Category: Politics

Time, the once-great magazine that has shrunk to 12 pages a week, has an interview with Madeleine Albright on the occasion of her new book. Like every memoir by a former Clintonoid, I won’t read it — I tend to shy away from fiction — so I rely on articles and reviews to tell me what to think of it.
Reading the interview, I thought, “Was tact a disqualification for a job in the Clinton administration?” I don’t recall anyone from Bush the Elder’s gang going out of their way to trash the Clintons; maybe there were a few, but they didn’t make themselves as obnoxious as these people. We’re not just talking about mid-level appointees trying to make a name for themselves, we’re talking about cabinet members all the way up to Bill and his lovely wife, Bruno.
Back to Madame Albright: the interview is very short, but it’s packed with howlers, such as “President Clinton focused on terrorism from the start,” and “Frankly, if there was a President Gore, we wouldn’t be in this particular mess.” There are several other questionable statements, like “Iraq is in fact a breeding ground for terrorists” (more accurately, it’s a magnet for terrorists as few of them seem to be homegrown.)
One nasty answer particularly stood out —

(Q) Bush’s foreign policy started as “Anything But Clinton” in almost every area—the Middle East, North Korea, China. Now events have pushed it back much closer to your approach. Do you ever succumb to schadenfreude?
(A) No, I’m much too kind and generous a person.

Because I’m kind and generous myself, I will not point out that Madame Albright looks like Ursula the Sea Witch from “The Little Mermaid.” Instead, I will let you decide.

Uncanny, isn’t it?
(Original joke made in 1997 by Steve Schultz when Albright was named secretary of state. Photos edited by me. Original photos (c) ???? whoever owns them.)

Michelle Malkin has a dead-on column about all the people who are impeding the war on terror at the local, state, and federal level. I would disagree that their resistance constitutes “spitting on their graves,” but it does endanger the living.
Last night on PBS (yes, I do watch PBS on rare occasions) they had a BBC special on Sept. 11, focusing on the government response to it. One of the things the Federal government did was seal the borders. I thought, “If they can seal the borders for one day, why couldn’t they do it every day?” They must have meant closing down border crossings. Whatever they did, two of the most significant things we could do are to seal the borders against illegal aliens, and deport illegal aliens who are here, with a high priority placed on countries that export crops of terrorists (Saudi Arabia, Syria, Colombia).
Neither one is going to happen, because the Bush administration doesn’t have the guts to stand up to the Diversity Uber Alles crowd. That virtually ensures another terrorist attack from foreigners. For the sake of their own sense of moral superiority, the Left, along with far too many irresponsible folks on the Right, has decided that any new law-enforcement measure is ipso facto one more move toward a police state. No matter how innocuous the plan, such as classifying air passengers by the risk they pose, the reaction is the same as if the feds abolished the Bill of Rights.
Some people apparently think that law enforcement is like a sport, and neither team should have a particular advantage over the other one. Like I said, this silliness isn’t limited to the Left.

David A. Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, worries that the computer screening program will go beyond its original goals. “This system is not designed just to get potential terrorists,” Keene said. “It’s a law enforcement tool. The wider the net you cast, the more people you bring in.”

Aaack! The cops might catch MORE CRIMINALS! Why, if this plan goes through, CRIMINALS MIGHT NOT EVEN TRAVEL BY PLANE ANYMORE! How will they get to visit their relatives in other states? Let us rend our garments.
(Our bishops aren’t too helpful here. Has anyone seen a statement from any U.S. prelate with even the mildest rebuke for immigration violators? Everything I’ve seen from the bishops says that all of our immigration laws are immoral, more or less.)
I’ve been mentally preparing an essay called “The emerging anti-anti-terrorism,” about the backlash against the war on terror. So much of this new phenomenon is identified as anti-war or anti-Bush activity, but we’re seeing an intellectual movement that is rapidly becoming an ideology. Just as the premise of anti-anti-Communism was that Americans had an “inordinate fear of Communism,” as Jimmy “Ask Me about My Foreign Policy Successes!” Carter put it, anti-anti-terrorists don’t think that terrorism poses a particular threat to the U.S., or at least not one we ought to get excited about. We’ll see if I get around to writing it. (Not that you probably care too much — I’m throwing it out there to see if it sounds interesting to anyone.)

[I typed a response to something Mark Shea posted, and I realized it was long enough to make it blog-worthy.]
…The Pope asks, “When will these conflicts cease? When will people finally see a reconciled world? We will not facilitate the peace process by allowing, with guilty indifference, injustice and to prosper in our planet.”
The alternative to going to war with Iraq was to let Saddam’s regime in place, free to murder political opponents, imprison the innocent, and instill a generalized terror into the population. Leaving aside whether it was ultimately prudent to go to war against Iraq — the answer to that question will become clearer with the passage of time — it was a net advance for the causes of human freedom and worldly justice.
I say this with sadness, because my deep regard for this pope was one of the factors in my conversion to Catholicism, but if the U.S. and U.K. had followed his advice (and that of the majority of the world’s bishops), the mass killings, unjust imprisonments, and general terror would still be in place in Iraq. Qusay would have succeeded Saddam, and this wretchedness would proceed for another generation.
I agree that the world, and particularly the West, is in the grip of a Culture of Death. I agree that we suffer from amnesia about our human nature and relationship to God. I agree that the key to renewing the world is to dedicate ourselves to Jesus Christ and live as he would have us live. In short, I agree with the Holy Father’s critique of the West.
However, in this matter, I believe that the war was justified on humanitarian grounds alone. The weak are not preyed upon by the strong, and the guiltless prisoners are out of their jails. A massively corrupt government no longer threatens its neighbors. Isn’t that enough?

This is Alex Cassar. Alex is the VP of the Family Coalition Party. Earlier today, Alex stopped by Catholic Light and kindly clarified his party’s platform about lowering taxation for families. (The FCP is the party for which our very own John Pacheco from St Blog’s is running.) So why aren’t you running Alex? You would make a good candidate yourself!

The Santa Cruz, California city council, a dues-paying corporate member of the Loony Left, weighs in with a proposal to impeach President Bush. Is it for lying under oath? Trying to suppress evidence in a civil trial? Suborning perjury? No, he apparently “violated international treaties by going to war in Iraq, and that the president manipulated public fears to justify the war and undercut Constitutional rights.”
If “manupulating public fears” is an impeachable offense, then no Democrat is fit to serve in Congress, because every two years they try to scare old people into thinking the Republicans are going to take away their Social Security and Medicare. Also, the U.S. has never signed an international treaty precluding it from making war; if that happened, it didn’t make the headlines.
This “movement” was founded by a University of Illinois law professor named Francis Boyle. He comments, “President Bush wants to waste another $87 billion in Iraq….That could pay for a lot of stop signs in Santa Cruz.” Or psychiatric hospitals, which are in perpetual short supply in the Golden State.