Alexander M. Haig Jr. pulls no punches in today’s Wall Street Journal.

Donald Rumsfeld’s departure and the decision to pursue counterinsurgency in Iraq required fresh commanders. But the administration overlooked a new source of military talent in, of all places, the U.S. Senate. The Senate Majority Leader, for example, asserts that the war is lost and that Gen. Petraeus is detached from reality in Baghdad. He and other equally qualified lay military experts are busily setting dates certain for troop withdrawal, oblivious of the consequences. Some have questioned the constitutionality of such Congressional resolutions. I question their wisdom. We need a debate on how to win, not how to lose. That would be a good topic for the presidential candidates. It’s certainly not what they’re talking about now.

John Quincy Adams warned us against going abroad “in search of monsters to destroy,” and some argue that the war on terror is just such a case. I disagree. On 9/11, the monster found us asleep at home and will continue to find us inadequately prepared unless we muster more strength and more wisdom. Unless we break with illusionary democracy mongering, inept handling of our military resources and self-defeating domestic political debates, we are in danger of becoming our own worst enemy.

And when domestic defeatism forces US withdrawal, and the religious fanatics spill oceans of innocent blood, the leftwing punditocracy will explain it is all the fault of George W. Bush for disturbing the peaceful idyll of Baathist dictatorship.

They’re very good at partisanship, but they’re doing so much of it these days that they are in danger of the public seeing through the whole thing.

AP:

The White House on Thursday pushed back against congressional investigations of the Bush administration and said lawmakers should spend more time passing bills to solve domestic problems.

In a constitutional showdown with Congress, the administration claimed executive privilege and rejected demands for White House documents about the firings of eight U.S. attorneys.

The House and Senate Judiciary committees have set a deadline of 10 a.m. next Monday for the White House to explain its basis for the claim.

The administration has not said when or if it will respond. Spokesman Scott Stanzel said Thursday the White House has received a many requests for information since Democrats took control of Congress in January and has turned over 200,000 pages of documents.

“They’ve launched over 300 investigations, had over 350 requests for documents and interviews and they have had over 600 oversight hearings in just about 100 days,” Stanzel said.

Democrats were dubious of the figures but did not offer their own.

Today’s Congress evidently provoked John Derbyshire to update John Betjeman’s Slough. The Corner’s link simply never produced anything for me. The lovely and talented Dr. Sanity, however, both linked and quoted it. My thanks to her.

Come, friendly bombs, fall on D.C.!
It’s not fit for humanity.
There’s nothing there but villainy.
Swarm over, Death!

Come, bombs, and blow to kingdom come
Those pillared halls of tedium—
Hired fools, hired crooks, hired liars, hired scum,
Hired words, hired breath.

Mess up this mess they call a town—
A seat for twenty million down
And rights to the incumbent’s crown
For twenty years.

…
And smash his desk of polished oak
(Paid for by honest working folk
Toiling ‘neath taxation’s yoke)
And make him yell.

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.

Unidentified “US officials” leak to Britain’s Guardian.

Iran is secretly forging ties with al-Qaida elements and Sunni Arab militias in Iraq in preparation for a summer showdown with coalition forces intended to tip a wavering US Congress into voting for full military withdrawal, US officials say.

“Iran is fighting a proxy war in Iraq and it’s a very dangerous course for them to be following. They are already committing daily acts of war against US and British forces,” a senior US official in Baghdad warned. “They [Iran] are behind a lot of high-profile attacks meant to undermine US will and British will, such as the rocket attacks on Basra palace and the Green Zone [in Baghdad]. The attacks are directed by the Revolutionary Guard who are connected right to the top [of the Iranian government]. …

US officials now say they have firm evidence that Tehran has switched tack as it senses a chance of victory in Iraq. In a parallel development, they say they also have proof that Iran has reversed its previous policy in Afghanistan and is now supporting and supplying the Taliban’s campaign against US, British and other Nato forces.

Tehran’s strategy to discredit the US surge and foment a decisive congressional revolt against Mr Bush is national in scope and not confined to the Shia south, its traditional sphere of influence, the senior official in Baghdad said. It included stepped-up coordination with Shia militias such as Moqtada al-Sadr’s Jaish al-Mahdi as well as Syrian-backed Sunni Arab groups and al-Qaida in Mesopotamia, he added. Iran was also expanding contacts across the board with paramilitary forces and political groups, including Kurdish parties such as the PUK, a US ally.

The latest Gallup Poll finds

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

Bill Kristol, in Time, thinks Congressional democrats are making a big political mistake by failing to control their insatiable appetite for American defeat.

When last seen before election day 2006, the Democratic Party seemed the very soul of moderation. And they stayed the course for the next two months…

But in the past few weeks, the Democrats have gone wild. The mushy domestic agenda is quickly disappearing beneath a tide of antiwar agitation in Congress. Joe Biden is leading the way, seeking to have as one of the first acts of the new Democratic Senate a nonbinding resolution condemning a troop increase in Iraq. Others want action, not just words. On the presidential side of the party, Hillary Clinton has gone at breakneck speed from being a mild critic of the war to calling for a legislated troop cap and threatening to cut off funds for the Iraqi army. Obama and John Edwards are cheerfully one-upping her by demanding a firm schedule for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. What happened?

In part, an accelerated presidential race, with its own dynamic. In part, the fact of congressional majority status, which has its own dynamic too. But in largest part, Bush. He crossed up the Democrats. They expected him to stay the Rumsfeld-Abizaid-Casey course in Iraq. Or, they thought, he might accede to the Iraq Study Group, admit errors and lead us to gradual defeat. Neither would have required Democrats to do anything much except lament the lamentable situation into which Bush had got us. Instead, Bush replaced Rumsfeld, rejected the Iraq Study Group’s slow-motion-withdrawal option and chose to try a new strategy for victory, backed by a troop surge. The Democrats were genuinely shocked that Bush wouldn’t behave as if the war was lost.

What’s more, the Democratic presidential race was beginning, and the candidates were under pressure to do more than express generalized disapproval of Bush. And so for the past three weeks, Democrats have been outdoing one another in lambasting Bush and–as they see it–his war.

But in politics, as in life, exercises in competitive indignation can get out of hand. Biden got rolling his resolution disapproving of the surge–but without thinking through the counterattack that would be opened up. Now, as the troops begin to enter the theater, Republicans can ask whether the main effect of these merely symbolic resolutions isn’t to undermine the chances of Americans succeeding and to encourage our enemies. Similarly, the idea of a legislated cap on troop strength had seemed a good way to show real commitment to the antiwar cause. Yet actually explaining why 137,000 troops in Iraq was fine but increasing the number to 160,000 should be prohibited– when the new commander wanted those reinforcements and said they were necessary to give the new strategy a chance of success–that isn’t so easy.

Today’s Wall Street Journal editorial page thinks the outgoing 109th Congress managed to do a few things right in its closing session.

One of the items the Journal mentioned gave me pause. Apparently, Congress opened 8.3 million acres of the Outer Continental Shelf for drilling. The thought came to mind: It was closed? When? By what specific legislation? And following what debate? I have no idea. But everywhere one looks in today’s America, whatever it may be, it’s currently illegal, forbidden, verboten. And the opportunity to do anything will require special legislation.

It’s been a long time, I expect, since somebody took a cigarette, asked for permission to light up, and received the once-common reply: “It’s a free country.”

The Stiletto is listening to noises from the nation’s capitol:

Hear That? It’s The Sound Of Dem Campaign Promises Being Broken

Here’s a round-up of recent headlines that makes it clear that The Party With No Plan has no plans to keep its campaign promises:

” Dems Won’t Find Enacting 9/11 Ideas Easy: Remember how Pelosi & Co. was going to implement every single one of the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations? Well, forget it. For one thing, many of the recommendations fall outside the purview of Congress.

” Democrats Split On How Far To Go With Ethics Law: After months of yammering about the “culture of corruption” on the other side of the aisle, Dems are dancing as fast as they can away from their promise of a “complete overhaul” of Congressional ethics rules. For one thing, there are no plans to curtail earmarks.

A college classmate this morning sent me a link to Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne‘s somewhat premature attempt at dancing on American Conservatism’s grave.

Dionne is not entirely wrong, of course. He notes correctly that George W. Bush never was a real conservative in the Goldwater, Reagan, or Gingrich sense. But, personally, I wouldn’t waste my time constructing elaborate theories about Hamiltonian “big-government conservatism,” or using “government as a means to achieve conservative ends.” It’s really much simpler than that. George W. Bush is simply an old-fashioned garden variety practical politician (what we used to call an Eisenhower Republican), bringing to his Presidency his family’s traditional flexibility in governing, flavored with just enough red-state populism and Republican impulses to secure the GOP base’s support.

The American left has remained mobilized and afflicted with a paranoid sense of wrong ever since their favorite son’s sexual scandals metastasized into perjury and impeachment. Disappointment with the outcome of the 2000 election and US military actions following 9/11 have continued to keep the left as angry and active as a nest of red ants thoroughly poked with a stick. The larger part of George W. Bush’s perceived conservatism really amounts to mere reciprocated animosity.

Dionne is not inaccurate in describing this Congress.

The most obvious, outrageous and unprincipled spasm occurred last night when the Senate voted on a bill that would have simultaneously raised the minimum wage and slashed taxes on inherited wealth.

Rarely has our system produced a more naked exercise in opportunism than this measure. Most conservatives oppose the minimum wage on principle as a form of government meddling in the marketplace. But moderate Republicans in jeopardy this fall desperately wanted an increase in the minimum wage.

The Republican Senatorial majority unfortunately includes a number of liberal Republican-in-name-only senators, and has been effectively paralysed by joys-of-incumbency induced timidity and the democrats’ willingness to abuse the filibuster.

Dionne contends that the repeal of the death tax failed “because there is nothing close to a conservative majority in the United States.” Rubbish! There certainly is a majority in this country in favor of not taxing away a family’s assets simply because someone has died.

Poll after poll proves it.

a 1999 poll by Worthlin Worldwide found 70 percent of voters favoring a phase-out of the estate tax. — A 2000 poll by the Pew Research Center found 71 percent of voters supporting elimination of the inheritance tax. — A 2001 CBS News/New York Times poll also found 71 percent of people opposing imposition of an estate tax at death.

Dionne would like to believe that libertarian versus traditionalist divisions are in the process of splitting the right on issues like immigration and stem cell research. Sorry, Mr. Dionne. It’s true that I disagree strongly with Michelle Malkin and Victor Davis Hanson about immigration, but our differences do not materially diminish my admiration and respect for those two traditionalists, nor are they likely to persuade Michelle, Victor, or myself to start voting for democrats. I don’t have a problem with stem cell research myself (being irreligious), but I believe President Bush was quite right to veto spending the tax dollars of religious people funding things they find morally repugnant. Let’s just finance this kind of research privately. There’s no shortage of rich atheists or leftists.

Dionne is off-base looking for a conservative split over religious issues these days. I’ve had plenty of differences within the Conservative Movement with religious traditionalists in days gone by, but there is no particular Religious Right agenda we libertarians have a major problem with today. I do have problems with organs of the left, like the ACLU, waging intolerant campaigns to eradicate any form of private religious expression in the public space, eliminating religious symbols, or persecuting the Boy Scouts for political incorrectness. In short, I expect most of us making up what Dionne calls the “big-business right and culturally optimistic conservatives” are likely to continue to vote with the ordinary hometown Americans rather than with the coastal community of fashion indefinitely on into the misty future.

He’s right in saying this Congress is a disaster, and many of its members deserve to be defeated. I’ve said the same thing repeatedly myself. But what will lose in November will not be conservative principles, but the exact opposite. The losers will be the unprincipled, the compromisers and trimmers, and the opportunists.

The Conservative Movement, Mr. Dionne, has experienced setbacks and electoral defeats before. Those of us who lived through the Goldwater campaign of 1964 are not especially perturbed by the prospect of this coming November. We will be back.

———————
Hat tip to Steve Wagenseil.