Text of President Obama's speech tonight

Listening to: "Won't Get Fooled Again," The Who

A wag on Facebook declares that Tuesday night's presidential speech regarding the troop buildup in Afghanistan has been leaked. A sampling:

We fight because we must fight if we are to live in a world where every country can shape its own destiny. And only in such a world will our own freedom be finally secure.

This kind of world will never be built by bombs or bullets. Yet the infirmities of man are such that force must often precede reason, and the waste of war, the works of peace.

We wish that this were not so. But we must deal with the world as it is, if it is ever to be as we wish ...

We hope that peace will come swiftly. But that is in the hands of others besides ourselves. And we must be prepared for a long continued conflict. It will require patience as well as bravery, the will to endure as well as the will to resist.

I wish it were possible to convince others with words of what we now find it necessary to say with guns and planes: Armed hostility is futile. Our resources are equal to any challenge. Because we fight for values and we fight for principles, rather than territory or colonies, our patience and our determination are unending.

Once this is clear, then it should also be clear that the only path for reasonable men is the path of peaceful settlement ...

We will do this because our own security is at stake.

But there is more to it than that. For our generation has a dream. It is a very old dream. But we have the power and now we have the opportunity to make that dream come true.

For centuries nations have struggled among each other. But we dream of a world where disputes are settled by law and reason. And we will try to make it so.

For most of history men have hated and killed one another in battle. But we dream of an end to war. And we will try to make it so.

For all existence most men have lived in poverty, threatened by hunger. But we dream of a world where all are fed and charged with hope. And we will help to make it so.

Read the whole thing and weep.

If every life is sacred ...

Constitutional amendment

Now here's an intriguing development — Top Men in the U.S. administration are pressuring Japan to change the Constitution written by U.S. forces after World War II.

Specifically, the U.S. would like to persuade Japan to change this section:

Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.

In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.

Know what I think? Leave the Japanese alone. I think the U.S. Constitution should be amended to include this section. It's an idea that's well past its time. I especially like the last line: "The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized." We had good talkers back in 1947. The next 61 years have proven talk is cheap.

Phony journalism

In the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan writes about the latest incident of a phony story making it onto the pages of a reputable journal. This time it's the New Republic, which already was badly burned a decade ago by the Stephen Glass debacle.

This time it was a writer/private named Scott Thomas Beauchamp, who apparently made up a bunch of stuff about horrific misbehavior by his fellow U.S. troops in Iraq. This kind of editorial sloppiness does no favors to the anti-war cause or the credibility of journalism; the New Republic has proved to be a friend of neither. ("Fool me once, shame on you ...") Noonan makes some good points.

Sunday morning reading

Another incident in which the protection of "intellectual property" means hiding the property so no one can see it-

"The Day the Buffy Music Died."After learning that fans of the canceled cult favorite have been, horror of horrors, demonstrating their undying love for the show by attending theatrical screenings of the Emmy-nominated musical episode "Once More, with Feeling" for the past year, 20th Century Fox's attorneys started sharpening their stakes. The studio, which owns the rights to the former WB (then UPN) dramedy red-lighted the dress-up and sing-along tour this week, canceling all future screenings ...

On another subject ...

"It's As Ridiculous As If They'd Given Goebbels One in 1938." Alexander Cockburn does a more thorough job than I did detailing Al Gore's career as a war monger.

Retired war monger wins peace prize

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has done its part for global warming by ensuring that hell freezes over, naming Al Gore a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Gore, a co-conspirator in the administration that deployed U.S. troops to Somalia, Bosnia and Haiti and bombed Iraq, Afghanistan and Sudan, shares the prize with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose chairman, Ranjendra Pachauri, Gore denounced for his "virulent anti-American statements" when Pachauri was being considered for the post of chairman.

Gore spent the 1990s supporting the Bush I and Clinton administration imperial adventures abroad – a quick Google search found this 1995 interview where he defends the invasion of Bosnia, for example. The most interesting thing, for me, was the introduction of the interview: "In Washington, Jim Lehrer conducts an interview with the Vice President where they discuss a Senate resolution to support the troops, but not the administration's policy in Bosnia." For those of you who've just joined us, this was a Republican Senate and a Democratic administration. The two parties routinely exchange their rhetorical positions on such debates depending upon whose ox is being, um, gored.

Those who were rightfully aghast when George W. Bush was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize should be, but won't be, aghast at Gore's actual award. After all, Gore is a member of the Butter-Side-Up Party, and Bush is a member of the Butter-Side-Down Party, and so they are opposites, doncha know.