In a wider sense, the war is as most wars: an evolution from blunders to wisdom, the side that makes the fewest and learns from them the most eventually winning. Al Qaeda and the insurgents in 2004-6 developed the means, both tactical and strategic, to thwart the reconstruction, but we, not they, have since learned the more and evolved.
As in the Civil War, WWI, and WWII, the present American military - which has committed far less mistakes than past American forces - has shifted tactics, redefined strategy, and found the right field commanders. We forget that the U.S. Army and Marines, far from being broken, now have the most experienced and wizened officers in the world. Like Summer 1864, Summer 1918, and in the Pacific 1944-5, the key is the support of a weary public for an ever improving military that must nevertheless endure a final storm before breaking the enemy.
The irony is that should President Bush endure the hysteria and furor and prove able to give the gifted Gen. Petraeus the necessary time - and I think he will - his presidency could still turn out to be Trumanesque, once we digest the changes in Europe, the progress on North Korea, the end of both the Taliban and Saddam, and the prevention of another 9/11 attack. How odd that all the insider advice to triangulate - big spending, new programs, uninspired appointments, liberal immigration reform - have nearly wrecked the administration, and what were once considered its liabilities - foreign policy, the war on terror and Iraq - may still save it.
Source. Note also below:
Honest reporting at last: "On Monday this week Rush Limbaugh talked about all the members of the mainstream media who are now coming to the conclusion that the surge is working. I think Burns and his fellow Times correspondent Michael Gordon have done more than anyone to change those attitudes and they did not do any of it as partisans. It is especially ironic that these two men of integrity work for the paper that has done its worse to insure defeat." [See also here]
The Left are afraid of success in Iraq: "As I predicted earlier in the day, the left wing blogosphere has turned on the Brookings scholars who went to Iraq and noted the results of the surge. Glenn Greenwald, a.k.a. “The Lion of Jalalabad”, penned a characteristically windy attempt at character assassination. Thankfully, Matthew Yglesias showed more brevity. Characteristically, both pieces didn’t take issue with what Brookings-men Kenneth Pollack and Michael O’Hanlon reported seeing in Iraq but instead attacked them personally. If you’ve studied the moonbats in their native habitats as I have the past several years, this comes as no surprise. After all, what is the chickenhawk meme but an attempt to win an argument by attacking your opponent rather than engaging his ideas? Has anyone come back from Iraq recently and not seen progress? Wouldn’t an effective rebuttal of O’Hanlon’s and Pollack’s article sought out such friendly sources?
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ELSEWHERE
Graphic above courtesy of Englishman's View
Gateway Pundit has some excellent photos of scenes in Jerusalem.
The publisher of the WSJ offers assurances that standards will not decline now that it is owned and run by Rupert Murdoch. The top-quality "Times" of London has thrived under many years of Murdoch ownership so one would have to be a bit paranoid to expect otherwise. I read "The Times" every day but I read no American publication regularly. As with Murdoch's Fox News, "The Times" gives conservative viewpoints a fair run -- a great contrast with its New York namesake.
The New York Times and Partisan Book Reviewers: "If one were to turn to The New York Times Sunday Book Review section today, the front page features a long indictment of the Bush Administration and the way it is conducting the War on Terror by Samantha Power. It is a curious article because there is no single book "reviewed" in the piece but rather it offers a tour d'horizon of books on the conflict that Power thinks we should all be reading. Power is identified as "the Anna Lindh professor of the practice of global leadership at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard." That's fine as far as it goes. But what the Times doesn't mention is a travesty. Samantha Power served last year as an adviser for the Presidential campaign of Barack Obama .Apparently, she still serves in some capacity as an adviser on his foreign policy team The fact that the New York Times chose her to deliver a harsh attack on the Bush Administration was a journalistic failing and reveals an agenda at work at the paper that has nothing to do with the journalism. The fact that the Times failed to disclose this campaign tie is a sin of omission"
Incredible British bungling: "Known sex offenders are living unchecked in the community because there are too many of them to be monitored regularly, according to research commissioned by the Home Office. The rapidly growing number of people registered as violent criminals or sex attackers is threatening to overwhelm the police, probation officers and social workers who have to keep them under supervision"
Eliot Spizer in the gun at last: "The fisherman is Andrew Cuomo, Spitzer's successor as New York's attorney general. In a state long known for remorseless Machiavellians willing to do whatever is necessary to get to the top, Cuomo may be the only man with more intense ambitions than Spitzer. The son of a previous New York governor, Cuomo recently made public his evidence that Spitzer used state employees to generate a false charge against state senate majority leader Joe Bruno, a Republican, with whom Spitzer was clashing. Cuomo clearly hopes to incite a feeding frenzy against Spitzer by those other well-known man-eaters, the Empire State's news media."
Respect must be earned: "Why, then, should we be commanded to "respect" those who insist that they alone know something that is both unknowable and unfalsifiable? Something, furthermore, that can turn in an instant into a license for murder and rape? As one who has occasionally challenged Islamic propaganda in public and been told that I have thereby "insulted 1.5 billion Muslims," I can say what I suspect-which is that there is an unmistakable note of menace behind that claim. No, I do not think for a moment that Mohammed took a "night journey" to Jerusalem on a winged horse. And I do not care if 10 billion people intone the contrary. Nor should I have to. But the plain fact is that the believable threat of violence undergirds the Muslim demand for "respect.""
For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here
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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".
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