Seasonal Cheer

Fighting For The UN

Now that Hillary Clinton has explained that the UN (or perhaps the Arab League), not the U.S. Congress, controls the warmaking power of the United States, we here in Chelm feel that the famous U.S. Marine Hymn needs some revising. To wit:

From the halls of Saddam's palaces,
To the shores of Tripoli
We fight the UN's battles
In the air, on land, and sea
We won't fight to serve our country
Till they authorize the means
We are proud to claim the title
Of the Blue Helmet Marines

Newt Gingrich, Master of Alternate History

Look Who's Unconstitutional Now!

I support the Libya intervention for the same reason I have always supported the Iraq war--genocidal/terrorist dictators need to be stopped by any means necessary. But I have to say Obama's failure to seek any sort of Congressional sanction--while making sure to get the UN to sign off!--is really very disturbing. Who is running the U.S. military, Congress or the Security Council? Interestingly, the record now shows three Democratic presidents going to war without Congressional approval--Truman's "police action" in Korea, which tore a giant hole in the U.S. Constitution's explicit placement of the warmaking power in Congress's hands (although U.S. involvement in the Korean War was both necessary and just), LBJ in Vietnam, and now Obama in Libya. On the other hand, both Bushes sought some sort of Congressional approval for their respective wars in Iraq. So on this point, the GOP really does have a better record of respecting the Constitution!

Which does not, of course, excuse the total lack of planning in both Iraq and Libya (and the current case could end up even worse than the mess Rumsfeld & Co. made after April '03!)

Too Much Blarney

Memo to God

Dear God,

If You just had to send this You-awful earthquake and tsunami to Japan, couldn't You have done it, like, 75 years ago when the Japanese Army was raping and murdering its way across China, and not after they've been peaceful carmakers for three generations? Or, if You just had to send an earthquake to cause a nuclear meltdown right now, couldn't You have arranged for it to hit the Iranian nuclear bomb production plants and not a harmless power plant?

Just wondering.

Thanks and keep up the great work makin' the world run like a Swiss watch.

Sincerely,

Reb Mordechai of Chelm

P.S. You don't kill innocent bloggers just for asking questions, do You?

The CAIR Bear

The Real Danger of McCarthyism

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) is about to hold hearings into the radicalization of American Muslim communities. The battle lines have already been drawn, and the fact that King is a former supporter of the IRA who still views the Irish terrorist group with sympathy shows that he is clearly not the right person to hold hearings this sensitive. Murder is murder no matter in whose name or for what cause it is committed.

But the problem of radicalization in Muslim communities is a real one that Muslim groups and well-intentioned civil libertaraians can't make go away by screaming that it is bigotry to point it out. There is indeed a danger of McCarthyism here, but let's remember that one of the worst things the late unlamented senator from Wisconsin did was to discredit anticommunism in the eyes of liberals who were able to dismiss all such accusations as the product of demagoguery. The historian of Stalinism Robert Conquest says that Russian friends have suggested to him in all seriousness that McCarthy may have been a KGB agent! Remember, the former government official Alger Hiss was in fact a Soviet spy, but many liberals refused to believe it because it was Richard Nixon who discovered the evidence and held the hearings, and many Republicans did indeed wish to paint the entire New Deal with a pink brush. It is very dismaying to see that nobody has learned anything at all from this sorry history.

These Terrorists Are The Same As Those Terrorists

Rep. Peter King (Hypocrite-N.Y.) is about to hold hearings on radical Islam in the United States. There is indeed a need to air this problem, but a man who supported the IRA and still defends it on the claim that the Irish terror gang was home-grown and local has no moral standing to do so. He is also wrong on the facts; the IRA had ties to the PLO and other international terrorists. Murder is murder is murder, Congressman, and that is the basic fact you refuse to understand.