Before 9/11, we almost always knew how to win a war – even the people who weren't in favor of fighting it.

Plenty of people thought we should have just let the Confederate states go their own way in 1861 – but even they knew that if we beat General Lee on the field and occupied enough of the South, that the CSA would cry uncle and quit.

The First World War? Same story. Before President Wilson asked Congress for a war declaration, pro-German sentiment was pretty evenly divided with pro-English sentiment. But once war was declared, everybody knew – drive on to Berlin, and the world would be made safe for democracy. Except the Germans called it quits before the Anglo-Franco-American allies even crossed the frontier, so WWI never quite ended for the Germans. And that brings us, naturally, to the Second World War.

Not a whole lot of pro-German sentiment here for that one, unless you count some of the really fringe members of the America First brigades. (If I need to refer to them later, we'll call Charles Lindberg, Joe Kennedy & Co. the "Proto-Buchananites.") Even after Pearl Harbor, there were still a few pacifists in the country, however – but somewhere in their hearts, they knew the war would be won once we had soldiers occupying Berlin and Tokyo.

And so it went. We did those things, we won those wars.

Nuclear weapons and our first-ever defensive alliances complicated matters. Did we win in Korea, by simply holding the line? Or should victory have been defined as reuniting all of Korea under a friendly government in Seoul? Or, since the Chinese proved to be our real foe after Inchon, should we have considered anything less than deposing the Beijing regime to have been something less than victory?

Well. Fighting the Chinese in China would have led to a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union. In 1953, we would have won that, too – but is a win still a win when after dozens of nukes have hit us? Some days, the closest you can get to victory is simply not having to fight.

Then there's Vietnam, which was Korea writ on a much larger scale. We won the battles, as everyone knows, but we lost the war. Or did we? Vietnam was a series of battles in the larger Cold War. Sure, we lost South Vietnam, but we still won the larger war. Former lefty Robert Kaplan argued that fighting in Vietnam was a tragic necessity. Had we not proven ourselves willing to fight for South Vietnam, we could very well have lost our NATO allies without the Reds ever having fired a shot. Was Vietnam a win? A loss? A tragic necessity? All of the above?

As I said, nuclear arms and defensive alliances complicated things for us greatly. Our alliances forced us into wars we couldn't quite win (because of the nuclear threat), in order to avoid greater losses in future wars (which would have run even greater nuclear risks). Or, to put it in the kind of language I prefer to use when discussing politics, the Cold War sucked.

If you think war has become complex, peace is messier still – and always has been.

Nobody ever knows what the peace will look like. Let's use our examples from earlier. Even as late as Appomattox, who could have predicted the KKK, Jim Crow, or Radical Reconstruction? No statesmen in 1914 knew that the war they were about to unleash would result in 20 million deaths, Russian Communism, or Nazi Germany. World War II? If you can find me the words of some prophet detailing, in 1940, the UN, the Cold War, or even the complete assimilation of western Germany into Western Europe. . . then I'll print this essay on some very heavy paper, and eat it. With aluminum foil as a garnish.

NOTE: That's what gets me about all the complaints that President Bush "didn't have a plan" to "win the peace" in Iraq. Oh, blow me. Nobody ever has a plan for the peace. Or if they do, it will prove useless. "No peace plan survives the last battle" is the VodkaPundit corollary to Clausewitz's dictum that no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.

By now, you probably know where I'm going with this little history lesson: How do we define victory in the Terror War, and what will the peace look like.

Let's get the second part out of the way first.

What will the peace look like? I don't have a damn clue. And neither do you. And if you meet anyone who claims to know, feel free to laugh at them really hard. So hard, you get a little spit on their face. Sometimes, justice can be small and spiteful – ask a meter maid. Anyway.

When peace comes, it could look like whatever Mecca, Tehran, Damascus, Riyadh, Pyongyang, Khartoum, Kabul, Cairo, etc., look like after being hit by big city-busting nuclear warheads. Or it could end with the entire Arab and Muslim world looking like the really well-manicured bits of Connecticut. My best guess is, somewhere in-between. But that's only a guess.

NOTE: It's a sad state of affairs (their affairs, not ours) that the first scenario, no matter how repugnant and unlikely, still seems more likely than the second scenario, no matter how virtuous.

Now that we know that we don't know how we'll win, that leaves the question (and the oxymoron): How do we win?

Ending the rule of the Taliban didn't end the war. Ending the rule of Saddam didn't end the war. We could depose the dictators in every dictatorship, and still not be done with this mess. Our enemy isn't a nation. It isn't a leader. It isn't, despite the misnomer "War on Terror," a war on terror.

What we're fighting is an ideology.

First off, let's brush aside the Loser Notion that if we kill terrorists, we'll only breed more terrorists. So what? Every dead terrorist is, well, dead. And we can always build more bombs and make more bullets. For 30 years now, the US Army has trained to fight in a "target-rich environment." Bring'em on.

Now that we have defeatism out of the way, let's get on with defeating the enemy. "But the enemy is an ideology," you've been told, "and you can't fight thoughts with bullets."

Yes and no.

Some people forget (because they backed/worshipped/served-as-useful-idiots-to the other side) that we have fought an ideology before, and – we won. The Cold War was, above all else, an ideological conflict. It was the Great Civil War of Western Civilization. On the one side, you had Western Capitalism, and on the other, International Communism. Obviously, things weren't that cut and dried. The US certainly doesn't (to my constant dismay) enjoy a laissez-faire economy, and the European NATO countries even less so. And despite a totalitarian regime, even the Soviet Union tolerated a little samizdat capitalism. Nevertheless, with the exception of France, countries took sides and stayed there.

Which socio-political system was left standing after 45 years of conflict? Oh yeah, baby – despite what you hear on American campuses, the West won. We won completely. We knocked their dicks in the dirt. The bad guys gave up, in the end, without even firing a shot – like Saddam Hussein in his hidey-hole.

How did we do it? How did we endure 45 years of conflict? How did we win? In the end, it came down to one simple thing:

We proved the enemy ideology to be ineffective.

We fought Communism for almost 50 years, and we would have fought it for another 50 – had that ideology not been too incompetent to keep up the fight. Islamism isn't Communism, however, so the means of fighting it have to be different.

Communism, when it took us on directly, found we were willing to stand up for ourselves and our allies (no matter how undesirable some of those allies were). Korea was ugly and inconclusive. Vietnam was even uglier, and didn't go our way. But in each case, we sent the same signal to Moscow: Push us or our friends around, and we'll fight. No one can say for sure that the 1st Air Cavalry Division's actions in Vietnam kept the Soviets from sending their tanks west to the Rhine – but it sure kept them guessing. And that, in part, was the point.

Communism promised a better life here on earth, but failed to deliver. Selling the Commodore 64 at a retail price of $300 was enough to prove that Communism had failed in comparison to capitalism. The Stealth Fighter just drove the point home.

Meanwhile, not much changed here at home. We lurched from Truman to Eisenhower to Kennedy to Johnson to Nixon to Ford to Carter to Reagan – and that entire time, we not only kept up the fight (more or less), but we didn't change any of the fundamental precepts of our civilization. In fact, thanks to the Civil Rights movement and the anti-draft protests, we came ever-closer to achieving our ideals.

We can out-produce you. We are willing to fight you. We are unwilling to become you. Add those three things together, and we proved that Communism was ineffective. They lost, we won, get over it.

Islamism isn't Communism, obviously. Out-producing the Islamic world isn't hard – subtract the oil, and Finland provides more exports than the entire Arab world. But Islamism doesn't promise a better life here – it promises a better afterlife. Therefore, we aren't going to dissuade our enemies by producing a $50 iPod, or even a billion-dollar stealth bomber.

Killing our enemies isn't enough, because death is what they seek. If there were a million terror-sponsoring nations, we could invade them all and never make any headway in any essential sense. So that's out, too.

What we are is why they want to kill us – so even if the US were to become my libertarian wet-daydream fantasyland, it wouldn't help us win the war.

With all that in mind, I've identified three keys to winning this war:

1. Take the initiative.
2. Fight when we have to, even if we can't win.
3. Remain what we are.

Take the Initiative

If 9/11 taught us anything, it's that we can't sit back any longer. Proactive measure are needed, and probably (sadly, tragically) for the foreseeable future. Had the Soviets engineered a 9/11-type attack on American soil, and had we failed to respond in greater measure, then the Cold War would have been lost. A nation unwilling to respond to attack on its own principal city, can hardly be counted on to defend the cities of its allies. Germany would have been reunited, all right – under a Communist regime.

Islamists can't be deterred the way the Soviets were, and that means we have to be proactive. And that means taking the fight to the enemy, before he can take the fight to us. Doing so doesn't preclude further 9/11-style attacks on us. But it does mean, at the very least, reducing their frequency. More importantly, it also means keeping our standing as a vital nation. At this stage in the game, failing to be proactive would mean losing whatever allies we have left. (Are you listening, John Kerry?)

Taking the initiative also means discarding fair-weather allies. If France and Germany would rather scuttle NATO than stand by its most important member, then NATO must whither. This is, as I think I've already demonstrated, a fight for our very existence. Allies who fail (or refuse) to recognize that aren't real allies – and should no longer be treated as such. The UN was never an ally, and I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

Taking the initiative is why – despite all the WMD talk – we invaded Iraq. We had to topple the Taliban, because the Taliban was directly linked to 9/11. We had to invade Iraq, because Iraq is directly linked to what is wrong with the Arab world. And unless the Arab world is fixed – either by setting up decent governments (I hope), or by nuclear castration (my nightmare), or something in-between – then this war is not yet over.

Fight When We Have To, Even If We Can't Win.

The Battle of Pearl Harbor was a lost cause. Korea was nearly one. And Vietnam, given the constraints described above, was almost certainly a losing proposition.

But we fought in those places.

We fought at Bull Run, too. And we fought at Kasserine Pass, and Manila, and Bastogne, and Hue, and on Flight 93. We even won at a couple of those places, even though cause seemed lost.

But we fought.

And that's the whole point. Going into Afghanistan is October of 2001, we went in without knowing if we could win. We went in, severely outnumbered, trying a brand-new doctrine (forced on the Pentagon by that idiot, George W. Bush) in a nation known as "the graveyard of empires." But Afghanistan was the sanctuary and training ground of those who hurt us so badly on 9/11. Had we not fought there, the War would have been over, scarcely before it had begun. So we went. And we won. But victory was no foregone conclusion. We went anyway.

Whether we can win (by establishing something resembling decent government) in Iraq is still an unanswered question. But, as I argued in the previous section, we had to go into Iraq and at least try. There is a sickness in the modern Arab world, and it must be cured. Iraq is our attempt at curing it without killing the patient. The prognosis for the patient is still unclear – but, so far, our resolve is crystal clear. But, like a oncologist, we had to go in no matter what the risks.

There will be other battles we may have to face, no matter how dubious the outcome. Will Iran be next? Will we finally lose patience with the Saudis? Will we find evidence that Syria, or Yasser Arafat's West Bank cronies are now in charge of Saddam's old chemical weapons?

I don't know. And nobody knows where such battles might lead us. But, if we want to win this war, we can't be afraid of fighting any necessary battles.

Remain What We Are

You don't defeat the enemy by becoming him. We didn't beat the Soviets by establishing our own Five Year Plans, and we won't beat the children of oppression by becoming oppressors.

We might stop an attack or two by militarizing our borders, but what would we lose? We'd be three, maybe four, short steps above the dictatorships we so rightly despise. And we'd be this much closer (hold your thumb and index fingers very close together for visual effect) from breeding our own homegrown crazies, just like they breed them Over There.

We might stop an attack or two by inspecting every single cargo container coming into our country – but the economic repercussions would kill more people than a dozen 9/11s.

We might stop an attack or two by nuking every Islamic city from Tangier to Islamabad – but, come morning, we'll have to look ourselves in the mirror. What that means is, just because you don't agree with the millions and millions of antiwar Americans, doesn't mean you may discount completely their opinions. Want a civil war in your own country? Then start nuking other countries indiscriminately.

Defeating terror can, I hope, be done without becoming terrorists, ourselves. But the war is young, and we didn't nuke Hiroshima until Japan was already almost entirely beaten.

Taking the initiative, fighting where we must, remaining free – those are the keys to victory.

If we show our enemies that they aren't the only ones who can take the initiative. . .

If we show our enemies that we are willing to fight them, even when the odds are slim. . .

If we fight and fight and fight, without ever giving up those freedoms we're fighting to defend. . .

. . . then we will have proven, no matter how long it takes, that their ideology is ineffective. We won't just take it. We won't retreat. We will not change.

We will have proven that their way is the way of death; our way is the way of life.

How it will all play out is anyone's guess. But I do know this much. Anyone who claims we should just suffer attacks on our homeland, or retreat before all hope is lost, or surrender our liberties when those freedoms are what we live for –-- the only thing that person offers you is the same thing offered you by our enemies:

Defeat.

Stick to the game plan. We can win.

I read fiction quickly, because I want to find out how it ends.

I read history slowly, because I already know how it ends (with me here at my desk enjoying a martini) and because I'm very curious to know how it happened.

Which partly explains why I haven't posted much. If you think I read history slowly, you ought to see me try writing about it -- especially now that we're so much in the thick of history again.

So, yeah, I'm still trying to finish that thing I told you about earlier. If it's not done tonight, then I'm calling it quits and getting on with the usual blather.

UPDATE: I swear to Whomever I'm almost done with this thing. If I can trim another 300 words off of it, it'll be suitable for the blog.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I got the damn thing (barely) under 3,000 words. And I give it to you for free. Once again, I ask -- who's the hardest-working blog in the business?

I missed Roger L. Simon and the Blogfaddah on Hugh Hewitt's show today (I would say I have no excuse, since Hugh is now on a decent frequency in Atlanta--but I do have an excuse: I was grilling eggplant and veal cutlets for my wife). Have to catch the replay. In the meantime, Simon says:

Hugh wanted to know if Glenn and I thought the mainstream media (other than Fox) were going to deal with this story thoroughly. We both thought it would take a few days for them to get their fingers out of their ears, but that they had little choice.

After watching the rountable on Brit Hume's show (via my trusty ReplayTV), I'm guessing he's right. Both Mara Liasson and Juan Williams--both NPR reporters and neither members of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy--readily agreed that Kerry needs to explain his Cambodia story, and that Kerry's Vietnam record deserves as much press scrutiny as Bush's National Guard service.

Early spin prediction, based on Williams' commentary: Kerry will assert that he thought he was in Cambodia, but didn't find out that he wasn't until after 1992, when he published a letter to the Boston Globe recounting how being in Cambodia on Chistmas Eve of 1968 was 'seared into his memory.' It's lame, but it might give him an out with the press.

How Kerry explains away blaming Richard Nixon for his being in/near Cambodia nearly a month before Nixon actually took office, I have no idea.

Laughable Ron Brownstein navel-gazer in today's LA Times. Brownstein spends a couple of grafs hand-wringing over how horrible and divisive partisanship is today (hey, Ron, go read a little history before you write another one of these; 1964, 1948, 1884, and 1800 would be good places to start), then weighs in with these pearls of Big Media conventional wisdom:

In his venom, though, [Michael] Moore has been trumped by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group of Vietnam veterans with strong Republican ties. Last week, the group aired an ad in three battleground states that was to traditional political discussion what a snuff film was to a conventional horror movie.

Yo, Ron. You're supposed to be a reporter. Can't you tell the difference between the public statements of guys who actually served with Kerry (spare me the canard about not being in his particular boat--that's nothing but obfuscating DNC spin, and you know it) and a list of third-hand conspiracy tinkering? You already noted that Moore plays fast and loose with the facts, and mildly criticized him for it. Why can't you bring yourself to judge the Swift Vets by the same standard--the facts, not the rhetoric?

What difference does it make if their claims are 'venomous,' if it turns out they're telling the truth? I didn't notice you or your paper discounting Joe Wilson last year, and he was spewing venom aplenty. Heck, you even gave Wilson prime space on your editorial page to attack his critics just last month, while virtually ignoring the oversight reports that found him to be full of partisan hot air.

Given the weight of the Swift Vets' accusations, and the fact that Kerry has based his entire campaign upon those four months in Vietnam, wouldn't they have reason to be upset if their claims are accurate?

We'll never know if Brownstein is on the case. He never bothers to ask the question. Insteand, he goes on to laud John McCain (you know, the same guy who wanted to make it illegal to criticize politicians) for being "willing to set boundaries on the partisan fervor."

Please. McCain doesn't like it when anybody disagrees with him, period, and he's not a bit shy about lashing out harshly when he gets upset (the press only seems to notice--and applaud--this when he lashes out against Republicans). Brownstein and his ilk need to start worrying more over the facts of the Swift Vets' accusations and less over the "partisan fervor" surrounding the race. For gosh sakes--it's a campaign! It's supposed to be partisan!

I'd take the likes of Brownstein a lot more seriously if they'd accord the Swift Vets one tenth of the attention and investigation they spent on Bush's National Guard records early this year. If Kerry's critics are all lying, it shouldn't be that hard to figure out the facts... unless, of course, the media isn't interested in those facts getting out.

What should have been an 800-word column-type thingy has instead turned into a monster, and taken up all of last night and most of this morning.

Back later, after I've taken a red pen to a thousand or three words.

Hugh Hewitt contacted the Boston Globe yesterday about Matt Drudge's assertion (see below) that reporter Michael Kranish had been hired by the Kerry campaign to write a forward to the Kerry-Edwards campaign book. Globe editor Michael Baron responded:

[i]t is completely untrue that Boston Globe reporter Michael Kranish ever contracted to write for a Kerry campaign publication.  Earlier this summer, Mr. Kranish worked with Public Affairs, the publisher of the Boston Globe biography of Kerry...to write a short introduction to a second project: an independent, unauthorized review of publicly available documents dealing with the platform and policy statements of Kerry and Edwards.  When Public Affairs subsequently struck anagreement with the Kerry campaign to do an official book, Kranish's relationship with the project immediately ended.

Hewitt says Kranish should sue Drudge for libel. On the other hand, via the Blogfaddah, Kranish didn't exactly cover himself in glory with yesterday's story claiming one of the anti-Kerry Swift Boat veterans had retracted his story. Tom Maguire--who is owning this story from start to finish--notes a glaring Dowdism in Kranish's reporting:

Elliott is quoted as saying that Kerry ''lied about what occurred in Vietnam . . . for example, in connection with his Silver Star, I was never informed that he had simply shot a wounded, fleeing Viet Cong in the back."

Get Maureen Dowd on the line - that may have been the most misleading ellipsis ever published, but since the affidavit was not public, who knew?

Subsequently, Capt. Elliott retracted his retraction, prompting some head-scratching.

Now, both the original affidavit and the re-affirmation (the retraction of the retraction) are available here. I will read it again, and you should, too, but my first reaction [Update: and second, and third] is that Kranish wrote a wildly deceptive and misleading story.

Let's restore the missing ellipsis, emboldening the excerpted bit:

3. When Kerry came back to the United States he lied about what ocurred in Vietnam, comparing his commanders to Lt. Calley of My Lai, comparing the American armed forces to the army of Ghengis Khan, and making similar misstatements. Kerry was also not forthright in Vietnam. For example, in connection with his Silver Star, I was never informed that he had simply shot a wounded, fleeing Viet Cong in the back.

Hello, Mr. Reporter! When Capt. Elliot "backed off one of the key contentions", was it the My Lai complaint, or the Ghengis Khan comparison? Or was it one example preceded by "for example"?

Kranish may well have been misnamed by Drudge (and me) as a "Kerry staffer," but he's still got a lot of 'splaining to do over the "Elliott retracts charges" story, which is falling apart at the seams. Regardless of whether Kranish ever meant to write fluff for Kerry's book or not, the Elliott story smells like a put-up job.

Bill Hobbs has a blurb today about people intentionally putting phony information in registration-required media site sign-ins, quoting NYU professor Adam L. Penenberg in Wired,

Depending on my mood, I'm a 92-year-old spinster from Topeka whose hobbies include snowboarding, macramι and cryptology; the CEO of a successful high-tech firm in Bumblebutt, New York, whose company has a market capitalization of four cents; or an Alaskan mango grower. What magazines do I read? Soldier of Fortune, Modern Bride, Granta and High Times. Date of birth? Dec. 7, 1941. July 4, 1976. Jan. 1, 1901. My name? Jed Clampett, Mustang Sally or Freddy Fudbuster.

I'm with Fudbuster--er, Penenberg. I've never given a single snippet of accurate information to any registration page. I also don't allow any of my banks or credit card issuers to share my information with others, and I go out of my way to anonymize attempts to "data mine" me, i.e., deleting cookies on a regular basis, and using a Kroger discount card that I found on the ground in Centennial Park.

That's not because I'm afraid of Big Brother; what the hell--I've been investigated for security clearances. The government knows chapter, verse, and correct spelling on me. And you know what, they have good reason to. I agreed to those investigations of my own free will, nobody put a gun to my head.

But I sure as hell never agreed to let the New York Times or Atlanta Urinal-Constipation collect information about me, and I'll be damned if I ever do so willingly. It's not just an invasion of my privacy--it's an insult, and it's collecting on the cheap. You want information out of me that's valuable, you can pay me something for it. Otherwise, as far as you're concerned, my name is Nunya Biznis.

Not only do I refuse to enter remotely accurate information, I use BugMeNot's anonymous logins whenever possible, since they have the added benefit of completely screwing up the Big Media databases. I encourage you to do the same, and to spread the word about BugMeNot and similar sites.

UPDATE: All apologies, I completely botched the BugMeNot link above before splitting for dinner. It's working now.

Is John Kerry's hometown paper acting as a spin arm of the Kerry campaign? Via Drudge, a couple of items that'd give one that impression:

BOSTON GLOBE journalist Mike Kranish has been commissioned to write the foreword of the official Kerry-Edwards campaign book -- just as he is covering the campaign in an official capacity as a journalist for the BOSTON GLOBE!

Kranish made waves on Friday by reporting in the GLOBE how a key figure in the anti-Kerry vet ad campaign, Kerry's former commanding officer, "backed off one of the key contentions."

But Captain George Elliott claims the Kranish article is "extremely inaccurate" and highly misstated his actual views.

Having Kranish being a paid part of Kerry's campaign book is pretty damning for the Globe (owned by the New York Times Corporation, incidentally). While I'm very much in favor of reporters disclosing their political views, having what amounts to a Kerry staffer covering his campaign is going several steps too far.

When Kranish's story broke this morning, my reaction was that it was very bad news for the "Swift Vets" group to have their credibility undercut so quickly. Now I think things may work in exactly the opposite direction. Elliott's post-story denial has a lot more impact cast in the light of Kranich's connections with Kerry, more than it would have if any other reporter had "broken" today's story.

Keep watching this one, particularly for when and if Elliott goes on the record in front of the cameras. It's more than appropriate to ask whether Kranich is reporting Elliott's statements accurately, or carrying water for a campaign that he overtly supports. We'll have to wait and see if the rest of the media has the cojones to put one of their own under the conflict-of-interest microscope.

Unexpectedly busy here this week, which always makes for lame blogging. And rather than be lame, I'm taking the day off.

It looks like swift boat veterans aren't the only vets Kerry has trouble with:

A Rasmussen Reports survey shows that military veterans prefer George W. Bush over John Kerry by a 58% to 35% margin. Those with no military service favor Kerry by ten percentage points, 51% to 41%.

More interesting is this:

The potential grassroots impact of the war issue is highlighted by the fact that 48% of Americans say they know someone who is currently serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. Among these voters, Bush currently has a ten-point advantage in the poll. Fifty-four percent (54%) of veterans know someone serving in these war zones.

When it comes to perceptions of the situation in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is likely that information from family and friends has a bigger impact than news coverage.

Now that's encouraging news.

Big bust in Albany:

Federal agents and city police raided a Muslim mosque overnight Wednesday, with armed officers sealing off a block in downtown Albany for several hours. Authorities declined to immediately discuss the raid at Masjid As-Salam mosque. An FBI spokesman said a press conference was tentatively set Thursday afternoon in Washington.

Some mosque members held morning prayers Thursday on a nearby sidewalk. WTEN-TV reported two men were arrested and are suspected of providing material support for terrorism.

Hat tip to the California Yankee, who has more details.

I wonder if this is a side-effect of spending a good chunk of one's childhood in Swiss finishing schools:

On Sunday and into Monday, Kerry hit Michigan, where he attempted to use the same Ohio jokes. Clearly, the sports humor has to be taken out of his hands before he really embarrasses himself.

"I just came here from Bowling Green," Kerry told the crowd to subdued applause. "I was smart enough not to pick a choice between the Falcons and the, well, you know, all those other teams out there. I just go for Buckeye football, that's where I'm coming from."

At that point, before all the boos began raining down upon him, Kerry seemed to realize his error. In an attempt to silent the angry crowd of University of Michigan supporters, Kerry said, "But that was while I was in Ohio. I know I'm in the state of Michigan and you got a great big M and a powerhouse of a team." Then his face, presumably, the Botox permitting, turned Big Blue.

Now granted, I'm not exactly normal on this particular issue, having lived and breathed college football virtually from the womb (I'm also a freelance sportswriter, and wrote a book about the game ten years ago), but it's just hard for me to grasp that level of cluelessness about such a primary aspect of American life and culture.

This is not real hard to understand, for normal humans: You don't tug on Superman's cape, you don't spit into the wind, you don't pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger, and you don't boost Buckeye football in front of Michigan fans.

On the other hand, Kerry should probably be thanking his lucky stars that he isn't campaigning down South. If he'd gone and said, "I just go for Volunteer football, that's where I'm coming from," in front of a crowd of Alabama fans, he probably wouldn't have survived the aftermath.