Bloggers have just been named by ABC, 2005's People of the year. As a blogger, I would like to thank all the little people, which means I can start with myself. One would have to return to the late 15th century for comparison. Then it was the printing press and the growing print shops that made information available to the masses.

The change was more than just people knowing, it was people checking. You published at your peril, as much from peers as the pontiff. Errors could no more be hidden than could truth from a Polish astronomer. Would anyone doubt the printed word the father of the the enlightenment, the grandfather of the revolution.

The first real information age, the 17th century, begat the revolution which was crushed first by Emperor then Kaiser then Czar and finally by Fuhrer and General Secretary. Information was king, as was he who controlled it. Thus the last battles of the 19th and 20th centuries were as much a battle for information as it was ideas. Where Radio Free Europe could be jammed, the internet has no such limitations. 40 years ago, East Berliners peered over a wall. Today, Ukrainians learn instantaneously of election fraud and fill the streets of Kiev. Moscow stands by powerless, its recalcitrance overwhelmed in the court of public opinion.

The blogger is the newest weapon of democracy. The internet, funded by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), was along with the US Space program, established in response to the cold war. In need of a secure network to continue communications in the wake of nuclear war, once again, the Aresenal of Democracy would arm the world to advance freedom.

Deep inside the heart of clerical tyranny, the voices of the oppressed will still be heard. No fatwa can silence this weapon, nor can any theocracy withstand its blows.

These weapons are a collection of a variety of small technologies created throughout the world. They go by names like Apache, MySQL, PERL, PHP, *BSD, and Linux. They were crafted by very talented and mostly nameless computer programmers and given to the world free of charge. Just as iron and gunpowder, by themselves impotent, when combined horrifically deadly, so to are a web server, a database, and a scripting language. While the former required factories and large capital outlays, the latter requires a few dollars of silicone and copper.

"Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one." A.J. Liebling Today, for a mere pittance, anyone can own one.

The last battle being waged for information is the one between the gatekeeper and the barbarian. The former, collectively known as the Mainstream Media (MSM), is challenged by the latter, the blogger. Now almost anyone can own the press. As with the printing press, today's gatekeepers publish at their peril. Obviously forged documents were exposed, while former veterans were "swift" to get their rebuttal heard.

It is no secret that the MSM has a decide slant in one direction. As I have previously written, that particular poltical persuasion has a contempt for democracy, a contempt for the ability of the ordinary average person to make good decisions, to effectively govern their own lives.

For example:
Ignorance and bloodlust have a long tradition in the United States, especially in the red states...The blue state citizens make the Rousseauvian mistake of thinking humans are essentially good, and so they never realize when they are about to be slugged from behind...red state types love to cheat and intimidate, so we have to assume the worst and call them on it every time. We have to give them more to think about than they can handle—to always appeal to reason and common sense, and the law, even when they can't understand it and don't respond.

A similar argument was heard in Nuremberg. But unlike 1933, there will be no Enabling Act. We are in a new age of democracy, the pundit in pajamas as powerful as any newspaper, and many with a larger audience. Unlike the newspaper, the pajama clad must be good, for they don't enjoy the luxury of virtual monopoly.

Democracy is no guarantee of freedom. No truer maxim than exists this: "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." Today the blogger mans the frontlines of democracy, the newest soldier whose roots trace from the hoplite to the minuteman. Whether it's Kiev, Tehran, or even South Dakota, the power of people to have their voices heard is a wonderful thing.

Where this path will lead is uncertain. News gathering and reporting is still vital. What has changed is that it is no longer solely the reporter, but also the participant, who is the source of information. And no longer will that information be filtered, even altered, to fit an agenda. The Old Gray Lady was humbled, but who knows how pervasive their deceit truly was.

Equally important, opinion will no longer be shaped by the few. The palace no longer needs keys, only a modem. It is the new age of democracy, the evolution of an old idea morphed by technology.

One thing that has always annoyed me about the environmentalist crowd is the overwhelming sense of power they bestow upon humans. Environmentalism is a very secualrist movement, and secularism itself is a religion, thus the replacement of God with man. In the secular worldview, man is divine, man the creator, and everyone servant to man, thus only himself.

Apparently the Earth has another point of view, for if we learned anything this week, it is the immense frailty of we humans. We are utterly powerless to stop an earthquake, or the resulting tsunami. Man cannot build big enough to withstand any force nature can throw.

The earth has gone through dramatic climate shifts before, and will continue into eternity. Man hasn't the power to shape it, and barely the power to adapt to it. The earth changes, it isn't changed. Man has no say in this matter.

Amidst the caranage and horror of Southeast Asia, we must once again relearn a lesson. We are but mere mortals, the root word latin for death. Human being the other interesting word, its root the latin word for dirt.

Thus, we are merely consigned to death, returning to the dirt from whence we came. Fatalism? Hardly. The human has a soul, which, according the Greeks, is what makes humans special. And we need remember this, that we can use the earth for our benefit, for our enjoyment, but we can no more change the shape of the earth than we can alter her orbit.

Hopefully, we will be reminded how powerless humans really are, and people will stop attributing to us godlike powers. The tradegy of the tsunami's aftermath is unimaginable. Several hundred thousand dead, millions' lives damaged irreparably. The earth however doesn't miss a beat as she continues her daily cyclics as though nothing happened.

The earth is alterable, but immutable. We can customize our little corner of it, cutting down a hill, carving a road through a mountain. But we cannot reshape or transform the earth. We are as responsible for climatic change as sins were for the plague. Some have tried to deify man, only to be recently reminded the futility of their ambition.

Rights are not guaranteed by a piece of parchment, nor are powers bequeathed by the wishes of the self-beatified. We haven't the power some ascribe to us, and we should stop promoting public policy as though we do. We have tried and failed. Everything we serve up at the earth she swallows up and spits out. While she returns serve with a trifle of a splash, and we are destroyed. In this game, earth always wins.

Earth 1. People 0.

A strong two party system is essential for a vibrant democracy, the maxim about power corrupting is true even in a representative government. No better example is there than the 40 year democratic ownership of congress from the 1950's through the 1990's, a situation that even Republicans bought into, provided they had safe seats and nice perks. (Bob Michel comes to mind.) Just as destructive would be a similar Republican control of congress. Competition is good in sports, free markets, and even politics.

But in this instance, it is essential that the democratic party implode. It is not important whether one agrees with all the Republican ideas, I certainly don't, but the fundamental differences between the two parties are greater than differences of opinion.

At one time, the two parties had similar goals for the country, just different paths to reach the same destination. Word for word, Kennedy's inaugural address could well have been spoken by Reagan or W. Word for word, FDR's Arsenal of Democracy speech in 1940 could have been spoken by Reagan or Bush. Need one wonder what FDR or Kennedy or Truman would say about the democratic gala at the opening of Moore's vile propaganda film.

Today, the situation is radically different. It is not so much that they have different paths, but different goals. And what is truly worse, and far more dangerous, is that they have put party ahead of country. Their inability, their refusal to face the threats and challenges the country faces makes it essential that the party implode and start anew.

They still don't fully grasp the threat we face from terrorism today. It is democratic party doctrine that a) there was no connection between al Qaida and Saddam Husseein and b) the war in Iraq is a diversion from the war on terror. This can be so easily disproved that it is scary. Stephen Hayes' book The Connection: How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein has Endangered America, is a clear and detailed accounting of not just a casual, but rather detailed relationship. A quick recounting is here. Perhps they should just re-read the 9/11 commission report.

With few exceptions, namely Joe Lieberman and Joe Biden, they completely refuse to acknowledge the full scope of the terrorist threat and its necessary state-sponsorship. But their betrayal of the country, their politics before country partisanship, has another side. They completely refuse to acknowledge the impending catastrophe of social security.

John Kerry campaigned as if there was no problem, and that the "transition gap" of private accounts is too risky and costly. Here again, they put party before country.

There is no debate about the whether there'll be a future explosion of social security. The only honest debate is when it will occur. But one thing is patently clear, whether 20 years from now or 30, the receipts will exceed the outlays to the tune of several trillion dollars annually. A horrible analogy for sure, but this is the tsunami that follows the earthquake. We know it will hit, we don't know when, and we must act now.

But this tune has been sung by democrats for decades. Even after 30 years of welfare destroying the black family, skyrocketing illegitimacy, and trans-generational pandemic poverty, they still carried on like schoolgirls whenever anyone mentioned "welfare reform". If there is one legacy of Clinton's presidency it is that today welfare rolls are less than half what they were when he took office.

The democrats are still living in fantasy land, the pollyanna Ruy Tuxeira being the latest example. Vote fraud in Ohio and voter intimidation in Florida are not just cooky conspiracy theories of a few deranged leftists trolling dailykos. They are mainstream democratic dogma.

For the good of the nation, the democratic party must implode. It must regroup and find a message, but more importantly, it must become a grown up and mature party, and begin to act responsibility. It must be willing to acknowledge the threats and challenges the country faces and be prepared to offer sensible and responsible ideas. Currently, all they offer is caterwauling and juvenile denials. They aren't a party as much as they're a mob. As much as I enjoy it, it is not good for the nation. And that is far more important.

One of David Brooks' Hookie awards recipients, Blind into Baghdad by James Fallows is an excellent read on the pre and post war planning. Though he does outstanding research and compilation, he leaves out the most obvious and telling problem, one that was never predicted nor dealt with.

The problem is analgous to a patient who goes into a doctor's office who is obese, has very high blood pressure, and extreme shortness of breath. The doctor spends hours detailing to the patient ad infinitum the risks associated with obesity and high blood pressure. The doctor pulls out diagram after diagram of the heart and arteries, presenting a mini-symposium on the circulatory system. This continues for literally hours until the patient has learned enough to teach a class. There is only one problem, the patient eats fatty foods, smokes like a chimney, and has a highly stressful job. These most obvious factors are competely ignored by the doctor.

And how exactly is that analogous to the Iraqi war? Almost every problem that was addressed could well have been predicted had we invaded almost any nation, especially one freed from 30 years of oppressive rule. Did the administration pick and choose its information to best fit its foreign policy agenda? Without a doubt, but what administration hasn't? However, the Iraqi venture was really unlike any other in US history. The Army War College could have chosen to look into the British experiences in Iraq, India, or South Africa. In fact, they could have also looked into the Nazi experience in Yugoslavia or Greece.

Instead of greasy food and cigarettes, the most obviously glaring omission from the report was the Vietnam/Somalia political factor. Search throughout the article for the word Vietnam and here is what you find:

The missteps of the first half year in Iraq are as significant as other classic and carefully examined failures in foreign policy, including John Kennedy's handling of the Bay of Pigs invasion, in 1961, and Lyndon Johnson's decision to escalate U.S. involvement in Vietnam, in 1965. The United States withstood those previous failures, and it will withstand this one.
...
In the nearly three decades since U.S. troops left Vietnam, the American military has fought only two wars as most people understand the term: the two against Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
...
as one of them recalled, "It is looking most probable you are going to witness one of the largest military engagements since the Second World War." This was hyperbole (Korea? Vietnam?), but it helped to convince the WFP that relief preparations should begin.

Vietnam is simply set as a gauge by which all military operations are measured. Is Iraq a failure comparable to Vietnam? Is Iraq going to be the largest operation since WW2? We'll know in twenty years.

So, basically the entire post war planning dealt with every possible condition, save the one that was in reality, most outside the realm of anyone planning. They had people from the military, USAID, all sorts of dissident groups, heads of NGO's, the list goes on and on. Everyone involved had impeccable credentials, notwithstanding any political leanings. However, all they needed was one political scientist.

What is the real lesson from Vietnam? For the US military, it is numerous. For the rest of the world, along with Somalia (found only once in this context: Because those engagements—in Grenada, Lebanon, Panama, Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and elsewhere—have no obvious connection with one another...) the lesson of Vietnam is monumental, so much so that even bin Laden himself has referenced these events. The real lesson is that if we don't handle the domestic political situation, then nothing else matters.

(Historical note: By the end of the Vietnam war, we had drawn down to less than 30,000 total force strength in country. Yet, the South was beginning to reconstruct a government and maintain its security. It was only when the traitorous (yes, traitorous) anti-war crowd in Congress cut off funding and refused support did South Vietnam fall to the communists. )

The Vietnam War was one where never lost a battle, but ended up losing the war. North Vietnam knew it could not defeat us militarily, but could politically. They knew that they could use a propaganda campaign, with the press and the protestors their agent provocateurs. Walter Cronkite, John Kerry (yes, that one!!), and a cast of thousands provided more deadly ammunition than anything North Vietnam could muster. Somlaia just further reinforced the notion that America was unwilling to bear even a drop of blood spilled.

(WaPo link) Bin Laden's contempt for America seems even greater than his contempt for the Soviet Union. "The Russian soldier is more courageous and patient than the U.S. soldier," he told the London-based Arab newspaper, al-Quds al-Arabi, in 1996. "Our battle with the United States is easy compared with the battles in which we engaged in Afghanistan." (emphasis mine)

As examples of alleged American cowardice, bin Laden frequently cites the case of the withdrawal from Lebanon after the 1983 truck bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut and the withdrawal from Somalia after the 1993 killings of U.S. servicemen in Mogadishu...

The greatest intelligence failure of the war, one which I wrote about on 12/14, was that we had no appreciation of the situation on the ground prior to invasion. As the article points out correctly, all the tactical problems were well predicted. However, no mention was made of the more crucial problem, who would be conducting them.

As I wrote:

All this led to the great intel failure of 2003, the failure to appreciate the Iraqi situation on the ground. We still were working under the assumption that Saddam was governing as a secular leader. He wasn't. He was actively recruiting Wahabi/Salafi clerics to preach in the newly construct mosques he began to build.

Hitler had less than a decade to create the Fuhrer Liebstandarten, that became the backbone of the Waffen SS. Saddam had nearly twice as long to create his Feddayeen Saddam, every single one fanatically loyal to him. He recuited from the poorest neighborhoods, trained them, paid them, and indoctrinated them. He sent them around the world to integrate in other terrorist organizations, and he invited terrorists, including al Qaida to Iraq.(empahis mine)

The fact remains that Saddam had built a large and fanatical following of people willing to do anything, including blowing themselves up. Nobody understood this, nobody predicted this, and nobody could have planned even remotely for this. The discovery of the Fedayeen Saddam surely has to rank a very close second only to the failure to find WMD's as surprises of the war.

Had the insurgents simply been frustrated ex-soldiers, then a job or other financial opportunities would have placated them. Were the insurgents opposing US "occupation", then the hand over in June should have been motivation enough for most. Had the insurgents been simply criminals or other societal outcasts, they would have long since given up as resistance becomes more futile.

Just as in Vietnam, we can't be beaten in battle. The recently completed routing in Fallujah, the victories over Sadr's thugs in Najaf, or even the battles in Ramadi or Samarra, only reinforce that when the insurgents meet US troops, they die in large numbers. The insurgents we face today know they have only one possible victory strategy: a political victory over a war-weary US.

Thus, their mission is to prolong the fighting as long as possible, continue to inflict casualties, however small historically and statistically, and terrorize the Iraqi population. And all the way, continue to use the media as a tool. No better example is the recent election worker assassination and AP's (photo, and stories, location) "coverage" of events. Bombings most often target Iraqis while the press is all too quick to jump onto a planted question.

All of the problems we face today are rather unrelated to the pre-war planning and post-war difficulties. Considering all the reconstruction efforts and relatively stable parts of Iraq, all other things being equal, the situation should be better. The looters of a year and half ago aren't the ones planting bombs in front of police stations or blowing themselves up in mess halls. No, the insurgents today are nihilists, bent on destruction for the sake of destruction. They are the remnants of Saddam's regime, an army of devotees he created, trained, armed, and motivated, which we hadn't any inclination or understanding of.

And their strategy is entirely the Vietnam/Somalia strategy of a political victory. That political victory, being mostly tactical regarding Iraq, would also carry with it a much larger strategic victory. It will sap the will of America to fight global terrorism. President Bush, and Senator Lieberman, are right in this respect, that Iraq is central to the war on terror. No greater playbook could have been drawn up than this:

We cannot let that happen. A democracy such as ours can only go to war and win with the informed support of the people.

The terrorists can never defeat us militarily. But they can divide us and defeat us politically if the American people become disappointed and disengaged, because they don't appreciate and support the overriding principles that require us to take military action. The same, of course, is true for our allies in Europe, Asia and throughout the Muslim world. They need to better understand and embrace our purpose and what it means for them.

What we are fighting for in Iraq and around the world is freedom. What we are fighting against is an Islamic terrorist totalitarian movement which is as dire a threat to individual liberty as the fascist and communist totalitarian threats we faced and defeated were in the last century.

That was Senator Lieberman before the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in June 2004 and it is exactly the game plan being used by the insurgents in Iraq. The only mention of the word media in Fallows' article was in conjunction with the Iraqi media, that they be "re-educated". Senator Lieberman's words are prophetic: "A democracy such as ours can only go to war and win with the informed support of the people."

It should be clear that a great many people do not have even the slightest understanding of the situation in Iraq. This deficit falls squarely on the shoulders of one man: President Bush. It was his responsibility to inform the public, to talk to us, to do what FDR did two generations earlier. He had to know he wasn't going to get anything but a hostile press. 60 years ago, we had Ernie Pyle, Robert Sherrod, and many others. Today, we get planted questions and Chris Matthews' "the insurgents...just disagree with us. They are, in fact, fighting for their country."

The one problem with the Hookie going to this article is that while it accurately predicts most possible problems, it completely misses the largest and most glaring war problem: politics. They made no references to a hostile press or the Vietnam/Somalia effect. Without question, the administration has made many mistakes in Iraq. But, for anyone to say that "they predicted this" without considering the political angle is duplicitous. They are simultaneously right and wrong. Sure, it's easy to predict a problem, but accurately predict the source is an altogether different matter.

Our enemies are operating on a different strategic level: where our goal is to crush the insurgents and establish a functional democratic Iraq, theirs in much simpler, wear us out. They know they have willing allies in the media, and not just Al Jazeera but the BBC, AP, and even CBS, CNN, et al. They believe we will eventually do exactly what we did in 1974. They just don't believe it, they're relying on it.

(Here's a quick example: Oprah ran a story recently on Iraqi women becoming addicted to valium. Apparently the situation is so bad, they need it to cope. Apparently, one of the problems is all the rape and violence against women. Oprah mentions how there are no rape crisis centers, etc., to help handle this. But Oprah commits a sin of omission: Islam considers women to be property, nothing more than a husband's chattel. In Islamic countries, THERE ARE NO RAPE CRISIS CENTERS BECAUSE RAPE ISN'T A CRIME!!! In fact, they have this thing called honor killings. If a girl is raped, it's a disgrace to her family, and SHE IS KILLED!! It would be nice if Oprah would mention such things. In a nutshell, women had it better under Saddam.

And in case that's not enough, there's the V-DAY website, of the organization working to end violence against women. Here's their take on the liberation of Iraq: "Since the US occupation and regime change in Iraq, women have lost more freedom than they've gained." I never knew Saddam was such a feminist.)

By not taking into account nor predicting the political component of the Iraqi operation, the Hookie needs reconsideration. In fact, every future military operation we conduct in the war on terror had better have a political factor figured in. Based in the results of the Iraqi war, each future operation will have two enemies: one military, one political. And if we don't account for the latter, then we'll surely lose the former.

UPDATE: 11:05 PM 12/28:: Since I started writing at around 7:00 PM or so, didn't have time to check out Powerline. So, I follow the Instapundit link and see at 8:40 11/28 they post this regarding MSNBC "comparison" of Iraq and Vietnam:

...By the same token, if the public can be made to feel about our effort in Iraq the same way it felt about the war in Vietnam, then perhaps our retreat from the former will look a lot like our retreat from the latter.

So true. So true.