Viable Solutions to the Energy Crisis

The American Government seems all but dysfunctional in the face of the current energy crisis.  Part of the problem is that there isn't really a crisis, just yet.  Gas prices in the U.S. seem frighteningly high, but in constant dollars, they are about where they were in the early eighties.  But unlike earlier energy bottlenecks, this one seems unlikely to go away.  The reason is that China and India are unlikely to go away.  If energy pressures are likely to increase in the near future, and I think they are, we ought to be doing what we can before the real crisis happens. 

The problem is simple: demand is increasing faster than supply.  For that, there are only two solutions, and both would better than either or none: increase supply and lower demand.  Almost every pious politician on either side of the room likes to talk about alternative energy and energy independence.  But the one is vain and the other is utter nonsense.  Neither biofuels nor wind power are yet contributing anything to our energy supply.  Rather, both cost more than they produce.  But even if cost effective technologies come on line, neither wind nor corn will ever produce more than a marginal bounty in energy.  There just isn't enough energy in a years sunshine or a year of blustery days to matter. In the foreseeable future, the world economy will run on oil.

So what is left.  Reducing demand by increasing energy efficiency offers real dividends.  A lot of this will be taken care of by the market.  Americans are already shifting to smaller cars as the numbers go up over gas stations.  But if you like big government solutions, it's probably a good time to increase fuel efficiency standards for vehicles across the board.  Mortimer Zuckerman has a piece, "Stop the Energy Insanity," in U.S. News.   

The first fuel economy standard law, known as Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or cafe, was passed in 1975—a mandate that doubled the fuel efficiency of the typical car sold in the United States between 1974 and 1985 from 13.8 mpg to 27.5 mpg (even though these measurements took place in favorable controlled conditions rather than on actual highways). It has flattened out since then, in contrast to Europe, which now demands 44 mpg. An effort here in 1990 to lift the fuel standard to 40 mpg for cars aroused furious opposition led by Democrats from automaking states, like Michigan's Sen. Carl Levin and Rep. John Dingell. Had that bill been passed, we would be using 3 million fewer barrels a day.

There are probably millions of barrels of energy fat to be cut out of the American economy in all sectors.  One real solution to energy prices is get going on reducing demand per person. 

The other thing is to increase the supply of energy.  Zuckerman again:

We can get past the lame repetition of the decades-old argument over the virtues of offshore drilling. Simply put: To refuse to exploit our vast oil reserves is insane. The United States is one of the few countries in the world that choose to lock up their natural resources by dramatically restricting production and exploration...  In the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, we're talking about a tiny corner of 2,200 acres (an area the size of a small airport) out of 19 million acres. The proposed drilling promises to yield an estimated 10.4 billion barrels, representing well over 20 years of imports from Saudi Arabia. Drilling in ANWR would take place on the coastal plain, a mosquito-plagued tundra and bog in the summer, not in the snowcapped mountains of ANWR that television pictures would have you believe are at stake. In the winter, the area would also be traversed on ice roads that melt in the spring. This would do no permanent damage to an environment in one of the bleakest, most remote places on this continent—except to inconvenience some caribou that might have to find a different place to mate. We cannot lose over $40 billion a year to serve the caribou.

Yes.  It's crazy not to exploit domestic sources of oil, and the Democrats will sooner or later be forced to recognize this.  I would add that we probably need to increase our refinery capacity, so that the next Katrina can't shut it down so easily. 

I would also point out that the only really significant alternative to oil and coal is nuclear power.  In a fit of Steven King paranoia, we largely shut down growth in nuclear power decades ago.  We can no longer afford that.  Fast breeder reactors can supply a lot of the power we need if only we get around to building them.  It's time to push aside the whiners and find real solutions to problems like waste storage. 

I am quite confident that these problems will be solved.  The sooner we get down to business, the less pain will be involved. 

WALL-E: A Review

Some conservatives hate WALL-E.  Some conservatives love WALL-E.  Put me in the latter category.   I highly recommend Rod Dreher's post (see the second link above).  Because his post gives you the story line, let me suggest you go there and then come back here.  This spares me from the tedious job of telling the story and possibly spares the dear reader from having to read the story twice.  Let me just say at the start that the film is worth seeing merely as entertainment, containing a fun story line told in a riveting manner.  The film is also quite edifying. 

I am in large agreement with Rod.  The film shows humans as alienated from nature (or Nature), choosing to distract themselves with video and fast food, not bothering to engage the world around them.  The film has a handful of homages to 2001: A Space Odyssey, another film that uses outer space to show how technology can dampen our sense of wonder, thereby making us less human.  The humans on the ship Axiom in WALL-E constantly have a video screen in front of their faces telling them what to buy, allowing them to both commerce and converse, and basically distracting them from their surroundings.  One particular scene has two people having a conversation by video although they are sitting right next to each other.  One woman has her video screen go out on her and is astounded to learn that the Axiom has a pool, although she's been sitting next to it for years.  The humans in the film are fat consumerists devoid of eros (I think there is an implication that babies are made by machines) and devoid of knowledge of their past; they are lumps who live merely to be distracted and have their immediate desires fulfilled. 

But the film's depiction of humanity is not simplistic.  WALL-E himself is quite human, having the longing for another that the humans have lost, as well has finding meaning in the treasures of the Earth's past.  WALL-E is an inspiration to the humans, who do ultimately redeem themselves.  In this sense the film is not anti-human.  If it is "anti" anything, it is anti-consumerist.  Humans are not a foreign entity that spoils what is pristine.  Instead, humans are part of nature and are called on to be responsible stewards.   

There is no doubt that the film is a bit "green."  This is no better depicted than at the end of the film with a not so subtle message that we should "love the Earth."  But the movie isn't just green, and in that sense it is smarter than some conservatives let on. And after all, if one is to be conservative, ought not one have something to conserve? 

The film is not kind to corporations.  The Earth was taken over by BNL (Buy and Large) Corporation.  This rubs some conservatives the wrong way.  But shouldn't conservatives be worried about the commodification of our lives, even our very bodies? Is not consumerism a legitimate worry?  One can critique corporations and the reduction of all things to a commodity without necessarily being a Marxist.  I'd point out that the purpose of the film is to prick our consciences, not to advocate that the state take over the means of production. 

Beyond the film's basically edifying message, the storyline is engaging and the characters endearing.  In WALL-E, Pixar has created a delightful character who entertains for roughly the first thirty minutes of the film without saying a word.  We saw the film in a theater packed with young kids and were astounded by how well behaved they were. I take that to be in part a sign of the film's ability to hold a child's attention.  Other than a couple pedestrian chase scenes, I also found the film gripping.  The odd love story that develops between WALL-E and the robot EVE (not a coincidental name) is touching without being sappy.  I honestly hope the film gets a Best Picture nomination.  Compared with the cynical Hollywood crap we are sure to see in this Fall's "Oscar season," WALL-E is a breath of fresh air. 

A random comment: the film makers could have profited from reading Canticle for Leibowitz.  This might temper their faith in humanity's ability to "get it right" this time. 

As is often the case with Pixar films, there is an animated short before the film.  It is about the magician Presto and a very hungry rabbit.  It is hilarious.  Pure animated genius. 

Prof. Blanchard has developed a distaste for animated talking animals. I can't disagree with him there.  But to the extent robots are a proxy for animals (although the robots don't really talk) I hope he overcomes this aversion long enough to see WALL-E.  But I have seen the previews shown before WALL-E.  There are more talking animal movies coming.  And they all look awful. 

Obama's Progressive Politics

My latest in the American News. 

Birth Control in China

While I am solidly prolife with regard to abortion, I have  never been opposed to birth control as such.  But it is one thing to believe, as I do, that individuals should have access to a wide range of birth control technologies, and another to form judgments about the effects of such technologies across whole societies.  The dramatic decline in births per woman has had very unfortunate consequences for places like South Dakota, and poses similarly serious demographic problems for Europe and Japan.  These societies all have lavish retirement policies, but those policies depend upon younger workers funding them.  The supply of the latter is drying up rapidly.  I do not know what to do about this, but it seems worth noting.

China represents a rather different problem, one that may be of concern not only for her government and her neighbors but for the rest of the world.  In The New Republic, Mara Hvistendahl has an article entitled "No Country for Young Men."  In China, two powerful forces have amplified each other: one is the one child policy, brutally enforced by party officials all over the country, and the other is the strong preference for male children.  The result of this has been that millions of China's daughters were never allowed to celebrate their first birthday.  You might suppose that the world's feminists would find something wrong with that, and maybe they have.  I have not noticed it.  It may be that feminists are largely incapable of seeing anything wrong with birth control, however it is employed. 

But there is a much more serious problem coming to term in China.  Hvistendahl begins with the enormous popularity of war games among China's young men.  Then she points out what this might mean:

The macho violence spurting forth through outlets like war games is a growing trend in Chinese society--and China's one-child policy, in effect since 1979, is partly responsible. The country's three decades of iron-fisted population planning coincided with a binge in sex-selective abortions (Chinese traditionally favor sons, who carry on the family line) and a rise, even as the country developed, in female infant mortality. After almost 30 years of the policy, China now has the largest gender imbalance in the world, with 37 million more men than women and almost 20 percent more newborn boys than girls nationwide.

By the time these newborns reach puberty, war games may seem like a quaint relic. In the 2020s, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences researcher Zheng Zhenzhen, estimates in a People's Daily interview that 10 percent of Chinese men will be unable to find wives, which could have a huge impact on Chinese society. Historian David Courtwright suggests in Violent Land that sexually segregated societies in the United States--frontier towns flush with unmarried men, immigrant ghettos in early twentieth-century cities, mining camps--are behind our propensity toward violence. The immigrants and westward migrants who shaped early America, Courtwright says, were largely young single men, who are-- today as well as then--disproportionately responsible for drug abuse, looting, vandalism, and violent crime. A long-term study of Vietnam veterans in 1998 may explain exactly why: The subjects' testosterone levels, which are linked to aggression and violence, dropped when they married and increased when they divorced. Eternally single men, by extension, maintain high levels of testosterone--a recipe for violent civil unrest.

The most dangerous animal on the planet is a human male, between the ages of about 15 and 35, who is unmarried.  The United States experienced a dramatic rise in criminal violence in the 1960's, when young men born in the post war baby boom began to come of age.  But of course there was no gender disparity.  A lot of young men avoided violence and dysfunction by finding wives, and the subpopulations that suffered most were those in which marriage had all but collapsed as a cultural force. 

China has been relentlessly building a demographic time bomb.  Millions of young men without any hope of marriage is about a frightening a prospect as I can imagine.  And there is no obvious way to defuse this bomb.  Even if China drops the policy, or somehow corrects the gender bias in its implementation, the demographic bulge is arriving.

It's possible, of course, that the explosion will be contained internally.  But the force of it could be enough to destabilize China, which is enough to destabilize the region.  Another possibility is that Beijing will find itself forced to direct the blast outward, giving it an outlet in regional wars.  Welcome to the twenty-first century. 

I accept birth control generally as an individual right, but I am not enthusiastic about it.  Those who are have never been willing or able to consider that it might have very unfortunate consequences for the societies that make it widely available.  Events might be about to force that issue. 

FISA Passes

The revamped Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act passed the Senate today, 69 to 28.  The yes vote included 47 Republicans (minus John McCain who was out on the trail), and 22 Democrats including Barack Obama. 

FISA is designed to protect the civil liberties of Americans in the United States, while allowing America's intelligence services broad powers to monitor communications abroad.  No one in Congress seems to doubt that our intelligence services should be able to listen in freely when, say, a member of Hezbollah in Lebanon calls someone in Iran.  There is no role for judges in that case. 

But what happens when one of the two parties calls someone in Chicago?  FISA creates a special court to issue warrants in such a case.  I gather that such warrants can be issued retroactively, so the spooks don't have to stop listening to what may be a party to the next terrorist plot while someone rounds up a judge.  The new version of FISA tightens some of the restrictions on such surveillance, for example prohibiting "so-called "reverse targeting" -- using the authority to intercept foreign communications without an individual warrant if the real purpose is to spy on a "particular, known person" in this country."  All of that seems reasonable to me. It is true that the new FISA, like the old one, allows the issue of warrants without cause, which is to say without prior evidence of wrong-doing.  But that is the nature of intelligence gathering directed against our enemies abroad.  The purpose is not to make cases, but to prevent mischief. 

The sticky issue was retroactive immunity for telecom firms that aided the Bush Administration in the days following 9/11.  I think this was vital to the purposes of the bill.  Do we really want companies to withhold information that might help our security services prevent the next 9/11 for fear that they might be sued later?  It is not the job of Verizon to enforce the fourth amendment. 

There are obviously two key national interests involved here.  One is to protect the privacy of American citizens.  The other is to keep terrorists from blowing us out of our socks.  Intelligence powers can obviously be abused.  If the Bush administration used such powers to spy on the Obama Organization, or the ACLU, or Greenpeace, that would be such an abuse.  I have not heard a shred of evidence to indicate such abuse.  Bush & Company probably think there is no reason to be concerned about civil liberties, but someone needs to be concerned.  FISA's Democratic critics are concerned about that, but don't seem to be even a little concerned about the need to keep an eye on the bad guys.  The only bad guys they seem to notice are the Bushies.  That, I suppose, is why you need two parties.  The bill was a compromise.  It is probably true that Bush got more than his opponents did. 

But I issue again the warning I have issued before: if something happens that really makes all Americans fear for their lives and futures, they won't care much about thereafter about fourth amendment protections.  If you care about civil liberties, you have to make sure that the other shoe doesn't drop. 

Replies to a Cherished Reader

Intrepid reader BB (Blarney Bob, if I am not mistaken), has posted a lot of comments on my Keloland site.  While I find BB a bit snippy now and then, he is a thoughtful and educated critic and I appreciate him.  So here are some replies. 

To my post Obama the Flip Flop Phemon 1, BB has this:

"Flip flopping" or "waffling" is a political necessity. Being uncompromising and adhering dogmatically to an issue is usually not good policy.

To which I reply: waffling is often necessary, but some waffle more than others, and Obama has been waffling like he's getting paid for it.  At least he's not "dogmatic". 

To my post on Lincoln and Darwin, BB had this:

Not a bad post Dr. Blanchard. Although Lincoln would have done anything to preserve the Union including allowing slavery (and also suspending habeus corpus). How would you rank W with him? Would he have been president of the CSA? Texas and privilege...I bet after First Bull Run he would have declared "mission accomplished!" Just think how many lives could have been saved! Anyway here is an interesting link for you: http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/resources/quiz.aspx Check it out and see how you do! Sorry there is no listing in the rankings for DSU but considering that Harvard seniors only got 69% it is perhaps better not to know. Enjoy and happy Independence day!

Thanks, BB.  I'm not sure what you mean by "Lincoln would have done anything to preserve the Union including allowing slavery."  Lincoln argued, rightly, that the Constitution protected slavery in the states where it existed, but he was steadfastly opposed to its extension into new territories.  He thought that it would die if it were closed off in the South.  The South agreed, and so his "adhering dogmatically" to his position brought about the war.  As for Bush, it does him little disservice to say that he is no Lincoln.  I took the test at the site you posted.  It was pretty good.  In a moment of inattention, I answered one question incorrectly.

To my post on biofuels, there is this:

Gee Ken, I thought you of all people would appreciate ethanol. Not only does it cost you less to fill up your SUV but also has the added benefit of helping to alleviate the fundamental cause of the earth's problems--overpopulation!

I think I follow BB's sarcasm here, and if so, I am in agreement.

For time's sake, I must skip his most substantial and interesting comment, to my post on Iraq.  But I note this comment on my post about Enemies of Reading at Purdue:

In the Bush administration the kid would not even have gotten a job unless he passed such crucial questions as: "Who did you vote for?; and "What is your stance on Roe?" Obviously key prerequisites to getting a job reconstructing Iraq. This is past being "antithetical to freedom of thought." This is political nepotism of the worst sort resulting in negligence bordering on criminal.

I understand that BB loathes George W., but the comment is goofy.  Choosing who to appoint to positions in one's administration is one of the things you get to do when you have an administration. Every administration tries to find places for its friends, and keep out people who would oppose its policies.  But even if that weren't true, this issue has nothing to do with telling a university employee what books he is allowed to read during break. That is left wing authoritarianism, and BB ought to recognize it and be appalled by it.  If he were in the same position as Mr. Sampson, he would be just as vulnerable, or so I conclude.  BB obviously reads a lot. 

Again, thanks BB.  You let me know that I have at least one reader. 

Congressional Approval Rating Falls to Single Digits

Rasmussen:  "The percentage of voters who give Congress good or excellent ratings has fallen to single digits for the first time in Rasmussen Reports tracking history. This month, just 9% say Congress is doing a good or excellent job. Most voters (52%) say Congress is doing a poor job, which ties the record high in that dubious category."  So, why aren't Republicans going after the "new Democratic Congress" harder?  As Prof. Blanchard points out below, there's nothing "new" in Obama's politics, just as there's been no real leadership from the Democrats (or Republicans, for that matter) in Congress.

Obama the Flip Flop Phenom 2

I have long thought it pernicious idea that one candidate can transcend politics as we know it.  Some candidates are better than others, but all are politicians by definition, and that carries with it certain kinds of baggage.  Barack Obama began his candidacy precisely by selling a vision of transcendence, and a lot of his voters clearly bought into it.  So I am genuinely grateful that Senator Obama has been working tirelessly for weeks now to tear that vision into microscraps.  Here's what he said today, from the Washington Post:

By Anne E. Kornblut
POWDER SPRINGS, Ga. -- Sen. Barack Obama on Tuesday broadly dismissed recent stories that he is moving toward the political center, saying he has always held certain centrist views -- on encouraging faith, on the right of individuals to own guns -- and that attempts to portray him otherwise are the work of cynics.
            
Obama, egged on by a raucous audience, said he would like to address "this whole notion that I am shifting to the center, or that I am flip-flopping."  "The people who say this apparently haven't been listening to me," Obama said.

Well, Obama is now in the position of the naked guy telling people who can plainly see his pud wiggling about that he is wearing a fine and modest set of clothes.  Here's Rich Lowry at Real Clear Politics:

In the past few weeks, Obama has broken two pledges (to take public financing in the general election and to filibuster legal immunity for telecoms that cooperated with the government in terrorist surveillance); has belittled his own rhetoric during the primary campaign (saying it could get "overheated and amplified" on the issue of trade); redefined his promise to meet without preconditions with the leaders of hostile states until it's basically meaningless; endorsed a Supreme Court decision striking down a Washington, D.C., gun ban his campaign had previously said he supported; and made muddy, centrist-sounding statements about his positions on Iraq and abortion that he had to go back and try to clarify.

But if you don't believe Lowry, who is no friend of Obama or his party, you might take seriously Bob Herbert, very much a man of the left.  From the New York Times:

One issue or another might not have made much difference. Tacking toward the center in a general election is as common as kissing babies in a campaign, and lord knows the Democrats need to expand their coalition.

But Senator Obama is not just tacking gently toward the center. He’s lurching right when it suits him, and he’s zigging with the kind of reckless abandon that’s guaranteed to cause disillusion, if not whiplash.

So there he was in Zanesville, Ohio, pandering to evangelicals by promising not just to maintain the Bush program of investing taxpayer dollars in religious-based initiatives, but to expand it. Separation of church and state? Forget about it.

And there he was, in the midst of an election campaign in which the makeup of the Supreme Court is as important as it has ever been, agreeing with Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas that the death penalty could be imposed for crimes other than murder. What was the man thinking?

Another voice on the left, E.J. Dionne, notices the same thing.  So does the Washington Post, though this Democratic organ welcomes what it sees as a more sensible policy on Iraq.  I might welcome it too, if only I could figure out what it is.  And if all this weren't enough, my esteemed Keloland colleague Todd Epp seems to feel a bit betrayed by the Phenom.

But it is Herbert who puts his finger on what is amazing about Obama's sudden, dramatic sidesteps:

Only an idiot would think or hope that a politician going through the crucible of a presidential campaign could hold fast to every position, steer clear of the stumbling blocks of nuance and never make a mistake. But Barack Obama went out of his way to create the impression that he was a new kind of political leader — more honest, less cynical and less relentlessly calculating than most.

You would be able to listen to him without worrying about what the meaning of “is” is.

This is why so many of Senator Obama’s strongest supporters are uneasy, upset, dismayed and even angry at the candidate who is now emerging in the bright light of summer.

It's silly to deny that Barack Obama is flip-flopping at an unprecedented frequency.  Some folks are probably hearing the waves on their iPods.  What is most interesting is what it says about the Obama campaign's view of the election.  To be sure of victory, he must adopt a lot of conservative positions. That's what Clinton adviser Dick Morris called "triangulating."  Obama is absorbing the Clintonian strategy, whether or not he is absorbing Clinton voters.  But triangulating is necessary only if you think that most of the electorate doesn't really believe what you believe.  We have learned a lot about Barack Obama over the last couple of weeks. 

 

Racism, the South, and the Politics of Voting

Jonah Goldberg:  'The story of the South's sloughing off of racism and its movement into the GOP fold, is one of the most egregiously under-told and distorted tales of modern political history. . . . The bigotry aimed at the South never ceases to amaze me. Indeed, it is astounding to me how the left tells us we need to understand the nuance of, say,  the Jihadi mind in all of its shades of gray, but when it comes to the voting habits of law-abiding white North Carolinians all you need to know is that if  a white hand pulls a lever for a Republican politician, that hand must be attached to a racist, and that racism guided the hand to vote for a Republican."

All the News Thats Fit to Print

Andy McCarthy:  Victory in Iraq ... Yawn

Newspaper Blues

Reuters:  "Shares of McClatchy Co, publisher of the Miami Herald, are down 77 percent this year; Lee Enterprises Inc, which owns the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, is down 84 percent. The largest of them all, USA Today publisher Gannett Co, is trading at a nearly 17-year low."  Also note this graph of Gannett's stock price (Gannet owns the Argus Leader):

Enemies of Reading at Purdue

If anyone doubts that the contemporary left, at least as it is represented in many institutions of higher learning, is crawling with enemies of free intellectual inquiry, consider this story from Purdue.  Dorothy Rabinowitz, in the Wall Street Journal:

The story began prosaically enough. Keith Sampson, a student employee on the janitorial staff earning his way toward a degree, was in the habit of reading during work breaks. Last October he was immersed in "Notre Dame Vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan."

Mr. Sampson was in short order visited by his union representative, who informed him he must not bring this book to the break room, and that he could be fired. Taking the book to the campus, Mr. Sampson says he was told, was "like bringing pornography to work." That it was a history of the battle students waged against the Klan in the 1920s in no way impressed the union rep.

The assistant affirmative action officer who next summoned the student was similarly unimpressed. Indeed she was, Mr. Sampson says, irate at his explanation that he was, after all, reading a scholarly book. "The Klan still rules Indiana," Marguerite Watkins told him – didn't he know that? Mr. Sampson, by now dazed, pointed out that this book was carried in the university library. Yes, she retorted, you can get Klan propaganda in the library.

The university has allowed no interviews with Ms. Watkins or any other university official involved in the case. Still, there can be no disputing the contents of the official letter that set forth the university's case.

Mr. Sampson stood accused of "openly reading the book related to a historically and racially abhorrent subject in the presence of your Black co-workers." The statement, signed by chief affirmative action officer Lillian Charleston, asserted that her office had completed its investigation of the charges brought by Ms. Nakea William, his co-worker – that Mr. Sampson had continued, despite complaints, to read a book on this "inflammatory topic." "We conclude," the letter informed him, "that your conduct constitutes racial harassment. . . ." A very serious matter, with serious consequences, it went on to point out.

Fortunately, the story has a happy ending.  Mr. Sampson (no word on Delila yet) managed to get help from the ACLU and FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) and the Purdue administration quickly back-peddled, denying that it had ever said or did what it said and did in print. 

But one has to wonder just what kind of people these are who regard "openly reading a book" as a crime?  Bozos, to be certain.  But malevolent Bozos, whose every instinct is antithetical to freedom of thought.  Every honest person on the left, with a genuine concern for liberty, should demand that this sort of thing be shut down. 

Victory over AQI (al Qaeda in Iraq)

Winning is better than losing.  1991 was a glorious year for Twins fans.  1994 was a glorious year for Republicans.  2004 was a glorious year for George W. Bush.  2008 looks to be a glorious year for anyone who cares about winning the war in Iraq.  This from Marie Colvin, in Iraq for the Times of London:

American and Iraqi forces are driving Al-Qaeda in Iraq out of its last redoubt in the north of the country in the culmination of one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror.

After being forced from its strongholds in the west and centre of Iraq in the past two years, Al-Qaeda’s dwindling band of fighters has made a defiant “last stand” in the northern city of Mosul.

A huge operation to crush the 1,200 fighters who remained from a terrorist force once estimated at more than 12,000 began on May 10.

Critics of the Iraq invasion will point out that al Qaeda wasn't in Iraq in any significant way before the invasion.  Ok.  But given that they are about to be soundly defeated there (12,00 in May to 1,200, about to be smoked out, is what defeat looks like), doesn't this look like a disaster for al Qaeda?  Imagine if the United States had withdrawn in the face of terrible violence, and AQI had taken control?  That would have been an unparalleled disaster for us.  Al Qaeda's stock would have risen world wide, and they would have had Iraq's oil to fund their schemes with.  That is what we would have been facing if the Democrats had had the courage of their convictions, and had blocked the surge policy. 

As it is, al Qaeda is about as discredited as a political movement can get.  It has suffered a terrible defeat on the battlefield, and has alienated Muslims everywhere.  Letting al Qaeda into Iraq may certainly be chalked up among Bush's failures.  He surely failed to anticipate it.  But his surge strategy was the right call and, because of it, al Qaeda's adventure in Iraq is turning out a lot worse for them than for us.  Maybe the war was a terrible idea, but winning it is a lot better than losing.