Katrina and the Waves

Like most of you I'm glued to the television watching the devastation that has befallen much of southern Louisiana and Mississippi, and most notably, New Orleans, as a result of Hurricane Katrina. Unfortunately, it appears that it's going to get worse before it gets better. My prayers go out to those who have lost loved ones and/or earthly possessions. Please donate to a relief organization such as the Red Cross, which is providing humanitarian aid to those devastated by this calamity.

True Believers

An extremely interesting post by Wretchard at The Belmont Club, which quotes from Paul Berman's recent book Terror and Liberalism.

In a word the Left would logically be expected to oppose Osama Bin Laden because it represents everything Berman thinks the Left has fought against since it's inception. The question Berman tries to answer is why the precise opposite has happened.

UPDATE:

Wretchard makes an excellent point in the comments section, as well.

The period of the Great Purges holds enduring interest for me because it is consequent to Communism's great decision to replace God, who they believed did not exist, with man in whom they had endless faith. But what if it turned out that Man, at least political Man, actually resembled Joseph Stalin? That was the epiphany of Dachau and Magadan. If Man were truly fallen then where could one turn?

The answer of course, was to turn inward; to keep the epiphany a secret. Even though the Left has consigned the story of the Great Purges, Mao's Great Leap Forward and the Year Zero to the skeleton closet, subconsciously they've lost faith in Man yet are unwilling to make their way back to God. What's Left is a life in which no worldly pleasures are prohibited, in which 'security' is guaranteed from cradle to the yawning grave. And into this paradise of despair God comes again, this time in the shape of Allah, to make a mockery of everything the Left has on offer. When Nietzsche proclaimed the Death of God he did not say it only had to happen once.

Update From Camp Casey

Powerline Blog reader Curt Loftis spent two days in Crawford, Texas, carrying out a first-hand reconnaissance of the anti-American forces assembled there. Read about it here.

UPDATE:

Here's another observation from a man on the ground.

The Media Quagmire

Good article by Scott Johnson in the Daily Standard about the biased media coverage of the Iraq War. The money quote:

As Paul Weaver wrote in 1977 in his review of Big Story [Peter Braestrup's book subtitled "How the American Press and Television Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam and Washington"]: "A politicized press speaking the language of news is an instrument of propaganda, and such an institution does not foster democracy, but erodes it."

France Smears Lance

The French are a disgrace. But that's nothing you didn't already know.

More on Iraq

There's a theme in my last few posts on Iraq: Progress. It's something we don't hear enough about in the lamestream media. In his column in the Chicago Sun-Times, Mark Steyn discusses some of this progress.

In Iraq right now the glass is around two-thirds full, and those two thirds will not be drained down to Sunni Triangle levels of despair. There are 1 million new cars on the road since 2003, a statistic that no doubt just lost us warhawks that Sierra Club endorsement but which doesn't sound like a nation mired in hopelessness. A new international airport has been opened in the north to cope with the Kurdish tourist and economic boom. Faruk Mustafa Rasool is building a 28-story five-star hotel with a revolving restaurant and a cable-car link to downtown Sulaimaniya.

Steyn points out how the media are continuing to present a one-sided view of Iraq, particularly as it relates to the ongoing negotiations in drafting the Iraqi constitution.

As the deadline approaches, we read that the whole magilla's about to go belly up, there's no agreement on the way forward, Washington's going to have to admit it called things disastrously wrong and step in to salvage what it can by postponing the handover to an Iraqi administration/the first free elections/the draft constitution/whatever.

Steyn argues that the divisive nature of the three parties to the negotiations (Kurds, Shia, and Sunni) is actually a boon for the process.

If you want to start an experiment in Middle Eastern liberty, where better than a nation split three ways where no one group can easily dominate the other two?

If you'd been asked in 2003 to devise an ideal constitution for Iraq's very non-ideal circumstances, it would look something like this: a highly decentralized federation that accepts the reality that Iraq is a Muslim nation but reserves political power for elected legislators -- and divides the oil revenue fairly.

Unfortunately, as we've pointed out before, the MSM (mainstream media) constantly slant headlines and coverage to promote a sense of failure and despair in hopes to undermine our efforts in Iraq. Steyn beautifully summarizes the state of affairs in America.

To be sure, we shouldda done this, and we shouldda done that. Yet nonetheless Iraq advances day by day. The real quagmire is at home, where the kinkily gleeful relish of defeatism manifested by Cindy Sheehan, Joan Baez, Ted Kennedy et al. bears less and less relationship to anything happening over there. Iraq's future is a matter for the Iraqis now -- which, given the U.S. media, Democrat blowhards like Joe Biden and Republican squishes like Chuck Hagel, is just as well.

The Rejection of Materialism

As I've said before, Dennis Prager is one of my favorite thinkers. In this article he contrasts the Judeo-Christian philosophy with the leftist worldview, which is descendant from Marxism.

Because religious people have values that transcend the material, Marx called religion the opiate of the masses: It keeps the masses from making social revolution by keeping them happy with non-material concerns and non-material rewards. The further left one goes, the more significant social revolution becomes. It does for two reasons:

First, devoid of religious meaning in their lives, for many on the Left, social change -- or as it is known today, "social justice," the term for left-wing social change -- has become their substitute religion and provider of meaning.

Second, given that the only reality is material, any denial of materialism's supremacy disturbs the Left. The true leftist objects to the notion of poorer people leading happy lives.

Although Judeo-Christian values also care about material progress, it is not the primary concern. Non-material concerns, such as charity, freedom, and spirituality--values that elevate the soul--are held in higher regard. However,

To a materialist, the notion that poor people would place non-material concerns over material ones is absurd, if not perverse.

Read the whole article. Dennis does a wonderful job of clarifying the distinctions.

Another Progress Report

Sometimes I feel a little down when I read about all the America-haters in our own country. I realize that Canadians and Europeans are going to hate us because all they hear is one-sided leftist crap from their media and many (but certainly not all) are too lazy to find alternative sources of information. Thank God we have a number of choices from which to choose in America from the left (Los Angeles Times, New York Times, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, etc.) and the right (Fox, News, most successful talk radio shows, etc.). One of the best things about the Internet/blogging is that there are many informed people who can fact-check and engage in protracted discourse (obviously there are a lot of brainless hate-spewing sites, too, which are worthless). In any event, this post at Generation Why links to a list of good things that are happening in the ongoing War on Terror. It's encouraging.

A Contrast -- GWB and Bill Clinton

The post title links to an article that illustrates an interesting insight into the disparate personalities of President Bush and former president Bill Clinton, using the example of how each man deals/dealt with the families of fallen soldiers. Guess which one is mostly concerned about the families and which one is primarily concerned with himself.

Our Progress So Far

Christopher Hitchens authors an excellent essay in the Daily Standard called A War To Be Proud Of. The article details the accomplishments of the Bush administration's proactive war on terrorism.

Yesterday's gig...

was a lot of fun. David Styles, a DJ with KIIS FM, was there doing some promotions and we had him come up and jam with us on the drums. Actually, he doesn't really know how to play drums, but he gave it a good try and seemed to have a good time.

LTA @ Beach Cities Festival

Lower Than Angels is playing this afternoon at 3:30 p.m. @ the Beach Cities Summer Spectacular in Redondo Beach at the corner of Aviation Boulevard and Manhattan Beach Boulevard. If you're in the area, stop by and check it out. Parking and admission are free. Bring your puppets.

The Paranoid Style

Antoher great article penned by Victor Davis Hanson, who is a military historian and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University (and a registered Democrat, I believe). Posting his articles is becoming a regular (weekly) occurrence.

It is becoming nearly impossible to sort the extreme rhetoric of the antiwar Left from that of the fringe paleo-Right. Both see the Iraqi war through the same lenses: the American effort is bound to fail and is a deep reflection of American pathology.

This Guy Hates Teenagers (Especially On TV)

I hesitate to post something about a show I've never seen, but this guy's review of the "reality" show "Brat Camp" is actually very funny.

Oops

This is kinda funny. http://www.thehometownchannel.com/money/4891417/detail.html

Another Example of Bias @ the New York Times

This is disgraceful journalism.

Blogging About Combat in Iraq

This is an absolute must-read from the blog of Michael Yon, an author who is blogging from Mosul, Iraq. This post is a riveting account of a battle between coalition forces and terrorists.

Terrorism Is Like A Cancer

The title of this post links to a thought-provoking article that suggests a different way to view terrorism.

We need to understand how the terrorists operate and sustain themselves. Al Qaeda is not like any enemy we have ever faced and therefore our national responses will be unlike any we have ever given. While Al Qaeda is obviously capable of great violence, it may be likened to a virus that has already infected the world's systems of commerce, travel, finances, politics and communications.

The first step in staunching the spread of the cancer, is to understand the reason it is growing.

The process is similar to angiogenesis in cancer, where a tumor takes over control of the body's ability to produce blood vessels for the sole purpose of nourishing itself. One way doctors spot tumors is by finding unusual concentrations of blood vessels feeding the growing malignancy. [Donald] Sensing's [Winds of Change] comparison of Islamic terrorism to a virus, if correct, makes a nonsense of claims that that Islamic militants are infiltrating the West in retaliation for Iraq or even the supposed provocations of Israel. The infiltration is occuring for entirely independent reasons: to provide nutrients for the malignancy or to turn ordinary systems into their purposes.

Understanding the analogy of terrorism as cancer turns conventional wisdom about how to eradicate it on its head. A widely-held belief is that if only the West provided more aid, support, freedom, etc. to Muslim countries they would leave us alone. This is empirically untrue. Some examples of aid we've provided to Muslims in the recent past: 1) the war in Bosnia to save Muslims from Serbian Christians, 2) the failed mission to Somalia that was intended to deliver humanitarian aid to a Muslim population, 3) billions of dollars in foreign aid to various Muslim countries and the Palestinian Authority, 4) financial and rescue assistance after the tsunami of 12/26/05, 4) the expenditure of blood and treasure to liberate millions of people from a cruel and despotic dictator in Iraq, and the ongoing rehabilitation of a dilapidated infrastructure that had been neglected for three decades, etc. What dividend have we received from our actions?

I'm not suggesting that we discontinue our acts of goodwill. However, this article suggests that, not only will "doing more good" not ensure peace, it may exacerbate the problem it is intended to eliminate.

Consequently, in reverse of expectations, the more material one provides to the disease -- Islamic terrorism by analogy -- the less ameliorative its effects. Welfare benefits would be received, not with gratitude but to fund militancy; council housing used to host bomb factories; UN relief grants used to pay for Hamas banners that say "Gaza Today. The West Bank and Jerusalem Tomorrow".

Successfully combating the terrorism disease must involve implementation of a comprehensive strategy that cuts off the blood flow from all sources that nourish it. Thankfully, President Bush understands the nature of the disorder. His remedy--the Bush Doctrine.

We will direct every resource at our command -- every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every necessary weapon of war -- to the disruption and to the defeat of the global terror network. This war will not be like the war against Iraq a decade ago, with a decisive liberation of territory and a swift conclusion. It will not look like the air war above Kosovo two years ago, where no ground troops were used and not a single American was lost in combat. Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success. We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.

Not So Good News From Africa

It's interesting to hear cries of "Imperialism!" against the West from the Muslim world when, in fact, some Muslim countries appear to be the primary source of modern-day imperialism. Read about current Muslim efforts in Africa here.

This Show Is Funny

Steve Carrell (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, The Daily Show, Anchorman) is hilarious in "The Office," which airs Tuesday nights on NBC. It's sometimes over the top, but very funny. Especially, if you work in an office (like me).