The Dougout

Guest Editorial by Roxanne Albertoli:

Thoughts on why it is the intellectuals, not the decent average men, who set the ideas of a culture/society, and how this affects the US’s self-defense.

Listening to a talk show host (Michael Savage), he said that when (not if) the Muslims drop or detonate a bomb in America, and some of you out there want to organize yourselves into a militia to defend yourselves, and your families, that you will be stopped by our government. He said “you'll be jailed, while they put a ring of police around every mosque in America” to defend it against the justice people want to dispense.

I think he's right. He cited the fact that the mayor of Seattle did just that when a Muslim man kidnapped a young girl (late July, 2006) to get into a Jewish Center, then proceeded to shoot, with two handguns, 6 unarmed women, one of whom was pregnant, and killing one of them. The mayor proceeded to encircle the mosques (and synagogues) of Seattle with police to protect them.

I wonder now if even a nuclear hit on a US city will startle people into their senses and realize it's their head on the chopping block, literally. The mental malaise in the US goes very deep. I see how the past 50 years of public education’s teaching of appeasement and “diversity” as ideals have had a bad effect on people's view of what’s right. By always compromising, equivocating, taking it on the chin, empathizing with other's pain, wringing hands over our great wealth and opportunities which forbids us (evidently) from destroying another country that's attacked us (too assertive/arrogant/un-humble), leaves average citizens confused on what's right anymore.

Taking a devil's advocate view, I can see the idea that we're too "lucky", too wealthy and happy, to defend ourselves from "pipsqueaks", that to hammer back with all our might looks to the world like we're in overkill, arrogant, not sufficiently magnanimous. Such a view is deceptively simple, and it’s incorrect.

It’s one reason why Ayn Rand said it doesn't matter that the average man’s ideas are better than the intellectuals, in that the average man wants to save his life, his country, and that he knows it's better than religious or tribal nihilism. The average man cannot defend his views philosophically, as they must be by the intellectuals, against the following types of popular culture ideas: That the strong MUST help the weak. That to do otherwise is to be arrogant/unkind/a not-nice person. That because fortune has smiled upon you, the strong, you must help the weak, turn the other cheek, bend over backwards to take it on the chin, etc. Then you prove how good you are.

It takes a philosophical approach to combat this. That it isn't good fortune or luck that made America productive, wealthy, or gave her citizens the “can-do” spirit. It was reason, logic, the proper political foundation (Founding Fathers) and freedom (for men to act) that created it. That America almost was and can still be lost. That it takes a monumental, almost inconceivable amount of unwavering reason/ applied rationality and denial of immediate gratification, over a long time, to achieve a country like this. (Denial of immediate gratification NOT being a sacrifice.) For the world to demand that America give up its dearly bought freedom, wealth, and opportunities, by allowing ourselves to be attacked without retaliating, is treason to the men and women who worked so unrelentingly to achieve this country. (That would be a sacrifice, i.e., giving up a greater value for a lesser value.)

Because of this, America owes nothing to anyone, although she is a friend to any country that wants help with knowledge to build a free and prosperous society. To be attacked for being good (which is the motive behind 9/11) makes any pipsqueak country that does so not only fair game, but on such grounds those aggressors must be destroyed. To not count the costs of the attack on 9/11 is to invite every thug head-of-state and gangster nation who wants to spit in America's face to do so. A government's only real job is to defend its citizens’ lives and freedom.

A corollary issue is it also takes an intellectual to explain how the Welfare State’s giving its’ citizens everything, besides all its other ill effects, makes them feel undeserving of being protected. That is, of not feeling any moral indignation at some thug who comes to kill them. Fear yes, but no moral indignation that would galvanize a person, or a society, to action. The Welfare State does this by undermining and ultimately destroying the connection between our survival and our freedom to think, work and trade; the freedom that is as absolute a requirement for human life as food or shelter. By smothering you with taxes and “entitlements” the Welfare State’s end result is that you feel no consequence, good or bad, from any “choice” you make. Choice is not allowed except in non-essential matters. Thus surviving, living, is “granted” from the state. With the decline in living standards is a concomitant decline in moral standards. Feeling as though ones’ life is important and a solemn responsibility that no one may direct but oneself, becomes an anachronism. Living in a Welfare State robs most of its’ inhabitants of the need to think, to find solutions to the challenges of life, so they lose the passion to live, they lose reverence for their lives. A country that is a Welfare State must either revert back towards freedom, or thugs (internal or external) will conquer it. It’s either or.

Crossposted at Infidel Bloggers Alliance

ARI's ObjectivistConferences has a stellar lineup for this three-day event to be held in Boston:

DANIEL PIPES, director of the Middle East Forum
YARON BROOK, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute
FLEMMING ROSE, culture editor of Jyllands-Posten
ROBERT SPENCER, director of Jihad Watch
PETER SCHWARTZ, author of The Foreign Policy of Self-Interest: A Moral Ideal for America
JOHN LEWIS, assistant professor of history, Ashland University

Hat tip: NoodleFood

If the MainSewerMedia (an unpaid adjunct of Hezbollah these days) have their way, Americans will never find out:

SAN FRANCISCO -- As many as 14 people were injured this afternoon by a motorist who drove around San Francisco running them down before he was arrested, authorities said.

Seven of those injured were in critical condition, police and firefighters said. Authorities have identified the man who was arrested as Omeed Aziz Popal, who has addresses in Ceres (Stanislaus County) and Fremont.

Authorities said they believe Popal was the same driver who ran over and killed a 55-year-old man walking in a bicycle lane in Fremont, at Fremont Boulevard near Ferry Lane, just after noon. That crash scene is just blocks from Popal's Fremont address, where he had most recently been living.

According to this report from the San Jose Mercury News the culprit is in custody. He is described as a "relatively young man" and nothing else.

Hat tip: Pastorius at IBA.

Update: The MainSewerMedia will on occasion actually give details (including a picture) of an arrested polygamist, multiple cell phone owning religious nut:

The sect, long based in an enclave on the twin border towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona, split from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when the mainstream Mormon Church banned polygamy more than a century ago.

But, you already knew where that was going, didn't you?

Guest Editorial by Edward Cline:

The retreat and ultimate defeat of the West will be made possible by an alliance of pragmatism and altruism. Since the stated U.S. policy is to avoid “collateral damage” and loss of “innocent” civilian life, President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have opted for two policies: To cripple our military by establishing “rules of engagement” to avoid collateral damage (especially to civilian infrastructure) and minimize civilian casualties; or, not to engage the enemy at all, but seek a diplomatic solution to a conflict.

This is our operating strategy not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but now in the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah-ruled Lebanon. It accounts for the paradoxical, astonishing failure of Israel to defeat its militarily inferior foe. Israel failed because Bush and Rice engineered the failure in the name of “peace.”

After allowing Israel to attempt to “shock and awe” Hezbollah into ashes with air strikes, and seeing that strategy fail, Bush and Rice allowed Israel to launch a delayed land offensive against Hezbollah into Lebanon. At the same time, they instructed Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to not attack Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure, even if Hezbollah fighters were using hospitals, schools and even homes to fire its rockets into Israel and from which to fire at Israeli troops. Despite this hamstringing, non-military policy, Israel advanced rapidly to the Litani River in Lebanon. U.S. satellites observed the advance, and Bush called a halt to it. Israel was suddenly in possession of the field but under “orders” to simply maintain a holding action.

General George Patton’s philosophy of war it’s not. He did not believe in “holding actions,” but advancing and destroying the enemy.

According to the Debka File report (August 22nd), “Olmert’s absolute compliance with Rice’s directives without fully comprehending their military import threw Israel’s entire war campaign into disorder.” At the behest of the U.N., Israel subsequently surrendered its gains, knowing full well that Hezbollah would simply fill the vacuum.

(For the whole report, go to this link: http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=1204)

When one thinks that our leadership’s craven pragmatism has reached its limit, that it must acknowledge the utter failure of its policies, what followed was an even greater example of its moral turpitude: Both the U.S. and Israel turned to Syrian president (dictator) Bashar Assad to assist in the resolution of the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict.

Instead of conceding that their policy was wrong, the U.S. and Israel compounded their irrational policy by following it to its logical conclusion: by sending out “peace feelers” to the enemy.

The U.S. then handed the “moral” task of enforcing a peace between Israel and Hezbollah to the U.N., which ordered the assembly of a multinational force to create a “buffer zone” between them. With one or two exceptions, the nations sending troops to serve in this capacity are hostile to Israel. France is no friend of Israel, and three of these nations are Islamic. The others are “neutral.” Two other dictatorships, Russia and China, refuse to consider U.N.-imposed economic sanctions against Iran; Russia needs the revenue, and China needs the oil.

Was the hamstringing of Israel an obscene “gesture” to Iran, intended to be an inducement to “talk” about its pursuit of nuclear weapons? Very likely. The cowardice is obvious to our enemies. Why isn’t it obvious to the cowards? Were any lessons learned by Bush, Rice and Olmert? Apparently not. To minds that regard reality, language and principles as “fluid,” with no anchorage in reality, no lessons are possible. Bush, Rice, Rumsfeld, and the European appeasers all pose as “realists” in global politics, but reality is not their sole reference. Their rule of thumb is: Reality is what you make it. Reality, however, is not cooperating.

The comparison was made elsewhere by another astounded observer: Just as we did not conduct a war against blitzkrieg and kamikazes in World War II, we should not be conducting a war against “terrorism” but against those nations that facilitate terrorists or encourage them.

The current, unbelievable mess is made possible also by a concern about what the world – the Arab world and Europe – would think of the U.S. if it used its strength to defeat its enemies once and for all. But the concern about what the world will think of the U.S. is a symptom of a perilous lack of self-confidence, not only in the capacity to act, but in its own value and worth. The U.S. will not act with pride.

Economist Walter Williams, in trenchant article on Capitalism Magazine, “Will the West Defend Itself?” (August 23rd) posed this question:

“Think of it. Currently, the U.S. has an arsenal of 18 Ohio class submarines. Just one submarine is loaded with 24 Trident nuclear missiles. Each Trident missile has eight nuclear warheads capable of being independently targeted. That means the U.S. alone has the capacity to wipe out Iran, Syria, or any other state that supports terrorist groups or engages in terrorism – without risking the life of a single soldier.”

But, our policy, based not on self-defense, but on global consensus and approval, regards our strength as a liability.

Thomas Sowell, in another Capitalism Magazine article, “Point of No Return?” (August 22nd) also paints a disturbing picture of what the “realists” in Washington and Europe refuse to see about the nature of our enemies. By his analysis, we are either reaching the “Munich pact” point, or have already passed it.

What is one of the major contributing factors to a lack of self-confidence? Multiculturalism, or the policy that no culture is superior to another (though Islamists claim otherwise). Moral relativism, which predates multiculturalism, is another factor. It takes a “global village” to imbue such nihilistic ethics, and a “world community” to teach the proud and the strong a lesson in humility.

Bush and Rice are Kantian manqués par excellence: altruism, or the sacrifice of the good to evil, is the moral fuel that powers their pragmatism. Their maxim is: peace. Period. Not “peace at any price,” not even “peace in our time.” Just “peace,” with no projection of the consequences.

Career pragmatists come in two varieties: those rendered insensate to reason and insulated against reality; and those hostile to reason. In either case, the corrupting power of pragmatism is evident. And, it is futile to point to a pragmatist’s intelligence. One might ask: can’t these people see what we are seeing, and reach the same conclusions about what is happening and what ought to be done about it? But intelligence is no guarantee of a fealty to reality or a commitment to rationality.

The fear of taking a proud, selfish moral stand against the West’s enemies and a queasy reluctance to take action against them have exponentially multiplied the perils to the U.S. and Western civilization in a pattern just as ominous as that which occurred in the 1930’s, when a sustained policy of appeasement for the sake of “peace” resulted in World War II.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran read Hitler’s book of how to treat appeasers and other “useful idiots.” For the last two weeks his military has conducted “war games,” including the firing a missile from a submarine and numerous surface-to-surface missiles. He inaugurated the opening of Iran’s first heavy water producer. He has in his possession two or three Soviet nuclear warheads obtained in 1993 by Iran after that other “Evil Empire” collapsed. While their fissionable material has expired, undoubtedly they have served as adaptable models to place onto long-range Iranian missiles, to be targeted on Israel.

Ahmadinejad has laughed at the West all the way fulfilling his mission of being the new Muslim “Mahdi,” or “expected one,” giving the U.S. and the U.N. the equivalent of a Bronx cheer. His immediate goal: the erasure of Israel. His long-range goal: to establish a new Persian empire in the Mideast.

The rumblings you hear in the distance are the Persians, the Tartars, the Huns and the Visigoths rallying around their Farsian fuehrer.

Crossposted at Infidel Bloggers Alliance

In 1947 Charles MacDonald published Company Commander. It is his story of leadership under fire from the Siegfried Line to Czechoslovakia. In September 1944 Captain MacDonald was given command of I Company, 3rd Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division. The lives of nearly two-hundred men were his responsibility; MacDonald was twenty-one years old.

MacDonald received his baptism of fire in a squalid, captured German pill-box part of the captured Siegfried Line his men were ordered to hold. Five days before the massive German attack in the Ardennes, MacDonald’s 2nd Division was relieved by the 106th Infantry Division. As a result of the German offensive that began on 16 December 1945, two of the three infantry regiments of the 106th Division would be surrounded and captured.

MacDonald’s unit was moved north for an attack into, and through, the Siegfried Line aimed at taking the Roer Dams. The jumping off point for this attack was along the north flank of what was to become “The Bulge.” On the evening of 16 December, MacDonald was ordered to quickly deploy with the other companies of 3rd Battalion to hold a vital crossroads “at all costs.” Nobody knew it at the time but elements of two German Divisions, the 277th Volksgrenadier and the 12th SS Panzer, were headed for that crossroads.

The 17th would witness concentrated hell in the forest in front of the crossroads. MacDonald’s men held off six successive attacks by German infantry. The Germans got closer to the American foxholes with each successive attack. MacDonald’s men were getting low on ammunition and had received no artillery support. Except for two M4 Shermans somewhere behind their position, I Company had no anti-tank defenses. At that moment five Tiger Tanks rumbled up the road. The German tanks began to systematically blast the Americans in their foxholes. After approximately thirty minutes of that I Company broke for the rear. The Shermans got two of the German tanks before being destroyed.

MacDonald arrived at the battalion headquarters only knowing where a handful of his men were. As he states he was disgusted with himself feeling he had failed to hold the crossroads and by allowing many of his men to be killed or captured. He wondered if he would be court-martialed and if it would not have been better to have been killed in the battle. The first thing his battalion commander said to him was, “nice work, Mac.” The 3rd Battalion had held the crossroads under impossible conditions just long enough for the 2nd Division’s other regiments to get into position. MacDonald received the Silver Star.

Richard E. Cowan was a machine gunner from M Company assigned to MacDonald’s unit during the battle. For staying at his gun and covering the other men in their retreat, Cowan became the subject of both German infantry and tanks. Nevertheless, Cowan held his position and was the last man to pull back. He was killed the next day. For his efforts on 17th December he received the Medal of Honor.

Jose Lopez, another machine gunner who was attached to the neighboring K Company, also received the Medal of Honor for his courage on 17th December. Fortunately, Lopez survived the war and lived to a ripe old age. Reading the award citations gives some indication of the ferocity of the German attack.

A month later leading his company in a counterattack MacDonald was wounded. After two months of recuperating, MacDonald was given command of G Company of the 2nd Battalion of his old regiment. MacDonald led this company from the Rhine to Leipzig and into Czechoslovakia by the war’s end.

The book isn’t all blood and gore there are moments of humor and dialogue right out of a movie. For example, MacDonald reports the following comments by his troops who had just witnessed a P-47 fighter-bomber attack on German positions:

“Well, their work’s done for the day,” someone said. “Yeah,” a mortarman answered, reaching for a shovel, “they’ll go home now and have a short Scotch and a hot bath and shack up with some mademoiselle or some Limey wench. What a life!” “Yeah, and draw a double salary for it,” a headquarters man put in. “That’s the life for me.” Willie Hagan said, “Oh, dry up. You never had it so good.”

In passing MacDonald notes that the 3rd Battalion surgeon was Edward T. Matsuoka of Honolulu. Matsuoka received his medical degree in 1941 and was awarded the Bronze Star for his efforts during the Battle of the Bulge.

MacDonald was wounded on 17 January 1945. The final volume of the Green Series on the European Theater, The Last Offensive, takes off from around that time and concludes with the war’s ending. This volume of the series was written by Charles B. MacDonald who retired as Deputy Chief Historian, U.S. Army in 1979. MacDonald also wrote or co-wrote two other books of the Green Series, The Siegfried Line Campaign and Three Battles: Arnaville, Altuzzo, and Schmidt. He also contributed to Command Decisions.

After retiring, MacDonald wrote A Time for Trumpets (note the title). This, I believe, was his last book. It is the history of the Ardennes Offensive and concentrates on the first two weeks of the struggle. Needless to say, this was a deeply personal work for him:

I approached the work with a kind of messianic zeal, for I wanted to tell the story to my own satisfaction (the battle had shaped my life, and I have always felt that I left a little something of me in the Ardennes).

This leads to the question, can someone with such an intense personal involvement write an objective history? I believe he did. It is the best work I’ve read on the battle (not that I have read them all). Perhaps, MacDonald had a personal need to understand what had happened and therefore, he wrote an honest account because of his personal involvement.

The title of the work is of interest because of the ongoing debate about “Drums and Trumpets” military history that focuses on battles, leaders, weapons and campaigns and the future and direction of the field. This may be what MacDonald had in mind when he penned the closing paragraph of A Time for Trumpets:

Hitler saw the American soldier as the weak component (the “Italians”) of the Western alliance, the product of a society too heterogeneous to field a capable fighting force. Bouck, Crawford, Tsakanikas, Umanoff, Moore, Reid, Descheneaux, O’Brien, Jones, Erlenbusch, Goldstein, McKinley, Mandichak, Spigelman, Garcia, Russamano, Wieszcyk, Nawrocki, Campbell, Barcellona, Leinbaugh. Black men, too, although their color was hardly reflected in their names. The heterogeneity was indeed there, but at many a place – at Krinkelt-Rocherath, at Dom. Butgenbach, in the Losheim Gap, behind the Schnee Eifel, at St. Vith, atop Skyline Drive, at the Parc Hotel, Echternach, Malmedy, Stavelot, Stoumont, Bastogne, Verdenne, Baraque de Fraiture, Hotton, Noville – the American soldier put the lie to Hitler’s theory. His was a story to be told to the sound of trumpets.

Update, 22 June 2009: Prior to joining the Army in 1942, MacDonald had graduated from Presbyterian College in Clinton, South Carolina. He was from Little Rock, South Carolina. The Presbyterian College archives have made seven of MacDonald's wartime letters available online in PDF format.

Ken Conklin’s review of the doings at Iolani Palace last Friday, August 18th, includes an interesting description on Hawaii’s “Republican” governor’s non-support of the Flag Wavers in favor of the Flag Burners:

Governor Linda Lingle, Proclamation for Statehood Day 2006, on official stationery…. It was published two days after Senator Slom's first announcement, and barely a day before the privately-organized celebration. Governor Lingle had been asked to organize a government-sponsored celebration, but refused on grounds of "political correctness" because she felt it might offend ethnic Hawaiians for the State of Hawai'i to celebrate the state holiday that honors the fact that we are a state!” [Lingle’s Proclamation mentions the State Capitol completed in 1969, but not Iolani Palace that served as the capitol until that time.]

“Lingle created the proclamation only after advisors warned her that, in view of the privately-organized celebration, she would be embarrassed if she failed to issue one. The proclamation as first printed had the wrong date for the 1959 Admission Day. An official announcement of the proclamation backdated its date of issuance to make it appear the proclamation had been issued earlier. Note that Lingle has repeatedly traveled to Washington D.C. to zealously lobby Congress to pass the Akaka bill, and spent most of her time with President Bush when he was in Hawai'i urging him to support the Akaka bill. Lingle has also personally attended numerous ceremonies for groundbreaking on Hawaiian Homelands projects. She personally appeared at a huge red-short rally at 'Iolani Palace, and wore the red shirt while speaking in support of Kamehameha School's racially segregated admissions policy. Yet she refused to have the state sponsor the Statehood Day celebration, refused to attend it, didn't issue a proclamation until it became apparent that the celebration would go forward under private sponsorship and she would be embarrassed if she made no statement at all.” [Emphasis added]

“Thus it is clear where Governor Lingle's priorities lie -- support racial separatism, cultivate the approval of Hawaii's highly favored racial group, and do nothing that might offend the most radical leaders of that group.”

Yes, it should be clear by now to all honest observers that Lingle is a consummate opportunist. If she had any principles when she began her political career they have long since been pushed aside by the “just win baby” ethos of the professional politician. Apparently, Lingle will even denigrate the legitimacy of Hawaii’s Statehood in order to become a senator of a state she’s not sure should exist!

Lingle’s lack of a political philosophy means she will have no long-term effect on how the state government does business. After her term expires, whether next year or in 2011, it will be back to business as usual for the state kleptocracy. Her tenure as governor will be a quickly forgotten interregnum. While the Democrats are conceding her the governor’s race this November, they will pull out all the stops to keep her out of the senate. Then Hawaii’s Christine Todd Whitman will return to a well deserved obscurity.

Guest Editorial by Edward Cline:

“Hugh Kenrick did not attach any significance to dreams. He once wrote to his mother that they were ‘but the skewed, tilted, involuntary recollections of one’s experiences and thoughts.’ Tonight, however, he had one of his infrequent dreams, and if he had been able to remember it, he might have seen some relationship in it between its events and those of the last month.”

The events of that last month, in Sparrowhawk: Book Four - Empire, were the struggles and triumph of securing passage of Patrick Henry’s Stamp Act Resolves in the Virginia General Assembly in May 1765. Hugh, an ally of Henry’s, had spared no effort to help secure the passage of those Resolves, which would serve, for the first time, to unite the colonies to oppose Parliamentary authority. It had been a Herculean struggle, pitting Henry and his allies against the gods of privilege, deference and complacency, whom Henry calls the “Tidewater grandees” and a “great weight of ballast.”

Hugh, some days after passage of the Resolves and the dissolution of the General Assembly, and exhausted from the effort, falls asleep on a divan in the home of his friend, Jack Frake. In his dream, he first imagines that, browsing through the used bookstalls in London, he discovers a lost play by Shakespeare, The Tragedy of King Henry the Second, about the conflict between King Henry and Thomas á Becket. He sees it being performed by London’s leading actors.

“Then, with unaccountable abruptness, the stage figures merged, and
Hugh imagined himself, at times with Patrick Henry, and, oddly enough at times, with an older Thomas Jefferson [at the time, a law student, and with whom Hugh has struck up an acquaintance], delivering speeches on liberty to a malodorous assembly of men of Becket’s time. Somehow, he knew that his scruffy audience understood every word he spoke, but also that what he was saying was unintelligible to every man in it. The serfs, the knights, the tradesmen, the princes all gaped up at him with cows’ and sheep’s eyes. He was standing on a dais with Patrick Henry and Jefferson, and turned to them to remark, ‘We may as well be speaking Dutch, or Algonquian, or court German, sirs. Ought we to go on, before they take us for sorcerers, and burn us at the stake?’”

Contributing to Hugh’s dream, by way of his subconscious, was his memory of the opposition to Henry’s Resolves by men in the General Assembly who knew that Henry was right but were fearful of Crown authority and the punishment it could impose. The Tidewater grandees refused to acknowledge the reality of their dilemma. The political leadership of that era was proof against reason, and was eventually displaced by men who adhered to reason. Understanding it helped me to grasp why own political leadership is proof against reason and reality.

I often think we are faced with the same conundrum, speaking reason to those who can read, write and think, but to no effect. We see no consequences, no concessions to reason, no admission of fault. Unreason and illogic seem to move of their own power toward certain tragedy with a hubris oblivious to reality.

If one could corner someone like Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and explain to her why her and President Bush’s Mideast policy can only guarantee disaster for Israel and the U.S., and that the best way to secure “peace” in that region is to defeat the Islamists of all suasions, and to such a thoroughly humbling degree that neither they nor their creed could ever recover to challenge, and then threaten, Western civilization.

Could we reasonably expect her to agree? No. And she wouldn’t. Given her record, and the long, sorry record of our foreign policy’s repeated attempts to reconcile good with evil, which she hopes to make work this time, one should be one hundred and ten percent certain that one would be rebuffed and dismissed, with a parting caution by her not to meddle in the rarefied realms of foreign policymaking and implementation, to leave peace-making to the professionals and the initiated.

The truth is that modern foreign policymaking is founded on the same non-causal mysticism as alchemy and astrology, and is on the same level of illogic, fantasizing and wishing. Well, the policymakers must think, the stars are in the right positions, so that, if we mix the right base metals with the right precious ones, the stars will exert an ineffable influence and produce peace and amity.

Search long and hard, you will find no better premises in especially American foreign policymaking to date.

The main premise is: Evil, such as Hezbollah, is open to reason. It can be persuaded of the “evil” of its own evil and lured to coexist with the good. If evil would deign to agree to a mutual compromise of ends with the good, all its past butchery and destruction can be forgiven.

Conversely, if Israel can be persuaded that the “aspirations” of the Palestinians, Syria, and Iran are no less or more legitimate than Israel’s wish to exist unmolested, then peace and amity in the Middle East are feasible ends and a compromise can be worked out that will satisfy all conflicting parties. After all, goes the thinking, good and evil are merely relative terms, and there is no reason to become fixated on absolutes.

What can account for this absurdity? The philosophical fallacy identified by Ayn Rand as the primacy of consciousness (as opposed to the primacy of existence), that is, the premise that mind moulds reality. Our foreign policy, inculcated in university graduates in foreign relations studies, goes something like this: If those responsible for evil acts, such as Hezbollah, Hamas, the IRA, Al-Quada, etc., can be persuaded that their perception of reality is wrong -- for example, that Israel’s wish to exist is no less or more legitimate than Hezbollah’s wish to exterminate Jews-- then they can be brought into the camp of the “reasonable” and “practical” and a “deal” can be struck.

To borrow a line from the film, Cool Hand Luke, good and evil need only “get their minds right,” and all will be well. Diplomacy, or the wizardry of adjusting reality to the exigencies of peace, can work wonders.

All these mental gymnastics wiggle around the fact that evil is evil, intent on achieving its purpose, which is destruction, which it will achieve, unless it is stopped and eradicated. But recognizing that evil is evil, that it is anti-reason and anti-life, requires a moral judgment. This is something our policymakers have refused to make.

Note Bush’s pretence that if he does not talk directly with Hezbollah, he cannot be accused (or, in modern jargon, “perceived”) as dealing with evil, thus keeping his promise that his administration would never consciously recognize the terrorist organization. Instead, he has pursued “peace” through third parties and the United Nations, first turning to the U.N. as a moral touchstone with the authority to sanction action (just as he did with Iraq).

Now, seeing that the U.N.’s “moral authority” carries little weight with Hezbollah, which has shown nothing but contempt for U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon and which continues to regroup and rearm itself while a ragtag force of “buffer zone” enforcers is assembled, Bush wants the U.N. to pass another resolution that will empower U.N. forces to disarm Hezbollah. Disarming killers will somehow transform them into non-killers. It is blaming guns and rockets for aggression, not the men who use them. If the killers do not have weapons, they cannot do “violence” and will turn to “democratic” processes to achieve their ends. (It “worked” in Iraq, didn’t it?)

Which, of course, would mean Hezbollah’s complete takeover of Lebanon’s government. After all, Lebanon’s president has already called Hezbollah his country’s “militia” -- why not make it official? -- and said that he does not plan to disarm it. And the U.N. would be reluctant to empower its forces to attempt to disarm Hezbollah without risking their being cut to pieces by a force more formidable than the U.N.’s (since when has a U.N. force ever achieved a military victory?). The situation in the Mideast can only progress to a more complicated, intractable mess, unless Israel reasserts its right of self-defense and thumbs its nose at the U.N., just as Hezbollah has, and pursues its original purpose, to destroy Hezbollah, instead of agreeing to a truce with it.

So, the evil will remain, and our policymakers will huddle again to try to figure out why their wizardry has not worked. Reality will always out, no matter how often and how magically it is denied. Our policymakers are a new species of “Tidewater grandees,” and hopefully they will be replaced by men of reason before it is too late and we and Israel are burned at the stake.

Crossposted at Infidel Bloggers Alliance

Last Friday was Admission Day for Hawaii. In recent years the only way someone living in Hawaii had any knowledge of this was that it provided state government employees with yet another paid holiday. Otherwise, there has been no official notice of the day including by Hawaii’s allegedly Republican governor.

Last year Malia Zimmerman, editor of Hawaii Reporter, wrote an article on this that was a lone voice in a wilderness of Hawaiian Political Correctness:

“It’s Hawaii’s birthday, observed as a state holiday Aug. 19, but no residents or visitors would know that. There is no parade, no fireworks, no birthday cake, no candles, no political speeches, no additional red, white and blue flags flying high, and definitely no acknowledgement by Hawaii’s political leaders that 46 years ago, Hawaii became America’s 50th state. There is just a sad, embarrassing silence.

“What once was a day of pride and parade has caved into the political correctness of a small percentage of native Hawaiians and other radicals who dislike the United States so much that they want Hawaii to become a sovereign nation unaffiliated with the rest of America.

“The actions -- or lack there of in support of America -- by Hawaii’s political leaders, is a great slap in the face to America’s founding fathers, to the visitors from the mainland U.S. and most of all to the vast majority of residents who are proud to be part of the United States.”

This year a few stalwart citizens and office holders tried to take Admissions Day back from the American-Freedom haters. Republican state senator Sam Slom announced this event on August 8th. He chose Iolani Palace as the venue for celebrating Hawaii becoming the 50th star on the American flag. I applaud Slom’s courage in having the event at the Palace. The Palace has been the scene of some of the most hate filled rhetoric to be uttered in public in the Aloha State. At an event marking the overthrow of the Monarchy in 1993, UH Professor Haunani-Kay Trask declared war on America at a major Sovereignty demonstration at the Palace before a crowd of 15,000:

"We are not Americans," she said. "Say it in your heart. Say it in your sleep. We will never forget what the Americans have done to us. Never, never, never. The Americans, my people, are our enemies."

Ken Conklin has the transcript of another Trask rant at the Palace from September 2, 2002 when, yet again, she spewed her venom to a large crowd of supporters:

“All you Hawaiians who think the United States is good think again. Take my class. Hawaiian Studies 390. Read the Blount Report. Read the report that shows what the haoles [white people] thought of us. They think the same thing today. That's where we get Rice and Conklin and Burgess. These are your ENEMIES Hawaiians, your ENEMIES. When Kamehameha was getting ready to go to war, he didn't sit there and think, "Oh gee I wonder if we should make nice. I wonder if I should go over to Kahekili and say hey, let's have a little pa'ina [party]." No.

“We need to think very, very clearly about who the enemy is. The enemy is the United States of America, and everybody who supports it. Rice. Conklin. Burgess.”

After the overthrow of the Monarchy Iolani Palace became the capital and housed state offices until 1969. After the building of the new capital building, the Palace was restored to its original condition circa 1893. It wasn’t until after the late 1960’s orgy of nihilism and America hatred that the Palace began to be used as a symbol by large numbers of Sovereignty activists.

During this whole period, at least until 1969, the American flag flew proudly from the Palace. This symbolism isn’t lost on the activists and the celebrants for statehood that this represents the political progress of change from monarchy to constitutional republic. However, it appears that many political commentators in Hawaii are completely clueless on this issue.

Yes, the confrontation at the Palace Friday was predictable, given that two participants, Slom and Conklin, have had “war” declared upon them by the activists. According to Richard Noah Hough at Hawaii Reporter the activists are also at “war” with high school bands:

A local high school band was on site, outside the steps of the palace, and to my surprise, so were unregistered protesters. Armed with microphone, bullhorns, and ample rage, needless to say the occasion did not go as I hoped but a part of me expected.

Yet, those protesting, even on the microphones with police present, made threats and even stated, "we are coming for you Gov. Linda Lingle, Sam Slom ... and all you in the Hawaii Legislature, we are coming for you!"

These “activists” are the enemies of democracy by their own statements. They would “come” for our elected representatives and replace them with whom? The biggest thug amongst them? Ken Conklin has more on what happened Friday including links and pictures as does this Honolulu Star-Bulletin article.

One of the problems with Hawaii is the number of people who will pander and grovel before the anti-democracy activists. For example, there is this Star-Bulletin article on the disgusting effects of flying the American flag from the Palace right after the attacks of 9/11/01:

Alice Guild, executive director of the Friends of Iolani Palace, has apologized for raising the American flag over the palace for a month in honor of the Sept. 11 attack victims.

"I am so, so sorry for the pain that has been caused," she wrote in a Nov. 8 open letter to the "Board, Staff, Volunteers of Iolani Palace and to those who were affected by the raising of the American flag at the palace on September 28th."

She wrote that she received hate mail and "'hurt mail' from people who were feeling a deep sense of pain and betrayal" after raising the U.S. flag over the former home of Hawaiian monarchs.

Her letter, however, has angered others who believe no apologies are ever warranted for flying Old Glory, especially on what is now a state building.

"To me it's just not right," said Gene Wallace, a docent at Iolani Palace. "To me it just boils down to one simple thing: You don't apologize for raising the American flag."

Not so Mr. Wallace, many “liberals” will apologize for the very air they breathe. Although the anti-democracy activists have stated that they are “coming” for Governor Lingle, they won’t have far to look. Last year our RINO governor was at a pro-segregation event advocating for a racially exclusive policy for the Kamehameha Schools and ripping the 50th star from the American flag.

Some have criticized the choice of the Palace as the venue this event. However, if that was the only objection, where were the other Statehood Day events? Except for Senator Slom and State Rep. Barbara Marumoto (R, Waialae-Kahala) I have not read of a single elected representative in the state of Hawaii participating in any Statehood Day event including the governor. This is a sad testament on the state of democracy and patriotism in Hawaii.

Update, 8/21: Both Malia Zimmerman and Don Newman provide eyewitness accounts of the day's event. There is also video footage available at KHNL online. The two eyewitness reports should be useful to Hawaii blogger Doug at Poinography who doesn't have Windows Media Player [Heh] and so hasn't been able to view the "fighting back" that he seems to think is justified.

Apparently, those who disagree with Doug's friends don't have a First Amendment right to peaceful assembly. When a howling mob prevents a high school band from playing at an annouced, public event and the governor, state attorney general and the cops hide under their desks while this is occurring, then our rights are diminished.

Guest Editorial by Edward Cline:

On August 10th President Bush, speaking about the foiled, London-based plot to blow up ten planes with liquid-based devices assembled during flight by Al-Quada linked would-be suicide bombers, said, “The recent arrests that our fellow citizens are now learning about are a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation.”

Before addressing this subject, let us first define and clarify the meaning of the term fascism. Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary (1956), defines fascism as “any program for setting up a centralized autocratic national regime with severely nationalistic policies, exercising regimentation of industry, commerce, and finance, rigid censorship, and forcible suppression of opposition.” The American Heritage Dictionary (2nd edition, 1982) is less exact in its definition, and, frankly, woozier: “A philosophy or system of government that is marked by stringent social and economic control, a strong, centralized government usually headed by a dictator, and often a policy of belligerent nationalism.”

Surprisingly, while the Oxford English Dictionary discusses the Italian Fascismo, it defines neither that term nor fascism, limiting itself to the Mussolini phenomenon, a startlingly blinkered identification that excludes its occurrence in such countries as Spain and Argentina.

Ayn Rand, in her article, “The Fascist New Frontier,” remarks: “The difference between [socialism and fascism] is superficial and purely formal, but it is significant psychologically: it brings the authoritarian nature of a planned economy crudely into the open….Under fascism, men retain the semblance or pretence of private property, but the government holds total power over its use and disposal.” She cites the definition of fascism found in The American College Dictionary (1957): “a governmental system with strong centralized power, permitting no opposition or criticism, controlling all affairs of the nation (industrial, commercial, etc.), emphasizing an aggressive nationalism….”

She notes further that the “fascist-Nazi axis scorns material comfort and security, and keeps extolling some undefined sort of spiritual duty, service and conquest…..The fascist-Nazi axis offers nothing but loose talk about some unspecified form of racial or national greatness.” (Emphasis Rand’s).

This last notation perfectly implicates Islamofascism. Miss Rand may be forgiven for omitting religious greatness, for when she wrote “The Fascist New Frontier” (a damning indictment of President John F. Kennedy, which her publisher, Bennett Cerf at Random House, refused to include in a collection of her essays) religion as such did not play much of a prominent role in politics. I imagine that Islam at that time (the 1960’s, the PLO, for example, being founded in 1964) was as far removed in her mind as a credible peril as, say, ouija boards. And it is the advocacy of religious greatness that characterizes Islam. All of it.

Bush’s use of the term Islamic fascists apparently offended Muslims everywhere and moved their spokesmen to write letters of indignation and make public statements.

In Britain, the merest hint that Islam motivated the would-be plotters caused its Muslim spokesmen to take curiously defensive and offensive positions. The Los Angeles Times of August 13th reported that, “In an open letter to several newspapers, the leaders of much of Britain’s establishment Muslim community, including six Muslim lawmakers, said British foreign policy is ‘putting civilians at increased risk, both in the U.K. and abroad,’ and said the government should focus less on domestic anti-terrorism laws and more on reorienting its policy in the Middle East.

“While emphasizing that ‘attacking civilians is never justified,’ the letter said that ‘'the debacle of Iraq and now the failure to do more to secure an immediate end to the attacks on civilians in the Middle East [read Lebanese civilians, not Israeli] not only increases the risk to ordinary people in that region, but is also ammunition to extremists who threaten us all.’”

Yes, Islamic terrorism does threaten “us all.” How many Muslims died in the World Trade Center, and on the London underground last July 7th, and in Iraq? Between Shi’ite and Sunni terrorist acts in Iraq, about 1,000 Muslims die a month. Some brotherhood of Mohammed. No mention of Hezbollah’s and Hamas’s use of civilians as shields to deter Israeli strikes. Islamists are hypocritically selective in their public grieving for “innocent” civilians.

The Los Angeles Times article continues:

“Shahid Malik, a Labour Party member of Parliament from an area that was home to one of the July bombers, said Israel’s bombing campaign in Lebanon and Britain’s failure to condemn it are issues of substantial frustration.

“’Obviously, I think everybody would condemn Hezbollah and their actions,’ he said, “but it’s critically important that we say the actions of Israel, and the reactive inaction of us in the West, is [sic] contributing to increasing anger and frustration among Muslims in the U.K., in America, and across the world. And invariably, if you’re angry and frustrated, then you’re more likely to be susceptible to voices that are sinister.’”

I contend that these statements are more sinister than an open call to behead and massacre infidels. These are veiled threats. What would alleviate the “frustration” of young Muslims are the wholesale conversion of Britain to Islam and Sharia law, Britain’s immediate withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, and the dissolution of Parliament. Then British Muslim youth will no longer be angry and frustrated and susceptible to sinister voices urging them on to violence. They’ll become “good Britons.”

On this side of the Atlantic, Muslims have been equally disingenuous. Daniel Pipes, an authority on Islam and the Middle East, in an article on FrontPage Magazine on August 14th, “At War with Islamic Fascists,” quotes a number of them. Leading the pack are representatives from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

“CAIR’s board chairman, Parvez Ahmed, sent an open letter to President Bush: ‘You have on many occasions said Islam is a ‘religion of peace.’ Today you equated the religion of peace with the ugliness of fascism.’”

Perhaps he is concerned that Bush is waking up to the true nature of Islam.

Pipes reports that Nihad Awad, also of CAIR, called the term (Islamic fascists) “ill-advised” and “counter-productive,” and suggested that we “take advantage of these incidents (the arrest of the London plotters) to make sure that we do not start a religious war against Islam and Muslims.”

Excuse me? It would be untoward to start a “religious” war against Islam and Muslims, when Islam and Muslims are waging a “religious” war against the West? One supposes there would be no strife if we would all just roll over and submit to Islam, acquire a taste for goat meat and self-flagellation, and replace the Constitution with Sharia law.

In his article, Pipes subsequently bursts the balloon of Muslim sensitivity and objection to the term, citing its use by Bush numerous times in the past, when no one, not Muslims, not the press or news media, raised an eyebrow.

Pipes then discusses, and questions, the use of the term Islamic fascist or Islamofascism. He asserts it is inappropriate.

“I applaud the increasing willingness to focus on some form of Islam as the enemy, but find the word fascist misleading in this context. Few historic or philosophic connections exist between fascism and radical Islam. Fascism glorifies the state, emphasizes racial ‘purity,’ promotes social Darwinism, denigrates reason, exalts the will, and rejects organized religion -- all outlooks anathema to Islamists.”

I have the highest regard for Daniel Pipes, but even he has lapses of insight. It surprised me when I encountered that statement. I agree with Ayn Rand that the differences between socialism and fascism are superficial and merely formal; likewise, the differences between German Nazism and Italian fascism are superficial, since they were both “crude” forms of planned economies and total power over a nation’s citizens. Fascism has properly become synonymous with Nazism. And when one examines the supreme goal of “radical” Islam, which is the establishment of a global caliphate, what would it entail but much the same thing as global fascism of the secular German variety?

Islamofascism would glorify the caliphate (or the state), emphasize not racial “purity,” but religious purity, promote religious (and therefore social) Darwinism by asserting that Muslims are superior to everyone else, denigrate reason (since when has any religious faith been regarded as a paragon of reason?), exalt the will (Immanuel Kant’s anti-reason can be applied equally to Islam as to Christianity; Christians began martyring and sacrificing themselves long before Muslims got the idea), and uphold organized religion, which, in this instance, would be Islam and only Islam.

And what else would a grand caliphate be but a governmental system with a strong centralized system (controlled by theocrats) that permitted no opposition or criticism, that controlled all affairs of the globe, and that emphasized an aggressive global “nationalism” (next stop, South America, China?)? Models for Islamofascism already exist. Look at Iran, but also at Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Dubai, and even Iraq. Where are their Anglican, Methodist, Jewish or atheistic billionaires and sheiks? How many billions do their regimes spend on their welfare programs, open only to Muslims? Hezbollah also boasts of a welfare state for loyal Muslims, just as the Nazis had for loyal, allegiance-swearing Germans.

And, what is the visceral difference between watching old clips of Nazi rallies at Nuremberg, showing tens of thousands of Germans giving the Nazi salute, and recent footage of tens of thousands of Islamists (Pipes’s preferred term) giving their mass salutes in Beirut, Gaza, and Tehran? Does the object make a difference? In Germany, it was to Hitler and National Socialism; in the Mideast, it is to Allah or Mohammad and the local dictator or mullah that commands the selfless, “spiritual” dedication to the cause.

Pipes quotes an editorial from the Washington Times, “It’s Fascism”:

“Fascism is a chauvinistic political philosophy that exalts a group over the individual -- usually a race or nation, but in this case the adherents of a religion….It also describes Thursday’s terrorists. It very accurately describes the philosophy of Al-Quada, Hezbollah, Hamas and many other stripes of Islamism around the world.”

And, unfortunately, Pipes still doesn’t get it. He still believes that peaceful, law-abiding American (or British) Muslims pose no threat to the country, and that they ought to be more proactive in denouncing “radicals” who give Islam a bad name by blowing up planes and pizza parlors and subways and firing rockets into Israel and committing atrocities such as they did in Beslan. But the reason we do not hear more from these “law-abiding” “moderate” Muslims is because their creed silences them.

A belief in Islam short-circuits their minds. The either/or factor stops their thinking cold, rendering them as thoughtless and inarticulate as the creed requires them to be. Islam does not tolerate divided loyalties: not between the Constitution and a mullah or imam, not between reason and faith, not between Allah and the deity of any other creed, not between freedom of expression and a prohibition of representations of Allah and Mohammad. I have said it before here and elsewhere: subject the Koran and Hadith to a vivisection to rid them of their belligerent, homicidal, and authoritarian dictates, and Islam would no longer be Islam, but a creed as innocuous and pacific as the Amish or Quaker. Force is an integral element of Islam, lending the creed a natural predilection for totalitarianism.

The short-circuiting of the minds of rank-and-file Muslims allows their leaders to speak with forked-tongues and advance the goal of Islamifying Western societies. We see it happening in Britain and Europe, and it is occurring in the U.S., as well. It is not “rights” that Muslims seek in Western societies, but privileges and a special, protected status. To use a football analogy, organizations like CAIR and the Muslim Public Affairs Council carry the ball to the goal post, while lesser Muslim advocates run interference.

Yes, Islam can inculcate nothing but Islamic fascists. And American Muslims must face their either/or: to repudiate Islam, or remain a quiet, sanctioning fifth column.

Crossposted at Infidel Bloggers Alliance

According to al-Reuters news service, their reporters, aka Hezbollah, in Lebanon have declared victory:

"We are before a strategic and historic victory, without any exaggeration," Nasrallah said. "We emerged from the battle with our heads high, and our enemy is the one who is defeated."

It's difficult to argue with that statement of fact. Hezbollah will remain armed, willing and able to continue its mission of Genocide with the help of its puppetmasters in Tehran:

IT was supposed to be the day the maligned Lebanese army took control of the country's borders and policed the UN ceasefire.

Instead, the military commanders were left humiliated and troops stranded as Hezbollah told them not to disarm its fighters.

The first infantry units were preparing to head south when Hezbollah showed who controls the area by announcing it would not surrender its weapons.

The Government can't force Hezbollah to abide by the ceasefire," Economics Minister Sami Haddad said.

"It's unnatural to have an armed political party in cabinet that does not abide by what the Government of Lebanon wants."

There were optimistic murmurs about trying to integrate Hezbollah fighters into the army. But Hezbollah seems to have decided that the demand for its fighters to disarm and leave the 20km arms-free zone would show it as losers in the conflict.

One soldier said Hezbollah was better armed and organised, and that he was reluctant to confront "the resistance fighters".

Another soldier said his brother and a cousin were fighting for Hezbollah. "I can't turn a gun on the resistance, because they are family," he said.

The West has suffered yet another total defeat. No mention from certain quarters on how using the "Just Surrender Theory" of Michael Walzer is going to eradicate Hezbollah.

Crossposted at Infidel Bloggers Alliance

Earlier this week, Wednesday the 9th, I spilled the beans on Prof. Goldberg-Hiller's plans for a new, new poly-sci department at the University of Hawaii-Manoa. Andrew Walden, editor of the Big Island's Hawaii Free Press, has some interesting thoughts on this development posted at Hawaii Reporter:

Senator Inouye may need to take a look at the future of the Hawaii Democratic Party as well. A recent series of emails leaked to the website www.kalapanapundit.blogspot.com [that's me!] indicate University of Hawaii at Manoa Political Science Department Chair, Jonathan Goldberg-Hiller is secretly planning to transform one of the Hawaii Democratic Party’s primary training grounds into, the “department of alternative political studies.”

UH Manoa is critical to the Hawaii Democratic Party’s ability to produce effective electoral candidates for the future. Fully 50% of the current sitting Democrat legislators, 10 Senators and 21 Representatives, studied at UH Manoa according to their official legislative biographies. The academic milieu at UH Manoa is founded on censorship of voices not congruent with Joe Lieberman’s opponent Ned Lamont. Is further limiting of the ideological environment in the cards for Manoa? Democrats produced by UH Manoa will simply be unable to cope—much less compete--in the modern political world after four years in the “alternate” political universe. Democrats will just have to look elsewhere for their new crop of up and coming leadership.

Well the Professors have gotten wind of this and they are not amused. The comments at the UHM poly-sci bulletin board make for interesting reading. The subject heading of these comments is: "Zimmerman RightWing blog article--University of Hawaii-Manoa Political Science Department to Become 'Department of Alternative Political Studies?'"

George Kent chimes in with a comment worthy of a Comrade:

From: "George Kent"

I think the best response would be to offer the
author assistance in finding psychiatric help.

Aloha, George

What a charming view towards disagreement from an university professor. Kathy Ferguson comment is typical. "No radicals here, just us 'liberals.'"

Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2006

From: "Kathy Ferguson"

How quaint: A Red scare. Just when I was
beginning to miss the Cold War.

Kathy

I suspect what Ferguson misses is the late 1960s, which the university is attempting to keep au courant.

P.S. George, you might want to change the scary picture at your webpage.

The Belgium based website Brussels Journal is under attack by the Islamofascist allies, i.e. the civil authorities of that soon to be dead nation. Paul Belian has been "requested" to visit the nearest police station to "explain" his temerity in writing something not to the liking of those who wish to cut his throat:

Here is an ARI press release by Yaron Brook:

Irvine, CA--"By pressuring Israel to accept the U.N.'s cease-fire agreement, the Bush administration is betraying Israel--and America," said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute.

"In the wake of a plot to kill thousands of westerners, our administration is doing nothing more than having Americans throw out their toothpaste and shampoo. Meanwhile, our leaders are forcing the one country that is actually taking serious action against Islamic totalitarianism to back down. We should be helping Israel to destroy Hezbollah, not urging it to hold back.

"This moral travesty is a betrayal of Bush's so-called war on terror."

I have nothing to add relating to this disgrace. Crossposted at Infidel Bloggers Alliance.

Guest Editorial by Edward Cline:

In a crisis, if a rational moral standard is discarded, pragmatism, allied with altruism, is the only recourse open to men attempting to end the crisis. Then the only deciding factor in a resolution is “pressure” on the conflicting parties to abandon or compromise their positions. A pragmatic standard, after all, would require recognition not of an absolute, non-negotiable value, but the fluid, subjective “ethos” that renders all values “value-neutral,” and satisfy no one but the pragmatists. If a value is said to be no better than any other, it is implied that it cannot be so important that its defense is worth the risk of destruction, “violence,” or a “disproportionate” action.

The news media reflects this philosophy in its choice of phrases and terms in reporting the Israeli-Hezbollah war. The reportage of the conflict, in general, is as far removed from reality as the thinking of the diplomats who are scrambling to stave off a wider conflict and evade having to take a moral stand.

There are no heroes in any news report. For example, John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, when appointed by President Bush to that position, was billed and subsequently excoriated by the press and media as a “hardliner” contemptuous of the U.N. and likely to start fist fights with the America-haters on the Security Council or in the U.N. cafeteria. But Bolton’s tough talk mellowed; he has predictably succumbed to the corrupting ethic of the U.N.’s value-neutral pragmatism. It is Bolton who worked with French U.N. ambassador Jean-Marc La Sabliere on the wording of the resolution calling for a cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon.

MSNBC reports that Bolton told the Associated Press, “We’re still pressing for a vote on a resolution as early as we can, but we’ve got to reach agreement, and there are still a lot of issues that need to be considered. So, when will the vote be? It’s hard to say at this point.”

Certainly not Mike Hammer speaking. Bolton subsequently, at France’s behest (and on instruction from Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice), agreed to amend the wording and points of the resolution to accommodate the concerns of Arab League diplomats. And, yesterday, Rice announced a cease-fire “deal” that all parties, but most especially Israel, can “live with.” A policy of pragmatism must necessarily focus on and require the submission of the victim, in this instance, Israel, not on the aggressor, in this instance, Iran, by way of Hezbollah. Absolutes, such as Israel’s right to self-defense, are not options when pragmatists are “brokering” a peace. The rule that the “best defense is an offense,” initially subscribed to by Israel (after years of retreat) is not to be found in any diplomatic manual.

La Sabliere, of course, acted on instructions from French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy (at the behest of President Jacques Chirac), who, according to BBC News, asserted that “there could be no military solution to the crisis -- so Israel must stop the shooting, as well as Hezbollah.” France, so chic and sophisticated and worldly in some respects, is Europe’s premiere connoisseur of pragmatism. Douste-Blazy recently met with his Iranian counterpart in Beirut and praised Iran as a “stabilizing force” in the Mideast. I am betting that the Iranian foreign minister retreated to a restroom out of earshot, and doubled up in laughter.

France, of course, seeks to ingratiate itself not only with its Arab friends, but also with its own hostile, refractory Muslim population.

Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, very likely surrendering to “pressure” from its alleged ally, the U.S., has indicated he is open to a U.N.-sponsored international force to secure the border between Israel and Lebanon. Which is tantamount to expecting the Visigoths to protect Rome against the Huns.

The U.S., ready to “negotiate” its commitment to Israel’s existence, has also predictably allowed France to set the terms of resolution. BBC News reports that “France is at the center of intense diplomatic efforts to bring about a cease-fire in Lebanon, in the face of grave risks that the conflict could spread out of control. Does France hold the key to peace in the Middle East?”

No. It holds the key to further strife there, in the form of more attacks on Israel. There are no terms of reconciliation possible between Israel’s wish to survive and the Arabs’ wish for Israel to perish, either immediately or by bleeding it to death from endless suicidal concessions.

The Associated Press reported on MSNBC: “At an open Security Council meeting on Tuesday, Qatar’s Foreign Minister Hamad bin Jassem Al Thani, speaking on behalf of the Arab delegation [to the U.N.], warned Israel that continuing attacks on Lebanon will ‘sow the seeds of hatred and extremism in the area’ rather than restore peace and stability.”

One must wonder if the reporter who filed this story presumed Jassem was speaking tongue-in-cheek. First, it was Israel that was attacked. Second, it is Lebanon that has served as the Arab world’s “neutral” launching pad for rockets and other assaults on Israel, acting as a “democratic” proxy for its enmity for Israel. Third, the “seeds of hatred and extremism” were sown decades ago; the hatred and “extremism” emanating from diplomatic lounges and the “Arab street” show no signs of abating.

The West’s concept of a “stabilized” Mideast is based on a Hegelian notion of the marriage of thesis and antithesis -- Israel coexisting with the Arabs -- to attain some ethereal apotheosis in human evolution and “multicultural” relations. The Arabs’ concept of a “stabilized” Mideast is simply the obliteration of Israel. Name one ayatollah, imam (abroad or here at home), Iranian president, Jordanian king, Palestinian or Hamas thug, Syrian dictator, Hezbollah cleric or Saudi or Pakistani madrassa that hasn’t preached that concept and goal and never minded its being known to the West. Which concept is dotty, and which is “realistic”?

Hitler was being “realistic” in his appraisal of France and Britain’s moral fiber and commitment to the sovereignty of nations he wished to conquer. The diplomatic waffling of Britain’s Neville Chamberlain especially only emboldened Hitler to move into Poland, the Rhineland, Austria and Czechoslovakia. Similarly, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has taken the measure of the U.S.’s commitment to defend Israel. He has already dared to send Iranian “volunteers” to fight alongside Hezbollah, in addition to supplying rockets and other war matériel by way of Syria.

Significantly, there has not been one news item anywhere reporting that Ahmadinejad, a pig for publicity, has denied the charge.

Correspondents of mine have precisely described as “reactive” overall Western behavior since 9/11 and the Islamic declaration of war on the West, and particularly on the U.S., while the creation of Homeland Security, TSA and all the nascent totalitarian restrictions being imposed on Americans they likened to erecting a virtual Maginot line (which the Germans, when they moved on France, simply bypassed) to keep out the Hun.

I’ll go one better, and liken our current policy to a permanent circling of the wagons, or building a stockade to repair to next to a frontier town, with no hope that the cavalry will ever come to the rescue by eradicating the Indian war parties and lifting the siege, because it’s pinned down up at Little Big Horn. That is what our policy has done, transformed the world into a frontier in which civilized men exist in constant peril, and the Indians may roam and raid at will, untouchable, because that is their “lifestyle” and their grievances over encroaching civilization are legitimate and beyond judgment.

That is, the West has accepted, indefinitely, as a norm, a state of siege. A state of siege requires the diminution of the freedom and liberties of the besieged, which is what we are witnessing now in the U.S. The besiegers will do as they please, and keep probing for weaknesses, or find a way to bypass our Maginot line. And all we will do is “react.”

It is certainly pragmatic to prohibit paying passengers from taking liquids, make-up, toothpaste and laptop computers on board commercial planes to thwart suicide bombers. But this is merely another example of a siege philosophy, a policy to protect the country from enemies the Bush administration refuses to acknowledge and attack. Do these restrictions on Americans serve to preserve freedom, liberty and other rights that creatures like Michael Chertoff, head of Homeland Security, claim they are serving? Hardly.

What is preventing the U.S. from dealing with Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia as they should be dealt with, that is, as enemies dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the U.S. and candidates for a thorough, debilitating military reduction? For one thing, our State Department. John Bolton hales from the State Department. Condoleezza Rice now heads that department. Both have been either seduced or corrupted by it. One would need to go back more than half a century to find the name of an individual in that department who boasted an iota of moral courage.

Our State Department is markedly anti-American. It has been staffed by leftists, One-World loons, and Hegelians for decades. It has worked to undermine or sabotage every semi-assertive, semi-rational policy adopted by various occupants of the White House over the last forty or so years, rare as those policies have been.

Another disruptive factor is multiculturalism, which acts as a cognitive anticoagulant that stops the West from formulating and adopting a solid, assertive, and self-assertive moral policy vis-à-vis its enemies. One isn’t likely to proclaim freedom, individual rights and press freedom (too much) if one is convinced that those values aren’t superior to or any better than abject submission to religious tyranny or other form of “cultural” collectivism. They are just “different,” beyond judgment, beyond comparison.

A mind poisoned by multiculturalism and suborned by political correctness will see no difference between, say, Rudolph Evans’s magnificent statue of an intransigently proud Jefferson in the rotunda of the Jefferson Memorial and the degrading, obsequious figure of a Muslim bowing to Mecca. Such a mind would shudder at the prospect of swearing eternal hostility to anything, never mind to every form of tyranny over the mind of man. That kind of language is banished from the minds of our pragmatic policymakers.

But, these are the kinds of minds that are preparing the U.S., Israel and the West for future turmoil and disaster.

Crossposted at Infidel Bloggers Alliance

In the Spring 2006 issue of The Objective Standard, Yaron Brook and Alex Epstein analyze "Just War Theory." In the article they state:

Just and Unjust Wars [by Michael Walzer] serves as the major textbook in the ethics classes taught at West Point and dozens of others colleges and military schools. More broadly, Just War Theory—for which Just and Unjust Wars is the most popular modern text—is the sole moral theory of war taught today.

As evidence of this I present some recent comments on the war in Lebanon by Mark Grimsley who has a blog named Blog Them Out of the Stone Age. Grimsley is a professional military historian who teaches at Ohio State University where he received his Ph.D. He has published several well regarded works on the American Civil War. In a recent post Grimsley provides numerous links about the ongoing campaign in Lebanon. One section is titled: "Articles on Just War Theory and the Problem of Moral Judgment in War." As the entries under this heading make clear, there is only one theory governing the "rules of engagement" in war and that is based on one interpretation of Judeo-Christian ethics.

As Brook and Epstein note:

To identify a nation as an enemy is to recognize it as a committed initiator of force that threatens one’s own life, that forfeits its right to exist, and that in justice deserves whatever is necessary to end the threat it poses. By Just War Theory’s moral standards, however, there is no such thing as an enemy nation. Even when a nation initiates aggression, it is not regarded as the proper object of retaliation, but as a haven of “others” to be served. (This notion is, unsurprisingly, rooted in Augustine’s religion, Christianity, which countenances us to love everyone— specially, as proof of extreme virtue, to “love thine enemy.”)

Walzer’s prescriptions are not the idle musings of an ivory tower philosopher; they are exactly the sort of “rules of engagement” under which U.S. soldiers are fighting—and dying—overseas. When our marines in Baghdad do not shoot back when fired upon from a mosque, or when our helicopter pilots are shot down while flying too low in an attempt to avoid civilian casualties while in pursuit of their targets, they are following the dictum that we should show a “positive commitment to save civilian lives” even if this entails “risking soldiers’ lives.”

Prof. Grimsley elaborates further on his views of "just war" in a blog post at Cliopatria. He is practicularly unhappy about the graphic "I'm a Fan of Disproportionate Response" that is on the sidebar of The Dougout:

Well, I'm not a fan of disproportionate response. The reliance on aerial and artillery bombardment troubles me; I cannot, try as I might, accept the proposition that it falls within the modern laws and usages of war. It violates the very core of those laws and usages: The weapons used in war must discriminate between combatants and noncombatants. Civilians are never permissible targets of war, and every effort must be taken to avoid killing civilians. Their deaths are permissible only if they are unavoidable victims of a deliberate attack on a military target.

I agree that "disproportionate response" violates what passes for international law and usages when it comes to civilized nations defending themselves. How is Hezbollah going to be made to follow these laws and usages? The question answers itself and also make clear that "Just War Theory" benefits the aggressor. It would be suicidal for Israel to adopt "Just War Theory." Such a course would be an open invitation to fascist aggressors to attack with impunity, hide behind civilians and when they start losing to whine to the U.N. for a "cease fire." As with all forms of altruism "Just War Theory" rewards evil and punishes the good.

Crossposted at Infidel Bloggers Alliance

A series of e-mails from within the UHM poly-sci department was sent to my inbox by a little bird. The first begins with William J. King on the University’s poly-sci net:

From: "William J King"

Subject: Reaction to the ' vision statement' Sender:
owner-polisci-l@HAWAII.EDU

Regarding the latest next vision statement: Didn't we just re-conceptualize ourselves a few years back? I can not imagine the department producing employable graduates or attracting law school applicants with the approach of: "to become the premier department of alternative political studies. By alternative focus, I mean that we excel within the areas neglected by mainstream political science that appeal to our extant political and methodological interests in order to compound our present reputation..."While I have your attention: A PoliSci course which is drastically lacking is an undergrad class on the Politics of Health. This course would be intended to attract Nursing students and Med School wanna bees to see health, disease, and medicine from other than the germ theory/medical model perspective that they get in their programs. Modern history of medicine, competing models of medicine, comparative medicine, who becomes ill, who survives, politicsof health and medicine would be covered.

Indeed why should medical students sully their minds with all that pesky science when they can study herbs and crystals? Of course, every professor is going to want their pet area to be represented under the new dispensation. As professor George Kent chimes in:

From: "George Kent"

Subject: Vision for the Department's Future Sender: owner-polisci-l@HAWAII.EDU

Colleagues -- The Vision for the Department that Jon circulated on July 30 is very good. I like the idea of becoming the premier department of alternative political studies. However, there is a significant omission. The list of areas in which the department invests should include some form of international relations/world politics. The emphasis certainly could be on some fresh alternative approach (I like the idea of focusing on global governance), but no matter what specific form it may take, some variant of international relations should be on the list, and it should be high in the hiring priorities for the near future. Aloha, George

Department head Jon Goldberg-Hiller is not happy about public discussion on new hires and the change of format at this point so he is conducting an investigation to get to the bottom of this outrage:

Date: Sun, 06 Aug 2006

From: "Jon Goldberg-Hiller"

Thanks, George. I have been investigating something a bit upsetting, and I'd like to ask the help of the faculty. About three days after I sent this to you, an employee of ITS who is a former member of this department responded to the Polisci-Llist in opposition to this proposal. I hadn't sent him a copy (I don't even know him--though he has long been critical of me in this forum and elsewhere). Because he has access to email accounts, an investigation has commenced by ITS to find out how this access was achieved. The employee in question--William J. King--has responded to me that he found this document in the faculty lunch room some weeks ago, but I only completed it on the day I sent it to you and never showed a draft to anyone prior to that. If you forwarded this document to anyone off this list, would you kindly let me know so I can inform the investigators or stop this investigation. May I please request that materials of this sort remain within our orbituntil they are discussed. This is not an attempt at an end-run aroundgraduate students or even ITS personnel, but a plea for conversation within our own faculty about some issues before they are publicly debated in the usual forums. Many thanks. JON Jon Goldberg-Hiller, Ph.D.

Goldberg-Hiller followed up later the same day with this:

Date: Sun, 06 Aug 2006 From: "Jon Goldberg-Hiller"

Dear Department: In various ways on this list, an exploratory report that I had written as a thought-piece for an upcoming faculty retreat has been acknowledged though not disseminated. I am writing to calm worries; the substance of the faculty discussions will be made public for broader consideration at department meetings that will commence this Fall. The general subject is widely known and has been previously discussed in department meetings: with an extraordinary number of faculty retirements likely within the next few years, I have proposed, and the administration has encouraged, a long-term development plan that will guide faculty replacement and possibly permit early hiring in order to preserve institutional continuity. Discussions about a plan are likelyto take place in numerous venues during the coming year including among the faculty, among the graduate student community, and in departmental discussions that combine both; it will also involve the College administration at some point. This is a serious issue that this department needs to face, but it will not require decision making that will be concluded any time soon. There will be ample time for broad discussion and consideration of any proposals that are made. Thanks. JON

It’s all about finding “alternative” faculty. Goldberg-Hiller must have a problem if Commies are not “alternative" enough these days. As his website proclaims:

I completed my BA in political science at Reed College (1979) and my MA and Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (1991) with emphasis in public law, comparative politics, and Marxist theory…Research Interests: I have recently been studying the ways changing forms of identity, nationalism, political authority and political economy have modulated the mobilization of rights in various contexts. By starting with these dimensions of social life rather than with rights discourses themselves, I have tried to understand how rights are resisted and how they retain relevancy; in this vein I have researched such contemporary phenomena as the conservative reaction against same-sex marriage, opposition to the political recognition of indigenous peoples, and efforts by labor unions to boycott legal regulatory machinery.

Imagine, this PC litany is just not cool enough any more at UHM.

Guest Editorial by Edward Cline:

Browsing through the thousands of pages of a diplomatic history of the United States commissioned by the State Department, I came across this interesting paragraph about the efforts and obstacles of the U.S. to establish civil relations with foreign powers under the Articles of Confederation, before adoption of the Constitution:

“The Confederation’s lack of power was an even more significant factor in the abortive negotiations over American sailors held captive in Algiers. Unlike relations with Spain…Algiers held all the advantages. The guarantee of safe passage in the Mediterranean was always available: namely, to pay suitable tribute to the Dey [Muhammad III, Emperor of Morocco, 1757-1790]. This route was followed by European powers, who found it less expensive to pay the pirates than to fight them. Such recourse was not open to Americans. Although the issue was never as vital to America’s survival as other problems in foreign relations, none was more painful. For Jefferson, who was given the task of ransoming the American captives, the solution lay in arms. He wanted to join a federation that would sweep the pirates from the sea once and for all, and was distressed over France’s submitting to Algerine demands. [John] Jay’s reaction was more cynical; he sensed that Europe had no interest in challenging the pirates, and would relish the prospect of a war between America and the Barbary States, from which Europe would benefit….”

(From The Emerging Nation: Foreign Relations of the United States Under the Articles of Confederation, 1780-89, Vol. 3. National Historical Publications and Records Commission, 1996)

Jefferson at this time was minister to France, and John Jay minister to Spain. What impressed me was the echo from that distant era of Europe’s toleration of the Barbary pirates, in particular France’s, and Europe’s unwillingness to “sweep the pirates from the sea once and for all.” The U.S., at the time strapped for cash to launch a navy that would have satisfied Jefferson’s recommendation, could do little else but emulate the European policy and pay tribute. In 1786 the U.S. representative, John Barclay, negotiated a “non-molestation” treaty with Morocco, whose “emperor” was paid $10,000 in gifts to sign it. But Tripoli, Algiers and Tunis for the next three decades continued their seizures of American vessels and enslaving their crews and passengers. After the Dey’s death, Morocco also resumed its depredations.

It should be noted here that during the American Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, Barbary pirates would turn over seized American vessels to the British navy! For a price, of course.

As president, Jefferson took the first concrete steps to counter the Barbary looters by sending a squadron to combat Tripoli, which had declared war on the U.S. because it didn’t think it was receiving enough in tribute. (For details, see the adventures of Stephen Decatur). Jefferson, struggling with a contentious Congress, was unable to deal effectively with the other Barbary States. It fell to President James Madison to finish the task of reducing Algiers, Tunis, Morocco and Tripoli and forcing them to cease their plundering of American vessels (1815).

One must observe that neither Jefferson, Jay nor Madison responded to the Barbary “crisis” by proposing to “democratize” the Barbary States for the sake of “peace” in the Mediterranean, or rebuild towns damaged by American bombardments, or pay compensation to “innocent” Muslims affected by the fighting. And all they got in the way of European response to the idea of an international military effort to subdue the Barbary States was indifference and expressions of “such is life” tolerance of Barbary extortion. Further, Jay was correct in his assessment of Europe, in that it benefited from American action at no cost to it, not even in an expression of gratitude. Today, Europe is similarly benefiting at the expense of the U.S. expending blood and treasure fighting the wrong war.

The historical parallels of and differences between that age and this one are noteworthy, not only in terms of actions taken, but in terms of a nation asserting its right to reply to force with force. Jefferson and Madison were not by nature “men of war,” but they nonetheless settled on war instead of continuing to pay tribute to barbarians and submitting to their extortion. Their decisions were not governed by an unreasoning, emotional anathema to “violence.” In that era, the U.S. had to wait until it was solvent enough to dispatch a navy to end the “crisis.” And when the causes of the “crisis” were dealt with, there was no more crisis to bedevil the country.

When one watches the frantic, contemptible relief with which the U.S. and Europe react to the least chance for “peace” between Israel and Lebanon (re the recent U.N. Security Council resolution to end the fighting, but condescending to allow Israel to defend itself), one cannot help but sense that it is not “peace” they are seeking, but release from the responsibility of taking a moral stand, in this instance, on the right of Israel to retaliate with force against a power seeking its destruction. Thus, Hezbollah, a more vicious and dangerous band of killers than the Barbary pirates ever could be (they were not being financed with Iranian oil revenues), is being treated as an ineluctable metaphysical fact that must be dealt with on its own terms.

The absence of a moral stand treats the warring parties, Israel and Hezbollah (or Lebanon, if you like, which one observer called a “state within a terrorist organization”), to morally neutral entities fighting doing violence to each other for no comprehensible reason.

Somehow, think President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Prime Minister Blair, France and other parties, the perilous conflict in the Mideast can be reduced to the level of a Hatfield-McCoy feud of “proportionate,” tit-for-tat “reciprocal” actions, refereed by the United Nations, which has in the past, more than once, demonstrated a virulent hatred of Israel (and of the U.S.).

Underscoring the nature of the conflict, King Abdullah of Jordan, who has criticized the U.S. and Israel over the war, according to the BBC, “stressed the only way to achieve peace was to end the Israeli occupation of Arab lands.”

Concretely, he was referring to the territories Israel won and kept after being attacked by its Arab neighbors. More broadly, he was referring to the claim by Hezbollah, by the Palestinians, by Syria, by Iran, that Israel itself “occupies’ Arab land, and that its destruction would bring “peace” to the Mideast.

A moral stand in this and in any other “crisis” that involves aggression would be a refusal to sacrifice the good to evil and a “proactive” policy to preserve the good. This is not our present policy. Now we are asking Israel, the good, what one commentator called the “frontline of civilization in the Mideast,” to jeopardize its existence by accommodating an unacknowledged evil, Islamofascism. This is a totalitarian movement which, as one Iranian ayatollah recently proclaimed, will one day rule from Spain to Iran, by jihad or by diplomacy.

There would be no need for a U.N. sponsored “international” force to patrol the Israeli-Lebanese border if Israel were allowed to eradicate Hezbollah “once and for all.” As for the Lebanese government, it should fall. The Lebanese should learn the hard way that it should not pay to form a “democratic” alliance with totalitarian killers.

Our Islamic enemies understand us, all too well, and are advancing because they grasp that the West is unwilling to assert not only its right to exist, but its moral superiority. When will our political leaders begin to understand our enemies and act to vanquish them? Only when they grasp the fact that retaliatory violence is the only answer to force and terror.

Crossposted at Infidel Bloggers Alliance

The USS Maddox was an Allen M. Sumner class destroyer that first saw action in the Pacific in November 1944. She was hit by a kamakaze on 21 January 1945 in which seven men were killed. The Maddox DD-731 also deployed during the Korean War were one of her duties was escorting the battleship USS Missouri. My step-father served aboard the Maddox for the duration of the Korean War. He told me that their standing orders were that if a torpedo was spotted heading for the Missouri they were supposed to intervene and take the hit.

The Maddox is most famous for being attacked by North Vietnamese Motor Torpedo Boats (MTBs) in the Gulf of Tonkin. This incident led to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, more properly the Southeast Asia Resolution, where President Johnson was given authorization by Congress to go to war defending South Vietnam from Communist aggression:

North Vietnam's leaders, who knew from their own intelligence sources about the American connection to Operation 34A, were determined not to bend to U.S. pressure. Hanoi directed its navy, which had not been able to catch the fast PTFs, to attack the slower American destroyer. On the afternoon of 2 August, the Communists dispatched three Soviet-built P-4 motor torpedo boats against Maddox. Torpedoes launched from the P-4s missed their mark. Only one round from enemy deck guns hit the destroyer; it lodged in the ship's superstructure. The North Vietnamese naval vessels were not so fortunate. Shellfire from Maddox hit the attackers. Then F-8 Crusader jets dispatched from the aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga (CVA 14) strafed all three P-4s and left one boat dead in the water and on fire.

This last Thursday Ehren Watada's father, Bob Watada, made some comments at Hilo's Palace Theater before the showing of the pro-Islamist victory film, Sir! No Sir!. Among other "anti-war" cliches and lies, Watada said this:

Speaking of the incident that propelled the United States into the Vietnam War, "I found it hard to believe that 12 fishing ships in the Gulf of Tonkin could fire a torpedo at Navy ships," Bob Watada said.

That's the left's definition of history: those kook conspiracy theories that confirm to their anti-American bigotry. The mayor of Hawaii County Harry Kim was also there, where he courageously came out against war, "I consider war the greatest failure of mankind." I understand next week Mayor Kim is going to take a strong public stand in opposition to drowning puppies.

Crossposted at Infidel Bloggers Alliance

In 1956 President Eisenhower started the USA on the road to appeasement of Islamofascists. In that year Egyptian thug Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized (stole) the Suez Canal. The Canal was the property of Western companies, as were Mid-East oil fields. It is West's allowing the nationalization of this private property that is the reason we are "over a barrel" regarding oil:

ON JULY 26, 1956, President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal, at that time the most vital international waterway in the world. The Middle East, and all of us, still live under the shadow of the fateful events his decision triggered 50 years ago. Even more than the Cold War, the Suez crisis has shaped the world we live in. And at its heart was the biggest American foreign policy blunder since the War of 1812.

So, when the British high command informed Eden it would take six weeks to assemble enough ships, planes, and men to take back the canal and topple Nasser, Eden turned to the French for help. They in turn appealed to the Israelis. For some time the Israelis had wanted to wipe out the Palestinian guerrilla bases which had sprung up along their border with Egypt since the 1948 war, camps run by a Palestinian student-turned-Nasser flunky named Yasser Arafat. So Israel's chief of staff, the 41-year-old Moshe Dayan, drew up a plan with the help of a young paratrooper colonel named Ariel Sharon for an incursion into Gaza and Sinai in coordination with an Anglo-French landing at Suez. The Israelis assumed the West would back up bold action against hit-and-run terrorists and those who supported them.

But they, and their allies the French and British, had not reckoned on the United States. President Eisenhower and his secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, were preoccupied with the Cold War. Like their Democratic predecessors, they were reluctant to support any move that smacked of "colonialism," no matter how justified. And Eisenhower, in Stephen Ambrose's words, was "uncomfortable with Jews" and never understood the threat Israel faced from its Arab neighbors. So the Americans refused to endorse the Suez invasion. "We do not want to meet violence with violence," Dulles said--words that have a disturbing echo today. Then the Americans went further. If the British and French attacked Egypt, Eden was told, the United States would not back them up in the United Nations.

The Suez crisis was over. But the damage it did was, and remains, incalculable. Eisenhower had wrecked the trust between the United States and its former World War II allies for a generation; in the case of France, for all time. If anyone wonders why French politicians are always willing to undermine American initiatives around the world, the answer is summed up in one word: "Suez."

This, in the end, was the most egregious result of Suez. Hammarskjöld had ushered in a new era of international gangsterism, even as the U.N. became an essentially anti-Western body. Its lowest point came less than two decades later, in 1975, when it passed a resolution denouncing Zionism as racism and a triumphant Yasser Arafat addressed the General Assembly with a pistol strapped to his hip.

Hat tip: Liberty and Culture

Robert Trancinski on why Western leaders keep evading the obvious:

Everyone knows that Hezbollah initiated a war with Israel in order to justify its status as a military "state within a state," billing itself as a defender of Lebanon against Israel--even while, far from defending Lebanon, Hezbollah is causing Lebanon to be torn apart. And everyone knows that Hezbollah deliberately operates among Lebanon's civilian population, cynically exploiting the resulting civilian casualties as propaganda.

But even more insidious is a kind of cognitive altruism that tells men to sacrifice, not just their interests, but their judgment, subordinating their knowledge to the opinions and prejudices of others. That is what seems to be operating here. Whatever Secretary Rice knows about the Iranians' strategy is discarded the moment lurid images of civilian casualties are splashed across the front pages of European newspapers and the broadcasts of Arab television stations. Just as, in this self-abnegating morality, you have to consider the interests of everyone except yourself--so, in this morality of cognitive self-abnegation, you have to consider everyone's opinion except your own. Thus, faced with the united force of "world opinion," the formerly "tough-minded" Secretary of State was flustered into an ignominious surrender of American interests.

This is a strange kind of war, in which we have more than enough military capability to crush the enemy's "lousy army." Nor do we lack the intellectual power to understand and counteract the enemy's strategy. But we lack the moral confidence to use both our power and our knowledge.