Analogies are always inexact, but from no corner of history is there one that would give us cause for optimism about the West’s trend toward disarmament since 1991.  There doesn’t have to be a Nazi Germany on the horizon, or even a Soviet Union, for this trend to be dangerous.  The logical vulnerability in comparing everything to the 1930s is not that there is no Nazi Germany today; it’s that too many people harbor the illusion that danger only comes in that form.

Danger’s more common forms usually start – deceptively – with political intimidation, typically in neglected and hard-to-defend spots.  In such spots even a weaker nation can generate a relative imbalance of force.

I don’t do rants very often, and I try to steer away from the “What a Bunch of Nincompoops We’ve Turned Into” variety.  But I ran across this Top 10 list from the Newsweek webpage today, and – well, some things just have to be done.

The topic of the list is “History-Altering Decisions.”  The list appearing among a bunch of other Top 10 lists indicates it is apparently an attempt by someone to compile a list of Top 10 History-Altering Decisions.  Keep in mind, as you peruse them, that someone probably got paid to put this list together.  It even features contributions from Tom Daschle and John Kerry.

The Obama administration’s decision to have a civilian trial for the 9/11 terrorists is a political one.  The attorney general hasn’t foresworn military tribunals:  Abd-al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the USS Cole attacker, is to be brought before one.  There is no doubt of the guilt of the 9/11 plotters:  Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the four others being sent to New York for trial.  No trial is required to establish that they committed the crimes they are charged with.  The defendants even told their military judge in December 2008 that they wanted to plead guilty, dispense with a trial of any kind, and proceed directly to execution.  In fact, they outlined at the time precisely what they were prepared to plead guilty to, a list that extends well beyond the 9/11 attacks.

Nothing relevant to deciding the fate of the terrorists will be revealed in the civilian trial.

Ninety one years ago, in the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the armistice was proclaimed that ended the terrible fighting in World War I.  A war that had erupted in large part because Europe’s political leaders, a century on from the Napoleonic conflicts, were accustomed to war remaining limited, produced some of the bloodiest battles ever fought. The six-month battle of the Somme in 1916 took the lives of an unimaginable 1.5 million French, German, and British soldiers – without either side achieving sustainable penetration of the line of confrontation, or any operational victory. WWI was the most tactically and politically frustrating of wars, admitting little maneuver, little jockeying for advantage, and no enduring significance to victory.

But it marked the debut of the United States on the stage long occupied by the great powers of Europe, as American soldiers boarded troop ships to head “Over There,” and with their numbers and supplies, along with improving mobile tactics in the battles of 1918, turned the tide in favor of the Western alliance.

The shootings at Fort Hood on 5 November have thrown into strong relief the great conundrum facing the liberal West today:  how to administer freedom of conscience and thought, in the face of an ideological religion that, as practiced by its radical or fundamentalist adherents, is diametrically opposed to those very liberties.

A great many right-wing pundits have made a great many good points in the last few days, about manifold signs of trouble from Major Nidal Hasan, and those signs apparently being ignored by the Army.  Not only did he talk to his colleagues about his intense opposition to the War on Terror, he was fingered by the FBI for comments in an online forum in which he approved the actions of suicide bombers.  Colleagues knew he thought it was profoundly wrong for the US to be in a war with Islamists and to be fighting it in Muslim countries.

I love Peggy Noonan to death.  No, really.  She’s long been a favorite columnist of mine, and a delightful chronicler of Reagan and his years in office.  Bless her heart.

Alert readers probably sense a “but” coming here.

Tuned in to the conservative zeitgeist in 2009, she’s not.

In this seemingly endless period of indecision, all critiques of the Obama administration’s emerging (or not) approach to Afghanistan require the caveat:  If this is what they decide to do.

So consider the caveat posted.  In the interest of fairness, we must also note that it took George W. Bush time to decide to adopt the surge strategy in Iraq; although that situation is an imperfect analogy with Obama and Afghanistan in some key ways.  Unlike Obama, Bush had not announced a new strategy in Iraq only to begin backtracking on it when presented with the requirements for executing it.  Even more important, Bush did not at any point between 2003 and 2009 revise his objective for the campaign in Iraq.  All the deliberations in the period between the first battle of Fallujah and implementation of the surge strategy centered on what strategy to use, to achieve that constant objective.

Which leads me to the import of the deliberations currently underway in the top circle of Obama’s advisors.

How Do YOU Feel About “Redistribution”?

A recent discussion at another blog has reminded me that the concept of “redistribution” – of wealth, income, etc – is a heavy, heavy burden on our thinking about politics and economics, and one that, now more than ever, we all need to get straight in our minds.

We are in a dangerous and vulnerable political period today.  A political faction in America is seeking to implement an intentionally redistributionist agenda, and in my view has been surprisingly straightforward about that.  The practices of the past – obfuscating all drives toward collectivist redistributionism with invocations of compassion and emotional anecdote – have been left behind.  Politicians on the left today are making only the most perfunctory obeisance to feel-good obfuscation, and are working – quite avowedly, in many cases – toward coercive schemes intended to accomplish redistributionist goals.

We need to armor our thoughts on this subject.

So.  Big election coming up.  The off-year gubernatorial contests in Virginia and New Jersey can’t help being significant, of course.  They always are, even when Americans are not in the midst of what may be the greatest national debate over our political direction since 1860.  There are elections in many of the states, from the race to fill Ellen Tauscher’s seat in California’s 10th district, to the 11 constitutional amendments being voted on in Texas, to the seven seats in the Georgia statehouse being filled by special election, and the school board pick in my own town in the California Southland.

But of course the race that is suddenly front and center is the one for John McHugh’s seat in the 23rd Congressional district of New York.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air, writing today about Pat Leahy’s dismissal of constitutional questions about the individual insurance mandate, vectored me onto this August 2009 piece by David Rivkin and Lee Casey.  In it they cite the principles, backed up by case law, that make it unconstitutional for the federal government to levy an individual mandate to purchase health insurance.

The bottom line for Rivkin and Casey is, first, that an individual health insurance mandate simply doesn’t fall under any kind of activity the courts have ever held that the federal government has the power to regulate.  Second, attempting to regulate it with a purchase mandate would violate principles the court has previously affirmed.

The debate, as discussed at the end of my earlier post, is most definitely taking place out there.  The individual mandate is not just a constitutional issue, of course.  It is one, but it is also the principal means by which Congress is looking to extract money from the people to fund transformation of our health care system.  The focus on the federal budget is misleading, whether CBO projections are showing large deficits or not.  All four of the Democrats’ plans will cost us a lot of money, whether through the mandate to buy insurance or through increased taxes of various kinds.

Nevertheless, it is particularly significant that there is no constitutional basis for levying this mandate.  How odd that so many Americans seem to have lost the sense that constitutional limitations are an indispensable guarantor of liberty, and now disparage this question as unimportant.