From The Australian:

There is a certain familiarity to the concomitant series of actions and reactions when disaster strikes in the world. The US stands ready, willing and able to offer assistance. It is often the first country to send in millions of dollars, navy strike groups loaded with food and medical supplies, and transport planes, helicopters and floating hospitals to help those devastated by natural disaster.

Then, just as swift and with equal predictability, those wedded to the Great Satan view of the US begin to carp, drawing on a potent mixture of cynicism and conspiracy theories to criticise the last remaining superpower. When the US keeps doing so much of the heavy lifting to alleviate suffering, you’d figure that the anti-Americans might eventually revise their view of the US. But they never do. And coming under constant attack even when helping others, you’d figure that Americans would eventually draw the curtains on world crises. But they haven’t. At least not yet.

So it was last week. The US stood ready to help the cyclone-ravaged Burmese people. It did not matter that Burma’s ruling junta was no friend of the Americans. With more than 100,000 people feared dead and many more hundreds of thousands left destitute, US Air Force cargo planes loaded with supplies and personnel started arriving in nearby Thailand to begin humanitarian operations in Burma.

A US Navy strike group in the Gulf of Thailand sent helicopters ashore, ready to arrive in Burma within hours. Alas, Burma’s military leaders left their people to die for 10 days before finally accepting help from the evil empire. Even if the Yanks are allowed to boost their assistance to Burma, they can expect a groundswell of criticism.

Back in 2004, the Americans - along with the Australians - arrived within hours to help the hundreds of thousands of people left devastated by the Boxing Day tsunami in Asia. A US carrier group steamed towards Indonesia’s Aceh province. A second US Marine Corps strike force made its way to Sri Lanka with water, food and medical supplies.

The Pentagon spent millions of dollars sending C-130 transport planes from Dubai to Indonesia with tents, blankets, food and water. A navy chief in charge of co-ordination efforts said the US would deliver “as much help as soon as we can, as long as we’re needed”.

The resentment that comes from needing the military and economic might of the US translated into the most absurd criticism. Jan Egeland, the former UN boss of humanitarian affairs, cavilled about the stinginess of certain Western nations. His eye was on the US. Former British minister Claire Short was equally miffed, describing the initiative by the US and other countries as “yet another attempt to undermine the UN”, which was, according to her, the “only body that has the moral authority” to help…

…The need to paint Americans as a greedy, selfish, war-mongering superpower cannot be disturbed by facts. It matters not that, in the year before the tsunami, the US provided $2.4 billion in humanitarian relief: 40per cent of all the relief aid given to the world in 2003. Never mind that development and emergency relief rose from $10 billion during the last year of Bill Clinton’s administration to $24 billion under George W. Bush in 2003. Or that, according to a German study, Americans contribute to charities nearly seven times as much a head as Germans do. Or that, adjusted for population, American philanthropy is more than two-thirds more than British giving.

There is a teenaged immaturity about the rest of the world’s relationship with the US. Whenever a serious crisis erupts somewhere, our dependence on the US becomes obvious, and many hate the US because of it. That the hatred is irrational is beside the point….

…The really unfortunate part about this adolescent love-hate relationship with the US is that, unlike most teenagers, many never seem to grow out of it. Within each new generation is a vicious strain of irrational anti-Americanism. But unlike a parent, the US could just get sick of it all and walk away.

…in one area only, defense.

Via Powerline:

Most of this sounds terrible to me, but I can see how some of it could have some political appeal.

But what about this: “I will slow our development of future combat systems.”

Huh? Who thinks that’s a good idea? And this is a prepared statement!

I think pretty much every major new combat system we have developed in the last 30 years has had three primary goals: 1) Reduce the risk to our warfighters; 2) Reduce the risk to civilians in war zones; 3) Reduce the chance we will have to fight at all by maintaining an overwhelming technical superiority.

I wonder which of our more recently developed systems Obama wishes we didn’t have. Maybe precision munitions, so we’d have to carpet bomb foreign cities to hit small urban targets? Maybe he wishes we couldn’t make bomber pilots invisible to enemy radar. Or maybe he wishes we didn’t have up-armored Humvees or MRAPs.

Slowing the development of these systems makes sense only if you want to fight more wars with more American and foreign civilian casualties.

The first Congressional Medal of Honor for action in Afghanistan is to be awarded in the next few days. Read about it here.

Lieutenant Murphy will be the 3445th CMOH recipient since Lincoln created the decoration in 1861. Five have been awarded for actions in the last 34 years, all posthumous. Three have been awarded for actions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yesterday was the 39th anniversary of Prague Spring, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.

The Russian’s celebrated with veiled threats against their former colonial possession. From Reuters:

Russia’s military chief told the Czech Republic it would be making a “big mistake” to host a U.S. missile defense shield on its soil and urged Prague on Tuesday to delay a decision until a new U.S. president is elected.

The Czech Republic is discussing hosting a radar station which would form part of the U.S. missile shield — a system designed to intercept and destroy missiles from “rogues states” but which Moscow sees as a threat to its security.

“We say it will be a big mistake by the Czech government to put this radar site on Czech territory,” said Yuri Baluyevsky, the Russian military chief of staff, after meeting the Czech deputy defense minister, Martin Bartak.

He said the Czech Republic should hold off making a decision until after the U.S. presidential election, scheduled to take place in late 2008. Incumbent George W. Bush will not be running.

Why its any of Russia’s business what purely defensive preparations the Czech Republic makes is an interesting question in itself.

But maybe more interesting is their view of American domestic politics. For some reason they think that a Democratic President will abandon our NATO commitments.

That’s unlikely. Former Soviet allies Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland were admitted to NATO (despite strenuous Russian protests) in 1999 during the Clinton Administration. At the time Clinton said:

Today we welcome Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, finally erasing the boundary the Cold War artificially imposed on the continent of Europe.

The expansion strengthens an alliance that now clearly is better preserved to keep the peace and preserve our security in the 21st century, by giving the 16 current members three new allies ready to contribute troops, technology and ingenuity.

Approval in the Senate was broad and bi-partisan, the treaty passing 80-19.

I seriously doubt a Democratic administration would mean a change in our NATO policy, but for some reason the Russian’s believe otherwise. For some reason they believe that a Democratic president would abandon a formal ally. For some reason they think they think American treaty commitments are worthless. For some reason they think a little intimidation is all it takes to send the US packing.

Maybe that’s because its exactly what the Dems have been telling the world for the last 4 years. I’ve ascribed it to crass political opportunism that would be set aside if the American people gave them responsibility for our national security. Let’s hope we don’t have to find out.

Via LGF

This story is a bit stale, but I have a few points to highlight I haven’t seen elsewhere.

To recap, a week and a half ago DailyKos (probably the most popular left-wing blog) was hosting its YearlyKos conference in Chicago.

One of the panels was called “The Military and Progressives: Are They Really That Different,” moderated by John Soltz, an Iraq War veteran and founder of VoteVets, a veterans group opposed to the war. The discussion accordingly was focused on US failures in Iraq and the need to withdraw ASAP.

During Q&A a uniformed Army Sergeant gets up to argue that “the surge” is working, and that Iraqi civilian casualties are in decline. At this point Soltz completely flips out. He says the soldier is breaking the law by making political comments while in uniform, says he’s going to contact his superiors to get him a dishonorable discharge, and even threatens to “come down there,” to shut him up.

Here’s the video from the DailyKos website. Fast forward to 41:00 for the begining of the dispute.

Notably DailyKos has edited out everything the Sergeant says - we hear only Soltz dressing him down.

Fortunately PajamasMedia was there filming the event and have posted a video in which you can hear both sides.

Its obvious from the uncensored video that the Sergeant wasn’t saying anything political. He’s not terribly articulate, but he’s really just saying the surge is working. He’s not saying invading Iraq was a good idea, or Bush is great, he’s just conveying facts as he sees them. Soldiers are commenting on the situation in Iraq in interviews on TV everyday. Soltz was interjecting with a discussion of facts, not politics.

And when did the left wing suddenly get so concerned about people not using a military uniform for political purposes? It is true that the political speech of soliders is limited by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. DoD Directive 1334.01 3.1.2 prohibits wearing a uniform,

During or in connection with furthering political activities, private employment or commercial interests, when an inference of official sponsorship for the activity or interest may be drawn.

This is why Generals called to testify in Congress are so careful what they say, sounding stilted as investigators try to goad them into endorsing one political plan or another. Same thing with military interviews or press conferences. And its a good rule - we don’t want guys using their military uniforms grabbing political power from elected civilians.

Most of us don’t, anyway. John Kerry clearly violated the rule when he testified in front of Congress in uniform in 1971. He wasn’t presenting factual information, he was aggressively attacking the elected, civilian leadership of our country. And he wasn’t just making a political statement, he was launching a political career. In less than a year he was running for congress.

Kerry’s Presidential campaign was more overtly military than anything we’ve had in this country since US Grant. He arrived for the DNC convention on a replica navy boat, and started his first speech of the gathering with a salute. He started his grab for power by abusing his military uniform, and he almost made it all the way to the top promoting his alleged marshall virtues.

The left loves this stuff. Just look at how their younglings dress. Castro tee shirts, Mao tee shirts. Images of lifetime dictators who siezed power in military coups and spent almost their entire public lives dressed in military garb. Che is pehaps the purest, and thus most popular, of the type. He never had a post-revolution plan, he just kept on killing. Is there a more popular image among American leftists than Che’s face peering up from under a military beret?

But the left doesn’t like all things military. Defending America - bad; promoting democracy abroad - bad; helping tsunami victims - no comment; giving poorer Americans a chance to pay for a college education through their own hard work - bad. Exterminating 50 Million Chinese in a Marxist revolution - good; taking power in Venezuela then tossing out their fragile constitution - good; expanding the government by force at the expense of individual liberties - can’t get enough.

The shouting down of the sergeant has gotten a fair amount of media attention. I’ve seen no commentary on Wesley Clark’s opening comments (starting at in 8:05 above video).

He starts off by saying “I joked during my Presidential campaign that I wasn’t just a Democrat, I grew up under socialism…In the military all our kids went to the same schools, we all got the same healthcare, shopped at the same stores, got paid the same, its the perfect communist society, you could say (laughs).” He goes on to talk about how living a military life informed his progressive politics. Everybody works together, everyone is treated the same - this is his vision for America.

I’d add that this perfect society he chose to live part of his life in is also completely authoritarian. Its a place where there is no right to a trial by jury. Not following orders can be a capital crime. Corporal punishment for minor infractions is standard. You can’t dress the way you like, or wear your hair as you please. Its illegal to be gay. There is no freedom of the press, or of speech. As we learn later in this same video, any political expression at all is against the law.

Sounds a lot like China, or Cuba, or any number of other leftist paradises. Clark is right, in some was a country dominated by marshall law, and a country run by “progressives” have a lot in common.

Always been a fan of Victor Davis Hanson. I like him even more now that I know he was once a professional farmer.

If you read his columns you’ll recognize many of the examples and arguments in this Hoover Institution address (and Q&A).

We wrote about the problems at Airbus here a couple of weeks ago. Then we discussed what a disaster the A380 has been and how it its pulling the rest of the massive company down with it.

In the last week an American Thinker writer has printed two excellent pieces on the company, The Self-Humiliation of Airbus (2/20) and Brinksmanship at Airbus (2/26).

They’re both worth reading in their entirety. Some excerpts from the later:

When a political project like Airbus falters while competing with a commercial enterprise like Boeing, political considerations predominate in developing countermeasures. The turbulent events of the past week demonstrate that the European rival of Boeing is still guided by politicians unwilling to concede the need for painful but necessary remedies, and more interested in looking good to their constituents than in solving the problems at the company…

…The problems at Airbus now go beyond the row over which country will lose more jobs, and which country will build the next generation high tech model (with spillover potential for other high technology jobs)…Although France and Germany continue to paper over the developing crises, they cannot do so forever. An extraordinary set of problems is leading to a pattern of brinksmanship, deferring tough choices until they explode. Thereby magnifying the damage…

…Perhaps the most dramatic news to leak out of Airbus over the weekend following the Franco-German summit was notice that Airbus might ask its workers to put in a 40 hour week, instead of the 35 hours per week they have been working. For no extra pay…

…Retreating on the 35 hour work week would itself be a humiliating retreat for France and Germany, which have taken pride in their more civilized approach than the savage Americans. No doubt, vicious American competition would be blamed, but one wonders if other sectors of the French and German labor force would welcome such an increase in work at no additional compensation, just because their political leaders backed a grandiose airliner…

The article also discusses the collapse of the A380 freighter project, and highlights recent share purchases of Airbus’ parent company (EADS) by the governments of Russia and UAE, further complicating an highly political board.

We refer to our earlier Airbus post for discussion of how the collapse is impacting seemingly unrelated projects like the A400M military transport.

One of the sad things here is the impact on Europe’s previously dynamic aerospace industry. Dozens of smaller companies were jammed together to create EADS in a fit of socialistic central planning that had no economic rationale. Now the entire industry risks suffocation.

EADS is trying to manufacture incredibly complex A380 under a single corporate banner. At the same time Boeing has radically decentralized, outsourcing even fuselage manufacturing to subcontractors on other continents. May the best economic model win.

ht: SJS

Tomorrow (Sunday 2/25/07) 60 Minutes will air a segment about something called the Appeal for Redress. The Appeal is a petition:

As a patriotic American proud to serve the nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in Congress to support the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq . Staying in Iraq will not work and is not worth the price. It is time for U.S. troops to come home.

The petition was prepared by The Center on Conscience & War (CCW), which was founded in 1940 with a mission “to defend and extend the rights of conscientious objectors.”

On January 16th 2007, representatives of the Appeal for Redress publicly voiced their opposition to the war in Iraq by bringing the individual petitions of over 1,300 active-duty and reserve members of the military to the attention of Congress. The Appeal for Redress, was started by active duty service members. About 60% of signees have served at least one tour of duty in Iraq. The service members who started this ongoing appeal felt that it was important for them to take a clear stand on the issue.

Although the story is getting a lot of attention its worth considering how few servicemen are actually involved here. Active-duty and reserves represent about 2.7MM people. So those “1,300 active-duty and reserve members of the military” who signed the petition are just 0.05% of the total.

And what exactly do these people have to do with “conscientious objectors”? My understanding of that term is as it applies to people who are excused from service during a time of conscription due to some religious or moral objection to any violent activity. Amish and Mennonite men have long been excused from military service on this basis. The special status was claimed by hundreds of thousands of men during the Vietnam draft, with something like 360,000 avoiding service without ever even having their cases formally reviewed.

But the people in this case are all military volunteers. Whatever their status, its seems tautologically impossible that they could be considered “conscientious objectors.”

The CCW seems to have a broader agenda regarding Iraq.

A co-founder, Marine Sgt. Liam Madden states, “Just because we volunteered for the military doesn’t mean we volunteered to put our lives in unnecessary harm and to carry out missions that are illogical and immoral.”

With all due respect to Sgt. Madden, putting his life on the line for anything the civilian leadership asks is exactly what he volunteered for. He also volunteered to give up broad swaths of his rights as a civilian, including most of the protections in the bill of rights and submission to an entirely separate judicial system. As an enlistedman, he even has fewer rights than he would have as an officer.

Madden has said a lot about Iraq since returning from his 7 month tour in Iraq. He told CNN, “I’m concerned about the reasons we went to war, about the profiteering,” and that he had doubts about enlisting in 2003, “when the current administration started inundating us with fear.” Is this guy really thinking on his own or is someone feeding him lines?

And that 2003 enlistment date is the thing that really doesn’t add up. Madden enlisted in February 2003, just one month before the war in Iraq started. US troops had already been in Afghanistan for 17 months. Congress had (overwhelmingly) authorized the Iraq war in October 2002. By February 2003 the US had about 300,000 troops in Kuwait and elsewhere in the Persian Gulf preparing for the invasion. SecDef Rumsfeld was speaking openly of his plans for the execution of the Iraq invasion. Just what did Madden think he was signing up for?

If Sgt. Madden and the other 1299 petition signers really want out of the service I say let them go. As civilians they can the go on to say whatever they want. I don’t really care, but anyone declining to do a duty they signed up for probably deserves a dishonorable discharge - there should be some penalty for backing out of such an important, albeit entirely voluntary obligation.

This petition reminds me of another Marine who, refusing to deploy to Iraq, was briefly a media superstar in 2004. Petty Officer 3rd Class Pablo Paredes went AWOL ahead of his 12/6/04 scheduled departure from San Diego on the Amphibious Assault Ship USS Bonhomme Richard. At the time Paredes was the first serviceperson to openly resist deployment to Iraq. He returned to the base on 12/18/04 with media in tow and sporting a variety of bizarre anti-war tee shirts.

The Navy has gone easy on Paredes - he was given restricted duty but never spent any time in the brig and will likely be discharged normally when his tour is over. But there was one additional chapter in the Paredes, Bonhomme Richard story that didn’t get much coverage.

On 12/26/04, three weeks after Paredes went AWOL, the Indian Ocean Tsunami hit killing 300,000 people. The Bonhomme Richard was diverted to the Indonesian coast and was the first American capital ship on the scene. She brought 200,000 lbs of supplies generated 30,000 gallons of fresh water daily for the relief effort. Her hovercraft brought supplies ashore and her Knighthawk helicopters evacuated thousands of refugees, including several hundred to her own medical ward. While CNN and the NYT were profiling Paredes for his corageous dissent, his erstwhile shipmates were spearheading the largest foreign humanitarian effort in US history.

Many of our finest citizens are in places like Afghanistan and Iraq now. They’re risking their lives not only to defend us, but to build an entirely new, free societies on the ashes of centuries of feudalism and dictatorship. Their work is dangerous and often thankless, as petty domestic political disputes have converted half of our elected officials into a propaganda machine for the enemy.

Our military has enormous responsibilities that go far beyond fighting. Its a job for only the most willing, most prepared, and in many ways the best among us. Few (certainly not me) are qualified. The sooner the likes of Madden and Paredes self-identify as not up to the challenge, the better.

Power Line has posted a video that might be embarrassing for the ‘Bush Lied’ crowd. Its an ABC report from 1999 (that is, before Bush was president) noting all sorts of Iraq, Al Qaeda connections, including high level meetings between Iraq government officials and Bin Laden and efforts by Al Qaeda to procure Uranium from Africa.  ABC claims ‘three intelligence agencies’ as its sources.

I like the reporter’s use of the term international pariah in reference to Saddam’s Iraq - exactly the words John Kerry used to describe the US while sharing the stage with a former Iranian president at the Davos conference last month.

This video fits particularly well with this 2/10/07 NYT editorial, repeating the fiction that Bush simply invented the whole Saddam-is-a-bad-guy thing out of whole cloth to avenge his daddy and steal oil, or something (ht FlopplingAces): 

It took far too long, but a report by the Pentagon inspector general has finally confirmed that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s do-it-yourself intelligence office cooked up a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda to help justify an unjustifiable war.

Of course, the inspector general report did no such thing. The entire inquiry was over whether or not the Pentagon or anyone else should be allowed to do their own intelligence analysis. Of course they can (NYT, perhaps, excluded).

 The editorial mentions that Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) is heading the intelligence panel trying to give ‘Americans the answers’. Rockefeller is notable for, among other things, being one of only two elected officials in the US to have called Saddam Hussein an ‘imminent threat’ back in 2002. From the Statement of Senator John D. Rockefeller IV on the Senate Floor On the Iraq Resolution, October 10, 2002:

There has been some debate over how “imminent” a threat Iraq poses. I do believe that Iraq poses an imminent threat, but I also believe that after September 11, that question is increasingly outdated. It is in the nature of these weapons, and the way they are targeted against civilian populations, that documented capability and demonstrated intent may be the only warning we get. To insist on further evidence could put some of our fellow Americans at risk. Can we afford to take that chance? We cannot!

The other politician who called Hussein an imminent threat wasn’t Bush or Cheney or even that turncoat Lieberman. It was then junior Senator from South Carolina (and now aspiring Democratic presidential candidate) John Edwards. From a 2/24/02 CNN Late Edition interview:

I think Iraq and Saddam Hussein present the most serious and most imminent threat.

Within just two years Edwards was vice presidential candidate for the ‘Bush Lied’ ticket. Im not sure whether he is being honest, trying to undermine Hillary (by association with Bill), of just an idiot when he said this on 2/7/07 on Meet the Press:

MR. RUSSERT: Why were you so wrong (on Iraq)?

SEN. EDWARDS: For the same reason a lot of people were wrong. You know, we—the intelligence information that we got was wrong. I mean, tragically wrong. On top of that I’d—beyond that, I went back to former Clinton administration officials who gave me sort of independent information about what they believed about what was happening with Saddam’s weapon—weapons programs. They were also wrong. And, based on that, I made the wrong judgment…

Ummm…so who lied about what to whom when? Was ABC news lying in 1999? Were Jay Rockefeller and John Edwards lying in 2002? Were ‘Clinton administration officials’ lying? Just maybe all this ‘Bush Lied’ business is just a bunch of horse crap churned out by cowardly politicians hoping they can keep their jobs by winning the majority of the uninformed idiot vote.