Celebrate America's 230th B-Day with Pride

Fire of Liberty


Happy 4th of July. I think President John Adams provided the best observation of the importance in celebrating the birth of our nation when he noted the following in a letter to his wife:

I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more. You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.

So have a safe night and enjoy the fireworks on the 230 year birthday of our nation.

Ethanol not the Miracle Fuel that Folks Think it Is

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James Jordan and James Powell who are research professors in Maglev Research Center at Polytechnic University of New York have an interesting piece(Registration required) in Sunday's Washington Post that points out that all the excitement that has been created over the usage of ethanol as an alternative for petroleum based fuels is pure hype with regards to the usage in the US. Jordan and Powell points out that even if we used our current corn crop of 73 million acres to produce ethanol(25.5 billion barrels)we'd produce only an equivalent of 6 billion gallons of gas. As Jordan and Powell notes, this is a lot of work and usage of a food crop just to produce such a small amount of fuel whose own fuel value is only about 2/3's that of gasoline(1.5 gal. ethanol = 1 gal. of gas). All in all, Jordan and Powell lay out a good argument on why the usage of ethanol is not the silver bullet towards ending our dependency on foreign sources of petroleum and oil in general that the MSM, the Greens, Bill O'Reilly, corn growers and President Bush seem to keep touting about. I'd say that Jordan and Powell summed up the futility of the US trying to take us down a ethanol only highway when they noted the following:

It is argued that rather than using corn to make ethanol, we can use agricultural wastes. But the amounts are still a drop in the bucket. Using the crop residues (called corn stover) from corn production could provide about 10 billion gallons per year of ethanol, according to a recent study by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The net energy available would be greater than with ethanol from corn -- about 60,000 Btu per gallon, equivalent to a half-gallon of gasoline. Still, all of the U.S. corn wastes would produce only the equivalent of 5 billion gallons of gasoline. Another factor to be considered: Not plowing wastes back into the land hurts soil fertility.

Similar limitations and problems apply to growing any crop for biofuels, whether switchgrass, hybrid willow, hybrid poplar or whatever. Optimistically, assuming that switchgrass or some other crop could produce 1,000 gallons of ethanol per acre, over twice as much as we can get from corn plus stover, and that its net energy was 60,000 Btu per gallon, ethanol from 300 million acres of switchgrass still could not supply our present gasoline and diesel consumption, which is projected to double by 2025. The ethanol would meet less than half of our needs by that date.

Perhaps more important: The agricultural effects of such a large-scale program would be devastating.

Recently, there has been lots of excitement and media coverage about how Brazil produces ethanol for its automobile fuel and talk that America should follow its lead. But Brazil consumes only 10 billion gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel annually, compared with America's 170 billion. There are almost 4 million miles of paved roads in America -- Brazil has 60,000. And Brazil is the leading producer of sugar cane -- more than 300 million tons annually -- so it has lots of agricultural waste to make ethanol.

Finally, considering projected population growth in the United States and the world, the humanitarian policy would be to maintain cropland for growing food -- not fuel. Every day more than 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes -- one child every five seconds. The situation will only get worse. It would be morally wrong to divert cropland needed for human food supply to powering automobiles. It would also deplete soil fertility and the long-term capability to maintain food production. We would destroy the farmland that our grandchildren and their grandchildren will need to live.

I'd say the best thing we could do is create a mix of gasoline and alternative fuels rather than junking oil altogether. No matter what, the markets and demands of the people will be a far better judge in determining the viability of these fuels than what the folks in D.C. think is best.

Securing the Western Canon

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Michael Gove, a Conservative MP for Surrey Heath(UK) and columnist for The Times, has a new book out called Celsius 7/7 which lays out in great detail how much of a threat that radical Islam actually is for the West. Instead of me telling you about this insightful but scary book on the dangerous world of Islamo-fascism, I suggest you read the following excerpt of Gove's work here and here.

Clearing the Jackals From the Middle East

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I'd say that this piece by Jed Babbin is an excellent summation of why the IDF is making incursions into Gaza. Here a brief sample:

Last year's Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip was a council of despair. Ungovernable and with a deeply-embedded terrorist infrastructure, Gaza was only a source of casualties for Israel. Withdrawal - accompanied by sealing the borders to prevent terrorist incursions - appeared the last best hope. Maybe Ariel Sharon could have brought off the idea of withdrawing and sealing off Gaza as a terrorist base. But Ehud Olmert is no Sharon, and as Olmert watched Gaza became Hamastan.

Terrorist, anarchic Hamastan proved a jar that couldn't be sealed. This year alone about eight hundred rockets were fired from it into Israel and though dozens of terrorist incursions were foiled, more and more succeeded as the Gaza-based terrorists learned how to penetrate the Israeli barriers. Still, the Olmert government hung back. It lacked the courage and decisiveness needed to re-enter Gaza to stamp out the terrorist enclaves. And, more importantly, it couldn't go back into Gaza without admitting that its withdrawal policy was a failure. Instead, Olmert ineptly struck back at rocket launch points and Israel's ability to defend itself seemed - thanks to Palestinian disinformation campaigns directed at sympathetic media -- to produce innocent civilian casualties among the Palestinians.

Hamastan poses problems both too large and too small for Israel to solve. The small problems, such as terrorists excavating the terror tunnel used to surprise Gilad Shalit's unit, can never be entirely prevented. The military strike into Gaza this week won't re-establish Israeli occupation, and it will from time to time be repeated. Bigger problems, such as the Hamas government and the support it gets from Israel's neighbors, won't, say some top Israelis, be solved by topping Hamas because there's no moderate Palestinians to take their place. That is another counsel of despair. Israel is stuck in a military cycle it thinks can't be broken. But it can, and it must, for our benefit as much as Israel's.

Israel can never settle the Palestinian problem by dealing only with the Palestinians just as we cannot ever settle Iraq's problems by dealing only with Iraqis. Because Israel's neighbors, and Iraq's, are the sources of their problems, so they must be the focus of the solutions. They are regional problems. If they are not solved throughout the region, they will not be solved at all.

I couldn't have said it any better. For more on the recent events in the Middle East go to the homepage of WABC 77's radio host John Batchelor and click on Radio Show Archives to get some informative reporting from the Middle East.

US is the Superman of the World

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Now this is an interesting piece by Douglas Kern over at TCS Daily that notes why it is important that the US remains at its current station on the world power totem-pole instead of becoming a "Fortress America" much like Rep. John Murtha, Sens. Kerry and Levin as well luminaries of the paleo-right like Pat Buchanan want us to be.

PM Maliki taking a Right Step in Iraq

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For the past two weeks I've been reading various articles on the Iraqi government's effort to launch a reconciliation with various factions within the Sunni minority who have taken up arms against the US and Iraqi security forces. After listening to the pros and cons of the Iraqi government going forward with such a effort, I have to say that I'm in favor of Prime Minister al-Maliki and his government going further with such talks. Now I know that the mere thought of the Iraqi government holding talks with Sunnis who have taken up arms and killed our servicemen is a little disturbing to their families and various politicians in D.C. but its a decision being made by a sovereign state that we have no control over. No matter how much we kick and scream, the Iraqi government has to be able to find a way to eliminate or at cut down the threats to their democracy in half and if talking to and bringing the least dangerous branches under the umbrella of a national unity government is the best approach then so be it. One only has to look back at the history of this nation to realize from time to time after the Revolutionary War, Civil War and our fight against the guerrillas in Philippines, the government has gone about reconciliating and pardoning American Tories, Confederates or Filipinos who took up arms or killed American soldiers during these conflicts. (With regards to individuals in the Revolutionary War and Civil War, the powers that be in the US agreed that even though taking up arms and killing American soldiers they were still Americans and should be welcomed into the fold.)Above all else, these individuals who are willing to come forward to admit their guilt and ask for a pardon is far better than having an angry mob at their throat threatening further chaos for years to come.

One thing that I didn't thing about PM al-Maliki's reconciliation plan is the fact if you bring the Sunni militias and Iraqi tribes out of the cold you will enlist more allies into the fight thus creating a smaller fishbowl for the Islamic terrorists to swim in. Well luckily for the readers of Fire of Liberty, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer seems to sum up the necessity of the Iraqi government pushing forward a reconciliation with when noted the following in his most recent column:

In Iraq, amnesty will necessarily be part of any co-optation strategy in which insurgents lay down their arms. And it would not apply to the foreign jihadists, who, unlike the Sunni insurgents who would join the new Iraq, dream of an Islamic state built on the ruins of the current order. There is nothing to discuss with such people. The only way defeat them is to kill them, as we did Zarqawi.

But killing them requires depriving them of their sanctuary. Reconciliation-cum-amnesty gets disaffected Iraqi Sunni tribes to come over to the government's side, drying up the sea in which the jihadists swim. After all, we found Zarqawi in heavily Sunni territory by means of intelligence given to us by local Iraqis.

Protests in America over the amnesty suggestion have caused both the administration and the Maliki government to backtrack. But don't believe it. Amnesty will be an essential element in any reconciliation policy. Which, in turn, is the only route to victory -- defined today just as it was on the first day of the war: leaving behind a self-sustaining post-Saddam government, both democratic and friendly to our interests. It is attainable. The posturing over amnesty can only make it more difficult.

Let's thank G-d that the Iraqi government is running the day to day activities of Iraq and will take the heat from the voters rather than a US regent. We'll carry part of the weight with regards to the military operations in Iraq but it'd be nice to have the insurgency cut in half and more indigenous people in Iraq helping us track down and wipe out the snake den of terrorists who are the real culprits responsible for setting of bombs killing innocent citizens in Iraq.

Supreme Court Should Interpret Laws not Make Them

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Here's an editorial in the D.C. Examiner that pretty much shows the absurdity of the Supreme Court's recent decision in the Hamdan case. Instead of clearly defining whether or not the US could try captives at Gitmo as enemy combatants(According to the Geneva Convention such individuals without a uniform or rank who are taken in the battlefield are not granted the same rights as a POW) the robed ones created further confusion by issuing a muddled ruling and forcing their will on another branch of government thus usurping the President's power to conducting and effectively fulfilling his role as Commander-In-Chief. I'd suggest that Justices Stevens, Breyer, Ginsberg, Souter, Kennedy, who issued this confusing or essentially useless legal gobbly-gook with regards to Hamdan vs Rumsfeld should reread the Constitution and realize that with regards to fighting the War on Islamic Terrorism or any war for that matter, the President is the point man in executing the war(This includes detaining enemy combatants as well as the command of our soldiers) followed by Congress (The control the purse). We'd be better off if these legal eagles did a better job at reading the Constitution and thinking before the creating a bigger mess for the President and this nation. The D.C. Examiner summed up the problem of the Judiciary's over-stretch when the noted the following:

What'’s worse, the court majority does so to utterly absurd effect. It purports to apply the protections of the international Geneva Conventions to terrorists who fight under no particular flag — and who themselves therefore do not operate under, nor abide by, the same conventions. And it adopts those conventions as part of American law enforceable under American courts, despite the fact that the Conventions'’ own language makes them enforceable via diplomatic action rather than through the courts of any one nation.

Even worse still, the court majority specifically substitutes its own judgment of "“military necessity"” for that of the president and military services. As Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in dissent (joined by Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito, in support of a lower court decision written by now-Chief Justice John Roberts), the courtÂ’s assumption of such responsibility "“is so antithetical to our constitutional structure that it simply cannot go unanswered."”

Justice Thomas is right. The decision and the very act of choosing to decide it was precipitate and injurious to the republic. Both domestically and abroad, this nation very likely will be less safe as a result.

Here's hoping that Congress can formulate a law or set of laws that codify the guidelines for trying enemy combatants(If you recall, we've tried German spies/ combatants found on our shores during WWII in military tribunals as well as with the plotters in the Licoln assassination.)in the near future. I know that this will make the seperation of powers very fuzzy but it darn sure beats letting non-elected judges(Can't be held accountable to the voters because the Constitution deemed them interpreters of laws not creaters of laws) find some imaginary punumbras or emanations in the constitution and draw up their own laws.

Who Killed the Electric Car?

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Ralph Kinney Bennett over at TCS Daily has the answer. You'll be surprised by what you read.

Putting Bullets Holes in the Hockey Stick Model

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Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist for the University of Alabama in Huntsville, has a interesting piece over at TCS Daily that puts a dent in the "hockey stick" temperature curve models that Al Gore and the Green Team seem to cleft to and wave in the face of the media to push an global warming alarmist agenda. While I wish I could write a lot on the subject, I figured I'd let Dr. Spencer (who's further up the scientific ladder than I) fill you in on what the National Academies of Science revealed in its most recent report on the hockey stick model. It's real interesting, so check it out:

For the last several years, the hockey stick has been a poster prop for manmade global warming. For instance, it figures prominently in Al Gore's new movie, "An Inconvenient Truth." But the statistical and data analysis methods that Mann et al. used to arrive at their 1,000 year temperature reconstruction were strongly criticized by some. The hockey stick played down the warmth of the "Medieval Warm Period" of 1,000 years ago, as well as the later coolness of the "Little Ice Age."

Also, the uncritical acceptance of the hockey stick for inclusion in the U.N.'s Third Assessment Report on global climate in 2001 gave many scientists the impression that the editors of that report wanted to believe the hockey stick more than they were convinced of its validity.

In their attempt to not publicly scold Mann and his coauthors for questionable data analysis methods, the authors of the new report instead chose to restate the evidence for how warm the Earth has gotten recently. What the media didn't notice, however, is that the 1,000 year figure that was central to the whole hockey stick debate had now been replaced in the report by a figure of 400 years. Since most of the last 400 years was dominated by the "Little Ice Age," the warming during the 20th century should be welcomed by humanity.

The report says that surface temperature reconstructions before this period (about 1600) have "less confidence" and that "uncertainties...increase substantially backward in time..." for any of these proxy estimates of ancient temperatures. One review panel member told me that the statisticians on the panel were amazed when it was revealed that the method underlying the hockey stick had essentially no statistical skill when validated.

This is pretty harsh language for an NAS report written by review panel members, several of whom are equivalent to foxes guarding the hen house. Researchers who have bought into the validity of using proxy measures for ancient climate reconstructions aren't about to throw away the "best" method the paleoclimate research community has, even if it can not be validated with real temperature measurements (the thermometer was not even invented until the 1600's).

One rather amazing characteristic of the hockey stick is the so-called "divergence problem": the strong warming in the late 20th century is not even indicated in the tree ring data that were used to reconstruct the last 1,000 years of supposed temperature variations. Much of the 20th century warming (the blade of the hockey stick) represents real temperature measurements, not tree ring reconstructions, since they don't show the warming. This raises a natural question, which the panel shrugged off: If tree rings do not show the strong warming of the late 20th century, how do we know there wasn't a similar temperature spike 1,000 years ago?

I'd say that the scientific community is not in such an agreement as Gore and the Green Team would like us to believe. Thanks to folks like Roy Spencer, Bjorn Lomborg(author of The Skeptical Environmentalist), Richard S. Lindzen(Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT), Steven F. Hayward and other scientists who continue to apply their scientific knowledge to continue to study the atmosphere rather than jumping to conclusions on global warming like Gore has. A tempered approach is more viable and will be much more frugal than rushing headlong into a problem that might just be a natural occurrence that rolls around every 400 or a thousand years. Sometimes the solution is more harmful than the problem.(That's if you believe there is a pressing problem.)

Preserving Our History

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Bloomberg columnist Joe Mysak has a good column out today which notes that the childhood home of John Wilkes Booth is up for sale and no-one's willing to pay the $805,000 that its current owners want for the restored home of the killer of Lincoln. As a lover of history I share Mysak's opinion that instead of letting this historic home being sold to the highest bidder or some property builders the state of Maryland should shell out the $805,000 and turn the home into a historic site for future generations to explore. With various historic books concentrating of Booth, Lincoln and the assassination appearing in the past five years, putting the home in the care of the state in an investment in preserving our past and gives readers, students, and future historians a piece of history to visit and touch thus giving them a connection to our past. Here's a look at Mysak's interesting column:

``County Seeks State Help to Preserve Tudor Hall,'' said a headline in the Baltimore Examiner after the failed auction. Back in March, the Baltimore Sun previewed the auction with an article headlined ``Family Home of J.W. Booth Too Pricey for Preservationists.''

I read these stories and thought: How is this possible? Are we so drowning in structures of great historical significance that we can let a building like this get away? How long can it be before a developer sizes up Tudor Hall and its eight-plus acres and decides the best thing is to tear it down and replace it all?

Practiced His Lines

The house was built by Booth's father, Junius, in 1847 about 25 miles northeast of Baltimore. In ``American Brutus'' (Random House, 2004), Michael W. Kauffman tells the tale:

``From a book of designs he chose a charming two-story, eight-room cottage in a neo-Gothic style. Built on a cruciform plan, it had a massive central chimney, a full-width front portico, steeply-pitched gables, and diamond-paned windows,'' Kauffman writes. ``They would name the place Tudor Hall, after Henry Tudor, the earl of Richmond and slayer of King Richard III.''

This was the atmosphere Booth grew up in, Kauffman relates, one in which fearless republicans (small ``r'') assassinated real or perceived tyrants. There is a little balcony outside one of the bedrooms on the second floor, where Wilkes, as his family called him, practiced his lines.

The house was built by the man who would become chief carpenter at Ford's Theatre in 1865, where Lincoln was shot.

Can you imagine not preserving such a thing for posterity? Can you imagine a better use for public finance than to step in and save this piece of American history? There's a lesson to be learned here: Our heritage is always in peril.

I have to agree with Mysak on his column and hope that the state of Maryland follows through in investing in on our history. Once a piece of history is gone it can never be recovered.

###Take a look at this piece by Andrew Ferguson's on the threats to our history in our nation and its education system and the importance of keeping the flame going.###

Mugabe's Hell

Fire of Liberty

Here's yet another example of how Robert Mugabe and his thugs in ZANU-PF are taking Zimbabwe further down the Highway to Hell. One of these days the people of Zimbabwe are going to say enough is a enough and oust Mugabe and his lot from power. I'm thinking a lot more of the nations in the West and within Africa should stand up and provide some moral/political/economic support for the democratic movement in Zimbabwe to get the ball running. So here's hoping for the end of tyranny in Zimbabwe.

Thinking Like the Private Sector

Fire of Liberty
If you've been a reader of Fire of Liberty from the start, you know that I'm pretty much an advocate for the private sector in the fight against diseases, poverty and providing disaster supplies for the various people suffering during a disaster. While big government acts like molasses in organizing and delivering the right goods to the folks in need, companies like Wal-Mart, Fed-EX, UPS and various others gather water, clothes, food and deliver them in a more efficient and quicker amount of time because they don't have the red-tape and are centered on a goal.(The did a similar thing during Katrina.) Well Daniel B. Prieto, a senior fellow and director of the Reform Institute's Homeland Security Center, agrees with such approach in an op/ed in the San Francisco Chronicle but enhances this by noting that we need to bring together these private entities on a E-bay/Amazon/E-Harmony website but that deals with the delivery and distribution of disaster relief. While he suggests that such a web-site should be created and used by the Department of Homeland Security its a step in the direction of the private sector that takes a hatchet to red tape and the behemoth of big government that forms in D.C. If you have a site that shows a list of donors and what products they have to offer, the local or state governments could request various goods before the disaster or during and the DHS could dole them out must faster and without the confusion.(We still need the federal government for airlift capability and disbursement.)

Now while I could write on and on about this dynamic idea, I figured you'd like to read Daniel B. Prieto's thoughts on the creation of this efficient system. So take a look:

Future disasters envisioned by the Department of Homeland Security -- attacks with chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear agents, natural disasters, bombings -- will all require specialized-response resources, and the government will need all the help it can get from the private sector. Federal, state and local governments should identify critical supplies and capabilities -- vaccines, ventilators, generators, electric transformers, laboratory capacity, decontamination equipment, logistics, transport, warehousing -- that they will need ahead of time.

Building an eBay-like system to match regional disaster-response needs with companies that can pledge assistance ahead of time or help out in real time would save dollars and lives. Properly built and maintained, it would ensure that the vast majority of private pledges and donations are put to good use, instead of going unused. It would allow state, local and federal governments to inventory available critical assets rapidly and would be much faster than relying on government bureaucrats to create a resource database on their own. Such a system would effectively harness the enormous, but untapped, goodwill of the private sector to play a leading role in homeland security.

Better yet, this idea has already been proved. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Craigslist proved extremely effective at helping people find missing loved ones and housing matches -- in many ways, it was easier to use and more effective than similar efforts by the Red Cross and homeland security.

Washington will need to show innovation and leadership to launch an online marketplace to match government response and recovery needs with the vast skills, resources and goodwill of America's private sector. If done right, such a system can be built quickly and cost-effectively with proved technologies. The Department of Homeland Security should avoid the business-as-usual approach that tends to plague federal technology projects, in which billions of dollars are routinely spent on multiyear contracts to build hard-to-use systems from scratch. Additionally, the Department of Homeland Security should use available science and technology and emergency preparedness monies to support regional pilots to test and implement the system. Finally, and perhaps most important, Washington should provide federal liability protections for companies that register and donate critical disaster-response resources through the program.

While I still prefer the private sector over the government in most matters(Aside from providing law and order, national security, printing money and securing our borders) I have to say the Prieto's ideas are spot on in using the ideas of the private sector to get the government on track with regards to disaster relief. So check it out.

A Glimpse into the Hermit Kingdom

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While Kim Jong Il continues to garner the attention of the world press with his quest to build more nukes and the ballistic missiles to deliver such a deadly arsenal in Tokyo, LA, San Francisco, and other parts of the US, few in the MSM fail to point out that North Korea is a despotic regime that is wreaking havoc on its people. While these paragons of the media have failed to provide a real look into the Hermit Kingdom, Artemii Lebedev(A big web-designer in Russia) has ventured in the land of Kim Jong Il and has provided the web-site MilitaryPhotos.Net with a bevy of photographs of North Korea and the dire straits that it has fallen under the rule of Kim Jong Il (I'd say that is hasn't changed much since the 1950's but then again it is Stalinism at the highest level). Above all else, we should also pay attention to the actions of the regime towards its people and how we can free them from the clutches of Kim Jong Il. We cannot allow this system to continue to exist especially when he's got nukes and is pretty close to having an delivery system for them. Talking has its limits and we're getting near that point.

Keep Plan Colombia Funded

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I'd have to say that after watching the great success that Colombia's President Uribe has had in the past five years in reducing the FARC's numbers and reach within the country as well as Colombia's efforts in putting a damper on the cocaine and poppy crop, it'd be a shame to allow various members of our Congress to throw a monkey-wrench into Plan Columbia(Where we supply Colombia with arms and planes to spray various fields of drugs to cut down the production of drugs). Now I know that there's a demand problem with regards to drugs but you've still got to eliminate the drugs to starve the junky. With Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales(Bolivia) siding with FARC and narco-traffickers being friendly with Islamic terrorists throughout the world, it's a must that we continue to supply money and aircraft to Colombia and its brave forces in the Colombia National Police to continue the good fight. We can't afford another Afghanistan(1989-2001) or Somalia developing in our own backyard especially when we've got such an abled leader like Uribe willing to take down FARC and its fellow narco-terrorists. I'd rather buy more planes for Colombia than allow Colombia forces to be gunned down by the narco-terrorists on the ground or the possibility of our troops going into a hot-war to prevent one of our allies from falling to such forces. So let's keep the flow of US funds going into Colombia to continue the eradication of crops to break the back of the narco-terrorists. (We could boost the funds to encourage the growth of alternative crops in Colombia to end the growth of cocoa and poppies).

A Vigilant Stand For Freedom

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Jasper Gerard of the Sunday Times has good one on one with Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Now for the folks who don't know Hirsi Ali, she in a Dutch MP who has been under threats to her life due to her vigilant stand against the rise of Islamic fundamentalism within the Netherlands and the rest of the world. If you want to see a true example of someone who's believes in the freedoms of liberal democracies and is willing to take on the Islamic fascists no matter the cost then Ayaan Hirsi Ali is someone you should look at. Luckily for us, Mrs. Ali is emigrating to the US to work at the AEI and use a bigger microphone to further her brave stand against the Islamic fascists. So please read this fine piece on Mrs. Hirsi Ali, you'll find it very interesting.

^^^Also check out Ayaan Hirsi Ali's new book The Caged Virgin. Here's an excerpt.

Thank God For Reagan and SDI

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After reading this piece by Alan W. Dowd over at TCS Daily, I'm glad that President Reagan introduced SDI and President Bush cleared the way for a National Missile Defense by withdrawing from the ABM treaty. If we hadn't, we'd be in a far graver spot than we are now with North Korea(They're still dangerous with missiles of this range and a nuke program). So thank you Presidents Reagan and Bush for promoting missile defense.

The Orange Revolution is Back on Track

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Well, it seems that after several months of negotiations the three political parties in Ukraine who helped bring about the Orange Revolution in 2004 have finally drawn up the composition of the new government and selected Yulia Tymoshenko as their new PM. It's rather nice that the government has decided to go the path of freedom and democracy. While Tymoshenko and Ukrainian PM Yushchenko might have been at odds with each other earlier this year (He dismissed her over a conflict of opinion) they are a better match than a PM and rather joining ranks with Victor Yanukovich's pro-Russian party that would add un-needed vinegar to the spirit of the Orange Revolution thus creating havoc for Ukraine's further embrace west. All in all the selection of Tymoshenko as the PM of Ukraine is a right step down the road to becoming a more liberal society(the classical sense - democracy, pluralism and freedom of thought). So congrats go out to Yulia Tymoshenko and the people of Ukraine.

A Policy To Win In Iraq

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Professor Frederick W. Kagan, a resident scholar at AEI on Defense Issues, has a short piece in the Weekly Standard which notes that as long as the American military and the friends in the Iraqi security forces continue to take the fight to the insurgents they will win the day. I have to say the best part of Kagan's piece is the following:

There is only one thing the administration and the Iraqi government can do that generates both a sense of their victory and an obvious defeat for the insurgency: clear, hold, and rebuild cities and towns wracked by violence and lawlessness, as the president declared we would do last fall. When Iraqi and American troops clear a town in which the insurgents have been operating freely, we know we've won, the Iraqi people know we've won, and the insurgents know we've won. This is the way to create a sense of victory that everyone understands.

The other virtue of clear-and-hold operations is that they bring security. Without security, further political and economic progress is extremely difficult. And the ultimate goal of reconciling Iraq's sects, ethnicities, and tribes will be much easier once the population is secured. Insurgents take advantage of the absence of coalition and effective Iraqi military and police units to assassinate key officials seen as collaborators, intimidate or punish anyone who might provide information about the rebels to the coalition, and recruit supporters from disaffected and terrorized young men. Those young men are frequently unemployed, moreover, because it is nearly impossible to have a functioning local economy in such lawless conditions. Even the nonmilitary elements of counterinsurgency strategy that the Bush administration has rightly been emphasizing require security to succeed. Yet clear-and-hold is not actually the primary objective of U.S. forces in Iraq today. American commanders instead claim to be focused on "handing over battlespace" to newly trained Iraqi troops. Like the body counts of the Vietnam war, the percentage of "battlespace handover" has become the statistical proxy for success in this war.

That must change. With the Iraqi government now complete and the Iraqi Security Forces growing more rapidly than anyone had a right to expect, there is no more urgent task for the coalition in Iraq today than establishing security throughout the country. This is not merely part of a defensive operation to control the spreading violence. Now is the time for a surge in military operations to clear and hold contested areas in Iraq that can offer the prospect of convincing large numbers of Iraqis that the government will win and the insurgents will lose. This is the best hope for breaking the insurgency rapidly, strengthening the new Iraqi state, and achieving victory.

Here's hoping we push this policy to its fullest and secure Iraq for future generations so we don't have to fight in another war in Iraq some 10 years down the road. By following such a policy we'll achieve results much like Patton did during the Battle of the Bulge. We defeated a wretched then and we can do it again.

****
If you want a longer a more detailed account of how to defeat the insurgency in Iraq, I suggest you read this piece by Frederick W. Kagan.

Establishing A New Iraq

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After reading this opinion piece in The Times by PM Nouri Al-Maliki, I'd say that the Iraqi people and government have a leader who is very determined and has some well stated goals and ideas that will push the nation further down the road of democracy. We can already see PM Maliki's ideas being implemented with regards to Iraqi security forces along with 130,000 US soldiers taking the fight to the terrorists in and around Baghdad. This is just another reason why the calls of "cut-and-run" coming from Murtha and company is a bad idea now and tommorow. Iraq has marched down this road so far and it'd be a shame to bail on them at this important turning-point in Iraq. So keep going down this path PM Maliki and President Bush, we've got your back.

Nutters of North Korea

Fire of Liberty

As I listened to the news last night and this morning I heard a North Korean general explain that they had every right to build and launch ballistic missiles because Japan has build up its defensive weaponry and the US has a big presence in the region. We'll, the only reason why the US and Japanese military are beefing up or showing a strong posture is because ruthless dictators like Kim Jong Il are spending tons upon tons of its money on nuclear weapons and missiles that can destroy Seoul, Tokyo, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Kansas City and other cities in the US. Kim Jon Il, go figure!!!