THE MISRECKONERS

I can't overemphasize the importance of understanding what William F. Buckley writes about in this editorial about Norman Podhoretz' new book, World War IV, which highlights a sobering reality--one that the left would prefer not to recognize:

What do the Islamists have to compare with the Wehrmacht or the Red Army? The SS or Spetznaz? The Gestapo or the KGB? Or, for that matter, to Auschwitz or the Gulag?"

A thoughtful answer to that question is sobering. The Islamists have:

"-- A potential access to weapons of mass destruction that could devastate Western life.

"-- A religious appeal that provides deeper resonance and greater staying power than the artificial ideologies of fascism or communism.

"-- An impressively conceptualized, funded and organized institutional machinery that successfully builds credibility, goodwill and electoral success.

"-- An ideology capable of appealing to Muslims of every size and shape, from Lumpenproletariat to privileged, from illiterates to Ph.D.s, from the well-adjusted to psychopaths, from Yemenis to Canadians."

Add to the above "a huge number of committed cadres. If Islamists constitute 10 percent to 15 percent of the Muslim population worldwide, they number some 125 million to 200 million persons, or a far greater total than all the fascists and communists, combined, who ever lived."

Recognition, then, of the scale of the pretensions of the Islamist enemy has to precede substantial measures against it. In the matter of Iraq, for instance, the ambiguity of our engagement and the enlarging political cry against it would alter dramatically if one accepted the premises of the Fourth World War so ineluctably spelled out in Podhoretz's little volume, which takes time here and there to demolish such arguments as were mounted in protest against President Bush's mention in his 2003 State of the Union address of yellowcake hunting in Niger.

Those critics who insist that it is only a small war-party faction of the Islamists that we have to fear might have been asked a generation ago if it was not merely a small number of Germans and Russians we were properly exercised about. Sixty million people were dead after that misreckoning.

Let us catalog the misreckoning, as the cycle of misinformation and deceit go round once again on the left, in preparation for General Petraeus' report due out next week:

We have Sidney Blumenthal revisiting the tried and true meme that Bush knew there were no WMD's in Iraq when he attacked, or "Bush Lied, People Died". This meme alternates with the one that Bush was stupid enough to believe that there were WMD's in Iraq as late as 2006.

Here we have one of those contradictory discourses that are so prevalent on the left, and which beautifully demonstrate the chaotic state of their cognitive processes. You, dear reader, must believe simultaneously that Bush is a lying clever manipulator AND a stupid, dumb-ass idiot moron!

You begin to see why the left manages to win all political arguments--contradictions in you logic are perfectly acceptable.

The Washington Post wants to make sure we know that "experts" doubt the drop in violence reported by the Military in Iraq. On the same day, they are careful to include their interpretation of the Jones Report to publicize that the, "Iraqi Army Is Unable to Take Over Within A Year". and that the GAO Criticizes Homeland Security's Efforts to Fulfill its Mission.

Kevin Drum in The Washington Monthly assures us that Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) is just a "myth"; and not surprisingly even the left's winter soldier, John Kerry, comes out of the decaying woodwork of the HuffPo to spout his usual anti-American, anti-troop bull.

Continuing in a long line of Democratic twits, Dennis "the menace" Kucinich has helpfully met with Syria's president, while bashing his own.

The Washington Times can't help but notice that the Democrats are already dissing the Petraeus Report in advance of its publication:

Congressional Democrats are trying to undermine U.S. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus' credibility before he delivers a report on the Iraq war next week, saying the general is a mouthpiece for President Bush and his findings can't be trusted.

"The Bush report?" Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin said when asked about the upcoming report from Gen. Petraeus, U.S. commander in Iraq.

"We know what is going to be in it. It's clear. I think the president's trip over to Iraq makes it very obvious," the Illinois Democrat said. "I expect the Bush report to say, 'The surge is working. Let's have more of the same.' "

The top Democrats — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California — also referred to the general's briefing as the "Bush report."

And, when we hear more threats from the psychopathic deviants of Al Qaeda, look for it to be downplayed and minimized (and even completely ignored by the IQ-challenged morons who call themselves 9/11 "truthers"--9/11 idiots, more like).

For the Misreckoners, it's all in a day's work.