Last Jones and Testament
Mood:  irritated
Now Playing: maybe some Richie Havens
Five hundred years from now, historians and social scientists will look back on us and ask how we ever could have smoked tobacco, knowing what we do of its ill effects on our bodies and on our world as a whole. And they will say, for better or worse, smoking tobacco was something that we did to ourselves on our way to becoming ourselves. But there will still be the shaken heads of condescension at what weak-willed animals we were. What rats we must have been to trade in this stuff and enslave our fellow men to produce this stuff and find ourselves resorting to this stuff to just make it through the day.

No, there will always be addicts and addictions. In fact, I hope it is so. Because being drawn to things at the chemical and essential levels is what makes us human beings. We are the species with the participial name: thinking man ---the being that becomes what it wills.

But they will never make smoking tobacco or anything else safe because it is manifestly unsafe for one's health. It is inconceivable to me that even the very first person to take a drag off some grapevine didn't think it was a stupid thing he was doing to himself. "Smoke? I'm purposely drawing smoke into my lungs? Where the fuck is my mind?"

Forget plastics, Benjamin. Pharmaceuticals is the way to go. Give us the (synthesized) goods in an easily-swallowed pill. Give us another kind of pill to take us off of the first one and set us up for the next. Because we're always going to have a jones for this thing or that. We're always going to be rats banging away at the lever to get our treat.

This is a struggle that never ends until everything ends. Dammit.

No Joke
Mood:  not sure
Q.: How many people who are trying to quit smoking does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

A.: What's it to you, you goddamned sack of shit?! Are you writing a fucking novel?!

Riveting
Now Playing: "All for the Love of Rock n' Roll' by the Tuff Darts
It's a special feeling when you recognize that a war report you've just read will be looked back on decades from now as an exemplar of the times our men and women are now experiencing in the War for Iraq. At Michael Yon's site, there is just such a report ---called "Gates of Fire."

I implore you to read the whole thing and to take your time going through the many photographs there.

Outstanding.

Cindy Sheehan Is an un-American Tool of the Far Left
Courtesy of Patterico, check out the video of Cindy Sheehan talking to CBS News reporter Mark Knoller at Sweetness & Light. Here's some of the transcript:

Mark Knoller: You know that the President says Iraq is the central front in the war on terrorism, don’t you believe that?

Cindy Sheehan: No, because it’s not true. Iraq was no threat to the United States of America until we invaded. Iraq was not involved in 9/11. Iraq was not a terrorist state.

But now that we have decimated the country, the borders are open. Freedom Fighters from other countries are going in. And they have created more terrorism by going into an Islamic country, devastating the country and killing innocent people in that country.

Terrorism is growing. And people who never thought of being car bombers, suicide bombers are now doing it because they want the United States of America out of their country.

Disgusting.

It Must Be Said
Michael Barone makes a criticism of the President and his disinclination to justify himself and this war that I've been making for quite some time, too. In making his case, Barone turns to an excellent piece by David Frum at today's National Review Online, but he further says that a model to which the President should be turning is Franklin Roosevelt's famous fireside chats. In those national radio addresses, FDR spoke to the country in great detail about his plans and his rationale in the world war going on around him:

It is generally assumed today that there was some kind of unanimity about World War II. Not really. Roosevelt was criticized for putting a priority on the European Theater over the Pacific; after all, some said, hadn't it been the Japanese who attacked us? Not everyone forgot that many of his opponents charged before Pearl Harbor that he was provoking the Germans and the Japanese to attack us (indeed a strong case can be made that he was). The media of the day was mostly controlled and run by Republicans—some of them like Henry Luce of Time were supporters of Roosevelt's war policies, but others like Col. Robert McCormick of the Chicago Tribune (then the biggest-circulation broadsheet in the country) bitter critics.

Roosevelt clearly kept an eye on his enemies. In May 1940, as resistance to Hitler was collapsing in Western Europe, he noted that "there are a few among us who have deliberately and consciously closed their eyes [to foreign threats] because they were determined to be opposed to their government, its foreign policy, and every other policy, to be partisan, and to believe that anything that the government did was wholly wrong." Later in that chat he warned of a "fifth column that betrays a nation unprepared for treachery."

In July 1943, after the fall of Mussolini, he asserted, "It is our determination to restore those conquered peoples to the dignity of human beings, masters of their own fate, entitled to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want and freedom from fear. We have started to make good on that promise. I am sorry if I step on the toes of those Americans who, playing party politics at home, call that kind of foreign policy 'crazy altruism' and 'starry-eyed dreaming.'"

I often find myself frustrated at George W. Bush's minimalist approach to resorting to the human aspect of his leadership with regard to the war. "Never complain, never explain" has very much lost its allure with me as a tactic of power. Is it that his advisers have weaned him from his "smoke 'em out of their holes"-type rhetoric because it seems too unseemly? Have they persuaded him that going beyond the usual cant about democracy and bringing us real, live examples of our military's sacrifices and triumphs is somehow speaking too much from the saddle?

Horseshit!

Mr. President, Cindy Sheehan is right about one thing ---if only one thing: you need to tell her what her son died for. No one else's justifications will do; only yours have the power to move the world. And you can do it with the greatest possible pride, too, because I know that you know why he did; you simply have to have the courage to explain the higher meanings of this war in concrete ways that everyone can appreciate. Because the macrocosm is within the microcosm. The struggle of one town or one school or one soldier or cop on the beat to rise above the violence and make a positive contribution to the success of Iraq is one worth sharing with all of us.

Anticipate the arguments and pre-empt them, if you can.

Rum Dumb
Mood:  hungry
Now Playing: the allegro from Mozart's Piano Concerto in C minor (K. 491)
Enough of your quibbling! I just got a call from a girl at Amy's Ice Cream on Guadalupe and she says that the rum raisin is in.

Hmmm...rum raisin...

The Long Knives
Have a look at this post over at Steve Soto's place. Apparently, he and some Kossack-types are about to have done with the Democratic Leadership Council and call for total peace:

With the DLC wing and their new mouthpieces Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden sounding a replay of the “we can’t be against the war; Bush will berate us!” 2004 campaign message, there is room as Atrios notes for the rest of the party to move into new and unencumbered territory on Iraq from this point forward. Bush ran and won on Iraq and terror in 2004, but there is a good and bad side to that development. The bad side for the Democrats is that they lost the election. The good side is that with the conclusion of that election Democrats are free to throw off the shackles of that “we can’t leave Iraq” albatross and start anew.

There's rumblings throughout the Left half of the blogosphere that the anti-war crowd is preparing to seize its moment and excommunicate the sell-outs, but on the basis that Soto establishes here? Hardly.

First, it may be that Clinton and Biden can actually see a variety of reasons why we should be in Iraq ---all wars ultimately being multi-causal. Maybe they, unlike the execrable John F. Kerry, are the nuanced ones. Biden is especially quick to criticize the execution of the war ---as any fair-minded supporter would in such an important matter--- but he may personally accept the necessity of our use of force in that part of the world to foment these new democratic movements.

Second, there's no obvious political advantage to advocating immediate withdrawal from Iraq ---at least none that any unambiguously anti-war Democrat may claim. That is to say, no one cares whether Turd Kennedy thinks we should cut and run; but people would pay attention if HRC or Biden thought so.

Third, it is an absolute mistake to suppose that Iraq is an irreparable mess. The Coalition and the Iraqi people have achieved a lot in these past two and a half years: deposing the Saddamites, securing countless little liberties that we here take for granted, the January elections in which eight million Iraqis braved death to participate, and now the prospect of a constitution and real democratic form of government. You want to be on the wrong side of that, Steve? You want to abandon what we have begun because we didn't find enough WMD to your liking? I think that's a very irresponsible tack to take. Our men and women didn't sacrifice themselves in such numbers just so that y'all can pretend this is 1968; they sacrificed themselves so that we can insist upon and defend democracy in the middle of a very backwards part of the world ---one that harbors oil and Sulafists and enemies of Christianity and Judaism.

I think you know what Scoop Jackson would say. He'd say that albatrosses don't wear shackles.

The Real Villain Here
Jeff Goldstein, one of the blogosphere's best humorists, has a very useful post about Hugo Chavez and the inevitable fallout among the Left (and Right) over conservative Christian personality Pat Robertson's call for Chavez's assassination. Robertson may be a fool for his candor, but, as Goldstein reminds us, let's not forget who the real villain here is. Quoting Thor Halvorssen's piece in a recent issue of The Weekly Standard:

Ch?vez first ran for president on a reform platform, winning in a landslide. What few understood then was that Ch?vez planned to revolutionize the country following a plan masterminded by his longtime friend Norberto Ceresole, an Argentinian writer infamous for his books denying the Holocaust and his conspiracy theories about Jewish plans to control the planet.

The title of Ceresole’s 1999 book on Ch?vez and Venezuela, Caudillo, Ej?rcito, Pueblo ("Leader, Army, People"), eerily recalls the German national socialist maxim, “One People, One Country, One Leader.” (The first chapter is titled “The Jewish Question and the state of Israel.") After denying the Holocaust, he explains that the greatest threat to Chavismo comes from the Jews of Venezuela. A self-described Communist and fascist, Ceresole became an expert in national socialism after designing Juan Domingo Per?n’s electoral platform in Argentina. In Ceresole’s hands, representative democracy mutates into “participatory” systems led by cult-like figures; tellingly, Ch?vez praises the “participatory democracy” of Libya, Syria, Iran, and Cuba. Ceresole’s structure channels the people’s will through the charismatic strongman; the military functions as the central political body. Ceresole’s roadmap for Venezuela suffered some setbacks, including a 2002 coup that displaced Ch?vez for 48 hours and a national strike that almost toppled the government. But Venezuela’s dramatic political metamorphosis was nonetheless complete by the time Ceresole died in 2003.

Chavismo’s purpose, however, is not just to create a stable autocracy. At its core is a far-reaching foreign policy that aims to establish a loosely aligned federation of revolutionary republics as a resistance bloc in the Americas. The Chavista worldview sees the globe as a place where the United States, Europe, and Israel must be opposed by militarized one-man regimes.

If democracy is about anything, it's about exposing cults of personality.

Goldstein writes:

Though Robertson clearly overstated the case—at least insofar as he spoke publicly, which will allow Chavez to play up his already legendary paranoia and anti-Americanism by tying Robertson’s statement to the official government line—it is nevertheless imperative that we don’t lose sight of who the real villian is here. Unfortunately, I suspect our own press will do just that, aiding Chavez by playing up the connection between the social conservative base—understood to be Bush’s staunchest supporters (though that itself is debatable)—and Roberstson’s brand of religiosity. Which, while predictable, would be a shame, nevertheless.

Don't forget that Venezuela supplies us with about a seventh of our oil imports ---and Chavez has routinely threatened to cut us off if we cross him. I think he's nutty enough to do it ---even at the risk of hurting his own economy.

So, enjoy ripping into Robertson as a hypocrite and as a prominent ally of the Bush Administration all you want, but recognize the vast difference between the moral culpability of these two men.

Whacking the New Beard
Now Playing: "Crazy" by Patsy Cline
Why the hell is Pat Robertson calling for the assassination of Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez? Isn't that something that one should only do in the privacy of one's own pointy little head?

Now, of course, if something were to happen to Chavez, the one person you know would get blamed is George W. Bush.

Thanks to the National Geographic Channel
Mood:  special
If you didn't catch the National Geographic Channel's 4-hour documentary Inside 9/11, you really missed some exceptional TV. I'm sure it will be on again, so look for it.

Oh, and here's the website for this excellent documentary. Check it out.

What Hath Uncle Sam Wrought
Mood:  a-ok
Michael Barone writes of the Muslims in the Middle East:

They may also have noticed that Egypt will have its first contested election for president this year. "There were no arguments over the United States, Israel, Palestine, Iraq, or any of the other 'hot spots' that used to dominate every meal and spill over into tea, coffee, and dessert," writes Mona Eltahawy in the Washington Post of her trip to Egypt this summer. "This time, all conversations were about a small but active opposition movement in Egypt that since December has focused on ending the dictatorship of President Hosni Mubarak. I have never heard so many relatives and friends take such an interest in Egyptian politics or--more important--feel that they had a stake in them." Minds are indeed changing.

This is not to say that everybody in these countries has good things to say about the United States. But we are not engaged in a popularity contest. We're trying to construct a safer world. We are in the long run better off if Muslims around the world turn away from terrorism and move toward democracy, even if we don't like some of the internal policies they choose and even if they don't have much affection for the United States. Two generations ago Americans, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of deaths, changed minds in Germany and Japan. The Pew Global Project Attitude's metrics give us reason to believe that today's Americans, at far lower cost, are once again changing minds in the Muslim world.

Casey Sheehan and Louis Qualls died in defense of their fellow soldiers and Marines ---but they also gave their lives in furtherance of my right to sit here in the comfort of my own home on this muggy Monday morning in Texas and say that Those Men are the fathers to a new world of democratic possibility. History will mark their sacrifices one liberated mind and body at a time. It is my small ---but absolute--- duty to remember that here.

The Nauseatingly Cute Robin Meade

Suffrage
Now Playing: "Jet" by Paul McCartney & Wings
I only caught a few minutes of Meet the Press today, but I thought that Reuel Marc Gerecht had an interesting, albeit controversial, point: don't worry too much about whether women in Iraq have absolute political and social equality right away. In our own country, women didn't have the full franchise until 1920 ---and no one can reasonably say that we weren't a functioning democracy before then.

Anyway, I very much doubt that women won't have the vote from the very start of a constitutional Iraq. That doesn't seem to be an especially big issue. But it's interesting that what we expect an Iraqi constitution to look like is so fully modern. We see suffrage as a given, when it is not.

But let us have lots more commentary from the Left ---that is, if they are able to see past the war for a moment to visualize the inevitable peace--- on their concerns regarding Islamic law.

I mean, if you have a problem with sharia, by all means, share it with the class...

Seeing Urchins
To celebrate my birthday today, I went out of town with my family to have lunch with my aunt who lives a few minutes north of the President's ranch outside of Crawford.

On our way back, we went looking for Camp Casey ---and found it.

There's not much to it, frankly: many dozens of whitebread hippies who had come in nice vehicles and parked them down the road from the tents and propaganda booths where they hung out. Lots of cops standing around in the hot Texas sun on account of these flakes and their safety. All the usual detritus generated by city folk loitering in the middle of otherwise bucolic farmland.

There was also plenty of counter-protesting around, too, not the least of which came from most of the property-owners in the area with signs hanging from their fences showing support for our Commander in Chief and our troops. Lots of bikers, too, with their MIA/POW flags out and their menacing machinery.

In fact, from just our cursory view, it looked like there were as many counter-protesters there as hippies. And, it must be said, there were some mighty cute ones of each kind, too.

And, of course, CNN has its news truck parked right there at the edge of the action.

I think people were there mostly for its value as a road-trip destination. Maybe have a bite at a local restaurant and pick up a mug or baseball cap.

The world will definitely keep on turning.

But there were a lot of crosses along the road leading to the camp. My brother said he saw a crescent among them, but I didn't catch that. Just saw lots of crosses and wished there didn't have to be any more. But I know better.

It's the Old Haters-for-Peace Ploy Again, Eh?
Now Playing: "Fur Elise" by Ludwig van Beethoven
Thanks to RedState.org, here's a link to a little bit of Cindy Sheehan's nuttiness, as displayed at a rally last April for Islamofascist sympathizer/attorney Lynne Stewart (for Christ's sake!):

I was raised in a country by a public school system that taught us that America was good, that America was just. America has been killing people, like my sister over here says, since we first stepped on this continent, we have been responsible for death and destruction. I passed on that bullshit to my son and my son enlisted. I’m going all over the country telling moms: “This country is not worth dying for. If we’re attacked, we would all go out. We’d all take whatever we had. I’d take my rolling pin and I’d beat the attackers over the head with it. But we were not attacked by Iraq. {applause} We might not even have been attacked by Osama bin Laden if {applause}. 9/11 was their Pearl Harbor to get their neo-con agenda through and, if I would have known that before my son was killed, I would have taken him to Canada. I would never have let him go and try and defend this morally repugnant system we have. The people are good, the system is morally repugnant. {applause}

Note: Neo-con is Leftist code for "troublemaking Jew."

Harry Truman Was Right
Over at the Captain's Quarters, guest poster Dafydd has an excellent post rebutting the latest rationalizations being floated by the Clintonites on the issue of Able Danger:

The Able Danger argument du jour is whether the group actually had Mohammed Atta's name, or whether they had "merely" identified his al-Qaeda cell in Brooklyn... as if that makes all the difference.

Oh, well, if they didn't have his actual name, then busting up the cell and arresting everyone wouldn't have made any difference, right?

That cell contained not only Atta but several other eventual 9/11 hijackers. If the FBI had gotten the information, they would -- one hopes -- have surveilled the cell and eventually broken it up. Atta would have either been captured with the rest or forced to flee with a manhunt on his heels; he likely would have used one of his many aliases to flee the country. He may have been caught, or he may have ended up in Iraq.

Ending up in Iraq, eh? Why not?

Remember Ramzi Yousef? He was the guy who constructed the bomb used in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center.

Guess which country he fled to after that job. (Hint: it's said by some to have never threatened us.)

[CORRECTION: I mistakenly referred to Yousef, when I had in mind Abdul Rahman Yasin. Yasin was the animal who mixed the chemicals for the 1993 WTC bombing.]

"...arrived like mourners to a mass to rot in boredom's glow..."
Now Playing: "My Little Town" by Paul Simon (with Art Garfunkel)
Here's a really nice picture from yesterday's Austin American-Statesman of the anti-war protesters down on Town Lake Wednesday night.

I'm sure there's a joke in there somewhere about bats, but let it pass: it's a great picture.

Presumed Immunity
I don't like Cindy Sheehan. I think she's exploiting the death of her son, Casey Sheehan, who was a real hero. She, on the other hand, is a sympathizer to Islamist murderers.

I am not obligated to show respect or patience for mentally-ill idiots. But I am obligated to point out that Sheehan is being used ---with her full consent--- by asshole Leftists who love having a prop that they think is immune to criticism because of the loss she's suffered. Their special place in Hell is called the last judgement of History.

If this Jew-hating old moonbat thinks that George W. Bush is a terrorist, then why would she want to see him? Wouldn't she be afraid that he would take her captive and saw her head off?

In fact, Sheehan is quite comfortable with the notion of terrorists, so long as she doesn't actually have to come face to face with any of them. But she can be in no doubt that she is aiding and abetting them with her every utterance.

If Sheehan is so fucking wonderful, then let Turd Kennedy and Lurch and the rest of them come down to Crawford and stand beside her. Maybe she can explain to them that the Jews own everything and that appeasing Islamofascism is the surest way to peace.

"Militants"
Mood:  don't ask
Now Playing: "Young at Heart" by Frank Sinatra
I was watching the Gaza withdrawal earlier this morning on the cable news networks and the exquisite Lisa Daniels of MSNBC referred to the protesters and settlers ---at least twice that I heard--- as "militants."

Doesn't she know that militants is the term that propagandists like al-Reuters and al-Jazeera use for Islamofascist murderers?

Surely Ms. Daniels wasn't observing any militancy of that kind ---or of any kind, for that matter--- at Kfar Darom today. What she was seeing was the tumultuous and tearful passing of Israel's dream of a promised land.

Let the Car Swarm People have Gaza. Watch what they do with it. When they turn it into a seedbed of terrorist insanity, the IDF will come again ---as they did almost 40 years ago--- and rip those bastards apart, as they deserve.

Momentarily Preincarnated
I was watching some footage from Gaza a few minutes ago and there's all these Car Swarm People out in their boats off the coast of Greater Israel ---celebrating their victory over the perfidious Jews.

I don't know why, but for three or four seconds, the sight of Arabs sailing around with flags flying and with all their caterwauling really sent a mental shiver up my Historical spine.

Hadn't I seen Them before? In those very same waters, but a thousand years ago?

Foolishness, but yes.

Who says there's no final solutions? Mankind may come to forget what once was a necessity, but only because, for a moment, it was all that was left to us: absolute, amoral, and annihilatory acts in indemnification of the ultimate morality of self-preservation.

I hope I'm strong enough to face the light.