May 7, 2003

MAD DOGS OF WAR
Neocon pit-bulls snarl at Syria: 'You're next!'

The mad dogs of war, unleashed by George W. Bush, are baying and barking up a storm. The War Party isn't resting on its laurels. The conquest of Iraq had hardly been celebrated by our President, as he landed on an aircraft carrier in a fighter jet and bounded out to meet his cheering Praetorians, when the cry for an encore was heard:

"President Bush is committed, pretty far down the road. The logic of events says you can't go halfway. You can't liberate Iraq, then quit."

That's the little Lenin of the neocons, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol. In spite of the story being bruited about that Condolezza Rice reined in the gung-ho guys in the Pentagon at the last moment and barely avoided a U.S. invasion of Syria � the White House is denying it � Kristol is right. George the Great can hardly contain his own Greatness within the arbitrary boundaries drawn by the British Foreign Office on the map of the Middle East. The incision has been made, and the Bushies have no choice but to keep operating, whether they like it or not. Bush implied as much in his speech to the troops, as he strutted about in his flight suit, his helmet tucked neatly under his arm:

"The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001 – and still goes on. � Any outlaw regime that has ties to terrorist groups and seeks or possesses weapons of mass destruction is a grave danger to the civilized world – and will be confronted."

Translation: Syria � you're next!

A "terrorist" is not just a member of Al Qaeda, in the Bushian lexicon: now Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestinians, the Syrians, the Shi'ite groups in Iraq that sympathize with the Iranian regime � all are in the sights of this administration, which has initiated a new kind of urban renewal project in the region. After the bulldozers do their work, a new Middle East is supposed to rise out of the rubble � one that is "democratic," secular, and could easily be mistaken for the Middle Western areas of the good old United States � like those American compounds in Saudi Arabia. But does anyone really believe for a minute that Iraq can be turned into, say, Arizona? This "democratization" campaign is a crock. Something else is going on here....

An "outlaw regime" is, potentially, any and all Middle Eastern governments with the glaring exception of Israel, the one nation in the region that we knowhas nuclear weapons and much else. We know because we paid for them. While we question captured Iraqi scientists searching frantically for evidence of Iraq's legendary "weapons of mass destruction," Mordecai Vanunu sits in an Israel maximum-security prison in solitary confinement, having spent 12 of his 18 year sentence in solitary confinement. He was imprisoned after being kidnapped by the Mossad off a London street for revealing the truth about Israel's nuclear weapons.

But this is not hypocrisy: Israel, you see, is a "democracy." Never mind that its Palestinian helots are dispossessed of their land and disenfranchised as well. The hallmark and guiding principle of U.S. policy in the region is simple: one standard for the Arabs, and another one for the Israelis.

Bashar al Assad found this out when tried to explain to Colin Powell why Israel, too, must get rid of its WMD. Powell's response to the Syrian suggestion that the U.S. back their proposed UN resolution to rid the entire Middle East of nukes and other WMD, submitted to the Security Council on Friday, was to reject out of hand the principle of evenhandedness:

"Clearing such weapons from the region is a long-standing U.S. goal, but now is not the time to address that matter," is how Ha'aretz characterized his attitude.

Translation:

"Shut the f*** up, get your hands out where I can see them, and get down on the ground!"

The Syrians know what's up: Assad rushed to assure Powell that anti-Israel groups headquartered in Damascus would be expelled. But the Israelis and their "free Lebanon" contingent have been raising doubts about how much control the Syrian President has over his own country, and now that meme has made it into this New York Times op ed piece written by a CIA analyst:

"Mr. Assad was only 34 when he became president upon the death of his father, Hafez, in June 2000. Until then, most of his political career had been spent as head of the government-run Syrian Computer Society. Still encumbered by several of his father's key advisers, he does not yet have the standing to make fundamental changes in policy on his own. One has only to observe the Syrian president in meetings where he is accompanied by his foreign minister (in office since 1984) or his vice president (a key regime figure since the 1970's) to appreciate the constraints he faces."

Meanwhile, Hezbollah and other anti-Israeli guerrilla groups are asking: "What 'crackdown'?"

"There are consequences lurking in the background," growled Powell on the Sunday morning talk show circuit. The President will "have all his options on the table" if Syria doesn't hop to it. Are we talkin' war? Powell's answer: "There are many ways to confront a nation." Yes, and our neocons know each and every one of them, including sanctions, a propaganda war, and a new selection in the Hitler of the Month Club.

What is lurking in the background is the neocon network that has burrowed its way up to the highest levels of this administration and is on a roll. These guys aren't going to miss their opportunity to raise the banner of Imperial America in the Middle East � and, incidentally, smite Israel's enemies in one fell swoop – before the American public catches on to their game. As CIA analyst Flynt Leverett relates:

"The military victory over Saddam Hussein's regime has empowered some officials in the Bush administration to push for similarly decisive action against other state sponsors of terrorism. For the hardliners, Syria has become the preferred next target in the war on terrorism. I know because I've been hearing the argument a lot in recent days. For the last eight years, I have been directly involved in United States policymaking toward Syria, as a CIA analyst, on the State Department's policy planning staff and at the White House. In all that time, I have never seen officials as willing to take on the Syrian regime as they are today."

No longer even bothering to hide their Likudnik loyalties, Bush's top advisors on the wrong side of the Powell-Rumsfeld divide are plumbing for war. Newt Gingrich's blast at Powell's "ludicrous" trip to Damascus was just the first salvo. The Secretary of State was quite right in his reply: the President was the real target of the Newtster's ire. Gingrich's diatribe was a shot across the bow at the first sign of hesitation by George the Conqueror in pressing on with what the more maniacal neocons gleefully refer to as "World War IV." Get on with it, George � or else.

On the Iranian front, the threat to "isolate" Teheran is a hollow one: it is the United States that is being isolated, as an American viceroy appoints a largely secular civilian junta dominated by Iraqi exiles to build a nation where the imams rule. How is it "isolating" the Iranians to invite the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), armed and trained by Teheran, into the new Iraqi "interim" government?

Powell's bluster is a smokescreen for what amounts to a de facto US-Iranian alliance: after all, the Americans knocked off Iran's principal enemy, and immediately turned their sights on Syria. Rumors that the Iranians promised to allow the use of their airspace for the attack on Iraq may not have been entirely unfounded. In any case, a January trip by Assad to Teheran was cancelled at the last minute, and Syrian-Iranian relations, never all that cordial to begin with, have never been worse. If the Americans amputate the Syrian wing of the secularist Ba'ath party, Iran's ayatollahs won't shed a tear, nor will the Turks, who have outstanding issues with Damascus. When it comes Syria's turn to be "liberated" from its sovereignty, the Turkish parliament may prove far more cooperative with Washington. Syria is surrounded by enemies, and it is only a matter of time before they pounce – with the U.S. leading the way.

Seen as a grand-scale replication of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the invasion and occupation of Iraq begins to make at least some kind of twisted sense. The goal of U.S. war plans in the region, like the strategic thrust of Israel's fight against the Palestinians, is to destroy the secular-modern Arab entities � the Ba'athists of Iraq and Syria � just as the Israelis trained their fire on the PLO, and encouraged the development of religious rivals to Arafat, even going so far as to fund the early growth of Hamas.

Ever since Bashar al Assad succeeded his father, the Israelis have feared a U.S. rapprochement with Syria: the former London-based opthamologist is Hafez al Assad's second son, and never intended to inherit his father's power. But the death of the family's first-born male heir, Basil, thrust him into the leadership. Bashar started out as a reformer, and hopes were high, but the reforms were stalled by the resistance of the Ba'athist old guard. Now the news that the Syrian President had offered to negotiate directly with the Israelis before the invasion of Iraq lends credence to his reputed willingness to compromise and break the logjam blocking Middle East peace. Naturally, Ariel Sharon rejected the offer. Why should the Israeli Prime Minister bother talking with Assad when he can send his American errand boy to do the job?

Not that there is anything for Syria to negotiate � except the terms of its surrender.

As the pretexts for Gulf War II are torpedoed, one by one, the real reason for the invasion of Iraq becomes more obvious with each passing day. As "weapons of mass destruction" fail to turn up, and the fabled Al Qaeda-Iraq link is less convincing than ever, the swiftness of the American victory underscores the reality that Saddam never was a military threat to begin with, either to his neighbors or to us. What, then, was the point of this war?

In 1996, Richard Perle, James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks, Jr., Douglas Feith, Robert Loewenberg, David Wurmser, and Meyrav Wurmser collaborated on a policy paper for then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which declared "A Clean Break" with the "defensive" strategies of the past:

"Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq � an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right � as a means of foiling Syria's regional ambitions."

The Israelis, and their American amen corner, have always understood that the road to Damascus runs through Baghdad. As the authors of "A Clean Break" presciently put it:

"Syria enters this conflict with potential weaknesses: Damascus is too preoccupied with dealing with the threatened new regional equation to permit distractions of the Lebanese flank. And Damascus fears that the 'natural axis' with Israel on one side, central Iraq and Turkey on the other, and Jordan, in the center would squeeze and detach Syria from the Saudi Peninsula. For Syria, this could be the prelude to a redrawing of the map of the Middle East which would threaten Syria's territorial integrity."

That not a few of the authors of this policy paper are now high officials in charge of directing America's foreign policy means that this strategy can now by implemented � by the U.S. government.

That's what the invasion of Iraq was all about. Syria was always the real target of "Operation Iraqi Freedom," and this post-war diplomatic dance with Damascus confirms it. As Pat Buchanan put it in The American Conservative:

"We charge that a cabal of polemicists and public officials seek to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America's interests. We charge them with colluding with Israel to ignite those wars and destroy the Oslo Accords. We charge them with deliberately damaging U.S. relations with every state in the Arab world that defies Israel or supports the Palestinian people's right to a homeland of their own. We charge that they have alienated friends and allies all over the Islamic and Western world through their arrogance, hubris, and bellicosity."

Will this same gang of warmongers entrap us in a war with Syria, and drag us back into Lebanon, where we are sure to confront the ghosts of our past errors? The battle-cry has already been sounded: Stay tuned as we hear news of Syria's "weapons of mass destruction" and the inevitable question: "Is Saddam in Syria?"

As Yogi Berra once said: "This is like deja-vu all over again!"

First, as to Bill Bennett: If the fact that Vice President Agnew took bribes and violated income tax laws prior to conversion to true believer status as Vice President (he used to go around Executive Department offices as an ideological Santa Claus on a regular basis handing out copies of National Review and Human Events) does not make his speeches against the Americong and the media leftists one whit less true, then I can get over Bill Bennett's gambling his own money. I have never though Bennett was so very conservative in any event and his attacks on fellow Jesuit prep school alumnus Pat Buchanan were disingenuous. His books I have purchased for my kids who eagerly read them.

I read Fleming's article and I know Fleming who lives nearby. He is the village eccentric in Rockford. He is so far around the bend ideologically that he wouldn't know patriotism if it jumped up and bit him, which I predict may well occur. I have read his columns and I have read his magazines. I am acquainted with his staff who move in an ever more nutty direction daily as well.

Above all, Fleming is dedicated to yak-yak as a substitute for any action that might resolve anything. He is a legend in his own mind and those of his employees. Whatever the original intentions of those who founded the Rockford Institute, it has become an asylum for those who please to regard themselves as "paleoconservatives" because of their unemployability among actual conservatives.

Dump Rumsfeld as a "worthy goal for patriotic conservatives?" First of all, in the United States, patriotism is a love of our own country not of the interesting and quaint little Balkan tyrannies that so interest Fleming that he condemns the improved government of Serbia for being disappointingly compliant with American government policies. Would he prefer the "good old days" of Slobodan Milosevic, a second generation communist boss and master of atrocities? Or maybe the wondrous record of another local leader there (although Croatian by birth) Josef Brosz Tito who certainly was not very pro-American and used to back the kidnapping and deportation of Greek children to Russia for ideological training after WW II? Maybe it would be in order for Mr. Fleming to give equal time to the views of Miloslav Djilas, Tito's former #2, who was converted to the cause of freedom by being incarcerated by Tito. How many Americans of Scots-Irish ancestry wish to retire to Montenegro? How many of those few are American patriots. The idea sounds like a rerun of the incomprehensible poet Ezra Pound's admiration for Mussolini's Italy and broadcasts to American troops to rebel against their officers. Such behavior is interesting on a certain level but not particularly patriotic or admirable.

Rumsfeld is the very finest Secretary of Defense that we are likely to see. He is carrying out the agendas of the conservative movement in reforming the military not as a social institution but for the purposes of miltaries throughout history: Killing those who need to be killed and breaking their things in the most efficient manner possible. He is restoring military morale after eight years of anti-military misrule by the Arkansas Antichrist and Mrs. Antichrist who now embarasses New Yorkers as their junior senator.

As Macchiaveli famously asked: Is it better to be feared or to be loved? As Machiavelli concluded, it is better to be feared.

If Syria behaves, it will not be because of the Kumbaya foreign policies of Clinton, Gore, Albright, Christopher or of the left wing of the Demonratic Party. It will not be due to the talentless efforts of three talentless nude magazine cover anti-American broads from Texas who trade their nation's interests for a little approval from the culterati.

Certainly it will not be because of any effort by the pantywaist dilletantes and counterfeit conservatives of the Rockford Institute (may their funding evaporate) who hang out admiring the Dixie Tricks in time of war (bravely selling the Tricks' CD's to support the Tricks in their sedition), who side with Tim Robbins and Susan Saranwrap and Hanoi Jane and Norman Mailer in time of war, who think that cuddling up with a good novel or an anthology of inscrutably pretentious poetry justifies their criticism of those who DO rather than just theorize, who have no sense of shame for their admiration of the secularized culture that is our French enemy while pretending to defend Catholic France which disappeared before they were born and probably before their great-grandfathers were born, but don't confuse them with the facts.

If the Fleming article you previously posted was his dishonest attack on Rumsfeld which included something to the effect that: if only Bush could be brought to understand how disloyal Rumsfeld is then yada, yada....., then, yes, I have read it, not because I think that Fleming's opinions ought mean anything whatsoever to conservatives and other patriots but because I despise his claims of being a conservative of any stripe and any claim that the Rockford Institute retains a shred of credibility in that vein. His and their dishonest delusions and taking of the name "conservative" in vain bear watching as one might watch the weather to determine whether to close the car windows.

I have regard for Jack Kemp (who would certainly discomfort Fleming, et al., as one who believes that any American can be a real American regardless of religion or ethnicity) but I would suggest that he has been out of politics for a while and that his agendas are primarily economic. He is noticeably absent from public fora despite the rise of Fox and the conservative turn of MSNBC. I don't know what he may have said but he may well have been wrong. The American Spectator has had a fine reputation but I confess that I found it considerably less compelling when, under George Gilder, it increased its emphasis on business concerns. I don't know what it said and it is not infallible. I will start to review it on the web again. I am not familiar with a publication called "the Hill."

Let us assume that Rumsfeld approved Gingrich's remarks and that they were anti-Powell. Powell can be useful. If and when Powell ceases to be useful, he is quite replaceable. Rumsfeld is by far the more indispensible man. He is an interventionist as has been and is the conservative movement, post-Pearl Harbor, to say nothing of post-9/11. Rumsfeld DOES something about it rather than merely engaging in soothing or disruptive yak-yak, as is Fleming's habit.

Since Bush has a reputation for running a tight ship, as you put it, have you considered that it was Bush who was behind any criticism of Powell and that Gingrich was useful for the purpose in an appearance at the business (hence moderate) think tank American Enterprise Institute? After all, Powell's preference for extending the United Nations yakathon did not much help the war effort, did it? We also were accommodating a good ally in Tony Blair but we have again, thanks not to the usual wishy-washies at Foggy Bottom (the State Department) but to Bush, Rumsfeld, Perle, Wolfowitz and the others despised by such as the Rockford Institute and Fleming, established a salutary degree of fear in those nations who are enemies of our nation.

Powell is not much more than a sop to the wet, liberal miniwing of the GOP, Rumsfeld has proven to be a warrior worth remembering. Powell is a pro-abort. Powell had no problem with most of the issue positions that are anathema to conservatives. Powell was apparently sharply disappointed by being slapped in the face by the perfidy of Jacues ChIraq, Gerhard Schroeder, Joshka Fisher. Vladimir Putin, their collective Belgian and Luxembourgian poodles, et al. At this point, Powell serves as administration "dove" and will be used to deliver strong words to demoralize our nation's enemies. After all, if Powell has been harsh, they have no hope. When he ceases to be useful, it will be time to deal with the State Department at long last.

Fleming vs. Bennett: Bennett indulges the arguable vice of losing his own money on slot machines at casinos. The real disappointment there is that Bennett is matching wits with a machine programmed to make sure the house wins. This cannot be good for Bennett's intellectual reputation. Further, he lost millions. On the other hand, they were his own millions. He obtained them the old-fashioned way by earning them. Whether he wanted to invest those dollars in the stock market (which is also gambling), in real estate (which is also gambling), in George W. Bush's presidential campaign to the extent allowed by law (a surer thing but still a gamble) or in being entertained (what a limited imagination) by slot machines, he has earned the right to be a fool soon parted from the money in question. Heck, he could even throw the money down a rathole like the Rockford Institute but they should not hold their breath waiting. Uncle Tenooch (phonetic) will spend the money more patriotically and more wisely than the Rockford Institute.

Fleming, on the other hand, is a political poltroon and a genuine eccentric who is quite dishonest if he claims to be any kind of conservative which he does claim ("paleo-conservative" which, as a term, is a lie). Grumpiness is not conservatism. Eccentricity is not conservatism. Euro-sycophancy is not conservatism. Francophilia is not conservatism. Serbophilia is not conservatism particularly of a sort that admires the tyrants and reviles the marginal improvements as being to responsive to American wishes. Notions of blood and soil as the underlying bond between men are more reminiscent of certain out-of-control Austrian Schicklegrubers, paperhangers and racial theorists in charge of middle-20th century Germany than they are of American patriots or actual conservatives.

Essentially, Fleming is as conservative as Frances Kissling of "Catholics" for a Free Choice is Catholic. NOT. Both are examples of unforgiveable and shameless trademark infringment.

Having checked your homepage, I note that you and I are of different generations. I am not about to recover from the despicable anti-Vietnam War and anti-American movemnent of the 1960s and 1970s. Fleming is old enough to remember them too. I regard them and their sympathizers as Americong. The real lesson of Vietnam is to be prepared to employ overwhelming force without diplo-slime restrictions (how many died in vain during the cowardly hassle over a square or round conference table for the Paris surrender talks?) in rapid fashion to obliterate any enemy worth obliterating, to do this without kissing diplomatic backsides and to win absolutely in the shortest time possible with the minimum American casualties and to treat any antiwar activity in such circumstances as disloyal opposition which it is. The historians and academics can chew their old slippers after the fact. They can hold indictrination sessions known as teach-ins before the fact.

Active resistance deserves not cuddly indulgence and subsidy but effective response with extreme prejudice. See Kent State College, Ohio, May, 1970. The toll could have been higher but the point was made. Governor Jim Rhodes was a "moderate" Republican when that was not inconsistent with being a man's man. His response to the burning of an ROTC building at Kent State and students who march into the rifles of National Guardsmen was quite restrained. The Rockford Institute is shocked, shocked (!) at that view as well. Too bad!

Waco is more analogous to the machine-gunning of students in a dormitory at Jackson State College in Mississippi almost simultaneous with Kent State.

A great deal was made by the left of Kent State because they assumed (correctly) that white middle class parents, concerned about their own kids' leftward drift, would get all sniffly and weepy and more available to the left if they could be convinced that Kent State showed that the Nixon administration and its local governors were prepared to MURDER poor misguided half-assed Marxist little Boodgeums when mom and dad who did such an abysmally absent-minded and rotten job of bringing up Boodgeums were just sure (emotionally, that is) that their kid would straighten out eventually (as many did).

Thus, white middle-class and often clueless mom and dad were willing to accept the burning of ROTC buildings at state colleges and students marching physically and defiantly into the faces and rifles of Ohio National Guardsmen as some political equivalent of goldfish-swallowing or bed races or telephone booth stuffing.

The Kent State students took direct action against legitimate authority, were the aggressors and had absolutely no defense at law for their crimes. The National Guardsmen acted in self-defense. Contrary to modern distortion, most National Guardsmen were veterans of active duty, were older than the students and tended to have families and real-world jobs and businesses of their own and real responsibilities in life not student revolutionary fantasies. The National Guardsmen in question had been activated a month earlier to deal with a Teamsters' Union strike in which union snipers were shooting "scab" drivers from highway overpasses (and thereby endangering the nearby motoring public as well). The guardsmen were a little worn out with irresponsible jackasses (a mild term) by the time they got to the rebellious spoiled students of Kent State. When the salutes went off in the crowd of marching students, the soldiers fired. Good for them!

Meanwhile, at Jackson State College in Mississippi, the slaughtered black students were killed in their dormitories, not challenging the authorities to their faces in direct physical confrontation. That got a lot less attention because blacks were already committed to the left and did not need to be jacked up by further propaganda effort. Whatever the mythology which may be spread today, most whites were not moved by the killing of black students back then and the incident was soon forgotten. I am Irish, Scottish, German and English and not at all black, lest someone (not you) imagine that race is my motive in this post thus far.

I belong and have long belonged to the Knights of Columbus. I was sitting at a Knights of Columbus private bar watching a Yankee baseball game on TV when the game was interrupted by the Kent State story and accompanying footage. Most of the men at the bar were laborers at a local tire factory (and committed Democrats for economic and labor reasons only) who had just gotten out of work. I said to the tireworker next to me: The National Guard shot four students at Kent State. He replied: Too bad it wasn't forty. The next guy said: Four hundred and a few more multiplied by 10. Many of them had kids who were in college or whom they hoped to send to college but they had had enough of spoiled college brats living out revolutionary fantasies against government and war when these men worked long hard hours at very dirty factory jobs, inhaling rubber fumes (not voluntarily) at relatively low wages and had to pay taxes to subsidize public colleges like Kent State and the students who were protesting. They served in the military when called, did not love the experience of service but paid their dues. They revered those among them and their forebears who served in World War II after deprived youth in the Depression. I did not blame the tire workers then. I was a law student then. I said: Damn right! I don't blame the tireworkers now.

Waco (and let us not forget Ruby Ridge) were much more analogous to the unjustified slaughter at Jackson State AND they were perpetrated on the watch of the Arkansas Antichrist, Mrs. Antichrist and their curious crew of superannuated student revolutionaries. The FBI did what it was told. Let this be a lesson that those who were committed to Marxism-Leninism as students and have not reformed are NEVER to be trusted with governmental authority. David Koresh was a headcase. I am no admirer of the screwball beliefs of either Koresh or of Randy Weaver. The government had no excuse for the homicides. I am ashamed to say that the shooter at Ruby Ridge, Lon Horiuchi, is a turbo-Catholic and thus my co-religionist. I also have an admirable friend who is Horiuchi's best friend but he cannot convince me that Horiuchi does not deserve prison, together with his superiors who changed the rules of engagement. There was absolutely no excuse for Waco as perpetrated by the Miami bull-who served the Arkansas Antichrist as Attorney General. Those responsible for the butchery of Koresh and his followers should have been prosecuted and, where warranted, executed.

As to Ketchupboy Kerry, I lived in New Haven when he attended Yale and I know many of his contemporaries there. He is a phony. As Speaker of the Yale Political Union, he was a ranting,raving Americong. He signed up for the Coast Guard in what turned out to be a futile attempt to avoid the war. He probably figured he could spend the time winking and nodding at Scotch smugglers on the New England Coast. Then he found out the hard way that the Coast Guard was also involved in the river war in Vietnam and he was assigned to a gunboat. Imagine his aggravation. He got wounded and was decorated and came back to be a founder of Vietnam Veterans Against the War and even threw someone else's medals over the White House Fence to underline his communist sympathies. These stories will come out in a campaign for president which he will NOT win and he will NEVER gain a conservative by lying about his support for the military and a strong foreign policy when we all know better.

The age difference (I am 56) does mean something. There were many stories from my generation that were never told, lies by Cronkite (a self-described unreconstructed 1930s radical in his Look Magazine intterview with Oriana Fallaci circa November, 1968) that were told, and tragedy resulting in the ongoing degeneration of our nation. It will be your g eneration and your children's generation that will bear the resulting burden of the failures of my generation. We did elect Reagan and, until the 1992 election of the thing fromm Arkansas, the baby-boomers cast a majority of their votes Republican in every presidential election. I am loyal to Bush the Younger. He has been a very pleasant surprise. Religion is the key to his presidency and to the differences from his inept father. Dubya's not perfect but he is a lot more perfect than the electable alternatives.

One piece of (honestly) non-condescending advice. When I was younger, I was more of a red-hot ideologue and inclined toward libertarianism (even served as a State Libertarian Party Officer utterly unnoticed as I was nominated by the GOP for Congress) and, as I grew older, got married, had kids, I became much more Catholic and, as necessary to that, less libertarian. I know that I will not leave to my still school-age kids a perfect world. They are being raised to get my enemies and yours after I am gone and to pass it to their children. If you think drugs should be legalized or that we should have a more restrained foreign policy or cut the size of government or return to the literal meaning of our Constitution as the Ur document of the US, AND, understandably, find Dubya wanting in any and all of those respects, consider the ELECTABLE alternatives and vote for Dubya. You CAN influence policy but not with the Hildebeast in the White House at any point.

Anti-semitism is rising in our country and that is always ugly and always a sign of danger to the fabric of our civilization. It means we are beginning to squabble over scraps and looking for scapegoats. On this question, I do not trust the paleos who often urge a politics rooted in soil and blood and kith and kin. I am not Jewish but that does not make me better than Jews. Fill in the blanks for any other group defined by condition of birth.

If you should have children, you may find yourself more in agreement. If you imagine or desire children, likewise. Ideas have consequences, as the brilliant Richard Weaver wrote. And those who have realized that fact include the students of Kent State, of Jackson State, the Weaver family, David Koresh, me, and, I dare hope, you, as well. We cannot escape permanently the wages of our actions good or evil and must govern ourselves accordingly if we are wise.

My apologies for not having time to edit. I have to take my daughter to volunteer at a hospital.

God bless you and yours!

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MAD DOGS OF WARNeocon pit-bulls snarl at Syria: 'You're next!'

MAD DOGS OF WAR
Neocon pit-bulls snarl at Syria: 'You're next!'