Friday, May 04, 2007
Thoughts on a New Day
No, I wasn't able to watch the first Republican Presidential-candidates debate last night, unfortunately. (It would have been difficult -- we don't have cable-television access at home.)
I would have enjoyed listening to it on the radio, had I been available. But it's been busy at home; heck, I wasn't even able to sneak over to MIT to watch this. (It was an Air Force ROTC event, with a parade and an F-15 flyby.)
So I'll be reading the capsule summaries and looking online for the transcripts. (Of the debates, that is, not the flyby.) So far, this summary appeals to me; and you can't beat this one for conciseness.
In the meantime, thanks to the Powerline guys, there's this gem from Lawrence F. Kaplan at The New Republic, which really deserves quoting in full:
Maybe it was a slip of the tongue. But, when Nancy Pelosi confessed last year that she felt "sad" about President Bush's claims that Al Qaeda operates in Iraq, she seemed to be disputing what every American soldier in Iraq, every Al Qaeda operative, and anyone who reads a newspaper already knew to be true. (When I questioned him about Pelosi's assertion, a U.S. officer in Ramadi responded, incredulously, that Al Qaeda had just held a parade in his sector.) Perhaps the House speaker was alluding to the discredited claim that Al Qaeda operated in Iraq before the war. Perhaps. But the insinuation that Al Qaeda's depredations in Iraq might be something other than what they appear to be has become a staple of the congressional debate over Iraq. Thus, to buttress his own case for withdrawal, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said, "We have to change course [away from Iraq] and turn our attention back to the war on Al Qaeda and their allies"--the clear message being that neither plays much of a role there....(emphasis mine)
Do prominent Democrats honestly believe that al-Qaeda is not in Iraq, and has nothing to do with Iraq? (Perhaps: James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal's "Best of the Web" has a lot of fun citing AQWHNTDWIIIWHNTDWAQ -- which, of course, stands for "al-Qaeda (which has nothing to do with Iraq) in Iraq (which has nothing to do with al-Qaeda)".
Granted, the argument has been made -- so often that it's too old to be a cliche -- that al-Qaeda was never in Iraq before America invaded. (In other words, al-Qaeda's presence in Iraq, according to some, is America's fault. If you accept that argument, though, I'd think you'd want America to get rid of al-Qaeda in Iraq; shouldn't we clean up our own messes?)
Even if it's true that al-Qaeda wasn't in Iraq before 2003, let's face it -- it no longer matters. We had good and sufficient reasons for invading Iraq... and if al-Qaeda was never in Iraq before, they're certainly there now. If al-Qaeda decided, for their own reasons, to make Iraq the front-line of their battle against the West, we should be grateful -- they went where our troops are, instead of forcing us to hunt them down elsewhere in the world. And we'll continue to hunt them down there, if Congress can be prevented from pulling the plug.
In short, Ms. Pelosi, your efforts -- and those of your colleagues -- to claim that Iraq has nothing to do with the War on Terror, well, they make me sad. I'm sad because I wish you'd take your blinders off, gain some understanding as to who your nation's enemies are, and remember your duty to your country -- as its third-highest elected representative -- and remember also that, between your country and your party, your country should come first.
This is not about who will inhabit the White House in 2009 -- although current rhetoric makes me wonder if I'll ever vote for a Democrat again. This is about keeping America safe. If we can't do that, then little else matters.
If the Democrats and Republicans can ever unite on the need to fight this war and win it, and convince me that they're serious about it, then I'll make time to worry about health care and gay marriage and teacher's unions. Right now, I have more pressing things to think about... and so does Ms. Pelosi.
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Keep An Eye On Mr. Thompson
Fred Thompson is beginning to impress me. Yes, I know he's the most popular undeclared candidate in the upcoming 2008 Presidential race, at least on the Republican side. (Are there any popular undeclared Democrats? I haven't heard of any.) Yes, I know there are issues.
And yet, I find myself liking him, as a candidate. I think he's playing it very smart -- being very up-front about himself (in re his recent revelations about his health, for example). I think it was wise of him to stay out of the fray at this early stage, while multiple candidates, Democrats and Republicans alike, batter each other senseless. (I did not understand why candidates felt it necessary to work so hard so early this time. Was there any reason for it, other than following Hillary's lead?) I'm also reminded of another recent dark-horse Presidential candidate, one who didn't announce his candidacy until relatively late in the process.
True, Mr. Thompson's not getting the free press that the other candidates are getting. But it's not like the man lacks for name recognition -- he's been in two dozen movies and a great many TV episodes, in addition to his six-year term as Senator from Tennessee. And if that weren't enough, his day-job as occasional replacement for Paul Harvey, in addition, has given tens of millions of Americans daily access to his voice -- and his opinions, the kind of access any other candidate would kill for.
Speaking of which, Mr. Thompson has an article in yesterday's online National Review that's just a crackerjack. I urge you to go and read the whole thing -- but let me excerpt just a little:
It bothers Americans when we’re told how unpopular we are with the rest of the world. For some of us, at least, it gets our back up — and our natural tendency is to tell the French, for example, that we’d rather not hear from them until the day when they need us to bail them out again.
But we cool off. We’re big boys and girls, after all [...]
In the meantime, let’s be realistic about the world we live in. Mexican leaders apparently have an economic policy based on exporting their own citizens, while complaining about U.S. immigration policies that are far less exclusionary than their own. The French jail perfectly nice people for politically incorrect comments, but scold us for holding terrorists at Guantanamo.
Russia, though, takes the cake [...]
President Vladimir Putin, though, shows no sign that he feels defensive about his remarkable string of luck. He knows who’s really to blame for "meddling" in Russian "internal affairs." It’s the United States.
He’s lambasting us for yielding too much power. One example of this excessive power is the missile defense radar system we want to install in Poland and the Czech Republic — to give the free world early warning of a missile attack by terrorists or a rogue nation like Iran. Perhaps it’s just a coincidence that the Russians have been supplying Iran with both nuclear and missile technology while using their U.N. veto to block sanctions that would force Tehran to back down. Regardless, we’re clearly at fault, he says, for putting a defense system close to Mother Russia.
(I think he meant "wielding", not "yielding" -- if you think about it, that changes the meaning of the sentence. But that's okay. Lord knows, I've forgiven our current President for much worse slips of the tongue than that.)
Go check it out. And let's hope that we haven't seen the last of this guy.
UPDATE: Instapundit helpfully links to this political biography of Fred Thompson. I found it a worthwhile read; you might want to have a look.
Labels: 2008, U.S. politics
