Turning Point???

The National Review Online has paneled a group of writers to respond to a “piece” written by O’Hanlon and Pollack in the New York Times. The reason the NRO is fascinated with NYT “piece” is that the writers have written a “keep the military in Iraq through 2008” type column. The thing that increases the fascination is the source (NYT) and the writers (Liberal Democratic Party leaning critics of the Bush management of the War in Iraq).

JRH 7/31/07
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Turning Point?
An op-ed and a war.

July 31, 2007 5:00 AM
An NRO Symposium

The New York Times ran a piece Monday by two non-“neoconservatives” — Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack — arguing that the war in Iraq can be won. Is this indicative of some kind of mood change afoot? Could we really win this war? Could the rhetoric in Washington really change? National Review Online asked a group of experts.

Frank J. Gaffney Jr.
What are we to make of the fact that two of the Democratic party’s most knowledgeable critics of President Bush’s campaign to stabilize and democratize post-Saddam Iraq, Michael O’Hanlon and Robert Pollack, have publicly rejected the defeatists and called for a sustained U.S. effort there into 2008? The short answer is that they have the wit to recognize mistaken claims that all is lost in Iraq when they hear them — and the courage to say so.

This assessment is remarkable, of course, not only for the fact that its authors are breaking ranks with nearly all of the rest of the Democrats’ foreign-policy establishment. It is also noteworthy for being the latest and, arguably, most objective indicator that the situation on the ground in Iraq is, indeed, changing for the better.

As such, the O’Hanlon-Pollack report makes plain one other truth: Those who persist in denying that General David Petraeus’s counterinsurgency strategy is having the desired, salutary effect and who insist that our defeat is inevitable are promoting a self-fulfilling prophesy. They are so determined to score domestic political points by unilaterally ending the conflict in Iraq that they are prepared to surrender the country to al Qaeda and various Shiite militias and their respective Saudi, Iranian and Syrian enablers.

Public-opinion polling and anecdotal evidence suggests that Americans are beginning to appreciate the true nature — and potentially enormous costs — of the surrender in Iraq being advocated by many Democrats and a few Republicans. The O’Hanlon-Pollack op-ed may reflect that reality as much as shape it. Either way, its authors deserve our thanks.

— Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is president of the Center for Security Policy.

Victor Davis Hanson
What is interesting about the essay is that both scholars were early supporters of the war to remove Saddam Hussein, then constant critics of the acknowledged mistakes of the occupation, and now somewhat confident that Gen. Petraeus can still salvage a victory. In two regards, they reflect somewhat the vast majority of the American people who approved the war, slowly soured on the peace — but now have yet to be won over again by the surge to renew their erstwhile support.

We are witnessing two phenomena. First, after four years of misery the Iraqis themselves are tiring of war, have grasped what al Qaeda et al. do when in local control, realize the U.S. wants to leave only after establishing a constitutional state, not steal its oil, sense that the United States may well win — and are slowly making adjustments to hedge their bets.

In a wider sense, the war is as most wars: an evolution from blunders to wisdom, the side that makes the fewest [blunders] and learns from them the most eventually winning (sic). Al Qaeda and the insurgents in 2004-6 developed the means, both tactical and strategic, to thwart the reconstruction, but we, not they, have since learned the more and evolved.

As in the Civil War, WWI, and WWII, the present American military — which has committed far less mistakes than past American forces — has shifted tactics, redefined strategy, and found the right field commanders. We forget that the U.S. Army and Marines, far from being broken, now have the most experienced and wizened officers in the world. Like Summer 1864, Summer 1918, and in the Pacific 1944-5, the key is the support of a weary public for an ever improving military that must nevertheless endure a final storm before breaking the enemy.

The irony is that should President Bush endure the hysteria and furor and prove able to give the gifted Gen. Petraeus the necessary time — and I think he will — his presidency could still turn out to be Trumanesque, once we digest the changes in Europe, the progress on North Korea, the end of both the Taliban and Saddam, and the prevention of another 9/11 attack. How odd that all the insider advice to triangulate — big spending, new programs, uninspired appointments, liberal immigration reform — have nearly wrecked the administration, and what were once considered its liabilities — foreign policy, the war on terror and Iraq — may still save it.

— Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is the author, most recently, of A War Like No Other. How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War.

Clifford D. May
Yes, Virginia, there are some rational, reasoning liberals. Michael O’Hanlon and Ken Pollack have long been among them. They are serious students of national security. They are Democrats but not hyper-partisans. They are not so willfully self-deluded as to believe that America’s defeat in Iraq would be a problem only for President Bush and those pesky neocons. They understand that America’s defeat in Iraq — at the hands of al Qaeda and Iranian-backed militias — would be hugely consequential for America.

What O’Hanlon and Pollack conclude — “There is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008” — is not exactly breaking news to those who read NRO, The Weekly Standard, and the Wall Street Journal’s editorial pages. It is not news to anyone who has been carefully following developments in Iraq since Gen. David Petraeus was confirmed as the American commander in that theater.
But most Americans have heard only the drumbeat of the antiwar Left. The Left has been banging out the message that the Petraeus mission has failed — since before the Petraeus mission was fully underway. And most of the mainstream media have been unwilling even to suggest an alternative narrative. (A notable exception is the Times’ own John Burns, a reporter who is apparently not read by Times editorial writers.)

So the O’Hanlon/Pollack op-ed is important. It forces the conversation to re-open. Even such media outlets as CNN now have to discuss the possibility that the war in Iraq might yet be won. That may at least give pause to rattled Republicans as well as to rational, reasoning Democrats.
Yes, Virginia, there are such Democrats.

— Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is the president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism.

Senator John McCain
Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack have uncovered a truth that seems to escape congressional Democrats: General Petraeus’s new strategy has shown remarkable progress. Earlier this month, on my sixth trip to Iraq, it was evident that our military is making dramatic achievements throughout the country.

Despite this progress, Democrats today advocate a precipitous withdrawal of American forces from Iraq. They are wrong, and their approach portends catastrophe for both Iraq and the United States. To fail in Iraq risks creating a sanctuary for al Qaeda, sparking a full scale civil war, genocide, and violence that could spread far beyond Iraq’s borders. To leave prematurely is to ensure just one thing: that we will be back, in more dangerous and difficult circumstances. We cannot and must not lose this war.

We must prevail. General Petraeus and his troops have asked Congress for just two things: the time and support they need to carry out their mission. They must have both, however much the congressional Democrats seek to withhold them. That is why I will keep fighting to ensure that our commanders have what they need to win this war.

I cannot guarantee success. But I do guarantee that, should Congress fail to sustain the effort, and should it pay no heed to the lessons drawn by Mr. Pollack and Mr. O’Hanlon, then America will face a historic and terrible defeat. Such a defeat, with its enormous human and strategic costs, will unfold unless we do all in our power to prevent it. I, for one, will continue to do just that.

— John McCain is senior United States senator from Arizona and a candidate for the Republican nomination for president.

Mackubin Thomas Owens
What is most interesting about this article is not what it says, but who is saying it. If a conservative were to write such an article, the skeptics most assuredly would immediately dismiss it as repeating White House talking points. But the fact that two severe critics of the Bush administration’s management of the war — from a think tank usually described as liberal to boot — have published such a piece in the New York Times of all places might, under normal circumstances, give opponents of the war pause.

The security situation in Iraq is clearly improving. The worn-out cliché that an insurgency cannot be defeated by military means alone is true as far as it goes, but security is sine qua non of stability in a counterinsurgency. The fact that the Sunni sheiks have been turning against al Qaeda and the other Salafi groups and the Shia have, to a lesser extent, rejected Sadr’s Mahdi army bodes well for security in the long run.

But does it matter at this point? Time is running out, not in Iraq but in Washington, D.C., where, as more than one commentator has pointed out, the Democratic majority in Congress and the party’s presidential candidates all seem to have opted for defeat and disgrace. Thanks to these geniuses and the Republicans who enable them, we may be on the verge of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

— Mackubin Thomas Owens is an associate dean of academics and a professor of national-security affairs at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. He is writing a history of U.S. civil-military relations.

James S. Robbins
There is no question that on the ground the war is being won. Baghdad is becoming more secure. Iraqi tribal leaders and even some insurgent groups are turning against al Qaeda in Iraq and other outsiders who are pursuing their own violent agenda and who care nothing for the people of Iraq. The activities of Iran, Syria, and other counties supporting the insurgency are coming under increasing scrutiny and public censure. Iraqi military and police forces are fielding thousands of new, trained recruits every month. The government of Iraq may not be addressing all of the legislative initiatives we would like them to, such as the energy law and sorting out power sharing in their federal structure; but it took our country 75 years to come to grips with the contradictions inherent in our Constitution, and with a great deal more violence. We can give them time.

The weak link in the war effort is in the U.S. Congress. Politically driven assessments that downplay the progress of the war, pandering to antiwar groups, and a public that has tuned out, add up to grave difficulties in sustaining the war effort. Given more time, the progress in Iraq will become so clear as to be undeniable, and the troop drawdown could commence on more favorable terms. There is a significant difference between withdrawal in the face of adversity and redeployment after meeting our stated objectives. It is the difference between defeat and victory.

— James S. Robbins is the director of the Intelligence Center at Trinity Washington University and author of Last in Their Class: Custer, Picket and the Goats of West Point. Robbins is also an NRO contributor.

Peter W. Rodman
No one should underestimate the power of boredom as a determinant of journalistic opinion: When doomsaying becomes commonplace, the novelty factor works in favor of optimism. Objective reality is a necessary condition for today’s more hopeful assessments in Iraq, but it is never sufficient. It has been apparent for a while that the president’s “surge” is helping stabilize the military situation. That analysts like Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack are prepared to affirm it clearly after visiting Iraq is to their great credit. Journalists not driven by anti-Bush animus may now want to herd in the more positive direction.

The next question is how our domestic politics will absorb this new perception. On its face, it strengthens the President and complicates the Democrats’ internal divisions. Doomsayers will zero in on Iraqi failures in the political dimension; these failures, I hope, reflect only a time lag before improved security conditions boost the self-confidence and political strength of Iraqi moderates. Those in this country determined on abandoning Iraq will always find excuses. But, finally, the improved mood — and reality — should embolden Republicans to help the president hold the line through the (totally artificial) interim reckoning scheduled for September.

— Peter W. Rodman, a former NR senior editor, is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He served until recently as assistant secretary of Defense for international-security affairs.

Joseph Morrison Skelly
The answer to all three questions posed by this timely symposium is, I believe, a qualified “yes.” With regard to the first query — is there “some kind of mood change afoot?” — it is important to distinguish between the war’s harshest critics, its wavering skeptics, and its steadfast supporters. There has not been a mood change among the war’s vehement antagonists, but the essay by Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack is indicative of a begrudging acceptance of the tentative progress in Iraq by some of the war’s agnostics. While the war’s critics will, alas, never accept the new facts on the ground nor will their demeanor change under any circumstances, something akin to a mood swing among the war’s skeptics will follow continued improvement in Iraq. As this scenario unfolds it is likely that they will catch up with the war’s stalwart supporters, whose faith, long tested by the tough going and long derided by the war’s critics, is now being vindicated.

“Could we really can win this war?” Yes, with victory defined not as perfection, but as a stable Iraq at peace with itself, respectful of its neighbors, and an ally in the War against Islamic Terrorism. After several years of searching for a viable strategy, the United States military, its Coalition allies and its Iraqi counterparts are now waging a campaign based upon some of the tried and tested principles of counterinsurgency warfare that have been newly updated for the twenty-first century. The battle plan is encapsulated in the U.S. Army / Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, which was drafted by a team led by General David Petraeus and is now being published by the University of Chicago Press. Kudos must also go to defense analysts who laid out the theoretical basis for the surge, including Fred Kagan, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a former professor of military history at West Point, and the author of an important new book on this subject, Finding the Target. Most of all, it is the soldiers on the ground who are turning the tide in Iraq. Michael Yon is detailing their success in Operation Arrowhead Ripper in Diyala in a series of compelling dispatches. Further west, the accomplishments of the Marines in Anbar province, with Army and Air Force support, has been remarkable; when the story of this war is written, their victory will loom large.

The momentum on the battlefield means that it is now likely that Operation Iraqi Freedom will be won or lost on the home front in America, thus lending immediacy to the question “Could the rhetoric in Washington really change?” The answer: perhaps. The critics of this war will never alter their tune, since they have so much invested in failure. But the rhetoric of the skeptics may change gradually. Like the national mood, it will be influenced by events on the ground.

Should progress continue, people will wish to be associated with it. We will thus witness the truth inherent in the well known adage, “Victory has a hundred fathers, but defeat is an orphan.”
Count Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini’s foreign minister, first used this formula in 1942 as World War II inexorably shifted against the Fascists, and President John F. Kennedy paraphrased it in 1961 after the Bay of Pigs debacle, increasing the number of fathers to one thousand. During the trying times of the past several years, President Bush has often stood alone in Washington, the orphaned architect of what many critics assumed to be a certain defeat, but perhaps he will soon be joined by the city’s skeptics, whose rhetoric will improve as they align themselves with the vast majority of Americans who already believe we can win. Some may view their reaction as cynical, and to a certain extent this is true, but it is also natural, people wish to be linked with success. Welcome the skeptics aboard. What matters in the long run is that we win. When that happens, victory in Mesopotamia will have not one hundred or one thousand, but millions of fathers, American and Iraqi alike, all of whom can take pride in what they have achieved.

— Joseph Morrison Skelly is an academic fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C.

Michael Yon
I am in broad agreement with most of the article by O’Hanlon and Pollack and, in fact, have been reporting in writing, on national radio, and most recently on Good Morning America that I have been seeing remarkable positive changes in Iraq.

I asked General Petraeus last night for his opinion of the current situation. General Petraeus responded with: “Our assessment at this point is that we have begun to achieve a degree of momentum on the ground in going after AQI sanctuaries and in disrupting the activities of some of the militia extremists; however, AQI continues to try to reignite ethno-sectarian violence and clearly still has the capability to carry out sensational attacks that cause substantial civilian loss of life. And the militia elements certainly continue to pursue sectarian displacement in certain fault-line areas and to cause trouble in some Shia provinces as well. So there’s clearly considerable work to be done by Coalition and Iraqi Security Forces. Beyond that, the spread of Sunni Arab rejection of AQI is very important and is a development on which we are still trying to capitalize beyond Anbar Province, where the effects are already very clear.”

In fact, I have had the feeling for more than a month that top U.S. leadership in Iraq has been being cautious not to show too much optimism at this time. However, I have seen changes with my own eyes in Nineveh, Anbar, and Diyala that are more fundamental than just winning battles. In Nineveh, the enemies of a united Iraq are still strong and vibrant, but the Iraqi army and police in Nineveh clearly are improving faster than the enemy is improving. In other words, the Iraqi Security Forces are winning that particular race. Out in Anbar, the shift actually began to occur last year while Special Forces and other less-than-visible operators, along with conventional forces such as the Marines, began harnessing the mood-shift of the tribes. Whereas in Nineveh the fight has been more like a race and test of endurance, in Anbar the outcome was more like an avalanche. Parts of Diyala, such as Baqubah, witnessed avalanche-like positive changes beginning on June 19 with Operation Arrowhead Ripper. I witnessed the operation and was given full access. However, other areas in Diyala remain serious problems. I have seen firsthand many sectarian issues. There remains civil war in parts of Diyala (largely thanks to AQI). Down in Basra, a completely different problem-set faces the British who themselves are facing tough choices.

Skipping past the blow-by-blow and getting to the bottom line: I sense there has been a fundamental shift in Iraq. One officer called it a “change in the seas,” and I believe his words were accurate. Something has changed. The change is fundamental, and for once seems positive. And so, back to the O’Hanlon-Pollack story in the New York Times, “A War We Just Might Win,” I agree.

— Michael Yon is an independent writer, photographer, and former Green Beret who was embedded in Iraq for nine months in 2005. He has returned to Iraq for 2007 to continue reporting on the war. He is entirely reader supported and publishes his work at www.michaelyon-online.com.
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© National Review Online 2006-2007. All Rights Reserved.

Stanislav Shmulevich: Hate Crime or Misdemeanor?

I have to post something about this Stanislav Shmulevich who through a Quran or two into the toilet at a college Library.

I understand that Shmulevich is a Jewish Ukrainian that has lived in America since childhood. Although he was not registered at the college this term he was about to graduate and I presume he had taken some time off for whatever reason.

Shmulevich was caught in October 06 in the act of trashing the Quran in the toilet (or Qurans, I did not read clearly on that issue), yet it was just a week or so he was arrested and charged under the equivalent of Hate Crime Statutes. I have read the by-lines that Bill O’Reilly agrees that Shmulevich should be charged for hate crimes for his actions. I mention that because I am an O’Reilly fan and usually side with Mr. Fair & Balanced.

This time O’Reilly and the authorities have screw-up greatly! Shmulevich on video did indeed commit a crime. The crime was at worst destruction of public (or private) property. A court of law cannot adjudicate a crime that was in the mind of an individual but only the actual act of the crime. If America were into arresting people for thoughts of hatred then Mohammedans, Leftists or even artists could be arrested.

I am completely dissatisfied that this can be a hate crime charge. I mean there are Mohammedan Sunnis and Shi’ites in America which act out public protests that say death to Israel, death to America, death to Jews, death to those who insult Islam and on and on and on. Where are the hate crime arrests in these instances? One does not need to have the thought police to understand the public rabble rousing of hatred in the minds of those Mohammedans.

YET Shmulevich trashes a Quran or two and is arrested. Incidentally Shmulevich was arrested by a Mohammedan cop that has received all kinds of awards from Mohammedan organizations with ties to foreign terrorists like Hamas. The Council on American-Islamic Relations comes to mind. CAIR members are linked to funding Hamas with money via charity and Hamas is on the State Department terrorist list.

Read the interesting details from Hot Air Blog.

Free Border Patrol Agents Ramos and Compean!

I am a huge fan of the writing of Mark Alexander of the Patriot Post (and contributor to other blogs as well). I am on the Patriot Post email list (which is free). I strongly recommend that you take part in the free subscription.

Below is a petition from the Patriot Post gathering signatures to commute the Sentence of Ignacio Ramos, Jose Compean and Guillermo Hernandez.

I have been following the unjust conviction status of Ramos and Compean, but I have to admit I know little of Hernandez’s circumstances. Ramos and Compean were convicted by the Prosecution and the Judge teaming up to prevent exculpatory evidence to be admitted in their trial. It has also been revealed that Johnny Sutton the U.S. Attorney General actually withheld evidence of exoneration. I also might mention that the whole ball of prosecution began at the request of the Mexican Government (known for its corruption).

Below is the Petition request:

JRH 7/29/07
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Free Border Patrol Agents Ramos and Compean!

Patriot Post
Mark Alexander Publisher


Make your voice heard TODAY!

Please join fellow Patriots and sign "Free the Texas Three and Secure our Borders" -- A citizen petition calling on President Bush to commute the sentences of both former Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean, and their colleague, former Sheriff’s Deputy Guillermo Hernandez; asking Congress to insist that the DEA prosecute Mexican national Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila on felony drug-distribution charges; and demanding that Congress and the Bush administration secure our borders.

"It is not honorable to take mere legal advantage, when it happens to be contrary to justice." --Thomas Jefferson

To sign this petition online, link to --http://PatriotPetitions.US/borders

If you don't have Web access, you can sign this petition by sending a blank e-mail to: <sign-borders@PatriotPetitions.US>

Please forward this invitation to Patriot family members, friends and associates. So far, we have over 43,000 signatures, but in order to encourage serious consideration of this critical issue, we must collect in excess of 100,000 signatures.

(Circulation of this petition is being sponsored by The Patriot, the most widely read conservative journal on the Internet. If you have not already joined the ranks of Patriots receiving The Patriot, we encourage you to do so. This highly acclaimed conservative digest of news, policy and opinion will be delivered FREE by e-mail to your inbox each week. Simply link to -- http://PatriotPost.US/subscribe/

PRIVACY POLICY: Patriot Petitions is not a commercial site and does NOT release any identifiable information on our petitioners to any third party under any circumstances, nor do we accept any third-party advertising to our lists.)

Judge Munley Adjudicates That Cities Cannot Make Laws Pertaining to Illegals

Mayor Louis J. Barletta of Hazelton, PA became fed up with illegal immigrants in his city after two illegal aliens fatally shot an American citizen. He was so upset that this could happen from foreigners in America illegally that he encouraged his city of thirty thousand to pass an ordinance making it tough for illegal aliens to live in Hazelton, PA.

The city ordinance was billed as the “Illegal Immigration Relief Act.” Its design was to make it tough for Land Lords to rent to illegal immigrants thus making it tougher for illegal aliens to reside in Hazelton.

CHECK THIS OUT! On Thursday July 26 U.S. District Judge James Munley overturned Hazelton’s “Illegal Immigration Relief Act” on the grounds that a city could not enforce the rule of law that is the charge of State and Federal authorities.

What is that? The law is the law! Munley had to write 206 pages to establish his judicial ruling. And no surprise here: Democratic Party candidate for President Senator Obama praised the Munley ruling.

What is it about a Leftist Judiciary and Leftist Politicians that want to allow the flow of illegal immigrants to the harm of American citizens?

Fred's Federalism

Here is a post from Curt of Flopping Aces about Fred’s Federalism. Curt was disturbed about the report of Spencer Abraham (a Christian Arab/American who has been a lobbyist for Islamist regimes and organizations) as Fred’s Campaign Manager. I was disturbed by that report as well.

Curt has read some recent writings from Fred about Federalism and has convinced himself that Fred’s Campaign Manager does not necessarily reflect Fred’s policy views.

I am still on the fence as I read the pros and cons of Fred’s controversial choice of Spencer Abraham as his new high roller Campaign Manager.

JRH 7/29/07

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Fred's Federalism

Posted by Curt

Flopping Aces

July 28, 2007 at 10:35 AM

On the heels of Fred's perplexing choice for campaign manager we get a editorial written by him that puts me back into his camp. Fred's Federalism

The Framers drew their design for our Constitution from a basic understanding of human nature. From the wisdom of the ages and from fresh experience, they understood the better angels of our nature, and the less admirable qualities of human beings entrusted with power.

The Framers believed in free markets, rights of property and the rule of law, and they set these principles firmly in the Constitution. Above all, the Framers enshrined in our founding documents, and left to our care, the principle that rights come from our Creator and not from our government.

We developed institutions that allowed these principles to take root and flourish: a government of limited powers derived from, and assigned to, first the people, then the states, and finally the national government. A government strong enough to protect us and do its job competently, but modest and humane enough to let the people govern themselves. Centralized government is not the solution to all of our problems and – with too much power – such centralization has a way of compounding our problems. This was among the great insights of 1787, and it is just as vital in 2007.

The federalist construct of strong states and limited federal government put in place by our Founders was intended to give states the freedom to experiment and innovate. It envisions states as laboratories in competition with each other to develop ideas and programs to benefit their people, to see what works and what does not.

He then notes how, over the last few decades, our government has ignored the ideals of federalism, even though federalism responds better to the will of the people:

Federalism is not an 18th century notion. Or a 19th century notion. It retains its force as a basic principle in the 21st century, because when federalism is ignored, accountability, innovation, and public confidence in government at all levels suffer.

It is as true today as it ever was: the closer a government is to its people, the more responsive it is to the felt needs of its constituencies. Too often, however, state and local leaders have to answer to federal bureaucrats first and their constituents second. When the federal government mandates a program that states and localities are forced to implement, or when a federal grant program is created to fund a specific state or community need, it blurs the lines of accountability.

[...]I’ve been saying it for years, and it bears repeating: what works in Tennessee may not work in Nebraska and may be different from what succeeds in Oregon. That’s why President Ronald Reagan compared federalism to letting a thousand sparks of genius in the states and communities around this country catch fire. It’s not a perfect system, but it works a lot better than the alternative of central planning.

We need to allow local authorities to apply their own good ideas and use their own good judgment. Each state can find its own way, learning from the successes and failures of the others. There is a wealth of creativity and initiative out there in the states, and often the best ideas in Washington started out as state initiatives.

[...]When you hold firm to the principles of federalism, there’s another advantage: our federal government can better carry out its own defining responsibilities – above all else, the security of our nation and the safety of our citizens. Sometimes I think that our leaders in Washington try to do so many things, in so many areas, that they lose sight of their basic responsibilities.

He then lays out how we can go back to the way it should be:

A good first step would be to codify the Executive Order on Federalism first signed by President Ronald Reagan. That Executive Order, first revoked by President Clinton, then modified to the point of uselessness, required agencies to respect the principle of the Tenth Amendment when formulating policies and implementing the laws passed by Congress. It preserved the division of responsibilities between the states and the federal government envisioned by the Framers of the Constitution. It was a fine idea that should never have been revoked. The next president should put it right back in effect, and see to it that the rightful authority of state and local governments is respected.

The man gets it. The federal usurpation of state powers is at the root of many of our problems today and his fix is quick and easy.

SlantRight Editor: You really need to click to the Flopping Aces link to this post. The comments about Fred’s Federalism are well thought out responses (as of the time I read them anyway). Some of the comments agree with Curt and some do not: all of the comments were perspectives to dwell on.

I am still on the fence about Fred. Until yesterday, I was firmly behind Fred. I still need to read some more input on how Spencer Abraham will influence Fred.

Jihad Spence: Fred Thompson's Pan-Islamist Campaign Manager

 
 

Well I have been waiting for some media bad news on Fred Thompson but I way did not expect this! Here is some poop on Fred Thompson from anti-jihadist Debbie Schlussel via the anti-jihadist website the American Congress for Truth (email list).

Here is the pre-article hint: Fred Thompson has hired Arab-American (Lebanese Christian) Spencer Abraham as a campaign manager. Although Abraham has Christian roots Schlussel documents wide connections to Islamist and Hezbollah sympathies.

I don’t know about you but that is a huge dent in the armor of my Thompson admiration. I guess I will wait for the rebuttal from pro-Thompson supporters on hiring Abraham; however personally I am raising red flags to examine.

JRH 7/28/07
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Jihad Spence: Fred Thompson's Pan-Islamist Campaign Manager

By Debbie Schlussel
American Congress for Truth (Email List)
July 27, 2007

He hasn't entered the Presidential race yet, but Fred Thompson, yesterday, showed us why he's the scariest Republican Presidential candidate. And maybe the scariest of both parties.

Don't believe Thompson's claim that he understands the Islamist jihadist threat to America. His announcement, yesterday, of his choice of Spencer Abraham as campaign manager, told us everything we need to know. Although Abraham, of Lebanese descent, is a Christian, he is a career water carrier for Islamists of the most extremist stripe and made that the cornerstone of his failed, one-term Senate career and equally lousy tenure as Energy Secretary.

As a conservative--but more important, as an American concerned about the future of this country in the face of a terrorist threat--Thompson's choice of Spencer Abraham was the final nail in the coffin for me in opposing Fred Thompson's quest for the White House.

I know Spencer Abraham. He wrote one of my recommendations for law school. And the Spencer Abraham that I and all of America have since experienced is bad news for everyone except CAIR, ADC, MPAC, ISNA, and all Islamists who want to endanger America.

In 2003, I wrote the definitive column on Spencer Abraham a/k/a Spence a/k/a Edward Spencer Abraham (which was quoted in The Washington Post), and I re-publish it below, with several additions I've made, updating it. At the time Spence was still Energy Secretary, but he left to become a lobbyist for Islamist countries.

As a Senator, he took marching orders from James Zogby of the pan-Islamist Arab American Institute, opposing profiling of Arabs, the use of secret evidence against Muslims (at the behest of Muslim groups), attempting to repeal the Clinton counterterrorism package, refusing to fund computer tracking of student and other foreign aliens, giving millions in our tax money right to Hezbollah, and putting CAIR on the map on Capitol Hill (taking the group's officials around to meet other Senators and Members of Congress). He took campaign contributions from the relatives of Hezbollah-backed top Lebanese officials after he got the group millions in our tax money.

Spence was one of only two Senators in the entire U.S. Senate who refused to sign a letter calling on President Clinton to condemn Palestinian terrorism and Yasser Arafat. This was at the height of a series of homicide bombings in Israel in 1999 and 2000.

As Energy Secretary, he gave top secret tours of nuclear facilities, as well as detailed information on how we secure them to Muslim nations who are our enemies. And he gave out undue post-9/11 awards to Al-Qaeda money-launderers . . . at the White House. The money launderers were raided by U.S. Customs Service agents.

After he left the Bush cabinet, Spence became a lobbyist for Mid-Eastern Muslim countries that practice the Arab boycott of Israel and don't really like us too much either. He took their money and until the Thompson race, did their bidding.

Do you really support a guy, Fred Thompson, who picked this man to head up his team? Either Thompson is clueless about Abraham, which should immediately disqualify him for the White House and frighten all of us about how he makes decisions. Or he knows about Abraham, and went with him anyway. Just as bad. If you want to say no to jihad, you WILL say NO to Fred Thompson. He chose, and now we must choose against him:

JIHAD SPENCE: Bush's Dangerous Energy Secretary is Now Fred Thompson's Campaign Manager

Since the Blackout of 2003, he's gotten lots of TV face time. But should U.S. energy policy be entrusted to Spencer Abraham?

In 2000, President Bush said his Cabinet would "look like America," nominating Abraham, the defeated Lebanese-American Senator from Michigan, to Energy Secretary--part of the Bush strategy targeting the Arab vote.

But was this political strategy in the best interest of the country? Abraham's record suggests otherwise.

In the two years since 9/11, Abraham did absolutely nothing to improve our precarious electric power situation.

That would be bad enough.

But, since 9/11, Abraham continued a controversial UN-sponsored program allowing foreign visitors from countries on the State Department terrorist list to tour U.S. nuclear reactors. A course sponsored by the UN International Atomic Energy Agency, taught by U.S. nuclear weapons lab security personnel, gives tours of Nuclear Regulatory Commission facilities and teaches participants from 57 countries--including Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia--security techniques employed at American nuclear sites. "They were teaching them to black out systems, which they could use against us at labs," an official told a popular newssite. This was reported on extensively by investigative reporter Paul Sperry, author of "Infiltration."

The Clinton Administration taught the course to foreign representatives, too. But that was pre-9/11. In the post-9/11 era, Abraham irresponsibly continued it, despite protests.

Then there's Jamal Barzinji. Abraham enlisted him to find parties who helped and reached out to Muslims after 9/11, with Abraham hosting an awards ceremony for them. Problem is, Barzinji is an officer and/or director in SAFA Trust, Mar-Jac Poultry, and International Institute for Islamic Thought, all raided by Customs in March 2002 for laundering over $1.7 billion to Al-Qaeda and Islamic Jihad (through University of South Florida terrorist professor and Islamic Jihad founder and frontman, Sami Al-Arian).

More troubling is Abraham's Senate record, ignored by his former Senate colleagues in an easy confirmation hearing.

Should a Senator who deliberately endangered national security for Arab/Muslim votes and campaign money be entrusted to oversee U.S. energy policy and access?

Abraham's frightening national security record included:

Liberal immigration policy, including lax foreign visitor tracking, at the behest of Arab/Muslim groups; Tried to End Profiling, Secret Evidence Use Against Terrorists

Abraham was Senate Immigration Subcommittee Chairman through the end of 2000. Abraham routinely caved to the demands of Arab/Muslim leaders, such as the Arab American Institute's James Zogby, on national security matters, especially immigration.

"Ever since (I first met) him, Abraham has been coming to us and giving advice, support and the benefits of his leadership," Zogby told The Detroit News.

And taking Zogby's advice, too.

Abraham actively worked to delay computer systems to track foreign visitors, which Arab/Muslim groups, including Zogby's, strongly opposed. 1996 immigration law required computerized entry and exit tracking of all temporary visas, but was gutted by Abraham and other legislators. They refused to allocate money for the program and delayed its full implementation until 2005. In 2000, Abraham, as Chairman of the Immigration Subcommittee, delayed implementation of other requirements of the 1996 immigration measure, including university-assisted enforcement student visa laws and collection of fees from foreign students to pay for computer tracking.

These programs might have prevented the Sept. 11 attacks. But Abraham desperately craved the Arab/Muslim vote in Michigan.

Abraham also sponsored and pushed for the repeal of the use of secret evidence against terrorists, a vital portion of the Clinton counterterrorism package. He also sought to outlaw profiling of Arabs and Muslims by federal law enforcement.

Foreign aid funding for Hezbollah, rewarded by pseudo-foreign campaign contributions
In July 2000, Abraham sought over $268 million in tax-funded USAID grants for Hezbollah terrorist-controlled Southern Lebanon, at Arab American Institute's Zogby's request. Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah, has targeted and murdered many Americans. Millions in similar USAID grants (which have scant strings and accountability attached) to Afghanistan were misspent on Taliban terrorist activities. Abraham enlisted Michigan Republican Congressman Joe Knollenberg, on the House International Relations Committee, to push the questionable aid package in the House. They ended up obtaining $86 million, which went straight to Hezbollah and which was never tracked thereafter. They knew this, and that's why they and Zogby sought the money for their Hezbollah friends.

Abraham and Knollenberg were repaid for their efforts, receiving thousands in campaign contributions from Nijad Fares, the Houston-based greencard-holding son of Syrian-backed Lebanese Deputy Prime Minister Issam Fares.

Soft on terrorism

Abraham was one of only two U.S. Senators who refused to sign an October 2000 letter to President Clinton condemning terrorist acts by Yasser Arafat and the P.L.O.

Abraham led the nearly successful June 2001 attempt to reverse the use of classified evidence against terrorists, sponsoring the legislation at the behest of Islamist groups, including the American Muslim Association (AMA) and the American Muslim Political Coordination Council (AMPCC), both headed by Agha Saeed.

In July 1999, Abraham wrote to Saeed, AMA, and AMPCC asking their support: "Your efforts are truly needed in the political arena. . . . You can truly make a difference in the political and policy arenas, and I remain committed to helping you achieve that goal."

But Saeed openly praised Palestinian terrorism as "armed resistance" and appeared at lectures and events sponsored by Hamas front groups, including one panel, in which he was joined by the indicted Al-Arian, entitled: "Zionism: A Racist and Colonialist Ideology." AMA-sponsored events featured these exhortations: "The trees and the stones will say, oh Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me. Come and kill him!" "Victory comes from Allah and Hezbollah is our model." "Hear that, Bill Clinton? We are all supporters of Hamas."

Given Spencer Abraham's record of kowtowing to Arab, Muslim, and foreign interests on virtually every national security issue, his hegemony at Energy is disturbing. He should control no form of power--political or electric.

__________________
Every day, American Congress for Truth (ACT) a 501c3 non-profit organization is on the front lines fighting for you in meeting with politicians, decision makers, speaking on college campuses and planning events to educate and inform the public about the threat of Islamofascism.

If General Patton Were Alive Today …

Okay. I have said recently America needs to find a military leader with the mindset of General Patton. Shortly after I wrote those words Hannity and Colmes showed a brief sanitized clip of a parody of General George Patton (under the guise of the movie Patton re-dubbed) giving his most famous speech to his troops.

BY GOD LISTENING TO THE YOUTUBE PATTON EVOKED JOY IN BEING AN AMERICAN!

Watch the video knowing it is a martial dedication to the troops fighting for your freedom yet be forewarned, the language is in the spirit of Patton – it is R rated.



Here is the original speech from the movie Patton. God in Heaven I loved that movie! Every Lefty in America should be strapped to a chair and forced to watch the movie repeatedly until they get it.

Thomas Sowell: Moral Paralysis

Thomas Sowell hits the nail on the head when he speaks of “Moral Paralysis.” Sowell runs down the comparison of the Western Democracies and Hitler’s Nazi Germany. In essence there were many moments that England and France could have stepped into Germany’s military build-up and prevented WWII.

Sowell points out that France in particular had a much superior military in 1936 over Germany. If France had reacted militarily to the German invasion of the Rhineland, Hitler had given secret orders to retreat immediately.

What was France’s reaction to Hitler’s taking of the Rhineland? The reaction of negotiation! Does that sound familiar today?

The Western Democracies of Europe and the Democratic Party of America are frozen by the same “Moral Paralysis” of pre-WWII in relation to Iran. I could also mention the United Nations; however that international organization is contaminated by a Mohammedan espousalized freeze of Debased Paralysis. My meaning being that the U.N. is absolutely ineffective in executing its charter for global peace for it supports the causes of violent Islamism over the sensibility of Western Style (American style in particular) Democracy.

How long will the West negotiate Iran into a psycho Shi’ite nuclear military power capable of adventurism to bring about their hoped for chaos to hurry along the return of their hidden imam – The Mahdi?

Hillary's War with the Pentagon

Apparently Hillary is attempting to make a connection of guilt by association with Bush on the operation of the War on Terror. Hillary sent a letter to the Pentagon asking about time tables and exit strategies. Hmm … You would think that public Letter would go to Bush as the top dog of the Executive Branch.

Under Secretary of Defense Eric S. Edelman replied to Hillary’s Letter.

At the Democratic Debate Hillary twisted the Letter exchange alluding that the Pentagon had accused her of being unpatriotic for asking such questions. I am certain the Democratic fringe oohed and awed on how Hillary allegedly exposed the Pentagon of Right Wing diminishment of Senator Hillary Clinton the wife of a former President (skirt chaser).

Read the real story that exposes Hillary as a lying manipulator that may indeed a horrible manager in the Executive Branch if elected President (God forbid!):

JRH 7/27/07
************************************************
Hillary's War with the Pentagon


By Roger Aronoff
July 26, 2007
Accuracy in Media


Hillary Clinton has decided that, in order to look presidential, she needs to pick a fight. Her spat with Senator Barack Obama over meeting with foreign leaders is the latest example. Before that, she falsely claimed that the Pentagon had accused her of being unpatriotic. This phony controversy, fanned and inflamed by the media, says more about Hillary than it does about the Pentagon. Would she, as president, deliberately pursue policies that embolden the enemies of America?

Is she too reckless and irresponsible in foreign affairs to be Commander-in-Chief?

During the CNN/YouTube debate, Mrs. Clinton claimed that "…I asked the Pentagon a simple question: have you prepared for withdrawing our troops? In response, I got a letter accusing me of being unpatriotic¯that I shouldn't be asking questions."

This is an exaggeration that tells us a lot about Hillary's approach. She wants the public to believe that she is being picked on. Can't she take the heat?

In fact, Under Secretary of Defense Eric S. Edelman had told Senator Clinton in a letter that the Pentagon is always "evaluating and planning for possible contingencies" but that "long-standing departmental policy" is that "operational plans, including contingency plans are not released outside of the Department."

He also told her that "Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United states will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon, and Somalia. Such talk understandably unnerves the very same Iraqi allies we are asking to assume enormous personal risks in order to achieve compromises on national reconciliation, amending the Iraqi Constitution, and other contentious issues."

Today Secretary of Defense Robert Gates released a letter he wrote to Sen. Clinton in an attempt to ratchet down the controversy, stating that Congressional oversight is both "appropriate and essential," and does not "embolden our enemies." At the same time, he did not repudiate Edelman and insisted that Edelman had not impugned her motives or her patriotism.

Tough Questions

Many questions about the war should be asked. For example, why isn't the Bush Administration holding Iran accountable for killing our troops in Iraq? Why is the Bush Administration not confronting China about sending weapons to insurgents in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan through Iran?

But these questions are based on the premise that the U.S. should win the war. The Hillary approach is to assume that we will lose it and that we should get out in a public way that signals to the rest of the world our demise as a superpower.

Hillary's May 22 letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates had asked that he provide Congress with briefings "on what current contingency plans exist for the future withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq." On the other hand, she said, if no such plans exist, "please provide an explanation for the decision not to engage in such planning." And rather than merely having asked, as she said on CNN, "a simple question" about withdrawing our troops, she declared that "it is imperative that the Department of Defense prepare plans for the phased redeployment of U.S. forces."

Two days later, she was one of just 14 Senators who voted against a bill to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, because the bill didn't include a timeline for withdrawal from Iraq.

Media Controversy

The Edelman July 16th response letter became a hot topic in the news and the blogosphere. For her part, Hillary sent a follow-up letter, complaining to Secretary Gates about Edelman and wondering whether Gates shared his view.

Associated Press called the Edelman letter "a stinging rebuke" from the Department of Defense. The article said that DOD told her "that her questions about how the United States eventually plans to withdraw from Iraq boosts enemy propaganda."

But this was misleading. The Pentagon's point was that public discussions about operational details of withdrawal are destabilizing and demoralizing to our allies.

Taking the Hillary line, Fred Kaplan of Slate.com said that Edelman "all but accused of her (sic) treason for asking to be let in," and suggested it was "an insult" to all Senators. On the low-rated CBS Evening News, Katie Couric erroneously reported that "the Pentagon is lashing out tonight at Hillary Clinton."

But if you read the actual letter, instead of the one paragraph that keeps getting quoted, it is not a stinging rebuke at all, but rather a statement of the administration's policy and judgment. Kaplan's piece in Slate actually linked back to a 2006 article of his own for the Atlantic magazine which documented that in fact contingency plans for withdrawal from Iraq already existed at that time.

Contingency plans are just that. There are lots of contingency plans that are made, but not acted upon unless certain developments occur.

The unstable Keith Olbermann of MSNBC ranted on in defense of Sen. Clinton, with full quivering lip and trembling outrage. "A spokesman for the senator says Mr. Edelman's remarks are 'at once both outrageous and dangerous,'" said Olbermann. "Those terms are entirely appropriate and may, in fact, understate the risk the Edelman letter poses to our way of life and all that our fighting men and women are risking, have risked, and have lost, in Iraq."

A threat to our way of life? Olbermann is obviously over the edge, an embarrassment to MSNBC and parent company GE.

Strangely, however, with his nightly dispensing of red meat to the Bush haters and the far left, and his unwillingness to bring on guests with opposing points of view, his show has become MSNBC's highest rated prime time show, even though he gets only about a fourth of the viewers on average of his archenemy Bill O'Reilly. This is the market Hillary played to with her phony charge that the Pentagon was accusing her of being unpatriotic.

Joining the Hillary bandwagon, commentator Juan Williams responded that he felt the letter was "intended to chill the political discussion and debate over the war, and that's anti-democratic." He called it scare tactics.

One who cut through the fog was Lt Col Bill Cowan, a Fox News consultant and former senate staffer, as well as a true military hero. He was on the O'Reilly Factor on July 20, and said, "The letter she [Hillary] got from Secretary Edelman was about as vanilla a letter as can be written in this town. There was nothing whatsoever directed at her personally. It was a typical, almost standard, form letter…Nothing at all in there to imply that he was impugning her motives, her intentions, or anything."

Cowan said that Clinton had made an error. He said that "…she's entitled to ask these kinds of questions. But to publicly ask these questions and to expect a public disclosure of the plan is unacceptable."

The controversy casts doubt on Hillary's qualifications to be president. She knows that operational details of military activities are not shared with Congress. But she asked for them anyway, in an attempt to act tough with the Pentagon brass. When they replied with the facts, she whined and cried foul.

Demands from Hillary and other Senate liberals for military details like this undermine the effort to win the support of the Iraqis. The local people have to make calculations. Do they want to support us, at the risk of retaliation from those who want us to fail? Or do they want to join their enemies, or stay on the fence? The key for the U.S. and its allies is winning the Iraqis' confidence.

If Hillary were serious about this, and not trying to grandstand, she would approach the Pentagon privately and through the appropriate channels. But the asking of such questions publicly by a prominent senator who is running for president, and who might win, is a signal to the world of pending defeat. It says to Iraqis that if Hillary Clinton wins the White House, the U.S. is out of Iraq, no matter what the consequences.

The indignation from Clinton and her backers to the Edelman letter is insincere and her request was irresponsible. It is apparently okay for them to attack the patriotism and judgment of President Bush and his administration. But when an official of the Pentagon makes a simple observation that disclosing national security information helps the enemy, this is considered offensive and improper and an unfair attack on Mrs. Clinton.

This controversy comes at a time when Hillary has calculated that she needs to make her move to the left, pandering to the MoveOn and DailyKos far-left wing of the Democratic Party. In doing so, as a New York Newsday article points out, she is fudging the truth about when she made the shift from supporting the war to opposing it.

The Future

It appears that Senator Clinton wants the U.S. to lose, while the Bush Administration continues to hold out the hope of winning in some fashion. Columnist Charles Krauthammer proposes The 20 Percent Solution, a plan to work with and arm the Sunnis so they can fight and defeat al Qaeda and the foreign Jihadists, and then be in a position to co-exist with the Shi'ite majority. Even the New York Times has acknowledged "astonishing success" in the predominantly Sunni Anbar province.

Journalist and historian Victor Davis Hanson explained the implications of a precipitous withdrawal. "It is not easy securing Iraq, but if we decide to quit and 'redeploy,' Americans should at least accept that the effort to stabilize Iraq was a crushing military defeat, that our generation established a precedent of withdrawing an entire army group from combat operations on the battlefield, and that the consequences will be better known even to our enemies than they are to us."

For his part, President Bush on July 24 in Charleston, South Carolina, called for "complete victory" in Iraq. But AIM Editor Cliff Kincaid points to evidence of a no-win strategy in which Iraq is turned over to the U.N. And the aforementioned Lt Col Bill Cowan points out that a loss in Iraq would be a victory not only for al Qaeda, but even worse, it would mean "an Iranian victory in Iraq."

Meanwhile, a CBS-New York Times poll found that 62% agree that it was right to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Slightly over half of those think we should have left shortly after completing that mission. But over half now want to give the surge a chance to succeed before deciding what step to take next.

The mischaracterization of this Edelman-Clinton exchange has been stunning in the pattern of consistency in which it has been reported. It is an example of the support Clinton has in the media, and the willingness to distort a story to make the Bush administration look bad and for Clinton to be both a victim and a foe of the administration on the war. While President Bush prematurely declared "Mission Accomplished" in May of 2003, after toppling Saddam and scattering his uniformed forces, Hillary Clinton is premature in her assertion that the war cannot be won and that all that's left to decide is how we pull out.

___________


Roger Aronoff is a media analyst with Accuracy in Media, and is the writer/director of "Confronting Iraq: Conflict and Hope." He can be contacted at roger.aronoff@aim.org

© 2007 Accuracy In Media, All Rights Reserved.

Border Patrol Agents Fear doing Job Due to Potential Prosecution

This is a fascinating motive for prosecuting Border Patrol Agents for doing their job. Apparently when foreign governments ask for retribution after Border Patrol Agents nab suspects for breaking American laws (e.g. drug smuggling or illegal entry), the Executive Branch of the American government complies by ordering the prosecution of Border Patrol Agents. This is happening to the tune of even withholding exculpatory evidence that either provides reasonable doubt or outright exonerates a Border Patrol Agent of charges brought against him or her.

So here is the picture: Border Patrol Agents have a mandate to protect the American Border (Canadian and Mexican) from illegal entry and smuggling (whether that is drugs, human trafficking, spies, terrorists or whatever). In the course of their duties a suspect or perpetrator may flee or use violence to withstand apprehension. If the Government representing the foreigner is unhappy with how the American Border was protected, they ask the American Government for some sort of satisfaction. The satisfaction seems to be the prosecution of the Border Patrol Agent or Agents involved in an incident.

If that scenario is used against Border Patrol Agents it hand cuffs their mandate to protect the American Border. The expected result is the free flow of drugs, espionage and terror cell across the American Border – WHY? Because a Chinese Communist Government or a corrupt Latin American Government or a hidden agenda Mohammedan Nation Government complains to the State Department or to the Bush Administration.

That is NUTS!

This is the reason former Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean are in jail. It is the reason that former Border Patrol Agent Robert Rhodes was unsuccessfully prosecuted. AND it is probably the reason behind the spate of firings of U.S. Attorney Generals recently. This is speculation on my part but a few of these U.S. Attorney Generals that were fired for poor performance or managerial conflicts may have been the result of the desire to follow the rule of Law rather than the political agenda of smoothing over a diplomatic issue of the State Department.

I suspect Robert Rhodes was made the patsy in his case for his sexual preference: Rhodes is an overt homosexual. If you read my blogs you know I am not a huge fan of the immorality of homosexuality; however I am huge fan of justice and the rule of Law. Following the wishes of a foreign government is crazy. A homosexual may be out of line in expecting their alternate lifestyle to be accepted as mainstream morality (as opposed to Biblical Morality); however it is not illegal to be a practicing homosexual. Rhodes became penniless paying the defense that exonerated him from all charges. Rhodes is suing for 25 million bucks for his unjust prosecution. I hope he wins.

As for Ramos and Compean, now I understand as to why President Bush will not pardon them. They are the victims of foreign diplomacy: The kind of foreign diplomacy that does allow drug smuggling and probably allows the entrance of terrorists on to American soil.

American MSM Give Forum to American Enemies

America is at War. It is currently called the War on Terror. If one disagrees with the decision to engage in War that is their Constitutional right. However it is not a Constitutional right to undermine the government’s ability to wage the War that was Congressionally approved with the President.

My God fellow Americans giving aid to the enemy during War is treasonous is it not?

Well check this out: some of the biggest publishers of the Mainstream Media (MSM) have given a voice to Jihadists as a forum to justify their hatred and their reason for War with America (and probably Israel).

Excuse me: I don’t care how Leftist or how much a Leftist hates Bush for engage Terrorists after years of attacks against American resources and military assets only for the final straw of toleration to be snapped with an attack on America’s Homeland murdering thousands of American men, women and children.

Was Bush wrong to engage Terrorists? NO! Bush should have gone after more rogue States harboring Terrorists than just Afghanistan and Iraq.

Was Bush wrong on his choice of strategy to achieve a goal of victory? YES! Just because Bush screwed up strategically does not mean America surrenders, it means the strategy or leadership must change. A leadership change does not mean finding defeatists who wish to surrender, it means finding leadership to carry out a strategy that ends in American Victory. Losing should never be an option for America. We need a General Patton attitude about spilling the blood of the enemy and not tolerating the enemy to spill American blood (the sanitized version, Patton would have been more graphic).

God bless America and shut down the MSM that supports the enemies of America. Freedom of the Press is not the freedom to undermine American morale. The MSM should be exposing the character of Jihadists not providing them a forum. The Jihadist has their own media to spread their lies and opinions.

Go to Counterterrorism Blog to read the specifics of this heinous abuse of First Amendment Freedom of Speech and the Freedom of the Press.

The Surge and Local Iraqi Cooperation

Apparently Sunni and Shi’ite tribal Sheiks/Chieftains are growing wearing of al-Qaeda. They are beginning to help America’s coalition of the willing against al-Qaeda. Also it appears there dissention among the al-Qaeda itself in Iraq: junior level al-Qaeda members are growing weary of the brutality executed against their fellow Mohammedans. The result has been many al-Qaeda members are informing to America on al-Qaeda plans.

And still the Democrats lamely say to give up on the war in Iraq.

Read David Limbaugh’s thoughts on al-Qaeda disarray, local Iraqi support for the American military and the continuing Democratic Party assailment on the War on Terror in Iraq.

Norman Podhertz on Iran and Neocon Profile

Norman Podhertz is a man I highly respect. He is a reason that I still lean toward being a Neocon. Podhertz perceives who the enemy is and calls for victory – the extreme prejudice kind of victory in which the rules of war is to engage the enemy to its utter destruction.

It sounds harsh however if the War on Terrorism is continued to be fought with namby pamby rules of engagement it will last for decades until someone figures out the obvious to win. Just as the Allies figured it out to win WWII against Axis Authoritarian regimes of Germany, Japan and Hitler military puppet Italy.



Norman Podhertz biography (with a mention of a few other Neocons) from International Relations Center – Right Web:

JRH 7/25/07
***************************************

(This is really an anti-neocon website; however their exposition is concise and non-vindictive.)

Aside from Irving Kristol, few of the writers and ideologues associated with neoconservatism can claim as lasting an influence on the political faction as Norman Podhoretz, the longtime editor of Commentary magazine and an adjunct fellow at the rightist Hudson Institute. Under his editorship, which lasted from 1960 to 1995 (he is now editor at large), Commentary became the quintessential mouthpiece of the neoconservatives, serving as a soapbox from which Podhoretz and like-minded writers shaped the contours of what he called the neoconservative "tendency" as it began to emerge in the late 1960s and early 1970s. From that platform, Podhoretz and others lambasted the anti-war movement, extolled the virtues of military power, attacked "appeasers" like George McGovern, and condemned the supposed amorality of the counterculture and of liberal social policies. Podhoretz also cofounded the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) in the mid-1970s to serve as a pressure group aimed at fighting back the politics of détente with the Soviet Union and championing a fierce anti-communism that became the central theme of the early presidency of Ronald Reagan.

Discussing Podhoretz's influence, Andrew Bacevich writes in his 2005 book The New American Militarism: "Once his own fling with sixties radicalism ended, Podhoretz launched a 'scorched-earth campaign against the New Left and counterculture.' From his editorial command post at Commentary ... Podhoretz did much to create and refine the fiercely combative neoconservative style. That style emphasized not balance (viewed as evidence of timidity) or the careful sifting of evidence (suggesting scholasticism) but the ruthless demolition of any point of view inconsistent with the neoconservative version of truth, typically portrayed as self-evident and beyond dispute" (p. 72).

In his writings, Podhoretz commonly explicated themes associated with neoconservatism, including its constant preoccupation with weakness, the centrality of the Holocaust, the belief in U.S. exceptionalism, and the view that U.S. military force is a unique arbiter of good in global affairs. For Podhoretz, the Vietnam War was the new "Munich"—"the self-evident symbol of a policy that must never be followed again." (Munich is the classic symbol of appeasement because it is where Neville Chamberlain of Britain and other leaders agreed in 1938 to allow Adolf Hitler to take control of land in Czechoslovakia, thus fostering Nazi expansion.) The debacle in Vietnam had resulted in the lessening of the possibility of the United States wielding its military power, a result that Podhoretz considered potentially catastrophic. As he wrote in 1982: "The survival not only of the United States but of free institutions everywhere in the world depends on a resurgence of American power." Thus, he and other neocons in the 1970s, including his wife Midge Decter, struggled to overcome the post-Vietnam "malaise" in U.S. culture, which they thought was expressed in the counterculture and the "appeasement" polices of both the Nixon and Carter presidencies (quotes in this paragraph cited in Bacevich, pp. 74-75).

Podhoretz gained a reputation while at Commentary for overusing Holocaust imagery to describe contemporary events. Remarking on Podhoretz's work, Peter Novick, author of The Holocaust in American Life, writes: "Once one starts using imagery from that most extreme of events, it becomes impossible to say anything moderate, balanced, or nuanced; the very language carries you along to hyperbole ... Anyone who scoffed at the idea that there were dangerous portents in American society had not learned 'the lessons of the Holocaust.'" This preoccupation also found expression in neoconservatives' views on Israel. As Decter once wrote while criticizing politicians whom she felt were not sufficiently supportive of Israel: "In a world full of ambiguities and puzzlements, one thing is absolutely easy both to define and locate: that is the Jewish interest. The continued security—and in those happy places where the term applies, well-being—of the Jews, worldwide, rests with a strong, vital, prosperous, self-confident United States" (cited in Gerson, Neoconservative Vision, p. 165).

Describing the sharp neoconservative reaction to perceived anti-Semitism in the United Nations following the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the conservative scholars Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke argue that a consensus gradually emerged among key neoconservatives like Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Irving Kristol, and Podhoretz that "America and Israel ... shared a common ideological struggle against common enemies. The 1970s saw the vague consensus of neoconservatism ... wrap itself tightly around the belief that America must have a self-assured and robust elite, which must be willing to employ U.S. power promptly and resolutely, if need be, and prepared to stand up to the USSR along with its anti-American and anti-Semitic allies at the UN and beyond" (Halper and Clarke, America Alone, p. 60).

For Podhoretz and his cohorts, the world is in a constant state of crisis. Living under this constant threat demands a stark choice between "surrender or war," as Podhoretz once wrote when criticizing the Carter administration (cited in Bacevich, p. 77). Near the end of the 1980s, as the Soviet Union began to crumble, Podhoretz's Commentary continued to warn of impending doom from the Soviets. In 1987, he published an article by Eugene Rostow, which argued: "The Soviet program of indefinite expansion achieved by the aggressive use of force ... [is still] the central problem ... of world politics and American national security." A year later, the French writer Jean-Francois Revel wrote in Commentary that glasnost was a ruse: "It is an instrument through which [Gorbachev] can consolidate his own power by using the press to indict and, little by little, eliminate his predecessors' men" (quotes from Ehrman, p. 175).

With the end of the Cold War, Podhoretz quickly joined forces with a second generation of neoconservatives who began championing a new U.S. interventionist policy, a notion that found preeminent expression in Charles Krauthammer's 1990 Foreign Affairs article, "The Unipolar Moment," which argued that the United States should take advantage of its position as the unique global superpower to impose its priorities across the world. Unlike some of his contemporaries, such as Robert Tucker and Irving Kristol, Podhoretz fully embraced this new campaign, which eventually coalesced around the many ideologues who created the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) in 1997. Podhoretz signed PNAC's founding statement of principles, which called for a "Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity" that would ensure "American global leadership." It added: "we need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles."

After 9/11, Podhoretz became one of the most prominent supporters of the view, initially dreamed up by neoconservative academic Eliot Cohen, that the United States was fighting World War IV. In a 2004 Commentary article, Podhoretz opined: "We are only in the very early stages of what promises to be a very long war, and Iraq is only the second front to have been opened in that war: the second scene, so to speak, of the first act of a five-act play. In World War II and then in World War III [the Cold War], we persisted in spite of impatience, discouragement, and opposition for as long as it took to win, and this is exactly what we have been called upon to do today in World War IV."

He added, employing that old standby of Holocaust imagery: "For today, no less than in those titanic conflicts, we are up against a truly malignant force in radical Islamism and in the states breeding, sheltering, or financing its terrorist armory. This new enemy has already attacked us on our own soil—a feat neither Nazi Germany nor Soviet Russia ever managed to pull off—and openly announces his intention to hit us again, only this time with weapons of infinitely greater and deadlier power than those used on 9/11. His objective is not merely to murder as many of us as possible and to conquer our land. Like the Nazis and Communists before him, he is dedicated to the destruction of everything good for which America stands."

In a 2002 speech at the American Enterprise Institute, Podhoretz borrowed a line from George Kennan's famous 1947 article "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," which argued for a policy of containing and rolling back the Soviet Union, to describe the war on terror. Replacing the words "Russian-American relations" in the original with "Islamic terrorism," Podhoretz said: " The thoughtful observer of Islamic terrorism will ... experience a certain gratitude for a Providence which, by providing the American people with this implacable challenge, has made their entire security as a nation dependent on their pulling themselves together and accepting the responsibilities of moral and political leadership that history plainly intended them to bear."

Podhoretz is the author of several books, including The Norman Podhoretz Reader: A Selection of his Writings from the 1950's through the 1990's (2003); The Prophets: Who They Were, What They Are (2002); My Love Affair with America (2000); Ex-Friends (1999); The Bloody Crossroads: Where Literature and Politics Meet (1986); Why We Were in Vietnam (1982); Making It (1980); The Present Danger; Breaking Ranks: A Political Memoir (1979); and Doings and Undoings: The Fifties and After in American Writing (1966).

Last Updated: March 27, 2007
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Hudson Institute, Staff Bio: Norman Podhoretz, http://www.hudson.org/learn/index.cfm?fuseaction=staff_bio&eid=PodhNorm.

Andrew Bacevich, The New American Militarism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

Mark Gerson, The Neoconservative Vision (Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1997).

Charles Krauthammer, "The Unipolar Moment," Foreign Affairs, Winter 1990/1991.

John Ehrman, The Rise of Neoconservatism: Intellectuals and Foreign Affairs 1945-1994 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995).

Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, America Alone: The Neoconservatives and the Global Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

Norman Podhoretz, "World War IV," Commentary, August 17, 2004.

Norman Podhoretz, "America at War," speech at the American Enterprise Institute, February 13, 2002.

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Published by the International Relations Center (IRC, online at http://www.irc-online.org/). Copyright © 2007, International Relations Center. All rights reserved.

Recommended citation:"Norman Podhoretz," Right Web Profile (Silver City, NM: International Relations Center, March 27, 2007).

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Production: Chellee Chase-Saiz, IRC

Copyright © 2007, International Relations Center. All rights reserved.
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