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:: MAX BLACK ::

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." --C.S. Lewis

"The Swiss pocket knife of conservative thought on the web..." - Eli Kardrakian

"Bookmark Max and dump your subscription to the newspaper; if you don't have a birdcage you really don't need it anyway..." - Shirley St. James

:: Sunday, June 27, 2004 ::

The 7-11 Commission

The inimitable Mark Steyn on the fantastic failure of the 9-11 commission:

These poseurs have blown it so badly they've become the definitive example of what they're meant to be investigating: a culture so stuck in its way it's unable to change even in the most extreme circumstances.

{...}

Giving bureaucrats new acronyms and smarter shoulder insignia won't make America more secure. What makes America more secure is going to where the terrorists are, killing large numbers of them, and fixing -- or at least neutralizing -- the dysfunctional states in whose murky waters they breed. Remember Sheikh Muqtada al-Sadr, the Khomeini-wannabe with the 10,000-strong Mahdi Army? He threw in the towel last week. And, of that 10,000, the 1st Armored Division estimates it killed "at least several thousand."

You haven't heard about that on the network news? Well, there's a surprise.

I feel certain you could pick 10 people at random from a shopping mall crowd get a better assessment of the failures of government on the days preceding September 11. The 9-11 commission is a profound example of Washington's cripling impotency--and it's the highest order of irresponsibility given that the lives of the American people and their sons and daughters fighting in Iraq are dependent on the findings of this fatuous sham. Steyn is right, the next thing to emerge from the halls of power will be yet another commission to investigate the commission...and we're paying them large sums of money to do it!

Steyn also has a fine shakedown of My Life over at WSJ.com:

Mr. Clinton is certainly thinking of his legacy. The index lists more pages for "bin Laden, Osama" than "Jones, Paula," which isn't how it seemed at the time. You can't blame the poor fellow. As things stand, you'd be hard put to devise a more apt personal embodiment of the long holiday from history the U.S. took between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the World Trade Center. If geopolitics is the Super Bowl, Mr. Clinton is Janet Jackson, complete with wardrobe malfunctions.

Yikes...

:: Max 10:43 AM [+] ::
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