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Post-Speech: Obama's Triangulation Strategy

It has been a week now since Obama's widely praised speech where he sought a more open, honest dialogue about race in America. Unfortunately, the candidate isn't practicing what he's preaching -- and in this case the pun is intended.

Barack Obama was in North Carolina yesterday, giving a new version of his stump speech. The Senator has apparently found the Lord, and wants to share with his audiences just how pure and mainstream a religious man he is. He's on a new strategy to downplay his 20+ year association with Reverend Wright of the Trinity United Church in Chicago. It goes something like this:

Minimize it: In comments to one North Carolina crowd, Obama called this whole issue of Wright an unnecessary "distraction" from the real problems people face in this country. "We can't lose sight of America's real issues -- like the War in Iraq -- every time someone says something stupid".

Now, calling Wright's sermons simply "stupid" is, in my view, a significant back-track from the major speech he gave last week on the issue of race, when he rejected Wright's views and condemned them.

Obama also stressed that Wright has given three sermons a week for 30 years and that those opposed to his candidacy had found "five or six of his most offensive statements" and "boiled" them down to play over and over. "I hope people don't get distracted by that."

Why should people get distracted by the fact that the spiritual adviser to the presumptive Democrat candidate for President of the United States should blame white America for 9/11, the Palestinian problem and all the problems of blacks in this country?

Mainstream it: Yesterday, Obama spoke of the Trinity United Church as if it were the most tolerant, open congregation in the country. "Everybody is welcome to come to Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street. It is a wonderful, welcoming church," he said. "If you were there on any given Sunday, folks would be doing the same things in church at Trinity as they do everywhere else. They're praising Jesus. They've got a choir singing. It's a very good choir. And the pastor is trying to teach a lesson to connect scripture to our everyday lives."

Unfortunately, Obama stopped short of citing the specific scriptures that tells us that the U.S. government created AIDS to destroy the black community, or that introduced drugs into black neighborhoods.

Backtrack from it: Though in his widely reviewed speech on Race last week Obama admitted to having attended some of the Wright sermons that were universally found offensive, yesterday he backtracked, saying that Wright had said some "very objectionable things when I wasn't in church on those particular days."

I guess it depends on what the meaning of the word "in" is...if it means "in church" as actually sitting in the pews, or if it means "in church" as in standing in the parking lot where he couldn't really hear the sermon going on inside. Bill Clinton would be proud of such practiced dissembling.

If You Can't Beat 'em, Join 'em: In Greensboro, Obama's campaign staff has found the Lord as well, now using prayer before his events, something that began since the controversy over Wright and his remarks. "Thank you for this time of excitement and enthusiasm," a local reverend prayed. "I pray a special blessing, oh God, a special blessing, on Barack Obama." The audience was then led in the Pledge of Allegiance. And if there was any question that Obama is a religious and patriotic American, he ended his speech with a "God bless America."

So, the candidate who wouldn't wear an American flag on his lapel pin is now cloaking himself in both the bible and the flag at his campaign events. Does this not strike you as a cold and calculating way of actually avoiding that real discussion of race that he says he so desperately wants in America?

This strikes me as disingenuous, and I hope most of America will not buy what Obama is selling now: a "slick Willie" style attempt to triangulate his position and his beliefs, with an obvious hope that the public will eventually be so confused by the ever-changing position that they will simply remember the last thing that the candidate says.

Sadly, I know many people who are susceptible to this strategy. I will do my best to make sure that both Obama and Clinton are held to account for all their actions and all their words.

We've had enough dissembling in the White House. It is time for some straight talk!

Honesty on the Radio

Some of you may know that I am a HUGE fan of Dennis Prager. I urge any of you who read this to listen in to his show at least once a week. There is no more honest, wise and thoughtful commentator on the public airwaves. You can find the link to his website on the left of this column. Go there and see where his radio show is available in your area. You won't be sorry.


Today, Dennis had on a discussion with Bernard Lewis, the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near East Studies at Princeton and the foremost authority on Islam and the relationship between Islam and the West. Lewis did his undergraduate and graduate work at a place I know well -- the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies (a sister school of the London School of Economics where I got my Master's degree -- though some fifty years separated our time there). Lewis is now 92 years old, and he has lost none of the intellectual honesty and outspokenness that has distinguished his career. It is unusual to have an academic not infected with the moral relativist or political correctness disease that has run rampant through our universities, and today Lewis did not disappoint. One of his most important statements in the discussion with Prager was his answer to the question (I'm paraphrasing here): "Would Islam leave America alone if we stopped our support of Israel"?

This, of course, is the common theme of the "just leave them alone" school of foreign policy: the notion that if we just leave the Middle East and abandon Israel, the radical Islamists will cease their jihad against America and the West. It has always struck me as a sophomoric, idealistic view of the world that doesn't understand the nature of the enemy we face -- a view that Lewis backed up in his answer. According to Lewis, the abandonment of Israel (and by extension our other interests in the region including Iraq) would be seen by Islam as an American failure, and would show the Muslim world that America can be defeated. Rather than reducing the flames that fan the Islamic fires it would do precisely the opposite: prompting the radical jihadists to step up the pressure and continue the fight now that the enemy (America) is weakened.

This is something that I've been arguing for some time. Radical Islam feeds on our foibles and our lack of resolve. They go for the jugular when they sense weakness. They do not show pity. Our retreat would only lead to a stronger offense against us and not the peaceful accommodation that so many idealists expect.

Thank you to Dennis Prager and Bernard Lewis for some unusual honesty on the airwaves. I just hope people are listening.

The Obama Speech and Race

The current furor over Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright reminds me of another seldom discussed contradiction within the Democratic party: The self-described party of inclusion is obsessed with the divisive issue of race. As a conservative I am not surprised by this, because I have long accepted that the Left is deeply attracted to the narrative of victimization and oppression at the hands of "the man" -- whether that be white males, corporations, the "government" or others wielding power in our society. I've written numerous times about the "cult of victimization" that I see among liberals that essentially takes two forms: those who feel victimized by power and those who are part of the power class but feel guilty about it. Thus you see strange bedfellows on the Left -- poor blacks, illegal immigrants, union workers, media elite and Hollywood stars all in a messy millieu of fear, guilt, anxiety and prodigious amounts of anger.

In this context, the reaction to Jeremiah Wright and the Obama speech that sought to explain it is both understandable and disturbing. Obama's ability to deliver a moving speech on the subject of race was an impressive act for a candidate who has excelled at being the "non-racial candidate". His speech was rich with his personal history and attempted to put Wright's sermons in a broader context. To his credit, he did go a long way toward repudiating Wright and the comments that have gotten endless play on YouTube:

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

Those "statements", you'll recall, relate a whole host of incendiary comments about how America deserved the attacks on 9/11, how whites created the AIDS virus as a weapon against the black community -- and on and on and on.

Obama is careful, however, to not repudiate Wright "the man", even if separating the man and the preacher is exceedingly hard to do.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

Thus, for Obama, Wright's comments and their acceptance in the black community are rooted in fear -- the same kind of fear of black men his white grandmother had expressed to him in the past. This gives Wright's hateful, angry speech a legitimacy that it doesn't deserve -- as if they are on par with the words of his beloved grandmother. It's disturbing double speak: Obama repudiates the views of Wright without actually repudiating the base sentiment, or the man who delivered them. He then goes on to cite a litany of tired arguments about Jim Crow laws and historical race discrimination -- all of which he uses to explain why the black community is so angry and distrustful for white America.

Obviously, much of what Obama says is true: there has been a history of slavery and black oppression in America. That is undeniable. The important question is: Does it really still exist to the level that blacks apparently believe it does? Not only is Jim Crow long dead, but so is "Separate but Equal" and other legal and structural barriers to equality. Those barriers were put permanently to rest by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a landmark legislation that incidentally was sponsored by white Democrats and Republicans in the Congress, and was signed by a white southern president. Through Affirmative Action and other preferences, blacks have actually by law been given real systemic advantages over whites for over 40 years. In my view, there is a deep contradiction in the words of Jeremiah Wright and his brand of black separation theology and the plain facts that are clear to anyone willing to look honestly at this issue.

My own honest view of race, the black community and the Democratic party includes the following:

-- There is a gulf between the races in America -- but it is as much a creation of the black community and "leaders" such as Jeremiah Wright who are underwritten by the Democratic party, as it is a product of real white-based racism.

-- The vitriol of Jeremiah Wright and other separatists in the black community is rooted in the 1960s -- the anger of Malcolm X, the Black Panthers and other revolutionaries who lived in an age when real discrimination and racism was both accepted and sponsored by the state. But that was then. Today, the notion that blacks are systematically "kept down" by a "white America" is not consistent with the world we live in -- where a Barack Obama can go to Harvard and be within a hair of the Democratic nomination for president of the United States!

-- The core theology of Wright and other pastors in the black community is consistent with the race-based victimization mantra of the Jesse Jackson's of the world. In this way it is a self-fulfilling dogma that not only fails to empower, but also destroys the desire and ability of blacks in America to take individual responsibility for their lives -- and to join the mainstream community where education, jobs and prosperity are available to them. Why is it so hard to accept that if one black man or woman can rise to become an executive or a lawyer in America today, then that avenue is open to all blacks in America?

-- The broader Democratic party -- and white liberals in particular -- act to reinforce the notion of an ingrained, systemic racism in this country. The net effect of this is to give blacks and the black community a "pass" on both what they say and what they do. Nicholas Kristof, the liberal white columnist for the New York Times, wrote a piece after Obama's speech that illustrates this perfectly. For example, on the issue of Wright's remarks, Kristof basically acts to translate Wright's angry words that are clearly hostile to white America:

Many well-meaning Americans perceive Mr. Wright as fundamentally a hate-monger who preaches antagonism toward whites. But those who know his church say that is an unrecognizable caricature: He is a complex figure and sometimes a reckless speaker, but one of his central messages is not anti-white hostility but black self-reliance.

So, for Kristof, the way to black self-reliance is through race-bashing white America. He goes on:

Many white Americans seem concerned that Mr. Obama, who seems so reasonable, should enjoy the company of Mr. Wright, who seems so militant, angry and threatening. To whites, for example, it has been shocking to hear Mr. Wright suggest that the AIDS virus was released as a deliberate government plot to kill black people.That may be an absurd view in white circles, but a 1990 survey found that 30 percent of African-Americans believed this was at least plausible. (Just as) many African-Americans even believe that the crack cocaine epidemic was a deliberate conspiracy by the United States government to destroy black neighborhoods.

Thus, Wright's words aren't the problem, nor is the misguided belief among blacks that there is actually truth to what he says. The problem is racism. It is white racism that causes blacks to do crack, to drop out of the free education they are provided, to destroy their neighborhoods and to foster repeat generations of black children in single parent households.

Liberals like Kristof won't dare mention the notion of personal responsibility, nor point out the obvious absurdity that giving Wright a pass on his rhetoric because others in the black community hold the same beliefs is pandering to the lowest common denominator. Such honesty would conflict with their own deep-seated sense of "white guilt" over the predicament that blacks are in. Apologize and justify -- that's the liberal solution to the race issue in America today.

The irony, of course, is this: white guilt that apologizes for black racism and that serves to further legitimize the victimization and self-segregation of blacks only serves to destroy their best hope for eliminating racial inequality: real assimilation. That is the message that Democrats and Barack Obama should be giving the black community. His speech on race and his handling of the Wright issue fell far short of that, and proves again that he is not the post-racial candidate he claims himself to be.

The End of Hope

As many of you know I've been watching the 2008 campaign pretty closely. I correctly predicted even before the Iowa results in early January that McCain would be the Republican nominee ("Reading Tea Leaves"). Now I am making a new prediction: Barack Obama's campaign to win the Democratic nomination has been mortally wounded.

I say this because the furor over the incendiary comments of his pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, is just now gaining momentum. It will not die a quick and quiet death, and is going to serve to further alienate the white electorate that has been Obama's most tenuous base of support. For a candidate claiming to be the first "post racial" major black politician -- a unifier in a color-blind America -- he is looking increasingly like a shill for a Black Panther-style black activism that is -- at its core -- patently racist.

Obama has gone on television now to denounce his pastor's comments, even as the church itself has raced to defend them ("Obama church responds in 9/11 row"), predictably claiming racism against the black pastor:

"Nearly three weeks before the 40th commemoration anniversary of the murder of the Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr, the Rev Jeremiah A Wright Jr's character is being assassinated in the public sphere because he has preached a social gospel on behalf of oppressed women, children and men in America and around the globe."

Obama's attempt to disavow Wright's comments, however, ring hollow. Friday night, Obama told CNN anchor Anderson Cooper the following:

"(I) didn't know about all these statements. I knew about one or two of these statements that had been made. One or two statements would not lead me to distance myself from either my church or my pastor. ... If I had thought that was the tenor or tone on an ongoing basis, then yes, I don't think it would have been reflective of my values."

And yet, as blogger Donald Douglas points out (here) the NY Times ran an article a year ago pointing out that the Obama campaign had taken pains to dis-invite Wright from delivering a public invocation at Obama's candidacy announcement. In a discussion with Wright, the NY Times reports that Obama told Wright “You can get kind of rough in the sermons, so what we’ve decided is that it’s best for you not to be out there in public.” That's a strange conversation for Obama to have with his revered mentor and friend if he didn't "know about" Wright's comments.

Obama can't have it both ways on this. He can't belong to an openly racist church that is led by an openly racist pastor and claim to be a post-racial candidate. He cannot claim that Jeremiah Wright is his spritual advisor and mentor and then claim that the Wright's deeply help beliefs about the evil that is America don't factor in to that relationship. Nor can he claim ignorance. Wright is his pastor and friend. He is a militant racist provocateur, who evidently believes that white America is evil. Those comments are on the record. If Obama heard those sermons and didn't walk out of the church, or if he knew of them and didn't immediately disavow them by refusing to return to services, he is not fit to be president of the United States. This will become clearer and clearer in the coming days and weeks.

The irony here is that we don't really know Barack Obama -- and that is simultaneously both his strength and weakness. Being a blank slate allows people to put their hopes and dreams on you, but it also means that very basic revelations about your past can have a tremendously negative effect on how people view you. For Obama, his church and pastor will prove to be devastating as people begin to piece together what makes him the kind of man worthy -- or in this case, unworthy -- of the presidency.

My prediction: Obama is toast.

Obama's Moral Compass?

Barack Obama has one significant advantage over Hillary Clinton and John McCain: he's a blank slate, and can be to his supporters anything and everything they want him to be. His record of public service would barely take up a page of a resume: a few terms as an Illinois state senator and three years in the United States Senate, where he has been responsible for almost no legislation of note. Barack Obama talks a great game and wrote a couple of nice books ("Dreams from my Father" and "The Audacity of Hope") -- but he's otherwise an unknown.

Which brings up some critical questions about what makes Obama tick. What are his values? How does he make decisions? What is his moral compass on issues of import to the people of America?

How do we answer these vitally important questions for our collective future? Because Obama doesn't talk freely to the press, preferring scripted events and speeches, this is no trivial task. One method would be to look closely at two people who he is close to and who have been much more willing to talk about their deep feelings about race, politics and culture in America.

The first is Michelle Obama, the candidate's wife. Her comments about "being proud of her country for the first time" (in her mid-4os) has gotten a lot of publicity already. I won't belabor it here. My guess is that her ability to script her answers is not as finely tuned as her husbands, and that what came from Michelle Obama was truly what she feels. She's deeply disappointed in this country, despite the fact that her family has risen to one of the highest points of American political life. One would think that such a rise would elicit a "wow, isn't America great" kind of sentiment; but, alas, only more angry leftist machinations about racism and sexism come from this prospective First Lady. I, for one, am not impressed with the notion of Michelle Obama in the White House.

The second person who has been influential in the making of Obama is his pastor, the now-infamous Jeremiah Wright. The Reverend Wright, Obama's pastor for the last 20 years at the Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago's south side, married Obama and his wife Michelle, baptized their two daughters and is credited by Obama for the title of his book, "The Audacity of Hope."

The Reverend Wright has a long history of what even Obama's campaign aides concede is "inflammatory rhetoric," including the assertion that the United States brought on the 9/11 attacks with its own "terrorism."

In a campaign appearance earlier this month, Sen. Obama said, "I don't think my church is actually particularly controversial." He said Rev. Wright "is like an old uncle who says things I don't always agree with," telling a Jewish group that everyone has someone like that in their family.

Oh, really? I don't know too many uncles out there who actually think (and will publicly state) that we are to blame for 9/11.

An ABC News review of dozens of Rev. Wright's sermons, offered for sale by the church, found repeated denunciations of the U.S. based on what he described as his reading of the Gospels and the treatment of black Americans.

"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people," he said in a 2003 sermon. "God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."

In addition to damning America, he told his congregation on the Sunday after Sept. 11, 2001 that the United States had brought on AL Qaeda's attacks because of its own terrorism.

"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost."

Obama looks to Wright for much of his moral calibration, saying recently:

"What I value most about Pastor Wright is not his day-to-day political advice," Obama said. He’s much more of a sounding board for me to make sure that I am speaking as truthfully about what I believe as possible and that I’m not losing myself in some of the hype and hoopla and stress that’s involved in national politics."

What this tells me is this: Obama may not take Wright's advice on electoral tactics, but he looks to him for his moral compass -- keeping Obama straight so that his thinking on core issues reflects (presumably) a shared morality and sense of right and wrong. This is downright scary. Do we dare elect a man who looks for moral direction to an avowed racist who hates America?

It is vital that the words of Reverend Wright be widely disseminated so the American public, so enthralled with the Obama vacuum, has the appropriate context in this election.

The United Socialist States of America

Do you remember when America was free? When the nation stood for individual liberty and opportunity? When America was a meritocracy that rewarded ingenuity and entrepreneurship?

That America is under siege -- and is threatened with extinction. We live now in a society where government is geared principally toward protecting people from themselves. We have exchanged personal responsibility in a free and open marketplace with something that increasingly looks like socialism: government regulating more and more of our lives in the name of the "public good". At the core, this public good is both about eliminating any and all dangers from the free market, and protecting people from the impact of their own bad decisions. The United States of America is now a "nanny" state.

Look around you and you see the nanny state is every facet of our lives -- and it will only get worse should the Democrats take over the White House and increase their Senate majority in November. Clinton and Obama are both on record as wanting to enact vast new legislation to protect poor defenseless Americans from a wide variety of ills.

-- Did you take on a highly leveraged mortgage you couldn't afford? No worries, the feds will bail you out.

-- Are you currently without health insurance? Rest assured: there's a program on the way that will force you to pay for it whether you want it or not.

-- Did your job get outsourced because it was no longer competitive? No problem: there's a move to extend unemployment benefits and revoke NAFTA and other free trade agreements to protect even the least competitive rust belt jobs.

-- Did you have the misfortune of being in the path of a hurricane, tornado or forest fire? Let not your heart be troubled: the federal government will spend billions to bail you out -- including paying for you to shop at Best Buy for big screen TVs while putting you up in a hotel for years on end.

-- And now, in California, comes a ruling that says that parents can't home school their own kids without having a state certification -- paying homage to the teacher's unions and in effect saying: government knows better than you do about how to raise your children.

We've become a society where personal responsibility is largely meaningless. At the root of this is a fundamental message: people are too stupid to run their own lives, so the government must do it for them. We can't possibly understand the legal contracts we enter into, or be responsible for re-training ourselves when the free market determines that our job skills are no longer needed. Its someone elses fault.

Help! I've fallen and I can't get up!

All I can say is this: be careful what you wish for. Clinton, Obama and the Democratic nannies in the Congress desperately want to save you from yourself -- and will increasingly enact costly, draconian measures to ensure that they can control every aspect of your life.

The United Socialist States of America is coming soon to a ballot box near you!

On Opinion and Iraq

Opposition to the Iraq war continues to be a rallying cry on the left. Barack Obama has not only made his opposition to the Iraq invasion in 2003 a foundation of his candidacy, but his economic plan is based principally on his ability to re purpose the $12 billion a month spent on the war into other uses -- namely universal health care and other entitlement programs. Both Obama and Clinton claim to have plans to begin withdrawing American troops immediately upon taking office, even if the process as a whole will take 14 to 16 months to complete. But the intent is clear: to remove US combat forces from the major operations that they have been engaged in during the "surge" -- even as these operations have met with great success.

Where does this reflexive opposition come from? It is clear that opposition to the use of American power is at the core of the Democratic party, and it particulary animates primary politics. But data seems to show that opposition to the Iraq war is deeper than just a partisan divide, and that the American people are tired of the war and want it to end. According to a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, 63% of Americans believe the Iraq war wasn't worth the price paid, while 49% believe US troops should be brought home "immediately", regardless of the situation on the ground. These are astonishing numbers given the success of the surge and the precipitous decline in US combat casualties. In February, for example, there were 25 US combat deaths, down 64% from the year-earlier period. Put into perspective, there were over 43,000 deaths from traffic accidents in 2006 -- an average of 3,500 per month. While every combat death in Iraq is a tragedy, these are trained soldiers who have volunteered to be in the fight -- not innocent bystanders. In comparison to any other war -- from World War II to Korea to Vietnam -- the rate of combat casualties in Iraq is phenomenally low.

Thus, the opposition to the war seems out of proportion to the facts on the ground -- and is obviously driven by other forces. My belief is that much of it comes from the undeniable bias of the media that is quick to report on our setbacks while largely ignoring our successes. The picture being painted is unrealistically gloomy and has been for the past three years -- even in the face of progress. The fundamental story-line on Iraq has not changed since the breakdown in security and the attack on the Samara Mosque in early 2006; most reporting still focuses on sectarian strife, "civil war" and the lack of progress in political reconciliation. All of these issues have been overtaken by events on the ground, where security has been restored and sectarian conflict has been substantially reduced. But that is not a story you are likely to hear in the main-stream media.

My guess is that the Iraq war is going to play against the Democrats in November -- both because the situation will continue to improve, and because John McCain can rightfully take credit of much of the recent success. I know that Americans don't want to lose in Iraq, and when confronted with the reality of our progress will choose to go with the Commander in Chief who can finish the job. The stakes -- particularly when properly communicated -- are simply to great to fail: a base of terrorism in Iraq on the border of a soon-to-be nuclear Iran. Most Americans know that there is no way we can let that happen. Whether that is enough to sway the election to McCain will largely be determined by his ability to frame the debate and rightly keep us focused on the extreme price of failure.

Fit To Be King

There was an interesting bit of news out of London last week when it was revealed that Prince Harry had secretly been serving for the past three months in Afghanistan as a "leftenant" in the historic Gurkha regiment. Harry, as you may remember, was denied an earlier opportunity to serve in Afghanistan when it was revealed by the media that his unit was about to deploy. His nickname quickly became the "bullet magnet". His value to Al Qaeda in the propaganda war, should he have been captured, would be immense; just think of those grainy despicable videos of Nick Berg and other Western hostages flanked by masked gunmen with machete knives at the ready and you get the picture.

To Harry's credit, however, he was not to be denied -- and served as part of a pact with the media to blackout his deployment. His desire to serve in the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda is a rare shining example of someone of privilege willingly putting himself in harm's way, and going to extensive lengths to do so. He is reportedly responsible for calling in at least three major air strikes which claimed the lives of up to 30 terrorists. Pity there aren't more like him -- and for my money, though he's second in line to the British throne, he's certainly proven himself fit to be king.

It is unfortunate, of course, that the rest of Europe isn't as eager to support our efforts in Afghanistan. Though the Brits have nearly 8,000 troops in southern provinces actively engaged in combat, other European countries have so restricted the mission of their meager troop deployments that they are effectively restricted from doing any actual fighting. Germany, France, Turkey, Italy and Spain have all rejected calls to send their own soldiers to support British and Canadian forces in the south, on the grounds that the situation is too dangerous and that they are ‘overstretched.’ The German government recently rebuffed a request by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates for 1,000 troops to be sent to the battlefield, a decision that was loudly condemned by Afghan MPs, one of whom, Ramazan Bashardost, asked rightly of the Germans “whether their troops have come to Afghanistan to eat cake and rest, or to fight against terrorism?”

I believe they are there to eat cake. According to a recent report in the London Sunday Times, German troops are restricted from "traveling more than two hours away from a major medical facility", and German helicopter pilots are barred from flying at night, with a requirement to be back at base by mid-afternoon. Just in time for a nice cold beer and some Bratwurst.

I realize that this is hardly shocking. But consider that for the past 60 years American forces (and taxpayers) have stood at the ready to defend Germany from aggression -- which, for a very long time, was quite a real possibility. Now, Germany is faced with another kind of threat, largely from within its own borders, and the fact that they don't see a link between that threat and the global struggle against Islamic terror is quite alarming. It is yet another example of the kind of "head in the sand" mentality that pervades Europe: if we just leave them alone, they will go away.

That is just folly. And though it is promising that Prince Harry gets it, I fear that the rest of Europe is doomed to repeat the same mistake of appeasement over and over and over again.