The AfPak Non-Pentagon Papers

As I reported earlier, the WikiLeaks document dump hasn't generated spectacular revelations. Certainly, from an intelligence and government secrecy standpoint, it's a really big deal. By now, though, most analysts have actually kinda yawned at the whole thing. But for leftists, WikiLeaks is pure gold. Recall that Julian Assange denied that his goal was to bring an end to the war. That's pure bull. I've paid too much attention to this creep since the bogus Apache Reuters video ploy a few months back. These people are out to damage the U.S. big time, and all the hardline leftist organizations go into overdrive when a new doc-dump/video exposé goes live. Case in point is the hyperventilating coverage at Democracy Now!, "The New Pentagon Papers: WikiLeaks Releases 90,000+ Secret Military Documents Painting Devastating Picture of Afghanistan War." Amy Goodman's a commie, and communists have two big attacks on the West: "Wars of imperial aggression" and "hegemonic racism" (Israel demonization falls somewhere in between both of those, as the Jewish state is the racist outpost of American-led neo-colonialism in the Middle East). And of course, MSNBC's more of a "commie" network than CNN, and these folks are creaming over WikiLeaks, for example, Cenk Uygur at this clip featuring Matt Lewis of Politics Daily:

On an interesting related note, the Wall Street Journal sees a silver lining in the release of the documents, and the editors debunk the "Pentagon Papers" analogy at the same time. See, "The AfPak Papers":

We've long believed the U.S. government classifies too many documents as secret, and now we know for sure. How else to explain why Sunday's release of some 92,000 previously confidential documents reveals so little that we didn't already know about the war in Afghanistan? This document dump will only matter if it becomes an excuse for more of America's political class to turn against a war they once supported ....

Far from being the Pentagon Papers redux, the larger truth is how closely the ground-eye view in these documents reinforces what U.S. officials were long saying: that the war wasn't going well, the Taliban were making gains, and a new and invigorated strategy was needed to combat them. Both the Bush and Obama Administrations made the same diagnosis in recent years, neither one kept it secret, and this year Mr. Obama followed through with an increase in troops levels and a renewed counterinsurgency.

The most politically explosive documents concern the conflicting loyalties of Pakistan's Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI. Nearly 200 reports allege that the Pakistani military intelligence arm is in cahoots with the Taliban, despite claiming to side with America. This is undoubtedly true but also no surprise.

The ISI helped the U.S. arm and organize the mujahideen against the Soviets, and it kept doing so to fill the Afghan power vacuum after America abandoned the region in the early 1990s. The reports released this week allege—often citing a single source or uncertain information—that the ISI helped train Afghan suicide bombers, plotted to poison beer slated for GIs, and schemed to assassinate President Hamid Karzai. It isn't clear how many of these plots were ever attempted, but there's no doubt that many Pakistanis doubt U.S. staying power, fear Indian influence in Afghanistan, and want to use the Taliban to shape events on their Western border.

Then again, we also know that Pakistan has shifted its behavior in a more pro-American direction in the last 14 months as the Taliban began to threaten Pakistan's own stability. Responding to a surge of terrorism against Pakistani targets, the Pakistani army has pushed Islamist insurgents from the Swat Valley and even South Waziristan. It has taken heavy casualties in the process. Islamabad now actively aids U.S. drone strikes against Taliban and al Qaeda leaders in the mountains along its Afghan border.

Pakistan can and should do more to pursue the terrorist enclaves along the border, as well as in Quetta and Karachi. The question is what's the best way to persuade their leaders to act. U.S.-Pakistan cooperation has been one of the Obama Administration's foreign policy successes, and it would be a tragedy if the leak of selective documents, often out of context, would now poison that cooperation.

That's the most sober thing I've read on foreign policy in weeks (be sure to RTWT). WSJ points out that the documents indicate that Iran is cooperating with al Qaeda and related Sunni extremist groups, another fact that puts the lie to the promise of diplomatic engagement with Tehran.

RELATED: "Why WikiLeaks' ‘War Logs’ Are No Pentagon Papers." (At Memeorandum.)

HBO's 'Homeless: The Motel Kids of Orange County'

Getting ready to watch this documentary with my family, at 9:00pm PST, Homeless: The Motel Kids of Orange County:

The director/producer is Alexandra Pelosi, who is the daughter of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Light My Fire

At Saberpoint, from last week, featuring this clip of The Doors: "Jim Morrison: Dionysian Shaman or Acid-Addled Freak?" Stogie watched the Oliver Stone flick and did a write-up.

Newlyweds Orlando Bloom and Miranda Kerr

Some news-related midweek Rule 5.

At People Magazine, "Newlyweds Orlando Bloom and Miranda Kerr Show Off Wedding Bling."

And ‎"PIRATE BOOTY: Orlando with Miranda (VIDEO: Miranda Kerr's new Victoria's Secret ad)":

Sexual Interactions of the Orgasmic Kind

At Feministe, "My Sluthood, Myself":

Last summer, I suffered the breakup of a relationship that I had thought would be permanent. Now, I’ve been through my share of break-ups, even of quite serious relationships, but nothing ever broke me like this one.

Since then, I’ve had sexual interactions of the orgasmic kind with 9 different people, none of which I was at any time in a committed relationship with.

I’m not telling you this to shock (though I am specifying the number because we all need to get over the whole “OMG! Be ashamed of your NUMBER! It’s either too big or too small!” thing). I’m telling you this because of something else that’s also true about me: I’d really like to be in a long-term, probably monogamous relationship. That’s right, folks, I’m a slut who craves a stable, loving, committed relationship. File me under “Lookin’ fer luv: ur doin it wrong.”

That’s the story we get sold, right? That women who sleep around are destroying their chances at True Love. Something to do with bonding hormones getting all used up? Or is it that we have so little self-esteem that no one could love us? Or maybe it’s that we’re all used candy wrappers or dirty masking tape. I can never remember.

Thing is: I’ve done it the other way. Until my mid-30s, I was largely a serial monogamist. Not for any grand ethical or philosophical reasons – it was just what felt comfortable to me. That’s not to say that I didn’t have some wild adventures in college, or never went to bed with someone on a first date – I did on occasion. It’s just that when I did, I’d often wake up the next day in a relationship. Let me tell you: not the best recipe for partnership bliss.

I’m thinking of one particular instance in which I had what was for me a very painful dry spell: a year and a half in which I barely got to kiss anyone, and didn’t get to do anything other than that at all, sexually speaking, with anyone. It… yeah. Didn’t feel too good. Made me feel like I would never be touched or loved again. Made me feel, in a word, desperate. You know what’s not a great emotional state for making important life decisions? Desperation.

To wit: after this year and a half of nothing, I went to bed with a woman I barely knew on our first date. Nothing wrong with that, we had a great time, and seriously, did I mention a year and a half? The problem came the next morning, when it became obvious that she was much more into me emotionally than I was at that point. Did I tell her that? And potentially get exiled back to my affectionless desert? I bet you know the answer. What followed was a two-year relationship in which we were unhappy for about the last year and a half ...

Lots, lots more at the link (amazingly).

I guess this is why feminists decry "slut shaming." They wanna be out and proud about their slutishness (and their sexual orientation?) and don't think they should hafta catch any flak for it.

And on a related note, I've never even heard of "Craigslist Casual Encounters" (the miracle that saved our orgasmic friend here, but RTWT).

No shame there, I guess.

Lindsay Beyerstein on JournoList

The Daily Caller's trickle of JournoList e-mails is providing a treasure-trove of insight into the twisted minds of radical leftists.

See, "Raw Journolist emails on ‘Palin’s Downs child’." (Via Memeorandum.)

Breathtaking is Lindsay Beyerstein's comments, for example:

"In the post-Rathergate era, journalists should be on their guard for Republican dirty tricks."

Dana Loesch picked up on this in a one-word titled post, "Irony."

But Ms. Beyerstein's extended discussion of Sarah Palin is almost unreal:

The story is far-fetched and as yet unsupported by evidence. Kathy’s right: So far, there’s not enough evidence for any responsible commentator to discuss this. Public speculation without proof is cruel and counterproductive.

However, if some reporter thinks this rumor is worth investigating further, and he or she absolutely nails this story, that would be great.

If I had the smoking gun, I’d proudly publish the evidence. (I don’t think the story is plausible enough to bother looking, but that’s a separate question.)

Anyone who decided to raise her granddaughter as her daughter is a liar and a hypocrite, not to mention an abuser of two generations of children. What kind of parent would force her family to live that kind of lie?

What warped values would give rise to such a decision? Lots of grandparents raise their grandkids. That’s admirable and commonplace. Barack Obama spoke movingly before a crowd of 84,000 about how his own grandmother helped raise him.

Why lie about the baby’s origins, except to spare Palin political embarrassment? She’s a self-professed Bible believing Christian whose mommy cred might be diminished by the revelation that she raised an unwed teen mom. That said, I imagine that she would have scored a lot of points for openly raising her daughter’s disabled child–and rightly so. A hoax would suggest extreme selfishness and blind ambition, not to mention vanity and a distinctly irrational preoccupation with keeping up appearances.

The fact that baby Trig has Down Syndrome isn’t the weakest link in the story. Yes, older mothers are at increased risk of bearing children with Down Syndrome. The majority of children with DS are born to younger mothers–because most babies are born to younger women, period.

My cousin, a pediatric nurse, mentioned a couple months ago that moms in their early teens are also at increased risk of bearing children with DS compared to women in their late teens and twenties. Does anyone know of a study to support that? The papers I’ve seen tend to put everyone under 25 in one category, instead of breaking the data down further.

Cheers,

Lindsay

Warped values?

Right.

The left is warped. Lindsay Beyerstein is the personification.

**********

Wait!

There's more! Turns out Andrew Sullivan, M.D., specialist in forensic gynecology, sees the JournoList as vindication!

Plus, William Jacobson's got a post up as well, "Journolist Trig Emails - All About The Story Line."

Crazy On You

I little music to brighten the afternoon?

Recall that Heart played Harrah's Rincon in May, which must have been awesome. This clip's from the 1970s. Enjoy "Crazy on You":

With Governor Jan Brewer...

...is my good friend Chris at Panhandle's Perspective, "Texas Business and Arizona Politics":

Haiti: Living in Limbo

An exremely moving photo-essay on Haiti earthquake survivor Alescandra Simin, from Carolyn Cole at the Los Angeles Times:

"Simin bathes Midjalannda in a large metal bowl, the same one the family uses as a latrine at night. She worries about her daughter's weight loss."

See the whole thing, at the link.

Arthur C. Brooks on Reason.TV

Via Theo Spark:

Julian Assange Alleges U.S. War Crimes in Afghanistan

At WSJ, "WikiLeaks Founder: Documents Suggest Evidence of War Crimes":

The Afghan war documents published by WikiLeaks appear to contain evidence of war crimes, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told a news conference in London Monday.

"There does appear to be evidence of war crimes in this material," he said, adding that it would be "up to a court" to make judgements on any crimes.

He cited in particular Task Force 373, which he described as a U.S. military "assassination unit" that he said killed seven children in a "botched raid."

He strongly suggested a coverup of civilian deaths during the war, pointing to U.S. military reports on the number of people wounded or killed during specific incidents. In some of these, a high number of those killed or wounded are classified as "enemy" while very few are classified as "civilians," which Mr. Assange called "suspicious."

Asked how many incidents could potentially be investigated for possible war crimes or other reasons, he said "thousands," adding that the U.S. military would probably be forced to investigate some. "You need enough investigated to create deterrents" against similar behaviour in the future, he said.

Mr. Assange added that the information in the documents "really doesn't paint a flattering picture of the Taliban, either," noting that there are many reports of Taliban-planted explosive devices resulting in "significant loss of human life."

He said the documents don't just "reveal abuses" but paint a detailed picture of "the last six years of war," including the kinds of weapons used and the progress or setbacks experienced.

There's more at the link.

Noteworthy is Assange's claim that "he doesn't 'really have an opinion about whether the war should stop'."

Actually, he does care if the war stops, because his whole agenda is to stop the United States, and he's backed by the global transnational network of neo-communist activists who're gunning for America.

That said, lots of folks are unimpressed (and hence it's a media hayride mostly).

See Jawa Report, "Noted Liar and Conspiracy Theorist Leaks Documents Which Shock and Awe No One." And at Abu Muqawama, "Scoop!":

Here are the things I have learned thus far from the documents released via Wikileaks:

1. Elements within Pakistan's Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) support the Taliban.
2. The United States integrates direct action special operations into its counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan, targeting insurgent leaders through capture/kill missions.
3. Civilians have died in Afghanistan, often as the result of coalition combat operations.

I'm going to bed, but if I were to stay up late reading more, here is what I suspect I would discover:

1. "Afghanistan" has four syllables.
2. LeBron is going to the Heat.
3. D'Angelo Barksdale didn't actually commit suicide in prison. Stringer Bell had him killed.
4. Although a document dated 17 October 2004 claims the Red Sox were down 3-0 in a seven-game series with the Yankees, they actually went on to win 4-3.
5. Liberace was gay.
6. The Pathan remains wily.
7. Julian Assange is a clown.

But more seriously, see this piece at Mother Jones (of all places):

The other interesting data are notes from what the military calls KLEs—key leader engagements. Military officers, as well as officials from State, USAID, and other agencies regularly meet with important players in a war zone to get their take on the situation. Often they're dull and tell the interviewers little they didn't already know; sometimes, though, they give insight to "atmospherics"—how Afghan locals feel about US forces or the Taliban. Many of these key leaders take their lives into their hands; from my experience in Iraq, I know that numerous Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds with high standing among their tribes—and among our enemies—took time to brief US officials, often to dish dirt on crooked or violent elements in their vicinity. If they were ever outed as collaborators with American forces, they'd be as good as dead. And Wikileaks has 16 pages of secret military KLEs with individuals and groups in Afghanistan, spanning six years. No names are redacted. In this case, what retired general James Jones, the White House national security adviser, said yesterday is correct: WL is putting some lives at serious risk with that particular data dump.

Wikileaks Defends Release of Afghanistan War Logs Documents

Julian Assange defends the release of secret military files on the war in Afghanistan. Plus, an update from the Russian news channel:

I'm still working through the information, but see my earlier entry, "WikiLeaks and the Afghanistan War Logs." Also, at Politico, "W.H. condemns 'irresponsible' leaks, dismisses stories." And especially, Blake Hounshell, "The logs of war: Do the Wikileaks documents really tell us anything new?":

Three news organizations -- the New York Times, the Guardian, and Der Spiegel -- today published explosive reports on a treasure trove of more than 91,000 documents that were obtained by Wikileaks, the self-proclaimed whistleblower site.

I've now gone through the reporting and most of the selected documents (though not the larger data dump), and I think there's less here than meets the eye. The story that seems to be getting the most attention, repeating the longstanding allegation that Pakistani intelligence might be aiding the Afghan insurgents, offers a few new details but not much greater clarity. Both the Times and the Guardian are careful to point out that the raw reports in the Wikileaks archive often seem poorly sourced and present implausible information.

"[F]or all their eye-popping details," writes the Guardian's Declan Walsh, "the intelligence files, which are mostly collated by junior officers relying on informants and Afghan officials, fail to provide a convincing smoking gun for ISI complicity."

The Times' reporters seem somewhat more persuaded, noting that "many of the reports rely on sources that the military rated as reliable" and that their sources told them that "the portrait of the spy agency’s collaboration with the Afghan insurgency was broadly consistent with other classified intelligence."

Der Spiegel's reporting adds little, though the magazine's stories will probably have great political impact in Germany, as the Wikileaks folks no doubt intended. One story hones in on how an elite U.S. task force charged with hunting down Taliban and Al Qaeda targets operates from within a German base; another alleges that "The German army was clueless and naïve when it stumbled into the conflict," and that northern Afghanistan, where the bulk of German troops are based, is more violent than has been previously portrayed.

Otherwise, I'd say that so far the documents confirm what we already know about the war: It's going badly; Pakistan is not the world's greatest ally and is probably playing a double game; coalition forces have been responsible for far too many civilian casualties; and the United States doesn't have very reliable intelligence in Afghanistan.

'We Were Soldiers'

Watched it yesterday. Interesting to see a film with Mel Gibson amid his personal meltdown. I always admired Gibson in this one. I think it's when he tried to become American. Wikipedia's got a good page on the history, "Battle of la Drang." I also love Madeleine Stowe in this film, and I miss her in more recent movies. A truly classy woman:

The Left’s Default Response is Fascism

From John Nolte:

As a former Leftist I do, however, understand the knee-jerk leap to fascism. Being a Leftist sucks when it comes to political debate. You really only have two choices to try and convince others that your progressive ideas and values aren’t toxic, and that’s emotionalism, lies, or both. I remember how frustrating that was and so it only makes sense that Leftists would find appealing everything from a literal “shut up” straight through to wishing that America wasn’t a democracy but instead the kind of country with a government willing and able to permanently silence those opinion and broadcast outlets a chosen few don’t agree with or don’t think “advances us in this country.”

WikiLeaks and the Afghanistan War Logs

It's strange, since I was just listening to a 20 minute interview with Julian Assange yesterday at TED. I had planned to write about that as soon as this latest breaking news cycle winds down (JournoList, Shirley Sherrod, etc.), and now we've got the release of the Afghanistan war logs, which had been expected. Yeah, since the Iraq Apache video smear (and the detailed coverage at Jawa Report, et al., and my own), I've been gaining a sharper understanding of Assange and his hard-left enablers worldwide. It's simply more clear by the day that America's enemies are not just on the battlefield, but also among the global transnational issue networks working to bring down the United States and its Western allies.

I need to research the war logs and find out more on this, so expect updates. Below is a clip featuring Julian Assange for The Guardian. There's also a big exposé at The Guardian as well, so it's clear that the newspaper's coordinating its coverage with WikiLeaks. See, "Afghanistan war logs: Massive leak of secret files exposes truth of occupation." And of course, the New York Times is on the case, seemingly as deeply involved as is The Guardian. See, "Inside the Fog of War: Reports From the Ground in Afghanistan."Also at NYT (FWIW), "Piecing Together the Reports, and Deciding What to Publish":

The articles published today are based on thousands of United States military incident and intelligence reports — records of engagements, mishaps, intelligence on enemy activity and other events from the war in Afghanistan — that were made public on Sunday on the Internet. The New York Times, The Guardian newspaper in London, and the German magazine Der Spiegel were given access to the material several weeks ago. These reports are used by desk officers in the Pentagon and troops in the field when they make operational plans and prepare briefings on the situation in the war zone. Most of the reports are routine, even mundane, but many add insights, texture and context to a war that has been waged for nearly nine years.

Over all these documents amount to a real-time history of the war reported from one important vantage point — that of the soldiers and officers actually doing the fighting and reconstruction.

The Source of the Material

The documents — some 92,000 individual reports in all — were made available to The Times and the European news organizations by WikiLeaks, an organization devoted to exposing secrets of all kinds, on the condition that the papers not report on the data until July 25, when WikiLeaks said it intended to post the material on the Internet. WikiLeaks did not reveal where it obtained the material. WikiLeaks was not involved in the news organizations’ research, reporting, analysis and writing. The Times spent about a month mining the data for disclosures and patterns, verifying and cross-checking with other information sources, and preparing the articles that are published today. The three news organizations agreed to publish their articles simultaneously, but each prepared its own articles.

Classified Information

Deciding whether to publish secret information is always difficult, and after weighing the risks and public interest, we sometimes chose not to publish. But there are times when the information is of significant public interest, and this is one of those times. The documents illuminate the extraordinary difficulty of what the United States and its allies have undertaken in a way that other accounts have not.

Most of the incident reports are marked “secret,” a relatively low level of classification. The Times has taken care not to publish information that would harm national security interests ...

There's more at the link, but I stopped at this line. "The Times has taken care not to publish information that would harm national security interests"?

Don't believe it for a second. The New York Times has been the radical left's institutional organ working to bring about an American defeat in Iraq and the War on Terror, and now in Afghanistan.

Recall Heather MacDonald's piece from 2006, on the Times' reporting that helped killed the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program. See, "National Security Be Damned":

BY NOW IT'S UNDENIABLE: The New York Times is a national security threat. So drunk is it on its own power and so antagonistic to the Bush administration that it will expose every classified antiterror program it finds out about, no matter how legal the program, how carefully crafted to safeguard civil liberties, or how vital to protecting American lives.

The Times's latest revelation of a national security secret appeared on last Friday's front page--where no al Qaeda operative could possibly miss it. Under the deliberately sensational headline, "Bank Data Sifted in Secret by U.S. to Block Terror," the Times blows the cover on a highly targeted program to locate terrorist financing networks. According to the report, since 9/11, the Bush administration has obtained information about terror suspects' international financial transactions from a Belgian clearinghouse of international money transfers.

RTWT.

See also, Michelle Malkin, "NY Times Blabbermouths Strike Again."

I'll have more later after I read and research a bit. Meanwhile, readers can check WikiLeaks directly: "Afghan War Diary, 2004-2010." And the Der Spiegel piece is here: "Explosive Leaks Provide Image of War from Those Fighting It" (via Memeorandum).

Correcting the New York Times

This post is a revised and update version of an entry that was scheduled to go live early Monday morning (see the original post below). Some readers might recall that last weekend I caught New York Times' political reporter Matt Bai publishing a 100 percent falsehood that claimed a "shower of hateful epithets" had allegedly met Rep. John Lewis outside Capitol Hill last March. Full details below, but it's a pleasure to revise and update with a correction from the editors published in today's newspaper:

Corrections

Published: July 25, 2010

NATIONAL

The Political Times column last Sunday, about a generational divide over racial attitudes, erroneously linked one example of a racially charged statement to the Tea Party movement. While Tea Party supporters have been connected to a number of such statements, there is no evidence that epithets reportedly directed in March at Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia, outside the Capitol, came from Tea Party members. (Go to Article)

There's no perma-permalink, so here's the screencap for posterity. (The orginal article has been revised, however, and the correction is appended at bottom: "Beneath Divides Seemingly About Race Are Generational Fault Lines.")

And this correction is an extremely limited one at that. John at Power Line picked it up, and he notes:

Someday the Times may go all the way and admit that the epithets "reportedly" directed at Lewis (reported by Lewis himself, that is) never occurred. In the meantime, the paper is careful to assure its readers that Tea Party members have made "a number of" racially charged statements, all of which are unspecified.

Hat tip to Pirate's Cove, who links to Linkmaster Smith at The Other McCain. And thanks to Glenn Reynolds for originally linking and spreading the word. My original post is below:

**********

Interesting piece at NYT (FWIW), "In a World of Online News, Burnout Starts Younger":

Such is the state of the media business these days: frantic and fatigued. Young journalists who once dreamed of trotting the globe in pursuit of a story are instead shackled to their computers, where they try to eke out a fresh thought or be first to report even the smallest nugget of news — anything that will impress Google algorithms and draw readers their way.

Tracking how many people view articles, and then rewarding — or shaming — writers based on those results has become increasingly common in old and new media newsrooms. The Christian Science Monitor now sends a daily e-mail message to its staff that lists the number of page views for each article on the paper’s Web site that day.

The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times all display a “most viewed” list on their home pages. Some media outlets, including Bloomberg News and Gawker Media, now pay writers based in part on how many readers click on their articles.

Once only wire-service journalists had their output measured this way. And in a media environment crowded with virtual content farms where no detail is too small to report as long as it was reported there first, Politico stands out for its frenetic pace or, in the euphemism preferred by its editors, “high metabolism.”

The top editors, who rise as early as 4:30 a.m., expect such volume and speed from their reporters because they believe Politico’s very existence depends, in large part, on how quickly it can tell readers something, anything they did not know.

RTWT.

The golden nugget of today's high-octane online journalism is the breaking news report. And what's not mentioned so much at the piece is how newspapers are in fact threatened by all the alternative media. Notice how at the piece reporters aren't working a beat so much nowadays as trawling the web for interesting and exclusive tidbits of information. Also important is the premium of fresh content so as not to lose readers.

Sounds a lot like blogging, actually.

Speaking of which, I had a great time of it last week. I broke a story.

On Sunday night I published "Calling New York Times: Congressman John Lewis was NOT 'Showered With Hateful Epithets Outside the Capitol' Last March." I e-mailed it out to some on my bloggers' distribution list, and Glenn Reynolds picked it up (and I had an Instalanche rockin' the blog when I got back online at 3:00am Monday morning.) That was followed up by Andrew Bolt at Australia's Herald Sun, and then a little later by Power Line and NewsBusters. (I'm especially proud of the Power Line link --- that's a first for me, and Power Line was one of the very first blogs I discovered years ago before I picked up blogging for myself.) And it turns out a Power Line reader has written "An open letter to Matt Bai." (Via Glenn.)

So, head on over there and check it out. That's cool!

BONUS: It turns out Mark Levin linked to my post as part of his 7-19 program on "race based politics."

That's too cool!

Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea

I'm about half way through C. Bradley Thompson's new book, Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea. Yeah, it's an attack on neoconservatism, by one who was sympathetic to the ideology at one time. It's an excellent read, although I disagree with its conclusions, and it'll take me some thinking to put those disagreements in more detailed writing here. I can say that Thompson's focus so far is primarily on Irving Kristol and how he was informed by Straussian political philosophy. Hence, Thomspon reads an allegedly extreme authoritarianism into the movement that --- it is argued --- is at odds with the vision of the American founders. I'd simply note that neocons are way more eclectic than is postulated at the book, and again, I'm not done yet. I have peeked ahead to the conclusion, and Thompson takes his thesis to its logical conclusion to find neoconservatism anti-democratic. More on this later. Meanwhile, this is the kind of response I'd offer outside of the Irving Kristol exegesis, from Max Boot:

"Neocons Are Liberals Who Have Been Mugged by Reality"

No longer true. Original neoconservatives such as Irving Kristol, who memorably defined neocons as liberals who'd been "mugged by reality," were (and still are) in favor of welfare benefits, racial equality, and many other liberal tenets. But they were driven rightward by the excesses of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when crime was increasing in the United States, the Soviet Union was gaining ground in the Cold War, and the dominant wing of the Democratic Party was unwilling to get tough on either problem.

A few neocons, like philosopher Sidney Hook or Kristol himself, had once been Marxists or Trotskyites. Most, like former U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, simply had been hawkish Democrats who became disenchanted with their party as it drifted further left in the 1970s. Many neocons, such as Richard Perle, originally rallied around Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a Democratic senator who led the opposition to the Nixon-Ford policy of détente with the Soviet Union. Following the 1980 election, U.S. President Ronald Reagan became the new standard bearer of the neoconservative cause.

A few neocons, like Perle, still identify themselves as Democrats, and a number of "neoliberals" in the Democratic Party (such as Sen. Joseph Lieberman and former U.N. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke) hold fairly neoconservative views on foreign policy. But most neocons have switched to the Republican Party. On many issues, they are virtually indistinguishable from other conservatives; their main differences are with libertarians, who demonize "big government" and preach an anything-goes morality.

Most younger members of the neoconservative movement, including some descendants of the first generation, such as William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, and Robert Kagan, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, have never gone through a leftist phase, which makes the "neo" prefix no longer technically accurate. Like "liberal," "conservative," and other ideological labels, "neocon" has morphed away from its original definition. It has now become an all-purpose term of abuse for anyone deemed to be hawkish, which is why many of those so described shun the label. Wolfowitz prefers to call himself a "Scoop Jackson Republican."

BONUS: At Dr. Sanity, "WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW...":

...is not love or global orgasms, but more neoconservatism.

'Mama Grizzlies'

I love this clip. All three of these women, wives and mothers with busy lives at home and in the workplace, are running for elective office. It takes a lot, especially fundraising. Some day I may throw my hat in the ring, although this blog probably wouldn't help my campaign, LOL!

RELATED SCORCHER: At Fox News, "100 Days to Decide: Republicans Bank on Anti-Dem Strategy, Platform Unclear."

PLUS: At The Hill, "Franken warns that GOP Congress would bring ‘truly dangerous agenda’" (via Memeorandum). And at Sweetness & Light, "Franken: GOP Brings ‘Dangerous Agenda’."

Sunday Cartoon Roundup

More at Flopping Aces and Theo Spark.

The Secular Inquisition

From Chapter 4 in Melanie Phillips, The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth, and Power:

What have the issues of anthropogenic global warming, the war in Iraq, Israel and scientism got in common? Not a lot, you might think. But in fact a number of threads link them all. Most fundamentally, they involve the promotion of beliefs that purport to be unchallengeable truths but are in fact ideologies in which evidence is manipulated, twisted and distorted to support or "prove" their governing idea. All are therefore based on false or unsupported beliefs that are presented as axiomatically true. Moreover, because each assumes itself to be proclaiming the sole and exclusive truth, it cannot permit any challenge to itself. It has to maintain at all costs the integrity of the falsehood. So all challenges have to be resisted through coercive means. Knowledge is thus forced to give way to power. Reason is replaced by bullying, intimidation and the suppression of debate.

This makes them all deeply regressive movements of thought, which corrode the most fundamental concept of the Western world. The principle characteristic of Western modernity is freedom of thought and expression and the ability to express dissent. The eighteenth-century Enlightenment ushered in the modern age by breaking the power of the church to control the terms of debate and punish heresy. Church and state were separated, and a space was created for individual freedom and the toleration of differences --- the essence of liberal society.