Posse Incitatus

Murtha vs Greyhawk

One of the more fascinating developments over the past few years is the Democrats' reliance on veterans to do their dirty work of pushing defeatism.

John Kerry made a career out of this, but the ghosts of his past came back to haunt him in 2004.

The Dems then relied on an assembly of frauds, liars and fakes to get the job done.

Their current battering ram is Rep. John Murtha, a man the mainstream press touts as a hawk but a fellow who, it is increasingly clear, is a career defeatist.

Mudville Gazette has a roundup of Murtha's various causes and opinions that one won't find in any mainstream outlet.

Perhaps the most telling is Murtha's happy picture with Code Pink, the rabid anti-war, anti-soldier ogranization that taunts wounded veterans.

If nothing else, that photo should dispel the notion that Murtha gives a damn about our fighting men and women.

Whatever compassion he once felt for them has been consumed by his political ambition and hate for the president.

His military record is what it is: honorable service that all Americans can respect.

But that in no way exonerates him for his current despicable behavior.

History is replete with distinguished soldiers and statesmen who turned on their countrymen and earned everlasting condemnation thereby.

Starting with the Athenian Alcibiades we see a line of sound soldiers - often great and courageous leaders - who nevertheless put their own personal ambition or political hangups over the good of the nation.

Benedict Arnold and Henri Phillipe Petain are two well-known examples.

Both of these brave men could fairly be called the saviors of their countries - before they turned traitor.

The siren song of ambition does not always lead to outright collaboration with the enemy. George Brinton McClellan certainly believed he could save the Republic, but was willing to ally with a defeatist party to achieve the White House.

At least McClellan remained fiercely loyal to his nation and never (that we can find) uttered a word against the soldiers he once led.

The same cannot be said of Murtha, who spares no opportunity to describe out military as worn out and demoralized.  Indeed, Murtha has urged potential recruits not to enlist, a stance that one cannot possibly understand in any other context than urging American defeat.

Murtha will shortly find what Kerry and the rest already have: that a mothballed uniform is no defense against talking down our military and working with those who despise it. 

In the 1970s, it was common to find Hanoi Jane pictures pasted into military urinals.  Murtha should now recieve the same dubious honor.

The implacable march of time

Captain Ed speculates that Iran may be blinking in its nuclear standoff.

The Posse disagrees.  Iran's goal is to develop nuclear weapons and to this end, time is its greatest ally.  We fully expect Iran to signal agreement, begin compliance, declare a halt, openly resume work, halt again, offer to negotiate, accept whatever is offered and so on until its weapons are finished.

Time is on Iran's side.  The longer they draw out negotiations, the longer they have to complete their work.

As the debate over Iraq has shown, there is no end to the amount of time the West's liberals are willing to give to negotiations.  Even with the clock ticking down to Iranian nuclear weapons, negotiation is better than war.  Always.

Even if negotiation leads to a far greater and deadlier war.

As the Posse has noted before, the anti-war left believes that when they do not act, time stands still.  So long as the US does nothing to antagonize Iran, Iran will not have nuclear weapons.  And once it gets them, it will not use them.

And if it uses them, it is all our fault.

This unwillingness to see aggressors as anything other than reactive forces means that Iran wins simply by delaying the game.

Wretchard correctly points out that there is a pain threshold for the West, a point at which American public opinion - jaded as it is by the war in Iraq - will rally behind a campaign against Iran.

Certainly the smouldering hatred of the mullahs and the capture of the US embassy plays a role in this, as does Iran's role in many terrorist attacks.

But until that point is reached, the US cannot move overtly.

That is why the Posse enthusiastically supports arming the Iranian resistance.  Not only does this hit Iran at its weakest point, it lays the ground work for democratic governance by allowing a "shadow government" to succeed the mullahs.  Dissident groups should be invited to draft a constitution-in-waiting and everything needed for a government in exile should be put into place.

It is our fervent hope that this is already in progress and that the only reason we have not heard about it is that the administration has insulated it from the traitors at CIA.

Iranian options

The Posse hasn't had much of an opportunity to examine the Iranian standoff, but a few points are clear.

1.  Military options are quite constrainted.  Air strikes will not be sufficient to destroy Iran's nuclear capability and a land war is out of the question.

2.  Doing nothing (aka "giving peace a chance") is what the mad mullahs want and actively helps their side.

The Posse therefore believes that if it isn't already happening, the US should be training a cadre of Iranian dissidents to liberate their country.  This is what we should have done in Iraq: establish a viable resistance, create an experienced and reliable leadership that is ready to take over once the regime collapses.

Unfortunately, CIA cannot be relied upon to do anything other than leak wartime secrets that are harmful to the Bush administration.

Other assets, such as SOCOM may be more promising, but only if they can keep the operation insulated from CIA corruption.

It seems to us that the Bush administration is in a bind, partly one of its own making.  By not disciplining CIA early on, it has allowed the agency to effectively go rogue for years, making it that much harder to do anything short of active combat operations.

One thing is certain: the status quo cannot be maintained indefinately.  Sooner or later, the balance will tip in one direction or the other, either for the mullahs or the West.

This fact is lost on the anti-war movement, however.  As noted below, they are an ideology of stasis, where if we will the world to stand still, it will. 

Other actors - terrorists, dictators, factions - are immobile and inert, reacting only when the US swings into action.

The fact that the Democrats continue to pick nits about a short-lived college alumni association and wring their hands over search warrants indicates that they simply aren't up to the task of dealing with a fluid strategic environment.

As far the the Dems are concerned, the clocks of the world stopped in 1993 and didn't resume until Sept. 11, 2001.

During the years in between, Saddam, the ayatollahs and the terrorist networks sat in idle chatter and expectation, perhaps looking forward to the next UN conference on universal disarmament and the evils of Zionism.

Some time ago, people wondered if the equivalent year for the war in terror was 1864 or 1944.

The Posse begins to think that perhaps were are still in 1939.  Iraq may yet prove the Spanish Civil War to the challenge Iran poses.

The left and the manly virtues

Best of the Web yesterday quoted a typical member of the irrational left ("Digby") who opined that for the 1960s generation, there were only two real options to be a man:  military service in Vietnam or a the hippie lifestyle of sex, drugs and rock and roll.

Though the Posse was planning on embracing other topics, this latest broadside (originally targeting Judge Samuel Alito) adds a new dimension to our previous discussion with Kevin Baker on the mentality of the looney left.

We have long believed the "chickenhawk" slur was a smoke screen to hide the left's own psychological inadequacies.  This latest outburst confirms us in this belief.

James Taranto already nailed the most striking feature of this worldview - that being a father with a good job doesn't qualify as "manly."  Indeed, according to this fellow, a committed relationship with children is an act of moral cowardice.

Certainly this adds another piece of the puzzle to explain declining birth rates.

But what it also does is reinforce the Posse's theory that the left is desperate to find some substitute for its own cowardice; that by equating the "courage" do to drugs and have easy sex with the rigors of military service, it is attempting to hide its own unease.

This also helps explains the lefts aversion to firearms, and their constant need to assert that those that collect and use them do so out of sexual inadequacy.

What is never said is the reverse: that the fear of firearms and the power they embody also is indicative of sexual dysfunction.

As we've said many times, guns are about choices.  They do not provide any guarentee of harm befalling their owner.  What they do is provide options.

Without a gun, a person menanced by an attacker or group of attackers simply has less options.

To put it another way, by denying oneself the means of effective resistance, surrender becomes a more moral choice. 

If you are in a restuarant and a lunatic pulls a gun out and waves it around, one has several choices:  flight, surrender or fight.

If one has a gun, the fighting option becomes far more viable than it does without one.  Indeed, were one to have a loaded gun and simply watch a killer go about his business, the public condemnation would be immediate and overwhelming.

A far easier course, morally speaking, is to be disarmed and helpless.  This absolves the individual of any responsibility, either for himself or others.  The burden is placed squarely on the "authorities," who can be blamed for everything that goes wrong.

It is increasingly obvious that the modern left is about the abdication of all personal responsibility.  One need not be a parent, hold a job or even defend one's self in order to be virtuous.  As the demographics are demonstrating, this is an ultimately self-limiting belief system.

The ideology of stasis

One of the things we like about Internet debates is that they often lead to unexpected findings.

When Kevin Baker started his ruminations on mass movements, it could have been written off as typical doom-saying or borderline paranoia by a group of gun nuts.  Certainly that is how the left would have looked at it.

Mark Steyn's article added a new twist: that of demography, reminding us that even political beliefs must bend before the iron laws of population change.

Our previous post incorporated this and then went further, attempting to demonstrate that the left is now a slave to the present.  As the Pet Shop Boys would say:  "We've got no future, we've got no past, here today, built to last."

But  people are mortal.  When Ariel Sharon was stricken last week, the status quo in the Middle East was shattered.  The media is full of hand-wringing over his succession, and his sudden invalidism is taken as proof (by idiotarians of both right and left) of either divine vengeance or horrible bad luck.

The Posse takes a different view.  The man was  77 years old.  He had less time ahead of him than behind him.  At some point, he would depart this world.

Yet the reaction of shock, disbelief and denial continues.  We noticed a similar dynamic when Yasser Arafat finally went to his long reward.  There as well we saw an unwillingness to admit the obvious truth that even if he recovered from his illness, he was no longer able to control his petty empire.

What this illustrates is that the left's divorce from reality is becoming complete.  Their Marxist roots led them to condemn the past but with the collapse of communism, the future no longer has any promise.

They live only for the moment and expect everything to remain changeless, stagnant.  An excellent example of this is the debate over global warming, which really is no debate at all.  Of course the climate changes; it always has.  Our world is forever changing, yet to the left, every day should be clear and sunny, exactly like the one before it.

There should be no earthquakes, hurricanes or storms.  When they happen, they are the wrath of an angry Gaia and can be prevented only by reducing CO2 emissions, recycling and raising organic food.

This permanence is but an illusion, and though the left is working itself up into a frenzy, it is ultimately doomed to fail.  Time stands still for no one.

While we can freeze the frame in a motion picture, life is always in motion.  The Posse understands this; watching our children grow, we feel it keenly.

Perhaps it is because the left is childless, self-obsessed and wishes to palm its ancestors off on state-run nursing homes that it is easier for them to ignore this.

The new Habsburgs

Barring a major post from Kevin, this will be our last word on the question of whether the unhinged left really comprises a mass movement.

As we pointed out yesterday, the tide of demography is heavily against the left.  If the hand that rocks the cradle holds the key to the nation, the left is clearly doomed.

The Posse believes that the increasing anger and venom being spewed are indicative of the death throes of the leftist cause.  Their monopoly on the media is crumbling.  Their hold on government is collapsing and the few bastions of strength remaining to them, academia and the judiciary, are increasingly discredited and disregarded.

The decision of the left to force gun control and social engineering through the courts were early signs that they were losing power.  Even Democrat-liberal legislators balked at these issues because they no longer resonated.  But because they are immune to popular sentiment, judges felt safe enough to proceed.

The resulting backlash has galvanized resistance to the left, even among Democrats.  States that voted solidly for Kerry, like Michigan, resoundingly approved referendums increasing protections for traditional marriage.

Thus it is fine for Kevin to assert that the lunatic fringe is trying to "stampede the herd" in the direction of increased radicalism, but it also does nothing to support his argument.

The moonbats can try all they please; it is increasingly obvious that they are failing.  They've dropped dozens of firecrackers but the cattle aren't moving.

As we've noted before, the key elements needed to make a radical mass movement are lacking here.

First, the movement needs some sort of courage, either on the part of the leadership or the base.  Despite fiery rhetoric, there are no equivalents to Blackshirts, SA or Red Guards to deal with.  The left is full of whiny, pampered babies who only talk big.  If one responds forcefully to them, they shriek in fear and claim their are being repressed.

This is a far cry from the street fighting that heralded the Fascist, Nazi and Bolshevik revolutions.

Secondly, the center has to collapse.  In order for this to happen, we would have to wipe out the savings of the middle classes and reduce the lower classes to destitute unemployment.  Despite Democrat talking points and the best efforts of the media, the US does not have 33 percent unemployment, the banking system hasn't folded and the famine doesn't stalk the land.

Indeed, most of the would-be radical Kevin is worried about have even greater stakes in the status quo than we do.

In fact, this is the dirty secret of the modern left: it is wholly reactionary.  It doesn't want revolution, it was stagnation.  As Mark Steyn's article points out, these people want to be footloose and in their mid-20s forever.

They want easy work, comfortable hours, long vacations and smug self-righteousness.  A few insulting bumper stickers is about all the confrontation they can handle.

Steyn noted that in 1913, few Europeans knew their world was about to end.  Certainly this was news to the Habsburgs when they attempted to crush Serbia in the summer of 1914.  The Austrians hoped to make an example of the Serbs, demonstrating that even the enfeebled Dual Monarchy could still throw its weight around.

Instead, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was destroyed.  As one noble said after the war "This was not what the leaders intended."  Surely not.

The modern left is in the same death throes.  It rattles its saber, it bristles and barks, but its legions are hollow and its leaders are geriatric and indolent.  The coalition they lead is shot through with internal contradictions and is constantly on the verge of outright dissolution.

Like the Austrians, the left needs someone to fight their wars for them.  Austria-Hungary had Germany; the modern left has radical Islam.

But radical Islam is an unreliable ally and embracing it too openly will result in the complete collapse of the coalition.

This is not to say there are no dangers.  Wacko leftists may yet decide to kill in Allah's name or perpetrate similar mischief.  Certainly we must remain vigilant and continue to engage them in the battle of ideas.

But the pathetic ravings of the leftist fever swamps aren't indicative of a new radicalism; there are in fact the death throes of old liberalism.

Guns, guts and babies

With Kevin Baker back and blogging, the Posse is ready to respond to his response to our response to his column.

For those not minded to hit all those links, we will summarize.  Kevin's contention is that the disconnect from reality on the left is so profound, so complete that society itself will be harmed.  He sees in MoveOn.org and DemocraticUnderground a new mass movement, comparable to the Fascists and Communists of earlier times.

We pointed out to him that nothing the Left has done indicates anything approaching the intestinal fortitude of these groups and - to cut to the chase, his answer was this:

What happens when you give cowards the power of life-and-death, backed up by the State?

History tells us. After the slaughter is over, they claim they were "only following orders."

That's all very spooky and heavy with foreboding, but now Kevin has linked to Mark Steyn's excellent column, which adds something new: demographics.

One thing Steyn noted is that "Red America" is also "fertile America."  It's the conservatives who are having the big families.  It makes sense that people who believe in Faith, Family and Freedom will also be the ones willing to sire and raise children.

The Posse is reminded of the infamous article by Amy Richards, who decided to abort two of her triplets in order to spare her the shame of shopping at Costco.

In the followup, Richard said this:

I do want my children to have access to things like a good doctor and health insurance, music class or art class, school and just generally a sense of well-being and enough exposure to diverse experiences. That and the medical risks are precisley why I decided not to carry the triplets to term. [emphasis added]

Is there anything more indicative of the leftist mindset than this?  Triplets may be unexpected, but traditional conservative families would regard them as a blessing - one not without difficulties, to be sure - but a gift from God to be cherished.

These people don't just lack the courage to fight, they lack the courage to reproduce.  that is what Steyn is saying and he's absolutely right.

Conservative America uses Sam's Club and Costco and value the savings.  They drive older cars and put up with fewer toys because family is worth the sacrifice.

For all their bloviations about "doing it for the children," leftists would prefer to see less of them brought to term.

Over the long term, these malcontents will age and die - indeed the Baby Boomers are already feeling the creeping inexorable advance of time.

The numbers they leave behind will be smaller and softer, cuddled from infancy, medicated through primary school and financially supported through college.  They will be spineless technocrats who can't imagine life without an ipod or their parents to pay off their credit cards.

To use a Marxist phrase, the "correlation of forces" heavily favors the right: we have the guns, the guts and the babies.

They are disarmed, demoralized and childless.

Hardly much to fear.

Secrets kept and secrets revealed

Via the hated Instapundit, the Posse recommends this harsh (but deservingly so) takedown of the New York Times by Tom Maguire.

Maguire does an excellent job of puncturing the Times' bubble of self-righteous spin.  Using the logic the editors have summoned forth, any secret can be revealed to the press, regardless of the national security ramifications.

Consider a disgruntled staffer who believes that a certain operational method is inappropriate or otherwise unfair.  Rather than use the chain of command with its numerous safeguards and safe harbors, he could, using the Times' logic, simply spill critical details onto the front page, possibly with the result of military defeat.

Not that this would bother the Times.  The NYT doesn't believe there really is a war.  The 9/11 attacks were an accident, an unfortunate hiccup resulting from Bush rather than Al Gore being in office. 

This is why appeals to national security (which were conveniently raised during the Plame case) are disingenuous since the NYT doesn't much care for it anyway.  Despite the proven fact that there are thousands of terrorists waiting for a chance to kill Americans, the Times is really afraid of its own freely elected leaders.

This is paranoia writ large.  It is a sign of clear and debilitating mental illness.

During time of war, particular a war against an unconventional enemy that uses stealth, the government must have the ability to monitor enemy communications, particularly those involving possible traitors within our borders.

Warrants don't apply in this instance, and for good reason - the target of the monitoring is outside the country.  If US intelligence picks up a call originating from Kandahar or Islamabad heading for Peoria, are the supposed to wake a judge and ask for permission to listen in?  What if the person in question changes phones often, using a fake identity or the phones of friends?  How exactly is such a warrant to be described?

Terrorist communications are not protected by the Bill of Rights and monitoring them does not harm American liberty in the slightest way.

But spilling secrets in wartime does both: it undercuts the Executive's authority to wage war and it puts the lives of American citizens at risk.

The price for the Times' First Amendment rights may well be deaths of innocent Americans killed in a terror attack now that this program has been exposed.

Do those people have rights?

Perhaps someone should sue the NYT for violating the civil rights of all Americans by putting their lives in jeopardy.

Either way one frames this debate, the Times loses - unless, and only unless - there is no terrorism.

It is increasingly clear that this is what the Times and the Left now believes.  Their denial is monumental.  Indeed, it is bigger than the World Trade Center.

Happy New Year

The Posse wishes all of our readers a happy new year and we fervently hope that 2006 is much better than 2005.

All told, 2005 has been a mixed year for us.  It has seen the hardest trials of our life and yet some of its greatest joys.

We have a new younger Posse member, the Wiggle Princess, whose cheerful disposition is truly a joy to behold.   We have never known a happier baby.

We've also changed jobs, tasted the bitterness and despair of protracted unemployment and sold off a couple of our firearms to pay the bills.

More importantly, Sithkitten had a brush with death - an event that cannot help but leave one changed.  It was a major factor in our decision to convert to Catholicism.  In addition, Sithkitten has decided to move forward on her own career in the health care field.

By any measure, we are in better shape on this New Years Day than we were a year ago, and for that, we are profoundly thankful. 

This blog continues to take shape, and last year saw a surge in readership followed by its almost complete collapse.  We're not sure what is at work, but for those readers that stuck with us, we have only this to say:  please send money thank you very much.  Your readership and especially your commentary have helped us get through a profoundly tough year.