From A to B to G

I’ve always been intrigued by the Left’s view of America’s actions toward North Korea, especially during Bush’s regime. They seem to lay the sole blame of NK’s nuclear development at the feet of Bush. I find that extremely disingenuous (aka a lie!!) What in the hell do they think their ‘Savoir’ Bill Clinton did for eight years? Keep them in “developmental lock-down”? A Pandora’s Box just waiting for an incompetent boob to unleash to the world? Please….

A nuclear program just doesn’t pop up over night. So this tells the world NK was playing the Clinton Admin as fools, while stringing them along. But don’t try to tell that to the Left. They feel the whole NK development program is the fault of the Bush Admin.

Make no mistake; I’ve never disparaged the Clinton Admin in any of my rants. I thought he was a rather decent President. I didn’t agree with some of his plans, but I thought he was better than Bush I and Carter combined.

So, it was something to stumble upon this article by Sue Raging Roz during my Daou feed this evening. The title was US Backing off on North Korea. And her lead before the NY Times/International Herald Tribune article was:

Are there other fish to fry or is the Bush administration finally clueing in to the complexities of the situation over there?

Yet, the entire block is such a harsh break from the standard US policy (/sarcasm):

BEIJING The six-nation talks on the North Korean nuclear crisis opened here Tuesday with the top American negotiator stating that the United States recognized the sovereignty of the North Korean government as a "matter of fact" and had "absolutely no intention" of launching a military attack against the Stalinist regime.

The American envoy, Christopher Hill, also appeared to suggest that the United States would be amenable to a step-by-step process under which North Korean concessions would be met by rewards from the United States and other participants in the talks.

He described the approach as "words for words and actions for actions" - language that seemed to signal a softer line compared with earlier days, when the Bush administration demanded that North Korea must first dismantle its nuclear program before the United States would offer any direct aid or other benefits. Washington has already said it would send 50,000 tons of food aid to North Korea through the United Nations.

So, let me get this straight…. If we play extreme hard ball, we are thought of as evil villains who are unyielding in our own ‘principles’, yet if we show negotiating skills we are thought of as going “soft” on the issue.

Can you say “political pettiness” five times quickly?

Roberts / Scalia / Morality

What a Trinity!?!?!?
I was doing my daily Daou Report feed this evening. Most of the gak I just skimmed and deleted; far more Left Wing drivel than ususal today. However...I came across an intriguing article which I always find appealing.

Ann Althouse has an article I had to spend half the time reading out loud. It also reminded me why I could only stomach on semester of pre-law.

It seems Jonathan Turley wrote an article which Ann refers to in which Sen. Durbin asked an ambiguous question on how Roberts would react "if the law required a ruling that his church considers immoral":

Roberts appeared nonplused and, according to sources in the meeting, answered after a long pause that he would probably have to recuse himself...

Roberts could now face difficult questions of fitness raised not only by the Senate but by his possible colleague, Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the most conservative members of the court (and a devout Catholic). Last year, Scalia chastised Catholic judges who balk at imposing the death penalty — another immoral act according to the church: "The choice for a judge who believes the death penalty to be immoral is resignation, rather than simply ignoring duly enacted constitutional laws and sabotaging the death penalty."

As mentioned in previous entries, I'm a practicing, not ncecessarily Christian non-Catholic...meaning I attend Catholic chruch every Sunday yet am unable to partake in Communion. Yet I find it fascinating when devout Christians (or any other faith for that matter) choose when to play the faith card against when the Govt or State rules. After all didn't Christ state, 'render unto Ceasar that which is Ceasar's, and unto God that which is God's'.

Yet, here's Scalia's argument on why it's ok to support State rights (yet over turn Federal law) on Choice (vis a vie abortion), yet uphold State execution...How do these jive with his staunch Catholic beliefs???

Capital cases are much different from the other life-and-death issues that my Court sometimes faces: abortion, for example, or legalized suicide. There it is not the state of which I am, in a sense, the last instrument that is decreeing death, but rather private individuals whom the state has decided not to restrain.

One may argue, as many do, that the society has a moral obligation to restrain them. That moral obligation may weigh heavily upon the voter and upon the legislator who enacts the laws, but a judge, I think, bears no moral guilt for the laws society has failed to enact.

My difficulty with Roe v. Wade is a legal rather than a moral one. I do not believe – and no one believed for 200 years – that the Constitution contains a right to abortion. And if a state were to permit abortion on demand, I would and could in good conscience vote against an attempt to invalidate that law, for the same reason that I vote against invalidation of laws that contradict Roe v. Wade; namely, simply because the Constitution gives the federal government and, hence, me no power over the matter.

With the death penalty, on the other hand, I am part of the criminal law machinery that imposes death, which extends from the indictment to the jury conviction to rejection of the last appeal. I am aware of the ethical principle that one can give material cooperation to the immoral act of another when the evil that would attend failure to cooperate is even greater: for example, helping a burglar to tie up a householder where the alternative is that the burglar will kill the householder.

I doubt whether that doctrine is even applicable to the trial judges and jurors, who must themselves determine that the death sentence will be imposed. It seems to me those individuals are not merely engaged in material cooperation with someone elseÂ’s action, but are themselves decreeing, on behalf of the state, death.

The same is true of appellate judges. In those states where they are charged with re-weighing the mitigating and aggravating factors and determining de novo whether the death penalty should be imposed, they are themselves decreeing death, whereas in the case of the federal system, the appellate judge merely determines that the sentence pronounced by the trial court is in accordance with law, perhaps the principle of material cooperation could be applied. But as I have said, that principle demands that the good deriving from the cooperation exceed the evil which is assisted. I find it hard to see how any appellate judge could find this condition to be met unless he believes retaining his seat on the bench, rather than resigning, is somehow essential to preservation of the society, which is of course absurd. As Charles de Gaulle is reported to have remarked when his aides told him he could not resign as president of France because he was the indispensable man: “Mon ami, the cemeteries are full of indispensable men.”

I pause at this point to call attention to the fact that, in my view, the choice for the judge who believes the death penalty to be immoral is resignation rather than simply ignoring duly enacted constitutional laws and sabotaging the death penalty. He has, after all, taken an oath to apply those laws, and has been given no power to supplant them with rules of his own. Of course, if he feels strongly enough, he can go beyond mere resignation and lead a political campaign to abolish the death penalty, and if that fails, lead a revolution. But rewrite the laws he cannot do....

This dilemma, of course, need not be faced by proponents of the living Constitution who believe that it means what it ought to mean. If the death penalty is immoral, then it is surely unconstitutional, and one can continue to sit while nullifying the death penalty. You can see why the living Constitution has such attraction for us judges.

It is a matter of great consequence to me, therefore, whether the death penalty is morally acceptable, and I want to say a few words about why I believe it is....

The Day the Earth Stood Still

All I can say is OMG!!!

The Seattle Times, a bastion of Liberalism, has seen a great injustice wrought upon the citizens of Washington. An injustice brought upon us by the friends and allies of the Times, yet the Times is willing to call them out...and call them out they did!!!!

In failing to police the Legislature's promiscuous declarations of emergency, the Washington Supreme Court has failed to protect the rights of the people.

[...]

The state constitution gives voters the right of referendum on any new law except for "such laws as may be necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health or safety, support of the state government and its existing public institutions."

[...]

The purpose of the referendum power is to limit the power of legislators to pass unpopular laws. The emergency clause should allow for a handful of exceptions only. When the Legislature declares emergencies dozens of times in every session — 98 times this past spring — it is limiting the people's right to challenge its decisions.

What the state needed from the court was a statement of its own responsibility and a standard for sorting the fake emergencies from the real ones. What we got was a statement that pretty much anything can be an emergency if the Legislature says it is.

Perhaps the people need a constitutional amendment to clarify what is an emergency or require that all declarations of emergency have a two-thirds vote.

This last paragraph is just amazing coming from the likes of the Seattle Times!!

(tip: Orbusmax)

bin Laden and Iraq date to 1998 and VDH Post

I've never been one of those who was wed to the bin Laden/Saddam threat. I felt while Saddam was a 'threat', it was a contrived association. I had no doubt Saddam harbored and supported terrorism, from Abu Nidal and Abu Abbas to paying blood money for Palestinian suicide bombers. Thanks to Power Line, there's video from ABC News dating back to 1998 which showed a direct link btwn bin Laden and Saddam!! Yet, there's not been a peep about this from ABC or any other 'credible' news site much less the wingnut sites of the Left.

UPDATE: Michael Totten blogs an exact entry!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Another fine bit of work from Victor Davis Hanson.

Ever since September 11, there has been an alternative narrative about this war embraced by the Left. In this mythology, the attack on September 11 had in some vague way something to do with American culpability.

Either we were unfairly tilting toward Israel, or had been unkind to Muslims. Perhaps, as Sen. Patty Murray intoned, we needed to match the good works of bin Laden to capture the hearts and minds of Muslim peoples.

The fable continues that the United States itself was united after the attack even during its preparations to retaliate in Afghanistan. But then George Bush took his eye off the ball. He let bin Laden escape, and worst of all, unilaterally and preemptively, went into secular Iraq — an unnecessary war for oil, hegemony, Israel, or Halliburton, something in Ted Kennedy’s words “cooked up in Texas.”

In any case, there was no connection between al Qaeda and Saddam, and thus terrorists only arrived in Iraq after we did.

That tale goes on. The Iraqi fiasco is now a hopeless quagmire. The terrorists are paying us back for it in places like London and Madrid.

Being in the Puget Sound, I remember the outrage Sen. Murray expressed at the airing of her bit on how bin Laden has done so much for Muslims. There was no 'out of context' possiblitiy since the entire episode was aired. Yet, she cried foul and blamed the 'Right' for trying to 'twist' her words.

Prior to 9/11, the United States had given an aggregate of over $50 billion to Egypt, and had allotted about the same amount of aid to Israel as to its frontline enemies. We had helped to save Muslims in Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, Kuwait, and Afghanistan, and received little if any thanks for bombing Christian Europeans to finish in a matter of weeks what all the crack-pot jihadists had not done by flocking to the Balkans in a decade.

Long before Afghanistan and Iraq, bin Laden declared war on America in 1998, citing the U.N. embargo of Iraq and troops in Saudi Arabia; when those were no longer issues, he did not cease, but continued his murdering. He harbored a deep-seated contempt for Western values, even though he was eaten within by uncontrolled envy and felt empowered by years of appeasement after a series of attacks on our embassies, bases, ships, and buildings, both here and abroad.

And to think we still give so much to so many ungreatful...

Neither bin Laden nor his lieutenants are poor, but like the Hamas suicide bombers, Mohammed Atta, or the murderer of Daniel Pearl they are usually middle class and educated — and are more likely to hate the West, it seems, the more they wanted to be part of it. The profile of the London bombers, when known, will prove the same.

The poor in South America or Africa are not murdering civilians in North America or Europe. The jihadists are not bombing Chinese for either their godless secularism or suppression of Muslim minorities. Indeed, bin Laden harbored more hatred for an America that stopped the Balkan holocaust of Muslims than for Slobodan Milosevic who started it.

VDH talks about the Western Liberals need for appeasement almost as a guilt complex. Guilt at our own success and affluence.

Our first hindrance is moral equivalence. For the hard Left there is no absolute right and wrong since amorality is defined arbitrarily and only by those in power.

Taking back Fallujah from beheaders and terrorists is no different from bombing the London subway since civilians may die in either case. The deliberate rather than accidental targeting of noncombatants makes little difference, especially since the underdog in Fallujah is not to be judged by the same standard as the overdogs in London and New York. A half-dozen roughed up prisoners in Guantanamo are the same as the Nazi death camps or the Gulag.

Our second shackle is utopian pacifism — ‘war never solved anything’ and ‘violence only begets violence.’ Thus it makes no sense to resort to violence, since reason and conflict resolution can convince even a bin Laden to come to the table. That most evil has ended tragically and most good has resumed through armed struggle — whether in Germany, Japan, and Italy or Panama, Belgrade, and Kabul — is irrelevant. Apparently on some past day, sophisticated Westerners, in their infinite wisdom and morality, transcended age-old human nature, and as a reward were given a pass from the smelly, dirty old world of the past six millennia.

The third restraint is multiculturalism, or the idea that all social practices are of equal merit. Who are we to generalize that the regimes and fundamentalist sects of the Middle East result in economic backwardness, intolerance of religious and ethnic minorities, gender apartheid, racism, homophobia, and patriarchy? Being different from the West is never being worse.

These tenets in various forms are not merely found in the womb of the universities, but filter down into our popular culture, grade schools, and national political discourse — and make it hard to fight a war against stealthy enemies who proclaim constant and shifting grievances. If at times these doctrines are proven bankrupt by the evidence it matters little, because such beliefs are near religious in nature — a secular creed that will brook no empirical challenge.

I still have a Libertairian view on govt and life, but make no mistake - evil is evil in any culture, whether it's West or Muslim. Until the vast majority of decent Muslims take back control of their religion, they do not warrent our pity but should be ashamed.

London Bombings

I've withheld my thughts on the London Bombings until now...

I was appalled at the MSM incesent carping of 'no arrests yet'. Is it the US media approach to have immediate results or what?? I guess this is the price we pay for entertainment.

But Scotland Yard has done their due dilegence with identifiying the lost souls.

But the most telling line was from the Times of London:

The four were captured on CCTV cameras at King’s Cross Thameslink station, laughing together and carrying rucksacks, minutes before they set off for their targets at 8.30am on July 7.

So much for the innocent young boys who didn't know what they were doing!

Wretchard the Cat

My favorite web site is The Belmont Club. It is THE most insightful blog I've come across on both sides of the isle. The knowledge and vision is unsurpassed.

Today, Wretchard outed himself. I hope this was the correct decision. I feel his anonymity allowed him to truly speak the truth. I hope this will not affect his muses.

Another Episode in the War between Christendom and Islam

Bruce Thorton pens an insightful article at Victor Hansen's site on what we perceive of the Islamofacists' jihad.

Indeed, what we call Islamic radicals are in fact Islamic traditionalists; it is the so-called "“moderates", those wanting to compromise Islam so it can coexist with Western ideas such as secular government, separation of church and state, and human rights, who are the radicals and innovators. The terrorists are simply fulfilling the traditional and orthodox command of their religion to battle the infidels who resist the revelation of Mohammed and the global socio-political order mandated by Islam.

[...]

Yet listen to a respected historian in a conservative magazine: “Muslim holy wars (“jihads”), as taught in the Koran, were first and foremost a personal inner struggle for moral purity” and only secondarily a war against infidels. So all those Muslim armies that conquered the Christian Near East, North Africa, Egypt, Spain, Sicily, the Balkans, all that plunder, slaughter, rape, enslavement, kidnapping, and destruction were only the '“secondary'” jihad. How could such blindness to the obvious, masquerading as sophisticated '“tolerance',not arouse contempt in the minds of our adversaries? They tell us over and over that they are waging jihad in order to establish the global hegemony of Islam, and we tell ourselves that these Muslims don't understand their own religion. Millions and millions of Muslims all over the world cheer for the jihadists and support them materially and psychologically, millions idolize bin Laden and celebrate the murder of Westerners, but we tell ourselves that they are a minority of confused souls whose minds have been addled by poverty or autocracy or anger over the Palestinians.

[...]

The murderers we call terrorists are traditional jihadists, as much as were the first Islamic armies that swept away the Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman civilizations of the Mediterranean. They are not going to be bought off with votes, a free press, more cable channels, Wal-Mart, or any other material good that to us constitutes the good life. They are fighting for a spiritual cause, the establishment of Islam as a global order in fulfillment of the will of Allah, and the reduction of all those who will not become Muslims to dhimmi, inferiors who acknowledge the superiority of Islam and the rightness of their subjection to it.

I really can't disagree with this train of thought. We in the West like to think others have the same thought process as us. We fail to understand all people are not Western-centric and do not have the same values. I draw a loose parallel to language. It's like trying to compare character based Eastern languages (Korean) to alpha based languages in the West. They require different regions of the brain. Thus our values may reside outside of what the Islamofacists will find acceptable to exist on planet Earth... It is OUR choice to live.

Latest Musings

Wow...That's all I can say for the past week, wow.

First, I was so happy for London to shaft Paris by being awarded the 2012 Olympic Game.

But that was tempered of course by the tragedy in London on July 7th. All I can say is the Islamofacists picked the wrong country this time...this isn't Spain.

But I did see a great article from the Sun documenting the acts of Terror since 1993. The only things missing are the acts of Terror against Israel and India.... What, those acts don't count???