The Madness of Andy McCarthy

Conor Friedersdorf soundly exposes the manifold, insidious deception in Andy McCarthy's new book:

Mr. McCarthy would have us believe that President Obama refuses to acknowledge the September 11 attacks, the appropriateness of the word war, or the fact that our current military efforts abroad are directed at real enemies. Yet here is a speech where the president does all those things in the space of one brief passage. The degree of misrepresentation that Mr. McCarthy permits himself is staggering.

He goes on:

It is so easily shown to be false that it ought to exist only in the author’s mind. Unfortunately, this misinformation is being touted by Rush Limbaugh as piercing, Michelle Malkin is recommending it to her readers, and Mark Levin is calling it “thorough” and “cutting edge, and few of their listeners will question the facts the book presents because they foolishly if understandably underestimate the capacity for intellectual negligence perpetrated by these hosts everyday.

They rave about a book.

I’ve read a single excerpt, and already the mistakes demonstrated by simple Google searches are multitude.

Read the whole thing. It's quite amazing to me how people like McCarthy continually get serious treatment from allegedly serious people. It's one thing to have serious, substantive disagreements with Obama on policy, but it is a viler and more destructive thing, to willfully distort and invent facts, in order to advance a case that the President, and the Left are guilty will willful treason--a case that could only be true in the fairy-tale universe of his own brain. Assuming McCarthy has any intention of the book achieving mainstream success, the excerpts he presents ought to show that this whole unhinged partisan enterprise is rotten from top to bottom, and not worth the paper it's printed on.

Just sayin.'

HT: Sully

"If only Israel could fight all its battles this way."

"It would be the cleanest and least-deadly war in the history of warfare. Even some of Israel’s harshest critics should understand that."

Michael Totten, on the successful op against Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh:

Hamas and Hezbollah use civilians as human shields. Hezbollah uses an entire country as a vast human shield. Some critics, for various reasons, are more interested in lambasting Israel than the terrorist organizations it’s fighting. That’s easy when you live in New York or Brussels. People in the Middle East have to live with (or die because of) what happens. How Middle Easterners fight wars isn’t political or academic to me. I’ve never been inside Gaza, but I once lived in Lebanon, I travel there regularly, and there’s a real chance I’ll be there when the next war pops off. I’d rather not be used as a human shield if that’s OK with those who give Hamas and Hezbollah a pass. And I’d much rather read about Hezbollah leaders getting whacked by mysterious assassins with forged passports than dive into a Beirut bomb shelter during Israeli air raids.

Me too. Read the rest. I get the certain people are vexed that the Israelis didn't follow some sort of protocol, and used forged passports when they decided to successfully take out, without any collateral damage at all, a man whose organization of unrepentant war criminals who deliberately target civilians, among other things, but I fail to see what rules were really broken here, except the rule that seems to be increasingly the norm, in certain circles, per the Goldstone Report, that it is a war crime for sovereign nations to defend their territory, but not a war crime to attack said territory.

I mean, maybe I'm missing something here, but I don't think so...

ADDED: I understand that Australians are not pleased that forged Aussie passports were used, but my argument still stands.

AND: Alan Dershowitz wrestles with the question, and comes to pretty much the same place as Totten does.

The Nobel Peace Prize, and the Wartime President

In the continuing discussion over Obama's Nobel Prize, there has been much talk of what this means for Afghanistan. Certain people are wondering if Obama, as the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, will continue the fight in Afghanistan. According to Bob Kerrey, he has to:

Then, against all reasonable predictions, President Bush chose to increase rather than decrease our military commitment. The "surge," as it became known, worked. Victory was snatched from the jaws of defeat.

From what I have seen, President Obama has the same ability to step outside the swirl of public opinion and make the right decision. While success in Afghanistan may not look the same as it does in Iraq, I believe there is a very good chance that a stable democracy can survive there. If it does, it would be good for the Afghan people, good for the security of the region, and good for the United States. The heroism of Afghan voters who turned out this past August in spite of the Taliban's violence should inspire us to stand by their side until security and stability are established in their country.

He continues:

Afghanistan is also not Iraq. No serious leader in Kabul is asking us to leave. Instead we are being asked to withdraw by American leaders who begin their analysis with the presumption that victory is not possible. They seem to want to ensure defeat by leaving at the very moment when our military leader on the ground has laid out a coherent and compelling strategy for victory.

When it comes to foreign policy, almost nothing matters more then your friends and your enemies knowing you will keep your word and follow through on your commitments. This is the real test of presidential leadership. I hope that President Obama—soon to be a Nobel laureate—passes with flying colors.

Indeed.

HT: Althouse

"If the insurrection continues, a fast hard shove might well push it over. If the regime survives, it may well feel invincible."

Michael Totten, on the manifest corruption of the Iranian regime, the people in the street protesting the regime, and what our response ought to be in the West. I just thought I'd add this to this discussion.

The regime’s only allies in the world are terrorist armies and Bashar Assad’s Baath Party state in Syria. Assad himself, like Khamenei and Ahmadinejad, is a pariah among the Arabs, Persians, Turks, Kurds, Azeris, and Israelis who make up the region.

Iranian civilians risk violent beatings and worse by the thousands for standing up to the regime in the streets and treating it as the enemy it clearly is. There is no better time for the rest of us to do so, as well, especially since such gestures carry far less risk for us. The Pasdaran have no divisions in Washington, Paris, or London.

Obama Administration officials still hope they can talk Khamenei out of developing nuclear weapons and supporting Hamas and Hezbollah. This is delusion on stilts. Khamenei can’t even compromise with his own regime or his hand-picked presidential candidates. He placed them under house arrest, along with a Grand Ayatollah, and deployed thousands of violent enforcers into the streets. Not only does he confront the world, he is at war with his very own country.

Understand the mind of a totalitarian. “Probe with a bayonet,” Vladimir Lenin famously said. “If you meet steel, stop. If you meet mush, then push.”

Read the whole thing. This situation does appear to make the chances of diplomacy monumentally less likely to be effective. I'm cautiously optimistic that the internal revolt may yet bring real change, or that some form of hard diplomacy may still work. Obama promises hard diplomacy with the regime. Assuming diplomacy has any real chance of working, it's going to have to be really hard--as hard as steel.

Also posted on Stubborn Facts.

May Update; Checking In

Blogging's been infrequent lately, and I've been neglecting my own blog for quite some time now. Most of my blooging as of late has been at my second home. I plan to resume my regular blogging pace, and I'm planning to touch on all the latest topics, including the torture debate, Obama vs. Cheney, and the my thoughts on Judge Sotomayor (and the circus-like atmosphere like will surround her confirmation).

Stay tuned.

How Do You Know You've Gone Too Far?

When Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs thinks you've gone too far:

Johnson supported Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in 2008, but he spent some of the campaign attacking anti-Obama conspiracy theorists, and he rejected the idea designs were malicious, rather than merely naive. Johnson worries, in conversation and on his blog, that his old allies have been duped by far-right European political parties and have bought into wild attacks on the president that discredit their own causes.

“I don’t think there is an anti-jihadist movement anymore,” Johnson said. “It’s all a bunch of kooks. I’ve watch some people who I thought were reputable, and who I trusted, hook up with racists and Nazis. I see a lot of them promoting stories and causes that I think are completely nuts.”

You've got to read this article. I applaud Charles Johnson for having his eyes opened, and speaking out on this. His former allies, many whom he helped bring into the limelight, have turned on him:

“Some people at that summit in Belgium were not people we should have been associated with,” Johnson said, pointing out that since 2007 the terrorism-focused conservative bloggers have become supporters of Dutch politician Geert Wilders , who wants to outlaw Islam in his country. “Some of these people outright want to ban Islam from the United States, which I think is crazy, completely nuts. That’s not something we do in this country. These people will outright defend banning the Koran or deporting Muslims. That’s popular with the Geller/Spencer crowd.”

When they talk about Johnson today, the rest of the terrorism-focused bloggers alternate between anger and regret. He has smeared them, they say, and according to Dymphna he’s “destroyed a lot of networking that was beginning to emerge” between American and European critics of Islamic extremism. “He’s really gone off the deep end,” Geller said, pointing to Johnson’s more and more frequent criticisms of creationists, such as the attack on the anti-evolution, Glenn Beck-inspired event, which made the host angry enough to lash out at LGF on his show. “He’s a leftist blogger now.”

It's amazing what happens when you dissent from the party line, huh? Make no mistake, I don't expect Johnson to become anything approaching an Obama supporter, but one needn't be, to see that many on the rightosphere have gone John Birch.

Read the whole thing.

"And Biden is the foreign-policy gravitas on the Democratic ticket, so his comments are actually even more disconcerting."

Kirsten Powers, on the double standard over Biden's gaffes, versus Sarah Palin's:

There were a few exceptions. On MSNBC's "Morning Joe," co-host Mika Brzezinski flipped incredulously through the papers, expressing shock at the lack of coverage of Biden's remarks. Guest Dan Rather admitted that if Palin had said it, the media would be going nuts.

So what gives?

The stock answer is: "It's just Biden being Biden." We all know how smart he is about foreign policy, so it's not the same as when Sarah Palin says something that seems off.

Yet, when Biden asserted incorrectly in the vice-presidential debate that the United States "drove Hezbollah out of Lebanon," nobody in the US media shrieked. (It was, however, covered with derision in the Middle East.) Or when he confused his history by claiming FDR calmed the nation during the Depression by going on TV, the press didn't take it as evidence that he's clueless.

Indeed. Michael Totten brought the Lebanon gaffe up, and let's not forget Biden's constitutional flub. I'm for Obama at this point, but I've got to call 'em as I see 'em, and frankly, the bias at work here is blatant, and disquieting.

HT: Althouse, who offers this up, which I agree with:

Even those who support Obama -- not all, but some -- are getting nauseated by the press bias. And it's not just the bias. I'm really queasy about that future Biden is foreseeing. He has access to all sorts of reports of threats that we can't be told. It's as if he's taunting us with his inside knowledge. There will be -- what? -- attacks? And is Obama already planning to respond in ways that they know will dismay us? Tell us more. Is it about Israel?

I don't think one needs to oppose Obama to be vexed by the pro-Obama bias in the press. In fact, as I've argued elsewhere, it gives a lot of the attacks on Obama more legitimacy than they would have otherwise, because when attacks on Obama are rejected by most of the public, it is seen by many as a left-wing media conspiracy, even when it's not, because a lot of the press is basically in the tank for Obama.

"It therefore seems to me that the Republican Party has invited not just defeat but discredit this year"

Christopher Hitchens endorses Obama:

It therefore seems to me that the Republican Party has invited not just defeat but discredit this year, and that both its nominees for the highest offices in the land should be decisively repudiated, along with any senators, congressmen, and governors who endorse them.

I used to call myself a single-issue voter on the essential question of defending civilization against its terrorist enemies and their totalitarian protectors, and on that "issue" I hope I can continue to expose and oppose any ambiguity. Obama is greatly overrated in my opinion, but the Obama-Biden ticket is not a capitulationist one, even if it does accept the support of the surrender faction, and it does show some signs of being able and willing to profit from experience. With McCain, the "experience" is subject to sharply diminishing returns, as is the rest of him, and with Palin the very word itself is a sick joke. One only wishes that the election could be over now and a proper and dignified verdict rendered, so as to spare democracy and civility the degradation to which they look like being subjected in the remaining days of a low, dishonest campaign.

I think he's a bit unfair to Palin in some respects, but I think he may be on to something. Read the whole thing.

HT: Althouse

Seven Years Later, We Still Haven't Forgotten

Seven years ago today, America suffered the worst attack on her soil in history. Nearly 3,000 people were murdered by evil forces bent on our destruction. They declared war on us, and we ought to do every just and right thing we can to prevail over those who would seek to kill us, and threaten our way of life. We must challenge the ideology that drives them, and contend for the idea of human freedom. WE need to win the war, is all I'm saying.

BTW, think what you want, but this goes beyond the elction, whoever you're voting for.

God Bless America.

Benazir Bhutto Assassinated

This story has been developing all day, but it's clear that Bhutto was attacked during a speech. She was shot in the neck and the chest, and the assassin apparently blew himself up. She survived the bombing, but died of the gunshot wounds. Tragic all around. A sad day for Pakistan, and a sad day for us all.

HT: SF for the link

Congressional Foolishness, Ill-Advised and Dangerous

While we should recognize the tragic and bloody Turkish deportation of over a million Armenians during World War I as a horrible thing, I'm basically in agreement with Michael van der Galien (and the Bush Administration) that the nonbinding resolution that sprung forth out of Congress is a ill-advised and counterproductive measure:

Bush didn’t want the panel to send the resolution to the full House, because he feared (and fears) that it’ll do great damage to the relationship between Turkey and the US. The US is increasingly dependent on Turkey. Not only is Turkey a Nato ally closest to where the action takes place these days, it’s also one of the most important and powerful Muslim countries. Of all the Muslim countries in the world, the US can’t afford to insult this particular one.

If the House accepts the resolution - and I’m sure it will - the US has a major problem. Not only may trade problems occur, not only will anti-Americanism in Turkey increase, not only will Turks boycott American products and businesses, Turkey is also likely to move closer to the East and to distance itself a bit from the West. This at a time that the West needs Turkey in the war against radical Islam. More, it also makes it increasingly likely that Turkey will act against the PKK without asking the US for permission or even informing the US about the operation.

I've heard reports earlier today that the Congress (or at least Ike Skelton) has reversed course, and decided to kill this resolution. Let's hope so, and hope no permanent damage has been done. Let's settle this very real issue of the Armenian genocide(?) the right way, and not with nonbinding but dangerous resolutions.

Let Me Say This...

Ron Silver has endorsed Rudy for Prez. I like Ron Silver, and I'm certainly not bothered by him backing a Republican, as others might be, but I feel the need to point out something.

Considering this related quote:

[H]e is still a registered Democrat, and Mr. Silver told his convention audience that he has not disavowed the left's social agenda. But at the moment he represents a particular slice of the American political spectrum: voters who put national security before ideology and want to keep President Bush's hand on the nation's rudder.

I certainly believe that national security is basically the primary issue (I'd like to think I've established that rep on this blog), but I have problems with the idea that believing that requires one to want to keep President Bush's (or in the case of the current election, a Republican's hand on the nation's rudder.

Heads Still Placed Firmly In The Sand

One of my favorite movie lines ever is the line from The Usual Suspects, in which Verbal Kint, speaking of mystery villain Keyser Soze, remarks that "the greatest trick the devil ever pulled, was convincing the world he didn't exist." Apparently, even if he came out and told them, some people still wouldn't believe. Consider this from Christopher Hitchens:

Over the past few months, I have been debating Roman Catholics who differ from their Eastern Orthodox brethren on the nature of the Trinity, Protestants who are willing to quarrel bitterly with one another about election and predestination, with Jews who cannot concur about a covenant with God, and with Muslims who harbor bitter disagreements over the discrepant interpretations of the Quran. Arcane as these disputes may seem, and much as I relish seeing the faithful fight among themselves, the believers are models of lucidity when compared to the hair-splitting secularists who cannot accept that al-Qaida in Mesopotamia is a branch of al-Qaida itself.

Now, there is obvious religion-bashing going on this statement (we're all aware of Hitchens' God-hatred), but the highlighted part appears to be tragically true. Some people just don't get it, and they continue to abide under the most idiotic of assumptions.

Read the whole thing, but check out another excerpt:

We can not only deny the clones of Bin Ladenism a military victory in Iraq, we can also discredit them in the process and in the eyes (and with the help) of a Muslim people who have seen them up close. We can do this, moreover, in a keystone state of the Arab world that guards a chokepoint—the Gulf—in the global economy. As with the case of Afghanistan—where several provinces are currently on a knife-edge between an elected government that at least tries for schools and vaccinations, and the forces of uttermost darkness that seek to negate such things—the struggle will take all our nerve and all our intelligence. But who can argue that it is not the same battle in both cases, and who dares to say that it is not worth fighting?

Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel, and regrettably others, who ought to know better.

HT: Instapundit

The Senate Iraq Showdown Slumber Party In Full Swing

Well, it looks like it's going to happen. The machinery is set, and protests pro and con are already under way.

This all seems awfully familiar...

Discuss. (Actually, I plan on blogging the aftermath tomorrow).

BTW, they really might want to pay attention to this guy. (HT: Stubborn Facts)

I Don't How Else To Say This

I'm planning on blogging more extensively on the issue after getting a better handle on things, but as I see things now, this is bad. I know it may place me in unexpected company to say this, but the situation in Colombia is bad. I hope I'm reading this wrong, but if things are as they seem, then Congress has a lot to answer for.

HT:Instapundit (Yes, that Instapundit. Some people seem to have a great deal of antipathy against the good professor, but the fact that we don't agree on everything hardly disqualifies him from polite society, and certainly ought to exempt him from such low-class namecalling.)

Yes, That Would Be Great

From Brendan Loy:

“Technical reasons,” eh? Wouldn’t it be great if it turned out the terrorists were trying to set off the bombs with newly purchased iPhones, but failed because they couldn’t activate them? ;)

Ha! One can only hope. Nice work, Apple!

Mohammed Fadhil on the Stakes

Iraq the Model's Mohammed Fadhil, on the stakes in Iraq, and the cost of we leave the mission unfinished:

It is up to us to show tyrants and murderers like Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah, Syria's Bashar Assad, and their would-be imitators who seek to control Iraq's people and wealth that we, the people, are not their possessions. They can't take out our humanity and they can't force us to back down.

The world should ask them to leave our land before asking the soldiers of freedom to do so.

The cost of liberating Europe in the last century was enormous in blood and treasure. In fact, it took half a century of American military presence thereafter to protect those nations from subsequent threats. If that made sense during a Cold War, and it did, then I don't understand why anyone would demand a pullout from Iraq (and maybe later, the entire Middle East) when the enemies are using every evil technique, from booby trapped dead animals to hijacked civilian aircrafts, to kill innocents.

And so, my friends, I will call for fighting this war just as powerfully as the bad guys do - because I must show them that I'm stronger than they are. The people of America need to understand this: the enemies of a stable Iraq are America's enemies, and they simply do not understand the language of civilization and reason.

I have nothing else I can add. Read the whole thing, as they say.


HT: Michael J. Totten

UPDATE: Some commenters have complained on MJT's blog about Fadhil's connections and biases. It's reasonable to assert that he's biased in favor of the war, but I don't think he ever hid that fact. Many have complained that his piece was linked to by righty outfits like Hannity, Michelle Malkin, et al. I fail to see how this is Fadhil's fault, or relevant. At the end of the day, it was an interesting and compelling piece, and that's why I (and I'm assuming MJT, the NY Daily News) linked to it.

Jon Voight Supports the Fight Against Terror

A good interview. you should check it out. An excerpt:

The war on terror is real. People would have you believe it's not real. This is not Vietnam. This particular situation is not the same wherein we can walk away and just leave destruction behind us. No, we can't. Anyone who has paid attention to what [Iranian President] Ahmadinejad is saying, what all the mullahs are saying in this country and in England, and in all of the Arab world, this is serious—they're calling for the destruction of America and all democracy and that's what's going on. We could lose this war.

Yes, indeed. Let us hope we don't lose this war.

"Saddam Himself Was a Weapon of Mass Destruction"

You should watch this interview with Colonel Salahdin Ahmad Ameen, of the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga, done by Michael Totten, and Patrick Lasswell. He reflects on the horrors of Saddam's reign, Abu Ghraib, and why the U.S. shouldn't leave the mission unfinished in Iraq. He appears confident that we'll stay, but he points out that if we leave, it will have been the ninth time (including Kissinger's sellout in 1974, as well as Bush I's in 1991) the Kurds will have been hung out to dry.

Principled Anti-War Criticism That Leaves You Speechless

I'm of course talking about this breathtaking piece by Tish Durkin, over at the Huffington Post. I'm a war supporter, so I probably wasn't in her target audience (even though I'm a liberal), but Durkin offers up some of the most principled criticism of the Iraq war that I've read. You must read the whole thing, but I'll excerpt a few bits:

Don't get me wrong. If I felt that this post were going to be read by a bunch of war apologists, I would take them angrily to task for the manifest, manifold failures in Iraq, and the criminally self-indulgent fictions on which those failures were based. But since this post is presumably being read mostly by war critics, I will devote it to challenging anti-war activists on their apparent belief that everything they say about Iraq is, always has been, and ever shall be true.

It is not, for instance, true that it was the American-led invasion that opened season on the slaughter of innocent Iraqi civilians. Whatever else the Bush administration made up about Iraq, the rank murderousness of Saddam Hussein was not one of them. Amid the gunfire and giddiness of Baghdad right after its fall in April 2003, it was common to find people converging onto bits of infrastructure, manically fueled by the rumor mill: someone had said that there was a torture chamber underneath this stretch of highway; a secret prison built into this wall. People had no time to be interviewed; if they talked at all, they'd keep going as they panted: "My husband/brother/son disappeared twenty odd years ago; he could still be alive; I have to get him out." I remember going to a mass grave; a "minor" one, not far from Hilla. People were digging there, too: for bones, which were piled everywhere, a sickening canine bonanza. Close by there still lived a man who had seen what had happened there in the days after the war with Kuwait, but kept his mouth shut for years: busloads of innocent Shi'ites, screaming 'God is Great' at the top of their lungs, had been unloaded, rung around pre-dug graves, and shot.

And this one, which ought to be put on a t-shirt, and passed out at every anti-war rally in the country:

Finally, what depresses me, and makes me despise so much war criticism even when I agree with it, is that so many of those positing it seem so happy about what's gone wrong. They seem to relish the probability that Iraq will get worse and worse so that they can be righter and righter.

Like liberals - and thinking conservatives, and sentient beings -- everywhere, I gravely doubt that the troop surge - so little so late -- will do anything to save Iraq. But for the sake of the Iraqi people, I sure hope it does - even if that helps the Republicans.

This may sound crazy, but if the only path to victory in Iraq and the larger GWOT meant a hundred years of GOP victories, I'd pay that price, and I'm sure Durkin would too. Of course, most of us know that such a trade isn't even remotely neccessary, or helpful for that matter. Such fairy-tale either/or dilemmas exist only in the minds of party-line partisans. We don't need to elect Republicans to succeed in Iraq and the GWOT. We just need those in both parties to get their heads on straight.

Hat tip: Instapundit