The Iraq War

About a year and a half ago, we were losing the war in Iraq. Violence was skyrocketing to genocide-like proportions, our enemies were united against us, and Democrats were calling for a withdrawal. Eventually, Bush got the point and implemented the surge strategy some 1 year ago. The surge, of course, was designed to drastically up the number of American combat troops in the country, along with a new counter-insurgency strategy led by a new face: General David Petraeus. Petraeus had a plan that was pretty simple on the face of it: relentlessly pursue any and all tribal leaders and lobby them for assistance, and attack Al Qaeda relentlessly as well. Isn’t that what we had been doing, though?

Kind of, but with one big difference: Petraeus planned to back up his lobbying of Sunni tribal leaders (Iraq, like many countries in the world, still holds its tribes dear in sociological organization) with some 10,000 new U.S. combat troops. In other words, it sent a message that we were going to crush Al Qaeda whether the Sunni tribal leaders liked it or not, and Al Qaeda was no longer the winning side they had thought it was. Al Qaeda itself helped greatly in our efforts: Al Qaeda warlords were known to march into Sunni tribal leaders’ houses and demand to marry their daughters. This was greatly offensive to the tribes, who strongly prefer their women to not marry outside the tribe; much less brutally oppressive terrorists who will no doubt put the tribal leaders’ daughters in great danger. Al Qaeda also heavily regulated the economy (in their own strange way) of the areas it dominated, closing down businesses (and therefore people’s means to feed their families) at will. Every kind of “moral hazard” was snuffed out: smoking, drinking, or not dealing appropriately with women; which to Al Qaeda means talking to them.

Sunni tribal leaders who submitted to Al Qaeda put their people in more harm than they would have by helping the Americans. They eventually began to realize this and switched sides, knowing that the surge of American forces on the ground would greatly help them in protection.

Long story short? The surge worked, and it worked devastatingly well. Those 10,000 new combat troops quickly set to work routing Al Qaeda from anywhere it might hide, and the areas it cleared could now be held by other American forces, who didn’t have to worry about chasing Al Qaeda and could stay put helping the locals in all kinds of matters.

Iraq still has numerous, numerous problems. Despite what the leftists would really want you to think, though, they’re fixable problems. The greatest myth of this war is that America can’t win it. Let me make this clear: if there is any kind of war that is fought militarily, the American military can win it, when given the chance. Period. That the left would deny this isn’t insulting to anyone but our soldiers. The American military has no shortage of money, it has no shortage of technology, it has no shortage of courage, and it has no shortage of heart. The only thing it’s got a shortage of is real support.

See, you can support the troops and hate/not support their mission, in theory. A lot of folks do take that path. But are you really supporting them? My analogy is that doing that is like supporting the Dallas Cowboys as individuals, but not supporting their objective: to win the Superbowl. If all you want is for none of them to get injured and to play their games decently (as long as they’re not hurt), you’re not really supporting the team or its objective. You’re just supporting individuals.

Supporting individuals, while better than not supporting anything, really isn’t supporting the military. That’s because the troops, when they join the U.S. military, cease to become simply individuals. They join a greater cause, where the mission supercedes the individual’s safety or anything else. The cause, currently, is victory in Iraq and the defeat of Islamic terrorism. The military is, as the old Army commercials used to say, “an army of one.” While it’s made up of troops, those troops are a team united by the objective.

So, in conclusion, supporting the troops is good and necessary, but supporting the military is much more meaningful.

The Ron Paul Show Part 2

So, after hearing Ron Paul attack Rudy Giuliani for, essentially, “stereotyping terrorists,” I felt compelled to make another comment on Dr. Paul. The attack on Giuliani during a debate was very interesting, to say the least. Giuliani had just finished refuting Paul’s point that we’re the ones that started the War on Terror, citing evidence of terrorist attacks on German, British, French and Middle Eastern targets before 9/11 or the Iraq invasion. (Romney, too, intelligently pointed out the assassination of Benazir Bhutto as an attack unrelated to American activity) Paul lashed out at Giuliani’s “not being able to tell the difference” between the terrorist groups.

This attack showed just how strongly Paul believes that Al Qaeda is right and America is wrong. Giuliani was not claiming that all terrorists are the same, he was citing a clear and present pattern of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism against democracy; as was Mitt Romney. The difference between Paul’s and the other Republican candidates’ views couldn’t be clearer: to Paul, if we would simply leave the world alone we would be alright; and to the other Republicans, jumping ship from the world won’t solve anything.

Paul’s rigid isolationism sounds better now than it has at other times. What would his response to the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor in 1941 have been? He might tell you now that we did the right thing in declaring war and proceeding to win against Japan, or he might not. Destroying half the U.S. Pacific fleet and killing 3,000 Americans is a grave offense, is it not? So how on earth could he say no to fighting Japan?

The same way he says no to fighting Al Qaeda after they killed 3,000 American civilians and knocked down the World Trade Centers. Paul never outright says it, but it’s continually and strongly implied that going into Afghanistan and breaking up Al Qaeda’s stronghold there was a mistake. In other words, Al Qaeda didn’t need to be brought to justice, they needed to be appeased.

Furthermore, what would he have said about responding to Germany’s declaration of war against the United States two days after Pearl Harbor? Germany had not attacked us. They weren’t messing with us. What business of it is ours if they want to have their little Holocaust and crush freedom in Europe?

By Ron Paul’s logic, we would not have responded to Germany. Furthermore, I doubt Paul would’ve chosen to fight back against Japan: after all Hawaii, where Pearl Harbor was, was annexed by the United States. Ah, the wicked non-isolationism! Don’t you see? If we had not taken Hawaii, had naval presence in East Asia, and there were no Americans on Guam or Wake island (or the Aleutian islands off the coast of Alaska, where Japan attacked later in the war), the Japanese would have left us entirely alone. They would’ve been perfectly happy to take the entire Far East and kill the some 12 million Chinese, many of them civilians, that they did.

And why did we fight the Communists in the Cold War? If Ron Paul had been president, it’s chilling to think of the consequences. For instance, Paul continually advocates spending “less money overseas”. I like the idea. But what he means is bringing all the troops home. It doesn’t cost that much money (definitely not enough to pay off the national debt, like he seems to think) to keep them out there, so where would he save the money? The dirty little secret of his ideas is that he would cut defense spending. And probably not just by a little bit, but by a lot.

What if Paul had cut defense spending in World War 2 and kept our troops from being overseas to hold Russia at bay? I wonder if those farfetched ideas like the little Manhattan Project (the scientific, government funded project to develop atomic weapons) would get cut. I also foresee a unified Korea under the Communist rule of the North, and very possibly Japan as a satellite state to China. Western Europe would not have stood a chance against the Soviet war machine, and the Middle East wouldn’t, either.

The point is this: the world isn’t in 1780 anymore. In the Revolutionary War era, our worst enemies were a bunch of fellows who marched slowly across fields in bright red coats with weapons that took a full minute to reload.

In 1980, two-hundred years later, the Soviet Union possessed the capability to destroy around 90% of the United States’ population between sunrise and sunset. To give you an idea of just how much that is, make the Holocaust 50 times bloodier, and achieve it in less than one five-thousandth of the time. I’ve never heard more chilling numbers than that.

And I’d suggest Dr. Paul chew long and hard on them.

Energy Dependence and the American Economy

People are out saying that energy independence is an absolute necessity. They say we’re funding the terrorists indirectly by buying oil from Saudi Arabia. They say we’re stirring up Venezuela somehow by buying oil from them. They say we’re putting ourselves in grave danger by buying oil from other countries and not having enough of our own here.

They’re partially right. There are a few things they’re missing, though: first of all, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela provide some 35% of all American oil together. What they don’t like to talk to you about is the fact the other 65% or so comes from the combined oil reserves of Canada, Britain, Mexico, and the U.S. itself. Most of our oil is in secure locations pretty near us. That’s why, say, if we happen to get into a war with Saudi Arabia and Venezuela at the same time, our military could function fine, though we would have to have civilian gasoline rationed. (This scenario, though, is as far-fetched as they come: if a war occurred between any primary-American oil supplier and America occurred, chances are that all of the others would immediately fall in line with the U.S. in hopes of maximizing their oil profits.)

No country in this world is truly energy-independent. Even those that are closest, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, rely on other countries overwhelmingly for vehicles and movers. Go to any one of those countries and you’re not going to see many native cars: the cars will be European, American and Japanese. This doesn’t change the fact that it would be preferable for America to become more energy independent.

I’ve got a dang good way to start: drill in the Arctic. There are massive oil reserves up there, even though the natural environment makes them rather difficult to get at. Here’s another good way to start: drill in Colorado. Colorado houses a massive oil reserve deep beneath the Rockies. What stands in the way of both? Environmentalists.

Look, I love nature. I really do. I’m a conservationist as well. I’d be highly hesitant to drill in Yellowstone Park, and I don’t like to drill in the Rockies, either. The Arctic, however, is not Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon. It’s a barren wasteland of ice up there; not exactly a vacation spot. As for the Rockies, I don’t think this is exactly like destroying them. Look at Texas here, today! We’ve drilled this whole state inside-out and it’s not unlivable, nature still thrives in many places here, and it’s a nice state.

Here’s the point: when small sections of nature and national security collide, I think we know the answer. They collide now due to the fact that most terrorist organizations, like Al Qaeda, get their funds from rich Saudi Arabians, who get their funds from oil revenue. They also collide because Venezuela’s only claim to fame is their status as a large supplier of American oil, propping up a potentially-dangerous anti-American dictator.

Finally, the third step is to invest more funds in alternate energy research. I doubt that Ethanol is the final answer, but it’s a nice starting point. I think the answers will become clearer over the next few years as we invest more research to find something, anything, to replace oil.

America will never be energy-independent, in all likelihood. But I think we can and will grow more energy independent over the years, and an excellent starting point is to use the energy that we have here in the States.

Florida ‘08

The Florida elections just happened and McCain has narrowly defeated Romney, making him the frontrunner for the Republican nomination. As Huckabee fades from existence (and Giuliani has dropped out, endorsing McCain), it looks like the race is now between Romney and McCain for the whole Republican race. The “base” (folks who are permanently-raged about the fact that immigration, even legal immigration, exists, think that tax cuts with more spending is a grand idea, etc.)  seems to be uniting behind Romney, while the rest of us are going for McCain.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t hate Mitt Romney or the Republican base. I agree with that base on many, many things (Mitt Romney currently agrees with us, too). I really wouldn’t mind Willard Milton Romney, which is his real name (I’m not kidding), as president all that much (as opposed to Obama or Clinton). Like I said before, I just don’t believe he’s electable at all. He’s going to be seen by independents as just another country club, big business Republican who’s the same old flip-flopping politician. Coming off of the heels of an extremely unpopular president, we’re going to need someone that’s not quite the normal mold to win.

Let me warn all of you Conservative ideologues out there: Mitt Romney’s not your man. Yes, he is perfect on all his positions. But take a moment to think about what that means: here is a man who changed his positions on assortments of issues, not just from campaign to campaign but from campaign to governing. Running as a pro-choicer then turning around in office and voting like a pro-lifer every time is NOT something to be proud of, despite how Romney shamelessly brags about it. Changing from election to election is tolerable (only because all politicians do it a little bit) but distasteful. Changing from campaigner to officeholder is not only inexcusable, but it is unacceptable except under the most extreme of circumstances (Bush changing to a Terror-Hawk after 9/11 would be an acceptable change). It’s fundamentally dishonest to campaign as something and govern as something else when the voters entrusted you to be who you campaigned as.

I end this short rant on Romney with a letter sent into the National Review by Tony Riveria of Newark, Delaware:

“Your endorsement of Governor Romney… has left me a little cold. You disqualify Mayor Giuliani for alienating social conservatives, but Romney is sure to suffer a similar deficit in their ranks. Giuliani, at least, has had the courage to acknowledge this disagreement and has offered to appoint conservative judges. You say Governor Huckabee suffers from a lack of credentials on economic policy and foreign policy, but Romney has no real foreign-policy credentials either At best, you are endorsing Romney for his economic policy, management ability, and electability. More important, however, is the point that Romney is still an unknown entity. Your endorsement implies confidence that he has not changed positions for political expedience-that you believe you know the man and his policies. I suspect you may be seeing only what you want to see. He’ll take you to the dance and end up dancing with someone else.”

Ann Coulter

Ann Coulter, the face of modern idiocy, has recently stated on an episode of Hannity and Colmes that she would “campaign and vote for” Hilary Clinton over John McCain if that is the match up. After being grilled (though not hard enough, her incessant and exceedingly annoying blabbering makes that difficult) by Sean Hannity, Alan Colmes calmly sat back, arms folded, and said his work is finished. He then asked her to sit in for him the next day. (I promise, I’m not joking about any of this, the clip is on Fox’s website).

Don’t you love it? Ultra-conservatism: so far right, it’s left. John McCain holds some liberal positions. How many conservative positions does Hilary Clinton hold? Give me a moment… none.

If that’s not bad enough, Coulter made the statement that she honestly believes that Hilary Clinton would be better fighting the War on Terror than John McCain. She cited that other Republicans supported the surge as well, ignoring that Hilary didn’t and doesn’t and completely ignoring that McCain had been calling for it for a long, long time. She said Hilary is not going to pull out of Iraq completely, despite the fact that Hilary has continually stated that she will pull out of Iraq completely.

I couldn’t make this stuff up.

This leads us to an important point: the ultra-conservative movement has, at this point, completely thrown out character as a qualification for President. The only thing that matters is ideological orientation. With the death of Ronald Reagan, Reagan’s character is dead to them, even though it lives on in John McCain. Reagan’s positions remain, however, and they live on in Mitt Romney (for the moment). Character, being completely null and moot now, is not at all a factor in their equation of McCain. All they can look at is what he voted for and what he didn’t.

McCain tried to get things done. Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter act like we have 70 die-hard Republicans lined up in the Senate and 350 in the House, all ready to vote the party line. That’s nowhere close to true, and it seems like McCain is the only one to realize it. Compromise is a part of legislative action. Rigid ideology rarely is. Coulter will never under facts like this.

Despite the fact that Hilary will go for amnesty more than John McCain, that she will lose the war in Iraq unequivocally and willingly, that she will “resolve” (AKA claim to win then retreat) the war in Afghanistan, that she will bring socialized medicine and massive government growth across the board, she will raise taxes and spending, and she will fight any restrictions on abortion and will support any on guns, Ann Coulter will take her over John McCain.

Coulter represents the ultimate fringe of the Republican party, but Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and others seem to be slowly inching out there. Limbaugh has accused McCain of “second guessing our generals,” and has been railing against him every day for weeks now. Beck has stated that if it’s a light drizzle on election day, “real” conservatives won’t show up to support McCain over the Democratic opposite (likely Clinton).

These statements aren’t quite as ridiculous as Coulter’s, but they’re pretty ridiculous, especially Beck’s. Will these ultra-“conservatives” derail a Republican shot at the White House? If so, I think it’s safe to say that they should be held accountable completely for the loss of the war in Iraq. They will also be held accountable for at least 2 new left-wing Supreme Court justices. They will be held accountable for increased gun control, decreased rights of the unborn, increased taxes, increased spending, a stronger liberal homosexual agenda, and increased internationalism.

The irony is that Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter deride Washington for being disconnected with the people, for being corrupt, and for never getting anything done. There have been only a few people in Washington, I think, that can be called clean of all three counts. One of them is John McCain. So why is that these ultra-conservatives rail so badly against the only man who fits their criteria for what Washington should be?

It’s far, far beyond me.

(For the record, I thank my brother for bringing Coulter’s statements to my attention and helping me condense and clarify my angry thoughts, as well as injecting some of his own, regarding those statements.)

Wrap Up and Look Ahead

It would be a miracle for Romney or Huckabee to win the Republican nomination over McCain at this point, and it would be a sign of the apocalypse if Ron Paul were to. Thought it’s still possible, of course, it probably won’t happen and I, therefore, am going ahead on the assumption that McCain is the nominee.

On the Democratic side, even though Obama has guilty whites, a media lovefest and blacks alike, Clinton is still the favorite for a reason. Obama also has likeability, freshness, and, from all I’ve heard and seen, is the best speaker in the race on either side. Clinton has name recognition and “Democratic Party Core” stamped on her forehead. She also has women and Hispanics, and any lingering racists, all six-dozen of them, in the country (now that John Edwards is out). So it’s the media, blacks, and rich whites vs. Hispanics, racists and women.

What is this world coming to?

I don’t know. But I do think that Hilary still is clearly the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, despite Obama’s wins in Iowa and South Carolina. Obama has less than a week to catch up to Hilary in about 80% of the Super Tuesday (next Tuesday) states. That’s why, until further notice, Clinton is probably going to win the nomination.

Watching her and John McCain go at it is going to be more fun than anything. You can count on Hilary to get repeatedly and mercilessly hammered on the Surge issue. McCain, as he repeatedly has in the course of Republican debates, is going to come across as the most clear-minded, vocal leader in all matters of foreign policy, and the long-rejected architect of the Surge.

McCain is not the smoothest speaker and he sometimes misspeaks. That’s in contrast to the more well-spoken Clinton, which would initially appear to be an advantage for her. It may indeed be. But I think it also highlights all the more the difference between the two individuals: McCain is a real, honest patriot who happens to serve his country now in Washington. Clinton is just a cheap, Clintonian politician who is addicted to Washington.

I think that when McCain and Clinton match up, Clinton will continue to be exposed badly, in the words of Matt Labash, as “[someone whose] icily-fake exterior melts down to reveal her core of molten artificiality.” Clinton will stand up there and claim she will fight for you and be your champion in Washington. McCain will stand up there and tell you he was your champion in Washington. Clinton will tell you she wants to end this war. McCain will tell you he’s going to win it. Clinton won’t mention illegal immigration or Al Qaeda. McCain will tell us he plans to stop both. Clinton will tell us about caring, changing and how she’s a fighter. McCain will tell us about honor, dignity, and how he’s been a fighter.

If an ounce of true heart is left in this country, John McCain will be the next president of the United States.