By Jed Babbin on 4.10.06 @ 12:08AM
Whilst Congress vacates, it had better listen ... to the people, not to John Kerry and Cynthia McKinney.
Whoever said February is the cruelest month was clearly ignorant
of April. We haven't even suffered the joys of Tax Day yet, but in
ten short days so much has been fouled up it must be some sort of
record. The Senate has plumbed the depths of illegal immigration,
the New Yorker's Sy Hersh has a case of the nuclear vapors
over Iran, disarmed Brit gardeners are being terrorized by a giant
rabbit, and the Dems have finally identified a group that is a
legitimate target of violence. And while the Dems gasp for air,
their EMS squad -- the elite media snobs -- are riding to the
rescue with decreasing effect.
Seymour Hersh -- the Kitty Kelly of Abu Ghraib -- has a splashy
article about how the president is planning for a nuclear
preemptive strike on Iran. Once again, the legacy media are getting
all their exercise by jumping to conclusions. In military planning
sessions, everything is open to discussion and most everything
actually gets to the rough planning stage. Inevitably, some colonel
sitting behind his boss will ask, "why don't we just nuke the
bastards?"
A little over three years ago, I wrote
that there are two rules for the use of nuclear weapons: The First
Rule of Weapons of Mass Destruction is that they should only be
used when the alternative is to incur -- or inflict -- casualties
of a magnitude that is vastly greater than the WMD will cause. (The
Second Rule of WMD -- that we must maintain them as a deterrent --
isn't relevant here because Iran is not susceptible of deterrence.)
There are, in fact, many options to using nuclear weapons against
Iran now. There is, therefore, no reason for us to have decided to
do so at this point. Mr. Ahmadinejad might note that we can change
our minds as quickly as necessary, and it takes only a couple of
minutes to retarget a whole submarine-full of Trident missiles.
Ahmadinejad will wait because time is on his side for many reasons.
Not the least of which is that the 2008 election is not far away,
and if he's very lucky the Dems might capture the White House.
Under the banner of Vichy John Kerry's campaign, the French
Party made it clear, well, actually they made nothing clear. But on
Meet the Press yesterday, Kerry managed to prove that
neither age nor experience are a cure for what ails his
presidential ambitions. Not only did he say we should negotiate
Iraq's future with Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iran and the rest -- so
much for the neo-Wilsonians' dreams of Middle Eastern democracy --
but he also pronounced that North Korea can ignore us because we're
tied up in Iraq and that nothing can be done about Iran other than
getting Russia and China to join us in "serious sanctions" against
Tehran. Kerry made plain his opposition to any military action
against Iran, and there's no reason to doubt he speaks for his
party in saying such. Despite their abhorrence of violence against
America's enemies, the French Party has, apparently, decided that
one definable group is a permissible subject of violence.
THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IS NO longer the party of Martin Luther King
(or, for that matter, Rodney King). It's now the party of
cop-assaulter Cynthia McKinney. The good patient guys and gals who
are Capitol Police shouldn't have to demand condemnation of her
conduct by other Dems. But if they do, they'll be disappointed. I
refuse to waste more than a few sentences on that horrible person,
or to say more than if she is guilty she should be tossed out of
Congress forthwith. The only things I care to know about McKinney
is how many times she slugged the cop with her cell phone and
whether said phone worked after it -- and the cop -- were so
abused. If it did, the manufacturer and model number are important
information to every parent of a member of "Generation Oops." We
await, anxiously, forthcoming reports of this information. And,
even without reports of Cynthia's cell phone's survival, Americans
know that cell phones are not a weapon of choice, even against
small game.
The villagers of Felton, north of Newcastle, demonstrating the
ultimate result of gun control, reportedly have hired marksmen
with air rifles to take out a giant rabbit that is raiding
their communal veggie garden. According to -- sigh -- the Agence
France Press, one local resident described the black and brown
bunny as "...massive. It is a monster." Beginning at about age 8, I
was regularly ordered into the fields to terminate the rabbits
raiding my Brit grandma's garden with a single-shot .22 that proved
both safe and effective. Only the Brits would have the patience to
hunt a monster bunny with air rifles. Or should they hire Cynthia
and her cell phone? No. British patience is not limitless. Just ask
Mr. Phillip Meeson, chief executive of the low-cost airline,
Jet2.com.
One of Mr. Meeson's aircraft (and some 100 would-be passengers)
were stuck in Chambery when the French police allowed protesting
students to block a runway for more than an hour. That was the last
straw for Mr. Meeson, who had become quite incensed at one of the
latest long breaks taken without notice by French air traffic
controllers. Previously, he called on the "lazy frogs to get back
to work." In a rather Reaganesque tirade, Mr. Meeson elaborated
thusly: "While France is undeniably a beautiful country (with
equally good food and beer, I hasten to add) we are appalled and
quite frankly tired of the air traffic controllers' old-fashioned
attitude to dealing with any issues they may have. In short, we
urge the controllers to get back to work or get another job." I
hereby nominate Jet2.com to be the official airline of the Vast
Right Wing Conspiracy. It would do the Senate a world of good for
some state to entice Meeson to (legal) citizenship and a candidacy
on the Republican side of the ballot. Failing that, senators could
at least talk to Mr. Meeson about illegal immigration.
THE SENATE'S BOLLICKING OF THE ILLEGAL immigration bill fell apart
last week when Harry Reid blocked Republicans from amending the
bill to ensure that illegal aliens with criminal records are barred
from work permits and citizenship. Can't deny any criminals the
right to vote Democratic can we, Mr. Reid? But let's not be too
eager to assign blame or credit for the illegal immigration debacle
before we decide which is which.
At present, neither the House nor the Senate has taken the one
serious step essential to solving the problem. And only two members
of the MSM seem to have it right. Charles Krauthammer, of course,
does. He wrote that unless we build a strong barrier across the
border, the rest of the legislative "remedies" are just so much
dross. That point was made by CNN's Lou Dobbs on the Chris Matthews
show yesterday, to the derision of the panel of hard core lefties
on the show. Until the Congress undertakes to build the barrier,
anyone who prevents one of these fake remedies from becoming law is
a hero, not a goat. Even if his motives are entirely dishonorable,
as Reid's were.
Dobbs, while speaking sense to the Clooney-esque media types,
made a prediction that we all must work to prove true. He said that
when members of Congress talk to their constituents in this
two-week break they will get an earful about illegal immigration.
Let it be so. Unless and until Congress resolves to close the
border -- in a way sufficient to reduce the flood of illegals to a
small trickle -- whatever else they do will be window dressing.
TAS contributing editor Jed Babbin is the author
of Inside the Asylum: Why the UN and Old Europe Are
Worse Than You Think (Regnery, 2004).
topics:
Harry Reid, Books, Law, Military, Iraq, Iran, Russia, NATO, North Korea, Immigration, Nuclear Weapons
