Restitution

Vacation Time ...

Greetings to all the readers from Hugh Hewitt's blog, and thanks again to Hugh for the link both from his blog as well as from the article he wrote for Townhall.com (I'll try not to let it go to my head -- but the fact that he got my last name wrong in the article will help with that).

*Update (08-24-06: 6:39 AM): someone corrected the mistake.  Thanks!

If you're linking in from his article, I'd like to point out that I respectfully disagree with Hugh about the reasons Abizaid feels America is ignoring the war, but I think we would agree on most other issues.  I'm a huge fan of Hugh's and listen to his show every day.

I will be off the grid for the next five days on a trip to Eagle Crest for our family summer vacation.  During that time, there is an outside chance my friend and former boss Lt. Col. Tom Eisiminger will guest-blog for me (he's really busy with personal stuff at the moment, but check in anyway just in case). 

I will be back on Tuesday.  Also, shortly after I return, I will be heading to Fort Knox for some training, and get this ... I'm flying United Airlines on the fifth-year anniversary of September 11th to get there!  Your prayers are welcome, although I have to admit I almost hope someone does try and take over the airplane I'm in.  My wife will smack me if she reads this, but it's true -- I may be closing in on middle-age, but I'll never be too old to kick some ass ('scuse my French) when my back's against the wall.

Cheers to all and thanks for visiting.

American Inconstancy

I think I'm going to try and turn this post into an essay at some point when I can squeeze more time out my average day. 

The concept of American inconstancy, or American fickleness with regards to our politics, isn't anything new and has been remarked on by far better men that me.  However, since we are still engaged in the War on Terror (and will be so for as long as Bush sits in the Oval Office, he's assured us), the issue needs to be revisited at length.  This is one of the many things I believe Norman Podhoretz has achieved with the essay he wrote for Commentary Magazine (subsequently posted at the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, here).  Note: this is a 19-page essay, not a quick-read, so print it out and go someplace quiet for an hour or so.

If you read this blog, you already know that I am a "neoconservative" at least concerning foreign policy, but actually in many other areas as well.  Although I dislike the label, it is useful in describing my point of view to others.  But beneath labels and beneath rhetoric, I am essentially a one-issue voter:  I care about winning the war on terror.  In my mind, all other political considerations (yes, including immigration and even judges) must take a backseat, since all are predicated on our ability to maintain our own security.  It's very simple: if we fail in this, the other issues won't matter.

I heard an interview on the Hugh Hewitt Show yesterday with GEN John Abizaid, and he made a remark which I took to be an indirect rebuke of everything written recently with the pens of men like George Will and William F. Buckley:  he said he noticed during his trips to the United States from his base in Qatar that the country didn't seem to be very cognizant that there was a war going on.  There was no broad kind of awareness of the war that he could easily pick up from random television viewing or newspaper-browsing.

I'm sad to say that I agree with him.  It is something that has bothered me for quite some time.  However, I am not content with the pat response to this phenomenon found on so many radio talk shows or conservative opinion pieces: namely that this is the result of the Bush administration not making the case to the public.   Sorry, but I'm not buying that.  That smacks, to me, of an all-too typical American cop-out, and one that conservatives in particular should be wary of: after all, we are the ones who continually remind other Americans that we should behave as grown-ups and that being an American is "advanced citizenship."  To turn and claim that it is up to our president to hold our hands and remind us daily of how dire the consequences of losing this war really are, strikes me as petulant and childish.  We are responsible for our destiny as a nation folks -- not George W. Bush, not Donald Rumsfeld, and not GEN John Abizaid.  They work for us, not the other way round.  Hearing Abizaid's remark made me feel genuinely ashamed to be a conservative.

Inconstancy -- reflected in our apathy toward the war and our mindless obsession with trivialities -- seems to me a relatively new phenomenon.  I don't believe the citizens of this country had such problems during WWII.  I am, of course, too young to be able to say that I know this from my own experience, but judging from the photos and stories and films from that era, the war was never far from the minds of people at home.  On the contrary, many of them felt a kinship with the GI "over there," because they worked in a factory building planes or bombs or ships -- or else did their duty by buying war bonds, etc.  No one was holding their hands.  It didn't require daily or even weekly press conferences by the president to keep the American war machine humming (although there were plenty of them, the populace didn't need them to stay focused).

So what is different?  And can it ever change?  Will this or any future generation of Americans ever again be willing to unite together and stick through tough times until the war is won?  Have we forever lost our ability to absorb the sacrifices necessary in any conflict, much less one so dire as the survival of western civilization itself?  Will it take a nuclear weapon being detonated in a metropolitan American city?  Would even that horror wake us from our slumber, or would we turn our rhetorical guns on ourselves even more fiercely than we already do?  Are the Mullahs and the Imams right about us, after all?  Are we the weak horse?  Will they find to be true what Imperial Japan found to be a lie 50 years ago ... that we were a "paper tiger?"

It's easy for pundits like George Will and W.F. Buckley to take shots at Bush.  They sit in the cheap seats.  They don't have 3,000 Americans (and getting close to 3,000 soldiers) on their conscience.  They don't have to understand the complexities of developing and implementing policy in the Middle East (although they evidently think they do).  They are free to imagine Bush is a fool or is surrounded by them, and to say as much to their hundreds of thousands of readers -- but they don't have to make the decisions or deal with the consequences.  They don't have to constantly readjust their rhetoric in order to maintain influence with a Congress and Senate-full of similarly-pressured men and women also trying to stay alive politically.

And so the betrayal -- yes, betrayal -- of Bush by Mr. Will and his ilk has become a cause for celebration for the enemies of freedom both here and abroad.  Small men with pens once again bite at the heels of their betters, as they have so often in the past: from Abraham Lincoln to Teddy Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan.  And each passing generation they gain more influence while possessing less of a sense of responsibility.

I wish I had an answer, but I don't.

Is "Islamofascist" a meaningful term?

The ivory-tower types are parsing the meaning of Islamofascist over at NRO.  Interesting reading, I thought.

Allow me to give you the non-eggheaded reason I use the term "Islamofascist."  Disclaimer:  No, I don't have any letters after my name, nor am I a "fellow" at some "think-tank."  I'm just an average guy, and I try to tell it like I see it.

Islamists become fascists when they behave like fascists.  It's very simple, really.  Fascist isn't a meaningless term, as some of the intellectuals above seem to believe.  Fascism is a political ideology with specific goals and characteristics, but there is one difference between fascism and any other ideology: it takes a specific intellectual step that others typically do not.  Other religions and ideologies may reach the point at which their practitioners believe they have grasped within its tenets a set of truths so profound as to make all rival ideologies false.  In fact, most ideologies do this to some extent. 

However, only fascism takes the intellectual step of acting on this presumption with violence, or using this presumption to excuse or condone violence.  In this sense, even Christianity was fascistic at one point in history.

The term is useful because it is being used.  It has already passed the most basic of linguistic tests: it resonates with people.  Enough said, IMO.

I guess I'm an "unrepentant neocon" too

Every once in awhile, you come across comments made by others with which you agree.  More rarely, you come across an entire paradigm with which you agree ... such is the case with me and Norman Podhoretz.

Quote:

"If you stipulate that everything people allege was a mistake in Iraq, even if you stipulate that they all were actually mistakes rather than judgment calls about which reasonable men could differ and could have had worse consequences if they'd gone the other way--even if you stipulate that all the critics are right, these 'mistakes' are chump change compared to the mistakes that were made during World War II by great leaders like Churchill and Roosevelt, and the lives that were squandered, thousands and thousands of lives uselessly squandered. . . ."

Couldn't have said it better myself ...

Ned Lamont's pyrrhic victory

Interesting article linked here (subscription required).  It's pretty fair analysis, I'd say, except I think STRATFOR overlooked one significant possibility: Lieberman didn't lose the primary by much, and if he picks up Republican votes while running as an Independent (which is possible, since there really is no serious GOP challenger for that Senate seat in Conneticut), he could actually win.  I say this because were I a citizen of Conneticut, I would happily vote for Leiberman.  In fact, I would have seriously considered voting for Lieberman over George W. Bush if he'd won the presidential bid for the Democrats in '04, and I'm far from the only moderate Republican who would have done so.

There is a huge difference between people who are opposed to the way the Iraq war has been handled, and people who are opposed to the entire concept of the war in Iraq -- just as there is a huge difference between people who think Bush has bungled his job in general and people who viscerally hate the man and everything he stands for.  The Howard Dean wing of the Democrats don't seem to be aware of either distinction.  They see the 30% approval ratings and assume the nation supports their entire point of view.

If Lieberman wins the election as an Independent, this would be a total disaster for the Howard Dean/Michael Moore wing of the Democrat Party (which looks as if they are in ascendance at the moment), and would be even more damaging to the Democrats than the Clinton impeachment was damaging to the GOP.  It could serve to severely marginalize just about everyone who supported Lamont (which is just about everyone of significance on the left).

However, from what I'm hearing on the right, many in the GOP are happy to see this development.  They see the John Kerry/Hilary Clinton wing of the Democrat Party as actually more dangerous than the far left Howard Dean/Michael Moore wing (I realize Michael Moore is not a politician, but this is why I included him), precisely because the moderates are able to draw votes away from the GOP.  But if the Democrat Party truly becomes the party of Howard Dean and Ted Kennedy, then the right-wingers will view that as a very hopeful sign of them retaining power in the upcoming elections. 

From my point of view, however, I think this is a depressing development: the last thing this nation needs at the moment is more polarization, and the Democrats moving even further to the left will guarantee that the rhetoric will continue unabated.

Of course, it's possible that the GOP is the one making the miscalculation, but I think they are probably right on this one.

The polls might seem to indicate widespread opposition to the war in Iraq, but when the pollsters asked in the most recent survey if we should pull all the troops out of Iraq immediately, only 26% said "yes," and that means that 74% of America disagrees with Ned Lamont, Howard Dean, Ted Kennedy, Michael Moore, et al on their core issue ... not a good sign, if you ask me.

If this isn't casus belli, what is?

First of all, kudos to the counterterrorism spooks and police investigators on both sides of the Atlantic who work tirelessly day and night to keep us all safe and who foiled the attempt to blow up US airliners.

However, of even greater significance, in my view, is this story.

It's one thing for the wack-jobs in Iran to spout their holocaust-denial and call for the destruction of Israel ... it is something in a completely different category for Iran to send Revolutionary Guard soldiers into southern Lebanon to fight alongside Hizbollah terrorists and to help them launch rockets into Israeli civilian populations.

In a world that's right-side-up, Israel would already be launching attacks into Iran for this.  In fact, so would the U.S.  However, judging from the low-level of coverage this story is getting in the MSM and the fact that no Israeli official has made any statements that I can find about it, I suspect that Israel is going to pretend it didn't happen.

I can understand their reasoning, here.  They are already deep into a shooting war and mired in a messy ground invasion of Southern Lebanon.  They last thing they want to do right now is expand this into a war with Iran.

That said, this is evidence of how dangerous and calculating the Iranian leadership can be.  I suspect that they knew the Israelis wouldn't make a fuss if they discovered Iranian soldiers in Lebanon.  It was a calculated risk, and it looks like they are going to come out on top ... yet again.

All of this -- from the kidnappings to the rocket attacks, is Iran is making its move, folks, and sooner or later they are going to miscalculate.  When that happens, either the U.S. or Israel (or both) is going to eat their lunch.   For the sake of everyone, and particularly the Israelis, I just pray it stays conventional.

The Downside of Being the World's Greatest Military

No matter how good any particular commando or group of commandos are, they are still human.

I ran across a couple of people today who said something to the effect that "Israel has one of the best-trained militaries in the world, why do they need to bomb civilian locations to get Hezbollah fighters?  Why don't they go in there and find them with their special forces, and thus reduce the amount of civilians killed?"

The thing about a statement like that is that it immediately indicates the person isn't very knowledgable about things military.  Now, I wish I could provide a link to someone who wrote that in an article or said it in a town-hall meeting or something -- but I think such sentiments are usually found in ordinary Americans -- or ones who don't write articles on foreign affairs for a living, anyway.  So I want to direct this to people like that.

When two or three relatively isolated fighters shoot a rocket from the backyard of a house in southern Lebanon, or from the roof of an apartment building, there is a very small window of opportunity that opens for a very limited amount of time if you're the Israeli military.  This is because as soon as that rocket is fired, within minutes, the terrorists have dismantled their equipment, packed it up in their van, and are on their way to the next firing location.

You can't eliminate such threats with commandos.  When the rockets get fired, real-time satellite imagery records the infrared bloom ... the target is identified and mapped out on a grid, and within seconds, a firing location is transmitted to the fighter-bombers circling in the sky.  If they are close enough, the will line up the target and fire a guided munition at the source.  That's how you get them.  By the time you give the coordinates to the group of commandos -- even ones who are air-mobile -- the terrorists will be long-gone by the time they arrive, and thus more Israeli citizens will die from Katyusha rockets and more Israeli buildings will suffer expensive damage.

So the next time you criticize western military tactics, remember that all the hype from films and television shows combined won't make any single commando any more superhuman than he is already is.

Oo-Rah! Part II

Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, commanding general of the I Marine Expeditionary Force, congratulates former Marine Sgt. Robert J. Mitchell on his receipt of the Navy Cross during a ceremony aboard Camp Pendleton, Calif., July 28, 2006. Mitchell, who was wounded four times during his two tours in Iraq, received the medal, the nation's second-highest award for battlefield heroism, in recognition of his actions during the battle for Fallujah, Iraq in November 2004. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. George Hruby

Link to article

Oo-Rah!

MEDAL OF HONOR – U.S. Marine Pfc. Jacklyn H. Lucas shakes hands with the Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. Michael W. Hagee while receiving his Medal of Honor ceremonial flag during a ceremony at the Marine Barracks in Washington, D.C., Aug. 3, 2006. Defense Dept. photo by William D. Moss

The President of the United States takes pleasure in presenting the MEDAL OF HONOR to

PRIVATE FIRST CLASS JACKLYN H. LUCAS,
UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS RESERVE

for service as set forth in the following

CITATION:

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving with the First Battalion, Twenty-sixth Marines, Fifth Marine Division, during action against enemy Japanese forces on Iwo Jima, Volcano Islands 20 February 1945. While creeping through a treacherous, twisting ravine which ran in close proximity to a fluid and uncertain front line on D-plus-1 Day, Private First Class Lucas and three other men were suddenly ambushed by a hostile patrol which savagely attacked with rifle fire and grenades. Quick to act when the lives of the small group were endangered by two grenades which landed directly in front of them, Private First Class Lucas unhesitatingly hurled himself over his comrades upon one grenade and pulled the other one under him, absorbing the whole blasting force of the explosions in his own body in order to shield his companions from the concussion and murderous flying fragments. By his inspiring action and valiant spirit of self-sacrifice, he not only protected his comrades from certain injury or possible death, but also enabled them to rout the Japanese patrol and continue the advance. His exceptionally courageous initiative and loyalty reflect the highest credit upon Private First Class Lucas and the United States Naval Service.

/S/ HARRY S. TRUMAN

Who Really Fights?

"It's about our love of family, and the work we'll do for them, and the joy they bring us. It's about the irreplaceable, incomparable bond between a man and wife. It's about the united outrage we feel when Americans are murdered. It's about why we fight."

Notice the section in italics (which are my own). This was the National Review’s Katherine Jean Lopez’s take on the new Oliver Stone film, “World Trade Center.”  I see and hear such remarks all the time, and I have no problem with these sentiments.  On the contrary, they are heartening and all-too rare in the media.  Speaking as a military veteran and a person currently working professionally for the Department of Defense, I would go so far as to say such sentiments make me proud to be an American.  But not everyone reacts to Lopez’s remark, “… why we fight,” the way I do. In a recent Chicago Sun-Times column, Mark Steyn shares an e-mail sent to Lopez which berated her for equivocating what she does as a magazine editor to what Soldiers do in the field:

“For the record, and unless I am somehow uninformed, I think it fair to state that you do not fight -- you never have and, hopefully, never will have to. You are not a member of any of the branches of the armed forces, nor a reservist. You are not, and I am fairly sure, have never been engaged in a combat situation. Your contribution to this war is limited solely to your ability to exercise the skillset provided by your liberal arts education in the pages of the National Review.”

The reader then goes on to characterize her statement as not merely a slip of the tongue, but an “extraordinarily disrespectful’” remark.

"It does a tremendous disservice to your readers and is extraordinarily disrespectful to the millions of men and women around the world who are in uniform and fighting and dying for their countries."

Mark Steyn then explains, at length, exactly how “wrong-headed” is this remark. Read the article.  It is very good, of course.  More importantly, it is a crucial part of his (and my, for that matter) much broader narrative: that we are in danger of witnessing the destruction of western civilization at the hands of 12^th Century-throwback religious fanatics because we have become “men without chests.”

However, Steyn himself is not a veteran, or at least if he is he has never made mention of it.  So in a sense, everything he wrote in his column is going to be rejected out-of-hand by people like the one who wrote the email to Lopez.  This is unfortunate, because he makes a critical point: nations, not armies, win wars. Again, read his column.  There is nothing substantive that I can add to his arguments.

That said, I have to confess a certain sympathy with emailer above, and there is a lesson which Steyn, Lopez and all the others can learn from this if they can muster the necessary humility.  That lesson is simply this: don’t ever forget to honor the men (and in some cases, women) in the sandbox who are fighting and dying for you, and always try and phrase your arguments in such a way that will reflect your cognizance of that. 

I want to point out that this is something many of the big-name conservative bloggers and pundits already do very well -- particularly Hugh Hewitt.  However, I think Steyn's article revealed a vulnerability in the paradigm shared by many "online warriors," so to speak, who are trying to do their bit to win the war on terror.

Regardless of how valuable what Steyn, Lopez, Hewitt, et al are doing is – and there is no doubt in my mind that it is supremely valuable – the price is being paid by 19- to 25-year old young men who are setting aside their own dreams of a good life to serve in the harshest and most dangerous of conditions.  Don’t ever forget that they have families who love them and depend on them, and who live in fear every day of getting that phone call. Don’t ever forget that every American Soldier or Marine who dies means that a family somewhere in American suburbia gets absolutely devastated.

These men are our heroes, our champions -- but war is not a game to the men who fight and die it it.  Guard against seeing them as pawns on a chessboard -- no matter how dire the game is as you see it -- or as the faceless automaton superheroes in a video game. 

They bleed for this nation … so we don't have to.