The Noble Pundit

Profiling Is Bad

Gee, in the past I've supported the idea of profiling as a way to more effectively use of policing and security resources. But then I see articles like this that point out the extremes in profiling gone bad.

Fro some reason, I'm thinking that someone's parents forget to teach them that "sorry" isn't always enough. There are some mistakes that are forever. Assassination is one of them.

The supreme irony here is that there is a decent likelihood that the murderer in this case was, at least once, sprung free by his victim's father. I don't agree with the father's having supported terrorists through providing them legal defense, but this is much too high a price to pay.

The most sickening part though is this:

"We will consider him as a martyr like hundreds of Palestinians killed by Israeli occupation forces," the al-Aqsa brigades leader said...

So, they kill him and, along with a letter of apology, the best that they can offer the family is to act like their child was killed by the Israelis.

What???

The Israelis did not kill this young man. They had nothing to do with his murder! This was a case of hate motivated murder gone bad.

Sorry doesn't make it right. Sorry doesn't make it better. They took the life of another person simply because they believed he was a person whom they hated for purely racist reasons.

Maybe profiling does have some problems....

Another UN Success Story

In the Sudan Islamists have raped 100 women in an attack on the Christian south.

Now the UN is involved in the Sudan, trying to broker a ceasefire in the civil war. A UN official who was in Rwanda (the site of another genocidal success story) has declared himself "totally shocked" at the horror of the ethnic cleansing in Sudan. The UN's biggest concern? Not the lives lost or the evilness of the actions in Sudan. No, they are more concerned that the genocide may undermine the peace talks as they are coming to an end.

So it's ok to murder, maim and rape so long as it doesn't affect the talks? What kind of inane, perverted policy is that?

Why do Sudanese Christians have fewer human rights than anyone else? Is murder not the ultimate deprivation of human rights? Is not systematic terroristic rape not one of the worst violations of human rights? Why does the UN go out of its way to protect the "rights" of oppressors, murderers and thugs, while ignoring those of the Christians?

I'm starting to think that it is a religious bias. The UN seems to be enamored with protecting the rights of Muslims at the expense of everyone else.

In very few places around the world are the Muslims an oppressed minority, denied their basic human rights. In far more places they are the oppressive majority.

Saudi Arabia. Iran. Sudan. Yemen. Egypt. Tunisia. The West Bank and Gaza Strip. Syria. The list goes on of places in which the Muslims are systematically violating rights and oppressing the people.

Yet all that anyone ever wants to talk about is the Israelis building a fence around their territory. We talk about the indignities of profiling. We talk about the horrors of there being restrictions on the numbers allowed on the Temple Mount. We talk about the prisoners - the people who violated the law and are paying society's price for having done so.

Ignored are the Christians of Sudan, Tunisia, or Iran. Ignored is the hatred that spews forth from Saudi Arabia, Egypt or Indonesia. Ignored is the fact, undisputed by the Muslims, that we are engaged in a war of survival for Christianity and Western culture.

These are all inconvenient nuisances to the moral relativists. These are all points to be brushed aside as irrelevant by the appeasement crowd. These are all lies to the people who believe mulitculturalists who insist that we simply don't understand.

But we do understand. Every person with a well grounded moral compass understands. Oh, we might want to believe to siren's song of the peace-through-surrender crowd, but we innately know better. There can be no peace with a group that only seeks your death. None.

The UN still hasn't figured this out yet. The UN still believes that words are the way. In their twisted thinking, a peace agreement that will be violated almost as soon as it is signed is more important than protecting the dignity of the hundreds of women who are raped or gangraped every day by the very people with which Annan's group is negotiating.

A peace agreement with the Sudanese will be like Oslo with the Palestinians. The words are golden; the actions irrelevant. So believes the peace-at-any-cost crowd.

Their song is sweet and their Kool-Aid tart. Everyday fewer and fewer people seem to be able to resist the temptations of their ways.

I fear the day when they finally hold reign over the rest of us. It will be a dark, surrenderous day indeed.

Not A Good Day For Common Sense

Today is the anniversary of the beginning of the end for Saddam. Many of the peaceniks are using the opportunity to call for the complete withdrawl of troops from Iraq. They are making the usual claims: that the war has led to an increase in terrorism and that things are worse in Iraq than they had been during the reign of Saddam. There is also the group of kneejerk appeasers who opposed war for any reason, but I won't even begin to discuss them.

How can anyone honestly argue that Iraq with Saddam still in power could be better in any way, shape, or form than the current situation. Are there more mass graves being created? Are people being deliberately starved for poiltical gain? Are people being denied medicine than it stockpiled?

But what about the protests of the Iraqis, many will ask. They claim it to be proof positive that the Iraqi people don't want us there. I actually view the protests as a success. It is proof that the Iraqi people are starting to become more comfortable with us being there and that they are starting to understand what freedom is and that they actually have some. Does anyone really think that they would have been out protesting Saddam without fear of retribution?

The peaceniks will also point to Madrid and scream about how the invasion has made the world a more dangerous place.

Uh, uh. Don't think so. Know why Madrid happened? Read this column from the Washington Post. 3/11 happened not because of the invasion of Iraq, but because of European spinelessness. 3/11 happened because it could. The terrorists knew that there would be no real response to their action. They knew that there would be no swift retribution á la Afghanistan. They knew that the result would be on the order of a "solidarity clause" discussion rather than a retargeting of weapons.

3/11 happened because the European response was so predictible. The wringing of hands; the talk of addressing root causes. 3/11, not Iraq, has made terrorism more likely.

Now when confronted most of the anti-warriors will declare their support for the troops if only they were under UN command (we want to internationalize this operation after all, right?). UN peacekeeping operations make everything OK. Look, Kofi Annan is even suggesting that UN peacekeepers go in Burundi to help end their civil war. Surely that points to the righteousness of the peacekeeping operations.

So I got curious. I wondered how many peacekeeping operations has the UN entered into since its inception?

Turns out the answer is 55. As I read through the list, I only saw a couple of operations that could be called successes (UN Emergency Force I in 1956 to supervise the withdrawl of troops from the Suez and UN Emergency Force II to supervise the withdrawl of Egypt, Syria and Israel from the Sinai). I saw a number, including the first ever peacekeeping mission, that were still ongoing for decades. And there were also a number of spectacular failures, like the UN Truce Supervision Organization which has been monitoring the Arab-Israeli ceasefire since 1948 (they missed 1973 and the Palestinian terrorism), the UN Protection Force in former Yugoslavia - just think Srebenica, and the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda. Other missions like the Kashmir mission could be debateably called failures, but it is certainly less clear and definitely not a resounding success story.

Peacekeeping missions, as it turns out, are not even included as part of the UN mission. Dag Hammarskjöld described them as part of Article VI½. You know, I don't think that I've ever seen that Article in print anywhere....

When we were debating the idea of going into Iraq, President Bush did make it clear that this was not going to be a quickie in-and-out operation. At the time the peaceniks were accusing the US of wanting to go in, take Saddam out, and to leave a power vacuum in Iraq which could have made things worse.

But we stayed the course, and for that (among many things), they hate us. We are close to turning Iraq back over to the Iraqi people for the first time in decades. The road we have taken has been difficult and fraught with setbacks, but we are almost there. To pull out now would be a great disservice to the men and women in uniform who freed the Iraqis and to the Iraqis themselves. They would survive and at this point there would not be a complete vacuum. But the transition would not be as orderly and it would lose much of its import.

See the orderly transition of power from one group to another is a basic building block of a real, democratic government. It is also something that Iraq, after suffering the yoke of Saddam for 30+ years, is not used to.

Sometimes we have to lead by force. Sometimes we have to lead by example.

Common sense says that this is a time to hang in there, do things right, and set the right example for the Iraqi people, who despite their protestations, are looking to us for guidance.

"The White Man's Burden" - Our National Burden

Today, my father loaned me his copy of the complete poetic works of Rudyard Kipling. He also flagged a number of pieces for me to read. One of them was "The White Man's Burden." As I was reading it, even though it was written in 1899, a number of much more modern images flashed through my head. I thought that I might indulge to share what I saw, as best I can.

"The White Man's Burden"

Take up the White Man's burden-


  Send forth the best ye breed-
Go bind your sons to exile-


  To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness
  On fluttered folk and wild-
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,


  Half devil and half child.

Take up the White Man's burden-


  In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror


  And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,


  An hundred times made plain.


To seek another's profit,


  And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden-


  The savage wars of peace-


Fill full the mouth of Famine


And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest


  The end for others sought,


Watch Sloth and heathen Folly
  Bring all your hope to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden-


  No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper-


  The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
  The roads ye shall not tread,


Go make them with your living,


  And mark them with your dead!

Take up the White Man's burden-


  And reap his old reward:


The blame of those ye better,


  The hate of those ye guard-
The cry of hosts ye humour
  (Ah, slowly!) toward the light:-
"Why brought ye us from bondage,
  "Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden-


  Ye dare not stoop to less-
Nor call too loud on Freedom
  To cloak your weariness;
But all ye cry and whisper,
  But all ye leave and do,
The silent, sullen peoples
  Shall weigh your Gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden-
  Have done with childish days-
The lightly proffered laurel,
  The easy ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
  Through all the thankless years,
Cold-edged with dear-bought wisdom,


  The judgement of your peers!

After having read through the poem, I came to the conclusion that the only thing that has really changed since it was written is that the White Man's burden became America's collective burden, as evidenced by the last photo. Black, white, red, brown or whatever you might be, the burden of being American will also fall to thee.

It is our national burden.

A Political Quiz

I don't often like the quizzes that make the rounds of the blogosphere and am usually very suspect of any emails I get asking for a link to one. But this one from Donald Hagen is a riot. Some of the questions:

What are the best forms of taxation?

CONS: - Flat taxes, where everyone pays the exact same dollar amount. Clearly, it doesn't require a Harvard MBA to see that flat taxes are truly the fairest way to equally distribute the tax burden among all citizens.

Incredibly, many so-called fair-minded liberals are against flat taxes, and argue that progressive income tax brackets are the "fairest" form of taxation. Now what sort of twisted logic is that? And yes, Ronald Reagan was absolutely correct when he observed that graduated income tax brackets were invented by Karl Marx.

Now the surprising irony about the widespread popularity of graduated tax brackets, is that despite their image a as a politically powerful segment of society, the wealthy remain the only group of people that it is still perfectly legal--and in fact, expected--to discriminate against.

And to make matters worse, the media constantly perpetuate negative stereotypes about the affluent minority. In novels, movies, and TV shows wealthy characters are always portrayed as a vile heartless blend of the very worst qualities of Ebenezer Scrooge, Scarlet O'Hara, and Snidely Whiplash.

LIBL: - Graduated Income Taxes

- Corporate Income Taxes

- Luxury Taxes

- Excess Profits Taxes

- Gift Taxes

- Estate Taxes

- Gasoline Taxes

- Windfall Profits Taxes

- Sin Taxes

- FICA Taxes

- Property Taxes

- Alcohol Taxes

- Guzzler Taxes

- Cigarette Taxes

- Employer Paid Taxes

- Sales Taxes

- Oleomargarine Taxes

- Junk Food Taxes

- Corporate Polluter Taxes

- Hotel/Soak the Rich Out of Towner's Taxes

- Business Regulation Compliance Costs/Taxes

- Behavior Activists Disagree with Taxes

LBRT: - Voluntarily pay for government services when you voluntarily use them. If these services are such a great deal, then governments won't have any problems finding an ample number of willing customers.

I would rather live in a nation with wealthy neighbors, than wealthy governments.

COMM: - Taxation is unneeded if you cut out the middleman, and simply enslave the populace directly.

A former defense contractor announces the development of a new hazard avoidance feature for cars. When the safety system's onboard radar detects an impending collision, the car automatically deploys a rocket-powered ejector seat that shoots its occupant 37,000 feet into the air, then parachutes him gently to Earth. Needless to say, this feature would raise the price of cars by a factor of ten. We should...

CONS: let auto manufactures study the devices, and make their own determination about the suitability of adding ejector seats to their product lines.

LIBL: require every car company doing business in America to make ejector seats standard equipment by the release of next year's model year. Make it a Federal offense to disconnect or tamper with emergency ejection equipment.

LBRT: wait until the auto industry's engineers design ejector seats that are economically feasible. In the meantime, let consumers who want the ultimate in motoring safety, purchase ejector seats for their own cars in the after market.

COMM: force the incorporation of ejection seats in mass transit systems.

These are just a couple of the questions on the quiz. A number of the answers are downright hilarious.

FWIW, I ended up choosing between the Conservative and Libertarian answers most of the time, but I have to admit the Commie answers were much simpler (and usually funnier).

Poetry Time!

Opinion Journal printed another Kipling poem today that has some relevance given the events of last weekend:

It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:--
"Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away."

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we've proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray,
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to says:--

"We never pay any one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost,
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!"

Now that I have a real job, when I get some money saved up, I think I'm going to have to go out and buy a complete collection of Kipling's poetry.

And to think that I generally dislike poetry....

The World Is Getting Scary

While I was looking for things to write about tonight, I noticed something. The world is becoming exceedingly more violent than it has been in the past, at least perception-wise, it is.

We have Syria fighting with the Kurds, with security forces killing more and more of the Kurds.

Zimbabwe has charged the mercenaries from last week with violating their security law by attempting to procure rocket launchers and grenades.

The Nigerian government is clashing with Islamofascists (maybe they can put the scam-mailers on the front lines?).

Kosovo is returning to the days of ethnic violence.

Georgia is desperately trying to avoid an armed conflict with the breakaway province of Adzharia.

The Allies in Afghanistan are conducting Operation Mountain Storm.

The Spanish are starting to discover evidence of an intelligence and law enforcement failure similar to our pre-9/11 failures.

And yet the EU appeasers still haven't gotten the clue. They seem to be more concerned with justifying and passing a "solidarity clause" than actually fighting terrorism.

And, of course, al-Qaeda is making more of their usual threats.

I know the world is a dangerous place, but this is perhaps a little more dangerous than normal. Too many hot spots in too small an area near the global powder keg.

Another Addition To The Pantheon Of Exceedingly Bad Ideas

Here I was trying to avoid politics tonight, and I found one of the most singularly bad ideas I have ever seen proposed by a member of Congress. It violates the most important basic premise of our nation - that each of the three branches of government is governed by a system of checks and balances.

For the short version, Congressman Lewis of Kentucky has introduced a bill to the House that would allow Congress, with a supermajority vote, to overrule findings of the Supreme Court.

I'll agree with the Congressman that judicial activism has gone too far and we need to find a way to reign it in. But is the gutting of the Constitutional seperation of powers the best way to go? Not a chance in hell.

There are two checks on the power of the Legislature written into the Constitution. First, the President (or the Executive branch) can veto the law. That check is not an absolute one, however, with the ability of Congress to override the veto with a, here's an interesting suprise, supermajority vote. The Supreme Court has a more limited scope of things that they can examine, but a contrary Supreme Court ruling has always had the effect of scrapping the law.

If Congress thought the law to be necessary anyways, they have always had the Amendment process available to them to overrule the Supreme Court, but an Amendment requires the buyin of the states.

This bill would essentially circumvent the Amendment process.

First of all, I strongly believe that a simple law will not be enough to put this in force. It changes the basic structure of the Constitution. That, by definition, should require an Amendment.

Second off, I don't believe that we should put that much power into the hands of any one branch. Even the Imperial Judiciary doesn't have this much power. This law would put us at the mercy of a tyranny of the Congress.

Passing this law would take away any pretense of a need for responsible action on the part of Congress. No longer would they be bound by the constaints of checks and balances: they wouldn't have any.

This bill likely has no chance of going anywhere, but I think that its introduction raises some pretty serious red flags. We are going too far in the other direction in our quest to save the country from the Judiciary.

We have to find the proper balance. I don't know what the ultimate answer will be, but I know that this should not be it.

Replacing one tyranny with another is pretty unproductive, all in all.

Did Osama Cast The Deciding Vote In Spain?

I read a number of articles today that were discussing the impact of 3/11, the Spanish national election, and the possible involvement of al-Qaida. All the articles seemed to indicate that Sunday's election was a great victory for AQ and a harbinger of things to come for the rest of us.

I saw the election referred to as the "toppling" of a Western democracy. I saw it referred to as a vote for appeasement. (link will probably change tomorrow, just search his archive for today's edition) I saw it referred to as a vote "for al Qaeda." Various rantings and ravings I can't recall the source of also spoke of the election of the Socialist Party in terms ranging from dejected to dire.

What happened in Spain was a watershed event, no doubt. But what can we really take away from it already?

Not as much as we're trying to, I think.

Let's look at the opinion of Neal Boortz:

It has become even more clear that the Islamo-fascist movement has scored a tremendous strategic victory with its attacks last week in Spain. Dutch economist Bernard Walschots nails it: "Al Qaeda or its affiliates have toppled a democratic government for the first time. This may have dramatic implications for the Western democracies." Did you get that the first time around? The Islamic Jihadists have just toppled the government of a major Western nation. Socialists have taken over in Spain. Islamic terrorists like socialists ... they're brothers under the skin.

This morning we learn that CNN has discovered an Al Qaeda document which set forth a plan to get Spain to pull its troops out of Iraq. Apparently the document was posted on a computer bulletin board some months ago. This document talked about developing a strategy to force the conservative government of Spain out of office and elect socialists. And just how was that going to be done? Terrorist attacks, that's how. So, the plan was formulated, then implemented, and proof of success came quickly. The people of Spain fell into line immediately and voted out a government unfriendly to terrorism, and voted a more friendly one in.

Now Spain is loudly touting its plans to become one of the Axis of Weasels, joining Germany, France, Belgium and other Euroweenie countries in a program of appeasement toward Islamic Jihadists. How weak are the Europeans? Well, let's take this comment from Romano Prodi, the President of the European Commission. Prodi says: "It is clear that using force is not the answer to resolving the conflict with terrorists ... terrorism is infinitely more powerful than a year ago."

Force isn't the answer? If not force, what? Appeasement? Doesn't Prodi remind you of Chamberlain prior to World War II? Read your history. Terrorism always works against the appeasers.

What's next? How about England? Intelligence officials are already suggesting that Great Britain will be next in the Islamic campaign of terrorism. Then ... the United States. The Wall Street Journal editorial this morning says that the U.S. must brace itself for the next wave of attacks. They worked in Spain ... so Al Qaeda must be thinking that they can work as well in America.

This election year just got a whole lot more interesting ... and dangerous.

Spain is surrendering ... but World War IV continues.

On the whole, I don't disagree with Neal. But I think that he is jumping to some premature conclusions about the new government in Spain.

I can understand his dislike of the Socialists. If I were Spanish, I'd be furious with the outcome of the election. Socialist policy is about as close to economic terrorism as you can get while still operating in a quasi-capitalist economy. But, of course, I'm not Spanish so my opinion matters as much over there as theirs does here.

But to imply (he doesn't come right out and say it, but it is most certainly implied) that the Socialist government will simply roll over for al- Qaida, well I think that that is still yet to be seen.

Zapatero has stated his intention to bring home the Spanish troops in Iraq unless the UN takes over or there is a material change in circumstances. He has stated his desire for closer relations with European nations, while still maintaining "cordial" relations with Washington. Every declaration he has made has been hedged in some way. No wonder he likes Kerry so much more than Bush: they are but two peas from the same pod.

Taking shots at the European Union and Prodi are well justified. We already know what their non-reaction reaction will be. Appeasement is the watchword of the day in the EU itself.

But we really don't know how Zapatero will react once in power. He might be an Axis of Weasel appeaser of Chamberlainic proportions. Or he might be another Tony Blair, a leftie who knows right from wrong when the chips are down. We really can't determine anything more from Zapatero's statements than we can from John Kerry's, they are just way too ambiguous and hedged.

Was Zapatero's election the "toppling" of a Western democracy as has been insinuated? No it was not. Was it an upset? Yes. But the toppling of a government? Not even close.

There have been no charges of the election itself being flawed. Power is transitioning in a normal, peaceful manner. The fact that the government-elect is not one that we would have desired to see in office does not mean that the government was toppled. There is a difference between this transition of power decided on in a fair and open election by the electorate, and the violent civil war transition that is marring the overthrow of Jean-Baptiste Aristide in Haiti. The former is a democracy in action, the latter a revolutionary toppling of a corrupt regime.

Zapatero's election cannot, as of yet, be called a vote for al-Qaida. Is it a bad omen? Most definitely. But until Zapatero sells out to the Islamofascists, we owe it to him, and the Spanish people, to give the benefit of the doubt.

Now what will all this mean come November? I think that the conventional wisdom on this is accurate: there will be a bloody and brutal attempt at influencing the Presidential election like the Spanish election was swayed.

If such an attempt is made, it will be a gross miscalculation on the part of Osama & Co. One that could make the reaction to 9/11 look tame.

Americans have no illusions about the intention of the terrorists. We don't believe that a change in Administration will cause Osama to suddenly decide that we're really a bunch of good guys after all. We don't think that the election of John Kerry will turn the tyrants of the world into true friends. We understand that the only intention of our foe is the elimination of freedom and the imposition of Shar'ia. Nothing less will satisfy them, quite similar to the way in which only the complete destruction of Israel will satisfy the Palestinians.

No, an attack on America in the weeks leading up to November will only ensure the reelection of George W. Bush, with a mandate to hunt down and eliminate any and all terrorist threats to our nation. Our post-9/11 reaction was impersonal. Our reaction to another Machiavellian Spanish-style attempt will be infinitely more personal. If Osama is still recycling air and providing life for a tree (which I personally doubt, I think that he's a stain on a cave painting somewhere, but I digress) another attack will be the equivalent of suicide by military.

I fully expect that al-Qaida will use their faulty calculus in making their ultimate decision (and it will likely be their last organizational decision before they cease to exist). My only question isn't whether or not they'll try to attack the US, but rather if they will take another practice shot at someone else.

If they do make an attempt on France, Germany, or Britain what, if anything, should we do? Should we unleash a fury like they haven't seen? Or should we sit back and allow the act to go unanswered? It is actually still a very valid line of questioning regarding 3/11.

The NATO Treaty clearly states in Article 5:

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

Spain, a NATO ally, was attacked. We have a right to take such action as we deem necessary to defend the security of the West. France, Germany, and now even Spain may not be publicly happy about us protecting them from, among other things, their own poor decision making, but they cannot help but to be pleased if they no longer have to fear Islamofacist attack.

There are certainly a number of open questions still floating around concerning 3/11 and the new Spanish government.

But I don't believe that it is quite time to start fretting about the course the new Spanish government may or may not take.

It is still too early to start trying to assess the impact the 3/11 or any follow-on aftershocks may have on the November general election.

But it is never too early to determine the manner, method and timing of the defense of Western civilization, no matter which friends, allies, or enemies join us in the fight.

The election is Spain has brought new potential complications, but we have to keep it in perspective. It is not the "toppling" of the government; it is not a vote of confidence for the tactics of al-Qaida.

Life has gone on, just as the Spanish democracy has.

Western civilization has survived another assault, just like the American Republic will.

In challenges, lies opportunity. We now have before us another opportunity to demoralize and destroy the most pervasive terrorist group of our time.

Will we take advantage of the opportunity?

Or will we fritter it away obsessing over the potential ramifications of the successful demonstration of the resiliency of Western democracy?

Do we give Osama the deciding vote?

Cross posted to We The People

The European Reaction To 3/11?

So here we are four days after the attacks in Madrid and the initial European reaction is starting to become clear. And to say that it is less than intimidating would be an understatement.

High level security talks? Proposals for a "solidarity clause?" A decision to make a decision at the end of the month?

Not exactly a steely resolve to bring the parties responsible to justice. Yes, it took a while for the determination to be made after 9/11 as to who we needed to go after.

But there was no need for a "solidarity clause" to be voted on by Congress. Every state in the Union stood behind New York, Washington DC, and Pennsylvania without question or debate. We did not, as a nation, ask for permission to from anyone to defend our interests.

We just looked at the situation and decided what needed to be done. And we did it. At its root, it was that simple.

But that is not the course of action being taken by the EU. They are dithering and delaying, all the while giving the terrorists more time and more opportunity to consolidate, to plan and to potentially attack again.

Now understand that this is not intended as a criticism of the Spanish themselves. I don't agree that they did the right thing with the election results over the weekend, but in the end my opinion matters as much over there as theirs does over here.

The new Spanish government has a right to show that they have the ability to do what is right for Spain. I don't believe that they will be as stalwart a friend as the Aznar government, but that does not mean that they won't be able to act in the best interest of the Spanish people.

The problem I see is that the new government seems to be more interested in trying to refight the debate over the propriety of the Spanish involvement in the war on terror. There is a big debate ongoing about whether or not being involved in the war will tick off al-Qaida or other Muslim extremist groups.

Unfortunately that is a rather useless debate. The question is no longer how do we avoid pissing them off, but how to we react to their anger? It's like trying to find the source of the fire instead of fighting the fire as the building burns around you.

Prime Minister elect Zapatero has a difficult task before him. He has already stated his intention to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq (but with an escape clause for that promise - a smart move), but he cannot afford to withdraw Spain from the war on terror. The events of the eleventh have brought Spain to the bank of their Rubicon. They must decide what their course will be. Do they turn back and give the terrorists a moral victory? Or do they commit themselves to the war in every sense?

The new Spanish government has a grace period in which to formulate their response. How long is that period? Who knows. It might be a week; it might be a month.

But the EU has no excuse. If the EU wants to pretend that it is on an equal footing to the US then it needs to react to an attack on one of its members like the US would (and has) to an attack on one of its states.

So far, all the attacks of 3/11 have generated from the EU proper is the every feared "scowl of disapproval." Not exactly the best response to invoke fear or deterrence.

(Cross posted over at We The People, a group blog to which I have been invited as a new contributor)

Kerry's Foreign Boosters

John Kerry is claiming to have support among a few foreign leaders, although he is avoiding any questions regarding his overseas admirers.

Now I can understand Germany and France deciding that they would prefer someone other than Bush in office, given the "old Europe" comments and the general disagreement about everything except the day of the week. But I found this quote from Kerry to be quite interesting:

"I'm talking about our allies, I'm talking about people who were our friends nine months ago," Kerry said while campaigning Sunday, adding he would not identify leaders he spoke with.

Kerry, who speaks French and some German, said they told him: "'You've got to win this, you've got to beat this guy, we need a new policy'."

I have a real problem with Kerry not seeing an issue with that statement. As President his job would be to formulate and direct US policy, regardless of the opinions of other nations. France, Germany or whoever made that statement certainly would like to see a new policy in Washington.

But just because they would like to see a new policy does not mean that we should grant that wish or even entertain it. US policy is designed to promote the interests of the US first, foremost, and only.

The President shouldn't give a rat's behind whether or not anyone else agrees or disagrees with our policy. He is beholden only to the American electorate, which make quotes like this pretty useless in the end:

A survey Monday of German voters published by Focus magazine found that 65 percent want Kerry compared to 11 percent for Bush, five percent for neither and 19 percent undecided.

The problem with this statement is that the opinion of the German electorate doesn't matter in the US general election. The quote tells us nothing of any value. It is almost as the media is so desperate to get rid of Bush that they will seize on any favorable bit of information that might help their cause.

But again we end up coming back around to the same basic fact. The President works for the American people and only for the American people. Given Kerry's pride in the endorsements of the foreign leaders and his acceptance of their desire for a new policy in Washington, I don't think that he quite understands who his employer would be.

And it is absolutely critical that you understand who your real employer is before taking on any new job.