Truths We Dare Not Speak

The incomparable VDH revisits our so called disastrous war in Iraq. We never hear about Iraq anymore do we? How strange! The state run media won't say it, so here goes. The most successful campaign, in the shortest time, with the fewest losses, in the history of warfare. Iran will be the next to fall. God bless George Bush...T

We are tired of Iraq and have Trotskyized it out of our existence, given the huge cost and 4,000 dead.

But consider: not a single America died in Iraq in December (38 murdered in Chicago during that period); three have been lost this month (24 murdered so far this month in Chicago).

Some random thoughts. The surge was a brilliant success.

The heroes are relatively ignored. They are U.S. forces who served in Iraq, of course; Gens. Odierno and Petraeus (recall what he endured from Hillary Clinton and MoveOn.org in his Senate inquisition); civilian analysts like Fred Kagan and retired Gen. Keane; and, of course, a demonized George Bush—attacked by most of his former supporters, the majority of pundits and columnists, those Democrats who had voted to authorize the war, many of the Iraq Study Group members; and by a cadre of retired “revolt of the generals” officers.

Yet for some reason, very few senators (cf. the You Tube videos of the debates of October 11-12, 2002) who gave impassioned pleas, authorizing 23 writs to go to war, have ever quite explained why they flipped—and what they think now of both their original support, and their subsequent opposition.

A Harry Reid (“the war is lost”) or Barack Obama (out of Iraq by March 2008 and the surge “is not working”) have never subsequently suggested that they were wrong at a time when our troops desperately were trying against all odds to save the fragile country.

Nor has anyone questioned the conventional dogma that Iraq empowered Iran, supposedly by removing the demonic Saddam. (Yet consider the liberal logic: we were wrong to remove a monster because he was a useful balance-of-power monster [ignore the genocide of the Kurds, Marsh Arabs, etc]; yet we deplore prior administrations for giving the same monster some aid in his war against Iran.)

In fact, mass demonstrations and unrest now take place in an isolated Iran, not so much in a democratic Iraq. The latter is proving more destabilizing by its open broadcasting and word of mouth freedom to Iran than Iran is to Iraq by its savage use of terrorism. (What will happen to conventional wisdom, if there comes a day when Iran is constitutional, along with Iraq and Lebanon?)

No one has officially said they were wrong in alleging “No Blood for Oil.” But we got no oil from Iraq. The price rose after we invaded. The Chinese, Russians, and Europeans got the contracts in free and fair bidding.

(Contrast Saddam’s rigged pre-war, quid-pro-quo oil concessions to the corrupt French). There was no Halliburton conspiracy to steal resources. The left often now, mirabile dictu, accuses us of being naïve in bleeding to give others the resources that they once accused us of wishing to steal. Barack Obama still talks of Iraq as a mistake, even as he quietly ignores his own prescriptions to have gotten out by early 2008, and to have stopped the surge—and continues to follow the Petraeus/Bush plan.
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Waterboard MSNBC!

Is it just me? Am I the only one who would do almost anything for one night with Ann Coulter?! Oh well...

I see that the press - MSNBC in particular - and the fanatic leftists in congress are clamoring to put Bush and Cheney in jail for "torture" related war crimes. They use as their latest shallow justification that WWII Japanese war criminals were executed for "waterboarding" American POW's (execution is what the press and the left really want for Bush of course!).

Problem is, as is the case with most of what the MSM states as fact, and almost all of what the left claims, this case is patently false, and provably so.

In fact - the CIA just this very day released the transcript of the EIT congressional briefing, attended by Nancy Pelosi, which now proves not only that she knew and approved of the waterboarding EIT, but that she knew it had already taken place, and upon whom it specifically had been used (Abu Zubaydah). Again, she signalled her approval at this time.

- Hypocrite, thy name is liberal statist!..T

...Given what the Japanese did to prisoners, waterboarding would be a reward for good behavior.

...To claim that the Japanese – architects of the Bataan Death March – were prosecuted for "waterboarding" would be like saying Ted Bundy was executed for engaging in sexual harassment.

What the Japanese did to their POWs made even the Nazis blanch. The Japanese routinely beheaded and bayoneted prisoners; forced prisoners to dig their own graves and then buried them alive; amputated prisoners' healthy arms and legs, one by one, for sport; force-fed prisoners dry rice and then filled their stomachs with water until their bowels exploded; and injected them with chemical weapons in order to observe, time and record their death throes before dumping them in mass graves.

While only 4 percent of British and American troops captured by German or Italian forces died in captivity, 27 percent of British and American POWs captured by the Japanese died in captivity. Japanese war crimes were so atrocious that even rape was treated as only a secondary war crime in the Tokyo trial, similar to what happens during an R. Kelly trial.

The Japanese "water cure" was to "waterboarding" as practiced at Guantanamo what rape at knifepoint is to calling your secretary "honey."

The Japanese version of "waterboarding" was to fill the prisoner's stomach with water until his stomach was distended – and then pound on his stomach, causing the prisoner to vomit...
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Dreaming of a Giuliani/Petraeus Ticket in 2012 and an American Surge

Image by genetew via Flickr

I think as part of a Giuliani/Petraeus ticket this could be unbeatable. Really it is unlikely that one with no political experience can capture the presidency. (unless, of course, you are a communist community organizer and radical with no public record, and with the slobbering, drooling support of the drive-by media...)

By 2012 republican divisions should be gone thanks to Osama, Pelosi, and Reid, oh my! Yes, and Giuliani would be a great president in his own right. He is much more conservative than given credit for, even on social issues, where he has pledged a strict constructionist court, and especially an economics and libertarian issues. Yes, and he is the only American Pol with the intellectual stamina to tame the executive branch and impose his will on congress.

So it's early, I know! Here, anyway, is to Rudy/David in 2012!...T

Signs of our collective weakness emerged after 9/11 when only part of the American population took seriously that we were at war with an evil and motivated enemy determined to destroy our way of life. Since then, al Qaeda has refused to quit despite debilitating losses.

Clearly, our national will is wilting away.

Following the tragic lead of Europe, too many Americans no longer want to engage our external threats head-on. And on the domestic front, we are confronting the economic crisis of our lifetime with the same full-steam-ahead spending-spree mind-set that got us into the mess to begin with.

We say: Let's create more government dependency, reward the incompetent and print more money.

That's doubling down on stupidity.

We are a trust-fund nation (picture Tori Spelling in the Lifetime Channel role of her career) whose BMW has run out of gas in the middle of the Mojave Desert after a pointless 115-miles-per-hour joy ride. The credit cards are maxed out. We're out of cell phone range. And dad, who just got taken by Uncle Bernie Madoff, wouldn't take the call anyway.

The silent generation, which learned valuable lessons from the Depression and World War II, is not here to guide us through these difficult times. The narcissistic baby boomers, who probably think this song is about them, are now firmly in charge. And that's the rub.

What is scaring us - even though many of us won't admit it - is that we elected a president who wants more than anything to be liked. What else explains his headlong rush to persuade foreign governments - even enemy regimes - to embrace us? And what else justifies his infatuation with Hollywood?

And even that he doesn't quite get right. I still can't believe that the president of the United States traveled across the country - without his teleprompter crutch - and made fun of the Special Olympics on national television.

When the going gets tough, the weak go on Leno.

I can't get out of my head that the leader of the free world gave the British prime minister 25 films on DVD that don't even work in U.K. machines.

I can't wrap my head around the fact that the commander in chief tried (for a minute anyway) to require injured warriors to pay to have private insurers take care of their treatment.

I can't believe the president would allow the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to dictate the terms of his budget - and Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd, the symbols of government kowtowing to Wall Street - to be spokesmen for his financial bailout.

And did President Obama really produce a YouTube video to appease President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the mullahs of Iran?
Yes, he did.

These aren't beginner's mistakes. These are his core incompetencies.

The media that got him elected knows it is responsible for the gathering debacle, and so Jon Stewart, a so-called comedian and exemplar of the groupthink of the governing elite, is desperately hunting for scapegoats. Now that their secular savior is in charge, the "Dissent is Patriotic" bumper-sticker crowd is figuring out ways to stamp out criticism.

I admit, I am now officially freaking out.

The last time I felt this hopeless was when the Democratic Party and its cohorts in the media sold us on the false premise that we lost the war in Iraq. In the process, they also sought to demonize the very man that led us out of our peril.

His name is Gen. David H. Petraeus.

Less than two months into the Obama presidency, which appears to be lost somewhere in the Mojave Desert, I have decided to try to soothe my anxieties by placing my hope in a political surge.

In the election of 2010, Republicans should run heroic veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom who exhibited the will and fortitude to defeat the enemy and to rebuild a torn nation, even while too many of their fellow countrymen wrote them off.

And in 2012, the man President Obama's staunchest allies called "General Betray Us" should come in with guns blazing and defeat the man whose only weapon to lead us to victory is a teleprompter.
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The Conquering Caesar!

After a great victory over his enemies, the victorious Caesar would be given the honor of a "Triumph" - a procession through the streets of the capitol city regaled by his fallen enemies and cheering supporters alike.

As a sop to former republican times, his slave would run behind his chariot, every now and then whispering in his ear... "Remember you are human! Remember you are human...you Communist bastard!!!"...T

Terrorism? Solved!

This would work!...T

HOW TO STOP ISLAMIC TERRORISTS...... it worked once in our History...

Just before World War I, there were a number of terrorist attacks against the United States and it's interests by, you guessed it, Muslim extremists.

So General Pershing captured 50 of the terrorists and had them tied to posts execution style. He then had his men bring in two pigs and slaughter them in front of the, now horrified, terrorists.

The soldiers then soaked their bullets in pigs blood, and proceeded to execute 49 of the terrorists by firing squad.

The soldiers then dug a big hole, dumped in the terrorist's bodies and covered them in pig blood, entrails, etc.

They let the 50th man go. And for about the next 42 years, there was not a single attack by a muslim fanatic anywhere in the world.

Bush Was Right, Again

Against all odds this author thought possible, this ignorant paean of a president is even MORE narcissistic that Bill Clinton. He is, as the author wryly, but aptly, puts it - "a man who would run over his grandmother to get in front of a camera". His press conference today was an orgy of "I" "Me" and "Mine" that would have made Ol' Bubba cringe.

Bush has left him a powerful legacy to squander. Let's hope his vanity prevails over his colossal ignorance and fanaticism, as it did the Clinton's...T

You’d never know it from listening to the lamestream media this weekend, but Iraqis went to the polls in nationwide provincial elections. Turnout was strong, and there was not a single major act of violence.

The early returns show a repudiation of the Islamist and other religious parties which had been in large part dominated by Iran. Secular parties, and in particular, the party of the current Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, appear to have gained position. This is a huge step toward a secular, stable representative democracy in Iraq.

“I just voted and I’m very happy,” said one Iraqi man.

“I want the political leaders to listen to us. I think this will begin the change,” said another.
“A great day,” said yet another.

The BBC reported that there was “a holiday atmosphere” among voters walking to the polling places.
A female Baghdad medical student said, “People here are so excited by the feeling that their vote can make a difference.”

Exhilaration over voting? Excitement? A holiday atmosphere?

The lamestream media, invested for years in the narrative that Iraq was a failure, only begrudgingly reported any of this, and made sure to counter it with erroneous reports about light turnout and confusing voting procedures.

Seriously?

Iraq had more effective and efficient candidate selection than we did.

Exhibit A: the Illinois Senate seat.

Exhibit B: the New York Senate seat.

Exhibit C: the Minnesota Senate seat (pending).

Exhibit D: ACORN, anyone?

We should have Iraqi election monitors watching us during our next elections. They ran a better show than we did.

Most disgracefully, our new president—-a man who would run over his grandmother to get in front of a camera—-could only manage a lame written statement “congratulating” the Iraqi people on holding elections. He’s got no problem holding press conferences about such pressing issues as the choice of White House puppy. But a presser on the landmark Iraq elections? Why, that’s a bridge too far.

President Bush stuck with Iraq. Against all political pressure and advice to the contrary, he went ahead with the surge and allowed the generals and the troops the latitude to see the engagement to victory. In the process, he liberated 28 million people from tyranny’s grip and gave them a shot at freedom.

Something tells me there was a “holiday atmosphere” at the former president’s Texas home this weekend.

Bush was right. Again.
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Redemption!

Well now! He's not looking so bad anymore, is he!...T

What Really Happened In The Middle East

Great recap here, showing the fantasy reality that the western press has made of the Arab-Israeli conflict. View this video, then check out a summation of the real history of "Palestine" here:

http://navitor.blogspot.com/2009/01/is-it-israel-or-palestine-whats-truth.html

Why post this now? Well, glad you asked! The point to garner from this factual history, and from what we see on NBC and the Clinton News Network, is exactly that: They don't make mistakes. They willingly distort, lie, fabricate, and straight out attempt to control and indoctrinate the American public to their socialistic worldview...T

College Students: Terror is, like, the New Communism

Like, like, like! Marcia Marcia Marcia! Another whole generation that has lost the lessons of the 70's and 80's (and 30's and 40's). Appeasement NEVER works. Thank you, leftist college profs/aged 60's radicals!...T

"These poor souls have no memorial. Least of all at an American university."

I spoke for a few minutes to the 20-year-old woman seated across the aisle from me.


She: What brings you to Denver?"

Me: I am giving a speech.

She: What do you do?

Me: I'm a radio talk show host.

She: Who did you vote for?

Me: McCain

She: Why?

Me: Smaller government and the war on terror.

She: Terror is the new communism.

Me: Communism killed about a hundred million people. And who do you think attacked and killed 3,000 of us on Sept. 11?

She: The government.

For the record, as I believe this to be essential to understanding this young woman's views, she is a student attending the University of California Santa Barbara.

Truth is she had to be a student at a major university. She would never have come up with "Terror is the new Communism" on her own. It is a moral obscenity that one has to learn.

Of course, there is an irony to this statement. Meant in the opposite way she meant it, I could largely assent to the proposition that terror is the new communism. Communism was an enslaving and murderous threat in its time and the Jihadism is such a threat in our lifetime.

But that is not how this young woman meant the statement. As she has learned history and the contemporary world, communism was a bogeyman in its time and terror is a bogeyman in our time.

When I told her that communism had killed 100 million people, I could not tell if she even processed the words. It was as if had I uttered a series of nonsense syllables. She either didn't believe me or didn't care.

On the assumption that I had met a person with a normal conscience, the only rational explanation for her non-reaction is that she didn't believe me and regarded what I said as right-wing propaganda (just as the belief in that Islamist terror threatens us).

In her belief that neither communism nor terror were/are real threats, I suspect this young woman represents many college students. If one wants to understand what left-wing dominance in university social sciences departments produces, one merely had to meet this young woman.

At most universities, communism is a non-evil, indeed, largely a non-issue. The most enslaving and murderous movement in history is almost never taught as such. When communism is mentioned at all, it is usually solely in order to show how vile anti-communists were. Thus, as little as students may know about McCarthyism, most students far more readily identify it with evil than they do communism. Indeed, more could probably identify Joseph McCarthy than Joseph Stalin.

Nor is this a matter of students not being taught to label anything as evil. They have no problem labeling Nazism, Fascism, George W. Bush, slavery, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, xenophobia, and tobacco companies as evil. It's just that they won't label communism as such.

Does one in 10.000 students know of the communist terror-famine that took about 6 million Ukarainian lives. How many know about the communist Pol Pot, who butchered nearly one-third of his fellow Cambodians? Or how many innocents were murdered in the Gulag Archipelago (or could even identify it)? Or that China's communist tyrant Mao Zedong killed about 60 million of his fellow Chinese? Or that Communist North Korea is essentially a concentration camp in the guise of a country?

The answer to all these questions is very few.

And that, quite frankly, breaks my heart. I am currently reading "Mao: The Secret Life," almost universally regarded, even in the mainstream media, as the most important book on Mao ever written.

According to the authors, in 1930-31 alone, Mao and his gang developed 120 types of torture for use on innocent people he wanted to force into phony confessions so as to rule by terror. They included burning the vaginas of wives of opponents and pulling wires through men's penises, which were then attached to their ears and plucked.

These poor souls have no memorial. Least of all at an American university.
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New Feature - My Publications

A new feature is included in NAVITOR - DoxTop - My Publications. It's previewed here with my Thesis, published in 2001, and is a permanent feature in the left hand column, near the bottom of the applications.

If you love military history, the study of WWI, and/or Winston Churchill, then this is for you...T

Is it Israel? or Palestine? What's the Truth?

Is it Israel or Palestine? What about the west bank and Gaza? Obviously the Drive-By's care not a whit about history (or the truth...) so here's some facts - not from this author, but straight from the encyclopedia. Facts, not passions:
- 1: Palestine was an ancestral name given Israel by the Roman Empire, as it's province, and entirely Jewish in nature
- 2: There has NEVER been any such thing as a "Palestinian"
- 3: The name Palestine disappeared from History for thousands of years - until Winston Churchill brought it back as the new name for the conquered regions of the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire - to be used as the new homeland for the Jews. Yes, ALL OF IT: Modern day Israel, the west bank and Gaza, and ALL of Jordan...T

From Drop Box

History of Jordan 1920s to 1930s
With the break-up of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I, the League of Nations and the occupying powers were required to redraw the borders of the Middle East. The ensuing decisions, most notably the Sykes–Picot Agreement gave birth to the French Mandate of Syria and British Mandate of Palestine. More than 70% of the British Mandate of Palestine was east of the Jordan river and was known as "Transjordan". Until 1921, the land was supposed to be part of the Jewish National Homeland, the land designated by the League of Nations to be the future Jewish State of Israel. In 1921, the British gave semi-autonomous control of Transjordan to the future King Abdullah I of Jordan, of the Hashemite family, after his failed attempt to take control of Syria when his brother King Faisal I became king of Iraq. This partitian was in breach of the British Empire's undertaking to make Palestine a Jewish state as was required under the terms of the mandate, and as such outraged the Jewish population, but pressure from the Arabs caused the British to acquiesce to the Hashemites' demands.

[edit] 1940s
Main articles: 1940s in Jordan, 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and 1949 Armistice Agreements
The mandate over Transjordan ended on May 22, 1946; on May 25, the country became the independent Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan. Transjordan was one of the Arab states opposed to the second partition of Palestine and creation of Israel in May 1948. It participated in the war between the Arab states and the newly founded State of Israel. The Armistice Agreements of April 3, 1949 left Jordan in control of the West Bank and provided that the armistice demarcation lines were without prejudice to future territorial settlements or boundary lines.

In March 1949, Transjordan announced its annexation of what is now commonly known as the West Bank, renaming it the West Bank, a reference to its location west of the Jordan River. Only two countries, however recognized this annexation: Britain and Pakistan. It is unknown why Pakistan recognized this annexation.
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Panetta AN AWFUL PICK - Leftist Military Writer

Even leftist ex-military types despise Panetta, like the author, a career intelligence officer in the US Army. He has a long record of wanting to gut intelligence...T

WOULD you ask your accountant to perform brain surgery on your child? That's the closest analogy I can find to the choice of Democratic Party hack Leon Panetta to head the CIA.

Earth to President-elect Obama: Intelligence is serious. And infernally complicated. When we politicize it - as we have for 16 years - we get 9/11. Or, yes, Iraq.

The extreme left, to which Panetta's nomination panders, howled that Bush and Cheney corrupted the intelligence system. Well, I worked in the intel world in the mid 1990s and saw how the Clinton team undermined the system's integrity.

Al Qaeda a serious threat? The Clinton White House didn't want to hear it. Clinton was the pioneer in corrupting intelligence. Bush was just a follow-on homesteader.

Now we've fallen so low that left-wing cadres can applaud the nomination of a CIA chief whose sole qualification is that he's a party loyalist, untainted by experience.

The director's job at the CIA isn't a party favor. This is potentially a matter of life and death for thousands of Americans. But the choice of Panetta tells us all that Barack Obama doesn't take intelligence seriously.

Mark my words: It'll bite him in the butt.

After the military, the intel community is the most complex arm of government. You can't do on-the-job training at the top. While a CIA boss needn't be a career intelligence professional, he or she does need a deep familiarity with the purposes, capabilities, limitations and intricacies of intelligence.

Oh, and you'd better understand the intelligence bureaucracy.

Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.), who was blindsided - and appalled - by the Obama mafia's choice, has the essential knowledge of how the system works. She, or a similar expert, should have gotten this nod. But the president-elect wanted a clean-slate yes-man, not a person of knowledge and integrity.

We're witnessing the initial costs of Obama's career-long lack of interest in foreign policy, the military and intelligence. He doesn't think the top job at the CIA's important and just wants political cover on that flank. (Guess we got Panetta because Caroline Kennedy has another engagement.)

Forget a "team of rivals." Obama's creating a campaign staff for 2012.

Of course, he's reeling from the shrill rage of the Moveon.org crowd over his nomination of grown-ups to be his national-security adviser, director of national intelligence, administrator of veterans' affairs and, yes, secretary of state. (By the way, how could Hillary be dumb enough to accept a job where success is impossible?)

Panetta's appointment is a sop to the hard left, a signal that intelligence will be emasculated for the next four - or eight - years.

Think morale's been bad at the CIA? Just wait.

Conservatives played into this scenario by insisting that any CIA analysis that didn't match the Bush administration's positions perfectly amounted to an attack on the White House. Well, sorry. The intelligence community's job isn't to make anybody feel good - its core mission is to provide nonpartisan analysis to our leaders.

To be a qualified D-CIA, a man or woman needs a sophisticated grasp of three things: The intel system, foreign-policy challenges and the Pentagon (which owns most of our intelligence personnel and hardware). Panetta has no background - none - in any of these areas. He was never interested.

If you handed Leon Panetta a blank map of Asia, I'd bet my life he couldn't plot Baghdad, Kabul or Beijing within 500 miles of their actual locations. (Maybe he can see China from his California think tank?)

This shameless hack appointment is the first action by the incoming administration that seriously worries me. Get intelligence wrong and you get dead Americans.

Ralph Peters was a career intelligence officer in the US Army.
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Bush Legacy?

God bless the author for this thoughtful look ahead, and behind, to assess GW's legacy. I cannot agree more. As I have been writing in this page for years now, he will be fondly remembered, and soon...T


President George W. Bush departs with low approval ratings. Appraisals of presidents sometimes change over time, and sometimes they don’t. Harry Truman was deeply unpopular in his time but is now revered. James Buchanan let the country slide toward civil war and is still considered our worst president. How will Bush’s legacy fare? Politico asked the experts to consider his place in history.

George W. Bush, like Harry Truman, was president when an unexpected attack inflicted a terrible defeat on the United States. Unlike the far-away launch of the Korean War, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, savaged the heart of Manhattan and came close to crippling the national government in Washington.

Bush quickly rallied the country’s confidence at Yankee Stadium, spoke to its sorrows at the National Cathedral and announced its firm resolve to the world in his address to the Congress. He then directed the takedown of the Taliban and, with it, the support structure and command-and-control capabilities of Al Qaeda, which began the complete overhaul of the national security apparatus of the United States.

This reorientation of America’s defenses toward the long conflict with radical and networked Islamist jihadists has been both remarkable and remarkably successful, and it has been begun in such a way as to avoid obscuring the growing competition with China and the threats posed by rogue states such as North Korea, Libya, Iraq and Iran.

The change from Cold War to no war to the long war ahead is far from complete. “You only get eight years,” Vice President Dick Cheney coolly remarked, conveying that part of a presidential legacy is a mature understanding that you cannot play to win just the matches in which you are captain.

Bush led the world to remove one of its most dangerous (and, thanks to Oil-for-Food, corrupting) dictators, devised a joint containment strategy of the despot of the Far East and completely but quietly disarmed Muammar Khaddafi of his massive stocks of weapons of mass destruction and his A.Q. Khan-supplied nuclear technology in the aftermath of the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

When Iran attempted to exploit the American intervention into Iraq, Bush countered that thrust with the surge, and as he leaves office, that counteroffensive is succeeding. New alliances with the states of the former Soviet Union are deepening as a result of the 43rd president’s strategic direction, especially in Poland and Bulgaria. A genuine missile shield has been deployed, and an archaic treaty that crippled America’s ability to defend itself has dissolved.

Our alliance with Israel is as strong as it has ever been, and our commitment to helping Israel repulse any thrusts by its enemies in Gaza and Lebanon is strong. Lebanon is better off than it was but not as free of Syrian influence as it should be. Hezbollah remains the cat’s paw of the Iranian theocracy, but the world does not doubt its true nature, and clarity is a valuable thing. There is clarity about Hamas, as well, and about many other networked jihadists. Even as Bush prepares to leave office, Israel is relying on the unwavering support of the president in its latest clashes with Hamas.

Bush’s much criticized communications strategy — I am one of the most frequent critics here — pushed key themes again and again. A relentless, though often ineloquent, focus on the evildoers has left no one in doubt about the central challenge of our time, and the Bush Doctrine is one of only three options in dealing with the combination of Islamist fanaticism and operational ability to deliver massive blows to our homeland.

The alternatives — fecklessness and appeasement (eloquent or not, it doesn’t matter) — may return to Washington, but if they do, the consequences will be at least as staggering as those of Sept. 11. Bush’s clarity about not waiting to be struck again and about the need to move decisively against rogue regimes that are believed to possess WMD is a model for future presidents that will be ignored at their and our peril.

Removal of the threat can be by force of arms, as with Iraq, or by force of will, as with Libya, but there is no safe alternative to the Bush Doctrine if the regime is a menace with the means to strike the U.S. directly or through proxies. Bush’s doctrines have defined the choices ahead, and will be used to evaluate his successors’ policies via the jihadists and their ambitions for WMD.

The complete overhaul of the strategic posture of the United States in the seven years since Sept. 11 is half of the central legacy of George Bush. The domestic accomplishments of this center-right president are large and interesting — No Child Left Behind and prescription drug legislation, to name two — and his failures were ambitious and politically significant, Social Security reform and immigration overhaul most prominent among them.

Bush’s grand achievement on the domestic side was the most recent turn of a triple play of tax cuts — John F. Kennedy’s, Ronald Reagan’s and his own — all of which prove the incredible economic wisdom of allowing people to keep more of the money they make. It is unfortunately a lesson that is as quickly unlearned as it is productive when relearned. We are watching its unlearning now. Someone down the road will make it four for four.

The long run of economic growth that ended with the subprime crisis was the product of low marginal tax rates. The bubbles that burst did not destroy that truth any more than their explosions undermined the wisdom of free trade, for which Bush was a tireless campaigner. The appointments of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito will play out over decades and cannot possibly be evaluated now.

The other part of Bush’s central legacy will be the example of the correct temperament of a commander in chief in wartime. Though relentlessly attacked by a domestic left wing deranged by fear or hate, Bush refused the temptation to return in kind the abuse he received. The campaign of 2004 was tough, but there was nothing in it or in Bush’s administration remotely approaching the scale of dirty tricks that marked many episodes in the years from Kennedy through Bill Clinton regarding the treatment of political enemies. Bush’s reserve when it came to political hardball is a standard of crucial significance for the long war ahead.

The Plame affair was a burlesque from start to finish, signifying nothing except the crazed nature of the president’s opponents. Like the charges of “Bush lied, people died” and of Bush-led massive assaults on civil liberties, historians will mock such absurd indictments.

Throughout this political hysteria, Bush stayed calm and governed with an eye toward protecting the whole country, which he did. Whether competent state and local authorities might have prevented the Hurricane Katrina chaos we will never know, but it won’t be more than a relatively small chapter in the histories written about Bush. His refusal to snarl back will be part of that chapter and part of a much larger theme about dignity and grace in the exercise of power.


Estimable temperament has marked Bush’s management of the war, as well — mistakes and all. Like Lincoln, he picked commanders and followed their recommendations until overwhelming evidence of failure could no longer allow him to do so, and then he changed commanders. As with Lincoln, this approach to command led to some defeats on the battlefield. But unlike Lyndon B. Johnson’s meddling, it did not lead to a strategic defeat. Bush’s deep love for the troops he has commanded is obvious; his sorrow for those who have lost a spouse, a child or a parent is profound; and his concern for the wounded has set a standard that should be matched by all future presidents. Bush is deeply loved by the military. In wartime, that is among the most important measures.

Bush’s greatest failing was a surprising one given his skill as a politician. Combined with his two wins as governor and his transformation of Texas politics, Bush won five of six great political battles, including the off-year contests of 2002 — a rare accomplishment. But he could not provide a path for a successor. The success of the surge and the defense of the U.S. homeland against another terrorist attack turned the battle to succeed Bush into one of the strangest campaigns ever, one in which the most important issue — the war — was rarely discussed. Bush’s immediate move to smooth the president-elect’s path to power is a part of his admirable record as an American president with uniquely American traditions to uphold.

No doubt the Internet dervishes will pepper this and other assessments of Bush with their standard displays of anonymous ferocity. There are a lot of 14-year-olds with Internet connections. But when the Jon Meacham of 150 years from now goes about his task with Bush, that historian will have as much material and more, as did the author of “American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House.” And the verdict will be nearly the same: Here was an extraordinary and controversial man who accomplished a great deal, lost many battles, stood by his friends sometimes too long and could be stubborn beyond political calculation but who accomplished his most urgent task of protecting the union against its many enemies. The successful completion of that task is what all great presidents have in common.

Bush’s great legacy is the peaceful transition of power in an age of terror, a legacy made possible by his courage and his resolve to take the battle to our enemies, confront and defeat them wherever they could be found, contain them when they could not be attacked, and demand of the world a seriousness about the threat that remains real and deadly in its intentions. He has modeled how to act as president in this new media age of virulent venom at home and of fanatical violence and hatred abroad — with detachment toward the former and courage toward the latter.

Count me among the 30 percent, which will soon be 40 percent — and then more than 50 percent much sooner than most of the chattering class can conceive. Bush is deeply loved and respected in places as diverse as remote villages in Africa and booming tech centers in India and, despite the noise from a left still trying to diminish his character, among tens of millions of Americans grateful for the care he has taken to protect them and their families.

But his greatest admirers will be Americans, and perhaps Afghans, Iraqis, Israelis, Indians and Africans a century or more from now who read about his record and resolve in so many efforts will marvel at his restraint and credit his faith and his family for a remarkable service to freedom.
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Winning Isn't News

This from IBD. One wonders if Osama will now get credit for "winning" in Iraq? That's a rhetorical question, as we all know what spin the MSM drive-by's will take.

So what would happen if the U.S. won a war but the media didn't tell the American public? Apparently, we have to rely on a British newspaper for the news that we've defeated the last remnants of al-Qaida in Iraq...T

London 's Sunday Times called it 'the culmination of one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror.' A terrorist force that once numbered more than 12,000, with strongholds in the west and central regions of Iraq, has over two years been reduced to a mere 1,200 fighters, backed against the wall in the northern city of Mosul.

The destruction of al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) is one of the most unlikely and unforeseen events in the long history of American warfare. We can thank President Bush's surge strategy, in which he bucked both Republican and Democratic leaders in Washington by increasing our forces there instead of surrendering.

We can also thank the leadership of the new general he placed in charge there, David Petraeus, who may be the foremost expert in the world on counter-insurgency warfare. And we can thank those serving in our military in Iraq who engaged local Iraqi tribal leaders and convinced them America was their friend and AQI their enemy.

Al-Qaida's loss of the hearts and minds of ordinary Iraqis began in Anbar Province, which had been written off as a basket case, and spread out from there.

Now, in Operation Lion's Roar the Iraqi army and the U.S. 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment is destroying the fraction of terrorists who are left. More than 1,000 AQI operatives have already been apprehended.

Sunday Times (London) reporter Marie Colvin, traveling with Iraqi forces in Mosul, found little AQI presence even in bullet-ridden residential areas that were once insurgency strongholds, and reported that the terrorists have lost control of its Mosul urban base, with what is left of the organization having fled south into the countryside.

Meanwhile, the State Department reports that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government has achieved 'satisfactory' progress on 15 of the 18 political benchmarks 'a big change for the better from a year ago.'

Things are going so well that Maliki has even for the first time floated the idea of a timetable for withdrawal of American forces. He did so while visiting the United Arab Emirates , which over the weekend announced that it was forgiving almost $7 billion of debt owed by Baghdad, an impressive vote of confidence from a fellow Arab state in the future of a free Iraq.

But where are the headlines and the front-page stories about all this good news? As the Media Research Center pointed out last week, 'the CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News and CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 were silent Tuesday night about the benchmarks 'that signaled political progress.'

The war in Iraq has been turned around 180 degrees both militarily and politically because the president stuck to his guns. Yet apart from IBD, Fox News Channel and parts of the foreign press, the media d oes n't seem to consider this historic event a big story.

Some Random Politically-incorrect Reasons to Be Optimistic on Thanksgiving Day

Now that Osama is co opting Bush policies wholesale (Iraq; Tax cuts; Afghanistan; Gitmo; FISA; Patriot Act; Financial bailouts etc...), one wonders if our fair and balanced news media will continue to say we ( and Osama) are racist, fascist, torturing, police state-loving murderers of our own citizens who had the Twin Towers blown up for oil?

...FAT CHANCE.

Oh, and by the way, any possibility they will give Bush credit for keeping us safe for 8 years now, liberating Afghanistan and having the courage and wisdom to turn Iraq into a spectacular success, and a stable democracy at the very heart of the middle east?

...NO WAY. The drive-by's are forever corrupted and discredited, as phony as CO2 driven climate change - great article linked here!

For the record - they won't see us acting like they did the last eight years: crying, whining, and fantasizing about massive conspiracies. No, because we love our country, and want her to succeed. We wish President-Elect Osama well (OK, a little fun is allowed!), and hope for his success.

Take time to follow the link to the full post - It really is VDH at his very best...T

Turning on a dime.

There is such a thing as divine Nemesis, even though the god seems to sleep for long periods. The media violated all the classical cannons of fairness and objectivity in this presidential campaign. Now they are in a dilemma, since most of their long-voiced objections about Bush won’t be operative any more—on matters of taxes, Guantánamo, the bail-outs, FISA, the Patriot Act, Iraq, guns, abortion, capital punishment—inasmuch as Obama suddenly won’t be hoping and changing much of anything, but often leaving things on these issues as they are, while turning management over to the tentacles of the Clinton octopus. The media, in Animal Farm fashion, will have to do a ‘that was then, this is now’ turnabout, as they dream of reasons why Gitmo is not that bad, or why keeping the Bush tax cuts for a bit will stimulate the economy, or why wiretapping on suspected terrorists, on reflection, isn’t really that subversive. And as they reinvent the once evil administration policies, and the formerly Hillary hacks into inspired Obama ideas and experienced and professional Obama appointments, few will believe them. Done, over with—the media has lost credibility and will have to start over from square one. And all that was a much needed development. (PS—after the India nightmare, note the Obama reaction to dismantling the FISA accords, Patriot Act, Guantánamo, and withdrawing from Iraq, as the campaign rhetoric of Bush shredding the Constitution morphs into something like ‘the public will turn on a dime and blame us for criminal laxity if anything like 9/11 happens on our watch.’)

What happened to Iraq?

Lost? Quagmire? Out by March 2008 which was the promise Obama gave when he announced his run in February 2007? General Betray Us? Somehow between Gen. Petraeus’s 2007 congressional testimony (Cf. Hillary’s “suspension of disbelief” slur) and the present calm, the US military essentially won the war. All the front-page stories in our papers that Americans in Iraq were incompetent, barbaric, mercenary, and Hitlerian suddenly ceased, and in their absence there was—nothing? About five times as many Chicagoans died violently in October than did US soldiers in combat in Iraq. Just as the hysteria peaked as gas was supposedly fated to hit $5 a gallon, but silence followed when it descended below $2, and just as we were warned that spiraling home prices had ensured an entire new generation of Americans were shut out of the American dream, and then even greater furor followed when prices fell suddenly and Americans were robbed of their equity, so too with Iraq, which we were to assume, would always be lost, but apparently never won. Like it or not, Gen. Petraeus will compare favorably with generals like Sherman, LeMay, and Ridgway who likewise somehow found victory when failure seemed certain. For all the tragedy and mayhem, the thought that Saddam Hussein is gone and just five years later there is a stable and successful constitutional government in the heart of the ancient caliphate seems as surreal as it is encouraging.
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Munich Redux?

In a great article titled "The Guns of August", author Monica Crowley details the stunning incompetence of the western powers to this naked attempt to rebuild the ex Soviet Union. We can only pray that Bush can convince the spineless worms of NATO to face down this despicable bully before we re-enter a new cold war...T

When Nazi Germany seized control of Czechoslovakia in 1938, appeaser extraordinaire Neville Chamberlain referred to it as “a faraway country of which we know little.”

The Nazi invasion was based on the simple and reasonable enough-sounding pretext that ethnic Germans in the Sudetenland wanted to be annexed to the Fatherland. Hitler’s invasion of that small, seemingly insignificant country led, of course, to total war in Europe and a global conflict that cost 100 million lives. All because the Western democracies didn’t see—or didn’t want to see—the unsatiable appetites of an expansionist power led by a coldly calculating mass murderer.

It’s often said that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. Here we go again.

Russia has used the pretext that ethnic Russians living in a part of the independent republic of Georgia want to be folded into Russia. The Georgians, they say, are doing “ethnic cleansing” of the Russians there, requiring Russia to intervene to defend them.

Of course, this requires Russian tanks, fighter jets, and now ground troops to sweep into Georgia proper, killing thousands while they begin to occupy the country.

To many Americans, Georgia is a “faraway land of which we know little.” Nor do we much care: we’ve got Michael Phelps to cheer on and summer barbeques to attend to.

But as history has demonstrated time and time again, it’s the seemingly small crises that blow up into big ones. Really big ones.

This is one of those times.

The Cold War never ended. The Russians are behind every major state-based threat we face: Iran, North Korea (through China), Venezuela, Syria, the list goes on. They are creating new spheres of influence while re-establishing their old, Soviet-era ones. They extort Eastern Europe on its oil supply. They have blown up part of the oil pipeline that runs through Georgia and Turkey (a NATO member). They are authoritarian at home and expansionist abroad.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had this invasion planned for weeks, if not months. Before ordering the bombs to fall and the tanks to roll, he didn’t rush to the UN seeking international approval. He didn’t seek sanctions or resolutions. He just marched in with a full-on invasion. (If the United States had done this, holy hell would be breaking loose in the hallowed halls of the UN. We wouldn’t be able to count the official condemnations of “America’s reckless, unauthorized breach of international law.” With the Russians, we get a big yawn and a shrug of powerlessness.)

Georgia is a pro-Western, fragile new democracy. It has had 2000 troops in Iraq, making it the third biggest contributor to coalition forces there after the United States and Great Britain. It is struggling to establish its democratic, free market independence in Russia’s long shadow. The Russians didn’t like all of the progress Georgia had been making, nor did it appreciate Georgia’s application to NATO. So Russia rolled in: “If I can’t have you, nobody will!”

The Russians are hammering the old Soviet empire back together. They had been doing it through economic (primarily energy) extortion. Now they’re doing it the old-fashioned way: through force. The Russians have been doing this for centuries. It’s not new.

It’s incredible that the western democracies seem impotent to stop this invasion of a democracy and reverse it. Short of military action, we could strip Russia of its G-8 membership, levy economic sanctions, and stop its membership to the World Trade Organization. Forget about going to the UN: Russia will veto everything.

The western democracies need to show a backbone. What would Reagan do? What would Thatcher do? For heaven’s sake, what would George H. W. Bush do? (Even he went to war to reverse an invasion of the petrotocracy, Kuwait. Georgia may not be sitting on a ton of oil, but it’s the transit point for a tremendous amount of it.)

This is one of those moments when we will wonder why the good guys were paralyzed while the bad guys marched. It’s one of those moments on which the future of freedom hangs. It’s one of those moments when the bad guys test the good guys. And so far, the good guys are contemplating their navels while the bad guys scorch the ground of liberty.
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