Sine Qua Non

Fading Fast

Dick Gephardt gave up everything for a final run at the White House. But the bad news just keeps coming fast and furious.

No crocodile tears here.

Exodus

It took two years, but Christopher Johnson's fabulous Midwest Conservative Journal is no longer dependent on Blog*Spot.

Chris also just celebrated his second anniversary as a blogger with MCJ. Congratulations to one of the old-timers.

So Close, and Yet So Far

Tom Friedman's off the wagon again drinking the Kool-aid with The War Over the War:

History may one day record that maybe the most honest speech about why we invaded Iraq was given by Prime Minister Tony Blair, addressing the filing cabinets in an empty hallway just outside his office at No. 10 Downing Street.

History may also one day record the foolishness and duplicity of so many learned people who really should have known better concerning the liberation of Iraq.

On March 13, six days before the British Parliament would be asked to vote for war, Mr. Blair was stewing in his office, worrying about whether he would win the vote.

Kind of scary isn't it, to realize how close we really are to losing Western Civilization since so few are now willing to stand up for it and defend it.

Mr. Blair knew the real and good reasons for ousting Saddam Hussein: First, he was a genocidal dictator, who aspired to acquire weapons of mass destruction — even if he did not have them yet. And second, removing Saddam and building a more decent Iraq would help tilt the Middle East onto a more progressive political track and send a message to all the neighboring regimes that Western governments were not going to just sit back and let them incubate suicide bombers and religious totalitarians, whose fanaticism threatened all open societies. These were the good reasons for the war, and Mr. Blair voiced some of them aloud that day.

This is what really bugs most people about Tom Friedman. You see, he really does understand the issues.

As Mr. Stothard recalled the scene outside Mr. Blair's office: "the prime minister takes a walk out into the hall and stands, shaking out his limbs, between [his political adviser] Sally Morgan's door and a dark oil painting of Pitt the Younger. . . . Morgan is away from her desk. [Mr. Blair] looks into the empty interior as if the answer to the latest state of the vote count will emerge from her filing cabinets nonetheless. He comes back out, disappointed, and looks around him. `What amazes me,' [Mr. Blair says,] `is how many people are happy for Saddam to stay. They ask why we don't get rid of [the Zimbabwean leader Robert] Mugabe, why not the Burmese lot. Yes, let's get rid of them all. I don't because I can't, but when you can you should.' "

I've been reading Herodotus lately, and one of the key themes to The Histories are the calamities that befell great empires when their leaders refused to recognize their limitations. It just isn't possible to succeed if we set out to cure all the world's ills at once and to demand that we do so is a reliable indicator of simple-minded utopian thinking at best, and knee-jerk anti-Westernism at worst. So why doesn't Mr. Friedman label this foolishness for what it is?

Alas, Mr. Blair never really made this case to his public. Why not? Because the British public never would have gone to war for the good reasons alone. Why not? Because the British public had not gone through 9/11 and did not really feel threatened, because it demanded a U.N. legal cover for any war and because it didn't like or trust George Bush.

Cause and effect Mr. Friedman. The reasons offered here are only rationalizations of a deeper disease infecting Europe and most of the left, with the last reason offered being closest to the mark. But one could easily substitute anyone on the right for President George W. Bush, and not much would have been different.

Yes, what takes me aback here is the degree of European-style anti-Americanism and anti-Bushism in Britain — which Mr. Blair's personal and overt pro-Americanism has disguised. "Blair had a real George Bush problem," says John Chipman, director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. "George Bush is disliked by a large segment of the British public. He offends the European sense of nuance. The favorite European color is gray and the only colors President Bush recognizes are black and white. So in supporting the war, Blair was not just going against European public opinion, he was going against his own."

Like I said, Mr. Friedman can see clearly. If only he would shed his deep-set prejudces that influence his reasoning and conclusions.

Unless real W.M.D.'s are found in Iraq, Gulf War II will for now and for years to come be known as "the controversial Gulf War II" — and the hyped reasons for the war will obscure the still good ones. Only future historians will be able to sort out this war's ultimate validity. It is too late or too early for the rest of us.

Oh please. The war was valid Tom -- you said so yourself above. As has been so often noted by others, an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But, of course, considering how blithely the mass graves, torture videos, continuous violation of UN resolutions, and past use of chemical weapons by Iraq have been ignored while the word "quagmire" has become ubiquitous in Big Media, I don't think this war would have been considered anything but "controversial" by the NY Times or Europe since it was led by President George W. Bush. After all, we can't have him doing anything right with an election on the horizon, now can we?

It's too late, because no one will ever know what Saddam would've done had Messrs Blair and Bush not acted.

Oh? And yet, the handwringing over why 9/11 wasn't prevented continues unabated. Well, which is it Mr. Friedman? Do we become purely reactionary and adopt some variant of Mutual Assured Destruction as our policy for dealing with state sponsored terrorism or do we plan and act to prevent acts of great terror before they occur? You can't have it both ways. Well, you can't have it both ways if you want to be taken seriously.

And it's too early, because the good reasons for this war — to unleash a process of reform in the Arab-Muslim region that will help it embrace modernity and make it less angry and more at ease with the world — will take years to play out.

A nice utopian finish there Mr. Friedman. Despite the clear intention to reshape the Mideast as one of the goals of the liberation of Iraq, this wasn't the primary goal. The primary goal was to protect the United States, and by extension the rest of the world, from state sponsored terrorism. Saddam Hussein and Iraq were guilty as charged and their demise was a very good thing. Whether the people of Iraq can seize this opportunity to improve their lot is primarily their task -- not ours! We will help, but if they fail, we still did the right thing. The war over the war in Big Media is merely a partisan sideshow that wouldn't be happening had Al Gore managed to steal the last election -- even assuming that he would have acted as clearly and forcefully to protect and defend the future security of the United States as has President George W. Bush. And please, I'm not attacking Al Gore's patriotism or love of the United States, but noting that his propensity to further the goals of transnational progressivism would have made the liberation of Iraq well nigh impossible.

I look forward to the day when Mr. Friedman can dispense with his knee-jerk anti-"rightism" and offer his insights and analysis without having to toe the party line or cater to the elite left's prejudices. Leave that to Paul Krugman, et al.

The Giardian

There's the NY Slimes, the Atlanta Urinal-Constipation, Louisville's Curious-Urinal, and now I offer one more. Henceforth the most popular far-left paper in the UK will be known as The Giardian. Those of you familiar with giardia will understand why.

3rd ID

I wonder how many of the people who use the length of the current United States 3rd Infantry Division deployment to argue that Iraq is a quagmire even knew there was a United States 3rd Infantry Division six months ago. To me, this seems to be the latest example of a DNC talking points fax -- remember how often "gravitas" started appearing suddenly out of nowhere?

Crazy Like a Rabid Fox

Hillary passes out the red Kool-aid at the first convention of the American Constitution Society:

"These favorable decisions in recent months should not obscure the torrent of aggressively activist and legally dubious decisions of times past," Clinton, D-N.Y., told the American Constitution Society.

So strict constructionism becomes constitutional activism and real constitutional activism becomes (gasp!) "conservativism." That sound you hear is caused by the rapid turning and re-turning of a small patch of earth in Sutton Courtney. On my next trip to England, I am going to make a pilgrimage there to lay a rose on that grave. But I digress.

She said this is "the same court that gave us Bush v. Gore, which made a mockery of one of our most cherished constitutional rights, the right to vote," a reference to the 2000 ruling that ended Democrat Al Gore's chances of winning the White House.

This is, of course, sheer bloody lunacy and reveals Hillary as just another in a long pantheon of Democrats for whom the ends justify the means. No doubt several of the illiberal utopian statists in the audience left with fresh red Kool-aid stains on their fancy frocks as they enthusiastically cheered Hillary on. I also have no doubt that many in this adoring crowd cotton to this kind of hyperbole in a manner best expressed by John Travolta when he was accused of being out of his mind in the really bad movie Broken Arrow, "Yeah. Ain't it cool?"

The Return of Comical Ali

Uh huh:

A new audiotape purportedly from Saddam Hussein, broadcast on Friday, forecast that U.S. and British forces would soon be defeated by Iraqi resistance.

"Our belief is strong that God will grant us victory and we are confident that the moment for the foreign army to collapse is possible at any moment," said the tape aired by Al Jazeera satellite television. The voice sounded like Saddam's.

Supporting Israel

Last week while having a fine cigar on a patio with my friend Martin, the topic of why I support Israel came up. I gave him two quick reasons before we moved on to the next topic: democracy and great big brass balls. Israel is the sole democratic state in a sea of totalitarianism in the Middle East. That's a good enough reason to support them, but I also admire their courage and steadfastness in the face of what would seem to be an overwhelming set of foes.

Since we moved on quickly, there were a few more reasons I wanted to get out as well. Here are three more reasons I support Israel and a two reasons I've heard offered that do not apply -- at least to me.

Caption Of The Week

I am guest judge this week over at Dodd Harris' Caption of the Day contest. Hop on over and give it your best shot -- even if it is only a weekly event. Somebody's gotta beat Will Vehrs this week. You have until next Thursday.

Shooting Blanks

Desperation has set in over at Team Gephardt since he's already having to use his big guns just to stay alive:

Democrat Dick Gephardt secured an expected Teamsters endorsement Friday with the union's leadership voting unanimously to back his 2004 presidential bid.

After his backtracking on supporting the President in the liberation of Iraq, I wonder what else Dick has up his sleeve.

Friday's Blast From the Past

I like the housemartins, especially Happy Hour.

Gilligan's Isle

Is an anagram for Gilligan's Lies.

Come here little buddy...

Your Moment of Szell

I have this recurring image of an old woman spotting this guy on the street...

Incidentally, this post introduces a new acronym: WWTT? That's not "What Would Tim-may! Tim-may!", but "What Were They Thinking?"

Looks Like I Picked A Bad Month To Stop Sniffing Glue

With apologies to Lloyd Bridges for that title, I'm back. I take most of a month off and Richard Cohen gets re-listed on Drudge. Obviously, your humble Scourge has work to do! But that will have to wait a bit until the torrent of backlogged items gets washed away.

I stepped away for a while to address a crisis of whether to quit blogging or not. As you can see dear reader, I have decided to continue -- though posting may be a little more sporadic and bursty at times than in the past. To rebuild my barely adequate psychic defenses I spent two weeks in Southern California with the family where I logged on only once, though the capability was always available. So I think I blog like I drink, heavily but sporadically. Anyway, I proved to myself that I could step away if I wanted to, and that's important --at least to me. I didn't really miss blogging, which kind of surprised me, but I definitely fell out of the news cycle. I didn't even know Uday and Qusay had assumed room temperature for several days. Huzzah!!!

Before recounting the adventures in La-La land, I first must thank Andrea Harris who has graciously provided a forum for me away from Blogspot. Thank you webmistress!!! I'll also put in a kind word for Dodd Harris, Dean Esmay and several others who have offered to help me move in the past. Moving has been extremely easy, thanks to all of you. Archives and some other special features, including a blogroll, will follow soon.

And now for the vacation...