September 22, 2005
CCW
Counter Conventional Wisdom. It is what blogs excel at. I posted about a Nick Danger piece on RedState.org the other day that defied CW.
Today, Larry Kudlow linked to and agreed with that article, and this one about the President's response to Katrina.
In this piece, Thomas Lifson says that W has been misunderestimated again and puts the big spending response in context.
[an] important lesson the President learned at Harvard Business School is to embrace a finite number of strategic goals, and to make each one of those goals serve as many desirable ends as possible.The President’s strategic goals remain remarkably consistent: 1) position America to win the War on terror (a goal thrust upon his presidency in 2001); 2) keep America’s economy growing; 3) position the Republican Party to dominate American politics in the foreseeable future.
His response to Hurricane Katrina is being shaped by these three goals, as well as (and even more importantly) by the genuine humanitarian impulse to help fellow Americans and fellow souls when they are most in need.
Lifson then shows how the President’s response serves these goals.
Good Stuff!
Pardon my nit picking this morning, but the War on Terror remains the burr in my bonnet with this administration. The two cardinal rules of goals that I learned are that they must be definable and measurable. If someone could define winning the War on Terror to me and how we measure our progress or success that would be helpful.
Posted by: Silence Dogood at September 23, 2005 11:46 AMWell, if it's nitpicking season, I believe it's a bee in one's bonnet or a burr in one's saddle.
How about four years without a serious attack on American soil? It's an amorphous agenda but the length of time without a US attack, the removal of the Taliban from Afghanistan, the removal of Saddam from Iraq, free elections in both nations and spillover into Kuwait (women's suffrage), Egypt (multi-party elections), and Libya (ended nuke program) are substantive achievements. And that if you had dreamed of this in late September 2001, you'd have been a hapless Pollyanna.
For the near term, let’s look at continued protection at home, ability to safely draw down troop levels in Iraq, and some spillover to Syria and Iran.
Posted by: jk at September 23, 2005 5:14 PMThere I was, looking foolish wearing a saddle for a bonnet...
I certainly can't argue with the successes you claim, ( I can almost picture the chart on the Oval Office wall, "Days since a terrorist attack" with little numbers that are hung up every day) and I too celebrate them even as I remain a skeptic. The ground rules of this conflict are different, there will be no armistice or surrender, no territory to capture or reclaim, or even a notable collapse of a wall or an empire. The only way to win is to affect a change in the mindset of the would be perpetrators, when freedom and economic prosperity become more important than their cause, a success that will be significant precisely because it is not notable, but a peace that ushers in quietly over time as terrorism becomes so rare as to be largely forgotten. Governments will change and ideologies will soften, but it is a fallacy to think that military intervention is the only or faster way to achieve these goals.
Posted by: Silence Dogood at September 27, 2005 11:35 AMSilence, may I please say, politely, "bunk."
I submit that one can never affect a "change in the mindset of the would be perpetrators" of terrorism. Anyone who, as I, has attempted to "change" a spouse's mindset understands this simple fact of life all too well.
The change that is needed here is not external to America, but within it. Terrorists dare to attack us because they know we'll hamstring our own self defense with pacifist navel gazing. They attack us because we attack ourselves (or at least, allow ourselves to attack each other). Free speech is just fine with me - let the collectivists argue that America deserves to be destroyed, or assemble plans for an "International Freedom Center" at the WTC memorial - but to hell with this political correctness that prevents proud individualists from saying "you are wrong." Let the rest of America's individuals decide which camp they'd rather join, but only after they've heard BOTH sides of the argument, not just the MSM and ivory tower party lines.
Military intervention against groups, gangs, tribes, or nations who conduct murders and bombings of civilians is indeed the only way to dissuade them. And if James Earl Carter, Jr. had invaded Iran and rounded up every last "revolutionary" who was involved in the invasion of sovereign US territory at our embassy for trial and imprisonment, perhaps we'd never have seen the slaughter of 9/11 or the scores of smaller "operations" that presaged it.
America is the good. Liberty is her guiding principle. Relentless intolerance of threats to our liberty is the fastest, the surest... the ONLY way to preserve it. "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants." It remains for every American to choose whether to lead, to follow, or to get the hell out of the way.
Posted by: johngalt at September 27, 2005 3:10 PMI guess we will have to agree to disagree johngalt, or may I politely say "bunk" in return? Fear of retribution will not dissuade fanatic terrorists, neither will the opposite embolden them, they march to their own deluded drummer. Describe for me how someone who views himself as a martyr will be emboldened if he thinks he won't we killed or dissuaded if he thinks he will. It doesn't matter to him, that's the point of being a martyr. Look at how Israel's 40 years of strong response has worked against terrorism. To pretend that a more aggressive response back in Iran for example would have saved us from 9-11 is pure insanity. Insanity as in doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. The conservatives have heralded their conclusion that sanctions don't work, the liberals their conclusion that military intervention and government overthrow doesn't work. Funny thing is they are both right, but rather than come up with more options each side claims one as the answer.
Posted by: Silence Dogood at September 28, 2005 12:51 PMOf course the true fanatics won't easily be dissuaded by a forceful response against them, and may even in their great rage welcome it. But they are indeed emboldened by cowardice and restraint. Or aren't you familiar with UBL's famous "fatwa" statement, "...the extent of your impotence and weaknesses became very clear" after Clinton withdrew from Somalia?
And then we have the followers. These are the ones I think can be deterred, when they see a crushing miltary response to each petty terrorist skirmish. It may occur to them that there's no profit in their bloody agenda if they fail to make any progress or win concessions. Or aren't you familar with Zarqawi's famous courier intercept stating that suicide bombers were getting harder and harder to find?
"Israel's 40 years of strong response," you say? Like evacuating its citizens by force and buldozing their homes so that "Palestinian" cockroaches can call that their "homeland?" That's not the kind of "strong response" I advocate.
If you want to call what America has done in the face of a terrorist threat for the last 26 years insanity then I'll agree with you, but I sure as hell won't abide with any notion that it has been, on the whole, "forceful."
Military intervention and "government" overthrow worked quite nicely in Afghanistan, thank you very much. And the liberals are scared straight to death that it's on the verge of working in Iraq as well. You, on the other hand, appear to be advocating for the elusive "un-thought-of better option" so routinely used as a tool to provoke impotence. Well, I've been talking about such a better option for some time now. The question now is, who doesn't want us to win?
Posted by: johngalt at September 28, 2005 3:27 PMLookit you guys having all this fun on the bottom of the page!
I guess you have exposed a fundamental difference between the supporters and the serious antagonists of the administration’s terror policy.
I have to line up squarely with JohnGalt on this. Osama Bin Laden exploited the Arab street's perception of the US as a paper tiger, following our nation's ignominious retreats in Beirut (Reagan) and Somalia (Clinton), as well as our pusillanimous reaction to the Iranian hostages (Carter), the first Trade Center bombing (Clinton) and the Embassy and U.S.S. Cole bombing (Clinton).
As for Israel, the worst part of the Intifada followed the failure of the Oslo accords, when both the US and Israel looked weak.
What we perceive as kindness is perceived by Islamofascists as weakness.
Posted by: jk at September 28, 2005 5:01 PM | What do you think? [7]