Dream Narrative

I found this dream narrative to be very much in the style of dreams. Its funny too.

Kofi fails to control his mouth

In the words of Mark Steyn, "The UN system designed to constrain Saddam was instead enriching him, through the Oil-for-Food programme, and enabling him to subsidise terrorism. Given that the Oil-for-Fraud programme was run directly out of Kofi Annan's office, the Secretary-General ought to have the decency to recognise that he had his chance with Iraq, he blew it, and a period of silence from him would now be welcome."

First Hand Blog Reporting

My brother witnessed a fire, and got some pics. See what happened on my brother's blog.

O'Reilly losing his audience?

Bill O'Reilly has run afoul of people like Laura Ingraham, who criticize his embrace of terms of the left. I lost interest in him between April and July. I think that he became more interested in his posture as an independent that the truth of his analysis. More than anything, O'Reilly is just a contrarian. Click the July link to an article by VDH on people who float along following the news day, or in O'Reilly's case, opposed to the news day.

The International Community?

Two articles have something very good to say on this subject. One is in Slate, which does a nice job on the inherent reasons broad coallitions are not capable of routine responce as needed. Anyone who has read up on the Napoleonic Wars can recognize that even when there are only four important players, getting them all together at once is just too much to ask most of the time. Of the seven coallitions formed, only the 6th, and 7th included all of the major powers, Britain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia. (The first coallition probabaly didn't need the strength of Russia, but the early withdrawl of Prussia doomed it.) Some more needs to be done on why we seem to be so in thrall of the idea of a consensus among the international powers. Victor Davis Hanson is probabaly the go to source for that.

Second is a six week old piece by Robert Kagan on the Kerry line, we should "only go to war because we have to." Kagan demonstrates that this reveals a more profound unilateralism than the Bush administration. Bush and his team is an internationalist one willing to work with those able to work with us at a given time. Kerry is arguing for an isolationist withdrawl from the international community. He knows full well, as Lee Smith pointed out in the piece mentioned above, that expecting the international community to ever form consensus is so rare that it nearly amonts to a guarantee of inaction. So Kerry's multilateralism is really just a mask for Jeffersonian isolationism.

Brooks on Hawk vs. Hawk

In this space I pointed to this NYTimes column by David Brooks. He argues that Hawks break down into gradualists and the confrontationalists. The gradualists argue for constant pressure, but against confrontation, because its frequently conter-productive. The confrontationalists argue for clearing out the enemy when we know where he is.

I will say that talking like a gradualist and occasionally being a confrontationalist is walking softly and carrying a big stick. Its the best of all possible policies. People like Bill Bennett rightly complain that talking like a confrontationalist and acting like a gradualist makes us look weak.

For myself, I'd say that my instincts tend more toward confrontationalism and my intellect tends to favor gradualism. I have no problems with confrontationalism per se, but I do agree with the gradualists that these things are won over the long term. I also dislike talking like a confrontationalist and acting in any other fashion. I'd rather talk like a gradualist, expect and plan for a long term commitment, and occasionally, unexpectedly, confront our enemies forcefully.

Theory

Kerry's strategy was to A) establish his bone fides as a warfighter, in order to B) criticize the Iraq war and the while Bush foriegn policy without being tarred as a loopy peacenik. It worked once, when Kerry testified in the Senate in '71. The strategy is being derailed because this time around Kerry can't establish his bone fides. His '71 testimony, his other anti-Vietnam activities, his career in the Senate all undermine the notion that Kerry is who he says he is. Most recently his own waffling on Iraq prevents him from establishing his hawkish credentials. Perhaps he keeps trying to move on to phase B only to realize that he hadn't completed A.

A Pattern Emerges

It seems there are a number of people who are reputed to have said one thing, then "recanted". I wonder. Recently, there is the case of Maj. General Hodges, Killian's supervisor, and so well up the chain of command at the Texas National Guard for then Lt George Bush, now himself Commander-in-Chief. Originally CBS claimed Hodges as part of their authentication of the memos critcal of Bush's service. But, as ABC reports, "he feels CBS misled him about the documents they uncovered." ABC also observes, "CBS responds: 'We believed Col. Hodges the first time we spoke with him. We believe the documents to be genuine. We stand by our story and will continue to report on it.'"

CBS is claiming that Hodges is changing his story, Hodges is claiming the press misled him. "According to Hodges, CBS told him the documents were 'handwritten' and after CBS read him excerpts he said, 'well if he wrote them that's what he felt.'" ABC goes on to say, "His personal belief is that the documents have been 'computer generated' and are a 'fraud'."

So, did Hodges change his tune, as CBS claims, or did CBS lie to him to get him to say what they wanted? And how prevelent is it for these supposed recantations to be media misquotes or distortions? And how often does the press describe a correction of its own errors as a recantation by a source? "We didn't err, our source recanted." Or perhaps, more honestly, "Our source caught us lying about what they said, but that won't match our story, so we'll attempt to discredit them."

Also, check out Mark Steyn on this subject

Cheney v Edwards

This Monday, Kerry called Iraq "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time" and said his goal was to withdraw U.S. troops in a first White House term. "I would not have done just one thing differently than the president on Iraq, I would have done everything differently than the president on Iraq," Kerry said. He called the president's talk about a coalition fighting alongside about 125,000 U.S. troops "the phoniest thing I've ever heard." Apparently, Kerry thinks that the war has consequences, and that there is a difference between doing it right and doing it wrong. Indeed, Kerry told a West Virginia rally the "W" in Bush's name stood for "wrong -- wrong choices, wrong judgment, wrong priorities, wrong direction for our country" on everything from jobs to Iraq.

It turns out that Dick Cheney also thinks the war has consequences and that there is a right way and a wrong way to prosecute the war. It therefore follows that if the two candidacies have such differing visions, the Kerry vision might well be consequencial and wrong. That adds up to dangerous. "It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States," Cheney told supporters at a town-hall meeting.

Kerry claims he would do everything differently, including pulling out of Iraq and claiming to be able to internationalize the war. Kerry claims to be able to bring the troops home with honor and quickly, he claims to be able to bring in new international partners. To many of us this sounds like a combination of fantasy (there simply are no available troops to replace Americans) and cutting and running. Consequential and wrong: dangerous.

John Edwards replied, "Dick Cheney's scare tactics crossed the line today, showing once again that he and George Bush will do anything and say anything to save their jobs. Protecting America from vicious terrorists is not a Democratic or Republican issue, it's an American issue and Dick Cheney and George Bush should know that. John Kerry and I will keep America safe, and we will not divide the American people to do it."

So, apparently, Kerry can suggest that Bush's policy is harmful, risky, and a distraction, which is to say that it risks harmful consequences, but heaven forbid the other guys say this about Kerry. To suggest that is an unAmerican scare tactic. Edwards may think that the Kerry/Edwards program would do that, but reasonable people might believe its harmful, risky, and dangerous. You simply can't call the other guy's policy bad without expecting him to call your plan bad.

EU President: Smooth Operator

The EU President, the Dutch Bernard Bot, put out a statement about the school siege in Beslan which said, "We would like to know from the Russian authorities how this tragedy could have happened." The Russians were not amused. According to EUObserver, the Russian Foriegn Minister replied, "In a situation when the whole world knew that the main priority was saving children, and that there would be no storming, to hear such words from a minister seems to us to be blasphemy." Bot promised to smooth things over with the Russian Foriegn Minister, but the Russians aren't in any apparent hurry to actually make contact with Bot. According to the Financial Times, "Bot's aides said Mr Lavrov was travelling in the Middle East and was hard to contact, shrugging off suggestions of a possible snub." Uh huh.

Democrats for Bush

Google the phrase 'Democrats for Bush' and what you find is entirely based on terror, foriegn policy, and embrace of the Truman-Kennedy strength and committment to democracy. No one other than Zell Miller talks about how the President represents the values of the heartland. Zell is a dinosour and if he had much more of a public career ahead of him would end up switching parties. Democrats for Bush, or 9-11 Democrats are voting on the issue of foriegn policy.

More and more Dems drink the Kool-Aid

The party of McGovern seems more and more unhinged. Loopy partisans are always out there in the wings, but they seem to be going mainstream, while the mainstream Dems go loopy. The Vince-Foster-was-murdered people never gained a central place in the party. As the American Spectator began to devote itself to Clinton conspiracy theories, it lost readership. The Left, starting with paranoid delusions of a "great right-wing conspiracy", through anguish at their failure to steal the election (a theft which they then projected on the Republicans) in Florida, through 9-11, Iraq, and Michael Moore have gone so far off the deep end, I think they are performing miracles of self-destruction.

I accept the conventional wisdom that the country was evenly divided and that the margin of undecideds was small. So my own explanation of the 11 point Bush lead is that Democratic frothing at the mouth is killing them. Some voters either vote Democratic or go fishing. More and more are staking out a spot by the lake. Some voters are undecided and are going for Bush. And non-voters may come out to support the President rather than see the party of madness and lunacy (I'm referring to Terry McAuliffe, Michael Moore, and most recently, and regrettably, Susan Estrich) gain control of the White House.

Responsible Democrats have two choices. One, they can opt for the approach taken by Randy Kelly, Ron Silver, or Ed Koch, and support the President on the issues of terror and democracy abroad while opposing him on issues like abortion or stem cell research. Two, they can lament the hate so many in their party have towards so many Republicans, and hope that once in power their leaders will be forced to adopt a more responsible policy and tone. Voting Democratic implies that you either agree with the rhetoric of the Democratic Party, or believe that they will come to their senses once they win.

I strongly believe that once a politician goes over the deep end, they are broken and cannot be put back together. Some of these people, say Gore, are so damaged by the contested election of 2000 that they can never be let near to the levers of power again. This is the central lesson of Nixon. Others were never on an even keel, and should never have been let in in the first place. These wackos are generally not politicians but activists and propagandists.
As more and more Dems cut loose their ties to responsible politics and give in to hate and venom, the party faces a longer and more profound wander in the woods. This may well be neccesary to purge the party of its madness and help the party re-invent itself. The Democrats chose not to embrace the Clintonian Third Way without Clinton. So, some new approach will have to be discovered.

Ownership Society

Professor Bainbridge has the prescription down cold.

Mark Steyn

Somehow he manages to write about the Beslan school business rather than the hurricane. As usual he's right on.

All Hurricane All the Time

Who is this constant hurricane coverage for? What about the school takeover in Beslan? The downed Russian planes? The Kerry campaign shakeup? The campiagning in the Ohio Valley by both candidates? The new polls showing Bush up by 11 points? An election in Mexico? The Sudan genocide? And there are other natural disasters, a flood in China and an earthquake in Japan. Hello? Is there more to news than pictures of Florida hurricanes?