Mark Steyn: 'Long war' is breaking down into tedium

Chicago Sun-Times ^ | 03/05/06 | Mark Steyn

[Pokey78]

Steyn ping!

[Paloma_55]

Et Tu Brutus?

[grey_whiskers]

Please add me to the Steyn Ping List!!

Cheers!

[MaryFromMichigan]

Always a pleasure to see Steyn nicely un-excerpted.

[Pokey78]

Done.

[mylife]

Has anyone here experienced folks asking for finger prints when writing a check?

Happened to me about 6 mos back
I grudgingly obliged and smeared the print real good rendering it useless

[Kokojmudd]

Harrahs hotel and casino told me the reason their rooms didn't have coffee makers was because of 911 and the patriot act.

[Alexander Rubin]

While many of his points in this article are valid, I still can't help disagreeing with some of them. I think the Dubai port deal would lead to a fundamental conflict of interest, and a needless risk of security breach. I'll take whatever opposition to it that can be mustered, piecemeal or not. I would prefer a consistent, rationally formulated policy across the board, but for now, blind opposition works for me. Moreover, though I agree the Patriot Act is overinvoked (and I think its generally a bad idea), I can't really come up with any alternatives myself.

[wizardoz]

Despite being portrayed as a swaggering arrogant neocon warmongering cowboy, President Bush has, in fact, been circumspect to a fault for five years.

I agree. I like Dubya a lot, but he's by no means rightwing. I hope he is not being too optimistic about the Muslim world. (I personally am ready to turn that black rock into radioactive dust.) But I'm willing to be patient a while longer and give him his chance to implement his ideas.

[aculeus]

... a general public skepticism (to put it politely) about the entire Muslim world. In that sense, the ports deal is the American equivalent of the Danish cartoon jihad: increasing numbers of Europeans -- if not yet their political class -- are fed up with switching on the TV and seeing Muslim men jumping up and down and threatening death followed by commentators patiently explaining that the "vast majority" of Muslims are, of course, impeccably "moderate." So what? There were millions of "moderate" Germans in the 1930s, and a fat lot of good they did us or them.

[Paul Ross]

And on discovering that there was no mention of driver's licenses in that particular subsection, I wrote back that we have a policy of reporting all erroneous invocations of the Patriot Act to the Department of Homeland Security on the grounds that such invocations weaken the rationale for the act, and thereby undermine public support for genuine anti-terrorism measures and thus constitute a threat to America's national security.

AWESOME!

The President should take note of these kinds of egregious "Bureaucrats Gone Wild" moments...and essentially take the same position as Steyn did here.

Other than the SOTU or Inauguration speeches,he hasn't done Prime Time presidential addresses on television at night to help America keep its eye on the ball.

This would be a good time for him to display his own sense of humor here, and go on a 'charm offensive.'

When the laws are being misused..."silence" is not golden...

[veronica]

Even the "friendliest" Arab regimes tend to be a bunch of duplicitous shysters: King Hussein sided with Saddam in the Gulf war, Mubarak and the House of Saud are the cause of much of our present woes.

I wish people would understand this.

I am comforted by the fact that Mark Steyn seems to be at same the juncture at which I have found myself recently. I feel a bit better now about my sense of creeping dissatisfaction.

For the record I had to provide a plethora of i.d. a while back to set up my new health savings account. Patriot Act stuff. I don't really mind, but I do mind when I have to listen to Bush administration crap about "the religion of peace."

[ClaireSolt]

Finger p;rints to cash a paycheck about 8 years ago. Nothing to do with Patriot Act.

[SunTzuWu]

Pokey,

I love reading Steyn. He's a breath of fresh air. Please add me to the Steyn ping list.

Thanks!

[mylife]

Just bought a car friday they wanted SSN
This stuff irks me

[livius]

President Bush has, in fact, been circumspect to a fault for five years. But the equivocal constrained rhetoric is insufficient to a "long war." And from all sides, more and more people are calling its bluff.

I think Bush has been trying to give the Muslims one last chance, which they are consistently blowing. Our response after 9/11 was actually quite muted and never named the true culprit (Islam, which has only been on the attack for the last 1400 years). The chattering classes, in fact, rushed out to apologize to Islam as a whole, even though we had never done anything to it. Suddenly our university students had mandatory Saudi-sponsored classes in Islam to prepare future generations to honor and respect those who were trying to destroy us. What a fierce response!

Obviously, Hillary and the gang would be even weaker and more conciliatory than Bush if they got into power, and indeed are acting just as weathervanes, as Steyn said, feeling they have gotten an issue on which they can attack Bush at absolutely no cost to themselves. This is particularly amusing now that it has been revealed that Bill Clinton is actually a paid agent of Dubai, and little wifey claims not to have known this.

However, I don't really think that the population in general is calling the bluff of anything or anyone. This is partly because the press keeps people ignorant of the extent and seriousness of Muslim attacks in other parts of the world (and here as well, judging by all the Islam-motivated individual attacks that have just been described as "crimes" rather than terrorism, never even mentioning the words Islam or Muslim). It is also because people aren't sure exactly what to do about it, since there is absolutely no leadership and no policy that gives us any defense against the storm that we all plainly see on the horizon.

[sine_nomine]

Add me to the ping list, too. I want to leave no Steyne unturned.

[TheGeezer]

"Circumspect" and "bluff", eh?

If the President had called the Arabs warmongering crazies and Islam a duplicitous religion of contradiction and lustful opportunism in 2001, he would have been branded a racist, hate-mongering fascist...oh, that's right, he was branded a hate-mongering racist fascist even though he did none of those things...never mind.

I suppose the Democrats have mined the xenophobia necessary to call the "bluff", which is sort of ironic, the Democrat Party being the part of diversity and tolerance and all. But now that the party of tolerance, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and diversity has endorsed xenophobia, I suppose the Republicans can now get on with the war, clarifying matters to Americans and bombing the snot out of Iran for starters?

The political opportunists of the Democrat Party may have outflanked Rove on this one, but in doing so played right into his hands. As I said last week, the UAE kerfuffle is the Perfect Rovian Storm.

[Paul Ross]

But what I find interesting is the underlying argument: At heart, what Hillary Clinton and Co. are doing is dismissing as a Bush fiction the idea of "friendly" Arab "allies" in the war of terror. They're not necessarily wrong. Even the "friendliest" Arab regimes tend to be a bunch of duplicitous shysters: King Hussein sided with Saddam in the Gulf war, Mubarak and the House of Saud are the cause of much of our present woes.

Steyn's sense of reality is the best and keenest among all the punditocracy...

I truly wish that his common-sense approach was one that the administration would embrace, rather than reject in knee-jerk liberal fashion. Steyn shows his clear-headedness for the prosecution of the war that, sadly, the President and his Cabinet fail on 'big time.' He notes:

I would be perfectly prepared to consider a raft of measures insisting that, for the duration of the war, there'll be restrictions on access to the United States by certain countries. As I've argued for some years, it's absurd that the Saudis are allowed to continue with their financial and ideological subversion of everything from American think-tanks to mosques to prison chaplaincy programs (and, I'll bet, without providing driver's license numbers).