Memo to Obama: Afghanistan is over! We lost!

While Walt was wondering what to make of the swap of one (1) American deserter for five (5) top Taliban commanders, something else happened. This weekend, five American servicemen were killed in Afghanistan...apparently by members of the Afghan armed forces.

An official statement of the so-called "international coalition" called the killings a "friendly fire" incident. Walt takes this to mean that the killers were not the dreaded Taliban or al-Qaeda, but the very people the US occupying forces are there to serve and protect. America's friends, you might say...or not. After all, with friends like that...

This latest demonstration of the folly of leaving American troops in the sandpit even one day longer comes hard on the heels of Obama's Rose Garden "victory lap" in celebration of the 5-for-1 prisoner swap. Woohoo, sez the Prez, we brought home this courageous hero who was "captured on the battlefield" after serving with "honour and distinction". [Actually it was Susan Rice who said that. Ed.]

OK, Susan Rice said it. But Obama told a war-weary nation that even though he was going to leave some 10,000 American soldiers in the line of (friendly) fire for another couple of years, they need not fear being left behind! Unless of course they're dead, in which case they'll be brought home in body bags -- still not left behind!

The controversy surrounding the Bergdahl deal is not about one confused and reluctant soldier. (Bergdahl flitted around with ballet and Buddhism before joining the army, but became disillusioned with the invasion of Afghanistan about 90 seconds after arriving there.) Rather it is about President Hussein Obama, his foreign policy in general and his conduct of the war in particular.

The prisoner swap represents -- or should represent -- a moment of truth for all Americans, including Susan Rice, Chuck Hagel and the Prez himself. The war is over. America lost. Again. In 2016, unless a new president [Hellery Clinton? Ed.] extends the mission again, the Americans will finally leave. Afghanistan will remain as it was -- a benighted wasteland of warring tribes. The expenditure of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives will have been for naught -- a total (and criminal) waste.

Further reading: "White House's Handling of Bergdahl 'a Joke'", by Dr. Charles Krauthammer, in National Review Online. And yes, we do have the video.

The end of affirmative action? Charles Krauthammer talks about the Schuette case

Affirmative action is a fraud, a sham, a dirty trick played on the people of the USA in the name of "racial equality" and "fairness". From the getgo, it was a plot by the usual gang of "progressive thinkers" and "anti-racists" to get even with the white people of America for "centuries of oppression of people of colour".

The argument was that African-Americans -- not all vizmins, just the blacks -- weren't getting ahead in society and in life because they were being held back by things like segregated schools. A decade after Brown v. Board of Education ended segregation, blacks were still found to be under-represented in US colleges and universities because, evidently, they couldn't cut the mustard on the admissions tests.

The solution proposed by the guilt-wracked liberals was not to help the poorly educated African-Americans with things like, say, Remedial English, but to make the "Eurocentric" tests easier! When that didn't work, hundreds of "civil rights" laws and regulations were put in place to effect give "minorities" preferential treatment in getting into school, getting government jobs, getting public housing, and so on.

America being the most litigious country on earth, it didn't take long -- about a decade -- for hundreds of lawsuits to be brought challenging this state-mandated reverse discrimination. Eventually one such action reached the United States Supreme Court: Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. In that landlmark case, Justice Lewis Powell found "diversity in the classroom" to be "a compelling state interest". So, he said, affirmative action was allowed under the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act.

But, a majority of the justices found, the university's programme went too far, so it was struck down and Mr. Bakke (a white man) was admitted to the U.C.-David medical school. The practical effect of Bakke was that most affirmative action programs continued without change.

But was Bakke a binding precedent -- the law of the land -- or merely a non-binding plurality opinion? In 2003, the majority of the Supreme Court upheld Powell's position in Grutter v. Bollinger. They found that a "race-conscious admissions process that may favor underrepresented minority groups" did not amount to a "quota system", which would have been unconstitutional under Bakke.

However, Chief Justice Rehnquist, joined by three other justices, dissented. He called the University of Michigan Law School's system a thinly veiled and unconstitutional quota system, citing the fact that the percentage of African-American applicants closely mirrored the percentage of African-American applicants that were accepted. Still, the 5-4 decision was hailed by the usual suspects as a victory for progressive thinkers over racists, yada yada yada, and reverse discimination was apparently enshrined as the law of the land.

Last week, however, the Supreme Court appeared to reverse itself. Its just-released decision in Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action upheld the right of the citizens of Michigan to ban race conscious admissions at the state’s colleges and universities, and in many other governmental activities as well.

The phrase which I've emphasized is the key. The Supreme Court is saying, in Schuette, that the final decision as to the necessity for or rightness of schemes like affirmative action rests with the people, not the courts!

Two propositions were accepted by the parties and the Court:
(1) In certain limited circumstances, the constitution permits race-conscious admissions (affirmative action), and
(2) Although the Constitution permits affirmative action it does not require it.
The second proposition means that a public university can decide not to engage in affirmative action, and that a university’s board of trustees or regents can forbid the university it governs from considering a student’s race in the admissions process.

That is essentially what the Court said -- although not so clearly -- in Grutter. Here's how Charles Krauthammer explains it.



Here's how Mr. Krauthammer put it in his syndicated column. "After 36 years since the Bakke case, years of endless pettifoggery — parsing exactly how many spoonfuls of racial discrimination are permitted in exactly which circumstance — the court has its epiphany: Let the people decide. Not our business. We will not ban affirmative action. But we will not impose it, as the Schuette plaintiffs would have us do by ruling that no state is permitted to ban affirmative action." [The emphasis is mine. Walt]

Does this mean that a judicial stake has at last been driven through the heart of affirmative action? Hardly. What is clear, though, is that the majority of Americans (and their British and Canadian cousins) are fed up with anti-white racism. If the majority is allowed to have its say and have its way, as the US Supreme Court now says it should be, the end of reverse discrimination may well be in sight.

Further reading: "Ethnic politics, public opinion forcing a second look at U.S. affirmative action: Two recent Supreme Court decisions throw the ball to state legislatures", a well-balanced analysis by Neil Macdonald on the CBC News website.

Footnote: Walt has just acquired a copy of Charles Krauthammer's latest book, Things That Matter (Crown Forum, 2013). In a blurb on the back cover, David Brooks says that Mr. Krauthammer's writing "transcends the crush of daily events and can be read, with profit, always." Indeed.

Mitt!!! Go big or go home!!!

Charles Krauthammer said it, in today's Washington Post. I don't like to quote at length too often from the writings of newspaper columnists, but some of them -- CK is one of my favourites -- have a way of putting things that I can't even come close to matching.

Mr Krauthammer's thesis today is that the Inevitable Mitt has squandered umpteen chances to speak out forcefully and clearly against the manifold errors of Obama and his administration, but for some reason keeps pulling his punches. Romney's play-it-safe strategy would be fine if he were leading, but he's behind -- way behind, now -- and he needs to come out of his corner swinging with both fists. "His unwillingness to go big, to go for the larger argument," the writer says, "is simply astonishing."

The example CK gives is that of the Prez's incredibly lame speech to the General Assembly of the Disunited Nations. Referring to this month's anti-American demonstrations all over the Muslim world -- which included the killing of a US ambassador, let's not forget -- Krauthammer says:

Obama seems not even to understand what happened. He responded with a groveling address to the UN General Assembly that contained no less than six denunciations of a crackpot video, while offering cringe-worthy platitudes about the need for governments to live up to the ideals of the UN.

The UN being an institution of surpassing cynicism and mendacity, [I love that line! Walt] the speech was so naive it would have made a fine middle-school commencement address. Instead, it was a plaintive plea by the world’s alleged superpower to be treated nicely by a roomful of the most corrupt, repressive, tin-pot regimes on earth.

Yet Romney totally fumbled away the opportunity. Here was a chance to make the straightforward case about where Obama’s feckless approach to the region’s tyrants has brought us, connecting the dots of the disparate attacks as a natural response of the more virulent Islamist elements to a once-hegemonic power in retreat. Instead, Romney did two things:

He issued a two-sentence critique of the initial statement issued by the U.S. Embassy in Cairo on the day the mob attacked. The critique was not only correct but vindicated when the State Department disavowed the embassy statement. However, because the critique was not framed within a larger argument about the misdirection of U.S. Middle East policy, it could be — and was — characterized as a partisan attack on the nation’s leader at a moment of national crisis.

Mr. Krauthammer concludes with some serious and urgent advice that Romney must heed if he's not to become Mitt, the Inevitable Loser.

Make the case. Go large. About a foreign policy in ruins. About an archaic, 20th-century welfare state model that guarantees 21st-century insolvency. And about an alternate vision of an unapologetically assertive America abroad unafraid of fundamental structural change at home. It might just work. And it’s not too late.

Whether you agree or disagree, you're welcome to write to Mr. Krauthammer directly. Here's his e-mail: letters@charleskrauthammer.com. Don't tell him Walt sent you, because the Washington Post Writers Group would likely ask me to pay for reprinting over a third of his column!

The rise of Ron Paul -- freedom is coming again!

"The freedom Ron Paul stands for is coming again. Sooner or later, it’s going to happen. What Ron Paul started is not going to go away. Republicans are in the midst of deciding what the GOP really is. He’s the only one standing on principles. And those principles are going to outlive Ron Paul. We’re going to make sure of it."

So said Leah Wolczko, 45, an unemployed schoolteacher from Manchester NH, quoted in the lamestream press this weekend. And that, according to the Washington Post's Charles Krauthammer, is Ron Paul's great achievement. "After a quarter-century in the wilderness, he’s within reach of putting his cherished cause on the map. Libertarianism will have gone from the fringes — those hopeless, pathetic third-party runs — to a position of prominence in a major party." [My emphasis. Walt]

"Mormon Mitt" Romney may have won New Hampshire, but (with the votes of Leah Wolczko and others) Congressman Paul was a good second, better than any of the so-called conservative, candidates. Why? The media portray him as radical, dangerous, crazy, beneath the notice of Washington insiders. But ordinary people like him. A lot!

That's because Ron Paul is the only presidential wannabe talking sense rather than the same old platitudes. Shrink the bloated federal government. End America's self-proclaimed role as the world’s policeman -- neither helpful nor affordable.

Add in Paul’s unbending opposition to the Police State Act [Patriot Act, surely! Ed.] and the war on drugs, all in the name of individual liberty, and you've got a big bowlful of electoral appeal.

Now, much to the consternation of pundits on the left and on the right, Mr. Paul’s world view is being welcomed into the conversation. Charles Krauthammer calls Paul’s undeniable momentum "a signal achievement, the biggest story yet of this presidential campaign."

Congressman Paul will never enter "the promised land" of the Oval Office, writes Krauthammer. But there can be no doubting that he has already done something which others (hello, Ross Perot!) found impossible. He has won mainstream recognition -- albeit grudging -- for his cherished libertarian ideals.

Quoting Krauthammer again: "I find him a principled, somewhat wacky, highly engaging eccentric. But regardless of my feelings or yours, the plain fact is that Paul is nurturing his movement toward visibility and legitimacy."

And conservative commentator Mark Steyn observes (in "Ron Paul beckons GOP to Fortress America") that the Texan’s clout is no longer in doubt. His foreign policy prescription may amount to "delusional" isolationism, Steyn writes, yet it is a view that is finding "more and more takers after a decade of expensive but inconclusive war.

"Too many of my friends on the right are demanding business as usual — the Pentagon’s way of doing things must continue in perpetuity. It cannot." [My emphasis, again. Walt]

Walt advises the GOP to take Ron Paul and his millions of supporters seriously. The libertarian voice must be heard. Mr. Paul should be a featured speaker at the Republican platform debate in August. He may be quirky and "out there" but he’s real! He's the little guy -- literally and figuratively -- the real guy in an otherwise fake roster of runners.