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The only two blogs I go back and read old entries are my own (for personal reasons) and Europundits, because it's written so damn well. I only wish he wrote more...but then when lacking new articles, I go back and read his old articles they hold up. It's really quite impressive. Here is an archive of Sept. 2003. All good stuff, particularly the analysis of the Iraq war.

But what I wanted to talk about was this section of a different article:

My doubt is: can we trust our leaders, this meaning basically the Bush administration? They seem frequently indecisive. They don’t speak as clearly as it would be desirable. They are criticized unfairly and full time by a hostile media and sometimes seem to act in order to appease their critics. They’re vulnerable to all hazards of the political and electoral games.

But, having seen the behaviour of the Democrats, it is only reasonable to conclude that it could be worse. Making a long story short: can this administration win the war? Whether it can or can’t, an alternative leadership would possibly mean defeat and surrender. I’m afraid even to consider the possibility of how things would look like were the Americans to give up the fight.

But then, if we try to look at the situation with a colder eye, another question emerges: whose war is this, after all? It’s not Bush’s war. It’s not any administration’s war. This war has been directly declared on the American people. And the test that is being put to this people is: do they have what it takes to win? Are they resolute and, if so, will they force their resolution on any administration?

This weekend, I got into an argument with an old co-worker who was an idiot. He wanted to pick a fight about the injustice of the Iraq war, he said that other countries were more dangerous (which ones, I asked...he said, others, I'm not sure), that if we changed public policy towards Israel the OBL's of the world would no longer attack us (too stupid a notion to even consider), and that he indeed believes in conspiracy theories (how do we really know it was Al Queda that attacked us).

Anyhow, the question remains - do we Americans have the resolve to deal with the fact that a small number of clever, committed people, want to hurt and kill us in order to thrust themselves into positions of power?

I think the answer is both yes and no. I think most Californians do not have the resolve and will to fight this enemy, militarily, and more importantly, ideologically. The guy I had dinner CANNOT defeat a jihadist ideologically. He cannot explain why they are wrong and why the American and Western systems of government are more legitimate. He is first reduced to flagellatistic notions of American cruelty (as different and WORSE than cruelty that exists in other places and/or times...example - outrage of Abu Gharib and silence during Saddam's torture chambers), then reduced to apologizing and excusing acts of horrific barbarity when not perpetrated by America (well, you can understand why they become suicide bombers), then reduced to moral relativism and equivalence (well, Iran should be able to have nukes if we do), and finally, in the most odious, Orwellian trick, substitutes lies for truth and by repeating them enough times to himself and his peers, believes that indeed 2+2 = 5, Mossad did 9/11, and the US government invented Osama Bin Laden.

There are different levels here, but all of them, belie a lack of resolve in dealing with the Islamic Fascist threat. Many Americans, particularly Californians, don't want to believe we are at war. Sometimes this feel-good, open arms mentality is good, particularly for breaking down prejudices resulting from xenophobia, etc. But it can also be naive and stupid when applied to someone who does not seek to be your friend, and instead, is using you and your inventions and the fruits of you freedom in a parasitic way to undermine the open-society we all value. Terrorists use planes they could not invent as weapons. They use the internet they could not invent for communication.

Fortunately, I have a solution to the lack of resolve. Because most Americans are too lazy to understand the details of the conflict and aren't committed to seeing it resolved, we shouldn't decide our foreign policy on what's popular. **I've always acknowledged that I have fascist tendancies - for operating a film set, decisions on where to go drink and eat, and on good and bad taste (clothes, movies, books, people).** And even in a democracy, we acknowledge that the masses don't always get it right - so we have a representative democracy...and in some cases a vanguard of experts - the supreme court. So with respect to the Islamic Fasicist issue - we don't listen to the idiots. My opinion counts more than the jerk I ate dinner with. It is that plain and simple. If I'm with three idiots and they all have stupid opinions based on lies and falsehoods and lazy psuedo-intellectualism, then their three votes count less than my one - because I know what I'm talking about and they don't. There's the solution.

Now if someone has better taste in food, can make a better movie, or knows a smarter way to deal with Islamic Fascists, by all means, I defer to their wisdom and my vote is worth less....but don't that America ought to not take the fight to the terrorists because a lot of fools think it's the wrong move. If we learned anything from Seinfeld, doing the opposite can sometimes be smarter than going with the instincts...