Dissing Dissent

Dissent is either a time-honored American tradition or a cynical, rancorous affair, depending on who is doing the dissenting, and who is being dissed.

From Mr. Obama's speech on Afghanistan given at West Point, on Dec 1, 2009:

"I opposed the war in Iraq precisely because I believe that we must exercise restraint in the use of military force, and always consider the long-term consequences of our actions. We have been at war for eight years, at enormous cost in lives and resources. Years of debate over Iraq and terrorism have left our unity on national security issues in tatters, and created a highly polarized and partisan backdrop for this effort." [my italics]

"Polarized and partisan?"  So, whose fault was that?  Bush's?  Why?

"The wrenching debate over the Iraq War is well-known and need not be repeated here. It is enough to say that for the next six years, the Iraq War drew the dominant share of our troops, our resources, our diplomacy and our national attention — and that the decision to go into Iraq caused substantial rifts between America and much of the world."

If the wrenching debate need not be repeated here, why are we repeating it here?

But since he brought it up, the indispensable Mr. James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal has pointed out a subtle admission:  "There weren't a lot of surprises in President Obama's Afghanistan speech... but here's one: The president quietly repudiated the myth that Iraq has nothing to do with al Qaeda."  He did so in this passage:

"We must keep the pressure on al Qaeda, and to do that, we must increase the stability and capacity of our partners in the region. Of course, this burden is not ours alone to bear. This is not just America's war. Since 9/11, al Qaeda's safe havens have been the source of attacks against London and Amman and Bali." [my italics]

Taranto noted that the Amman bombing, which killed dozens and injured hundreds, was masterminded by one Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the "Jordanian-born leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq," according to the New York Times, which adds the following to Mr. al-Zarqawi's resume:

"The only attacks outside Iraq known to be directed by Mr. Zarqawi were in Jordan, said an American counterterrorism official who spoke on condition of anonymity because his agency does not permit him to discuss such matters on the record. Those attacks include the 2002 murder of Laurence Foley, an American diplomat; a foiled plot in 2004 to attack the United States Embassy and Jordanian intelligence headquarters; and bombings of three Amman hotels in November that killed 60 people."

Taranto can't help rubbing it in:  "Little wonder Obama also said in his speech that 'the wrenching debate over the Iraq war is well-known and need not be repeated here.'  That's easier than admitting that he has changed his mind and now regards Iraq as having been an al Qaeda safe haven and source of international terrorism."

Wrenching debate or not, the good news is that America helped Mr. al-Zarqawi become the late Mr. al-Zarqawi.  He communes with the worms today, courtesy of the United States Air Force and President George W. Bush.

Continuing on now with Obama's speech:

"Today, after extraordinary costs, we are bringing the Iraq war to a responsible end. We will remove our combat brigades from Iraq by the end of next summer and all of our troops by the end of 2011. That we are doing so is a testament to the character of our men and women in uniform. Thanks to their courage, grit and perseverance, we have given Iraqis a chance to shape their future, and we are successfully leaving Iraq to its people."

 Thanks to... what?  The policies Obama opposed?  You mean... the surge worked?

"This vast and diverse citizenry will not always agree on every issue -- nor should we. But I also know that we, as a country, cannot sustain our leadership, nor navigate the momentous challenges of our time, if we allow ourselves to be split asunder by the same rancor and cynicism and partisanship that has in recent times poisoned our national discourse."

Nice.  Noteworthy here is that when it was Mr. Bush's war and Mr. Obama was the dissenter, opposition was about "exercising restraint" and considering "long-term consequences."  Now that it is Mr. Obama's war, he preempts dissent by labeling it "rancor", "cynicism", "partisanship", "poison."

As Paul Mirengoff at the Power Line blog observed, it's "Non-partisanship for thee, but not for me."

Ah, well.  Like Rush Limbaugh, I want Obama to fail to implement his domestic agenda, but I support his decision on Afghanistan, as far as it goes.  The only caveat I would offer is, er, uninspired by words like these:

"Finally, we must draw on the strength of our values — for the challenges that we face may have changed, but the things that we believe in must not. That is why we must promote our values by living them at home — which is why I have prohibited torture and will close the prison at Guantanamo Bay."

Forget the partisan shot on the issue of "torture."  The best interpretation of this passage is that Obama is just not being serious.  Closing Gitmo will mean either freeing enemy combatants (including terrorists), or relocating them (in which case, big deal), or (what else?) bringing them to U.S. soil for trial in our civilian courts -- thus equipping our foreign enemies with rights under the U.S. Constitution.  This is a brand new thing.  In wars past, enemy combatants who were uniformed members of another country's military were treated not as U.S. citizens, but as prisoners of war, and as such were protected by the Geneva Convention, not the U.S. Constitution.  Enemy combatants who were not in uniform were considered spies, and were afforded a fair trial by military tribunal -- followed by a first-class hanging.

Is it really in America's best interests to grant constitutional rights to foreign terrorists?  To "promote our values," will soldiers from now on have to read to captured prisoners their Miranda rights?  And supply them with public defenders?  Do we really want to go there?  "If the bomb doesn't fit, you must acquit?"   Is it too late to point out that these people do not share our values, and do not respect them, and will exploit them against us?

"And we must make it clear to every man, woman and child around the world who lives under the dark cloud of tyranny that America will speak out on behalf of their human rights, and tend to the light of freedom, and justice, and opportunity, and respect for the dignity of all peoples. That is who we are. That is the moral source of America’s authority."

I know Obama intended this passage to be inspirational, and... hey, look, I'm trying, alright?  But  liberals just don't speak the same language as the rest of America.  He's saying:  Listen up, all of you poor folks who live under oppressive tyranny, help is on its way!  America will speak out for you!  There!  Take that, Kim Jong-Il!  Pow!  Take that, Ahmadinejad!  Biff!

"Tend to the light"?  Despite all the encomiums heaped on Obama's rhetorical gifts, they are still underrated, aren't they? Wow.  I haven't been this inspired since Lawrence Welk hawked Serutan ("That's 'Natures' spelled backwards!") to millions of constipated grandparents.

Sorry, but if America has any moral authority, it is in its willingness to take down tyranny, not just talk about it.

But maybe Obama is trying, too.  We'll soon know if his heart is in it.  Sending thousands more troops?  Just sending the troops is probably not enough -- and certainly won't be if they are made to follow rules of engagement that were crafted not by experienced battlefield veterans, but by an administration whose primary focus  is  the desire to be perceived as the "good guy" by people who will hate us no matter what.

Obama wants to defend the U.S. with a pretty war.  Sooner or later, he'll have to choose between "pretty" and "defending the U.S."

Whose Side Are They On?

With the Ft. Hood shootings, we saw the tip of the iceberg, I think, on how political correctness has infected our military. It's been 24 years since I separated from the Air Force, when p.c. was in its infancy. I was there at its birth -- mostly, little things, nothing big enough to make one wonder if it was compromising military effectiveness. Political correctness always seemed out of place there, as if a cuckoo's egg had been placed in a nest of brooding eagles.

Since those days, judging from the news, the cuckoo chick has hatched and has outgrown her hosts, always kicking up a fuss and demanding constantly to be fed. The eagles' own chicks, meanwhile, go ignored and malnourished.

In the case of Ft. Hood, an Islamic Army psychiatrist spoke openly about his pro-terrorist sympathies and had even been observed trying to contact al-Qaida. Finally, he snapped, yelled, "Allahu akhbar!" ("Allah is great!") and opened fire on a group of military members, killing or injuring more than twenty people. So what was the Army Chief of Staff's response? To promise more due diligence aimed toward identifying those with pro-terrorist sympathies, so that we could stop such acts of terrorism before they happened? Well, that might have been the sane response, but it was not General Casey's. Instead, he opined, “...as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.”

A military that welcomes those who love America as well as those who want to tear it down -- gee, how much more diverse can you get?

More recently, four Navy SEALs have captured a notorious terrorist. So they're getting a commendation? A medal? A promotion?

Nope. They're getting a court-martial.

It seems the terrorist had somehow acquired a fat lip.

Now, don't get me wrong. I know a bloody lip is a horrifying thing, and to give someone a bloody lip is to commit the foulest of atrocities.

But before we demand that these Navy SEALS be tried for a war crime and given the firing squad for hitting this poor innocent monster in the mouth, take a look at these pictures here (follow the link -- or don't, it's pretty graphic).

The terrorist with the bloody lip was one of the perps who hung these Blackwater contractors from a bridge and set them on fire.

Sorry, but I think he earned that fat lip. And now, the SEALs' chain of command has earned one, too.

A couple of interesting exchanges took place on Rush Limbaugh's radio program (they can be found here). According to a caller, "Greg from North Carolina," the chain of command is going after the SEALs as a form of institutional payback. A few months back, the SEALS rescued a merchant ship captain from Somali pirates. Obama got credit in the news media for "pulling the trigger," but according to Greg, very little credit was deserved:

CALLER: Well, the truth behind that situation is that the SEAL operators were kept off the scene for well over 36 hours. There was a lot of foot dragging by the commander-in-chief's people in letting them in the theater. After they were in theater and in place they were given a very restrictive ROE: Rules Of Engagement. The ROE was so restrictive that really they couldn't engage their targets. There were two previous opportunities to rescue Captain Phillips, and they were not allowed to take those opportunities...

When they finally did engage the hostiles, they did it liberally interpreting the ROE, and the on-site commander finally was kind of fed up with the situation and gave them a weapons-free command and they were able to engage and rescue Captain Phillips. The fallout from that was immediate and rather violent in its anger. The White House people -- I don't know the president himself, I just know their representatives with the chain of command -- were absolutely livid with this and they did not want the rescue to be conducted in the way that it was.

These people are very vindictive... But I do have to say this, and I'd like to make this one point... The military of today is not the military that fought World War II. It is not even the military that fought the first Gulf War. It is a military that has been thoroughly politicized. It is a military that is suffering the fallout of Patricia Schroeder's ridiculous, politically correct policies that still have great power and sway in the military. And I'm just going to have to tell you: I do not mean to impugn the junior personnel in the military, the line troops, the junior officers. I'm not talking about these people. These people are doing a fine job. They're outstanding people. But the senior ranking, the civilian and senior ranking military personnel are thoroughly indoctrinated and on board with this politically correct agenda that's in the military.

My own position is this is no way to fight a war. We're so concerned about not offending anyone, we're unnecessarily putting the lives of our troops at risk. Furthermore, as Rush points out in the transcript, it's evidence that some things -- i.e., political correctness -- are more important than victory.

I grudgingly supported the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq when Bush was president. I didn't think it was the right thing to do, but I was hoping Bush was right and I was wrong. Now, none of that matters. If this p.c. attitude is the way the game is to be played from now on, there is no sense in subjecting our soldiers and sailors to a two-front war -- that is, getting shot at both by the nominal enemy as well as their own chain of command.

I say bring them home, disband the military, and wait for our country's destruction like good little politically-correct children.

2009 PASS Summit

I'm writing this from Seattle, as an attendee at the 2009 PASS Summit, a series of seminars for database administrators who specialize in Microsoft's SQL Server database facility. I don't often blog about my profession -- I tried it out once, but soon learned there are many geeks, Ubergeeks, and Obergruppengeeks in this profession, and I was a guppy swimming with the sharks. I should be reading SQL Server blogs, not writing them.

I think PASS stands for Professional Association of SQL Server DBAs, or something to that effect. Everyone talks about PASS as if I should intuitively know what the acronym means, so I'll just intuit it out loud here.

I'm into the second day of seminars here, and it has certainly been instructive. Today, I listened as PASS and Microsoft banged the drum and chanted rhapsodically about PASS and Microsoft. Which is not say that they have nothing to bang or trill about. Microsoft is touting their virtual server technology and hitting us with a new (new to me) term, "clouds", which I'm certain was thought up by their marketers. A cloud, as best as I gathered in between the self-administered high-fives and double-jointed auto-patting on the back, is a database-driven something or another which will "harness" (another great marketing verb) and "leverage" (ibid) the power of... sorry, I forgot. Anyhow, the briefing contained lots of pretty pictures of clouds. Somehow, it didn't occur to Microsoft marketers to put up a picture of a good old Midwestern wall cloud, or an incoming hurricane, but just a pretty, puffy little white thing that Joni Mitchell could sing about. Well, I really don't know clouds at all. At heart, I'm a practical sort of guy, and I have to see something work (at least) a few times before I can figure out what's going on. I spend most of my time tearing out the software equivalent of drywall and replacing it, so a discussion on the future of architecture is a little over my pay grade. But I can always use some handy hints and tips for how to put up dry wall.

The good news is I've already gotten some of that from the seminars I've attended. Yesterday, an entire day devoted to indexing data for high-performance querying. (In the world of querying, faster = better.) Indexes are to databases what... well, indexes are to dictionaries. At the top of the page in a dictionary is the first word and the last word on the page, and the words are always sorted in alphabetic order. Makes looking up a word a matter of turning, at most, eight to ten pages, depending on how many words are defined. What if you had to look up each word, every time, not by using the dictionary's index, but starting at the first page and checking each word sequentially until you located the right one? If the dictionary is 10,000 pages, that's an average of 5,000 page scans per lookup. Yikes! Everyone would be speaking in commonly-known one and two syllable words, and William F. Buckley, Jr. would have had to settle for using words that are somewhat less arcane than "callipygous" and "usufruct". Database indexes work on the same principle as the one in your dictionary -- they are information about your information, housing the locations on disk (also called, analogously, pages) where the information resides. Since this is software we're talking about and not the printed page, indexes can be a lot more numerous, intricate and sophisticated than the simple one in your dictionary, but the concept is still the same -- every piece of information has an address and the index helps you to find it quickly.

Anyhow, it looks like it's time for class again. Lots of empty tables around me in the chow hall and the occasional annoyed glance from the workers busing the tables, so I'll atypically cut this short.

Cockroaches, Bureaucrats, and Other Things That Need Stepping On

To most folks, Zachary Christie looks like a nice 6-year-old boy.

But to the perceptive and highly-trained personnel of the Christina School District in Delaware, he looks more like public enemy no. 1:

Young Zachary did something so heinous, it took the brave men and women of the Christie School District to save us all.  You see, Zachary brought this to school:

And that was all the ever-vigilant public servants needed to sentence young Zachary to 45 days in reform school.

Just who's the public enemy?

Here's the story (follow the link) courtesy of the NY Times.  And here is the web site his parents set up to plead for help.
 
"Zero-tolerance"? Of what? Common sense? Good folks of the Christina School District, here's a clue: if the NY Times is rubbing its eyes in disbelief, it's time to undo the lobotomy.

Don Surber sees it as a "war on scouts."

Glenn Reynolds (the Instapudit) thinks "the excuses offered for this piece of idiocy are even more damning than the idiocy itself."

What do I think?  It's just another day on another battlefield in our inexorable march toward tyranny.  But the good news is the people still have enough power to set the powers-that-be back on their heels.  Zachary's ordeal has a happy ending:  the school board, under the glare of publicity, reprieved Zachary and let him back into school.

It's nice to know our public servants can indeed do the right thing when watched constantly and cornered like rats.

But there are stories very similar to this all over the country in which the ending is not quite so happy.  The NYT article mentions "a third-grade girl [who] was expelled for a year because her grandmother had sent a birthday cake to school, along with a knife to cut it. The teacher called the principal — but not before using the knife to cut and serve the cake."  In New York, an Eagle scout was suspended for twenty days for having a two-inch pocket knife in his car.

When I was in high school, the knife would have been taken away and given back at the end of the year, end of story.

Overbearing, overreaching bureaucrats are like cockroaches:  they do their damage in the dark and scatter when the light shines on them.  And that's our job as American citizens: to shine that light.  When the idiocy threshold is reached and common sense refuses to kick in, it's time for us to do the kicking.

Boomers or Bust

I stumbled onto this column a couple of years ago by Mike S. Adams, at TownHall.com. Professor Adams teaches criminology at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, about four hours south of where I live, in Virginia Beach.

It's one of my favorite columns of all time. It's about the inflated sense of entitlement felt by many, if not most, in my generation (born in 1954, I'm sort of in the final wave of the "Baby Boomers").

As my buddy Ray from South Carolina tells me: "Insofar as parenting is concerned, the report card is in: our generation has earned an 'F'."

Our parents, I believe, taught us manners and rules. What they did not teach was why we ought to conform to them. I believe they understood why, but could not articulate the real issue.

The reason we have manners, and politeness, and rules, and so forth, is out of respect for other people. There. It's not complicated.

My generation grew up largely to believe that the conventions of our parents were "old-fashioned" and "phony". The media and the entertainment establishment flattered us into believing we were America's greatest generation, so much smarter and more idealistic than our parents. What did we do to deserve such accolades? Nothing. What did our parents do to deserve such insults? Nothing, except win a fight to the death against two horrible fascistic regimes and suffer through an agonizing twelve-year economic Depression, determined that we, their children, would not have to suffer as they did.

The result is we, the Boomers, grew up with the largest, most metastasized sense of entitlement of any generation in history. I've said it before, I'll say it again: the opposite of a sense of entitlement is gratitude. Christianity teaches that gratitude is the proper attitude of a Christian, who knows he deserves nothing but God's condemnation, but is saved by faith through grace.

But, flaws and all, my generation is the one now running things. The kids who used to say, "Never trust anyone over thirty," are now in their fifties and sixties.

I hope and pray, through some miracle of the Lord's, that our children turn out better than we did.

The GOP: Enablers of Liberalism

Michelle Malkin is on top of the latest Republican-organized sell-out of conservatives.  Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)  appears poised to sign on to the "Cap'N Tax" scheme proposed by the liberals.

If you're a Republican, and liberal Democrats -- who have the Presidency and control of both houses of Congress -- are desperate to find Republicans to sign onto their craziness, what does that tell you?  It tells me that they are afraid Republicans will use their craziness as an issue; they wish to nullify it by donning the cloak of "bipartisanship" -- a code word meaning liberals win, conservatives lose.

I've written about the phenomenon of back-stabbing Republicans before.  Here, and here.

Go poke around at the Republican National Committee web site, if you want to read some inflammatory conservative viewpoints.  It's as if Rush Limbaugh writes their material.  Republicans know who send them money.  They know who man the phones and the booths.  They know who get out and vote. Conservatives, that's who.

But do not infer from the GOP's conservative talk that they are willing to perform conservative deeds.  When push comes to shove, the Democrats will shove them around, and they will in turn shove conservatives around.  I'm so old, I remember when Lindsey Graham was a conservative.  Then, he started hanging around John McCain, and the next thing you know he was calling conservatives a bunch of bigots for opposing Bush's Illegal Alien Amnesty Act, referred to in the mainstream media as "Immigration Reform."

Y'ever notice how betrayal of American interests is always preceded by lofty nomenclature?  The word "reform" usually plays a prominent role.  A demolition derby, if named by liberals, would be called "auto restoration reform."  Feeding someone poison would be called "metabolic reform."  Kicking someone in the butt would be called "pede-posterior reform."  Being kicked in the butt would be called "gluteal reform and impact aid."  Why, you can't be against reform, can you?  You aren't one of those reactionary right-wing troglodytes, are you?

In the case of cap-and-trade, we could accurately call it the "2009 Unemployment and Economic Tailspin Act", as if we didn't already have enough of that.  But it is being sold as emissions and environmental "reform."  It will become "change you can believe in" as soon as they take your dollars and give you back a couple of coins.

The GOP plays the same game every election year.  Talk conservative, gather conservative money, accept conservative votes, and then cave in to liberals.  But with the GOP completely powerless, grass-roots conservatives are doing a better job than Republicans ever did at standing up to the liberal machine, with their tea parties and marches and town hall meetings.

The GOP is not the opposition party; they are the "prone-position" party.  Republicans are not the opponents of liberalism; they are the enablers of liberalism.

My pledge is this:  Not one red penny.  Not one red cent of my money goes to the Republican National Committee; they will spend it on GOP insiders, "moderates" and "RINOs" all.  (RINO = Republican in Name Only).  We will gladly send money directly to candidates we believe to be legitimate conservatives, whether they are Republican or third-party.  We've tried everything we know to interest the GOP into fighting hard for conservative ideas.  Nothing else has worked, so let's try starving them until they get the message, or until a viable third party forms and we no longer need them.

How to Avoid a Foolish Consistency

It's time for a quiz on American mainstream journalism. Ready?

Who wrote the following?

"There is a lot of good news in the latest intelligence assessment about Iran. Tehran, we are now told, halted its secret nuclear weapons program in 2003, which means that President Bush has absolutely no excuse for going to war against Iran. We are also relieved that the intelligence community is now willing to question its own assumptions and challenge the White House's fevered rhetoric. The president and his aides are apparently too worried about getting caught again shaving intelligence to stop that. . . . We don't know if the Iranians will find any offer [of high-level diplomacy] credible, or if they even want to. It is the least Mr. Bush can do to try to salvage his credibility with the American people and America's allies."

Hands are waving. Why, that was easy: it's from an editorial published by the Grey Lady herself, the New York Times -- you know, "All the news that's fit to print," the gold standard of journalism, "the newspaper of record"... you get the drift. Published on Dec 5, 2007.

Ready for another one? Who wrote this one?

"Iran has a long history of lying and cheating about its nuclear program, so the news that it has been secretly building another plant to manufacture nuclear fuel is hardly a shock. But it provides one more compelling reason (are any more needed?) why the United States and other major powers must be ready to quickly adopt--and enforce--tough new sanctions if negotiations fail to persuade Tehran to abandon its nuclear ambitions."

So what's your guess? Fox News? Nope. The Washington Times? Uh-uh. National Review? You're getting colder. The Jerusalem Post? Rush Limbaugh? The American Spectator? George F. Will? Commentary? The Heritage Foundation? Bill O'Reilly? Wall Street Journal? Sean Hannity? Donald Rumsfeld? Glenn Beck?

Not even close.

Time's up. Er, so to speak.

Believe it or not, again, that was from an editorial published by the Grey Lady herself, the New York Times -- you know, "All the news that's fit to print," the gold standard of journalism, "the newspaper of record"... yep. Those guys again. Published Sep 26, 2009.

Confused? You shouldn't be.

What was that observation about "double standards" again? Goes like this: behind every apparent double standard lurks an unacknowledged single standard.

So, in this instance, what could that single standard possibly be? What changed between 2007 and 2009? Can you think of anything? Hmmm?

Perhaps the most important thing that has changed is, well, the fellow and the political party who control the federal government. That was some change, I guess. Enough so, that what was once "fevered rhetoric" has now become a "compelling reason."

Air was wrong if President Bush breathed it. Sabre-rattling is right if President Obama does it.

Liberal journalists like to protest that the mainstream media is objective, unbiased, balanced, impartial, etc. -- to which I say, baloney. But now I have to admit, you can indeed get both sides of the story from the New York Times.

All you have to do is wait for America to elect someone they happen to like.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." But how much consistency does it take to cross the threshold into foolishness? Hard to say -- Emerson didn't specify. It may require quite a lot. But, as I'm sure the NYT editorial board would agree, why take any chances?

(Hat tip: James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal's "Best of the Web.")