CORRESPONDENCE
CORRESPONDENCE Reasons for War Neal B. Freeman's "NR Goes to War" (TAS, June 2006) basically tells National Review "I told you so" that the invasion of Iraq was wrong. Mr. Freeman stakes his...
...What are the odds...
...First, I read with great interest Mr...
...our Cabinet ministers show themselves to be sleazy and self-serving...
...As for P~ Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.: he should get out a little and try and see the wider picture, which is more than the interests of the USA, ERIC BROWN Bromley, Kent, UK Over a Barrel Tom Bethell asks who is he to argue with Steve Forbes on what the price of gold should be ("Saving an Unstable Currency," TAS, April 2006...
...Britain is in a mess and our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan merely compounds the problem...
...These appointees are currently conservatives--although the previous crewwas about as bad...
...Before conceding too much financial insight to Mr...
...Marliave and Johnson,just a few points: (1...
...Gun battles between competing gangs of coyotes are occurring with increasing frequency up and down I-8 and 1-10 near where I live in Tucson...
...Department of Labor, so I know one when I smell one...
...To say, as Mr...
...our farmers, many of whom with their suppliers are going bankrupt, have been waiting since last autumn for their annual payment yet the Department for Agriculture and Rural Affairs has still not introduced a payments system-however, its former incompetent minister, Margaret Beckett, gets promoted to foreign secretary...
...Buckley lack the ability to discern the truly visionary concept of Mideast democracy and its possibilities for the future...
...I f democracy is to survive, we will have to fight some wars to defend it...
...Should Mr...
...But the fourth issue is crucial, because it suggests that even if the U.S...
...At E1 Paso the Rio Grande takes a turn almost due north through the state of New Mexico...
...The Mexican/New Mexico border region lies west of E1 Paso...
...But what ultimately motivated me to write was that once having finished Grover Norquist's "The Twelve Year Itch," I had to back up and re-read the entire article...
...Freeman believes they are...
...But let me go further...
...These events provide a clear insight into the jihadist comaflsion that grips the Muslim world today...
...That is virtually the definition of hard utopian leftism...
...military...
...Blair is a man singularly without principle...
...However, the finances should be fair for all involved and that fairness must be expressed up front--in the bill...
...The reality, which doesn't seem to pierce the Belt-way, is that the first one's barely on the radar screen and Bush abandoned the latter immediately after last election day...
...Naturally, award of these grants was the highest priority for the grant staff, pushed hard by the political appointees in the agency...
...and the paucity of his appearances in the House of Commons, where he could not care less about the parliamentary process, is beneath contempt...
...Full disclosure: I just retired after more than 30 years up to my armpits in the bureaucratic quagmire at the U.S...
...And Geoffrey...
...Second, when the levees failed due to the gross negligence of the Corps, pundits bemoaned the supposed lack of flood insurance in Louisianm Wrong again...
...we have lost control of the number of illegal immigrants in our country and Human Rights legislation makes it difficult to deport any who are caught, even those who have committed terrorism...
...Tyrrell's comments on "earmarks" ("The Bush Crack-Up...
...One could saythat these are murky matters, that we never really know which countries possess WMD...
...Though questionably part of the West, the fate suffered by Russia under Communist rule provides a similar example of precipitous cultural decline...
...The last five digits of Jack's AKC registration numbers are exactly the same as my tractor at work...
...Blair will have long since departed the scene rather than quit when he starts to lose...
...would succeed over the next four plus years...
...It will be interesting to see whether Blair is still in office when America and the UK pull their troops out of Iraq in a repeat of the Vietnam debacle...
...By having demonstrated he doesn't mean what he says on the subject, Bush is highly unlikely to suck voters in with it again...
...If I may say, it cannot be assumed that real estate speculators are always operatingwith altruistic motives...
...Buckley would have been quite satisfied with the status quo in the area with Saddam in charge...
...The article was well researched except for two errors in twice locating Hudspeth County as lying west of E1 Paso...
...Do you think that he loses any sleep over the suicide of Dr...
...Liberals and neoconservatives may embrace such schemes...
...Today, one year later, the price of oil is about $70 a barrel...
...It brought tears to my eyes...
...However, by 1992, he realized that old Labour values would not win Labour future elections, so he made Labour palatable...
...Louisiana is byfar the most participatory state in the country...
...In that rough neighborhood, we knew that Pakistan had nukes, that Israel had nukes, that Iran was scrambling to obtain nukes...
...The Austrian economist George Reisman, professor at Pepperdine, writes that interest rates are primarily determined by profits, at least in an economywith an invariable money supply...
...What with the unscheduled, interior micturition and defecation...
...Clearly, the administration's plan is a bureaucratic quagmire which, even if it worked, would take far too long to address the issue...
...Conservatives reject them...
...Hudspeth County lies to the east of E1 Paso County...
...however, Geoffrey has the intelligence and temperament of a Labrador retriever...
...2) that the occupation of Iraq might not be a 'cakewalk...
...JOSEPH A. HINES Gilbert, Arizona Quin Hillyer's article on the Baker plan and the Bush administration's incompetence in handling this federally created, massive engineering disaster, was excellent...
...If they were, then the invasion of Afghanistan (which he suggests he always supported) would not have been justified, but invasions of Russia, China, France, and the U.K...
...does prevail in Ira% and a democratic government is stabilized there, that global terrorism might not be deterred...
...After the fact, when the "reason" for invasion elided into democracy-buildingin Iraq--ajustification upon which the administration would not have dared to rely p r e - w a r - t h e ideological ground shifted, as well...
...Time has yet to tell us...
...to war...
...America was victorious in defeating the Nazi and Communist forces of evil...
...Because the amount of debt and unfunded liabilities of the government is so massive that to maintain the economic order-and hence social peace--it will require monetary policy to become ever looser...
...That there have been no such successful attacks does not prove that the invasion of Iraq deterred them, but it most obviously also does not prove that it did not...
...Who benefits...
...neo-con like R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...My humble opinion: Gold will have its ups and downs, but it's a winner in the long run...
...Who was confident that no terrorist attack within the U.S...
...Republicans win when they run on conservative principles...
...Our prisons and legal system are in a mess...
...and (4) that global terrorism might not be deterred by the invasion of the U.S...
...We pray that we will somehow find our way to success in Iraq...
...In an apparent attempt at buttressing Bill Buckley's sadly mistaken opinion regarding the Iraq war, he applies common liberal myopia to the history depicting why it was that we went there initially...
...I read in this morning's Washington ~'mes that Karl Rove seems to thinkhe can save the daywiththejudicialnomination and defense of marriage issues...
...We're extraordinarily good at detection (if not nearly as good at non-proliferation...
...Freeman and Buckley...
...So in the Austrian view, low interest rates could be a sign of pessimism on the part of businessmen...
...our Deputy Prime Minister has behaved in a manner unfit for his office, yet is allowed to keep his title, JULY/AUGUST 2006 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 9 CORRESPONDENCE and the pay that goes with it...
...The lessons of 9/11 and prior have fallen on many deaf ears-including Messrs...
...and our over-stretched soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are not properly equipped and tossed aside when they are injured and thus beyond requirement...
...This spells inflation, which means higher prices for tangible assets, including gold...
...SPURGEON W, WESNER Tucson, Arizona Animal Parts I was deeplytouchedby Ben Stein's wonderful column in the May issue ("Until Death"), particularlywhere he writes, "Finally, a Hollywood awards dinner that makes me feel great...
...Sixty-seven percent of New Orleanians carried flood insurance...
...If they think they can scare me to the polls, well, having lived through Tip O'Neill and George Mitchell, among other hogs at the public trough, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid certainly aren't going to stampede me into the waiting arms of the Republican Party...
...Germany has never recovered the pre-eminent position in science and culture it held before this "mass act of cultural suicide" perpetrated by Nazi barbarians...
...Who among us, on September 12, 2001, was casual about booking flight on a commercial airline...
...So we decided to get another smaller version, this time a Welsh terrier...
...Everybody loves Geoffrey...
...My Airedale, Geoffrey, is over 12 years old but we were lucky...
...Apparently he was also absent during the many public statements describing the numerous reasons for our effort...
...After this cutting critique the "clash of cultures" will never be the same...
...Babbin's account of his dawgs ("It's a (Wonderful) Dog's Life," TAS, June 2006...
...My question about the 10 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY/AUGUST 2006 CORRESPONDENCE Baker Plan is this: Cui bono...
...Blair is therefore, to coin The American Spectator's words, a "Public Nuisance...
...Iraq may not be the right war, in the right place, at the right time...
...It was the burden of proponents to prove that he did...
...Forbes, it should be pointed out that last year (May 9, 2005), Steve led off his "Fact And Comment" column in Forbes magazine by saying, "The Oil Bubble is about to burst...
...History does not assure us that democracy will survive barbarian invasions...
...Nobody wants to antagonize Congress...
...One would be wrong to say that...
...Let us pray that it will be equally successful in the current battle against Islamicjihad...
...They should be compensated for those risks...
...Freeman ever free himself from the thrall of pointy-headed elitism that the NationalReview staff evidently devolved into, he might have a chance at regaining a bit of common sense and view the world as it really exists--not through the blue-blood tinted glasses of the new "conservative" elite...
...Apparently, he was absent when the President gave his initial speech delineating many reasons for the action...
...More importantly, whether WMD "permitted" the war or not, there remains the question of whether the war was, in fact, still justified...
...Last year they 8 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY/AUGUST 2006 CORRESPONDENCE found a tumor in his liver...
...We were now attempting a grand scheme in human perfectibility, to be effected by the raw power of government force...
...The article doesn't address how the people who would ultimately be living in these houses would acquire them, from whom, and at what price...
...With the creative impulse in precipitous decline, its opposite, the destructive force, takes over, spreading boundless evil around the world...
...ROBERT JOHNSON Darien, Connecticut Neal Freeman replies: First, my thanks to the many TAS readers who e-mailed comments, which were both smart and heuristic...
...I had serendipitously named him Jack For Crissake but, believe me, it was no misnomer...
...Freeman does not claim that he told NR so, but does claim that Robert Novak did...
...Tyrrell does, that Blair "puts principle before party" is a joke...
...His and his wife's avowal to eat less animal parts, after learning of the deplorable conditions under which chickens and pigs are forced to spend their lives on factory farms, is indicative of a rare willingness to alter one's lifestyle in keeping with one's convictions and sympathies...
...I have two points to add...
...Or at least semi-great...
...If I'm staying home, so are tens of thousands of others and in some closer districts than mine, that spells finis for Republicans...
...MIKE BAYS Bloomington, Indiana JULY/'AUGUST 2006 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 11...
...Yet I disagree with the author that the Islamic world's "mass act of cultural suicide has no clearparallel in the history of the West...
...He doesn't see the deep, visceral animus that the disgraceful performance of the President and the Senate Republicans have created by passing their amnesty bill-what I believe is easily the worst piece of legislation written in my lifetime...
...Smaller would be easier, right...
...I have to invoke his appellation every day...
...But then again, it may be...
...KENT REBMAN Brownsburg, Indiana Top Dog It was really scary to read Mr...
...In both cases the cultural suicide was accompanied by murderous rampages and world wars--the Gulag, Auschwitz, World War II, and the Cold War...
...Freeman should concede that so far: global terrorism has at least been deterred within the U.S...
...would be...
...At age 53 that's saying a lot...
...I f anything, history suggests that democracy will yield to barbarians within a few centuries...
...Tyrrell argues...
...Somehow I think that the clever Mr...
...Even the administration would concede that the WMD argument was critical to its case: of all the "reasons" advanced in support of war, onlyWMD was accepted by the public as casus belli...
...First, if Louisiana was allowed to keep the 50 percent ofoil royalties that similarly situated states like Texas get, we would need no federal assistance whatsoever...
...Sadly, I agreed with most of the articles...
...Message to Tony Blair," Public Nuisances, TAS, May 2006), is that he has administered the United Kingdom badly and mocked our political process...
...Freeman's assumption to the contrary...
...I call him a Welsh terror...
...But the Republican Party is going to have to ~n it again without my vote--I'm sitting this one out...
...and nowwe have a nice bare spot in the living room where there was carpeting...
...The administration thus went to great lengths to make the WMD case, culminating in the unfortunate UN speech that Colin Powell has described accurately as a "blot" on his distinguished career...
...RICHARD MARLIAVE Oakland, California Mr...
...Apparently, both he and Mr...
...the interminable chewing of anything and everything whether they are fastened down or not, to include our epidermal layer and, once, the end of an electric cord (fortunately not plugged in...
...JACQUELINE RAVEN New York, New York Blair Basher The reason Tony Blair must go, and this is coming from a Conservativethinking Briton not some gung-ho U.S...
...the constant tormenting of Geoffrey...
...We provide one third of the nation's oil and gas supply, and that industry has ravaged our coast and made us more xaflnerable to storms, but we get almost no compensation for the pillage to our coast...
...In response to Messrs...
...Blair is an opportunist...
...Don't be surprised to see oil at $30 to $35 a barrel within 12 months...
...David Kelly, especiallywhen his mercenarywife can sign a copy of the Hutton report before it is auctioned for money to support the Labour Party funds...
...Freeman has given the term "elitist" a new lowest common denominator...
...KENNETH L. MATHIAS Taunton, Massachusetts West of El Paso Judd Slivka was correct in his article "Crossed Lines" (TAS, June 2006) that the border is a dangerous place...
...Only the fourth of these issues is critical to the case for war, and that issue has not been made despite Mr...
...I think even Grover Norquist can tell you, those odds aren't very good...
...By pointing out that the Islamic culture just isn't there, he rips apart the "clash" image...
...Obviously, the developers who would be immediately receiving public funds are taking some major risks-it is not yet obvious that they will have a huge, eager market for their redeveloped properties...
...I offer these comments as a life-long conservative, charter subscriber to NationalReview, and one continued on poge 8 6 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY/AUGUST 2006 CORRESPONDENCE who still cherishes his "ELECT BUCKLEY VOTE CONSERVATIVE COLUMN 'D" button...
...He was against nuclear weapons as ayoung MP and against the then Common Market...
...Angelo Codevilla may have overstated his case, but Stephen Moore and Quin Hillyer especially were dead on...
...We could design and build real flood protection and coastal restoration with competent engineers, which most certainly excludes the federal Corps of Engineers...
...As a bureaucratic insider I was appalled at the lack of basic due diligence with regard to earmark grants...
...there truly are parallel universes...
...Witty, intelligent, challengingit's all the things I've come to expect from the Spectator, in abundance...
...Some think that a "savings glut" is causing it, others that an easy money pollcybythe Fed is the culprit...
...fraud in the public sector is reaching unprecedented levels...
...Hillyer's article "The Battle of New Orleans" and believe that this approach may have a chance of working...
...Include Me Out I was contemplating dropping a note as I read through the June issue because, having subscribed to the Spectator for perhaps 15 years, it struck me that this was the finest issue published in all that time...
...That could be true, but it is also true that President Bush articulated several other reasons for war before invading and it is entirely possible that we would have gone to war if, mysteriously, Bush had never also mentioned WMD...
...Freeman cites Novak as has having forecast "(]) that the case for WMD had not been made...
...Oh, and note to Bill Frist--save yourself the trouble of running for president because you and I have exactly the same chance of being elected...
...And he inherited a strong economy in 1997, which he is now making uncompetitive...
...Blair has not stood up for British interests in the EU but agreed to increase our payments to this unaccountable organization as it strives to set up one Europe...
...3) that democratic values might not easily take root in the sands of the Middle East...
...Just because he has allied himself with George Bush in a foolish adventure in Iraq, which has unleased Islamic terrorism worldwide and not contained a threat, is no reason for him to stay in office, as Mr...
...Freeman stakes his case entirely on the fact that massive inventories of WMD were not found in Iraq...
...On this issue Mr...
...By comparison, just 30 percent of the 28,800 flooded homes in Mississippi had flood insurance, and Houston, which has generated the third-highest number of repetitive flood claims in the nation, has a 25 percent penetration rate for federal flood insurance, according to the Times-Picayune...
...ROGER D. McKINNEY Broken Arrow, Oklahoma Curious George I have two comments on the articles in the April 2006 issue...
...Second, I completely agree with Mr...
...Well, he missed that one...
...KENNETH JACOBSON Sunnyvale, California Cultural Suicides Roger Scruton's report on the decline of Islamic culture provides a new and original insight into the jihadist suicide frenzy terrorizing our world today ("Islam and Orientalism," TAS, May 2006...
...I've now hosed myself off, thankfully...
...Despite various redistrictings over the years, I live in a town that lies in a congressional district that hasn't elected a Democrat since the Coolidge administration, nor is it likely to now...
...Those who know 20th century history may point to Nazi Germany where whole realms of culture were erased overnight by book burnings, record destruction, and the systematic exile and murder of scientists, philosophers, writers, and other creators of culture...
...Most Airedales are off-thewall...
...PETER SKURKISS Stow, Ohio Tom Bethell has written some interesting articles lately about the low interest rates on long bonds...
...our once exemplary Civil Service has been politicized and ministers shy away from any notion of accountability when they foul up-they do not automatically resign...
...Something to keep in mind is the Austrian theory of the business cycle...
...When they pull a Lugar and make themselves indistinguishable from Ted Kennedy or Jim Jeffords, they lose...
...I have come to the conclusion that Norquist's mathematically precise rose-colored glasses have a giant blind spot...
...MIRIAM IL BENSMAN Baton Rouge, Louisiana Back Home Again Ben Stein's article in the June 2006 issue is the finest, sanest commentary on our state of affairs that I have encountered in a very long time ("American Bipolarized...
...billions are being squandered in the National Health Service...
...All other reasons given, before the invasion, to justify the invasion, are dismissed as irrelevant based on the bald assertion that only Iraqi WMD "permitted" the President to take the U.S...
...I have nothing but admiration for the Steins for their caring hearts and their willingness to recognize our responsibility to speak out against the inhumane treatment of other species, and to disavow our support for those who treat members of those species with callous disregard for their well-being...
...Even so, it was never the burden of skeptics to prove that Saddam did not possess WMD...
...MICHELE GAUDIN New Orleans, Louisiana The April Special Issue was first rate...
...Regarding the first issue, WMD are not the essential justification of pre-emptive war that Mr...
...That is no mean feat...
...Indiana's flaccid Democrats don't seem to be able to find a patsy to run against Dick Lugar but after his execrable vote against American sovereignty and the basic rule of law, if they could find a credible candidate who actually seemed to believe in these things, they would win my vote...
...Apparently, he and Mr...
...That we couldn't get the goods on Saddam was in itself significant...
...One of my colleagues who worked in the grant award process described it as being "as close to working in a criminal enterprise as I've ever come...
...On the second and third issues, it merely need be observed that all war is difficult and when war is justified it is justified despite its difficulties...
...Want to hear something really really scary...
...Boy, were we mistaken...
...In other words, businessmen do most of the borrowing and they will only borrow when they expect that their gross profits can repay the principal and interest...
Vol. 39 • July 2006 • No. 6
