Winter is Coming...

 

by Craig Willms

Hey Nero, put that fiddle down!

Winter being an unsubtle metaphor for war it is always right around the corner. Even at the height of summer we know winter is coming. Our country is waking up from a long slumber - and it needs to. With a new administration we are seeing a renewed effort to prepare America for a war we hope we never have to fight. Unfortunately, we are miles behind. Do we realize that the nation that spends more on defense than most of the rest of the world combined is not prepared to win wars? 

America in its lore and continuing self-image is the nation that defeated the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese. Well, for one we didn't do it alone and we were an unapparelled industrial power then. We are no longer unapparelled and we are a greatly diminished industrial power today. 

Short of leveling the world in a nuclear holocaust we haven't the army or the industrial might required to win a major war. With the advent of drone technology and precision munitions military actors from anywhere could castrate our nation. 

I bring this up because we have an undercurrent in the political rhetoric that seems hellbent on taking Russia to war for their crimes against Ukraine. The EU and the American left are saber rattling as if war with Russia is the only rational solution. President Trump campaigned on stopping the current wars, while rebuilding our fighting capacity and ridding the Federal government of waste and fraud, yet he is being opposed at every turn by the peace and love party. Other than opposing Trump at every turn because he is Trump none of this computes. Up is down, left is right, hot is cold and good is evil. 

The entirety of the Biden years were devoted to absolute nonsense. They beat their chest like rabid gorillas and then went to garden parties with their transvestite friends. They goaded Russia with covert and not so covert actions in Ukraine for more than a decade while floating NATO expansion over and over... This while they attempted to dismantle what is left of America's industrial and energy substrate and encouraging our chief ally to do the same. The EU is a military joke - and they know it. The one nation with the skill and work force to be a significant industrial power has been laid to waste by preserving butterflies and flowers. Germany is lost, and with it so is Europe. France, the other legitimate power, is stumbling in the weeds of its own contradictions and Great Britain is a shell.

The question is, were the Biden puppeteers really fiddling or was it by design. In all honesty I believe it was the latter. 

The left, the communists, let's call them what they are, want the United States and our capitalist ways to fall. It's not even debatable. Their political opposition, the feckless Republicans and the country club crowd want to act like we can give in to the leftists here and there as well as spread out productive capacity (and get cheap labor to boot) and magically all will be well with the world. Well obviously, that's wrong. Giving into the left only emboldens them. Nothing is ever enough. They are children and they want it all. Even in the face of utter failure nothing will turn these people into moderates. Their ideas must be crushed, Karl Marx must, for once and for all, be completely discredited. Please.

Trump sees that. He coopted the Republican party to inject a dose of reality. Time will tell if he can succeed, if he's allowed to, that is, if he can get out of his own way. If he can subdue his titanic ego - a very tall order - he can take a giant step toward making America sturdy again. It seems his top priority is to reindustrialize the nation and re-militarize our armed forces. That seems like an oxymoron considering armed forces is another term for military, but what Biden's puppeteers were doing was sissifying our military and making it a social justice cause instead of a fighting force. I hope enough people can see that. 

Because America is protected by oceans and supposedly friendly neighbors to the north and south, we have a measure of protection, or at least we did. What Canada and Mexico have been doing violates the friendly neighbor clause. They are staging ground for China to flood the U.S. with their cheap goods and their drugs (and Chinese migrants). Our friendly neighbors also use tariffs to prevent American goods from wrecking their own production. As in, from what I hear, 250% on dairy products from the U.S. Lately we've been hearing the term "reciprocal tariffs" instead of just tariffs so that the point can be made. Almost every country protects its industry with tariffs in one way or another, this is nothing new.  Trump is playing tit-for-tat in order to prod manufacturing back to our shores. It's smart. But the media makes it seem like Trump is just being a jerk and rocking the boat because he can. Well, yes, he can, and he should. 

If war was to come to us in a big way right now, we'd be screwed. Our delicate infrastructure could be devastated before we could ramp up a war machine. We don't even make the components in this country that support our own infrastructure. The left would get its dream and the rest of us would be living hand to mouth, groveling for scraps. The United States would go the way of the Romans, a footnote in the history books. That's what the leftists want. Please tell me you can see that...

Bad Actors

by Craig Willms

No, I'm not talking about Adam Sandler or Hayden Christenson, notoriously bad actors, I'm talking about bad actors on the world stage. We in the West like to think of Putin or Xi or Maduro, the Ayatollah even Kim as bad actors - and they are - but to a certain degree they are reactionaries. Reacting to what, to whom? Well, sorry to say they're reacting to the American state. The American State Dept. and their ancillary departments to be exact. We need only to look in the mirror to see the catalyst of  many of the world's atrocious actions.

Most Americans are going to say what? What on Earth are you talking about? The thing is most non-Americans will know exactly what I'm saying. We here in America are so under served by our mainstream media, where most people still get their news, that we can't even recognize how brainwashed we are. Even with the global reach of the Internet and access to outside news sources the domestic big media still hold sway. It's understandable, a single human has only so much time and bandwidth - and most of us are busy. There is a lot of noise out there. 

The good news is that the whole of the Biden presidency and the subsequent Harris campaign exposed a fair amount of the rot and guile that is our Federal government. The fact that Trump cleared all hurdles including being shot, and won the 2024 presidential election handily indicates that enough people see the truth of the vile underbelly of the "blob". The blob? The bureaucratic state, the permanent government, the deep state or whatever you want to call it, constitutes the blob. The blob is not hemmed in by American borders, it exists in Canada, Europe and Australia as well. Trump was elected partly due to his rhetoric to drain the 'swamp', clearly American's have some idea of the width and breath and the depths of  this monster. It remains to be seen if he's all hat and no cattle. Color me skeptical, he did next to nothing on this the first time around.

What ever you think it's wrong. As bad as I think it may be, be assured it's worse, much worse. 

Anywhere in the world there is strife or war or economic dysfunction America or it's allies are stirring the pot. Usually there are major economic concerns, giant corporations and a lot of money on the line. Do you really think that the invasion of Ukraine by the Russians started in February 2022 when the tanks started rolling? If so, you are naïve. Ukraine was supposed to be the buffer between Russia and NATO. Putin was promised by multiple administrations that NATO would not encroach on Russia. The Obama administration then staged a coup in Ukraine and installed a NATO friendly regime after ousting the Russian friendly government.  Now we are funding a war to the tune of billions of dollars that not one person can demonstrate a single American interest. Not one. Is it any wonder Putin is reacting the way he is.

Consider the Nordstream pipeline in the North Sea. It supplied affordable Russian gas to Europe. It was destroyed mysteriously. Mysteriously? Wink, wink. Yeah, you and everyone else knows who destroyed it. Why? What's it all about? 

Indeed, what is it all about? It's about energy, and who control's it - and who makes money from it. Oil, natural gas and coal power the modern world, therefore he who controls it controls the world. This has been true for 100 years or more. Nearly every hot war has been fought over the control of energy. Lurking behind the scenes the State Department and their minions in the CIA etc etc foment armed conflict to induce chaos and ultimately determine who controls the flow of oil and gas.

In one sense the desire to push the world to electric cars and electric heating and cooking seems laudable if only to change the world's power dynamic (pun intended). But it was folly. For one, the conversion to EV's and the like is not technically ready, and two, it still takes traditional energy to power the electric grids of the world. 

Remember when Syria entered into deals to build oil pipelines to connect the middle east to the Mediterranean Sea? Suddenly there was an insurgency in Syria, funded and armed by - you guessed it - the Obama administration. ISIS was born. It worked, Assad was nearly overthrown until Russia intervened. It became a stale mate, but it stopped the pipeline plan. We back here in America only heard how awful ISIS and Assad (and the Russians) behaved. We were put on high alert for terrorist activity here in the Homeland while our planes and drones were dropping bombs on innocent Syrians, killing tens of thousands and displacing millions of people. Indeed, Assad and the rest of them are bad, evil even, but how can we, the United States, consider ourselves the good guys?

We like to think that Iran and the Ayatollah's as the epitome of evil, and in a sense they are, but they are also reactionaries. More than half a century ago the CIA installed a government in Tehran to serve as our guy in the heart of the middle east oil region. Since the overthrow of the Shah in 1979 Iran has been at war with the U.S. in one way or another. We are sold this notion that they are are just wild-eyed terrorists, but they are the way they are because of what our CIA had done - and continues to do. They, the Iranian government are not the good guys, but neither are we. America caused this situation. Is it any wonder we are regarded as The Great Satan in Iran... 

The western hemisphere is just as deep in the State Department's mess as the middle east. Since WWII the CIA and the State Department has intervened, disrupted, staged coups and generally run amok in the affairs of every sovereign nation on this side of the world. Is it any wonder South American nations are embracing China. 

This has got to stop. Is there any reason to believe it will? Not really. The "deep state" or whatever you call it is essentially a crime syndicate and has been since it's inception in the 1940's. It is entrenched, and it's world wide. Anyone, regardless of their status or perceived power who confronts it in any way is usually dealt with swiftly and decisively. It's either coercion or it's a bullet. 

One hopes that a Trump administration can start turning the ship, particularly since he has only one term, no reelection to concern him. To the previous point, a bullet recently grazed his ear and the circumstances and the perpetrator are still shrouded in mystery. Be assured the money and power of the giant corporations, the money men on Wall Street and the deep deep deep state in Washington DC will outlast him. The service he can do is to shine the light on this monster and get average Americans to see what we have become. We are a criminal global war factory, and the powers and principalities will continue unabated until we collectively demand an end to it. Even that may not be enough.

Prelude to War? Time to look in the mirror

What happens on the other side of the world seemingly has no effect on the everyday lives of ordinary Americans like me, until it does.

In my little sequestered corner of the world I live in the Rodney King inspired "Can't we all just get along-ville". (It's better known by it's other name Naive-ville). No we can't it seems. What's happening in Ukraine and the Crimean peninsula was a long time coming and it seems it wasn't Russia who pulled the trigger. Mother Russia, behaving like any other country would, has had just about enough and is moving to protect its vital interests. Of course, you'll never hear that from our mainstream media.

The whispers and shouts all over the Internet is about the concerted but clumsy US/EU coup to overthrow the elected government of Ukraine. The timing was chosen to inflict maximum embarrassment on Putin and the Russians. The Olympics were in full swing in nearby Sochi when the "grassroots" protests began. The highly calculated and preplanned coup d’état orchestrated on the ground in Kiev might have been widely accepted as a real grassroots protest but for the audiotape of foul language used by Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs at the United States Department of State. On the tape we clearly hear Ms Nuland plotting the future leadership of Ukraine in her conversation with the US ambassador to the Ukraine. This was reported in the U.S. acknowledging the embarrassment to the Obama administration but then was never discussed again.

It's highly likely that the over arching plot to this sub-plot was hatched long before Obama, and probably before G.W. Bush as well. If true it gives you the sense that the President, whomever he is, doesn't really control the entire foreign policy agenda ( 'ya think). Since the fall of the Soviet Union there has been a plot rumored that the Euro-American hegemony is marching eastward to impose world economic domination. You can argue about the chess pieces on the board, but regardless, this shit has been going on for decades and neither Bush nor Obama is innocent.

The question then to all patriotic and America loving citizens is how much longer are you going to continue whispering sweet nothing's into Uncle Sam's ear as he orchestrates coup after coup on tiny defenseless countries before you realize he's a really bad dude?  How many innocent people living in Can't we all just get along-ville have to suffer and die at the hands of the CIA and its European counterpart. These things make great plots for thrilling novels and blockbuster movies, but this is real life and these are real people.

No one is saying Vlad Putin is a great guy, but he and the Russians are probably confused by these events and are reacting in a way they believe will preserve their vital interests - Crimea being the major one. In fact no one expects the world’s last superpower to act so insanely. Since 911 and even before everywhere the U.S. goes it ends up creating one failed state after another. The idea that it's the U.S. fomenting revolt, breeding hatred, and spreading death and misery to whatever it touches seems preposterous - but look at the track record of just the last decade. Iraq and Afghanistan turned out nicely, right? How about that Arab Spring?

At a time when the world needs a steady and sober hand to guide it to the next chapter in civilizational progress we have the world's sole superpower (and its business masters) rampaging from one violent confrontation to the next causing havoc and misery with no rhyme or reason. At least none that makes common sense.

Those who proclaim that the U.S. "must" stay engaged to protect the world from mad men need to look in the mirror. The U.S. is becoming the mad man. There are sober and thoughtful people who see the ultimate outcome of this madness but are powerless to stop it. Deception and delusion rules. The arrogance on display as the statements and actions out of Washington become more and more reckless.

Ordinary Americans and Europeans should be in the streets protesting the coming disaster. While the news media distracts the masses with fluff and nonsense the insane criminals in Washington, New York and Brussels are driving the world toward another war.

Time to look in the mirror America.


Ugh




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The Arab/Muslim world just isn't appealing to me...

When I think of other cultures on this great big planet as I sit snug in my middle class American life I can think of none that appeal to me less than Arab/Muslim cultures. Put another way when I think of all the places in the world that interest me or fascinate me only one Middle East country even makes the list and that would be Israel. Maybe I'm being short sighted, but I doubt I'm the only American that feels this way. Frankly I wish America would just get out of that part of the world all together so I could go on and blissfully ignore it.

The truth is America and the West have created this reality and the Arab/Muslim world is just in reactionary mode. With this so-called "Arab Spring" happening across the Middle East and Northern Africa we are seeing the inevitable backlash against decades of the West propping up brutal dictatorships in the name of stability. In many of these tribal cultures there has been little chance that democracy or free societies would ever temper centuries of inter-mural conflict and violence. Such instability is totally unacceptable to the West because it interrupts the spice flow. The spice of course is the oil that is absolutely vital to all civilization on Earth. Due to the luck of geography the Middle East sat atop a gold mine it could have never hoped to exploit without the West and for that they have been under the thumb of one dictator or another for a the better part of a century.

All that, it seems, is about to change.

One has to wonder if the powers that be - the ones above and beyond Presidents and Prime Ministers - love this chess game that much? Or perhaps they need endless conflict as a cover. It asks the question: are we all then merely puppets? These men in the shadows have all the money they need, it can't be about money. Money then is just the way they keep score. However, this clash between the Arab/Muslims and the West has the potential to remake the world. Are the shadow men playing the ultimate game of "chicken" this time? Many are convinced the West cannot win. The West has the weapons, the technology and enough money to win, but it lacks the one key element necessary to prevail. The will to win.

The Muslim world has two weapons the West is unwilling to develop or utilize that will make all the difference in the world. Oil and the womb. Western economies and therefore Western war machines are dependent on oil. The West is unwilling to stand up to the self-loathing aspects of our own societies and make a commitment to end the dependency on Middle East oil. Secondly, we have convinced our own women to forgo motherhood and thereby have embarked on a path of self extinction.

Europe is particularly fragile. Having made a deal decades ago with Arab oil kingpins to allow mass immigration from the Middle East and Northern Africa in exchange for no interruptions in the oil flow. Simultaneously they've been replacing their own religious underpinnings with political correctness resulting in a dearth of native born children. They have all but submitted to eradication. Demographically Europe may already beyond the point of no return. Underneath Europe is slowly transforming into a Muslim culture, and their own self-loathers stand in the way of any meaningful effort to turn the tide.

I think it's a ways off for America to be transformed into a Muslim culture. While Political Correctness has polluted everything here as well there is still enough resistance and backbone to defend America - at least for a while.

World history is replete with cultural expansion and domination. Cultures rise and cultures fall and there's no reason to suspect the fall won't happen to America itself. There's is just something wrong when cultures literally give up as it seems many European countries have. I'm not alone in believing that the great things about American culture are worth fighting for. The people on the ground are willing, but we lack any leadership at all. Our fearless leaders won't buck the prevailing religion. The ultimate battle is not going to be Islam vs Christianity, rather Islam vs Political Correctness. As a religion Political Correctness is doomed to failure the question is are we stupid enough to follow it down?


CW

WWWW I:World Wide Web War

That the Internet has been revolutionary is an understatement. The reach of instant information, entertainment and personal communication is nothing short of miraculous. It has changed the music industry, the banking industry, the newspaper industry and every other industry and organization that has embraced it and particularly those that haven't. It has spawned several of the largest most powerful companies that have ever existed - it has destroyed even more. It is no coincidence that the modern world has become dependent on it.

I'm hear to tell you the the Internet is in danger. A cyber war is raging under the covers that threatens to invade and destroy the very civilization that spawned it, funded it, nurtured it and most importantly propagated it.

Today the company that has come to epitomize the success of cyberland, Google, Inc. is locked in a battle of wills with a nation with vast potential and billions of idle dollars. China, more precisely the Chinese government is suspected of a cyber attack that was ultimately aimed at Google's e-mail servers. This attack was under reported as most of these are since companies and government agencies (including the DOD) are loath to let on when they have been compromised. Google has decided to call China out...

Google may be the only entity that can - it's a hugely powerful company and it isn't tied to the U.S. government and therefore touchy international relations won't stand in the way of accusations and retributions. However the market potential of China is so great any company including Google would be insane to walk away. Still, the sophistication of the hackers indicates Chinese government support at some level and Google is steaming.

So far Google hasn't conclusively tied the Chinese government to the recent attacks, but the source of those attacks was traced to mainland China. It's well known that a huge majority of dangerous and malicious cyber activity homes out of China, Southeast Asia and Russia. The U.S. government and top security-firms indicated that over 30 other companies were targeted in this latest attack. Even then most companies weren't very forthcoming with information and trail soon grew cold.

Tracking the source of these attacks is increasingly difficult. Most attackers use relays to direct their attacks - and with millions of seriously compromised computers attached to the Internet (possibly even yours or mine) its easy for the cyber criminals to hide their tracks.

Corporations (and governments) that employ state of the art firewalls and web security systems walk a fine line between making the Internet a useful, or more precisely an indispensable tool and protecting their data, their money and their equipment from the cyber warriors. Even locking down what sort of traffic can enter or leave a company's electronic walls it seems the very "ports" that have made the World Wide Web what it is are the avenues of choice for the invaders. The familiar ports 80 (http) and 443 (https) are increasingly to dangerous to leave unattended.

The bottom line is that you've got to presume that there is a dangerous, hostile, invader inside your network, inside your computer. The idea is to control who's on your network system and it takes highly skilled teams whose only job is searching for computer attacks. In light of the current economic situation unfortunately most companies are severely understaffed in this area. Just buying the latest whiz bang security system is not enough, human eyes and expert training is key... The Internet infrastructure is very fragile right now.



CW

Whack A Mole

Whack-A-Mole is a fun but ultimately frustrating child's game. But that's the point isn't it? It's supposed to be frustrating. The only way to avoid the frustration is not to play it. The War on Terror, or as the Obama Administration calls it "man-caused disasters" is exactly that - whack a mole. Hit it hard right here and it pops up over there. It's just like squeezing one end of a balloon or of course that famous arcade game from whence came the name. The only way to ultimately win the game is to pop the balloon or pull the damn plug.

Al Qaeda for all intents and purposes is the mole popping up here, then there then everywhere. The U.S. and a few allies (emphasis on few) are the mallet pounding it down.

First popping up in Saudi Arabia with a series of domestic attacks before landing in a dysfunctional Somalia in the 1990's where the first international attacks were spawned. Since then it has moved its base operations each time the hammer came down on its head. To Afghanistan where 9/11 was cooked up then to Iraq and most recently Yemen. They have permanent regional branch offices in Pakistan, Europe, Indonesia, Egypt and of course the United States. They are attracted to dysfunctional regimes and regions of the world. That would include parts of Europe and the United States (think Michigan).

In the early days of the Bush Administration the War on Terror was a two pronged approach. A hammer smash was directed at Afghanistan. The result was predictable - the mole popped up somewhere else. The other prong was aiming to pull the plug on al Qaeda so the game would be over before it went any further. Going after al Qaeda's money, the regimes and the "network" that supported it seemed at first to be the most effective battle in the war. A winning strategy you might say? The opponents of the Bush Administration would have none of it.


Obviously the hammer approach continues to this day and the results are as predictable as the arcade game, the damn mole just keeps popping up somewhere else. Thank God Bush and company were stopped from waging a truly effective campaign. With the American and European press, the court system and the Democrats in Congress fully mobilized to neuter any success the coalition enjoyed Bush had lost his best weapon. Wire tapping, intercepting fund transfers, obtaining communications records from the phone carriers as well as the concept of profiling and the practice of rendition (and of course advanced interrogation methods) came under an unrelenting attack. Remember the illustrious New York Times divulging advanced monitoring techniques that were responsible for some of the biggest successes in the early part of the war? This was the equivalent of sending your troops into war and then shooting at them from the rear.

Al Qaeda was either strategically brilliant or extremely fortunate to have such luck. Massive resources are required to be the hammer. It wears us down financially and emotionally as it ties down and distracts us. Most of all it gets us arguing among ourselves.

I don't think the Bush Administration had any illusions that the War on Terror would be over quickly, you'll recall repeated quotes regarding "a conflict of our generation" and a "long slog". There is little doubt that it will be that much longer with one hand tied behind our back.

I'm reasonably sure I'm not the only one who has little confidence in the current regime to secure the Homeland - based on what we've seen so far...

Is it me or has this White House constructed a team of operatives to politicize every crisis that comes along. First blame Bush, second deflect all criticism until a new story comes along to distract the 24/7 news media. I find it interesting there is little hand-wringing in the main stream media when Obama adopts the parts of the Bush strategy that survived the constant criticisms of his own party. Isn't it becoming clear the parts of the Bush strategy that were gutted are coming home to roost - we are probably going to see another devastating terrorist attack, err, I mean man-caused disaster as a direct result of going soft. Flowery rhetoric about civil liberties in the face of the obvious doesn't go far with the families of the victims of these preventable attacks.

Play whack a mole if you must, but for God's sake work on the pulling the plug!






CW

The History of W

Blinded by BDS we can't see straight... But one day we will

With the perpetual race for the White House building up to its crescendo as we speak it's nearly impossible to properly assess the current occupant's legacy. In fact it may take 30- 50 years before the book will be closed on George W. Bush.

Historian John Lewis takes the long view and wonders if we can be fair to the Bush presidency's historical significance without the filter of time. Read his article "Ending Tyranny" before you close the door on a consequential but flawed presidency- you may have a change of heart toward our 43rd president.

Without a doubt this Bush presidency was consequential. The same can't be said for all presidents. Looking back through the post WWII administrations few have been notably consequential in the long run.

Truman, without question had a profound and deeply misunderstood effect on the world. At the time he was very unpopular - with popularity numbers below GWB's. His was the administration that formed the doctrine that grew up to be known as the Cold War. The Truman Doctrine was the right thing to do and yet at the time hardly anyone was thrilled about it. Truman was held in much higher esteem in the subsequent 40 years, and rightly so.

Eisenhower presided over a period of general calm - the world was weary after a decade of war. The thought of Ike illicits little emotion one way or the other.

Kennedy, unfortunately, didn't reign long enough to have left much more than an emotional legacy. He recovered from mistakes his arrogance and inexperience led him into, but an assassins bullet preempted him from "changing" the world.

Johnson, well now, he had a profound and lasting effect alright... Vietnam and the Great Society. Johnson's administration was quite consequential, but in a very, very damaging way. The legacy of the Great Society still haunts us today. The decay and rot in our inner-cities is due in large part to Great Society policies. The stain of Vietnam has faded, but it is still an open sore in many quarters today.

Nixon: consequential in that he hurt the Republican party immensely. His policies and actions didn't change the country fundamentally. He will be a sorry figure in presidential history.

Ford.

Carter was a result of Nixon. He was a disaster. Even the things that he did that were positive - like beginning deregulation, nominating Volker for the Federal Reserve - didn't seem to make an impression. He has spent the years since leaving office soiling his country and its leaders in foreign lands - oh, and building little houses.

Reagan was a result of Carter. Even though his time in office ended 20 years ago his impact on the country and the world can be assessed. Many critics still see him as a bumbling fool, scripted but otherwise disengaged. This was not true. Years after his presidency ended and his office was being closed down many hundreds of pages of his personal hand written papers and (radio) essays came into the light. He was a deep thinker who formed his own policies without a round table of consultants. He, without question, helped bring a resolution to the Cold War in America's favor. To this day his vision and belief system is cited by the new leaders of the nation-states that had been under Soviet dominance. Domestically he set in motion policies that led to a prolonged economic expansion that still lingers today. Reagan, if he did nothing else, made Americans feel good about their country and that was no small feat after 4 years of Carter telling us our best years were behind us.

Bush 41. He was an able administrator, but if you look up the word inconsequential in the dictionary his picture would be there.

Clinton also presided during time of relative calm as the Cold War wound down. It is far too early to fully assess his administration. Was his a consequential presidency? Hard to say of man who had no real over arching vision or strongly held belief system. He was and is a narcissist. The economy benefited from a so-called peace dividend and a technology boom - particularly in the run up up to Y2K. On the foreign front he let Carter drum up a bad deal with North Korea - when Carter had no right. He didn't react anywhere near boldly enough to the rise of violent terrorism. He allowed technology and financial deals to flow into Communist Chinese hands that may in time become profoundly dangerous to American interests and the American economy. It's just too early to tell about Clinton...

Then there is Bush 43. If nothing else he is a brave man. He took action, decisive action after 9/11 and has paid dearly for daring to engage an enemy that had smacked around the West with impunity for 2 decades.

It would be pointless for me to go into a long contentious prattle about Bush. In many ways his presidency is a failure. His biggest failure was his inability to communicate. The bully pulpit is a president's most important tool. But only time will tell if his biggest, boldest and most controversial act - the elimination of Saddam Hussein's barbarous government in Iraq - will be a positive for the Middle East and the world. I think it will be.

al Qaeda is severely impaired, decimated really, and due to its actions in post-Saddam Iraq has lost favor in much of the Muslim world. Bush can take pride in the rightouness of that.



CW

The War Effort:Cause and Effect

During the "Good War" President Roosevelt had the press on his side. Anyone using propaganda to undermine the war effort was dismissed as a crackpot or arrested as a traitor. The War Department relied on a sympathetic press to suppress secrets that would render aide and comfort to the enemy. If for example the press was actively undermining the President at every turn early in the American intervention into the Pacific and European theaters when our forces were less than effective our enemies might have been emboldened resulting in even more casualties.

To this day one can still marvel at the way America worked together in the war effort. Propaganda and fear were used on our own citizens in a way that would be thoroughly rebuked today. It was a different time. The survival of the country was paramount and almost no one relished our defeat. Not so today. The day after a clear majority in Congress passed the authorization the use of force to oust Saddam Hussein the loyal opposition and their corporals in the media began its unrelenting attack on George W. Bush and the war effort.

Forget the effect this has had on our national psyche and focus on the practical day to day job of fighting and dying on the ground. It's bad enough that the most prominent newspaper in the country routinely snubs the Commander in Chief and publishes national security secrets that had been leaked. Considering that a major American cable news channel suppressed news of Saddam Hussein's murderous atrocities in order to maintain a bureau in Baghdad should anyone be surprised that the mainstream media would use its power to undermine American policy.

Studies now being published show a direct cause and effect of the reverse propaganda dished up on a daily basis by most of the print and broadcast media in terms of violence in Iraq. (Click here to read the Washington Times article on this topic) When Senate Majority leader Harry Reid declares that "the war has been lost" and when CNN, NBC, CBS and PBS air stories of retired generals and former presidents raising doubts about the situation on the ground the rise in violent attacks in Iraq is directly measurable.

From the article:

The increase in attacks is more pronounced in areas of Iraq that have better access to international news media, the authors conclude in a report titled "Is There an 'Emboldenment' Effect? Evidence from the Insurgency in Iraq."

The researchers studied data about insurgent attacks and U.S. media coverage up to November, tracking what they called "anti-resolve statements" by U.S. politicians and reports about American public opinion on the war.

"We find that in periods immediately after a spike in anti-resolve statements, the level of insurgent attacks increases,"

It is not an uncommon phenomenon for protesters to suddenly come alive when a camera shows up. In this situation people are dying as a direct result of unbalanced, skewed news coverage intended to weaken the resolve of the war effort on all fronts.

Much of the blame can and should go to the Bush administration itself. For one, the administration, stung by the "Mission Accomplished" fiasco, stopped it's own propaganda effort. In failing to highlight adequately major accomplishments and bolster the reason for engaging in this conflict as more and more evidence of Saddam's atrocities and support of international terrorism surfaced (and, yes, ties to al Qaeda ) it allowed the media to form the public opinion narrative. Secondly, it can not be defended that it took so long for the President to change tactics when things clearly took a turn for the worst. This paralysis or stubbornness only emboldened the insurgency and the anti-Bush media. Still, even after the "surge" produced the results it was intended to the media either straight up denied it or ignored it altogether. Hardly good journalism.

History will be the final judge of how this venture plays out. I think it's still quite possible that Iraq will become the jewel of the Arab world if local terrorism can be contained long enough for the economy to bloom. There can be no doubt that Iraq's neighbors have contributed to the chaos fearing a successful democracy (of sorts) next door would put pressure on them to loosen the grip on their own populations.

All that being said it is still unconscionable that the American and international media knowingly and deliberately provide aide and comfort to a despicable enemy that indiscriminately kills and tortures military personnel and civilians alike. It's one thing to ask journalists and their editors to sugarcoat everything and quite another to have the media literally actively work for the terrorist's cause.



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What a Fool I Was

Nineteen-Ninety-One was the year the Soviet Union collapsed (officially). The Cold War was over and peace was about to befall a tired and war weary world. The future looked bright and what a future it was going to be!

What a fool I was.

I don't think I can be faulted for having the "audacity of hope". Having lived my entire life in the shadow of the mushroom cloud it seemed that a tremendous weight had been lifted the day I watched the Berlin Wall come down from half a world away. Like dominoes the Warsaw Pact fell culminating in the crumbling of the Soviet regime on December 31 1991.

The world smelled a lot sweeter then. I was entertaining the notion that humanity had achieved the end of war!

What a fool I was.

Like a lot of people I had dismissed Islamic terrorism as a nuisance and frankly someone else's problem. Life was too good worry about such things... George H. W. Bush was the president and although he was not as firm an anti-socialist as Ronald Reagan I was quite convinced that American socialism had been fully discredited and wasn't coming back. Living way up north in Minnesota I had no inkling that an unprecedented invasion of illegal immigrants was about to take place. Political correctness was a seemingly harmless prod to get us to choose our words carefully in public settings. China was a nation of a billion plus souls and a million telephones. Surely they were by no means an economic threat to the juggernaut that was the USA.

What a fool I was.

Measure twice, cut once. That's what Ross Perot told us - a good piece of common sense advice. His crazy like a fox routine cost G.H.W. Bush a second term and Bill Clinton and his wife became the president. But this Clinton fella was full of the "audacity of hope" himself and seemed to be different kind of Democrat. It was clear he was a narcissist. His self absorbed governance style meant he had no real convictions and his presidency would lead to nothing of any consequence (that is once his wife's health care grab failed).

What a fool I was.

I did not consider that Clinton was methodically denuding the military. I did not notice he sold his country out to the Chinese Communist Party for campaign contributions. I did not realize that he was loosening immigration policies, looking the other way as the southern border was being overrun. I did not comprehend the implications of his disregard of those pesky Islamic terrorists. Yeah, Bill Clinton was a different kind of Democrat for sure.

What a fool I was.

But alas, that was all over when George W. Bush "finally" moved into the White House. The adults were back in charge. I liked the sound of tax cuts. I liked the thought of the brakes being applied to an insidious creeping socialism. But then September the 11th happened.

And...

For a while I was quite impressed and extremely proud of the President and the American people. This Bush the Younger was a man of action. He exuded a clarity of purpose. I thought we had on our hands a historic presidency in the making - a real war time hero.

What a fool I was.

"Bring it on" was what G.W. Bush said to al-Qaeda after the fall of Baghdad. The sage advice of an earlier commander in chief to walk softly but carry a big stick was ignored. It was all down hill from there.

In his first term (besides taking the country to war against dangerous Islamic extremists) President Bush signed tax cuts that were slooowwwly phased in, but were inexplicably set to expire anyway. He signed campaign finance reform that destroyed the historic fund raising advantage the Republican party enjoyed. As a bonus it legitimized a renown America hater Mr. Moveon.org himself - George Soros. He signed the No Child Left Behind law that cemented the federal Department of Education instead of dismantling it. He signed the Medicare Part D law that was the largest expansion of government entitlements since LBJ. Actually, he signed everything that landed on his desk, not once using the veto to send a message to the deficit monsters in an out of control congress. Still, with the economy turning around, Saddam Hussein in custody and gas prices finally stabilizing I was sure we would come out of this historic period safe and sound...

What fool I was.

Bush was reelected. That was the last thing that went his way.

The Iraq war went south. A hurricane named Katrina destroyed a major American city. An embittered opposition party and the mainstream press tagged teamed their unrelenting attacks on the President. The southern border was literally being overrun by illegal invaders from Mexico and all points south. Vital Social Security reform died at the hands of a Republican congress. Gas prices at the pump sky rocketed. Dick Cheney shot his lawyer... These, my friends are just the high points.

In 2006 the Republicans lost both houses of Congress after a disappointing 12 year run. We now sit in a political black hole called a presidential election. OK, at least we have a few really good Republicans running and I was convinced John McCain had no chance of collecting the nomination.

What a fool I was.

So where does this leave the world just over a decade and a half after the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War?

-We are still at war
-We suffer at the gas pump like never before.
-We pay more for everything, but especially food
-We watch our wealth being drained from our 401K's and the equity from our homes
-We watch helplessly as an invasion of illegal immigrants flood our cities and towns
-We fiddle while socialism creeps into every aspect of our lives
-We hopelessly endure the loss of manufacturing capacity to China and southeast Asia
-We wither under a Global Warming propaganda machine that is on the verge of radically altering society based on extremely shaky science
-We are party to demographic trending in the West that points to the literal extinction of dozens of ethnic groups by the turn of the next century
-We really haven't stemmed the tide rising Islamic radicalism
-We are witness to the siege of tiny Israel, attacked mercilessly for simply existing
-We sit idly by while Africans in Darfur, Kenya, Somalia and Uganda are slaughtered

But hey, there's a new season of American Idol! Is Britney Spears still behaving badly? Oh and isn't that Roger Clemens a rascal? I'm just saying ...

We have to have priorities, right?


(God, save us)



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All's War the Ends War

Quite possibly the American "occupation" of Iraq will end before George W. Bush leaves office in Jan '09.

It was quietly announced that the American and Iraqi governments will start negotiations early in 2008 to bring about an end to the allied occupation. This will in essence bring to a formal conclusion the U.N. Chapter 7 Security Council involvement in the occupation and administration of Iraq.

Lieutenant General Douglas Lute told reporters in the White House: "The basic message here should be clear. Iraq is increasingly able to stand on its own. That's very good news. But it won't have to stand alone."

The number of American troops in country will drop to something like 50,000 troops. Out of sight, out of mind - the remaining troops will be permanently stationed at bases outside of the large cities. This is similar to the way it has been done in Japan, Germany and Korea. Having a large well armed troop presence should discourage internal or external forces from threatening the fragile government there.

Thankfully this should remove the Iraq war as a major issue from the upcoming presidential election.

How history will judge this war and the President's decision remains to be seen. If Iraq becomes the successful model for the rest of the region as Bush and his advisor's claimed it would be then history will be kind. The fact that South Korea became a powerful economic force in the modern world took the sting out of an unpopular conclusion to an unpopular war and left Harry Truman well regarded in history's bloodshot eyes.

The Butcher of Baghdad is dead and so are his sadistic sons. The Iraqi government will never gas the Kurds again. The Shiites in the south are free from Saddam's boot. These are all good things. Thousands have died on all sides, this is regrettable. That there will be no more mass graves filled with the bodies of the innocent means at least in some way none died in vain.

As for America's so-called imperialistic designs the fact that we actually can't wait to turn over sovereignty to the locals should put to rest any comparison to the Roman or British Empires of old. Surely America is imperialistic in our desire to make the world safe for business and trade. How horrible.



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