Jay Reding.com

As Arab countries boycott Danish products after a Danish newspaper published drawings of Mohammad, Michael Ledeen says now would be a good time to buy Danish products. Looks like it’s a tall glass of Tuborg for me..

It appears as though the single worst enemy the Democratic Party has is itself. John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and other liberal Democratic Senators are planning to try and block the Alito nomination with a filibuster that has a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding. Already, several other Democrats have openly said that the idea of a filibuster is foolish, including Rep. Harold Ford and Senator Barack Obama.

It’s not surprising that John Kerry would support such a filibuster, he’s trying to ingratiate himself with the radical left in the Democratic Party, and a pointless show of obstructionism is just his style. However, one would think that Senator Clinton would not wish to make herself out to be an obstructionist liberal when she’s been triangulating like crazy in advance of 2008. Then again, Clinton probably figures that an Alito filibuster will give her enough liberal street cred for Blue New York in 2006 - and given the weakness of the New York GOP, it’s not like she has any real need to triangulate for the benefit of upstate voters.

The question here is why the Senate liberals would bother with such obviously futile effort - an act which is not only doomed to failure, but dividing their own party as well. What this speaks to is the power of the far-left liberal base within the Democratic Party these days. Joan Vennochi of The Boston Globe editorializes on this shift to the left:

Calling for a filibuster is a late, blatant bow to the left. It seemed more theatrical than realistic. Still, any such bowing from Massachusetts helps the Bush administration. ”Bring it on,” chortled the Wall Street Journal after Kerry announced his effort to rally fellow Democrats from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. There, the Journal snidely observed, he was ”communing with his political base.”

Calling for a filibuster makes political sense for Kennedy, who is adored by every left-wing constituency in America. He isn’t running for national office; he can afford to stick to strict liberal principle. He wants to go down fighting. For Kennedy, a filibuster call mollifies the left at no political cost. It is also an attempt to make up for the obvious: He used the wrong tone and tactics during the hearings. Going after Alito as a bigot backfired. Forget about Mrs. Alito’s tears. The moment Kennedy was exposed for belonging to a discriminatory college fraternal organization, it was over. He lost the moral high ground.

Kerry’s enthusiasm for a filibuster is harder to fathom, except as more of the same from a perpetually tone-deaf politician.

The Democrats have been given an excellent chance to run to the center, exploit the weaknesses of the Republicans, and vault themselves into a majority in Congress. It’s exactly what the Republicans did in 1994 - they didn’t run on their hatred of Clinton, they ran on the Contract for America and an anti-corruption agenda. The Democrats haven’t done anything that savvy, and the further to the left they move to placate the “netroots activists” the harder it is to later try and say that they’re a party that can govern from the center.

This ridiculous filibuster threat is yet another sign of how internally divided the Democratic coalition really is. Even when the Republicans are at their weakest, the Democrats still can’t seem to get it together. On national security, the Democrats remain clueless. Their advantages on domestic issues end up being negated by foolish acts of partisanship, an uninspired and ravenously partisan leadership, and the (largely correct) perception that Democrats are hostile to the values of many of the people who would normally be a natural constituency. So long as those trends continue, the Democrats will, and should, remain a minority party.

Bob Woodruff, ABC co-anchor, was severely injured in an IED attack in Iraq. Here’s hoping for a swift recovery.

Stephen Green asks why the Democrats just can’t seem to win:

Look at me. I’m pro-choice. I support gay marriage. I think porn is OK and that drugs (which aren’t OK) ought to be legal. My taste in music and movies and entertainers are a lot more New York and LA than they are Nashville or Branson.

But with the exceptions of maybe Zell Miller and Joe Lieberman, there’s not a Democrat today I’d vote for without first chewing through my own forehead.

Democrats: I’m your target voter! Appeal to me! I’m sick of the Republicans already! Don’t make me perform impossible physical acts! Please!

But they won’t listen and, come November, I’ll vote for a bunch of Republicans again. (Although I’ll probably leave a bunch of choices blank.) I’ll feel bad about it, of course, but I’d feel even worse if I voted for a Democrat.

And I’m their target voter. Sheesh.

In other words, the Democratic Party is doomed.

I don’t think the Democrats are doomed - you can’t keep losing elections forever without someone like Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan coming along to shake up the status quo. Our two-party equilibrium exists because both parties must compete for the middle. We don’t have a parliamentary system in which a small party can act as a kingmaker - the US’ political system has long followed Duverger’s Law - essentially since the beginning with the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists.

The reason why the Democrats keep losing is simple: George W. Bush.

I’m not saying that Bush is some kind of political genius. Yes, Karl Rove is a brilliant strategist, but there’s nothing that Rove is doing that’s magic, and his success has far more to do with identifying Republican voters and getting them to the polls than to somehow duping the public.

No, the essential problem is that the Democratic Party is obsessed with George W. Bush. We’re talking full-out Ahab mode. Every issue is seen strictly through the prism of that obsession. It’s been that way since 2000, but the war in Iraq has caused even “mainstream” Democrats to come unhinged.

The Democrats have very little appeal to those who don’t already have a raging hatred of George W. Bush. They’re not even trying to preach to anyone else. Which might work if enough people share that hatred, but even those people who may disapprove of Bush’s performance aren’t going to vote for Joe Democrat just because George W. Bush is a big mean poopy-head.

Dick Meyer of CBS News gets it right and puts it simply:

The 2006 GOP/Rove platform can easily be put on an index card, if not a Post-it note. It reads something like this: we are at war against foreign terrorists who want to kill you and your society and we’ll do what it takes to stop it and the Democrats won’t; we will cut your taxes and give you money and Democrats won’t. Every Republican candidate in the country can spit that one out.

The controversy over domestic surveillance without warrants illustrates the efficient, black and white clarity of the Rovian message. Rove said, “Let me be as clear as I can: President Bush believes if al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they’re calling and why. Some important Democrats clearly disagree.”

Please draft a two sentence response that will work in a TV ad; my guess is it will sound as convoluted as John Kerry explaining why his vote for war was a vote against war.

Democrats thought the domestic surveillance revelations were a boon; if that were the case, why would the administration be devoting this week to a public campaign to trumpet the issue? Simple: because they think they have the gut punch: we’ll protect you, they won’t.

The Democrats are committing slow political suicide. They’re pushing back against their own moderates like Senator Lieberman and Senator Clinton (although Hillary’s “moderation” may itself be a ruse). They can’t hold an argument without engaging in a spittle-flecked diatribe about the President. They nominated Howard Freakin’ Dean as their party chairman. Influential strategists like Thomas Frank keep telling the Democrats to “frame” the same old arguments with a lot of preachy God-talk, ignoring the fact that it’s the content not the presentation that’s the problem.

The last successful period for the Democratic Party was the Clinton Administration. Bill Clinton, for all his personal flaws, knew how to appeal to the American public. He was committed to free trade, he lowered capital gains taxes in 1996, and his initiatives tended to be more of the “midnight basketball” type than his (and by “his” I mean “his wife’s”) attempts to socialize American healthcare. He drove Republicans crazy - almost as crazy as Bush makes Democrats - because he could so convincingly ingratiate himself to everyone. In 1994 the Republicans won on a broad program to reform government - they won in a landslide. In 1996 and 1998 they ran on the “we hate Bill Clinton and so should you” and they lost ground. There is a lesson here.

So long as the Democrats remain hyper-fixated on George W. Bush, they won’t win. So long as the anger of their party keeps boiling over, they won’t appeal to people like Stephen Green. So long as The Daily Kos represents the heart of the Democratic Party, they’ll be consigned to the political fringes.

Instead of wisely shifting the ground to subjects where they actually have some political advantages, they keep shifting the debate back to Bush’s strongest talking point - it’s like moths being attracted to the flame of a plasma welding torch. In 2002, the Democrats looked week on homeland security. In 2004, Kerry’s “global test” rhetoric and constant doubletalk showed he was utterly rudderless on the war. In 2006, the Democrats are positioning themselves once again as the party of vacillation and weakness in this war. If the Democrats were smart, they would have chided the President and immediately drafted a bill that would have reformed FISA - but then they couldn’t get their preening indignation pressed into the lens of every willing camera.

The truth is that while the GOP seems to be dropping the ball, the Democrats keep scoring points on the other side. Never in recent history has a party gone completely off the rails in such a dramatically self-destructive manner - and their hatred of Bush has them blinded to the realities of their situation.

Now, as a partisan, I take great amusement in all of this. However, I’m an American first and a partisan second. A vibrant democracy is incompatible with single-party rule. However, as Green notes, the Democrats are not providing an acceptable alternative for America. As bad as the Republican leadership has become on spending and as many ethical lapses and scandals as the GOP has had, when it comes right down to it, even a terrifically flawed GOP is better than the alternatives.

No wonder the Democrats are so angry - when you’ve convinced yourself that your political adversary is the epitome of ignorance and stupidity, the fact that he keeps outsmarting you at every turn has to be infuriating. However, if the Democrats don’t realize that unless they can preach to someone who isn’t already in the choir, hatred is all they’ll have when President Rice, McCain, Guiliani, Romney, Allen, or someone else is sworn in. You can’t win an election in this country on acrimony alone.

John Kerry has become the Paris Hilton to Al Gore’s Nicole Ritchie on the stage of American politics.

Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon once again flog their al-Qaeda is really winning meme in The New York Times - and again, their analysis borders on the disingenuous. They argue:

The author of the 9/11 attacks did not, of course, think that his musings would jump-start a negotiation. Had Americans instead listened with the ears of those for whom the message was intended - Muslims around the world - they would have heard something very different. Instead of a weak Osama bin Laden, they would have heard a magnanimous one who could offer a truce because “the war in Iraq is raging, and the operations in Afghanistan are on the rise in our favor.” Mr. bin Laden staked his claim to leadership of the Muslim world on 9/11, striking us as others only dreamed of doing. On the tape, he shows strength by taking credit for America’s humiliation in Iraq and continues to do what we are not: fighting for the hearts and minds of the Muslim world.

It is too early to say how this tape will affect Muslim opinion, but there is no doubt that Mr. bin Laden’s strategy has been paying off. According to a poll released last month by Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland and Zogby International, when Muslims in several countries were asked what aspect of Al Qaeda they “sympathize” with most, 39 percent said it was because the group confronted the United States. Nearly 20 percent more sympathized because it “stands up for Muslim causes,” which is really just a polite way of saying the same thing.

What Benjamin and Simon neglect to mention is that support for al-Qaeda in the Muslim world has dropped precipitously according to the Pew Global Attitudes Survey conducted last year. Furthermore, it is much harder for al-Qaeda to claim to “stand up for Muslim causes” when their primary business has been blowing up fellow Muslims. The vicious attack on a Jordanian wedding party did more to harm bin Laden than anything else - it exposed in a deep and visceral way that al-Qaeda isn’t a group of determined idealists, but a bunch of hardened thugs who don’t give a damn if their victims are Muslim or not.

Meanwhile, in Iraq, the insurgency is fracturing as native Iraqis realize that al-Qaeda wants to subjugate them even more than their American “occupiers”. The Sunni population in Iraq continues to embrace the political process as the primary form of change rather than armed conflict.

Benjamin and Simon have been flogging this same line for quite some time now, and repetition doesn’t make it any less accurate. Al-Qaeda’s agenda is doomed by its own glaring internal contradictions - al-Qaeda may make use of the latest technologies in it’s global jihad, but it’s incapable of creating an environment where people can have decent lives - the Middle East is slowly lurching towards increasing freedom, and al-Qaeda stands in opposition to that trend. The Arab and Muslim world is not stupid - they can see the value of al-Qaeda’s empty promises and are embracing democratic change. That trend has the full weight of history and human nature behind it, al-Qaeda’s retrograde ideology does not.

Bin Laden’s proposal for hudna comes from a position of weakness. His words disclose a hidden meaning - the US is winning in Afghanistan and Iraq, and bin Laden can only get his way once we’re gone. As efforts at reconstruction and civil society in those two countries continue, al-Qaeda’s grip becomes less and less strong. Al-Qaeda flourishes in societies where autocracy divorces the polis from the polity - and bin Laden is right, democracy stands at odds with his extremist version of Islam.

The war is not won, but it will be the West’s vacillation and weakness that would produce a victory, not the strength of al-Qaeda. Bin Laden has studied the West long enough to know our weaknesses intimately - and he knows that the path to victory is convincing the West that it cannot win a war that it is winning before the sparks of democratization in the Muslim world become a conflagration. Sadly, it is our own defeatism and lack of courage that has become our enemy’s greatest weapon.

A former Iraqi general is claiming that Iraqi WMDs were covertly smuggled into Syria before the March 2003 invasion:

Mr. Sada, 65, told the Sun that the pilots of the two airliners that transported the weapons of mass destruction to Syria from Iraq approached him in the middle of 2004, after Saddam was captured by American troops.

“I know them very well. They are very good friends of mine. We trust each other. We are friends as pilots,” Mr. Sada said of the two pilots. He declined to disclose their names, saying they are concerned for their safety. But he said they are now employed by other airlines outside Iraq.

The pilots told Mr. Sada that two Iraqi Airways Boeings were converted to cargo planes by removing the seats, Mr. Sada said. Then Special Republican Guard brigades loaded materials onto the planes, he said, including “yellow barrels with skull and crossbones on each barrel.” The pilots said there was also a ground convoy of trucks.

The flights - 56 in total, Mr. Sada said - attracted little notice because they were thought to be civilian flights providing relief from Iraq to Syria, which had suffered a flood after a dam collapse in June of 2002.

He doesn’t have anything that provides verifiable proof, but his story matches what we do know. Saddam knew that the hammer was likely to fall sooner or later, and moving WMDs across the Syrian border would be the logical thing to do. There was plenty of cross-border traffic across the Syrian border before the war, everything from refugees to commercial flights to illegal oil shipments. Slipping a few barrels of VX or even a disassembled anthrax lab into one of those flights or shipments would not have been difficult at all, and we’d have no way of telling what was in those containers without physically inspecting them.

I would not at all be surprised if eventually some real evidence of low-level production and storage of WMDs were found in Iraq, or when the Assad regime in Syria falls we find that Iraqi WMDs were sent across the border. Saddam was a malignant narcissist, but not an idiot. He knew that not even a few chemical shells would save him, so it would make great amounts of sense for him to make it look like everyone was wrong about Iraqi WMDs.

All this, of course, is just theoretical now. We haven’t found any evidence of significant WMD programs beyond a few degraded chemical shells and some miscellaneous lab equipment. It’s equally possible that Saddam’s WMD capabilities had steadily degraded since the Gulf War and everyone in Iraq was lying to everyone else to save their own necks - saying that destroyed stocks of WMDs existed and inventing phantom programs. Such activities are part and parcel of an authoritarian and autocratic state like Saddam’s Iraq.

If there is one thing that history teaches us, however, it’s that widely-assumed judgments like “Saddam did not have any WMDs” can easily be overturned by explosive new evidence - and while that evidence hasn’t yet materialized, it remains a possibility.