BITTER ENDERS. A surprisingly moody post by Tacitus (go here and scroll down to "Reprint," April 18), with this money graf:

Retroactive nonsupport does not imply present-day loss of nerve; similarly, just because cause X produced effect Y, it does not follow that cause Y will always result. The Iraqi debacle does not discredit the reverse-domino notion; it does not discredit the idea of societal change via military force; and it does not discredit the notion of unilateral American action. It only discredits the idea of doing these things badly. Keep that in mind.

There seems to be more of this sort of thing coming from war supporters nowadays (from responsible war supporters, I mean -- the idiot kind do not acknowledge any difficulties whatever). Unfortunately, what their admissions boil down to is this: "Just because we were wrong doesn't mean we were wrong."

In a strange way, the 9/11 Commission, however blackly it is painted by its critics, has given those Bushites with chilling feet an opportunity to question the execution, rather than the idea, of the invasion and occupation. With so many kinks in the system, one can after all say: there, that's what went wrong -- a hamungadunga in the whatchamacallit; thus were all our sound plans waylaid!

This musters in such folks the old-fashioned American never-say-die spirit. Back to the drawing board. This time for sure. Declare Chapter 11 (or June 30) and move on.

Likewise the absurd level of optimism in which they engaged last year also provides them with an out. They were only wrong, they can insist, to think it would be easy; and the fact that it is hard merely makes it more of a challenge from which, being American, we will not shrink.

In fact, these difficulties they have only recently begun to acknowledge have also given them an excuse to cast off the laurels, and responsibilities, of the liberator. Already silver linings are being envisioned in Fallujah that could not have been mentioned back when we were first decided that, in the absence of WMDs, we had done it all for the Iraqi children. Now Andrew Sullivan rejoices: We killed ten of them to every one of ours! And soon our enemies will be brought to heel -- for their own good, but mostly for ours.

To some extent I welcome this shift. I have long said that I care much less about the people of Iraq -- even the photogenic children -- than I do about the people of the United States. Back when we were liberators, this made me seem cruel. Now I'm on my way back in the mainstream, which is a relief.

My remaining worries hinge on the next stage of the all-embracing yet undefined War on Terror. If these guys really think we did great except for the execution, I'm afraid they're likely to say, on to Syria -- and this time we do it right!

...BEFORE THE TRUTH PUTS ON ITS BOOTS. Ned Flanders has gotten the word: Orson Scott Card's cover as a "blue dog Democrat," not a "conservative," must be maintained. "My sci-fi fan friend... must only be sending me the right-wing stuff" from Card's oeuvre, explains Flanders. Um, that's because that's all there is, Neddy. See here.

LILEKS UPDATE. Today he takes Andrew Sullivan to task for proposing a gas tax. To my great disappointment, he does not do so on the grounds that Sullivan's homosexuality makes his argument intrinsically inferior to any heterosexual counterpart -- not this time, anyway.

On the other hand, he does suggest that the cultural "rot" he recently traced back to Guy de Maupassant can also be found in dictionaries ("You have to love [definition] #3, eh? The rot goes deep"). Who knows where Jimbo will discern the rot next? ("In 1713 it turned up in Sicily... in 1840 it reappeared in Paris...") They may find the poor devil poking at his cellar walls at 3 a.m., marvelling at the depth of the rot.

ANOTHER REASON TO BE GLAD YOU'RE A LIBERAL. The doofi at The Corner are fussing over whether it's okay for conservatives to like School of Rock. I shit you not.

Keep this and other similarly moronic discussions in mind next time any of these clowns says word one about other people's Political Correctness.

FROM THE LAND OF THE MONKEY TRIAL. Hey, remember last April when Professor Reynolds was rhapsodizing Iraqi children giving flowers to Marines?

My what a difference a year makes:

...dividing Iraq would certainly send a long-term lesson about what happens to countries that resist the United States.

In our loving embrace in '03, under our heel in '04! Even your humble correspondent has had relationships that took longer than that to go sour.

In the '03 post, the Professor notes, more than once, how "colossally, utterly, unredeemably wrong" Iraq war opponents were about Iraqis' reaction to their liberators. Turns out those opponents' predictions were a lot closer to the mark then what the Professor and his fellow geniuses were expecting. For all the pseudo-folksy touches the Professor sticks into his writing -- frequent use of "yup" and "hey," e.g. -- he seems fairly allergic to common sense.

SHORTER DAVID BROOKS: Who knew?

COMMENTS seem to be off. For how long I don't know. But don't worry -- even without your constant encouragement, I am always aware that I have THE BEST READERS IN THE UNIVERSE!

(I know these guys claim they do, but they only say it to get suckers to do their research -- and, for all I know, their laundry -- for them. I'm more the giving sort, and I have no compulsion to string along an audience by flattery or fluffery, which is why you chose well to patronize this site, you brilliant, sexy people.)

UPDATE. Fixed!

YOU KNEW THIS WAS COMING (edited). "Well, I have no religious opposition to homosexuality," drawls prairie pundit James Lileks, thumbs fussing with his suspenders. "I think civilized society recognizes that a small percentage of its citizens are drawn to the same sex..."

And then he seems to come out against same-sex marriage -- that's what it looked like to me at first, red-eyed examination. Then it seems like that point was moot, but that gay couples can't be good parents. Then it seems like they could be, but that gay parents -- well, here's an example:

Moms? Any guy can do your job. Dads? Your son or daughter doesn’t need to grow up with a male role model in his or her daily life. It’s the sort of pernicious nonsense that thinks gender is an arbitrary social construct. It’s not enough, apparently, to say that gay couples can be great parents. You have to insist that heterosexual couples have no inherent advantages.

Upon further review, it seems that what the guy doesn't like is an acceptance of gay marriage based on the unavoidable conclusion that gay people can have healthy relationships and happy children, on the grounds that this would make him (i.e., straight people) look like something less than the optimum model of childrearing.

Maybe this is what all those arguments concerning the deleterious effect of gay marriage on straight marriage are really about.

ADDENDUM. When comments come back on, somebody explain this sentence to me: "Just because gay couples can’t be excellent parents doesn’t mean that the inherent nature of the relationship is equal to the inherent nature of heterosexual parenting."

WE'RE A LITTLE SHORT OF FUNDS... Daniel Henninger tells how you, Mr. Citizen, can assist the war effort in Iraq:

The First Marine Expeditionary Force and U.S. Army in Iraq want to equip and upgrade seven defunct Iraqi-owned TV stations in Al Anbar province -- west of Baghdad -- so that average Iraqis have better televised information than the propaganda they get from the notorious Al-Jazeera. If Jim Hake can raise $100,000, his Spirit of America will buy the equipment in the U.S., ship it to the Marines in Iraq and get Iraqi-run TV on the air before the June 30 handover.

Doesn't sound like such a bad idea, but why is this Marine (hopefully aided by what Henninger calls "the coalition of the can-do") compelled to take up a collection for it, rather than can-doing it with government money? Henninger says, to "bypass the slow U.S. procurement bureaucracy." That's nice, we all hate bureaucracy, but isn't the War on Terror a top government priority? If so, why isn't this funded by the cash-glutted Pentagon, rather than a serviceman's tin cup?

I mean, Jesus fucking Christ. The State Department hired a top advertising executive to promote our cause in the Middle East, but they can't jack up a hundred large for a studio and a couple of transmittors?

This sticks in my craw even more than it might have because of a conversation I had recently with a woman whose son was plaguing me to buy raffle tickets for a school fundraiser, the purpose of which was to buy books, paper, and other essentials. The kid goes to a public school. I asked, doesn't the budget cover that? And I was informed that this sort of begging was common; public schools never have enough government green to pay for all the necessities of education.

Even in this era of religious belief in limited government (which, like Christianity, is often invoked and seldom observed), that blows my mind. And now I'm asked to pry open my wallet, not for the widows and orphans whose diminishing share of government funding is a long-standing if bitter reality, but for basic military and educational operations?

What the fuck did I just pay taxes for? Or, maybe more to the point, what the fuck did the wealthiest Americans not just pay taxes for?

PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY II. "I think perhaps the most compelling arguments from the pro-[drug]-legalization crowd are long-term ones. But in the short run -- a few years to a decade or two -- there would be a lot more drug addicts as the culture worked out the consequences... we would be making peace with the fact that an irreducible number of people would be permanently enslaved to drugs..." -- Jonah "Kegger!" Goldberg, The Corner.

PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. "BILL CLINTON JUST TRIED TO KILL ME. Really. I'm serious. Honestly. Talkingpresidents.com Bill Cllinton just fell off a shelf and hit me in my head..." -- Kathryn Jean "In what area are Christians most persistently persecuted?" Lopez, The Corner.

ENOUGH. Jonah Goldberg and Richard Brookhiser take time out from destroying the country to talk about what a shit George Bernard Shaw was.

I'm all for the marketplace of ideas, but when the gap in talent between yourself and your subject approaches seven light-years, you should just shut the hell up.

THE STORY OF G.I. JIM. Air Raid Marshal Lileks, treating the pop culture industry as his personal Target, demands a 9/11 movie. Not the crappy TV movie he already got -- a big budget production like Wake Island or The Passion of the Christ.

Of course Hollywood is too evil and traitorous to make such a film, so maybe Jimbo and a couple of his buddies should do it in the backyard with some of that technology he's always creaming over. I can see it now:

The door swings open like at the beginning of The Searchers, revealing an idyll of well-fertilized lawns, gas grills, and Volvos. But something is amiss. In the distance, a column of smoke rises.

JAMES strides into frame and silently surveys the column. In the background his entertainment center is tuned to seventeen news feeds and an old episode of Hoppity Hooper. All but the latter show talking heads, each telling Americans that the attack they have just witnessed is "America's fault," and that, in protest of our even existing as a free society, all network anchorpersons would start wearing Soviet flag pins.

JAMES' fist clenches; his rock-hard abs quiver. Wiping the Bisquick from her hands with her apron, WHATSHERNAME rushes to his side.

WHATSHERNAME: James, you're only one man! What can you do about it?

JAMES: What can any man do who cares about his country? I'ma write me a column!

He strides with grim determination to the staircase. Little GNAT looks up at him.

GNAT: Daddy, I made potty.

JAMES freezes, smiles, ruffles her hair.

JAMES: That's my girl. (quietly, to WHATSHERNAME) Hide her in the tool shed till I get back.

And wait'll you see when the posse catches up with Michael Moore!

HOUSECLEANING. I cleaned up a few of the blogrollees:

Whiskey Bar had a dead link, and Billmon's too hot right now to have me steering potential converts into a blind alley.

Duly noted also is Kevin Drum's move to Washington Monthly, where in a world gone mad he clings tenaciously to that tiny, flooded islet known as the moderate position.

IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING WHAT PRESS CONFERENCE THEY WERE WATCHING...

...This guy is the most sincere man I have ever seen hold public office and I will tell you guys I have met and known a lot. This is an asset that speaks to the heart and soul. It carries more weight then any flowery words could ever do. These are traits that wear well with people. It is not rooted in first impressions, but in lasting impressions. My impressions of this man will permeate my soul my entire life. I never expect these impressions to be exceeded by any other public figure. He is my Reagan, my Churchill, my FDR, my JFK, my Lincoln, or my whatever. He is a once in a lifetime. He is a gem, he is a godsend, one day more people will know and understand what gift we have been given.

    -- Roger L. Simon commentor "Samuel"

...that question can best be answered by Morpheus: there is no press conference.

The brainwashed we can pity. The paid operatives just roil our contempt. "No one should be fooled by the way he stumbled through some of his answers," cautioned John Podhoretz. "Bush knew exactly what he was doing..." I'll say he did -- the dazed look on his face last night clearly showed that he knew he wasn't making much sense. But with spin doctor/journalists like he's got, why should he care? If Bush came out eating a rat, Podhoretz would tell us how such displays of machismo endear the President to his people.

War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Bush is Churchill.

CHIVALRY. Some of you may remember the outrage Ted Rall generated with his ungenerous treatment of 9/11 widows ("bug," "ignorant little rant," "ugly, nonsensical," "evasive, gutless, dirt-eating," etc).

You will find a new Dorothy Rabinowitz piece at right-wing redoubt OpinionJournal, entitled, "The 9/11 Widows: Americans are Beginning to Tire of Them" and treating thus a group of WTC survivors who have spoken unfavorably about the President:

The venerable status accorded this group of widows comes as no surprise given our times, an age quick to confer both celebrity and authority on those who have suffered. As the experience of the Jersey Girls shows, that authority isn't necessarily limited to matters moral or spiritual. All that the widows have had to say -- including wisdom mind-numbingly obvious, or obviously false and irrelevant -- on the failures of this or that government agency... has been received by most of the media and members of Congress with utmost wonder and admiration. They had become prosecutors and investigators, unearthing clues and connections related to 9/11, with, we're regularly informed, unrivalled dedication and skill.

Surely James Lileks, Little Green Footballs, Tim Blair, Aaron Rantberg, et alia, will rise to these 9/11 widows' defense?

Chirp. Chirp.

QUICK TAKE. The opening statement was clear on the Iraq plan, and also contained the information, which really needed to be spoken aloud in a very public way, that the plan has no clear ending: June 30 is a waystation, after which we may (read: probably will) still be in Iraq ("our military commitment will continue... coalition military forces... protect their government... Our commitment will not end June 30th"). It helped Bush that he was able to surround this truth with expressions of support for the military and their families, a sense of a widespread and nefarious threat (Jerusalem, Bali, Madrid, etc.), several references to the United Nations, and compound sentences clearly not of his own devising.

This doesn't work so well when people are asking impertinent questions. I don't know if anyone was really expecting Bush to apologize or admit mistakes about 9/11, but he seemed awfully dodgy when they asked him about it, with his endless inklings and war footings. Also, if only the threat of terrorist mischief, not the presence of weapons of mass destruction, were reason enough for dislodging Saddam, why not just dismiss the subject forthrightly, rather than speculate on a possible second turkey farm in Iraq?

He finished by saying the American people knew that he meant what he said -- which seems like a way of excusing his ragged public speaking skills as proof of his sincerity. But you don't have to be slick (as in Willie) to seem as if you're hiding something. Doubling back, inane repetition, and off-topic answers can also signal prevarication. If I were advising the President, I'd tell him to butch it up.

COME, LET US REASON TOGETHER. So much strife, so much misunderstanding. Surely Red and Blue can agree on something? Well, yes. Andrew Stuttaford is quite right to approve the bird Rheingold Beer flipped at Mayor Bloomberg and his smoking ban.

I haven't had a Rheingold in a while, and remember it tasting like chilled lighter fluid, but I reckon I owe it another chance.

IN HIS DARK, DRAFTY SKULL A TINY EMBER GLEAMED. "Part of what is happening in Iraq seems to be an understandable nationalist reaction to being governed by a foreign occupying power." -- Rich Lowry, National Review.

NEW FISH, SAME OLD BARREL. I understand this nut is somebody's idea of a deep thinker. Let us see.

"We know who most of America's enemies are," writes Michele Catalano. "Now there is a new group to add to that list: the anti-war crowd."

Her proof points regarding the beliefs and behaviors of the "anti-war crowd" are taken from one fairly mild paragraph by Ted Rall, and a couple of possibly authentic protest signs. Thin gruel indeed, but so far as she's concerned these demonstrate that all Americans who doubt the wisdom of our Iraq adventure "support the taking of American hostages, the killing of American soldiers and, by proxy, the jihad against America."

Then she laments the polarization of our country.

Then she says she wants to drive a wooden stake through a protester's eye socket.

Gary, does A Small Victory qualify as one of those "foaming at the mouth" sites that are supposed to lie beneath our notice? If not, why not?