Semper fi

For two ex-Marines -- my father-in-law and my 'Uncle' Earl: Captain Jimmy Bones And His Devil-Dog Marines

Heritage Quote

"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious."

—Thomas Jefferson

Space elevator

Here is a neat article about a small step toward someday building a space elevator in order to more economically move people and materials to and from Earth orbit.

LiftPort Group Inc., of Bremerton, Wash., has successfully tested a robot climber — a novel piece of hardware that reeled itself up and down a lengthy ribbon dangling from a high-altitude balloon.

The test run, conducted earlier this week, is seen as a precursor experiment intended to flight validate equipment and methods to construct a space elevator. This visionary concept would make use of an ultra-strong carbon nanotube composite ribbon stretching up to 62,000 miles (100,000 kilometers) from Earth into space.

This really appeals to my geeky side!

[Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit.]

Relief vouchers

Kathryn Newmark (quite a productive family, those Newmarks), over at The American Enterprise, has published an article about school vouchers as a part of the federal Katrina relief effort.

Katrina left an estimated 372,000 students without schools. To help other schools absorb these students, the administration has proposed $2.6 billion in aid, which includes up to $7,500 per K-12 student for the 2005-06 school year. And the federal money will follow students to both public and private—the Department of Education is setting aside $488 million to compensate families for the costs of private school tuition.

It makes for interesting reading.

Heritage Quote

"A State, I cheerfully admit, is the noblest work of Man: But Man, himself, free and honest, is, I speak as to this world, the noblest work of God..." —James Wilson

Entitlements' legacy

Philip Wallach shares his concerns about the burgeoning entitlements budgets in this country. Here's a taste:

But even apart from these concerns, we will be pinned and wriggling on the wall by the simple arithmetic of the budgetary black hole our (fore)fathers have created. Right now, a little more than one in ten of our federal tax dollars goes to debt service. This is a mere pittance when compared to what we face in the future. Our own Comptroller General, David Walker, has warned that if we stayed our current budgetary course, by 2040 we might be required to pay nearly all of our federal taxes to service the debt left to us by the big spenders now in charge. These are not trifling concerns.

We owe it to our children to read this and ponder upon its ramifications.

Katrina examined

Jack Kelly gives us three compelling reasons for a thorough investigation of the Katrina readiness/relief efforts.

Heritage Quote

"There! His Majesty can now read my name without glasses. And he can double the reward on my head!"

-- John Hancock (upon signing the Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1776)

Return to Afghanistan

Firepower Forward describes his return, from mid-deployment leave, to Afghanistan. One of the stops is Ireland:

After a 3 hour layover in Shannon Ireland, we are called to board. 200 soldiers begin making their way out of the small terminal towards the gate. Several of the American tourists in the terminal position themselves near the door and shake hands with soldiers or clap them on the back wishing them good luck as the(y) exit. I remember visiting Dublin last year and having our host go out of her way to show me some anti-Bush posters on lamp posts and billing them as a general indictment by Ireland against the war. Today though, as I near the terminal exit, I hear the clapping start sporadically then rapidly spread throughout the terminal. Looking over my shoulder I saw every person in the terminal on their feet applauding. My eyes misted over as our contingent made our way out of the terminal and back towards harms way, thankful for the hospitality of the Emerald Isle.

Go read the whole thing.

[Hat tip to CaliValleyGirl.]

Death Eaters

The California Conservative points out that Cindy Sheehan has a lot of 'professional protestor' help. And the identities of the organizations involved should raise the hairs on the back of your neck.

527

Tony Snow talks about how Harry Reid has 'transmogrified' into a party hack. Here's a taste:

Reid's performance raises an interesting and vital question: What on earth would persuade a naturally nice man to behave in such an inane manner -- and why would a majority of Democrats join him in voting against John Roberts, who may be the strongest high-court nominee in a century?

Here is the two-word answer: McCain-Feingold. The McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform bill, designed grandly to "take money out of politics," predictably produced the opposite effect. It sucked in a flood of cash, gutted the major political parties and made poseurs more unaccountable than ever before.

You will find that Mr. Snow finds the effects of McCain-Feingold to be objectionable. I'm inclined to agree with his reasoning.

[Hat tip to Betsy Newmark at Betsy's Page.]

Perspective

Michael Barone reminds us about the big picture. Here's an excerpt:

A world spinning out of control: That is what the old-line broadcast networks seem to be showing us. But I see other patterns. George W. Bush has consistently asserted that one reason for removing Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq was to advance freedom and democracy in the Middle East. In spite of the improvised explosive devices, that seems to be happening. Lebanon's Cedar Revolution was as inspiring an example of people power as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Libya has dismantled its weapons of mass destruction. Egypt, by far the largest Arab nation, had its first contested election this month, and, as the Washington Post's David Ignatius writes from Cairo, "the power of the reform movement in the Arab world today ... is potent because it's coming from the Arab societies themselves and not just from democracy enthusiasts in Washington." Which is evidence that Bush was right: Muslims and Arabs, like people everywhere, want liberty and self-rule. Afghanistan has just voted, and Iraq is about to vote a second time this year. Violence continues, but the more important story is that democracy and freedom are advancing.

He also covers the economy, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and America's lack of popularity with the rest of the world. A good read.

The "other" rally in D.C.

A first-hand account, and well worth your time.

Heritage Quote

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and pursuit of Happiness: that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1776

After Katrina -- what went wrong

John Fund, over at OpinionJournal, talks about the perils of sending loosely-controlled aid to Louisiana. And he doesn't hold back:

No state turns out better demagogues than Louisiana--the state that Huey Long ruled with an near-fascistic fist and that inspired the new Sean Penn version of "All the King's Men" that hits movie theaters this November. While the Bush administration and Congress aren't in danger of being fried as witches, they better figure out that they and the taxpayers are about to be fleeced like sheep as they ship south $62 billion in emergency aid with few controls or safeguards.

I have reprinted the whole thing in the extended entry.

A Swamp of Corruption

In Katrina's wake, Louisiana's political culture needs a cleanup too.


Monday, September 26, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

Perhaps no footage from Hurricane Katrina was replayed more often than the "Meet the Press" clip of Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, La., telling Tim Russert that bureaucrats had "committed murder" in the storm's aftermath. He sobbed as he told about a colleague's mother drowning in her nursing home after begging her son on the phone for four days to save her from the rising waters. Talk show host Don Imus said he had never seen such gripping testimony on TV in his life.

But MSNBC.com later found the story didn't hold up. Eva Rodrigue, the 92-year-old mother of Thomas Rodrique, the parish's emergency services director, did drown--but not because federal or state officials failed to rescue her. Mr. Rodrique said his mother died the day of the hurricane because the nursing home's owners ignored commands to evacuate. The owners are now under indictment for negligent homicide. Mr. Rodrique says his mother never spoke with him, and he can't explain why his boss, Mr. Broussard, got it so wrong.

Mr. Broussard returned to "Meet the Press" yesterday to punch back at critics of his obviously embellished statement. "What kind of sick mind, what kind of black-hearted people want to nitpick a man's mother's death?" he roared. When Mr. Russert continued to point out the discrepancies in his account, Mr. Broussard told him "Man, get out of my face" and then said the bureaucrats and officials who failed his region "should be strung up. Those people should be burned at the stake."

---

No state turns out better demagogues than Louisiana--the state that Huey Long ruled with an near-fascistic fist and that inspired the new Sean Penn version of "All the King's Men" that hits movie theaters this November. While the Bush administration and Congress aren't in danger of being fried as witches, they better figure out that they and the taxpayers are about to be fleeced like sheep as they ship south $62 billion in emergency aid with few controls or safeguards.

More will be coming. Last week, Louisiana's two senators didn't even blink when they asked the feds for an ultimate total of $250 billion in assistance just for their state. "We recognize that it's a very high number," Sen. Mary Landrieu admitted. "But this is an unprecedented national tragedy and needs an unprecedented national response."

Even if the total ends up far short of that figure, the opportunity for fraud and waste will be unprecedented. "We're getting a lot of calls" on emergency aid abuses, reports Gen. Richard Skinner, the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general. Last week, police officers found a treasure trove of food, drinks, chainsaws and roof tarps in the home of Cedric Floyd, chief administrative officer for the Jefferson Parish suburb of Kenner. Mr. Floyd is one of several city workers who will likely be charged with pilfering.

Despite assurances from President Bush, "the government is fighting this war [on waste] with Civil War weapons, and we're just overwhelmed," Joshua Schwartz, co-director of the George Washington University Law School's procurement law program, told Knight Ridder. Democrats are already scoring political points. Rep. David Obey, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, is lamenting the lack of accountability in the aid package. He is calling for "the beginning of some new thinking" on how to handle disaster relief.

Put bluntly, the local political cultures don't engender confidence that aid won't be diverted from the people who truly need and deserve it. While the feds can try to ride herd on the money, here's hoping folks in the region take the opportunity to finally demand their own political housecleaning. Change is past due. Last year, Lou Riegel, the agent in charge of the FBI's New Orleans office, described Louisiana's public corruption as "epidemic, endemic, and entrenched. No branch of government is exempt."

Louisiana ranks third in the nation in the number of elected officials per capita convicted of crimes (Mississippi takes top prize). In just the past generation, the Pelican State has had a governor, an attorney general, three successive insurance commissioners, a congressman, a federal judge, a state Senate president and a swarm of local officials convicted. Last year, three top officials at Louisiana's Office of Emergency Preparedness were indicted on charges they obstructed a probe into how federal money bought out flood-prone homes. Last March the Federal Emergency Management Agency ordered Louisiana to repay $30 million in flood-control grants it had awarded to 23 parishes.

Much of the region has long had a relaxed attitude towards corruption. ABC's Cokie Roberts, whose parents, Hale and Lindy Boggs, both represented New Orleans in Congress, was only half-joking when her first suggestion for speeding reconstruction was releasing convicted former governor Edwin Edwards from prison because he "knows how to get things done."

But there is room for optimism. "The hurricane was so big and traumatic it could jolt the relaxed political culture," says Ron Faucheux, a Democratic former state legislator from New Orleans. He also notes that 2007 will inject new blood into Louisiana's Legislature when term limits kick in for the first time and force almost half its old-boy members to step down.

---

As for New Orleans, no city in America would better serve its most vulnerable residents with a clean sweep of its institutions. Just this summer, associates of former mayor Marc Morial were indicted for alleged kickbacks involving public contracts. Last month the FBI raided the home and car of Rep. William Jefferson as part of a probe into allegations he had misused his office.

It is the city's dysfunctional police force that needs immediate attention. Lt. Gen. Steven Baum, chief of the Pentagon's National Guard bureau, lamented the poststorm "disintegration" of the force. City residents have long endured men in blue who not only fail to fight crime but sometimes engage in it, with more than 50 officers going to prison in the past dozen years, two of them to death row. When one police district was caught altering its data, Chief Eddie Compass said, "I don't need an outside agency coming in. I think we have proven that we are capable of taking care of our own house."

Indeed, many local officials are quick to attack any outsiders who question the local way of doing things. Sen. Landrieu is especially sensitive since politics is her family's business. Her father was mayor of New Orleans, her aunt sits on the city's school board, and her brother is the state's lieutenant governor. She did a passable imitation of the overwrought Aaron Brossard when she told ABC News that if President Bush utters any criticism of how local officials responded to the disaster "I might have to punch him--literally."

But some questions must be asked before city residents decide whether to return. "We can't go back to the way we've done things," says former congressman Bob Livingston, a Republican. He notes that the Orleans Parish Levee Board allowed money to be diverted from levees into many other projects. Those included a local casino, a convention center and a Mardi Gras fountain. "We were trying to be good neighbors," former board member Jim Livingston (no relation to Bob) explained to me.

Fred Smith of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who grew up in New Orleans, says the area must leave behind an economy and political culture that belongs to the last century. He notes that Houston has become the South's energy capital, Atlanta its commercial capital and Charlotte its financial center. "Katrina provides a chance to give up populism and embrace reform," he says. The area has given the country so much--in music, in cuisine, in style. But it has also bred a fatalistic attitude which has left too many people with little belief that things can be better. As William Faulkner put it, people too often endure rather than hope.

---

The massive federal aid now flowing to the region should give victims of Katrina and Rita some hope--along with the knowledge the country has embraced them. It is up to them to seize the opportunity and make a fresh start. If that means abandoning some of the comfortable practices of the past and electing fewer demagogues, the next generation will appreciate that Katrina's survivors chose not just to rebuild their homes but to begin "some new thinking."

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Egyptian democracy

David Ignatius has a column up at the Washington Post that discusses the very real potential for democratic reform in Egypt. Here's a taste:

But unlikely as it sounds, the 77-year-old Mubarak won reelection this month on a platform of political and economic reform. The fact that even the pharaonic Mubarak is running as a democrat illustrates the power of the reform movement in the Arab world today. The movement is potent because it's coming from the Arab societies themselves and not just from democracy enthusiasts in Washington.

And this can be attributed to the U.S. involvement, under President Bush's leadership, in founding democracies in Afghanistan and Iraq. Bet on it.

It's an interesting read. Recommended.

[Hat tip to Michael Barone's Blog.]

After Katrina -- what went right

Lou Dolinar, retired firefighter and retired reporter for Newsday, has an article up that provides us a new perspective on the Katrina disaster relief effort -- what went right. Here's an excerpt:

Largely invisible to the media's radar, a broad-based rescue effort by federal, state and local first responders pulled 25,000 to 50,000 people from harm's way in floodwaters in the city. Ironically, FEMA's role, for good or ill, was essentially non-existent, as was the Governor's and the Mayor's. An ad-hoc distributed network responded on its own. Big Government didn't work. Odds and ends of little government did.

It's a good read that illustrates some good things about America and its people. I recommend it.

Iraq Permanent Fund

Here is a good idea for spreading the wealth in Iraq.

Sheehan's legacy

Byron York gives us different perspective on Cindy Sheehan's anti-war rally in D.C. Here's an excerpt:

About that time, a cameraman shooting the scene noticed something. "I've seen a lot of these people before," he said. Pointing to a woman a few feet away, he said, "That one was at the World Bank thing. They're professional protesters."

And indeed, that one - Fithian - had been at the protests in Washington a few years earlier. And so had some of the people working with Fithian. And Code Pink's Medea Benjamin, exchanging a warm hug with Fithian on the Capitol lawn, had been at hundreds, if not thousands, of protests. There were some real protest veterans in the group.

Indeed, the photographer's observation pointed to something telling about the day. On close examination, the Cindy Sheehan phenomenon appears not to be a mass movement of any sort but rather to consist of a small group of relatives of U.S. servicemen and women -- there were perhaps 30 in all with Sheehan on Wednesday -- accompanied and guided by a group of full-time organizers like Fithian, Benjamin, and the people from Mintwood Media Collective. People like Sheehan and the other Iraq relatives -- many of them grieving and angry -- don't know how one goes about organizing protests. Fithian and Benjamin do.

Amerika

Phin, over at Phin's Blog, and with tongue firmly planted in cheek, has pointed us toward a better way to achieve socialism in America.

Heh.

Good questions

Peggy Noonan asks some pointed questions about the seemingly new direction the Republican party, and our current administration, is headed.

Here are some questions for conservative and Republicans. In answering them, they will be defining their future party.

If we are going to spend like the romantics and operators of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society;

If we are going to thereby change the very meaning and nature of conservatism;

If we are going to increase spending and the debt every year;

If we are going to become a movement that supports big government and a party whose unspoken motto is "Whatever it takes";

If all these things, shouldn't we perhaps at least discuss it? Shouldn't we be talking about it? Shouldn't our senators, congressmen and governors who wish to lead in the future come forward to take a stand?

And shouldn't the Bush administration seriously address these questions, share more of their thinking, assumptions and philosophy?

I've put the whole piece in the extended entry.

'Whatever It Takes'

Is Bush's big spending a bridge to nowhere?


Thursday, September 22, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

George W. Bush, after five years in the presidency, does not intend to get sucker-punched by the Democrats over race and poverty. That was the driving force behind his Katrina speech last week. He is not going to play the part of the cranky accountant--"But where's the money going to come from?"--while the Democrats, in the middle of a national tragedy, swan around saying "Republicans don't care about black people," and "They're always tightwads with the poor."

In his Katrina policy the president is telling Democrats, "You can't possibly outspend me. Go ahead, try. By the time this is over Dennis Kucinich will be crying uncle, Bernie Sanders will be screaming about pork."

That's what's behind Mr. Bush's huge, comforting and boondogglish plan to spend $200 billion or $100 billion or whatever--"whatever it takes"--on Katrina's aftermath. And, I suppose, tomorrow's hurricane aftermath.

---

George W. Bush is a big spender. He has never vetoed a spending bill. When Congress serves up a big slab of fat, crackling pork, Mr. Bush responds with one big question: Got any barbecue sauce? The great Bush spending spree is about an arguably shrewd but ultimately unhelpful reading of history, domestic politics, Iraq and, I believe, vanity.

This, I believe, is the administration's shrewd if unhelpful reading of history: In a 50-50 nation, people expect and accept high spending. They don't like partisan bickering, there's nothing to gain by arguing around the edges, and arguing around the edges of spending bills is all we get to do anymore. The administration believes there's nothing in it for the Republicans to run around whining about cost. We will spend a lot and the Democrats will spend a lot. But the White House is more competent and will not raise taxes, so they believe Republicans win on this one in the long term.

Domestic politics: The administration believes it is time for the Republican Party to prove to the minority groups of the United States, and to those under stress, that the Republicans are their party, and not the enemy. The Democrats talk a good game, but Republicans deliver, and we know the facts. A lot of American families are broken, single mothers bringing up kids without a father come to see the government as the guy who'll help. It's right to help and we don't lose by helping.

Iraq: Mr. Bush decided long ago--I suspect on Sept. 12, 2001--that he would allow no secondary or tertiary issue to get in the way of the national unity needed to forge the war on terror. So no fighting with Congress over who put the pork in the pan. Cook it, eat it, go on to face the world arm in arm.

As for vanity, the president's aides sometimes seem to see themselves as The New Conservatives, a brave band of brothers who care about the poor, unlike those nasty, crabbed, cheapskate conservatives of an older, less enlightened era.

---

Republicans have grown alarmed at federal spending. It has come to a head not only because of Katrina but because of the huge pork-filled highway bill the president signed last month, which comes with its own poster child for bad behavior, the Bridge to Nowhere. The famous bridge in Alaska that costs $223 million and that connects one little place with two penguins and a bear with another little place with two bears and a penguin. The Bridge to Nowhere sounds, to conservative ears, like a metaphor for where endless careless spending leaves you. From the Bridge to the 21st Century to the Bridge to Nowhere: It doesn't feel like progress.

A lot of Bush supporters assumed the president would get serious about spending in his second term. With the highway bill he showed we misread his intentions.

The administration, in answering charges of profligate spending, has taken, interestingly, to slighting old conservative hero Ronald Reagan. This week it was the e-mail of a high White House aide informing us that Ronald Reagan spent tons of money bailing out the banks in the savings-and-loan scandal. This was startling information to Reaganites who remembered it was a fellow named George H.W. Bush who did that. Last month it was the president who blandly seemed to suggest that Reagan cut and ran after the attack on the Marine barracks in Lebanon.

Poor Reagan. If only he'd been strong he could have been a good president.

Before that, Mr. Mehlman was knocking previous generations of Republican leaders who just weren't as progressive as George W. Bush on race relations. I'm sure the administration would think to criticize the leadership of Bill Clinton if they weren't so busy having jolly mind-melds with him on Katrina relief. Mr. Clinton, on the other hand, is using his new closeness with the administration to add an edge of authority to his slams on Bush. That's a pol who knows how to do it.

At any rate, Republican officials start diminishing Ronald Reagan, it is a bad sign about where they are psychologically. In the White House of George H.W. Bush they called the Reagan administration "the pre-Bush era." See where it got them.

Sometimes I think the Bush White House needs to be told: It's good to be a revolutionary. But do you guys really need to be opening up endless new fronts? Do you need--metaphor switch--seven or eight big pots boiling on the stove all at the same time? You think the kitchen and the house might get a little too hot that way?

The Republican (as opposed to conservative) default position when faced with criticism of the Bush administration is: But Kerry would have been worse! The Democrats are worse! All too true. The Democrats right now remind me of what the veteran political strategist David Garth told me about politicians. He was a veteran of many campaigns and many campaigners. I asked him if most or many of the politicians he'd worked with had serious and defining political beliefs. David thought for a moment and then said, "Most of them started with philosophy. But they wound up with hunger." That's how the Democrats seem to me these days: unorganized people who don't know what they stand for but want to win, because winning's pleasurable and profitable.

But saying The Bush administration is a lot better than having Democrats in there is not an answer to criticism, it's a way to squelch it. Which is another Bridge to Nowhere.

---

Mr. Bush started spending after 9/11. Again, anything to avoid a second level fight that distracts from the primary fight, the war on terror. That is, Mr. Bush had his reasons. They were not foolish. At the time they seemed smart. But four years later it is hard for a conservative not to protest. Some big mistakes have been made.

First and foremost Mr. Bush has abandoned all rhetorical ground. He never even speaks of high spending. He doesn't argue against it, and he doesn't make the moral case against it. When forced to spend, Reagan didn't like it, and he said so. He also tried to cut. Mr. Bush seems to like it and doesn't try to cut. He doesn't warn that endless high spending can leave a nation tapped out and future generations hemmed in. In abandoning this ground Bush has abandoned a great deal--including a primary argument of conservatism and a primary reason for voting Republican. And who will fill this rhetorical vacuum? Hillary Clinton. She knows an opening when she sees one, and knows her base won't believe her when she decries waste.

Second, Mr. Bush seems not to be noticing that once government spending reaches a new high level it is very hard to get it down, even a little, ever. So a decision to raise spending now is in effect a decision to raise spending forever.

Third, Mr. Bush seems not to be operating as if he knows the difficulties--the impossibility, really--of spending wisely from the federal level. Here is a secret we all should know: It is really not possible for a big federal government based in Washington to spend completely wisely, constructively and helpfully, and with a sense of personal responsibility. What is possible is to write the check. After that? In New Jersey they took federal Homeland Security funds and bought garbage trucks. FEMA was a hack-stack.

The one time a Homeland Security Department official spoke to me about that crucial new agency's efforts, she talked mostly about a memoir she was writing about a selfless HS official who tries to balance the demands of motherhood against the needs of a great nation. When she finally asked for advice on homeland security, I told her that her department's Web page is nothing but an advertisement for how great the department is, and since some people might actually turn to the site for help if their city is nuked it might be nice to offer survival hints. She took notes and nodded. It alarmed me that they needed to be told the obvious. But it didn't surprise me.

Of the $100 billion that may be spent on New Orleans, let's be serious. We love Louisiana and feel for Louisiana, but we all know what Louisiana is, a very human state with rather particular flaws. As Huey Long once said, "Some day Louisiana will have honest government, and they won't like it." We all know this, yes? Louisiana has many traditions, and one is a rich and unvaried culture of corruption. How much of the $100 billion coming its way is going to fall off the table? Half? OK, let's not get carried away. More than half.

Town spending tends to be more effective than county spending. County spending tends--tends--to be more efficacious than state spending. State spending tends to be more constructive than federal spending. This is how life works. The area closest to where the buck came from is most likely to be more careful with the buck. This is part of the reason conservatives are so disturbed by the gushing federal spigot.

Money is power. More money for the federal government and used by the federal government is more power for the federal government. Is this good? Is this what energy in the executive is--"Here's a check"? Are the philosophical differences between the two major parties coming down, in terms of spending, to "Who's your daddy? He's not your daddy, I'm your daddy." Do we want this? Do our kids? Is it safe? Is it, in its own way, a national security issue?

---

At a conservative gathering this summer the talk turned to high spending. An intelligent young journalist observed that we shouldn't be surprised at Mr. Bush's spending, he ran from the beginning as a "compassionate conservative." The journalist noted that he'd never liked that phrase, that most conservatives he knew had disliked it, and I agreed. But conservatives understood Mr. Bush's thinking: they knew he was trying to signal to those voters who did not assume that conservatism held within it sympathy and regard for human beings, in fact springs from that sympathy and regard.

But conservatives also understood "compassionate conservatism" to be a form of the philosophy that is serious about the higher effectiveness of faith-based approaches to healing poverty--you spend prudently not to maintain the status quo, and not to avoid criticism, but to actually make things better. It meant an active and engaged interest in poverty and its pathologies. It meant a new way of doing old business.

I never understood compassionate conservatism to mean, and I don't know anyone who understood it to mean, a return to the pork-laden legislation of the 1970s. We did not understand it to mean never vetoing a spending bill. We did not understand it to mean a historic level of spending. We did not understand it to be a step back toward old ways that were bad ways.

I for one feel we need to go back to conservatism 101. We can start with a quote from Gerald Ford, if he isn't too much of a crabbed and reactionary old Republican to quote. He said, "A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have."

The administration knows that Republicans are becoming alarmed. Its attitude is: "We're having some trouble with part of the base but"--smile--"we can weather that."

Well, they probably can, short term.

Long term, they've had bad history with weather. It can change.

---

Here are some questions for conservative and Republicans. In answering them, they will be defining their future party.

If we are going to spend like the romantics and operators of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society;

If we are going to thereby change the very meaning and nature of conservatism;

If we are going to increase spending and the debt every year;

If we are going to become a movement that supports big government and a party whose unspoken motto is "Whatever it takes";

If all these things, shouldn't we perhaps at least discuss it? Shouldn't we be talking about it? Shouldn't our senators, congressmen and governors who wish to lead in the future come forward to take a stand?

And shouldn't the Bush administration seriously address these questions, share more of their thinking, assumptions and philosophy?

It is possible that political history will show, in time, that those who worried about spending in 2005 were dinosaurs. If we are, we are. But we shouldn't become extinct without a roar.

Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father," forthcoming in November from Penguin, which you can preorder from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Thursdays.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Ex - U.N.

Claudia Rosett indulges us with a pleasant fantasy: closing up the current U.N. and starting afresh and anew.

We should be so lucky. [/cynicism]

I've posted it all in the extended entry.

U.N.-Plugged

Imagining the end of the "world" as we know it.


BY CLAUDIA ROSETT

Wednesday, September 21, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

On Monday afternoon the electrical power blew out at U.N. headquarters, forcing the secretary-general and the foreign ministers of four of the world's most powerful nations, along with France, to evacuate the executive offices on the 38th floor. Nonessential U.N. staff were sent home--leaving a friend to quip, "Does that mean all of them?"

Power has since been restored. But Monday's blackout was about as close as anything's come to Ambassador John Bolton's much-quoted line that the U.N. could lose its top 10 stories and nothing would be different. The General Assembly session, continued without interruption in another part of the U.N. complex. The global economy ticked along. The world turned on its axis. On schedule, the sun set. All of which led to a taboo line of thought: What if we simply left the U.N. unplugged?

In the debate over U.N. reform, that is the no-go zone. It is accepted practice to issue tons of documents outlining endless reform, argue over all of it, despair of most of it, mangle the remainder and then recite as an axiom of the modern universe that the U.N. is a flawed institution, but it's all we've got. To whisper that maybe the U.N. is a relic beyond repair, and perhaps a new age of the world deserves a new and better institution, is to knock yourself right out of the debate. No one would want to do that; or at least no one who has invested the eons it takes to read Kofi Annan's 87-page reform plan, Mr. Bolton's sagely line-edited version of the ensuing reform document, the final version of the "outcome" document, the stack of U.N.-reform-related congressional proposals and testimony, the think-tank documents, the zillion-and-one op-eds, and of course the recent 847-page report of Paul Volcker's inquiry.

But in the fleeting twilight moment this past Monday of contemplating a U.N. without power, I did wonder what a new world council would look like, if instead of restitching the creation animated by our forefathers in 1945, we created an institution tailored to our own era--not the 20th century, but the 21st.

The upside of an entirely new U.N. could go well beyond better electrical circuits at headquarters, or more agile computer backup (for a while, the U.N. Web site went out along with the lights). The current U.N. dates back to a time when the frontier of information technology was the vacuum tube, the ascendant philosophy in the developing world was communist central planning, and the kind of war the U.N.'s founders sought to prevent was chiefly the domain of uniformed armies clashing under the flags of sovereign states.

The U.N. founders wrote a charter at the end of World War II filled with wonderful words about reaffirming faith in "human rights" and "the dignity of human beings." They then contradicted themselves in practice from day one by respecting thug regimes enough to provide Stalin's Soviet Union a permanent seat on the Security Council and two extra seats in the General Assembly. They set up a U.N. system that not only failed to prevent a long series of wars but today fails to curb terrorism, or even adequately define it. In other words, to create an inclusive gathering of nations in 1945, our forefathers made some big practical compromises with their lofty ideals. In making those tradeoffs, their priorities did not reflect a world in which Osama bin Laden could surf the Internet.

Nor did they set up a U.N. replete with the checks and balances and transparency widely recognized these days as necessary to good governance. The U.N. founders did not provide adequate defenses against the tangled growth of U.N. bureaucracy, the packing of the ranks over the decades with cronies and rival national cliques, or the formation of influential lobbying groups of despotic regimes such as the former Soviet bloc or the current Arab League. And in setting up the U.N. as the mother of all multilateral aid agencies, the U.N. founders never came to grips with the vital principle that if private enterprise is the real engine of prosperity--which it is--then the secret is not to jack up government-channeled aid at every opportunity but to push chiefly for more liberty, even if that means a lesser role--and smaller budget--for the U.N.

---

If today's democratic leaders were to take the same prerogative as our grandparents--but without waiting until the world around them is reduced to rubble--and set out to create a U.N. from scratch, what would it look like? If we set out to meld the same worthy ideals of human rights and dignity that inspired the old U.N. with the practical needs, miracle technologies and hard-won wisdom of our own age, how would it work?

Would we choose to start with an organizational chart anything like that of the U.N. today--a labyrinth so vast and secret that according to Mr. Volcker's findings even the U.N.'s own management cannot decipher it?

Would we start with a Secretariat like the one we have today, which has in some disturbing respects evolved into a sort of singularly privileged 192nd member state? The original purpose of the Secretariat was to implement the decisions of the General Assembly and Security Council--in other words, to serve the member states. Over the years, the Secretariat acquired a budget in the billions, but somehow failed to develop the skills to handle it well. Now, Mr. Volcker's report informs us that no one these days expects the secretary-general to be hired for his administrative or managerial skills. Instead, he has become the "chief diplomatic and political agent of the United Nations." OK, but in that case, who or what at the U.N. does the secretary-general represent? When Kofi Annan says "we"--as in "from our point of view" the liberation of Iraq was "illegal," who exactly is he speaking for? The administrative staff? The Security Council? The General Assembly? Has he in contradiction of the U.N. charter (which is what he was at that moment claiming to represent) been promoted to the status of royalty, the head of a world state--in which case all now owe allegiance to the figure originally mandated to perform the functions of U.N. chief administrator and clerk?

Would we create a Security Council in which the despotic People's Republic of China holds a permanent seat and a fascist state such as Syria rotates through the presidency, but democratic Israel is systematically excluded from serving at all?

Would we create a General Assembly in which Zimbabwe, North Korea, Burma and Turkmenistan all wield a vote, but the elected leader of democratic Taiwan is not even allowed to set foot on the premises?

Would we create a U.N. in which the financial accounts are secret, the auditing is inadequate, and the standards are double or worse--lax for the highest officials and severe for lower-tier staff who lack patrons in the right places?

These questions belong to fantasy, of course. No one in power has seriously addressed them because no one important is seriously thinking of turning out the lights for good at Turtle Bay. But for a moment there, it was intriguing to wonder what, with the benefit of 60 years experience, we might now invent--if we ever left the old U.N. unplugged long enough to find out.

Ms. Rosett is a journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Her column appears here and in The Wall Street Journal Europe on alternate Wednesdays.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

With the rampant corruption that is becoming so evident in the U.N., I think the world should seriously consider shutting it down and starting over.

Tropical Storm Rita

YAY! She's been downgraded to a tropical storm!

Prayers regarding Rita have truly been answered.

Thank you.

Landfall

Rita has made landfall well east of the Houston/Galveston area (where my in-laws' and many other family' and friends' homes are located). Louisiana and far southeast Texas are being hammered right now.

Please continue to pray for the people who are affected by this storm.

Heritage Quote

"[H]onesty will be found on every experiment, to be the best and only true policy; let us then as a Nation be just."

-- George Washington (Circular letter to the States, 14 June 1783)

Michael Yon redux

The Deuce Four, Michael Yon's host unit in Iraq, is coming home. Michael himself is out of Iraq making preparations for his return. He will be much better equipped this next time.

During this temporary re-quipping and organizing phase, I will also post a few more dispatches about Iraq. One of these, Battle for Mosul IV, I tried to post many times from Mosul, only to have the fighting interrupt the writing.

And he promises to post more dispatches. I hope he also does some serious R&R before he returns to Iraq. He certainly deserves it!

President Talabani speaks

The president of Iraq, Jalal Talabani, talks about the importance of defeating terrorism. Here's how he begins:

There is no more important international issue today than the need to defeat the curse of terrorism. And as the first democratically elected president of Iraq, I have a responsibility to ensure that the world's youngest democracy survives the inherently difficult transition from totalitarianism to pluralism. A transformation of the Iraqi state and Iraqi society is impossible without a sustained commitment of soldiers from the United States and other democracies.

The rest is in the extended entry. Highly recommended reading -- it puts our military struggle back into perspective (without the distortions of viewing it through our media's dark lens).

We Need American Troops

Thank you for liberating my country. Please don't leave before the job is done.


BY JALAL TALABANI

Wednesday, September 21, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

BAGHDAD--There is no more important international issue today than the need to defeat the curse of terrorism. And as the first democratically elected president of Iraq, I have a responsibility to ensure that the world's youngest democracy survives the inherently difficult transition from totalitarianism to pluralism. A transformation of the Iraqi state and Iraqi society is impossible without a sustained commitment of soldiers from the United States and other democracies.

To understand why, let us recall how we reached this juncture in history. How is it that Iraq today has a democratically elected head of state, government and Parliament? How it is that members of the most repressed ethnic groups now hold the highest offices of state? All these welcome developments are a result of the courage and vision of President Bush and his allies, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Australian Prime Minister John Howard, leaders whose commitment of troops to enforce U.N. Security Council resolutions liberated Iraq.

---

Without foreign intervention, the transition in Iraq would have been from Saddam's bloodstained hands to his psychopathic offspring. Instead, thanks to American leadership, Iraqis have been given an opportunity of peaceful, participatory politics. Contrary to the new conventional wisdom, Iraq and the history of 20th-century Europe demonstrate that force of arms can implant democracy in the most arid soil.

The rapidity of the democratization and reform of Iraq is staggering. There was no German state for four years after the Second World War. By contrast, Iraq has moved from a centralized, one-man dictatorship to a decentralized, federal republic in half that time.

Inevitably, there have been stresses and strains. In Iraq these have been amplified by the terrorism of the remnants of the fascist Baathist dictatorship and our interfering neighbors. To contain these tensions, and to defend our young democracy, requires the support of American and other troops. Foreign forces are needed to train and equip the new Iraqi armed forces and to give Iraq its own counterterrorism capability. Only the United States and its closest allies are able to provide such assistance.

Creating these Iraqi forces has not been easy, but Iraqis have been undaunted by the difficulties. Every terrorist attack on Iraqi forces leads to a surge in military recruitment--the opposite of the appeasers' myth that resisting terrorism causes more terrorism. For all the short-term problems, the soundness of the long-term strategy of building up Iraqi forces was demonstrated in recent days when Iraqis took over sole control of security in the holy city of Najaf.

As Iraqi forces gain in confidence and capability, so the need for foreign troops will diminish. The number of foreign troops will be determined in consultations between the Iraqi government and its foreign allies on the basis of operational requirements.

American forces are in Iraq at the invitation of the democratically elected government of Iraq, and with the backing of a United Nations Security Council resolution. Your soldiers are in my country because of your commitment to democracy. Moreover, during my visit to Washington, Mr. Bush reaffirmed the United States' complete support for the Iraqi political process toward sustainable democracy, and for the fight to defeat fascist and jihadist terrorism in Iraq.

That commitment to liberty has shaped our opposition to any timetable for withdrawal. There are also two practical, policy reasons to avoid such a scheduled reduction in foreign troop numbers. First, a timetable will aid the terrorists and tell them that all they have to do is wait. Second, military plans must be flexible. We should have the suppleness to respond to the often-changing level of terrorist threat. Indeed, we will require ongoing security assistance in many forms for many years to come.

If we keep progressing at the present rate, Iraqis may be able to take over many security functions from foreign forces by the end of 2006. That is not a deadline, but it is reasonable aspiration. During my visit to the United States, I was fortunate to meet relatives of some of the brave troops serving in Iraq. They were staunch, and I want their loved ones to have to serve in Iraq not a moment longer than is necessary.

---

Americans should be proud of what its soldiers have achieved. The presence of foreign forces has prevented a renewed civil war in Iraq--renewed because there has already been a civil war in Iraq. For 35 years, Saddam and his Baath Party made war on the Iraqi people. The liberation of Iraq ended that civil war.

Above all, American forces provide Iraq with a much-needed deterrence capability. In the past, Iraq sought an illusory security through the follies of aggression, terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. Today, our external security comes from our alliance with the United States. Our neighbors can thereby be assured that we will settle all of our differences with them peacefully.

Sadly, some of our neighbors have chosen not to understand this. They seem either unwilling or unable to shut off the pipeline of terrorists crossing into Iraq. And in addition to what is at least passive support for the terrorists, some of them are providing financial and material support to them, too. They must desist from this behavior now.

While the problem of some of our neighbors supporting terrorism is bad enough, we can only imagine what our neighbors might have done if American troops had not been present. Most likely, Iraq would have been transformed into a regional battlefield with disastrous consequences for Middle Eastern and global security.

Without American forces, the vision of American leadership and the quiet fortitude of the American people, Iraqis would be almost alone in the world. With its allies, the United States has provided Iraqis with an unprecedented opportunity. Iraqis have responded by enthusiastically embracing democracy and volunteering to fight for their country. By giving us the tools, your troops help us to defend Iraqi democracy and to finish the job of uprooting Baathist fascism.

Mr. Talabani is president of Iraq.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

How can we possibly abandon Iraq now?

Welcome to the new digs!

Welcome! Would you look at this place? Can you believe it?

Well, it's all due to the tremendous talent and industriousness of the Apothegm Designs team -- Phin and Sadie.

They are very easy to work with. Phin has been patiently explaining things and very quickly implementing things even when I only had vague notions about how to describe what I really wanted would like to see here.

Anyway, there may be a little bit of tweaking going on over the weekend (longer if Rita causes my power to fail), but this new, improved, blog is just about completed.

Well, it's late, and I've got a storm to attend to. I'll catch ya in the morning!

Rita on the horizon

Though it looks as if Rita will not be the monster storm that was initially expected, and it doesn't appear to be hitting the Galveston-Houston area dead on, it is still a strong storm capable of wreaking massive destruction. A lot of people are in danger.

Please pray for those in Rita's path.

Polls in perspective

This article at The American Spectator puts Bush's poll number in a more realistic perspective than the somewhat gleeful reports coming out of the majority of the news media. Here's an excerpt:

Today, depending on which, if any, poll you believe, Bush's job approval rating is anywhere between 41 and 47 percent. Not too great but not disastrous, especially when the nation's confidence in the Congress (33%) and the media (28%) isn't too rosy either. And, considering that Presidents Clinton and Reagan both polled under 40 percent at times, he seems in good company.

Recommended.

Bus pictures then and now

This post is snarky, but also very amusing. And it illustrates how better prepared and led the Houston/Galveston area seems to be.

Heritage Quote

"I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country."

-- Nathan Hale (before being hanged by the British, 22 September
1776)

Rita looms

My wife's parents arrived at our house early this morning from the Clear Lake area just north of Galveston. It took them 10 hours to get here. It normally takes about 4.5 hours non-stop. The evacuation is massive.

And so is the potential for death and destruction. And not just near the coast. Some local meteorologists are saying that there is a good chance that Rita will be a Cat 1 hurricane when it reaches us -- 300 miles inland.

Please pray for everyone in the storm's path.

This is the 'Age of Irony'

At least, it is in the Anchoress' opinion. And she makes a very good case for that. She cites a New York Times article that is reporting (in a disapproving sort of way) about how elite college co-eds are saying that they want to quit work to raise their kids when the time comes. Here's a taste of her post:

Reality check, honey, child-rearing still is a "private" issue and parents are still their children's first teachers.

Clearly the "it takes a village" mentality, wherein children are popped out and plopped into the care of others while the superior sorts take on the world, still has a welcome home in the minds of some of these academics, but I think the young women about whom they are fretting are bringing very healthy and thoughtful opinions to the matter. After all, why would a well-educated woman with confidence in her values feel it a "better" idea to leave her child with a less-educated woman who has no heartfelt interest in that child's well-being, than to raise the child herself?

IMO, it boils down to personal choices. The parents-to-be need to decide beforehand how the family will approach child-rearing. There is no right answer. What matters is that the parents stay connected with one another and engaged with their children. Love trumps all, but quality time spent with and for your child is an important manifestation of your love for him or her.

There is much more good stuff on the topic. It's a good read. Recommended.

Heritage Quote

"I own myself the friend to a very free system of commerce, and hold it as a truth, that commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive and impolitic - it is also a truth, that if industry and labour are left to take their own course, they will generally be directed to those objects which are the most productive, and this in a more certain and direct manner than the wisdom of the most enlightened legislature could point out."

-- James Madison (speech to the Congress, 9 April 1789)

The Stoic One

Fifteen years ago today, my world was turned upside down.

In a good way.

It was at 6 PM, 21 Sep 1990, when my dearest friend, my lovely wife, gave birth to our first child -- a beautiful, wonderful girl, 'Al'.

We had been happily anticipating that moment by attending birthing classes, asking advice, and reading everything we could about pregnancy, birth, and raising children. 'Al' changed all that. Don't get me wrong -- the classes and books and advice from friends and family was all valuable information, but my lovely lady and I did not have the experience of being parents to fully understand the information that we had. As a friend of mine used to say: "I'm not sure I understand all I know about that!" We were like that as we began our parenthood odyssey with our first child. (As a parenthetical note, we were like that with our second child, too.)

The baby grew into an infant, then a toddler, then a pre-schooler. She began attending elementary school, then intermediate and middle school. She started high school this past August. And she turns fifteen today.

The baby who, in the delivery room, stopped crying when she heard me greet her. The little girl who, when I was away on a long business trip, refused to eat dinner or take a bath until I got home. The girl who would curl up into my lap and tell me she loved me. The adolescent who was virtually impossible to live with for about 18 months. The seventh grader who went on a mission trip to Mexico and helped build houses for families living in tar paper shacks.

Is now a loving, loyal, intelligent, industrious, fun-loving, Christian young woman. Who already has made, and will continue to make, a positive difference in this world.

God has truly blessed her mother and I.

Happy Birthday, Sweetheart! You are such a blessing!

U.N. Ambassador

Bret Stevens, at OpinionJournal gives us a look at U.N. Ambassador John Bolton's challenges at the U.N.

It is in the extended entry.

Our Man in the Twilight Zone

An interview with Ambassador John Bolton.


BY BRET STEPHENS

Saturday, September 17, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

NEW YORK--It is Tuesday morning, Sept. 6, the day before Paul Volcker is to present his full report on the U.N.'s Oil for Food scandal. It's an 847-page catalog of U.N. malfeasance, incompetence, corruption and arrogance. Among other unflattering disclosures: Kofi Annan knew about, but did not report, Iraqi violations of the sanctions regime, a clear breach of his fiduciary duties as secretary-general. But none of this seems to especially distress him or his staff.

Instead, their main worry seems to be how to stage-manage the event to keep John Bolton from reaching for the microphone. The secretary-general's office lets it be known that it expects only Mr. Annan and Mr. Volcker to speak. A behind-the-scenes effort is launched to dissuade other Security Council members from making statements, thereby isolating the U.S. Mr. Volcker's press conference is arranged in the middle of the Security Council's public session as a way of distracting the media's attention.

The scheme almost goes according to plan--until the U.S. delegation gets wind of it. "We called the Secretariat and said, 'You're damn right we're speaking,' " recounts a U.S. diplomatic source. Indeed, if Mr. Bolton's shop at the U.N. has a motto, "We're Speaking" is surely it.

---

In the seven weeks since Mr. Bolton arrived in New York, he has denounced the United Nations Development Program for its "unacceptable" funding of Palestinian propaganda and publicly fingered "dozens of countries who are in a state of denial" about the need for U.N. reform. Working at the U.N., he tells me as we chat over coffee in his nondescript midtown Manhattan office, "feels a little like Rod Serling has suddenly appeared and we're writing episodes from 'The Twilight Zone.' " Does he feel even a little bruised by his five-month confirmation saga, in which hostile witnesses described him as a "kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy" and which ended, after a Democratic filibuster, in a recess appointment? "No way," he answers flatly.

In person, the 56-year-old diplomat does not come across as the pit bull of leftist caricature. He is neither brash nor pompous and not remotely oily, though it would be a stretch to describe him as charming.

What comes across, instead, is a kind of relentlessness. He talks about "going 24-7" in negotiations and actually means it: Our interview was initially planned for 7:30 a.m. on Labor Day. (Mercifully, it was pushed back a few hours.) He has a lawyerly regard for fine print, but his basic idea of diplomacy is advocacy. "It's not just a question of stability and relations and calming troubled waters," he says about the role of an ambassador. "I'd like to advance American interests and ideals at the United Nations." In doing so, he's fighting battles on several fronts.

First front: the permanent U.N. bureaucracy headed by Mr. Annan. "The Oil for Food program is, for many Americans, a tangible symbol of what's wrong with management at the United Nations," Mr. Bolton says. "And I think the most troubling lesson is that that kind of activity didn't spring up overnight. It comes from a culture that already exists here at the U.N."

For illustration, Mr. Bolton points to the career of Vladimir Kuznetsov. Until his arrest by the FBI earlier this month, the Russian national was chairman of the U.N.'s Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions, which sounds obscure but is the U.N. equivalent of the White House's Office of Management and Budget. During the course of Mr. Volcker's investigation, it was discovered that another Russian national, a procurement officer named Alexander Yakovlev, had traded secret bidding information for bribes, netting $950,000 from $79 million worth of U.N. business. Mr. Yakovlev's arrest in August led U.S. investigators to Mr. Kuznetsov, who allegedly set up an offshore company to handle his cut of Mr. Yakovlev's spoils.

"Within the U.N. world, arresting Kuznetsov is just an absolute thermonuclear explosion," says a U.S. diplomatic source, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case. "When you have the guy responsible for the good governance of the U.N. system doing this, what does that tell you about the rest of what's going on?"

So what does Mr. Bolton intend to do about the bureaucracy? He wants to rationalize the way it works, eliminate duplication, insist on better oversight, apply some American muscle to make that happen: "We can't be shy when we're giving 22% of the base budget of the United Nations from making clear we have strong feelings about this."

His other way of dealing with the bureaucracy is to talk right past it. Prior to his arrival in New York on Aug. 1, the U.S. had been struggling to make its views known on the so-called Outcome Document--a statement of U.N. goals, methods and principles envisioned as a kind of new U.N. charter. The U.N. had arranged an opaque "facilitation" process to get just the document it wanted.

"We had been consistently making very detailed comments to the facilitators," explains Mr. Bolton, waving a marked-up document predating his arrival. "The problem was the facilitators were not taking our changes. So what I did was write a 'Dear Colleague' letter to all 190 missions. I laid out our general principles, took them through the changes we were proposing, and then showed them the kind of line-by-line changes we were going to make."

All in all, Mr. Bolton's changes numbered in the hundreds. "That's what diplomats do," he says. "When you have disagreements you sit down and negotiate. That's not what we were doing in the facilitator process."

---

This brings Mr. Bolton to his second front in the struggle for U.N. reform. "A lot of what we have in mind when we talk about U.N. reform is not just better management practices; we're also talking about the conduct of member governments. . . . The U.N. is an international organization and its member governments need to hold the Secretariat accountable."

There are two difficulties here, however. First, member governments have shown little or no interest in a well-functioning U.N. bureaucracy--and not a little interest in one that remains dysfunctional and corrupt. Indeed, the main reason the Oil for Food scam grew so vast and lucrative is that countries such as China, France and Russia tacitly conspired with U.N. bureaucrats to turn a blind eye to Saddam Hussein's abuses and avail themselves of his favors.

The second difficulty is ideological. Throughout our interview, Mr. Bolton speaks repeatedly of "old thinking," "age-old controversies" and "decades-old concepts." One such concept is the U.N.'s goal of getting rich countries to spend 0.7% of their GDP on official development assistance. "The levels of ODA assistance don't necessarily tell you anything about the effectiveness of the development policies of the recipient country," he says. "The main thing they need is sound economic policy domestically, not hostile to foreign investment, open to foreign trade and open to international markets."

Mr. Bolton's logic is compelling, especially given how much of past Western largesse to the Third World ended up in numbered Geneva bank accounts. But there's a hiccup: The rest of the world is besotted by 0.7%. The nonaligned movement insists on 0.7% as the price of agreeing to "reform," for reasons that are well-comprehended. The Europeans also like it, in part because some of the smaller countries actually approach the target, in part because it is a handy way of scoring the U.S. (ODA: 0.16%) for its alleged stinginess. Mr. Bolton says it's "fantasy" to think countries are going to agree to what they do not agree with, as the U.S. does not agree with 0.7%. Yet when a fantasy takes place in fantasyland--that is, when the U.N. talks about 0.7%--it acquires a kind of plausibility and even the force of necessity, like a magic broom in a Harry Potter novel.

---

In other words, it remains to be seen whether it isn't Mr. Bolton who turns out to be the fantasy here, while the U.N. perdures as it has for 60 years and through countless "reform" bids. That's certainly one conclusion to draw from the results of this week's U.N. summit. The Outcome Document to which the administration eventually acquiesced crosses no American red lines: "The main thing about this document is that it's not as bad as it could have been," says a senior administration official. But it's easy to imagine Mr. Bolton gagging over much of it. On management reform, for instance, the document "commends the Secretary General's previous and ongoing efforts to enhance the effective management of the United Nations." Apparently, the Volcker report has already been forgotten.

In our interview, Mr. Bolton insists that the current document is just the beginning: "Reform is not a one-night stand," he says. "Reform is forever." It's a good line, and there can be no doubt that while John Bolton remains U.S. ambassador--he has 17 months to go--he'll continue to roll the reform rock up the U.N. mountain. There's a myth about that. It inspires admiration for the hero. It does not inspire hopefulness about the outcome.

John Bolton is Sisyphus in the Twilight Zone.

Mr. Stephens is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Energy policy

Pete Du Pont has some encouraging words about our energy futures.

I've reprinted the whole thing in the extended entry.

The Other Recovery

Après le déluge, a new energy policy.


BY PETE DU PONT

Tuesday, September 20, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the White House, Congress and thousands of citizens have stepped forward to begin the recovery. But Katrina also requires a second response, for its other serious impact was on America's energy supplies. It shut down Gulf Coast petroleum and natural gas production, disabling eight refineries, which account for 10% of U.S. production capacity, and more than 100 Gulf of Mexico oil and gas platforms. According to the federal Minerals Management Service, "nearly 60 percent of the Gulf of Mexico's normal daily oil production remained blocked from the market because of [hurricane] evacuations." So the price of oil hit $70 per barrel, and America's energy challenges came into focus.

American petroleum consumption is way up--from about 15 million barrels a day in the early 1980s to more than 20 million today. But domestic petroleum production is way down--from just over 11 million barrels a day in 1970 to about eight million today. America used to have more than 300 refineries in operation. We now have half that number, and the newest refinery in America was built almost 30 years ago. To meet these shortfalls we import 12 million barrels of petroleum a day from foreign nations.

The liberal establishment seized upon all these pessimistic data, hinting that an American Armageddon was just around the corner. China's oil consumption has doubled since 1995, India's is following the same path, and together they will soak up the world oil supply and limit our global imports. Jimmy Carter tells us drilling for more oil in Alaska would be too damaging to the environment; Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois insists that we must "stop using our SUVs and trucks and be more economical"; Joan Claybrook of the Naderite group Public citizen says we need "adjustable price controls" on oil and "an excess profits tax retroactive to January 2005" on oil companies. The New York Times concludes we must reduce our "blatantly excessive demand" for oil.

But America is neither doomed nor dumb when it comes to energy production. The Department of Energy reports that it requires half as much energy to produce a dollar of gross domestic product today than it did 30 years ago. Oil refineries are improving--their capacity has increased by one-third, from 12,000 barrels a day to nearly 17,000 over 35 years. New technology has increased automobile mileage from 13.5 miles a gallon to more than 22, so the cost per mile driven has been declining.

---

So what are the solutions to the petroleum supply problems that Katrina has finally brought to the public's attention? Simply put, America needs a new and expansive energy policy.

First, we need to build new refineries and build them faster. We know how to do it but lack the political will. Because of substantial and complex federal, state and local permit requirements and regulation, obtaining construction permits takes years--more than five just to get air quality permits in the case of a proposed new refinery in Arizona--and costs the oil industry about $5 billion a year in regulatory and capital costs to bring them into compliance with increasing government regulation. We need a simpler, faster permitting process so domestic refinery production can expand to meet growing demands.

Second, we need to drill for more oil in America. For starters, there are 10 billion barrels of recoverable oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, making ANWR the equivalent of an oil-exporting nation. Then there are the energy resources off America's coasts. They are estimated to contain 16 billion barrels of oil and 70 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. In 1981 Congress banned new offshore drilling, but as we have seen in the Gulf of Mexico, offshore drilling is clean and safe. From our thousands of offshore oil-drilling platforms, there has not been a significant spill in 25 years. And of course when drilling for natural gas there aren't any oil spills at all.

Third, the construction of additional nuclear power plants would generate electricity and reduce petroleum consumption. The National Center for Policy Analysis reports that plants now operate at 90% of capacity (up from 59% in 1980), and their "operating costs have fallen from 3.31 cents per kilowatt-hour in 1988 to 1.7 cents, which is slightly lower than coal and much lower than the cost of natural gas fired plants."

---

Finally, the world is not only not running out of oil; there are substantial untapped supplies of oil and gas around the globe. Daniel Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates--and the Pulitzer-prize winning author of The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power--noted in the Washington Post at the end of July that "there will be a large, unprecedented build up of oil supply in the next few years. Between 2004 and 2010, capacity to produce oil (not actual production) could grow by 16 million barrels per day--from 85 million barrels per day to 101 million barrels per day--a 20 percent increase."

That increase will come not in America, but in OPEC countries like Saudi Arabia , Algeria and Libya, and others such as Canada, Kazakhstan, Brazil and Russia. It will drive the supply up and the price of petroleum products down.

Mr. Yergin points out that there are always dire predictions of the end of oil--remember the "permanent oil shortage" of the 1970s--but that technology overcomes such doomsday predictions. For example, in the late 1970s the deepest water an offshore platform could drill in was 600 feet; today it is 10,000 feet. Today the Gulf of Mexico contains 800 manned drilling platforms and thousands of unmanned ones, all linked to the coast by 33,000 miles of underwater pipelines. Technology has made that possible, and technology will continue expanding our oil supply access.

So the risks we face are not what Mr. Yergin terms "below ground" geological or lack-of-resource risks. "Rather, they are 'above ground'--political instability, outright conflict, terrorism, or slowdowns in decision-making on the part of governments in oil-producing countries." Meeting these challenges will not be easy, but markets work. Thus, as Mr. Yergin says, "the U.S. government should work to encourage global energy trade, for a more open system would be better for our security."

In short, substantial quantities of oil and gas are out there, and America will be more secure, stable and prosperous if we gain access to them. Recovering from the disaster of Katrina is our first responsibility; securing adequate supplies of energy comes next.

Mr. du Pont, a former governor of Delaware, is chairman of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis. His column appears once a month.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Heritage Quote

"A State, I cheerfully admit, is the noblest work of Man: But Man, himself, free and honest, is, I speak as to this world, the noblest work of God...."

-- James Wilson (Chisholm v. Georgia, 18 February 1793)

Remodeling

This blog is getting a face lift by the famous (or should I say infamous?) Apothegm Designs. They are still in the midst of it, so I can't say when the new look will be online, but the mock up I've seen looks really impressive!

Just FYI.

Conventional Wisdom regarding WMD

Scott Johnson provides us a slew of quotes by Democrats about Saddam's WMD threat over the last 10-15 years. Just to refresh everyone's memory about the conventional wisdom prior to 2003.

I found it refreshing to see that my memory of times past was, indeed, correct -- and that all of those who claim Bush lied about Iraqi WMD are either trying to rewrite history or are just plain ignorant of the truth.

Judicial Committee hearings

Gary Varvel has a very funny political cartoon about the John Roberts nomination hearings posted at the Indianapolis Star website.

Heritage Quote

"Religion and good morals are the only solid foundation of public liberty and happiness."

-- Samuel Adams (letter to John Trumbull, 16 October 1778)

Progress happens

This UPI article discusses the lessons learned in Fallujah. It starts with:

Fallujah may end up being a lesson in both how not to conduct a counter-insurgency campaign, and conversely, how to do it successfully.

And paradoxically, the real success will be when terrorists can be treated like criminals and dealt with through the judicial system, according to Col. Dave Berger, commander of Regimental Combat Team 8, responsible for Fallujah and its immediate environs.

Recommended reading.

Spread the word

Army Col. H. R. McMaster, commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, presented an overview briefing last week about Operation Restoring Rights in Tall Afar, Iraq. He discusses the units involved and what was discovered after the operation was underway -- and it underlines a key reason that we are there:

We have been joined by a very effective organization, the 3rd -- the 2nd of the 325, the White Falcons from the 82nd Airborne Division. They've gotten into this fight and have done a tremendous job. We're coordinating our efforts with the 1st of the 72nd Infantry in Mosul, who is pursuing the enemy relentlessly in their area as the enemy attempts to flee. They are hunting them down in that area. But the American soldier is pursuing the enemies of Iraq, they're pursuing the enemies of our nation. We are committed to this mission to bring freedom and security to 26 million people here. And it is very clear to our soldiers as we go into these areas, as we see these caches, as we see the horrible acts that these people have committed, as we see the extremist literature and the intolerance and the hatred that this enemy possesses, it is very clear to us that these are enemies of our nation, and we are proud to be here to pursue them and defeat them in Tall Afar and broadly throughout this region.

And he closes with a plea to accurately report the progress being made in Iraq, and the dedication of our troops in the region.

COL. MCMASTER: Hey, thanks. And please, everybody, just please tell the American people how great their soldiers are. You've got to tell them. I mean, it is unbelievable what they're doing. I mean -- and I know I can't keep you any longer, but I just want to tell you, they're fighting. They're defeating the enemy. They are partnered with Iraqi security forces. They're building Iraqi security force capability. They're providing humanitarian assistance. They're organizing reconstruction right now. They are taking care of the people of the city as they're pursuing the enemy. I mean, it is extraordinary the quality of the young men and women who we have here pursuing the enemies of our nation and helping to secure the people of Tall Afar and western Ninevah. So you got to tell them.

Read the whole thing for a well-balanced view of what is going on in the Tall Afar area.

NOLA Timeline

This article provides an interesting timeline for the Louisiana relief effort before, during, and after Katrina made landfall. It is published by Northside Journal News, a newspaper based in central Louisiana. You'll find that it contradicts much of the hysterical reporting that was being spouted two weeks ago.

Despite Governor Blanco's reluctance to coordinate the state's efforts with federal assistance, President Bush declared a state of emergency for Louisiana two full days before Katrina hit the Louisiana coast. The move allowed FEMA to begin staging relief supplies for immediate distribution in New Orleans once the storm had passed. The president's emergency declaration also allowed FEMA to coordinate all disaster relief efforts and to provide appropriate assistance in a number of Louisiana parishes. All that was left to do was wait for Kathleen Blanco to request Federal assistance. Under the Emergency Management Assistance Compact, which was revised after 9/11, the Federal Government and FEMA are not allowed to interfere with local operations unless they are authorized by state and local leaders.

Meanwhile Blanco had her own advisors insisting that the President was actually making a request for federal takeover of the Louisiana National Guard, and asking to put Louisiana State Police under federal control. They were concerned that this would be the same as martial law and lead to abuse of power by the federal government.

Heritage Quote

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

—George Washington and the delegates

Iraqi Soldiers Donate to Katrina Victims

How's this for cameraderie?

They give because they are grateful for our help in Iraq. They give because they care.

Nomination hearings

Ed Morrissey, over at the Captain's Quarters, has an amusing post about the Senate Judiciary Committee's pontifications at John Roberts' nomination hearings. Here's a taste:

It might be possible to arrange for a panel of dullards to appear on television for three days and nights in a row to make fools of themselves outside of an Average Joe revival, but the Judiciary Committee Democrats make it unnecessary.

Needless to say, the good captain had me in stiches. You should read the whole thing.

The media misses it yet again (no surprises)

Here is a rather pointed op-ed about the hysterical nature of media coverage during Katrina's aftermath.

As the last of the evacuees from New Orleans settle into shelters, the levees are plugged and the water begins to recede, what is being revealed is not the tens of thousands of dead bodies predicted for the past two weeks but some of the most inaccurate reporting of a major news story in memory. While the mainstream media has been climbing all over itself trying to find ways to tie George Bush to the New Orleans disaster, it might be better served trying to figure out how they could have so uncritically accepted a body count from New Orleans that could easily be ten or more times the actual number.

There is actually quite a bit to think about in this piece. Read it all.

Our President's NOLA speech

Here is the transcript of President Bush's New Orleans speech.

I thought he did a very good job at articulating his care and concern for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. He also did a good job of outlining his plans for restoring the entire area of devastation, and the steps being taken to improve both federal and state responses to future disasters.

Heritage Quote

"[T]he present Constitution is the standard to which we are to cling. Under its banners, bona fide must we combat our political foes - rejecting all changes but through the channel itself provides for amendments."

-- Alexander Hamilton (letter to James Bayard, April 1802)

Insightful analysis

Bill Roggio, over at The Fourth Rail has a good analysis about what was behind the bombings in Baghdad, and why they happened. Here's a taste:

After Tal Afar, al Qaeda strikes in its predictable and brutal fashion: suicide bombs and terror. In Baghdad, a suicide bomber lures in Shiite day-laborers, blows up his truck. Reports indicate 114 killled and 156 wounded in this single incident. Mohammed at Iraq the Model states eleven separate explosions in Baghdad ocurred in today. According to Zarqawi today's attacks are revenge for al Qaeda's losses at Tal Afar, and the beginning of "all out war against the Shiites".

Zarqawi's terror campaign achieves its desired effect. Coalition successes in northern and westerner Iraq are overshadowed by the gruesome images of mass casualty assaults. Suicide bombs are a show of force, but not a measure of al Qaeda's power. al Qaeda has neither the popular support, the skill nor the means to govern in Iraq. Its real power lies in the ability to create fear. But the Iraqi people have not given in to fear, rendering al Qaeda's only weapon ineffective.

He goes on to detail how Zarqawi and other terrorists use the Western news media to further their goals in Iraq:

As the Iraqi government is not ready to provide for its own security, it is dependent on the United States for vital assistance. Therefore, al Qaeda's only hope of success in Iraq is to destroy the will of the American public and create the conditions for a hasty withdrawal. They are deftly manipulating our own media in an attempt to accomplish this goal. Zarqawi depends on the fact that the Western media will give his terrorist attacks top billing while regulating successful Coalition operations such as Tal Afar to the back pages, or support the cause by subtlely portraying American soldiers as criminals or thugs.

I recommend you read the whole thing . . .

Voices from the front

The Tampa Tribune is going against the grain (at least for the mainstream media) and publishing interviews of soldiers deployed overseas. Here is what they have so far:

6 Sep 2005

14 Sep 2005

They're worth reading.

Why rebuild?

Klaus Jacob, over at the Washington Post poses an interesting question: Why rebuild New Orleans?

Heritage Quote

"Taxes should be continued by annual or biennial reeactments, because a constant hold, by the nation, of the strings of the public purse is a salutary restraint from which an honest government ought not wish, nor a corrupt one to be permitted, to be free."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to John Wayles Eppes, 24 June 1813)

Pompous clowns

George Neumayr at The American Spectator has an op-ed posted that calls a spade, well, a spade:

The emptiness and arrogance of the Senate's demagogic buffoons can't be overstated. Arlen Specter's phrase "super duper" precedent illustrated what a collection of lightweights the Senate has become. John Roberts patiently explained the rudiments of the law to them, but the Senators were too busy shuffling through their papers in search of the ACLU's latest talking points to listen. Or in the case of Specter, looking around for an oversized Roe v. Wade prop to underscore his argument about "super duper" precedent, that cogent legal concept which somehow eluded the authors of the Federalist Papers and drafters of the Constitution.

I could not a have put it better. Read the rest . . .

Never Forget

Major K, a US Army officer deployed in Iraq, posted a nice summation of the fight we find ourselves in.

Four years ago today, we suffered the worst terrorist attack in modern history in New York City. It was the culmination of over 20 years of islamo-fascist terrorism directed against western nations by numerous organizations and their allied nation-states. Four years ago today, we decided that we had had enough and were not going to take it anymore. This war has been raging for over twenty years. Four years ago, we started fighting back. This is bigger than Al Qaeda, Afghanistan, the Taliban, Iraq, Zarqawi and the Ba'athists. Everyone of them, however, is an indispensible part of this war. Today, I am glad to be here more than any other day. This is going to be a long war, and it will not end here nor will it end with me. I am just thankful to have a tiny piece of this, and honored to be among the Soldiers that I work with every day. This war will not be won by our Generals. This war will be won by our Sergeants. Light a candle. Never Forget...

Good news from Iraq, part 35

Here is Chrenkoff's last good news report on Iraq. However, it will live on at Good News Central.

I will miss Chrenkoff's comprehensive reporting and insightful commentary. I wish him good luck in his new job.

Now back to the report. Remember the desperate fighting in Sadr City last year? Here's an update:

Crammed into armored Humvees heaving with weapons, Lt. Col. S. Jamie Gayton and his soldiers were greeted by a surprising sight as they rolled into one of Baghdad's poorest neighborhoods.

Men stood and waved. Women smiled. Children flashed thumbs-up signs as the convoy rumbled across the potholed streets of Sadr City.

It was a far more welcoming scene than the urban war zone of a year ago, when U.S. troops and black-clad guerrilla fighters battled in the narrow alleys of the squalid slum.

"We're making a huge impact," Gayton said as his men pulled up to a sewer station newly repaired with U.S. funds. "It has been incredibly safe, incredibly quiet and incredibly secure."

Sadr City has become one of the rare success stories of the U.S. reconstruction effort, say local residents, Iraqi and U.S. officials. Although vast swaths remain blighted, the neighborhood of 2 million mostly impoverished Shiites is one of the calmest in Baghdad. One U.S. soldier has been killed and one car bomb detonated in the last year, the military says.

The improvements are the result of an intense effort in the wake of the street battles last August with fighters loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada Sadr. Within a month, U.S. officials decided to make Sadr City a showcase for rebuilding, and increased spending to $805 million in a neighborhood long neglected under Saddam Hussein.

The report goes on to report some lessons learned from the Sadr City reconstruction effort:

Unlike elsewhere in Iraq, where the reconstruction fell under the purview of a hodgepodge of U.S. civilian agencies, the American military provided sustained, focused leadership in a limited geographic area. That focus provided the oversight needed to coordinate the military's efforts with those of the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Pentagon's Project and Contracting Office, the primary reconstruction agencies.

The rebuilding also held more immediate significance among mid-level commanders in the field than among higher-level Pentagon officials preoccupied with fighting the war. The field officers focused on short-term, high-visibility projects such as cleaning up trash and digging wells, instead of massive new water treatment plants or power stations that take years to build. They also hired local Iraqi contractors, who in turn employed many of the militia members who had once battled U.S. troops.

Finally, unlike the U.S. multinationals contracted to build large infrastructure projects, the military did not have to rely on expensive security contractors for protection. That enabled soldiers to more easily communicate with Iraqis, monitor progress and overcome problems.

It is well worth reading the whole thing.

Heritage Quote

"There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism."

-- Alexander Hamilton (The Farmer Refuted, 23 February 1775)

Michael Yon's report

Michael Yon provides us a progress report on LTC Kurilla and the Deuce-Four . He has also spruced up his website a good bit. Though the Deuce-Four is coming home this month, Michael Yon plans to remain and report on the Iraqi elections coming up next month.

Chrenkoff's essay on bad news

Chrenkoff has something to say about the battle to get unbiased information out to Americans. He makes some good points.

The media, just like Mother Nature, shows that dripping water will over time erode a mountain. But two can play that game, even if one side starts with a major handicap and has to suffer perpetual frustration in doing so.

The rest is well worth reading.

Heritage Quote

"As riches increase and accumulate in few hands, as luxury prevails in society, virtue will be in a greater degree considered as only a graceful appendage of wealth, and the tendency of things will be to depart from the republican standard. This is the real disposition of human nature; it is what neither the honorable member nor myself can correct. It is a common misfortunate that awaits our State constitution, as well as all others."

-- Alexander Hamilton (speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, June 1788)

Aiding and abetting

Austin Bay says some smart things in this blog entry about terrorism and "strategic information". Here's his conclusion:

Terrorists can be a very small group of people or a politically weak organization. What makes the small and anonymous appear powerful and strong? In the 21st century, intense media coverage magnifies the terrorists' capabilities. This suggests that winning the global war against Islamist terror ultimately means accomplishing two things: denying the terrorists weapons of mass destruction and curbing what is currently Al Qaeda's greatest strategic capability: media magnification and occasional media enhancement of its bombing campaigns and political theatrics.

Most of our mainstream media is culpable. And yet they happily promote the murderous jihadists' agenda by disseminating the information so readily provided to them by terrorists. In the 1940s, many of them would have been thrown into prison for aiding and abetting the enemy.

I suppose that would be too much to ask for nowadays, eh? (Just kidding!)

Another History Quote

"No abounding of material prosperity shall avail us if our spiritual senses atrophy. The foes of our own household will surely prevail against us unless there be in our people an inner life which finds its outer expression in a morality like unto that preached by the seers and prophets of God when the grandeur that was Greece and the glory that was Rome still lay in the future."

—Theodore Roosevelt

History Quote

"Time after time mankind is driven against the rocks of the horrid reality of a fallen creation. And time after time mankind must learn the hard lessons of history—the lessons that for some dangerous and awful reason we can't seem to keep in our collective memory."

—Hilaire Belloc

Heritage Quote

"The ingredients which constitute energy in the Executive are, first, unity; secondly, duration; thirdly, an adequate provision for its support; fourthly, competent powers. ... The ingredients which constitute safety in the republican sense are, first, a due dependence on the people, secondly, a due responsibility."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 70, 14 March 1788)

China to be the next USSR?

This op-ed builds a case that we are setting ourselves up for trouble with China in the future. Here's a quote:

The U.S. will chase every terrorist mouse (which is good, unless it means also neglecting the core competencies of the armed forces), while lessening and dispersing its power, and moving from previous centers of gravity (Europe, the Western Pacific) to Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East. This will create a long and open alley through which China will run. Among other things, by placing markers in every trouble spot, we will probably be tied down and distracted, taxingly and often, to our enemies' delight.

When China completes its run up the broad alley we have afforded it, it will much sooner be the other pole in a once-again bipolar world, which will create the opportunity for terrorists in the guise of liberation movements to gather under its wing, as they did with the Soviet Bloc during the Cold War. Ironically, in reconfiguring the military to focus primarily on terrorism, we may not only give China a great opening, but create for the terrorists a new lease on life.

The war in Iraq has been poorly planned and executed from the beginning, and now, like a hurricane over warm water, the insurgency is in a position to take immense energy from the fundamental divisions in that nation. The rise of Chinese military power, although lately noted, has met with no response. America's borders are open, its cities vulnerable, its civil defense nonexistent, its armies stretched thin. We have taken only deeply inadequate steps to prepare for and forestall a viral pandemic that by the testimony of experts is a high probability and could kill scores of millions in this country alone. That we do not see relatively simple and necessary courses of action, and are not led and inspired to them, represents a catastrophic failure of leadership that bridges party lines.

I don't buy all of his assertions, but he does make some good points.

The whole thing is in the extended entry.

'They Are All So Wrong'

Four years after 9/11, Washington keeps courting strategic error.


BY MARK HELPRIN

Friday, September 9, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

September 11 was not so much a discrete event as part of a continuum. It was the result of broad strategic failures that, preceding it by decades, continue to this day and are likely to continue on. It is as if the country has lost, as exemplified by the Left now out of power, a great deal of the will to self-preservation, and, as exemplified by the Right now in charge, not a little of its capacity for self-defense. Our politics and policies have somehow been parceled out to opportunists like Michael Moore--purveyor of conspiracy theories and hatreds, whose presentation, unclean in every respect, is honored nonetheless by the controlling rump of Democrats--and to Bushmen like "Kip" Hawley of Homeland Security, father of the proposal to allow carry-on ice-picks, bows and arrows, and knives with blades up to five-inches long.

---

For more than 20 years prior to September 11, Islamic terrorists imprisoned and murdered our diplomats and military personnel, destroyed our civil aviation, machine-gunned our civilians, razed our embassies, attacked an American warship and, in 1993, the U.S. itself. For varying reasons, none legitimate, we hesitated to mount an offensive against the terrorists' infrastructure, hunt them down, eliminate a single rogue regime that supported them, or properly disconcert our fatted allies whose robes they infested. This was comparable in its way to Munich. Only in 2001, when it became obvious to any rational being that we must, did we retaliate, but even then in the face of domestic pressure to judicialize the response, which was exactly what we had done all along.

The underlying corollary to this reflex of appeasement is the notion that our military options are constrained financially, as if we are not a nation of stupendous wealth and it has not been the American tradition since the Civil War to spend, in support of war, with the intensity of war itself. In 1945, we devoted 38.5% of GNP to defense, the equivalent of $4.76 trillion now. The current $400 billion defense budget is a twelfth of that and only 3.2% of GDP, as opposed to the average of 5.7% of GNP in the peacetime years between 1940 and 2000. A false sense of constraint has arisen in every quarter of society. It is the ethos of the administration, the press, the civilian side of the Pentagon, and many of the prominent uniformed military brought to high rank in recent years.

They are all so wrong. In violating established tradition and throwing aside advantage and elemental common sense, they waste American lives. And for what? What moral construction would allow anyone to spend more than 2,000 dead and tens of thousands of wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan--so far--while insisting without major exception that cutting costs is a virtue? When is holding back from one's troops at war the reinforcements, armor and basic equipment they need a virtue rather than a sin?

Is it not the duty of the secretary of defense, his chiefs, and the wide array of generals to press energetically--even to the point of resignation--for whatever is necessary (not the minimum, but a safe surplus) to support the armies in the field? If they do not, who will? Had the president gone to Congress on September 12 and asked for almost anything, he would have been granted it. But he never did. This was a fundamental strategic error. If you must go to war, do not do so hesitantly, with half a heart. And in answer to the rationale that the casualties of this war are relatively light, one does not decently measure casualties against those of previous wars, but in terms of whether they can be avoided.

Apart from the paucity of armored vehicles, body armor, and other staples of battle, the chief problem of prosecuting the Iraq war has been the size and scale of the force. Despite inaccurate claims of unprecedented speed in the advance to Baghdad, the three weeks of halting action it took to get there, with lines of supply that are to this day poorly protected, were both spur and instruction for the insurgency. In what is only apparently a paradox, the military objective should have been less the conquest of territory and echelons than of morale, and, to accomplish this, territory and echelons would have to have been subdued with the blinding speed, shock and awe of the Six-Day and Gulf wars. The instant the Arab world realized that the promised shock and awe had not materialized, the insurgency was born.

We then nurtured it by deploying a fraction of the ratio (10:1) long experience indicates is necessary for suppression; by dismissing the enemy as mere "thugs," when, although they are thugs and worse, they have the thousand-year motivation of their civilization defending its heartland from Persians, Mongols, Shiites, and now Christians; and by gratuitously elevating our aims from the purely defensive to the transcendental, while steadily diluting the little power we have in the hope of forcing the entire Arab and Muslim worlds to a new politics. From a country where they have been held down in their beleaguered enclaves for two-and-a-half years, how are 140,000 soldiers to transform the highly aggressive and deeply rooted political cultures of 1.2 billion people?

---

Ceaselessly, we court strategic error. At the end of the Cold War, assuming that history had concluded, we discarded too much military power. This continues through the present, rationalized by reference to transformation. But it is yet further error to believe that military-technical evolution can make up for the kind of deficiencies and poor strategic judgments from which no machine can save an army. Continual and remarkable innovation is both indispensable and expensive, but President Clinton required budgetary choice between innovation and everything else, and his successor has yet to disagree. The root of the error that offers transformation as a substitute for so much that is crucial is the conviction that having both would exceed reasonable military expenditures and somehow break the common weal.

Having made many wrong choices, we find ourselves at yet another strategic crossroads, where invisibly to the general public we are about to choose wrongly again. We are reshaping the military into a gendarmerie, configured for small wars, counterinsurgency, peacekeeping and nation-building, all at the expense of the type of force that could deter or defeat a rising China. Although we need a gendarmerie, we cannot do without heavy formations and the many additional ships required for a navy--now less than half the size of the Reagan fleet and shrinking--to exploit our natural advantage in the Pacific.

The U.S. will chase every terrorist mouse (which is good, unless it means also neglecting the core competencies of the armed forces), while lessening and dispersing its power, and moving from previous centers of gravity (Europe, the Western Pacific) to Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East. This will create a long and open alley through which China will run. Among other things, by placing markers in every trouble spot, we will probably be tied down and distracted, taxingly and often, to our enemies' delight.
When China completes its run up the broad alley we have afforded it, it will much sooner be the other pole in a once-again bipolar world, which will create the opportunity for terrorists in the guise of liberation movements to gather under its wing, as they did with the Soviet Bloc during the Cold War. Ironically, in reconfiguring the military to focus primarily on terrorism, we may not only give China a great opening, but create for the terrorists a new lease on life.

The war in Iraq has been poorly planned and executed from the beginning, and now, like a hurricane over warm water, the insurgency is in a position to take immense energy from the fundamental divisions in that nation. The rise of Chinese military power, although lately noted, has met with no response. America's borders are open, its cities vulnerable, its civil defense nonexistent, its armies stretched thin. We have taken only deeply inadequate steps to prepare for and forestall a viral pandemic that by the testimony of experts is a high probability and could kill scores of millions in this country alone. That we do not see relatively simple and necessary courses of action, and are not led and inspired to them, represents a catastrophic failure of leadership that bridges party lines.

Perhaps this and previous administrations have had an effective policy just too difficult to comprehend because they have ingeniously sheltered it under the pretense of their incompetence. But failing that, the legacy of this generation's presidents will be promiscuous declarations and alliances, badly defined war aims, opportunities inexplicably forgone, ill-supported troops sent into the field, a country at risk without adequate civil protections, and a military shaped to fight neither the last war nor this one nor the next.

Mr. Helprin, a Wall Street Journal contributing editor, is Senior Fellow of the Claremont Institute and Distinguished Visiting Fellow of Hillsdale College. He is the author, most recently, of "Freddy and Fredericka" (Penguin, 2005).

Mr. Helprin is a novelist, a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Islam, Jihad, and Terrorism

An interesting review of a no doubt controversial book entitled The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims.

This brings up an important point: terrorism cannot be separated from Jihad, and Jihad cannot be removed from Islam. This is the reality that we are dealing with. Every Jihadi knows this; it is time others did too.

Though I am not an expert on Islam, I have done some research into it, and this statement is not counter to what I have read from informed sources.

Jihad is how Islam has been spread throughout its history. Muslims conquered territory and then offered the newly subjegated people a choice: Embrace Islam, or die. Essentially, jihad is Islamic evangelism. Here's another excerpt:

Genocide is often a direct consequence of Jihad though it is glossed over by ‘Islamically correct’ historians. The book gives contemporary and even eyewitness accounts of various genocides from the time of the Prophet to present day Africa. This includes not only the Turkish massacre of the Armenians, but also the so-called ‘ethnic’ conflict in Sudan, which is the direct consequence of the revival of Jihadism.

Like genocide, slavery is also an integral part of Jihad. In fact most Islamic regimes were based on slave economy. The Legacy of Jihad has a sixty-page section on Jihad slavery. It makes for chilling reading. Particularly disturbing is the revival of slavery and slave trade in Sudan as a direct consequence of the resurgence of Islam and the emphasis on Jihad.

I'm very interested in this book, though I have no idea when I'll have time to actually read it. The reviewer indicates that it is well-documented:

The documentation is so profuse, much of it recorded by Muslims themselves, the reader begins to wonder why all this has been kept away from the public by Islamic scholars and academics whose job it is to inform. As the great Islamic scholar and critic Ibn Warraq (the author of Why I am Not A Muslim) asks in his brilliant Foreword: why did it take Dr. Andrew Bostom, not an Islamic scholar but a medical scientist, to bring out this monumental compilation? Where were the Orientalists, historians, Islamic scholars and other sundry academics?

Has anyone out there read this book? Is it worth reading?

9/11 plus four years

Please pause sometime today, and think of that horrible day four years ago when our national naivete was torn away with the sight of airplanes full of innocents being flown into buildings full of innocents.

By evil men.

There are some in this country who have forgotten or ignored the message sent to us that day -- in the form of a note pinned with a knife to the chest of a loved one. I feel sorry for them. I cannot understand how someone can take such a message and regard it as somehow the fault of this nation that terrorists -- evil men -- hate us and want to terrorize and kill us. And there are some who actually believe that if we leave the pustules of terrorism in this world alone, that they will reciprocate by leaving us alone. But that view ignores one of the lessons of 9/11/2001, because at that time this nation, myself included, was largely pretending that terrorists did not exist -- or were at least not going to be a danger to us. So we were leaving them alone then. And they murdered innocent people regardless.

We know better now.

Remember the men and women who died four years ago at the hands of evil men. Remember the heros who willingly entered those burning buildings and did not return. Remember the courage of those Americans who caused Flight 93 to crash into the Pennsylvania countryside rather than allow the evil men who flew it to accomplish their mission of terror and death.

Remember those since then who have fought and died in foreign lands in our country's defense -- who have taken the fight to those evil men, so that they no longer have the luxury of deciding how, where, and when they will murder innocent Americans. Support this fight so as to ensure that all innocent citizens of all nations will one day be spared from the black-hearted, evil pestilence called terrorism.

That is the best way that we can honor those who died on 11 September 2001.

History Quote

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.

-- Mark Twain

Heritage Quote

"How could a readiness for war in time of peace be safely prohibited, unless we could could prohibit, in like manner, the preparations and establishments of every hostile nation?"

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 41, 1788)

Do-ers and do-ees

I recommend that you read this and think about it.

Shelby H. Williams did.

You are part of Katrina relief efforts

Please prayerfully consider giving to a reputable charity for hurricane Katrina relief. A lot of people have lost family, friends, homes, and jobs. A lot of work has to be done to restore the three-state area devastated by the storm.

My family has donated to the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR). We also have assembled health kits to send to Sager Brown, the UMCOR dissemination facility located in Baldwin, LA. Additionally, our church is involved in feeding and providing other relief to the 115+ refugees that have been arriving in our East Texas community since last Thursday.

Every little bit helps . . .

Battling with votes instead of weapons

It appears as if the Iraqi Sunnis have decided to fight with votes instead of guns.

Voter registration soared in some Sunni Arab parts of Iraq as Sunnis mobilized to try to vote down a draft constitution they believe will divide the country, according to figures released Wednesday at the close of registration for the Oct. 15 referendum.

[snip]

The surge in voter registration in the heavily Sunni west signaled the minority's belated entry into the country's political process. Most Sunnis stood on the sidelines of the Jan. 30 national elections that seated the transitional government, which was charged with drafting the constitution. As a result, Sunnis were left with diminished political leverage in negotiations over the document.

This time, "we registered to defeat the constitution," said Khalid Jubouri, a guard at a government ministry in Fallujah, a city in the volatile western province of Anbar. "This is considered fighting by word and thought. We are optimistic about the battle, and we will win it eventually."

Registration in Anbar swelled from a tiny percentage of eligible adults in January to nearly 85 percent, said Muhammed Ibrahim, the director of voter registration centers in the province.

Ibrahim said about 600,000 of the province's 715,000 eligible adults registered, despite pledges from al Qaeda in Iraq, an insurgent group led by Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian, that anyone who took part in the voting would become a target for killing.

"It is a big number we didn't expect given the security situation in the province," Ibrahim said. "It is a great number."

It looks at lot like there is a growing democracy in Iraq. This, more than any other thing, is what Iraq needs to defeat terrorism in Iraq. And it appears to be working.

Tribes

This is a rather long, but extremely interesting essay asking the question: "What tribe are you on?"

Heritage Quote

"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Benjamin Rush, 23 September 1800)

What would have happened if Katrina had hit on Clinton's watch?

Click here for an amusing bit of fiction. But it is sooo plausible!

Military relief for Katrina victims

To learn more about the Katrina relief efforts that our military is undertaking, check out this link.

Anarchy in city hall

Bryan Preston, from Junkyard Blog has been looking into the New Orleans crisis management nightmare. Here is some of what he says:

Instead of acknowledging the faults that lie at city level and stepping in to organize relief efforts, Louisiana and New Orleans officials spent most of last week lashing out at the Bush administration, though its response was three times faster than the response to hurricane Andrew just 13 years ago. Government actually got quicker at doing something, in spite of the massive increase in the number of lawyers on the public dime in the intervening years. The locals blamed the feds even though the administration, whatever its faults, was ahead of all local officials when it came to declaring a state of emergency and requesting a mandatory evacuation. A massive butt-covering exercise is underway in Louisiana as I write, so massive it is second only to the actual relief and law and order efforts going on in the vast Katrina destruction zone.

Preston goes on to reference instances of attempted blame-shifting, then he addresses the question of all of those city and school buses in New Orleans that could have been used to transport evacuees to safety, yet ended up being flooded in a bus park with the rest of the city:

The buses I mentioned earlier and have blogged about extensively all weekend are evidence of and a symbol for those failures. They sit unused and waterlogged, their empty seats representing lives lost to the flood. Their useless presence in flooded parking lots demonstrate that the best plan is useless if it's never implemented. And they fact of their unuse demonstrates a deeper pathology at work in New Orleans government: The entire thing was rotted from the inside out. New Orleans' government was a disaster waiting to happen.

Then Mr. Preston goes on to point out that the gross failure of the city government in this crisis was symptomatic of its generally poor condition:

New Orleans' city government was an abscess. I say "was," by the way, because for all intents and purposes it ceased to exist some time last week--probably at about the same time the local officials realized that their multiple failures were bound to lead to major loss of life. Its emergency management czar, one Terry Ebbert, squealed about an absence of command and control over the relief effort, when it was his job to establish that command and control. The police department is two-thirds gone after about 1,000 officers deserted in the face of the flood and the looters--some of whom were police officers themselves. Mayor Nagin sent up a profanity-laced diatribe against the federal government that should have been delivered in front of a mirror. The abscess at city hall failed its citizens. It is guilty of gross negligence leading to death for many of its most vulnerable citizens. As the wretched condition of its school system demonstrates, long before it collapsed last week, the municipal government of New Orleans was a total and unmitigated disgrace.

He paints a sad picture, but much of what I have read tends to back up Mr. Preston's claims -- so do not dismiss them lightly. Read the rest, do some independent research, then make up your own mind about it.

Heritage Quote

"Can it be, that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a Nation with its virtue? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human Nature."

-- George Washington (Farewell Address, 19 September 1796)

Katrina's Kidz

If you'd like to help out kids who are victims of hurricane Katrina, go read this post at Boudicca's Voice.

New Orleans realities

Richard Baehr, at The American Thinker has published a very good article that attempts to dispel several of the myths surrounding the New Orleans tragedy brought on by hurricane Katrina. He starts with this:

There will be plenty of time to argue about who was responsible for the slow response in New Orleans this week in dealing with those who did not choose to leave, or were unable to leave the city before the hurricane hit. The catastrophe that followed, when the levees gave way, and 80% of the city, and many of the surrounding suburbs flooded, was far worse than the hurricane itself. Already many seem to have forgotten that New Orleans officials thought they had escaped Katina’s wrath as the storm moved north from the Gulf on Monday, prior to the levees giving way.

I recommend you read the rest.

Good news from Afghanistan, Part 16

Here is Chrenkoff's latest, and perhaps last, installment of good news from Afghanistan. Here's how it starts:

The country's farms are alive again.

Seven years of drought had left fields monochrome plains of brown dust. But good snows and rains have many Afghans seeing color again -- seas of golden wheat undulate in the breeze, green apricot trees are plump with yellow fruit, melons of every hue dot fields.

It is much-needed relief for impoverished farmers as well as the estimated 3.4 million Afghans who have been relying on food handouts from overburdened international aid groups.

One wheat farmer sees the end of the drought as a sign that God is pleased with the country's fledgling democracy.

"Since the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan has started to recover from the drought and people's lives have been getting better," said Fazah Rahman, 36.

"In previous years, no one even bothered to plant crops because our lands were dry like a desert, but that has all changed and everyone is sowing their land," he said.

Mohammed Sharif-Sharif, a senior official at the Agricultural Ministry, said the harvest is exceeding expectations.

"This year, we will be in need of less food aid from other countries," he said. "In the past seven years, nearly all our wheat was imported. But fortunately, it will significantly drop this year."

The sheer size of this compilation should be indicative that there is a lot more going on in that country than our media deems newsworthy. I recommend it.

Heritage Quote

"The establishment of Civil and Religious Liberty was the Motive which induced me to the Field -- the object is attained -- and it now remains to be my earnest wish & prayer, that the Citizens of the United States could make a wise and virtuous use of the blessings placed before them."

-- George Washington (letter to the Reformed German Congregation
of New York City, 27 November 1783)

Quote

"Faith declares what the senses do not see, but not the contrary of what they see. It is above them, not contrary to them."

—Blaise Pascal

Aggie hurricane relief

For the latest on what Texas A&M University is doing to help out the victims of hurricane Katrina, click on this link.

Some highlights:

- Providing food and shelter to 300+ refugees in Reed Arena.
- Pledged to accomodate/enroll up to 1000 students from disaster-area
colleges.
- Provided 10 buses and drivers for use in San Antonio to shuttle refugees.
- Pledged $200,000 to help refugee students and families.

Heritage Quote

"Work as if you were to live 100 Years, Pray as if you were to die To-morrow."

-- Benjamin Franklin (Poor Richard's Almanack, 1757)

Rumsfeld in-depth

An excellent article about Donald Rumsfeld.

It is from this suite of rooms that Rumsfeld has become one of the most loathed and revered men in the world. The man is too impatient, too damned arrogant, too beyond politics, and just too stubborn for his own good. He is the famously combative, two-time SecDef (both youngest and oldest ever) who chews up and spits out experienced reporters in what are easily the most skillfully performed press conferences since John Kennedy walked the earth. He has brilliantly executed a couple of wars, and badly botched a peace. Let us stipulate all these truths just to move the conversation along.

But something else has been going on in this office, and it's nothing short of the most profound transformation of the U. S. military since World War II-a historic process that will, paradoxically, yield a force Americans haven't seen since our frontier days. The United States had one Defense Department on January 20, 2001, and it will have a very different one by January 20, 2009. Donald H. Rumsfeld, thirteenth and twenty-first secretary of defense, is the reason why.

Recommended reading.

Ancient History Quote

"Self control is the chief element in self respect, and self respect is the chief element in courage."

-- Thucydides

William H. Rehnquist - RIP

Chief Justice William Rehnquist has died.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who steered the Supreme Court on a more conservative course during more than 33 years on the bench and who presided over the impeachment trial of one president and helped elect another, died Saturday at his home in Arlington, Va. He was 80.

Rehnquist had been in failing health since he was diagnosed in October with thyroid cancer. An announcement from the court late Saturday said the chief justice had experienced "a precipitous decline in his health in the last couple of days" and died in the evening, surrounded by his three children.

May he rest in peace.

NOLA Observations

Some pertinent observations about the tragedy-in-progress that is New Orleans by the conservative Federalist Patriot newsletter.

I've reprinted the entire thing in the extended entry. It is well worth reading because it provides a counter-balance to all of the "analysis" going on in the mainstream media right now.

Observations on the decent, the dire and the despicable...

Finally, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, water is flowing out of New Orleans as Lake Pontchartrain recedes to its normal stage. After the water levels inside and outside the levees equalize, much of New Orleans' real estate will still be about eight feet under, where it will remain until levees are repaired and pumps activated, likely in four to eight weeks. A huge swath of Mississippi and Alabama is also drying out from this devastating storm -- a storm that left some thousand dead and wreaked incalculable human suffering on more than a million survivors, most of whom are now homeless and jobless.

In a sense, the shock this week was reminiscent of that Tuesday morning almost four years ago -- but the death and destruction of 9/11 occurred in two hours, whereas Katrina's mayhem is an ongoing disaster. As it was with 9/11, our response to catastrophic events such as those witnessed this week define us as a people; it reveals, proportionally, both the best and worst of our citizens and our society.

But the media coverage has not been proportional. For five days and counting, the 24-hour news recyclers have played an endless loop of footage featuring misery and destruction accompanied by thematic tunes and graphics -- surreal. Those cameras have captured loss and suffering amid misery and looting. To be sure, that's what they do best -- but there is much more to this story than meets the camera eye.

How we respond to catastrophe says a lot about our character as Americans. Unfortunately, there were very few cameras this week focused on hundreds of thousands of decent people responding to very difficult circumstances with great courage and resolve. At ground level, most who lost all their material possessions remained thankful -- grateful that they, their families and their friends, were alive. You know the type. Their glass is always half full and they live for the next sunrise, not the last sunset. Their stories reflect the true American spirit.

Additionally, those who suffered losses are far outnumbered by relatives, friends and strangers who have lent a hand and donated material goods, services and money. These folks have opened their churches, homes and businesses to provide shelter for refugees invited into their communities. Thousands of Americans from around the nation, professionals and laborers alike with expertise necessary for recovery efforts, have left their homes and families in order to volunteer their assistance. Countless millions are offering daily prayer for victims. As each day has passed, the ranks of those stepping forward to help their displaced countrymen have grown exponentially. This is the face of America, but the cameras have not captured these images.

This is the America that volunteered thousands of personnel and billions of dollars to help with the recovery effort in South Asia after last December's Tsunami.

Further, due in part to federal planning efforts by the Department of Homeland Security after 9/11, federal, state, and local government agencies have responded to this crisis side by side, expeditiously delivering emergency support to those who would not -- or could not -- evacuate in advance of the hurricane or its residual flooding. National, state and local leaders have set aside petty political differences in a unified effort to care for the immediate and intermediate needs of those left homeless. They have also begun to work out a comprehensive recovery plan for the region.

That notwithstanding, the media focus has been almost exclusively on two percent of the affected population who have yet to be evacuated -- not only the TV media, but the print media as well. Friday morning, The Washington Post's headline read "A City of Despair and Lawlessness". Apparently The New York Times got the memo, too; their headline read "Despair and Lawlessness Grip New Orleans".

Consequently, there is plenty of media coverage on official complaints that services have not been delivered fast enough, that rescue efforts have been too slow, and that there have been competing agendas. "We are watching this devastation unfold on our televisions for days and you have to ask: where is the federal government?" queried Sen. Frank Lautenberg. "We should have had a significant amount of troops and supplies there on the ground Monday."

Apparently Mr. Lautenberg is "logistically challenged." He missed, for example, the fact that when the levees failed, President George Bush activated 15,000 National Guardsmen (5,000 more on the way), who were joined by thousands of police officers, physicians and emergency-management specialists from around the nation. Within 24 hours of the levees failing, there were 50 Disaster Medical Assistance Teams, 25 Urban Search and Rescue task forces, eight swift-water rescue teams, two Incident Support Teams, and 1,700 trucks loaded with water, ice, meals, medical supplies, generators, tents and tarps en route. Additionally, FEMA coordinated massive relief efforts with DHS, DoD, HHS and other agencies with relief capabilities -- indeed, an armada is now on its way.

However, as this column has noted before, individual preparedness is the foundation of national preparedness. The federal government does not have, nor has it ever maintained, enough emergency-relief inventories to alleviate all suffering in a catastrophe of this magnitude. What it does maintain will, at best, meet only minimal needs and may not be available for days or even weeks depending on the nature of the catastrophe. (FederalistPatriot.US posts an excellent resource page ["Recommended Action Plan" | http://FederalistPatriot.US/useprpc/] with all you need to know about emergency preparedness measures for yourself and your family.)

Mr. Lautenberg will have to cut his summer vacation short and return to Washington, though, as President Bush will be asking Congress for $10 billion to cover immediate relief expenditures for FEMA alone.

Lautenberg, however, is not alone in using this tragedy as political fodder. As President Bush was welcoming Bill Clinton to the White House yesterday to assist with fundraising for disaster relief, former Clinton senior advisor and noted White House hatchet man Sid "Vicious" Blumenthal opined, "The Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war. ... The Bush administration's policy of turning over wetlands to developers almost certainly contributed to the heightened level of the storm surge."

Apparently Sid has forgotten the Senate's diversion of domestic infrastructure funding to cover the 700-percent cost overrun for Ted Kennedy's Big Dig boondoggle. Perhaps that $16 billion American tax payers spent on 7.5 miles of Boston highway could have been better spent on levee improvements in New Orleans -- but we digress.

The fact is, the city of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana have been arguing for decades with the federal government over who should foot the bill for the NO's gambit on developing ever-widening areas of the sinking swamp around the city. Every elected official in Louisiana knew that the city was on borrowed time with its category-three levees. The eventuality of a cat-four or cat-five hurricane was accepted as a "moral hazard." Indeed, Katrina ended that debate, and American taxpayers will now be saddled with the cost of the levee and the total recovery effort.

Naturally, there were also some AlGorite eco-nuts who actually blamed President Bush and Mississippi governor Haley Barbour for the hurricane. "As Hurricane Katrina dismantles Mississippi's Gulf Coast," protested Robert Kennedy Jr., "it's worth recalling the central role that Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour played in derailing the Kyoto Protocol and kiboshing President Bush's iron-clad campaign promise to regulate CO2. ... In 1998, Republican icon Pat Robertson warned that hurricanes were likely to hit communities that offended God. Perhaps it was Barbour's memo that caused Katrina, at the last moment, to spare New Orleans and save its worst flailing for the Mississippi coast." (Are we to understand that Jr. is now taking his rhetorical cues from Pat Robertson?)

Despite assertions about "global-warming hurricanes," renowned meteorologist Dr. William Gray, in a recent interview with Discover magazine (which has advocated the theory of human-induced global warming), begged to differ: "This human-induced global-warming thing...is grossly exaggerated. ... I'm not disputing there has been global warming. There was a lot of global warming in the 1930s and '40s, and then there was global cooling in the middle '40s to the early '70s. Nearly all of my colleagues who have been around 40 or 50 years are skeptical...about this global-warming thing. But no one asks us." Gray was described by Discover magazine's editors as one of "the world's most famous hurricane experts." But what do they know. (For an exposition on the causes of global warming, see ["The Earth Day Before Yesterday" | http://federalistpatriot.us/alexander/edition.asp?id=304]).

On the topic of fossil fuel, OPEC oil topped $70/barrel this week, though it costs the money-grubbing cartel a mere $4/barrel to produce. (If memory serves, we liberated this region from tyranny twice in recent history, yet no offer of reduced oil prices to help alleviate our refining crisis has been forthcoming.) President Bush will surely be blamed for our high gas prices and our limited refining capabilities -- but those casting the blame are the same folks who have blocked construction of a single U.S. refinement facility since 1976.

Back in the Big Easy, the ugliest American face projected around the world this week has been that of the looters. Though they represent far fewer than one percent of those displaced by the hurricane and its flooding, their repulsive actions commanded about 50 percent of field TV broadcasts.

On Canal Street, a man sloshing through hip-deep water with ten pairs of jeans over his shoulder was asked if he was salvaging merchandise from his store. His reply? "No, that's everybody's store." Sadly, that has been the norm throughout the French Quarter, where looters have ripped iron gates from storefronts and taken everything they could lay their hands on. These loathsome creatures have filled industrial-size garbage bags with clothes and jewelry and floated them down the street on pieces of plywood, even as National Guardsman sloshed by on survivor-rescue details. Looters also targeted drug stores and at one point threatened to raid a children's hospital that hadn't been evacuated. Relief trucks have been ambushed and robbed by marauding gangs. Ambulances have been overturned. Nursing homes have been invaded. Stories of rape and murder are now emerging.

"We will do what it takes to bring law and order to our area," said Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco. "I'm just furious. It's intolerable." Here we would advise Ms. Blanco that in the aftermath of a devastating natural disaster, and under a state of martial law, the NOPD should be empowered to discharge their weapons when confronted by these riotous gangs -- though preferably not while CNN cameras are rolling. Alas, by this time next week, Al $harpton and Je$$e Jack$on will have landed, insisting that these hoodlums are actually the victims.

Regardless of the bleak and chaotic face the 24-hour news recyclers have put on this tragedy, the real face of America is that of a million Patriots who have courageously persevered, and tens of millions who are helping lift them up from tragedy -- but that face is too mundane for news editors, whose primary concern is market share and advertising revenue.

Heritage Quote

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."

-- Cesare Beccaria (On Crimes and Punishment, quoted by Thomas
Jefferson in Commonplace Book)

Flat tax

John Fund, over at OpinionJournal, makes a case for a national flat tax to replace our current income tax.

I've reprinted the entire article in the extended entry. It makes for interesting reading.

JOHN FUND ON THE TRAIL

The World Is Flat

But America is a laggard in the tax-reform revolution.


Monday, August 29, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

Next month's report of the White House tax reform commission will likely stop short of advocating a complete scrapping of the tax code. But look for it to have warm words for how well the flat tax is promoting economic growth in the more than dozen places--ranging from Ukraine to Hong Kong--that have adopted variations of it.

It's about time the concept of taxing all income at a single rate, which presidential candidate Steve Forbes and then-House Majority Leader Dick Armey broached a decade ago, once again takes center stage. It's increasingly popular overseas, with Romania and the republic of Georgia adopting it last January. Greece is likely to introduce a 25% single rate for both corporate and personal income next month. If Poland's opposition parties win next month's elections they are likely to introduce a flat tax. In Italy, the Bruno Leoni Institute has just published an interview with former finance minister and current defense minister Antonio Martino detailing his support of the flat tax.

Even Germany, normally a center of intellectual stagnation when it comes to tax policy, has gotten the bug. Angela Merkel, the candidate of the conservative Christian Democrats in the Sept. 18 election, has appointed radical reformer Paul Kirchhof as her spokesman on taxes. While her party's manifesto falls far short of advocating Mr. Kirchhof's idea of a single rate of 25% for companies and individuals, she has stoutly defended his approach: "It's important that there is a man who wants to go further in principle and, when there is room for maneuver, says, now we can go the next step."

To everyone's surprise the stodgy German media are now consumed with debate over the flat tax. Berlin's left-leaning Der Tageszeitung noted that under Mr. Kirchhof's proposal generous exemptions would mean a family of four would pay tax only on its portion of income that was over $42,000 a year. With the current German tax system now operating with 90,000 rules and 418 tax exemptions it asked, "Isn't an understandable tax system good for all? . . . Kirchhof stands for clarity." The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Germany's most respected paper, noted that while the idea has been predictably attacked by unions and some business interests, "massive resistance by people representing particular interests and associations is the most certain sign that this is the right path to take."

In Britain, die-hard opponents of the flat tax, such as Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, were caught censoring portions of an internal Treasury paper on the subject that was obtained under the recently effective Freedom of Information Act. The unexpurgated version, leaked to the Daily Telegraph, found that a flat tax would likely make Britain more attractive to foreign investors, eliminate economic distortions and create a "mini-economic boom." The paper noted that under flat-tax systems in other European countries the rich end up paying a larger share of total tax revenues. In flat-tax countries, taxpayers in the highest brackets move from consumption or tax-sheltered investments to more productive, taxable investments. Many higher earners work harder or take additional risks, rewarded by higher after-tax returns.

Indeed, the Brussels-based Center for a New Europe notes that none of the countries that have adopted the flat tax are seriously contemplating any retreat from it. Flat-tax pioneer Estonia is even reducing its rate by two percentage points a year until it drops to 20% in 2007. Since the tax's inception in 1994, Estonia has had an average growth of 5.2% a year, and now also ranks fourth (out of 155 countries) in the Index of Economic Freedom, published by The Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation.

After being mired in stagnation for years, in 2001 Russia implemented a flat tax of 13% for individuals, along with a 15% rate for most business income. The economy grew 7.3% last year, thanks in part to underground activity going legitimate, more than doubling revenues from income taxes. Even the New York Times, which opposes a flat tax in the U.S., has praised, President Vladimir Putin for "radically simplifying the code and slashing rates." On a trip to flat-tax Slovakia earlier this year, President Bush, extolled those who are using the flat tax "to attract capital and create economic vitality."

---

Here at home the flat tax is still routinely ridiculed. When Mr. Forbes floated the idea in 1995, President Clinton joked that Republicans were becoming "the party of flat-earthers and flat-taxers." But he has also told friends privately that he got a real scare during the 1992 primaries when Jerry Brown championed a flat tax. Mr. Brown won applause from audiences by pointing out that under our current system the rich will always be able to hire experts to lobby for tax loopholes and avoid the higher rate traps set for them.

That logic and the practical realization of it in country after country is winning adherents from all walks of life in the U.S. Donald Trump is full of praise for Mr. Forbes's new book, "Flat Tax Revolution." Actor Clint Eastwood praises a flat tax because it would mean "a little old lady on a home computer [could do] the work of all these thousands of bureaucrats and accountants." A variation on the flat-tax idea, junking the income tax in favor of a single-rate national sales tax is also gaining popularity. "The Fair Tax," a new book by Rep. John Linder and radio talk-show host Neal Boortz, is currently topping best-seller lists.

So here's hoping the Bush tax reform commission is bold enough to at least propose some steps towards a dramatic flattening of the income tax code. It may be a matter of long-term economic survival. America's taxes on profits are around 40%, when you combine federal, state and local levies. With the possible exception of Japan, that rate is about the highest of any developed nation in the world today. If the U.S. doesn't adopt the flat tax it may find itself losing jobs, capital and ambitious entrepreneurs to nations with a more ambitious growth agenda.

Alvin Rabushka, a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, believes it's only a matter of time before an emerging economic superpower like China or India goes the flat-tax route. His book on the subject has just been published in Chinese, with a preface by Lou Jiwei, the vice minister of finance. If China adopted a flat tax, more than a quarter of the world's population would be filling out tax returns on the back of a postcard. That would leave them a lot of time and money to eat our economic lunch.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Bush's latest challenge

This analysis from the New York Times is really spot-on about President Bush's options in dealing with the Katrina catastrophy -- and the potential political consequences. Here's a taste:

But the current president, in contrast, prides himself as a crisis manager. He observed in a debate with Vice President Al Gore in 2000 that natural catastrophes were "a time to test your mettle."

The next few weeks will determine whether he can manage several challenges at once, in the chaos of Iraq and the humanitarian and economic fallout along the Gulf Coast.

Success could help him emerge from a troubled moment in his presidency, when his approval ratings have hit an all-time low. But it is hardly assured.

It takes free registration, but I recommend that you read it.

Hurricane Katrina: Blog for Relief Day

The full extent of destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina is still not known, but it is clear that it has killed thousands and displaced millions of people in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.

Please hold the survivors in your thoughts and prayers.

There is something else that you can do: Get involved in volunteer efforts to help the victims of this national tragedy. Or donate money to one of the many relief agencies that are already rushing aid to that devastated gulf coast region.

I am donating to the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) - UMC Disaster Relief Fund. The UMCOR's main distribution center is located in Baldwin, Louisiana -- some 60 miles away from the disaster area. It suffered some damage, but is operational, and is working feverishly to provide relief to the victims of Katrina.

Also: Check out Glenn Reynold's site, Instapundit, for many more links to relief agencies.

And Michelle Malkin is a good resource for what is going on down there.

You can also check out this aggregate page of bloggers who are contributing to Katrina relief efforts.

Technorati Tags: flood aid, Hurricane Katrina

Heritage Quote

"The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse."

-- James Madison (speech in the Virginia constitutional convention, 2 December 1829)

Blockbusted

Without realizing it, I walked right into a police stakeout at my local Blockbuster. When a young man stepped out the door, a group of officers pounced, cuffing him and hustling him into a squad car.

Seeing my astonished frozen expression, one cop came over and said, "When they say the movie is due by noon the next day... they mean it!"

[Received from Marty's Joke of the Day by way of The Good Clean Funnies List.]