Sedente Animo

Obama Probably Doesn't Even Know He Did Something Wrong

Everyday, all over the Internet, people throw around the word "treason" very lightly.  However, when I use the word treason right now in regards to Barak Obama, I'm not making that mistake.  Link: From the New York Post:

WHILE campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence.

According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.

"He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington," Zebari said in an interview.

In all seriousness, this warrants an objective and bipartisan investigation.

Where's the Plan?

John Broder in the The New York Times gets around to writing about something we've all noticed:  Democrats have no plan for solving the Iraq problem.  I had to chuckle at this passage:

“We haven’t coalesced around a single plan,” Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat who is up for re-election this year, acknowledged in an interview on Thursday. “But, we’re in general agreement on the basic principles.”

What basic principle is that?  "We are against anything Bush is in favor of"?

I can't believe Americans are willing to vote for candidates who are in favor of withdrawl, such as Bob Casey running for Pennsylvania Senator.  Day after day, Americans teach their children to clean up the messes they've made and to not quit in the middle of something.

Leaving Iraq before the job is done is the same thing.

Haditha

For good reason, the events that transpired last fall in Haditha are attracting a lot of scrutiny.  Obviously, thats a good thing because as more and more attention is devoted to it, the better chance we have of getting to the bottom of what happened.

But as the American Thinker points out [h/t] don't be so quick to assume what the final verdict is going to be.  While the "fog of war" may make what happened there impossible to determine, that doesn't mean we shouldn't keep an open mind -- something the authors at Time may have forgotten to do.

Two more points...  (1) Not that this should stand in our way of getting to the bottom of the issue, but I am not too keen on what the reaction will be in the Middle East if the Marines of Kilo Company are somehow exonerated. (2) Even if there was no pre-meditated wrong-doing, it should go without saying that while the Rules of Engagement are often seemingly inexplicable, rules are still rules and mistakes should be dealt with appropriately.

Gitmo

Link: U.N. Urges Closure of Guantanamo Detention Facility.

A U.N. anti-torture panel today issued a rebuke of Bush administration counter-terrorism policies today, calling for the closing of the Guantanamo detention facility in Cuba and a halt to the transfer of suspected terrorists to countries where they may face torture.

There is no way of knowing, but would the panel have reached a different conclusion if they had actually visited the facility in Guantanamo?  Indeed, some that have visited have reached the conclusion that Gitmo is more lenient towards its prisoners than jails in Belgium.

Just because these prisoners were not captured while wearing a uniform with all the trappings to denote rank and military unit does not mean they are not dangerous.

As a matter of fact, many of the prisoners are still conducting a war from within the prison.  The prisoners know it's a war, when will the UN realize this?

Will Being Will

Reading George Will makes me want to put on a bow-tie and round-rimmed glasses.

His latest effort, this one on the last page of Newsweek, discusses the pork "emergencies" in the latest Congressional "emergency" spending bill.

...the "emergency" bill includes $594 million for highway projects, even in Hawaii, 4,000 miles from where Katrina hit. And $4 billion for supposed farm "disasters" unrelated to Katrina. And $150,000 for the Bronx Council of the Arts, $1.8 million to promote art in West Virginia, $500,000 for the Montana World Trade Center, and on and on. A poll shows approval of Congress down to 22 percent. Who are those 22 percent?

And Will being Will, he wraps up the column with a dose of perspective:

Americans, endowed by their solicitous government with an ever-expanding array of entitlements, now have the whiny mentality that an entitlement culture breeds. They feel entitled to purchase gasoline at the price they paid for it 25 years ago. Guess what? Last week they could do even better than that. The average price of a gallon of regular was $2.91. In April 1981, the real, inflation-adjusted price was $3.10.

He's got a great point.  Additionally, as a friend pointed out to me, that at the time for every ten dollars an American spent, one went to gasoline.  Today, it is one out of sixteen.

But as I wrote a few days ago, let the whine go on.  Each extra decibel of whining is another minute less that America will be dependent on those that would prefer to see us weakened, or worse, destroyed.  Indeed, Max Boot writes in the Los Angeles Times of the "dictatorship dividend"

Of the top 14 oil exporters, only one is a well-established liberal democracy — Norway. Two others have recently made a transition to democracy — Mexico and Nigeria. Iraq is trying to follow in their footsteps. That's it. Every other major oil exporter is a dictatorship — and the run-up in oil prices has been a tremendous boon to them.

To Good to be True?

There is an incredibly interesting interview on Human Events Online with Reza Pahlavi, son of the former and late Shah of Iran.

...in the next two to three months he hopes to finalize the organization of a movement aimed at overthrowing the Islamic regime in Tehran and replacing it with a democratic government.

He believes the cause is urgent because of the prospect that Iran may soon develop a nuclear weapon or the U.S. may use military force to preempt that. He hopes to offer a way out of this dilemma: a revolution sparked by massive civil disobedience in which the masses in the streets are backed by elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

For the most part, Pahlavi seems to have his native country's best interests at heart -- preventing an invasion by foreign governments, liberating the populace from oppression -- but some ulterior motives seem to exist as well...Pahlavi isn't convinced republics are the best form of government for the Middle East nations and he would be willing to succeed his father and sit on the throne of a constitutional monarchy if the opportunity came his way.

He says all the right things -- Israel has a right to exist peacefully, strongly supports nuclear anti-proliferation.  The question becomes, is Pahlavi someone the West can support and work with, or, is he someone merely trying to gain power?

Can My SUV Run on Starbucks?

Today, I paid roughly the same price for a grande Americano from Starbucks as I did for a gallon of gasoline.

The espresso drink tasted good, briefly put a small smile on my face and put an extra spring in my step for a few hours.  The gallon of gasoline enabled me to travel approximately 20 miles (I drive a small SUV, and it was part highway traffic, part city traffic) to my job, where I recouped the travel cost in approximately 5 to 10 minutes of work.

When I purchased the beverage from Starbucks I did so quite willingly and without any duress whatsoever.  When I pumped the gasoline into my vehicle, I huffed, puffed, sighed, and rolled my eyes.

Fairly warped perspective isn't it?

My only condolence is that I am not alone.  While gas prices creep up and up, so does the health of the economy as Americans spend and spend.  Certainly there is a limit to how much the economy can bear to transport goods and services from point A to point B, but from the looks of things, we haven't reached that point yet.

But while I try and put the rising cost of gasoline in perspective, on the contrary, I don't want people to calm down about the matter.  Please, by all means, get amped up about it.  The more attention my fellow citizens and the politicians that represent us pay the matter, the sooner we will move towards reducing our nation's dependence on foreign oil.

People are acting as if the current oil prices are a crisis.  Clearly, if we can afford Starbucks drinks and high definition televisions and cell phones that take pictures and sneakers for our children that light up for heaven's sake, then we are no where near the status of "crisis".

But we are playing with borrowed time.  At some point, soon or later, next month, next year, or next decade, we are going to have a real crisis.  The nation is one violent incident in the Middle East or change in policy based on the whim of a former desert nomad away from serious problems that would bring our economy and lives to a screeching halt.

Some call for increasing our supply of oil through domestic means.  Go for it I say.  Some advocate a "let's send a man to the moon in ten years" style scientific effort to develop alternative energy sources.  Again I say, go for it.  I would even suggest tax credits to oil companies to build refineries, tax incentives to automobile manufacturers to increase fuel efficiency.

When President Bush stated that the nation was addicted to oil, he was right.  And what happens when an addict's addiction is removed cold turkey?  I for one would rather see America weaned off of foreign oil than abruptly sent to detox.