Cee-Gars To Be Handed Out

[Chap]

...over here.

Joint Chiefs #2?

[Chap]

No DoD report, but the local paper says Cartwright in for Giambastiani.

Defending San Francisco

[Lex]

Plus ça change:

The annual aerial show by the U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels — a San Francisco tradition dating back to 1981 that pumps millions into the local economy — is running into opposition from three local peace advocacy groups that are calling for a permanent halt to the popular Fleet Week flyover.

CodePink, Global Exchange and Veterans for Peace, Chapter 69, are working with Supervisor Chris Daly on a Board of Supervisors resolution to address concerns over the Blue Angels.

Daly acknowledged he is considering a call to halt the flyovers because, he said, “they seem dangerous and unnecessary.” Daly said he plans on introducing the resolution as early as Tuesday, but is still drafting the language. A resolution is not legally binding, but states a board position.

We get paid to defend San Francisco. It’s our job.

The rest of the country?

We’re doing that for free.

Killing Fields

[Dadmanly]

The New York Times published an Op Ed yesterday, written by Peter Rodman and William Shawcross, with the evocative title Defeat’s Killing Fields.

Rodman and Shawcross make a cause and effect comparison between Vietnam and Iraq and warn that Defeat in Iraq, as it did in Vietnam, will have disastrous consequences:

SOME opponents of the Iraq war are toying with the idea of American defeat. A number of them are simply predicting it, while others advocate measures that would make it more likely. Lending intellectual respectability to all this is an argument that takes a strange comfort from the outcome of the Vietnam War. The defeat of the American enterprise in Indochina, it is said, turned out not to be as bad as expected. The United States recovered, and no lasting price was paid.

We beg to differ. Many years ago, the two of us clashed sharply over the wisdom and morality of American policy in Indochina, especially in Cambodia. One of us (Mr. Shawcross) published a book, “Sideshow,” that bitterly criticized Nixon administration policy. The other (Mr. Rodman), a longtime associate of Henry Kissinger, issued a rebuttal in The American Spectator, defending American policy. Decades later, we have not changed our views. But we agreed even then that the outcome in Indochina was indeed disastrous, both in human and geopolitical terms, for the United States and the region. Today we agree equally strongly that the consequences of defeat in Iraq would be even more serious and lasting.

For such as need the lesson in latter half 20th century American History – and many rhetorical opponents of our efforts in Iraq surely need one – Rodman and Shawcross patiently explain exactly the catastrophe our abandonment made of Vietnam.

(More excerpts and commentary back at Dadmanly.)

Democracy in Prague

[Dadmanly]

Michael Rubin writing on The Corner a few days back reported that the participants of the Prague “Democracy and Security Conference” issued a Prague Document. Contributors included former Czech President Vaclav Havel, famed Soviet dissident and Israeli Parliamentarian Natan Sharansky, and former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, and the document was immediately lauded by President Bush.

Rubin noted the following points:

1. To demand the immediate release of all non violent political prisoners in their respective countries
2. Instructing diplomatic emissaries to non-democratic countries to actively and openly seek out meetings with political prisoners and dissidents committed to building free societies through non-violence.
4. Raising the question of human rights in all meetings with officials of non-democratic regimes.
5. Seeking national and international initiatives, in the spirit of the Helsinki Accords, that link bilateral and international relations to the question of human rights.
8. Isolating and ostracizing governments and groups that suppress their peaceful domestic opponents by force, violence, or intimidation.
9. Isolating and ostracizing governments and groups that threat other countries and peoples with genocide or annihilation.

Oh, Rubin also has something to say to those who pretend to care about human rights and “prisoners of conscience” the world over:

Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, European Union, Middle East Studies Association, BBC: Your silence is deafening.

The more I reflect on this document, the more it reminds me of former President Carter’s attempt to premise much of US foreign policy on human rights, an exercise of quixotic proportions often viewed by conservatives as naïve.

Aside from what anyone might think of such attempts to isolate and ostracize dictatorships through moral condemnation, it amazes me that President Bush has formulated one of the most idealistic foreign policies of the past 100 years. What irony that many of those who most denigrate the Carter Presidency for naïve idealism so strongly support President Bush and his more “assertive” attempts to promote democracy. Likewise, note how those who should be Bush’s allies internationally rather condemn and excoriate him, and elevate Carter as a sage.

The many inconstant on Left and Right pick their heroes and villains first, and then justify their passions. There no doubt is some ancient term for such phenomena.

(Cross-posted at Dadmanly)