'76 Blog

Obama seems to be more concerned with fighting a war with Fox News, than pursuing the war on terror.  While our generals are asking for an increase in forces in Afghanistan, Obama dithers.  A century and a half ago the British Army in India marched into Afghanistan.  Realizing they did not have sufficient forces, they tried to withdraw their troops. Over the next few weeks, as they made their way back south through the Khyber pass, the army of nearly 16,000 military and support personnel  was annihilated.  Only one medical officer survived to tell the story.  Shortly thereafter, an Afghan poet celebrated his event by calling his country ‘the graveyard of empires.’  If the Obama administration can’t get serious in Afghanistan, we should bring the troops home and declare defeat. Of course this would allow our enemies to recoup and attack our country once again.  This would be a catastrophe with a nuclear Pakistan next door and Islamic Jihadis threatening that government daily. Instead our president has declared war on the only network independent of the government.  With a strategy similar to what Hugo Chavez is doing with any opposition in the Venezuelan media, the White House is refusing to allow any member of the administration to be interviewed on Fox.  Obama is willing to sit down with Chavez, but won’t sit down with Glenn Beck, nor allow his lackeys to do so. White House Communications director Anita Dunn told CNN Sunday, concerning Fox News, “we don’t need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave.”  I wonder if Ms. Dunn is behaving the way a White House Communications Director should behave, especially to the most popular news outlet in the United States.  If Obama is able to stop Fox, or succeed in intimidating them into compliance like the rest of the mainstream media, I worry for our republic.  When asked what kind of government he was trying to create, Benjamin Franklin responded, “a republic, if you can keep it.”  I am beginning to worry, whether we can keep that republic.

The proclamation announcing the Nobel Peace Prize for President Obama states that he “created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama's initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.” The Nobel committee has fallen into the same trap that many American commentators have: rather than actually evaluating outcomes and successes, they are rewarding those who express good intentions. From the proclamation, the Nobel Committee actually acknowledges this, disregarding whether or not any of Obama’s “good intentions” will eventually result in policy success. After going through the checklist of “accomplishments,” there is little or no evidence that any of these things have resulted, nor will they result, in making peace. Multilateralism and dialogue about disarmament and the climate are meaningless. It appears that the only thing Obama has done, which the committee views as an accomplishment, is to weaken the United States’ standing in the world. While the Nobel Committee may view this as an accomplishment, a weaker United States is certainly not consistent with a more peaceful world. America’s strength on display has in fact led to greater peace in the world over the last 70 years, while presidencies such as Jimmy Carter’s, which sought to diminish America’s standing, actually led to greater world conflict. Good intentions alone, of course, do not necessarily lead to peace. And a naïve belief that good intentions will result in peace is dangerous. Every attempt at appeasement has been laden with good intentions, whether it is Chamberlain’s cowering to Hitler, or Carter’s weakness in light of increasing Soviet expansion. Weakness in the face of great danger does not establish peace. The Nobel Committee has made a mockery of itself by honoring the hope for peace, rather than an actual accomplishment of it.  

Last Sunday on "Meet the Press," US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice was questioned on the wisdom of President Obama’s failed effort to secure the 2016 Olympics for the city of Chicago.  Ambassador Rice replied that “It's never a mistake for the President of the United States to be willing to fight and compete on behalf of our country.  And that's what he did, and he would do it again in a nanosecond.”  The ironies of this statement are many; here are just two. First, the fact that our United Nations ambassador confuses campaigning for the Olympic Games as “fighting” and “competing” for our country is, of course, nonsense.  Convincing the IOC to accept a bid to host is not much different than competing in a beauty pageant.  Confusing such a campaign with advocating for American interests is indeed baffling. Second, and far more important, is that Ambassador Rice fails to see that President Obama’s track record as President is anything but fighting for America, it’s interests, or the interests of its allies.  The examples are many, but a few of the lowlights will suffice. Obama announced in September that he would not continue the planned development and deployment of the missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic (two former Soviet satellite nations who have, in recent years, become staunch allies of the United States).   Obama’s motivation for this decision was an attempt to gain favor with Vladimir Putin of Russia.   Of course, Prime Minister Putin was ecstatic about this decision. President Obama has recently pushed back his scheduled meeting with the Dalai Lama in an attempt to gain favor from the Chinese government, waiting instead until after his visit to China later this year.  These overtures to Russia and China have already proven useless.  China has announced that it opposes any new sanctions against Iran, in spite of the discovery of new nuclear capabilities.  President Chavez of Venezuela has bragged recently of new technology-sharing with Russia concerning nuclear and missile know-how.  Any expectation of support against Iran and against preventing proliferation of weapons in our own hemisphere is, of course, naïve.  In Afghanistan, in spite of his campaign rhetoric ensuring that this was the “good” war and assurances that he would take the necessary steps to ensure success, the President’s inability to take the decisive steps that the military commanders on the ground have requested has shown a timid inability to command. In every major foreign policy speech delivered at home or abroad, rather than defend America’s interests and her noble past accomplishments, President Obama has instead used each occasion to criticize our history, while diminishing our standing in the world. The failure to fight for America is not, of course, limited to foreign policy mistakes.  Obama’s domestic policies, including but not limited to: his support of a cap and trade plan; the government takeover of major banking and automotive corporations; and his unwillingness to prevent the expiration of tax cuts which would ensure a pro growth environment for small businesses, will all do great harm to American economic interests. To date, President Obama has failed to exhibit any knowledge of how to fight for America’s interests.  He and his Administration’s confusion that campaigning for the hosting of the Olympics equals fighting for America would be comical if not so tragic.

Obama's dangerously deluded foreign policyBy Mark Hillman Say what you will about Bill Clinton's foreign policy shortcomings, but for the most part he had the good sense not to squander Ronald Reagan's legacy of peace through strength.       By contrast, Barack Obama's foreign policy seems to be predicated on a boundless faith in his own persuasive powers and the naïve notion that our international antagonists are merely misunderstood.  Not since Jimmy Carter has American foreign policy been so obsequious or short-sighted.       Rather than isolate Argentine menace Hugo Chavez, President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have managed the remarkable feat of backing Chavez's acolyte in Honduras, ousted president Manuel Zelaya, while still eliciting ridicule from Latin America's most notorious thug.       Zelaya, who sought to defy Honduras' constitutional prohibition against a president seeking multiple terms, was duly prosecuted by his country's attorney general, removed from office by its supreme court, lawfully replaced by a president from his own political party, and finally deported when his supporters threatened national insurrection.       Obama and Secretary Clinton — standing alongside Chavez, Cuba's Castro brothers, and the Organization of American States — want to restore Zelaya to power and chastise the Honduran government for adhering to the rule of law.       Apparently Obama longs for the bad ol' days when the Castro boys and their Soviet Russian patrons established communist dictatorships in Central America.       Or perhaps he believes that Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin is just a harmless fuzzball, rather than an erstwhile KGB officer who laments the fall of the Iron Curtain.  That would explain why last year, as a candidate, Obama's initial reaction to the Russian invasion of neighboring Georgia was to urge both sides to "show restraint."       Worse still as president Obama courts Russia's cooperation by abruptly canceling plans to deploy anti-missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic.  He didn't revoke these promises in exchange for Russian cooperation.  He simply did it and hoped that Russia would cooperate — just as his climate change policy is to disembowel America's economy and hope China, India and others do the same to theirs.       The Poles and Czechs endured decades of Russian Soviet oppression.  We should help empower them to defend themselves.  Instead Obama's policy is a slap in the face — no matter how his administration spins it.  To the Russians and the Iranians, against whose developing ballistic missile program the defenses offered protection, Obama's pusillanimous maneuver further demonstrates weakness.       Russian president Dmitri Medvedev applauded Obama's decision, just as a shrewd negotiator insincerely compliments the strength of an adversary he recognizes to be weak.  The Kiev Post explained, "Russian diplomacy is largely a zero-sum game and relies on projecting hard power to force gains."  That is, Russia plays hardball and plays for keeps.       In his speech to the U.N., Obama tossed about platitudes: "the yearning for peace is universal" and "the most powerful weapon in our arsenal is the hope of human beings."  But "yearning for peace" is not universal — certainly not among governing authorities in places like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea who routinely trample "the hope of human beings" in their own country and in others.       "Two great threats facing the survival of the modern liberal West," cautions Lee Harris in The Suicide of Reason, are "exaggerated confidence in the power of reason" and "profound underestimation of the forces of fanaticism."       Because most western nations haven't faced a direct threat to their placid existence in more than a generation, we too readily forget that the majority of the world's inhabitants live their entire lives governed not by reason and rule of law but by the law of the jungle and the iron fist of an oppressive government.       Reagan understood that regimes that threaten, attack and oppress peaceful neighbors are indeed "evil" and that they can be deterred only by strength and determination.  Much of the world criticized him when he stood up to "the evil empire," when he walked away from arms deals that would have weakened us and strengthened our adversaries, and most notably when he exhorted Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall."         Today we know that Reagan's critics cowered because they lacked his vision.       History is replete with leaders like Obama whose sincere desire for peace blinded them to devious designs of others.  Seeking peace is laudable, but lasting peace is rarely attained by those who appear desperate for it. Mark Hillman is a Centennial Institute fellow and Colorado's Republican national committeeman.  He formerly served as Colorado senate majority leader and state treasurer.  To read more or comment, go to www.MarkHillman.com.

Sympathy and warmth toward US Muslims is up in the past two years, while concern for Islam's tendency to violence is down, according to a Pew survey reported in USA Today on this, the eighth anniversary of 9/11.  Bush's "religion of peace" mantra, combined with his refusal to speak bluntly about jihad or radical Islam, set the stage for Obama's truly Orwellian purge of America's vocabulary for thinking about those sworn to destroy us.  And voila, today's poll findings are the result.  Here is part of the USA Today story: According to the Pew survey, belief among Americans that Islam encourages violence has fluctuated since the Sept. 11 attacks, and was at its lowest level — a quarter of those surveyed — in March after the terror strikes. By 2007, 45% of Americans believed Islam was more likely than other faiths to encourage violence. This year, that number fell to 38%. The group most likely to say Islam encourages violence this year was conservative Republicans, at 55%. But that dropped 13% from two years ago, making them the group with the biggest change of opinion since 2007. The survey, conducted by telephone, also indicated that Americans have grown steadily more knowledgeable about Islam: 41% knew that the Muslim name for God is Allah and the Quran is the Islamic sacred text, compared to 33% in March 2002. The "small and gradual, but noticeable" change has an affect, Smith said. Those most familiar with Islam were least likely to link the religion with violence. Fifty-seven percent of people who knew the names Muslims use to refer to God and their sacred text, and were also acquainted with a Muslim, said Islam did not encourage violence more than other faiths. The same percentage of that group said their overall opinion of Muslims was favorable and 70% of that group said there's discrimination against Muslims.

Like most news junkies who had followed the war in Iraq on a daily basis for six years I thought I was pretty well informed.  However when I read Bing West’s  The Strongest Tribe  I was stunned at how much I had missed- not just unreported or misreported events but also how to think about those events in balanced perspective. Soon after the lightning overthrow of Saddam the mainstream media began to turn against a war they had never much liked in the first place.  As the war ground on their reporting disproportionately revolved around suicide bombers in Iraq and grieving families in America.  Most books that promised “deeper analysis”- even well written ones like Bob Woodward ‘s trilogy- revealed a clear liberal bias and left us yearning for some Paul Harvey to tell us “the rest of the story”. We find such a person in Bing West whose book is long on “on the ground” reporting and short on political opinion.  It radiates an evenhandedness that gives a reader great confidence in its veracity. West was a career military officer who distinguished himself as an authority on counterinsurgency warfare in Viet Nam. That war produced relatively few good books, but West’s classic The Village is one of them.  Later he would serve as an Assistant Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan. Published in 2008 the book covers the war from the beginning through the success of the “Surge” which snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.  West employs a strictly chronological approach and avoids those annoying back and forth digressions that confuse readers. West comes down hard on both civilian and higher military leadership who through most of the war utterly failed to define a unified and coherent American mission in Iraq.  Whether it was Defense (Rumsfeld) vs. State (Powell) in Washington or their counter-parts (General Abizaid vs “Proconsul” Bremer) in Iraq their conflict and confusion over strategy profoundly undermined mission effectiveness on the ground.  Underlying this confusion was an American naiveté and general cluelessness concerning cultural/historical and political realities in Iraq. The State Dept. seemed to think that giving Iraqis a few PowerPoint presentations on tolerance/diversity, constitution writing, and Roberts Rules of Order could swiftly transform their country into an up and running self-defending democracy. Having achieved their quick battlefield victory a la Afghanistan, the Pentagon wanted to get out of Iraq as soon as possible, and while waiting to do so corralled its soldiers in large isolated bases from which the troops “commuted to work”. Having no coherent plans for “post-victory” operations both Defense and State bought into the bizarre “Light Footprint” doctrine which suggested that the very sight of American soldiers so inflamed young Iraqi males that they immediately ran to the nearest Al-Qaeda recruiting office to become instant jihadists. All this confusion went on for three years (2003-2006) during which Iraq spiraled downward into chaos and the American people soured on the war. The great strength of West’s book rests on his frequent and lengthy stays in Iraq mostly spent embedded with American troops.  He persuasively demonstrates that local American commanders and local Iraqi leaders (notably the Sheiks of Anbar Province) figured out what was wrong and what was needed long before the politicans and military brass in either Washington or Baghdad. Finally a senior military leader emerged who grasped the validity of these local viewpoints.  General David Petraeus saw clearly that victory was impossible without local Iraqi support, and that support was absolutely dependent on Americans providing the people with the security and stability that would allow them to inform on and fight back against the detested foreign fighters of Al-Qaeda who were terrorizing them by systematically murdering their men and raping their women. Petraeus took a strategy that had worked for a number of local American commanders and applied it country-wide.  He took his troops out of their isolated bases and had them “move in” with the people and stay.  Beginning in the deadly “Sunni Triangle” he also authorized local American commanders to recruit, arm, and pay local Iraqi males (“Sons of Iraq”) as fighting auxiliaries to the American forces.  Thus empowered local leaders (mostly tribal sheiks) courageously faced murderous Al-Qaeda reprisals and blessed joint combat operations against a suddenly exposed and then decimated enemy whose power rapidly melted away in the face of this new turn of events. Petraeus success in selling this new strategy which was the critical element in the success of the “Surge” was absolutely dependent on his views becoming known to key National Security Council staffers who orchestrated an “end run” around the Pentagon and the State Dept- both highly resistant to any notion of increased troop levels. While West praises the gutsy decision of a politically battered President Bush to authorize the “Surge” despite the rampant and poisonous “defeatism” pervading Washington, he severely faults him for his passivity and unwillingness to challenge senior Cabinet and military leaders during the long period (over two years) when the situation in Iraq was clearly deteriorating.  Citing Lincoln, FDR, and Truman as examples, West correctly insists that Presidents must be willing to aggressively intervene and even fire people when a war is obviously going badly.  For too long George W. Bush failed that test. Even more severely does West condemn the rank hypocrisy of Democratic leaders like Reid, Pelosi and Murtha who endlessly chanted their “support for our troops” while doing everything in their power to undermine the mission of those troops and also giving aid and comfort to the enemy by publicly announcing that “the war was lost” when in fact it was about to be won. The real heroes of West’s book are American soldiers.  Their valor uncelebrated by their country’s media, their mission undercut by politicians, and often poorly served  by  their own higher leadership, they fought against a savage and fanatical enemy in deadly battle spaces like Fallujah street by street, house to house, often room to room with incredible skill and bravery.  West sternly reminds us that “They are not victims; they are Warriors”.  Their individual stories- the best part of the book- will fill your heart with pain and pride. The title of the book comes from the remark of a Sunni Sheik when West asked him why the top Al-Qaeda leader in Fallujah had fled the city in a woman’s dress.  The Sheik pointed to a passing Marine patrol and in respectful tones replied “Because they are the Strongest Tribe”. West closes his book expressing concerns about the future of the “Strongest Tribe” in a country whose martial virtues are being drained by the poisonous atmosphere of political division and cultural warfare. We all should worry about a day when- like contemporary Europe- there will be nothing worth fighting for and no more volunteering young warriors even if there was. William Moloney is a Centennial Institute Fellow and former Colorado Education Commissioner.  His columns have appeared in the Wall St Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, Washington Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Baltimore Sun, Rocky Mountain News and Denver Post.  

(Boston) While the world watched the fraudulent Iranian elections by chance I found myself here in the historic capital of American election fraud. Just a few steps from Boston’s City Hall the Union Oyster House has been a favored haunt of local politicians since Colonial times.  As we sampled the culinary  delights of this Beantown landmark my companion- a wryly self-described “humble servant of the people”- noted that two centuries earlier Governor Elbridge Gerry had enjoyed similar fare here.  It was he who invented “gerrymandering”, a method of redistricting now institutionalized in every state as the most successful form of election fraud in American history. Through the years Boston continued to invent, refine and export to grateful imitators nationwide many new breakthroughs in election fraud.  One of the most productive was  creating the key patronage post of Cemetery Commissioner said official being responsible not just for mowing the grass above the graves but much more importantly insuring that those loyal Democrats beneath the grass were not deprived of their right to vote “early and often” every election day. While stealing votes outright was more cost effective sometimes it was necessary to buy them.  Even then these thrifty New Englanders deplored wasteful spending.  Jack Kennedy’s grandfather Boston Mayor “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald insisted that the “Machine never bought more votes than actually required”.  In another context his son-in-law Joe Kennedy sternly told a Chicago alderman that he “wasn’t paying for a landslide”. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ignored these counsels of moderation, apparently being quite willing to pay for a landslide and/or steal more votes than actually required. The initial U.S. response to this self-evident fraud was somewhere between an embarrassment and a disgrace (when you sound less tough than the Europeans you know you’ve dropped the ball badly).  Waffling between saying it didn’t matter who won the election and being fearful of accusations of “meddling” Obama and company demonstrated once again why foreign and national security policy has been the Achilles Heel of the Democratic party for over forty years. In its obsequiousness Obama’s expression of gratitude to “Supreme Leader” Ayatollah Khamenei for his willingness to look into irregularities in a few precincts rivaled the notorious bow to the King of Saudi Arabia. Amazingly none of this qualified as the week’s top example of U.S. spinelessness.  After North Korea’s “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-IL defiantly announced that he was (A) weaponizing his nuclear stockpile, (B) conducting further tests of his Hiroshima sized bomb, and (C) scheduling tests of an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) capable of reaching the U.S., the Obama Administration announced it would adhere to a new “get tough” policy proposed by Chinese and Russians at the United Nations. The heart of the policy involves intercepting North Korean vessels suspected of carrying nuclear presents to friends like Syria or Iran and asking permission to board and search;  however if they say no, that’s O.K. too. When loony right-wingers in Congress questioned the adequacy of this response the Administration gave further evidence of its resolve by announcing that if North Korea persists in its’ nuclear naughtiness in next year’s  budget we may refuse to make further cuts to Missile Defense spending beyond these already included in this year’s budget. Right now, if you’re keeping score the old “axis of Evil” – Syria, Iran, and North Korea-is definitely ahead on points.  Obama’s much hyped but pathetic speech in Cairo (“America is one of the largest Muslim nations; my daddy was a Muslim”) clearly signaled he isn’t going to fuss too much when Iran inevitably gains full nuclear power status.  As noted above he’s O.K. with letting Russia and China via the UN set the limits of  U.S. toughness with North Korea. The only member of the “Axis” who’s even been scored upon in this contest is Syria and that only because the Israelis who know a threat when they see one helpfully bombed that country’s rising nuclear facility flat. The  Boston Globe  (owned by the N.Y. times since 1994 and hopefully soon going bankrupt) was “deeply troubled by this unilateral Israeli action” and this week even had the effrontery to editorially call on Obama to “oblige Netanyahu to rearrange his governing coalition to be more in accord with U.S.. policy toward the Palestinians”. What’s wrong with this picture?  A lot, and the price of folly may be exacted sooner than we think. William Moloney is a former Colorado Education Commissioner and now a Centennial Institute Fellow.  His columns have appeared in the Wall St. Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, Washington Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Baltimore Sun, Denver Post, and Rocky Mountain News. 

Much is being made of the Dick Cheney vs. Barack Obama "debate" now going on in the media over national security. It was page one in Friday's Wall Street Journal, after Cheney and Obama gave dueling speeches the day before -- Obama from the rotunda of the National Archives and Cheney from the American Enterprise Institute. As has been his consistent message, Obama again reiterated his view that the Bush administration had "gone off course" in using enhanced interrogation techniques and off-shore prisons, saying that he is seeking to restore "the power of our most fundamental values".The former Vice President, meanwhile is having none of it. Calling the Bush policies "legal, essential, justified, successful and the right thing to do", he again took on the administration's critics by pointing out that "After the most lethal and devastating terrorist attack ever, seven and a half years without a repeat is not a record to be rebuked or scorned, much less criminalized. It is a record to be continued until the danger has passed."This is an exceedingly vital debate. President Obama has made decisions on the basis of politics that I believe are putting our nation at risk. He caved to the left in precipitously deciding to close Guantanamo without any alternative plan; now it turns out that many of the most hated Bush policies -- using military tribunals and indefinite detention -- will continue. Why? Because more than half of the remaining Guantanamo detainees are too dangerous to try in court or to release back into the civilized world. But where will they go once Guantanamo is closed? No one has a clue, because nobody in Congress wants these lethal prisoners in their backyard. In the halls of Congress, NIMBY is the rule -- unless, of course, it's pork.The problem for those who think that Obama is on a dangerous path, however, is that it is Dick Cheney leading the charge. Where is the spokesperson for the opposition to this president who isn't past his prime and considered a cross between an "angry white man" and Darth Vader?We know, of course, that John McCain -- the Republican candidate for president just a short 6 months ago who got more than 44 million votes in the election -- is of little help on this issue, having campaigned himself against enhanced interrogation and for the closing of Guantanamo. So he's been -- by necessity and by temperament -- silent in this debate. But where are the others? Are there any conservatives who have a future (as opposed to a past) in politics willing and able to stand up and say to the nation what it already suspects? That Obama's inexperience and desire to "make everyone happy" is putting us at risk? That his world view -- and thus his emerging foreign policy -- is dangerously naive?You have to give Obama credit -- he certainly likes to talk as if he is reasoned and balanced in his approach, that he has command of the vital issues that face us as a nation. He is nothing if not outwardly confident. But this president doesn't deal well with specifics and facts. He's long relied on soaring rhetoric that sounds great but says nothing. Like many liberals, he makes statements of opinion as if they are fact, saying it in such a way that it seems beyond dispute -- but offering no evidence to back it up. As the WSJ editorialized:   The President went out of his way to insist that its existence "likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained," albeit without offering any evidence, and that it "has weakened American security," again based only on assertion. What is a plain fact is that in the seven-plus years that Gitmo has been in operation the American homeland has not been attacked. It is also a plain fact -- and one the President acknowledged -- that many of the detainees previously released, often under intense pressure from Mr. Obama's anti-antiterror allies, have returned to careers as Taliban commanders and al Qaeda "emirs." The New York Times reported yesterday on an undisclosed Pentagon report that no fewer than one in seven detainees released from Gitmo have returned to jihad. Mr. Obama called all of this a "mess" that he had inherited, but in truth the mess is of his own haphazard design. He's the one who announced the end of Guantanamo without any plan for what to do with, or where to put, KSM and other killers. Now he's found that his erstwhile allies in Congress and Europe want nothing to do with them. Tell us again why Gitmo should be closed? President Obama is making things up out of whole cloth and peddling them as fact; he is tremendously vulnerable on these issues, because what he says doesn't pass the simple smell test. Where is the leadership that is screaming this question -- and the attendant risks of doing so -- at the top of their lungs? Why is it Dick Cheney -- a man whose career is over -- shooting the arrows at the president and his party over this?Is this really the best we can do?

Women Warriors & Human Nature: All honor to the fallen Lt. Roz Schulte. Not sure I could have done what she did in life and in death.  But I believe a well-ordered society that respects human nature will treasure its women as irreplaceable life-bearers, biologically and spiritually called to that high role in perpetuating humankind. It will not lower them with training to inflict mass violence or carelessly waste their gift by sending them to kill or be killed.  The occasional warrior queens and heroic fighting women, such as the biblical Deborah or the medieval Joan of Arc, are but the exceptions that prove this rule. Much as I love America, it concerns me that our governance is ever more utopian, ever less attuned to human nature.

"Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the Obama administration had no choice but to order the shutdown of the prison at Guantanamo because 'the name itself is a condemnation' of U.S. anti-terrorism strategy," said a news item this week.  Okay, let's think about this.   Here we have a high official supinely conceding that the Left's poisoning tactics can fatally stigmatize something, anything, they happen to hate -- anything the Left and its slavish media decide to subject to years of constant battering. That poisoning itself now becomes the reason driving US policy.   Isn't this a little circular? Why does the thing-named  (fill-in-the-blank) have to go?  Simply because the Left's stigmatizing and vicious poisoning campaign has been so propagandistically powerful that the very name Guantanamo (or George Bush or Sarah Palin or Dick Cheney) has been damned and demonized into a self-evident "condemnation."   In other words, this admission of the resulting condemnation-effect caused by a hammering hate campaign by the Media and the Left is now being used by Gates, our nation's Secretary of Defense, as the basis for the implementation of a national policy!   By the same token, any Obama spokesman can announce that the very names, Bush or Palin or Cheney or Guantanamo, are sufficient reasons in themselves for those named persons or places or things TO BE CONDEMNED.   This spin-effect originated with Hilter, Stalin, Mao, Ho, Pol Pot, Fidel, and Chavez. But now we see it being openly expressed by the executive branch as a sufficient basis for supporting a national policy---all other rational arguments made from reason MUST BOW AT THE HIP.   The Left is masterful at getting its way with language, self-validating trigger words to engender positive or negative emotions and resultant mindless compliance by the target audience.  Here is a vivid example on the negative side.