Best of the Web Today - June 6, 2006
By JAMES TARANTO
But She Supports the Troops!
Arianna Huffington, the Puffington Host's hostess with the mostess, offers an electoral strategy for the Democrats:
[I] read the same jaw-dropping accounts of drugged up, hallucinating, and stressed out U.S. troops, "killing the wrong people all the time . . ."
The killings in Haditha--like Abu Ghraib, like Bagram, like Guantanamo, like all the everyday, unheralded horrors perpetrated on innocent Iraqi civilians--have made America less safe. . . .
The Dems seem to be having a hard time grasping that the right thing--the obvious thing--is for them to unabashedly say, "We are the party that will bring the troops home." A move that will keep us all safer. . . .
A prominent Democrat recently told me that he was worried and that he wished the 2006 election was today because he wasn't sure where things would stand five months from now.
Really?
Let me clue him in. One thing is for sure: five months from now, we'll still be in Iraq, fighting a counterinsurgency we're not prepared to fight, with more Hadithas--and a less safe America--the inevitable result.
If Democrats can make this their defining issue, they can stop worrying about the laundry list of "what ifs" they are now obsessing over: What if people forget about Katrina and Abramoff and DeLay? What if gas prices come down? What if GOP gerrymandering trumps voter unrest? What if the gay marriage ruse works again?
The Democrats are worrying that gas prices may come down? That doesn't sound like a doomsday scenario to us. But never mind, the Democrats can count on "drugged up, hallucinating, and stressed out U.S. troops, killing the wrong people all the time." That's a winning message, all right!
Letter From Iraq
Here's an email we received from a U.S. military officer who asks us to withhold his name:
I am currently stationed here in Iraq and have been here for the past 11 months; I am an adviser to the Iraqis and meet them on a daily basis. I have been in many locations in the country and am involved on a daily basis together with the Iraqis fighting the insurgency.
The media manipulation by the insurgents is brilliant and extremely effective. The press has become a puppet for the insurgents; the insurgents know exactly what they are doing with these "massacres" (quoted here because the investigation has not been completed, nor have any charges been filed) and the political nightmare they will cause the current administration. Bodies are produced for film, and there is zero fact-checking by the media--the media eat up this "news" like there is no tomorrow. A couple of hundred bucks paid by the insurgents to a few guys/ladies in the town where this "massacre" occurred to make up some bad news and pine for the BBC's or CBS's or whoever's cameras is a nice month's salary for many and money well spent by the insurgency.
All the Arabs (Sunni and Shia), Kurds and Chaldeans I have come to know well here will tell you that Arabs are emotional people who tend to exaggerate. A lot. Experience has shown that "50 insurgents hiding out in XX location" is five, at most 10. "Three hundred dead" at the morgue is at most 40. "A huge cache with WMD" is 45-50 weapons. It is a cultural norm and is accepted over here as a norm. It is reported in the West as fact. With no fact-checking.
When we convoy, all in the town/village know when and where there is a bomb/IED/VBIED that is targeting coalition forces. This is not so true in Baghdad, but in the outlying towns all know. What is the culpability for those people in the village/town? Would the Marines be guilty in the U.S. under the same circumstances?
I do not know whether or not the Marines are guilty. A Marine's job is to "close with and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver," and I can guarantee its effectiveness. But the insurgents have the ear of the press. Hopefully the politics will be put aside for the investigation and the facts will be told, whatever they may be.
Peter Beinart, author of "The Good Fight: Why Liberals---and Only Liberals---Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again" offered this observation recently on the Puffington Host:
This horrible story from Haditha powerfully underscores the liberal vision, which is this. We are not angels: without sufficient moral and legal restrictions, and under conditions of extreme stress, Americans can be as barbaric as anyone. What's makes us an exceptional nation with the capacity to lead and inspire the world is our very recognition of that fact. We are capable of Hadithas and My Lais, so is everyone. But few societies are capable of acknowledging what happened, bringing the killers to justice, and instituting changes that make it less likely to happen again. That's how we show we are different from the jihadists. We don't just assert it. We prove it. That's the liberal version of American exceptionalism, and it's what we need right now in response to this horror.
It seems to us that what Beinart calls the "liberal vision" is one most conservatives would agree with as well. We asked him at a breakfast this morning if he could name any prominent conservatives who deny the Haditha allegations on the grounds that "we are angels," and he could not.
There are some, however, mostly on the left, who are overly quick to assume the guilt of Americans (see our first items yesterday and today) or who seek to indict America for the crimes of Americans. Americans are not angels, of course. But that doesn't mean we should have patience with those who regard us as devils.
Bush Killed My Baby!
"The conservative politics of the Bush administration forced me to have an abortion I didn't want," claims one "Dana L.," a lawyer from Virginia, in a Washington Post op-ed piece. A 42-year-old mother of two, she "managed to snag some rare couple time" with her husband one evening in March, and, "in a sudden rush of passion, I failed to insert my diaphragm."
The next morning, a Friday, she phoned her gynecologist "to get a prescription for Plan B, the emergency contraceptive pill that can prevent a pregnancy--but only if taken within 72 hours of intercourse." He refused, as did her internist. "In Virginia," she explains, "health-care practitioners apparently are allowed to refuse to prescribe any drug that goes against their beliefs."
At this point, with the weekend approaching, "I was pretty much out of options." Well, not quite. This is from an online chat yesterday on WashingtonPost.com (hat tip: Kathryn Lopez):
Myersville, Md.: Thanks for the honest article. Does Planned Parenthood distribute Plan B in Virginia or is it only available through MD offices? If not, is it because of Virginia's state laws regarding the distribution of birth control?
Dana L.: I believe Planned Parenthood distributes Plan B nationwide. Unfortunately for me, in my panic that Friday, I didn't even think of calling them.
As you've probably guessed by now, she found herself pregnant. She went to Planned Parenthood and had an abortion. "This all could have been stopped way before this baby was conceived if they had just let me have that damn pill," she writes. (Apparently the folks at PP neglected to explain it was only a fetus.)
So is it Bush's fault that Dana was careless about her contraception, that Virginia law allows doctors to conscientiously object, that her doctors availed themselves of that law, and that it didn't occur to her that Friday to go to Planned Parenthood? Well, no. Here is the Bush connection:
It turns out that in December 2003, an FDA advisory committee, whose suggestions the agency usually follows, recommended that the ["Plan B"] drug be made available over the counter, or without a prescription. Nonetheless, in May 2004, the FDA top brass overruled the advisory panel and gave the thumbs-down to over-the-counter sales of Plan B, requesting more data on how girls younger than 16 could use it safely without a doctor's supervision.
Apparently, one of the concerns is that ready availability of Plan B could lead teenage girls to have premarital sex. Yet this concern--valid or not--wound up penalizing an over-the-hill married woman for having sex with her husband. Talk about the law of unintended consequences.
This she blames on "religion [having] been allowed to seep into American politics the way it has. . . . To think that, all these years after Roe v. Wade became the law of the land, this is what our children have to look forward to as they approach their reproductive years."
As for the FDA's decision, let's assume for the sake of argument that Dana is right on the merits, and that moral concerns rather than medical ones drove the rejection of OTC status for Plan B. It's still awfully simple-minded to blame President Bush. After all, the religious seepage to which she refers long predates his administration.
And how, after all, does she propose to disallow such seepage? You can't very well pass a law against holding religiously based political opinions. The Supreme Court can, and sometimes does, impose contrary policies by way of imaginative constitutional interpretations, as it did in Roe v. Wade. But while Roe settled abortion law, at least for three decades and counting, it unsettled abortion politics and spurred the creation of the contemporary "pro-life" movement, one of whose victories might have been the FDA decision not to reclassify Plan B. Dana L. might just as well blame Harry Blackmun as George W. Bush for her undesired abortion.
Why They Call Nativists 'Know-Nothings'
Blogger Harry Forbes notes something quite interesting:
The Boston Globe website published the pictures of each valedictorian in Boston's high schools and other high school programs. As you thumb through the pictures, it is striking how many of these students are immigrants. So many, that I decided to take some statistics. The Globe listed the country of birth for each student. For some US-born students I guessed that they were 2nd generation immigrants (for instance if they were Vietnamese). Almost 2/3 of the Boston valedictorians are either immigrants or children of immigrants. From my analysis: here is the breakdown of the 38 valedictorians:
1st or 2nd generation US 63.2%
Later than 2nd generation US 32.8%
Born in the US 52.6%
Born overseas 47.4%
Maybe the anti-immigrant slogan should be: "Keep America stupid--seal the borders!"
Way to Win the Youth Vote!
The College Republican National Committee has a droll idea:
Freeze out cataclysmic environmental scare tactics with a little humor. The Oklahoma University College Republicans gave out free snow cones to students for an event they called "Global Cooling Day." . . . Consider staging a similar event on your campus--but make it a beach party instead. Kiddie pools, sand, bikinis--you get the idea.
The Democratic National Committee responds with a press release:
As more and more experts continue to confirm the harmful effects of global warming, the College Republican National Committee is urging its membership to mock the threat by throwing beach parties this summer. The College Republicans actions demonstrate the misplaced priorities and short-sightedness of the future of the Republican Party, according to the Democratic National Committee. . . .
"The College Republicans' beach parties mocking global warming are just another example of the misplaced priorities and short-sightedness of the Republican Party," said College Democrats of America President Grant Woodard. "The College Republicans' ignorance toward the seriousness of global warming and climate change shows a Party more focused on partying than talking seriously about the issues facing young people across America. While College Republicans party on this summer, College Democrats will be knocking on doors, working to get Democrats elected nationwide. . . ."
It's hard not to laugh, though, at the conflicting claims "global warming" alarmists raise. "Far from being barren wastelands, the deserts that occupy one quarter of the earth's land surface could be key sources of food and power," claims PlanetArk.com:
But these vast open spaces, home to rare and useful plants and animals, are at risk from climate change and human exploitation, the UN's Environment Programme said in a report published on World Environment Day.
Deserts are good! No! Deserts are bad! According to London's Independent:
Few places on Earth are less hospitable, less suited to human life than the Sahara desert. Yet as global warming accelerates and the prospect of profound climate change looms large, we must face the fact that vast areas of our planet will be rendered equally barren.
The Arab News even claims that the "vast arid lands and deserts" of Saudi Arabia are threatened by "climate change." And given the crazy Shariah dress code over there, they can't even have beach parties.
World Ends . . .
"Survey: Blacks Not Prepared for Natural Disasters"--headline, BET.com, June 5
At Least on DailyKos.com
"Anger Disorder More Common Than Thought"--headline, Reuters, June 6
Why Not Try Sending a Bible and a Cake?
"U.S. Is Offering Deals on Trade to Entice Iran"--headline, New York Times, June 6
Zero-Tolerance Watch
"The Calumet City high school student arrested for trying to participate in her graduation ceremony after being denied entry for being late might head off to college without a police record after all," the Chicago Sun-Times reports:
Thornton Fractional District 215 Supt. Robert Wilhite said Monday he wants to drop disorderly conduct and criminal trespass charges against 18-year-old Maquisha Cosey. He'll discuss the charges at a previously scheduled school board meeting today.
We noted the story yesterday.
If You're Not Part of the Solution, You're Part of the Precipitate
"Canal-Scum Solution Still Cloudy"--headline, Indianapolis Star, June 5
Hey, Wait! We Can't Live Without 'Em Either!
"Females to Be Wiped Out"--headline, Australian, June 6
What Would We Do Without Recycled Experts?
"Endless Possibilities for Recycling Experts"--headline, Coventry (England) Evening Telegraph, June 5
Thanks for the Tip!--LXXIX
"Health Tip: Take an Antibiotic Properly"--headline, HealthDayNews, June 5
Bottom Story of the Day
"Teacher's Pet Tortoise Missing, Feared Dead"--headline, Antelope Valley Press (Palmdale, Calif.), June 6
Holiday in Hell
Today is June 6, 2006. It would be 666 if zeroes and slashes didn't exist. But it's still a special day in Hell--no, not the netherworld but someplace almost as bad: "the unincorporated hamlet 60 miles west of Detroit," as the Associated Press describes it. Hell, Mich., plans a party:
Nobody is more fired up than John Colone, the town's self-styled mayor and owner of a souvenir shop.
"I've got '666' T-shirts and mugs. I'm only ordering 666 (of the items) so once they're gone, that's it," said Colone, also known as Odum Plenty. "Everyone who comes will get a letter of authenticity saying you've celebrated June 6, 2006, in Hell."
Most of Colone's wares will sell for $6.66, including deeds to one square inch of Hell. . . .
Mike "Smitty" Hickey, owner of the Dam Site Inn, wasn't sure what kind of clientele would show up Tuesday.
"We're all about having fun here. I don't think we're going to get the cult crowd, the devil worshippers or anything like that," said Hickey, whose bar's signature concoction is the Bloody Devil, a variant of the Bloody Mary.
In 1996, the Brendan Byrne Arena, home to hockey's New Jersey Devils, was renamed the Continental Airlines Arena. If the folks in Hell were really ambitious, they would build a new arena with the old name and lure the Jersey NHL franchise there. Then the Devils could play at Byrne in Hell. |
