It might have been fun watching a talking tree lead the country for a few years, were it not for the small matter of the war for civilization, and the fact that you don’t want a president who’s determined to lose it. It’s interesting, in looking at a map of the results, to see that there’s a huge block of red (Republican) states starting from Florida, going most of the way up the eastern seaboard, and then sweeping west all the way to Nevada, leaving a few pockets of confused people on the fringes — geographically and otherwise — who are completely out of touch with the rest of the country. Unfortunately, this includes my home state of California . . . Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Politics
I Feel Safer Already
Spirit-crushing foolishness from my candidate, John Kerry. The nation is trying to figure out how to fight global terrorism and he’s talking about having ‘not just a Department of Health and Human Services, but a Department of Wellness.’ How about a Department of F***ing Perspective? — Mickey Kaus Read more →
Strike a Pose
In Iraq this week, Saddam Hussein was handed over to his countrymen to answer for his deeds, including genocide and crimes against humanity. The possibility now exists for Iraq to become the second functioning democracy — along with Israel — in the Middle East. I think this is great news, but if you’re pessimistic and having trouble striking the correct cynical pose, here are some suggestions. Read more →
Pacifism
The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to the taking of life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists whose real though unadmitted motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration of totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writings of younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States. Moreover they do not as a rule condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defense of western countries. . . . Pacifist literature abounds with equivocal remarks which, if they mean anything, appear to mean that statesmen of the type of Hitler… Read more →
Mixed Reviews
Christopher Hitchens takes a chainsaw to Fahrenheit 9/11. Here’s an excerpt, on the film’s closing quote from Orwell’s 1984: A short word of advice: In general, it’s highly unwise to quote Orwell if you are already way out of your depth on the question of moral equivalence. It’s also incautious to remind people of Orwell if you are engaged in a sophomoric celluloid rewriting of recent history. Read more →
Meet the Press
Contacts between Iraqi intelligence agents and Osama bin Laden when he was in Sudan in the mid-1990’s were part of a broad effort by Baghdad to work with organizations opposing the Saudi ruling family, according to a newly disclosed document obtained by the Americans in Iraq. . . . Read more →
Clinton on Iraq
After 9/11, let’s be fair here, if you had been President, you’d think, Well, this fellow bin Laden just turned these three airplanes full of fuel into weapons of mass destruction, right? Arguably they were super-powerful chemical weapons. Think about it that way. So, you’re sitting there as President, you’re reeling in the aftermath of this, so, yeah, you want to go get bin Laden and do Afghanistan and all that. But you also have to say, Well, my first responsibility now is to try everything possible to make sure that this terrorist network and other terrorist networks cannot reach chemical and biological weapons or small amounts of fissile material. I’ve got to do that. Read more →
Meet the Press
. . . I do think there was what amounted to a kind of conspiracy to get the U.S. into a war against Iraq, if we define the term as a secretive plot involving a group within the government but excluding many important officials, who bent events and information to their undeclared purpose. Although you’d have to say it was a barely undeclared purpose. — Washington Post Associate Editor Robert G. Kaiser Is it really a secret conspiracy if it involves a congressional vote and 17 U.N. resolutions? Read more →
iet-Vay am-Nay ad-ay auseam-Nay
The candidate [John Kerry] offered his guests peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches, a daily staple for him on the road. His passion for PB&Js, Kerry told his companions, dated back to Vietnam, where he not only ate them frequently but traded them for other commodities. — “Kerry Escalating Use of War Veteran Status,” Los Angeles Times Read more →
The Ambition of Others
Let us recollect that peace or war will not always be left to our option; that however moderate or unambitious we may be, we cannot count upon the moderation, or hope to extinguish the ambition of others. — Alexander Hamilton Read more →
Other People’s Money
The ability to ignore costs is at the heart of the attraction of government for some and of the expansion of government over time. Anything that might conceivably be of some benefit to someone, sometime, is worth doing, if someone else is paying. In our own lives, we pass up all sorts of benefits when we decide that they are just not worth their cost. Maybe we would like to have a new car or add another room onto the house or take a vacation in the Caribbean but it may not be worth what it would cost. So we keep driving the old jalopy, get used to not having a den and take in a few ball games during the summer instead of going on a cruise. Life is full of trade-offs when it is your own money. — Thomas Sowell Read more →
The European Approach
The new Spanish government will soon meet with Germany and France to craft a ‘European’ approach to terrorism. Topic No. 1: How big should the white flag be? Oak or cedar for the pole? — James Lileks Read more →
Lost in the Mind
There can never be defeat if a man refuses to accept defeat. Wars are lost in the mind before they are lost on the ground. No nation was ever defeated until the people were willing to accept defeat. — George Patton Read more →
Best Explanation of the Spanish Election Results
Even the mere threat of Islamic terrorism has for several decades been very effective at steering European nations’ foreign policy. Going back further consider the Germans in the 1930s and early 1940s. A small minority of people living in Europe had an ideology and the will to use violence to back up that ideology. Without a whole lot of effort or actual force they were able to conquer nearly every other European nation and convince those Europeans to accept major elements of their ideology. European democracies appear strong but apparently are easy to control by anyone who threatens to disrupt the bourgeois comforts of the populace. Nor do Europeans have the internal strength to dislodge violent minorities who’ve gained control of their societies. In the 1940s it was the leveling of German cities by the British and American air forces and Soviet artillery that convinced Europeans of the impracticality of… Read more →
France Weighs In
Sociologist Emilio Lamo de Espinosa says Europeans have been dreaming. Writing in Le Monde (in French), Lamo says Europeans have thought they would be spared because they haven’t supported the Bush administration’s policies. Read more →
John Kerry, International Man of Mystery
I’ve met foreign leaders who can’t go out and say this publicly, but boy they look at you and say, ‘You’ve got to win this, you’ve got to beat this guy, we need a new policy,’ things like that. — John Kerry ‘In terms of who he’s talked to, we’re not going to discuss that,’ spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said yesterday. ‘I know it would be helpful, but we’re not going into that. His counsels are kept private.’ — The Washington Times, “Kerry fails to back up foreign ‘endorsements’” Read more →
A Brief History of Democratic Statesmanship
Speaking at Columbia University in 1959, a student challenged the 33rd President [Harry Truman], a Democrat, on dropping the second A-bomb. ‘The reason I asked this,’ the student said, ‘was that it seemed to me the second bomb came pretty soon after the first one.’ After speaking testily of ‘Monday morning quarterbacks,’ Truman said simply: ‘I was there. I did it. I would do it again.’ — Daniel Henninger, The Wall Street Journal KERRY: I think George Bush rushed to war without exhausting the remedies available to him, without exhausting the diplomacy necessary to put the U.S. in the strongest position possible, without pulling together the logistics and the plan to shore up Iraq immediately and effectively. TIME: And you as Commander in Chief would not have made these mistakes but would have gone to war? KERRY: I didn’t say that. TIME: I’m asking. KERRY: I can’t tell you. —… Read more →
Foreigners for Kerry
I’ve met foreign leaders who can’t go out and say this publicly, but boy they look at you and say, ‘You’ve got to win this, you’ve got to beat this guy, we need a new policy,’ things like that. — John Kerry SEOUL — North Korea’s state-controlled media is known for its reverential reporting on Mr Kim Jong-il. But the Dear Leader is not the only one getting deferential treatment: Mr John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic candidate in the United States, is also getting good play in Pyongyang. His speeches are being broadcast on Radio Pyongyang and reported in glowing terms by the Korea Central News Agency (KCNA). — “Kerry gets dream run in North Korean media”, The Straits Times Read more →
Quotes on Kerry
Yet not all Democrats are thrilled with John Kerry. (As an aside, try to wrap your mind around the phrase ‘thrilled with John Kerry’ and you’ll see why he might not be the strongest nominee.) — Best of the Web Today I have never met anybody, nor seen anybody interviewed, nor received an email from anybody, nor read a letter to a newspaper from anybody who really woke up in the morning and thought: If John Kerry doesn’t win, I just don’t know what I shall do. — Christopher Hitchens, The Daily Mirror Read more →
We Need to Know the Truth
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for president, said he thought there ought to be some investigation of the claim that Aristide was forced out and escorted by U.S. troops. ‘I have a very close friend in Massachusetts who talked directly to people who have made that allegation,’ Kerry said on Today on NBC. ‘I don’t know the truth of it. I really don’t. But I think it needs to be explored and we need to know the truth of what happened.’ — “U.S. denies Aristide’s kidnap charges,” Newsday This has become standard operating procedure for Democrats: put out some outlandish statement (President Bush had foreknowledge of Sept. 11, Bush was a ‘deserter’), then say you ‘don’t know the truth of it’ but it’s ‘out there’ and ‘we need to know’ what happened. — Best of the Web Today Read more →