Mr. Gary Bauer — The Supposed Christian as Slanderer, Israel-Firster, and War-Monger

I just watched a television commercial paid for by the “Emergency Committee for Israel” in which Mr. Gary Bauer spends a minute or so defaming Dr. Paul as: a spinner of 9/11 conspiracies, an America-hater, an opponent of the U.S. military, a friend of Iran, and — that most lethal of all sins — a foe of “our ally Israel.” Now, that is a lot of lies to pack into a minute, but as a crazed-Christian one cannot expect the war-mongering Mr. Bauer to know that one of God’s commandments is “Thou shall not lie.”

The Republican Party’s fear of the potentially enormous popular appeal of Dr. Paul’s truth-telling in regard to foreign policy is palpable and understandable. Listen to Mr. Bauer’s commercial and you will know what the Republican establishment wants:

– (a) war with Iran, although Iran is no threat to the United States unless we or Israel attack Iran first

–(b) all the U.S. blood and treasure needed to ensure Israel is free to do what it wants to Palestine, although both Israel and Palestine are irrelevant to the economic and national-security interests of the United States except in the negative sense that both entities bleed the U.S. Treasury and keep us mired in their endless religious war

–(c) a popular belief that the U.S. military approves of Washington’s relentless, war-causing, and bankrupting interventionism, even though almost all campaign contributions from U.S. military personnel go to Dr. Paul

–(d) complete popular faith in the fallacy that 9/11 has been fully explained, although the 9/11 Commission’s archive has yet to be released and so Americans do not know how easily Osama bin Laden could have been killed in 1998-1999

– (e) Americans to hold the racist, counter-intuitive, and, indeed, brain-dead-Santorum-ite belief that Muslims are attacking us because of our freedom, gender equality, and liberty, a position the depends not on empirical evidence — there is none — but on the need of U.S. politicians to convince voters that their interventionism does not cause wars, which is as silly a belief as one that holds actions do not prompt reactions

After listening to Mr. Bauer, I think FOX television would be missing a bet if it did not create a program called “Lets Kill U.S. Kids and Bankrupt America.” The show could feature Bauer, Charles Krauthammer, Bill Kristol, and John Bolton explaining why America needs more and more wars and why the president is above the Constitution and can legally take the country to war without a declaration of war by Congress.

Two or three episodes of such a show would demonstrate the obvious to all Americans; that is, Dr. Paul is both the defender of the U.S. Constitution and the only Republican presidential candidate who champions America’s interests first, last, and always. Needless to say, it would also expose Mr. Bauer’s ignorance of the Lord’s prohibition against lying.
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Fearing the Constitution’s return, the Washington Post launches a panicky, sophomoric attack on Dr. Paul

Living in Northern Virginia a person gets use to the Washington Post’s clear preference for an all-powerful federal government that ignores the Constitution. In terms of presidential candidates, this means the Post will support candidates who cover the maintain-the-status-quo political spectrum from the Democrats’ far left to reliably liberal country-club Republicans, like George H. W. Bush and that former-president’s unelectable clone Mit Romney. The Post has, for example, savaged Speaker Gingrich at every turn in his campaign. More recently, however, the Post has turned its fire on Dr. Ron Paul, running a negative front-page story on Sunday (1 January 2011) and an amazingly hysterical and panicky column by Michael Gerson Monday morning (2 January 2011). The Post’s editors cannot stand the thought of a president who will not keep the power and spending of the federal government growing, and so has decided that Speaker Gingrich and Dr. Paul must be destroyed because they are the enemies of what the Post defines as the “American way,” centralized federal power, relentless interventionism, constant wars, and bankruptcy.

Speaker Gingrich has defenders in the mainstream media, but few defend Dr. Paul, despite his growing grass-roots support across the country, and so I thought I would give it a shot. The New Year’s Day article in the Post mentioned above can be countered by the derisive laughter it deserves. The article criticized Dr. Paul because his message was not colored by the “American optimism” used by other Republican candidates and President Obama. Apparently the august editors of the Post want to return to the “don’t worry, be happy” attitude that helped to get America into the disastrous situation its faces today. At base, the Post’s critique of Dr. Paul’s campaign rhetoric is not that it is negative, but rather that is true.

Is Dr. Paul wrong about coming U.S. bankruptcy; the looming possibility of a second, deeper recession; the madness of the federal government campaigning for secular democracy across the Muslim world and thereby empowering Islamists; the Treasury pumping billions of wasted dollars into the already dead-on-its-feet Euro Zone; the corruption of the Congress and the U.S. electoral process by foreign lobbies and deep-pocketed campaign contributors; the expanding readiness of both parties to limit rights guaranteed by the 1st and 2nd Amendments; the inability of the U.S. military to win wars by destroying America’s enemies; court decisions that prevent state governments from defending their citizens, even though the federal government has abdicated that role; a bipartisan ruling elite that has involved Americans in numerous wars in which no U.S. interest is at stake; a Congress that has for 40 years failed to move the country toward energy self-sufficiency because it is owned by oil companies, foreign governments, and is scared to death of environmental fanatics, etc. etc. etc.?

Of course not. Dr. Paul is right on all these counts. His serious, worried, and warning demeanor is absolutely appropriate to the disaster the Democrats and most Republicans have wrought, but want to hide and smile about until the presidential election. Smiles and foolish optimism are hardly the correct response to important debates in a republic that is not far from its death throes. A photograph of most of the Republican candidates and Obama and his lieutenants would merit the caption: “Be optimistic and keep smiling, America’s enemies love idiots.”

Monday’s Post OpEd by Michael Gerson is entitled “Ron Paul’s Poison Pill” and it is a juvenile and panic-stricken performance by a major voice of country-club Republicanism. Apparently sensing that Dr. Paul’s concerns and manifestly appropriate worries about America’s future are shared by an increasing number of American voters — especially young voters — Mr. Gerson shriekingly paints Dr. Paul as a racist and a devotee of Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy; an abettor of the Holocaust and so implicitly an anti-Semite; an isolationist who sins by wanting to protect America first, last, and always; a bigot ready to reverse the Civil Rights Act; and a blame-America-firster. Mr. Gerson’s essay reminds one of a high-school sophomore’s vitriolic, first-try at journalism that slips past the teacher who serves as the editor of the school’s paper.

And why does Dr. Paul merit these calumnies? Because Mr. Gerson and the Republican establishment he speaks for do not want to debate the dire problems America faces at home and abroad because such a debate would show there is not a nickel’s worth of difference between most Republicans and Obama’s Democrats, and that both parties are equally responsible for the near in-extremis condition of America’s economy, finances, and foreign policy.

Mr. Gerson’s OpEd makes it clear that most Republicans, like most Democrats, regard any resistance to more unnecessary bipartisan wars and endless and war-causing democracy-mongering interventionism as “isolationism”; opposition to unlimited federal government power as racist and neo-Confederate; support for fiscal responsibility to avoid national bankruptcy as a “lack of compassion”; and any questioning of the bipartisan elite’s definition of reality as it has been shaped and inculcated for several generations by the federal government’s Department of Education and their ill-educated operatives in the teacher’s unions as an antediluvian response by a man who refuses to see that that the federal government knows what is best for him better than he does. In essence, Mr. Gerson, on behalf of both parties, is telling Dr. Paul, his supporters, and all voters to shut up, go home, watch TV, and let the bipartisan political elite decide what is best for all Americans and their country. The proper response to this outrageous and anti-American arrogance is to suggest that Mr. Gerson and the elitists for whom he speaks should be collectively sent to hell.

Let me close by noting that I while I support Dr. Paul in the areas of foreign policy, fiscal conservatism, and a return to constitutionalism, I am a traditional conservative and not a libertarian. I cringe at, rebel against, and am willing to denounce many Libertarian views of events in American history, views which I regard as ahistorical, unrealistic, and, at times, just silly. I particularly oppose the Libertarian’s view of Abraham Lincoln. But their view of Lincoln is precisely that: their view. And they are perfectly entitled to it.

Those of us who are not Libertarians and yet support Dr. Paul — and those numbers are rising — might best explain our support and affection for him by quoting the Libertarians’ favorite bete noire. “Many free countries have lost their liberty and ours may lose hers,” Abraham Lincoln once said, “but if she shall, be it my proudest plume, not that I was the last to desert her, but that I never deserted her.” Of the many things one can say about Dr. Paul, the one that cannot be contested is that he never deserted America and its constitution — as have so many of his peers — for office, power, and wealth. He can wear that plume with pride and the thanks of all Americans.

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Iowa’s Choice: Dr. Paul or U.S. bankruptcy, more wars, and many more dead soldiers and Marines

Two recent experiences underlined for me what Iowans will vote for next week in the field of foreign policy if they do not vote for Dr. Ron Paul. On Christmas day, I heard Chris Wallace’s program on FOX. He had a guest — Mr. Charles Lane — who made the false and scurrilous claim that Dr. Paul’s foreign policy was the same as that of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s America-hating policy, a doctrine that appealed to Barack Obama for more than twenty years and which the president and his party are now implementing. Following this imbecilic assertion of Mr. Lane to its logical conclusion, U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines also must be ardent devotees of Rev Wright’s anti-Americanism as they donate many times more money to Dr. Paul than to all the other Republican candidates combined.

Then on 26 December, I visited Mount Vernon’s new and extraordinary multi-media museum documenting the life of George Washington. At the end of the exhibition there is video of U.S. Senators reading Washington’s Farewell Address into the record, something they appear to do every year. When I arrived in front of the video Senator John McCain was reading Washington’s clear warnings about the dangers of foreign intervention and the fatal impact of mindlessly favoring one country over another. To hear this from McCain’s interventionist, war-mongering, and Israel-is-always-right mouth was sound evidence of his hypocrisy and deceitfulness, as well as his and his senatorial colleagues’ ignorance of Washington’s ideas and U.S. history generally.

Based on these two experiences, let us look at what Iowans not voting for Ron Paul will help to inflict on an America already terribly wounded by the Republican and Democratic interventionism in the Muslim world.

1.) A foreign policy that will complete U.S. bankruptcy. While there is a lot of talk about cutting domestic spending to bring the federal debt under control, it is obvious that neither party is willing to make substantial cuts in that area. Indeed, both are counting on drastic cuts in defense spending to help reduce the federal debt. While they may agree on and even make defense-spending cuts, any such reductions will be short-lived and then restored to much more than current levels. Obama and any Republican save Dr. Paul will continue to intervene in the Muslim world and so will motivate more Muslims to fight us. A third-grader could tell you that you cannot cut defense spending when Washington’s unrelenting interventionism is cultivating new enemies who are intent on attacking U.S. citizens and interests. If you are being attacked, our third grader would patiently explain, you have to spend whatever it takes to defend yourself. And there is no doubt that we and our vital interests are going to keep being attacked by Islamists as long as we continue to intervene in their world.

2.) Obama’s return or the election of any Republican but Dr. Paul means the continuation of the State Department’s not-so-secret computer/Facebook/Twitter proselytizing campaign to incite people to overthrow their governments in places like Iran, Russia, Tunisia, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and elsewhere. [NB: Three offices of Mrs. Clinton’s elitist democracy/feminism crusade in Cairo were raided and shut by Egyptian authorities on 28 December 2011 for intervening in Egypt’s domestic affairs.] This mindless promotion of anarchy alienates the governments targeted and will motivate them to harm the United States in some manner. Of no concern to Obama, Mrs. Clinton, and Senators McCain and Graham, of course, are the thousands of young and naive people who will die at the hands of the regimes they are instigated to overthrow by the democracy-pushing federal bureaucrats and their elitist political masters, all of whom are safe and secure here in North America. Dr. Paul’s non-interventionist policy will allow foreigners to work out their political destiny in their own way and at their own pace; prevent unnecessary additions to America’s growing list of enemies; and save countless young lives.

3.) All the Republican contenders and the Obama administration are whole-hearted believers that the Arab Spring will bring the installation of secular democracy across that region. This has been and still is a nonsense that only adolescent idealists — or deliberate liars — could believe, and one that has been proven fatuous by the fact that Islamists have won every election held since the start of the Arab Spring. Neither the Obamaites nor the Republicans will admit they are wrong on this issue and they will pump billions of dollars in foreign aid into the Arab-Spring countries in a feckless, Muslim-alienating effort to build secular democracies and install the crazed feminism of Mrs. Clinton. Such aid not only will be wasted, but it surely will cause more Muslims take up arms against America. Indeed, the continuation of this bipartisan cultural/feminist war on Islam is likely to start the clash of civilizations Professor Huntington predicted.

4.) Electing anyone but Ron Paul will further increase the already strong chances of widespread Islamist-conducted violence inside the United States. Any other Republican candidate or a reelected Obama will keep lying to Americans by claiming that we are being attacked because of our liberties, gender-equality laws, and elections rather than because of Washington’s constant intervention in the Islamic world. This now two-decade-old lie — which is abetted by most of the media — has hidden from Americans the fact that all of the would-be Islamist attackers who have been captured in this country were motivated by the invasion of Iraq, U.S. support for Israel, or some other U.S. government action in the Muslim world. As Dr. Paul has explained, our Islamist enemies are motivated by Washington’s bipartisan foreign policy, and as long as that foreign policy does not change the number of young, U.S.-citizen Muslim males willing to attack their fellow citizens will keep increasing. For those who doubt this reality, a quick look at the recently adopted Defense Appropriations Act will clear their eyes. That Act’s authorization for the U.S. military to detain U.S. citizens in the United States is clear evidence that the leaders of both parties know that their foreign policy is going to bring war to America’s streets and towns and that the U.S. military will be called on to fight Islamists militants here at home.

5.) Obama and any Republican candidate, except for Dr. Paul, will slavishly obey the U.S.-citizen-dominated, pro-Israel lobby that bribes and suborns them by getting into a war with Iran. Indeed, Washington, Tel Aviv, and London are already conducting a lethal, covert-action war inside Iran which is killing Iranian nuclear scientists and destroying nuclear-related facilities, as well as trying to goad Tehran into reacting with violence and thereby give the West a casus belli. Such a war would be a financial and military disaster for the United States, and would be watched with glee by Russian and Chinese leaders who — while their countries would lose some trade with Iran during a war — would applaud another U.S. self-inflicted would that further erodes the already failing economy that is the base of American power. Moreover, if U.S. political leaders would not permit the U.S. military to defeat Afghan and Iraqi mujahedin armed with Korean War-vintage weapons, they surely will not allow the military to defeat a much better armed nation-state like Iran. Thus we would have yet another politically imposed defeat for the U.S. military. More painful for Americans will be the Iran-sponsored attacks that will occur in the United States if Washington and/or Israel launch a first strike on Iran. The only serious threat Iran poses to the United States is the result of more than 35 years of near-criminal bipartisan negligence by the U.S. executive and legislative branches in the fields of border control and domestic security. Both Iran’s military and intelligence services and their Lebanese Hizballah surrogate have created clandestine entry points along our southern border, as well as a large clandestine infrastructure in the continental United States, one which works with similar networks in Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Iran is too smart and fearful of U.S. military power to use this apparatus to strike first in North America, but the network clearly is meant to allow Tehran to respond violently here if Iran is attacked by America and/or Israel.

6.) While all of the Republican candidates and Obama talk about their plans to make America energy self-sufficient to the greatest extent possible, there is no reason to believe any of them. In the past 40 years, the two parties have made virtually no progress toward this goal, unless you count moving up Daylight Savings Time by three weeks as a major gain. Both parties have taken the easy and profitable route: dependence on oil-rich Arab tyrants, a policy that mandates that the U.S. military spends billions each year to defend the Arab Peninsula’s fundamentally anti-U.S. police states. Only Dr. Paul could be counted on to allow the unfettered development of all domestic energy resources to promote energy self-sufficiency and allow the gradual abandonment of our mujahedin- motivating exploitation of Muslim oil. But even Dr. Paul cannot prevent the United States from fighting an oil war that the Republicans and Democrats have fixed on the national agenda, one that America will wage in the Niger Delta region — from which we will soon get 20-25 percent of our crude — because of the Islamist insurgency that is gathering steam in Nigeria and threatening the oil-rich Delta region’s stability.

Notwithstanding the damnable lies about Dr. Paul’s foreign policy constantly proclaimed by his fellow Republican candidates, leading pro-Israel/pro-intervention U.S.-citizens and their journalist friends, and most of the media, only the gentleman from Texas speaks for the Founder’s non-interventionist vision of America’s role in world affairs and for plain common sense. In the Founders’ non-interventionist design for U.S. foreign policy that is championed by Dr. Paul, Iowans will find a proven road to the maintenance of America’s sovereignty, independence, peace, and prosperity. In the realm of common sense, Dr. Paul beats his fellow candidates, the Obamaites, and the media hands down. Dr. Paul challenges the interventionists in both parties on their plans for spreading secular democracy — and causing wars thereby — on historical grounds that are irrefutable because they are just good commonsense. We, the British, the Australians, and the Canadians have been building our republics/democracies since Magna Charta in 1215 — that is for nearly 800 years — and we are not yet quite perfect. If Iowans and all Americans truly think about what Dr. Paul is saying — and not what the interventionists say he is saying — they would respond favorably to the Texan’s logical conclusion that what we have not fully accomplished in eight centuries cannot possibly be attained in Egypt, Afghanistan, or elsewhere in the Muslim world in 6 weeks, 6 months, or six years, not least because none of those places separate church from state. Dr. Paul’s precise use of history and commonsense exposes the exorbitantly costly effort to build democracies in the Islamic world for what it is; namely, Washington throwing money down the drain for a cause that is impossibly lost from the start and one that will involve us in wars where we have no interests.

In the words of Dr. Paul’s Republican opponents, the Obamaites, and most of the media, on the other hand, Iowans ought to easily be able to hear the elitist, racist, and war-causing Wilsonian doctrine of intervening abroad to impose democracy and secular social beliefs on foreigners at the point of bayonets. Indeed, the national-security policy advocated by Dr. Paul’s opponents and critics boils down to the clear and absurd argument that: America needs more and more wars — and the dead/maimed military personnel attendant thereto — that are motivated by Washington’s intervention abroad if Americans are to be safe and secure at home.

For Iowans and Americans as a whole, then, the best choice for their children, grandchildren, and country clearly lies in the Founder’s foreign-policy wisdom and Dr. Paul’s sturdy advocacy and promised application thereof.

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On Iraq: Think like Romans and admit we were beaten

One of the most disturbing aspects of contemporary America is its absolute determination to deceive itself. As the last U.S. soldiers and Marines leave Iraq, we have heard President Obama, Senator McCain, Defense Secretary Panetta, and numerous others speak as if U.S. forces accomplished something positive in Iraq. Indeed, our service personnel have been welcomed home as “liberators” and told — ominously — that there are other peoples in the world who yearn for the sort of liberation the United States brought to Iraqis.

What to make of this species of lunacy? In recent years it has been popular to compare the United States to the ancient Romans, at least in terms of military power and the geographic reach that military power can attain. This sort of historical nuttiness sells well in the media, the academy, and the mouths of war-mongering politicians like Senators McCain, Graham, and Lieberman, but it will not stand scrutiny.

The Romans were a superb military power that brought peace and prosperity to much of Europe for 500 years or more, and they brought it mostly by waging wars that literally annihilated their enemies. The precursors to the Roman peace were complete military victories that left Rome‘s enemies with no doubt that they had been totally defeated, and believing the beginning of wisdom was to become Rome‘s friend, or at least not cross Rome a second time. Reality was the pivotal component here. Rome’s enemies always knew they were defeated, one historian has written, and the Romans were always realistic and manly enough to know when they had won and — as important — when they had loss.

The evolving aftermath of the Iraq war in the American mind proves that, at least among our bipartisan governing elite, there is not a single Roman to be found. In Iraq, the United States was defeated in every conceivable way. Not one of Washington’s clearly delineated war aims was accomplished. The Sunni-based tyranny of Saddam Hussein has been replaced by a Shia-dominated tyranny whose leader’s contempt for the United States is so strong that he did not bother to wait until the last U.S. soldier departed before starting what will be a relentless persecution of Iraq’s Sunni minority. For Obama and McCain, this sort of tyranny is acceptable because Maliki and his Shia thugs won office in a fair but meaningless election. For Obama, McCain and their ilk the important thing is just having an election, the fact that an election simply delivers a replacement tyranny is irrelevant.

So, at the cost of a trillion dollars, regional instability, 4,600 dead soldiers and Marines, and 30,000-plus wounded, the Bush and Obama administrations succeeded in scoring a victory in Iraq by “liberating” it from stability, order, and Saddam-conducted brutality and delivering it to a Shia tyranny which appears ready to push as quickly as possible for a sectarian civil war in which the Iraqi Shias — with Iran’s help — will try to annihilate the country’s Sunni minority, and probably the even smaller Christian one while they are at it. Some victory.

While all of this will quickly become water-under-the-bridge as the Republicans and Democrats and their media acolytes move on to furthering America’s economic collapse, it is very important that ordinary Americans and their military leaders accept the reality that the U.S. military was — at least in the Muslim world’s perception — defeated in Iraq. General Petraeus and his successors brought enough stability to Iraq to allow U.S. forces to exit by allowing; the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad in favor of the Shia; the herding of Sunnis into Jordan; and by taking advantage of the hatred al-Qaeda’s Abu Musab al-Zarqawi engendered among Iraqi Sunnis to deal al-Qaeda a telling tactical defeat from which it is now well on the way to recovery. As the Sunni-Shia civil war develops in Iraq, we will see that al-Qaeda has returned as a potent part of the Sunni forces that are even now organizing to fight for survival against the U.S.-made, Iran-supported Shia tyranny in Baghdad. Al-Qaeda-in-Iraq also will emerge as a key source of material support and military guidance for the Islamist militant groups across the Levant that are preparing to exploit the improved access to weaponry, freed mujahedin prisoners, increasing Islamist political power, and less restrictive operational environments ushered in by the so-called Arab Spring.

As Dr. Paul often says, unnecessary U.S. intervention leads to war and more war, as well as to exorbitant and uncontrollable costs in terms of blood and treasure. That the decision to intervene in Iraq was disastrous is now clear, and that U.S. national security interests in the region are now more threatened than in the pre-2003 era is likewise clear. What now needs to be accepted is that, for the Muslim world, the U.S. military was defeated and driven out of Iraq by men armed with weapons that were state-of-the-art at the time of the Korean War.

It is possible and perhaps accurate to believe that U.S. forces were defeated in Iraq because (a) U.S. politicians refuse to win the wars they start; (b) the failed U.S. educational system has stopped teaching children that wars can settle matters if won, that the only mercy in war is fast and complete victory; and that wars can only be won by killing the enemy and his supporters until they quit; (c ) that the post-1945 development of Just War Theory causes the U.S. to lose wars and allows and applauds the killing of U.S. soldiers and Marines if enemy civilians are protected; and (d) that far too many U.S. general officers are lobotomized of their common-sense faculties by attending Harvard and Princeton.

But while each of these things may be true, for now it is best for all of us to act the part of Romans and manfully accept the reality that America was defeated in Iraq. If we do not elect Dr. Paul, we would be wise to prepare to irrefutably win the next war that will be caused by our bipartisan and interventionist democracy-mongers, a war that probably will occur either against Iran — at the behest of U.S.-citizen supporters of Israel — or in Africa where several genuine U.S. national interests are increasingly threatened by rising Islamist power.

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Roll on toward the cataract, Oh Ship of State!

How can the American governing elite be so consistently devoid of common sense and so utterly lacking in any recognition of reality? Most of these Grandees have gone to our best universities, are well traveled, and have access to enormous information banks, both unclassified and classified. And yet, in recent days, the following pearls of “wisdom” have dropped from the mouths of prominent political, military, and media personalities.

–The sum and substance of the Republican candidates’ debate was that Americans and their government should be furious with Pakistan for not doing America’s dirty work and committing national suicide. Apparently Islamabad providing the United States with help sufficient to lose 6,000-plus soldiers — four times NATO’s dead — and cause a civil war on its territory does not cut the mustard with most of the Republican candidates, or with pundits and Democratic leaders for that matter. What this attitude shows is not the Republican candidates’ toughness, but rather their adolescence. What has been occurring in Afghanistan since 2001 is America’s war, and it will be won or lost based on what the U.S. government and people do. More brutally and accurately, it will be won or lost only through the expenditure of whatever American blood and treasure it takes to win. Except in an adolescent’s fantasy world, America’s task of winning cannot be safely delegated to a country that lacks the resources, will, motivation, and national interests to win it. The Constitution, moreover, has no provision allowing the executive and legislative branches to delegate their responsibility for national defense to a foreign country. Successful war fighting, debt reduction, border control, and energy self-sufficiency can only come at the hands of competent adults, and across the U.S. governing elite, sadly, such individuals are few and far between.

–We are into another spate of “al-Qaeda is dead” nonsense which is flowing from unnamed U.S. military and politician leaders and being broadcast by adolescent journalists whose motto seems to be “leak me anything and I’ll print it as a fact.” Now we are being told there are only two important al-Qaeda figures left to kill in the Pakistan-Afghanistan theater. While the CIA has been admirably successful in killing senior Al-Qaeda leaders, we should keep in mind — as the CIA surely does — that al-Qaeda has survived to date because it plans for leadership succession and has replacements at hand when leaders are killed. The successors surely are not as talented as those killed, but neither are they ignorant of the jobs they inherit, and hands-on experience sharpens their skills. Moreover, with effective and growing branches operating in Pakistan, Yemen, Europe, the United States, Somalia, Palestine, Lebanon, and across North Africa and the Sahel al-Qaeda has far more de facto leadership schools than it had in 2001. Al-Qaeda on the verge of defeat? Do not hold your breath.

–As the pimply, adolescent dream of the “Arab Spring” implodes, the U.S. elite is still seeing “positive signs” of a movement toward democracy in the Arab world. The Obama administration believes that the interim Libyan regime will be able to disarm the tribal and Islamist militias that were formed during NATO’s war to remove Gaddafi. Readers will recall, I am sure, how successful similar disarmament campaigns have been in Iraq and Afghanistan. And in Egypt more democracy — or is it anarchy? — is springing up as protestors throw rocks and other things at Army and security personnel and are killed by soldiers and police in turn, while the United States grows more hated because the military is using U.S.-supplied ordnance. Then there is Syria, where the efforts of the viragos-in-chief — Mrs. Clinton and Susan Rice — have pushed that country to the edge of civil war, although the U.S. media reports the protestors killed, while ignoring the substantial number of Syrian soldiers being killed by Islamists militias. One hopes that at least some in the U.S. elite know that anarchy is more hated and feared than despotism by Sunni Muslims, and therefore Washington’s anarchy-producing push for democracy in the Arab world may yet yield order-producing Islamic regimes in the states Obama, McCain, Graham, Cameron, and Sarkozy have slated for secular democracy.

Mr. Lincoln once told his fellow citizens that “[i]f destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” Nothing can tend more toward national suicide for the United States than the continued leadership of terminal adolescents.

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