Which is the same problem we face here, of course; only we don't seem to be quite as ludicrous as the Dutch:

Can a threatened society rally to its own defense? Or will political correctness paralyze the survival instinct? Those are questions being asked here in the Netherlands, where an experiment in no-questions-asked multiculturalism is coming to an end.
...

In the aftermath of the killing [of fimmaker Theo Van Gogh], there was a spasm of anti-Muslim violence. About 20 mosques and schools were vandalized. Fortunately, no serious injuries resulted. But then the Dutch reverted to their standard touchy-feelyness. Students at a high school held a "group hug" as a "tonic against hate and violence in the country."

And although the churches here are notoriously empty, the Nieuwe Kerk has been jammed. Why? Because of a Moroccan culture exhibit that lets ethnic Dutch empathize with their new countrymen.

...

Shouldn't there be a serious effort to get to the heart of the problem, and to crack down where necessary? Muslims loom huge in Holland's demographic future. In the cities, more than half of schoolchildren are Muslim, and new immigrants are steadily trickling in. Ethnic conflict is real, and it can't be solved by hugging.

Read the whole thing.

It seems to me, by the way, that "hugging" is the main culprit behind most of the world's ills. From TV family therapist John Gray to trees to my annnoying drunk friend Stinky "I Love You, Man!" Ketchum -- hugging is just vile.

It solves nothing. Arms aren't made for hugging. They're made for shaking hands, eating balogna sandwiches, foreplay, working a lathe, and carrying a gun. Period.

Okay... Hugs are nice-- between people who are traditionally supposed to hug. And I mean parent-child hugs, boyfriend-girlfriend hugs, husband-wife hugs, drunk-girls-telling-each-other-they'll-be-friends-forever hugs, best-friend-just-got-back-from-Afghanistan hugs, etc.

Strangers should not hug. Ever.

Also, I don't like no one touching my stuff. So just keep your meathooks off. If I catch any of you guys in my stuff, I'll kill you. And I don't like nobody touching me. Any of you homos touch me, and I'll kill you...*

*Corrected. It's still not the exact quote from Stripes, but internet political partisans are attacking me (probably on orders from Karl Rove) for screwing up "the flow" of Francis' line.

As I cannot verify my original quote to my satisfaction, I have to retract it, although I maintain the possibility that it was "accurate" even if not "authentic."

Another Correction: AndrewF provides the accurate and authentic quote, which I now use.

If I screwed up the quote before, I'd like to be the one to break that story.

Posted by: Ace at 09:22 PM | Comments (19)
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GregS sends this. Awesome:

And the caption:

the state of the war in Iraq (news - web sites) with Chief Warrant Officer Donald Hartson, 126th Aviation Battalion, during the Senators visit to Camp Al Tahreer (Liberty) in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, January 5, 2005. Kerry met with Soldiers from his state, asking them what he should tell Congress about the war in Iraq. The troops complained to Kerry that the good work that they are doing is not getting reported in the United States.

Emphasis enthusiastically added.

Update: HelenW sends this funny photoshop caption.

Posted by: Ace at 02:23 PM | Comments (10)
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Michele at ASV was just wondering if she was an "asshole" for having difficult relations with clerks at stores.

It reminded me of this real-life story, posted on The Perfect World.

For those of you who don't know, a guy calling himself "Fergussen Foont" was quite the angry liberal at Table Talk (at Salon), until he got booted off for violating even their standards. He was fond of signing off his messages with the epigram "Sic Semper Tyrannis," which seemed his wink-and-nod way of endorsing the assassination of a president. (Those were John Wilkes Boothe's words as he lept to the stage after killing Lincoln; it means something like "thus the end to tyrants." Something like that. I don't speak Latin, having never been in Latin America.)

He made a lot of claims, like having seen -- first-hand-- videotape of a coked-up George Bush in a police jail after being busted for possession. And for working for NASA, and for working for Guiliani; few of these claims seem supported by the factual record.

Anyway, the great Nick Kronos kept his eye on Foont, and discovered this Foont freak-out-- reported by Foont himself-- after the November 2002 congressional elections. His brave act of civil disobedience seemed to have something to do with shopping-mart discount cards:

I am having great difficulty bringing myself to read or watch the news these days....

Since the election a couple of weeks ago, every single day brings some new horror on the front page, some snickering, gloating rightwinger extolling the virtues of cruelty, niggardliness, the loss of our precious rights, and war, or some unstoppable outrage against our environment or our liberty.

So I find myself avoiding the press to an increasing extent, simply because whenever I read an article or watch a newscast it makes me too angry to deal with the random happenstances that occur from day to day. In traffic I drive more aggressively, cutting people off and running yellow (and debatably red) lights. I yell at people, often profanely. If someone cuts in front of me in a supermarket queue I am as likely to push them aside physically as just let the matter drop.

For instance, just today I went to a CVS drug store to buy some Diet Coke which they advertised at two 12-packs for $5.00.

I carried them up to the cashier, waited my turn in line, and when she rang it up she asked me for $8.57. I told her that the tax rate for purchases like this was 6.5%, not 65%, and she said that no, the 2/$5.00 price was only for people who had one of those little cards that stores have begun to use to track customer purchases.

She was a young, nice girl, and obviously this wasn't her fault.

But she was standing in the line of fire and I gave it to her with both barrels. I said, loudly enough for everyone in the store to hear, that I will simply never shop there again, because I do not want them, and through them and their "Poindexter Card" the government, tracking my whereabouts and my habits just to save a quarter on a 12-pack of Diet Coke.

I left them on the counter, blocking the small counter space from the people in line behind me and stormed angrily out of the store. I am quite sure everyone in the store thought I was a complete lunatic.

Um, I think everyone will take his word on that.

But I don't care how I look anymore if I can just achieve the goal of making people uncomfortable....\

But I got to thinking how Poindexter's weasels might use the data they collect. There might be purchases we could make as individuals at these stores that fall outside what they establish to be our personal "patterns." These anomalies might raise a red flag in their computerized data collection that would bring our lives under more active scrutiny, and that might result in complications in our lives that we might prefer to do without.

I would suggest that our front line of resistance at this preliminary point might be to refuse, in a most pointed way, these increasingly ubiquitous store cards....

Later, he practiced some more semi-violent resistance. This time, a computer store apparently ran out of their advertised $29 printers:

I was one of the first in the door, and when I asked where were the $29 printers, they told me that they had sold them all at 9:00 that morning, contrary to their advertising and what one of their personnel told me yesterday afternoon.

I got really angry, yelled a lot, was ordered out by a sheriff they always keep in the store (because evidently they get a lot of really pissed-off customers a lot of the time), and he almost arrested me because I wasn't about to back off. I overturned an empty cart.

Politics is fun. Politics is (sometimes, marginally) important.

But politics is often just a sublimation for deep personal and psychological problems. And this is true on the right as well as the left.

If anyone finds themselves behaving in such an anti-human fashion due to the results of an election, please, do yourselves, your families, and your communities a favor and find a new interest.

Nearly psychotic behavior is perfectly accepted at football games, for example.

Posted by: Ace at 02:21 PM | Comments (7)
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Sorry, this seems to keep happening. Last time, though, they were working again in a couple of hours.

I apologize for the loose shit going on with this site's comments. Maybe Man of Substance can recommend someone to ride my ass until they're fixed once and for all.

Posted by: Ace at 01:34 PM | Comments (8)
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Apparently "the truth" was a side-dish which came with the Arby's Super-Sized Bucket O' Roast Beef Moore also brought with him.

Mmmm... truth. I like sopping up gravy with the truth. Deee-licious.

Posted by: Ace at 01:00 PM | Comments (1)
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I do not agree that the Geneva Conventions apply in all cases, of course, nor do I regard them as Holy Writ. They're international agreements arrived at among specific parties, at a specific time, for specific purposes, and whether either the agreements themselves or the principles they contain should govern in other circumstances is hardly beyond the bounds of reasonable discussion, as Andrew [Sullivan] -- who in other circumstances seems less deferential to existing law simply as law -- seems to suggest.

I have no idea what laws Andrew Sullivan might wish to flout. It's a stone-cold mystery to me.

Instapundit's run-down and links are worth reading, even though I disagree with his basic take.

Saying "torture doesn't work" is just a way to avoid a difficult question. Mickey Kaus has made this observation before-- by insisting that torture doesn't work, you are claiming that there is simply no upside to it whatsoever, which makes opposing it easy.

It's an intellectual dodge. Of course torture works. Not always, and not necessarily quickly, but take a look at the films of our brave captured Vietnam pilots being coerced into reading anti-American screeds for North Vietnam's propaganda uses.

These were brave and strong men, some of the most disciplined in the world. And they broke. They didn't want to say those horrible things, but there does come a point at which the human spirit fails.

Posted by: Ace at 12:54 PM | Comments (11)
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Unbelievable:

Visiting with U.S. troops in Baghdad on Thursday, failed presidential candidate John Kerry trashed Commander-in-chief George Bush for making "horrendous judgments" and "unbelievable blunders" that have undermined the war effort.

In a series of demoralizing comments first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, the defeated Democrat griped, "What is sad about what's happening here now is that so much of it is a process of catching up from the enormous miscalculations and wrong judgments made in the beginning."

What, no "the Iraqi insurgents are the MINUTEMEN, and they will win"?

Come on, Kerry. This has always been your problem. If you're going to take a position, don't do it by half-steps. Go all the way with it, baby.

Thanks to Running at the Mouth's Top 5 at 5 run-down of blog-stories.

Posted by: Ace at 12:38 PM | Add Comment
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And apparently I'm not alone. The DUmmies are bawling their eyes out at the bravery of this woman, who conveniently announces her transformation into an archliberal firebrand just two months after her re-election.

I somehow doubt she made that plan clear during the campaign.

Now that's the sort of bravery for me! The kind of bravery that risks and costs nothing at all.

Thanks to Mike.

Posted by: Ace at 12:15 PM | Comments (12)
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I guess we all knew this was coming.

I wonder if the "Wall Street Bankers" who did this were "neo-cons," if you know what I mean.

Funny, they all don't look neo-connish.

Thanks, LauraW. She tells me I need to hat-tip Whacking Day, who I really have to add to the blogroll one of these days. Good site.

Posted by: Ace at 11:18 AM | Comments (10)
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...has broken out in a thread not particularly well-suited for such a discussion. I'm starting this post so that those interested in the debate can hash things out.

I'll check the comments and move the best points into this post.

Cedarford makes this point, which I'd never heard before:

Part of the problem is the Left, the Euroweenies, and the International Red Cross think the US is bound by 1977 Protocol I to the Geneva Convention, which requires treating terrorists as protected civilians unless they are actually attacking you.

The terrorist is required to comply by having some actual identifying characteristic under that Protocol WNEN attacking...as in Mohammed Atta wielding a boxcutter shouting "Death to Infidels".

Fortunately, Ronald Reagan refused to sign on to that 1970's lunacy.

But the Left, Euroweenies, and International Red Cross think he was very, very wrong....

Therefore they continue to lecture us that we are defying the Geneva Conventions by not giving POW status to unlawful combatants, based on a treaty we never signed...

It seems that that protocol would give to terrorists the legal right to the precise advantage they seek-- to wit, being able to attack and then quickly melt away into a civilian population and hide amongst them, disguising their status as illegal combatants.

Why on God's green earth would we reward such underhanded dishonorable behavior by granting it legal sanction?

Bring It On Update: Byron York says the Democrats are quite serious about making torture the central issue in Albert Gonzales' confirmation hearings:

While a number of committee Democrats clearly plan to hit Gonzales hard, Democrats have kept close counsel on whether they actually intend to try to sink the nomination, or whether they will, after making a certain amount of noise, ultimately acquiesce in Senate confirmation. What has Republicans newly concerned is that the "chatter" — mainly about minority plans to oppose Gonzales on the issue of his role in determining the treatment of U.S. detainees in the war on terror — suggests a serious effort. "People are going crazy now," the Republican says. "All these letters, People for the American Way, the former military commanders writing in. There's a lot of energy, and it's energy that is typically associated with an effort to kill a nominee."

Gonzales, and the White House, appear prepared to defend the administration's reading of the Geneva Convention and the argument that parts of the treaty do not apply to the war on terror. In a statement prepared for today's hearing, Gonzales says, "After the attacks of 9/11, our government had fundamental decisions to make concerning how to apply treaties and U.S. law to an enemy that does not wear a uniform, owes no allegiance to any country, is not a party to any treaties and — most importantly — does not fight according to the laws of war."

More troublesome will be questions about Gonzales's role in the so-called "torture memo" controversy, in which Justice Department lawyers, reporting to Gonzales, explored the internationally accepted definition of torture and how it applied to detainees in the war on terror. In recent days, Republicans have come to believe that Democrats will likely recite a list of abusive prisoner-treatment techniques and then ask Gonzales whether each one constitutes torture. "There could be some horrible cross-examinations," another GOP source says. "Like, 'So, if you attach battery cables to a person, is that torture?' You can go through a whole series of questions." As of Wednesday, the White House was said to have been engaging in last-minute preparations for that line of questioning.

Here's the dirty little secret about the American public and torture: We all say we don't want to torture people (well, I don't, but a lot of people do), but most people actually do want us to torture the right people in the right situations... we just want to keep it hush-hush.

As they say, everyone wants the sausage, but no one wants to see how it gets made. And the American people have accepted the principle of knowing blindness and/or calculated obfuscation on this point.

The Democrats can make an issue of this, as their base demands. The majority of the public, however, condemns torture publicly but supports it -- in the appropriate situation-- privately.

All the Democratic screaming about this issue will just convince the American voters of what they already pretty much believe: The Democrats just aren't serious about protecting America from Al Qaeda, and they're just not to be trusted to make the hard and sometimes brutal judgments needed to do so.

So, as two presidential candidates said this past year: Bring it on.

Posted by: Ace at 11:11 AM | Comments (6)
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