First Rich Lowry writes under the heading, “Thought Experiment”:

Someone was just making a good point to me. What would Gen. Casey's reaction be if he had a commander who was losing a battle, so he decided to add a tiny increment to his force. Then he kept on losing, so added another tiny increment. And so on. He would probably relieve him. But this is exactly what Gen. Casey himself is doing in the Battle for Baghdad.

A little over an hour later, Andy McCarthy responds:

Rich, what if Gen. Casey was taking his orders from civilian leadership that denied there was a war going on between Israel and Hezbollah this summer when there was a raging war going on between Israel and Hezbollah?

What if he knew that our enemies were being directed and abetted by Iran – which was also steering Hezbollah during the aforementioned not-a-war against Israel – but the said civilian leadership was not letting him do anything about that?

What if he knew that Iran was supplying munitions and killing his troops in Iraq, but his civilian leadership – while telling the country that rogue nations had a choice either to be “with us or with the terrorists” – was actually offering Iran economic assistance, aeronautics assistance, telecommunications assistance, agricultural assistance, and all manner or assistance under the sun if Iran would only please, please pretend to stop building nukes?

What if Iran not only laughed off that offer, but continued to help kill Gen. Casey’s troops in Iraq while continuing to harbor al Qaeda leaders (including Osama bin Laden’s sons)?

What if while all that was going on, Iran promised to obliterate Israel and to conduct blistering attacks in and against the United States, and the civilian leadership still evinced no interest in doing anything meaningful against Iran?

How much should we then blame Gen. Casey for the Battle of Baghdad when his civilian leadership has no stomach for dealing with the enemy behind the Battle of Baghdad?

I love Rich, but Andy nails it. The decisions that have killed us in this war have been wretched political ones. We could put a zillion troops in the Anbar province and Baghdad, but without some willpower from our civilian leadership, they wouldn’t do a damn bit of good.

With the Baker Commission due to offer its inevitably awful recommendations in six days, it will be up to the president to belatedly stiffen the spine of the American war effort. Let’s hope he does so.

Complaints? Compliments? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com.

One of the best parts of this gig is that people send me free books to read and hopefully praise. Most of the books I read all the way through, but until now I haven’t felt compelled to offer a review.

Noemie Emery of the Weekly Standard has written a fascinating study of America’s political dynasties, “Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families.” It’s a fantastic read that surveys the Adamses, the Roosevelts, the Kennedys, the Bushes and the Gores. The toll that the dynastic expectations take on the clans’ children is frequently horrific.

It’s a fantastic read, one that I couldn’t put down. (Actually I could put it down, but chose not to.)

I would be remiss in talking about free books that I really enjoyed if I didn’t also mention the novel “Greenwich Mean Time” by my frequent email correspondent Christopher Fountain. I normally don’t read fiction, but after reading the first few hilarious pages of this tale of an Indian Casino trying to come to one of the Nutmeg state’s most elegant confines, I was hooked.

Comments? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com.

Editor & Publisher is a trade magazine for the left wing MSM, and so naturally its editor has perfect pitch for the overwhelmingly left wing MSM. From a recent column by Greg Mitchell blasting new New York Times columnist and former WaPo reporter Thomas Edsall:

Edsall was so eager to sell his new book that he appeared recently on rightwing radio host Hugh Hewitt's program, where he admitted that the mainstream media has an "overwhelmingly" strong liberal bias -- making the job for his former colleagues in the industry so much easier -- and estimated that Democrats outnumber Republicans in newsrooms by 15 or 25 to 1. This margin is not sustained by a single survey, even the slanted ones frequently cited by Hewitt and has brethren.

Here's the important aspect of this paragraph: Everyone knows that Edsall was speaking the truth, and honest journalists like Mark Halperin and Thomas Edsall admit it.

Mitchell can't and won't because the admission of pervasive left-wing bias within the MSM threatens the less talented among the lefty brethren. If media companies intend to get competitive before completely bleeding out, they will have to re-balance their newsrooms and end the clubby smugness that destroys not just their appeal to many readers who resent the endless agenda journalism, but which also wrecks a journalist's news judgment. Thus do places like the Minneapolis Star Tribune and The Los Angeles Times shut heir newsrooms off from the sort of intellectual diversity and debate that sharpens all comers and produces much more interesting papers, and with that, climbing as opposed to plummeting circulation.

But to re-balance would mean tossing a lot of the timeserving and talentless lefties overboard and hunting for fresh perspective and energetic newcomers. E&P is like a union newsletter --it isn't going to be calling for productivity improvements anytime soon, even though its engines are shutting down, and in fairly rapid fashion.

UPDATE:  Edsall responded to Mitchell's blast with a bit of analysis that is probably the best assessment of the 2006 elections yet rendered by the anyone in the MSM, which collectively seems obliviouis to the year six of eight year presidencies data. Edsall wrote in part:

Republicans have been ascendant in American politics -- the data there are clear -- since the mid sixties, with the transformation of the South into a GOP stronghold. Things change. The reformulation of a center-left coalition which may be emerging this year has been four decades in the making -- I don’t think it is irrational to see this new success as potentially fragile. The Democrats won the presidency in 1976, to see it slip away in 1980. They won the Senate in 1986 and lost it in 1990. Clinton won the White House in 1992 (with 42% of the vote in a 3-way race), only to see the House and Senate swing to the GOP in 1994, where they stayed for the next 12 years. In addition, the Republicans won the presidency in 2000 and 2004.

The win this November was a substantial gain for the Democrats, but not an iron-clad irreversible victory, if you look at the numbers.

I have invited Greg Mitchell to be a guest on the radio show.

Rick Warren is catching some flak for inviting Senator Obama to a conference on AIDS, in Africa and around the world.  Rick's a friend, so you can discount this if you'd like, but it seems to me that setting aside political differences --even on crucial issues like protecting the unborn-- is certainly appropriate when the focus is on the prevention of a deadly disease and relief for a epidemic devastated continent. 

Warren has done far, far more for the lost and the least than 99.9% of Americans, and extending an opportunity for Senator Obama to speak at a conference on AIDs is not a mistake to corrected but instead an example to be followed.

1) What will George W. Bush’s legacy be?

That’s kind of starting at the end, isn’t it? Start somewhere else, maybe somewhere closer to the beginning.

2) Okay. Sorry. Is George W. Bush smart?

By any conventional standards, yes. He’s not a genius like Winston Churchill was or Theodore Roosevelt was, but he’s every bit as bright as the two guys he defeated in his presidential campaigns. The rub on the Bush intellect is that he’s rigid and unsubtle. The latter isn’t much of a problem because the main threat that confronts us, the fact that millions of Islamists want to destroy us, isn’t a subtle one even if it has eluded the attention of the American left. Rigidity also isn’t necessarily a bad thing in a war-time leader. But that rigidity clearly becomes a liability if it causes the president to think that he’s already made his decision so he doesn’t have to consider facts on the ground that have changed.

3) Do you think that’s what’s happened?

It could be. After 9/11, the obvious clear and present danger was Al Qaeda. Five years down the road, Al Qaeda remains a threat but a vastly degraded one. The more dire threat is an enflamed Muslim world with prominent elements that want to destroy us. I have grave doubts whether the president and his team understand this. That’s why I was so disappointed to see Rumsfeld go. While the politicians (of both parties) and the media obsess over Iraq the way a 13 year old girl obsesses over the dreamy boy in homeroom, Rumsfeld knew that Iraq was but one front in an enormous struggle. If the president doesn’t understand this and thinks that we can have a lasting peace with countries like Iran and Syria, then he’s tragically mistaken.

4) Don’t you think all this Baker Commission stuff and the apparent outsourcing of foreign policy to exiled warhorses makes the president look very small?

Since the midterms, the president has looked downright Lilliputian. But events can be strange in that way. Sometimes a president can make a comeback literally overnight.

5) In this case, it’s impossible. Too much damage has been done.

It’s happened before. In the aftermath of the 1994 midterms, Bill Clinton felt compelled to have a press conference where he insisted that he was still relevant. It’s hard to remember how disastrous those midterms were for the Democrat party. At the time, the Democrats had held the house for over 40 years. The Kos Kidz have been taking umbrage over the fact that the media hasn’t covered the 2006 midterms in the same exhaustive way that they did the 1994 ones. They’re young, so maybe they don’t know – no one thought the Republicans were going to take the House that day. What’s more, four decades of tradition were tossed out the window.

I remember being at Romney headquarters on Election Night. Mitt had lost, but we all knew that was going to happen. But some of us crowded around the TV’s in the room and couldn’t believe our eyes – the unthinkable was occurring.

6) So how did Clinton come back?

Two words, long since forgotten in most quarters – Oklahoma City. On the day of that attack, the rootless and feckless president finally looked like a leader. His rage matched the nation’s. For the first time in his administration, he looked like a president rather than some playboy policy wonk who wanted to give his wife 16% of the American economy to play with while he occupied himself using the armed forces as a Petri dish for social experimentation.

That was in the spring of '95. Oklahoma City gave extremism a bad name – about the worst thing you could call someone back then was an extremist. Passionate politics of the type practiced by Newt Gingrich fell out of favor. The public started to develop a taste for mushy moderation, and Clinton played along limiting his grand endeavors to things like school uniforms and eliminating the scourge of drive-thru deliveries (which he constantly, annoyingly referred to as drive-by deliveries.)

When Gingrich and the congress shut down the government in the summer, they looked extreme. Clinton was back on top, a position he would never yield throughout his tenure.

7) That’s kind of a depressing analysis – Bush will need a calamity along the lines of Oklahoma City to re-emerge as a leader?

I know, it is. And believe me, I’m not hoping for it.

8) What else can he do besides wait for a terrorist tragedy?

He can be the master of events. If there’s going to be an armed confrontation with Iran, it might as well be now before they gain nuclear weaponry. Same goes for Syria. Since we obviously can’t live with Moqtada al-Sadr, we should make plans to live without him.

9) You mean kill him?

Well, that is what one tries to do to an enemy in a war. Since al-Sadr is an enemy and this is a war, I think it’s fairly obvious what we should do as far as he’s concerned.

10) When did it all start to go wrong for Bush?

Katrina.

Let’s face it – Bush has never articulated the threat that we face, or at least not in a way that America has come to understand it. But his inarticulateness wasn’t a huge problem because many Americans felt they knew what was in his heart, and that his heart was pure. They also felt like they knew what was in his spine, and it was pure steel.

Katrina changed that. While Americans were suffering, Bush was fund-raising. When he belatedly appeared on the scene, he appeared overwhelmed and weak. He complimented his in-over-his-head FEMA director. He had no clear idea what to do. The president who had always been so sure of himself seemed perplexed, embarrassingly so. The public’s perception of him changed that week. It has yet to change back.

11) Do you regret voting for him?

No. At times I’ve been inspired by his leadership, at other times very disappointed. With the Baker Commission recommendations likely to get a friendly audience in the White House, the biggest disappointments may be yet to come.

But whatever his faults, he was a helluva lot better than either of the guys he ran against. I have no question about that.

12) Can I now ask this – what will be his legacy?

Well first, let’s talk about what it won’t be. It won’t be trimming the top marginal tax rate by 4% points. It also won’t be the profligate spending Congresses that he enabled. In history’s view, those will be footnotes if they merit a mention at all. (Quick: What were Abraham Lincoln’s tax and budgetary policies?)

Bush’s legacy will focus exclusively on how he dealt with the Islamist menace. In the immediate Post 9/11 aftermath, he’ll get an A+. Since then, the record is incomplete. If his administration ended tomorrow, his legacy would be decidedly mixed. The next president would have to clean up the mess in the Middle East that continues to spread. He would also have to call the American people to arms and sacrifice, two things Bush has conspicuously eschewed the last five years.

In history's eyes, Bush wouldn’t be a Neville Chamberlain who got everything wrong, but he also wouldn’t be a Ronald Reagan or Winston Churchill who got everything right. It would be his successor that history would treat as the truly consequential figure.

If Bush goes wobbly and listens to the Baker Commission, he makes it that much more likely that his successor will come from the Neville Chamberlain School. But if Bush renews (initiates?) the fight against Radical Islam, finally calls it what it is while calling the American people to action, he could still go down as a great man.

13) Are you optimistic?

Frankly, I’m horrified by the damage that the Baker Commission may do. That’s why I’m writing today – so hopefully the president knows that he will not be alone if he launches an initiative to do what needs to be done.

14) You didn’t answer the question. Are you optimistic?

No. But as anyone who followed my election predictions knows, I’ve been very wrong before. And I would be delighted to be equally wrong again.

Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com.

There is much speculation over the opponent Rose Bowl organizers will invite to play Michigan. The Los Angeles Times'  Chris Dufrense runs through the likely options which include Notre Dame, LSU, Louisville or Rutgers.

Why not Boise State?  The Broncos are 12-0 and BCS-eligible, and are the only undefeated team other than the mighty Buckeyes.  All of Idaho will drive down for the game and the Rose Parade, and the country would eagerly tune in to watch David take on, if not Goliath, then the second biggest Philistine.  Every college football fan would be cheering for the Broncos, and the build up would be immense.

C'mon Rose Bowl Committee.  Do the right thing.  Invite Boise State.

From what we know so far, the Baker Commission is going to recommend that we cut troop levels in Iraq, attempt to make nicey-nice with our determined enemies in Iran and Syria, and demand Israeli concessions to serve as the deus ex machina to bring about peace in our time. In a word, oy vey!

Coming from a commission headed by James Baker, the latter recommendation is especially jarring. During his tenure as Secretary of State, I believe his most famous quote regarding Israel and the Jews was (and pardon his French), “Fuck the Jews. They didn’t vote for us anyway.”

Whether or not Baker is an anti-Semite or merely a non-comprehending putz is a disputable but largely academic matter. A report from America’s putative best minds that focuses on the six million Jews in the region rather than the one billion Muslims is fatally suspect. Of course, it’s more politically expedient and just plain easier to focus on the Jews. Regardless of what idiocies the Baker Commission pukes out, our government won’t have to put itself on alert for a gaggle of flying rabbis determined to terrify airliners.

THERE’S SO MUCH THAT JIM BAKER doesn’t understand and never has understood; I honestly don’t know where to begin. Perhaps a good place to start would be in 1941 when the Palestinian leader, Mufti al-Husseini, journeyed to Berlin and aligned himself, his people and his movement with the Nazi agenda of annihilating the Jews. Since that time (which was actually seven years before Israel was born), extermination of the Zionist Entity and those inside of it, not any kind of peace agreement, has been the lodestar of the Radical Muslim world. To think that this leopard is suddenly going to change its spots or be satisfied with a Sudentenland-sized chunk of Israel is ludicrous. When Ahmadenijad said he wanted to wipe Israel off the map, he meant it.

Aaah, Ahmadenijad. What does this man have to do to convince our country that he means business? Last night, John Kerry was on Larry King (there’s a convergence of some sort). Kerry was fresh from having testified before the Baker Commission. Why the Baker Commission needed the insights of this particular Senator will be yet another mystery of our era for historians to unravel.

Kerry seemed quite satisfied with what the Baker Commission was going to recommend. He seemed especially tickled that the Commission was poised to seek a diplomatic settlement with Iran and Syria to bring about peace in the Middle East. The fact that a diplomatic settlement with these nations would depend on the good faith of their lunatic leaders either doesn’t bother or fails to register with the Kerry and the Commission.

Perhaps the most disturbing and most dispiriting aspect of the entire Baker Commission exercise is that it represents a distinctly post 9/11 view of things, but that the commission and apparently great swaths of our government have learned all the wrong lessons from that day. Bad generals always fight the last war, and 9/11 was the last war.

Let me explain: It’s not terrorism that’s our biggest problem, but hostile regimes. Donald Rumsfeld went on TV the weekend after 9/11 and characterized it as a battle in a new kind of war, a battle that we had lost. This was a fruitful way to look at things. In the epochal clash whose arrival was heralded on that day, the losses suffered on 9/11 by historical and future standards were a pinprick.

I don’t mean that disrespectfully. I cried that day, and cried again a week later when my wife and I attended the funeral of a close friend of hers. But 9/11 signaled the start of a long war with implacable foes. And the losses of 9/11, while shocking, were nothing compared to the losses suffered in London during the blitz let alone those suffered contemporaneously in Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The larger point is that 9/11 showed the maximum of what maniacs can accomplish with guile, a little money and an impoverished regime providing them safe haven. Compared to what maniacs will be able to accomplish with hundreds of billions of petro-dollars while running regimes flush with cash and having a limitless desire for martyrdom and murder, 9/11’s damage comes into a different, sharper focus.

WE KNOW WHO’S GOING to love the Baker Commission recommendations. The Democrats at home who think getting out of Iraq is the only thing that matters will jump aboard the report as an intellectual life raft. Bereft of any ideas of their own for the past five years, Democrats will seize on the report as cover for getting our illiterate children in the armed forces home.

But the Iranian mullahs will be even happier. The Baker Commission report will give them the same feeling that Hitler got in Munich – these men will not fight. They will see a solid chunk of the American body politic eager to sell out an ally while making concessions to our enemies without requiring those enemies to fire a single shot.

But here’s the killer part: Even if President Bush does the right thing and shoves this report in a part of James Baker’s anatomy where the sun don’t shine, the Commission will still do incalculable harm. The media, the Democrats and even many Republicans have already given the Baker Commission the sheen of omniscience once wrongly bestowed upon the 9/11 Commission. Regardless of the obtuseness of the Baker Commission’s recommendations, they will be hailed as genius and indisputable by wide swaths of the public.

Our country will look ridiculous. And a country like ours can’t afford to look ridiculous. Or weak. Especially at this point in history.

Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com.

Today's broadcast is devoted to The Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund, which provides support to Marines wounded in the war or in training for combat and their families.  Please give generously to help those who have sacrificed a great deal in the service of the country.

You can donate online or send a check to:

Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund

825 College Blvd, Suite 102

PMB 609

Oceanside, CA 92057

For more information, call 760-725-3680.

UPDATE:  A Freeper thread here.

Dear Mayor Daley:

I have secured all the seats for the Friday, December 1, 11:00 AM showing of The Nativity Story at the AMC River East 21, 322 East Illinois Street.   WIND-AM 560 will be announcing the details of who is invited and how the seats will be distributed, but we are holding ten seats for you and your close staff.  I am certain that once you have seen the film you will reverse your decision to pressure Christkindmarket organizers to drop the movie's sponsorship.

Please rsvp to me at hugh@hughhewitt.com.

Hugh Hewitt

Bill Frist will not be running for president. This development throws the Republican primaries into tumult - the race to become the most humiliated Republican is suddenly wide open. Duncan Hunter and Sam Brownback – your ship has come in!

If I might be serious about Frist for a moment, when I spoke with him he seemed like an extremely intelligent, impressive and well-informed guy. As you all know, that has not been my typical experience when conference-calling with Republican machers. I also recall my chance meeting with a Republican Senator on the golf course a couple of years ago. His praise for Frist was obviously sincere and heartfelt.

Frist has obviously made the right move in not running. The entire Congress the last few years has been an epic disappointment, and as the leader of the Senate there was no conceivable way he could skate away from that record. But in considering Frist’s future, it’s worth noting that this Senator from a mid-sized state and with short-term service was recognized by his colleagues as the man who should lead them. Furthermore, First was never plagued with the kind of grumblings that went on behind Coach Hastert’s and President Bush’s backs, even as the 2006 election season began to resemble a political Hindenburg.

Frist has much more to offer. Retiring from the field at this point in time is the best way for him to maintain his ability to do so.

Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com

For the second year in a row, Markos Moulitsas has declared his hostility to affirmative action. At least insofar as it concerns his own endeavors.

Markos gives all Daily Kos front pagers a year to strut their stuff and then replaces them with fresh blood. It’s actually a reasonable policy. As Markos reminds the Kossacks, “Ultimately, this is a site about the Democratic Party and elections.” Bloggers with lifetime tenure may get some crazy ideas about blogging about things like Israel and the site’s reflexive hostility to the Jewish state, and lord knows that wouldn’t be any good for getting Democrats elected.

So each year, Markos deep-sixes the old front pagers and comes up with a new batch of fresh meat. As he did last year, Markos vowed that “I won't pay any heed to physical attributes (sex, race, etc). In the blog world, the writing -- and how it fits in my vision for the site -- is everything.”

Too bad the Democratic Party (that the Daily Kos so eagerly supports) discourages trivial concerns like law firms, newspapers, hospitals and the government to employ the same kind of merit-based criteria.

Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com

My ABCNews.com column is up on the subject:.  Short version:

We ought to brand 11/27 as MSM Triumphalism Day, an annual celebration of elite media pretension unsupported by actual influence in an environment of declining market share.

Let the record show I am not responsible for the lame column title.

From Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass:

And lo, City Hall ordered the heralds to cry the mayoral decree from the top of every two-flat and skyscraper in his domain:

No advertising of the movie "The Nativity Story" at City Hall's approved German Christmas festival, called Christkindlmarket, right across the street from City Hall in Daley Plaza.

Christkindlmarket literally means "Christ child market" in German. The sponsors included the producers of "The Nativity Story," a film about the birth of Christ. The market wanted to run ads about the movie at the festival that commemorates Christmas.

But City Hall determined such ads would offend. Jim Law, mayoral herald and director of the Mayor's Office of Special Events, explained:

"Our guidance was that this very prominently placed advertisement would not only be insensitive to the many people of different faiths who come to enjoy the market for its food and unique gifts, but also it would be contrary to acceptable advertising standards suggested to the many festivals holding events on Daley Plaza."

"Our guidance?" What manner of spirit visited City Hall to shape this statement? The ghost of George Orwell?

I am working on arranging a free screening of The Nativity Story for Mayor Daley and 199 other City  of Chicago employees at a theater a mile and a half from the mayor's vast office complex.  Perhaps if Mayor Daley sees it he'll realize what a truly dumb move this was and restore the movie to its sponsorship spot.  Or perhaps his dad will appear Marley-like before him and give him fair warning.

From Michael Freund's column in the Jerusalem Post:

And all this talk of talking with the bad guys has only served to encourage them still further.

What is needed now is decisive action, and fast, to slap them down and put the radicals back in their place.

A massive American air assault on Iranian nuclear installations would do just the trick. It would not only set back Teheran's atomic ambitions for years to come, but also serve as a resounding display of US will and resolve.

A strike on Iran would amount to a reversal of the Shi'ite surge that is now taking place throughout the region. It would take the wind out of the Iranian leader's apocalyptic sails, and it would have a noticeable impact on the sectarian violence now raging in Iraq, too.

Syria, Hizbullah and others would take notice, and America's ostensible Arab allies - all of whom are Sunni - would certainly welcome a blow against the dangerous Iranian regime. Stopping Iran in its tracks is the great challenge of our day. For the sake of the entire Western world, and the future of the Jewish people, we can only hope and pray that President Bush will rise to the occasion and do what needs to be done.

"Had Britain stopped fighting in May 1940, Hitler would have won his war," wrote historian John Lukacs in Five Days in London. "He was never closer to victory." The same now holds true of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who may be just months, or even weeks away from crossing the nuclear point of no return.It was Churchill himself who once said, "I never worry about action, only inaction." As a result, he led his nation and the civilized world to victory.

Mr. President, may that now become your motto too.

Such talk will give the appeasement press a collective heart attack.  Freund's blog is here: Fundamentally Freund.

From a WaPo profile of James Webb:

At a recent White House reception for freshman members of Congress, Virginia's newest senator tried to avoid President Bush. Democrat James Webb declined to stand in a presidential receiving line or to have his picture taken with the man he had often criticized on the stump this fall. But it wasn't long before Bush found him.

"How's your boy?" Bush asked, referring to Webb's son, a Marine serving in Iraq.

"I'd like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President," Webb responded, echoing a campaign theme.

"That's not what I asked you," Bush said. "How's your boy?"

"That's between me and my boy, Mr. President," Webb said coldly, ending the conversation on the State Floor of the East Wing of the White House.

Expect Senator Webb to be blunt with both sides:

One senior Democratic staff member on Capitol Hill, who spoke on condition that he not be identified so he could speak freely about the new senator, said that Webb's lack of political polish was part of his charm as a candidate but could be a problem as a senator.

"I think he's going to be a total pain. He is going to do things his own way. That's a good thing and a bad thing," the staff member said. But he said that Webb's personality may be just what the Senate needs. "You need a little of everything. Some element of that personality is helpful."