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Have we lost in Iraq? If we have, is that so bad? Some of our favorites have thoughts.
Tony Blankley is first.
… It would appear that the great divide in both public opinion and between politicians is not Republican-Democrat, liberal-conservative, pro or anti-Bush, or even pro or anti-war (or, in Europe: pro-or anti-American). Rather, the great divide is between those, such as me, who believe that the rise of radical Islam poses an existential threat to Western Civilization; and those who believe it is a nuisance, if, episodically, a very dangerous nuisance. …
Transterrestial Musings on the dems.
… The problem is that they won’t start acting in the national interest until, to paraphrase Golda Meir, they start loving their country more than they hunger for power and hate George Bush.
WSJ editorializes on the dem ownership of defeat.
… The stakes in Iraq are about the future of the entire Middle East–and of our inevitable involvement in it. In calling for withdrawal, Mr. Reid and his allies, just as with Vietnam, may think they are merely following polls that show the public is unhappy with the war. Yet Americans will come to dislike a humiliation and its aftermath even more, especially as they realize that a withdrawal from Iraq now will only make it harder to stabilize the region and defeat Islamist radicals. And they will like it even less should we be required to re-enter the country someday under far worse circumstances. …
Hugh Hewitt interviews the New Yorker contributor who wrote the book on the rise of al Qaeda.
What does the European left think of the dems idea of quitting Iraq? The Captain spots a piece in The Guardian.
The Guardian (UK) has relentlessly opposed the war in Iraq for the past four years and more, giving its readers on the Left a steady diet of bad news and angry opinion based on its editorial policy. British newspapers have an open editorial bias, and readers expect news from a point of view. Guardian readers may find themselves surprised today, however, to find a detailed explanation of all the reasons why the nations in the Middle East do not want an American withdrawal from Iraq …
Jim Taranto closes out the section.
Jonah Goldberg with a Corner post on jargon. From that he links to a 2002 column. We have that too.
… I think the strategic conceit of creating new buzzwords and jargon to protect bureaucrats, consultants and ideologues is one of the more fascinating constants of the human condition (I think Vaclav Havel wrote a play on this and Orwell was obviously a hero in the battle against this sort of thing.). If you don’t know the lingo, you’re on the outside. But often the only thing that justifies you’re outsider status is your ignorance of the lingo. Intellectuals, obviously, are the greatest culprits when it comes to using words as bouncers (I wrote a column about it here a long time ago), but as we move deeper into the New Economy, it’s only going to get worse. …
Tech Central has an item on Milton Friedman that morphs into a short history of The Foundation for Economic Education . FEE is a little known, but effective, group of free market scholars. Pickerhead grew up in New York reading the Times and The Saturday Review of Literature and was on his way to becoming an obnoxious north-east liberal. Until by chance, at the age of 15, discovered a FEE published copy of The Law by Frederic Bastiat.
Some of the things in the Tech Central piece did not ring true so we consulted a Pickings reader who was executive secretary of FEE for 15 years. His thoughts are here too.
It’s FEE night at Pickings. John Stossel’s column on the environment links to The Freeman published by FEE.
… John Semmens of Arizona’s Laissez Faire Institute points out that Earth Day misses an important point. In the April issue of The Freeman magazine, Semmens says the environmental movement overlooks how hospitable the earth has become — thanks to technology. “The environmental alarmists have it backwards. If anything imperils the earth it is ignorant obstruction of science and progress. … That technology provides the best option for serving human wants and conserving the environment should be evident in the progress made in environmental improvement in the United States. Virtually every measure shows that pollution is headed downward and that nature is making a comeback.” (Carbon dioxide excepted, if it is really a pollutant.)
Semmens describes his visit to historic Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts, an area “lush with trees and greenery.” It wasn’t always that way. In 1775, the land was cleared so it could be farmed. Today, technology makes farmers so efficient that only a fraction of the land is needed to produce much more food. As a result, “Massachusetts farmland has been allowed to revert back to forest.” …
Riehl World warns of a new global warming scam.
Division of Labour has ideas for Africa from NY Times’ Thomas Friedman and Don Boudreaux of Cafe Hayek.