The Razor

I love the art of the deal, and so it was easy for me to imagine the following:

Rove: Howard, it is I, Lord Rove calling from the depths.
Dean: Karl, I Lord of Screams hear you. State your business.
Rove: (sound of escaping steam) I have reached what I believe to be a fair… trade of sorts… Hagel for Lieberman.
Dean: To what scheme might I apply this so-called logic of yours, Karl?
Rove: Hagel is one of yours, and Joe’s one of ours. And if Joe loses the primary, you know he’s going to win the general. So… You run Lamont against my boy Joe, you get Charles du Hagel – the French asshole.
Dean: Hmmm… A bargain methinks…
Rove: It is truly fair… It shall preserve the balance of forces which helps to maintain the balance in our 527’s.
Dean: Agreed. Make it so.

At Dean’s World, Aziz takes issue with what some on the Right are characterizing as the Silence of the Left over recent events in Israel’s neighborhood. I too have noticed that NPR has reported relatively little on the conflict during peak drive time. Instead they have run stories about Bush’s planned veto on federally funded stem cell research, and illegal immigrants. They even ran a story about a town posting signs in a fountain warning of “hydrogen” in the water. Meanwhile Israel is taking care of business.

Whenever the Left is silent, I know that something is up. Reality has intruded into their fantasies, and they are forced to spin new theories or push their cognitive dissonance beyond its limits. Similar events happen on the Right – usually involving the personal failings of a favored pol or spokesman (Rush’s chemical abuse is one example that leaps to mind).

What really buggers them is that the actions of Hamas and Hesballah (today’s spelling) are so blatantly warlike. Crossing a border, attacking soldiers, then firing missiles into civilian areas – all from areas that Israel has completely vacated. The hard anti-semitic Left will have no problem making Israel the aggressor in these cases, but it’s much harder for the softer Left – many of whom happen to be Jewish.

Jews and the American Right have never been natural allies. The traditional Right – exemplified by Pat Buchanan and his publication, American Conservative – has never been a strong supporter of Israel and has always encompassed groups with various degrees of anti-semitic views. They have therefore tended to lean leftward traditionally.

However the traditional terms used to describe political ideologies no longer make sense anymore. For example, the strongest anti-semitism is now found on the Left – supporting boycotts of Israel to its outright destruction. It has also become a bastion of intolerance toward Judeo-Christian religions – seeing them as oppressors of more enlightened peoples.

Meanwhile the Religious Right has been vocal in its support of Israel, de-emphasizing its past history of attempted conversion of the Jews while discovering Biblical basis for Israel’s right to exist. Also, the Neo-Conservatives have championed America’s strong support of Israel as a way to protect the US from the anti-American forces in the Middle East – ignoring Israel’s weapon sales of American technology to China.

The silence exists – contrary to what Aziz believes – and it is palpable as the pro-Israel Left comes to terms with an Israel that played by the rules and got hit anyways. One can only hope that many of the Left begin to recognize that what they call Liberalism is nothing of the such, and is more reactionary than anything found on the Right.

Syria Delenda Est

Terrorist Op-Ed In Washington Post

Face Up on the Guillotine – The Democratic Revolution

Swiss: Israel Violating Geneva Conventions

Photoshop Fun

Hamas Kidnaps Israeli Soldier

A True Uniter for the Democratic Party

Terrorists Using Women for Cover

Hope for Virginia and Democrats

Buying an Election in Virginia

Should We Celebrate Zarqawi’s Death

Ann Coulter Calls 9-11 Widows Witches

How NOT to Win Friends and Influence People

Oh Canada…

This time of year I’m always reminded that I’ve never lived in a place where fireworks were legal. Even growing up as a kid in St. Louis county meant a trip in the backseat of my brother-in-law’s T-bird across the line to lawless Jefferson County, where communities such as Peerless Park and the nearby Valley Park catered to those willing to cross the border with their contraband.

Looking back as a parent, giving explosives and magnesium flares to children makes no sense whatsoever. So why do I miss holding bricks of Black Cat firecrackers and grosses of bottle rockets?

Give a kid a brick of firecrackers and you’ve handed him a night’s worth of mayhem.

Here is a list of things I’ve blown up with firecrackers:

1. Model Airplanes – Before my teens I used to build model airplanes and hang them from my bedroom ceiling. At the age of 13, most of these were blown up in live-action reenactments of Midway, Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Britain.

2. Army Men – Battle of the Bulge the seige of Ke San were reenacted, complete with buried explosives and flung grenades.

3. Crayfish – At the age of 10 I was attacked by a group of jihadi crawdads all wearing suicide vests. Well, actually they were trying to scurry away with lit fireworks on their backs but the results were the same.

4. Copper pipes – Hammer one end of a pipe nearly shut, drop a firecracker in, add rock and bang – instant pellet gun/pipe bomb (if you overdo it)

5. Fingers – By the time I came of age, cherry bombs and M-80s* were just myths: most firecrackers could go off in your hands without anything nastier happening than some light burns and one heck of a sting. Fast fuses in the cheaply made Chinese firecrackers were common, as were the sounds of ZZT, BANG, followed by a boy’s cry for his mother.

For all the fireworks I illegally shot off, for all the bottlerocket fights and mishandling if not downright abuse of them, I never needed more medical attention than a squirt of bactine and a bandaid.

There are still places in America where people can participate in this uniquely American fascination with blowing things up with explosives, and do so without the heavy hand of the Nanny State. As a good parent though, who is not living in a free state, I won’t teach my kid disrespect for the law by driving to a nearby state, picking up a few bricks and grosses and having a blast in my own backyard. But as the cicadas whine and the heat and humidity bear down, I will nurse a healthy resentment for the bureaucrats and do-gooders who keep me from blowing things up behind my stockade fence.

The Nazi advance must be halted, Charlie must be repelled…

*The M-80 was the stuff of legend among boys ages 8-12. We had all heard stories about the power of this explosive, and yearned to find one or make one ourselves. This lead to serious engineering efforts along the lines of a neighborhood Manhattan Project whereby we slit open firecrackers, emptied out their powder onto a piece of newspaper, added a fuze and rolled it as tightly as possible. While these cigar-sized wads usually fizzled, we did get lucky once. Billy Moore: We hardly knew ye…

North Korea is readying to test a missile that can hit the West Coast.
It says that it’s not bound to a missile testing moratorium in this article.

I think that it’s a perfect time to test America’s ABM capabilities and try to shoot the thing down.

If we miss, we’ll lose some diplomatic face in exchange for data from a real-life situation. But if we blow the thing up… Kim’s nukes won’t be seen as such a threat and we’ll look even tougher.

It’s a risk worth taking if I were Bush.

So the Zarqman is dead – as predicted by this StrategyPage article (I just subscribed to them and I must say that this publication is worth every penny).

Some comments:

1. BBC on NPR called this a “propaganda victory” for the Bush Administration.
2. It will be interesting to see who celebrates his death and who doesn’t.
So far the Bush admin, Blair, Iraqi PM, Shi’a and al-Qaeda are all happy that he’s dead. NPR and the BBC appear more subdued so far.
3. Nick Berg’s father has said that he is saddened by his son’s executioner’s death, saying that it just increases al-Qaeda’s anti-American sentiment. He’s a pacifist running on the Green Party ticket for Congress in Delaware.

Victor David Hanson lays out the reason for our sacrifice better than anyone else in this Memorial Day article.

Our soldiers fought for the chance of a democracy; that fact is uncontestable. Before they came to Iraq, there was a fascist dictatorship. Now, after three elections, there is an indigenous democratic government for the first time in the history of the Middle East. True, thousands of Iraqis have died publicly in the resulting sectarian mess; but thousands were dying silently each year under Saddam—with no hope that their sacrifice would ever result in the first steps that we have already long passed.

Our soldiers also removed a great threat to the United States. Again, the crisis brewing over Iran reminds us of what Iraq would have reemerged as. Like Iran, Saddam reaped petroprofits, sponsored terror, and sought weapons of mass destruction. But unlike Iran, he had already attacked four of his neighbors, gassed thousands of his own, and violated every agreement he had ever signed. There would have been no nascent new democracy in Iran that might some day have undermined Saddam, and, again unlike Iran, no internal dissident movement that might have come to power through a revolution or peaceful evolution.

Read the entire thing. It’s worth it.

And John Gibson nails it:

When it comes to the students we have to consider some facts. These are students whose parents have paid upwards of a $1,000 a week for them to be in the school. They have lived protected and sheltered lives. They didn’t suffer an attack on 9/11.

They haven’t fought the wars that followed. They have virtually no experience in life, except what happened before they left home and what happened when the college professors got hold of them.

Condoleezza Rice helped free more women in Afghanistan and Iraq than anybody has ever freed in the history of man. She is playing a major role in a solution to the war in Darfur.

Condi Rice doesn’t represent their values. I should say not, since their values seem to be intolerance, closed-mindedness and the cocksureness of youth that allows a college student to pass judgment on a secretary of state.

(link)

Since my first encounter with Iraq almost 40 years ago, I have relied on several broad measures of social and economic health to assess the countrys condition. Through good times and bad, these signs have proved remarkably accurateas accurate, that is, as is possible in human affairs. For some time now, all have been pointing in an unequivocally positive direction.

The first sign is refugees. When things have been truly desperate in Iraqin 1959, 1969, 1971, 1973, 1980, 1988, and 1990long queues of Iraqis have formed at the Turkish and Iranian frontiers, hoping to escape. In 1973, for example, when Saddam Hussein decided to expel all those whose ancestors had not been Ottoman citizens before Iraqs creation as a state, some 1.2 million Iraqis left their homes in the space of just six weeks. This was not the temporary exile of a small group of middle-class professionals and intellectuals, which is a common enough phenomenon in most Arab countries. Rather, it was a departure en masse, affecting people both in small villages and in big cities, and it was a scene regularly repeated under Saddam Hussein.

Since the toppling of Saddam in 2003, this is one highly damaging image we have not seen on our television setsand we can be sure that we would be seeing it if it were there to be shown. To the contrary, Iraqis, far from fleeing, have been returning home. By the end of 2005, in the most conservative estimate, the number of returnees topped the 1.2-million mark. Many of the camps set up for fleeing Iraqis in Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia since 1959 have now closed down. The oldest such center, at Ashrafiayh in southwest Iran, was formally shut when its last Iraqi guests returned home in 2004.

A second dependable sign likewise concerns human movement, but of a different kind. This is the flow of religious pilgrims to the Shiite shrines in Karbala and Najaf. Whenever things start to go badly in Iraq, this stream is reduced to a trickle and then it dries up completely. From 1991 (when Saddam Hussein massacred Shiites involved in a revolt against him) to 2003, there were scarcely any pilgrims to these cities. Since Saddams fall, they have been flooded with visitors. In 2005, the holy sites received an estimated 12 million pilgrims, making them the most visited spots in the entire Muslim world, ahead of both Mecca and Medina.

Over 3,000 Iraqi clerics have also returned from exile, and Shiite seminaries, which just a few years ago held no more than a few dozen pupils, now boast over 15,000 from 40 different countries. This is because Najaf, the oldest center of Shiite scholarship, is once again able to offer an alternative to Qom, the Iranian holy city where a radical and highly politicized version of Shiism is taught. Those wishing to pursue the study of more traditional and quietist forms of Shiism now go to Iraq where, unlike in Iran, the seminaries are not controlled by the government and its secret police.

A third sign, this one of the hard economic variety, is the value of the Iraqi dinar, especially as compared with the regions other major currencies. In the final years of Saddam Husseins rule, the Iraqi dinar was in free fall; after 1995, it was no longer even traded in Iran and Kuwait. By contrast, the new dinar, introduced early in 2004, is doing well against both the Kuwaiti dinar and the Iranian rial, having risen by 17 percent against the former and by 23 percent against the latter. Although it is still impossible to fix its value against a basket of international currencies, the new Iraqi dinar has done well against the U.S. dollar, increasing in value by almost 18 percent between August 2004 and August 2005. The overwhelming majority of Iraqis, and millions of Iranians and Kuwaitis, now treat it as a safe and solid medium of exchange

My fourth time-tested sign is the level of activity by small and medium-sized businesses. In the past, whenever things have gone downhill in Iraq, large numbers of such enterprises have simply closed down, with the countrys most capable entrepreneurs decamping to Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf states, Turkey, Iran, and even Europe and North America. Since liberation, however, Iraq has witnessed a private-sector boom, especially among small and medium-sized businesses.

Link

What’s the quintessential leftist cause? It’s the one you see on a gazillion bumper stickers: Free Tibet. Every college in the US has a Free Tibet society: There’s the Indiana University Students for a Free Tibet, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Students for a Free Tibet, and the Students for a Free Tibet University of Michigan Chapter. Everyone’s for a free Tibet, but no one’s for freeing Tibet. Idealism as inertia is the hallmark of the movement.

Mark seems to think that Liberals are very good at rationalizing inaction while tolerating genocide. Kind of what the Right did during Spain’s Civil War and later when Europe became the Third Reich. Perhaps the people of Darfur will get lucky and Angelina Jolie will adopt them.

I thought I would say that considering that it’s somewhat expected to dis the President these days. Here’s why.

1. I give credit to George Bush for fighting the War on Terror even though it would have been much easier to lob a few cruise missiles into Afghanistan (like Bill Clinton did), or avoided conflict with our allies in Iraq (as his father did). Because of his efforts, I believe that America is safer today than it has been at any time since Jimmy Carter took office in Jan. 1977.

Al Qaeda preached that America was a paper tiger. It believed this because of Carter’s handwringing, Reagan’s disappearing (from S. Lebanon after the Beirut barracks bombing) and Bill Clinton’s disinterest. George Bush has shown this to be a mistake by the only method Al Qaeda understands: killing them before they kill us. This has come as a surprise to Al Qaeda, and one that they have yet to respond to.

2. I believe that the Iraq War is – and was – justified. I believe that Iraq is better off today than it was under Saddam, and that the Middle East and the USA are safer as a result of this action. I do not believe that 2,300 soldiers have died in vain. I believed that they gave their lives in the cause of liberty which I continue to believe is a noble cause. Unfortunately I believe that those who don’t believe in liberty anymore are the ones most likely the first to lose it should liberty be lost. Leftist Intellectuals, gays, and other liberals should take note about how their peers have been treated in areas lacking liberty – such as Saudi Arabia, North Korea and Iran.

I also believe that removing Saddam was in America’s long-term best interest, as is supporting a democracy in the Middle East. Whether the Iraqis can rise to the occasion and grasp that chance is up to them.

3. Even though I disagree with George Bush on many issues, I still respect him and the American Presidency. From his reflexive support of Free Trade to his reflexive dislike of environmental regulations, there is plenty I disagree with the president on. However that does not mean that I do not respect him as a person or the office he holds. As Gerald Ford said, “One can disagree without being disagreeable.” I refuse to mock him, call him names, or blame him for every imagined bad thing that has happened to me or the causes I support. However I do believe that I have the write to criticize him when I feel it is necessary, but only when such criticism has a point – and a possible alternate solution.

4. I believe that my nation is as strong as it has ever been in its history. I believe that one day we will look upon this period with nostalgia in the same way people view life during the 1950s and 1960s. I still believe in my nation, and continue to wonder when voicing one’s patriotism became a crime in some parts of society.

For the past three or four days I have turned on “All Things Considered” during the evening commute, just to see if it was as biased as I found it to be three years ago when I stopped listening to it. The third story, after an excellent piece on the Skilling Enron cross-examination (go Feds!) and a good one on the conviction today of former Illinois governor Ryan on all counts, was an interview with a “presidential historian” to discuss presidents and their relationships with their subordinates. In particular, if there was any precedent behind Bush’s support of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

The historian said, “No.” He then went on to characterize the growing restlessness with Rumsfeld to “failure in Iraq”, saying that if we were succeeding no one would be gunning for Rummy. I’ll paraphrase the rest of the interview: “Vietnam. Vietnam. Vietnam. MacNamara, Johnson and Vietnam. Vietnam. Vietnam. Nixon and Vietnam. Vietnam. Vietnam. Truman, MacArthur and Vietnam. ”

Well, I suppose balance from an academic is like expecting a jihadi to say something nice about a Jew. So, for those of you who haven’t checked out NPR lately.

Move along. It’s still a biased pit of anti-Americanism that really, really needs to get its funding cut off.

Gateway Pundit has a zesty roundup on past predictions about Iraq – including tasty source links. Yum!

I just FTP’d up the home page, so be sure to visit therazor.org/saddam2008/ for the latest.

Note:
This is a parody site designed by a man who believes that, given the chance, he would have the moral duty to put a bullet in the brain of Saddam. In the 1980’s I wrote letters as part of Amnesty International campaign against his regime. I protested when he invaded Kuwait in 1990, and later wrote critically of the Bush I administration for allowing this man to stay in power.

This man is evil and responsible for killing more Muslims than any Jew or American, living or dead.

Ligneus links to a Spectator column that makes an important point:

What does the episode tell us about ourselves? The first is that we are not morally serious people; in a word, that we are decadent.

I sometimes wonder if all a Liberal wants to do is for the government to take care of him so he can drink, smoke and f*ck without abandon. In short, he wants to be a teenager again – just with Gov’t as the permissive, hand-wringing parents who hand him the keys to the car and the liquor cabinet – then drive his girlfriend to the abortion clinic when necessary.

If true, I’d better start studying the Koran…