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July 23, 2004

Add another one

: Just saw via my Technorati that columnist Michelle Malkin is now blogging.

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Getting 9/11 backwards

: If I were writing the 9/11 Commission report, I would have started with the recommendations and then used the narrative to back up those recommendations.

By starting with and rehashing the past, the commission continues the rhetoric of blame it engaged in through its hearings.

And then, rather than wallowing in the finger pointing and coulda-shouldas, the Commission would have focused attention on the future and the more urgent issues facing us, namely:

But the enemy is not just “terrorism,” some generic evil. This vagueness blurs the strategy.The catastrophic threat at this moment in history is more specific. It is the threat posed by Islamist terrorism—especially the al Qaeda network, its
affiliates, and its ideology....

It is not a position with which Americans can bargain or negotiate. With it there is no common ground—not even respect for life—on which to begin a dialogue. It can only be destroyed or utterly isolated....

The present transnational danger is Islamist terrorism.What is needed is a broad political-military strategy that rests on a firm tripod of policies to • attack terrorists and their organizations;
• prevent the continued growth of Islamist terrorism; and
• protect against and prepare for terrorist attacks....

All that sounds good. But then the Commission utterly loses its balls. The tough talk turns to UNesque generalities. This is war. Force must be met with force, not rhetoric.

The report identifies breeding grounds for terrorist vermin:

• western Pakistan and the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region
• southern or western Afghanistan
• the Arabian Peninsula, especially Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and the nearby Horn of Africa, including Somalia and extending southwest into Kenya
• Southeast Asia, from Thailand to the southern Philippines to Indonesia
• West Africa, including Nigeria and Mali
• European cities with expatriate Muslim communities, especially cities in central and eastern Europe where security forces and border controls are less effective

The report goes on to make recommendations regarding Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia. Then it turns to wimpy, Coke-commercial foreign policy that does not answer the question of how to bring democracy to the Middle East and rid it of terrorism. Put on your Birkinstocks and get our your guitar as you read this:

The U.S. government must define what the message is, what it stands for. We should offer an example of moral leadership in the world, committed to treat people humanely, abide by the rule of law, and be generous and caring to our neighbors. America and Muslim friends can agree on respect for human dignity and opportunity.

What the hell does that mean? According to the Commission, we will win this war in... libraries?

• The United States should rebuild the scholarship, exchange, and library programs that reach out to young people and offer them knowledge and hope.Where such assistance is provided, it should be identified as coming from the citizens of the United States.

Excuse me, Mr. bin Laden, shhhhhhh!

: There are good recommendations in the report, of course. But the more I read of it, the less impressed I am.

Last night, Aaron Brown and this morning the Washington Post poured dutiful praise on the commission and its report. I still dissent. The commission hurt its own credibility by comporting itself with partisanship and finger-pointing during its hearings. And its report does not bring the vision and force we need. It merely stirs the muddy waters of politics.

But then, a commission cannot lead. A leader will give us vision and force. The question is whether we have one.

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A place for my stuff

: Marc Canter and I find kismet in a place for my stuff/a digital lifestyle aggregator.

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Back at the front

: Four years and one campaign after he started his pathbreaking, groundbreaking, backbreacking granddaddy blog of blogs, Ken ("We fact-check your ass") Layne is back, blogging again. Bravo!

As we now know, what actually happened is the non-journalists figured out just how easy it was to crank out opinions. And instead of a million tough-ass reporters breaking and making news from wherever it happened, we've got a million little Jonah Goldbergs and Maureen Dowds, all typing their little opinions based on the same AP copy....

That so many of the bloggers are better than the Professional Columnists doesn't make me feel any happier about the way this thing has shaken down. (There's only a handful of good columnists in this country, along with many hundreds of awful cliché hustlers. Being as "good" as some no-name filler hack from Scripps-Howard or whatever is still being not very good at all. And you already know that, in your heart, so I'll shut up about it.) ...

Anyway, it is still early in the battle, and over these next six weeks we'll get to see if bloggers are any better at covering a meaningless dog show -- minus the charming dogs, but still featuring the bug-eyed Ron Reagan Jr. Then, maybe, we'll see people with the time and leisure income to become one-person newspapers, wandering around, finding interesting tales, making up elaborate lies on a Mark Twain scale (you people can do better than Jayson Blair), posting interesting photographs, interviewing real humans, etc.

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