The Cons Are Alright

 

Kurt Schlichter speaks for me; perhaps for you.  Recognize yourself here?  If so, you’re an ally.  

BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT: We cons will be fine and we’ll win in the end, but it’ll take time and hard fighting.

…the old ways don’t fit, what worked before doesn’t work now…

I used to subscribe to The Weekly Standard and National Review, .. As for NR, it’s sad – you post-internet cons don’t dig it, but back in the day, Buckley’s baby was it. There was no other conservatism. When it came in the snail mail once every two weeks, you got your fix for another fortnight. …Now, ...I'd happily let NR burn. …

Does it matter if they left us or we left them? I tend to think that they were never truly with us. Have we really changed? On the surface, maybe. I used to be a hawk. I even went to a couple of the conflicts that all the smart people on our side said were super good ideas. And then I watched the utter failure of these same geniuses – a kid could nearly go from being a fetus to buying a Dos Equis in the time America’s been chasing jihadi banditos around the Hindu Kush to no avail.

I heard the lectures about free enterprise then realized that I wanted no part of being in the party that enabled mega-corporate pillaging of our middle class for the benefit of the Chinese communists.

And I watched Conservative, Inc., manage decline while filling its cruises, and then I watched the guy I defended from all the “Chimpy McHalibu$Hitler” slurs turn around and cavort with the people calling me worse….

The hell with these people.

We’re done with them, but not with conservatism. We carry that torch now. The True Conservatives™ sure as hell aren’t even pretending anymore – we just had a whole year of “The Conservative Case For Biden.” They care only about their cheesy little fellowships in DC at the Conservativish Forum for Freedom and Eagles and Taking Dumb Businessmen’s Money and More Eagles, where they scribble unread pap on lame blogs. They eagerly collect the tech titan’s 30 pieces of Bitcoin to join in the cancel chorus of conservatives who actually believe in something besides securing these dorks’ sinecures.

But we know it now. We see it, and there’s no unseeing it.

As the Lincoln Project – if you accept that Abe’s project was trying to score with teen boys – collapses, and we giggle, there’s no hiding the corruption of Conservative, Inc. Well, now there’s a new conservatism, and it’s going to happen without the Fredocon caucus.

Remember George Will? Me neither.

To reprise a cliché of my own making, Donald Trump was the avatar of our dissatisfaction with the garbage Establishment and the refusal of the useless, sclerotic and cruise-oriented losers allegedly on our side to defend our interests. It didn’t help that these credential-fetishizers … always despised us. Some were born snobs, and some embraced snobbery – there’s no snooty like “I got out of the trailer park and I gotta ensure no one ever makes that connection between me and my déclassé past again” snooty. But they all think we are stupid, borderline evil, and utterly unsuited to have a say in our own governance. In that, they express their class solidarity with the caste status neurotics of the left.

So, why my optimism?

Well, as we’ve seen, our opponents inside our tent are worthless. Moreover, our enemies outside on the left are buffoons. Ted Lieu? Adam Schiff? Toots Swalwell, the guy who actually thought the Chi-Com courtesan liked him because he was cool? These are singularly unimpressive people who project an aura of competence solely by appearing on camera. But they are stupid, and weak, and the idea that our enemies are these brilliant Lex Luthors crafting intricate conspiracies from their secret lairs is ridiculous. All this stuff happening now is not the result of some cunning strategy but of dumb luck, the inevitable cyclic nature of politics, and some mistakes by our own side (Did you ever notice how most of the things that went bad for Trump happened when he listened to Establishment Republicans?). These are not supermen – these sissies would probably cry because I just assumed their gender.

… Every answer we seek is within the Constitution and the documents that went into creating it. What we sell is freedom, prosperity, and human dignity. What the other side sells is, at best, a soft corporate/political tyranny of the mediocre.

And the most important factor is that we are now conservawoke. Red pilled, if you will. We see the lies. And we see the liars. That ridiculous XX-Jeb! hack Nikki! Haley keeps trying to happen and we keep laughing at her. ….

We’re done with GOP weather vanes who say whatever the Establishment tool in front of her wants to hear. Recently, Nikki! sat down with Tim Alberta of Politico and said… who cares? We had her pegged at “she sat down with Tim Alberta of Politico.” If you can’t tell who the enemy is, it’s you.

So? And? If freedom was easy, everyone would be doing it, and those of us who have read history from before 1619, and/or have resided outside this country can clarify for you that freedom as the natural state of man is most def not the case.

No one is going to give us anything but serfdom – you can have as much of that as you want, and gratis. But freedom has to be taken, one GOP state reforming its election laws at a time, one new conservative-friendly social media venue at a time, one action-packed and conservative-oriented series at a time.

My guess is that Donald Trump has played his (crucial) role and will move on after humiliating the Democrats again by scoffing at their latest puny impeachment. He will be a kingmaker and an important asset in bringing forward the new blood we need to re-energize us. Populism had a tough four years. We’ll take a breather for a bit, then charge. Look at our bench! Ric Grenell, Kristi Noem, Ron DeSantis, Rick Scott, and many more. Look at our expanding network of media outlets, not least of which is Townhall. Look at the new voices we’re seeing, often from the world of podcasting, and often of people who became at least conservative-curious because they saw the failures of the left (Tim Pool, Michael Malice, Adam Carolla, Joe Rogan).

And look at the doddering, failing enemy, presiding over the collapsing Potemkin village that is the failed Establishment.  Yeah, the cons are alright.

The wife-beater, the witch and the White House: Why the hell did Trump ever tell Rob Porter and Omarosa ‘you’re hired’?

Piers Morgan answers the most important questions

'Shut the f**k up, a**hole,’ snarled Omarosa Manigault-Newman at me. ‘How are your kids going to feel when they wake up and discover their dad’s a f**king f*gg*t?’

Yes, this is the same Omarosa Manigault-Newman who just spent a year inside Donald Trump’s White House.

I’ve met a lot of vile human beings in my life, from dictators and terrorists to sex abusers and wicked conmen.

But I’ve never met anyone quite so relentlessly loathsome as Omarosa; a vicious, duplicitous, lying, conniving, backstabbing piece of work.

Omarosa sidled up to me at the New York Mercantile Exchange and said, quite seriously: 'Piers, do you want a showmance?' 'A what?' I replied. 'A showmance. You know, a romance on the show - we get it on together. Happens all the time on Apprentice. Everyone has sex together. Then we can make lots of money out of it.’ I stared at her grasping, ferociously ambitious little eyes, and laughed: 'You must be joking, you deluded woman.' She didn't take it well. 'What are you? Gay?'

From that moment, she turned on me like a viper.

The Truth About Viet Nam

We won the war in Viet Nam until the Democrats gave the victory away. We won the war in Iraq until the Democrats decided that they wanted the US to lose the peace.

For Democrats it's always party over the Nation. Why do Democrats hate this country?

GOP DOUBLE-CROSSING TRAITORS

Ann Coulter takes the wood to Republicans on amnesty.

Remember when?

Back when they needed our votes before the last election, Republicans were hairy-chested warriors, vowing to block Obama's unconstitutional "executive amnesty" -- if only voters gave them a Senate majority. The resulting Republican landslide suggested some opposition to amnesty.

Heading into the election, college professor Dave Brat took out the sitting House majority leader and amnesty supporter Eric Cantor in a primary, despite being outspent 40-1. It was the greatest upset in history since the 1980 "Miracle on Ice" at the Lake Placid Olympics: Never before has a House majority leader been defeated in a primary. And Brat did it by an astonishing 55.5 percent to 45.5 percent.

Again, the voters seemed to be expressing disquiet with amnesty.....;

Since at least 2006, voters have insistently told pollsters they don't want amnesty. Seemingly bulletproof Republican congressmen have lost their seats over amnesty. President Bush lost the entire House of Representatives over amnesty. What else do we have to do to convince you we don't want amnesty, Republicans? Make it a host on "The View"?

Now:

Republicans and George Will tell us they can't stand up to Obama's executive amnesty because the media are unfair.

Oh, well, in that case ... never mind.

This is news to them? They didn't know the media were unfair when they were promising to block Obama's illegal amnesty before the elections? The media have blamed the GOP for every failure of Republicans and Democrats to reach an agreement since the Hoover administration. This isn't a surprise development.

I have this Walter Mitty dream; I'm running for office and my campaign focuses on the media ... I would run against the media. My opponent would be the media which supports my opposition.

Why don't Republicans attack the media? People hate the media! Their power is eroding -- and it would erode a lot faster if Congress would challenge them. Instead of submitting to the media's blackmail, my suggestion is, take their gun away.

Tell voters what the media won't: that Obama's "amnesty" will give illegal aliens Social Security cards and three years of back-payments through the Earned Income Tax Credit, even though they never paid taxes in the first place.

Could we get a poll on that: Should the government issue work permits to illegal aliens and give them each $25,000 in U.S. taxpayer money? I promise you, Obama would lose that vote by at least 80-20. Even people vaguely supportive of not hounding illegal aliens out of the country didn't sign up to open the U.S. Treasury to them.

Tell voters that the media are refusing to report that, for the past two weeks, Senate Democrats have been filibustering a bill that would defund Obama's illegal amnesty.

Ann points out that if DHS isn't funded 200,000 out of 230,000 of its employees woudl still show up for work.

Are the Republicans deliberately throwing the fight?

Why don't Republicans spend all their airtime attacking the media for lying about what Obama's amnesty does and what the Democrats are doing? It's hard to avoid concluding that Republicans aren't trying to make the right arguments. In fact, it kind of looks like they're intentionally throwing the fight on amnesty.

If a Republican majority in both houses of Congress can't stop Obama from issuing illegal immigrants Social Security cards and years of back welfare payments, there is no reason to vote Republican ever again

Rush Limbaugh has stated that Republicans and their corporate backers are in favor of amnesty. That's absolutely right.  But while GE's Jeff Immelt has money, he only has one vote.  This could destroy the Republican party.  If the Republicans in congress stab their voting base in the back they'll never win another election.

"After my election, I have more flexibility," Repeat

After the election, a little time passed and then, flexibility happened.

... the Chinese ADIZ, the Russian annexation of Crimea, the rise of ISIS, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the fall of Mosul, the end of Hungarian liberal democracy, the Central American refugee crisis, the Egyptian-UAE attacks on Libya, the extermination of Iraqi Christians, the Yazidi genocide, the scramble to revise NATO’s eastern-frontier defenses, the Kristallnacht-style pogroms in European cities, the reemergence of mainstream anti-Semitism, the third (or fourth, perhaps) American war in Iraq, racial riots in middle America, et cetera and ad nauseam.All that was in the future just one year ago.

"After my election, I have more flexibility,"

A Russian army tank attacked airfields in eastern Ukraine on Monday, Ukrainian military officials said, amid worsening tensions between Kiev and Moscow.

Obama promises no military intervention and no military aid to Ukraine.

Only the Democratics can lose a war retroactively.

False Military Doctrine And The Benghazi Assault

Bottom line on this story from Captain's Journal:  one of the top Generals, General Ham who headed U.S Africa Command defied orders and began to come to the aid of our people in Benghazi.  For so doing so he was relieved of command and aid was not given.  Leon Panetta lied.  General Ham was replaced by one of the Pentagon's Perfumed Princes who was willing to follow Obama orders and allow our men to die.

The information I heard today was that General Ham as head of Africom received the same e-mails the White House received requesting help/support as the attack was taking place. General Ham immediately had a rapid response unit ready and communicated to the Pentagon that he had a unit ready.

General Ham then received the order to stand down. His response was to screw it, he was going to help anyhow. Within 30 seconds to a minute after making the move to respond, his second in command apprehended General Ham and told him that he was now relieved of his command.

The story continues that now General Rodiguez would take General Ham’s place as the head of Africom.

This version of events contradicts Mr. Panetta’s October 25 statement that General Ham advised against intervention. But so far there is nothing solid to back it up. Maybe Ham attempted to send a reaction force against orders, or maybe he simply said the wrong thing to the wrong people. Perhaps he gave whomever he was talking to up the chain a piece of his mind about leaving Americans to die when there was a chance of saving them. At the very least U.S. forces might have made those who killed our people pay while they were still on the scene. The Obama White House is famously vindictive against perceived disloyalty – the administration would not let Ham get away with scolding them for failing to show the leadership necessary to save American lives. The Army’s ethos is to leave no man behind, but that is not shared by a president accustomed to leading from that location.

 

Oh, and the bullshit that Panetta threw out?

The notion that we don’t send our forces into harm’s way without knowing what’s going on is patently absurd and false. Simply said, it’s a lie. We deploy Army Rangers to take control of air fields and landing zones in potentially hostile environments, for which we do not know all of the desired information; we deploy Marine infantry into situations of potentially unknown threats all of the time all over the globe; each and every time a patrol left the outpost at the Korengal in Afghanistan, they were deploying into potentially deadly situations without specific and detailed knowledge of the situation.

Self-fulfilling prophesies.

A response to Paul at Powerline ...

I am not a resident of Delaware nor do I have inside knowledge of its Republican political establishment. However, those who blame the Tea Party – which is not a party – for putting up a candidate who could not win, may want to amend their conclusions about the inevitability of Christine O’Donnell’s loss.

I base my dissent on several factors. First, despite being the focus of a really vicious national campaign to denigrate her personally; a campaign that included both Democrats AND Republicans, O’Donnell’s loss was not the blowout that was widely predicted. She received 40% of the vote in a state everyone said was a deep blue state. She was even with Coons for the Independent vote. According to exit polls, she received 51% of the white vote and 50% of the vote in small communities. She lost massively among blacks (by about the same margin as Republicans often get) but only got 81% of the Conservative vote.  In fact, O'Donnell got about the same percentage of the vote as Joe Biden's opponents received despite the national campaign to make her the poster child of the "Loony Right."

There was second factor that may give us some insight into her loss. She had to build a political machine from the ground up in the space of 45 days. Appearing on Bill O’Reilly’s show last week she said that the Republican Party in Delaware denied her their machinery to help her during the election. For all the good the Republican label gave her in blue-state Delaware, she actually ran an Independent campaign.

The bottom line is this: her loss was not foreordained. The Republican establishment – from Karl Rove on down – would rather lose an election than have people that they can’t control into that “big tent” they always say they want. When somebody as high profile as Rove denigrated O’Donnell after she beat the one the establishment anointed, Mike Castle, he was in the process of creating a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Not saying that O’Donnell would have won the election in any case, just saying that running against both the Democrats and the Republicans made it just that much harder. The lesson for the Tea Party and Conservatives in general is that you have to be careful about choosing your friends because they may be the ones who are close enough to you to stab you in the back.

HISTORICAL SIDE NOTE: 

As I was writing these comments I was reminded of another event, long ago, during England’s War of the Roses. It ended in the death of the last British king killed in battle: Richard III. Most people have heard of Richard III from the play of the same name by William Shakespeare. He made Richard out to be a bloody villain. With the benefit of hindsight, Shakespeare knew that it was much safer in the England of his day to be on the side of the winner, Henry Tudor who after the battle was crowned Henry VII.

Richard III was killed at the battle of Bosworth Field because one of his key military leaders, Henry Percy – Earl of Northumberland – decided to sit out the battle, and another, William Stanley, waiting to see how the battle developed before deciding to come on Tudor’s side; in the end helped to kill Richard.

Politics hasn’t changed much in the intervening 525 years.

Casting the Hedge Funds as Villains

The press is enlisting. It's the first war they can really fight.

The Neatest Job of Eviscerating Chris Buckley Ever

Iowahawk takes Chrstopher Buckley and fillets him as only he can: As a Conservative, I Must Say I Do Quite Like the Cut of this Obama Fellow's Jib

Excerpt (you must read the whole thing):

But there is an even more compelling reason to support Barack Obama: Sarah Palin.

If you are a conservative like me, you guffawed when you heard John McCain announced this declasse rube as a running mate, followed by good-natured applause, thinking it was some sort of whimsical campus prank he was reenacting from his Annapolis years. This was, of course, quickly followed the shock of realizing that he wasn't joking, and all that Hanoi unpleasantness had finally driven him around the bend.

It's an inescapable conclusion that this woman has, in 6 short weeks, single-handedly destroyed the Republican party. Certainly George Bush may share some of the blame; but we conservatives must remember how our hopes were buoyed by his impressive bloodlines and Yale degree before we realized his excursion to Texas had caused him to "go native." But la Palin offers true conservatives no such extenuating graces. I mean, my God, this woman is simply awful; the elided vowels, the beauty pageantry, the guns, the crude non-Episcopal protestantism, the embarrassing porchload of children with horrifying hillbilly names, the white after Labor Day. As fellow conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan quipped to me the other day outside a Martha's Vineyard antique shop, it's gratifying to know the Gipper isn't alive to see what has become of his party.

But it's not just American conservatives who are appalled. Just last week conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks and I were enjoying an apres-badminton apertif at the family weekend house in Montauk with my good friend Viscount Klaus-Maria Von Wallensheim, the conservative EU Agricultural Pricing Minister with whom I shared an Alpine chalet and manservant during our years as classmates at a Swiss boarding school. "Kloonkie" (my old school appellation for the Viscount) reported the growing dismay of the Continental Right over Palin's embarrassing enthusiasm for childbirth and Israel.

"Coddsie, old chap," he warned, "You know I've always been America's biggest defender in Monaco. But if you elect this ill-bred charwoman, I will be forced to move anchor to St. Tropez out of pure shame."

David and I were left nodding silently, for how else could we respond? If Palin has lost Kloonkie, she has surely lost the entire conservative movement. The idea of this dreadful woman in Washington is almost too much to contemplate. Not only would it be a fashion disaster, one can scarcely imagine the White House social calendar -- mooseburger fetes to that ghastly Joe the Plumber, perhaps followed by snow machine derbies through the Rose Garden?

Such a nice boy (Lawyers for the Terrorists: Shearman & Sterling)

Shearman and Sterling is the lead lawyer for terrorist detainees at Gitmo. It managed to get Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi released.

According to Mudville Gazette:

Three years ago, Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi, a Kuwaiti soldier who deserted to fight in Afghanistan alongside the Taliban, sat in a detention cell at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, while lawyers argued whether he was an "enemy combatant."

Thank to Shearman and Sterling:

Al-Ajmi denied all charges that he was an enemy combatant and a jihadist, and that documented statements were untrue.

He was repatriated to Kuwaiti authorities on Nov. 3, 2005.

It was recently reported that:

Last week, a Dubai-based television channel reported that al-Ajmi was killed carrying out a homicide bombing in Mosul, Iraq.

A very interesting tale evolves describing how American law firms and PR agents like Richard Levick have managed to work on the side of murderous Islamofascists to kill innocent civilians and American soldiers. If you want to find out what the face of evil is, go to the websites and look at them. The phrase "the banality of evil" comes to mind.

These people are literally selling the enemy the noose which will be used to hang us. There is an interesting exposition on the way that the PR was handled to turn stone killers into helpless waifs unfairly imprisoned:

The strategy sought to accomplish two things: put a sympathetic “human face” on the detainees and convince the public that it had a stake in their plight. In other words, the militant Islamists who traveled to Afghanistan to become a part of al Qaeda’s jihad on America had to be reinvented as innocent charity workers swept up in the war after 9/11. The committed Islamist who admitted firing an AK-47 in a Taliban training camp became a “teacher on vacation” who went to Afghanistan in 2001 “to help refugees.” The member of an Islamist street gang who opened three al-Wafa offices with Suliman Abu Ghaith (Osama Bin Laden’s chief spokesman) to raise al Qaeda funds became a charity worker whose eight children were left destitute in his absence. All 12 Kuwaitis became the innocent victims of “bounty hunters.”

A Montreal-based marketing firm was hired to create the families’ full-service Web site which fed propaganda–unsourced, unrebutted and uninvestigated by the media–aimed at the media all over the world. Creating what Mr. Levick calls a “war of pictures,” the site is replete with images meant to appeal to Americans: smiling Kuwaiti families wearing T-shirts and baseball caps, cute children passing out yellow ribbons.

Much of the original story came from 9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America and was written in 2007. It's a story you will not find in the NY Times of the Virginian Pilot. It doesn't fit the template.

UPDATE: From the Wall Street Journal:

'Captive 220'
May 9, 2008; Page A16
It's a fair bet that no high-powered American law firm will lend a caring hand to the relatives of the seven Iraqis murdered last month by a suicide bomber named Abdullah Salih Al Ajmi and two accomplices. That's too bad, seeing as how Ajmi was himself a beneficiary of some of that high-powered legal help.

Ajmi is a Kuwaiti who was 29 when he blew himself up in the northern city of Mosul in April. But before that he had spent more than three years as an enemy combatant at Guantanamo, where he was known as "Captive 220." He was taken prisoner at Tora Bora, Afghanistan, after the fall of the Taliban, in whose service he had reportedly spent eight months. While in detention, he told interrogators that his intention was "to kill as many Americans" as he possibly could.

In April 2002, a group of Kuwaiti families retained the law firm of Shearman & Sterling to represent the Kuwaitis held at Guantanamo, including Ajmi. (An attorney at Shearman tells us the firm donated its fees to charity.) Ajmi was one of 12 Kuwaiti petitioners in whose favor the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2004 in Rasul v. Bush, which held that the detainees were entitled to a habeas corpus hearing.

CIA Blows It Again In the Middle East

Is the CIA only good at plotting against the Bush administration? It seems to be the case:

The September Israeli airstrike on a suspected nuclear site in Syria had been in the works for months, ABC News has learned, and was delayed only at the strong urging of the United States.

In early July the Israelis presented the United States with satellite imagery that they said showed a nuclear facility in Syria. They had additional evidence that they said showed that some of the technology was supplied by North Korea.


One U.S. official told ABC's Martha Raddatz the material was "jaw dropping" because it raised questions as to why U.S. intelligence had not previously picked up on the facility.


Officials said that the facility had likely been there for months if not years.


"Israel tends to be very thorough about its intelligence coverage, particularly when it takes a major military step, so they would not have acted without data from several sources," said ABC military consultant Tony Cordesman.



U.S. Cautious After Flawed Iraq Intelligence

A senior U.S. official said the Israelis planned to strike during the week of July 14 and in secret high-level meetings American officials argued over how to respond to the intelligence.


Some in the administration supported the Israeli action, but others, notably Sect. of State Condoleeza Rice did not. One senior official said the U.S. convinced the Israelis to "confront Syria before attacking."


Officials said they were concerned about the impact an attack on Syria would have on the region. And given the profound consequences of the flawed intelligence in Iraq, the U.S. wanted to be absolutely certain the intelligence was accurate.


Initially, administration officials convinced the Israelis to call off the July strike. But in September the Israelis feared that news of the site was about to leak and went ahead with the strike despite U.S. concerns.


The airstrike was so highly classified, President Bush refused to acknowledge it publicly even after the bombs fell.

Meryl Yourish comments re the US intelligence community:

Yeah, that would be the same intelligence that didn’t pick up on al Qaeda and 9/11. Good to know they’re just as crappy now as they were then. I feel so safe. Not.

Some in the administration supported the Israeli action, but others, notably Sect. of State Condoleeza Rice did not. One senior official said the U.S. convinced the Israelis to “confront Syria before attacking.”

Gee, good idea. Let Syria know you know about their secret nuclear weapons site, so they can move it and hide it somewhere else.

If you want to see the recap of what’s been going on with Syria this year, click here. That’s the last 30 or so posts including a Syria tag. All of the military analysis is predicated on the fact that the Syrians would use conventional weapons, as well as possibly chemical and biological agents. In the meantime, Syria is working with North Korea (doubtless funded by Iran) to hopscotch over the little details of developing scientific knowledge yourself—which takes decades—to simply buy instant Israeli destruction. Thanks so much, effing Pakistan, and France, for helping spread nuclear technology beyond the original five nations. Now Russia is working with Iran to do the same, and Iran is working on an ICBM that can reach the U.S. Europe is already within reach.

And watch: From the left and from the Israel-haters, they will insist that Israel’s intelligence was cooked. This, in spite of North Korea’s reaction, and in spite of the fact that Syria has had nothing to say, and has not demanded a UN investigation, or a Security Council or General Assembly resolution condemning the raid.

That silence speaks volumes.

It was nukes.

John Steel comments:

CIA. Our Motto: Getting it wrong since 1947. This is one of those mornings when I hoping that the CIA is just the comedy front for the ACTUAL intelligence organization — then I wake up. The most successful clandestine opertion they have run in the past 20 years is the one ongoing against the current US administration.

Daily Kos Tells You How To Make An IED

A blogger on DailyKos gives step by step instructions for making IEDs to kill American soldiers.

But they support the troops.

And don't question their patriotism.

The Civil War and Iraq

I have to say at the outset that I am not impressed when someone quotes a long dead sage to “prove” a point. Appeals to authority are one of the weakest of the logical fallacies.

However, sometimes the things you read about events long ago and men long dead strike a responsive cord and remind you that there are very few new things under the sun.

I am re-reading Ulysses S. Grant’s Memoirs. Yes, THAT Grant: Ulysses S. Grant of Civil War fame. He was the Civil War General who finally commanded all of the Union armies and defeated the Confederacy. His capture of the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg coincided with Lee’s defeat at Gettysburg and re-invigorated the North in its fight to reunite the Union.

There is an eerie similarity between the current war and America’s Civil War. Even the political parties are the same.

First, although the war was about saving the Union and ending slavery, it was – as it was known throughout much of the South - the “War of Northern Aggression.” Unfair, perhaps, but the South’s objective in the Civil War was to be left to secede in peace, not to invade or conquer the North. The Civil War’s fighting was ostensibly begun by the bombardment of Fort Sumter and the surrender of Major Anderson and his 85 troops. The fighting was not expected to last very long at all, and the surrender of the fort's defenders was quickly followed by their release to Union warships outside Charleston harbor. Major Anderson later became a Union General. But, while the skirmish at Fort Sumter marked the initiation of shooting, the Civil War was started by Abraham Lincoln’s decision to prevent the South from seceding, and his willingness to use military force to prevent it.

Lincoln was determined to preserve the Union and – as a result – Northern armies invaded the states that seceded to bring them back under Federal Government control. Virtually all of the war was fought on secessionist soil.

Today we consider that a good thing. But it was not inevitable. Lincoln could have allowed the South to secede and made arrangements with the Confederate government to cooperate in developing another separate country on the North American continent, thereby saving roughly 600,000 lives; 2% of the population. In today's terms that same death toll would equal 6 million people.

Following the war, the South was treated as conquered enemy territory during “Reconstruction” and its economy was so devastated that it took a century before it fully recovered.

There were many people who opposed the war. First or course were the 10 million people of the Southern states who would just as soon not fight an invading army. But even among the 20 million Northerners, there was a very large contingent who did not feel the war was worthwhile and who were content to see the South secede. Among these was George McClellan, the top Northern General at the beginning of the war who ran against Abraham Lincoln in 1864 when his party – the Democrats – ran on an anti-war platform, promising to end the war and negotiate with the Confederacy.

Of course, this unpopular war was blamed on Abraham Lincoln who was attacked by the Democrats as “Honest Ape” in newspapers which ran cartoons showing him as a monkey. Lincoln is also illustrated as commanding a boat with a pair of black men groping a white woman. When a draft was announced, riots exploded in New York City which killed an estimated 100 people and had to be put down by units of the Army of the Potomac. Wisconsin newspaper editor Marcus M. Pomeroy called Lincoln

"fungus from the corrupt womb of bigotry and fanaticism" and a "worse tyrant and more inhuman butcher than has existed since the days of Nero... The man who votes for Lincoln now is a traitor and murderer... And if he is elected to misgovern for another four years, we trust some bold hand will pierce his heart with dagger point for the public good."

This scenario is eerily similar to the situation we find ourselves in now. Today Pomeroy has his counterparts on the Internet at sites like DailyKos and MoveOn.org and at street demonstrations where President Bush is commonly demonized as a mass murderer and 9/11 is called "an inside job.".

It may be instructive to hear what the men of that time had to say.

Faced with intense criticism from Democrats and defeatist Republicans, Grant commented

“I always admired the South, as bad as I thought their cause, for the boldness with which they silenced all opposition and all croaking, by press and by individuals, within their control. War at all times, whether a civil war between sections of a common country or between nations, ought to be avoided, if possible with honor. But, once entered into, it is too much for human nature to tolerate an enemy within their ranks to give aid and comfort to the armies of the opposing section or nation.”

There is no doubt that the kind of “aid and comfort” that General Grant was referring to is similar to what we are seeing in the “anti-war” faction today.

The government of the day dealt with their ideological enemies on several levels. In one famous case they imprisoned and later exiled congressman Clement Vallandingham. For those not familiar with him, he was the founder of the “Copperheads.” Vallandigham gave a major speech on May 1, 1863 charging the war was being fought not to save the Union but to free blacks and enslave whites. To those who supported the war he declared,

“Defeat, debt, taxation [and] sepulchres - these are your trophies.”

He denounced "King Lincoln," calling for Abraham Lincoln's removal from the presidency.

Just as the war in the Middle East is being fought with an eye on the politics in Washington, the Civil War was fought with the same politics in mind. The Confederacy’s objective was to make the North weary of war so that the fighting would cease, the Confederacy remain separate, and slavery remain in place. The failure of Northern arms in the first years of the war led to discouragement in the North and problems with military recruitment.


As volunteers dried up, a draft was instituted in the North. In protest, rioters lynched blacks in New York. Grant was keenly aware of these political problems. In his memoirs he recalls a conversation he had with General Sherman as he was preparing his Vicksburg campaign.

“[Sherman advised Grant to go back the Memphis and establish a base of supply in keeping with military doctrine instead of deciding to live off the country and attack Vicksburg]…To this I replied, the country is already disheartened over the lack of success on the part of our armies; the last election went against the vigorous prosecution of the war, voluntary enlistments had ceased throughout most of the North and conscription was already resorted to, and if I went back as far as Memphis it would discourage the people so much that bases of supply would be of no use; neither men to hold them or supplies to put in them would be furnished. The problem for us was to move forward to a decisive victory, or our cause was lost. “

From the perspective of 150 years later and the rosy glow we get from having fought a bloody war to free us from the scourge of slavery and to preserve the Union, we tend to forget the incredible controversy that this noble cause engendered.

Is there is lesson to be learned that we can apply to our situation today? Yes there is. Today the situation we face is even more dire than the North faced in 1860. The Confederacy was not an aggressive power. During the attack on Fort Sumter there were no casualties caused by hostile fire and the Union troops that surrendered were sent home. The Confederate States simply wanted to be left alone. The case of the Islamofascists is not as simple. They swim in a sea of likeminded adherents numbering roughly 1.5 billion people, some armed with nuclear weapons and others in the process of obtaining them.

Their attack on 9/11 caused 3000 casualties - more than Pearl Harbor - and their ostensible objective is a world-wide Caliphate. This may sound like the ravings of a lunatic, but notice that many voices of opposition are already stilled in Europe - mindful of the killing of Theo Van Gogh - and even the mainstream media, supposedly American champions of “free expression,” are afraid to offend Islamic sensibilities by publishing cartoons of which Islamists do not approve.

We are engaged in a new kind of war; a war without a center of gravity against we can fight with our superior weaponry. We have a Copperhead contingent within our ranks who don’t believe we are actually in a war and who wish us to stop fighting and start negotiating our retreat.

Like the fight against Communism, this may well be a long twilight struggle whose end we cannot know. We sympathize with General Grant, but we know that his struggle ended in victory for freedom and union. Let us pray that the God who has spared this great nation so far will continue to bless us despite our manifold sins and that, like Grant, we will find victory. Let us also pray that it will not be at the cost of so many lives and so much destruction.

EDITED 9/18/2007

What if Moveon.org Existed 65 Years Ago

James Brolin (Mr. Barbra Streisand) "Happy 9/11"

James Brolin celebrates 9/11. A stab in the back.