Generalissimo Franco, however, is still dead.

So, what do you say when your dead son calls you? Evidently, you say "Well, damn boy. We just had your funeral today."

Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto

Well, I seem to be slow in catching on, but I just found this: The Anti-Idotarian Manifesto.

I think I can officially declare myself to be an Anti-Idiotarian.

Why it's important the Democrats wise up.

A self-proclaimed Democrat that I've never heard of makes some very good points at Opinionjournal.com today.

Watching the primary campaigns among this year's pathetic crop of Democratic candidates, I can't help but think that their campaigns would be vastly improved if they would only rise to the level of "Death to the Republicans."

Instead, their platforms range from Howard Dean's "Bush is the devil" to everybody else's "I'll make you rich, and Bush is quite similar to the devil." Since President Bush is quite plainly not the devil, one wonders why anyone in the Democratic Party thinks this ploy will play with the general public.

. . .

And the most vile part of this campaign against Mr. Bush is that the terrorist war is being used as a tool to try to defeat him--which means that if Mr. Bush does not win, we will certainly lose the war. Indeed, the anti-Bush campaign threatens to undermine our war effort, give encouragement to our enemies, and cost American lives during the long year of campaigning that lies ahead of us.

Osama bin Laden's military strategy is: If you make a war cost enough, Americans will give up and go home. Now, bin Laden isn't actually all that bright; his campaign to make us go home is in fact what brought us into Afghanistan and Iraq. But he's still telling his followers: Keep killing Americans and eventually, antigovernment factions within the United States will choose to give up the struggle.

It's what happened in Somalia, isn't it? And it's what happened in Vietnam, too.

Reuters recently ran a feature that trumpeted the "fact" that U.S. casualties in Iraq have now surpassed U.S. casualties in the first three years of the Vietnam War. Never mind that this is a specious distortion of the facts, which depends on the ignorance of American readers. The fact is that during the first three years of the war in Vietnam, dating from the official "beginning" of the war in 1961, American casualties were low because (a) we had fewer than 20,000 soldiers there, (b) most of them were advisers, deliberately trying to avoid a direct combat role, (c) our few combat troops were special forces, who generally get to pick and choose the time and place of their combat, and (d) because our presence was so much smaller, there were fewer American targets than in Iraq today.

Compare our casualties in Iraq with our casualties in Vietnam when we had a comparable number of troops, and by every rational measure--casualties per thousand troops, casualties per year, or absolute number of casualties--you'll find that the Iraq campaign is far, far less costly than Vietnam. But the media want Americans to think that Iraq is like Vietnam--or rather, that Iraq is like the story that the Left likes to tell about Vietnam.

Vietnam was a quagmire only because we fought it that way. If we had closed North Vietnam's ports and carried the war to the enemy, victory could have been relatively quick. However, the risk of Chinese involvement was too great. Memories of Korea were fresh in everyone's minds, and so Vietnam was fought in such a way as to avoid "another Korea." That's why Vietnam became, well, Vietnam.

. . . .

In other words, the Iraq campaign isn't over--and President Bush has explicitly said so all along. So the continuation of combat and casualties isn't a "failure" or a "quagmire," it's a "war." And during a war, patriotic Americans don't blame the deaths on our government. We blame them on the enemy that persists in trying to kill our soldiers.


Am I saying that critics of the war aren't patriotic?
Not at all--I'm a critic of some aspects of the war. What I'm saying is that those who try to paint the bleakest, most anti-American, and most anti-Bush picture of the war, whose purpose is not criticism but deception in order to gain temporary political advantage, those people are indeed not patriotic. They have placed their own or their party's political gain ahead of the national struggle to destroy the power base of the terrorists who attacked Americans abroad and on American soil.

Patriots place their loyalty to their country in time of war ahead of their personal and party ambitions. And they can wrap themselves in the flag and say they "support our troops" all they like--but it doesn't change the fact that their program is to promote our defeat at the hands of our enemies for their temporary political advantage.

Think what it will mean if we elect a Democratic candidate who has committed himself to an antiwar posture in order to get his party's nomination.

Our enemies will be certain that they are winning the war on the battleground that matters--American public opinion. So they will continue to kill Americans wherever and whenever they can, because it works.

Our soldiers will lose heart, because they will know that their commander in chief is a man who is not committed to winning the war they have risked death in order to fight. When the commander in chief is willing to call victory defeat in order to win an election, his soldiers can only assume that their lives will be thrown away for nothing. That's when an army, filled with despair, becomes beatable even by inferior forces.

He even rips on the media:

Our national media are covering this war as if we were "losing the peace"--even though we are not at peace and we are not losing. Why are they doing this? Because they are desperate to spin the world situation in such a way as to bring down President Bush.

It's not just the war, of course. Notice that even though our recent recession began under President Clinton, the media invariably refer to it as if Mr. Bush had caused it; and even though by every measure, the recession is over, they still cover it as if the American economy were in desperate shape.

This is the same trick they played on the first President Bush, for his recession was also over before the election--but the media worked very hard to conceal it from the American public. They did it as they're doing it now, with yes-but coverage: Yes, the economy is growing again, but there aren't any new jobs. Yes, there are new jobs now, but they're not good jobs.

And that's how they're covering the war. Yes, the Taliban were toppled, but there are still guerrillas fighting against us in various regions of Afghanistan. (As if anyone ever expected anything else.) Yes, Saddam was driven out of power incredibly quickly and with scant loss of life on either side, but our forces were not adequately prepared to do all the nonmilitary jobs that devolved on them as an occupying army.

According to the common knowledge, Dean is doing well because he's "about something," not just "trying to be 'Bush-lite'." I don't think that's true. He's not about something other than "not Bush." He's being trumpeted as a moderate because he has one not-so-much-left notion - that Vermont's gun laws probably shouldn't be the same as New York's. He may, unlike the rest of the anti-gun crowd, even acknowlege that the Second Amendment actually might mean something and that the Federal Government shouldn't be just going ahead and violating the Constitution. On the other hand, he probably also supports campaign finance reform, which (notwithstanding one of the worst SCOTUS decisions ever) is unbelievably violative the letter and the spirit, IMHO, of the First Amendment.

But his foreign policy is either (1) cynical, reflexive "Bush-bad" opportunism; or (2) cynical, reflexive "US-bad" leftist crap. Either way, as much as it plays with the college crowd that seems to be his base, I think it's gonna fail miserably with grown-ups.

I like having two parties. I want two parties. I cherish gridlock as a way to keep the government from just doing stupid stuff. But the Democrats are killing themselves, and the Republicans seem to be filling the void. We're heading for one-party rule, and I don't like that one bit. Even if that one party is the Republicans, especially if they're going to pass crap like a Medicare "reform" giveaway, and a campaign finance law that criminalizes political speech within 60 days of an election.

It was never a quagmire...

The one apparently sane Canadian notes:

Iraq has never been a quagmire, nor even close. The death toll since formal hostilities ended in May has been serious, but pales next to the mountain of corpses piled up by Saddam's regime.

. . . .

Opponents of the war and opponents of George W. Bush tend to be one and the same, and the intensity of their dislike for the President is such that it has often coloured the picture of Iraq that the world has been served.

The trick has been to equate Iraq to Vietnam. Al Gore made a point of it last week when he threw his backing behind Howard Dean for the Democratic party's presidential nomination, describing the situation as a "quagmire" -- the emotionally loaded term everyone knows means Vietnam.

Even on the surface this is a ludicrous proposition. U.S. involvement in Vietnam lasted the better part of two decades and killed more than 58,000 American troops. At its peak the United States had 440,000 soldiers in Vietnam, and they were dying at a rate of almost 320 a week. It was a jungle country, ideal for guerrilla warfare, in which insurgents had crucial support from major powers able to easily supply them with the weapons and financial support to carry on. And even as the United States fought on, it never had a workable plan for a legitimate government that could govern the country.

None of this is true in Iraq, nor even close.

. . .

It has somehow become more acceptable to attack Mr. Bush for risking U.S. lives than to condemn Saddam for murdering Iraqis. A report this week indicated Saddam's regime had executed 61,000 people in Baghdad alone. He is believed to have killed 180,000 Kurds, and his post-Kuwait reprisals on Shiite Muslims left another 60,000 dead.

He ran torture chambers and stuffed his prisons with political opponents. People were mutilated, apparently for no better reason than the entertainment of their killers. Critics had explosives strapped to them and were blown to bits. Dissidents were tossed off tall buildings. Since the U.S. invasion, authorities have found 41 mass graves; hundreds more are believed to exist, containing between 300,000 and 500,000 victims.

Yet the focus has been on attacking the Americans, a situation that may finally change with the capture of Saddam. It underlines a simple question. Given the choice, who would you want running your country: a democratic if imperfect administration like the one in Washington, or that madman they dragged out of a hole in the ground yesterday?

Judging from some of the posts on The Democratic Underground (Right Wing News has a decent selection), apparently some people really would prefer Saddam Hussein.

I've been noting a sad lack of appreciation for what freedom actually is. I think, though that just as the far-left and the far-right are identically authoritarian, and some things can be so uncool as to be cool (e.g. Neil Diamond), that the "intelligencia" has now gotten so "intelligent" that it is now stupid.

Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About

Well, this is amusing.

The Shoe Bomber

Remember the guy who got on a plane with a bomb built into his shoe and tried to light it? Did you know his trial is over? Did you know he was sentenced? Did you see/hear any of the judge's comments on TV/Radio? I didn't think so. Our diligent media at work again. Everyone should hear what the judge had to say:

Ruling by Judge William Young U.S. District Court
Prior to sentencing, the Judge asked the defendant if he had anything to say. His response:
After admitting his guilt to the court for the record, Reid also admitted his "allegiance to Osama bin Laden, to Islam, and to the religion of Allah," defiantly stated "I think I ought not apologize for my actions," and told the court "I am at war with your country." Judge Young then delivered the statement quoted below, a stinging condemnation of
Reid in particular and terrorists in general.

January 30, 2003, United States vs. Reid.

Judge Young:
"Mr. Richard C. Reid, hearken now to the sentence the Court imposes upon you. On counts 1, 5 and 6 the Court sentences you to life in prison in the custody of the United States Attorney General. On counts 2, 3, 4 and 7, the Court sentences you to 20 years in prison on each count, the sentence on each count to run consecutive with the other. That's 80 years. On count 8 the Court sentences you to the mandatory 30 years consecutive to the 80
years just imposed. The Court imposes upon you each of the eight counts a fine of $250,000 for the aggregate fine of $2 million. The Court accepts the government's recommendation with respect to restitution and orders restitution in the amount of $298.17 to Andre Bousquet and $5,784 to American Airlines. The Court imposes upon you the $800 special assessment.

The Court imposes upon you five years supervised release simply because the law requires it. But the life sentences are real life sentences so I need go no further. This is the sentence that is provided for by our
statutes. It is a fair and just sentence. It is a righteous sentence.

Let me explain this to you. We are not afraid of you or any of your terrorist coconspirators, Mr. Reid. We are Americans. We have been through the fire before. There is all too much war talk here. And I say that to everyone with the utmost respect. Here in this court, where we deal with individuals as individuals, and care for individuals as individuals. As human beings, we reach out for justice. You are not an enemy combatant. You are a terrorist. You are not a soldier in any war. You are a terrorist. To give you that reference, to call you a soldier, gives you far too much stature. Whether it is the officers of government who do it or your attorney who does it, or that happens to be your view, you are a terrorist. And we do not negotiate with terrorists. We do not treat with terrorists. We do not sign documents with terrorists. We hunt them down one by one and bring them to justice.

So war talk is way out of line in this court. You are a big fellow. But you are not that big. You're no warrior. I know warriors. You are a terrorist. A species of criminal guilty of multiple attempted murders. In a very real sense, State Trooper Santiago had it right when you first were taken off that plane and into custody and you wondered where the press and where the TV crews were, and he said you're no big deal. You're no big deal.

What your counsel, what your able counsel and what the equally able United States attorneys have grappled with and what I have as honestly as I know how tried to grapple with, is why you did something so horrific. What was it that led you here to this courtroom today? I have listened respectfully to what you have to say. And I ask you to search your heart and ask yourself what sort of unfathomable hate led you to do what you are guilty and admit you are guilty of doing. And I have an answer for you. It may not satisfy you. But as I search this entire record, it comes as close to understanding as I know. It seems to me you hate the one thing that is most precious. You hate our freedom. Our individual freedom. Our individual freedom to live as we choose, to come and go as we choose, to believe or not believe as we individually choose.

Here, in this society, the very winds carry freedom. They carry it everywhere from sea to shining sea. It is because we prize individual freedom so much that you are here in this beautiful courtroom. So that everyone can see, truly see that justice is administered fairly, individually, and discretely. It is for freedom's sake that your lawyers are striving so vigorously on your behalf and have filed appeals, will go on in their representation of you before other judges. We are about it. Because we all know that the way we treat you, Mr. Reid, is the measure of our own liberties.

Make no mistake though. It is yet true that we will bare any burden, pay any price, to preserve our freedoms. Look around this courtroom. Mark it well. The world is not going to long remember what you or I say here. Day after tomorrow it will be forgotten. But this, however, will long endure.

Here in this courtroom and courtrooms all across America, the American people will gather to see that justice, individual justice, justice, not war, individual justice is in fact being done.

The very President of the United States through his officers will have to come into courtrooms and lay out evidence on which specific matters can be judged, and juries of citizens will gather to sit and judge that evidence democratically, to mold and shape and refine our sense of justice.

See that flag, Mr. Reid?
That's the flag of the United States of America. That flag will fly there long after this is all forgotten. That flag stands for freedom. You know it always will.

Custody, Mr. Officer. Stand him down."

So, how much of this Judge's comments did we hear on our TV sets? We need more judges like Judge Young, but that's another subject.
Pass this around. Everyone should and needs to hear what this fine judge had to say. Powerful words that strike home....

First Hand Account - Letter From A Captain In Iraq

I got this from a friend of a friend.
/Stuart

We knew there was a dinner planned with Ambassador Bremer and LTG Sanchez. There were 600 seats available and all the units in the division were tasked with filling a few tables. Naturally, the 501st MI battalion got our table.
Soldiers were grumbling about having to sit through another dog-and-pony show, so we had to pick soldiers to attend. I chose not to go. But, about 1500 the G2, LTC Devan, came up to me and with a smile, asked me to come to dinner with him, to meet him in his office at 1600 and bring a camera. I didn't really care about getting a picture with Sanchez or Bremer, but when the division's senior intelligence officer asks you to go, you go.
We were seated in the chow hall, fully decorated for Thanksgiving when aaaaallllll kinds of secret service guys showed up. That was my first clue, because Bremer's been here before and his personal security detachment is not that big. Then BG Dempsey got up to speak, and he welcomed ambassador Bremer and LTG Sanchez. Bremer thanked us all and pulled out a piece of paper as if to give a speech. He mentioned that the President had given him this thanksgiving speech to give to the troops. He then paused and said that the senior man present should be the one to give it. He then looked at Sanchez, who just smiled.
Bremer then said that we should probably get someone more senior to read the speech. Then, from behind the camouflage netting, the President of the United States came around. The mess hall actually erupted with hollering. Troops bounded to their feet with shocked smiles and just began cheering with all their hearts. The building actually shook. It was just unreal. I was absolutely stunned. Not only for the obvious, but also because I was only two tables away from the podium. There he stood, less than thirty feet away from me! The cheering went on and on and on. Soldiers were hollering, cheering, and a lot of them were crying. There was not a dry eye at my table. When he stepped up to the cheering, I could clearly see tears running down his cheeks. It was the most surreal moment I've had in years. Not since my wedding and Aaron being born. Here was this man, our President, came all the way around the world, spending 17 hours on an airplane and landing in the most dangerous airport in the world, where a plane was shot out of the sky not six days before. Just to spend two hours with his troops. Only to get on a plane and spend another 17 hours flying back. It was a great moment, and I will never forget it. He delivered his speech, which we all loved, when he looked right at me and held his eyes on me. Then he stepped down and was just mobbed by the soldiers. He slowly worked his way all the way around the chow hall and shook every last hand extended. Every soldier who wanted a photo with the President got one. I made my way through the line, got dinner, then wolfed it down as he was still working the room.
You could tell he was really enjoying himself. It wasn't just a photo opportunity. This man was actually enjoying himself! He worked his way
over the course of about 90 minutes towards my side of the room. Meanwhile, I took the opportunity to shake a few hands. I got a picture with Ambassador Bremer, Talabani (acting Iraqi president) and Achmed Chalabi (another member of the ruling council) and Condaleeza Rice, who was there with him.
I felt like I was drunk. He was getting closer to my table so I went back oer to my seat. As he passed and posed for photos, he looked my in the eye and "How you doin', captain." I smiled and said "God bless you, sir." To which he responded "I'm proud of what you do, captain." Then moved on.

Wrong

Peter:
You are mistaken. The person whom accepted wisdom terms the "smartest President of them all" IS an idiot!

Rabbi Shimon Bar-Yochai's gonna want a royalty...

Notwithstanding the fact that Kabbalah is an ancient tradition, the Kabbalah Centre in Los Angeles, home to such Torah luminaries as Madonna and Britney Spears, has evidently tried to trademark the red string 'round the wrist used to stave off the evil eye. The U.S. has turned them down.

No word yet on whether the author of the Zohar is entitled to compensation...

Update: Thanks, Professor Volokh!