Mark Steyn:

…President Bush was in Israel the other day and gave a speech to the Knesset. Its perspective was summed up by his closing anecdote – a departing British officer in May 1948 handing the iron bar to the Zion Gate to a trembling rabbi and telling him it was the first time in 18 centuries that a key to the gates of the Jerusalem was in the hands of a Jew. In other words, it was a big-picture speech, referencing the Holocaust, the pogroms, Masada – and the challenges that lie ahead. Sen. Obama was not mentioned in the text. No Democrat was mentioned, save for President Truman, in the context of his recognition of the new state of Israel when it was a mere 11 minutes old.

Nonetheless, Barack Obama decided that the president’s speech was really about him, and he didn’t care for it. He didn’t put it quite as bluntly as he did with the Rev. Wright, but the message was the same: “That’s enough. That’s a show of disrespect to me.” And, taking their cue from the soon-to-be nominee’s weirdly petty narcissism, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Joe Biden and Co. piled on to deplore Bush’s outrageous, unacceptable, unpresidential, outrageously unacceptable and unacceptably unpresidential behavior.

Honestly. What a bunch of self-absorbed ninnies. Here’s what the president said:

“Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

It says something for Democrat touchiness that the minute a guy makes a generalized observation about folks who appease terrorists and dictators the Dems assume: Hey, they’re talking about me. Actually, he wasn’t – or, to be more precise, he wasn’t talking only about you…

The media is definitely running with the DNC storyline here. I saw a CNN segment last night that started with something like, “Obama hits back over Bush attack,” then proceeded directly to two talking-heads discussing the implications - they neither quoted nor showed any of the actual Bush speech. On The News Hour last night Mark Shields said Bush had, “given the Democrats a big gift,” by allegedly lashing out at Obama.

Where have these people been for the last 6.5 years. Anti-appeasement has arguably been the cornerstone of everything Bush has done on the international scene since 9/11. Now he makes a speech in front of a community of people who have suffered perhaps more than any other due to appeasement in the 20th century, yet suddenly his mild and obvious comments are an attach on Obama.

This is going to be an interesting country if Obama wins. Any political disputes with the Great Leader will denounced as inappropriate personal attacks.

Great editorial in today’s WSJ by Bret Stephens. A bit wandering and thus difficult to excerpt. Read the whole thing.

Selected quotes:

…A nation in which the poor are defined by an income level that in most countries would make them prosperous is a nation that has all but forgotten the true meaning of poverty. A nation in which obesity is largely a problem of the poor (and anorexia of the upper-middle class) does not understand the word “hunger.” A nation in which the most celebrated recent cases of racism, at Duke University or in Jena, La., are wholly or mostly contrived is not a racist nation…

…The problem with Iraq today is that it is a net importer of terrorism and instability. Yet when the U.S. invaded, it was a net exporter of both. An improvement? On balance, probably yes. Since Iraq regained its sovereignty in 2004, it has had two presidents and three prime ministers. This is too much in the Italian mold of government. Yet who, outside of the CIA, wants to return to the strongman model?…

…(A)cross the way is the hulk of the old Deutsche Bank building, critically damaged on 9/11 and slated for destruction. In an attempt to ensure that not even trace levels of asbestos and other unpalatable elements would escape the wreck, a meticulous plan was devised to dismantle the building floor by floor, at a price exceeding that of its construction. In August a fire broke out, and two firefighters died after getting lost in the maze of internal scaffolding erected to keep the asbestos in. Those brave men lost their lives for the sake of an EPA standard, and there’s been no work to speak of on the building since. It’s a case of the perfect becoming the enemy — the mortal enemy — of the good…

…There is great virtue in the American way, which expects CEOs to perform on a quarterly basis, presidents and Congresses to reinvent politics in 100 days, generals to wipe out opponents in 100 hours without taking significant casualties, doctors to save life and limb every time, search engines to yield a million results in less than a second, and so on. There is also great virtue in the belief that what is bad can be made good, and that what is good can be made great, and that what is fractionally less than great is downright awful.

But these virtues can spawn vices. One is impatience. Another is a culture of chronic complaint. A third is the belief that every problem has a solution, that trial is possible without error, that risks must always be zero, that every inconvenience is an outrage, every setback a disaster and every mishap a plausible basis for a lawsuit…

A recent Fox News Poll finds 19% of Dems want the US to lose in Iraq.

I’m always skeptical of polls, but a few recent ones seem to be consistently identifying 20-40% of Dems as completely insane.

In May we wrote about a Rasmussen poll showing 35% of Dems think Bush knew about the 911 attacks beforehand. In September we noted a Zogby poll showing 43% of Dems think, “…the US government knew the attacks were coming but consciously let them proceed for various political, military and economic motives.”

How does this extreme element of the Dems compare to the most extreme elements of the GOP? On abortion the most hard core position is that it should be illegal under all circumstances - 18% of the GOP think this (surprisingly, 10% of Dems agree).

I think its fair to say the GOP is pretty consistently caricatured as being composed overwhelmingly by hard-line abortion opponents. For example, Guiliani’s and Romney’s respective positions on abortion get more coverage than probably any other issue.

Far more accurate is the observation that something like 1/3 of Democrats have strong, anti-American inclinations. Any Dem aspiring for national office will have a tough time keeping this critical fringe happy (witness Obama’s recent bizarre comment on American flag lapel pins).

One of the great myths of our time is that the world stood together with the US after the 911 attacks. Bush’s arrogance and stupidity subsequently turned the world against us. A few reminders:

CNN’s coverage of Palestinians celebrating on 911

MSNBC’s coverage of Palestinians celebrating on 911

Fox’s coverage of Palestinians celebrating on 911

Iran’s response to 911

“What we watched on the TVs regarding slamming of two planes into the New York Twin Towers, was in fact a make-believe scene,” said Iran’s Deputy Culture and Islamic Guidance Minister and head of Iran’s Culture, Art and Communications Research Center Mohammad-Hadi Homayoun in an address to the Iran-Russia Dialogue among Civilizations Conference in Moscow.

Homayoun stipulated that the sky-scrappers were destroyed through bomb explosions, adding that after massive media propaganda of the US the crusades began.

Many cite the Le Monde headline Nous sommes tous Américains (We Are All Americans Now), the idea being that the largest circulation liberal newspaper on the continent was declaring solidarity with the US. Anyone who read the actual article knows their point was somewhat more nuanced:

…The reality is more certainly that of a world with no counterbalance, physically destabilized, and thus more dangerous since there is no multipolar balance. And America, in the solitude of its power, in its status as the sole superpower, now in the absence of a Soviet counter-model, has ceased to draw other nations to itself; or more precisely, in certain parts of the globe, it seems to draw nothing but hate. In the regulated world of the Cold War, where the various kinds of terrorism were more or less aided by Moscow, a certain degree of control was still possible, and the dialogue between Moscow and Washington never stopped. In today’s monopolistic world, it is a new barbarism, apparently with no control, which seems to want to set itself up as a counter-power. Perhaps, even in Europe, from the Gulf War to the use of F-16s by the Israeli army against the Palestinians, we have underestimated the intensity of the hate, which, from the outskirts of Jakarta to those of Durban, among the rejoicing crowds in Nablus and Cairo, is focused against the United States.

But the reality is perhaps also that of an America whose own cynicism has caught up with. If Bin Laden, as the American authorities seem to think, really is the one who ordered the Sept. 11 attacks, how can we fail to recall that he was in fact trained by the CIA and that he was an element of a policy, directed against the Soviets, that the Americans considered to be wise? Might it not then have been America itself that created this demon…

Not exactly an expression of unalloyed empathy and support.

Finally, don’t forget what happened to a former US ambassador when he appeared just days after 911 on a talk show on the state owned network of probably our most important ally. Of the incident Frontpage wrote:

We all know about poor Philip Lader, former US Ambassador to the Court of St James who was reduced to tears on BBC ‘Question Time’ on 15 September 2001 as the moderator, Davis Dimbleby, sat and dispassionately watched a crazed studio audience stomping its feet and shouting anti-American epithets two days after the Trade Center and Pentagon attacks.

Allies wavered, the European press sneered, and people across the Middle East danced in the streets - that was the world’s response to 911. Issues like Iraq, Halliburton, Gitmo were appropriated post hoc to vindicate a pre-existing chauvinism.

From NRO:

Six years on, most Americans are now pretty certain what they’ll wake up to in the morning: There’ll be a thwarted terrorist plot somewhere or other — last week, it was Germany. Occasionally, one will succeed somewhere or other, on the far horizon — in Bali, Istanbul, Madrid, London. But not many folks expect to switch on the TV this Tuesday morning, as they did that Tuesday morning, and see smoke billowing from Atlanta or Phoenix or Seattle. During the IRA’s 30-year campaign, the British grew accustomed (perhaps too easily accustomed) to waking up to the news either of some prominent person’s assassination or that a couple of gran’mas and some schoolkids had been blown apart in a shopping centre. It was a terrorist war in which terrorism was almost routine. But, in the six years since President Bush declared that America was in a “war on terror,” there has been in America no terrorism.

In theory, the administration ought to derive a political benefit from this: The president has “kept America safe.” But, in practice, the placidity of the domestic front diminishes the chosen rationale of the conflict: If a “war on terror” has no terror, who says there’s a war at all? That’s the argument of the Left — that it’s all a racket cooked up by the Bushitlerburton fascists to impose on America a permanent national-security state in which, for dark sinister reasons of his own, Dick Cheney is free to monitor your out-of-state phone calls all day long. Judging from the blithe expressions of commuters doing the shoeless shuffle through the security line at LAX and O’Hare, most Americans seem relatively content with a permanent national-security state. It’s a curious paradox: airports on permanent Orange Alert, and a citizenry on permanent …well, I’m not sure there’s a homeland-security color code for “Gaily Insouciant,” but, if there is, it’s probably a bland limpid pastel of some kind. Of course, if tomorrow there’s a big smoking hole where the Empire State Building used to be, we’ll be back to: “The president should have known! This proves the failure of his policies over the last six years! We need another all-star Commission filled with retired grandees!”

And that would be the relatively sane reaction. Have you seen that bumper sticker “9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB”? If you haven’t, go to a college town and cruise Main Street for a couple of minutes. It seems odd that a fascist regime which thinks nothing of killing thousands of people in a big landmark building in the center of the city hasn’t quietly offed some of these dissident professors — or at least the guy with the sticker-printing contract. Fearlessly, Robert Fisk of Britain’s Independent, the alleged dean of Middle East correspondents, has now crossed over to the truther side and written a piece headlined, “Even I Question The ‘Truth’ About 9/11.” According to a poll in May, 35-percent of Democrats believe that Bush knew about 9/11 in advance. Did Rumsfeld also know? Almost certainly. That’s why he went to his office as normal that today, because he knew in advance that the plane would slice through the Pentagon but come to a halt on the far side of the photocopier. That’s how well-planned it was, unlike Iraq.

Apparently, 39-percent of Democrats still believe Bush didn’t know in advance — or, at any rate, so they said in May. But I’m confident half of them will have joined Rosie O’Donnell on the melted steely knoll before the Iowa caucuses. If Iraq is another Vietnam, 9/11 is another Kennedy assassination. Were Bali, Madrid, and London also inside jobs by the Bush Gang? If so, it’s no wonder federal spending’s out of control.

And what of those for whom the events of six years ago were more than just conspiracy fodder? Last week the New York Times carried a story about the current state of the 9/11 lawsuits. Relatives of 42 of the dead are suing various parties for compensation, on the grounds that what happened that Tuesday morning should have been anticipated. The law firm Motley Rice, diversifying from its traditional lucrative class-action hunting grounds of tobacco, asbestos, and lead paint, is promising to put on the witness stand everybody who “allowed the events of 9/11 to happen.” And they mean everybody — American Airlines, United, Boeing, the airport authorities, the security firms — everybody, that is, except the guys who did it…

Good article - hard to excerpt. Read the whole thing.

That “39-percent of Democrats still believe Bush didn’t know in advance” refers to a Rasmussen poll we wrote about back in May. Specifically, Rasmussen found that 35% of self-identified Dems believe “George W. Bush knew about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in advance,” 39% believe he didn’t, and 26% didn’t know.

As we wrote at the time, we’re always skeptical of polls (small sample sizes, leading questions) and this one, though fascinating, was no exception. But last week Zogby published a poll that seems to reinforce the finding that a significant portion of Dems really do believe the government played an active part in some 911 conspiracy.

According to Zogby 31% of Americans believe either:

(C)ertain elements in the US government knew the attacks were coming but consciously let them proceed for various political, military and economic motives (26.4%)

(C)ertain US government elements actively planned or assisted some aspects of the attacks (4.6%)

As always, the crosstabs reveal interesting details. The loons are concentrated among the young, uneducated, minorities, and, of course, liberal Democrats. Here’s the breakdown of the groups most likely to believe the government either deliberately allowed or actively planned the 911 attacks:

I always like the Walmart question, which now appears in most thorough polls. It separates urban poor from rural poor on the one hand, and incurious snobs from normal people on the other. Urban poor and pretentious idiots - the core of the DNC.

We’ll close with something we wrote in July:

I’d like this question to be asked in a debate among aspiring DNC Presidential nominees. “Yes or no, can you say with 100% certainty that President Bush had no prior specific knowledge of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.”

Any candidate answering “no” will alienate the majority of Dems who are reasonable people. A “yes” answer will loose that 1/3 base of the party - those hard core lunatics who vote Dem only because that party is best at pandering to them. They will simply go and vote Green or Communist or somesuch.

This question would be the equivalent of the Abortion Question for GOP candidates -a difficult issue on which there is no easy consensus even among regular GOP voters. Its also one the media forces GOP politicians to discuss in almost every Q&A (I think Rudy was asked about it 4 times in the last debate). Would if the media forced Dems to confront similarly divisive issues with such regular frequency.

ABC claims to have a copy of the CIA’s translation of Osama’s latest video diary. Some highlights:

…In the Vietnam War, the leaders of the White House claimed at the time that it was a necessary war…and during it Rumsfeld and his aides murdered two million villagers. And when Kennedy took over the presidency and deviated from the general line of policy drawn up for the White House and wanted to stop the unjust war, that angered the owners of the major corporations who where benefiting from its continuation. And so Kennedy was killed…

…Among the most capable…who speak to you on the topic of manufacturing public opinion is Noam Chomski…

…So in answer to the question about the causes of the Democrats’ failure to stop the war, I say: they are the same reasons which led to the failure of former president Kennedy to stop the Vietnam War. Those real power and influence are those with the most capital. And since the democratic system permits major corporations to back candidates…there shouldn’t be any cause for astonishment in the Democrats’ failure to stop the war…

…All of mankind is in danger because of global warming resulting to a large degree from the emissions of the factories of major corporations, yet despite that, the representatives of these corporations in the White House insist on not observing the Kyoto Accord…

…The capitalist system seeks to turn the entire world into a fiefdom of the major corporations under the label of “globalization” in order to protect democracy…

Chomsky, Vietnam, Global Warming - he even criticizes Bush for not giving the UN more authority in Iraq. With the exception of repeated invitations to accept Islam (which don’t in themselves sound all that crazy) everything could have been written by the typical American Leftist.

Question for the next youtube Democratic presidential debate - “Osama obviously wants to destroy America. What party do you think he wants to win in 08?”

Update 9/9/07:

David Brooks makes the same point on The News Hour.

A producer of the ABC mini-series Path to 911 is claiming the network is blocking DVD release in deference to Hillary’s incipient presidential bid. The claim is so extraordinary its hard to believe - but why, exactly, is this otherwise popular and critically acclaimed mini-series not available?

From the LAT:

Among the nearly two dozen television DVDs slated for nationwide release on Sept. 11 is the second season of “Bones,” the third season of “Grey’s Anatomy” and the miniseries “The Starter Wife” that aired earlier this year. Not on the list on that day or any other in the near future is last year’s highly controversial “The Path to 9/11.”

The $40-million, five-hour ABC miniseries, which recently received seven Emmy nominations and drew a combined two-night audience of more than 25 million viewers, is for now on the path to nowhere. Its Amazon page reads: “Currently unavailable. We don’t know when or if this item will be back in stock.”

With no date for the release, questions are being raised about whether political pressure is behind its current status as a stalled or discarded DVD project. The reasons are murky, but the miniseries’ writer, Cyrus Nowrasteh, believes it’s crystal clear: Powerful forces are out to protect Bill Clinton’s presidential legacy and shield Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) from any potential collateral damage in her bid for the White House.

Nowrasteh, also one of the miniseries’ many producers, said he was told by a top executive at ABC Studios that “if Hillary weren’t running for president, this wouldn’t be a problem.”…

…Even before “The Path to 9/11″ aired on ABC late last summer, the docudrama ignited a political firestorm, almost entirely from high-profile Democratic leaders who viewed its account of events leading up to the terrorist attacks as a right-wing hatchet job on the Clinton administration and its efforts to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. Attempts to pressure ABC to cancel the miniseries at the time were unsuccessful, but last-minute network edits were imposed to quell the critical outcry…

…Initially, Nowrasteh was told by executives at ABC Studios that the miniseries would have a DVD release in January. Then, April. Then, this summer. Currently, Nowrasteh has not been notified of a specific release date for the DVD.

Despite a virtually nonexistent Emmy marketing campaign, “The Path to 9/11″ claimed seven nominations, though none in the more prestigious categories for writing and directing. As the miniseries’ writer and a producer, Nowrasteh is entitled to revenue from DVD sales, but it would be fractions of a penny for a disc sold. DVD sales, too, could potentially help ABC offset its considerable financial losses on the project.

“I go to Blockbuster and I see a lot of crap on the shelves,” added Nowrasteh. ” ‘Path to 9/11′ deserves to be available to people who want to see it or buy it or rent it or whatever. Every controversial movie I can think of, whether it’s ‘Fahrenheit 9/11,’ the Reagan miniseries . . . they were all released; they were broadcast. You can get them on DVD.”

I never saw it, but my recollection is that Dems were upset only because it didn’t pin 100% of the blame on the Bush administration. Recall, five Dem Senators, including now majority leader Harry Reid, wrote a letter to Disney (parent of ABC) threatening to withdraw their broadcast license if they aired the miniseries. From the letter:

…The Communications Act of 1934 provides your network with a free broadcast license predicated on the fundamental understanding of your principle obligation to act as a trustee of the public airwaves in serving the public interest. Nowhere is this public interest obligation more apparent than in the duty of broadcasters to serve the civic needs of a democracy by promoting an open and accurate discussion of political ideas and events…

Thus the collectivist mind churns - the only “fair and accurate” side is the Dem side. Anything else is not in the “public interest,” so the government has the authority to shut you down.

Via LGF

From The Telegraph:

America’s first Muslim congressman has provoked outrage by apparently comparing President George W Bush to Adolf Hitler and hinting that he might have been responsible for the September 11 attacks…

…To applause from his audience of 300 members of Atheists for Human Rights, Mr Ellison said he would not accuse the Bush administration of planning 9/11 because “you know, that’s how they put you in the nut-ball box - dismiss you”.

So he’s refraining from saying Bush planned 9/11 to avoid being dismissed? Wouldn’t a better reason be because its not true?

This is an issue I think the Dems need to get a handle on. How many of them really believe Bush planned 9/11? In May we noted a Rasmussen poll that asserted the following:

Democrats in America are evenly divided on the question of whether George W. Bush knew about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in advance. Thirty-five percent (35%) of Democrats believe he did know, 39% say he did not know.

I’d like this question to be asked in a debate among aspiring DNC Presidential nominees. “Yes or no, can you say with 100% certainty that President Bush had no prior specific knowledge of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.”

Any candidate answering “no” will alienate the majority of Dems who are reasonable people. A “yes” answer will loose that 1/3 base of the party - those hard core lunatics who vote Dem only because that party is best at pandering to them. They will simply go and vote Green or Communist or somesuch.

This question would be the equivalent of the Abortion Question for GOP candidates -a difficult issue on which there is no easy consensus even among regular GOP voters. Its also one the media forces GOP politicians to discuss in almost every Q&A (I think Rudy was asked about it 4 times in the last debate). Would if the media forced Dems to confront similarly divisive issues with such regular frequency.

Via CQ

I usually don’t care much for opinion polls - small sample sizes, loaded questions - and what kind of weirdos are sitting at home in the middle of the day answering a list of questions from a cold calling stranger anyway?

But this Rasmussen poll seemed worthy of note. The headline, 22% Believe Bush Knew About 9/11 Attacks in Advance, is striking enough, but some of detail is truely amazing.

Democrats in America are evenly divided on the question of whether George W. Bush knew about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in advance. Thirty-five percent (35%) of Democrats believe he did know, 39% say he did not know.

So almost half of Dems with an opinion think GWB knew about 911 in advance, which basically means they think he is a complete fraud and our government has perpetrated an enormous hoax for the last 5.5 years. This is the same party that carps on about Bush not being prepared enough or responding quickly enough on 911.

Republicans obviously reject this notion by a wide margin. As for the “independents”:

Among those not affiliated with either major party, 18% believe the President knew and 57% take the opposite view.

Sounds to me like a large portion of the DNC base’s brains are so conspiracy addled, so hate filled, that they have lost touch with basic reality. Congrats to Howard Dean - mission accomplished.

I wish these Rasmussen, Peter Hart, Gallup, and other pollsters would ask more discriminating questions so we could know more about the respondents. Some questions I’d like to see in the crosstabs:

Q: Is the US in an economic recession?

Q: Did the Federal Government spent more than $0.01 during the Clinton Administration on fetal stem cell research?

Q: Do you believe that every news story is just another example of how GWB is mean stupid and evil?

Q: Do you believe GWB planned 911 to avenge his father and steal Iraq’s oil for Haliburton, and something about Enron, and he made up Osama Bin Laden who he can’t catch anyway, and he probably has OBL in some illegal Ashcroft torture prison, because GWB is too stupid and an evil genius, and some Jews somewhere are behind it all?

I’d bet more than half of Dems would answer ‘yes’ to the first two questions. I’d seriously bet 1/5 would agree with the last.

Reminds me of the recent Gallup poll that found 70% of muslims called 911 “completely justified” while only 25% believe 911 was carried out by muslims.