All We Are Saying ... Is It's Over and We Won

... (crickets chirping) ...

Zombietime says the war in Iraq is over, and we won. This is a very dangerous thing to say in today's America. It goes against all the existing narratives that our helpful media dishes out daily, ie., that the war was lost a long time ago, and only a moron or a President who doesn't listen to his advisers -- but I repeat myself -- would continue the charade.

Turns out, the war was not lost a long time ago (though it was trending that way). But winning wars requires a Commander-in-Chief with both fortitude and judgment to, ahem, listen to the advice of an adviser, Gen. David Petraeus, who is an expert on counter-insurgency, and who convinced President Bush in December 2006 that changing our strategy was worth a shot, even though it would require another 20-30,000 troops to make it work. So President Bush, to his great credit, and despite just having been rebuked by the November 2006 elections, and despite constant calls for swift withdrawal by poll-watching Congressmen, decided to up the ante, and send more troops, and make Gen. Petraeus the commander of the Multi National Force Iraq to implement his strategy.

This was a very daring move. And it worked. And here we have an object lesson in why the military is under the command of the President, and not Congress.

I know all this because I read military and pro-defense blogs. And it would be awfully nice if more people knew why we won the war. They'll study the Petraeus doctrine in military schools for decades, because it was a revolutionary solution to an age-old problem, but the American people are too ill-informed and self-absorbed to notice; yet they know how much money Sarah Palin's wardrobe cost.

Can you say "culture in decline"?

So Zombietime is declaring November 22, 2008, Victory in Iraq Day. I'll gladly participate, keeping in mind those who have died to make this happen, and the leadership of President Bush in committing to winning the damn war.

But lots of people don't like President Bush, so by their tortured logic, that means we didn't really win, after all. Or if we did, it isn't very important. After all, he talks funny.

So never-you-mind that today, Iraq is mostly peaceful, due to both the change in strategy and the people of Iraq finally turning against Al-Qaeda in Iraq about two years ago, after realizing that terrorists care about nothing except killing innocent people by the truckload in order to gain power. And give the people of Iraq credit -- lots of credit -- because they risked their lives (including the lives of innocent women and children) in order to actively start fighting against terrorist scumbags who blow up little kids running for candy and strap bombs to kids with Down syndrome and then detonate them via remote control.

Just don't expect much comment on this historic victory over the terrorists and the unmitigated evil they represent. Nah, we live in a post-modern bubble here, where such things can be ignored, because they don't fit the narrative. It's cool. You just make up the facts you wish to be true, and ignore the true ones, and voila! A new reality is born.

So no front page headlines in 72 point type announcing victory, no victory parades, and no admission from the 20-30% of the country that suffers from Bush Derangement Syndrome, that they were wrong. That would require intellectual honesty, and in a post-modern world, well ... who has time for that silliness?

And they fought so hard, for the other side, these rabid Bush-haters in the media and Congress and various leakers at State and CIA. During wartime, too! How exhausting for the poor dears. Of course, normally, this is borderline treason, but somehow we've gotten to a place where it's "the highest form of patriotism". Um, sure. OK.

Despite their efforts, we won anyway. And we'll remember who puts petty political squabbles over the nation's interests. And we'll teach our children all about the shameful conduct of the various factions that worked against our ultimate victory, and the way they advanced the cause of terrorists the world over for political gain at home. And how they then tried to spin it later, and then learned to avoid the topic when it wasn't a political winner for them.

Once we started winning, lots of people stopped pretending to care about the war. When we were losing, it was vitally important to them. Does that sound like patriotism to you? Me neither.

And we all know people who belong to this club. I'm not sure what to say to them, except that arguing about being lied into war is silly, because every war starts due to lies of some sort or another. Even a benevolent government has no real duty to tell the full truth to its people, in matters of war. Calling a press conference to announce that the real reason behind the Iraq war -- to increase pressure on neighboring countries, particularly Saudi Arabia and their terror-supporting ways -- is just giving away strategic information for free. And this was, in fact, the long-term goal, and so far, at least in part, it's working. If you didn't like that plan, what was your plan? Continue to pursue terrorists as individual criminals, in the courts, instead of the organized para-military force that they are? That doesn't work, for all kinds of reasons, and it led to 9/11.

And the best thing to do -- when you yourself are safely at home while others are fighting in a war you don't support because you don't understand it, or because you don't like the President -- is to keep quiet and support it anyway, at least outwardly. Do everything you can to keep national morale up, so we can win quickly, both to honor the memories of those injured and killed in that war, and to send messages to our enemies that yes, there is a serious price to pay for messing with us. War is like a classroom, and everybody in the world is learning from it; you want those lessons to be to your advantage in the future. Which also means, conversely, that giving up and running away when the going gets tough emboldens those who in the future, might not otherwise attack. This is basic Geo-Politics 101.

One more thing: undermining the Commander in Chief during a war works to accomplish the goals of the enemy during wartime, by actively killing morale and sapping the national will. Whether intended or not, that's what happens. So knock it off; we're lucky enough to live free due to the sacrifices of others, and so we owe them at least that little bit of gratitude, that little bit of humility, to do what we can to help them, so we can pay them back by quickly bring them home, victorious.

So, to all those elected officials, bureaucrats, and other lemmings who took principled stands that undermined our cause, congratulations. This means you, Dick Durbin.

And, to all the private citizens who took a principled stand, and refused to let a lack of good information stop them from trying to re-live 1969 all over again, congratulations. Someday you'll figure out that anti-war protests are nearly always full of crap.

To some of us, it looked an awful lot like putting partisan politics before the national interest.

But hey, if you say it was a principled stand, I believe you. And since taking a principled stand is about principles, not image and politics, I anxiously await all those drinks and meals you're going to enthusiastically buy when you run into somebody in uniform.

Or, you could admit it was all about trying to gain political advantage. Totally up to you.

Scientists Stunned to Discover CO2 Helps Plants Grow

Nobody hipped them to the photosynthesis thing, I guess.

The French Press Agency reports that a group of German scientists has found that increasing exposure to carbon dioxide can actually boost crop growth.

Researchers at the Johann Heinrich von Thunen Institute spray plants with carbon dioxide jets so that the air around the plants is equivalent to with what some scientists predict will be the level of CO2 in the atmosphere by the year 2050.

Hans-Joachim Wiegel, one of the researchers, said that by spraying the plants "output increased by 10 percent for barley, beets and wheat."

Other established scientific concepts they plan to re-discover in the future:

1. Earth orbits Sun instead of the other way around


2. Water is wet


3. Sky is dark at night, lighter in the morning, extra bright between noon and 5 p.m.

Just To Clarify ... "Dissent" vs. "Slimy Lies"

The main reason I can't really take Democrats very seriously is because they say stuff like this:

And some of the success of the surge is that the goodwill of the Iranians - they decided in Basra when the fighting would end, they negotiated that cessation of hostilities - the Iranians.

"Goodwill"?

Um, no. This statement is not just provably incorrect; no, it's much worse than that.

If it is a statement made in good faith, it is downright dangerous; and if it is not made in good faith, it is pandering to the anti-American wing of the Left.

And in either case, it is borderline treason, to publicly make statements that offer aid and comfort to an enemy that is actively engaged in killing our armed forces.

Gasp! Did I just say treason?

Sure did. Look it up. Let's examine it, shall we?

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

Using a word like "goodwill" is offering Aid and Comfort. Check.

No person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

She said this to the press. Check.

The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

She is the Speaker of the House; talk about your conflict of interests!

Of course, this statement itself, and its underlying, disconnected-from-reality, surreal lunacy, wouldn't be that big of a deal if Rep. Pelosi was just a fringe nutcase, standing in the subway, wearing dirty clothes and possessing few teeth, and hitting you up for a buck to buy some Mad Dog 20/20. Which, if there is any justice in the world, might be the case within a few years.

No, unfortunately, everything she says represents mainstream thought in the leadership of the party.

And everything uttered by the other "leaders" in our Democratic Congress agrees with the kinds of things Pelosi says: Reid, Durbin, Schumer, Obama, Kennedy, Clinton, the list goes on and on.

What this means is that everything that comes out of Pelosi's mouth -- and just about every politician's mouth, to be fair -- is intentional, and researched, and focus-grouped. Every. Flipping. Word.

But no Republican would be so stupid as to say something so idiotic. But the Democratic leader of the House, third in line for President? Sure!

So. What all this really means?

It means that there are a lot of people in the United States who believe the worst about our government, and the best about the government of Iran, and countries like it. And politicians therefore see no downside to offering aid and comfort to enemies of our armed forces. And the media whistles past the graveyard, ignoring outrageousness like this, because they largely agree with it.

This is not "dissent". Dissent is offered with respect and sober judgment, and from a platform of trying to improve the nation with constructive criticism.

No, what we have here are outrageous lies offered up by slimy politicians, for consumption by the clueless and the active supporters of the enemy during a war.

I'd pay money to watch Rep. Pelosi take her bizarre opinions about "Iranian goodwill" to Iraq, and talk to some military folk who could tell her how wrong she is.

"They Drilled Hell-on-Earth, and Put Up an Oil Rig"

(sung to the tune of "Big Yellow Taxi")

We've all heard alot about ANWR, and how we shouldn't drill for oil there because it is "pristine".

In this case, "pristine" is another way of saying "bug-infested", and "a vast, uninhabitable wasteland, even for the caribou".

Obama and Guns

He is a Democrat, so he does what Dems do:

"I think that the Second Amendment means something. I think that if the government were to confiscate everybody's guns unilaterally, then I think that would be subject to constitutional challenge," Obama said in 2004.

In a separate interview, Obama said, "I have said consistently that I believe the Second Amendment is an individual right."

So he can read. And he is firm, firm, in his commitment to Constitutional rights that were plainly spelled out 230 years ago.

The junior U.S. senator from Illinois has insisted that he supports both the law-abiding use of firearms and reasonable gun control. The NRA and the McCain campaign, though, claim Obama's record in the Illinois General Assembly shows him to be a gun grabber.

Obama was among just eight state senators who voted against a new law making it legal for Illinoisans to use guns to defend themselves in their own homes, even if their own hometown should have a law saying that's not legal.

Sure, just call the cops, so when they finally get there, they can clean up the bloody mess that used to be you and your family.

There is something wrong, something very basic, when a politician votes that way on such an important matter as defending your home and family. Either the politician (a) believes such a position is good and just, or (b) adopts such a position just to win public favor.

I find both (a) and (b) severely lacking, in various ways.

He can't run in a general election on that stance. So he will now have to dance for us, and pretend that it is our best interests to allow judges and legislators to hammer out some kind of fuzzy gray area between "guns are a Constitutional right" and "reasonable gun control".

That always works out so well.

Wake Up, Smell Coffee

A while back, the Belmont Club offered a summary of this New Yorker article by Lawrence Wright, "The Master Plan", in a post entitled Al-Qaeda from the inside out.

The article and post are must-reads, if one wants to understand the reality of the world today.

Reading either exposes Al-Qaeda for what it is: a political organization, using Islam to advance political goals. This may come as a shock to some; news like this rarely finds its way into any mainstream media outlet, and even when it does, it disappears so fast it is nothing more than a blip on the radar.

For instance, the original intent of their terrror mission was to strike back at the corrupt, tyrannical leaders of Middle Eastern countries. And chaos works to their advantage:

The theoretical basis for this strategy, an al-Qaeda document called the "Management of Savagery", has been the subject of study at West Point. It was anonymously authored by the mysterious Abu Bakr Naji, who anticipates the fact that while the Jihad will be everywhere tactically defeated by American forces, the necessary fate of each battlefield would be ruin and chaos; and it would not be an unfavorable outcome because chaos is on Allah's side. As the world's system administrator, America would be tied down attempting to restore order everywhere. The dilemma the US could not avoid was that to rule was to maintain order; but to fight the Jihad was to foul its own nest.

Chaos and terror is a strategy; those who view it from afar and think "bring our troops home now" are in effect campaigning for the terrorist agenda. Whether they believe they are doing so, or not, is unimportant; the point here is that power-mad scumbags are blowing up innocent people in order to further their own agenda, and are forcing us, as defenders of freedom, to make hard choices: are we in the fight, or not?

It is basically a battle of wills.

So far I'm not impressed with the West, other than certain leaders like Tony Blair, Australian PM John Howard, and President Bush.

From the article:

... the thesis of "The Management of Savagery" is drawn from the observation of the Yale historian Paul Kennedy, in his book "Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" (1987), that imperial overreach leads to the downfall of empires. Naji began writing his study in 1998, when the jihad movement’s most promising targets appeared to be Jordan, the countries of North Africa, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen .... Naji recommended that jihadis continually attack the vital economic centers of these countries, such as tourist sites and oil refineries, in order to make the regimes concentrate their forces, leaving their peripheries unprotected. Sensing weakness, Naji predicts, the people will lose confidence in their governments, which will respond with increasingly ineffective acts of repression. Eventually, the governments will lose control.

Savagery will naturally follow, offering Islamists the opportunity to capture the allegiance of a population that is desperate for order. (Naji cites Afghanistan before the Taliban as an example.) Even though the jihadis will have caused the chaos, that fact will be forgotten as the fighters impose security, provide food and medical treatment, and establish Islamic courts of justice.

"The Management of Savagery".

The ... Management ... Of ... Savagery.

Savagery, The Management Of.

Think about that -- the whole movement is a gigantic hate crime against freedom-loving people everywhere.

Yet, to listen to some, we're supposed to get upset about making enemy combatants at Guantanamo uncomfortable for a few minutes.

OK, how about this? We shoot them immediately upon capture, instead. It's what they deserve, and it's in our best interests, and we have every right to do it, both by historical precedent, and by authority of the Geneva Convention.

"The Management of Savagery" is about political power. Terrorism, itself, is about political power. Always has been, always will be.

Yet, large segments of the Western world seem to want nothing more than to stick their heads in the sand, and pretend we can just take our ball and go home, so that the forces of terrorism will leave us alone. But they won't, and if you doubt that, I suggest to you that the people of Madrid on March 11, 2004 probably thought the same thing.

Islamist terrorists know the West is weak - that's why they are poking and prodding the beast. They know many in the West have no will to fight, and no respect for themselves or their culture. They want us to fight and be divisive, and to ultimately give up. And if we do, we accomplish their goals for them, and teach them that we are weak.

I.e., by taking our ball and going home, and by letting douche-tools like Dick Durbin compare our troops to Nazis and Guantanamo to a Gulag without apologizing in any meaningful way, we play right into the hands of the Islamist terrorists.

No thanks, I'm trying to cut down.

Yeah, I Didn't Think So

I'd love to hear some kind of reasonable explanation for this:

The White House wants a $1.4 billion stimulus/national security package…for Mexico (Michelle Malkin, February 11, 2008)

I doubt that such an explanation is even possible though.

To have one, you'd have to find legal and rational justification for a plan to give money collected from U.S. taxpayers to the government of Mexico ... to defend Mexico's southern border from an invasion of Central Americans, many of whom are undoubtedly destined for the U.S. When at the very same time we hear U.S. policians invoke arguments against doing the same thing for our southern border.

Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?

"Supporting the Troops"

Or "Insulting the Troops"?

Back in Novemeber 2006, Charles Rangel opened his considerable cake hole and offered this pearl of idiocy about our military:

"I want to make it abundantly clear: if there’s anyone who believes that these youngsters want to fight, as the Pentagon and some generals have said, you can just forget about it. No young, bright individual wants to fight just because of a bonus and just because of educational benefits. And most all of them come from communities of very, very high unemployment. If a young fella has an option of having a decent career or joining the army to fight in Iraq, you can bet your life that he would not be in Iraq."

Well.

Is he just that dumb, to believe this old canard from the Vietnam War days? Which, by the way, wasn't even true then?

I already knew it was untrue from prior reading I've done. But just to prove a point, five minutes with Google and a reasonable search phrase was enough to point me to this Heritage Foundation study.

And guess what? Lower income recruits are under-represented compared to their percentage in the overall population. Upper income recruits are over-represented, and the gap grows the higher up you go in the income strata.

Or maybe Rangel just doesn't care if it's true, and is just pandering for the anti-war vote.

DING DING DING DING DING!!

Rangel is completely wrong. Not that surprising; politicians are often wrong, especially when they open their mouths.

No, what is most interesting here is that nobody in the media called him on it, except for Best of the Web, which then got many, many letters and emails from those who have served or know those who did.

They seem to have a pretty unified message for him:

• part 1


• part 2


• part 3


• part 4


• part 5

When people wonder why I dislike and distrust the mainstream media, and almost all politcians, but especially the supposed "liberals", so implicitly and completely, it's because of things like this. They can lie all they want about the very military that protects their sorry, contemptible asses. Because nobody calls them on it.

And so it encourages the insiped "Bush Lied" bumper stickers and cute key chains that clever people hook onto the outside of their purses to count down the seconds until Bush is out of office. And it encourages rehashed My Lai massacre stories like Haditha, which feed popular misconceptions about honor or the lack thereof.

Whatevs.


I try really hard to avoid getting all pissed off about idiots any more. Not good for my health.

But I know I've just about had enough of all this. The myopia about WMD. The demonization of Bush and Cheney because they had the gall to try to exert American power in pursuit of American interests. Hauling out old, tired "recieved wisdom" from the Vietnam era that wasn't true then, and is completely irrelevant now. The smug superiority of risk-averse know-it-alls whose first choice is always to do nothing, rather than try something, but who reassure us they "feel" deeply about it, to legitimize their inaction.

Facts have been reduced to trivia questions.

This allows our media and our politics to float about aimlessly, unmoored, bouncing randomly off of the latest piece of useless and often completely incorrect "news".

Lots of us accept this as normal.

It is not normal. We don't tolerate evasiveness and obfuscation in our kids or our spouses. There, it's called "pathological lying". And to the extent that we accept it, we are "enablers".

And so what we're doing is enabling politicians -- who really should know better than to just throw wildly inaccurate statements out there -- to do it anyway ... because nobody calls them on it.

Likewise, we enable the media -- who continue to fail miserably at their centrist, non-partisan watchdog role, yet continue to be mystified at their declining influence and revenue streams -- to do it anyway ... because nobody calls them on it.

Think about what this means. We live in a country where both journalists and politicians routinely put complete bullshit out into the public sphere with no regard for the truth. They play us for fools.

They think we are too stupid to notice, or care, that what they'e putting out there is either flat out wrong, or only partially true.

And they might be right.

I've never understood why people put up with this. To put up with it is to be implicit in the deception.

This is one of the reasons I have a blog. To call "bullshit" on charlatans and knaves like Charles Rangel. Politicians and journalists are two groups that have enjoyed privilege and power for far too long, and they've done it largely by controlling the use of information to their advantage.

Lets hope the sand is running out of that particular hourglass.