I have been in agreement with George Bush’s oft-repeated assertion that all people have an inherent desire for freedom, including Arab Muslims, and I would still like to believe that, but I must admit that this article makes a persuasive case against that idealistic hope:
W’s wrong: Feedom can’t grow in Iraqi soil
And this article also persuasively supports the same theme:
Exhibition Killing The Muslim “debate” on hostage-taking and beheading.
Hat tip realclearpolitics
We recently moved to Murfreesboro, which is an old pre-civil war town. We’re renting a house in the historic district. Our house looks to be late 19th century. It has 12 foot ceilings that have been lowered from the original 13 or 14 foot ceilings, and heartwood pine floors. I walked around the hood yesterday and took a few pictures of houses with my new Sony DSC P41 digital camera. You can check them out here. The first one is our house.
From: “Seward, Jeff”
Date: October 1, 2004 4:53:52 PM CDT
To: “john seward”
Kerry doesn’t have a specific plan about what he is going to get from “allies.” In fairness, he can’t know in advance. Fundamentally, he is saying this should have been a much more international operation from the get-go, but Bush botched that and has never recovered. We are now in a mess from which Bush has no realistic plan to extract us (if Kerry is vague about his four-point plan, what are the specifics of Bush’s plan to accomplish our mission and get out?). Somehow, we have to change the framework of the problem. That means reestablishing serious links with allies and together figuring out new approaches that leave responsibility less unilaterally resting on US shoulders. This is not just a “poor us–we’re bearing all the burden” argument. It’s not working for this to appear to Iraqis and the Muslim world as an essentially US operation. So Kerry is essentially suggesting that we have to share the responsibility with other countries that have a stake in the outcome and, to do that, we have to share a lot of decision-making power. What form will that take? Who knows? I don’t think Kerry could realistically be specific about that even if he were inclined to be. I thought Kerry’s strongest moment in the debate was when he compared his “four-point” plan to Bush’s “four-word” plan: “more of the same.” That is essentially what Bush is suggesting. Kerry is simply making the point that “more of the same” will produce more of the same; we need a major shift in direction; that shift involves some form of internationalizing the task; and that internationalization will not happen until we have a new president who actually believes in working with other interested parties. I don’t see that Kerry is being any more vague than Bush is on this issue, and it is clear that Kerry would move in a much less unilateralist direction than Bush has or will. That’s a pretty clearly articulated difference whether or not you think it’s a good idea.
On the North Korea thing, both Bush and Kerry made hash out of that. There is no contradiction between our dealing directly with N. Korea and the five-power talks. The Chinese, Japanese, Russians, and South Koreans have been asking us to talk directly to the North Koreans. Doing so doesn’t undercut their involvement in the problem at all. Joe Biden laid this out very clearly on one post-debate show I saw last night. This is another place where Bush made a mess in his first two years and is now struggling to fix. No serious analyst of any political persuasion is making the case that the Bush administration has done a good job on North Korea. I thought Bush was much more convincing on this point last night, but that was only because he completely misrepresented the reality of the situation and the real issue about bilateral talks with North Korea. He was only convincing because the public is completely ignorant about what has happened and what they are doing.
From: john seward
Date: October 1, 2004 8:05:34 PM CDT
To: “Seward, Jeff”
The idea that the French Foreign Legion, the Bundeswehr, and the remnants of the Red Army are going to take our place in Iraq is just a bizarre fantasy. I’m sure Kerry doesn’t believe it for a nanosecond. The fact that you apparently do, despite your vast knowledge of history and present day reality, is either disingenuous or a sign of political desperation. Bush’s plan may or may not work, but it is very clear. Continue fighting the “insurgents”, hold elections in the areas where it is possible, and recreate the Iraqi military. There is no other “framework”. As Bush kept repeating, “It’s hard work.”
We are pursuing the international, UN, diplomatic route in Sudan. How is that going?
North Korea broke their agreement and began developing nukes while Clinton was still president. There is no easy, quick fix to this problem. Requiring NK to deal with China, Japan, Russia, and South Korea instead of forging another phony agreement with the U.S. is the best we can do now.
Kerry is an appeaser. He is our Neville Chamberlain. Churchill wanted to preemptively attack Hitler’s Germany, but the voters overruled him. Millions of people died as a result. This is another similar occasion.
Following is an email exchange between me and my kid brother Jeff about last night’s debate. It’s similar to the debate itself in that my brother, like Kerry, is more intellectual, more articulate, not to mention more long-winded, than George Bush and I are. He’s also taller than me. But George and I are right, and Kerry and my brother, tall and tan though they may be, are wrong. Jeff is a political science professor with a bachelor’s from the University of Texas and a phd from Stanford, where he used to play tennis with Condoleeza Rice. We used to agree about politics, except maybe I was an even more radical leftist. Now, since 9/11, we disagree about politics almost completely, which is actually more fun.
Continue reading
Apologies to all my fans, but I’ve decided to turn comments off. I thought they would be a good idea, create dialog and all that, but it hasn’t workd out that way. Most of the comments are along the lines of you’re (me that is) crazy, you’re unspiritual, you’re mean, you like killing people, etc. Nobody seems interested in talking about the substance of the posts, or engaging in any kind of intelligent dialog about the opinions expressed therein. This is their right of course, but it’s been embarassing to me to be associated with the general low quality of the comments, and just kind of a drag generally. So I’m turning them off, which means I’ll probably lose all 4 of my readers, but I won’t have to waste my time reading them anymore. So my apologies to those precious few commentators that actually had something to say.
This is the best case I’ve seen yet for voting for John Kerry (hat tip Instapundit).
Here’s a quote:
“John Kerry is not interested in pre-emption now. But he is not in office. He is not responsible for the defense of the country today. He does not receive the same intelligence briefings as Bush, nor does he have advisors who suggest actual courses of action. He has campaign advisors, and they are completely different animals.
“Democrats will justifiably scoff if Bush wants to wage another pre-emptive war. But they won’t scoff if John Kerry does. They will sit up and take notice, and so will some people in Europe. Kerry can change the minds of skeptics. Bush can’t.”
Things are going to get much worse in Iraq between now and the U.S. election, and between now and the Iraqi election in January. Things are going to get as bad as the combined efforts of all the global terrorist organizations and nations can possibly make them. We are in a real war against a real enemy, and this is crunch time. And we can’t expect much help from anyone.
Kerry has said that, if elected, he will pull out of Iraq. Our enemies will do whatever they can to help him get elected. And they will do whatever they can to prevent elections in Iraq. Here is some reading material:
My friend, Rico is worried about my mental health. Here’s what he says:
“John,
“I was thinking last night and what got me was that you used to hold high opinion about certain ways of being, like praying and general love for your fellow man and woman…And you used to live in the same hippie commune as me and now you just feel like those times were a waste and/or you devalue the time you spent doing those activities…I feel like you have selectively decided that some parts of your life were a waste when you post all this war-like rhetoric here…I like to argue with you about it, but really I think it’s corrosive to your Spirit to carry on the way you do…There’s something phony about the way you portray yourself and your history…It’s sad and I think you should examine the whole of your life in a new light…It’s like some sort of neurotic attitude you have that makes you tear down or devalue parts of your life experience so you can be content in your war-like philosophy…I’m serious…I know you used to be so gung-ho about tipi ways and now you just shift gears to an old incarnation of rhetoric for argument’s sake…Does this make sense to you? I feel that we could be closer if you were more real with what goes on in your thought processes.
“Okay, brother, I mean it!”
This is a very common response. Whenever I say the word “war”, my friends start showing deep concern because I have obviously lost my mind. OK, here, Rico, is “what goes on in [my] thought processes”:
1. The United States was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. 3000 innocent people were murdered.
2. We are at war with a global, loose federation of terrorist organizations. Their avowed goal is to destroy, not only the U.S., but all of Western civilization.
3. Western civilization is good, and it is worth defending.
4. If we don’t defend ourselves by taking the fight to the enemy, we could quite possibly lose this war.
Does believing these things mean I am crazy? Is this evidence of deep-seated neurosis? We can disagree about tactics and strategy. We can disagree about whether terrorism is a serious threat. We can even disagree about whether war is ever justified. But how come whenever I say something that you disagree with, you avoid responding to anything I say, and start expressing sadness about my mental illness? I don’t do that to you. I just make sarcastic comments about your lack of a coherent argument.
I finally get my DSL connection today so I won’t have to sit on the front porch and bootleg off the neighbor and get eaten by mosquitos, but we’re taking off this afternoon to go to a reunion of the Spring Hollow commune. So there probably won’t be any blogging for a few days.
Kuwait has never attacked its neighbors. Kuwait has never massacred its own citizens. Kuwait has never attempted to acquire chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. Kuwait has not been a sanctuary for terrorists. Kuwait has never tried to assassinate the President of the United States. Kuwait is not a threat to anyone. However, if some kind of democracy is successfully established in Iraq, which I admit is problematical, then the likelihoood of democracy spreading to Kuwait increases dramatically.
If, on the other hand, Iraq dissolves into civil war, which is quite possible, after all that’s what happened in the U.S., that would be bad, but not as bad as leaving Sadaam in power. As I have said before, if anyone has a better idea for dealing with the root causes of terrorism, than doing whatever it takes to foster democracy in the Middle East, I would love to hear it.
Here’s a good analysis of the military situation in Iraq. And here’s an excellent essay about why it would be a terrible idea to withdraw from Iraq.
