Having It Both Ways

You’ve got to hand it to veteran Democrats like Washington’s own Rep. Norm Dicks (D-WA). After the vote in the House of Representatives a week ago in which the Democrats decided not to vote for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, he allowed as how the whole war was a mistake.
Quoted in The Seattle Times:

Dicks now says it was all a mistake — his vote, the invasion, and the way the United States is waging the war.

But Dicks isn’t calling for an immediate pullout. Nor is he even calling for a pullout in six-months, which is the modified proposal from John Murtha (D-PA). Oh no.

While he disagrees with Murtha’s conclusion that U.S. troops should be withdrawn within six months, Dicks said, "He may well be right if this insurgency goes much further."

But if Dicks voted against an immediate pullout, and he disagrees with Murtha’s six-month timetable, then he is more or less in agreement with the Bush administration policy that troops will be withdrawn as and when the Iraqi security forces are capable of taking over.

Presumably the Bush plan is that some time in January, after the Iraqi elections and after a new Iraqi prime minister is chosen, the Iraqis will formally request that the US will start withdrawing troops.

Oh good. That means we are all in agreement. Except that Democrats like Norm Dicks maintain that the whole thing was a mistake, and that knowing what he knows now he would never have voted for the war in the first place.

Another way of looking at the Iraq “mess” is from the perspective of the Iranian Amir Taheri. He reckons that the US policy, to hand Iraq back to the Iraqis, is on track. To hand back Iraq to the Iraqis has taken several steps:

The first objective, to bring down Saddam, was achieved in three weeks.

The next objective was to break the apparatus of oppression created by the Ba’ath. Despite some residual problems, this, too, has been achieved.

Another objective: Break Saddam’s war machine, which had been used against Iraq’s neighbors as well as Iraq’s Kurds and Shiites. After just three years, nothing is left of that infernal machine.

The formation of the Governing Council represented the first step toward restoring Iraqi sovereignty. Next came the transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqis, in June 2004.

That was followed by the formation of an interim government, a series of municipal elections, a general election leading to the formation of Iraq’s first pluralist government, the writing of a new constitution and a referendum to get it approved.

The next item on the checklist is the general election set for Dec. 15.

And the first thing that the new Iraqi government will do in February, Taheri writes, will be to negotiate the withdrawal of coalition troops.

Presumably, Congressman Norm Dicks could agree with that. Even though he maintains that the whole Iraq adventure has been a complete mistake.

McCain without a McClue on Economic Policy

Over the years Republicans and conservatives have wondered about Senator John McCain. Who is he and where does he stand on economic policy?

That was what Stephen Moore has been wondering too. “Just who is John McCain, and what is his economic philosophy?” That’s what he wondered as he headed in for an interview with the senator.

I mean, if you are a Republican in the post-Reagan era there is a presumption that you have internalized the lesson of Reaganomics, the idea that you grow the economy by lowering tax rates and encouraging across-the-board business growth. And there is a presumption that you have turned away from the Democratic recipe of targeted privilege and subsidy.

But John McCain has always seemed to act against the Republican grain. First, he was involved in the S&L scandal, the only Republican in the Keating Five that carred water for Charles Keating, the corrupt S&L official. That raised a huge question mark, not just about McCain’s probity but about his common sense. What Republican would want to carry water for an official in a notoriously government-favored (and Democrat sponsored) industry and that was known to be in trouble since the late 1970s?

Then he’s been a thorn in the side of President Bush and was the co-author of the monstrous McCain Feingold bill to limit campaign speech.

So here is what Moore found out about McCain’s economic philosophy. Said McCain:

"I’m going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated."

In case you were wondering, McCain was for years chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce,
Science, and Transportation.

Isn’t it getting a little past time for McCain to complete his economics education?

Rachel's Story

Suppose you had been brutally raped back in 2002. Suppose you had battled back and had confidently faced your attacker in court, had testified and sent him to jail.

Suppose you had written an article about your experience and now, finally, here it was, published in Marie Claire on July 7, 2005.

So here you are, riding in the London Tube on the way to work, reading your story in a women’s magazine at about 9:00 am, heading out of Kings Cross station when all of a sudden:

I felt rather than heard an explosion; it was as if I had been punched violently in both ears. The world went as black as if I had been plunged deep underwater.

Well, it’s a survival story, the story of Rachel North, rape victim and terror victim, but none the less compelling for that.

And it is a reminder that we are heading out of a curiously tranquil era in western history when nothing really happened.

But now we are going back into the real world, the world no longer of equable reason, of kindliness and due process and people dying peacefully in their beds. We are returning to the real world of life and death, of the dark chthonic forces that dwell in the ravines between the ethereal peaks of sublime exaltation, of populations on the move, of the clash of civilizations, of religious wars, of heroism and victory, of shame and defeat.

It is a world that has been there all along. Only we chose not to see it.

Keeping the Home Computers Burning

The Brits are having a spot of winter weather right now, what they call “snow chaos.” That is British understatement to describe road conditions where 1,000 cars have been temporarily stranded by five inches of snow in Cornwall.

But Vicki Woods is worrying about the home computers. What happens if the power goes out and there is no power for any of the vital home appliances. Like showers.

My husband observed that the shower wouldn’t work if the electricity went down. The shower? What was he on about? "You chose, if you remember, a power shower. What do you think ‘power’ means?"

Yes, it always comes as a shock when the power goes out. It is even more of a shock to learn that the Brits have jumped from claw-footed bathtubs to power showers in one giant leap. But then Ms. Woods starts to worry about the really important things, like how are we going to keep all the computers running when the power goes out? Time to look for a generator.

The one I liked best was a tidy little yellow object the size of a hat-box, costing £249 ($400). I liked it mostly because it promised "running time approx 10 hours", which would do me nicely if the house was plunged into darkness at three in the afternoon.

The chap down at the pub thought that was the funniest thing he’d heard all week. A little thing like that wouldn’t be able to do anything, let alone power the Woods’server farm.

"You’d be looking at - ooh, what? £500 ($900) down for a serious piece of kit that’ll do all your computers, and all you’ll need then is a gizmo that...

Yes, it’s great fun on a dark November evening to get all snuggled up next to a roaring fire and tap humorous articles about what to do when the power goes out.

But imagine the “scrum” (another classic British word) at the superstore when everyone and his brother are rushing out to buy themselves a generator! How big would it have to be to run the computers, the home theater, the microwave, the power shower, and a light or two?

Winning in Iraq

What is going on in Iraq? Are we on the cusp of helping the Iraqis establish a self-governing society complete with federal constitution and a consensual politics in which the punctuations of suicide bombers are merely gigantic sound effects? Or are we on the cusp of failure, in which the progress from election to constitutional referendum to election is a mirage of stage effect in which the reality is a menacing insurgency that is poised to plunge Iraq into civil war?

The honest answer is that we don’t know. If we knew the real situation then everything would be over, bar shouting.

But military historian Victor Davis Hanson thinks we are on the cusp of victory.

Despite acrimony at home, the politics of two national elections and a third on the horizon, and the slander of war crimes and incompetence, those on the battlefield of Iraq have almost pulled off the unthinkable — the restructuring of the politics of the Middle East in less than three years.

That is why the Democrats are not willing to go beyond their opportunistic truckling to the “Bush Lied” crowd and their ankle-biting criticism of the details of the war in Iraq. When offered a chance to vote on bringing the troops home, they respectfully declined.

They are politicians. They are creating noise—fear, uncertainty, and doubt—and preparing the ground for an “I told you so” moment, if it comes, that could help them regain control of Congress or propel a Democrat to the White House in 2008. It is a tactic that has very little downside. If the Bush strategy succeeds, well, then they can say that Bush was lucky to win, considering how he bungled the whole thing from start to finish.

Be Thankful and Hope

In the present season of conservative and Republican exhaustion it is easy to think that the great tide of conserative reform has reached its high tide and has turned into a vicious rip-tide that will swallow its supporters. Even if that is so we should be thankful, especially in this season, for all that the American conservative movement has achieved in its program of resumption, that is, the resumption of eternal truths and practices that sustain the civilized life. We use “civilized life” in the strict sense referring to the life of the city in its characteristic of bringing together those of a commercial habit to serve the consumers.

But there is also hope. In the weeks after the voters of California truckled to their public employee masters and the principled liberal voters of King County, Washington, voted to reelect Ron Sims, the county executive that presides over the third most corrupt election system in the United States, according to one observer, there are buds of renewal. According to Max Borders

Many of us are tired of trying to use political channels to bring about social change. We’re dissatisfied with the way government handles such projects, we’re fed up with the bureaucracy, and we resent having our money taxed from us every paycheck to be managed by those who only claim to know better.

And some of us are doing something about it. Borders cites a whole range of “social entrepreneurs,” many of them successful business entrepreneurs like the Google guys and Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, who

are starting to figure out that civil society works better than government at bringing about civic improvement, opportunity, and positive change. The altruism boom is underway. And if the government doesn’t smother it, social capitalism can amount to a revolution for tremendous good.

Fast Company has compiled a list of these new social entrepreneurs. But will they make a difference?

One thing is for sure. The present huge power structure that runs the government system of social support will not give up without a struggle.

An Old Reagan Hand Says GOP in Power Too Long

Reagan aide Lynn Nofziger is now 81. It was forty years ago that he left his job as a journalist to join the gubernatorial campaign of Ronald Reagan. Now he sees that the GOP has been in power too long, according to Ralph Z. Hollow.

"They’ve been in power too long," Mr. Nofziger says of Republicans. "Any time you put any political party in power for too long, it becomes corrupt. It loses its focus. It forgets why it came there."

Also, the Democrats have opposed the Republicans at every turn, and Republicans are just tired.

Maybe Nofziger is right. Maybe the Republicans need a turn in the political wilderness to do some thinking and to develop a new political vision. Not that the Democrats are any better.

If Republicans have got fat and lazy at the national level the Democrats are in worse shape. Their aristocratic vision of government by the enlightened and educated for the benefit of the “little people” that sounded so noble two generations ago is now a hollow joke. Today’s Democrats are an oligarchy, pure and simple, a coalition of the well connected and the privileged passing out the spoils of the tax system to their followers.

At least you can say that their followers’ needs are modest, for now. State and local government employees earn a mere 40 percent more than private sector workers and retire in their fifties.

Imagine what things will look like in twenty years. Democrats will probably have convinced themselves that they deserve to earn twice as much as evil Republican private sector workers. And they will retire on magnificent pensions in Florida and Arizona in their forties after twenty years of selfless service for the people.

Yes. Hillary Clinton for President!