It’s bad enough when congressmen use the public purse for “pork” to build bridges to nowhere or useless programs for contributors’ profit, but John Murtha – no slouch at being a prince of pork – goes further. Murtha raises -- or lowers -- disgrace to a new level by using pork to defeat the United States, and Iraqis.

According to the inside chronicler of congressional antics, The Hill, John Murtha and comrades are trying to buy Blue Dog Democrat votes, and hopefully a few Republicans, to vote for the Iraq and Afghanistan funding bill that would include restrictions on the President’s ability to operate.

House Democratic leaders will add nearly $4 billion for farmers to a bill funding military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan to attract conservative Democrats concerned that the measure would wrongly constrict President Bush’s power as commander in chief.

Democrats may also add money for children’s health insurance in the hope of winning the votes of Republicans such as Illinois Reps. Mark Kirk (R) and Judy Biggert (R), whose home state faces a $240 million deficit in its State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP)....

Murtha has remained steadfast about putting restrictions on the president.
“We will have three restrictive amendments,” he said.

The Associated Press reports:

The House Democratic proposal brought a sharp response from Republicans on Wednesday.

Rep. Adam Putnam, R-Fla., called the plan a ''fig leaf'' to distract the public from what he said was Democrats' ultimate goal of cutting off funds for troops in combat.

Hardly anyone pays any serious attention to John Kerry anymore, having repeatedly demonstrated his buffoonery.

However, John Kerry is still a United States Senator, holding powerful committee positions for the Senate’s majority party. The liberal allies of his points of view in the media are still the dominant chroniclers and influencers of public views. Thus, Kerry still has substantial influence on current policies and opinions that will shape our future.

The latest example is the Senate Foreign Relations committee hearing on the nomination of Sam Fox as ambassador to Belgium. John Kerry demanded that Fox, who donated $50,000 to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, renounce “the politics of personal destruction." According to the Associated Press report, “Kerry said the incident raised questions about Fox's fitness to serve as an ambassador.” The AP report continued:

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., a presidential hopeful and chairman of Tuesday's hearing, said he found Fox's responses "unsatisfying." He said he would have preferred if Fox admitted it was a mistake to contribute to the Swift Boat group.

The AP reporter inserted his view that the Swiftee charges against Kerry’s military record in Vietnam were “unsubstantiated allegations.”

Kerry, Obama, and the AP reporter, thus, perpetuate one of the most egregious misrepresentations of history in modern journalism.

With extremely little exception, the major media refused to investigate the testimony and depositions by almost all of the veterans who served with Kerry in Vietnam. Despite certain Kerry claims, like his invented Cambodia excursion, being absolutely proven false, and substantial evidence that many of his other self-exaggerations were also false, the major media during the 2004 campaign and since have adopted the word “unsubstantiated” to describe the Swiftees’ charges and evidence.

Investigative columnist Thomas Lipscomb detailed much additional evidence substantiating the Swiftees’ charges. Lipscomb, who was also the founder of Times Books, which published the hardcover edition of the Pentagon Papers, brings an important perspective to this media malfeasance. In an interview with me, Lipscomb says:

When the New York Times published the Pentagon Papers, it cost the New York Times a fortune in running the complete records in newsprint and, subsequently, in a published book edition. The New York Times thought it in the best interests of the public to draw its own conclusions from the evidence the New York Times had compiled.

The strange case of the John Kerry military records, which he had promised to release publicly, is that three great news organizations conspired to withhold them from the public. Not only did Kerry not make his military records public as promised, but three of the largest news organizations in the world gave him protective coloration by withholding them. All the public received were summaries in the opinions of the three news organizations, which had already shown an appalling inability to analyze the Kerry military records.

There’s nothing more dangerous to the future and to history than the failure to reconcile the facts of the past.

In an age when it is practically free to publish on the Internet the records as given to the Associated Press, Los Angeles Times and Boston Globe, it is even more disgraceful to withhold them, against every tenet of modern and transparent journalism.

The public still doesn’t know whether John Kerry released his complete military records. John Kerry has refused to release his Vietnam diary. John Kerry, rather than go into a court – if he believes himself slandered -- and be subject to discovery, just along with his allies in the media hide behind their unsubstantiated charge of “unsubstantiated” against the Swiftees who exposed Kerry’s lies and exaggerations.

As Instapundit’s law professor Glenn Reynolds recently wrote:

”Swiftboating" seems to mean the disclosure of truths that are, er, inconvenient for Democrats.

One might add, inconvenient to the history of defeatism that congressional Democrats are currently trying to write into our history, as they did in Vietnam.

Republicans fussed or feuded before the 2006 elections about what or who should be included or excluded from our fold, while Democrats united in castigating anything Republican. Not surprisingly, the more focused Party scored gains.

The Democrats are failing to retain the sale, as they expose there’s little behind their slogans. Democrat Iraq policy is various shades of how quick to retreat, without a plan or care to deal with the consequences or diminished trust in America’s purpose and resolve. Democrat domestic policy is to shift political slush funds to their pockets by pushing narrow interest legislation for unions, pandering to radicals, and legislative payoffs to other allies. Hardly the right stuff that they promised.

While this Democrat self-exposure occurs, Republicans are discovering that their Big Tent approach that won national elections for two-decades is actually still intact. The star attractions – those pursuing the Republican nomination for president in 2008 – are not only filling the tent but also favorably competing with their potential Democrat opponents among early watchers and the media.

Many commentators bemoan this long campaign. I welcome it. There’s no better way to find out who has the sense, presence of mind, and intestinal fortitude to fill the unrelentingly trying role of president. John Kennedy’s appeal to a prospective Cabinet member, “We can learn our jobs together,” led to foreign policy failure after failure in the early 1960’s. Today, the political and security challenges and challengers to America are of such a more immediate and dire magnitude that, it should be evident to any, there’s no luxury of an inexperienced, confused, glib or half-stepper in the Oval Office.

I’m not ready to declare for one of the potential Republican presidential viers. I have definite leanings, but prefer to see how each fare under a long, grueling public vetting. Whether Guiliani, McCain or Romney, the current prospective leaders have various pluses and minuses. But, compared to any prospective Democrat candidate, as preliminary polls indicate, they are seen as more viable, essentially because they have tested careers of taking strong stances, usually practical and successful. In short, they have character, the essential quality upon which the decisive margin of voters ultimately decide. Not only that, but their record of policy flexibility is comforting to many, who prefer that to narrow partisanship exhibited in the political careers of the leading Democrats.

The Republicans are rediscovering their Big Tent, while the Democrats are still caught in their policy and leadership-sterile ghetto.

The ship of State, Department that is, is increasingly revealed as failing to leave port to fulfill its role in the Iraq war.

My column in today’s Examiner, “U.S. Government Can’t Even Mobilize Itself for Iraq,” details the State Department as “slow, understaffed and underexperienced to fill their needed role in the war in Iraq.”

The President’s new emphasis on counterinsurgency, via General Petraeus, appears off to a promising start, but behind it is required the localized help by Provincial Reconstruction Teams to build better Iraqi leadership and governance and to coordinate quick results civil-military reconstruction projects that will make security gains more than ephemeral.

State, and other civilian agencies, as the Iraq Study Group pointed out, are not up to their task, after over three years of war, and despite the painfully learned and forgotten experience of its criticalness in Vietnam almost four decades ago.

Saturday, the Washington Post dug deeper into how this failure came to be, “Iraq Rebuilding Short on Qualified Civilians.”

By the fall of 2003, Lugar [then Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee] had grown worried about the U.S. reconstruction effort in Iraq. L. Paul Bremer, who was running the occupation government in Baghdad, had been pleading for more staffers with skills in post-conflict rebuilding -- people who could repair the electricity infrastructure, rehabilitate hospitals, retrain the police. Bremer urged Cabinet secretaries to send experts in their departments to Iraq. Some did; others blew him off. Pentagon officials, meanwhile, were recruiting young Republican Party loyalists for tours in Iraq. Many of them lacked reconstruction experience, but they were willing to work in Baghdad….

Neither the administration nor Congress took the need seriously enough to fund the effort.

"There was this perverse cycle that began," he recalled. "The legislative staff at State would say, 'The Hill doesn't like this, therefore we shouldn't ask for much because we're not going to get it.' Then you had the Hill saying, 'The administration hasn't made this a priority so we're not going to fund it.' "

Defense saw the need to build a civilian reconstruction corps, and offered to fund it out of its budget, but both it and State emphasized other geography than Iraq:

Eventually, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, persuaded Congress to allow the Pentagon to transfer up to $100 million to State for post-conflict civilian deployments. But Defense and State couldn't agree where to spend the money. Defense wanted much of it spent on stabilization operations in Haiti. State wanted to use it to help in the aftermath of last summer's war in Lebanon, officials on both sides recalled.

So, today, we’re maybe just getting around to funding and staffing the State Department Office of Reconstruction and Stabilization (SCRS).

Today, the SCRS corps that Pascual envisioned as a rapid-response force with 200 federal employees ready to deploy has just 11 people on active duty.

Lugar and Biden reintroduced their bill this week. It mandates the formation of a 250-person active-duty response unit drawn from the federal government and the creation of a 2,000-strong civilian reserve corps. It also authorizes $145 million to fund the operation.
"Hopefully," Lugar said, "we've come to a point where we finally realize we need to do this."

New Republic senior editor Lawrence Kaplan asked, “What if they threw a war and nobody came?” in describing this failure of State and other civilian agencies to leave dock for Iraq. Some of the disappointing results in Iraq are evident. And, some to come, will be due to the tugboat that wouldn’t and left port too late.

Last October, I wrote about Senator Trent Lott’s threats to the insurance industry of punitive legislation as pressure to pay him off for the uninsured loss of his beachfront house to Hurricane Katrina.

Irresponsible building in flood zones is subsidized by everyone else, and everyone else is supposed to be shocked and pay after every flood to maintain the homeowners’ irresponsible choice to have a luxury water view.

Today’s Wall Street Journal recounts the crusade by Senator Lott to introduce punitive legislation. He, also, rounded up fellow Mississippi lawyers and politicians to launch lawsuits. State Farm caved to political extortion, and will pay off Trent Lott.

The result, for those Mississippians without Trent Lott’s position and friends:

Lost among all the politicians' war-whooping over the State Farm capitulation, is the effect this extortion has had on the private insurance industry. In recent weeks companies from State Farm to AllState have stopped writing policies in parts of Mississippi, which will result in consumers having fewer insurance choices, if they can find insurance at all.

Ah, but never fear: Washington has a solution for that, too. In the face of insurers exiting his state (in no small part because of the actions of politicians), Mr. Taylor [an ally of Lott’s] earlier this month introduced yet another piece of insurance legislation. This one would expand the national flood insurance program to cover other hurricane-related damage. In other words, the Mississippian wants to create a new federal disaster insurance program that will put taxpayers--rather than private insurers--on the hook next time a storm hits. Revenge is a scary thing.

The federal flood insurance program has already paid out six times as much as collected in premiums. Lott and buddies want taxpayers without a view to see many billions more of their taxes go into their pockets and those of wealthy or irresponsible others who knowingly build in known danger zones.

This goes beyond "pork" to sheer personal pigging out at the public's expense.

It is widely recognized now that the U.S. should have committed far larger military forces to Iraq than it did, in order to quickly subdue the Sunni and Al Qaeda insurgencies and provide security for more speedy reconstruction. This may be excused by the equally widely recognized failure to expect such an externally and internally well-financed and led insurgency.

What has been less focused upon, until lately, is the failure to build and commit the necessary pacification and reconstruction civilian forces necessary to success even at the lower expected insurgency level.

The senior editor of New Republic, Lawrence Kaplan, (subscription registration required) asks, “What if they threw a war and nobody came?” Kaplan’s inquiry is because, as he ponders:

In a counterinsurgency whose main thrust ought to be nonmilitary, the full force and expertise of the U.S. government is nowhere to be seen in Iraq. Were the combined resources of the State Department, the Justice Department, and other government agencies actually brought to bear in this war, things in Iraq might have turned out much differently.

Instead, we’ve depended upon hard-working, well-meaning, and often but unevenly effective U.S. military officers in the field. However,

Few of the officers engaged in tribal diplomacy have the benefit of any formal training, most aren’t even civil affairs officers.

Kaplan misses some important points in his critique, which I’ll return to, but his core difficulty with the level of commitment from civilian agencies is central.

Kaplan points out the corrective:

Hence, the logic of the civilian-led PRT’s – unveiled in 2005 to, in the words of a State Department cable, “assist Iraq’s provincial government with developing a transparent and sustained capability to govern…promoting political and economic development, and providing the provincial administration necessary to meet the basic needs of the population.”…the Army now supplies most of the manpower for the PRT’s. Persuading their civilian counterparts to show up is another matter.

Six months after they were unveiled, the PRT’s had attracted all of twelve job applicants from the State Department, according to The Washington Post, and only one of those was qualified….[C]ivilian agencies have declined to revive the Vietnam-era practice of compulsory war-zone assignments.

Kaplan compares this to what occurred with a similar mandate in Vietnam, where the ambassadorial level CORDS director,

dispatched nearly 8,000 civilian and military advisors to fan out across South Vietnam’s provinces….one of every 25 State department/USAID employees was deployed to Vietnam as part of CORDS, versus roughly one out of every 300 today in the Iraqi PRT’s.

Further, tours then were 12-18 months, versus 3-6 months today.

Kaplan concludes:

Never mind the government’s well-chronicled failure to mobilize the public for war. The government can’t even mobilize itself.

Kaplan’s critique suffers from an overly facile comparison to the CORDS operations in Vietnam, clarification of which doesn’t negate his core point but makes it more potent.

CORDS (Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support), the pacification program, in Vietnam was a large-scale endeavor, as Kaplan stresses, under ambassador Robert Komer from May 1967 serving as a deputy to military commander General Westmoreland. Gains in population under control were slim, mostly coming from refugees moving to government areas for security or jobs. When General Abrams assumed command, after the decimation of the Viet Cong during Tet 1968, strategy shifted to a “one war” coordinative emphasis, in which counterinsurgency and pacification, clear-and-hold, were emphasized above larger-scale search-and-destroy. The more able William Colby became the pacification czar, working closely with Abrams to take advantage of the reduced enemy presence in order to eliminate enemy base areas by flooding them with military forces, eliminating the enemy’s “shadow government,” and supporting self-help, self-defense and self-government by the Vietnamese government. The program was largely successful, leaving the North Vietnamese to large-scale conventional offensives, turned back with American military support in 1972 but, then, successful in 1975 when Congress forbid the promised U.S. military supplies and support that was part of South Vietnam’s U.S. designed defense.

In short, there were three key ingredients that changed after 1968: The strategy shifted toward a greater emphasis on counterinsurgency; The leadership of pacification was more effective and effectively coordinated with the military; and, The enemy presence was far reduced.

Today, in Iraq, our strategy is shifting toward a greater emphasis on counterinsurgency and, temporarily at least, the Sadr-Shia presence is subdued and in hiding. That provides a window of opportunity to replace their influence in Baghdad with a reformist government presence. Remaining, weakened Baathist-Sunni insurgents, with little place to retreat, continue their attacks, but are being cleared from Baghdad and Anbar.

Comparable problems existed in South Vietnam as in Iraq from highly uneven quality of military and civilian leaders. But, although there were intrigues among leaders and commanders in Saigon that reduced abilities to reform local or divisional leadership, the sectarian divisions within Iraq are far more divisive and hindering, indeed are at the center of challenges.

Back to the issue of the Provisional Reconstruction Teams (PRT) in Iraq, what is also different today than in Vietnam is, as Kaplan stresses, the almost utter failure to mount a large-scale pacification and leadership building effort, or to coordinate and integrate it with the overall strategy.

The idea of PRT’s was only introduced to Iraq in October 2005. Although recognizing the earnestness of some early efforts, the October 2006 audit report from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction found:

Many obstacles have been overcome, but many remain, such as the ever-changing security situation, the difficulty of integrating civilian and military personnel, the lack of a finalized agreement [between State and Defense Departments] on PRT operational requirements and responsibilities, a lag in funding resources, and the difficulty in recruiting and retaining qualified civilian personnel….Given the security situation, the PRT’s and the local governance satellite offices have varying degrees of ability to carry out their missions. Specifically, of the 9 PRT’s and 4 satellite offices that we reviewed [of 10 PRT’s and 8 satellite offices],4 were generally able, 4 were somewhat able, 3 were less able, and 2 were generally unable to carry out their PRT missions….[T]he lack of specific guidance led to confusion about civilian-military roles at PRT’s.

Nonetheless, the audit reported that at the local level, “in general the civilian and military organizations within the PRT’s are effectively working together.”

A PRT is targeted to have up to 100 U.S. and 30 local members. According to the audit, “To compensate for the lack of civilians, DoD stepped up and provided numerous military civil affairs personnel to fill the void for many of the vacant PRT Program positions, such as local government, economic, and agriculture advisors.” As of September 29, 2006, the audit found only 60% of the 128 civilian PRT slots filled. The audit found, also, “The PRT’s lacked funding and logistical supply resources.” Part of the lack was due to Congress requiring a detailed funding plan from State, delivered in October 2006.

The Iraq Study Group report told of civilian agencies having trouble filling positions with qualified candidates and recommended directed assignments, as during Vietnam, that greater coordination across agencies is a critical need, and that State needs to “train personnel to carry out civilian tasks associated with a complex stability operation outside of the traditional embassy setting….Other key civilian agencies, including Treasury, Justice, and Agriculture, need to create similar technical assistance capabilities.”

The day after President Bush’s speech of January 10 for a new operations strategy for Iraq that included an increase in PRT’s to 20, Secretary of State Rice announced, that a retired Foreign Service officer with experience in Vietnam was named as coordinator for Iraq reconstruction. The choice seems worthy, but it’s telling that State had to reach so deep into its bench to find qualifications.

The New York Times reported in early February 2007 that,

Senior military officers, including members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have told President Bush and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates that the new Iraq strategy could fail unless more civilian agencies step forward quickly to carry out plans for reconstruction and political development.

The State Department raised eyebrows at a Senate hearing with its request for Defense to fill more than a third of the 350 new State Department slots required for Iraq, adding to the 140 Foreign service officers in Baghdad and 50 currently with PRT’s.

Although a seasoned veteran of such posts, the institutional resistance within State to being more field active could be seen in new Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte telling the Foreign Service’s latest graduating class on February 20, of which only 4 of 75 are going to Iraq, that such “hardship” posts are good career moves.

The Congressionally funded United States Institute of Peace briefing of February 2007 on Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Iraq brings us up to date:

Lack of established goals and information on completed projects made it difficult to determine whether PRTs were achieving "success," or whether better results would be obtained by using an alternative approach. Although it had the inter-agency lead, the State Department has not yet done an assessment to determine if PRTs are achieving their purpose.

In sum, decades after our painfully learned, then forgotten, Vietnam experience, and over three years into our latest painful learning experience in Iraq, we are just at the start of a lesser pacification effort, understaffed, underexperienced, and undermeasured.

Many commentators predict that any new public patience with our Iraq presence provided by the President’s new directions will run out by this summer. Congressional Democrats aren’t even willing to wait that long to hamstring our efforts. The grossly inadequate interagency participation or contribution to the war is an under-commented factor, and measures to correct it for Iraq or other future needs are negligent.

As Lawrence Kaplan concluded, “The government can’t even mobilize itself.”

Barack Obama officially announced his presidency last week from the steps of the old State Courthouse in Springfield Illinois where Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous “House Divided” speech. Obama’s message, loaded with sound bites and symbolism, signified nothing except repackaged racial and class politics. In response, History Professor Gerald Matacotta thundered his disapproval from the podium at the annual GOP Lincoln Dinner at Antun’s in Queens Village last Sunday saying, “Obama, you’re no Abraham Lincoln.”

Abraham Lincoln launched his own presidential campaign with his “House Divided” address commencing the struggle against slavery. He bluntly stated, “I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.” Either the country would be all slave or all free and there was no middle ground. He pointed out that continuing the status quo indefinitely was impossible and invoked our founding document, the Declaration of Independence in order to declare the extinction of the institution of slavery. He attacked the pro-slavery conspiracy of slaveowners, Southern apologists and Democrats who aim to nationalize the institution that would invalidate the ideals of our Founding Fathers for universal liberty.

According to Richard Carwardine’s award winning book, Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power, Lincoln stood his ground and would not make concessions to his opponents clamoring to preserve the status quo, although the “soft on slavery” Democrats and increasingly more congressional Republicans urged him to compromise in order to save the union. The swelling cries of “timid men” were advising a return to the Missouri Compromise line in order to keep the house together and avoid secession by the southern states. But Lincoln wouldn’t yield to this delusional half free, half slave proposal telling a Missouri Republican, “he would sooner go out into his backyard and hang himself.” He would not renege on the founding Republican principles against the expansion of slavery into new territories or be bullied and blackmailed into yielding on these principles. Lincoln told wavering Republicans, “if we surrender (to the bullies and blackmailers who we defeated by constitutional elections) it is the end of us, and the end of government. They will repeat the experiment upon us ad libitum.” Lincoln felt that if he yielded an inch to Republican Party backsliders on moral principles he would lose all power as president. Moreover, he warned Republican leaders that losing principles at a time of crisis would be suicidal for the party that got him elected, and determined to prevent his party from becoming “a mere sucked egg, all shell and no principle in it.” As a result of these admonitions, Republicans stood up during that congressional session to defeat all such cowardly compromise resolutions.

This is the bold nature of the leadership we need today in order to return to the original principles of America’s “war on terror,” the long abandoned Bush Doctrine which pledged enmity against any nation that harbored terrorists, and to take preemptive and unilateral military action if necessary against any rogue state that was involved in the production of WMD or that safeguarded terrorists. Instead of holding on to these principles, many Republicans have accommodated the “soft on terror” Democrats. As a result moral relativism has taken hold of our nation to fill the vacuum in leadership of the congressional Republicans and the softening of Bush administration principles beaten down by the continuous pounding of the anti-war drums. The morally bankrupt Democrats following in the footsteps of their pro-slavery forebears of antebellum America, have united with House Speaker Pelosi and her staunchest supporter, Rep. John Murtha to pass a treasonous nonbinding resolution against President Bush’s strategic plan for victory in Iraq. In this manner, the Democrats have announced their intentions to abandon Iraq and surrender to terrorism, uniting to provide aid and comfort to our enemy as Ralph Peters wrote in the New York Post, calling it “the most disgraceful congressional action since the Democratic Party united to defend slavery.” Seventeen timid Republicans have likewise caved in and traded away their moral principles by voting for the resolution to support the enemy and undermine our troops.

Some Republicans have held out resolutely, such as Rep. Peter King who condemned the disgraceful resolution that attempts “to control and restrict strategic battlefield decisions” and Rep. Sam Johnson who described “being a POW in Vietnam and becoming disheartened as he learned of protests back home.” Such bold voices are now urgently needed to speak out loudly and vociferously to drown out the beating drums of surrender and defeat, as Lincoln would have done. Our leaders must go back to Lincoln’s principles and deliver another Gettysburg Address to tell the American people exactly what we are fighting for and who our enemy is. We need leaders who are not afraid to stand up and wage a total war when necessary as Lincoln did, for a total victory. We need to show the world American power and articulate the message of American strength and patriotism. We will continue to fight until our principles of Liberty have spread throughout the world and are respected and feared by every tyrant and rogue state. We have to hear that these principles are worth fighting and dying for and that our fallen heroes on the battlefield have not died in vain. We must overwhelm the self-righteous apologists, and drown out the pious homilies of the seditious politicians and power-lusting academics who spit on America and whose consciences have been numbed and lobotomized in the void of moral relativism. The eagle must soar once again into the skies of victory.

Barack Obama’s voice is undoubtedly not one that speaks to the principles of American strength. This Democratic apologist is a “soft on terror” voice of naiveté and surrender who has plagiarized Lincoln’s powerful words and grafted his eloquent statements onto his own ludicrous peace plan to bring the troops home by next March in order to force the Sunni and Shia to come to the table to find peace through diplomacy. He promises that after he ends the war and our divided house is finally one, he will end poverty, provide universal health care, ease the crisis of global warming, and end our dependence on foreign oil. Obama’s abominable speech was a disgrace to Lincoln’s name and legacy.

During the contentious elections of 1964, in which Lincoln was elected to a second term, the Democrats chastised Lincoln for a war they characterized as “four years of failure” and called for an immediate end to the war and bringing the crestfallen troops home. History has a strange way of repeating itself. But Lincoln stood resolutely against the clamor as the Union armies were on the threshold of victory. Lincoln delivered his most famous speech for his second inauguration, declaring peace and unity, based upon the principles of American strength in defense of the constitution:

With malice toward none, with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan-to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.

True compassion and healing only emerges out of strength and victory.

CORRECTION:

A reader, Anthony Nardi brought to my attention a quote that I have erroneously attributed to Lincoln and asked that I issue a correction. I stand corrected according to the following paper on Lincoln researched by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. That said, Lincoln defended the arrest of Vallandigham and several treasonous Maryland legislators arrested for voting for secession. He suspended habeas corpus and utilized his constitutional power at full throttle mandating wartime arrests to prevent the obstruction of military mobilization. Maybe the exact words weren’t Lincoln’s, but the spirit was his to “arrest individuals, and suppress assemblies, or newspapers, when they may be working palpable injury to the military” as an advisor confided to him.

Regarding your reprint of your Queens Village Eagle article on Democracy Project, you have quoted Abraham Lincoln in the following context:

When Lincoln was elected to the presidency, the Southern states seceded and the nation was plunged into Civil War. As Commander-in-Chief he led the divided union through the war and ultimately united the nation based on the just cause of equality for all and emancipation of the slaves. He stood valiantly against any party or foe that would undermine this righteous cause saying: "Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged."

The quote that closes that paragraph is erroneously attributed to President Lincoln. Evidence of such may be found here: Misquoting Lincoln

“The Party Of Defeat” is the title of Robert Caldwell’s column today in the San Diego Union-Tribune. Robert Caldwell, editor of the Sunday opinion section at the newspaper is one of the most studied commentators in the major media on international affairs and domestic politics, who repeatedly zeroes in on core issues that his more liberal counterparts avoid or obfuscate.

Caldwell strikes a signal stake into the heart of the Democrat Party’s machinations over Iraq:

Starkly put, Democrats risk making “Bush’s war” their war, and then losing it.

The whole column is to be read, but if you only read that short sentence you know almost all you need to know about the Democrats’ congressional and presidential posturing.

All Caldwell has to say, however, regarding Republicans is that, “All but a handful of Republicans” congressmen voted against the Democrats’ irresolute resolution in the House. The column was written before yesterday’s vote in the Senate, in which the New York Times emphasized, “Seven Republicans split from their party and joined 48 Democrats and one Independent…All but two of the seven face re-election next year.” The first paragraph of the New York Times narrative trumpets,

Republican defections emboldened Democrats to promise new attempts to influence the administration’s war policy.

If Republicans tolerate this behavior from Republican senators and congressmen, the Republican Party will deserve to be tarred as a Party Of Accomodating Defeat. This isn’t a matter of congressional nicety to tolerate deviance. This is a core matter of national security, above all, and certainly above narrow partisan advantages in Congress.

The Republican Party is not the property of its paid functionaries or legislators. It is the property of Republicans. Some may argue that the teeter-totter of congressional majority, for the benefit of this or that tax or narrow domestic interest group, is primary over national security. It isn’t. Many activist Republicans are beginning to band together to remind legislators of their proper priority, as The Victory Caucus. The registration screen has been fixed, so please click and join today.

The New York Times continues:

Democrats would not divulge the details of their next step, but one official said it would focus on the mission of American troops in Iraq and try to skirt the more politically difficult question of federal money for the military.

Caldwell’s column cites what the Democrats have divulged:

Rep. John Murtha, the blustery Pennsylvania pol and anti-war ally of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is already pledging to use his power as chairman of the House Armed Services Committee's appropriations subcommittee on defense to stop the surge by restricting the deployment and funding of U.S. forces.

Here's what Murtha said in an interview Thursday with the MoveCongress.org Web site, which represents a coalition of anti-war groups:

“They (the troops) won't be able to continue. They won't be able to do the deployment. They won't have the equipment, they don't have the training and they won't be able to do the work. There's no question in my mind ... we're going to stop this surge.”

Does Pelosi, smarter and smoother than Murtha, agree?

“I fully support that,” Pelosi said of Murtha's remarks.

Then Caldwell points out the practical issue:

Congress' constitutional authority lies in deciding how much to appropriate for the military. Deputizing 435 House members and 100 senators as armchair generals to micromanage the movement of troops and the military conduct of a war isn't in the Constitution for a reason. It couldn't possibly work and would be folly to attempt.

General Petraeus faces many similar hurdles in Iraq today that were faced by General Creighton Abrams in his turn around in Vietnam that brought victory in the field, only to see it literally abandoned by congressional eliminations of American and South Vietnamese war fighting abilities. From a tape of one of his command meetings (researched by Lewis Sorley in A Better War):

Abrams told his field commanders one day, "We're in a time period where it's the goddamnedest ball game -- outfielders are running around in the infield, infielders are out, and people are shoving the pitcher and trying to get a chance at it." And, someone else suggested, "the sportswriters are down on the field, too."

"That's right," Abrams agreed. "Not only that, but some of the fans and so on. It's really -- it's a mess. Jesus, everybody's in the act, and they've completely abandoned the territory that they're supposed to be covering, and they're just roaming. One other thing -- the officials have abandoned the field. The umpires are in the locker room."

Not this time, say many, who remember or learned what happened last time. Join the Victory Caucus.

UPDATE 1:
Speaking for the Senate Democrats, Charles Schumer chimed in with his intention for Democrats to be “relentless.”

There will be resolution after resolution, amendment after amendment…just like in the days of Vietnam.

UPDATE 2:
Mark Tapscott, editorial page editor of the Examiner, points out the last time the Democrats tried to salute their own perfidy:

For millions of Americans, including people in both parties and especially among Baby Boomers, the sight of Kerry stepping to the podium and saluting in acceptance of the Democratic presidential nomination was too much.

Swift Boat Veterans provided a voice and an effective political channel for these voters, without whose passion and votes Bush might well have been relegated to a one-term presidency.

Today, millions of Americans still think the War on Terrorism in Iraq and elsewhere is worth winning, even as the Democratic party is swept with a withdrawal fever fed by decades of ideologically induced blaming America first for the world's ills.

Simultanously, GOP ranks in Congress are divided over the war in Iraq, with some of its most visible and respected leaders caving in to the same fever, and most of the rest being reluctant or at best only half-hearted in labelling Democrats as a party of retreat and defeat.

In other words, nobody in the Washington Establishment is speaking for those in heartland America who want victory against the terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere. That's why Victory Caucus is getting such a tremendous response so quickly. People "out there in the real world" beyond the Washington Beltway yearn for leaders who speak for them on behalf of winning.

It's not guaranteed, of course, but Victory Caucus has the look of the election wild card of the 2008 presidential campaign.

Republicans who prioritize national security above all other policies must place national security above party loyalty.

Since I served in Vietnam, I’ve been a national security Republican. That’s meant supporting the building of Republican majorities in order to have a more capable defense capacity, to use it when necessary, and not desert our pledged obligations to the freedom of allies.

Many of my domestic political positions are the centrist liberalism in which I was raised, and which provided opportunities up from poverty for which I am grateful to America’s caring and openness. That, to me, was worth fighting for then, and even moreso now that enemies of our way of life can and do launch attacks here.

Last year, I argued with conservatives that the Harriet Miers nomination was not sufficient cause to deny the president’s prerogative and weaken his presidency. Last year, I argued that some conservatives suffered “battle fatigue,” taking it out on the president. My priority was unity in order to retain Republican control of the Congress, so the Democrats could not again do what they promised in a repeat retreat from responsibilities in Iraq as they did in Vietnam.

Insularity and relaxation upon official comforts among Republican leaders, instead, contributed to the Democrat controlled Congress we now have that is following through on their plan to undermine the Iraq effort. Some Republican congressmen and senators – who Hugh Hewitt has aptly named “White Flag Republicans” – have joined with the Democrats. It matters not whether they have gone soft or are just playing to their local bleachers. The result is the same.

It’s not just me, but probably a majority of self-described Republicans and many other Americans place national security above all other policies. Being ill in bed this week, I exhausted my book pile. So, today I visited the used book store I’ve patronized for years in my beach town that is full of aging hippies. Aside from pleasantries, I’ve never had a serious discussion with the middle-aged proprietress. I’d presumed from appearances and other liberal comments she’d made that she was one of those aging hippies. Today she started a discussion, while I was looking at a WWII history book. “I heard you were in Vietnam. What do you think is similar now?” I replied that both presidents Johnson and Bush failed to follow tried and true military advice to apply overwhelming forces and deny the enemy sanctuaries, leading to enfeebled results, but other presidents made grave errors in our other wars. What was different in Vietnam and today is that those opposed to American values exploited public wariness and weariness so they could grasp political power for its privileges and for their own domestic Leftist agendas, and they placed that objective above national security. She teared up, saying she would find it difficult to again have confidence in Republicans, since she read that some are going along with such undermining.

Despite earlier errors, General Abrams and President Nixon succeeded in achieving victory in Vietnam, only to have it frittered away by Democrats cutting off promised aid and air support. In 1968, few would have predicted either the successful turnaround or its abandonment. Today, General Petreus may have such skill, and President Bush has the gumption to support him. Only, the Democrats and "White Flag Republicans" are determined to deny them, and Iraqis, the opportunity.

A number of conservative luminaries have started The Victory Caucus. This isn’t hard conservatives ranting about RINO’s, a posture which I personally think is both needlessly insulting and stupid. This is responsible figures who place national security above party.

So the House vote is over , and the Democrats have had their day and their defeatist, non-binding resolution. So what do we do now?

We begin organizing in earnest to ensure that in November 2008, voters will have a slate of strong candidates who believe in Victory.

This will be a long and serious effort, but it starts now. We have established a team within the site that will focus on identifying strong candidates -- veterans, ideally --- as well as teams devoted to identifying White Flag Republicans and their antimatter opposites, the Blue Dog Democrats. These three groups will be at the forefront of our efforts to identify the districts where we can do the most good: whether that is to replace a defeatist Democrat with a new Republican victory candidate --- or to help a Blue Dog Democrat who is strong on the war take down a White Flag Republican. Here, party comes second: victory --- and country --- come first.

If this sounds appealing to you, be sure to register, and then you can join the teams you feel you can best contribute to….

If national security is primary to you, you must register, now. American first.

While catching up on the Cesar Borja story, I was struck by one sentence in the New York Times’ account of how it unraveled the differences between some key facts versus what the family, politicians and the press presented.

Mrs. Borja and her son said that The New York Times was the first newspaper to ask them for documents showing Officer Borja’s actual duties at ground zero.

(I’m not concerned here with the details of the Borja case. For those who want further details, please see the NYT’s article linked above, or the summary at USA Today’s blog On Deadline, and the Editor & Publisher recount of the N.Y. Daily News appeal to truthiness.)

What struck me about what the New York Times did in this case is that it did what we expect quality journalism to do: investigate important topical stories. This highlights a substantially more important story about which mainstream journalism not only dropped the ball, but with knowing irresponsibility: John Kerry’s military service.

Investigation is a key role of journalism, which journalists themselves recognize as a core function and fundamental to their relative competitive value, credibility and future. When it is performed well -- completely and without prejudice to whose ox is gored – media investigations contribute mightily to keeping our politicians more honest, to the integrity of our public discourse and to sounder policies.

It is not investigation, but another matter – of driving public opinion and policy -- when media bestow unto themselves the right to expose national security secrets or publish one-sided stories based on anonymous sources. This is usually fairly transparent, and undermines the relative competitive value, credibility and future of mainstream journalism.

A related matter – abjectly failing to investigate a major, contentious issue, particularly when there is considerable credible evidence to merit further investigation – also undermines the relative competitive value, credibility and future of mainstream journalism.

At this point, although he will run for re-election as senator from Massachusetts, still a position of power, John Kerry’s aspirations and larger impact on the nation’s future are over. But, the impact continues in much public argument about his self-description as a war hero and its demolishment by the sworn statements of almost all of those who served in the same unit and experienced the details.

Based on my extensive files of news articles, columns and blog posts from during the 2004 campaign (most of which are likely off-line by now anyway so I won't frustrate you with links that don't work), simply summed up, the major media failed to publicly or energetically demand that John Kerry present his full military records and his diary, in order to let the public better know the truth. Instead, most of the major media just denigrated the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, without any independent investigation of their well-documented challenges to Kerry’s self-descriptions. Even after the 2004 election, in June 2005, when Kerry released some form of his military records to just three friendly mainstream organs, they refused to make them public to see what details were within or determine whether complete. The major media did not, either, pursue release of Kerry’s diary from Vietnam.

The New York Times is to be commended for asking to see the documents related to the Borja story, and sharing the details with the public. Would that it and its brethren had done similar in 2004-5, or will in the future. The mainstream media has a lot of catch up to do to re-establish its core value and credibility in order to have a brighter future than portended by its present course of declining attention from readers and watchers.

The inability of the State Department to find in its ranks those qualified or willing to serve in Iraq as part of joint teams, as reported here, raised eyebrows among those concerned about the U.S.’s ability to meet its goals in Iraq. Secretary of Defense Gates told Senators, “If you were troubled by the memo, that was mild compared to my reaction when I saw it.”

There is a deeper inability within State. Its Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration, Ellen Sauerbrey, raised more eyebrows when in her first trip to Vietnam she denied that Central Highlands people are persecuted.

Hanoi’s Nhan Dan newspaper, of course, welcomed her remarks:

No punishment or mistreatment were imposed on ethnic minority people from the Central Highlands who have previously fled illegally to Cambodia, said an US diplomat on February 5.
Ellen Sauerbrey, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration, made the remarks during a meeting with the press in Hanoi regarding her 6-day visit to Vietnam which began on January 31.
Sauerbrey said all the seven people she has met and talked to, without government officials' presence, affirmed they were not mistreated or punished when they returned to Vietnam.
The returnees said they were happy to come home and their lives have not been changed since then, she said, adding that these people had no obvious goals to flee the country, they simply followed others.
The US diplomat affirmed that the Government of Vietnam has adopted an open policy for organisations and individuals to come to the Central Highlands and directly meet or talk to the returnees.
Sauerbrey, on her first visit to Vietnam, revealed that she was impressed by the encouraging results of her visit and by the enthusiasm of the Vietnamese people, saying that she witnessed a robust growth of the country. (VNA)

Sauerbrey’s report contradicted every human rights organization, like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, certainly not lackeys of the Right. Her inexperience in the area, and quick trip, charitably, led to her absurd comments.

A 27-year State veteran, with deep experience in Asia and with human rights issues, writes to set Sauerbrey straight:

A senior State Department official visiting Vietnam recently told the media that Degar Montagnard returnees had not been harassed by authorities. This was based on her brief meeting with only seven members of Vietnam's Central Highland Degar minority (also known as Montagnards) who were recently repatriated to Vietnam from Cambodia. She also conjectured that their motivation for fleeing Vietnam was economic rather than as a result of abuse of their human rights.

The individuals whom Under Secretary of State for Population Affairs Ellen Suaerbrey met purportedly were part of a group of nearly 2,000 who fled Vietnam since 2001 many from the 2004 Easter crackdown by security officials. Many of those who escaped were returned to Vietnam against their will. Hanoi's mistreatment of these and other Montagnards, notwithstanding its pledge to the UN that arranged the transfer that there would be no retribution, is however, chronicled by many reputable international human rights organizations.

An Amnesty International-USA official testifying before the US Congressional Human Rights Caucus September 14, 2006 stated that Vietnam appeared to be in violation of its agreement with the UN insofar as the Vietnamese authorities had "detained, questioned and in some instances severely mistreated people who sought sanctuary in Cambodia but who were returned to Vietnam." The official, T.Kumar, Advocacy Director for Asian and the Pacific at Amnesty International-USA, also described human rights abuses related to interference with Montagnard religious activities, freedom of movement and other basic rights.

Another highly regarded non-governmental organization, Human Rights Watch has reported that Montagnards who participated in the 2004 demonstrations that led to their flight abroad were beaten and imprisoned, and that some of those sent back from Cambodia were persecuted. The group's Asia director, Brad Adams, in a statement released February 6, 2007 described Sauerbrey's comments as difficult to accept. He noted specifically that Human Rights Watch had spoken to returnees "who have been threatened, harassed, and beaten, in Vietnam, after returning from Cambodia." Adams dismissed the contention by Sauerbrey that Montagnards with whom she spoke were unable to explain why they had fled Vietnam and discounted her claim that they probably had left for economic reasons unrelated to human rights abuse.

Under Secretary Sauerbrey's comments were undoubtedly welcomed by her Vietnamese Government hosts. Previous State Department statements had been far more candid. The most recent State Department description of the plight of those who fled in 2004 and those who reportedly assisted them noted: "Authorities in the Central Highlands continued to prosecute ethnic minority members whom the government alleged were involved in separatist activities or in helping other individuals illegally cross into Cambodia. Government press reports indicated that at least 15 ethnic minority persons were convicted and sentenced to prison terms of 2 to 13 years. There were credible reports that in at least two instances during the year, one in Dak Lak and one in Gia Lai, some of these persons were held for lengthy periods without trial. One of the individuals reportedly was held and tried in secret."

Undersecretary Sauerbrey was either unfamiliar with or felt unimportant this record of abuse or the historical context which has prompted international concerns about the Montagnards. An ethnic minority, many of whom are Christian, the Montagnards had strongly supported U.S. troops in the Vietnam War. Their history of rescuing downed US fliers or trapped US ground units earned them a reputation among those of us who fought in Vietnam that is not forgotten. Unfortunately, Hanoi also never forgot nor have they forgave the Montagnards. The Montagnards, for decades have paid a heavy price for their friendship with America as reflected in their plight of deep poverty, a dearth of government services, little of no protection under Vietnam's judicial system and systematic abuse by security officials.

The Hanoi Government's well documented abuse targeting the Montagnards, which has included torture, has been an impediment to the Bush Administration's efforts to develop a military-to-military relationship, expand trade ties and otherwise improve bilateral relations. Sauerbrey's rosy assessment presumably was intended to sway those in Congress and elsewhere who have insisted that Hanoi relent in its abuse of human rights meted out against Montagnards, against other Christian and non-Christian groups and workers as a quid pro quo for improved Washington-Hanoi ties.

Sauerbrey's trip into the Central Highlands was unusual. Outside monitors, including Embassy personnel from Hanoi, UN officials, journalists, and Congressional delegations are routinely denied access to the area or only allowed to travel under very tight constraints. Amnesty International, among others, have called for unrestricted access to the Central Highlands by independent and international human rights monitors noting that "the lack of such access and the continued crackdown against particularly Christian Montagnards violate the basic human rights that Vietnam is obligated to uphold as a state party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights."

It is most unfortunate therefore that Undersecretary Sauerbrey used this rare access to the Central Highlands to simply echo the Hanoi Government's widely discredited claims that it is not persecuting this minority.

In my 27 years of service in the State Department, most of it focused on human rights issues and frequently in states whose Governments sought to hide their abuse of human rights, it was an essential requirement of sound investigation and reporting to avoid the kind of gullibility displayed by Under Secretary Sauerbrey. Such credulity betrays the people suffering serious abuses. It also betrays fundamental principals and values to which Americans as a people and as a government aspires.

Undersecretary Sauerbrey's brief venture into the Central Highlands and ensuing pronouncements ill-served her country, its values and the truth.


Edmund McWilliams is a retired senior Foreign Service Officer having served 27 Years, of which many were in service in South East Asia. His military service in Vietnam with the US Army at the rank of E-5 dated from January to November 1972
Contact: 2835 Cherry St. Falls Church, Va 22042 (703-237-3913) (cell 703-899-5285)

The Arkin affair will diminish the ability of newspaper readers to know what biases affect mainstream reporting. It won’t stop the biases, just lead to they being more hidden.

A newspaper sponsors a blog for its print reporters and for others in order to extend its franchise (and maybe provide a transition to a paperless newspaper), to provide additional information and comment that doesn’t fit the space or relevance of the print version, and now we know not to let readers know how (at least for the Washington Post, and probably others) newspaper staff really think.

I’m conflicted. I’d really like to know more about what a newspaper’s reporters really think, and their biases. I don’t want to know in order to go ballistic on this or that matter, though I may.

I’d really rather be concentrating on understanding the news. In order to do so, I want -- need -- to know in order to better appraise what filters and foci are being applied to the background and larger environment of what they do select to report or emphasize.

That would certainly be easier than digging through many other sources, particularly in the alternative media and blogs, in order to get the crucial information the major media leaves out, and in order to get a better fix on which major media reporting is reliable.

Of course, it may be uncomfortable for a newspaper to be hammered for comments deemed egregious by many readers, and such prejudices should be kept out of reporting – indeed far more than at present. But, rather than cloaking the opinions of reporters, major media should encourage them to be more forthcoming in separate opinion sections and particularly at their blogs.

The Washington Post’s ombudsman, Deborah Howell, reflects of the William Arkin affair in “A Blog’s Blast Damage.” Ms. Howell notes of Arkin calling our professional military “mercenary”:

Readers usually take things literally. And an editor should have told him to take out the word. That's what editors are for: They keep opinion writers from making fools of themselves.

Then, Ms. Howell reports what, instead, did and didn’t happen:

An editor read his column before it was posted but didn't see the problem. Jim Brady, washingtonpost.com's executive editor, said that had he seen it, he would have asked for changes. Arkin said he would have made them.

Why? Ms. Howell doesn't address the editor's bias that would lead him or her to see nothing wrong with calling our servicepeople mercenaries. She just sees a failure to be more tactful or better cloaked in being biased:

What's the difference between opinion writing for the newspaper and for washingtonpost.com? The writing can be similar, but the editing is more intense at the newspaper. More experienced eyes see a story or a column before it goes into the paper; The Post has several levels of rigorous editing. There is "less of an editing process" for blogs at the more immediacy-oriented Web site, Brady said.

Ms. Howell doesn’t dodge the issue of standards:

Arkin's column did not meet Post standards, but then, newspaper editing isn't perfect, either. But "mercenary" surely is live ammo; such an incendiary word should have popped out in flames to Post editors.

And it is good editing that should prevail when a report carries The Post's banner.

Newspapers’ bloggers and newspaper blog editors will become more circumspect as a result of the Arkin affair. We will have a smaller window into the actual thinking and filters that influence newspapers’ product. There are many more Arkins and editors who fail to meet standards. We deserve to have more of them expose themselves.

It is patently dishonest for a political party to misrepresent the views of veterans or to malign veterans.

Democrats, since Vietnam, have electorally suffered due to their cut-and-run abandonment of the achievements by our military and Democrats’ association with radicals who maligned veterans’ service.

Democrats do not seem to have learned much from that except to shield their similar undermining today behind false organizational fronts and platitudes of support that ring hollow. The tactic may find acceptance in media friendly toward Democrats, but still falls flat among most Americans.

The Washington Post reported yesterday on the visit to Congress of several veterans opposed to administration policy in Iraq.

When Iraq war veteran Jon Soltz accused Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) of "aiding the enemy," the Democratic senators gathered around him yesterday did not wince. Nor did Democrats object when Soltz, the chairman of a group called VoteVets.org, called President Bush and Vice President Cheney "draft dodgers."

In the United States Congress, where decorum usually holds sway, Soltz and his small band of veterans are saying things many Democrats would like to express but can't. And as the politics heat up over the Iraq war, Democratic leaders increasingly are being drawn to Soltz and his angry soldiers.

Later in the Washington Post report is the vet group’s claim that:

VoteVets.org has 20,000 members, including 1,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, said spokesman Eric Schmeltzer. The PAC is part of a coalition of left-leaning groups organized by Americans United for Change that includes labor unions and liberal groups such as MoveOn.org.

Aside from a self-claimed 1,000 being a miniscule percent of Iraq war veterans, VoteVets.org implausibly seeks to confuse this Leftist affiliation:

Soltz said the group is pro-military and not a front for the Democrats. "I'm a conservative," said Soltz, who volunteered on Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign.

Not coincidentally, VoteVets.org had nothing to say about the outrageous characterization by William Arkin of Iraq veterans as “mercenaries” but did target three Republican Senators in a Superbowl ad to support a resolution to criticize the President’s policy in Iraq.

Moderate electoral analyst Stuart Rothenberg, at his blog Rothenberg Political Report, comments:

If supporters of President George W. Bush's policy of sending another 20,000 troops to Iraq had aired a television ad that argued that opposing the new Bush policy means "you don't support the troops," opponents of the President would have rightly gone bananas….

And yet, those same folks don't seem to mind paying for a VoteVets.org TV spot that says people who support Bush's policy "don't support the troops."…

Someone needs to tell the folks over at VoteVets.org that their ad is just plain wrong and that spending a lot of money to put it on TV doesn't change that.

This isn’t the first time that VoteVets.org has been criticized by liberals or centrists who have any caring for truth. During the 2006 elections, FactCheck.org criticized VoteVets.org’s ad for “nasty tactic – accusing an opponent of playing with the lives of American troops.”

VoteVets.org is the latest incarnation of several Democrat fronts over the past two years that originate in Howard Dean’s “50 state strategy” alliance with Kosites. I wrote about VoteVets.org here, and included links to my prior columns tracing their evolotion.

The Democrats' '06 replay of veterans gambit

Dems Cynical Veterans Politics 2006

“Band of Brothers” Redux

Democrats’ 2006 National Security Strategy

Dem Vets Get No Respect

The results of this Democrat “veterans surge”? Abyssmal. Daniel Glover, in his Beltway Blogroll, showed the 2006 vote results for every so-called “Fighting Dems” candidate.

A few of the anointed candidates dropped out of their races well before the general election, and 18 others were defeated in primaries, suggesting that the party as a whole is not eager to rally around veterans. Most of the other fighting Dems were soundly defeated Tuesday.

Leading Democrats, meanwhile, feel little compunction to restrain themselves from absurd claims about veterans. For example, (video at the link) when Senator McCain reported on his recent visit to Iraq:

that he had talked to soldiers from the ranks of privates up to generals. They all told him that they did not believe you could support the troops and oppose their efforts.
Harry Reid's response was, in effect, that the troops lied to John McCain because they did not want to speak candidly with a war hero/Presidential candidate.

Harry Reid, on the floor of the United State Senate, said the American soldiers in Iraq lied to John McCain.

Veterans will soon have another chance to disprove the Democrat meme, if anyone in the major media will pay attention instead of provide TV time and newspaper ink to Democrat or radicals’ claims.

March 17, 2007, the union of radical Left and pro-Palestinian groups operating as United for Peace and Justice [Correction: A.N.S.W.E.R. is running the show] will assemble in Washington, D.C. to march from the Vietnam Veterans Wall to the Pentagon. Veterans and supporters are contacting each other, as a Gathering of Eagles, (also see here) to peaceably collect around the Wall to prevent protestors from defacing it.

It would really be interesting to see the VetVotes.org people stand with their fellow veterans, for a change.

In recent conversations with young colleagues and co-workers I have often observed a mentality of entitlement. There is a culture of dependency among youth who seem to think that society owes people a livelihood, a roof over their heads, health care for the ill and everlasting liberty without having to fight for it.

I was having a discussion recently with a bright young student going for her masters at NYU’s Stern School of Business, about corporate fraud and the financial scandals at Enron where the directors Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling were indicted for numerous securities and monetary crimes. She mentioned Jack Welsh lumping him together with the crooked CEO’s of Enron and other big time criminals. Her class just completed a study of Jack Welsh alleging that he committed crimes of defrauding employees out of their livelihoods and awarding disproportionate payouts to the top executives. He was demonized as an ignoble corporate shark exploiting the powerless victims of his mammoth empire.

It is astounding how academia can trash the legacy of a revered business leader, Jack Welsh named “Manager of the Century” by Fortune magazine. He engineered the turn around of GE by firing the 10% most unproductive workers and rewarding the top performers. Incompetent employees are a liability to a company. However if one’s outlook is tainted by an entitlement mentality, even the most sensible business policies are construed as unethical and the most highly regarded corporate sage is regarded as a crook.

Nonetheless, my own generation, the baby boomers, were no less guilty of the same flaw. Our parents, who pampered and indulged us and shielded us from life’s hard knocks, called us the ‘sniveling spoiled brat’ generation as we were growing up. Fortunately I have long since matured in my thinking, but it’s no less perplexing how my generation’s spoiled mentality has trickled down into the teacher’s education schools, the academic curriculum and classrooms as “education for social justice.” In fact the fruits of these liberal academic programs are being seen in street level advocacy groups working to shake down small companies and extort businessmen for the ‘progressive’ cause of worker’s rights in order to halt the spread of capitalism. Anything with a ‘progressive’ label is lauded as visionary and trumpeted by the New York media whose writers likewise hail from progressive schools of journalism.

But the New York Post’s Tom Elliot has exposed one of these sniveling advocacy groups, the Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC) for the fraud that it is, an “angry campaign to end capitalism in N.Y.C. eateries.” Like a band of latter-day Barbary Pirates these self righteous goons prowl the streets of New York targeting fine restaurants with rowdy street demonstrations, loud bullhorns and signs charging them with violations of worker’s rights even in cases where there was not a single violation and the workers had never asked for their representation.

But they have succeeding in putting some restaurants out of business and keeping customers away from others. They have also succeeded in profiting themselves by extorting restaurant owners for large ransoms so they will leave them alone. Smith and Wollensky has paid ROC $164,000 to end the protests at two of its restaurants, Cite and Park Avenue Cafe. Conducting their guerilla operations protected as a tax exempt 501(c)3 charitable foundation they continue to dodge legal loopholes reeking havoc on New York’s fine dining establishments with impunity. Workers whom ROC claims to represent without their consent are fed up with the loss of customers and resulting loss of tips.

Who are the protesters who fill the ranks of ROC? They are the new breed of youthful radicals schooled in social justice advocacy at our most prestigious colleges and universities. The leading radical is a Harvard/Yale trained lawyer named Saru Jayaraman whose objective is to fight for social justice and stated that she “wants to eliminate capitalism from the restaurant industry.” She also teaches a class on immigrant rights at NYU as a professor of Political Science and Labor Studies, where she recruits protesters from her class. She boasted: "Our challenge to capitalism is not simply building alternative institutions, but actually, over time . . . developing new owners . . . who will infiltrate the New York State Restaurant Association and ultimately co-opt it for workers' rights.”

Barbara Lundblad, a professor at Union Theological Seminary who teaches a class in "Preaching for Social Transformation" also encourages her students to participate in the protests. She leads the protesters in “prayer vigils” in front of New York restaurants, which are simply a more pious means of extortion and intimidation of restaurateurs and their customers.

But we can and will fight back. One way is to dine and tip generously at the besieged Cite and Park Avenue Café and other restaurants targeted by NYU professor/activists and their disciples. Another way to end the political indoctrination in the classroom is to cut off funding to NYU. Most of NYU’s support comes from endowments, grants and donations from alumni. A small percentage comes from tuition. All alumni should call up and pledge not to donate another cent to NYU as long as such radical professors are indoctrinating and recruiting students in the classroom. As long as professor Saru Jayaraman is teaching students to fight for social justice in order to end capitalism in the restaurant industry, all alumni and donors should tell the president that they will withhold contributions until that professor is discharged and an academic environment is restored at NYU.

Another way is to lobby our state lawmakers to get them involved when we observe such professors using the classroom for their pet political causes. We should call our representatives and let them know that the abuses of higher education are a troubling phenomenon. Through the efforts of my colleagues Mitchell Langbert, Candace de Russy and I, several state lawmakers are already well informed and involved. The Academic Bill of Rights legislation was recently reintroduced in the 2007 session as bill #S2300 in the State Senate by Senator DeFrancisco, and #A04406 in the Assembly by Assemblyman Seminerio. The purpose of the bill is to promote intellectual diversity on campus and prevent such political abuse of classroom time. A portion of the memo written by the bill’s sponsor states:

Professors and administrators have an obligation to make students aware of a broad range of viewpoints and perspectives. They are not hired to teach only students who share their political or philosophical views, and professors should never force their own views upon their students. The classroom is not and should never be a soapbox for a professor to promote his or her point of view.

If the protest Left of the Vietnam war are responsible for the diminished public and congressional support for that war, then why are public and congressional support for the war in Iraq at comparable low levels when the protest Left has been now so minor and ineffectual?

Sixties radicals enjoy extolling how they brought down President Johnson or stopped the funding in 1975. Sixties conservatives counter how if not for those radicals, in effect or directly supporting North Vietnamese aggression, our successes would not have been undermined, bringing horrible suffering upon millions of Indochinese.

Both sides are exaggerating the role of the protest Left.

More telling, in both cases, is the more generalized disappointments in results flowing slower and with greater difficulty than the promises from policy makers.

The protest Left is fast to exploit these disappointments, but oversteps in denigrating American motive. The reaction to the shocking displays and words of the ‘60’s radicals propelled many, then and after, toward conservatism. Skillful conservative politicians and organizers built a successful movement on this broadened foundation that increased conservatives’ power in electoral politics for a generation.

Meantime, the graduates of the protest Left, and those influenced by their themes, advanced through media and academia, some through electoral politics, to increase their relative power over the national discourse. Their increased weight more than offsets the relatively minor ability of the Left to mobilize public protests.

One can easily point out the irresponsibility of policy opponents who find overblown fault first with America, as they ignore or excuse far grosser excesses by foes, or who blithely deny the stakes that we have in national security, world order or greater freedom among others on our planet. One can easily point out that they offer no constructive paths or alternatives.

But, what about the fault that justifiably falls upon our policy makers? They have failed to deliver the degree of progress they presented, particularly within the time frame and extent of resources they expected.

In both Vietnam and Iraq, lessons were painfully learned about the enemy, intelligence developed, and our military overcame. This is natural in war, no nation capable of perfect preparation, and events and enemy adaptations presenting new and unthought of hurdles. Immersion, experience and adaptation yield success. American forces excel in this flexibility.

The desire to be or have loved ones home by Christmas was powerful during all our wars.
Those with military experience or understanding, and those with faith in America and its goals, are patient with the natural confusion and elongated time frame of wars. Those without or with less are more impatient. As time wears on, all’s patience is tried.

The hesitancy of presidents Johnson and Bush to follow tried and true military experience in applying more force and denying the enemy sanctuaries, and to more rapidly change military command and strategy, fed this impatience.

Are we, then, to primarily blame the protest Left for diminished public and congressional support, or primarily blame their affiliates in today’s media, or primarily blame those with the leadership responsibility? I suggest the latter.

This, by no means, excuses those opponents of policy or protestors who act irresponsibly, and who fail to either be constructive or offer constructive alternatives. The distractions and restrictions they cause definitely restrain our leaders from greater force or from more openness at recognizing errors and altering course. But, the policy leaders, still, have the responsibility to create confidence through boldness and honesty.

When we have appeared more successful, the voices of opponents or protestors have been more muted and their declarations of defeat given less credence. When we seemingly flounder, their voices are louder and more followed. The constructive changes that President Bush is initiating are not given their chance by many.

No one can deny that we’re late in the innings in Iraq. No one can deny that the natural impulse of politicians is to be re-elected. What remains to be seen is whether today’s view of the 2008 elections is more important to our politicians than boldness and honesty, not to mention national security and a more benign Middle East. So far, too many appear lacking in those leadership traits. The protest Left is not to blame for that.

Few bother to dig through the dead wood and crippled thought at the New York Times, and its wire service customers do not see its occasional corrections that appear after gross errors. Thus, the New York Times’ prominent postures or the attention and misunderstanding originally created do their damage.

Last week, I demonstrated the error of the premise of the New York Times mischaracterization of the American Jewish Committee as a “conservative advocacy group” as lead paragraph support by the NYT's leftist reviewer belittling a critique of Israel-attacking Jews.

David Bernstein at Volkh.com drew my attention to the following “correction” by the New York Times, and adds his comment.

Posted by David Bernstein: N.Y. Times Issues Correcton re American Jewish Committee: http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_02_04-2007_02_10.shtml#1170593602

An article in The Arts on Wednesday about an essay titled "'Progressive' Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism" on the Web site of the American Jewish Committee referred incorrectly to the committee. Its stance on issues ranges across the political spectrum; it is not "conservative."

Well, that's better, and given that the AJC identifies itself as "centrist," it's about all we can expect. But don't be fooled, as Ilya pointed previously, the AJC's stance on issues does not "range across the political spectrum"; it is consistently mainstream liberal,
including on Israel-related matters.

Maybe, if enough Vietnam veterans lived in the Upper West Side of Manhattan and socialized with New York Times editors, the New York Times would have gotten around to correcting its repeated erroneous mischaracterization of the Swiftees’ documented charges as “unsubstantiated” and gotten around to actually investigating and reporting, rather than being a transmission organ for Kerry.

Neither the White House nor the Congress has behaved seriously enough to either known lessons of Iraq or to in future avoiding such chaotic and disorganized policy and execution. Both are caught up in near-term fixes or flaming.

Instead, needed is a major overhaul of agency capacities and of interagency coordination.

Prior to the 2003 invasion, we thought we had enough interagency consultation and coordination. Since, we’ve learned that what there was may have been adequate to expectations, but has been inadequate to the evolving situation we misestimated. This hasn’t been corrected, or even seriously been addressed.

In the case of the intelligence reorganization, the White House and Congress just compromised on a shuffle of the deck-chairs and to add bureaucracy. The administration, similarly, appears more reactive than proactive in replacing Secretary Rumsfeld, appointing Lt. Gen. Petraeus, and its current tactical shifts in Iraq.

The Iraq Study Group’s recommendations fade from memory. Senate Democrats and Republicans dither and dicker about nonbinding resolutions for personal catharsis and political CYA that express irresolution to our foes and friends.

Last night’s Lehrer News Hour discussion with Democrat Beltway columnist Mark Shields has him noting that the Iraq resolution debate is merely a precurser to the more serious attempts by Democrats to challenge Iraq policy by micromanagement of the military appropriations.

The president now is requesting and being required to do so, to come up with an additional request for supplemental appropriations for the war. That is going to be the vehicle over which the real debate is.

Democrats promise to “scrutinize White House war-spending requests more zealously,” as the Washington Post reports. The report quotes a former top Pentagon official that, “The defense budget request is the sleeper political issue of the year.” Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s concern is the “ ‘opportunity cost’ that would cut into Democrats’ ability to fund their domestic priorities.”

Before the 2006 elections and before the release of the ISG report, Col. Austin Bay tried to get Secretary Rumsfeld to reply to a fundamental weakness in U.S. preparedness and execution in Iraq.

My question: "Mr. Secretary, based on our experience in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and the limited interagency and non-governmental organization (NGO) participation in that operation, how do you see 'Unified Action' evolving for future conflicts?"…

"I'll tell you we're better at it now than we were five years ago," Rumsfeld replied. He acknowledged that "challenges remain" in achieving Unified Action and that effective Unified Action is critical to winning 21st century wars.

He's right -- we are better at it than we were. However, I know we aren't as good at it as we need to be….

The politically deft SecDef finessed the question -- and it was finesse, not dodge. The military jargon masked a heavy political hand grenade I was rolling toward the Beltway. You think Harry Reid's land deal or Mark Foley's messages are big stories? How about a stinging pre-election turf battle between Defense and the departments of State, Treasury, Justice, Commerce and Agriculture, complete with zinger accusations of who is or isn't contributing to the war effort?
I know, that's quite a claim, which is why I need to translate the mil-speak: Unified Action means coordinating and synchronizing every "tool of power" America possesses to achieve a political end -- like winning a global war for national survival against terrorists who hijack economically and politically fragile nations and provinces….

Our system for "Unified Action" is still largely a Cold War, 20th century relic designed to prop up governments (so often corrupt and ill-led), instead of helping individuals and neighborhoods become economically self-sustaining and self-securing. Winning war in the Age of the Internet means improving neighborhoods and individual lives. The 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner and micro-finance whiz Muhammad Yunus understands this.

We are in a long, global war, where economic and political development programs must reinforce security and intelligence operations -- and vice versa.

We've been improvising "joint development and security operations," and we've learned from our improvisation (Rumsfeld's "we're better than we were").

But it's time to quit improvising. Effective "Unified Action" requires re-engineering 20th century Beltway bureaucracies -- which means thoughtful, sophisticated cooperation between the executive branch and Congress.

The Iraq Study Group’s recommendations included the following three:

RECOMMENDATION 74: In the short term, if not enough civilians volunteer to fill key positions in Iraq, civilian agencies must fill those positions with directed assignments. Steps should be taken to mitigate familial or financial hardships posed by directed assignments, including tax exclusions similar to those authorized for U.S. military personnel serving in Iraq.

RECOMMENDATION 75: For the longer term, the United States government needs to improve how its constituent agencies—Defense, State, Agency for International Development, Treasury, Justice, the intelligence community, and others—respond to a complex stability operation like that represented by this decade’s Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the previous decade’s operations in the Balkans. They need to train for, and conduct, joint operations across agency boundaries, following the Goldwater-Nichols model that has proved so successful in the U.S. armed services.

RECOMMENDATION 76: The State Department should train personnel to carry out civilian tasks associated with a complex stability operation outside of the traditional embassy setting. It should establish a Foreign Service Reserve Corps with personnel and expertise to provide surge capacity for such an operation. Other key civilian agencies, including Treasury, Justice, and Agriculture, need to create similar technical assistance capabilities.

Along with many others, these recommendations have received scant attention, or been dismissed as either too large or serious a project for our chattering politicians.

Instead of seeking headlines or to micromanage tactics, the Congress should be holding serious studies and hearings on how to accomplish better agency capacities and coordination. The administration should be proactive in offering concrete recommendations, and in engaging in serious consultations with the Congress. This will demonstrate whether either the White House or the Congress is serious about better waging the long war that both admit we’re in.

We remember “A Choice, Not An Echo” or “Shining City on a Hill” as rallying cries that moved first a movement and then a nation and then the world. They were forward looking affirmations of confidence and faith in freedom and American resolve. We don’t remember any such rallying cries from Gerald Ford, Bush #41 or 43, but rather pleas for staying the course of whatever course we were on. They won or lost largely for reasons external to their own efforts, but they failed to set a course that would either last or overcome.

Leadership includes but is far more than “the buck stops here.” Leadership is the wisdom and experience to weld others’ concerns and aspirations with a vision and the concrete steps to get there, then to mobilize to achieve each step.

It’s equally true that every war contains both the seeds of the next war and the next peace. How we act heavily influences which. There is no end of history, or sidestepping history. The challenges will never disappear of living in an evolving world of many nations and peoples, often with conflicting claims. Those challenges are best met constructively and bravely. Otherwise, temporary avoidance seeds or leaves the field to those to gain from conflict.

We look back at watersheds of history, some at the time seeing the portents from the failures that only appeared manifest to many later on, too late. World War I put Europe into shocked impotence and the U.S. into isolationism, exploited by communist and fascist thugs. World War II only turned this around late in the game by the resistance of England, survival instinct of Russians, and the U.S. taking years to get fully mobilized. Sheltered by a nuclear standoff, Western Europe returned to shocked impotence and the U.S. to carrying the burdens of internationalism on an accountant’s cost-benefit mentality. In Vietnam, the time bought for others in the region and our failing determination shifted our leaders to finding the costs exceeding our own benefits, leaving the residual costs to others who suffered from encouraged foes and later to ourselves as new foes took encouragement from our fickle timidity.

Today, we find relatively few disagreeing that we’re in a long war of some sort with a determined, distributed force of extremists. Otherwise, there’s little agreement, either among or between various camps of thought. Much of that chaotic thinking stems from our prior confusions, errors, and failures to face or correct them.

Most of those are rooted in budgetary unwillingness to maintain large adaptive armed forces, and an unwillingness to awake earlier to these needs and the needs for early overwhelming action.

Expressions of dangerous purposes that threaten our security and well-being do not energize us in majority efforts. Then, the armed threats are rationalized away or haltingly met by half-measures that fail to squelch the encouraged foes. When finally moved to action, our forces are inadequate and misallocated, and the disappointments and excess blood shed discourage many.

If we’d had better intelligence, if it hadn’t been denuded of experienced minds and made overly dependent on eyes in the sky by the post-Vietnam restrictions, maybe we would have known or done differently in 2003. If we had a larger and more flexible armed force budgeted at prior levels, a more robust Special Operations capability, and State and other departments more focused on counterinsurgency than canapés, if the military hadn’t been shrunk to semi-adequacy by so-called “peace dividend” domestic spending and the other departments had stepped up to their partnership responsibilities, maybe we would have done better after Saddam was toppled.

We can continue to argue those points. But, to dwell on them in a domestic-centered tit-for-tat is an avoidance of facing up to the future. Whether we today or soon withdraw from or send more troops to Iraq, we will still face the same problems and needs.

Further denuding our capacities to analyze, act and respond, as post-Vietnam, will not meet those problems and needs.

Only a major – and costly, but still less than the ‘50’s or ‘60’s spending as a percent of GNP – expansion and reorganization of our intelligence and military and foreign operations organs, and determined head-knocking to coordinate and work together effectively, will be hopefully adequate.

The candidate for 2008 who is courageous and articulate to thus lead may win, but certainly will be seen as looking forward and set a course for the future rather than wallowing in the past.

We don’t need, or want, a rehash of the past, or near-sighted stubbornness to stay the course. We need, and are awaiting, a new course. Most Americans will rally to those who come together to lead, rather than belittle and be little. We need a “Forward Vision for a Free World.”