The Wornout (And Inaccurate) Analogy of Vietnam (Updated 4/4)

Today at American Thinker, Dr. Ben Voth of Miami University has a very good piece that focuses on the outcome of the 10,000 day struggle known as the Vietnam War.

I'd like to expand on Voth's piece.

These popular perceptions ring throughout American History Classrooms, American Movies, and especially the preconceived notions of the American Media.

• The United States "lost" the war.


• The war was impossible for the US to win.


• The US's final withdrawal solved the problems of the war.


• The lives of those given in the conflict were "wasted".

Hence, as Voth alludes to in his piece, the term "Vietnam" is synonymous with military failure. It has become the mnemonic device of many who associate any military campaign with inevitable failure.

In my writings I have not been shy about to whom the blame falls for this misperception. In December of 2005, J.R. Dunn, one of the premier American Thinker writers, posted a piece entitled "The Legacy of Tet", an article I have cited countless times in my writings.

Without completely rehashing Dunn's argument, he cements my point that the Useful Idiots of the Mainstream Media created many, if not all, of the misperceptions listed above by inaccurately reporting events on the ground in Vietnam. In the heyday of the Useful Idiot's influence (before the internet, naturally), when Walter Kronkite reported world events, it was the equivalent of Moses and the Stone Tablets. Once Walter stated "that's the way it was," reality and perception would morph into one and not a Head of State in the world could convince Americans otherwise. In January 1968, North Vietnam's Tet Offensive took place; a massive invasion of the South by North Vietnamese regulars equipped and trained by the Soviet Union. Walter's verdict? America was essentially defeated during Tet, and the war was all but lost.

Dunn's sources recall a different outcome (bold emphasis mine).

"The result of all (North Vietnamese Commander Nguyen) Giap's efforts was a total rout. The South Vietnamese, utterly horrified by the prospect of a Communist takeover, sat tight while U.S. and government troops crushed the attack in a matter of days. The sole holdout was the old imperial citadel at Hue, which required three weeks to be retaken. The government stood firm, the ARVN, once recovered from its initial surprise, did a creditable job."

He continues:

"The Viet Cong (South Vietnamese Communist Sympathizers), on the other hand, were ruined as a military force, their rural infrastructure left in tatters. They never fully recovered, forcing the PAVN (People's Army of North Vietnam) to take over the bulk of combat duties. Giap, his reputation saving him from the usual fate of failed generals in communist societies, went back to the drawing board. (Though not very fruitfully —— his next scheme was a 'mini—Tet' in April, which ended much the same way.)"

In A Patriot's History Of The United States, Larry Schweikart and Micheal Allen tell a story identical to Dunn's (again, bold emphasis mine).

During Tet, the "Vietcong troops reached the U.S. embassy in Saigon, where they (contrary to popular movie renditions) were killed to a man... for every American Soldier or Marine killed, 50 North Vietnamese died, a ratio 'approaching the horrendous slaughter....between the Spaniards and Aztecs in Mexico or British and Zulus in southern Africa.'" At the old capital of Hue "the surprised and outnumbered U.S. Marines evicted 10,000 Viet Cong and Vietnamese regulars from a fortified city in less than three weeks and at a loss of only 150 dead."

More: " A U.S. military historian, Robert Leckie, referred to Tet as 'the most appalling defeat in the history of war' for Hanoi-an 'unmitigated military disaster'. Even General Tran Van Tra, a top-ranking communist, agreed, 'We suffered large sacrifices and losses with regard to manpower and material, especially cadres at the various echelons, which clearly weakened us.'"

How did the circa-1968 Useful Idiots report Tet? Schweikart and Allen continue:

"....yet the media reported this as a communist victory. 'Embassy in Saigon Captured!' read one erroneous headline.... Scenes were cut and spliced in the studios into thirty-second clips of marines and body bags, with an accompanying text, 'American troops mauled (p. 694).'"

When the dust finally settled in 1972, Schweikart and Allen tell a story few of my generation have ever heard.

"Realizing they could not beat the United States as long as Nixon remained in the Presidency, the North Vietnamese boldly sought to influence the November elections by convincing Americans of the hopelessness of their cause."

Once Nixon thrashed McGovern in the 1972 election: "Out of options, consequently, on January 23, 1973, Le Duc Tho of North Vietnam signed an agreement with U.S. Secretary of State William Rogers ending the war. Nixon made clear his intention of keeping U.S. Warships in Southeast Asia and of using American air power stationed in Thailand or the Philippines to maintain the peace. The North promised to return all American POWs. Like any such agreement, it largely hinged on Nixon's willingness and ability to enforce it. For all intents and purposes, America's longest war was over."

More: "Having won every major military encounter in the war, American armed forces withdrew and Vietnamized the war, as had been the intention since Kennedy."

DO NOT MISS THIS - "Vietnamization, however, worked only as long as the U.S. Congress and the American President remained committed to supporting South Vietnam with aid. In the wake of Nixon's resignation, Vietnam could no longer count on the president, and shortly thereafter Congress pulled the plug on further assistance, dooming the free government in the South (p. 715-716)."

Let's recap: The US and South Vietnam essentially won every major military confrontation of the war. The North and the Viet Cong were running out of options and forced to sign a Peace Agreement. South Vietnam, today, would still be a free and most likely vibrant nation with a north/south contrast similar to Korea. However, once Nixon was run from office and Congress pulled the plug on the fledgling but surviving government in the south, all was lost.

The consequence?

• The emboldening of communist movements worldwide which would not only enslave millions, but be a security and financial thorn in the side of the West for the next 15 years.


• The ushering in of brutal regimes in both Cambodia and Laos.


• The horrors of Vietnamese "re-education camps" throughout South Vietnam.


• A demon on the shoulder of American Military readiness that would not be shaken until the rapid defeat of Iraqi forces under Saddam Hussein in 1991.


• A still existing, but seldom reported, repressive regime in Vietnam to this day. This link to Human Rights Watch, hardly a pro-American organization, details such.
  

The blame for this? Many fingers can be pointed, but the most square of them would be at the Useful Idiots of the Mainstream Media, who systematically reported events on the ground in Vietnam inaccurately and with devastating effects on American psyche.

Fast forward, if you will, to Iraq in 2007. Entering the fifth year of US involvement in Iraq, the situation vis-a-vis the Useful Idiots and operations on the ground are similar. The US and its coalition partners have

• Deposed a brutal dictator


• Freed millions from the looming presence of Rape Rooms and Torture Chambers


• Established a Constitutional Government via overwhelmingly successful elections


• Have begun training the Iraqi Police Force and Military to be self sufficient defenders of the new order.


• Begun to rebuild the infrastructure.

The success of these endeavors can be viewed here and here.

Yet, what do we hear in the MSM daily? Carnage, Bombing, US Death Toll and "Civil War".

See a pattern? The only similarity between Vietnam and Iraq that I can see - well, two:

• The sloppy, incomplete reporting by the Useful Idiots


• The HORRIFIC consequences of our failure in Iraq, which can only happen if we lose our will to fight. How will we lose our will to fight? If the Useful Idiots continue to point an erroneous picture of what really is happening on the ground.
  

Stop comparing Iraq to Vietnam, Power Whores of the Democratic Party and Useful Idiots of the Media. The only way it can become Vietnam is if you people LET IT.

*******

Addendum: Sunday, April 1, 2007

Wrong, Wrong, WRONG - Yesterday at AT, as a follow up post to Voth's piece, Andrew Sumereau comments that "Bush and company should have known this from all that history teaches. They, and we, are paying the penalty of ignoring the lessons of Vietnam."

I have to respectfully disagree with Sumereau. Again, the entire premises of his piece yesterday and his earlier piece he references from 2005 are flawed as I have outlined above. We did NOT lose the Vietnam War any more than we "lost" the Korean War. Sumereau is a case study in the type of thinking that my entire post above is meant to address.

The lessons of Vietnam are not the ones that Sumereau speaks of. The lesson of Vietnam is that the American Public should never solely depend on the Useful Idiots of the MSM for their information on the day-to-day results of a military endeavor. While Sumereau to some extent makes valid points about the needs of effective war fighting (and Bush et al, along with commanders on the ground in Iraq have made adjustments in tactic, as does every commander in war) he is basing his entire argument on a false premise ~ that Vietnam was a defeat.

A Smog Filled Wedding

Oh, there was magic in the air that night!

Tonight, as I was fighting back the bile of E!News's announcement of Cameron Diaz, Justin Timberlake and Leo DiCaprio all attending an "earth-friendly wedding", I again was extremely grateful that my wife and I celebrated an Emissions-filled wedding. Not only did we not recycle a single glass bottle at our wedding, we taxed carpoolers and drove away in a '76 Chrysler Cordoba with a missing Catalytic Converter.


My wife and I are not like all the Godless, mindless sheep who have no meaning in their lives and cling to any baseless, idiotic ideology in an attempt to gives our lives a sense of "purpose". We had not a green wedding but a gray wedding. We may not be cool, but we have minds of our own.

Gaia is God's bitch.

Mullahs to The West - "What Are You Going to Do About It?"

National Review Online has this editorial today regarding the current stand off between Great Britain and Iran with regard to the 15 detained British Sailors. As you may or may not know, Iranian Patrol Craft seized a British Envoy during an inspection of a suspect oil tanker by the latter. The Iranians continue to hold the Sailors hostage.

The Mullahs want to know, what are we going to do about it?

This paragraph in the editorial is especially pertinent (bold emphasis mine):

"Israel was placed in this dilemma last summer, when Iranian agents — the Hezbollah of Lebanon — crossed the border, killed some soldiers, and took two others hostage. Israel treated this aggression as a declaration of war, and its repeat in the Gulf waters has to be met with the same firmness. The making of any sort of deal whereby personnel legally arrested are exchanged for personnel illegally snatched — never mind anything that might compromise sanctions — would mean unconditional victory for Iran, and the admission of impotence and humiliation for Britain, and therefore the West."


So, basically, Ayatollah Khameini and his short little puppet Mahmoud Ahmadinejad want to know, "what are you going to do about it?"

Obviously, their confidence is high that the answer is "nothing".

How did we get here?


Imagine two worlds.

The first is a world where such aggression isn't even perpetrated because the aggressor fears the resolve of the transgressed. The aggressor knows that his economy is teetering on the brink of ruin because of his statism. The aggressor knows that, because he operates a fear society, that his people yearn for freedom and at the slightest sign of military instability, heightened by an attack by a First World Nation in response to such an aggression, he will lose control over his own citizenry. Its too risky, so he respects the First World Power and doesn't cut his own throat.
The second scenario is radically different. The aggressor seems to project power around the world because of the fear-ridden inaction of the transgressed. The aggressor knows that retaliation by the First World Power being transgressed faces resistence from a detached, restless population that is leary of any type of military casualty. The aggressor knows that ultimately, the First World Power will therefore give in to the demands of the aggressor. The aggressor knows this because of the vocal opposition to any kind of military action routinely voiced by a large segment of the First World Power's politicians. The First World's Media gladly acts as a megaphone for the opportunistic and naive First World politicians who project this message. Also, maybe unwittingly, they report the news in a way designed to elicit sympathy for the aggressors.

So, where are we? Sadly, scenario listed second is where we are. And the Mullahs know it. Giving ANY kind of concession to these autocrats in this situation is nothing more than a symbol of weakness. It will only get worse from here.

Put down the Xbox controller. Think beyond your own world. Khameini et al are asking - "What are you going to do about it?" I hope we have the right answer before we sink further.

What Does Bubba do when Hillary is away?

Here's what he wants you to think he does when Hillary is out inciting class warfare among ignorant populists on the campaign trail.

Today, I caught a brief snippet of the Rush Limbaugh show while at work. In this article, Clinton prattles on about his love for Lucy and the Andy Griffith Show. But the best part is how he explains to us that Andy et al are his best friends when Hillary is out slaying capitalist dragons.

"As you know, my wife is away, so I'm home alone a lot," Clinton said of Sen. Hillary Clinton, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008. "I'm particularly grateful to TV Land for giving me something to do at night."

Yes, Bill, I'm sure you are grateful.

Are you laughing as much as I am about this? Look, and Limbaugh in so many words alluded to this: We all know what Bill is doing when Hillary is away. I can hear the high school kids in the neighborhood talking about it now.

"Man, you should have seen the hotties at this party I went to the other day at Chelsea's old man's house. DAMN!"

"For real, dawg?"

"Yeah Bra. We're talking smokin' hotties. They all kept asking these dudes in shades with ear pieces where Old Man Clinton was at, but they wouldn't say. Everyone just kept pointing at this bedroom door upstairs that was closed all night."

"Dude, how in the hell do you get invited to these things?"

"Don't know, Bra. Guess Old Man Clinton and I are kinda buds, know what I'm sayin'?"

"Cool."

"Yah."

(PS - I guess a lot of my incredulity at all of this comes from the fact that I have zero faith in Clinton's "wholesomeness". The mental picture of this philandering power whore eating Cheezits and yukking it up at the antics of Barney and Gomer is a picture I scarce believe any sane person can conjur up. Yet so many people just think this guy is the Second Coming. Amazing to me....)

Screw the Troops, Part II

It gets better. Read this editorial from IBD. It can be summed up by the passage below:


"How sad that Congress' new majority didn't have the guts to take a straight-up vote on withdrawing troops without linking it to all sorts of pork-barrel spending.

This shows Democrats don't have the courage of their convictions — unless bribed. As far as party ideals go, using our troops as a bargaining chip for pork really descends to the basement. "

Remember, Democrats support the troops. Yep, they'll support the troops alright, on one condition: just make sure their pet social programs and feeding troughs are taken care of.

Nauseating.

THIS JUST IN! Edwards Repents for Mansion, Large Carbon Footprint

THANK GOD! Finally a Democrat is willing to Walk the Walk instead of just wishing it on others. Bravo, Johnny Boy!

Screw the Troops - No Spinach Farmer Left Behind

I have nothing to add to this post from Townhall.com. Thank you, John Campbell. My sentiments exactly. Bold emphasis mine.

Outcry Over War Supplemental Spending Abuse Grows
Posted by: John Campbell at 11:09 AM

"Just in case you thought the conservatives on Capitol Hill were the only ones up in arms over the pork filled appropriations bill meant to fund the war, in an editorial this morning, the Washington Post criticized the bill because of the reckless withdraw provisions and the $20 billion in unrelated spending thrown in the bill.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/22/AR2007032201883.html
'The legislation pays more heed to a handful of peanut farmers than to the 24 million Iraqis who are living through a maelstrom initiated by the United States, the outcome of which could shape the future of the Middle East for decades.
As it is, House Democrats are pressing a bill that has the endorsement of MoveOn.org but excludes the judgment of the U.S. commanders who would have to execute the retreat the bill mandates. It would heap money on unneedy dairy farmers while provoking a constitutional fight with the White House that could block the funding to equip troops in the field. Democrats who want to force a withdrawal should vote against war appropriations. They should not seek to use pork to buy a majority for an unconditional retreat that the majority does not support.'
In addition, to the the article in the Washington Post, I was particularly struck by a report released by the RSC. Among other things, it found that if you took the $219 million allotted in the bill for spinach, peanut storage, and shrimp fishing, and directed it to the troops, it would be the equivalent of providing every soldier in Iraq with an additional $1,425."

Way To Teach Those Republicans a Lesson, You on The Right Who Sat Out Nov 2006!

"The Senate Budget: A $2,641 Per Household Tax Increase and No Entitlement Reforms"

I stumbled upon this article at the Heritage Foundation's website this afternoon. In the wake of last November's elections I predicted this to happen, not trying to congratulate myself here.

I dug deeper and found this standoff between author Jim Geraghty in National Review Online and Bill Quick of Dailypundit.com.


Says Geraghty: " If I want a more conservative government, I get it by electing the more conservative of the two choices, even if he isn’t as conservative as I would like. I do not get it by sitting on the sidelines and pouting, and letting the less conservative guy take the reigns of power."

Of course, Geraghty has it right, and the first article of this post is exactly what I predicted would happen as a result of the sit-out. The plastic monster pictured to the right is now the third most powerful person in Federal Office and she thinks you need to pay more in taxes (that is you rich people; rich being defined as anyone who pays taxes).

You sure showed those Republicans, Bill. Enjoy your new tax bracket.

Fred Thompson, 2008

God, do we need this guy....

Celebrating the Crusty, Old, Rich White Guy

The Richer he gets, the more he Invests and Spends. The more he Invests and Spends, the more Robust the Economy. God Bless Him.

Progressive? Don't Flatter Yourself......

Today at The American Thinker, Henry P. Wickman, Jr. has a terrific piece entitled "Progressive?" which effectively harpoons those on the Contemporary American Left who label themselves with the term. What's more, AT's Editor and Publisher, Thomas Lifson, follows up effectively with a piece entitled "Not Progressive At All".

Allow me to throw my 2 cents into this discussion by saying THANK GOD someone with some readership is finally saying what I have said for years now, that the terms "Progressive" and "Liberal" are ill-suited to the Contemporary American Left in general and the Democratic Party in particular.

What's more, I generally shy away from labeling myself as a "Conservative", because I think the moniker has a tendency to reflexively paint someone as a "defender of the status quo" irrespective of whether or not the status quo is morally valid.

The terms "Progressive" or "Liberal" are best suited as Wickman uses it in his article:

"There was a time in our history when the positive connotations of this word as description of certain political policies were reasonably merited. When African-Americans were suffering the woes of Jim Crow laws and the bigotry that spawned them, efforts to end these conditions were certainly progressive."

Or, to put it differently, Jim Crow Laws and "Separate But Equal" were inherently immoral attitudes pervasive in a large part of our society, and moves to counter that ideology were truly Progressive.

Today, its a different story. In a post on another website, I made this comment back in December:

"I refuse to flatter the American Left (including those power whore Democrats in elected office - Reid, Kennedy, Pelosi et al) by referring to them as “Liberal”. I’m even more annoyed at their references to themselves as “progressive”, especially as its meant to apply that those of us who disagree with their destructive policies are not progressive. A point I have routinely made in my writings is that there is NOTHING Liberal or Progressive about:

* pushing for negotiation with Tyrants and Terrorists around the world, when history has shown that they view talk as weakness.
* zealously clinging to Great Society Welfare-ism when it has destroyed the traditional family and had devastating effects on the inner cities, increasing poverty and leading an increase in crime by fatherless men.
* continuing to incite class warfare and soak the rich tax policies, when its the “rich” who invest the money and grow the economy. Taxes take away the incentive to invest.
* hamper America’s effort to defend itself in the war on terror. The very existence of all we love and know of Western Civilization is at stake, and they refuse to accept it when its plain to see.

I don’t call them Liberals or progressives. They’re just the contemporary American Left."

I'm a Reagan Republican. BUT, I'm progressive - anything that is inherently immoral and counter-productive needs to be reconsidered and re-approached. Someone needs to slide that memo very casually to those at the table who label themselves "Progressive" and keep spewing the same old Democrat garbage that has given us a lot of the social, economic, and foreign policy headaches we have today.

Thank you, Wickman and Lifson, for validating what I have been shouting from the rooftops.

Getting Right to the Point About the Libby Fiasco

Here are the facts about the Scooter Libby trial. For those of you who don't know, he's Vice President Dick Cheney's former Chief of Staff, recently convicted of perjury in what's predominately know by the Useful Idiots as "Plamegate". -

• First and foremost, there was no crime committed. If there was, Richard Armitage, Colin Powell's former Deputy Secretary of State, would have been indicted. He was the one who first leaked Plame's name to the media.
• Patrick Fitzgerald knew this immediately upon completing the deposition of the columnist who printed Plame's CIA employment, Robert Novack. The investigation should have ended there.
• Fitzgerald, regardless, was undeterred and sought to get an Administration Official indicted on mail fraud, if necessary. After hours of grilling both Rove and Libby, Fitzgerald finally found faulty recollection of years-old discussions with reporters in Libby's hours of Grand Jury testimony. Would you have remembered the details of such a conversation to that degree under those conditions? Me? Honestly, probably not.
• Libby will most likely get an appeal and win, Clarice Feldman at The American Thinker does a fabulous job detailing the joke that this trial of a process crime became.

HOWEVER, I want to save a majority of my venom for the real crooks in this case, Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, and his "victim" wife, Valerie Plame.

• The entire genesis of the "scandal" centers around the investigation of the "outing" of a "covert" CIA operative, Valerie Plame. The criminality of outing a covert CIA Operative is outlined in the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA). The author of the legislation is Victoria Toensing, who has repeatedly stated that Valerie Plame was NOT covered by the IIPA (read the last bullet-point of this response from Toensing).
• None-the-less, Plame and Wilson have constantly insisted that the IIPA protections were valid in this instance, so it begs the question: why didn't Fitzgerald prosecute ANYONE on that basis? Answer: because Plame wasn't covert. If she was, at best it was negligence on Fitzgerald's part not to indict Armitage, at worst a what seems to be a partisan hit job by the Special Prosecutor smelling Bush Administration blood in the water.
• Joe Wilson's credibility is in shambles, yet he and Plame continue to be lionized by the Useful Idiots and the Left.
• Why haven't any of the Useful Idiots pointed out that, prior to the outbreak of "Plamegate", Used Car Salesman Joe Wilson had his wife listed in his "Who's Who of America" entry?

Just another instance of maniacal Bush Hatred running amok. This time in our judicial system.

Doing a Tune Up On a 2004 and Newer Jeep Grand Cherokee

I swear, if I still did this for a living I'd kill myself.

I was off work today and usually doing maintenance on our SUVs is leisurely for me. So, when I finished doing the Oil Change on my wife's mid-90s Grand Cherokee, I lit a Punch Rare Corojo Magnum and felt like I was starting down hill.

I was going to do a routine tune-up on my 2004 Grand Cherokee. Easy right? For Pete's sake, its screwing plugs in, isn't it?

About a year ago I did Cap, Rotor, and Wires on my wife's V8. When I finally finished the job, I was relieved. If you aren't a Jeep specialist and you have to match the V8's wires up perfectly, all I can say is....thank God I was drinking because I would have went nuts.

So, my Grand Cherokee is an in-line six cylinder. Compared to what I went through a year ago, it should be a piece of cake, right?

Wrong.

First off, I've been out of the business for a long time, so new developments in technology will pass me by pretty easily in this field. Back in December when I did the last oil change, I looked inquisitively at the ingnition system for the first time, knowing what was coming, and being a bit perplexed. I didn't see the usual free flowing plug wires. Instead, where the plugs "should be" I saw a plug harness bolted in by four bolts.

Today, I had the nerve to tackle it.

Years ago I learned that good mechanics "do everything by feel" rather than by sight. Today, I experienced that reality. I think I went through every socket in my tool box before I

1. finally got the plug harness off (click on the bottom picture to see what the harness looks like-its connected to the left side of the valve head)


2. removed every plug, including what appears to be the #6 plug, along the firewall and covered by a heater hose bracket, held in place by a nut in a spot tight enough that a dwarf would swear trying to loosen it. I removed all the old plugs, in and of itself no easy feat.



3. upon replacing the plugs, had to wrestle like hell to get the harness back in place, bolting it down and getting all the proper heater hoses back as they should be.

All this, while realizing my lovely wife would be home any minute now wondering why our puppy, all this time, was able to dig half way to China in our back yard.

In my mind I could hear her, "What have you been doing all day??"

*Sigh*. Nothing, Dear.

Tax Rosie's Stupidity

Justin McCarthy, blogger at Newsbusters.org did a fabulous job today of documenting yet another idiotic display by Rosie O'Donnell, the alternative in US Diplomacy to Joseph Wilson.

As I walked to the office this morning from the train station, I passed several newspaper machines and stands, each displaying headlines that Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM), the al-Qaeda operative long believed to be the mastermind behind the September 11th attacks, confessed in a hearing at Guantanamo Bay's detention center to that and to the beheading in 2002 of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

My first thought? The clock was ticking, maybe long overdue for irrational Bush haters to start babbling about torture bringing this confession about. In my mind, before I had my second cup of coffee, I was sure somewhere on the blogosphere, some boogereater was making the comment that the confession was illegitimate because it was, no doubt, made under duress.

I didn't have a chance to see any response to the news at work today, but on the train ride home I logged onto Newsbusters and read McCarthy's post. Ah yes, Rosie, I should have known.

McCarthy and the NB community do a fine job of making Rosie look stupid for her comments on ABC's The View about the treatment of KSM, so I'm not going to address that itself. But what DID catch my eye was the continued idiocy of Rosie and other Bush haters in citing the 1949 Geneva Conventions and their alledged "violation" vis-a-vis the Guantanamo Detainees (bold emphasis mine).

O’DONNELL: "I think the man has been in custody of the American government, in secret CIA torture prisons in Guantanamo Bay, where torture is accepted and allowed, and he finally is the guy who admits to doing everything. They finally found the guy. It's not that guy bin Laden. It's this guy they've had since ‘93 (huh, was he on a Michael Dukakis furlough when he beheaded Pearl in 2002?). And look, this is the picture they released of him. Doesn’t, he look healthy?"

Later, Rosie says: "We should uphold the standards of the Geneva Convention and lead the free world in democracy."

McCarthy in his NB post addresses the bin Laden comment, so I'll let that go.

I want to talk about this popular misnomer among the Left and even among well meaning but misinformed Americans that those captured on the battlefield on the streets of Iraq and Afghanistan, who, after administrative hearings as prisoners of war, are determined to be enemy combatants are to be afforded the protections of the Geneva Conventions. This is dangerous ignorance.

In the July 4, 2005 issue of National Review, attorneys Lee Casey and David Rivkin do a fabulous job of making the lines of lawful and unlawful enemy combatant clear.

Say Casey and Rivkin: "The only other option..." aside from criminal trials for suspected terrorists ... "offered by Amnesty and its ilk is to treat captured terrorists as prisoners of war under the 1949 Geneva Conventions. Adoption of this policy, however, would effectively eliminate our ability to obtain intelligence information about al-Qaeda’s future plans from the detainees. Although POWs can be interrogated under the Geneva Conventions, they cannot be 'exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment' if they do not talk. A strict interpretation of this provision would eliminate even the offer of rewards for information, since this would have the effect of 'disadvantaging' anyone who refused to cooperate. This, likely, was the intent; the Geneva Conventions were meant to protect the lawful soldiers of states, who are fully entitled to keep their military secrets. But the treaties were not designed to protect irregular or 'unlawful' combatants: Guerrillas or terrorists — who do not obey even the most basic laws of war, including requirements to have a regular command structure, wear uniforms, carry weapons openly, and eschew deliberate attacks against the civilian population — are not entitled to a Geneva POW status. Customary international law simply requires that unlawful combatants be treated humanely. They may well ultimately be subject to criminal prosecution (in military courts) for their unlawful belligerency, but they are also enemy combatants who can lawfully be held, without criminal trial, until hostilities are concluded."

I have to ask the question - forget about the fanatical Bush hater of Rosie O'Donnell - how many regular Americans know this? Not many you say? Why? Because the Useful Idiots of the Mainstream Media (MSM) don't make this readily known? Are you shocked?

None-the-less, many on the Left around the world have been keen to this distinction and have sought to eradicate it. Casey and Rivkin continue:

"Suggestions that the Geneva Conventions actually abolished the category of unlawful combatant are a relatively recent development. In the late 1950s, about ten years after the fact, the International Committee of the Red Cross claimed that the treaties were 'comprehensive,' providing some Geneva status for everyone. In the 1960s, however, the Red Cross still freely conceded that granting Geneva status to unlawful combatants — in that instance, the U.S. policy decision to treat captured Viet Cong as POWs — went beyond any applicable legal requirement. By the mid-1970s, a concerted effort was launched to amend the Geneva Conventions in order to guarantee POW treatment for unlawful combatants, including guerrilla forces associated with national liberation movements, who would otherwise have been consigned to various colonial or Third World military justice systems. Of course, had the 1949 treaties eliminated the status of unlawful combatant, as is now claimed, no such amendments would have been necessary."

Then comes the money paragraph:

"Although many of our European allies approved these amendments, the U.S. did not. It flatly refused to accept a 'privileged' status for individuals who did not obey the laws of war, and flatly refused to ratify the Geneva amendments — known as Protocol I Additional. As a result, the U.S. is not bound by any legal norms that would even arguably require it to grant the Guantanamo detainees POW status, or a speedy trial in the civilian courts. It has not violated the law, as Amnesty International so brazenly claims. In fact, much of the outrage, in Europe and elsewhere, over American policy with respect to Guantanamo can be traced to just such unfounded and irresponsible claims."

As an aside, I'm going to avoid discussing the definition of the word "torture" as it relates to Rosie's use of it. The fact that the thermostat is low in the interrogation room, or that heavy metal music is played at top volume, of that Jihadi's have to listen to Barney sing "I love you, you love me" incessantly; the fact that this is not torture by even the most wussified definition is not my point in this post.

My point is that the prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay are prisoners of war fighting as unlawful combatants, and that they are not afforded the protections of the Geneva Conventions. They are not purse snatchers apprehended by gumshoes on the streets of New York City. They are not Uniformed Soldiers taken on the battlefield either. They are unlawful enemy combatants taken on the battlefield of foreign nations in what is known as the War on Terror.

Keep flapping your piehole, Rosie. We'll be there to make you look like a fool in the meantime.

Class Envy, Pt II: In The Current National Review: “Big-Time Pay….in a big time economy”, by Jim Manzi

This article was somewhat of a 1970’s Roller Coaster for me. It started out flat, seemingly predictable.

“The widening gap between CEO and worker pay makes these huge(CEO)paychecks even harder to swallow. The median ratio of senior-executive to work pay has grown from about 20 to 1 in 1970 to about 100 to 1 in 2005. Even worse, many workers believe that their real wage growth is slowing and their job security is low and dropping.”

My first thought was, I can see this on Katie Couric every night at 5. Why is my favorite magazine, National Review, printing this?

Then the Roller Coaster began to, suddenly, click uphill. Manzi continues a few paragraphs later.

“Think back to the bureaucratic, inward looking, and risk-averse corporate world of 30 years ago; it’s important to remember just how bad it was…there was widespread speculation throughout 1980s that the U.S. could not compete with Japan and the rest of Asia. Continental Europe was held up as a model of developed-economy success.”

Manzi continues, and soon hits an absolute home run, allowing me to breathe for the first time (bold emphasis mine).

“If the U.S. of that time wanted to escape economic stagnation, the corporation of the time had to go. As I started my business career in the mid-1980s I had a ringside seat for the titanic struggle to reform American business. While an economy is constantly evolving, there was an economic Twenty Years’ War that began in roughly 1980; by 2000 it was largely complete, and we now live in the new economy that it created. This wasn’t a pretty struggle. It was trench warfare to force corporations to be more aggressive, entrepreneurial, and risk-taking, and it was fought out one company at a time. Change was fiercely resisted by incumbent managers, who often draped their resistance in appeals to tradition, corporate loyalty, or the public interest.”

Says Manzi: “A lot of money was made by those with the wit, audacity, and stamina to force these changes… This process also created enormous financial risks and opportunities for management teams that were willing to transform companies. Ironically, by focusing on maximizing shareholder value in order to increase personal wealth, they did the hard work on the reforms that have renewed the American economy’s overall position as the envy of the world.”

At the peak of this Roller Coaster, what Manzi is saying is, the Market for Managers was willing to pay what is necessary to transform American Business into the competitive force that it has become today. Or, put better, the demand for good Managers; those willing to work the hours, commit the passion, assume the grab-your-ankles-if-you-fail risk, and most importantly, bring the natural skills that were necessary to make American Business competitive; that demand and the price for their services increased.

For full elaboration on Manzi’s thought process, I’d encourage the patron of Jeff’s Garage and Ale House to visit the print version of the magazine. Overall, Manzi does a fantastic job of illustrating that CEO’s of America’s highest paid corporations are, because of the scrutiny of those they answer to, justified.

That said, I was a little disappointed with how the Roller Coaster ended; like they all do, on a flat surface with a pimply kid urging you to move on to the next thrill.

On the last page of the article, he says, “But to say that this cure [reducing the CEO-to-worker pay gap] would be worse than the disease is not to imply that all’s well with in the new, market-based world of executive compensation. Markets are unsentimental about forcing change, and they are efficient at directing resources to their highest and best use, but for the participants they are a school for selfishness (*sigh*). Unbridled compensation markets consume a kind of social capital that any real company, or society, requires for success: solidarity with others and identification with a cause greater than self.”


Finally, Manzi’s prescription to this “problem” is the following: “Fortunately, the CEO-to-worker ratio is not a very good summary measure of what creates feelings of inequity. More important to most people are: (1) the growth rate of their income, (2) the security of their standard of living, and (3) a belief that the game is not rigged against them. A practical political program should focus on these issues.”

Get that? A political program should focus on these issues. But how? And why should a political program even exist to address these "issues"? Manzi's article is powerful and refreshing up to this point. Then, sadly, he loses me a little, because he seems to be giving a little bit of a nod to the "Zero Sum Theory" - maybe unintentionally.

This “Zero Sum Theory” of economics is misleading and dangerous in the hands of politicians who wish to prey on woefully ignorant citizens who think that the theory is valid – and that by a vote for a regulator who will reign in CEO pay, tax the wealthy at a confiscatory rate is a vote that will somehow level the playing field. This is foolish and destructive. The idea that a CEO’s multi-million dollar salary is somehow screwing the little guy is startling ignorance of how wealth is spread in a Market Economy. Just because one person has a large amount of money does not mean that another person will be a large amount in the hole.

What's more, the other three issues aside from CEO pay that Manzi references are issues that government intervention, i.e., a "political program", should be kept away from.

Upward mobility exists for all in the United States of America, and any truly modern Capitalist economy. It happens daily in our nation, and I have members of my own family to prove it. The idea that some how a “practical political program” can rectify the gap between CEO and worker pay is intrusive, politically empowering, and utterly dangerous to economic health. Bravo to Manzi for pointing out how CEO’s of today came to the earnings they enjoy. Shame on anyone who thinks that a “political program” is the solution to a straw man of inequality; that CEO’s pay is somehow holding the “little guy” down.

In The Current National Review: "Go Flat-Now" by Kevin A. Hassett

Rats - tried to find it on National Review Online with little success.

This morning on the train ride into work I read a fantastic piece in the March 19th issue of National Review entitled "Go Flat-Now" by Kevin Hassett (print subscribers can find the article on page 8).

I've long been an advocate of the Flat Tax - or put another way, an income tax rate the doesn't increase with one's income, but rather, remains fixed regardless of income. In this issue of NR, Hassett makes a very good case for an increase in worker's wages that corresponds with the initiation of a flat income tax.

Hassett shows how Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, the Slovak Republic, and Ukraine, all formerly under socialist economies, increased worker salaries in some cases as much as 265% in 2 to 5 years with the introduction of a flat tax. By contrast, other nations such as Armenia, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia retained their progressive tax rates and only saw very modest wage increases by comparison; 8% on average in the late 1990's.

This is further proof of the positive effects of lower tax rates on the producers in a society. Sure, the tax rates for those accustomed to paying more will decrease, but their disposable income will increase, which means more money to invest, grow their businesses and mwoooahhhhaaaahhaa get even richer. However, as one attempts to get richer, and economy grows, a job base expands and all benefit. As the job base expands, so do revenues to the Treasury over the long term. Thank you, Art Laffer.

There are options to protect any increase in financial burden to the Treasury on behalf of the lower classes - exemptions to a certain salary, for example. But the fact of the matter is, lower rates for those who pay the VAST majority of the taxes can only benefit the economy, and in the turn, the lower classes. Upward mobility, anybody?

Check the article out - very interesting case for one of my pet issues.

Welcome to Jeff's Garage and Ale House

Welcome - This is the beginning of what I hope will be a very diverse, entertaining, and maybe even educational website; sort of the cyber-version of the real Jeff's Garage and Ale House. To fully appreciate why I created this webpage, let me tell you the story of Jeff's Garage and Ale House and why it is so important to me personally.

About Me

I grew up on the East Coast of Florida in a sleepy beach town just south of Daytona Beach. It was a great adolescence, what many young people dream of. But, as a surfer and a coastal Floridian to the hilt, my passions and interests were not about auto mechanics. I had always had a sort of silent admiration for people who were knowledgeable in the field, but never really had time or the need for that matter to learn the trade myself.

After three years in the Navy as a Gunner's Mate (Missiles), in 1992 I came home to Florida and wanted to catch up with my peers in college. I had to pay bills, obviously, and a golden opportunity came about to learn the Auto Mechanic's trade from the ground up as a technician for Bridgestone/Firestone stores. This was a perfect opportunity for me, because it enabled me to work during the day and begin my college classes at night.

Inside of a year I had amassed a decent collection of mostly Craftsman and Snap-On Tools, as well as a knowledge of the trade that, a couple of years earlier, I had never thought I would have. Some of the "Old Salts" at the first store I worked at sort of took me under their wing and I began to really enjoy the field, even if I was less than enthusiastic about being in the retail end of the business.

I graduated from Florida State in the mid-1990's with a degree in Political Science and a Minor in Economics. This was, of course, my true passion but I had to remain in the Automotive Industry to pay the bills - National Review didn't have any spots open for a mid-twenties guy with axle grease under his fingernails and limited contacts. By this time time I had become an Assistant Store Manager for one of BFS's chief Florida Competitors. Even though I still enjoyed the trade itself, the stress of the retail end of it was beginning to really grind me down. About six months after I graduated from FSU, I took a job at a Parts Counter for a Toyota Dealership where I continued to learn about the industry. The money, however, was far less than stellar and I began to feel like I needed a real career that would truly challenge me and give me the opportunity I needed to make a good living. I would spend the next five years as a traveling consultant, living on the West Coast of Florida before I would meet the woman who would later become my wife.

Here's where the story of Jeff's Garage and Ale House begins

My wife, at the time my fiance, and I shared a tiny one bedroom condo in downtown Chicago shortly after my moving north to be with her. I had within the last year left the consulting business and the two of us were constantly cramped in this tiny little 1000 square foot home whenever we weren't at work. No balcony, one TV between us, not much in the way of a computer for that matter. I absolutely loved my wife but had become accustomed to having my own "space" and we both felt like the living conditions we were currently in were driving us both to insanity. When we decided enough was enough with the City, we began looking in the West Suburbs and found a cozy little Cape Cod house in the Fox River Valley.

All of my life, especially all of my adult auto mechanic life, I had always wanted a garage, but having bounced from condo to condo had never had the opportunity to own one. What's more, paying someone else $30 to do routine work on my SUV that I could easily do myself was something that always stuck in my crawl. So, my one prerequisite to my wife was that our new home had to have a spacious, preferably detached garage. The Cape Cod we had found had a detached, car-and-a-half garage complete with bare bones workbench and several power outlets. The previous owner was quite the handyman and had built a series of shelves throughout the structure. I was in heaven.

Upon moving into the new house, my first shopping spree was at Sears to amass Craftsman compressors, jacks, creepers and other basic auto shop tools. I also wasted little time setting up a stereo system and found a spot for my humidor full of cigars (the Condo we lived in had no place for a cigar aficionado to enjoy himself - Jeff's Garage and Ale House is 100% cigar friendly. If you don't like the smoke, stay out. More on that later). Months later as a birthday present my wife bought for me a nice Kenmore fridge that can hold over a case of bottled beer. My Brother-in-Law donated a tiny, black and white TV that would be my sole garage TV until I was able to run the DirectTv line out to the garage, and now the 19" flat screen TV is hanging in the wall and is connected to the Sony Stereo for a very real surround sound feel. XM Satellite Radio plays as well through the stereo. So, on any given weekday afternoon, if the workday has been stressful especially, you'll find me out there. Jeff's Garage and Ale House has also become home to the Chicago Cubs during the summer. Pat and Ron on the Stereo, and the Lovable Losers on the TV with the volume down. Cigar smoke will be everywhere.

But Jeff's Garage and Ale House over the past couple of years has become more than a place to smoke a cigar, watch a ball game, and keep our SUV's in tiptop shape. It is also a place where XM radio broadcasts such right-of-center political pundits as Larry Elder. Politics are a very big part of the establishment.

I come from a family of Reagan Republicans who are very individualistic people. As such, my passions for history, theology, politics, and economics often spill over into garage time. I have continued to be an avid reader in all these fields, and have written many essays and editorials on the topics that matter to me. Many of these ideas and essays spawned from Garage Time, where a cigar and a good song helped the thought process along.

My political passions are these:

• Promoting Free Market Economics and Free Trade, and, thus, vehemently opposing class envy - they all cannot co-exist. I believe passionately in a flat, non-progressive tax rate, anything else is nothing more than class warfare, which simply empowers self-interested politicians and eventually hampers economic activity.
• Peace-through-strength military readiness. This is the most critical function of a government in a free society. In the post-Cold War era, this is even more important given the sworn enemy the West in general and America in particular faces in Islamofascism.
• The best avenue to peace and prosperity in the world is to ensure that as many people as possible live in freedom. Poverty around the world is not the result of the West's "exploitation", it is the result of corrupt, tyrannical governments exploiting their populations, all while blaming the West to keep the focus off their corruption.
• The Media in any free society is one of its preservation's most critical elements. There is undoubtedly a positive correlation between the freedom of a nation's media and the freedom and education of its people. So when the American Mainstream Media (MSM) skews its reporting to support Leftist ideology, all while insisting that it is not, it frustrates me to no end. The MSM of America, ironically, has become a primary vehicle of enemies who seek to destroy our greatness; sometimes the MSM seems oblivious to this. That's why I refer to them as the "Useful Idiots" and why I participate fairly frequently at Newsbusters.org.

There are more, and in these pages we'll talk more about them, I'm sure. I'm glad you are here. Lets discuss these things and enjoy a beer and a cigar. As mentioned earlier, we are a Cigar friendly environment. If you don't like the smoke, go to Starbucks.

All that, and we are still the cheapest oil change in the Western Suburbs.

Again, WELCOME.