An outstanding man lays down his burdens. Click here.

Whatever Mr. Olmert’s considerable virtues, the terrorists have won. A free people has forgetten the blood-soaked lessons of the last century and voted in the appeasers of terror.

And don’t think Americans can’t make the same mistake this fall.

Click Here.

Pragmatism is gutting Republicans’ principles when it comes to campaign finance law (i.e., the First Amendment); but the growing effort to regulate 527 funds is going to bite them on the butt going into 2008. Click here.

The Shah’s son has come out against any bombing of Iran, which seems like a reasonable position for him to take (and he was being reasonable when he said it), even if it ultimately proves to be the wrong policy. This successor to a line of kings going back to Bible times certainly doesn’t want any more destruction and death coming to his homeland than necessary, and frankly, neither do we.

In any case, a friend of mine criticised his statement as anti-American (I don’t believe it was). Here’s my response.

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Yeah, but don’t forget that Jimmy Carter sold out his father when it counted; hence the Ayatollah’s regime. Deposing the Shah and bringing in Khomeini was a liberal cause celebre for years — complete with campus protests, divestiture movements, stars wearing arm bands, blah blah blah — much like their earlier support for the “agrarian reformer” Pol Pot and their later adoration of the Communists Daniel Ortega and Nelson Mandella (fortunately for everyone, blacks particularly included, Mandella came to power right after the Soviet Union fell, and thus had tremendous incentive to build a democratic country). A quick glance at old Doonsbury strips from 1977-1978 will bring their hatred of the Shah into very clear focus (not to mention make it utterly laughable: they were demonizing a mildly autocratic, highly pro-U.S. leader who had done more to democratize, educate his people, introduce free markets and give rights to women than anyone in the whole history of the Middle East outside of Israel, in favor of the Ayatollah Khomeini).

This was all right before Khomeini established one of the more repressive regimes on the planet, took hostage all the occupants of the American embassy for 444 days, and began funding every terror group in sight. And I do mean right before, as in “liberals all adored Pol Pot right before he murdered half his own population,” or “liberals all hero-worshiped Joe Stalin right before he introduced a man-made famine to kill off every living Ukrainian. Oh, and thanks to the New York Times, they loved him right during and right after also”.

I believe it was George Orwell who said that “The sin of nearly all left-wingers from 1933 onwards is that they have wanted to be anti-fascist without being anti-totalitarian.” Well, by their estimation, the Shah was a fascist, and depending on how you look at it, maybe he was. But he was no Nazi (note that the Baath Party is expressly modeled on the Nazi Party, and Yassir Arafat’s father worked directly with Hitler, and the Palestine Authority sees itself as the modern successor of the Nazi Party with regard to answering “the Jewish Question”, yet this doesn’t seem to bother liberals either). He was one of the most courageous reformers in Asian history. Flawed? You bet. But we’re talking about the last in a line of Oriental despots stretching back to Bible times. He was not going to ever perfectly live up to our standards, and his people would not have him do so, not then. He was moving as fast our direction as his circumstances would permit, and derailing him meant sinking Iran back into a medieval abyss.

Anyway, I’ve rambled enough about this one (among oh so many) American leftist sell-out of a great nation which was trying to enter the 20th Century. We must never forget the degree to which the left is (at best) uncomfortable with patriotism toward American or (more usually) absolutely hates this country and seeks to undermine anyone who doesn’t. Last night, Alan Colmes — author of a whole book defending the patriotism of liberals — became enraged at a guest who, in his thick French accent, began criticizing France and the French (they are rioting again, you know). He demanded of this man why he was “anti-French”, and the man replied “because I am an American. I came to this country and became a citizen, because I love America and what it stands for.” Colmes sputtered out several angry half-statements about the audacity of this man daring criticize France and then said “well, if you’re an American, I’ll just become French!” The proud immigrant said “go ahead.”

The Shah’s son has every right to feel sold out. We could have saved not only his father — whom we owed, big-time, for all his help against the Soviets and others, not to mention for his outstanding record of real reform — but his country, from a band of mass murderers now seeking to plunge the world into nuclear oblivion. Instead, our President condemned him — mere weeks after having him to America and holding a dinner for him! — and left him and his people to the wolves. You can imagine how the Pahlavis must feel toward us, and the Chaings, and the Diems, and all the rest of the good men and women unlucky enough to lead an emerging but troubled country while a Democrat was running America.

The FEC did the right thing and today announced that internet politics — TheVanguard.Org, MoveOn.Org, bloggers, etc. — are completely UNregulated by the Alien and Sedition Acts, er, the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance law.

This is a huge First Amendment victory; but because it leaves traditional political groups untouched (i.e., straitjacketed), it dramatically shifts the ground of American politics.

All the action is on the internet now. If you want to make a difference, you’re going to have to make it here. And if you’re reading this blog, you should probably start right here.

A truly major upgrade (version 3.0) of TheVanguard.Org goes live today. Take a moment and stop by: you won’t be disappointed.

Excellent insights from Ken Walsh, radio personality on WFTW’s “The Wake-Up Call” (Fort Walton Beach, Florida) and a good friend of ours.

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The TIME magazine folks were actually disappointed that there was no shooting. Without shooting and bombing and artillery strikes there was no chance to report that more dead American servicemen were killed while terrorizing and executing more innocent Iraqi women and children.

As far as they are concerned, the only thing we got out of the exercise was some thirty captured terrorists. These thirty are the allies of the Democrat Party of the United States. In the eyes of the media, how are the so-called “insurgents” ever going to drive the great Satan out their country if the Iraqi military and police keeping rounding up the very people whose job it is to blow up American military personnel with IED’s and car bombs?

One quote brings me to comment on the total lack of understanding on the part of the media with things military. Remember that the people who report on this stuff simply have no idea what in the hell they are even talking about.

Here is the quote from the same article:

“But contrary to what many many television networks erroneously reported, the operation was by no means the largest use of airpower since the start of the war. (”Air Assault” is a military term that refers specifically to transporting troops into an area.)”

These so-called war correspondents and journalists are over there and we depend on them to tell the American people what is really going on? They don’t even know the basic terminology!

Remember early in the Gulf War I at one of the press briefings in Saudi Arabia when they showed the video of a shoot-down of an Iraqi aircraft? The pilot was heard in the background saying “Fox 2, Fox 2″. It is indelibly etched in my brain that the next thing that happened was that some doofus from CNN chimes in saying something to the effect that the pilot was telling others that he had just fired one of the new Fox air-to-air missiles. It then became abundantly clear to me that most of the reporters over there then and now don’t know shit from shinola.

That is why we may have to pay someone with half a brain to write an article with positive info about the activities of the coalition forces in Iraq and then request Iraqi newspapers to run them. Of course, the NYTimes will never publish such propaganda, even if it is factually accurate.

Just remember, boys and girls, that condoms cannot protect our troops from Democrats.

The big D in Democrat stands for Defeat of the United States and its military.

Grouchy

Andrew Sandlin has posted a blog entry concerning Andrew Sullivan and Francis Fukuyama’s recent recantings of their earlier positions on the war. It is worth reading, and I will repost it here, with further comments of my own at the end.

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The most surprising news relating the current American war in Iraq emerges not from streets of Baghdad but from the editorial pages of American magazines. Some of the neo-conservatives, denizens of the vanguard Right rushing all over themselves just three years ago to proffer intellectual tresses for the president’s war effort, have in the aftermath of a bloody occupation that may foster a civil war done a public about-face in now repenting and complaining about American “narcissism,” “naiveté” and “unilateralism” in our undertaking the current conflict. Both Francis Fukuyama (America at the Crossroads, Yale University Press) and Andrew Sullivan (“What I Got Wrong About the War,” Time, March 13, 2006) recently experienced something akin to a religious conversion in revolting against the neocon rationale for the Iraq War and its entire foreign policy philosophy. This reversal is validly available to all whose initial support for the war did not feature a moral component: “Sadam is an evil, a torturing, murdering tyrant who must be displaced by a humane democracy.” Or, “Iraq possesses or soon will possess WMD’s, and its regime must be overthrown to protect the citizens both of Israel and the United States. Under the circumstances, regime change is the most humane action we could take.”

After all, Sadam was by all accounts (except his own) a torturing, murdering tyrant; and Iraq had employed WMD’s against the Kurds (whether Iraq possessed them in 2002 or not).

If the chief justification for invasion was not simply pragmatic (we can get away with it) but rather moral (this is the right thing to do), we can scarcely reverse ourselves because the invasion did not bring a swift antiseptic success festooned with the all accoutrements of Western democracy. RealPolitik does not well serve the cause of moral indignation. Moralizers are not entitled to say with Sullivan: “The specter of Iraq teetering closer to civil war and disintegration has forced a reckoning [among us neocons].”

Memo to Fukuyama, Sullivan and Co.: buck up and be men. If the invasion was morally justified, and if the chief rationale for it was in fact just such morality, stand up and take your lumps. After all, while all of us are entitled to change our mind, moral principles do not change every three years. If they do, they weren’t principles — or moral — in the first place.

Now is not the time to be squeamish, gentlemen.

You never count the cost of doing right.

You do right.

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I realize that by “vanguard Right” Andrew is not talking about TheVanguard.Org or Vanguard PAC. However, I would just like to note — lest anyone miss the point — that we have not changed our tune in the least regarding American foreign policy in Iraq or anywhere else; and additionally, that while we have a rather extraordinary (and extraordinarily well-known) team in our stable — including Reagan Doctrine architect Jack Wheeler, Wall Street Journal editorial board member Stephen Moore, K Street king Grover Norquist and many others — we do not now and never have had Mssrs. Fukuyama or Sullivan in our association.

While we mean no disrespect to either of those gentlemen by saying that, just at the moment, we’re rather glad about that. Andrew’s assessment of their present performance is precisely correct (we would add that Mr. Fukuyama’s entire “end of history” thesis is riding on the line just now, and with his magnum opus in re-release, this is no doubt much of the motivation for his current comments), and we are both saddened and distinctly unimpressed.

Rod D. Martin, J.D.
Founder and Chairman
TheVanguard.Org