Soccer Dad: Submitted 04/02/08

April 2, 2008

Submitted 04/02/08

The Watcher's Council nominations are up!

Let me go out of order this week and welcome new council member Hillbilly White Trash to our lineup. He leads off this week with The Moral Blindness of the Left in which he excoriates the media (specifically Jonathan Alter plus others) for whitewashing the misdeeds of Sen. Clinton.
Or Not - Done With Mirrors runs through a list of events that happened in Iraq - or not. I still haven't got a handle in the recent Sadr-Maliki conflict. I've seen that Sadr surrendered, that the surrender was engineered by Iran and that Maliki surrendered. Or not.
CD22 Runoff -- Shelly Sekula Gibbs Vs. Pete Olson - Rhymes With Right writes a brief for Shelley Sekula Gibbs the candidate for what was Tom DeLay's seat in the Republican primary. Still he'd even prefer Pete Olson over the incumbent, Nick Lampson. Speaking of political races, Joshua Sharf of View from a Height (who won the non-council competition a few months ago) is running for Colorado's state legislature.
Black Liberation Theology - Supposedly Sen. Obama has initiated the all-important "conversation about race" in our country. What the MSM have ignored is why racism is not unacceptable when adopted by Blacks. Joshuapundit addresses this, offers a credible explanation of what Sen. Obama was doing in Trinity United, and why it's not an entirely credible excuse:

Political life in black America is centered around churches, and Obama had political ambitions. Trinity United happens to be Chicago's largest and most politically active black church, and as a black man in that part of Chicago with political ambitions, it may be that he merely used the Trinity United Church of Christ as a political stepping-stone for his election to the Illinois State Senate.

On the other hand, he and his wife have been active members for two decades, and have a long standing close personal relationship with Jeremiah Wright..or as Obama himself put it, this racist and anti-Semite is `like family.' Even more damning as far as I'm personally concerned is that he allowed his children to listen to and be indoctrinated by Wright during their formative years. One customarily doesn't do that with one's children unless one agrees with what is being taught on a deep level.

It's an excellent brief on the issue Black Liberation Theology.
Interpreting the Events In Basra - The Glittering Eye casts a jaundiced eye on the Sadr/Maliki rift and sees it as more of a power play by Maliki than an attempt to restore order.
The Repeated Historical Falsehood - The Colossus of Rhodey writes that the historical truth of the Tuskegee experiment was bad enough, there's no need to (and it is indeed unhelpful to) enhance it with false details.
The Messiah-Shtick - Bookworm Room debunks the Obama as Messiah phenomenon. I know that description doesn't quite do it justice, but it was as succinct as I could be.
Another UN Obscenity (Updated) - Wolf Howling criticized the UN Human Rights Commission for whitewashing Wahhabism and the Bush administration for failing to confront the issue.
'Tis The Season For Parents and Kids To Be Scammed - The Education Wonks takes issue the "Who's Who ..." industry that has developed to separate parents from their hard earned money to see their children mentioned in books. Confession: some 30 years ago my parents bought one of these books. It was flattering for me. But it didn't take too long before I wondered what was the point.
Answering Yasmine - Cheat Seeking Missiles responds to a convert to Islam.
Can We Just Walk Away From Iraq? - Right Wing Nut House writes not right now, but as the situation changes and it becomes clearer that the American presence isn't helping, it might be time to consider such.
Sticks and Stones - I wrote about yesterday's article in which Steven Erlanger, on his way home after a number of years as the NYT correspondent in Jerusalem, wrote well about the incitement (called "insults" in the headline) of Hamas against Jews. Still it was disappointing that a subtext of the articles was that he was whitewashing Fatah at the same time.

My nomination for the non-council post was NY Times Reporters Try To Defend Grave Mistake -- Of Course Fail by The Strata-Sphere, a long post critiquing reporter Eric Lichtblau's coverage of FISA.

Wolf Howling and JoshuaPundit have also reviewed the Council posts.

UPDATE: While it doesn't necessarily bear on the subject of whether or not the United States should have invaded Iraq, Right Wing News reminds us what kind of psychopath Saddam (and Uday and Qusay) was. More on topic though, is Austin Bay's take on the Sadr/Maliki showdown in which he was more positive than either the Glittering Eye or Right Wing Nuthouse.

Saddam's old cohorts managed to convince themselves that if they spread enough money around, killed enough people and hammered the U.S. electorate with bloody headlines the United States would leave and the Iraqi government would eventually collapse -- and they would return to power. Saddam's capture, trial and execution has all but snuffed out the old-line Baathists. Recall Maliki stoutly defended his decision to carry out the court's sentence of capital punishment. He bet with Saddam dead the tyrant's cult of personality would wither. It has.

Al-Qaida pursued the same strategy of blood for headlines. Al-Qaida in Iraq tried to ignite a sectarian war -- its now-dead emir, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, made that goal explicit in February 2004. Al-Qaida massacred en masse, to the point that U.S. Sen. Harry Reid (D for Defeatist) declared the war in Iraq lost. Then, the Sunni tribes in Anbar turned on al-Qaida. Sunni political integration is by no means complete, but al-Qaida has failed.

Now the Shia-led Iraqi government focuses on its chief Shia nemesis. How the Iraqi government handles Sadr matters. In August 2004, Sadr's thugs grabbed the Grand Mosque in Najaf. Sadr was counting on Americans to bomb the mosque. The United States opted to follow the political lead of Shia Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Sistani's aides told coalition officers: "Let us deal with Sadr. We know how to handle him and will do so. However, the coalition must not make him a martyr."

The Iraqi way often appears to be indecisive, until you learn to look at its counter-insurgency methods in the frame of achieving political success, instead of the frame of American presidential elections.

Read, Enjoy. Be Informed.

watcher's council.