More From Diana

I am continuing to follow the changing attitudes of Diana Moon.
Diana was one of the first blogs I read and along with Meryl inspired me to start my own.
She really has gone into uncharted areas though.

I've spoken with a lot of people recently, all of them supporters of the war. We've all developed tremendous misgivings. Every day, every new American death, every ambush, and I feel those doubts grow. Am I not supposed to blog about that?

From what did she and her friends develop misgivings?
Perhaps they all thought that we would march into Baghdad and the people would be cheering in the streets?
That would have been nice but that only had a 10 to 20 percent chance and only if we had gotten Saddam during the war.
No one likes seeing american boys getting killed but this what happens in war.
This is what war is all about and if they supported it, as they say they did, they should have realized that this could happen.
These are not the kind of people you would find drinking latte at Starbucks.
They are animals.
They are vicious, depraved killers.
They won't go easily.
We are going to have to root them out and put them somewhere where they can't hurt others.
My own preference would be six feet under but I suppose we are too civilized for that.
It is going to be a messy business but we will get it done.
In contrast I am pretty upbeat about Iraq because I think things could be going a lot worse, a whole lot worse.
Things may still go a whole lot worse but it looks like we have a handle on the situation and it is improving.


Diana also has some strange ideas about National Defense.

I think that true national defense consists of getting our education system together, because if we had a crack K-12 system we would create our own cognitive elite instead of having to import it from abroad.

Where do I start?
I will grant that our K-12 school system, especially in our major cities is a mess. Howard Dean is not going to change that. If Bush could get a voucher program through congress it would go a long way to moving in the right direction.
The school system is not national defense however.
In some ways it is more important than national defense but it has taken us a long time to let it get as screwed up as it is and it is a problem that we are not going to solve overnight.
Fixing the school system, not just K-12 but the colleges also is going to be a major factor in the future direction of this country.


Real national defense is concerned with breaking things and killing people.
For this Howard Dean would be a disaster.
The world is a messy place, to quote Rush's Undeniable Truth of life #6: Ours is a world governed by the aggressive use of force.
This is not something Howard Dean understands.
Saddam understands this, so does Bin Laden. Every two bit dictator knows this.
The mullahs in Iran and the generals in North Korea understand this.
The Chinese understand this, that is why they are continuing to build missiles that can reach Taiwan.
When Dean was on Meet the Press last, he didn't have a clue. When Russert asked him about the military he gave some lame answer about his advisors. Who are these advisors?
Let's hope that Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez is not one of them. I recently watched her on TV and was amazed that a woman from California could think herself an expert of military matters just because she was elected to congress.
She is the kind of person, and so is Dean, who would overule generals on tacitcal metters that they have no business being involved in.
Bush at least seems to have enough sense to let the generals do their jobs.


The final problem I have with this post of hers is this idea of a "cognitive elite".
We have plenty of "cognitive elites" already.
What we need is basic citizens who know how to read.
Who know enough to be productive members of society.
Who know who the Founding Fathers were and what they did.
We need people who know what is in the constitution.
We need people who know that the purpose of the bill of rights is to limit what government can do.
We need people who can work together to build a better America for our children and our children's children.