Letter From The Capitol

St. Hillary of Hinsdale's Youthful Tears

I cut Hillary slack on her Bosnia story, attributing it to wishful memory, rather than calculated fabrication.  but what she said April 4 in Memphis was too much.  I am not buying it.  She claimed to have shook King's hand when she was 14, in 1962.  OK, possibly she did.  But upon hearing of her assassination, she told us last Friday: "I remember feeling such despair.  I took my book bag hurled it across the room.  It felt like everything had been shattered, like we would never be able to put the pieces together again."  No tape.  No witnesses.  Hillary, a Goldwater Girl in 1964, was radicalized by 1968, and soon would be helping lawyer Robert Truehaft, in the Oakland area, represent Black Panther defendants--people whose racial hatred and violent propensities were anathema to the love of humanity and God, and the non-violent pursuit of justice that Dr. King preached.

Once again, ludicrously self-referential, she lets us in on her secret nobility in youth, her paroxysm of grief at the assassination of a revered American figure, a killing that took place in the most terrible year in American history since the Korean War, in the midst the most terrible domestic discord seen in America since at least the Great Depression, and perhaps even since the Civil War.  Between Valentine's Day & Labor Day in 1968, Walter Cronkite turned decisively against the Vietnam War, Lyndon Johnson announced he would not run for re-election, King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated, and the Democratic Convention in Chicago turned into a literal riot.

So Hillary turns the story of one of modern America's worst days into a tale of her own heroic reaction to an epic, appalling event.  But finish this posting on an upbeat note: Mark Steyn's hilarious send-up of Hill's "It's 3 AM in the White House" red=phone ads.

St. Barack of Trinity: The Resurrection

Charles Krauthammer, a trained psychiatrist, diagnoses three cross-cutting psychological phenomena in the 2008 race: Hillary's penchant for what shrinks call "confabulation"--adopting fish stories as remembered pseudo-reality, with Hill, CK writes, doing so "on a pathological scale"; Barack's post-Philadelphia resurrection by a mainstream media (MSM) determined to save his candidacy; and MSM's penchant for diving sainthood and virtue in Democratic candidates, especially, presidential aspirants.  Put simply, MSM is back in the tank for Obama, Hillary's Bosnian misadventures having given MSM the opening to put Obama's Pastor of Disaster into the MSM Memory Hole.

The New York Times reports that 81 percent of Americans think America is headed in the wrong direction.  This is just the kind of sentiment that can lead voters en masse to seek a savior--in 2008, either The Soldier or The Saint.  In a Wall Street Journal op-ed Juan Williams, whose book "Eyes on the Prize" sparked an award-winning PBS series on the civil rights movement, brilliantly impales Obama for abandoning post-racialism since the Ghost of Pastors Past appeared.  After noting that Obama at first appeared to be breaking away from "the merchants of black grievance and victimization, Williams writes:

But as his campaign made headway with black voters, Mr. Obama no longer spoke about the responsibility and the power of black America to appeal to the conscience and highest ideals of the nation. He no longer asks black people to let go of the grievance culture to transcend racial arguments and transform the world.

He has stopped all mention of government's inability to create strong black families, while the black community accepts a 70% out-of-wedlock birth rate. Half of black and Hispanic children drop out of high school, but he no longer touches on the need for parents to convey a love of learning to their children. There is no mention in his speeches of the history of expensive but ineffective government programs that encourage dependency. He fails to point out the failures of too many poverty programs, given the 25% poverty rate in black America.

And he chooses not to confront the poisonous "thug life" culture in rap music that glorifies drug use and crime.

Instead the senator, in a full political pander, is busy excusing Rev. Wright's racial attacks as the right of the Rev.-Wright generation of black Americans to define the nation's future by their past. He stretches compassion to the breaking point by equating his white grandmother's private concerns about black men on the street with Rev. Wright's public stirring of racial division.

Author Virginia Postrel fears that voters seduced by Obama's glamour will elect someone who cannot meet inflated expectations (even pundit David Brooks, normally level-headed, sees in St. Barack the chance for America's racial redemption).  She sees Obama's "aspirations and character" as formed by his racial consciousness, and thus Obama is unlikely to prove a post-racial candidate: “It was into my father’s image, the black man, son of Africa, that I’d packed all of the attributes I sought in myself, the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela.”  Militants W.E.B. Dubois and the far worse Malcolm X, who openly preached hatred of whites, mix with heroic martyrs Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King like mustard and blueberry pancakes.

The April 4 video clip of members of a Memphis crowd booing John McCain during his mea culpa on originally having opposed King's holiday, shows how entrenched the canonization of America's first black saint is; will St. Barack become the Second Saint if elected?  To date, the only president to achieve true full saintly status had been Abraham Lincoln, who can be criticized far more safely than can MLK.

When plaster saints fall of the mantelpiece, the maids have a mess to clean up.

Index 4/07/08

3 posts: (1) A Nuclear-Free World?--Us v. Them; (2) Saint Barack of Trinity: The Resurrection--MSM Murders; (3) "Moses" and Me--Class & Crass.

Partisans to Petraeus: Sentence First, Trial Later

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in a display of epic effrontery last Thursday, warned General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker not to put a positive spin on the situation in Iraq, when this week they testify before Congress.  Said Madame Speaker: We have to know the real ground truths of what is happening there, not put a shine on events because of a resolution [of the situation in Basra] that looks less violent when it has in fact been dictated by someone [Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada] al-Sadr who can grant or withhold that call for violence or not."  "General Pelosi" was prominent among those who castigated the Bush administration for pressuring intelligence analysts to slant their findings re Iraq WMD, a charge refuted in major reports (Senate Intelligence Committee, July 2004; Silberman-Robb Commission, February 2005).

Frederick & Kimberley Kagan assess Basra, with a few extra days' perspective, and find that failure to set proper conditions led to a flawed effort--PM al-Maliki acted upon impulse.  In doing so he did what the Congress oft pressed him to do: attack outlaw Shia militias and criminal gangs.  Iraqi troops numbered 30,000 for the operation (more than 3 times the 9,000 in 3 brigades Congress wanted Iraq to deploy in Baghdad).  Sadr's troops performed far less effectively than they did in 2004, when they plunged Baghdad & Karbala into chaos; this time their efforts fizzled.  Far from straddling between America & Iran--the way our pal Musharraf straddled between us and the Islamists in Pakistan--Iraqi forces fought on our side, against Iranian support.  Terror expert Daveed Gartenstein-Ross & Iraq blogger Bill Roggio add more on Basra: In 6 days of fighting, Sadr's Mahdi Army lost 571 killed & 880 wounded, 490 captured & 30 surrendered.  the Iraqi opposition called a parliamentary session to oppose the mission, and only 54 of 275 lawmakers showed up.  The government maintains it did not accede to any of the 9 conditions set by Sadr for the ceasefire.

John McCain said on TV Sunday that "overall the Iraqi military performed pretty well" but that the government made a mistake in starting a campaign in Basra while still fighting in Mosul.  Big Mac added that Basra is now under government control, and that Sadr's request for a ceasefire shows he was losing; winers, Big Mac noted, rarely ask for ceasefires (Mac thought it a mistake for the Iraq government to stop).

Ex-Green Beret Jack Kelly offered his own appraisal of Basra, echoing Big Mac.  Tellingly, Kelly also quoted George Friedman of Stratfor, to the effect that Iran's aim of using pro-Iran Shia to dominate Iraq has been thwarted,  Stratfor argued a year or two ago that Iran was calling the shots in Iraq, and that any resolution would be on Iranian terms.  The shift by Friedman, a solid commentator is significant, as in indicator of how the surge has turned the tables on Iran.

Frederick Kagan also tallies the Benchmark Scorecard for Iraq, per what Congress required per the surge: (1) Legislative - 4 accomplished, 2 underway, 1 stalled; (2) Security - all 7 accomplished; (3) Government Performance - 1 accomplished, 3 underway.  Thus, of 18 benchmarks, 12 have been accomplished, 5 are underway and just one is stalled.  Would anyone care to ascertain how Congress did, given 18 major benchmarks, in any calendar year since the founding of the republic?

College student Tara Tedrow raises a pointed query: If Obama wants a "strike force" to keep the peace in Iraq, how many troops would be needed?  Tedrow compares Iraq to California, a land area of roughly the same size.  California currently has, in state and local personnel alone, 116,128 full-time law enforcement personnel.  Now, adjust for population size, as California's 36.5 million populace is 1/3 higher than Iraq's 27.5 million--put another way, Iraq has 3/4 the population of California).  Iraq thus needs 87,493.  Except, of course, Iraq has a few security problems CA does not.  (Then again, Iraq need not deal with the mess generated by Hollywood types.)

A Nuclear-Free World?

NRO posted a special 5-part series of interviews, with Hoover Institution scholar Peter Robinson interviewing Reagan-era Secretary of State George Shultz, a co-sponsor of the Nuclear Security Project.  The five together run 28 minutes.  Part I focuses on proliferation; Part II zeroes in on U.S. - Russia issues; Part III covers North Korea; Part IV addresses Iran; Part V addresses terrorism.  Here is a link to all 5 interviews (if all else fails, go National Review Online's homepage and scroll down).

The nuclear-free issue was teed up in a January 15, 2008 WSJ article which Shultz co-authored with former Nixon-Ford Secretary of state & National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, former Clinton-era Secretary of Defense William Perry (also a stealth technology pioneer) and former Georgia Democratic Senator Sam Nunn, co-sponsor of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, on whose homepage the Nuclear Security Project sits.  The four note that the U.S. & Russia, with 95 percent of the world's nuclear warheads, must lead the way.  They recommend: (1) extend key provisions on monitoring & verification, from the 1991 START Treat, which expires Dec. 5, 2009; (2) improve launch procedures to prevent precipitous decisions after a strike; (3) end mass-attack plans; (4) negotiate cooperative multilateral ballistic missile defense and early warning systems; (5)   with nuclear weapons-grade material in more than 40 countries, "dramatically accelerate" efforts to secure nuclear material and prevent acquisition by terrorists; (6) begin talking about phasing out forward nuclear systems; (7) strengthen the Nonproliferation Treaty's monitoring provisions; (8) adopt a method for brining into full effect the comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; (9) develop an international system to monitor the nuclear fuel cycle; (10) negotiate further substantial reductions in U.S. & Russian nuclear forces, beyond those already adopted in existing arms treaties.

Nuclear weapons expert Jay Davis warns that nuclear forensics may not be good enough to detect nuclear material obtained by terrorists.  Since 1993, there have been, he writes, more than 1,300 instances of trafficking in nuclear material.  Upon a nuclear detonation on American soil, it would take forensics experts more than one month to determine its source.  Three timelines would run: hours to determine whether uranium or plutonium was used; hours to weeks to ascertain size, weight and complexity of the bomb, and several months to track the source country.  Davis proposes that we update our forensic capabilities, upgrade international cooperations and prepare to resist political pressure for premature retaliation after an attack.

The Bush administration, for its part, scored a diplomatic ten-strike at last week's NATO summit, in getting European countries, over Russia's strident objection, to approve a broad-based missile defense program for NATO (another winner for 43: 9 of the soon-to-be 28 members of NATO were admitted on 43's watch).  Given the odds against achieving a nuclear-free world, NATO's decision, made possible by the intersection of President Bush's steadfastness, new leaders in Germany & France, and Russia's neo-Stalinist renaissance engineered by Tsar Vlad the Bad, is a sensible hedge against nuclear-free idealism.

The steps recommended by the plethora of experts are reasonable to start with.  The long-term problem will be to develop monitoring and verification systems of such high confidence so as to assure against strategic breakout at low numbers of weapons.  The WMD fiasco in Iraq shows that we are a long way from knowing down to single warheads what even a hostile medium-size country has (or has not); policing the likes of Russia & China & India, with their monster geographic areas, is a task of vastly higher magnitude.

"Moses" & Me

The Los Angeles Times obituary on Charlton Heston captures in depth the actors memorable career--from Shakespeare to Moses to sci-fi--and involvement in the nation's political life--a Reagan Democrat, Heston marched with Dr. King & headed the NRA.  I had occasion to meet the actor, before he went on stage in DC to play Captain Queeg in Herman Wouk's "The Caine Mutiny."  He was gracious and charming.

Heston entered my life because my late father, Charles, hired him ($1 million a year for four years) in 1987 to do commercials for Contel Corporation, the company Charles founded and chaired.  Heston did a series of nationally-televised ads, ending each one with, "For Contel, this is Charlton Heston."  As Dad said, Moses would be a good image for a young company to gain visibility.

It worked.  Proof positive came in the summer of 1987 when, returning home from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, I struck up at conversation at the local airport, with an elderly lady.  She asked about my job, and I told her I worked for Contel Corporation.  She looked puzzled, so I added: "If you've seen the ads with Charlton Heston, that's us."  "Oh, yes!" she answered.  The power of fame made clear anew.  Farewell to a class act.