Posse Incitatus

Obama sees dead people

It's been said before, but Barak Obama is a freaking gaffe machine.

In my previous post, I noted that I used to write speeches for politicians - and that these included some for Memorial Day.  To some readers, I'm sure this makes me uniquely unqualified to criticize Obama for his tawdry electioneering over the bodies of our fallen warriors.

However, it is worth pointing out that my speeches for Memorial Day were apolitical.  I usually drew upon Gen. John A. Logan's order creating Memorial Day, (the text of this, by the way, hangs on a bronze plaque in the rotunda of Michigan's Capitol) as well as the Gettysburg Address, and other works (like Flanders Fields) that are appropriate to the occasion.  I flatter myself that they captured the solemnity of the moment.  I do know that one legislator had to cut my speech down because he said it was too difficult for him to deliver - he got all choked up.  A rare compliment.

That is what Memorial Day is all about, in my opinion at least.  A day of contemplation and gratitude for the valor and sacrifice of those who have gone on before, not a time to announce the latest giveaway to a focus-grouped constituency.

Thousands of U.S. and allied troops have died fighting against Islamic radicals in Iraq.  Memorial Day is a time to remember their sacrifice and - in the words of a better man - "highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain."

You don't honor your war dead by abandoning the object of their sacrifice and then cutting checks to their surviving comrades.  Sean Grimes didn't die for a jobs program, he died for freedom.  It's that simple.

Some bloggers may be willing to excuse this as a minor slip of the tongue, but I cannot.  I wrote these kind of speeches and I simply cannot imagine doing something so crass as to insert a politics into it.

Memorial Day 2008

Believe it or not, in a previous career I used to write political speeches.  This year, I was planning to quote from some of my old Memorial Day ones, since most of the people who delivered them are out of office.  Unfortunately, I've misplaced the archival disk they were one, so maybe this will be a project for next year.

One of the strange features of the war we are in is that it is being waged almost as a sideshow.  People enlist, train deploy and come back and the rhythm of life seems unaffected.  The protests have faded to a few old hippies reliving past glory and a few young idiots who have no understanding of what sacrifice means.

This Memorial Day, I find myself thinking of Captain Sean Grimes.  He died on March 4, 2005.  My post was written back when it seemed that Iraq might be straightened out sooner rather than later, and when it looked like George W. Bush had succeeded in creating a long-term GOP majority.

It has been a tough haul since then, but I stand by what I wrote at the time.  The terrorists are losing, and the flame of hope has been kept burning bright because of those who served and who continue to serve, in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the world.

Debate of the century

Via Pajamas Media, I found this fascinating tv debate between Mark Steyn and some of his antagonists.

Having not really paid attention to the "sock puppets" before, I am amazed at how immature they are.  The two women sound like valley girls - they don't know their facts, don't really care to, and assume that everyone will just let them have their way.  They have the victim tone of voice down pat.

The fellow is painfully earnest, yet his reading of Ayatollah Khomeini's remarks were one of the best examples of unintentional self-parody I've ever seen. 

These three have learned the liberal debating method well: misquote and distort whenever possible and when challenged, change the subject.  The moderator gamely tries to pin them down, but they won't have any of it.

I give them credit for staying on message - but it is a pretty weak message.  I also enjoy the kids insisting that they feared to debate Mark because he might shout at them or call them names.  Nice.

I have to wonder what the rules will be in the Brave New Canada they wish to make.  Will you have to get government permission to quote well-known public figures, or will a permission slip from these guys suffice?

And if, say, Khadaffi or someone of his ilk goes on about the inevitable defeat of the West, will that also be a hate crime?

There is a real danger in this case.  The kids are very earnest in their objective, which sounds okay on the face of it: we just want to publish a rebuttal.

But if they (and their hidden compatriots) win, they will destroy the free speech of Canada.  Publishers will effectively lose editorial control of their papers; any controversy will be answered with a complaint and the resulting chill to free speech will mean that even vital news of the day may go unreported.

Hopefully, Canada's legislators will pull them back from the brink.

One final observation:  It is highly amusing to see that even as Mark is making his (understandably) passionate rebuttals, he can't resist throwing references in to musicals ("South Pacific") and his copious knowledge of celebrity gossip (Zsa Zsa Gabor).

A true renaissance man.

Making a virtue of apathy

Serial commenter Nurglitch seems determined to reprise the roll of our old pet troll, but hey, it's a slow news day.

Heaven forbid Zimbabweans should take personal responsibility for their own nation-state. After all, foreign intervention has worked so well for Zimbabwe in the past, right? Right?

Oh, wait, intervention by a foreign power violating Zimbabwe's sovereignty would validate Mugabe's motivation for clinging to power.

Trying to solve the problem by force, by matching Mugabe's force with greater force, is pointless (and hypocritical) if your complaint is Mugabe's use of force against his political (and personal) enemies.

Okay, let me try to follow this logic (such as it is).  Mugabe uses violence to oppress his people.  This is bad.  Therefore, we should not use violence to liberate them because that will legitimize the violence being used to keep them down.

Uh, no.  That is like saying that the rape victim deserved it because if she had he means, she might kill her attacker, so better to keep her in  her place.   And anyway, it's none of our business.

Furthermore, forceful intervention would be like trying to put out a fire by pouring lighter fluid on it. The point, presumably, would be to stabilize the region, which isn't going to happen if it gets turned into a war-zone. More to the point, who's going to pay for this war? Who's going to fight it?

Isn't it a war-zone already?  Last time I checked, three million Zimbabweans have fled to South Africa, which is seeing growing violence directed against them.

Let us not pretend that the state of affairs in southern Africa is anything approaching peaceful.

It isn't Conservative thought or Liberal thought (you know Neo-Conservatives are Liberals, right?), it's good old fashioned human apathy.

It's also immoral. 

The fact is that you don't feel it's your personal responsibility, and the further fact is that your gov't is filled with like-minded individuals who couldn't give rat's ass about Zimbabwe.

Actually, I do feel it is my responsibility, which is why I am drawing attention to it.  I also do not feel the Bush administration is doing enough.

So when do you start fundraising to take your private army to Zimbabwe and show those people what they're doing wrong?

Ah yes, I guess I'm a "chicken-merc" or some such nonsense.

I know the left has made a secular religion out of the proposition that the "personal is political" but this is stupid even by their addle-brained standards.

The proper mechanism to change government policy is to vote and to advocate one's point of view.  It is not to  raise a private army and enforce it at the point of a gun - that leads exactly to the sort of misery we see in Africa today.

I also can't help but notice that this flies in direct opposition with the sentiments expressed at the start of this comment.  Apparently Nurglitch believes that formal American intervention would make a bad situation worse and "pour lighter fluid" on the conflagration, but the addition of unaccountable private armies will make everything peachy.

It is an undeniable fact that increasing global integration in trade and communication mean that isolationism is no longer practical.   In international terms, it is no longer acceptable to have an orderly "core" and a disorderly "periphery."  As we saw in Afghanistan, even distant relatively small movements can create considerable mayhem in the very heart of the West.

Hopefully the creation of the United States African Command (AFRICOM) will be followed up with a similar diplomatic effort to finally bring some order to Africa.  And maybe, liberal politicians will move beyond simplistic "leave 'em alone" or "why don't YOU got fight" arguments and truly engage the issues at stake.

A different Clark's theorem

It looks like I may have been a bit premature in my hopes for a peaceful transition of power in Zimbabwe.  In many ways, it boils down to basic power politics: Robert Mugabe is more willing to use force to keep power than anyone else is to get rid of him.

It's been a few years, but I remember one of my professors jokingly referring to a "Clark's Theorem" for Africa.  It was developed by an American ambassador (named Clark, of course) who postulated simply:  There is no bottom in Africa.

No matter how bad things are, they can get worse.

Reader Nurglitch's response to my earlier post pretty much summarizes the current state of liberal thought, by the way:  The Zimbabweans are "sorting things out by themselves," which means starving in heaps and hoping for help from abroad that will never arrive.  Oh, and I need more degrees to truly understand the deep, scholarly reasons for the West's inactivity in the face of pure evil.

Could be.  Or maybe I should just have a stiff drink and watch "Firefly."  Either way, the end result is the same.

The limits of "soft power"

One of the consistent criticisms liberals have thrown at the Bush administration is that it is too reliant on “hard” power – meaning military action – and not at all good at using “soft” power – diplomacy and economic leverage. 

Barak Obama in particular has talked of using a soft power in his “dignity promotion.”  All well in good, but recent events have left me wondering what exactly this means.

For example, both Democrat candidates have now stated their opposition to the Columbia Free Trade agreement.  Now if this isn’t “soft” power, I don’t know what is.  International relations between nations is not game of sentiment and soft words.  At its core, statecraft is about the national interest.  By opposing this agreement, both Democrats are essentially telling Columbia that we value their alliance, but not enough to actually pay anything for it.

This is hugely important.  No state will retain world respect if its policy is to undercut or ignore its allies whenever domestic interest groups require it.  Making matters worse is the juvenile notion that we should be negotiating more with our enemies, which Obama has also said he would do.

How can this approach earn the United States anything but contempt on the world scene? 

Apparently Barak Obama wants to tell America’s closest Latin American ally that while we appreciate all the hard work they are doing to curb our drug trafficking problem and think that their efforts to check Hugo Chavez’s malignant influence is great, we won’t actually do anything to help them.  Instead he wants to meet with Chavez!

I guess that’s the other bizarre part of this misguided statecraft:  We will meet with any regime and negotiate, but once you’ve ruled out military force and embraced economic protectionism, what is there to talk about?

This post is a little different because I am actively soliciting liberal responses.  Please, tell me what “soft” power means if not trade agreements and other humanitarian assistance.  Because right now, all it looks like Obama and Hillary plan to do is talk nicely while smacking our friends in the face.

Movie Review: Iron Man

This past weekend Sithkitten and I took a rare visit to the cinema to see “Iron Man.”  Watching the previews I was encouraged.  This could be a good year for Hollywood, simply because the movies they are making look like ones worth watching – for a change.

Anyhow, I enjoyed “Iron Man,” chiefly because Robert Downey, Jr. is quite a good actor and his character is more interesting than most.

Let’s be honest, super hero movies are pretty formulaic.  We meet the hero before the transformation, watch it happen, and then he goes and kicks butt.  The film usually ends with a nod to a possible sequel.

So plot-wise, there isn’t much going on, and one can only watch so many special effects demo reels before the whole thing gets a little tired.  So what is the jaded movie-goer to do?

Basically, you need good actors to save the day, and that also means funny ones.  Yes, there are going to be explosions, mind-boggling special effects and the epic destruction of monuments, but will I laugh?

Happily, I did.  Perhaps because of his personal struggles, Downey brought something a little extra to the part of Tony Stark.  I don’t go much in for spoilers, but the stewardesses on his private plane were classic.

There was one other element of “Iron Man,” that caught my attention:  the good guys and the bad guys.

The good guys are the US military.  Not surprising when the Air Force cooperates, but it’s nice to see more filmmakers realizing that the public is tired of seeing our troops portrayed as either helpless idiot-victims or mindless killers. Similarly, while not making a big deal out of it, it was pretty clear that the bad guys were, if not actual Al Qaeda honchos, someone who is on their speed dial list.  I’m sure that resonated with a lot of folks as well.

I’m not sure if they can sustain it in the all-but-inevitable sequel, but at least this movie was pretty solid.  Worth the money.

Seven days in May

The computer has been having some issues and I at least may not be blogging for a bit.  Other Posse members are encouraged to step of, course (hint, hint).

Meanwhile, the degree to which the mainstream press is in the tank for Obama continues to impress.  Though I'm horrified at the thought of him in the White House (let alone the Democrat nominee), I can't help but enjoy the increasing anger and frustration of the Clintons as they watch their once-pliable instrument turn on them.

Will McCain be able defeat either of them?  Sure.  It is worth pointing out that for most of 2000, Al Gore was not only far out in front but widely hailed as "inevitable."  Why we even had academics with charts and tables to prove it.  Gore did not have the messianic cult of Obama, but he did have his own Savior of the Planet vibe and George W. Bush was far less qualified than John McCain.

The point?  It's still anyone's race.