Category: The Dish

"I’m not naive about my country. My country is definitely not always right; my country has at times been terribly wrong. But I know this about Americans: We don’t set out to kill innocent people. We don’t cheer when innocent people die …

We may have the power of a giant, but we also have the heart of a good and generous people, and we will get through this. We will grieve for our dead, and tend to our wounded, and repair the damage, and tighten our security, and put our planes back in the air. Eventually most of us, the ones lucky enough not to have lost somebody, will resume our lives. Some day, our country will track down the rest of the monsters behind this, and make them pay, and I suppose that will make most of us feel a little better. But revenge and hatred won’t be why we’ll go on. We’ll go on because we know this is a good country, a country worth keeping.

Those who would destroy it only make us see more clearly how precious it is," – Dave Barry, September 13, 2001. Those sentiments are precisely why I view the introduction of torture as American policy as a victory, and not a defeat, for al Qaeda.

"Well aware that Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burdens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time; …

that our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that, therefore, the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to the offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which in common with his fellow citizens he has a natural right; that it tends also to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing, with a monopoly of worldly honors and emoluments, those who will externally profess and conform to it…

that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.

Be it therefore enacted by the General Assembly, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burdened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in nowise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities," – from the Virginia Act For Establishing Religious Freedom, by Thomas Jefferson.

A reader writes:

In a day of shock and disbelief, I vividly remember watching that Buckingham Palace band live. That was the moment I finally let go and wept. 

It was just so … odd to see the Buckingham Palace band playing our national anthem, and I was incredulous at the crowd of Britis standing in solidarity with us, crying for our loss. I was so happy we had friends around the globe, yet I couldn‚Äôt understand why so many non-Americans were saddened to the point of gathering in public. Then I realized that it was because they loved our country and loved our people. The world suddenly seemed smaller, less cold, less hostile. I didn‚Äôt feel alone.

Here’s Theo van Gogh’s short movie, Submission, about the brutal, unconscionable plight of women in radical Islam – and its threat to Western freedom. Van Gogh was murdered for this movie. Today, let’s keep his message alive.

Above is one of the cartoons the Islamists managed to bully the Western press into not printing. Its message is a valid, important, profound one: radical Islam’s subjugation of women. Send me anything – quotes, pics, YouTubes, links – you think might show al Qaeda that we aren’t afraid; and I’ll post the best.

No speeches or sermons or recollections from me today. Just a stream of posts designed to show what al Qaeda and the Islamo-fascists have not yet destroyed: our freedom as Westerners. Today’s blog is dedicated to showing Osama, Zawahiri, Nasrallah, Ahmadinejad and all the Islamist murderers and tyrants what they hate: evidence of resistance and of freedom – from the West, from moderate Muslims, from Jews, from women, from gays, and from all who seek freedom against theocratic tyranny. If you have a link, an item, a photo or a YouTube guaranteed to offend Islamist theocrats, please send them to me, and I’ll post. Check in throughout the day for images and words that will gall Islamists everywhere, quotes that reveal tenacity and lack of fear, videos that expose the failure of the medieval bigots who struck five years ago, tributes to people who have stood up to these bullies and who have shown that we have not submitted yet; and never will.

For starters – and a moment particularly poignant for me as an Anglo-American – here’s the Buckingham Palace band, playing the American national anthem after 9/11. If it re-summons some of the trans-Atlantic solidarity after the atrocity, then it’s a good way to start the day.

"Angie and I will consider tying the knot when everyone else in the country who wants to be married is legally able," – Brad Pitt. Thanks, Brad. I wish more opposite-sex couples would take the same stand – or go to Massachusetts to get married, the one state where equality is already here.

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent.  Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding," – Justice Brandeis, 1928.

"Men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." Who does that remind you of?

I’ve aired this viewpoint before – and it is, at least, something practical that might be done, while we are stymied from effective action or a competent executive for the next two years. From a reader:

There is another alternative: redeploy in Kurdistan, as Galbraith suggests. The US troops are wanted there, you can access the large oil fields of Kirkuk, and you’re still close enough with the troops to act as a genuine deterrent to both a meddling Iran or the Sunni cesspool in Baghdad.  It will be like enforcement of the no-fly zone, except with more muscle because they’ll still be troops on the ground, who will not be preoccupied with minding their backs in the midst of a civil war; things are relatively calm in Kurdistan. The peshmerga can still retain the job of internally policing Kurdistan, whilst the US can keep an eye on what’s going on in the rest of the region. It would be easy enough to deploy troops quickly in the event that Iran blockaded the Straits of Hormuz, or the Islamists seized the Saudi oil fields, or Israel was attacked by Iran and/or Syria (and their Hezbollah minions). This strikes me as the most elegant solution to a very messy problem right now.

Better than "whack-a-mole" because Rumsfeld won’t allow us to win.

The latest revelation that Donald Rumsfeld actually threatened to fire any subordinate who tried to come up with a post-invasion occupation plan makes me feel a little less crazy. Among the few posts airing theories about the bizarre decision-making by the Bush administration before I went on vacation, there was this one:

Some in the administration and among Bush-supporters, like me, believed in democratization as well as WMD-removal as twin pillars of the war. But the war-plan proves that this was not what Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush really had in mind. The most plausible interpretation is that they expected the discovered WMDs to provide complete justification for the war – and then wanted to get out as fast as possible, with a friendly exile like Chalabi installed. They wanted merely to send an intimidating signal.

For this and other attempts to make sense of Bush incoherence, I was described as demented, paranoid, etc. Of course, anyone who has read "Fiasco," or "Cobra II" will be less surprised. Fire. Rumsfeld. Now.