Another Fake Bin Laden Tape

Bin Laden is dead. At least that's what I believe, and I've believed it for a couple of years. My main evidence is that the media whore hasn't shown his face since -- well in at least a couple of years. The ultimate slap in the face to the U.S. and other allies would be to show his face and prove that he is alive -- but he does not. This can only be because he cannot. And "he cannot" -- not because the means to get such things out from caves in Pakistan or Afghanistan are not available. He cannot because the means to get such things out when you're dead are unavailable. Unless Allah is truly on his side. Which he apparently isn't, because ... where's the beef, man?

So I'm parusing through this story on the fake Bin Laden tape where the fake Bin Laden (FBL) once again talks about the "Zionist-crusader war against Islam".

Well, let's see, what FBL calls Islam has declared war on "The West", which consists of what he calls Zionists and Crusaders... so it stands to reason that the people he describes, if they are to fight back, must be waging a war on what he calls Islam. Ok. Fine, Fake Bin Laden. What's your point? It actually seems pretty reflexive to me.

Of course, FBL's point is that he wants to rile up those who feel, or at least publicly declare, that what FBL calls Islam is not, in fact, Islam -- so that they'll join his fight. If he can get them to believe that America et al wants to kill and enslave them, they will fall in line with what FBL calls Islam. Which is kind of Ironic, because FBL's Islam pretty much calls for the killing and/or enslaving of the entire non-Muslim world, and they've started doing things like flying planes into buildings and blowing themselves up in restaurants and discos, ramming boats full of explosives into other boats, trucks full of explosives into embassies, and kidnapping people and sawing their heads off and videotaping it for the world to see to make it happen. And the rest of Islam lifts nary a finger to stop it. Which makes the rest of Islam ... a defacto accessory to the war.

So Islam declares war on the West. The parts of the West with any cajones remaining declares war on Islam, with one hand self-tied behind it's back so as to avoid, if at all possible, actually killing people who aren't actively fighting them even if they aren't against the enemy and harbor some sympathy for him. I fail to see why that should send any of the west running for sack cloth, tails between legs.

Of course it's not a war on terror. As Dan Simmons points out in his April, 2006 message, declaring war on terror in 2001 would be like declaring war on aviation in 1941. You don't declare war on a tactic. You declare war on people. What people have declared war on the West?
People who say they are Muslims have, that's who, and that Allah justifies their actions. The rest of Islam is, for all practical purposes, silent except to say "don't blame us!!!"

There is also plenty of evidence, if you care to read past the CAIR's carefully chosen and edited Koran verses, that Islam not only allows ample justification for Islam's War on Everything Not Islamic, it actually demands it.

The rest of Islam may not be waging the war, but they perpetuate a friendly climate for the one FBL and Friends are waging. Think of Muslims as gasoline (no, the irony isn't lost on me), and FBL's and his buddy's groups as part of that gasoline which is actually aflame. The rest of the gasoline is not actually on fire (yet), but it is a favorable environment for that fire to spread over. It feels a kinship and an obligation to it, and will not stand in its way -- even get caught up in the flame front as it sweeps through. As Christians are more amenable to Christian ideals, even more extreme ones, Buddhists more amenable to Buddhist ideals -- you get the picture; so are Muslims more amenable to Islamic ideals. Spread them all over the world, light a match... and see what happens. That's what OBL et al started. It's what FBL is trying to continue.

FBL's war is far closer to a "Crusade" against the West than the West's fight back against it, which is more like begrudging self-defense.

So that's pretty much it for that. Not to wage war back on that which wages war on you is either slavery or suicide, take your pick. So we have a war on Islam, but only because Islam insists upon it and we must fight back.

FBL apparently also said that the the West's cutting funding to the Palestinian government since Hamas won the Palestinan elections was further proof of an anti-Islamic campaign.

Well, it's not, but since it shoudln't need proof anyway, it's kind of moot. Imagine a little boy running up to his sister, slapping her in the face -- and when she punches him back the little boy screams "She is fighting me!" Yeah? Duh! You get no sympathy for me.

Then I made the mistake of going and looking in the comments, where one person talks about "the only acceptable democracy is one imposed by America and its allies", in self-congratulatory leftist agreement with FBL's QED above.

Of course, the first thing I'm thinking of is, uh, no ... but if we feel that a democratically elected party government having as its chief reason for existence the annihilation of one of our friends and that they further use tactics that are unnaceptable to anyone in the civilized world ... we might just have a teensy-weensy problem handing them money.

"Hey, John, I know you're friends with your neighbor and all, but I'm going to try to blow up his house with him and his family in it. I'm taking donations, and you're a big fat meanie for not giving any to me because, well, you gave it to my family before and my family elected me to represent them."

Buh-bye.

Then there was the confounding smattering of "reality" based folks whose only problem with Bin Laden was that he keeps the TRUE evil person, G.W. Bush in power. They expect people to take them seriously, because they only hang around people who take them seriously. Seriously, you ought to walk in on one of these pow-wows some time. The Daily Kos... The Huffington Post... to name a couple. And the tinfoil brigade shows up here as well.

Anyone with an ounce of intelligence is aware of the fact that Bin Laden was a creation of the CIA. They used him as a figurehead to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. Close family associates of Bin Laden were meeting with Bush snr on 9/11. Please people of the world wake up to the bogus and utterly contrived 'war on terror'. It is being used to remove our basic freedoms and justify the mad scramble for the world's dwindling energy resources.

These people need to go back to sleep as it appears their only reason for existence is to parrot what they hear from people they think are intellectual and in possesion of some obscure knowledge of which they are one of the few chosen and sainted few who have the brain capacity to comprehend in a never ending feedback cycle of baseless ego massage.

Fortunately, these days on this BBC story -- comments seem to be, on the whole, much more sane that some of the cow-mire buckets of screed I've seen in the past, with some really to-the-point ones like:

"We're used to hearing him issuing threats to everybody with the audacity to
be western."

and this one

"Until I read the latest Bin Laden message, I was somewhat indifferent to this war on terrorism. But his message on Sudan has convinced me that he is the very embodiment of all that is evil. In addition, I think the man is a racist, given the way he views non-Arab and non-Muslim Sudanese.

His message is very clear: he is a crusader who doesn't care about human lives, including the lives of the ignorant youth who follow him blindly."

Like I said, I think the man is dead. His movement lives on, though -- but its not happy about the conditions, and its getting more and more desparate.

Personally, I vote we keep up the pressure on these worms.

Dead Bin Laden "Speaks" Again

I've said it before, and I'll say it again.

Bin Laden is dead. The latest audio tape, released today, was accompanied by a still photograph of the dead man, while he was still living. Why? Because you can't film a dead man talking, and nothing would be a bigger coup for Al-Queda than to prove Bin Laden is still alive. They can't, or they would. He's not.

Anyway, Fake Bin Laden (FBL) says Moussaui "didn't do it" -- that he had nothing to do with 9/11.

Frankly, I don't care if he did or didn't. Given what the man said and the ideology he spewed, if he said he did it that's good enough for me whether he's lying or not.

FBL wants to cast doubt upon the American Justice System, and take away any feelings of "victory" America might feel over his conviction. And like I said, I don't really care if FBL is lying or not.

Speaking of lying, next time someone talks to you of the Religion of Peace, Google This: Al-Taqiyah

Yep. In Islam, it's ok to lie to infidels to decieve them about Islam or to sew discord among Islam's enemies. It's ok to make false, temporary alliances and friendships. It's ok to say it's peaceful even if you know darned well it isn't.

Now I understand that some Muslims don't believe this (We think! how can we really KNOW if they can say anything to make Islam look less threatening to infidels?) But the important thing is, many do and they can and do find passages in the Koran and Hadiths to justify it.

Your Obligitory "Looks Like I Was Wrong" Post

So woke up Monday Morning to the sound of a Bin Laden-free world.

And over the last several years yours truly here has all but insisted that Bin Laden was dead, buried under the rubble of some collapsed cave somewhere.

But apparently not.  Apparently after years of tracking Osama down by courier, The Team That Cannot Be Mentioned slipped in, took him out, and then took him OUT... to sea, where they disposed of him in a place that will be very difficult to gather 'round and build a shrine.

Of course, in this day and age of conspiracy theories, it did occurr to me that that story line would be a perfect cover for a faked assasination, and I got to thinking.... like an Escher drawing, where I suddenly saw the whole thing inside-out....

Now let me make it clear that I'm buying the story, as real conspiracies tend to get ratted out, and the bigger, the more quickly.  But before I went to bed last night, this wild conspiracy theory popped into my head.

Suppose ... suppose Bin Laden had been dead for years.  And suppose Obama was sinking in the polls.  And suppose he knew Osama had been dead for years, but nobody could prove it.  And he wanted to improve his image.  So what if he wanted to "catch" Bin Laden and give himself a bump in the polls?  But there was this "birther" conspiracy out there to which this would only add more fuel.

Suppose Oprah had a friend named Donald Trump, a man widely liked for his TV "reality" show.  Suppose they had him hint at running for president, and start pushing the birther issue, so that the birthers would rally behind him, and Obama -- after years of refusing to release that "long form" and apparently spending a substantial amount to keep it from seeing the light of day ... would give in to the "pressure" from this "right-wing nut-job", look like the victim, and produce the birth certificate (or a facimile of it).   This once and for all marginalizes the birthers to the absolute fringe, and they lose any sympathy anyone in the "middle" had for them.  Anyone who still holds to that crazy conspiracy is officially a nut-job now.

And to hold to any further conspiracy theory would bring down mounds of derision and dismissal.

Then we stage a raid by a team that "doesn't exist" where they "kill" Osama, and whisk his body off to an air-craft carrier to be dumped into the ocean for very good reasons (and reasons I agree with, for the record) ... and there's no trace of the man who was killed and nobody who was "there" that you could even ask about it, because they don't exist.

Now Obama's the guy who "got Bin Laden", his poll numbers go up, and he has a "tough guy" notch in his belt from which to help campaign.

Or, suppose it really WAS Bin Laden (which I do believe, and this is actually more plausible) ... and that we figured out this was his compound last August and a couple of months ago our intelligence agencies said we have the intel now to pinpoint his location and take him out at any time .... but that the plan was do NOT take him alive and do NOT let his body be buiried in a place around which his supporters can rally.

But there's a problem.  It'll look, pardon the pun, "fishy".  And we've already got 38% of the population who either are themselves or don't completly reject "birtherism".... and this would only add to suspicion.  So staffers say "Mr. President, we really need to lay this birther thing to rest."  But after years of refusing to release that "long form" and apparently spending a substantial amount to keep it from seeing the light of day ... it would look a little strange for the president to just suddenly release it without a reason.

So Oprah's buddy Donald is recruited to "start" a presidential campaign (which would surprise nobody, since he's made noises about it before) and as a part of his campaign, he would "pressure" Obama (bad cop) to release the birth certificate.  Obama would resist, then finally give in -- him looking like the victim, Trump eventually fading into the background, and the birthers completely marginalized and untouchable.

Which would set the stage for the raid.  And in this version of the story it's an actual real raid against the real, living Bin Laden which could now be carried out in the manner desired and in such a political climate that the number of people who would publicly question the veracity of the story would be minimized.   Which would be good all around for national and world security.

Either one would make a fun movie plot, eh?

In the end, the conspiracy theorist is right that there was covertness, but that it was carried out for the right reasons.  Which would blast a hole in the lefty worldview that all covertness is wrong.

Osama Bin Laden is Dead

That's my opinion. After seeing yet another videotape of al-Zawahri issuing public threats, it's pretty clear that Bin Laden is dead.

If he weren't, he wouldn't be able to resist the spotlight. He would have nothing to gain by not doing these tapes himself, and lots to gain by doing them himself. Why isn't he doing them himself?

Because he is dead.

That's the only logically sustainable explanation.

4 Years Ago Today

It was 4 years ago this morning that I had pretty much the following IM exchange with a friend of mine:

Mark: "Oh my God, an airplane just crashed into the World Trade Center."
Me: "Like a little airplane?"
Mark: "No, like a commercial jet. Oh my God, I'm watching it now."
Me: "Crap. That was no accident."

Moments later, he IM'ed me that a second plane just hit. He watched it live.

I wonder how many Americans actually who Osama Bin Laden was before that?

Here we are, 4 years later. We've ousted his umbrella government in Afghanistan. I believe Osama Bin Laden is dead. Al Queda is still around -- no surprise there.

And we're in Iraq. Due to bad communication by the Bush Administration (for whatever reason) and a highly successful campaign by the left to discredit Bush -- a large portion of the country feel we shouldn't be there, and that this has nothing to do with the War on People Who Are Using Terror Tactics Against Us.

I find this disturbing, since I've seen the connection from the beginning. It's a very, very strong connection. It has little to do with the Iraqi government's involvement -- directly in 9/11 -- but Iraq's government had a lot to do with the motivation behind 9/11.

Many of the people who think we shouldn't be in Iraq believe that Bush lied about Saddam having "Weapons of Mass Destruction" (a euphamism for Chem/Bio/Nuclear weapons). They believe that the Bush administration "cooked up" the WMD story, and that he knew that Hussein did not have such weapons anymore.

Let's take a look at what Washington thought just 3 years before 9/11 --

The United States is prepared to use substantial force against Iraq if diplomatic efforts fail to resolve the crisis over U.N. weapons inspections - We must stop Saddam from ever again jeopardizing the stability and security of his neighbors with weapons of mass destruction."- Madeline Albright (Secretary of State), Feb 1, 1998

"Iraq is a long way from [the USA], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face."- Madeline Albright (Secretary of State), Feb 18, 1998

"If you remember in 1991, Saddam Hussein invaded another country, he plagued it, he set fire to it, and he decided that he could control the region. Before that, he had gassed his own people. Hussein has chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies."- Madeline Albright (Secretary of State), Nov. 10, 1999

"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983. If we fail to respond, Saddam and all those who follow will believe that they can threaten the security of a vital region with impunity. But if we act now as one, we will send a clear message to would-be tyrants and terrorists that we will do what it takes to protect our security and our freedom."- Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998

"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."- Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998

"Look, we have exhausted virtually all our diplomatic effort to get the Iraqis to comply with their own agreements and with international law. Given that, what other option is there but to force them to do so?" - Sen. Tom Daschle (D, ND), Feb. 11, 1998

"The U.S. should strike, strike hard and strike decisively. In this instance, the administration needs to act sooner rather than later."- Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV), Nov 14, 1998

Did Bush cook all that up?

After he left office, on Larry King Live, Clinton says:

"When I left office, there was a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for.."

"We might have gotten it all, we might have gotten half of it, we might have gotten none of it."

I read and heard several interviews with Clinton during last year's election process and I noted how reluctant he was to criticize Bush on Iraq.

I don't think his restraint is calculated to help Hillary get elected in '08. I think he knew what Bush knew and was unwilling to criticize the man for doing what himself had called for earlier.

Then there's this from Clinton as President on Feb 18, 1998:

[if Saddam Hussein] "fails to comply, and we fail to act, or we take some ambiguous third route which gives him yet more opportunities to develop his program of weapons of mass destruction and continue to press for the release of the sanctions and continue to ignore the solemn commitments that he made? Well, he will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction."

"If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow." ... "Some day, some way, I guarantee you, he'll use the arsenal."

This was after his buildup of US Military in the Gulf in Jan/Feb 1998.

That ambiguous third route is what Saddam counted on again and again, and the U.N. kept handing it to him. Less than a week later, Kofi Annan struck a deal with the Hussein -- which once more gave U.N. inspectors permission to inspect. The only thing he responded to was force, and even then it was always just enough response to get the threat backed off.

Ten months after Saddam accepted Annan's offer, he kicked U.N. weapons inspectors out of Iraq for good. The US complained. Then Clinton (Dec, 1998) dropped the bombs he talked about on Lary King Live. (without even consulting the UN Security Council) A year after the inspectors were banished, the U.N. created a new inspection regime which inspected only what Saddam Hussein would allow it to inspect. Saddam was a master at buying more time. Was he hiding the fact that he didn't have the weapons, or was he hiding the fact that he did? How the hell was anybody supposed to know? Given his well understood motives and history, does it really matter? Could we afford to wait? We thought we could afford to wait on Bin Laden. We were wrong.

The Bush administration didn't just make this up.

I didn't include the many quotes from the same Democrats now against Bush (I mean the war) that many of these same people (plus Kerry) made in 2002 which further bolstered the idea that everbody was sure Saddam was a menace and was trying to hide that menace. I didn't include them on purpose make the point that the Bush administration wasn't just cooking up a story and feeding it to them. This is all Clinton era.

Why should anyone expect different results each time we threatened, he appeased just enough... over and over.... to buy more time? The hard-left's opposition was quickly gaining traction in the middle left. There really wasn't much time.

Couple this with the fact that one of Bin Laden's biggest peeves was -- Western (mostly US and Brit) troops on sacred (Saudi) soil. Why were we there? Because we were the only ones willing to lift a finger to contain Saddam and try to enforce the myriad of otherwise toothless UN resolutions. (was it 14 or 17 by this time?) So how do we get off of Saudi soil (er... sand)? Pull out and leave Saddam unrestrained ? Not a good option. The best option would be to finish the war that brought us there 10 years earlier. Only then would it be the responsible thing for us to leave.

I had dismissed as "maybe's" many of the straws he was grasping at -- preferring to focus on the bigger picture, which was "let's finish this 10 year old war and get the hell out of there." It brought our planes being routinely shot at. It bought Saddam time and lots of oil money. It brought lots of dead and tortured Iraqis, and it bought us mounting resentment among many Muslims for keeping Saddam down, and just for being in Saudi Arabia. That brought us Osama Bin Laden and 3 airplanes smashed into buildings in America.

Strategy For Success: Redeploy!

I was listening to Morning Edition on the way in this morning, and in the headline news there was a story on two competing democratic proposals ("resolutions") in Congress calling for a troop pullout from Iraq. They're amemendments to a military spending bill. First of all, the bills are non-binding, and second, they'll never pass. So basically, they're being brought up for the purpose of scoring more Bush Bashing highlights.

The one Kerry and Feingold are backing calls for a firm date -- July 1 of next year. Democrats opposed to setting a date have introduced another bill that calls for a phased withdrawal starting this year and a demand for the President to submit a plan for withdrawal by years end.

Jack Reid spouts on about a "phased redeployment" starting this year (see, that's not withdrawal, that's sending soldiers in Iraq somewhere besides Iraq. But it's not withdrawal) and about forcing the president to do the right thing. This of course means withdrawal. Reid talks about leaving Iraq with as much success as possible (victory is not possible) and about a "strategy for success". Which is starting to sound like Kerry's "I have a plan".

Levin, the second bill's sponsor, says that Bush "has not said that we do not have an open-ended committment in Iraq. The President has not said tat there will be further reductions, and redeployments of troops this year". He says the proposal is trying to get the president to say both.

It seems to me that to the Democrats, a "strategy for success" means "a strategy for leaving". Bush and the Republicans "Strategy for Success" is to defeat the enemy. At that point, we can start a strategy for "redeployment", or -- sorry, you're not fooling anyone, Democrats -- withdrawal.


If success = leaving, then of course, why not get on with it? But if success = a stable, democratic Iraq, then a strategy for success cannot include a plan for withdrawal. When I go in to fix the furnace, my strategy is to keep at it until the furnace is fixed. I don't need to tell my wife that I have a "strategy for success" and a "plan for withdrawal". She assumes success means the furnace is fixed, and she also assumes that when the furnace is fixed, I will withdraw from the furnace room without declaring a plan to do so.

But the democrats want to know "Where is the plan to get out of Iraq?"

Well here it is. When we and the Iraqis agree that they don't need us anymore to control the Islamist and Ba'athist "resistance", we'll send some boats and planes and our guys will get on them and they'll head home. See?

In the mean time, the strategy for success is to root out and kill the enemy, cut them off from their supplies and support until they are a) dead b) devoid of the will to fight, or c) devoid of the ability to fight. And it's working.

After Zarqawi, They're Losing

Zarqawi document found on a thumb drive in his pocket.

Read the first few paragraphs -- then notice Zarqawi's "strategy for success" -- which incidentally, does not include a plan for withdrawing from Iraq -- along with several reasons why our "strategy for success" should not include "redeployment" until the mission is accomplished (success).

The democrats pander to people who have a world view that we caused the war on Islamism, and that all we have to do is stop and it will stop (or, the more hard core think that we should just sit and reap our "just punishment" from the Islamists). Of course, in that world view, "success" means to stop fighting.

Stopping fighting is excactly the behavior that brought this war on in the first place. Bin Laden et. al. believe they brought the Soviet Union down. After declaring that the "more dangerous of the superpowers" had been defeated, that America would be a piece of cake because we lack the stomach for a fight. Somalia and other incidents like it "proved" that. I think they truly had hopes that 9/11 would bring about our surrender to Islam and/or Dihimmitude. Those who don't understand this vote for democrats, and democrats are pandering to these people. This pushes sensible democrats like Joe Lieberman out of what should be the core of that party to the fringe.

War is not a football game. It is a fight to the death There is no game clock. Demanding a game clock means demanding we tell the enemy when we'll stop fighting so that they can bide their time until then to move in for the kill.

More (better) at Captain's Quarters

Restraint

This article, by one Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post, has had me thinking for about a week. It gets right to the crux of what is and has been going on in the world for the past 15 years, at least -- although not quite in the way the author probably intended.

She's talking about a book by a conservative Harvard professor called "Manliness".

In it, she says the following:

"The problem of manliness is not that it does not exist," Mansfield concludes. "It does exist, but it is unemployed." Well, um, excuse me, but I think — it’s just my opinion, now, maybe you disagree, and I’m sure we could work it out — Mansfield has it exactly backward. Manliness does exist. The problem is that it’s overemployed — nowhere more than in this administration.

Well let me tell you Ruth, it is just your opinion, I do disagree, and I'm not so sure we can work it out.

She ends her article thus:

Mansfield writes that he wants to "convince skeptical readers — above all, educated women" — that "irrational manliness deserves to be endorsed by reason." Sorry, professor: You lose. What this country could use is a little less manliness — and a little more of what you would describe as womanly qualities: restraint, introspection, a desire for consensus, maybe even a touch of self-doubt.

But that’s just my view.

Well, I'm glad you're not going out on a limb to claim you're correct there. After all, that would be assertive and manly.

Our culture, our country, has plenty of restraint, and as a matter of fact often too much. It is excactly what brought 9/11 upon us. If you read any of Al Queda's literature, it is rife with how weak we are, how we are crippled with self-doubt and restraint, and how little respect that evil group of people have for these admittedly (by me, not them) noble qualities.

Allow me to expound. Restraint is what allowed 19 men with box cutters to commandeer 4 airliners and fly them into buildings. Foreknowledge and presumption of that restraint gave them the balls to try it. People from a more manly culture would have overpowered 5 men on a plane with boxcutters and kicked their collective asses. But no -- restraint was shown on three of the planes. Guess what? The fourth plane failed.

Restraint is what allowed Osama Bin Laden to live through the 1990's ... St. Bill's years.

Restraint is what Saddam Hussein relied upon to coninue his reign of horrors unmolested.

Restraint is what the U.N. is all about -- restraining anyone from doing anything to stop any tin-pot dictator from doing anything they want to. Inaction favors tyrants. Calling Bush a tyrant for taking action is not only hypocritical, it's dead wrong. This administration is paying, politically, for the restraint of the previous administration, and frankly I admire it's steadfastness in continuing the fight in the face of relentless attacks by the press and the massive and slowly more and more successful propaganda campaign against doing what needs to be done dispite the obvious political pressure against it. These guys aren't as concerned with staying in office as they are in doing what needs to be done.

Like a man.

(note -- that's a metaphor. A an honorable woman will behave the same way, and a dishonorable man will not).

Veterans For Peace - Think. It's Patriotic

I mentioned that I didn't run in to any obnoxious protestors at yesterday's Memorial Day parade.

I didn't run in to any, but I ended up with a leaflet from an outfit called "Veterans For Peace". (A lady I ran into wrote her email address on it and gave it to me so I could send her a couple of pictures I took of her kids at the parade.)

I've seen them before. I salute anyone who has fought honorably to defend America -- for doing that. With this group, though, the first thing that comes to mind is the smugness, the moral high ground declaration in the name. (Read today's Thomas Sowell for a little more on that kind of talk).

"Veterans for Peace." There is an unstated suggestion that if you're not with them, you're not for peace. As if the "other" flavor of veterans must be "Veterans for War". As if anyone is not for peace.

I'm for peace. It's not a question of being against peace. It's what kind of peace are you willing to accept? Dihimitude is peace. But that's not what America is about. America is not about peace. It's not about being patriotic. It's about liberty. It's about freedom. It is, by design, a nation of free men (and ladies, when I say "men" in that context, that includes you, too just as "horses" includes "mares". English is spoken here.)

So I'm reading this, and it asks:

All around the world, people wish for the same things -- a place to live, food to eat, and health for our families. Does our government facilitate this? Is it an example for our kids, teaching them to value life, love, and community?

Well, our government does facilitate this. It facilitates a system where free men are free to choose what they do for a living, who they associate with, and how they care for their families and friends.

Is our government an example for our kids, teaching them to value life, love, and community?

Our government is not supposed to be an example to our kids, teaching them anything. At least that's not the way it was designed. That has traditionally been the role of religion over the ages. How ironic it is that those who cry loudest about "separation of church and state" want the state to become the new church now that they have pretty much disconnected the values and culture of the church that produced the state. This is precisely why they put that clause in the first amendment. The state should teach our kids values? Isn't that pretty much religion? No, families get to teach their own kids their own values.

That aside, the underlying suggestion is that our government is an aggressive war-mongering machine and is thus a bad example to our kids. But our government isn't an aggressive, war-mongering machine. It does, however, when it goes to war teach kids that some things are worth defending, and that is a value that should be well understood.

It should also be understood that

All around the world, people wish for the same things -- a place to live, food to eat, and health for our families -- and some of them wish for a world without infidels.

And if you're not a Muslim, no matter how much you support them -- you're still an infidel.

At any rate, then they go on to say that "this is not about pro-peace vs pro-war. This is about being a part of a democracy." (Distributed by Mid-Missouri Peaceworks -- right).

Right before they basically go and cast it that way in carefully chosen language to make their balanced-sounding "thinking points". After all, the slogan (remember those, John Edwards?) on the pamphlet is "Think. It's Patriotic." Right before they go ahead try to subtly tell you what you should think (so you don't have to -- see, they've already done it for you).

"Some people think Memorial Day should be celebrated with dispays of weapons and planes, while others hold to its original purpose: to honor all who've died in the tragedy of war."

Well first of all, bub, those two ain't mutually exclusive. As a matter of fact, a display of power is a great way to honor them, as it shows we are still here and still strong, thanks to them. That it wasn't just a tragedy, but it was a tragedy in the line of duty to a higher purpose. The continuation of the idea that is America.

And secondly, it is not to honor all who have died in the tragedy of war. It is to honor all of our soldiers (or soldiers from other armies fighting for us) who have died tragically -- in the tragedy of war. It is not to honor Hitler or Saddam or his sons, or Zarqawi or the filthy bits of sub-humanity who purposely kill civillians in an attempt to sway public opinion through fear and sorrow. The war deaths of those people is not tragic, and this day is not to honor them, but to thank those who died killing them and those like them.

Some people think Memorial Day is an opportunity to recruit more young people into the military while others think our young people should serve our country in ways that don't involve participating wars of aggression.

Well didn't that one come with a truckload of presumptions? Remember, this isn't about pro-peace vs. pro-war. Riiiiiiight. Look at the language. Opportunists are preying on our children to fight for Halliburton is pretty much what they're saying. But "some people think this" and "some people think that". Look how balanced we are! We don't have an agenda, no sir. We just want you to think. In our terms.

Secondly, yes, if it is honorable to die fighting for our country, then it is honorable for young people to pick up the swords of the fallen and follow in their footsteps so they will have died preserving something that we still think is worth preserving.

Some think making war against countries like Iraq or Iran is defending our freedom. But others point out that they have done nothing to us and pose no threat.

Some people apparently haven't been paying attention for the last 30 years if they "point" that "out" -- or they are lying. And check that language out -- see, "some people think" -- but now the other side is "pointing out" -- implying fact, now, not opinion. It's not even "they think" - "we think" anymore. Iran has made no secret that it wishes to undermine and destroy Western Civilization, for it is incompatible with Islam. Iraq invaded a soveriegn country, the U.N. (mostly us, as usual, providing the teeth) kicked his ass back into Iraq. But then the U.N. said - "wait! stop! cease fire!". Uh, only who stayed there to enforce the conditions of that cease-fire? And whose planes were continually shot at (they did nothing to us my round bippie). 17 resolutions. 11 years. America takes the heat (along with Great Britain). As usual.

Where did we station the military force we needed to enforce the "cease fire"? A:Saudi Arabia. And what pissed Bin Laden off more than anything ... something about infidels on holy soil. What could he have been referring to?

Of course, then we get to the whole "blood for oil" thing:

Rather, they think these countries have resources (such as oil) our nation covets and that's the real reason for making war.

Which is the biggest load of bullshit the "Pro-Peace" folks keep repeating. Listen, if we were that big an aggressive, swaggering, thieving bastard... we. would. go. take. the. oil.

We do not. We pay these countries handsomely to use our technology and know-how to basically mine the only natural resource these countries have other than sand. They can't do it. They benefit from it anyway. We pay them for it. Is it in our best interest if that area of the world is kept as stable as possible? Sure it is. But as far as I can see, and nobody has shown me any credible evidence to the contrary - If Iraq is stabilized, she will own her oil and sell it to the highest bidder -- and it ain't just us bidding.

That's the way it works, and that's why oil prices are so high. Because demand not only from us, but from every other developed country in the world is high, and they all bid on it and pay what the market will bear.

If Mid-Missouri Peaceworks gets its way, Iraq will not be stabilized, so that they can gloat about what a mistake it was to try to end the 1991 war once and for all, and leave Iraq free from the tyranny that started it, and their oil won't be any good to us or Iraqis. Just the terrorist-supporting, Islamist government that will take over. Won't that be pretty? (Well, until our technology breaks down and they can't get it out of the ground anymore without commercial mercenaries they might recruit to help them under the table).

Then they go on to babble about "energy independence" through renewable energy rather than through "domination in the Persian Gulf". Well, folks, domination in the Persian Gulf doesn't give us energy independence at all -- so it's a false comparison. And we don't dominate the Persian Gulf. We influence it, for sure, and that's not only good for us but for the rest of the developed world.

Renewable energy is great. Make it work on the scale we need it to, and I'll sign on.

Some think U.S. policy promotes democracy, but others think aggressive militarism makes more enemies, robs our economy of funds needed for productive investments and does not contribute to our real security.

Well, the ones who think U.S. policy promotes democracy actually really think that democracy promotes democracy, and democracy promotes peace. No democratic nation has ever declared war on another one. Right now what I care about is that the Islamists see that the U.S. isn't going to appease them or merely pretend-slap them on the wrists. They wanted our attention, they got it. "Some people" seem to think that if we just ignore them they'll go away. Well, we pretty much ignored them for the better part of 30 years and they kept trying more and more spectacular acts to get our attention. They did not go away. Like undisciplined children, they kept screaming louder and louder until we put the newspaper down and gave them more than a stern look for once.

I saved this one for last, because it is a question worth answering.

Some folks think supporting our troops mean you have to support the orders they've been given, while others think bringing our troops home safe and alive and providing them with healthcare and education (ed. wtf???) is the best way to support the troops.

Ok. No, supporting the troops doesn't mean you have to support the orders they've been given (or even the mission -- which is a word I noticed they carefully avoided using). But we do expect a few things. We expect you not to accuse them of things they haven't done. We expect you not to judge their actions by the same standards you would expect someone to hold in a quiet restaurant in peacetime. These people are getting shot at with bullets and missiles and grenades. They have split-seconds to react, then split-seconds to react again, and again, and again. We expect you to give them the benefit of the doubt. We expect you to recognize that the vast majority of them are decent human beings who don't torture, rape, or kill indiscriminately. We expect you not to wish them dead so that the other side wins so that you can claim you were "right". And we expect you not to do your utmost to undermine them by aiding and comforting the enemy.

We can talk about the wisdom of starting it later before the next round, but we had that debate and we won. We expect you to talk about it rationally when its all over. Quitting now would be far, far worse than starting it and accomplishing the mission would have been -- even the "some folks" on the other side agree about that -- so we expect you to at the very least respect the fact that we're trying our best so that we only have one enemy prolonging the fight, not two.

Weasles in Positions of Authority

This is politician speech. Weasel words:

“You cannot say as the president of the United States, ‘I welcome disagreement in a time of war,’ and then have the vice president of the United States go out of the country and mischaracterize a position of the speaker of the House and in a manner that says that person in that position of authority is acting against the national security of our country,”
- Nanci Pelosi, regarding a disagreement with the Vice President

What she meant to say, if she said it in plain English, was

The President can't say he welcomes disagreement in a time of war and then have the Vice President go out and disagree with my disagreement by saying what I really mean but have been carefully avoiding explicitly saying.

It really pisses her off. How dare the Vice President do his best to assess what her position is and say it when she won't say it herself! How dare he try to pin a weasel down as to what her position is! Why, if she were forced to actually publicly take a clear position and state her plan of action, somebody might be able to, you know, criticize it. I'm sure that's like a violation of her free speech, or something.

Here's what Cheney actually said:

"If you're going to advocate a course of action that basically is withdrawal of our forces from Iraq, then you don't get to just do the fun part of that, that says, 'We'll, we're going to get out,' and appeal to your constituents on that basis"

Nothing in there about Nancy's Patriotism. He's saying she should stop weaseling and spell out her position. He wasn't questioning her Patriotism. He was questioning her honesty. He was challenging her to be upfront and honest with her constituents (and the rest of us).

Did she do it? No. Did she argue with anything he actually said? No. Her response amounts to "Daddy! Dick's saying I'm adopted again!!!! Tell him to stop!" when all Dick was doing was saying she should stop hedging about whether or not she intends to clean her room. He doesn't think, based on what she hasn't said and what she has done, that she's even thinking about it.

Well, Nancy, how 'bout it?

Can you tell me what Al Queda's strategy is? (Can you tell me, for that matter, what the "insurgent" strategy is -- when their actions can be differentiated from Al Queda's? )

Can you tell me what your perferred Iraq strategy is? ("Not whatever Bush does" is not a valid answer.)

Dick thinks your strategy is to abandon Iraq. Is he wrong? Dick thinks that Al Queda's strategy is to prey on the West's poor stomach for blood and do just enough to stay in the headlines so that America will leave and Al Queda can declare victory. I've read a few documents of theirs and listened to Bin Laden and Zawahiri say pretty much excactly that.

Is Dick wrong about that?

What are the consequences of leaving Iraq unstable right now? (note that "well it's all Bush's fault" or "we shouldn't have gone in the first place" does not answer that question).

I think Dick's dead on to what you're about and he struck a nerve. You struck back by going directly to chapter one in the Progressive Argument Handbook. Call 'em a name and change the subject.

Thus Opening the Door for a "Deather" Movement

White House Won't Release "Death Photos"

"It is important to make sure that very graphic photos of somebody who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence or as a propaganda tool," [..] "We don't trot out this stuff as trophies," [..] "The fact of the matter is, this is somebody who was deserving of the justice that he received."

So we must take your word for it. Got it.

This is the reason he released his birth certificate last week, I'm tellin' ya.  To pave the way for this announcement.  Question this, and you look like a chump.

Again, not sayin' it didn't go down exactly as reported.  But that's why he finally released the "long form".

Update: It's already started. But overseas. :-)

“We still have no reason to believe that bin Laden is dead because America has not provided any cogent proof to prove its claim” - Qari Zabiullah, Taliban Spokesman

Durka! Durka! Zarqawi is dead.

Rock on, guys.

Good work. Hopefully, he's joined his buddy Bin Laden in the infernal hereafter.

(somehow, I can't get "Ding! Dong! The Witch is Dead" out of my head. Unfortunately, there are many more witches out there.)

Freedom - Bill Whittle

This is a back dated post, back dated to Bill's original post date. I post this here because it is the single most powerful defense of the second amendment I have ever read (but it is much more than that), and Bill's a busy guy and hasn't gotten this all re-indexed yet since he moved his blog to Pajamas Media & started doing videos on PJTV. Some of the essays didn't transfer in their entirety, and this was one of them.

It is in his book, "Silent America", essays from a Democracy at War, which I highly reccomend as a coffee table book. There are no pretty pictures. But Bill, a TV editor in Hollywood, had a talent for words, and a passion for America as America was designed.

Here it is:

December 22, 2002

FREEDOM - Bill Whittle

When I was a little kid, I asked my dad about an image I had seen of really huge numbers of prisoners being marched to their execution in a forest clearing, guarded by perhaps five or ten men with rifles. I wanted to know why they didn't just rush the guards? I mean, it's one thing if they were heading to another crappy day at work camp, but these people were being led off to be killed. I mean, for God's sake, what did they have to lose?

I was six. My dad looked at me. He had served in the latter days of WW2 in Europe as a U.S. Army intelligence officer. No parachuting onto the decks of enemy U-Boats at night to steal Enigma machines --- just newly-minted, 2nd Lieutenant grunt work. He'd been to the camps though, seen some horrible things. When I asked him why they didn't fight back or run for the woods, he said, without any arrogance or contempt or jingoism, "I don't know Billy, I can't figure that one out myself." Then there was a long moment. "But I can't imagine Americans just walking off like that, either."

Now before the combined military might of the European Union responds with a very harshly worded letter, let me clarify something: When he said he couldn't imagine Americans marching off to their deaths, he meant, obviously, Americans like the ones he knew. Kids who grew up hunting, kids who got a BB gun for their fifth birthday (never Christmas though --- you could shoot your eye out!)

I don’t believe for an instant in any genetic nonsense about slave races or nations of pure-bred heroes. That’s a deadly trap, and the end result of such thinking is a place on the watchtower machine-gunning starving prisoners. But humans are the most successful species this planet has seen not for being ferocious or fast or strong or even intelligent, but for their malleability. Humans can, and do, adapt to anything. It is their culture that determines what is in their hearts.

Consider the case of Jews in Germany, during the 1930’s: Here was a people who had been so tormented and prosecuted and psychologically beaten down that they came to believe the outrageous slander that they were guests in their own county. Behind their shuttered doors at night, they created cocoons of astonishing culture and beauty, a symphony of violins and cellos and poetry and literature. They were far over-represented in occupations we rightly esteem as among the most noble of our species: surgeons, musicians, teachers and scientists.

By any measure of human decency, these were the people that should have been helping to lead a ravaged Germany back to respect and prosperity. Yet they were massacred in their millions by brutes and sadists who could barely write their own names.

If it is possible to write a clearer lesson on human nature, then I cannot imagine it, nor can I imagine the amount of blood it will take to convince people unwilling to look reality in the face; that reality being that compassion, culture, law and philosophy are precious, rare and acquired habits that must be defended with force against people who understand nothing but force. The great failure and staggering tragedy of European Jews is that they could not accept that some of their neighbors were not as decent, humane and educated as they were. A culture that learned to survive by turning inward simply never was willing to face the reality of what they were up against; namely, that hoping for compassion and humanity from the likes of the Nazis was akin to reading poetry to a hurricane. This denial --- and that is the only word for it --- is, in the final horrible analysis, a form of unconscious arrogance, a refusal to see things for what they are. A people of astonishing internal beauty simply could not look into the face of such ugliness without turning away. And now they are dead.

And there are many intelligent, enlightened, gentle and good-hearted people today who believe exactly the same thing. If we let this moral blindness continue to gain ground, then they will get us all killed, too. And then who will put their boot on humanity’s neck for the next thousand years?

I recently visited a website that featured a picture of Star Trek’s Mr. Spock, with the caption: My hero! Someone who thinks his way out of trouble! The implication, of course, is that force and violence are universally to be rejected and despised as unworthy of thinking people (or Vulcans).

Well bucko, Spock carried a phaser as well as a tricorder, and he used it when he had to. If the Star Trek future represents a hope for our species at its most reasonable and open-minded best, it would be well to remember that the Enterprise carries a hell of a lot of photon torpedoes because the cause of human decency cannot be advanced if all the decent humans lie dead.

Freedom is preserved by free people. Our 40th President wrote that “no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.”

Free people know in their heart that they are free. Back again for a moment to a culturally rich, bathed in literature and opera, non-simplisme culture like 1940s Germany: I also asked my father what would happen if the Gestapo came for us one night. He said he couldn't stop them from taking us, but he could damn sure take a few of those bastards with them, and I decided right there that I'd do the same thing.

In the Warsaw Ghetto, in Solzhenitsyn's Gulags, in countless other miserable terrifying pits of murder, some people woke up to the idea that resistance is NOT futile. Which is why that old saw, which in my terribly, tragically misspent liberal youth I used to sneer at as the mark of a real idiot - "they can have my gun when they pry it from my cold dead fingers" - suddenly makes a new kind of sense to me.

That is not the statement of someone who doesn't want to give up a snowmobile or a Beemer. That is a statement that draws a line in the sand for the government, or any other oppressor, to plainly see. You want to take this freedom away from me? COME AND GET IT.

I believe gun ownership is the truest form of freedom, and here's why: It says you are your own person, responsible for your own actions. You are not willing to be collectively punished for the misdeeds of others. In fact, those that abuse this freedom by committing crimes are thought of and dealt with much more harshly by gun owners, as a rule, than Hollywood celebrities, precisely because a free person understands the responsibility that comes with freedom.

To the many thoughtful and intelligent Europeans and Canadians who scorn the 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution as the dangerous plaything of illiterate, mindless oafs who enjoy loud noises, let me simply refer you to that great unbiased and incorruptible teacher: History.

Ask yourselves why intellectual elites so love totalitarian states where people are unarmed and dependant sheep. Look at the examples of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, and Saddam, and the horrors they have inflicted at will on their own people. And when contemplating your ever-so-sophisticated foreign policy, ask yourselves what real options you are left with when facing a determined, heartless bastard like Hitler, Napoleon, Ghengis Khan or Attila.

Maybe the time for real evil like that has finally gone. I hope you are right, I really do. I don't want to go fight those bastards; I'd rather barbeque and watch the Gators. I'm sure the Jews in 1930 Germany thought such things could never happen again, not in the heart of European culture and civilization. I'm sure every bound and beaten musician, surgeon, philosopher and painter being lined up at the side of a ditch thought exactly that.

Try and understand this about Americans like myself and others who can look such horrors in the eye: We are not going out like that. Get it? We'll put up with handgun murders if we have to, but we are not going down that road. As a general rule, we are quiet, peaceful, decent people with better things to do than referee endless bloodbaths abroad. But it is possible to get our attention. And believe me, you have it now, and I believe the time will come when you will regret calling us cowboys and Nazis and idiots, because the day may come when you once again need the help of a free and determined people, fighting forces you ignore not from superior sophistication but from sheer moral cowardice.

Great Britain, the philosophical home and mother to this nation, has responded to a horrible shooting tragedy by essentially disarming their entire population. That is their decision alone to make, and history will record whether it was a wise one or not. But consider this:

A Marine Corps officer wondered to himself whether such an order would be carried out in the United States. He was surprised to see that most of his men would not follow an order to disarm the populace by force.

This, to my mind, is the fundamental difference between the Europeans and the U.S.: We trust the people. We fought wars and lost untold husbands and brothers and sons because of this single most basic belief: Trust the people. Trust them with freedom. Trust them to spend their own money. Trust them to do the right thing. Trust them to defend themselves. To the degree that government can help, great - but TRUST THE PEOPLE.

It would take an army --- not an army of celebrities or trial lawyers, an actual SHOOTING ARMY --- to forcibly disarm this nation. Who will do the dirty work? Volunteer citizen soldiers, that's who - and the first guns they'd have to turn in would be their own.

See, we don't have shock troops here, boyo. No Republican Guards, Special or otherwise; no Hussars, no Cossacks, no SS; we lack Praetorian elites, Napoleonic bodyguard units - any of that ideologically inculcated poison. Just kids serving their country, making some money for college. You think those people would fire on a crowd of American citizens fighting to preserve the Constitution, when they themselves have taken the same oath? Think again.

Unlike the those poor, unarmed, psychologically battered Jews, Poles, homosexuals and uncounted other souls lost in the mid 1940s, NO ONE is pulling ANY kids out of this crowd's house at night and going home fully staffed, ready to try again tomorrow. Understand? THAT is the point.

Here is a sociological experiment that might have something to teach us:

Kick down 100 doors of self-proclaimed French pacifists, grab the women and kids, and haul them away. Then try again in Texas, with 100 NRA members. Collate, or rather, have a surviving relative collate the results. Extrapolate the abductors' rates of casualties to determine the total number of murdering swine needed. See what percentage of jackbooted thugs have a suicide wish and then determine the number of men you will need to disarm, kidnap and murder 50 million armed people.

You will need a lot of men. More than you can raise.

These trust the people freedoms are so deeply engrained in the fabric of America as to be almost hereditary, I think. I used to worry that we'd bred that out of us, and then along comes Todd Beamer and company on United Flight 93, who, first among us that day, realized they were being marched to their deaths and decided to do something about it. Not for themselves, because by taking that action they knew they were doomed. They did it for us. Not only to save the lives of those on the ground for whom their aircraft was headed, but to remind us of who we are as a people, to add to the list of ordinary Americans who can gather extraordinary courage and resolve because they have been trusted all their lives by their government and their fellow citizens.

We are a nation of unruly immigrants, self-selecting people who placed bold action above endless suffering, sold what little they had and bought passage to take a chance on a place they had never seen except in their quiet hopes, a land our 40th President, Ronald Reagan, described as “a beacon, a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home." Intellectuals have called Ronald Reagan a moron, but that is to be expected from people incapable of being moved by anything other than the sound of their own bitter and small voices in a world too full of hope for them to grasp.

We are, and remain, the descendents of people who had had quite enough of being told what to do by inbred aristocratic fops and unelected, intellectual sadists. When Europeans call us simplisme, they show themselves incapable of recognizing the difference between intelligence, of which we are amply endowed, and intellectualism, that circle-jerk of coffee table revolution and basement politburo planning that we have never had much patience with.

To those who doubt our mental sophistication, I would remind you that our grandparents walked upon the moon. And why is it that of all we produce and all we exult, the only things that seem to have caught on in Europe are McDonald's and Baywatch? That says much more about them than it does about us, and none of it good, I'm afraid.

We as a nation suffer an appalling number of handgun-related deaths each year --- perhaps 11,000 of them. The number is not important; each is a personal tragedy and those lives can never be replaced.

If we attempt to reduce this horrible number by banning handguns, we are taking away the property of a person who has broken no laws by a government whose legitimacy is determined by a document that specifically allows that property, namely guns.

Destroy that trust by punishing the innocent, by pulling a plank from the Bill of Rights, and the contract between the government and the people falls apart. Once the Second Amendment goes, the First will soon follow, because if some unelected elite determines that the people can't be trusted with dangerous guns then it's just a matter of time until they decide they can't be trusted with dangerous ideas, either. Dangerous ideas have killed many millions more people than dangerous handguns - listen to the voices from the Gulag, the death camps, and all the blood-soaked killing fields through history.

The Framers, in their wisdom, put the 2nd Amendment there to give teeth to the revolutionary, unheard-of idea that the power rests with We The People. They did not depend on good will or promises. They made sure that when push came to shove we'd be the ones doing the pushing and shoving, not the folks in Washington. And by the way, gun rights supporters are frequently mocked when they say it deters foreign invasion - after all, come on, grow up, be realistic: Who's nuts enough to invade America? Exactly. It's unthinkable. Good. 2nd Amendment Mission 1 accomplished.

But back to the undeniable domestic cost: When confronted with the idea of banning handguns to reduce this horrible toll, many handgun defenders are tempted to point to the numbers killed on the highways each year --- perhaps four times that number --- and ask why we don’t ban cars as well.

The logical response is that bans on travel - cars, airplanes, etc. - are a false analogy compared to banning guns because cars have a clear benefit while guns don't do anything other than kill what they are aimed at.

While that is exactly true, I think it misses the point, which to me is simply this: We'd never ban car travel to avoid thousands of highway deaths. It's clearly not worth it in both economic and personal freedom terms. We chose, reluctantly, and with many a lost loved one in mind, to keep on driving.

Here is my dry-eyed, cold-hearted, sad conclusion: I believe that the freedom, convenience and economic viability provided by the automobile is worth the 40,000 lives we lose to automotive deaths each year --- a number made more horrible by the fact that perhaps 40% are related to drunk driving and therefore preventable.

By the same calculation, I accept that the freedoms entrusted to the people of the United States is worth the 11,000 lives we lose to gun violence each year.

I wish I could make both those numbers go away. I will support any reasonable campaign to make them as low as possible.

But understand this: 11,000 handgun deaths a year, over four years is very roughly 50,000 killed. In Nazi Germany, an unarmed population was unable to resist the abduction and murder of 6,000,000 people in a similar period: a number 120 times higher. Throw in the midnight murders of the Soviets, the Chinese, the various and sundry African and South American genocides and purges and political assassinations and that number grows to many hundreds, if not several thousand times more killings in unarmed populations.

Visualize this to fully appreciate the point. Imagine the Superbowl. Every player on the field is a handgun victim. All the people in the stands are the victims who were unable to resist with handguns. Those are historical facts.

I, myself, am willing to pay that price as a society – knowing full well that I or a loved one may be part of that terrible invoice. I wish it was lower. Obviously, I wish it didn’t exist at all. But any rational look into the world shows us places where the numbers of innocents murdered by their own governments in unarmed nations are far, far higher.

Of course, many societies have far lower numbers. Japan is a fine example. I'm sure if the United States had 2000 years of a culture whose prize assets are conformity and submission then our numbers would be a lot lower. Alas, we are not that society. Thank God, we are not that society.

It is abundantly clear that the rate of handgun murders in the United States is not uniform. Very large murder rates can be observed in small, exceedingly violent populations of every race in this country, and these rates seem to be more related to issues of income, education and living conditions. Certainly guns are freely available in areas where our murder rates are appallingly high. They are also found in very large numbers in communities where handgun crime is virtually nonexistent.

Doesn’t that tell us that there something deeper at work here? Could it be, perhaps, that the problem is not with the number of guns in this country but rather in the hearts of those who we allow to wield them, repeatedly? Could it really be as simple as apprehending, and punishing, those that would do harm to innocents and to civilization? Rather than banning guns, should we not attack the moral rot that infests these small, violent populations of every color who put such horrible numbers at our feet?

Assume for a moment you could vaporize every gun on the planet. Would crime go away? Or would ruthless, physically strong gangs of young men be essentially able to roam free and predate at will?

The history of civilization shows time and time again how decent, sophisticated city dwellers amass wealth through cooperation and the division of labor - only to be victimized by ruthless gangs of raping, looting cutthroats who couldn't make a fruit basket, sweeping down on them, murdering them and carting away the loot, to return a few years later, forever, ad infinitum. Vikings, Mongols, desperadoes of every stripe - they are a cancer on humanity but there they are and there they have always been.

If civilization is worth having (and I believe it is) then it has to be defended, because the restraining virtues of justice, compassion and respect for laws are products of that civilizing force and completely unknown to those who would do it harm.

Therefore, since I believe in this civilization, in its laws, science, art and medicine, I believe we must be prepared to defend it against what I feel no embarrassment for calling the Forces of Darkness. Those forces could be raiders on horseback, jackbooted Nazi murderers, ecstatic human bombs or some kid blowing away a shopkeeper.

For the gun-ban argument to be convincing, you'd have to show me a time before shopkeepers were blown away, hacked away, pelted away or whatever the case may be. You would have to show me a time in history before the invention of the firearm, when crime and raiding and looting did not exist, when murders and rapes did not exist. We may lose 11,000 people to handguns a year. How many would we lose without any handguns, if murderers and rapists roamed free of fear, ignoring reprisal from citizens or police? I don't know. You don't know either. Maybe it's a lot fewer people, and maybe, in a world where strength and ruthlessness trump all, it would be a far higher one.

You may argue that only the police should be allowed to carry guns. Consider this carefully. Do we really want to create an unelected subculture that views itself as so elite and virtuous as to be the only ones worthy of such power, trust and authority? Have we not clearly seen the type of people drawn to such exclusive positions of authority, and the attitudes and arrogance it promotes?

Furthermore, I can't see any moral distinction between a policeman and a law-abiding citizen. Policemen are drawn from the ranks of law-abiding citizens. They are not bred in hydroponics tanks. They are expected to show restraint and use their weapon as a last resort. Millions upon millions of citizens, a crowd more vast than entire armies of police, do exactly this every day.

If all of these horrors had sprung up as a result of the invention of the handgun I'd be right there beside those calling for their destruction.

But clearly, this is not the case. In our cowboy past we used to say that "God created Man, but Sam Colt made them equal." This is simple enough to understand. It means that a villager, let's say a schoolteacher, can defeat a human predator who may have spent his entire life practicing the art of war. Firearms are what tipped the balance toward civilization by eliminating a lifetime spent studying swordplay or spear play or pointed-stick play. The bad guys have always used weapons and they always will. The simple truth about guns is that they are damn effective and even easier to operate. They level the playing field to the point where a woman has a chance against a gang of thugs or a police officer can control a brawl.

I don't see how vaporizing all the guns in the world would remove crime or violence - history shows these have always been with us and show no signs of responding favorably to well-reasoned arguments or harsh language. I wish it were not true. I wish the IRS did not exist either, but there it is.

Criminals, and criminal regimes ranging from The Brow-Ridged Hairy People That Live Among the Distant Mountains all the way through history to the Nazis and the Soviets, have and will conspire to take by force what they cannot produce on their own. These people must be stopped. The genius of the 2nd Amendment is that it realizes that these people could be anybody - including the U.S. Army. That is why this power, like the other powers, is vested in the people. Nowhere else in the world is this the case. You can make a solid argument that the United States is, by almost any measure, the most prosperous, successful nation in history. I'm not claiming this is because every American sleeps with a gun under the pillow - the vast majority do not. I do claim it is the result of a document that puts faith and trust in the people - trusts them with government, with freedom, and with the means of self-defense. You cannot remove that lynchpin of trust without collapsing the entire structure. Many observers of America never fully understand what we believe in our bones, namely, that the government doesn't tell us what we can do - WE tell THOSE bastards just how far they can go.

Of course, all of this is completely whimsical, because, like nuclear weapons, guns are HERE and they are not going to go away. You cannot just vaporize them. Honest people might be compelled to turn in their weapons; criminals clearly will not. So what do you propose? Forget the moral high ground of gun ownership. Again a simple truth, often maligned but demonstrably dead-on accurate: When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.

The American Revolution surely is unique in the sense that the ringleaders - Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Hamilton, etc - were men of property, wealth and prestige; in other words, men with something to lose. Compare this to any other revolution in history, where the ringleaders were outsiders; plotters staring in the windows of prosperity, powerless. The Russian Revolution, French Revolution, etc - these were joined by desperate people fighting mind-numbing poverty and severe political repression.

And yet the Founding Fathers were men who were as well-off as any men on earth at the time, and furthermore, any of them could have been (and were) political leaders under His Majesty's government. The average colonial farmer likewise led a life far more comfortable than those of his cousins in Europe, to say nothing of Asia or Africa.

For all practical intents and purposes, these people had absolutely nothing to gain, and everything in the world to lose, by taking on the greatest military force the world had ever known. Why would they do this? What possible motivation could well-off, comfortable people have? Militarily, they seemed certain to lose, and they knew before they started - and Patrick Henry made the abundantly clear - that they would be hanged as common criminals if they failed.

Of course, the answer is, they did it to be free. And they did it to make the rest of their nation - the poor, the disenfranchised - free as well. And it is clear as crystal from their collective writings that they took that risk to make Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore and the rest of us in their unseen posterity free, too. They could look down the dim, moonlit riverbanks of the future and see a society worthy of their sacrifice and determination. They knew that God, (or for me, chance perhaps) had put them together in a time and place where bold, courageous action followed by much suffering, doubt, blood and fear could, perhaps, unleash in mankind an energy source the likes of which they could not imagine.

So for me, a child of that bet - that guess, that commitment, that roll of the dice - for ME, I owe them the defense of that freedom, and I will do my poor mite to pass it on as best I can. These men pledged to each other their Lives, their Fortunes and their sacred Honor. They pledged that to ME. I owe them. I do not have the right to take away someone else's freedom and property - it is offensive to me to even contemplate it. Of course, if someone breaks the freedom/responsibility covenant by committing a crime, then all bets are off. To that extent, I view handgun murderers not just as criminals but as traitors as well.

I hate seeing our kids get shot on the street, I hate it, I hate it. But that is the cost of freedom. People get horribly killed on Spring Break road trips to Florida at age 18. They're driving drunk. We could prevent them from going. We would save lives. Enron and MCI steal like the worst characters from Dickens, taking people's Christmas dinners so they can have gold plated faucets. We could regulate more, make things harder for the millions of honest businesses that build and trade honorably each day. The day may come when someone flies a Cessna into a stadium. We can ban the airplanes. Ditto for pleasure boats. We can ban and confiscate and regulate to our hearts content, and we will undoubtedly save many, many innocent lives by doing so. All for the price of a little freedom.

I believe we should punish the perpetrators. I will not agree to restrict the freedoms of the vast numbers of people who abide by the concomitant responsibility and live lives of honesty and decency. And there is more than the physical restriction of freedoms: There is the slow erosion of self-reliance, self-confidence and self-determination among a nation. The more your government restricts your options, the more you psychologically look to government to keep you safe, fed, clothed, housed and sustained.

There is a word for people who are fed, clothed, housed and sustained fully by others, and that word is SLAVES.

If Congress were occupied by angels and Michael sat in a throne of glory in the Oval Office, I would listen to what they said for my own greater good. But no government is made of angels, not even the Canadian government in all its decency and compassion. So who determines how much freedom we trade for how much security? People do. People are not unknown to place their own interests above those of others. There is even a vanishing remote chance that Jean Cretien has at some point perhaps put personal interest above those of his constituents.

The real genius of the Founding Fathers was that these great and good men had the foresight and the courage to look into their own darker motives, and construct a system that prevents the accumulation of power.

The Constitution they created could only be torn up by force of arms. And that is why the Founders left that power in the hands of the people, who together can never be cowed by relatively small numbers of thugs holding the only guns.

As PJ O'Rourke points out, the U.S. Constitution is less than a quarter the length of the owner's manual for a 1998 Toyota Camry, and yet it has managed to keep 300 million of the world's most unruly, passionate people safe, prosperous and free. Smarter people than me may disagree with that document - I'm for not touching a comma.

So as a proud son of those brave men, I'll take freedom - all of it - and because I accept the benefits of those freedoms, I'll solemnly take the responsibilities as well. I may someday lose a child on a trip to Spring Break, but I'll never lock them in the basement to keep them safe. And I'll accept the fact that living in Los Angeles puts me at risk for being shot to death because I feel the freedom is worth it. I breathe that freedom every day, and hey, we all gotta go sometime. I'll continue to fly experimental airplanes because I am careful, meticulous, precise and responsible, and yet the day may come when I am out of altitude, out of airspeed and out of ideas all at the same time. Oh well. I have seen and done things up there that you cannot imagine and I cannot describe. Freedom.

I respect and admire Canada. Although we have chosen certain diverging paths since the days of the Revolution, we have been, and always will be, the best of friends despite our differences. Canada is unquestionably as decent, modest and good a society as exists on Earth today. And yet while Canadians frequently point out that they are free of our vices, I perceive that they are free of our greatness as well. You can't have it both ways.

Me, personally, I'll take the spirit, ingenuity and passion that can plant the American flag on the moon over pre-paid health care. I can buy health care. Thirty three years after watching the event as a ten year old boy, I’m still trying to go to the moon. (Some of us in the Mojave desert may still have few tricks up our sleeve on this one. We're still free to build airplanes and spacecraft from our garages and fly the goddamn things. Try and keep up with a nation that builds working spacecraft in the garage. As a hobby. Out of pocket. For FUN.)

And everyone who has taken America's disdain for intellectualism as a lack of intelligence has woken up looking at our dust trail as we speed ever faster beyond them. We're not just a smart country - we're THE smart country. Behold the list of inventions and Nobel Prize winning scientists. Einstein was an American. Of course he emigrated here --- we all did. Germany threw him away - he's ours now, by his choice, not ours. Ditto Von Braun and numerous others, not to mention the legion of homegrown geniuses like the Wright Brothers and Robert Goddard, just to draw two names from the narrow field I know best. Staggeringly brilliant men and women, the best, most active minds on the planet pulling for the same team.

Canada is free of many of the foreign policy disasters and failures of vision that the United States has been correctly charged with, but they are free too of the satisfaction and pride of being history’s singular bulwark of freedom and prosperity, and the eternal, unintimidated scourge of tyrants and murderers from the Barbary pirates, through the armed might of the 20th Century’s parade of totalitarians and right up to Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden and the criminal lunatics that run North Korea.

Our failures and disgraces cruelly remind us that we, like every other government, are composed of fallible men and women with no divine ability to read the future or foresee all outcomes. But these failures are failures of action, action borne of confidence and a belief in our way of life, and come all the more painful for their contrast to the everyday standards to which we hold ourselves as a people and a nation. For it is an undeniable fact that no great nation in history has held a shadow of our measure of power, and yet exercised it with such restraint, nor does any time in the bloody history of warfare reflect a people so magnanimous in victory against enemies sworn to our murder and destruction. From our first hour, we have been, and remain, the beacon of hope and freedom for a world desperate and longing for such an example, and we can measure our success in building such a place by the numbers of those who are literally dying in an attempt to come and be part of it.

So take your pick: Freedom or security? Greatness or goodness? Passion or decency?

Our respective ancestors made their choice and here we are. I respect anyone’s right to chose differently. I only speak up to defend the choice we Americans made as a deeply spiritual one, borne of reflection and danger and a spectacular triumph against all odds. I cannot stand idly by to hear people denounce our freedoms as the dimwitted macho posturing of a mob of illiterate uncultured idiots who are so vulgar and uncouth as to still believe in Hollywood myths manufactured for our simple, complacent, unsophisticated nature.

From the Revolution until today, the choice for full freedom with all its accompanying excesses and failures is a profoundly well-reasoned, moral and ethical choice, and the result has been national and personal success unparalleled in the history of this world.

I am deeply proud to be a member of such a magnificent group of people. I hope to God I can give back as much as I owe.