Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
ACLU: Spying for America's Enemies
Savor the silence of America's self-serving champions of privacy. For once, the American Civil Liberties Union has nothing bad to say about the latest case of secret domestic surveillance -- because it is the ACLU that committed the spying. Last week, The Washington Post reported on a new Justice Department inquiry into photographs of undercover CIA officials and other intelligence personnel taken by ACLU-sponsored researchers assisting the defense team of Guantanamo Bay detainees. According to the report, the pictures of covert American CIA officers -- "in some cases surreptitiously taken outside their homes" -- were shown to jihadi suspects tied to the 9/11 attacks in order to identify the interrogators.
Seventy Years After the Hitler-Stalin Pact
"Communazi" became magazine shorthand for their collaboration, dark slang connecting the two totalitarian ideologies of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany after they ratified the Hitler-Stalin Pact. That faux-peace agreement and its secret protocols, signed 70 years ago on Aug. 23, 1939, divided Eastern Europe between the Nazis' swastika and the communists' hammer and sickle. The pact shocked Western Europe and the U.S., but Poland, in the land trapped between the armies of National Socialism and Marxist Internationalist Socialism, understood the immediate implications. Poland's two old enemies, both with territorial and imperial ambitions, were setting the political conditions for war.
Grays of Making Them Talk
In a 2004 report that was made public on Monday, the CIA's inspector general noted that "a number of agency officers of various grade levels who are involved with detention and interrogation activities are concerned that they may at some future date be vulnerable to legal action." Depending on your view of the Bush administration's "enhanced interrogation techniques," this spontaneously expressed fear shows either that the officers knew they were breaking the law or that they worried they would be punished for policy decisions made by their superiors.
Competition
"Choice, competition, reducing costs -- those are the things that I want to see accomplished in this health reform bill," President Obama told talk-show host Michael Smerconish last week. Choice and competition would be good. They would indeed reduce costs. If only the president meant it. Or understood it. In a free market, a business that is complacent about costs learns that its prices are too high when it sees lower-cost competitors winning over its customers. The market -- actually, the consumer -- holds businesses accountable and keeps them honest. No "public option" is needed.
Bob Novak vs. the TV "Genius"
The death of columnist and reporter Bob Novak was a sad occasion for conservatives who voraciously read his columns and cheered his verbal punches on cable television for decades. On TV, Novak's passing was treated with respect, but only briefly: ABC, CBS and NBC all noted it on their evening news on Aug. 18, but by the next morning, NBC offered only a sentence or two. ABC and CBS had nothing at all. (All three squeezed in the mandatory daily update on Michael Jackson.)
Obama's Reality Problem
WASHINGTON -- At first it seemed plausible that President Obama had a communications problem on health care -- to which the solution was always more and more Obama. But exposure did not translate into persuasion. Then it seemed useful to diagnose a partisan problem, blaming a small minority of congressional obstructionists and town hall crazies for frustrating the will of the majority -- until polls showed a majority opposing Democratic approaches to health reform. More Americans (according to a recent Washington Post poll) now think that health quality, costs and their own insurance coverage will get worse under Obamacare than believe these things will improve.
Obama and Faith
The fight over health care took the most interesting turn last week. President Obama briefly switched from wonkish frippery about bending cost curves to speaking of faith. Reaching out to progressive faith leaders in two massive conference calls, Obama insisted that God was on his side. Expanding health care fulfills a "core moral and ethical obligation that we look out for one another ... that I am my brother's keeper, my sister's keeper." This would be an easy opportunity to call attention, once again, to the double standards applied to Obama. When President George W. Bush invoked God as his inspiration, many liberals saw our theocrat-in-chief taking a sledgehammer to the wall between church and state. When Obama does likewise, it's inspiring, spiritual leadership.
America Loses its Own Hearts and Minds
Every insurgency has a long-term plan. That plan isn't military victory. It's tacit alliance with naysayers or sympathizers from the opposing force who are all too willing to undermine the war effort. Every insurgency is a stalling tactic aimed at the enemy, designed to oust those determined to wage war and install those determined to achieve armistice at all costs. Even after their defeat at Gettysburg, the Confederacy held out hope that an 1864 Democratic presidential victory would provide them independence. "If we can break up the enemy's arrangements," wrote Robert E. Lee, "he will not be able to recover his position or his morale until the presidential election is over, and then we shall have a new president to treat with."
What Will They Learn?
When parents plunk down $20, $30, $40 and maybe $50 thousand this fall for a year's worth of college room, board and tuition, it might be relevant to ask: What will their children learn in return? The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) ask that question in their recently released publication, "What Will They Learn: A Report on the General Education Requirements at 100 of the Nation's Leading Colleges and Universities." ACTA conducted research to see whether 100 major institutions require seven key subjects: English composition, literature, foreign language, U.S. government or history, economics, mathematics and science. What ACTA found was found was alarming, reporting that "Even as our students need broad-based skills and knowledge to succeed in the global marketplace, our colleges and universities are failing to deliver. Topics like U.S. government or history, literature, mathematics, and economics have become mere options on far too many campuses. Not surprisingly, students are graduating with great gaps in their knowledge -- and employers are noticing."
Blowing Smoke at Terrorists
Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, according to the 9-11 commission report, was the mastermind of the Oct. 12, 2000, attack on the U.S.S. Cole that killed 17 U.S. sailors. Nashiri was also the target of an "unauthorized" CIA interrogation technique (that had not been legally vetted by the Justice Department) that is described in a May 7, 2004, CIA inspector general's report that was partially declassified by the Obama administration this week. CIA officers blew smoke in Nashiri's face, according to the report, and they used cigars.
Command Decision
On May 27, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson had telephone conversations about Vietnam with McGeorge Bundy, his national security adviser, and Sen. Richard Russell, chairman of the Armed Services Committee. First, to Bundy, he said: "It just worries the hell out of me. I don't see what we can ever hope to get out of there. ... I don't think that we can fight them 10,000 miles away from home and ever get anywhere. ... I don't think it's worth fighting for, and I don't think we can get out. It's just the biggest damn mess I ever saw. ... What the hell is Vietnam worth to me? ... What is it worth to this country?"
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
This Week, It Was Scotland's Turn To Shame the West
Whenever I think that some Western country or institution has reached a low point, shortly thereafter, sometimes the very next week, another Western government or institution proves me too optimistic. Last week, it was the news that the Yale University Press will not allow any picture of Muhammad to appear in its forthcoming book on the Muhammad cartoons controversy. Not only will Yale not print the cartoons that are the subject of the book, Yale will not print any picture of Muhammad, no matter how respectful, no matter that a believing Muslim drew it, and no matter how long ago it was drawn.
Don't Give Obamacare a Life Raft
So here I am feeling a lot better about the possibility of rolling back Obama statism, when I come across an AP report that Sen. John McCain is throwing President Barack Obama a health care life raft. It's official; the Beltway GOP simply can't stand "prosperity." Why can't the senator read the tea leaves for once and realize America doesn't want socialism? Why can't he read history and understand that liberals never stop with socialism lite? Once in the door, the statist pushes it all the way open. Don't you see, Sen. McCain? To them, compromise is about incrementalism. They are looking for useful idiots on the other side of the aisle to unlock that door and nudge it open.
The Mysterious Case of Scottish Justice
When convicted Pan Am Flight 103 killer Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi landed to a hero's welcome in Libya last week, there was no question about it: Our Betters in Europe got rolled. They were undone by the vainglory of Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, who authorized Megrahi's "compassionate" early release for terminal prostate cancer. MacAskill explained: Compassion means "remaining true to our values as a people. No matter the severity of the provocation or the atrocity perpetrated." Sure, there's a place for justice -- but smugness first.
National Suicide
Remember when the deficit was so bad that Democrats said we (or more accurately the Republicans) were placing a terrible burden on our grandchildren? That was several trillion dollars ago. Democrats now appear perfectly fine with extending the growing deficit and national debt to their great-grandchildren. Perhaps politicians think they will never be held accountable three generations from now because they won't be around to explain to those not yet born why they refused to stop our financial hemorrhaging.
Obama's Blunder
If the left wing of the left wing of the left wing in American life doesn't control most of the Obama farmstead's best and richest acreage, it could be time for new spectacles -- since things surely look that way. Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to go after the CIA has all the earmarks of policy designed to make left-wing hearts palpitate. What other purpose could it possibly serve? Not that of national security or common sense.
Obama Screws Up Latin American Policy
The lights are going out in Venezuela. The Chavez-controlled legislature passed an education bill on Aug. 13 that will extinguish the last glimmers of free thought in the country's classrooms. The law is such a caricature of revolutionary legislation that it almost seems like a joke, like something out of Woody Allen's "Bananas." But it's not funny for Venezuelans. Schools will now be required to teach "Bolivarian doctrine," a vague catchall for Chavez's sloganeering. They will be supervised by "communal councils" (read commissars from the socialist party) and the central government will decide who can and who cannot enter universities and the teaching profession.
Disney's Decline
I'll always remember how magical it was to see Tinker Bell flitter across the TV screen. She would touch the top of Cinderella's Castle with her magic wand and release a million tiny sparkles that cascaded down the television screen and seemingly into my living room. Since our family normally attended church on Sunday evenings, it was a rare treat to watch the Wonderful World of Disney. On that occasion when I was home and could steal away and turn on the TV, I was instantly transported into a world of fairytales and dreams. Disney was synonymous with innocence, happiness and hope - of Mickey Mouse, virtuous damsels and handsome heroes.
The Great Escape
Many of the issues of our times are hard to understand without understanding the vision of the world that they are part of. Whether the particular issue is education, economics or medical care, the preferred explanation tends to be an external explanation-- that is, something outside the control of the individuals directly involved. Education is usually discussed in terms of the money spent on it, the teaching methods used, class sizes or the way the whole system is organized. Students are discussed largely as passive recipients of good or bad education. But education is not something that can be given to anybody. It is something that students either acquire or fail to acquire. Personal responsibility may be ignored or downplayed in this "non-judgmental" age, but it remains a major factor nevertheless.