FLATINE & BROOKS - August 26, 2005

JIM LEHRER: And to the analysis of Flatline and Brooks. Johnny Flatline of the Fake Democracy Foundation, NY Times columnist David Brooks. Johnny, based on what you just heard, how do you read the Iraqi Constitution situation tonight?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Obviously, our administration is portraying this constitutional process as a significant event because they have no other choice. They have nothing else to hang their hat on. Bush is constantly in desperate need to publicize a current event like this because, by any more standardized measure, he’s failing. Remember when our Marines went in to clean up Fallujah? How clean is it now? Remember the big election that was going to break the will of the insurgents? How significant was that? Remember when we caught Saddam? That was supposed to greatly diminish the violence. Now they propose that a constitution will reduce the will of the insurgency. The insurgency has never been stronger than today, so where is the progress? They are running out of excuses for the violence that continues.

JIM LEHRER: You think that much is riding on this David?

DAVID BROOKS: No. No. I think it’s important. And the more elections we can have the better we are. But, you know, the security thing is the most important thing. But as far as the constitution I think there are two parts to it. The one is the distribution of power, the federalism part. And the second is the social issues part -- the protection of minorities.

On the federalism part, it seems to me they’ve done pretty good. If these events have proved anything in the past week is that we cannot bind these three groups -- the Kurds, the Sunnis, and the Shiites -- closely together into one centralized country because they’ll tear each other apart. They need a loose structure where each group can really govern themselves. So I think the federalism part is just good. And then you get to the social issues.

JIM LEHRER: But they’re not quite there yet.

DAVID BROOKS: There’re not quite there.

JIM LEHRER: But they’re not there at all.

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I wouldn’t say they are not there at all. I mean what’s going to happen is that the Sunnis are going to scream, but then they’ll participate in the process afterwards to ratify. So I think eventually they’ll get there through a process, unhappily. But then the second side, the side that’s generated a lot of press back here is the protection of women's rights, and social issues, and the court system, and things like that. And here we’re obviously a lot less happy. If you read the constitution, it’s contradictory. There are some parts of it that read like the equal rights amendment – much more liberal than anything we have, other parts that are much more restrictive. But I think the key point is that the Shiites in the South were insisting on some of these conservative social issues, they were elected and it’s their country. And if we try to repress the legitimate values that they have which, even if we find them distasteful that’ll just turn off their population. It is their country, and they’ve got to work through it.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree with that Johnny, that the United States may be in a position where we have to stand back and let a constitution go, with some things in it that are really going to be hard to sell in the United States of America?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Well, that is a predicament isn’t it? Of course every country’s people should be able to decide for themselves what they want, just as Venezuela has freely decided they like Chavez more than Pat Robertson does. But the United States created this situation, not the Iraqis, and the United States has now invested billions upon billions of United States tax dollars tampering with another country. And let’s not forget we began this tampering long before Bush arrived. This money has been spent very unproductively. Every prediction has gone wrong. Talk of constitution only helps the media waste more air time on another meaningless distraction from the harsh reality. This President, who runs secret prisons, shoots the finger at our media, speaks only to prescreened citizens, and kidnaps people around the world for torture, is trying to glorify himself with a deep concern for Iraqi democracy and constitutions. Pardon me for not being just a little more than skeptical. Pardon me for being a little less than respectful.

David, who must by now be the lead spokesman for the establishment, because he is so smooth at making extreme right wing policy sound moderate, is now introducing us to words like federalism to try to compare this effort to the founding of our own country. Obviously, some noble vocabulary is desperately needed to try to whitewash a very nasty situation that we really can’t afford to fix, because our country actually lacks the power, resources and integrity to fix a mess based entirely on our own immoral behavior.

DAVID BROOKS: That’s not true. It’s not our kind of democracy. We never said it was going to be Switzerland or the United States or Cape Cod. It’s going to be their kind of democracy. And that was the whole essence of the theory behind it. Which is you’ve got regimes that are dysfunctional, societies that are repressive because there’s no give and take, there’s no culture of compromise. There’s no building coalitions. But if you get a system which we will have under this constitution where women have the vote, where you’ve gotta build coalitions, where you’ve got freedom of assembly, freedom to have parties, all that kind of stuff, you get a much more normal society.

JIM LEHRER: A lot of things to talk about on Iraq this week. Senator Hegel said last Sunday, he brought up the bad word, cause he’s a Vietnam veteran, in fact he earned two purple hearts and a bronze star in Vietnam. He said, "it’s beginning to look like Vietnam." And it became a major, major event when Chuck Hegel said that. What do you think about that?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I think he pointed to something useful. Which is that the President can’t just go around the country and say freedom, freedom, freedom, repeat that stuff. The reason a lot of people are losing support for the war is because they don’t think it’s winnable. They might think OK, it’s a noble cause, but we’re not winning. Why should we sacrifice more young men and women to a lost cause? And what the President did this week was not address this issue. He just repeated the stuff about freedom. He’s got to address the issue about winnability and he’s gotta show what we learned in Vietnam, which was how to fight an insurgency. At the end of Vietnam, we actually got reasonably good at it, using a strategy we hadn’t even tried here. So I’d hope the President would take a lot at what Hegel said and say "OK, let’s try what they learned. In Vietnam, they learned how to fight an insurgency. Let’s learn from our experience" if we haven’t don’t it all.

JIM LEHRER: Johnny, Hegel, to quote directly, he said, "by any standard, when you analyze two and half years in Iraq, we’re not winning."

JOHHNY FLATLINE: The fact that only war veteran politicians are allowed the status to criticize war only tells you how tightly controlled our government is by the military industry. But let me go back to Vietnam as well, to say we are doing exactly what we learned in Vietnam. I don’t know where David gets this story about learning how to fight insurgents. I think he’s just making that up, because it makes absolutely no sense to the historical record I’ve seen. But nice try. I know for Bush supporters, it only needs to sound good. People in general see Vietnam as a failure, but by some measures it was a complete success, and it’s important to understand how and why if we are ever going to be a responsible citizenry.

Vietnam lasted a decade, and billions were spent on military hardware. Our destructive military machine got to waste ammunition on a jungle and brown people for a decade. That was the main point of that war. There was no other point. Let’s not kid ourselves. All of the other points were meaningless sales pitch, and never a true objective. Much money and profit was made on Vietnam by our military contractors. They made all they could until they were finally stopped.

Iraq is no different. The war was always meant to last a long time, and the lies to get the war started were unimportant, because it was known that once we went in, time could be bought on the famous line well, we can’t pull out now. We created this mess, now we’ve go to finish it. And unlike Vietnam, there’s actually a massive pot of gold in Iraq that we want to control. This is a power play, plain and simple. So I’m not getting too obsessed over the future of this Iraqi constitution. Do I wish it luck, so our own violent US regime will gain confidence to try this again on another country? Or do I wish it to fail, so America can learn that we overreaching with our power?

JIM LEHRER: And of course General Meyers spoke. We had the news summary a while ago, the Chairman of the joint chiefs said he just got back from Iraq and the troops are beginning to say "well we’re doing ok over here, what’s happened back home? Where’s our support going? What he talking about? Is he talking about Hegel?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, he’s talking about what we all see in the polls, which is a drop in public support. And what you are getting from troops and I think we’ve heard it, I’ve heard it, they think they’re winning. ‘How come they’re not with us at home? Are they going to pull the rug out?’ So at the Vietnam analogy, some things don’t apply. The insurgents have no popular support. They have no big super powers backing them. They’re a shadow of that kind of thing. But on the other hand we are fighting an insurgency war. And it has begun to take a toll, though the cost, on the domestic audience. And so Meyers was saying ‘hey, if we’re going to fight this war, let’s fight it, but let’s not lose it because we lost the civilian debate at home.’ Which is why it’s so important that Bush get out there with a strategy. And just to fill one mistake we made in Vietnam, was to go around chasing insurgents on search and destroy missions, thinking, ‘hey, we’ve got all this fire power, let’s use it.’ And we’d chase them and we’d leave the village and they’d take over the village again.

JIM LEHRER: Which is exactly what happened in Fallujah and Ramada.

DAVID BROOKS: Exactly, and they’ll kill everybody that helped us. And we made all those mistake exactly again. The secret we learned in Vietnam was don’t worry about attacking the enemy. Protect civilians. And then slowly expand the areas you’re protecting. That way you get civilians helping you. We learned that in Vietnam [chuckle] but we haven’t learnt it now.

JIM LEHRER: You believe that the President could turn this around by just changing his message to the American people about this war?

DAVID BROOKS: No. Well I think the message has to be not ‘hey we’re advancing freedom.’ People either accept that or they don’t. The message has gotta be a strategy, but then there has to be a strategy, there has to be a measurable result of what we’re winning on the ground. Listen, in Mosul two weeks ago, three election workers, Sunni election workers, were killed while they were just trying to register voters. That’s the moral clarity of this issue. That’s not what the issue is. Is it a lost cause or are we winning? And I think it’s way too soon to be defeatist about it on the ground.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Of course it’s too early, because Bush has not handed off enough billions to his buddies yet. And leaches will not quick sucking until somebody lights a flame to it. It’s that simple. Most money spent on Iraq is not money handed to an Iraqi. It's mostly money handed to funny corporations based in places like Houston.

JIM LEHRER: Quick, another subject before we go and that’s the base closing commission. A lotta talk about politics and whether there was or wasn’t, who wins, who loses. How do you read the performance?

DAVID BROOKS: I think it’s rated very highly. It comes on the heals of the 911 Commission, the WMD Commission. We’ve had a lot of good commissions.

JIM LEHRER: Government by commission [chuckle].

DAVID BROOKS: I know, maybe this democracy thing is overcooked. Maybe our greatest public figure is Alan Greenspan.

JIM LEHRER: "All right, choose nine people and put em over there [joking]."

DAVID BROOKS: [joking] It’s worked at least maybe compared to the dysfunctional nature of our politics it done ok.

JIM LEHRER: What do you think?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Well, it’s only an interesting reminder of how vast and overblown our military establishment has become. Our military is so vast and powerful now, you can’t find a single politician willing to openly criticize it, because if they did, they would be out of the job fairly quickly. That’s how concentrated the power is. I think we’ll just have to let it spend itself to death like Russia did, before we can stop this particular excess of power. Expect pain when that happens. Specific towns are trying to avoid the pain of a base closing. That pain might spread to the entire country one of these days, if we are not careful. But we are still far too arrogant to see that yet.

FLATLINE AND KRISTOL - August 19, 2005

MARGARET WARNER: Now, for insight and analysis into the latest on Roberts and other political high points of the week, of the Fake Democracy Foundation Johnny Flatline, and Bill Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard. Mark Shields and David Brooks are both off tonight. And we're so glad you're both with us. So, Bill, how important politically are all these pages of documents that have come out?

BILL KRISTOL: Well, I've studied, of course, all 38,000 pages.

MARGARET WARNER: Just like Jan.

BILL KRISTOL: Yes, thank God Jan is here. They don't seem to me to have made much of a difference at all. I've always thought that the majority of Democrats would oppose Roberts, who will be a conservative justice, not a radically conservative justice, but a conservative justice, but Roberts will have some Democratic support and all the Republicans, and he will get through, I think.

MARGARET WARNER: Johnny, do you think any votes are hanging in the balance based on what's coming out in these papers?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Oh, who knows. This Congress has voted in some real criminals like Negroponte, with hardly a word spoken. I’m not so sure there's ever much reason for optimism with this bunch, which has proven to be quite weak at taking on any meaningful fights.

MARGARET WARNER: So you think the issue that Jan spoke about at the end, about getting those documents, you think that has legs? You think there are senators who would hold up the nomination?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: I’m just not so sure that’s a meaningful point. The primary question I have, is do we have anybody in Congress who can even discern what legal scholarship even looks like? Is anybody really interested in appointing the best and brightest to the bench? And is Congress interested in holding up their own responsibility to this review? I don’t think so. I’m afraid the historical record on this question is a bit disappointing. It’s a dog and pony show, with little meaning ever given to academic facts.

MARGARET WARNER: Do you want to comment on that? I wanted to ask you about Leahy, too, and his-- you know, when the Roberts nomination was made four weeks ago, the Democrats were incredibly cautious. Well, he sounds like a fine man; we'll reserve judgment. This week, you had Sen. Leahy, the lead Democrat on Judiciary, calling him among the most radical on civil rights, women's rights, privacy and so forth. What happened?

BILL KRISTOL: What happened is there was a front-page article, I think in the Washington Post, saying it looks like Roberts is going to go through pretty easily. He may get as much as 70 votes. The Democrats aren't doing much to oppose him. And there was a huge uproar in the left-wing blogsphere, and the interest groups, and suddenly the next day Sen. Leahy makes remarks that I don't think were previously scheduled that he's outraged by Roberts and in fact I think says he's going to lead the opposition to him.

I think most of the Democratic Party does not want to be on record voting for a man to go to the Supreme Court who will be a pretty conservative judge, and I think there's enough pressure from the interest groups that a certain number of the Democratic senators will be outspoken in their opposition. I think a certain number will vote against but will be mild mannered and polite. I would say Sen. Clinton, for example, might take that tack, and then I suspect Roberts will get a dozen or so Democrats and, as I say, will make it through pretty easily.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Who knows if we will ever learn who this guy really is. The whole purpose of each and every person Bush appoints is to withhold information as long as possible and demand an up or down vote. In other words, obey me, or screw you. I’ll just appoint him when you’re in recess. I don’t need your approval for what I want. How dare you question my appointees! I’m sure Roberts must be well indoctrinated on how inside power wants him to behave, otherwise he would have never gotten this far. Didn’t I hear he was a member of Skull & Bones? Need I say more?

MARGARET WARNER: I'm going to switch us to the politics of Iraq. Johnny, what do you make of the Cindy Sheehan phenomenon, the mother of the slain American soldier who, until yesterday, was camped at President Bush's ranch, outside it, and there have been more than 1500 antiwar vigils spurred by her? What's going on here?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: It really surprised me because the rest of the world has staged huge protests against our power, and Americans, by comparison, have been rather sanguine about it all, unaware of how vehement world opinion is, because our own media ignores the story. This mom steps in and the right doesn’t know what to do with her because she seems so normal. She seems to be a leading figure because she’s beyond the insult machine of the GOP. They may find a way to discredit her, like they do everybody else, but right now they’ve gotten caught scratching their heads. I’m sure Bill can help us find a way to insult her efforts.

BILL KRISTOL: I think it's grotesque. I think the left has found a new weapon to oppose the president and the war, and that weapon is martyrdom, and they are using the death of a soldier in this case and the mother's grief over that death to try to, obviously, rally support, as Mrs. Sheehan has made perfectly clear to get the troops out of Iraq. Her complaint isn't that we aren't grieving enough over these young men and women who have died; it's that President Bush isn't following her preferred policy alternative. We'll see how much attention the media pays to Linda Ryan, the mother of a Marine who died, who's very offended by what Mrs. Sheehan is saying. Are we going to now pull out competing mothers, competing widows? I think -- it's just grotesque, I think.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: For right wingers, questioning authority is always a grotesque and even an immoral act. They really hate it when people don’t get in line and do as they’re told, no matter how deadly. If he thinks Ms. Sheehan is grotesque, wait until he gets a load of me.

MARGARET WARNER: Bill, do you think whether her phenomena is connected to the broader antiwar movement or not do, you think this is another case where pressure is being put on some of the Democrats in Congress by the grassroots wing of the party?

BILL KRISTOL: Yeah, two points. The war isn't going well, and the President has troubles in Iraq, and I think he should do a better job of executing the policy, which I happen to support. But that's one issue. The second issue is whether Mrs. Sheehan will help the antiwar movement, and I don't think so. I think she's going to be tough for the Democratic Party. She's going to-- she and her supporters-- and there are many, and if you read the liberal blogs and they are really enthused by her, she's the leader of the antiwar movement now. There will be pressure on Democratic senators and congressmen to support her position, which is withdrawal from Iraq. And I think that's a tough-- I'm not sure that's a position that the leaders in the Democratic Party want to be in. We'll see what people like Sen. Clinton and others, how they handle this.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Bill makes an excellent point about the Democrats, because it’s true they are hardly any different from Republicans, and way too weak to speak out against our greedy military machine lest they all be wiped out of a job very quickly. The public is enthused about Ms. Sheehan because our government – both Democrats and Republicans - has grown incapable of voicing any opinion other than support for the war. It’s little wonder the Democratic party is so weak, because they are too fearful of supporting truly left wing points of view. Instead of leading the left, the have to follow it. That's very sad. Our left wing is all faked, just as our democracy is all faked. It’s just more proof that our politicians are not really beholden to the voter as much as they are to their funding sources.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. We'll leave it there. Bill & Johnny, thank you.

FLATLINE & BROOKS - August 12, 2005

Johnny Flatline and David Brooks discuss declining support of the war in Iraq and whether the United States has a plan to defeat the insurgency.

JIM LEHRER: And finally tonight, the analysis of Flatline and Brooks. David Brooks of the NY Times, and Johnny Flatline of the Fake Democracy Foundation. David, how do you read the message of this administration now on the direct issue of when the troops are going to start coming out of Iraq and how?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I guess I’d say there were a bunch of different constituencies here. Some in the military want to get out because it’s so unpleasant. So I think some of the military people were saying "We’re going to be able to draw down, we’re making some progress training the Iraqis."
Then there’s the constituency, the Iraqis themselves, the ones on our side, so to speak, the people in the government, sort of threatening them, you know, you can’t count on us forever, time for you to start thinking about standing up for yourself. And then there’s this constituents of the insurgents, which I think the president was addressing which is don’t count on us leaving, you’re not winning this fight, we’re winning this fight, we’re staying until the end.
And I think President Bush, who runs the place, is more in the third school. I think he is, we’ll stay till the end. I think realistically the crucial facts will be the elections this fall, the referendum on the constitution and then the election. And if they turn out to be replications of what we saw in the last election, I think there will be a great will to stick it out and I think those elections – and as we’ve seen in insurgency wars in the past – it’s only elections and the political climate that can weaken an insurgency.

JIM LEHRER: Meanwhile, Johnny, is it fair to say there’s kind of mixed messages coming out of the administration?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Is it fair to say there’s mixed messages? No that isn’t fair at all to say that. What is fair to say is the Bush administration is a bold faced criminal liar. Now that would be fair. Impeachment would be fair. As the big lie morphs over time, we can count on geniuses like Brooks here to develop amnesia, and try to smooth talk over the current situation to make it sound like this is the work of educated sound minded people over some imaginary continuum. There is nothing sound nor normal about this situation. People are dying at great expense to this country with a small few actually profiting from this chaos. That’s all that can really be said with some certainty. Bush’s word means nothing to more and more people each day and more people are starting to put two and two together.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree he has got a candor problem now?

DAVID BROOKS: No, I think he’s been straight, we’re going to try to fight the war, we’re going to try to defeat the insurgency. I think two things. First of all, I don’t think his approval ratings are down 23 points. The survey of the surveys I saw had him up around 42, 43, 44 -- I don’t know – 45 is not bad. Secondly, a democracy can’t sustain a war if when the war goes badly – as all wars do – we pull out just because it’s unpopular. The Civil War was unpopular, the Revolutionary war was unpopular, World War II was unpopular. The question is: Do we have a mission? Is the mission worth it? Is it good for American interests? And the war is unpopular, because as we talked about a few weeks ago, the vast majorities think it’s still worth it and think we can’t pull out.

JIM LEHRER: Johnny, what do you say to those who suggest, whether they’re in favor of pulling out or staying, whether they’re Republicans or whether they’re Democrats, whether they’re hawks or doves, whether they’re in the administration or out of the administration, there seems to be kind of an absence of a plan, anybody’s plan, to do something – to finish it –

JOHNNY FLATLINE: So sad to hear you portray the country in pairs like that. You are well trained. First of all, let’s stop using the mind programming vocabulary of the people who orchestrated this war lie. We are not fighting insurgents. That implies somebody is sneaking in to ruin our honest plans. We are fighting angry Muslims. Let’s call them what they really are. They are angry Muslims. If we can start there, we can then begin to ask ourselves, what could they possibly be mad about – mad enough to risk their lives, or give their lives to resist us? If they are insurgents, then so are we.
At this point, I find it pointless to refer to any previous war. What does it matter? That’s just another technique to gloss over our current failures. Just because a war is for a good cause, doesn’t make war good or glorious. The Civil War was for a good cause, but it was also the deadliest war on record for this country. There were other countries who found more peaceful ways to end slavery. So let’s not pat ourselves on the back for that one. In this case, we are in Iraq because . . . . there is literally no reason, other than to enrich some connected corporate insiders, burn up some expensive ammo, scare the crap our of some Muslims, and maybe manage some control over the second largest oil reserves in the world. If Iraq did not have the oil fields, I can assure you we would not be there right now.
There is no plan that makes any sense other than leaving, because there is no realistic plan that anybody can really afford to pay. We took on something that we cannot afford to finish. At this point, it’s more of an issue of how to save face, or fake a victory. Those who are profiting from this are in no hurry to resolve the issue because any lack of resolution keeps the ammo money – our tax dollars – on cruise control. If you want to know what the plan is, follow the money trail.

JIM LEHRER: But the plan is working from your point of view?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I don’t know if it’s working. I really don’t know. I don’t know too many serious analysts who think the insurgents can win. They’re a small majority – a small minority, they have no positive agenda; they have no popular support. On the other hand, there could be a civil war, we don’t know what’s going to happen between the Sunni and the Shiites and the Kurds.
And there could just be chaos. You know, insurgencies do win by not losing. So, you know, I’m never in the position of saying how things are going because I’m not there and I don’t know. But I do think it’s still a worthy cause when you focus on who the enemy is, the Jihadists and Baaathists, those people just have to be defeated for the good of the world.

JIM LEHRER: Johnny?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: David mentioned chaos, and not knowing what will happen. That’s the problem with all war, is you don’t know what is going to happen before you start it. Which is why starting wars can be a really stupid move because you have handed over the management of future affairs to luck and chance. David refers to serious analysts – a serious analyst is one thing that has never been welcome in this administration. The serious analysts warned us that Iraq would be chaos because of the conflicting three cultures there. The serious analysts warned us this war would be costly. The serious analysts warned us this war would not be quick and easy. The serious analysts warned us that establishing democracy in a country would not be done overnight. But all of those analysts were not only ignored, they were actively fired, demoted, discredited, to this very day. Since the entire foundation of government policy of the Bush administration had been totally devoid of serious analysis, what makes any of us believe they are going to begin any serious analysis of anything today? There is no analysis. The only analysis I can think of is that Bush’s religious right wing actually desires chaos in the Middle East because for them, chaos represents the coming Rapture. That’s why Bush’s so called gut is not afraid to make a mess. He thinks he’s helping Jesus. That’s the closest I think we can come to anything trying to pose as serious analysis.

DAVID BROOKS: Obviously, his view would be the fringe of American thought. I think the President is right to say we are in there for the long haul. But one thing that bugs me about the whole debate is we’ve talked about the casualties, as we should, the focus on the enemy has not been there. Who is the enemy? What are their motivations? Once you start thinking about who the enemy is, then you start realizing their victory, which would either be a victory for the Baathist tyranny or for the Jihadists, would just be a calamity. And that’s why we’re there in the first place. And so as you focus on the enemy I think you begin to see that withdrawal would just be ruinous.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: The enemy is either Jihadists or Baathists? And if either wins it would be a calamity? That’s hilarious. The enemy is the United States because we went there uninvited, and unprepared to truly help the people. We went in unprepared to devote resources to a culture that we were literally uprooting with bombs. We did not go in for the reasons you just explained and you know it. The product of our position as enemy intruder is another enemy called angry Muslim. I have no idea if we could ever kill all resisters or all angry people of the world, and I don’t care to know. I don’t care what happens to Iraq after today. We are killing on my grandkid’s credit card financed with Chinese labor. I don’t want to participate in this suicidal transaction anymore. We can’t afford what we are doing, so how could it be good for us? How could it be making us safer if we are killing beyond our means? If the troops jumped on an airplane tomorrow, and came home in twenty four hours, I have no idea what would happen to Iraq, but I do know one thing without a shadow of doubt -- the United States would be better off and safer. Let there be no question about it. We would be better off to tuck our tails and run, just like we did in Vietnam. Less aggression leads to less aggression. Let’s be an example to that. As long as we stand as an example to brutal force, we will be teaching others to act like we do -- to fight. Those insurgents are mirror images of our own behavior, and our own grandiose arrogance.

JIM LEHRER: Quick question. Cindy Sheehan, whose son died in Iraq, is camped out in front of the President’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. Should he meet with her?

DAVID BROOKS: Apparently, she has – according to her they have met at one point. They had some conversation. But you know there’s diversity in America of opinions on this war, diversity on this set on the war and she represents a point of view that’s legitimate, a point of view. I think he should in general meet the people whose sons are paying this incredible sacrifice. Whether her in particular now that she’s become such a political figure, I don’t know. I’m not sure.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Well, first of all, Bush does not normally meet with people who haven’t been prescreened and filtered to worship his feet. They don’t do random town meetings. They do pretend fake meetings, designed to look like public interaction. But Bush does not subject himself to random America, lest he find out people like me actually exists. That’s why our democracy is dead. There is no input from the people anymore. There is a vast filtering mechanism out there that seeks to give voice to those who will reinforce entrenched power. That's what keeps guys like Brooks here overpaid. Bush is too busy with his vacation to visit with Ms. Sheehan. But I would like to remind everyone that he cut short his previous valuable vacation time to worry with a brain dead lady in Florida. I think Bush prefers to interact with people who incapable of thought. He can relate to them better.

JIM LEHRER: Okay. Thank you both very much.