Politics: July 2006 Archives

Harry Reid stuck in denial: 1994's "Contract with America," was an "urban myth."



On the contrary. It was a list of ten specific issues that the Republicans were committed to bring to a floor vote. Not to pass, although they really did try and succeeded with seven and partially with another, but to bring them to a recorded floor vote so that people could see how their representative voted. Most of them had been languishing in committee for years, because that was an easy way to avoid the tough votes where either way you voted you were going to get someone angry, either the voters or the big campaign contributors.



Most of these issues had large constituencies, people who were committed to them. Offering them a commitment to bring it to a floor vote gave a lot of these folks the impetus to switch their vote to the Elephant candidate. Many of these folks had three, five, or even all ten of the issues that they supported and had given up ever seeing happen. In short, this was a market making activity that brought people from being uninterested in politics to being dedicated Republicans because of the Contract With America. Those who were on the fence but supported one or more of the issues went Republican. And those who did not support them weren't in play for the Republicans anyway.



The Republicans committed themselves publicly to the Contract with America, and en masse. No quibbling around the edges. There would be Floor Votes on these issues, period. Furthermore, the issues in the Contract were in line with what a lot of Republicans and their bases of support believed, and had been campaigning upon for years, not something they discovered overnight because some focus group or high powered consultant told them there were votes in it. Their commitment was believable, the way a Democratic commitment to national security is not.



There is a reason why Democrats have completely lost the hearts of the American middle. Deep down, most of the population realized something on September 11, 2001: We are not immune to the attacks that the rest of the world had been suffering for at least thirty years prior to that, and instead of figuring out ways to enhance our national security while nonetheless preserving our rights as Americans, Democrats are utterly obsessing about not abridging one jot or iota of the most ridiculously farfetched among those rights that grew up during a long period when we were immune, no matter what the effect upon national security. It's going to take an awful lot of hard work on their part before anyone is going to believe the Democrats really mean to safeguard our national security, and they're going to have to walk the walk as well as talk the talk, which means some votes on some issues that are going to alienate their most extreme supporters. I'll believe they mean it on national security when they're willing to risk some wrath and votes on the part of their far left supporters in favor of national security measures that really do protect the national interest. Until then, no deal, at least as far as I'm concerned. I have seen exactly zero evidence that any Democrat other than Joe Lieberman and Zell Miller even understand this.

First, a warning. There is some foul language below. I found myself unable to discover or remember less colorful words that conveyed adequately the information that needed to be conveyed.



Next, a sampling of some of the most current news out there:



As usual, Israel has it right while the rest of the world has it wrong: Israelis resolve to use more force



In other news. Bush-Blair call for international force. With a new UN resolution to enforce. What I want to know is how this would be different than all the other UN missions, all the other UN resolutions. Insanity: Trying the same solutions and expecting different results.



neo-neocon on What does Ariel Sharon have to say. I've seen many articles of the sort she refers to, teaching Palestinian children (and others in the broader Arab world) to hate Jews. They get ignored, because it doesn't fit the reader's preferred world view. Bill Whittle has something to say about that.



Via Dr. Sanity, a series of photos that should put anyone's doubts as to Hesbollah tactics to rest here.



Belmont Club writes some theoretically speculative fiction that is spot-on the probabilities, as far as I can tell.



I, for my part, am disgusted and past disgusted at people who have the evidence put up right in front of their eyes that these terrorist (Hesbollah) are never going to quit trying to exterminate Israel and the Jews so long as there is one Hesbollah or one Jew in the world, and still refuse to believe it because that one point of hard data conflicts with all of the things they want to believe, but have not one shred of hard evidence in favor of.



Given the fact that Israel has shown they are willing to live with Hesbollah, but Hesbollah has shown it is spectacularly unwilling to accept any compromise as anything more than a platform from which to launch their next attack, there is only one rational thing to be done. Exterminate Hesbollah. I can hear the shocked gasps from here. Well, screw that. There is no moral equivalence here. Israel has shown itself willing and able to abide by agreements that it's negotiating partners live up, or even sort of live up to. Witness Jordan and Egypt. Hesbollah is not. Indeed, they are making use of an Islamic technique that goes back to Mohammed and works because all of the decent people of the world that are farmers and bus drivers and especially real soldiers want peace so badly they will go to absurd lengths to preserve it, even when it is plain that hope is completely false. Well Hesbollah doesn't. They don't even pretend they want peace. It is so far past time to wipe these murdering terrorist scum off the face of the earth that I still have difficulty with the fact that Ronald Reagan didn't order it in 1983. Israel is doing the world a favor with every one of these hard-line extremists they kill, and if they ever did succeed in their goal of destroying Israel, the rest of the world would then reap the fruits of their labors. So consider Israel told "Thank You!" from me every time one of these enemies of civilization falls over dead. If I ever have the opportunity to thank an Israeli in person, I will.



Yes, it bothers me to see kids killed in the exchange of hostilities. It bothers me severely. But I put the onus for that squarely where it belongs, with Hesbollah, who hides in their midst, shoots out from groups of civilians, and hopes and prays that Israeli answering fire kills some "innocent" children and women and old men. IT IS A WAR ZONE! From time immemorial, civilians have known to get out of war zones. In Croatia, In Bosnia, in Kosovo, there were refugees. In Rwanda, Uganda, Congo, Sudan, there are refugees. Evacuate, at least until the bullets stop flying. From the dawn of time, civilians have gotten out of the way of hostile militaries. Why does the civilian population not evacuate southern Lebanon? Why can the civilian population not evacuate in this one instance. I'll tell you why! Some of them are Hesbollah supporters. The rest are being prevented from leaving! By Hesbollah! The Hesbollah supporters have made the determiniation that if Israel kills them while shooting at Hesbollah fighters, it'll give Hesbollah ammunition to claim the Israelis are uncivilized brutes who go looking for civilians to shoot. This is Bullshit. No, I'll go one better. This is utter Bullshit, purified and refined three times, down to the most essential, concentrated elements of Bullshit. It is bullshit so lost in its own self-justification, it has no clue as to even go about locating the truth. If Israel had wanted - or even been willing - to inflict those kinds of casualties on civilians, anytime in the past, it would not currently be under such heavy threat from all sides. It is a miracle that anyone in Israel is even willing to negotiate for peace under any circumstances. If the United States had ever been, since 1945, under such heavy attack as Israel thie entire time since its creation, there would be a nuclear desert surrounding us. If the Soviet Union, or China had been under that kind of threat, there would have been worldwide nuclear devastation just because they might as well do the rest of us in while they were at it. Israel has been nuclear armed for decades, and that they have not lobbed so much as one of them at their dedicated enemies is such a tribute to their will to stand for the essential principles of civilization that if the sorry nations of this world are ever looking for the best possible guardian for all the nuclear weapons of the world, I will nominate Israel. Compared to them, the Amish are quasi-pacifist weaklings.



I've said it before and I'll keep saying it. In the war between Israel and her enemies, the vast majority of the reason that there is even talk of a war - so close to 100% of the reason that there is fighting that the remainder just isn't worth talking about - is that the Islamists and other people think Death to Israel is more important than Life for their islamic co-religionists. This war will continue until either that changes, or every single one of the participants on one side or the other is dead. Israeli soldiers stand apart from civilians, shelter civilians behind them, even enemy civilians, and do not fire upon them except when they absolutely must to preserve their own lives. Israel as a nation has acted with so much decency and self-control that the rest of the world should be praising them for their saintly restraint. Their opponents target civilians, conduct war from population centers, hide within civilian populations, and use human shields as much as they can. I would prefer that the Islamists, Palestinian and otherwise, changed their minds, and decided Death for Israel just wasn't important any more. But neither I, nor anyone else, nor any combination of anybodies, has the power to force those Islamists to make that choice in their heart. It has to come from within, and it is showing exactly zero evidence of even being a debate. If they will not change their minds, if that must be the case, I'd rather'd share this world with the Israelis than the Islamists. I'd rather my daughters got to share this world with the Israelis and their self-control than had to share it with the Islamists and their hate and self-immolation. If anybody has any doubts as to what the Islamists would do to Israel if the situation were reversed, and they had the military advantage, exorcise them. Israel would be gone in fifteen minutes, and no UN or EU or American handwringing would change that or even put it off by the amount of time it takes to say "Mind Your Own Business!" We would be completely ignored. The only reason those kidnapped Israeli soldiers are even alive is that the Islamists hope to exchange them for literally hundreds of Islamists being held in prison - nice, civilized, prison, having been convicted in open, public, trials - who are being held because they committed or were intentionally involved in deadly terrorist attacks upon Israeli civilians. What happened to the Israeli civilians that that the Islamists captured but didn't think they'd be able to exchange? Research it yourselves. The answers are available on the internet. I found the original stories (and others from the same day) in less than sixty seconds.



I am so glad that Israel finally had the intestinal fortitude to go after these enemies of civilization that my only worry is that some other enemy of civilization pretending to be a nice, diplomatic, civilized human being will talk them out of finishing the job.

neo-neocon deconstructs and deflates the idea of a "proportional response".



The idea of a modern civilization takes a lot to maintain. It has an amazing capacity not only for repair, but also for self-replication, that would have been unthinkable sixty years ago. Nonetheless, the raw materials, the power, and most essentially, the skills base have got to be there to keep it functioning more or less at a reasonable level. Attacks that smash the power generators, kill the doctors and nurses, and prevent medicine and supplies from reaching the hospitals kill people just as certainly as a bullet to the head, even if the damage is done on a less personal level. Not to mention the direct casualties of the attacks that Israel has been suffering under since 1967. It's a miracle and unbelievable monument to the Israelis resourcefulness that they have a country at all after nearly forty years of this.



I am not interested in nearly sixty year old grievances of the Palestinians against the Israelis. There were two approximately equal populations of refugees created at the same time. One group, the entire world is familiar with. The other was created when Israel successfully defended herself at creation, and these were Jews against who the Islamic governments of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and others dispossessed as vengeance for the success of other Jews that the effected populations literally had no control over and little commonality with save a common religion. This second group, having been in their hearts Egyptians, Syrians, and Iraqis (among other nationalities), once dispossessed by bitter arabic governments who lacked the justifications Israel had, decided that if they were going to be treated as Israelis, they might as well become Israelis, and were welcomed with open arms, given citizenship, and made new lives for themselves. But they still have better claims against the Arab governments who threw their grandparents out of centuries old homes, than the descendants of Palestinians who at least committed treason towards Israel and were dispossessed for that very excellent reason. The Jews who were dispossessed committed no crimes and were dispossessed anyway. But since Israel was looking to create a prosperous modern nation, not nurse grievances, these dispossessed Jews were welcomed with open arms, and got on with the business of creating a new life on a new homestead. When you get to the bottom line, that is the story of Israel.



If there is any doubt in your mind that Israel has shown by words and deeds that it wishes to live in peace with Moslems, consider the fact that since its inception they have willingly granted citizenship and equal rights to Moslems who were willing to swear allegiance. They have Moslem political parties who participate in Israeli elections, Moslem soldiers who serve in the Israeli defense Forces, and any number of important personages who happen to be Moslems. Israel has been about the creation of a nation and a civilization, but her neighbors have given her no peace these last sixty years. The one time Israel attacked (1967), they had four nations outnumbering them twenty to one massing armed forces on their borders with clear signals of intentions to invade. Not to have struck pre-emptively in that situation would have been suicide, especially given that Israel's border in those days were far smaller and more difficult to defend (the West Bank reaches within nine miles of the Mediterranean, about half the distance of the typical American commute). Every other time, it has been an incessant pounding and escalation of attacks, or actual armed invasion, that forced Israel to either retaliate or suffer the destruction of their ability to form a state and a society.



Had the inhabitants of the West Bank tried to make a new life under the Israelis, they would have been full fledged participants in the Israeli political process by now. Egypt made peace and got the Sinai back in 1978. But ever since those territories came under Israeli control, two generations ago, they have been more interested in Death for Israelis than Life for Palestinians. Nor have Israel's arab neighbors done anything for the Moslem co-religionists like what Israel did for dispossessed jews. If they had, the problem would have vanished by now. But always the grievance against Israel was more important than the well-being of these people whose plight they supposedly hold in such concern. Israel has a large population of Jews descended from those expelled from Moslem lands who could nurse the same grievances, but have built new, successful lives for themselves and their descendants.



The point I am making is that the Israelis have taken every reasonable opportunity to turn the other cheek, which is not even a Jewish admonition, while the surrounding Islamic powers have done everything in their power to cut that Israeli other cheek off. Yes, I've got a lot of sympathy for third generation refugee camp residents, but I put the onus of responsibility for them being there where it belongs: on the Palestinian leadership and the Islamic powers surrounding Israel. Not upon Israel, which has done everything it reasonably could have short of suicide, in the name of peace.



This now appears to be ending. A people who have been trying to make peace with the Islamic world for sixty years, and who have received nothing but death and despite and destruction for their efforts, are running out of patience. When not only those running Israel, but their parents and grandparents and even great-grandparents can remember nothing but war against the Islamic self-appointed enemy, you can forgive them perhaps finally running out of patience and maybe taking a few destructive steps of their own to remove their enemies' ability to inflict that death and despite and destruction which Israel has suffered under for the past two generations.



Lebanon either is a sovereign state or they are not. If they aren't, Israel is pacifying a barbarous no-man's land which has been the source for continuing attacks upon it for at least thirty five years. If they are, then the Lebanese state is responsible for seeing to it that persons within its territory do not attack other sovereign states, and those states (Israel) who suffer recurring attacks are quite within international law to treat such attacks as acts of war. Any idea of "disproportionate response," by it's very nature, implicitly attempts to let intentional but largely less competent or less effective acts of aggression off the hook of responsibility; yet they were planned and attempted by persons who are legally competent adults. Had Osama's two planes missed the Trade Center Towers, it would still have been an act of war. If Mexico invaded but their army was routed by half a dozen Border Patrolmen, it would still be an act of war, just not a terrifically competent one. The intention of starting a conflict remains. Suppose the Japanese had misgauged when attacking Pearl Harbor and all crashed off the coast of Oahu. Do you think it likely FDR would have let them off the hook with a stern warning about "Don't let it happen again!"? No, their other attacks on the Philippines and Wake Island would have made their intentions all too obvious, and so it is in the Middle East today. There comes a time when it becomes obvious that the only way to get peace is not to rely upon a forbearance of a sworn enemy, which has been nonexistent in this case for sixty years; the way to peace is to remove your enemy's ability to wage war on you, no matter what it takes, whoever else suffers as a result. It is not as if those who suffer collateral damage have no responsibility or culpability for the series of events which led to said damage. By any reading of international law or moral and ethical guidelines of responsibility, those who had the responsibility for stopping those attacks and failed to do so, and failed to request assistance to do so, bear every bit as much of the blame as members of those terrorist organizations who made the actual attacks.



Now this morning while I was tightening up the article, news that Olmert Sets Conditions for End to Fighting. Quote, "the fighting in Lebanon would end when the two Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah guerrillas were freed, rocket attacks on Israel were stopped, and the Lebanese army was deployed along the border." All obviously necessary conditions, and something any other country would demand under equivalent circumstances. Far more lenient than most countries would demand, as a matter of fact. Wars of conquest have been fought over less than Israel has suffered in the last few weeks, let alone over the sorry course of this conflict. To accuse them of disproportionate response is to invite laughter from anyone familiar with the actual events of the last sixty years in the Middle East.