THE SHIA ANTI-IRAN ALLIANCE
TTPers have known for many moons now that the American military is winning a tremendous victory in Iraq. This week, Tony Blankley and Jack Kelly provide updates in Declaring Victory and Declaring Defeat. The media is finally and begrudgingly acknowledging the reality of victory. So far, however, the focus has been entirely on the defeat of Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). Yet this has been a two-front war, a war to terrorize and destabilize Iraq waged not just by AQI, but by Iran. Now we learn that not only is terrorist violence vanishing in Sunni regions of AQI focus, but in Shia regions of Iranian focus. AP is reporting that Basra violence is down 90%. America's victory in Iraq means that both Al Qaeda and Iran have been defeated... simultaneously. Now here's a question to consider: Was this George Bush's goal all along? Iraq as a two-fer! Let's not go there, though. Let's focus instead on the consequences of defeat in Iraq for Iran. They are very grave. One of the gravest examples is the emerging Arab Shia Anti-Iran Alliance.
DECLARING DEFEAT
We're floundering in a quagmire in Iraq. Our strategy is flawed, and it's too late to change it. Our material resources have been squandered, our best people killed, and our reputation around the world is circling the drain. We must withdraw immediately. No, I'm not channeling Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. I'm channeling Osama bin Laden, for whom the war in Iraq has been a catastrophe. Al Qaeda had little presence in Iraq during the regime of Saddam Hussein. But once he was toppled, Al Qaeda's chieftains decided to make Iraq the central front in the global jihad against the Great Satan. "The most important and serious issue today for the whole world is this third world war, which the Crusader-Zionist coalition began against the Islamic nation," Osama bin Laden said in an audio tape posted on Islamic Web sites in December, 2004. "It is raging in the land of the Two Rivers. The world's millstone and pillar is Baghdad, the capital of the caliphate." Jihadis, money and weapons were poured into Iraq from all over the Moslem world. All for naught. Al Qaeda has been defeated in Iraq.
REAGAN 21: Applying RR’s Principles to the 21st Century
It's been nearly 20 years since Ronald Reagan left the presidency. Yet, even people who don't remember his presidency (or his governorship in California) as I do, have positive views of his legacy. Yes, he lowered taxes and ended the Cold War. But we remember him for even more than that. He stood unwavering by his principles, his personal integrity was never in question and he had that immutable optimism. Today, Congress has a record-low approval rating of 11 percent. Republicans lost the majority in part because they spent too much, had ethical lapses and did not deliver on illegal immigration and other issues. The people put Democrats in charge, but they have disappointed even more than Republicans. Americans are crying out for leadership with principle, integrity and courage. They want to believe again in an optimistic vision for America's future. Reagan 21 is the project of a group of about 20 senators and representatives to provide that fresh, bold leadership.
DECLARING VICTORY
It has become obligatory for both pro- and anti-war commentators to never mention the possibility of victory in Iraq. The most that anti-war people will admit is that the surge has gained a temporary military advantage in a war that cannot be won militarily. The most pro-war commentators will claim is that they see the possibility of "success" perhaps, maybe, someday, somehow. But as of Veterans Day 2007, I think one can claim a very real expectation that next year the world may see a genuine, old-fashioned victory in the Iraq War. In five years we will have overturned Saddam's government, killed, captured or driven out of country almost all Al Qaeda terrorists, suppressed the violent Shi'ite militias and induced the Sunni tribal leaders and their people to shun resistance and send their sons into the army and police and seek peaceful resolution of disputes. And we will have stood up a multisectarian, tribally inclusive army capable of maintaining the peace that our troops established.
COULD HILLARY VANISH IN A PUFF OF SMOKE?
Most pundits in Washington have already conceded the Democrat nomination to Sen. Clinton because of the large leads she holds in national opinion polls. But that lead is illusory, because normal people don't pay much attention to politics a year before the election. It's not a surprise that there are a lot of undecideds in the national polls, or that the frontrunners in both parties are the candidates with the highest name recognition. The polls in Iowa -- where a higher proportion of voters is paying attention, because the Iowa caucuses are less than two months away -- tell a different story. There, Hillary Clinton's lead over Sen. Barack Hussein Obama is within the margin of error. Sen. Obama is so wet behind the ears dolphins could swim there. But he's a likeable guy, and people tend to vote for the candidate they like.
Chapter Thirty-Two: “WE HAVE KILLED MALINCHE!”
[After an absurdly long bout of inexcusable procrastination, Chapter Thirty-Two of The Jade Steps in finally here. There are only two more chapters to go: The Sowing of the Whirlwind, and La Malinche, followed by an Epilogue. The end is in sight!] The Jade Steps Chapter Thirty Two: "We Have Killed Malinche!" Cortez lay awake in his bedchambers at his headquarters in Tepeaca. He and his forces had returned from Huaquechula in time to celebrate All Saints Day and pray to those who had achieved the beatific vision in heaven that this "ultimate end of human existence" might possibly be granted to them when they die. That was yesterday. Today, they held the Feast of All Souls Day, to pray for those departed Christian souls being cleansed of their sins in purgatorium. For some reason, he had felt an unusual uneasiness during the prayers at Mass, which he expressed to Doña Marina. Now he was even more uneasy, for where was she? Gone on one of her evening learning expeditions. This one was taking too long. He wished that she was next to him right now. Suddenly she was. She had burst wordlessly into the room, quickly removed her dress, and snuggled up to him in their bed. A look into Cortez's eyes told her what he had been thinking. And when he looked back into hers, he knew something was wrong. He waited for her to tell him.
ACTUALLY DOING SOMETHING ABOUT $100 OIL
Yesterday (11/08), the Wall Street Journal ran an article giving ten reasons Why $100 Can't Float. They were good, persuasive reasons. Yet taken together, they were not sufficiently persuasive as they ignored the political dimension of the problem. Put in a nutshell, we have near $100 oil instead of energy independence at a fraction of the cost because Congress is an obstacle rather than a solution to the problem. Right here in America, we have enormous energy reserves of coal, natural gas, liquid oil, and oil shale. With foreign oil now so expensive, it should be easy to produce our own energy at far less cost. And it will be easy if Congress does three things:
MOSLEM TERRORIST DRUG LORDS WITH NUKES
How's that for your basic nightmare scenario? Welcome to Pakistan's future. And for once, the Moonbats are right. It is Bush's fault. It is not, of course, Bush's fault that Pakistan is a make-believe country ludicrously constructed by the colonial British, as we learned in The Lunacy of a British Legacy. It's not his fault that Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI - the Pak CIA) created the Taliban as a joint business venture to run the Afghan heroin trade (as we learned about in The Bourne Absurdity). But it is his fault for not eliminating Afghanistan's poppy fields, which are capitalizing the Islamist maelstrom engulfing Pakistan. That's because the family of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, along with the family's business partners in New Jersey, are making millions from Afghan heroin as well. All the media attention is now on Pervez Musharraf and his consolidation of power, with predictable puerile moaning about his "threat to democracy." Naturally, almost no big media attention is paid to the heroin drug money fueling the crisis. If they did, reporters' attention might better be directed away from the riotous streets of Islamabad and towards a McMansion on a leafy quiet street in Mendham, New Jersey.
BESLAN IN AMERICA?
On Sept. 1, 2004, Chechens affiliated with al Qaeda seized a middle school in Beslan, Russia. In the three day siege, 334 people --most of them children -- were killed. Could something like that happen here? * In May of 2006, two Saudi students at the University of South Florida boarded a school bus. They were "cagey and evasive" in explaining why they boarded the bus, said a spokesman for the Hillsborough County sheriff. * In March of 2007, the FBI issued a bulletin to law enforcement warning that Moslems "with ties to extremist groups" were signing up to be school bus drivers. * A Houston television station reported in August of this year that 17 large yellow school buses have been stolen. Al Qaeda prefers middle schools because the girls are old enough to rape, but the boys aren't big enough to fight back, says retired Army LtCol. Dave Grossman, who runs a private security firm. Why would al Qaeda contemplate something so monstrous?
THE ENTITLEMENT CRISIS AS A MORAL CRISIS
The U.S Comptroller General and head of the GAO, Government Accountability Office, has described the entitlements crisis facing this country as a "tsunami" that approaches while we continue to party on the beach. What GAO head David Walker is talking about are the massive upcoming obligations under Social Security and Medicare that we have no funds to meet. Tens of trillions of dollars of supposed commitments, promises made to us by our government, that today we have no clue how we'll pay. In those rare moments when our political "leaders" screw up sufficient courage to acknowledge this dark and ominous fiscal cloud hanging over us, the discussion is invariably technical. Proposed tax increases, cap increases, retirement age increases, benefit cuts, indexing -- all geared to "save the system." But who has considered that, despite all the discussion about unfunded liabilities, what we really have on our hands is, at root and core, a moral crisis?