You can protest against the manner in which Bush has gone about bringing freedom to Iraq. That is a legitimate issue for debate. You can rail, with European hauteur, against the style of an American president who wears cowboy boots with his tuxedo and bestows folksy nicknames on foreign leaders.

Some will dismiss this as simplistic and naive. That, of course, was what some Europeans thought of Ronald Reagan’s Palace of Westminster speech in 1982, when he told a British audience that a turning point in history had arrived - that Soviet communism had failed because it did not respect its own people, their creativity, and their rights.*snip*

OSAMA BIN LADEN and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for al Qaeda–perhaps even for Mohamed Atta…

*snip*One should not underestimate the obstacles to Bush’s foreign-policy aims: The most difficult of these begin not in Iraq’s Sunni “triangle” but at home. Can the president convince enough Americans that his is the best course of action? Securing democracy in Iraq alone will require at least a second Bush term in order to see through the policy. The victory of a Democrat in 2004 would likely mean an American withdrawal from Iraq or handing the problem over to the United Nations — hardly a friend of democracy or America’s best interests. Unlike during much of the Cold War, when it could reasonably be expected that a change of administrations would not mean a radical change in the policy of containment, there is no bipartisan consensus in the post-9/11 world.

The 2004 election will be the most momentous at least since 1980 when Americans chose Reagan’s defense build up over four more years of drift and appeasement under Carter. Just as Reagan became a shaper of public opinion, so too must Bush. Only in doing so can he insure that the new policy he calls “a forward strategy of freedom” will endure in the years and decades ahead, whether a Democrat or a Republican is in charge. These are the stakes.

Fables of the Reconstruction and Cynics Without a Cause

*snip*In the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, there were reports of a certain celebratory air in some Saudi neighborhoods, of congratulatory messages sent back and forth on mobile phones. In that and subsequent violence, the attackers seemed to be succeeding in reaching a constituency that among other things wants to remove a ruling family it sees as American stooges.

The fact that the targets were fellow Muslims lent the sense that the attackers might just be pursuing pure chaos. “If they were really seeking change they would resort to actions that would win them the support of the people,” the professor said. “Before, people could find excuses. It is getting so irrational that you cannot explain it, you cannot defend it, you cannot understand it.”*snip*

My comments: I think the Saudi’s should realize at this point that OBL isn’t doing this for any “jihad.” He’s doing this for himself and his selfish ambitions. It’s been my opinion all along that the support for OBL amongst the Saudi royals didn’t come from the top of the royal family, but someone lower on the scale. I think this confirms it. OBL isn’t happy that the US and Saudi Arabia still have somewhat friendly relations. This attack was a way of expressing that, IMO. Perhaps this will force the Saudi’s to rethink their ways in terms of who and what causes they support.

Rich Lowry also wrote an op/ed about this topic today:

The Saudi royal family can only be thinking, “What good is protection money if it doesn’t protect you?”

No one likes us. And the democrats know why: the world loved us just two years ago, and then this President, cowboy arrogant and rudely unilateral, blew it. “When America was savagely attacked by al-Qaeda terrorists on 9-11, virtually all the world was with us,” writes Democratic elder statesman Theodore Sorensen. “But that moment of universal goodwill was squandered.” He writes that in the current issue of The American Prospect, but he is speaking for just about every Democratic candidate, potentate, deep thinker and critic, and not a few foreign commentators as well. The formulation is near universal: “The president has somehow squandered the international outpouring of sympathy, goodwill and solidarity that followed the attacks of Sept. 11″ (Al Gore). “He has squandered the goodwill of the world after Sept. 11″ (John Kerry).

Bill Clinton was the most accommodating, sensitive, multilateralist President one can imagine, and yet we know that al-Qaeda began the planning for Sept. 11 precisely during his presidency. Clinton made humility his vocation, apologizing variously for African slavery, for internment of Japanese Americans, for not saving Rwanda. He even decided that Britain should return the Elgin Marbles to Greece. A lot of good that did us. Bin Laden issued his Declaration of War on America in 1996–at the height of the Clinton Administration’s hyperapologetic, good-citizen internationalism. *snip*

Al Sharpton’s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination has so far attracted little support from voters, but plenty of financial backing from a loosely knit coalition of wealthy African American media barons and impresarios.

Sharpton, who was unavailable for comment, has made a similar point in the past. Writing of his candidacy last year in his book, “Al on America,” he said, “Even if I lose, I have the option to negotiate points with the Democratic Party.”

Life is good in the parallel world inhabited by Mumia Abu-Jamal and his supporters, a.k.a the Mumaniacs.

Mumia was not present for the ceremony at Paris City Hall, he being otherwise engaged. He is serving a life sentence at the Greene state prison in Waynesburg, Pa. for the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner.