May 20, 2004
Here is the
New
York Times' account of the letter from four dozen
Democratic lawmakers rebuking American Catholic Bishops
for daring to suggest that their Catechism means what
it says.
The desperation
of these Democrats to silence the bishops has
led to some extraordianrily stupid arguments.
"They're helping destroy the church by dividing
it on issues, and they're politicizing the Eucharist,"
Congressman Bart Stupak of Michigan asserts. Right.
Some bishops assert that the well-known and long-defended
Church teaching on the protection of the unborn forbids
abortion absolutists from receiving Holy Communion,
and this is dividing the Church?
Stupak isn't
satisified with one stupid argument. He goes for
the daily double: "The bishops came out against
the war, and I don't see them saying to all the people
who voted for it, you can't receive communion because
you voted for an unjust war."
Sigh. John
Leo explains how the bishops ended up in a position
where a theological know-nothing like Stupak can presume
to lecture them on the Catechism and their teaching
authority, but how they got there is less important
than how they respond to the letter. The Democrats
are demanding that elected office be understood to confer
immunity from Church doctrine. If the bishops
are silent in response, then the public will rightfully
ask, if politicians don't have to obey the Church, then
why should we?
A far more
important issue isthe nature of the Eucharist.
If receiving Holy Communion does not actually depend
on the recipient's state of grace and conformance to
Church teaching, then what does that say about the Eucharist?
If the Bishops don't respond, then they are in fact
admitting that anyone can receive the Eucharist, which
is inconsistent with centuries of Church doctrine.
I am uncertain what the Church teaches about the sin
that accompanies an apostate's receipt of Holy Communion,
so perhaps a Catholic reader will e-mail me some guidance
on that, but I think the Church teaches that it means
eternal damnation unless confessed and repented.
Which in turn would mean that the Bishops may be risking
the souls of the signers of the letter as well as those
of the readers of the letter who understand it to be
true unless the bishops respond. Tough thing,
being a bishop.
A few bishops
have had the courage to speak on this issue, which will
define the American church for years and probably decades
to come. The Vatican must be watching this collision
with great interest as well. Silence by the bishops,
given the letter's high profile, will be interpreted
by the signers and the media as agreement by the bishops
with the assertions made in the letter, so there should
be quick response from the bishops --if they are going
to respond at all.
May 19, 2004
48
"Catholic" lawmakers tell the Church that
it doesn't know what it is talking about, and, further,
that it should "pound sand." This
is an extraordinary moment in the history of the Roman
Catholic Church, and the direct challenge to the Church
on the issue of the life of the unborn will say more
about the Church's future in America than any other
issue. If the American Church is forced by political
pressure to abandon its Catechism, then there will be
zero authority left in the American Church. If,
on the other hand, the Church rallies to the defense
of the defenseless and tells the 48 that they are apostates,
it will mark a beginning of renewal. Watch this
very closely. It is much more important than any
single presidential election.
Here's the
story on the "fix
bayonets, charge" heroism Mark Steyn brought
to our attention today. Don't mess with the Argyll
and Sutherland Highlanders!
Lefty blogger
Matthew
Yglesias just made the argument on my program that
the appearance of the sarin shell represents a defeat
for the Bush administration because it signifies the
war's failure to secure and destroy the WMD. This
is a clue as to where the left goes next now that the
"Bush lied" meme is completely destroyed.
It may not have occured to Matt that the reason the
WMD may have eluded our troops is that U.N. opposition
and Democratic Party support for that Blix-led opposition
allowed Saddam the time he needed to conceal or transfer
the WMD. Had the U.N. acted with speed, or even
if the Democratic Party wholly supported the president
in moving more quickly to confront Saddam, perhaps his
stockpiles could not have been concealed. Matt's
got an argument. But it is as persuasive as the
"Bush lied" hoax, now discredited.
To repeat:
The significance of the sarin shell is explained in
detail here.
Send any reporters you know to read this, and this.
Tom
Daschle is in political trouble. Deep political
trouble. Despite the fact that he has spent $8
million already. I think 9/11 may have changed
South Dakota's opinion of the leader of the Democrats.
The state is a Republican state that will go
heavily for George W. Bush. Its voters may also
want to send a senator to D.C. who will support the
president, not oppose him reflexively, especially on
the war. Celebrate these polling numbers by donating
at www.JohnThune.com.
As I play Rudy Giuliani's testimony
from
today, I am convinced it ought to be seen or heard
by every American. It reminds us of why we are
in Afghanistan and Iraq; why we must stay; and why we
must win.
Smash
as poet. Haiku becomes blogku.
Orrin
Judd has a suggestion for a young conservative that
should get passed around.
The talented
and gracious Cathy
Seipp shoots and scores on the
very large target that is Los Angeles Times' editor
John Carroll's pretentiousness. It makes for
fine reading along with my WorldNetDaily
column today, also on the Times. If Michael
Kinsley had guts, he'd hire Seipp and Jill
Stewart for the op-ed page he's been hired to rebuild.
But how likely
is John Carroll to actually practice what he preached?
Good
info on the implications of the sarin WMD.
Read it all. You haven't seen this analysis in
the bigs. In fact, you have barely seen any mention
ofthe sarin shell at all.
And give USMC
Major Ben Connable's USA Today op-ed a close read.
And bookmark www.thegreenside.com
for more of the same. These Marines sure turn
out superb writers as well as warriors.
Mark
Steyn and Claudia
Rosett are my guests in hour 1. Matt
Yglesias joins me in hour 3. Rudy's testimony
will play in hour 2.
Which is why
I love my job. By the way, the story "Man's
Shrinking Brain Puzzles Doctors" does not involve
Joe Biden, though you could be forgiven for thinking
so.
As Frank Gaffney
noted on yesterday's program, it is possible to believe
that the only two WMD in Iraq were the two unsuccessfully
deployed against American troops in the past ten days.
Not smart to so believe, just possible. William
Safire wades into the battle to focus the public
on the attempted use of WMD against American troops.
The Los Angeles
Times remains firmly in the camp of "nothing to
see here, please move on." The paper has
front page space for the explosion in senior
internet dating, but not the explosion of a shell
with about a
gallon of sarin in it. The paper does report
on President
Bush's inroads with Jewish voters, and notes that
his seriousness on the subject of terror is one reason
for his appeal to this demographic. Given the
number of subscribers in Los Angeles and California,
Jews and non-Jews alike, who are very interested in
terror, perhaps the paper could explore the WMD issue,
or the
North Korean train explosion, before a mass casualty
attack makes the story impossible to ignore.
But that would assume the paper was
interested in serving its readers as opposed to its
agenda. I recap the problems with John Carroll's
pseudo-journalism in today's
WorldNetDaily column.
Both the New
York Times and the Washington
Post note John Kerry's travels with Howard Dean.
I have been arguing for a month now that Dean is the
best choice Kerry has before him when it comes to the
veepstakes. Sure, he can be as mad as a hatter,
but Dean would bring fire to the chilliest presidential
candidacy in my memory, a base-energizing and possibly
base-expanding passion that the aloof "Swiss-educated
son of a foreign service officer," as Time branded
Kerry, will never generate on his own. The old
rule against a regional ticket died with the rise of
a national media, as did the need to win a crucial swing
state. Dean has the game that Kerry lacks, and
Gephardt also misses. It is the raw stuff of politics
--charisma. Watch that space.
The Washington Times provides a comprehensive
update on the negotiations to form the new Iraqi
government. Though Joe Biden doesn't understand,
the transfer is going to happen on June 30, and it is
going to work. But there's a lot that Slow Joe
Biden doesn't understand.
May 18, 2004
Please read Joe Carter's "The
Significance of Sarin."
Thanks to
John Hawkins of RightWingNews
for listing this blog as among his favorites.
Thanks to Betsy
for her link this day as well. The blogosphere
is beginning to function in predictable and surprisingly
strong patterns of reciprocity, guaranteeing that crucial
news and center-right analysis moves rapidly into the
opinion stream. Glenn,
of course, can assure such info transfers in a moment's
notice, but networks of reciprocity have informally
developed that function in a cumulative fashion as parallel
news-distribution channels. Powerline
checks here frequently, just as I check Powerline frequently,
as well as the rest of the Northern Alliance.
I run through the milblogs listed at the left, and they
check here and then move around to their other far flung
blog friends. As these patterns become habits,
far more than new voices emerge --new means of opinion
production spring up.
Kathryn Jean
Lopez pegged NationalReview.com's
monthly traffic at around 2,000,000 in her appearance
on my program today. RealClearPolitics.com
has exploding traffic as well. As papers like
the Los Angeles Times fail their readers and withdraw
into their left-wing corners, the new networks are providing
what they refuse to: balance, hard facts, and tremendous
analysis.
And
odd bits of humor as well.
The
shell suspected of containing WMD was tested, and confirmed
to have held between three and four liters of the nerve
agent sarin. That's a lot of the deadly substance,
which requires only a tiny amount to quickly kill. Facts
on sarin can be found here.
So, do you
think it will make the front page of the Los Angeles
Times tomorrow, or will we have to wait for the successful
use of a WMD in a mass casualty attack for their presence
to matter to the editors of the Kerry newsletter association.
Andrew
McCarthy details why Zarqawi's intentions include a
mass-casualty attack within Iraq. The
Belmont Club provides some examples from history
on why such intentions have failed in the past. The
pace of Islamist plotting is picking up, however,
and in
places where no one suspects it is underway. The
media needs to get with the program of letting people
know the threat is not gone, but is in fact growing.
The front
page of the Los Angeles Times has three stories about
Iraq: "Suicide
Attack Kills Head of Iraqi Council," "Death
of Prisoner Detailed in testimony," and "Pervasive
Abuse Alleged by Freed Detainees, Red Cross."
The attempted
use of a WMD against American troops made page
A8, with this lead paragraph: "An artillery
shell rigged to explode in a roadside bomb in Baghdad
instead dispersed a tiny amount of sarin, a nerve gas
that Saddam Hussein produced in the 1980s, U.S. officials
said Monday." Paragraph 8 of the story reads:
"'What is of concern is that there may be more
of them out there," said a U.S. official, who requested
anonymity."
What apparently
concerns American elite media --blue state media like
the Times of both coasts-- is that any credibility be
attached to the idea that Saddam did in fact conceal
WMD, just as he buried MIGs in the sand. Rather
than confront any implications of the attempted use
of the WMD, the Times editors buried the story deeper
than the MIG, and covered the front page with anti-war,
anti-Bush headlines. They even tossed in an Enron
header on page one: "Enron
Tapes Hints Chiefs Knew About Power Ploys."
In
a lengthy praise of himself and his newspaper delivered
to an academic audience a couple of weeks back,
Los Angeles Times editor John Carroll blasted Fox News
as pseudo-journalists. One part of his indictment
read this way:
"You
may be familiar with a study published last October
on the public misconceptions about the war in Iraq.
One of those misconceptions was that Saddam's weapons
of mass destruction had been found."
"Another
was that links had been proven between Iraq and Al Qaeda."
"A third
was that world opinion favored the idea of the U.S.
invading Iraq."
"Among
people who primarily watched Fox News, 80 percent believed
one or more of those myths. That's 25 percentage
points higher than the figure for viewers of CNN --
and 57 percentage points higher than that for people
who got their news from public broadcasting."
Put aside
Carroll's wildly amusing elevation of the ideology of
viewers into a commentary on the content of their preferred
channels --as though PBS viewers are going to believe
any reason for invading Iraq-- or his repetition of
the talking points of the left, as though it is not
rational to believe there were ties between Saddam and
al Qaeda. [Note to Carroll's believers: Read this.
It is only a "myth" if you hate Bush
so much as to blind yourself to the obvious.]
The crime
Carroll accuses Fox News of committing is of leaving
"its audience so deeply in the dark."
What percentage
of Los Angeles Times readers knows that a sarin shell
--a WMD-- was employed against American troops?
And since the paper chose not to report at all the second
major story on WMD confirmed by the military yesterday
--the use of a mustard gas shell against American troops
a couple of weeks earlier-- what percentage of Times'
readers will know about that?
John Carroll
wrote his own indictment in his windy speech.
The Times is concealing the news it doesn't like, leaving
its readers "deeply in the dark." But
don't expect the courage to admit as much from Carroll
or any of his staff. It is a "get Bush"
operation on Spring Street, every bit as obvious as
the "get Arnold" frenzy of last fall.
It will have the same effect as well.
People know.
They don't believe the bigs, even when they agree with
the agenda of the agenda journalism within.
If future
attacks using WMD are successful, however, I wonder
if we will have another commission to explore why a
U.S. news media turned its eyes from the story that
was sitting right in front of them. Maybe John
Carroll will give a lecture on that topic when that
day comes.
UPDATE: Contrast
the non-coverage of the WMD story in the Los Angeles
Times with this
account by the Washington Times' Bill Gertz, widely
regarded as one the finest military/national security
reporters in the U.S. Then ask yourself whether
the military community in Southern California, especially
the families and comrades of Marines from Camp Pendleton
serving in Iraq, deserved this sort of report from their
paper of record. Or do you think they wanted a
front page story on Enron?
May 17, 2004
Who, exactly
is making the decisions on what constitutes "news?"
Over at the
Washington Post at this hour, I can find no reference
--zero-- to the attempt to use a suspected sarin gas
shell against American troops. It is as though
it did not happen. Instead there is a deeply
pessimistic assessment of the struggle to establish
an Iraqi democracy. Thank God that the Post
wasn't around at Valley Forge.
Over at the
New York Times there is a ham-handed attempt to dismiss
the shell: "Army
Discovers Old Shell Holding Sarin."
It is as though the Times was reporting on the raising
of the Hunley from Charleston harbor. The
attempted use of WMD against Coalition Forces --not
once, but twice in recent weeks-- may not faze
the Begalas of this world, but don't the American people
have a right to know that WMD have been discovered in
Iraq?
Evidently not. Not anymore than
they had a right to know of Zarqawi's
background or role in the beheading of Nick Berg.
In short, the news is being managed to help John Kerry
get off the floor. Not coordinated, of course,
just managed. In the way that fares are managed
on airline routes. The elites decided it just
didn't matter that a sarin gas shell and a mustard gas
shell had been used in failed attacks against American
troops. Poof, the story vanished.
And the 9/11
Commission report will say what about "shaking
the trees?"
Kyle Munson
is the music critic for the Des Moines Register.
Today he attacks
the band Alabama because the group's lead singer,
Randy Owen, blasted the media's coverage of the Iraq
war. He'll appear with me next hour on the program.
I wonder if he reads The
Belmont Club? Probably not, but we will find
out if the Register's rock writer has a clue.
Mr. Munson signed his column today "Register music
critic, member of the big and scary media, independent
thinker, patriot with global good sense."
Well, we'll be the judge of that.
The article
from the new issue of The Weekly Standard, "Who
is Abu Zarqawi," must be read by people like
Ronald Brownstein, who just don't get it. Some news
reports assert that today's sarin gas attack was Zarqawi's
work, which is ominous beyond belief. The arguments
made by President Bush for invading Iraq are all being
vindicated as we learn more about Zarqawi and now his
possible possession of a sarin shell. Saddam appears
to have had a working relationship with this terrorist,
and now this terrorist shows his hand in the use of
sarin. Brownstein argues that the Bush Doctrine of preemptive
war is dead. I wonder if he can tell us his thoughts
on handling Zarqawi if he relocates to Syria.
An
artillery shell containing sarin nerve gas --a WMD by
anyone's definition-- was used against American troops
today, with two soldiers injured.
This is a
major development, though I doubt it will be played
as such my the elite media as it runs counter to the
theme that Bush lied. Just look at Brownstein's
column
from this morning, discussing in the post below.
It contains this sentence:
"The
first blow to Bush's [preemptive war] doctrine came
when coalition forces failed to find the weapons of
mass destruction the president had stressed as a principal
justification for the war."
Now, even
though the Times' website is running a story
on the sarin shell, expect John Carroll's paper
to minimize or ignore this proof positive of the presence
of WMD in Iraq. Let's run a contest to find the
first "it doesn't matter" story quote or op-ed.
Nick Berg's execution vanished from the headlines in
a day, and there is no guarantee that the sarin shell
with all that implies will be in Wednesday's papers
after a Tuesday notice.
But consider the implications if Zarqawi
gets his hands on these shells. He won't waste
them in roadside attacks. We can only hope that
the Coalition finds the stockpile before the terrorists
do.
But keep in
mind that Brownstein declared preemptive war doctrine
to be dead. If those stockpiles happen to be in
Syria, I guess there's nothing we can do.
Same-sex
marriage came to Massachusetts at a minute after
midnight last night, when the city of Cambridge began
issuing licenses to same sex couples. Early
this morning, an out-of-state couple, from Minnesota,
will be married in Provincetown. When they
return to the upper midwest, the real controversy will
begin because the federal Defense of Marriage Act says
they won't be married, but the Full Faith and Credit
Clause of the Constitution may mean that they are.
If the latter view prevails, a Marriage Amendment to
the Constitution will become the dominant domestic issue
of the day. There's a reason why John Kerry refuses
to endorse same-sex marriage even as his own state yields
to the whims of four judges. He knows the country
opposes this judicial diktat, and by a wide margin.
The Los Angeles
Times' Ronald Brownstein writes one
of the least perceptive columns of his long career this
morning, arguing that the Bush Doctrine of preemptive
war is dead. He quotes Ivo Daadler as saying the
doctrine is as dead as a doornail. Since Daadler
is a former Clinton national security council employee,
I guess it must be true, even though later in the column
Brownstein admits that even John Kerry has reserved
for himself a right to strike preemptively.
Brownstein's
argument is that the failure to find WMD in Iraq and
the cost of the war in terms of lives and money doom
future presidential actions to strike at gathering threats.
This is electioneering dressed up as "analysis,"
pure Kerry boosterism from an agenda journalist of the
left. The election will be precisely about about
the doctrine of preemption. Bush can be counted
on to strike at any gathering threat. Kerry can
be counted on to wait until after a blow falls, and
then probably to wait some more. Brownstein is
rooting for Kerry, so he dismisses the Bush approach
and uses a Clintonite to back up the dismissal.
Brownstein's editor, John Carroll, preached a self-serving,sanctimonious
sermon on real journalism versus "pseudojournalism"
ten days ago, and actually had it reprinted
in yesterday's opinion section of the paper, no
doubt causing chuckles among the handful of readers
of that section.
The chuckles
come because of the obvious, almost painful dissonance
between Carroll's self-congratulatory rhetoric about
the "code" among journalists, and the "newspaper's
duty to the reader." Carroll holds up some
giants of the past, Lippmann, Reston, Murrow, and Sevareid,
and declares "[t]hey were, foremost, journalists,
not entertainers or marketers. Their opinions
were rigorously grounded in fact. It was the truthfulness
of these commentators --their sheer intellectual honesty--
that causes their names to endure."
Brownstein's
"commentary" cannot be understood, even by
a blinkered apologist like Carroll, to be "rigorously
grounded in fact." Brownstein ignores that
just four days ago the president gave a speech which
included a full-throated defense of preemption, and
the crowd roared. This does not make the preemption
doctrine a consensus position by any means, but it also
puts the lie to Brownstein's attempt to bury it, and
influence public opinion by decal ring it dead.
The election is all about preemption. When Bush
wins --or even before that, when Syria or Iran discovers
that preemption isn't dead-- expect Brownstein to write
a "preemption resurrected" column.
Turn to the
paper's front page this morning: "Governor
Keeps Distance from Bush Campaign." More
agenda journalism --a naked attempt to spin Arnold
as distant from Bush, an absurd argument to anyone who
has followed the campaign and Bush's trips to California,
or Arnold's stumping for Bill Jones. And on the
front page? Without a single quote from Arnold
indicating disdain for Bush or distance from a re-election
effort he has repeatedly and publicly pledged himself
to? Yes indeed, Murrow would be proud. The
paper tried to keep Arnold from office, and now it is
arraying its reporters and stories in a constant barrage
of news attempting to undermine the president, even
when it has to quote former Clinton staffers as authority,
or use non-events as leading political indicators.
The campaign
against the president in the elite media of the United
States hasn't gone unnoticed, but it also doesn't matter
much since the papers lost their reputations for objectivity
long ago, and control over the news cycle a few years
back with the rise of the blogosphere and cable.
They have been battered by third-party truth-telling
ever since (recall when the LAT edited George Will's
column to omit a reference to Juanita Broaddrick, but
was caught and forced to apologize to the readers?)
and the anger has turned into mockery. Only the
newsrooms seem not to know the wide disdain in which
they are held.
The Bush Doctrine
of preemption isn't dead. The same cannot be said
about objectivity at the Los Angeles Times or its east
coast cousins.
May 16, 2004
Newsweek
has the latest poll that shows (1) a drop in President
Bush's approval ratings, and (2) a dead-heat in the
Bush-Kerry poll. Proving what?
That Americans
wish progress was quicker in Iraq, but that even in
the face of the worst 45 days of news since 9/11, the
president is still understood as a war leader and Kerry
is an implausible replacement. There's a stature
gap when it comes to dealing with the enemy which John
Kerry will never fill, which is why I remain very optimistic
about the fall vote. The American people know
that a vote for Kerry will be a vote to cut-and-run,
and they also know that there is no way to withdraw
from a war we didn't start and we cannot end, as the
execution of Nick Berg reminded demonstrated again this
week.
Over at the
New York Times op-ed page there is a very useful piece.
(No, of course it isn't Maureen Dowd's. Does anybody
read Maureen Dowd anymore? She's the east coast
branch of the Los Angeles Times op-ed page: Unnoticed
and unmissed.)
The article
by Adriana Lins de Albuquerque, Michael O'Hanlon, and
Amy Unikewicz --"The
State of Iraq: an Update"-- is accompanied
by a chart
of facts. Facts are stubborn things, as John
Adams observed. It matters that the unemployment
rate in the country has fallen from 60% to 45% in a
year; that oil production has gone from 100,000 barrels/day
to 3.4 million barrels per day; that telephone service
is at 130% of what it was pre-war; that 52 health clinics
have beer repaired, 2,000 small loans disbursed, and
860 judges vetted. Yes, there are 5,000 insurgents
and 500 foreign jihadists today where a year ago there
were none. But only an analyst blind to the threat
personified by the killers of Nick Berg would want to
turn time back and not invade Iraq. Hundreds of
Americans have died winning and now securing a new Iraq,
and that sacrifice can only be understood opposite the
sure knowledge that al Qaeda and the states like Saddam's
Iraq that applauded (and, given Abu Musab Zarqawi's
presence in and out of Saddam's Baghdad, tolerated and
encouraged) 9/11 will try again and again to strike
America even more devastating blows.
Mark
Steyn spells it out for us this morning:
"The
war on terror will be lost in the talking shops of Washington
-- i.e., it will be thanks to the lack of resolve inculcated
by excessive exposure to blow-dried pundits and Senate
hearings. The war now has two fronts. In
Iraq, the glass is half-full. In Washington, it's
half-empty, and draining fast."
Steyn isn't
a pessimist, though, because he understands that the
vast majority of Americans understand. The only
good thing about the past month-and-a-half has been
the effect it will have on American politics --the great
sorting-out of the people with clear vision from the
partisan hacks. November's choice cannot now be understood
as other than a referendum on how America is going to
conduct itself over the next two decades. The
Bush path is clear, and means aggressive confrontation
of the enemy up to and including invasion if necessary,
versus the Kerry approach of talk to the Security Council
and get some subpoenas issued. The Bush approach
is hard and costly, both in lives lost among the military
and huge appropriations. The Kerry approach is
suicidal.
May 15, 2004
Roaming around
Mark
Robert's blog this morning brought my attention
to two other blogs run by PCUSA pastors in Orange County,
California: Tabletalk
and Porch
Pondering. San Clemente, California is home
to a fourth Presbyterian pastor, Tod Bolsinger, whose
wonderful new book, It
Takes a Church to Raise a Christian, is featured
in my blog-ads column.
That's a lot
of "under-50" Presbyterian talent in one county
(and there's more, I'm sure), and a certain sign of
renewal within the PCUSA,
which has had it share of battles over the past two
decades, as The
Presbyterian Layman has dutifully chronicled.
The rise of writers who are also pastors and also theologically
traditional and scholarly tells me that the battle to
keep the PCUSA from falling over a cliff has in fact
been won, though the debates may continue for years
to come.
We now return
you to our regularly scheduled national security and
political commentary. Very few blogggers move
easily between the theological and the political --like
Evangelical
Outpost. So head over there, but don't miss
The
Belmont Club this weekend, which provides the crucial
background for understanding the momentum in Iraq (which
is in the right direction.)
May 14, 2004
You could
watch television. Or you could read MarineCorpsMoms.
(Hat tip to Mudville
Gazette --the blog of freedom.)
Great stuff over at "43
for 8." Wear it proudly.
The Nigerian
government acknowledges that 30 Christians have been
murdered by rampaging Muslim mobs in Kano, the country's
second largest city. But
this report puts the death toll at 600. Earlier
this week Christians committed
outrages against Muslims in a different part of the
country. I have not seen a single report in
the major media on the violence, though there is thread
up and running at FreeRepublic. Do John Carroll's
"real
journalists" not care when the victims are
Africans? Perhaps some "pseudo-journalists"
will pick up on the massacres and the precarious situation
in one of the world's crucial regions.
UPDATE: There's more here.
Some have questioned the authenticity of the e-mail
I posted from a Marine in Fallujah. Well, thanks to
some help from another Marine Corps officer, I have
confirmed that the e-mail was legit. In fact, I was
directed to the Marine's father's web-site, which is
The
Green Side. Bookmark it. You can read it and get
the truth, or read the Los Angeles Times etc. and get
the agenda journalism of the defeatists.
From a colleague in academia with rare experience in
the real world of war:
"Hi Hugh,
Having finished grading exams and research papers for
my National Security Policy class I am now deep into
analysis of the current "crisis" over the
prisoners. I don't fill my brain with the refuse spewed
daily from the left-wing elite media, likening my mind
to a river that if constantly subjected to garbage becomes
polluted.
I have listened to the conservative punditry try to
deal with this event rationally, hoping that the blogosphere,
talk radio and the few islands of rational thought on
cable TV would win the day. Unfortunately, I don't think
"we," conservatives, supporters of the Iraq
effort and the president, are winning the information
war; Al Queda is. Today's incredibly (I am not being
cold here, I honestly feel for Mr. Berg and pray for
his son's eternal soul and for peace for his family)
shallow attacks on the president and the Secretary of
Defense by Mr. Berg, admitting that al Queda "MIGHT
be as bad as Bush and Rumsfeld" prove to me that
the information struggle is going very poorly and therefore
the war is going poorly at the strategic level.
Why? One can look to history as a bit of a guide as
I believe bin Laden and his strategic thinkers do. At
first glance it appears that bin Laden badly miscalculated
by attacking the US on 9/11/2001. Al Queda's infrastructure
and organization took massive and punishing assaults
and it lost its main base of operations. The Taliban
were dismantled and lost were the funding and training
opportunities in Iraq. All of this is irrefutable and
for the good. However, al Queda still exists and still
operates, albeit on a reduced budget and with reduced
dramatic effect, and is having a strategic effect on
the United States.
People schooled in strategy wisely and routinely consult
THE giant of strategic thinking, Carl Von Clausewitz
and his tome On War. The great Prussian strategist discussed
the concept of an enemy's "center of gravity"
(COG). If one can successfully identify an adversary's
center of gravity and destroy it, the war can be won.
So the questions for American strategists are: What
is al Queda's COG and what is the US center of gravity
that must be protected at all costs? Neither of these
is easy to answer because were it so, Barbara Boxer
could be considered a grand strategist.
The strategist ought to consider what Al Queda's goals
should be. This makes one recall Robert E. Lee's catastrophic
mistake at Gettysburg in 1863. The South could never
realistically expect to defeat the North but should
have been determined not to lose. However, flush with
stunning victories and having pressed farther north
than at any previous time, Lee saw what he believed
to be an opportunity to win the war. Had Lee elected
to NOT engage his stronger enemy with its significant
tactical advantage in position and artillery, at some
point after suffering strategic exhaustion the North
may have had to accept secession. NOT LOSING was what
was required. He failed to recognize that fact despite
the pleadings of General Longstreet, and today Americans
memorialize a great yet tragic victory consummated on
that "hallowed ground."
Additionally the strategist might look to Vietnam as
instructive of what Al Queda should strive to do. The
Army of North Vietnam and the Viet Cong (VC) could not
defeat the US militarily in a head to head show down
so they elected not to challenge the US directly EXCEPT
during Tet. Having convinced themselves that the government
of South Vietnam was so corrupt and that the people
of South Vietnam were ripe to revolt if given the prodding
of a "major uprising," the North and VC launched
a massive and surprise offensive in the South. History
now shows that the assumptions of General Giap, NVN's
famous strategist who engineered the victory at Dien
Bien Phu in 1954, were completely wrong and that militarily
Tet was a disastrous defeat for the North and the VC.
Giap was relieved in disgrace. But a funny thing happened
on the way to the war. The American media reported the
event as a major DEFEAT for the US and the South. Certainly
the ability of the North and the VC to launch such an
offensive came as a strategic surprise to the US commanders
and the Johnson administration, as they had been advertising
that the US was winning the war and that was true. However,
the fact that there had been surprise and the PICTURES
of VC and North Vietnamese forces in US facilities and
the negative reporting was devastating to the AMERICAN
WILL to soldier on. Despite a stunning and devastating
MILITARY victory in Tet, it became a massive strategic
defeat as the story that was told was of failure.
Jump forward to the 21st century and America's war
on terror. This war is currently very unconventional
and one which the US armed forces are prepared to fight.
While it is not the preferred type of fight, it is one
which US forces are trained to fight and win. America
is ruled by civilians and civilians control policy and
therefore set the framework for strategy. The latter
must be made to conform to the former if there is to
be strategic success. Otherwise a policy/strategy mismatch
occurs and the result is predictable and disastrous.
The Bush Doctrine is to proactively eradicate international
terrorism as a threat to the US and thereby the world
writ large. The military strategy that matches with
this policy is to go where the terrorists are, or are
receiving aid and comfort, and destroy them and if necessary
the regimes that support them.
That's the theory but what is the reality? In the immediate
aftermath, America followed this doctrine to the letter.
Afghanistan or, more accurately, the Taliban was correctly
identified as the primary culprit in its support of
al Queda and therefore directly responsible for the
attacks of September 11th. The strategy was to remove
the Taliban regime and to eliminate Al Queda in Afghanistan.
Strategy matched policy and one can see how smooth the
Afghanistan operation has been. The information out
of Afghanistan conformed to the reality on the ground.
Iraq has been a different story.
Militarily Iraq has been a resounding success in that
the Iraqi armed forces have been destroyed and the terrorists
engaged, or have they? Fallujah was, as Fred Barnes
so aptly pointed out, "a fight that needs fighting!"
The opportunity was there to make a massive push into
Fallujah and take the city and destroy the insurgents.
I had the opportunity to speak to a Marine Major recently
back from Iraq who said the Marines were ready and aching
to go in and clean out that nest of vipers. They KNOW
the losses will be high but they wanted this fight.
The insurgents know that every time the Marines enter
the city they (the insurgents) take massive losses.
Well, it appears as if the civilian leadership has decided
on an on again off again approach and that doesn't work.
The Weinberger/Powell doctrine for the commitment of
US forces to battle insists on overwhelming force, not
piecemeal attempts to pacify the insurgency. In this
regard, the administration may have missed a critical
opportunity to eliminate a large portion of the insurgency.
Recall the analysis with regards to General Lee. The
South merely had to not lose. The insurgents made a
strategic mistake in making Fallujah a direct assault
on US forces. BUT, the US failed to capitalize in April
2004 the way George Meade did at Gettysburg in July
1863 with the full support of President Lincoln.
Is Fallujah our Tet? No but Fallujah combined with
the mind numbing stupidity at Abu Ghraib prison may
well be the undoing of so much good over the past years.
Never mind that the Army discovered and exposed the
problem. Never mind that the perpetrators and hopefully
any leaders who allowed it to happen are or will be
prosecuted. What all of this exposes to the strategist
is that the US center of gravity is its will to carry
on and fight. Constant harping on Abu Ghraib is devastating
the morale of US forces engaged in real combat. The
insurgents in Fallujah still run unafraid as the Marines
are held outside the city while a two bit cleric tries
to dictate to the world's hyper-power terms or disengagement.
This is NOT how a superpower acts. The American media
is now acting as a fifth column, just as it did in Vietnam.
The press is adamantly opposed to President Bush and
the Iraq policy. Ergo, it "reports" the story
to make the thing look far worse than it is. Hence the
administration is losing the information war. The most
glaring example is the fact that an American was brutally
and mercilessly slain in cold blood with and international
audience and the American press gave it short shrift.
Today it's back to Abu Ghraib and the ever irresponsible
Charlie Rangold suggesting that Berg was killed because
there are not enough jobs in America and of course that
very unfortunate emotional diatribe from Nick Berg's
grieving father.
Jump to bin Laden headquarters and imagine how gleeful
Osama and his "generals" must be. An American
is viciously slain for all to see and the US Congress
and the victim's father blame NOT al Queda but the US
Commander in Chief! Al Queda is winning this war, slowly,
one newscast and daily sheet run at a time. The press
sees the glory days of Vietnam and Watergate returning
and it is acting in its own self interest and not in
the interest of the American republic. Add to this the
news now that PFC Lynndie England, now infamous for
the pictures of her in the prison, is said to have had
consensual sex multiple times in front of a camera with
multiple partners. This is confirmation for the Muslim
jihadists that all of the beliefs they hold with regard
to America being corrupt are true, AND it adds to the
strategic advantage I now believe to be held by al Queda.
All al Queda needs to do now is NOT lose but to strike
when able at the time and place of its choosing. Al
Queda has correctly identified the US center of gravity.
The US on the other hand has yet to do the same with
regards to al Queda. The American elite media does not
care that Nick Berg was murdered and is now wringing
its hands like some Hamlet character while al Queda
plots its next attack. America is losing this war, not
tactically but strategically and THAT is the essence
of warfare. Losing does not immediately assume all is
lost but a change of emphasis is required. The administration
needs to go on the information offensive and get the
message out. It needs to counter the media feeding frenzy
with the facts and it needs to be hammered home daily.
Lastly, American strategists need identify the center
of gravity of al Queda and attack it relentlessly. Unfortunately
al Queda does not have a free press willing to expose
its every weakness. It is instructive to consult another
great strategist to look for guidance. Sun Tzu commanded,
"Know the enemy and yourself." Al Queda appears
to know America far better than America knows al Queda
or itself. That is a recipe for strategic disaster."
Bravo Victor
Davis Hanson. Bravo.
Read every
word. Send it to twenty friends. Every blogger
who is a friend of freedom should post it prominently.
Powerline's
Big Trunk is right: Instapundit
has become a traffic cop for truth, sending blogosphere
traffic here and there as is needed to keep crucial
stories in the public eye even as the media dinosaurs
want to lounge in the swamp of the abuse photos.
There is a
huge backlash underway against John
Carroll's old media, part of which is in response
to overkill on the prison abuse and part of which is
underemphasis on Nick Berg's execution. John
Podhoretz is one of many who have taken off the gloves,
and more will follow. The Kerry/Kennedy/Leahy/Boxer
caucus of "politics first, the national interest
second --if at all" has made the crucial mistake
of turning up the volume on their harangues, and folks
did indeed notice, which was very bad for the Dems.
Cableland's obsession with the dozen rogue soldiers
is understood now as a slander on the great and good
--emphasis good-- military, and Teddy's "new management"
remarks put the cap on the outrage over the slander.
The public
gets "proportionality." Teddy doesn't,
but the public does, and the public thinks the prison
story is purposefully being played out of proportion
to its significance in the hope of wounding the president.
Which is why
blogs like Command
Post, The
Belmont Club, LGF,
Blackfive,
Smash
and Mudville
are soaring in popularity. Take a look at the
traffic
rankings over at N.Z. Bear. Very new blogs
are soaring as the demand for solid information and
analysis, not the agenda journalism of the left, grows.
Of course the left has its tens of thousands of visitors,
but the new blogs that are serious about the war have
gained instant traction because readers want much more
than the "bash Bush and the military" that
is flowing from the nets and the big papers.
Yesterday
I played a clip of General Myers addressing hundreds
of troops in Baghdad. Myers noted his respect
for and confidence in the president and the Secretary
of Defense, and the troops roared --and I mean roared--
their approval for a long period of time. Callers
and e-mailers told me how moved they were by this expression
of faith in the chain of command. This bedrock support
for the war and for Bush is widespread, and it must
reduce the Kerrys/Kennedys/Leahys/Boxers to dismay,
especially when voiced by the troops. How can
these troops not know that they have been misled by
a pack of chickenhawk neocon gunslingers? Why
don't they trust Kerry et al?
The public
gets a lot of things, in fact, like the
absurdity of a Catholic College pulling an honorary
degree from Alberto Gonzales, the White House Counsel,
over his support of the death penalty while Kerry, Daschle,
Leahy etc receive not even a public rebuke for abortion
rights absolutism. There have been less than 1000
executions in the United States since 1973, but more
than 44 million abortions. The public gets proportionality,
even if craven administrators at out-of-the-way colleges
don't.
But mostly
the public gets the fact that we are at war. There's
a
battle underway in Najaf right now, and the pacification
of Fallujah is progressing. The e-mail
from the Marine which I posted two days ago has
received widespread notice because it explains a lot
about Fallujah. Had the media done its job properly,
there would be no need for such e-mails, but as it explains,
there's no accounting for big media's approach to a
war the stakes of which couldn't be higher. Except,
perhaps, John Carroll's media has decided that Bush
must go and the facts be damned.
I think the
progress being made in Iraq is quite huge and lasting,
though of course invisible to most of America because
of the media's practice of veiling it behind coverage
of the prison photos, the 9/11 show trials, and other
"get Bush" stories. The panic of last
month --the Shias are rising, the Sunnis and the Shias
are combining!-- is forgotten now, even as the Sadr
brigade is methodically destroyed. This month's
panic is the prison abuse story. With each cry
of "fire," the impact on the electorate is
less and less, and the reality of Bush's war leadership
more and more obvious.
All of which
is my long-winded way of saying that stories like Dan
Balz's in the Washington Post that points to the president's
falling approval rating, or polls like this
one out of Ohio showing Kerry ahead of Bush by 7%
among likely voters in the Buckeye State (hat tip to
RealClearPolitics)
just don't worry me. The country's not suicidal,
and a vote for Kerry is a vote for defeat in the war,
and the public knows it.
Optimism over
a political result doesn't mean optimism over politics,
though, because the lows to which Kerry/Kennedy/Leahy/Boxer
have brought us are pretty far down. The long
term combination of security and freedom requires two
parties, each one of which is committed to the robust
prosecution of the war, which will go on for decades.
We don't have that right now, and there is no indication
that the Lieberman wing of the Democratic Party is anything
other than a sort of appendix, capable of being noticed
but without any real function.
There's only
one way to fix the Democrats: Crush them at the polls
until the base of the party, full of ordinary Americans
committed to the war, demand a new leadership that is
not in the thrall of the MoveOn/NARAL extremists, and
new voices not poisoned with envy, vile, and just plain
nuttiness. The Democrats need a 1964, and I think
it is coming.
Do your part:
www.johnthune.com
and www.richardburrcommittee.com.
Putting John Thune in Tom Daschle's Senate seat and
Richard Burr in John Edwards' chair will be part of
the message the national Democratic Party needs to hear.
May 13, 2004
My WeeklyStandard.com
column asks whether anyone will join Nevada Senator
John Ensign in condemning Teddy Kennedy's slander of
the American military. John Kerry refused to do
so, saying he understood what Kennedy meant, though
he didn't agree with Kennedy's "framing" of
the remark.
Yesterday
the Boston Globe published on page B2 a fake picture
of US soldiers raping a woman. The
Globe apologized today. Great Britain's Daily
Mirror also admitted to publishing
fake abuse photos. I am waiting to hear more
from Los Angeles Times preacher/editor on how real
journalism is practiced at major papers. Carroll's
belief is that having a corrections column cures all
evil. Does the little paragraph published by the
Globe cure the harm done by running with an "unauthenticated"
rape photo?
Lileks writes
that "the
hills are alive with the sound of wrong conclusions
being drawn," and he can be forgiven for thinking
so given the ongoing abuse of the prison abuse story.
Every major paper is full of the shock of senators and
congressman and ordinary Americans --a genuine shock,
as was the president's and Rumsfeld's etc.
But there
is huge disgust with the Kennedys, Kerrys, Leahys
and Globes that are so ham-handedly
politicizing the matter, and using it as a crowbar
against the entire military and the administration.
A vast majority of Americans support and appreciate
the great and good --emphasis on good-- military, and
the president's reputation for integrity hasn't been
dented a bit by the actions of rogue soldiers.
Rumsfeld's
in Iraq this morning, and I can't blame him for
wanting to be among real warriors after having to listen
to Leahy whine
on about yellowcake yesterday.
I think two-thirds
of the country is clear-eyed about the war. The
other third is screaming abuse, but the two-thirds are
thinking about Nick Berg's killers and that their sympathizers
that number in the millions, and their terrorist allies
that number in at least the tens of thousands.
One third of America is having their world-view confirmed
by seeing photos of a handful of soldiers acting in
a criminal fashion in a military they believe to be
an agent of repression in the world, and won't stop
to ask themselves: Exactly how many soldiers are involved?
Out of how many? And they surely won't stop to
read this
report from CentCom on another day's fighting against
the mob and another day's victory.
But I think
the middle of America and certainly the center-right
know exactly how high the stakes are, and they have
Kerry-Kennedy-Leahy's number. They are repulsed
by the willingness to slander the military in an attempt
to score political points. The Democrats are racing
towards a cliff, and I think the fall is going to be
long and hard come November. America is going
to have to choose between resolve and retreat, and it
is not a country known for retreating. Kerry/Kennedy/Leahy
think Vietnam defined the country. Bush thinks
the two desert wars, Afghanistan and WW II define the
country. Bush is right.
Is the struggle
worth it? Yesterday
the world's largest democracy voted to change governments.
More than 50 years ago, the birthing of India and Pakistan
was wildly chaotic and marred by horrific violence,
and Pakistan's travels towards stability is not yet
finished.
But the promise
of an Iraq voting in 2050 as India voted yesterday is
why we are in Iraq. The alternative is to leave
the Arab world mired in despotism and extremism, birthing
millions more of the sort who murdered Nick Berg, Danny
Pearl, and 3000 Americans. We really don't have
a choice, no matter what the Kerrys/Kennedys/Leahys
think or, more accurately, pretend to think.
Finally, the
Mexican government has published footage of alleged
UFOs. Do you suppose we could ask SETI to
broadcast an appeal to the aliens to take Leahy and
Kennedy with them back to their home planet? This
would be insurance against their ever deciding to invade
and conquer our country.
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