Another Darfur and another Saigon. A moral failure and an epic humiliation. That is the cost of surrender.I agree with him.
Food snobs! You know who I mean – the kind of people who study the restaurant ratings in metropolitan mags, who know the names of the chefs in “quality” restaurants, who shop at Whole Foods and buy “organic” and “artisanal” products, who buy expensive kitchen utensils and actually use them from time to time; people who will happily discourse on such subjects at the drop of a hat. That’s right, the kind of people who will gladly and ostentatiously drop hundreds, even thousands, of dollars for a “dining experience” that they can then brag about to their similarly deluded friends. When I was a child, such people were rare and were generally considered the objects of ridicule or pity. Now it seems they are everywhere and exist in sufficiently large numbers to support a TV network and major film productions [not just foreign and indie projects like “Babette’s Feast” and “Sideways”].
Such people take themselves far too seriously.
However off-putting some might find such behavior, it is not in itself a bad thing. The spread of consumer snobbery beyond the narrow confines of the super-rich is a measure of the general prosperity of our nation. The inane and often offensive sensibility behind Ratatouille, a children’s cartoon designed to stroke the sensibilities of food snobs, is therefore to be tolerated if not exactly welcomed.
There is nothing particularly interesting about the film from a technical aspect. It is adequately animated and the voice acting is competent (Peter O’Toole, the exception, is wonderful). The plot is simple and hackneyed and the characters pure cardboard, but as in all children’s films, cute. The humor is pure slapstick, calculated to appeal to children and childish adults – nothing special. What sets Ratatouille apart and earns it plaudits from film critics is its informing sensibility – snobbery.
SPOILERS [although the plot is so predictable that it doesn’t matter much].
The main character is an anthropomorphized rat named Remy [voiced by Patton Oswalt]. He was born with an exquisite talent for appreciating food which sets him apart from his relatives for whom food is simply nourishment. He’s the smart kid who doesn’t really fit in. Separated from his family during a ratty food raid he discovers the world of haute cuisine – a heavenly realm to which he, as a rat, has no access. Skulking around a once famous Parisian restaurant he meets another outcast, Linguini [voiced by Lou Romano], a terminally inept young man who works as a garbage boy. Separately Remy and Linguini are doomed to fail in life – together they can become the greatest chef in Paris. Naturally, they meet cute and bond.
Tension is provided by an unscrupulous chef, Skinner [voiced by Ian Holm] who took control of the restaurant after the death of its famous owner and who is capitalizing on its reputation by churning out inferior products to be sold to the benighted masses who shop in supermarkets rather than specialty stores [I warn you, the in-your-face snobbery is hard to take]. This defines the main theme of the film. It is a paean to artisanal production and a heavy-handed condemnation of mass consumerism. Skinner comes to suspect the secret behind Linguini’s improbable success and seeks to expose it. Remy and Linguini try to maintain their secret relationship while Linguini simultaneously courts the only female chef in the kitchen, Colette [voiced by Janeane Garofolo].
Resolution comes in the form of an overbearing and seemingly sadistic famous food critic, voiced by Peter O’Toole, who delivers final judgment on all things culinary. He had previously written off the restaurant after the death of its owner and now will pass judgment on the product of the new culinary sensation, Linguini. The crisis comes when, on judgment day, Linguini’s secret is exposed and the entire restaurant staff resigns in disgust. Remy, however, recruits a substitute staff from his ratty clan and prepares a magnificent ratatouille that charms the fearsome food critic. In the denouement Remy’s concoction melts the critic’s heart to the point where he is willing to accept that he is eating a meal prepared by varmints.
By the end of the film the outcasts have become accepted (by the discerning people who count if not by the general society), artisanal production has triumphed over mass production, true love has triumphed over social ineptitude and stigma, a moral equivalence has been established between rats and humans, and adults in the audience have been reassured that their insane pretentions are indeed worthwhile. Most importantly, critics are told that for all their cantankerousness, they are really good guy softies who serve a vital function in educating the masses and promoting tolerance and the appreciation of all that is good in life. Naturally, they fell in love with Ratatouille which has become one of the highest rated films of the year.
It figures.
PS: I note that several critics praise the "camera work" in this film. Here's a clue guys, there is no such thing as "camera work" in a cartoon. What they are talking about is the interesting choices of perspective and illusory motion that the cartoon technique enables the director to make. They are indeed impressive, but no more so than Bird's previous effort, "The Incredibles".
2004 - $413 billion
2005 - $318 billion
2006 - $248 billion
2007 - $205 billionThe New York Times's Paul Krugman, in December, wrote that President Bush "plunged the budget deep into deficit by cutting taxes on dividends and capital gains even as he took the country into a disastrous war." Senator Clinton went to the Senate floor in February of this year to speak of the "fiscal recklessness" of the Bush administration, which she charged had contributed to "record deficits." In March, Senator Schumer, who is now the chairman of Congress's Joint Economic Committee, spoke of "budget excesses of the past six years" that have brought us "a mounting debt to the rest of the world."
But as the shrinking figures above show, in fact the deficit is shrinking. When you look at it as a percentage of GDP, the decline is even more striking:
2004 - 3.6%
2005 - 2.6%
2006 - 1.9%
2007 - 1.5%As the mid-session review released yesterday by President Bush's Office of Management and Budget says, the 1.5% of GDP figure is well below the 40-year average of 2.4%. It's also smaller than the deficit was in the first three years of the Clinton administration. The deficit numbers would be even better but for the war, though it is costing only $12 billion a month.
The C.I.A.’s loudest champions have traditionally insisted that its successes were classified and its failures heralded, and that anyone with full access to the secret record would venerate its role in United States national security since its founding under President Harry S. Truman. With Iraq as the end point, Mr. Weiner’s thesis is instead that from the 1940s on, intelligence gaffes, sloppy covert action and bootlicking in the Oval Office have kept the agency from making the kind of grandiose contributions often claimed for it and, at crucial times, have done this country damage.
Anyone tempted to write this book off as an anti-C.I.A. screed had better look at Mr. Weiner’s sources. The author has impressively studied the archival record, teased out newly declassified primary documents and done numerous interviews to glean as much as can be publicly known about the agency’s history. Some of the most damning criticism of the C.I.A.’s past performance in this book comes not from gadflies or ideologues but from ex-officials and long-secret authorized accounts by C.I.A. historians.
Read the whole thing here.
Whenever I have criticized the CIA's record in conversations with liberals and government bureaucrats, I have heard time and again the statement that we just don't hear about their successes. Well now we do know. There are damn few of them. Information leaking out of the intelligence community has long been, and remains to this day, of limited value. Take its criticisms of current policy and its apocalyptic predictions with a grain..., no make that a shaker, of salt.
The larger aim of the new strategy is creating an opportunity for Iraq's leaders to negotiate a political settlement. These negotiations are underway. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is attempting to form a political coalition with Amar al-Hakim and Kurdish political leaders, but excluding Moqtada al-Sadr, and has invited Sunnis to participate. He has confronted Moqtada al-Sadr for promoting illegal militia activity, and has apparently prompted this so-called Iraqi nationalist to leave for Iran for the second time since January.
Provincial and local government is growing stronger. Local and tribal leaders in Anbar, Diyala, Salah ad-Din, North Babil and even Baghdad have agreed to fight insurgents and terrorists as U.S. forces have moved in to secure the population alongside their Iraqi partners. As a result, the number of Iraqis recruited for the police forces, in particular, has risen exponentially since 2006.
This is war, and the enemy is reacting. The enemy uses suicide bombs, car bombs and brutal executions to break our will and that of our Iraqi allies. American casualties often increase as troops move into areas that the enemy has fortified; these casualties will start to fall again once the enemy positions are destroyed. Al Qaeda will manage to get some car and truck bombs through, particularly in areas well-removed from the capital and its belts.
But we should not allow individual atrocities to obscure the larger picture. A new campaign has just begun, it is already yielding important results, and its effects are increasing daily. Demands for withdrawal are no longer demands to pull out of a deteriorating situation with little hope; they are now demands to end a new approach to this conflict that shows every sign of succeeding.
[Emphasis mine]
Read the whole thing here.
The New York Times makes the case for immediate withdrawal.
It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit.
Like many Americans, we have put off that conclusion, waiting for a sign that President Bush was seriously trying to dig the United States out of the disaster he created by invading Iraq without sufficient cause, in the face of global opposition, and without a plan to stabilize the country afterward.
At first, we believed that after destroying Iraq’s government, army, police and economic structures, the United States was obliged to try to accomplish some of the goals Mr. Bush claimed to be pursuing, chiefly building a stable, unified Iraq. When it became clear that the president had neither the vision nor the means to do that, we argued against setting a withdrawal date while there was still some chance to mitigate the chaos that would most likely follow.
While Mr. Bush scorns deadlines, he kept promising breakthroughs — after elections, after a constitution, after sending in thousands more troops. But those milestones came and went without any progress toward a stable, democratic Iraq or a path for withdrawal. It is frighteningly clear that Mr. Bush’s plan is to stay the course as long as he is president and dump the mess on his successor. Whatever his cause was, it is lost.
....
This country faces a choice. We can go on allowing Mr. Bush to drag out this war without end or purpose. Or we can insist that American troops are withdrawn as quickly and safely as we can manage — with as much effort as possible to stop the chaos from spreading.
Read the whole thing here.
[A]s the Times itself acknowledges, what has happened in the past only previews what is in store if we precipitously withdraw. And this will prove the case not only in Iraq, but elsewhere in the Persian Gulf, the Middle East, Taiwan, and Korea. Once the U.S. demonstrates that it cannot honor its commitments, those dependent upon it must make the necessary adjustments. Ironically, while the Times urges acceptance of defeat, Sunni tribesmen at last are coming forward to fight terrorists, and regional neighbors are gradually accepting the truth that their opportunistic assistance to jihadists is only threatening their own regimes.
We promised General Petraeus a hearing in September; it would be the height of folly to preempt that agreement by giving in to our summer of panic and despair. Critics called for the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, a change in command in Iraq and at Centcom, new strategies, and more troops. But now that we have a new secretary, a new command in Iraq and at Centcom, new strategies, and more troops, suddenly we have a renewed demand for withdrawal before the agreed-upon September accounting—suggesting that the only constant in such harping was the assumption that Iraq was either hopeless or not worth the effort.
The truth is that Iraq has upped the ante in the war against terrorists. Our enemies’ worst nightmare is a constitutional government in the heart of the ancient caliphate, surrounded by consensual rule in Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Turkey; ours is a new terror heaven, but with oil, a strategic location, and the zeal born of a humiliating defeat of the United States on a theater scale. The Islamists believe we can’t win; so does the New York Times. But it falls to the American people to decide the issue.
Read the whole thing here. Prof. Davis' point-by-point demolition of the NYT argument is an extraordinary expose of the illogic and dishonesty underlying much of the left's position on the war. IMHO it is a must-read.
President Pervez Musharraf pledged to combat Muslim extremists across Pakistan yesterday as furious crowds demonstrated against the storming of the Red Mosque and two suicide bomb attacks left six dead.Read it here.In a televised address to the nation, Gen Musharraf said that those inside the mosque and its adjacent madrassa, or Muslim college, were "terrorists" who directly threatened Pakistan's security. They had also tarnished Islam's reputation as a tolerant and peaceful religion.
"What do we as a nation want?" he asked. "What kind of Islam do these people represent? In the garb of Islamic teaching they have been training for terrorism. They prepared the madrassa as a fortress for war and housed other terrorists in there."
....Moderate Pakistanis generally support his decision to crush the fundamentalists who had taken control of the mosque in the centre of the capital, Islamabad.
(Fortune Magazine) -- Just how red-hot is the current worldwide expansion? "This is far and away the strongest global economy I've seen in my business lifetime," U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson declared on a recent visit to Fortune's offices.
That may come as news to many Americans, whose boom-time memories are stuck in the 1990s, when Silicon Valley was the epicenter of our growth fantasies. But the fellow now occupying Paulson's old office at 85 Broad Street in downtown Manhattan shares that upbeat view. Just returned from a ribbon-cutting ceremony in the Middle East, Goldman Sachs (Charts, Fortune 500) CEO Lloyd Blankfein waves out toward the East River as he explains how the rise of the "BRICs" has altered his strategy and his travel schedule. (BRIC is an acronym Goldman coined in 2001 reflecting the rising economic power of Brazil, Russia, India, and China.)
"I helped make my career by being very disciplined about opening offices," he says. Yet in nine months Blankfein has announced or opened offices in São Paulo, Moscow, Tel Aviv, Mumbai, Qatar, and now Dubai. "We've never done anything close to that before," he marvels. "The week before Dubai, I was in Turkey, and before that, Russia and China. I'm really living the BRICs-plus-Middle East kind of life."These days more and more CEOs are livin' la vida BRIC. GE's (Charts, Fortune 500) Jeff Immelt devotes 12 weeks a year to foreign travel and is looking for his company to grow "twice as fast outside the U.S. as inside - 12% a year, vs. 6%." Immelt expects to see even more robust growth - 20% a year - in emerging markets, which last year accounted for $30 billion of GE's nearly $170 billion in sales.
John Chambers, who last fall opened Cisco's (Charts, Fortune 500) new Globalization Center in Bangalore, seconds the notion that "this is the strongest global trend" of his career. "There is a unique balance today," he says. "More than half of GDP growth is coming from emerging countries. And yet the developed countries are also doing pretty well. It is something we have never seen before."
Read the whole thing here.
Note this, unlike previous booms, is a truly global expansion. The developing world is growing faster than the developed, Europe faster than the US. Real incomes are rising everywhere. The wealth of the world is growing at an amazing rate. The human race, despite rapid population growth, is nearly three times richer today than we were back in the 1970's. The old post-war development models upon which so many of our transnational institutions are based, are hopelessly out of touch with today's reality. These are the best of times..., ever in human history.
These are all short-term dangers and at some point one of them or more is bound to kick in, but as Fortune notes, the long-term prospects are much more optimistic.
This is because of deep, structural changes that are taking place all over the world. The tech bubble of the nineties may have burst, costing investors trillions, but the tech industries march on, generating new profits. Global consolidation of production, which a generation ago produced huge profits in the steel industry is now doing the same in other industries. Lending institutions, other than the World Bank which has resisted all attempts at reform, have changed their practices, becoming far more canny in choosing who to lend to and how. The consumer market, previously confined to the developed West is now going global and spurring entrepreneurial booms in far flung reaches of the globe. There will be a correction (there always is) and it may be deep and long, but these changes in global business patterns are here to stay.What Fortune has not noted is just how much this transformation has been facilitated by American political leaders. The much-maligned trio of internationalist presidents -- Bush, Clinton, Bush -- promoted, over determined Congressional opposition, free-trade policies that brought much of the world into the interactive mix. All three heroically resisted pressures from international agencies and the environmentalist movement that would have imperiled global prosperity. The current administration, in particular, has worked assiduously toward creating new security arrangements, both bilateral and regional, that will replace those old Eurocentric institutions inherited from the mid-twentieth century. These new agreements, on defense, on the environment, on property rights, on nuclear proliferation, and a host of other matters are centered on Asia, and are designed to protect the favorable business climate that has emerged there. These three presidents, especially Dubya, may well go down in history as the most forward-looking in our history since the days of Lincoln and Grant.
He came, he saw, he humbled himself. Never before has the president of America gone out of his way to pay tribute to a gathering of dissidents. The most powerful man on earth acknowledged that these otherwise powerless individuals from five continents possess what he rightly called "an even greater power — the power of conscience."
What had brought President Bush to make this pilgrimage to Prague, en route to the G-8 summit? The answer echoed through the noble vision outlined in his speech — a speech that several seasoned observers of presidential oratory who attended the conference judged to be among the best that Mr. Bush has ever given.
This man, beset by his foes and abandoned by friends, still cares passionately about the love of liberty that inspires men and women to extraordinary self-sacrifice, even if the vision he set out in his second inaugural speech is as far from reality as ever. At one point, he made a wry reference to his own isolation, both among the leaders of the free world, and even within his own administration. Former chairman of the defense policy board advisory committee to George W. Bush, Richard Perle, had earlier reminded us that the president was "coming here to meet with his fellow dissidents." "If standing up for liberty makes me a dissident," Mr. Bush said, "I wear that title with pride."
Read the whole article here.
The Weekly Standard's account is here.
Gateway Pundit has a wrapup here.
Behind these astonishing achievements was the triumph of freedom in the battle of ideas. The communists had an imperial ideology that claimed to know the directions of history. But in the end, it was overpowered by ordinary people who wanted to live their lives, and worship their God, and speak the truth to their children. The communists had the harsh rule of Brezhnev, and Honecker, and Ceausescu. But in the end, it was no match for the vision of Walesa and Havel, the defiance of Sakharov and Sharansky, the resolve of Reagan and Thatcher, and fearless witness of John Paul. From this experience, a clear lesson has emerged: Freedom can be resisted, and freedom can be delayed, but freedom cannot be denied.And he made the obvious comparison between the Cold War struggle and the Global War on Terrorism:
Like the Cold War, it's an ideological struggle between two fundamentally different visions of humanity. On one side are the extremists, who promise paradise, but deliver a life of public beatings and repression of women and suicide bombings. On the other side are huge numbers of moderate men and women -- including millions in the Muslim world -- who believe that every human life has dignity and value that no power on Earth can take away.
The most powerful weapon in the struggle against extremism is not bullets or bombs -- it is the universal appeal of freedom. Freedom is the design of our Maker, and the longing of every soul. Freedom is the best way to unleash the creativity and economic potential of a nation. Freedom is the only ordering of a society that leads to justice. And human freedom is the only way to achieve human rights.
And his commitment for the future:
[T]he United States is committed to the advance of freedom and democracy as the great alternatives to repression and radicalism. (Applause.) And we have a historic objective in view. In my second inaugural address, I pledged America to the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world. Some have said that qualifies me as a "dissident president." If standing for liberty in the world makes me a dissident, I wear that title with pride. (Applause.)
America pursues our freedom agenda in many ways -- some vocal and visible, others quiet and hidden from view. Ending tyranny requires support for the forces of conscience that undermine repressive societies from within. The Soviet dissident Andrei Amalrik compared a tyrannical state to a soldier who constantly points a gun at his enemy -- until his arms finally tire and the prisoner escapes. The role of the free world is to put pressure on the arms of the world's tyrants -- and strengthen the prisoners who are trying to speed their collapse.
Regarding his critics he made the following points:
Some say that ending tyranny means "imposing our values" on people who do not share them, or that people live in parts of the world where freedom cannot take hold. That is refuted by the fact that every time people are given a choice, they choose freedom.
....
Another... objection is that ending tyranny will unleash chaos. Critics point to the violence in Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Lebanon as evidence that freedom leaves people less safe. But look who's causing the violence. It's the terrorists, it's the extremists. It is no coincidence that they are targeting young democracies in the Middle East. They know that the success of free societies there is a mortal threat to their ambitions -- and to their very survival. The fact that our enemies are fighting back is not a reason to doubt democracy. It is evidence that they recognize democracy's power.
.... Still, some argue that a safer goal would be stability, especially in the Middle East. The problem is that pursuing stability at the expense of liberty does not lead to peace -- it leads to September the 11th, 2001.....
Others fear that democracy will bring dangerous forces to power, such as Hamas in the Palestinian Territories. Elections will not always turn out the way we hope. Yet democracy consists of more than a single trip to the ballot box. Democracy requires meaningful opposition parties, a vibrant civil society, a government that enforces the law and responds to the needs of its people. Elections can accelerate the creation of such institutions.
....
Finally, there's the contention that ending tyranny is unrealistic. Well, some argue that extending democracy around the world is simply too difficult to achieve. That's nothing new. We've heard that criticism before throughout history. At every stage of the Cold War, there were those who argued that the Berlin Wall was permanent, and that people behind the Iron Curtain would never overcome their oppressors. History has sent a different message.
The full text of President Bush's speech is here.
It's a powerful and moving statement, but does it reflect reality?
Prof. Kramer's response to it is instructive.
[T]he Middle East is also home to another kind of authoritarian rule. In this kind of system, the regime doesn't rely only on fear, or even primarily on fear. Such regimes don't require an external enemy or perpetual war. To the contrary: the ruler builds a consensus around the status quo, by sharing a bit of power, balancing interests, upholding law, and averting war. These aren't free societies--you can't stand in the town square and say what you want without fear of being arrested. But these aren't "fear societies" and they aren't "republics of fear."Moreover, many of the most troublesome states in the Middle East have made major strides on the road toward democracy.
....
[T]hese regimes cooperate with the world in combatting terrorism and containing an aggressive Iran, they have peace treaties with Israel or float peace initiatives, they don't threaten or intervene in the internal affairs of other countries, and they don't seek weapons of mass destruction. None of them has gone to war in the last thirty-plus years.
And who are the net exporters of insecurity? These are states that have multi-polar or pluralistic systems: Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and what some call Palestine. These systems aren't democracies, but in terms of formal practices like elections, they've actually gone the longer distance. Yet they don't provide security for their peoples, and they export insecurity, in the form of terrorism, refugees, radical Islam, and nuclear threats. What's discouraging is that this isn't true in only some of the cases, or only half of them. It's true, for now, in all if them.The key, he argues is security. In the long run the democracy imperative will benefit the region and the world, but that is the long run and we live in the here and now.
Don't just offer lofty rhetoric. People are skeptical of it. Don't say that America will provide the security: it won't. And don't say that we have to think long-term: too much can go wrong in the short-term. The pro-democracy forces need to show how they'll make their peoples not only freer, but more secure--and how they'll make the rest of us safer.Read the whole thing here.
....
It's a fact of life that the world's support for freedom isn't unconditional-- even for this US administration--and security is the condition. Meet that condition, even part way, and good people in the world won't just admire your courage. They might even take a chance and support you.
Abu Ali said that on 1 April 2007, he and his people attacked al Qaeda in Buhriz for their crimes against Islam. He also said something that many Muslims have said to me: al Qaeda are not Muslims. (Both Sunni and Shia have said nearly the exact same words, at times on video.)
....
Before the tape was running, I asked Abu Ali why he and the 1920s [militia] turned against al Qaeda in Buhriz. Speaking through LT David Wallach, a native Arabic speaker, Abu Ali said that “al Qaeda is an abomination of Islam: cutting off heads, stealing people’s money, kidnapping . . . every type of torture they have done.”
Read it here.
Good luck, guy. It's a brave new world out there.[T]he demand for traditional column writing has pretty much dried up, just as the demand for buggy whips collapsed when the automobile came along. I don't mourn the old system. I am a great fan of bloggers and learn far more from them than I do from the Broders and Friedmans of the world, who have largely become irrelevant to serious political discussion.
Furthermore, the basic medium through which columnists operate -- newspapers -- are dying a slow death. It's a rare week when some major paper doesn't announce new layoffs, buyouts or other severe cost-cutting measures, such as reducing the size of the paper to save on costly newsprint, as The New York Times will do next month. At some point, the bloodletting will end, but not before many more papers fold. Eventually, we will probably be left with a handful of national papers, with all the rest devoted exclusively to local news.
Broadcasters are under the same pressures, and I suspect that the traditional nightly network news program will eventually go the way of the dodo. Those who care about the news will get it from cable, the Internet or talk radio.
I think there will always be a market for quality commentary, however, and some day someone will figure out a better way to make money from it. In the meantime, I have decided to devote myself to writing books, where authors still have control over their output and can make better money. I will continue to pen the occasional column, but this is the last one I plan to write on a weekly basis. I offer thanks to all my readers and editors for their support.
[L]iberty, hence, civilization is currently under a three prong attack.
One prong consists of Islamist barbarians, Al Qaeda types, who, like barbarians from time immemorial, excel in exploiting the military and institutional weakness of civilized democracies.
The second prong consists of Fascist/Communist/Islamist tyrannies such as China, North Korea or Iran who feel threatened by the success of democracies. They enjoy sitting back, watching the barbarians soften up the democracies despite knowing that they are bound to be the barbarians' next victims.
The third prong consists of transnational elites who assume that the Islamist barbarians do not pose a real threat. Their goal is to bring about a world run by international institutions not directly accountable to the “uninformed masses.” Indeed, as they consider powerful civilized democracies, most especially the US, to be their most formidable opponent, these transnational elites do not shy from cooperating with Islamists and tyrannies by legitimizing their demands that free speech, i.e., thought be circumscribed.
She notes that in similarly threatening times the only appropriate response has been sustained military action to defeat those who would threaten freedom.
Read the whole thing here.
My, my! What to say about this? Prof. Klinghoffer's sketch makes little sense as history. Dark ages are essentially a literary conceit, based in a restricted and biased view of western society, but the warning it embodies is quite real.
Modern Western culture and the liberties we enjoy are under siege, from both external and internal enemies, and she has identified the most potent of those foes. And she is quite right that the only appropriate response to at least two of these threats involves sustained application of military force in association with political, diplomatic, and economic actions. But in such times as these can such clarity of purpose be maintained?
Prof. Klinghoffer is not optimistic.
I still hold on to the belief that the American people love liberty too much to give it up and, as they have done before, they will snatch victory from the jaws of current defeats. So, why can't I be happy? Because with each and every passing day the price for defeating the forces of darkness is getting higher and higher and ultimate victory less and less certain.
I'm not so pessimistic as Prof. Klinghoffer. There are real sources of strength in our collective Western societies, even if the current elites are undergoing something of a well-deserved crisis of confidence. By a wide range of measures things have never been as good as they are now. The current military crisis is nothing new. We have not enjoyed a clear-cut military victory in a major confrontation since WWII. Korea was a Godawful mess, so was Vietnam. Gulf War One started promisingly, just as the current one did, but we withdrew before securing victory. Yet, through this whole six decades of defeat and indecision, Western, and particularly American, power and influence reached its greatest extent. Nor are the current political conflicts unprecedented. We have seen worse before and survived.
I suspect that we will sort out our present political difficulties both in America and in Europe, and that the inherent power of Western liberalism and capitalism will ultimately prevail over our common adversaries. The end is not yet nigh.
With prior monthly revisions non-farm payrolls increased 207,000—that includes 132,000 new jobs in June, 190,000 in May, and a 122,000 in April. Not too hot, not too cold.Read it here.
Year-to-year wages for non-management workers increased 3.9 percent. Comparing that with the 2.3 percent increase in the headline inflation personal consumer deflator (for May, the latest month) leaves about 1.5 percent improvement in real wages.
The unemployment rate remains at a historically low 4.5 percent. This means the Fed will neither tighten nor ease. Holding its target rate steady, with a rising economy and profits, is very bullish for stocks.
(Note: If you graduated from college your jobless rate is 2.0 percent. If you failed to graduate from high school your rate is a much higher 6.7 percent. Message: Stay in school.)
The whole economy is experiencing a midyear pick up, led mostly by business, though consumers will be chipping in. For the consumer pessimists out there, remember Say’s Law—supply creates its own demand. In other words, as businesses invest, produce, and hire more, rising incomes will spur consumer spending.
Moreover, if we and the consensus [of economic experts] are correct, then the period 2003-2008 will have been one of the most powerful periods of economic growth globally since accurate data has been collectable for much of the world."Read it here.
Climate change is a problem, and it definitely is one that we need to tackle over this century. But to say that this is the first and foremost thing that we need to tackle, as Tim Flannery said in a Financial Times interview a week ago, that this is the one thing we need to focus on in the next 10 years - that is simply ridiculous. We would be doing something that will help people very little - and only in a hundred years from now - at a very high cost. Meanwhile, we would be neglecting the fact that we could do massive amounts of good for less money for a lot of the people living right now - and in the process helping their descendents much more.Read the whole thing here.
Speaking through an American interpreter, Lieutenant David Wallach who is a native Arabic speaker, the Iraqi official related how al Qaeda united these gangs who then became absorbed into “al Qaeda.” They recruited boys born during the years 1991, 92 and 93 who were each given weapons, including pistols, a bicycle and a phone (with phone cards paid) and a salary of $100 per month, all courtesy of al Qaeda. These boys were used for kidnapping, torturing and murdering people.
At first, he said, they would only target Shia, but over time the new al Qaeda directed attacks against Sunni, and then anyone who thought differently. The official reported that on a couple of occasions in Baqubah, al Qaeda invited to lunch families they wanted to convert to their way of thinking. In each instance, the family had a boy, he said, who was about 11 years old. As LT David Wallach interpreted the man’s words, I saw Wallach go blank and silent. He stopped interpreting for a moment. I asked Wallach, “What did he say?” Wallach said that at these luncheons, the families were sat down to eat. And then their boy was brought in with his mouth stuffed. The boy had been baked. Al Qaeda served the boy to his family.
To abandon the Iraqi people to monsters such as these would be inexcusable, but we've done it before and, if the Democrats have their way, we will do it again.
Read the whole dispatch here.
Michael Yon reports from Iraq. Things are going very, very well right now..., important things. He also has some interesting things to say about the behavior of the MSM journalists.
As the major fighting wound down:
Media coverage went from a near monopoly (Michael Gordon from New York Times and me) to a nearly capsized boat as journalists flooded in from other parts of Iraq to see the fight. They managed to miss most of it. Today, I’m told, there are now only 3 journalists remaining, including one writer (me.)
As with the Battle for Mosul, which I held in near monopoly for about five months during 2005, the most interesting parts of the Battle for Baqubah are unfolding after the major fighting ends. But as the guns cool, the media stops raining and starts evaporating, or begins making only short visits of a week or so.
The big news on the streets today is that the people of Baqubah are generally ecstatic, although many hold in reserve a serious concern that we will abandon them again. For many Iraqis, we have morphed from being invaders to occupiers to members of a tribe. I call it the “al Ameriki tribe,” or “tribe America.”
I’ve seen this kind of progression in Mosul, out in Anbar and other places, and when I ask our military leaders if they have sensed any shift, many have said, yes, they too sense that Iraqis view us differently. In the context of sectarian and tribal strife, we are the tribe that people can—more or less and with giant caveats—rely on.
Most Iraqis I talk with acknowledge that if it was ever about the oil, it’s not now. Not mostly anyway. It clearly would have been cheaper just to buy the oil or invade somewhere easier that has more. Similarly, most Iraqis seem now to realize that we really don’t want to stay here, and that many of us can’t wait to get back home. They realize that we are not resolved to stay, but are impatient but to drive down to Kuwait and sail away. And when they consider the Americans who actually deal with Iraqis every day, the Iraqis can no longer deny that we really do want them to succeed. But we want them to succeed without us. We want to see their streets are clean and safe, their grass is green, and their birds are singing. We want to see that on television. Not in person. We don’t want to be here. We tell them that every day. It finally has settled in that we are telling the truth.
Now that all those realizations and more have settled in, the dynamics here are changing in palpable ways.
Read the whole thing here.
The trouble is, things are also changing in Washington where Republican Senators are beginning to turn tail. The Iraqis are right to worry about our willingness to see the job through. Once again it begins to look as if the US will abandon the fight just as the tide is turning. Maybe the Iraqis now understand that Bush tells the truth and that the war was not just an oil grab, but the narrative the Democrats are pushing says just the opposite and all too many Americans have embraced it.
UPDATE:
Maybe this will help a bit. Michael Gordon reports from Bakubah in the NYT:
The American military has struggled for more than four years to train and equip the Iraqi Army. But here the local Sunni residents, including a number of former insurgents from the 1920s Revolution Brigades, have emerged as a linchpin of the American strategy.
The new coalition reflects some hard-headed calculations on both sides. Eager for intelligence on their elusive foes, American officers have been willing to overlook the past of some of their newfound allies.
Many Sunnis, for their part, are less inclined to see the soldiers as occupiers now that it is clear that American troop reductions are all but inevitable, and they are more concerned with strengthening their ability to fend off threats from Sunni jihadists and Shiite militias. In a surprising twist, the jihadists — the Americans’ most ardent foes — made the new strategy possible. Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a predominantly Iraqi organization with a small but significant foreign component, severely overplayed its hand, spawning resentment by many residents and other insurgent groups.
Generally speaking Gordon seems to be supporting Yon's position, that real progress is being made through the introduction of new tactics. Working through local militias rather than the formal instruments of an Iraqi state may well be the path toward a viable political settlement that will produce, in time, a functioning Arab democracy.
One of the most interesting things about the current conflict and the debate over it is that old templates and narratives are manifestly inappropriate to the current situation and people are being forced to innovate. We are moving into a new era, a perilous and exciting one.
[The] promise [of] a colorblind society... has been traduced by the "diversity" exception to the Equal Protection Clause. That exception allows white majorities to feel noble while treating blacks and certain other minorities as seasoning -- a sort of human oregano -- to be sprinkled across a student body to make the majority's educational experience more flavorful.
This repulsive practice merits Clarence Thomas' warning in his opinion concurring with last week's ruling: Beware of elites eager to constitutionalize "faddish social theories." Often, they are only theories. As Roberts said, Seattle and Louisville offered "no evidence" that the diversity they have achieved (by what he has called the "sordid business" of "divvying us up by race") is necessary to achieve the "asserted" educational benefits.
Evidence is beside the point. The point for race-mongering diversity tinkerers is their professional and ideological stake in preventing America from achieving "a colorblind mentality."
Last week's decisions handed down by the Roberts Court were a direct repudiation of such diversity tinkering and a triumphant assertion of the principle of equality for all. As Chief Justice Roberts put it:
"The way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."How true..., how true!
Juan Williams, writing in the New York Times endorses this view, quoting Thurgood Marshall to support the contention that diversity was never the intent of Brown, and outlines the failure of Brown to achieve racial equality in education. He writes:
Racial malice is no longer the primary motive in shaping inferior schools for minority children. Many failing big city schools today are operated by black superintendents and mostly black school boards.
And today the argument that school reform should provide equal opportunity for children, or prepare them to live in a pluralistic society, is spent. The winning argument is that better schools are needed for all children — black, white, brown and every other hue — in order to foster a competitive workforce in a global economy.
Dealing with racism and the bitter fruit of slavery and “separate but equal” legal segregation was at the heart of the court’s brave decision 53 years ago. With Brown officially relegated to the past, the challenge for brave leaders now is to deliver on the promise of a good education for every child.