A Real Chest Beating

So I'm over at Resist.net discussing the drug war with a guy who says I'm peddling hopelessness by showing how the narcos already control the government. I don't exactly see it that way:

If you don't face the problem you can't fix it. We can overthrow the narcos tomorrow by legalization. That one is easy. In theory. In practice too many on the right refuse to surrender (in the drug war) to win.

The purpose of the narcos in government is to maintain prohibition. If they can't do that they have nothing to do.

Will it fix the drug problem? No. Will it even fix the crime problem? No. But like alcohol legalization the crime problem will be reduced.

Then Skip chimes in to give me some advice:

For God's sake, don't you realize that if we admit imminent defeat and stop beating our chests, waiving our flags, and whining about dem Dems, then nobody will ever descend from the heavens and save our patriotic souls from Obama and his minions. Please don't jinx the fantasy. It is the narcotic that numbs the pain of our talk-big-but-do-little-or-nothing reality.

Well I had some choice words for Skip.

OK Skip,

You got me there.

Lulz. !!!!11!!!!!

Sometimes a good sound defeat sows the seeds of victory. Think of Pearl Harbor. It made the carrier the center of our Naval doctrine. Because that was all we had. The Japanese didn't catch on until it was too late for them.

Or think of the Raich decision on Med-Pot. The social conservatives got their way and because of it we are still stuck with the Wickard vs. Filburn decision which essentially gave the Federal Government control over every nook and cranny of our economy. The social conservatives got their victory. And it is still costing them.

Here is a book that covers Wickard and some other cases:

The Dirty Dozen: How Twelve Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom

Guess Who Said This

Try this on for size:

As for the question of whether the surge is working, I can only state what I witnessed: U.N. staff and those of non-governmental organizations seem to feel they have the right set of circumstances to attempt to scale up their programs. And when I asked the troops if they wanted to go home as soon as possible, they said that they miss home but feel invested in Iraq. They have lost many friends and want to be a part of the humanitarian progress they now feel is possible.

It seems to me that now is the moment to address the humanitarian side of this situation. Without the right support, we could miss an opportunity to do some of the good we always stated we intended to do.

Who said it? Angelina Jolie

H/T Insty

Why I'm Not A Libertarian

Libertarians talk a good game on national defense but hate all wars. Libs do not get that wars are a series of disasters leading to victory. They don't have the bottom to ride out the disasters and turn them around. They have turned into Copperhead Democrats.

They don't get the American Jacksonian tradition.

I'm a Jacksonian - which is why I could never be a Libertarian Party member with the party in its current form. Who is the Jacksonian in the race for president? Who said:

"We are Americans and we will never surrender, they will."

That man will be the next President of the USA.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

We Will Not Let It Fall To Violence

SFC SKI commented on my post The Objective - Iraq. The SFC makes some good points about the security situation in Iraq. To which I responded:

Thanks so much for the comment!!

You say:

You really can't split Iraq's security problems along internal and external, they are intertwined to a tremendous extent.

Agreed. However, what I was thinking of was more about a division of labor. Americans do primarily border security. Iraqis do mainly internal security.

With the whole job ultimately being handed over to the Iraqis - when they are ready.

As to the spineless in Congress. I think they are one termers. Think of the '72 elections when we elected Nixon (a truly vile man) over his anti-war Democrat rival.

The most important thing to be done in winning this war is that more soldiers like you speak out. You don't even have to blog. Comments on blogs are equally helpful.

BTW I'm sure it is too far above your pay grade, but our war leaders are really letting us down by not getting more news and views of the troops out.

War is 3/4s morale. The DOD and the President are letting the home front down.

The message is simple:

There is a democratically elected government in Iraq under attack by the disgruntled, by Nazi emulating Baathists, and by external forces. This Iraqi government may fall at the next election. We will not let it fall to violence.

Cross Posted at Classical Values and at The Astute Bloggers

Clinton On Iraq

Christopher Hitchens has a fine piece on the trajectory of our war with Iraq.

...it was on the initiative of President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore, both of whom delivered extremely tough speeches warning of another round of confrontation with Saddam Hussein, that the Senate passed the Iraq Liberation Act that year, making it U.S. policy to remove the Baathists from power. It was the Clinton administration that bombed Sudan, claiming that a factory outside Khartoum represented a chemical-weapons link between Saddam and Osama Bin Laden. And, as Sen. Clinton reminded us in the very same speech, it was "President Clinton, with the British and others, [who] ordered an intensive four-day air assault, Operation Desert Fox, on known and suspected weapons of mass destruction sites and other military targets" in Iraq. On its own, this is enough to make childish nonsense of her insinuation that an "obsession" with Saddam took root only after the Bush-Cheney victory in 2000.

This just in: Clinton calls for pullout starting in 90 days.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the early front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, has called for a 90-day deadline to start pulling American troops from Iraq.

Clinton, the wife of former President Bill Clinton, has been criticized by some Democrats for supporting authorization of the war in 2002 and for not renouncing her vote as she seeks the U.S. presidency in next year's election.

H/T Instapundit and Don Surber and a commenter at Ann Althouse.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Murtha Has A Plan

Murtha has a plan for American defeat in Iraq. MoveCongress.Org says John Murtha will speak to them about removing support for our troops and thus ending the War in Iraq. Evidently they would prefer genocide followed by a full scale Middle East War. MoveCongress has spoken and here are their words.

The Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense has begun consideration of the president’s $93 billion supplemental appropriations request for Iraq. Action on the request will be the first opportunity for the new Congress to exercise its “power-of-the-purse” over the Iraq war.

Chairman Murtha will describe his strategy for not only limiting the deployment of troops to Iraq but undermining other aspects of the president’s foreign and national security policy. Chairman Murtha discusses these steps in a videotaped conversation with former Congressman Tom Andrews (D-ME), the National Director of the Win Without War coalition, sponsor of MoveCongress.org.

Join us here tomorrow for this exclusive interview.

The bolding was by me. Also note that the offending sentence can no longer be found at MoveCongress. I wonder why? Well, it is a big web with eyes and ears everywhere.

Why do I feel this is 1936 all over again?

And now, on March 7, 1936, while France had only a caretaker government, Hitler, not fearing the League being used against him, sent troops into the Rhineland. According to the Versailles and Locarno treaties the Rhineland was to remain demilitarized. The move defied these agreements but was popular in Germany - an issue of national sovereignty - the Rhineland being a part of Germany. But Hitler's generals were concerned. Germany's army was still not ready for combat. Hitler had assured his generals that they could withdraw at the first sign of a counter move by France's army, but he had taken measure of the pacifism in France and Britain and was confident that France and Britain would do nothing. His move into the Rhineland caused a sensation and the world waited to see what France and Britain would do.

Bolding again mine.

The UN is corrupt and will do nothing. The enemies of liberty advance with the help of our anti-war folks. Did some one say 1936?

Churchill, in the House of Commons, declared the remilitarization of the Rhineland to be a triumph for Hitler. He spoke of the danger to parliamentary nations from heavily armed dictatorships. He complained that Britain was confronting dictators "without weapons or military force" and that the spirit of British people was being tamed and cowed "with peace films, anti-recruiting propaganda and resistance to defense measures."
Fear of the Left in France

In May, 1936, elections in France brought to power a new coalition government, called the "Popular Front" - a coalition that included Communists - who were responding to the Soviet Union's new policy of allowing alliances with anti-fascists. After only a few days in office, France's new government announced its intentions to improve working conditions - which, along with wages in France, lagged behind other advanced industrialized nations. Labor leaders were emboldened by the Popular Front's victory. They were impatient and wanted to demonstrate their power, so they sent their workers out on strike, aggravating everyone but labor and the Left.

The head of the new government was Leon Blum, the leader of France's Socialist Party. Rightists in France wondered whether Hitler conquering France would be any worse than the Left in power in France, Rightists knowing that Hitler would suppress the Left. The expressions "better Hitler than Blum" and "better Hitler than Stalin" were heard.

What good are weapons and military force if you can't use them? Churchill was of course in great dismay over the British situation in 1936. Had he been in America today he would have been livid.

Churchill did have one nice thing to say about America. "Americans can always be depended upon to do the right thing --- after they have tried everything else."

He was right, but it is going to cost us. Dearly.

You can hear what John Murtha has to say at Google Video.

Mark Levin has an excellent rant on Murtha [audio].

Murtha has me frosted. So I'm adding a bit more on this crook.

The Washington Times calls the Murtha plan a plan for defeat.

In the wake of September 11, McGovernism -- that is, the reflexive opposition to the use of force by the United States against foreign enemies that has dogged the Democratic Party since Richard Nixon's time -- became more of a liability than ever. At least, it appeared that way judging from the 2002 and 2004 election results. But in last year's congressional elections, the Democrats came up with a shrewd, cynical new P.R. strategy that has until now served them well: saying lots of nice things about American soldiers fighting in Iraq while simultaneously advancing resolutions that denigrate their mission. But the decision to effectively cut off funds by micromanaging their use -- rather than by doing so directly -- may also be unconstitutional.

When the House votes today on the resolution denouncing Mr. Bush's plans for additional troops to combat al Qaeda and other terrorist groups in Iraq, members should be under no illusions about what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the Democratic Party leadership are trying to do: to make it impossible for American troops to properly do their job in Iraq.

The battle going on in Iraq is still in doubt. It may be in doubt for a number of years. Insurgencies are not defeated over night.

Sweetness and Ligght has some good quotes:

By Richard Cowan and David Alexander

WASHINGTON, Feb 15 (Reuters) - U.S. Rep. John Murtha, a leading congressional opponent of the war in Iraq, on Thursday said his plans for placing conditions on how President George W. Bush can spend $93.4 billion in new combat funds would effectively stop an American troop buildup.

"They won’t be able to continue. They won’t be able to do the deployment. They won’t have the equipment, they don’t have the training and they won’t be able to do the work. There’s no question in my mind," the Pennsylvania Democrat said.

Lovely. If our troops need help the cavalry will not be on the way.

Murtha says he was once a Marine. I'll agree with that. He is a Marine no longer.

"We’re trying to force a redeployment not by taking money away, by redirecting money," Murtha said, adding he wants U.S. funds to be slanted more toward diplomacy and Iraq reconstruction…

Now why would John "I coulda been a crook" Murtha want to redirect the money? His brother is a defence lobbyist. Perhaps he will have some say in how these redirected funds will be spent. Ya think?

Further reasearch shows Murtha's Military Medals may have been unearned.

"Of course Congressman Saylor wanted to help if he could, but there was nothing in the service record to indicate the wounds were of any severity and the documents specifically indicated that next of kin was not notified in either instance," Fox told the Herald-Standard in 1996. "We were amazed that Mr. Murtha was asking for Purple Hearts for superficial lacerations," he added.

I guess Murtha belongs to the John Kerry squad of war heros.

The Captain's Quarters has some thoughts on Murtha's slow bleed of American troops.

H/T Instapundit

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Readiness For What?

The Democrats have a strategy for defeat in Iraq.

Top House Democrats, working in concert with anti-war groups, have decided against using congressional power to force a quick end to U.S. involvement in Iraq, and instead will pursue a slow-bleed strategy designed to gradually limit the administration's options.

Led by Rep. John P. Murtha, D-Pa., and supported by several well-funded anti-war groups, the coalition's goal is to limit or sharply reduce the number of U.S. troops available for the Iraq conflict, rather than to openly cut off funding for the war itself.

The legislative strategy will be supplemented by a multimillion-dollar TV ad campaign designed to pressure vulnerable GOP incumbents into breaking with President Bush and forcing the administration to admit that the war is politically unsustainable.

I wonder if after our pull out it becomes necessary to retake Iraq to prevent genocide, will that be politically sustainable?

No doubt Democrats have the courage of their convictions.

"What we have staked out is a campaign to stop the war without cutting off funding" for the troops, said Tom Mazzie of Americans Against Escalation of the War in Iraq. "We call it the 'readiness strategy.'"

Readiness for what?

Certainly not readiness to defeat our jihadi enemies. It is 1936 all over again.

This move by the Democrats will not shorten the war against the jihadis. It will make it at least ten times bloodier for them and us.

H/T Instapundit

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Let's Do It On the Cheap

Dr. Sanity is discussing denial. She says that it is a cover for something we don't want to look at. Hiding under the covers.

The most interesting thing to me is in the comments.We have alleged Muslim Supremacists and good old American Defeatists. Commenter Phoenix comments on a post farther up the thread including a dig at the Muslim:

"Jesus talked of love. You talk of denial. And he lived in a world far more brutal than this one."

Sidney,

How can you say Jesus lived in a world far more brutal thing this one? That's nuts. Any era that has embraced wishful thinking and denial has been a brutal era. That means we've had nothing but increasing brutality from BCE to now. Jesus didn't have a thing to do with the brutality other than to think he could mitigate it by love. And to think that love might have engendered brutality? No, never, I'm sure you'd say. Men never kill in the name of their religion, right? Whatever. The thing we know for sure is that we can now kill many more with much greater efficiency. That's a fact not based on denial or wishful thinking. Hmmm.... I wonder if that's considered a truth? Hell if I know....

Phoenix - 01.19.07 - 8:35 pm

So I replied to Phoenix:

En fuego!

Which if you think about it is kind of a pun.

===========

To the rest:

Want to know how America can fight when it gets pissed?

Look at the campaign against the Japanese in the Pacific - WW2 after the first 3 months.

No quarter asked, none given. Shoot the wounded.

Nuke 'em if they complain.

Really, you had better hope we suceeded on the cheap, because it could go much worse for the bastards.

Do you suppose they are listening? Is De Nile a river in Egypt?

Cross Posted at Classical Values