What the Heck was I Thinking!?

I’m afraid he may be right: 

SO IS THERE ANY HOPE THAT Republican Senators will see the light? Personally, I doubt it. Certain Republicans, especially those who are up for reelection in ‘08, have been trying to figure out a way to distance themselves from the war since the calamity of 11/7. The non-binding resolution farce is their pet trick du jour.

The Republicans may think this is the lesson to be learned from the ‘06 elections. I think they’re trying to avoid looking at the real reasons - corruption, cronyism, pork barrel - all the things they just don’t want to have to quit to get reelected.

Mr. Barnett continues:

But hey, look on the bright side. Many times over the past six years, we’ve all said if we’re going to have Republicans in office who behave the way these guys do, why bother? ‘These guys’ are at this very moment sowing their own political demise. The Spirit of ‘94 died in the GOP a long time ago. We should have known all along that the Senators and Congressmen who killed it weren’ going to be the ones to bring it back.

That may all be true, but I see a long time in the wilderness for conservatives if the Republican party doesn’t find some good candidates to either replace these yahoos, or get them to pay attention.

That wilderness is also populated with Islamist terrorists - how many of us will pay for their cupidity?

What really bothers me is I’m afraid Mr. Barnett is right on the mark.

P.S.: I signed the list. How about you!?

Source: Hugh Hewitt

A snazzy title, but it struck me while I was reading a review of a new book published in Germany. The review is at Captains Quarters blog. The book, Henryk Broder’s new book on the Western response to radical Islamism, Hurray, We’re Capitulating! 

The quote below jumped out at me:

As different as the West’s reactions to the Muslim protests were, what they had in common were origins in feelings of powerlessness and helplessness. Critical souls who only yesterday agreed with Marx that religion is the opium of the masses suddenly insisted that religious sensibilities must be taken into account, especially when accompanied by violence. The representatives of open societies reacted like the inhabitants of an island about to be hit by a hurricane. Powerless against the forces of nature, they stocked up on supplies, nailed doors and windows shut and hoped that the storm would soon pass. (emphasis mine)

This is the core of the Left’s philosophy - you as an individual are powerless and need Big Brother to help you and “defend” your rights against the powerful __________ (fill in with your favorite corporation, lobby group, political party). You don’t need guns to defend yourself, that is the state’s role, as it decides.

Capt. Ed Morrissey adds:

Our enemies have learned that we have no stomach for confrontation. We have grown so content within our material success that we view all conflict as economic problems to be solved through concessions and compromise.

The lack of stomach for confrontation is only against those threats who don’t appear to fall into the tidy categories defined by the liberals. These Islamo-fascist rioters don’t look much like the capitalists that the liberals really despise, so liberal can’t really see them as an enemy.

Besides, the Islamo-fascist rioters use violence and bombs and guns. Those are all scary things. Liberals want us to talk with them to see if they will put down their scary things.

Source: Captain’s Quarters

I’ve not heard much from Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia that I like. He appears to have no sense of humor, no sense of his own humanity, and to be completely tone-deaf about what he says in public.

Dr. Sanity blogs about an ironic observation made by a commenter to The Corner about Jim Webb’s invocation of Presidents Eisenhower and Teddy Roosevelt in his response to the State of the Union

The commenter noted that the method used by Eisenhower’s administration to stop the Korean war has some curious implications for the war in Iraq.

When President Eisenhower assumed the presidency from Truman in 1953, he quickly recognized the logical solution to the strategic conundrum was shifting U.S. war-fighting from limited to total war means, and he thereby ended the Korean War by communicating to the communists his intention of escalating with nuclear weapons if the communists persisted in their total war objectives. Civilian limited war advocates should have seen the glaring fallacy of their theory at this point, but they didn’t. For his part, Eisenhower did not believe that limited war could remain limited. (cited as - Col. Tom Snodgrass, writing at American Thinker)

So, does Jim Webb, the anti war Senator intend to say to the country that the big stick needs to come out in the war? Or is Mr. Webb just trying to invoke someone who stopped a war without thinking through the way that person stopped it?

Eisenhower was not a pacifist. To quote Dr. Sanity:

Remember that before he was President, Eisenhower was a general in a war in which up to 56 million people died (counting both military and civilian). A war, in fact, that might have gone on for many extra years if the difficult decision to use nuclear weapons had not been made by a Democrat President of the United States. I’m sure the irony of this was lost on Webb and his fellow Democrat defeatists as they argued to boldly accept defeat in Iraq, while calling on the ghosts of wartimes past.

Just what is the message from Democrats? No war? End the war by ANY means? Or just “Don’t let Bush get credit for the win?”

Source: Dr. Sanity: DEMOCRATS AND THE GHOSTS OF WARTIMES PAST