I omitted the following from the Stewart-Soderberg exchange:

Do you think they're the guys to--do they understand what they've unleashed? Because at a certain point, I almost feel like, if they had just come out at the very beginning and said, "Here's my plan: I'm going to invade Iraq. We'll get rid of a bad guy because that will drain the swamp"--if they hadn't done the whole "nuclear cloud," you know, if they hadn't scared the pants off of everybody, and just said straight up, honestly, what was going on, I think I'd almost--I'd have no cognitive dissonance, no mixed feelings.

It's sort of funny that Jon Stewart thinks this plan was hidden from him, when the very language he now uses to describe the plan -- "drain the swamp" -- comes directly from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Instapundit observes that super-liberal Josh Marshall long argued that this was the administration's plan all along. He said that, as Instapundit notes, as if it were a bad thing. He also claimed that it was some secret-- which it wasn't.

Bush and administration officials talked up the possibility of reform in Iraq sparking much-needed changes in the Middle East for years. Liberals just chose to ignore those statements, as they didn't have a Joe Wilson type who could report back from drinking sweet mint tea that the scheme was simply impossible.

I was, and remain, skeptical of the "Plymouth, Iraq" theory, as one on-line correspondent is fond of calling it.

But I was always aware that it could work-- that Al Jazeera, for example, might run lots of coverage of Iraqis debating and drafting their own constitution, and that the Arab/Muslim world might be fascinated by seeing Arabs and Muslims practicing real democracy, and yearn for a better political life for themselves. (As it turns out, the Iraqi elections and protests in Lebanon have already sparked Arab and Muslim interest in the possibility of reform... just wait until the constitution begins being drafted.)

Even though I was a skeptic, I was also aware that you can't beat something with nothing. For all their blather about the "root causes" of terrorism, I don't seem to recall any truly workable liberal plans to address these root causes, apart from "opening channels of dialogue" and paying off terrorists and doing everything that Dominique De Villepain wants us to do.

it seems that only the neocons actually proposed a method of addressing those "root causes" that could, in theory, maybe kinda sorta possibly work at all.

So I was on-board with the plan. I didn't think it would necessarily work, but I knew that something had to be tried -- we had to do something to try to change the course of the Arab/Muslim world from its suicidal path of relentless megaterrorism confrontation with the West -- before we tried Plan B.

And Plan B would not be pretty. After WWII, it was debated seriously whether Germany ought to be forcibly deindustrialized-- that is, have all its industry destroyed and not allowed to be rebuilt. Forced into an eighteenth-century existance of a purely agrarian economy.

We avoided Plan B for Germany with the Marshall Plan and by guiding the Germans to democracy-- and peacefulness.

The liberation of Iraq is Bush's attempt to avoid Plan B for the terrorist-spawning Muslim world.

It's quite annoying to have liberals claim now that they were "misled" about one of the main arguments for liberating Iraq. We made this argument repeatedly; they dismissed it out-of-hand as pure fantasy, unwilling to even consider it.

If they honestly don't remember hearing about it, that's only because they dismissed it so knee-jerkedly in the first place.

Well, you were told. Stop claiming this is all some after-the-fact concoction of KKKarl Rove's.

As Instapundit notes, it seems the Lebanese sort of got the connection between Iraq and Middle East freedom:

Posted by: Ace at 09:32 AM | Comments (7)
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...or at least you haven't gotten the full story.

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A herd, not a pack:

Stewart: But what do you make of--here's my dilemma, if you will. I don't care for the way these guys conduct themselves--and this is just you and I talking, no cameras here [audience laughter].

But boy, when you see the Lebanese take to the streets and all that, and you go, "Oh my God, this is working," and I begin to wonder, is it--is the way that they handled it really--it's sort of like, "Uh, OK, my daddy hits me, but look how tough I'm getting." You know what I mean? Like, you don't like the method, but maybe--wrong analogy, is that, uh--?

Soderberg: Well, I think, you know, as a Democrat, you don't want anything nice to happen to the Republicans, and you don't want them to have progress. But as an American, you hope good things would happen. I think the way to look at it is, they can't credit for every good thing that happens, but they need to be able to manage it. I think what's happening in Lebanon is great, but it's not necessarily directly related to the fact that we went into Iraq militarily.

Stewart: Do you think that the people of Lebanon would have had, sort of, the courage of their conviction, having not seen--not only the invasion but the election which followed? It's almost as though that the Iraqi election has emboldened this crazy--something's going on over there. I'm smelling something.

Soderberg: I think partly what's going on is the country next door, Syria, has been controlling them for decades, and they [the Syrians] were dumb enough to blow up the former prime minister of Lebanon in Beirut, and they're--people are sort of sick of that, and saying, "Wait a minute, that's a stretch too far." So part of what's going on is they're just protesting that. But I think there is a wave of change going on, and if we can help ride it though the second term of the Bush administration, more power to them.

...

But I think that there is also going on in the Middle East peace process--they may well have a chance to do a historic deal with the Palestinians and the Israelis. These guys could really pull off a whole--

Stewart: This could be unbelievable!

Soderberg:---series of Nobel Peace Prizes here, which--it may well work. I think that, um, it's--

Stewart: [buries head in hands] Oh my God! [audience laughter] He's got, you know, here's--

Soderberg: It's scary for Democrats, I have to say.

Stewart: He's gonna be a great--pretty soon, Republicans are gonna be like, "Reagan was nothing compared to this guy." Like, my kid's gonna go to a high school named after him, I just know it.

Whatever, Jon.

Part of the problem is that you idiots were so smug that you never considered the possibility you could be wrong. That's why all of this comes as such a discomfitting shock to you.

Posted by: Ace at 08:19 AM | Comments (15)
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Must read. But here are the best bits:

Beirut drama dominates Arab media

By Sebastian Usher

Newspapers in Lebanon have greeted the fall of the government on Monday as a historic moment and proof of people power on the streets of Lebanon.
...

The opposition movement in Lebanon has been inescapable on Arab TV stations, which have brought the dramatic events of the past two weeks since the assassination of the country's former Prime Minister, Rafik Hariri, live into millions of Arab homes.

The front pages of Lebanon's papers are a colourful sea of triumphant protesters holding aloft the Lebanese flag.

"People power brings down Karami's cabinet", reads the headline in the Daily Star.

...

[W]ith Arab satellite stations focusing so intensely on Lebanon, there is little chance that the symbolism of the opposition's victory has been lost on the wider Arab world, including Syria.

Arab newspapers are weighing up the possible knock-on effect of events in Lebanon on other Arab states, asking whether it is the precursor of the spread of genuine democracy across the region.

I'll let that sink in for a moment.

And then I'll repeat it:

Arab newspapers are weighing up the possible knock-on effect of events in Lebanon on other Arab states, asking whether it is the precursor of the spread of genuine democracy across the region.

All emphases added.

And here's the kicker:

That article ran on the BBC website.

I am now, I think, even more disrespectful of the media than I was before.

Yes, they are dutifully reporting the new optimism.

But they do seem to be stampeding, don't they? It doesn't take much to spook this herd and get it to change direction.

I think I'd actually have more respect for them if they didn't back down from years of previous group-think so quickly. At least that would have demonstrated some spine, or something.

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Why did they hang the soldier effigy outside their rented property, rather than their own?

Well, because their tenants -- three lovely young Republicans, as it turns out -- had the temerity to hang a Bush/Cheney poster in the window of their own place. Well, the place they were renting, at least.

And that's what prompted our little jihadist landlords to begin festooning their house with anti-Bush, anti-troops signage. As a neighbor reports:

I will let these women speak for themselves but I will mention a few facts known to me. The renters claim to have been harassed by Mr. Pearcy, receiving multiple e-mails a day and frequent visits. Shortly after he discovered the Bush/Cheney sign in the window of their now-rental property, Mr. Pearcy, they allege, became upset and threatened to paint the entire house with KerryÂ’s name among other things. Shortly thereafter, the tenants came home to find the five foot long "idiot" sign in their front yard and the Palestinian flag flying from the roof.

And there's more.

And even if there weren't, you should click on Digger's link anyway, because he has a pic of the three harassed tenants, and they're all pretty darn dishy.

Not that that matters, of course. Free speech applies equally to the plain as it does to the smokin' hot.

In theory, at least.

Posted by: Ace at 10:39 PM | Comments (8)
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It's mainstream now, baby.

This is a struggle of good and evil. And weÂ’re the good. -- Howard Dean, Chariman of the Democratic National Committee

Via PoliPundit, who now brands the Democratic Party a religious cult.

I feel like he could have gone even stronger with his language. -- Katherine Dessert, a student and preschool teacher in the audience, finding Dean's Good/Evil dichotomy a bit too nuanced for her tastes.

From Kausfiles (scroll down to Sunday, Feb. 27th.)

Meanwhile, "The Conscience of the Senate," former KKK Kleagle Robert Byrd (D-WV), compared the GOP's consideration of the so-called "nuclear option" to end judicial fillibusters to the machinations of Hitler's Third Reich, and finds the GOP to be rather shabby by comparison:

"For the temporary gain of a handful of out-of-the-mainstream judges, some in the Senate (search) are ready to callously incinerate each senator's right of extended debate," Byrd said in remarks on the Senate floor.

...

Byrd compared the move, not yet undertaken, to Hitler's abuse of power.

"Hitler never abandoned the cloak of legality. He recognized the enormous psychological value of having the law on his side," he said.

From FoxNews.

The Republican Party

Keeping the trains running on time since 1994.

What to take from all of this?

Well, the first response is to simply say that viral moonbattery has now infected the Democratic Party from ward captain to its highest elected officials. But that's, frankly, old news, and furthermore, it's too easy.

The Democrats are not stupid. They're doing this for a reason.

The Democrats' jaws dropped to the floor when they watched KKKarl Rove troop out new Republican voter after new Republican voter in red-leaning counties across the country.

They were aghast that they had just undertaken their most effective get-out-the-vote campaign in history -- aghast that they had actually out-raised Republicans in money -- aghast that they garnered the most votes for a Democratic candidate for president, ever -- and lost anyway, because the GOP was just a little bit better at turning out -- "exciting" -- its base.

They have decided they won't have their base be the second-most excited in 2006 or 2008. They've decided to start campaigning now, and campaigning not with the nuance and moderation likely to attract centrists and independents, but with the venom and red-meat likely to turn out Naderites and just-plain-leftists for the Democratic Party.

And if this alienates some moderates-- so be it. They have decided that the name of the game is base politics, in both meanings of that phrase.

Will this work? I don't know if it can. For one thing, as regards the raw numbers, "excitable" base conservatives outnumber "excitable" base liberals by 3:2, at least according to self-identification. Even assuming that there are more potential liberals out there -- people so outside the mainstream that they usually don't even vote, people who are very liberal but just won't admit it, even to a pollster-- it would seem that the GOP has a solid advantage as far as the ideologically committed.

For another thing, and this is the Democrats' main problem: they complain of the Republicans' use of "wedge issues" against them -- gay marriage, abortion, etc. -- but "wedge issue" seems to mean, to them, "an issue that cuts against and so we think it's darned unfair of you to keep harping on it."

But what excited the Republican base was Bush's delivery on important substantive political issues: tax cuts, pushing for more a more mainstream judiciary, protecting marriage from redefinition by judges, outlawing one of the more vile sorts of abortions.

And of course standing firm by the principle that the United States Government has the right, and the obligation, to protect its citizens against foreign threats, no matter what Dominique De Villiapain might say about it.

The Democrats may not like those issues, and they may claim (as they do, each and every election cycle) that any issue that hurts them is simply illegitimate and un-American to even discuss publicly, but they are in fact real issues the American people care about.

So: that is how the Republican Party went about exciting its base.

The Democrats, meanwhile, seem to be merely offering nothing but superheated rhetoric about "evil" and "Hitler." Why is it that Democrats beging to hem and haw when Al Qaeda butchers are called evil, but castigate Howard Dean for calling 50% of his fellow American law-abiding citizens evil because he didn't use strong enough language?

True enough, Senator Byrd is discussing a legitimate issue-- he's on the wrong side of it, of course, but he is playing the judge card to excite his base, the same as Bush played it to excite his, and there's no dirty pool in that.

But... comparing the Republican Party to the Nazi Party? And finding the latter to be... more principled in its fidelity to the law?

The issues that excited the Republican base were, mostly, issues that also attracted moderate voters, by and large. Moderate voters might not be as anti-tax as Republicans, but they like tax cuts. Moderate voters might have had more anxiety and second-thoughts about Iraq than most Republicans, but they still supported Bush's decision to invade Iraq, even if, strangely enough, they thought the war was a mistake by November 2004.

But the point is: the issues that excited the base were either attractive to moderates, mildly to strongly, or were a bit of a wash, or (as with the judiciariy) just something they didn't care very much about either way.

The Democrats, meanwhile, seem to be attempting to energize their base not with matters of substance or principle but with increasingly intemperate language from increasingly high-ranking elected officials.

Will that also play well with the moderates?

I have to think it won't. Moderates seem to want above all concord and civility an compromise and "niceness," for lack of a better word.

I just don't seen Dean's Aragorn-inspired speechifying on good and evil, or a former KKK Klansman's thoughts about Hitler, doing much to convince the moderates that the Democrats are the party that's more interested in "civility" and "results" than "negative attacks" and ideology.

Update: Soxblog has similar thoughts in a piece he pens for -- God, I'm so jealous I could spit a kidney -- the Weekly Standard online.

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...in Germany.

In related news, various German boy bands are recording new disco-themed versions of the Horst Wessel song.

Thanks to David for the correction. Horst Wessel, not "Wiesel." To be honest -- yeah, I know this is sorta bad -- I confused his last name with Eli Wiesel's.

And I'm sure I probably spelled that wrong, too.

Posted by: Ace at 03:55 PM | Comments (11)
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Yeahp, he felt he had to reveal the identity of one of Saddam's judges.

Now that judge has been assassinated.

Thanks, Bobby!

CORRECTION: Apparently not the same judge Fisked outed; another one of the 49 judges working on the matter.

Posted by: Ace at 03:44 PM | Comments (9)
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Let us hope that the Syrians are more prompt about troop withdrawals than CBS News is about investigating bogus stories:

Syria expects to withdraw its troops from Lebanon in a few months, President Bashar al-Assad said in an interview published Tuesday.

"It (withdrawal) should be very soon and maybe in the next few months. Not after that. I can't give you a technical answer. The point is the next few months," he told Time magazine.

...

In the interview posted on Time's Web site, Assad would not give a definite timetable for pulling out his army, saying it depended on technical, rather than political, considerations.

Can an authoritarian regime survive when it caves so?

An intercepted Syrian document suggests that Bashar Assad thinks the answer is "No."

Posted by: Ace at 11:07 AM | Comments (17)
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They can kill, but they can't win:

More than 2,000 people demonstrated Tuesday at the site of a car bombing south of Baghdad that killed 125 people, chanting "No to terrorism!"

The article then discusses a kidnapped French journalist for about an hour and a half-- I'm not trying to be uncaring of the journalist's fate, but it does seem the writer wanted to immediately tell you about ongoing bad news after (sadly) reporting the good.

More than 2,000 people held the impromptu demonstration on front of the clinic, chanting "No to terrorism!" and "No to Baathism and Wahhabism!"

I'm not sure what to say about this:

The demonstrators also demanded that interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi step down.

The best spin I can put on it is this: when people are incensed, they will, in a normal sort of country, criticize their politicians and demand change. That is democracy -- even if democracy is sometimes short-sighted and prone to unthinking tumult.

And even better: the demonstrators weren't killed for speaking their minds.

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