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The Patriot Post Brief 08-28
From The Federalist Patriot
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CAMPAIGN WATCH“Being shot down may not qualify one to be president, as retired Gen. Wesley Clark infamously said recently. But what men do under fire might tell us about the character we may discover in a president. Clark’s precise words, aimed at undermining John McCain’s executive experience, were: ‘I don’t think getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president.’ In fairness, Clark also praised McCain’s heroism, saying that he honored his service as a prisoner of war and even that ‘he was a hero to me.’ Predictably, Republicans were outraged and Democrats were outraged at the GOP’s outrage. For his part, Barack Obama performed the political minuet of condemn ‘n’ distance. He condemned the remarks and distanced himself from his surrogate/general... Clark misses the point of McCain’s story. McCain isn’t a hero because he was tortured. He’s a hero because he declined an offer by his captors to be released, refusing to leave his fellow Americans behind. It may not take much effort to get shot down, but it must take a considerable act of will to consign oneself to more deprivation and torture. It must take a level of courage unknown to most to place concern for others above one’s own interest. Surely self-sacrifice, courage and loyalty figure somewhere in the calculus for selecting a president. We can make no similar analysis of Obama, since he hasn’t fought in any wars in his lifetime. But we have been given a glimpse at how Obama responds to external pressures and where he draws the line on loyalty and self-sacrifice. When it comes to family and friends, it seems Obama is first a survivalist... Clark is right that getting shot down doesn’t qualify one to be commander in chief. But it is relevant to wonder with whom one would rather share a foxhole.” - Kathleen Parker
POLITICAL FUTURES“Two weeks ago, I predicted that by Election Day Obama will have erased all meaningful differences with McCain on withdrawal from Iraq. I underestimated Obama’s cynicism. He will make the move much sooner. He will use his upcoming Iraq trip to acknowledge the remarkable improvements on the ground and to abandon his primary season commitment to a fixed 16-month timetable for removal of all combat troops. The shift has already begun. Thursday, he said that his ‘original position’ on withdrawal has always been that ‘we’ve got to make sure that our troops are safe and that Iraq is stable.’ And that ‘when I go to Iraq... I’ll have more information and will continue to refine my policies.’ The flip is almost complete. All that’s left to say is that the 16-month time frame remains his goal but he will, of course, take into account the situation on the ground and the recommendation of his generals in determining the ultimate pace of the withdrawal. Done.” - Charles Krauthammer
FOR THE RECORD“Barack Obama now has cited the Nuremberg trials after the Second World War as a model of the way Osama bin Laden should be tried in the (unlikely) event he’s ever taken alive. He recommends Nuremberg as an example to follow because, he says, those trials embodied universal legal principles. The Nuremberg trials a model of international law? Those stone-faced judges in Red Army uniforms peering down from the bench at Nuremberg, shoulder boards in place and guilty verdicts at the ready, must have been there as representatives of Comrade Stalin’s well-known devotion to universally accepted legal principles. This is not to say that the judges at Nuremberg couldn’t demonstrate exquisite tact. For example, not a one noted the Soviets’ responsibility for the Katyn Massacre, a war crime none dared accuse them of at the time. In 1946, the Soviets were still Our Fighting Russian Allies. And so the mass execution of the Polish army’s officer corps in the Katyn forest was pinned on the Nazis, who were conveniently at hand. What would one more war crime matter in a record already so monstrous? Nor did any of the judges at Nuremberg make much of the infamous Nazi-Soviet Pact that precipitated the whole, bloody cataclysm that was the Second World War. That alliance between fellow dictators was simply tossed down the memory hole. It became a non-event. At Nuremberg, the Soviet Union was invited to sit in judgment of its old partner in aggression - on a charge of waging aggressive war. To wit, the war of aggression that the Soviet Union joined with Nazi Germany to ignite in September of 1939. Barack Obama would have been on sounder ground if he had cited the proceedings at Nuremberg not as an example of justice but irony. You have to wonder if anybody remembers any history any more. Barack Obama doesn’t seem to. The unthinking simply assume, as Sen. Obama does, that Nuremberg was some kind of model of justice. Hey, the Nazi leaders were hanged, weren’t they?” - Paul Greenberg
LIBERTY“’A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.’ Because of the inclusion of the M-word (militia), gun-control advocates have long argued that the Second Amendment applies to militia, but not to individual citizens. Last week, the Supreme Court put an end to that nonsense when it issued a decision overturning the District of Columbia’s 32-year-old ban on handguns - even in citizens’ own homes... It was ‘an inevitable ruling,’ explained George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley. ‘Even though I’m an advocate of gun control, it’s very hard to read the Second Amendment and not see an individual right.’ Yet, somehow, four justices did not see that the fundamental right - actually, it’s more than a right, it’s a basic human instinct - of self-defense.” - Debra Saunders
GOVERNMENT“Why did the Founders bother toiling in the summer heat of Philadelphia in 1787 writing a Constitution when they could have relied on the consciences of Supreme Court justices like Anthony Kennedy instead? Kennedy is the Supreme Court’s most important swing vote and its worst justice. Whatever else you think of them, a Justice Scalia or Ginsburg has a consistent judicial philosophy, while Kennedy expects the nation to bend to his moral whimsy... In a 2005 interview, Kennedy said of the court, ‘You know, in any given year, we may make more important decisions than the legislative branch does’... He went on to note how judges need ‘an understanding that you have an opportunity to shape the destiny of the country.’ So much for the country’s destiny being shaped by a free people acting through their representative institutions, within certain constraints it enshrines in the Constitution. That wouldn’t allow nearly enough room for what Jeffrey Rosen, in a devastating profile of the justice in The New Republic, calls Kennedy’s ‘self-dramatizing moralism.’ On any politically charged case, we are supposed to wait with bated breath while the famously agonizing Kennedy decides which side he is going to bless with his coveted fifth vote. In so doing, Kennedy believes he is, in Rosen’s description, creating ‘a national consensus about American values that will usher in what he calls ‘the golden age of peace.’ Observers less besotted with Justice Kennedy than Justice Kennedy might put it differently: making it up as he goes along.” - Rich Lowry
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