Links and Minifeatures 11 08 Tuesday

Carnival of Liberty is up!

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Captain's Quarters has an excellent post about the demographics of suppressing the riots and actually governing. Money quote: "the combatant ratio in any ethnic war may thus be one to one." That's a wonderful ratio for guerilla activity, absolutely unacceptable in terms of actually governing, if and when the riots are contained. France has been pretending that an obvious problem didn't exist for thirty years, not realizing that they were giving away their country (or at least large chunks of it), and I just don't see them getting it back. Even if they did, given the demographics of the situation, they won't be allowed to keep it. Time to emigrate, because Arabic will be the official language of what's now France within two generations at the very most.



Q: What did one moslem say to the other moslem?

A: We'll always have Paris!



LGF has more about the explicitly racial and ethnic nature of the riots. He also has Kos blaming the riots on Bush (or at least running a poll where the options are France, Bush, and the Rioters, in that order. The votes as of when I looked are 838, 337, and 2136, respectively, so maybe there is hope for almost two thirds of them.



The more I read on the left, the more I think that Eric Flint has a point about Moby Dick in this book. Is it looking a lot like the Liberal Captain Ahab has cast George W. Bush as the Great White Whale?



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Powerline has two articles worth reading. One on the CIA's attempt to influence domestic politics, one on the contradiction between investigating Libby and Rove for leaks, while not investigating leaks of actual classified government intelligence to the newspaper. Why aren't those reporters being subpoenaed? Why aren't they being forced to divulge their sources?



Chortle! Hugh Hewitt chimes in with "What did Wilson not know, and when did he invent it?"



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Vodkapundit has an excellent essay up on what kind of war this is, what the status really is, and who's really fighting it. Here's a hint: It's not about military position. The US won all the battles in Vietnam.



I fully agree with him that if we lose, it will be because of the media. That's one of the (lesser) reasons why I'm here. Even if it's only with a few hundred readers a day, just because I can only do so much is no excuse to do nothing.



I want to ask the next question that Vodkapundit failed to ask, however: What happens to our domestic politics after we blame the media for losing this war. Well, nothing, really, because if we lose it wil be because we've essentially been conquered. Maybe there won't be Islamic soldiers trooping through our streets a la Germans in 1940 Paris. But we'll be as much under their thumbs as Vichy was under Hitler's (and he rolled in and conquered the rest of France two years later because they were insufficiently submissive). Freedom of the expression will mean, in al practicality, freedom of Islamic expression, which is to say that you are free to worship god how the mullahs tell you to, free to pay the dhimmi tax, free to have fatwas issued against you for offending the clerics.



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Mudville Gazette has the very moving story of a survivor of Ia Drang, on the fortieth anniversary of that battle. A man who decided to fight instead of give up, and lived to tell the tale because he refused to give up.



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Asymmetrical Information has an excellent post on the subject of abortion, with which I very much agree. Bottom line: The presumption behind going to get an abortion is that you're stopping a human life. I don't agree that it's necessarily murder. It's still not something I want to have be an easy thing to do. In fact, I want it as difficult as practical without outright prohibiting it.



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If you're reading this and haven't yet voted, please remember to do so. Particularly in California, where I have already voted in favor of Propositions 74, 75, 76, and 77. The choice is clear: Do you want more of what we've been going through, or do you want the possibility of change for the better? No guarantees, of course. But if we continue on the course we're on, it's a certain disaster. Now I have to get home and watch the kids so my wife can vote!