Damn Andrew Sullivan for making me link him.

Some time ago, I wrote, with typically self-indulgent wordiness, that we had to instill in the Iraqis a sense of responsibility for their own fates by giving them greater power to shape their own futures. For good or for ill:

First, the Iraqis would understand that their words and demands have consequences, and that they really ought to be quite careful about choosing them. They would be forced to transition from the irresponsible politics of powerlessness -- ranting, raving, always blaming one's troubles on some outside force -- to the more responsible politics of actual power.

Second, it would convince them that we really are quite serious about handing their country back to them, and so they needn't be so conspiratorially-minded and cynical about that. They could stop endlessly agitating for us to leave, because they'd be reassured that on the day they really want us to leave, we will.

Third, it would focus their mind on realistic decisionmaking. They can blame everything on America right now, because they don't feel ownership over the policies America executes. It's someone else's problem; like John Kerry, they can just sit back and carp about whatever we do, without offering a real alternative plan for action.

Right now Iraqis seem to want us to both provide good security while simultaneously not fighting the terrorists destroying that security. Were they to take ownership of the problem, and to understand that they are responsible for proposing a plan of action, they might begin to realize they can't have both at once, and must, yes, actually choose or at least prioritize. Whichever way they choose, they can't keep blaming America for the choice.

Sullivan reprints a letter from a Marine reading thus:

As far as Falluja goes, we have not been allowed to get back in there with any real numbers yet. Initially, it was confounding.

However, a very interesting dynamic has developed.

Since we have stayed out of Falluja and focused elsewhere, the mujahadeen have had their run of the town. As they have had no one to fight, they have turned their criminal instincts on the citizens.

The clerics who once were whipping these idiots into a suicidal frenzy are now having to issue Fatwas (holy decrees) admonishing the muj for extortion, rape, murder and kidnapping. It is unfortunate for the "innocent people" of Falluja but the mujahadeen have betrayed themselves as the thugs that they are by brutalizing the civilians. There are, in fact, reports of rape, etc from inside the town.

While the muj are thugging away inside the town, we are about 1/2 mile away paying claims, entering into dialogue and contracting jobs. The citizens come outside the city for work and money and are treated like human beings. They go back inside and enter a lawless hell.

In short, the muj have done more to show the people what hypocrites they are in a few short weeks than we could have hoped for in a year. The result is more and more targetable intelligence. If we are given the green light, we can really go to town on these guys (no pun intended). However, as much as we would like to do just that, the optimal solution is to empower the Iraqis to take care of it themselves. That is precisely what we are doing.

I think this jibes with a point I made: It is a liberal impulse to attempt to protect people from their own bad decisions by taking decisions out of their hands and forcing them to make the "right" decisions. It is a conservative impulse to say, "Do what you want, but don't expect much help if you screw things up for yourselves."

Such laissez-faire thinking wouldn't seem to apply to a war/occupation situation, but sure enough, the basic rules of human responsibility and the laws of unintended consequences continue operating, even in Fallujah.

Posted by: Ace at 05:19 PM | Comments (3)
Post contains 664 words, total size 4 kb.

Very interesting stuff. Stuff we've all suspected, but it's nice to get objective numbers for it.

Highlights:

* The previously most-polarizing political figure was Bill Clinton, natch. But Bill Clinton's partisan gap (the difference between support from his partisans and support from those in the opposite party) was only 60 points in May 1996. Bush's partisan gap is 25% larger, over 70 points of difference.

[Yeah, I know, that doesn't seem like quite 25%. But this is what Gallup tells me.]

* Bush's 70+-point gap is not only unprecedented for May of a re-election year, but it is unprecedented for any point in a re-election year. No president, dating back to Harry Truman, has had a partisan gap above 70 points in any Gallup Poll in a re-election year.

* Prior to Bush, there were only a few times when a majority of one party's supporters strongly approved of a president while a majority of the other disapproved. For example, during the last years of Clinton's presidency, Gallup found a majority of Republicans strongly disapproving of him and a majority of Democrats strongly approving of him, but never did both groups simultaneously exceed 6 in 10. The closest the groups came to matching Bush's current pattern was in March 1999 -- shortly after the Senate acquitted Clinton in his impeachment trial -- when 57% of Republicans strongly disapproved and 73% of Democrats strongly approved of Clinton. This was one of four times (out of nine measurements for Clinton) when a majority of Republicans disapproved of him at the same time a majority of Democrats approved.

The only other time Gallup data find a majority of the two parties' supporters holding strong opposing views of the president was in October 1982, when 51% of Republicans strongly approved of Reagan and 54% of Democrats strongly disapproved.

* While the polarization in the current president's approval ratings is certainly remarkable, the fact that such a high proportion of either partisan group has such strong opinions is also rare. The only other president to have more than 60% of a partisan group disapproving of him was Richard Nixon in the year of his resignation, when 61% of Democrats strongly disapproved of him. At that time, Nixon had overall job approval ratings below 30%.

Presidents who have more than 60% of a partisan group approving of him are typically benefiting from a significant rally event, including: the elder Bush shortly after the Persian Gulf War (91% of Republicans as well as 65% of Democrats strongly approved); Clinton during the height of the impeachment process (a 79% strong approval rating among Democrats shortly after the Monica Lewinsky story broke); and the current president after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks (87% of Republicans strongly approved of Bush in early October 2001).

Taken together, the data show that the current political environment is highly unusual. The country experienced a polarization only remotely similar during the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal years.

There are good reasons for this, I think.

There is Florida 2000, of course.

But there's also the fact that Bush has not been afraid to push his agenda hard, and the Democrats have been emboldened to resist just as hard, if not harder.

We all know what's going on: The Democrats have staked their political future -- their viability for 20 or more years -- on a disaster in Iraq and in the American economy. They have not been careful to half-support Bush's moves, so that they can take partial credit if good news comes. They have stridently opposed just about everything he's done, so that if there is good news, they will be discredited.

They cannot afford, at this point, for America to win in Iraq. Or for America's economy to recover.

The stakes of this election, then, are pushing both sides to historic levels of partisanship. But it's particularly vicious on the left, which has, of its own free will, set itself up so that it can only prosper politically should America be beset by misery and disaster.

In a way, I can't even blame the left anymore. They may have put themselves into this situation, but however they got there, they're in that situation now. They cannot under any circumstances afford for Bush to preside over the rapidly-growing, super-prosperous, Treasury-enriching 2005-2009 presidential term.

And if that means they need terrorist attacks, dead American bodies in Iraq, and Hoovervilles, so be it. They've got to pray for those things. They've left themselves little choice.

Even though they opposed the tax cuts which were partly responsible for the new prosperity, they can at least take credit if the economy grows like gangbusters under President John Kerry. It happened under my watch, he will say.

This is going to be a watershed election. The consequences of this election will be felt for 20 years.

Posted by: Ace at 04:25 PM | Comments (8)
Post contains 807 words, total size 5 kb.

For the first time in ages, I watched network news. NBC carried a positive piece on the economy.

Remember my complaint that the liberal media refuses to do that montage of a printing-press pumping out money to signal a growing economy? Well, they didn't do the printing press, but they did do a quick montage of machinists making steel parts, cash registers ringing, etc. The visual was clearly one of "we're getting back to work and making money." Not quite as dramatic as that stupid printing press, but it was a positive visual.

One quibble: the expert they found to comment said that these latest jobs numbers show that we're "on the verge of a sustained economy."

Ummm, does "on the verge of " now mean "right in the middle of"? There is an undeniable reluctance to admit the obvious, to wit, that the economy is booming. The best NBC News can manage is to admit we're on the verge of such.

Not actually there yet, of course.

Still, overall, they reported the news fairly objectively, giving prominent mention of the "almost a million jobs in three months" fact that Bush surely wants repeated as often as possible. And, in fact, they even refuted a claim being made by the lefties, to wit, that these new jobs are low-paying hamburger flipping deals. The report mentioned that these new jobs pay "slightly" above average, whatever that means. (Sorry, I didn't get a complete transcript.)

They didn't state that the Democrats are making this false claim, but they did report the fact which refutes it. Kinda good.

Now, all the numbers are with us, and the media is finally embarassed into reporting them. Can this help but feed consumer confidence and improve the economy further?

Posted by: Ace at 04:01 PM | Comments (6)
Post contains 311 words, total size 2 kb.

Check this out:

Pessimist vs. Optimist on Cable Only: Bush-Cheney '04 announced the release of a new ad Friday. Called "Pessimism," the ad will be shown on national cable channels. According to the accompanying press release, "The new ad highlights President Bush's leadership in strengthening the economy, including 1.4 million new jobs added since August, in contrast to John Kerry's pessimism about America's growing economy." In a press release from early May, Kerry said that "America is still in the worst job recovery since the Great Depression, with 2.2 million private-sector jobs lost in the Bush presidency," one of the claims that the new Bush ad aims to refute.

So: Who's right, here? The media just can't say. Bush says one thing, Kerry says another. Your head could explode from trying to analyze the divergent claims. It's far too difficult to figure out whose numbers are accurate.

Except it's not.

We have the numbers. Kerry is wrong. Flat-wrong.

Anyone think that if Bush were making claims contrary to established fact the media would just report his false claims, and Kerry's correct claims, as an unresolvable dispute?

The media pounded on Bush for making an unlikely prediction about 2.6 million jobs created by the end of 2004. (That prediction is actually now "likely," but let's leave that aside.)

So, Bush gets pounded for making predictions (which turn out to be much more likely than at first thought), but Kerry is permitted by the media to make false assertions regarding currently established facts without challenge.

Oh, that liberal bias, as the man says.

Posted by: Ace at 12:26 PM | Comments (2)
Post contains 277 words, total size 2 kb.

Offer was made "about a year" before the September 11 attacks:

ZDF reported that American and Taliban officials met secretly in Frankfurt in November 2000 to discuss deporting bin Laden long before his al Qaeda terrorist network successfully hijacked airliners and crashed them into New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington in 2001.

The television documentary, which aired Thursday evening in Germany, said the Afghan-American businessman Kabir Mohabbat tried to broker a deal between the U.S. government and the hard-line Islamic Taliban. Mohabbat quoted the Taliban foreign minister, Mullah Wakil Ahmed Mutawakil, as saying: "You can have him whenever the Americans are ready. Name us a country and we will extradite him."

Ever notice that when the media is reporting on something that is potentially damaging to Clinton, they get very vague about the administration the event occurred under? They can never bring themselves to say "Clinton." The best they can do is provide a vague date that allows you to figure out who was the President at the time.

I can't help but think they're hoping readers don't bother doing the math themselves.

I've seen this dozens of times. Hell, I've even seen them misidentify the President during 1999 or 2000 as George Bush in their rush to pin something on the current administration. Anyone remember that story? Let me know in the comments if you do. I know Instapundit covered it.

Ooooh! Here's another recent example! Here's the MSNBC story regarding a walk-in tipping the US to a planned Al Qaeda jet attack, a year before 9-11. The walk-in was disbelieved, and no action was taken on his tip.

Now: Go to the top of the article and search for "Clinton."

Who was President when this occurred? Who knows? It's a mystery. A stone-cold whodunnit.

Maybe it was Clinton. Maybe it was Bush. It's hard to say, and really, why should we get all hung up on "basic facts" anyway? Let's keep our eyes on the bigger picture: George Bush is ruining this country and he caused 9-11.

Ace of Spades Readers are Awesome: Golden Boy remembers the story in which Clinton's failure to follow-up on an offer to extradite OBL is blamed on Bush:

The report revealed that in a previously undisclosed secret diplomatic mission, Saudi Arabia won a commitment from the Taliban to expel bin Laden in 1998. But a clash between the TalibanÂ’s leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, and Saudi officials scuttled the arrangement, and Bush did not follow up.

Bush didn't follow up?

From Austin, Texas?

What the fuck was he supposed to do? Don his famous cowboy garb and "Yeee-haw!" his way into fucking Kabul and lasso hisself some terrorist?

Who knew that the President of the United States had, in 1998, delegated terrorist-lassoin' activities to the governor of Texas?

If that were the case, the media really should have made that clear, as it would have disproved the notion that Bush had "no" foreign policy experience. If a guy has been de-pu-tized by the head American Marshall to take his trusty horse Nugget and his keen-nosed smell-hound Arrow, and then gallop off to foreign capitals to russle hisself up some evil-doers, then I gotta say, I count that as foreign policy experience of some sort.

By the way, MSNBC apparently has corrected their original error. They deleted the reference to Bush not following up.

So, did they say that Clinton did not follow up?

Nope. They said the United States did not follow up.

Odd, that. When they think it's a Bush failure, they personalize the failure. When it turns out to be a Clinton failure, it's a failure of all Americans.

And they once again cagily avoid mention of the man in charge at the time.

Posted by: Ace at 12:15 PM | Comments (11)
Post contains 645 words, total size 4 kb.

Side-by-side photo comparisons of our horrible, horrible human rights violations and those minor infractions committed by our enemies.

Via The Foggiest Idea.

Posted by: Ace at 11:26 AM | Comments (2)
Post contains 28 words, total size 1 kb.

I updated my blogroll, which I've been meaning to do for some time.

First of all, I moved most of the "New Bloggers" out of the New Blogger Showcase and on to the regular list. I kept Victor Davis Hanson in the New Blogger Showcase, because I'm just not sure yet he's seaseoned enough to be considered an experienced blogger. Plus, I think he can use the additional exposure he's getting from that.

I don't think I'm ever moving him off the New Blogger list, to be honest. I just really dig having VDH there. Fills me with pride.

If you've got me on your blogroll, and you don't know why I didn't include you, drop me an email. It's probably just an oversight. I say "probably," because there are some sites I don't bother linking. If you're posting once every three weeks, I don't know if I'd link you. That kind of thing.

Anyway, readers might enjoy some of the new names on the list.

Posted by: Ace at 11:17 AM | Add Comment
Post contains 172 words, total size 1 kb.

248,000 jobs in May, beating economists' expectations. April and March both revised upwards, so that 947,000 jobs were created in three months. And:

Virtually every major sector of the economy added jobs in May, from retailing to construction industries. Particularly notable were 32,000 new hires in manufacturing -- a fourth straight monthly increase and the biggest for any month since August 1998 when 143,000 manufacturing jobs were created, the department said.

A reader's email made me increase the size of the cowbell with this line:

Even Bruce Dickinson (yes, THE Bruce Dickinson) can't call for enough
cowbell here.

Okay, for THE Bruce Dickinson, more cowbell.

Posted by: Ace at 09:45 AM | Comments (6)
Post contains 111 words, total size 1 kb.

Some people are pushing Porter Goss, but let's face it, who the hell has ever heard of Porter Goss? Even Porter Goss has trouble placing the name.

But there is also a groundswell of support for Giuliani, a tough manager who won widespread praise for his leadership in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

His spokeswoman, Sunny Mindel, said last night that Giuliani is "committed to sustaining the success of his private consulting firm, Giuliani and Partners, and working to help re-elect George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney."

As effective a campaigner and spokesman as Rudy Guiliani is, if he really wants to re-elect Bush and Cheney, he'll do them the favor of taking over the very shaky CIA.

Posted by: Ace at 10:50 PM | Comments (7)
Post contains 142 words, total size 1 kb.

Occasional Ace of Spades HQ contributor Aaron Burr has decided to do a half-blog feature over on The Perfect World, and I think it's a pretty good one.

The Jackass of the Week: Chris Lehane. I'm sure everyone can get behind that call, even though I'm not sure what makes Chris Lehane the Jackass of this particular week.

Perhaps it's more of a Lifetime Achievement thing. Maybe the Irving G. Thalberg Award for Lifetime Technical Achievement in Jackassery.

He invented the Dolby (TM) ass-jacking process.

Not-necessarily-safe-for-work Advisory: Aaron Burr doesn't call him a "jackass." No, he goes for the very, very potty-mouth word that got Mr. Lenny Bruce into so much trouble all those years ago.

The "c" word. The other "c" word, the longer one. The one you might use for John Kerry, rather than the one you'd use for Barbara Boxer.

Apparently Aaron Burr doesn't follow the Ace of Spades Golden Rule: You'll never fill the big rooms workin' blue. I attribute that to a simple lack of maturity and restraint on his part.

I'm still pulling for Dana Milbank and/or any of the useless, girlish shriekers at the amateur webzine Slate. (Mickey Kaus excepted, of course. William Saletan partially excepted.)

Quibble: As odious as Chris Lehane is, I am convinced he's working for our side.

Oh, he might not think he's working for our side. But objectively he is. Even liberal reporters recoil from him as if he were a stinking rummy with his dick hanging out of his haggard pants.

He's kind of like a metrosexual Nosferatu. Every time this lisping nightwalker appears, I get the willies something awful.

I am convinced he has the power to command rats and vermin with his voice. Somebody must take his simpering seriously, I figure.

It's a mystery to me how someone so bereft of charm, grace, or rhetorical persuasiveness could have possibly worked himself up to such a high position in media relations.

Posted by: Ace at 10:16 PM | Comments (15)
Post contains 333 words, total size 2 kb.