May 28, 2004

POLITICALLY CORRECT BASEBALL

        The great game of baseball is a living offense against politically correct egalitarianism. There is no way of avoiding the reality that some possess greater skill than others. No way? Well-- not quite. Liberal egalitarianism is offended by the reality that some are superior musicians, mathematicians, poets---or baseball players. What is to be done? Here's the answer, perhaps applicable to other human activities that betray the awkward fact that some are better than others. Listen to the tale of 11 year old Anthony Seblano and tremble for the future of America:

HE'S OUT!
By BILL HUTCHINSON
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER


Anthony Seblano, 11, is banned from pitching some games.

At age 11, Anthony Seblano has a fiery fastball that's a blessing and a curse.
The Brooklyn sixth-grader, nicknamed The Rocket, was recently yanked off the mound and banned from pitching against the St. Athanasius Youth League team - all because he's too good.
The 4-foot-9, 80-pound lefty is the ace of the Joe Torre Little League's traveling team. But when the squad traveled to Borough Park to play St. Athanasius last Friday, St. Athanasius officials had the pint-size hurler marched off the mound.

"Most of the time I just throw strikes. I never walk anybody," Anthony said yesterday. "I really don't think this is fair, because my teammates depend on me."

Anthony's mom, Linda Seblano, said she couldn't believe her ears when her son's coach told her about the ban.

"I'm appalled by this," said Seblano, of Marine Park. "We've told our son that if you work hard, good things will happen. Now we have to tell him that all his hard work has gotten him banned."

Anthony can still pitch in the Joe Torre in-house league and for his school, Good Shepherd Elementary School. But he can't pitch in the St. Athanasius league, said Tom Gambino, co-chairman of the St. Athanasius Youth Organization.

"He [Anthony] blows away the competition, so he is what we consider an illegal player," said Gambino.

Gambino noted Anthony has thrown a perfect game and two no-hitters against St. Athanasius players.

"He is an overwhelmingly, powerful pitcher. It's a very unfair advantage," Gambino said.

He said St. Athanasius is a church league that's not affiliated with Little League, and therefore is not bound by its rules.

Gambino said St. Athanasius' rules allow it to ban dominating pitchers from outside teams.

"He can come in here and hit 10 home runs a game. I don't care, as long he he doesn't pitch," Gambino said.

OUR FRIENDS THE SAUDIS--AND THE EGYPTIANS

BEIRUT, Lebanon, May 28 (UPI) -- "Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said Friday his country turned down an invitation from U.S. President Bush to attend the Group of Eight summit.

Saudi daily al-Hayat, monitored in Beirut, quoted al-Faisal as saying: "Riyadh has no intention to participate in the parley at all."

The United States addressed invitations to six Arab countries, including Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Morocco, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, to attend the parley in Sea Island, Ga., June 8-12.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak also apologized for not attending the summit citing previous commitments.

Washington had hoped to discuss democratic reform in the Arab world, known as the Greater Middle East Initiative, at the summit, along with leaders from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia. "

May 27, 2004

SHEIKH PATRICK BUCHANAN'S SERMON

Saudi Arabia's official organ, Arab News, disseminator of conspiracy theories concerning Jews and 9-11, purveyors of hatred towards America and Israel, has a new columnist ready to issue fatwas vs. the 'neocons': it's Patrick Buchanan fulminating about "What some of us view as the moral descent of a great and Godly republic into imperial decadence, neocons see as their big chance to rule the world..."See the rest here.

May 21, 2004

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS KILLS

Horsefeathers has wondered why responsibility for the Abu Ghraib prison scandal never seemed to attach itself to the one person directly and clearly charged with authority and responsibility. Jack Wheeler points out that "the officer in charge of Abu Ghraib and all U.S. military prisons in Iraq, (was)the commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade, Army Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski." And why have there been no reprimands, no calls for her resignation, no indignant bloviating by the likes of Ted Kennedy and Carl Levin? Wheeler gives the answer and it is so obvious that it has been hidden in plain sight: Political Correctness dictates that Karpinski be viewed as an innocent victim of others. It was long before Abu Ghraibh that she revealed her frightening level of incompetence and avoidance of responsibility. Read it and weep. Here.

May 20, 2004

RUDY GIULIANI THROUGH THE EYES OF THE NEW YORK TIMES

Leave it to the New York Times and Gail Collins to find a way to slam Rudy Giuliani for his comments to the 9-11 commission. What irked them was the former Mayor's effrontery in remind the grandstanding, finger pointing blowhards that the enemies were and remain the terrorist murderers, not the rescuers. “To point out, as former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani did yesterday, that the terrorists were responsible is both accurate and unhelpful.” Oh? Of course, the Times adopts a tut-tutting high moral tone while mocking Mr. Giuliani’s “vaunted toughness” for failing to achieve perfection pre-9-11. A point Mr. Giuliani made clear is that under conditions that could never have been anticipated, the saving of thousands came as close to perfection, as human beings can achieve in such an unfolding disaster. He candidly acknowledged it was not perfection and we should learn from experience, but he made clear that no matter how much we learn, next time we will be very fortunate to achieve the extraordinary rescue success of 9-11. Mr. Giuliani’s central point was an extremely helpful reminder of the ways in which the liberal utopian view, with its necessary search for scapegoats, can undermine our war effort. It is an intolerable blow however, to the world view of the New York Times editors. The fact is that the Times, for all its high minded protestations has been leading the charge to find scapegoats. Here’s how they describe the commissioners: “We needed these respectful but hardheaded men and women to ask tough questions about the Bush administration's vigilance before 9/11, and this week we needed to hear their stern questions about New York City's emergency response to the attack on the World Trade Center.” Let us for a moment refrain from guffawing at the “respectful but hardheaded men and women” description, and notice there is no mention of asking 'tough questions' about the 8 years of the Clinton administration prior to the 8 months of Bush before 9-11. The real trick for Gail Collins and her editorial board, is to find a high minded way to blame Bush, Giuliani and dissenters from liberal orthodoxy, rather than Osama bin Laden and the Islamo-fascists. That requires shifting attention away from the heroic achievements of that terrible day when our nation was attacked. It means shining a spotlight on human failings and claiming they were caused by base motives. When Rudy Giuliani, early in his mayoralty undertook his war on crime, he did so with a profound understanding of human nature. The New York Times fought him all the way because crime, they insisted, was caused by deprivation, and by our failure to empathize with the plight of the poor and downtrodden. They favored gentle understanding, and greatly increased welfare spending. Harsh measures, they insisted, would just fill up our jails and breed more criminals. Sound familiar? Then it was local crime, now it's Islamo-Fascism. Giuliani’s success drove liberals mad, even while their own lives improved, thanks to his forceful efforts. We are greatly in his debt, not only for his handling of 9-11, and not just for his war on crime in New York, but also for reminding us of our need to fight an enemy that wishes to destroy all of us, including the politically correct members of the Times editorial board.

P.S. And speaking of the New York Times's agenda, an interesting "Correction" is to be found in today's newspaper: "An article on Monday about the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling that ended school segregation misstated a word in a paraphrase from President Bush, who attended a ceremony in Topeka, Kan. He called for a continuing battle to end racial inequality — not equality."There couldn't possibly be an unconscious meaning to that slip now, could there?

May 19, 2004

THIN RED LINE OF HEROS IS STILL ALIVE

"...Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, 'ow's yer soul?"
But it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll..."
--Rudyard Kipling

The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders have a long and distinguished history. They trace their lineage to the eighteenth century (see their website here)

"91st Argyllshire Highlanders raised in 1794. Saw service in South Africa Peninsula, Waterloo and India. 93rd Sutherland Highlanders raised in 1799. Saw service in New Orleans, Crimea including Balaklava, where they earned the nickname of the Thin Red Line and the Indian Mutiny where they won seven Victoria Crosses. In 1881 the two regiments amalgamated to form The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders (Princess Louise's). After amalgamation battalions of the regiment served in: South Africa (Zululand) Boer War India and the Far East. The Regiment had twenty six battalions in World War I and nine in World War II. Since the Indian Mutiny members of the regiment have earned a further nine Victoria Crosses. Since World War II the 1st Battalion has served in Palestine, Korea, British Guiana, Berlin, Suez, Cyprus, Malaya and Singapore, Borneo, Aden, Germany, Falkland Islands, England, Scotland and Northern Ireland."

Amidst all our current handwringing and self- flagellation, the seeming loss of nerve by the free world, it is heartening to read of bravery in battle, as a contrast with the cowardly barbarism of enemies who decapitate helpless prisoners.:

"OUTNUMBERED British soldiers killed 35 Iraqi attackers in the Army’s first bayonet charge since the Falklands War 22 years ago.
The fearless Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders stormed rebel positions after being ambushed and pinned down.

Despite being outnumbered five to one, they suffered only three minor wounds in the hand-to-hand fighting near the city of Amara..."
See the rest here.

May 18, 2004

THE WORLD'S OLDEST TERRORIST IS LONELY. GIVE HIM A CALL

Thanks to MEMRI, we can access Yasser Arafat's personal web site. It's lonely being a terrorist leader who can't travel freely to be with friends in France. We learn that Mr. Arafat is a caring, tender hearted fellow who struggles to help children and women. He even adopts orphans of 'martyrs'. Why not give him a call at (972 - 8 - 2822366), or send a fax (972 - 8 -2822365) to cheer him up.

May 16, 2004

VICTORY IS THE CURE

Our 24/7 media coverage forces us to look elsewhere for historical perspective. David Gelernter points out that in our earlier war against Nazi totalitarianism, things did not always go well. "...It was May 1941 and World War II was going badly. Churchill was Britain's Bush and Rumsfeld, prime minister and minister of defense. Eden was his foreign secretary and friend. There had been disasters in Greece and Crete, a discouraging naval battle with the warship Bismarck, and hard fighting in Iraq, where the British were battling Nazi-backed Rashid Ali and Luftwaffe bombers that were helping him out. "My dear Winston," Eden wrote, "This is a bad day; but tomorrow Baghdad will be entered, Bismarck sunk. On some day the war will be won, and you will have done more than any other man in history to win it..."

While we are enduring a variety of setbacks in our war with Islamo-Nazi totalitarianism, this is worth reading in its entirety, both for consolation as well as confirmation that the cure President Bush and our country require is military victory.
See the rest here.

May 15, 2004

THE GENTLEMAN TERRORIST: ABU AL ZARQAWI

We crude, uncultured Americans don't sufficiently appreciate the Eurosophisticates nuanced view of the world. If we did, we'd surely be rushing to the support of their preferred Presidential candidate, John F. Kerry. Horsefeathers wonders whether Monsieur Kerry shares their view of Abu al Zarqawi: In European intelligence circles he is apparently known as "(the)...'gentleman terrorist' because of his predilection for the use of poisons over more brutal methods..." How could such a gentleman be involved in the beheading of Nick Berg? "...We don't think he is behind this decapitation," says a European intelligence official. "He is more sophisticated than that..."
See the rest here.

May 13, 2004

THE MOST BORING MAN IN WASHINGTON: BOB WOODWARD

Horsefeathers’ rolodex had listed Senator Grassley of Iowa as the most boring man in Washington—that is, until Bob Woodward’s new best-seller “Plan of Attack” appeared in stores and he began to haunt the slow-talk shows.

What Bob Woodward lacks in imagination he makes up for in banality. His new book has no table of contents. Can you guess why? Right, it has no content worth calling attention to. If he listed the contents, anyone picking up the book and flipping the pages would have yawned, put it down and asked for the new Elmore Leonard. No one who has paid the slightest attention to the events of the last year can possibly be surprised by what’s in Woodward’s new book.

Bob Woodward wants you to think of himself as your simple, honest, clean-living, friendly, reliable, unbiased—did I say simple?—broker of current history. Ergo the “Bob.” Like “Honest Abe.” Not like the journalists of the Beltway Elite who get their clothes in Saville Row. The “Bob” is part of his Boy Scout costume, like James Stewart’s in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. That’s the way he comes across in his interviews on TV and in his writing. But “Honest Bob” makes a sly end-run around sharing credit with valued co-writers.

The back of the book is flooded with more acknowledgements than a Steven Spielberg movie. But on the first page of the book there is a special acknowledgement in the form of an “AUTHOR’S NOTE” which acknowledges that “Mark Malseed, a 1997 architecture graduate of Lehigh University… assist[ed] me full-time in the reporting, writing, research and conception of the book.” He goes on for another 150 words singing Mark Malseed’s praises, concluding finally with, “Last time he was a collaborator. This time he was a partner.” It seems that there is nothing too good for Mr. Malseed except his name on the cover of the book.

The book purports to “provide the first detailed, behind-the-scenes account of how and why President George W. Bush, his war council and allies decided to launch a preemptive war in Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein.”
“Information in the book comes from more than 75 key people directly involved in the events….These interviews were conducted on background, meaning I could use the interviews but not identify the sources of it in the book.” This, of course, makes it easy for him to “create” his history since there is no way of checking his version of the events.

As it turns out, his book is a slow-talking, plodding chronology of events known to us all, with skin-deep commentary added revealing only what the astute public was able to surmise at the time. Yes, there were and are sharp differences of opinion between Colin Powell on the one hand and Donald Rumsfeld and Vice-President Cheney on the other. Needs no ghost come from the grave to tell us this. The repetitious verbiage from someone’s notes—“Iraq, no!” “Iraq, yes!” “Iraq later”---rather than illuminating the issues, deadens the narrative. You’re supposed to think that you’re getting the inside poop because it comes from someone’s notes of National Security Committee meetings when in fact you get expectable, unsurprising, muddled discourse.
Ever since he stumbled onto Watergate, Woodward has made a career of re-enacting his relationship with Deep Throat in a dozen different venues. Many of his books suffer from dependence on cooperative main sources, sometimes anonymous, who feed him the inside dope and usually create his point of view.

His stock-in-trade is digging deep. This penchant, according to the Barnes and Noble on-line biography, “started when he was a teen-ager, working one summer as a janitor in his father’s law office in Wheaton, Illinois. He made his way through the papers in his father’s desk, his father’s partner’s desk and the files in the attic.

“ ‘I looked up all my classmates and their families, and there were IRS audits or divorces or grand juries that did not lead to indictment….It was a cold shower to see that the disposed files contained the secret lives of many of the people in this perfect town and showed they weren’t perfect.’”

It seems that not much has changed since his teenage years. He still gets secret pleasure out of exposing the mighty, out of showing how imperfect they are. His targets in this book are Rumsfeld and Bush and his hero is Colin Powell—the company dove. Most of the point of view in the book comes from Powell. You understand Powell from the inside because Woodward gives him the opportunity that he gives to no one else. You hear Powell’s grievances, you hear how unfairly he is treated by the naughty boys in the Defense Department, you hear how noble and courageous he is—clearly, according to Woodward, the class act of the administration.

Woodward wants you to hate Rumsfeld. He depicts him as a megalomaniac, self-righteous, hawkish, and acerbic to all. From Woodward’s perspective he’s the man you love to hate.

His treatment of Bush is characterized by a repellant slyly condescending attitude: Will the boy-president make good? His expose of Bush’s clay feet is more subtle than his workover of Rumsfeld. He does not do a hatchet-job on Bush. Instead it is death by ten thousand cuts. He quotes everything he can to make Bush look childish, uneducated, macho, impulsive. “Bush sauntered in like Cool Hand Luke, flapping his arms slightly, cocky but seeming ill at ease.”

There’s an old Yiddish saying that goes “If you’re out to beat a dog, you’ll find a stick to beat it with.” Woodward has no difficulty in finding many sticks with which to beat Bush. He is fond of using Bush’s own words to make him look silly, obnoxious, adolescent or unpresidential. And since Bush’s trade-mark style is informality, directness, and what-you-see-is-what-you-get, it is not hard to find in his unguarded conversation words or behavior that more burnished politicians would never allow themselves to express.

Bush is often characterized by Woodward and others as being inarticulate and verbally impaired, and in the book Woodward presents his own quotations as crystal clear. The Department of Defense, however, published much of his interview with Rumsfeld on its website, and here is what Bob Woodward sounds like unedited: “Q: And having talked to people -- it seems to be the breakthrough in that, if there’s a breakthrough, and this is what I would ask you that you develop -- you with General Franks but General Franks making the presentation. This is kind of a summary version of it, the lines of operation versus slices of regime vulnerability that you set up the things that -- these are the lines of operations, kinetics, SOF, all the way down to humanitarian. And then these are the targets or the things that could be attacked. Does that sound--?”

Here is another typically irrelevant but mean-spirited third-hand observation of Bush that Woodward includes in the book: “The JCS staff had placed a peppermint at each place. Bush unwrapped his and popped it into his mouth. Later he eyed Cohen’s mint and flashed a pantomime query, Do you want that? Cohen signaled no, so Bush reached over and took it. Near the end of the hour-and-a-quarter briefing. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Army General Henry ‘Hugh’ Shelton, noticed Bush eyeing his mint, so he passed it over.”

There is no doubt that Bush says the things he says—stumbling, repetitive, cliché-ridden, uncool. But Woodward’s less than deep understanding of Bush can not seem to see that Bush’s actions are very different from his words.
Contrary to what he is accused of by those who are ignorant of the facts, he is not impulsive or thoughtless. Sixteen months elapsed between the early thinking about invading Iraq and the actual invasion. And those sixteen months included six months of intense international diplomatic negotiations. Throughout the planning phase of the war, he listened endlessly to the experts to-ing and fro-ing on countless aspects of the complex situation before he finally came to a decision about what he thought was the best plan. And where he was uneducated, he educated himself quickly and relevantly.

Woodward’s interests are not deep, nor is his analysis of events. He is like a little boy who has wandered into a laboratory and who sees little mice being treated “cruelly” and who doesn’t really understand what is going on. He does not seem to have a grasp of the complexity of governmental dynamics within the context of history. For example, it is clear that he has never read the discussions and planning conferences that have taken place in wars past. He would have understood then that there are always clashes of opinion, and war plans are always doubtful, and in most cases are never carried out as planned. If he had ever familiarized himself with Churchill’s Joint Chiefs of Staff meetings during World War II he would have seen some of the same behavior on the part of a commander-in-chief that he finds so unacceptable in George W. Bush—his prodding for speedy action, his reliance on his gut instincts, his hawkish inclinations—all traits that characterize Bush as well as Churchill.

Woodward’s implied agenda in the book is that Bush had fallen under the spell of Cheney and Wolfowitz early on and from 9/11 he had decided to invade Iraq even though it had no direct connection with the war against terrorism. And that their view of events is merely gratuitously hawkish. His historical naiveté compels him to see each of the 22 Arab nations as distinct and autonomous and as though radical jihadists within all the Arab nations were not interconnected and were not supported within the context of Pan-Arabism.

The fact is that journalists have, in the last twenty-five or thirty years, become part of the cultural elite. No more Hildy Johnson and the boys in the press room playing poker and shooting the breeze. Now every kid who graduates from journalism school wants to (1) write a novel, or (2) expose some Republican wrongdoer, or (3) change the world. They have a secret romance with the culture of the verbally endowed elite—writers, intellectuals, and Hollywood celebrities. They are uncomfortable with men of action as political leaders—men like Eisenhower, Reagan, and Bush, men who are not eloquent, who stumble over their words and who do not bear the kosher stamp of higher education. They laughed at Harry Truman at first, sniggered at Eisenhower throughout his administration, and smile condescendingly at Ronald Reagan still. And in Great Britain the elites laughed at Winston Churchill when he became Prime Minister. Churchill was another what-you-see-is-what-you-get leader, impulsive, unburdened by higher education, often childish, but unquestionably the greatest wartime leader Britain ever had.

Bush is clearly an imperfect leader with feet of clay. But all men of affairs have feet of clay. Unfortunately, Woodward never got over his adolescent need to prove this disappointing fact of life.

So if you are looking for a really slow read, something that will make your eyes glaze over, something as flat as yesterday’s beer, run out and buy Bob Woodward’s new book.

May 12, 2004

MORON WATCH: ELIZABETH BUMILLER OF THE NY TIMES

"...Friends say that despite Mr. Rumsfeld's sometimes ferocious exterior, he is a principled man..."

There are certain feelings that are unacceptable to the arbiters of political correctness at the NY Times. Perhaps their editorial board could take a break from condescending to our cowboy President and pay attention to their own idiocies? What pray tell does the word "despite" in this sentence mean? For the NY Times certain feelings like empathy, are good, evidence of superior sentiment. Other feelings, like "ferocity" are bad; they're too aggressive, too masculine (or in NYTimes cant, "macho"). One wonders though, wouldn't ferocity in a leader bent on destroying our enemies be welcome and perhaps rooted in high principle? Feeling, for example, ferociously angry at the perpetrators of the beheading of an American. Is ferocity the opposite of principle? One suspects that, for the editorial board of the NY Times, anything more ferocious than a complaint about the quality of the booze on 43d Street is considered unprincipled. Wake up people: in the real world the opposite of "principled" is not strong feeling; it is what our enemies do when they behead innocents: that's "unprincipled".

APOLOGY=APPEASEMENT

Fouad Ajami knows the Arab world and the totalitarian mind set of its leaders. The current round of apologies President Bush has been making to these leaders is an invitation to continuing barbarism as surely as 1930's appeasement was an invitation to Hitler.

"...In the scales of military power, the Arabs have not been brilliant in modern times. But there is cunning aplenty in their world, and an unerring eye for the follies of great foreign powers. The Arabs can read through President Bush's stepping back from his support for Ariel Sharon's plan for withdrawal from Gaza. There are amends to be made for Abu Ghraib, and those are owed the people of Iraq. Yet here we are paying the Palestinians with Iraqi coin. The Palestinians will not be grateful for our concessions; and they are to be forgiven the only conclusion they will draw. Those concessions have already been taken as the compromises of an America now in the throes of self-flagellation..."

See the rest here.

May 11, 2004

NO SOONER SAID THAN (ALMOST) DONE: SULLIVAN PLEADS FOR A KERRY MC'CAIN TICKET

"...A Kerry-McCain ticket, regardless of the many difficulties, would, I think, win in a landslide..."
Read it here.

May 10, 2004

SULLIVAN UPDATE

        Back in March Horsefeathers invited predictions of the date when Andrew Sullivan would bail out on President Bush and endorse John For-Against Kerry. We thought at that time that gay marriage would be the motivating issue for the switch, however it now appears the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib is the near-final straw. But it isn't exactly the abuse that's the problem; it's that "...It was vital to reverse the Islamist narrative that pitted American values against Muslim dignity. The reason Abu Ghraib is such a catastrophe is that it has destroyed this narrative..." This is the worst thing a literary intellectual can imagine, destruction of the "narrative". Oh the horror! In any case, Sullivan spins his own hysterically lurid narrative lending credence to the similar rantings of Islamist "clerics" like al Sadr. Speaking of the Bush administration he writes: "...To have humiliated the United States by presenting false and misleading intelligence and then to have allowed something like Abu Ghraib to happen - after a year of other, compounded errors - is unforgivable. By refusing to hold anyone accountable, the president has also shown he is not really in control. We are at war; and our war leaders have given the enemy their biggest propaganda coup imaginable, while refusing to acknowledge their own palpable errors and misjudgments. They have, alas, scant credibility left and must be called to account..."
        Bill's prediction of May 27 is looking pretty good right now.

RUDOLPH GIULIANI: STILL A REAL LEADER

As the country lapses back into its slumbers, denying that we are in a World War with totalitarian Islam, Rudy Giuliani's leadership is sorely missed. It is a crucial function of a leader to rouse us out of our self-absorbed sleep into full wakefulness. The recent media obsessions and preoccupations with prisoner abuses, porno pictures, and the last episode of Friends, are a great way to divert ourselves from the fact that Islamic totalitarians notice our hesitation in pursuit of our war aims, and understand it to be evidence of our psychological weakness. The call to Jihad intensifies, pregnant women and children are gunned down by Islamo-Nazis while we worry about whether we have deprived them of their Geneva convention rights. Meanwhile, here's Rudy, at the Council on Foreign Relations, telling it like it is:

"...As we analyze what went wrong, I really urge that instead of playing this political blame sort of process of do you blame it on the Bush administration or do you blame it on the Clinton administration, or-the reality is there's something much more basic going on here. There's something about us that we should analyze and figure out not to continue repeating. I believe we did essentially the same thing with terrorism that we had done in an earlier age with Nazism. You know, we won the war to end wars with the First World War. When we won that war, we basically withdrew from the world. Hitler announced pretty early what he was going to do. It was pretty clear what he was going to do. Europe decided to go the course of accommodation, working things out with him, giving in to his demands, giving him territory-let's give him a little more, maybe he'll get better with age. That was essentially the idea, right? And then when they finally had given him so much there was no more to give him, he went and took it. And finally America faced up to it with the attack on Pearl Harbor after all of Europe was basically gone. The armies of France and England had been driven across the English Channel. And had Hitler not decided to open a second front with the Soviet Union, who knows if he wouldn't have been able to successfully invade England and take England? We'll never know the answer to that. But it was a basic mistake of not viewing the world realistically for a long, long time, and also a basic lesson that you're going to save more lives confronting horrible, horrific human beings and their movements at an early stage rather than at a later stage. I don't think there's any doubt now, in retrospect-and retrospect is always much easier-that if we had confronted Hitler five or six or seven years earlier, we would have saved millions and millions of lives that were otherwise lost.

Roughly the same thing happened with communism-not quite as dramatic as with Hitler and with Nazism, but almost the same tendency, because we tend to romanticize-meaning Americans-we tend to romanticize the people we're dealing with, rather than deal with them in a very realistic way. We romanticized, in some elements of our government, Stalin for a period of time. We had to deal with him, we had to work with him, we needed him to win the war against Hitler and against the Fascists. But then there was also a certain tendency to not see him for what he was, which is why for a long time a good portion of Europe was gone, half of Korea is not there or is under oppression. And it took us a long, long time, and it took us really until Ronald Reagan became president of the United States, to decide that the best course with communism was to confront it rather than to consistently negotiate with it and to kind of be afraid of it. And we did confront it, starting in 1981, and I think even [former Soviet leader Mikhail] Gorbachev would say in retrospect-as I once asked him this question-that Ronald Reagan spent the Soviet Union into oblivion. They just couldn't keep up with his spending. They couldn't keep up with his military spending. And I believe because of that determined approach to ending communism, we were able to end it in most parts of the world maybe five, 10, 15 years faster than it otherwise would have happened. But we certainly were able to have people now live out their lives in freedom who would have otherwise lived it out in oppression, with a few exceptions, like North Korea and Cuba.

We did the same thing then with terrorism. We didn't pay attention to it the way we should. We won the Cold War in a very dramatic way. I think there is-there is no one that wouldn't agree that we won it fast when we won it and ended it, it happened so much faster than anybody ever assumed it would happen with the opening of Eastern Europe, the end of the Soviet Union, the crashing down of the Berlin Wall. We were in a much more peaceful world, we believed.

We did exactly what we had done after the Second World War, or after the First World War. We took a big peace dividend..."

See the rest here.

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