Category Archives: War

Update V: Sarah Who?

Conservatism, Elections 2008, Free Speech, John McCain, Sarah Palin, War

Well, John McCain’s VP pick is certainly pretty.

Alaska’s Gov. Sarah Palin is an outsider alright. Liberals, to whom beauty is a liability (unless it’s Michelle Obama’s kind of Amazon-Woman appeal), are already making light of her beauty-queen pedigree. Check this condescending Newsweek article title: “Pageants and Politics.” Isn’t this an attempt to diminish the woman?

Palin is a hunter and a strong supporter of the Second Amendment. Unlike her boss, she favors drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But, and as Obama intends to do, she already has raised taxes on oil company profits.

She’s from Idaho, which, I am told, is where extremely conservative Real America escapes the depredations of the creeping left.

A nickname that has stuck with Palin is “Sarah Barracuda”—all good—and she worked as a commercial fisherman. Her husband, a handsome, some-time commercial fisherman (one of the most dangerous jobs), is a Yup’ik Eskimo. I say that the Moron McCain has hit a home run. This family is a nice counterweight to the Obama family exotica.

On the issue of experience, McCain has knocked the stuffing out of Obama in as much as the latter has made all the winning arguments for judgment and wisdom over experience.

From the gushing Republicans are doing over Palin, however, it is clear that it doesn’t take much to please these party loyalists. Republicans are nowhere near a eureka moment—recognizing that without Ron-Paul type fiscal leadership, the US is going down the economic toilet, with a national debt half as large as the GDP.

For that, a pretty face and a feel for fetuses are not enough. Salvaging the country is something only a Paul, perhaps a Bob Barr, could do, with a willing Congress. And here the reader is encouraged to fill in all the clichés of improbability he can conjure. For example: And Britney Spears will grow a voice. Or wear underwear.

Update I (September 1, 2008): Sarah Palin’s unmarried daughter, aged 17, is expecting a baby. I disagree with all the Republicans and “conservatives” who’ve suddenly detected in this event another sign of Palin’s conservative bona fides. Palin’s press release reveals the woman’s liberal parenting style with respect to an issue her conservative cohorts are helping to normalize:

“Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. We’re proud of Bristol’s decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents. As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows that she has our unconditional love and support.”

Spoken like a true liberal, who supports and, no doubt, will subsidize irresponsible—some conservatives would say immoral—conduct.

Update II: cultural conservatism has become an unknown quantity in fin de siècle America, in which a conservative candidate for office publishes a letter practically celebrating her unwed daughter’s pregnancy. There is not a hint of disapproval in the Palin press release. A reader has asked what I think Palin ought to have said about the affair. Apparently that’s a mystery. So here’s the conservative version of Palin’s press release:

“As conservatives can imagine, my husband and I are deeply disappointed in our beautiful daughter, Bristol. Her actions flout the upbringing and the values we thought we had instilled in her. Our daughter is well aware of our disappointment. In addition to the enormous responsibilities she will be forced to shoulder due to her reckless behavior, she has her parents’ disapproval to deal with. As this is a private and very difficult matter for our family, we ask that the media respect our privacy and keep its distance.”

Update III: From ABC News: “A meme is developing out there among liberals that Gov. Sarah Palin was a supporter of Pat Buchanan in the 1990s, a charge that the McCain-Palin campaign strongly denies.”

Why deny? So a pregnant daughter is not a liability, but supporting Pat Buchanan is?

Update IV (September 2): The responses so far to my comment about Gov. Palin’s perfectly liberal parenting style is to point out that getting knocked up and having bastards is simply the way of the world.

I see moral and cultural relativism is another twisted tenet conservatives have adopted. For that is what this mounts to: because everyone does it, certain conduct becomes part of the cultural repertoire. Judgment is suspended. Understanding extended, and the undesirable behavior then multiplies.

Furthermore, my comment pertained not to what the girl intends to do—or will be compelled to do—but to the lack of any opprobrium in Palin’s gushing press release. As I say, her daughter’s conduct is depicted rather positively, even praised.

Actually, when my girl was a little younger than Bristol, I had The Talk with her. Let me put it this way, the options I presented her with should she conceive were not as appealing as the Palin plan for unwed mothers. Nowhere did “pride and support” feature in our little conversation. It broke my heart to be so harsh, but it worked, to the benefit of my daughter’s wellbeing. Young girls are not ready physically or mentally to have babies. Babies born to young girls, moreover, are not as healthy. In fact, complications and abnormalities abound in the young cohort as they do in the older age group.

Question: Palin’s kid is five months into her pregnancy. Why on earth did she not get married earlier?

Naturally, this is an interesting conversation in itself. Note: nowhere have I intimated that this matter should–or does–have any bearing on Gov. Palin’s abilities.

Update V: Lew Rockwell on what’s in the offing for this feisty woman:

It is perhaps possible to be the governor of a small state such as Alaska and not be part of the machine. It is not possible to be vice president of the United States and not enter into the deeply immoral arena that values the burying of all principle, and saying and doing whatever is necessary to bolster power.

Part of the purpose of campaigns is to socialize the candidates in this mold. Sarah will be slapped around if and when she openly disagrees with McCain’s politics. When they win the election, she will immediately be required to take on the role of an apologist for all that the administration does.

Neocons Resurrecting The Cold War

Bush, Foreign Policy, Neoconservatism, Russia, War

My colleague Vox Day has a perspicacious post about Russia’s assistance to the South Ossetian and neighboring Abkhazian separatists:

“This battle for Georgia – not South Ossetia – is a long time in coming. Bill Clinton laid the groundwork for it by altering the rules of the game in Serbia, in which it was made clear that a major power had the right to intervene on behalf of a breakaway republic if it cried “help, help, I’m being repressed” by the sovereign territory owner. The Russians rightly feel that they’re playing by our rules and they have every reason to believe they’re going to get away with it since there is zero sympathy for the anti-Russian US position in Europe. The European position, quite reasonably, is to shrug and assume that it’s just like Kosovo, except that they also don’t want to upset their Russian fuel supplies.

At this point, the Georgian attack on South Ossetia appears to have been a terrible miscalculation by the Georgians and their US and Israeli advisors, who have been trying to solidify control over the oil pipeline in recent months.”

Myself, I warned against recognizing Kosovo some time back: Here and here.

The neocons are getting hot for war. These warmed-over Trotskyites yearn to resuscitate the Cold War. Andrew Sullivan, once a neocon, really seems to have repented—turned away from neoconery. He dishes it out:

“Krauthammer this morning goes into raptures about the possibility of reliving the 1970s and 1980s:
The most crucial and unconditional measure, however, is this: Reaffirm support for the Saakashvili government and declare that its removal by the Russians would lead to recognition of a government-in-exile. This would instantly be understood as providing us the legal basis for supplying and supporting a Georgian resistance to any Russian-installed regime.

This is a 1980s Afghanistan gambit, a de facto return to the Cold War, even though Russia is not a global expansionist power any more, and even though it is no longer communist. No thought given, apparently, to the chance that this could backfire on a power now occupying two countries rather closer to Russia than Georgia is to the US. Oh, well. They’ll figure that out later. There’s Russians to fight! One thing that baffles me: why does the US need a legal basis for anything in Krauthammer’s view?”

All that from a man who used to be a neocon of the deepest dye. Andrew may yet redeem himself.

A War He Can Call His Own

Barack Obama, Elections 2008, Foreign Policy, Iraq, War

Here’s an excerpt from my new WND column, “A War He Can Call His Own”:

“Obama wants to maintain a meaty presence in Afghanistan. He may even be conjuring up new monsters and new missions. This is because Obama needs a “good” war. Electability in fin de siècle America hinges on projecting strength around the world—an American leader has to aspire to protect borders and people not his own. In other words, Obama needs a war he can call his own.

In Afghanistan, Obama has found such a war.”

Comments are welcome.

Updated: Beam Scotty (McClellan) Up

Iraq, Media, Neoconservatism, Propaganda, War

You mean there still is no consensus about the unconstitutional, unjust war an American government waged? That’s right; the “nation” is still litigating the invasion of Iraq. What’s more, the stakeholders are circling the wagons.

Here is something of the smorgasbord of McClellan coverage; it’s some of what you should take away from the publication of a stale, tell-all by a former low-level Bush administration functionary. Admonitions are in order for most members of the media who were right by Scotty’s side, whooping it up for war crimes. For or against Scott, send in some of the reviews you like (but take your pro-war crimes comments elsewhere):

• “Well, why, all of a sudden, if he had all these grave concerns, did he not raise these sooner?”—Richard A. Clarke

• “It would have been nice if he had told us some of this at the time, back when it was his job to keep the public informed.”—Karen Tumulty, Time magazine [Not so fast Ms. Tumulty; it was YOUR job too to apprise the public.]

• “The memoir strikes me as the standard stuff: ‘I was an insider to a corrupt group but the head of the group and I weren’t corrupt; we were misled.’”—liberal blog called American Street

• “Bush displayed a ‘lack of inquisitiveness’; the administration operated in a ‘permanent campaign mode’; the Iraq war ‘was not necessary’–other than that McClellan’s chosen to reveal them. But is that even really that surprising?” And: “the book displays a calculating mind that was never much in evidence in the White House press room.”—Jason Zengerle, The New Republic

Update (June 3): After watching Scott McClellan handle the raging bull, Bill O’Reilly, I’ve changed my opinion. This young man was strong, courageous and filled with a certain conviction. He did well against the man who acted as an accomplice to the administration, and who sold the war to those who’d have to go out and fight it. This was Bush’s war, Blair’s war, Podhoretz’s war, and Billo’s war. Billo showed his discomfort by flaring his nostrils and pursing his lips. McClellan, who was calm and comfortable, got to the man.

McClellan’s ability to admit over and over again that he had been completely wrong in his judgment and ethics served as a good contrast to Billo, who was prepared to concede nothing of the kind.

Granted, McClellan is not opposing the war on the most solid of grounds: Implicit in the case he makes is that if Iraq had WMD—irrespective of it not threatening the US or having any ties to al-Qaida—the US would have had a case for war. McClellan implies that we had a right to enforce UN resolutions, be a global governor. (Suddenly the US is an arm of the UN). We don’t.

Still, I will buy McClellan’s role as a bellwether of sorts—another insider sounding a warning—when the evidence against this corrupt administration results in impeachments, disgrace, and loss of face. There are no signs of that so far.