Is Mickey Kaus, of the usually superior and cunning political mind, out to sabotage the Democrats? If not, I don’t know how else to explain his idea that they should push a “Return to Normalcy“** platform for 2006-2008.

It’s not hard to puncture this loser. Heather Hurlburt addressed the underlying problem in the superb but neglected essay “War Torn” in November 2002:

“Democrats are in this position precisely because we respond to matters of war politically, tactically. We worry about how to position ourselves so as not to look weak, rather than thinking through realistic, sensible Democratic principles on how and when to employ military force, and arguing particular cases, such as Iraq, from those principles. There are a lot of reasons for this failure, including the long-time split within the party between hawks and doves. But we will never resolve that split, nor regain credibility with voters on national security, until we learn to think straight about war. And we will never learn to think straight about war until this generation of professional Democrats overcomes its ignorance of and indifference to military affairs.”

Mickey continues to promote tactics over policy. Moreover, when he speaks of “decathecting” from the war on terror, he highlights the fatal flaws in his thinking.

• “We can handle it” is not an encouraging message to those Americans who look at the war on terror as a concrete enterprise rather than as an abstract concept.

• “We can handle it” is a deeply discouraging message to those Americans who do not compartmentalize the war on terror (Afghanistan is separate from Iraq is separate from Israel [except when it's all Israel's fault!] is separate from July 7 is separate from March 11 is separate from September 11, and so forth). It is not Islamophobic to connect those dots. It is common sense. The Democrats are so used to twisting themselves into pretzels in order to avoid offending anyone’s sensibilities that they refuse to say out loud what many Americans are thinking.

• “We can handle it” is a distressing message to those Americans who seek a way to win the war on terror rather than slink away from it to concentrate on domestic issues, which are very important but for which they have no sound message, either. (Unlike Bush, who loses no opportunity to tell Americans that they’re great and doing a great job–which audiences love.)

• “We can handle it” is a disturbing message to those Americans who, as a result of the “cartoon jihad,” understand that the culture war at home is also a front in the war on terror. As more emigre extremist Muslims living in the West get more and more vocally indignant about “our” ways, the West will see more conflagrations. (It was a mistake for the MSM, pundits, and the State Department to sweep this under the rug. Robert Wright’s counseling more, and ever more refined, self-censorship is a trap–and utterly distateful: more twisting ourselves into pretzels?)

Democrats will be unlikely to mount a successful campaign unless they demonstrate to Americans that they believe we’re at war and that they’re determined to win it. That’s my bold prediction.

** in fairness to Mickey Kaus, he has now replied to some of his critics. (I wasn’t among them.)

The other day, Andrew Sullivan, who has been keeping tabs on extremist thuggery in the name of Islam longer than I have been paying such close attention to geopolitics, wrote that not only a Muslim faction but also the Grand Rabbi of Moscow has condemned a proposed gay pride march in that city.Today a reader enlightens him about the rabbi.Now clear on the fact that the rabbi, apparently from a Lubavitcher sect, represents a far-out-of-the-mainstream group, Andrew remarks:

This sounds not unlike what has happened to Christianity in parts of America - hijacked by the most extreme and intolerant.

Well, yeah.

We are, let us remember, fighting a war against extremists.

If the violent, mad, impossible-to-reason-with, hair-trigger-temper people we were fighting were Jews, for example, they would be the wild-eyed ultra-Orthodox followers of Meir Kahane or something, not the secular Jews of the Upper West Side, Grosse Pointe, or Santa Monica. Maybe if more people got that, they would get the war on terror.

Or maybe not.

Islam, as has so often been said, has been hijacked by some of its “followers” as a political move (power grab). For obvious reasons, secularists and the faithful of other religions are reluctant to get involved in an internecine intra-Muslim war.

Unfortunately, we were dragged into it, most notably and obviously by Osama bin Laden on September 11, 2001. We cannot build a wall between us and our enemies. We will have to engage with them, and they with us, on different terms.

The media in both the United States and Britain has decided that Denmark is close-minded and intolerant. How else to explain the publication of cartoons offensive to Muslims? It must be because of latent, or overt, racism.

This is nonsense. The Nordic countries are famous for their persistent efforts to integrate Muslims and other “outsiders” into their homogenous societies, and they have been at the forefront of efforts to help, among others, the Palestinians–which has won them deep skepticism from Israelis.

Now this has changed. In response to an accusatory op-ed in the Guardian, an editorial in the Jyllands-Posten responds that Danes are “friendly and tolerant.” The editorial is translated into English on this blog. Most encouraging of all is this exchange between an anonymous poster and the editors:

Dear Danes:
how does like feeling vilified, hated, smeared, misunderstood, having your flag burnt, your embassies attacked, your football team threatened and now even in the intellectual world, which you are so proudly part of, you are bheing called names like in the guardian.
welcome to being an Israeli. you have been deeling with it for 1 month…we have been dealing with it for 50 years.
Israeli
Comment by israeli — February 19, 2006 @ 9:58 am

Yes, finally we do see what it’s like being Israelis. I would personally like to thank all Israelis for the fair coverage we have received in your media. When the cry went out on the internet “we are all Danes now” the first thing that sprang to my mind was: “No, we are all Israelis now.”
Oh, and don’t worry about the intellectuals. They’ve made themselves irrelevant in the eyes of most Danes by their lack of support for free speech.
Shalom,
Agora
Comment by Administrator — February 19, 2006 @ 10:55 am

Empathy is hard-earned in this world.

UPDATE: If this is any indication, many Danes feel they are being smeared. It looks like they have the stomach to push back. I’ll be following this story.