Do Not Go Gently Into That Socialist Night

The people of Bolivia have declined to go gently into the socialist worker's paradise that Hugo Chavez puppet Evo Morales has tried to decree. They have decided to, "Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

The protests in the southern city of Sucre came hours after pro-government allies in a constitutional assembly approved a preliminary draft late on Saturday of the new constitution, a key Morales political project.

Morales, a leftist and Bolivia's first Indian president, says the new constitution will give the country's indigenous majority more political power.

But the vote was boycotted by the rightist opposition, which has heavily criticized the assembly.

On the streets of Sucre, protesters stood face to face with police officers, setting fires to tires as tear-gas rained down on them.

They also set fire to Sucre's San Roque prison, starting a prison riot that saw at least 100 inmates escape, local media said.

Bolivia's state news agency ABI reported police had been ordered off the streets in Sucre to avoid further provoking protesters. The agency said the police officer who was killed had been lynched by a mob. Three other officers were injured.

"The constitutional assembly needs to leave. They're no good. It's just for La Paz; it doesn't represent Bolivia," said a university student who did not give his name after a night battling police.

Protests have raged for days against the assembly and the constitution it was drafting, and on Saturday police used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse thousands of demonstrators.

The disturbing fact about this is that the anti-Morales factions thought a boycott was an effective tool. It is not - it is a foolish self-minimization of an opposition group. It is never a good idea to decline to exercise one's political voice.

A Sign That The US Is Getting It Right In Colombia

Earlier today, I linked to an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times by Robert Kaplan that described huge gains in stability in the nation of Colombia. Kaplan wrote:

When I visited Arauca province in northeastern Colombia in February 2003, it was considered the most dangerous part of the country. Attacks by narco-terrorists using improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, and cylinder and car bombs occurred every few hours. U.S. Army Special Forces members, who were in the province to train Colombian army troops, left their base only in full battle-rattle — that is, in body armor with guns at the ready — just like in Iraq. The town of Arauca was a ratty sprawl of tacky storefronts with awnings made of black plastic, the kind used for garbage bags. Attacks on the pipeline carrying Colombian oil to the Caribbean coast were unrelenting.

By last year, though, there had been dramatic change: Proper cafes were open, storefronts were painted, crowds flooded the streets — at night too.

Four years ago, I had journeyed through Arauca's streets inside a convoy of Humvees armed with light-medium machine guns. In the middle of town, I'd stayed put in my Humvee. More recently, I rode in the open back of a pickup with a handful of U.S. and Colombian soldiers armed with nothing more substantial than Beretta pistols, and motorcycle escorts with a few assault rifles. In town, I walked the streets with Army Capt. Troy Terrebonne of Houston, who told me, "Wherever you want to go, we can go, on foot. It's safe here." The last IED attack in the town had been 18 months earlier.

One sure sign that things are going right in Colombia comes from the Associated Press today. Hugo Chavez is putting relations with that nation into "the the freezer."

"I declare before the world that I'm putting relations with Colombia in the freezer because I've completely lost confidence with everyone in the Colombian government," Chavez said during a televised speech.

Addressing Cabinet ministers and military officials, Chavez said: "Everyone should be alert in relation to Colombia — economic relations — the businesses Colombians have here and the businesses we have there. Commercial relations, all of that is going to be harmed. It's lamentable."

Chavez was responding to Uribe's decision to cancel his mediation with Colombian rebels, preliminary talks aimed at a prisoner swap that would free rebel-held hostages, including three Americans. Uribe's spokesman said Chavez had defied the Colombian president by directly contacting his army chief to discuss the issue.

The Venezuelan leader said a statement issued by Uribe's government giving its reasons for ending his mediation was "filled with lies."

"I really, truly believe that the Colombian government doesn't want peace," Chavez said.

Chavez said he was particularly irked that Uribe had his officials issue statements instead of contacting the Venezuelan leader directly.

"Why don't do you show your face?" Chavez said. "President Uribe is lying … in a shameless, horrible, ugly way. I think Colombia deserves another president, it deserves a better president."

That should be considered a threat, I think. Chavez has been building up his armed forces lately - despite the fact that he is under no threat from anyone in the region. (That includes the United States.) More importantly, it shows that US policy toward Colombia is working and should continue. Our Congress should put aside partisanship and approve the free trade agreement with Colombia. Chavez is blatantly anti-American - our politicians should back a government that offers an alternative to Chavez in the region.

VDH Dismantles Archbishop

Commenter Terrence sent this item in and it has also popped up on Memeorandum. Victor Davis Hanson blasts the Archbishop of Canterbury for his inane, ignorant and laughable grasp of history. Hanson points out the absolute absurdity of Rowan Williams' comments to a British Muslim magazine. Hanson is stinging here:

TWO, Williams should read a little about British military campaigns in India, and then count the corpses.

THREE, he should also tally up the amount of money the U.S. has spent for civic and economic development in Iraq over four years, and then compare that to what Britain invested in any  four-year period in their centuries-long occupation of India.

FOUR, I don't recall the British, after their second year in India, fostering nation-wide elections.

Oh do go read it all. It exposes Williams for the fatally politically correct, historical illiterate that he is.

The Blind Archbishop

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has given a number of thoroughly anti-American remarks in an interview with a British Muslim magazine. The Sunday Times reports:

Williams went beyond his previous critique of the conduct of the war on terror, saying the United States had lost the moral high ground since September 11. He urged it to launch a “generous and intelligent programme of aid directed to the societies that have been ravaged; a check on the economic exploitation of defeated territories; a demilitarisation of their presence”.

He went on to suggest that the West was fundamentally adrift: “Our modern western definition of humanity is clearly not working very well. There is something about western modernity which really does eat away at the soul.”

Williams suggested American leadership had broken down: “We have only one global hegemonic power. It is not accumulating territory: it is trying to accumulate influence and control. That’s not working.”

He contrasted it unfavourably with how the British Empire governed India. “It is one thing to take over a territory and then pour energy and resources into administering it and normalising it. Rightly or wrongly, that’s what the British Empire did — in India, for example.

Williams proves that it is phenomenally easy to prove your ignorance by opening your mouth. Robert Kaplan writes of the quiet successes in the war on terror today:

There has been no magic-bullet solution in Colombia, no newsworthy technique that you could write about. It was just bread-and-butter, never-give-up, attrition-of-the-same. The Green Berets provided small-unit training that raised the combat ability of the Colombian military, making it more aggressive in hunting down the drug armies as well as more aware of human rights as a pivotal tool in counterinsurgency. Meanwhile, State Department aid came with an implicit proviso: The Colombian army should put more emphasis on medical, education and social programs to secure the goodwill of the inhabitants.

As Colombia has gone, so has the Philippines. Before 9/11, the southern island of Basilan was a Muslim terrorist hide-out. In 2002, with the help of Green Berets, Filipino army forces cleared it. By last year, Manila-based businesses felt safe enough to invest there. When I visited last year, Basilan had cellphone towers, more roads and bridges paved with asphalt, more schools and increased agricultural production. Power outages were common because of surges in demand, a sign of uneven development but of development nevertheless.

Between risk-prone invasions like Iraq, on the one hand, and isolationism, on the other, the missions in Colombia and the Philippines showcase low-cost, low-risk and tediously unspectacular counterinsurgency options. And these places are not alone. Other U.S. military deployments I have observed recently — in Algeria, Mali, Niger, Kenya, Georgia and Nepal — are variations in a minor key. What stands out about all of these missions is their small scale and implicit modesty. We are not in combat in any of these countries — but, rather, training local militaries that are or might be.

In all these countries, our military aid is combined with civilian development assistance. This is the global war on terrorism as preventive rather than as proscriptive……..

Perhaps the Archbishop should reassess his remarks.

Hillary’s Worst Enemy

Is Hillary, according to Michael Goodwin. He notes the recent polls that find Hillary Clinton to be perceived as less trustworthy than most of the other candidates in the field today. Those poll results, Goodwin says, are directly the fault of the candidate. Hillary being Hillary may not be working out too well.

Indeed, one of the mysteries of the Democratic race so far is why she fell into a predictable trap. She and her team, including the former President, are addicted to polls the way some people are addicted to crack. They had to see the red flags on basic character questions, yet they did nothing to confront them. And so Hillary has been Hillary, to a fault.

Now she is starting to pay the price. Winning the nomination, which seemed inevitable for nearly a year, is becoming a serious challenge. Suddenly, she looks neither invincible nor inevitable.

Polls that show Sen. Barack Obama picking up support at her expense in Iowa, New Hampshire and nationally perfectly illustrate Clinton's weakness. Asked which candidate is most honest and trustworthy, Clinton came in fourth in New Hampshire and third in Iowa. Only 13% rated her tops in that category in New Hampshire, with Obama getting 27% and both John Edwards and Bill Richardson doing better than her. In Iowa, Clinton got only 15% on the same question.

In both states, Obama gained ground she lost. He now leads for the first time in Iowa, 30% to her 26%, according to the ABC/Washington Post survey, with Edwards at 22%. And her 23-point lead in New Hampshire shrunk by 9 points in a month, according to the CNN/WMUR survey, which put her ahead by 36%-22% over Obama.

Given her relative strength across the board, the results hardly qualify as a great unraveling, but neither are they incidental. Less than a month after Obama and Edwards began making more direct attacks on her candor, cracks began showing. That's not a very long time under the gun to suffer such damage and the quick results will only encourage more attacks.

As Goodwin points out, the cracks in Hillary's wall of inevitability began to appear very shortly after Obama and Edwards began going on offense against her. Those attacks have been neither particularly tough or particularly venomous as political attacks go. Yet they have caused damage because they are targeted where Clinton is weakest: her trustworthiness. Even if she wins the nomination, the damage has already been done.

Shame - Part Two

Today the Telegraph picks up on the story about the shameful treatment some wounded British veterans received at a public swimming pool at the hands of some very nasty civilians. The Daily Mail covered it on Friday. The Telegraph story has an additional detail, however.

Injured soldiers who lost their limbs fighting for their country have been driven from a swimming pool training session by jeering members of the public.

The men, injured during tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, were taking part in a rehabilitation session at a leisure centre, when two women demanded they be removed from the pool. They claimed that the soldiers "hadn't paid" and might scare the children.

The incident has sparked widespread condemnation. Adml Lord Boyce, a former head of the Armed Forces, said last night the women should be "named and shamed"……

…..It is not the first time that Headley Court neighbours have been accused of poor behaviour.

There was uproar earlier this year after residents objected to planning permission to convert a home into a six-suite hostel for injured soldiers' families to stay in. The local council later approved the building work.

It isn't an isolated incident, then. It is a pattern that has existed for some time in that town. It would not be at all surprising if the same people were involved.