One Bullet Dodged

Well, the Senate finally caved to the popular will and for a second time rejected the immigration bill.

So we're back to the status quo--illegal immigrants flowing across the border, no security on that border, and no enforcement except for catch-and-release. Unless Washington gets the message, and when has that happend?

Dangerous Nutjobs

The Wolf of Man

[N]o people wants to send off their sons and especially their daughters to fight overseas, but it never occurred to me that this was “‘natural isolationism.” It just seems like natural humanity to me. I don’t know of many other peoples in the world who truly relish sacrificing their young men to war. Peoples around the world may glorify soldiers and celebrate their deeds in war, but most people, normal people, would rather that there be no war if at all possible.

--Daniel Larison

Daniel is right to say there’s a long-standing aversion to sending young people–especially one’s own–to fight, especially when the enemy is far from our shores, let alone our gates.

At the same time there’s a bloodlust very deep in the souls of many, even if it’s helped along by drums, banners, films, speeches and sermons artfully deployed to stimulate it. We enjoy war at least as much as we do professional sports, especially if others do the fighting for us. The crowds cheered the parading soldiery as Europe unknowingly prepared to annihilate its civilization and a generation of its sons in 1914.

Does Norman Podhoretz, who built his career on having been chased by blacks as a kid in Brooklyn and growing up to write about it, get a frisson when he dreams of “our boys” igniting fireballs over Teheran? I wouldn’t be surprised it he does. (In case anyone gets the wrong idea, no, you don’t have to be Jewish to be a warmonger–it’s a multicultural pastime).

Or We Could Appoint a New People

As to the first point, as almost everyone agrees -- we can't finally succeed in Iraq without an indigenous Iraqi government capable of effective government -- why don't we replace the government. While democracy is all good and well -- we entered Iraq to protect our own national security interests. If we could give them democracy, too, all the better. But first, we have to look out for our (and the world's) interests.

I continue to believe that defeat in Iraq will have shocking consequences. Even most war critics believe that -- they just don't want to think about it.

Just as Abe Lincoln kept hiring and firing generals until he found a Gen. Grant, who could fight and win, President Bush needs to hire and fire Iraqi leaders until he finds a strong man who can get the job done.

I pray that President Bush has not been so moved by his own "democratic" rhetoric that he has blinded himself to the ruthless, practical demands of the moment

--Tony Blankley

So much for "democracy promotion."

Not That Girl

She also said ‘my face is very dry. There’s no cream here. But it doesn’t matter. I am not that superficial girl. I haven’t looked in a mirror since I got here.’

--Paris Hilton

I am deeply relieved.

No Such Luck

The truth is that most Democrats have no intention of using military force to promote U.S. security under any circumstances. They prefer to live in a fantasy world in which "diplomatic initiatives" and "multi-national peacekeeping forces" can keep us safe.

--Power Line

There is a reliably oikophoic/pacifist wing of the Dems, but most of them are reliably interventionist. The Dems as a party are more partial to UNICEF card internationalism than the GOP, but a little carpet bombing between friends is ok with them, especially if it has a UN or NATO figleaf.

Next stop, Darfur.

UPDATE: changed "anti-American" to "oikophobic/pacifist." More accurate.

A Plug for Cal of Blessed Memory

Coolidge, who sardonically called Hoover a “wonder boy” and who memorably stated, “The chief business of the American people is business,” is presented as a kind of Zen saint, a pillar of inaction: “Coolidge had long ago determined that the world would do better if he involved himself less. [He] believed that the work of life lay in holding back and shutting out. He conducted his official life according to his own version of the doctor’s Hippocratic Oath—first, do no harm.” Shlaes hails his decision to leave the Presidency after five and a half years (thus ducking the crash and its consequences) as “another of Coolidge’s acts of refraining, his last and greatest.”

--John Updike, reviewing Amity Shlaes's The Forgotten Man

Updike became a Democrat because his dad had a hard time in the Depression and FDR made him feel better.

Relax

Paris Hilton is free.

What, me worry?

Salivating, Or Worse, For a War

Today, this same dynamic is creating a moment of great danger. The radicals are becoming reckless, asserting themselves for little reason beyond the conviction that they can. They are very likely to overreach. It is not hard to imagine scenarios in which a single match--say a terrible terror attack from Gaza--could ignite a chain reaction. Israel could handle Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria, albeit with painful losses all around, but if Iran intervened rather than see its regional assets eliminated, could the U.S. stay out?

With the Bush administration's policies having failed to pacify Iraq, it is natural that the public has lost patience and that the opposition party is hurling brickbats. But the demands of congressional Democrats that we throw in the towel in Iraq, their attempts to constrain the president's freedom to destroy Iran's nuclear weapons program, the proposal of the Baker-Hamilton commission that we appeal to Iran to help extricate us from Iraq--all of these may be read by the radicals as signs of our imminent collapse. In the name of peace, they are hastening the advent of the next war.

--Muravchick Yet Again

Horror of horrors! The umbrella-wielding hordes are constraining "the president's freedom to destroy", and it is this constraint that threatens a war. Congress exercising its constitutional function.

Here we see Muravchick salivating, or worse, for a war; he will stop at nothing to have one. As Shakespeare said, such men are dangerous.

Where is the national interest in this fantasized folly? A question never asked, because it cannot be answered.

Nonsense Immune to Garlic

Democracies, it is now well established, do not go to war with each other. But they often get into wars with non-democracies. Overwhelmingly the non-democracy starts the war; nonetheless, in the vast majority of cases, it is the democratic side that wins. In other words, dictators consistently underestimate the strength of democracies, and democracies provoke war through their love of peace, which the dictators mistake for weakness.

--Joshua Muravchick

This proposition appears to be well-established only in the minds of ideologues.

It is not true empirically. World War I is a sufficient counter-example. The Boer War is another.

It is not true theoretically. Why should democracies be immune to the siren song of national insult and national aggrandizement? Why does it keep reviving, like a vampire suddenly immune to garlic?

Let's Be Clear

Michelle Malkin displays a number of photos of Iranian police brutalizing people who didn't dress or behave Islamically enough. Videos, too, which I embed sparingly because they are time-consuming to watch.

Michelle likes to display the nasty side of Islamic politics, perhaps to a fault, but the repression in Iran is real enough. So let's be clear: the régime in Iran is nasty and repressive. Recently it's become ostentatiously worse on that score, perhaps because of its economic crisis.

I've been very much opposed to war with Iran. You don't have to love the mullahs to take that view.

Word of the Day

Utas--An obsolete (alas!) word for the eighth day of a feast. Related to "octave." Here's an example from St. Thomas More's last letter to his daughter Margaret:

I cumber you, good Margaret, much, but I would be sorry if it should be any longer than tomorrow. For it is Saint Thomas' even and the Utas of Saint Peter; and therefore tomorrow long I to go to God: it were a day very meet and convenient for me. I never liked your manner toward me better than when you kissed me last: for I love when daughterly love and dear charity hath no leisure to look to worldly courtesy. Farewell, my dear child, and pray for me, and I shall for you and all your friends, that we may merrily meet in Heaven. I thank you for your great cost...

HT: Bill Luse.