Please check out these two outstanding articles in National Review Online (Part I and Part II) written by my good friend, Reggie Gibbs. His account is truly fascinating.
The Passing of Two Yankees Legends
A terrific piece from the NRO’s Daniel Foster on the passing of George Steinbrenner and Bob Sheppard, the legendary voice of the New York Yankees from 1951 – 2007.
It has been a tough week for the Yankee faithful. First, legendary Stadium announcer Bob “the Voice of God” Sheppard passed over the weekend (I’ll always remember his wonderful palindromes: ”Now batting, numbah 2, the shortstop, Derek Jee-tuh, the shortstop, numbah 2, now batting.”). And now the news that The Boss, George Steinbrenner, has died at age 80.
That’s exactly how Sheppard used to introduce the players. Here’s a great tribute. I went to my first Yankee game in 1989. I can’t say that I remember his voice that very first game; I wasn’t even ten years-old yet. But as I grew up and went back to Yankee Stadium during the 1990s, I came to love that voice. Listening to Bob Sheppard introduce the starting line-ups, batters, and pitchers was an unforgettable part of going to the Stadium.
As far as the Boss goes, he was a winner and a straight shooter, through and through. A pure capitalist, he made a lot of people very wealthy and a lot of families very happy. Some of my fondest memories growing up are days I spent at Yankee Stadium. It has been a tough week for the Yankee faithful, indeed. George and Bob, RIP.
Mattis is a Great Pick to be CENTCOM Commander
U.S. Marine Corps General James N. Mattis, who currently serves as the commander of U.S. Joint Forces Command, has been selected to lead U.S. Central Command. This is an outstanding pick by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Mattis is an exemplary general officer and a true strategic thinker. Not surprisingly, the mainstream media is beating up on Mattis for some comments he’s made in the past about warfare. His remarks were candid and, unfortunately, have been taken out of context. One misleading headline reads: “James Mattis: ‘It’s fun to shoot some people.’” Here’s the context for the quote:
You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years, because they didn’t wear a veil. You know guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyway. So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot ‘em.
I know this might come as a surprise to some people but our enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan are not good people. They intentionally target and kill civilians. They are the types who think it’s okay to slaughter innocent men, women, and children. They hold the nineteen hijackers who killed nearly three-thousand Americans on September 11, 2001 in high esteem. They treat women as second-class citizens and view it as their duty to kill Christians and Jews.
So Mattis isn’t politically correct; he’s a warrior and he’s exactly the type of man I want defending this country. It’s a blessing that we have men like James Mattis and it’s a travesty that his reputation be marred in anyway by a handful of so-called journalists. The Senate should waste no time in confirming General Mattis.
John Kerry’s Misinformed Position on the New START Treaty
Yesterday, Senator John F. Kerry wrote an op-ed in response to Mitt Romney’s piece published earlier this week in which the former governor argued against ratifying the New START Treaty. Kerry’s op-ed was not only hyper-partisan but, as The Heritage Foundation’s James Carafano notes, quite inaccurate as well. Kerry’s op-ed was little more than partisan drivel. It lacked any sort of serious analytical rigor. I would expect a better quality of analysis and thought from the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Steele’s Failed Critique Highlights Division Among Conservatives on War Strategy
In 2006, I was really pulling for Michael Steele in his battle to win a U.S. Senate seat in Maryland. Unfortunately, Ben Cardin won and Steele wound up running the Republican National Committee. Steele’s odd remarks about the war in Afghanistan have led to a growing number of calls for his resignation among prominent conservatives. The war in Afghanistan was definitely not a war of President Barack Obama’s choosing, as Steele suggested in his remarks at a Connecticut fundraiser. This factual inaccuracy made the rest of Steele’s comments seem off-the-wall, but it appears as though he was trying to challenge the president’s strategy for prosecuting the war. He just failed miserably:
Well if he’s such a student of history, has he not understood that, you know, that’s the one thing you don’t do is engage in a land war in Afghanistan. Alright? Because everyone who has tried over a thousand years of history has failed. And there are reasons for that. There are other ways to engage in Afghanistan without committing more troops.
To an extent, Steele is right: historically, Afghanistan is where great powers go to die. Some conservatives view the current strategy for the war in Afghanistan as fundamentally flawed–myself included. Our political objectives in Afghanistan are unclear and it is unlikely that we have the long-term political will to stay in Afghanistan for the time that’s required, nor the will to allocate the requisite number of troops. George Will wrote a great op-ed last year in which he argued that airpower, rather than land power, may be sufficient to achieve our objectives in Afghanistan. Steele, however, failed to present clearly a viable alternative to a land-based, counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy for Afghanistan. His hollow critique lacked credibility because of his factually inaccurate statement about the genesis of the war. Conservatives are split on the issue of Afghanistan and the Steele flap highlights this division. At face value, the conservative uproar is focused on Steele’s bogus suggestion that America elected to fight this war, unprompted. The real issue is the division on strategy among conservatives. Because Steele did such a poor job of communicating this alternative viewpoint, this division remains largely unexplored.
Very simply, the RNC needs a chairman who can raise lots of money and who can present clear, and viable policy alternatives to the current administration. The RNC chairman doesn’t need to be a foreign policy expert, but he/she needs to present his/her ideas in a clear and unambiguous manner. Steele has been unable to do this on several occasions.
What I care about most are the November elections. Right now, conservatives are tracking to make impressive gains in the House and Senate. The Democrats in Congress and the Obama administration are imploding politically. Their liberal ideology is simply incompatible with an electorate that is, at the end of the day, center-right. So while Steele is an imperfect chairman, selecting at a new high-profile chairman at this time could become an unnecessary distraction from November. Every minute spent on Michael Steele is less time that’s spent thinking about how to win in November. Steele’s definitely no Lee Atwater or Haley Barbour, but I don’t have any better suggestions at the moment. Mitt Romney is an outstanding administrator and would do well, but the legacy of his government health care program in Massachusetts would render his opposition to nationalized medicine impotent. Plus, he would probably view the gig as a demotion–going from serious presidential candidate to party chairman. Or maybe he wouldn’t. Part of me thinks that Romney could be a powerhouse at the helm of the RNC. I’m just not sure how he would be able to handle the health care issue. This is the same issue that could potential hobble his 2012 ambitions.
Happy Indendence Day – Get a Free Pocket-Sized Declaration of Independence & Constitution
Happy Independence Day to all! Thank you to all the military men and women who have fought to secure our freedom. It is my sincere hope that our friends in Congress and the White House will take time to reacquaint themselves with this very important document. I think that every public servant ought to carry a copy of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Too many have long forgotten the history of this nation’s founding and simply do not understand the principles of limited government and individual liberty articulated in the Declaration of Independence. Thankfully, you can get a FREE, pocket-sized edition of these two documents from the good people at The Heritage Foundation.
You can find Thomas Jefferson’s immortal words below:
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.