From The Wall Street Journal:

Secret GOP Weapon
The Scots-Irish vote.
By James Webb

To an outsider George W. Bush's political demeanor seems little more than stumbling tautology. He utters his campaign message in clipped phrases, filled with bravado and repeated references to God, and to resoluteness of purpose. But to a trained eye and ear these performances have the deliberate balance of a country singer at the Grand Ole Opry.

Speaking in a quasirural dialect that his critics dismiss as affected, W. is telling his core voting groups that he is one of them. No matter that he is the product of many generations of wealth; that his grandfather was a New England senator; that his father moved the family's wealth South just like the hated Carpetbaggers after the Civil War; that he himself went North to Andover and Yale and Harvard when it came time for serious grooming. And as with the persona, so also with the key issues. The Bush campaign proceeds outward from a familiar mantra: strong leadership, success in war, neighbor helping neighbor, family values, and belief in God. Contrary to many analyses, these issues reach much farther than the oft-discussed Christian right. The president will not win re-election without carrying the votes of the Scots-Irish, along with those others who make up the "Jacksonian" political culture that has migrated toward the values of this ethnic group.

At the same time, few key Democrats seem even to know that the Scots-Irish exist, as this culture is so adamantly individualistic that it will never overtly form into one of the many interest groups that dominate Democratic Party politics. Indeed, it can be fairly said that Al Gore lost in 2000 because the Democrats ignored this reality and the Scots-Irish enclaves of West Virginia and Tennessee turned against him.

Why are the 30 million Scots-Irish, who may well be America's strongest cultural force, so invisible to America's intellectual elites? It is commonplace for commentators to lump together those who are descended from British roots into the WASP culture typified by New England Brahmins, or the Irish, who are overwhelmingly Catholic. But it is political nonsense to consider the Scots-Irish as part of either.

The Scots-Irish are derived from a mass migration from Northern Ireland in the 1700s, when the Calvinist "Ulster Scots" decided they'd had enough of fighting Anglican England's battles against Irish Catholics. One group settled initially in New Hampshire, spilling over into modern-day Vermont and Maine. The overwhelming majority--95%--migrated to the Appalachians in a series of frontier communities that stretched from Pennsylvania to northern Alabama and Georgia. They eventually became the dominant culture of the South and much of the Midwest.

True American-style democracy had its origins in this culture. Its values emanated from the Scottish Kirk, which had thrown out the top-down hierarchy of the Catholic Church and replaced it with governing councils made up of ordinary citizens. This mix of fundamentalist religion and social populism grew from a people who for 16 centuries had been tested through constant rebellions against centralized authority. The Scots who headed into the feuds of 17th-century Ulster, and then into the backlands of the American frontier, hardened further into a radicalism that proclaimed that no man had a duty to obey a government if its edicts violated his moral conscience.

Matched with this rebelliousness was a network of extended family "clans," still evident among the Scots-Irish, built on an egalitarianism that measured a person by their own code of honor, courage, loyalty and audacious leadership. Noted Scottish professor T.C. Smout said it best when he observed that these relationships were "compounded both of egalitarian and patriarchal features, full of respect for birth while being free from humility." They demanded strong leaders, but would never tolerate one who considered himself above his fellows. Andrew Jackson, the first president of Scots-Irish descent, forever changed the style of American politics, creating a movement that even today is characterized as Jacksonian democracy.

The Scots-Irish comprised a large percentage of Reagan Democrats, and contributed heavily to the "red state" votes that gave Mr. Bush the presidency in 2000. The areas with the highest Scots-Irish populations include New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, northern Florida, Mississippi, Arkansas, northern Louisiana, Missouri, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, southern Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and parts of California, particularly Bakersfield. The "factory belt," especially around Detroit, also has a strong Scots-Irish mix.

The Scots-Irish political culture is populist and inclusive, which has caused other ethnic groups to gravitate toward it. Country music is its cultural emblem. It is family-oriented. Its members are values-based rather than economics-based: they often vote on emotional issues rather than their pocketbooks. Because of their heritage of "kinship," they're strangely unenvious of wealth, and measure leaders by their personal strength and values rather than economic position. They have a 2,000-year-old military tradition based on genealogy, are the dominant culture of the military and the Christian right, and define the character of blue-collar America. They are deeply patriotic, having consistently supported every war America has fought, and intensely opposed to gun control--an issue that probably cost Mr. Gore both his home state of Tennessee and traditionally Democratic West Virginia in 2000.

The GOP strategy is heavily directed toward keeping peace with this culture, which every four years is seduced by the siren song of guns, God, flag, opposition to abortion and success in war. By contrast, over the past generation the Democrats have consistently alienated this group, to their detriment.

The Democrats lost their affinity with the Scots-Irish during the civil rights era, when--because it was the dominant culture in the South--its "redneck" idiosyncrasies provided an easy target during their shift toward minorities as the foundation of their national electoral strategy. Their long-term problem in having done so is twofold. First, it hampers their efforts to carry almost any Southern state. And second, the Scots-Irish culture has strong impact outside the South. This is especially strong in many battleground states. It is no accident that many political observers call the central region in Pennsylvania "northern Alabama." Scots-Irish traditions play heavily in New Hampshire--the only New England state that Mr. Bush carried in 2000. Large numbers of Scots-Irish settled in the southern regions of Ohio (called "northern Kentucky"), Indiana and Illinois. They were among the principal groups to settle Missouri and Colorado. They migrated heavily to the industrial areas in Michigan, which is one reason that George Wallace, ran so strongly in that state in 1968 and 1972.

But other than with those who identify with the Christian right, it would be wrong to think that the Republicans have their firm loyalty. For every Lee Atwater or Karl Rove who understands the Scots-Irish, there are others who privately disdain them. And sometimes not so privately--the most vicious ethnic slur of the presidential campaign came from Charles Krauthammer, after Howard Dean suggested that the Democrats needed to reach out to the "guys with the Confederate flags on their pickup trucks." Mr. Krauthammer, who has never complained about this ethnic group when it has marched off to fight the wars he wishes upon us, wrote that Mr. Dean "wants the white trash vote . . . that's clearly what he meant," and that he was pandering to "rebel-yelling racist rednecks."

As with other ethnic groups, those inside the culture know how to read such code words, and there may come a time when the right Democratic strategist knows how to counter them in the manner that Mr. Dean contemplated. John Edwards is at his visceral best when his campaign rhetoric seems directed at doing that.

The decline in public education and the outsourcing of jobs has hit this culture hard. Diversity programs designed to assist minorities have had an unequal impact on white ethnic groups and particularly this one, whose roots are in a poverty-stricken South. Their sons and daughters serve in large numbers in a war whose validity is increasingly coming into question. In fact, the greatest realignment in modern politics would take place rather quickly if the right national leader found a way to bring the Scots-Irish and African-Americans to the same table, and so to redefine a formula that has consciously set them apart for the past two centuries.

Mr. Webb, a former secretary of the Navy, is the author of "Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America," just published by Broadway.

This is nauseating. It makes me want to vomit like the puppet in Team America. If they really want to commemorate Williams, why don't they take out the Yankee championship memorabilia and replace it with, I don't know...NOTHING! (Or maybe some fishing poles and pages from old Sears catalogs,)

Mantle's Family Angry About Name Change

The family of the late Mickey Mantle expressed its anger yesterday at a decision to temporarily rename the Yankees slugger's eponymous restaurant -- and even worse, to call the place "Ted Williams," after the Red Sox great -- following Boston's victory over the Bronx Bombers.

The awning at the restaurant on Central Park South carried a makeshift paper sign reading "Ted Williams," covering the familiar "Mickey Mantle" lettering. The decision was made by the restaurant's owner, Bill Liederman, who was paying homage to the Bostonians.

"Mickey loved Ted, and we hold Ted's memory in the highest regard," said Mantle's widow, Merlyn. "But Mr. Liederman's conduct is disgraceful and an insult to Mickey's memory, and to the Yankees and their fans."

Mantle and Liederman opened the restaurant in 1988, becoming close friends until the Yankee great's death in 1995. A man at the restaurant said yesterday Liederman could not immediately comment about the flap.

From National Review:

The Florida Lie
A paranoid urban legend returns.

It's already starting. Democrats are pumping up the volume on behalf of an insidious lie: Evil forces deliberately disenfranchised black voters in 2000, especially in Florida, and are already doing it again this year.

John Kerry has said, "Never again will a million African-Americans be denied the right to exercise their vote." Jimmy Carter — who never hesitates to smear the country whose highest office he once occupied — has made similar noises. Hyperbolic Democratic honcho Terry McAuliffe will travel next week with Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who never miss an opportunity to tell black audiences that the age of Jim Crow is still here when it comes to disenfranchisement.

The Kerry salvo about a million black voters is a wild extrapolation based on the falsehood that in 2000 blacks were disenfranchised in Florida and then assuming proportional numbers were disenfranchised in every other state. The million number is highly convenient since it is the threshold for a sound bite really to bite. Kerry, for instance, will never say on the stump that the economy has lost a net 600,000 total jobs during the past four years, sticking instead with a statistic that keeps the figure over a million.

What happened in Florida in 2000 is some voters spoiled their ballots, voting for two candidates or not making a discernible mark on their ballot. This happens in every election, but these mistakes were magnified in Florida because of the scrutiny that came with Bush's 500-vote margin. Peter Kirsanow, a Republican member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and a one-man truth squad about the Florida controversy, estimates the rate of spoilage in Florida at roughly 3 percent.

That is similar to the 2.6 percent rate in 1996, when Democrats failed to scream about disenfranchisement. The spoilage rate in heavily Democratic Chicago in 2000 was almost 6 percent, double that of Florida. The sad fact is, according to Kirsanow, ballots tend to be spoiled more in low-income areas (white or black), areas where many people haven't graduated high school, and areas where there are a large number of first-time voters.

Democrats took this sociological datum, which applies everywhere around the country, and spun from it a conspiracy theory in Florida — blacks were kept from voting, "disenfranchised." The first problem with this feverish notion is that the county supervisors who conduct the elections and would have had to do all the disenfranchising in the black areas with high rates of spoilage were almost all Democrats.

The more specific allegations of attempts to disenfranchise blacks are paranoid urban legend. No one has produced any evidence of the dogs and hoses some activists have said were used to keep blacks from the polls — and if Bull Connor had really been loose in Florida, people would have noticed. Another allegation involves the so-called "felon purge list," which was meant to keep felons from voting. It had significant errors and hindered some legitimate voters at the polls, but the list wasn't a deliberate racist act. According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 42 percent of the people on the list were black. But 48 percent of convicted felons in Florida are black. It turned out that roughly 6,000 felons correctly on the list were allowed to vote illegally anyway.

Kerry et al. want to play on the primal fears of black voters, convincing them that the American electoral system is fundamentally corrupt. The 2004 election has, therefore, achieved the status of being pre-stolen — if Bush wins, he ipso facto stole it. A Democratic National Committee manual instructs activists, in the true spirit of Florida 2000, to allege voter intimidation even in the absence of evidence. Right on cue, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference has floated wispy tales of the harassment of black voters in Florida.

All of this is so tawdry. But nothing is beneath hucksters who know that the positive merits of Kerry are so uninspiring that they have to resort to gutter tactics to try to get him elected, lying to black voters in the process.

— Rich Lowry is author of Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years.

Too bad draft days are over
By Dennis Rogers

Forget the political sniping. There's not going to be a military draft any time soon.

Ain't it a shame.

A military draft for all able-bodied Americans -- with no deferments for anybody -- would be good for the country, the military and the draftees.

I say that as a former Army NCO who supervised many a reluctant warrior during my wearing of the green. No, I was not drafted. I voluntarily enlisted in 1962 and re-upped for six years in 1964. My draftees called me a "lifer," as if that were a bad thing.

Not only should there be a draft, it should include doctors, lawyers, nurses, pharmacists and, yes, preachers. Journalists, too. And women. Everybody.

Go ahead, spew your morning coffee over the newspaper. Rant that today's military is so high-tech some doofus draftee wouldn't know which end of his weapon to point at the enemy. Besides, a military draft is a form of national slavery, the closet libertarian inside you says, and in a free country no one should be forced to serve.

Oh, and don't forget what the elitists say about how the promising lives of our best and brightest young folks from well-off families, most of whom do not serve these days, should not be wasted on a battlefield.

No one dared say it at the time, but that was the real reason behind college deferments during the Vietnam War. Farm boys and inner-city kids were sent off to Vietnam to fight communism so rich kids could safely stay in college until they could go to work for daddy.

Conscientious objectors and those intellectually, emotionally or physically unsuitable for military duty could work in poor neighborhoods, schools, national parks and veterans hospitals. They'd sleep in tents, get half the pay of soldiers and eat field rations three times a day, though.

Here's a handful of good reasons we need a draft:

We need the warm bodies. There are simply not enough active-duty soldiers or reservists to do the job today.

It would be cheaper. Draftees would get a hefty pay raise only if they re-enlisted.

It would keep the reserves strong. The minimum service should be two years active and two years of reserve meetings.

A military hitch would bond those who served with a shared cultural experience that doesn't exist in America today except for TV and franchise stores.

It would improve the nation's health. At least for two years, people would be forced to eat right and stay in shape.

It would bridge the wide social gap between races, ethnic cultures and economic classes. Taking showers together breaks down all sorts of barriers.

No politician should send Americans to war unless that person has served in uniform and appreciates the sacrifice they're asking of others.

It would end disputes over the physical and mental equality of races and genders.

Society would be better off if more young people received a dose of discipline from a tough-as-nails drill sergeant at 5 a.m.

It's high time children of the rich and powerful did their share of the fighting and dying for this country. They get the biggest rewards from living here, so it only seems fair they shoulder more of the burden.

Which is why it will never happen.

Outstanding post here from the premier Yankees blog, Bronx Banter.

The Success of Failure

Mulling over the end the 2004 season got me thinking about failure as a motivating element in our lives. Particularly as it applies to the creative process. Allow me to indugle myself here. First of all, do yourselves a favor and check out two first-rate articles on the Yankees: “Mythbusters” by Larry Manhken, and the latest installment of The Pinstriped Bible by Steven Goldman (oh, and look at David Pinto’s defense of Alex Rodriguez while you are at it too).

How can we view failure in a positive light? In an interview with Mike Shannon (from the book “Baseball: The Writer’s Game”), Pat Jordan explained:

I recently wrote a piece on failure for a magazine called Men’s Fitness. They wanted me to write a piece on success. They said, “Well, you’ve been a successful baseball player”…these were people who obviously didn’t know much about my career…”and now you’re a successful writer; write a piece on how to motivate yourself for success in whatever you do, etc., etc.” But I ended up writing about failure instead. I told them, “I’ve made a whole career out of failure. I failed in baseball and made a career in writing through that, and everytime I write a piece I fail because it’s never as good as I want it to be and that makes me write another one. So I owe my whole life to failure.”

Jordan isn’t alone. The great William Faulkner regarded perhaps his finest book, The Sound and the Fury, as a noble failure. In an interview with Jean Stein which originally appeared in the Paris Review, Faulkner elaborated:

Faulkner: Since none of my work has met my own standards, I must judge it on the basis of that one which caused me the most grief and anguish, as the mother loves the child who became the thief or murderer more than the one who became the priest.

Interviewer: What work is that?

Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury. I wrote is five separate times, trying to tell the story, to rid myself of the dream which would continue to anguish me until I did. It’s a tragedy of two lost women: Caddy and her daughter. Dilsey is one of my own favorite characters, because she is brave, courageous, generous, gentle and honest. She’s much more brave and honest and generous than me.

Interviewer: How did The Sound and the Fury begin?

Faulkner: It began with a mental picture. I didn’t realize at the time it was symbolical. The picture was of the muddy seat of a little girl’s drawers in a pear tree, where she could see through a window where her grandmother’s funeral was taking place and report what was happening to her brothers on the ground below. By the time I explained who they were and what they were doing and how her pants got muddy, I realized it would be impossible to get all of it into a short story and that it would have to be a book. And then I realized the symbolism of the soiled pants, and that image was replaced by the one of the fatherless and motherless girl [Caddy’s daughter] climbing down the rainpipe to escape from the only home she had, where she had never been offered love or affection or understanding.

I had already begun to tell the story through the eyes of the idiot child, since I felt that it would be more effective as told by someone capable only of knowing what happened, but not why. I saw that I had not told the story that time. I tried to tell it again, the same story through the eyes of another brother. That was still not it. I told it for a third time through the eyes of the third brother. That was still not it. I tried to gather the pieces together and fill in the gaps by making myself the spokesman. It was still not complete, not until fifteen years after the book was published, when I wrote as an appendix to another book [The Viking Portable Faulkner] the final effort to get the story told and off my mind, so that I myself could have some peace from it. It’s the book I feel tenderest towards. I couldn’t leave it alone, and I never could tell it right, though I tried hard and would like to try again, though I’d probably fail again.

Wow. One of the great books in modern literature and its creator considered it a failure. Furthermore, Faulkner looked at failure as a virtue. Consider his feelings about Ernest Hemingway given in an 1955 interview:

I thought that he found out early what he could do and stayed inside of that. He never did try to get outside the boundary of what he really could do and risk failure. He did what he did really could do marvelously well, first rate, but to me that is not success but failure…failure to me is the best. To try something you can’t do, because it’s too much (to hope for0, but still to try it and fail, then try it again. That to me is success.

How does this relate to the Yankees? I’m not certain, other than we Yankee fans are dealing with failure this morning. But that’s what baseball is all about, right? Failing most of the time. Accepting it and moving on. Just ask every other team in the league with the exception of the Sox and the Cardinals. The season may have endeded poorly for the Yanks, but as a whole, I wouldn’t characterize it as just a failure. As Goldman points out in his article, there was a lot to be appreciate about the Yanks this year. Hopefully, the team can learn from their failures, lick their wounds and then try again next year. The point isn’t that they failed, it’s that they pick themselves up, determined to try again. That’s all we can ask from ourselves and that’s all we can ask from them.

Finally, here is one last gem from Faulkner. It is from a letter he wrote to Malcolm Cowley. I've found it meaningful and inspirational for a long time.

As regards to any specific book, I’m trying primarily to tell a story, in the most effective way I can think of, the most moving, the most exhaustive. But I think even that is incidental to what I am trying to do…I am telling the same story over and over, which is myself and the world. Tom Wolfe was trying to say everything, the world plus “I” or filtered through “I” or the effort of “I” to embrace the world in which he was born and walked a little while and then lay down again, into one volume. I am trying to go a step further. This I think accounts for what people call the obscurity, the involved formless “style,” endless sentences. I’m trying to say it all in one sentence, between one Cap and one period. I’m still trying to put it all, if possible, on one pinhead. I don’t know how to do it. All I know to do is to keep on trying in a new way. I’m inclined to think that my material, the South, is not very important to me. I just happen to know it, and don’t have time in one life to learn another one and write at the same time.

…Art is simpler than people think because there is so little to write about. All the moving things are eternal in man’s history and have been written before, and if a man writes hard enough, sincerely enough, humbly enough, and with the unalterable determination never never never to be quite satisfied with it, he will repeat them, because art like poverty takes care of its own, shares its bread.

Posted on Oct 22, 2004 at 2:07 PM

UNARMED FOR BATTLE AGAINST BETTER TEAM
BY JERRY IZENBERG

NEW YORK -- They had the biggest payroll in all of baseball. With such a budget, small countries in Eastern Europe could fund their electric bills, their garbage pickups and their mass transit. George Steinbrenner gave himself an unlimited budget -- and spent it all.

With this team, the Yankees won more games than anybody else in the American League. But they were playing a con game. The big bats covered their deficiencies. Management saw the thin pitching and lied to itself.

"We'll be all right when we get to the playoffs" was its mantra. But it wasn't going to be that way. After three relatively easy victories, the Yankees began to fall to pitching inequities, pitching fatigue and pitchers whose salaries did not support the payroll numbers.

Joe Torre, the manager, knew it. Brian Cashman, the general manager, knew it. In his way, so did Steinbrenner. They never had the pitching. What they had was the ability to club people into submission when the planets were lined up in the right conjunction with the sun.

But the pitching? The kind of pitching that wins a short series? They were in a mess. Mike Mussina (when he was healthy) and El Duque (when he was healthy) and Kevin Brown (when he was healthy) -- were what they counted on. But the vagaries of their own anatomy betrayed them down the stretch.

Then it finished them last night.

Mariano Rivera is the greatest one- or two-inning reliever who ever played the game. But you can't make deals with fatigue. The Yankees had to use Rivera and Tom Gordon over and over again.

And in the end, it caught them and squeezed them and put them in position to suffer the worst single loss in the history of these kings of the Bronx.

Yesterday they completed the final stage of snatching defeat out of the jaws of history. They thought they could get by with smoke, mirrors and the ability to hit. But they guessed wrong.

It worked for them at the start of this tournament primarily because this is a team that used its offense to come back after trailing in 65 games. Now, here in a short series, once the bats went cold there wasn't much they could do.

And the bats did go cold. Once the pitchers failed, once Game 4 was lost, then Game 5, then Game 6, they were staring at the worst possible scenario in the history of the Yankees.

You get up 3-0 in games in this town and you are supposed to be able to finish. This is New York, the place where if you can make it there, you'll make it anywhere. When the pitching failed and Torre looked up and down the dugout and saw no solutions, they knew.

The fact that they clipped Pedro Martinez, who came on in relief, for two runs meant nothing. They were the Little Dutch Boy and the leaks were everywhere and they were running out of fingers with which to plug them.

Their bats felt as though they were swinging wet cement. They were tight. They came to bat looking like overwound springs. They chopped, they lunged. These were the Yankees. It was hard to believe that they are the team that won six pennants since Joe Torre took over.

They spend money. They sign free agents. Money is no problem for them.

But they were snookered by the image of their own invincibility. Rivera could not come on to save them. They were too far gone for that. Torre was a chess master with no pieces to move.

From the start yesterday there was an air of inevitability about the moment. Johnny Damon, the spiritual leader of this Red Sox team, kept telling them to stick with it -- that they would win.

This is a guy who came to yesterday's moment of truth hitting just .103 in this series. He is this team's leader. The first thing you see about him is the hair. It flows down both sides and the rear of his skull. It merges with a beard that covers his upper lip as much as it does his chin.

Johnny Damon does not look like a ballplayer at all. Naturally, with all that hair and the beard and the broad chest, he looks as though he has stepped out from one of those glass cubicles in the New York Museum of Natural History. Java Man looks more athletic.

But Damon is the guy who described his team as a bunch of idiots. Yesterday, he hit two tremendous home runs. After the second one, the Yankees never came back.

The Sox never stopped digging. The Yankees had nobody to stop them. This wasn't about the Curse of the Bambino or another Red Sox car wreck.

This, plain and simple, was about a game won by the better team. The Sox had the pitchers. The Yankees did not. The Sox did not feel the pressure. The Yankees did.

Now they will seek to unravel the mystery. Now George will import new faces ... pay more money ... perhaps blame Torre. This is the worst reversal of form in the history of baseball. That it happened to the Yankees makes it all the more shocking.

For once, the Yankees had no solution. For once, the blame fell directly on the pitching staff -- and indirectly on George.

Will there be changes? You bet there will be.

Mr. Steinbrenner doesn't take losing easily.

Despite his upbeat manner, neither does Torre.

This will be the autumn of ferocious Yankee activity.

Jerry Izenberg appears regularly in The Star-Ledger

From Mike O'Toole's blog: Blogging Like I've Never Blogged Before. The solution to the Iraq situation.

Operation: Problem Solved!

Rather than bore you with it here, you can just click on this link.

From FrontPageMagazine.com:

The War Democrats Believe In
By Don Feder

The Democrats have been characterized as a party of peace marchers and flag-burners -- a Neville Chamberlain cadre chattering away on cable TV, knee-jerk internationalists who’ve mistaken the United Nations for the United States Marines.

I must protest this calumny.

Under the right circumstances, the Democrats can be Sgt. York and Audie Murphy times Rambo. There was a little war of which Democrats are exceedingly fond – so much so that they’re still bragging about it five years later.

It’s a conflict that didn’t involve allegations of weapons of mass destruction. The nation we subjugated wasn’t a sponsor of international terrorism. (This time, we fought for the terrorists.)

It wasn’t remotely related to national security. And the justification for our intervention turned out to be a complete fabrication.

For 78 days in 1999, we bombed Christian Yugoslavia (our ally in two World Wars) to aid Moslem separatists who were tight with Osama bin Laden. Ever since, NATO has occupied its sovereign territory – with disastrous results.

Appearing on CNN’s “Late Edition” in August, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton offered her husband’s 1999 adventure, over the ancient province of Kosovo, as evidence that Democrats are better at fighting wars than Republicans. (I would have thought Korea and Vietnam proved that conclusively.)

We smashed the Serb war-machine, and “we didn’t lose a single American military person,” Hillary boasted of the conflict her draft-dodger hubby dragged us into. She neglected to mention that it was a war we fought from 30,000 feet.

The party of McGovern and Dean is so proud of this notable feat of arms, that it invited Hashim Thaci, chieftain of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and Clinton’s erstwhile ally, to attend the Democratic National Convention. (You’d think the Party in a Perpetual Fog would be at least a little curious about how Thaci got the nickname “Snake.” Hint: It’s not because he’s a patron of the arts.)

On his return to Kosovo, Snake Thaci – head of a terrorist gang that finances its operations through drug-running and prostitution – proclaimed, “It was confirmed once again that a Democratic administration would recognize and respect the will of the people of Kosovo for self-determination.”

Self-determination is code for independence from Yugoslavia – the creation of another Republic of Jihad (Balkanistan) on the periphery of Europe.

The Clinton gang that ran the war – including Richard Holbrooke and Wesley Clark (then Supreme Commander of NATO forces) -- are slated for key posts in a Kerry administration. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs under Clinton, Holbrooke (who once called the Serbs “murderous assholes”) could be Kerry’s Secretary of State.

The War Hero and his running-mate both voted for the Senate resolution authorizing the use of force in Kosovo. A war resolution died in the Republican House.

What, we went to war without congressional authorization! We also did it without the permission of the United Nations. (Whatever happened to multilateralism?) Still, the French and Germans were on board – always a bad sign.

In a July 23, 2004 letter to Albanian-Americans, Kerry charged the Bush administration was “turning its back on the region” Whenever Bush doesn’t coddle terrorists (the PLO, the KLA) Kerry accuses him of abandoning whole regions.

In said letter, Kerry declared, “The people of Kosovo must be able to determine their own future, including how they want to be governed.” Since “the people of Kosovo” now are overwhelmingly Moslem, thanks in part to Clinton, Kerry is committing himself to Kosovo’s independence.

He wants to finish the job our last Democratic president started in 1999.

Kosovo is the ancient heartland of Serbian Orthodoxy. Until the 1970s, its population was predominately Serb.

Due to illegal immigration from Albania, Moslems became a majority and began agitating for autonomy. Then they started committing atrocities against their Serb neighbors – like beating elderly nuns, raping young girls and attacking monasteries. Then the KLA – which the U.S. State Department listed as a terrorist group as late as 1998 – started assassinating Yugoslav police and government officials.

Slobodan Milosevic, an ex-communist apparatchik who was President of Yugoslavia at the time, overreacted. (It is the Balkans, after all, a region second only to the Middle East for ethnic/religious harmony.)

Casting about for a way to take the nation’s attention off oral sex and impeachment, Bubba determined that we must intervene to save the saintly Albanians from the savage Serbs.

Ethnic cleansing was afoot, President Perjury gravely intoned. Exactly how this was different from the exchange of populations that took place throughout Europe in the aftermath of World War II (think of Poland and Germany, think of India and Pakistan) was never quite explained.

Worse, there were reports of killing fields and mass graves. Milosevic was cast as an architect of genocide – the Heinrich  Himmler of the Balkans,

At the Rambouillet conference, the Yugoslav president was presented with an ultimatum: allow a peace-keeping force into Kosovo (as a prelude to detaching the province from Yugoslavia) and permit NATO forces to occupy the entire country, if they choose.

The Serbs refused and the bombing commenced. We killed over 3,000 – mostly civilians, mostly with cluster-bombs -- before Milosevic finally yielded to vastly superior force.

After the Yugoslav Federal Army was driven from Kosovo, forensic experts scoured the countryside, and came up empty-handed.

A December 31, 1999, article in the Wall Street Journal (coincidentally, by Daniel Pearl) reported that allegations of “indiscriminate mass murder, rape camps, crematoriums, mutilation of the dead – haven’t been borne out in the six months since NATO troops entered Kosovo. Ethnic-Albanian militants, humanitarian organizations, NATO and the news media fed off each other to give genocide rumors credibility. Now, a different picture is emerging.”

Following these revelations, there were no cries of “Where are the MGs?” (mass graves). Republicans didn’t begin every speech by accusing Clinton of lying to the nation in his rush to justify an unnecessary war (though they could have).

Michael Moore did not make a documentary on how a Democratic president engineered a conflict to advance his personal agenda. (“Fahrenheit 1999”?) No one in the media asked about Clinton’s exit strategy (5 years later, U.S. forces are still stationed in Kosovo) or demanded to know how he intended to “win the peace.”

Whether or not there was ethnic cleansing before the war, there certainly was afterward.

Albanians, who were handed a victory by Clinton and NATO, drove out 277,000 Serbs. (Hundreds were murdered and thousands brutalized.) As of March 2004, Moslem multiculturalists had destroyed 135 Orthodox churches, monasteries and shrines – all under the watchful eyes of KFOR , as NATO’s  Keystone Cop peace-keeping force is called.

The rampage continues. The latest pogrom occurred in March, when (in a planned and coordinated campaign) 28 Serbs were murdered, more than 600 wounded and another 3,600 forced to flee. The Serbs left in Kosovo  -- estimated at between 102,000 and 114,000 -- live in a state of siege. Should KFOR be withdrawn, they’d all be dead or exiled in a matter of days.

Yes, Kosovo truly was the Democrats’ finest hour – a prime example of just how tough the party of Jimmy Carter and Ramsey Clark can be, when they’re in a fighting mood.

On the other hand, their Kosovo allies are threatening to give scum-of-the-earth a bad name. Back in ’99, Senator Joe Lieberman, who’s rumored to know something about foreign policy, called the KLA “freedom fighters.” Well, you know what the moral relativists of the left say: “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”

As it transpires, the KLA is allied with other freedom fighters, -- whose SOP is car bombs and demolishing sky-scrappers. Bin Laden was active in the Balkans as early as 1994.

In a Washington Times story published within days of 9/11, defense expert Bill Gertz disclosed: “Islamic radicals, including supporters of bin Laden, have been supporting Albanian rebels fighting in the region (who then were trying to de-stabilize Montenegro), including members of the Kosovo Liberation Army. Intelligence officials have said there are reports that KLA members have been trained at bin Laden camps in Afghanistan.” During the initial fighting there, U.S. units scooped up Kosovar Albanians who were serving with the Taliban’s foreign legion.

Another investigative article (“Al Qaeda’s Balkan Links,” The Wall Street Journal, November 1, 2002) noted, “By feeding off the region’s impoverished republics and taking root in the unsettled aftermath of the Bosnia and Kosovo conflicts, al Qaeda, along with Iranian Revolutionary Guard-sponsored terrorists, have burrowed their way into Europe’s backyard.”

Also, in the wake of the Democrats’ merry little war, Kosovo became the prime route, after Turkey, for the importation of heroin from Southeast Asia to Europe – just one more way our friends the freedom fighters thanked us for giving them a country.

The foregoing all is courtesy of Bill Clinton, John Kerry and the other Democrats who know what the US military is for – killing Christians to aid Moslem terrorists.

Whatever the shortcomings of President Bush’s plans for Iraq, at least he’s trying to bring democracy to a nation that’s never known it before. Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney ousted a brutal dictator, who sponsored international terrorism and (at the very least) was actively acquiring WMD-technology.

In Kosovo, we put the terrorists in power. Kerry helped. He voted for it. He defends it. (Thaci was his honored guest in Boston.) Now he’s pushing independence for the terrorists. In terms of betraying the West, this is easily the best work he’s done since his contribution to undermining the U.S. war effort in Vietnam in 1971.

Don Feder is a former Boston Herald writer who is now a political/communications consultant. He also maintains his own website, DonFeder.com.

Why we need to defend the Electoral COllege
by Jonah Goldberg

"The electoral college method of electing a president of the United States is archaic, undemocratic, complex, ambiguous, indirect, and dangerous."

That's what the American Bar Association famously had to say in 1967 about the Electoral College, and the sentiment is echoed in the complaints we increasingly hear today. The ABA's indictment was wrong on points 3 ("complex"), 4 ("ambiguous"), and 6 ("dangerous"). But it was right that the college is archaic, undemocratic and indirect. And that's why I love the musty old thing.

When Dean Wormer threw Delta House - AKA "Animal House" - off campus, the fraternity president, Robert Hoover, exclaimed, "But sir, Delta Tau Chi has a long tradition of existence both to its members and the community at large."

I feel the same way about the Electoral College. The mere fact that it has been around for a very long time stands in its favor.

In Federalist 49, James Madison referred to "that veneration which time bestows on everything, and without which perhaps the wisest and freest governments would not possess the requisite stability." What Madison meant by this was simple. Anyone can write a new constitution. The Weimar Republic's constitution was, for example, arguably the best written constitution of the 20th century. We need not dwell on its successes. Meanwhile, old constitutions are a rare thing. Our political institutions and culture are deeply invested in the Electoral College, and its two-century-long success is something g we should respect on its own merits.

Which brings me to the Bar Association's second and third complaints. Yes, the Electoral College is undemocratic and indirect - which, I'm sad to say, is a redundant complaint in the modern view. Today we think that anything that buffers, dilutes or even improves "direct" democracy is automatically evil in some way. (Some, like Dick Morris, even want Americans to decide public policy by polls.) According to this logic, of course, we should abolish the U.S. Senate, since 35 million Californians get the same representation as fewer than 1 million Montanans do - not that I'm trying to give anyone any ideas.

But the Senate and the Electoral College share many of the same rationales. It's true that the founders were worried about too much democracy. A Senate, it was hoped, might cool the passions of the more representative house. An Electoral College might also have the same effect, preventing demagogues from sweeping to power in a moment of national passion. This "archaic" benefit of the college has been reduced because electors must vote for whomever won their state. But it hasn't vanished. A nationwide popular presidential election could be dominated by a handful of mostly urban states. Is it really so horrifying that our system requires presidential candidates to grasp the regional and cultural variations of the nation?

I agree it's a flawed system. But that's true of every system - ours just so happens to be the most successful one in the history of humanity. Moreover, one needs to ask how would our society be improved by direct, popular elections? Sure, we'd have "majority rule," but why is that so great? Once you get past the symbolism and romance of majoritarianism, there aren't many concrete benefits to it. A mob is usually the majority. The difference between a mob and a republic are those institutions that encourage deliberation, reflection and judgment. Popular, direct elections do no such thing.

The ABA said the electoral college system was "ambiguous," "complex" and "dangerous." It's not complex. Each state decides democratically who it wants to be president, the winner gets that state's electoral votes, which are allotted proportionally based on population. Whoever wins the majority of electoral votes wins. If you think that's too complex to grasp, I'm not sure you're qualified to vote in the first place. It's not ambiguous either. Indeed, one of its chief benefits is that historically it has given an unambiguous victory in electoral votes to candidates who receive only a fraction of the popular vote.

As for the dangerous part, well, that's in the eye of the beholder. If you think fraud is a problem, direct voting would make it that much harder to identify. The Electoral College serves as a dye marker helping us identify where elections go wrong. Direct election would turn the entire nation into Florida 2000.

More important, I look around America today, with the constant bribing of voters to show up at the polls, and I don't yearn for more direct democracy. (Celebrities are being used as bait at some polling stations. If you need a glimpse of P-Diddy or Matt Damon to motivate you, don't vote.) I look at the way politicians prostitute themselves in front of focus groups and at the whim of pollsters, and I think it would be more dangerous to give in to these trends than to fight them. But most of all, I stand by this conservative axiom: When change is not necessary, it is necessary not to change.

Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online, a Townhall.com member group.

From The New York Times:

War of Words
By TOMMY FRANKS

President Bush and Senator John Kerry have very different views of the war on terrorism, and those differences ought to be debated in this presidential campaign. But the debate should focus on facts, not distortions of history.

On more than one occasion, Senator Kerry has referred to the fight at Tora Bora in Afghanistan during late 2001 as a missed opportunity for America. He claims that our forces had Osama bin Laden cornered and allowed him to escape. How did it happen? According to Mr. Kerry, we "outsourced" the job to Afghan warlords. As commander of the allied forces in the Middle East, I was responsible for the operation at Tora Bora, and I can tell you that the senator's understanding of events doesn't square with reality.

First, take Mr. Kerry's contention that we "had an opportunity to capture or kill Osama bin Laden" and that "we had him surrounded." We don't know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December 2001. Some intelligence sources said he was; others indicated he was in Pakistan at the time; still others suggested he was in Kashmir. Tora Bora was teeming with Taliban and Qaeda operatives, many of whom were killed or captured, but Mr. bin Laden was never within our grasp.

Second, we did not "outsource" military action. We did rely heavily on Afghans because they knew Tora Bora, a mountainous, geographically difficult region on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is where Afghan mujahedeen holed up for years, keeping alive their resistance to the Soviet Union. Killing and capturing Taliban and Qaeda fighters was best done by the Afghan fighters who already knew the caves and tunnels.

Third, the Afghans weren't left to do the job alone. Special forces from the United States and several other countries were there, providing tactical leadership and calling in air strikes. Pakistani troops also provided significant help - as many as 100,000 sealed the border and rounded up hundreds of Qaeda and Taliban fighters.

Contrary to Senator Kerry, President Bush never "took his eye off the ball" when it came to Osama bin Laden. The war on terrorism has a global focus. It cannot be divided into separate and unrelated wars, one in Afghanistan and another in Iraq. Both are part of the same effort to capture and kill terrorists before they are able to strike America again, potentially with weapons of mass destruction. Terrorist cells are operating in some 60 countries, and the United States, in coordination with dozens of allies, is waging this war on many fronts.

As we planned for potential military action in Iraq and conducted counterterrorist operations in several other countries in the region, Afghanistan remained a center of focus. Neither attention nor manpower was diverted from Afghanistan to Iraq. When we started Operation Iraqi Freedom we had about 9,500 troops in Afghanistan, and by the time we finished major combat operations in Iraq last May we had more than 10,000 troops in Afghanistan.

We are committed to winning this war on all fronts, and we are making impressive gains. Afghanistan has held the first free elections in its history. Iraq is led by a free government made up of its own citizens. By the end of this year, NATO and American forces will have trained 125,000 Iraqis to enforce the law, fight insurgents and secure the borders. This is in addition to the great humanitarian progress already achieved in Iraq.

Many hurdles remain, of course. But the gravest danger would result from the withdrawal of American troops before we finish our work. Today we are asking our servicemen and women to do more, in more places, than we have in decades. They deserve honest, consistent, no-spin leadership that respects them, their families and their sacrifices. The war against terrorism is the right war at the right time for the right reasons. And Iraq is one of the places that war must be fought and won. George W. Bush has his eye on that ball and Senator John Kerry does not.

Tommy Franks, a retired general and former commander in chief of the Central Command, is the author of "American Soldier." He is a member of Veterans for Bush.

Great post here from the Power Line blog.

An army brat's case against John Kerry

Laura Armstrong has sent me the text of the moving speech she gave at the Vietnam Vets for Truth rally last month. I have taken the liberty of dividing it into two parts and shortening it somewhat. Here is the first part:

I am SO very proud to stand with you today, before our nation’s great capitol. Aren’t you awed by the power and the tone of the messages we’ve heard? I know many of you have similar stories of unbelievable valor and sacrifice, just like our speakers. If only America could hear you all.

I wasn’t in Vietnam, but I’ve been a military observer and participant all my life. Army brat, Marine wife, I worked also as a civilian journalist for a Navy newspaper in Pensacola. My brother was a CH-46 pilot in Desert Storm. I’ve been a widow for 11 years now, but, happily, there’s a Marine serving out there who’s on his way home to us this week, after more than a year away, so stakes are high for me personally when it comes to electing the next commander in chief.



My earliest memories however are of you, our wonderful men and women of the U.S. armed services. I was that Army brat who waited for you – and then cried when you finally returned home after a long hitch overseas. It took awhile sometimes, for us to recognize you. You guarded my gates. Double-timed outside my schoolhouse window. You unfurled the American flag each morning. You played taps each evening. You decorated my parade grounds on all the special occasions, and delivered Santa Claus in your Hueys. When I fell off my bike, riding to the post school, you picked me up, brushed me off, and told me to carry on. For years, I thought captain was a first name, and I still hit the rack each night at bedtime.

I learned early to cherish the traditions of the service, and knew enough about the world to be very proud when my dad told me he was going to a place called Vietnam so other kids could be freed from the threat of communism. When Dad was gone on his first tour, he was already my hero. I’d imagine him giving Hershey bars to little kids – he said he always carried some in the leg pocket of his flight suit, because little girls like me didn’t always get enough to eat. He was a kind and decent person, even in war. And in spite of war.

I’m certain I don’t have to tell YOU how honor and service are revered in most military households. But for others listening I want to emphasize this -- when you grow up knowing the meaning of mottos like Ex Libre Oppresso and Semper Fidelis, when you learn as a kid that freedom is not free and you see the direct and sometimes tragic toll it takes on your friends and neighbors, people you know and love, you realize that intangibles like honor and duty and trustworthiness aren’t just from political speeches.

To military families, our honor is sacred. And when a tragedy happens, whether in combat or a routine training accident, sometimes our honor is all we have to hold onto. . . .My dad helped me to understand this. He was a career soldier, an aerial rocket artillery pilot. A quiet patriot, raised up on a cattle ranch at the foot of Mt. Hood in Oregon. His adventurous spirit took him to the Army, where he loved the flying and the men with whom he served as much as he loved his family. I think some of them are here today. . .

Black Bart, my dad, distinguished himself in the battle of the Ia Drang first in 1965, when he was Charlie Battery commander for the 2nd of the 20th First Air Cav. . . .Like so many of you, Black Bart volunteered for a second tour and served as Battalion Cmdr. of the 4th of the 77th 101st Airborne. Just before Thanksgiving, 1968, we learned he was shot down and reported missing while taking out an enemy gun emplacement. That dreaded knock on the door came during The Macy’s parade, the memory of that seared forever in my brain.

And speaking of SEARED, ironically, dad’s funeral was held almost the same time a young John Kerry was seeing the doc about a splinter, and requesting his first purple heart.

Please let me emphasize… there are worse things than losing your dad in a war.

I soon realized that the myths and lies created by people with political agendas can be far more hurtful. It was bad enough to hear our dads criticized by those who hated the military, but to hear Kerry and his radical veterans distort the truth and tarnish every honorable action caused a righteous hurt and anger. Their lies dominated in the American dialogue, while your stories of valor went untold. Sound familiar?

What John Kerry and his political backstabbers did in the early ‘70s took no courage. It simply took a ringleader with access to Teddy Kennedy and the willingness to sacrifice truth and honor. More than any other person, that ringleader, Kerry, was responsible for the atmosphere of hatred and disdain you all came home to.

I believe you didn’t complain because nothing like this had occurred before you. Kerry’s traitorous testimony in ’71…was an unforgettable moment that cut deep through the ranks, as we’ve heard here today. But you all had lives to build, and so you did, putting the past behind you. You tolerated the lies and stereotypes all these years. But today, this guy has made it this far in the political process -- and we stand here to object.

Let’s remind Americans this is NOT a squabble between America’s veterans, as so many talking heads want people to believe. This is about the CHARACTER AND JUDGEMENT OF one man-- John Kerry. This is about holding him accountable for his actions, especially now in a time of war and when the well-being of our military is at stake. There is no statute of limitations when the honor of a generation has been grievously stomped upon.

While debates might rage about Kerry’s short tour of duty, we’re only concerned here with irrefutable facts. This is not my opinion….these are facts:

Donna Rowe saved a beautiful baby girl.

Jim Warner overcame 6 years of captivity by the enemy.

Some daddies didn’t come home.

And Lt. John Kerry flew out of Vietnam after just a few short weeks in combat, Super 8 film in the can, and testified that those with whom he served were ALL murderers, rapists and criminals.

That’s on the record.

We are not here to re-fight the Vietnam war or even defend it. We are here to tell America that John Kerry did not have to attack the warriors to protest a war. Whatever his motivations back then, he showed he believes the means justify the ends, and everyone else be damned. Is this the kind of president we need today?

And we’re here in solidarity with our newest soldiers. We don’t want them having to salute a commander in chief whose respect for the troops is proven to blow with the political winds. We need a leader, not a weathervane.

It’s worth repeating over and over. We are motivated by a deep concern for our country. We are NOT playing politics, but venting our hearts. . . .Here’s a man who claims to be pro-military, yet his life’s work has shown otherwise. It cannot be denied or spun or revised by journalists.

When Lt. Kerry left the battlefield and betrayed you, he chose his path – weak on defense, anti-military. And he carries on, alternately boasting and bashing, voting for and against. In fact, his lies about the troops are perpetuated even in his NEW book “Tour of Duty”, written just last year. Listen to this line, from page 211 that expresses his attitude towards Cobra gunship pilots: “It disturbed (Kerry) that even a few trigger happy American yahoos considered killing Vietnamese civilians a sport."

TRIGGER HAPPY YAHOOS, MR. KERRY? How could anybody who really understands our military, say that about these fine young pilots?

So the pattern is clear: Kerry is the architect and perpetrator of one of the largest continuing slanders against American troops. He smeared you then, he is smearing the Swiftees today, and he will call us all liars tomorrow. His deceit and vindictiveness are fact.

I want you to know, some of us never questioned the character of the Vietnam veteran. You are the protectors -- the heroes from everyday America who answered your country’s call. And you’ve earned your right to speak, even 35 years later.

When Kerry supporters say you should be silent, America should stand up for you. They owe you. They should stand up and say --

Kerry was wrong to abandon you, both physically and in spirit.

Kerry was wrong to attack your honor based on lies and hearsay.

Kerry was wrong to paint that horrid imagery for the entire world to feast upon.

Those of us lucky enough to know this new generation of warriors understand they’ve been strengthened by the sacrifices you all made both in Vietnam and later. It’s their reverence for your sacred honor, DESPITE the John Kerrys of the world, that calls them to duty. Their clarity was forged by images of 9-11. But their courage is inspired by you.

Well, "Team America" may not be, as Last says, an instant classic. If it's not, though, it comes about as close as a movie with profane, sexually explicit marionettes can get.

Politicize This!

Trey Parker and Matt Stone's "Team America" is a mean-spirited, fall-down funny satire. But it isn't spoofing whom you think.
by Jonathan V. Last

IT REMAINS TRUE that people beset by an unhealthy thirst for politics tend to see politics everywhere. This monomania was most recently on display with the left's embrace of Roland Emmerich's fine disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow because they thought it was an assault on George W. Bush.

Brace yourself for more silliness. Today Matt Stone and Trey Parker's Team America: World Police debuts. Sean Penn has already taken to the ramparts, fuming at the movie's depiction of him and lamenting its right-wing message which will "encourage irresponsibility that will ultimately lead to the disembowelment, mutilation, exploitation, and death of innocent people throughout the world." Further out on the left, the Daily Kos is similarly disturbed by Team America: "The apparent goal of the movie was to make it a satirical jab at every facet of the 'war on terror.' Problem is, I think our side got the worst of it."

There will be more. If he hasn't already, expect salvos from Andrew Sullivan lauding Team America's political philosophy--that the world is composed of "dicks," "pussies," and "assholes"--and rhapsodizing about the virtues of South Park Republicans. The gentle souls at Reason should be similarly smitten. Eventually the left will strike back and the two sides of the ideological spectrum will make a little scrum, each trying to claim Team America for their own.


WHY ALL THE FUSS? Team America follows the exploits of a supra-governmental strike force called, fittingly enough, Team America. Like G.I. Joe, they cross the globe foiling terrorist plots, killing bad guys, and making the world safe for Wal-Mart. Unlike G.I. Joe, they curse, drink, and have sex. Also, they're marionettes.

After one member of the team is killed by a terrorist during a shootout in Paris, their leader, Spottswoode, recruits Gary Johnston, a rising Broadway thespian, to the team because they need an actor to infiltrate an Arab terrorist network. It turns out that the terrorists are being manipulated by Kim Jong Il, and as Team America turns its attention to North Korea, they lose support at home when a group of Hollywood stars organizes against them.

The Hollywood crowd, led by Sean Penn, Alec Baldwin, and Tim Robbins, thinks that Team America is a fascist, warmongering, blah-blah-blah. Much mayhem follows. In no particular order: Hans Blix is fed to sharks, the city of Cairo is destroyed, Helen Hunt is cut in half with a samurai sword, and certain of the puppets engage in various acts of sexual depredation.

What has Messrs. Penn and Kos so hot is that Hollywood actors are portrayed as self-important, callow, anti-American jerks. (As a side note, Sean Penn's next film is The Assassination of Richard Nixon. He plays a common man who is driven to assassination by the president's political corruption. As the movie's press release explains, "Though set in a divided America of thirty years ago, The Assassination of Richard Nixon, particularly its shattering dénouement, achieves an eerie resonance in our equally conflicted, post-9/11 era.")

The right has not been entirely happy with Team America, either. Weeks ago it was reported that the White House thought the film unhelpful. In it, Americans are portrayed as dumb, crude, and self-centered and American military intervention is shown to be a cure nearly as bad as the disease. Stone and Parker have never been particularly kind to either Republicans or conservatism in their other endeavors, including South Park and the short-lived TV-satire, That's My Bush!

All of which misses the point: The real target of Team America is neither Sean Penn, nor George Bush. It's action-movie director extraordinaire Michael Bay.


WHATEVER ELSE it is, Team America is first and foremost a pitiless indictment of the modern action movie. The characters and dialogue are dead-eye parodies of the roles Bruce Willis, Tom Cruise, and Nicholas Cage often clock in for.

Even more devastating is the way Parker and Stone mock action directors such as McG, Dominic Sena, Simon West, Joel Schumacher, Tony Scott, and, more than anyone else, Michael Bay. From its camera angels to its cuts to its daft, by-the-numbers narrative arc, Team America is such a hysterical condemnation of the blockbuster action movie that it's very nearly cruel. There is one sequence, where the little marionette heroes limp lamely toward the camera in a shot stolen from Bay's Armageddon, that is so mean that it actually conjures sympathy for the poor, overpaid chap. (When you remember that Bay stole this shot from Philip Kaufman's The Right Stuff, the sympathy magically disappears.)

With Team America, Parker and Stone are saying, Hey, not only can we make an exact knockoff of the junk you spend $120 million dollars on, but we can do it with actors who are literally wooden.

To miss this and get caught up in Team America's politics is like watching Best in Show and trying to figure out which breed of dog Christopher Guest likes most.


BUT ENOUGH ABOUT POLITICS. Is it any good? Yes and no. There are moments of gut-busting hilarity in Team America. The puppet for Kim Jong Il, for instance, is unbelievably funny. Trey Parker voices him as a cross between Dr. Evil, Mr. Wong, and Elmer Fudd; he steals every scene he's in. Stone and Parker's trademark gross-out humor is also on display, and it works well most of the time.

It's worth noting that the comic timing in Team America is truly inspired. The directors know how to hold beats, not just so long that they're uncomfortable, but even a little longer than that. The result, as when Gary tries to convince Spottswoode to let him rejoin Team America, is terribly funny. The movie's score is also quite hysterical: All of the cheap, emotional musical cues that bash audiences over the head in action movies are dialed up ten-fold, and played with absolute conviction.

The same cannot be said for the soundtrack. Team America isn't a full-blown musical, like South Park: The Movie, but it has its share of production numbers. On the whole, they're amusing, but none are overly clever. There's no "La Resistance" number, which you'll find yourself humming days later.

Finally, the movie lacks something in the profanity department. One of the joys of South Park is its genius for cursing: Parker and Stone took profanity to ludicrous heights, inventing cusses so bizarre and vivid that they work as stand-alone jokes. I won't name any of them here, but I have my favorites and other viewers no doubt have theirs. The profanity in Team America is more pedestrian, and, if this makes any sense, less funny.

Which is pretty much the final verdict on Team America. If you like what the South Park boys do, then you'll enjoy yourself. But it isn't the instant classic for which so many fans have been hoping.

Jonathan V. Last is the film critic for The Daily Standard.

Quite the astringent Christopher Reeve observations here by Fleming.

BRAIN-SUCKING FREAKS
by Thomas Fleming

Another Superman is dead. Not the Superman of my childhood, George Reeves, who was found shot dead by a German Luger in 1959. Although there was no note or other indication that Reeves had killed himself, the police ruled it a suicide. The actor, too identified with his TV role, had become depressed over his inability to find work. It was a sad end for an actor who 20 years earlier had made a tiny splash as one of the charming Tarleton twins courting Scarlet O’Hara. I was fourteen, and my friends and I thought it was funny. Superman killed himself. How? Jumping out a window. Forgot to flap his wings. And for decades, that is the way I remembered Reeves’s death.

Young people are callous, of course, but why should we care about the death of an entertainer any more than the death of some fellow-townsman whose obituary we read in the newspaper? I suppose one answer might be that we are made aware of entertainment celebrities and come to feel we know them, but we obviously don’t know them. Of course, if a favorite writer or singer dies, someone who has brought pleasure and insight to our lives, we are sorry at the loss, but few of us let the news interrupt a good meal or a boring ballgame.

Poets and songwriters are one thing, but how could anyone (except for friends and family) really care about paid entertainers who get rich pretending to be something they are not? Acting, for the most part, is the least noble line of work a man could take up. (For the sake of argument I exempt actors who devote their lives to classic drama.) Most of us, when we see film of middle aged women hacking and hooping over a dead Elvis (or dead Beatle), think there must be a great emptiness in these women, and not just in their heads.

I think I was more disturbed by the suicide of the TV Superman than by the agony and death of Christopher Reeve. Neither could act; neither starred in a decent movie, but at least George Reeves did not turn him into a symbol for all actors caught in the tragedy of type-casting. The other day, observing that I cared no more for the death of Mr. Reeve than for any derelict found dead in the alley, a young member of our staff retorted, “At least he tried to help people.” Help people?

First of all, let us be clear about who Mr. Reeve was. He was not some hard-working schmo who saw acting as a means of escaping a life of want. He was the spoiled son of divorced litsy parents. He was a nice preppy kid—Princeton Day then Cornell—who got into pictures because of his good looks. Like most actors, his world was pretty much himself. The only sign that he cared about other people was the usual leftist student activism obligatory for people of his class and type: protesting war, protesting racism, protesting other people who never lived in Princeton or went to Cornell but were stuck trying to make the best of a bad situation in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, or a rice paddy in Vietnam. He was a perfect representative of the over-schooled undereducated liberals who have ruined our country.

Then, whammo, the rich kid goes out riding and cannot control his horse. Suffering from what should have been a fatal injury to his spinal chord, he suddenly discovers the reality of human suffering. His suffering. Naturally he becomes an advocate for all those who suffer what he suffered. And, not content with raising money for research and treatment for his problem, he had to go the extra liberal mile: Why not put all those unborn fetuses to something useful, something that could help him? Despite the paucity of evidence indicating that fetal stem-cell research is more likely to produce results than research on adult stem cells, our Cornell grad became the posterboy for recycling unborn babies. Rednecks used to display the bumper sticker, “EAT MORE POSSUM.” Reeves should have had “EAT MORE BABY” on the back of his limousine.

I thought I was the only person who understood the implications of Reeve’s humanitarian advocacy, but my children told me of an episode of South Park (a show I refuse to watch) in which Reeve goes on Larry King to promote stem cell research. To make it clear I am not making this up, I quote from the synoposis of “Krazy Kripples” on tvtome.com. “Christopher Reeve shows that Stem Cell research has allowed him to raise his arms. Reeve illustrates how he gets Stem Cells to help him out, by taking a fetus and cracking the back of its neck open and sucking out the insides. It affects him immediately by giving him a greater mobility with his arms.” Tasteless but to the point.

So while the rest of TVLand America is out mourning the death of this great actor and good friend of John Kerry, I’m going to watch Gone with the Wind for the 100th time and pay tribute to George Reeves: He had the decency to blow his own brains out instead of eating a baby’s.

From The New York Times, October 9th:

What You See Is What You Get
By SCOTT DADICH

Austin, Tex. — If we've learned one thing about this year's presidential campaign, it's that message is king. But while the pundits have spent innumerable hours parsing the minutiae of each candidate's oral communications, they have had nothing to say about the visual messages of the two candidates. As a graphic artist, I find this distressing. And as a Democrat, I'm sorry to have to declare President Bush the frontrunner in the competition for the best logo.



Logos can be powerful, and they're all about subliminal messages. Perhaps because of my Texas roots, I have a weakness for the big and the bold, and the main 2004 Bush-Cheney logo, basically a holdover from the 2000 presidential race, fulfills my expectations. It's brash and snazzy: a field of powerful, militaristic navy blue punctuated with the four letters of his surname spelled out in white in what appears to be Folio Extra-Bold Italic letters. (Even the name of the font sounds forceful, doesn't it?)

The effect is striking, simple and progressive. The rightward lilt of the wide, capital letters reinforces Mr. Bush's ideology while at the same time portraying a buoyant sense of forward movement, energy and positive change. The type is strong without being oppressive, nimble without being fanciful - a successful construction reminiscent of the 1992 Clinton-Gore logo. Add a simplification of the American flag - 20 stars and seven stripes - and a supportive "Cheney" in a smaller font underneath, and you've got a strong visual hierarchy that reinforces the candidate's spoken message that he is a firm and resolute leader.

One outgrowth of the Bush logo is even better: the graphic sound bite "W," which appears on bumper stickers. Americans are conditioned to equate visual brevity with success and power. One need only look at the landscape of corporate America for confirmation: the Nike swoosh, the CBS eye, Target's bull's-eye and McDonald's golden arches. It's appropriate that Mr. Bush allowed his middle initial to work for him, and a testament to the letter's power that the opposition has co-opted it for its own use, though it is circled with a slash through it.

A typical Kerry logo displays the same inconsistency that his opponents accuse him of. A steady visual message requires the consistent use of the same font over and over again. On a typical drive to work, I encounter no fewer than five typefaces used in as many different Kerry-Edwards logos. One is stretched out; another is condensed. One looks masculine; one looks feminine. In contrast to Mr. Bush's aggressive sans-serif font, Senator John Kerry's multitudinous font choices center on the use of thin, delicate-looking, "girlie-man" type. No wonder some voters think he's a vacillating wimp.

Some of my quibbles would be obvious only to typography gurus. But Mr. Kerry makes other, more noticeable mistakes. Rather than distinguish his candidacy, his logo's Reflex blue background serves only as a weak echo of the president's bolder navy. Mr. Kerry's flag is free-floating and leans backward, while Mr. Bush's flag is anchored to his name and leans forward. Add to this a claustrophobic red border that prevents the eye from moving upward and onward and you're starting to see the visual poverty of this campaign.

The American flag in the Kerry-Edwards logo is the biggest gaffe of all. Although it has the requisite 50 stars, there are five rows of 10 stars, rather than the correct arrangement of five rows of six stars and four rows of five stars. It looks like a mistake - not a stylized interpretation, like the flag in the Bush logo.

Now, close your eyes and count to three. Look at the Kerry-Edwards logo above. What word do you see first? That's right: "Edwards." This is because the name of the vice-presidential nominee is placed beneath the "Kerry" in the same type and size, causing it to occupy more space. (And it's not just because Edwards is a longer name than Kerry; though Cheney is longer than Bush, their logo doesn't have that problem.) Talk about message confusion! The inelegant stacked Helvetica Iteration of the Mondale-Ferraro ticket of 20 years ago was almost as bad - and we know how that race ended.

In recent weeks, Mr. Kerry has done a better job of getting his verbal message across. But his visual message has already been burned into the electorate's collective psyche. Even if he wanted to make a change for the better, the money has been spent, the signs have been printed, and the bumper stickers have been stuck. But, John, if you do win in November and decide to run for re-election, give me a call.

Scott Dadich is the creative director of Texas Monthly magazine.

From medpundit.blogspot.com

The Price of Seduction:

The Kerry plan for healthcare is so seductive. Under the Kerry plan, not only will the lame walk, but not one child will go without health insurance. And most adults will have it, too. Under Kerry's plan, all kids living in families making up to $56,500 a year will qualify for government-funded insurance. Their parents will, too, if they make up to $37,700. It's almost impossible not to fall in love with the man with a plan like that. No wonder my nurse tells me a vote for Kerry is a vote for nurses. No wonder prominent pediatricians signed on to promote Kerry.

But like most things that sound too good to be true, it is. We don't have to imagine what would happen under Kerry's Medicaid expansion plan. All we have to do is look south, to Tennessee to see the Kerry plan in live action. Since 1994, Tennessee has provided state-funded healthcare with the same eligibility requirements as the Kerry plan. Nine years later the state's governor was calling it the dragon that eats everything, and financial management consultants were warning that by 2008 the program would consume $9 out of every $10 in new revenue taken in by the state. That's a lot of money, money that won't be available for other essential state-provided services.

And yet, despite spending all of that money, Tenncare patients still end up getting the shaft. In the grand American tradition, the program shunned rationing, covering everything from lava lamps to MRI's. The programs generosity, however, did not include doctors and hospitals, whose reimbursement rates are so low that seeing Tenncare patients is a losing proposition. As a result, access to care is a very real problem for Tenncare patients, some of whom have to drive 40 miles just to see a doctor. (And keep in mind, those are mountain miles.)

And what about the children? Only 19% of pediatricians in Tennessee accept Tenncare, the lowest participation rate of any state in the union. As a result, over one-third of children enrolled in Tenncare have trouble finding a doctor. That's a very real problem. And one that's much more serious and damaging to a child's health than lack of insurance.

But under Kerry's Tenncare National, access to care would be even worse. The median family income in the U.S. is $53,991. Three hundred percent of the poverty level for the average family of four is $56,500. Under Kerry, over half of America's families would qualify for the expanded Medicaid coverage. Which would mean that doctors would see their reimbursement drop drastically - to the point that they would have trouble staying in business. You can't squeeze blood from a rock, and the fact of the matter is that the safety margin of the average physician's practice is already razor thin, thanks to the medical liability crisis. And there's no reason to think that a Kerry/Edwards administration is going to enact any meaningful medical liability reform, not with donors like these. With most of the country struggling with rising malpractice insurance premiums, there's just no room for physicians and hospitals to provide mandated charity care for the middle class. The heart may be willing, but the purse won't allow it.

The pincer movement of Kerry's healthcare plan and trial lawyer friends would squeeze doctors right out of the picture. Those physicians who can would retire early, as many already are. Others would probably leave medicine all together. Hospitals that can't make up the difference by soaking the rich would close, as many small community hospitals did under the onslaught of managed care in the 1990's. But in this case, it wouldn't just be rural and inner city hospitals, it would also be suburban and small city hospitals. Only the large tertiary care centers, like Mass General and The Cleveland Clinic, who attract the wealthy the world over would stand a chance. And the future would be even bleaker. Who wants to invest the time and money to go to medical school if it's financially impossible to pay back student loans? The healthcare industry is leading employers in the U.S. Fewer hospitals and doctors not only means less access to care - it means higher unemployment rates. A vote for Kerry is anything but a vote for nurses. And it certainly isn't a vote for children. More people may have healthcare insurance under Kerry's plan, but they'll have a much harder time finding somewhere to use it.

In the last debate Kerry called our current healthcare insurance system high-priced but low-benefit. The implication was that his plan would be low-priced and high-benefit. But everything has a price, and Kerry's is higher than we can afford.

From washingtonpost.com, a prescient piece of writing from James Webb over two years ago.

Heading for Trouble
Do we really want to occupy Iraq for the next 30 years?
By James Webb

Wednesday, September 4, 2002

Country music's most popular song this summer is a defiantly nationalistic tune by Toby Keith, in which he warns potential adversaries that if they mess with us, "we'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American way." Last week the Chinese government showed us its way. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage had brought a conciliatory gesture from the Bush administration, agreeing to recognize a separatist group in China's Xinjiang province as a terrorist entity. This diplomatic contortion was so appeasing that the Economist magazine labeled its logic "astonishing." And yet the day after Armitage left, the Chinese government sent its own political signal by "test-firing" a DF-4 missile, which has a range of more than 4,000 miles and was designed to attack U.S. military bases on Guam.

The implied disrespect of this incident did not occur in a vacuum, either militarily or diplomatically. As our country remains obsessed with Saddam Hussein, other nations have begun positioning themselves for an American war with Iraq and, most important, for its aftermath. China, which has pursued a strategic axis with key Islamic nations for nearly 20 years, received the Iraqi foreign minister just after Armitage's departure, condemning in advance an American attack on that country. Russia has been assiduously courting -- both diplomatically and economically -- all three nations identified by President Bush as the "axis of evil." Iran -- the number one state sponsor of international terrorism, according to our own State Department -- has conducted at least four flight tests of the nuclear-capable Shahab-3 missile, whose range of 800 miles is enough to hit U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf, Turkey and Central Asia.

Meanwhile, American military leaders have been trying to bring a wider focus to the band of neoconservatives that began beating the war drums on Iraq before the dust had even settled on the World Trade Center. Despite the efforts of the neocons to shut them up or to dismiss them as unqualified to deal in policy issues, these leaders, both active-duty and retired, have been nearly unanimous in their concerns. Is there an absolutely vital national interest that should lead us from containment to unilateral war and a long-term occupation of Iraq? And would such a war and its aftermath actually increase our ability to win the war against international terrorism? On this second point, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the Joint Chiefs vice chairman, mentioned in a news conference last week that the scope for potential anti-terrorist action included -- at a minimum -- Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, Libya, Georgia, Colombia, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and North Korea.

America's best military leaders know that they are accountable to history not only for how they fight wars, but also for how they prevent them. The greatest military victory of our time -- bringing an expansionist Soviet Union in from the cold while averting a nuclear holocaust -- was accomplished not by an invasion but through decades of intense maneuvering and continuous operations. With respect to the situation in Iraq, they are conscious of two realities that seem to have been lost in the narrow debate about Saddam Hussein himself. The first reality is that wars often have unintended consequences -- ask the Germans, who in World War I were convinced that they would defeat the French in exactly 42 days. The second is that a long-term occupation of Iraq would beyond doubt require an adjustment of force levels elsewhere, and could eventually diminish American influence in other parts of the world.

Other than the flippant criticisms of our "failure" to take Baghdad during the Persian Gulf War, one sees little discussion of an occupation of Iraq, but it is the key element of the current debate. The issue before us is not simply whether the United States should end the regime of Saddam Hussein, but whether we as a nation are prepared to physically occupy territory in the Middle East for the next 30 to 50 years. Those who are pushing for a unilateral war in Iraq know full well that there is no exit strategy if we invade and stay. This reality was the genesis of a rift that goes back to the Gulf War itself, when neoconservatives were vocal in their calls for "a MacArthurian regency in Baghdad." Their expectation is that the United States would not only change Iraq's regime but also remain as a long-term occupation force in an attempt to reconstruct Iraqi society itself.

The connotations of "a MacArthurian regency in Baghdad" show how inapt the comparison is. Our occupation forces never set foot inside Japan until the emperor had formally surrendered and prepared Japanese citizens for our arrival. Nor did MacArthur destroy the Japanese government when he took over as proconsul after World War II. Instead, he was careful to work his changes through it, and took pains to preserve the integrity of Japan's imperial family. Nor is Japanese culture in any way similar to Iraq's. The Japanese are a homogeneous people who place a high premium on respect, and they fully cooperated with MacArthur's forces after having been ordered to do so by the emperor. The Iraqis are a multiethnic people filled with competing factions who in many cases would view a U.S. occupation as infidels invading the cradle of Islam. Indeed, this very bitterness provided Osama bin Laden the grist for his recruitment efforts in Saudi Arabia when the United States kept bases on Saudi soil after the Gulf War.

In Japan, American occupation forces quickly became 50,000 friends. In Iraq, they would quickly become 50,000 terrorist targets.

Nations such as China can only view the prospect of an American military consumed for the next generation by the turmoil of the Middle East as a glorious windfall. Indeed, if one gives the Chinese credit for having a long-term strategy -- and those who love to quote Sun Tzu might consider his nationality -- it lends credence to their insistent cultivation of the Muslim world. One should not take lightly the fact that China previously supported Libya, that Pakistan developed its nuclear capability with China's unrelenting assistance and that the Chinese sponsored a coup attempt in Indonesia in 1965. An "American war" with the Muslims, occupying the very seat of their civilization, would allow the Chinese to isolate the United States diplomatically as they furthered their own ambitions in South and Southeast Asia.

These concerns, and others like them, are the reasons that many with long experience in U.S. national security issues remain unconvinced by the arguments for a unilateral invasion of Iraq. Unilateral wars designed to bring about regime change and a long-term occupation should be undertaken only when a nation's existence is clearly at stake. It is true that Saddam Hussein might try to assist international terrorist organizations in their desire to attack America. It is also true that if we invade and occupy Iraq without broad-based international support, others in the Muslim world might be encouraged to intensify the same sort of efforts. And it is crucial that our national leaders consider the impact of this proposed action on our long-term ability to deter aggression elsewhere.

The writer was assistant secretary of defense and secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration

From The Chicago Sun-Times:

Backward-thinking Kerry unfit to lead U.S.
By Mark Steyn

I love that bit in every debate where John Kerry pledges to "hunt down and kill the terrorists.'' You can see him thinking, ''Must remember to say 'kill' very loudly and in a deep voice. And sound as if I'm not gonna be some pantywaist president who uses special forces or unmanned drones. I'm gonna kill -- sorry, KILL -- 'em myself.'' This is to dispel suspicions that in reality he'd hunt down the terrorists and serve them with a subpoena, possibly from one of the less robust judicial systems, such as The Hague or Massachusetts, and possibly for mail fraud, if the whole mass murder thing looks like it won't stick.

But it's exhausting having to remember when to spit out the tough talk, and so your concentration wanders, and you get relaxed, and then you say things like this to the New York Times:

''We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance. As a former law enforcement person, I know we're never going to end prostitution. We're never going to end illegal gambling. But we're going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn't on the rise.''

So the senator has now made what was hitherto just a cheap crack from his opponents into formal policy: The Democrats are the Sept. 10 party.

The ''I'll hunt down and kill America's enemies'' line was written for him and planted on his lips. The ''It's just a nuisance like prostitution'' line is his, and how he really thinks of the issue. What an odd analogy. Your average jihadist won't take kindly to having his martyrdom operation compared with the decadent infidels' sex industry, but the rest of us shouldn't be that happy about it either. Kerry is correct in the sense that even if you dispatched every constable in the land to crack down on prostitution there'd still be some pox-ridden whore somewhere touting for business. But, on the other hand, applying the Kerry prostitute approach to terrorists would seem to leave rather a lot of them in place. In Boston, where he served as a ''law enforcement person,'' the Yellow Pages are full of lavish display ads for not-all-that-euphemistic ''escort services.'' In other words, while you can make an argument for a ''managerial'' approach to terrorism, the analogy with prostitution sounds more like an undeclared surrender. This is aside from the basic defect of the argument: If some gal in your building is working as a prostitute, that's a nuisance -- condoms in the elevator, johns in the lobby; if Islamists seize the schoolhouse and kill your kids, even if it only happens once every couple of years, ''nuisance'' doesn't quite cover it.

And, as Kerry says, we've been here before: in the '90s. Back then, every so often al-Qaida blew up some military housing, a ship, couple of embassies, etc., and the Bill Clinton team shrugged it off as a nuisance. No matter how flamboyantly Osama bin Laden sashayed down the sidewalk in his fishnets and mini-skirt he couldn't catch the administration's eye. In 2000, after 17 sailors were killed on the U.S.S. Cole, Defense Secretary Bill Cohen said the attack ''was not sufficiently provocative'' to warrant a response.

So Osama tried again, on Sept. 11, 2001. And this time, like the escort ads in the Boston Yellow Pages, he was very provocative. And that's the point: Even if you take the Kerry Doctrine as seriously as the New York Times does, the nuance of nuisance depends largely on the terrorists. When all they could do was kill a few dozen here, a few hundred there, they were a ''nuisance'' to Clinton, Cohen, Kerry and Co.; when they came up with a plan that killed thousands, they became something more than a nuisance. But that change in status was determined largely by them. The Kerry Doctrine leaves it in their hands. And, in this kind of conflict, if you're not on the offensive, you're losing.

That's what John Kerry means when he says ''we have to get back to the place we were'' -- back to the '90s. Mem'ries light the corners of his mind, misty watercolor mem'ries of the place we were, but the reason they're misty watercolors is that we didn't see clearly what was going on. It wasn't just the nuisance of the biennial embassy bombing, it was the terrorist annexation of flop states and the thousands upon thousands of young Muslim men graduating from al-Qaida's training camps and then heading off wherever the jihad calls. The British Muslims discovered among the Beslan schoolhouse killers, for example: If you downgrade the war to a ''nuisance,'' is that the sort of cross-border trend you're likely to spot?

''It's a different kind of war,'' says Kerry. ''You have to understand it's not the sands of Iwo Jima.'' That's true. But Kerry's mistake is in assuming that, because it's not Iwo Jima, it's somehow less of a war. Until recently we thought of ''asymmetrical warfare'' as something the natives did with machetes against the colonialist occupier. But in fact the roles have been reversed. These days, your average Western power is utterly incapable of projecting conventional military might to, say, Saudi Arabia or the Pakistani tribal lands. But a dozen young Saudi or Pakistani males with a little cash, some debit cards and the right phone numbers in their address books can project themselves to Frankfurt, Ottawa or Antwerp very easily and to devastating effect. That's the lesson of 9/11.

So, for all that Bush is accused of being ''stubborn,'' it's Kerry who refuses to change. He reckons that Americans are worn out by the wild ride of the Bush years and really do long to ''get back to where they were'' -- back to Sept. 10, to the summer of shark attacks and missing congressional interns. All that going back to Sept. 10 means is that you'll have to learn the lessons of the morning after all over again: I do believe that, if clueless, complacent Kerry won, more Americans -- and Britons and Canadians and Australians and Europeans -- will die in terrorist ''nuisances.''

But he won't win. Because enough Americans understand that going back to where we were means a return to polite fictions and dangerous illusions. That world is broken and you can't put that world back together.