Saturday, December 31, 2005

Would it be so wrong if Bush was right?

Plant the seed, and Democracy will grow.

From the Strategy Page: Hard Times in the Heartland

In the two countries that Islamic terrorism was born in, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the terrorists are taking a beating. ... In Egypt, the majority of the population continues to be turned off by the seemingly random violence of Islamic terrorists. ... The main source of Islamic terrorism, Saudi Arabia, has turned on Islamic terrorism with a vengeance.

Friday, December 30, 2005

News Takes a Vacation

Is news on vacation? Seems like it's been awfully quiet over the last week or so. Makes me wonder how much of what I think about is governed by a single group. Tis the season when the main stream media goes on vacation. News papers, TV news, talk radio and TV news talk shows. O'Reilly, Hannity, etc. all quite. The discussion goes down to a whisper. Blogs have become a media for conversation as well as a source for information. But this time of year emphasizes the dependence that we all have on the main stream media.

Wednesday, December 28, 2005

The Belmont Club - Who is a Journalist?

Wretchard has a thought provoking post about reporting and the information war.

Who is a Journalist?

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Believe the parts you want to believe

This is a response to a comment in a previous post. I meant to be short, but alas, I have run on and have decided that this will serve well as my post on this subject.

Anonymous,

Thank you for continuing to visit Geoffosphere!

I haven't had a chance to post about this subject, but I have seen many informative posts. I'm sure you know my answer to your question because this is the basis for the division between our political views. You don't think I believe or listen to your views, and I don't think you listen to my points of view. Yet we both know each other’s side.

But since you asked, I refer you to the posts below that will take you to many more posts on the subject. Not all of them in staunch defense of the President. But for the most part saying that these actions were in defense of the citizens of the United States. And that we don't have enough information to know the legality of these actions.

Instapundit (1)
Instapundit (2)

Unfortunately, the NYT is so horny to convict the President that they are willing to publish whatever part of a story serves their purpose. And people on the left eagerly follow the cue. There is more to this story than we know. It was to be a secret program, so we’re not going to get more of the story. The bigger story should be that national security secrets are being made public. This can only aid our enemy.

Finally, the President has done much to involve the balancing branches of the government so that there would not be an abuse of power. But that does not seem to matter to the hordes on the left. Believe the parts you want to believe in order to serve your purpose. I think we can both agree with this statement.

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Winning

I've been quiet for a few days, now. I think it is because we are turning the corner on the War. Not the war in Iraq (we were never in danger of losing that war), but the war over here. The third elections in Iraq hours away, and the echoes of the Democratic party's failed, last-ditch effort to defeat Bush by losing the Iraq war are fading into oblivion. I believe the silent majority of Americans - the portion of the population stifled by a biased media - are proud of the decisions they made about going into war. I say "we" made the decision because a large majority of our representatives and a large majority of the polls said that Americans felt it necessary to remove Saddam Hussein in order to protect America. And today, we are feeling proud that there are clear signs that it was the right decision. It was a hard decision, and even harder to stick to the decision. But nothing has changed since we made the decision, and today we are marking a great milestone on the long road to securing our freedom. And the absence of defeatist rhetoric is a beautiful sound.

Read this post at The Belmont Club, On the eve of the Iraqi elections. Defeat is a bitter pill to swallow.

Friday, December 09, 2005

American Panic

This post at Powerline informs us of an intriguing essay by Norman Podhoretz. He refers to a time during the American Revolution that resembles the current popular opinion about the Iraq War.

The similarities to our situation today are uncanny. We, too, are in the midst of a rapidly spreading panic. We, too, have our sunshine patriots and summer soldiers, in the form of people who initially supported the invasion of Iraq—and the Bush Doctrine from which it followed—but who are now abandoning what they have decided is a sinking ship. And we, too, are seeing formerly disguised opponents of the war coming more and more out into the open, and in ever greater numbers.

Thursday, December 01, 2005

Living History

This is an excellent little article about Bush and Churchill at the mid-war point facing political pressure from home. How amazing it is that history repeats itself. And as The Greatest Generation did before us, so too will we be victorious over tyranny.

Churchill is remembered in the popular imagination as someone who rallied a nation, vowed never to give up, and took his country to victory. Few remember that Churchill faced a crisis of confidence two-and-a-half years into the war, exploited by those “with lesser burdens to carry.”

And fewer still remember the names of the politicians and media critics who created a crisis of confidence in the midst of a war.

Commentary:
At about age 25 (10 yrs ago), I learned that the more history you have behind you, the more interesting history becomes. I think about what it must have been like “back then”. But you can never really know what it was like unless you were there. Then there is talk about re-writing history. History has to be re-written because to tell the whole story would take too long. I learned in school how FDR and Churchill stood up and defeated fascism. I like to think that George Bush and Tony Blair are doing the same against Islamofasciam. My interest in history has led me to believe that during pervious wars, there must have been opposition because there is opposition today. There must have been other perspectives. There must have been neigh-sayers. It must have been a struggle at home as it is today. But that’s not in the history books I had in school. Would I be a different person today, if history had not been re-written? Would our society be different today? How would it be different? Better? Worse? Or is it inevitable that history is to remembered for the betterment of the future?