Moral Equivocation

The Left continues to draw parallels between the actions of terrorists in Hezbollah and HAMAS and the actions of the nation of Israel. Between catch phrases such as "collective punishment" and "disproportionate response." As Rush Limbaugh observed during his program a few days ago, the ratio of US to Japanese military battle deaths in the Pacific Theatre of World War II was something in the neighborhood of 22:1 (Rush's figures were much more precise; I don't have the actual numbers here in front of me). That figure, however, does not even include civilian casualties. It doesn't include the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Would the Left classify a 22:1 ratio in battle deaths as a "disproportionate response?" Should we have gone easier on the Japanese? After all, they only killed about 2,400 soldiers and 70 civilians in the attack on Pearl Harbor. Should we have stopped after reciprocating with 2,400 combat and 70 civilian deaths on the Japanese side? Would that have made everything okay (would the Japanese have stopped after an even proportion was reached)? To even ask questions such as these is ludicrous, yet this is how the Left seems to think wars should be fought.


The idea that Israel should offer a response in proportion to the actions perpetrated upon them by Hezbollah is steeped in emotionalism, yet is painfully lacking in logic. After 9/11, we didn't hear these same people calling for restraint and for a "proportionate response." We didn't hear condemnation of the "collective punishment" of the Taliban and the Afghani people. Yet to the Left, who consider the very existence of the nation of Israel to be tantamount to a terrorist act, any response offered by Israel is inappropriate.

Personally, I happen to believe that this current crisis, more than anything else, shows why the Left cannot be trusted to run America: they lack perspective. The United States is fighting a War on Terror...or, more appropriately, a War on Islamic Radicalism. I've heard it time and time again from Leftists: "You can't fight Islamic radicalism...Islamic radicalism is an idea, and you can't fight an idea." This argument is ludicrous. We are fighting Islamic radicalism by *gasp* killing Islamic radicals!!! The Left, however, cannot seem to bring themselves to believe that all Islamic radicals are our enemies (despite the fact that they consider the United States to be "The Great Satan"). The truth is that the current Israel/Lebanon conflict is another front in the War on Terror.

Instead of condemning Hezbollah for fighting dirty in order to win the PR battle, the Left condemns Israel for "targetting" civilians. The truth is that Israel's first action in this conflict was to target infrastructure - airports and roads - in order to prevent Iran and Syria from re-supplying Hezbollah with weapons. After that, Israel began targetting Hezbollah's military targets...which Hezbollah just happened to have hidden in hospitals, mosques, schools, and homes...and then Hezbollah prevented civilians from leaving those areas, in order to purposly maximize civilian casualties when Israel struck those targets. Of course, while the media has been faithfully reporting the number of civilian casualties, they have been mysteriously silent on the number of Hezbollah terrorists who have been killed. And since Hezbollah fighters don't wear uniforms, there have been questions as to whether terrorist deaths have been heaped in with the numbers of innocents killed in order to inflate the numbers. Because according to the Left, Israel is the terrorist organizaion, and Hezbollah is just defending itself against their 'aggression'. Israel's bombing of a UN outpost? Kofi Annan called it a "deliberate act." I don't doubt that - Israel was deliberately targetting the Hezbollah militants that had been using the UN outpost to shield them from attack.

Despite all of the attacks and moral equivocation from the Left in this conflict, Israel has been doing exactly the right thing. As deplorable as civilian losses are, Israel is sending a message to Hezbollah: "It isn't going to work anymore. We aren't going to let you hide behind civilians, or even the United Nations any more. We will attack you where you hide, and we will kill you. We will not put up with your dirty tricks any more. We will do what it takes to stop you, and you will rue the day you messed with the soveriegn nation of Israel." Israel's actions are "Cowboy diplomacy" at its finest, and it is this attitude, rather than the appeasement urged on by Leftists worldwide, that will end the cycle of violence in the Middle East.

Kofi Annan says that he wants a cease-fire. Well, Israel will give it to him: sooner or later, Hezbollah will run out of rockets and terrorists to fire those rockets. And when Hezbollah has been brought to its knees and shot in the head, Israel will cease firing, because they will have run out of terrorists to fire at.

The United Nations: Helping to Advance the Cause of Terrorism

As the conflict in Lebanon continues, Israel has continued to take heat for civilian losses inflicted within Lebanon. Israel has been blamed for targetting homes and ambulances, and a large part of the world community has showed its extreme ignorance, jumping on the anti-Israel bandwaggon, blaming Israel for these attacks.

This, more than anything, shows the extreme ignorance of these world leaders. It is now coming out that Hezbollah militants have been firing off rockets from homes...and Hezbollah has not allowed the civilian population to leave. Hezbollah fighters have also been using ambulances as transports for its fighers, as well as using homes to store munitions. All of these actions violate the Geneva Conventions, yet instead of blaming Hezbollah for using such low tactics, Israel is blamed for responding to those tactics to take out the terrorists.

Kofi Annan has been urging Israel to agree to a cease-fire with Hezbollah. Hezbollah, in response, has said that it is ready and willing to negotiate toward a cease-fire. Go figure! Israel is kicking their butts! Hezbollah, at this point, has little choice but to take the diplomatic route. A cease-fire is about the only thing short of an Iranian nuclear warhead detonating over Jerusalem that could possibly ensure Hezbollah's continued survival. And, even better for the terrorists, Israel comes out looking like the bad guys when they refuse to negotiate again with the terrorists! The United Nations, supposedly the world's best hope for peace, is playing right into the terrorists' hands with these continued calls for a cease-fire. What they don't seem to realize is that there have been cease-fires before. If cease-fires were the answer here, this conflict would have been resolved a long time ago. However, with their calls for a cease-fire, world leaders such as Kofi Annan show that they are either ignorant to the lessons of history, or are outright ignoring those lessons. If cease-fires ensured peace, then the Israel/Gaza/Lebanon area would be the most peaceful region on Earth. As history has shown, though, all a cease-fire accomplishes is to give the terrorists a reprieve - a chance to heal their wounds, re-arm, and prepare further attacks on Israel. Israel has entered into cease-fire agreements in the past, and it has gotten them nothing but an eventual continuation of hostilities.

The simple truth of it is that Hezbollah has everything to gain by a cease-fire, while a cease-fire will not help Israel in the least. And by condemning Israel's attacks on Hezbollah and urging a cease-fire, the United Nations has come out unequivocally on the side of the terrorists. If anything, the UN should be helping Israel - after all, according to UN Resolution 1559, Hezbollah should not exist. So, here again we have a nation enforcing UN resolutions over the UN's protestations. Here again is an opportuinity for the UN to show some backbone and back up its words. And here again the UN shows itslef to be a monumental failure and a complete joke.

Mantra of the Left: Hate Israel, Love Terrorists

For almost a week now, Israel has been bombing Lebanon in retaliation for attacks by Hezbollah terrorists. Last week, a Hezbollah raid across the Lebanon border resulted in the death of several Israeli soldiers and the kidnapping of two. In response, Israeli warplanes began bombing targets inside Lebanon, including the runway and fuel depot at the Beirut airport, the main road from Lebanon into Syria, and the headquarters of Hezbollah in Lebanon. Throughout the campaign, Hezbollah has been launching unguided missiles into Israel.

In response to the heating up of this conflict, the international community is divided along its usual lines, with the Israel-bashers bashing the Israeli response as being too harsh, and President Bush coming out on the side of Israel, stating unequivocally that Israel has a right to defend itself against terrorist attacks.

I've heard several arguments against Israel. The most common argument is that Israel's response is disproportionate to Hezbollah's initial attack. Well, allow me to let you in on a little secret: this is war. By crossing the border and attacking Israeli soldiers, Hezbollah (who, by the way, is officially represented in the Lebanese government) committed an act of war. In war, the goal is to kill the enemy. The idea that Israel should have taken two Hezbollah soldiers to trade for the two Israeli soldiers that Hezbollah kidnapped so that the response would be "proportionate" is just plain stupid. Israel has given concession after concession after concession in the interests of peace. In fact, the territory in Southern Lebanon that Hezbollah is now using to attack Israel used to be know as "the occupied terriroties." Israel no longer occupies Southern Lebanon. They gave it back. Israel no longer occupies the Gaza Strip. They gave it back...and even then, after the leftist peaceniks pressured Israel into giving Gaza back, those same peaceniks then turned around and criticized Israel for removing the Israelis who were living in Gaza. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Israel has shown conclusively through the years that they want peace. After the Six Day War, Israel gave the Sinai Penninsula back to Egypt in the interests of peace. Since then, there has been peace between Israel and Egypt...because Egypt has refrained from attacking Israel. Hamas and Hezbollah, however, are not interested in peace. It's happened time and time again: the terrorists will attack. Israel will respond. The peaceniks will demand a cease-fire. Israel will give concessions in the interests of peace. Then, a few months later, the cycle begins again: the terrorists attack.

For the peace-loving hippies, the only "proportionate" response Israel could possibly give is the one that involves caving to the terrorists' demands. In this case, that means the release of thousands of Arab prisoners being held by Israel for various crimes. Here's a little history lesson: in 2004, Hezbollah kidnapped an Israeli businessman. In order to resolve the situation, Israel released over 400 Arab prisoners in exchange for his safe return. Given the current situation, the question of, "did it solve anything?" is a resounding "NO!" The only thing that Israel's caving in to the terrorists' demands did was to teach the terrorists that Israel will cave in to their demands. And now, two years later, Hezbollah is pulling the same stunt, this time demanding the release of thousands of Arab prisoners in exchange for two kidnapped soldiers. Want to talk about "disproportionate response?" Israel's concessions have been disproportionate to the concessions of the Arab terrorists. Israel's actions now are justified because the terrorists have shown that no amount of concessions or appeasement will bring peace. This leaves Israel with one solution: kill the terrorists.

Another common argument is that Israel's military attacks are unjustified because the Israelis are killing Palestinian civilians. While this is true, the real question is, are the Israelis targetting Palestinian civilians? The answer is no. In the past, and throughout this current campaign, Israel has gone out of its way to attack only strategic targets. As a matter of strategy, Hezbollah and Hamas leaders have taken to surrounding themselves with women and children, and hiding military assets (weapons and munitions) close to civilian targets. Many of the unguided missiles that have been launched at Israel have been coming from Lebanese homes. In order for Israel to take out the missile sites, the homes also must be destroyed. We even saw this strategy in the Iraq war, when "insurgents" were attacking our soldiers from mosques and hospitals. There seems to be a general consensus from the peacenik left that modern wars should be fought in a politically correct manner...and the proliferation of television news cameras throughout modern war zones has the effect of forcing nations into these kinds of ineffective campaigns. But I submit to you this: if TV news cameras had been present in the major battles of World War II, and those images were shown on American television, the people then would have been revolted by what they saw. They would have demanded more restraint. They might have even demanded a more "proportionate" response as Allied forces proceeded to kick Hitler's butt. And if Allied leaders had caved in to such demands, we would have lost that war and Europe and North Africa, and who knows where else, would be under Nazi control today. In fact, the reason that America lost the Vietnam war was largely because the American public lost the will to fight after seeing images of the war on TV. But let's face it: as long as the world community demands politically correct wars, none of the world's greatest problems will be solved. The problem of Islamic terrorism will never be solved by giving in to the demands of terrorists. The problem of a nuclear Iran will never be solved by trying to appease Ahmadenijad. The problem of the Iraqi 'insurgency' will never be solved by placating the insurgent terrorists by pulling our troops out of Iraq. These actions will only accomplish two things: they will delay conflict for a short time, and they will make conflict all the worse when it finally arrives. These hard-line Islamofascist terrorists, including HAMAS, Hezbollah, Ahmadenijad, Al Qaida, and the Iraqi insurgency, will only be satisfied with two things: the elimination of Israel, and the elimination of the United States. And then, after they have accomplished those two goals, they will move on to their final goal: turning the rest of the world into an Islamic state.

So to all of those Leftists out there who love peace so much, I say this: if you truly want Israel to continue placating the terrorists instead of killing them, take this advice: go out and buy yourself a Koran and a prayer rug, because if you can't show the Islamofascists how very Muslim you are when they roll into town, you'll only be left with one choice: convert or die.

Ann Coulter: Plagiarist? I don't think so.

If anyone actually reads this blog, you may have noticed the little debate I had a short time ago over this post regarding Ann Coulter's new book Godless. While the debate quickly branched away from Coulter's book, the debate started over charges of plagiarism brought against Coulter.

The initial source of the charges brought up appears here...and there are more charges here (for a much more coherent review of the charges, see this report by MSNBC).

Of course, these charges, brought up in the liberal blog "The Rude Pundit," are not likely to sway my opinion of Coulter, especially after I came across a post entitled, "Why Ann Coulter is a ****" (note: this post contains tons of vulgarity, and I only link to it reluctantly and as an example of the vitriolic hatred "The Rude Pundit" routinely engages in...for more examples, click here at your own risk).

Now, I have been reading Godless on my own (and enjoying it, by the way), and I have read the allegations of plagiarism. Most of them are innocent: what "The Rude Pundit" claims is plagiarism is nothing more than Coulter using similar wording to the sources from which she drew her information. In one case, "The Rude Pundit" claims that Coulter plagiarized a 1988 press conference by explaining the events that occurred when a convicted rapist and murder released on furlough again committed rape and murder, and then committed suicide...in the same order that they were described in the press conference! As if Coulter should have explained that the criminal, once furloughed, committed suicide, murdered a woman, and then proceeded to rape her.

As allegations of plagiarism spread via the internet and then the news media, Coulter's syndicator, Universal Press Syndicate, decided to do their own investigating, later announcing that they saw no legitimate claims of plagiarism. Even the Daily Kos, an extreme liberal blog, stated that the charges of plagiarism were "overblown."

Basically what it gets down to is that these allegations of plagiarism amount to nothing more than baseless attacks on Coulter's credibility...which most liberals wouldn't give a plug nickle for, anyway. And, as it turns out, their attacks have, if anything, bolstered Coulter's credibility by giving her the closest thing to an endorsement by the Daily Kos that she's ever likely to get.

Liberalism: Life Devoid of Reality

It's gotta be fun being a liberal. Personally, I wouldn't know, because every time I try to understand what it's like to think like a liberal I pass out, but it's gotta be nice to be able to live in constant denial of reality.

Here's what I'm referring to:

President Bush today delivered a presentation to Congress detailing the success of his administration's economic policies. In a unilateral pre-emptive strike, the New York Times today published an editorial trashing the Bush economy. The thing about the Times editorial, though, is that it is nothing more than anti-Bush propaganda.

All good propaganda must include within it a shred of truth, or, at the least, a half-truth, and the Times does this with great skill. Looking at the numbers reported in the Times, the Bush economy doesn't look very impressive, and does, in fact, look somewhat depressing. The lie in the numbers the Times uses, however, is that the numbers they report only work if you assume that President Bush's economic policy took effect the minute Bush was sworn in. The denial of reality here is that, as all good liberals do, the Times refuses to acknowledge the fact that the Bush administration inherited a recession. When President Bush took office, the previously robust economy (whose success was thanks to the Republican-dominated Congress) was beginning a downward turn, which soon became a recession (the 9/11 attacks helped greatly in this). The truth is, while the economy was headed downward during the early part of Bush's presidency, President Bush's economic policy didn't take effect until President Bush was finally able to overcome Democratic obstructionism and the 'Bush tax cuts' were passed - about 18 months into President Bush's first term. And if you calculate the numbers from the time that the President's economic policy took effect, it's extremely easy to see that President Bush's plans for the economy have been hugely successful.

The Times, however prefers to live in their own little dream world, denying any and all signs of economic success. Meanwhile, the real world suffers under the burden of continuing left-wing propaganda.

One of the most amazing things about the success of the Bush economy is that, contrary to the nay saying of liberals, government revenues have skyrocketted. That's right, President Bush lowered taxes, and revenues went up. When President Bush proposed the tax cuts, the Democrats ran around screaming about how the deficit was going to skyrocket...and with the war, it has. But, provided the Congress can restrain its penchant for funding 'bridges to nowhere', the increased revenue will allow the government to pay down the deficit.

Sometimes, however, the denial of reality is much more veiled than this blatant attempt by the Times. It seems that every month I hear the same reporter for AP radio news saying that "economic growth was not as high as experts predicted," basically framing economic growth as a bad thing because the economy didn't grow as fast as some 'experts' said it should. After hearing this for a few months, a couple of questions popped into my mind: first, just how much did the economy grow, and second, what is it about the economy that makes these experts so optimistic? After all, if experts are predicting such robust growth month after month, then either the Bush administration is doing a good job, or the 'experts' are inflating their numbers to make it look like the administration is doing poorly (because the numbers show that the economy is booming, and nowadays, liberal nay saying just shows that Dems will even deny the undeniable if it means they can attack President Bush).

The unemployment rate is at 4.6 percent. To put this in perspective, the lowest unemployment rate during the Clinton administration (which President Clinton was lauded for by the media) was 4.2 percent (through much of Clinton's presidency it was much higher)...just 0.4 percent lower than where the unemployment rate is now. Under the Bush tax cuts, tax revenue grew by $274 billion, or 14.5 percent. As President Bush stated in his address, "It's the largest increase in 24 years" (or since 1982, when President Reagan, who also lowered taxes, was in office). The Treasury Department projections say that next year, tax revenues will increase by $246 billion, or 11 percent. The original projection for this year's budget deficit was $423 billion. The actual deficit: $296 billion. Hardly the worst economy since Herbert Hoover, as the Democrats alleged before the 2004 election. The economy is booming, and as the President said, "That's what happens when you implement pro-growth economic policies."

Liberal attacks on the Bush economy are old news...and by now, they truly are just tired attempts at lying to the public. The economy has been doing great for so long that maybe the Times should change its motto from "all the news that's fit to print" to "all the DNC propaganda that we can possibly run".

North Korea: Psycho Communist Dictatorship, or Monumental US Failure?

Yesterday, the worker's paradise known as North Korea test-launched a long-range missile rumored to have the capability to reach the United States. The launch was a monumental failure, as the missile toppled into the Sea of Japan shortly after launch.

In response to this test, Madeline Albright came out swinging, saying that the test launch was a failure of U.S. diplomacy. Now, granted, Albright has proven herself to be little more than a leftist wacko, but unfortunately, leftist wackos tend to be treated as genuine experts by the media, and Albright is no exception.

My question is this: how is the test launch of a long range missile, which the United States and Japan have been telling North Korea would be considered an extremely threatening move, a failure of U.S. diplomacy? How, exactly, does this work?

Really, this is to be expected: the war in Iraq was seen by the left as a failure of US diplomacy, even though it was Saddam Hussein's actions that precipitated the invasion. Why should this be any different? After all, as time passes, the Left in America moves further and further left, to the point that in another couple of years, the Democratic Party will have to rename themselves the Socialist Party (or maybe even the Communist Party) just to keep from violating Truth in Advertising laws. As lefties like Albright see it, North Korea is nothing but the bright and inevitable future that America should look forward to with baited breath. Forget the fact that the blame for the fact that North Korea has nuclear weapons rests squarely on the shoulders of the Clinton Administration (Albright served as Clinton's Secretary of State). Forget the fact that Albright herself visited North Korea and spoke with Kim Jong Il, and came back talking about what a great place North Korea is and what a great guy Kim Jong Il is (he's just misunderstood, according to her).

Let's face the facts here: Just because the United States and Japan couldn't talk an insane Communist dictator out of performing a missile test that constitutes a threat to the entire region, that doesn't mean that US diplomacy has failed. It does mean that North Korea is not our friend and should not be trusted to do the right thing. It does mean that the US government should have workable military plans to quickly destroy any and all missile facilities in North Korea. It does mean that the US missile shield project is more important than ever.

And finally, it does mean that anyone with any sense at all should disregard pretty much anything that comes from the mouth of Madeline Albright.