Victor Davis Hanson critiques Obama’s Coronation Speech, writing in two pieces short pieces at The Corner.

On Obama as plucky Horatio Alger:

Obama, who gained his education and found opportunity in the awful Reagan and Bush I years, lives in a mansion, has prep school and Ivy League degrees, made several millions of dollars last year, and was the offspring of two PhD candidates — and is thus a firsthand witness to America's greed and unfairness?

If this is failure, can we have some more please?

If Obama were to win, no one would infer from the desolation he described in America, that he may well inherit an economy, in a downturn, that just grew at 3.3 in the last quarter, an unemployment rate of 5.7%, and record levels of exportation, one that did not go into recession with $140 a barrel oil, with more students in college than at any time in its history and more than any other nation in the world, with a war in Iraq nearly won, and both the Taliban and Saddam Hussein gone and replaced with constitutional governments — and Europe, whether in France, Germany, or Italy, with strong pro-American leadership.

We’re Here to Help You, we promise:

The convention's final workmanlike message: The country is wrecked. Our freedoms are lost. Our soldiers are victims, not triumphant heroes. We are all impoverished except for a parasitic few. All bad news is not due to globalized changes in a radically different world, but to the nefarious greed of Bush-Cheney-McCain nexus. The Obamas, Kerrys, Pelosis, Gores, et al. who make millions a year and live in mansions, are populists uniquely called upon to tax, expand government, and think of ever new programs, as if the United States doesn't have the largest government and the most ineffective programs in its history.

For those who would argue that this is a “glass half full, glass half empty” dichotomy, I say that’s a false one.

More apt, the perfect is the enemy of the good. For Obama and those of his liberal ilk –in complete control of today’s Democratic Party – the glass must be rejected because it’s not completely full to overflowing, its head is less puffy than we prefer, and it doesn’t have those attractive bubbles coming up from the bottom.

A CBS News outlet in Albany reports that NY Governor David Paterson in essence accused Republicans of making racist overtures in “code”:

"I think the Republican Party is too smart to call Barack Obama 'black' in a sense that it would be a negative. But you can take something about his life, which I noticed they did at the Republican Convention – a 'community organizer.' They kept saying it, they kept laughing," he said.

Wow, that’s the end for Sen. Obama’s campaign, when all the white trash out there starts listening to Republicans and wake up to discover Obama’s black.

Gov. Paterson went on to clarify:

"I think where there are overtones is when there are uses of language that are designed to inhibit other people's progress with a subtle reference to their race," he said.

"At this point, Americans wouldn't tolerate a racial appeal. What I'm saying is that there are sneaky ways to try to hurt someone," he said.

Geez, Governor. You sound just like the pathetically ingratiating person of pallor trying to talk jive, smack, or gangsta’.

Take it from a Conservative Republican. “Community Organizer” never has been, isn’t, and never will be “code for black.” But you’re right, it is code. Anyone with a fair to middling experience with Marxism or liberal Academia knows that Community Organizing is what Unionists, Communalists, Activists, and demagogic populists do.

I’ll give you another hint. Lenin and Mao were Community Organizers. Castro was a Community Organizer. Venezuela’s increasingly strong-armed dictator Chavez was a Community Organizer, as was Ho Chi Minh. So was Saul Alinsky, a source of some of Sen. Obama’s inspiration (and most of Sen. Clinton’s).

Community Organizers organize and (temporarily) empower communities -- that’s the source of their power. They accomplish what they seek when they have successfully motivated and energized their targeted mass audience. Their stated ends aren’t even important, for in harnessing the means, the collective will of the community, they achieve another end that consumes: their own power and influence. That personal end will always justify their means, and Obama is no different, as his long-abiding Presidential ambitions attest.

Community Organizers are by and large Demagogues. To be successful in their task, they need to enflame, anger, manipulate and motivate communities to action. They tend to exaggerate, and their rhetoric is heavy on hyperbole. They rouse rabbles. They generate mass hysteria, if they are successful. They’re all about the masses, washed or unwashed.

Here’s how Conservatives view the whole concept of the need to Organize. Community Organizers are the Conservative equivalent in all major respects to the Communists, Socialists, and Marxists whose reason for living is organizing communities.

Sure, Union Organizers organize working communities, and partisan political operatives like the infamous ACORN organize voter communities for electoral purposes. But these represent very temporary organizations. Once constructed, their architects are “out of a job,” and on to the next non-union shop or electoral project. Not so the professional Community Organizer.

Presidential Candidate Obama seemingly appeared out of nowhere after the briefest of Senate and state legislative careers, and touted his Community Organizing as a major component of his leadership experience. He served his Community, even if his accomplishments were transitory and their importance tangential to his political ambitions.

Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska appeared out of nowhere: a woman of real, personal accomplishment who didn’t need to mobilize a community to reach and wield power. And yet, from the moment of Sen. McCain’s announcement of Palin as his Vice Presidential nominee, Obama spokespeople and Obama himself ridiculed her “small town mayor-ship and ignored her Gubernatorial experience.

So Vice Presidential Candidate Palin had the pluck and combativeness to observe that, as the mayor of a small town in one of America’s last frontiers, yes, a mayor was kind of like a Community Organizer, except for having actual responsibilities.

That’s still a really funny line. Here’s why, Gov. Paterson, and it has nothing to do with racism.

Contrary to the idealistic but unfettered by gritty reality Community Organizer, a Mayor (or any other Executive) has specific, distinct responsibilities, which when not satisfied or fulfilled, can generate an awful lot of hell to pay. Community Organizers can keep finding communities (real or virtual, like classes of aggrieved persons) to organize, but a Mayor or Governor has to run one, with all that that entails.

Progressives (Marxist-inspired or otherwise) are really big on organizing communities, getting people to vote “in accordance with their economic interests.” Which itself is code word for “voting for their Class.” Yet, they do not officially or formally represent the communities they manipulate, and overwhelmingly take advantage of those they mobilize as stepping stones for their own personal enrichment or advancement. Sadly, much of what Community Organizers “accomplish” either turns out to be a whole lot less than advertised, evaporates after the Organizer moves on (or steps up), or engenders a whole new level of exploitation and corruption.

That’s why the small-d democratic model creates political constructs in which an individual is elected for a specific term, with a specific set of responsibilities, with a very real accounting at the end if he or she (or their party) seeks re-election. As opposed to Alinsky’s theories of Community Organizing, or similar Manifestos, which all too often in the real world create a tyranny imposed by the masses, but run by a chosen few.

Absolute power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, however much that power started out “of the people.”

That’s just some of why Republicans laughed so heartily with Gov. Palin, when she contrasted her executive experience with a boastful, self-proclaimed Community Organizer.

(Via Drudge Report)

Etcetera

For added insight into Obama’s time as a Community Organizer in Chicago, the ideas of Alinsky, and other nuances of progressive history in Chicago, see John Judis’s fascinating history in the The New Republic.

(Via Online Journal)

A concerned group of alarmed Leftists, noting Sen. Obama’s many flip flops on issues of critical interest to them, wrote an open letter to the presumed Democratic nominee for President.

In addition to obligatory foreign policy positions on Iraq and terrorism, as well as a completely unrestricted right to abortion, they identify a panoply of aged socialist ambitions, from which Obama dare not dissent, for risk of straying from Marxist orthodoxy:

A response to the current economic crisis that reduces the gap between the rich and the rest of us through a more progressive financial and welfare system; public investment to create jobs and repair the country's collapsing infrastructure; fair trade policies; restoration of the freedom to organize unions; and meaningful government enforcement of labor laws and regulation of industry.

Universal healthcare.

An environmental policy that transforms the economy by shifting billions of dollars from the consumption of fossil fuels to alternative energy sources, creating millions of green jobs.

A commitment to improving conditions in urban communities and ending racial inequality, including disparities in education through reform of the No Child Left Behind Act and other measures.

An immigration system that treats humanely those attempting to enter the country and provides a path to citizenship for those already here.

One can only imagine what a “more progressive financial and welfare system” would look like. As it stands now, less than 50% of Americans pay more in taxes than they receive as direct payout from the Government. The top 5% of earners pay more than 80% of all taxes. Anyone earning more than $100,000 a year – nowhere near rich by modern standards – pays 50% or more of their income towards taxes at the Federal, State and Local levels. The “poor” in America subsist at a higher standard of living than 95% of all of humanity, and more than 80% of all other “citizens of the world.”

It reminds me of the bumper sticker you see, “Vote Democrat, it’s easier than working.”

Public education and emergency medical care are easily available, on demand, for these same “poor,” despite the deplorable absence of Universal Healthcare.

And when did the US outlaw unions? Workers remain free to organize unions, but fewer and fewer non-unionized workers chose to sacrifice even a modest amount of their income to union bureaucracies (and kleptocracies) that have enriched their leadership, without improving working conditions, which already exceed those of almost every country on earth. What’s really intended here, is Government enforced union participation, the better to control a key Democratic Party constituency.

What kind of environmental policy can possibly shift billions of dollars from the consumption of fossil fuels to alternative energy sources?

Does that mean a policy “shift” mean that money is taken from us, so that we can’t spend on gas? Or, that gas is allowed to become so prohibitively expensive or completely unavailable, that we can’t spend on gas? That would certainly explain Speaker Pelosi’s refusal (and Obama’s until just the other day) to allow any increase in oil drilling in the US. Or Obama’s earlier observation that rising gas prices were a good thing, as long as they don’t rise too quickly, but get good and high eventually!

Right now, the people who spend on fossil fuels are us, the consumers, not Government. Heck, Government makes more and more money, the higher the gas prices go, in confiscatory taxes tied as a percentage to gas prices. Like cigarettes, the Government makes more money, the higher the prices go. The Government doesn’t spend on gas, it takes a cut!

How many more years are we going to refight the War on Poverty, before we wake up and realize that Government subsidy and Central Planning fosters blight in urban communities? Or that the social and economic choices of individuals and communities, in response to Government assistance, fosters continuing racial “inequality?”

Less Government, not more, is the lesson the 20^th century should have taught these aging hippies.

And how much more humane could our immigration policy get, with Amnesty for those already here thrown in to boot? They get to break our laws, exploit our services, get for nothing that which they do not earn or pay, we forbid law enforcement from enforcing immigration law, contrary to their charter, and we resist at every turn any meaningful limit or constraint on the free and illegal flow of immigrants?

The only way we could make immigration more humane is to stop it altogether. That would end the exploitation of illegal immigrants, eliminate the economic incentives to exploit disadvantaged semi-skilled or illiterate workers in other countries, and severely constrain the flow of illegal drugs.

So who signed this plea to Obama? Some real notables, to be sure, including:

Juan Cole

Phil Donahue

Jodie Evans, co-founder CODEPINK: Women for Peace

Jane Hamsher

Tom Hayden

Norman Solomon, Author and Obama delegate to Democratic National Convention

Matt Stoller

Studs Terkel

Katrina vanden Heuvel

Gore Vidal

Howard Zinn

As humorous postscript, a visit to the online petition supporting this letter includes several historical figures, no doubt entirely sympathetic to the Socialist aims expressed:

(Via Instapundit)

I need some help from any friends out there I have left.

Why should I even make an effort of political involvement, with the choices we face?

The Democrats insisted on nominating a neophyte ultra-liberal because he was sufficiently US Defeat at Any Cost, so as to properly bury the President’s legacy in Iraq. I have absolutely nothing to criticize about Sen. Obama, because he has almost no record of leadership, accomplishment, courage, or moral fiber. In a sane political world, he wouldn’t even make a short list for VP. The only stands he’s taken I trust in him to uphold, are the ones for which he’s garnered 100% liberal rankings: abortion on demand at any age to anyone for any reason, and Government as the answer for every social ill. The liberal elite he represents have never given up on their dream of an enlightened Socialism, and now they’ll get every wish fulfilled.

Leading Democrats have been, and will be, far more interested in punishing and denigrating the current President, even if that plays right into the hands of our enemies. They have always preferred that Bush be wrong, even if that meant America losing a war they themselves voted to approve. Their absolute bottom line has been: The US has to lose in Iraq, because that execrable GWB tricked us into going to war against Saddam Hussein. As the sole Conservative in a Liberal Democratic family, I can testify that Bush Derangement Syndrome has made your average Democrat insane over any Bush accomplishment, and orgasmic over any Bush failure. They ignore any impact to US National Interests, because they honestly believe that what Bush has done to harm America justifies anything that’s done to punish the hated ‘W.’

The Republicans insisted on nominating the worst possible nominee, who cannot be caricatured any more offensively than his actual persona presents. They face the prospect of campaign performances reminiscent of James Stockdale. And they’ve deserved everything they will get, in even greater isolation, powerlessness, and evaporation as a contributor to any National civic discussion. They out-grafted even the most venal of Democrats, allowed RINOs to turn them away from every one of their core principles, except a strong defense – and they darn near frittered that away as well. No fiscal conservative can rightly defend their record.

We will get some version of universal health care, new and more generous bankruptcy and foreclosure protections, greater government control of banking, insurance, stock and bond trading, and of course, an expanding illegal immigrant amnesty that will swell the ranks of non-Americans diluting the vote of Americans. Reparations for Slavery will be forthcoming, as well as all manner of “Civil Rights” legislation for racial minorities, women (fences must be mended, after all), and the usual GLBT spaghetti of sexual abnormalities.

Government will grow gargantuan; taxes will rapidly increase, with a gross distortion of what is already a very progressive tax structure. That will of course mean that lower income Americans will get paid off in bribes and services, higher income Americans will be punished severely for daring to support the notion that our incomes are our money first before it belongs to our Government, as spoils to redistribute.

Don’t get me wrong. I too, view the Obama candidacy as a historic occasion, when many optimistically believe that race relations can be healed. But that can’t be the sole criteria for electing the erstwhile Leader of the Free World, Liberty’s Champion the world over.

Our enemies laugh at our indecision, our weaknesses, our lethargy and laziness in the face of obvious, dedicated, and continuous war against us, our allies, and our interests. Our desire to turn away again from International problems, chasing chimeras of collectivism. Meanwhile, the rest of the “civilized world” is just now waking up with raging hang-overs from such intoxications.

Mainstream media craves an Obama victory, and will do everything in their power to achieve it. European elites delight in the prospect of an Obama victory. Muslim theocracies and dictatorships the world over salivate over the hope of an Obama Presidency. Until their media advisers cautioned them of the negative effect they were having on the Obama campaign, terrorist groups openly proclaimed their support for Obama.

That’s the vantage point from which I view this week’s sycophantic Obamania. It just reinforces pessimism.

Stay tuned, but I don’t see any daylight between the US and a reinvigorated Liberal Fascism.

The Editors at the NY Times have long proved themselves overwhelmingly biased and nakedly partisan, throughout 8 years of relentless attacks against any move the Bush Administration has taken to fight terrorism or our terrorist enemies. They make no pretense of logic, consistency, or even sanity, as long as all slurs and insults point Bush-ward. They have no need of facts, let alone opposing viewpoints, especially not those heretical ones that refute the received wisdom of the Times.

They assume venality in every case, cause, and controversy, and have championed the alternate universe inhabited by most of the Left, whereby their political opponents are evil, every intention is ulterior and sinister, and every partisan (on the other side) is less than human. The NY Times doesn’t just drink the Kool-Aid, they concoct huge batches of it for public consumption.

But they’ve outdone themselves today, in offensiveness, insult, even slander, asserting that the US Military has aided and abetted in orchestrating a Kangaroo Court conviction of an admitted terrorist, under orders from the White House and Congress.

From the Editors of the Times comes this:

Guilty as Ordered

Now that was a real nail-biter. The court designed by the White House and its Congressional enablers to guarantee convictions of high-profile detainees in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — using evidence obtained by torture and secret evidence as desired — has held its first trial. It produced ... a guilty verdict.

The military commission of six senior officers (whose names have not been made public) found Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who worked as one of Osama bin Laden’s drivers until 2001, guilty of one count of providing material support for terrorism.

The rules of justice on Guantánamo are so stacked against defendants that the only surprise was that Mr. Hamdan was actually acquitted on the more serious count of conspiring (it was unclear with whom) to kill Americans during the invasion of Afghanistan after Sept. 11, 2001.

The Times refuses to employ real legal scholars, or any modicum of fact checking to refute your average terrorist defense attorney’s talking points, apparently preferring to rely on columnists like “economist” Paul Krugman for legal commentary. Thus, they can allege that the trial outcome was ordered, or that the military tribunal process is “so stacked against defendants,” while in the very same editorial admit that Hamdan was found innocent of a questionable charge, and found guilty of one he admitted.

This despite the views of actual legal scholars, who note that the current military tribunal process as established by the “worst bits of lawmaking in American history,” the Military Commissions Act of 2006, insisted upon by the Supreme Court and enacted by Congress on a second attempt, is actually more protective of defendant rights as anything guaranteed by the Geneva Conventions, or even that afforded US soldiers under Military Justice.

If I were one of the 6 officers who sat in that jury, I’d file a defamation or libel suit against the Times. I’d also make it big, public, and embarrassing for the Times Editors.

The Times has played anything but the role of impartial observer, negligently perpetrating untruths and fallacies about military law, and repeated Bush Administration efforts to create a legal framework for individuals who are at war with us, but act as proxies for State sponsors of terror, or other organized terror and criminal gangs.

The Times misreports on the Geneva Conventions and the Laws of War, military justice, military affairs, and often, constitutional law and jurisprudence. They insist on remaining ignorant, and perpetuating the prolonged ignorance of their readers. They sabotage Government and Military counterterrorism programs, aid and abet the disclosure of classified intelligence and programs, and they self-righteously cloak themselves in a ludicrous mantel of public service, in doing as much harm as possible to any effort taken to combat terror.

If there existed any actual, impartial credentialing authority for Journalists, their bona fides would have been yanked some time ago.

I for one have concluded that we should have identified any terrorists, saboteurs, irregular militias, fighters (in or out of uniform) captured on foreign battlefields or outside the US as Prisoners of War, rather than unlawful combatants. With an oppositional and power-hungry Supreme Court, an obstructionist opposition Party who places partisan gain above National Security, there has been and will be no hope we will ever convince the naysayers that terrorists are a threat and terror organizations are real and must be combated aggressively.

Here’s the thing. With POWs, in wartime, military authorities get to identify those who engaged in terror, committing acts of violence in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions and Laws of War. Sure, go ahead and exempt American terrorists, and shuttle them off to the civilian legal system.

The US can then implement military proceedings on foreign combatants, and conduct summary executions of individuals deemed guilty of war crimes, terror, espionage or sabotage, on the spot. They can keep the rest confined until such time as a credible terror organization steps forward to surrender on their behalf. Which means, we can leave them to rot for the rest of their lives in prison camps.

An actual real world prosecutor, with real life experience in prosecuting terror cases, Andy McCarthy, reacts with similar if more composed outrage over at The Corner.

Naturally, I would never suggest that the New York Times stoops to a predetermined editorial narrative with which it proceeds, and toward which it slants news coverage, without a care in the world about what facts actually happen. But today's "Guilty as Ordered" rant about the Hamdan military commission trial has to take the cake. The first paragraph is so shamefully dishonest and misrepresentative of reality as to defy one's necessarily low expectations of the Gray Lady.

(snip)

Of course, the trial also produced a not-guilty verdict. Was that "as ordered" too? If the system was "designed ... to guarantee convictions" how did that happen?

Bill West, writing at the Counterterrorism Blog, comments on the Times’ malicious slander of the military officers sitting on the Hamdan jury:

The results of this trial demonstrate that American military officers truly are the independent minded, moral self-thinkers we expect them to be. Sure, members of the military must "take and follow orders." But they must also be able to think for themselves and act in a moral way. This is especially true for the Officer Corps...the leadership of the US military. We expect military officers to act with honor and sound judgement. Contrary to what some on the far left (very many of whom never served in the military) may believe, when one becomes a US military officer, one does not morph into a mindless automaton.

The officers who served on this jury had a duty to independently weigh the evidence presented to them within the rules of the Commission and to render a decision based on their own judgment of that evidence...not based on any external orders. The conduct of the proceedings and the verdict demonstrate those officers did just that. They not only vindicated the Commission...the "system"...but they brought great credit upon themselves and the Officer Corps. They upheld that code of honor We the People expect of them.

The NY Times, in its derogatory editorial, not only ignores that fact but does a backhanded insult to those officers who served on the jury.

(Links via Memeorandum)

Sully thinks Sen. McCain should have picked a VP with more foreign policy experience than Sen. Obama.

Other Dem commentators are piling on, a terrible choice, rapid pro-abortion gun nut, all politics, do they think Hillary’s supporters will pick just any woman, lots of other sexist trash talking.

Think OODA Loop. She’s pro-life, the mother of a Downs Syndrome baby who refused to consider abortion, aggressively reformist and anti-pork spending, and grew up hunting moose. Lined up against the 40 year Washington Insider, blow-hard Biden. Outscores Obama on Executive and real-life managerial experience. Can attack Obama directly on his infanticide vote and 100+% NARAL rating (he out radicals the radicals and should get bonus points).

I want to see this dogfight play out, because the outcome’s already certain.

McCain nailed this one.

(Via Memeorandum)

Yuval Levin writing at The Corner spotlights a very curious assertion by Sen. Barack Obama, as reported by AFP:

“We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,” Obama.

Levin retorts:

We can’t?  So at what temperature would other countries like me to keep my home, then, and how much should I eat?

But it’s really, really worse than that. Obama made the statement in the context of claiming that, as President, he would ensure that the US set the example on Global Warming.

So should we expect an Obama Administration to outlaw SUVs?

Would Obama’s EPA Director set Federal policy guidelines on how much we eat, enforceable by the EPA? Or would Obama advocate laws to limit dietary intake? Would prosecution involve jail time on reduced rations, or a mandatory attendance at Fat Camp?

Will Obama insist on strict energy monitoring and rationing, whereby home thermostats transmit readings to US Dept. of Energy, resulting in automatic shutoff of energy until room temperatures fall back to an environmentally sustainable 68 degrees?

Even if Obama intends only to use the bully pulpit to encourage the behavior he sees as more of a proper example for the world, does he really want to be both President and First Nag? (Maybe this is part of his campaign readjustments post-nomination, and he wants to incorporate essential qualities of Al Gore and Hillary Clinton.)

I remember a firestorm when a Democrat suggested that the US needed to have the International Community approve foreign policy decisions that we make based on our own National Security. I also vividly recall all the suggestions from the Left that the US should surrender sovereignty to the UN, the International Court, or other international bodies, many of the members of which notably lack any quaint traditions like freedom, justice, or equality.

We need to have other countries give their okay for the individual behavior in matters of personal conscience and liberty of US citizens? Why do I get the feeling that there’s a lot more involved with this man’s choice of wearing or not wearing a US flag on his lapel?

There isn’t any way to escape the conclusion this man’s a born Socialist. If he means what he says, and he seems awfully sincere to me, he means to assert control over every means of production, energy source and consumption, every lifestyle choice at all susceptible to Government interference. I thought Communism was dead.

As an observation, it might be nice if Obama treated the relations between internal US communities with the same deference he shows foreigners. If he did, he would easily avoid gaffes like calling a female journalist “sweetie,” refer to rural Pennsylvanians as “clinging to guns and religion,” or talk about “typical white people,” or suggesting we need to worry about whether foreigners think our personal choices are “okay.”

Thomas Friedman plays Olympic Judge on the Georgia conflict, and rightly awards Gold to Russian “prime minister” Vladimir Putin in a US Foreign Policy towards Russia NY Times Op Ed. Unfortunately, Friedman also leavens his judiciousness with some errant (if predictable) cause and effect, thus ruining the whole loaf of his argument.

Based on Friedman’s assessment, he awards the Silver to a Georgia’s “bone-headed” President, Mikheil Saakashvili, and in a spirit of bipartisanship, Bronze to the “Clinton and Bush foreign policy teams.”

Friedman wants credit for the prescience of arguing against NATO expansion after the liberation of the Eastern Europe, and the attendant collapse of the Soviet Union. In this, Friedman shares some illustrious company, including foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum, Democrat Sen. Sam Nunn, and the State Department forbearer of Containment as America’s response to Russian Communism, George Kennan.

Ordinarily, evidence of aggression, covert manipulations and provocations towards war, and stark renunciation of international agreements, as well as diplomatic norms, would suggest that a Belligerent Nation indeed posed a grave threat to its neighbors. So Russia appeared to clear-eyed observers, following the collapse of their edifice of oppression, without any real demonstration that the underlying causes of Soviet aggression were renounced, nor meaningful amends made.

Not for those who make excuse for killers, bullies and tyrants, always finding the germ of cause for the full grown fruits of evil. For Russian apologists, Russia is the latter day equivalent to Germany after the humiliation of Versailles.

Friedman declares, “The humiliation that NATO expansion bred in Russia was critical in fueling Putin’s rise.” For Friedman, Putin was the aberration in a steady Russian march from darkness towards enlightenment, beginning with Gorbachev and continuing with Boris Yeltsin.

My recollection may be a little dusty some twenty years later, but it seems to me that Soviet (and Russian) strongmen were a steady stream of KGB, with Yeltsin as a populist and very brief interlude, before power devolved back into the hands of the KGB and Mafia bosses. Even Yeltsin seemed packaged for Western consumption as a democracy-embracing street pol, versus the indisputable party boss earlier in life. No Lech Walesa he.

I’m likewise pretty sure that the US was more concerned with Soviet aggression and the enslavement of captive populations and the peoples of Eastern Europe, rather than the democratization of Russia, as Friedman alleges. I don’t know any serious Kremlinologist, Soviet-watcher, or Russophile who thought Russia capable of that great a leap towards democracy. Yet Friedman questions:

Wasn’t that why we fought the cold war — to give young Russians the same chance at freedom and integration with the West as young Czechs, Georgians and Poles? Wasn’t consolidating a democratic Russia more important than bringing the Czech Navy into NATO?

As someone who spent a former career studying aspects of Soviet occupation and oppression of Eastern Europe, I can personally attest to the greater affinity, desire, motivation, and capacity for freedom and democracy among the Czechs, Georgians, and Poles than their Russian counterparts. And the fear of Russian aggression and repression in the absence of a NATO security guarantee.

This line of argument also ignores the very real fact that Strongmen have ruled Russia since its reemergence from the Soviet construct. Old party apparatchiks, Politburo, Military leaders, and of course, the KGB, retained the reins of power throughout. The exterior form changed, not the Oligarchy within.

Shouldn’t recent moves to reassert Regional dominance, revive Russian espionage and instigate covert, proxy warfare represent the very kinds of demonstration that give lie to the pretense of Russian good intentions?

Friedman also insists, “Russia wasn’t about to reinvade Europe.” On the basis of what evidence does he assert this? Because they didn’t? I certainly remember a lot of nervousness about Russian intentions following the end of the Cold War, and many of us who followed Europe and Russia were frankly surprised that Russia seemingly squelched their imperial aims in the years since the fall of the USSR. A strong argument can be made that Western assertiveness in supporting former Russian satellites threatened neighbors are precisely the factors that preempted Russian aggression.

Friedman acknowledged Mandelbaum to make this argument over false premises in US Foreign Policy towards Russia:

“The Clinton and Bush foreign policy teams acted on the basis of two false premises,” said Mandelbaum. “One was that Russia is innately aggressive and that the end of the cold war could not possibly change this, so we had to expand our military alliance up to its borders. Despite all the pious blather about using NATO to promote democracy, the belief in Russia’s eternal aggressiveness is the only basis on which NATO expansion ever made sense — especially when you consider that the Russians were told they could not join. The other premise was that Russia would always be too weak to endanger any new NATO members, so we would never have to commit troops to defend them. It would cost us nothing. They were wrong on both counts.”

This strikes me as both revisionist history, and after the fact excuse making for the Russians. By necessity of his argument, Mandelbaum must conclude that all known and unknown acts of Russian aggression since 1992 can be attributed to the egregious provocation from the US and NATO. Known acts of aggression would include the attempted murder leaders in Eastern Europe, funding and sponsorship of terrorism, political assassinations, and attempted manipulation of democratic elections in neighboring states.

For sure, NATO expansion was predicated on the assumption that past aggressive behavior and imperial intent signaled the likelihood of such behavior and intent in the future. Certainly, many in the West hoped strong support and a muscular defense of now liberated states would help coax Russia away from “aggressiveness,” and a belief that such aggressiveness need not be “eternal.”

Mandelbaum also suggests that NATO promoters considered Russia “too weak to endanger any new NATO members, so we would never have to commit troops to defend them.”

That sounds like a straw man, and the whole point of moves like membership in NATO and participation in missile defense is a well-considered response to a Russia far too strong and still quite capable of violence and aggression towards its neighbors.

Friedman concludes:

Georgia is a nascent free-market democracy, and we can’t just watch it get crushed.

Indeed. Within his Russian apologia masked as even handed criticism, Friedman also consents to a bottom line I can agree with:

If it persists, this behavior will push every Russian neighbor to seek protection from Moscow and will push the Europeans to redouble their efforts to find alternatives to Russian oil and gas. This won’t happen overnight, but in time it will stretch Russia’s defenses and lead it to become more isolated, more insecure and less wealthy.

Friedman ends where Russia’s neighbors have always lived – in nervous vigilance, next to an imperial-minded thug.

(Via Memeorandum)

Ralph Peters, writing in the NY Post, slams the mainstream media (MSM) for conspiring to impose an almost total blackout on success in Iraq:

DO we still have troops in Iraq? Is there still a conflict over there?

If you rely on the so-called mainstream media, you may have difficulty answering those questions these days. As Iraqi and Coalition forces pile up one success after another, Iraq has magically vanished from the headlines.

Want a real "inconvenient truth?" Progress in Iraq is powerful and accelerating.

But that fact isn't helpful to elite media commissars and cadres determined to decide the presidential race over our heads. How dare our troops win? Even worse, Iraqi troops are winning. Daily.

Peters is right, this has nothing to do with an absence of blood in non-newsworthy stories. There could be no more bigger news story in the past 5 years, then the revelation that Iraqis and their US and coalition allies have soundly defeated Al Qaeda, neutralized Sunni resistance to the government, and severely constrained the violence and influence of sectarian militias, both Sunni and Shia.

The reason the MSM chooses not to report on our stunning (and widely unexpected) success in Iraq is because they disapprove. They’re profoundly dsiappointed, and they fear the political implications for their preferred candidate in this year’s Presidential election.

Peters concludes his indictment by noting some contrasts, in terms of Legislative accomplishment, media preferences, and ulterior motives:

The surge worked. Incontestably. Iraqis grew disenchanted with extremism. Our military performed magnificently. More and more Iraqis have stepped up to fight for their own country. The Iraqi economy's taking off. And, for all its faults, the Iraqi legislature has accomplished far more than our own lobbyist-run Congress over the last 18 months.

When Iraq seemed destined to become a huge American embarrassment, our media couldn't get enough of it. Now that Iraq looks like a success in the making, there's a virtual news blackout.

Of course, the front pages need copy. So you can read all you want about the heroic efforts of the Chinese People's Army in the wake of the earthquake.

Tells you all you really need to know about our media: American soldiers bad, Red Chinese troops good.

Is Jane Fonda on her way to the earthquake zone yet?

Ralph must listen to National Peoples Republic -- I mean, Public Radio (NPR) -- which must have some official policy that reporting on China must always be upbeat and reflect positively on China’s communist government. Talk about a news blackout.

Apparently, NPR staff were present in rural China, working on a series of reports when the recent earthquakes struck. These reports give every impression on focusing on the hopeful and impressive strides China has made, in transforming their largely rural and agricultural heartland into a burgeoning industrial and economic powerhouse.

Their presence provided them immediate and proximate on scene access to the quake and recovery efforts, on which they’re reporting with gusto. All of a piece, unfortunately, with their gushing coverage for the past several years.

For the earthquake, NPR is awash in heroic stories of the Chinese Army, the Chinese Government, and the Chinese people recovering in the aftermath of the quakes. But they don’t just stop there. An analysis piece the other day suggested that the Chinese central planners have “learned” from bad public relations from previous disasters, and now allow and even encourage international and Chinese press coverage of the earthquakes and relief efforts.

No doubt this is true for China, with MSM fawning friends like NPR, natural disasters and their aftermath can have a positive impact on international public opinion in advance of their awaited Olympic Games. You have to wonder if the conscientious and full-of-good-intentions worshippers of Government supported public media don’t view this situation as a mission: how to make China more appealing. (NPR to the Communists: “Stand back, comrades, and we’ll have this cleaned up for you in no time, at all. Don’t you worry about a thing.”)

If you think this is outrageous exaggeration, listen closely the next time NPR reports from China. In recent stories, even the slight negatives they include are enveloped in excuses for Chinese misbehavior. Admiration and envy are palpable in the reports.

NPR reports that the Chinese have constructed too many dams, now damaged or threatened by earthquakes, but distressingly notes how critical these dams are for energy production. The Army units conducting rescue and recovery operations would be able to reach distressed communities more quickly by water if they there weren’t all these dams.

Darned central planning! There’s always an unanticipated consequence. For which, of course, new regulations and directives need to be formulated. The NPR reporting gives the overwhelming impression that their reporters greatly sympathize with the difficulties of, rather than resent, totalitarian control of everything. (If you want a glimpse of what a Democratic vision for what a Total Government future looks like, stay tuned.)

How great in contrast to how dreadfully George W. Bush’s FEMA handled Katrina, you have to know they, and their majority audience, are thinking. This despite volumes of evidence of New Orleans and Louisiana incompetence and corruption, and the remarkable and nearly unreported heroics in responding to Katrina, of the Army and Air National Guard, who provided critical, life saving services within hours of disaster.

An offhand tidbit shows the supreme irony of the implicit subtext of NPR’s China reporting. NPR reports that the Government will relocate entire villages to new locations less vulnerable to earthquake, or where services can be restored more quickly.

A government can no doubt be very effective when all the means of a totalitarian state, capable of complete disregard of the life and humanity of its people, are directed at a single mission or task. Chinese political and other prisoners can testify about live harvesting of organs for internal use and international export, for profit. Absolute and total control can look mighty attractive, when state control eclipses and renders meaningless or invisible, the price a society pays for that efficiency.

Hitler did indeed make the trains run on time, particularly those carrying his victims to death camps.

Can anyone imagine how NPR would be reporting on a US Government program to “resettle” New Orleanians to higher ground?

The NPR reporter suggested, “The Government has realized, that in disasters, a free press can hardly have any downside,” or words entirely to that effect. The same feature acknowledged that if remains to be seen if this same “openness” will apply to Chinese political reporting. Are they kidding? I hope they’re not holding their breath.

But with NPR, when it comes to China, it might be hard to tell the difference between them holding their breath, or merely struck breathless in adoration.

(Via Instapundit)

Last week, Presidential Candidate Senator Barack Obama made a speech in Berlin, Germany.

The Grand Revision on Iraq may be underway in earnest, but there were other revisions on display as well, when Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama gave a grand speech in Berlin.

It is no doubt true that those who win wars get to write history, but it is just as true that just about anybody, from any political legacy, can attach themselves to a victory they did not foresee, in a struggle they did not support, for an objective they did not seek.

This is just as true when speaking of the Cold War, as when speaking of our emerging victory in Iraq. Sen. Obama, presumptive Democratic Party nominee for President, hails from a political tradition and party that devalued and obstructed both.

For many on the Left, the Cold War was an invention and a series of provocations; communism and socialism were appealing doctrines, marred only by unfortunate implementations. Such idealists, like those in public broadcasting, like to think of themselves as Citizens of the world. So does Obama:

I come to Berlin as so many of my countrymen have come before. Tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a citizen – a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world.

In fairness to Obama, however much an internationalist, there’s no doubt Obama knows what side he needs to be on when it comes to the Cold War:

Ours is a partnership that truly began sixty years ago this summer, on the day when the first American plane touched down at Templehof.

On that day, much of this continent still lay in ruin. The rubble of this city had yet to be built into a wall. The Soviet shadow had swept across Eastern Europe, while in the West, America, Britain, and France took stock of their losses, and pondered how the world might be remade.

This is where the two sides met. And on the twenty-fourth of June, 1948, the Communists chose to blockade the western part of the city. They cut off food and supplies to more than two million Germans in an effort to extinguish the last flame of freedom in Berlin.

The way Obama spoke in Berlin was highly reminiscent of that Cold Warrior of the past, Ronald Reagan. He spoke of the fight of a generation, for freedom, with no allusions or ambiguity about the threat to freedom posed by Soviet Communists. Would that his allies of a previous generation saw the threat as clearly. Obama this week remembered the desperate heroism of the Berlin Airlift, and what was at stake for Berliners. The iconic JFK, who Obama sought to emulate, harkened to it when he spoke in Germany. Twenty years ago, Reagan did as well, and challenged Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the wall Obama tried so hard to evoke as central imagery for his speech.

In the 1980’s, however, many of Obama’s Democratic Senate colleagues thought Reagan irresponsible, bellicose, antagonistic. They, like Obama in recent months, insisted that jaw, jaw, jaw, was better than war, war, war. Yet in less than a decade, Reagan’s challenge was met, with the USSR’s release of Eastern Europe, and in the remarkable series of events that won the Cold War, a war only barely begun with the Berlin Blockade.

Along the train of thought Obama pursued in his speech in Berlin, he suggested that while the fall of the Iron Curtain “brought new hope,” the bringing of East and West together somehow left us more vulnerable to new dangers.

Obama then juxtaposes two very different threats, represented by the “terrorists of September 11^th” training globally, and automobiles and factories “melting icecaps” and “shrinking coastlines.”

Obama is certainly not alone in displaying hysteria over what he perceives as the “grave threat” of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). However commonplace this view of AGW, in politics or media, emerging science is acknowledging the gross distortions, faulty data models, exaggerated projections, and flat out bad pseudo-science pervades global warming hype from Al Gore, Obama, and other AGW shills.

Nor is Obama the first Democrat to equate or compare AGW as a threat with radical Islamic terrorism. But by definition, such a view minimizes terrorism while it grossly inflates any actual danger from a warmer climate.

Later in his speech Obama sucks up to his green-fetishist European audience by insulting America:

Let us resolve that all nations – including my own – will act with the same seriousness of purpose as has your nation, and reduce the carbon we send into our atmosphere.

By all means, we should resolve such a thing: the rate of US CO2 emissions is lower than any country in Europe, and we are the only country not increasing such emissions at a dramatic rate. Europe is entirely unserious about reducing carbon emissions, and that ought to suit the US as well.

Others have also remarked on Obama’s odd locution of how 9/11 terrorists killed “thousands from all over the globe on American soil.” While a slight number of foreign victims are counted within those lost at the World Trade Center on 9/11, they’re a very small minority compared to the actual Americans killed on 9/11. The terror plotters sought to destroy Americans, an American landmark, and harm the American economy.

Obama then sets up another comparison of European and American attitudes towards each other:

In Europe, the view that America is part of what has gone wrong in our world, rather than a force to help make it right, has become all too common. In America, there are voices that deride and deny the importance of Europe’s role in our security and our future. Both views miss the truth – that Europeans today are bearing new burdens and taking more responsibility in critical parts of the world; and that just as American bases built in the last century still help to defend the security of this continent, so does our country still sacrifice greatly for freedom around the globe.

I offer a couple of observations. Obama remarks that in Europe, “the view that America is part of what has gone wrong in our world” is “all too common.” It’s just as common a view among University professors and academic elites, such as those from which both the Senator and his wife hail. I also question whether European commitment and support for peacekeeping and other international security initiatives around the world are increasing, rather than decreasing. I know that US military forces continue to serve around the globe, in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and nowhere in such numbers as Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s ironic that Obama mentions “American bases built in the last century” and how we “still sacrifice greatly for freedom around the globe,” without mentioning the greatest of sacrifices we make today in Iraq.

But Obama is just warming up rhetorically. He then proceeds to equate the “wall” of European and US foreign policy differences to other kinds of barriers:

That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another. The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.

How could anyone question the moral imperative of tearing down these walls? Wait a minute, what’s that about “countries with the most and those with the least?”

What kind of wall exists, that relates in even a metaphorical way, between “countries that have the most” (think America) and “those with the least” (think Africa)? Wall suggests something fabricated with intent. We can safely assume poor countries don’t build that wall (although an argument can be made that their despot kleptocrats do), so by default the rich ones are to blame. So poor countries are poor and rich are rich because somehow the rich built these walls to keep the poor poor, so they, of course, must pay.

Marxist economic theology, pure and simple. One has to wonder if Obama thinks of human wealth and poverty the same way. Moments later, Obama makes it certain:

This is the moment when we must build on the wealth that open markets have created, and share its benefits more equitably. Trade has been a cornerstone of our growth and global development. But we will not be able to sustain this growth if it favors the few, and not the many. Together, we must forge trade that truly rewards the work that creates wealth, with meaningful protections for our people and our planet. This is the moment for trade that is free and fair for all.

Any (well-informed) trade economist will tell you, free markets are inherently fair, to the extent that they are truly free, without internal subsidy or tariff. But that’s not what Obama thinks. He is describing here the Demon Globalization, Old World Colonialism in another guise. Note how trade and economic growth must somehow be constrained, or better, distributed in a fashion that rewards many, rather than a few.

This alludes to the classic Progressive (and Marxist) mythology that free market capitalism rewards the few at the very top of some economic pyramid, by exploiting all those at any level below the highest tier. When he demands that any economic policy must “truly reward the work that creates wealth,” Obama isn’t talking about entrepreneurs, but standard Marxist solipsism for the Means of Production, the Common Man of the masses.

Obama ended his speech with a call to action for the “people of the world,” declaring “this is our moment.” In doing so, Obama referred to an America that has spent more than two centuries striving to perfect an imperfect nation, in which we often did not “live up to our best intentions.”

That’s true, we often have not. But at several decades older than two centuries, America is the oldest Democracy in the world, and progenitor or protector to virtually all the others.

Obama’s witness of America is the hope of the Immigrant, expressed in the close of his speech:

Our allegiance has never been to any particular tribe or kingdom – indeed, every language is spoken in our country; every culture has left its imprint on ours; every point of view is expressed in our public squares. What has always united us – what has always driven our people; what drew my father to America’s shores – is a set of ideals that speak to aspirations shared by all people: that we can live free from fear and free from want; that we can speak our minds and assemble with whomever we choose and worship as we please.

Yes, America is that beacon of freedom, that promise of opportunity, that offer of living life more abundantly. But I would respectfully disagree, Senator, about that first bit about allegiance.

Without a doubt, immigrants and their cultures, languages, arts, ideas and ideals have greatly enriched our Nation, in fact made us who we are in every tangible and intangible way.

But we are a Nation with an allegiance to a very particular tribe and kingdom, that of Americans, and their United States of America.

Most of us – but not all, and perhaps not Sen. Obama -- grew up reminding ourselves of that allegiance, in the form of a pledge we recited every day in school, in classrooms, auditoriums, in stadiums, ballparks, village squares, and on holidays and civic remembrances (from Wikipedia):

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

One nation, indivisible. Many of us still find that a worthy object of allegiance.

(Via Memeorandum)

Congratulations, President Elect Barack Obama, on your historic victory in yesterday’s US Presidential election. That’s a singular accomplishment, given your path through life and a grueling 2 year campaign.

Congratulations, fellow citizens who voted for and placed so much hope, treasure, and dedicated effort to have your Man win the White House, and for the near-equal accomplishment of increasing majorities in Congress. The people have spoken, for whatever change they hope for, expect, or otherwise anticipate, and placed a special trust in your party. This, at a time of extreme economic uncertainty and grave threats and dangers to US National Security.

I was a reluctant supporter of John McCain, but regret that he and Governor Palin were unsuccessful in their uphill battle against a juggernaut of disenchantment, obvious political acumen, and even more obvious mainstream media complicity. I considered them preferable candidates over an inexperienced but charismatic Obama and an erratic Senator Biden.

The events of 9/11 have dictated most of my political positions since. Democratic Party reactions to the challenges of global terror, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, gross disrespect shown by antiwar Democrats towards US service men and women have further caused me to feel totally estranged from 50% of my fellow citizens, including the entirety of my family and many people I had respected and admired.

I remember being a reluctant supporter of one George Bush in 2000, and suffered through the five weeks of turmoil that events in Florida engendered. Reasonable people may disagree on what 2000 symbolized for America, but the protracted fight over the election poisoned political discourse in the US ever since.

I am greatly relieved that we will not be replaying such a political transition this year. I can appreciate how joyous, excited, gratified, and justified feel the supporters of the President Elect.

As an American, I am also very proud of my fellow citizens, who through a consensus of those who felt obliged to vote for the “minority” candidate, or out of racial solidarity, with complete color blindness, or with an imperfect collection of prejudices chose Obama as either the best of options or the lesser of evils. Motivations are varied, and often complex, but judged by results, America affirmed its promise and its better nature in electing President Barack Obama.

On January 20^th, 2009, he will become my Commander in Chief. I won’t submit my retirement papers, and I will strive to show him the respect to which he is entitled. I will follow orders, however much I may disagree with them, just as I did with the two prior Commanders in Chief.

I offer the following recommendations to the new President before his new position might make that inappropriate.

The United States has been hated, resented, and opposed throughout the world for the past 50 years and more. President Bush became a lightning rod for enmity, scorn, insult, and opposition, but did not create anti-US animus, nor will it abate with you at the helm. You don’t have to take my word for it, you’ll find out. We have not caused all the problems in the world; rather, we are one of the few forces for good, and one of the only true Western Democracies that has lifted so much as a finger for oppressed Muslims the world over. Don’t believe the propaganda, because it will offer you precious little comfort when history resumes.

Ruthless opportunists will use any pretext to advance their own interests at the expense of ours. Everyone will have their hands out. Place US interests above the interests of others, and see how fast you become the new poster child for US imperialism, and your figure the model for effigy.

Your military is the finest, most professional military in the world. If you demonstrate that you value our achievements, preserve our victories, allow us to win, and reward us with true fidelity and respect, we will follow you anywhere you ask us to go. We will get the job done, without respect to party or person.

Before you and your compatriots launch the New New Deal, take some time to reconsider the Old New Deal, even if throughout your academic and political career you’ve never seen the need. Try to make it through Liberal Fascism or The Forgotten Man, or even review the latest study from UCLA, estimating the FDR prolonged the Depression an extra 7 years. (Quite a feat, making the Great Depression Great, when it might have been merely bad.)

Raising taxes, sharing the wealth, redistributing income, punishing economic activity, constraining business, all at a time of economic recession and retre