Great interview

Kissinger talks straight to our German "allies."

One of the excellent points he makes is this one:

With the disappearance of European nation states into the EU, it becomes impossible for countries to ask for sacrifices, like military combat, from their citizens. The citizen can duck by claiming that the nation state no longer has any legitimacy, while at the same time he feels no obligation whatever to Brussels.

As we are seeing, this can make it impossible to raise and support fighting armies at the old national level -- and people are not likely to sign up to fight and die for an abstract bureaucratic construction like the EU. So how does EU-Europe defend itself? And what is a mutual defense treaty like NATO worth? We are having a very hard time getting some of our NATO partners to actually fight in Afghanistan, because their voting populations believe they have left all such things behind. Germany seems to be the worst case, even using its own history as an excuse to stand aside.

Byron

Why We Fight

The German translates to "Al-Qaeda and the house of torture."

I hesitated about sending this, but do so on the principle of Know Your Enemy.

I wish the Arabic were translated, but the images speak for themselves.

If this needs to be seen anywhere, it's at the Democratic Convention. Any notion of abandoning the Iraqi people to these psychopaths should be unthinkable, yet the Democrats' Soros-fueled left base is demanding that we do exactly that, and immediately. Both Clinton and Obama are promising, to one degree or another, to carry out that mandate if elected.

Extremely graphic. If you watch this, it may ruin your day.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9089532722810348478

Identity politics

Divide-and-rule identity politics turns out to be (surprise!) divisive.

The Democrats created a Frankenstein's monster, and now its chickens are coming home to roost.

February 12, 2008 (NYP) -- A prominent member of the national Democratic Party has circulated a sharp e-mail saying the removal of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle was disloyal to Hispanics and should give "pause" to superdelegates and voters.

The e-mail from, Steven Ybarra, a California superdelegate who heads the voting-rights committee of the DNC Hispanic Caucus, was sent to fellow caucus members in the hours after word broke that Solis Doyle - the most prominent Latina in Clinton's campaign - would be replaced by another close Clinton loyalist, Maggie Williams, who is black.

(Trans-gendered Asians are sure to take this as a double snub.)

The sub-text is this: Identity politics works as long as there is an overriding issue or enemy that can unite the groups above their separate interests. The war in Iraq was supposed to fill that role, with the neo-con Repubs as the personification of evil. But the war is being won (as of yesterday, Pelosi was still desperately trying to deny that, and this is why), so now what is left to hold the Democrat conglomeration together? It was in this context that Billy Boy careened out onto the campaign trail and dissed Obama, something black Dems instantly took as an ethnic insult. A stupider move can hardly be imagined, Bubba tossing a stone like that in the Dem's glass house. Stone? More like a grenade. Obama's campaign took off like a rocket, while Hillary's instantly tanked, as identity groups chose sides and split off.

Without the Big Issue to unite them, and the race-ethnic cards suddenly laid bare on the table, the Democrats may be descending into an intra-party free-for-all that will be very hard to bring under control. Lots of little tents can act like one big one only under certain conditions, which have to be carefully nurtured and guarded. In their blind ambition, the Clintons have trampled all over everything.

Byron