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David Warren marks the anniversary looking at Canada’s contributions to the war on terror.
… Canada took a pass on helping the American enterprise in Iraq — the justification for which we did not so much dispute as ignore. We left the British and Australians, the Poles, Georgians, and others, to do our share of the lifting there. The wisdom of the Chrétien government was to focus our embarrassingly limited resources on the task of clearing the Taliban out of Afghanistan.
In this, we have played a modest but distinguished role. Even if our government has not, our soldiers in that theatre of war have recalled Canada’s finest martial traditions, in some wonderfully aggressive campaigns. Our scandalously under-equipped and under-manned units have taken casualties proportionally higher than our allies — but more to the point, they have inflicted casualties far out of proportion to what they have sustained.
It has been a mostly thankless task Their accomplishments have been almost entirely ignored in Canadian media back home, while their losses have been prominently reported. In the last fortnight, for instance, I was aghast to be unable to find, anywhere in the mainstream Canadian media, mention of our soldiers’ part in one major, obviously heroic operation.
Their instruction was to escort a 200-tonne hydroelectric turbine — too large for any helicopter to lift — on a five-day journey across Taliban-infested territory to the Kajaki reservoir in Helmand province. The expedition, led by the British, and including Australian, New Zealand, and American troops, as well as Canadian and Afghan, was under attack throughout the journey. The turbine was successfully delivered, intact. …
Fouad Ajami looks at the foreign policy differences between the candidates.
… When we elect a president, we elect a commander in chief. This remains an imperial republic with military obligations and a military calling. That is why Eisenhower overwhelmed Stevenson, Reagan’s swagger swept Carter out of office, Bush senior defeated Dukakis, etc.
The exception was Bill Clinton, with his twin victories over two veterans of World War II. We had taken a holiday from history — but 9/11 awakened us to history’s complications. Is it any wonder that Hillary Clinton feigned the posture of a muscular American warrior, and carried the working class with her?
The warrior’s garb sits uneasily on Barack Obama’s shoulders: Mr. Obama seeks to reassure Americans that he and his supporters are heirs of Roosevelt and Kennedy; that he, too, could order soldiers to war, stand up to autocracies and rogue regimes. But the widespread skepticism about his ability to do so is warranted. …
American Spectator suggests Sarah fans might want to cool their jets a little.
In the less than two weeks since she was introduced as John McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin has become a political sensation.
She has united the Republican base behind McCain’s candidacy in a way that few could have predicted. She has energized conservatives. She’s attracted more than 15,000 to rallies. And her speech to the Republican National Convention in St. Paul last week has prompted comparisons to Ronald Reagan.
With all due respect to the governor of Alaska, are conservatives getting ahead of themselves?
For months, conservatives have mocked the celebrity appeal of Barack Obama, but now they are flocking to Palin in a similar manner. …
Ann Coulter’s great column on 9/11 and seven years of no attacks here at our home.
Morose that there hasn’t been another terrorist attack on American soil for seven long years, liberals were ecstatic when Hurricane Gustav was headed toward New Orleans during the Republican National Convention last week. The networks gave the hurricane plenty of breaking-news coverage — but unfortunately it was Hurricane Katrina from 2005 they were covering.
On Keith Olbermann’s Aug. 29 show on MSNBC, Michael Moore said the possibility of a Category 3 hurricane hitting the United States “is proof that there is a God in heaven.” Olbermann responded: “A supremely good point.”
Actually, Olbermann said that a few minutes later to some other idiotic point Moore had made, but that’s how Moore would have edited the interview for one of his “documentaries,” so I will, too. I would only add that Michael Moore’s morbid obesity is proof that there is a Buddha.
Hurricane Gustav came and went without a hitch. What a difference a Republican governor makes! …
Karl Rove says Barack needs to stop running against Sarah.
Of all the advantages Gov. Sarah Palin has brought to the GOP ticket, the most important may be that she has gotten into Barack Obama’s head. How else to explain Sen. Obama’s decision to go one-on-one against “Sarah Barracuda,” captain of the Wasilla High state basketball champs?
It’s a matchup he’ll lose. If Mr. Obama wants to win, he needs to remember he’s running against John McCain for president, not Mrs. Palin for vice president.
Michael Dukakis spent the last months of the 1988 campaign calling his opponent’s running mate, Dan Quayle, a risky choice and even ran a TV ad blasting Mr. Quayle. The Bush/Quayle ticket carried 40 states.
Adlai Stevenson spent the fall of 1952 bashing Dwight Eisenhower’s running mate, Richard Nixon, calling him “the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, and then mount the stump and make a speech for conservation.” The Republican ticket carried 39 of 48 states.
If Mr. Obama keeps attacking Mrs. Palin, he could suffer the fate of his Democratic predecessors. These assaults highlight his own tissue-thin résumé, waste precious time better spent reassuring voters he is up for the job, and diminish him — not her.
Sarah Palin returned today to Alaska. Perfunction.com has the story.
Good Corner post on the enthusiasm at McCain/Palin rally in NOVA.
… One good indication of the enthusiasm were the number of creative signs and campaign paraphenalia by those present. I saw two high-school girls together — one had a custom T-Shirt that said “The Future Mrs. Track Palin,” and her friend’s shirt said “Piper Can Do My Hair” (my memory may not be exact). There were also lots of special needs children and mothers present. One mother had a rather lovely and affecting sign with a picture of her son with Down syndrome that read “47 Chromosomes from Heaven.” Geraghty and I saw another woman with a sign that said “McCain Hero with a Heart and a Veep Just Like Me.” Just like me? Women really seem to identify with Palin. …
Jonah Goldberg on how lucky we are the crazy Dem left nominates their candidate.
… Psephologist and columnist Michael Barone noticed during the primaries that, with the exception of the black vote, Obama’s support within the Democratic party is comprised almost entirely of cultural liberals. He dubbed this intra-Democratic split a divide between “academics and Jacksonians.” The Jacksonians are working-class, culturally conservative whites. The academics are the same people who formed the base for Howard Dean, Bill Bradley, Michael Dukakis, Gary Hart, George McGovern, and other successful presidents in the anti-matter universe where Spock has a goatee. …
… He seems to have established a new Biden’s Law: if one makes enough gaffes, they soon reach a point that none of them matter. And even stranger is Biden’s Second Law of Politics: the more you sound obnoxious and offend, you soon reach a point where the shocked listener turns from anger to indifference and finally no less to empathy! …
This week The Economist bellwether state is Missouri.
AT A park in downtown St Louis, three women are drinking Bud Light and watching a demonstration of Scottish tossing-the-caber. It is a peaceful scene at the Festival of Nations, but worries simmer beneath the surface. The women supported Hillary Clinton, and are now undecided. Barack Obama is “a wonderful young man”, but inexperienced in foreign policy. John McCain is “honourable”, but perhaps not up to the task.
These are typical concerns from an average undecided voter in this state. Missouri has 5.8m people and 11 electoral votes. Its moderate size belies its traditional role in presidential elections. There are ways to win the White House without winning Missouri, but few candidates have managed it. The state has voted for the victor in 25 of the last 26 elections. The exception was in 1956, when America went for Dwight Eisenhower, a popular Republican war hero, in a landslide. Missourians gave it to Adlai Stevenson, a cerebral Democrat from neighbouring Illinois. …
Remember the hilarious movie Thank You For Smoking? Christopher Buckley, who wrote the book has written another. This time on the Supreme Court.
Think George W. Bush is unpopular? Pity Donald P. Vanderdamp, the blandly honest bowling enthusiast occupying the White House in “Supreme Courtship.” Congress, which has tagged him “Don Veto” for rejecting every spending bill that lands on his desk, hates him so much it’s trying to amend the Constitution to limit presidents to one term — beginning with him. And now a fresh collision awaits. President Vanderdamp has a Supreme Court seat to fill, and in a stroke of genius, he has nominated America’s most popular TV judge: Pepper Cartwright, star of “Courtroom Six.”
Beautiful and headstrong, Cartwright spews folksy Texas wisdom when not quoting Shakespeare, packs a LadySmith revolver and delivers judicial decisions from the hip. She was once a real judge — a good one — on the Los Angeles Superior Court before her husband-cum-producer, Buddy Bixby, plucked her from the bench and turned her into a star. “I doubt I’m qualified to be a clerk at the Supreme Court,” she admits in a news conference, though she’s better at the media rodeo than her adversaries on the Hill. They include Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dexter Mitchell, a shiny, botoxed Amtrak supporter from Connecticut who bears a passing resemblance to Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. (“Mitchell loved — lived — to talk”) and who is determined to quash Cartwright’s appointment, not least because he lusts after a seat on the court himself. …
Slate’s Explainer tells us who first put lipstick on a pig.