Jeff takes the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's ("Intelligencer"? Granted, I know it's a real word, but come one. Couldn't you have just said "Reporter"?) Thomas Shapley--hereafter referred to as "Tom"--to task for the latter's confusing of the Valerie Plame non-event and the recent leak on NSA surveillance:

How peculiar indeed that the President and his administration should respond differently to these two situations. How very odd that when something right out of the pages of a movie of the week crops up and administration opponents do their level best to capitalize on it in order to harm the President and obstruct his second-term agenda, that the administration should respond one way, but when a loose-lipped grudge-bearer calls up a reporter and blows the lid on an operation that saves American lives, the administration does something else entirely.

If I didn’t know better, I’d say the White House is doing its job, Tom.

From the level-headed responses I've read regarding the NSA's web cookie whoopsie, Captain Ed has to have the best analysis:

In the great spectrum of Internet privacy dangers, "persistent cookies" sits on the weakest end. Spyware from free downloads cause more security problems than cookies, and even the ones used by the NSA can be blocked by any browser on the market. The AP uses the mistake to make cookies sound vaguely sinister when they're almost as ubiquitous on the Internet as pop-up ads, if not more so. The Guardian gets even more hysterical, in all senses of the word, when it says that the "[e]xposure adds to pressure over White House powers".

The silliest part of the story is that no one can understand why the cookies would present any danger to visitors to the NSA website. Both versions of the story call the risk to surfers "uncertain", but a more accurate description would be "irrelevant". Even if the NSA used it to track where casual visitors to its site surfed afterwards, it would discover nothing that any casual surfer wouldn't already be able to access on their own with Google or a quick check on Free Republic. Now imagine who stops to check on the NSA website and try very hard to come up with any good reason to spend precious resources on scouring the web preferences of bloggers and privacy groups instead of focusing on real signal intelligence, which already comes in such volume that the agency has trouble keeping up with their primary task. [Emphasis in the original.]

Jeff does an outstanding job of showing the flip side of the coin the press doesn't want to admit:

Yes, the President is responsible for making the decision to go to war based in part on intelligence that turned out to be incomplete. But the President is also responsible for acting with swift resolve to unseat a brutal dictator, terrorist and friend to terrorists. He’s also responsible for having the sheer guts to go it alone when a great many of the West’s liberal democracies shirked their responsibility both as leaders of the world and as members of the Security Council of the United Nations. He’s also responsible for bringing Saddam Hussein to justice, for capturing or killing his cohorts in crime, for cutting off a huge source of funding to Palestinian murder gangs, for shattering Ansar al-Islam, and for freeing the Shiite people of Iraq from decades of illegitimate rule by a Stalinist political party. And in many ways, President Bush is personally responsible for bringing liberty to Iraq for the first time ever, and for changing the history of the Middle East, and the Arab and Muslim worlds.

New Hampshire Union-Leader:

The Democratic Party's national leadership has plumbed a record depth in its search to score points against the Republicans. In the past week and a half, both House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean have called for the United States to surrender in Iraq. Not since George McGovern in 1972 has one party called for the United States military to surrender to an enemy during wartime.

Some will object to the word, "surrender," but there is no other word to describe the immediate withdrawal of troops from the war zone in Iraq. The simple fact is that two of the nation's three highest-ranking Democrats are advocating an enemy victory over U.S. forces in a foreign land. That not only is appalling in its contempt for the troops who have died to liberate Iraq, it is astonishing in its brazen disregard for the lives and well-being of the Iraqi people. [Via Political Diary.]

Jeff points to Lorie Byrd's recent column, and correctly notes how voters should want their elected officials to err: on the side of caution. What really stood out for me when I was reading Lorie's piece, was this:

[I]t must be pointed out that Democrats are not to be trusted with the nation’s security. They have shown that not only will they endlessly debate until it is possibly too late but that after a military action has been initiated, in the face of difficulties and waning public support, many will back out and abandon the mission and the troops. The approach of the Democrats to the threat posed by Saddam Hussein as outlined in all of the intelligence reports available prior to the war in Iraq stands in stark contrast to that of the Bush administration.

Hugh Hewitt:

Apparently Brownstein and Vaughn could not find one elected Democrat willing to defend the 2002 vote as right at the time and right in retrospect, which tells us a great deal about the Democrats and national security -- primarily that they ought not to be allowed anywhere close to its control. [Emphasis added. --R]

Mark Steyn:

Happily for Mr Zarqawi, no matter how desperate the head-hackers get, the Western defeatists can always top them. A Democrat Congressman, Jack Murtha, has called for immediate US withdrawal from Iraq. He's a Vietnam veteran, so naturally the media are insisting that his views warrant special deference, military experience in a war America lost being the only military experience the Democrats and the press value these days. Hence, the demand for the President to come up with an "exit strategy".

In war, there are usually only two exit strategies: victory or defeat. The latter's easier. Just say, whoa, we're the world's pre-eminent power but we can't handle an unprecedently low level of casualties, so if you don't mind we'd just as soon get off at the next stop.

Demonstrating the will to lose as clearly as America did in Vietnam wasn't such a smart move, but since the media can't seem to get beyond this ancient jungle war it may be worth underlining the principal difference: Osama is not Ho Chi Minh, and al-Qa'eda are not the Viet Cong. If you exit, they'll follow. And Americans will die - in foreign embassies, barracks, warships, as they did through the Nineties, and eventually on the streets of US cities, too.

Jeff Harrell:

The tin-foil-hat crowd got one thing right after all: The American people have been systematically lied to since 9/11. Not by the President, but by the press.

As usual, Jeff says it better than I was thinking:

It’s as if we’ve got a country full of people who are walking around under the impression that the moon is made of green cheese, repeating it to each other, going on television talk shows to discuss the green cheese issue, publishing lengthy editorials in prominent newspapers about the implications of new revelations about lunar green cheese. It’s positively baffling.

OpinionJournal:

Harry Reid pulled the Senate into closed session Tuesday, claiming that "The Libby indictment provides a window into what this is really all about, how this Administration manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to sell the war in Iraq." But the Minority Leader's statement was as demonstrably false as his stunt was transparently political.

What Mr. Reid's pose is "really all about" is the emergence of the Clare Boothe Luce Democrats. We're referring to the 20th-century playwright, and wife of Time magazine founder Henry Luce, who was most famous for declaring that Franklin D. Roosevelt had "lied us into war" with the Nazis and Tojo. So intense was the hatred of FDR among some Republicans that they held fast to this slander for years, with many taking their paranoia to their graves.

We are now seeing the spectacle of Bush-hating Democrats adopting a similar slander against the current President regarding the Iraq War. The indictment by Patrick Fitzgerald of Vice Presidential aide I. Lewis Libby has become their latest opening to promote this fiction, notwithstanding the mountains of contrary evidence. Excellent article, with point-by-point facts which rebuff the "Bush lied" crowd, as well as exposing the outright hypocrisy of leading Democrats.

The Federalist Patriot, 05-43 Digest:

Al-Qa'ida murdered almost 3,000 Americans on U.S. soil in about an hour back in 2001--almost all of them civilians. The reason no additional American civilians have died in attacks on our homeland is that 150,000 uniformed American Patriots have formed a formidable front on al-Qa'ida's turf, a very inhospitable region of the world. These Patriots are a proud breed--Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coastguardsmen--and they have chosen to stand in harm's way in order to defend their families, their friends, their country.

In doing so, more than 2,000 of these brave souls have been killed.

This week, every mass media outlet took a break from their "CIA leak" promotion to run headlines and lead stories about the Iraq death toll reaching 2,000 (1,567 killed in action since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, 19 March 2003)--as if the death of American Patriot number 1,999 was somehow less important. Typical was this headline from The New York Times: "2,000 Dead: As Iraq Tours Stretch On, A Grim Mark." But not a whisper in the Leftmedia about the 3,870 Iraqi security forces killed in the last six months alone, in defense of their emerging democracy.

For The Patriot, every death of a member of our Armed Forces is equally devastating, and we mourn each one. Not a day passes without our prayers for both those standing in harm's way, and their families.

The "dezinformatsia" machines promote this "milestone" for one reason only--to foment additional dissent and rally support against the Bush administration's national-security strategy, which is to protect our homeland by taking the battle with Jihadis to their turf. In doing so, the Leftmedia has reduced the sacrifice of these young Patriots to nothing more than political fodder for their appeasement agenda.

On the night of 11 September 2001, President Bush told the nation, "We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them." He set in motion pre-emptive operations, which would become the "Bush Doctrine." Our analysts continue to support the doctrine of pre-emption firmly as the best measured response to the Jihadi threat around the world.

As for those still "Stuck on Stupid", insisting that there were no WMD found in Iraq, here's a partial list of what didn't make it out of Iraq before the invasion: 1.77 metric tons of enriched uranium, 1,700 gallons of chemical-weapon agents, chemical warheads containing the nerve agent cyclosarin, thousands of radioactive materials in powdered form designed for dispersal over population centers, artillery projectiles loaded with binary chemical agents, etc.

As The Patriot noted in October, 2002, our well-placed sources in the region and intelligence sources with the NSA and NRO estimated that the UN Security Council's foot-dragging provided an ample window for Saddam to export some or all of his deadliest WMD materials and components. At that time, we reported that Allied Forces would be unlikely to discover Iraq's WMD stores, noting, "Our sources estimate that Iraq has shipped some or all of its biological stockpiles and nuclear WMD components through Syria to southern Lebanon's heavily fortified Bekaa Valley."

In December of 2002, our senior-level intelligence sources re-confirmed estimates that some of Iraq's biological and nuclear WMD material and components had, in fact, been moved into Syria and Iran. That movement continued until President Bush finally pulled the plug on the UN's ruse.

To that end, we are deeply indebted to our Patriot Armed Forces, who have prevented al-Qa'ida or some other Jihadi terrorist cell from striking a U.S. urban center with WMD. Make no mistake--Islamofascists want to bring America to ruin, and they will use any means at their disposal to do so. Mr. President, stay the course. [Emphasis added. --R]

Bret Stephens:

Many explanations have been given to account for the almost matchless barbarism into which Palestinian society has descended in recent years. One is the effect of Israeli occupation and all that has, in recent years, gone with it: the checkpoints, the closures, the petty harassments, the targeted assassinations of terrorist leaders. I witnessed much of this personally when I lived in Israel, and there can be no discounting the embittering effect that a weeks-long, 18-hour daily military curfew has on the ordinary Palestinians living under it.

Yet the checkpoints and curfews are not gratuitous acts of unkindness by Israel, nor are they artifacts of occupation. On the contrary, in the years when Israel was in full control of the territories there were no checkpoints or curfews, and Palestinians could move freely (and find employment) throughout the country. It was only with the start of the peace process in 1993 and the creation of autonomous Palestinian areas under the control of the late Yasser Arafat that terrorism became a commonplace fact of Israeli life. And it was only then that the checkpoints went up and the clampdowns began in earnest.

In other words, while Palestinian actions go far to explain Israeli behavior, the reverse doesn't hold.

Tony Blankley:

If the president were to call for two plus two to equal four, the media would report that such a proposal had the support of only 42 percent of likely voters, and a slippage of even conservative support from 87 percent to 63 percent. Perhaps on the jump page, in the 38th inch of the story in the New York Times, they might get around to quoting a professor of mathematics from MIT to the effect that, in fact, the president was right that two plus two still equals four. But for television and radio break news, the story would end at the polling result, which is bad news for the president.

[...]

One doesn't mind, so much, mainstream journalists being b-st-rds. It's being such dumb b-st-rds that one finds so irksome.

"We live in circumstances our parents did not live in, or our grandparents. We live in a time in which there is no rival model to the American model for how to run a modern industrial commercial society. Socialism is gone. Fascism is gone. Al-Qaeda has no rival model about how to run a modern society. Al-Qaeda has a howl of rage against the idea of modernity.

"We began in 1945 an astonishingly clear social experiment: We divided the city of Berlin, the country of Germany, the continent of Europe, indeed the whole world, and we had a test. On one side was the socialist model that says that society is best run by edicts, issued from a coterie of experts from above.

"The American model, on the other hand, called for a maximum dispersal of decision-making and information markets allocating wealth and opportunity. The results are clear: We are here, they are not. The Soviet Union tried for 70 years to plant Marxism with bayonets in Eastern Europe. Today there are more Marxists on the Harvard faculty than there are in Eastern Europe."

--George Will, "The Doctrine of Preemption," from a speech delivered on 23 May 2005, at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in Dallas, Texas (Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, the national speech digest of Hillsdale College.) As Mr. Will stated, we had the test of socialism already. It didn't work. Yet the Left in these United States still insist on socialist policies as means of moving our states and nation forward. What hubris. What do they think they know that will make these policies and institutions work here when they didn't work elsewhere? (Don't bother pointing to Cuba, North Korea, or China, mouth-foamers. The first two aren't true communist/socialist nations, as they are dependent upon the cult of personality of the leaders. The latter is, well, lucky to have figured out how to ingest just enough capitalism to keep the economy afloat, which further proves that Marxist communism/socialism does not work.)

No, the Defense Department isn't shuttering personal blogs of soldiers, Marines, sailors, and airmen, but it is asking them to be more careful. I can understand the frustration some of our active-duty milbloggers must feel, but for security reasons, it is better to err on the side of caution and not post something the enemy could potentially use and exploit.

Mac Johnson:

One of the many negative consequences of America's defeat in The Vietnam War has been the uncontrolled proliferation of Vietnams since then.

Nicaragua threatened to become another Vietnam. Lebanon nearly became another Vietnam. Had Grenada been only slightly larger than a manhole cover and lasted one more hour, it would have become a Caribbean-Style Vietnam. The invasion of Panama was rapidly degenerating into a Narco-Vietnam, right up until we won. Likewise, the First Gulf War was certainly developing into another Vietnam, but then sadly, it ended quickly and with few casualties.

For people of a certain age or political stripe, Vietnam is like Elvis: it's everywhere. For example, during a long wait at a Chinese Buffet in Georgetown in 1987, Ted Kennedy was reported to have exclaimed "QUAGMIRE!" and attempted to surrender to a Spanish-speaking busboy.

And that was probably the smart thing to do, because the lesson of Vietnam is: it is best to lose quickly, so as to avoid a quagmire.

[...]

If you liked what our quick, casualty-saving withdrawal from Somalia did for us at the Khobar Towers, at our embassies in East Africa, at the waterline of the USS Cole, and at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, then you'll love what a quick "casualty-saving" withdrawal from Iraq will do for us for the next twenty years. It'll finally make you stop worrying about Vietnam. Read the entire column for Johnson's thirteen edifying points, and stop saying every geopolitical event the United States gets involved in is going to disintegrate in to a Vietnamesque "quagmire."

His latest book, The West's Last Chance, is coming true before our very lives. Don Feder:

A committee appointed by the British government, composed of Muslims, wants the nation to scrap its Holocaust Memorial Day, in the name of inclusiveness and sensitivity. No word yet on whether they also want to eliminate Passover – said to be insensitive to Egyptians.

The committee recommends replacing the observance (started in 2001 and held annually on January 27) with a Genocide (a.k.a., Victimhood) Day, which would recognize the alleged mass murder of Muslims in "Palestine," Chechnya, Bosnia, and wherever else followers of the Religion of Peace have come into conflict with the accursed infidel.

In making its case for inclusiveness, the committee somehow neglected to mention the many victims of Muslim mayhem – Armenians, Sudanese Christians, Kosovar Serbs (ethnically cleansed in the wake of NATO’s war on Yugoslavia), and Hindus – to name but a few. If an Arab stubbed his toe on the boot of a Christian knight sometime in the 11th century, it’s a crime against humanity that must be memorialized throughout the ages, according to the imams. On the other hand, the slaughter of infidels is seen as the will of Allah, and worthy of a Heavenly reward.

The committee maintains that Britain’s Holocaust Memorial Day fuels feelings of isolation and alienation among Muslim youth. And, well, to have a special commemoration of the systematic slaughter of one in every three Jews on earth (in an effort to annihilate an entire people), is grossly unfair, the committee suggests. This is one of numerous matters that goes to the heart of the "clash of civilizations," the premise of Blankley's book. Muslims are not interested in assimilating, as has every other ethnicity or religion in the West. They are not interested in tolerating others who are, in the case of the Jews, non-Arab, or, in the case of everyone else, non-Muslim. The people of the West need to wake up to these facts, and quickly. Surely, you say, not all Muslims feel this way. Surely this is simply those radical extremists the likes of bin Laden, right? Then why is there nothing but silence from the majority of supposedly peace-loving, tolerant, assimilated Muslims in the West?

Jon asked the question. (It makes me feel old to realize he's talking about high school classes in his remarks.) I was getting ready for work. Kel and I had just changed places in the shower; she was watching the Today show when they went live after the first plane it. While I was shaving, I watched the second plane fly in to the second tower. "A second plane just hit!" I yelled in to the bathroom. "What?!?!?" was the reply from my wife. "The first plane was no accident," I told her. The early speculation after the first plane struck was that it was an accident of some sort. I, and millions of others, knew right then it was no accident. We both finished getting ourselves ready, watching the news the entire time. I was on the road to the office when the first tower fell. Tears were in my eyes, and the thought that kept running through my head was Those poor people... I was at work for around an hour before they sent us home. At the time, my wife was working in the tallest building in downtown Dallas. Building management shut it down; my wife never even made it up to her office to be sent home. We spent the rest of the day in the living room, glued to the news. Yesterday, Jeff said:

On another subject, tomorrow is the fourth anniversary of 9/11. What’s there to say about that? It seems like a lot of Americans would like to forget the events of that day. I don’t really blame them. Denial is a legitimate reaction to trauma. But I think we’d be better served by remembering than forgetting. I think we’d be better off taking the day tomorrow to think about what happened on that Tuesday morning four years ago, to remember the shock and the horror and the grief. Because I think that remembering it will honor the dead and fill us with a terrible resolve that nothing like it shall ever happen again. Likewise, the Toad implores us to never forget. Our pastor touched briefly on this in worship this morning. Our church is involved in several different areas of providing relief services to persons displaced by Katrina. We've adopted 22 families that have been relocated to the Dallas area, among other initiatives. One thing Tim told us was to keep a marathon mindset with regard to this help we were providing. Just as too many people in this nation lost sight of what 9/11 meant for our country, too many people will forget about the hundreds of thousands affected by Katrina in the coming months. We can forget neither. Keep the long view in mind. Pace yourself; the war against the Islamofascists who attacked us on 9/11 will be a marathon, not a sprint. Do not forget.

Since you won't hear about it any where else, Arthur Chrenkoff has the latest good news from Afghanistan. It is amazing how much is happening in this now-free nation in such a short amount of time. It truly shows the bias and if-it-bleeds-it-leads mentality of the mainstream press that these stories are not getting more coverage. We wrought this, America, through the service and sacrifice of our sons and daughters in the armed services. They should be proud. We all should be.

Chuck Hagel, Senator, Nebraska-D:

"We should start figuring out how we get out of there," Hagel said on "This Week" on ABC. "But with this understanding, we cannot leave a vacuum that further destabilizes the Middle East. I think our involvement there has destabilized the Middle East. And the longer we stay there, I think the further destabilization will occur." Follow the good Senator's logic with us: 1. The U.S. toppling of the Hussein government in Iraq, and construction of a democratic republic in same, destabilizes the Middle East. (Funny, we thought the fact that a mad dictator known to have invaded his neighbors and gas his own people would have contributed to the already destabilized Middle East.) 2. A continued U.S. presence in Iraq destabilizes the Middle East. 3. If the U.S. pulls out, there will be destabilization in the Middle East. So according to the good Senator from Nebraska--who cannot be questioned because he has "absolute moral authority" as a Purple Heart-receiving Vietnam veteran--we're damned if we do, and damned if we don't, so we may as well damn millions of other people while we're at it. What the hell is wrong with people like Senator Hagel, that they wish to condemn millions of people to (a) the constant worry that the dictator's secret police will whisk them off to a torture room (Saddam's Iraq), or (b) sudden U.S. withdrawal will plunge them in to a hard-line Islamofascist government (Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, Iran)? The arguments over whether or not we should have gone in to Iraq are over, people. It's done. There is no time machine, we can't go back and change it. (And if we could, would you really? Can you honestly say the Iraqis are worse off now than under Saddam?) It would be nice to bring most of the troops home. (Note, I did not say "all". We should always maintain a presence in Iraq as we move in to the future.) However, we can not wholly withdraw overnight and allow the fledgling Iraqi republic to implode. The future of the United States is, for good or ill, now tied to the future of Iraq, and for the sons and daughters of both nations, we owe the Iraqis our continued support. [Prompted and inspired by today's Best of the Web.]

So sayeth the editors in this past Friday's Federalist Patriot (link is a PDF): The usual Demo-gogue suspects -- Kennedy, Kerry and company -- are increasing the tenor of their demands that the Bush administration commit to a timetable for withdrawing American troops from Iraq. A few misguided Republicans have even signed on to this legislative folly. Insisting that we cap our military support for the new Iraqi government is a dangerous political ploy intended to help Demos rally their peacenik constituency in the run-up to next year's midterm elections. Dangerous, because challenging the administration to agree to a timetable only emboldens Jihadis, who would very much like to move the frontlines of the Long War from their turf to ours. The Demos know President George Bush will not agree to such a timetable. As the president has said repeatedly, "Our exit strategy is to exit when our mission is complete." Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld protests that any such deadline for withdrawal would "throw a lifeline to terrorists." Indeed, but it is always easier to sell anti-war rhetoric like "give peace a chance" than it is to advocate peace through superior firepower, and to use force in defense of critical U.S. national interests.

For eight long years, the Clinton administration pursued a policy of appeasement, particularly in regard to Middle Eastern policy and pursuit of Islamic terrorists. Terrorists were classified as mere “criminals” then, including those Jihadi fanatics who first bombed the WTC’s north tower in 1993, who bombed the Khobar Towers in 1996, who bombed our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and who bombed the USS Cole in2000. Consequently, Clinton’s negligent inaction emboldened this enemy, and the result was a devastating attack on our homeland just months after the Bush administration took office in 2001. “Peace” had its chance under Clinton, but President Bush made the difficult decision to give war a chance. Remarkably, the outcome has, to date, pre-empted any further attacks on U.S. soil – which was, after all, its primary objective. The transition from an ineffectual policy of containment to one of pre-emption was the most significant strategic military shift since WWII. To be sure, there have been setbacks, and President Bush bears a heavy and heartfelt burden for those uniformed Patriots who have given their lives to protect ours. If we did check out of Iraq, as suggested by a growing chorus on the Left, al-Qa’ida and other Islamists will not only rule that nation – they will eventually control the entire region, with the possible exception of Israel. The “exit timetable” crowd knows this, but that hasn’t prevented them from using this issue as political fodder – and from using it to undermine support for our military personnel and our operations in the Middle East. Of course, this places both those personnel and our national security in peril. One need only ask the exit advocates, “Exit where, and for how long?” Because we didn’t finish the job in Operation Desert Storm, we had to return with Operation Iraqi Freedom. Reality dictates that if we don’t finish the job now, we’ll have to return again, and likely at a far greater cost in terms of American lives. Not only should we not set a timetable for withdrawing from Iraq, but we should seek to establish an alliance with the Iraqi government in order to maintain a strong military presence in the region. How long? As long as there are Islamofascists bent on detonating a nuclear device in some U.S. urban center and sending our nation into economic ruin. According to The Patriot’s well-placed military and intelligence sources, one closely guarded objective in securing a free Iraq is to establish a forward-deployed presence in the Middle East – a presence that would certainly include personnel but whose primary component would be massive military-equipment depots that could be tapped for future rapid-deployment military operations in the region. This forward-base objective is critical, given that it will ensure our military presence in the heart of Jihadistan, and an ability to project force in the region quickly without having to ramp up via sea and airlift. This alone will pay rich dividends by way of maintaining peace through preparedness. The new Iraqi government will likely extend an invitation to the U.S. to establish two bases in southern Iraq now that, as you may recall, our friends the Saudis have expelled our fighting forces from their country. The proposed base locations are nowhere near Iraqi urban centers – which is to say, they are highly securable. We expect this new military presence to consist primarily of limited personnel, but with substantial assets transferred from bases in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. Of course, those who claim that the U.S. military presence in the Middle East is the problem will wail about the establishment of permanent base operations in the region. Fact is, however, until the last Israeli is dead and the West no longer dominates the world economy (and, thus, culture), Jihadis will not rest. Previously, this column has outlined the nature of asymmetric threats like Islamist terrorist regimes – some given safe harbor by Islamic states, some seeking to create new Islamofascist states. (See the three-part series on U.S. national security at FederalistPatriot.US/Alexander) On the importance of our holding the frontline against Jihadistan in Iraq, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger recently wrote: “The war in Iraq is less about geopolitics than about the clash of ideologies, culture and religious beliefs. Because of the long reach of the Islamist challenge, the outcome in Iraq will have an even deeper significance than that in Vietnam. If a Taliban-type government or a fundamentalist radical state were to emerge in Baghdad or any part of Iraq, shock waves would ripple through the Islamic world. Radical forces in Islamic countries or Islamic minorities in non-Islamic countries would be emboldened in their attacks on existing governments. The safety and internal stability of all societies within reach of militant Islam would be imperiled.” Indeed, the safety and stability of the free world would be imperiled. This is the Long War, Islamofascism is the enemy, and Iraq is the front line. If we are serious about pre-empting Jihadi terrorism (despite Demo political mischief), we must not abandon Iraq. Of course, if we follow the Kennedy and Kerry plan, Islamofascists, who will control the region, won’t have to attack on U.S. soil, they will just cut off U.S. oil – and bring the entire West to its knees – until it submits to Islam. Of course, no Western political leader is going allow that scenario – not even Jacques Chirac or Gerhard Schroeder. These Jihadi cave dwellers, the Islamists who fly planes into buildings and bomb Iraqi children at open markets, don’t share Western (predominantly Judeo-Christian) values. To be sure, they have no compunction about reducing your standard of living to something less than their subsistence – and they will, given the opportunity.

Ben Shapiro takes aim at the anti-war mouth-foamers on the left.

The good rabbi isn't afraid--like so many in our nation, including the President, I'm disappointed to say--to call a spade a spade:

We were victorious during WW II because daily we were fighting a concrete, named enemy: Germany, Hitler, Nazism, and the German people supportive of the above. In contrast, today, those who show the face of the enemy are called racists. Consequently, we have chosen to call it not what it is -- a war against radical Islam -- but a war against terrorism, a raceless entity.

Though in all other investigations, evidence, history, and “most-likely” are the tools used to stop the next likely perpetrator, today’s political correctness labels such common sense detective work as “profiling” -- the latest concoction of racism. Better to remain less protected and maybe die than to be a profiler or be called a racist. That is how silly we’ve become. Silly people do not, over the long run, win wars.

This is why you cannot give in to terrorist demands. This is why it is pointless to "try to understand why" those who commit horrific acts of violence against innocents to further a religio-political agenda do so. Hamas vows to continue fight

In a show of force, Hamas founders and political leaders appeared Saturday on a stage together for the first time in 10 years to tell the Palestinian people that the militant group's armed struggle will go on after Israel's impending withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. 'Tomorrow Jerusalem,' Abbas exults Less than three days after he urged Palestinians to refrain from excessive celebrations over the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas on Friday presided over a huge celebration in Gaza City where he declared: "Today we are celebrating the liberation of Gaza and the northern West Bank; tomorrow we will celebrate the liberation of Jerusalem." The Israeli government acquiesced to the demands of terrorists. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the PLO: these are terrorist organizations. They demanded land which was never theirs to begin with--that's right, the land of "Palestine" has always belonged to some other nation, including Jordan, Syria, and Egypt, so why aren't the Palestinians sending suicide bombers in to those nations?--through the use of terror. These are not "freedom fighters" or "insurgents," they are terrorists. The Israeli government caved, and it got them nothing. The reason is simple: the Palestinians, with the sometimes silent, sometimes vocal, backing of the entire Arab world, want nothing less than the complete and total destruction of Israel. They want all the Jews out of the land, dead or alive, but one could infer preferably dead. They want no Jewish state to exist. You cannot reason with people like this. You cannot give in to their demands and hope for the best. You kill them. You achieve total and complete victory, with overwhelming military force. Then you set about dictating the terms of the peace, and you help rebuild. It worked it Japan. It worked in Germany. It will work in Afghanistan and Iraq. It could have worked within the borders of Israel.

I felt "The Patriot Perspective" from today's Federalist Patriot (PDF file) was worth reprinting.

Spitting on The Few, The Proud... Upon entering a fine Southern high school with a long and honorable history as a military academy, this columnist's next nine months would be marked by the official indoctrination (and unofficial hazing) that attended freshman years at most such academies. It was September of 1970. A year later, however, this school, like many others across the nation, did an about-face and abandoned its military tradition. It seemed that public opinion of military service, and thus, parental enthusiasm for military feeder academies, had changed dramatically in the course of just a few years. Prior to 1967, military service and tradition were still considered good and honorable. But by 1972, acrid protests against our military campaign on the Cold War front in Southeast Asia had taken a heavy toll. Elitist politicos like George McGovern, glitterati like Jane Fonda, John Kerry, et al., along with their Leftmedia propaganda machine, had overturned public support for the defense of South Vietnam and, by extension, support for anyone in a military uniform. There were no more ticker-tape parades welcoming troops home, but plenty of seething glares, name-calling and spitting from "enlightened youth" and their protagonists who tagged all military personnel persona non grata. Fast-forward about three decades. After 9/11, America was virtually, and rightly, united behind President George Bush's campaign against Jihadistan and its asymmetric threat vectors such as al-Qa'ida. Now that support has begun to unravel, however -- not because there are 58,000 casualties as there were in Vietnam, but because, once again, as America's finest are defending liberty at home by promoting freedom in critical regions abroad, the storm clouds of Leftist dissent are gathering. Once again, anti-American protests by political opportunists, Hollywonk elitists and the Leftmedia's (now 24-7-365) talkingheads, are taking a heavy toll. Perhaps the earliest evidence of waning public support for the Long War against Jihadistan is the recruiting difficulty for our "all-volunteer" Armed Services. Army recruiters have fallen short of their goals for four of the last five months and may fall well short of their annual objective of 80,000 enlistments, with only two months left in this fiscal year. This will be the first time since 1999 that the recruiting goal has not been met. Guard and Reserve recruitments have also fallen short for the other service branches.Military planners may ask Congress to authorize raising the age limit for Army active-duty service from 35 to 40, and authority to double the enlistment bonus for high-priority recruits (intelligence, infantry, special operations, civil affairs, and linguists) from $20,000 to $40,000. But this is not likely to offset the damage inflicted upon the image of military service by the Left. Of course, part of the problem is that military service is, as it has always been, tough. But most active duty and reserve personnel are dedicated warriors who complain little. The real obstacle to the enlistment of new recruits is the desecration of the image of military service by the Fifth Column -- the enemy within. The American anti-war movement, led by neo-McGovernites such as DNC Chairman Howard Dean and lawmakers Kucinich, Kennedy and Kerry has not been able to find legs. So rather than target "war," these malcontents have rallied their minions to undertake counter-recruitment measures, figuring that a nation can't fight a war without warriors. (Of course, it can't defend itself either -- but the Left refuses to acknowledge that liberating Afghanistan and Iraq, and keeping Syria and Iran at bay, is relevant to our national defense.) Doing the bidding of big dogs like Dean and the aforementioned KKK are their radical allied organizations like the Campus Antiwar Network, Code Pink for Peace, the Ruckus Society, Earth First, United for Peace and Justice and the Society of American Law Teachers, to name a few. These organizations and a hundred more like them are surrogates for the National Lawyers Guild, the ACLU, the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, Veterans for Peace, the War Resisters League and The American Friends Service Committee. Their objective is to undermine recruitment efforts by labeling anyone interested in military service persona non grata. It's deja vu all over again. Periodic Leftmedia feeding frenzies over alleged "abuse" at places like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay add fuel to protestors' efforts to debase military service by equating those in uniform with terrorists. Extending this equation, some of these groups are now deplorably suggesting that American casualties are justified because "freedom fighters" in Iraq are defending themselves against American invaders. (Rhetorical memo to the anti-war Left: What kind of "freedom fighter" detonates a bomb-laden SUV amid a group of Iraqi children receiving candy and toys from U.S. soldiers?) The emergence of these cadres of Leftist agitators is a serious threat to U.S. national security. Their efforts to undermine the honor of military service in an effort to deter recruitment efforts should not be underestimated. Predictably, where anti-American sentiments flourish, Jane Fonda can't be far behind. This week, Hanoi Jane announced plans for a protest tour on buses fueled by vegetable oil to suggest the current conflict in the Middle East is only a "war for oil." "I have not taken a stand on any war since Vietnam," Fonda said. "I carry a lot of baggage from that." (Click here to see some of that baggage, as "Hanoi Jane" mounts an NVA anti-aircraft gun about 100 yards from the "Hanoi Hilton," where American POWs were being tortured. "It's another example of the government lying to the American people in order to get us into war," Fonda says of the liberation of Iraq. Of course, it is Fonda who is lying to the American people. Take note, Hanoi Jane and all you counter-recruiters endeavoring to denigrate military service -- ditto to Dean and KKK, who exploit the murder of military personnel as political fodder to undermine public support for a Republican administration in advance of midterm elections: Your actions are tantamount to spitting on not only those who wear our nation's military uniform, but those who have died in it. Indeed, news about Fonda's shameless antics was overshadowed this week by the tragic death of uniformed Patriots in Iraq: 21 Marines (20 of them attached to the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines based in Ohio) and eight Soldiers were killed, and others wounded, in roadside bombings and other ambushes by Islamofascist death squads. Sergeant Justin Hoffman of Delaware, Ohio, was among the fallen. His father, Robert Hoffman, said that Justin believed in the cause he was fighting for, and he challenged his fellow Americans to support the mission in Iraq through its completion. "I have some real doubts whether Americans will stand tall and follow through on it," Mr. Hoffman said. "It needs to be done, and if they don't, it'll be a real disgrace to the lives that were sacrificed." If America does not stand firm, there will be many more lives sacrificed -- and on American soil. "The Word of God is like cool water from a canteen," said retired Marine Corps Commandant Charles C. Krulak. "During the most difficult times, it brings relief and a feeling of renewal that allows us...to accomplish any mission set before us." To that end, please pray for our Patriot Armed Forces, and especially for the families of our fallen Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen, who have died in defense of American liberty while prosecuting the war with Jihadistan. In their honor, and that of all Patriots standing watch today, we must not allow the Left, in pursuit of their self-serving agendas, to once again treat military uniforms as spittoons. The re-emergence of counter-recruiting/anti-war cadres should be rejected with prejudice.