Also in the New York Times, Paul Krugman responds to George W. Bush’s veto of a middle-class entitlement first step to socialized health care by taking out the world’s smallest violin and playing the world’s saddest song.

Here’s what Reagan said in his famous 1964 speech “A Time for Choosing,” which made him a national political figure: “We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet.”

Today’s leading conservatives are Reagan’s heirs.

Reagan was perfectly right back then. The cost of food is derisory in the United States, and even welfare provides more than enough income to preclude “going to bed hungry.”

And George W. Bush was perfectly right to veto that manipulatively-titled bill today. And, yes, conservatives are Ronald Reagan’s heirs and proud of it.

HOUSE # 1:
A 20 -room mansion (not including 8 bathrooms) heated by natural gas. Add on a pool (and a pool house) and a separate guest house all heated by gas. In ONE MONTH ALONE. This mansion consumes more energy than the average American household in an ENTIRE YEAR. The average bill for electricity and natural gas runs over $2,400.00 per month. In natural gas alone (which last time we checked was a fossil fuel), this property consumes more than 20 times the national average for an American home. This house is not located in a northern or Midwestern “snow belt,” either. It’s in the South.

HOUSE # 2:
Designed by an architecture professor at a leading national university, this house incorporates every “green” feature current home construction can provide. The house contains only 4,000 square feet (4 bedrooms) and is nestled on arid high prairie in the American southwest. A central closet in the house holds geothermal heat pumps drawing ground water through pipes sunk 300 feet into the ground. The water (usually 67 degrees F.) heats the house in winter and cools it in summer. The system uses no fossil fuels such as oil or natural gas, and it consumes 25% of the electricity required for a conventional heating/cooling system. Rainwater from the roof is collected and funneled into a 25,000 gallon underground cistern. Wastewater from showers, sinks and toilets goes into underground purifying tanks and then into the cistern. The collected water then irrigates the land surrounding the house. Flowers and shrubs native to the area blend the property into the surrounding rural landscape.

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Answered here.
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Hat tip to Scott Drum.

Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post is a leftwing editorialist I don’t commonly agree with, but I think the opening, at least, of today’s column hits the nail on the head.

The last two times the Pew Research Center asked people to describe President Bush in a single word, chief among the overwhelmingly negative responses was the word “incompetent.”

What makes that particularly fascinating is that it’s a realization that the public has reached pretty much on its own.

Unfortunately, Froomkin then goes right off into leftwing subjectivity land, repeating the usual memes about unsatisfactory management of the war in Iraq, failure to perform Moses-level miracles on flooded New Orleans, and (quelle horreur!) actually trying to appoint Republicans to DOJ positions.

Froomkin essentially takes the opposite of the facts as his basis to lambaste Bush.

Iit’s well past time to ask ourselves: What has Bush done to our government?

Bush’s two top advisers—Vice President Cheney and just-departed political guru Karl Rove—made little secret of their desire to have the wider federal bureaucracy serve their purposes. But just how much has the exertion of absolute White House political control, through a network of loyalists put in key positions, damaged government agencies’ ability to accomplish the tasks the American people expect of them?

How many long-time senior career employees have been marginalized, micromanaged or driven out of government?

Unfortunately, the real reason Americans think Bush is incompetent is precisely the reverse. Americans have concluded that Bush is incompetent because he cannot defend his own Attorney General when he tries to replace some federal attorneys. They believe that he is a weak leader because he could not compel large portions of the State Department and the Intelligence community to support his policies.

This president did not succeed in replacing disaffected senior officers in the CIA or reforming the Agency, and when National Security information was leaked repeatedly in the New York Times and Washington Post, no one was ever prosecuted or punished.

On the other hand, his adversaries successfully managed to criminalize even questioning the bona fides of Ambassador Wilson’s testimony, and succeeded in convicting the Vice Presidential Chief of Staff of perjury in a case where no crime could possibly ever have occurred. It was George W. Bush himself who appointed the man who aimed the torpedo at the midships of his administration. Bush made James B. Comey (Martha Stewart’s nemesis) Deputy Attorney General, and when John Poindexter (angry at not being reappointed) called for a washbowl and a towel and recused himself, James B. Comey selected the special prosecutor.

Bush is not incompetent because he tyrannically remodeled the bureaucracy. He is incompetent because he has failed to get control of the government he was elected to head, and because he has failed both to punish his enemies and to defend himself and his friends.

The Zogby Poll finds George W. Bush is a trifle unpopular with a mere approval rating of 29%, but Congress is doing so much worse at 11% that one almost expects to see angry peasants with torches and pitchforks attacking the Capitol.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad probably has a higher public approval rating in the United States than the Reid/Pelosi Congress.

Senator Pat Leahy of Vermont offers some interesting advice to President Bush on his choice of a new attorney general to replace the unfortunate Alberto Gonzalez.

Leahy contends that

The attorney general is the people’s lawyer, not the president’s.”

which is an amusing piece of sophistry. Of course, “the people” don’t actually play any role in the federal system after elections are concluded. “The people” cannot decide what side the Justice Department will choose to take on an abortion case. “The people” cannot decide on whether or not Microsoft should be prosecuted for an alleged monopoly. And “the people” cannot decide whether 8 federal attorneys or all 93 need to be replaced.

What Senator Leahy means by “the people” is obviously what Thomas Sowell likes to call the consensus of the elect, the collective viewpoint of the mainstream media, the liberal democrat congressional majority, the establishment punditocracy, and so on.

The Senate has the Constitutional right to advise and consent on presidential appointments of ministers of state and officers of government, but executive power is vested by the Constitution in the president not in “the people” nor in Congress nor in the consensus of the liberal establishment. Cabinet officers really do work for the president.

Senator Leahy goes on to urge President Bush to select a candidate for attorney general, who is neither notoriously partisan nor divisive.

Above all, the new attorney general cannot interpret our laws to mean whatever the president wants them to mean. The departing attorney general showed a lack of independence from the president and the White House. We have seen the disastrous consequences.

The next attorney general must uphold the rule of law on behalf of all of the American people.

The president begins this process. Through his choice for attorney general, he can be a uniter or a divider. For the sake of the Department of Justice and its vital missions on behalf of the American people, this would be an excellent time to work with us to unite the nation.

And how does the last democrat president’s choice of attorney general measure up to Pat Leahy’s proposed standards?

Janet Reno was anything but a uniter, and it is difficult to imagine a possible Republican choice who could be equivalently offensive to the other party. Reno was a leftwing extremist , who many people believed misused her Dade County Prosecutorship on behalf of her own political agenda. She was appointed by President Clinton despite a record of ideologically-motivated, questionable prosecutions in Florida, and despite her dubious moral character and life-style.

Janet Reno went on to compile arguably the most controversial record of any attorney general, presiding over the federal massacre of Seventh Day Adventists in Waco, Texas, the seizure by machine-gun-wielding federal agents of a six-year-old refugee for deportation to Communist Cuba, and—of course—the unprececented and completely partisan firing of all 93 US Attorneys.

The Daily Mail gleefully chronicles Mr. Morgan’s inevitable rebuke for hubris.

If he didn’t believe in karma before, Piers Morgan must surely do now.

The ex-newspaper editor, now a columnist for The Mail on Sunday’s Live magazine, took great delight in making fun of President Bush for falling off a Segway – the two-wheeled, motorised, gyroscopically balanced scooter that, its makers promise, will never fall over.

His paper, the Daily Mirror, ran the headline in 2003: “You’d have to be an idiot to fall off, wouldn’t you Mr President.” It added: “If anyone can make a pig’s ear of riding a sophisticated, self-balancing machine like this, Dubya can.” So, it seems, can Mr Morgan.

He broke three ribs after falling off the Segway at 12mph in California – just three days before he was due to make his biggest TV appearance to date, as a judge on the grand final of reality show America’s Got Talent. ...

He had to be taken to hospital to be patched up, but despite his misfortune, Morgan made it to the TV studio. His celebrity friends have been chortling at his expense. Simon Cowell has urged people to make Morgan laugh because ‘it causes Piers absolute agony’.

Writing in Live magazine this week, Morgan is rueful about the comments on Mr Bush. He says: “Since only he and I appear to have ever fallen off one, I think the makers of the Segway can probably still justifiably claim the machines are “idiot-proof”.”

video

Newsweek’s hunt for Bin Laden article has some interesting accounts attributing his success at escaping justice to excesses of official caution (Hey! the press might criticize them) and bureaucratic paralysis.

As recalled by Gary Berntsen, the CIA officer in charge of the covert team working with the Northern Alliance, code-named Jawbreaker, the military refused his pleas for 800 Army Rangers to cut off bin Laden’s escape. Maj. Gen. Dell Dailey, the Special Ops commander sent out by Central Command, told Berntsen he was doing an “excellent job,” but that putting in ground troops might offend America’s Afghan allies. “I don’t give a damn about offending our allies!” Berntsen yelled, according to his 2005 book, “Jawbreaker.” “I only care about eliminating Al Qaeda and delivering bin Laden’s head in a box!” (Dailey, now the State Department’s counterterror chief, told NEWSWEEK that he did not want to discuss the incident, except to say that Berntsen’s story is “unsubstantiated.”)

Berntsen went to Crumpton, his boss at the CIA, who described to NEWSWEEK his frantic efforts to appeal to higher authority. Crumpton called CENTCOM’s commander, Gen. Tommy Franks. It would take “weeks” to mobilize a force, Franks responded, and the harsh, snowy terrain was too difficult and the odds of getting bin Laden not worth the risk. Frustrated, Crumpton went to the White House and rolled out maps of the Pakistani-Afghan border on a small conference table. President Bush wanted to know if the Pakistanis could sweep up Al Qaeda on the other side. “No, sir,” Crumpton responded. (Vice President Dick Cheney did not say a word, Crumpton recalled.) The meeting was inconclusive. Franks, who declined to comment, has written in his memoirs that he decided, along with Rumsfeld, that to send troops into the mountains would risk repeating the mistake of the Soviets, who were trapped and routed by jihadist guerrilla fighters in the 1980…

Whenever (Special Forces Operations Sergeant Adam Rice) and his men moved within five kilometers of the safe house, he says, they had to file a request form known as a 5-W, spelling out the who, what, when, where and why of the mission. Permission from headquarters took hours, and if shooting might be involved, it was often denied. To go beyond five kilometers required a CONOP (for “concept of operations”) that was much more elaborate and required approval from two layers in the field, and finally the Joint Special Operations Task Force at Baghram air base near Kabul. To get into a fire fight, the permission of a three-star general was necessary. “That process could take days,” Rice recalled to NEWSWEEK. He often typed forms while sitting on a 55-gallon drum his men had cut in half to make a toilet seat. “We’d be typing in 130-degree heat while we’re crapping away with bacillary dysentery and sometimes the brass at Kandahar or Baghram would kick back and tell you the spelling was incorrect, that you weren’t using the tab to delimit the form correctly.”

But Rice made his request anyway. Days passed with no word. The window closed; the target—whether Mullah Omar or not—moved on. Rice blames risk aversion in career officers, whose promotions require spotless (“zero defect”) records—no mistakes, no bad luck, no “flaps.” The cautious mind-set changed for a time after 9/11, but quickly settled back in. High-tech communication serves to clog, rather than speed the process. With worldwide satellite communications, high-level commanders back at the base or in Washington can second-guess even minor decisions.

Read the whole thing.

Wars are costly, and the US has conventionally spent more than its actual revenues in time of war. Say what you will about George W. Bush’s management of the War in Iraq. His domestic tax policies (i.e. tax cuts) combined with the Rumsfeldian parsimony in troop deployments have successfully kept the US economy healthy and avoided customary war-time inflation.

As the New York Sun notes, the deficit is shrinking faster than those glaciers the moonbats are so concerned about.

2004: $413 billion
2005: $318 billion
2006: $248 billion
2007: $158 billion

Close readers of this column may recall the top three numbers in the list above from our editorial of July 12, “Incredible Shrinking Deficit.” It commented on the mid-session review released by President Bush’s Office of Management and Budget, which projected the fourth number, the 2007 federal budget deficit, at $205 billion. Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office released its own updated estimate for 2007, $158 billion, a deficit even smaller than the White House’s July figure. The CBO yesterday also released its latest estimate of the 2007 deficit as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product, allowing us to update another list of deficit numbers:

2004: 3.6%
2005: 2.6%
2006: 1.9%
2007: 1.2%

The Washington Post notes that the president’s failure to gain control of the federal bureaucracy has paralysed the implementation of his intended policies, and left him in the frustrated role of outsider critic of the government he theoretically heads.

By the time he arrived in Prague in June for a democracy conference, President Bush was frustrated. He had committed his presidency to working toward the goal of “ending tyranny in our world,” yet the march of freedom seemed stalled. Just as aggravating was the sense that his own government was not committed to his vision.

As he sat down with opposition leaders from authoritarian societies around the world, he gave voice to his exasperation. “You’re not the only dissident,” Bush told Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a leader in the resistance to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. “I too am a dissident in Washington…”

In his speech that day, Bush vowed to order U.S. ambassadors in unfree nations to meet with dissidents and boasted that he had created a fund to help embattled human rights defenders. But the State Department did not send out the cable directing ambassadors to sit down with dissidents until two months later. And to this day, not a nickel has been transferred to the fund he touted.

Two and a half years after Bush pledged in his second inaugural address to spread democracy around the world, the grand project has bogged down in a bureaucratic and geopolitical morass, in the view of many activists, officials and even White House aides. Many in his administration never bought into the idea, and some undermined it…

“It’s our policy,” the official said.

“What do you mean?” the bureaucrat asked.

“Read the president’s speech,” the official said.

“Policy is not what the president says in speeches,” the bureaucrat replied. “Policy is what emerges from interagency meetings.” ...

Still, after an invigorating start in 2005, progress has been harder to find. Among those worried about the project is (Natan) Sharansky, whose book (The Case For Democracy) so inspired Bush. “I give him an A for bringing the idea and maybe a C for implementation,” said Sharansky, now chairman of the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies at the Shalem Center in Israel. “There is a gap between what he says and what the State Department does,” and he is not consistent enough.

The challenge Bush faced, Sharansky added, was to bring Washington together behind his goal.

“It didn’t happen,” he said. “And that’s the real tragedy.”

George W. Bush has a low approval rating, the latest Zogby Poll reports:

66 percent said Bush had done only a fair or poor job as president, with 34 percent ranking his performance as excellent or good.

But Congressional approval ratings have cratered, setting an all-time record low:

83 percent said Congress was doing a fair or poor job, just 14 percent rated it excellent or good.

Orrin Kerr, at the Volokh Conspiracy, is puzzled by conservatives crying foul over the Plamegame prosecution.

..the claim, as I understand it, is that the Libby prosecution was the work of political enemies who were just trying to hurt the Bush Administration.

I find this claim bizarre. I’m open to arguments that parts of the case against Libby were unfair. But for the case to have been purely political, doesn’t that require the involvement of someone who was not a Bush political appointee? Who are the political opponents who brought the case? Is the idea that Fitzgerald is secretly a Democratic party operative? That Judge Walton is a double agent? Or is the idea that Fitzgerald and Walton were hypnotized by “the Mainstream Media” like Raymond Shaw in the Manchurian Candidate? Seriously, I don’t get it.

It’s simple enough. George W. Bush is an idiot.

Bush appointed Martha Stewart-prosecutor James Comey (no Republican, no conservative) Deputy Attorney General. Comey proved a thorn in the administration’s side on War on Terror policies, favoring kinder treatment for illegal combatants than he had for Martha, and making waves over the NSA’s Counter-Terrorism data-mining operation. Bush derisively referred to Comey’s liberalism with one of those nicknames he likes to confer, dubbing him “Cuomey.”

Bush then proceeded to mortally offend John Ashcroft by declining to keep him on as Attorney General in his second term. Ashcroft retaliated by recusing himself from appointing a prosecutor in L’Affaire Plame, placing thereby a loaded weapon in Mr. Comey’s eager hand.

Comey then gleefully appointed his pal Patrick Fitzgerald, a kindred spirit sharing every bit of Comey’s liberal politics and Inspector Javert-like lack of prosecutorial inhibitions, as special prosecutor.

If anyone has doubts that Fitzgerald is a thoroughgoing partisan, acting politically in service to the democrat party and the American left, one need only take note of the venues of release—Monday, July 2nd, 2007 at 5:32 pm, July 02, 2007 8:55 PM ET

We fully recognize that the Constitution provides that commutation decisions are a matter of presidential prerogative and we do not comment on the exercise of that prerogative.

We comment only on the statement in which the President termed the sentence imposed by the judge as “excessive.” The sentence in this case was imposed pursuant to the laws governing sentencings which occur every day throughout this country. In this case, an experienced federal judge considered extensive argument from the parties and then imposed a sentence consistent with the applicable laws. It is fundamental to the rule of law that all citizens stand before the bar of justice as equals. That principle guided the judge during both the trial and the sentencing.

Although the President’s decision eliminates Mr. Libby’s sentence of imprisonment, Mr. Libby remains convicted by a jury of serious felonies, and we will continue to seek to preserve those convictions through the appeals process.

And don’t forget that the unknown parties at the CIA who initiated a complaint with the Justice Department over the identification of the arranger of Ambassador Wilson’s junket to Niger starting the whole witch hunt also in theory work for President Bush.

It is precisely the combination of George W. Bush’s ill-advised appointments and complete failure to gain control of his own branch of government which made possible the creation of this contrived scandal in the first place.

Faced with the prospect of an innocent and decent man going to prison, George W. Bush did the right thing and commuted Lewis Libby’s sentence.

Evidently trying to conserve as much of that 27% public approval rating as he can, Bush allowed the fine and probation portions of the sentence to stand. Presumably he is counting on those of us who disapprove of L’Affaire Plame to step in with donations to spare the Libby family a quarter of a million dollar price tag for Mr. Libby’s public service. And, presumably also, come the morning of Hillary Clinton’s (or, I hope, Fred Thompson’s) Inauguration, while the Press is distracted, Bush will eliminate the conviction entirely with a pardon.

I would be happier if Bush had simply pardoned Libby, but I am willing to understand, and forgive, his caution. At least, Bush has proven that there is a fundamental residuum of humanity, decency, and loyalty in his character. He is not a complete shit.

Now, if he would only go over to the offensive and get us some revenge…

AP story.

Peter Baker, in the Washington Post, records the observations of some eyewitnessses that George W. Bush is taking his second term setbacks and low poll numbers with grace. The reporter’s glee at the depth of the president’s misfortunes is actually tempered by some grudging admiration.

Other presidents have been crushed by the pressure. Lyndon B. Johnson was tormented by Vietnam War protesters outside his window shouting, “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” Nixon swam in self-pity during Watergate, talking to paintings and once asking Henry Kissinger to pray with him. Bill Clinton fumed against enemies and nursed deep grievances during his impeachment battle. ...

Kissinger, who advises Bush, said the president has never asked him to kneel down with him in the Oval Office. “I find him serene,” Kissinger said. “I know President Johnson was railing against his fate. That’s not the case with Bush. He feels he’s doing what he needs to do, and he seems to me at peace with himself.”

Bush has virtually given up on winning converts while in office and instead is counting on vindication after he is dead. “He almost has . . . a sense of fatalism,” said Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), who recently spent a day traveling with Bush. “All he can do is do his best, and 100 years from now people will decide if he was right or wrong. It doesn’t seem to be a false, macho pride or living in your own world. I find him to be amazingly calm.” ...

Horne, the British historian, found himself with Bush on another occasion after Kissinger gave the president “A Savage War of Peace,” Horne’s book on the French defeat in Algeria in the mid-20th century. Bush invited Horne to visit. They talked about the parallels and differences between Algeria and Iraq as Bush sought insight he could apply to his own situation.

Horne said he is not a Bush supporter but was nonetheless struck by the president’s tranquility. “He was very friendly, very relaxed,” Horne said. “My God, he looked well. He looked like he came off a cruise in the Caribbean. He looked like he hadn’t a care in the world. It was amazing.”

AP reports that Judge Walton has turned down Lewis Libby’s attorneys’ request for a prison delay to allow for appeal.

A federal judge said Thursday he will not delay a 2 1/2-year prison sentence for I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, a ruling that could send the former White House aide to prison within weeks.

U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton’s decision will send Libby’s attorneys rushing to an appeals court to block the sentence and could force President Bush to consider calls from Libby’s supporters to pardon the former aide.

No date was set for Libby to report to prison but it’s expected to be within six to eight weeks. That will be left up to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, which will also select a facility.

Now we will have a chance to see what George W. Bush is made of. Will he allow a loyal subordinate to serve actual prison time as the result a ridiculous, purely partisan criminalization-of-policy-disputes affair which he himself could have, and should have, prevented ever occurring in the first place?

If he does that, conservative Republicans should withdraw their support from such a president.

Jules Crittenden takes the occasion of the failure of the Gonzalez No Confidence vote, Harry Reid’s 19% Favorable Rating, and the democrat Congress’s 27% Approval Rating (a 10 Year Low) to remind Americans that it is actually possible to be doing worse than George W. Bush.

Mark Tapscott says the unpopularity of both Republicans and democrats proves it’s time for a new Party.

President Bush has nominated Dr. James W. Holsinger Jr., a professor of preventive medicine at the University of Kentucky College of Public Health, as Surgeon General.

The Holsinger nomination will ignite a firestorm of controversy because Dr. Holsinger wrote a politically incorrect paper for the United Methodist Church in 1991 at a time when that denomination was considering changing its position on homosexuality.

Holsinger’s paper on the Pathophysiology of Male Homosexuality identifies anatomical inconsistencies and epidemiological hazards attendant upon common male homosexual activities, concluding that the inevitably greater likelihood of injury and disease provides a “speaks for itself” argument against the proposed change.

This nominee’s decade-and-a-half old heresy will not go unavenged by the forces of political correctness.

Representatives of the life style which Dr. Holsinger criticized in 1991 are well entrenched in prominent positions in government and the punditocracy, and will certainly not be inclined to forgive his observations.

Today’s initial ABC News story, just for instance, manifests such a tone of high-pitched indignation, and undertakes so detailed a point by point effort at refutation that its author’s personal interests and affiliations seem only too clear.

Aspects of the fight on this one will have amusing elements of comedy, but I don’t see how Bush can possibly believe this nominee is going to be confirmed. It seems remarkable that the president is willing to take the heat over a foredoomed gesture like this one, but isn’t willing to stick his neck out (at least, perhaps until the last possible moment) to right an injustice as eggregious as the conviction of Lewis Libby.

AP:

Former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby was sentenced to 2½ years in prison Tuesday for lying and obstructing the CIA leak investigation. ...

“People who occupy these types of positions, where they have the welfare and security of nation in their hands, have a special obligation to not do anything that might create a problem,” U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton said. ...

The White House said that President Bush feels “terrible” for Libby and his family, but does not intend to intervene now. ...

Walton fined Libby $250,000 and placed him on probation for two years following his release from prison. Walton did not immediately address whether Libby could remain free pending appeal.

Bush is not really on the spot, unless Judge Walton refuses to allow Mr. Libby to remain free pending appeal.

I would think myself that there is every reason to suppose that an appeal would be successful.

If Libby really does face imprisonment, and George W. Bush does not pardon him, regardless of the political cost, my own view is that Mr. Bush will have irretrievably disgraced himself.

Kimberly Strassel in the Wall Street Journal explains the game plan.

If there’s a smarter guy in Washington right now than Sen. Chuck Schumer, Republicans haven’t noticed. The New York Democrat is doggedly working to dismantle what’s left of the Bush presidency, with barely an ounce of pushback from the other side.

Mr. Schumer was the instigator of the Democrats’ probe into the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, although note that the question of who fired which prosecutor is already yesterday’s news. The attorneys mess was just an opening, a hook that is now allowing Mr. Schumer to escalate into an assault on the wider administration, as well as presidential authority over key programs, such as wiretapping.

The ultimate goal? Surround the Bush presidency in a mist of incompetence and corruption, force Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to go, get a special prosecutor appointed to examine the many supposed misdeeds, and then sit back and ride the steady drip-drip of negative Bush headlines all the way to more Senate seats and the Oval Office.

The latest Gallup Poll finds

Congress Approval Down to 29%; Bush Approval Steady at 33%

AP:

President Bush vetoed legislation to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq Tuesday night in a historic showdown with Congress …

Bush signed the veto with a pen given to him by Robert Derga, the father of Marine Corps Reserve Cpl. Dustin Derga, who was killed in Iraq on May 8, 2005. The elder Derga spoke with Bush two weeks ago at a meeting the president had with military families at the White House.

Derga asked Bush to promise to use the pen in his veto. On Tuesday, Derga contacted the White House to remind Bush to use the pen, and so he did. The 24-year-old Dustin Derga served with Lima Company, 3rd Battalion 25th Marines from Columbus, Ohio. The five-year Marine reservist and fire team leader was killed by an armor-piercing round in Anbar Province.

Hat tip to Jules Crittenden.

The Anchoress has written a moving tribute to President Bush, titled The President of All the People, which views his failures to respond more vigorously and effectively to his opponents as explicable in religious terms.

Who knows? Maybe she’s more correct than most of the rest of us as to what really makes George W. Bush tick.

Don Surber shows a wonderful picture of President Bush, helping Democrat Sen. Robert Byrd walk as they gather to confer a congressional Gold Medal to the Tuskegee airmen who served in World War II.

Sen. Robert Byrd is, of course, ... as partisan a Democrat as one may find. In the picture, Bush holds Byrd’s hand with great gentleness and compassion, in no way demeaning Bryd or taking away his dignity. But you can see that he is firmly grasping the old man’s hand; Bush is concentrating entirely on serving him safely to his seat.

Surber says that the picture didn’t get picked up by many papers and suggests that it’s because the press is reluctant to remind people that President Bush is an utterly decent, humane and gentlemanly man. Nothing good is permitted to be shown of President Bush, these days. Doesn’t fit the “Bush is evil and moronic” template. I more than suspect that Surber is correct.

It’s been that way for a while, actually. I recall that a year after 9/11, President Bush’s poll numbers were still in the stratosphere; they were very high heading into Iraq. They were still pretty high during the “cedar revolutions” and the “orange revolutions” – the so-called “Arab Springtime” during which time Democracy seemed to be threatening to break out all over the world. It was all happening under Bush’s watch, and Bush was dancing with these folks as they demonstrated their hopefulness.

That was only in two years ago, in May, 2005. Feels like half an age, doesn’t it? ...

President Bush drives us crazy. We want him to fight back. He won’t. We want him to “save” himself. He won’t. He won’t “save” his presidency, either. He won’t “save” his party. He won’t “save” his legacy.

President Bush is doing what is unthinkable – he is staying true to the task laid out before him, to serve all the people. He is remaining faithful to that and he is counting on his God to do the rest, as his God has promised.

Read the whole thing.

Hat tip to Terrye.

Reuters grudgingly admires the Bush Administration’s success in preventing any successful mass terrorism attack on US since 9/11, but finds downsides of “huge security costs, strains on the U.S. military from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and resentment of the United States abroad.”

President George W. Bush’s administration has crippled al Qaeda’s ability to carry out major attacks on U.S. soil but at a political and economic cost that could leave the country more vulnerable in years to come, experts say.

Even as al Qaeda tries to rebuild operations in Pakistan, experts including current and former intelligence officials believe the group would have a hard time staging another September 11 because of U.S. success at killing or capturing senior members whose skills and experience have not been replaced.

“If the question is why al Qaeda hasn’t carried out another 9/11 attack, the answer I think is that if they could have, they would have,” said a former senior U.S. intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Tighter U.S. airport security, greater scrutiny of people entering the United States and better coordination between the CIA, FBI and Department of Homeland Security also have made it harder for extremists to enter the country, experts said.

Home-grown extremists in the United States are believed to be isolated and lacking the will or ability to carry out large-scale operations.

“Make no mistake about it, however, our enemy is resilient and determined to strike us again,” said Charles Allen, chief intelligence officer at the Department of Homeland Security.

Some experts warn that the successes of Bush’s war on terrorism have been undercut by huge security costs, strains on the U.S. military from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and resentment of the United States abroad.

“Huge costs?”

AP just recently (3/18) noted that the war is proving relatively inexpensive.

After four years, America’s cost for the war in Iraq has reached nearly $500 billion — more than the total for the Korean War and nearly as much as 12 years in Vietnam, adjusting for inflation. The ultimate cost could reach $1 trillion or more.

A lot of money? No question.

But even though the war has turned out to be much more expensive than Bush administration officials predicted on the eve of the March 2003 invasion, it is relatively affordable — at least in historical terms.

Iraq eats up less than 1 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, compared with as much as 14 percent for Vietnam and 9 percent for Korea.

“I think it’s hard to argue it’s not affordable,” said Steven M. Kosiak, director of budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a defense think tank in Washington, D.C.

A lot of us on the Right think Bush should have expanded the US military, too, but doubtless this administration’s policy of fighting the war on the cheap has a great deal to do with its comparatively modest costs.

Foreign opinion? Well, the treasonous clerisy is what it is. Any visible and effective US policy will inevitably stimulate the left’s condemnation and outrage.
———————————
This Reuters article does, however, contain one particularly interesting detail.

IntelCenter chief executive Ben Venzke said the chance of an al Qaeda attack on U.S. soil has grown based on the militant network’s increasing references to the American homeland in public messages.

“Our leading thinking is that we are closer now to an attempt at a major attack in the United States than at any point since 9/11,” Venzke said.

Rick Ballard, at YARGB, has some choice words concerning the reptile Paul McNulty, and President’s Bush’s continuing above-the-fray passivity. He’s perfectly right, too.

How does a man as profoundly perfidious as Paul McNulty get appointed Deputy Attorney General? Who vetted this snake to a post where his betrayal could do so much damage? If you don’t recognize the name, you need to read this exclusive account of perfidy, disloyalty and disobedience to understand what type of loathsome viper the President inadvertently invited into his Department of Justice.

McNulty is a product of the same Southern District of New York which produced Comey and Fitzgerald. He exhibits the same fawning servility to Chuck Schumer as do the other two and his allegiance to that snake of a politician is possibly even stronger. As you read the article you can sense the slightest bit of regret by McNulty for carried scorpion (Schumer) across the river. That regret is as phony as the balance of this non mea culpa. McNulty was and is a very willing betrayer angling for a future political plum.

The President is reaping what he himself has sown in this matter. ...

The President’s ludicrous instruction to “fully cooperate” with FBI agents running a political operation in the Plame matter while at the same time insisting that a condition of employment by this White House means forfeiture of the Fifth Amendment right has finally reached what should have been its obvious conclusion. AG Gonzales’ counselor, Monica Goodling has appropriately taken a leave of absence and announced her intention to make full use of her right against self incrimination. Apparently she paid close attention to Fitzgerald’s conduct in the Libby matter and decided that allegiance to a President unwilling to stand beside those who stand beside him was of little value.

McNulty’s fawning obsequience to Schumer and his sideshow is another matter. Having never been loyal to anyone other than himself he cannot be characterized as other than a week reed who should never have been entrusted with his office.

The President’s decision to rid himself of the eight US Attorneys who were not carrying out his policies was correct and without need of any justification other than that they did not please him. After all, that’s what “at the pleasure of the President” means. Cobbling up the “poor performance” rationale was shabby cover for the exercise of a legitimate prerogative and the cover was torn aside by McNulty in an attempt to ingratiate himself with Schumer.

The Bush administration has been remarkably clean (especially in comparison to the Clinton administration). The Indian Affairs scandal (Abramoff affair) was largely due to the venality of Congressmen who thought themselves beyond the law. The Plame matter could easily have been a tempest in a teapot if it had not been handled so maladroitly and the current brouhaha about the exercise of legitimate executive power is an entirely self inflicted wound.

It would be nice if the President woke up tomorrow and remembered that he is still only a politician. He isn’t “above” the fray and he is going to be running the Executive by himself if he doesn’t drop the “turn the other cheek” pose and return open blow for open blow. He might start by taking a hard look at his communication staff and a harder look at those closest to him. They are not telling him what he needs to hear if he is to complete his term with any support whatsoever.

Read the whole thing.

Dick Morris offers a little advice that George W. Bush, his White House team, and the Justice Department would be wise to take to to heart.

When will the Bush administration grow some guts? Except for its resolute — read: stubborn — position on Iraq, the White House seems incapable of standing up for itself and battling for its point of view. The Democratic assault on the administration over the dismissal of United States attorneys is the most fabricated and phony of scandals, but the Bush people offer only craven apologies, half-hearted defenses, and concessions. Instead, they should stand up to the Democrats and defend the conduct of their own Justice Department.

There is no question that the attorney general and the president can dismiss United States attorneys at any time and for any reason. We do not have civil servant U.S. attorneys but maintain the process of presidential appointment for a very good reason: We consider who prosecutes whom and for what to be a question of public policy that should reflect the president’s priorities and objectives. When a U.S. attorney chooses to go light in prosecuting voter fraud and political corruption, it is completely understandable and totally legitimate for a president and an attorney general to decide to fire him or her and appoint a replacement who will do so.

The Democratic attempt to attack Bush for exercising his presidential power to dismiss employees who serve at his pleasure smacks of nothing so much as the trumped-up grounds for the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson in 1868. Back then, radical Republicans tried to oust him for failing to obey the Tenure of Office Act, which they passed, barring him from firing members of his Cabinet (in this case, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton) without Senate approval. Soon after Johnson’s acquittal, the Supreme Court invalidated the Tenure of Office Act, in effect affirming Johnson’s position.

But instead of loudly asserting its view that voter fraud is, indeed, worthy of prosecution and that U.S. attorneys who treat such cases lightly need to go find new jobs, the Bush administration acts, for all the world, like the kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. All Republican supporters of the administration can do is to point to Bill Clinton’s replacement of U.S. attorneys when he took office. Because the president and the attorney general insist on acting guilty, the rest of the country has no difficulty in assuming that they are.

Bush, Rove, Gonzales and Co. should explain why the U.S. attorneys were dismissed by emphasizing the importance of the cases they were refusing to prosecute. By doing so, they can turn the Democratic attacks on them into demands to go easy on fraudulent voting. A good sense of public relations — and some courage — could turn this issue against the Democrats for blocking Bush’s efforts to crack down on the criminals he wanted prosecuted.

Read the whole thing.

George W. Bush, who is not running for anything, neither blocked the Plamegame witch hunt nor pardoned its only victim, Lewis Libby. But Fred Thompson, who is considering running for the presidency in 2008, will be hosting fundraisers to help pay for Libby’s defense.

He’s definitely winning points in my book.

J. Peter Mulhern suggests that, “more than halfway through his second term,” George W. Bush should give serious though to assuming control of his own government.

Scooter Libby is a convicted perjurer because the United States Department of Justice grossly abused its power and because politics short-circuited all the safeguards that are supposed to prevent such abuses. This is one of the most appalling perversions of a civilized judicial system since France sent Alfred Dreyfus to Devil’s Island because the ruling elite didn’t like Jews.

If the appellate and executive review processes fail as badly as the investigative and trial processes did in Libby’s case, Libby will go to a federal penitentiary because Democrats don’t like Republicans. There is enough shame in this outcome to go around.

Patrick Fitzgerald is a disgrace both to the legal profession and to the human race. His partisan allies, such as Senator Chuck Schumer and certain nameless bureaucrats at the CIA, are beneath contempt. The jury was unfit for its task, because it was apparently both prejudiced and intellectually incapable of noticing that the prosecution had no case. The trial judge lacked either the wit to see a gross miscarriage of justice unfolding before his eyes or the courage to stop it. But ultimate responsibility for Fitzgerald’s outrageous misconduct lies with his boss.

George W. Bush could have stopped Fitzgerald’s farce at any time. He could stop it today. He doesn’t even need to use the pardon power, at least not yet. Fitzgerald serves at the President’s pleasure Mr. Bush has every reason to be severely displeased. The President could simply fire him and, for good measure, order the DOJ to start an investigation into Fitzgerald’s misconduct in the Libby matter. President Bush could then instruct Fitzgerald’s replacement to join Libby’s defense in its motion for a new trial. If the court grants that motion the DOJ could then offer Libby its apologies and withdraw the prosecution. If it doesn’t the DOJ could join in Libby’s appeal. If that fails then the pardon power lies in reserve.

Of course, he won’t. He’ll just let the whole comedy proceed, then (at best) pardon Libby on the morning of Hillary’s inauguration.

says Gerard Baker in the London Times, who also echoes the Jonah Goldberg thesis that it would serve the democrats right to win in 2008. The theory that the burden of responsibility would sober the democrat leadership is an interesting one, I think, but it is obviously not necessarily right.

Somewhere, deep down, tucked away underneath their loathing for George Bush, in a secret place where the lights of smart dinner-party conversation and clever debating-society repartee never shine, the growing hordes of America-bashers must dread the moment he leaves office.

When President Bush goes into the Texas sunset, and especially if he is replaced by an enlightened, world-embracing Democrat, their one excuse, their sole explanation for all human suffering in the world will disappear too. And they may just find that the world is not as simple as they thought it was.

It’s been a great ride for the past six years, hasn’t it? George Bush and Dick Cheney and all those pantomime villains that succour him — the gay-bashing foot soldiers of the religious Right, the forktailed neoconservatives with their devotion to Israel, the dark titans of American corporate boardrooms spewing their carbon emissions above the pristine European skies. Having those guys around for so long provided a comfortable substitute for thinking hard about global challenges, a kind of intellectual escapism.

When one group of Muslims explodes bombs underneath the school buses of another group of Muslims in Baghdad or cuts the heads off humanitarian workers in Anbar, blame George Bush. When Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, denounces an imbalanced world and growls about the unpleasantness of democracy in eastern Europe, blame George Bush. When the Earth’s atmosphere gets a little more clogged with the output of power plants in China, India and elsewhere, blame George Bush.

Some day soon, though, this escapism will run into the dead end of reality. In fact, the most compelling case for the American people to elect a Democrat as president next year is that, in the US, leadership in a time of war requires the inclusion of both political parties, and in the rest of the world, people will have to start thinking about what is really the cause of all our woes.

Bush does a comedy routine with impersonator Steve Bridges at 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner.

11:24 video

Fox News:

A plan by the Bush administration to release detailed and possibly damning specific evidence linking the Iranian government to efforts to destabilize Iraq have been put on hold, U.S. officials told FOX News.

Officials had said a “dossier” against Iran compiled by the U.S. likely would be made public at a press conference this week in Baghdad, and that the evidence would contain specifics including shipping documents, serial numbers, maps and other evidence which officials say would irrefutably link Iran to weapons shipments to Iraq.

Now, U.S. military officials say the decision to go public with the findings has been put on hold for several reasons, including concerns over the reaction from Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — as well as inevitable follow-up questions that would be raised over what the U.S. should do about it.

Michael Gerson takes Virginia’s wordsmith Senator Jim Webb out behind the shed over his democrat rebuttal speech last night:

The Democratic response by Virginia Sen. James Webb was also memorable, in a different way. Whenever a politician puts out to the media that he has thrown away the speechwriters’ draft and written the remarks himself (as Webb did), it is often a sign of approaching mediocrity. This was worse. Senator Webb made liberal use of clichés: the middle class is “the backbone” of the country, which is losing its “place at the table.” I am not even sure there is a literary term for a mixed metaphor that crosses two clichés. And Senator Webb’s logic was as incoherent as his language (the two are often related). No “precipitous withdrawal”—but retreat “in short order.” Fight the war on terror vigorously—except where the terrorists have chosen to fight it. It is, perhaps, a good thing that James Webb earned a job as senator. As a speechwriter he would starve.

But Joshua Stanton supplies the rebuttal speech Jim Webb should have given.

My fellow Americans, We have have a long and glorious history that I join you in celebrating here tonight. Let me share with you this deguerrotype of my great great great great grandfather, a penniless drunkard and street-corner pugilist who sat in a Dublin jail, until he was paroled and came to Virginia in 1724, just in time to join in the massacre of the peaceful Massapequasimolie Indians. I would hope you draw strength from this tomorrow when you return to your janitorial duties, brooding about the hour when you will rise up against the robber barons of the beef trust, but none of you are likely to have understood those historical references anyway.

But let me get to the real reason we are here, besides your mandate to disband the Mark Foley Man-Boy Love Association: to change course in Iraq. I know a lot about changing course because I was the Navy Secretary in my young Republican days, when I was one of the people my most enthusiastic supporters would ordinarily revile.

Read the whole thing.

Jules Crittenden offers George W. Bush the speech he ought to give tonight.

The State of the Union is a disaster. I did my best, but I made mistakes, and my best wasn’t good enough.

We went to war without building up our army, and now, I am trying to make up for that.

But that is not the disaster.

The disaster is that you, Congress and the American people, do not care to fight.

Faced with a fundamental challenge to our own security, to everything we believe in, to the world order to peace and security for which we and our parents fought so hard for so many years, you now want to pretend like none of these threats are real. You want to surrender to the evil I have been telling you about. An evil that, unchecked, can consume large parts of the world and threatens to usher in a dark age.

You didn’t like it when I talked about evil. Sounded too simple, too uncompromising, too moralistic. Too … biblical.

I don’t know what else you call people who fly passenger jets into office buildings; who rape women in front of their husbands and children, and execute their opponents in acid baths; who seek to spread tyrannical and archaic religious regimes that enslave women and stifle fundamental freedoms. Who want to dominate the world’s primary oil fields with nuclear weapons.

I call it evil. Works for me.

I’ve heard all the comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam. George Bush’s Vietnam. The myopia is astonishing, even for me, George Bush, who you all think just isn’t that smart. But I learned something in school: People who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Didn’t you learn anything from Vietnam? Didn’t you see what happened when your predecessors in Congress, disgruntled and responding to public opinion polls just like you are, voted repeatedly to undermine an ally that was fighting for its survival and making headway against evil? There, I’ve said it again. Millions of people were murdered or imprisoned.

And then, those who wished us ill … the evil-doers … evil, evil evil … took advantage of our weakness…

Where do you think this war we are now engaged in started, anyway? Just ask Osama bin Laden, veteran of the Afghan war against the Soviets, what lesson he learned from two decades of American appeasement and withdrawal in the face of provocation.

Now, you want to negotiate with two of the world’s primary sponsors of terrorism, who are directly involved in support of the terrorists who murder our soldiers. You want to make an arrangement by which we will exit Iraq, and leave it to them. To loot, to murder, to fight over, while the rest of the world’s evil regimes look on, see our weakness, and plot their own moves.

You can try that, with resolutions, by cutting spending for troops in the field, as you seek the short-term satisfaction of withdrawal. But I remain President of the United States, and as long as I am, I will be no lame duck in this fight.

I will engage evil directly where I find it, in Iraq and in Iran. With an aggressive and ruthless new strategy and a plan to build our army as we should have a long time ago, I will show the American people that we can fight and we can win. I expect that the American people, though misled by their press and many of their elected representatives, will see results and will get it. Because the American people are a people who in the end don’t give up, don’t stop fighting, refuse to lose, and will choose to win. I have faith in them.

Oh, there’s another one of those words you don’t like.

A nation that is not willing to fight for what it believes in, for its place in the world, is not worthy of its own ideals. But that is not America. I now intend to help America restore its faith in itself. By fighting this necessary fight that we cannot afford to lose.

John L. Overland, Jr., Esq.

Even as I write this I know that people smarter than I will have written their own concise and analytical commentaries as to what went wrong for Republicans during the mid-term elections of 2006 and for me, that’s OK. My intent is not to analyze what went wrong for us but to express my own appreciation to a man often belittled, often maligned, and often unjustly so. That man is my President, George W. Bush, and right now I sincerely believe that the President needs some kind words. He has received damned little in the course of his Presidency. Instead, throughout his Presidency and certainly in the last week he has suffered the most vicious attacks, consistently from the Left but lately even from certain of us on the Right, and it’s time to provide an honest appraisal.

I have a few problems with Gerge W. Bush myself, but I always reconsider when I reflect upon his ability to drive the lefties right around the bend. Nobody who affects leftists the way the crucifix affects vampires can be all bad.

But she finds what the democrats will do with the opportunity presented by their recent electoral success is unclear.

As for Democrats, they have a unique opportunity, one they haven’t had in 14 years, to redefine for the public what their party is. It is their chance to change their public label. Now, with the cameras of the country trained on Capitol Hill, they can throw off the old baggage of the 1960s and ‘70s and erase the cartoon version of their party, which is culturally radical, weak in its defense of America, profligate, McGovernite, bitterly devoted to the demands of its groups as opposed to the needs of America.

In 1992 the young Southern moderate Bill Clinton got a chance to erase the cartoon, and he did, for a while. But he quickly slid back, undone by his own confusion as to the purpose of his power, and reinforced the public’s worst assumptions about his party with everything from the health-care fiasco to using the Lincoln bedroom as a comp room for big rollers to horrifying fund-raising and personal scandals. What he did prove—and the area in which he did break away from the cartoon version of Democrats—was that he didn’t dislike money or its makers. He did nothing to harm Wall Street, little to slow the economy, displayed a personal tropism toward the rich. Beyond that he didn’t change his party’s rep.

Can Nancy Pelosi? She looked radiant when she was elected by the Democratic conference Thursday, and she was careful to speak—everyone was careful to speak—of children and grandchildren. No one held up a sign saying “We’re Normal,” but the message was sent.

Can the Democrats spend the next two years showing a moderate, centrist, mature face to the country? Republicans say—this is the big phrase—“It’s not in their DNA.” But betting on the other guy’s inability to change is not, really, a plan. And these Democrats, or many of them, seem a rising generation of pragmatists. They seem to know what’s at stake. If they scare America, they give Republicans a ready campaign theme for 2008: If you liked the crazy Democratic Congress, you’ll love a crazy Democratic White House.

Can they go down the center, or will radicalism of various sorts erupt and gain sway? No one knows. The Democrats don’t know. The answer is going to help shape America’s future political history. And it will help shape George Bush’s. If the Democrats are radical, he will look more reasonable, not only in the eyes of the public but of history. If the Democrats are moderate, I think he will do something surprising, and yet much in line with his personality and nature.

She predicts, on the other hand, that George W. Bush will outdo both the Paleocons and the Neocons in dumping the Republicans.

Old affection and regard for the White House and the president have dissipated. But fear remains. They have two more years, they have the power to nominate, they have money. And so a party that might begin the process of refinding itself by thoughtfully detaching from the White House will, likely, not.

But I see a surprise coming.

What is the first thing men do when they’re drowning? They save themselves. With the waters rising on every side the president will attempt to re-enact his first and most personally satisfying political success when, as governor of Texas, he won plaudits and popularity for working hand in glove with Democrats. He accepted many Democratic assumptions—he shared them, it wasn’t hard.

The White House’s reaction to the recent election was, essentially, Now we can get our immigration bill through with the Democrats. That was a clue. I suspect the president will over the next two years do to Republicans what he did to Donald Rumsfeld: over the side, under the bus and off the sled.

He doesn’t need them. They’re not popular. They’re not where the action is. He’ll work closely with Democrats, gain in time new and admiring press—“Bush has grown,” etc.

This is the path he will take to build his popularity and create a new legacy. If the Democrats let him. It would be in their interests, so I think maybe they will.

AJStrata has a good word to say for George W. Bush and the Conservatism of the Bush Administration, and urges the rest of us to refrain from jumping ship.

Let me describe what I think is an attractive conservative vision. It begins with supporting and respecting our President and all his accomplishments. And since I and many others still have unflinching support and admiration for the man, I decided to steal some from the commenters here and dub this conservative view “Bush Conservatives”.

Bush Conservatives not only believe in Reagan’s 11th commandment to not speak ill of fellow conservatives – we live it. From the Gang of 14, to Harriet Miers, to Dubai Ports World and to the immigration issue – there has been a brand of Republican which eschewed the 11th commandment. So let the Republicans be defined by that group – Bush Conservatives will be defined by their antithesis. Bush conservatives are not afraid of the word ‘compromise’. They despise the word ‘failure’. If there is a good idea, we do not care what party gets credit – we care that the good ideas get enacted. It is not Party uber America anymore.

Read the whole thing.

Beth agrees with him, and takes a firmer line with the Paleocons:

I’m still very, very angry at the Buchanan Conservatives/neo-right/cannibals/whatever you wanna call ‘em. It is THEY who I blame more than anyone for the GOP/conservative loss in the election. I suppose it’s irrational to blame them first, but they are the ones with whom I have the most contact, if you will, or at least the most in common (in that we are bloggers). They worked for over two years, slandering everyone on their own side whenever there was a point of disagreement. How the hell did they think the media wouldn’t lap that up? Dissension within the conservative ranks? A gift to the liberal media! And as a result, rather than putting real pressure on those who needed it, they simply allowed the left’s sound-bite slogans, “culture of corruption” and “pork-loving Republicans” to penetrate the usually-disengaged voters’ minds.

A generative anthropologist (Eric Gans?) keyboards a deserved eulogy for what its author describes as “a courageous, novel, and, of course, risky strategy.”

We have just witnessed an epic battle between a courageous, novel, and, of course, risky strategy for transforming the very conditions that have made us powerless against victimary Islamist blackmail, on the one hand, and the forces of continuity with pre-9/11 policies (I would say “illusions,” but part of my argument here will be in favor of stepping back from these more immediate polemical stances), in particular foreign policy realism and transnational progressivism, the political form of White Guilt, on the other. The forces of continuity have won…

Read the whole thing.

Hat tip to truepeers.

Reuters reports:

President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan said that after the September 11 attacks the United States threatened to bomb his country if it did not cooperate with America’s campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Musharraf, in an interview with CBS news magazine show “60 Minutes” that will air Sunday, said the threat came from Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and was given to Musharraf’s intelligence director.

“The intelligence director told me that (Armitage) said, ‘Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age,”’ Musharraf said. “I think it was a very rude remark…”

The Pakistani leader, whose remarks were distributed to the media by CBS, said he reacted to the threat in a responsible way. “One has to think and take actions in the interest of the nation, and that’s what I did,” Musharraf said.

Before the Sept 11, 2001 attacks, Pakistan was one of the only countries in the world to maintain relations with the Taliban, which was harboring al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, and many Pakistanis were sympathetic with the neighboring Islamic state.

But within days of the attacks Musharraf cut his government’s ties to the Taliban regime and cooperated with U.S. efforts to track and capture Al-Qaeda and Taliban forces that sought refuge in Pakistan.

They need to have the same conversation with more than one country right now.
———————————-
Hat tip to LGF.

The New York Times reports that democrats, relying on polls showing public approval numbers for President Bush dropping, are making opposition to Bush the main focus of their campaigns.

Mr. Bush’s image this fall is being invoked by Democrats as a proxy for Americans who want change in Washington; who oppose the war in Iraq; who think Mr. Bush has not done enough to protect the nation from future terrorist attacks; or who are angry with changes Mr. Bush has pressed in Medicare.

“It’s not just photos,” said John Lapp, who runs the Democratic campaign committee’s independent advertising program. “It’s statements and actions and votes that show a pattern of people being with Bush.”

Steve Murphy, a consultant whose firm made the Iraq advertisement for Ms. Madrid of New Mexico, said: “The war is a dominant issue. For all these Republican candidates who are going through gyrations to distance themselves from Bush — well, if they support Bush on the war, there is nothing more illustrative of the fact that they are in bed with Bush.”

Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat leading his party’s campaign to take back the Senate, said: “In 2004, people were still happy with Bush’s course in Iraq. Now they are not.”

Peggy Noonan, in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, explained why Bush-hatred just isn’t enough.

Pundits and historians call Mr. Bush polarizing — and he is, but in some unusual ways. For one thing, he’s not trying to polarize. He is not saying, “My team is for less government, your team is for more — my team, stand with me!”

Mr. Bush has muddied what his team stands for. He has made it all come down to him — not to philosophy but to him and his certitudes.

What is polarizing about him is the response he elicits from Americans just by being himself. They have deep questions about him, even as he is vivid to them.

Americans don’t really know, deep down in their heads, whether this president, in his post-9/11 decisions, is a great man or a catastrophe, a visionary or wholly out of his depth.

What they increasingly sense is that he’s one thing or the other. And this is not a pleasant thing to sense. The stakes are so high. If you woke most Americans up at 3:00 in the morning and said, “Tell me, looking back, what would you have liked in an American president after 9/11?” most of them would answer, “I was just hoping for a good man who did moderately good things.” Who caught Osama, cleaned out Afghanistan, made it proof of the possibility of change and of the price to be paid by those who choose terror as a tactic. Not this historical drama queen, this good witch or bad.

The one thing I think America agrees on is that George Bush and his presidency have been enormously consequential. He has made decisions that will shape the future we’ll inhabit. It’s never “We must do this” with Mr. Bush. It’s always “the concentrated work of generations.” He doesn’t declare, he commits; and when you back him, you’re never making a discrete and specific decision, you’re always making a long-term investment.

This can be exhausting…

With all this polarity, this drama, this added layer Mr. Bush brings to a nation already worn by the daily demands of modern individual life, the political alternative, the Democrats, should roar in six weeks from now, right? And return us to normalcy?

Well, that’s not what I sense.

I like Democrats. I feel sympathy for the hungry and hapless, identify with aspirations, am deeply frustrated with Mr. Bush. More seriously, I believe we are at the start of a struggle for the survival of the West, and I know it is better for our country if both of its two major parties have equal responsibility in that struggle. Beyond that, let’s be frank. Bad days are coming, and we’re all going to have to get through them together, with two parties, arm in arm. It’s a big country.

But I feel the Democrats this year are making a mistake. They think it will be a cakewalk. A war going badly, immigration, high spending, a combination of sentimentality and dimness in foreign affairs — everyone in the world wants to be free, and in exactly the way we define freedom at dinner parties in McLean and Chevy Chase — and conservative thinkers and writers hopping mad and hoping to lose the House.

The Democrats’ mistake — ironically, in a year all about Mr. Bush — is obsessing on Mr. Bush. They’ve been sucker-punched by their own animosity.

“The Democrats now are incapable of answering a question on policy without mentioning Bush six times,” says pollster Kellyanne Conway. “What is your vision on Iraq? ‘Bush lied us into war.’ Health care? ‘Bush hasn’t a clue.’ They’re so obsessed with Bush it impedes them from crafting and communicating a vision all their own.” They heighten Bush by hating him.

One of the oldest clichés in politics is, “You can’t beat something with nothing.” It’s a cliché because it’s true. You have to have belief, and a program. You have to look away from the big foe and focus instead on the world and philosophy and programs you imagine.

Mr. Bush’s White House loves what the Democrats are doing. They want the focus on him. That’s why he’s out there talking, saying Look at me.

Because familiarity doesn’t only breed contempt, it can breed content. Because if you’re going to turn away from him, you’d better be turning toward a plan, and the Democrats don’t appear to have one.

Which leaves them unlikely to win leadership. And unworthy of it, too.

Former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, no democrat, evaluates the Bush administration’s policies, accomplishments, and failures.

We are at war with jihadists motivated by a violent ideology based on an extremist interpretation of the Islamic faith. This enemy is decentralized and geographically dispersed around the world. Its organizations range from a fully functioning state such as Iran to small groups of individuals in American cities.

We are fighting this war on three distinct fronts: the home front, the operational front and the strategic-political front. Let us look first at the home front. The Bush administration deserves much credit for the fact that, despite determined efforts to carry them out, there have been no successful Islamist attacks within the United States since Sept. 11, 2001. This is a significant achievement, but there are growing dangers and continuing vulnerabilities…

One of the most deep-seated of these problems is the U.S. government’s tendency to treat this war as a law enforcement issue. Following a recommendation of the Sept. 11 commission, Congress sought to remedy this problem by creating a national security service within the FBI to focus on preventive intelligence rather than forensic evidence. This has proved to be a complete failure. As late as June of this year, Mark Mershon of the FBI testified that the bureau will not monitor or surveil any Islamist unless there is a “criminal predicate.” Thus the large Islamist support infrastructure that the commission identified here in the United States is free to operate until its members actually commit a crime.

Our attempt to reform the FBI has failed. What is needed now is a separate domestic intelligence service without police powers, like the British MI-5…

Turning to the operational front, our objectives are to destroy the capability of Islamist organizations to attack us and to deny them geographic sanctuaries in which they can recruit, train and operate.

The post-Sept. 11 threat demanded preemptive attack against Islamist bases, and this was done without delay in the invasion of Afghanistan to destroy al-Qaeda and remove the Taliban government, its ally and supporter. It was a brilliantly executed operation in which all our armed forces and CIA operatives combined in a ruthlessly efficient victory. In the succeeding years, however, the Taliban and al-Qaeda have been able to regroup, rebuild and re-attack because they enjoy a secure sanctuary largely free from attack within the border areas of Pakistan.

The next military operation of the war was, of course, the invasion of Iraq. Here again the combined military operations of the United States and Britain were brilliantly successful in defeating Iraqi forces and removing Saddam Hussein and his regime. But in the aftermath of that victory, grave blunders were made. There was a total misunderstanding of the requirements for successful occupation.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was proved right in his keeping the initial invasion force small and agile, but desperately wrong in disbanding all Iraqi security forces and civil service with no plan to fill the resulting vacuum. Certainly it is hard now to understand the logic of that decision.

The military occupation in Iraq is consuming practically the entire defense budget and stretching the Army to its operational limits. This is understood quite clearly by both our friends and our enemies, and as a result, our ability to deter enemies around the world is disintegrating.

This brings us to the third front, the strategic-political. The jihadist regime in Iran feels no reservation about flaunting its policy to go nuclear, and it unleashed Hezbollah, its client terrorist organization, to attack Israel. In Somalia a jihadist group has seized control of the government. In Pakistan, Islamists are becoming more powerful, and attacks within India are increasing. Governments in Indonesia, Malaysia, Egypt, Algeria and Jordan are under increasing Islamist pressure. In the Pacific, North Korea now feels free to rattle its missile sabers, firing seven on America’s Independence Day. China is rapidly building its 600-ship navy to fill the military vacuum that we are creating in the Pacific as our fleet shrinks well below critical mass. Not one of these states believes that we can undertake any credible additional military operations while we are bogged down in Iraq.

The indoctrination and recruiting of jihadists from Indonesia, South Asia and the Middle East are carried out through religious establishments that are supported overwhelmingly by the Saudi and Iranian governments. Even in the United States, some 80 percent of Islamic mosques and schools are closely aligned with the Wahhabist sect and heavily dependent on Saudi funding. Five years after Sept. 11, nothing has been done to materially affect this root source of jihadism. The movement continues to grow, fueled by an ever-increasing flow of petrodollars from the Persian Gulf.

There is no evidence that the administration has ever raised this matter with the Saudi government as a high-level issue, and—just as damaging—it has never acknowledged it as an issue to the American people. Thus Rumsfeld’s question—are we killing, capturing or deterring jihadists faster than they are being produced?—must be answered with an emphatic no.

In reviewing progress on the three fronts of this war, even the most sanguine optimist cannot yet conclude that we are winning or that we can win without some significant changes of policy.

Victor David Hanson thinks Bush is doing the right thing, but faces some very serious problems in keeping the American public’s support while trying to fight a less-than-total war.

Only a reincarnated Chamberlain or Daladier could think that there is no Islamist commonality between the recent hostage-taking of Western telejournalists on the West Bank, Iranian threats to extinguish Israel and end the American presence in the Gulf, terrorist attacks on soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, plans of killing thousands in Britain and Germany, or plots to blow up American airliners in London — as if Japanese fascists, Italian fascists, and German fascists could not have made war in unison against the liberal democracies given their differing agendas and sects, and lack of coordination.

And even when the Islamists do not succeed, their threats and rhetoric cripple the West: when Mr. Ahmadinejihad rants about wiping Israel off the face of the map or sending gunboats into the Gulf, he garners a few billion extra in annual petrodollars due to the frenzy of oil speculators. A few foiled terrorists in London still managed to force millions of people into humiliating searches of their carry-on luggage, and cost the West untold millions in lost flights, delays, and inconvenience.

In fact, the current strategy of having removed the two most odious dictatorships — the Taliban and Saddam Hussein’s — and fostering democracies in their places remains the only sensible course. Far from winning this war for the future of the Middle East, Syria, and Iran are increasingly isolated, desperate to thwart democratization that surrounds their borders in Turkey, Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, and Lebanon, and facing world sanctions for their roguery. For all its messiness, the promotion of democratic reform infuriates the Islamists and paid-off Arab journalists and intellectual toadies alike, and ultimately works in our favor.

But right now the real problem has been the necessity of reversing the order of traditional postwar democratization. The old calculus was first the proverbial horse of defeating and vanquishing utterly the enemy; then the cart of showing magnanimity in rebuilding the country of a contrite loser. Only in that order would the Americans be willing to give millions to the former supporters of once murderous Nazis, Italian fascists, or imperial Japanese who had killed and maimed their sons.

In the Middle East, we reversed the sequence, on the idealistic — and I think correct — premise that the Afghan and Iraqi people were captive to their dictators, and that we wished to avoid an all-encompassing conflict along the lines of World War II. In other words, we trusted that the Taliban and Saddam Hussein explained the recent savagery of the Afghans and Iraqis, rather than the innate savagery of the Afghans and Iraqis themselves explaining the creation of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. The result of this confidence, despite the carnage of war, was that democracy was ushered in, the rogues were to be kept out, and peace was supposed to follow from a grateful, liberated people.

But why should it, when the hard hand of American war was not first completely felt — nor the jihadists utterly vanquished and discredited and any who supported them? Unless there is some element of fear, or at least the suggestion of consequences to come for recalcitrance, why should an Iraqi cease his easy support of Hezbollah, his anti-Semitism, or his cheap support for Islamist terrorists around the block? It would be as if we expected to end slavery outright in the Confederacy around 1862, or rid Germany of Nazis around 1943, or persuade the Japanese fascists to vote in 1944 — before such ideologies have been utterly defeated and the steep price for those who tolerated them paid in full.

So what Mr. Bush is faced with is this nearly impossible paradox of half war/half peace: at a time when most are getting fed up with abhorrent Middle Eastern jihadists who blow up, hijack, and behead in the name of their religion, he is attempting to convince the same American public and the Western world at large to spend their blood and treasure to help Muslim Afghans, Iraqis, and now Lebanese, who heretofore — whether out of shared anti-Americanism or psychological satisfaction in seeing the overdog take a hit — have not been much eager to separate themselves from the rhetoric of radical Islam.

In any case, the administration’s problem is not really its (sound) strategy, nor its increasingly improved implementation that we see in Baghdad, but simply an American public that so far understandably cannot easily differentiate millions of brave Iraqis and Afghans, who risk their lives daily to hunt terrorists and ensure reform, from the Islamists of the Muslim Street who broadcast their primordial hatred for Israel and the United States incessantly.

Remember the surreal Middle East: we freed Shiites from Saddam; so Shiite Iran in response tries to destroy Shiite democrats in Iraq, who, being constantly attacked by terrorists and militias, in turn sympathize with anti-democratic Hezbollah terrorists and militias in Lebanon. And at one point last month, the Lebanese, between slurs against America, were expecting the United States to send it cash, retrieve expatriates immediately, restrain Israel, do something about Hezbollah, and praise Lebanese critics — and all at once.

So how can one expect Americans to witness the barbarism of the jihadists, the creepy rhetoric of the imams and mullahs, the triangulation of Arab governments, and the puerility of the Muslim Street, pause, take a deep breath, and sigh, “Ah, they are frustrated because they are unfree and poor, and so in error blame us for their own autocracies’ failures. Therefore, we must be generous in our sacrifices to allow them the same opportunities for freedom that we enjoy.”

That contemplation and forbearance are both too complex and too much to ask of a post-September 11 public, and so end up as a piñata for political opportunists on both sides to smack to shreds.

On the Right the politicking works out with cynicism and disgust: “These ungrateful and hateful people aren’t worth the life of another American soldier or American dollar.”

Yet the Bush idealism wins no points from the Left either. Both for partisan purposes, and due to the wages of multiculturalism that oppose any Western effort to bring to the other the good life that they themselves so eagerly embrace, Leftists still harp about no blood for oil and assorted conspiracies in lieu of legitimate analysis and criticism.

What, then, is needed — aside from crushing the jihadists and securing Afghanistan and Iraq — is more articulation and explanation. The word “liberal” — as in promoting liberal values abroad, and reminding the world of the traditions of liberal tolerance — needs to be employed more often.

Some tough language is also helpful on occasion: any time the free democracies of Iraq or Afghanistan wish to vote to send American troops home, of course we will comply. Likewise, Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon are under no compulsion to accept hated American aid or military help. And just as the American public needs reminding that millions of Middle Easterners are currently fighting jihadist terror in Afghanistan and Iraq — we wish we could say the same about our “allies” in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia — so too the Iraqi and Afghan governments should convey to the American people that their support is appreciated, and its continuance deemed vital.

How odd that the president must explain the pathologies of the Middle East to such a degree as to warn Americans of our mortal danger, but not to the point of excess so that we feel that there is no hope for such people. He must somehow suggest that jihadism could not imperil us were it not for the “moderates” who tolerate and appease it — while this is the very same group that we feel duty-bound to offer an alternative other than theocracy or dictatorship. And he must offer a postwar plan of reconstruction to the citizens of the Middle East at a time when many of them do not feel that their romantic jihadists have ever really been defeated at all.

Even the eloquence of a Lincoln or Churchill would find all that difficult.

Bill Quick delivers a devastating (and, alas! only too accurate an) evaluation of George W. Bush’s fundamental failures of leadership.

Bush’s proud words of five years ago stand revealed as hollow and meaningless. What happened?

What happened was one of the biggest failures of leadership in Presidential history. Bush supporters will claim that Bush was done in by a liberal media and the ferocious hatred of liberals and leftwingers, but that is one of the things true leadership is all about: Managing and overcoming opposition in order to achieve the necessary goals – in this case, the destruction of world Islamist terrorism and the regimes that support it.

Bush turned out to be singularly ill-equipped for this task, both by skill and by temperament. His public relations management was curiously hesitant and badly timed, and, of course, his inabilty to speak effectively in public was a gigantic handicap. His temperament, it eventually became clear, was hesitant, overly calculating, timid, and “compassionate.” Compassion has its place, but not in warfighting. The Bush we know would not have pulled the trigger on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He abdicated the hard decisions in favor of political maneuvering and meaningless gestures.

Looking back, it becomes obvious that Bush never intended, or, perhaps, never intended with any conviction to actually do what he said he would do. His own brave promises reveal their hollowness with the passage of time. The world is a far more dangerous place for the United States, thanks to Bush’s failures. Today, we stand threatened “by the world’s most dangerous regimes with the world’s most destructive weapons.” And the Wahabbis of Saudi Arabia continue to fund a global terror support machine the likes of which we have not seen since the Soviet regime financed and trained every two-bit communist terror organization it could find.

That is unlikely to change under the Bush administration and, indeed, I expect it to grow worse, as I don’t believe Bush has any intention of keeping an effective US military force in the region capable of giving pause to Iran, or to Saudi Arabia.

Instead, we are treated to distractions that give the impression that somebody (in this case, Israel) is doing something about some Islamist terrorists (in this case, open Iranian surrogates), and the US is “doing its part” by “protecting” Israel against the likes of France. And Bush’s vaunted “political credit” (which probably never existed in the first place) has dribbled down the drain of his own incompetence.

As for me? I’ve moved on. The first administration of the first century of the American Third Millennium will, in my estimation, be remembered as one of the biggest failures of that century. Bush’s great failure was, not invading Iraq, but not weathering the adversity that followed through acts of real leadership, and then pressing on with the necessary military destruction of the other regimes he, himself, named as most dangerous five years ago.

I’m hoping we can get through the next two years without any major disasters, and then I’m looking to elect a real war leader to the White House – somebody with a warrior’s temperament and a leader’s skills. George Bush has neither. He is a dangerous failure, and America will be well rid of him.

America’s last great war leader was a man from New York. Hmm. Is anybody like that running for President in 2008.

This last reads to me like a hint in favor of Giuliani.

Phooey! Giuliani certainly has a lot more truculence and brazen personal ambition than George W. Bush, but I wouldn’t call that leadership. Inspired by the chap whose portrait used to hang in Rudy’s boyhood social clubs, no doubt, Giuliani proved capable of providing a dose of cleaning-up-the-streets fascism, which was sufficient to pass for big-time reform in New York City’s perennial cesspool of corruption and incompetence. But what passes for good government in 1920s Italy, or today’s Gotham, is not going to attract the GOP’s national base. Giuliani will never survive, either personally or politically, the close scrutiny applied to presidential candidates.

Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds.

James Lewis reports that, with Mike Wallace playing sycophant, on Sunday night Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will threaten the president of the United States with death on national television if he fails to convert to Islam.

If CBS had a real American at that interview, he would have stood up and struck Ahmadinejad in the face for his insolence.

I have no trouble picturing how Andrew Jackson or Theodore Roosevelt would have responded to such a threat.

The Southern (reporting from Southern Illinois) tells a heartwarming story. U.S. Army Lt. Col. Grayson Gile of Marion, Illinois, while serving in Afghanistan as an officer in the Combined Joint Special Operation Task Force, met an elderly Hazara man who had taken a year, working in secrecy, to hand knot a rug as a personal gesture of thanks for the liberation of Afghanistan to the American President.

While in the country, Gile got to know many of the natives. “We got to have quite a bit of interaction with the people of the host nation, probably more contact than most soldiers. It took time to establish a rapport with them, but once we established trust, we had friendships,” he said.

One of those friendships involved a Kabul rug merchant who pulled Gile aside before he left the country. The merchant told Gile the story of an elderly man, so overwhelmed with gratitude to the United States for its intervention in the conflict that he made a gift for President Bush – a gift that was a year in the making and made, given the conditions of the country, under penalty of death.

Gile was astonished when he saw the hand-knotted rug, a portrait of Bush, filled with Christian and Catholic symbolism. Filling the center of the rug is an incredible likeness of Bush, dressed in religious vestments, standing at a podium decorated with the official seal of the country and flanked by two waving American flags.

Directly above Bush is Jesus with a sacred heart and stigmata carefully knotted into the rug’s pattern. The rug also shows cherubs and, apparently in an homage to both Bush and a fallen Northern Alliance leader, two lions.

“(Ahmed Shah) Masood was often called ‘the Lion of Panjshir.’ As one of the country’s military leaders, he put some very, very heavy licks to the Soviets and then turned around and delivered the same to the Taliban,” Gile said. “He was assassinated two days before 9/11.”

One corner of the rug reads, “President George W. Bush,” while the opposing corner has the words, “Number one champion.”

I can hear the leftists’ teeth grinding even now.

It’s not like he’s all that conservative, really. (He spends money like a democrat, and he added another major entitlement program.)

And it’s not like he’s done such a great job managing the war. (He’s invaded only two lousy Islamic countries and he has not even interned the antiwar radicals.)

But he does have one great quality: He is absolutely fabulous at upsetting and irritating the left. When the typical moonbat starts talking about George W. Bush, he turns positively purple with rage, and emits a fine spray of spit as the pace of his hysterical rant accelerates.

Mark Morford demonstrates the correct technique in today’s SF Chronicle:

It is like some sort of virus. It is like some sort of weird and painful rash on your face that makes you embarrassed to walk out the door and so you sit there day after day, waiting for it to go away, slathering on ointment and Bactine and scotch. And yet still it lingers.

Some days the pain is so searing and hot you want to cut off your own head with a nail file. Other days it is numb and pain-free and seemingly OK, to the point where you think it might finally be all gone and you allow yourself a hint of a whisper of a positive feeling, right up until you look in the mirror, and scream.

George W. Bush is just like that.

Everyone I know has had enough. Everyone I know is just about done. There is this threshold of happy deadened disgust, this point where the body simply resigns itself to the pain, a point where the disease, the poison has seeped so deeply into the bones that you just have to laugh and shrug it all off and go for a drink. Or 10.

You do have to love Bush.

Jules Crittenden in the Boston Herald identifies exactly the same mistake, which folly goes back to Lyndon Johnson and before him to Harry Truman: half-measures and the failure to mobilize the whole of the nation in the war effort, in a democracy like ours, will result in a continual erosion of public support, if victory is not achieved over a very short interval of time.

Prosecution of any war will always be opposed by a radical and pacifist fringe, who will quickly attract the support of the community of fashion, which is always in search of a cause. Once that alliance is organized and in operation, the general public will be subjected to an endless barrage of whingeing and anti-war propaganda, which in the end will demoralize the general public. Normal people will insist the war be abandoned, in the end, simply because they are so terribly, terribly sick of listening to the Left.

Five years on, some people remain unaware that this is war; that we are facing an enemy that will do anything in its power to destroy us.

The fact that on any given day we are free to fly around the world, drive our cars without restriction and buy as much food as we like in rich variety seems to have confused them.

The lack of U-boats attacking the shipping lanes has lulled some people into thinking this is not actually a war. Not a real war, certainly not a good war, not like World War II. They mock the very notion that it is a war, having fun with the name “Global War on Terror.” They put forward the notion that, like almost everything else in our American lives, this thing that has been called a war is a choice. A bad choice. Who can blame them? Even fighting in this war, unlike most of the great wars our that threatened our existence in the past, is a choice made by a small percentage of Americans who have joined the Armed Forces. George Bush, while announcing that we were at war five years ago, made a decision to encourage Americans to go about their business as usual. Rather than mobilizing the country for war, he decided he could fight this unconventional war by unconventional means, and with the forces already at hand. Normalcy had its uses as a weapon. It showed that our enemy could not hobble us. In other respects, it was a mistake…

Bush chose not to treat this as total war, insisting it could be done with some finetuning of the resources at hand. His domestic opposition has taken that idea several steps farther, insisting Islamic terrorism is a police problem that does not require military force and certainly not the suspension of some legal niceties. After all, they do not consider it an actual war of the sort faced by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt when they destroyed cities and imprisoned anyone who threatened the security of the nation.

Ironically, Bush has been so effective with his approach, that there has not been an attack on the mainland United States since 9-11. That has allowed his opposition to maintain that all the unpleasant things Bush has had to do domestically and abroad are unnecessary, or the very least excessive. They’ve had the freedom to nitpick at the execution of the war, expressing indignation at every misstep, while ignoring major accomplishments, which they see after all as the accomplishments of an unnecessary war based on global intelligence failures that, in hindsight, they cast as lies.

Randy Barnett correctly identifies two of the current administration’s most serious mistakes:

It has long seemed clear to me and many others who are otherwise sympathetic to its policies that the Bush administration made two colossal errors in prosecuting the general war on terror.

First: Not seeking quick explicit congressional authorization for such policies as incarceration, military tribunals, etc. The Hamdan case was just one result of this failure. Now, such involvement is much more difficult to accomplish; then it would have been relatively easy. Just not as easy as going it alone, which has proved to be the harder course in the long run.

Second: Not involving the American public directly in supporting the war. Tax increases or a military draft were not needed for this. But bond drives, resource collection, and other assistance-to-the-military programs — even better, some form of volunteer genuine militia service — in the wake of 9/11 would have given the public some ownership of the resulting policies. Many called for these sorts of initiatives at the time. They were waiting to be asked to pitch in and help. Instead the administration adopted a Vietnam-type strategy of “We’ll handle things; you all go about your business.” Which leads to bad reactions when “things” do not go as smoothly as expected.

The administration essentially opted for a one-branch war, and the country is now paying the price for that decision. While the failure to involve Congress is merely hard to rectify at this point, the failure adequately to involve the public may now be impossible to remedy.

(with the aid of some very clever editing) U2’s Sunday Bloody Sunday.

Hat tip to Mr. Right.

The pictures make it obvious.

George W. Bush’s “best presidential moment” was quoted in translation from an interview with the German language weekly Bild am Sonntag.

“I would say the best moment of all was when I caught a 7.5 pound perch in my lake,” he told the newspaper in an interview published on Sunday.

Although the White House’s English language transcript correctly describes the president’s catch as a largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides), a number of moonbat blogs are leaping (like hungry bass) after a rather unsurprising English-to-German-then-back-to-English translation error.
————————————————————-
Americablog started it:

Bush told the following to a German newspaper yesterday:

Bush told weekly Bild am Sonntag when asked about his high point since becoming president in January 2001. “I would say the best moment of all was when I caught a 7.5 pound perch in my lake.”

The only problem is that the world’s record for the largest freshwater perch caught is 4 pounds 3 ounces.

So Bush either doubled the world record, and didn’t report it, or he’s a liar.

(Major kudos to the Stacy Taylor Show on KLSD-AM in San Diego for catching this.)

So, naturally, Kos joined in:

Jesus. H. Christ. Is Bush even capable of telling the truth?...

Apparently, since Bush didn’t have any “best moments”, he had to invent one.

Upper Left:

Someplace along the translation line (the original story was published in German) the fish in question has mutated from a record setting freshwater perch to a stocked bass charitably described as, well, fair sized. The size and species of George’s finned prey isn’t what really struck me, though.

It was the way he tossed off “…my lake,” as though owning your own lake is the most natural thing in the world.

Of course, there’s nothing natural about Bush’s private man-made lake, or the fish, for that matter, which are planted for his private angling pleasure.

And there it is. After six years as “the most powerful man in the world,” the final Decider of all matters of national and international importance, George W. Bush’s best moment was the solitary pursuit of a private pleasure on his private lake playing what was, in essence, a game of shoot the fish in the barrel.

Doesn’t that seem a bit, I dunno, sociopathic to you?

Fact-Esque:

The story, as with all BushCo stories, was a lie…. In the meantime, the White House has scheduled a press conference with the 7.5-pound perch/bass/man-dressed-as-fish at which time he is expected to describe being caught by Dear Leader as the high point of his last five years. If the perch is unavailable, Harry Whittington is expected to stand in on his behalf.

Collected comments on Stephen Colbert’s monologue at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner.

Richard Cohen:

Colbert was not just a failure as a comedian but rude. Rude is not the same as brash. It is not the same as brassy. It is not the same as gutsy or thinking outside the box. Rudeness means taking advantage of the other person’s sense of decorum or tradition or civility that keeps that other person from striking back or, worse, rising in a huff and leaving. The other night, that person was George W. Bush.

Colbert made jokes about Bush’s approval rating, which hovers in the middle 30s. He made jokes about Bush’s intelligence, mockingly comparing it to his own. “We’re not some brainiacs on nerd patrol,” he said. Boy, that’s funny.

Colbert took a swipe at Bush’s Iraq policy, at domestic eavesdropping, and he took a shot at the news corps for purportedly being nothing more than stenographers recording what the Bush White House said. He referred to the recent staff changes at the White House, chiding the media for supposedly repeating the cliche “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic” when he would have put it differently: “This administration is not sinking. This administration is soaring. If anything, they are rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg.” A mixed metaphor, and lame as can be.

Why are you wasting my time with Colbert, I hear you ask. Because he is representative of what too often passes for political courage, not to mention wit, in this country. His defenders—and they are all over the blogosphere—will tell you he spoke truth to power. This is a tired phrase, as we all know, but when it was fresh and meaningful it suggested repercussions, consequences—maybe even death in some countries. When you spoke truth to power you took the distinct chance that power would smite you, toss you into a dungeon or—if you’re at work—take away your office.

But in this country, anyone can insult the president of the United States. Colbert just did it, and he will not suffer any consequence at all. He knew that going in. He also knew that Bush would have to sit there and pretend to laugh at Colbert’s lame and insulting jokes. Bush himself plays off his reputation as a dunce and his penchant for mangling English. Self-mockery can be funny. Mockery that is insulting is not. The sort of stuff that would get you punched in a bar can be said on a dais with impunity. This is why Colbert was more than rude. He was a bully.

Glenn Reynolds:

I call him brave when he mocks Mohammed on the air. Until then, he’s not even a bully. He’s just a comedian, only one who’s not being very funny.

Nathan Gardels:

For those of us in the smart political set who are right about Bush being wrong in Iraq and elsewhere, it was hard to swallow. At the White House Correspondent’s Association dinner Saturday night in Washington the President embarrassingly outironicized Stephen Colbert. If, as Kierkegaard long ago understood, the capacity for ironic self-reflection is a sign of deep intelligence, what did it mean?

I surprised myself by saying to Mort Zuckerman that “a man who is that funny can’t be all bad.” And his timing was better than Jerry Seinfeld’s…

Bush may not be able to beat the Iraqi insurgents or Osama bin Laden, but he surely put Steve Colbert’s performance afterward to shame. Has he disarmed Comedy Central by being funnier than they are? I certainly thought so.

Joshua Trevino sums it all up.

H/T to Glenn Reynolds.

David Frum wonders in this month’s Cato Unbound lead essay, Republicans and the Flight of Opportunity, whether the collapse of the Gingrich Revolution of the 1990s and the emergence of George W. Bush has resulted in the squandering of “The fairest chance to achieve the limited-government agenda.”

Frum observes:

The state is growing again—and it is preprogrammed to carry on growing. Health spending will rise, pension spending will rise, and taxes will rise.

Now I still continue to hope that the Republican party will lean against these trends. But there’s a big difference between being the party of less government and a party of small government. It’s one thing to try to slow down opponents as they try to enact their vision of society into law. It’s a very different thing to have a vision of one’s own.

And the day in which we could look to the GOP to have an affirmative small-government vision of its own has I think definitively passed.

He notes three reasons:

First, while small-government conservatism remains an important faction within the Republican party, it is only a faction. When Republicans held the minority in Congress, the small-government faction could act as an important blocking group against big-government over-reaching—as happened for example with Hillarycare in 1994 or the Carter energy plan in 1978. But when the Republicans won their majority and the small-government faction tried to enact an affirmative agenda, suddenly we discovered that we were not strong enough to enact a program by ourselves — and had instead rendered ourselves vulnerable to blocking action by others…

..Second, I think it’s been fairly established now that the Republican party responds far more attentively to the practical needs of business constituencies than to the abstract principles of free-marketeers. Tom Delay’s “K Street Project” attempted to harness the might of the business lobbying community to Republican goals. It ended instead by subordinating the Republican party to the wishes of the business lobbying community…

..Third, for the GOP to reinvent itself as a limited-government would require it to repudiate much or maybe close to all of the domestic agenda of the Bush administration.

His ultimate conclusions are gloomy.