Ouch! (and Darn!)

As I noted before, the great and grand hope of President Obama would be that EUROPE WOULD LIKE US AGAIN! Now, I stand by my statements that it doesn't matter what Europe, or anyone else thinks, but it would have at least been nice if he could get them to, you know, stand beside us and fight a little or something. But it was not to be:

Barack Obama made an impassioned plea to America’s allies to send more
troops to Afghanistan, warning that failure to do so would leave Europe
vulnerable to more terrorist atrocities.
But though he continued to dazzle
Europeans on his debut international tour, the Continent’s leaders turned their
backs on the US President.

Gordon Brown was the only one to offer substantial help. He offered to
send several hundred extra British soldiers to provide security during the
August election, but even that fell short of the thousands of combat troops that
the US was hoping to prise from the Prime Minister.
Just two other allies
made firm offers of troops. Belgium offered to send 35 military trainers and
Spain offered 12. Mr Obama’s host, Nicolas Sarkozy, refused his request.

Poor Barack pulled out all the stops to convince them to do more. He tried hope:

The derisory response threatened to tarnish Mr Obama’s European tour, which
yesterday included a spellbinding performance in Strasbourg in which he offered
the world a vision of a future free of nuclear weapons.

He tried lecturing:

Mr Obama – who has pledged 21,000 more troops to combat the growing insurgency
and is under pressure from generals to supply up to 10,000 more – used the eve
of Nato’s 60th anniversary summit to declare bluntly that it was time for allies
to do their share. “Europe should not simply expect the United States to
shoulder that burden alone,” he said. “This is a joint problem it requires a
joint effort.”

He even tried outright threats:

He said that failing to support the US surge would leave Europe open to a fresh
terrorist offensive. “It is probably more likely that al-Qaeda would be able to
launch a serious terrorist attack on Europe than on the United States because of
proximity,” he said.

But, alas, no more help from our friends abroad than when that detestible, mentally retarded, chimpy, cowboy (spits on the ground in disgust) was in office. This must be Bush's fault, somehow.

When I was eight years old . . .

Neil Boortz makes, I think, an exceptionally good point about the argument that Ayres’ activities don’t matter because they happened when Obama was 8 year old:

While we're at it, I'm getting tired of this asinine argument that Ayers threw
his bombs when Obama was only eight-years-old and that this somehow excuses
Obama for any friendship the two may have had. Actually ... this makes the
situation worse. It is not as if a friend of Obama's went off the deep end and
started planting bombs. This man's record was there when Obama found him. It was
not a question of what Ayers might become ... it was the fact of what he already
was, an unrepentant terrorist, when Obama embraced him. An 80-year-old could use
this mindlessly stupid "but I was only eight years old" argument to excuse a
friendship with Hitler today.

Right on. For more, see this (by way of instapundit): "Obama was indeed only eight in early 1970. I was only nine then, the year Ayers’s Weathermen tried to murder me."

On 9/11

The History Channel is running a retrospective on 9/11 tonight. I’m recording it. As I look back over the last 7 years, it’s hard to believe that it was so long ago, but also, so short. So much as changed in my life since 2001. I was a newlywed, and a college student who didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life. The highest job that I had reached was waitress, and I had never even considered the idea of law school.

As I look back, I think that I have forgotten a lot of the true, unbearable absurdity of that day. The dazed look around campus as I walked to class knowing that things are different now. The voice of my history professor, explaining that he couldn’t lecture that day, because this was going to be big, big, bigger than Pearl Harbor, he didn’t know what it would mean. Attempting to find some normalcy as I watched the news with some of my classmates while we stuffed envelopes for the Honor’s program, a promise to help that I had made seemingly a century ago.

I think that in a lot of ways, the human mind tries to gloss over these things and forget them. I think that its easier that way, to not dwell on the bad. And I’m not sure that I want to remember, to relive. But then, I think that in some ways it’s necessary. I think that it’s more human to remember, to not lose touch with what happened, and why. If I forget, then I am nothing, and I can do nothing to make it better.

Agonizing Decision?

Phyllis Chestler is extraordinarily melodramatic about her voting decision. A vote for a McCain and women lose their freedom, or a vote for Obama and the terrorists win:

Thus, here are some wrenching bottom lines: Do we vote to keep abortion legal and to stop the anti-Choice conservatives from taking over the Supreme Court–or do we vote to make sure that the American military is allowed to stop the Islamic fundamentalist terrorists in their tracks? Can we really achieve both goals by voting for one candidate? If not, then what is the more pressing priority? For ourselves, for our country, for the world at this moment in history?

If American women retain the right to choose whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term–in my view, a prerequisite to female human freedom, what does this mean if the jihadists bomb the country back to the seventh century? If the jihadists triumph, American women will be forced to convert to Islam, to wear veils or burqas (body bags), and risk being stoned to death, hung, or honor murdered if they want to choose their own husbands, attend college, dress like modern American girls do, or convert to another non-Islamic religion.

Look, I care a lot about this presidential election, but I realize that it's less important than I'm making it- Roe v. Wade is unlikely to be overturned even with a McCain presidency, and even if it is, most states still have abortion rights of their own- it is not an all or nothing by any means. Moreover, even if abortion were to be outlawed across the land, this is not, as Ms. Chestler puts it, damaging to a "prerequisite to female human freedom." This is, in fact, the worst, most insulting type of defense of abortion- it requires 2 conclusions, both of which are demeaning to women and life itself- first, that women have no choice at all in the matters leading up to getting pregnant, and second, that carrying a child is a violation of your human freedom (a horrible thing), rather than a small miracle of human life (although it does bring to mind Obama's "punished with a baby" comment).

On the same side, if Obama wins, the Islamic terrorists don't automatically win, too. Yes, I think that there would be more danger, but the American people are tough, and I find it hard to beleive that, if by some horrible serious of events, terrorists were able to assert some form of control, we would not put up with it. We have refused to put up with far less. Furthermore, as we sometimes forget, Obama is an American, too, and he will do what he can to stand up to this. Yes, I think that he'd make some mistakes, and I think that those mistakes would increase the risk of an attack or similar, but I still think that he will avoid doing anything that would put us in the sort of position that Ms. Chestler describes.

When push comes to shove, not much is going to change, regardless of who gets elected, and change will come gradually, and we will have plenty of checks in place to prevent either man from making such a dramatic impact.