The liberal media and political cartel was shaken yesterday with the publication in The New York Times of a patently heretical editorial by two Brookings Institution scholars, Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack.

Breaking the numbing repetition of political commentary emanating from the bell jar known as the beltway, Messrs. O'Hanlon and Pollack have just returned from the war zone in Iraq.  Readers familiar with the Brookings Institution know it as a reputable, left-of-center think tank that is admired for its substantive analysis.  Although its leftward bias has always been evident, in particular for its advocacy for the Realpolitik sensibilities of certain Clinton Administration officials, unlike the mainstream media, it hasn't permitted political considerations to trump the truth.

Their report, along with Hugh Hewitt's stunning interview with the highly respected New York Times journalist, John Burns, constitute both a reportorial sea change as well as a nascent political reformation.

Although you may not see these reports on ABC, NBC, CBS, be assured their editors are aware of them and their initial response will be to raise the castle draw bridge.  More immune from the bias of craven liberals, but nonetheless still in their thrall, are CNN and MSNBC, which will be obliged to recognize that something is happening in Iraq and it's good for America.

However, the more profound question is why the American left is so deeply invested in defeat in Iraq.  Why is the picture of an Iraq that is slowly moving towards stability, thanks to the military of the United States, such an apparently abhorrent image?

The answer is that those modest successes were the product of President Bush bucking the conventional thinking of appeasement and diffidence which has infected both America and Europe.  We would also note that one of America's most enduring foreign policies has been the desire to export democracy, in particular, in places firmly in the control of despots.  Indeed, our young Republic has been the prime mover in emancipating more nations from the dictatorial fangs of heinous regimes than any other.  That's because we've come to understand that freedom and the rule of law the most reliable guarantors of human happiness, and because we know that democratic nations almost never initiate military action against other nations.

Somehow in our modern age the Democratic Party became beholden to a vicious leftist sensibility, one more enamored of socialist states with their thoroughly misguided goal of absolute equality than with ensuring civil rights and open markets.  That led to their cold embrace of arguments of moral equivalence among all nations and the collateral disdain of the projection of American values.

Now that progress in Iraq has become undeniable, even to our left-leaning media, the hard left's influence on Democratic leaders may start to wane.  That may bode well for our chances to complete our mission in Iraq, which will position us well for dealing with the next chapter of totalitarianism--Iran.

The self-imposed travails of former University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill are compelling only to those who are so thoroughly entangled in the political machinations as to discount the real reason he was fired.

A letter to the editor from ClearCommentary's editor was published in today's Colorado Springs' Gazette, and it clarifies the underlying cause of his termination and it had nothing to do with the First Amendment rights of university professors.

However, it also touches on the glaring imbalance of ideas in humanities classes on our college campuses, something that is apparently obvious only to conservatives.  Indeed, if you raise the issue with liberals, in particular those with any association with our halls of higher learning, you are typically greeted with shrugs and raised eyebrows. 

For them, academic freedom merely means the immunity they enjoy from counter-arguments, from matters of race all the way to national security.  That forces the conclusion that their primary interest is not academic inquiry but rather the soothing, if somewhat monotonous echo of their own ideas.

Terms of political derision typically have an unusually long half-life, and such is the case with the term 'neoconservative.'  A piece by David Corn in The Nation argues that Fred Thompson is a neocon which is the left's version of the 'scarlet letter' because it connotes support of the Iraq war.

However, it's instructive for us to recall that the term originated with liberals who were disenchanted with the Democratic Party which they felt was politically adrift in matters of foreign affairs.  Chief among them was Jean Kirkpatrick, who was a Democrat since the nomination of George McGovern but charged the Carter Administration with tolerating human rights abuses in Communist states while withdrawing support for anti-communists on the basis of human rights.

Updating the term, Corn and his ilk reflexively paint anyone who favored the U.S. invasion of Iraq as a neocon because it's a convenient if nearly meaningless moniker for their allegedly dim-witted approach to foreign policy.

First, it's curious that although a large numbers of the Democratic leadership voted in favor of the war, and despite the fact that Saddam Hussein is no longer the threat to his own people and neighbors, the left has become ardently opposed to it.  Why?  Because it's not easy, people are dying, and they just want to end it, which is to say they perfectly reflect an adolescent approach to adult problems.

The problem is that reality doesn't support Corn's allegations.  None of those typically rounded up as suspected neocons fit the definition:  Not President Bush, not Vice President Cheney, and not Donald Rumsfeld.  As conservative columnist David Harsanyi wrote:

These days it seems as though even temperate support for military action against dictators and terrorists qualifies you as a neocon.

What's truly curious about the left's charges, which typically center around pre-emptive military action, in particular, unilateral action, is that they only achieve credibility to the degree you believe that the agenda of the radical Islamists is a fiction spun from thin air by--yes, the neocons.  However, if you recognize the pattern of the dozens of attacks by Islamic terrorists against America and the West over the past thirty years and draw the conclusion that they are plotting our destruction, you are branded an extremist yourself--for wanting to destroy them before they destroy us.

Also curious is the fact that under President Bush the U.S. has never taken unilateral diplomatic or military action, despite the Democrats insistence that we engage in bilateral talks with North Korea--a recommendation that Mr. Bush summarily rejected.  Now that the 6-party talks are producing results we hear a stony silence from our brethren on the left about the merits of multi-party talks.

Beyond its rejection of the projection of military power is liberalism's criticism of the notion that American values should be exported.  Whether it's our democratic principles, our economic system of capitalism, or, God forbid, our traditional values and cultural norms, the thought of imposing anything except indifference on the world is anathema to the left.

In light of this, the charge that Fred Thompson is a neocon is rather laughable since he's been a life-long conservative.  Criticize his positions on the war or the economy if you will, but let's see if we can advance beyond childish and derogative names for our opponents, which add more heat than light to the debate.

After this week's dust-up between Democratic presidential contenders Clinton and Obama, the big question among the beltway cognoscenti is which has the experience to be president.  Writing in Newsweek, Richard Wolffe outlines the contours of the debate for us, which are shaped, tacitly if not explicitly, by the Democrats' historical weakness on national security.

As has been widely reported, a debate question this week drew two opposite responses:  Obama said he would meet with the leaders of Iran and other rogue nations without preconditions and Clinton said she wouldn't.  Presidential candidates, like prize fighters, are always on the prowl for weaknesses in their opponents and mercilessly attack when provided an opportunity.  Forgiving the mixed metaphor, this one was teed up perfectly and stayed true to form as the week progressed, as the two candidates continued taking swipes at each other.

Wolffe correctly concludes that neither candidate has a deep resume in foreign policy, but that's being far too generous.  Obama says he has better judgment than any candidate, "And I don't base that simply because I was right on the war in Iraq." (an assertion he may one day rue).  Indeed, he rendered that complex judgment by drawing on

...a set of experiences that come from a life of living overseas, having family overseas, being able to see the world through eyes of people outside our borders.  The notion that somehow from Washington you get this vast foreign policy experience is illusory.

Really?  If "living overseas" were a defining criterion for the presidency, versus being a governor or a vice-president, the list of qualified candidates would be quite lengthy.  But most Americans know that being the leader of the most powerful nation on earth requires far more experience, such as a chief executive who has demonstrated leadership under fire or someone with an extensive resume of public service.  In that regard, neither Clinton nor Obama makes the grade.

But Obama is particularly under-qualified, and two recent gaffs make the case:  The first was the earlier debate in which he said his first action after a major terrorist attack on two U.S. cities would be to ensure adequate performance by first-responders, mentioning the less than stellar response during Katrina.  Now, having a highly organized and efficient first-responder capability is crucial, but it reflects poor political instincts to overlook retaliation against the enemy that perpetrated the attack.

As have others before him, Wolffe compares Obama with JFK, which only demonstrates the timeless validity of Shakespeare's maxim that "Comparisons are odious."  Re-read the Kennedy-Nixon debate, then read Kennedy's Inaugural Address, and you'll have an immediate and shocking contrast to Obama.  Kennedy had both solid political instincts and an in-depth command of the issues of his day, something he didn't pick up through crash courses with advisers--as is the case with Obama.

Callowness of judgment is excusable in many positions in life because we all have to start somewhere.  However, whomever inhabits the Oval Office must have time-tested, steely judgment, the kind that looks through the gauze of complex and nuanced situations to make decisions informed by an intimate understanding of diplomacy and strategy.  Those aren't the traits of a forty-something man with all of two years in the senate under his belt.

As we have in many prior posts, we'll stipulate that President Bush's prosecution of the war in Iraq has been strategically flawed and unfocused.  However, his overall strategy to combat the radical Islamists more than makes up for it because it's predicated on an interpretation of events that most terrorism analysts believe is credible, and that distinguishes him from most of the Democrats.

Mort Kondracke, writing in Roll Call presents the case for a bipartisan strategy to fight al-Qaeda, which is one area where you might think there would be agreement.  You may be wrong.  Kondracke trots out the usual fodder for partisan pundits, that Mr. Bush's invasion of Iraq

...created a terrorist rallying point and recruiting ground where none existed beforehand, and that he has inflamed Muslim sentiment around the world.

He goes on to quote Lawrence Wright with his assertion that "al-Qaeda was essentially dead" in 2002 after being evicted from Afghanistan.  From there he quotes Wright's 2006 article in The New Yorker in which he cites jihadist theoretician Abu Musab al-Suri, who says effectively the same thing.

There is no question that the protracted presence of the U.S. military in Iraq has incited jihadists worldwide to violence, the question is what the Middle East would look like had we not invaded Iraq?  First, does anyone truly believe that given the deep roots of the radical Islamists' hatred for America and the West that it would not have reconstituted itself even if the U.S. had pursued them more aggressively in Afghanistan?  If you do, read Bernard Lewis' The Roots of Muslim Rage, written in 1990, long before even the most prescient analysts understood the depth of the war in which we're now engaged.
The more mature--which is to say, correct--analysis is that, our many setbacks and strategic blunders aside, the U.S. invasion of Iraq produced a twofold benefit of immense value:  First, it eliminated Saddam, a despotic savage whose nuclear program was in abeyance and could be reanimated at his discretion, and which provided the Iraqi people an opportunity for a government by and for the people; and, second, it placed Iran at the forefront of what has rapidly become the seminal crisis in the Middle East.

We can now deal with Iran's transparent desire for a nuclear weapon without the distraction of Saddam threatening to upstage Ahmadinejad by reconstituting his own quiescent nuclear program.  That al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) is a formidable force is irrefutable, but is it not also the case that a direct if unwitting byproduct of our invasion is that we've effectively chosen the battlefield?  That, as military strategists will tell you, is a fundamental advantage--if we have the political will to exploit it.

And, that's where Mr. Kondracke's suggestion of a bipartisan approach to combating al-Qaeda is decimated--on the political battlefield.  The hard left wing of the Democratic Party has already exerted tremendous influence on party leaders, not to mention its presidential candidates.  Is there any reason to believe that they would countenance an unfettered prosecution of al-Qaeda, one in which we used all the tools at our disposal?

They winced at our use of the NSA electronic surveillance program--where they monitor a known terrorist overseas talking to someone in America--how, pray tell, could they accept an all out war?

We may be making progress in the war against the jihadists, as well as some measurable progress in Iraq, but for those who understand the nature of the sleepless malice we face, we're clearly losing the political war at home.

Here in Colorado supporters of both free speech on college campuses and the rule of law have cause for celebration.  As reported in today's Rocky Mountain News, the Board of Regents at the University of Colorado, where Churchill was chair of the ethnic studies department, voted 8-1 to terminate him. 

Although Churchill and his supporters immediately began chanting and banging drums at a protest at the back of the meeting room, two people not in attendance applauded the decision.  Both authors whom Churchill had mischaracterized in his writings, R.G. Robertson and Russell Thornton, felt the decision was justified.

As Roberterson noted:

I'm glad that scholarship, or the ideal of scholarship, won out over somebody's weird view of political correctness.  I'm happy that it happened, that he's been found out, and by his peers - meaning other university people - and been called what he is, a plagiarizer and a liar.

Thornton, a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles said:

It's important to know Indian history, and it's important to know factual Indian history, not just a bunch of B.S. that someone made up.

However, beyond the poetic--or academic--justice that these men must feel, this decision is also noteworthy because of its immense complexity, culturally and academically.  As has been reported nationally, plagiarism among students is on the rise, from community colleges to our Ivy League schools, and when it's discovered the punishment is severe, as it ought to be.  How, then, could the Board of Regents fail to uphold their duty and not find Churchill guilty, since the evidence was apparently unequivocal?

More easily than you might imagine.  Political correctness, which is a veritable plague on our culture, is radioactive on our college campuses and woe to conservative students who have the temerity to stand up to professors--in particular in the humanities--who routinely use their classrooms as their personal fiefdoms where they espouse their liberal theories with absolute impunity.

Against that backdrop the Churchills of academia enjoy unparalleled immunity from recourse for every infraction from classroom malfeasance to down-grading students who dare to challenge their pet pieties.  In that context, taking research liberties--otherwise known as plagiarism--distorting the work of academic enemies, or extrapolating beyond the data, often pass unnoticed below the radar, without any oversight whatsoever.

Indeed, it was only when people outside the university system began performing their own due diligence on Churchill's research--after his infamous assertion that the victims of 9/11 were "little Eichmans," that evidence of his flagrant plagiarism came to light.

For those untainted by the politics, this has never been an issue of First Amendment rights.  The fact the justice prevailed, even in the academic world where truth is often a casualty of politics, is a real cause for celebration.  After the Regents' decision, and in an act of defiance that actually has a wonderful literary double meaning, Churchill said, "I am going nowhere."

Finally, an assertion that has the ring of truth.

e meeting room, two people not in attendance applauded the decision.  Both authors whom Churchill had mischaracterized in his  writings, R.G. Robertson and Russell Thornton, felt the decision was justified.

As Roberterson noted:

I'm glad that scholarship, or the ideal of scholarship, won out over somebody's weird view of political correctness.  I'm happy that it happened, that he's been found out, and by his peers - meaning other university people - and been called what he is, a plagiarizer and a liar.

Thornton, a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles said:

It's important to know Indian history, and it's important to know factual Indian history, not just a bunch of B.S. that someone made up.

However, beyond the poetic--or academic--justice that these men must feel, this decision is also noteworthy because of its immense complexity, culturally and academically.  As has been reported nationally, plagiarism among students is on the rise, from community colleges to our Ivy League schools, and when it's discovered the punishment is severe, as it ought to be.  How, then, could the Board of Regents fail to uphold their duty and not find Churchill guilty, since the evidence was apparently unequivocal?

More easily than you might imagine.  Political correctness, which is a veritable plague on our culture, is radioactive on our college campuses and woe to conservative students who have the temerity to stand up to professors--in particular in the humanities--who routinely use their classrooms as their personal fiefdoms where they espouse their liberal theories with absolute impunity.

Against that backdrop the Churchills of academia enjoy unparalleled immunity from recourse for every infraction from classroom malfeasance to down-grading students who dare to challenge their pet pieties.  In that context, taking research liberties--otherwise known as plagiarism--distorting the work of academic enemies, or extrapolating beyond the data, often pass unnoticed below the radar, without any oversight whatsoever.

Indeed, it was only when people outside the university system began performing their own due diligence on Churchill's research--after his infamous assertion that the victims of 9/11 were "little Eichmans," that evidence of his flagrant plagiarism came to light.

For those untainted by the politics, this has never been an issue of First Amendment rights.  The fact the justice prevailed, even in the academic world where truth is often a casualty of politics, is a real cause for celebration.  After the Regents' decision, and in an act of defiance that actually has a wonderful literary double meaning, Churchill said, "I am going nowhere."

Finally, an assertion that has the ring of truth.

If you Google 'cultural elitism' you'll capture a curious amalgam of essays and articles that date to Vice President Dan Quayle's use of the term during the 1990 presidential campaign.  We're all familiar with the genus of cultural elitism that thrives in our urban settings and whose most prominent feature is the tacit assurance that its inhabitants are superior to the rest of the nation.

Whether it's the arts, music, or literature, they breathe the rarefied air of the cultural cognoscenti and disdain those who tarry in common sinecures across the fly-over states.  However, there is another type of cultural elitism, one that is far more profound in its influence and even more contentious than the one noted above.

Jim Ryan, posting at Philosoblog, distinguishes between the superficial signs of culture--"having parades, showing soccer on TV, having birthday cake on birthdays, wearing wedding rings"--and the deeper and therefore its more revealing aspects.  He begins by framing the argument with the immodest but ultimately correct notion that cultural elitism "requires a clear-eyed devotion to the truth," and that it plumbs such profound issues as

...whether to have arranged marriages, whether to inculcate self-reliance in children, the value of literary and historical education, [the] value placed on science and technology, work ethic, whether to have a sense of tragedy about life, and all the way down to whether all little girls should have their clitorises torn out, whether people who question the ruler should be killed, and whether it is okay to enslave others. It is ludicrous to be relativistic at all of these levels of depth. Therefore, cultural elitism clearly makes good sense, and one can overlook this fact if one fails to recognize these levels of depth. This is leftism: a postmodernist lack of depth.

We might not characterize it quite as Mr. Ryan has, but you get the point:  Twenty-five hundred years of history would seem to be an adequate beta test for adjudicating what works in terms of child rearing, education, the value of civil rights and the rule of law.  Yet, as recent history evidences, we find ourselves entangled in those very issues, from using race in college admissions but not in terrorist profiling to failing to have the moral temerity to recognize that single-parenthood is anathema to the individual and common good.

The perpetual reinvention of cultural constructs reflects an undue devotion to that very relativism that Mr. Ryan mentions as the source what might be charitably called insufficient adherence to common sense.  It's difficult to say with certainty, but we may be emerging from a kind of dark modern age which began in the 60s, whose adherents adamantly denied the truths that were tested in the crucible of centuries of history.

Yet, the cultural anarchy that imbues our lives in America appears to have us in a stranglehold and since it is a sightless Leviathan, it's future is an opaque cipher.  Indeed, we are witnesses, almost on a daily basis, to a wide variety of corrosive spectacles, compliments of those who are unwitting participants in advancing its aberrant march and it's an unpleasant sight at best.

The libertarians among us, whose polity counsels a kind of cultural agnosticism, are of utility only during times of relative homogeneity--and that is hardly what we're suffering now.  Therefore, we concur with Mr. Ryan's conclusion:

The inheritors of any good culture should re-immerse themselves in it, pass it on to their children, and recommend it to others as preferable to many alternative cultures, and especially to the obviously bad cultures. It’s time to start acknowledging and openly discussing the goodness of certain cultures and the badness of others.

The battle of ideas, which is at the core of the debate over the Democrats' attempts to muzzle talk radio hosts, has always been an unsightly affair, punctuated with rhetorical punches below the belt.  Although some debates are gentlemanly and subdued, in many the gloves come off and pyrotechnics reign. 

Indeed, although many polemical pugilists follow the Marquess of Queensbury Rules in such civilized sports as boxing, the same can't be said for political debates, which are a kind of Rugby without rules.  And, it's because liberals have failed to achieve a viable presence on talk radio that they've resorted to below-the-belt punching in their drive to reanimate the so-called 'fairness doctrine.'  If you can't win fairly--which is to say in the marketplace of ideas--just rewrite the rules.

Now, they won't tell us that they want to regulate conservatives off the air.  Rather, they say that in radio markets where there isn't an approximately even share of 'balance,' they would effectively ensure equal footing--which is to say, muscling liberal voices into the mix.  Since Air America, perhaps the most visible attempt at liberal talk radio, is about to emerge from Chapter 11 after a miserable failure, will liberals in Congress be demanding subsidies to impose balance?  We already have one National Public Radio, do we really want The Second Generation?

All Americans should be duly concerned when the government begins to encroach into areas that are the rightful purview of the free market, even under the politically protected guise of 'fairness.'  But, more fundamentally, why should fairness be injected into the rough and tumble world of free speech when it has no business anywhere else in our world?

To wit, liberals seem perfectly comfortable with the unfair way in which the United Nations and World Bank are managed--which is on a par with organized crime.  And, is it fair that welfare became an entitlement draining our public coffers of trillions of dollars since President Johnson's Great Society of 1965?  What about illegal immigration, which costs our nation billions annually?

Those are all accepted by-products of an imperfect world where excuses procreate like rabbits but responsibility is an endangered virtue.  Well, if we can tolerate those brazen examples of unfairness, we can--and ought--to demand the same when we engage in the war of ideas.

There is nothing more cynical than trying to rig a race, but that's precisely what the liberals are doing--and every American with an inkling of the amount of blood we've shed defending free speech should be concerned about that.

Political road maps that have even a modicum of confidence, if not credibility, are as rare as they are unreliable.  That's what makes Eleanor Clift's piece in Newsweek so noteworthy.  With only a glancing fidelity to the real world, she tries to makes the case for her leftist comrades that now is the time to mount a serious challenge to end the war in Iraq.

We begin with a quote from Clift's bible that purports to demonstrate the vulnerability of moderate Republicans:

The voters are almost as furious with the Democrats for their inability to end the Iraq War as they are with President Bush for prolonging it. Democrat Chellie Pingree lost by 16 points when she challenged Maine Republican Susan Collins in 2002. Now Collins, running for re-election in ’08, is on everybody’s endangered list. After much public agonizing, she became one of the four Republicans this week to break with Bush and vote with the Democrats on the war.

We might begin by asking which "voters" Clift is referring to when she conveniently links them with both Democrats and Republicans:  It's a calculated--which is to say, craven--way of suggesting that the inability of the Democrats to end the war is dwarfed by an even larger cohort of voters who are outraged at President Bush's temerity to prolong it.

We turn to Clift's argument that Maine senator Susan Collins--who is the media's canary in the political mine shaft--is on "everybody's endangered list," which presumably realigns the epicenter of the Iraq debate leftward and, in turn, provides the appearance of political momentum, where none is warranted.

In truth, we should be encouraged by the news that Moveon.org's Washington Director, Tom Matzzie

talks regularly with Vietnam War activist Tom Hayden to get his thoughts on how to proceed, and how to avoid pitfalls.

The further left that presumably mainstream Democrats move to achieve political momentum the better for Republicans, and Mr. Hayden, former husband and political ally of Jane Fonda, is evidence that they're approaching uncharted political territory.

Clift finishes with a marvelously predictable analysis that assures skeptical Republicans and die-hard Democrats alike that the left's most primal motivation is political, which is to say, not in America's national strategic interest:

Faced with big losses in ’08, Republicans have to choose their survival over sticking with Bush. To get out from under the political heat, more than their vote has to change.

Although political calculus is vital for the success of any party, in times of national peril the political scoreboard is rarely the best measure of long-term success.  That's why we can thank Eleanor Clift for crafting the image of the Democratic Party as the one most interested in political advantage, even at the cost of national security.

While Republicans are criticized for casting the war in Iraq in simplistic, monochromatic tones, Democrats are chastised for their overly-analyzed, academic nuance that becomes hopelessly lost in the details as it tries to find the perfect algorithm to justify its conclusion that withdrawal is actually a victory.

Always faithful to the Democratic paradigm is Arianna Huffington, writing in her flagship blog, The Huffington Post, who takes up the matter of the recently published National Intelligence Estimate (NIE).  She criticizes Anderson Cooper's AC360 approach to this as yet another attempt to argue that the report is ambiguous when, in her view, it's a glaring condemnation of President Bush's policies.

Cooper presented two sides of both the NIE and the war in Iraq which is anathema to Huffington because it suggests the matter is not as simple as many on the left purport.  On his recent program, General David Grange argued that having Iraq as a magnet for al-Qaeda is favorable since it makes them easier to dispatch, whereas Michael Ware countered, saying it's not a magnet for existing radicals--that we're actually creating a newly minted generation of them.

You might recall a memorandum from former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that questioned whether we had a metric for determining that very question:  Are they producing more jihadists than we're killing?  Ware concludes that "Iraq has been a total disaster, in terms of limiting the number of jihidas."  What Ware, Huffington, et al never take the time to explain is how they would prosecute the jihadis, who thrive in over 65 nations worldwide.  Some mention more troops in Afghanistan, but our military leaders there tell us they have adequate resources.

Indeed, we must make it clear that while the Republicans want to aggressively decimate al-Qaeda as expeditiously as possible--with Iraq being the 'shooting fish in a barrel' example--Democrats are far more focused on whether and to what degree those efforts are creating more of them.  It's the old anecdote from World War Two, we don't want to antagonize Hitler for fear he would retaliate.

Of course, no diatribe from Huffington would be complete without her pet tag line that "the war in Iraq has fueled a growing hatred of America, spread Islamic extremism...", and, of course, the most damning of all, "we have failed to capture bin Laden."  Does anyone recall the failure to capture Hitler a seminal failure of the Roosevelt Administration?  What about our failure to capture the Japanese general, Tojo Hideki?

The unwitting subtext in their complaint that we haven't captured bin Laden is that this is a criminal justice matter, not a war.  Because if they believed this were truly a war, former president Bill Clinton would have eliminated bin Laden in the 90s, since he had the opportunity on at least two occasions.

And, while Huffington and her liberal ilk can preoccupy about why the world hates America, the adults in this administration are more focused on defending our nation using such tools as the NSA's electronic surveillance program, yet another pre-emptive tool the left can't abide.

Academic parlor talk concerning who is spinning what is a luxury for those convinced we're not, in fact, in a war at all--and that's their prerogative.  But for those who see a pattern in the dozens of attacks by Islamic extremists beginning with the attack on our Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, it's a bit more serious than that.

Which makes us conclude that for all the strategic flaws President Bush has made in Iraq, at least we should be thankful that an adult is at the helm.

Although perception and reality are, to a large extent, in the eyes of the beholder, when disparities become sufficiently conspicuous, deniability becomes a both serious challenge and a potential embarrassment.  Talk radio host Hugh Hewitt's interview yesterday with General David Patreaus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, highlights just such a disparity.

Unlike many military commanders, this general brings a remarkable balance of candor and sausion which obliquely compel conclusions refreshingly free of political bias, which is to say, observations that appear accurate and credible.  The picture that emerges is one that is at once complex and fraught with uncertainty, but also, one not without hope--if we can persevere, and that, of course translates into political will.

For those who follow the news and commentary emanating from the left, the war is lost, or hopeless, or both.  We hear the droning drumb-beat of defeatists whose primary goal is a withdrawal timetable without serious consideration of the consequences to the millions of innocent Iraqi citizens, not to mention the fate of the Middle East.

However, as noted above, there also appears to be a slowly evolving disparity between the picture the Democrats paint and the one that is seeping into our living rooms via cable news and such interviews as the one with Gen. Patreaus.  Add to that the real-time reportage from Michael Yon, who brings us contextually accurate and unvarnished analysis, and you begin to see that the left's view of our progress in Iraq is truly jaundiced.

To the degree that these relatively minor voices seep into mainstream thinking it will be difficult for our left-leaning media to ignore them as they meticulously select stories and video footage that merely echo the perception by liberal Democrats' that all is lost.

That may lead to a diminution of unqualified calls for immediate withdrawal from Iraq in the near-term, and, if the news from Gen. Patreaus in September is even mixed--that is, if there is verifiable evidence of substantial progress in degrading the enemy's capabilities--there is at least a chance for longer-term stabilization.  That, in turn, could provide the political process in Iraq the opportunity to move forward, and that would be real cause for celebration.

There are so many unknowns and the risks remain daunting, but Americans who take the time to research the issue can only conclude that the picture is not only different from that painted by the mainstream media, it appears to be improving in ways that are getting difficult for them to ignore.

God forbid that the folks in Peoria found about it, because we might witness a nascent sea change of opinion.  That would mean a clear blue political sky for those invested in victory, and darkening storm clouds for those invested in defeat.

Readers may recall Peter Galbraith, a former U.S. ambassador to Croatia, and currently a senior diplomatic fellow at the Center for Arms Control.  His lengthy piece in Salon, blithely titled The Iraq War is Lost, is worth reading despite its adroit avoidance of the most fundamental rationale for the war:  To wit, that it's the focal point of our global battle against radical Islam.

Democrats who wish to bring an unwarranted credibility to Iraq military strategies that are permutations of a 'phased withdrawal' now use the Lugar-Warner plan as the very quintessence of prudence.  Mr. Galbraith doesn't fail in this regard, quoting Senator Lugar, who states that the U.S. should

...refocus our policy in Iraq on realistic assessments of what can be achieved, and on a sober view of our vital interests in the Middle East.

Galbraith then completes the argument by characterizing U.S. efforts in Iraq as "four years of a war driven more by wishful thinking than by strategy," and calling Lugar's recommendations "hardly a radical idea."  He also uses recent arguments by the Bush Administration and Republican congressional leaders that describe the devastation in Iraq that would follow a U.S. withdrawal as evidence that they themselves believe defeat is inevitable.

This is a perverse kind of logic because the only reason those arguments are being posited is because the war's most fervent defenders are convinced the Democrats believe it's lost, ergo the need to warn the public of the likely aftermath of a premature U.S. departure.  Indeed, the "specter of defeat" Galbraith uses to describe the administration's thinking is merely the penumbra of the left's morbid preoccupation with what they see as a foregone conclusion.

Of course, any argument for appeasement wouldn't be complete without a blanket condemnation of the "surge"--which, in truth is a comprehensive strategic realignment focusing on counter-insurgency--in this case it's Mr. Galbraith's summary accusation that it "has failed to accomplish its political objective."  That, a full month into the initiative.

One of America's enduring virtues is a consensual faith in the innate goodness of this nation, one founded on the notion of universal, God-given freedom.  It's that unyielding notion that the 'common man,' whether he lives in al Anbar province or Indiana, is worthy of democracy, of individual rights, of a chance to live in freedom.  It's those virtues that are the casualties of a divided nation, one where impatience and arm-chair battle fatigue have conspired convince a significant portion of America that victory in Iraq--as evidenced by relative economic and civic stability--is simply not possible.

It's clear from last evening's Senate slumber party that the Democrats don't have the votes to force President Bush's hand in ending the war.  Yet they seem to have begun using a kind of politically regressive approach to dealing with their frustrations, and that is to grandstand and repeat the same feckless accusations. 

For example, yesterday Senator Carl Levin, who is an intelligent and insightful man, chastised the president, stating that America's presence in Iraq has led to an influx of al-Qaeda.  The retired general who was interviewed with him dryly asserted that he would see that as an advantage, since it's far easier to kill them when their in one nation as opposed to trying to do so in dozens of nations around the globe.

There is only one way to win the global war against radical Islam and that is to aggressively pursue and kill them in Iraq, while we train the Iraqi military to assume the defense of their own nation.  The counter-insurgency is beginning to show promise, and perhaps that's why the Democrats are desperate for a quick decision to withdraw.

To the extent it's true, it's an ignoble legacy for a once great political party.

Perhaps the broadest consensus in American politics relative to the military is that it should be civilian led.  Indeed, history provides numerous examples of the fact that, with rare exceptions, civilian managed militaries don't attack other nations for economic gain or to acquire land.  However, if we examine what the critics of the Iraq war are saying a theme emerges, one to which they themselves are oblivious.

A perfect example is Anne Applebaum's piece in Slate which reviews the compendium of options generated from beltway politicians desperately in search of cover to avoid slaughter in the next election.  It's the predictable--which is to say tiresome--amalgam of troop reductions or outright withdrawals, stay the course, or (horrors!) a troop increase.

Completely outside the recognition of Applebaum and the authors of these effete suggestions is a glaring fact:  None is being recommended by an active duty military leader.  Indeed, it's the same view-from-the-beltway perspective on a war that few have taken the time to see firsthand and yet they believe they are eminently qualified to provide summary judgments about its disposition.

Imagine Congress in December 1944, just as the Battle of the Buldge started, debating whether the prospective loss of life was worth the cause.  After all, the war was winding down, most military analysts believed Hitler was doomed to defeat, and indeed, that battle, fought in the Ardennes forest, was his last tactical gasp.  But for our elected officials to take to the podium in the Senate and debate troop strength, or, worse, media gurus, most of whom know more about the mating habits of butterflies than military strategy, is an appalling stupidity only acceptable in our age where the obtuse reign supreme.

Applebaum finishes her exercise in hand-wringing by making an assertion that reflects the low-flow intellectual arguments of the left:

There are no obvious solutions in Iraq, only policy changes that could make some things better and some things worse. Maybe much worse.

The facts on the ground are that General Petraeus' strategy realignment (or what is vaguely called the 'surge') has only been at full strength for about a month.  If you ask Michael Yon, someone who is actually there and who provides accurate daily dispatches, he'll tell you progress is being made, but it is halting and slow.

There will probably come a day when a measure of stability is reached in Iraq, at which time the Democrats may find the political will to admit that decapitating Saddam, eliminating an al-Qaeda presence, and allowing 25 million souls a modicum of the freedoms we so often take for granted, was worth the effort.  Maybe not.

Either way, it will be because President Bush had the wisdom to understand what is at stake, and because he allowed his military commanders the time to do their job.  Neither of which the Democrats--and a growing number of so-called Republicans--seem capable of.

In reading Christopher Hitchen's rebuttal to Michael Gerson's Washington Post editorial concerning the existence of God it's clear that his arguments turn on the way in which historical religious teachings led to the abuse, torture, and murder of innocents.  Implicit in his argument is that religion causes otherwise moral people to act in barbarous ways.  Further, if we credit religion with motivating people to do good, and if some groups such as Hamas, that murder in the name of religion but who also allegedly assist the downtrodden, we must credit all religions.  Really?

Hitchens should tell us why we can't make meaningful distinctions between members of two supposedly religious groups, one whose actions are amoral and the other whose actions are kind and selfless? 

Indeed, arguing that human beings have used Christianity or Islam to justify heinous behavior tells us nothing concerning the whether or not God exists, or whether faith in Him is reasonable or the height of folly.  What it does tell us is that human nature is indelibly stained with primal desires and motivations, some of them laudable others dark and despicable.  By focusing on the latter when arguing against the existence of God all Hitchens is telling us is that human beings have great potential for evil--and that's a revelation?

That takes us to one of Hitchen's presumably insurmountable challenges:

Here is my challenge. Let Gerson name one ethical statement made, or one ethical action performed, by a believer that could not have been uttered or done by a nonbeliever.

It's not ostensibly a trick question yet it does misdirect us into thinking about ways in which an atheist might not be capable of moral behavior and that is the wrong way to frame the issue.  Rather, we would posit a Catholic priest, someone who has lived his entire life in faithful service to his religion and who has ministered to the sick, the poor, and the spiritually destitute.  That priest, unlike the nonbeliever of Hitchens' choice, can make the ethical statement that his life of service to others was a testimony to the greatness of God--and therein lies the crux.

One of the touchstones of a religious person is that he's enjoined to do the right thing even--or especially--when no one is observing him.  Why?  Because God commands it and we believe God is aware, in some way we can never comprehend so long as we breathe, of whether or not we decide good over evil.  There is no corollary motivation compelling the atheist to choose good over evil when no one is watching because he doesn't believe God is watching.  Therefore, although some atheists might choose good over evil simply because they are disciplined to do so, on balance fewer would because our instinct to give in to base self-interest overrides most people's sense of secular moral certitude.

For those who have read philosophy, from the pre-Socratics all the way through Berkeley, Hume, Kant and into the 19th century's Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, and the 20th century's Russell, A.J. Ayer, and others too numerous to mention, it's axiomatic that the putative existence of God can not be empirically demonstrated.  Intersperse throughout those names those of St. Anselm, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and take it right into the 20th century with such religious titans as C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton, and you have powerful intellects who argued that God does, in fact, exist, but none of them proved it.

What they did is to use the exquisitely nuanced nature of our intellect, our reasoning, and our expansive capacity for goodness, to craft arguments predicated on a faith in something greater than ourselves, something that doesn't merely satisfy a timeless yearning, but which makes demands of us well beyond the materialist world of the atheist.

In doing so it has the potential to create in each of us a nearly limitless repository of decency, of goodness, and, ultimately, the kind of selflessness that improves the lives of those around us, such that each of us can honestly say, "God is the animating influence in my life."

The questions Hitchens must answer is why an atheist would feel compelled to act as selflessly as a theist when not doing so is at once less demanding and more convenient?  And, crucially, on a battlefield, why would an atheist risk his life for a fellow soldier or Marine since he doesn't believe in the hereafter.  Indeed, there is a linear relationship between selflessness and fervency of belief in God, and, for obvious reasons, the atheist is far less inclined to make that assertion.