The American Spectator

The best metric to way freedom weighs less than a pound and is written on parchment: The Constitution of the United States.
— I.M. Kessel

NOTHING IFFY ABOUT IT
Re: Peter Ferrara’s Obama and the CIA: Making the Terrorists’ Day:

“President Obama has decided that the CIA is a greater threat to America than Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism. If that decision turns out to be wrong, with thousands of Americans dying in another terrorist attack, President Obama and the Democrat Party will end up paying a grievous political price, which would be well deserved.”

“If” that decision turns out to be wrong? If?

Even if Al Qaeda and Islamofascists don’t gleefully seize the opportunities Obama appears to affording or will afford through his ideologically motivated words and actions, America’s enemies must be laughing themselves silly. How can they not, watching and listening to Obama, Eric Holder, Nancy Pelosi and her supporters pursue, among other items on their leftist agenda, this public humiliation and potential prosecution of the CIA?

But besides this agitprop, as well as threatening and weakening America by their recklessness, fecklessness, spinelessness and arrogance, haven’t Obama, Holder and their party have already grievously damaged themselves?

You wonder: Do Obama, Holder, Pelosi et al. really know with whom they toy so, in the CIA or the terrorist groups/countries? Or do they suspect at all that someday, they may be on the very wrong end of conduct such as theirs is now?

Regardless, all of us had best hope and pray that, because of actions such as Obama’s current CIA witch hunt, another terrorist attack doesn’t happen again on American soil.

For me, there also another unthinkable: That within my lifetime, there would be a president and his administration, plus his party—or, at least, its leaders—as well a malignant state-controlled media, that would be so nationally divisive and such tangible mounting threats to our country.
—  C. Kenna Amos Jr.
Princeton, West Virginia

TO DIE FOR
Re: Christopher Holland’s letter in Reader Mail’s Paying Dues:

Mr. Holland’s piece was well written and thought out. I preemptively apologize for a “gotcha” but as a war veteran (Desert Storm), I feel a moral imperative to disabuse Mr. Holland of a gross misperception regarding war: “Winning is the only thing that counts and nobody prosecutes a victor.”

Winning the war is of penultimate importance. The execution of the war is more important. The ethics of the Talmud, Bible and other holy writing influenced our Founding Fathers and have not (yet) been abandoned. We were founded “as a city on the hill” and a lamp unto the world. A superpower has superior might but that does not make it inherently right; its choices reflect its character. A superpower that imposes its will on others is superior in strength but inferior in morality.

A just war has two criteria: the cause must be just and so must be the prosecution of the war. Our enemies may or may not have moral convictions, but to continue to be a just people, we have to fight with an extra burden: morality. An American president (JFK, LBJ or Nixon) could have “glassed” the jungle. Even without using the nuclear option, our troops could have easily won the war in Viet Nam. We had massive superiority in troops and equipment, but we conducted ourselves in a manner to minimize “collateral damage.” The same holds true for our use of force in Iraq. With air power alone, we could have destroyed every vestige of civilization in the area, but the brunt of the destruction would fall upon civilians. America chose morality over simplified victory. We continue to pay dearly with blood and treasure for this choice, but it is a choice for which American can continue to stand proudly.

Many a service member has had the words “Death before Dishonor” tattooed to his (or her — for this instance I choose giving credit to the deserving over grammatical expedience) skin. The words are not a throw away punch line. They are words to live by. And sometimes die for.
— I.M. Kessel

BILDT’S BILGE
Re: Daniel Mandel’s The Refusal to Recognize Anti-Semitism:

“Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt retorted that freedom of expression had to be protected and that he lacked time to edit ‘all strange debate contributions.’” Where was this editorial freedom when Muslims protested the comic(al) depiction of Mohammed?
— I.M. Kessel