Do We Have What It Takes Anymore? Maybe Not

Mark Steyn, in his always insightful way, wonders the same thing. Having read his post in the Sun-Times does give one pause and a good reason to reflect on what America is capable of and willing, or not willing in this case, to do about our present and future enemies. Several of Marks paragraphs jumped out at me but the entire post is well worth reading.

The enemy aren't a bunch of simpleton Pushtun yakherds, but relatively sophisticated at least in their understanding of us. We're all infidels, but not all infidels crack the same way. If they'd done a Spain -- blown up a bunch of subway cars in New York or vaporized the Empire State Building -- they'd have re-awoken the primal anger of September 2001.

The jihad crowd ... employed a craftier strategy. Their view of America is roughly that of the British historian Niall Ferguson -- that the Great Satan is the first superpower with ADHD. They reasoned that if you could subject Americans to the drip-drip-drip of remorseless water torture in the deserts of Mesopotamia -- a couple of deaths here, a market bombing there, cars burning, smoke over the city on the evening news, day after day after day, and ratcheted up a notch or two for the weeks before the election -- you could grind down enough of the electorate and persuade them to vote like Spaniards, without even realizing it. And it worked.

The jihad crowd know that. So instead they employed a craftier strategy. Their view of America is roughly that of the British historian Niall Ferguson -- that the Great Satan is the first superpower with ADHD. They reasoned that if you could subject Americans to the drip-drip-drip of remorseless water torture in the deserts of Mesopotamia -- a couple of deaths here, a market bombing there, cars burning, smoke over the city on the evening news, day after day after day, and ratcheted up a notch or two for the weeks before the election -- you could grind down enough of the electorate and persuade them to vote like Spaniards, without even realizing it. And it worked. You can rationalize what happened on Tuesday in the context of previous sixth-year elections -- 1986, 1958, 1938, yada yada -- but that's not how it was seen around the world, either in the chancelleries of Europe, where they're dancing conga lines, or in the caves of the Hindu Kush, where they would also be dancing conga lines if Mullah Omar hadn't made it a beheading offense. And, as if to confirm that Tuesday wasn't merely 1986 or 1938, the president responded to the results by firing the Cabinet officer most closely identified with the prosecution of the war and replacing him with a man associated with James Baker, Brent Scowcroft and the other "stability" fetishists of the unreal realpolitik crowd.

Still, we are all Spaniards now. The incoming speaker says Iraq is not a war to be won but a problem to be solved. The incoming defense secretary belongs to a commission charged with doing just that. A nostalgic boomer columnist in the Boston Globe argues that honor requires the United States to "accept defeat," as it did in Vietnam. Didn't work out so swell for the natives, but to hell with them.

What does it mean when the world's hyperpower, responsible for 40 percent of the planet's military spending, decides that it cannot withstand a guerrilla war with historically low casualties against a ragbag of local insurgents and imported terrorists? You can call it "redeployment" or "exit strategy" or "peace with honor" but, by the time it's announced on al-Jazeera, you can pretty much bet that whatever official euphemism was agreed on back in Washington will have been lost in translation. Likewise, when it's announced on "Good Morning Pyongyang" and the Khartoum Network and, come to that, the BBC.

For the rest of the world, the Iraq war isn't about Iraq; it's about America, and American will... Meanwhile, the guys who are challenging us right now -- in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea and elsewhere -- are regarded by the American electorate like a reality show we're bored with. Sorry, we don't want to stick around to see if we win; we'd rather vote ourselves off the island.

I'm still not totally convince that the Iraq war is "the" reason that the Republicans lost on Nov. 7 considering the trouncing that Leiberman gave the Democrats hand picked and supported candidate in very blue Connecticut. But Steyns analysis is spot on in what the ramifications and indications are.

New Format Apology

As you may have noticed, I changed the template format of Heard Here. In doing so I inadvertently ended up deleting all the past comments. I'm sorry for that, it was not a house cleaning, they just got lost in the move. Not being a computer geek I am struggling to find several of the features that I had previously and it will take some time to get them back but the past comments are gone forever it seems.
Tom

UPDATE: I think I have it fixed. Fingers crossed.

A Post-Mortem

There seems to be a bunch of these going around the net about "what went wrong?". Most of the gnashing of teeth, rending of clothes and keening while taking the mantle of sack cloth and ashes can be understood. Wrong, but understood. The Republican Party has no one to blame but themselves and the people we sent to Washington. It was, in my opinion, not a failure of the conservative agenda and conservative ideas but a failure of our elected representatives to follow that philosophy. They fell into the trap of feeling safe, bullet proof and their future was insured by their incumbent status. The same hubris that caused the downfall of the Democrats in the 1994 elections. My only consolation is that they recieved a message that they ignore to their own peril and that the ones who kicked their ass were for the most part running on a conservative, albeit Democratic, agenda. We will see is the new class of Blue Dog Democrats can walk the talk and not succumb to the Pelosi, Rangel, Conyers, Waxman ilk and the other far left side of the Party leadership.

More: Another few random thoughts come to mind about the reasons we lost. Our Representatives and Senators didn't seem to have the cojones to fight for what they supposedly believed. They didn't act as leaders and a majority and just wanted to get along and be popular with the inside the beltway crowd of pundits, and their constituents who sent them there be damned. I hope that the ones left learn something about not only talking the talk but walking the walk

Update: Hugh Hewitt has it about right. As does Peter Mulhern. Both are exceptional statements of the point I was so poorly trying to articulate.

Kinsley on Pelosi

Ouch! Michael Kinsley in todays Washington Post has an op-ed about Pelosi and what we can look for if the Dems win the house. Kinsley, a liberals liberal talks about the Democrat platform "A New Direction for America," and he is far from impressed. No wonder he waited till now to give his opinion instead of a week or two ago. I have never been a fan of Kinsley but he is usually a level headed columnist and I do read him often. I wish everyone had read this column prior to the elections.

What would a Democratic House of Representatives under Speaker Nancy Pelosi be like? The Republicans have been painting an unattractive portrait of Democrats roasting young children on a spit in the Capitol Rotunda and whatnot. Hoping for a more encouraging view, I picked up "A New Direction for America," a 31-page manifesto released to little acclaim by House Democrats in June. By all means read it. But do me a favor and vote first.

The document is full of bromides, of course, and like all good bromides, they come in threes. The Democrats promise "security, prosperity, and opportunity" in "diverse, safe, and vibrant communities." Not to mention "integrity, civility and fiscal discipline." They will "protect Americans, secure our borders, and restore our country's position of international leadership" through "homeland, energy, and diplomatic strategies." And we're only up to Page 3.

He is not easy on Bush and company by any means but even he is having a hard time swallowing the Democratic agenda. He concludes with this little jaw dropper.

Honesty is not just therapeutic. Fiscal honesty is a practical necessity. "New Direction" quite rightly denounces the staggering fiscal irresponsibility of Republican leaders and duly promises "Pay As You Go" spending. But in the entire document there is not one explicit revenue-raiser to balance the many specific and enormous new spending programs and tax credits.

Competence, of course, brings us back to Iraq. Apparently and unfortunately, President Bush is right that the Democrats have no "plan for victory." (Neither does he, of course. Nor, for that matter, do I. But I don't claim to have one. And I didn't start it.) For national security in general, the Democrats' plan is so according-to-type that you cringe with embarrassment: It's mostly about new cash benefits for veterans. Regarding Iraq specifically, the Democrats' plan has two parts. First, they want Iraqis to take on "primary responsibility for securing and governing their country." Then they want "responsible redeployment" (great euphemism) of American forces.

Older readers may recognize this formula. It's Vietnamization -- the Nixon-Kissinger plan for extracting us from a previous mistake. But Vietnamization was not a plan for victory. It was a plan for what was called "peace with honor" and is now known as "defeat."

Maybe "A New Direction for America" is just a campaign document -- although it seems to have had no effect at all on the campaign. My fear is that the House Democrats might try to use it as a basis for governing.

Get out there and vote.

It's not Viet Nam, If we leave they will follow

From the American Thinker comes this thought provoking article on the consequences of a cut and run policy in Iraq. It is definately something to keep in mind when considering your vote on November 7.

It doesn’t matter how we got there. It doesn’t matter how you think you were lied to. It doesn’t matter if you think there was a connection between Sadam and Al-Qaeda. The only thing that matters now is that both Al-Qaeda and Iran and the terrorist groups they back and inspire believe that Iraq is their decisive battle. They have chosen it as the place where they will defeat America, and unlike the Viet Cong, they will not stay put. They will follow us home.

Bush opponents like to quote the National Intelligence Assessment which stated that America has been made less safe because its involvement in Iraq has become a recruiting aid for terrorists. That is of course true. But those same people ignore the flip side of that equation, which the National Intelligence Assessment made equally clear. If the Al Qaeda and Iranian backed terrorists win in Iraq they will be further encouraged in their war against us. If they are defeated, then the defeat will go heavy with them; and we will indeed be the beneficiaries.

To put it in its simplest terms, we can quit the battle field but the battle field will not quit us.

It is a powerful reminder of what we are facing and I ask everyone to read it all.

A Look at the Alternative Choice

A Party Adrift On National Security from

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Leadership: Wonder what national security will be like under a Democrat-controlled Congress? Wonder no more. Minority leader Nancy Pelosi and other top Democrats are telling you right now, and it isn't comforting.

Apparently preparing for her accession to speaker of the House after November's election, Pelosi gave an interview Wednesday explaining her views on the war on terror.

If you believe, as we do, that America is engaged in such a global war, and you think it should be prosecuted to the fullest, be afraid — very afraid. For Pelosi made clear she doesn't think the war in Iraq is even part of the war on terror. It's more like a distraction.

"The war in Iraq is the wrong war," she said. "No matter how many times the president wants to say it, the war in Iraq is not the war on terror. The war in Afghanistan was."

That, in a nutshell, is the wisdom of today's Democratic Party, congealed into a semiofficial policy stance. And if Democrats win in November, House leader Pelosi will make it all official.

For the record, the jihadists now sending suicide bombers to create chaos in Iraq don't see it that way. They — and this includes Osama bin Laden — see Iraq as absolutely central to their war aims.

In October, the Director of National Intelligence released a letter from al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri to the now-deceased Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. In it, DNI said, he affirmed the "centrality of the war in Iraq for the global jihad."

"The jihad movement is growing and rising," wrote al-Zawahri. "It reached its peak with the two blessed raids on New York and Washington. Now it is waging a great historic battle in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, and even within the Crusaders' own homes."

He also outlined a four-step plan to restore the lost Muslim caliphate and establish radical Islam's domination across the world.

And what was step one? "Expel the Americans from Iraq."

Yet, somehow, Pelosi and her pals seem to think we can buy peace simply by leaving Iraq or focusing on Afghanistan or coming home. And Democrats think the unpopularity of the war in Iraq will be their winning hole card this November.

Iraq War foe Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., complained Wednesday of the war's "crushing burden" on the Army. Well, just think how crushing it will be if jihadists take over Iraq, and someday get a nuke.

Then there's John Kerry, eyeing another presidential run. On Thursday, he accused President Bush of "cut and run" in Afghanistan — laughable, of course, coming from someone who voted for the war in 2002, then flip-flopped all over the place on supporting it, but who now backs a pullout.

All this serves to undermine the war effort, and for what? One election. This shouldn't be about politics, but many Democrats don't seem to recognize this is World War III. And if they don't agree, they don't have to take our word for it.

"The most important and serious issue today for the whole world is this Third World War," bin Laden said in a special message to Iraq back in December 2004. "It is raging in the land of the two rivers (Iraq). The world's millstone and pillar is in Baghdad, the capital of the caliphate." (Emphasis is ours.)

Those who don't understand this and refuse to fight basically would hand the war on terror to our enemies. This is as inexcusable today as it would have been in World War II.

Would Americans of the Greatest Generation ask their politicians on D-Day, "What does this have to do with Pearl Harbor?" Of course not. Yet, today, that's precisely what the Democrats seem to be doing.

Having seen exactly the same intelligence as the Bush administration, Democrats in October 2002 voted to go to war against Saddam Hussein. It was the right decision then, and remains so today. But when the going got tough, and the far left of their party started screaming, the qualms got the better of them.

We don't know if the next Congress will be Democrat or Republican. But we do know that all other issues pale in comparison to the war on terror .

If the Democrats win in November— which we doubt — they'd better stop posturing and get serious about a war in which our very civilization is at stake. If they don't, they risk disaster — something for which American voters may never forgive them.

Food for thought.

Those Poor GITMO Detainees

Richard Miniter of the NYPost
Has a good inside look at what is being done to torture those poor souls at GITMO. No wonder it has been compared to a gulag and those damned Nazis, by the Democrats.

"ON the military plane back from America's most fa mous terrorist holding pen, the in-flight film was "V for Vendetta," a screed that tries to justify terrorism. It was a fitting end to a surreal, military-sponsored trip.

The Pentagon seemed to be hoping to disarm its critics by showing them how well it cares for captured terrorists. The trip was more alarming than disarming. I spent several hours with Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., who heads the joint task force that houses and interrogates the detainees. (The military isn't allowed to call them "prisoners.")

Harris, a distinguished Navy veteran who was born in Japan and educated at Annapolis and Harvard, is a serious man trying to do a politically impossible job. I spoke with him at length, and with a dozen other officers and guards, and visited three different detention blocks.

The high-minded critics who complain about torture are wrong. We are far too soft on these guys - and, as a result, aren't getting the valuable intelligence we need to save American lives.

The politically correct regulations are unbelievable. Detainees are entitled to a full eight hours sleep and can't be woken up for interrogations. They enjoy three meals and five prayers per day, without interruption. They are entitled to a minimum of two hours of outdoor recreation per day.

Interrogations are limited to four hours, usually running two - and (of course) are interrupted for prayers. One interrogator actually bakes cookies for detainees, while another serves them Subway or McDonald's sandwiches. Both are available on base. (Filet o' Fish is an al Qaeda favorite.)"

Read the whole thing. It is an eye opener. I'll be back later with a piece on the Geneva Convention and why we and our allies are the only ones who try to adhere to it and are the only ones held accountable to those vague standards.. Our emenies never have. Both our present and past ememies.

TWO THOUSAND ONE, NINE ELEVEN (2001-911)

TWO THOUSAND ONE, NINE ELEVEN (2001-911)

Two thousand one, nine eleven
Three thousand plus arrive in heaven
As they pass through the gate,
Thousands more appear in wait
A bearded man with stovepipe hat
Steps forward saying, "Lets sit, lets chat"

They settle down in seats of clouds
A man named Martin shouts out proud
"I have a dream!" and once he did
The Newcomer said, "Your dream still lives."

Groups of soldiers in blue and gray
Others in khaki, and green then say
"We're from Bull Run, Yorktown, the Maine"
The Newcomer said, "You died not in vain."

From a man on sticks one could hear
"The only thing we have to fear.
The Newc omer said, "We know the rest,
trust us sir, we've passed that test."

"Courage doesn't hide in caves
You can't bury freedom, in a grave,"
The Newcomers had heard this voice before
A distinct Yankees twang from Hyannisport shores

A silence fell within the mist
Somehow the Newcomer knew that this
Meant time had come for her to say
What was in the hearts of the five thousand plus that day

"Back on Earth, we wrote reports,
Watched our children play in sports
Worked our gardens, sang our songs
Went to church and clipped coupons
We smiled, we laughed, we cried, we fought
Unlike you, great we're not"

The tall man in the stovepipe hat
Stood and said, "Don't talk like that!
Look at your country, look and see
You died for freedo m, just like me"

Then, before them all appeared a scene
Of rubbled streets and twisted beams
Death, destruction, smoke and dust
And people working just 'cause they must

Hauling ash, lifting stones,
Knee deep in hell, but not alone
"Look! Blackman, Whiteman, Brownman, Yellowman
Side by side helping their fellow man!"

So said Martin, as he watched the scene
"Even from nightmares, can be born a dream."

Down below three firemen raised
The colors high into ashen haze
The soldiers above had seen it before
On Iwo Jima back in '45

The man on sticks studied everything closely
Then shared his perceptions on what he saw mostly
"I see pain, I see tears,
I see sorrow -- but I don't see fear."

"You left behind husbands and wives
Daughters and sons and so many lives
are suffering now because of this wrong
But look very closely. You're not really gone.

All of those people, even those who've never met you
All of their lives, they'll never forget you
Don't you see what has happened?
Don't you see what you've done?
You've brought them together, together as one.

With that the man in the stovepipe hat said
"Take my hand," and from there he led
three thousand plus heroes, Newcomers to heaven
On this day, two thousand one, nine eleven

Author UNKNOWN

What a shame!

Interesting stats

A comparison of achievements.

The Global Islamic population is approximately 1,200,000,000, or 20% of the world population.

They have received the following Nobel Prizes:

Literature:
1988 - Najib Mahfooz.
Peace:
1978 - Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat
1994 - Yasser Arafat

Physics:
1990 - Elias James Corey
1999 - Ahmed Zewail

Medicine:
1960 - Peter Brian Medawar
1998 - Ferid Mourad

The Global Jewish population is approximately 14,000,000, or about 0.02% of the world population.

They have received the following Nobel Prizes:

> Literature:
> 1910 - Paul Heyse
> 1927 - Henri Bergson
> 1958 - Boris Pasternak
> 1966 - Shmuel Yosef Agnon
> 1966 - Nelly Sachs
> 1976 - Saul Bellow
> 1978 - Isaac Bashevis Singer
> 1981 - Elias Canetti
> 1987 - Joseph Brodsky
> 1991 - Nadine Gordimer World
>
> Peace:
> 1911 - Alfred Fried
> 1911 - Tobias Mich ael Carel Asser
> 1968 - Rene Cassin
> 1973 - Henry Kissinger
> 1978 - Menachem Begin
> 1986 - Elie Wiesel
> 1994 - Shimon Peres
> 1994 - Yitzhak Rabin
>
> Physics:
> 1905 - Adolph Von Baeyer
> 1906 - Henri Moissan
> 1907 - Albert Abraham Michelson
> 1908 - Gabriel Lippmann
> 1910 - Otto Wallach
> 1915 - Richard Willstaetter
> 1918 - Fritz Haber
> 1921 - Albert Einstein
> 1922 - Niels Bohr
> 1925 - James Franck
> 1925 - Gustav Hertz
> 1943 - Gustav Stern
> 1943 - George Charles de Hevesy
> 1944 - Isidor Issac Rabi
> 1952 - Felix Bloc h
> 1954 - Max Born
> 1958 - Igor Tamm
> 1959 - Emilio Segre
> 1960 - Donald A. Glaser
> 1961 - Robert Hofstadter
> 1961 - Melvin Calvin
> 1962 - Lev Davidovich Landau
> 1962 - Max Ferdinand Perutz
> 1965 - Richard Phillips Feynman
> 1965 - Julian Schwinger
> 1969 - Murray Gell-Mann
> 1971 - Dennis Gabor
> 1972 - William Howard Stein
> 1973 - Brian David Josephson
> 1975 - Benjamin Mottleson
> 1976 - Burton Richter
> 1977 - Ilya Prigogine
> 1978 - Arno Allan Penzias
> 1978 - Peter L Kapitza
> 1979 - Stephen Weinberg
> 1979 - Sheldon Glashow
> 1979 - Herbert Charle s Brown
> 1980 - Paul Berg
> 1980 - Walter Gilbert
> 1981 - Roald Hoffmann
> 1982 - Aaron Klug
> 1985 - Albert A. Hauptman
> 1985 - Jerome Karle
> 1986 - Dudley R. Herschbach
> 1988 - Robert Huber
> 1988 - Leon Lederman
> 1988 - Melvin Schwartz
> 1988 - Jack Steinberger
> 1989 - Sidney Altman
> 1990 - Jerome Friedman
> 1992 - Rudolph Marcus
> 1995 - Martin Perl
> 2000 - Alan J. Heeger
>
> Economics:
> 1970 - Paul Anthony Samuelson
> 1971 - Simon Kuznets
> 1972 - Kenneth Joseph Arrow
> 1975 - Leonid Kantorovich
> 1976 - Milton Friedman
> 1978 - Herbert A. Simon
> 1980 - Lawrence Robert Klein
> 1985 - Franco Modigliani
> 1987 - Robert M. Solow
> 1990 - Harry Markowitz
> 1990 - Merton Miller
> 1992 - Gary Becker
> 1993 - Robert Fogel
>
> Medicine:
> 1908 - Elie Metchnikoff
> 1908 - Paul Erlich
> 1914 - Robert Barany
> 1922 - Otto Meyerhof
> 1930 - Karl Landsteiner
> 1931 - Otto Warburg
> 1936 - Otto Loewi
> 1944 - Joseph Erlanger
> 1944 - Herbert Spencer Gasser
> 1945 - Ernst Boris Chain
> 1946 - Hermann Joseph Muller
> 1950 - Tadeus Reichstein
> 1952 - Selman Abra ham Waksman
> 1953 - Hans Krebs
> 1953 - Fritz Albert Lipmann
> 1958 - Joshua Lederberg
> 1959 - Arthur Kornberg
> 1964 - Konrad Bloch
> 1965 - Francois Jaco b
> 1965 - Andre Lwoff
> 1967 - George Wald
> 1968 - Marshall W. Nirenberg
> 1969 - Salvador Luria
> 1970 - Julius Axelrod
> 1970 - Sir Bernard Katz
> 1972 - Gerald Maurice Edelman
> 1975 - Howard Martin Temin
> 1976 - Baruch S. Blumberg
> 1977 - Roselyn Sussman Yalow
> 1978 - Daniel Nathans
> 1980 - Baruj Benacerraf
> 1984 - Cesar Milstein
> 1985 - Michael Stuart Brown
> 1985 - Joseph L. Goldstein
> 1986 - Stanley Cohen & Rita Levi-Montalcini
> 1988 - Gertrude Elion
> 1989 - Harold Varmus
> 1991 - Erwin Neher
> 1991 - Bert Sakmann
> 1993 - Richard J. Roberts
> 1993 - Phillip Sharp
> 1994 - Alfred Gilman
> 1995 - Edward B. Lewis

The Jews are not demonstrating with their dead on the streets, yelling
and chanting and asking for revenge; the Jews are not promoting brain
washing the children in military training camps, teaching them how to
blow themselves up and cause maximum deaths of Jews and other
non-Muslims.
The Jews don't hijack planes, nor kill athletes at the Olympics; the
Jews don't traffic slaves, nor have leaders calling for Jihad and death
to all the Infidels. The Jews don't have the economic strength of petroleum,
nor the possibilities to force the world's media to see "their side" of the question. Perhaps the world's Muslims should consider investing more in standard education and less in blaming the Jews for all their problems.

Talk to a Liberal Moonbat