FREEDOM’S BIRTHDAY
July 4th is Freedom’s Birthday. My suggestion is, amidst the fireworks and barbeques and flag-waving fun - all of which is great - that you take the time to feel good about America.Put aside your worries and concerns, your frustrations and fears about what’s wrong with America. For one day, forget the negative - put it all in a zip-lock bag, hide it in the back of the freezer, and pretend it doesn’t exist.One reason is that for all your worries about America’s culture and morality - you and all your fellow conservatives can feel good about your country. Liberals can’t. One of the defining characteristics of leftie-liberals is an inability to feel truly proud of their country - proud to the bone.You cannot be a liberal without feeling apologetic and embarrassed over being an American. You cannot be a conservative without lacking any such embarrassment or compulsion to apologize at all.Being an American is simply the coolest thing in the world. Wherever I have traveled in the world - it’s over 180 countries now - whenever someone asks me, “Where are you from?”, it’s always such a thrill to answer, “America - I’m an American.”I’m an American. Say it to yourself. Doesn’t it feel fantastic? It’s a feeling liberals can never have.
ELIMINATE IRAQ
Not the country. Not the people who live in the country. Eliminate the country's name. "Iraq" is a plain Arabic noun - al-iraq - meaning “the shore and grazing area of a river.” Inspiring, isn't it? Prior to 1921, there had never been a country called “Iraq” - never in history. “Iraq” was an invention of the British after World War I, who along with the French were carving up pieces of the defeated Ottoman Turkish Empire into colonies called League of Nations Mandates. Yet there already was a name for the region encompassed by the Ottoman remnants, a name from the mists of time. For thousands of years before it was eliminated from history by reasons known only to the unfathomable British colonial mind, it was called Mesopotamia.
THE DEMOCRATS’ BIG LIE CAMPAIGN
As wars go, the conflict in Iraq was -- and is -- as good as it gets. A three week military campaign with minimal casualties, 25 million people liberated from one of the most sadistic tyrants of modern times, the establishment of a military and intelligence base in the heart of the terrorist world. What well-meaning person could oppose this? In addition, two thirds of the Al Qaeda leadership is gone, and there hasn’t been a terrorist attack in America in more than two and a half years, something no one would have predicted after 9/11. By any objective standard, the Bush war on terror is a triumph. These real world considerations are why the campaign waged by the Democratic Party and a Democratic press against the Bush war policy is based not on any analysis of the war itself, but on maliciously concocted claims about the prewar justification for military action. For purely political agendas, the Democrats hope to attempt to convict the Administration of “misleading the American public” and wasting American lives through deception and fraud, and thus to defeat the President at the polls in November. This is the campaign of the Big Lie.
THE IRANIAN ELECTION STRATEGY AT WORK
So the Iranians seized some British "warships" this week, and arrested eight British naval officers. That's what the Iranians announced in the morning, and that's all we've heard. The chatterers were agog. Why would the Iranians do such a crazy thing? Do they really want war (If that isn't a good old-fashioned causus belli, what is?)? Etc.Yes, they're crazy, no doubt. But they're not stupid. And if an Iranian action seems stupid, you're probably misinterpreting it. There's a perfectly straightforward explanation for the whole episode: The Brits were laying down a network of sensors to detect the movement of ships toward major Iraqi oil terminals. The Iranians considered that a bit of a threat. So they attacked.And why, you might ask, did the Iranians feel threatened?Because they were planning to attack (or have their surrogates attack) the oil terminals, silly.And why attack the oil terminals?Because they want to defeat President Bush in November, and they figure if they can get the price of oil up to around $60 a barrel, he'll lose to Kerry.
MY LIE
It is startlingly instructive to see Bill Clinton seize the public limelight again immediately after the funeral rites for Ronald Reagan, to juxtapose the dignity of those rites with the deception of Clinton’s book, the national outpouring of grief and admiration for Ronald Reagan with the adolescent infatuation for Slick Willie.Bill Clinton’s intelligence and abilities exceeded Ronald Reagan’s - but they don’t count. It was their choices that made the difference between Clinton’s sleaze and Reagan’s nobility.This month, June 2004, the American people have been pulled between two poles: the positive of Ronald Reagan’s appeal to the best within them, and the negative of Bill Clinton’s appeal to irresponsibility and depravity. I am confident the pull of Ronald Reagan will be the stronger.One reason is that it’s too blindingly obvious that Bill Clinton’s book should have been entitled My Lie.
GROVER IN MANCHURIA
Wrap your brain around this:
· The Policy Director for the Intelligence Division of the Department of Homeland Security - who has access to classified information on all our ports, airports, and everything else pertaining to national security - is a Moslem with direct ties to Islamic radicals under indictment by the FBI.· This individual, named Faisal Gill, received his security clearances despite his lying on his clearance forms about his ties to Islamist organizations. When his deception was disclosed, he was suspended last March - and then reinstated with his clearances intact.· The reason he got the job, received his clearance, and was reinstated after being suspended, was pressure from the single most influential Republican activist and lobbyist in Washington, Grover Norquist.
SAFELY ENCRYPTING EMAILS WITH PGP
Last week I discussed the shortcomings of web surfing anonymizers. Although they have some use, they are useless against anyone who is targeting you in particular.Another concern of my readers concern emails. Emails pass through numerous way stations on the way from the sending to your mailbox. Also from your email application to someone else’s inbox.One method that can keep emails and instant messages private is strong encryption. The most popular application is PGP. PGP is a tongue in cheek term for Pretty Good Privacy. PGP actually offers strong encryption.
THE NUMBER ONE DANGER TO THE WORLD TODAY
Last April, famed theoretical physicist Haim Harari, Chairman of the Davidson Institute of Science Education and former president (1988-2001) of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, gave a speech entitled “View from the Eye of the Storm.” It is a fascinating discursion by a brilliant mind on the conflict between Western Civilization and Islam.Dr. Harari singled out Iran as "the number one danger to the world today." Yes, Iran is waging war upon the United States, is the primary sponsor of terrorism in Iraq, and will soon be capable of indulging in nuclear blackmail and terror. Yet it is not Iran that is the world’s primary danger. It is Colin Powell’s State Department which is waging war against George W. Bush and is doing everything it can to keep Iran’s Islamofascist regime in power.
FINESSING IRAN: DANGEROUSLY STUPID
The Bush administration has clearly decided to try to "manage" Iraq and "finesse" Iran, hoping to muddle through until the election and then, if victorious, consider its options in the broader theater. The president and his top advisers evidently want to avoid "new adventures" between now and November.But this is a very dangerous strategy, because it leaves the initiative, in Iraq and elsewhere, entirely in the hands of people like Zarqawi and his longtime Iranian sponsors. Indeed, it seems to me that doing nothing is an open invitation to "new adventures" in the Middle East, in Europe, and in the United States.You don't need classified information to see this; it's right in front of our noses. Yet we refuse to see it. This is what intelligence failures are really about: denial of the most obvious facts about the world. And it's what policy failures are about as well: refusal to take the obvious steps to protect our citizens, our allies, and our national interests.
A SPASM OF SPITE
In the Monday, June 14, 2004 edition of The Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan wrote a despicable hit piece on her fellow speechwriters in the Reagan White House. It was entitled “The Ben Elliott Story,” supposedly a tribute to the White House Chief Speechwriter told in the context of seeing him at President Reagan’s National Cathedral funeral service - yet it ended up being a nauseating attack on her former colleagues.The people she attacked are my friends, and it so happened that I attended President Reagan’s service with them. That she took this sacred occasion to vindictively smear them is beyond and beneath contempt. I was compelled to write the following letter to The Wall Street Journal:To: Ned Crabb, Letters Editor, Wall St. JournalIt is a sad and bizarre spectacle to see Peggy Noonan immolate her reputation in a gratuitous spasm of spite. As someone who worked closely with the Reagan White House speechwriters for five years - 1983-1988 - I know the source of the resentment. She was never part of the team.