OF PUPPETS AND PUPPETEERS

Damian Penney comments on a particularly obnoxious quote in which both the President and Congress are decried as puppets whose strings are being pulled by Israel.

"What has been happening over the years is a predictable routine of foreign visitation from the head of the Israeli government. The Israeli puppeteer travels to Washington. The Israeli puppeteer meets with the puppet in the White House, and then moves down Pennsylvania Avenue, and meets with the puppets in Congress. And then takes back billions of taxpayer dollars. It is time for the Washington puppet show to be replaced by the Washington peace show."

I won't spoil the surprise by telling you who said it. Follow the link to find out for yourself.

But then comes news of an al-Qaeda memorandum in which it is explained that the Madrid train bombing was the result of a deliberate strategy to target Spain as the weakest member of the Iraq coalition. The train was bombed, which swung the pending election to the socialists, who promptly exited Iraq.

Would someone please remind me who the puppets are?

 
BECAUSE THEY WERE AMERICANS

Daniel Pearl. Nicholas Berg. Paul Johnson. All publicly murdered by would be theocratic fascists in a particularly gruesome manner. Because they were Americans. The murders were of a piece with the fate of those four contractors in Fallujah, the Ranger (or was it more than one Ranger?) whose body was dragged through the streets of Mogadishu by a mob. Close to three thousand noncombatants died in the Trade Towers on 9/11 following a coldblooded unprovoked attack on a "target" completely unrelated to anything military in which the attackers committed suicide with the express purpose of taking as many of us with them as they could. More died on the USS Cole, in the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, in the indiscriminate attacks in Riyadh and Khobar... The list goes on. Because they were Americans.

These are the images our adversaries wish to project to the world. They obviously believe that this makes them appear strong and that the US will be convinced that we cannot prevail over such people. For a while, they succeeded in convincing us, and we pushed Israel to moderate its response to terror. But flying an airliner loaded with unarmed civilians into a unprotected building filled with more unarmed civilians is not an act of strength. Nor is sawing off the heads of men you have captured or hiding a bomb in a car. These are no more acts of strength than Michael Moore's dissent (if you can call it that) in a land where dissent is protected, if not cherished, is an act of bravery.

Our opponents openly state that their religion justifies (indeed, requires) their utter intolerance of anyone who does not believe precisely as they do. They cite verses from their holy writings to support those contentions.

And our side? (Yes, Virginia, there are sides in this conflict.) Our side writes "news" articles like this under the headline "Beheadings fuel fresh backlash against Muslims":

EAGLESWOOD TOWNSHIP, New Jersey (AP) -- The recent beheadings of two Americans in the Middle East have added fuel to the angry backlash against Arab-Americans and Muslims that began after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

An angry backlash against Arab-Americans and Muslims that began after the attacks of 9/11? Really? I missed it completely. Silly me, I thought President Bush told a joint session of Congress in November of 2001 "I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith. It's practiced freely by many millions of Americans, and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah. The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself. The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends; it is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them." So just what was this horrendous backlash that CNN claims to exist?

The murders of Paul Johnson and Nicholas Berg triggered hate mail, verbal attacks and anti-Muslim signs. Muslims received death threats and their mosques were vandalized.

"Since 9/11, every time there is an incident overseas attributed to Muslims or Arabs, we go on orange alert ourselves," said immigration lawyer Sohail Mohammed.

I love that: "incidents" which are "attributed to Muslims or Arabs." As if the people to whom the "incidents" were "attributed" were not murdering people and boasting about it.

"There are individuals here who are off the wall, who think that every woman who wears a hijab or every man named Mohammed is out to blow things up."

True. And there are individuals, groups and even governments "out there" who are off the wall, who think that murdering thousands of people will somehow result in the return to the Middle Ages and the Caliphate. A choice has been forced on us between those two. We have to choose or die. Which do you prefer?

Sohail Mohammed is a lawyer in New Jersey. An article in Mother Jones describes him as having cases related to traffic tickets and tells us that he "established the Human Rights Education and Law Project (HELP) to serve as a clearinghouse for the legal concerns of area Muslims." What do you want to bet that Mr. Mohammed doesn't run HELP for free? What do you want to bet that Mr. Mohammed has a vested interest in making sure that there is in fact a backlash that he can HELP ameliorate?

The Mother Jones piece laments that, "[a]lthough there were no anti-Muslim riots, the dozens of calls that came into Mohammed's office told of a community under siege. Federal agents were interrogating Muslim Americans in and around Paterson, near where some of the hijackers had lived. Ali Erikenoglu, an electrician, said four FBI agents entered his home without removing their shoes, walked on the carpet he uses for prayer, and demanded, 'What kind of an American are you?' Others recounted being pulled over by police for wearing religious headdress as they approached the Lincoln Tunnel. At least 20 people were held indefinitely by the Immigration and Naturalization Service in county jails following routine traffic stops or anonymous tips. In some cases, families had no way of knowing where they had gone, since court records were sealed and detention locations kept secret. Nationwide, the number of people detained on INS charges topped 180."

Oh no! Dozens of calls! Dozens! In a community of 100,000 plus. The FBI agents asked questions! And they did not take off their shoes! People were pulled over in traffic stops! INS actually enforced laws that have been on the books for decades! More than 180 people (more than five percent of the people murdered on 9/11!) were detained in accordance with that law! Clearly civil liberties in America have gone the way of the dodo bird.

Back to the CNN piece: Hate mail? CNN provides no examples, so I am left to wonder why they claimed that hate mail was involved. Verbal attacks and anti Muslim signs? You mean people actually expressed opinions concerning the murder of two of their fellow citizens? Good God, what will become of us?

Vandalism and death threats are another matter. Vandalizing property and threatening someone's life are crimes and should be (and in fact are being) investigated. But, once again, CNN declines to say whose life was threatened and in what manner. Did it really happen? We can't tell from this article. Graffiti? I might be wrong, but I don't recall CNN, HELP or CAIR being so outraged by anti-semitic graffiti on American synagogues or anti-American graffiti on American WWII graves in France.

Al-Qaida-linked militants in Saudi Arabia decapitated Johnson, an American engineer, after warning that they would kill him if the Saudi government did not release jailed comrades. Berg, a businessman, met a similar fate last month in Iraq.

How sporting of them to warn us. I guess they weren't in a sporting mood on 9/11, when there was no such warning. And for God's sake, why can't they call someone who publicly boasts of violent crimes committed for the purpose of creating terror a terrorist?

Following Johnson's death, anti-Islam signs surfaced around the rural New Jersey neighborhood where he once lived. One read "Stamp Out Islam" next to a drawing of a boot over a crescent and star. Another, hung on a mailbox next door to Johnson's sister's home, was more detailed.

"Last night I wasn't a racist, but today I feel racism towards Islamic beliefs," it read. "Last night Islamics had a chance to speak up for Paul Johnson, but today it's too late. Islamics better wake up and start thinking about tomorrow."

The holy writings of the vast majority of Americans allow Christians and Jews to take an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Yet I must have also missed the reports of the beheadings of American Muslims and Arabs in response to the Berg and Johnson murders. The response in both Iraq and Saudi Arabia was to go after the people who actually boasted of committing those murders.

The New Jersey attorney general sent bias crimes investigators to the area, along with stepped-up state police patrols. The signs are gone now, replaced with hand-lettered placards on utility poles that say "Our prayers are with the Johnson family."

Mohammed is right in that every society has its nutballs. Our nutballs post signs which might be offensive and are investigated by our own police to see if there is any possibility that they might go beyond posting signs (and the signs themselves are replaced with inoffensive ones). Islamic nutballs murder thousands and are stopped, if at all, by armed force imposed from outside. Given that nutballs are inevitable, which flavor nutball would you prefer: the sign-posting/investigated-by-the-cops nutball or the beheading/fly-the-airliner-into-a-skyscraper nutball?

But more anti-Muslim graffiti appeared Thursday on a Muslim man's home in Egg Harbor Township.

The article complains that the police have failed to prevent the additional graffiti. Just how were they supposed to do that without violating the civil liberties held so dear by HELP?

"It's really our fear coming true," said Faiza Ali of the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "It indicates a hatred that could turn into something violent."

Strong emotions generated by acts of unbelievable barbarity and violence could cause people to become violent? Who knew?

Relatives of Johnson, in a statement made through a church pastor after a memorial service Saturday, said that they hope his legacy is one of peace in the land he grew to love during more than a decade abroad.

"When history is written on the war on terrorism, let Paul's death be the catalyst that led to thousands more Westerners working in harmony with people in the Middle East to ensure fear and barbaric acts against free peoples come to an end," the Rev. Kyle Huber of Greentree Church said.

The day after Johnson's death, a coalition of Muslim groups held a rally to condemn the killing in Paterson, the heart of New Jersey's Arab-American community.

Good. Has it happened again since that time? It needs to be done at least weekly until this war is over. And this war will not end for quite some time. I believe that American Muslims and Arabs are Americans first, that they are on our side. But I start to wonder about that conclusion when I read that they are offended at the very idea that the police think it might be possible that they might know someone who knows someone who knows something about someone in their community who intends us harm.

A few days later, vandals tossed empty liquor and beer bottles at a mosque in Union City as congregants inside mourned a teenager who died in a car crash.

Assuming that this was related to the Berg and/or Johnson murders, it was stupid and offensive. But its still one hell of a lot better than taking a hostage, chopping his head off and posting video of the beheading on the internet, ain't it?

"If they are throwing empty bottles today, they could be throwing rocks, or worse, shooting at us tomorrow," said Aref Assaf, president of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee's New Jersey chapter.

Yes, it's theoretically possible. Just as it is theoretically possible that, if your co-religionist are beheading us today, it is possible that you will be beheading us tomorrow. Both are unlikely. And I would suggest that the most effective thing that can be done to avoid such outcomes would be to identify and deal with those who are the incitement to such outcomes from "your" ranks and "ours." The US is doing what it can to prevent a backlash. Is Islam, doing everything it can to prevent the incitement to that backlash? Not when we hear complaints that FBI agents didn't take off their shoes.

Two mosques in Florida were vandalized in the days after Johnson's killing. In the Tampa suburb of Lutz, someone broke into the Islamic Community Center and scrawled "Kill All Muslims" on the mosque's interior walls, then smashed windows. In Charlotte Harbor, someone vandalized a mosque's sign and left threatening phone messages.

In the St. Louis suburb of Ballwin, Missouri, vandals painted a swastika and the word "Die" on the wall of the Dar-Ul-Islam mosque.

In Texas, dead fish were dumped near the entrance sign to a mosque under construction in a suburb of Houston.

And in the Chicago suburb of Orland Park, residents urged officials this past week to reject a mosque's building application. A Baptist pastor told a public hearing he feared it would attract Islamic extremists and violence. The center was approved over boos and catcalls from the audience.

But it was approved, no?

"I believe the time is coming when Muslims will not be safe inside the U.S. borders," one man wrote to the Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations. "I see nothing wrong with us doing the same things to them that they are doing to innocent people."

Well, I believe that the time is actually here when non-Muslims are not safe within the borders of Muslim nations. And who wrote that second sentence in the quotation? The guy who was writing to CAIR? Is he complaining about a a backlash and then saying that a second backlash to the first one is acceptable?

"It is high time you people wake up and smell the blood," another man wrote to Assaf's group in New Jersey. "Turn in the terrorists. They are your relatives, in a lot of cases. Cousin Omar. Uncle Mohammad. You know what I mean. Until you come forward to help us stamp out this vermin, you are as bad as they."

Cited after a long list of graffiti and vandalism intended to make the writer look bad. The fact of the matter is that no one disputes that the terrorists of 9/11 and Fallujah and Riyadh and Bali and Khobar and Chechnya and Madrid and Netanya and Algeria and Yemen (the USS Cole) and Nairobi and Dar es Salaam (US embassy attacks)... and ... and ... are without exception Muslim. The fact of the matter is that the best thing Muslims and Arabs can do to prevent the outcome they fear is to police their own ranks. And that means cooperating with the US in dealing with the fanatics among them.

Their failure to do so, can only result in more victims. What the hate mailers and graffiti "artists" are graphically pointing out is that the victims will no longer be exclusively on one side. This is a war. We didn't start it, but we are in it. There are only three possible outcomes: our surrender, our extermination, or our victory (which, according to the fanatics on the other side, means the extermination of the fanatics on the other side). We will not surrender. We will not cooperate by dying en masse. What's left is prosecuting the war through to victory. In that effort, American Muslims and Arabs can help, hinder or simply stay out of the way. Just like the rest of us, a choice has been forced upon them.

I think they should help.

Because they are Americans.

 
THE 9/11 REPORT

On September 16, 2001, Brad Todd provided an extraordinary insight into the events of 9/11 that we seem to have forgotten.

It's worth rereading, in light of the upcoming report from a 9/11 Commission that seems to have overlooked a number of things, including Mr. Todd's insight.

By Brad Todd

Guest column

(Sept. 16, 2001)

It's been, of course, impossible to get past IT.

Even in a country with the attention span of a gnat, we're all still glued to the tube. The 24-hour news channels have heretofore proven they can make anything boring in short order, but this one drips with emotion so thick even they can't wring it dry.

Yep. We're as stuck on it as we were Tuesday morning.

Grocery store checkout banter is still single-subject. I understand it's the only topic at the manicurist's shop, too.I think even children sense how big IT is. The ones who walk by my front door don't have their normal sing-song cadence. There's no screeching. No laughter. They know something's not right.

What is IT?

Something besides the grief, I think -- although the grief is tormenting.

Something deeper than the shock -- although the shock is overwhelming.

No, I think it's the gut-level fear that for the first time in my generation, we were whipped.

Whipped by our own complacency. Our own comfort. Our own insistence on putting convenience ahead of precaution. Our own arrogance that let us forget that the world is a dangerous place.

And the outcropping of that fear is an angst about the new order. How long before we're not behind again? How much time must we spend off the top of the world? Out of control of our own lives?

This, of course, is the angst that people in most of the rest of the world feel every day. And if we look deep inside, we can probably acknowledge that for all our egalitarian pontifications, this is not the kind of equality and fraternal kinship in which we really believe.

I finally admitted this fear to myself three days after the attack. I wasn't particularly proud of it. It seemed like a shallow thing to fret over when such real suffering was all around me -- my house sits just three miles from the Pentagon, after all.

But there it was.

And the aftertaste of the bitter pill of my character flaw was the sad realization that such angst was Osama's primary objective. Buildings and airplanes and, yes, even 6,000 lives, were just the collateral damage. Despite the metaphoric value of last week's bricks and mortar targets, the real core of the Western economy isn't a skyscraper or a government building. It's the can-do swagger of the American worker. And bin Laden's soldiers cut deep into that swagger.

So he won.

Or did he?

I thought so ... until Friday night.

Friday night I watched a Jane Pauley interview with the family of Jeremy Glick. Jeremy Glick was a 31-year-old who flew as a passenger on commercial airplanes for a living. I describe him that way because right now I'm fairly convinced I'm just a 31 year old who flies planes as a passenger for a living...the other parts of my job having become less noticeable this week.

As the interview unfolded, I realized something I didn't know before: Jeremy Glick and the people on United Flight 93, bound from Newark to San Francisco, knew what was happening on the ground.

At 8:48 a.m. Mohammed Atta took a jet headlong into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Eighteen minutes later and accomplice did the same to the south tower.

When Jeremy Glick called his wife, his first question was an attempt to confirm something another passenger had heard on his spousal call: was the World Trade Center story true?

Lizzy Glick paused, thought for a minute, swallowed hard, and told him the truth. Yes, they had. Moments later, still on the line with her husband, Lizzy Glick saw that another plane had run into the Pentagon. She passed that information on as well to her husband, who relayed it to the other passengers.
Jeremy Glick then told her that the passengers were about to take a vote and decide if they should rush the hijackers and attempt to foul up whatever evil plans they had.

He put down the phone and a commotion was heard by those on the other end of the line. Then nothing. A dead line. An aborted missile launch against the town where I live.

That was 10:37 a.m. on Tuesday, September 11... just 109 minutes after Mohammed Atta rammed the first plane into the north tower of the World Trade Center.

Just 109 minutes after a new form of terrorism -- the most deadly yet invented -- came into use, it was rendered, if not obsolete, at least decidedly less effective.

Deconstructed, unengineered, thwarted, and put into the dust bin of history. By Americans. In 109 minutes.

And in retrospect, they did it in the most American of ways. They used a credit card to rent a fancy cell phone to get information just minutes old, courtesy of the ubiquitous 24-hour news phenomenon. Then they took a vote. When the vote called for sacrifice to protect country and others, there apparently wasn't a shortage of volunteers. Their action was swift. It was decisive. And it was effective.

United Flight 93 did not hit a building. It did not kill anyone on the ground. It did not terrorize a city, despite the best drawn plans of the world's most innovative madmen. Why? Because it had informed Americans on board who'd had 109 minutes to come up with a counteraction.

And the next time a hijacker full of hate pulls the same stunt with a single knife, he'll get the same treatment and meet the same result as those on United Flight 93. Dead, yes. Murderous, yes. But successful? No.

So I think the answer I come to is "yes, but at least not for long."

They did whip us. And maybe those of us who've demanded to be let on airplanes at the last minute fed a culture of convenience that made it possible.

But they only had us on the mat for 109 minutes.

 
LILEKS

Go read.

You have Bush. You have Saddam.

One is a meglomanical dictator with a small moustache who killed millions, gassed ethnic minorities, annexed a neighbor state and paid underlings to kill Jews.

The other is Hitler.

 
WHAT IF THEY HAD WON?

Ah, summertime! Congress is not in session, and the election season has yet to really catch fire, so the political junkies in the press are flailing about looking for stories. And you just know that Bill Clinton will oblige. According to Drudge, Bill Clinton tells Dan Blather that his (Clinton's, not Rather's) successful fight against conviction after having been impeached is a "badge of honor."

Now I remember why I disliked Clinton. He lied under oath. That's perjury, or at least it would be if I did it. And yet, according to Clinton, beating the rap is a badge of honor. I suppose you have to have a pair of brass ones to even consider running for the office to begin with.

That said, Clinton should never have been impeached. Not because he didn't perjure himself, and not because that is an insignificant offense. Impeachment was a truly bad move because the leaders of the impeachment fight knew or should have known going in that they could not convict Clinton in the Senate. The inability to convict meant that the post impeachment fallout would, having failed to remove him, cripple Clinton for the remainder of his term. Love them or hate them, ineffective Presidents are a luxury America can no longer afford.

And Jesus H. Christ, what if they had won? Gore would have been the incumbent going into the 2000 election. Given the incredibly thin margin by which he lost to Bush, that fact alone would have been more than enough to assure a different result in any number of states, including Florida. The 2004 talks with the Taliban concerning the extradition of Osama bin Laden in connection with the September '01, June '02 and December '03 terrorist attacks in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago would, I have no doubt, be characterized as frank.

 
A LEGAL GENIUS, I AM

The US Supreme Court has reversed the Pledge of Allegiance case. Remember that one? Michael Newdow, an atheist, sued on behalf of his daughter because he objected to the "under God" language. The Ninth Circuit agreed and held that the Pledge was unconstitutional.

Way back when, in July of 2002, I noted that Newdow did not have custody of the daughter on whose behalf he was suing, which meant that he had no authority to conduct the suit.

< backpatting >SCOTUS agrees with me.< /backpatting >

 
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, LAWRENCE MARTIN

A Great Northern Loonie is heard from.

Fiction has its place -- especially at the time of one's passing. And so, the American airwaves glisten these days with tales about how it was Ronald Reagan who engineered the defeat of communism and the end of the Cold War.

Enlighten us with the (capital T) Truth, O Master.

It was his arms buildup, Republican admirers say, and his menacing rhetoric that brought the Soviets to their knees and changed the world forever. He was a pleasant man, the 40th president, which makes this fairy tale easier to swallow than some of history's other canards. Truth be known, however, the Iron Curtain's collapse was hardly Ronald Reagan's doing.

"Republican admirers", Larry?. Did you count those well known Republicans Lech Walesa, Natan Sharansky, Ted Kennedy, a "senior (and former) Soviet general", etc., etc., etc.

It was Mikhail Gorbachev, who with a sweeping democratic revolution at home and one peace initiative after another abroad, backed the Gipper into a corner, leaving him little choice -- actors don't like to be upstaged -- but to concede there was a whole new world opening up over there.

Your evidence, please?

As a journalist based first in Washington, then in Moscow, I was fortunate to witness the intriguing drama from both ends.

That's not evidence.

In R.R., the Soviet leader knew he was dealing with an archetype Cold Warrior. To bring him around to "new thinking" would require a rather wondrous set of works. And so the Gorbachev charm offensive began. The first offering, in 1985, was the Kremlin's unilateral moratorium on nuclear tests. "Propaganda!" the White House declared.

That's not evidence, either.

Then Mr. Gorbachev announced a grandiose plan to rid the world of nuclear weapons by 2000. Just another hoax, the Reagan men cried. More Commie flim-flam.

Then came another concession -- Kremlin permission for on-site arms inspections on Soviet land -- and then the Reykjavik summit. In Iceland, Mr. Gorbachev put his far-reaching arms-reduction package on the table and Mr. Reagan, to global condemnation, walked away, offering nothing in return.

That's not quite what happened in Reykjavik, Larry. According to Harvard's JFK School of Government, "Reagan proposed the elimination of all offensive ballistic missiles within ten years, and Gorbachev reciprocated by proposing to eliminate the even larger category of all strategic weapons. Ostensibly, it was SDI and its potential for changing the strategic balance of power that motivated such dramatic proposals-but it was also the reason why they were ultimately rejected." (Emphasis added.) So both sides were proposing the elimination of offensive nuclear weapons (Gorbachev including non-missile weapons and Reagan limiting his proposal to missiles) but the Soviets also wanted to kill Reagan's defensive "Star Wars" scheme, as well. Reagan's response was "What the hell use will ABM's or anything else be if we eliminate nuclear weapons?"

Glasnost and perestroika became the new vernacular. For those in the White House like Richard Perle, the prince of darkness who still thought it was all a sham, Gorby now began a withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan. He released the dissident icon Andrei Sakharov and hundreds of other political prisoners. He made big strides on freedom of the press, immigration and religion. He told East European leaders that the massive Soviet military machine would no longer prop up their creaking dictatorships. He began the process of something unheard of in Soviet history -- democratic elections.

Gorbachev didn't withdraw from Afghanistan just for the hell of it. Gorbachev withdrew from Afghanistan when it became apparent that the Soviets could not gain a military victory over the rebels Reagan had armed with Stingers. Remember that, Larry? It's the move that everyone (from lunatic fringes of the political spectrum, at least) now claims resulted in the attack of 9/11. The release of Sakharov followed years of international protest against his imprisonment and was a public relations gesture, no more.

By now, the U.S. administration was reeling. Polls were beginning to show that, of all things unimaginable, a Soviet leader was the greatest force for world peace.

Reeling? No. Reagan did not have a poll driven presidency. He knew what he wanted, knew he could get what he wanted and set about getting it.

An embarrassed Mr. Reagan finally responded in kind. Nearing the end of his presidency, he came to Moscow and he signed a major arms-control agreement and warmly embraced Mr. Gorbachev. A journalist asked the president if he still thought it was the evil empire. "No," he replied, "I was talking about another time, another era."

Note that the major arms control agreement did not include a prohibition on Reagan's Star Wars project, which was the cause of the failure of the Reykjavik summit. So who caved, Mr. Martin?

The recasting of the story now suggests that President Reagan's defence-spending hikes -- as if there hadn't been American military buildups before -- somehow intimidated the Kremlin into its vast reform campaign. Or that America's economic strength -- as if the Soviets hadn't always been witheringly weak by comparison -- made the Soviet leader do it.

That's right: someone's recasting the story, Martin, but it ain't the people who are crediting Reagan with winning the cold war and bringing down the Soviet Union. If everyone knew that the Soviets were witheringly weak economically in comparison to the US, why did Arthur Schlesinger say in 1982, "Those in the United States who think the Soviet Union is on the verge of economic and social collapse" are "wishful thinkers who are only kidding themselves." And why in 1982, did Sovietologist Seweryn Bialer of Columbia University write in Foreign Affairs: "The Soviet Union is not now nor will it be during the next decade in the throes of a true systemic crisis, for it boasts enormous unused reserves of political and social stability." Reagan, on the other hand, told everyone who would listen in the early eighties that the Soviet Union was on its last legs and was ridiculed for his beliefs. Well, he was right, and the experts who pooh poohed him as an ignorant cowboy (sound like more recent political rhetoric?) were dead flat one hundred percent stunningly and absolutely wrong.

In fact, Mr. Gorbachev could have well perpetuated the old totalitarian system. He still had the giant Soviet armies, the daunting nuclear might and the chilling KGB apparatus at his disposal.

Mr. Gorbachev could not have continued anything. The unsuccessful August 1991 coup attempt finished him. By December of that year, he was largely irrelevant and Yeltsin was in charge. The daunting nuclear might and the chilling KGB apparatus didn't help.

But he had decided that the continuing clash of East-West ideologies was senseless, that his sick and obsolescent society was desperate for democratic air.

Sick and obsolescent society? Why it seems like just a paragraph ago you were telling us how Gorbachev could do anything he wanted.

His historic campaign that followed wasn't about Ronald Reagan. It would have happened with or without this president. Rather, it was about him, Mikhail Gorbachev: his will, his inner strength, his human spirit.

Gorbachev's "historic campaign" had stalled by 1990. From InfoPlease: "By 1990, however, Gorbachev's perestroika program had failed to deliver significant improvement in the economy, and the elimination of political and social control had released latent ethnic and national tensions in the Baltic states, in the constituent republics of Armenia, Georgia, Ukraine, and Moldova, and elsewhere. A newly created (1989) Congress of People's Deputies voted in Mar., 1990, to end the Communist party's control over the government and elected Gorbachev executive president."

As for the Gipper, he was bold and wise enough, to shed his long-held preconceptions and become the Russian's admirable companion in the process.

Reagan's "long held preconceptions" were that the Soviet Union was economically and politically incapable of continued existence without witting or unwitting assistance from the West. So what preconception exactly did Reagan shed to become the faithful Tonto to Gorbachev's Lone Ranger?

In the collapse of communism he deserves credit not as an instigator, but an abettor. Best Supporting Actor.

To paraphrase Churchill: Some support. Some actor.

 
THE WONDERS OF THE INTERNET

From the sublime to the ...

Well, calling this ridiculous would be too polite.

Via VodkaPundit.

 
SOMEONE CALL THE UN. THEIR AMBULANCES HAVE BEEN FOUND.

This really pisses me off.

Via Best of the Web (fifth item down):

Access|Middle East has video shot by Reuters showing a portion of a gunbattle between Palestinians and the Israeli Defense Forces in which UN ambulances transport the Palestinians and their weapons. You, too, can view the video by clicking the above link. The story is in the upper right hand corner of the page. Click on "View Document".

And this is the organization Kerry wants to run Iraq? This is the organization which is to have a Kerry provided veto on our foreign policy? This is the organization that can't (or won't) account for billions in oil for food money?

Enough. Get the UN out of the Middle East. For that matter, get them out of Africa, too. And they're sitting on some pretty valuable real estate in New York. Maybe we should take that back, while we're at it.