October 31, 2006
Heritage Quote
"The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves in all cases to which they think themselves competent, or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of the press."-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to John Cartwright, 1824)
Perceptions
Victor Davis Hanson has a good essay on War, Punditry, and Farming.
Three snippets:
On Korea --
Depression apparently abounds these days. In the latest Time, Robert Galluci, the present Dean of the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, pleads with us to talk to North Korea (“Let’s Make a Deal…”)—as if their present plutonium stockpiles did not originate during the Big Talk of the 1990s under the Carter/Clinton shuttles, or that a regime that has recently starved to death over 1 million of its own cares much about either talking or honoring anything that might come out of such discussions.
On pundits --
Watching and reading the recent Washington punditry, whether in print or on television, is a depressing spectacle. Almost all—Charles Krauthammer is the most notable exception—have somehow triangulated on the war, not mentioning why and how in the B.C. days they sort of, kinda, not really called for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. For some the Road to Damascus was the looting or Abu Ghraib, for others the increasing violence. Still more now say the absence of WMD did the trick.But almost none of the firebrands of 2003 speaks the truth behind the facade: They supported the war when it looked like few casualties and a quick reconstruction and thus confirmation of their own muscular humanitarianism—and then bailed along the way when they realized that wasn’t going to happen and the unpopular war might instead brand them as “war mongers”, “chicken-hawks” or just fools.
And on farming (sorta) --
I can recall, comparing great things to small, the same changing wisdom in farming: pick grapes early for a safe drying period for raisins; or pick late to ensure a sweet ripening grape for a better raisin. If September was dry and hot, then the late guys who saved their heavy sweet raisins were geniuses; but if it rained, the early pickers who at least salvaged their crops when no one else could were considered brilliant.
Go read the whole thing. He makes some good points.
The decline of the Eurozone
Anatole Kaletsky has some disturbing things to say about how the Maastricht Treaty, creating the European economic zone, is suppressing the economies of many of the countries who signed it.
The Maastricht treaty has turned the Eastern Europeans into second-class citizens. The belated recognition of this fact is starting to have the predictably ugly impact on the politics of Europe’s eastern periphery. But before getting too indignant about the injustices to Eastern Europe, let us spare a thought for the citizens of old Europe who are privileged to “enjoy” full membership of the eurozone. The latest budgetary crisis in Italy may well be averted and the Prodi Government will probably survive for a few more months. But as Signor Prodi’s huge tax increases begin to bite, the Italian economy is almost certain to sink back into recession. Moreover, there will be no chance of Italy tackling any of its real economic problems once unemployment starts rising next year.What Italy needs today is competition, privatisation of grossly inefficient state-sponsored utilities, deregulation of the financial system and changes in labour laws. Such reforms can be hard to implement even in a booming economy. In a stagnant or declining one, they will become impossible.
To make matters worse, Italy will be tightening its budget at the same time as Germany implements the biggest tax increases in its modern history — also in deference to the Maastricht Treaty, if not under quite such direct compulsion from the EU. These simultaneous fiscal blunders in Italy, Germany and Eastern Europe will almost mean another “lost year” for the euro zone, with economic performance falling far behind America, Britain and Japan. But the long-term consequences could be more far-reaching.
At some point the people of Europe will realise that there is something rotten in a political system that leaves them forever in the world economy’s slow lane — and which cannot be changed by any democratic process, regardless of how people vote.
Recommended.
International diversity
Thomas Sowell makes some thoughtful observations about how diversity in Iraq may have slowed our nation-building efforts there.
He also makes equally thoughtful comments about finishing that effort.
I've reprinted the whole op-ed in the extended entry.
Diversity's Oppressions
Why Iraq has proven to be so hard to pacify.
BY THOMAS SOWELL
Monday, October 30, 2006 12:01 a.m. ESTIraq is not the first war with ugly surprises and bloody setbacks. Even World War II, idealized in retrospect as it never was at the time--the war of "the greatest generation"--had a long series of disasters for Americans before victory was finally achieved.
The war began for Americans with the disaster at Pearl Harbor, followed by the tragic horror of the Bataan death march, the debacle at the Kasserine Pass and, even on the eve of victory, being caught completely by surprise by a devastating German counterattack that almost succeeded at the Battle of the Bulge.
Other wars--our own and other nations'--have likewise been full of nasty surprises and mistakes that led to bloodbaths. Nevertheless, the Iraq war has some special lessons for our time, lessons that both the left and the right need to acknowledge, whether or not they will.
What is it that has made Iraq so hard to pacify, even after a swift and decisive military victory? In one word: diversity.That word has become a sacred mantra, endlessly repeated for years on end, without a speck of evidence being asked for or given to verify the wonderful benefits it is assumed to produce.
Worse yet, Iraq is only the latest in a long series of catastrophes growing out of diversity. These include "ethnic cleansing" in the Balkans, genocide in Rwanda and the Sudan, the million lives destroyed in intercommunal violence when India became independent in 1947 and the even larger number of Armenians slaughtered by Turks during World War I.
Despite much gushing about how we should "celebrate diversity," America's great achievement has not been in having diversity but in taming its dangers that have run amok in many other countries. Americans have by no means escaped diversity's oppressions and violence, but we have reined them in.
Another concept whose bitter falsity has been painfully revealed in Iraq is "nation-building." People are not building blocks, however much some may flatter themselves that they can arrange their fellow human beings' lives the way you can arrange pieces on a chess board.
The biggest and most fatuous example of nation-building occurred right after World War I, when the allied victors dismembered the Habsburg Empire and the Ottoman Empire. Woodrow Wilson assigned a young Walter Lippman to sit down with maps and population statistics and start drawing lines that would define new nations.
Iraq is one of those new nations. Like other artificial creations in the Balkans, Africa and elsewhere, it has never had the cohesion of nations that evolved over the centuries out of the experiences of peoples who worked out their own modi vivendi in one way or another.
Tito's dictatorship held Yugoslavia together, as other dictatorships held together other peoples forced into becoming a nation by the decisions of outsiders who drew their boundaries on maps and in some cases--Nigeria, for example--even gave them their national name.
Even before 9/11, there were some neoconservatives who talked about our achieving "national greatness" by creating democratic nations in various parts of the world.
How much influence their ideas have had on the actual course of events is probably something that will not be known in our generation. But we can at least hope that the Iraq tragedy will chasten the hubris behind notions of "nation-building" and chasten also the pious dogmatism of those who hype "diversity" at every turn, in utter disregard of its actual consequences at home or abroad. Free societies have prerequisites, and history has not given all peoples those prerequisites, which took centuries to evolve in the West.
However we got into Iraq, we cannot undo history--even recent history--by simply pulling out and leaving events to take their course in that strife-torn country. Whether or not we "stay the course," terrorists are certainly going to stay the course in Iraq and around the world.
Political spin may say that Iraq has nothing to do with the war on terror, but the terrorists themselves quite obviously believe otherwise, as they converge on that country with lethal and suicidal resolve.
Whether we want to or not, we cannot unilaterally end the war with international terrorists. Giving the terrorists an epoch-making victory in Iraq would only shift the location where we must face them or succumb to them.
Abandoning Iraqi allies to their fate would ensure that other nations would think twice before becoming or remaining our allies. With a nuclear Iran looming on the horizon, we are going to need all the allies we can get.
Mr. Sowell is the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution. He is the author, most recently, of "Black Rednecks and White Liberals" (Encounter Books, 2005).
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
October 30, 2006
Heritage Quote
"My anxious recollections, my sympathetic feeling, and my best wishes are irresistibly excited whensoever, in any country, I see an oppressed nation unfurl the banners of freedom."-- George Washington (letter to Pierre Auguste Adet, January 1st 1796)
Dear New York Times
A letter written to the New York Times by our Dept. of Defense in rebuttal of a misleading editorial about Donald Rumfeld and troop numbers in Iraq.
It's in the extended entry. The New York Times declined to print this. Spread the word.
October 24, 2006 To the Editor: The New York Times has once again repeated a popular myth to mislead its readers about Secretary Rumsfeld. We ask for an immediate correction. Today’s editorial claims: “There have never been enough troops, the result of Mr. Rumsfeld’s negligent decision to use Iraq as a proving ground for his pet military theories, rather than listen to his generals.” Whether or not the Times believes there were enough troops in Iraq, the claim that any troop level in Iraq is the result of Secretary Rumsfeld “not listening to his generals” is demonstrably untrue. Generals involved in troop level decisions have been abundantly clear on this matter:
Rather than advancing Secretary Rumsfeld’s alleged “pet theories,” General Franks wrote that he based his troop level recommendations on the following: “Building up a Desert Storm-size force in Kuwait would have taken months of effort - very visible effort - and would have sacrificed the crucial element of operational surprise we now enjoyed. . . . And if operational surprise had been sacrificed, I suspected that the Iraqis would have repositioned their Republican Guard and regular army units, making for an attrition slugfest that would cost thousands of lives.” On page 333 of his memoirs, General Franks added: “As I concluded my summary of the existing 1003 plan, I noted that we’d trimmed planned force levels from 500,000 troops to around 400,000. But even that was still way too large, I told the Secretary.” General Franks also notes on a number of occasions that rather than “rejecting” military advice, Secretary Rumsfeld repeatedly listened to commanders’ advice in designing a plan for Iraq.
These statements are not new, nor difficult to find in public sources. So the implication is that either the New York Times believes these generals are not being truthful, or that they are too intimidated to tell the truth. If the Times feels this way, way not say so? For our part, we vigorously dispute either assertion about these distinguished military leaders. The Times claims to correct “all errors of fact.” Please correct this at once or provide us with demonstrable facts that support your assertion.
Sincerely, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs |
October 29, 2006
Heritage Quote
"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite."-- James Madison (Federalist No. 45)
October 28, 2006
Heritage Quote
"Cherish, therefore, the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, Judges, and Governors, shall all become wolves."-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Edward Carrington, 16 January 1787)
Journalism in Iraq
Michael Fumento, currently on his third embed tour in Iraq, writes about typical war correspondence in Iraq -- and how it widely deviates from his experiences there. Here's how he starts:
Would you trust a Hurricane Katrina report datelined “direct from Detroit”? Or coverage of the World Trade Center attack from Chicago? Why then should we believe a Time Magazine investigation of the Haditha killings that was reported not from Haditha but from Baghdad? Or a Los Angeles Times article on a purported Fallujah-like attack on Ramadi reported by four journalists in Baghdad and one in Washington? Yet we do, essentially because we have no choice. A war in a country the size of California is essentially covered from a single city. Plug the name of Iraqi cities other than Baghdad into Google News and you’ll find that time and again the reporters are in Iraq’s capital, nowhere near the scene. Capt. David Gramling, public affairs officer for the unit I’m currently embedded with, puts it nicely: “I think it would be pretty hard to report on Baghdad from out here.” Welcome to the not-so-brave new world of Iraq war correspondence.
Go read the rest.
October 27, 2006
Heritage Quote
“The great object of my fear is the federal judiciary. That body, like gravity, ever acting, with noiseless foot, and unalarming advance, gaining ground step by step, and holding what it gains, is ingulfing insidiously the special governments into the jaws of that which feeds them.”— Thomas Jefferson
A view from Iraq
James Taranto published an email from an intel sergeant in the 4th Infantry Division currently deployed in Iraq. In it, he maintains that we need to rethink our nation-building methodology. He also talks about what contributed to our success in re-building Germany after WWII.
In Germany after World War II, we controlled our sector with approximately 500,000 troops, directly administering the area for 10 years while we rebuilt the country and rebuilt the social and political infrastructure needed to run it. In Iraq, we've got one-third that number of troops dealing with three times the population on a much faster timetable, and we're attempting to unify three distinct ethnic groups with no national interest and at least three outside influences (Saudi Arabian Wahhabists, Iranian mullahs and Syrian Baathists) each eagerly funding various groups in an attempt to see us fail. And we are.
I've reprinted the whole thing -- including some commentary from other Taranto readers -- in the extended entry.
A View From Iraq
Our item yesterday in which we reaffirmed our support for the liberation of Iraq brought some very interesting reader comments. This is from an American there who asks not to be named:There's been a lot of discussion back home about the course of the war, the righteousness of our involvement, the clarity of our execution, and what to do about the predicament in which we currently find ourselves. I just wanted to send you my firsthand account of what's happening here.
First, a little bit about me: I'm stationed slightly northwest of Baghdad in a mixed Sunni/Shia area. I'm a sergeant in the U.S. Army on a human intelligence collection team. I interact with Iraqis on a daily basis and I help put together the intel picture for our area of operations. I have contacts with friends, who are also in my job, in every area of operations in the Fourth Infantry Division footprint, and through our crosstalk I'd say I have a pretty damn good idea of what's going on in and around Baghdad on a micro and intermediary level.
I wrote heavily in favor of this war before I enlisted myself, and I still maintain that going into Iraq was not only the necessary thing to do, but the right thing to do as well.
There have been distinct failures of policy in Iraq. The vast majority of them fall under the category "failure to adapt." Basically U.S. policies have been several steps behind the changing conditions ever since we came into the country. I believe this is (in part) due to our plainly obvious desire to extricate ourselves from Iraq. I know President Bush is preaching "stay the course," but we came over here with a goal of handing over our battlespace to the Iraqis by the end of our tour here.
This breakneck pace with which we're trying to push the responsibility for governing and securing Iraq is irresponsible and suicidal. It's like throwing a brick on a house of cards and hoping it holds up. The Iraqi Security Forces (ISF)--a joint term referring to Iraqi army and Iraqi police--are so rife with corruption, insurgent sympathies and Shia militia members that they have zero effectiveness. Two Iraqi police brigades in Baghdad have been disbanded recently, and the general sentiment in our field is "Why stop there?" I can't tell you how many roadside bombs have been detonated against American forces within sight of ISF checkpoints. Faith in the Iraqi army is only slightly more justified than faith in the police--but even there, the problems of tribal loyalties, desertion, insufficient training, low morale and a failure to properly indoctrinate their soldiers results in a substandard, ineffective military. A lot of the problems are directly related to Arab culture, which traditionally doesn't see nepotism and graft as serious sins. Changing that is going to require a lot more than "benchmarks."
In Shia areas, the militias hold the real control of the city. They have infiltrated, co-opted or intimidated into submission the local police. They are expanding their territories, restricting freedom of movement for Sunnis, forcing mass migrations, spiking ethnic tensions, not to mention the murderous checkpoints, all while U.S. forces do . . . nothing.
For the first six months I was in country, sectarian violence was classified as an "Iraqi on Iraqi" crime. Division didn't want to hear about it. And, in a sense I can understand why. Because division realized that which the Iraqi people have come to realize: The American forces cannot protect them. We are too few in number and our mission is "stability and support." The problem is that there's nothing to give stability and support to. We hollowed out the Baathist regime, and we hastily set up this provisional government, thrusting political responsibility on a host of unknowns, each with his own political agenda, most funded by Iran, and we're seeing the results.
In Germany after World War II, we controlled our sector with approximately 500,000 troops, directly administering the area for 10 years while we rebuilt the country and rebuilt the social and political infrastructure needed to run it. In Iraq, we've got one-third that number of troops dealing with three times the population on a much faster timetable, and we're attempting to unify three distinct ethnic groups with no national interest and at least three outside influences (Saudi Arabian Wahhabists, Iranian mullahs and Syrian Baathists) each eagerly funding various groups in an attempt to see us fail. And we are.
If we continue on as is in Iraq, we will leave here (sooner or later) with a fractured state, a Rwanda-waiting-to-happen. "Stay the course" and refusing to admit that we're screwing things up is already killing a lot of people needlessly. Following through with such inane nonstrategy is going to be the death knell for hundreds of thousands of Sunnis.
We need to backtrack. We need to publicly admit we're backtracking. This is the opening battle of the ideological struggle of the 21st century. We cannot afford to lose it because of political inconveniences. Reassert direct administration, put 400,000 to 500,000 American troops on the ground, disband most of the current Iraqi police and retrain and reindoctrinate the Iraqi army until it becomes a military that's fighting for a nation, not simply some sect or faction. Reassure the Iraqi people that we're going to provide them security and then follow through. Disarm the nation: Sunnis, Shias, militia groups, everyone. Issue national ID cards to everyone and control the movement of the population.
If these three things are done, you can actually start the Iraqi economy again. Once people have a sense of security, they'll be able to leave their houses to go to work. Tell your American commanders that it's OK to pass up bad news--because part of the problem is that these issues are not reaching above the battalion or brigade level due to the can-do, make-it-happen culture indoctrinated into our U.S. officers. While the attitude is admirable, it also creates barriers to recognizing and dealing with on-the-ground realities.
James, there's a lot more to this than I've written here. The short of it is, the situation is salvageable, but not with "stay the course" and certainly not with cut and run. However, the commitment required to save it is something I doubt the American public is willing to swallow. I just don't see the current administration with the political capital remaining in order to properly motivate and convince the American public (or the West in general) of the necessity of these actions.
At the same time, failure in Iraq would be worse than a dozen Somalias, and would render us as impotent and emasculated as we were in the days after Vietnam. There is a global cultural-ideological struggle being waged, and abdication from Iraq is tantamount to concession.
Reader Russ Daniel makes an interesting point about the media side of the war:
I continue to be surprised at how well the Iraqi insurgency/terrorists play our media, and how few Americans realize that we are playing right back. It is my impression that many Americans realize that the terrorists are conscious of how their actions impact American resolve--but very few Americans realize how our actions impact Iraqi resolve. It's as if Americans believe that our newspapers and media stop at the water's edge.
For example, terrorists cause chaos in Iraq with a goal of making it appear to Americans that our military is wasting time, lives and effort over there. The mirror of that result comes when Democrats intentionally disrupt American efforts by portraying our soldiers as criminals. Don't they realize that Iraqis will see these comments and will ultimately come to believe that they are wasting time, lives and effort by cooperating with us?
Reader Cliff Thier argues that our analysis "missed an important fact: the world is not static":
It is possible--I'd say likely--that had we not removed Saddam, we'd find ourselves in a much worse place today than we are. At the time of President Bush's decision to remove Saddam, U.N. sanctions were crumbling. Shortly thereafter Saddam would have had piles of money to spend on weapons, suicide bombers and bribing Russians, Chinese, the French and various U.N. factotums. If Saddam didn't have weapons of mass destruction then (a dubious proposition even now), he would have imported and built a stockpile by now.
The United States' credibility as a serious world power would be nil. Threatening Saddam for more than a dozen years (through the Bush and Clinton and Bush administrations) without once following through on those threats would mean we'd have no influence in any crisis whatsoever. Our position now is certainly not a good one--but had we not followed through on our threats, we'd be in a much worse place than we are.
It's always a mistake to see the world as it is today and mistakenly compare it with the world as it was on a day in the past. It's harder to do, but infinitely more useful, to try to compare today's situation with that in which we'd find ourselves if we had done nothing.
This weekend "60 Minutes" aired Lesley Stahl's interview with Nancy Pelosi, who most likely will become speaker if Democrats take the House. The Web write-up suggests how shallow is the Democratic Party's thinking on Iraq:
One issue that she is fighting about here is Iraq. She opposed the war from the start and now, like her, most Democrats support a phased withdrawal of troops beginning later this year.
"Does that not open you up then to that charge of cutting and running? This is just what they're saying," Stahl asks.
"The issue is them. The issue is the war they got us into," Pelosi replies. "If the president wants to say the war in Iraq is part of the war on terror, he's not right."
"Do you not think that the war in Iraq now, today, is the war on terror?" Stahl asks.
"No. The war on terror is the war in Afghanistan," Pelosi says.
"But you don't think that the terrorists have moved into Iraq now?" Stahl continues.
"They have," Pelosi agrees. "The jihadists in Iraq. But that doesn't mean we stay there. They'll stay there as long as we're there."
It seems entirely too pat to say that if we leave Iraq, so will the jihadists. After all, there were jihadists in Afghanistan long before we arrived. But let's say it's true. Where does Pelosi think the jihadists will go? Isn't she worried that some of them will come here?
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
"Unified Action"
. . . in 21st Century wars.
Austin Bay asks for Donald Rumsfeld's take on this critical issue. So far, in Iraq and Afghanistan, we've been making it up as we go along -- improvising.
But it's time to quit improvising. Effective "Unified Action" requires re-engineering 20th century Beltway bureaucracies -- which means thoughtful, sophisticated cooperation between the executive branch and Congress.
Read the rest.
Question
“The European Union has just uncovered another dangerous threat to European social stability: home-schooling. Yes, German police recently arrested the mother of children who were being home-schooled. The father had to flee with the children to Austria. The European Court of Human Rights upheld the German ban on home-schooling, which dated back to 1938 in the Nazi era. ... Think about that at a time when Americans, even Supreme Court justices, are advocating the use of foreign legal precedents for American court rulings. Do we really want to start jailing home-schooling parents?”—Patrick Henry College Professor David Aikman
October 26, 2006
Heritage Quote
"It has ever been my hobby-horse to see rising in America an empire of liberty, and a prospect of two or three hundred millions of freemen, without one noble or one king among them. You say it is impossible. If I should agree with you in this, I would still say, let us try the experiment, and preserve our equality as long as we can. A better system of education for the common people might preserve them long from such artificial inequalities as are prejudicial to society, by confounding the natural distinctions of right and wrong, virtue and vice."-- John Adams (letter to Count Sarsfield, 3 February 1786)
French intifada continues
Though this is not being reported on very much, there are disturbing indications that a new 'intifada' is growing in France.
The recent ambush was emblematic of what some officers say has become a near-perpetual and increasingly violent conflict between police and gangs in tough, largely immigrant French neighborhoods that were the scene of a three-week paroxysm of rioting last year.
Presidential greatness
. . . and George W. Bush.
James Lewis puts those two things together in an essay about why George W. Bush will be ranked with other great presidents.
I’ll bet right now that Bush 43 will come to be seen as one of the most important presidents, not because he has solved the challenges of the war we now face, but because he is the first president to try to do so with all his heart and soul. In the Long War on Islamofascism, future administrations will learn from George W. Bush, just as Cold War presidents learned from Harry S Truman. Truman didn’t win the Cold War, but he defined it for the next forty years. Like Truman’s, this is a watershed administration, gifted with the intelligence and courage to recognize the times we live in.
Recommended.
Why we must fight
Here is an under-reported story about Quds Day, during which hundreds of thousands of Iranians -- including their leaders -- call for the annihilation of Western civilization. And with special emphasis on Israel and America.
It is disturbing when the entire leadership of one nation, along with hundreds of thousands of its citizens, comes out with celebrations and parades every year that call for the annihilation of another country.It is more twisted that no world leaders or international bodies, including the United Nations, have denounced the activities surrounding Quds Day, an Iranian holiday introduced by Ayatollah Khomeini that is marked on the last Friday of Ramadan.
These people are scary, and they are well on their way to getting nukes.
Read the whole thing.
October 25, 2006
Heritage Quote
"Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."-- Thomas Paine (American Crisis, No. 1, 19 December 1776)
The stakes are high
. . . in this election. Thomas Sowell points out what really is at stake.
But elections are not about which politicians get to keep their jobs, though the media cover the news as if the political horse race is the issue. Elections are about the fate of 300 million Americans and the future of this nation.That fate hangs grimly in the balance as two irresponsible regimes in North Korea and Iran seek to gain nuclear weapons. Neither leader of these regimes can be deterred by threats of nuclear retaliation, as the Soviet Union was deterred.
Both are like Hitler, who was willing to see his own people decimated and his own country reduced to rubble rather than quit when it was obvious to all that he could not win. If you can imagine Hitler with a few nuclear weapons to use to vent his all-consuming hatreds in a lost cause, you can see what a nuclear North Korea or a nuclear Iran would mean for America and the world.
It is obscene that our media should be obsessed with some jerk in Congress who wrote dirty e-mails to congressional pages — and was forced out of Congress for it — when this nation faces dangers of this magnitude.
Go read the whole thing. He makes some compelling points.
Enabling terrorism
Ralph Peters does not mince words in this op-ed about how our attempts to 'protect human rights' have marginalized efforts to eliminate the insurgency in Iraq.
WHETHER the issue is domestic law and order or fighting foreign wars, the great fallacy of the left is the belief that protecting the "human rights" of killers is more important than the elementary human right of the vast majority - the innocent - to live unmolested by murderers and fanatics.Whether the cry is "Free Mumia!" or "Close Guantanamo!" or "Bring the Troops Home Now!" the consistent purpose is to rescue killers from justice - no matter the cost to law-abiding citizens here or to the millions of Iraqis who truly desire peace.
Read it all. Even though I hesitate to agree with his assessment about the abject failure of our policy in Iraq, I have to concede that he makes some good points.
A worthy cause
Mario Loyola has an op-ed up at National Review Online wherein he makes a good case for staying the course in Iraq. Despite the inaccurate perception that Iraq is a failure.
I hate to call for a parade in the middle of a thunderstorm, but the fact is that democracy — the political process of self-government — is plainly succeeding in Iraq. The violence has slowed it down, but has not been able to stop it. Indeed, the reconstruction effort remains much more vast than the insurgency, which has never been able to achieve national scope and will never achieve national unity. People should avoid concentrating on the spectacular violence: It may rage for years without ever achieving lasting strategic significance.
Recommended.
October 24, 2006
Heritage Quote
"A fine genius in his own country is like gold in the mine."-- Benjamin Franklin (Poor Richard's Almanack, 1733)
Censorship?
Michael Yon, over at The Weekly Standard, discusses an alarming development in Iraq.
My experiences with the U.S. military as a soldier and then as a writer and photographer covering soldiers have been overwhelmingly positive, and I feel no shame in saying I am biased in favor of our troops. Even worse, I feel no shame in calling a terrorist a terrorist. I've seen their deeds and tasted air filled with burning human flesh from their bombs. I've seen terrorists kill children while our people risk their lives to save civilians again, and again, and again. I feel no shame in saying I hope that Afghanistan and Iraq "succeed," whatever that means. For that very reason, it would be a dereliction to remain silent about our military's ineptitude in handling the press. The subject is worthy of a book, but can't wait that long, lest we grow accustomed to a subtle but all too real censorship of the U.S. war effort.
I hope this is not true, but if it is, we must nip it in the bud. This is NOT why we fight.
Yon goes on to talk about the critical need for our side of the story to be reported. (Emphasis added.)
There's little comfort in the supposition that this mess might be more the result of incompetence than policy. After all, what does it matter whether the helicopter crashed because it ran out of gas or because someone didn't tighten the bolts on a rotor? Our military enjoys supremely onesided air and weapons superiority, but this is practically irrelevant in a counterinsurgency where the centers of gravity for the battle are public opinion in Iraq, Afghanistan, Europe, and at home. The enemy trumps our jets and satellites with supremely onesided media superiority. The lowest level terror cells have their own film crews. While al Sahab hums along winning battle after propaganda battle, the bungling gatekeepers at the Combined Press Information Center (CPIC) reciprocate with ridiculous and costly obstacles that deter embedded media covering our forces, ultimately causing harm to only one side: ours. And they get away with it because in any conflict that can be portrayed as U.S. military versus media, the public reflexively sides with the military.
Read the whole thing. Yon's is a rare perspective -- one that needs to be shared. Highly recommended.
Cranky electorate
Michael Barone postulates about why this election seems so unsettled to an uneasy America.
Why so cranky? So why do large majorities of voters say the nation is off on the wrong track? One reason is that we have come to expect good things. Even as consumers keep spending lots of money, they get cranky when gas prices spike upward -- and then don't take much note when, presto, the market works and they plunge back down again. We take it for granted that Times Square is as crime free a tourist zone as Walt Disney World. We are dismayed by continuing violence in Iraq because we have come to expect military interventions to be as casualty free as our effort in Kosovo.But there is something else. It's the looming threat behind the headlines: London terrorist bombers arrested. Terrorist plot to bomb trains in Germany. Iran is developing nuclear weapons, while its president denies the Holocaust and threatens to destroy Israel. Hugo Chavez at the United Nations railing at the United States. North Korea is developing nuclear weapons to go with the missiles it already has. All these remind us that there are people out there who want to destroy our bounteous and tolerant civilization.
Go read the whole thing. Recommended.
Ununoctium
Here's a story about the brief existence of Element 118, and what it could possibly mean to science.
Unfortunately, the atoms lived less than a millisecond before decaying, first into element 116, then 114, then 112 and finally fragmenting completely. It wasn't unexpected, but atomic physicists believe, for theoretical reasons, that atoms with 120 or 126 protons might be a lot more stable. Of course, they were saying that about element 114 a few years ago, and it didn't pan out. But if they get to a point where one of these super-heavy elements lasts for hours, not milliseconds (it will depend in part on getting the right number of neutrons as well), that would be enough time to do actual chemistry and understand their properties. It could happen, say the researchers, within 5 to 10 years, if a dedicated accelerator could ever get funded. That's the goal of all this work — there's pretty much no conceivable practical application for any of this stuff.
October 23, 2006
Heritage Quote
"The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave."-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Richard Rush, 20 October 1820)
'American Mourning'
Bill Crawford, at All Things Conservative, posts some excerpts from the book, 'American Mourning'.
It's worth your time.
Envy
Gagdad Bob talks about the evil of envy.
Evil:
You can put any fancy spin on it that you wish, but no one can convince me that our struggle with Iran or with North Korea is anything other than a struggle against pure, unalloyed evil. But what if you are too sophisticated to believe in the primitive idea of evil? Then I’m afraid you may be too sophisticated to survive your own magical ideology. In naively embracing “peace” you are ensuring your own doom, which frankly wouldn’t bother me if I and my friends and family and beloved cosmonauts didn’t have to go down with you.
And Envy:
As I mentioned a couple of posts back, if your conception of human nature is faulty, then your political philosophy is going to be dysfunctional. One of the reasons leftism is so inherently dysfunctional is that it revolves around the appeasement of perhaps the single most spiritually destructive human emotion of them all, constitutional envy. In the formulation of the brilliant psychoanalyst Melanie Klein, envy is the primary mode of expression of the death instinct. It is present in everyone, but can be exacerbated by early childhood experiences so that later in life it becomes a crippling barrier to psychological health and happiness. For envy prevents one from appreciating what one has. It can only attack the person or system believed to possess what one lacks. In this regard, it is the polar opposite of gratitude, which is one of the prerequisites of human happiness. As a matter of fact, Klein’s most famous book is entitled Envy and Gratitude.
This guy is unapologetic, but he makes cogent arguments. Recommended.
Iraqi security
Here is a sparsely-reported event that should be trumpeted around the world.
This past weekend Iraqi security forces successfully provided security for nearly one million Shia pilgrims who thronged to Najaf, Iraq in a peaceful commemoration of the death of the first imam. The pilgrimage concluded without incident.
Why isn't this more widely reported? It is an extremely important indicator that things are beginning to settle down in Iraq. And yet all we hear about is that our generals want to change our approach over there. We are losing the propoganda war, people! But that is the only part of the war that we're losing.
October 22, 2006
Heritage Quote
"If, for instance, the president is required to do any act, he is not only authorized, but required, to decide for himself, whether, consistently with his constitutional duties, he can do the act."-- Joseph Story (Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833)
Cloaking device
Definitely one for our inner geek.
Scientists from the US and the UK have successfully demonstrated a cloaking device.
In this first successful experiment, researchers from the United States and England were able to cloak a copper cylinder.It's like a mirage, where heat causes the bending of light rays and cloaks the road ahead behind an image of the sky.
"We have built an artificial mirage that can hide something from would-be observers in any direction," said cloak designer David Schurig, a research associate in Duke University's electrical and computer engineering department.
For their first attempt, the researchers designed a cloak that prevents microwaves from detecting objects. Like light and radar waves, microwaves usually bounce off objects, making them visible to instruments and creating a shadow that can be detected.
It's a long way from an operational implementation, but it is still a very good start!
Recommended.
2 percent
George Will explains why, as Bill Clinton said to the British Labour Party's annual conference, America is "now outsourcing college-education jobs to India."
It's the economy, stupid!
But Clinton-as-Cassandra should not persuade college students to abandon their quest for diplomas: The unemployment rate among college graduates is 2 percent.
He goes on to discuss many other very positive economic indicators.
I recommend you read the whole thing.
October 21, 2006
Heritage Quote
"That diabolical Hell conceived principle of persecution rages amoung some and to their eternal Infamy the Clergy can furnish their Quota of Imps for such business,"-- James Madison (letter to William Bradford, 24 January 1774)
One liner
Glenn Reynolds, over at Instapundit, showed his uncanny insight the other day.
Knowing more history than most journalists is no great feat.
Sadly.
Good quote
"If Democrats went after America's enemies with the relentless ruthlessness with which they attack Republicans, the Axis of Evil would be toast."Jack Kelly, Irish Pennants, 12 October 2006
October 20, 2006
Heritage Quote
"The idea of restraining the legislative authority in the means of providing for the national defense is one of those refinements which owe their origin to a zeal for liberty more ardent than enlightened. "-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 26)
Why I am not a Democrat
Denis Keohane has an interesting op-ed up at The American Thinker about the undemocratic ways of the Democrat Party. It really resonated with me. I'm beginning to realize why I have been gradually moving further and further away politically from many Democrats.
Mr. Keohane concludes with this:
It is grossly ironic that the party that is undermining the very concept of the democratic process, calls itself the Democratic Party.
Go see how he reaches that conclusion.
Recommended.
[Oh, and for the record, I'm not a Republican, either.]
Shame on you, Republicans!
You helped renew and expand our thriving economy, but have failed to take credit for it!
President Bush and the Republican Congress took direct action to stimulate the economy and boost investor confidence by trimming the capital-gains tax to 15 percent and cutting in half the double taxation of dividend income paid to investors by corporations.By increasing after-tax rewards for saving and investing, the 2003 tax-rate cuts worked precisely as advertised. Since May 2003, the U.S. economy has expanded by a quarterly average of 3.7 percent (annualized) and has added 6.6 million new jobs. As of the close of the markets on Monday this week, a total of $5.7 trillion in new shareholder wealth has been created since the tax-cut agreement was reached on May 20, 2003. Total dividend and share repurchases increased an astonishing 123 percent to over $600 billion for the 12-month period ended in June. Total household net worth is up $14.4 trillion, or 37 percent, since the tax cut.
Instead of touting this amazing record of success to America’s investor class, Republicans have been virtually silent about the economy this campaign season.
Recommended.
Politically savvy jihadists
Ed Lasky, over at The American Thinker has a provocative note about the jihadists strategy to influence our elections next month.
It's in the extended entry.
From Tom Friedman
Jihadists admit they are killing for the the camera and for the Democrats. A new twist for the “Party of Death”. From behind the Times Select wall:
But while there may be no single hand coordinating the upsurge in violence in Iraq, enough people seem to be deliberately stoking the fires there before our election that the parallel with Tet is not inappropriate. The jihadists want to sow so much havoc that Bush supporters will be defeated in the midterms and the president will face a revolt from his own party, as well as from Democrats, if he does not begin a pullout from Iraq.
The jihadists follow our politics much more closely than people realize. A friend at the Pentagon just sent me a post by the “Global Islamic Media Front” carried by the jihadist Web site Ana al-Muslim on Aug. 11. It begins: “The people of jihad need to carry out a media war that is parallel to the military war and exert all possible efforts to wage it successfully. This is because we can observe the effect that the media have on nations to make them either support or reject an issue.”
It then explains that for jihadist videos of attacks on Americans to have the biggest impact, “Some persons will be needed who are proficient in the use of computer graphics including Photoshop, 3D Studio Max, or other programs that the people of jihad will need to design … video clips about the operations.”
Finally, the Web site suggests that jihadists flood e-mail and video of their operations to “chat rooms,” “television channels,” and to “famous U.S. authors who have public e-mail addresses … such as Friedman, Chomsky, Fukuyama, Huntington and others.” This is the first time I’ve ever been on the same mailing list with Noam Chomsky.
It would be depressing to see the jihadists influence our politics with a Tet-like media/war frenzy.
Ed Lasky 10 18 06
October 19, 2006
Heritage Quote
"The great desideratum in Government is, so to modify the sovereignty as that it may be sufficiently neutral between different parts of the Society to controul one part from invading the rights of another, and at the same time sufficiently controuled itself, from setting up an interest adverse to that of the entire Society."-- James Madison (letter to Thomas Jefferson, 24 October 1787)
12,011.73
More exceedingly good economic news.
The finish above 12,000 was the latest sign that the stock market continues a cautious recovery from the losses and despair investors suffered in the early part of this decade. After peaking in early 2000, the Dow and other indexes fell precipitously amid the dot-com collapse, recession and the impact of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
I say that we should just blame Bush!
'Can we talk?'
Thomas Sowell has an op-ed up at Townhall that explores free speech in contemporary society.
Free speech is not a luxury but a necessity if we are to hear the various sides of issues before we decide what to do.
[Via Betsy Newmark.]
Hydrogen as an alternative fuel
Popular Mechanics has an article out about the pros and cons of using hydrogen as a source of energy.
It's not as good as you'd think -- yet.
WHEN ASSESSING THE State of the Union in 2003, President Bush declared it was time to take a crucial step toward protecting our environment. He announced a $1.2 billion initiative to begin developing a national hydrogen infrastructure: a coast-to-coast network of facilities that would produce and distribute the hydrogen for powering hundreds of millions of fuel cell vehicles. Backed by a national commitment, he said, "our scientists and engineers will overcome obstacles to taking these cars from laboratory to showroom, so that the first car driven by a child born today could be powered by hydrogen, and pollution-free." With two years to go on the first, $720 million phase of the plan, PM asks that perennial question of every automotive journey: Are we almost there?And the inevitable answer from the front seat: No. Promises of a thriving hydrogen economy — one that supports not only cars and trucks, but cellphones, computers, homes and whole neighborhoods — date back long before this presidency, and the road to fulfilling them stretches far beyond its horizon.
Good information. Go read the rest.
[Via Instapundit.]
Trudeau lives it
OPFOR discusses cartoonist Gary Trudeau's personal ethics.
After enduring 3 years of stupid protestor tricks, we've learned that "I support the troops, not the war" is an empty, used carsalesman's line. SMASH did a thorough job proving that on a street corner outside Walter Reed Army Hospital.
Yet while Code Pink and friends were outside the hospital engaged in their most inappropriate protest, Gary Trudeau -who has made his anti-war slant clear through his comic strip) was inside and bedside. Trudeau checked his politics at the door, and made himself 100% available to our wounded warriors, signing autographs, chatting with soldiers, and listening to their stories.
THAT, ladies and gentleman, is "supporting the troops, not the war." I will be reading The Sandbox daily, simply out of support for Gary Trudeau and his efforts on behalf of our soldiers. I encourage you all to do the same.
Hats off to you, Mr. Trudeau. I hope others can learn from your example.
October 18, 2006
Heritage Quote
"It appears to me, then, little short of a miracle, that the Delegates from so many different States ... should unite in forming a system of national Government, so little liable to well founded objections."-- George Washington (letter to Marquis de Lafayette, 7 February
Her heart is in the right place
RightWingSparkle is quitting blogging, and I wish her Godspeed.
I appreciate her honesty, and hope that she reconsiders and resumes blogging -- as a ministry, perhaps . . .
Nuclear arms control
OpinionJournal has a good piece about global nuclear arms control.
Actually, it is more like non-control, isn't it?
I've reprinted the entire column in the extended entry.
The Arms-Control Illusion
A short history of nonproliferation failure.
Saturday, October 14, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDTNorth Korea's apparent test of a nuclear weapon has once more put the international arms control system in the hot seat. This week the U.N. Security Council did muster 13 votes condemning the test, whatever that means, and today it is expected to vote on new nonmilitary sanctions against Pyongyang.
This is better than nothing, though how much better depends on the fine print and the political will to enforce it. China and Russia objected at first to the sternest punishment, especially to inspections of North Korean cargo ships and tough financial sanctions. But according to reports yesterday, the U.N. resolution will allow at least some of these searches.
The good news here is that at long last the U.N. is attempting to enforce its own nonproliferation regime. Before the multilateralists get too pleased, however, it's worth recalling that it took an actual nuclear blast following a long-range missile test this summer to motivate the Security Council to take even these modest actions. Years of North Korean cheating on its treaty commitments hadn't been enough.
We mention this because the cases of North Korea and Iran are revealing the limits of arms control treaties in restraining rogue states bent on gaining nuclear weapons and other WMD. In the wake of Korea's nuclear test, we are hearing renewed calls for "direct" talks between the U.S. and North Korea akin to those that took place in the 1990s. The idea is to get North Korea to sign another agreement promising to give up its nukes. But one reason we're at the current pass is because Kim Jong Il violated the many commitments he made to the Clinton Administration.
Even as it allowed inspectors at its Yongban nuclear facility, Pyongyang was pursuing a separate and secret bomb-building effort. When the world objected once that effort was exposed, North Korea responded by shutting off the U.N. cameras at Yongban, expelling the inspectors and withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). Meanwhile, because the 1994 Agreed Framework had allowed North Korea to keep its plutonium under U.N. "safeguards," Pyongyang was then free to make a bomb with that nuclear fuel. Now it apparently has done so, unless this too turns out to be another lie.
The case of Iran has followed a similar arc of deception and U.N. failure. Tehran also signed the NPT, only to pursue its own secret bomb-building effort. The U.N. inspectors working inside Iran didn't discover any of this until they were tipped off by an Iranian opposition group that clearly had better intelligence than the U.N. The International Atomic Energy Agency has since produced report after report documenting Iran's violation and deception, and, under the explicit terms of the NPT, Tehran should have been referred immediately to the Security Council.Yet the IAEA declined to do so for years. And only this summer, after Iran repeatedly rejected European entreaties to stop enriching uranium, did the Security Council finally agree to cite Iran for its arms-control violations. That resolution set an August 31 deadline for Iran to stop enriching uranium, promising dire consequences. But Iran keeps enriching, and so far the U.N. keeps begging it to cooperate. If neither Tehran nor Pyongyang takes these U.N. warnings seriously, this is why.
The latest U.N. excuse for doing little is fear that Iran will withdraw from the NPT, as North Korea did--and then where would we be?But at least then Iran would have been forced to brand itself an international rogue, instead of using the NPT as a fig leaf to buy more time to fulfill its obvious nuclear ambitions.
If arms control won't stop rogue bomb makers, what can? Well, regime change for one. Saddam Hussein is no longer a potential nuclear threat to anyone because he no longer runs Iraq. But short of deposing a regime, the most successful policy has been the Bush Administration's Proliferation Security Initiative.
Operated out of the Pentagon on a "coalition of the willing" basis, PSI helped blow the whistle on Libya's clandestine nuclear program, rolled up A.Q. Khan's nuclear black market and has interdicted North Korean weapons shipments. The difference between this and the NPT is that the PSI doesn't give the feckless or evil a veto over what it does. It is a coalition of countries with a shared sense of purpose, and above all the willingness to act.
The world will need more such cooperation and creative thinking to contain a proliferation threat that is only going to grow. But the beginning of wisdom is to realize that the threat hasn't ended merely because a rogue regime signs an arms-control treaty.
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
Essence vs. Existence
Gagdad Bob does a good job of defining essence and existence and applying them to contemporary societal and religious issues.
For the religious man, essence is prior to existence and determines existence. God knew you before you were bearthed and begaialed and keeps a running count of every hair on your head.For the leftist, existence determines essence. You are an accident. You have no a priori transcendent essence, but your essence is determined by accidental factors such as race, class and gender.
It's well worth the read.
October 17, 2006
Heritage Quote
"The invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the Constituents."-- James Madison (letter to Thomas Jefferson, 17 October 1788)
Why we fight redux
OPFOR has a nice story and picture underlining the humanitarian aspects of our struggle in Iraq.
Got a tough but heartwarming story and a picture of a medical Chief, John Gebhardt in Iraq. This little girl’s entire family was executed…they intended to execute her also and shot her in the head…but they failed to kill her. She was cared for by John’s hospital and healing up, but has been crying and moaning. The nurses said John is the only one she seems to calm down with, so John has spent the last four nights holding her while they both sleep in that chair. The girl is coming along with her healing.
Go check it out.
Was it a real nuke?
Richard Miniter says maybe.
So, was the blast a fake? It is possible but not likely, says a well-placed bureaucratic source. Some intelligence community contrarians suggest that North Korea might have synchronized some 600-800 tons of TNT to explode in a mountainside tunnel. The emerging consensus is that such a trick would be very difficult; getting all of the TNT to explode in the same nanosecond is nearly impossible.And it is the tremors of the Earth, measured in fractions of a second, which will tell the tale.
Read the whole thing.
UPDATE: It likely was a real nuke. Radioactive traces have been detected by airborne sensors.
Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte's office said in a statement that airborne sensors last Wednesday detected "radioactive debris," confirming that a nuclear test took place near P'unggye, in northeastern North Korea. "The explosion yield was less than a kiloton," it added.
A peek inside N. Korea
Suki Kim provides a brief glimpse at the situation faced by the people of North Korea.
I've reprinted it in the extended entry.
Great Leadership
What I saw in North Korea.
BY SUKI KIM
Monday, October 16, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDTDespite the much-touted label of being the most secretive nation in the world, the one thing everyone knows about North Korea is that its people have been dying in massive numbers from starvation and persecution for decades, the reality of which seems to have bypassed the nations involved in the on-again-off-again six-party talks--whose diplomacy has apparently failed. By landing a punch at the nonproliferation policy of the U.N. Security Council, an organization soon to be led by South Korean Ban Ki Moon, North Korea yet again thwarted its former promises of stopping all nuclear activities. The Bush administration is advocating harsher ways of punishing a country they maintain is a member of the "axis of evil" through tougher sanctions and cutting off its financial sources, neither of which has worked so far in stopping North Korea from doing whatever it wants to do. Now that it claims to have become the world's ninth nuclear power, I wonder what will change, if anything, for its people.
On June 25, 1950, when North Korea invaded South Korea, my mother's brother, then age 18 and living in Seoul, was kidnapped by the North's soldiers. Fleeing the bombs, my grandmother, with her five children, fought through the panicked crowd onto the jam-packed, southbound train when someone screamed out that young men should give up their seats for women and children. My grandmother spent her remaining life haunted by that last moment, of her eldest son rising and reassuring her that he would be on the next train. Hers turned out to be the last train out of Seoul. Later, a neighbor reported seeing him tied up and being dragged away by the North Korean soldiers. Korean Confucian ethics holds that there is no bigger sin than abandoning one's family, and yet neither Korean government has granted reunions for the millions of separated families, except for a handful who have been used as a showcase for the failed peace summits.In February 2002, I traveled to Pyongyang in an effort to locate my uncle. I never found him, but I spent about a week with the Workers' Party leaders, ranging from the chairman of the Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries to the then-ambassador to the Permanent Mission to the U.N., who repeatedly told me that their real enemy was not South Korea, with whom they are still technically at war, but the U.S., which, along with the Soviet Union, had drawn up the 38th Parallel in 1948 and perpetuated the war by isolating them through sanctions. They were mystified as to why the United States was allowed to have nuclear weapons when it was the only nation in history to have deployed them on civilians, never mind starting wars all over the world.
My most vivid impression of Pyongyang was that an entire generation must have been eradicated for such a place to exist. Nothing on their empty, energy-deprived streets indicated that anything prior existed. Every book, piece of artwork and building was either made by the Great Leader or about the Great Leader. Their only official newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, was four pages long and consisted almost exclusively of praise for their Great Leader. Their state-controlled TV showed mostly undated footage of the Great Leader. Everywhere I went, music played in the background and the subject of the lyrics was inevitably the Great Leader.
The regime of North Korea has done a most efficient job of wiping out Korea's 5,000-year history, imbued with Buddhism, Shamanism and Confucianism, with one amnesia-inflicting spell called "Juche," its political philosophy of self-reliance. And what seems to make the Great Leader so "great" is that he has replaced their lost memory. For my uncle to have survived there, he either would have had to forget everything he had known, or learned to believe in the Great Leader. Or it is possible that he held on with the hope for the two Koreas to reunite; my grandmother did, until she passed away 25 years after he went missing.
In the 1970s in South Korea, I grew up with the anthem, "Our Wish is Reunification," which children still sing. Today, however, South Koreans readily claim North Koreans as their siblings and yet they hesitate upon the topic of the Kim Jong Il regime's collapse, which might lead to the breakdown of 38th Parallel and to millions of refugees pouring south. President Roh Moo Hyun's increasingly less popular "sunshine policy" has provided a conduit through which money is funneled into North Korea for supposed economic reform, although it now looks as though it has effectually funded the North's nuclear program.
South Korea is not the only one who fears the consequence of Kim Jong Il's demise. Neither China nor Russia, North Korea's biggest allies and neighbors, wants to foot the bill for refugees. As many as 300,000 North Koreans have crossed the northern border since the Korean War despite a joint crackdown from North Korean agents and Chinese police. For Japan, the threat from North Korea has provided a basis for lobbying for remilitarization and a revision of their post-World War II, U.S.-sponsored pacifist constitution. America, whose soon-to-be downsized 32,000 troops are still stationed in Seoul's Yong San Garrison, does not want to forfeit its control over the region to China, whose trading relationship with South Korea and economic hold over the North have grown rapidly in recent years. The prospect of One Korea benefits no one except the welfare of the North Korean people, whom the mighty six-party nations seem to have forgotten. So why are we relying on their decision on what to do about North Korea?
Just last month, the World Food Program launched an appeal for more funds to fight the food shortage in North Korea, worsened by the August flood that had, according to the state's figures, killed and left homeless hundreds, although various human rights groups claim numbers closer to hundreds of thousands if not millions. Over a third of all children are reported to be malnourished. According to Amnesty International, 400,000 have perished from political persecution; 150,000 are still held in underground concentration camps. Since the much condemned July 4 missile tests, humanitarian aid has been cut drastically.In the 1970s, South Korean propaganda posters of starving children were forced upon us to show that North Korea was hell on earth and that its leader was a selfish, ruthless despot. In the decades since, during which time a famine killed over a tenth of North Korea's 23 million people, not much has changed at all. The 38th Parallel is still there. The most the Bush administration has done in its diplomatic strategy about North Korea is to call it evil. The peace talks are continuously stalled. The U.N. is in yet another emergency huddle to figure out a way of handling the problem. Now that North Korea claims to be a nuclear power, what will be different?
In the meantime, the Siberian winter is quickly approaching for the people of North Korea, where heat and food are scarcer than ever. The Rodong Sinmun headlines after the nuclear test revealed just one brief congratulatory paragraph on the success of the test, which has turned the rest of the world upside down. The other articles were about the floral baskets delivered to their Great Leader from the various communist parties of China, Laos and Cuba.
Ms. Kim, a 2006 Guggenheim fellow, is author of "The Interpreter" (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2003).
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]/small>
October 16, 2006
Heritage Quote
"Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure."-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to William Johnson, 1823)
The perils of social engineering
Dick Armey has a good opinion piece posted about Christians and Big Government.
We must avoid the temptation to use the power of government to perfect our society and its citizens. That is the same urge that drives the Left and the socialists, and I can assure you that every program or power we give government today in the name of our values can be turned against us when the day comes where a majority of Congress is hostile to us.Instead, we need to limit the sphere of government and create civil space where private institutions, individual responsibility and religious faith can flourish. By reducing the size of the welfare state, we increase the importance of the works of Christian charities and our church communities. By reducing the tax burden on families, we make it easier for Christian households to tithe or for young mothers to stay home to raise their children. The same is true for retirement security based on ownership. Reducing the ever-growing reach of the federal government means local communities, and more important, parents, are free to establish the standards and values for the education of their children.
Consider the welfare reform we passed in 1996. By reducing bureaucracy and dependency and emphasizing work and responsibility, we changed conditions for an entire segment of our society. Since welfare reform passed, teen pregnancy, welfare caseloads, and the number of abortions in America have all declined. That is the kind of policy change that values voters need to support, and it is the result of limiting government’s power over our lives.
He has some compelling arguments, and he takes on James Dobson and others who are tempted to use government to effect social change.
Recommended.
Frivolous politics redux
Thomas Sowell provides a multi-part dissertation on the prevalence of frivolous politics in America. The series is extremely interesting, mostly non-partisan, and makes some astute observations.
Highly recommended.
I've provided links and quotes from each part:
Frivolous Politics (Part I)
With a war going on in Iraq and with Iran next door moving steadily toward a nuclear bomb that could change the course of world history in the hands of international terrorists, the question for this year's elections is not whether you or your candidate is a Democrat or a Republican but whether you are serious or frivolous.
Some people say that there is no point voting because there is no difference between the two major parties, and the other parties have no chance of winning. However, there is a difference: the Republicans are disappointing and the Democrats are dangerous.
Nowhere is political frivolity more in evidence than in issues involving racial and ethnic groups. Disagree with some policies or demands and you become an instant "racist."The substance of those policies or demands, and the substance of the objections to them, get lost in an orgy of rhetoric and personal accusations. Racial issues are just one of a growing number of issues where rational discussion has become virtually impossible.
Choosing candidates to vote for at election time is not like choosing a buddy or choosing some sports or entertainment figure to idolize. Nor is it a verdict on someone's qualities as a human being.
October 15, 2006
Heritage Quote
“My confidence is that there will for a long time be virtue and good sense enough in our countrymen to correct abuses.”— Thomas Jefferson
You disagree? Then shut up!
Peggy Noonan has a thoughtful op-ed up at OpinionJournal about the intolerence of the political Left for dissenting opinions.
I've reprinted it in the extended entry.
The Sounds of Silencing
Why do Americans on the left think only they have the right to dissent?
Friday, October 13, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDTFour moments in the recent annals of free speech in America. Actually annals is too fancy a word. This all happened in the past 10 days:
At Columbia University, members of the Minutemen, the group that patrols the U.S. border with Mexico and reports illegal crossings, were asked to address a forum on immigration policy. As Jim Gilchrist, the founder, spoke, angry students stormed the stage, shouting and knocking over chairs and tables. "Having wreaked havoc," said the New York Sun, they unfurled a banner in Arabic and English that said, "No one is ever illegal." The auditorium was cleared, the Minutemen silenced. Afterward a student protester told the Columbia Spectator, "I don't feel we need to apologize or anything. It was fundamentally a part of free speech. . . . The Minutemen are not a legitimate part of the debate on immigration."
On Oct. 2, on Katie Couric's "CBS Evening News," in the segment called "Free Speech," the father of a boy killed at Columbine shared his views on the deeper causes of the recent shootings in Amish country. Brian Rohrbough said violence entered our schools when we threw God out of them. "This country is in a moral freefall. For over two generations the public school system has taught in a moral vacuum. . . . We teach there are no moral absolutes, no right or wrong, and I assure you the murder of innocent children is always wrong, including abortion. Abortion has diminished the value of children." This was not exactly the usual mush.
Mr. Rohrbough was quickly informed he was not part of the legitimate debate, either. Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post: "The decision . . . to air his views prompted a storm of criticism, some of it within the ranks of CBS News." A blog critic: Grief makes people say "stupid" things, but "what made them put this man on television?" Good question. How did they neglect to silence him?
Soon after, at Madison Square Garden, Barbra Streisand, began her latest farewell tour with what friends who were there tell me was a moving, beautiful concert. She was in great form and brought the audience together in appreciation of her great ballads, which are part of the aural tapestry of our lives. And then . . . the moment. Suddenly she decided to bang away on politics. Fine, she's a Democrat, Bush is bad. But midway through the bangaway a man in the audience called out. Most could not hear him, but everyone seems to agree he at least said, "What is this, a fund-raiser?"
At this, Ms. Streisand became enraged, stormed the stage and pummeled herself. Wait, that was Columbia. Actually she became enraged and cursed the man. A friend who was there, a liberal Democrat, said what was most interesting was Ms. Streisand made a physical movement with her arms and hands--"those talon hands"--as if to say, See what I have to put up with when I attempt to educate the masses? She soon apologized, to her credit. Though apparently in the manner of a teacher who'd just kind of lost it with an unruly and ignorant student.
On "The View" a few days earlier it was Rosie O'Donnell. She was banging away on gun control. Guns are bad and should be banned. Elizabeth Hasselbeck, who plays the role of the young, attractive mom, tentatively responded. "I want to be fair," she said. Obviously there should be "restrictions," but women have a right to defend themselves, and there's "the right to bear arms" in the Constitution. Rosie accused Elizabeth of yelling. The panel, surprised, agreed that Elizabeth was not yelling. Rosie then went blank-faced with what someone must have told her along the way is legitimately felt rage. Elizabeth was not bowing to Rosie's views. Elizabeth needed to be educated. The education commenced, Rosie gesturing broadly and Elizabeth constricting herself as if she knew physical assault were a possibility. When Rosie gets going on the Second Amendment I always think, Oh I hope she's not armed! Actually I wonder what Freud would have made of an enraged woman obsessed with gun control. Ach, classic projection. Eef she had a gun she would kill. Therefore no one must haf guns.
There's a pattern here, isn't there?It is not only about rage and resentment, and how some have come to see them as virtues, as an emblem of rightness. I feel so much, therefore my views are correct and must prevail. It is about something so obvious it is almost embarrassing to state. Free speech means hearing things you like and agree with, and it means allowing others to speak whose views you do not like or agree with. This--listening to the other person with respect and forbearance, and with an acceptance of human diversity--is the price we pay for living in a great democracy. And it is a really low price for such a great thing.
We all know this, at least in the abstract. Why are so many forgetting it in the particular?
Let us be more pointed. Students, stars, media movers, academics: They are always saying they want debate, but they don't. They want their vision imposed. They want to win. And if the win doesn't come quickly, they'll rush the stage, curse you out, attempt to intimidate.
And they don't always recognize themselves to be bullying. So full of their righteousness are they that they have lost the ability to judge themselves and their manner.
And all this continues to come more from the left than the right in America.
Which is, at least in terms of timing, strange. The left in America--Democrats, liberals, Bush haters, skeptics of many sorts--seems to be poised for a significant electoral victory. Do they understand that if it comes it will be not because of Columbia, Streisand, O'Donnell, et al., but in spite of them?
What is most missing from the left in America is an element of grace--of civic grace, democratic grace, the kind that assumes disagreements are part of the fabric, but we can make the fabric hold together. The Democratic Party hasn't had enough of this kind of thing since Bobby Kennedy died. What also seems missing is the courage to ask a question. Conservatives these days are asking themselves very many questions, but I wonder if the left could tolerate asking itself even a few. Such as: Why are we producing so many adherents who defy the old liberal virtues of free and open inquiry, free and open speech? Why are we producing so many bullies? And dim dullard ones, at that.
Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father" (Penguin, 2005), which you can order from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Fridays on OpinionJournal.com.
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
October 14, 2006
Heritage Quote
"The great object of my fear is the federal judiciary. That body, like gravity, ever acting, with noiseless foot, and unalarming advance, gaining ground step by step, and holding what it gains, is ingulfing insidiously the special governments into the jaws of that which feeds them."-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Judge Spencer Roane, 9 March 1821)
Paper tiger
New Sisyphus has a good post up that he calls Quick Notes Tuesday. His last note cited a Canadian blog:
"The United States will not permit the worlds most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."--George W. Bush, 2001 State of the Union Address
"Ka-boom"
--North Korea, Sunday night
To restore our credibility as a nation, perhaps we should follow through with our promises.
October 13, 2006
Heritage Quote
"The duty of an upright administration is to pursue its course steadily, to know nothing of these family dissentions, and to cherish the good principles of both parties."-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to George Logan, 1805)
Good news from America
Michael Barone points out all of the good economic news that you won't see on the front pages.
The Labor Department Friday announced that the number of jobs increased between April 2005 and March 2006 not by 5.8 million but by 6.6 million. As an editorial in the Wall Street Journal notes, "That's a lot more than a rounding error, more than the entire number of workers in the state of New Hampshire. What's going on here?" The most plausible explanation, advanced by the Journal and by the Hudson Institute's Diana Furchgott-Roth in the New York Sun, is that lots more jobs are being created by small businesses and individuals going into business for themselves than government statisticians can keep track of. Newspaper reports on the number of jobs usually focus on the Labor Department's business establishment survey. But over the past few years, the Labor Department's household survey has consistently shown more job growth than the business establishment survey. The likely explanation: The business establishment survey misses jobs created by new businesses. Our government statistical agencies do an excellent job. But statistics designed to measure the economy of yesterday have a hard time reflecting the economy of tomorrow.
The federal budget deficit has been cut in half in three years, three years faster than George W. Bush called for. Why? Tax receipts were up 5.5 percent in FY 2004, 14.5 percent in FY 2005, and 11.7 percent in FY 2006. That's up 34.9 percent in three years. And that's after the 2003 tax cuts. When you cut taxes, you get more economic activity, and when you get more economic activity, the government with a tax system that is still decidedly progressive gets more revenue.
The bottom line: The private-sector economy is much more robust and creative than mainstream media would have you believe.
All of that in spite of record expenditures in Washington, D.C., massive disaster-relief efforts following the 2005 hurricane season, supporting military and reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq, and record-breaking high fuel costs last year.
Oh, and let's not forget that the Dow Jones is breaking all-time highs now, as well.
It looks as if President Bush got the economy right. Hopefully other leaders will recognize that and stop talking about killing the tax cuts. (What are they thinking, anyway?)
Time to put up or shut up
Ralph Peters makes a persuasive argument that it's time to let the Iraqis shoulder their load.
As this column stressed months ago, the test for whether we should remain in Iraq is straightforward: Will Iraqis fight in decisive numbers for their own elected, constitutional government? The insurgents, militiamen and foreign terrorists are willing to die for their causes. If "our" Iraqis won't match that strength of will, Iraq will fail.If Iraq's leaders stop squabbling and lead, and if Iraq's soldiers and police fight resolutely for their constitutional state, we should be willing to stay "as long as it takes." But if they continue to wallow in ethnic and religious partisanship while doing as little as possible for their own country, we need to leave and let them face the consequences.
Give them one more year. And that's it.
Go read the whole thing.
So this is journalism?
National security correspondent for ABC News, Jonathan Karl reviews Bob Woodward's new book -- he describes Woodward's 'novel' approach.
What does the author's faux-realism add up to this time around? His two previous books on the administration--"Bush at War" (2002) and "Plan of Attack" (2004)--were criticized for lavishing too much praise on President Bush and his national security team, who were portrayed, for the most part, as steadfast, competent leaders in the face of an implacable enemy. No more. Now Mr. Woodward portrays the president and his team as incompetent, out of touch and dysfunctional. The conventional wisdom has shifted dramatically in the past couple of years and Mr. Woodward with it.
I've reprinted the whole thing in the extended entry.
So This Is Journalism?
Bob Woodward takes a novel approach in his new book on the Bush administration.
BY JONATHAN KARL
Wednesday, October 11, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDTIt may seem like another lifetime, but just over five years ago China forced down an American EP-3 spy plane for venturing into Chinese airspace and held its 24-member crew hostage for 11 days. It was the Bush administration's first international crisis, and it was a big one. So how did the president's national security team deal with it? They called Prince Bandar.
At least that's what Bob Woodward tells us in one of the non-Iraq revelations in his latest blockbuster, "State of Denial." In Mr. Woodward's account of that tense stand-off with China, Secretary of State Colin Powell called Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then the Saudi ambassador to the U.S., for help. Prince Bandar, Mr. Woodward tells us, "had special relations with the Chinese through various deals to purchase arms and missiles" and, of course, oil. With a few calls to the Chinese, which were monitored by the National Security Agency, Mr. Woodward says, "Bandar eventually got the Chinese to release the 24 hostages." He goes on: "Never modest about his influence, Bandar considered it almost a personal favor to him."
The story is classic Bob Woodward: fly-on-the-wall descriptions of super-secret discussions, details missed by every other reporter, a juicy scoop. But the account leaves lingering questions: Did Prince Bandar really get the Chinese to release the hostages? Was that the whole story? How does Mr. Woodward "know" all this? Could it be that Prince Bandar himself is making the claim? Your guess is as good as mine. Mr. Woodward doesn't tell us."State of Denial" is replete with similar Woodwardian reporting: secret meetings recounted in vivid detail, complete with lengthy, verbatim quotations of what key players said to each other as the story unfolded. Once again, it all reads as if Bob Woodward was lurking in the background as the meetings happened, taking exceptionally detailed notes. But of course he was not there. We learn not only what the president and all his men said but also what unspoken thoughts raced through their minds. But Mr. Woodward wasn't inside their heads either, it is safe to say.
Mr. Woodward attempts to write like a novelist, not a journalist: His books are scenic and dramatic and dialogue-driven, more sensationalism than history. Take, for example, this description of a conversation in May 2003 (two months after the Iraq invasion) between Gen. John Abizaid, then deputy military commander in the Middle East, and Gen. Jay Garner, the official briefly responsible for the reconstruction of post-Saddam Iraq:
"Garner told Abizaid, 'John, I'm telling you. If you do this it's going to be ugly. It'll take 10 years to fix this country, and for three years you'll be sending kids home in body bags.'
"Abizaid didn't disagree. 'I hear you, I hear you,' he said."
Mr. Woodward doesn't tell us where he got this verbatim account of a meeting that took place more than three years ago; he writes as if it is a simple fact that it unfolded as told, not someone's recollection. We cannot gauge whether the source, whoever it was, might have had a motive to put a certain spin on facts. The discussion neatly makes Gen. Garner look like the truth-teller who foresaw precisely what would happen and tried to do something about it. Maybe it's true or maybe it's the way Gen. Garner would like to remember it, but he said no such thing publicly at the time.
As more than a few people have noted over the course of Mr. Woodward's long career, his narratives are propelled in part by who talks to him and, just as important, who gives him the best, most detailed and colorful descriptions of what went on in all those secret meetings. And that brings us back to Prince Bandar.
Apparently Prince Bandar is an excellent source for Mr. Woodward, somebody willing to give blow-by-blow accounts of virtually every encounter he has had with top Bush administration officials, including the president and his family. In this book, Prince Bandar seems to be everywhere. He persuades President Bush to endorse the creation of a Palestinian state, he educates President Bush on the ways of the Middle East, he warns against the invasion of Iraq. In Mr. Woodward's account Bandar is a central player, mentioned almost as often as Vice President Cheney and more often than British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Gen. George W. Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq.
Consider this typical anecdote:
"The elder George Bush was concerned about his son after 9/11 and he called Prince Bandar. 'He's having a bad time,' Bush told Bandar.
" 'Help him out.' "
Perhaps President Bush's father is the source of this nifty exchange. If so, it's an amazing revelation that he was so worried about his son that he tapped the Saudi ambassador for a personal intervention so soon after the attack on America carried out largely by Saudi citizens. Or maybe the source is somebody who says he was told about the conversation by either the elder Bush or Prince Bandar, in which case it's basically hearsay. Or maybe, just maybe, the source is Prince Bandar himself. Again, Mr. Woodward gives us no clue, instead describing the conversation as if he were there.
What does the author's faux-realism add up to this time around? His two previous books on the administration--"Bush at War" (2002) and "Plan of Attack" (2004)--were criticized for lavishing too much praise on President Bush and his national security team, who were portrayed, for the most part, as steadfast, competent leaders in the face of an implacable enemy. No more. Now Mr. Woodward portrays the president and his team as incompetent, out of touch and dysfunctional. The conventional wisdom has shifted dramatically in the past couple of years and Mr. Woodward with it.At a time when nearly everyone seems to be blaming Iraq's problem on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld--too few troops, not enough planning, too much arrogance--"State of Denial" presents him in an unflattering light, to say the least: demanding power over Iraq's reconstruction and deftly avoiding responsibility when things go badly. When Mr. Woodward goes mano-a-mano with Mr. Rumsfeld in an on-the-record interview, he puts himself into the narrative. He prods Mr. Rumsfeld and expresses exasperation and disbelief at some of the defense secretary's answers.
Yet it may be the best interview that Mr. Rumsfeld has given as defense secretary. He is combative and defensive but makes news. For instance, Mr. Rumsfeld tells Mr. Woodward that the phrase "mission accomplished" was in the original draft of the now infamous speech President Bush gave on the USS Lincoln after the fall of Saddam Hussein and he asked that it be taken out. The White House has always claimed that "mission accomplished" was coined by sailors who wanted to give the president a warm welcome on their aircraft carrier. More significantly, Mr. Rumsfeld says that he disagreed when the president, in a major speech on the third anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, described U.S. strategy as "clear, hold, and build." Mr. Rumsfeld felt that "hold" and "build" were not for the Americans to do but for Iraqis: "I wanted them clearing. And then holding." It is a remarkable admission: the defense secretary and the president unable to agree on how to define U.S. strategy three years into the war.
Mr. Woodward also describes an interview with Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that shows how Mr. Woodward's legendary commitment to protecting his sources has evolved over the years. In the interview, which took place earlier this year, Gen. Pace stumbles when he describes the insurgency. Here is the book's version, beginning with Gen. Pace's words:
" 'They're on the ropes . . .if this parliament continues to function and this prime minister continues to function.' "
"'Okay,' I said, 'but are they on the ropes?'
"'Wrong word,' Pace said.
"'You're going to sound like Cheney,' I said. 'You want to retract that?'
" 'I do,' he said. 'I would like to retract that. Thank you. I appreciate that. I appreciate the courtesy.' "
Courtesy? Mr. Woodward recounts the whole thing, right there on page 475. Apparently for Bob Woodward, Peter Pace is no Mark Felt. Maybe Gen. Pace would have fared better with Mr. Woodward if he had given him a good scoop during a parking-garage rendezvous.
Mr. Karl is senior national security correspondent for ABC News.
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
October 12, 2006
Heritage Quote
"[W]hen the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, - who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia."-- George Mason (speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 14 June 1778)
The bottom line
Bookworm has a thought-provoking essay up at The American Thinker about the fundamental differences between our two primary political parties. At least the differences that should make a difference in this fall's election.
All of which leads me back to my original point, which is that, in the upcoming elections, the only thing that matters to me is backing the party that understands that radical, Jihadist Islam is a threat to the comfort, safety and freedoms we Americans take for granted. I’ll be the first to acknowledge that the Republicans, who have a fairly shabby history as a Congressional minority, and who are subject to all the handicaps that come with being politicians, have been less effective than I would wish in dealing with this real and imminent threat as a majority. However, they’ve been more effective than the Democrats could ever be, since the Democrats deny that such a threat even exists (a state of cognitive dissonance difficult for me to understand in a post-9/11 world).
Read it all.
Hurricane season
"In May, U.S. government and private forecasters warned of another dire Atlantic hurricane season. Coming on the heels of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the forecasts kept oil prices near a record for months. They scared away some insurance investors in a year the companies may end up turning in higher profits. And hedge funds like Amaranth Advisors LLC gambled big that natural gas prices would climb -- and lost. No hurricanes have struck the U.S. coast so far this year, deflating natural gas prices... The bungled forecasts shed light on what happens when energy traders, investors and, in some cases, the news media, rely too heavily on an inexact science" -- Bloomberg news service (with thanks to Benny Peiser at CCNet).
GOP Straw Poll
Ed Morrissey, over at Captain's Quarters has put together a GOP straw poll about the 2008 presidential race.
He has invited other bloggers to provide this poll on our websites, so here it is:
October 11, 2006
Heritage Quote
"[T]he importance of piety and religion; of industry and frugality; of prudence, economy, regularity and an even government; all ... are essential to the well-being of a family."-- Samuel Adams (letter to Thomas Wells, 22 November 1780)
Sarbanes-Oxley report card
Mallory Factor sums up the SOX implementation on it's fourth anniversary.
So that’s Sarbox at four: The law is a disaster. SEC Chairman Chris Cox is for it. And John Kerry hopes to fix it by making government bigger.
I know that Sarbanes-Oxley has caused the company I work for to add a whole new section of accountants and bookkeepers. And yet, no benefits have been forthcoming -- except, perhaps, that the company hasn't been sued or penalized for non-compliance. It has just added a huge amount of bureaucracy to our company. Thus costing us, and our customers, more money for no discernable gain.
Vote next month -- seriously
Thomas Sowell discusses frivolousness and seriousness in contemporary politics and reporting. He also addresses next month's election:
You may deserve whatever you get if you vote frivolously in this year's election. But surely the next generation, which has no vote, deserves better.
Recommended reading.
Deficit cut in half -- 3 years early
Bizzyblog shows us that the Bush administration has reduced the reported deficit by half -- 3 years before predicted.
And there are other gems in Bizzy's post:
But first, let’s recap what has happened in the past three fiscal years:
- Tax receipts have soared by over 35% (with 5.5%, 14.5%, and 11.7% increases in fiscal 2004, 2005, and 2006, respectively) from $1.78 trillion to $2.41 trillion (2004 and 2005 results can be found at Page 2 of this PDF from the Congressional Budget Office [CBO]; 2006’s receipts were estimated by adding the $253 billion revenue increase reported near the end of this longer story).
- Despite the costs of the Iraq War, the rest of the War on Terror, Katrina relief, and not nearly enough control over other spending, the administration has accomplished its goal of cutting the reported deficit in half by the time it leaves office a full three years early (fiscal 2009, which ends a little less than three years from now, is the last budget over which the Bush Administration will have responsibility). Andrew Taylor of the Associated Press reported on the deficit yesterday (commented on here) but “somehow” missed this little nugget of good news, even though he reported on the administration’s original fiscal 2004 promise in a “not going to happen” manner just under a year ago on October 14, 2005 (last two paragraphs at link) –
The White House has set a goal of cutting the deficit in half from the $521 billion prediction for 2004 that it issued at the beginning of that year. (the original goal was therefore set sometime before October 1, 2003, the beginning of the 2004 fiscal year — Ed.)
The administration says it is still on track to reach that $260 billion goal by the time Bush leaves office. But administration budget projections leave out the long-term costs of occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, and have yet to be updated with cost estimates of hurricane relief.
Even with all of those costs included, the administration has reached its goal. How ’bout that, Andrew?
- Economic growth has averaged an annualized 3.89% during the past 13 quarters since the 2003 Bush tax cuts were passed. This is a record that for all practical purposes matches the best seven years of the Clinton administration, but trails the best seven years of the Reagan-Bush 41 and Kennedy Johnson eras, when more aggressive tax cuts were enacted:
Too bad this tremendous news is not being trumpeted by our news media like some sordid emails have been.
The Bizzyblog post also discusses "reported deficit" vs. "federal deficit", and how we could easily see the beginning of a string of budget surpluses in fiscal 2009.
Recommended.
October 10, 2006
Heritage Quote
"I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast; for I intend to go in harm's way."-- John Paul Jones (letter to M. Le Ray de Chaumont, 16 November 1778)
Why we must fight
Ed Koch has a good op-ed about why we must continue to fight the jihadists.
It makes no difference in determining our current position whether we were right or wrong to go into Iraq in 2003; we are now there. To those who say, if we were wrong initially, we can never justify staying, I say, ridiculous. The enemy is worldwide Islamic terrorism, and its center today is Iraq. If we were to leave Iraq, would al-Qaeda and other groups allied with it stop their attacks on Americans? Certainly not. We were not in Iraq, nor was George W. Bush our President, when in 1993 Islamic terrorists bombed the World Trade Center killing six and injuring one thousand people; when Islamic terrorists blew up the U.S.S. Cole, killing 13 and injuring 33; when they blew up U.S. Army barracks in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 and injuring 515; when they blew up two American embassies in Africa, causing 257 deaths and 5,000 injuries. We were not in Iraq, and Bush was the President, when Islamic terrorists hijacked and drove passenger planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001, killing some 3,000 people.
Recommended.
'Beam me up, Scotty.'
Well, not any time soon. However, physicists from the Danish National Research Foundation Center for Quantum Optics have successfully teleported quantum information over a distance of a half meter.
. . . Professor Eugene Polzik and his team at the Niels Bohr Institute at Copenhagen University in Denmark have made a breakthrough by using both light and matter."It is one step further because for the first time it involves teleportation between light and matter, two different objects. One is the carrier of information and the other one is the storage medium," Polzik explained in an interview on Wednesday.
The experiment involved for the first time a macroscopic atomic object containing thousands of billions of atoms. They also teleported the information a distance of half a meter but believe it can be extended further.
If this is for real, it could mean a revolution in secure communications.
Who's really in denial?
William Kristol asks and answers the quoestion: 'Who's Really in Denial?'.
"Americans face the choice between two parties with two different attitudes on this war on terror."--George W. Bush, September 28, 2006
President Bush is right. It would be nice if he weren't. The country would be better off if there were bipartisan agreement on what is at stake in the struggle against jihadist Islam. But despite areas of consensus, there is still a fundamental difference between the parties. Bush and the Republicans know we are in a serious war. It's not the Bush administration that is in a "State of Denial" (as the new Bob Woodward book has it). It's the Democrats.
Consider developments over the last week. Democrats hyped last Sunday's news stories breathlessly reporting on one judgment from April's National Intelligence Estimate (NIE)--that the war in Iraq has created more terrorists. More than would otherwise have been created if Saddam were still in power? Who knows? The NIE seems not even to have contemplated how many terrorists might have been created by our backing down, by Saddam's remaining in power to sponsor and inspire terror, and the like. (To read the sections of the NIE subsequently released is to despair about the quality of our intelligence agencies. But that's another story.) In any case, the NIE also made the obvious points that, going forward, "perceived jihadist success [in Iraq] would inspire more fighters to continue the struggle elsewhere," while jihadist failure in Iraq would inspire "fewer fighters . . . to carry on the fight."
What is the Democratic response to these latter judgments? Silence. The left wing of the party continues to insist on withdrawal now. The center of the party wants withdrawal on a vaguer timetable.
Bush, on other hand, understands that the only acceptable exit strategy is victory.
Go read the rest.
October 09, 2006
Heritage Quote
"I wish from my soul that the legislature of this State could see a policy of a gradual Abolition of Slavery."-- George Washington (letter to Lawrence Lewis, 4 August 1797)
Over there
Charles Krauthammer has a good op-ed up at washingtonpost.com that discusses the NIE, terrorists, and the war in Iraq.
The question posed -- does the Iraq war increase or decrease the world supply of jihadists? -- is itself an exercise in counting angels on the head of a pin. Any answer would require a complex calculation involving dozens of unmeasurable factors, as well as construction of a complete alternate history of the world had the U.S. invasion of 2003 not happened.He makes some very good points. Recommended.
The castle market
John Tamny asks the question: What housing bust?
Jan Hatzius, chief U.S. economist for Goldman Sachs, puts the odds of a consumer-led recession at one in three. His reasoning for this bearish assessment goes as follows: The current housing slump could negatively impact consumer spending which would bring down the economy. But there's one glaring problem with this sequence of events: There simply is not a lot of evidence that real estate has hit a rough patch.
Go read the rest.
Good news!
An appeals court in Cincinnati has ruled that the government can continue to use its warrantless domestic wiretapping program pending the Justice Departments appeal of a federal judge's ruling outlawing the program.
The ruling overturned District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor's decision last week to deny a lengthy stay in the case, which is expected to end up with the Supreme Court.
Thank God there are still members of the judiciary who use reason rather than feelings as the basis of their judgements.
October 08, 2006
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)
Being your own god
Dr. Robert Godwin, aka Gagdad Bob, has a blog called One Cosmos in which he expounds upon many matters in human existence and applies a spiritual filter in an effort to more fully understand them. His latest post is about innocence. And it's a keeper.
Being innocent also makes you simple. It makes you transparent. It makes you harmless toward the good. But many people do not like to look into the face of innocence. It repels them. Being that it was stolen from them, they wish to steal it from others--there is a perverse thrill involved in telling a child Santa Claus doesn't exist, that all sex is the same, that God is dead, that all texts are arbitrary narratives concealing blind power, that truth doesn’t exist. It is the perverse thrill of of rebellion and destruction, the illicit joy in being one's own god.
The post is a bit lengthy by our modern standards of bulletized powerpoint presentations, but it is well worth your time to read -- and to think about.
Highly recommended.
Inside Iraq
Callimachus, over at Done With Mirrors wraps up a series of posts written by a contractor who spent two years in-country helping to rebuild Iraq. She comments on media coverage of the events transpiring in Iraq, and contrasts that with her experience.
What I don't appreciate is the coverage that followed the battle. Because after it started to draw down, all those fighting there were immediately forgotten. Instead, the decisions about the battle turned into masses of political BS for the MSM in the U.S., and not a single Marine from the battle ever gained long-term recognition. After the battle, the media crawled back in its hole and waited for the next big, photogenic pool of blood to form on the ground.Meanwhile, I, the women working with me, the engineers on the road and our few security members kept chugging along doing the boring stuff, and living a lot like the Iraqis around us, minus the ancient social baggage. We just kept seeing the real day-to-day blood and flowers and concrete all mixed together.
There is quite a bit more, with links to the first two posts of the series as well as other related links.
Highly recommended.
October 07, 2006
Heritage Quote
"Nothing so strongly impels a man to regard the interest of his constituents, as the certainty of returning to the general mass of the people, from whence he was taken, where he must participate in their burdens."-- George Mason (speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 17 June 1788)
Darkest before the dawn?
One can only hope . . .
Reporter Returns to Iraq, Finds Changing AttitudesUpdated 2:35 PM ET October 6, 2006
How bad is bad? After six weeks away from Iraq and returning to Baghdad, I find the city appears much worse than when I left. Last week, according to a U.S. military spokesman, Baghdad experienced more attacks from car bombs and improvised explosive devices than at any other time this year. In the last five days, 14 U.S. soldiers have died in Baghdad, numbers that haven't been seen in the city since the 2003 invasion. ABC's local Iraqi staff tell us there are an increasing number of neighborhoods they no longer dare to visit. The U.S. military said the reason for the increased casualty rate is that U.S. troops are now aggressively engaging the enemy, and they expected some push back. When extra U.S. troops first arrived in August, they concentrated on Sunni areas and had considerable success in restoring peace. But now that they have moved into Shiite areas, the resistance has increased. Compounding the problem for the United States is the uneven state of readiness in the Iraqi security forces. With 15,000 U.S. troops in Baghdad, a city of 5 million, the Americans need Iraqi forces to back them up and keep the peace in neighborhoods as they move on to new areas. In some cases, the Iraqi police simply don't turn up for work. But even worse is the involvement of some police officers with the death squads that have terrorized the capital for months. On Wednesday an entire police brigade from western Baghdad was suspended from duty because of its connections to death squads. For ordinary Iraqis, life has become ever more difficult. Many women are now afraid to leave their homes to go shopping, children are kept indoors to play, men sleep with guns next to their beds -- if they can sleep at all. The physical violence is horrific, but even more widespread is the psychological damage afflicting the entire city, which sees its hope for an end to the violence gradually ebbing away. The U.S. military said the situation in Baghdad would probably get worse before it gets better, and Iraqi citizens wonder how long they can stay alive before their lives improve.
Predation
Michelle Malkin, once again, hits the nail squarely on the head in her op-ed discussing sexual predation in our nation's capitol.
Washington is embroiled in another sex scandal. A sure-bet win for the Republicans in Florida is now imperiled. The Dems look to be one seat closer to regaining control of the House. But the latest one involving disgraced GOP Congressman Mark Foley's predatory emails and lecherous instant-message exchanges is more than just a political nightmare.It's a parental nightmare.
And, speaking as the parent of two girls, I have to agree.
Recommended.
October 06, 2006
Heritage Quote
"It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more. You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not."-- John Adams (letter to Abigail Adams, 3 July 1776)
Democrats and national security
Lorie Byrd, over at Townhall posted an op-ed last week that sums up the scepticism that many Americans have toward the Democrats' stance(s) on national defense. She starts with:
Prompted by Condoleeza Rice’s reponse to Bill Clinton’s theatrical production on Fox News Sunday over the weekend, Hillary Clinton came out Tuesday in defense of her husband’s record on terrorism in an effort to establish Democrats’ credibility on the issue. She is going to have to come up with something more persuasive if she wants to convince voters that Democrats can be trusted with national security.
She then goes on to describe some little-known facts about the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 -- and then-President Bill Clinton's response to that terrorist attack by quoting Confederate Yankee Bob Owens:
Owens states the fact that Hillary Clinton’s husband hoped to disguise with bluster: “Bill Clinton was President of the United States when lower Manhattan was the victim of an al Qaeda plot executed by an Iraqi bomb-builder who detonated a chemical/conventional weapon under tens of thousands of Americans. President Clinton later knew what the bomb was composed of, knew how it was intended to be used, and what threat al Qaeda posed…Bill Clinton was President for another 7 years, 10 months, 25 days after this attack.”
Finally she gets to the crux of many moderate and conservative Americans' doubts:
We know what Bill Clinton did, and didn’t do, to combat terrorism after that attack. As for what a President Hillary or a Democrat-controlled congress would do to fight terrorism, what they refuse to do today, even after 9/11, tells me all I need to know about what they would do if they were in control.
Food for thought.
Insurgents in Iran?
Confederate Yankee has a post up this week about terrorists in Iran. No, not terrorists being trained by Iranian forces, but terrorists who are terrorizing Iran.
He cites part of an Iran Focus story. I've cited a bit more of that article here:
Iranian security forces have recently arrested a network of “separatists” in the Iranian capital Tehran and the oil-rich south-western city of Abadan, state television reported.The report said that the network was being supported and strengthened by the intelligence apparatuses of certain neighbouring states and a European country which it did not identify.
It accused the “separatists” of planning to carry out bombings inside Iran.
Go read what CY has to say . . .
No bubble this time
Jerry Bowyer points out that we are in a very positive growth-based economy right now. And this time it's different.
After flirting with record closings for more than a week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average surpassed its all-time close of 11,722.98 on Tuesday, ending the day at 11,727.34.Some say this new Dow territory merely puts us back where we were five years ago. But this argument misses the point. We’re not back where we were five years ago. Five years ago, the markets were working their way out of a bubble; this time it’s the real thing.
October 05, 2006
Heritage Quote
"It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind."-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 1, 27 October 1787)
Savagery
Patrick Poole has an op-ed up at American Thinker that describes the brutal savagery being visited on Iraqi civilians by fellow Iraqis.
Superlatives are insufficient to describe the horror currently seen in Iraq: bags filled with severed human heads; scores of bodies found with the eyes drilled out; limbs amputated with power saws; crowds of Iraqi children blown to bits for accepting candy from American troops; pits filled with bodies of executed “collaborators”. These are the daily deeds of the self-proclaimed Islamic “freedom fighters” in Iraq – the Warriors of Jihad.
We have got to put a stop to this violence.
Recommended reading.
The Coming Crisis in Citizenship
The National Civic Literacy Board of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute has released a troubling report: The Coming Crisis in Citizenship: Higher Education's Failure to Teach America's History and Institutions. There's more of the executive summary below the fold.
The report presents scientific evidence that,
for the very first time, reveals how much American colleges and universities—including some of our most elite schools—add to, or subtract from, their graduates' understanding of America's history and fundamental institutions.
It presents four key findings:
FINDING 1: America's colleges and universities fail to increase knowledge about America's history and institutions.
- Seniors scored just 1.5 percent higher on average than freshmen.
- If the survey were administered as an exam in a college course, seniors would fail with an overall average score of 53.2 percent, or F on a traditional grading scale.
- Though a university education can cost upwards of $200,000, and college students on average leave campus $19,300 in debt, they are no better off than when they arrived in terms of acquiring the knowledge necessary for informed engagement in a democratic republic and global economy.
FINDING 2: Prestige doesn't pay off.
- Colleges that rank high in the U.S. News and World Report 2006 ranking were ranked low in the ISI ranking of learning in these key fields. Specifically, a 1 percent increase in civic learning as measured in our survey corresponded to a decrease of 25 positions in the U.S. News ranking.
- There is no relationship between the cost of attending a college and students' acquired understanding of America's history and key institutions. Students at relatively inexpensive colleges often learn more, on average, than their counterparts at expensive colleges.
- At many colleges, including Brown, Georgetown, and Yale, seniors know less than freshmen about America's history, government, foreign affairs, and economy. We characterize this phenomenon as "negative learning." A majority of the 16 schools where senior scores were actually lower than freshman scores are considered to be among the most prestigious colleges in the United States.
FINDING 3: Students don't learn what colleges don't teach.
- Student learning about America's history and institutions decreases when fewer courses are taken in history, political science, government, and economics.
- Schools where students took more courses in American history, political science, and economics outperformed those schools where fewer courses were completed.
- Civic learning is significantly greater at schools that require students to take courses in American history, political science, and economics. Student knowledge in these key areas improves significantly at colleges that still value excellent teaching in the classroom.
FINDING 4: Greater civic learning goes hand-in-hand with more active citizenship.
- Students who demonstrated greater learning of America's history and institutions were more engaged in citizenship activities such as voting, volunteer community service, and political campaigns.
And makes recommendations:
RECOMMENDATIONS
The report concludes with five recommendations aimed at improving undergraduate learning about America's history and institutions:
- improve the assessment of learning outcomes at the college and university level;
- increase the number of required history, political science, and economics courses;
- hold higher education more accountable to its mission and fundamental responsibility to prepare its students to be informed, engaged participants in a democratic republic;
- better inform students and their parents, public officials, and taxpayers of a given university's performance in teaching America's history and institutions; and
- build academic centers on campuses to encourage and support the restoration of teaching American history, political science, and economics.
ISI offers this report with the hope that it will stimulate corrective action and accountability among those immediately responsible for higher education—trustees, donors, alumni, parents, public officials, administrators, faculty, and students. It is still possible to improve the teaching at our colleges and universities of America's history and institutions, and thereby to forestall the coming crisis in citizenship.
You can truly see symptoms of this deficiency just by looking at the political environment in which we find ourselves. Politicians, journalists, and pundits alike consistently fail to apply reason to a given situation. Why? Because the electorate tends to go with whatever is shouted the loudest and shouted the most recently.
I fear that this is the dumbing down of America in terms of our politics, our understanding of history, and our duty to community and nation.
I pray that I am wrong.
Declining fortunes
John Hindraker points out a document recently released by US Central Command that was discovered in Zarqawi's hideout after he was killed. In it, Al-Qaeda leadership is indicating that they are not doing very well.
`Atiyah instructs Zarqawi to follow orders from Usama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri on major strategic issues, such as initiating a war against Shiites; undertaking large-scale operations; or operating outside of Iraq.`Atiyah goes on to criticize Zarqawi’s board of advisors in Iraq for their lack of adequate political and religious expertise, and he warns Zarqawi against the sin of arrogance. Because al-Qa`ida is in what `Atiyah calls a “stage of weakness,” `Atiyah urges Zarqawi to seek counsel from wiser men in Iraq— implying that there might be someone more qualified than Zarqawi to command al-Qa`ida operations in Iraq. `Atiyah closes with a request that Zarqawi send a messenger to “Waziristan” (likely, Waziristan, Pakistan) in order to establish a reliable line of communication with Bin Laden and Zawahiri. `Atiyah confirms in the letter that al-Qa`ida’s overall communications network has been severely disrupted and complains specifically that sending communications to Zarqawi from outside of Iraq remains difficult. Interestingly, he explains how Zarqawi might use jihadi discussion forums to communicate with al-Qa`ida leadership in Waziristan.
Very interesting reading. Recommended.
October 04, 2006
Heritage Quote
"[L]et them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."-- Thomas Jefferson (First Inaugural Address, 4 March 1801)
DDT returns . . .
. . . in order to save lives . . .
Deroy Murdoch has an interesting article about the overwhelming benefits of using DDT for mosquito control.
The World Health Organization on September 15 issued new guidelines calling for DDT to play “a major role” in deterring and killing mosquitoes, which spread malaria. Each year, this debilitating, often deadly disease ails some 500 million people and kills about one million human beings, mainly poor Africans, Asians, and Latins under age five.WHO malaria chief Dr. Arata Kochi said: “Help save African babies, as you help save the environment.” WHO’s new policy is a major boon for millions in the Third World and a major triumph for a cadre of free-market activists who relentlessly have pursued this cause.
An interesting article. It turns out that using DDT saves many more lives than not using it. Quite a different outcome that what was predicted in the 70s when it was banned.
Recommended.
Media critique
Callimachus, a journalist by trade, has some pertinent things to say about the agenda-driven reporting that is so prevalent in today's media.
But you get not a whiff of that in the Bush story. All you'd get is Bush's remark and the political response from Democrats. Nobody even had the guts to ask, "well, is their rhetoric essentially the same as the enemy's propaganda?" The leading Democrats certainly aren't going to bring that up on their own. The similarity is rather embarrassing to them, I'd think.But until you actually ask that question, and show the comparison, you won't know whether Bush is making an accurate comparison or not.
Go read the whole thing.
Good news from Iraq
Bill Crawford has compiled a number of good reports from Iraq. Here's how he starts:
Prime Minister al-Maliki continues to tour the country in efforts at securing some sort of reconciliation, and won an important victory last week when 25 of the 31 tribes in Anbar province agreed to join in the fight against foreign terrorists and Iraqi insurgents.
He continues with stories about Kurdish thank you advertisements (perhaps you've seen one), captured Iraqi documents, security advances in-country, reconstruction efforts, the progress on the economic front, and American heroes in Iraq.
Well worth the read.
October 03, 2006
Heritage Quote
"No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffusd and Virtue is preservd. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauchd in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders."-- Samuel Adams (letter to James Warren, 4 November 1775)
Prayer request
Keith and Stephanie McCord are having a pretty tough time right now. They are a young couple with a four month old son, who are battling cancer in Keith's brain, hip bone, liver, and spleen. They started a blog shortly before finding out about Keith's cancer. Go read the whole blog -- it starts in April of this year. Their story will touch your heart.
This young family needs your prayers. God has been with them and blessed them in many ways, but they are not out of the woods yet. The power of prayer is real, and I ask that you pray every day for these wonderful people.
I intend to.
Clash of civilizations
Jonathan Last has a good editorial in the Philadelphia Inquirer wherein he describes the centuries-long history of war between Islam and the West.
Harvard professor Samuel Huntington first made this case in 1993, in his famous article "The Clash of Civilizations" in the journal Foreign Affairs. "Conflict along the fault line between Western and Islamic civilizations has been going on for 1,300 years," he wrote. After the founding of Islam, Muslims spread their faith by the sword. Islam conquered North Africa and pushed into Europe, where it ruled in Sicily, Spain, Portugal, and parts of France. Twice, the forces of Islam laid siege to Vienna. For 1,000 years, Islam advanced and Christendom retreated.As Pope Benedict XVI explains in his book Without Roots, the very concept of "Europe" emerged as a reaction to the surge of Islam. Not until the failure of the second Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683 did the Islamic tide recede definitively. For the next 300 years, Western civilization was ascendant and the Islamic world stagnated.
He goes on to provide many examples of past and present conflict. Then he asks a couple of questions:
If we accept that this is a clash between civilizations, two questions face us: How does this change our thinking? And the painful one: What do we do about it?
Good questions, indeed. Recommended.
October 02, 2006
Heritage Quote
"[T]he propitious smiles of Heaven, can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained."-- George Washington (First Inaugural Address, April 1789)
