Nancy Pelosi gets even more extreme in her attacks on Bush: "Bush is an incompetent leader. In fact, he’s not a leader. He’s a person who has no judgment, no experience and no knowledge of the subjects that he has to decide upon." And: "He has on his shoulders the deaths of many more troops, because he would not heed the advice of his own State Department of what to expect after May 1 when he ... declared that major combat is over. The shallowness that he has brought to the office has not changed since he got there."

In "No Way to Run a War", Mark Helprin penned a Wall St. Journal article that criticizes both the Republican Administration and the Democratic opposition for their respective approaches to dealing with the threat from Iraq. Read it and chime in.

Here’s the crux of his case, and the best graf in the essay:

In the Middle East, our original purpose, since perverted by carelessness of estimation, was self-defense. To return to it would take advantage of the facts that the countries in the area do not have to be democracies before we require of them that they refrain from attacking us; that a regime with a firm hold upon a nation has much at stake and can be coerced to eradicate the terrorist apparatus within its frontiers; and that the ideal instrument for this is a remounted and properly supported U.S. military, released from nation building and counterinsurgency, its ability to make war, when called upon, nonpareil.

David Tucker ponders the effects of the ruling that has allowed Massachusetts to start issuing marriage licenses to homosexual couples and asks:

"Is this revolution as good as the last one that Massachusetts led? Are its principles as sound?"

Instapundit links to this amusing story about what happened when a group of gay activists showed up at a rally in London to show their solidarity with the plight of Palestinians. They were immediately surrounded by Islamic fundamentalists who accused them of being agents of Sharon’s government.

I understand that the old "Bush is Hitler" line is nothing new, but now it’s found its way to the History News Network, not from some unknown commentator, but from a Swarthmore historian.

Actually, his argument is a bit more subtle than that--Bush is more like von Papen than Hitler, having prepared the groundwork for a fascist takeover. The evidence? An increasing amount of talk of using massive force--even nuclear weapons--in the War on Terror, and efforts to minimize (if not defend) the crimes at Abu Ghraib.

Don’t get me wrong--I have no time for those who are advocating turning the Middle East to glass, or who defend what happened at Abu Ghraib. But aren’t such attitudes an understandable (though not justifiable) response to the predictions of "quagmire" we’ve been hearing? Once we’ve established that the country is heading toward imminent defeat, we then ask ourselves what we should do about it. The answer of many on the Left is that we should cut and run. Should we be surprised that there are others who are equally convinced by the "quagmire" thesis, but who think that defeat must be avoided, no matter what the cost?

Lucas Morel reflects on the Brown v. Board of Education decision on its 50th anniversary. Here’s a sample:

"By officially desegregating public schools in America, a unanimous high court prompted the most productive decade of the modern civil rights movement, culminating in the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act. However, the legacy of Brown remains mixed as its praiseworthy conclusion stands at odds with its flawed reasoning."

Robert J. Samuelson has an insightful piece about the worsening relations between the United States and Europe. He notes that Americans hardly paid attention to the fact that on May 1 10 new countries--most of them former members of the Soviet bloc--joined the European Union. There are a number of reasons why this is the case, simple demographics among them. However, for Europeans George W. Bush represents everything they dislike and distrust about America:

Yesterday, I traveled with the 3d platoon to Tikrit—my second visit to Saddam’s old home town. It struck me what a scenic city it is, resting right on the Tigris, and featuring enormous palaces with sprawling balconies which reach out toward the water.

Several weeks ago, a checkpoint manned by the Iraqi Civil Defense Corp (ICDC) was overrun by bandits. In addition to attacking the Coalition and the ICDC, the bandits had been destabilizing the roads south of Kirkuk and Tuz by committing acts including, well, highway robbery. Soldiers from Echo 196 subsequently were able to locate four of the bandits, who were heavily armed with mortar rounds, rocket launchers, and AK-47s. A firefight ensued, in which a medic was injured, and all four bandits were killed--three by Apache air support. This is a high-tech war, and so I have been able to see digital images of the results from the battlefield. The pictures reveal the realties of armed conflict, and as one soldiers suggested, will remain burned in his mind long after he returns home. Talking to a group of soldiers about the raid, they credited Sgt. Perry Hamilton of 3d Platoon with what they thought was the most honest explanation of the troop’s feeling about the battle: it was not that the platoon wanted to kill them, but that under the conditions of the firefight, it was either us or them. Of course, in the larger scheme, the need was equally urgent, because these bandits were directing their attacks not only against the Coalition, but against innocent Iraqis who they terrorized on the roads. Following the attack, a funeral was held by a village in the south for the four bandits. In addition to being the home of the brother of one of the bandits, intelligence suggested that the village housed a significant number of anti-Iraqi forces and substantial weapons caches. So early on Thursday morning, the unit with which I am embedded joined a large cast in raiding the village.

When the order came down for the mission, Lt. Spears of 3d platoon gathered his men together to give them an overview of the mission. Spears is a veteran of Desert Storm who frequently jokes around with troops, but today it was all business. He warned them that the road they would be traveling down had not been used in some time, and was expected to be loaded with IEDs. The village they would be hitting was thought to hold some pretty bad guys, and a lot of weapons, so they should be ready for anything. I was standing next to Sgt. Ward, who was active duty for 17 years before joining the Guard. He noted how quickly the crowd of troopers, who began by joking, became quiet and serious once the briefing began. I noted how quickly the look their eyes changed—grew more stern, concerned, and serious—as the reality of the mission sank in.

The operation was largest I have witnessed to date. The raid was to begin with an air insertion of troops by Blackhawk helicopters, followed by a large ground component. But as the vehicles were staged late Wednesday night, lightning began to appear on the horizon—no rain, just lightning and gusts of wind. We subsequently received word that the Blackhawks were a no go due to weather, but the mission would continue as a ground assault.

I rode in an up-armored Humvee with some civil affairs (CA) guys in a convoy that included both Army Humvees and ICDC in Nissan trucks. Prior to leaving, the CA guys gave me a quick tour of the vehicle, which, like most pre-mission briefs, basically constituted a description of what to do if things go wrong. Accordingly, they gave me instructions regarding how to hail a medevac, showed me where the spare ammo and the medical kits were, and, if all went wrong and we were overrun, they gave me instructions to use the phosphorus grenade in the vehicle to melt the sensitive equipment.

The drive to the village was conducted lights out on a night that was forecasted to have zero illumination. The soldiers all wore night vision goggles, while I stared out at the passing blackness. (Before leaving, I had a chance to check out the night vision, and how it works together with the laser sights on the M-16s. When you are wearing the night vision, you can see the path of the laser, as well as a detailed, enhanced target. Very cool.). While the night vision goggles (or NODs) are effective, even the soldiers had trouble seeing this night given the lack of illumination. The paths (not even exactly dirt roads) we were taking were in ill-repair, and seemed to disappear into farmers’ fields. The vehicle I was riding in was part of the convoy assigned to create an outer cordon, and to block a road that might have served as an escape path from the village. In the pre-dawn darkness, it was nearly impossible from our vantage to make out what was happening in the village, so we listened on the radio as the raid progressed. Overhead, Apaches circled providing air support, and stirred up clouds of dust on the ground. As first light peaked above the horizon, it became possible to see some of the other air power that we had been hearing for hours—F-16s performing recon and an unmanned drone making repeated passes.

After a couple of hours of quiet, shots rang out from the village, prompting the soldiers in the vehicles around me to prepare in case these were the opening volley by the anti-Iraqi forces in response to our presence. But then word came over the radio that the shots were fired at a charging dog. Soon thereafter, it became apparent from the chatter over the radio that the village was all but deserted. The civil affairs unit was called in to assess the water system and other needs of the town, and I went with them. As we walked through the streets and past the mud huts, there was an eerie silence. There were more chickens roaming the streets than people. When we reached the center of the village, we found the muqtar chatting with Lt. Col. Miller. We were able to discern that the anti-Iraqi forces had fled the village sometime following the bandits’ funeral. Now that the military objective was achieved, the civil affairs crew could begin their task of assessing the water and power needs of the village. The contrast between these Army functions is stark, and is illustrative of complexity of the military mission in Iraq: in one minute, the village is surrounded by ground forces and is being flown over by F-16s and Apaches. In the next, the soldiers are meeting with the muqtar to make sure that there are enough wells, electricity, and school supplies in the village.