Petrified Truth

The whip hand

Here's an interesting take on the current political environment from some savvy observers: The Note team at ABC News.

The horrific car bomb explosion outside of Baghdad — killing more than 100 and sure to dominate cable and network news all day — shows just how politically strong President Bush is right now.

We only reluctantly draw political lessons from human tragedy, but today's news is yet another reminder that on a range of issues — national security, foreign affairs, budgeting, dealing with the nation's gathered governors — the President has the whip hand.

Events and positions that would have brought hailstorms down on past presidents (say: Bill Clinton) don't seem to be seen as "political" problems for this administration right now.

In fact, with the oh-so-prominent exception of Social Security, it is amazing how relatively free and unscathed the White House is to pursue its at-home and abroad agendas.

The Democratic Party is still trying to figure out (1) what Howard Dean is all about; (2) what its positive agenda is/should be; (3) what its 2006 strategy is/should be; (4) who its 2008 presidential candidates are/should be; (5) how it should talk about Iraq; (6) which of allied interest groups it can count on; (7) if the Democratic Leadership Council or MoveOn is more of the answer; and (8) so much more.

De-evolution

Essential Victor Davis Hanson is also pondering the results of President Bush's tour of Europe and what the future holds.

The Europeans worry not just about American muscular idealism usurping their prized role as the backroom moral arbiters of globalized society. Berlin will soon be in range of Tehran's missiles. Jihadists went to Afghanistan, the West Bank or Iraq from Marseilles or Amsterdam, not from Detroit and the Bronx. Enemies of the U.S.--unlike Europe's--more likely have to get in rather than come from within. Suddenly the old American stereotypes--an integrated rabble at home, an up-armed society foolishly spending its borrowed money on exotic missile defense, and an intrusive fleet turning up everywhere--are not so silly after all.

What happens if a newly aroused United States takes seriously the anti-American rhetoric of the European masses and media rather than the triangulating reassurances of their diplomats? Our elites may lament being cold-shouldered on their hajj to European Oz; yet red-state America is no longer afraid of the suave wizard's booming voice and image on the big screen, but instead has spied out the tiny functionary with his ridiculous levers and dials behind the curtain at the side.

So we are in a dilemma. Until postmodern Europe rightly assumes a role commensurate with its moral rhetoric, population, and economic strength, out of envy or pride it will often seek to undercut and occasionally embarrass the U.S.--at least up to that fine, though ambiguous, point of not quite alienating its hyperpower patron. For our part, we cannot ridicule Europe's present military impotence only to oppose its nascent efforts at a unified defense establishment. So go to it, Europe--one voice, one army, one U.N. Security Council seat!

The United States should ignore all this ankle-biting, praise the EU to the skies, but not take very seriously their views on the world until we learn exactly what is going on inside Europe during these years of its uncertainty. America is watching enormous historical forces being unleashed on the continent from its own depopulation, new anti-Semitism, and rising Islamicism to Turkish demands for EU membership and further expansion of the EU into the backwaters of Eastern Europe that will bring it to the doorstep of Russia. Whether its politics and economy will evolve to embrace more personal freedom, its popular culture will integrate its minorities, and its military will step up to protect Western values and visions is unclear. But what is certain is that the U.S. cannot remain a true ally of a militarily weak but shrill Europe should its politics grow even more resentful and neutralist, always nursing old wounds and new conspiracies, amoral in its inability to act, quite ready to preach to those who do.

We keep assuming that Europeans are like Britain and Japan when in fact long ago they devolved more into a Switzerland and Sweden--friendly neutrals but no longer real allies. In the meantime, let us Americans keep much more quiet, wait, and watch--even as we carry a far bigger stick.

Disaster waiting to happen

Here's Mark Steyn on President Bush's trip to Europe and the unfortunate prospects for the EU's future.

Most of the so-called [EU] constitution isn't in the least bit constitutional. That's to say, it's not content, as the U.S. Constitution is, to define the distribution and limitation of powers. Instead, it reads like a U.S. defense spending bill that's got porked up with a ton of miscellaneous expenditures for the ''mohair subsidy'' and other notorious Congressional boondoggles. President Ronald Reagan liked to say, ''We are a nation that has a government -- not the other way around.'' If you want to know what it looks like the other way round, read Monsieur Giscard's constitution.

But the fact is it's going to be ratified, and Washington is hardly in a position to prevent it. Plus there's something to be said for the theory that, as the EU constitution is a disaster waiting to happen, you might as well cut down the waiting and let it happen. CIA analysts predict the collapse of the EU within 15 years. I'd say, as predictions of doom go, that's a little on the cautious side.

But either way the notion that it's a superpower in the making is preposterous. Most administration officials subscribe to one of two views: a) Europe is a smugly irritating but irrelevant backwater; or b) Europe is a smugly irritating but irrelevant backwater where the whole powder keg's about to go up.

For what it's worth, I incline to the latter position. Europe's problems -- its unaffordable social programs, its deathbed demographics, its dependence on immigration numbers that no stable nation (not even America in the Ellis Island era) has ever successfully absorbed -- are all of Europe's making. By some projections, the EU's population will be 40 percent Muslim by 2025. Already, more people each week attend Friday prayers at British mosques than Sunday service at Christian churches -- and in a country where Anglican bishops have permanent seats in the national legislature.

Some of us think an Islamic Europe will be easier for America to deal with than the present Europe of cynical, wily, duplicitous pseudo-allies. But getting there is certain to be messy, and violent.

Until the shape of the new Europe begins to emerge, there's no point picking fights with the terminally ill. The old Europe is dying, and Mr. Bush did the diplomatic equivalent of the Oscar night lifetime-achievement tribute at which the current stars salute a once glamorous old-timer whose fading aura is no threat to them. The 21st century is being built elsewhere.

Related: watch Mark Steyn interviewed by C-SPAN's Brian Lamb (Real Media).

A Company of Soldiers

We missed PBS's Frontline program "A Company of Soldiers" earlier this week, but caught it last night when our local PBS affiliate KUHT re-aired it. What a great piece of reporting: open, honest, timely.

If you missed it, or want to see it again, PBS has posted the entire show online, along with detailed supporting material. Here's producer Edward Jarvis:

The objective of the film was to document the realities of life in Iraq for the average American soldier. To this end, we were left to our own devices and allowed to film everything, with no restrictions. The only time we were asked not to film was when a personal threat was made to an officer, and his men were asked if they wanted to leave the team because of the heightened threat level; in the end none did, but they didn't want the presence of the cameras to inhibit this decision. We selected the unit we wanted to be with and we chose those whom we wanted to film. Under the terms of our embedding agreement, the film was shown to a Pentagon official prior to broadcast for security clearance only; they had no editorial control at all. Their only request was blur the name of an intelligence officer named in a document which appears briefly in the film. Everything else is a faithful documentation of this company of soldiers during the month we spent with them last November.

The soldiers of Dog Company, part of the 1-8 Cavalry from Fort Hood, Texas are nothing less than inspirational. Check 'em out.

Getting it wrong, getting it right

Here's Jack Kelly, national security correspondent for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, on Iraq:

It will be some months before the news media recognize it, and a few months more before they acknowledge it, but the war in Iraq is all but won. The situation is roughly analogous to the battle of Iwo Jima, which took place 60 years ago this month. It took 35 days before the island was declared secure, but the outcome was clear after day five, with the capture of Mt. Suribachi.

Those who get their news from the "mainstream" media are surprised by developments in Iraq, as they were surprised by our swift victory in Afghanistan, the sudden fall of Saddam Hussein, the success of the Afghan election and the success of the Iraqi election.

Journalists demand accountability from political leaders for "quagmires" which exist chiefly in the imagination of journalists. But when will journalists be held to account for getting every major development in the war on terror wrong?

Tip via PowerLine

People power

Fareed Zakaria offers advice for the U.S. about dealing with Syria and Lebanon, and has this insight along the way.

Throughout the Arab world we are beginning to see people power at work. And strikingly, the autocrats who have long claimed to understand the Arab Street are bewildered by it. The Shia are rising but acting with restraint, the Palestinians are voting freely but endorsing diplomacy, the Lebanese speak up--not about Israel or America, but rather about Syria. Arab rulers will increasingly have to adjust to the actual feelings of their people rather than the caricatures that they have drawn up.

Hate in Houston?

This is disturbing news from our area. The cops need to get to the bottom of it right away. We don't want to be as clueless as, say, France.

A spike in anti-Semitic vandalism and other possible hate crimes across Houston in recent months has alarmed police and set the Jewish community on edge, investigators and activists said Wednesday.

Since September, 14 such crimes have been reported in the Greater Houston area. Eight occurred in a three-week period in December, said Martin Cominsky, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League. The last known incident was Dec. 30.

Police say they have never seen this many anti-Semitic crimes reported in such a short period of time. Seven of the nine incidents that happened inside Houston's city limits have already been classified as hate crimes, police say. The other two incidents are still being reviewed.

By comparison, Cominsky said that authorities last year classified a total of 14 incidents, "involving all races and religions," as hate crimes. What's more, police have no idea who's responsible — or if these "personal" attacks, as investigators describe them, are even related.

Most of the crimes involve vandalism at public places, including houses of worship and a Jewish community center. But there have also been threatening messages left on answering machines at synagogues in Houston and The Woodlands.

Police are concerned the crimes could eventually escalate to violent acts if the perpetrators aren't stopped.

Feel like a million bucks

Here's a big part of The Answer for what ails public education: the library as the best reason to come to school.

It is a very big deal, the new library at P.S. 105. A new library feeds a boy's dreams. "When this library first opened," said Isaiah Ross, a fifth grader, "I promised myself I'd read every dinosaur book here."

A new library makes you feel like a million bucks. After Quindell Bowers, a first grader, checked out "Hey Al" by Arthur Yorinks, he skipped out of the library.

A new library smells good.

"When I come into the new library it smells like wood," Tyrone Irving, a fourth grader, wrote in his essay expressing thanks for the library.

The new library at P.S. 105 has a full-time certified librarian and a full-time aide, meaning it can be open before school, every period during school and even after school, for parents to come in with children and check out books. It is big enough that two classes can use the library each period.

Throughout the day, children leave their classrooms to visit and get books. The single-day circulation record at P.S. 105's new library is 167 - meaning 30 percent of students checked out a book that day.

When the Robin Hood Foundation, a nonprofit agency that fights poverty in New York City, was looking to help the schools, it decided on libraries, because a library is the one academic place every child in a school uses. Since 2002, 31 new Robin Hood libraries have been built at some of the poorest elementary schools citywide, and they are spectacular to behold, every one different and all worthy of an Architectural Digest spread.

The new library at the 110-year-old P.S. 106 in Bushwick, Brooklyn, was built on the fourth floor, in an attic space, and features a stairway that leads to two large windows with a perfect view of the Manhattan skyline. And those padded stairs double as seats for library classes.

When a library is the most beautiful room a child has ever seen, it sends a message. "One of my kids, a third grade boy, said to me, 'I want to be a librarian,' " said Concetta Ritorto, principal of P.S. 10 in Park Slope, Brooklyn. "I said, 'You're kidding.' " If you've seen the new library at P.S. 10 it makes sense; the wood-paneled room feels like a Midtown Manhattan law library.

But just as important as a beautiful space well stocked - Scholastic and HarperCollins donated a million books each for the libraries - are the people who run them. Robin Hood required that each new library have a full-time aide and a librarian with a master's in library science.

At P.S. 105, Mrs. Feldman, the librarian, has time to coordinate classroom lessons with teachers. For a kindergarten class studying transportation, she read, "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus." "Is this fiction or nonfiction?" Mrs. Feldman asked.

"Fiction," said a girl. "A pigeon can't drive a bus." More.

Party of No

Journalist Gloria Borger says the Democrats have become the "party of no."

As it turns out, Howard Dean is not the best choice to lead the Democratic National Committee. If the party is looking for a new spokesman, there is a better choice--David Spade (with apologies to his Capital One ad):

Social Security reform? No. Clear some judges? No way, Jose. Find some agreement on national security? Nyet. Sure, the Democrats are struggling to find their voice, pick their leaders, and agree on a legislative strategy. It's hard work. But it's also too bad they're allowing themselves to look like a bunch of minority naysayers--defined more by old tactics than new ideas. Sad to say, the Democrats are becoming the party of no.

Ironically, it's the Republicans who understand the Democrats' predicament. "We were the party of no since the 1930s," a top White House aide told me. "It took Ronald Reagan and his 'Morning in America' for us to get out of that mind-set and start proposing solutions to problems." And there is no going back. No way. Never.

That must be why the DNC elected Howard "Dr. No" Dean as their new leader -- David Spade turned them down.

Hunter S. Thompson rewind

Here are two more post-mortem appraisals following the suicide of Hunter S. Thompson.

Writer Tom Wolfe, who knew Thompson, finds much to admire.

Hunter's life, like his work, was one long barbaric yawp, to use Whitman's term, of the drug-fueled freedom from and mockery of all conventional proprieties that began in the 1960s. In that enterprise Hunter was something entirely new, something unique in our literary history. When I included an excerpt from "The Hell's Angels" in a 1973 anthology called "The New Journalism," he said he wasn't part of anybody's group. He wrote "gonzo." He was sui generis. And that he was.

Yet he was also part of a century-old tradition in American letters, the tradition of Mark Twain, Artemus Ward and Petroleum V. Nasby, comic writers who mined the human comedy of a new chapter in the history of the West, namely, the American story, and wrote in a form that was part journalism and part personal memoir admixed with powers of wild invention, and wilder rhetoric inspired by the bizarre exuberance of a young civilization. No one categorization covers this new form unless it is Hunter Thompson's own word, gonzo. If so, in the 19th century Mark Twain was king of all the gonzo-writers. In the 20th century it was Hunter Thompson, whom I would nominate as the century's greatest comic writer in the English language.

Tough-minded Gerard Van Der Leun, who also knew him, expresses a much different view in debate with a reader.

You seem to be under the impression that I have zero admiration for the books of Thompson. Let me dissuade you that. I found Fear and Loathing (AT THE TIME) to be a fascinating and inspiring book in its way. In time I outgrew it. In time I outgrew the mental state that Thompson became stuck in. In time I outgrew almost everything about those days -- all the me, me, me of it, all the hate your country cool pose of it, all the vile behavior excused in the name of "freedom" which was, at the end, just code for selfishness. I outgrew all of it. Thompson did not. He was forever chained to a self of the moment. For him it was always 1972.

In the end, his life was all about me and nothing about others. He ended typing non-selling screeds about the hatefulness and vilness of Americans and his country. He ended filing blubber nobody read for ESPN2. His own hate and bile dragged him down.

Finally, he ended in some gore spattered room giving his wife and son his final gift of spite -- his body and a mess -- to cope with and clean up. In the end he was what he was all along and what many of his ilk still are behind their cozy little lies of the self and the sole -- a selfish coward.

But take heart...because in the end that is not how Hunter Thompson will be remembered. In 10 to 20 years he won't be remembered at all.

I suspect he may be right.

Cuba's independent libraries

More courageous than the mealy-mouthed pros at the American Library Association, the Cuban Cultural Center in New York City has "adopted" an independent library in oppressed Cuba.

They chose one in Las Tunas, Cuba, the Felix Varela Independent Library, which is named for a Cuban priest famous for his work for immigrants and the Roman Catholic church in Lower Manhattan in the 1800's. The library itself, like some 100 others that have been founded since 1998, offers Cubans an alternative to the official media or state-run libraries. They carry newspapers and magazines from around the world or books considered taboo by the regime - like "Animal Farm" by George Orwell.

"I know firsthand what it is not having something interesting to read," said the jazz saxophonist Paquito D'Rivera, who left Cuba in 1980 and who voted to adopt the library. "I know what it is like to have to hide to read something that the government calls subversive."

Almost two years ago, about 11 independent librarians in Cuba were among 75 dissidents, journalists and others arrested and given prison sentences of up to 28 years for essentially collaborating with enemies of the state. Most are still in jail, despite an international outcry.

Although New York is home to magnificent libraries, world-class publishers and fierce champions of free expression, the cultural center is the only group in the city so far to adopt an independent library. They hope their action will send a dual message.

"It's not just about sending whatever books we can, but we want the people in Cuba to know they are not alone and that someone here recognizes what they are going through," said Rafael Pi Roman, an anchor on Channel 13 who belongs to the cultural group. "The dilemma is, we are doing this in a city where people have too often seen Fidel Castro as a romantic figure."

Some members of the cultural group think that as more people in traditionally liberal circles begin to see what is happening in Cuba's dissident movement, they will realize that the idea of opposition to Mr. Castro goes far beyond old stereotypes of right-wing tropical exiles screaming for the cameras. The group itself is nonpartisan, and its members range from liberal to conservative.

"I have no idea what the politics are of anybody is in this room," Mr. Pi Roman said. "But none of us would say there should be human rights for Cuba but not for those people who are on the other side. None of us would have supported apartheid. One thing is sure: There is no hypocrisy. If you are for human rights for some, you have to be for human rights for all."

This follows a recent decision by a public library board in South Dakota to take a stand for intellectual freedom in Cuba, as reported by Nat Hentoff in the Village Voice.

Fidel Castro, I'm sure, never heard of the small town of Vermillion, South Dakota, until late last year, when the Vermillion Public Library—founded in 1902, on the eve of the Progressive era in American politics—began to gain international attention by becoming the first, and only, American library to call attention to Castro's imprisoning of 10 of Cuba's independent librarians to sentences of more than 20 years.

Spurred by Mark Wetmore, vice president of the library's board of trustees, the Vermillion library voted on November 18 to sponsor and support the Dulce Maria Loynaz Library in Havana, Cuba.

In March 2003, Castro's State Security police arrested 75 Cuban dissenters: journalists, human rights workers, and labor organizers, along with independent librarians who provided access to books excluded from Cuba's censored library system. These "subversive" independent public librarians were sent to Castro's foul prisons, along with the other dissenters.

During the raids on these independent libraries, the offending books were confiscated, and many of them burned. The Dulce Maria Loynaz Library was one of the targets, but it remains under the directorship of Gisela Delgado, who was not imprisoned.

The Vermillion Public Library is now sending books to its sister independent library in Havana. The first two shipments included Spanish-language editions of George Orwell's 1984 and a collection of the works of that formidable freethinker Mark Twain.

What has made this signal of solidarity against repression most notable is that this small town in South Dakota has not only defied Castro but has also shown the hypocrisy of the national American Library Association—the largest organization of librarians in the world—whose governing council last year overwhelmingly defeated an amendment from one of its members to demand that Castro immediately release the 10 independent librarians, along with the other 65 "prisoners of conscience," as Amnesty International has described them.

Although American librarians stood up to John Ashcroft's Patriot Act provision empowering the FBI to seize library records, including the readers of suspect books, the policy makers of the ALA didn't want to overly offend the Cuban dictator. (Some members of the ALA governing council are Fidelistas who serenade Castro's health care system but are silent about his secret police—and the gulag in which he keeps Cubans who will not be silenced. The Fidelistas prevailed in that ALA vote.)

I have found it astonishing that not until the Vermillion Public Library's sponsorship of an independent Cuban library has an American public library reached out to any of the courageous freedom libraries in Cuba.

This isn't a groundswell yet. Most library boards and librarians themselves are either too uninformed or too submissive to take a stand. But it's a start.

• Freedom to read (not)
• ALA's shameful silence

Fun

Today is Presidents Day, so here's a pertinent timewaster: presidential hangman. (Tip via NRO's The Corner.) Enjoy.

Hunter S. Thompson checks out

Self-styled "gonzo journalist" Hunter S. Thompson has ended his own strange, tumultuous life. Sad, but somehow predictable: how else would he -- could he -- have ended his journey?

James Lileks observes (tip via Instapundit):

"File under Capote, Truman – meaning, whatever you thought of the latter-day persona, don’t forget that there was a reason he had a reputation. Read 'Hell's Angels.' That was a man who could hit the keys right."

Michelle Malkin has more links.

Kevin Aylward at Wizbang makes this observation:

Thompson's legacy - gonzo journalism - in many ways was the first manifestation of the form of writing many of us practice today, though not nearly as well. I'll be the first to say it... Thompson was the grandfather of the blogging movement.

That may be true. Thompson surely had an impact, including on my own collegiate mind during the sordid 1972 presidential campaign -- his articles in Rolling Stone were eye-opening to a freshman starting to awaken to the wider world.

That said, it's hard to keep Lileks's admonition firmly in mind given Thompson's abject decline after the 1970s. Was he really that talented? Or was it all a soft-bellied illusion bound exclusively to those times, like the psychedelic music of the 60s that seemed profound but feels so empty now? We'll have to check back in a decade or two. For now, RIP, "Uncle Duke."

Money talks

This report has the ring of truth. It's interesting that a multi-million dollar bank robbery has had such an impact after so many years of terrorism, gangsterism and virtual civil war produced so much denial.

Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, the Sinn Fein leaders, were publicly named as members of the IRA's Army Council in an unprecedented move by the Irish government yesterday.

The public naming will heap even greater damage on republicans after a week of allegations over IRA involvement in crime.

The Provisionals, once regarded as staunch defenders of the Roman Catholic community, are rapidly losing all credibility over allegations of theft, murder and money laundering to bankroll Sinn Fein's political ambitions.

Michael McDowell, the Irish justice minister, named Mr Adams, Mr McGuinness and Martin Ferris, the Kerry MP, as members of the seven man ruling IRA Army Council during a radio interview at the weekend.

The body gives the orders for all major IRA tactical actions, including sanctioning robberies, purchase of weapons and targeting.

In answer to who he thought was on the IRA Army Council, Mr McDowell said: We're talking about a small group of people, including a number of elected representatives, who run the whole [Republican] movement.

"We're talking about Martin McGuinness, Gerry Adams, Martin Ferris and others."

Before the £26 million Northern Bank robbery, Mr McDowell was almost alone among Irish politicians forcibly to demand an end to IRA criminality. He took a harder line than both the British and Irish governments who maintained a policy of turning a blind-eye to many IRA activities in the interests of the political process.

Mr McDowell said that many professionals, including lawyers, accountants and financiers, were connected to the IRA's money laundering operation which led to the Garda discovering almost £3 million in cash last week.

Fingers in the dike

Dan Darling at Winds of Change has read and summarized a Norwegian security review of the violent murder of artist Theo van Gogh by an Islamic jihadist in The Netherlands. The conclusion:

The killing of Theo Van Gogh was not the work of a lone fanatic but rather the deliberate work of an ad-hoc group of al-Qaeda supporters that viewed the world within the context of the network's global jihad.

Read the whole scary thing. The Dutch are in a lot of trouble, thanks to years of Islamic immigration into their country and their unthinking tolerance of an extreme and violent new sub-culture.

Remember

Today is the 60th anniversary of the unimaginably courageous assault in 1945 by U.S. Marines against the Japanese fortress island of Iwo Jima. Survivors have gathered in Fredericksburg, Texas.

With memories of Iwo Jima fading and with the survivors' ranks thinning, those who fought in the decisive battle have gathered here for what could be their last big reunion.

The anniversary observance, which has drawn nearly 300 Iwo Jima survivors, continues through Sunday. It was organized by the Texas Department of Parks & Wildlife and the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, hometown of Adm. Chester Nimitz, commander in chief of the Pacific fleet after Pearl Harbor.

The 36-day assault claimed the lives of more than 6,800 U.S. Marines and wounded about 20,000 others.

Fighting was often at close range — with small arms, machine guns, grenades, satchel charges, mortars and flamethrowers. The 8-square-mile island was heavily fortified and defended by at least 20,000 Japanese, only 1,100 of whom survived.

The U.S. victory became a turning point in the Pacific War and provided one of the most memorable photographic images of World War II — the planting of the U.S. flag atop Mount Suribachi five days after 61,000 Marines began invading Iwo Jima on Feb. 19, 1945.

After the flag-raising, it took a month for U.S. troops to traverse the land-mine-covered island, capture its airfields and wipe out resistance hidden in bunkers and caves and in an extensive network of tunnels that took decades to build.

So fierce was the fighting that 22 Marines and five sailors received the Medal of Honor for their heroic acts there, oftentimes for hurling their bodies onto armed grenades to protect fellow troops, and for braving torrential enemy fire to rescue wounded comrades.

Related:

• National Museum of the Pacific War
• U.S. Marine Corps. - Medal of Honor Recipients
• National Park Service - U.S.M.C. War Memorial
• PBS - American Valor
• Zell Miller - Iwo Jima, If Covered by Media Today

More: Historian Arthur Herman reviews what happened at Iwo Jima and draws a profound conclusion.

Sixty years ago today, more than 110,000 Americans and 880 ships began their assault on a small volcanic island in the Pacific, in the climactic battle of the last year of World War II. For the next 36 days Iwo Jima would become the most populous 7 1/2 square miles on the planet, as U.S. Marines and Japanese soldiers fought a battle that would test American resolve even more than D-Day or the Battle of the Bulge had, and that still symbolizes a free society's willingness to make the sacrifice necessary to prevail over evil--a sacrifice as relevant today as it was 60 years ago....

The lesson of Iwo Jima is in fact an ancient one, going back to Machiavelli: that sometimes free societies must be as tough and unrelenting as their enemies. Totalitarians test their opponents by generating extreme conditions of brutality and violence; in those conditions--in the streets and beheadings of Fallujah or on the beach and in the bunkers of Iwo Jima--they believe weak democratic nerves will crack. This in turn demonstrates their moral superiority: that by giving up their own decency and humanity they have become stronger than those who have not.

Free societies can afford only one response. There were no complicated legal issues or questions of "moral equivalence" on Iwo Jima: It was kill or be killed. That remains the nature of war even for democratic societies. The real question is, who outlasts whom. In 1945 on Iwo Jima, it was the Americans, as the monument at Arlington Cemetery, based on Rosenthal's photograph, proudly attests. In the jungles of Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1970s, it was the totalitarians--with terrible consequences.

Today, some in this country think the totalitarians may still win in Iraq and elsewhere. A few even hope so. Only one thing is certain: As long as Americans cherish the memory of those who served at Iwo Jima, and grasp the crucial lesson they offer all free societies, the totalitarians will never win.

Romans and Remans

Here's evidence from archaeologists confirming a portion of yet another "legend" from the ancient past: the founding of Rome.

Italian archaeologists digging in the Forum have unearthed the ruins of a palace they say confirms the legend of Rome's birth " a discovery that may force the rewriting of Western history.

Most contemporary historians dismiss as fable the tale that Romulus founded Rome in 753 B.C. and built a walled city on the slopes of the Palatine hill where he and his twin brother, Remus, were suckled by a wolf in their infancy.

Andrea Carandini of Rome's La Sapienza University has spent 20 years trying to prove the skeptics wrong and last month he and his team hit on the final piece of a puzzle he believes shows the myth has root in fact.

The source of Mr. Carandini's confidence is the discovery of traces of an 8th century B.C. house of regal proportions on the edge of the Forum that dates from the period of the Eternal City's legendary founding.

Found 10 yards or so beneath pines growing on the surface of the Palatine and under centuries of construction from classical to Renaissance times, the palace had a courtyard and covered inner area spanning an estimated 3,800 square feet. Wooden columns marked its entrances, ceramics decorated it and seats were located against the walls of a grand central hall.

It is located by the Sanctuary of Vesta, the Roman goddess of the hearth, close to the slopes of the Palatine, the site of the earliest traces of Roman civilization and where legend has it Romulus killed Remus before building Rome.

Most historians have always dismissed Rome's founding myth because they argued the Eternal City was just a huddle of wattle huts at the time Roman historian Livy described Romulus fortifying the Palatine and showing "outward symbols of power." Mr. Carandini, who has also found traces of sanctuaries, a defensive wall and a shingle Forum floor dating from the same period, said that view will now have to change.

It's like the Middle East - every time they dig up something, it just seems to confirm that our ancestors knew what they were talking about when they composed the "myths" handed down to us.

Tony Snow has colon cancer

Radio and TV host Tony Snow announced today that he was diagnosed with colon cancer last Friday. He talked about it on his radio show. Tough news, but it sounds like he caught it early.

Good luck, Tony. We'll pray for you.

UPDATE: Tony called in to his show recently following his surgery.

He's back

So, the Democrats have cast their lot with mouthy Howard Dean as DNC chairman.

Democrats elected Howard Dean chairman of their national party on Saturday, casting their lot with a skilled fund-raiser and organizer whose sometimes caustic, blunt comments can lead to controversy.

The 447-member Democratic National Committee chose Dean on a voice vote to replace outgoing party chief Terry McAuliffe. The former Vermont governor and presidential candidate had promised to rebuild the state parties, take the offensive against Republicans, and better explain party positions on issues.

"We only have one way to go, and that's up," Georgia delegate Lonnie Platt said.

It's a modest improvement over Terry "Loser" MacAuliffe, but still... Karl Rove's cry of "Yippee!" must have been audible all over Washington, D.C.

Way back in 2003, Joe Lieberman said it best:

"He seems to believe if you are just against everything, that's enough. Against removing Saddam Hussein. Against tax cuts. Against knocking down walls of protection around the world so we can sell more products that are made in America, by Americans. Dr. Dean has become Dr. No."

Teaching us something

Peggy Noonan has been watching tenacious Pope John Paul II's declining health and offers her thoughts, with help from Michael Novak, on the meaning of the example he is setting now.

I have been thinking about John Paul II. Everyone has, I suppose. The pope yesterday missed Ash Wednesday services at the Vatican. This after a recent hospitalization.

Ash Wednesday reminds Catholics that we will leave this world some day, that from dust we came and to dust we will return. We are asked to renew our spiritual lives, to give up some small pleasure and give that sacrifice to God, at least until the spring, and Easter.

The pope's long physical decline is part of a long goodbye that carries within it meaning.

...

His whole life is a goodbye tour now. He knows they come to see him in part because they want to be able to say, "I saw John Paul the Great." And so there is around him a sense of inescapable twilight.

An explosion of joy and sadness will mark his passing. Joy because it is time now for a younger man to put his stamp upon the age. Sadness because he is a giant, the last pope of the old age. And something else. After him the real modern world begins, the new one, the post-9/11 one, and all will be in play. He was the last fruit of the old world. His presence was definite and dense as the Vatican itself.

His suffering is his witness. It has a purpose. It is telling us something. Yesterday, in thinking about this and remembering that audience, I called the great writer and thinker Michael Novak. He thought aloud for me. St. Therese of Lisieux, he reminded me, believed her suffering could help others. She would take her moments of pain or annoyance or sadness and offer them to God, believing that they became united with God's love, united that is with something infinitely powerful which works always for the betterment of man. She would ask God to take her suffering and use it to help the missionaries of the world. She knew, Mr. Novak said, what Dostoevsky knew: there's a kind of web around the world, an electric web in which we're all united in suffering and in love. When you give to it what you have, you add to the communion of love all around the world.

Therese was a Carmelite. Mr. Novak spoke of George Weigel's observation that the pope has a Carmelite soul, a soul at home with the Carmelite tradition of everyday mysticism.

What should the pope's suffering tell us? Several things, said Mr. Novak. He is telling us it is important in an age like ours to honor the suffering of the old and the infirm. He wants us to know they have a place in life and a purpose. He not only says this; he lives it. He was an actor as a youth; he teaches by doing and showing, by being. His suffering is a drama he is living out quite deliberately. John Paul stands for life, for all of life. He wants to honor what the world does not honor.

But why, I said, does God allow this man he must so love to be dragged through the world in pain? He could have taken him years ago. Maybe, said Mr. Novak, God wants to show us how much he loves us, and he is doing it right now by letting the pope show us how much he loves us. Christ couldn't take it anymore during his passion, and yet he kept going.

Which reminded me of something the pope said to a friend when the subject of retirement came up a few years ago: "Christ didn't come down from the cross." Christ left when his work was done.

Read the whole thing.

Cruel but fair

So, Great Britain's very daft Prince Charles is getting re-married...

A radiant Camilla, wearing a fuchsia gown and clutching a black evening bag, showed off her engagement ring — a royal family heirloom, platinum band with a square-cut central diamond and three sparkling baguettes on each side. Next to her, Charles smiled proudly and blushed, hands held behind his formal jacket, head angled at a princely tilt.

"Of course," the bride-to-be said when asked at the Windsor Castle reception if Charles had gotten down on one knee to propose. "I'm just coming down to Earth."

... which yields the Quote of the Day:

"I give Chuck credit for originality. Most guys his age ditch the old battleaxe and pick up a trophy wife. He ditched the trophy wife and picked up the old battleaxe."

Long shot

Daniel Henninger says Iraqi voters should win this year's Nobel Peace Prize. That's a splendid idea. What are the odds?

They have already won the world's peace prize by demonstrating in a single day a commitment not seen in our lifetime to peace, self-determination and human rights--the goals for which the Nobel Peace Prize began in 1901. Formal recognition by the Nobel Committee of what the Iraqi people did on Jan. 30 would do more to ensure the furtherance of these goals, in concrete ways, than any other imaginable recipient this year. Who did more?

The history of the Peace Prize shows as well that Iraq's voters placed themselves squarely at the center of one of the Nobel Committee's enduring, seemingly quixotic, goals--peace in the Middle East.

On at least three occasions, the Prize has been awarded to individuals attempting Middle East peace. Ralph Bunche received the Prize in 1950 for work as mediator in Palestine a few years before. Then Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin won in 1976 and in 1994 it went to Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat. Cynics would argue that Arafat deserves another Peace Prize for dying. The way to trump the region's well-earned reputation for lost causes would be to reward the eight million Iraqi idealists who rejected the cynics who offered death and subjugation over the difficulties of negotiating a democracy.

"Hello, everyone"

Famed classical music scholar and radio educator Dr. Karl Haas has died at age 91. His programs were always informative and fun at the same time. He'll be missed.

[F]or Haas... the greatest joy was sharing his passion for classical music with the dentists, shopkeepers and other everyday folk who made up the audience for "Adventures in Good Music," the music and commentary program he started in Detroit in 1959 on radio station WJR. The program, which still airs daily in reruns on 110 stations in America and Australia, reached millions of listeners and cut across classical music stereotypes.

Haas loved to tell the story of a recital and commentary he gave once in Ft. Wayne, Ind.

"One of the members of the audience who came up to greet me after the program was a tall man with a windblown face -- obviously a man of the soil," Haas wrote in a Public Radio newsletter. "As I shook hands with him, he said, 'Dr. Haas, I listen to your program every day on my tractor while I'm plowing fields. I don't always understand what you're talking about, but I sure do like the way you say it. And the music ain't bad either.'

"I've always treasured that meeting because it proved that if audiences weren't quite getting what I had to say, they weren't running away either. I was getting through with the music."

Haas' program cut an idiosyncratic path through the forest of music appreciation, seducing listeners through his humanistic exploration of music and ideas, his irrepressible enthusiasm and gentle humor. His melodious German accent -- he was born in the city of Speyer and settled in Detroit in 1936 after fleeing the Nazis -- carried Old World authority. But he cut against professorial stuffiness by adopting a casual manner: chatty, anecdotal and off-the-cuff.

Haas won prestigious awards, among them two Peabody Awards for broadcasting excellence, and was elected to the Radio Hall of Fame. But it was the responses from listeners that most warmed his heart. In 1987 he told the Chicago Tribune that the most moving letter he ever received was from a soldier in Vietnam responding to a mystery composer quiz.

The letter arrived in an envelope so filthy that Haas had no idea how the post office deciphered the address. The soldier wrote, "There's a hell of a mystery as to why I would be in this filthy foxhole here in Vietnam, but there's no mystery to your composer today. I got it right away."

Haas marveled at the power of music and the resiliency of the human spirit: "That letter," he said, "really shook me up."

Related coverage:

Good news from Afghanistan

Here's Arthur Chrenkoff's latest roundup of good news from Afghanistan. It's a valuable service, especially now that major media have virtually abandoned the country.

Just when, after decades of bloodshed and despair, Afghanistan is finally getting back on its feet, the media have already moved on. But as citizens of countries whose servicemen and -women liberated Afghanistan from the Taliban yoke and continue to help rebuild of the country, we deserve to be told when all that blood, sweat and money is bringing good results....

As the old riddle goes, if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? If a country like Afghanistan is getting back on its feet and there's no one to report it, does it actually happen? As far as the people of Afghanistan are concerned, thankfully, yes; as far as the rest of the world, all too often the answer is no. That's why it's so important that the stories of Afghans--and those who are helping them--be told.

Voice mail

This is worth a laugh.

Marching backwards

Indispensable Victor Davis Hanson watched the recent confirmation hearings for Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and is alarmed by what he saw, as should we all.

What in the world has happened to us?

Democratic idealism that once alone gave the nation its needed social safety net, civil rights legislation and environmental protection is becoming ossified and in danger of ensuring a permanent party of strident second-guessing and deductive furor at the loss of almost all political power.

A majority of the state legislatures and governorships is lost. The Senate is lost. The House is lost. The presidency is lost -- the Supreme Court almost.

The former idealists and reformers have become backward-looking. Thus for a sober documentarian Edward R. Murrow, we now get the conspiracist Michael Moore who praised the terrorists who kill voters in Iraq as "Minutemen." Instead of JFK's muscular idealism, we see Ted Kennedy hours before the historic elections in Iraq screaming to withdraw American troops.

And in place of a crusading Hubert Humphrey, we now endure Barbara Boxer endlessly on television not to apologize, but to recycle the boorishness of her earlier distortions against Condoleezza Rice.

Barbara Boxer's moment is a metaphor of our age, of the radical change from idealism to cynicism and worse.

Truth about Social Security

Congressional Democrats have united in complete opposition to President Bush's ideas for Social Security reform. Whatever the pros and cons of various approaches to change, we can always count on the Left to demagogue this issue in particular.

One word being used often in their talking points: "guarantee." For example, here's buzzing from Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid:

"There's a lot we can do to improve Americans' retirement security, but it's wrong to replace the guaranteed benefit that Americans have earned with a guaranteed benefit cut of up to 40 percent."

Economist and Wall Street Journal contributor Susan Lee, speaking on public radio program Marketplace, explains clearly how Social Security is just another program. There ain't no "guarantee," which illustrates the most fundamental problem: it's not "your" money in any way. And that's why the Left can't tolerate the idea of private accounts. Once it's your money again, they can't touch it.

[R]ight now Social Security benefits are nothing more than political promises. Despite all the words like "trust fund" or "old age insurance," these benefits have no legal standing. Congress can cut them any time, and Congress has.

Back in 1983, Congress cut benefits by raising the retirement age gradually from 65 to 67. The Supreme Court has sanctioned the idea that benefits have no legal standing twice already. In Helvering v. Davis, the Court ruled that Social Security is a welfare program under Congressional control. And in Fleming v. Nestor, the Court found that contributions were tax payments, pure and simple, and that doesn't entitle taxpayers to benefits.

Surprised? Well, I was - until I logged onto the website of the Social Security Administration, where I found this explanation:

Benefits, the site tells us, are only earned in a moral or political sense. Congress can make the rules more generous or more restrictive whenever it wants. But private accounts amount to private property and private property is protected under the Fifth Amendment against unlawful taking. So all contributions to the account and returns on investments in the account would constitute a privately-owned asset. Unlike the Social Security benefit, owners of private property in the form of private accounts could pass them on to heirs as bequests when they die.

Of course, in the Bush Administration's vision, individuals woudn't be free to invest in anything they wanted. The government will likely restrict investments to a conservative mix of stocks and bonds. That minimizes investment risks and assures that retirees won't be left holding an empty bag.

Sure, there are lots of problems with the creation of private accounts. But having your retirement money taken away from you, however much there is of it, isn't one of them.

So, keep your wits about you as the Washington windbags debate your future.

The last full measure

The first Medal of Honor since the infamous "Black Hawk Down" battle in Somalia will be awarded, perhaps in March, to Sgt. 1st Class Paul R. Smith.

Sgt. 1st Class Paul R. Smith, who spent his boyhood in Tampa, became a man in the Army and died outside Baghdad defending his outnumbered soldiers from an Iraqi attack, will receive America's highest award for bravery.

President Bush will present the Medal of Honor to Smith's wife, Birgit, and their children Jessica, 18, and David, 10, at a ceremony at the White House, possibly in March. The official announcement will come soon, but the Pentagon called Mrs. Smith with the news Tuesday afternoon.

Tip via Blackfive

As noted before, Smith gave his life to save others in a fierce gunbattle near Baghdad, killing perhaps as many as 100 Iraqi Republican Guard soldiers.

• U.S. Army Center of Military History - Medal of Honor Citations
• PBS - American Valor

Little Big Man

Peggy Noonan has a well-calibrated appreciation of President Bush's State of the Union address.

George Bush finally began his second term on Wednesday night with an address that marked the return of the Bush of the stump, the Bush who was re-elected president three months ago and whom the nation knows well. His State of the Union address underscored that he meant what he said when he ran: Efforts to move against junk lawsuits, protect marriage and reform Social Security are all on the table. America continues as a friend of liberty throughout the world. The speech was marked by an air not of insistence but of persuasion.

George Bush made it clear he does not intend to cooperate with the tradition whereby second terms are all anticlimax enlivened by scandal. He will not be at the mercy of history. He means to continue doing big things.

...

[I]n a surprising way for the president the [Social Security] issue is win-win. If he loses in Congress, he lost on a great issue on which his large base will likely believe he was right, and on which history will not be able to prove him wrong. And if he wins, he allows the free market to energize and renew a huge creaky behemoth. My guess? Little Big Man is going to get reform.

...

The end of the speech offered an unforgettable moment. When the mother of Marine Sgt. Byron Norwood, who gave his life in Iraq, was honored in the balcony, and then leaned down to embrace the woman in front of her, an Iraqi who had lost her father to Saddam, and who had just voted--when that mother embraced that woman it said more than words could about what we are doing and why. Sacrifice brings progress; courage brings deliverance; love born in Pflugerville can liberate in Fallujah. It pierced the heart.
As for the Democratic response, Harry Reid looks and talks like a small-town undertaker whom you want to trust but wonder about, especially when he says the deceased would love the brass handles. Although Nancy Pelosi continues to look startled, even alarmed, her comments are predictable and pedestrian. Both seemed eager not to agree with Ted Kennedy's recent "Iraq is Vietnam" statements, which more and more seem not just stupid but scandalously so. Absent endorsing radical defeatism, however, Mr. Reid and Ms. Pelosi had little to say. They made Important Sounds. Neither seemed sincere or serious. The president seemed both. More.

Beaming out

Sadness: Star Trek: Enterprise has been cancelled. Last episode will be May 13. This was a good show that never got the support it deserved.

Shock and awe

Newsweek reporter Rod Nordland came away awed by the Iraqi election, despite earlier misgivings. Read the whole thing.

The most touching story I heard was that of Samir Hassan, 32, who voted in a Sunni neighborhood of West Baghdad. Dressed in shabby clothes, he hobbled to the polling place on one leg and a pair of crutches; the other leg had been blown off by a suicide car bomb that targeted a police recruitment center he had the misfortune of passing at the time, one day last October. "I would have crawled here if I had to," he told a reporter who found him waiting in a long line. "I don't want terrorists to kill other Iraqis like they tried to kill me."

It was hard not to catch some of that spirit....

After the polls closed, back in the Green Zone the Independent Iraqi Elections Commission held a press conference in the Convention Center. There were no American officials there; even the United Nations advisers stayed in the background. IECI spokesman Fareed Ayar came to the podium and gave a look of exasperated exhaustion, and then broke into a broad smile. "This day was a historic day and a very Iraqi one," he said. "A day full of surprises." Elections officials were predicting that 8 million of the country's 14 million registered voters will have voted, though it will be some time before there's an official tally—and as long as 10 days before results are final and announced. "The streets of Baghdad were not filled with blood as the terrorist groups threatened," Ayar said. "The cities were not bathed in blood."

In the next days it will become clearer how well the Shia List did compared to Prime Minister Allawi's slate and some of the lesser contenders, but in this election, that doesn't seem to matter nearly as much as whether or not it happened. In a real sense, the much more important contest was between the terrorists' and the Baathists' ideal of an imposed state, and the ideal of democracy—and this time democracy won. "Today, Iraqis have shown both insurgents and the world that they are ready to join the international community of democratic nations," said a statement by the Iraqi Election Information Network, an independent monitoring group.

It was hardly a perfect election. In large parts of the country, Sunnis did not vote in very significant numbers, and they will almost certainly be greatly underrepresented in the National Assembly. When that Assembly begins drafting a new constitution for Iraq, it will have to find a way to encourage and enable Sunni participation—or risk deepening Sunni support for the insurgency, or even provoking a civil war. And there are very large questions about whether the Shia, so long disenfranchised by the minority Sunnis, will be willing to bring them into government to keep the peace. But for the moment, those seem like tomorrow's problems. I look down at my right forefinger, still purple from the voter's ink I dipped it in at the polling station, to the pleased amusement of the workers there. It's supposed to take three days to wear off, but at least I don't have to worry about being killed over it. When I think of all those Iraqis with their stains of honor, it's hard not to feel a sense of awe at the courage they showed today.

Fair and unbalanced

It's a chilly, rainy, gloomy day here in Houston. This cheers things up a bit...

Under intense pressure from the Bush administration to sell its controversial Al-Jazeera network, the nation of Qatar stunned the television industry today by agreeing to sell the broadcast company to Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Channel.

Television insiders were taken aback that the network whose motto is "We Report. You Decide," would acquire a broadcast entity whose slogan is "Death to the Infidels."

But according to Murdoch, chairman and CEO of Fox parent News Corp., the merger was a natural because, in his words, "We took a look at their format and realized that it was almost identical to ours." More.