Tibetians and Darfuris Make the Rounds Again

Mark Steyn picks up the Deseret News guest opinion on Darfur and recognizes what he has been saying all along:

...Meanwhile, the leftists don't accept it because, while they're fond of "causes," they dislike those that require meaningful action: Ask Tibetans about how effective half a century of America's "Free Tibet" campaign has been; or ask Darfuris, assuming you can find one still breathing, how the left's latest fetishization is going from their perspective:

"On Sunday, April 29, Salt Lake Saves Darfur invites the greater Salt Lake community of compassion to join with us as we honor the fallen and suffering Darfuris in a day of films, discussion and dance with a Sudanese dance troupe."

Marvelous. I hope as the "Salt Lake Saves Darfur" campaign intensifies in the decades ahead there'll be enough Darfuris to man the dance troupe. It would be truer to say that the greater Salt Lake community of compassion, like Sen. Obama with his light bulbs, is "working on" saving Darfur.

Of course I had the advantage over him this time since I subscribe to the Deseret News (just for the pictures mind you).

Defining Hitler Up

A while back I was pulling crud out of one of my drains when a little one asked what I was doing.

“I’m cleaning junk out of the drain.”

She smiled and said “I like junk.”

Not a big surprise if she only hears the word “junk” as a description for her favorite diet.

I checked Google once to see how many hits I could get with the words “Bush” and “Hitler”. At the time I got 1.48 Million hits. I compared other names with Hitler, the closest contender to Bush was Stalin with half the hits. The Bush-Hitler crowd is quite prolific.

Now consider: When more than half our high school seniors picked Germany, Japan, or Italy as one of our World War II allies do you think they are up to speed on Hitler and his atrocities? I’m sure from context they’ve picked up that Hitler wasn’t a good person. But what type of person was he? Well if Bush = Hitler then the reverse must also be true Hitler=Bush. I can see some of the next generation thinking that Hitler’s biggest atrocity was being in the wrong party (ironic when anti-Semitism runs rampant in the "correct" party).

For the uninformed, the Bush Derangement Syndrome folks are defining Hitler up; for the informed, when BDS sufferers equate Bush with Hitler they only demonstrate their detachment from reality.

P.S. If you're one of the ones who didn't know we fought against Germany, Japan, and Italy in WWII, you might want to read up on Hitler to understand this post.

When Manners Rule over Morals

Just wanted to point out this piece by Andrew Klavan if you missed it:

The thing I like best about being a conservative is that I don’t have to lie. I don’t have to pretend that men and women are the same. I don’t have to declare that failed or oppressive cultures are as good as mine. I don’t have to say that everyone’s special or that the rich cause poverty or that all religions are a path to God. I don’t have to claim that a bad writer like Alice Walker is a good one or that a good writer like Toni Morrison is a great one. I don’t have to pretend that Islam means peace.

You'll want to read the whole thing.

H/T Powerline

Further AP Discredits

Note the bolded aside when reading this AP dispatch:

By 21-10, the House oversight committee voted to issue a subpoena to Rice to compel her story on the Bush administration's claim, now discredited, that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa.

The administration’s claim was discredited? Only if the AP is using Joe Wilson’s discredited NY Times commentary and is ignoring what he actually told the CIA. From the Senate Intelligence Report on pre Iraq war intelligence, the CIA's reports officer had the opposite take on Joe Wilson’s debrief:

…he judged that the most important fact in the report was that the Nigerian officials admitted that the Iraqi delegation had traveled there in 1999, and that the Nigerian Prime Minister believed the Iraqis were interested in purchasing uranium, because this provided some confirmation of foreign government service reporting. (see page 46).

The British would probably be one of those foreign government services the CIA had in mind. As far as I know the British still stand by their claim, which was validated by Joe Wilson. Not really a claim the AP can discount as discredited without citing an unimpeachable source.

How discredited was Joe Wilson when caught in the lie? Enough to be dropped like a hot potato from the campaign of the man discredited for the claim of having served in Cambodia, during Christmas, during President Nixon’s term, seared in his memory (see Guinness Book of World Records – most lies in one sentence).

As with the Jamal Hussein debacle, AP editors have a world view not hindered by reality. When stories hit their desk confirming their views, fact checking is deemed unnecessary

Darfur: The Lefts New Tibet

Mark Steyn wrote once about people who sport “Free Tibet” stickers on their car bumpers:

[They’re] advertising [their] moral virtue, not calling for action. If Rumsfeld
were to say, “Free Tibet? Jiminy, what a swell idea! The Third Infantry Division
go in on Thursday”, the bumper-sticker crowd would be aghast.’

I thought of such moral vacuousness after reading a local group’s call to “Help end genocide in Darfur”. They would “honor the fallen and suffering Darfuris in a day of films, discussion and dance with a Sudanese dance troupe”

I would think a bake sale to raise funds to arm the oppressed Darfuris would be more effective.
Helping Darfuris defend themselves, however, seems out of the question since the “Save Darfur” group wants to discuss how to put United Nations peacekeepers in place – you know the same folks who didn’t lift a finger to stop the killing in Rwanda, Bosnia, Timor, etc. One would have to think a call for U.N. peacekeepers would only be made by the Sudanese oppressors. Who is “Save Darfur” really working for?

Meanwhile, in the 48th year of the campaign to free Tibet I found this 2007 merchandise sale at the Free Tibet website where “All proceeds from our merchandise range go towards our campaigns to help bring about an end to the occupation of Tibet.” Maybe the plan is to keep collecting money for the next two centuries, let the interest compound and then buy Tibet back from China – assuming there are any Tibetians left.

In his opinion piece on Darfur, Chuck Bruder calculates:

In the time that it has taken to read this, another Darfuri man or woman or baby
has perished.

I wonder if he has calculated how many will die in 48 years of
films, discussions and dance?