Counterpoint

The Truth Will Set Us Free

Fri, 07 Nov 2003 15:26:30 GMT

Victor Davis Hanson breaks it down:

In short, our enemies are ideological fanatics who benefit from sanctuary in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Iran, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Yemen, money from Saudi Arabia and pan-Arabic charities, and indirect political tolerance and at times covert support from members of the Saudi Royal family, the government of Basher Assad, Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, elements of the Pakistani government, and Yasser Arafat. We all know that privately, but we must now publicly accept the challenge of our day -- if we wish to ensure that there are no more craters and incinerated flesh in New York. The president had it right all along that there is a big choice for everyone involved -- and those in the Middle East will have to decide whether they are for or against the United States in its efforts to kill the Islamic fascists who have butchered thousands of our own and who want to destroy America and offer a new Dark Age in its place. All the peace marches, New York Times editorials, or near-slander from Democratic presidential contenders cannot change that reality, and so the decision really is either to cease and desist or to wage war and finish the conflict. Anything in between is madness.

Mon, 25 Aug 2003 16:11:40 GMT

Ayn Rand. "The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles." [Motivational Quotes of the Day] George W. Bush, you bible-thumping imbecile, you are guilty!

Mon, 25 Aug 2003 16:10:49 GMT

Will anxious voters choose an ideological extremist over an incumbent president? [OpinionJournal] Probably not, and that's a pity. Goldwater was a great man. Dean is an ideological extremist (from what I can tell though, very left wing). We need someone like Goldwater again...

Mon, 25 Aug 2003 16:08:43 GMT

Iran Sends Al Qaeda Members to Saudi Arabia. The Islamic Republic News Agency has reported that Iran extradited "a number" of highly-placed Al Qaeda members to our allies the Saudis: [little green footballs] Yet another cuntry that Bush Jr. has done nothing to, despite much more evidence than Iraq that it sponsors terrorism. What about Saudi? North Korea?

Message to the Democrats

Mon, 25 Aug 2003 15:50:10 GMT

I'm pro war. Not Bush's pathetic version of it but the kind that includes killing our real enemies, not just the ones on the periphery. Yes, that means Saudi Arabia and Iran. Without remorse and without apology. I fucking despise Bush and would like nothing more than to boot him out of office. I'm far from the only one that feels this way. (Demand) So, where the hell are your candidates? The ones that aren't loons? (Supply) I kinda like Dean, only because he's an Angry Man. I can't stand him once I examine his beliefs though.

Manifest destiny warmed up?

Mon, 18 Aug 2003 19:36:46 GMT

America, it is said, is the world's latest imperial power. Don't believe it.

Supremacy by Stealth

Mon, 18 Aug 2003 19:29:05 GMT

It is a cliché these days to observe that the United States now possesses a global empire -- different from Britain's and Rome's but an empire nonetheless. It is time to move beyond a statement of the obvious. Our recent effort in Iraq, with its large-scale mobilization of troops and immense concentration of risk, is not indicative of how we will want to act in the future. So how should we operate on a tactical level to manage an unruly world? What are the rules and what are the tools?

This one is straight from Atlas Shrugged

Fri, 15 Aug 2003 16:27:15 GMT

The Big Blackout...

How We Collapse

Tue, 12 Aug 2003 20:06:31 GMT

Professor Hanson is puts his fingers on the contradiction that Western civilization frequently contends with:

The burden of the modern Western soldier is not that he is too lethal -- although he is surely that as well -- but that he must be more than a soldier: he must be a humanitarian who seeks to rebuild almost immediately what he finds has been destroyed by his enemy. An American in Iraq must be as concerned to spackle the shattered plaster from his (or others') gun bursts as he is to pull the trigger in the first place. And that fact in and of itself -- while it will never quite satisfy his elite Western censors -- quite literally can get him killed. In this regard, my favorite recent scene was in the neighborhood of the blasted death house. After explaining to Western journalists that they mysteriously knew nothing of either the Husseins' nearby presence or the Baathist sympathies of the sheik next door, residents complained of shattered windows and pockmarked walls from collateral fire -- only to be assured that the U.S. government would quickly provide suitable compensation. And we will -- with apologies added.

Altruism.

Victor Davis Hanson: War's Bitter Laws

Tue, 15 Jul 2003 02:54:44 GMT

Professor Hanson takes a walk on the dark side and becomes, I daresay, Codevillaesque:

We sometimes downplay the need to liquidate the charismatic leaders of our enemies. Our grandfathers did not. Thus in almost paranoid frenzy they diverted troops to hunt down a mythical National Redoubt where purportedly a Hitler on the lam might plan terror and guerrilla resistance that could re-galvanize a demoralized populace. We ridicule their silliness and error, but perhaps they understood something we have forgotten. ... We are winning this war. But we should never forget, because of our amazing success so far, that we are still in a war -- a big one against Islamic fascism and the abettors of terror in the Middle East that started on September 11 but will follow certain historic rules that did not suddenly first appear in 2001, nor can be easily ignored by present experts. Our task -- ordeal if you will -- is that we must make war so godawfully terrible to our enemies, and the rewards of peace and reform so humanely sweet to our friends, that the vast middle in between will have no problem choosing sides.

Those who don't understand history are doomed to repeat it. As Codevilla says:

Victory Means Killing Causes Where did all the Nazis go? Where are all those Communists who so recently made up a movement with roots and branches in every corner of the world? Recall for a moment the Communist movement's breadth and depth. The Communist Party was just the tip of the iceberg. Every political party, every labor union, every newspaper, every school, every profession, every social organization had sympathizers with Communism who played a significant role in its life. What made Communism so strong? What made democratic politicians (Reagan excepted) afraid to say that it was evil? No one argued that the Soviet Union recruited every Communist, pulled every string on Communism's behalf throughout the world. It did not have to, any more than the sun has to reach down and turn every sunflower to make it follow its path. Where now are all those people, young and old, who would argue and demonstrate, and scheme and spy and kill and betray for the grand cause of Communism? They were no more when the Soviet Union was no more, just as sunflowers would cease to exist were there no sun. As for those ferocious Nazis whom the New York Times (all by itself, without orders from Berlin) once thought were the wave of the future, only the name remains, as a hackneyed insult. Human causes are embodied by human institutions. With them they flourish, with them they die. Communists and Nazis everywhere ceased to be a problem when the regimes that inspired them died.

Why radical Islam might defeat the West

Fri, 11 Jul 2003 21:35:46 GMT

This guy is on to something. While the West, embodied by Europe, has probably lost the war already -- mainly by not reproducing -- America may yet win. It's a precarious time and, unfortunately, Bush is the best we have out of politicians that would likely win. That in and of itself says a great deal...

Not a single Western strategist has proposed an ideological response to the religious challenge of Islam. On the contrary: the Vatican, the guardian-of-last-resort of the Western heritage, has placed itself squarely in the camp of appeasement. Except for a few born-again Christians in the United States, no Western voice is raised in criticism of Islam itself. The trouble is that Islam believes in its divine mission, while the United States has only a fuzzy recollection of what it once believed, and therefore has neither the aptitude nor the inclination for ideological warfare. ... Grim men of faith - Loyola, Oldebarnevelt, Richilieu, Mazarin - led the religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries, while the Florentines amused the tourists (The sacred heart of darkness, February 11). The trouble with Strauss, I reiterate, is that he was an atheist, rather a disadvantage in a religious war. The West has no armed prophet. It doesn't even have an armed theologian.

The West does have an "armed prophet" -- it is Ayn Rand.

The Founders understood the importance of free immigration

Thu, 03 Jul 2003 20:57:26 GMT

Tomorrow we celebrate the 227th anniversary of a document that founded our nation by defining what it stands for: the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But how many of us remember that among the colonists' grievances was the king's hindrance of immigration? [OpinionJournal]

Codevilla: When the Cheering Stops

Sat, 21 Jun 2003 05:59:34 GMT

Another masterpiece:

In 1991, as in Vietnam, and as in Korea, America specialized in winning the battle and losing the war. Whether military success in Iraq, 2003 would break that pattern would depend on the resolution of intellectual conflicts in Washington.

What I love about Codevilla is that he hits the source of problem: (bad) philosophy. Read the whole thing. He should write a book.

A Time for Choosing

Sat, 21 Jun 2003 02:59:47 GMT

I am going to talk of controversial things. I make no apology for this.

Mark Steyn is in Iraq: Come on over the water's lovely

Mon, 02 Jun 2003 01:46:44 GMT

There's no dysentery or cholera, no sign of a human catastrophe, the roads and medical centres are empty and the countryside charming. Yes, writes Mark Steyn, there's no place like Iraq for a holiday.

Reuel Marc Gerecht: The Mullahs' Manhattan Project

Mon, 02 Jun 2003 01:44:04 GMT

Do we dare let these men acquire nukes?

Our Own Worst Enemies?

Fri, 30 May 2003 22:22:40 GMT

Angelo Codevilla lays it out:

What stands in the way of our achieving the peace we so desire? Primarily, the ideas of Western elites. Here are a few. Violence and killing do not settle anything. In fact they are the ultima ratio, the decisive argument, on earth. Mankind's great questions are decided by war. The battle of Salamis decided whether or not there would be Greek civilization. Whether Western Europe would be Christian or Muslim was decided by the battle of Tours. Even as the U.S. Civil War decided the future of slavery and World War II ended Nazism, so this war will decide not just who rules in the Middle East, but the character of life in America as well. Our primary objective in war as in peace must be to act in accordance with the wishes and standards of the broadest slice of mankind. In fact, the standards of most of mankind are far less worthy than those prevalent in America. America's Founders taught this, and forgetting it has caused harm. Alliances must always be means, never ends in themselves, and as such must be made or unmade according to whether or not they help secure our interest. Our interest in war is our kind of peace. That is why it is mistaken to consider an ally anyone who impedes the killing of those who stand in the way of our peace. With allies like Saudi Arabia, America does not need enemies. When involved in any conflict, we should moderate the pursuit of our objectives so as propitiate those moderates who stand on the sidelines. Individuals and governments stand on the sidelines of conflict, or lend support to one side, according to their judgment of who will win and with whom they will have to deal. "Extremist" is one of many pejorative synonyms for "loser." The surest way to lose the support of "moderates" is to be ineffective. Might is mistaken for right everywhere, but especially in the Middle East. Hence the easiest way to encourage terrorism is to attempt to deal with "the root causes of resentment against us" by granting some of the demands of our enemies. Learning to put up with security measures will make us safer, and is a contribution we can all make to victory. On the contrary, security measures will not make us safe, and accustoming ourselves to them is our contribution to defeat. The sign of victory over terrorism will be the removal of security measures. The Arab regimes that are the matrices of terrorism have nothing going for them except such Western shibboleths. Their peoples hate them. Their armies would melt before ours as they have melted before Western armies since the days of Xenophon's Upcountry March. They produce nothing. Terror is their domestic policy and their foreign policy. The oil from which they get the money that they lavish on themselves and on terrorism comes from revenues that Westerners give them to satisfy Western ideas of what is right. The regimes that are killing us and defeating us are the product of Western judgments in the mid-20th century that colonialism is wrong and that these peoples could govern themselves as good stewards of the world's oil markets. They continue to exist only because Western elites have judged that war is passe. It is these ideas and judgments, above all, that stand in the way of our peace, our victory.

Fri, 30 May 2003 20:56:42 GMT

The case for war, revisited [Economist: Opinion]

Fri, 30 May 2003 20:33:24 GMT

Harry S Truman. "Carry the battle to them. Don't let them bring it to you. Put them on the defensive. And don't ever apologize for anything." Too bad today's Democrats are so craven. Unfortunately, the Republicans are only a little bit better in this regard.

Fri, 30 May 2003 20:29:25 GMT

Road Trap for America. Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. says the "roadmap to Murderville" will not only be a disaster for Israel -- it will cause serious negative repercussions for the US war on terror ... [little green footballs]

Thu, 22 May 2003 07:53:51 GMT

Henrik Ibsen. "The strongest man in the world is he who stands alone."

Thu, 22 May 2003 07:53:01 GMT

Did the Iraq War Help al-Qaeda?. Another excellent column from Christopher Hitchens on the aftermath of the Iraq War, dealing with the latest bogus argument from the Appeasement Left: [little green footballs]

Wed, 14 May 2003 19:16:43 GMT

India, Pakistan and Kashmir [Economist: Opinion]

Wed, 14 May 2003 19:10:23 GMT

Why America should shut down the Guantanamo prison camp [Economist: Opinion]

Terror strikes in its breeding ground, Saudi Arabia

Wed, 14 May 2003 18:26:27 GMT

There's a reason those bombings took place in Saudi Arabia.

One Last Look

Wed, 14 May 2003 18:00:52 GMT

Although United Nations weapons inspector Rocco Casagrande and his colleagues found no bioweapons in Iraq, they could sense that the government had not come clean.

Food Fight: Looting at the UN

Sun, 04 May 2003 05:34:26 GMT

When the Food Workers Union stages an impromptu walkout at the U.N., the diplomats start looting for lunch and booze.