Heritage Quote

"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."

-- Thomas Jefferson

Heritage Quote

"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever."

-- Thomas Jefferson

Change and hope

“Change is not a destination just as hope is not a strategy.”

-- Rudy Giuliani, RNC

True contrast

"I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities."

-- Sarah Palin, RNC

Wheat stem-rust threat: very real and spreading rapidly

The Washington Times has an article about a wheat disease that has spread from Afica into Iran and threatens the global supply. Here's how it begins:

A lethal variant on an ancient disease affecting wheat has spread from its base in Africa to Iran and now threatens vast fields in South Asia, the Middle East and Europe at a time of global food shortages, agricultural specialists warn.

The new strain of wheat-stem rust, first identified in Uganda nine years ago, is threatening crops during a global crisis over rising food prices, depleted reserves, rising agricultural trade barriers and violent food-related protests on four continents.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported in early March that the new wheat fungus had been found in fields in western Iran far earlier than computer models anticipated, perhaps carried on the high winds generated by Cyclone Gonu in June. The geographical leap means that the spread of the disease to countries such as Pakistan and India may be just a matter of time.

"The detection of the wheat-rust fungus in Iran is very worrisome," Shivaji Pandey, director of the FAO's Plant Production and Protection Division, said in early March. "The fungus is spreading rapidly and could seriously lower wheat production in countries at direct risk."

This is alarming news. Go read the rest.

The upside of the surge

J.R. Dunn has an essay up at American Thinker about some of the things he's noticed as the surge succeeds.

There are times when optimism is realism. The past few months encompassed one of those occasions. As the surge was unfolding, analyses were overcautious at best, and all of them were wrong. War is the realm of surprise, and guerilla war above all. Something could happen tomorrow to overthrow anyone's insights and predictions. This is precisely what occurred with the surge, which upset the calculations of the Jihadis, the Dems, and this country's chattering classes.

So with that in mind, we will attempt an analysis that strives for both optimism and realism, based on a serious appraisal of the war's progress up until now. (Anyone who cannot live without pessimism will find it here, in as deeply considered and well-written a fashion as you are ever likely to see.)

It's a good read. He makes some good points.

Global warming?

The California citrus industry is the latest victim of global warming.

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) - Shoppers soon will be feeling the sting of higher prices from a wave of icy weather that has hit California farms. As much as three-quarters of the state's citrus crop withered in the field during the cold snap, but nearly every winter crop, from avocados to fresh-cut flowers, has suffered severely.

Price hikes still won't be enough to offset the damage, as growers cope with nearly $1 billion in losses following four consecutive nights of subfreezing temperatures.

On Tuesday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger asked the federal government for disaster aid from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Small Business Administration for growers and other affected businesses.

Sorry -- I couldn't help but note the irony.

Venezuela's dictatorship?

Mario Loyola points out the similarities between Castro's takeover of Cuba in the 1960s, and Chávez's current takeover of Venezuela. In both cases, democracy was snuffed out by fascism.

For students of the Cuban Revolution, it was an ill omen to hear Hugo Chávez in the final weeks of Venezuela’s presidential campaign proclaiming that “there is no longer room in Venezuela for any project other than the Bolivarian Revolution.” Sure enough, just one month after his reelection victory, Chávez is moving against both opposition parties and opposition press. Venezuela is staring into the abyss of fascism.

Yes. When I said that democracy was snuffed out in Venezuela, I used the past tense deliberately.

Recommended reading.

Good question

What if we are winning in Iraq?

Every bit of strategy that is being discussed is based on the idea that we are losing. The Democratic opposition is based on the idea that we are losing. The media mantra is that we are losing. What if we are not?

Go read the rest. He points out some very real positive changes in Iraq's economy that cannot be ignored.

[Via Glenn Reynolds.]

A Kurd's response to the ISG report

Masrour Barzani, currently director of the Intelligence and Security Agency of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq and a high-ranking member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, has posted a rebuttal to the ill-conceived ISG report. And he's not being nice.

The Iraq Study Group's recommendations will accomplish nothing in Iraq. Its expressions of "gratitude" to those of us Iraqis who fought on the battlefield for freedom and liberty ring hollow. The report ignores our accomplishments, dreams and sacrifices in favor of a concern for those whose ultimate goal is the destruction of democracy.

Our federal constitution, which the majority of the Iraqi people voted for, is treated flippantly, as though it were a negotiable document rather than the hard-fought result of lengthy negotiation among those willing to participate in the new Iraq. Further, the study group's approach is driven by the concerns of the countries in this region rather than by the concerns of the Iraqi people.

Many Iraqis, especially the Kurds, are justifiably concerned about this. No one from the study group visited Iraqi Kurdistan, which the group admits is safe and pro-American, and where there has not been a single U.S. casualty since the war. Kurds not only fought alongside Americans but lost some of our best men to American friendly-fire incidents. Yet we staunchly support the work of the coalition and are eternally grateful for the sacrifices the American people have made for our future.

The report is right to acknowledge that part of the problem in Iraq is America's inability to distinguish friend from foe. Unfortunately, Baker-Hamilton fares even worse in this regard. This comes as little surprise, since it was partly written by those who orchestrated the saving of Saddam Hussein in 1991.

Go read the whole thing.

Those silly Europeans

James Lewis, over at American Thinker, has an interesting op-ed concerning the hypocrisy that seems to prevail in Europe these days.

Ten years ago Europeans looked on passively while genocide took place in the Balkans; finally they talked the United States into acting. The Europeans and their hero diplomat Kofi Annan, looked on and did nothing while genocide took place in Rwanda. Today a credible court case in France alleges that the French colluded and stirred up the genocidal parties for its own benefit. Today, Europe supports the Sudan being a member of the UN Human Rights Commission, and fails to do anything about yet another African genocide carried on by the Sudanese regime over a period of decades.

Yet Europe wants to spare Saddam’s life.

There is much more. I recommend it.

Reaction

Mohammed and Omar Fadhil, bloggers at Iraq the Model and citizens of Iraq, provide their reaction to Saddam's sentence.

I was overwhelmed with joy and relief as I watched the criminals being read their verdicts. For the first time in our region tyrants are being punished for their crimes through a court of law.

Until this moment and while I’m typing these words I’m still receiving words of congratulations in emails, phone calls and text messages from friends inside and outside the country. These were our only means to share our happiness because of the curfew that limits our movement.

This is the day for Saddam’s lovers to weep and I expect their shock and grieve to be huge. They had always thought their master was immortal so let them live in their disappointment while we live for our future.

This is a day not only for Iraqis but a historic day for the whole region; today new basis for dealing between rulers and peoples are found.

No one is above the law anymore.

A whole new concept for much of that region.

Justice

Saddam Hussein has been tried, convicted and sentenced for crimes against humanity.

An Iraqi court on Sunday sentenced Saddam Hussein to the gallows for crimes against humanity, closing a quarter-century-old chapter of violent suppression in this land of long memories, deep grudges and sectarian slaughter.

May God be with him, and with us all.

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.

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. EST

Iraq 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.]

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.

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!

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. EDT

North 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.]

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.

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.

Osama dead?

Not sure, but The Jawa Report has more. Just scroll down for all of the info . . .

Tyrant

Hugo Chavez, dictator of Venzuela, disturbs me. The U.N. General Assembly's reception of his hate-filled speech disturbs me even more. Thor Halvorssen points out the outright deception in Chavez's speech yesterday.

Chavez has said the United States is "afraid of truth, is afraid of independent voices," yet Chavez has suffocated all dissent in his own backyard. Beyond rewriting the Constitution to bolster his legal power, he's passed a law banning "the use of language deemed to be insulting to the President of the Republic."

Indeed, any expression of dissent, public or in private, against any public official is punishable with prison.

Francisco Usón - a former minister in Chavez's own Cabinet - recently drew a six-year jail term for expressing an opinion on television. Carlos Ortega - the president of Venezuela's AFL-CIO-affiliated federation of workers - got a 16-year sentence for instigating a legal strike despite protests by the International Labor Organization of this unspeakable violation of human rights. (Ortega escaped from prison last month.)

Chavez claimed yesterday that the United States protects terrorism while his own government is "fully committed to combating terrorism and violence." In fact, Chavez has demonstrably protected and armed the FARC terrorists of next-door Colombia. (He's also presided during the greatest crime wave in Venezuelan history, with a death toll exponentially larger than any previous government's.)

Chavez denounced capitalism as the generator of "mere poverty." Yet, thanks to a capitalist oil boom, he has profited from the richest Venezuelan government in history - but squandered its wealth on a new Venezuelan oligarchy of petro-millionaires masquerading as government officials. Meanwhile, misery and malnutrition are at a historic high.

Chavez railed against Western-style democracy. Yet it was western style democracy that brought him into power (after his own armed coup failed) and may remove him in the end. This is why he does everything he can to hollow and weaken democratic institutions.

And this tyrant was applauded by many of the world leaders at the U.N. yesterday . . .

What is this world coming to?

Underreported rally

You quite possibly have not heard or read that there was a protest yesterday where tens of thousands of Israel supporters protested Ahmadinejad of Iran and called for the release of the Israeli soldiers who were kidnapped in July.

As world leaders convened for the second day of the United Nations General Assembly, tens of thousands of supporters of Israel gathered across the street from United Nations headquarters to protest President Ahmadinejad of Iran and to call for the unconditional release of the Israeli soldiers kidnapped on July 12. The international and national leaders who stepped up to the podium also challenged the United Nations to take preventative action against the Iranian leader who threatens the Jewish people with genocide.

The National Solidarity Rally, sponsored by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the Jewish Community Relations Council, sent a message of solidarity with Israel and support for the war against global terrorism and its state sponsors.

"This is a message to the leaders of the world that we reject Ahmadinejad and his message of hate and the immorality he represents," the executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents, Malcolm Hoenlein, said.

Speakers at the rally included Foreign Minister Livni, Ambassador Bolton, Governor Pataki, Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, and Professor Alan Dershowitz.

"We stand united today against the terrorist and the hostage takers. We say to them terror will not defeat us," Ms. Livni said. "We will not rest until the Israeli hostages, our sons, come home to the embrace of a loving nation."

The wife of kidnapped soldier Ehud Goldwasser, Karni Goldwasser, demanded of the United Nations, "Stop talking and start to act," to bring her husband back home.

Mr. Wiesel chastised the United Nations for welcoming Mr. Ahmadinejad to the General Assembly at all. "A man who brings shame to the world has no place anywhere. He must be excluded from all groups of international nations," he said.

Go read the rest.

Stop apologizing!

Anne Applebaum, over at washingtonpost.com has a good op-ed up about how the West needs to stop saying 'sorry' and start standing up for our right to free speech. Here's her conclusion:

Maybe it's a pipe dream: The day when the White House and Greenpeace can issue a joint statement is surely distant indeed. But if stray comments by Western leaders -- not to mention Western films, books, cartoons, traditions and values -- are going to inspire regular violence, I don't feel that it's asking too much for the West to quit saying sorry and unite, occasionally, in its own defense. The fanatics attacking the pope already limit the right to free speech among their own followers. I don't see why we should allow them to limit our right to free speech, too.

Go read how she got to it . . .

Food for thought

"Rome fell September 4, 476AD. It was overrun with illegal immigrants: Visigoths, Franks, Anglos, Saxons, Ostrogoths, Burgundians, Lombards, Jutes and Vandals, who at first assimilated and worked as servants, but then came so fast they did not learn the Latin Language or the Roman form of government. Highly trained Roman Legions moving rapidly on their advanced road system, were strained fighting conflicts worldwide. Rome had a trade deficit, having outsourced most of its grain production to North Africa, and when Vandals captured that area, Rome did not have the resources to retaliate. Attila the Hun was committing terrorist attacks. The city of Rome was on welfare with citizens being given free bread. One Roman commented: 'Those who live at the expense of the public funds are more numerous than those who provide them.' Tax collectors were 'more terrible than the enemy.' Gladiators provided violent entertainment in the Coliseum. There was injustice in courts, exposure of unwanted infants, infidelity, immorality and perverted bathhouses. 5th-Century historian Salvian wrote: 'O Roman people be ashamed... Let nobody think otherwise, the vices of our bad lives have alone conquered us'."

---William Federer

Quote

"They're (Iran) out to get you (United States). We're (Israel) just the first step."

-- Benjamin Netanyahu on Hannity & Colmes, 06 Sep 2006

Advance to the rear

Michael Portillo is not kind in his assessment of France's recent ventures in international diplomacy.

Now that British and American forces are bogged down in Iraq, this should be the moment for the French cock to crow. But what exactly has the distinctive French alternative produced for the world or France? The softer European approach to Iran over its nuclear programme was decisively rebuffed, and Europe has had to join America in calling for sanctions. When France was invited to provide leadership over Lebanon, it vacillated. Its offer of 2,000 soldiers remains underwhelming. Chirac’s pro-Arab policies have not even bought off Muslim discontent at home, as the urban riots showed.

Last week a former junior member of the Bush administration, Jeff Babbin, likened undertaking a military operation without the French to going on a deer shoot without an accordion — you just leave behind the noisy useless baggage.

Humour notwithstanding, he is spot on.

Recommended reading.

Jill Carroll -- her story

The Christian Science Monitor has published Jill Carroll's story of being a hostage of Sunni insurgents in Iraq. The story is fully online and includes text and video, along with photos and related news stories from the period of her captivity and since.

Recommended.

Silver lining in Israel?

Noah Pollak has an op-ed up at NRO expressing hope that the end of hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel is part of a good plan. He can't really bear the alternative.

To most Israelis, supporters of Israel, and especially to the IDF soldiers I spoke to on the border over the past few days, the cessation of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah that recently went into effect is viewed as a cruel indignity, a dangerous projection of Israeli weakness and equivocation, and a plucking of defeat from the jaws of victory. These were my thoughts as well.

Recommended.

Mideast's Munich

Arthur Herman, over at the New York Post, draws some very interesting parallels between UN Resolution 1701 and the Munich agreement of October 1938 where Neville Chamberlain reached agreement with Hitler to allow Germany to annex the Sudetenland -- ultimately resulting in the dismantlement of Czechoslovakia. And resulting in encouraging Hitler to even further conquests.

Munich in 1938 boiled down to the free world placating the fascists . . . ultimately leading those freshly emboldened belligerents to invade and conquer their neighbors -- thus beginning the Second World War. A much larger war than they would have had if they had decided to stop, rather than appease, Germany in 1938.

In that sense, the cease-fire may be even more momentous than Munich, and a greater blunder. In 1938 Chamberlain and other appeasers had the excuse that they were trying to prevent an armed conflict no one wanted. Today, of course, that conflict is already here. Historians will conclude that by supporting U.N. Resolution 1701 and getting Israel to agree, the Bush administration has in effect declared that its global war on terror is over. We have reverted to the pre-9/11 box of tools, if not necessarily the pre-9/11 mindset. From now on, the worst Iran, Syria, and North Korea will have to worry about are serial resolutions in the United Nations. Terrorists will be busy dodging Justice Department subpoenas, not Tomahawk missiles.

We should learn from history, not just ignore it. Recommended.

Paper tiger

Once again, the United Nations, under Kofi Annan, is proving to be a facilitator for terrorism.

Annan angered Israeli officials when he told Channel 2 on Tuesday that "dismantling Hizbullah is not the direct mandate of the UN," which could only help Lebanon disarm the organization. Annan upset officials further when he said that deploying international forces in Lebanon would take "weeks or months," and not days as expected.

How unprofessional. And unreliable. And dangerous to peace.

Annan has proved he is not up to the challenge. The man should be replaced.

History lesson

Thomas Sowell gives the reader a brief history of the Middle East to provide the proper context for his comments about the most recent cease-fire between the nation of Israel and those who would destroy it.

Most people are as uninformed about the history of the Middle East as they are about its geography. Supposedly Jews took over the Palestinians' homeland in order to create the state of Israel.

But there was no Palestinian homeland. That whole region belonged to the Ottoman Empire until the Ottoman Empire was dismembered after its defeat in the First World War.

Christians, Jews, and Muslims had all lived in Palestine for centuries. In the course of carving up the Ottoman Empire to create new nations, the British set aside a small part of it for Jews -- and after violent objections from the Arabs, stalled for years on letting this bit of land become an independent nation.

Jews lived in Palestine long before there was a state of Israel and even before there was an Ottoman Empire. In 1939, Winston Churchill commented that Jews in Palestine "made the desert bloom." The resulting prosperity of the area attracted both more Jews and more Arabs, including some Arabs whose descendants would later claim that Jews took over their country.

After World War II and the Holocaust, Jews seeking refuge turned to their promised home in the Middle East and battled the British to seize control and proclaim the independence of Israel.

In the face of polarizing hostility and violence in surrounding Arab countries, Jews fled these countries and many were absorbed into Israel. Meanwhile, Arab countries urged Arabs living in Israel to leave before these countries' planned attacks with the aim of destroying the new state.

It was the Arabs, rather than the Israelis, who created a massive Palestinian refugee problem.

Highly recommended.

First-hand reporting -- Israel

Michael Totten is in Israel and is reporting from inside Hezbollah's Free Fire Zone. While he was talking to a couple of IDF spokesmen, one mentioned this little-known fact about the beginning of the conflict:

“Hardly any journalists have mentioned this,” Dan said. “But at the very beginning of this thing, when Hezbollah captured our soldiers, they also tried to invade, conquer, and hold the town of Metulla along with two other towns. And they were repulsed.”

Clearly an act of war. No ambiguity in that, is there?

There are several photos included in the report. Go read the whole thing.

The end in sight?

Steve Shippert, over at ThreatsWatch has an op-ed up wherein he predicts the imminent demise of Hizbollah. Here's how he begins:

Amid the relentless images of the dead extracted from a building in Qana, amid the fiery anger those images generated – from Lebanon to Europe and from Egypt to Indonesia - and amid deafening global cries for an immediate ceasefire, a curiously contradictory picture is emerging from the battlefields of Hizballistan: Hizballah is on the ropes, running short of resources and desperate for a ceasefire for its very survival.

While the world has held itself aghast at ‘Israeli aggression,’ Israel has been relentless in pursuit of what has been described as the fiercest Arab fighting force in the region. Undeterred by global outcry as over two thousand rockets and missiles have rained down upon Israeli cities with relatively little note, Israel has made good on their Prime Minister’s declaration of “Enough.�

Israel is providing a lesson on fighting the war on terror.

I hope he's right. Read the whole thing.

Double standard

Ed Morrissey has a good op-ed up at The Examiner about "the soft nihilism of low expectations" concerning the conduct of war by terrorists. Israel is held to a high standard in terms of the Geneva Conventions and the conduct of war. Hizbollah, on the other hand, gets a free pass.

This creates an impossible double standard for Israel and political victories. In order to defeat terrorists, Israel will have to engage them when they attack, wherever that happens to be. In their effort to zealously apply the rules of war to only one side, the global community doesn’t act to reduce the tragedies of civilian casualties, it increases them by encouraging Hezbollah’s tactics. The terrorists counted on precisely this response, which dictates their tactics and strategy to this moment.

The Lebanese caught in this vise should seek redress in Beirut. Unfortunately, the same global community that castigates Israel for unintentional collateral damage has let the Lebanese government off the hook for failing to disarm Hezbollah, as demanded by Security Council resolution 1559. Had the Saniora government done so, this war would never have started. And while the Lebanese Army would have difficulty with that task, Beirut never asked for any assistance in meeting its obligations.

Why does the international community perpetuate this double standard?

If Hezbollah wins

OpinionJournal has a thoughtful article up about what would happen if Israel loses this war against Hezbollah.

A premature cease-fire now would allow Hezbollah to claim a victory over Israel and emerge as a stronger regional power. Even a best-case scenario would probably see Israel again fighting Hezbollah--at a time of Hezbollah's choosing and as the dominant force in a future Lebanese government. There could also be trouble for Israel with other neighbors, since Israel would have forfeited the aura of military invincibility that has kept it relatively safe for decades in such a rough neighborhood.

Recommended reading.

I've reprinted it in the extended entry.

Olmert and Bush
The consequences of an Israeli defeat would be ugly.

Tuesday, August 1, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

The deaths of dozens of Lebanese civilians in an Israeli airstrike at Qana on Sunday is a tragedy. But tragedies happen in all wars, which is why they shouldn't be fought without good reason and the determination to win. We hope that's the lesson Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the Bush Administration are drawing as international criticism reaches its highest point so far in the three-week offensive against Hezbollah.

The initial, muted reaction from most of the major Arab states showed that their leaders were quietly happy that Hezbollah and its Iranian patrons might be dealt a heavy blow. They understand the mullahs' imperial aims, and that Hezbollah's rockets are a foretaste of what they too might expect if Tehran gets a nuclear bomb. But public opinion against Israel in the Muslim world remains strong and hasn't been helped by daily pictures of destroyed Beirut apartment blocks.

It also appears that Israel's bombing campaign hasn't done nearly as much damage to Hezbollah as first thought. Sunday saw more Katyusha rockets (about 150) launched into Israel than any previous day in the war--and Hezbollah is believed to have used up only a fraction of its stockpile. Israeli Defense Forces clearly underestimated Hezbollah's capabilities and overestimated their ability to degrade them from the air.

---

The question is what now. One temptation for the Bush Administration, which is under fire from most Arab leaders including Iraq's, will be to rein in Israel quickly. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been talking about pushing a cease-fire through the U.N. later this week, although the timetable seems to have been pushed back. One of the ideas is that a multinational force would then help Lebanon's government disarm Hezbollah.

But moving too soon, and with Hezbollah still powerful, risks replaying the disastrous scenario that unfolded in August 1982. That's when civilian casualties related to attacks on PLO strongholds in Beirut led the Reagan Administration to demand a halt to the fighting. The resulting events--insertion of multinational forces, the Marine barracks bombing, and U.S. withdrawal--are still cited by the likes of Osama bin Laden as evidence the civilized world has no stomach for a hard fight.

A premature cease-fire now would allow Hezbollah to claim a victory over Israel and emerge as a stronger regional power. Even a best-case scenario would probably see Israel again fighting Hezbollah--at a time of Hezbollah's choosing and as the dominant force in a future Lebanese government. There could also be trouble for Israel with other neighbors, since Israel would have forfeited the aura of military invincibility that has kept it relatively safe for decades in such a rough neighborhood.

Leaders in Tehran and Damascus would also conclude that employing terrorist proxies works. Iran could roll ahead with its bomb program knowing that Europe and the U.S. can be easily intimidated. Lebanon's fledgling democracy would be another casualty. President Bush's entire vision for the Middle East would suffer a severe setback if the current fighting ends with Hezbollah still a credible military force.

Israel does not deliberately target civilians, much less children. They were hit in Qana because Hezbollah operates near civilians to use them as a shield and to exploit such tragedies as to turn world opinion against Israel. Hezbollah has been the consistent and flagrant violator of international law throughout this conflict--deliberately targeting Israeli civilians with shrapnel-filled missiles, fighting out of uniform, and hiding among Lebanese civilians and helpless U.N. peacekeepers.

---

If these and other tactics remind you of al Qaeda and the insurgents in Iraq, they should. They are the reality of today's asymmetrical terrorist methods, and their success in Lebanon will only mean the further spread of those methods against others in the Mideast and beyond.

So we hope that, while Ms. Rice pursues diplomatic options, privately Mr. Bush is telling Mr. Olmert that Israel must finish the job he started against Hezbollah--including a ground invasion of southern Lebanon if that's what it takes. American support for Israel's strategy is far from cost-free for Mr. Bush, and Mr. Olmert has to understand that it won't continue if he lacks the will to prevail as rapidly as militarily possible.

There are certainly risks to this strategy, in the loss of more Israeli and Lebanese lives and further global criticism of both the Jewish state and the U.S. But now that the war has been joined, and Israel has pledged not to stop without disarming Hezbollah, a defeat for Israel will mean more danger and far more casualties down the road.

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

Inversion

Hugh Hewitt points out that Hezbollah is all about murdering people. And those who take exception to Israel's response in Lebanon need to remember that fact. Here's how he begins:

The tragedy of the deaths of children and adult civilians should not obscure that every day the Hezbollah terrorists send barrages of rockets into Israel, each one of which is intended to kill civilians and in far greater numbers than died in Qana. The incompetence of Hezbollah's munition makers is somehow obscuring the scale of its terrorism. If the 9/11 attacks had only killed 300, would the U.S. not have invaded Afghanistan and later Iraq? Hezbollah has tried for three weeks to inflict a 9/11 on Israel, but Israel is being damned because its defensive measures have led to civilians held hostage by terrorists. This is an insane inversion of the laws of war and customary international law as well as of common sense. Hezbollah began this war and is responsible for the deaths of everyone on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border.

Each day of the war Israel struggles to minimize harm to civilians. Each day Hezbollah tries to kill them and uses Lebanese civilians as hostages.

He makes some good points about how the international cry for a cease-fire is just playing into the terrorists hands.

Likewise the outcry about civilian deaths in Qana:

Whatever works is repeated. Condemning Israel for the deaths of civilians living near terrorist missile launchers will only result in the placement of more terrorist missile launchers near civilians. If the world wants to end this war, the UN should join Israel is demanding the international community organize a fighting force to take over from Israel the necessary work of removing Hezbollah as a threat to the civilians on both sides of the border and should rush sanctions on Iran and Syria for their supply of indiscriminate weapons to non-state actors.

I'll go one step further.

All of us have got to bite this bullet and work diligently toward making terrorism an extremely violent and short career path.

Until all of the terrorists are dead and gone.

Only then will we have peace.

If we settle for anything less, we're just fooling ourselves.

Go read the rest.

Hiding among women and children

An article in yesterday's Herald Sun in Australia provides evidence that supports the allegation that Hezbollah is using civilians as human shields.

THIS is the picture that damns Hezbollah. It is one of several, smuggled from behind Lebanon's battle lines, showing that Hezbollah is waging war amid suburbia.

The images, obtained exclusively by the Sunday Herald Sun, show Hezbollah using high-density residential areas as launch pads for rockets and heavy-calibre weapons.

Where is the outrage?

Coincidence?

Or a message from God?

In Ireland, a worker digging with an excavator in a peat bog to package potting soil uncovered an ancient book of psalms, 20 pages long, and very well preserved.

And what was the book opened to?

The book was found open to a page describing, in Latin script, Psalm 83, in which God hears complaints of other nations’ attempts to wipe out the name of Israel.

UPDATE: It turns out that, though the book was open to Psalm 83, the psalms were numbered differently in the eighth century, so the passage that the book was opened to is actually Psalm 84 in modern bibles. Allahpundit over at Hot Air has more on this story.

“The Director of the National Museum of Ireland … would like to highlight that the text visible on the manuscript does not refer to wiping out Israel but to the ‘vale of tears’,� the museum said.

The vale of tears is in Psalm 84 in the King James version.

Still apropos, I'm thinking . . .

Existential -- not political

Zeev Avrahami, an Israeli peace activist in the past, has an op-ed up at Spiegel Online about how Israel is fighting for its very existence.

Today, I am convinced that Israel is fighting a justified war. Far from being an "optional war," this conflict was forced upon us. There is a feeling that every positive step taken in recent years has been answered by punishment. Now we are prepared to do whatever it takes to turn Israel into a safe place, even if this means invading Lebanon once again. We also want to sip coffee and play backgammon. We've had enough of rockets from the north and south and suicide bombers from everywhere. We also want to lead a normal life, just like the people in New York, Berlin or Rome who don't have to look up every time a stranger enters their favorite cafe.

Please read the whole thing.

[Hat tip to Captain Ed.]

Don't believe everything you see on CNN

CNN’s senior international correspondent Nic Robertson is backpedaling from his story last week about Israel bombing civilians in Lebanon.

Challenged by Reliable Sources host (and Washington Post media writer) Howard Kurtz on Sunday, Robertson suggested Hezbollah has “very, very sophisticated and slick media operations,� that the terrorist group “had control of the situation. They designated the places that we went to, and we certainly didn't have time to go into the houses or lift up the rubble to see what was underneath,� and he even contradicted Hezbollah’s self-serving spin: “There's no doubt that the [Israeli] bombs there are hitting Hezbollah facilities.�

Why didn't Robertson say that in his report? Why isn't CNN broadcasting a retraction/correction to that story?

Pathetic.

[Hat tip to Betsy's Page.]

Israel: A historical perspective

Michael Medved, over at Townhall.com provides a history of Israel in defense of that nation's right to exist.

In order to place these realities in proper perspective, it’s first necessary to reject some thirty years of wildly irresponsible anti-Israel propaganda. First of all, it’s not true in any sense that the modern Jewish State ever supplanted or destroyed an existing nation of “Palestine.� From the time of definitive destruction of the ancient Jewish commonwealth in 70 A.D., the land that comprises the current State of Israel never enjoyed independent existence but, rather, passed back and forth among competing world empires—Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Crusader, Mamaluke, Ottoman and British. Over the course of more than 1,800 years, no nation with the name “Palestine� appeared on any maps, anywhere. The distinguished Arab-American historian Philip Hitti, professor at Princeton University, testified to the Anglo American Committee in 1946: ‘There is no such thing as ‘Palestine’ in history, absolutely not.�

It well worth reading.

The Proportionality Fallacy

Ed Morrissey does a good job of discussing the absudity of 'proportional response'.

To use a crude analogy, if someone is stupid enought to bring a knife to a gunfight, it doesn't mean that those holding the guns have a moral obligation to fight with knives instead. Proportionality demands exactly that, and it leads to nothing but longer and more destructive wars. Part of the reasons nations build strong militaries is to deter people from committing aggressive acts against them. The United States did not build the military it has just to provide "proportionate" reponse. Such a limitation would invite any tinpot dictator or kleptocrat to attack us, knowing that we would only respond in proportion to their ability to attack. It makes every fight even-up from the beginning, odds that would encourage a lot more fighting, not less.

Go read the whole thing.

Calling a spade, a spade

John Bolton is showing refreshing clarity in his defense of Israel's action in Lebanon.

"I think it's important that we not fall into the trap of moral equivalency here," Ambassador John Bolton told CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer."

"What Hezbollah has done is kidnap Israeli soldiers and rain rockets and mortar shells on innocent Israeli civilians. What Israel has done in response is act in self-defense. And I don't quite know what the argument about proportionate force means here. Is Israel entitled only to kidnap two Hezbollah operatives and fire a couple of rockets aimlessly into Lebanon?

"The situation is that Israel has lived under the terrorist threat of Hezbollah for years, and these most recent attacks have given it the legitimate right, the same right America would have if we were attacked, to deal with the problem. And that's what they're doing."

[Hat tip to My Pet Jawa.]

Quotable

“I have no interest in diplomacy for the sake of returning Lebanon and Israel to the status quo ante."

-- Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice

History lesson

Rachel Neuwirth has an interesting essay up at The American Thinker about learning from our past.

Today the buzzword crowd seems more concerned about restraining Israel than in defeating the Islamic terrorists that want to complete Hitler’s goal of exterminating all Jews. How times have changed. Then, the survival of millions of Jews was of little concern to the nations. Today the same powers fear that the Jews are defending themselves too vigorously.

Go read the whole thing. It's worth the time.

Lebanon hijacked!

Austin Bay has an interesting column up at StrategyPage that discusses what is needed to halt rocket fire from a hijacked state.

In the past week, 1,400 rockets have hit Israeli cities, most from firing positions inside Lebanon.

But now for the layer of complexity: Hezbollah hides these weapons among apartment houses and in villages, nesting rockets in Lebanese neighborhoods.

Hezbollah controls these neighborhoods -- not the Lebanese government.

In other words, Israel suffers rocket attacks from a Lebanon that "is not quite Lebanon" in a truly sovereign sense. The rockets, of course, come from "somewhere," but Hezbollah's "somewhere" is a political limbo in terms of maps with definitive geo-political boundaries. Lebanon is a peculiar form of failed state. It's not the madhouse of Somalia or the impoverished dreg of Zimbabwe, rather, Lebanon is a hijacked state.

Go read the whole thing.

Strategic analysis

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross has posted a strategic analysis of any Israeli incursion into Lebanon.

It is critical to understand the strategic implications of the Israeli incursion into Lebanon. Hizballah has proven to be a far more effective fighting machine than Israel anticipated, and the Israelis find themselves in a difficult situation: Continued military operations in Lebanon risk escalation and further destabilization, while a quick withdrawal would hand Hizballah a significant victory. This blog entry analyzes the most salient strategic considerations.

Recommended.

Evacuation

Austin Bay gives a good rundown of the current Noncombatant Evacuation Operation (NEO) being conducted by the US Navy and Marines in Lebanon.

The presence of Hezbollah-operated Iranian anti-ship missiles makes this NEO particularly dicey.

Four days to assemble an evacuation fleet and move it into a war zone is rapid action. It does not appear that way with 24/7 news which relies on a constant stream of sensational headlines. Carping on a microphone is easy. Providing perspective is more difficult. Remember, the Navy is conducting combat operations as well as training operations.

Go read the rest.

Hizbollah's ball bearings

Michael Kraft comments on a report about Hizbollah deliberately adding ball bearings to their rockets' payloads in order to maximize civilian casualties.

In a rather unusual story, the Reuters new agency reported that the Human Rights Watch criticized Hezbollah’s practice of packing ball bearings into the rockets it fires at Israel as a violation of international humanitarian law and probable war crimes.

The Reuters report said that some of the Kutyusha rockets fired into Haifa Sunday and Monday contained hundreds of metal ball bearings that are of limited use against military targets but “cause great harm to civilians and civilian property. The ball bearings lodge in the body and cause serious harm.�

This is just another indication that Hizbollah is just trying to indiscriminately kill, maim, and destroy.

IDF in Lebanon

Bill Roggio has an analysis of the likelihood of a full-scale invasion into Lebanon.

Israeli leaders continue to signal they do not intend to launch major ground operations to hunt and destroy Hezbollah in southern and deeper into the Bekaa Valley in the east and north. The Washington Times reports on an exchange between MSNBC's Chris Matthews and Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres.

MSNBC's Chris Matthews asked Peres what would "cause you to take ground troops into either Lebanon on a sustained basis, or into Syria?"

"Nothing whatever," Peres replied. "We don't intend to enter Lebanon from the ground. The danger today is not an exchange of power on the ground but really the missiles and the rockets, we should try to stop it."

Go read the rest.

Implementing Resolution 1559

Charles Krauthammer has an interesting op-ed up at washingtonpost.com wherein he maintains that Israel has a golden opportunity in Lebanon.

There is crisis and there is opportunity. Amid the general wringing of hands over the seemingly endless and escalating Israel-Hezbollah fighting, everyone asks: Where will it end?

The answer, blindingly clear, begins with understanding that this crisis represents a rare, perhaps irreproducible, opportunity.

Every important party in the region and in the world, except the radical Islamists in Tehran and their clients in Damascus, wants Hezbollah disarmed and removed from south Lebanon so that it is no longer able to destabilize the peace of both Lebanon and the broader Middle East.

Recommended.

International extortion

OpinionJournal has a thought-provoking editorial up about the ramifications of North Korea's fireworks on 4 July.

I'e reprinted it in the extended entry.

Rocket's Red Glare
Not-so-crazy Kim tells the world to pay up one more time.

Thursday, July 6, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

Most of the civilized world spent yesterday denouncing Kim Jong Il's July 4 fireworks display of launching several missiles into the Sea of Japan. The denunciations are all very nice, but the question is what lesson the world's leaders, especially those in China and South Korea, are going to learn from this latest North Korean provocation.

White House National Security Adviser Steve Hadley declared that "it's hard to get a sense on what" the North Koreans "think is to be achieved by this." But we suspect Mr. Hadley knows well enough, because this is the way Kim Jong Il always behaves when he wants to coax the U.S. and other countries into making further concessions.

Kim is at it again because his previous provocations have typically been rewarded. The most famous example is the 1994 Agreed Framework in which the Clinton Administration responded to Kim's nuclear threats by offering aid and the promise of nuclear energy plants. That deal collapsed in 2002 when Kim repudiated it, announced a secret nuclear program and kicked out U.N. inspectors.

Or consider what happened the last time Kim launched a missile, sending the Taepodong-1 over Japan in 1998. The Clinton Administration went back to the negotiating table and came close to concluding a missile version of the 1994 nuclear agreement. As part of that deal--negotiated by then-State Department Counsellor Wendy Sherman--the U.S. would launch North Korean satellites in return for the North's pledge to stop developing long-range missiles.

Given Pyongyang's abysmal record at keeping its promises, the more likely outcome would have been the theft of U.S. technology and the strengthening of the North's missile program. As late as mid-December 2000 White House sources were even suggesting that President Clinton might visit Pyongyang to conclude the deal. Negotiations stopped only when the Clinton Administration's time expired.

---

This time Kim has tried to raise the stakes by launching a Taepodong-2, which has the range to reach the Western U.S. The fact that the missile exploded less than a minute after launch is reassuring, especially if you live in Seattle. But Kim still hopes this launch will attract even greater accommodation, and some in the U.S. and South Korea may be ready to play along.

The last thing the U.S. should do is reward North Korea's missile provocation with direct talks. Yet before yesterday's missile tests, that is exactly what Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Richard Lugar advised. Former Clinton officials Ashton Carter and William Perry have accused President Bush of ignoring diplomatic options with Pyongyang, even as they also propose a pre-emptive military strike. But what are the six-party talks with the North if not multilateral diplomacy? The real story may be, as Nicholas Eberstadt argues in The Wall Street Journal today, that Kim Jong Il has concluded from recent U.S. actions toward Iran and North Korea that Mr. Bush is now as diplomatically pliable as Mr. Clinton.

Japan had the most forceful response yesterday, banning port calls by North Korean ships, charter flights and officials. A lone North Korean ferry currently floating off the northern Japanese port of Niigata won't be allowed to dock. Tokyo is also mulling more severe economic sanctions.

Pyongyang's launch is especially embarrassing to China and South Korea, both of which warned against a launch and both of which have propped up Kim's regime. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill flew to Asia yesterday to consult with both countries, and his challenge is to get them to join Japan and the U.S. in putting more economic and political pressure on the North.

China doesn't want refugees pouring across its northern border and also doesn't want to be seen to be abandoning a client regime. However, the missile test is an opportunity for the U.S. to show Beijing that its support for Kim is creating other problems for Chinese interests, notably a more militarily assertive Japan.

In South Korea, one question is whether a change in policy toward the North must wait until a change of government in Seoul. President Roh Moo Hyun has staked much of his domestic political credibility on his "peace and prosperity policy." His party took a whipping in recent local elections and he's down in the polls, but the next presidential election isn't until December 2007.

---

North Korea's missile tests also point up the need for improved missile defenses, both regionally and in the U.S. South Korea announced last week the purchase of upgraded Patriot missiles from Germany. Japan is working closely with Washington to improve its fledgling missile defenses, including an agreement last week to allow the Pentagon to deploy Patriots at a U.S. base in Okinawa.

But nothing the U.S. and Japan might do is likely to accomplish much if China and South Korea refuse to pressure the North to abandon its nuclear program. This is what happens when a non-transparent, authoritarian regime is appeased long enough for it to acquire nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. The mullahs in Tehran have already absorbed that lesson. Iran, and other states that are considering going nuclear, will be closely watching how the world responds to Kim Jong Il's latest provocation.

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

Hijacking Haditha

Michael Yon, a veteran who served as an embedded reporter in Iraq, has a thought-provoking essay about what we do and do not know about Haditha. He recounts several experiences he lived through while embedded with the Deuce-Four in Iraq. He also puts things in a context that is much more rational than the hyper-ventilating "reporting" surrounding the Haditha incident right now.

We do not know if our Marines massacred those Iraqis. In war, things like this can and will sometimes happen, which is not to say it is acceptable. After almost four years of conflict, involving more than 100,000 military personnel, this clearly is not the norm or we would have heard about many such cases. But the difficulty of fighting a counterinsurgency mission in a shifting political environment is something about which our military leaders are mindful. . .

Read the whole thing. It will make you weep.

Stranger in a strange land

Marine 1LT Jeffrey Barnett, currently deployed in Iraq, provides context to the Haditha incident. He is not seeking to justify any criminal actions by our Marines, but to show how this highly unusual behavior might actually occur.

Examine the following hypothetical example: During a vehicular patrol, you drive though a small neighborhood of four houses around 0800. Everything is kosher. Women are making breakfast, children are playing, and men are talking to each other near the road. You drive through the same area two hours later at 1000 and things are vastly different. Nobody is outside. As the second vehicle in the patrol rounds a corner just past the four houses it is hit by an IED. The magnitude of the casualties can be left to the individual imagination. Whether it killed everyone inside the vehicle or just peppered the doors with dirt, the intent was the same. Someone wanted to kill you. Someone looked at your truck and said to themselves “Those men should die, and I’m going to make it happen,� It—pisses—you—off.

Go read the whole thing.

Without firing a shot

How do we deal with Iran effectively, yet avoid a war? Bret Stephens has some ideas on how to go about taking Iran down -- peacefully (at least outside of Iran).

I've reprinted it all in the extended entry.

How to Stop Iran (Without Firing a Shot)
Current diplomacy isn't working. Here's Plan B.

BY BRET STEPHENS
Tuesday, May 16, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

What can the Bush administration do to persuade Iran's leaders that their bid to develop nuclear weapons will exact an unacceptable price on their regime? What can it do, that is, short of launching air strikes?

Begin by shelving the current approach. For three years, the administration has deferred to European and U.N. diplomacy while seeking to build consensus around the idea that a nuclear-armed Iran poses unacceptable risks to global security. The result: Seven leading Muslim states, including Pakistan and Indonesia, have joined hands with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to affirm his right to develop "peaceful" nuclear technology. China and Russia have again rejected calls for U.N. sanctions. The Europeans are again seeking to sweeten the package of technical, commercial and security incentives the mullahs rejected last year. And that's just last week's news.

Today, the international community is less intent on stopping Tehran from getting the bomb than it is on stopping Washington from stopping Tehran. That's something the administration may not be able to change. But there are steps it can take independently to alter Iran's calculations. Here are four.

• Take the diplomatic offensive. "Western countries must push the internal conflicts inside the Iranian government," says Mehdi Khalaji, an Iranian journalist and visiting scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Mr. Khalaji proposes that President Bush write an open letter to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, specifying the conditions under which the U.S. would be prepared to negotiate. By addressing Mr. Khamenei this way, Mr. Bush would bypass and humiliate Mr. Ahmadinejad, aggravate the regime's internal frictions and explain to the Iranian people why theirs is a pariah state.

---

"The administration could say, 'If you halt enrichment, we can negotiate. If you stop supporting Hamas and Hezbollah, we can negotiate. If you release the following political prisoners, we can negotiate. If you stop meddling in Iraq, we can negotiate.' This would provoke a controversy inside the government. Some would say, 'OK, we can give up on these prisoners. We can back away from our relationship with Hamas. And so on.'"

Mr. Khalaji also urges the U.S. government to recast the content of its Farsi-language radio station, known as Radio Farda. The station's programmers, he says, "misunderstand the young generation of Iran, which is very political. The quality is not appropriate for a serious audience. The news isn't professional the way the BBC is." Offering a serious journalistic alternative to the Beeb ought to be an administration priority.

• Target the regime's financial interests. "In many ways, the Islamic Republic of Iran has become the Islamic Republic of Iran, Inc.," says Afshin Molavi, the Iranian-American author of "Persian Pilgrimages." Between 30% and 50% of Iran's economy is controlled by the bunyad, so-called "Revolutionary Foundations" run by key regime figures answerable only to Mr. Khamenei. Hard-line Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, considered to be Mr. Ahmadinejad's spiritual mentor, controls the sugar monopoly, while former President Ali Rafsanjani is said to be the richest man in the country.

Since Mr. Ahmadinejad came to power, these ayatollah-oligarchs have been running for financial cover: Capital outflows from Iran surpassed the $200 billion mark in the past year alone. Much of that money has made its way to banks in the United Arab Emirates, many of which have correspondent banks in the U.S. "We are preventing financial transactions going to the Palestinian Authority because banks are scared they'll be hit by U.S. terrorism-financing laws," says a source who closely tracks the Iranian economy. "Why can't we do the same thing with Iran?"

• Support an independent labor movement. On May Day, 10,000 workers took to Tehran's streets to demand the resignation of Iran's labor minister. And despite last year's $60 billion oil-revenue bonanza, the Iranian government routinely fails to pay its civil servants, leading to chronic, spontaneous work stoppages.

Workers' rights got a boost in January when Tehran's bus drivers went on strike to demand the release of their imprisoned and tortured leader Mansour Ossanloo. In a state that bans independent labor unions, the strike was an unprecedented event, calling to mind the 1980 Gdansk dock strike that became Poland's Solidarity movement. That movement succeeded largely thanks to the support of Lane Kirkland's AFL-CIO, which in turn received funding from the National Endowment for Democracy. The same model needs to be energetically applied to Iran today.

"The neat thing about the labor movement is that wherever it goes, it's welcomed," says a source familiar with Iranian workers' groups. "It actually makes America look good."

• Threaten Iran's gasoline supply. Iran is often said to have an oil weapon pointed at George Bush's head. Rob Andrews, a Democratic congressman from New Jersey, notes the reverse is closer to the truth: Because Iran lacks refining capacity, it must import 40% of its gasoline. Of that amount, fully 60% is handled by a single company, Rotterdam-based Vitol, which has strategic storage and blending facilities in the UAE. The regime also spends $3 billion a year to subsidize below-market gas prices.

---

With Illinois Republican Mark Kirk, Mr. Andrews has introduced legislation calling for the quarantine of gasoline imports should Iran continue to flout Security Council resolutions. "If gas prices were to soar in Iran," he says, "the regime would be destabilized, the possibility of internal change would increase and the regime would find a way to back away from the precipice."

One objection: A gas quarantine may require the naval blockade of Iranian ports, which is legally tantamount to an act of war. Not a problem, says Mr. Andrews: "I think the development of a nuclear weapon in violation of an international treaty is an act of war, too."

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

The once and future Holocaust

Charles Krauthammer has a compelling editorial up at the Washington Post about the very real potential for genocide being visited upon Israel. While the world stands by and watches. Again.

The establishment of Israel was a Jewish declaration to a world that had allowed the Holocaust to happen -- after Hitler had made his intentions perfectly clear -- that the Jews would henceforth resort to self-protection and self-reliance. And so they have, building a Jewish army, the first in 2,000 years, that prevailed in three great wars of survival (1948-49, 1967 and 1973).

But in a cruel historical irony, doing so required concentration -- putting all the eggs back in one basket, a tiny territory hard by the Mediterranean, eight miles wide at its waist. A tempting target for those who would finish Hitler's work.

Go read the whole article.

Illegals?

John Leo does a good job of describing several largely unpublicized aspects of the illegal immigration crisis we find ourselves in. Here's an excerpt (emphasis mine):

Editorialists seem to discuss the illegals mostly in terms of compassion and the impossibility of deporting the 11 million already here. But the core of the problem is that illegal entry is a never-ending process. An amnesty-light compromise in Washington is unlikely to do much more about this than the allegedly tough amnesty-light program of 1986. In a poll last August, about 40 percent of adults surveyed in Mexico said they would like to move to the United States. If so, there would be another 28 million people. Mexico has a high birthrate, a broken political culture and a government determined to dump its poor on the United States. It even publishes a comic book showing illegals how to avoid the U.S. border patrol.

And there's more. Highly recommended.

Good neighbors

It seems that the threat of civil war in Iraq has motivated some of its neighbors into trying to help avert one.

April 13, 2006: The rising threat of a sectarian civil war appears to be helping to avert one. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and some other nations bordering Iraq are increasing measures to curb extremist support in Iraq, and are curbing assistance to groups responsible for actions that are feeding sectarian tensions. Apparently leaders in these countries have decided that an Iraqi civil war along sectarian lines will inevitably spill over onto their soil, as large numbers of refugees flee the fighting, while their own citizens become radicalized in support of co-religionists in Iraq, both events possibly fueling internal disorders. There are a lot of Shia Arabs in places like Saudi Arabia, Syria and Kuwait. Most of these Shia Arabs live near the Saudi and Kuwaiti oil fields. It has always been, at least since the oil was discovered, the policy of both nations, to keep their Shia happy, or at least quiet.

Meanwhile, Iraq is also serving as an experiment on how to create an Arab economy that will flourish. Since World War II, the Arab world has lagged the rest of the planet in economic growth. For example, 300 million Arabs, and all that oil, generate less economic activity than Spain, and its population of 40 million. The main problem has been bad government. Too many dictators, and too much government restrictions on the economy. Too much corruption and waste. Even higher oil prices don't help, as it simply provides more money to be wasted on consumption, rather than business investment.

One of the things that has been changed in Iraq is the way the economy is regulated. Since Saddam was tossed out in 2003, the economy has been governed by Western rules. As a result, GDP per capita doubled by the end of 2005, and the GDP is expected to grow another 49 percent by 2008. All this despite continued attacks by Sunni Arab rebels on oil facilities and other economic targets. It's much easier to start a business in Iraq now, even though there's still a lot of corruption. The big change is that now the corruption is illegal, and there is even progress in prosecuting the government officials who take bribes or try to shake down businessmen. Lebanon is the only other Arab state to run its economy in a Western fashion, and they have thrived. However, Lebanon also interrupted their success story with a fifteen year (1975-90) civil war. Iraqis are well aware of that, and have no illusions about what happens if everyone does not get along. Another thing haunting Iraqis is the most successful economy in the region; Israel. This is also the country most like the economically successful Western states. Iraqis can't really talk about it openly, but the "Israeli Model" is discussed. A real democracy, peace at home, a flourishing economy, a powerful military, and nuclear weapons. Well, no one said it was a perfect model for Iraq.

[Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit.]

The immigration equation

Darleen, ovr at Darleen's Place does a good job of discussing the immigration problem that we find ourselves in. She has some pertinent experiences that color her thinking (the right color, I think):

I can't necessarily blame even these illegals for coming here. An almost hopelessly corrupt and arrogant Mexican government has practically driven them over the border in order to have an ever increasing cash flow back into their pockets. This is where I hold American employers of illegals much more culpable in the equation.

I will confess that some of my passion on this subject is driven by what I have grown up with and what I witness working within the judicial system. Add to that what my daughter in emergency medical services in an area with a large percentage of illegals shares with me.

Highly recommended.

Genocide in the Sudan

And a call to action by a man who knows what genocide really looks like.

It's in the extended entry -- and it's not a pleasant subject, either.

Darfur
In Sudan, the world ignores Rwanda's lessons.

BY PAUL RUSESABAGINA
Sunday, April 9, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

History shows us that genocides can happen only if four important conditions are in place. There must be the cover of a war. Ethnic grievances must be manipulated and exaggerated. Ordinary citizens must be deputized by their government to become executioners. And the rest of the world must be persuaded to look away and do nothing. This last is the most shameful of all, especially so because genocide is happening again right now in the Darfur region of Sudan, and the world community has done precious little to stop the killings.

What is happening in Darfur is exactly what happened in my home country of Rwanda, which was left to choke on its own blood from April to July of 1994.

The United Nations took virtually no action during the genocide. A detachment of well-equipped peacekeepers, made up of less than one-twentieth of the American troops now stationed in Iraq, could have easily stopped the killings without risk and sent the powerful message that the world would no longer tolerate mass murders of civilians, a real expression of the phrase "Never Again." But this simple act was deemed, then and now, to be somehow beyond the power of the United Nations, the United States, NATO, the European community and everybody else with the real power to stop another holocaust.

---

There are now about 7,000 soldiers from the African Union stationed in Sudan, which is mostly an exercise in public relations. They lack helicopters, jeeps and firepower. More importantly, they lack a sense of purpose. There are no clear rules of engagement and many of the soldiers appear more interested in collecting their per diem payments than inserting themselves between the government-backed Janjaweed militia and their victims in the farming villages. The African Union recently said it will stay into September, and a handover to the United Nations may take place at that point. By that time, the genocide will have lasted for three years with a likely half-million dead, or more.

To be sure, part of the debate involves the fear of an Iraqi-style campaign of insurgence against any humanitarian or peacekeeping force deemed "too Western" by the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed thugs. But we should not let ourselves be cowed by these threats. Will we allow murderers to intimidate us away from doing the right thing and saving lives?

Historically, I am sorry to say, the answer has been "yes." When modern genocide has loomed, the United Nations has shown more concern for not offending the sovereignty of one of its member nations, even as monstrosities take place within its borders. Yet "national sovereignty" is often a euphemism for the pride of dictators. Darfur is just such a case. The world cannot afford this kind of appeasement any longer.

---

The real lesson here is that the United Nations is in need of not only reform but also a basic rethinking of its peacekeeping philosophy. World governments must agree that the extinction of a race is a crime worth stopping at any cost, and back up this sentiment with action. And the U.N. Security Council must create a tool that it has lacked for far too long--a small multinational "rapid response" force which can quickly airlift tanks, jeeps, helicopters and troops to spots where the evidence of genocide is overwhelming.

Such a force would not require endless dickering, delicacy and will-testing; it should be made up of no more than 10,000 troops and deployed only in extreme situations, because its real power is not in its gun barrels--it is in the message to genocidal regimes that the world will refuse to overlook atrocities. This would have stopped the Rwanda tragedy from happening, probably without a shot being fired. It could now stop Darfur from getting worse, with similar ease.

History offers us another lesson about genocides: The apologies, recriminations and resolutions of Never Again usually begin after the genocide is safely finished and it becomes safe once more to mourn the lack of action. That should not happen this time. The proposed extinction of an entire race should now be considered an override clause to the rule of national sovereignty. Rwanda is over and everybody mourns it comfortably. We ought not to wait until Darfur is over to start saying Never Again yet again.

Mr. Rusesabagina is the author, with Tom Zoellner, of "An Ordinary Man," published this week by Viking. The film "Hotel Rwanda," was based on his personal story as a hotel manager who saved the lives of numerous Tutsis by offering them refuge in the Hotel Milles Collines in Kigali, Rwanda. A recipient of the National Civil Rights Museum's 2005 Freedom Award, he lives in Brussels.

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

Health care reform

Mitt Romney, Governor of Massachusetts, has a column up at OpinionJournal about Massachusetts new approach to health care. Here's how it starts:

Only weeks after I was elected governor, Tom Stemberg, the founder and former CEO of Staples, stopped by my office. He told me, "If you really want to help people, find a way to get everyone health insurance." I replied that would mean raising taxes and a Clinton-style government takeover of health care. He insisted: "You can find a way."

I believe that we have. Every uninsured citizen in Massachusetts will soon have affordable health insurance and the costs of health care will be reduced. And we will need no new taxes, no employer mandate and no government takeover to make this happen.

It sounds intriguing, to say the least. And it can be adapted to meet other states' needs, as well.

I've reprinted the article in the extended entry.

Health Care for Everyone?
We've found a way.

BY MITT ROMNEY
Tuesday, April 11, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

BOSTON--Only weeks after I was elected governor, Tom Stemberg, the founder and former CEO of Staples, stopped by my office. He told me, "If you really want to help people, find a way to get everyone health insurance." I replied that would mean raising taxes and a Clinton-style government takeover of health care. He insisted: "You can find a way."

I believe that we have. Every uninsured citizen in Massachusetts will soon have affordable health insurance and the costs of health care will be reduced. And we will need no new taxes, no employer mandate and no government takeover to make this happen.

---

When I took up Tom's challenge, I assembled a team from business, academia and government and asked them first to find out who was uninsured, and why. What they found was surprising. Some 20% of the state's uninsured population qualified for Medicaid but had never signed up. So we built and installed an Internet portal for our hospitals and clinics: When uninsured individuals show up for treatment, we enter their data online. If they qualify for Medicaid, they're enrolled.

Another 40% of the uninsured were earning enough to buy insurance but had chosen not to do so. Why? Because it is expensive, and because they know that if they become seriously ill, they will get free or subsidized treatment at the hospital. By law, emergency care cannot be withheld. Why pay for something you can get free?

Of course, while it may be free for them, everyone else ends up paying the bill, either in higher insurance premiums or taxes. The solution we came up with was to make private health insurance much more affordable. Insurance reforms now permit policies with higher deductibles, higher copayments, coinsurance, provider networks and fewer mandated benefits like in vitro fertilization--and our insurers have committed to offer products nearly 50% less expensive. With private insurance finally affordable, I proposed that everyone must either purchase a product of their choice or demonstrate that they can pay for their own health care. It's a personal responsibility principle.

Some of my libertarian friends balk at what looks like an individual mandate. But remember, someone has to pay for the health care that must, by law, be provided: Either the individual pays or the taxpayers pay. A free ride on government is not libertarian.

Another group of uninsured citizens in Massachusetts consisted of working people who make too much to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to afford health-care insurance. Here the answer is to provide a subsidy so they can purchase a private policy. The premium is based on ability to pay: One pays a higher amount, along a sliding scale, as one's income is higher. The big question we faced, however, was where the money for the subsidy would come from. We didn't want higher taxes; but we did have about $1 billion already in the system through a long-established uninsured-care fund that partially reimburses hospitals for free care. The fund is raised through an annual assessment on insurance providers and hospitals, plus contributions from the state and federal governments.

To determine if the $1 billion would be enough, Jonathan Gruber of MIT built an econometric model of the population, and with input from insurers, my in-house team crunched the numbers. Again, the result surprised us: We needed far less than the $1 billion for the subsidies. One reason is that this population is healthier than we had imagined. Instead of single parents, most were young single males, educated and in good health. And again, because health insurance will now be affordable and subsidized, we insist that everyone purchase health insurance from one of our private insurance companies.

And so, all Massachusetts citizens will have health insurance. It's a goal Democrats and Republicans share, and it has been achieved by a bipartisan effort, through market reforms.

We have received some helpful enhancements. The Heritage Foundation helped craft a mechanism, a "connector," allowing citizens to purchase health insurance with pretax dollars, even if their employer makes no contribution. The connector enables pretax payments, simplifies payroll deduction, permits prorated employer contributions for part-time employees, reduces insurer marketing costs, and makes it efficient for policies to be entirely portable. Because small businesses may use the connector, it gives them even greater bargaining power than large companies. Finally, health insurance is on a level playing field.

Two other features of the plan reduce the rate of health-care inflation. Medical transparency provisions will allow consumers to compare the quality, track record and cost of hospitals and providers; given deductibles and coinsurance, these consumers will have the incentive and the information for market forces to influence behavior. Also, electronic health records are in the works, which will reduce medical errors and lower costs.

---

My Democratic counterparts have added an annual $295 per-person fee charged to employers that do not contribute toward insurance premiums for any of their employees. The fee is unnecessary and probably counterproductive, and so I will take corrective action.

How much of our health-care plan applies to other states? A lot. Instead of thinking that the best way to cover the uninsured is by expanding Medicaid, they can instead reform insurance.

Will it work? I'm optimistic, but time will tell. A great deal will depend on the people who implement the program. Legislative adjustments will surely be needed along the way. One great thing about federalism is that states can innovate, demonstrate and incorporate ideas from one another. Other states will learn from our experience and improve on what we've done. That's the way we'll make health care work for everyone.

Mr. Romney is governor of Massachusetts.

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

Immigration done right

Charles Krauthammer has an op-ed up at washingtonpost.com that outlines a good two-step approach to immigration reform.

This is no time for mushy compromise. A solution requires two acts of national will: the ugly act of putting up a fence and the supremely generous act of absorbing as ultimately full citizens those who broke our laws to come to America.

It's really very simple, so why can't our representatives in Washington get it right?

More on immigration

Alan Reynolds, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, makes some good points in this op-ed about the need for understanding the facts concerning immigration reform.

It is almost impossible for foreigners without close relatives here to work here if they are not refugees or asylum-seekers, unless they marry a U.S. citizen or win the diversity lottery. The English, Irish, Scots and Canadians needn't bother with the lottery -- their language is insufficiently diverse. Immigration reform will never be reform until such capricious criteria are replaced by employability, English language testing by U.S. schools and serious immigration fees (to separate sincere applicants from the frivolous).

Recommended.

What are our priorities?

From Wednesday's Miami Herald: Unsecure ports of entry

While Congress was engaged in the hysterical debate over foreign ownership of U.S. ports, something much more dangerous was taking place in America's vulnerable ports of entry. As disclosed yesterday at a congressional hearing, federal investigators were able to smuggle enough radioactive material into the United States last year to make two dirty bombs.

Go read the rest.

Pointed questions

Investors.com has a good op-ed up that asks pointed questions of Islamic followers and their apologists.

In the wake of the cartoon jihad and mosque-on-mosque violence in Iraq, most Americans now think Islam has more violent believers than any other faith. Yet many still view it as a "peaceful religion."

Psychologists might call this cognitive dissonance -- a state of mind where rational people essentially lie to themselves. But in this case, it's understandable. In our politically correct culture, criticizing any religion, even one that plots our destruction, is still taboo. And no one wants to suggest the terrorists are driven by their holy text.

Food for thought.

Immigration reform

Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor of California, has some things to say about what is now needed for immigration reform. Here's a taste:

. . . immigration is about our values. Too often the debate centers on what immigrants owe us. Too seldom do we ask what we owe them. Above all, we owe it to our country and our immigrants to share our values. We should talk about our history, our institutions and our beliefs. We should assimilate immigrants into the mainstream. We want immigrants to not just live in America but to live as Americans.

He knows a thing or two about immigration. Recommended.

Apologies

I apologize for not blogging since I returned home this week. I unknowingly brought something nasty, an intestinal virus, home from Louisiana and then shared it with my family. We're all doing better now, but it was an unpleasant couple of days.

Hey, at least it's Friday . . .

America's heritage

Peggy Noonan does an admirable job of putting into words the idea that Americans are in danger of losing their unique heritage -- because of our flagging patriotism. Here is part of her conclusion:

When you don't love something you lose it. If we do not teach new Americans to love their country, and not for braying or nationalistic reasons but for reasons of honest and thoughtful appreciation, and gratitude, for a history that is something new in the long story of man, then we will begin to lose it.

It is well worth your time to read this.

I've reprinted the rest in the extended entry.

Patriots, Then and Now
With nations as with people, love them or lose them.

Thursday, March 30, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

I had a great experience the other night. I met some of the 114 living recipients of the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military award. It was at their annual dinner, held, as it has been the past four years, at the New York Stock Exchange.

I met Nick Oresko. Nick is in his 80s, small, 5-foot-5 or so. Soft white hair, pale-pink skin, thick torso, walks with a cane. Just a nice old guy you'd pass on the street or in the airport without really seeing him. Around his neck was a sky-blue ribbon, and hanging from that ribbon the medal. He let me turn it over. It had his name, his rank, and then "1/23/45. Near Tettington, Germany."

Tettington, Germany. The Battle of the Bulge.

When I got home I looked up his citation on my beloved Internet, where you can Google heroism. U.S. Army Master Sgt. Nicholas Oresko of Company C, 302nd Infantry, 94th Infantry Division was a platoon leader in an attack against strong enemy positions:

Deadly automatic fire from the flanks pinned down his unit. Realizing that a machinegun in a nearby bunker must be eliminated, he swiftly worked ahead alone, braving bullets which struck about him, until close enough to throw a grenade into the German position. He rushed the bunker and, with pointblank rifle fire, killed all the hostile occupants who survived the grenade blast. Another machinegun opened up on him, knocking him down and seriously wounding him in the hip. Refusing to withdraw from the battle, he placed himself at the head of his platoon to continue the assault. As withering machinegun and rifle fire swept the area, he struck out alone in advance of his men to a second bunker. With a grenade, he crippled the dug-in machinegun defending this position and then wiped out the troops manning it with his rifle, completing his second self-imposed, 1-man attack. Although weak from loss of blood, he refused to be evacuated until assured the mission was successfully accomplished. Through quick thinking, indomitable courage, and unswerving devotion to the attack in the face of bitter resistance and while wounded, M /Sgt. Oresko killed 12 Germans, prevented a delay in the assault, and made it possible for Company C to obtain its objective with minimum casualties.

Nick Oresko lives in Tenafly, N.J. If courage were a bright light, Tenafly would glow.

---

I met Pat Brady of Sumner, Wash., an Army helicopter medevac pilot in Vietnam who'd repeatedly risked his life to save men he'd never met. And Sammy Davis, a big bluff blond from Flat Rock, Ill., on whom the writer Winston Groom based the Vietnam experiences of a character named Forrest Gump. Sgt. Davis saved men like Forrest, but he also took out a bunch of bad guys. And yes, he was wounded in the same way as Forrest. That scene in the movie where Lyndon Johnson puts the medal around Tom Hanks's neck: that's from the film of LBJ putting the medal on Sammy's neck, only they superimposed Mr. Hanks.

I talked to James Livingston of Mount Pleasant, S.C., a Marine, a warrior in Vietnam who led in battle in spite of bad wounds and worse odds. I told him I was wondering about something. Most of us try to be brave each day in whatever circumstances, which means most of us show ourselves our courage with time. What is it like, I asked, to find out when you're a young man, and in a way that's irrefutable, that you are brave? What does it do to your life when no one, including you, will ever question whether you have guts?

He shook his head. The medal didn't prove courage, he said. "It's not bravery, it's taking responsibility." Each of the recipients, he said, had taken responsibility for the men and the moment at a tense and demanding time. They'd cared for others. They took care of their men.

Other recipients sounded a refrain that lingered like Taps. They felt they'd been awarded their great honor in part in the name of unknown heroes of the armed forces who'd performed spectacular acts of courage but had died along with all the witnesses who would have told the story of what they did. For each of the holders of the Medal of Honor there had been witnesses, survivors who could testify. For some great heroes of engagements large and small, maybe the greatest heroes, no one lived to tell the tale.

And so they felt they wore their medals in part for the ones known only to God.

In a brief film on the recipients that was played at the dinner, Leo Thorsness, an Air Force veteran of Vietnam, said something that lingered. He was asked what, when he performed his great act, he was sacrificing for. He couldn't answer for a few seconds. You could tell he was searching for the right words, the right sentence. Then he said, "I get emotional about it. But we're a free country." He said it with a kind of wonder, and gratitude.

And of course, he said it all.

---

What this all got me thinking about, the next day, was . . . immigration. I know that seems a lurch, but there's a part of the debate that isn't sufficiently noted. There are a variety of things driving American anxiety about illegal immigration and we all know them--economic arguments, the danger of porous borders in the age of terrorism, with anyone able to come in.

But there's another thing. And it's not fear about "them." It's anxiety about us.

It's the broad public knowledge, or intuition, in America, that we are not assimilating our immigrants patriotically. And if you don't do that, you'll lose it all.

We used to do it. We loved our country with full-throated love, we had no ambivalence. We had pride and appreciation. We were a free country. We communicated our pride and delight in this in a million ways--in our schools, our movies, our popular songs, our newspapers. It was just there, in the air. Immigrants breathed it in. That's how the last great wave of immigrants, the European wave of 1880-1920, was turned into a great wave of Americans.

We are not assimilating our immigrants patriotically now. We are assimilating them culturally. Within a generation their children speak Valley Girl on cell phones. "So I'm like 'no," and he's all 'yeah,' and I'm like, 'In your dreams.' " Whether their parents are from Trinidad, Bosnia, Lebanon or Chile, their children, once Americans, know the same music, the same references, watch the same shows. And to a degree and in a way it will hold them together. But not forever and not in a crunch.

So far we are assimilating our immigrants economically, too. They come here and work. Good.

But we are not communicating love of country. We are not giving them the great legend of our country. We are losing that great legend.

What is the legend, the myth? That God made this a special place. That they're joining something special. That the streets are paved with more than gold--they're paved with the greatest thoughts man ever had, the greatest decisions he ever made, about how to live. We have free thought, free speech, freedom of worship. Look at the literature of the Republic: the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Federalist papers. Look at the great rich history, the courage and sacrifice, the house-raisings, the stubbornness. The Puritans, the Indians, the City on a Hill.

The genius cluster--Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, Madison, Franklin, all the rest--that came along at the exact same moment to lead us. And then Washington, a great man in the greatest way, not in unearned gifts well used (i.e., a high IQ followed by high attainment) but in character, in moral nature effortfully developed. How did that happen? How did we get so lucky? (I once asked a great historian if he had thoughts on this, and he nodded. He said he had come to believe it was "providential.")

We fought a war to free slaves. We sent millions of white men to battle and destroyed a portion of our nation to free millions of black men. What kind of nation does this? We went to Europe, fought, died and won, and then taxed ourselves to save our enemies with the Marshall Plan. What kind of nation does this? Soviet communism stalked the world and we were the ones who steeled ourselves and taxed ourselves to stop it. Again: What kind of nation does this?

Only a very great one. Maybe the greatest of all.

Do we teach our immigrants that this is what they're joining? That this is the tradition they will now continue, and uphold?

Do we, today, act as if this is such a special place? No, not always, not even often. American exceptionalism is so yesterday. We don't want to be impolite. We don't want to offend. We don't want to seem narrow. In the age of globalism, honest patriotism seems like a faux pas.

And yet what is true of people is probably true of nations: if you don't have a well-grounded respect for yourself, you won't long sustain a well-grounded respect for others.

---

Because we do not communicate to our immigrants, legal and illegal, that they have joined something special, some of them, understandably, get the impression they've joined not a great enterprise but a big box store. A big box store on the highway where you can get anything cheap. It's a good place. But it has no legends, no meaning, and it imparts no spirit.

Who is at fault? Those of us who let the myth die, or let it change, or refused to let it be told. The politically correct nitwit teaching the seventh-grade history class who decides the impressionable young minds before him need to be informed, as their first serious history lesson, that the Founders were hypocrites, the Bill of Rights nothing new and imperfect in any case, that the Indians were victims of genocide, that Lincoln was a clinically depressed homosexual who compensated for the storms within by creating storms without . . .

You can turn any history into mud. You can turn great men and women into mud too, if you want to.

And it's not just the nitwits, wherever they are, in the schools, the academy, the media, though they're all harmful enough. It's also the people who mean to be honestly and legitimately critical, to provide a new look at the old text. They're not noticing that the old text--the legend, the myth--isn't being taught anymore. Only the commentary is. But if all the commentary is doubting and critical, how will our kids know what to love and revere? How will they know how to balance criticism if they've never heard the positive side of the argument?

Those who teach, and who think for a living about American history, need to be told: Keep the text, teach the text, and only then, if you must, deconstruct the text.

When you don't love something you lose it. If we do not teach new Americans to love their country, and not for braying or nationalistic reasons but for reasons of honest and thoughtful appreciation, and gratitude, for a history that is something new in the long story of man, then we will begin to lose it. That Medal of Honor winner, Leo Thorsness, who couldn't quite find the words--he only found it hard to put everything into words because he knew the story, the legend, and knew it so well. Only then do you become "emotional about it." Only then are you truly American.

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 Thursdays.

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

Well thought out and well stated.

I'm back

I'm back from Sulphur, LA. I've got a lot of catching up to do around the homestead, so please excuse the light blogging for a couple of days, or so. I also did a poor job of taking pictures -- I ended up working most of the time, and didn't have the time I thought I might to take pictures.

I'll post a few of those that I did take in the next day or two.

Storm recovery work team

I will not be blogging, for a few days, because this morning I embark with eight other rugged individuals to an area near Lake Charles, Louisiana, where we will be doing volunteer work helping the residents recover from hurricanes Katrina and Rita. We are the "primarily-unskilled-but-willing-to-work-with-strong-backs-team". Heh. We will be returning Monday evening.

I am taking a camera and intend to take a lot of pictures. I will post some of them upon my return.

Presidential press conference

Talk about a class act.

Civil war

No, not in Iraq . . . in Gaza:

Eyewitnesses said most of those wounded in Monday's fighting in the Gaza Strip were policemen who tried to prevent Fatah gunmen from taking over government buildings and security installations. The two sides exchanged gunfire for several hours in scenes that many Palestinians said were reminiscent of the civil war in Lebanon in the 1970s.

'Jason McElwain and respect for life'

Chuck Colson has a good op-ed about how the West, in general, fails to respect life.

No matter which side of this issue you find yourself, this is worth reading.

NOLA breach redux

Yet again, it seems as if news is being created by our journalistic brethren. This time it is a rehash of the Fed's understanding of the potential severity of flooding in New Orleans as a result of Hurricane Katrina. Ed Morrisey does a good job of showing that the news media is working very hard to make the Bush administration look bad. No surprises there.

Here is Mr. Morrissey's conclusion:

The media got it wrong yet again on Katrina. The notion that the experts warned of levee breaches is nothing more than a hack job initiated by the AP and continued by the rest of the Exempt Media even after the source material has proven it false.

Go read the well-researched arguments that lead to this conclusion.

More on the WMD question

It turns out that Saddam Hussein liked to record conversations that took place in his office. Evidently, a whole slew of these tapes were captured during the U.S. invasion of Iraq. CNN has published an article that reports on the content of some of Saddam's tapes wherein he and his senior aides discuss deceiving the U.N. WMD inspectors -- among other things. Here's a taste:

Hussein also can be heard speaking with high-ranking Iraqi officials about deceiving United Nations inspectors looking into Iraq's weapons program, which his son-in-law, Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel, oversaw.

Recommended reading.

I share Sarah's puzzlement about why this story has not gotten more press. After all, it is evidence that the U.S. intel on Iraqi WMDs prior to the invasion was not far off. So why is it not being presented with as much fervor as the "Bush lied" meme? Especially since it supports the assertion that Bush did NOT, in fact, lie.

Oh . . . maybe that is why. . .

Shrine bombing aftermath

Jack Kelly, over at Irish Pennants has an excellent commentary up about the Iraqis' refusal to participate in a civil war.

Those danged Iraqis. They continue to disappoint by failing to be disappointing. Could it be that most of them value freedom, democracy and peace as much as white Christians do?

Highly recommended.

Iraqi civil war?

Ralph Peters gives a first-person account of the conditions in Baghdad at the New York Post Online website. Contrary to many mainstream media reports, here is what he observed:

I FLEW over the streets of this city on Sunday. The calm made a striking contrast to the media hysteria. No mosques burned. No demonstrations seethed. The closest thing I saw to violence was a children's soccer game played in a suburb.

Baghdad isn't Candyland, of course. We skimmed the city at 300 feet — combat altitude — with the Blackhawk's guns up.

But it sure wasn't civil war. For now, at least, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his blood-cult terrorists haven't succeeded in pitting Sunni against Shia.

Go read the rest.

Welfare begets violence?

Dr. Helen, also known affectionately as the Instawife, is a psychologist who has recently posted about the fallacy of appeasement. Or 'How To Get A Bigger Welfare Check'. She starts with:

You would think that governments as well as people in general would understand that appeasing and rewarding negative behavior doesn't work. It's basic psychology 101--but one that not even most psychology professors understand or put to use. And apparently, this concept is foreign to many of the politically correct persuasion outside the classroom as well--for them, their feeling of moral "superiority" trumps human nature and causes liberals to turn a blind eye to justice and acts of violence.

Go read the rest. I recommend it.

Bonfire of the Pieties

Author Amir Taheri has an informative op-ed over at OpinionJournal about how Islam prohibits neither images of Mohammed nor humor about religion.

I think you'll be surprised at how many examples Mr. Taheri has of both. Recommended reading.

I've reprinted it in the extended entry.

Bonfire of the Pieties
Islam prohibits neither images of Muhammad nor jokes about religion.

BY AMIR TAHERI
Wednesday, February 8, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

"The Muslim Fury," one newspaper headline screamed. "The Rage of Islam Sweeps Europe," said another. "The clash of civilizations is coming," warned one commentator. All this refers to the row provoked by the publication of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper four months ago. Since then a number of demonstrations have been held, mostly--though not exclusively--in the West, and Scandinavian embassies and consulates have been besieged.

But how representative of Islam are all those demonstrators? The "rage machine" was set in motion when the Muslim Brotherhood--a political, not a religious, organization--called on sympathizers in the Middle East and Europe to take the field. A fatwa was issued by Yussuf al-Qaradawi, a Brotherhood sheikh with his own program on al-Jazeera. Not to be left behind, the Brotherhood's rivals, Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islami (Islamic Liberation Party) and the Movement of the Exiles (Ghuraba), joined the fray. Believing that there might be something in it for themselves, the Syrian Baathist leaders abandoned their party's 60-year-old secular pretensions and organized attacks on the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus and Beirut.

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The Muslim Brotherhood's position, put by one of its younger militants, Tariq Ramadan--who is, strangely enough, also an adviser to the British home secretary--can be summed up as follows: It is against Islamic principles to represent by imagery not only Muhammad but all the prophets of Islam; and the Muslim world is not used to laughing at religion. Both claims, however, are false.

There is no Quranic injunction against images, whether of Muhammad or anyone else. When it spread into the Levant, Islam came into contact with a version of Christianity that was militantly iconoclastic. As a result some Muslim theologians, at a time when Islam still had an organic theology, issued "fatwas" against any depiction of the Godhead. That position was further buttressed by the fact that Islam acknowledges the Jewish Ten Commandments--which include a ban on depicting God--as part of its heritage. The issue has never been decided one way or another, and the claim that a ban on images is "an absolute principle of Islam" is purely political. Islam has only one absolute principle: the Oneness of God. Trying to invent other absolutes is, from the point of view of Islamic theology, nothing but sherk, i.e., the bestowal on the Many of the attributes of the One.

The claim that the ban on depicting Muhammad and other prophets is an absolute principle of Islam is also refuted by history. Many portraits of Muhammad have been drawn by Muslim artists, often commissioned by Muslim rulers. There is no space here to provide an exhaustive list, but these are some of the most famous:

A miniature by Sultan Muhammad-Nur Bokharai, showing Muhammad riding Buraq, a horse with the face of a beautiful woman, on his way to Jerusalem for his M'eraj or nocturnal journey to Heavens (16th century); a painting showing Archangel Gabriel guiding Muhammad into Medina, the prophet's capital after he fled from Mecca (16th century); a portrait of Muhammad, his face covered with a mask, on a pulpit in Medina (16th century); an Isfahan miniature depicting the prophet with his favorite kitten, Hurairah (17th century); Kamaleddin Behzad's miniature showing Muhammad contemplating a rose produced by a drop of sweat that fell from his face (19th century); a painting, "Massacre of the Family of the Prophet," showing Muhammad watching as his grandson Hussain is put to death by the Umayyads in Karbala (19th century); a painting showing Muhammad and seven of his first followers (18th century); and Kamal ul-Mulk's portrait of Muhammad showing the prophet holding the Quran in one hand while with the index finger of the other hand he points to the Oneness of God (19th century).

Some of these can be seen in museums within the Muslim world, including the Topkapi in Istanbul, and in Bokhara and Samarkand, Uzbekistan, and Haroun-Walat, Iran (a suburb of Isfahan). Visitors to other museums, including some in Europe, would find miniatures and book illuminations depicting Muhammad, at times wearing his Meccan burqa (cover) or his Medinan niqab (mask). There have been few statues of Muhammad, although several Iranian and Arab contemporary sculptors have produced busts of the prophet. One statue of Muhammad can be seen at the building of the U.S. Supreme Court, where the prophet is honored as one of the great "lawgivers" of mankind.

There has been other imagery: the Janissaries--the elite of the Ottoman army--carried a medallion stamped with the prophet's head (sabz qaba). Their Persian Qizilbash rivals had their own icon, depicting the head of Ali, the prophet's son-in-law and the first Imam of Shiism. As for images of other prophets, they run into millions. Perhaps the most popular is Joseph, who is presented by the Quran as the most beautiful human being created by God.

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Now to the second claim, that the Muslim world is not used to laughing at religion. That is true if we restrict the Muslim world to the Brotherhood and its siblings in the Salafist movement, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and al Qaeda. But these are all political organizations masquerading as religious ones. They are not the sole representatives of Islam, just as the Nazi Party was not the sole representative of German culture. Their attempt at portraying Islam as a sullen culture that lacks a sense of humor is part of the same discourse that claims "suicide martyrdom" as the highest goal for all true believers.

The truth is that Islam has always had a sense of humor and has never called for chopping heads as the answer to satirists. Muhammad himself pardoned a famous Meccan poet who had lampooned him for more than a decade. Both Arabic and Persian literature, the two great literatures of Islam, are full of examples of "laughing at religion," at times to the point of irreverence. Again, offering an exhaustive list is not possible. But those familiar with Islam's literature know of Ubaid Zakani's "Mush va Gorbeh" (Mouse and Cat), a match for Rabelais when it comes to mocking religion. Sa'adi's eloquent soliloquy on behalf of Satan mocks the "dry pious ones." And Attar portrays a hypocritical sheikh who, having fallen into the Tigris, is choked by his enormous beard. Islamic satire reaches its heights in Rumi, where a shepherd conspires with God to pull a stunt on Moses; all three end up having a good laugh.

Islamic ethics is based on "limits and proportions," which means that the answer to an offensive cartoon is a cartoon, not the burning of embassies or the kidnapping of people designated as the enemy. Islam rejects guilt by association. Just as Muslims should not blame all Westerners for the poor taste of a cartoonist who wanted to be offensive, those horrified by the spectacle of rent-a-mob sackings of embassies in the name of Islam should not blame all Muslims for what is an outburst of fascist energy.

Mr. Taheri is the author of "L'Irak: Le Dessous Des Cartes" (Editions Complexe, 2002).

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