Michael writes in a recent post:

There are many angry people in the middle east, and I agree with Dr. Paul that our occupation of their lands makes the US a focal point of their anger, a lightning rod for their wrath.

I really need to address this exceedingly lame argument.

Prior to 2003, the US did not occupy land in the Middle East. This is problematic to your position given what happened on 9/11.

To be more charitable to your argument, I think you are echoing a common sentiment, typically referred to as isolationism, which goes something like this:

Meddling with other countries affairs is bound to breed discontentment. This discontent can boil over causing the formation of organizations intent on harming our country. Therefore, it’s best to not meddle in other country’s affairs.

Much like Humanism, isolationism is a hopelessly naïve view of the world. Let’s look at it some different reasons why.

First, we have meddled with many countries and yet only a small portion has seen organizations form set on causing direct harm to our country. There are the more obvious examples of our meddling like occupying Japan and Germany after WW2 or more subtle examples like placing high tariffs on certain Chinese imports. If the argument is that meddling in other countries affairs is the controlling variable for violent retaliation you have some explaining to do.

A second problem with isolationism and, it’s the basis for my charge of naivety, is that it’s completely unrealistic in a global economy. The very nature of international trade requires that countries meddle with each other. Often times that meddlesome comes in the form of treaties and agreements in international groups. Its worth noting that the more engaged a country is in global trade, that is the more amenable its to being meddle with, the less likely organizations from that country will form to harm the US. Unless you advocate the US pulls out of international trade it is simply impossible to strictly adhere to a isolationism policy and I don’t know about you but I like my iPods cheap.

The third problem is that isolationism restricts intervention in instances in which a state is committing atrocious acts against another state or it’s own people. Would Ron Paul have intervened in the Second World War? He certainly could not have done so on the basis of stopping the holocaust. How about Kuwait, Sudan, Darfur or Rwanda? Isolationism restricts intervention in any of these instances. Some might like to have the option open to intervene on moral grounds. I would like the option open.

There are more reasons why such a policy is foolish but I don’t want to list all of them.

If you ask me, a much more meaningful explanation for why some organizations do harm is because they live under an oppressive regime that often scapegoats US policy as to why they are oppressed. Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Osama argue that his antipathy towards the US was based on his belief that Saudi Arabian oppressive government was able to retain power thanks to the US?

It’s not meddling that causes the problem but oppressive regimes blaming the US for the oppression that is the problem. If you ask me, this is one of the reasons why invading Iraq was prudent. While it’s the case that terrorism was not coming out of that country, the conditions were absolutely ripe for it to occur. By invading and setting up a democracy you nip in the bud the development of fractious organizations that could have been inimical to the US.

In this explanation, the best way to deal with US hatred is to regime change nations that oppress their people. Clearly this is unlikely to work from a political perspective but what you might try and do is set up some free market democracy in some key regions until you run out of political will. Hopefully, over time liberal ideology will spread to the more oppressive regimes leading to bloodless democratic revolution. This seems to be in part the current administration plan in Iraq and Afghanistan. Under this policy, I think it would wise to add Iran to the list. This would allow the three nascent Democracies to form a strong contiguous allied front for liberal values in the Middle East.

With any luck, Iran will continue its efforts to build nuclear weapons giving the next administration the political capital needed to invade and establish democracy in that country. We can only hope for such luck.

After spending several years trying to force the President to leave Iraq, due to the success of the surge Democrats are changing their rhetoric in Iraq.

Congressional Democrats are reporting a striking change in districts across the country: Voters are shifting their attention away from the Iraq war.

Rep. Jim Cooper, a moderate Democrat from Tennessee, said not a single constituent has asked about the war during his nearly two-week long Thanksgiving recess. Rep. Michael E. Capuano, an anti-war Democrat from Massachusetts, said only three of 64 callers on a town hall teleconference asked about Iraq, a reflection that the war may be losing power as a hot-button issue in his strongly Democratic district.

I never understood why the democrats employed the rhetoric of retreat. I realize they used other words to make it not sound like a retreat but if I was running the democratic party during the height of the anti-war sentiment I would of used the rhetoric of strategy change. Had the democrats been on top of Petreaus plan before Bush brought him in, and applied the necessary political pressure to get Bush to use Petreaus surge strategy they would currently be reaping the fruits of the success of the surge. It would of been a great political coup and resulted in significantly more positive coverage about how Iraq is now working.

As such, they squandered the political will by arguing a defeatist position and leaving open the more much more political palatable change in strategy approach to the GOP. No doubt part of the problem was that the democrats were listening to the far anti-war left and foolishly believed the majority of Americans echo this partisan desire to withdraw from Iraq. This was clearly not the will of the people, which was perfectly captured by the video in which democratic rep. Obey, frustrated by some citizens demanding a vote to withdrawal funding from the war, yells that they don’t the votes.

It was obvious to me that the majority of Americans did not want to leave Iraq but were definitely unhappy with the way things were progressing due in large part to the way the war was being covered. The fact that the democrats were unable to correctly distinguish between these two sentiments is what separates good politicians from bad politicians.

Good politics is finding the rhetorical message that matches the will of the majority. Republicans have consistently beat the Democrats in Iraq by finding the proper rhetorical message. Last night, over dinner, Michael mentioned that he liked Ron Paul because he does not spin his message. Ron Paul ’speaks the truth’ as he said. The problem with speaking the ‘truth’ is that a majority of people rarely share the ‘truth’. Your truth does not get elected with a minority. This is the case with Ron Paul and was most certainly the case with democrats attempting a withdrawal of the troops out of Iraq.

Roger Simon makes an interesting point in comparing antiwar moves about Vietnam and Iraq.

Normally this would instill passion, or at least passionate ambition, but there is a subtler and more treacherous roadblock to authenticity in all this that is not frequently acknowledged. While the Vietnam and Iraq Wars are often equated by the liberal-left, the differences between the two are greater than the similarities, especially in the critical area of who is the adversary. For Vietnam: The evils of communism could be and were rationalized by the left as a plea for social equality in an economically unjust world. For Iraq: The evils of Islamofascism and just plain fascism are considerably harder, indeed almost impossible, to rationalize.

This problem is particularly true for Hollywood because the evils of Islamofascism – notably extreme misogyny and homophobia – are justifiably big no-nos to people in the Industry. In fact, they are close to the biggest no-nos of all for them in their daily lives. Who is worse than a sexist pig? Only a violent, murderous sexist pig who wants to take over the world. It then becomes a complex balancing act indeed to make a movie that ignores or downplays this in order to criticize the US as the larger villain. No one has been able to come close to pulling off this balancing act in a film. In fact, it may well be impossible because it is fundamentally dishonest.

Communism putatively was about the people. What is Islamic Fundamentalism about?

One of the more satisfying, under-reported barometers of cultural trends is the dismal box office take of recent movies attacking U.S. foreign policy and the war in Iraq.

Read that article in its entirety, and observe that, in all the reasons offered for why these films have met with public indifference and scorn, the 800-pound gorilla in the room is ignored:

These films are all anti-U.S.

Post here.

You have no idea how happy I am that these films have all bombed at the box office. It was an unexpected bonus that they even the critics didn’t like them. Surprising given the slight liberal tilt of reviewers in the aggregate.

It makes me genuinely happy to see the Anti-America crowd in Hollywood have their shit shoved back in their face.

You can’t put a price on good Satire.

And it’s no wonder fire hates us. We’ve been demonizing it ever since the first cinematic Frankenstein monster said “Fire bad!”. We tell our children not to play with matches or they’ll wet the bed. We won’t even allow lighters on airline flights! Even before the fire is made, it’s assumed to be evil by its very nature. Plus we only allow fire the most menial of jobs in this country - barbecues, fireplaces, scented candles - is it any wonder that fire resents us so deeply?

I, for one, don’t blame it. And I am ashamed to be an American.

NYPost has a story about how current surveillance laws hindered out intelligence agency’s ability to listen on Al Qaeda causing them to miss an opportunity to rescue a capture soldier.

U.S. intelligence officials got mired for nearly 10 hours seeking approval to use wiretaps against al Qaeda terrorists suspected of kidnapping Queens soldier Alex Jimenez in Iraq earlier this year, The Post has learned.

Thank god my rights to talk to a suspected non-citizen terrorist in a different country are secure. Who cares about acquiring the intelligence needed to bring back a solider when my right to talk to non-citizens outside the country is in peril?

Don’t hold your breath waiting for the NYtimes to make this a front page story. They were the turncoats that made public this program while we were at war. See they betrayed the country because they care about it so much. Makes sense when you think about it. Inform our enemy of our actions to make our country better.

Reflecting the MSM bias, most news organization ignored the bulk of a general’s speech strongly denouncing media coverage of the war and focused only on the parts that criticizes the way the war is being currently ran. Captain’s quarters has more details.

Given that, it seems highly ironic that the journalists covering the story attempted to cover up the acidic, biting, and mostly accurate criticisms of their own performance in this war while giving front-page treatment to Sanchez’ criticisms of the political structure at the same time. If Sanchez has such credibility and standing to bring this kind of criticism to bear on Washington, why didn’t the Post and other news agencies give the same level of exposure to his media criticisms as well? He basically accuses them of cynically selling out the soldiers to defeat American efforts to win the war, and made sure that those accusations came first before his assessment of the political failures, but you’d never know that from the Post.

The Post then goes on to obfuscate a key part of the second half of Sanchez’ speech. While he criticizes the Bush administration in sharp terms, Sanchez blames the Democrats in equal measure. He calls out partisans on all sides for exploiting the war for their own political benefit rather than the good of the nation, and blames the lack of range for strategic options on the corrosive debate that has hamstrung the range of choices.

I don’t understand the flak I’m getting for using Code Pink as an example of democrats dishonoring soldiers. These people go to a veteran’s hospital with signs that say abhorrent things that are in plain view of injured soldiers and somehow that’s showing honor to the soldiers.

I suppose none of you would agree such action shows honor for the soldiers. Remember I was asked to provide evidence of democrats not showing honor to soldiers. I provide a profoundly obvious example of dishonor and none of you acknowledge it as such. This entire discussion feels alot like three card monte.

I make a statement, one of you asks for evidence, I provide it, and then the argument is moved to something not being addressed in the argument.

Jamie

Moves the argument to about the government’s treatment of soldiers. That Walter Reed debacle was disgusting and completely unacceptable and was very dishonorable to our soldiers. And it also has nothing to do with code pink being an example of democrats dishonoring our soldiers.

Darwin

Moves the argument to about what I think people can say and can’t say to soldiers about war. Oddly I have made no statement about what one can and can’t say to soldiers about a war. More bizarrely he generalizes to say we can’t criticize the war because of military culture. I have no idea what that means and I have no idea how that is related to Code Pink being an example of a set of democrats dishonoring soldiers.

Michael

Moves the argument to being about liberal interpretation of a rhetorical slide in justifying military action in Iraq. Again not clear how that’s relevant to the discussion about code pink dishonoring soldiers.

Dan

Questions what it means to honor a solider. Arguably that’s related and certainly can be moved in a way to get at the argument at hand. Again he ignores the Code Pink example.

None of you concede the point that this is an example of democrats dishonoring soldiers. In fact because you fail to generate counter arguments yet aim to move the argument in a different direction implies that my example is valid. Otherwise you would of addressed my example head on. The fact is that there is a virulent anti-war group that will happily dishonor soldiers because their hatred of war the clouds their judgment. Historically this group votes democratic. Really this is so basic that I can’t believe were discussing it.

It’s okay to admit I’m right. Trust me it will only hurt for a little while and then you can praise yourself for having integrity.

What the heck. Let me help y’all out. One could argue that Code Pink can’t be considered democratic. Given that the organizations is chock full of socialists and pacifists it’s not entirely clear one can call them democrats. This was the counter argument I was expecting and was hoping would lead to an interesting discussion about what means to be ascribed to a political organization.

Regarding Code Pinks actions, I don’t think there is a way you can say what they did honored the soldiers without completely rendering meaningless the term honor.

Democratic Congressman Murtha Dishonors Soldiers

I had already prepared my counter to charges that Code Pink was not a democratic organization. Congressman John Murtha, a democrat celebrated by the MSM as a sensible congressman that switched his pro war views to anti war when things in Iraq became difficult. He accused several marines of killing innocent civilians in ‘cold blood’. Needless to say after the full investigation it was determined the soldiers did not kill civilians in cold blood. Currently several of the soldiers he falsely accused are bringing charges of defamation against him. It’s hard to see how this is not an example of a democrat dishonoring soldiers.

Just to help y’all out some more:

1. Arguing that John Murtha was involved in the Walter Reed debacle does not refute my position.

2. Drawing wrong headed inference about what I would permit in terms of criticizing Military culture has nothing to do with Murtha’s actions.

3. Echoing the liberal meme that Iraq war justifications have changed over time bears no relationship to Murtha dishonoring our soldiers by making false accusation about them.

Hope this helps you guys offer better counter arguments!

Stories about how the military casualties are lower than they have been for a year have been covered to death. The way the MSM has covered this from every angle leads me to believe not much is going on the world.

US military losses in Iraq for September stood at 70 on Sunday, the lowest monthly figure since July last year, according to an AFP tally based on Pentagon figures.

The figure also marks the fourth consecutive drop in the monthly death toll following a high of 121 in May. June saw 93 deaths, July 82 and August 79. The monthly toll in July 2006 was 53.

Oh wait thats right, its not heavily covered because no one wants to read about America succeeding. In America there is no demographic for pro America stories. Especially news sources that cater to the left. In other words all of them.

Last Wednesday, while flying from Phoenix to the Alamo City on U.S. Airways Flight 207, a San Antonio man, Gil Anderson, witnessed something memorable.

Shortly before takeoff, he overheard a flight attendant tell a young uniformed soldier sitting in front of him:

“A lady in first-class wants to switch seats with you.”

The soldier accepted the offer and walked up to the first-class section.

“When the lady came back to our area, I had a tear in my eye,” Anderson said when he phoned this column soon after his plane landed. “I gave her a little round of applause.

“Then, by golly, everybody in that area started applauding,” he said in a voice tinged with emotion. “It was a very moving moment.”

Acknowledging the applause of Anderson and the other passengers, the first-class lady said simply:

“I did it because he deserves it.”

Its nice to see some in this country to have the good sense to honor our soldiers as heroes. More than we can say about some democrats.