People (unconvincingly, to me, and probably to anyone who’s not suffering selective amnesia about the runup to the war) accuse George W. Bush of shifting justifications after 911, but how about shifting justification for 911?
…bin Laden’s justifications for 9/11 are continually moulded and shaped by Western media coverage. At first – on 28 September 2001 – he disavows responsibility for the attacks, instead trying to pin the blame on some dastardly conspiracy within America itself: ‘The United States should trace the perpetrators of these attacks within itself
People (unconvincingly, to me, and probably to anyone who’s not suffering selective amnesia about the runup to the war) accuse George W. Bush of shifting justifications after 911, but how about shifting justification for 911?
…bin Laden’s justifications for 9/11 are continually moulded and shaped by Western media coverage. At first – on 28 September 2001 – he disavows responsibility for the attacks, instead trying to pin the blame on some dastardly conspiracy within America itself: ‘The United States should trace the perpetrators of these attacks within itself
People (unconvincingly, to me, and probably to anyone who’s not suffering selective amnesia about the runup to the war) accuse George W. Bush of shifting justifications after 911, but how about shifting justification for 911?
…bin Laden’s justifications for 9/11 are continually moulded and shaped by Western media coverage. At first – on 28 September 2001 – he disavows responsibility for the attacks, instead trying to pin the blame on some dastardly conspiracy within America itself: ‘The United States should trace the perpetrators of these attacks within itself
Tony Snow makes an excellent point about the Democrats’ position–that long-term central planning doesn’t work much better in war than in agriculture or industry:
The only flaw in the Orderliness Hypothesis is that it doesn’t work if people are present. The war on poverty looked great on paper. It failed miserably in real life. Air-cleansing regulatory schemes looked great in computer models, but failed abysmally in reality. Centralized health care boasted of chalkboard elegance, but is breaking the bank right here, right now. The myth of managed affluence collapsed with the Berlin Wall.
And yet, failure has not altered Democratic thinking an iota. John Kerry boasted dozens of times in his debates with George W. Bush that he had a plan — for everything: dental care, tree planting, street paving, book binding, teen rutting, mass transit, air circulation, steel production … you name it. He announced these schemes with a sense of triumph, as if having a plan were superior to having a clue.
In resisting President Bush’s infinitely variable approach to the ever-shifting situation in Iraq, Democrats have reverted to form. The cries for benchmarks and deadlines merely embody their weird faith in plans. Howard Dean unwittingly captured the absurdity of it all when he announced this week the precise number of National Guard units required to subdue Al-Qaida.
The sight of Murtha denouncing (even incoherently) the war was too much temptation for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.). The House Democrats
Stephen Schwartz writes about the real wars in which we have been, and remain engaged, and the fantasy ones in the minds of the left, and much of the media:
The degree to which the MSM, academia, and other members of the Western intelligentsia live in a fantasy world of narcissistic self-righteousness is extraordinary. But the phenomenon is not new. It first became visible during the Spanish civil war of 1936-39, the original exemplar of what I call a theory of
Economist looks at counter insurgengency training and hopes a volunteer army will remember them longer than a conscript army remembered lessons from Viet Nam.
Gateway Pundit has a roundup on the Iraqi elections, which are reportedly going smoothly, with little violence, despite Zarqawi’s threats. Even the BBC is impressed.
Four days after he set foot in Australia, the rape spree began. And during his sexual assault trial in a New South Wales courtroom, the Pakistani man began to berate one of his tearful 14-year-old victims because she had the temerity to shake her head at his testimony.
But she had every reason to express her disgust. After taking an oath on the Qur
Russell Seitz says that Khaddafi, despite his seeming change of heart a couple years ago after he saw Saddam being pulled out of his rat hole, continues to cause problems.
James Woolsey warns us not to underestimate the power of the Salafist vision:
…the Salafists’ theocratic totalitarian dream has some features in common with the secular totalitarian dreams of the twentieth century, e.g., the Nazis’ Thousand Year Reich, or the Communists’ World Communism. The latter two movements produced tens of millions of deaths in the 20th century in part because, at least in their early stages, they engendered “fire in the minds of men” in Germany, Russia, and China and were able to establish national bases. Salafists had such a national base for the better part of a decade in Afghanistan and have had one controlling the Arabian Peninsula for some eight decades. They haven’t attained the Nazis’ and Communists’ death totals yet, but this is only due to lack of power, not to less murderous or less totalitarian objectives…(The president’s “Islamofascist” term is thus perhaps understated