Free Frank Warner

Doctors accidentally find way to restore memories

This is almost eerie.

A 50 year old man, dangerously obese, goes to the hospital for experimental brain surgery to suppress his appetite. A small piece of his skull is removed, and an electrical probe inserted deep into his brain tissue. It reaches his hypothalamus and current is switched on. Suddenly the patient -- awake through the procedure -- begins to speak uncontrollably about events in his past, events he had long forgotten. He remembers a day's walk in the park 30 years ago, complete with what people were wearing, all in vivid color. He sees them speaking to him, every motion they made. The intensity and level of detail of the memories is frightening.

The scene may read like the script of a bad science fiction flick but it comes from an unidentified patient at Ontario's Toronto Western Hospital.

If this really works, imagine what it could do for Alzheimer's patients, or for otherwise healthy people who just have something important to remember.

Frank Warner

One of first Iwo Jima flag raisers dies

U.S. Marine Radioman Raymond Jacobs, who helped raise the first American flag on Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima, on Feb. 23, 1945, reportedly died today.

Jacobs was part of the first group of Marines to raise a flag at Mount Suribachi. Pictures were taken, but they were little noticed at the time. A little later the same day, a second flag-raising was captured in a much more artistically dramatic photograph, which came to represent the Marines’ commitment to victory.

The full story of the Iwo Jima flag-raisings probably is most accurately told in the recent motion picture, “Flags of Our Fathers.” But in the end, it didn’t really matter who raised the first flag. What mattered to those Marines was that the flags were raised in Day 5 of what turned out to be a bloody 35-day battle, in which 21,000 Japanese and 7,000 Americans died.

By winning Iwo Jima, the Marines won two key airfields, which helped give the Allies the advantage for the rest of the war. Radioman Jacobs was part of that great victory of freedom.

Frank Warner

Max Boot: We haven’t won in Iraq

It seems to me the Iraq war is won, as long as we don’t lose on purpose. Max Boot says we haven’t won. Maybe he’s saying the same thing, but he has the details.

Boot has some especially interesting observations since his return from an 11-day visit. First, sobering news from northern Iraq, the new Sunni Arab battleground:

The growing security in Baghdad allowed U.S. commanders to move a second battalion up to Mosul to address the threat. Now U.S. forces are pushing into west Mosul, a predominantly Sunni Arab area that has become an al Qaeda stronghold. (Eastern Mosul, with a heavily Kurdish population, is more peaceful.)

As we drove the streets of west Mosul in a Humvee, I saw IED-scarred roads flooded from broken water mains--something I had last seen in Ramadi in April 2007. In many areas, shops were closed and no people were visible on the streets.

While getting a briefing on the security station at Combat Outpost Eagle, a fortified building located in the heart of west Mosul and jointly manned by Iraqi and American troops, we heard an explosion in the distance. It was an OH-58 Kiowa helicopter firing a Hellfire missile at a truck that was stuffed with munitions. Five of the seven men inside the vehicle were killed in the initial strike, but two managed to get out and take refuge in a neighboring building. U.S. troops arrived on the scene, and missiles and tank shells poured into the building. One of the terrorists was shot while trying to sneak out, while the other one blew himself up with a suicide vest. ...

My bleak impressions of northern Iraq were reinforced the next day while visiting Bayji, site of an important oil refinery in Salahaddin province. There are too few American and Iraqi troops stationed here to control a city with a population of 140,000, and it shows.

12 battalions withdrawing. Boot says this about what it will take to keep the enemy from turning the tide:

[A] number of officers scattered across the country independently used the phrase "perfect storm" to describe what might happen this summer with a reduction in the CLC ranks.

This worst-case scenario centers around the planned reduction of U.S. forces from 170,000 (20 brigade combat teams) to the pre-surge level of 140,000 (15 brigade combat teams). In Baghdad this could mean a cut from 32 battalions to 20. Can the security situation continue to improve with one-fourth of the coalition force withdrawn? We will soon find out, since the drawdown will be finished by mid-July. ...

After almost two years in power, Maliki is getting poor reviews. Iraqi and American officials alike complain about his reliance on a small coterie of hardline Shiite aides with close ties to Iran. He is building up the prime minister's office into its own power center while shunning the ministries that are supposed to be in charge of governance (and that are mainly in the hands of other parties). For instance, he has created a parallel defense ministry known as the Office of the Commander in Chief that answers to him personally, and he has put Shiite sectarians in charge of the Implementation and Follow-up Committee for National Reconciliation, which vets new recruits to the security forces. ...

There is also the danger that if Maliki were toppled the Iraqi parliament would be paralyzed for months, as happened in the first half of 2006 when the previous prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, was ousted. That period saw a staggering increase in violence--an experience that no one wants to repeat. For now both the Americans and the other Iraqi political parties are resigned to working with Maliki. ...

One cause for cheer is how adept American forces have become at counterinsurgency operations and how deeply they have come to understand Iraqi society. Their level of effectiveness is light years ahead of where it was when I first visited Iraq in August 2003. The senior American commanders--General David Petraeus and Lieutenant General Ray Odierno (who is about to be reassigned)--are outstanding. Petraeus, in particular, should be remembered as the Matthew Ridgway of this war, rescuing a failing war effort just as Ridgway rescued the United States in the Korean War. But similar skill and even greater bravery is displayed every day by tens of thousands of lower-ranking officers and enlisted personnel who have embraced their largely "non-kinetic" counterinsurgency mission. Sergeant Adam Farmer, an 82nd Airborne soldier stationed in the Adhamiya neighborhood of Baghdad for the past year, spoke for many grunts when he said of his soldiers, "Deep down they believe in the mission of extracting the s--heads from this area."

Bush, the hero man. Boot quotes Iraqi Colonel Abbas Fadhil, commander of the Besmaya Range Complex, an Iraqi army training center, who said:

"All soldiers say Mr. President George Bush is the hero man in the world," Abbas told us in fractured English. "He's fighting on behalf of all the world, not just Iraq. Mr. President Bush is fighting on behalf of humanity. .  .  . America was the only country in the world that decided to help the people of Iraq. Under Saddam we had a very black future. We had no refrigerators, no electricity. We lived like the cow. .  .  . Now we have a future."

Boot concludes:

By helping leaders like Abbas, the United States has a real chance to secure a historic victory in Iraq--one that would deal a heavy blow to Sunni and Shiite extremists alike. But only if we don't pull out too many forces too soon, whether motivated by the illusion that we have already won or the delusion that we can never win. The reality is that we are winning but that the war is far from over. We need to make a long-term commitment to prevent Iraq from sliding back into the kind of civil war that began to erupt in 2006.

And Boot has many more valuable insights. Check them out.

Frank Warner

John Edwards quits, Hillary Clinton wins nomination

With John Edwards pulling out of the Democratic primaries, Hillary Clinton now has a formidable coalition of Democratic status quo conservatives, Democratic dynastic monarchists and Democrats pseudo-liberals eager to close their eyes to make all the world’s problems go away. She effectively has won the Democratic nomination.

By the way, has Hillary Clinton ever said anything inspiring? I just saw her on TV, asking for the votes of Edwards supporters. Could speeches be any drier? President Bush has a tendency to stumble into poor word choices, but occasionally he comes out with a few gems of simplicity and wisdom. Clinton chooses her words carefully. She focuses all her energy on not saying the wrong thing, or saying the ambiguous thing. There’s nothing inspiring about that.

We could do worse for a president. (Heck, two nights ago, she applauded the success of the Iraq surge.) But could we do any duller?

Frank Warner

Melitus Mugabe Were tried to make peace in Kenya

In the chaos that followed Kenya’s disputed Dec. 27 elections, Melitus Mugabe Were attempted to bring the various ethnic groups together.

Yesterday, he was dragged from his car and killed.

It’s a sad fact that a relatively small number of thrill-seekers can band together with a few angry young men to destroy the peace for all. Kenya is collapsing.

Frank Warner

On those 16 words 5 years ago: A question no one has asked President Bush

If you get a chance to ask President Bush one question, it should be this:

Who in the White House was the one to recommend that the president take back the famous 16 words of the Jan. 28, 2003, State of the Union address? The words, which turned out to be well founded, were: “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

Someone on Bush’s staff recommended the statement that “Saddam … sought … uranium from Africa” be recanted. Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, on July 7, 2003, told the press that that sentence in the State of the Union message was “incorrect.” Four days later National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said “knowing what we now know … we wouldn’t have put this in the president’s speech.” But they didn’t “now know” anything.

True after all. In fact, the 16 words were true. A year later, both the British Butler Commission and the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee confirmed the existence of good evidence that Saddam indeed sought uranium in Africa.

The obvious explanation for the White House disavowing a correct statement is panic. Joseph Wilson, who had taken a CIA-paid trip to Niger in 2002, was running around claiming the president’s words were “false,” and Wilson was mixing in misleading reports of forged documents. On reading Wilson’s claims, someone in the White House went into over-protection mode. After all, the unnamed someone thought, the information came from Britain, not the CIA, so maybe British intelligence got it wrong. The panicky one hastily recommended that the White House retract the 16 words to avoid getting burned -- but got burned bigtime in the process.

Who was that panicky one? Just for history’s sake, would someone please ask the president?

Frank Warner

* * *

Follow-up question: Why, when the White House had a chance to recant its recanting in 2004, did it not?

McCain and Clinton win in Florida. What does it mean to Iraq?

What does it mean that Florida voters picked John McCain and Hillary Clinton as their choices for presidential finalists?

Does it mean Floridan voters want to secure the total victory of democracy in Iraq? Or does it mean they want to pull out most U.S. troops this year and let the Iraqis deal with the chaos that would return?

Considering how McCain and Mitt Romney are not that far apart on the liberation of Iraq (despite McCain’s claims), and considering how Clinton actually is tougher on Iraq’s fascists than Barack Obama, perhaps a thread of responsibility is running through these primary election results.

Frank Warner

President Bush: Trust the people, they’ll choose freedom

President Bush went with the “trust the people” theme in his State of the Union message last night. It’s not a bad way to tie together the benefits of freedom.

On the fight to free the oppressed and defeat the oppressors, he said:

Our foreign policy is based on a clear premise: We trust that people, when given the chance, will choose a future of freedom and peace. In the last seven years, we have witnessed stirring moments in the history of liberty. We've seen citizens in Georgia and Ukraine stand up for their right to free and fair elections. We've seen people in Lebanon take to the streets to demand their independence. We've seen Afghans emerge from the tyranny of the Taliban and choose a new president and a new parliament. We've seen jubilant Iraqis holding up ink-stained fingers and celebrating their freedom. These images of liberty have inspired us.

In the past seven years, we've also seen images that have sobered us. We've watched throngs of mourners in Lebanon and Pakistan carrying the caskets of beloved leaders taken by the assassin's hand. We've seen wedding guests in blood-soaked finery staggering from a hotel in Jordan, Afghans and Iraqis blown up in mosques and markets, and trains in London and Madrid ripped apart by bombs. On a clear September day, we saw thousands of our fellow citizens taken from us in an instant. These horrific images serve as a grim reminder: The advance of liberty is opposed by terrorists and extremists -- evil men who despise freedom, despise America, and aim to subject millions to their violent rule.

Since 9/11, we have taken the fight to these terrorists and extremists. We will stay on the offense, we will keep up the pressure, and we will deliver justice to our enemies.

We are engaged in the defining ideological struggle of the 21st century. The terrorists oppose every principle of humanity and decency that we hold dear. Yet in this war on terror, there is one thing we and our enemies agree on: In the long run, men and women who are free to determine their own destinies will reject terror and refuse to live in tyranny. And that is why the terrorists are fighting to deny this choice to the people in Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Palestinian Territories. And that is why, for the security of America and the peace of the world, we are spreading the hope of freedom....

In Iraq, the terrorists and extremists are fighting to deny a proud people their liberty, and fighting to establish safe havens for attacks across the world. One year ago, our enemies were succeeding in their efforts to plunge Iraq into chaos. So we reviewed our strategy and changed course. We launched a surge of American forces into Iraq. We gave our troops a new mission: Work with the Iraqi forces to protect the Iraqi people, pursue the enemy in its strongholds, and deny the terrorists sanctuary anywhere in the country.

The Iraqi people quickly realized that something dramatic had happened. Those who had worried that America was preparing to abandon them instead saw tens of thousands of American forces flowing into their country. They saw our forces moving into neighborhoods, clearing out the terrorists, and staying behind to ensure the enemy did not return. And they saw our troops, along with Provincial Reconstruction Teams that include Foreign Service officers and other skilled public servants, coming in to ensure that improved security was followed by improvements in daily life. Our military and civilians in Iraq are performing with courage and distinction, and they have the gratitude of our whole nation.

The Iraqis launched a surge of their own. In the fall of 2006, Sunni tribal leaders grew tired of al Qaeda's brutality and started a popular uprising called "The Anbar Awakening." Over the past year, similar movements have spread across the country. And today, the grassroots surge includes more than 80,000 Iraqi citizens who are fighting the terrorists. The government in Baghdad has stepped forward, as well -- adding more than 100,000 new Iraqi soldiers and police during the past year.

While the enemy is still dangerous and more work remains, the American and Iraqi surges have achieved results few of us could have imagined just one year ago. (Applause.) When we met last year, many said that containing the violence was impossible. A year later, high profile terrorist attacks are down, civilian deaths are down, sectarian killings are down. ...

Last month, Osama bin Laden released a tape in which he railed against Iraqi tribal leaders who have turned on al Qaeda and admitted that coalition forces are growing stronger in Iraq. Ladies and gentlemen, some may deny the surge is working, but among the terrorists there is no doubt. Al Qaeda is on the run in Iraq, and this enemy will be defeated.

When we met last year, our troop levels in Iraq were on the rise. Today, because of the progress just described, we are implementing a policy of "return on success," and the surge forces we sent to Iraq are beginning to come home. 

Freedom count: 22. In this speech, Bush used the word “freedom” 10 times, “liberty” eight times and “democracy” four times. Trusting in free people remains important to him, as it should be to any American president.

Frank Warner

Ted Kennedy ignites Democratic civil war

Sen. Ted Kennedy today declared that the 2008 struggle for the Democratic presidential nomination is not over. It’s a battle between fears and hope, old and new, stuffy and fresh, status quo and change.

Kennedy said:

“With Barack Obama, we will turn the page on the old politics of misrepresentation and distortion.

“With Barack Obama we will close the book on the old politics of race against race, gender against gender, ethnic group against ethnic group, and straight against gay. …

“There was another time, when another young candidate was running for president and challenging America to cross a new frontier. He faced criticism from the preceding Democratic president [Harry Truman], who was widely respected in the party. …

“And John Kennedy replied, ‘The world is changing. The old ways will not do. ... It is time for a new generation of leadership.’

“So it is with Barack Obama. …

“I believe that a wave of change is moving across America.”

The downside. Kennedy also reminded everyone that Obama was mildly opposed to the liberation of Iraq in 2002. That foolishness and general inexperience can be held against Obama. But in a political party led by appeasers and selfish cynics, he can be forgiven for occasional anti-liberation hysteria.

Now that General Petraeus has made it safe to vote for a Democrat, this Obama looks promising. But perhaps not in 2008. The Clintons have called in the steamroller.

It’s war.

Frank Warner

The Kennedys like Barack Obama

It’s lovely to hear that Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg has appealed to her father’s sense of idealism in her endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama for president.

Dropping the Schlossberg name for a The New York Times op-ed, she writes:

Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves, to tie that belief to our highest ideals and imagine that together we can do great things. In those rare moments, when such a person comes along, we need to put aside our plans and reach for what we know is possible.

We have that kind of opportunity with Senator Obama. It isn’t that the other candidates are not experienced or knowledgeable. But this year, that may not be enough. We need a change in the leadership of this country — just as we did in 1960.

Trial by flame. Caroline’s uncle, Ted Kennedy, today also is expected to throw his support behind Obama. I have the feeling these endorsements can’t stop the Hillary Clinton juggernaut, but Obama’s trial by fire could be like Jack Kennedy’s experience in 1956, when he lost a bid for the vice presidential nomination.

For the life of me, I don’t understand how Clinton wins Democratic primaries, but then again I have to question my own judgment when I root for Obama, who has youthful charisma but really has never taken the lead on any major worthy cause.

What we’re seeing this year, I guess, is a test.

Frank Warner

Still figuring out Heath Ledger’s $24,000 a month rent

How was it worth it that actor Heath Ledger paid $24,000 a month for his Broome Street apartment in SoHo, Manhattan?

That’s $800 rent a day for four months until Jan. 22, when he died there. What possibly could make a three-bedroom apartment worth that much?

We know he had a masseuse, a housekeeper, some skateboards, a mattress on the floor, and those six kinds of prescription drugs. OK, that might have done it.

Frank Warner

Why would dolphins kill babies?

Beautiful, intelligent dolphins ram and kill baby porpoises, and they even kill baby dolphins.

Why? And why did this phenomenon seem to be confined to the coasts of Virginia and northeast Scotland? Off Virginia, the deaths initially were blamed on U.S. Navy exercises. Off Scotland, animal lovers blamed oil rig technicians. The teeth marks -- and new video -- finally proved the dolphins did it.

Marine experts can’t figure it out. Food is not in short supply to these dolphins, but these marine mammals commonly kill porpoise babies and dolphin infants.

‘Look at ’em play.’ The experts are coming to the conclusion dolphins always did this, and probably do it everywhere. Years ago, we humans probably saw the dolphins killing baby dolphins, but it was from such a distance that we couldn’t make out what was going on.

Scientists say we had such respect for dolphins we assumed they were playing with their young. They were killing them!

(Remember The Twilight Zone’s “It was a cook book!”?)

Frank Warner

Retired Gen. Jimmy Cash has one thing to say: Stop Iran

Retired Air Force Gen. Jimmy Cash, who once had charge of monitoring all foreign missile launches for possible nuclear attack, boils down the global war on terror.

There are eight terror-sponsoring countries that make up the grand threat to the West. Two, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan just need firm pressure from the West to make major reforms. They need to decide who they are really going to support and commit to that support.

That answer is simple. They both will support who they think will hang in there until the end, and win.

We are not sending very good signals in that direction right now, thanks to the Democrats.

The other six, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea and Libya will require regime change or a major policy shift. Now, let’s look more closely.

Afghanistan and Iraq have both had regime changes, but are being fueled by outsiders from Syria and Iran . We have scared Gaddafi’s pants off, and he has given up his quest for nuclear weapons, so I don’t think Libya is now a threat.

North Korea (the non-Islamic threat) can be handled diplomatically by buying them off. They are starving. That leaves Syria and Iran. Syria is like a frightened puppy. Without the support of Iran they will join the stronger side. So where does that leave us? Sooner, or later, we are going to be forced to confront Iran, and it better be before they gain nuclear capability.

Stakes and mistakes. Cash doesn’t believe President Bush has articulated well what’s at stake if Iran’s theocratic dictatorship is not neutralized and if we start backsliding in Iraq and other fronts. And he doesn’t believe the Democrats are either ready or willing to act decisively and helpfully.

Cash says the democracies must win. He worries that, if the Democrats really withdraw all U.S. troops from the Middle East next year, Iran could take control of much more of that region’s oil and choke the West back to the 1930s and worse. That’s one reason the retired general also wants the U.S. to start immediately building more nuclear plants and drilling new oil wells.

I think Cash might be exaggerating the Democrats’ chances of pulling the rug out from the Middle East, if they put a Democrat in the White House in a year. But he can go only by what the presidential candidates are saying, and the Democrats do talk a lot about withdrawal.

The only choice. The general’s bottom line:

A President must make the war decision wisely, and insure that the cause is right before using his last political option.

HOWEVER, CONTROLLING IRAN AND DEMOCRATIZING THE MIDDLE EAST IS THE ONLY CHOICE IF WE ARE HELL-BENT ON DEPENDING ON THEM FOR OUR FUTURE ENERGY NEEDS.

No oil for bastards. We don’t want to steal anyone’s oil. But we can’t ignore illegitimate regimes who use oil to fund oppression and destroy democracy. Let the people of the Middle East control their oil -- in freedom.

Frank Warner

So Bush didn’t lie? Saddam said he pretended he had WMDs to scare off Iran

CBS’ “60 Minutes” on Sunday will carry an interview with George Piro, the FBI agent who interrogated Saddam Hussein for months after his December 2003 capture.

Saddam still wouldn’t admit he had no weapons of mass destruction, even when it was obvious there would be military action against him because of the perception he did. Because, says Piro, “For him, it was critical that he was seen as still the strong, defiant Saddam. He thought that [faking having the weapons] would prevent the Iranians from reinvading Iraq,” he tells [reporter Scott] Pelley.

He also intended and had the wherewithal to restart the weapons program. “[Saddam] still had the engineers. The folks that he needed to reconstitute his program are still there,” says Piro. “He wanted to pursue all of WMD…to reconstitute his entire WMD program.” This included chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, Piro says.

Wait a minute. Saddam acted as if he had WMDs, and probably told aides he had WMDs, and ran his armed forces as if they had WMDs? You mean, it really appeared as if Saddam had WMDs? President Bush and the CIA reasonably concluded that Saddam had WMDs? You mean, Bush didn’t lie? No!

So when Saddam didn’t cooperate fully and immediately with United Nations arms inspectors to prove he had no WMDs, the U.S. took the only action that would (1) punish Saddam’s violation of U.N. resolutions and (2) find out once and for all whether Saddam had WMDs?

And wasn’t the more important objective of the 2003 invasion to remove a totalitarian regime and replace it with democracy? After all, Saddam was violating U.N. Resolution 688, which required him to end his repression.

The nature of dictatorship. As Piro’s interrogations of Saddam reveal, the real problem in Iraq wasn’t the WMDs, which killed relatively few of Saddam’s victims. The problem was the secretive and unaccountable nature of its tyrannical regime.

That had to change. If your government has no free press, no opposition parties and no independent courts to check your ruler’s claims, and no constitution and free elections to throw out your ruler when he lies and murders, you are in hopelessly big trouble.

Five years ago, that’s where Iraq was.

Frank Warner

Robert Reich says Bill Clinton also said GOP had all the ideas

Robert Reich, U.S. labor secretary during the Clinton administration, says Bill Clinton is forgetting his own arguments, in the 1990s, that the Republican Party was the one with the ideas.

Reich says Clinton should stop attacking Barack Obama for saying the same thing. Reich makes pretty much the same point I made earlier today. He writes:

[T]he attack ads being run in South Carolina by the Clinton camp which quote Obama as saying Republicans had all the ideas under Reagan, is disingenuous. For years, Bill Clinton and many other leading Democrats have made precisely the same point – that starting in the Reagan administration, Republicans put forth a range of new ideas while the Democrats sat on their hands. Many of these ideas were wrong-headed and dangerous, such as supply-side economics. But for too long Democrats failed counter with new ideas of their own; they wrongly assumed that the old Democratic positions and visions would be enough. Clinton’s 1992 campaign – indeed, the entire “New Democratic” message of the 1990s – was premised on the importance of taking back the initiative from the Republicans and offering Americans a new set of ideas and principles. Now, sadly, we’re witnessing a smear campaign against Obama that employs some of the worst aspects of the old politics.

Reich has been an interestingly independent voice during this election campaign. Among other things, he has pointed out that, as the gap between rich and poor widens, the rich of the richest are the hedge-fund managers, from whom Democrats receive more contributions than Republicans. The hedge-fund managers apparently want to keep their tax advantage. Their profits are taxed at about half the tax rate of regular income. And the Democrats aren’t refusing the contributions.

As Bill Clinton can see, Reich is not looking for a job in the next Clinton administration.

Frank Warner

Daniel Patrick Moynihan also called GOP the party of ideas

Much has been made of Barack Obama pointing out that the Republican Party has been the party of ideas -- bad and good -- for the last 10 or 15 years.

Apparently, my hero, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, said the same thing in 1981.

Moynihan, a New York Democrat who held the U.S. Senate seat now occupied by Hillary Clinton, was what I call an open-eyed liberal. He studied social problems in detail (The breakdown of the two-parent family puzzled him most) in the liberal hope of finding enlightened solutions.

The will to solve. But what Moynihan saw as Republican ideas really was the Republican willingness to try something, anything -- tax cuts, toughness against totalitarianism, reduced regulation, welfare reform -- to shake up the status quo.

In the early 1990s, a few Democrats saw merit to some of the Republican ideas and came up with practical alternatives of their own. The Democratic Leadership Council, with Bill Clinton as one of its champions, took a shot at open-eyed liberalism.

Clinton did push a few of the DLC’s ideas as president. He repeatedly made the case for two-parent families. He signed welfare reform, encouraged the chronically jobless to get jobs. He even had a balanced budget in 2000. Nevertheless, many of his accomplishments looked more Republican than Democrat, and the conventional wisdom still was that the Republicans were the ones to ask for ideas.

Status quo Democrats. Today, it does little to recommend the Democrats that many of their leaders are unwilling to do anything significant about the biggest problems confronting us. Energy crisis? Don’t build nuclear plants. Don’t set up windmills. Global warming? Just sign Kyoto, but don’t do anything. Dictatorships enslaving half the globe? Ignore the screams. Social Security and Medicare crumbling? By all means, do nothing.

That’s closed-eyed liberalism. Shut your eyes, wish your problems away, and blame someone else when the problems only get worse. If someone else attempts a solution, throw up roadblocks and complain.

Now, of all our presidential candidates this year, who really is spelling out the problems honestly, and who really is offering solutions that have a chance of working?

Who has an idea?

Frank Warner

Nevada Hispanics bail out on Obama

A recent study found minority groups tend to hold prejudices against other minority groups. The Nevada Democratic caucus, in which Hispanics appear to have abandoned Barack Obama, is further evidence of this phenomenon.

It makes no sense, but what about prejudice makes sense?

Frank Warner

Congressional Budget Office forecasts no recession, but we’ll fix it anyway

Congress is willing to borrow $150 billion – adding to this year’s expected $219 billion budget deficit – to fix a recession that isn’t there.

The Congressional Budget Office says a recession isn’t’ coming. Reuters reports:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The slowing U.S. economy is unlikely to sink into an election-year recession and an economic rebound could begin as early as next year as housing and financial market turmoil fades, the Congressional Budget Office forecast on Wednesday.

In the meantime, the U.S. budget deficit will grow to $219 billion this year, up from the $163 billion registered last year, according to a CBO report submitted to Congress. But that forecast by Congress' nonpartisan budget analyst does not include the cost of an economic stimulus measure that is quickly moving through Congress and could cost around $150 billion or more. The deficit projection for fiscal 2008, which ends September 30, also does not include more money Congress is likely to approve this year for the war in Iraq.

While CBO noted an elevated risk of recession, its outlook was weighted more toward the United States working through its current economic problems and escaping a full-blown recession.

I thought a “stimulus package” might be a good idea, but if the signs of recession are that weak, borrowing that much more money is more likely to undermine confidence in the U.S. economy than bolster it.

Investors, here and abroad, want to see a U.S. economy that is paying its bills and preparing to pay for rising Social Security and Medicare costs. Investors don’t want to bet on any organization whose only solution to everything is debt.

Frank Warner

Bin Laden’s son says dad shouldn’t kill civilians, but he’s no terrorist

Osama bin Laden’s playboy son, Omar, says his father is no terrorist, but he probably should stop killing civilians.

“I try and say to my father: ‘Try to find another way to help or find your goal. This bomb, this weapon, it’s not good to use it for anybody.’ I don’t think 9/11 was right personally but it happened.”

This deadly thinking passes as logic in Egypt, but Omar, let’s say I flew a jet into the Cairo Tower, killing everyone in it. Am I a hero or a terrorist?

Frank Warner

Democratic debate: Obama and Clinton now pretend they hated Reagan

I hope you saw some of the Democratic presidential candidates’ debate last night. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama finally went at it over Ronald Reagan (or not).

Here’s the CNN transcript. As you read it, keep in mind that Reagan had something to do with winning the Cold War. Also keep in mind that President Bill Clinton had a love-hate relationship with the national debt.

In other words, keep in mind that Clinton and Obama really aren’t talking about how much they disliked Reagan (recently listed in Hillary’s Top 10 presidents of all time). They’re talking about how much they dislike each other:

OBAMA: What she said wasn’t true.

MODERATOR: She says that the new programs that she proposes she essentially can pay for.  She says that you have failed in that regard in the tune of some $50 billion worth of new programs that you cannot account for.

How do you respond to that charge?

OBAMA:  What she said wasn’t true.  We account for every single dollar that we propose.

Now, this, I think, is one of the things that's happened during the course of this campaign, that there's a set of assertions made by Senator Clinton, as well as her husband, that are not factually accurate.

And I think that part of what the people are looking for right now is somebody who's going to solve problems and not resort to the same typical politics that we've seen in Washington.

(APPLAUSE)

That is something that I hear all across the country.  So when Senator Clinton says — or President Clinton says — that I wasn’t opposed to the war from the start or says it's a fairy tale that I opposed the war, that is simply not true.

When Senator Clinton or President Clinton asserts that I said that the Republicans had had better economic policies since 1980, that is not the case.

Now, the viewers aren't concerned with this kind of back-and-forth.  What they're concerned about is who's actually going to help the get health care, how are they going to get their kids...

(APPLAUSE)

... going to college, and that's the kind of campaign I've tried to run.  I think that's the kind of campaign we should all try to run.

(APPLAUSE)

CLINTON:  Well, I couldn't agree more.  But I do think that your record and what you say does matter.  And when it comes to...

(APPLAUSE)

... a lot of the issues that are important in this race, it is sometimes difficult to understand what Senator Obama has said, because as soon as he is confronted on it, he says that's not what he meant.

The facts are that he has said in the last week that he really liked the ideas of the Republicans over the last 10 to 15 years, and we can give you the exact quote. Now, I personally think they had ideas, but they were bad ideas. They were bad ideas for America.

(APPLAUSE)

They were ideas like privatizing Social Security, like moving back from a balanced budget and a surplus to deficit and debt.

And with respect to putting forth how one would pay for all of the programs that we're proposing in this campaign, I will be more than happy, Barack, to get the information, because we have searched for it.

You have a lot of money that you want to put into foreign aid, a very worthy program.  There is no evidence from your Web site, from your speeches, as to how you would pay for it.

Now, why is this important?  It's important because I think elections are about the future.  But how do you determine what will happen in the future?  Well, you have to look to the record, you have to look to what we say in campaigns, and what we have done during our careers.

And I want to be just very explicit about this.  We are not, neither my campaign nor anyone associated with it, are in any way saying you did not oppose the war in Iraq.

You did.  You gave a great speech in 2002 opposing the war in Iraq.  That was not what the point of our criticism was.

It was after having given that speech, by the next year the speech was off your Web site.  By the next year, you were telling reporters that you agreed with President Bush in his conduct of the war.  And by the next year, when you were in the Senate, you were voting to fund the war time after time after time.

BLITZER:  All right.

CLINTON:  So it was more about the distinction between words and action.  And I think that is a fair assessment for voters to make.

(APPLAUSE)

BLITZER:  OK.  Thank you, Senator.  Senator, we're a little off topic.  I have to let Senator Obama respond, then Senator Edwards, who's going to come...

OBAMA:  We're off topic, but...

BLITZER:  But go ahead and respond, and then I want to get back to this issue that we're talking about, fiscal responsibility.  But go ahead.

OBAMA: Let's talk about it.

Hillary, I will be happy to provide you with the information about all — all the spending that we do.  Now, let's talk about Ronald Reagan.  What you just repeated here today is...

CLINTON:  Barack...

OBAMA:  Wait.  No.  Hillary, you just spoke.

CLINTON:  I did not say anything about Ronald Reagan.

OBAMA:  You just spoke for two minutes.

CLINTON:  You said two things.

OBAMA: You just...

CLINTON:  You talked about admiring Ronald Reagan and you talked about the ideas...

OBAMA:  Hillary, I'm sorry.  You just...

BLITZER:  Senator...

CLINTON:  I didn't talk about Reagan.

OBAMA:  Hillary, we just had the tape.  You just said that I complimented the Republican ideas.  That is not true.

What I said — and I will provide you with a quote — what I said was is that Ronald Reagan was a transformative political figure because he was able to get Democrats to vote against their economic interests to form a majority to push through their agenda, an agenda that I objected to.  Because while I was working on those streets watching those folks see their jobs shift overseas, you were a corporate lawyer sitting on the board at Wal-Mart.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA:  I was fighting these fights.  I was fighting these fights.  So — but I want to be clear.

So I want to be clear.  What I said had nothing to do with their policies.  I spent a lifetime fighting a lifetime against Ronald Reagan's policies.  But what I did say is that we have to be thinking in the same transformative way about our Democratic agenda.

We've got to appeal to Independents and Republicans in order to build a working majority to move an agenda forward.  That is what I
said.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA:  Now, you can dispute that, but let me finish.

Hillary, you went on for two minutes.  Let me finish.

The irony of this is that you provided much more fulsome praise of Ronald Reagan in a book by Tom Brokaw that's being published right now, as did — as did Bill Clinton in the past.  So these are the kinds of political games that we are accustomed to.

CLINTON:  Now, wait a minute.

Wolf, wait a minute.  Wait a minute.  Just a minute.

BLITZER: Senator Edwards, let them wrap up.  Then I'm going to come to you.

Yes?

CLINTON:  I just want — I just to clarify — I want to clarify the record.  Wait a minute.

EDWARDS:  There's a third person in this debate.

BLITZER:  Wait a minute, Senator Edwards.  Hold on.

There has been a specific charge leveled against Hillary Clinton, so she can respond.  Then I'll bring in Senator Edwards.

CLINTON:  I just want to be sure...

OBAMA:  Go ahead and address what you said about...

BLITZER:  We have got a long time to.  You'll have a good opportunity.

CLINTON:  We're just getting warmed up.

(APPLAUSE)

CLINTON:  Now, I just — I just want to be clear about this.  In an editorial board with the Reno newspaper, you said two different things, because I have read the transcript.  You talked about Ronald Reagan being a transformative political leader.  I did not mention his
name.

OBAMA: Your husband did.

CLINTON:  Well, I'm here.  He's not.  And...

OBAMA:  OK.  Well, I can't tell who I'm running against sometimes.

(APPLAUSE)

CLINTON:  Well, you know, I think we both have very passionate and committed spouses who stand up for us.  And I'm proud of that.

But you also talked about the Republicans having ideas over the last 10 to 15 years.

OBAMA:  I didn't say they were good ones.

CLINTON:  Well, you can read the context of it.

OBAMA: Well, I didn't say they were good ones.

CLINTON:  Well, it certainly...

OBAMA:  All right, Wolf.

CLINTON:  It certainly came across in the way that it was presented, as though the Republicans had been standing up against the conventional wisdom with their ideas.  I'm just reacting to the fact, yes, they did have ideas, and they were bad ideas.

OBAMA:  I agree.

CLINTON:  Bad for America, and I was fighting against those ideas when you were practicing law and representing your contributor, Rezko, in his slum landlord business in inner-city Chicago.
(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA:  No, no, no.

Hey, this campaign might avoid the big issues as much as most campaigns. But it sure is interesting.

Frank Warner

No pull-out polls left, the Iraq war is won

It’s Jan. 21, 2008, less than a year before President Bush leaves office. The march of time and progress ends the Democratic defeatists’ dream of losing the Iraq war to the fascists.

No credible poll has ever found a majority of the American public in favor of withdrawing most or all U.S. troops from Iraq within a year. That means the weak hearts in Congress no longer have a poll to point to when they insist on surrender in a year. Bush can go ahead and build on the success of the “surge.”

A new round of public opinion polls will be coming out next month and in March to examine U.S. attitudes on Iraq five years into the invasion and democratization of that nation. Unless the questions are framed in the oddest way, there’s a good chance the American public will say, yes, we hate war, but no, don’t end it until freedom has won.

Frank Warner

On freedom, Ronald Reagan gave Obama and Clinton plenty to admire

I’m enjoying how the Democratic presidential candidates, and Barack Obama in particular, remember President Ronald Reagan.

I didn’t agree with Reagan on many domestic policies, but his stand against Soviet Communist repression was in the great liberal tradition of defending the defenseless and freeing the oppressed.

Six days ago, Senator Obama told The Reno (Nev.) Gazette Journal:

“Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they [the people] felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.

“I think [John] Kennedy, twenty years earlier, moved the country in a fundamentally different direction. So I think a lot of it just has to do with the times. I think we’re in one of those times right now. Where people feel like things as they are going aren’t working. We’re bogged down in the same arguments that we’ve been having, and they’re not useful.  And, you know, the Republican approach, I think, has played itself out.

“I think it’s fair to say the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last ten, fifteen years, in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom. Now, you’ve heard it all before. You look at the economic policies when they’re being debated among the Presidential candidates and it’s all tax cuts.  Well, you know, we’ve done that, we tried it.”

Republicans had ‘better ideas’? Hillary Clinton avoided attacking Obama directly on Reagan, but said:

“My leading opponent the other day said that he thought the Republicans had better ideas than Democrats the last 10 to 15 years. That’s not the way I remember the last 10 to 15 years. I don’t think it’s a better idea to privatize Social Security. I don’t think it’s a better idea to try to eliminate the minimum wage. I don’t think it’s a better idea to undercut health benefits and to give drug companies the right to make billions of dollars by providing prescription drugs to Medicare recipients. I don’t think it’s a better idea to shut down the government, to drive us into debt.”

Check out Senator Clinton’s spin on President Bush’s Medicare prescription drug program, once backed by most Democrats. For the sake of the 2004 campaign, the Democrats decided to tarnish that liberal program to look as if it were a sell-out to drug companies. It turns out that program, by using free-market competition, is working better at keeping drug prices down than anyone expected.

Look who’s privatizing. Also check out Hillary Clinton’s recycling of the claim that Bush was trying to hurt Social Security by “privatizing” part of it. Oddly enough, “privatizing” Social Security, by starting new, private 401(k) accounts, is exactly Clinton’s proposal for Social Security, which she otherwise refuses to do anything about.

And she says cleverly drops the 1995 government shutdown and the national debt in the same sentence. Why were the Republicans willing to shut down the government? They were trying to persuade Bill Clinton, who opposed a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution, to accept spending caps to avoid more debt. Those caps produced a 2000 balanced budget, which Bill Clinton takes full credit for.

But back to Reagan: Barney Frank, a Hillary Clinton supporter, said he was shocked that Obama would say anything nice about the president who won the Cold War and opposed Big Government.

“I was stupefied by the comments...,” Frank said. “It’s baffling to me that he would speak so highly of him.”

‘Big government is over.’ It makes you wonder if Frank forgot that Bill Clinton declared on Jan. 27, 1996:

“The era of big government is over.”

That statement was 100 percent Reaganesque. A few months earlier, Frank openly opposed Bill Clinton’s support for a similarly Reaganesque measure to “end welfare as we know it.” The new law strictly limited welfare payments, and no Reagan or Bush signed the legislation. It was a Clinton.

Hillary also likes Reagan. In any case, it turns out Hillary Clinton liked Reagan before Obama liked Reagan. The New Hampshire newspapers reported on December 12 that Clinton named Reagan as one of her Top 10 “favorite presidents.”

Clinton was on to something last month. And Obama followed up in kind.

Now, nearly 25 years after Reagan’s Evil Empire speech, and 17 years after the death of the Evil Empire itself, it’s good to find inspiration in leaders who stand up to totalitarianism, rather than surrender to it.

There is no liberalism without liberty, no peace without freedom. Reagan knew that. The Democrats had better figure it out, too.

Frank Warner

Great only at chess, Bobby Fischer is dead

I remember the summer of 1972 and Bobby Fischer’s historic chess match with Boris Spassky. Every day, the newspapers had extensive coverage from Reykjavik, Iceland.

At the time, this contest was bigger than Watergate, and the break-in had just happened in June. The chess match went from July to September.

I had played chess, but I had never heard of the Benoni Defense, the Sicilian Defense, the Poisoned Pawn and Queen’s Gambit Declined. I just knew which way the pieces moved. Now everyone was talking chess jargon.

American champion. Fischer lost the first two games to Spassky, the defending world champion from the Soviet Union. But then, after it appeared Fischer might quit and go home, the match resumed. Of the next 19 games, 11 were a draw. Fischer lost once more, but he also won seven, giving him the match.

An American had captured the world chess championship for the first time ever.

Fischer was fairly strange even then, always threatening to pull out of matches, and finally finishing that 1972 championship in a back room away from cameras. Later, he grew weirder, making many ugly comments laced with anti-Semitism, especially surprising from a man whose mother was Jewish.

He could play chess. He just couldn’t play nice.

Bobby Fischer is dead at age 64. He died yesterday in Reykjavik.

Frank Warner

At the Library of Congress: Color photos from World War II

Some of the old pictures at the Library of Congress are amazing for their clarity and color. They are pictures of cities, towns, soldiers and civilians of the first half of the 20th century.

Click here to browse through the library’s collection. On this post, click on the pictures to enlarge them.

Among the more interesting pictures are the shots from World War II.

Vive DeGaulle. There’s a crisp picture of massive crowds welcoming French, American and other Allied troops into Paris on that city’s liberation Aug. 25, 1944.

There’s a picture of teenagers living at a Japanese American internment camp at Tule Lake, California, in 1942 or 1943.

Another photo shows women laborers assembling a C-47 military cargo plane in 1942 at the Douglas Aircraft Co. plant in Long Beach, California.

Huge album. The library has hundreds more historical color photographs, some dating to the 1910s. Don’t miss them.

Frank Warner

* * *

See also: 1910 in color: A peek into Russia before Communism.

Another sign of victory: All 18 Iraq provinces may take control of their own security this year

Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, second in command of U.S. forces in Iraq, says Iraq’s army and police may take primary control of all 18 provinces in that nation this year.

If so, it would be evidence of monumental progress. Right now, Iraq’s security forces control exactly half of the 18 provinces. Coalition allies are responsible for the other, more difficult half.

In March, Gen. David Petraeus, top U.S. commander in Iraq, is expected to provide a better overview of Iraq army progress and a schedule for some U.S. troop withdrawals.

Optimism builds. Right now, it appears that this year tens of thousands of American GIs will be “returning on success” from Iraq. There’s caution, but plenty of optimism besides that democracy has won in Iraq.

Frank Warner

Update: Power Line posts the charts that Odierno used to describe the recent progress in Iraq.

Hitchens is quitting cigarettes

I thought that smoke was his brain.

Frank Warner

Washington Post says U.S. should go it alone in Afghanistan

The Washington Post today says that, if the Europeans won’t commit NATO troops to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan, the United States should do the job unilaterally.

The Post is fundamentally wrong, but in the twisted thinking of today’s international politics, its editors could never figure out why. The Post says:

Though the United States already provides more than half of the 53,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, the additional Marines are needed because no other NATO country was willing, despite months of pleading and cajoling by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, to commit fresh forces to the troubled southern provinces where the Taliban has made a comeback...

It nevertheless is a good thing that Marines rather than European soldiers will deploy in Helmand province this spring to head off any Taliban offensive. Defeating the Afghan insurgency will require the United States to take on a larger part of the fighting. Success will also require U.S. commanders to insist that a more coherent, nationwide counterinsurgency strategy be pursued — including aggressive training of the Afghan army and police, economic development that is centrally coordinated, and a focused attack on the opium business that supplies most of the Taliban’s funding. If that means downgrading NATO’s role or bruising the feelings of some allied governments, so be it.

Shared burden. The sad thing is, many of those who opposed the liberation of Iraq really believe the United States enjoys unilateralism. The truth is, the U.S., because it is counted on to do all the hard and heroic work, has the most to gain from multilateralism, but other nations generally are too selfish to help.

Where The Washington Post has things backwards is in arguing that the U.S. embarrasses allied governments by fighting their battles. When we do their share of defending freedom, we embarrass ourselves.

Frank Warner

New defeatist hope: Next president will surrender Iraq

The New York Times today insists, “Don’t Tie the Next President’s Hands.” In an editorial, it says:

President Bush is discussing a new agreement with Baghdad that would govern the deployment of American troops in Iraq. With so many Americans adamant about bringing our forces home as soon as possible, a sentiment we strongly share, Mr. Bush must not be allowed to tie the hands of his successor and ensure the country’s continued involvement in an open-ended war.

Here we are, the Iraq war has been won in freedom’s favor. Yet The New York Times clings to the hateful hope that fascism will be triumphant. Are its editors so dull they can’t imagine one good reason for the spread of democracy?

Frank Warner

The Michigan primary: Romney finally wins one; Clinton loses black vote

Mitt Romney finally can say he’s No. 1 somewhere, with his victory in the Michigan Republican primary.

But the really odd thing is how the African-American Democrats who went to the Michigan polls voted “undecided” rather than vote for Hillary Clinton. Bill Clinton's response: calling Barack Obama the "establishment" candidate.

Who will we choose for president this year? I have no idea.

Frank Warner

Hitchens: One Hillary climbed a mountain

When Sir Edmund Hillary died Jan. 11th, I wondered why no one mentioned Hillary Clinton’s claim that she was named for him.

Christopher Hitchens remembers:

On a first-lady goodwill tour of Asia in April 1995 — the kind of banal trip that she now claims as part of her foreign-policy “experience” — Mrs. Clinton had been in Nepal and been briefly introduced to the late Sir Edmund Hillary, conqueror of Mount Everest. Ever ready to milk the moment, she announced that her mother had actually named her for this famous and intrepid explorer. The claim “worked” well enough to be repeated at other stops and even showed up in Bill Clinton's memoirs almost a decade later, as one more instance of the gutsy tradition that undergirds the junior senator from New York.

Sen. Clinton was born in 1947, and Sir Edmund Hillary and his partner Tenzing Norgay did not ascend Mount Everest until 1953, so the story was self-evidently untrue and eventually yielded to fact-checking. Indeed, a spokeswoman for Sen. Clinton named Jennifer Hanley phrased it like this in a statement in October 2006, conceding that the tale was untrue but nonetheless charming: “It was a sweet family story her mother shared to inspire greatness in her daughter, to great results I might add.”

Perfect. It worked, in other words, having been coined long after Sir Edmund became a bankable celebrity, but now its usefulness is exhausted and its untruth can safely be blamed on Mummy. Yet isn’t it all -- all of it, every single episode and detail of the Clinton saga — exactly like that? And isn’t some of it a little bit more serious?

And now, an airport in Nepal really is named for Edmund Hillary.

Frank Warner

Not ‘ready’ for democracy? Look at Japan. Bush pushes freedom in all the Middle East

This is certainly the bright side of the Bush administration. How many presidents have been willing to go into closed societies and publicly lay out the reasons they should open up? It’s not many.

President Bush, in the United Arab Emirates yesterday, praised the UAE’s steps toward electing a parliament, but told a collection of Middle Eastern Arab officials that all their nations deserve to be free:

In a free and just society, every person is treated with dignity. In a free and just society, leaders are accountable to those they govern. And in a free and just society, individuals can rise as far as their talents and hard work will take them.

For decades, the people of this region saw their desire for liberty and justice denied at home and dismissed abroad in the name of stability. Today your aspirations are threatened by violent extremists who murder the innocent in pursuit of power. These extremists have hijacked the noble religion of Islam, and seek to impose their totalitarian ideology on millions. They hate freedom and they hate democracy -- because it fosters religious tolerance and allows people to chart their own future. …

It is the desire for freedom and justice written into our hearts by Almighty God -- and no terrorist or tyrant can take that away. We see this desire in the 12 million Iraqis who dipped their fingers in purple ink as they voted in defiance of al Qaeda. We see the desire in the Palestinians who elected a President committed to peace and reconciliation. We see this desire in the thousands of Lebanese whose protests helped rid their country of a foreign occupier. And we see this desire in the brave dissidents and journalists who speak out against terror and oppression and injustice. We see this desire in the ordinary people across the Middle East, who are sick of violence, who are sick of corruption, sick of empty promises -- and who choose a free future whenever they are given a chance. …

Unfortunately, amid some steps forward in this region we’ve also seen some setbacks. You cannot build trust when you hold an election where opposition candidates find themselves harassed or in prison. You cannot expect people to believe in the promise of a better future when they are jailed for peacefully petitioning their government. And you cannot stand up a modern and confident nation when you do not allow people to voice their legitimate criticisms.

The United States appreciates that democratic progress requires tough choices. Our own history teaches us that the road to freedom is not always even, and democracy does not come overnight. Yet we also know that for all the difficulties, a society based on liberty is worth the sacrifice. We know that democracy is the only form of government that treats individuals with the dignity and equality that is their right. We know from experience that democracy is the only system of government that yields lasting peace and stability. In a democracy, leaders depend on their people -- and most people do not want war and bloodshed and violence. Most people want lives of peace and opportunity. So it is the declared policy of the United States to support these peoples as they claim their freedom -- as a matter of natural right and national interest.

I recognize that some people -- including some in my own country -- believe it is a mistake to support democratic freedom in the Middle East. They say that the Arab people are not “ready” for democracy. Of course, that is exactly what people said about the Japanese after World War II. Some said that having an Emperor was incompatible with democracy. Some said that the Japanese religion was incompatible with democracy. Some said that advancing freedom in Japan and the Pacific was unwise, because our interests lay in supporting pro-American leaders no matter how they ruled their people.

Fortunately, America rejected this advice, kept our faith in freedom, and stood with the people of Asia. The results are now in. Today the people of Japan have both a working democracy and a hereditary emperor. They have preserved their traditional religious practices while tolerating the faiths of others. They are surrounded by many democracies that reflect the full diversity of the region. Some of these democracies have constitutional monarchies, some have parliaments, and some have presidents. Some of these democracies have Christian majorities, some have Muslim majorities, some have Hindu or Buddhist majorities. Yet for all the differences, the free nations of Asia all derive their authority from the consent of the governed -- and all know the lasting stability that only freedom can bring.

Reports are that, when Bush finished his speech, “the audience clapped with restraint and stood as he left the stage.” During the address, everyone in the room was painfully aware that their jobs – indeed, their lives – still depend on slavish loyalty to their kings, emirs and other despots.

All those people have a right to applaud or boo whatever they want. Today, they are denied that right.

Frank Warner

Hillary Clinton: Iraq is calmer because she threatened to surrender

The “surge” had nothing to do with the recent improvement in Iraq’s security, according to Sen. Hillary Clinton. She says the credit goes to her threat, and the threat of other leading Democrats, to withdraw U.S. forces.

Yesterday, Clinton was confronted on “Meet the Press” with her Sept. 12, 2007, claim that the U.S. troop “surge” in Iraq was doomed and required a “willing suspension of disbelief” for support. Her response to Tim Russert:

“The point of the surge was to quickly move the Iraqi government and Iraqi people. That is only now beginning to happen, and I believe in large measure because the Iraqi government, they watch us, they listen to us. I know very well that they follow everything that I say. And my commitment to begin withdrawing our troops in January of 2009 is a big factor, as it is with Senator Obama, Senator Edwards, those of us on the Democratic side. It is a big factor in pushing the Iraqi government to finally do what they should have been doing all along.”

So al Qaida, the militias, Iranian leaders, and other fascists and fanatics in Iraq, six months into the “surge,” suddenly and dramatically reduced their bombings and shootings because America’s Democrats were signaling they were ready to surrender?

Heck, if all it took was defeatist Democrats for a free and peaceful Iraq, the war would have been over in 2003.

Frank Warner

Note: Apparently, Barack Obama made the same claim in the New Hampshire debate.

ABC poll: Iraq no longer is No. 1 worry

The economy has replaced the Iraq war as America’s No. 1 worry, a new ABC News poll shows.

The change in priorities follows significant improvements to Iraq’s security and recent U.S. economic sluggishness related to the soft real estate market.

Almost every opinion poll over the last four years has found the American public is willing to give our armed forces another year to complete the job of building a secure democracy in Iraq. This means that, on Jan. 21, unless Americans suddenly change their minds about everything, the Democrats will no longer will have any poll to point to in calling for President Bush to surrender in Iraq.

War’s over. We win.

Frank Warner

New York Times brands Iraq war vets potential murderers

The New York Times is publishing a series highlighting each time an Iraq war veteran came home and committed a homicide. There’s nothing scientific about the roundup, except that it’s calculated to convince readers that Iraq war vets are murderers, or at least not to be trusted.

Why doesn’t the Times do a series on the many times American GIs in Iraq accused the Times of printing stories that got Americans killed, and document why they made those accusations?

Frank Warner

Movies: ‘Charlie Wilson’s War’ leaves out Ronald Reagan’s vital role in defeating the Soviet Union in Afghanistan

“Charlie Wilson’s War” is supposed to be a fairly good movie. It’s got Tom Hanks, and I intend to see it. But according to most early reviews, it makes it appear as if a Democrat single-handedly defeated the Soviet army in Afghanistan.

If so, that’s an amazingly distorted picture.

In the movie, Democratic Congressman Charlie Wilson of Texas gets nearly all the credit for helping the freedom-fighters oust the Soviets who invaded Afghanistan in 1979, and President Ronald Reagan, the central figure in the Soviets’ surrender, is but a shadow.

(The whole idea is reminiscent of Kevin Costner playing Kenny O’Donnell in “Thirteen Days,” which ridiculously credited O’Donnell for coming up with every good idea during the Cuban Missile Crisis. As if JFK and Bobby Kennedy were sleeping.)

Missing characters. Taking on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan wasn’t “Charlie Wilson’s War” alone. Wilson had a part, according to historian Paul Kengor:

But the rest of the story, which receives no mention, is that it was the Reagan administration, and specifically CIA director Bill Casey, National Security Advise