Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Friday, August 15, 2014
Obama's Incomprehensible Iraq Policy Not So Incomprehensible
I am constantly amazed at the tendency of some to use the perspective of hindsight to condemn decisions of those who did not possess the supernatural gift of predictive prophecy at the time they made their decisions. So when a friend asked whether I believe that those who supported George W. Bush's decision to attack Iraq should feel remorse, considering the chaos and genocide occurring there now, I said "no," with some qualifications. I believe that Bush and his team based their decision to invade Iraq on the best available intelligence (as to weapons of mass destruction) and a reasonable belief that Saddam Hussein fostered and supported terrorism -- not to mention his serial violation of multiple U.N. resolutions -- and thereby represented a threat to the national security interests of the United States and its allies.
Overdoing the Death of Robin Williams
There was something thoroughly distasteful about that Robin Williams press conference the other day. It sounded wrong. It looked bad. It smelled. Was it newsworthy, so much so that news networks would break into their regular afternoon programming to broadcast live the first official law enforcement press conference surrounding Williams' death? We think so. Williams was not just an iconic American comedian since he burst onto the scene with "Mork and Mindy" in the 1970s, he was perhaps the single funniest man in America. That he would die so suddenly understandably generated interest. When the word "suicide" appeared we became a nation of rubberneckers. We had to know what happened.
Fidelity to Principle Can Make Needed Flexibility Impossible
Politicians have ranges of positions of varying widths that they find acceptable. Hillary Clinton, like her husband, has a very wide range of stands she finds acceptable, depending on timing and circumstances. President Obama's range of acceptable positions has been far narrower. This is reflected in their attitudes about military action in Iraq. Clinton was for it in 2002 and was against it by 2007. Obama was always against what he called a "dumb war." As for President George W. Bush's surge strategy, Clinton told Obama, in front of a surprised and dismayed Robert Gates, that her opposition to the surge was "political because she was facing him in the Iowa primary." Obama, according to Gates, merely conceded that opposition to the surge -- by whom? -- was political.
Thursday, August 14, 2014
Yes, Low-Tax States Are Out-Competing High Tax States
First, an apology. In a July 2 article in this newspaper [Investor's Business Daily] I erred in citing Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers comparing the superior job creation performance of no-income-tax Texas and Florida with the two states with the highest income-tax rates, California and New York. This set off a brouhaha in the media — although the errors in no way change the conclusion that low-tax states have grown much faster than high-tax states. I wrote that Texas had gained one million jobs in the last five years while California lost jobs. Regrettably, the correct period was a slightly longer period from January 2008- December 2013. Recall, the Great Recession started in December of 2007. The BLS household survey on employment finds that over this period Texas gained 1.08 million jobs and California lost 5,000 jobs.
In the Muddle of the Middle East
The White House's credibility isn't the only thing suffering from the President's Middle East failures -- so are tens of thousands of innocent people. They are the real casualties of the administration's indifference toward the religious persecution that's raging in the region. Even now, after a week of U.S. airstrikes, our own military is unconvinced that the President's eleventh-hour strategy is an effective replacement for the American intervention that should have taken place all along. In a brutal assessment of the situation, Army Lt. Gen. William Mayville warned that even with the U.S.'s involvement, "I in no way want to suggest that we have effectively contained or that we are somehow breaking the momentum of the IS (Islamic State). The strikes are unlikely to affect (IS's) overall capabilities or its operations in other areas of Iraq and Syria," he explained, describing the effect as "very temporary." If anything, IS is showing its ability to adapt, military leaders say, and are moving to hide among village people, where they know they're less vulnerable to U.S. attacks.
Why Is Hillary Doing Stupid Things?
"Great nations need organizing principles -- and 'Don't do stupid stuff' is not an organizing principle." So said former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton in an interview with The Atlantic. So, why is she doing stupid things? The Washington Post called her "blunt" criticism of the Obama administration "surprising." Well, it's certainly not surprising to anyone who has followed her career. Don't forget, she made her debut as a Wellesley College senior. She bluntly told off Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Brooke. Sen. Brooke, a liberal Republican, was the first black man elected to the Senate since Reconstruction. As such, and in recognition of his own massive personal dignity, Sen. Brooke was given deferential treatment by leaders in both political parties. But not by young Hillary Rodham. She sassed him good. Don't do stupid stuff.
Obama: The Iraq 'Bug Out' Was Not My Idea
After our ill-advised complete withdraw from Iraq in 2011, President Barack Obama now sends hundreds of "advisors" and orders airstrikes. Let's re-visit. When, in 2002, then-Illinois State Sen. Obama gave his famous anti-Iraq War speech, he argued that America had no business in this "dumb" war. Period. Obama considered Iraq a blunder of epic proportions, a misadventure totally devoid of any national security interest. Obama never doubted the assumption given to then-President George W. Bush by all 16 of our intelligence agencies: that Saddam Hussein possessed stockpiles of WMD, specifically chemical and biological weapons. CIA director George Tenet, who served under Obama's predecessors -- Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton -- called the intelligence behind this assumption a "slam dunk."
Can a Gun Owner Get Justice in New Jersey?
Shaneen Allen faces three and a half years in prison because she made an honest mistake, followed by a mistake of honesty. Allen, a 27-year-old phlebotomist who lives in Philadelphia, drove to Atlantic City with a gun in her purse, erroneously thinking her Pennsylvania carry permit would be respected in New Jersey. Then she told a state trooper about the gun when he pulled her over for a traffic violation. Last week, a state judge refused to dismiss the resulting charges against Allen, a single mother of two with no criminal record, or to order that prosecutors approve her participation in a pretrial diversion program. Her trial, scheduled for October 6, will pit New Jersey's draconian gun laws against compassion and common sense.
Hillary's Neocon Moment
Is it not a thing of wonderment that the two leading families of the Party of the Poor and Down-and-Out are ending the summer in Martha's Vineyard? Both the Obamas and the Clintons are renting spacious mansions, probably from Wall Streeters, on that enchanted isle. They're playing golf and tennis, and -- who knows -- croquet, just like the Rockefellers or Vanderbilts. Yet do not expect them to be dining together in the moonlight. In fact, relations between them have turned downright hostile. Hillary this week has made it all but final. She is a neoconservative, a genuine, 24-carat neoconservative! She has all the credentials. Back in the 1970s, Irving Kristol, the official godfather of neoconservatism, defined a neoconservative as a liberal who has been mugged by reality. By that definition, a mere believer in muscular foreign policy pronouncements is no neoconservative. Perhaps he or she is a hawk but not a neoconservative. To be a true neocon one has to have once been a liberal -- preferably a Trotskyite -- and to have come to one's conversion in fits and starts. Well, Hillary certainly fills the bill, complete with fits and starts.
Robin Williams: Comedy and Tragedy
Robin Williams made me cry. Like his mentor, the late Jonathan Winters, Williams, who committed suicide Monday, made me laugh so intensely tears would come to my eyes. Williams' death made headlines and led TV newscasts. His comedic genius diverted us from stories about terrorism and other sadness in the world. That's what comedy does. It makes us forget our troubles -- national, international and personal -- and for a moment, embrace happiness. Williams, who seemed full of joy on the outside, was apparently tormented on the inside. He suffered from clinical depression. An estimated 19 million Americans suffer from depression, according to the Mayo Clinic website. He may have tried to conquer it in the '70s and '80s by self-medicating with cocaine, but the drug, while creating an intense high, is often followed quickly by "intense depression," according to the Foundation for a Drug-Free World.
It's Chinatown
At the end of the movie, "Chinatown," when the rich, powerful and totally depraved Noah Cross drags his granddaughter away in order to use and abuse her as he used and abused his own daughter, the private eye, J.J. Gittes, tries to stop him. But he's held back by a friend, who says, "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown." And although at the time they are standing in the middle of a street located in L.A.'s Chinatown, what he's really saying is that some things never change, that those in power are always corrupt and, tragically, that corruption always triumphs at the end of the day.
Let's Get Serious About Mental Illness
Robin Williams' suicide this week shook up people across the political spectrum -- and for good reason. When a highly successful, incredibly popular figure from our culture decides to take his own life, it feels as though suicide could happen to anyone. It can't. Robin Williams reportedly suffered from mentally illness. He stated during an interview in 2006 that he hadn't been formally diagnosed with depression or bipolar disorder, but stated, "Do I perform sometimes in a manic style? Yes. Am I manic all the time? No. Do I get sad? Oh yeah. Does it hit me hard? Oh yeah." He added, "I get bummed, like I think a lot of us do at certain times. You look at the world and go, 'Whoa.' Other moments you look and go, 'Oh, things are OK.'" That same year, according to the Huffington Post, he explained the temptation of alcoholism -- he had famously admitted to drug and alcohol addiction problems -- to Diane Sawyer. "It's the same voice thought that ... you're standing at a precipice and you look down, there's a voice and it's a little quiet voice that goes, 'Jump.'"
Occupation of Cyprus Underscores Hypocrisy of Gaza Outrage
Cyprus is a beautiful island. But it has never recovered from the Turkish invasion of 1974. Turkish troops still control nearly 40 percent of the island -- the most fertile and formerly the richest portion. Some 200,000 Greek refugees never returned home after being expelled from their homes and farms in Northern Cyprus. The capital of Nicosia remains divided. A 112-mile demilitarized "green line" runs right through the city across the entire island.
Into a New Void?
This far into the human story, only the historically uninstructed are startled by what they think are new permutations of evil. So, when Russia sliced Crimea off Ukraine, Secretary of State John Kerry was nonplussed: "You just don't in the 21st century behave in 19th-century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext." If, however, Vladimir Putin is out of step with the march of progress, where exactly on history's inevitably ascending path (as progressives like Kerry evidently think) does Kerry, our innocent abroad, locate the Islamic State? The Islamic State uses crucifixions to express piety and decapitations to encourage cooperation. These are some of the "folks" -- to adopt the locution Barack Obama frequently uses to express his all-encompassing diffidence -- Obama was referring to when talking to The New York Times' Thomas Friedman. "That's exactly right," Obama said when Friedman suggested that Obama believes all Middle East factions must agree to a politics of "no victor, no vanquish." It will be interesting watching Obama try to convince the crucifiers and the crucified to split their differences.
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
Navy Goes Overboard with Bible Purge
There wasn't room at the inn for Jesus -- and now there isn't room at the Navy's Lodges either! After a string of good news on the religious liberty front, the Navy seems to be falling back into the military's bad habits on anti-faith censorship. Despite a longtime partnership with the Gideons, the director of the Navy Lodge program is tossing the nightstand Bibles, explaining that the giveaways will now be at the commanders' discretion. The directive, which was signed back in mid-June, started taking effect recently, as housekeepers and other sailors were instructed to purge the lodges of the free Bibles. At least two employees -- one Lodge worker and an active duty serviceman -- contacted our friends at AFA and Fox News to blow the whistle on the change. "We were told today... that due to a new policy by the CEO of NEXCOM, Rear Admiral Robert Bianchi, we were to remove the Bibles from the rooms," a housekeeper said. "They told us to put them in boxes, where they would be taken to a donation center somewhere."
Prepare for a Long War Against the Islamic State
The hawks (including me) were wrong about a lot, but some got one thing right. It's going to be a long war. In the early days after 9/11 there was a lot of talk about a "clash of civilizations" and a long "existential struggle" facing the West. I once asked the late Christopher Hitchens what he felt on that terrible day, and he said he felt no small amount of joy. Not for the suffering and death, but for the fact that the West finally had been awakened to the terrible but necessary struggle before us. And for a time, many liberals bought into the idea that America was heading into a generational struggle with jihadism. There were a slew of books on the subject. Peter Beinart, for instance, wrote "The Good Fight: Why Liberals -- and Only Liberals -- Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again." As the subtitle suggests, there was a lot of partisan mischief in his argument, but it rested on the premise that liberals must accept that "Islamic totalitarianism" -- his phrase -- has replaced communism as our enemy. On this, at least, Beinart and company, briefly agreed with George W. Bush that the war against "Islamic fascists" (Bush's term) was the "decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century."
Mindless Drones
Drones -- unmanned flying machines -- will soon fill our skies. They conjure up fears, especially among some of my fellow libertarians, of spying and death from above. These fears aren't groundless. President Bush approved the use of armed drones against suspected terrorists overseas, and President Obama vastly increased their use. Drones have killed thousands of people in places such as Pakistan and Yemen, countries against which we have not declared war. Drones keep getting more sophisticated. The Air Force is now developing what it calls MAVs, Micro Air Vehicles, tiny drones that can quietly search for an individual terrorist and then kill him with explosives or even incapacitate him with chemicals.
What John Walsh Plagiarism Fiasco?
This year's Senate races are the Democrats' to lose in the sense that the GOP is doing nothing to earn them, hoping President Obama's political collapse will have reverse coattail effects. The "news" networks of ABC, CBS and NBC have largely avoided paying attention to the bad political outlook for Democrats in the 2014. It is amazing. What bigger political story is there this year? They even skip over their own polls revealing Obama's approval ratings have sunk to the point that they almost mirror George W. Bush's marks in 2006, when Democrats took over both houses of Congress.
The K Street President
Wonder of wonders: The Washington press corps woke up. Finally, mainstream journalists are onto Barack Obama's game. Their breaking-news shocker? Turns out all that "hope and change" stuff was just hot air. A new report from the D.C.-based press shows that -- gasp -- the White House is infested with Beltway lobbyists. Good morning, sleepyheads!
Get Ready for Denials
Fox News correspondent Geraldo Rivera accused Matt Drudge's website of "the worst kind of jingoistic rhetoric ever" for carrying news stories about the dangers of illegal immigration. He said Drudge "is doing his best to stir up a civil war. I mean, shame on Matt Drudge." Republican Rep. Todd Rokita and his Indiana delegation have been criticized for suggesting the possibility that Latin American children pouring across our southern border are carrying deadly diseases. Some of them have already been discovered to be carrying lice and suffering from disease. We've yet to find out what kind of communicable diseases they could spread to American children when schools across the country are forced to admit them.