Kerry and Israel

It has been noted that during the DNC, very little was said by about the Democrats about their stance on Israel. The one mention was the Edwards line that they are for a strong and secure Israel, which drew almost no reaction from the delegates. Perhaps one way to judge what Kerry's policy would be is by the individuals that he has proposed appointing as emissaries; James Baker, Jimmy Carter, and Martyn Indyk are not encouraging choices to say the least. Baker's and Carter's antipathy towards Israel are clear and have been well documented in the past. Indyk's history and leanings are excellently documented in this article.

Ha'aretz, the leftish Israeli paper, has an article today stating how Kerry would be much more involved in the "peace process" than Bush was. Obviously this is shilling for Kerry that would be expected from them. But, as Caroline Glick points out, Kerry's problem is his stated desire to accede to the demands of "allies", specifically France - a country that has been openly hostile to Israel.

Yes, it is true that he seems to pay inordinate respect to outspoken Israel-bashers such as former President Jimmy Carter and Carter's National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. Then again, Bush appointed the harshly anti-Israel Marine General Anthony Zinni to be his Middle East mediator shortly after assuming office.

Yes, it is true that Kerry seems determined on forcing Israel back to the negotiating table with Arafat and using Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk as his emissaries in spite of the colossal failure of every policy the two men advocated during the Clinton presidency. But Bush has adopted the Road Map, which formally, if not practically, gives the EU, Russia and the UN the status of arbiters in the Palestinian conflict with Israel.

One thing though, is clear enough. In the unrelenting emphasis Kerry places on a certain brand of "multilateralism," he is providing undue, unreasonable and unacceptable legitimacy to a country that does not wish Israel well. Kerry can choose to be a friend of France, or he can choose to be a friend of Israel. But this is one area where he can't have it both ways.

However, possibly most telling regarding what Kerry's policy would be, was expressed in his recent comment that Bush is to blame for creating more terrorists. Powerline has an excellent appraisal of this statement and what it means for his Israel policy.

Terrorists and Relativists

One of the greatest destructive forces on our society and on our ability and will to fight the War on Terror is the moral relativism of the Left. For them, all cultures are equal. Their constant refrain to the condemnation of Islamist terrorism is that we are just as bad (if not worse); we have racism, and inequality, and violence. Ralph Peters challenges these notions, specifically relating to the recent church bombings in Iraq. The main difference he cites is in the society's acceptance of these outrages.

Apologists for terror will even point out that America has had its share of hate graffiti scrawled on the walls of mosques or synagogues. The difference is that we don't welcome it. Hate crimes repulse us. We prosecute. In the Middle East, they applaud (while in Europe they quietly snicker).

We've had our church bombings, too. Forty years ago, four little girls were killed in Alabama. We are — rightly — ashamed of it to this day. But we didn't celebrate the Ku Klux Klan's terrorism. We broke the KKK and changed America.

This is what differentiates cultures. While we condemn attacks on innocents, the Islamists, as well as the supposedly "mainstream" and "moderate" Arabs of the Middle East, are at best silent, and oftentimes find some reason to validate these slaughters. The only way towards progress for them is to realize that such barbarity will bring them nothing but continuing despotism and misery.

Even in wartime, our soldiers went to great lengths to spare religious facilities, despite their cynical use by terrorist criminals. Nor did the Israelis destroy the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem when Palestinian militants used it as a bunker.

Relativists may whine all they want, but such restraint is the hallmark of a superior civilization — cultures are not all equal.

One way or another, the future will be shaped by the forces of terror — either because Muslims embrace their madness and the comforting addiction to blame, or because populations, beginning in Iraq, reject the cult of hatred and human sacrifice the forces of terror revived within Islam.

A quarter century ago, violence between Christians and Muslims tore apart Lebanon, the loveliest country in the Middle East. The terrorists hope to recreate that "success" in the streets of Baghdad. And we can't stop them. It's up to the people of liberated Iraq.

No Need to Worry...Really

This morning both the Washington Post and the New York Times lead with stories that in effect support the Howard Dean line that this whole terror alert in New York and D.C. has been made up by the Bush administration for political gain. Both say that the intelligence that led to these alerts is a few years old and therefore there is no need to worry. The Washington Post even quotes an unnamed "senior law enforcement" official saying:

"There is nothing right now that we're hearing that is new," said one senior law enforcement official who was briefed on the alert. "Why did we go to this level? . . . I still don't know that."

Only by reading into the article does one notice that there may actually be more to these alerts than these two "newspapers of record" actually make out.

We know that al-Qaeda is planning, and desperately wants, to strike the US again before the November election. In part they need to do this to show their supporters in the Arab world that they are still a credible force. We have also found out that the latest al-Qaeda reconnaissance on these buildings was gathered in January of this year. It would seem fairly obvious that given all this information a higher level of alert is necessary, especially at the sites looked at by al-Qaeda as potential targets. Most likely, nothing will happen at these sites, perhaps because of the attention that they have received. Once a plan like this is exposed it makes the terrorists look for other targets.

There is also the possibility that the intelligence on these planned attacks was gathered not from the sources that were recently arrested. Debka yesterday wrote that these latest two suspects captured probably could not have had such knowledge of planned attacks. It is very possible that the information was gathered from other sources that the US does not want to reveal; perhaps other terrorists captured whose identities have not yet been revealed in order to be able to continue getting good information from them. This is just a supposition on my part, but maybe it is something that the major newspapers should take into account before coming out with stories that aim to impugn the motives, albeit indirectly, of the Bush Administration.

More Phoniness

A number of people have noted Kerry's Wendy's experience on a campaign stop in Newburgh, New York and the ensuing real lunch from a five-star restaurant. Now Mark Steyn weighs in with his take on this subject. It seems that no matter how hard Kerry tries, his phoniness in portraying himself as the "everyman" comes out.

I'm not sure whether Ben had the shrimp and Teresa the scallops, but, either way, it turns out John Edwards is right: there are two Americas - one America where folks eat at Wendy's, another America where the elite pass an amusing half-hour slumming among the folks at Wendy's and then chow down on the Newburgh Yacht Club's specials of the day. The Elizabeth Edwards anniversary-at-Wendy's shtick was meant to emphasise her husband's authenticity, but it now looks as inauthentic as Kerry's own blundering "regular guy" routine.

I scoffed at Edwards's "two Americas" riff when he was peddling it in New Hampshire, because its notion that there's the toffs in their mansions and the great unwashed in their Dickensian workhouses and ne'er the twain shall meet seemed complete bunk.

On reflection, I now see there might indeed be something to the idea of a remote privileged class hermetically sealed off from the masses. Unfortunately, John Kerry seems to be the best living exemplar of it. He may not enjoy eating at Wendy's, but his faux lunch order captures the essence of his crowd-working style: chilli and Frosty. If I were the Wendy's marketing director, I'd make it the John Kerry Special from now through election day.
[...]
As Noemi Emery put it in the Weekly Standard, Kerry is not just "the richest man ever to run on a national ticket", but also "the most self-indulgent in his lifestyle, and the most quasi-royal in his sense of himself".
That gives a whiff of condescension to his chant of "Help Is On The Way", a slogan already a tad too crudely nanny-statish. On the other hand, it's a very good catchphrase for Senator Kerry if he's back at the 15th-century ski chalet in Idaho and Teresa is complaining because she rang for a Scotch five minutes ago. "Don't be so impatient, lovie. The help is on the way.

Conservative Trends

James Glassman looks at the larger political trends in the US. For him, the outcome of this one election is not as important as the larger trend of the US towards Republicans.

Like most political epochs, this one is deeply rooted not in ideology but in demographics, economics and sociology. Republicans have come to power for three reasons: First, the generation that suffered through the Depression and saw the Democratic Party as savior is dying out. Hard-core New Dealers are being replaced as voters with a generation that grew up with Reagan.

Second, Americans are growing richer and becoming investors, sharing in the ownership of businesses, not merely seeing themselves as oppressed "labor" to overbearing "management." Half of all U.S. families own stock.

Third, a counter-cultural revolution, rooted in Generation X, has developed in reaction to the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s, which live on, benignly, in art but not in social policy. Crime and welfare dependency have dropped, religion is on the rise, drug use is declining, kids like their parents. The technology boom, part of this revolution, is based on libertarian (free-market conservative) ideals and entrepreneurship.

Easier to Ignore

Belmont Club has an excellent post today about our reluctance to admit the evil that exists and that we are fighting.

That's where the BBC gets it wrong: there is a reluctance to acknowledge that these things exist at all -- religious wars, death cults, dysfunctional societies, biological weapons in the hands of certified maniacs, blackmarkets in nuclear weapons -- beyond being film subjects; because to do so would imply having to do ugly things to solve them.
[...]
It is a picture of the world beyond the border, the world we almost had ignored, except for September 11. The real problem with that day is not what happened, but that it happened on TV. Three years onward those images are still de-materializing John Kerry's universe and making him, despite his best efforts, seem like a creature from another dimension. One of Roger Simon's readers quotes Russian journalist Sergei Lopatnikov:
To a great degree there is no Democratic party candidate John Kerry. There is an abstract "anti-Bush" candidate who has been compelled, in accordance with the US electoral system, to take on human form and assume a human name...

Sadr Really Done

It looks like the career of Moqdata al-Sadr was a brief one.

The Real Kerry

Powerline links to an article describing that lunch at Wendy's that Kerry supposedly enjoyed a few days ago.

While Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry and his running mate, John Edwards, and their families were having a “lite” lunch at Wendy’s in the Town of Newburgh Friday, drumming up local support right after the national convention in Boston, their real lunches were waiting on their bus.

A member of the Kerry advance team called Nikola’s Restaurant at the Newburgh Yacht Club the night before and ordered 19 five-star lunches to go that would be picked up at noon Friday. Management at the restaurant, which is operated by CIA graduate chef Michael Dederick, was told the meals would be for the Kerry and Edwards families and actor Ben Affleck who was with them on the tour.

The gourmet meals to go included shrimp vindallo, grilled diver sea scallops, prosciutto, wrapped stuffed chicken, and steak salad. The meals came to about $200.

Is there anything about this man that is not phony?

Realistically, the selection of Kerry by the Democrats is perfectly emblematic of the party. Both feel that they are entitled to the Presidency, and that any other outcome is the result either of a "vast right wing conspiracy", or the stupidity of the American people. Neither have any ideas other than "Bush is evil". And both are stuck in the foreign policy ideas of 30 years ago. As I have said before, Kerry is simply not serious on any of the important issues of the day.

Terror Warnings

There have been a number of terror alerts issued in the last few days, with levels of specificity not seen in previous warnings. According to the New York Times, this information was obtained after the arrest of a computer engineer in Pakistan who had "helped to operate a secret Qaeda communications system where information was transferred via coded messages."

In light of these warnings, this story from the World Tribune is fairly ominous.

U.S. Border Patrol agents detained 53 Arabic-speaking males in Arizona near the Mexican border on June 13, according to a report by a small-town newspaper in Tombstone, Arizona.

The same report detailed a second incident on June 21 in which 24 Arabic-speaking males were seized after a chase of a larger group of border-crossers, most of whom are still at large.

Both incidents involved agents from the Wilcox, Arizona Border Patrol station.

If this many were captured, how many actually managed to get through and what were they carrying? Of course, if we listen to Teddy Kennedy, the only thing we have to fear is 4 more years of Pres. Bush.

Where's the Bounce

Two polls have come out since the end of the DNC - the Newsweek poll showing a 4 point bounce for Kerry, and CNN/USAToday/Gallup showing a negative Kerry bounce. The Newsweek poll shows Kerry leading Bush by 7 points. This poll, however is of registered voters - usually more Democratic leaning and less accurate. The CNN/USAToday/Gallup, on the other hand is of likely voters and shows Bush leading by 4 points (among registered voters, this poll shows a 47%-47% tie), a gain of 4% for Bush. This is obviously horrible news for Kerry. By all estimates, Kerry should have been leading by anywhere from 5% to 15% coming out of the Convention. The fact that he could not hold any lead for more than a day or two shows that people really were not convinced by his DNC performance. Moreover, the Iowa Electronic Markets, a futures market for the election where trading is for real money, confirms the CNN/USAToday/Gallup poll and shows that Kerry's numbers have been declining throughout the convention. Its still early, but it seems that things are definitely looking up for Bush.

Powerline also notes that the Newswek poll significantly oversamples Democrats.

"Time-Honored Tradition"?

In today's Washington Post, Robert Kagan brings up some interesting points about the Kerry foreign policy as expressed by Kerry's acceptance speech. In essence, Kerry said that if he is elected President, America will return to its "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. That is the standard of our nation." As Kagan points out, historically this has not been the tradition at all. The only two wars that the US has "had to" go into were the two times when America was attacked - WWII, and Afghanistan. All the other wars and military interventions from the Spanish-American War in 1898 all the way through Kosovo, Bosnia, Haiti, and Iraq were arguably "wars of choice".

Kagan's point is that this argument is an example of the Kerry foreign policy.

Why is Kerry invoking an American "tradition" that does not exist?

Perhaps he's distorting American history simply to cast the Bush administration and the war in Iraq in the harshest possible light. But maybe Kerry is not being cynical. Perhaps, finally, he is saying what he really believes and not what American policy has been, but what it should be.

The doctrine Kerry enunciated on Thursday night, after all, was the doctrine initially favored by the antiwar movement and the mainstream of the Democratic Party after the debacle of Vietnam. "Come home, America" was the cry of those who believed America had corrupted both the world and itself in "wars of choice" in Vietnam and elsewhere.

Advocates of this doctrine did not propose a "return" to some mythical American past. Rather, they proposed a radical departure onto a very different course in American foreign policy. Their goal was a retraction of American power and influence from around the globe. Nor did they have any doubt that their view of America was patriotic. They would cleanse America of its sins.

Would it really be surprising if John Kerry, whose life and thought were so powerfully shaped by his Vietnam experience, now returned to the view of American foreign policy which that experience led him to three decades ago? There seems to be a conspiracy on both sides in this campaign not to take Kerry seriously as a man of ideas and conviction. But the fact that he has waffled so visibly on Iraq may be the best proof of his commitment to the beliefs about American foreign policy he came to hold in the 1970s.

The upshot of this foreign policy is that all wars are ruled out, no matter what their justifications, except when America is directly attacked.

It would rule out all wars fought for humanitarian ends, all interventions to prevent genocide, to defend democracy or even, as in the case of the Persian Gulf War, to uphold international law against aggression. For those are all wars of choice.

I think Kagan is slightly mistaken in this last assessment. It seems that what Kerry is saying is not that all "wars of choice" are ruled out, but only the ones where he doesn't agree with the choice. Kerry's foreign policy is very similar to Clinton's. And the only wars that would then be fought, would be wars where America does not really have a strategic interest; war would once again be seen and used as social policy as Clinton did in Kosovo, Bosnia, and Haiti. Any wars where there may be an Selfish American interest would be ruled out because of the Left's beliefs of the purported sins of America.

More Steyn on Kerry

In another excellent article, Mark Steyn describes the DNC and specifically Kerry's acceptance speech.

If it's enervating the base you're after, John F Kerry would seem to be the perfect candidate. On Thursday, for his first big moment in the national spotlight, his only concession to the occasion was to speed up his delivery, in order to cram a 90-minute address into the hour of primetime the networks were prepared to give him. But otherwise it was classic Kerry: verbose, shapeless, platitudinous, complacent, ill-disciplined, arrogant, and humourless.
[...]
The Kerry campaign seems to be the political equivalent of what they call on Broadway a "snob hit": the longer it is, the more boring it is and the worse time you have at it, the more you feel it must be good for you. To his numbed, buttock-shifting listeners, the great sonorous self-regarding orotund bromidic banality of Senator Kerry and his multitude of nuances is proof of how much more serious he - and therefore they - are.

It seems that Mark Steyn is not entirely fond of Sen. Kerry. He goes on to look at some specifics in the speech"

That's what John Kerry's offering them: a return to September 10.

He doesn't quite put it like that, of course. He talks about an America "strong" and "respected" and all the other poll-tested words, while the Democratic platform asserts that Republicans "do not understand that real leadership means standing by your principles and rallying others to join you".

Say what you like about Bush, but on Iraq he stood by his principles and rallied the British, Australians, Poles, Italians, etc, to join him. He also rallied Kerry and Edwards to join him. They voted for his war, as the columnist Debra Saunders of The San Francisco Chronical drolly pointed out: "Kerry and Edwards followed. Bush led."

Kerry now says that Bush "misled" him on Iraq. But, if he was that easily suckered by a renowned moron, how much more susceptible would he be to such wily operators as Chirac.
[...]
That's how I felt after the Convention: all week Senators Biden, Lieberman and Edwards made the case that the Democrats were credible on national security. Why couldn't Kerry have said that?

Because in the end he's running for President because he feels he ought to be President. That's his message to George W Bush: "The Senator needs you to move." And even then everyone else says it better.

Bush's Ohio Speech

In his first campaign speech after the DNC, President Bush addressed voters in Ohio. Since I was busy trying to fix my computer I didn't listen that closely but the main philosophical differences between Bush and Kerry were evident right away. During the DNC, democrats promised that both Hope and Help were on the way - in the form of more government programs. Judging by the speeches of Edwards and Kerry, everything that we would ever would be provided by the government. Alternatively Bush spoke of the need to allow small businesses to grow and flourish. He spoke of individual responsibility and of results in both the economy as well as in foreign affairs. The difference between the candidates is fairly clear. Do you want "Hope is on the way", or "Results Matter"?

Computer difficulties

Back online after three days of loading and reloading different versions of Windows. Only to figure out after three days that there was a nasty virus there (which Nudnikette had mentioned from the beginning and I dismissed flippantly), Thinking of going back to pen and paper now.

Still Slumbering

Victor Hanson examines the way that Europe looks at the current War on Terror. The disturbing thing is that even the way the US and Europe view of WWII differ greatly. This should be a clear sign to anyone who still believes in the simplistic notion that if only John Kerry were elected, everything with Europe would be great.

The inscriptions at American graveyards admonish the visitor to remember sacrifice, courage, and freedom; they assume somebody bad once started a war to hurt the weak, only to fail when somebody better stopped them.

In contrast, the "folly" of war — to paraphrase Barbara Tuchman — is what one gleans at most World War II museums in Europe. The displays, tapes, and guides suggest that a sudden madness once descended equally upon normal-thinking Europeans and Americans at places like Nijmegen and Remagen. "Stupidity," a European visitor at Arnhem lectured me, best explains why thousands of young men killed each other for no good reason over "meaningless" bridges. Perhaps — but I suppose the answer to that also depends on whether in September 1944 you ended up on the German or on the Allied side of Arnhem.
[...]
Europe now really does believe that such evil disappeared spontaneously, without Willies and Joes driving to their flaming deaths in thin-skinned Sherman tanks to stop SS murderers in 70-ton Tigers. But then in a world where George Bush last year was said to be a greater threat to peace than Saddam Hussein, why should one be surprised that affluent Westerners perhaps feel SS killers led by Sepp Dietrich were as much victims of war as the defenseless Belgian civilians they butchered?

The European view of our current war is supposedly one of "nuance", of an ability to see more than just black and white. But sometimes things really are black and white. Nazism was evil. Communism was evil. Islamofascism - the new Nazism - is evil. There are no shades of grey there. And to those that say that bin Laden and his ilk hate us for what we do, not simply for what we are, why is it that

French and Germans are busy rooting out plots to blow up their own citizens — despite billions of EU money sent to terrorist organizations like Hamas, support for Arafat, and cheap slurs leveled at America in Iraq. Why do Muslim radicals hate Europe when Europeans have no military power, no real presence abroad, give billions away to the Middle East, despise Israel, will sell anything to anyone anywhere at anytime, and have let millions of Arabs onto their shores? Are daily threats to Europeans earned because of what Europe does — or is the cause who they are?

We repeatedly hear the suggestions of Europe and the American Left that we need to look for root causes, that we need to understand why they do this. And the answer to that is an emphatic "No we don't". We need to defeat them, and then maybe, let future historians figure out why they didn't like us.

Indeed, if our dead could rise out of their graves they would surely rebuke us for our present blasphemy — shaking their fingers and remonstrating that bin Laden and his followers, both active and passive, are no different from Hitler and the other evil killers of their own age, who deserve to be defeated, not reasoned with or apologized to, and not understood. The voices of our dead abroad murmur to us, the deaf, that a nation is liked not by being good and weak or bad and strong, but only by proving both principled and resolute.

Sleep in peace, you ten thousand of St. Avold, and let us pray that we, the smug beneficiaries of your ultimate sacrifice, may still wake up from our own slumber.

Steyn's Convention Wrap-up

Mark Steyn has a good convention wrap-up.

'The embattled farmers stood and fired the shot heard round the world," declared Ted Kennedy in a moment of Revolutionary War nostalgia. Or he would have done, if he'd managed to stick to his text. But, in a strikingly erratic performance even by his standards, what actually emerged from the Senator's lips was: they "fired the shirt round the world".

That sums up better than anything what the Democratic Party's been trying to do this week for its Presidential candidate: fire the stuffed shirt round the world, put a rocket up a guy who seems weighed down by his own self-importance and project him into the stratosphere.
[...]
Floundering for a cause with which to rally the citizenry, the Democrats eventually found one: themselves.

"Our greatness is also measured by our goodness," declared Howard Dean.

"I've seen it in the people I've met and their desire to take our country back for the American people. I saw it in a college student in Pennsylvania who sold her bicycle and sent us a cheque for $100 with a note that said, 'I sold my bicycle for democracy'."

Really? John F Kerry's bicycle cost $8,000. Why doesn't he sell his for democracy? If you throw in the designer French T-shirt buttock-hugging lemon-hued lycra shorts, you'd probably be up around an even 10 grand. When Howard Dean and John Kerry and John Edwards talk about "change", what they mean is you send these bazillionaire grandees the 100-dollar bill and they'll keep the change.
[...]
There's a narcissism about the tone of this convention which cuts to the heart of the Democratic Party's problem: they don't believe in anything except their monopoly of goodness.
[...]
That's the essence of this convention: a condescending media congratulating a condescending leadership for effectively communicating to a condescending governing class their plans for everyone else. John F Kerry should enjoy it while he can. Electorally speaking, he'll lose his shirt.

Kerry Misses

Last night Kerry gave his acceptance speech, the most important speech of his campaign, if not of is political career. Kerry's main goal in this speech was to show himself to the American public, and especially to the swing/undecided voters. In this he failed. In the first ten minutes of the speech, Kerry attacked Bush for lying to get us into war, accused Cheney of being an evil polluter, and Ashcroft of destroying the Constitution. Clearly this was meant to appeal to his base, but most likely will alienate many swing voters who don't think in these loony-left terms. These attacks were followed, as they often have been in this past Democratic campaign, by insisting that he is taking the high road while the Republicans are not. As John Podhoretz points out:

He directly accused Bush of fighting a war not because it was in this country's national interest but basically because he "wanted" to.

He all but described the Iraq war in Michael Moore terms, as a war about oil, when he said that in his administration, "No young American in uniform will . . . be held hostage to our dependence on oil from the Middle East."
[...]
Kerry has every right to go after Bush with everything he's got. But in essence, while calling on the president to engage with Kerry in a battle of "great ideas," Kerry articulated only one big idea last night.

Kerry's big idea is this: He was a war hero and Bush is a lying scoundrel.

So, in the end, it appears Kerry has decided to run as Howard Dean with some medals.

In terms of showing himself to the voters, his main emphasis was on Viet Nam, and virtually nothing about himself since then. Dick Morris writes:

Then, after this long rendition of his childhood, he tells us at length what it was like to serve in Vietnam for the four months that he was there. So far, so good.

But then he spent only about one minute talking about what he has done since.

Beyond a brief allusion to his efforts for crime victims and to prosecute crimes against women as an assistant district attorney, his support for Clinton's plan for extra cops and a balanced budget and a reference to his work with John McCain on the POW and MIA issue in Vietnam, that's it.

What did this man do as an adult? What happened during his service as Michael Dukakis' lieutenant-governor in Massachusetts and in his 20 years in the United States Senate?

What bills did he introduce? What initiatives did he sponsor? Which investigations did he lead? What amendments bear his name? What great debates did he participate in?

What did he do for his constituents in Massachusetts? What businesses did he persuade to come to the Bay State? Which elderly did he help get their Social Security benefits? What injustices did he correct?

Kerry's biography ends at 24.

In terms of the most important issue of the day, the War on Terror, Kerry basically said nothing. "Let there be no mistake: I will never hesitate to use force when it is required". But when exactly is that? For Kerry it seems to be only after we have been attacked. Once again we see that his view on the war on terror is a legalistic one - we need proof before we act. And the proof that Kerry needs is a smoldering building or city. This is simply not serious given the threat we are confronting.

Basically, Kerry said that he should be President because he served four months in Viet Nam (35 years ago), because he was born in the west wing of the hospital, and because his initials are JFK. He'll need to do better than that to convince the swing voters.

Embassies

CNBC has just reported that the US and Israeli embassies in Uzbekistan were bombed.

Strength or Words

Dow Jones is reporting that "Kerry To Tell Convention Strength More Than Tough Words". Ummm, like destroying two of the worlds worst tyrannies? Strength like that? Or words about 4 months 35 years ago?

Surprise!!!

Its not Osama, but its not bad for the day of Kery's speech: Pakistan Arrests Embassies Bomb Suspect

Kerry's Speech

Pretty much everyone has billed Kerry's acceptance speech tonight as THE speech of his political career - as they will certainly describe Bush's acceptance speech at the Republican Convention. Both assessments are probably correct. Just as obviously, everyone has described what Kerry must say - strength, wisdom, etc. The question is will he be able to say it, will people believe him given his record, and will people be able to even stay awake for all 55 minutes of it - given the fact that he is not the most exciting of speakers (the words soporific come to mind). The Wall Street Journal editorializes on the past record and philosophy of Kerry and questions whether he can pass the "Commander-in-Chief test".

In pitching Mr. Kerry to be commander in chief, his campaign is also stressing the personal. Just as he captained that swift boat in Vietnam, he can lead the country now in dangerous times. Americans can be confident he'll use force against our enemies because he was willing to fight (and kill) in the Mekong Delta. But because he also knows first-hand the horror of war, he will not be as "reckless" as President Bush. "Strength" and "wisdom," as Bill Clinton put it on Monday--an alluring argument.

Yet surely we all know that personal bravery is not the same as political leadership. The doubts about Mr. Kerry concern not his courage but his judgment and conviction, and have been formed as the result of public service that is far longer than his admirable four months in Vietnam. Those doubts are both political and philosophical.

On the latter, Mr. Kerry has simply been wrong about the major national security questions of his time. Leaving aside the special case of Vietnam, the Senator voted against nearly every major weapons system during the Cold War. He supported the recklessly naive "nuclear freeze" in 1984. He opposed SDI, which convinced the Soviets they couldn't win an arms race. He even opposed the invasion of Grenada at the time, though he now says that is the kind of operation he would support. In other words, he was a stalwart of the dovish wing of the Democratic Party that voters refused to entrust with the Presidency from Vietnam until the Berlin Wall fell.

The Kerry campaign has hinted that they will shut down most advertising during the month of August in anticipation of the heavy Bush response (as well as the need to conserve the limited $75 million federal funds he will be receiving until after the Republican Convention). This is a risky move, especially if Kerry does not receive the expected post-convention bounce. Bush will once again be able to portray Kerry as he wants to, and if he is able to take any kind of lead into the Convention, the election will be pretty much over.

Arrow Works

The first true anti-ballistic missile system, Israel's Arrrow, today successfully completed its first live test. The Arrow shot down, at "high altitude" and incoming SCUD missile. The Jerusalem Post has a good article about this test, and the Arrow in general.

The Moore Democrats

Shmuely Boteach points out the Moorization of the Democratic Party and what this means to American foreign policy in the Middle East.

AMERICA IS hated by the nations of the world almost entirely due to its support of Israel and the war in Iraq. The United States is the great champion of Israel and is therefore loathed by a world that despises the Jewish state. Likewise, the US has incurred the wrath of the world by refusing to turn a blind eye toward Arab tyranny as embodied in Saddam Hussein.

When Democratic Party leaders demand that George Bush be dumped so that America can be loved again by the French and the Germans, they are well aware that the only way that's going to happen is by a radical change in American foreign policy. That would take us back to Bill Clinton's days, when America was neutral on the Arab-Israeli conflict and when it largely turned a blind eye to Arab tyranny.

But so long as America puts principle before profit by standing up for tiny Israel against half a billion Arabs and forcibly removing Arab tyrants, the world will continue to hate the superpower. Washington has become an international irritant by shaking up a complacent world order that couldn't care less if the Arabs eventually democratize.

Amir Taheri, meanwhile, clearly delineates the policy differences and shows the return of the policies of Carter to the Democratic Party.

EVER since Sen. John Kerry emerged as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Republicans have accused him of hoping to restore the Clinton foreign policy. But the Democratic Party's platform, "Strong At Home, Respected In The World," envisages a Kerry presidency whose foreign policy would more resemble Jimmy Carter's.

Another New York Times Stinker

Today's New York Times editorial manages to come up with some incredibly illogical and ridiculous lines in its suggestion for what Kerry needs to do to clarify his foreign policy.

When he accepts the Democratic presidential nomination tonight, John Kerry needs to give the nation a clearer idea of how his choices would have differed from President Bush's - particularly when it comes to the war in Iraq. The nation deserves to be told whether Mr. Kerry would have voted to authorize the invasion if he had known that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction.

This is simply inane. The true issue is what would John Kerry have done if he had the same knowledge regarding Saddam's WMDs that President Bush had. To phrase it the way the Times does is simply disingenuous. Given the available intelligence, President Bush (like the British, French, Russian, Israeli intelligence and UN Weapons inspectors) "knew" that Saddam had WMD. The real question is what would John Kerry have done in that situation, especially after 9/11?

Mr. Kerry and his running mate, John Edwards, have said that they voted to give the president the power to go to war to strengthen Mr. Bush's hand with the United Nations.

This is once again Kerry's excuse that he voted for threatening military action, but not actually using it. As any 6 year old learns, a threat is worthless unless it is backed up by something. Threatening and then doing nothing does not help a country's deterrence, to say the least.

They also had been given alarming intelligence reports, which they believed were accurate, showing that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling biological and chemical weapons and at least attempting to develop nuclear bombs.

And given those reports, they voted to use force against Iraq, but now disavow those votes.

Those reports were wrong, and Congress was wrong in presuming that Mr. Bush would go the last mile to get United Nations support.

Apparently for the New York Times, 17 UN Resolutions and an attempt at an 18th is not going far enough. Does the Times really think that if Bush just begged the French a little more, just asked nicer, they would have supported military action against Iraq? This is simply delusional. It is rewriting history with an attempt to deceive.

We can appreciate Mr. Kerry's complaints that he was misled on both counts.

No, he wasn't misled. The intelligence was incorrect. That is very different from misleading, something the Times is trying to do with its editorials.

But he and Mr. Edwards have refused to say whether they would have acted differently if they had known then what they know now.

Again, hindsight is easy, what would they have done knowing what was known then is the key issue.

When it comes to using force abroad, voters deserve a clear idea of how high Mr. Kerry would raise the bar from where Mr. Bush lowered it.

So Mr. Bush "lowered the bar" by using intelligence from all the world's major intelligence services and enforcing the policy of the previous administration as well as the UN?

Saddam Hussein was a vicious dictator, certainly, who was continuing to disdain United Nations resolutions on weapons of mass destruction and refusing to give full access to weapons inspectors. But we know now that because of the resolutions and the inspections, Mr. Hussein no longer had the forbidden weapons, even if he still harbored ambitions of getting them someday.

We also know that the UN resolutions were falling apart, in large part because of the French desire to resume trade with Saddam. So even if Saddam was not a direct threat to the US now, he would undoubtedly have been a threat to US interests later. Would the Times rather have dealt with a well-armed Saddam later?

Voters need to know whether Mr. Kerry agrees. Or would he have held back on invading Iraq and chosen instead to pursue the hunt for Osama bin Laden and the destruction of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and to focus diplomatic resources on places like North Korea and Iran?

North Korea and Iran have both been dealt with using "diplomatic resources" by the Bush Administration. Its not clear what the result will be with North Korea, but these "diplomatic resources" have been an utter failure in dealing with Iran; in large part because Iran knows that with all the disagreement in the US, they are safe from US military action. Showing once again that soft power not backed up by hard power is worthless.

But while voters are certainly prepared to accept a candidate with a complex worldview, they also value the courage that comes with occasionally taking a leap and giving an answer that's straight and simple.

The odds of getting a straight answer from Kerry tonight are pretty much nil.

Stroke of Luck?

The Mirror is reporting that Saddam's lawyer is claiming that the ex-dictator has suffered a stroke, and may not be able to stand trial. Unclear if this is true, judging by the source of this information.

Saddam not having to stand trial would probably be a good thing. There really is no need to have another debacle like the Milosevic trial.

Europe and America

An interesting article in the Hudson Review by an American who moved to Europe. Having lived in Europe since 1998, Bruce Bawer looks critically at Europe's complaints about America, through his review of a few books.

I moved from the U.S. to Europe in 1998, and I’ve been drawing comparisons ever since. Living in turn in the Netherlands, where kids come out of high school able to speak four languages, where gay marriage is a non-issue, and where book-buying levels are the world’s highest, and in Norway, where a staggering percentage of people read three newspapers a day and where respect for learning is reflected even in Oslo place names (“Professor Aschehoug Square”; “Professor Birkeland Road”), I was tempted at one point to write a book lamenting Americans’ anti-intellectualism—their indifference to foreign languages, ignorance of history, indifference to academic achievement, susceptibility to vulgar religion and trash TV, and so forth. On point after point, I would argue, Europe had us beat.

Yet as my weeks in the Old World stretched into months and then years, my perceptions shifted. Yes, many Europeans were book lovers—but which country’s literature most engaged them? Many of them revered education—but to which country’s universities did they most wish to send their children? (Answer: the same country that performs the majority of the world’s scientific research and wins most of the Nobel Prizes.) Yes, American television was responsible for drivel like “The Ricki Lake Show”—but Europeans, I learned, watched this stuff just as eagerly as Americans did (only to turn around, of course, and mock it as a reflection of American boorishness). No, Europeans weren’t Bible-thumpers—but the Continent’s ever-growing Muslim population, I had come to realize, represented even more of a threat to pluralist democracy than fundamentalist Christians did in the U.S. And yes, more Europeans were multilingual—but then, if each of the fifty states had its own language, Americans would be multilingual, too. I’d marveled at Norwegians’ newspaper consumption; but what did they actually read in those newspapers?

Democratic Foreign Policy

Claudia Rosett looks for the foreign policy of the Democratic Party, as shown by the Convention, and doesn't find much.

A Democratic foreign policy is what I was looking for when I switched on the TV Monday to watch the opening lineup at the Democratic Convention. I sat through Jimmy Carter ("Brezhnev lied to me"), Al Gore ("no controlling legal authority"), Hillary Clinton (the "woulda coulda shoulda" commodities trader) and then, at last, there he was, Big Bill (ol' "what the meaning of 'is' is") telling us that sending Sen. John Kerry to the White House would make America safer, smarter, stronger--just the way it was by the time Mr. Clinton left office (a March Rich pardon on his lips and state silverware in his luggage--or did Sandy Berger pack that in his pants?).

"By the only test that matters--were people better off when we finished than when we started--our way worked better," said Mr. Clinton.

Mr. Clinton finished, of course, in January, 2001, by which time al Qaeda's training camps, on Mr. Clinton's watch, had already churned out thousands of terrorists we've been trying to catch ever since. By that time, the Sept. 11 plot was just eight months from completion; our intelligence community was if possible even dumber than it is now; Iran had already been working for at least half a decade toward its nuclear bomb; North Korea had already been cheating for years on Mr. Clinton's "Agreed Framework" nuclear freeze; Arafat's intifada had crowned the Clinton photo-op forays into the Middle East; and Saddam Hussein, having kicked out the United Nations weapons inspectors in 1998, was busy cashing in bigtime on the Clinton-launched United Nations Oil-for-Food program, buying influence and blackmail opportunities among our allies, some of them the very same allies Mr. Bush has alienated, pushed away, burned his bridges to . . .

Kerry Fakes the War

Drudge is reporting that the bio-pic that will introduce Kerry at the DNC, parts of which are clips that Kerry filmed with an 8mm camera while he was on his tour of duty in Viet Nam, has a number of re-enacted war scenes. Spielberg is acting as an advisor on the bio films. Perhaps Nudnikette is right that Spielberg is the Devil.

Is there anything about Kerry that is real????

No Agenda but Hate

The Democrats have been trying to hold back on their Bush-bashing during the DNC, though at this point it seems, unsuccessfully. The reason for this is that aside from their hatred of Bush, they really have no agenda or party unity. This hatred of Bush, however, is not matched by any passion for their own candidate. As David Frum points out, the party is full of internal contradictions.

Today's Democratic Party is the party of America's most politically radical people and also its most politically conservative: the party of the anti-globalisation, bicycle-courier Left, and also of the retired generals, diplomats and oil executives who sign petitions denouncing Mr Bush's rejection of five decades' worth of inherited wisdom on the Middle East.

Today's Democratic Party is the party both of America's freest traders (such as Robert Rubin) and its fiercest protectionists (such as Richard Gephardt); of the ultra-secularists of Harvard, Columbia, and Berkeley and of fervently devout African-American churchgoers; of America's staunchest Zionists (such as Joe Lieberman) and its most conspiracy-minded anti-Semites.

Finally, today's Democratic Party is the party both of those who object to Mr Bush's foreign policy on principle (such as Richard Holbrooke, one of the two front-runners for the job of next Democratic secretary of state) and those who object only to its allegedly ham-handed execution (such as Delaware Senator Joe Biden, who is the other).

These incompatible groups all passionately dislike Mr Bush. But that dislike is not matched by any corresponding passion in favour of John Kerry.

Tony Blankley, meanwhile, thinks that the divisions that this hatred obscure, will do more damage to the Democratic Party if Kerry is actually elected, than if he loses.

The result is a hatred of Mr. Bush by the party activists that has consumed their policy passions and convictions. They hate Mr. Bush more than they hate the Iraq war. Their great intellectual battle of the 2000s — whether they should stay in the Clinton center or go back to their liberal convictions — has been subsumed temporarily by their common hatred of Mr. Bush. Should the American voters succumb to poor judgment and elect Mr. Kerry, a united Democratic Party may face the plight of the son in the Nazi story of hate and meaning. Bush hate is the glue that holds the party together. If he leaves the scene, the party may quickly fall apart.

War on Whom?

Caleb Carr takes issue with one of the lines of the 9/11 Commission report. The particular phrase that he does not like is:

"the enemy is not just 'terrorism,' some generic evil. This vagueness blurs the strategy. The catastrophic threat at this moment in history is more specific. It is the threat posed by Islamist terrorism -- especially the al Qaeda network, its affiliates, and its ideology."

Carr objects to this phrasing because

the members of the commission have tried to rewrite the terms of the global war on terrorism and turn it into a global war on Islamist terrorism alone.

and that this phrasing will be misinterpreted by the Arab world as a "clash of civilizations". Carr instead believes that we need to fight against terrorism in general. Obviously, this would require a definition of terrorism, which he provides, albeit in the form of a strawman argument:

Certainly terrorism must include the deliberate victimization of civilians for political purposes as a principal feature -- anything else would be a logical absurdity.

that he then knocks down by saying that under this definition

..the United States...would have to admit that its fire-bombings of German and Japanese cities during World War II represented effective terrorism.

While Carr acknowledges that there is a war and that we must fight it, he is wrong both about the definition of terrorism, as well as the actual enemy. Terrorism is more than just the "victimization of civilians for political purposes"; a more correct definition would be "the systematic use of terror or unpredictable violence against governments, publics, or individuals to attain a political objective". The US bombing Japanese or German cities was a war, not terrorism.

More importantly, is the question of whether we should define this as a war against Islamist terrorism. Carr's argument that the Arab world might misinterpret it is meaningless. Why should we care about insulting them? In fact, defining it this way, and making the Arab world understand that we are serious in this war could do a lot to make these Arab governments act against the terrorists to forestall our action against them. Additionally, who exactly is attacking the US, Spain, Israel, the Philippines, India, etc.? Was it Buddhists who flew the planes into the WTC? Is it Zoroastrians who blow up buses in Israel? Or Catholics beheading hostages in the Philippines?

Clearly our current war is against Islamist terrorism. Undoubtedly other terrorism exists, but it is not an existential threat to us or anyone else. This war is against Islamism, and the sooner we can get over the p.c. bullshit and acknowledge it, the quicker we will be able to triumph over it.

The Deer Hunter

Mark Steyn has an excellent column today on John Kerry's abilities at hunting deer, foreign policy, and his campaign in general. Steyn is less than impressed, as apparently is the electorate, to judge from the WaPo/ABCNews poll.

He was in Wisconsin the other day, pretending to be a regular guy, and was asked what kind of hunting he preferred. "I'd have to say deer," said the senator. "I go out with my trusty 12-gauge double-barrel, crawl around on my stomach... That's hunting."

This caused huge hilarity among my New Hampshire neighbours. None of us has ever heard of anybody deer hunting by crawling around on his stomach, even in Massachusetts. The trick is to blend in with the woods and, given that John Kerry already looks like a forlorn tree in late fall, it's hard to see why he'd give up his natural advantage in order to hunt horizontally.

Possibly his weird Vietnam nostalgia is getting out of control. Still, if I come across a guy in the woods in deer season inching through the undergrowth with a mouthful of bear scat, at least I'll know who it is.

Conversely, if you're a 14-point buck and get shot in the toe this autumn, you'll know who to sue.

Crawling around on your stomach is a lousy way to hunt deer, but it's proved a smart way to campaign for president. For months now, George W Bush has been up there getting fired on from all directions. Meanwhile, down in the scrub, John Kerry was crawling forward on his stomach, a stealth candidate advancing slowly, off the radar, prone alone.

Sadly, the stealth candidacy has come to an end. This week the real John F Kerry has to stand up, and, judging from the way those Senate and House candidates in tight races are staying away from the convention, a lot of bigshot Democrats aren't too sure Americans are going to like what they see.

And of course, the quintissential quote of the Kerry campaign:

Afterwards, asked about his apparent enthusiasm for the potty-mouthed has-beens, he replied thus: "When I talked about the heart and soul, I'm talking about the artistic expression. I'm talking about sort of the, I mean, I believe in the arts. I think that there's a great expression in it, and there's always this struggle. You know, does life imitate art or art imitate life? Which comes first? It's a little of both.

"I do think we have a responsibility, as leaders, to stand up. I think there were people at that concert we had in New York who stepped over the line. I've said that. They don't speak for me. They speak for themselves. I will stand up and struggle, as others have, to try to get that right balance between violence and sex and things."

New Poll

A new Washington Post/ABC News poll was released today, the results of which look incredibly negative for Kerry - which is probably the reason that the mainstream media is completely burying it. The poll is based on registered voters not likely voters, making it somewhat less accurate. But the inaccuracy of "registered voters" polls skew Democratic, making the results even more disturbing for Kerry.

President Bush has clawed back on issues and attributes alike, reclaiming significant ground that Kerry had taken a month ago. Kerry has lost support against Bush in trust to handle five of six issues tested in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll, including terrorism, Iraq, taxes and even health care. And Kerry's ratings on personal attributes — honesty, strong leadership, consistency, empathy and others — have softened as well.

The VP and pre-convention bounce have been virtually non-existent for Kerry. And with the polarization of the electorate, a large post-convention bounce is unlikely.

Carnival of Losers

Conventions, in this age where nominations are decided long beforehand, are supposed to be events which unite the party as well as show the undecided voters why it is that they should vote for that party. Undoubtedly, this year the Democratic Party is united - primarily, however, in its hatred of Bush rather than in any real issues. The way that the party is showing itself to undecideds, however, seems to be problematic. Jonathan Last points out that in a time when one of the man concerns is terrorism, and many voters see a need for a "strong America", the democrats come up with speakers who are decidedly not the best examples of these ideas.

JOHN KERRY and John Edwards want to bring you a stronger America. It says so on their signs and the slogan flickers across the thin, ticker-tape video screens that ring the Fleet Center, repeating over and over and over. To that end, they've decided to open their convention with the two biggest losers in the recent history of the Democratic party: Al Gore and Jimmy Carter.
[...]
Towards the end of his remarks, President Carter asks the delegates to repudiate "extremism" and worried about "extremist doctrines" which are pulling America into dangerous waters. I'm assuming he was talking about Bush, but you never know. After his speech, Jimmy Carter repaired to small box behind my workstation. There, the former president of the United States and his wife, Rosalynn, sat down next to Michael Moore.

Coulter at the Convention

The usually shrill, but often funny, Ann Coulter reviews the first day of the Democratic National Convention.

Apparently, the nuts at the Democratic National Convention are going to be put in cages outside the convention hall. Sadly, they won't be fighting to the death as is done in W.W.F. caged matches. They're calling this the "protestor's area," although I suppose a better name would be the "truth-free zone."

I thought this was a great idea until I realized the "nut" category did not include Sharpton, Al Gore, Bill Clinton and Teddy Kennedy – all featured speakers at the convention. I'd say the actual policy is only untelegenic nuts get the cages, but little Dennis Kucinich is speaking at the Convention, too. So it must be cages for "nuts who have not run for president as serious candidates for the Democratic Party."

The Arab-Israeli Conflict by Numbers

Dennis Prager neatly summarizes the Arab-Israeli conflict by looking at the numbers.

Drunk, and Still Trying to Drive

David Brooks, in a possible reference to tonight's DNC speaker, reviews Kerry's boringness and the careening car of the Democratic Party.

I didn't realize that tediousness is John Kerry's greatest trait. I didn't realize that a country barraged by a decade of Gingrich, impeachment, hanging chads and war may actually be looking for a Brezhnev to give it a break.
[...]
I also didn't sense that the Democratic Party is just sober enough to realize it needs a designated driver like John Kerry to get it home at night. This is a whacked-out party that has spent the past year throwing back Howard Dean hurricanes, being gripped with Michael Moore fever and indulging in Whoopi-esque animosity binges.

And yet there's that moment when you are drinking, before you get really blotto, when you realize that you have just enough sobriety for one last lifesaving act of responsibility. For the Democrats, nominating Kerry is that act...

It will be interesting to see the reaction of the delegates to Kerry. Obviously Clinton's speech and presence will be a hard act to follow. If by Thursday night people still remember Clinton's appearance, Kerry will look even more uninteresting by comparison.

A Plan for Israel

Thinking Meat has some advice for Israel to help it win over "world opinion".

Still Looking Backwards

Mark Steyn had an excellent article yesterday about our continuing arguments over the minutiae of the past few years, while at the same time neglecting the real issues of the future.

And that sums up perfectly the rotten state of domestic politics in America. A frivolous uncivil civil war is draining all the energy away from the real war. We warmongers didn't start the nitpicking, but somehow the entire landscape of U.S. politics has tilted so that a nation supposedly at war is spending most of its time looking through the rear window sniping about what was said and done in 2002, 2001, 2000, like the falling calendar leaves in a Hollywood flashback. The Democrats will always win on this playing field because, like some third-rate soap opera, their characters are not required to have any internal consistency.
[...]
What matters is where we're headed, not where we were. And, in that respect, John Kerry is still looking through the rear window. Not so much because of his remarkably poor choice of advisers -- Joe Wilson (the Politics Of Truth fraud), Max Cleland (with his schoolyard cries of "Liar, liar!") and Sandy Berger (with his pants on fire) -- but because Kerry's prescriptions (the U.N., the French) are so Sept. 10. A holiday from history is one thing. The Democrats are now embarked on a holiday from reality.

Religion of Peace

Over the past few years we have repeatedly heard (including from President Bush) that Islam is a religion of peace. The post-modern, PC advocates have brought out their moral equivalence to convince us that Islam is just like any other religion. Yet, whether we like it or not, Islam is not like the other major religions. Anthony Browne writes that Islam really does want to take over the world, and we would know that if we simply listened to what their religious leaders say to their worshippers every day.

The Real Meaning of the Fence Ruling

Yossi Klein Halevi has a good article on the real meaning of the ICJ ruling on the fence.

The real meaning of the court's decision, then, is to delegitimize not Israel's right to self-defense but its right to claim any territory, even for self-defense, over the Green Line.

The danger of that decision is to create the legal groundwork for an imposed solution that would force Israel back to the 1967 borders, even without a peace agreement — Yasser Arafat's dream scenario.

And so the war Israel needs to fight now isn't so much over the decision itself but its premise: that all land beyond the 1967 border belongs by right to Palestine.

The fact that the "Court" describes the WB in this way - the way that most of Europe and the Left describes it - is another example of the utter failure of Israel's propaganda efforts. Under international law, the WB is NOT "Palestinian land" and never was. It is land that legally is disputed; it is the unallocated portion of the original Palestine Mandate whose status must be determined by negotiations, which is exactly what the UN stated in Resolution 242. This is the information that Israel needs to get out more forcefully.

Republicans in Boston?

Hard to believe, but Viking Pundit has a picture of a pizzeria outside of the Fleet Center that doesn't entirely support Kerry.

Iran Policy

Lawrence Kaplan at TNR has a good article on the policy towards Iran of both Bush and Kerry. While his appraisal of the Bush policy is that it is not quite discernible, the Kerry policy is simply horrible.

At times, Kerry seems to be taking his cues from Jimmy Carter's 1976 presidential run, sounding as though he's blasting his opponent from the right while he quietly offers up solutions from the left. Nowhere is this truer than in the case of Iran, where, when you strip away Kerry's hard-boiled rhetoric about preventing the country from acquiring a nuclear weapon, what the candidate offers is a facsimile of the Clinton-era policy of "engagement." Likening the Islamic Republic to a much less dangerous threat from long ago, Kerry seeks to "explore areas of mutual interest with Iran, just as I was prepared to normalize relations with Vietnam." Hence, Kerry says he "would support talking with all elements of the government," or, as his principal foreign policy adviser Rand Beers has elaborated, the United States must engage Iran's "hard-line element"--this, while the candidate tells The Washington Post he will downplay democracy promotion in the region. In fact, as part of this normalization process, Kerry has recommended hammering out a deal with Teheran a la the Clinton administration's doomed bargain with North Korea, whereby the United States would aid the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for safeguards that would presumably keep the program peaceful.
[...]
Kerry's calls for a rapprochement with Teheran come at a rather inopportune moment. The very regime that Kerry demands we engage, after all, has just been certified as an Al Qaeda sanctuary--and by the very commission in which the Kerry campaign has invested so much hope.

The Party of Clinton vs. The Party of Bush

Bill Clinton is considered the savior of the Democratic Party, and one that John Kerry would very much like to emulate. That is why this the views of Clinton and Bush, as expressed in interviews to French newspapers are so instructive. The American Thinker describes these interviews.

The two styles and views of these two presidents could no be more opposite. Clearly, the two visions of foreign relations clash. Clinton still lives in the old paradigm, pre-September 11, where our priority was to befriend all countries at any cost, even if it endangered our national security. By endorsing one of the top terror masters in the world, Arafat, Clinton is siding, even if it is only morally, with one of our mortal enemies. Additionally, he views it as a priority to bridge our differences with the world, especially Europe. It looks like he does not realize the extent of the war we are now fighting.

As far as President Bush, his determination to “stick to his guns” is very reassuring. He is resolute in winning this war, fighting terrorist and rogue states alike. He will not compromise the security of our nation for France or the United Nations. He has a vision and strategy that will ultimately bring us to victory.

Unfortunately, Senator Kerry does not seem to grasp the stakes of the current war on terror. His foreign policy mirrors that of ex-President Clinton, and can be summed up in one word: appeasement. Obviously, with such clear differences, the choice in the November elections will be simple. Even Clinton acknowledged it when he said that if the election is going to be about the war on terror, President Bush will be reelected.

Iran and al-Qaeda

The Washington times reports of the continuing ties between Iran and al-Qaeda.

Charles Krauthammer, meanwhile, takes on the new criticism of the Iraq war - namely that we should have gone after Iran first.

If not war, then what? We know the central foreign policy principle of Bush critics: multilateralism. John Kerry and the Democrats have said it a hundred times: The source of our troubles is President Bush's insistence on "going it alone." They promise to "rejoin the community of nations" and "work with our allies."

Well, that happens to be exactly what we have been doing regarding Iran. And the policy is an abject failure. The Bush administration, having decided that invading one axis-of-evil country was about as much as either the military or the country can bear, has gone multilateral on Iran, precisely what the Democrats advocate. Washington delegated the issue to a committee of three -- the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany -- that has been meeting with the Iranians to get them to shut down their nuclear program.

The result? They have been led by the nose. Iran is caught red-handed with illegally enriched uranium, and the Tehran Three prevail upon the Bush administration to do nothing while they persuade the mullahs to act nice. Therefore, we do not go to the U.N. Security Council to declare Iran in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. We do not impose sanctions. We do not begin squeezing Iran to give up its nuclear program.

Instead, we give Iran more time to swoon before the persuasive powers of "Jack of Tehran" -- British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw -- until finally, humiliatingly, Iran announces that it will resume enriching uranium and that nothing will prevent it from becoming a member of the "nuclear club."

The French Reaction

Pejmanesque links to an excellent op/ed in the Seattle Times on the French reaction to Sharon's comments regarding anti-Semitism in France.

France is native soil to many mysterious theories of international relations these days, but on Monday, President Jacques Chirac took the folie to a new level. To prove France rejects anti-Semitism, Chirac announced that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon would be unwelcome in the land of liberté, égalité and fraternité.

The contretemps began on Sunday, when Sharon, speaking to visiting American Jewish leaders in Jerusalem, commented on the spreading rash of anti-Semitic incidents in France and encouraged French Jews to return to Israel "immediately." Despite Sharon's praise for France's efforts to calm its roiling tensions, Chirac and his foreign minister, Michel Barnier, took the opportunity to castigate the Jewish leader on the world stage, calling the remarks "unacceptable" and disinviting Sharon from a state visit until he had an "explanation."

We wonder several things here, but first is exactly which part of the remarks they didn't understand.

Richard Clarke's Contribution

Rich Lowry at the NRO Cornerpoints out this little tidbit from the 9/11 Commission report.

“Even after bin Laden’s departure from the area, CIA officers hoped he might return, seeing the camp as a magnet that could draw him for as long as it was still set up. The military maintained readiness for another strike opportunity. On March 7, 1999, Clarke called a UAE official to express his concerns about possible associations between Emirati officials and bin Laden. Clarke later wrote in a memorandum of this conversation that the call had been approved at an interagency meeting and cleared with the CIA. When the former bin Laden unit chief found out about Clarke’s call, he questioned CIA officials, who denied having given such clearance. Imagery confirmed that less than a week after Clarke’s phone call the camp was hurriedly dismantled, and the site was deserted. CIA officers, including Deputy Director for Operations Pavitt, were irate. ‘Mike’ thought the dismantling of the camp erased a possible site for targeting bin Laden.”

Seems that thanks to Clarke's leak, the US missed a chance to kill bin Laden.

More Frightening Stories

The Washington Times today reports that there have been more reports of terrorists "scouting" airlines for future attacks.

Flight crews and air marshals say Middle Eastern men are staking out airports, probing security measures and conducting test runs aboard airplanes for a terrorist attack.

At least two midflight incidents have involved numerous men of Middle Eastern descent behaving in what one pilot called "stereotypical" behavior of an organized attempt to attack a plane.
[...]
A second pilot said that, on one of his recent flights, an air marshal forced his way into the lavatory at the front of his plane after a man of Middle Eastern descent locked himself in for a long period.

The marshal found the mirror had been removed and the man was attempting to break through the wall. The cockpit was on the other side.

The second pilot said terrorists are "absolutely" testing security.

Iran's Nukes

This story suggests that military action probably would not destroy Iran's nuclear weapons research, but could possibly delay them for a significant period of time. The article makes a comparison to Israel's destruction of Iraq's reactor, and then comes up with this incredible line:

But instead of stopping him from pursuing the bomb, Saddam went underground and worked in secret until the program was uncovered by the U.N. nuclear watchdog in 1991.

So the IAEA just happened to uncover this in 1991?? I seem to recall 500,000 US and coalition troops were somewhat involved in this uncovering. But of course, to al-Reuters and Louis Charbonneau, that whole military thing doesn't accomplish anything, so why even mention it.

The New York Times' Arafat Problem

In an otherwise reasonable editorial regarding the need for Arafat to retire, the New York Times makes some appalling statements. The first is in the opening paragraph:

It's been the misfortune of the Palestinian people to be stuck with Yasir Arafat as their founding father, a leader who has failed to make the transition from romantic revolutionary to statesman.

Romantic revolutionary??????? This is how the Times refers to one of the world's arch-terrorists?? To the man who single-handedly made airplane hijackings a way of life??? To the man who has sent hundreds of terrorists to kill Israeli children??? To the man who is on tape (NSA recordings) ordering the murder of US diplomats in Khartoum??? How can anyone trust the Times after lines like this?

Next, the Times draws an equivalence between Arafat and Sharon.

The retirement of Mr. Arafat, who is 74, would allow the creation of a more credible Palestinian government that could garner international support and claim the moral high ground in the confrontation with Mr. Arafat's equally stubborn nemesis, Ariel Sharon.

And finally, the Times repeats the inane line regarding Arafat's legitimacy as leader:

Saying that it's time for Mr. Arafat to go is not the same as saying it is time for Mr. Arafat to be removed by force. He is, after all, a democratically elected leader, though the term he won in 1996 was never meant to be this long.

Apparently "one man, one vote, one time" is a good enough democracy for the Times, not even to mention the actual undemocratic nature of that "election". I guess for the Times, Saddam was also democratically elected. Paraphrasing Dennis Ross, Arafat's "election" was slightly more legitimate than Stalin's, and less legitimate than Hitler's.

Why Bush Must Win

Since 9/11 we have come to the realization that we are at war against a radical Islamofascist ideology. This war makes this election more important than any other election in the last 15 years. Uri Dan writes that its results will be watched by both our friends and enemies, and that because of this Bush must win.

But today's war against Muslim fascism is still very much in progress. And this is a war of a different kind. It entails indiscriminate jihadist attacks on civilians to an extent not seen before by modern civilization. The attacking barbarians cut the throats of their innocent victims, people such as journalist Daniel Pearl and others, and thus achieve hero status in the eyes of tens – perhaps even hundreds – of millions of other Muslims.

Their offensive stretches from New York to Madrid, from Paris to Istanbul, and from Jerusalem to Jiddah.

So if President Bush fails in his reelection bid this November, it will be seen as a tremendous victory for extremist Islam and for supporters of terrorism and dictatorship in the Arab and Muslim world.
[...]
If Bush loses the election, the fanatics will celebrate his loss as a victory in their war against the greatest power in the world. It doesn't matter that John Kerry may be forced to continue Bush's global war against terrorism or that Kerry may retract conciliatory-sounding election promises.

The very fact of a Bush defeat will be interpreted in the fevered, fanatical minds of millions of jihadists and their supporters to mean that their path of sowing terror and death is the right one.

A Bush loss could well give renewed momentum for an al-Qaida offensive.

This prognosis should worry American voters who care about their country's security. Consequently, however difficult it may be for voters brought up on democratic values to acknowledge, they should be cognizant of the extraordinary significance of changing supreme commanders in wartime.

And they should especially think about how a Bush loss would likely play in the eyes of America's enemies.

Wrap-up of Recent Stories

Martin Peretz, the editor-in-chief of The New Republic, looks at a few of the latest news stories. On Joseph Wilson and the "yellowcake":

The tale spun by former Ambassador Joseph Wilson that Iraq did not ever try to buy uranium yellowcake from Niger is now in the process of unraveling. And, of course, the phalanx of anti-war journalists is desperately trying to stop the bust-up. But it can't be done.

On Sandy Berger and Trousergate:

I confess: I do not like Sandy Berger; and I have not liked him since the first time we met, long ago during the McGovern campaign, not because of his politics since I more or less shared them then, but for his hauteur. He clearly still has McGovernite politics, which means, in my mind, at least, that he believes there is no international dispute that can't be solved by the U.S. walking away from it. No matter. Still, here's his story about the filched classified materials dealing with the foiled Al Qaeda millennium terrorist bombing plot from the National Archives: He inadvertently took home documents and notes about documents that he was not permitted to take from the archives; secondly, he inadvertently didn't notice the papers in his possession when he got home and actually looked at them; and, thirdly, he inadvertently discarded some of these same files so that they are now missing.

Jacques Chirac and France's actions at the UN:

French President Jacques Chirac has let it be known that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is not welcome as a guest in Paris. Mazel tov! Can you actually imagine Chirac putting out a genuine welcome mat for the Israeli leader who has shown that all of France's interventions in the area have brought nothing good: more of terror, more of Arafat, worst of all, more of Palestinian suffering, all to succor the illusion of French influence in the region.

More French Perfidy

As I vented yesterday, the vote of the UN General Assembly against the defensive fence that Israel is building was nothing short of shameful. It is one thing for Arab states to vote for such a resolution, no one expects any more form them. It is quite another for the countries of the EU, who all are or will soon be the targets of Islamist terrorism, to vote this way. Now, Haaretz is reporting that the EU states had actually decided to abstain a mere hour before the vote.

At the last moment, however, France backed by Sweden blocked a final decision to abstain and pushed fellow members to support the resolution.

"It was the French connection that delivered Europeans' support for the resolution," a Western diplomat who wished to remain anonymous told Haaretz yesterday. "In behind-the-scene negotiations over the wording of the resolution, it was sometimes hard to distinguish between the eagerness of the PLO observer al-Kidwa and that displayed by French Ambassador [Jean-Marc de la] Sabliere," the diplomat added.

If, and when, there is a terrorist attack in France, I, for one, will have no sympathy whatsoever. They have consistently betrayed Israel and the US, the two countries most actively fighting what is, in effect, World War IV - the War on Terror - and they should be treated like the back-stabbing appeasers and collaborators that they are.

Warren on Iran

David Warren writes of the coming confrontation with Iran. Iran has been making threatening statements, and most of the press ignores it. This issue is also finally becoming a part of the presidential campaign, and if framed correctly will be a big boost for Bush.

The Dishonesty of the Left

Ralph Peters presents an excellent and scathing indictment of the current Left.

The silence of the Left in the face of uncomfortable truths is a hallowed tradition, of course, dating back to the earliest crimes of the Soviet Union. When the reality confronting the Left contradicts the theory, the theory must be preserved at any cost.

And there’s no sign of improvement, not a glimmer of the least scrap of conscience or integrity on the Left. It’s all about revenge against a democratic system that gives a blue-collar worker a vote equal to that of a university professor’s ballot, about hatred for the free market for providing better lives for the great majority while Marxism drowned in the bile of its victims. There’s no one the new American Left so despises as the working man or woman who continues to believe in the United States.
[...]
The truth is that our Left is so intellectually decrepit, so infected by dishonesty, so morally feeble that it has only breath enough to condemn American actions. No matter how many brown or black human beings suffer around the world—starved, ethnically cleansed, raped, tortured, murdered—it doesn’t count unless you can blame America.

The 3rd Intifada

Amir Taheri writes today about the 3rd Intifada of the Palestinians. This one is against the Palestinian Authority and Arafat, and is the only one that is actually a popular uprising, as opposed to the previous centrally directed assaults on Israel.

The new intifada, however, represents people who wish to accelerate the Israeli withdrawal and are prepared to make Gaza work.

The new intifada's third aim is to tell the outside world to stop aiding and abetting the confederacy of rogues created by Arafat. The message is especially directed at the European Union, which has been giving Arafat almost a billion euros each year to play with as he pleases.

Arafat has used part of the money to buy support. Whenever faced with a critic, Arafat always asks: How much does he want?

The outside world knows little of the extent of corruption that the Arafat regime has created. It is common knowledge in the Palestinian territories that a dozen or two influential individuals, many of them related to Arafat by blood or marriage, control the economies of Gaza and the West Bank.

However, despite all the anger of Palestinians against Arafat, in most polls he still has fairly high approval ratings.

Nuclear Missiles in Iraq?

The Washington Times is reporting this morning that missiles armed with nuclear warheads have been found in Iraq.

Baghdad, Iraq, Jul. 21 (UPI) -- Iraqi security reportedly discovered three missiles carrying nuclear heads concealed in a concrete trench northwest of Baghdad, official sources said Wednesday.

The official daily al-Sabah quoted the sources as saying the missiles were discovered in trenches near the city of Tikrit, the hometown of ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

"The three missiles were discovered by chance when the Iraqi security forces captured former Baath party official Khoder al-Douri who revealed during interrogation the location of the missiles saying they carried nuclear heads," the sources said.

This is still unconfirmed, but if true would obviously be huge. Given the previous erroneous reports of finds of WMD, this report should probably be viewed skeptically (no matter how much we would like to believe it).

Berger Leaves Kerry Campaign

A good one from Scrappleface

(2004-07-21) -- Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, former national security advisor to President Bill Clinton, today left the presidential campaign staff of John Forbes Kerry, after "a thorough frisking and examination of his briefcase."

The premature departure follows the announcement of an FBI probe of Mr. Berger on allegations that he stole classified documents from the U.S. National Archives.

"We're sad to see our trusted friend, Sandy Berger, leave the Kerry-Edwards campaign," said Mr. Kerry, "But we're glad to have a chance to recover some items that had gone missing while he was here."

Mr. Kerry, who is also a U.S. Senator, said the search of Mr. Berger's person and effects turned up the only existing copy of a missing Kerry-Edwards document called "Our Unshakable Beliefs" which Mr. Berger had accidentally misplaced in his left ear.

In his defense, Mr. Berger said, "the document was quite small, and I think it just stuck to my fingernail and then got lost in my ear hair. It's a sloppy mistake that anyone could make."

Kerry's Record

Don Feder takes a look at the long foreign policy record of John Kerry. To say that he is not impressed would be an understatement.

The Democratic Party has a theme for its 2004 nominating convention, which starts next Monday. It’s not, "From each according to his abilities; to each according to his needs." Nor, despite the fact that Ted Kennedy is a featured speaker, is it, "Yo, ho, ho, and a bottle of rum."

Believe it or not, the slogan with which the party of retreat will try to sell its internationalist nominee is "Stronger At Home, Respected In The World."

John Forbes Kerry is going to make America Stronger At Home, Respected In The World? And will Bill Clinton lead a moral revival? Will Larry Flynt return traditional values to the media? Will Mullah Omar (spiritual leader of the late, unlamented, Taliban regime) forge a new chapter in tolerance and understanding?

Scum

That is the only word (at least the only non-expletive) that could be used to describe the UN and its latest anti-Israel vote. The UN continues to prove itself a worthless, foul, malevolent institution that for any thinking person should be considered below contempt. Enough has been written about the ICJ ruling, and much more will be written about this vote, so I will not make any arguments about why this decision was wrong, immoral, and simply offensive. This band of tyrannies allied with the spineless and powerless Europeans should be disbanded, its buildings destroyed, and the land and which it sits sown with salt so that no such outrage should ever arise in its place. I sincerely hope that the delegates who voted for this resolution experience first hand the terrorism that Israel has been suffering from and fighting all these years.

By the way, this is the institution whose approval Kerry seeks to legitimize US actions.

Zionism

A interesting article on the history of the demonization of Zionism. What the author leaves out, however, is the role of the Soviet Union in this demonization, undoubtedly a much stronger force than the Arab countries themselves.

No Win Situation

National Review's Rich Lowry shows how no matter what Bush does, his enemies will show it in the worst possible light.

Sometimes a political figure becomes so hated that he can't do anything right in the eyes of his enemies. President Bush has achieved this rare and exalted status. His critics are so blinded by animus that the internal consistency of their attacks on him no longer matters. For them, Bush is the double-bind president.

The Wages of Multilateralism

In an excellent article, Mark Steyn assaults the UN and "International Community" for its actions, or lack thereof, regarding the ongoing genocide in Sudan.

The Americans could probably make a difference in Sudan, too. The USAF could target and bomb the Janjaweed as effectively as they did the Taliban. But then John Mann and Harold Pinter and Rupert Everett would get their knickers in a twist, and everyone from John Kerry to Polly Toynbee would complain that it's "illegitimate" unless it's authorised by the UN. The problem is, by the time you've gone through the UN, everyone's dead.

The UN system is broken beyond repair. In May, even as its proxies were getting stuck into their ethnic cleansing in Darfur, Sudan was elected to a three-year term on the UN Human Rights Commission. This isn't an aberration: Zimbabwe is also a member. The very structure of the organisation, under which countries vote in regional blocs, encourages such affronts to decency.

The Sudanese representative, by the way, immediately professed himself concerned by human rights abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.
[...]
One day, historians will wonder why the most militarily advanced nations could do nothing to halt men with machetes and a few rusting rifles. After Kitchener's victory over the dervishes at Omdurman, Belloc wrote:

"Whatever happens/ We have got/ The Maxim gun/ and they have not."

We've tossed out the Maxim gun for daisycutters and cruise missiles. In Darfur, meanwhile, the Janjaweed on their horses are no better armed than the dervishes were. But we're powerless against them because we've fetishised poseur-multilateralism as the only legitimate form of intervention. Who needs a "Kipling of today" when the old one works perfectly well:

"Take up the White Man's burden/ The savage wars of peace/ Fill full the mouth of famine /And bid the sickness cease;/ And when your goal is nearest/ The end for others sought,/ Watch Sloth and heathen Folly/ Bring all your hope to nought."

He didn't know the half of it. Today, we have devised a system of protean "world government" that amplifies both the Sloth of the West and the heathen Folly of the thug states. And, because of it, in Sudan as in Rwanda, hundreds of thousands will die.

So Much for the Bounce

The bounce in poll numbers for John Kerry that everyone was expecting after the selection of Edwards seems to have come and gone rather quickly. Most polls initially showed a 5-6% lead for Kerry. Now, a couple of weeks later, that lead seems to have disappeared. Rasmussen, which conducts daily polls, shows that the President is now leading Kerry by 2%. While this is within the margin of error, there is a clear upward trend for Bush over the last week, and a corresponding downward trend for Kerry. More interestingly, the Iowa Electronic Markets, which briefly showed Kerry leading Bush after the Edwards announcement, now show Bush pulling away. Going into the convention, and with all the positive news coverage, these numbers should be pretty disheartening for the Kerry campaign.

Israel and British Bias

A very revealing article about the bias against Israel and the security barrier in British newspapers.

‘People don’t become suicide bombers for the fun of it, you know. They have grievances.”

The statement should have come as no surprise after all I had heard during the previous three hours, but still I was stunned. The speaker was one of two British journalists with whom I had spent the morning in and around the West Bank town of Kalkilya.

The Israel Defense Forces were taking foreign reporters on a tour of the “separation fence” late last month, days before Israel’s Supreme Court balanced humanitarian and security considerations, ordering the army to remove a small portion of the barrier and re-route other sections that might impose undue hardships on Palestinians.

Conducting our tour was a lieutenant colonel named Shai, the former battalion commander for the area. Also in the van: an IDF spokesman and the two Brits: Harriet, a foreign editor of the influential UK publication The Guardian, and Martin, a correspondent for the Times of London.

Another "Documentary" From the Left

Eric Pfeiffer describes his experience watching the new "documentary" about Fox News. As would be expected from a movie funded by MoveOn.org, facts are not the most important aspect of this film.

ON SUNDAY NIGHT, liberal activist group MoveOn.org organized more than two thousand screenings across the nation for op-ed filmmaker Robert Greenwald's assault on Fox News Channel, Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War On Journalism. The DC Metro area played host to 16 screenings, with some 800 registered attendees.

With the end of the Sopranos season, my Sundays have been devoid of mob mentality, so I signed up to join the festivities. Unable to resist the masochistic temptation, I registered for a screening at an indigenous cooperative proclaiming itself the "Peace House."...