January 26, 2005

Conversations with My Liberal Friends

Judging from Evan Coyne Maloney’s latest documentary video, there’s a line of thinking on the Left that says they should overthrow our government by force. I’m curious whether they really mean it, or whether they’re just saying these things for shock value.

Evidently it’s not exclusively the extremists on the Left saying this stuff. Just recently a friend of mine—an actual friend of mine—said the same thing. To me.

Let’s call this friend of mine Logan. I have lots of great friends who are Liberals. For some reason they like to talk politics with me. I enjoy talking politics of course, so that’s fine with me. Occasionally I get a surprise out of their arguments. A week or so ago I saw House of Flying Daggers with Logan. The protagonists in the film were people who were trying to overthrow a corrupt government by force. Afterwards Logan said, you know, we should have that here. All tyrants and despots should be overthrown. We should overthrow our government by force. I said, you’re just kidding, you’re just trying to get my goat. But he kept saying it. So after a while I said, “You don’t believe in democracy, do you?” He said, “Yes I do.” I said, “You want to overthrow a democratically elected government, that just got elected, in this country, by force. You’re the tyrant. You’re the despot.” I dunno, I think maybe I got through to him a little bit.

Say Anything is back online.

Report: Iranian Civilians Were Inspired by GWB’s Inaugural Speech

From an understandably anonymous poster from the Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran, writing on FrontPage:

Reports from across Iran are stating about the massive welcoming of President George W. Bush’s inaugural speech and his promise of helping to bring down the last outposts of tyranny.

Millions of Iranians have been reported as having stayed home, on Thursday night which is their usual Weekend and outgoing night, in order to see or hear the Presidential speech and the comments made by the Los Angeles based Iranian satellite TV and radio networks, such as, NITV or KRSI.

The speech and its package of hope have been, since late yesterday night and this morning, the main topics of most Iranians’ conversations during their familial and friendly gatherings, in the collective taxis and buses, as well as, among groups of young Iranians who gather outside the cities on the Fridays.

Many were seen showing the ” V ” sign or their raised fists. Talks were focused on steps that need to be taken in order to use the first time ever favorable International condition.

...What had always been missing in order to create a wide scale Iranian democratic revolution, such as what happened in Georgia, was till now a firm and noticeable World pressure on the Islamic regime and a trustable Opposition Council with a correct agenda.

Say Anything is down for the moment. In the meantime, Rob is posting at Ace of Spades.

Appreciating Winston Churchill’s Vision

Daniel Mandel, in Front Page, has an excellent appreciation of Winston Churchill:

Just over 130 years since a boy christened Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was delivered at Englands Blenheim Palace. He survived the trenches of France, political reversals and even being struck by a New York City cab to lead Britain from its greatest peril in May 1940 to victory over Nazism five years later. Monday marked the 40th anniversary of his death. In the age of Islamist terror, can we draw inspiration from his career?

Yes, but only, it seems, from his finest hour. Until his moment arrived in 1940, Churchill was frequently dismissed even within his own party as an imperialist adventurer with baroque ambitions, a throwback to an earlier epoch, an author of military debacles out of touch with a supposedly emergent world of international comity. In short, he was regarded then as most contemporary liberals might view George W. Bush or Ariel Sharon today.

And yet, if Churchill had faltered, bowing to party consensus in the 1930s or to counsel urging that Britain sue for peace in 1940, world history might have been very different. Assuming Western civilization had survived, he would have joined the ignominious company of men like Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain.

Instead, he sacrificed high office for years to sound the warning against appeasing the violent forces of totalitarianism. No one save he who foresaw the danger so far ahead was fit to lead when the supreme test arrived. And lead he did, for 18 months when Britain stood alone with but a slender lifeline to an isolationist United States. His mistakes were legion and often costly, but his leadership carried the allied cause.

Churchill was guided by a few elementary ideas: that Britain and the Anglo-sphere more generally was a force for good; that its division and vacillation invited destructive forces to fill the vacuum; and that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. Together, they might even be called the Churchill Doctrine.

There’s a lot more.

Captured Terrorist Confesses to Building Most of the Car Bombs Used in Baghdad

From NewsMax:

BAGHDAD, Iraq – An al-Qaida lieutenant in custody in Iraq has confessed to masterminding most of the car bombings in Baghdad, including the bloody 2003 assault on the U.N. headquarters in the capital, authorities said Monday.

Sami Mohammed Ali Said al-Jaaf, also known as Abu Omar al-Kurdi, “confessed to building approximately 75 percent of the car bombs used in attacks in Baghdad” since the Iraq war began, according to the interim Iraqi prime minister’s spokesman, Thaer al-Naqib.

A government statement said Al-Jaaf was taken into custody Jan. 15 and was responsible for 32 car bombings, including the bombing of the U.N. headquarters that killed the top U.N. envoy in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, and 21 other people.

Circumstantial evidence appearing to confirm this comes from ABC News:

JENNINGS: The level of violence is down in the last several days. Many explosive devices this month are less sophisticated than they’ve been in the past. They hope the U.S. is putting some of the better bomb makers out of business. Americans are ready targets in many places but there is no apparent antagonism here.

And even ABC News is reporting evidence that mainstream media has hidden good news regarding Iraq from the public:

JENNINGS: The U.S. is spending millions of dollars here on sewer pipes, sewage treatment, available clean water. How does the U.S. get credit for this? Every U.S. officer encountered today said the media has missed or underreported this part of the U.S. mission. We have surveyed 1,300 Iraqis in 40 different towns and cities. One thing comes through very clearly. It is a measure of their hope about the future. Yes, they feel unsafe, but they do go on to say that they believe the election will mean a positive change.

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