t see what that has to do with Obama winning the Presidency in 2008. You could drive a truck through the innuendo dripping from Hillary’s bottom line in her speech:

"Barack Obama is my candidate, and he must be our president," she said.

That’s what you say about decisions you make while holding your nose. Or taking a dive to the mat on the hint of a roundhouse punch.

AP’s Elliott couldn’t resist dropping in this comment from previous Clinton nemesis, Rudy Giuliani:

"Nowhere in that speech did she answer the question about his character, his ability to lead, the things that are at issue here," Giuliani said on "The Early Show" on CBS.

You go, girl. Keep stabbing away at him, and I’m sure you can wear him down.

You can almost imagine Bill, putting his arm around Obama with that good ole boy smile, telling him to get on in there and finish the Old Man off.

“We did everything we could for you, short of giving him the KO ourselves. He’s only one good punch from lights out. A girl scout could get the job done. He’s all yours.”

MORE

From Victor Davis Hanson at The Corner:

Her speech in Kennedy-1980 convention-fashion fulfilled its tripartite intentions: 1) it was well delivered, albeit in ossified liberal tropes, to such a degree as to remind the dazed delegates what a catastrophe they have committed in having nominated a novice over a pro; 2) it got her off the hook by cursory praise of Obama without suggesting enthusiasm for him that might either help his election or turn-off her supporters whose potential for trouble is predicated on Hillary as the perpetually wounded fawn; 3) it was not overtly, but only pro-forma hostile to John McCain, and did not contradict ads airing that use her prior anger at Obama as proof of a sort of "she's right" solidarity with McCain.

Bottom line: she remains loyal Democrat, dissed victim, the should-have-been nominated candidate, senior healer ready to clean up the mess of 2008, and savior in 2012. Note well Chelsea's ubiquity, the slick Hillary infomercial, Bill's wide grin, and the Clinton triad everywhere.

Thomas Friedman plays Olympic Judge on the Georgia conflict, and rightly awards Gold to Russian “prime minister” Vladimir Putin in a US Foreign Policy towards Russia NY Times Op Ed. Unfortunately, Friedman also leavens his judiciousness with some errant (if predictable) cause and effect, thus ruining the whole loaf of his argument.

Based on Friedman’s assessment, he awards the Silver to a Georgia’s “bone-headed” President, Mikheil Saakashvili, and in a spirit of bipartisanship, Bronze to the “Clinton and Bush foreign policy teams.”

Friedman wants credit for the prescience of arguing against NATO expansion after the liberation of the Eastern Europe, and the attendant collapse of the Soviet Union. In this, Friedman shares some illustrious company, including foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum, Democrat Sen. Sam Nunn, and the State Department forbearer of Containment as America’s response to Russian Communism, George Kennan.

Ordinarily, evidence of aggression, covert manipulations and provocations towards war, and stark renunciation of international agreements, as well as diplomatic norms, would suggest that a Belligerent Nation indeed posed a grave threat to its neighbors. So Russia appeared to clear-eyed observers, following the collapse of their edifice of oppression, without any real demonstration that the underlying causes of Soviet aggression were renounced, nor meaningful amends made.

Not for those who make excuse for killers, bullies and tyrants, always finding the germ of cause for the full grown fruits of evil. For Russian apologists, Russia is the latter day equivalent to Germany after the humiliation of Versailles.

Friedman declares, “The humiliation that NATO expansion bred in Russia was critical in fueling Putin’s rise.” For Friedman, Putin was the aberration in a steady Russian march from darkness towards enlightenment, beginning with Gorbachev and continuing with Boris Yeltsin.

My recollection may be a little dusty some twenty years later, but it seems to me that Soviet (and Russian) strongmen were a steady stream of KGB, with Yeltsin as a populist and very brief interlude, before power devolved back into the hands of the KGB and Mafia bosses. Even Yeltsin seemed packaged for Western consumption as a democracy-embracing street pol, versus the indisputable party boss earlier in life. No Lech Walesa he.

I’m likewise pretty sure that the US was more concerned with Soviet aggression and the enslavement of captive populations and the peoples of Eastern Europe, rather than the democratization of Russia, as Friedman alleges. I don’t know any serious Kremlinologist, Soviet-watcher, or Russophile who thought Russia capable of that great a leap towards democracy. Yet Friedman questions:

Wasn’t that why we fought the cold war — to give young Russians the same chance at freedom and integration with the West as young Czechs, Georgians and Poles? Wasn’t consolidating a democratic Russia more important than bringing the Czech Navy into NATO?

As someone who spent a former career studying aspects of Soviet occupation and oppression of Eastern Europe, I can personally attest to the greater affinity, desire, motivation, and capacity for freedom and democracy among the Czechs, Georgians, and Poles than their Russian counterparts. And the fear of Russian aggression and repression in the absence of a NATO security guarantee.

This line of argument also ignores the very real fact that Strongmen have ruled Russia since its reemergence from the Soviet construct. Old party apparatchiks, Politburo, Military leaders, and of course, the KGB, retained the reins of power throughout. The exterior form changed, not the Oligarchy within.

Shouldn’t recent moves to reassert Regional dominance, revive Russian espionage and instigate covert, proxy warfare represent the very kinds of demonstration that give lie to the pretense of Russian good intentions?

Friedman also insists, “Russia wasn’t about to reinvade Europe.” On the basis of what evidence does he assert this? Because they didn’t? I certainly remember a lot of nervousness about Russian intentions following the end of the Cold War, and many of us who followed Europe and Russia were frankly surprised that Russia seemingly squelched their imperial aims in the years since the fall of the USSR. A strong argument can be made that Western assertiveness in supporting former Russian satellites threatened neighbors are precisely the factors that preempted Russian aggression.

Friedman acknowledged Mandelbaum to make this argument over false premises in US Foreign Policy towards Russia:

“The Clinton and Bush foreign policy teams acted on the basis of two false premises,” said Mandelbaum. “One was that Russia is innately aggressive and that the end of the cold war could not possibly change this, so we had to expand our military alliance up to its borders. Despite all the pious blather about using NATO to promote democracy, the belief in Russia’s eternal aggressiveness is the only basis on which NATO expansion ever made sense — especially when you consider that the Russians were told they could not join. The other premise was that Russia would always be too weak to endanger any new NATO members, so we would never have to commit troops to defend them. It would cost us nothing. They were wrong on both counts.”

This strikes me as both revisionist history, and after the fact excuse making for the Russians. By necessity of his argument, Mandelbaum must conclude that all known and unknown acts of Russian aggression since 1992 can be attributed to the egregious provocation from the US and NATO. Known acts of aggression would include the attempted murder leaders in Eastern Europe, funding and sponsorship of terrorism, political assassinations, and attempted manipulation of democratic elections in neighboring states.

For sure, NATO expansion was predicated on the assumption that past aggressive behavior and imperial intent signaled the likelihood of such behavior and intent in the future. Certainly, many in the West hoped strong support and a muscular defense of now liberated states would help coax Russia away from “aggressiveness,” and a belief that such aggressiveness need not be “eternal.”

Mandelbaum also suggests that NATO promoters considered Russia “too weak to endanger any new NATO members, so we would never have to commit troops to defend them.”

That sounds like a straw man, and the whole point of moves like membership in NATO and participation in missile defense is a well-considered response to a Russia far too strong and still quite capable of violence and aggression towards its neighbors.

Friedman concludes:

Georgia is a nascent free-market democracy, and we can’t just watch it get crushed.

Indeed. Within his Russian apologia masked as even handed criticism, Friedman also consents to a bottom line I can agree with:

If it persists, this behavior will push every Russian neighbor to seek protection from Moscow and will push the Europeans to redouble their efforts to find alternatives to Russian oil and gas. This won’t happen overnight, but in time it will stretch Russia’s defenses and lead it to become more isolated, more insecure and less wealthy.

Friedman ends where Russia’s neighbors have always lived – in nervous vigilance, next to an imperial-minded thug.

(Via Memeorandum)

The Editors at the NY Times have long proved themselves overwhelmingly biased and nakedly partisan, throughout 8 years of relentless attacks against any move the Bush Administration has taken to fight terrorism or our terrorist enemies. They make no pretense of logic, consistency, or even sanity, as long as all slurs and insults point Bush-ward. They have no need of facts, let alone opposing viewpoints, especially not those heretical ones that refute the received wisdom of the Times.

They assume venality in every case, cause, and controversy, and have championed the alternate universe inhabited by most of the Left, whereby their political opponents are evil, every intention is ulterior and sinister, and every partisan (on the other side) is less than human. The NY Times doesn’t just drink the Kool-Aid, they concoct huge batches of it for public consumption.

But they’ve outdone themselves today, in offensiveness, insult, even slander, asserting that the US Military has aided and abetted in orchestrating a Kangaroo Court conviction of an admitted terrorist, under orders from the White House and Congress.

From the Editors of the Times comes this:

Guilty as Ordered

Now that was a real nail-biter. The court designed by the White House and its Congressional enablers to guarantee convictions of high-profile detainees in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — using evidence obtained by torture and secret evidence as desired — has held its first trial. It produced ... a guilty verdict.

The military commission of six senior officers (whose names have not been made public) found Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who worked as one of Osama bin Laden’s drivers until 2001, guilty of one count of providing material support for terrorism.

The rules of justice on Guantánamo are so stacked against defendants that the only surprise was that Mr. Hamdan was actually acquitted on the more serious count of conspiring (it was unclear with whom) to kill Americans during the invasion of Afghanistan after Sept. 11, 2001.

The Times refuses to employ real legal scholars, or any modicum of fact checking to refute your average terrorist defense attorney’s talking points, apparently preferring to rely on columnists like “economist” Paul Krugman for legal commentary. Thus, they can allege that the trial outcome was ordered, or that the military tribunal process is “so stacked against defendants,” while in the very same editorial admit that Hamdan was found innocent of a questionable charge, and found guilty of one he admitted.

This despite the views of actual legal scholars, who note that the current military tribunal process as established by the “worst bits of lawmaking in American history,” the Military Commissions Act of 2006, insisted upon by the Supreme Court and enacted by Congress on a second attempt, is actually more protective of defendant rights as anything guaranteed by the Geneva Conventions, or even that afforded US soldiers under Military Justice.

If I were one of the 6 officers who sat in that jury, I’d file a defamation or libel suit against the Times. I’d also make it big, public, and embarrassing for the Times Editors.

The Times has played anything but the role of impartial observer, negligently perpetrating untruths and fallacies about military law, and repeated Bush Administration efforts to create a legal framework for individuals who are at war with us, but act as proxies for State sponsors of terror, or other organized terror and criminal gangs.

The Times misreports on the Geneva Conventions and the Laws of War, military justice, military affairs, and often, constitutional law and jurisprudence. They insist on remaining ignorant, and perpetuating the prolonged ignorance of their readers. They sabotage Government and Military counterterrorism programs, aid and abet the disclosure of classified intelligence and programs, and they self-righteously cloak themselves in a ludicrous mantel of public service, in doing as much harm as possible to any effort taken to combat terror.

If there existed any actual, impartial credentialing authority for Journalists, their bona fides would have been yanked some time ago.

I for one have concluded that we should have identified any terrorists, saboteurs, irregular militias, fighters (in or out of uniform) captured on foreign battlefields or outside the US as Prisoners of War, rather than unlawful combatants. With an oppositional and power-hungry Supreme Court, an obstructionist opposition Party who places partisan gain above National Security, there has been and will be no hope we will ever convince the naysayers that terrorists are a threat and terror organizations are real and must be combated aggressively.

Here’s the thing. With POWs, in wartime, military authorities get to identify those who engaged in terror, committing acts of violence in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions and Laws of War. Sure, go ahead and exempt American terrorists, and shuttle them off to the civilian legal system.

The US can then implement military proceedings on foreign combatants, and conduct summary executions of individuals deemed guilty of war crimes, terror, espionage or sabotage, on the spot. They can keep the rest confined until such time as a credible terror organization steps forward to surrender on their behalf. Which means, we can leave them to rot for the rest of their lives in prison camps.

An actual real world prosecutor, with real life experience in prosecuting terror cases, Andy McCarthy, reacts with similar if more composed outrage over at The Corner.

Naturally, I would never suggest that the New York Times stoops to a predetermined editorial narrative with which it proceeds, and toward which it slants news coverage, without a care in the world about what facts actually happen. But today's "Guilty as Ordered" rant about the Hamdan military commission trial has to take the cake. The first paragraph is so shamefully dishonest and misrepresentative of reality as to defy one's necessarily low expectations of the Gray Lady.

(snip)

Of course, the trial also produced a not-guilty verdict. Was that "as ordered" too? If the system was "designed ... to guarantee convictions" how did that happen?

Bill West, writing at the Counterterrorism Blog, comments on the Times’ malicious slander of the military officers sitting on the Hamdan jury:

The results of this trial demonstrate that American military officers truly are the independent minded, moral self-thinkers we expect them to be. Sure, members of the military must "take and follow orders." But they must also be able to think for themselves and act in a moral way. This is especially true for the Officer Corps...the leadership of the US military. We expect military officers to act with honor and sound judgement. Contrary to what some on the far left (very many of whom never served in the military) may believe, when one becomes a US military officer, one does not morph into a mindless automaton.

The officers who served on this jury had a duty to independently weigh the evidence presented to them within the rules of the Commission and to render a decision based on their own judgment of that evidence...not based on any external orders. The conduct of the proceedings and the verdict demonstrate those officers did just that. They not only vindicated the Commission...the "system"...but they brought great credit upon themselves and the Officer Corps. They upheld that code of honor We the People expect of them.

The NY Times, in its derogatory editorial, not only ignores that fact but does a backhanded insult to those officers who served on the jury.

(Links via Memeorandum)

A concerned group of alarmed Leftists, noting Sen. Obama’s many flip flops on issues of critical interest to them, wrote an open letter to the presumed Democratic nominee for President.

In addition to obligatory foreign policy positions on Iraq and terrorism, as well as a completely unrestricted right to abortion, they identify a panoply of aged socialist ambitions, from which Obama dare not dissent, for risk of straying from Marxist orthodoxy:

A response to the current economic crisis that reduces the gap between the rich and the rest of us through a more progressive financial and welfare system; public investment to create jobs and repair the country's collapsing infrastructure; fair trade policies; restoration of the freedom to organize unions; and meaningful government enforcement of labor laws and regulation of industry.

Universal healthcare.

An environmental policy that transforms the economy by shifting billions of dollars from the consumption of fossil fuels to alternative energy sources, creating millions of green jobs.

A commitment to improving conditions in urban communities and ending racial inequality, including disparities in education through reform of the No Child Left Behind Act and other measures.

An immigration system that treats humanely those attempting to enter the country and provides a path to citizenship for those already here.

One can only imagine what a “more progressive financial and welfare system” would look like. As it stands now, less than 50% of Americans pay more in taxes than they receive as direct payout from the Government. The top 5% of earners pay more than 80% of all taxes. Anyone earning more than $100,000 a year – nowhere near rich by modern standards – pays 50% or more of their income towards taxes at the Federal, State and Local levels. The “poor” in America subsist at a higher standard of living than 95% of all of humanity, and more than 80% of all other “citizens of the world.”

It reminds me of the bumper sticker you see, “Vote Democrat, it’s easier than working.”

Public education and emergency medical care are easily available, on demand, for these same “poor,” despite the deplorable absence of Universal Healthcare.

And when did the US outlaw unions? Workers remain free to organize unions, but fewer and fewer non-unionized workers chose to sacrifice even a modest amount of their income to union bureaucracies (and kleptocracies) that have enriched their leadership, without improving working conditions, which already exceed those of almost every country on earth. What’s really intended here, is Government enforced union participation, the better to control a key Democratic Party constituency.

What kind of environmental policy can possibly shift billions of dollars from the consumption of fossil fuels to alternative energy sources?

Does that mean a policy “shift” mean that money is taken from us, so that we can’t spend on gas? Or, that gas is allowed to become so prohibitively expensive or completely unavailable, that we can’t spend on gas? That would certainly explain Speaker Pelosi’s refusal (and Obama’s until just the other day) to allow any increase in oil drilling in the US. Or Obama’s earlier observation that rising gas prices were a good thing, as long as they don’t rise too quickly, but get good and high eventually!

Right now, the people who spend on fossil fuels are us, the consumers, not Government. Heck, Government makes more and more money, the higher the gas prices go, in confiscatory taxes tied as a percentage to gas prices. Like cigarettes, the Government makes more money, the higher the prices go. The Government doesn’t spend on gas, it takes a cut!

How many more years are we going to refight the War on Poverty, before we wake up and realize that Government subsidy and Central Planning fosters blight in urban communities? Or that the social and economic choices of individuals and communities, in response to Government assistance, fosters continuing racial “inequality?”

Less Government, not more, is the lesson the 20^th century should have taught these aging hippies.

And how much more humane could our immigration policy get, with Amnesty for those already here thrown in to boot? They get to break our laws, exploit our services, get for nothing that which they do not earn or pay, we forbid law enforcement from enforcing immigration law, contrary to their charter, and we resist at every turn any meaningful limit or constraint on the free and illegal flow of immigrants?

The only way we could make immigration more humane is to stop it altogether. That would end the exploitation of illegal immigrants, eliminate the economic incentives to exploit disadvantaged semi-skilled or illiterate workers in other countries, and severely constrain the flow of illegal drugs.

So who signed this plea to Obama? Some real notables, to be sure, including:

Juan Cole

Phil Donahue

Jodie Evans, co-founder CODEPINK: Women for Peace

Jane Hamsher

Tom Hayden

Norman Solomon, Author and Obama delegate to Democratic National Convention

Matt Stoller

Studs Terkel

Katrina vanden Heuvel

Gore Vidal

Howard Zinn

As humorous postscript, a visit to the online petition supporting this letter includes several historical figures, no doubt entirely sympathetic to the Socialist aims expressed:

(Via Instapundit)

Sen. John McCain, on John McCain, quoted by Rich Lowry at The Corner:

In war and peace, I have been an imperfect servant of my country. But I have been her servant first, last and always. Whenever I faced an important choice between my country's interests or my own interests, party politics or any special interest, I chose my country. Nothing has ever mattered more to me than the honor of serving America, and nothing ever will. If you elect me President, I will always put our country first. I will put its greatness; its prosperity and peace; and the hopes and concerns of the people who make it great before any personal or partisan interest. We are going to start making this government work for you and not for the ambitions of the powerful. And I will keep that promise every hour of every day I am in office, so help me God.

Sen. Barack Obama, on Barack Obama, courtesy of Weekly Standard Blog, via Memeorandum:

[Revised paraphrase, according to Jake Tapper]

It has become increasingly clear in my travel, the campaign, that the crowds, the enthusiasm, 200,000 people in Berlin, is not about me at all. It’s about America. I have just become a symbol.'"

[Next sentence, quoted by Jonathan Weisman at WaPo's blog The Trail]

“I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions."

These admissions provide as stark a contrast as any with which America has been presented. No need for me to make any other remark.

Last week, Presidential Candidate Senator Barack Obama made a speech in Berlin, Germany.

The Grand Revision on Iraq may be underway in earnest, but there were other revisions on display as well, when Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama gave a grand speech in Berlin.

It is no doubt true that those who win wars get to write history, but it is just as true that just about anybody, from any political legacy, can attach themselves to a victory they did not foresee, in a struggle they did not support, for an objective they did not seek.

This is just as true when speaking of the Cold War, as when speaking of our emerging victory in Iraq. Sen. Obama, presumptive Democratic Party nominee for President, hails from a political tradition and party that devalued and obstructed both.

For many on the Left, the Cold War was an invention and a series of provocations; communism and socialism were appealing doctrines, marred only by unfortunate implementations. Such idealists, like those in public broadcasting, like to think of themselves as Citizens of the world. So does Obama:

I come to Berlin as so many of my countrymen have come before. Tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a citizen – a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world.

In fairness to Obama, however much an internationalist, there’s no doubt Obama knows what side he needs to be on when it comes to the Cold War:

Ours is a partnership that truly began sixty years ago this summer, on the day when the first American plane touched down at Templehof.

On that day, much of this continent still lay in ruin. The rubble of this city had yet to be built into a wall. The Soviet shadow had swept across Eastern Europe, while in the West, America, Britain, and France took stock of their losses, and pondered how the world might be remade.

This is where the two sides met. And on the twenty-fourth of June, 1948, the Communists chose to blockade the western part of the city. They cut off food and supplies to more than two million Germans in an effort to extinguish the last flame of freedom in Berlin.

The way Obama spoke in Berlin was highly reminiscent of that Cold Warrior of the past, Ronald Reagan. He spoke of the fight of a generation, for freedom, with no allusions or ambiguity about the threat to freedom posed by Soviet Communists. Would that his allies of a previous generation saw the threat as clearly. Obama this week remembered the desperate heroism of the Berlin Airlift, and what was at stake for Berliners. The iconic JFK, who Obama sought to emulate, harkened to it when he spoke in Germany. Twenty years ago, Reagan did as well, and challenged Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the wall Obama tried so hard to evoke as central imagery for his speech.

In the 1980’s, however, many of Obama’s Democratic Senate colleagues thought Reagan irresponsible, bellicose, antagonistic. They, like Obama in recent months, insisted that jaw, jaw, jaw, was better than war, war, war. Yet in less than a decade, Reagan’s challenge was met, with the USSR’s release of Eastern Europe, and in the remarkable series of events that won the Cold War, a war only barely begun with the Berlin Blockade.

Along the train of thought Obama pursued in his speech in Berlin, he suggested that while the fall of the Iron Curtain “brought new hope,” the bringing of East and West together somehow left us more vulnerable to new dangers.

Obama then juxtaposes two very different threats, represented by the “terrorists of September 11^th” training globally, and automobiles and factories “melting icecaps” and “shrinking coastlines.”

Obama is certainly not alone in displaying hysteria over what he perceives as the “grave threat” of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). However commonplace this view of AGW, in politics or media, emerging science is acknowledging the gross distortions, faulty data models, exaggerated projections, and flat out bad pseudo-science pervades global warming hype from Al Gore, Obama, and other AGW shills.

Nor is Obama the first Democrat to equate or compare AGW as a threat with radical Islamic terrorism. But by definition, such a view minimizes terrorism while it grossly inflates any actual danger from a warmer climate.

Later in his speech Obama sucks up to his green-fetishist European audience by insulting America:

Let us resolve that all nations – including my own – will act with the same seriousness of purpose as has your nation, and reduce the carbon we send into our atmosphere.

By all means, we should resolve such a thing: the rate of US CO2 emissions is lower than any country in Europe, and we are the only country not increasing such emissions at a dramatic rate. Europe is entirely unserious about reducing carbon emissions, and that ought to suit the US as well.

Others have also remarked on Obama’s odd locution of how 9/11 terrorists killed “thousands from all over the globe on American soil.” While a slight number of foreign victims are counted within those lost at the World Trade Center on 9/11, they’re a very small minority compared to the actual Americans killed on 9/11. The terror plotters sought to destroy Americans, an American landmark, and harm the American economy.

Obama then sets up another comparison of European and American attitudes towards each other:

In Europe, the view that America is part of what has gone wrong in our world, rather than a force to help make it right, has become all too common. In America, there are voices that deride and deny the importance of Europe’s role in our security and our future. Both views miss the truth – that Europeans today are bearing new burdens and taking more responsibility in critical parts of the world; and that just as American bases built in the last century still help to defend the security of this continent, so does our country still sacrifice greatly for freedom around the globe.

I offer a couple of observations. Obama remarks that in Europe, “the view that America is part of what has gone wrong in our world” is “all too common.” It’s just as common a view among University professors and academic elites, such as those from which both the Senator and his wife hail. I also question whether European commitment and support for peacekeeping and other international security initiatives around the world are increasing, rather than decreasing. I know that US military forces continue to serve around the globe, in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and nowhere in such numbers as Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s ironic that Obama mentions “American bases built in the last century” and how we “still sacrifice greatly for freedom around the globe,” without mentioning the greatest of sacrifices we make today in Iraq.

But Obama is just warming up rhetorically. He then proceeds to equate the “wall” of European and US foreign policy differences to other kinds of barriers:

That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another. The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.

How could anyone question the moral imperative of tearing down these walls? Wait a minute, what’s that about “countries with the most and those with the least?”

What kind of wall exists, that relates in even a metaphorical way, between “countries that have the most” (think America) and “those with the least” (think Africa)? Wall suggests something fabricated with intent. We can safely assume poor countries don’t build that wall (although an argument can be made that their despot kleptocrats do), so by default the rich ones are to blame. So poor countries are poor and rich are rich because somehow the rich built these walls to keep the poor poor, so they, of course, must pay.

Marxist economic theology, pure and simple. One has to wonder if Obama thinks of human wealth and poverty the same way. Moments later, Obama makes it certain:

This is the moment when we must build on the wealth that open markets have created, and share its benefits more equitably. Trade has been a cornerstone of our growth and global development. But we will not be able to sustain this growth if it favors the few, and not the many. Together, we must forge trade that truly rewards the work that creates wealth, with meaningful protections for our people and our planet. This is the moment for trade that is free and fair for all.

Any (well-informed) trade economist will tell you, free markets are inherently fair, to the extent that they are truly free, without internal subsidy or tariff. But that’s not what Obama thinks. He is describing here the Demon Globalization, Old World Colonialism in another guise. Note how trade and economic growth must somehow be constrained, or better, distributed in a fashion that rewards many, rather than a few.

This alludes to the classic Progressive (and Marxist) mythology that free market capitalism rewards the few at the very top of some economic pyramid, by exploiting all those at any level below the highest tier. When he demands that any economic policy must “truly reward the work that creates wealth,” Obama isn’t talking about entrepreneurs, but standard Marxist solipsism for the Means of Production, the Common Man of the masses.

Obama ended his speech with a call to action for the “people of the world,” declaring “this is our moment.” In doing so, Obama referred to an America that has spent more than two centuries striving to perfect an imperfect nation, in which we often did not “live up to our best intentions.”

That’s true, we often have not. But at several decades older than two centuries, America is the oldest Democracy in the world, and progenitor or protector to virtually all the others.

Obama’s witness of America is the hope of the Immigrant, expressed in the close of his speech:

Our allegiance has never been to any particular tribe or kingdom – indeed, every language is spoken in our country; every culture has left its imprint on ours; every point of view is expressed in our public squares. What has always united us – what has always driven our people; what drew my father to America’s shores – is a set of ideals that speak to aspirations shared by all people: that we can live free from fear and free from want; that we can speak our minds and assemble with whomever we choose and worship as we please.

Yes, America is that beacon of freedom, that promise of opportunity, that offer of living life more abundantly. But I would respectfully disagree, Senator, about that first bit about allegiance.

Without a doubt, immigrants and their cultures, languages, arts, ideas and ideals have greatly enriched our Nation, in fact made us who we are in every tangible and intangible way.

But we are a Nation with an allegiance to a very particular tribe and kingdom, that of Americans, and their United States of America.

Most of us – but not all, and perhaps not Sen. Obama -- grew up reminding ourselves of that allegiance, in the form of a pledge we recited every day in school, in classrooms, auditoriums, in stadiums, ballparks, village squares, and on holidays and civic remembrances (from Wikipedia):

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

One nation, indivisible. Many of us still find that a worthy object of allegiance.

(Via Memeorandum)

As if in prelude to commentary on Sen. Obama’s Presidential (Campaign) Visit to Afghanistan and Iraq, Israel and Palestinian Territories, and an adoring Europe, this past week evidenced recent evidence of Grand Revision.

This, of course, is the long predicted traverse of various political classes of Conventional Wisdom from What We All Knew Was True then, to What We Have Always Known is True now.

This turn of events surprises many, even those quite familiar with the various adages that embroider the truism, Defeat is an Orphan, Victory has a Thousand Fathers. Old political hands no doubt have all manner of examples from Partisan Navigation of the various methods and manners of the political pivot. Changes in political trade winds prompt a wise Captain to change tack. Paradigms shift.

Earlier in the week, no less a partisan than former White House Counsel Lanny Davis waxed poetic about the liberation of Iraq:

I just know I can’t get out of my mind that lady with the purple finger held up, smiling into the camera. If getting in was a mistake, then getting out — how and when — is not so simple as long as there is hope that she can some day live in a democratic Iraq that can help America in the war against terror.

Davis’s “confession of an anti-war Democrat,” was less surprising in revealing that Davis shifted readily between viewing the war as justified or not, depending on perceptions of how things were going at any moment, but rather what such admission reveals about this particular type of political animal.

Davis in effect admits that he changes his entire historical understanding and level of support for an American war effort, based on what things look like, how things are going, from moment to moment. That’s quite an admission for anyone who thinks seriously about foreign policy. It smacks of crass political expediency. Or moral relativity.

Here’s how Davis started out on his journey of transformation:

I had been strongly opposed to the U.S. intervention from the start. I felt this way even though I believed (as did most everyone, including the intelligence community) that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and even though I thought that Saddam was a murderous, genocidal thug and the world would be better off — and the U.S. safer — with him dead.

However, I reasoned, the WMD inspectors were back in and we had Saddam surrounded — thanks to George Bush, by the way, for which we Democrats did not give him sufficient credit at the time.

So why risk the uncertainties of a preemptive invasion, loss of life and treasure, and diverting our attention from 9/11 and the war against terror, which most U.S. intelligence indicated had nothing to do with Saddam?

Of course, all these remain good reasons for opposing starting the war, even as I look back now.

Davis admits to questioning his former certainty about the “wrongness” of the war when confronted by obvious indications that Iraqis actually celebrated their liberation, in joyfully embracing the rudiments of democracy after decades of oppression and horror.

Of course, when Al Qaeda set about to foment sectarian violence and the appearance of civil war, Davis reacted just as the terror Masters intended.

Then came the long demanded change in US policy in Iraq: a new counter-insurgency (COIN) strategy, and an increase of troops. The military actions necessary to create security, to give Iraq relief from violence, and a chance for the Iraqi government to make the insisted upon political progress.

Davis describes his latest change in perspective:

And then in early 2007 came the surge, which so many of us in the anti-war left of the Democratic Party predicted would be a failure, throwing good men and women and billions of dollars after futility. We were wrong.

The surge did, in fact, lead to a reduction of violence, confirmed by media on the ground as well as our military leaders.

It did allow the Shi’ite government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in the last several months to show leadership by joining, if not leading, the military effort to clean out of Basra the masked Mahdi Army controlled by the anti-U.S. Shiite extremist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and in the Sadr City section of Baghdad he claimed to control.

This willingness by the Shi’ite–dominated Maliki government to move against the Sadr Shi’ite extremists won crucial credibility for the government among many Sunni leaders and Sunnis on the streets, who joined together with Shi’ites to turn against the Al Qaeda in Iraq and other Taliban–like extremists.

These are facts, not arguments.

I suppose it should be gratifying to war supporters that anti-war Democrats can reconcile themselves to a positive outcome, to victory in Iraq, when all the uncertainty and “fog of war” has dissipated. But it reminds me of the townspeople coming alongside Gary Cooper at the end of High Noon, when Cooper and his wife protect the town against a criminal gang, unable to elicit the least support when the odds looked long, results were in doubt, and cringing citizens were more fearful of personal harm than standing in support of their town.

Via Glenn Reynolds, who also links to an earlier post, where Reader Peter Ingemi offered a prediction:

I'm remembering the coy saying about the French resistance. "If everyone who claimed to be in the resistance really had been, there would have been nobody left to collaborate."

I make the following prediction: In 20 or 25 years (it might not even take that long) all the people who where saying that the war was wrong and Iraq was wrong will talk about how America brought democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan and how they were a part of it due to their protests and desire for democracy and the end of tyranny. (of course they will not mention that the tyranny that they meant was us.) If the same people who write the current history books write them again be sure that this will happen.

The Grand Revision appears to be underway. More to follow.

I need some help from any friends out there I have left.

Why should I even make an effort of political involvement, with the choices we face?

The Democrats insisted on nominating a neophyte ultra-liberal because he was sufficiently US Defeat at Any Cost, so as to properly bury the President’s legacy in Iraq. I have absolutely nothing to criticize about Sen. Obama, because he has almost no record of leadership, accomplishment, courage, or moral fiber. In a sane political world, he wouldn’t even make a short list for VP. The only stands he’s taken I trust in him to uphold, are the ones for which he’s garnered 100% liberal rankings: abortion on demand at any age to anyone for any reason, and Government as the answer for every social ill. The liberal elite he represents have never given up on their dream of an enlightened Socialism, and now they’ll get every wish fulfilled.

Leading Democrats have been, and will be, far more interested in punishing and denigrating the current President, even if that plays right into the hands of our enemies. They have always preferred that Bush be wrong, even if that meant America losing a war they themselves voted to approve. Their absolute bottom line has been: The US has to lose in Iraq, because that execrable GWB tricked us into going to war against Saddam Hussein. As the sole Conservative in a Liberal Democratic family, I can testify that Bush Derangement Syndrome has made your average Democrat insane over any Bush accomplishment, and orgasmic over any Bush failure. They ignore any impact to US National Interests, because they honestly believe that what Bush has done to harm America justifies anything that’s done to punish the hated ‘W.’

The Republicans insisted on nominating the worst possible nominee, who cannot be caricatured any more offensively than his actual persona presents. They face the prospect of campaign performances reminiscent of James Stockdale. And they’ve deserved everything they will get, in even greater isolation, powerlessness, and evaporation as a contributor to any National civic discussion. They out-grafted even the most venal of Democrats, allowed RINOs to turn them away from every one of their core principles, except a strong defense – and they darn near frittered that away as well. No fiscal conservative can rightly defend their record.

We will get some version of universal health care, new and more generous bankruptcy and foreclosure protections, greater government control of banking, insurance, stock and bond trading, and of course, an expanding illegal immigrant amnesty that will swell the ranks of non-Americans diluting the vote of Americans. Reparations for Slavery will be forthcoming, as well as all manner of “Civil Rights” legislation for racial minorities, women (fences must be mended, after all), and the usual GLBT spaghetti of sexual abnormalities.

Government will grow gargantuan; taxes will rapidly increase, with a gross distortion of what is already a very progressive tax structure. That will of course mean that lower income Americans will get paid off in bribes and services, higher income Americans will be punished severely for daring to support the notion that our incomes are our money first before it belongs to our Government, as spoils to redistribute.

Don’t get me wrong. I too, view the Obama candidacy as a historic occasion, when many optimistically believe that race relations can be healed. But that can’t be the sole criteria for electing the erstwhile Leader of the Free World, Liberty’s Champion the world over.

Our enemies laugh at our indecision, our weaknesses, our lethargy and laziness in the face of obvious, dedicated, and continuous war against us, our allies, and our interests. Our desire to turn away again from International problems, chasing chimeras of collectivism. Meanwhile, the rest of the “civilized world” is just now waking up with raging hang-overs from such intoxications.

Mainstream media craves an Obama victory, and will do everything in their power to achieve it. European elites delight in the prospect of an Obama victory. Muslim theocracies and dictatorships the world over salivate over the hope of an Obama Presidency. Until their media advisers cautioned them of the negative effect they were having on the Obama campaign, terrorist groups openly proclaimed their support for Obama.

That’s the vantage point from which I view this week’s sycophantic Obamania. It just reinforces pessimism.

Stay tuned, but I don’t see any daylight between the US and a reinvigorated Liberal Fascism.

Ralph Peters, writing in the NY Post, slams the mainstream media (MSM) for conspiring to impose an almost total blackout on success in Iraq:

DO we still have troops in Iraq? Is there still a conflict over there?

If you rely on the so-called mainstream media, you may have difficulty answering those questions these days. As Iraqi and Coalition forces pile up one success after another, Iraq has magically vanished from the headlines.

Want a real "inconvenient truth?" Progress in Iraq is powerful and accelerating.

But that fact isn't helpful to elite media commissars and cadres determined to decide the presidential race over our heads. How dare our troops win? Even worse, Iraqi troops are winning. Daily.

Peters is right, this has nothing to do with an absence of blood in non-newsworthy stories. There could be no more bigger news story in the past 5 years, then the revelation that Iraqis and their US and coalition allies have soundly defeated Al Qaeda, neutralized Sunni resistance to the government, and severely constrained the violence and influence of sectarian militias, both Sunni and Shia.

The reason the MSM chooses not to report on our stunning (and widely unexpected) success in Iraq is because they disapprove. They’re profoundly dsiappointed, and they fear the political implications for their preferred candidate in this year’s Presidential election.

Peters concludes his indictment by noting some contrasts, in terms of Legislative accomplishment, media preferences, and ulterior motives:

The surge worked. Incontestably. Iraqis grew disenchanted with extremism. Our military performed magnificently. More and more Iraqis have stepped up to fight for their own country. The Iraqi economy's taking off. And, for all its faults, the Iraqi legislature has accomplished far more than our own lobbyist-run Congress over the last 18 months.

When Iraq seemed destined to become a huge American embarrassment, our media couldn't get enough of it. Now that Iraq looks like a success in the making, there's a virtual news blackout.

Of course, the front pages need copy. So you can read all you want about the heroic efforts of the Chinese People's Army in the wake of the earthquake.

Tells you all you really need to know about our media: American soldiers bad, Red Chinese troops good.

Is Jane Fonda on her way to the earthquake zone yet?

Ralph must listen to National Peoples Republic -- I mean, Public Radio (NPR) -- which must have some official policy that reporting on China must always be upbeat and reflect positively on China’s communist government. Talk about a news blackout.

Apparently, NPR staff were present in rural China, working on a series of reports when the recent earthquakes struck. These reports give every impression on focusing on the hopeful and impressive strides China has made, in transforming their largely rural and agricultural heartland into a burgeoning industrial and economic powerhouse.

Their presence provided them immediate and proximate on scene access to the quake and recovery efforts, on which they’re reporting with gusto. All of a piece, unfortunately, with their gushing coverage for the past several years.

For the earthquake, NPR is awash in heroic stories of the Chinese Army, the Chinese Government, and the Chinese people recovering in the aftermath of the quakes. But they don’t just stop there. An analysis piece the other day suggested that the Chinese central planners have “learned” from bad public relations from previous disasters, and now allow and even encourage international and Chinese press coverage of the earthquakes and relief efforts.

No doubt this is true for China, with MSM fawning friends like NPR, natural disasters and their aftermath can have a positive impact on international public opinion in advance of their awaited Olympic Games. You have to wonder if the conscientious and full-of-good-intentions worshippers of Government supported public media don’t view this situation as a mission: how to make China more appealing. (NPR to the Communists: “Stand back, comrades, and we’ll have this cleaned up for you in no time, at all. Don’t you worry about a thing.”)

If you think this is outrageous exaggeration, listen closely the next time NPR reports from China. In recent stories, even the slight negatives they include are enveloped in excuses for Chinese misbehavior. Admiration and envy are palpable in the reports.

NPR reports that the Chinese have constructed too many dams, now damaged or threatened by earthquakes, but distressingly notes how critical these dams are for energy production. The Army units conducting rescue and recovery operations would be able to reach distressed communities more quickly by water if they there weren’t all these dams.

Darned central planning! There’s always an unanticipated consequence. For which, of course, new regulations and directives need to be formulated. The NPR reporting gives the overwhelming impression that their reporters greatly sympathize with the difficulties of, rather than resent, totalitarian control of everything. (If you want a glimpse of what a Democratic vision for what a Total Government future looks like, stay tuned.)

How great in contrast to how dreadfully George W. Bush’s FEMA handled Katrina, you have to know they, and their majority audience, are thinking. This despite volumes of evidence of New Orleans and Louisiana incompetence and corruption, and the remarkable and nearly unreported heroics in responding to Katrina, of the Army and Air National Guard, who provided critical, life saving services within hours of disaster.

An offhand tidbit shows the supreme irony of the implicit subtext of NPR’s China reporting. NPR reports that the Government will relocate entire villages to new locations less vulnerable to earthquake, or where services can be restored more quickly.

A government can no doubt be very effective when all the means of a totalitarian state, capable of complete disregard of the life and humanity of its people, are directed at a single mission or task. Chinese political and other prisoners can testify about live harvesting of organs for internal use and international export, for profit. Absolute and total control can look mighty attractive, when state control eclipses and renders meaningless or invisible, the price a society pays for that efficiency.

Hitler did indeed make the trains run on time, particularly those carrying his victims to death camps.

Can anyone imagine how NPR would be reporting on a US Government program to “resettle” New Orleanians to higher ground?

The NPR reporter suggested, “The Government has realized, that in disasters, a free press can hardly have any downside,” or words entirely to that effect. The same feature acknowledged that if remains to be seen if this same “openness” will apply to Chinese political reporting. Are they kidding? I hope they’re not holding their breath.

But with NPR, when it comes to China, it might be hard to tell the difference between them holding their breath, or merely struck breathless in adoration.

(Via Instapundit)

Yuval Levin writing at The Corner spotlights a very curious assertion by Sen. Barack Obama, as reported by AFP:

“We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,” Obama.

Levin retorts:

We can’t?  So at what temperature would other countries like me to keep my home, then, and how much should I eat?

But it’s really, really worse than that. Obama made the statement in the context of claiming that, as President, he would ensure that the US set the example on Global Warming.

So should we expect an Obama Administration to outlaw SUVs?

Would Obama’s EPA Director set Federal policy guidelines on how much we eat, enforceable by the EPA? Or would Obama advocate laws to limit dietary intake? Would prosecution involve jail time on reduced rations, or a mandatory attendance at Fat Camp?

Will Obama insist on strict energy monitoring and rationing, whereby home thermostats transmit readings to US Dept. of Energy, resulting in automatic shutoff of energy until room temperatures fall back to an environmentally sustainable 68 degrees?

Even if Obama intends only to use the bully pulpit to encourage the behavior he sees as more of a proper example for the world, does he really want to be both President and First Nag? (Maybe this is part of his campaign readjustments post-nomination, and he wants to incorporate essential qualities of Al Gore and Hillary Clinton.)

I remember a firestorm when a Democrat suggested that the US needed to have the International Community approve foreign policy decisions that we make based on our own National Security. I also vividly recall all the suggestions from the Left that the US should surrender sovereignty to the UN, the International Court, or other international bodies, many of the members of which notably lack any quaint traditions like freedom, justice, or equality.

We need to have other countries give their okay for the individual behavior in matters of personal conscience and liberty of US citizens? Why do I get the feeling that there’s a lot more involved with this man’s choice of wearing or not wearing a US flag on his lapel?

There isn’t any way to escape the conclusion this man’s a born Socialist. If he means what he says, and he seems awfully sincere to me, he means to assert control over every means of production, energy source and consumption, every lifestyle choice at all susceptible to Government interference. I thought Communism was dead.

As an observation, it might be nice if Obama treated the relations between internal US communities with the same deference he shows foreigners. If he did, he would easily avoid gaffes like calling a female journalist “sweetie,” refer to rural Pennsylvanians as “clinging to guns and religion,” or talk about “typical white people,” or suggesting we need to worry about whether foreigners think our personal choices are “okay.”

Noel Sheppard, writing at NRO’s Planet Gore, decries the ‘gross negligence of adoring media when tiptoeing around the blatant vested interests of the exalted Al Gore.

In the midst of an emerging global food crisis greatly exacerbated, if not caused, by increasing production of bio fuels, reporters remain too emotionally attached to their environmental prejudices to start asking questions. Case in point courtesy of Sheppard: the May 6 interview of Gore on Terry Gross’s National Public Radio show, “Fresh Air.”

Gross in the interview tries to touch on a link between biofuels and the global food crisis, but all Gore had to do was blame any agricultural shortages on drought, caused of course by global warming, and Gross is blissfully off to other bromides.

Sheppard highlights what main and lesser stream media won’t: Al Gore is heavily invested, both from an historical policy perspective, and in lots of real dollars, with ethanol and other biofuel industries. According to Sheppard, Gore is an investor in Amyris Biotechnologies and AltraBiofuels, and cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate 14 years ago mandating the use of ethanol.

Nice work, if you can get it. Too bad media only concerns itself with business connections and dealings that concern Republicans, not sainted sycophants trying to control the means of production for the greater good.

So how bad is the food crisis, made worse by AGW-inspired public policy. Sheppard’s reporting suggests: bad, and if the likes of Gore get their way, certain to get much, much worse:

As the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Marlo Lewis wrote in his May 5 NRO article “Food for Fuel Is No Laughing Matter,” a number of key international organizations are expressing dire concern as such grain demand sends prices soaring:

Both World Bank President Robert Zoellick and International Monetary Fund Managing Director Domenique Strauss-Kahn warn that the increase in world food prices could force 100 million people back into absolute poverty (defined as a household income of $1 a day or less), wiping out all the gains the poorest billion people achieved during the past decade.
The price of wheat jumped 120 percent in the past year, hitting a 28-year high in February. The price of rice, the staple for billions of Asians, is up 147 percent over the past year, hitting 19-year high. The price of corn tripled in the past two years, increasing from $2.00 a bushel in January 2006, to $3.05 in January 2007, to $4.25 in January 2008, and hitting $6 a bushel in April 2008.

Anti-humanist Environmentalists might argue that all this amounts to a price we should be willing to pay, to reduce AGW. But do biofuels help, or hurt? Sheppard’s quotes a

Wall Street Journal report:

Now scientists are showing that ethanol will exacerbate greenhouse gas emissions. A February report in the journal Science found that "corn-based ethanol, instead of producing a 20% savings, nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years . . . Biofuels from switchgrass, if grown on U.S. corn lands, increase emissions by 50%."

Can you imagine that? An environmental public policy prescription that achieves the opposite of its desired intent. You’d think these people were unscientific, or stupid, or had ulterior motives, or something.

Sheppard concludes, and indicts:

Think about it:

·         Gore and his business associates have now admitted their investments in biofuel companies

·         Grains prices are soaring all over the world as many countries experience food shortages

·         Multiple international entities including the United Nations are pointing fingers at ethanol and biofuel for adding to the food crisis

·         Biofuels actually emit more GHGs than conventional gasoline

·         Gore travels the globe spreading climate hysteria while blaming every natural disaster on global warming

·         Some of the so-called “solutions” Gore recommends to eradicate global warming will increase the international usage of biofuels thereby benefiting companies he and his business partners are invested in.

Yet, to date, no mainstream press member has publicly connected the dots, or questioned Gore about any of this. Is someone going to have to turn a slideshow presentation into an award-winning Hollywood documentary for media to start recognizing and reporting Gore’s really inconvenient truth?

That wouldn’t help. There’d be no funding for that kind of film, and surely, no Nobel Prize or Academy Award.

Vets for Freedom announces support for a revised GI Bill. From their Press Release:

Vets for Freedom Supports Revised GI Bill
STATEMENT FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 14, 2008
Contact: Judy Mayka (202) 338-4070
(Washington DC) Vets for Freedom urges Senate members to work together to pass a GI Bill that not only addresses the immediate need for increased financial and educational benefits, but that also takes into account the unique dynamics of today’s all-volunteer force. The US military is working hard to increase its ranks in order to meet strategic needs across the globe; and as a result, it is imperative that recruitment and retention are both addressed as part of any GI Bill.
The Webb Bill correctly recognizes the rising costs of secondary education, and the importance of pegging yearly benefit increases to educational inflation indices, rather than the Consumer Price Index, which would require Congress to revisit the issue in a few years. The Webb Bill also allows for the accrual of Active Duty benefits for Reservists and National Guardsmen, many of which have seen repeated deployments.
On the other hand, the McCain-Graham Bill substantially increases monthly educational benefits and could be implemented immediately; while the Webb Bill would take over a year to implement and would require a new layer of Pentagon bureaucracy. The McCain-Graham Bill also rewards troops who remain in the military, providing strong incentives for our best and brightest to continue their service and support a growing force.
"Both the Webb and McCain-Graham bills have valuable aspects that address the needs of our military and our men and women in uniform." said Pete Hegseth, Executive Director of Vets for Freedom. "Vets for Freedom trusts that those involved will work toward a compromise to integrate the best aspects of both bills, and ensure its passage and implementation in a timely manner."
Vets for Freedom is a nonpartisan organization established by combat veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Its mission is to educate the American public about the importance of achieving success in these conflicts by applying our first-hand knowledge to issues of American military strategy. For more information, please visit www.vetsforfreedom.org.

This squares with influential MILBLOGGER and MilBlogdaddy Greyhawk, who comes down squarely in support of the GI Bill as a no brainer, and calls for urgent readjustment of the position of Senator McCain, if he doesn’t want to lose valuable ground to his Democratic Party opponent.

An Essay for the 2008 EO/Wheatstone Academy Symposium

Joe Carter of Evangelical Outpost is hosting the 2008 EO Symposium, sponsored this year by Wheatstone Academy. Joe explains the central topic of this year’s Symposium:

While the current political cycle has sharpened our focus on the role of religion in the public square, we often fail to reflect on the role of the public square upon religion. Increasingly, when Christians engage others in public forums, we do so using tools that we did not develop. Whether through movies, music, or new media, we tend to start with a pre-existing cultural forms and incorporate the Gospel as best we can.

As communication theorist Marshall McLuhan argued, the tools we use to communicate a message can shape that message in ways we may or may not intend.* If this is true then Christians have a duty to critically evaluate the effect of our media choices on our message. Do our choices of media forms allow the message to remain Christian? Or are the tools with which we communicate at odds with the message of the Gospel?

If the medium affects the message, how will the Christian message be affected by the new media?

Joe graciously extended an invitation for me to contribute an essay for the Symposium, and the following is something of an answer to this question.

Wary of Insularity

Introduction

Theorist Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase and elaborated on the concept, that “The Medium is the Message” (TMITM). McLuhan in his lifetime created prolific and elaborate works, combining philosophy and a fair amount of artistic invention. After his death, his family, followers, and business associates have architected around McLuhan’s ideas an impressive edifice of business and educational resources.

I’ve never read McLuhan, but from years of exposure to the many ubiquitous riffs and references to TMITM, it resonates. If nothing else, this year’s Symposium compelled me to read enough background synopses of what McLuhan seemed to be communicating to understand TMITM, at least a little.

It’s a great organizing concept in thinking about creative and expressive acts, and the entirety of consequences that flow from them. Enough to know that I don’t think I’ll take Mark Federman up on his well-intended instructional curriculum for understanding McLuhan. My guess is that summaries like those produced by Federman and his colleagues at the McLuhan Program can convey in two thousand words 95% of the explicit content (if not the implicit media) that McLuhan attempted in two million. (I suppose that’s one way TMITM, too.)

That said, the Christian needs to confront the New Media, and how it might affect the Christian message. More critically, God compels the Christian to consider the fullest range of consequences that result from their own creative and expressive acts, and those of others. This remains true for the Christian, whether in the context of New Media, or in the old, established media of church traditions. I suggest it’s Scriptural.

As I understand him, McLuhan adhered to a definition of media that includes within its scope any extension of ourselves, any tool or utility of matter or expression. A hammer represents a media, as does language, or any act of expression that allows the “‘outering’ of our senses,” to quote Federman, or “anything from which a change emerges.” McLuhan thought of media in this sense as something that grows, and seemingly takes on a life of its own. Federman further asserts that, “since some sort of change emerges from everything we conceive or create, all of our inventions, innovations, ideas and ideals are McLuhan media.”

McLuhan’s conception captures the idea of the individual as a Change Agent, media as the action catalysts, and the message as any and all changes affected.

Many committed Christians will testify that, as a follower of Jesus, they experience the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, however imperfectly or inadequately that is oftentimes reflected in their walk and practice. For us, that means we acknowledge conflicting truths: that He who is in us, is greater than he that is in the world; that in our carnal nature, the old sinful man, we do what we do not want to do; and that the Spirit and our carnal nature remain in constant struggle. It also means that for us, the Holy Spirit can make our expressions in media a joint effort between us and God – if we let His will be done. Certainly this can be so with Christian use of new media.

The Internet as Medium

The internet serves as an excellent source of information. It makes a remarkable breadth of tools and resources available in ways both immediate, efficient, and amazingly adaptable to a tremendous range of uses. The simple acts of cut and paste, link and google have entered not only our lexicon, but the almost unconscious habits of increasing automation.

We live a wired, electronic life, often virtual, but seemingly more familiar than much of the natural, physical world. We discover, explore, and often thrive in networks of connection and community. Within these virtual communities, alternative media, new media, flourish and grow. The internet serves as an electronic commons.

Certainly the internet, the many new media outlets and the virtual communities they reflect, stand as vivid examples of the kind of phenomena that McLuhan sought to examine.

The virtual world of the internet creates a moral tension between traditional understandings of reality, and the evident, real consequences that derive from the “unreality” of virtual constructs. Still, the worlds reflected by the internet are merely some from all possible worlds.

And perhaps well reflective of McLuhan’s contemplations, the internet also creates many unanticipated consequences. The internet allows and encourages without much constraint a widespread exhibitionism, however seemingly anonymous. The internet represents the media greenhouse for all manner of crime, exploitation, manipulation, theft, confidence games, frauds and corruption.

Further, many people succumb to an intoxication with online virtual reality. They immerse themselves in activity, thought, the exchange of ideas, and all manner of social networking. Unfortunately, for too many, that community participation comes at the expense of any near equivalent with the physical, external, reality-based world. And it’s not just phenomena of youth.

Many people rely on online community as a crutch, or alternative to real world community. Anonymity and the artificiality, the “virtualness” of the online experience allows people to define themselves, structure their interactions and relationships on individual terms. They have control, power, or influence, in contrast to what they perceive elsewhere. Others just get wrapped up for a season, and sometimes lose perspective.

As a MILBLOGGER, I’ve seen and experienced this firsthand. I find myself so involved at times with online communities, that I lose perspective on how narrow and encapsulated that world can be. Not everyone, maybe not even a significant minority of people read Instapundit, or Real Clear Politics, or Daily Kos for those of a different bent, or even the estimable Evangelical Outpost, and surely not my blog. But many of us who dwell in that world are often confronted with puzzled looks and blank stares even at the mention of blogs or blogging. We are still a tiny microcosm of the online world.

But other than accessibility, visibility, and differences (perhaps) in societal constraint, how is this different than the physical, non-virtual world? Don’t we as Christians run the same risks of cloistering or isolation in the “real world?”

God’s Call to Evangelize

Jesus calls on his followers to go and spread his Gospel, the Good News of God having sent the world His son, so that whosoever believes in Him, shall not perish but have everlasting life. Jesus led by example, seeking out sinners, as they had most need of the Physician. He walked among the lost, He lived life among them, He sought to reach them, and healed those who sought His mercy. He celebrated weddings, provided wine, dined with tax collectors and gave encouragement to the shunned and ignored.

He went where many religious leaders of his day would not go, He exhorted against dead religious observance, and He decried the elevation of man and tradition over the timeless heart and commands of God.

God also admonishes His children to be of the world, but not conformed to it.

The Great Commandment challenges us to serve as vessels for what He has poured into us: that Greatest of all Loves that He has shown to us, we are to share with others. Not when they come calling, not when they make themselves acceptable in His eyes, not under conditions we consider ideal in time and place. Go, He said, and make disciples of all the nations.

I dare to presume He would intend us to make disciples in all possible worlds, the virtual as well as the physical.

Christian New Media

There are excellent examples of Christian use of new media, and flourishing Christian online communities. Leading ministries reach contemporary audiences with new media, and the sometime difficulties of finding Christian publications and resources have been erased thanks to the adroitness of Christian publishers and the explosion of Christian internet sites. Christian bloggers abound, forming communities and blogging collectives. Some, like EO, are making significant inroads in traffic and exposure. No doubt, they reach many unsaved, and start conversation and debate. Some of these, by search and curiosity, then yearning and yielding, eventually find faith in Jesus as their savior.

Christians evangelize with new media. They reach the lost. They start conversations. They create relationships, and trust. They provide comfort and encouragement. They share ideas. They build, fortify, and amplify each other in Christian collective expression. They share audience, and thereby extend networks and the relationships they enable.

In every sense, Christians inhabit virtual reality in all the ways they inhabit the physical world. They learn and make use of new and emerging tools. Many churches keep their sermons online. Christian music abounds in music sharing sites, and many Christian families are carrying around I-pods filled with praise and worship music. Christian online dating services have even emerged.

Just as Christians used radio, and then television, as a media for evangelism and outreach, so too Christians have taken to the Internet to attract seekers and searchers, to proselytize, to evangelize, and to more flexibly and creatively serve their congregations, physical and virtual.

Cloisters of Fellowship

Does that mean that any and all Christian use of the internet and new media is holy, righteous, or in keeping with God’s purposes? Of course not.

God’s people aren’t always very Godly. We fail our Creator, we fall short. Tragically, one of the most damaging ways we fail in our faith is that we isolate, we stick to ourselves, we focus inward, we shrink away from a difficult world, from dangerous and hurting people, and we turn away from the Greatest Commandment. Worse, many of us never see the slide from grace for what it is. We don’t acknowledge our failure of responsibility. We convince ourselves, just as the fallen do, that we’re pretty good, or good enough, or the good we do outweighs the bad, and certainly outweighs the good we never get around to doing.

In modest tribute to McLuhan, I devised a media (expression) of the all too common trajectory of Christian zeal for evangelism. Think of it as the Bell Curve of a too common Christian maturation process:

God

God’s Call

God’s Call upon the Christian

God’s Call upon the Christian to Evangelize

God’s Call upon the Christian

God’s Call

God

We start with an awareness, then acceptance of the reality of God.

We then hear God’s call to us.

We accept and acknowledge Jesus as Lord and Savior, and by the Holy Spirit, begin to walk out God’s plan for our lives.

At its fullest expression, our understanding of God’s call leads us to evangelize, in fulfillment of the Great Commandment.

Sadly, some never make it that far, and the power of their faith ebbs like retreating tide. Even many who get there, retreat anyway.

The Cloistered Online

I submit that the greatest danger the internet and new media poses for the Christian (practitioner or evangelist) is the same danger posed by more traditional Christian community. Fellowships that turn inward, Congregations that self-serve, church bodies that exclude or separate or find more division with other Christians than unity, all of these stray from God’s call.

I don’t suppose this potential is any greater via new media than in the easier ways we isolate ourselves in the physical world. I certainly have witnessed enough isolation and cloistering behavior in churches to think the very act of stepping out online represents something of a hopeful sign, denoting an attempt to reach beyond the comfortable or known, seeking those who are lost.

In dialog such as those encouraged by Evangelical Outpost, and this Symposium, and the emerging communities of Christian bloggers, I also see a breaking down of denominational and doctrinal boundaries which have far too often stifled and stunted, than protected believers from error or bad doctrine.

I’ve read Catholic and other Orthodox church theologians, and serious students of Protestant faiths, and lots and lots of Christians who have tried to remain unaffiliated on doctrine, doing their part to confess the One Church of Jesus Christ.

We all bring a perspective of the faith experience, and if new media accomplishes little else, it encourages all of us to get out and about, and meet some of our neighbors. We walk past walls and through gates which in the physical world, remain tightly closed.

By seeking a broader, virtual community of Christ, we have the opportunity to more easily advance the purposes of God, and the advancement of His Kingdom.

That, and I kind of like the idea that God’s people can transmit the power of the Holy Spirit in the electronic dimensions of the internet. Not that He needs our help, not that He can’t find any way He wants, but there are far too many people who hide out in their virtual neighborhoods, hungering for freedom in faith, and the Truth that will set them free.

In important commentary today, David Ignatius at Real Clear Politics buttresses Petraeus and Crocker pointed testimony about Iranian trouble-making in Iraq, and makes a sober assessment of what awaits the next President:

Fighting a war against Iran is a bad idea. But fighting a proxy war against them in Iraq, where many of our key allies are manipulated by Iranian networks of influence, may be even worse. The best argument for keeping American troops in Iraq is that it increases our leverage against Iran; but paradoxically, that's also a good argument for reducing U.S. troops to a level that's politically and militarily sustainable. It could give America greater freedom of maneuver in the tests with Iran that are ahead.

Somehow, the next president will have to fuse U.S. military and diplomatic power to both engage Iran and set limits on its activities. A U.S.-Iranian dialogue is a necessary condition for future stability in the Middle East. But the wrong deal, negotiated by a weak America with a cocky Iran that thinks it's on a roll, would be a disaster.

I think Ignatius has this just about right, but I’d take it to the next logical conclusion. John McCain certainly recognizes the threat posed by Al Qaeda, as well as Iranian proxy sponsorship of terror groups, terrorists, and militia adversaries of both US forces and Iraq (however often he stumbles around trying to correctly label all the players).

Obama, on the other hand, never reveals a thorough understanding of the threats we face, or how seriously they threaten. I have great certainty that Obama would be more than capable of serving as proximate cause of a “weak America” negotiating the “wrong deal” with a “cocky Iran that thinks it’s on a roll.”

If the Bush Administration can be plausibly accused of over-simplifying threats and enemies to the point of caricature, its critics and opposition should be likewise accountable for thinking they can dispatch them like cartoon villains. To foreign policy neophytes like Obama, our sworn enemies will always act rationally, behave in farsighted self-interest, deal honestly, and respect conventional norms. (Or be quickly beaten or bombed into submission, if only a Brilliant Democrat takes on the task.)

Fatally for such who harbor these illusions, enemies in the real world are not so easily vanquished. Pity, Sen. Obama’s first hand experience with NY’s junior Senator, doesn’t better inform his understanding of adversaries in conflict.

(Via Memeorandum)

Phillip Carter’s Intel Dump has been picked up by the Washington Post, where he posted commentary on yesterday’s Congressional testimony from General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker.

Phillip Carter is a Veteran of OIF who supports Barack Obama and serves in a quasi-official capacity as an advisor to Obama’s Campaign. He’s also been a longtime and consistent critic of our efforts in Iraq, albeit an honorable and principled one, who makes his arguments on the basis of logic and personal experience, largely without rancor or insulting rhetoric towards those with whom he disagrees.

I’d rather have someone like him blogging for the Washington Post than many other potential candidates, but still, I think Carter is the one overplaying his hand, here.

Carter’s take-aways up front:

They overstated the threat posed by al-Qaeda in Iraq in an effort to justify the mission -- a mindset that has generated a deeply flawed strategy. They also overplayed the surge's success -- downplaying or discounting factors that likely did more to create today's improved security conditions. While their "Anaconda" strategy looks cool on a PowerPoint slide, it confuses the issues of control and influence, putting too much stock in America's ability to engineer success in Iraq. And, perhaps most tellingly, the two men made the case for perseverance without placing Iraq in the context of vital U.S. national interests, offering only apocalyptic predictions of what would happen if we don't stay the course.

Origins of Violence

Carter asserts that Al Qaeda cannot rightly be held accountable for the lion’s share of violence in Iraq:

The vast majority of Iraqi violence over the past five years has been caused a) by ethno-sectarian conflict between Sunnis and Shiites; b) intra-sectarian fighting amongst Sunnis and Shiites; c) fighting over scarce resources (oil, fuel, water, food, control over ministries with responsibility for the same); and d) fighting by Iraq's homegrown Sunni insurgency and homegrown Shiite militias. AQI has played an important role as catalyst and spoiler -- stoking the fires of sectarian violence (as with the 2006 mosque bombing in Samarra), and keeping them going whenever peace threatened to emerge. But that is a supporting role, and it is a mistake to cast AQI in the lead role and to characterize U.S. efforts in Iraq as a counterinsurgency against AQI.

Clausewitz once wrote that the most important challenge for a commander was to visualize the battlefield -- because all plans and actions flow from his understanding of the situation. Our skewed visualization of Iraq -- and overemphasis of the AQI threat -- has pushed us to adopt an extremely risky strategy of standing up Iraqi security forces and local partisans that will, if we ever withdraw or downsize our forces, create the conditions for a massive civil war.

Carter summarizes the violence in a way that confirms that for Carter, Iraq has been a Civil War in the making from the start, and will devolve into sectarian violence under any scenario, resulting from any action we took to date, or will take – except of course, for the vague policy direction suggested by his preferred Presidential Candidate, Sen. Obama.

I would argue that Carter’s invocation of Clausewitz more accurately explains his (and Obama’s) “skewed visualization of Iraq.”

Al Qaeda aggressively sought to portray their terrorist plots and factions, as well as the resulting violence, as indigenous and homegrown. They created Iraqi puppets for what were otherwise foreign terrorist operations, all of which has been repeatedly revealed as designed propaganda in captured Al Qaeda documents. Yet, Carter acknowledges AQI as “catalyst and spoiler,” but relegates AQI to a minor, “supporting role.”

Yet even the example Carter cites, that of the 2006 Samarra Mosque bombing, undercuts his argument. That seminal event, engineered to create the impression of sectarian conflict, is widely regarded as having provoked much of the resulting violence, and that was just the most obvious example of years of steady provocation. That’s pretty central to the instability and violence of what happened, yet Carter fairly implies that it had no material impact, against intractable (and pre-existing) ethnic strife. No doubt Al Qaeda spinmeisters are pleased that analysts like Carter – and policy makers like Obama – have so thoroughly bought into their deceits.

Nor does Carter make any mention of Iranian war-and violence-making, or the degree to which Iran has supported multiple factions (Shi and Sunni alike), as well as Al Qaeda itself. By adopting the view that the great majority of the violence is internal and domestic, Carter in effect aligns himself with those stubborn analytic reactionaries (including many at the CIA and State Department), who stubbornly refuse to accept the possibility that Shia Iran could ever find common cause with Sunni Al Qaeda. This repeats the same analytic conceit that refused to acknowledge that an irreligious secularist like Saddam Hussein could ever support or sponsor or find common cause with radical Islamic terrorists. (In the face of much evidence to the contrary.)

Other Causes

Carter also adopts another Democratic Party talking point, in claiming that other factors have led to the greatly improved security situation in Iraq:

What about the massive flows of displaced people? And what to make of the relative importance of the political deals with Sunni and Shiite political leaders that have kept their partisans out of the fight? These have all had a massive impact on the security situation -- probably more of one than that exerted by U.S. military forces.

These are odd factors to juxtapose. In the first, Carter joins those who claim that a largely completed ethnic cleansing has moved warring ethnic groups far enough apart that they no longer are in (as much) conflict. Again, that is based on a premise that Sunnis and Shia, in their natural state, unmolested, will always be at war.

Based on my (admittedly limited) experience in Iraq, as well as trusted sources more knowledgeable about Iraqi anthropology, most Iraqi families reveal a great deal of Shia and Sunni intermarriage. All of the Iraqis I met had Shia and Sunni relatives, and even some Kurds besides. The Iraqi (Kurdish) General who spoke to us at length described the same kind of intermixing. Pre-war Iraq was never particularly religious, other than in (some) Shia enclaves, and the Iraqi Shia (Arab) had been distinctly less religious than their Iranian (Persian) counterparts. That’s one of the points of friction between Iran and Iraq Shia communities, with a fair amount of racism and ethnic stereotyping thrown in for good measure. I find it highly credible that, without external agitation and provocation, Iraq can and will evidence reconciliation from the Baathist years of Sunni domination and Hussein’s acts of genocide, and the signs of such reconciliation are increasing.

I find it also highly likely that the “political deals” that Carter dismisses could not have been possible within the degrading security situation that prevailed prior to the Surge of US Military forces.

What’s Victory?

Carter passes on another Democratic Party talking point:

Seeking a Strategy. So what is our strategy in Iraq? And for that matter, what is "victory?" How does a "victory" in Iraq relate to America's larger national security interests? Petraeus and Crocker effectively punted on these grand questions, as they did last September, offering only that we needed to persevere and succeed to avoid vague Somalia-like predictions of what might happen if we don't.

I can directly attest to this line of rhetoric as a Democratic talking point, as it was echoed all day long yesterday by Democratic Congressional aides as a rebuttal to the personal testimonies of Vets for Freedom members. If what Petraeus and Crocker have been presenting to Congress this past year doesn’t constitute a Strategy, and underscore what the Bush Administration and its critics alike assert would be victory – Iraq taking on the role as self-preserver of their own freedoms and nascent democracy – then no plan or conditions for victory can never be sufficiently articulated.

Competing Democratic Party Presidential nominees have been issuing these kinds of criticisms since our invasion of Iraq. The criticisms evolve, the claims change, each change of policy seemingly in response to criticism, becomes yet another set of mistakes to deride and denounce. They’ve never met a single operation or version of the war plan that ever commends itself. It’s been failure one way or another, from 2003 until today.

Carter concludes, “We owe something more to our men and women serving in Iraq, and to the Iraqis.”

I couldn’t agree more. The Nation and our elected officials owe much to Veterans who have served the country in combat in Iraq, and to Iraqis. I’m hard pressed, and not convinced at all by Carter, how abandoning our mission in Iraq helps pay that debt.

(Via Memeorandum)

Vets for Freedom hosted our Vets on the Hill event Tuesday morning, featuring Presidential Candidate and Senator (Sen.) John McCain. Sens. Joe Lieberman and Lindsay Graham also attended, along with other leading pro-war Congressmen and Women.

The VFF event was extremely well-organized, pulled together by an excellent staff led by Pete Hegseth, VFF Executive Director. VFF covered the travel expenses for over 400 Iraqi and Afghanistan vets, most of whom arrived in DC Monday night and reported for VFF duty at 0530 Tuesday morning. We were addressed by Hegseth, his key staff, and Georgetown Men’s Basketball Head Coach John Thompson III and Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers.

Hegseth and Thompson both made humorous references to Hegseth’s Basketball career under Thompson at Princeton, during which Hegseth never played in a game. Thompson said his goal was always to help his young men achieve their goals, and since Hegseth’s was to serve in the Army, Thompson made sure that happened by keeping him on the bench.

General Myers gave an excellent talk about courage and sacrifice, and was the first of many speakers Tuesday who said that, as we served our country in war overseas, so the country needed us to continue to serve, in the war for public opinion and policy here at home.

At 0700, we were bused to Senate Park for the outdoor event, to feature McCain, Lieberman, and other congress people and participants in the VFF Heroes Tour, which stopped in DC yesterday and concludes in NYC today.

Numerous mainstream media outlets covered the outdoor event, as did Amie Parnes for Politico:

Several hundred veterans stood in the cold drizzle Tuesday morning for a man they called their hero.

“You can have your Tiger Woods,” David Bellavia, a former Army staff sergeant, told the crowd of pro-Iraq veterans. “We’ve got Senator McCain.” 

Milbloggers and their readers should be very familiar with Bellavia, a Silver Star decorated combat Vet who’s just published a gritty account of his combat experiences in House by House. His reference played off an earlier description of what it means to be a hero, and how often our society views sports figures as heroes and ignores those who risk all in service to their country. I found it astonishing, and gratifying, that John McCain waited patiently as both Pete Hegseth, VFF Executive Director, and Bellavia, gave short speeches before Hegseth introduced McCain. Bellavia is running for Congress, as are several other VFF members, and many people (including Hegseth) are suggesting Bellavia should receive a Medal of Honor.

Just as a quick aside, as Hegseth was amplifying on the Vets for Freedom mission and members, he momentarily could not come up with what was missing from his description of VFF members as Soldiers, Airmen, and Marines. By the time he recovered and added, “Sailors,” McCain had grimaced and made a gesture towards himself, much to the amusement of the Vets assembled.

Parnes summarized McCain’s brief remarks:

John McCain, (R-Ariz.) the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, did not disappoint. At a pit stop at the Vets for Freedom rally outside the Capitol before appearing on the Senate Armed Services Committee, McCain, called Army Gen. David Petraeus "one of [America's] greatest generals."

He also thanked the veterans. 

“I just wanna say what you know so well,” McCain said. “No one detests war more than a veteran. But the veteran also knows the consequences of defeat means greater sacrifice and greater numbers who are wounded and killed. You know better than any the consequences of defeat.” 

The 480 some VFF members present clearly appreciate the very pro-victory and pro-military stance McCain has always demonstrated, by Sen. Lieberman, who followed McCain, got us all fired up. As Parnes reported:

Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman, (I-Conn.) and Lindsey Graham, (R-S.C.), who have both endorsed McCain's candidacy and  joined him on stage, echoed his sentiments. 

“Do not underestimate the contribution you have made on the political battlefield at home,” Lieberman said. “Do we want al Qaeda and Iran to win a victory in Iraq?” 

“No!” the vets screamed.

He followed that by asking if we wanted to win, and the response was deafening. That’s why we took the hill yesterday, to advocate Congress to let us do just that.

But Lindsay Graham got the biggest response with this one liner:

“You want to know who wants you to come home more than anybody?” Graham continued. “Al Qaeda because you’re kicking their ass.” 

Just before the outdoor event concluded, Texas Congressman Sam Johnson, a fellow POW with McCain at the Hanoi Hilton, took his lkarge brimmed cowboy hat off and saluted those of us in attendance.

Then we headed on up the Hill to take the message to Congress: Let Us Win. More on that in Part Two, along with some photos.

(Thanks to Rich Lowry at The Corner, who linked to Politico’s Greg Pollowitz’s link to Parnes.)

Blackfive noted the VFF event yesterday, linking to This Ain't Hell, where Jonn Lilyea summarizes the event with video of the speeches, and plenty of good photos. (Better than the one’s I got standing in the front row. Beer to anyone who can find me.)

Newsbusters Kevin Mooney posts an interview with Hegseth.

Other blog coverage:

http://veteranamerican.info/?p=208

http://www.luoamerican.com/baldilocks/2008/04/rally-for-petra.html

http://bearcreekledger.com/2008/04/08/vets-on-the-hill/

http://www.soldiersperspective.us/2008/04/08/coming-soon/

http://locomotivebreath1901.blogspot.com/2008/04/vets-for-freedom-rally-for-troops-on.html

http://cannoneerno4.wordpress.com/2008/04/08/sacrifice/

http://cookiecrumbexpress.com/blog/2008/04/08/vetrans-for-freedom/

http://www.neptunuslex.com/2008/04/08/bigd-got-a-nice-note/

http://cao2.wordpress.com/2008/04/08/the-successful-surge/

http://radiopatriot.blogspot.com/

On the eve of General Petraeus’s next scheduled testimony to Congress, National Review hosts or links to three strong arguments in favor of continued support for our efforts in Iraq.

In the first, Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute takes on antiwar (and thus Antiwar Party) talking points. They make easy work for Kagan, whose very lengthy takedown can be summarized thus: however else they can be characterized, the arguments against Iraq by anti-war Democrats are deeply dishonest, and not in accord with reality – current or past.

What is Victory?

Kagan demolishes what equates to Democratic sophistry, the pretense that a withdrawal from Iraq would not really be defeat, nor can staying achieve “victory”:

Yes, in the world as it is, whatever line we sell ourselves, there really is victory and there really is defeat, the two are different, and their effects on the future diverge profoundly. And yes, the reason we must continue to spend money and the lives of the very best Americans in that far-off land is that the interests of every American are actually at stake. [snip] Unless the advocates of defeat can show, as they have not yet done, that the consequences of losing are very likely to be small not simply the day after the last American leaves Iraq, but over the next five, ten, and 50 years, then what they are really selling is short-term relief in exchange for long-term pain.

Other highlights from Kagan:

The War Costs Too Much
Military spending has traditionally been a form of economic stimulus, and wars more commonly end recessions or depressions than start them. That’s not a good reason to start a war, but neither is it a good reason to lose one. The impact of the current war on the U.S. economy, finally, is far smaller than the impact of previous major conflicts.

The War Is Inevitably Lost, Recent Progress Notwithstanding
The credibility of many making this argument suffers from the conviction with which they declared early (and, in some cases, even late) in 2007 that no progress of any kind was possible.

Iraq is a made-up state: Iraqis hate each other, and only armed might can keep the peace.

The high degree of Sunni-Shi’a intermarriage in the mixed areas of Iraq, the large numbers of such mixed areas, and the increasing anger with which many Iraqis in those areas now denounce the idea of sectarian conflict all run against this argument.

Iraqis are not ready for democracy
As for the notion that democracy is incompatible with Islam, tell it to the hundreds of millions of Muslims in Turkey, India, Indonesia, and Europe who have embraced it. As for the notion that democracy is inappropriate for Arabs, the enthusiasm with which the liberal elite that insists on the universality of its own moral relativism engages in such overtly racist argumentation is astounding.

The Anbar Awakening had nothing to do with the surge
This argument is a bit like saying that the French people, finally tiring of the Nazis’ occupation, rose up of their own accord in 1944, engaging in increasing partisan and insurgent activities culminating with the re-appearance of the Free French military units that liberated Paris — and that none of this had anything to do with the Normandy invasion, since the Free French movement and partisan activity within France predated that invasion.

Violence fell only because Moqtada al Sadr ordered a unilateral cease-fire
In addition to having to abandon any pretext of participating in Iraqi politics if he ended the ceasefire, therefore, Sadr also had to face the likelihood that well-informed U.S. and ISF troops would take out his key leadership cadres the moment he ordered them to fight. And that is what happened when Maliki launched his offensive in Basra and JAM and Special Groups began to fight in Baghdad — which is one of the main reasons Sadr ordered his people again to stand down.  The degree of Sadr’s influence and power — even of his control over his own movement — is increasingly open to question, but his ability to make Shi’a Iraq explode at will appears to be substantially diminished.

Now that the Surge Is Ending, We’ll Be Right Back Where We Started
The worst flaw in this argument, however, is that it naively assumes that the situation in Iraq today is the same as it was in January 2007 apart from the temporary increase in U.S. forces and the (supposedly) temporary drop in violence. In fact, the situation has changed profoundly both in the provinces and in Baghdad itself, where the central government has made remarkable progress even on the “benchmarks” that Congress set for it last year.

We Should Never Have Fought this War in the First Place
There are no do-overs in the real world. Deciding that we made a mistake in 2003 or that we don’t like what has happened in the intervening five years does not make it possible to hit some global rewind button and start again from scratch.

Iraq Is a Distraction from the Real War on Terror
Is there really any question about whether or not al-Qaeda in Iraq is part of the global al-Qaeda movement? Considering, then, that there are very few and very small al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, that al-Qaeda in South Asia is mostly in Pakistan, and that none of those insisting that the U.S. abandon Iraq to fight the “real” enemy in Afghanistan have proposed any meaningful plans for dealing with Chitral and Waziristan where that “real” enemy actually is — considering, finally, that the one place American soldiers are actually fighting al-Qaeda every day and decisively winning is Iraq, how, exactly, is Iraq a distraction from the war on terror? This is the war, and we’re winning it. Let’s not decide that we’d rather lose.

In the second piece noted above, Senators Joe Lieberman and Lindsay Graham set the stage for Generalm Petraeus’s testimony by also highlighting the hypocrisy and error of many antiwar critics:

When Gen. David Petraeus testifies before Congress tomorrow, he will step into an American political landscape dramatically different from the one he faced when he last spoke on Capitol Hill seven months ago. This time Gen. Petraeus returns to Washington having led one of the most remarkably successful military operations in American history. His antiwar critics, meanwhile, face a crisis of credibility – having confidently predicted the failure of the surge, and been proven decidedly wrong.

Senators Lieberman and Graham acknowledge the tragic and significant costs of our efforts in Iraq, but they remain adamant about the value or our continuing successes, in contrast to the fear mongering of antiwar opponents:

The success we are now achieving also has consequences far beyond Iraq's borders in the larger, global struggle against Islamist extremism. Thanks to the surge, Iraq today is looking increasingly like Osama bin Laden's worst nightmare: an Arab country, in the heart of the Middle East, in which hundreds of thousands of Muslims – both Sunni and Shiite – are rising up and fighting, shoulder to shoulder with American soldiers, against al Qaeda and its hateful ideology.

It is unfortunate that so many opponents of the surge still refuse to acknowledge the gains we have achieved in Iraq. When Gen. Petraeus testifies this week, however, the American people will have a clear choice as we weigh the future of our fight there: between the general who is leading us to victory, and the critics who spent the past year predicting defeat.

Lastly, Ralph Peters at the NY Post checked in with a military colleague in Baghdad for what he believes will be a close resemblance to what General Petraeus will report to Congress this week.

Peters explains why Iraq and the Iraqi Government is faring much better than mainstream media and Congressional detractors try to depict:

My source acknowledged that "the planning for Basra was incomplete and some of the local forces were incapable of standing up to the Iranian-supported rogue-militia elements." The quality of Iraq's security forces remains uneven - but he sees them as remarkably improved, in general. Their performance in Basra was more impressive than feature-the-bad-news reporting implied.

This officer doesn't paint over the cracks in the Iraqi house, but he's convinced that the Basra operation did "reflect a determination of a Shia-led government to deal with Shia extremist challenges."

For myself, I watched the Basra dust-up from Panama, amazed at the willful obtuseness of "war correspondents" who still refuse to acknowledge basic military realities. They demanded a level of effectiveness from Iraqi troops that the British had been unable (and unwilling) to deliver over the last five years.

Unlike the Brits, who faked it, the Iraqis went into the city and fought. Was their performance perfect? Of course not. But this is where the punditry got really interesting.

Many of the critics had previously lavished praise on the counterinsurgency manual that Petraeus midwifed. One of the most-quoted maxims from that document was T.E. Lawrence's admonition that it's better for our local allies to do something imperfectly themselves than for us to do it perfectly for them.

Well, the Iraqis stepped up to the plate. A few units folded. Others fought ferociously. They did what we said we wanted - and the critics raised the bar again. (Unfair criteria for success now may pose a greater obstacle in Iraq and Afghanistan than do al Qaeda or the Taliban.)

And, by the way, it was Moqtada al Sadr, not the Iraqi government, who requested a cease-fire - after being urged by the Iranians to opt to let those militias live to fight another day.

This stage is set. Let’s see what happens in Washington this week.

Do you know who the Vets for Freedom are? From their website:

Vets for Freedom is a nonpartisan organization established by combat veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Our mission is to educate the American public about the importance of achieving success in these conflicts by applying our first-hand knowledge to issues of American strategy and tactics in Iraq.

We support policymakers from both sides of the aisle who have stood behind our great generation of American warriors on the battlefield, and who have put long-term national security before short-term partisan political gain.
Vets for Freedom is the largest Iraq and Afghanistan veterans organization in America.

That’s who we are, some 20,000 strong. Here’s what many of us will be doing in Washington DC tomorrow. An excerpt:

More than 400 members of Vets for Freedom will gather on Capitol Hill to hear words of support from various Senators—including presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)—before individual meetings with their legislators.

Tuesday’s gathering will provide a unique opportunity to get first-hand perspective from recent veterans who came from across the U.S., to spread a message of support for the troops, and to support General David Petraeus as he testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee about progress in Iraq that day.

I’ve been proud to serve on VFF’s National Leadership Team since receiving an invitation from co-founder Wade Zirkle. Pete Hegseth is the current Executive Director, and has acquitted himself with distinction, making numerous high-profile media appearances and keeping VFF energetically engaged.

Kristan Wheaton, blogging at Sources and Methods, links to an article by Barron YoungSmith in The New Republic, purported to explore Presidential Candidate Barack Obama’s “revolutionary” proposals for intelligence-gathering.

As an aside prior to commenting on YoungSmith’s article, Wheaton works as an Intelligence Educator at the very intelligence-savvy Mercyhurst College, and moonlights as a blogger on intelligence related topics at Sources and Methods. She’s prolific, informed, non-partisan from what I have seen, and she’s in my blog roll.

I don’t know that I want to keep repeating “YoungSmith” to accord with my journalistic stylebook. Maybe this is a new affectation as alternative for hyphenated names. But I keep thinking of Senator Paine (Claude Rains) or Jim Taylor (Edward Arnold) making slight reference to poor Jefferson Smith (Jimmie Stewart) in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Since YoungSmith is identified as a “web intern” for TNR, perhaps he won’t be offended if I go with Barron out of convenience.

Barron leaves his readers little doubt as to where his sympathies lie in his opening paragraph.

Many of Barack Obama's foreign policy initiatives are designed in direct philosophical opposition to the policies--indeed, the worldview--of the Bush administration. On Iraq, Obama does not merely say that he wants to end mismanagement of the war (like John McCain), nor the war itself (like Hillary Clinton)--he says, "I don't want to just end the war. I want to end the mindset that got us in the war."

Barron apparently adheres to that strand of liberal orthodoxy that insists that war mongering or some other illicit, assumed but unspoken ulterior motives underlie all war making decisions by the Bush Administration. Rather than any genuine motivation to, I don’t know, fight terrorism and the nation states that sponsor and support terrorism. Of course, this comes as no surprise from someone who has helped produce a book called U.S. vs. Them: How a Half-Century of Conservatism Has Undermined America's Security.

Barron applies his conceit of ulterior motives to a little remarked on idea of Obama’s, that of transforming the post of Director of National Intelligence (DNI) into a fixed term, presumably non-partisan position like that of the Federal Reserve Chairman:

It's common for Democrats to promise an end to Bush-style politicization of intelligence. But the way that Obama frames the issue--likening the DNI to the independent, technocratic Chairman of the Federal Reserve--indicates that his view of the intelligence process is ontologically opposed to the way conservatives see it. As Franklin Foer has explained in detail in The New Republic, the Bush administration justified its pre-war intel abuses using a methodological critique that dates back, at least, to the 1970s (some trace it back to Edmund Burke's distrust of the Enlightenment).

The administration argued that the CIA put too much trust in the social-science methods cultivated by people like the CIA's "father of intelligence analysis," Sherman Kent. Abram Shulsky, who ran the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans--the outfit that produced "alternate intelligence" to justify the Iraq war--decried "the view that intelligence is, at bottom, an endeavor similar to social science, if not equivalent to it," which led to the pernicious belief that "intelligence analysis can be divorced from the policy process and, indeed, be apolitical in nature. As a result, one can even talk about creating within the intelligence community an analytic arm along the lines of a 'world-class think-tank'."

When liberals start dissing Edmund Burke to discredit their political adversaries, their hackles are up, way up. But there’s one heck of a dense set of assumptions in that last paragraph, and worthy of some specific criticism.

No one who has spent any time evaluating the metrics, analytic basis, modeling or predictive assumptions in that miasma called modern Social Science would fail to understand how great an insult is intended by “the view that intelligence is, at bottom, an endeavor similar to social science, if not equivalent to it.” Shulsky no doubt would fully agree with the sentiment Barron in the next paragraph attributes to Obama, that “intelligence assessment is a non-ideological exercise in finding out what's true and what's not,” or that the Intelligence Community (IC) trades first and foremost in “empirically-verifiable facts.”

The IC also necessarily involves subjective judgments, estimates and forecasts, a fair amount of deduction, and prediction, else it provides little value to decision-makers. This nuance ignored by Obama and other Bush critics, and likewise omitted by Barron in his analysis, more accurately gets to the heart of what Shulsky, Rumsfeld and others were trying to accomplish with the IC.

Another aside, this one to critique the TNR piece by Foer that Barron quotes admiringly. (Good choice for an intern.) Foer runs through a litany of stereotypic, cherry picked examples of Bush Administration animus towards the sciences (foremost, the social sciences, but hard sciences too). You’d be hard pressed to glean any even-handedness in Foer’s screed, given that any policy deriving from the “scientific basis” for anthropogenic global warming is good, any objection based on faulty or inadequate science, or worse, pseudo-science is bad.

Foer bases his assault on some imagined Conservatism on this premise:

Since its inception, modern American conservatism has harbored a suspicion of experts, who, through adherence to inductive reasoning and academic methodologies, claim to provide objective research and analysis. To be sure, this social-scientific approach has its limits. Conservatives have raised genuinely troubling questions about its predilection for downplaying the role of "culture" and "values" in shaping human behavior. But the Bush administration has adopted a far more extreme version of this critique: It takes the radically postmodern view that "science," "objectivity," and "truth" are guises for an ulterior, leftist agenda; that experts are so incapable of dispassionate and disinterested analysis that their work doesn't even merit a hearing. And the results have been disastrous.

That’s gross distortion of the position of those who oppose Progressive policy and agenda, whoever well such policy prescriptions are wrapped in the trappings of a science that most of its proponents do not understand a wit (ex., Al Gore). What Conservatives (actual and neo-) have objected to is a presumption that the social scientific fads of today can be counted on as firm foundation for all manner of expansive social programs, the hidden or unintended consequences of which are poorly anticipated or outright ignored.

But note that this resistance to an ever-increasing Government role as Solution to Problems not yet defined, is transformed by Foer and his progressive ilk into a radical view that dispenses with truth. Nothing could be further from “the truth,” as what galls conservatives most is how lightly or little Progressives want to treat with actual truth and consequences, rather than hypotheticals and extremes.

Back to Barron. Barron attempts an even-handed assessment of the IC in acknowledging error, but also doing well in learning from it’s mistakes:

Finding the truth is--of course--a difficult task, and even those who strive for empiricism and objectivity inevitably commit errors. That's true even when the White House and Congress are not pressuring them. But, contrary to current, unwarranted popular perceptions, the IC is actually quite good at doing its job, learning from its mistakes, and adapting its procedures to meet new challenges.

But that’s a fig leaf for Barron,  who evidently views the products of the IC as only acceptable when they fit his (and Obama’s) preconceived and narrow interests, and again, the conceit of “cooking the books:”

Most recently, there was the scuffle over last year's National Intelligence Estimate, which can only be understood in the context of the Bush administration's past attempts to pressure the CIA over Iraq and Iran.

Because the CIA felt the need to push back against the Bush administration's constant pressure to find incriminating evidence about Iran, the Agency issued an NIE that basically slapped the administration in the face--creating a headline that rendered U.S. policy on Iran's uranium enrichment program all but inert until 2009. The Bush administration started this cycle of recrimination, and the end result is that Iran continues to enrich uranium--the most difficult part of making a nuclear bomb--and the U.S. has been helpless to pressure Tehran to stop, to the point where the Europeans were so alarmed they decided to take up the slack.

If the Bush administration had taken a pragmatic approach to Iran's activities, rather than cooking the books to fit its own views, we would have been able to have a substantive, gradual policy that increases pressure on Iran in proportion to its progress on uranium enrichment. And the IC and the administration wouldn't be looking over their shoulders at each other, so suspicious that it's near-impossible for the U.S. to figure out, and devise a rational response to, the true situation on the ground.

So there we have it. Partisans and agenda-mongerers within the IC produced in the latest NIE a deeply flawed, politicized, and intentionally distorted assessment of Iran’s nuclear aims and programs, as a tit-for-tat for earlier politicization. And Barron concludes, as does Obama, Democrats, and TNR, that it’s all Bush’s fault. If he hadn’t been trying to push his foreign policy objectives against their better judgment and advise, he only had himself to blame when they responded with a political missive that short-circuited US foreign policy.

And if Iran acquires functional nuclear weaponry as an unintended consequence? That will be Bush’s fault, too. Natch.

Glenn Reynolds posts an update on the situation in Iraq, linking to an excellent analysis by Austin Bay at Real Clear Politics, and passes along a real time situation report from a deployed Colonel. Read both.

Bay ’s assessment:

The firefights, white flags, media debate and, for that matter, the Iraqi-led anti-militia offensive itself are the visible manifestations of a slow, opaque and occasionally violent political and psychological struggle that in the long term is likely democratic Iraq's most decisive: the control, reduction and eventual elimination of Shia gangs and terrorists strongly influenced if not directly supported by Iran.

Other Shia militia and gangs confront Iraq, but Sadr is the most vexing case. His father, a leading Shia cleric, was murdered -- many Iraqis believe at the order of Saddam Hussein. That makes his father a political and religious symbol.

And Sadr knows it. So do his financiers.

Bay should be required reading for his mainstream media counterparts, who seemingly are oblivious to the context for any news (especially news that can be used to portray our efforts in a negative light). He reminds us of the major sources for instability in the emerging Iraq Nation State, underscoring that the current difficulties with Shia militias is only the latest of challenges the new Government has faced. First ex-Baathists who hoped for Saddam’s return, then Al Qaeda who tried to start a Civil War. Increasingly those who sought to derail our efforts found unwitting allies in the US Congress, many of whom keep finding excuses to call the war a failure.

Bay concludes:

The Iraqi way often appears to be indecisive, until you learn to look at its counter-insurgency methods in the frame of achieving political success, instead of the frame of American presidential elections.

In southern Iraq and east Baghdad, Sadr once again lost street face. Despite the predictable media umbrage, this translates into political deterioration.

Think of the Iraqi anti-Sadr method as a form of suffocation, a political war waged with the blessing of Ayatollah Sistani that requires daily economic and political action, persistent police efforts and occasional military thrusts.

Reynolds’s correspondent Colonel in Iraq provides not only a good insight into military leadership under General Petraeus, but a useful framing of the objectives for Maliki’s government to weather the latest challenge:

From watching the news, you know Maliki moved to Basrah in a show of force. He made lots of blustery statements about what he was going to do to the Jayesh al Mahdi (JAM). The Baghdad arm of JAM, headquartered in Sadr City, responded with a little fireworks of their own in Maliki's absence. In hindsight, Mr Maliki may have overplayed a bit, and some feel he lost credibility in the process.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, General Petraeus quietly and deftly encouraged the central government of Iraq to:

(a) concentrate not on JAM, but on the criminal element within JAM. "Anyone on the street with a weapon is a criminal." This effectively divided the JAM members. Next,

(b) focus on the humanitarian element of the operation. Pushing much-needed food and water to trapped inhabitants encouraged even more JAM members to stay home and take care of family members. Finally,

(c) show that fighting is not going to solve the needs of Iraq.

By addressing the essential services issues and bringing central government people to the provincial sessions to address concerns, people see their government taking an active role in solving the problem.

The effect was that Moqtada al Sadr got to make a point, Maliki demonstrated his resolve, the Iraqi Army and Police showed themselves to be capable and professional, and there's a sense of a better day coming in Basrah. Without the strong response of the central Government, the militia-led uprising could have very easily led to further lawlessness, mayhem, and devastation. The Coalition trained and helped equip and arm the Iraqi Army. The surge allowed us to clear and hold areas long enough to bring violence levels down, so the government could start focusing on essential services. If anything, the surge came too late because people have been without services for far too long.

These are the arguments that need to be deployed against political and partisan opportunists here who will try to spin events in Iraq to (yet again) attempt to discredit our efforts in Iraq. General Petraeus’s next appearance before Congress will definitely provide a nexus for the domestic political battles to come.

Mark Steyn, writing at The Corner, notes a frank admission from a very unlikely source. He uses a paragraph as tease, defying readers to identify his source, who it turns out is a very well know, formerly “brain dead liberal,” Playwright David Mamet.

What a confessional Mamet wrote for the Village Voice! Here’s the heart of his testimony:

I'd observed that lust, greed, envy, sloth, and their pals are giving the world a good run for its money, but that nonetheless, people in general seem to get from day to day; and that we in the United States get from day to day under rather wonderful and privileged circumstances—that we are not and never have been the villains that some of the world and some of our citizens make us out to be, but that we are a confection of normal (greedy, lustful, duplicitous, corrupt, inspired—in short, human) individuals living under a spectacularly effective compact called the Constitution, and lucky to get it.

For the Constitution, rather than suggesting that all behave in a godlike manner, recognizes that, to the contrary, people are swine and will take any opportunity to subvert any agreement in order to pursue what they consider to be their proper interests.

To that end, the Constitution separates the power of the state into those three branches which are for most of us (I include myself) the only thing we remember from 12 years of schooling.

The Constitution, written by men with some experience of actual government, assumes that the chief executive will work to be king, the Parliament will scheme to sell off the silverware, and the judiciary will consider itself Olympian and do everything it can to much improve (destroy) the work of the other two branches. So the Constitution pits them against each other, in the attempt not to achieve stasis, but rather to allow for the constant corrections necessary to prevent one branch from getting too much power for too long.

Rather brilliant. For, in the abstract, we may envision an Olympian perfection of perfect beings in Washington doing the business of their employers, the people, but any of us who has ever been at a zoning meeting with our property at stake is aware of the urge to cut through all the pernicious bullshit and go straight to firearms.

David Mamet is one of our finest living playwrights. Reading the entry on him at Wikipedia, it strikes me that I am not at all surprised that he dedicated his Pulitzer Prize winning Glengarry Glen Ross to Harold Pinter, who Mamet identifies as influence for his work.

However abysmal Pinter’s politics, and they are that and more, Pinter shows true genius in capturing dialog, idiom, character and the intensity of the banal. I can’t find better words, but the dialog and characters from Pinter’s The Birthday Party burrowed their way permanently into my brain, since I saw at performed by our Theater Department.

Mamet extends Pinter’s ability to breathe real life into his dialog. But his politics, often nakedly exposed in his scripts, have previously been rock solid Left and defiantly so.

Thus for Conservatives, Mamet’s confessional sounds as pure a Conversion Experience as we’re ever likely to hear.

I will be very interested to see if Mamet’s epiphany reflects itself in his subsequent work. (That’s if any of his publishers or producers have any stomach for what writing might result from the newly brain-alive Mamet.)

The NY Times continues in their partisan campaign to find ways to discredit or diminish Sen. John McCain as Presidential Candidate. This time, the always reliably partisan Carl Hulse was tasked to pound out a tendentious cloud of oblivious blather about whether John McCain is eligible to run for President.

Hulse begins with this howler of an assertion:

WASHINGTON — The question has nagged at the parents of Americans born outside the continental United States for generations: Dare their children aspire to grow up and become president? In the case of Senator John McCain of Arizona, the issue is becoming more than a matter of parental daydreaming.

Mr. McCain’s likely nomination as the Republican candidate for president and the happenstance of his birth in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 are reviving a musty debate that has surfaced periodically since the founders first set quill to parchment and declared that only a “natural-born citizen” can hold the nation’s highest office.

The worlds most quiet nagging, no doubt, and a “debate” so musty that it’s acquired over 200 years of dust since anyone’s seriously made the argument. No settled debate too archaic to escape the probing attention of NYT muckrakers, if a remote possibility exists that any of it will stick to their political opposition.

Blather, speculate, and cite academics who’d love to see the GOP candidate suffer any ill effects -- regular readers of the Times can imagine how the rest goes without needing to read further.

But in fairness, the NYT points to two pieces of legislation that directly clarify what little ambiguity stands in the Constitution:

Quickly recognizing confusion over the evolving nature of citizenship, the First Congress in 1790 passed a measure that did define children of citizens “born beyond the sea, or out of the limits of the United States to be natural born.” But that law is still seen as potentially unconstitutional and was overtaken by subsequent legislation that omitted the “natural-born” phrase.

Mr. McCain’s citizenship was established by statutes covering the offspring of Americans abroad and laws specific to the Canal Zone as Congress realized that Americans would be living and working in the area for extended periods. But whether he qualifies as natural-born has been a topic of Internet buzz for months, with some declaring him ineligible while others assert that he meets all the basic constitutional qualifications — a natural-born citizen at least 35 years of age with 14 years of residence.

Nice touch. In the first case, Hulse notes the very early fix (within scant years from the Constitution’s adoption), but then invokes unseen and unidentified authorities who see the law as “unconstitutional” and “overtaken by subsequent legislation.” None of the  serious Constitutional scholars weighing in today have attested to such views. (And how exactly does that work, where subsequent legislation overtakes, and in some fashion, invalidates what came before, without in any way refuting or rescinding?)

In the second reference, Hulse offsets statutes that held sway over the Panama Canal Zone, by invoking the heady and definitive scholarship of Internet Buzzmakers. Buzz, buzz, those internet bees, the stuff of academic (and journalistic) legend.

Matthew Franck, writing at NRO’s Bench Memos, offers an excellent critique of the NYT, including doubt about whether this issue has “nagged” anyone, mention of the 1790 act of Congress and lots of other Constitutional and other judicial detail.

Franck’s assessment is blunt:

The last line of the Times article, quoting the author of a long-ago law review article, is that "it is certainly not a frivolous issue."  I think that's just what it is, Ptolemaic epicycles of abstruse constitutional reasoning to the contrary notwithstanding. 

(Via Memeorandum)

A child born abroad to a US citizen in the military is automatically granted US citizenship as “natural born.” They are usually given birth certificates with a title, "US Citizen Born Abroad," issued by the US State Department.

My daughter was born in Germany in 1987 while stationed there, she was born in a German hospital (off base), yet the process is well understood by military and even German authorities, who confirmed at the time that my daughter WAS NOR eligible for (dual) German citizenship.

The US State Dept. processed and issued the birth certificate as part of normal consular activities.

Hey, NY Times! Look what I was able to Google: a US State Department information sheet on documentation for US citizens born abroad.

Documentation of United States Citizens Born
Abroad Who Acquire Citizenship At Birth

The birth of a child abroad to U.S. citizen parent(s) should be reported as soon as possible to the nearest American consular office for the purpose of establishing an official record of the child’s claim to U.S. citizenship at birth. The official record is in the form of a Consular Report of Birth Abroad of a Citizen of the United States of America. This document, referred to as the Consular Report of Birth or FS-240, is considered a basic United States citizenship document. An original FS-240 is furnished to the parent(s) at the time the registration is approved.

Because, of course, persons born to US Citizens abroad are automatically granted the status of natural born citizens. Much like spurious email chain letters, the NYT (and internet buzz) imaginings that question McCain’s eligibility rests on US citizenship documentation processes for US territories and possessions. Again, from the US State Dept.:

NOTE: Consular Reports of Birth are not available for persons born in Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Panama Canal Zone before October 1, 1979, the Philippines before July 4, 1946, American Samoa, Guam, Swains Island, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, or the former U.S. Trust Territories of the Pacific Islands. Birth certificates for those areas, except the Panama Canal Zone, must be obtained from their respective offices of vital statistics. Panama Canal Zone birth certificates should be requested through the Vital Records Section of Passport Services (see address below.) The fees are the same as those for DS-1350.

The oddity in the case of McCain rests on an anomaly of how the birth of such US citizens was documented for the Panama Canal Zone. Documentation for the birth of US citizens in US territories and possessions were issued by territorial Office of Vital Statistics. And since those offices no longer exist for the Panama Canal Zone, you have to request copies from US State Department Passport Services.

And nowhere in that process was there ever any process required to naturalize little Johnny McCain. No necessity at all, since he was a natural born US citizen.

Presidential candidate and Commander in Chief aspirant Sen. Barack Obama apparently stood in a debate last week with competitor Sen. Hillary Clinton. During the debate, Obama used an anecdote provide him by an Army Captain, who deployed to Afghanistan in 2003, and wanted to share some criticisms of his deployment with Obama.

Here’s what Obama actually said:

“You know, I've heard from an Army captain who was the head of a rifle platoon -- supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon," he said. "Ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24 because 15 of those soldiers had been sent to Iraq. And as a consequence, they didn't have enough ammunition, they didn't have enough humvees. They were actually capturing Taliban weapons, because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief.”

As anyone knowledgeable about the military might surmise, that set off a firestorm of criticism.

Many wondered in the Captain actually exists, or served in Afghanistan as a Platoon Leader.

Yes, he exists, and yes, he served as a Platoon Leader back when he was a Lieutenant, and yes, he and his platoon deployed with 24 out of a possible 39 soldiers. So thus far Obama’s purported source passes the same level of “existence” checks as Scott Beauchamp of TNR Diary fame.

Stephen Spruiell, writing at The Corner, did a good job capturing the other immediate, critical reaction several factual “features” of Obama’s little story. Their objections and calls of BS center on three features of Obama’s tale.

First, Captains don’t lead Rifle platoons. Lieutenants do, and usually 2^nd LTs at that. Second, Platoons themselves don’t get split up for different theater assignments Companies are the smallest organizational chunk that ever gets farmed out, and even that’s extremely rare, and rarely in theater level assignments, unless they’re a rare combat service or service support company.

Third, critics savaged the notion that equipment and ammo shortages forced the CPT and his unit to scrounge, salvage or capture enemy equipment to make up the shortfall. Knowledgeable MILBLOGGERS and their readership have been vehement, and unanimous, that this hasn’t not happened in Afghanistan.

For good reason, it turns out. ABC’s Jack Tapper scored an interview, courtesy of the Obama Campaign, with the Army Captain at the source of Obama’s anecdote.

Tapper rather blissfully states that “Obama’s anecdote checks out,” he must be using the same kind of fact checking methodology as TNR in their War Diarist debacle.

To return briefly to what Obama actually said, Obama stated that his Army Captain deployed to Iraq with 24 of the 39 he was authorized, and that as a consequence, “they didn't have enough ammunition, they didn't have enough humvees.” He further alleged that those shortfalls necessitated their capture of enemy weapons to make up for their shortfalls, as it was easier to capture what they needed than to get (properly) supplied “by our current commander in chief.”

Here’s what Tapper reports about the “ammo shortages:”

At Fort Drum, in training, "we didn't have access to heavy weapons or the ammunition for the weapons, or humvees to train before we deployed." What ammunition? 40 mm automatic grenade launcher ammunition for the MK-19, and ammunition for the .50 caliber M-2 machine gun ("50 cal.")

As First Sergeant of a National Guard unit which mobilized in 2004 and deployed to Iraq in 2005, I am not surprised that ammo for these two weapons systems might have been in short supply in 2003, given the OPTEMPO. We ourselves had no training shortages, but we didn’t get much more than qualification fire time, either. Though qualifying did take some time, going from a minimum number of qualified soldiers to a very healthy maximum number of those likely to be assigned.

Then, there’s the outrageous notion that soldiers needed to capture what they needed. When interviewed by Tapper, the Army Captain contradicted Obama, rather than “backed him up:”

"The purpose of going after the Taliban was not to get their weapons," he said, but on occasion they used Taliban weapons. Sometimes AK-47s, and they also mounted a Soviet-model DShK (or "Dishka") on one of their humvees instead of their 50 cal.

The underlying story behind Obama’s politicized anecdote, minus a few important details and with factual rearrangement, may be thought be some to “check out.” The unit was deployed without soldiers who had been transferred, there were ammo shortages, during training at Fort Drum, and the unit may have had vehicle shortages, as many units did in 2003, when this story takes place.

Obama, however, greatly elaborated on his storyline by: avoiding mention of when this took place and implying a currently existing state of affairs; falsely attributing causality between the shortage of soldiers to a shortage of ammo and equipment; and falsely depicting any relationship between any perceived weapons or equipment shortages and capturing weapons from the Taliban.

To a military reader, that falls far short of “checking out,” hence all the calls of BS and fabrication. But again, note that it was Obama, not the Army Captain whose fair criticisms he badly mischaracterizes, who has created the false fabric upon which the factual details are stitched.

Yes, the CPT's unit was short of ammo -- but only for range fire at Fort Drum in the US during mobilization training. That's a far cry from the intimation that troops were lacking ammo in combat, and thus had to salvage from the Taliban.

Yes, some of the soldiers pulled from the Rifle Platoon were reassigned to units that then were sent to Iraq -- some but not all. Glossing it all over as if the Army robbed Peter to pay Paul is misleading at best. Did the soldiers fill vacancies in units leaving immediately, whereas the Afghan bound Platoon left 6 months later?

Then, the belated acknowledgement that the CPT did his Afghan tour in 2003. With two big deployments just underway, it took 1-2 more years before vehicle shortages caught up. Yet, Obama's anecdote certainly conveyed the impression of negligent under-equipping of our soldiers. Ask any of us whether we had too little, or too much equipment.

And read closely this account of WHY the CPT's soldiers captured or confiscated enemy weapons. He states clearly the reason WAS NOT that they didn't have enough of their own.

Obama's use of this anecdote was rhetorical flourish, to be sure, and such always contains more gas than solid. But in this case, he exaggerates an anecdote from 5 years ago, twists it to fit his political purposes, and conveys all manner of impression not supported by facts.

(Tapper interview via The Corner.)

While indignant centrist to conservative critics taking on the NY Times for an obvious aged-and-saved hit piece on John McCain, Andy McCarthy offers counterpoint, writing at the The Corner.