Work Worth Doing Is Worth Finishing
The
press is not being provided with images of coffins being unloaded at Dover Air Force Base. I am alright with this because it images of coffins unloaded from a plane are horrifying but anonymous, a statistic not a story. If the press wants to take pictures of government issued coffins, they have to go to the funerals, not the cargo handling. If they go to the funerals, it will be hard for them to dodge reporting the story instead of the statistic.
The major media's decision to not risk confronting their own prejudice by presenting the life decisions that led to the death of our troops is contemptible cowardice. If they were to report the stories of the people who went in harms way, they would find a lot of decent people convinced they were doing the right thing by risking their lives so that others could be free.
Some people are concerned that George W. Bush is not attending individual services or even a mass memorial for those who died in Iraq. It is far too soon for a memorial service for Iraq, we are going to be there a lot longer and we will continue to lose people. For those who were raised by wolves or television, this is what is called national resolve. Properly applied, resolve can accomplish great things. As for individual services, were the President of the United States, the most powerful individual in the world to attend a service, it would do little to help those grieving their loss. I lost a Grandmother, an Aunt, and my father this year; I surely did not need every major media camped on my front lawn to help me through my grief.
I would rather have our people make a lasting accomplishment than receive empty accolades.
Gordon and Shugart earned their Medals of Honor, but a more lasting tribute would have been a civilized Somalia. The greatest affront to me would be to require all the sacrifices our people have made in Iraq and Afghanistan and then walk away with the job in sight of completion but undone. Until Iraq is economically stable enough to make itself politically stable, the job is unfinished.
We are building something more important than roads and bridges in Iraq and Afghanistan; we are building the tools for widespread prosperity. The only way to prevent tyranny is to provide the people with the economic power to defeat those who would enslave them. This is what we are doing in Iraq and why the fascist Baathists and the militant Islamists are trying to kill us. We are providing the tools for choice; this is the death of totalitarianism.
I understand that many do not like Bush, but he is freeing slaves. If you are not an Afghani woman, this freedom may not mean much to you; it should. By any reasonable standard of Western liberalism, we are engaged in work worth doing. According to history, this work is worth doing well and, above all, finishing.
Kool-Aid Dissent
It is a lot of fun to be angry. The adrenaline flowing, the feeling of unity with a pack, the delicious clarity of an extreme position are all heady experiences. The tonic of youth for many young and old is the adherence to a compelling ideal. This feeling is real and addictive; the source and cost of the feeling for many is irrelevant. Kayaking down rapids, skiing down a glacier, and screaming at Bush can all be accomplished in one day in Portland. Dissent has become another extreme sport in the Northwest.
Just like kayaking and skiing, there are points beyond which you can no longer recover. Just like other extreme sports, many of those points are not attended to by amateur enthusiasts. Just like other extreme sports, screwing up can get you imprisoned, hurt, or killed. Unlike other extreme sports, there is no regulatory body of peers to keep things safe and sane. Extreme dissent lacks the civility and sanity of a mosh pit.
There are issues with dissent that are not faced by extreme sports. Sportsmen routinely confront the bounds of natural laws, but they operate within them because they have no other choice. Extreme dissenters often ignore the bounds of human laws, civil communication, and fact verification regardless of the consequences, and they often get away with it. Eventually this behavior is wildly destructive.
Jim Jones is a mostly forgotten specter of a bygone era, but the legacy of his dissent is still worth reviewing. In another time, Jim Jones led a congregation to believe that they were persecuted and possessors of a special truth. He took those people away from rational community into a jungle and established his own criteria for truth. When confronted with a reality they could not dismiss or suborn, he chose to kill his community rather than relinquish the ecstasy of his message.
Today much of what advertises itself as dissent is increasingly isolated and lunatic, like the ideology of Jonestown. The acrimonious opposition to the current administration is pushing itself further into the jungle and away from honest communication. The eventual result of this political extremism is not yet written, but there is a point of no return. The final act of dissent is to drink the Kool-Aid and deny reality forever. Last week,
Garrett Hardin and his wife took that
position without admitting the failure of their Malthusian stance. This is not necessarily the ultimate fate of all who pronounce the true religion is named, "Bush=Hitler", but it is not an unlikely result, either.
Admitting that you are wrong is hard; admitting that you were deliberately vile in support of a lie is impossible for many. There are some mountains you should not ski, some rivers you should not run, and some political stances that will destroy you. Abandoning civil communication is like ignoring safety warnings and the weather; it may be a rush at first, but eventually it will bring you grief. In the end, it is better to accept a buzz kill than a kool-aid dissent.
(Thanks to
Glenn Reynolds,
Howare Kurtz, and
Gregg Easterbrook for the inspiration)
The Last Straw
S.Amdt. 1871 to S. 1689 (Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for Iraq and Afghanistan Security and Reconstruction Act, 2004 )
Looks innocuous, doesn't it? I suppose that they couldn't actually call it the Iraqi Indentured Servitude Amendment and expect passage. That is what it is, though. Another "loan" with no expectation of repayment, only the expectation of decades of odious moral advantage over people struggling to be free in the harshest environment in the world. Keeping track of this "loan" will cost the US millions of dollars, and it will never get repaid. This amendment is penny wise, pound foolish, and diplomatically inane.
For me this is the straw that broke the camel's back. Tomorrow I will change my registration from Independent to Republican. I do not think all that much of many of the Republicans in control of the local constituency, but on the whole, that is more of a challenge than a matter for despair. The
Republicans, for whatever reasons, were doing the right thing when it mattered. The Democrats were seeking personal advantage at any cost when it mattered. The Democrats have embraced isolationism instead of opposing the next holocaust and they are as damned for that position as the Republicans were in 1941. How
Senator Wyden can reconcile this position with his own faith is a mystery to me. I can no longer do so.
Liberate Iraq. Free Iran. End Oppression in North Korea. Make your vote count.
(Thanks to
Instapundit and
Priorities and Frivolities for the heads up.)
