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March 29, 2007 (word)

March 29, 2007 (pdf)

We have lots of stuff on Iran from many of our favorites. First David Warren from Ottawa Citizen.

Then Gerard Baker from Times, UK.

This weekend, Britain will mark the 25th anniversary of the start of the Falklands War, when Argentine forces invaded the small group of British islands in the South Atlantic, 1,500 miles off the coast of Argentina.
It was inevitable, given the coincidence of timing and the circumstances, that comparisons would be drawn between that conflict, which ended in a triumphant recovery of the islands by UK forces two months later, and the humiliation heaped on Britain in the last week by the seizure of 15 British sailors in the waters near the Persian Gulf. …

Mark Steyn, although in Chicago for the Conrad Black trial, provided some entertaining Corner posts.

… Back at the start of Jimmy Carter’s hostage fiasco, I think it was Andrei Gromyko who remarked that, if the students had pulled the same stunt at the Soviet embassy, Tehran would have been a crater by lunchtime. The Iranians believed him so he never had to do it (though, as Chechnya indicates, the Russians are generally prepared to walk the walk crater-wise). …

… Further to my Gromyko reminiscence above, I’ve been getting a lot of sneery e-mails like this:
So, the wise course would have been to bomb Teheran in 1979? What is the wise course today? Turning Teheran into a crater?
You’re missing the point. Because Gromyko credibly threatened to turn Teheran into a crater, he didn’t have to. That’s how deterrence works. …

Austin Bay provides a military man’s look.

Power Line and Dean Barnett at Hewitt comment on congress.

Jim Taranto finds a Joe Biden/Chuck Hagel op-ed for WaPo back in 2002. They wrote then we would have to be prepared to be in Iraq for a decade after Saddam fell. You gotta love the internet! It makes it easy to spot the grandstanding cowards. Then Jim writes on the Saudi back stabbing.

We have an item from Der Spiegel that takes Germans to task for their anti-Americanism.

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, the American historian who in his 1996 book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners” deprived the Germans of the belief that they didn’t know what was going on back in the day, is currently studying the history of genocides in the 20th century. One of the things he has noticed is that the politicians or military leaders who planned genocides and had them carried out rarely concealed their intentions in advance. Whether the victims were Hereros, Armenians, kulaks, Jews or later Bosnians, the perpetrators generally believed that they were justified and had no reason to hide their murderous intentions.
Today, when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad talks about a world without Israel while dreaming of an atom bomb, it seems obvious that we — as Germans of all people — should be putting two and two together. Why shouldn’t Ahmadinejad mean what he says? But we Germans only know what we believe.
The Americans are more dangerous than the ayatollahs? Perhaps the Americans should take the Germans at their word for a change. It’s high time for a new round of re-education. The last one obviously didn’t do the job

Debra Saunders writes on the congressional dems.

Not to be overlooked is Mugabe’s latest stunt. The Captain with the details.

We recently featured a Sun-Times piece by Jesse Jackson worrying about the prospects of young African-American males. Yesterday we wanted him to march on Albany. Today it’s Columbus, Ohio. We’d have thought that with Ohio’s many other problems, a new Governor would have better things to do than deny opportunity for poor kids to escape the worst schools in the state.

Lileks is here.

Having signaled the desire to court defeat in Iraq, the Democrats have passed a goody-laden bill that shows their desire to lose the battle against wasteful spending.
Pork: It’s the other white flag!

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• March 25, 2007 (word)

• March 25, 2007 (pdf)

Mark Steyn on Pakistan.

If you had to draw one of those organizational charts of the world’s problems, Pakistan would be at the center of them. We speak of the northwestern tribal lands as some of the most remote places on Earth. But, in fact, when they wanted to, the Saudis had no problem getting to them, spreading a ton of walkingaround money, and utterly transforming those villages: In Waziristan, you’ll find goatherds with GPS systems and a quarter-million dollars in U.S. currency, which is a lot for a goatherd. From the North-West Frontier Province, the Saudi money and Wahhabist ideology seeped through the country, into the mosques of the cities, radicalizing a generation of young Muslim men. From there it moved on to new outposts of the jihad, to Indonesia, Thailand and beyond. The flight routes from Pakistan to the United Kingdom are now the most important ideological conduit for radical Islam. The July 7 London bombers were British subjects of Pakistani origin. Last week, two more were arrested in connection with the Tube bombings at Manchester Airport as they prepared to board a plane to Karachi.

Good post on the Edwards from Dean Barnett at Hewitt’s blog.

… THROUGH THE YEARS, I’VE COME TO VIEW SERIOUS and progressive illness as an ever constricting circle with oneself at the center. The interior of the circle represents the contents of one’s life. As the circle gets smaller, things that were inside get forced out. Some of these things are dearly missed; other items that were once thought precious get forced to the exterior and turn out to go surprisingly unlamented.At the innermost point of the circle are the things that really matter: Family, faith, love. These things stay with you until the day that you die. At the very end, because the circle has shrunk down to its center, they’re all you have left. …

Post from Contentions on our aging population.

… Here’s a hint for anyone hoping to run for President ten years from now: learn everything you can about long-term care.

The dénouement at Duke is coming soon. John Podhoretz points out the “gang of 88″ faculty members will pay none of the costs.

Great post from Samizdata on the ignorance of the media.

Debra Saunders in good form.

… Bush Lied is the Big Lie. It takes the controversy over one aspect of U.S. intelligence on Iraq’s WMD — the nuclear program question — to argue that the whole WMD argument was bogus. That is, the president’s accusers are guilty of the very sort of dishonest selectivity that they accuse Bush of using.
Now the Bush-lied lie is boomeranging on those Democratic presidential hopefuls — Sens. Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Christopher Dodd and former Sen. John Edwards — who voted in favor of the Iraq war resolution.
By going along with the Bush-lied spin, by refusing to acknowledge that the intelligence community presented strong reasons to vote for war, these Democrats have boxed themselves into a corner. They now have only one rationale for their vote that they can use — they were duped by the nincompoop Bush — or one rationale that they cannot use — they sent U.S. troops to Iraq against their better judgment, but out of naked ambition. …

Jonah Goldberg does a number on Gore.

… But when asked this week about the enormous and unwise costs his plan would impose on the U.S. economy (according to the global consensus of economists), Gore said that his draconian emissions cuts are “going to save you money, and it’s going to make the economy stronger.”
Wait a second. This is the gravest crisis we’ve ever faced, but if we do exactly as Gore says (but not as he does), we’ll get richer in the process as we heal Mother Earth of her fever? Gore’s faith-based initiative is a win-win. No wonder so many people think it’s mean to disagree.

Roger Simon too.

After viewing the movie I was less troubled with the global warming issue and more troubled by Gore’s narcissism – not exactly the result intended. In fact, the reverse.

Environmentalists helped kill nuclear power three decades ago. Now they are rethinking. It is wrong to listen to them because they are “watermelons.” Green on the outside and red on the inside. Captain has the details.

John Stossel on the trend of naming buildings after crooks when they are still alive.

Tyler Cowen with a grown-up look at what eliminating the “big bad middleman” will mean to health care.

Carpe Diem says Wal-Mart is more selective than Harvard.