Hey, folks!

Today is the State Funeral for Ronald Reagan (going on as I type this). It's an absolutely gorgeous day (and has been a fantastically beautiful morning), and I thought it was quite appropriate that the Gipper get his send off on such a day.

Farewell, Mr. President.

• First on the list of semi-related items is Will Collier's post defending the Common Wisdom surrounding Reagan's impact on the world (it was gargantuan).
  

  [E]ven the most dedicated media filter can't help but let through the media/Leftist meme that Reagan was simply fortunate in his timing; it was really Saint Mikhail of Stavropol who "ended the Cold War." This quaint fiction ignores the history of the 1980's, to say nothing of their happy ending. Gorbachev, the last dictator of the Soviet Union, "ended" that conflict by losing it, and his own grasp of empire, in a popular revolution.
  
  Lest we forget, this dictator did not "step down," or "release" power--he was removed by his own people. Lest we forget, just months after being awarded a Nobel Prize for not invading his neighbors (by those standards, every U.S. President should earn the award for years in which they fail to march on Canada and Mexico), Gorbachev sent KGB black beret thugs into Lithuania and Latvia, where they murdered numerous pro-democracy activists. Noting that Gorbachev was the "least bad" of the USSR's sordid pantheon of despots comes close to the very definition of damning with faint praise.
  
  As George Bush (41) aptly noted, Communism didn't fall. It was pushed.

  He includes a very appropriate assessment of the conflict from the standpoint of a Soviet general:
  

  "You know what caused the downfall of the Soviet Union? You know what did it?" demanded a senior [Soviet] general, a little flush with vodka.
  
  Some racked their brains with thoughts of missile defense, perpetual shortages of everything from soap to vodka, the U.S. military buildup. The general banged his fist again. "That damn speech about the evil empire! That's what did it!" The general was standing now, and to the questioning eyes of one American he added: "It was an evil empire. It was."

  Indeed.
  
  Also of note, the fact that post-Communist countries are celebrating Reagan's life more than America itself is (if that's possible). Ya did good, Ronnie!


• Speaking of formerly Communist countries, what of Russia? Well, Vladimir Putin has a few words for the Democrats today:
  

  I am deeply convinced that President Bush's political adversaries have no moral right to attack him over Iraq because they did exactly the same.
  
  It suffices to recall Yugoslavia. Now look at them. They don't like what President Bush is doing in Iraq.

  I wonder if Putin is one of these mysterious "Foreign Leaders" who supposedly are backing John Kerry for President. Somehow, I doubt it.


• To go along with Putin's statements, here's Matt Welch in an article titled "Temporary Doves":
  

  it is of pressing interest to see what the architects of Kosovo, and its predecessor campaign in Bosnia, have to say about Bush?s controversial war. As luck would have it, there are recent books from three key Yugoslavia warriors: Madeleine Albright, the Munich-haunted Czechoslovak ?migr? who was the most influential anti-Milosevic hawk in Clinton?s cabinet; George Soros, the Munich-haunted Hungarian ?migr? and billionaire philanthropist who was among the earliest and most influential nongovernmental voices to urge military action against Serb nationalists; and Wesley Clark, the retired supreme allied commander of NATO who directed the Kosovo War.
  
  .........
  
  So what?s wrong with regime change in Iraq, whose dictator made the democratically elected (and defeated) Vladimir Meciar look like Thomas Jefferson? Soros? explanation is almost laughably tortured: "When the weapons of mass destruction could not be found, President Bush fell back on the justification of liberating Iraq from a heinous dictator and introducing democracy. That is indeed a noble cause, which could have justified the invasion if the president had made a case for it. But that was not the case that President Bush had presented to Congress, and presumably, Congress would not have endorsed it."
  
  Later, "noble cause" notwithstanding, Soros compares Iraq unfavorably to Vietnam, rues that "it could have been avoided," and then announces that "admittedly, Saddam was a heinous tyrant and it was a good thing to get rid of him" -- and that?s just on a single page. A page later, he laments that the United States, because of overextension in Iraq, "has been reluctant to get engaged in Liberia, causing unnecessary suffering." To be only slightly unfair, Soros seems to oppose toppling tyrants only when it is Bush?s White House doing the dirty work.
  
  Why? Because the president has embraced the doctrine of military pre-emption, allowed some members of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century to have positions of influence on foreign policy, and noisily mocked multilateralism in favor of case-by-case bilateral arrangements, thereby making the rest of the world, including longtime allies, nervous and surly.
  
  The criticism is valid enough, and Albright shares it, though to a less vitriolic degree. (Soros decries "Bush?s rabid unilateralism," while Albright worries diplomatically that "the great institutions forged by the trans-Atlantic partnership that saved freedom in the twentieth century are in jeopardy" and "must be rescued and revitalized if that blessing is to survive the twenty-first.")
  
  But both fail to acknowledge that the democratizing idealism of Bush administration officials such as Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz is in fact suspiciously similar to their own nosy Wilsonianism.

  Read The Whole Thing.


• To move back to Reagan and Communism for a second, take a look at Kevin Jaeger over at Treaudopia:
  

  To Lenin they were useful idiots, but now that they aren't useful to anyone anymore it's interesting to see that they're still idiots.
  
  .........
  
  Yeah, that's it. Everyone's jealous of Cuba's incredible achievements in human development. And North Korea's amazing success at fighting obesity. Socialist agriculture may produce famine, but it sure is an effective program against obesity.

  I wonder if Communist supporters will ever recognize the fact that they lost?


• Arthur Chrenkoff - who is going to be added to my BlogRoll as soon as I finish this post - has an incredible roundup of good news from Iraq. Points of interest:
  

  "The Baghdad City Council, largely a mix of previously apolitical technocrats, ranging from sheiks to secularists and from lawyers to engineers, has become a power in its own right. Council members were selected by their neighbors almost a year ago, and after first focusing on their neighborhoods, have since started to speak out on national issues."

  Western institutions and individuals continue to give practical assistance to Iraqis; for example lawyers from Nothingam University in the UK, who in week-long seminars are training Iraqi officials in how to build human rights programs. Or Kristi Gruizenga, a U.S. State Department specialist stationed in Baghdad, who advises female Iraqi politicians: "These Iraqi women are so brave, so smart and well educated, so motivated. They know they're making themselves targets for terrorists, but it doesn't faze them. This shows the Iraqi people are taking ownership of their country." Or a retired US Navy commander, who is converting a former secret police facility into a first-class camp for Iraqi Boy Scouts.

  let us not forget the humanitarian problem that doesn't exist anymore: in the first quarter of 2004, 92,679 applications for asylum in the West were lodged; this represents a 16% decrease on the previous quarter and a 25% on the same quarter in 2003. The reason? "Iraqis and Afghans comprised the two biggest asylum groups in 2001 and 2002, but their numbers have dropped dramatically since then. The number of Iraqi asylum-seekers in the first quarter of 2004, for example, was 2,143 – 81 per cent below the figure from the corresponding period last year." That's what's called solving the refugee problem at the source - the only method that really works. Meanwhile, more than 11,000 Iraqi refugees looked after by the United Nations have returned home since July last year.

  There's tons more, and you should go absorb every bit of it. And if that weren't enough, Arthur has two more posts full of this kind of great news.


• Another roundup from Chrenkoff, this time on the EU.


• Along similar lines, Brian Tiemann has noticed that the UN isn't happy with the lack of recognition its been getting of late (though I'm rather certain they'd really rather we continued to ignore them, given their scandal-ridden state), so they decided to make fools of themselves. Again.
  

  The UN plans to deal with another complaint against Israel as well, though this one is much older. It concerns Israel?s air raid on Iraq?s atomic reactor no fewer than 23 years ago.

  You mean the raid on Saddam's nuclear capabilities? The one that destroyed his nuclear program and forced him to go outside his own country looking for a replacement? That one? 'Cause I'm pretty darn sure that Israel did the entire world a huge favor there. As Brian T. puts is:
  

  All right, what possible message could the UN be trying to send with this...other than, "We like Saddam better than Israel"?
  
  The sheer brazenness with which the UN is trying to convince the world of its shameless agenda is simply astonishing. I guess they know there's no consequences, so why not become the Legion of Doom?



• The last item brings us back to Canada for an interesting admission by a Liberal Party candidate:
  

  It appears that in a strange twist, life has come to imitate mockery. Liberal candidate John Godfrey had this to say about the choice between the Liberals and Conservatives:
  
  "We may not be the public's favorite, but we're the devil they know,"
  
  So let me get this straight ? The plaintive Liberal cry is now: ?We are the devil. We are not your favourite. Why vote for anyone else?? Did I miss any nuances?

  It's very, very hard for me to keep from laughing here... HAHAHAHA HAHAHA hahahaha! Whew! Oh, man. Hehehehehehe....heh. Heh. Ahhh...