Month: August 2006

The True Purpose Of The Cease Fire

At least one world leader has given an honest assessment of why an immediate cease fire should occur in the Hezbollah-Israeli conflict, now entering its fourth week. Oddly enough — or not — that world leader runs Iran:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Thursday the solution to the Middle East crisis was to destroy Israel, state-media reported.
In a speech during an emergency meeting of Muslim leaders in Malaysia, Ahmadinejad also called for an immediate cease-fire to end the fighting between Israel and the Iranian-backed group Hizbullah.
“Although the main solution is for the elimination of the Zionist regime, at this stage an immediate cease-fire must be implemented,” Ahmadinejad said, according to state-run television in a report posted on its Web site Thursday.

Ahmadinejad made these comments at a hastily-arranged summit of Muslim nations in an attempt to get more support for Iran’s proxy in Lebanon. He implored the other leaders to cut any ties they may have with Israel and to unite together to destroy it, as well as isolate the United States and UK. Unlike others insisting on an immediate cessation of hostilities, Ahmadinejad rejected the notion of an international peacekeeping force, claiming that the Lebanese should retain sole responsibility for the area.
While this may be a rather extreme example, it does show the general purpose of the cease-fire demands. After all, who exactly would take responsibility for that agreement? Israel would, and Lebanon would be their partner. However, Lebanon has yet to bring Hezbollah under control, which is the entire problem. The Lebanese government can’t disarm the terrorists, and it’s still a large question as to whether they would if they had the ability.
Cease-fire agreements have to have two responsible partners, both willing to enforce the pact. That doesn’t exist in southern Lebanon any more than it does in Gaza and the West Bank, where Israel has plenty of experience with this concept. A cease fire at this stage does nothing but handcuff Israel and allow Hezbollah back into southern Lebanon to re-arm and restart the war.
Of course, Iran favors this because, as Ahmadinejad said, it would be a first step to the destruction of Israel. Oe wonders why other nations, supposedly Israel’s Western allies, favor this strategy as well.

New Dawn Coming This Saturday

The Northern Alliance Radio Network has broadcast for almost two and a half years here in the Twin Cities and around the world on our Internet stream, the first broadcast radio show by bloggers ever. We started as a three-hour show on Saturday afternoons with a rotating cast for every hour. When we got an extra hour earlier this year, we split the show into a more fixed format, with three bloggers in each two-hour segment, and ran from 11 am to 3 pm Central time each Saturday.
Now we have an exciting change that we believe will attract even more listeners. The Patriot has allowed us to shift the show to a 9 am CT start, beginning this Saturday morning. Mitch Berg and I will take the first two hours, giving us a chance to start the day off for our listeners with our two-hour segment. Brian, Chad, and John will continue to broadcast between 11 am to 1 pm.
To celebrate our debut as a morning show, we have invited Michele Bachmann to join us at 10 am. Michele is one of our Rightroots candidates, running for Minnesota’s Sixth Congressional District to replace Mark Kennedy, who’s running for Mark Dayton’s seat in the Senate. We’ll talk about Rightroots and Michele’s campaign as well as the issues she champions.
We hope you have breakfast with us, this Saturday and every Saturday!

No Retirees Or Tourists: Olmert

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has made clear that the war in Lebanon could be over in days, but only under conditions that ensure security for Israel on its northern border. With the UN debating various types of peacekeeping forces to replace Israel in Lebanon, Olmert insists that Israel would not accept another UNIFIL disaster:

In an interview with The Times in Jerusalem, the Israeli Prime Minister, said that the conflict could be over as soon as the United Nations Security Council authorised an international force and the troops were in place.
As he set out his vision for peace, the fighting intensified with 10,000 Israeli soldiers battling against Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon. The Shia Muslim militant group fired a record number of 213 rockets into Israel, with some penetrating the West Bank, the farthest that they have reached.
Nevertheless, Mr Olmert seemed confident that the fighting could be stopped within days. “I do not think that it will take weeks,” he said. “I think that a resolution will be made some time next week by the UN Security Council and then it depends on the rapidity of deployment of the international forces into the south of Lebanon.” …
He also said that Israel would not welcome a unit similar to the existing UN Interim Force In Lebanon (Unifil), which he said had proved ineffective in halting Hezbollah’s seizure of southern Lebanon.
“It has to be made up of armies, not of retirees, of real soldiers, not of pensioners who have come to spend leisurely months in south Lebanon but, rather, an army with combat units that is prepared to implement the UN resolution.”
He added: “We will not pull out and we will not stop shooting until there is an international force that will effectively control the area.”

Well put. UNIFIL proved not just completely ineffective in keeping peace but actually turned out to inadvertently promote war on the Blue Line. Undermanned and poorly led, the UN force stood by while terrorists built offensive positions adjacent to their own and did nothing when they launched attacks on northern Israel. The UN has demonstrated complete disregard for Israeli security, and no one believes that the UN has their safety in mind with their demands for a cease-fire.
Olmert gets the formulation humorously correct. UNIFIL turned out to be bystanders and tourists, not a fighting force, and only a fighting force can keep Hezbollah away from Israel. Israel doesn’t need more of the same to supposedly defend a DMZ above their border. Anything less than a real fighting force with a mandate to commit violence against Hezbollah incursions will be worse than nothing, because Israel would have to fight past them in order to defend themselves once again when Hezbollah attacks Israel in the future.
Will the UN agree? Probably not, but the Israeli position will allow them more time to do the job themselves.

Lieberman In Blackface?

I missed most of this today, but this kind of politicking embarrasses everyone associated with it:

Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton visited Mount Aery Baptist Church in Bridgeport to announced their endorsement of challenger Ned Lamont in his campaign against Sen. Joseph Lieberman. A picture of Lieberman in ‘blackface’ on a Lamont supporter’s blog drew criticism from both sides. …
This campaign has apparently hit a new low today with something offensive, and that is putting it mildly. The popular Huffington Post blog, which has strongly supported Lamont’s candidacy, posted a picture today depicting President Clinton and Joe Lieberman in an Amos n Andy-type doctored picture obviously taken from the Waterbury rally last Monday. In the picture, Lieberman is drawn in blackface and Clinton is wearing dark sunglasses.
Lamont’s campaign manager Tom Swan condemned this, calling it very offensive and said he requested that it be removed. He also said that while blogger Jane Hamsher is a supporter, she is not on the campaign pay-roll.
“It’s extremely offensive,” Lieberman said. “I have been the target of the ‘blogs’ on a lot of really offensive stuff, stuff I consider lies and smears, but this picture of me with Bill Clinton and me having my face blackened is offensive to people of all races and colors and just doesn’t belong.”

The photoshop artist didn’t just blacken Lieberman’s face — they put a minstrel-show suit and tie on the picture as well. Michelle Malkin and Hot Air have commented extensively on this, as has Tom Maguire and many others, bit no one can come up with a rational idea as to why Jane Hamsher would have posted this. Did she think that this was a pithy little statement regarding Lieberman’s views on race? Or did she really think it would read — as she claimed — that Lieberman was a phony?
Hatred makes people do embarrassing things, and Hamsher isn’t the first to demonstrate that. However, one has to wonder why Arianna Huffington allowed it on her site. Is she a Lieberman hater too? Or was she foolish enough to buy Hamsher’s explanation of the picture’s meaning?
It really is difficult to understand what a mainstream Democratic politician has done to inspire such hatred and vitriol. In fact, it’s becoming more and more obvious that Lieberman hasn’t done anything to inspire it, but just that the haters on the Left have set their sights on Lieberman this cycle. They will do and say anything to destroy him, and this is about as low as it could get. Lieberman doesn’t deserve this kind of treatment after his years of honorable public service. He’s not my favorite by any means, but that doesn’t mean he should have to suffer this kind of despicable treatment at the hands of his own party.
This is what the activist, radical Left have planned for America if they win control in November — character assassinations and smear campaigns. If they enjoy doing this to Lieberman, imagine what they’ll do to the rest of us.
UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt has a great post, noting Arianna’s huffery on the Mel Gibson story and contrasting it with her expurgation of the photo and silence afterward. Stand up and be counted, indeed!
Mark Coffey also has some thoughts about that.

Two Faces Of Spending

Two more of my posts have appeared at the Heritage Foundation Policy Blog today. The first takes a quick look at three amendments to the defense appropriation being debated in the Senate this week. Did you know that a memorial commission, a traveling exhibit on World War II, and a market research program will help us win the war on terror? Neither did I, but Senators Daniel Inouye and John Warner apparently think so.
The second post takes a longer look at Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s maiden speech, delivered at Columbia University yesterday. Paulson gave some reason for optimism that the Bush administration might finally get serious about cutting the federal budget after five years of growth in both discretionary and entitlement spending. I say some optimism, because we have heard much of this rhetoric before, and neither Congress nor the White House has had much political will or desire to put it into practice.
Still, Bush did want to reform Social Security last year before being thwarted by the Democrats, who preferred to do nothing about it except pretend that the problem doesn’t exist. Paulson reminded everyone that under current system, entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security will go from 8% of GDP to 17% of GDP by 2060, just slightly under the cut of our GDP that the entire federal budget takes now. I have more on this at Heritage, so be sure to read it all.

Rightroots: Irey Needs Support

Diana Irey has her work cut out for her if she wants to unseat longtime incumbent John Murtha in PA-12. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that she trails far behind Murtha in fundraising, although she still qualifies as the best-financed challenger in the state:

While Republican challenger Diana Irey accelerated her fund-raising pace in the second quarter of the year, she still trailed far behind U.S. Rep. John P. Murtha, D-Johnstown, the veteran incumbent in the 12th Congressional District.
Entering the final four months of the campaign, Mr. Murtha’s campaign committee had a cash advantage of more than 10-to-1 over the Washington County commissioner. The Democrat entered July with $1,804,695, while Ms. Irey had $159,138, according to a digest of Federal Election Commission filings compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. Murtha funds include money leftover from his last campaign.
Mr. Murtha had raised a total of $2,452,426 during that election cycle and spent $1,481,352 by June 30. Ms. Irey, who has tried to build a national fund-raising effort based on opposition to the Democrat’s anti-war rhetoric, had raised a total of $305,541 and spent $146,403.

Irey’s race is one of the eighteen focus campaigns supported by the Rightroots initiative. In fact, so far she’s proven one of the most popular of the candidates, with over $1200 in donations in the first 24 hours. As is obvious from this P-G report, she will need much more support to erode Murtha’s fundraising edge. She has a tough fight, but with enough support she could win this seat and help the GOP retain control of Congress.
One of our other candidates has noticed the Rightroots support already. Ray Meier, running in NY-24, has a press release on his site:

State Senator Ray Meier is breaking new ground in his campaign for New York’s 24th Congressional seat as he receives a boost today from Rightroots, a new fundraising effort organized by bloggers from across the country.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist endorses the Rightroots on his own Volpac blog today as well. Volpac becomes the eighth official endorser of Rightroots, and has been added to our site at ABCPac.
UPDATE: I think we can take Michelle Malkin’s challenge and agree that we won’t be photoshopping people into racist blackface images, like the netroots of the Left.

The Coming Democratic Meltdown

The Howard Dean experiment at the DNC appears to have created division, distrust, and chaos, as many of us predicted last year when Dean took the job. The Washington Post reports that party leaders have begun to craft back-channels to undermine Dean’s authority, bringing their efforts for a national program for the midterms to a shambles:

At a meeting last week, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) criticized Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean for not spending enough party resources on get-out-the-vote efforts in the most competitive House and Senate races, according to congressional aides who were briefed on the exchange. Pelosi — echoing a complaint common among Democratic lawmakers and operatives — has warned privately that Democrats are at risk of going into the November midterm elections with a voter-mobilization plan that is underfunded and inferior to the proven turnout machine run by national Republicans.
The Senate and House campaign committees are creating their own get-out-the-vote operations instead, using money that otherwise would fund television advertising and other election-year efforts. Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.) — who no longer speaks to Dean because of their strategic differences — is planning to ask lawmakers and donors to help fund a new turnout program run by House Democrats. He recruited Michael Whouley, a specialist in Democratic turnout, to help oversee it. …
Many Democrats said that despite a favorable political climate and record-setting fundraising, the campaign to recapture the House and Senate could fall short if the organizational problems persist. “What the party really needs is to get serious about local, volunteer-based” operations, said Jack Corrigan, a longtime Democratic operative. “The last-minute, throw-money-at-it approach . . . does not really solve the fundamental failure to organize that is there. The DNC is moving in the right direction, but needs to do more, fast,” he said.

Dean gave the internal version of “Yeaarrgh!!” in response, telling Democrats that “we have a big secret … and it’s going to help us win.” That sounds great, but successful political campaigns keep secrets from their opponents, not from their allies. With the election coming in three months, one has to wonder when Dean plans to let his pals in on his big secret, and what exactly about grassroots organization would be so secret in any case.
The big secret appears to be that Dean has been a complete incompetent at the job of party chairman. He has only raised a little over half of the funds that the RNC has gathered and only has one-quarter of the cash on hand of his rivals, a rather critical problem in the final 90 days of an election cycle. He has angered his big-checkbook donors, even George Soros, who probably lost some interest anyway when his efforts to buy the presidency fell short in 2004. The Democrats have been left with the slender reed of conservative disaffection with the GOP, and hope that the Republicans have turnout problems to mask their own problems with organization.
Now we have the different committees and activists within the party working independently, lacking coordination, and shuffling their money around to cross purposes. One of the key figures for the midterm cycle, DCCC chair Rahm Emanuel, won’t even speak to the head of his own party. The party has fallen apart, thanks to Dean’s incompetence and their lack of action in correcting it.
If the Democrats lose the midterms, expect to hear a lot of conspiracy theories about Karl Rove’s supposedly Machiavellian power. The truth will be that the Democrats sealed their fate when they put a nutcase like Howard Dean at the head of their organization.
UPDATE: I made an error in the difference between cash on hand and overall fundraising, which I have corrected, thanks to Thlime in the comments on this thread.

Israel Got Hezbollah’s Attention

After their rocket attacks on Israel dwindled down to 10 yesterday, the commando raid on Baalbek has apparently infuriated Hezbollah into risking everything on a last-gasp series of volleys. A record number of missiles have flown over the border, and in one case hit near the West Bank town of Jenin:

Hezbollah launched its deepest strikes yet into Israel on Wednesday, firing a record number of more than 160 rockets. An Israeli-American was killed as he fled for home by bicycle, and a stray rocket hit the West Bank for the first time.
The intense rocket fire defied claims by Israeli leaders and generals that they have considerably weakened Hezbollah’s military capabilities. It followed a two-day lull in Hezbollah rocket attacks, and came hours after Israeli commandos in Lebanon captured what Israel said were five Hezbollah guerrillas.
Police said at least 21 people were wounded in Wednesday’s attacks, which brought the Israeli death toll in three weeks of fighting to 55, including 19 civilians. Israel’s onslaught on Lebanon has killed at least 540, mostly civilians.

Hezbollah fighters have run gauntlets through IDF forces in southern Lebanon to get to the Blue Line with their launchers. They have fired and retreated at high speed, hoping to avoid return fire. They want to prove that they still have offensive capability against Israel, even thouugh their rockets do almost no damage to Israeli military assets.
It’s impressive, but rather foolish. In the first place, Israel has already shown that they will not be deterred by rocket attacks, so the effort here is mostly wasted. Just as in Britain in 1940, the attacks on civilian populations has strengthened Israeli resolve, not diminished it. Tactically, Hezbollah’s new operation is not much better than Japanese banzai attacks in the Pacific in WWII. They are sending their assets out into the open in a frontal charge that even when initially successful carries no strategic or political gain. All they do is expose their fighters to IDF fire — and their rocket launchers.
The inventory of Hezbollah’s rockets and missiles has been the topic of much discussion, but that isn’t the critical materiel problem for the terrorists. The launchers are the weak spot, and they’re relatively easy to hit. Mobile launchers are basically big trucks — big, slow-moving, heat-generating vehicles that have to stay on established roads to manuever. Without air cover, these launchers can easily be spotted at targeted by israeli aircraft, and it doesn’t take much to put one out of commission.
The decline of attacks in the last couple of days probably indicates a lack of launchers, and Hezbollah’s desire to conserve enough of them for a single big offensive. This is what we’re seeing now. If Israel destroys the rest of the launchers, it won’t matter how many missiles and rockets Hezbollah has left — they will just become useless stock. That’s what Israel wants to keep Syria from resupplying to the terrorists, and that’s why they blew up the roads as well as the airports.
Hezbollah will get its licks in today, but I doubt it will retain much capacity for rocket launches after this.

What Is A Yale Diva Doing At Columbia?

Eliana Johnson, once the proprietress of a clever blog called Yale Diva, has moved to the New York Sun as a reporter. She covered the appearance of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson at Columbia University yesterday, where Paulson tried to establish a new momentum for spending cuts and entitlement reform in his maiden speech. I’ll cover this at the Heritage Foundation Policy Blog later today.
Eliana has another blog connection: she is the daughter of my good friend Scott Johnson at Power Line, who proudly notes the tight style and straightforward reporting of the story. I had the pleasure to meet Eliana and all of Scott’s family on a few occasions and am delighted at her new success. I’m particularly pleased that she works at one of the best newspapers in this new media age.

Omission Commission Furious At Lack Of Truth

Today’s Washington Post reports that the 9/11 Commission got so frustrated with inaccurate testimony from military and aviation officials regarding the immediate response on 9/11 that they considered referrals to the Department of Justice for perjury:

Some staff members and commissioners of the Sept. 11 panel concluded that the Pentagon’s initial story of how it reacted to the 2001 terrorist attacks may have been part of a deliberate effort to mislead the commission and the public rather than a reflection of the fog of events on that day, according to sources involved in the debate.
Suspicion of wrongdoing ran so deep that the 10-member commission, in a secret meeting at the end of its tenure in summer 2004, debated referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, according to several commission sources. Staff members and some commissioners thought that e-mails and other evidence provided enough probable cause to believe that military and aviation officials violated the law by making false statements to Congress and to the commission, hoping to hide the bungled response to the hijackings, these sources said.
In the end, the panel agreed to a compromise, turning over the allegations to the inspectors general for the Defense and Transportation departments, who can make criminal referrals if they believe they are warranted, officials said.

The commission complained early about the spin coming from the Department of Defense and from aviation officials in reconstructing the events of the day. DoD officials blamed sketchy records of the day’s events for the confusion on timing. For instance, testimony indicated that the Air Force had tracked United 93 and would have shot the plane down had it approached Washington, but tapes subpoenaed by the Commission later revealed that the military had no idea about United 93 until it had crashed.
The tapes told a much different story than the witnesses, and the Commission was understandably upset that these witnesses gave them demonstrably false information two years or more after the events in question. The DoD could have reviewed the tapes themselves and figured out the facts. Commissioners felt that it approached perjury and wanted to have them prosecuted after they finallly got the tapes through the hostile manuever of subpoenas.
In the end, they allowed the DoD and DoT inspectors general to review the matter. Reports from both are expected shortly as to whether the testimony given was knowingly false. If so, the DoJ should consider prosecution.
However, we should also keep in mind the balls-up that the Commission became. While their recreation of the day’s events was excellent work, the rest of their effort produced nothing but the bureaucratic spin of which they accuse the DoD. The inclusion on Jamie Gorelick even after her role promoting the extralegal separation of law enforcement and intelligence units became clear skewed the panel’s point of view. She should have been a witness, not a panel member, as she was too much of a participant in the activities that led to the intelligence failures of 9/11.
The Commission also failed to follow up on important information in their haste to blame 9/11 on intelligence operations. They completely missed the ABLE DANGER program that had identified Mohammed Atta and his core of operatives as potential terrorists, and that was not because of DoD intransigence. Multiple members of that team tried to get their interest, and the panel refused to follow up on the leads. Even after these people went public with the information, panel members like Thomas Kean — quoted heavily in this story — mocked them and discounted their honor.
The panel of bureaucrats had too much at stake to allow bureaucracy to get the blame for 9/11, and so they concluded that the operations end of intelligence had to get it instead. They proposed a massive increase in intelligence bureaucracy, supposedly to make intelligence gathering and analysis more efficient. Instead, they created a behemoth of a bureaucracy in the Directorate of National Intelligence, so much so that Congress threatened to cut off its funding to keep its empire-building to a dull roar. It now employs almost a thousand people, almost none of whom develop or gather intel in the field, but instead look at it and push the paper up another level.
If anyone knowingly provided false information to a Congressional panel, then that person should face trial for perjury. However, the Omission Commission is the last group of people whose complaints about fair play and honesty interest me.