Is It Go Time?

Tuning in TV this morning brought the inevitable images of massive civilian casualties that Hezbollah must be hoping for. Despite warnings from the Israeli's for civilians to evacuate from this area that has been used to launch missiles, something like forty children may have been killed.

I believe it was Golda Meir who said, "I can forgive Arabs for killing Israeli children. I cannot forgive Arabs for making Israeli's kill Arab children."

An Israeli official appearing on This Week rightly pointed out that it is a war crime for combatants to hide among civilians, and for civilians to aid combatants, both of which are likely to have happened here.

Naturally, the images of the errant Israeli airstrike are on an endless loop on Al Arabiya, and Al Jazeera, and of course the "Arab Street" is inflamed. Has there ever been a time when the Arab street hasn't been inflamed? Over my entire life, I imagine I have seen more images of enraged Arabs burning American flags that I've seen Seinfeld reruns.

Show me a pro-American demonstration sometime. That'd be news.

The tragic reality is that Israel is going to have to keep right on killing civilians until such time that the civilians and their governments realize that it is folly to keep harboring terrorists. Let's hope they figure it out soon.

Where's Al Qaeda?

It wasn't that long ago that all we heard from the left was that Iraq was "a distraction", had "nothing to do with the war on terror", that we "took our eye off the ball".

My question to them today would be, "Where's Al Qaeda?" Isn't it odd that Al Qaeda has been reduced to a sideshow now that Saddam is gone? Hmmm...

Today, Chris Matthews goes on about a "Shia Crescent" that runs from Tehran to Beirut. Removing Saddam has now "empowered Iran". I wonder, will Mr. Matthews still think Iran has been empowered after Hezbollah has been demolished?

Youse guys just don't get it.

Sunday's Buffalo News offered a great example of how public opinion is formed. Actually, two great examples. The first, on the front page, is in a weaselly feature the paper runs most Sundays called "Behind the Headlines". "Behind the Headlines" exists in a journalistic nether world that floats somewhere between news and editorial.

It's on the front page, which I would think would lead most readers to believe it's news, or factual reporting. In reality, it's thinly disguised editorializing, full of conjecture, and short on fact. The headline starts us off in the opinionated direction. "Foreign Policy is Crisis-laden". Now, I'm not saying foreign policy isn't crisis-laden, but really, when hasn't it been? The sub-headline reads, "Faced with multiple crises, the Bush administration appears to be losing steam on the world stage." Really? I thought the Twin Towers coming down was sort of a low point.

What business do the words "Appears to be losing steam" have on the front page of a newspaper? What does that mean? Appears to be losing steam to whom? I don't know how much "steam" the administration ever had in the eyes of these reporters.

"I am hard-pressed to think of any other moment in modern times when there have been so many challenges facing this country simultaneously," said Richard Haass, a former senior Bush administration official who heads the Council on Foreign Relations. "The danger is that Mr. Bush will hand over a White House to a successor that will face a far messier world, with far fewer resources left to cope with it."

Yea, right. Unlike the pristine condition the country and the world were in when Bush took office. Let's see, stock market and economy tanking; Enron, Worldcom, Tyco and Adelphia all undiscovered, Saddam Hussein safe in Baghdad robbing Oil for Food blind with help from the Russians, French and Germans, Osama bin Laden comfortably plotting 9/11 from his safe haven in Afghanistan, Khaddafi with his WMD programs intact. But we were on good terms with the French.

What the article doesn't mention about Mr. Haass is that he worked in the State Department under Colin Powell. No disrespect to General Powell, but he was canned. Might Mr. Haass be grinding an ax here?

My larger point is that a piece like this simply has no place on the front page of a newspaper. I think your average Joe Sixpack reads this article and comes away with the impression that things are going very badly. The next day, a pollster calls, and Joe is going to give the President a bad report. And that's how public opinion gets shaped.

This isn't journalism, it's a product placement. Richard Haass' publicist probably got that quote placed in that article the way a Marlboro gets placed in a movie actor's hand.

I remember reading once that people tend to believe things they read, more so than things they hear. It must be true, because I believed it. The second piece is shameful in a different way. It's a puff piece on Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times.

The Times, of course, has recently broken entirely new ground by publishing the details of a classified program that tracked terrorist money transfers through an international financial clearinghouse known as SWIFT. For terrorists, the ability to move money around is essential, For those who would deter them, being able to track those transfers is quite simply a matter of life and death.

Someone who works in intelligence broke the law by revealing these secrets. The administration implored the Times not to publish. They did so anyway. Innocent Americans may very well die as a result.

The News' response? They print a fawning, sycophantic tribute to the guy, "Citizen Sulzberger". Who do they think they're kidding?

The fact is, Pinch's tenure at the Times will likely go down as the ruination of the franchise. Set aside the plummeting share price, the Jayson Blair fiasco, the Howell Raines debacle and the spectacle of Judith Miller going to jail. The simple fact is, large numbers of educated, informed Americans no longer take the Times seriously.

I can't believe it's almost two months since posting. Shame on me. Fact is, I've had things to do.
Probably the most significant and outrageous thing that has happened has been the revelation of secret security programs by the Times, LA Times, Washington Post, even the Wall St. Journal. Between that and the General's Revolt, it's apparent that the Left has politicized this war to an unprecedented degree.

Much has been made int the media about the rabid partisanship that exists in Washington today--usualy with the suggestion that Tom DeLay or Newt Gingrich, or of course the hated Bush administration is responsible for it. People tend to forget, or gloss over, the extraordinary lengths the Clintonistas went to in order to attain and consolidate their hold on power.

Jed Babbin has an interesting piece today all about the Clintons' penchant for appointing and promoting Generals based on political loyalty more than on the merits. Subsequent to that administration, many of these appointments (Clark, Zinni, Shinseki) have been mounting an insurgency of their own, busily undermining the administration's war effort. I guess it's a bit of a luxury that this war is minor enough that we feel safe enough to fight among ourselves.

Likewise, at the CIA, Rand Beers, another Clinton appointee, has seemingly been conducting covert ops against his own government.

Somehow, people need to recognize that the biggest obstacle to success in the war on terror is our own politics right here at home. I think the Democrat party leadership realizes that if George W. Bush gets credit for winning the war on terror, the party is through.

I've always been puzzled by the anti-war movement's fixation on the Iraq war. It just seems to me that they're against it because they're against it. It's political, not principled. At the end of the day, WMD or no WMD, links to Al Qaeda or no links to Al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein was a brutal, unstable lunatic at the controls of a country smack in the middle of the most strategic region in the world, and an avowed enemy of the United States. Leaving Saddam in power after the Gulf War was a strategic error that led to a decade of escalating terror, which culminated in 9/11.

Why defend him?