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Here was the part of Kerry’s acceptance speech in which he risks terrible danger to our country.
And as President, I will bring back this nation’s time-honored tradition: the United States of America never goes to war because we want to, we only go to war because we have to.
I defended this country as a young man and I will defend it as President. Let there be no mistake: I will never hesitate to use force when it is required. Any attack will be met with a swift and certain response.
Bring back the time-honored tradition: Kerry is making the classic military mistake, of fighting today’s war with the tactics from the last one. The results of such a mistake are often devastating:
In medieval times, the knight on horseback was dominant on the battlefield. Then the British came up with a devastating anti-knight weapon: the longbow, which could penetrate chain mail at 100 paces. At the battle of Crecy in 1346, and again at Agincourt in 1415, charging French knights were mowed down in rows.
Yet the use of horsemen in battle persisted for centuries, even as combat mortality rates soared. ...the main reason that the military style of large-scale cavalry formations lasted for so long was cultural: Officers and gentlemen liked riding around on horseback.
Other cultures were even slower to comprehend what was happening. At the Battle of the Pyramids in 1798, the Egyptian Mamelukes—riding the finest Arabian stallions, wearing all their burnished armor, waving jeweled pistols and scimitars—charged headlong into Napoleon’s infantry and were slaughtered.
Same thing today. The terrorists have this new tactic, in which they seek to use our own nobility against us. They rightly know that we would do everything we can to avoid civilian casualties. So they figure, they can kill our civilians, while we can only kill their soldiers (who are willing to risk death). This strategy has benefits to them. It lets them harm us in a way in which we forbear to harm them. It lets them hide within civilian populations. Additionally, such battles are often fought on a tit-for-tat basis, in which they kill civilians, and then comes a retaliation in which they lose a few soldiers; this tit-for-tat basis is something they can sustain for many years, as in the case of Israel vs. the Palestinian terrorists.
Clearly new tactics are called for in order to win the war on terrorists. George Bush has found a new tactic and used it to great effect. It is this: you strike us; we take over a country that supports terrorists, remove its dictators, and turn it over to its people.
This does not work so well for the terrorists.
But Kerry has chosen the tit-for-tat approach. He said it loud and clear: “Any attack will be met with a swift and certain response.” He left no room for doubt. He said he won’t take the war to them; he’ll leave it to them to come and kill our civilians; and when they do, he’ll kill a few of their soldiers in return.
And that would go on for years or even decades.
It’s yesterday’s tactics.
It’s exactly what the terrorists want.
It is surrender.
In conclusion: A vote for Kerry is a vote for fighting today’s war with yesterday’s tactics. And that is a classic military error, which we must not make.
Update 8-5-04. Welcome, Carnival of the Vanities readers! This site is proud to have this article included in the latest Carnival of the Vanities, hosted this week by Seldom Sober.
See also these recent posts:
Michael Moore was on The O’Reilly Factor last night, and asked Bill the following question (the quote is from memory. If anyone has a link to a transcript, please send it to me):
“Bush sent children to die in Iraq. Would you send your child to die in Iraq?”
Let’s count all the false assumptions in this question.
So the correct answer is, “The question is based on false assumptions.”
Moore asked O’Reilly another question:
“Since Hussein had no WMDs, what did our 900 soldiers die for?”
I would respond:
and…
Overall, the states that voted for Gore last time have lost citizens, while those that voted for Bush have gained citizens. Due to reapportionment, this has cost blue states electoral votes.
From AP:
Four years ago, Bush won 30 states and their 271 electoral votes – one more than needed. Gore, who won the popular vote, claimed 20 states plus the District of Columbia for 267 electoral votes.
Since then, reapportionment added electoral votes to states with population gains and took them from states losing people. The result: Bush’s states are now worth 278 electoral votes and Gore’s are worth just 260.
Via mousemusings, here are details of the specific states that have lost electoral votes:
WOODRUFF: Let’s talk about some of the state’s that lost representations, that lost numbers in the electoral count. Which ones are they?
SMYTH: There were two Gore states that lost two electoral votes. those were New York and Pennsylvania. New York, which is a Democratic strong hold, Pennsylvania which was a close battle ground in 2000. Those were the only two states that lost two electoral votes. There were several states that lost one vote. Michigan was one, Connecticut, Illinois for example.
WOODRUFF: And what about the states that picked up electoral votes?
SMYTH: Well there were four states that picked up two electoral votes. And all four were Bush states. Texas was one, Florida, Georgia and Arizona.
Could this be proof that the liberal policies of those blue states have failed—in that they are driving their citizens away?
And in the beautiful tradition of American democracy, driving them to red states, thereby increasing red state electoral votes?
Update 7-29-04. Welcome, Carnival of the Vanities readers! This article was honored to be included in the latest Carnival of the Vanities, hosted this week by Jeff Doolittle.
Update 12-23-04: The trend appears to be continuing.
You couldn’t make this up.
Sen. John Kerry spoke about the plight of the American worker when he traveled to Detroit earlier this week, a safe message for the blue-collar workers who build cars there.
So it was a little strange that the campaign picked as its press-pass logo for its Motor City tour the gleaming showcase car of a foreign auto company Rolls-Royce that makes cars priced far outside the financial reach of any middle-class voter.
“That’s an insult to the auto worker, it’s an insult to the American worker, it’s an insult to mainstream America,” said Sam Burwell from Corunna, Mich., a third-generation auto worker for General Motors. “It also shows who he’s really in touch with: his European, elitist French friends and not Americans like me. A Rolls-Royce, for cryin’ out loud.”
The Kerry-Edwards traveling press pass was designed by Mr. Kerry’s campaign advance team in Michigan and distributed to the reporters who flew with him to Detroit to attend the 2004 National Urban League Conference. Dominating the pass is the photograph of a Rolls-Royce 100EX, an opulent convertible complete with the famed “Spirit of Ecstasy” hood ornament.
Dick Morris circulates an email letter containing his very insightful commentary. A few excerpts from today’s:
THE KENNEDY-CLINTON SPLIT
...The recent effort by the Kerry Campaign to keep Hillary off the stage during prime time, coupled with their selection of Senator John Edwards as a Vice Presidential candidate are opening shots in this fight which will likely escalate into a full fledged feud.
When Kerry chose Edwards, a charismatic future contender for the presidency, he knew that he was investing in an opponent for Hillary when she goes for the top job herself.
...Hillary, of course, was entitled to a prime time speech. Apart from her husband, she is the most popular Democrat in the nation and she has addressed both of the last two conventions. The fiction that the women Democratic Senators caucused and decided to anoint Senator Barbara Mikulsky of Maryland to speak for them fooled nobody. To suggest that Hillary should mutely stand behind Ms. Mikulsky nodding in agreement was a statement to the Clintons – “this isn’t your party anymore.”
The split began in the fall of 2003 when Kerry was floundering in the face of the Howard Dean surge. The Clintons had bet on Kerry and even sent Chris Lehane, who had played a key role in their Lewinsky-impeachment defense, to be the Massachusetts Senator’s chief campaign consultant. But as Kerry faltered, the Clintons bailed out on his candidacy and pushed General Wesley Clark into the race as their candidate. The former president was quoted in public as saying that his wife and General Clark were the two most outstanding Democrats in the nation. Clinton loyalists like Bruce Lindsay and Harry Thomason took their cue and went to work for Clark. But the unkindest cut of all was when Chris Lehane walked out of the Kerry campaign, attesting to the Massachusetts Senator’s lack of viability and joined up with Clark.
In rushed Ted Kennedy to save the day, sending Kerry Mary Beth Cahill of his Senate staff to steer the faltering campaign. Kennedy’s pivotal role in the Kerry campaign was evident from his up front and public position by his colleague’s side on the night he won the New Hampshire primary. Indeed, as Kerry was all but clinching the nomination, who introduced him to the victory rally? Ted Kennedy.
The Clintons cold shouldered Kennedy throughout their Administration correctly realizing that he was radioactively liberal to the average American voter.
The flower of liberal punditry, Air America, didn’t know what was going on in their own backyard with regard to their radio network. And now John Kerry’s foreign policy czar, Sandy Berger (or Sandy Burglar, per Rush Limbaugh), is caught sneaking classified documents out in his socks.
Berger and his lawyer said Monday night he knowingly removed the handwritten notes by placing them in his jacket, pants and socks, and also inadvertently took copies of actual classified documents in a leather portfolio.
Are these the kind of people who should be running our country?
This week the Blogosphere has discussed in detail the strange behavior of 14 Syrian passengers on the June 29, 2004 Northwest Airlines flight #327 from Detroit to Los Angeles. As summarized by Daniel Pipes:
To make a long story short, fourteen Syrian “musicians” acted strangely during the flight, coming and going to the toilet, signaling each other from various points on the plane, disobeying instructions, intimidating passengers.
From Jacobsen’s article:
Suddenly, seven of the men stood up—in unison—and walked to the front and back lavatories. One by one, they went into the two lavatories, each spending about four minutes inside. Right in front of us, two men stood up against the emergency exit door, waiting for the lavatory to become available. The men spoke in Arabic among themselves and to the man in the yellow shirt sitting nearby. One of the men took his camera into the lavatory. Another took his cell phone. Again, no one approached the men. Not one of the flight attendants asked them to sit down.
...I grabbed my son, I held my husband’s hand and, despite the fact that I am not a particularly religious person, I prayed. The last man came out of the bathroom, and as he passed the man in the yellow shirt he ran his forefinger across his neck and mouthed the word No.
Many have found anomalies in this account, with a few even questioning its veracity. From BlogCritics:
The “terrorists” in this story apparently are doing very little to hide their connection. They give each other knowing nods and thumbs up signs. Apparently a number of passengers noticed and were afraid. Wouldnt the “terrorists” still want to hide their connection?
...No sir. The whole thing smacks of urban legend. I’m going on record right now. I call BS. I guess we’ll see if I’m right. If I’m wrong and it’s all true, well, I’ll be wrong and the writer will have done the world a service by heightening our awareness. And I’ll apologize.
However, Michelle Malkin confirms many of the details reported by Jacobsen:
Regarding Annie Jacobsen’s intriguing article, I just got word from Dave Adams of the Federal Air Marshals Service (FAM). Adams confirmed that he spoke to Annie Jacobsen, was quoted accurately in her story, and confirmed some of the basic facts outlined in her article (there were 14 Syrians on the flight; they were questioned by the Los Angeles Police Department, FBI, FAM, and so on; they were a musical band).
Let’s say everybody quoted above is right, namely, Jacobsen reported accurately, and the Syrians were too blatant in their behavior to be what they seemed to be to Jacobsen, and to Dave Adams. What’s going on?
Here’s a possible explanation I haven’t yet seen elsewhere: the Syrians were musicians who were jerking our chains in order to scare us. They purposely and blatantly acted like terrorists in order to scare the plane’s passengers, knowing that as they were carrying no weapons they would not be punished. The result: terrorism without having to do anything that would get them killed, arrested or deported.
As Jacobsen notes:
So here’s my question: Since the FBI issued a warning to the airline industry to be wary of groups of five men on a plane who might be trying to build bombs in the bathroom, shouldn’t a group of 14 Middle Eastern men be screened before boarding a flight?
Apparently not. Due to our rules against discrimination, it can’t be done. During the 9/11 hearings last April, 9/11 Commissioner John Lehman stated that …it was the policy (before 9/11) and I believe remains the policy today to fine airlines if they have more than two young Arab males in secondary questioning because that’s discriminatory.
So even if Northwest Airlines searched two of the men on board my Northwest flight, they couldn’t search the other 12 because they would have already filled a government-imposed quota.
Per Daniel Pipes:
...I looked at the public regulations for airline security procedures back in January 2002 and found them a recipe for disaster. Now we learn that the confidential regulations are yet worse. If we don’t get serious now about security, we will pay severely and then we’ll get serious, after who-knows-how-many are dead.
This has got to go. Air marshalls must be empowered to search anyone they want of any ethnicity, particularly anyone of Arabic descent, at any time during flight. Political correctness be damned. It’s better to have a safe flight and offended passengers than an unsafe flight and all dead pasengers. If passengers of Arabic descent don’t like it, let them ask their leaders to stand up and declare that they are against terrorists wherever they are to be found worldwide.
Don’t miss:
- Moxie’s conversation with AOL’s “SmarterChild” IM bot, which is programmed to tell kids to vote Democratic, and even to make derogatory remarks about Republicans. This is a scandal.
onedirgrrl: do you like Dick Cheney?
SmarterChild: No way. He’s awful. There are way better politicians than him
onedirgrrl: Again, why don’t you like Dick Cheney?
SmarterChild: You just can’t feel good about Dick Cheney, that’s all.
[...]
onedirgrrl: Do you like communism?
SmarterChild: Absolutely! I really like communism!
– Allah’s illustrated expose of how TIME magazine has published glowing color cover photos of Democratic VP candidates when they are selected, but has not done so for Republican VP candidates.
– Patterico’s detailed description of the LA TIMES’ ludicrously slanted coverage of the Joe Wilson story.
After a series of Page One articles trumpeting allegations by Joe Wilson against the Bush Administration (for details see this post), the Los Angeles Times has finally mentioned that the recent Senate Intelligence Committee report concludes that Wilson is a liar. But the story, which took the paper almost a week to run, appears on page A6, and does not cite the most compelling evidence that Wilson lied. (Although there is a front-page story about the Butler report, that story doesn’t mention Niger at all.) Incredibly, the Page One space today is reserved for more important stories, like this one about Harrah’s buying Caesar’s.
The revelations about Wilson come at the tail end of the page A6 story about Iraq efforts to buy Niger uranium...
Big media is using the tricks and deceptions detailed by these great posts to control what you think and how you vote.
He’s the epitome of the limousine liberal.
This site was honored recently by email correspondence from Bruce Herschensohn. I’d heard him speak, and had blogged an insightful comment he’d made about the U.N.
He’d made another comment I was very interested in posting here. The precise words in which he’d put it seemed perfect, and I contacted him to get an accurate quote.
Bruce made the point that we need more pre-emptive strikes. Nations including Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen continue to harbor terrorists who want to attack our civilian population on our shores.
Our President should tell their Chiefs of State that we know they shelter headquarters, training centers, offices, safe houses, and other facilities of terrorists, and either the Chief of State orders them out and gets rid of them or we will get rid of them.
My thoughts: That is exactly right.
So many here continue to wring their hands over what to do about terrorists, as though it would be an act of war against the nations that harbor them to eradicate them and the many known physical structures that house their workplaces. It is no act of war against such nations. We would be making no attack against those nations, but only on the terrorists who hide from us within their borders.
Those nations would find it very inconvenient to take it as an act of war. To do so they would have to admit they side with the terrorists and are collaborators in planned attacks against our civilians.
The terrorists are gnats. They are empowered precisely by our forbearance. Any previous nation in history with our power would have eradicated them together with their host nations from the face of the earth by this time. They depend and rely on our forbearance to exist and to continue their efforts to kill us.
There is no reason for such forbearance to continue. Bruce’s strategy is precisely what’s called for. It would greatly reduce the ability of the terrorists to harm our civilians and those of other nations.
Update 7-22-04. Welcome, Carnival of the Vanities readers! This article was honored to be included in the latest Carnival of the Vanities, hosted this week by SoundFury.
Many in the blogosphere have wondered why Bush hasn’t been speaking out on the benefits to Americans of the successful war in Iraq. This week he made one such speech.
Bush said the Senate report would be valuable in repairing shortcomings in intelligence gathering and analysis. But he stoutly defended his decision to go to war against Saddam Hussein.
“I had a choice to make,” he said. “Either take the word of a madman, or defend America. Given that choice, I will defend America every time.”
At that, 200 Oak Ridge scientists, engineers and technicians gave him a standing ovation.
“Although we have not found stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, we were right to go into Iraq,” Bush said. “We removed a declared enemy of America, who had the capability of producing weapons of mass murder, and could have passed that capability to terrorists bent on acquiring them. In the world after September the 11th, that was a risk we could not afford to take.”
Exactly right. If Hussein had no WMDs, it was for, like, 10 minutes—that is, the brief time we had him under the microscope. He had them before and he could put them together again quickly. The UN itself has declared that before and during the war Hussein ripped up factories capable of producing WMDs and shipped them out of Iraq.
I hope GWB will make more speeches on this subject.
For decades U.S. Presidents have tried to make headway in the mideast. Under GWB, it’s happening. Per Charles Krauthammer:
While no one was looking, something historic happened in the Middle East. The Palestinian intifada is over, and the Palestinians have lost.
This is likely to be more than just the end of the intifada itself:
The end of the intifada does not mean the end of terrorism. There was terrorism before the intifada and there will be terrorism to come. What has happened, however, is an end to systematic, regular, debilitating, unstoppable terror—terror as a reliable weapon. At the height of the intifada, there were nine suicide attacks in Israel killing 85 Israelis in just one month (March 2002). In the past three months there have been none.
...Arafat failed, spectacularly. The violence did not bring Israel to its knees. Instead, it created chaos, lawlessness and economic disaster in the Palestinian areas. The Palestinians know the ruin that Arafat has brought, and they are beginning to protest it. He promised them blood and victory; he delivered on the blood.
This coincides with the dramatic release of the Iraqi people from torture, oppression, and dictatorship, and the introduction of democracy to a leading Islamic nation—a significant event in world history.
On the domestic front, analysts are forecasting the best economy in 20 years:
...many analysts are forecasting that the overall economy, as measured by the gross domestic product, will grow by 4.6 percent or better this year, the fastest in two decades.
There were strong 4.5 percent growth rates in 1997 and 1999, when Bill Clinton was president and the country was in the midst of a record 10-year expansion.
But if this year’s growth ends up a bit faster than that, it will be the best since the economy roared ahead at a 7.2 percent rate in 1984, a year when another Republican president Ronald Reagan was running for re-election.
“We are moving into a sweet spot for the economy with interest rates not too high, jobs coming back and business investment providing strength,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Bank One in Chicago, who is predicting GDP growth of 4.8 percent this year.
It’s one of the most successful Presidencies in decades. Big media and the leadership of the left wish to suppress the news, but even they have reason to celebrate these important advances in their own circumstances, and the circumstances of all Americans.
How absurd is this? The so-called World Court “rules” that Israel’s terrorist-stopping wall must be taken down:
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (Reuters) – The World Court strongly condemned Israel’s West Bank barrier Friday, saying it had illegally imposed hardship on thousands of Palestinians and should be torn down.
It’s just funny: the wall “illegally imposed hardship” on the people who were blowing up Israelis!
The court said in a nonbinding ruling hailed by Palestinians and rejected by Israel that the barrier violated international humanitarian law. It called on the U.N. Security Council and General Assembly to stop its construction.
...The court’s head judge, Shi Jiuyong of China, said in the ruling: “The wall … cannot be justified by military exigencies or by the requirements of national security or public order.
The “court” can’t deny the fence stops terrorists and saves civilian lives. From Charles Krauthammer:
Only about a quarter of the separation fence has been built, but its effect is unmistakable. The northern part is already complete, and attacks in northern Israel have dwindled to almost nothing.
Yet the “court” still says that doesn’t justify the fence. Is this not saying that Israel has no right to defend itself?
What surprises me is that the “court” should align itself with the terrorists.
America responded correctly:
But the United States, which has vetoed Security Council resolutions against the Jewish state in the past, dismissed the court’s intervention and an American judge on the 15-member panel did not back the ruling.
And Israel responded correctly as well:
Israel was forthright in its rejection of the ruling, saying not one Palestinian suicide bomber had managed to slip into the Jewish state wherever the barrier had already been constructed.
“They can say the earth is flat. It won’t make it legal, it won’t make it true and it won’t make it just,” Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Britain’s Sky television.
Again, from Krauthammer:
While no one was looking, something historic happened in the Middle East. The Palestinian intifada is over, and the Palestinians have lost.
...Yasser Arafat started the intifada in September 2000, just weeks after he had rejected, at Camp David, Israel’s offer of withdrawal, settlement evacuation, sharing of Jerusalem and establishment of a Palestinian state. Arafat wanted all that, of course, but without having to make peace and recognize a Jewish state. Hence the terror campaign—to force Israel to give it all up unilaterally.
Arafat failed, spectacularly. The violence did not bring Israel to its knees. Instead, it created chaos, lawlessness and economic disaster in the Palestinian areas. The Palestinians know the ruin that Arafat has brought, and they are beginning to protest it. He promised them blood and victory; he delivered on the blood.
Even more important, they have lost their place at the table. Israel is now defining a new equilibrium that will reign for years to come—the separation fence is unilaterally drawing the line that separates Israelis and Palestinians. The Palestinians were offered the chance to negotiate that frontier at Camp David and chose war instead. Now they are paying the price.
It stands to reason. It is the height of absurdity to launch a terrorist war against Israel, then demand the right to determine the nature and route of the barrier built to prevent that very terrorism.
At this point this “court” is a sham. It’s just an attempted power-grab.
Edwards supported Bush in going into Iraq despite the U.N. From the transcript of Hardball with Chris Matthews, October 13 2003:
Matthews: Let me ask but the war, because I know these are all students and a lot of guys the age of these students are fighting over there and cleaning up over there, and theyre doing the occupation.
Were we right to go to this war alone, basically without the Europeans behind us? Was that something we had to do?
EDWARDS: I think that we were right to go. I think we were right to go to the United Nations. I think we couldnt let those who could veto in the Security Council hold us hostage.
And I think Saddam Hussein, being gone is good. Good for the American people, good for the security of that region of the world, and good for the Iraqi people.
MATTHEWS: If you think the decision, which was made by the president, when basically he saw the French werent with us and the Germans and the Russians werent with us, was he right to say, Were going anyway?
EDWARDS: I stand behind my support of that, yes.
MATTHEWS: You believe in that?
EDWARDS: Yes.
Previous to that, on CNN, February 4, 2002, Edwards had said:
...I do think that the more serious question going forward is, what are we going to do? I mean, we have three different countries that, while they all present serious problems for the United States—they’re dictatorships, they’re involved in the development and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction—you know, the most imminent, clear and present threat to our country is not the same from those three countries. I think Iraq is the most serious and imminent threat to our country.
Even Kerry’s own running mate stated that Bush was right on Iraq.
(Hat tip: Andrew Breitbart.)
