-- And for those who still wonder.

Not sure why, but today I've spent some time recalling my experiences in Vietnam (re-affirming that Iraq is NOT the same, btw) and remembering the "Win Hearts and Minds" campaign ....

Before continuing, let me get this sentiment out of the way:  We did not "lose" in Vietnam; our Congress -- coaxed by a biased, elitist media and pressured by throngs of young men protesting the "call to service" -- subjugated us to surrender.

In Vietnam, I had the opportunity to meet individuals who were organizers-of-sorts -- the men of Phoenix, Air America and counter-insurgency programs.  They were a hardy group -- professionals who alternately wore casual clothes and fatigues -- depending upon their assignment or stand-down status.  As often as possible, I visited their villa -- relishing their company, the food, the hot showers, honoring their confidences ....

I thought of them today, wondering how they might be reacting to what is  transpiring within our legislature, in our media and in Iraq -- wondering if they also share my concern that national integrity (and security) is on the brink of being compromised again -- this time by "churlishly neurotic Bush haters" whose idea of victory and success is to apply the mentality of the 60's which, in essence, contributed substantially to the problems we face today!

My fear -- without reservation -- is that the liberal "Vietnam-era braintrust," exemplified by baby-boomer elitist statesmen and an X-Y generation of legal-beagles and media-mutts who idolize them -- have revived an anti-military montage that was America almost forty years ago.

Other than the reality that the world has changed considerably over the past thirty-plus years -- the enemy we fought in the early 1960's didn't attack us or even our closest allies.  Now, forty years later, as the shadows of shame from the post-Vietnam era have finally waned -- our world changed dramatically and tragically on September 11, 2001.  As a nation, we rose to support an all-volunteer military to pursue those who had terrorized us.

That was five years ago.  
Yet, how soon we forget ....      

Immediately after the president's speech, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said, "I heard nothing new." Nothing? When Gen. David Petraeus takes command of U.S. forces in Iraq, it will mark the start of an historic turn in military strategy in Iraq and perhaps in U.S. war-fighting doctrine.

The U.S.'s primary problem in Iraq, manifest across 2006, has been an urban insurgency in a 30-mile radius around Baghdad and in Anbar province. The Petraeus command is the overdue beginning of the counterinsurgency.

This isn't a one-off effort as at Fallujah, but counterinsurgency as daily U.S. military policy. It is the product of an enormous amount of self-criticism and analysis done by military and civilian analysts in and out of government. It does not mean, as often suggested the past 24 hours, that 20,000 U.S. troops are now going to run out and look for gun battles with insurgents in back alleys.

In broadest outline, the plan divides Baghdad into nine districts, essentially neighborhoods. The job of providing daily security in each district will be undertaken by an Iraqi army brigade of several thousand soldiers, a U.S. support battalion of up to 1,000 troops, and most importantly, about 20 U.S. military "embeds" or advisers.

Some of us predicted late last year that advisory embeds would be part of the new Bush strategy on reading National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley's November memo of advice to the president in the New York Times. After a late November trip to Iraq, Mr. Hadley said four times in the memo that the U.S. should embed coalition forces with Iraq's army and dysfunctional police.

The source of this idea, in part, was a successful Marine experiment in Anbar province. Rather than attach just a single U.S. military adviser to an Iraqi commander at the division level, the Marines put advisers alongside Iraqi units down to the NCO level. They stayed with and fought with their Iraqi counterparts 24/7. And the Marines reported that the Iraqis fought with more confidence and effect, a k a spine-stiffening.

In 2004, a similar but broader effort at integration between U.S. and Iraqi forces was planned in Anbar province by Marine Maj. Gen. James Mattis. The Mattis plan is summarized in the middle of the Army's new Counterinsurgency Manual, released just last month. The manual's drafting was overseen by Gen. David Petraeus, who will now direct the U.S. military effort in the neighborhoods of Baghdad. It's not a coincidence. The manual describes in detail the purpose, theory, tactics and problems (including spikes in violence and casualties) likely to emerge during the new counterinsurgency strategy.

At the end of the manual there is a bibliography of books, studies and articles on fighting insurgency. It includes classics, such as Alistair Horne's "A Savage War of Peace," but what's interesting is how many of them were published since 2003, amid the Iraq war. Out of this effort has emerged a "best practices" for the U.S. when fighting an insurgency, as now.

Whether the U.S. should have done this back when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his foreign suicide bombers emerged is a legitimate question. The point is this: The Iraq violence has not been running like an untended open hydrant. Some of our best and brightest have been thinking hard about how to shut the valve. Last month AEI released a plan reflecting similar counterinsurgency ideas by military specialist Fred Kagan and the Army's former vice chief of staff, Gen. Jack Keane.

In November, the Bush administration joined the rethinking. The participants in that process looked at the whole range of criticisms and formal critiques of what the U.S. had been doing in Iraq to that point. They concluded the one thing that wouldn't change is the goal, mainly establishing a democratic government in Iraq. What would change, heretofore a nonsubject, were the strategic concept and the level of resources.

Some of this came out of Gen. Petraeus's Counterinsurgency Manual, some from U.S. commanders in the field and some from the military think tanks. Suggestions that had gotten a "no" before, now got a "yes."

Is it all a day late and a dollar short? Maybe. Some 20,000 more troops may be insufficient. The inevitable front-page casualty reports and blood-soaked photos may still drain the will of domestic pundits. But what we are seeing in the Petraeus command is the kind of step back that the military sometimes excels at. This the U.S. military at its potential best--remaking itself, as it did with the transition to training a volunteer army after Vietnam.

It is not the least bit obvious that this counterinsurgency plan will fail, and only the most churlishly neurotic Bush hater would want it to. The stakes for the region and the war on terror have been described many times. There is another reason: How this ends will have an important effect on the morale of our officer corps, the people who must summon the gumption to protect us. They deserve a final chance to succeed. This is the chance.

An idea one finds in the counterinsurgency literature, crucial to the success of any such strategy, is known as "unity of effort." Basically, it means all oars pulling in the same direction. The Iraqi government, for instance, has told the U.S. it will stop interfering in the military's rules of engagement. Tuesday's victorious 10-hour battle on Baghdad's Haifa Street, by a combined U.S.-Iraqi force, looked like a successful test of unified effort. It remains to discover whether anything resembling unity of effort can be achieved along Constitution Avenue.

Nothing would more raise the tenor of this debate than if some member of the Democratic Party would take ownership of the subject of military doctrine in Iraq. On the evidence of their statements the past 24 hours, barely a Democrat exists with a clue of what Gen. Petraeus is about to do or why.

Sen. Barack Obama, presidential second-runner, said, "We are not going to babysit a civil war." Democrats will get a chance soon at Senate confirmation hearings to question Gen. Petraeus. Babysitter is not the word he brings to mind. His appointment is the result of a ferment in American military thinking on Iraq that goes well past George Bush "alone." They should hear him out before deciding whether to support this effort, or remain in the opposition.

Daniel Henninger, who penned the editorial above in January 2007, also wrote this article in November 2004: 

Generation Gap
Blue Democrats lost red America back in 1965.

And you tell me over, and over, and over again my friend
Ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.

--Vietnam War Protest Song, 1965

How did the 2004 election map of the United States come to look like a color-field painting by Barnett Newman? In fact, if you adjust the map's colors for votes by county (as at the Web sites for CNN and USA Today), even the blue states turn mostly red. Pennsylvania is blue, but between blue Philadelphia and Pittsburgh every county in the state is red. California, except for the coastline, is almost entirely red.

This didn't happen last Tuesday. The color-coding of the 2004 election began around 1965 in the politics of the Vietnam era. The Democratic Party today is the product of a generational shift that began in those years.

The formative years of the northern wing of the Democratic Old Guard go back to World War II. It included political figures like Tip O'Neill, Pat Moynihan and Lane Kirkland. It was men such as these whose experiences, both political and personal, informed and shaped the Democrats before the mid-'60s.

Over time the party passed into the hands of a generation, now in their 50s and early 60s, whose broad view of America and its politics was formed as young men and women opposing the Vietnam War. That would include the party's current leading lights--John Kerry, Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi. And its most influential strategists, such as Bob Shrum, Mary Beth Cahill and James Carville. The old industrial unions, whose members went over to Ronald Reagan, gave way to the more dependable public-employee unions run by John Sweeney and Gerald McEntee.

These Baby Boomers--the generation of John Kerry, Al Gore and Bill and Hillary Clinton--transformed the world view of the Democrats, on everything from foreign policy to cultural issues. This new ethos--instinctively oppositional, aggressively secular--sank its roots deep on the East and West coasts, but it never really spread into the rest of the country, then or now.

Early on, the military became a focus. Democrats belonging to the World War II generation believed that one "served." There was a nonpartisan pact of reverence for the services. After Vietnam, Democratic partisans worked hard, and successfully, to eradicate ROTC from elite, coastal campuses and to adopt an ethos that no longer revered the services, but held them suspect of doing harm. Bill Clinton's relations with the military were strained. John Kerry tried to use his service biography to erase the Vietnam-era legacy of Democratic opposition to things military. It didn't work.

Expressed emotion matters greatly for this generation. The most notable phenomenon of the 2004 election was widespread liberal "hatred" of George Bush. Many wondered what sleeping volcano brought this lava to the surface. It came from the style of protest politics born in the 1960s. A famous liberal political phrase then was "the personal is political." Letting oneself become emotionally unhinged during a protest, as at Columbia, Harvard and Berkeley, became a litmus of authenticity. It became the norm, and it still is. But again, only for people who scream themselves blue.

Another phrase heard often in the campaign just ended was, "I'm frightened." Admiration for childlike fears in politics received approval in 1970 from Charles Reich's bestseller "The Greening of America," a paean to youth and "a new and liberated individual." Reich's book, by the way, also popularized the notion then that something called the "Corporate State" was blotting out the Aquarian sunshine. This is the mindset that just produced the Democrats' weird obsession with "Halliburton," as if anyone would care beyond the people who were long ago baptized into the blue faith.

But the politics of the Vietnam generation wasn't just about Vietnam. It was about changing everything, most notably the culture. This generation really opened up the culture. The old pre-Vietnam strictures on behavior and comportment--Tip O'Neill's old Boston Catholic world of Mass on Sunday and at least a working if not functioning knowledge of the Baltimore catechism--got hammered down till the moral landscape became flat and fast. Now you can drive anything at all into theaters, music or movies. This post-Vietnam culture of non-restraint, now almost 40 years old, produced Whoopi Goldberg's double-entendre jokes about George Bush's name at Radio City Music Hall, the Massachusetts Supreme Court's sudden decision on gay marriage, and hard-to-defend support for partial-birth abortion.

George Bush, age 58, was a reproach. He personifies everything they have fought since they drove LBJ and Richard Nixon out of politics. And this week they are trying to discover why most of the people who live between the Hudson River and Hollywood Freeway don't agree with them. Expect documentaries soon about Christian evangelicals on the Discovery Channel.

There is no hope that the Vietnam generation braintrust who just lost this election will ever understand Red America. Until someone in the party recognizes this, the tides of demography will inexorably erode the blue islands that remain on the map.

Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. His column appears Fridays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.

That last article was written in November 2004.  Three years later (with little thanks to our Republican leadership, incidentally) -- how soon we have again forgotten .... How soon we again find our nation slipping into a mind-set orchestrated by those "instinctively oppositional, aggressively secular" elitists of the 60's ....

I don't want the men and women who serve and sacrifice to be betrayed again by their nation.  I don't want an elitist, vengeful Congress and an ethically-unrestrained media to again subjugate our nation into a role of surrender. 

My reasoning is not based on memories of the forsaken Vietnam-era soldier, but on the reality that -- forty years later -- the enemy is no longer thousands of miles away in a foreign land.  The enemy is at our door.  This enemy is held at bay, not by negotiation or diplomacy or the ideals of the 60's, but by our diligence and relentless might. 

How soon we forget.

I hate the sight and sound of spit.  Especially when it's drooled by a lisping humanized Pillsbury doughboy. 

Barney cans tuna with gavel! 

This is hilarious.  Poor Barney. 

And the dem's 100 hour surge backwash continues .... 

The ebb tide, however, includes a drift of hypocrisy:  two major tuna-canning industries are headquartered in Nancy Pelosi's district.   Surely she won't anchor beaching America Samoans in the minimum wage sloop as a  navigational error .....

Dems 1 -- American Samoa 0.

Update:  Plugging the hole only highlights how out of touch Dems are to the needs of their constituents.   The score remains the same.

Here's Pamela of Atlas Shrugs to connect the duh duh dots.

uhbuhdeet uhbuhdeet -- That's all folks!

Joe Biden, recently announced candidate for president 2008, has issued a warning to the Bush administration for recent actions to protect US troops in Iraq.   

A US Presidential candidate who does not endorse protecting US troops?  No thanks.

He said the vote to authorize the president to order the use of force to topple Saddam Hussein was not a vehicle for mounting attacks in Iran, even to pursue cells or networks assisting insurgents or sectarian militias. “I just want the record to show — and I would like to have a legal response from the State Department if they think they have authority to pursue networks or anything else across the border into Iran and Iraq — that will generate a constitutional confrontation here in the Senate, I predict to you,” Mr. Biden said.

"In the interview on Friday, Ms. Rice described the military effort against Iranians in Iraq as a defensive “force protection mission,” but said it was also motivated by concerns that Iran was trying to further destabilize the country."

Make our day, Joe.  Call for a(nother) investigation to challenge the President's obligation to protect American troops.  Curtail US efforts to eliminate terrorist cells.  Keep it up, Joe.  Just what the November election called for:  another hearing, eh?

Pffffffffffffffth.

That ethics reform package dems wanted to push through seems to have stumbled in the Senate.   A few dems joined pubbies in upsetting the ole freebie fruit basket. 

And dem leaders are not too happy about it.

Where's the hype now, you might ask? 

It's alive and well - especially in the Senate back-room. 

Looks as if Mr. Reid et al aren't too keen on relinquishing all the hidden perks and legislative earmarks they campaigned to reveal AND/OR stop. 

It's not as if dems can get around to every campaign promise on a 2-3 day work-week.   Eliminating rotten apples, perks and restricting "pork barrel" legislation takes time, doncha ya know?

Liar, liar
Pants on fire ...

Sorry, Charlie.

So much for ethics and the clammer to increase minimum wage rates for everyone ..... Unless, of course you work for two companies in Pelosi's district. 

Two tuna processing companies in San Francisco are exempt from wage increases.   Convenient. 

The bill also extends for the first time the federal minimum wage to the U.S. territory of the Northern Mariana Islands. However, it exempts American Samoa, another Pacific island territory that would become the only U.S. territory not subject to federal minimum-wage laws.
    One of the biggest opponents of the federal minimum wage in Samoa is StarKist Tuna, which owns one of the two packing plants that together employ more than 5,000 Samoans, or nearly 75 percent of the island's work force. StarKist's parent company, Del Monte Corp., has headquarters in San Francisco, which is represented by Mrs. Pelosi. The other plant belongs to California-based Chicken of the Sea.

Something smells fishy. 

But then -- demoCATS favor tuna, didn't you know?

Mitt Romney participated in a podcast with Glenn and Helen yesterday -- not only to counter Youtube videos from his 1994 challenge to Teddy Kennedy, but to address the social issues which will be staple policies in his presidential bid.  You can listen to the podcast HERE. 

Here is a video blurb from that podcast. 

To hear the rest of the interview, visit Glenn and Helen's podcast link.

There's a touch of humor in how the media and dems are rushing to judgment over the President's pending speech tonight -- led by Tubby Teddy Kennedy, no less.  Kennedy's threats to re-write the Constitution (curtailing executive powers) should play out mightily over the next few months. 

Can't wait for the fall-out.  Or the fall-in.  Or whatevah.

What will the President say?  Does it really matter?  Even if he said what dems wanted to hear, they'd still find fault.  Blame it on Bush Derangement Syndrome.  They can't help it.  It's a blinding fever.  A creeping virus.  A contagious bug.

What's so amazing and amusing about all of this is that if you (dems) don't have an alternative suggestion or know what you (dems) want, it's easy to be critical! 

Call it win-win.

Or lose-lose? 

With the nation as the eventual loser.

Those who underestimated Mitt Romney's appeal to contributor purse strings had to be utterly amazed at the amount of money (6.5 million) pledged yesterday to support his candidacy for President in 2008.

Toldja.

Unless something (or someone) totally unforeseen appears on the political horizon within the next few months, Mitt Romney will be the candidate everyone will be watching.

Or everyone should be watching. 

Mitt Romney -- get to know him.

Newly elected -- more moderate -- democrats have set their own legislative parameters,  putting  Speaker Nancy Pelosi on notice.  A corp of "Blue Dog" democrats will not be supporting all the initiatives in Pelosi's agenda.

Will she heed the warning?  Probably not.

If she doesn't -- my prediction that disagreements amongst democrats may become a highlight during the next two years.

And that will not only make President Bush look even better, but may become a "plus" for Mitt Romney. 

Why?

No other candidate for President in 2008 has Romney's history (a Republican Governor in a liberal state) for working successfully with bipartisan initiatives.

We've  been forewarned about Pelosi's plans for the first 100 days of her tenure as Speaker of the House.   With dissension within her party, however, those plans may have been placed on hold had she not implemented a surprise twist to House Rules ....

What she orchestrated was a ruling to disallow Republicans from entering debates or allowing them to offer amendments to the plethora of bills Dems want to pass -- without the process of committee review. 

What can stop this parliamentary steam-roll?

Unless Republicans can come up with a twist of their own (unlikely), only the President's veto.

This should be interesting ....

Suggested Pelosi Theme Song:

99 bottles of ..... days to go
99 days to go
Turn a calendar page
See the BDS rage --
98 days to go ....

[Continue singing rounds until "1 day to go" then repeat "99 days" sequences for the next two years.]