Nightly Ramble

So I sit down with a little coffee, and begin to look at the world around me this chilly December night:

So now, Congress is going from a three day workweek to a five day workweek.  I’m quite sure the Democrats figure that that’s going to make them look hard working.  However, it should be noted that a hard-working government, generally speaking, is also more intrusive.  Thereby, I can’t regard a five day workweek in Congress, as a good thing.

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The evidence seems pretty clear, that there is running water on Mars.  Granted, that it’s awfully cold and dry on the surface of Mars, and the water evaporated quite quickly after being exposed to the Martian environment.  That, of itself, suggests that the water is below ground.  Now since it’s generally accepted that you need water to sustain life as we know it, it would seem that one more domino in the argument against life being elsewhere in space, has just fallen.

There are some, who will question whether or not the position of creationists will have to be changed.  But I don’t think so.  The existence of life elsewhere, changes nothing about whether not that life was created.

Why is it that so many nonbelievers are so interested in proselytizing their non belief?  Why, you would almost think it was a religion of itself.

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I notice the James Taranto of the wall street journal’s opinion page, is linking to a Washington post report which suggests that the Iraqis at all that impressed by the work of the Iraq Surrender Group.  Otherwise known as the “Iraq Study Group”.  Says WaPo:

Iraqi politicians and analysts . . . said the report is a recipe, backed by threats and disincentives, that neither addresses nor understands the complex forces that fuel Iraq’s woes. They described it as a strategy largely to help U.S. troops return home and resurrect America’s frayed influence in the Middle East.

Iraqis also expressed fear that the report’s recommendations, if implemented, could weaken an already besieged government in a country teetering on the edge of civil war.

“It is a report to solve American problems, and not to solve Iraq’s problems,” said Ayad al-Sammarai, an influential Sunni Muslim politician. . . .

“If the Iraqi government does not make substantial progress toward the achievement of milestones on national reconciliation, security, and governance, the United States should reduce its political, military, or economic support for the Iraqi government,” the report’s executive summary says.

For some Iraqis, the statement suggested that the report’s authors did not grasp, or refused to acknowledge, the diverse ambitions, rivalries and weaknesses that plague the government. The Kurds have dreams of creating an independent state. The Sunnis appear leaderless, yet seek a political voice. The Shiites are riven by feuds. There are disagreements over partitioning Iraq, over whether to restore members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party to their old jobs, over whether amnesty should be given to opponents of the government and the U.S. occupation.

At the bottom line, the only ones that are really impressed with the Iraq Study Group and its work, is the Iraq Study Group and the Democrats… and Al Quieda. It’s not even playing well in mainstream America.

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I made a comment a couple of nights ago about my desire to pick up a diesel truck.  It turns out, that there’s an awful lot of interest and diesel power these days.  More than I was aware of.  A recent report in the Detroit news backs this one up.  To make matters even more confusing for the enviro-whackjobs, the biggest interest and diesel is coming from European companies, where diesel is pretty much status quo.  It’s a confusing time to be a greenie, I suppose.  But as I said several months ago, forget all that nonsense, I go for what works.

What I say what works, vs what is politically correct, let me give you a prime example;

This truck is the traditional enemy of greenies everywhere.  the Ford Expedition.  Basically it’s a pickup truck with a suburban body over the top of it.  The usual suspects complained that it was a gas hog… getting around 12 to 15 to the gallon. But this particular one, has a 7L Diesel in it.  And it gets, on over the road situations, (are you ready?) around 25 to the gallon.

Now, if they were still making these, I’d buy one, new, in a heartbeat.  They’re not. So, I’m forced to the next best config.

This one, by all the reports I’m seeing, gets pretty much the same MPG. … 25 on the road. Not so bad. Enough room for the family, and enough torque to tow the 5000lb camper trailer well, it’s comfortable, stable, and will survive an accident better than just about anything on the road. And what’s better, is I’ll be able to drive the environmental nazis absolutely crazy, in the process.

(Raises hand) Yeah, I can do that.

Now, I think I should point out that I’m also looking seriously at Dodge and GM products where they offer high output diesels.  These photographs that I’m showing you are just a couple that I’ve ripped off at Ebay.

I think I should also point out, that there are no foreign made vehicles in my “to be examined” list.  The reason?  Only recently have they get big enough to handle the 5000lb. tow package, and none of them are diesel equipped.  Perhaps in a few years the get the message.  But I doubt it.

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(Courtesy of Doctor Fun)

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The House Ethics Committee Report includes new information that top Democrats were also aware in 2005 of Mark Foley’s inappropriate e-mails to congressional pages at about the same time as outgoing Speaker Dennis Hastert’s office was informed.While the report is critical of Hastert and his staff for not taking sufficient action, nowhere is there any evidence that the Democrats followed up.

So reports Rhonda Schwartz from ABC.

According to the Committee’s report, “the communications directors for both the House Democratic Caucus and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee” in the fall of 2005 also had copies of e-mails written by Mark Foley to a congressional page, which the high school student described as “sick, sick, sick, sick.”

Now, think about this. Why on earth would the Democrats not take this golden opportunity to dis a Republican in a contested district?  The answer can only be that their method of obtaining said documents, would be discovered.  If I recall correctly, there was an awful lot in the way of document leakage from one side of the house to the other this last time around.  It was said, that this was one of the reasons that the republicans were less effective than they might have been.

In short, they got the goods on Foley, by illicit means… Means they didn’t want to lose the advantage of.  In short, their political advantage, was worth more to them than ‘saving the children’.
Joyner raises another in my view less likely possibility :

The only way politics could explain the Democrats’ keeping silent for so long was to keep it for closer to the election, which would be repugnant. That did not happen, however; the information was leaked by a Republican.

(H/T photo: Washington Pox )

Lo and behold, it seems like that Mrs. Pelosi hand picked chairman for the House Intelligence Committee needs a crash course in intelligence.  Bill Faith, of Bill’s Bites reports on “Intelligence? Un pocito:”

Nancy Pelosi has struggled through a headache of her own making ever since tossing Jane Harman out of the House Intelligence Committee chair. She attempted to place Alcee Hastings into the slot, even though Hastings got impeached from the federal bench for corruption in the late 1980s. When her caucus rebelled, she instead selected Silvestre Reyes, who surprised the caucus with his support of an expanded US presence in Iraq. Now, according to CQ’s Jeff Stein, Reyes has little understanding of America’s explicit enemy in the war on terror:

Can somebody, anybody, buy Mrs. Pelosi a clue.

Ah, yes… you’d have to figure the NY Times would cough up this story.

Still… I object to Romney because of this story, because of reasons the Times cannot possibly understand, and if they did would certainly not admit to:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 8 — Gov. Mitt Romney, the Massachusetts Republican who has built a presidential campaign on a broad appeal for conservative support, is drawing sharply increased criticism from conservative activists for his advocacy of gay rights in a 1994 letter.

Mr. Romney’s standing among conservatives is being hurt by a letter he sent to the Log Cabin Club of Massachusetts saying that he would be a stronger advocate for gay rights than Senator Edward M. Kennedy, his opponent in a Senate race, in a position that stands in contrast to his current role as a champion of a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

“We must make equality for gays and lesbians a mainstream concern,” Mr. Romney wrote in a detailed plea for the support of the club, a gay Republican organization.

Here’s a case where Romney is clearly pandering to a vote block he seriously needed to overcome the Democrats in Massachusetts.

Look, gang… while I have very strong objections to his stated stand in 1994 on cultural ground, what I object to more strongly is something the Times and the hangers-on dare not mention… that Romney so easily shifts his stated principles in order to curry favor with one group or another.  As I said beack in 04’s presidential race, as regards John Kerry: I care less about what principles a person holds, than I do about them actually being HELD in the face of electoral reality.

This thing becomes a matter of trust… or rather… the lack of it.  Such a man cannot be trusted with high office… he clearly thinks holding that office of greater import than what he says are his bedrock principles. In short, he HAS no bedrock principles, rather gong after whatever will best satisfy his power lust.

I didn’t put up with that kind of nonsense from John Kerry, and I darn sure am not going to stand for it in a supposed Republican.

Update: in answer to some e-mail;

Yes I stipulate that it’s possible his position could have evolved since 1994.  This would be particularly true, given that in 1994 we were barely discussing the matter.  But if in fact his position on the matter has grown into what is now, he’s going to have to sell that.  I could be wrong here, but strictly as a matter of perception, I don’t think him capable of doing so.

Michelle Malkin, this morning, passes along some information regarding that supposedly “lone wolf” would-be bomber in Chicago:

I just got back from a trip to the mall to see the headlines about the alleged Chicago terrorist mall plot:

ABC News has learned a Chicago-area man has been charged with plotting a terrorist attack.Derrick Shareef, of Rockford, Ill was arrested Wednesday by the Joint Terrorism Taskforce when he met an undercover agent to trade hand grenades and a 9-millimeter handgun for a set of stereo speakers.

Shareef is accused of planning to use firearms and explosives to attack the CherryVale shopping mall in Rockford. The alleged plan was to target the 130-store mall during the holiday shopping season.

In September, Shareef became acquainted with a confidential witness who was cooperating with the FBI and confided to him that he wanted to commit acts of violent jihad against civilians.

On December 2, Shareef and the confidential source made video tapes of their last wills and testament.

On the video, Shareef again mentions jihad and says, “This is a warning to those who disbelieve, that we are here for you and I am ready to give my life.”

She has lots more details, including the affidavit.

Clearly, this man is not the brightest bulb in the string.  But, let’s look seriously at how such people come into being, shall we?  This is simply more of the consequences we spoke of recently, as regards letting the Islamo-facists be heros.

In terms f this moron in Chicago, here’s somebody, who, like many of the others I’ve written about in these spaces, had basically nothing going on in their lives.  Such people are invariably looking for something to empower themselves, and in the doing, he discovered the violent side of Islam. it is often said that people who don’t believe in something will believe in anything.  Put another way, such hateful messages, are generally are written best on a blank slate.

In this case there appears to be something more to the family relationships… something which to my mind is rather revealing.

Of course the family of this slimeball claims they’ve no idea how he got mixed up in all of this, according to a report by WIFR in Rockford Ill. But look down the report at the very last line of it tells is something of interest:

His mother, one Marie Shultz, is working on marriage number two.  This moron’s father lives in SouCal, and is a member of the Nation of Islam.
But look closely at this man’s words, in that affidavit Michelle’s got up. For all of the claims of religiosity and even in the scope of Islam, his comments don’t seem very religious, nor very peaceful, for that matter.  Islam simply becomes an outlet for this man’s twisted anger. Again, in his mindlessness, he sees the ideal as the Islamic wackos… he sees them as heroes.
And how do we let Islamo-facists be heros? A group that numbnuts like this Derrick Shareef. can hold as someone to look UP to?

By letting them win in the middle east, and elsewhere. This kind of monster is onlyb the tip of the ‘burg… such people will be crawling out of the woodwork, if we withdraw from Iraq without crushing our enemy there.

Christmas, that is.

Yes, I know, you knew that already.  But, in many ways, I didn’t. Not really. I just couldn’t get myself into it, ths year, for reasons I can’t begin to understand much less explain.

But this evening, by chance, I happened across a showing of “The Polar Express” on cable.  Oh, I’d already seen it, of course. On an I-Max screen, in 3d, no less. (If you get the chance for that one… if they’re re-playing it on the big screen somewhere…. go… you won’t regret it). We’ve even managed to get a copy on DVD.
But for some reason, despite all of that, I stopped, and watched, and in so doing, I re-discovered it’s magic.  Tom Hanks is to be commended for creating a masterpiece with this one.

There is a moral to this story of course… that being the Christmas itself and the magic therein, needs to be rediscovered frequently, to be really understood. I’m sure I will comment more about this, as the season draws closer.

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I’ve gotten a number of bits of e-mail, with regards to my comparison between the Iraq war, and world war two.  Just for those who don’t remember, I said, more or less:

Imagine trying to reconstruct Japan while the Kamkazie planes are still falling on our ships. No, we had to drop a couple atomic bombs to get the place pacified, first.

Imagine trying to play meals on wheels in Germany before the truce was signed. No, we had to firebomb a few cities first, to take the fight out of them.

Brutal? Certainly… But how would we have fared without such actions? Iraq gives us the answer. And how did we get into reconstruction prior to victory? To appease the anti-war crowd.

The responses that I’ve been getting, are cries of horror than I am apparently suggesting that brutal tactics be used in the process of winning the war. My friends, that’s what war IS. If you’re not willing to fight it, you’d best consign yourself to losing it. But really make sure that’s what you want to do.  Because, there are a number of nasty consequences for that loss.  Far nastier, than the consequences of winning.

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This weekend, will be fairly busy for myself and my family.  Christmas shopping of course.  But more repairs on the house as well.  The final installment on the Bathroom sink project, for example.  I’ll have to tear it all down, plumbing and all, so that I can take the vanity away from the wall long enough to set up a hole in the vanity itself so that I can lag-bolt the thing to the wall.  It seems an extra step to have to tear it down again, but I wanted to make sure everything fit where I wanted it placed before I made the thing fast to the wall.  I’m no expert, but I’ll get there.

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Happy birthday to the Dizzy Girl. I have been a longtime reader of Gennie.Since I started writing Bitsblog.  That’s years, gang. She should be on your favorites list, too.
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A slow night tonight, so I won’t keep you.

Gateway Pundit nabs Jimmy Carter plagiarizing:

Greg Tinti reports that Jimmy Carter lifted material from a Dennis Ross book and inserted into his new Jew-hating book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid

Somebody, I forget just who, commented that is now apparent why Carter was so willing to sit next to Michael Moore at the last Democrat convention, birds of a feather.

Follow the llinks to the video of Dennis Ross and look at the maps for yourself.

Respectful note is made:

WASHINGTON —AP– Former U.N. Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, a one-time Democrat who switched to the Republican Party and warmly embraced Reagan era conservatism, has died. She was 80.

Kirkpatrick’s death was announced Friday at the senior staff meeting of the U.S. mission to the United Nations, said spokesman Richard Grenell, who said that Ambassador John Bolton asked for a moment of silence. An announcement of her death also was posted on the Web site of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-oriented think tank here where she was a senior fellow.

Amanda Bronstad has an interesting story about, ” More JudgesPacking Pistols in Courtrooms:”

Despite increased security at courthouses following shootings in Chicago and Atlanta about one year ago, many judges are bringing their own guns into their courtrooms for protection.

Earlier this month, a Florida judge was ordered to accept mentoring after warning a defense attorney that he was “locked and loaded.” In May, a judicial ethics committee of the New York State Unified Court System found that it was ethical for a judge to carry a pistol into his courtroom.

There are two ways to take this story.   The hopeful is that demigods in black robes have decided, at long last, to show some long overdue respect for the Second Amendment.

The realist view is that these black robed wonders have deemed themselves above the same law they impose on us mere mortals.  That while judges will see fit to protect themselves, they will continue to deny that same right for you to protect yourself and your family.

I say the surest way get sane laws to require that they be uniformly enforced.  That to say that a citizen appearing before a judge should have the exact same right to carry as the judge, no more, no less.   If judges deem that citizens aren’t entitled to the right to keep and bear arms, then judgesshould not expect to enjoy that right either.

The same should go for all other polticians as well.

I’m learning a bit more about this WordPress thing. And I’m starting to get more impressed with it. There are certain areas that aren’t exactly, shall we say, intuitive. But, I’m starting to get over that problem. It’s like any new piece of software, it always takes me a while to get used to the intricacies of it. 

One of the things that I’ve discovered, is that it handles pictures far better than I ever thought. And I’ve just spent some time with Matt, my older boy, going over some of those controls. He seems a bit more impressed with it, now. We will see.

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I guess it should be a shock to no one, that James Cameron died of hypothermia. But I wonder if it was really necessary to turn that pointless in the news media. I guess without it being mentioned at least, there would always be questions about whether not he admits an unnatural death, a death at the hands of someone trying to rob him of whatever was he managed to carry as far as he did. What, four miles? But I would be a liar if I didn’t mention the thought that are really didn’t need to know the results of the autopsy. The family is been through enough already.

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Words cannot express the depth of my lack of caring over the Grammy awards.

I mean, look at who is getting nominated. Three Grammy nominations for the Dixie Chicks? Explain why. It certainly wasn’t based on album sales. More likely based on politics. Justin Timberlake, getting best record of the year, AND song of the year for a song that is so obnoxious the Brits have taken off their airwaves?

Give Paul Simon’s most recent album “Surprise” and listen… really listen, and explain to me why the people issuing those nominations completely ignored it. The real bottom line here, is this; the Grammys lost all connection to the music sometime around ten years ago. And it was faltering on the edge for several years before that. Perhaps that disconnection, is part and parcel of the reason the old line record companies have completely lost control of the industry.

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Speaking of the “music industry”, perhaps someone can explain to me the fascination with Brittany Spears. Her now infamous crotch shot, is so obviously a desperate promotional ploy, that I don’t even know why there’s discussion that it might have been anything else.

Look, let’s face it; to girl hasn’t the talent. All this ever was about, was sex. From the get go. At this stage of the game she should have matured as an artist, and started coming out with something other than the musical syrup she’s been coming up with, lo, these last ten years. But there just isn’t any “there” there. there is no more room for her to grow, because she simply lacks the capacity to be mature. And she certainly isn’t growing as an artist, having no more talent than did Andrea True… the x-rated film star back in the middle seventies disco era. And you may remember how she attracted the attention of the record producers in the first place, and who she signed with; Neil Bogart was still running Buddha records at the time. That was the label she signed with. It was a promotional gimmick, and came up with an almost listenable single….(More More More… a decided lyrical tie-in to her film career…) End of story.

As for Brittany spears however, there’s no more she can do. she hasn’t the talent to support a more mature product. So to attract attention to her the people who have been directing her all along in everything she has done, suggested it might not be a bad idea to show little skin. Since she always has anyway, where to go to ‘turn it up a notch’? Aha… Crotch shot. They’ve forgotten apparently that they can come up with more revealing pictures on the Internet at any hour that they’re night. This is definitely the last gasp, though unfortunately it came too late for her and her progeny.

Speaking of which… If she manages to keep her kids, through all of this, it’ll be a testament to the amount of money she’s been spending on a legal staff. It’s also a testament to why nouveau Riche Hollywood types shouldn’t spawn.

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There’s a bit of snow in the neighborhood, tonight. The radar shows that it’s a little more to the south and east of us than it is here. Still, we’ve managed to come up with a couple of inches on the ground at the moment. Which, as it happens, is exactly 2in. above what we had before. Now, that’s no probably isn’t going to last, given that someday the temperatures are supposed to be back up in the middle forties. That sounds pretty much like the kind of wonder we had last year, where it snowed one week and then stayed just above freezing for the next two, just enough to melt the snow again. Still, it is pretty outside just now. But it is going to be a zoo going into work in the morning. I’ve already resigned myself to that fact.

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I’m actually considering buying a vehicle by way of E-Bay. And not just any vehicle, but about $30,000.00 worth of diesel pickup truck. There are a number of reasons why that is not extravagant.

At the moment, my current van is getting around 21 to 22 MPG on the highway. Not too bad, for a conversion Astro/Safari with all wheel drive. And we love the configuration of the thing. It has served us very well indeed over the years. But we tow about 5000lbs. worth of trailer. The Astro does actually perform fairly well under that kind of load. But the gas mileage goes from that 21 to 22 figure, down to about nine or ten per gallon, when towing that trailer.

The diesel, meantime, while somewhat larger physically, is far more able in terms of power and stability to handle that trailer. It also tends to get without the trailer approximately the same mileage even with having several times the power, and about twice the engine size. 20 to 21 MPG, either reports I’m getting. And, yes, you end up paying 35¢ a gallon more on average for diesel. At least, around here.

However; that rig also ends up getting around eighteen or nineteen MPG with that trailer on the hitch according to what owners of similar equipment are telling me. Which is approximately double the fuel mileage. Now if you look at it that I’m only paying about a 10% surcharge for diesel, assuming a price of close on $3.00 a gallon for fuel, that huge increase in mileage undertow situation, is worth the added money. This is particularly true when you consider that if I wasn’t going for the diesel I would probably get a similarly equipped gasser, which would give me a lower base line mileage without the trailer, (say 12-17) and certainly would only be getting the nine or ten MPG while towing.

May as well get the added mileage and the added power. I admit, there is something of a mistique to driving a vehicle with 500 to 700 ft lbs. of torque available at all times. I can just imagine what the environmental wackos are going to say about this one.

We’ll probably do that kind of a deal next year at some point. We’ll see.
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Enough for now. I’m off to bed.

(Edit:  DavidL)

Ace has some thoughts on the recent noise over Iraq… Specifically, as regards the Iraq surrender group:

It’s artificial.

By this I mean there was no seismic change in the circumstance in Iraq. Incrementally most say it has gotten worse, but worse in a specific way: sectarian violence has increased. There has been an increase in US combat deaths, but such rises and declines in combat intensity has been largely cyclical; there may be some reason to fear that it will only get worse from here, but there is also good reason — the whole history of the war — to suspect it will abate. And then, later, increase in intensity again.

The sudden determination — now the Conventional Wisdom, according to the media — that everything has gone to hell and that we must get out immediately if not sooner is almost entirely a creation of the Democratic victory in November, and the media’s consequent emboldment to say clearly and forcefully the things they’ve been thinking since, oh, before the war began, and since the one-day “quagmire” in the actual invasion when our troops had to stop moving due to sandstorms.

It’s not real. There was no genuine “Iraqi Tet,” and even to the extent there was something of an Iraqi Tet, we know something about Tet offensives: they’re designed not to achieve military victories, but public opinion victories in America.

This is precisely correct.  Alas, that having identified the problem, doesn’t mean solving it…. And the democrats, much to their countries detriment, couldn’t care less having benefited greatly from that public relations effort on the part of the terrorists. 

The warplan should be the opposite of that suggested by Baker. Baker claims we must stop making fighting Al Qaeda the priority, and instead seek peace. That’s quite wrong. We should refocus on killing Al Qaeda and Shi’ite militiamen who attack US troops, and let peace seek itself, through the brutal methods by which peace is usually ultimately had.

The word “pacify” has a nice connotation, suggesting coddling a baby by giving it warm milk to suckle on. In historical reality, populations are “pacified” through extremely brutal, dirty, and nasty means, killed, raped, butchered, and driven out of their homelands until they ultimately lose all hope of military victory and all desire to fight.

Correct. Read again, what I posted earlier today, from VDH:

in those days, peace and reconstruction followed rather than preceded victory. In tough-minded fashion, we offered ample aid to, and imposed democracy on, war-torn nations only after the enemy was utterly defeated and humiliated.

And again, what I posted from Cicero’s De Officiis by way of Jason Papas:

“The only excuse, therefore, for going to war is that we may live in peace unharmed; and when the victory is won, we should spare those who have not been blood-thirsty and barbarous in their warfare. For instance, our forefathers actually admitted to full rights of citizenship the Tusculans, Acquians, Volscians, Sabines, and Hernicians, but they razed Carthage [in the 3rd Punic War] and Numantia [in Spain, 134 BC] to the ground.”

For James Baker, the focus that he’d like to see is more on the Palestinian and Israeli questions.  But, I’ve provided plenty in the way of proof that peace is not on the minds of the Palestinians. 
The reason that they haven’t wanted peace is because they haven’t been defeated yet.  Not really.  When I say defeated I mean utterly crushed. Until that happens, peace negotiations are used as would be any other weapon; against their declared enemy. 

We’ve been spending so much time trying to reconstruct Iraq, that we forgotten the first purpose of going in there the first place; that was to defeat the enemy. 

Today being December 7th, draws a great comparison…. Imagine trying to reconstruct Japan while the Kamkazie planes are still falling on our ships. No, we had to drop a couple atomic bombs to get the place pacified, first.

Imagine trying to play meals on wheels in Germany before the truce was signed. No, we had t firebomb a few cities first, to take the fight out of them. Brutal? Certainly… but how would we have fared without such actions? Iraq gives us the answer.

Fill in the blanks people… this isn’t rocket science. 

Update:

Captain’s Quarters is a little kinder… remarking at one point that :

The fundamental problem with the ISG is to misunderstand the entire war on terror.

And later, that:

…its recommendations descend from some strange Utopian vision of peace and brotherhood that only exists in the fevered imagination of the so-called realists.
…
The ISG wants us to believe that Iran and Syria have no interest in instability in the region. That’s an interesting perspective, since the two are the most notorious terror-sponsoring states in the world.

And therein, lies the problem.  There is a steadfast refusal on the part of some in Washington, and the majority on the left in the remainder of the country, to it now is that some people simply don’t want peace, which is precisely how we got here in the first place. 

An interesting note from Jason Papas, over at Liberty and Culture:

The great Roman orator, statesman, and philosopher, Marcus Tullius Cicero is a father of the theory of “just war;” but Cicero’s version differs substantially from Augustine, Aquinas, and Hugo Grotius. For Cicero, war has a clear purpose which determines when to fight and how each enemy should be fought. From De Officiis:

“The only excuse, therefore, for going to war is that we may live in peace unharmed; and when the victory is won, we should spare those who have not been blood-thirsty and barbarous in their warfare. For instance, our forefathers actually admitted to full rights of citizenship the Tusculans, Acquians, Volscians, Sabines, and Hernicians, but they razed Carthage [in the 3rd Punic War] and Numantia [in Spain, 134 BC] to the ground.”

For Cicero, the nature of the enemy determines the means to bring about a lasting peace. A barbarian enemy is fought to the death.

It seems to me that Mr Bush attempted to wage such a war in the middle east… and where we have run into problems is where we have altered that plan, so as to quiet the anti-war liberals.

freemyspacedesign.com   Sorry, but as I was looking through some of my various inboxes, I scored this animated .gif and just had to share it.

Signs you might have been going a little fast…

65 years ago, in the morning. About just now, in fact.
We were under attack.

for some, this date has sparked memories.

But for me, I have often wondered how those who died in that attack… and how those who survived it, would react to the prevailing ‘cut and run’ attitude around another dastardly attack, suffered more recently.

Hanson, who has come up in conversation here just recently, points out the differences, then to now:

in those days, peace and reconstruction followed rather than preceded victory. In tough-minded fashion, we offered ample aid to, and imposed democracy on, war-torn nations only after the enemy was utterly defeated and humiliated. Today, to avoid such carnage, we try to help and reform countries before our enemies have been vanquished —putting the cart of aid before the horse of victory.

Quite correct. And therein lies the biggest problem with the approach we’ve taken… it’s one that I’ve spoken of before. We’re ruining our chances for peace, because we don’t want to be seen as the aggressor. So worried are we about that impression that we’ve lost sight of the fact that peace only comes when the enemy is defeated.

In short, our action in Iraq were hobbled by one major sticking point; It was formulated so as not to tee off the anti-war left.  The trouble is accomidating such people is never condusive to good outcomes. I have written often enough that Bush 41’s problem was trying to accomidate the Democrats as regards taxes. He at their demand, broke his ‘no new taxes’ pledge, and they used that as a weapon against him. Bush 43 now suffers the same problems in his legacy; He also tried to compromise with the Democrats, as regards Iraq. Which, I’m afraid is how we ended up where we are.

Hanson is exactly on the money here… There is no starker contrast than the handing of that attack, 65 years ago today, and this one.