Not Bad People

Captain's Quarters Puts the dart in the small circle with this post. Writing about the mutilation of a female Polish hostage and the execution of the female British hostage who had done so much good work for the Iraqi people, Captain Ed says:

Kidnaping civilians as hostages paints a cowardly enough picture of Islamist lunatics, and carving their heads off for the camera makes them look almost infantile in their perversity. Putting a bullet into a woman's hooded head is so cowardly that it takes one's breath away. Together with the discovery of the Polish woman's mutilated and disemboweled corpse yesterday and it's difficult to conclude anything except that those responsible have to be tracked down and killed at all costs.

These are not freedom fighters or Minutemen, as Michael Moore notoriously proclaimed them earlier; these aren't even animals, as animals kill to eat or defend themselves. I can only describe them as ghouls, living demons who live to smell the blood of others in what appears to be some pseudosexual release. They live without a shred of honor or dignity, and like any other psychopath, only derive pleasure from the torture of others.

We can never take the pressure off of these "people." No matter what we do, they will never stop killing, and if we're not careful they'll come here for their next victims. Only when we have stamped the last of these sick bastards into the next world will we have any security in this one.

In light of all that these savages have done in the last months it makes Chris Matthews' claim on Hardball last night that these are "not bad people, just people we disagree with" so extraordinarily obtuse as to leave one speechless.

And the Left impugns the intelligence of those who voted for Bush.

Religiously Motivated Democrats

Hugh Hewitt makes an interesting point:

C-SPAN carried a forum last night moderated by the indestructible Marvin Kalb, which included Michael Barone, so I paused to watch.

The very last question was posed by a visibly angry woman of about 40, who demanded of the panel why discussion of religious voters never mentioned liberals or lefties who were religious, and always seemed to concentrate on the "religious right." (She might have said "radical religious right" but I can't be sure.)

Time was short, so no one really answered this, but I have heard this complaint over and over again. Look, it is a question of numbers. Faith-based voters certainly do exist within the Democratic Party, but they are the equivalent of African-American voters in the Republican party, a valued but by no means numerous group. Voters for whom faith is a huge aspect of their lives tend overwhelmingly to vote Republican these days. It isn't a conspiracy, and it isn't by any means a permanent alignment, but it is a real and significant feature of the American political landscape. Folks who pretend that there are huge numbers of religiously motivated liberal voters are just kidding themselves.

Quite so. In fact, many of the religiously motivated liberals we know refuse to identify themselves as Democrats, preferring instead to call themselves Independents or to align themselves with a third party. They are people who generally adopt a "seamless garment" approach to life issues, oppose war as a matter of principle, identify with the poor and the working class, hold a high view of traditional marriage and sexual morality, and eschew a politics of personal destruction. They certainly don't feel at home in the current Democratic party.

Letter From Iraq

How do the Iraqi people feel about Americans in general and President Bush in particular? Here's an anecdotal piece of evidence from IraqTheModel. It's a letter circulating online in Iraq, and Iraqis are invited to sign it. As of the time it was posted on IraqThe Model over one thousand Iraqis had signed.

In the name of God,

Sir, President George W Bush, President of the United States of America. On behalf of the families of the victims of the mass graves, on behalf of the martyrs of "Halabja" and "Anfal" and on behalf of all the Iraqis that you liberated from dictatorship and oppression; we have prayed for you and now we want to send you our congratulations on being reelected as a president of the United States.

Mr. President, we'd love to congratulate you and the people of the United States on the beginning of a new phase of democracy, freedom and prosperity and we wish you and the American people the best, as they have led the liberation of Iraq and sacrificed their sons and daughters for the freedom of the Iraqis; the historical achievement that the United States has accomplished together with the other liberating countries.

The United States and the coalition, among all other nations, were the ones who recognized the suffering of the Iraqi people and saved them from a regime that was more lethal and more destructive than any weapons of mass destruction. A regime that murdered, slaughtered and enslaved Iraqis for long, dark decades, denied them their freedom and their right to live a decent life until God inspired you and helped you to rescue us, liberate our country and put us on the road of freedom and democracy.

Mr. President, we the Iraqis are on your side and we'll keep supporting and blessing your efforts in eradicating terrorism inside and outside Iraq and all those who carried weapons against the liberating coalition forces and the new Iraqi police, hunting down the criminals who murder innocent civilians, whether Iraqi or American civilians.

We the Iraqis are determined to establish democracy and freedom in our country starting with general elections that exclude no one whether inside or outside Iraq. These elections would lead us to a democratic Iraq and we wish that you could help focusing on the role of the Iraqis outside Iraq and make use of their qualifications in the reconstruction process.

We also want to emphasize the necessity of establishing an international legislation that incriminates the Ba'athists, terrorists, fanatic salafis and all the parties, and governments that support them, not forgetting the media that promote the ideology of killing and terrorism.

These parties ought to be confronted and fought to achieve peace and stability in Iraq, America and the rest of the world.

We're also determined to establish a strategic, permanent relationship with our friends; the government and people of the United States to whom we hold the utmost feelings of gratitude, love and friendship for what they have given us and what they're still offering.

We will be united on the road of freedom and peace and we will always be supportive to all the efforts of America in bringing peace to the region.

In the end, we ask God to guide you and bless all your efforts to do the best for humanity as a whole.

All the glory to the American and Iraqi martyrs. Long live America. Long live Iraq, free and allied nations.

Your brothers in the "Iraqi Parliament" voice chat room and in "Sawt Al Iraq" website.

George Bush and the American military have given these Iraqis hope. And not only these but there are doubtless millions of people in Iran and elsewhere who are ruled by theocratic tyrants who are hoping that the freedom that has come to Afghanistan and Iraq through American force of arms will somehow come to their lands as well. America is the hope of the oppressed everywhere in the world and the irony is that the Left, the self-proclaimed champions of the down-trodden, is bitterly opposed to what has been done and has fought it every step of the way.

Make no mistake. If the Left had had their way Afghanistan would still be groaning under the Taliban and Iraq would still be a giant torture chamber run by the Hussein family. Libya would still be working toward the production of nuclear arms, Pakistan would still be allied with the Taliban, and all of these places would still be safe havens for al Quaida.

Another four years like the first four and George Bush will go down in history as the greatest liberator of all time as well as the man most despised by tyrants and their Leftist enablers ever to hold the office of president of the United States.

Secession By Any Other Name ...

The self-marginalization of the Left continues. This essay from The Stranger is an excellent case in point. The editors write:

It's time to state something that we've felt for a long time but have been too polite to say out loud: Liberals, progressives, and Democrats do not live in a country that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to Mexico. We live on a chain of islands. We are citizens of the Urban Archipelago, the United Cities of America. We live on islands of sanity, liberalism, and compassion--New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle, St. Louis, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and on and on. And we live on islands in red states too--a fact obscured by that state-by-state map. Denver and Boulder are our islands in Colorado; Austin is our island in Texas; Las Vegas is our island in Nevada; Miami and Fort Lauderdale are our islands in Florida.

Citizens of the Urban Archipelago reject heartland "values" like xenophobia, sexism, racism, and homophobia, as well as the more intolerant strains of Christianity that have taken root in this country. And we are the real Americans. They--rural, red-state voters, the denizens of the exurbs--are not real Americans. They are rubes, fools, and hate-mongers.

For Democrats, it's the cities, stupid--not the rural areas, not the prickly, hateful "heartland," but the sane, sensible cities--including the cities trapped in the heartland. Pandering to rural voters is a waste of time.

In cities all over America, distressed liberals are talking about fleeing to Canada or, better yet, seceding from the Union. We can't literally secede and, let's admit it, we don't really want to live in Canada. It's too cold up there and in our heart-of-hearts we hate hockey. We can secede emotionally, however, by turning our backs on the heartland. We can focus on our issues, our urban issues, and promote our shared urban values. We can create a new identity politics, one that transcends class, race, sexual orientation, and religion, one that unites people living in cities with each other and with other urbanites in other cities. The Republicans have the federal government--for now. But we've got Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego, New York City (Bloomberg is a Republican in name only), and every college town in the country. We're everywhere any sane person wants to be. Let them have the shitholes, the Oklahomas, Wyomings, and Alabamas. We'll take Manhattan.

To red-state voters, to the rural voters, residents of small, dying towns, and soulless sprawling exburbs, we say this: F**k off. Your issues are no longer our issues. We're going to battle our bleeding-heart instincts and ignore pangs of misplaced empathy. We will no longer concern ourselves with a health care crisis that disproportionately impacts rural areas. Instead we will work toward winning health care one blue state at a time.

We won't concern ourselves if red states restrict choice. We'll just make sure that abortion remains safe and legal in the cities where we live, and the states we control, and when your daughter or sister or mother dies in a botched abortion, we'll try not to feel too awful about it. In short, we're through with you people.

They're against us; we're against them. This is a war.

And when the oil dries up, we're not going to be turning to priests for answers--we'll be calling the scientists. And speaking of science: SCIENCE! That's another thing we're for. And reason. And history. All those things that non-urbanists have replaced with their idiotic faith. We're for those.

We should condemn their politics, exposing their conservatism as the anti-Americanism that it is, striving to make "conservative" into an epithet.

We all know that not everyone who lives in the suburbs is a raving neo-Christian idiot. The raving neo-Christian idiots are winning, however, so we need to take the fight to them....It's time for the Democratic Party to stop pandering to bovine, non-urban America. You don't apologize for being right--especially when you're at war.

There's lots more peace and love at the site. Sadly, the good folks at The Stranger don't seem to understand how a democracy is supposed to work, nor do they understand the concept of a nation. Either we agree with them and vote for their candidates or they take their marbles and go home. Their vision of America is of a mosaic of interest groups fractured by hatred for each other, an America riven by difference rather than united by values shared in common. Real Americans, in the minds of The Stranger's editors, are secular liberals, everyone else is a moron.

Whatever happened to liberal tolerance of difference of opinion? Whatever happened to the liberal ideal of celebrating diversity? Whatever became of the notion of "United We Stand"? Don't look for any of these sentiments at The Stranger.

Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for the tip.