Paul Tibbets, 92, Pilot of Enola Gay

Paul Tibbets, the pilot who ushered in the nuclear era, helping to end World War II, is dead at age 92. USA Today has a brief obituary:

Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the B-29 bomber Enola Gay, died today. He was 92.

Tibbets dropped an atomic bomb known as "Little Boy" over Hiroshima, Japan, at 8:16 a.m. on Aug. 6, 1945. As many as 200,000 people may have been killed within five years by the blast and its aftereffects, according to the Energy Department. This website has photographs of the devastation the bombs wrought before they forced the Japanese government to surrender to Allied forces led by Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

The Associated Press reports that Tibbets, who retired from the Air Force as a brigadier general in 1966, had no regrets about his role in the world's first atomic airstrike. "You've got to take stock and assess the situation at that time. We were at war. ... You use anything at your disposal," he was quoted as saying in 1975. "I sleep clearly every night," he added.

Tibbets wanted to be cremated, with no funeral or grave marker left to inspire protests.

It's a sad commentary on the state of our politics that the man who helped save countless lives - and whose work hastened the end of the war - is today vilified as a mass murderer by the postmodernist America-bashers of the multiculturalist left. The Jawa Report cites this nasty attack on Tibbets, from White Noise Insanity:

Paul Tibbetts [sic] did not die a hero to America. I’m sorry, but it does not take a brave person to strap a bomb to a plane, fly high above a sleeping city, and then drop an atomic bomb on it! Only a coward could be proud of himself after doing something like that....

Not only was a he a typical reich winger throughout his life, meaning he had zero compassion for the people of our planet, but he managed to be the typical reich winger upon his death by being a coward. Why? He told his loved ones that he didn’t want a stone or a marker for his grave. Why? Well, apparently this “big brave reich winger” didn’t want Americans to stand around his grave protesting what he had done in WWII!

Tibbets is also attacked at The Progressive:

I’m making a partial exception to my self-imposed rule of not speaking ill of the dead.
Paul Tibbets, the pilot who dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima, died Nov. 1, unrepentant till the very end.

“I wanted to do everything that I could to subdue Japan. I wanted to kill the bastards. That was the attitude of the United States in those years,” he told an interviewer in 1995. “I have been convinced that we saved more lives than we took. It would have been morally wrong if we’d have had that weapon and not used it and let a million more people die.”

There was only one problem with his analysis: He was just plain wrong. In the last few decades, there has been a whole slew of studies showing that the dropping of the bomb was—militarily and strategically—completely unnecessary.

The Progressive piece cites revisionist historians who have criticized President Truman's decision to use nuclear weapons on Japan.

Other historians get the story right, however. In an essay published July 2005, on the eve of Hiroshima's 60th anniversary, Richard Frank, the author of a respected history of the Guadalcanal campaign, published a commentary piece in the San Fancisco Chronicle defending the decision to drop the bomb on Japan:

What if the United States had chosen not to use atomic weapons against Japan in 1945?

Americans typically believe that an invasion of Japan would have been the consequence, but four other possibilities have been raised: a diplomatic settlement; Soviet intervention in the Pacific theater; continuing war with dire effects on millions of Asians trapped in Japan's empire; and a new strategic bombing directive.

Contrary to wishful theories, no realistic prospect existed for a diplomatic settlement. The American aim of unconditional surrender was not just a slogan. It constituted the keystone to the enduring peace that followed. It provided the legal authority for the occupation of Japan and the ensuing fundamental renovation of Japanese society.

Japan's leaders opposed unconditional surrender precisely because they understood it meant the extinction of the old order dominated by the militarists and their consorts. That old order had started a war that killed more than 17 million people -- most of them Asian noncombatants. The strongest evidence that compromise remained out of reach is that even when the Japanese government finally issued its first real surrender offer on Aug. 10, 1945, it still demanded that the United States guarantee that substantial power would remain in the hands of the emperor.

Frank continues:

Had the war continued for two weeks or perhaps only a few days, the destruction of the rail system would have brought about the mass famine that probably would have prompted the Japanese to capitulate. But this also means that Japanese would have died by the millions.

What history without Hiroshima illustrates is that there was no alternative happy ending to the Pacific War. When realistic consideration is given to the alternatives, atomic bombs stand as the worst way to have ended the war - except all the others.

This is the context in which we should remember Tibbets. Also note these heartfelt words from the Flag Gazer:

Thank you, Paul Tibbets. Thank you for what you did for our country, thank you for ending the war, thank you for all of the lives you saved and all of us you allowed to be born. You will always be my hero. Farewell, and Walk with God.

Walk with God, yes...that's a much more appropriate eulogy.

Anti-Terror Interrogations Real Target of Democrats

Today's lead editorial at the Wall Street Journal argues that anti-terror interrogation practices are the real target in Democratic oppostion to Michael Mukasey's nomination for Attorney General:

Democrats welcomed Michael Mukasey as a "consensus choice" for Attorney General only weeks ago, but incredibly his confirmation is now an open question. The judge's supposed offense is that he has refused to declare "illegal" a single interrogation technique that the CIA has used on rare occasions against mass murderers.

All of the Democratic Presidential candidates have come out against the distinguished judge, and Democrats on the Judiciary Committee appear ready to block his nomination from even reaching the Senate floor. This is remarkable not for what it says about Judge Mukasey but for what it reveals about Democrats and the war on terror. They'd disqualify a man of impeccable judicial temperament and credentials merely because he's willing to give U.S. interrogators the benefit of the legal doubt before he has top-secret clearance.

Could there be a clearer demonstration of why voters don't trust Democrats with national security? In the war against al Qaeda, interrogation and electronic surveillance are our most effective weapons. Yet Democrats have for years waged a guerrilla war against both of these tools, trying to impose procedural and legal limits that can only reduce their effectiveness. Judge Mukasey is merely collateral damage in this larger effort.

Read the whole thing.

The editors make a powerful case that the Democrats' Mukasey fight is being driven not by calculations of what's best for American national security, but by the need to pander to the party's antiwar base.

In any case, the good news this afternoon is that key Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are backing Mukasey's appointment, which means the nominee will likely gain confirmation (maybe Senate Democrats read the Wall Street Journal).

For additional commentary, check Memorandum. For a prototypical demonization of both the Bush administration's anti-terror agenda and Judge Mukasey, check the comments from the left's foremost surrender hawk, Glenn Greenwald.

Ron Paul and the Fringe of American Politics

My recent post on Ron Paul's prospects in New Hampshire attracted a lot of attention from the "Paulites," the extremely vocal online activists committed to defending Paul with denunciations and threats. The exchange in the comment thread was colorful, and prompted Patrick at Driving out the Snakes to write a follow-up post suggesting I had a "bee in my bonnet."

Thankfully, Rick Moran at the American Thinker sheds some perspective on the unhinged masses attracted to the Paul campaign. Here's the introduction:

What is it about the candidacy of Ron Paul that has attracted the paranoid fringe of American politics?

Clearly, there are Ron Paul supporters who are rational and grounded, not given to spouting conspiracies or blaming "neocons" for everything bad that happens in the world (neocons being a blind for anti-Semitism). For all we know, they may be the majority of his supporters.

But just as clearly, there is a dark underbelly to the Paul campaign -- a ruthless, mob of internet ruffians who seek to intimidate those who would dare criticize them, the Paul candidacy, or most especially, one of their pet conspiracy theories about 9/11, the "New World Order" (an amorphous term that generally means the imposition of a one world government), or something as mundane and silly as planting a computer chip in every new born in America.

The question isn't whether Ron Paul believes in any of these conspiracy theories, although he has said on at least two occasions that he believes the investigation into 9/11 must be reopened to explore "unanswered questions" about the tragedy. It is his apparent pandering to this lunatic fringe that must be explored and reasons for it demanded from the campaign.

I say "apparent" pandering because there is the possibility that Paul is completely clueless that his anti-government rants (a subjective word but apt if you listen to his speeches or watch him in the debates) full of dark hints of conspiracy and wrongdoing by the highest officials in the land, actually ring a Pavlovian bell for the paranoid conspiracy freaks causing them to flock to his banner.

The article includes excerpts from Paul's statements suggesting that he's not completely oblivious to the ideology and interests of the lunatic hordes flocking to his side. Moran offers this passage too, which applies in my case:

Constant attention is paid [by the Paulites] to Technorati and other blog search engines so that the most minute negative mention of Paul will bring several commenters rushing to his defense. Some are indeed polite and accommodating. Most are not. Personal attacks are common as are charges that the blogger is part of a conspiracy against the candidate.

Such attacks prompted Red State to ban the Paulites from its comment section, a move that raises touchy questions of free speech. Captain Ed Morrissey disagreed with Red State's decision, but he then makes this rather naive statement on the relative repulsiveness of the Paulites versus the far-left antiwar, multiculturalists:

I'm no Paul supporter by any means. However, Paul's statements can be addressed and rebutted fairly easily, at least those with which I strongly disagree. I don't fear the commenters nor the debate, even if it does grow tiresome at times. It certainly can't be any more tiresome than the S-CHIP debate, or the Iraq War debate, or the FISA debate -- and I'd have less sympathy for opponents on those issues than the people who support Ron Paul.

Captain Ed's known for his cool-headed political commentary, but on this issue he's out of his depth. Ideologically, the extreme fanatics on both the left and the right have joined together in common cause against the Bush administration and Iraq. In this sense, the traditional left-right ideological continuum is being pulled up, like a string, to square the circle among the most implacable foes of the American democracy.

I pointed out in my post, for example, that Adam Kokesh, an activist in the Stalinist group International ANSWER, proclaims himself a card-carrying member of the Libertarian Party. Moreover, Paul's campaign is attracting the most vile contingents of America's neo-nazi movement. Indeed, this grassroots fringe mobilization represents the latest iteration in the long tradition of apocalyptic extremism in American politics.

Moran's piece provides a nice conclusion to this theme:

Is Paul pandering to the conspiracy nuts in America, knowing their enthusiastic support for him will assist his campaign? Or is he unaware that by appealing to the basest emotions brought to the surface by his dark hints involving dark forces carrying out a campaign to take away our freedoms, he is giving the paranoid, the fearful, and the ignorant haters a standard to rally around?

He is a foolish man if he believes he can control these forces. In the end, they can only destroy him.

That's a lesson otherwise anchored Paul supporters might do well to digest.

A Long Morning for Charlie Company

The American Spectator has a gripping retelling of the 82 Airborne's "Charlie Company" (2-505 Parachute Infantry Regiment) and its close-range firefight with insurgents in Samarra, Iraq, August 26, 2007.

The story focuses on "Reaper Two," a sniper team from the Charlie Company's 2nd Battalion. The team's mission that morning was to provide a rooftop observation point (OP) to guard against insurgent activity on the roads into the central Samarra, where Charlie Company's 3rd Platoon would be carrying out a search of an IED manufacturing shop.

Reaper Two's position atop the building was compromised, and the sniper team came under withering enemy fire. The team's four paratroopers - Sergeant Josh Morley, Specialist Tracy Willis, Specialist Chris Corriveau, and Specialist Eric Moser - fought courageously to hold their position:

ON THE ROOF OF THE APARTMENT BUILDING, Morley and Moser were taking AK-47 and PKC (a 7.62mm Russian-made machine gun) fire from both stairwells. As they spun around to return fire, they saw several small, dark objects flying onto the roof from the stairwell -- hand grenades. Morley recognized that the situation was rapidly deteriorating and knew that, though his team currently occupied the high ground in the emerging battle, they could not hold out for very long due to their vast disadvantage in numbers. Seeing that Willis, who was next to the team's radio, was busy firing into the stairwell through a window on the enclave's north side, and not knowing that one of the first hand grenades tossed onto the roof had disabled it, Morley made a dash across the roof to call for the QRF.

He never made it there.

As Moser fired into the door from his corner in an attempt to suppress the enemy assault, he saw Morley appear to stumble and go down, his weapon skidding across the rooftop toward the stairwell door. His first thought was that the team leader had tripped and fallen; a moment later, his brain registered the truth: Morley had been shot. A burst of gunfire from the southern stairwell across the dividing wall had scored a direct hit, with one round striking Morley directly in the forehead. He was dead before hitting the ground.

Moser didn't have time to dwell on Morley's death. Knowing that what had just become a three-man team could not long withstand the concerted effort by what was clearly a large enemy force to move up the stairs to his location, he took the same chance that Morley had, and crossed the roof to the radio while Willis continued to fire his .240 machine gun into the stairwell, killing at least two enemy fighters with well-placed bursts as grenades continued to be tossed up the stairs and out onto the roof. As he moved to the radio (which he found to have been disabled by a grenade), Moser was able to get a look down into the northern stairwell. Inside, he saw a number of armed men, both black and Arab rushing up the steps toward the roof -- none of whom were the individuals he had seen get out of the car moments before on the street. Apparently there had been fighters stationed in the building before the white car's arrival.

Read the whole thing.

We don't often get such intimate reporting of the modern American military in combat. The article, written by Jeff Emanuel, a special operations veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, keeps a tight focus on tactical developments of the firefight, and doesn't dwell on the carnage and losses. Emanuel's conclusion is uplifting, but not weepy. We see the perseverance and strength of our fighters, and we get a feeling for the importance of unit camaraderie in battle.

Hat tip: Infidel's Are Cool.

Gotcha! Immigration Flip-Flop Haunts Clinton Campaign

I noted earlier that I missed Tuesday's Democratic debate. There's no worry, though, since I'm catching some of the key segments online. Hillary's illegal immigrant drivers' license flip-flop is a true classic in the history of presidential debate moments, available on YouTube:

Although Clinton herself took debate moderator Tim Russert to task for playing "gotcha" in his questioning on the issues, the immigration gaffe is Clinton's own "gotcha" moment. The episode powerfully demonstrates the hypocrisy of Clinton's "nuance" on the issues. The New York Times has more on Clinton's immigration moment:

It was a moment that crystallized Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s struggles in Tuesday night’s debate. Questioned about a plan to grant driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, Mrs. Clinton at first seemed to defend it, then suggested she was against it, until finally, pressed for a direct answer, she accused the moderator, Tim Russert, of playing “gotcha.”

Her verbal twists and turns provided her opponents with fodder for their central critique of Mrs. Clinton, which coursed throughout Tuesday’s debate: that she was trying to have it both ways on the issue, much as she was trying to portray herself as antiwar while voting to authorize the use of force in Iraq.

Here's more, on the conservative reaction to Clinton's gaffe:

Illustrating the political dangers of the issue, Mrs. Clinton found herself under fierce attack Wednesday from Republicans and conservative radio hosts for her debate comments.

“I know there are some politicians like Hillary,” Rudolph W. Giuliani told the conservative talk radio host Glenn Beck. “They say different things to different people. They use different accents in different parts of the country. I’m used to that about her now. I had never seen it happen all in one place, in one minute.”

Thanks to Senator Dodd, by the way, for providing the opening for this classic Hillary Halloween haunt.

Also, hat tip to Flopping Aces for the YouTube. See also Michelle Malkin on Hillary's immigration moment.

Republicans Facing Tough Year in 2008

A new poll from The Pew Research Center indicates that 2008 will be tough year for the GOP:

A year before the 2008 presidential election, most major national opinion trends decidedly favor the Democrats. Discontent with the state of the nation is markedly greater than it was four years ago. President Bush's approval rating has fallen from 50% to 30% over this period. And the Democrats' advantage over the Republicans on party affiliation is not only substantially greater than it was four years ago, but is the highest recorded during the past two decades.

The public continues to express more confidence in the Democratic Party than in the Republican Party as being able to bring about needed change, to govern in an honest and ethical way and to manage the federal government. The Democratic Party's advantages on these traits are much wider than during the last presidential campaign. Moreover, they remain about as large as they were just prior to the 2006 midterm election, in spite of rising public discontent with the Democrat-led Congress.

The voters' issues agenda also appears to benefit the Democrats. Along with Iraq, the economy, health care and education rate as the most important issues for voters. Compared with the 2004 campaign, fewer voters now place great importance on the issues that have animated Republican political unity in recent years – including gay marriage, abortion and terrorism.

Looking to the presidential election itself, the political climate appears to be affecting the morale of those in both parties. Democrats are more positive and more enthused than are Republicans. Since the beginning of the year, Democrats have closely followed campaign news at consistently higher rates than have Republicans, and somewhat greater proportions of Democrats say they have given a lot of thought to the presidential candidates.

Republicans not only are less engaged in the campaign, but they also rate their party's presidential candidates more negatively than do Democrats. Nearly half of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (46%) rate the Republican presidential candidates as only fair or poor; by comparison, just 28% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents give the Democratic presidential field comparably low ratings.

The poll also finds Hillary Clinton maintaining a large lead over Barack Obama nationally, 45%-24% among Democratic and Democratic-leaning registered voters. Clinton also leads Rudy Giuliani in a hypothetical head-to-head match-up, with a 51%-43% advantage.

Note though that the election's still a year away, and a lot can happen in the meantime. As William Kristol pointed out last week, the conventional wisdom on a Democratic presidential blowout next year could be wrong.

One factor likely to help the GOP is Iraq (as Kristol mentions). The surge has improved security in the country subsantially, and the public has become a bit less pessimistic on our chances of victory there. Indeed, good news on the war keeps coming, with today's Los Angeles Times reporting that the number of Iraqi civilian deaths dropped dramatically in October.

Additionally, campaigns matter, and should Hillary win the Democratic nomination, her "nuanced" flexibility on the issues (her flip-flopping) may provide a powerful issue for GOP attacks on her character and credibility.

That said, things are certainly not looking good for Republicans. USA Today also reports the results from a new survey finding dramatic discontent in the electorate:

One year before Election Day 2008, most Americans are dismayed by the country's direction, pessimistic about the Iraq war and anxious about the economy. Two of three disapprove of the job President Bush is doing. Nearly a year after Democrats took control of Congress, three of four Americans say it isn't achieving much, either.

In all, 72% of those surveyed in a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Oct. 12-14 say they are dissatisfied with how things are going in the USA while just 26% are satisfied. Not since April have even one-third of Americans been happy with the country's course, the longest national funk in 15 years....

There's plenty of time for attitudes to change before the election, of course, but the current landscape is the sort that in the past has prompted political upheaval and third-party candidacies. The last time the national mood was so gloomy was in 1992, when the first President Bush was ousted from the White House and H. Ross Perot received the highest percentage of the vote of any third-party candidate in 80 years. Bill Clinton was elected amid economic angst.

Both polls augur well for Democratic prospects next year. As the Pew survey notes, Democratic partisans are more enthusiastic about their party's chances than are their Republican counterparts. The USA Today piece shows as well how political scientists are talking about 2008 in history-making terms: Next year might be "a lot like 1952", according to David Mayhew, a political scientist at Yale and author of Electoral Realignments.

Of course, that's the year Eisenhower took over the White House after twenty years of Democratic power. Republicans might find some consolation in the 1952 analogy, however. Nineteen fifty-two ended up being an abberation in an otherwise long period of Democratic Party dominance. Perhaps Republicans can take heart knowing that should they lose in 2008, history shows clear prospects for the defeated party's return to power within a decade.

Rivals Rattle Clinton on the Evasiveness Issue

Tuesdays are my long days at work, so I did not see this week's Democratic presidential debate. I've been watching clips of the candidates' responses on television, and the newspaper commentaries are starting to trickle in.

This Los Angeles Times article discusses the new focus on evasiveness among Hillary Clinton's rivals, a weakness which might turn out to be the frontrunner's Achilles heel:

After searching for ways to rattle Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and stem her momentum in the Democratic presidential race, her chief rivals believe they have found an opening: what they cast as her evasiveness on several key issues.

The campaigns of Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina wasted little time Wednesday suggesting that the New York senator's performance in Tuesday's debate unmasked her as a candidate unwilling to commit to concrete plans.

On at least five issues raised in the debate, Clinton replied in ways that left it unclear what she meant or what action she might take.

That practice has worked for her in the past, permitting her to avoid positions that might antagonize voters, particularly the less partisan ones important to victory in the general election.

But the limitations and potential perils of her approach were driven home at the debate in Philadelphia.

In comments likely foreshadowing the shape of the Democratic contest in coming weeks, top Obama strategist David Axelrod said: "We're going to spell out positions on issues and demand others do as well. One of the things that people are looking for is someone . . . who will be forthright with them and not pass everything through a political calculator. It's a distinction in this race."

A memo issued by the Edwards campaign was more blunt, charging that Clinton was not "telling the truth to the American people."

Republican presidential contender Rudolph W. Giuliani eagerly joined in Wednesday, taking a swipe at Clinton that echoed complaints from her Democratic rivals.

"She was being attacked all night for taking different positions in front of different audiences," Giuliani said in a radio interview. "And then, by the end of the night, she took different positions in front of the same audience. It was pretty amazing. I mean, in politics I've never quite seen that before."

Clinton was wishy-washy on Social Security reform, and she flipped-flopped on drivers' licenses for illegal immigrants. As usual, Clinton dissembled on Iraq and the war on terror:

On Iraq, she said she was for ending the war, but also said an unspecified number of troops may be left in place for an ongoing mission of battling Al Qaeda fighters in that country.

The shift to pointing out Clinton's evasiveness is probably too late to slow her campaign juggernaut (an effort as difficult as stopping a runaway train, the metaphor I've used to describe the disastrous implications of a Hillary presidency for American politics).

See also additional analyses of Clinton's debate performance at the Christian Science Monitor and the New York Times.