Steven DenBeste:

But out of love for the Iraqi people, the peace demonstrators want that regime to continue to brutalize the Iraqi people, and for those in the north and south who currently are not within Saddam's power to become subject to it. (And love will prevail, because after Saddam's secret police and informants regain control over the Kurds and Shiites, they too will start proclaiming in public how much they love and admire Saddam.)

If that's love, I'd prefer to have these peace demonstrators hate me.

(Oh, it's OK, Steven, I'm sure they do.)

Steyn on Women's Issues:

Remind me never to complain about ''liberal media bias'' again. Right now, liberal media bias is conspiring to assist the Democrats to sleepwalk over the cliff.

Chuck Colson on yet another Florida stupidity.

Instapundit:

Were it really to become all-out war of the sort that Osama and his ilk want, the likely result would be genocide -- unavoidable, and provoked, perhaps, but genocide nonetheless, akin to what Rome did to Carthage, or to what Americans did to American Indians. That's what happens when two societies can't live together, and the weaker one won't stop fighting -- especially when the weaker one targets the civilians and children of the stronger. This is why I think it's important to pursue a vigorous military strategy now. Because if we don't, the military strategy we'll have to follow in five or ten years will be light-years beyond "vigorous."

The Daily Mirror, of all places, on Sept. 11:

A little over half a century ago, around half a million Americans died for our freedoms, as well as their own. Have we forgotten so soon?

And exactly a year ago, thousands of ordinary men, women and children - not just Americans, but from dozens of countries - were butchered by a small group of religious fanatics. Are we so quick to betray them?
....
The anti-American alliance is made up of self-loathing liberals who blame the Americans for every ill in the Third World, and conservatives suffering from power-envy, bitter that the world's only superpower can do what it likes without having to ask permission.

The truth is that America has behaved with enormous restraint since September 11.

Remember, remember.
...
Remember the gut-wrenching tapes of weeping men phoning their wives to say, "I love you," before they were burned alive. Remember those people leaping to their deaths from the top of burning skyscrapers.

Remember the hundreds of firemen buried alive. Remember the smiling face of that beautiful little girl who was on one of the planes with her mum. Remember, remember - and realise that America has never retaliated for 9/11 in anything like the way it could have.
...
AMERICA could have turned a large chunk of the world into a parking lot. That it didn't is a sign of strength.
....
When the news of 9/11 broke on the West Bank, those freedom-loving Palestinians were dancing in the street. America watched all of that - and didn't push the button. We should thank the stars that America is the most powerful nation in the world. I still find it incredible that 9/11 did not provoke all-out war. Not a "war on terrorism". A real war.

The fundamentalist dudes are talking about "opening the gates of hell", if America attacks Iraq. Well, America could have opened the gates of hell like you wouldn't believe.
...
But don't blame America for not bringing peace and light to these wretched countries. How many democracies are there in the Middle East, or in the Muslim world? You can count them on the fingers of one hand - assuming you haven't had any chopped off for minor shoplifting.

I love America, yet America is hated. I guess that makes me Bush's poodle. But I would rather be a dog in New York City than a Prince in Riyadh. Above all, America is hated because it is what every country wants to be - rich, free, strong, open, optimistic.

Not ground down by the past, or religion, or some caste system. America is the best friend this country ever had and we should start remembering that.

Or do you really think the USA is the root of all evil? Tell it to the
loved ones of the men and women who leaped to their death from the burning towers.

Tell it to the nursing mothers whose husbands died on one of the hijacked planes, or were ripped apart in a collapsing skyscraper.

And tell it to the hundreds of young widows whose husbands worked for the New York Fire Department. To our shame, George Bush gets a worse press than Saddam Hussein.
...
Remember, remember, September 11. One of the greatest atrocities in human history was committed against America.

No, do more than remember. Never forget.

Lileks:

Let’s not minimize what his reappearance might mean, but let’s not overexaggerate it either. Even if a volley of Predators converts Al Qaeda’s leadership into bouncing chunks of sand sushi, it still won’t remove the threat. After the Holy Army of Islam is defeated, well, say hello to the Army of Holy Islam. (Which may or may not be working with the Islamic Holy Army.) This is going to take a while. Destroy a worldwide network, and you’ll still have six guys capable of driving a fertilizer bomb up to the Nebraska State Capitol and reaping worldwide headlines.

Tom Holsinger:

The Bush Administration’s neglect of these issues is, however, a potential threat to its goals and existence, and unjustifiable given the heroic events on United Airlines Flight 93. The latter and the atavistic public response to it – expressed in a spontaneously created shrine at the crash site – was unmistakable proof that some exceptionally powerful American traditions remain very close to the surface.
...
Terrorist suicide attacks could get us into that dark place again. The possibility of genocidal events in the war on terror should not be dismissed given these similarities - few in 1939 perceived 1945.

The tradition epitomized by Flight 93 is quite different and 2500 years older - of classic Western Civilization at its dawn – free citizens who, together, comprise their “polis” and defend it with their individual lives as the expression of their corporate selves. This tradition has and does lie closer to the surface in America than elsewhere in the West due to a combination of deeper traits in American nationalism - self-reliance, individualism, etc.

The most common expressions of America's version of this Western tradition have been voluntary associations to defend against community threats, both temporary (posses & vigilantes) and organized - militias and volunteer firemen. Flight 93 showed that such associations arise from deeply held American traits and can be aroused in ordinary Americans by the appearance of domestic threats which their governments are unable or unwilling to confront.

The Bush Administration's peril here lies in the fact that the American people may themselves spontaneously attack domestic threats if it won't, and then vote it from office.
...
The Bush Administration can minimize this possibility [expulsion of Arabs/Muslims] by convincing the American people that it is not necessary for their protection. The best means is obviously prevention of further mass fatality attacks, with effective publicly demonstrated security measures being second. The latter is a disaster area. Public opinion here is primarily based on daily in-their-faces confrontations with ludicrously ineffective, offensive, demeaning airport security. Other, more dangerous but less obvious, examples exist of federal indifference to homeland security. These make the public more rather than less likely to expel Arab immigrants, while running over the Bush Administration, in the event of further mass fatality terrorism here.

The war on terror won't end until the American people are safe at home, because they have the power and will to utterly end their enemies' societies. Domestic and foreign governments ignore the American people at their peril.

And Happy Thanksgiving!

Lileks:

But holding your kid over a balcony with one hand - well, that’s the thing parents have nightmares about doing. For God’s sake! I duct-taped Gnat to my chest just to climb the stairs.
...
And you think, wow: all these years, he’s[Harlan Ellison] been getting older. I know it sounds stupid, but some people get fixed in your brain as being of a particular age. You always think of Stokowski as old and JFK as young. (He would have been in his eighties by now, if he’d made it). A young Reagan looks like a green-banana version of the real thing, who we all remember as 70 years old, precisely. Harlan Ellison is a Fiery Young Man.

The Safety Valve:

Number of crimes solved in the USA, Canada, the UK, and Australia by gun serial number registration since implementation: zero. Maryland already has a ballistic fingerprinting law...for handguns. Number of crimes solved using it since it went into effect two years ago? Zero.

Rantburg has a Kiplingesque poem on the Marines.

Doonesburied, Jesse Walker.

Happy Fun Pundit, another reason not to attack Iraq... the end of the Universe.

Lileks on the Balinese bombing.

Dawson:

By now, even a casual observer could have discerned a pattern: the US exert on Israel irresistible pressure - Israel caves in - the US sends an envoy to appease the Palestinian Arabs - the Palestinian Arabs respond with homicide terrorism.
...
Would it be unfair to suggest that the US is morally responsible for inflicting this Greek tragedy on Israel?

So, let's finish on an upnote... from The Corner, a Photoessay.

Robert Barnett, How Republicans can attract Libertarians.
George Will

Dems still don't Get It. They're still positing Bush-as-Dunce, despite all the evidence to the contrary. (And why would Algore want to have the notion that even a dunce can beat him, become popular, anyway?)

Jonah Goldberg:

I should also say I don't listen to Tom Daschle very often. Whatever Republicans do, he says he's "saddened and disappointed" with them. He talks like a kindergarten teacher, stage-whispering his disapproval of tax policy the way a den mother tsk-tsks a boy for drawing on the wall with crayons. I don't think I'm alone here. Daschle is not someone most people listen to. If he's ever turned out of office, fire departments could hire him to talk cats out of trees by lulling them to sleep with his voice until they dropped to the ground. If a cat didn't fare well, Daschle could say he's "saddened and disappointed" by the splattered feline and move to the next job.

But, when Daschle declared last week that Rush Limbaugh and his Wannabes — a great name for a swing band — were fomenting hate and inciting violence, people listened. Now, it wasn't really the sort of listening he had in mind. It was more like the attention that guy at the airport gets when he shouts at the check-in counter — "You don't understand! I have a huge flounder in my pants!" In other words, lots of people said, "What the hell is Tom Daschle talking about?"
....
Meanwhile, 41 percent of "poor" people in America own their own homes. And, today, adjusted for inflation, "expenditures per person among the poorest fifth of households equal those of the average household in the early 1970s." [my emphasis]

In other words, poor people today live under the conditions that middle-class people lived under in the 1970s.

Glenn responds to Osama, and so does Lileks.

Riyadh Dilenda Est.

Update: More, via Instapundit:
Samizdata,
South Knox Bubba,
Daniel Drezner

Lileks:

What if I could go back in the past, take myself aside and say: You know, in the future, you will be convinced that Russian computers are sending you messages about barnyard sex photos.

I would have gripped my future self by the shoulders: am I insane in the future? Tell me!

No, everyone gets them.

Oh. Well, that’s a relief. I think.

On Barbra:

Can't spell, can't spot fake Shakespeare, can't tell one wacky foreigner from another: it's increasingly obvious that Barbra is some deep sleeper planted by the Republicans to discredit the very concept of activist celebrities. Poor old Democrats, in thrall to her fundraising: people who need Barbra are the unluckiest people in the world.

Clinton and Carter

October 19:

Two former high-ranking Pentagon officials in the Clinton administration were arrested yesterday on charges of extortion, bribery, money-laundering and witness tampering in a suspected scheme involving the awarding of contracts to minority firms.

comment on Bill Quick's Book: Carter, Democrats Asked Soviets to Stop Reagan, Sway U.S. Election

...
Still happy with our latest Nobel Peanuts Prize winner, former President Jimmeh "Wabbit Warrior" Carter?
Here is where Carter takes credit for defusing the North Korean nuclear weapons crisis. [PejmanPundit found this link]. Another example of Carter's irresponsibility in the name of high principle. Naive and feckless or outright treason? Probably the former, but the same effect as the latter. The State Department should cancel Carter's passport before he goes somewhere else and causes any more damage.

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at October 19, 2002 09:28 AM

Mark Steyn They want to kill us all.

Tacitus:

The revelation of a North Korean nuclear weapons program is more than just another revelation of Clintonian foreign policy failure -- it's a revelation, albeit only slightly noticeable at present, of a Bush Administration foreign policy failure.

The high cost of Clintonian fecklessness toward North Korea.

...
A United Press International analysis says North Korea appears to have adopted what is called a "nuclear bee sting" strategy:

It means that Third World or "rogue state" leaders believe the threat of having a single nuclear weapon that could destroy an American city or of kill tens or hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops in the field would be sufficient to deter any major U.S. military action against them.

This seems an opportune time to put aside once and for all the silly and dangerous notion that being kind to dictators--including Saddam Hussein, who surely is eager for a "bee sting" of his own--is the way to peace.

Andrew Sullivan has quotes from the Clintonistas about North Korea in the 90s.

Richard Cohen on the Peace Prize.

The Clinton record on civil rights.

Another nasty holdover of Clintoon.

Ann Coulter:

BEFORE WE BEGIN, how happy is Dick Gephardt that he never has to take another four-hour phone call from Barbra Streisand?
...
Of the three Democrats arguably responsible for the election fiasco – Terry McAuliffe, Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt – surely the least culpable was Gephardt, the original phony "NASCAR Democrat." But picking up on the Clinton strategy of blame the innocent and promote the guilty, only Gephardt resigned.

Mark Steyn wants a pause in the bombing pause:

This is the real war aim -- or it should be, if we're to have any chance of winning this thing: We have to change the hearts and minds of millions of Muslims, too many of whom are at best indifferent to great evil. "Changing" isn't the same as "winning the hearts and minds," which is multiculti codespeak for pre-emptively surrendering and agreeing not to disagree with them. For over a year now, nothing has been asked of Muslims, at home or abroad.