POINT OF NO RETURN?

Thomas Sowell is one of the most estimable of Americans. A man of so many achievements must be taken seriously. Here's his "take" on the situation we're in today.
Is all lost? I think not, but it's a close call, and we're running out of time. We need to understand the nature of the War we're in, and unfortunately, at least half of us are oblivious. We cannot be defeated, if we fight, but if we will not, then as those with The Will achieve The Means, they WILL destroy us.

Nobody says it better, or more clearly.

Point of No Return?
By Thomas Sowell

It is hard to think of a time when a nation -- and a whole civilization -- has drifted more futilely toward a bigger catastrophe than that looming over the United States and western civilization today.

Nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran and North Korea mean that it is only a matter of time before there are nuclear weapons in the hands of international terrorist organizations. North Korea needs money and Iran has brazenly stated its aim as the destruction of Israel -- and both its actions and its rhetoric suggest aims that extend even beyond a second Holocaust.

Send not to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.

This is not just another in the long history of military threats. The Soviet Union, despite its massive nuclear arsenal, could be deterred by our own nuclear arsenal. But suicide bombers cannot be deterred.

Fanatics filled with hate cannot be either deterred or bought off, whether Hezbollah, Hamas or the government of Iran.

The endlessly futile efforts to bring peace to the Middle East with concessions fundamentally misconceive what forces are at work.

Hate and humiliation are key forces that cannot be bought off by "trading land for peace," by a "Palestinian homeland" or by other such concessions that might have worked in other times and places.

Humiliation and hate go together. Why humiliation? Because a once-proud, dynamic culture in the forefront of world civilizations, and still carrying a message of their own superiority to "infidels" today, is painfully visible to the whole world as a poverty-stricken and backward region, lagging far behind in virtually every field of human endeavor.

There is no way that they can catch up in a hundred years, even if the rest of the world stands still. And they are not going to wait a hundred years to vent their resentments and frustrations at the humiliating position in which they find themselves.

Israel's very existence as a modern, prosperous western nation in their midst is a daily slap across the face. Nothing is easier for demagogues than to blame Israel, the United States, or western civilization in general for their own lagging position.

Hitler was able to rouse similar resentments and fanaticism in Germany under conditions not nearly as dire as those in most Middle East countries today. The proof of similar demagogic success in the Middle East is all around.

What kind of people provide a market for videotaped beheadings of innocent hostages? What kind of people would throw an old man in a wheelchair off a cruise liner into the sea, simply because he was Jewish? What kind of people would fly planes into buildings to vent their hate at the cost of their own lives?

These are the kinds of people we are talking about getting nuclear weapons. And what of ourselves?

Do we understand that the world will never be the same after hate-filled fanatics gain the ability to wipe whole American cities off the face of the earth? Do we still imagine that they can be bought off, as Israel was urged to buy them off with "land for peace" -- a peace that has proved to be wholly illusory?

Even ruthless conquerors of the past, from Genghis Khan to Adolf Hitler, wanted some tangible gains for themselves or their nations -- land, wealth, dominion. What Middle East fanatics want is the destruction and humiliation of the west.

Their treatment of hostages, some of whom have been humanitarians serving the people of the Middle East, shows that what the terrorists want is to inflict the maximum pain and psychic anguish on their victims before killing them.

Once these fanatics have nuclear weapons, those victims can include you, your children and your children's children.

The terrorists need not start out by wiping our cities off the map. Chances are they would first want to force us to humiliate ourselves in whatever ways their sadistic imaginations could conceive, out of fear of their nuclear weapons.

After we, or our children and grandchildren, find ourselves living at the mercy of people with no mercy, what will future generations think of us, that we let this happen because we wanted to placate "world opinion" by not acting "unilaterally"?

We are fast approaching the point of no return

WHERE DID IT GO WRONG, GEORGE?

Gerard Baker, a friend of America, in today's London Times Online, has a devastating, perhaps slightly overstated, critique of U.S. foreign policy entitled: "It sounded so good to start with, But where did it all go wrong, George?" Read the whole thing, but in line with today's earlier post, "Failure of the Will," it finishes this way:

...the US could take the risk of alienating the world and discarding international law only if its leadership was going to be effective. Instead its leadership has been desultory and uncertain and tragically ineffective.

It tried unilateral pre-emption in Iraq, but never really had the will to see it through. So with Iran, it went all mushy and multilateralist. In Lebanon, it thought it would cover all the bases - start by aggressively supporting Israel, then go all peacenik, holding hands with the UN in a touching chorus of Kumbaya.

Now we have the worst of all worlds. Not only is the US despised around the globe, it can't even make its supposed hegemony work.

It's one thing to be seen as the bully in the schoolyard; it's quite another when people realise the bully is actually incapable of getting anybody else to do what he wants. It's unpleasant when people stop respecting you, but it's positively terrifying when they stop fearing you.

What we have now is a situation in which the world's only superpower, with the largest economic and military advantage any country has ever enjoyed on Earth, is pinned down like Gulliver, tormented by an army of fundamentalist Lilliputians.

Some will say that the US's ineffectiveness is a direct result of the loss of its "soft" power. Alienating the rest of the world has weakened its ability to achieve its objectives. Idiocies such as Abu Ghraib and the brief flirtation with torture as a legitimate instrument undoubtedly hurt America's image. But I don't truly see how the failings in the Middle East could have been avoided by Washington's being nicer to foreigners. What's been missing is resolute leadership.

It is hard for me to recall a time when the world was such a scary place. No one should rejoice at America's weakness. The world is scarier still because of it.

I can't put it another way. It's a sorry state, but worse still is that our current political quagmire doesn't offer another choice. We elected Mr. Bush, and I supported him, (and by the way still do as there's no other choice). But we're where we are in a very large part because six years of unremitting political hatred has precluded actual discussion of how to improve execution of our policies. The Democrat party has offered nothing...they have offered no idea or suggestion other than to leave...to "cut and run," or, before that, the very "Multilateralism" and French-Kissing that has brought us to this pass.

The President's conception was noble, and likely correct, but the execution has been faulty.

So, here's a question on the Management 101 Final Exam: Just how does one go about improving performance of a critical employee in a real world situation? a) Belittle him constantly; b) Harrass him every second; c) Delay any action he takes and harass his assistants; d) Define his weaknesses and help him improve in those areas.

The Political Class has failed this exam, and we're in sorry-ass shape because of it. If the Electorate as a whole ever got to thinking of something beyond Jon Benet Ramsay, it'd string the whole shebang from a lamp pole.

FAILURE OF THE WILL

My previous angry post "Do we need a new Warfighter President?" about the failure of our government to support, no, to demand, winning the Hezbollah War has proven true. I've not commented on the subject for several days, awaiting some indication of what might have been up anyone's sleeve, to be revealed later.

Now we know. Our sleeve is empty. Everyone else's sleeve contains treachery, incompetence and betrayal.

This war of American and Iranian proxies had a single cause, and several goals, (which might have differed for the Israelis and for the U.S.), but the only acceptable outcome was enunciated by the President and Secy. of State. This included return of the kidnapped Israeli soldiers, the disarming of Hezbollah and creation of a solid Lebanese government that would be the sole controller of the use of armed force. Until such conditions could be created, the peace was to be guaranteed by a "robust force" of international troops with real armaments and war fighting capability.

After a collossal failure of Israeli nerve, and a failure of U.S. to influence them or the "international community," the outcome has been determined, and it's in NO WAY acceptable. The kidnapped Israelis are not returned. Hezbollah is negotiating with itself as to whether, not how, to disarm, and a "disarmament" is now defined keeping their weapons, just not brandishing them in public. The "robust force" of 15,000 is now up to about 3500 from various countries, and the French, with whom this abortion was created, are only promising about 200.

The French! Constant only in betrayal, they were allowed by our Government to be prime movers in the "negotiation" that led to this disastrous outcome. The UN, happless as always, tags along, driven by it's usual miasma of anti-semitic and anti-American sentiment, providing "diplomatic" cover for what will surely be more war, a vastly bloodier one, over a much wider region than that contained by the Litani River....but on someone else's watch.

Mona Charen explains it:

...In a better world, the tactics of Hezbollah -- crossing an international boundary in an unprovoked act of ruthless aggression; kidnapping soldiers; using civilians as human shields; deliberately targeting Israeli civilians -- would have provoked universal revulsion. Every death of an innocent Lebanese would have been laid at the feet of Hezbollah. But in the world we actually inhabit, the European Union, Muslims throughout the world and many on the left in the United States condemned Israel instead. This war brought us not embedded journalists but embedded terrorists, woven into the fabric of civilian society -- missiles hidden in mosques, launchers within laundries.

Hezbollah, with a large assist from the Reuters news agency, boldly and blatantly falsified photographs and other news from Lebanon -- strategically posing human beings (dead and alive), stuffed animals and weeping women for world media consumption (see www.aish.com/movies/JP/PhotoFraud.asp). Thanks to alert bloggers like those at LittleGreenFootballs.com, we have come to recognize the ubiquity of figures like "Green Helmet Guy" posing as a Lebanese rescue worker when he almost certainly works for the terrorists -- the Leni Riefenstahl of Hezbollah.

One part of the world that proved particularly vulnerable to this manipulation was Israel itself. It fought this war with one eye on the camera.... the Israeli government worried excessively about the public relations price it was paying to defend itself. But by failing to finish the war, Israel did itself far more damage than any public relations hit could do. It emboldened the enemy -- and Israel's enemy in this war is our enemy, too.

How do you fight people who are not afraid to die? Well, certainly not by letting them believe that such tactics succeed. ...

At this moment, Israel has done the most dangerous thing we in the West can do: It has withdrawn from a fight without victory. The U.S. has offered some wobbly signals as well. Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute reports that after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced that the U.S. would "engage" Iran, a top Iranian official jeered, "Why don't you just admit that you are weak and your razor is blunt?" A few days later, an Iranian Revolutionary Guards boat unfurled a banner as it passed a U.S. Navy ship in the Persian Gulf. It read: "The U.S. cannot do a damn thing."

A Hamas columnist has predicted that Hezbollah's "victory" will open the door to a "third intifada."

We await the consequences elsewhere around the world -- from London to New York to Baghdad to Bali to Calcutta -- of jihadists who feel the wind at their backs.

We were promised "no return to the Status quo Ante"...an outcome that would settle control of Lebanon in the hands of a legitimate elected government that would engage the Israelis in creation of a final settlement. Hezbollah would particpate in politics if elected, but would have no army of its own.

Well, they were true to their word. We didn't get a return to S.Q.A. It's worse than that. Israel and the U.S. having been outmaneuvered in diplomacy and proved on the battlefield to be unwilling to fight whatever kind of war was necessary, we will now be tested everywhere in the world, by every enemy we have. Our potential allies will doubt us, because The Will is everything. We will soon hear again from North Korea; the Chinese will test us. The entire Middle East will be in play, and Iran has had confirmed what they suspected.

Bin Laden learned in Somalia that Bill Clinton would not fight, and was surprised when we did in Afghanistan and Iraq; that was a mistake from which the Islamofacsists are recovering. We're showing them that despite our willingness to fight OUR kind of war, we're proving unwilling to fight THEIR KIND.

There's discussion on a blog, The Belmont Club, one of the most intellectual sites on the internet, which chooses a character from a movie to make the point. Read the whole thing, but here's the money quote: "They realized that to be in power, you didn't need guns or money or even numbers. You just needed the will to do what the other guy wouldn't."

This war confirmed to our enemies that we haven't the Will. That's the war we're losing. The other guy fights, kills innocents, murders children, uses babies as bomb carriers....we build hospitals and schools, and fret about panty-hose "tortures." The Israelis worried about their image, and Hezbollah helped them by manufacturing "massacres."

We don't have to massacre children to defeat these savages but we do have to fight with whatever we must, and that's a bloody, awful business. The more fight now, the less later. Being deterred by the animus of the French or of the UN simply guarantees worse bloodshed in the certain wars down the line. Consider this frank observation by Hussein Massawi, a former Hezbollah leader: "We are not fighting so that you will offer us something, We are fighting to eliminate you."

I've written elsewhere that "a civilization that has both the capacity and the will to destroy another one, will do so. We have the capacity, but not the Will. They have the Will but not the capacity." They're acquiring the capacity, as Hezbollah showed the Israelis, and as the Iranians and North Koreans are showing us. Unless we develop the Will, we'll soon be fighting for our lives. Here.

Most of my friends and all of my family feel I've gone over the hill. They can't accept or stand to talk about my predictions that unless we stop them "over there," we will have to defend ourselves right here, in our own neighborhoods, and as individuals, not being able to count on our leadership to defend us. Recall how few people in England imagined in 1938 that London would soon be destroyed, their children evacuated, that being defended by "so few" the English would face the real possibility of defeat and submission to the "real" Nazis.

That's a horrible contemplation...but once again, today, the fire is raging across the world, and we just put another log on it.

In America, there is a political dimension playing simultaneously on a different screen in an adjacent theatre. There's a large and building constituency for withdrawal from the fight. Call it "cut and run" or "re-deploment across the horizon" or whatever, withdrawal can only confirm that we have no Will to fight their war. That can ONLY mean that we will have MORE of their war. And in the meantime, we quibble among ourselves over the legality of "wiretaps" and following the enemies' money trail.

We now live in another movie. A remake called "1938,(2)" I recognize the story line. I saw the first one, and I remember how it came out; 40-60,000,000 dead in six years. That time the White Hat Guy won, but it was a "close run thing" at times. This script may have a different ending, depending on whether we can find the Will .

There's nothing about History that guarantees the continued existence of anything....not even the United States, liberal democracy, freedom...not anything. Civilizations have come and gone...if we're to stay, we'll have to make it so.

I give Mr. Bush credit, and thanks, for what he has done. But he has proven himself to be an executive...a "do-er" ...and not much of a leader.

We need another Winston Churchill....and we need him badly... and now.

THE WORLD UNRAVELS

Mark Steyn explains to those who "just don't get it."

...Grant for the sake of argument...that when the bloodthirsty Zionist warmongers attack all those marvelous Hezbollah social outreach programs it drives British subjects born and bred to plot mass murder against their fellow Britons. What does that mean?

Here's a clue, from a recent Pew poll that asked: What do you consider yourself first? A citizen of your country or a Muslim?

In the United Kingdom, 7 percent of Muslims consider themselves British first, 81 percent consider themselves Muslim first.

...Lebanon is a sovereign state. It has an executive and a military. But its military has less sophisticated weaponry than Hezbollah and its executive wields less authority over its jurisdiction than Hezbollah. In the old days, the Lebanese government would have fallen and Hezbollah would have formally supplanted the state. But non-state actors like the Hezbo crowd and al-Qaida have no interest in graduating to statehood. They've got bigger fish to fry. If you're interested in establishing a global caliphate, getting a U.N. seat and an Olympic team only gets in the way. The "sovereign" state is of use to such groups merely as a base of operations, as Afghanistan was and Lebanon is. They act locally but they think globally.

...That's the issue: Pan-Islamism is the profound challenge to conventional ideas of citizenship and nationhood.

The pan-Islamists do act. When they hold hands and sing "We Are The World," they mean it. And we're being very complacent if we think they only take over the husks of "failed states" like Afghanistan, Somalia and Lebanon. The Islamists are very good at using the principal features of the modern multicultural democracy -- legalisms, victimology -- to their own advantage. (Modern democracies) don't quite dare to move against the pan-Islamists and they have no idea what possible strategy would enable them to do so.

... Excellent investigative work by MI-5 and Scotland Yard foiled this plot, and may foil the next one, and the one after that, and the 10 after that, and the 100 after those. And in the meantime, a thousand incremental inconveniences fall upon the citizen. If you had told an Englishman on Sept. 10, 2001, that within five years all hand luggage would be banned on flights from Britain, he'd have thought you were a kook. If you'd told an Englishwoman that all liquids would be banned except milk for newborn babies that could only be taken on board if the adult accompanying the child drinks from the bottle in front of a security guard, she'd have scoffed and said no one would ever put up with such a ludicrous imposition. But now it's here. What other changes will the Islamists have wrought in another five years?

Absent a determination to throttle the ideology, we're about to witness the unraveling of the world.

A REASONED RESPONSE TO MY ANGER

A reasoned response to my anger can be found here. Read the whole thing.

...Israel made clear what they wanted from their war from its beginning. It wanted their soldiers returned and the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah and move them out of the sub-Litani region. The Israelis want an end to Hezbollah's capability to shower rockets down on their cities. Those goals fit within Israeli political reality, which will abolutely reject another long occupation of Lebanon, considered by many as their Viet Nam. These limited goals may have made some of their international supporters despair, but the Olmert government does not want to fight the combined armies of Arabia again unless absolutely necessary, and that time has not yet come.

In this context, George Bush delivered the best deal he could to meet those goals. He fought the UN to a stalemate while allowing Israel a free hand to conduct military missions against Hezbollah positions and leadership, creating some diplomatic backlash against the US as a result. When France tried to weasel its way into the good graces of the Arab states supporting Hezbollah, Bush made sure they did so by themselves, and then forced them back. In the end, the resolution calls for the solution that Israel wanted all along, and it commits the UN to provide enough forces to at least have a chance of successful implementation. Bush also made sure that the Israelis did not have to leave Lebanon until that force replaced them despite loud calls for immediate withdrawal, allowing Israel to protect its retreat.

My point, therefore, was that George Bush could hardly be blamed for delivering almost everything Israel wanted out of this war, and doing so with unanimous UN Security Council approval. In fact, the result should be seen as something of a diplomatic accomplishment. Israel set the goals, and we delivered. If the result is unsatisfactory, then I believe it is unfair to blame George Bush for demanding a war that Israel did not want to wage.

History is not over, yet. A lot depends upon what our government does in the next months with the ultimate bad guys, Syria and Iran. If we move to the source, this is a reasonable choice, for the reasons explained. If we go back to square one, it's still a disaster. No matter that the Israelis got most of what they wanted/needed, the issue from my perspective is not what they need, but what WE need.

We'll see. Read the whole thing, by clicking on the link, above.

DO WE NEED A NEW WARFIGHTER PRESIDENT?

The "Daily Pundit", a seriously angry, and disappointed Bush supporter, says we need a new Warfighter President. Maybe he's right. That certainly is what I'll vote for. But, who is he?

I've edited this angry note to shorten it, but the theme is unchanged. Today, after the U.S. Government brokered a battlefield defeat which allows a terrorist Hezbollah to escape, to rearm and resupply, to fight another day again protected by the same "U.N." force that allowed the rocket bombardment which produced the war, well, it's hard to argue with Mr. Quick's harsh view.

In order to know where we stand today in evaluating George W. Bush, it is necessary to know where we - and he - stood five (yes, five) years ago. Three weeks after 9/11, the President addressed a joint session of congress and said:

Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them. (Applause.)

...Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. (Applause.) From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.

Four months after 9/11, President Bush delivered the State of the Union Address, in which he said the following:

... "Our enemy is...terrorists...and every government that supports them." "Any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime." "States like these [Iraq, Iran, North Korea] constitute an axis of evil." "The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."


....Viewed in that context, the invasion of Iraq and the toppling of the Hussein regime made perfect sense, especially in a military geostrategic sense. A liberated Iraq, serving as a base and jumping-off point for further military action against Iran and, perhaps, Syria, was an obvious first target for a campaign designed to destroy the regimes comprising the most immediate threats, and for placing enormous pressure on the Saudis to cease their Wahabbist support of Sunni terror organizations globally.

It is now five years later. The Taliban - which turned out to be merely puppets of al Qaeda, which had assumed regime status in Afghanistan, has been overthrown. al Qaeda is now stateless again. It has been badly damaged, but certainly not yet destroyed, as events yesterday in London make crystal clear. The Hussein regime in Iraq has been overthrown, but not destroyed, and much of the country, including the critical oil-bearing regions, is in the hands of Shia militias that answer as much to the Mullahs of Iran as they do to any purported "democratic" government in Baghdad - where, yesterday, hundreds of thousands demonstrated in support of Iranian sponsored terror group Hizb'Allah in their attacks on Israel.

The Mullahs of Iran remain in power and, far from being cowed by the Bush actions in Iraq, are poised to push the United States out of that country entirely. They are also poised to become the second Islamic republic to attain nuclear weapons. Their terrorist surrogates slaughter Americans in Iraq, and Jews in Israel.

The Syrian regime remains intact, and provides unlimited support to anti-American and Islamist terror groups, as it has for decades.

North Korea, a primary member of the "axis of evil," today "threaten[s] us with the world's most destructive weapons." - as does, or will soon, Iran.

Bush's proud words of five years ago stand revealed as hollow and meaningless. What happened?

What happened was one of the biggest failures of leadership in Presidential history. Bush supporters will claim that Bush was done in by a liberal media and the ferocious hatred of liberals and leftwingers, but that is one of the things true leadership is all about: Managing and overcoming opposition in order to achieve the necessary goals - in this case, the destruction of world Islamist terrorism and the regimes that support it.

Bush turned out to be singularly ill-equipped for this task, both by skill and by temperament. .... Compassion has its place, but not in warfighting. The Bush we know would not have pulled the trigger on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He abdicated the hard decisions in favor of political maneuvering and meaningless gestures.

Looking back, it becomes obvious that Bush ... never intended with any conviction to actually do what he said he would do. His own brave promises reveal their hollowness with the passage of time. The world is a far more dangerous place for the United States, thanks to Bush's failures. Today, we stand threatened "by the world's most dangerous regimes with the world's most destructive weapons." And the Wahabbis of Saudi Arabia continue to fund a global terror support machine the likes of which we have not seen since the Soviet regime financed and trained every two-bit communist terror organization it could find.

That is unlikely to change under the Bush administration and, indeed, I expect it to grow worse, as I don't believe Bush has any intention of keeping an effective US military force in the region capable of giving pause to Iran, or to Saudi Arabia.

Instead, we are treated to distractions that give the impression that somebody (in this case, Israel) is doing something about some Islamist terrorists (in this case, open Iranian surrogates), and the US is "doing its part" by "protecting" Israel against the likes of France. And Bush's vaunted "political credit" (which probably never existed in the first place) has dribbled down the drain of his own incompetence.

As for me? I've moved on. The first administration of the first century of the American Third Millennium will, in my estimation, be remembered as one of the biggest failures of that century. Bush's great failure was, not invading Iraq, but not weathering the adversity that followed through acts of real leadership, and then pressing on with the necessary military destruction of the other regimes he, himself, named as most dangerous five years ago.

I'm hoping we can get through the next two years without any major disasters, and then I'm looking to elect a real war leader to the White House - somebody with a warrior's temperament and a leader's skills. George Bush has neither. He is a dangerous failure, and America will be well rid of him.

I think the last statement is inappropriate, and wrong. Mr. Bush was here when we needed him, and when nobody else in the political arena stepped up to force the issue, to do the job, or to lead us to a better outcome. He is owed our thanks, and I agree with Ed Koch, that history will remember him well, in the spirit of Harry Truman, who was also a flawed person. And....there's still time to act to take out the Iranian nukes, to bludgeon Assad sufficiently to free the Lebanese.

Nonetheless, Mr. Bush's failure to defend himself against years of bitter attacks and lies, his unwillingness to abandon "nice" for "destroy the bastards," his inability to make his case by stating and restating the need to fight, his unwillingness to call his enemies (not his opponents, his enemies) out and name them what they are, cowards and traitors, has harmed him and harmed us all.

I agree, we'll need Atilla the Hun, not a missionary for "good", in the times ahead, but GWB isn't running, and it's up to us to find him. Where and who?

U.S.S. BILL CLINTON

This post is unabashedly stolen from someone else's blog. It is simply too good to leave on a single web site. If there is a God of Blogettique who is offended, then I accept full responsibility and whatever punishment is appropriate

The USS William Jefferson Clinton (CVS1) set sail today from its home port of Vancouver, BC.

The ship is the first of its kind in the Navy and is a standing legacy to President Bill Clinton "for his foresight in military budget cuts" and his conduct while president. The ship is constructed nearly entirely from recycled aluminum and is completely solar powered with a top speed of 5 knots. It boasts an arsenal comprised of one (unarmed) F14 Tomcat or one (unarmed) F18 Hornet aircraft which although they cannot be launched or captured on the 100 foot flight deck form a very menacing presence.

As a standing order there are no firearms allowed on board. The 20-person crew is completely diversified and includes members of all races, creeds, sex and sexual orientation. This crew, like the crew aboard the USS Jimmy Carter, is specially trained to avoid conflicts and appease any and all enemies of the United States at all costs.

An on board Type One DNC Universal Translator can send out messages of apology in any language to anyone who may find America offensive. The number of apologies are limitless and though some may sound hollow and disingenuous, the Navy advises all apologies will sound very sincere.

The ship's purpose is not defined so much as a unit of national defense - but instead in times of conflict the USS Clinton has orders to seek refuge in Canada. The ship may be positioned near the Democratic National Party Headquarters for photo-ops and can be used extensively for social experimentation, and whatever other worthless jobs, the ex-commander-in-chief and his wife can think of.

It is largely rumored that the ship will also be the set for the upcoming season of MTV's "The Real World".

The ship was renamed and commissioned USS William J Clinton when someone realized the USS Blowfish was already taken.

IT SPEAKS FOR ITSELF

Today's story is the thwarting, for now, of a plot to destroy multiple airliners simultaneously, causing thousands of deaths. People claim to be "shocked...just shocked" that the perpetrators are "homegrown" citizens of Great Britain. Consider these data, from Pew Foundation, listed on Michele Malkin's website.

These people do not consider themselves "homegrown" or part of our society. They operate under the cover of our civilization, but do not consider themselves "of" our civilization. They enjoy the protection of our traditions, operate out of "holy sites" and mosques, but only for the purpose of destroying those very protections.

They should be treated as what they are....agents of an enemy that intends to kill all of us...our children, spouses, neighbors and friends....without mercy, without remorse....indiscriminately, randomly, and for the single reason that we are not "them."

How long will we continue a suicidal policy of treating them as "homegrown?"

THE HABIT OF BETRAYAL

This post from The American Thinker blog says a lot that has needed saying out loud for a very long time. The betrayal is greater than just a political one...and becomes treasonous when the very existence of our society is at risk.

The Habit of Betrayal


‘Very Soon, This Stain of Disgrace [i.e. Israel] Will Be Purged From the Center of the Islamic World – and This is Attainable’ —- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, October 26, 2005

”’Imam [Khomeini] said: ‘This regime that is occupying Qods [Jerusalem] must be eliminated from the pages of history.” —- Ahmadinejad in speaking to The World Without Zionism conference, Tehran, October 26, 2005

“The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake.”—- Richard Cohen, Washington Post columnist


When the Boomer Left first came to power in the Seventies they told us that cheating on your marriage made you sexually liberated. The divorce rate soon doubled and tripled, followed by millions of abortions. I’ve long thought that the waves of feminist rage that followed a few years later came from that first treason of the Boomers: In spite of sexual “liberation,” Leftist women felt utterly betrayed and abandoned, over and over again, until rage was the only feeling left. It was the first big betrayal of the modern Left.

Then the same voices shouted that single-parent families were okay for kids; Dads were expendable; the welfare state would do the job. Soon Black families that had stayed intact over generations of Jim Crow were falling apart. Next, the Left proclaimed that drugs were good for you, that Black-on-Black crime was the result of racism, and that Ronald Reagan made AIDS. When children became unteachable and the schools went steadily downhill, the Teachers’ Unions decided that their real job in life was teaching self-esteem, no matter what the kids actually did.

Easy betrayal is the hallmark of the Boomer Left, both in the United States and Europe. In the Netherlands you can have your divorce in three days Why not drive-through spouse disposals? Sort of like a car wash, except you can kick out your spouse at the other end. The Netherlands has pioneered drive-through brothels, after all. Stay tuned.

Across the Channel, Britain cannot rid itself of thousands of known foreign terror suspects—- because they claim the right of asylum, with the passionate support of the Prime Minister’s wife, Cherie Blair, a “civil rights lawyer.” Was anybody surprised when fifty people were blown apart by a squad of suiciders on the London Underground? Nobody asked Cherie Blair to apologize. Nobody called it a betrayal of country—- that’s old Victorian language. Besides, the Labour Party is busily hacking away at Britain’s sovereignty anyway.

No country in Europe can control the inflow of Muslim immigrants, large numbers of them imbued with a hatred for European values. European elites oblige, by constantly betraying their own traditions through multiculturalism. The perverted message is: So you want to hate and despise us? You’re right!

Meanwhile back in the States, we are taught that trespassing aliens are actually “undocumented,” as if they had forgotten their wallets in Tijuana by some slip of the mind. The warm welcome of a generous Mexican host used to be Mi casa es su casa”—- my house is your house. Today Mexicans have learned to shout “Su casa es mi casa!” Your house is now ours, and don’t you forget it, Anglo swine. And nobody calls this a betrayal of American values, even though we are a country of legal and often passionately pro-American immigrants.

So when the New York Times explains that the First Amendment bestows on itself the right to betray national security secrets to jihadists who are even now killing our soldiers in Iraq, nobody seems to notice that this is treason in any sane society. And when Richard Cohen, whose name at least appears to be Jewish, begins a recent Washington Post column with the proclamation that “Israel is a mistake”—- right in the middle of a Hizb’allah Blitz, when 3,000 missiles are exploding over the heads of Israeli civilians huddling in bomb shelters—- nobody seems to notice anything odd.

On the Left, the habit of betrayal has now become so ingrained that loyalty to friends and country, commitments to wives and children, even the ability to speak freely in the universities, all those fundamental civilized values have simply been ridiculed and trashed.

And when a Democrat President is caught with his pants down, being serviced by a young Jewish intern while discussing the dispatch of American troops on the phone with a Congressman, and another time when Yassir Arafat awaits a meeting with him, the Lefties in the media launch a deafening defense. Yes, feminists had hollered about sexual harassment for decades, but that didn’t apply to Democrats. A female reporter publicly volunteered to service Mr. Clinton herself, as long as he stood for unrestricted abortions. Bill Clinton slapped his wife with the most shameful public insult any First Lady has ever received. Hillary must still burn with shame and anger when she thinks back to those days; but she will never admit to an unfashionable feeling of betrayal of her marriage. Like the original feminists, she is converting her seething rage into a run for power.

A few days ago New York magazine took up Richard Cohen’s slogan that Israel is a mistake, thereby endorsing genocidal madmen like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—- who just happen to be building nukes for that very purpose. The sentence “your nation is a mistake” means “you should never have been alive; destroying you is morally justified.” Why American Jews don’t riot in the streets is a mystery. If Richard Cohen said the same thing about Zimbabwe, he would be out of a job. And good riddance.

Cohen has now gone on to whip up the slogan of an Iraqi civil war, because just a little betrayal is never enough. If Israel goes down to defeat, followed by Iraq, Mr. Cohen might presumably throw a big party. It’s election time, after all, and a disaster for American policy in the Middle East is meat and potatoes to the Left. They will fake one if it doesn’t happen. How they hate their country.

Few civilized values have not yet been betrayed by the Left. Which is why the American people, bless them, see the weird old Boomer Lefties as increasingly alien to their own deepest beliefs and values. The habit of betrayal can only get you so far, before people start to take notice.

For what it's worth, us Bubbas are gettin' rot tarred ovit.

WE DO NOT INHABIT THE SAME MORAL UNIVERSE

I've stated it before, but as time goes on, it needs restating. We do not inhabit the same moral universe as the Islamics we're fighting. Right now the Israelis are fighting, but tomorrow it'll have to be us who do the bloody work. If you don't believe it, listen to NPR's report "Iraq still manages to shock."

Diapers on goats? Impure arrangement of vegetables a Capital Crime in Baghdad? Shari Law covers vegetables? Slitting the thoat of a boy for blinding a cow with a rock?

NPR calls it "staggeringly pointless" violence. I call it another Moral Universe.

Speech of Ehud Olmert

Art Bolz sends this...Olmert has a clear understanding of what's at stake here. I've stated this before in my letter to Liam, these people are not going quietly to the ovens ever again. This war is on the verge of getting out of hand, and when it does, nobody will be spared.

Speech of Ehud Olmert, Prime Minister of the State of Israel, published in Maariv on Monday, July 31, 2006.

Ladies and gentlemen, leaders of the world, I, the Prime Minister of Israel, am speaking to you from Jerusalem in the face of the terrible pictures from Kfar Kana. Any human heart, wherever it is, must sicken and recoil at the sight of such pictures. There are no words of comfort that can mitigate the enormity of this tragedy. Still, I am looking you straight in the eye and telling you that the State of Israel will continue its military campaign in Lebanon.


The Israel Defense Forces will continue to attack targets from which missiles and Katyusha rockets are fired at hospitals, old age homes and kindergartens in Israel. I have instructed the security forces and the IDF to continue to hunt for the Katyusha stockpiles and launch sites from which these savages are bombarding the State of Israel. We will not hesitate, we will not apologize and we will not back off. If they continue to launch missiles into Israel from Kfar Kana, we will continue to bomb Kfar Kana. Today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. Here, there and everywhere.


The children of Kfar Kana could now be sleeping peacefully in their homes, unmolested, had the agents of the devil not taken over their land and turned the lives of our children into hell. Ladies and gentlemen, it's time you understood: the Jewish state will no longer be trampled upon. We will no longer allow anyone to exploit population centers in order to bomb our citizens. No one will be able to hide anymore behind women and children in order to kill our women and children. This anarchy is over. You can condemn us, you can boycott us, you can stop visiting us and, if necessary, we will stop visiting you.



Today I am serving as the voice of six million bombarded Israeli citizens who serve as the voice of six million murdered Jews who were melted down to dust and ashes by savages in Europe. In both cases, those responsible for these evil acts were, and are, barbarians devoid of all humanity, who set themselves one simple goal: to wipe the Jewish people off the face of the earth, as Adolph Hitler said, or to wipe the State of Israel off the map, as Mahmoud Ahmedinjad proclaims.


And you - just as you did not take those words seriously then, you are ignoring them again now. And that, ladies and gentlemen, leaders of the world, will not happen again. Never again will we wait for bombs that never came to hit the gas chambers. Never again will we wait for salvation that never arrives. Now we have our own air force. The Jewish people are now capable of standing up to those who seek their destruction - those people will no longer be able to hide behind women and children. They will no longer be able to evade their responsibility. Every place from which a Katyusha is fired into the State of Israel will be a legitimate target for us to attack. This must be stated clearly and publicly, once and for all. You are welcome to judge us, to ostracize us, to boycott us and to vilify us. But to kill us? Absolutely not.


Four months ago I was elected by hundreds of thousands of citizens to the office of Prime Minister of the government of Israel, on the basis of my plan for unilaterally withdrawing from 90 percent of the areas of Judea and Samaria, the birth place and cradle of the Jewish people; to end most of the occupation and to enable the Palestinian people to turn over a new leaf and to calm things down until conditions are ripe for attaining a permanent settlement between us. The Prime Minister who preceded me, Ariel Sharon, made a full withdrawal from the Gaza Strip back to the international border, and gave the Palestinians there a chance to build a new reality for themselves. The Prime Minister who preceded him, Ehud Barak, ended the lengthy Israeli presence in Lebanon and pulled the IDF back to the international border, leaving the land of the cedars to flourish, develop and establish its democracy and its economy.


What did the State of Israel get in exchange for all of this? Did we win even one minute of quiet? Was our hand, outstretched in peace, met with a handshake of encouragement? Ehud Barak's peace initiative at Camp David let loose on us a wave of suicide bombers who smashed and blew to pieces over 1,000 citizens, men, women and children. I don't remember you being so enraged then. Maybe that happened because we did not allow TV close-ups of the dismembered body parts of the Israeli youngsters at the Dolphinarium? Or of the shattered lives of the people butchered while celebrating the Passover seder at the Park Hotel in Netanya?


What can you do - that's the way we are. We don't wave body parts at the camera. We grieve quietly. We do not dance on the roofs at the sight of the bodies of our enemy's children - we express genuine sorrow and regret. That is the monstrous behavior of our enemies. Now they have risen up against us. Tomorrow they will rise up against you. You are already familiar with the murderous taste of this terror. And you will taste more.


And Ariel Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza -- what did it get us? A barrage of Kassem missiles fired at peaceful settlements and the kidnapping of soldiers. Then too, I don't recall you reacting with such alarm. And for six years, the withdrawal from Lebanon has drawn the vituperation and crimes of a dangerous, extremist Iranian agent, who took over an entire country in the name of religious fanaticism, and is trying to take Israel hostage on his way to Jerusalem - and from there to Paris and London. An enormous terrorist infrastructure has been established by Iran on our border, threatening our citizens, growing stronger before our very eyes, awaiting the moment when the land of the Ayatollahs becomes a nuclear power in order to bring us to our knees. And make no mistake - we won't go down alone. You, the leaders of the free and enlightened world, will go down along with us.


So today, here and now, I am putting an end to this parade of hypocrisy. I don't recall such a wave of reaction in the face of the 100 citizens killed every single day in Iraq. Sunnis kill Shiites who kill Sunnis, and all of them kill Americans - and the world remains silent. And I am hard pressed to recall a similar reaction when the Russians destroyed entire villages and burned down large cities in order to repress the revolt in Chechnya. And when NATO bombed Kosovo for almost three months and crushed the civilian population - then you also kept silent.


What is it about us, the Jews, the minority, the persecuted, that arouses this cosmic sense of justice in you? What do we have that all the others don't? In a loud clear voice, looking you straight in the eye, I stand before you openly and I will not apologize. I will not capitulate. I will not whine. This is a battle for our freedom. For our humanity. For the right to lead normal lives within our recognized, legitimate borders. It is also your battle.


I pray and I believe that now you will understand that. Because if you don't, you may regret it later, when it's too late.

This war is going to get worse by far before it gets better….This man sounds tough, but tough is to hang in no matter what the cost and suffering….there’ll be a lot of pressure for “peace”….the kind of peace that leads to no peace, but only ultimately to the killing of all those Israelis and the destruction of their country.

That’s what is at stake for them…..and we’re next.

Olmert understands this, but do we?