An Encouraging Sign

The recent capture of the leading Iraqi in al-Qaeda's Iraq affiliate is no accident... You capture such people only when you have good intelligence, and you have good intelligence only when the locals have turned against the terrorists. -- Charles Krauthammer

A Manager for President? Instead of a Lawyer? Duh!

It would be helpful to have a person leading the country who understands how the economy works and has actually managed something. In the case of the three Democratic front-runners, not one of them has managed even a corner store, let alone a state or a city. -- Mitt Romney

The Rookie is Right

"Today's federal government is too big, too powerful, and too expensive because it is doing things beyond the scope of the Constitution. This is foolish and it is dangerous." -- newly elected Georgia Rep. Paul Broun

Rules of Presidential Politics, Iran, and Bush

1. No Democrat from outside the old Confederacy has won the White House since John F. Kennedy. . . .
2. No Republican has won the White House since Eisenhower who wasn't from Texas or California. . . .
3. No sitting senator has won the presidency since Kennedy. . . .

This election is shaping up as one that will break all the rules. . . .

Here is what the Iranians are seeing: . . . Bush become increasingly weak. . . . Congress making sweeping declarations, but backing off from voting on them . . . . a Republican Party splitting in Congress. . . . a presidential election shaping up in unprecedented ways with inherently unexpected outcomes. . . .

This gives Bush his strange strength. . . . Given the strange dynamics, he is not your normal lame duck. Everyone else is tied in knots in terms of policy and in terms of the election. Bush alone has room to maneuver, and the Iranians are likely calculating that it would probably be safer to deal with this president now rather than expect the unexpected in 2008.

-- George Friedman, Stratfor: Geopolitical Intelligence Report, 7/24/07

To Be A Useful Politician

A man to be a sound politician and in any degree useful to the country must be governed by higher and steadier considerations than those of personal sympathy and private regard. -- Martin Van Buren

Adversaries on the Run

The war is not lost in Iraq. In fact, now American and Iraqi security forces are winning. The enemy is on the run in Iraq. But here in Congress, in Washington, we seem to be or some members seem to be on the run, chased, I fear, by public opinion polls. -- Sen. Joe Lieberman

America's Unintended Secret Weapon

[There is] a strange paradox that has been manifest in American foreign policy since World War II. On the one hand, the United States has consistently encountred strategic stalemate or defeat in particular politico-military operations. At those times, the outcomes have appeared to be disappointing if not catastrophic. Yet, over the same period of time, U.S. global power, on the whole , has surged.

. . . The invasion [of Iraq] four years ago has led to the Sunnis and Shia turning against each other in direct conflict. Therefore, it could be argued that just as the United States won the Cold War by exploiting the Sino-Soviet split and allying with Mao Zedong, so too the path to defeating the jihadists is not a main attack, but a spoiling attack that turns Sunnis and Shia against each other. This was certainly not the intent of the Bush administration in planning the 2003 invasion; it has become, nevertheless, an unintended and significant outcome.

. . . Moreover, it is far from clear whether U.S. policymakers through history have been aware of this dimension in their operations. In considering Korea, Cuba, Vietnam and Iran, it is never clear that the Truman, Kennedy,Johnson/Nixon or Carter/Reagan administrations purposely set out to implement a spoiling attack.

. . . However, there is a deep structure in U.S. foreign policy that becomes visible. The incongruities of stalemate and defeat on the one side and growing U.S. power on the other must be reconciled. The liberal and conservative arguments explain things only partially. But the idea that the United States rarely fights to win can be explained. It is not because of a lack of moral fiber, as conservatives would argue; nor a random and needless belligerence, as liberals would argue. Rather, it is the application of the principle of spoiling operations -- using limited resources not in order to defeat the enemy but to disrupt and confuse enemy operations.

-- George Friedman, Stratfor Geopolitical Intelligence Report, 3/20/07

Islam vs Democracy

Why is separation of church and state such an alien concept resisted so fiercely by the Islamist leaders? . . . Islam from the outset united church and state. The prophet Muhammad was during his lifetime both a prophet and a Caesar. He established an Islamic society in which the sharia or holy law governed not only religious duties but also divorce, inheritance, interest rates, and the rules of warfare. The sharia is a comprehensive Islamic law that covers constitutional, civil and commercial matters in addition to spiritual or religious ones. -- Dinesh D'Souza, townhall.com, 5/14/07

Conspiratorial Hysteria

"The science of global warming is speculative. But there's nothing speculative about the damage a CO2 capture program will do to this country. I know the names of many of the thousands of people -- American workers, their families --whose lives will be destroyed by what has become a deceitful and hysterical campaign, perpetrated by fear-mongers in our society and by corporate executives intent on their own profits or competitive advantage."

". . . What you are really doing with a global warming program is getting rid of low-cost energy." The consequences? Americans have been fretting about losing jobs to places such as China or India, which already offer cheaper energy. "You hike the cost of energy here further, and you create a mass exodus of business out of this country."

-- Robert E. Murray, quoted by Kimberley A Strassel, opinionjournal.com, 5/21/07

Americanism as a Religion

Everyone who has reflected more than casually on the American national character has observed that religious belief is one of its most prominent features. We are, as G. K. Chesterton remarked of us in 1922, "the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed . . . a nation with the soul of a church, protected by religious and not racial selection." -- Terry Teachout, commentarymagazine.com, July/August 2007

Someone is deluded and dishonorable, but it isn't Petraeus

[W]hat cannot be said -- although it is now heard daily in Washington -- is that the surge, which is shorthand for Gen. David Petraeus' new counterinsurgency strategy, has failed. The tragedy is that, just as a working strategy has been found, some Republicans in the Senate have lost heart and want to pull the plug. . . .

A month ago, Petraeus was asked whether we could still win in Iraq. The general, who had recently attended two memorial services for soldiers lost under his command, replied that if he thought he could not succeed he would not be risking the life of a single soldier.

Just this week, Petraeus said that the one thing he needs more than anything else is time. To cut off Petraeus' plan just as it is beginning -- the last surge troops arrived only last month -- on the assumption that we cannot succeed is to declare Petraeus either deluded or dishonorable. Deluded in that, as the best-positioned American in Baghdad, he still believes we can succeed. Or dishonorable in pretending to believe in victory and sending soldiers to die in what he really knows is an already failed strategy.

That's the logic of the wobbly Republicans' position.

-- Charles Krauthammer, townhall.com, 7/13/07

How to fix illegal immigration

1. Pursue enforcement first.
2. Build the fence.
3. Fully staff our border patrol.
4. Fully staff Citizenship and Immigration Services.
5. Establish an effective exit visa system.
6. Eliminate the "jobs magnet" with heavy employer penalties.
7. No more anchor babies.
8. End sanctuary cities and drivers' licenses for illegal aliens.
9. Permanently disallow citizenship for illegal aliens.
10. End catch and release.

-- John Hawkins, townhall.com, 7/13/07

Wussie warfare

The Washington Times' Sharon Behn recently asked Command Sgt. Maj. Jeff Mellinger why the world's most powerful army hadn't yet accomplished this mission [i.e. to destroy Al Qaeda in Iraq]. He replied: "We could absolutely crush every one of them, but would you be happy with what is left?"

He's referring to the catastrophic destruction that is, and has always been,the price of total victory. It's something that never makes anyone "happy," but previous generations have found it necessary. Not ours. Postmodern man prefers a kind of limited warfare, fighting with one hand tied behind his back as a matter of choice -- a moral choice that lends even a superpower the humanizing aura of victim-hood. -- Diana West, townhall.com, 7/13/07

A politically incorrect foundation

[T]he only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments. -- Benjamin Rush

Robbery in progress

I am not robbed by people who have more money than me. I am robbed by a government that wants to penalize my industry and give increasing portions of what I earn to people who do not emulate my principles, morals and ethics. -- Cal Thomas, townhall.com, 5/31/07

Historical license

Everyone has the right to renounce past views. But not to make up that past. It is beyond brazen to think that one can get away with inventing not ancient history but what everyone saw and read with their own eyes just a few years ago. And yet sometimes brazenness works. -- Charles Krauthammer

Mormon canary

[Hugh] Hewitt's message [in "A Mormon in the Whitehouse?"] is that Mitt Romney has become a political canary in the coalmine. If a man of Romney's intellectual and professional stature is taken down simply because of his religious beliefs, others will follow. Permission will have been granted to destroy political opponents across the religious spectrum for believing "weird" things -- or perhaps for being excessively moral in the eyes of a skeptical, secular press. -- Richard Kirk, spectator.org, 5/11/07

Politics by other means

When I see the worsening degeneracy in our politicians, our media, our educators, and our intelligentsia, I can't help wondering if the day may yet come when the only thing that can save this country is a military coup. -- Thomas Sowell, townhall.com, 5/1/07

Harry's War Dumbed Down

Here is a poetic interpretation (suited to preschool mentality) of Senator Reid's defeatist stance on Iraq.

Dr. Seuss Revisited

Dr. Seuss was a popular purveyor of cartoon commentary during World War II. Much of his work is still spot on. Check it out.