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This morning’s Wall Street Journal features essays by both the Republican (Melman) and the Democratic (Dean) chairmen of their respective parties. Here’s Howard Dean’s conclusion:

Democrats offer America a new direction in fiscal policy, for the middle class, and in the war in Iraq. We believe that America should work for everyone:

We will restore honesty in government, starting with the pay-as-you-go discipline in Congress that served Mr. Clinton so well. Balancing the Federal budget will be a high priority with concurrent limitation of spending. We will ease the burdens on middle class Americans and reverse Republican cuts in college tuition aid and health care. We will ensure that a retirement with dignity is the right and expectation of every single American, including pension reform, and preventing the privatization of social security.

We will dramatically expand support of energy independence in order to generate large numbers of new American jobs and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. We will have a jobs agenda that includes good jobs that stay in America, a higher minimum wage and trade policies that benefit the global labor force, not just multinational corporations.

We will have a defense policy that is tough and smart, starting with phased redeployment of our troops in Iraq, and shore up our efforts to attack al Qaeda and fight the war on terror. We also will close the gaps in our security here at home by implementing the 9/11 Commission recommendations.

We are ready to lead with a thoughtful, fiscally responsible long-term vision. We will reach out to all Americans who value hope over fear and begin moving the country forward again.

Let’s take these one at a time, shall we?

We will restore honesty in government. Uh, right. The party of Clinton ("I never had sex with that woman!"), Nagin ("Chocolate City"), Daley ("I never met a man who couldn’t be bribed"), La Guardia ("The machine is greased with green"), McGreevey ("I confess!"), and Jefferson ("Doesn’t everybody keep $100K in their freezer?") is going to restore honesty. Sure. I’ll buy that one, right about the same time the sun stops rising in the morning…

We will dramatically expand support of energy independence in order to generate large numbers of new American jobs and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Nice sentiment, hard to disagree with. But … this is from the party that consistently opposes expanding the exploitation of American sources of energy. Drilling in ANWAR, wind generation off Cape Cod, more oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico or off the Florida coast or off the California coast, oil extraction from shale and tar sands, coal mining, advanced nuclear power generation — you name the domestic energy program, and the Democratic party has long stood against it. And they still stand against it. So far as I can tell, the only domestic energy programs supported by the Democrats are those that don’t actually exist, or those that generate campaign financing from rich constituents (think Tom Daschle and his support for alcohol from corn). So now the Democrats are taking a completely opposing position? Nope, they still oppose all those programs I listed, and more. All they’re for is the warm sentiment, which I guess they hope will fool a bunch of voters into thinking they actually support a program that might, er, work. But no such luck, folks.

We will have a defense policy that is tough and smart, starting with phased redeployment of our troops in Iraq, and shore up our efforts to attack al Qaeda and fight the war on terror. “Phased redeployment” is Democratic doublespeak for cut-and-run from Iraq — Pelosi, Kerry, Kennedy, Dean, and Reid have made this very clear by declaring, over and over, that our “redeployment” should be unconditional. Unconditional on winning the war, that is. They want us to leave, tails tucked firmly between our legs, and let Al Qaeda and Iran have Iraq. I wonder how they believe that’s “tough and smart", or even “tough or smart”. Sounds more like “wimpy and idiotic” to me, like we’d be joining the likes of their heroes, the Chiracian cheese-eating surrender-monkeys. And what, you may ask, do they mean by shoring up the efforts to attack Al Qaeda? Well, the only concrete proposals I’ve seen from the Democrats are to stop any productive intelligence efforts, to treat terrorists as common criminals rather than as an enemy in wartime, and to run (quickly) from anything that resembles armed confrontation. Closer to the truth would be to say that the Democrats have been for shoring up Al Qaeda’s capability to attack us!

About half of adult Americans believe the Democratic party best represents their political positions. Presumably those folks would be nodding their heads in agreement as they read Dean’s piece. That simple fact sums up my concerns about the future of America pretty well…

UN Futility

Just a couple of months ago, after Iran had made it crystal-clear to the entire world that it had no intention of stopping its nuclear weapons development, the U.N. Security Council adopted Resolution 1696. As the Wall Street Journal summarizes in a commentary piece ($) this morning:

In July, the Council adopted Resolution 1696, which noted “with serious concern that . . . Iran has not taken the steps required of it by the [International Atomic Energy Agency] Board of Governors.” The Council went on to express “its intention . . . to adopt appropriate measures under Article 41 of Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations to persuade Iran to comply with this resolution. . . .” Article 41 refers to all legally binding measures short of war — sanctions, that is — to bring states into compliance with U.N. resolutions. The Resolution said Iran must cease enriching uranium by August 31, a deadline Tehran has openly flouted.

So, serious consequences? Not quite. Chinese Middle East envoy Sun Bigan has rejected sanctions on Iran as “detrimental not only to the region but also to ourselves” — the latter a reference to China’s oil imports from Iran, up 56% from last year. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov — who is selling Iran a $700 million air-defense system — also says sanctions won’t work. That sentiment was echoed earlier this week by France’s Jacques Chirac, whom the Bush Administration has claimed is a stalwart ally in stopping Iran. “I am never favorable to sanctions,” said the French President, adding that, if they are unavoidable, they should be “moderate and adapted."

In other words, it has taken less than a month for the deadline set by Resolution 1696 to prove to be absolutely meaningless, something Mr. Ahmadinejad predicted in April. Why then would the Permanent Five risk their credibility as an institution by setting a deadline in the first place? Why threaten sanctions if they have no intention of imposing them?

A very good question.

The WSJ’s editors go on to theorize that this is all part of a deliberate effort to persuade America that we can just “live with” an Iranian nuclear weapons capability. In other words, they speculate that the U.N. is actually the manifestation of a vast anti-American conspiracy — and they’re serious.

I think they’re wrong about that, just as most conspiracy theories are wrong. Much more likely, as always, is to find a way to explain the observations with some good old human stupidity. And I don’t think that’s difficult in this case, as the U.N.'s ineffective posturing and drawing lines on parchment is strongly reminiscent of the European’s “handling” of Hitler just prior to his commencing hostilities. Read about the period, and you’ll find that organized groups of liberal-minded fellows who were very adverse to open confrontation with Hitler made agreements with him, over and over. And over and over, Hitler ignored them, using bombast and propaganda to “explain” his actions. The world took a depressingly long time to finally wake up and realize what a monster Hitler really was. Before this moment of clarity (which came when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939), the historical record is full of events that look distressingly similar to the way the world is dealing with Iran today.

I have little doubt that if Iran actually manages to obtain a nuclear weapon, the world will have another such moment of clarity. And it will be even more clarifying than Hitler’s invasion of Poland, as it will likely involve the demise of an entire city. Tel Aviv or another Israeli city would be most likely, but I wouldn’t rule out a European or even American target, as Iran has quite sophisticated delivery systems, including very quiet diesel-electric submarines. My fond hope (which keeps getting dashed) is that the world will somehow come to a consensus before such an awful event, but I’m getting less optimistic about this as each day passes…

Tomcats Retired

When I first went out to sea in the U.S. Navy (in 1973), we were at war in Vietnam. The Navy’s primary mission was to support the war with its airpower, and the workhorse fighter/bomber was the F-4 Phantom. A year or two later, the radical new “super plane” was introduced to the fleet: the F-14 Tomcat, with amazing new capabilities. I remember watching the very first squadron of Tomcat’s operating off the USS Enterprise, which was in the same task force as my ship (the USS Long Beach).

This morning I read that the last F-14 Tomcats are being retired this week, replaced by newer and even more sophisticated aircraft. The Tomcat is now a museum piece.

What does that make me?