In the wake of the recent leak and subsequent media misrepresentations of the most recent National Intelligence Estimate, it's been made abundantly clear that there are many who fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the war we are fighting.

Democrats and other critics think Iraq was a distraction from the true threat.  They believe this because they think we are at war with Osama bin Laden or Al Qaeda.  We are not.  Al Qaeda is an enemy, but they are not the war.

When Japan launched a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt did not respond with a declaration of war on the Japanese navy.  Nor did he limit his efforts to only those generals directly involved in the attack.  He declared war on Japan.

President Bush was right not to focus our response exclusively on Al Qaeda.  Al Qaeda is a subset of the enemy; just one tool amongst many that they use to advance their cause.  The true enemy is violent Islamic Jihad.  This is why the Democrats are wrong to think our efforts should be limited to only those directly involved in 9/11.

President Bush recognized this larger threat immediately.  It is this threat which the Bush Doctrine is designed to combat.  President Bush believes that in order to defeat Islamic Jihad, the absolute authority that virulent propaganda has in Middle East must be eroded.  The Bush Doctrine is the belief that the establishment of representative governments with personal and economic freedom provides our best chance to achieve this goal.  I believe it as well.  By it's nature, however, the success of the Bush Doctrine will be indeterminate for some time, possibly a generation.

In order to defeat an enemy, one must know the enemy.  Violent Islamic Jihad is itself a subset of a larger group, that of Islam as a whole.  But the whole of Islam is not our enemy, rather it is a fraction of the whole that seeks to spread Sharia law, through violence and intimidation, across the world.  They believe the world is Islamic and all that's needed is the elimination or subjugation of the infidels for their Islamic world to be realized.

We should not kid ourselves as to their religious faith.  Their interpretation of their faith is just as legitimate as that of those who do not wage violent jihad.  We do no one any favors by continually trying to deny that fact.  Instead, what we must do is embrace it.

We need to do more to encourage Muslims who do not support this radical agenda to speak up for and defend their interpretations.  As it is now, many within Islam have their heads in the sand.  They insist the jihadists have no basis for their beliefs, and so they refuse to engage them. Instead of simply allowing them to deny that they have any obligation to defend Islam, we must take a firm stance and demand their vocal support.

When democrats and other critics complain that Iraq has made more jihadists, they expose their ignorance of the enemy we face.  Those jihadists have been in the making for decades.  They have been exposed to virulent propaganda since birth.  Any efforts we make will be exploited by the enemy to motivate those they have spent so much effort making predisposed to violent jihad.  That fact is not a reason to quit fighting. 

We must keep our eyes on the prize.  A world without violent Islamic Jihad can be realized, but it will come only after the slow and steady implementation of the Bush Doctrine.  This will require a level of resolve that has not been asked of us in generations, if ever.  Yet we must remain firm, as the alternative is too horrible to contemplate.

See this post and more at Conservative Compendium.

Wars are filled with tough decisions, both tactically and morally.  In order to defeat the Confederacy, General Sherman's "March to the Sea" sought to break the enemy militarily, economically and psychologically.  The results of this march included the near complete destruction of Atlanta.

During WWII, in an effort to hamper German communications and prevent reinforcement of their eastern front, the allied forces firebombed Dresden.  

In order to avoid a ground invasion of Japan that would cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, the US ended the pacific war by dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Whether or not these actions were justified are positions which reasonable people can disagree.  What is clear, however, is that wars have historically been fought by people willing to make tough decisions in order to achieve victory.  Unfortunately, our current crop of leaders seem incapable of even considering the merits of such decisions today.

Of course, the enemy we face today operates in a different manner than the enemies we've fought and defeated in the past.  This enemy is an idealogy, not a specific state.  It has little infrastructure to target.  Its only significant vulnerability (beyond the little bit of infrastructure that has been targeted; is the knowledge specific leaders have regarding their cells and plans.

Given this knowledge, the prudent course of action would be to immediately determine how far we are willing to go to get that information.  But that requires an honest debate, conducted in good faith, within the public sphere.  Neither parties leaders seem willing to have such a debate openly and honestly.  

The Bush administration has been reluctant to make its case clearly to the public.  The administrations opponents have been too willing to demagogue the issue with indiscriminate and faulty use of inflammatory words like "torture".  

What exactly constitutes "torture" is a point of debate, as the definition is subjective.  But the opposition skips right over the definition and hopes you'll accept their assumptions on faith.  But does slapping a terrorist in the face to get his attention really constitute torture?  Critics want you to think so.  Most Americans would probably not be persuaded by such an argument.  The most serious technique our interrogators wish to employ is that of waterboarding.  That's where the subject is made to think he is drowning and death is imminent, though he is never in any physical danger.  But we'll never know precisely what the public thinks of these things since the public debate has been demagogued beyond recognition and few public officials seem to have the guts to state their position clearly and unequivocally.

Others, most likely the strongly religious, may find moral objection to any coercive interrogation techniques, whether they constitute torture or not.  Making the argument that a terrorist in captivity is incapable of harm, they believe that to bring them any amount of harm beyond that absolutely necessary to keep the terrorist from presenting a threat to civilians, such as imprisonment, would be immoral.  

I do not agree.  I find the underlying assumption of that position, that a terrorist locked away in prison is no longer a cause of harm, to be faulty.  A prisoner may no longer be capable of picking up a gun and shooting someone, but they can still do harm in their choices. If they have knowledge of the harm their companions are meaning to carry out and they choose not to divulge it, that choice is as much an act of aggression upon us as if they were out doing it themselves.

The individual's very silence about their known terrorist cohorts and their plans is a harm upon me and my countrymen. Given the scope of the attacks they wish to carry out, I find it morally unacceptable to not do everything in our power to get that information in order to protect those targeted by the terrorists. This is especially true when that knowledge constitutes the primary means by which to defeat an enemy that doesn't rely on railroads, airports, factories or other easy to bomb targets.  Their blatant and deliberate targeting of civilians serves to erase any remaining moral qualms I might have to putting known terrorists in unpleasant situations in order to learn what they know.

Sadly, even as legislation is being considered, few seem willing to consider the tough choices in front of our generation.  The leaders of previous generations had the guts to risk the deaths of thousands of civilians, rightly or wrongly, in order to protect many more Americans.  Today's leaders apparently lack the courage to even consider risking harm to a handful of known terrorists in order to protect thousands of American civilians.  And that's truly a shame.

See this post and more at Conservative Compendium.

As most everyone in the world has heard by now, thanks to the tireless efforts of the media liberal spinmeisters, some snippets from the National Intelligence Estimate were leaked a few days ago by an individual (or individuals) with an apparent anti-Bush agenda. 

The response to this leak was rather inevitable, as the administration has now moved to declassify and release some conclusions from the report in an effort to combat the news misrepresentations. 

In so far as the newly released judgements support the Bush Doctrine ("Greater pluralism and more responsive political systems in Muslim majority nations would alleviate some of the grievances jihadists exploit. Over time, such progress, together with sustained, multifaceted programs targeting the vulnerabilities of the jihadist movement and continued pressure on al-Qa’ida, could erode support for the jihadists."), it's reasonable to believe this whole episode will be a plus, rather than the intended minus, for the Bush administration.  In addition, the issue keeps the election focus on the war on terror.

It is for this reason that I am now predicting that many on the left, particularly in the blogosphere, will attribute the original leak to their ubernemesis, Karl Rove.  They will claim that if the original leak never happened, Bush would not have had the pretext to declassify parts of the report.  Thanks to the leak, conveniently made right before election time, the administration was able to justify releasing selected portions of the report.  And, once again, the inept attempts at sabotage from some leftist will blow up in the Democrats face, and Karl Rove will get the credit.

Related Post: New York Times Misses Mark On NIE Report

See this post and more at Conservative Compendium.

According to a new Gallop poll, 42% percent of Americans admit to being dumber than a rock. Er, I mean, 42% of Americans think conspiracy behind gas price drop.

It's not just the bloggers suggesting that the 66-cent drop in the average pump price over the past seven weeks to $2.38 per gallon is thanks to the collusion of former oilmen President Bush and Vice President Cheney and their Big Oil buddies. (Bloggers advancing this theory include Long Delayed Echoes, NH Insider, Various Miseries, and The "What Do I Know Grit.") A Gallup Poll found that 42 percent of the public thinks the Bush administration is deliberately manipulating the price. As plausible as that scenario apparently seems, energy analysts nevertheless deem it impossible.

The wave of ignorance that has swept over this country, thanks to massive failures in the media to report based on rationality instead of political hysteria, would be laughable if it weren't so depressingly dangerous. When reporters label massive market conspiracies to manipulate prices for a commodity where no one has the market power to much effect the price of trading as "plausible" instead of the more accurate description of "retarded", it's little surpise that the public is this ignorant.

It certainly begs the question, plausible to whom? Five year olds? In a sane world, that's what one would think. Apparently, however, it's plausible to all known victims of Bush Derangement Syndrome. All 42% of them.

American college and university students, supposed to be the best and the brightest, are unable to pass simple test on core American knowledge.

Freshmen and seniors at 50 of the nation's colleges and universities were asked 60 multiple choice questions about America's history and government, its relationship to the rest of the world and the market economy in a survey done by the University of Connecticut's Department of Public Policy on behalf of the conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI).

. . .Among the findings in the report are:

• Less than half of the college seniors surveyed recognized the phrase "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" as originating from the Declaration of Independence;


• Roughly 80 percent of college seniors were unaware that the federal government's largest payout is for social security; and


• Even with their country at war in Iraq, fewer than half of the seniors (45.2 percent) could identify the Baath Party as the main source of Saddam Hussein's political support. In fact, 12.2 percent believed that Hussein found his most reliable supporters in the Communist Party, and almost 5.7 percent said Israel.

. . .Lesser-known colleges such as Rhodes College, Calvin College and Grove City College ranked at the top of ISI's list, but at many of the nation's most prestigious universities, including Brown University, Yale University and Georgetown University, seniors know less than freshmen about America's history, government, foreign affairs and economy.

"This phenomenon is 'negative learning,'" said Bunting. "We were stunned to find that a majority of the 16 schools where negative learning occurred are considered to be among the most prestigious colleges in the United States."

It shouldn't come as any surprise to learn that these big, liberal institutions are not teaching about America. Unfortunately, the left's anti-American principles have so penetrated these institutions that many are actually exhibiting "negative" learning. Given the rhetoric of modern liberalism, it's not hard to see why.

The history of America disgusts them. They don't see a rare congregation of political genuises that led to this glorious bastion of freedom. They see an oppressive, imperialistic conglomerate of evil, capitalist exploiters. They carry this historic guilt with them wherever they go, blaming all the worlds ills on the American system. Many of these people are employed as college professors, where they spread their filth to future generations.

But something must be done about this tragic ignorance of America's most basic systems. Otherwise, the lefts American deprecation will continue to fester until the public is no longer capable of actively sustaining our fragile balance of freedom and prosperity.

See this post and more at Conservative Compendium.

The New York Times is gleefully reporting on a yet to be released National Intelligence Estimate supposedly attributing rising global jihad to the Iraq war.

A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.

The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.

Absent from the NYT's report, however, is any semblance of logic. Captain Ed of Captain's Quarters correctly points out the article's fallacies:

It makes the classic logical fallacy of confusing correlation with causation, and the basic premise can easily be dismissed with a reminder of some basic facts.

First and foremost, Islamist radicalism didn't just start expanding in 2003. The most massive expansion of Islamist radicalism came after the end of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, when the Islamists defeated one of the world's superpowers. Shortly afterwards, the staging of American forces in Saudi Arabia to drive Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait created the most significant impulse for the expansion of organized Islamist radicalism and led directly to the formation of al-Qaeda. It put the US in Wahhabi jihadist crosshairs for the first time.

Of course there has been an increase in jihadist activities since Iraq. But, as Captain Ed points out, correlation is not causation. And in this particular case, the cause lies in the fundamental nature of the enemy we are fighting, not in the actions we have taken to combat them. The competency to which we have carried out that action is another question, however.

If I place a lamp over the edge of a table and leave it perilously close to falling over the edge - knowing full well that any disturbance will cause it to fall and break - is the next person who walks into the room and causes it to fall the one to blame, or am I?

Radical Islamic Jihad ideology has been bombarded upon the populations of the Middle East for decades now. A primary part of that ideological assault is the assertion that the West, specifically the US, is determined to destroy Islam and conquer all the countries in the Middle East.

Some think this is reason for us not to take any action that could possibly be interpreted in that manner. The assumption behind that position - that the radicals rely on even the tiniest bit of truth in order to spread their filth - is fatally flawed. They have such total control over the media that they can claim any manner of outlandish nonsense and it will be believed. These people get on national television and claim that jews kill children and use their blood for passover. Any belief that these people rely on us actually doing what they claim we are doing in order to convince their public it is so should be dropped.

The brainwashing applied to these people since birth has put them in a position where they are ready to believe any aggressive Western action is a new crusade. It is that indoctrination that is to blame for knocking them over the edge, not our efforts to combat them. And that is where this report (or more likely, the NYT's account of this report) misses the mark.

The enemy has ingeniously designed a system in which our efforts to fight back results in an increase of their numbers. They rely on that fact to paralyze us into inaction, hoping that our resolve will waver and they will be allowed to operate virtually unimpeded, as they did all through the 90's. But we must continue on until we have eliminated the true cause, the stranglehold that virulent Islamic Jihad has on their media and culture. Expecting the enemy to just roll over as a response to our efforts is foolish and naive.

See this post and more at Conservative Compendium.