What Does Victory Look Like?
Sixty-five years ago today, World War II officially came to an end. On September 2, 1945, Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu boarded the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay and signed the Instrument of Surrender in front of American General Douglas MacArthur.
It was a formal and solemn ceremony, coming weeks after atomic bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, concluding six years of warfare, with some 70 nations fighting on three continents.
Today, we find ourselves in another global conflict, and it is broadly understood that there will be no such official declaration if and when we win.
Who would sign the surrender, and where? Would Osama bin Laden apply his imprimatur to some document at Ground Zero, perhaps in the Great Hall of Faisal Abdul Rauf’s planned “community center”?
In 1945, Japan’s leaders, like countless signatories to surrenders of centuries past, were agreeing on behalf of an entire population that hostilities would cease. In today’s war, where terrorist cells attack civilian and military targets all over the world, no leader is empowered to make that peace, even if he cared to.
Without a surrender, how will we know when we have won? Victory will take years, if we can manage it, but what will it look like and how do we achieve it?
Military might alone cannot win this war. And so, the adage goes, we will conquer by the strength of our ideas. Swell – but what’s that mean?
Often, the delineation of “our ideas” takes one of two forms. First, there are people like me, banging on about “freedom,” whatever that might be. Or, we are told, standing up for “our ideas” means making some absurd concession to antagonistic forces, in hopes our good intentions and intellectual bio-diversity will green the souls and stay the hands of our enemies (Mayor Bloomberg, call your office).
Political correctness is no match for radical Islam. The latter has shown its commitment, time and again in locations around the world, to winning this conflict. The former, meanwhile, is a tiresome modern reflex, whereby poseurs take a quick assessment of common sense, then put all their energy behind the contrary view. This tic can manifest itself in straightforward fashion – as in, when people aver it is offensive to erect a nativity display at Christmastime – or abstractly – such as, you demonstrate how a cut in capital gains tax rates spurs the economy, then someone calls you a racist.
In either case, this is no way to win a war.
That brings us back to freedom. But the question remains: Just what would the victory of “freedom” mean to us? Would we breathe a little easier? Would the Kabuki dance of airport security be curtailed? Most important, would the brave members of our armed forces be spared from injury and death on foreign soil?
Intelligent and experienced people have struggled to define victory in Iraq, where the US combat mission has just ended, and Afghanistan, where human rights abuses abound and military casualties continue – to say nothing of the almost-nuclear, terror-sponsoring Iran. What does “freedom” look like for Afghans, Iraqis, Iranians, and others?
There will be no top-hats and ceremonies when this war ends. And so I put the question to you, gentle readers – what does victory in the war on terror look like?
Canada’s Leadership in Space
On Thursday, Ministers Gary Goodyear and Josée Verner announced that veteran astronaut Colonel Chris Hadfield will be the first-ever Canadian to command the International Space Station.
Canadians are proud of our accomplishments in space as our country was the third nation in space. Our astronauts have participated in 15 space missions – more than any country other than the United States and Russia. And the world-famous Canadarm was designed, developed and built in Canada. Our achievements serve as inspiration for young Canadians to pursue studies in science and engineering.
Space exploration and development is a strategic asset and absolutely critical to the delivery of some of our Government’s key goals. Under the strong leadership of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Conservatives are taking action for Canada’s sovereignty, safety and security, sustainable management and the development of our natural resources.
To ensure that Canada maintains its strong position in this important field, our Conservative Government is investing $497 million in the Canadian space industry to develop the RADARSAT Constellation Mission, the next generation of advanced radar remote sensing satellites.
The Harper Government is taking action to support space exploration and development because it drives cutting-edge research, promotes technological excellence and strengthens our economy.
My prediction… Off to the polls we go
Based on today’s EKOS numbers, I think the chances of a fall election just jumped SIGNIFICANTLY, especially with some seat projections predicting a Liberal minority.
This being the first glimmer of “hope” for the Liberals in some FIVE YEARS, I’m betting they’re not going hesitate to pull the plug. With the projections showing gains for the Bloc, and only marginal potential losses for the NDP, look for the swords to cross as the House returns from the summer break.
The Rt. Hon. Stephen “Capt. Canada” Harper
SWEET PIC… PM Harper sitting in the cockpit of a CF-18. There’s no one else I’d rather have at the controls of this great nation of ours.
The Never Land Mosque
I’m sitting at my desk trying to think of ways to insult the followers of Islam as intentionally and as maliciously as the Park51 organizers have recently insulted the citizens of this great Christian nation. It isn’t easy to be as abrasive and arrogant as those who propose building a mosque at Ground Zero. But I’m trying my best.
Here are some of my ideas:
I propose building a mosque at Never Land ranch, the former home of Michael Jackson. I would then defend the building of the mosque by reminding opponents that people have been making pilgrimages to Never Land in order to worship a mentally deranged pedophile for years. Putting a mosque there would not change things substantially. Plus, one can reach California from Dearborn, Michigan in a couple of days. The same cannot be said of Mecca.
I propose building a large bomb filled with bacon grease, which would be dropped on the new Ground Zero mosque during the ground-breaking ceremony. Dubbed the “Mother of All Bacon,” or MOAB, this bomb would not actually hurt anyone. It would just permanently defile the location so that no one could worship there. That would take care of any Separation of Church and State issues in the event that Obama tries to use any future stimulus money during site construction. My bomb would also have a picture of Mohammed painted on the side with the caption “Mr. SOB” printed below.
In case you were wondering, “Mr. SOB” is short for “Mr. Scared-of-Bacon.”
Finally, I would propose setting up a vending area that fully surrounds the Ground Zero mosque. I would then gather a number of my redneck friends from South Carolina for a massive hog hunt. We would then sell the smoked hogs at vending locations near each entrance to the Ground Zero mosque. I would offer a “Boar-doba” special all-you-can-eat pig pickin’ platter for $9.11.
Before anyone gets too upset with my proposals and tries to behead me for my remarks on Islam, please remember two things:
1) I am writing this column with a loaded double barrel shotgun to my right and a loaded .357 magnum to my left. If you are a sword-wielding jihadist, please don’t bother. You’ll only annoy me and make me spill my coffee.
2) I am writing this column with tongue firmly planted in cheek. No follower of Jesus would take even one of my proposals seriously. They are meant to remind readers of just how crude, barbaric, violent, and intentionally insulting the followers of Islam really are. Religion of peace, my backside!
It may well surprise my readers when they hear me say that I will not join the efforts of those who seek to block the building of the new mosque at Ground Zero. I take this position for the same reason that I have refused to support legislation banning the burning of the American Flag.
John Stewart Mill once said that censorship is wrong for two reasons. First, it deprives people of the truth. Second, it deprives people of a greater appreciation of the truth via its juxtaposition with falsity.
When someone burns an American Flag we learn the truth about the extent of anti-Americanism among the ranks of our own. We also develop a greater appreciation of those who have fought for our freedoms. When I see my neighbor burning a flag I can boycott his business. I can then give my business to a veteran who has fought to defend the hateful idiocy of flag burners everywhere.
We cannot punish anti-Americanism if we engage in the prior restraint of its expression. We must allow it to flourish for a time if we are to mobilize a more effective response. The application of this reasoning to the controversy over the present Ground Zero mosque is obvious.
By not standing in the way of the construction of this mosque we will allow its supporters to exercise fully their constitutional right to make fools of themselves. When the mosque is completed I look forward to retracing the trail of its financial supporters to the very beginning. I have no doubt that such a search will lead us into the halls of the Obama White House. Nor do I have any doubt that Obama’s affirmative support of this project will lead to his permanent political downfall.
In the end, members of the Obama Administration may decide that the complex housing the mosque at Ground Zero would be a good place for an Obama Presidential Library. Either way, it is a good place to celebrate anti-Americanism for the free world to see and the sane world to judge.
Conservatives Are Defending Canada’s Northern Sovereignty
On day three of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s annual tour of Canada’s North, the Prime Minister visited Operation NANOOK in Resolute Bay, Nunavut. This operation is a major sovereignty exercise conducted by the Canadian Armed Forces, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Canadian Coast Guard and other government departments and agencies. Prime Minister Harper also addressed members of the Canadian Forces before travelling to Inuvik, Northwest Territories.
Conservatives believe that the integrity of Canada’s borders is the first and foremost responsibility of a national government. Our Conservative Government is committed to strongly asserting Canadian sovereignty throughout Canada’s Arctic.
The strategic importance of Canada’s Arctic is growing, which is why the work undertaken by Operation NANOOK is more valuable now than ever before. Countries around the globe are showing more interest in the Arctic and its rich resource potential. With new trade routes opening up, we must continue to promote Canada’s sovereignty while strengthening the safety and security of Canadians living in our High Arctic.
Operation NANOOK is part of our Government’s ambitious four-part Northern Strategy to assert and defend Canada’s sovereignty; to protect the unique and fragile Arctic ecosystem; to develop a strong Northern economy; and to encourage good governance, local control, and opportunity for Northerners.
Prime Minister Harper has made the North a priority for our Conservative Government because it is a priority for Canadians.
Americans think politicians are… overpaid. (Right again!)
Rasmussen Reports headline this morning: “75% Say Congress Should Cut Its Own Pay Until Budget is Balanced”.
I agree with America. I usually do.
I’ve written before that I think federal politicians here and in the U.S. should be paid according to a formula something like this: They should be paid roughly whatever small business people — entrepreneurs — are earning on average in any given year. Net, and after their taxes. Minus expenses (not plus lavish expense accounts and travel compensation and gold-plated benefit plans and Cadillac pension plans and…).
Since that’s how small business people and their families live, and they’re at least as valuable as politicians to a nation — or more valuable on so many levels — then why should politicians be treated and paid as if they’re better, or more special, or more highly valued by society? Nobody works harder or is more beneficial and valuable to the economy than small business people who innovate and create jobs, and find efficiencies in everything they do, and provide every good and service a nation needs and wants, and more.
MY BUILT-IN FORMULA FOR PAY RAISES:
The Rasmussen survey also question folks about how pay raises should occur in Congress. 78% of folks said pay raises should first be voted on by the public. Spot on.
Using my own formula, however, it works out naturally. Liberals: you could go ahead and call this “organic” if you want. If small business people make more money, the politicians will make more money. So there’s your formula for government “pay raises”. I imagine that would have an effect upon politicians roughly similar to a bolt of lightning up the gravy-filled butt. This is the desired effect.
Suddenly politicians would find ways of helping create an environment that would encourage small business, induce higher incomes, help create more productivity, more innovation, more employment, and so much more. They sure as heck wouldn’t prop up businesses or give them federal grants and loans. My formula would force politicians to see how they are in the way, and force them to get out of the way. Just watch as those business and employment taxes come down, baby! And you think they’d take most of the summer and winter off? Not a chance.
Some say this pay formula would discourage good folks from running for office. Well that’s just another added benefit. Downsizing government by 50%, even if it’s because they were forced to through a shortage of “employees”, would be just what the doctor ordered. They’re loath to do it on their own. So that’s fantastic. We’d end up with a government consisting of folks who actually want to perform a civic duty and serve the public, rather than useless career politicians who make a fabulous living and unreal pensions as they find more and worse ways of getting in the way, creating more stupid laws and regulations and policies and grow government bigger and bigger and more useless, and serve as more a hindrance to progress and innovation than anything else.
The only downside is that the nation would suffer some sort of temporary economic shock. I mean it would be positive — people not knowing what to do with all the extra money and what not — but this would serve as a re-awakening of sorts. The economy would suddenly start to turn all, you know, good and capitalist and free-market-y. People will get used to it, and demand even smaller governments, fewer intrusive regulations and idiotic taxes and reliance on governments….that sort of thing. Liberals will call it the new dark ages. It will be awesome.
So everyone benefits. I say let’s get on it.
There is no better way to conclude this blog entry than by including this quote from the same Rasmussen survey:
Voters are evenly divided as to whether a group of people selected at random from the phone book would be better than the current Congress.
Plain old Americans. Ya gotta love ‘em.
My prediction on Kinsella joining Team Rossi
With Kinsella confirming today that he’s joining the Rocco Rossi team, you can quote me on this… Rossi’s numbers will start to climb in two to two and a half weeks. At the same time, Smitherman will start some serious bleeding, as people realize that there’s just no way he can beat Ford.
Mosque really about pushing Sharia law
The swirling controversy over the Ground Zero mosque obscures what should be obvious, at least since 9/11, about the behavioural pattern of radical Islamists engaged in stealth jihad, or “lawfare,” to advance their strategic interest of securing concessions by Western governments for Sharia.
In generating this controversy, and then pushing hard on it by insisting on the constitutionally protected right of freedom of religion to build this mosque in the vicinity of Ground Zero in New York City, Islamists behind the project have masterfully succeeded in greatly dividing Americans as the ninth anniversary of 9/11 approaches.
What we are witnessing here is radical Islamists once again, as in the Danish cartoon controversy — or the controversy surrounding the wearing by some Muslim women of niqabs or full-face coverings, or the push for censorship on grounds of hate speech — taking hold of the legal-political framework of liberal democracy to secure grounds for their anti-liberal agenda of advancing acceptance of Sharia in the West.
Through indiscriminate violence, radical Islamists have succeeded to define Islam in terms of Sharia — Islamic law constructed more than a millennium ago by legal scholars that is, putting it mildly, entirely obsolete in the context of modern philosophy, science, democracy, gender equity and individual rights and freedom — and jihad, or sanctioning of violence, in the name of religion.
Mosques for radical Islamists are centres for preaching, recruiting, fundraising, networking and engaging in the political work of advancing their strategic interests.
Once it becomes clear who the people are behind the Ground Zero mosque — variously known as the Cordoba House or Park51, which Stephen Schwartz of the Center for Islamic Pluralism in Washington, D.C., among others, has been painstakingly assembling for Americans to judge for themselves — then there should be no mistaking about its political nature disguised as religion.
Feisal Rauf, wearing the title of Imam or a Muslim religious leader, is deeply embedded in the global Islamist network of activists and organizations.
One of Rauf’s closest associates, for instance, is the former prime minister of Malaysia, Mahathir bin Mohamad, and a virulent anti-Semite on public record.
Rauf is another soft-peddler of Islamism in the West associated with the politics of Muslim Brotherhood.
Those who are familiar with Tariq Ramadan will recognize how greatly Rauf is cut from the same cloth as this grandson of Hasan al-Banna who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt during the early decades of the last century.
Since religion is all politics for radical Islamists, Islam as faith is absent from their hearts. They are Muslims with hearts as black as their politics.
A black heart cannot be a receptacle of God’s mystery. If Islamist extremists had God in their hearts they could not bring so much grief in the name of Islam.
But Islamist extremists are contemptuous of the golden rule. It is this contempt in full display when they insist God is their accomplice in whatever they do.
If Rauf and company were truly men of God and not radical Islamists, their hearts would choke with remorse for the controversy they have fuelled over their project.
And then they would do the right thing, renounce building the Ground Zero mosque and apologize to the American people.
Summer vaction is almost over
Well folks, I’m guessing that it’s mostly due to the summer break, but there’s been little or nothing to report on politically during these lazy days of summer… other than the breakdowns of the “Just Visiting Express”, aka “The FailBus”.
With the various municipal election campaigns ramping up, and the return of Parliament, there’s sure to be lots more to blog on. I encourage everyone to start looking into who’s running in their area, and ensure that as few left-wing folks get elected. They only reason any of them EVER win is because too many of us are apathetic about municipal politics. Don’t forget that they control TENS OR HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of our tax dollars, or in the case of Toronto, BILLIONS. Make sure that reasonable people are elected to oversee spending, and not more “tax and spend” Liberals and Socialists.
