‘Who Is Minding The Store, As We Party In St. Paul?’

Foreign Policy, Neoconservatism, Russia, War

So asks Pat Buchanan in another thoughtful column, “Distant Drums At Sarah’s Party.” Here are excerpts:

“U.S. troops have crossed into Pakistan to attack Taliban and al-Qaida units in the privileged sanctuary of the tribal areas just across the border from Afghanistan. Have we just thrown a rock into the biggest hornet’s nest on earth?

How will the Pakistani government and people react to this U.S. incursion into their country to fight a war their own army has been reluctant to wage? How will the tribal peoples react? Will the weak new democratic regime, united only in its hatred of deposed President Musharraf, fall?

What is the future of this Islamic nation of 170 million, with its five-dozen nuclear weapons, that was once America’s great ally in South Asia, but is now seething with anti-Americanism?

In Afghanistan, the Taliban move closer to the capital Kabul as hardly a day goes by without U.S. armed forces being charged with the accidental killing of Afghan women and children. Is this even a winnable war, after seven years of fighting? And, if so, at what cost?

While the convention hears claims of victory in Iraq and an early return of U.S. troops, there are reports the Nouri al-Maliki regime, in collusion with Iran, wants the Americans out to settle accounts with the U.S.-sponsored Sunni militias and the Kurds over who rules in Baghdad and Kirkut.

Is the end of America’s long and costly war in Mesopotamia to be an Iraq incorporated into a Shia crescent led by Tehran?

Arnaud de Borchgrave reports that Israel, having supplied Mikheil Saakashvili’s army with weapons and training prior to his invasion of South Ossetia, had hoped to use Georgian airfields to fly strikes against Iran. The Russians are said to be furious and considering new military aid to Syria.

Now one reads of Dutch intelligence agents, who had infiltrated Iran’s nuclear program to sabotage it, being withdrawn, as the Dutch believe a U.S. strike on Iran may be imminent.

Vice President Cheney is in Tbilisi promising $1 billion in new aid, as Prime Minister Putin of Russia is asking why, if this aid is humanitarian, it is being brought into the Black Sea in U.S. warships.

In Moscow, President Medvedev and his foreign minister are talking of a Russian sphere of influence like the one the United States has demanded for two centuries with its Monroe Doctrine – a sphere from which all foreign military blocs and foreign troops are to be excluded.

This is a direct challenge to administration and neocon plans to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO. John McCain may declare, “We are all Georgians now!” – but, are Americans, or Europeans, truly willing to go to war with a nuclear-armed Russia to keep Josef Stalin’s birthplace under a regime led by an erratic hothead who launched what may be the dumbest war in history, which he lost within 24 hours?”

Update III: Sensational Sarah

Barack Obama, Conservatism, Democrats, Elections 2008, John McCain, Republicans, Sarah Palin, War

An excerpt from my new WND column, “Sensational Sarah“:

“With the Liberty Bell on the big screen behind her, Sarah Palin was the Belle of the Ball at the Republican National Convention. The governor of the State of Alaska was more than picture perfect, she was pitch perfect. She’s a pit-bull with lipstick, alright—lipstick, and sharp stilettos. A potent mix of style and substance. …

Palin has what Washington harpies, Democrat and Republican, lack: authenticity, character and a personality. She’s a mensch. There are plenty of plastic people doing the Republican Party’s biding—vicious, vacuous, vain men and women who’ll embrace her and try and change her. Consider the consummate Court Courtesan, Peggy Noonan. This Washington insider, lapdog to the powerful, was caught on an open mike trashing Palin, decrying her appointment as ‘political Bullshit’ and ‘Gimmicky.’ Palin is not a member of Noonan’s claque—not yet. ‘The permanent political establishment’ Palin decried is a bipartisan plague. Let us hope she remains on the outs with “the Washington elite,” Democratic and Republican alike. …”

You can read the complete column, “Sensational Sarah,“ on WND. Comments are welcome.

Update I (September 6): An interesting analysis from Gerard Baker of the Times is “Sarah Palin: it’s go west, towards the future of conservatism.”
I must say Sarah Palin is sounding a little repetitive today as she regurgitates her Convention speech on the campaign trail. Perhaps most Americans can’t remember it by now.

Update II: “‘I think the best thing about Todd Palin, he’s a man’s man,’ family friend Kristan Cole told ABC News. ‘He knows how to fix the boiler or the toilet or the sink or whatever,’ Davis agreed. ‘It’s very common in Alaska. We don’t have the luxury of calling the Roto-Rooter guy. We just do it ourselves.'” That reminds me of someone I know. As I said in my column, “Sensational Sarah,” “Real women who’ve raised children with good men know exactly what Sarah Palin means when she speaks about her man.”

Update III (September 8): Did I read somewhere in the comments to this post that Sarah Palin was masculine or “manly”? That’s insane. Take it from a feminine female (who happens to wear spectacles too); Palin is feminine alright. Her attire is feminine; the hair classic and soft—unlike Hillary’s hardened helmet—the mannerism the direct opposite of … Ann Coulter’s. Ditto the voice—although it’s not soft, it certainly is much less shrill than your average female foghorn on Fox News. Palin is very feminine. Men who are not hip to her womanly wiles are probably not very masculine themselves.

Excerpts From Palin’s Speech at the Republican National Convention

Conservatism, Elections 2008, John McCain, Republicans, Sarah Palin, War

The following are excerpts provided by the Republican National Committee of Gov. Sarah Palin’s speech as prepared for delivery at the Republican National Convention (via the New York Times):

“I had the privilege of living most of my life in a small town. I was just your average hockey mom, and signed up for the PTA because I wanted to make my kids’ public education better. When I ran for city council, I didn’t need focus groups and voter profiles because I knew those voters, and knew their families, too. Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown. And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves. I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities.”

***

“I’m not a member of the permanent political establishment. And I’ve learned quickly, these past few days, that if you’re not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone. But here’s a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I’m not going to Washington to seek their good opinion – I’m going to Washington to serve the people of this country.”

***

“Our opponents say, again and again, that drilling will not solve all of America’s energy problems – as if we all didn’t know that already. But the fact that drilling won’t solve every problem is no excuse to do nothing at all. Starting in January, in a McCain-Palin administration, we’re going to lay more pipelines…build more nuclear plants…create jobs with clean coal…and move forward on solar, wind, geothermal, and other alternative sources. We need American energy resources, brought to you by American ingenuity, and produced by American workers.”

***

“Here’s how I look at the choice Americans face in this election. In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers. And then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change.”

***

And here are excerpt from Mitt Romney’s speech. Listen to how Court Courtesan Peggy Noonan, a consummate Washington insider, trashes Palin HERE.

‘The Obamanation of Desolation’

Affirmative Action, America, Barack Obama, Christianity, Political Philosophy, Racism, The West, The Zeitgeist

A magnificent, crisply argued piece by the peerless Thomas Fleming, who happens to be a nimble stylist as well. Here are some highlights:

• “The appearance of John McCain and Barack Obama at Saddleback, California’s ‘purpose-driven’ church marks the ultimate ascent of Rick Warren to the Gantry-in-Chief of the P.T. Barnum Church of America.”
• “A liberal, as I never tire of quoting (from Robert Frost), is someone who would not take his own side in an argument. Rich liberals naturally support high taxes and extravagant government expenditures on the poor, preferably the undeserving poor. A male liberal—we can hardly call such creatures men—favors women’s rights; heterosexual liberals favor “Gay” “marriage,” and European-American liberals prefer all cultures to that of Europe. And, if these idiots condescend to note their skin color, they hate it or at least they think they do.”
• “The DNC and the media can tell any lies they like, but they cannot change the fact that the Democratic presidential candidate hates Whites, including the members of his mother’s family who showed him every kindness. Compared with the average self-proclaimed white bigot who says he loves his ancestors, Obama is one sick and sorry excuse for a human being.”
• “[Obama’s] claim to be a Christian is his best evidence that he was never a Muslim.”
• [S]etting aside race-loyalty, greed, and the libido dominandi, how could anyone else hold his nose long enough to vote for anyone who talks in that smarmy adenoidal voice? When Obama gets on his pulpit, it sounds almost like he is swallowing his words in a sea of phlegm. He does not so much speak as (to quote what Alexander Wolcott once said of a theater audience) strum his catarrh. His self-righteous public persona should grate on the sensibilities of normal people–like nails on a chalkboard or the voice of Mariah Carey. And yet, some otherwise normal people voted for him in the primaries and will vote for him again in the general election. Why or rather how?”
• [A]nyone will be better than Bush–is not an easy argument to refute—except in the case of Obama and McCain.
• “However you describe Affirmative Action and minority set-asides, they represent a deliberate and systematic policy of discrimination against people like me in favor of people not like me simply because they are not like me. Such disgusting and immoral policies are worse than any form of racism I have encountered because they teach us to hate precisely those whom we are most supposed to love.”
• “Bigotry these days has nothing to do with the way you treat people or even with what you actually say. Bigotry is what they say you are thinking when they play your speech backward at half speed.”
• “[W]e should not make the mistake of blaming black people for the suicide we continue to inflict on ourselves. We white males are the problem, not blacks, women, homosexuals, or Mexicans. We–at least the liberal part of “we”– turned away from our religion and our civilization; we made war on property and marriage; we rejected Haydn and Sophocles in favor of John Cage and Kate Chopin. We have emasculated ourselves, pithed our brains, destroyed our vision and hearing, and now, all that is left, is to vote for a candidate whose rhetoric at least is telling us to fling our worthless carcasses off the cliff. I blush even to hint at this but John McCain is now the only alternative to suicide.”