Sunroom Desk believes indignation over AIG bonuses misses the huge giveaway in government funds to other banks and hedge funds. A March 18, 2009 Wall Street Journal article states:

Some of the billions of dollars that the U.S. government paid to bail out American International Group Inc. stand to benefit hedge funds that bet on a falling housing market, according to people familiar with the matter and documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

In Obama’s AIG Panic, the Wall Street Journal editorial page states the obvious:

Anger rises when Americans learn after three bailout revisions that they haven’t been told the truth that the AIG nationalization was a conduit to save counterparties, and even hedge funds, that gambled on housing.

The Hot Air Blog comments:

The nasty little secret at the center of all the outrage is that the Obama administration could have stopped the bonuses by simply stopping the bailout. They could have forced AIG into bankruptcy, which would have voided the company’s contractual compensation obligations…In the future, we can avoid having taxpayer dollars go to Wall Street bonuses by not bailing out private companies with taxpayer dollars.

Forget about that previous common sense suggestion; everyone who has a say in the matter seems to have taken money from AIG, from Obama to Congress. Patterico’s Pontifications took a look at the Barney Frank’s efforts last week to convince people that he, as head of the House Banking, Housing, and Finance committee, is not at all responsible for the current mess:

Frank blasts former Pres. Bush for demanding that Fannie and Freddie increase the percentage of subprime loans they purchased, “supposedly because of his belief in an ‘ownership society.’” He ignores that — however ill-advised — this was a continuation of the aforementioned Clinton Administration policies and that Bush at least pushed the independent oversight of Fannie and Freddie that Frank opposed.

Frank also blames the Fed – and cheap money both here and abroad helped cause the housing bubble. However, Frank ignores that the Boston Fed (yes, in Frank’s virtual backyard) was among those pushing lower lending standards across the board in order to make more minority loans — which Frank has championed for years. Moreover, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan repeatedly warned Frank and his friends that Fannie and Freddie carried systemic risks requiring legislative action, above and beyond tighter regulation of these government sponsored enterprises. Frank turned a deaf ear to these alarms.

Other members of Congress have not (at least publicly) made any move to remove Frank, Christopher Dodd in the Senate, and all their fellow financial committee members from the oversight duties in which they have so clearly failed.

Moving on to newspapers, who is going to tell the public the truth about matters like those above if news businesses keep contracting? The LA Times warned:

Newspapers continue, to a degree, in their historical role of driving and shaping political debate. But they’ve slashed their staffs, often losing the most experienced (and highest-paid) reporters, because of a ghastly recession and advertising lost to the Internet.

The severity of the problem is hard to assess. How do you get your arms around what hasn’t been written?

Finally, Michael Ledeen’s criticism of Fareed Zakaria’s recommendations for U.S. international policy, calling it appeasement, and comparing it to Chamberlin’s deal with Hitler before World War II:

Zakaria writes as if radical Islam will destroy itself, if only we are patient and sophisticated.

In the end, time is on our side. Bin Ladenism has already lost ground in almost every Muslim country. Radical Islam will follow the same path. Wherever it is tried—in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in parts of Nigeria and Pakistan—people weary of its charms very quickly. The truth is that all Islamists, violent or not, lack answers to the problems of the modern world. They do not have a world view that can satisfy the aspirations of modern men and women. We do.

It is true that “bin Ladenism” has lost appeal, but that is primarily because it lost the war in Iraq, and has taken severe beatings in Lebanon and Gaza. Nothing is more devastating to a messianic movement–and radical islam is precisely that–than defeat on the battlefield. The jihadis claim that victory comes from God, thus the clear import of their defeat is that God is not on their side. That is why their defeat in Iraq was so momentous, and why we must aim to defeat the jihadi regimes, above all those in Damascus and Tehran.

Zakaria is quite wrong to say that the radical jihadis “lack answers to the problems of the modern world.” They do have answers, very appealing answers, not only to the problems of the modern world but to the most profound questions of human existence. They are ancient answers, barbaric answers, but they have considerable appeal to many Muslims, especially if we stand back and permit them to extend their sway. It is quite true, as Zakaria says, that most people would prefer to live in a more civilized manner, but the reason that the jihadis failed in Iraq and Afghanistan is because they were beaten by the greatest instrument of freedom in the modern world–the American military–not because the locals tired of living in a sharia state. The overwhelming majority of Iranians detest their lives in the Islamic Republic, but the mullahs continue to rule because the West has lacked the will to defeat them and make it possible for the Iranian people to live in freedom.

The current appeasers have less excuse than the British Prime Minister, who thought he could forestall and perhaps even avoid a war with the Third Reich. If they were really realists, the appeasers of today would recognize that we are already at war, and that, just as in the epic struggle against Nazism and Fascism, the only proper mission for the West is victory. Instead, they seek dishonor, and the effect of their dishonorable campaign is to encourage our enemies, weaken our will, condemn the victims of radical Islam to death, torture, and misery, and hasten the day when we will be forced to fight on a much larger scale, perhaps even in our own land.

Churchill put it best the day he became Prime Minister:

You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory. Victory at all costs – Victory in spite of all terrors – Victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival.