Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION FROM PAUL SUTLIFF By Paul Sutliff In 2008 Basak Otus, a writer for Yale Daily News, the leading news source for Yale University wrote an article that started: “English majors getting tired of Shakespeare and Wordsworth will soon be able to turn to Yale’s libraries for a poet of a different kind altogether: Osama bin Laden”. The backlash to this article should have been taken as a prophetic warning of what was to come, akin to the hand writing on the wall of King Belshazzar of Babylon in the book of Daniel. In that story the fingers of a man’s hand appeared and wrote on the wall an ominous warning that the prophet Daniel interpreted as meaning:

ISIS, the Islamic terrorist network, may have gone too far this time. On Saturday, as reported by The Gateway Pundit , “an Islamist extremist [Omar Mateen]   murdered 20 people at a ‘Pulse’ gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.” Fifty people are now reported dead. Gays have long been a targeted group for Islamic terrorists.

Never letting a crisis go to waste, Democrats who favor national restrictions on guns have turned the assault in San Bernardino in the direction of gun control laws they favor. If U.S. Senator Chris Murphy is not leading the pack, he is barking loudly with the other hounds. A day after the terrorist attack in California, Mr. Murphy tweeted to the world, “ Your ‘thoughts’ should be about steps to take to stop this carnage. Your ‘prayers’ should be for forgiveness if you do nothing - again.” The Murphy tweet produced others chastising the Senator for devaluing prayer. But Mr. Murphy’s tweet was not so much an assault on the efficacy of prayer as it was a case of purposeful campaign posturing; tweeting brings out the worst in many of us. If people are unwilling to do something to stop the carnage, Mr. Murphy seemed to be saying, “their ‘prayers’ should be for forgiveness.” Mr. Murphy did not say in his initial tweet who should be forgiven or why (Baathist tyrants in Syria? Isla...

US Senator Chris Murphy might have said simply that the US invasion of Iraq in March, 2003 radicalized enemies of “the Great Satan” – that’s us. At best, this was a half-truth. There is some discussion afoot as to whether George Bush’s largely successful overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime during a three month war radicalized ISIS. Perhaps ISIS has been radicalized by something else. Some people, staring at Mr. Murphy from across the political barricades,  assert that the premature withdrawal of American troops from Iraq following the war was the precipitating event that gave birth to ISIS’ largely successful advance from Syria to northern Iraq. ISIS, according to this reading of events, simply exploited a military and political weakness issued from President Barack Obama’s “lead from behind” Middle East strategy: When the cat’s away, Islamic terrorists will play. The propriety of the war to dislodge Saddam Hussein has become an  political briar patch so thick and tho...

The good news is that Secretary of State John Kerry is not Ayaan Hersi Ali , and therefore his address to Yale graduates on College Class Day was not cancelled by a tremulous administration responding to charges that the appointed speaker had needlessly denigrated Islam. Yale, one may be thankful, is not Brandeis University, which first announced plans that it would bestow an honorary degree on Hersi Ali and later cancelled her invitation to speak at the college when students and Muslim organizations became restive. Mr. Kerry, assuredly, is no Hersi Ali. His comments concerning the murderous assault on Christians by Muslim Salafists in the Middle East and Africa are so mild and inoffensive as to be barely noticed at all.     Nor is Mr. Kerry Condoleezza Rice, currently a professor of Political Economy in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and  the first African American in U.S. history to be appointed Secretary of State. Ms. Rice...

Russia’s Doors, Putin’s Time There are, and always have been, three doors to Russia, every one of which has been jealously guarded first by Russian Czars and in the Communist era by Russian Czars posing as proletarian workers such as Josef Stalin. There is a Western point of access (Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states), a Middle Eastern point of access (Afghanistan, Iran) and a Southern point of access (China). Access doors open both ways and, depending upon one’s point of view, President of Russia Vladimir Putin has now either opened or shut all the doors. It would be paradoxical, though never-the-less true, to say he has shut the doors by opening them. Mr. Putin was featured as Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” in 2007. That year, China’s leader Hu Jintao was featured as a runner up.

Here is President Barack Obama holding forth in an ad released in September: “Now Governor Romney believes that with even bigger tax cuts for the wealthy, and fewer regulations on Wall Street, all of us will prosper. In other words, he’d double down on the same trickle-down policies that led to the crisis in the first place.” That is the core message of the Obama-Biden campaign. Mr. Obama has repeated the claim often, and Vice President Joe Biden took it for a ride around the block in his recent debate with Republican Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan. Unfortunately, the theory recently collided with fact checker for the Washington Post Glenn Kessler, not a conservative or a member in good standing of the much abused and misunderstood Tea Party movement, who awarded the claim three out of four “Pinocchios,” which places the statement alongside such whoppers as “the earth is flat” and “Vice President Joe Biden is a gentleman.”

Former Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz, now running for U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman’s soon to be vacated seat along side U.S. Rep Chris Murphy, may have had her front grill dented a bit in recent days, but it must be said the lady now is in fearsome forward motion. Mrs. Bysiewicz has called for U.S. troops to leave Afghanistan as soon as practicable and, by so doing, got a jump on the laggard Mr. Murphy, who has been advertising himself in different venues as the progressive’s progressive. The modern progressives, nearly all of them Democrats, not so long ago were bestirring themselves as anti-war zealots. Who can forget Cindy Sheehan’s often reported march on former President George Bush’s Crawford, Texas ranch? During the Bush presidency, the air crackled with fervent calls by then presidential campaigner Barack Obama to shut down the Iraq war shortly after the Petraeus surge had been launched. The progressives were hot on closing down GITMO, still open for business. A not ye...

Here is former Speaker of the U.S. House Nancy Pelosi on the importance AND insignificance of the late Osama bin Laden: Then, September 7, 2006: “[E]ven if [Osama bin Laden] is caught tomorrow, it is five years too late. He has done more damage the longer he has been out there. But, in fact, the damage that he has done ... is done. And even to capture him now I don't think makes us any safer.” Now: “The death of Osama bin Laden marks the most significant development in our fight against al-Qaida. ... I salute President Obama, his national security team, Director Panetta, our men and women in the intelligence community and military, and other nations who supported this effort for their leadership in achieving this major accomplishment. ... [T]he death of Osama bin Laden is historic…” Note the use of the word “historic.” Anything that happened yesterday is historic. This overused locution parallels the word “interesting” in modern times. If your wife or GF, having dyed her ha...

After having made certain by DNA analysis that they had gotten their man, dead rather than alive, Osama bin Laden’s body was committed to the fishes. This was probably a good idea: The burial is compliant with Islamic rites, which specifies near immediate disposition of the dead; and the disposal of the remains makes it less likely that terrorists who drew energy from Mr. bin Laden’s presence will have a martyr’s site to which they can repair to pray and plot ways to blow up non-military civilians such as those who died on 9-11. Here in the United States, one could hear champagne corks popping shortly after the glad tidings were disclosed in a 15 minute address to the nation by President Barack Obama. Mr. Obama said justice had been served at the hands of the Navy Seals, who dispatched Mr. bin Laden after a brief firefight. Mr. bin Laden was shot in the head, according to officials, after he and his bodyguards resisted the assault. The assaulters bagged three adult males, including...

Ayman al-Zawahiri is the second in command of al-Qaeda, a step behind Osama bin-Ladin, whose silence on the American election has led some to suppose that he is indisposed or dead. Al- Zawahiri is very much alive. He is thought to be biding his time in the badlands of Pakistan until such time as it is once again safe to come out of his hidey-hole. He has issued a communiqué on the American election and decidedly does not respect the wisdom of the American people in choosing to elect Sen. Barack Obama as president because, among other reasons, he does not compare favorably with Malcolm X. Obama, said al- Zawahiri, is the direct opposite of “honorable black Americans” like Malcoln X , described in a CNN report as “the fiery African-American Muslim activist from the 1950s and 1960s.” The sticking point for al-Zawahiri is “Obama's foreign policy positions on Afghanistan and Israel ,” according to CNN. “The posting, an 11 minute and 23 second audio message in Arabic with subtitles in E...

In choosing to embrace proportional rather than winner take all primaries, the Democrat Party, true to its nature, was being democratic. But, in fact, proportional primaries, in which delegates are assigned in proportion to the votes cast, this year have elongated the primary season. For Republicans, the primary season was closed at the beginning of March. Democrats have miles to go before they sleep. The long Democrat primary season virtually assures a brokered convention, bruised egos and a disappointed Democrat electorate. This is simply another way of saying that Democrats have shortened the time they may devote to the general election. Whether or not a shortened general election will prove to be a bust or boom for Democrats is very much an open question. There are two schools of thought: One holds that the incessant squabbling between senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama during the duration of the Democrat primary will keep the two in the news, while Republican Sen. John McCa...

Yesterday’s question concerning the war in Iraq – “Are we winning or losing?” – has given way to today’s question – “Is Iraq Vietnam?” The question arose because President George Bush in a recent speech at a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention hinted that a retreat from Iraq would be attended by consequences similar to the retreat from Vietnam. "One unmistakable legacy of Vietnam,” Bush said, “is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens.” This has prompted a “discussion” – really, more like a bar room brawl – that Bush cannot win. A quick glance at the discussion on the weekend following Bush’s analogy will show why. The Hartford Courant and one of its lead commentators – Bill Curry , once an advisor to former President Bill Clinton, once a student anti-Vietnam war protestor – were very quickly out of the gate. Mr. Curry has told us that in writing his columns he often consults with name Carolyn Lumsden , now the Editorial page editor of...

The pity of it is there is no one on God’s side to answer Christopher Hitchens , the author of “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,” the latest and best in a long series of books recently published by ardent atheists. One thinks, almost involuntarily, of the cartoonish marginalia of William Blake’s poems, showing a long like of kings ending in a turd. Standing at the end of the line of distinguished atheist authors is the insufferably haughty Richard Dawkins, author of " The God Delusion ," who has suggested that atheists denominate themselves “brights,” so as to distinguish themselves from such "non-bright" thinkers as Blaise Pascal and Thomas Aquinas. “What an asshole,” Mark Warren commented on Dawkins in a review of Hitchens’ book in Esquire magazine. Brevity really is the soul of wit. Pass over Dawkins and “the wishfully thinking " The End of Faith ," by Sam Harris,” an atheist neuroscientist, Warren advises, but do not deny yourself the...

Dodd Likes Spinach When a politician begins a statement this way – “Don’t misunderstand me, I like spinach’’ – you can be certain he deplores spinach. If the politician is a progressive, the same rule holds true when the “spinach” is “soldiers in Iraq busily undermining the Democrat congressional effort to subvert the war on terror and make the White House safe for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or John Edwards or Dennis Kucinich or Chris Dodd, who has more experience than the other Democrat presidential candidates in subverting wars.” Hillary the Stiff It is said that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is much stiffer on the stump than her husband, ex-President Bill Clinton – soon to be, God willing, the future president’s First Partner. And this is true. Hillary is more formal than Bill, more cautious, less certain that –whatever the rhetorical thicket she may wander into – she possesses the wit, charm, grace and verbal agility to escape the briars that will tear her tender flesh. She is a...

It’s a little surprising, what with all the political wags in the state, that no one yet has suggested Sen. Chris Dodd may have had a Damascus road experience in Damascus while cannoodling with that consummate liar Syrian President Bashir Assad. Dodd now is positioning himself for a run for the presidency, already crowded on the Democrat side with anti-war candidates. Like Dodd, Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden and North Carolina Sen. John Edwards all voted in favor of the war at first; but, now that the war has soured, all favor some form of withdrawal and redeployment. How to distinguish oneself in this pea pod of anti-war presidential contenders presents a dicey political problem. Dodd’s most recent view on the Iraq war was summarized in an op-ed piece he wrote for an Iowa paper : Troops engaged in Iraq, Dodd wrote, should be re-deployed “to the Syrian border, to stop the flow of terrorists; to the north of Iraq, to better train Iraqi security forces; ...

The obvious answer to the question “What does Ned Lamont want?” is that he wants to replace Joe Lieberman in the U.S. Senate. And there are plenty of other people who would like to assist him. Lamont’s most active and articulate supporters are the Kossacks; that is what they call themselves. They are readers and assiduous followers of Daily Kos , a liberal web site maintained by Markos Moulitsas Zúniga. Some of the people who support Lamont’s insurgency campaign may be Republican sappers. It’s no secret that Lieberman will draw votes from Republicans in a general election. Connecticut Republicans afflicted with a bad case of moderation like Lieberman because a) he’s genuinely affable, and b) a moderate Democrat. Lieberman probably cannot be defeated in a general election. The senator is more popular in Connecticut than Chris Dodd, whose position on the war in Iraq has not alienated the readers of Daily Kos. But anything can happen in an election. The war in Iraq may yet become an albat...

It’s doubtful that the average American thinks very much about his own past, let alone the past of his nation’ recent presidents. Most Americans are forward looking; something they have in common with tempest tossed immigrants newly arrived in the land of milk and honey. During his first campaign against the current president’s father, former president Bill Clinton was careful not to dwell too much on his dubious past: It took awhile for that past to catch him up with the fleet footed Clinton and grab him by the throat. Clinton’s first campaign was grounded firmly in the insubstantial future. The past belongs to history and may be, especially to those who have lived in it, a twilight shrouded, dangerous terrain. The future belongs to the imagination and is made of “frogs and snails and puppy dog’s tails.” As boys -- who will be boys -- enter their maturity, their pasts, so the poem tells us, are transmuted to “sighs and leers, and crocodile tears.” If John Kerry didn’t get himself a ro...