Apologize for the War

A recent Time magazine article ran the following: "Would it really kill the neocons to apologize for the Iraq War?"

Of course, such idiocy got my blood boiling. Apologize for the war? Yeah, Saddam wasn't really so bad, was he? They stop just sort of going all glazed-over nastalgic, but only just.

Honestly, the idea is moronic. I don't know if I'm really a neocon, though I suppose when it comes to the war I am. And I am not going to apologize, because I see no reason to. I'm not an ends justify the means kind of guy. Saddam was a brutal dictator who deserves what hes going to get, and it should've been 12 years ago.

Oh, but the violence and death, right? So I guess Saddam's torture chambers were better, eh? Well, at least we didn't see them every day on the news, so what you don't know can't hurt you. Right? Sure thing. And as Christopher Hitchens said just the other day, the violence we see today is really just a part of the lingering effects of Saddam's rule. We waited 12 years too long to take this guy out.

The entire issue is basically devoted to the coming to power of "moderates" and more importantly the return of realists (who, as the WSJ has noted here, "deny reality, and embrace an ideology where talk is productive and governments are sincere"; see also this article). Of course, realists want "stability". Well, I'm a neocon, and I think stability is overrated. I happen to think it was right to take out Saddam and his murderous regime. Here is, again (I don't know how many times I've pointed this article out) perhaps the best column of the year, by Mark Steyn, worth quoting at length for the sheer brilliance it is:

Three years ago, in the weeks before the invasion of Iraq, it fell to the then prime minister of Canada to make the most witless public statement on the subject by any G7 leader.

"Your president has won," Jean Chretien told ABC News in early March 2003. So there was no need to have a big ol' war because, with 250,000 American and British troops on his borders, Saddam was "in a box." "He won," said Mr. Chretien of Bush. "He has created a situation where Saddam cannot do anything anymore. He has troops at the door and inspectors on the ground... You're winning it big."

That's easy for him to say, and committing other countries' armies to "contain" Iraq is easy for him to do. A quarter million soldiers cannot sit in the sands of Araby twiddling their thumbs indefinitely. "Containment" is not a strategy but the absence of strategy - and thug states understand it as such. In Saddam's case, he'd supposedly been "contained" since the first Gulf War in 1991, when Bush Sr. balked at finishing what he'd started. "Mr. President," Joe Biden, the Democrat Senator and beloved comic figure, condescendingly explained to Bush Jr. in 2002, "there is a reason your father stopped and did not go to Baghdad. The reason he stopped is he didn't want to be there for five years."

By my math, that means the Americans would have been out in spring of 1996. Instead, 12 years on, in the spring of 2003 the USAF and RAF were still policing the no-fly zone, ineffectually bombing Iraq every other week. And, in place of congratulations for their brilliant "containment" of Saddam, Washington was blamed for UN sanctions and systematically starving to death a million Iraqi kids - or two million, according to which "humanitarian" agency you believe. The few Iraqi moppets who weren't deceased suffered, according to the Nobel-winning playwright and thinker Harold Pinter, from missing genitals and/or rectums that leaked blood contaminated by depleted uranium from Anglo-American ordnance. Touring Iraq a few weeks after the war, I made a point of stopping in every hospital and enquiring about this pandemic of genital-less Iraqis: not a single doctor or nurse had heard about it. Whether or not BUSH LIED!! PEOPLE DIED!!!, it seems that THE ANTI-WAR CROWDS SQUEAK!!! BUT NO RECTUMS LEAK!!!!

A NEW study by the American Enterprise Institute suggests that, aside from the terrific press, continuing this policy would not have come cheap for America: if you object (as John Kerry did) to the $400-600 billion price tag since the war, another three years of "containment" would have cost around $300 billion - and with no end in sight, and the alleged death toll of Iraqi infants no doubt up around six million. It would also have cost more real lives of real Iraqis: Despite the mosque bombings, there's a net gain of more than 100,000 civilians alive today who would have been shoveled into unmarked graves had Ba'athist rule continued. Meanwhile, the dictator would have continued gaming the international system through the Oil-for-Food program, subverting Jordan, and supporting terrorism as far afield as the Philippines.

So three years on, unlike Francis Fukuyama and the other moulting hawks, my only regret is that America didn't invade earlier. Yeah yeah, you sneer, what about the only WMD? Sorry. Don't care. Never did. My argument for whacking Saddam was always that the price of leaving him unwhacked was too high. He was the preeminent symbol of the September 10th world; his continuation in office testified to America's lack of will, and was seen as such by, among others, Osama bin Laden: In Donald Rumsfeld's words, weakness is a provocation. So the immediate objective was to show neighboring thugs that the price of catching America's eye was too high. The long term strategic goal was to begin the difficult but necessary transformation of the region that the British funked when they cobbled together the modern Middle East in 1922.

Realism isn't really a strategy, its more like an absence of one. Let's cross out fingers and close our eyes and hope nothing bad happens. We can sit down with our enemies and settle things by conducting studies and setting up commisions. We can talk rationaly with murders and thugs, and those whose only objective is to kill us.

Spreading democracy may be like "making ice cream out of sand" to Time, but it is really the only solution. And if it doesn't work, nothing really will. Everything else is just short-sighted "realism".

Apologize? Ridiculous. The only thing to apologize for is waiting 12 years to do it.

Give Thanks

To those who keep us safe from tyranny and evil.

WeSupportU

Rumsfeld and the Realists

This is a fantastic article from the Wall Street Journal several days ago.

Rumsfeld and the Realists
Consistency is irrelevant to progressives.

BY MICHAEL RUBIN
Monday, November 13, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

On Dec. 20, 1983, Donald Rumsfeld, then Ronald Reagan's Middle East envoy, met Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. According to declassified documents, the Reagan administration sought to re-establish long-severed relations with Baghdad amid concern about growing Iranian influence. While U.S. intelligence had earlier confirmed Saddam's use of chemical weapons, Mr. Rumsfeld did not broach the subject. His handshake with Saddam, caught on film by Iraqi television, represented a triumph for diplomatic realism.

Iran and Iraq would fight for five more years, leaving hundreds of thousands dead on the battlefield. Then, two years after a ceasefire ended the war, Saddam invaded Kuwait. In subsequent years, he would subsidize waves of Palestinian suicide-bombers, effectively ending the Oslo peace process. Saddam's career is a model of realist blowback.

On Sept. 23, 2002, as Saddam defied international inspectors and U.N. sanctions crumbled under the greed of Paris, Moscow and Iraq's neighbors, Newsweek published a cover story, "How we Helped Create Saddam," that once again thrust the forgotten handshake into public consciousness. Across both the U.S. and Britain, the story provoked press outrage. NPR conducted interviews outlining how the Reagan administration allowed Saddam to acquire dual-use equipment. Mr. Rumsfeld "helped Iraq get chemical weapons," headlined London's Daily Mail. British columnist Robert Fisk concluded that the handshake was evidence of Mr. Rumsfeld's disdain for human rights, and Amy and David Goodman of "Democracy Now!" condemned Mr. Rumsfeld for enabling Saddam's "lethal shopping spree." While 20 years too late, progressives decried the cold, realist calculations that sent people across the third world to their graves in the cause of U.S. national interest.

What a difference a war makes. Today, progressives and liberals celebrate not only Mr. Rumsfeld's departure, but the resurrection of realists like Secretary of Defense-nominee Robert Gates and James Baker. Mr. Gates was the CIA's deputy director for intelligence at the time of Mr. Rumsfeld's infamous handshake, deputy director of Central Intelligence when Saddam gassed the Kurds, and deputy national security advisor when Saddam crushed the Shiite uprising. Mr. Baker was as central. He was White House chief of staff when Reagan dispatched Mr. Rumsfeld to Baghdad and, as secretary of state, ensured Saddam's grip on power after Iraqis heeded President George H.W. Bush's Feb. 15, 1991, call for "the Iraqi people \[to\] take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein the dictator to step aside." In the months that followed, Saddam massacred tens of thousands of civilians.

While Mr. Rumsfeld worked to right past wrongs, Messrs. Gates and Baker winked at the Iraqi dictator's continuing grip on power. For progressives, this is irrelevant. Today, progressivism places personal vendetta above principle. Mr. Rumsfeld is bad, Mr. Baker is good, and consistency irrelevant.

***Progressive inconsistency will only increase with the unveiling of the Baker-Hamilton commission recommendations calling for reconciliation with both Syria and Iran. In effect, Mr. Baker's proposals are to have the White House replicate the Rumsfeld-Saddam handshake with both Syrian President Bashar Assad and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The parallels are striking. First, just as Saddam denied Kuwait's right to exist, Mr. Assad refuses to recognize Lebanese independence (Damascus has no embassy in Beirut) and Mr. Ahmadinejad calls for Israel's eradication. Washington realpolitik enabled Saddam to act out his fantasies; evidence suggests both Mr. Assad and Mr. Ahmadinejad aspire to do likewise.

Second, just as the Reagan-era Rumsfeld turned a blind eye toward Iraqi chemical weapons, so too does Mr. Baker now counsel ignoring their embrace by the Syrian and Iranian leadership. Tehran used chemical munitions in its war against Iraq, and senior Iranian officials have also threatened first-strike use of nuclear weapons. Syria is just as dangerous: On April 20, 2004, Jordanian security intercepted Syrian-based terrorists planning to target Amman with 20 tons of chemical weapons. Mr. Assad has yet to explain the incident.

And, third, there is the issue of detente enabling armament. Following his rapprochement with Washington, Saddam transformed investment into replenishment. The cost of ejecting Iraqi forces from Kuwait was far greater than any benefit borne of engagement.

Trade with Tehran has likewise backfired. Between 2000 and 2005, European Union trade with Iran almost tripled. During this same period, Iranian authorities used their hard currency windfall not to invest in schools and hospitals, but rather in uranium processing plants and anti-aircraft batteries. Mohammad Khatami, Mr. Ahmadinejad's predecessor and a man often labeled reformist by U.S. and European realists, showed the Islamic Republic's priorities when he spent two-thirds of his oil-boom windfall on the military. Said Mr. Khatami on April 18, 2002: "Today our army is one of the most powerful in the world. . . . It has become self-sufficient, and is on the road to further development." Subsequent discovery of Iran's covert nuclear facilities later that year clarified his boast. The Assad regime has shown its willingness to spend its discretionary income on a wide-range of weaponry and terror groups.

Realism promotes short-term gain, often at the expense of long-term security. With hindsight, it is clear that Mr. Rumsfeld's handshake with Saddam backfired. While it may have constrained Iran in the short-term, its blowback in terms of blood and treasure has been immense.

Why then do so many progressives then celebrate the return of realism? The reasons are multifold. First, having allowed personal animosities to dominate their ideology, they embrace change, regardless of how it impacts stated principles. Hatred of Mr. Rumsfeld became a principle in itself. Likewise, the same progressives who disparage John Bolton seldom explain why they feel forcing the U.N. to account for its inefficiencies or stick to its founding principles is bad. They complain not of his performance, but rather of his pedigree.

Second is a tendency to conflate analysis with advocacy. Progressives find themselves in a situation where they both embrace realism but deny reality. An Oct. 13 Chronicle of Higher Education article regarding a Columbia University professor's attacks on Azar Nafisi, author of "Reading Lolita in Tehran," highlighted the issue: "The conundrum, say these \[Middle East studies\] scholars, is how to voice opposition to the actions of the Islamic Republic without being co-opted by those who seek external regime change in Iran through a military attack." By embracing a canard, intellectuals convinced themselves of the nobility of ignoring evidence. Thus, Western feminists march alongside Islamists who seek their subjection while progressive labor activists join with Republican realists to ignore Tehran's attacks on bus drivers seeking an independent union, even as a Gdansk-type movement offers the best hope for peaceful change in Iran.

Both realism and progressivism have become misnomers. Realists deny reality, and embrace an ideology where talk is productive and governments are sincere. While 9/11 showed the consequences of chardonnay diplomacy, deal-cutting with dictators and a band-aid approach to national security, realists continue to discount the importance of adversaries' ideologies and the need for long-term strategies. And by embracing such realism, progressives sacrifice their core liberalism. Both may celebrate Mr. Rumsfeld's departure and the Baker-Hamilton recommendations, but at some point, it is fair to ask what are the lessons of history and what is the cost of abandoning principle.

Lets not Jump to Conclusions

As Rich Lowry points out:

One myth of the elction:

—President Bush now must give up on the Iraq War. The rebuke to Bush was unquestionably an expression of voters’ frustration with the progress of the war, but they are not ready to give up yet. According to pollster Whit Ayers, less than one-third of voters favor withdrawal. A late-October New York Times poll found that 55 percent of the public favors sending more troops to Iraq, a position now endorsed by the paper’s liberal editorial board. Bush still has a window to take decisive action to reverse the downward slide in Iraq.

Just because people are upset with how its going, doesn't mean they favor retreat.

Lest We Forget

And apparently some people have. The media show terrorist propaganda videos but won't show the WTC getting hit.

CLICK HERE

Media Bias

After the election, this topic was on my mind the most, by far, because (mostly) of the war. This does no make me feel any better, but it hits the nail right on the head and amounted to almost exactly what was going through my mind:

The Media's Dark Role
By: Douglas MacKinnon

Nov. 7, 2006, will be remembered as the day the Democratic Party took back control of Congress for three distinct and critically important reasons.

First and foremost was the series of Republican missteps -- such as corruption, the leadership turning a blind eye to the corruption, budget-busting earmarks and a lack of real action on illegal immigration. These actions not only suppressed the vote for the Republican Party, but actually energized a number of Democratic voters.

Second was the number of incredibly well-run Democratic campaigns and their own very impressive get-out-the-vote machine. This was great stuff by any honest assessment.

Third, Nov. 7 needs to be remembered for something even Republicans don't have the stomach to address at the moment: that the remnants of objectivity in the mainstream media were all but exterminated by some on the left. A chilling and ominous development that played some role in the Democratic wave that is still splashing around the red states.

Make no mistake. Along with the multitude of Republican gaffes, and the hard work of the Democrats, there can be no doubt that the left-of-center mainstream media helped to manufacture this election victory for the Democratic Party. For parts of the last two years, many in the media have worked in concert with the Democratic spin doctors to indoctrinate the American voter into believing this election had to be a referendum on President Bush and the "failed" war in Iraq.

Horrified by Mr. Bush's re-election in 2004, as well as the historic Republican gains in the House and the Senate that year, some liberals in the media were determined to do everything in their power to ensure that there was no GOP celebration in 2006, even if that meant confirming to the world that they proudly abandon professionalism and ethics in the name of partisanship and ideology.

To make the election of 2006 a referendum on Mr. Bush and "his" war, the media knew full well they had to present that conflict in the worst possible light for as long as possible on their nightly newscasts, cable programs and front pages. Then, after force-feeding the American people a steady diet of this carnage for weeks at a time, the same media outlets would then "poll" the voters to get their impressions of Iraq and Mr. Bush.

Amazingly, against the protests of soldiers fighting and dying in Iraq, the mainstream media stuck with this partisan plan to only showcase the negative, the misery and the gore. They ignored the pleas of these soldiers to show that not only did they liberate a nation from a genocidal tyrant, but with compassion and great decency (often at the cost of their own lives), they helped to rebuild the country and connect with its people on a much-needed human level. The good far out-numbers the bad in Iraq, but the good was the enemy of a Democratic victory on Nov. 7.

Worse than becoming a public-relations arm for the Democrats, did some in the media actually aid and abet al Qaeda with their biased coverage? It has been fully documented that al Qaeda and the insurgents believe that if you kill enough American soldiers and have those deaths played on a loop by the American media, then the American people and their politicians will grow weak in the knee and call for a withdrawal.

Knowing that to be a stated goal of al Qaeda, and just before the election, CNN still decided to take a horrific video given to them by the insurgents, and put it on the air for the world to see. And just what was on this video? Only heroic American soldiers being murdered in cold blood by al Qaeda snipers. Other than to damage the administration or advance a partisan agenda, why would CNN air such disgusting footage?

Next, to all but ensure the desired outcome, a number of left-of-center "journalists" decided it was necessary to prematurely crown the Democrats the victors. Their thinking was that if you tell a lie or predetermine the results often enough, it becomes fact. So, months before the election, on the front page of the top one hundred left-of-center newspapers in the United States -- with a readership well north of 70 million people -- banner headlines proclaimed that the Democrats were all but certain to take both houses of Congress. Day after day, week after week, these liberal papers foretold a future beneficial to the Democrats.

This is a future that has now come true. To be sure, the majority of the blame rests with the Republican Party and its lemming-like march to become what it defeated in 1994. That said, it is not partisan, nor out of line, to ask if some in the media carried water for the Democrats in this election.

While it is certainly true that left-of-center media outlets continue to hemorrhage readers and viewers in search of fairness and balance, for the moment they don't seem to care. Because of the unethical actions of some within their industry, they helped determine an election.

The Democrats won, but democracy has paid a price. Who in the media is willing to address that?

Immigration

I got this in my email, worth quoting at length:

AMERICAN VOTERS DID not TURN AGAINST TOUGHER ENFORCEMENT OR LOWER IMMIGRATION.

I have some important new statistics that should give you comfort -- and that you may want to share with a lot of others. Oh, I'm sure you've seen or read discouraging claims from Fred Barnes, Michael Barone, the Wall Street Journal, the L.A. Times, Tamar Jacoby or dozens of ivory tower newspaper editorial writers since the congressional election returns this week. Their spin is everywhere. According to them, the Republicans' loss of the House of Representatives -- and particularly the loss of Randy Graf and J.D. Hayworth in Arizona -- proves that getting tough on illegal immigration is a political loser.
But consider this:

11.5% of all Republican seats in Congress were lost as Democrats took back control of Congress
But only 6.7% of the Members of Tancredo's Immigration Reform Caucus lost their seats.

I've seen various open-borders organizations even talk about Tancredo's Caucus being decimated! It just wasn't true. Members of the get-tough Caucus fared quite a bit better than Republicans in general. Caroline Espinosa, our NumbersUSA Media Coordinator, tells me most of the journalists to whom she has spoken understand that Republicans were swept from office because of high voter disgust at Republican scandals and frustration with Pres. Bush and particularly the war -- not because most Republican Members of Congress were the only force that stopped Pres. Bush and the Democrats from passing a massive amnesty. Unfortunately, many other journalists are not bothering to seek balanced information, do not call us and then rush out with the most ridiculous analysis of the election results. I hope you will help get the real story out to your friends, colleagues, neighbors and family as the subject comes up -- and to the public through letters to the editor of newspapers and by phoning radio talk shows (both local and national). Take a look at these additional percentages of Republicans who lost their elections:

Loss of Election by Republicans Based on Their Immigration-Reduction Grade of This Congress 9.6% with an A grade lost
25.0% with an F grade lost
9.2% with a B grade lost
6.4% with a C grade lost
9.5% with a D grade lost

There simply was no evidence that Members lost support because they were tougher on illegal immigration and on importing foreign workers. Exit polling failed to show any sign that voters disliked the immigration-reduction positions of the Republicans they were turning out of office. Rather, the polling found they were voting primarily on the basis of scandals and the war.

WHAT DID ARIZONA REALLY SHOW? Not a victory for the McCain AmnestyA number of commentators said the voting by Arizonans proved the lack of popularity of tough enforcement, even in a state with extreme levels of illegal immigration. And they say that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was the clear winner as voters showed they preferred his amnesty plan to enforcement-only. They say that because of the defeats of Republican congressional candidate Randy Graf and incumbent Rep. J.D. Hayworth who campaigned against McCain's amnesty and were beaten by Democrats who said they favored the Republican senator's amnesty (although their ads and public speeches obscured that behind a lot of tough talk about borders). But here is the counter evidence:

Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ) was re-elected easily in the statewide race in which he clearly opposed McCain's amnesty and the (extremely well-funded) Democrat clearly supported McCain's amnesty. Kyl was particularly vulnerable because he has been a loyal supporter of Bush's war effort which Arizonans apparently hate. But voters there apparently gave him a pass on his Bush ties because of his other qualities, one of the most known of which is his law and order approach to immigration.

In another statewide show of support for the immigration-reduction position, Arizona voters overwhelmingly approved ballot referenda that further toughen some already tough state laws against illegal aliens. The approved referenda will deny some state benefits to illegal immigrants, declare English the state's official language and bar illegal aliens from collecting punitive damages in civil lawsuits and from getting out of jail on bail if they commit serious crimes.

Polling of likely voters in Arizona and other battleground states and congressional districts found that large majorities of not only Republicans but of Independents and Democrats in all of them share our NumbersUSA desires for Attrition Through Enforcement on illegal immigration and reduced legal immigration.

So, what happened to Graf and Hayworth?

Some independent commentators say their loss was not due to their taking strong positions against illegal aliens but to their not talking enough about other issues. There was a sense among many voters that the two didn't have a broad enough agenda, the commentators said.

But Graf was also severely damaged by the fact that the retiring Republican Congressman (Kolbe) refused to endorse him and that huge amounts of national Republican money was used to advertise against him in the primary (which he won) as an extremist who had no chance to win. Then, when he won, the national Republicans refused to help him defeat the Democrat.

The treatment of Graf was one of the developments that has caused many people to contact me with their suspicion that the Bush political machine actually wanted House Republicans to lose their majority so he could work with Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to push through his amnesty.

It is difficult for me to go that far on a Bush Team conspiracy. But there is no doubt that many of that Team are happy that the Republicans' losses have caused so many in the media to suggest that Bush can now get some cooperation on his amnesty.

Graf and Hayworth have been the most talked about election losers because the extravagantly funded open borders media machine pushed their story as being the one that would explain everything about voters' opinions about immigration.

But my statistics at the top of this Alert show that one could just as easily have focused on the losses of Republicans who support McCain's amnesty.

For example, Sen. DeWine (R-OH) was defeated, a tremendous victory for our side, as he has been one of McCain's chief tools on the Senate Judiciary Committee in pushing the open borders agenda. I will not claim that his horribly anti-Ohio-worker immigration stance was the reason he lost. But the somewhat higher incidence of McCain-type Republicans losing than Tom Tancredo-type Republicans losing ought to put a stop to claims that tough immigration positions were behind the Republicans losses.

We also know that in some races, the tough immigration stance helped stave off the anti-Bush tide and allowed a Republican to win. A key example would be the Roskam (R) & Duckworth (D) race for an open seat in Illinois' 6th District. The two traded aggressive charges on each other over the immigration issue, with Roskam pledging immigration toughness and charging Duckworth with supporting an amnesty. That brought Sen. Obama (D-IL) into the fray, saying that both Duckworth and he oppose an amnesty but support Republican Sen. McCain's "comprehensive" legislation. But McCain's bill was defined well enough in the campaign that most voters understood that it would give permanent residence to some 12 million illegal aliens.

Republican Roskam's immigration toughness approach won.

Democrat Duckworth's McCain amnesty approach lost.

Yet, the Washington Post analysis on immigration in the election states that the get-tough approach failed virtually everywhere.
ARE THE NEW DEMOCRATS REALLY CONSERVATIVES WHO WILL VOTE OUR IMMIGRATION-REDUCTION AGENDA?

There was a lot of press before the election and TV commentary the night of the returns suggesting that many of the Democrats who beat Republicans were really pretty conservative and not that different from the Republicans they are replacing.

Then there was a rush of commentary since the election that the new Democrats in Congress may be pro-guns and anti-gay-marriage but that they are really typical economic liberals.

I still owe you a more detailed look at the new Democratic Members of Congress. But my assessment thus far is that most of these three dozen have indeed taken some conservative positions on hot-button social issues and more liberal positions on helping the working classes. But they aren't so much liberal or conservative as they are populist.

If they have some strong populist streaks, we've got a good shot at helping them truly help the working classes on immigration.

Liberal politics' most venerable magazine, The Nation, seems to have confirmed my optimism with an editorial this week that started with the paradox of Hayworth and Graf's defeats and the passage of the statewide anti-illegal alien referenda and then stated:

"It seems voters rejected anti-immigrant vitriol when it spewed from the mouths of candidates, but when that same rhetoric came in the faceless form of citizen's initiatives that mixed fiscal austerity with xenophobia -- voters swallowed the bait. Why should your tax dollars go to services for illegal immigrants? This was the message that anti-immigrant forces took to Arizonans. It was classic Lou Dobbs, class vs. race, and it worked.

"The apparent appeal of this message is what makes me nervous about the rising blue tide of economic populism in the Democratic Party. Raising the minimum wage and beating back the worst of free-market capitalism are all good things, of course. But Democrats have a long history of pandering to white, working-class 'Reagan Democrats' while cutting and running on racial minorities. Most recently, a raft of Democrats voted to build a fence along the US-Mexico border, including Prez. hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. It was a do-nothing, symbolic vote, but it doesn't bode well for what will happen next on the "common ground" Bush and Dems hope to find on immigration issues.

"As Roberto Lovato points out, 'The crop of House and Senate members-elect includes many Democrats whose positions on immigration hardly differ from the border first Republicans they ousted.' "

I wish I could be quite so optimistic, but I think the three dozen new Democrats are closer to Graf's and Hayworth's immigration positions than they are to the presumed new Speaker of the House Pelosi's.

It will be up to all of our activism whether they end up voting on their constituents (and our) behalf or on Pelosi's (and The Nation's).

And I have hope that most of these new Democrats will join up with genuine Democratic populists who already are championing our cause -- Sen. Dorgan (D-ND), Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), Sen. Byrd (D-WV), Rep. Lincoln Davis (D-TN), as examples. It is possible that a revved up core of Democratic populists could become what The Nation fears most and avoid racial polarization in favor of helping Americans of all ethnicities who are economically harmed by massive foreign labor flows. And if that happens, these Democrats could actually improve the "political soul" of the Republicans who are solidly on the side of immigration reduction.

It is around this kind of populist morality that we may see a middle-ground meeting of Republicans and Democrats that will show the true bi-partisanship that the media so desperately seems to covet.

It is also possible that the much larger role of Democrats in the still-Republican dominated immigration-reduction coalition will cause the media and many others to stop thinking of our immigration problems and solutions in terms of "conservative" or "liberal," much broadening the appeal of the solutions as being also "mainstream."

In my time on Capitol Hill after the elections, I got strong assurance from people who work regularly with the Blue Dog Democrat Coalition (most of whom vote with us on immigration) that most of the New Democrats should be inclined to join the Blue Dogs -- and that we will fail to get most of the new votes only if we fail to increase our level of activism.
A WORD ABOUT WHAT THE HOUSE REPUBLICANS FAILED TO DO RIGHT
The media are having a great time wagging their fingers at House Republicans and saying they were fools to think that standing tough against Bush's amnesty would save their majority.

They say that the House Republicans tried to sell the voters a fence when what the voters wanted was "comprehensive" answers to our immigration crisis.

That assessment is both wrong and right.

In fact, the House Republicans (with nearly 40 Democrats) last December passed "comprehensive" legislation (H.R. 4437) that dealt (a) with the border, (b) with workplace enforcement, (c) with interior enforcement, (d) with what to do with the illegal aliens already here (arrest somewhat more of them but mainly make life worse for them to cause them to go home on their own -- ATTRITION THROUGH ENFORCEMENT) and to (e)deal with the labor needs of this country by beginning to REDUCE the annual number of new legal immigrants.

But when the Senate (primarily Democrats, plus McCain and his minority GOP team) and the President indicated they would not budge in September, House Republican leaders timidly forced through only the fence and a couple of other technicalities.

Those of us representing NumbersUSA (and you) on Capitol Hill met in late August and early September with top GOP leadership offices. We warned them that voters would not give Republicans credit -- and would not really trust their sincerity -- if they did not try to force through a substantial part of the workplace enforcement they had passed last December in the comprehensive bill.

We told them that the fence alone would likely not get them any political mileage -- just as the fence alone will not likely do much to deter illegal immigration (especially if we don't have mandatory workplace verification).

And then, Republican national leaders who assembled ads to try to help Republican candidates on the basis of their toughness on immigration tended to miss the powerful populist, pro-worker message.
OPTIMISM FOR IMMIGRATION REDUCTION FROM A DEMOCRATJoe Guzzardi ran as a Democrat for Governor of California during the recall election a few years ago. He teaches English to immigrants and writes columns in newspapers and on the internet. You can read his entire column at: http://www.vdare.com/guzzardi/061110_chide.htm

Here are a few excerpts: To all my Republican immigration reform friends and colleagues, I have two words for you—“Chill out!”

During our movement’s moment of greatest triumph—the complete electoral humiliation of President George W. Bush, we should be basking in our glory at our collective victory.

Instead, most of you are wringing your hands and speculating on a worst-case scenario that would include amnesty for illegal aliens and various guest worker programs that will add greatly to the legal immigrant population.

But amnesty ain’t happening today, tomorrow or anytime soon.

Here’s why.

If we mount our typical fierce counter-insurgent assault on Congressional sensibilities by focusing on proving that amnesty would reduce to almost zero most incumbent’s Congressional 2008 re-election chances and therefore (in the broader picture) on retaining Democratic House control, we can cut the traitors off at the pass.

The election was not so much a triumph for the Democrats—remember, I am one—as it was a mandate for responsible, responsive government.

And if the Democrats should decide to ram through an amnesty in either the waning days 109th Congress or anytime during the 110th, they will rue the day.

If Bush bucks GOP sentiment by double-dealing with Pelosi, he can write off Republican support for prospective legislation during his remaining two years.

And if you are fretting about what might happen when the new Congress takes office in January 2007, consider that these Democratic representatives are only just months off the campaign trail—where they got an earful about amnesty—but within a few months of embarking on their re-election tour where voters will be harshly assessing their progress in the illegal immigration wars.

Do you really think that these new Congressmen—many of whom will face their same 2006 opponents—are going to vote for amnesty? Can you think of any surer way to lose in 2008?
FROM A CONSERVATIVE MAGAZINE: OPTIMISM FOR IMMIGRATION REDUCTIONI've quote from the liberal magazine The Nation, the following came from National Review, written by Mark Krikiorian, the head of the Center for Immigration Studies. You can read all of it at: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZjM1YmEwZmNiMDBiOGIwOTQ3NDc3N2Q4MWEwMDViM2Q=
Here are some excerpts that I think will add to your understanding of our political situation and hopefully encourage you to be of good cheer and of great engagement in the fight:

Before election night was even over, White House spokesman Tony Snow said the Democratic takeover of the House presented “interesting opportunities,” including a chance to pass “comprehensive immigration reform” — i.e., the president’s plan for an illegal-alien amnesty and enormous increases in legal immigration, which failed only because of House Republican opposition.

At his press conference Wednesday, the president repeated this sentiment ...

Tamar Jacoby, the tireless amnesty supporter at the otherwise conservative Manhattan Institute, in a recent piece in Foreign Affairs eagerly anticipated a Republican defeat ...

In Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria shares Jacoby’s cluelessness about Flyover Land: “The great obstacle to immigration reform has been a noisy minority. … Come Tuesday, the party will be over. CNN’s Lou Dobbs and his angry band of xenophobes will continue to rail, but a new Congress, with fewer Republicans and no impending primary elections, would make the climate much less vulnerable to the tyranny of the minority.”

And fellow immigration enthusiast Fred Barnes earlier this week blamed the coming Republican defeat in part on the failure to pass an amnesty and increase legal immigration: “But imagine if Republicans had agreed on a compromise and enacted a ‘comprehensive’ — Mr. Bush’s word — immigration bill, dealing with both legal and illegal immigrants. They’d be justifiably basking in their accomplishment. The American public, except for nativist diehards, would be thrilled.”

“Emerging consensus”? “Nativist diehards”? Jacoby and her fellow-travelers seem to actually believe the results from her hilariously skewed polling questions, and those of the mainstream media, all larded with pro-amnesty codewords like “comprehensive reform” and “earned legalization,” and offering respondents the false choice of mass deportations or amnesty.

More responsible polling employing neutral language (avoiding accurate but potentially provocative terminology like “amnesty” and “illegal alien”) finds something very different. In a recent national survey by Kellyanne Conway, when told the level of immigration, 68 percent of likely voters said it was too high and only 2 percent said it was too low. Also, when offered the full range of choices of what to do about the existing illegal population, voters rejected both the extremes of legalization (“amnesty” to you and me) and mass deportations; instead, they preferred the approach of this year’s House bill, which sought attrition of the illegal population through consistent immigration law enforcement. Finally, three fourths of likely voters agreed that we have an illegal immigration problem because past enforcement efforts have been “grossly inadequate,” as opposed to the open-borders crowd’s contention that illegal immigration is caused by overly restrictive immigration rules.

...

What’s more, if legalizing illegals is so widely supported by the electorate, how come no Democrats campaigned on it? Not all were as tough as Brad Ellsworth, the Indiana sheriff who defeated House Immigration Subcommittee Chairman Hostettler, or John Spratt of South Carolina, whose immigration web pages might as well have been written by Tom Tancredo. But even those nominally committed to “comprehensive” reform stressed enforcement as job one. And the national party’s “Six for 06” rip-off of the Contract with America said not a word about immigration reform, “comprehensive” or otherwise.

The only exception to this “Whatever you do, don’t mention the amnesty” approach appears to have been Jim Pederson, the Democrat who challenged Sen. Jon Kyl (a grade of B) by touting a Bush-McCain-Kennedy-style amnesty and foreign-worker program and even praised the 1986 amnesty, which pretty much everyone now agrees was a catastrophe.

Pederson lost.

Speaker Pelosi has a single mission for the next two years — to get her majority reelected in 2008. She may be a loony leftist (F- on immigration), but she and Rahm Emanuel (F) seem to be serious about trying to create a bigger tent in order to keep power, and adopting the Bush-McCain-Kennedy amnesty would torpedo those efforts. Sure, it’s likely that they’ll try to move piecemeal amnesties like the DREAM Act (HR 5131 in the current Congress), or increase H-1B visas (the indentured-servitude program for low-wage Indian computer programmers). They might also push the AgJobs bill, which is a sizable amnesty limited to illegal-alien farmworkers. None of these measures is a good idea, and Republicans might still be able to delay or kill them, but they aren’t the “comprehensive” disaster the president and the Democrats really want.

Any mass-amnesty and worker-importation scheme would take a while to get started, and its effects would begin showing up in the newspapers and in people’s workplaces right about the time the next election season gets under way. And despite the sophistries of open-borders

A Referendum on the War?

No, not really. Here's why:

It was not a referendum on Iraq. One of the most pro-Iraq lawmakers in Congress, Sen. Joe Lieberman, ran as an independent and trounced anti-Iraq Democratic nominee Ned Lamont. Meanwhile, of the five remaining Republican members of Congress who voted against Iraq's liberation, three lost: Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R.I.), Rep. John Hostettler (Ind.) and Rep. Jim Leach (Iowa). Only two anti-Iraq Republicans will return to the 110th Congress: Reps. Jimmy Duncan (Tenn.) and Ron Paul (Texas).

The Associated Press reports that while "three-fourths of voters said corruption and scandal were important to their votes, . . . Iraq was important for just two-thirds." Both groups tended to favor Democrats. (LINK)

And as Mona Charen points out:

The war in Iraq was cited as an “extremely,” “very,” or “somewhat” important factor in the votes of 89 percent of the electorate according to exit polls. But the war on terror was cited by 92 percent voters as important to their votes. These nearly cancel each other out, as those who cited Iraq as crucial tended to vote Democrat and those who cited terror tended to vote Republican.

Meanwhile, 57 percent of voters said they either “strongly” or “somewhat” disapproved of the job George Bush was doing as president, but more (61 percent) said they disapproved of Congress. Why Congress? Other polling, conducted before Election Day, found that 75 percent of voters were concerned about political corruption.

Really, it had more to do with politicians. (and I can't really blame anyone for that. The republicans stopped being conservatives and were content being politicians)

In Jonah Goldberg's words:

In other words, just as Democrats insisted, the GOP's drubbing had more to do with incompetence and scandal than program and ideology.

Indeed, if the conservative base hadn't been disgusted with Republican management, and if so many Democrats hadn't run as social conservatives, the GOP might have done just fine in this election.

Republicans lost because they behaved like self-indulgent politicians, not purists. Conservatives care a lot about ideas, so that's where we'll try to assign blame. But the ideologues aren't to blame. The Republicans are.

So, what do the Dems want to do?

A 25 point manifesto:

1. Mandatory homosexuality

2. Drug-filled condoms in schools

3. Introduce the new Destruction of Marriage Act

4. Border fence replaced with free shuttle buses

5. Osama Bin Laden to be Secretary of State

6. Withdraw from Iraq, apologize, reinstate Hussein

7. English language banned from all Federal buildings

8. Math classes replaced by encounter groups

9. All taxes to be tripled

10. All fortunes over $250,000 to be confiscated

11. On-demand welfare

12. Tofurkey to be named official Thanksgiving dish

13. Freeways to be removed, replaced with light rail systems

14. Pledge of Allegiance in schools replaced with morning flag-burning

15. Stem cells allowed to be harvested from any child under the age of 8

16. Comatose people to be ground up and fed to poor

17. Quarterly mandatory abortion lottery

18. God to be mocked roundly

19. Dissolve Executive Branch: reassign responsibilities to UN

20. Jane Fonda to be appointed Secretary of Appeasement

21. Outlaw all firearms: previous owners assigned to anger management therapy

22. Texas returned to Mexico

23. Ban Christmas: replace with Celebrate our Monkey Ancestors Day

24. Carter added to Mount Rushmore

25. Modify USA's motto to "Land of the French and the home of the brave"

Election 2006

This is pretty much what I've been mulling over all day: The ridiculous number of Democrats who ran as conservatives, in what Thomas Sowell calls a New Voter Fraud:

There is no real question that Democrats are more skilled at politics than the Republicans are. Democrats are more articulate, not to say glib, and they know how to stick together.

You don't see individual Democrats in the Senate going off to do their own thing in concert with the opposition and against the interest of their own party, as Senator John McCain has done with so-called "campaign finance reform" co-sponsored with ultra-liberal Senator Russ Feingold, and as he attempted to do on immigration with liberal icon Ted Kennedy.

Democrats know better than to betray their base of supporters — welfare state beneficiaries, the teachers' unions, environmental zealots, the ACLU and tort lawyers — the way the elder President Bush betrayed his supporters who relied on his "no new taxes" pledge and the way the current President Bush betrayed them by attempting to create amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants.

Republicans have too often forgotten the old-time admonition to the girl going to a party, to always remember to "dance with the one who brung you."

Even some Republicans have said privately that the Democrats have the edge in playing the game of politics. Given the greater political shrewdness of the Democrats and the overwhelming bias of the media in their favor, it is remarkable that Republicans have had any political success at all.

That the Republicans are still a viable party is one measure of how far the Democrats' policies and values differ from those of most Americans.

Nowhere is that difference greater than when it comes to defending the American people against crime at home and against military and terrorist threats from abroad. Liberal Democrats — which is to say, most Democratic politicians and all of their leaders — are ready to try almost any "alternatives to incarceration" of criminals and almost any alternative to maintaining military strength as a deterrent to enemy nations.

More is involved than an unwillingness to face unpleasant facts of life. There is a coherent ideology behind these positions. That ideology goes back more than two centuries — and has failed in country after country over those centuries. But it is an ideology that sounds good and flatters the vanity of those who consider themselves part of a wise and compassionate elite. Republicans have too eclectic a collection of beliefs to beat the Democrats on a purely ideological basis. Moreover, the liberal vision is a more attractive vision because it assumes away many of the painful and even brutal aspects of human life, especially the fatal dangers of relying on words when dealing with people who only respect force that is backed up by a willingness to use it.

Facts are the only real antidote to a seductive vision. But facts do not "speak for themselves." Somebody has to articulate those facts and explain their implications. The liberal media will certainly not do it and too often the Republicans do it badly or not at all.

How many people are aware that the black-white income difference and the male-female income difference both narrowed during the 1980s — that is, during the Reagan administration? Democrats talked a better game on both fronts and to this day are widely regarded as the best hope, if not the only hope, for minorities and women.

How many people are aware that crime rates soared when liberal ideas became part of the criminal justice system in the 1960s and only began declining in the 1980s after more criminals were put behind bars and kept there a longer time?

Democrats have learned to avoid admitting to being liberals and this year are running a number of moderate candidates.

If these new moderate candidates are elected and give the Democrats control of Congress, that control will be exercised by senior Democrats who will hold leadership positions — and all of them are liberal extremists, whether people like Nancy Pelosi in the House or Ted Kennedy and John Kerry in the Senate.

Getting people to vote for moderates, in order to put extremists in power, may be the newest and biggest voter fraud.

I think this blog might see more regular updates....

Pre-Election Reading

There have been a ton of good articles leading up to the election. In case you need a reminder on who to vote for, check these stories out:

Eye of the beholder

The Enemy Fails in Iraq's Bloody Ramadan, the Forces of Chaos Lose

Some Dems want to Raise SS Tax

Health Insurance More Expensive? Perhaps thats by Design!

And I forgot the others...

And to put what you hear in perspective:

Study: Big Three Tilt vs. GOP

And a little humor from those poor morons in Iraq: