I'll Just Free Ride Off Of All The People Who Think They Are Free Riding Off Of Me. Everybody Wins!

Or, to rephrase: I don't need to have kids, because I'll be taken care of by the kids of those who also aren't having kids because they think they'll be taken care of by the kids I'm not having. Another fine government-caused mess!

Excellent piece of demographic/political analysis here.

excerpt:

Generous welfare states tend to reduce the number of hours worked: high taxes mean that workers take more of their pay as untaxed leisure; unemployment tends to stretch out, thanks to generous benefits and reemployment schemes; sick leave and disability insurance reduce the cost of absenteeism; high pensions encourage healthy seniors to retire; and welfare benefits and family leave policies encourage women to spend more time with their children.

...

Governments have largely nationalised the traditional functions of the family, but in doing so they have not eliminated the need for future generations to care for the current ones in their dotage. Unfortunately, the assumption of family duties by the state allows people to free ride on the fertility of others—which they seem to be trying to do in massive numbers. As we've mentioned before, a society where everyone tries to free ride on everyone else is headed for disaster. Europe's safety nets, or at least the pension systems, may contain the seeds of their own destruction.

Killing With Kindness

Ralph Peters:

November 15, 2006 -- YESTERDAY, 80 terrorists in police uniforms raided an Iraqi research institute in Baghdad, rounded up 100-plus male students, loaded them into vehicles in broad daylight and drove away.

They couldn't have pulled it off without the complicity of key elements within the Iraqi security services and the government: "our guys."

The students probably will be executed and dumped somewhere. Partly for the crime of wanting to study and build a future, but primarily just to step up the level of terror yet again.

Apart from highlighting the type of regime of which both Shia and Sunni Arab extremists dream - a land of disciplined ignorance and slavish devotion - the mass kidnapping also highlights the feebleness of our attempts to overcome ruthless enemies with generosity and good manners.

With Iraqi society decomposing - or, at best, reverting to a medieval state with cell phones - the debate in Washington over whether to try to save the day by deploying more troops or withdrawing some is of secondary relevance.

What really matters is what our forces are ordered - and permitted - to do. With political correctness permeating our government and even the upper echelons of the military, we never tried the one technique that has a solid track record of defeating insurgents if applied consistently: the rigorous imposition of public order.

That means killing the bad guys. Not winning their hearts and minds, placating them or bringing them into the government. Killing them.

If you're not willing to lay down a rule that any Iraqi or foreign terrorist masquerading as a security official or military member will be shot, you can't win. And that's just one example of the type of sternness this sort of fight requires.

...

To master Iraq now - if it could be done - we'd have to fight every faction except the Kurds. Are we willing to do that? Are we willing to kill mass murderers and cold-blooded executioners on the spot?

If not, we can't win, no matter what else we do.

Arrest them? We've tried that. Iraq's judges are so partisan or so terrified (or both) that they release the worst thugs within weeks - sometimes within days.

How would you like to be one of Iraq's handful of relatively honest cops knowing that any terrorist or sectarian butcher you bust is going to be back on the block before your next payday? And yeah, they know where you live.

Our "humanity" is cowardice masquerading as morality. We're protecting self-appointed religious executioners with our emphasis on a "universal code of behavior" that only exists in our fantasies. By letting the thugs run the streets, we've abandoned the millions of Iraqis who really would prefer peaceful lives and a modicum of progress.

We're blind to the fundamental moral travesty in Iraq (and elsewhere): Spare the killers in the name of human rights, and you deprive the overwhelming majority of the population of their human rights. Instead of being proud of ourselves for our "moral superiority," we should be ashamed to the depths of our souls.

We're not really the enemy of the terrorists, militiamen and insurgents. We're their enablers. In the end, the future of Iraq will be determined by its people. The question is, which people?

Our naive version of wartime morality handed Iraq to the murderers. Will our excuse for a sectarian bloodbath be that we "behaved with restraint?"

Any code of ethics that squanders the lives of tens of thousands and the future of millions so we can "claim the moral high ground" is hypocrisy worthy of the Europeans who made excuses for the Holocaust.

If we want to give Iraq's silent - and terrified - majority a last chance, we would have to accept the world's condemnation for killing the killers. If we are unwilling to do that, Iraq's finished.

Bipartisanship

Cartoon:

Punting On First Down

Sobering Dean Barnett post entitled "It's The Jihad, Stupid!" Things are really starting to feel like the Bush 41 administration again. Man, I hated those times.

Quo Vadis?

Ace Of Spades:

What Did America Vote For In Iraq?

I'm not sure. My more optimistic side says that the American people didn't decide to run from a fight they can't afford to lose, but rather chose to express their lack of confidence in the manner in which the war was being fought. And perhaps they decided that Bush's stewardship on the war was simply not strong enough to overcome other considerations, such as scandal and overspending.

On the other hand, it's possible that the American people do want to cut and run -- they just don't want to call it that. A lot of times voters wish to be deceived. There's really no way to simultaneously cut taxes, increase spending, and still balance the budget, for example, and yet in many elections the public seems to want precisely that -- and they reward whichever party is better at pretending all three can be had together. They reward whichever party, in other words, is more credible in promising the incredible to the willingly credulous.

So perhaps the American people really do simply want to give up on confronting global terrorism -- they just needed a party to tell them that doing so was honorable (when in fact it was dishonorable), courageous (when in fact it was cowardly), and wise (when in fact it is incredibly dangerous and ill-advised).

In the past, politics largely did stop at the water's edge. Not this time. The Democrats have decided that a military defeat that endangers America for decades to come may not be in America's national-security interest, but it is definitely in their own political interest, and so have campaigned to undermine the war and the very idea of the use of American power in a way scarcely seen before.

...

In the current war, there will be dominos falling aplenty should America lose. Or simply decide it's no longer much interested in violent confrontation with the apocalyptically psychpathic.

Even a frustrating and bloody stalemate in Iraq is preferrable, I think, to an actual military defeat. For we will not just lose in Iraq. We will lose in Syria, and Gaza, and Lebanon, and Pakistan, and dozens of other Muslim nations as well, including, of course, in Iran.

There is chatter that Bush, now chastened and perhaps seeking to improve his own legacy, will acquiesce easily in all of this. If he does so, he will in fact go down as one of the worst Presidents in history, by nearly universal reckoning. The liberals will despise him for getting into Iraq and the conservatives and many moderates will despise him for so willingly getting out.

I hope that isn't the case. But I have a bad feeling about all of this. Before I viewed the Global War on Terror as being much more difficult than I'd hoped. Now I view it all as a likely defeat -- on all fronts -- unless something in the American temperament changes quickly, or unless some bold new strategy changes the facts on the ground.

Some of the comments to Ace's post:

My take on the American public is pretty pessimistic, actually. At least as far as the so-called independents go. I think they have fallen back into watching international developments as some sort of reality show. You know, the Sunni Triangle as "The Surreal Life" with guns. And they haven't liked the plot lines lately and just want to cancel the show.

...

You know who else won't be listening or taking us seriously anymore, Steve L? Moderates in the region who truly want to bring the rule of law, civil society and democracy to the Arab and Persian world.

Now? You would have to be some kind of damn fool to believe the US has your back when you stick your neck out against these mullahs and radical fundamentalist leaders. You'll just get it sawed off with a rusty blade, while pampered Western elites enage in elaborate navel gazing exercises. If I'm a reform minded Syrian, Iranian or Iraqi, right now I'm laundering my prayer rug, putting the girls in burquas and settling in for some "traditional" Islamic governance.

...

I believe the American people will fight back...

...when we either experience another September 11th-type disaster or start experiencing smaller terrorist attacks on a routine basis, just like Israel does today.

Until then, forget about it.

...

I truly don't believe Bush would bail on Iraq; he knows the stakes there. I do think he is reeling a bit from what can only be perceived as a total wash out of American will on the war. It's disheartening to the administration, just like it's disheartening to me. I've always thought the American people were something special, a unique blend of kindness and fierce spirit, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we really are selfish and soft, and just don't have the resolve that the WWII generation had. That's a disgrace.

...

The problem is, of course, that Bush has always pussed out on saying who it is we are at war against:

Mainstream Islam.

Sorry. I'd hoped that what we term "moderate Muslims" made up the majority, but clearly - no. I mean, I used to hem and haw about it like Bush does too. But then, I'm not the President, either, and I don't have quite the same responsibility and resources to see things lucidly and plan accordingly.

If you fear naming your enemy, how can you ever hope to defeat him? It's horrible and it sucks to have to realize that a good chunk of humanity is composed of nihilistic splodeydopes, but there it is.

The next 100 years are going to truly suck.

...

We will not be defeated in the war on terror. We may lose this phase and if we do it will mean the death of millions of.... muslims. Ultimately what we have done is try to win this war in the most peaceful manner possible. A mass casualty attack in the United States, say 200k plus, will result in an unrestrained response both at home and in how we handle things abroad. So far this war has been fought to avoid that and save lives not only American but also muslim. If the radicalization continues and they make a successful attack the demand for an intemperate response will be great.

...

I think the American people voted to leave Iraq. I don't think we have the ability to endure a sustained conflict anymore. We would never be able to fight a war like WW2. We will withdraw. We will continue to take the minor hits. At some point we will take a large hit, or one small hit too many. Then we will respond by dropping nukes and killing or isolating every Muslim in the world. This will happen ruthlessly and quickly. And then we will return to our lives. America is not able to think in the long term. We want instant gratification. Anything that takes too long will be abandoned.

...

Imo, Pres. Bush took his "compassionate conservatism" to the war. You can't win a war with compassion.

...

The American people can always be counted on the do the right thing...after all other possibilities have been exhausted.

I think it was Winston Churchill who said something along those lines.

...

Good post, Ace. I agree with most of it. I would just like to add one caveat. Your analysis leaves out the "to hell with them" hawks. That's the people who can and will fight the Islamofacists but don't see why we have to drag Muslims kicking and screaming into the 21st Century. Every time there is a story about finding 50 bodies of Iraqis tortured by Iraqis, people are thinking "we gave them freedom so they can drill someone to death?' Bush will continue the fight until he leaves office. Then it will be up to the Iraqis.

As far as messages to the world, the 2004 election was more important than the 2006. Bush won, and the world knows that if America is attacked, we will hunt them down and kill them in great numbers. If the dems cut and run now, this will just prove what the world already knows-- the dems are the cut and run party. So, the next time we go to war, we won't waste time. Hit them hard, hit them fast, and maximize damage up front.

And frankly, this is human nature. People don't get serious until they're fighting for survival. The delicate balance is did they delay to long? Churchill was alone, alone, alone. Bush has ensured that America will survive. The only open question is what other countries are going to make it in the 21st Century? I'm thinking much of the EU is toast!

I plan on watching the jihadis burn down Europe. Pass the popcorn...

Some Cartoons To Kind Of Suit The Occasion

Here, here, and here:

If Only The MSM Traitors Had Used Such Tactics On Our Real Enemies

Doug Wilson:

Nov. 7 needs to be remembered for something even Republicans don't have the stomach to address at the moment: that the remnants of objectivity in the mainstream media were all but exterminated by some on the left. A chilling and ominous development that played some role in the Democratic wave that is still splashing around the red states.

Make no mistake. Along with the multitude of Republican gaffes, and the hard work of the Democrats, there can be no doubt that the left-of-center mainstream media helped to manufacture this election victory for the Democratic Party. For parts of the last two years, many in the media have worked in concert with the Democratic spin doctors to indoctrinate the American voter into believing this election had to be a referendum on President Bush and the "failed" war in Iraq.

Horrified by Mr. Bush's re-election in 2004, as well as the historic Republican gains in the House and the Senate that year, some liberals in the media were determined to do everything in their power to ensure that there was no GOP celebration in 2006, even if that meant confirming to the world that they proudly abandon professionalism and ethics in the name of partisanship and ideology.

To make the election of 2006 a referendum on Mr. Bush and "his" war, the media knew full well they had to present that conflict in the worst possible light for as long as possible on their nightly newscasts, cable programs and front pages. Then, after force-feeding the American people a steady diet of this carnage for weeks at a time, the same media outlets would then "poll" the voters to get their impressions of Iraq and Mr. Bush.

Amazingly, against the protests of soldiers fighting and dying in Iraq, the mainstream media stuck with this partisan plan to only showcase the negative, the misery and the gore. They ignored the pleas of these soldiers to show that not only did they liberate a nation from a genocidal tyrant, but with compassion and great decency (often at the cost of their own lives), they helped to rebuild the country and connect with its people on a much-needed human level. The good far out-numbers the bad in Iraq, but the good was the enemy of a Democratic victory on Nov. 7.

Worse than becoming a public-relations arm for the Democrats, did some in the media actually aid and abet al Qaeda with their biased coverage? It has been fully documented that al Qaeda and the insurgents believe that if you kill enough American soldiers and have those deaths played on a loop by the American media, then the American people and their politicians will grow weak in the knee and call for a withdrawal.

Knowing that to be a stated goal of al Qaeda, and just before the election, CNN still decided to take a horrific video given to them by the insurgents, and put it on the air for the world to see. And just what was on this video? Only heroic American soldiers being murdered in cold blood by al Qaeda snipers. Other than to damage the administration or advance a partisan agenda, why would CNN air such disgusting footage?

Next, to all but ensure the desired outcome, a number of left-of-center "journalists" decided it was necessary to prematurely crown the Democrats the victors. Their thinking was that if you tell a lie or predetermine the results often enough, it becomes fact. So, months before the election, on the front page of the top one hundred left-of-center newspapers in the United States -- with a readership well north of 70 million people -- banner headlines proclaimed that the Democrats were all but certain to take both houses of Congress. Day after day, week after week, these liberal papers foretold a future beneficial to the Democrats.

If only the terrorist enemy had been subjected to such propaganda.

Ah, well. These morons have shown their true colors and guaranteed that after the next 9/11 (which, to have the shock value of the original 9/11, would have to be a much more destructive event), we will not be fighting a "nice guy" war. Nor will we be refraining from censoring a traitorous press, and jailing fomenters of sedition. That is, if we are serious about defending our civilization, which is starting to seem entirely questionable. At this point I can only see two likely outcomes over the next century: the survival of a free West after cunning, assertive, and sometimes brutal warfare, or the surrender of the West to Islam. Flip a coin.

Let's Not Forget That This Depravity Is Unprecedented

Good point:

It is overwhelmingly likely that even if we had found WMD in Iraq, The New York Times, Michael Moore, and nearly all college professors would have still opposed the invasion. After all, they would have argued, it was still a pre-emptive war and therefore wrong by definition; and besides, Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11.

Of course, the critics look right because we hardly seem to be winning the war in Iraq. But even here the critics are too smug. We have not won the war in Iraq because of something completely unforeseeable: widespread massacres of Iraqi civilians by other Iraqis and Muslims. We have never seen mass murder of fellow citizens in order to remove an outside occupier. No Japanese blew up Japanese temples in order to rid Japan of the American occupier. No Germans mass murdered German schoolchildren and teachers to rid Germany of the American, British, French and Soviet occupiers.

The level of cruelty and evil exhibited by those America is fighting in Iraq is new. Had Iraq followed any precedent in all the annals of resistance to occupation, America would likely have been victorious in Iraq. It may just be impossible, if one is morally bound not to kill large numbers of civilians, to fight those who target their own civilians and hide among them. But George W. Bush had no way to foresee such systematic cruelty.

With the election of a Democratic Congress and the reversion to the visionless "realists" of George W. Bush's father's administration, the critics are more certain than ever of their moral rectitude. But unless they disagree with Professor Ferguson's assertion that a pre-emptive war in 1938 would have been the most moral thing the Western democracies could have done, they ought to show a little humility. Based on what was known at the time, George W. Bush made a moral choice. And he would have won were it not for something new in the annals of human depravity.

The world is slipping into such barbarity that we do not even recognize the unprecedented strangeness of this. It just seems normal. It shouldn't.

You're Fired!

Paul Jacobs:

Few election results were less surprising than last Tuesday’s. It’s not as if there was no reason for a general backlash against Republican Party dominance in Washington, D.C. There were, in fact, more reasons to vote against Republicans than for them.

The Grand Old Party, in actual operation as a ruling party, had stood by just a few principles. Most people could only name two: Republicans had stuck to their guns on gun ownership rights and on a few tax cuts.

But general tax cuts? No. A general tax simplification reform? No.

Spending cuts? A resounding no, no, no, echoing throughout the land as the party of Reagan spent like the party of Tip O’Neil . . . on steroids.

Republicans in Congress, as corralled by the President, had even managed to increase entitlement spending by adding a new level of coverage by Medicare.

And the issue of war . . . well, Americans were beginning to see something very wrong in the move on Iraq.

None of these provide strong arguments for voting Democrat, of course. Democrats love spending money just as much as, apparently, Republicans in office do. And Democrats have demonstrated no clear vision on Iraq, much less on foreign policy in general. Though the war in Iraq was the paramount issue in the election, the victory by Democrats doesn’t point to any clear change in policy, as Democrats offered none.

But our democracy is, at the federal level, held in a two-party cartel. When one party demonstrably fails, Americans have no other choice: If we are to hold politicians responsible for their acts, then power must be taken away from them. Bite the bullet and vote for the opposition.

However distasteful, it’s that simple.

Double Down!

It was not policially possible for Republicans to do this, but it is more than possible for Dems to do it (on the "it takes a Nixon to go to China" principle), and hence chalk up a very big win for themselves and their own future as a political party:

Don't throw good money after bad. When you're in a hole, stop digging. If you've been running in the wrong direction, the first thing to do is, turn around.

These are the kinds of things Americans are hearing and saying about the war in Iraq. It's understandable: Those familiar sayings are often useful. When you gamble and lose, the natural tendency is to double your bet--and when that doesn't work, mortgage everything you have to try to retrieve your losses. But as every undergraduate economics student knows, that strategy is a disaster. Hence the principle of "sunk cost." The fact that I've lost a pile on some enterprise or investment is no reason to lose an even bigger pile. The smart move, economically speaking, is to reassess your decisions on a regular basis. When an investment isn't working, get out. Put your money, your talents, and your energy to better use somewhere else.

All of which seems to apply to Iraq, in spades. A seemingly quick and easy military victory has turned sour. The costs, in blood and treasure, have escalated. Victory looks uncertain and distant. It seems the time has come, if not to cut and run, then surely to cut our losses. If ever the principle of sunk cost applied to warfare, it would seem to apply here.

But that instinct is wrong. Warfare is not like investment banking. At precisely the moment an economist might say to stop throwing good money after bad, a wise military strategist might say to double the bet.

Why might that be so? For one thing, willingness to raise the stakes often wins the game. Why do insurgent gangs, who have vastly smaller resources and manpower than the American soldiers they fight, continue to try to kill those soldiers? The answer is, because they believe they only have to kill a few more, and the soldiers will leave. They need not inflict a military defeat (which would be impossible, given the strength of the American military)--all they need to do is survive until American voters decide to throw in the towel, which might happen at any moment.

The proper response to that calculation is to make emphatically clear that the fight will not end until one side or the other wins, decisively. That kind of battle can only have one ending, as Abraham Lincoln understood. In a speech delivered a month after his reelection, Lincoln carefully surveyed the North's resources and manpower and concluded that the nation's wealth was "unexhausted and, as we believe, inexhaustible." Southern soldiers be gan to desert in droves. Through the long, bloody summer and fall of 1864, the South had hung on only because of the belief that the North might tire of the conflict. But Lincoln did not tire. Instead, he doubled the bet--and won the war.

...

In the world of business, decisions are made at the margin: a little more invested here, a bit less there; everywhere, strive to cut waste, to spend no more than is absolutely necessary. In warfare, waste and excess are productive: They send the message that victory is inevitable, that whatever resources are needed to obtain it will be given to the task. That is the essence of what military historian Russell Weigley called "the American way of war." Overwhelm the enemy--instead of investing just enough, invest far too much. Make sure the other side knows that our capacity to give and take punishment immeasurably exceeds their capacity to absorb and inflict it.

The difficulties the Army has experienced in Iraq are due, in large measure, to the fact that the Defense Department forgot this historical lesson. Donald Rumsfeld tried to run a businesslike war. But warfare is not business; it is not fought at the margin. By striving to do just enough to win, we have done too little. The right strategy is to do too much.

The real shock-and-awe of this war for the jihadis, the real defeat-inducing demoralization for them, would be to see the Democratic Party, which they had considered allies, pour another 100,000 troops into Iraq. It would be akin to the rousing surprise tactic you see in movies or read about in great battles. Pretend to be routed, fall back, and after the enemy begins pursuit, suddenly the two extra legions that the enemy didn't bargain on come pouring into the battle from behind the hills.

I can't imagine that there aren't sane people in the party who see this historic opportunity. Democrats are vastly more shrewd than Republicans, politically speaking. I'd expect (hell, I've just seen it copiously illustrated) Republicans to fumble such a monumental opportunity for their party. The Democrats? Not so much.

The Inside Story Is Really Not That Big A Secret

Those who have ears ought to hear. I find nothing to disagree with in this piece.

The Dems Won By Putting Up Conservative Candidates In Red States

My prediction is that the raving leftists of this country will eventually be thrown under the bus. I'm assuming that the Dems want to remain in power, and this is how they are going to need to do it. The center of the electorate is much, much bigger than the leftist fringe. And the center has moved to the right, as witnessed by the Dems recent lack of interest in gun control, as well as their attempt to paint themselves as religious, and as witnessed by the passage of numerous defense of marriage initiatives throughout the land. It's going to be an interesting couple of years watching this. The Blue Dog Dems are not going to let the lefties run the show. And anti-antiwar Lieberman has serious leverage in a 51-49 Senate. I think the Dems are going to realize they now have a tremendous opportunity to erase forever their weak-on-defense image. And I think they're going to take it. If you thought Republican conduct of the war on terror was brutal (and if you did, you're pretty foolish), you haven't seen anything, yet. Also, the Dems now have a chance to strongly influence what kind of Great Society the new Iraq will be. Do you think they're going to pass that up?

What's better for a conservative than openly ridiculing all of the demented, out-of-power foaming-at-the-mouth, enraged, bitter America-hating leftists? I'll tell you what's better. Seeing them end up depressed, dejected, ignored, and "sold out" by what they thought would be "their" Democratic Party. The Republicans have shown us for six years that power trumps ideology. The Democrats won't be any different. Buh-bye, leftist fringe! Prepare to be very unpleasantly surprised, Jihadis!

Apropos cartoon:




Excerpts from apropos Krauthammer piece:

A margin this close should no longer surprise us. For this entire decade the country has been evenly divided politically. The Republicans had control but by very small majorities. In 2000, the presidential election was settled by a ridiculously small margin. And the Senate ended up deadlocked 50-50. All the changes since then have been minor. Until now.

But the great Democratic wave of 2006 is nothing remotely like the great structural change some are trumpeting. It was an event-driven election that produced the shift of power one would expect when a finely balanced electorate swings mildly one way or the other.

This is not realignment. As has been the case for decades, American politics continues to be fought between the 40-yard lines. The Europeans fight goal line to goal line, from socialist left to the ultranationalist right. On the American political spectrum, these extremes are negligible. American elections are fought on much narrower ideological grounds. In this election, the Democrats carried the ball from their own 45-yard line to the Republican 45-yard line.

The fact that the Democrats crossed midfield does not make this election a great anti-conservative swing. Republican losses included a massacre of moderate Republicans in the Northeast and Midwest. And Democratic gains included the addition of many conservative Democrats, brilliantly recruited by Rep. Rahm Emanuel with classic Clintonian triangulation. Hence Heath Shuler of North Carolina, anti-abortion, pro-gun, anti-tax — and now a Democratic congressman.

The result is that both parties have moved to the right. The Republicans have shed the last vestiges of their centrist past, the Rockefeller Republican. And the Democrats have widened their tent to bring in a new crop of blue-dog conservatives.

Moreover, ballot initiatives make the claim of a major anti-conservative swing quite problematic. In Michigan, liberal Democrats swept the gubernatorial and senatorial races, yet a ballot initiative to abolish affirmative action passed 58-42. Seven out of eight anti-gay marriage amendments to state constitutions passed. And nine states passed referendums asserting individual property rights against the government's power of eminent domain.

To muddy even more the supposed ideological significance of this election, consider who is the biggest winner of the night: Joe Lieberman. Just a few months ago, he was scorned by his party and left for dead. Now he returns to the Senate as the Democrats’ 51st seat — and holder of the balance of power. From casualty to kingmaker in three months. Not bad. His Democratic colleagues who abandoned him this summer will now treat him very well.

Lieberman won with a platform that did not trim or hedge about seeking victory in Iraq. And he did it despite having a Republican in the race who siphoned off ten percent of the pro-war vote. All this in Connecticut, a very blue state.

The public’s views on what we ought to do with the war remain mixed, as do its general ideological inclinations. What happened on Tuesday? The electorate threw the bums out in disgust with corruption and in deep dissatisfaction with current Iraq policy. Reading much more into this election is a symptom of either Republican depression or Democratic wishful thinking.

How To Lose A War

Great analysis at American Thinker:

In the aftermath of 9/11 any minimally responsible American government would have had to topple Saddam Hussein. We were at war with Hussein (yes, a real shooting war) and we were losing. When the twin towers fell we all knew, at some level, that the Arab world had challenged us. We couldn’t respond to that challenge by losing a war to our most vocal and visible Arab enemy. We had to assert our dominance, and Iraq, a major, oil-producing enemy just above the Arabian Peninsula, was the logical place to do it.

George W. Bush was not the man for this job. Instead of pivoting out of Afghanistan and descending on Iraq like a biblical plague, he took a long detour through the United Nations to argue about flouted resolutions and weapons of mass destruction.

The Blunder

When we finally got around to an invasion we had to put a humanitarian gloss on an essential demonstration of our power. Instead of Operation Arab Smackdown we got Operation Iraqi Freedom. This was the true blunder that turned Iraq from a political asset into a liability. This blunder belongs to George W. Bush and George W. Bush alone, even though Don Rumsfeld has now paid for it with his job.

Most Americans intuitively understand that our survival depends on maintaining our dominant position in the world and that to do so we have to answer all challengers and leave no serious enemy standing. To be the World’s hyperpower is to wear a target. With technology threatening to make the power of extermination widely available at popular prices, we have to make certain that nobody feels lucky enough to hazard a shot at that target. Americans will fight and die and pay through the nose to intimidate our enemies.

But most of us wouldn’t cross the street to make a better life for Iraqis, or for any other largely Arab population. This indifference isn’t evidence of atavistic racism. We are indifferent to the welfare of Iraqis partly because, after 9/11, we can’t help noticing that Arabia is not, by and large, well-disposed toward us. Mostly, however, we aren’t motivated to help Iraqis because we have our own children, our own lives and our own culture to worry about. The brotherhood of man notwithstanding, the welfare of foreigners is never going to make the list of our top hundred concerns.

Pious Hope and Shallow Support

...

We need a reliable client state in Iraq and fostering democracy in an alien and hostile culture is very unlikely to give us one. There was never any reason to suppose that democracy was our friend in Iraq any more than it proved to be our friend in, for example, Pakistan.

When President Bush cast the war in Iraq as a war for the benefit of Iraqis with vital collateral benefits for the U.S., sensible people recognized his argument for the nonsense it was and tuned him out. By choosing to cast it that way, President Bush guaranteed that the war would have shallow support at best. He also guaranteed that it would drag on long after that shallow support dried up entirely.

Needed: Leverage

When we tried to be liberating benefactors we gave up all the leverage we might otherwise have had over Iraq’s ethnic and religious factions. We couldn’t extort Shiite cooperation by threatening to replace Saddam with another Sunni dictator. We couldn’t threaten the Sunni tribal leaders with an Iraqi partition that would leave them cut off from any participation in the oil revenues of the Kurdish north and the Shiite south. We had guaranteed everyone a fair shake in the new Iraq. This had the effect of greatly reducing the downside risk of sectarian warfare and freeing everyone to fight for something more than their fair share.

Playing the good guys also cost us the advantage of our overwhelming power. We deliberately refrained from destroying the Iraqi army during our invasion even though we certainly had the tools to do so. Many thousands of men escaped to fight another day and another way. It wasn’t a lack of manpower that kept us from crushing Moqtada al Sadr’s militia and caused us to back away from Fallujah and other Sunni hot spots. From the beginning we were much less lethal than we should have been because we have been trying to fight without causing too many bad feelings that might get in the way of the effort to engineer a political settlement.

No matter how elusive such a settlement seems we keep groping for it because we can’t hand the terrorists a victory and the President has committed us to the goal of a free and democratic Iraq. But instead of looking resolute we increasingly look naïve, foolish and weak.

...

No wonder the voters are disgusted with Republicans and prepared to tolerate Democrats. George W. Bush has managed the almost impossible feat of making anti-war politics respectable in wartime.

Here are the lessons Republicans should learn from the pasting they took in 2006: Be practical. Common sense wins elections, half-baked theories lose them. When your leader is in thrall to a half-baked theory, cut him loose.

Never play follow the leader over a cliff again.

Lileks Sums It Up Pretty Well

In today's Bleat:

Noon today: Rumsfeld steps down, making a typical speech on the way out. “The question is, Do we know why I am leaving? Yes. Are we looking at the screen door, which may or may not hit me on the way out? We are, but you can’t say the hinges are oiled until we know how dry the hinges were before.” (Crinkly smile.) Reporters later note that while the speed of the resignation was impressive, press aides failed to plan for the chaos that would follow in the Q & A period.

I’m sad to see him go, even though people whose opinion I respect called for his keister a while ago. I’ve heard things about his replacement that supposedly spell ill news for the Bush Doctrine, but if that was still in force Syria would have been confronted long ago, instead of treated an this odd stray dog that wanders into the room from time to time and pees on the carpet. There’s that dog again! What’s his story? Check his tags.

But more on that later, if you care. Warm day, good spirits. [Yup. One of the reasons I identify with the right is that we're the kind of people for whom the loss of an election is not the loss of our entire reason for being. You don't hear us shrieking THEY CHEATED!! or Americans SUCK!! You will not be reading articles about post-election selection trauma and our visits to group therapy sessions, and about how we're all going to move to Texas.]

...

Trolled around some radio and websites today, and noted something interesting: no rancor. Well, you say, this reflects the circles in which you choose to move, and I suppose it does, but the places I haunt were not brimming with outrage and fury and tales of Diebold deviltry or voter suppression. If anything, mixed among the rue and worry, there was something unexpected:

Relief.

I’m serious: no one said as much, but I have the feeling that many on the right & center-right are relieved to have this Congress repudiated, as much as they dislike the potential effect of the alternative. Two more years of the same would have been two more years of tentative dithering, culminating in another appeal to hit the polls lest the Republic crumble. But we haven’t seen an innovation in policy or rhetoric since the last election. It is the adult thing to expect you will get half of what you want in politics, but this is not an excuse for making an lackluster attempt to get one-quarter and serving it up as one-hundred percent.

As everyone is fond of saying, we need two parties, and if this re-engages one and re-focuses the other, good. It doesn’t mean that Jesusland became Rosie O’Striesandland overnight, of course; there were all sorts of different messages, as you might expect in a gigantic nation of 300 million people. I was surprised to learn that the gay marriage amendment in Wisconsin included a ban on civil unions – that strikes me as overkill, to be polite. I understand the rationale – brick up the back door! – and it may seem like linguistic casuistry to insist that “marriage” means something separate when civil unions are permitted, but the word does have a certain power. As I’ve said before, my qualms about redefining marriage have nothing to do with anyone’s sexual preference; it strikes me as unwise to undo a long-standing institution NOW, PERIOD, and there’s the issue of child-raising and adoption and whether the state should favor one arrangement over another, or, inevitably, whether the state should permit a private institution to favor one arrangement over the other. Surely we are still able to say that a male-female dynamic, all other things being equal, have an advantage. I’ve had this argument with a few friends, and the look on mothers’ faces when you say “well, there’s nothing you bring to the table a man couldn’t provide” is priceless. They don’t believe it for a second, but they also cannot make the leap to admit that same-sex child-rearing situations lack certain inherent qualities, because that suggests a difference, and the difference implies a hierarchy, and we can’t have that. You inevitably get sidetracked on a discussion of bad hetero couples and great gay couples, which is interesting but irrelevant; we're talking about state policy here, and if you wish the law to regard the absence of a mother or father as irrelevant, tell me why that's a good thing.

Anyway. Point is, I think the majority of Americans wouldn’t balk at civil unions, and I think the same majority would accept laws that afford gay couples the right to have the same benefits as unmarried hetero couples via medical visitation, insurance plans, etc. Unlike 50 years ago, most people know someone who’s out. That tends to soften hearts. I know some thing that every evangelical thinks Sorry, sis, I love you, but your godless practices must keep you from being present at your life partner's funeral, but somehow I suspect that is not the norm. But when the matter of civil unions gets twinned with redefining marriage, it appears people will vote against the redefinition regardless of the secondary consequences. Preserving the traditional definition trumps any vague sympathetic acquiescence to some flavor of statutory equality. Twenty years from now, attitudes may change – but they’ll run up against constitutional amendments that arose in reaction to the decisions of a few judges.

And that’s one of the reasons I like judges who tap the brakes instead of flooring it through the red light.

Common Ground Wins The Election

This is good:

November 09, 2006

BILL WHITTLE EMAILS:

Over in Tim Blair's comment section, a guy named Dave S. said this:

"The Republicans lost and the Democrats won for the same reason -- they distanced themselves from their base. "

That's the sentence of the year, in my opinion.

Heh. Indeed.

UPDATE: George Will: "At least Republicans now know where the 'Bridge to Nowhere' leads: to the political wilderness. "

posted at 05:58 AM by Glenn Reynolds

Nations Not Ready For War Should Not Engage In It

Andrew C. McCarthy re Rumsfeld and Bush:

Worse, the president has been equally elusive in describing “victory.” The suppression of militant Islam has been conflated with the democratization of cultural Islam — as if one were unattainable without the other. In fact, they are different objectives, not nearly as intertwined as the administration rhetorically insists without persuasively showing.

None of that is a Donald Rumsfeld problem.

Of course, that’s not how the history will be written. Conventional wisdom holds that the bumbling in Iraq simply must be military bumbling. After all, the world’s lone superpower seemingly cannot get it done against a rag-tag assemblage of ousted Baathists, sectarian militias and jihadists — all willful, all determined to kill us and each other … not necessarily in that order. Surely the fault must lie with the Pentagon. Rumsfeld had to go.

Reality, as usual, is more complicated. President Bush didn’t simply tell his Defense Secretary to go win a war. The instructions were to win while simultaneously creating a novus ordo seclorum for the Muslim world. Imagine FDR ordering Eisenhower to begin the Marshall Plan right after Yalta instead of after the enemy was defeated — and oh, by the way, Ike, to the extent remaking Europe may interfere with quelling those pesky Nazis, tell the war-fighters to stand down while the diplomats “dialogue” our way to victory.

Those were Rumsfeld’s marching orders.

And that apart from another basic disconnect. Anything but the shortest military engagement is certain to fail if it does not enjoy public support. The American people are all for deploying our military to rout jihadists and their enablers. They do not, however, favor endangering their sons and daughters for a “hearts and minds” experiment of uncertain utility in a faraway land.

Most Americans don’t care whether Iraq is democratic. They want it to be stable and favorably disposed toward the nation that has sacrificed so much blood and treasure to free its people from tyranny. They want it to be inhospitable to al Qaeda, and a partner — rather than a growing obstacle — in the real war on terror. The war consumed with undermining jihadist facilitators like Iran and Syria, not with remaking the world.

The president says, over and over again, that American national security is dependent on the spread of democracy throughout the world. A mantra, however, is not a truth. This particular article of faith is just a theory — and one subject to much dispute given the skill with which jihadists have exploited democratic societies. Regardless of who’s right, though, Americans were certain to have limited patience for a mission that appears more about building another nation than securing our own. And that limit is overtaxed when our forces’ heroism seems squandered on a regime growing more hostile, and a people who seem ungrateful and hell-bent on slaughtering one another.

Yes. Job number one is the guaranteed destruction of all Jihadis and their backers. When no sane Muslim would even think of attacking us, then we can help them rebuild the rubble. That's the way the world has always worked. That's how Brittania, Gaul, Germany, and Japan were pacified. I don't think the rules have changed for millenia.

On the plus side, we've tried being good cop. Which was the right thing to do. And I think it's pretty clear that we're not going to try it again. So enjoy a breather for awhile as we all regroup for Round Two. That's what I intend to do. Until then, I'm not going to live in fear of the start of the next phase. It will be obvious when it arrives...

Forgotten Aspects Of The Vietnam Parallel

Democrats started our involvement in Vietnam, and Richard Nixon, a Republican, somehow took all the heat for it. Is it not possible that as the Dems gain power and responsibility and find out they need to be realistic, that our involvement will continue, escalate, and that, should this not work, the whole thing will eventually be seen as their failure?

Also, it will be fascinating to see one of two things happen. If the Dems decide to ramp up our forces there and actually win it, then the MSM will be filled with tales of glorious victory [it would be a hell of a positive thing for the Dems, wouldn't it? To erase their reputation as soft on defense. It took Nixon to go to China. Maybe it takes Democrats to finally lay waste to our enemies, I mean they're the ones who did it the last time. Dresden? Hiroshima? Republicans have never done any such thing]. If the Dems decide to cut and run, and Iraq becomes a monumental bloodbath, then I don't expect Iraq to be an item in the news at all. Either way, we won't have to put up with gloom and doom war reporting any more.

Cartoons

Here's a couple:

The Sun Is Setting

Thomas Sowell:

European nations protesting Saddam Hussein's death sentence, as they protested against forcing secrets out of captured terrorists, should tell us all we need to know about the internal degeneration of western society, where so many confuse squeamishness with morality.

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Having overwhelming military force on your side, and letting your enemies know that you have the guts to use it, is being genuinely anti-war. Chamberlain's appeasement brought on World War II and Reagan's military buildup ended the Cold War.

The famous Roman peace of ancient times did not come from negotiations, cease-fires, or pretty talk. It came from the Roman Empire's crushing defeat and annihilation of Carthage, which served as a warning to anyone else who might have had any bright ideas about messing with Rome [and that's where my blog gets its title: Cartago Delenda Est!].

Only after the Roman Empire began to lose its own internal cohesion, patriotism and fighting spirit over the centuries did it begin to succumb to its external enemies and finally collapse.

That seems to be where western civilization is heading today.

Internal cohesion? Not only does much of today's generation in western societies have a "do your own thing" attitude, defying rules and flouting authority are glorified and Balkanization through "multiculturalism" has become dogma.

Patriotism? Not only is patriotism disdained, the very basis for pride in one's country and culture is systematically undermined in our educational institutions at all levels.

The achievements of western civilization are buried in histories that portray every human sin found here as if they were peculiarities of the west.

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How many people have any inkling that it was precisely western civilization which eventually turned against slavery and began stamping it out when non-western societies still saw nothing wrong with it?

How can a generation be expected to fight for the survival of a culture or a civilization that has been trashed in its own institutions, taught to tolerate even the intolerance of other cultures brought into its own midst, and conditioned to regard any instinct to fight for its own survival as being a "cowboy"?

Western nations that show any signs of standing up for self-preservation are rare exceptions. The United States and Israel are the only western nations which have no choice but to rely on self-defense -- and both are demonized, not only by our enemies but also by many in other western nations.

Australia recently told its Muslim population that, if they want to live under Islamic law, then they should leave Australia. That makes three western nations that have not yet completely succumbed to the corrosive and suicidal trends of our times.

If and when we all succumb, will the epitaph of western civilization say that we had the power to annihilate our enemies but were so paralyzed by confusion that we ended up being annihilated ourselves?

Quote

Dick Armey in today's WSJ:

I've always wondered why Republicans insist on acting like Democrats in hopes of retaining political power, while Democrats act like us in order to win.

The rest of the piece expands on this theme.