In a story on the American electorate, BBC's editorial ignorance allows an urban legend on its website yet again:
George Bush's father lost the 1992 election because he went to a supermarket and plainly had not the slightest idea of what people did in supermarkets.
If that were true it would be a bizarre stretch over something so trivial. But it is not true.
Wait, there's more:
But there is another lesson that might be added to the list: democracy is one heck of a mess.
Which is why Americans need to stop thinking of the United States as a democracy. Cox & Forkum recently blasted Bush (and most of the American population, I daresay) on the issue, quite rightly pointing to this explanation by Leonard Peikoff...
The American system is not a democracy. It is a constitutional republic. A democracy, if you attach meaning to terms, is a system of unlimited majority rule; the classic example is ancient Athens. And the symbol of it is the fate of Socrates, who was put to death legally, because the majority didn't like what he was saying, although he had initiated no force and had violated no one's rights.
Democracy, in short, is a form of collectivism, which denies the individual rights: the majority can do whatever it wants with no restrictions. In principle, the democratic government is all-powerful. Democracy is a totalitarian manifestation; it is not a form of freedom...
The American system is a constitutionally limited republic, restricted to the protection of individual rights. In such a system, majority rule is applicable only to lesser details, such as the selection of certain personnel. But the majority has no say over the basic principles governing the government. It has no power to ask for or gain the infringement of individual rights.
Please remember that.
Update: Instapundit links to two cases of further BBC-induced lunacy.
Sunday, October 31, 2004
Saturday, October 30, 2004
A New Name In Western Bias
Suggesting that BBC's anti-American bias is insufficient, Al Jazeera is starting an English-language channel. If their English-language website is anything to go by, the United States will finally host a major news channel more corrupt than CNN.
I would say "I don't know whether to laugh or cry," except there is probably time to do both. (Via Iraq the Model)
I would say "I don't know whether to laugh or cry," except there is probably time to do both. (Via Iraq the Model)
Screed: Kerry Lied, People Died
The most unthinking movement of the past two years is the Anybody But Bush crowd, those who would elect Charles Manson if that meant ousting Bush, and who would rather have a Harding, Grant, Hoover or Carter-style presidency with Kerry--with no relevance, benefit, or mandate for/by the people--than endure President Bush's mediocre but dedicated record.
Foremost among the complaints is the "Bush Lied, People Died" meme. Ignoring that this means Kerry/Edwards are just as guilty (both senators voted to invade, and Edwards called the threat of Saddam Hussein 'imminent,' a notion President Bush countered in his State of the Union address), it is true that we have a right to expect politicians to be perfectly truthful.
We also have a right to expect the nations of the world to come together, join hands, and live in peace and harmony forever. But tabulate not thy pre-partum fowl. A politician saying he is right and his opponent is wrong is a common occurrence, even though there are usually valid facts on both sides (in most American discourse, at least). Accusing a politician of over-selling his position is like ticketing Indianapolis 500 racers for reckless driving.
I expect politician to have strong character and reason. Other traits are negotiable. During the Blitz, Prime Minister Churchill and others made public shows of defiance by strolling outside at the height of bombing fears, never letting on that intercepted Nazi communications often enabled them to know when those walks were safe. They deceived the world. But would you argue it was an inappropriate deception? At the opposite end of the spectrum, what do we make of those anti-war leaders who were on Saddam's payroll?
President Bush ran a campaign that trashed the Democratic doctrine of interventionism and nation building, and for a while as president he edged the U.S. toward his promised isolationism. After September 11, 2001, Bush reassessed that doctrine. Regardless of whether one agrees with that reassessment, acting on new information is a legitimate and responsible act of civil service. His father did the same thing with "Read my lips: No new taxes!" Clinton did it. I cannot think of a politician that has not done it. Politics are fluid, and the most dependable situations can still change. Not only must we consider that politicians must sell policies, we must also consider that they are no better at predicting the future than us. What anyone says may be entirely valid at the time he says it, but not so much at a later date. So we are back to character and reason.
We can extend this to the Iraq War. If pre-war information was believed to be reliable, and Bush, Blair, Howard, etc., rationally concluded that invasion was an appropriate response to that information, then they are in the clear. One cannot prove or disprove the justification for an action after the fact. If I hear a window break, I make sure it is not because of a burglar or rabid animal; if it proves to be a stray baseball that does not mean I was unjustified in taking action because I thought it might be something else. The leaderships' understanding of information was either reasonable, or it wasn't. People can only act on what they know.
Likewise, I am fascinated by the number of people who believe justification hinges entirely on statements, resolutions, motives, or finds. We could say we invaded Iraq because we wanted to steal Saddam's collection of erotic art, and while that would speak poorly of our motives, it has zero relevance to whether the war was justified. It is fun to debate the politics, as I do regularly here, but the reality is that people, institutions, and governments frequently do the right thing for the wrong reasons. What someone says is not anywhere near as important as what they do, and in Bush's case any American downfall will likely have more to do with his reckless spending (he is a bit of a socialist in a capitalist's job, but here the Democrats promise to be even worse [Kerry will pilfer more money out of American pocketbooks so he can cover it, naturally]).
Another popular ad hominem attack is that America has not exactly been pure in its international relations, an argument that is undoubtedly true, but irrelevant to the former Iraqi regime breaking its mandatory acceptance of United Nations resolutions. Guantanamo Bay invariably pops up in discussion, although Camp 22 in North Korea speaks better for the failings of American foreign policy:
Witness from Gitmo: For two or three days I was confused, but later the Americans were so nice with me, they were giving me good food with fruit and water for ablutions before prayer.
Witness from Camp 22: I witnessed a whole family being tested on suffocating gas and dying in the gas chamber. The parents, a son, and a daughter. The parents were vomiting and dying, but till the very last moment they tried to save the kids by doing mouth-to-mouth breathing.
America confuses an inmate for a few days, feeds him too well, and then takes an insufferable amount of time to sort the details. Shameful legal maneuvering receives more press than ongoing weapons testing on families. And of all the prisons in Cuba, the one most unlike Castro's gulags--where cockroaches offer every prisoner company, show trials are the norm, and biological waste often ends up as bedding--completely dominates most discussions. Some people's priorities are screwed.
Yes, America once supported Saddam (though nowhere near as much as others) against Iran, much like America worked with Stalin against Germany. All the more reason America needed to atone for its past action by removing Saddam. Also consider America's relationships with numerous Latin American nations throughout the 1950s-80s, that mostly fall under the "oops!" category ('mostly' because some regime changes, like in Grenada and Nicaragua, really did lead to improvements), in an effort to undermine communism? For all of the differences, there is at least one key similarity between American support for Stalin, Saddam, as well as the criminals closer to home: All took actions against the more serious threats at the time. These alliances, even the Latin American fiascos, were based on a degree of altruism as well as national security. That America has a history of being more fearful of third-world leadership by middle-class industrialists than spoiled militarists is not the result of flaws in policy, but a repeated flaw in execution. In politics, it is unfortunately better to appear reckless than weak.
But using "you hypocrites!" logic one must concluded that nobody should do anything about anybody. We could just as easily ask about the brutal repression of civilian populations actively supported by the United Nations over the decades, right up to the present day, and conclude that the United Nations should stay out of the Israel-Palestine issue since it has done little of merit about Turkey's power plays in Cyprus, Russia's grab of Japanese islands, Lebanon being made into Syria's puppet, Britain's continued hold over Gibraltar, or France's not-too-distant annexation of what used to be Germany territory or even her truly unilateral intervention in the Ivory Coast. At least the U.S. never vouches for Syria to help keep the world safe from the likes of, well, Syria.
America, Britain and, yes, Australia are the only three countries with a military force capable of responding to major/multiple threats. Many nations cower simply because they have no fortitude to do otherwise, a vile few cast themselves as bystanders, while the rest would as soon cheer the equal distribution of oppression than any unequal distribution of freedom. These wafflers, these self-interested wimps, these moral equivocators are telling America (and others) to make the Genovese Syndrome foreign policy? I subscribe to the view that those who have the resources to make a difference, the spirit to reach out, and the humility necessary to understand that we live in a global community should act like it.
Americans kept to themselves many times before, as during the crisis in Rwanda, and always ended up lectured for not interfering. Likewise, whenever America pulls troops out of a place in response to shouts of "Yankee go home!" the slogan shortly thereafter, from many of the same people, is invariably "The Yankees abandoned us!" It does not matter what happens, it is always America's fault. This thinking extends to other arenas. Polls in England and France conclude that a major problem is that Americans are too religious, while polls in Mexico and Turkey conclude that a significant fault is that Americans are too secular. It doesn't matter what Americans actually believe, they simply must be wrong. Australians say the United States is taking advantage of their nation's resources, while South Africans want to know why the United States is not doing more to take advantage of their resources. It rarely matters how America lends support, for it is never the right support. There is no policy that will enable America to satisfy the world, and it is foolish for America to even try to find one. So let me propose that America stands for neither isolationism nor imperialism, but should pursue interventionism, as is consistent with her essential values:
We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness--That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed; that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.
America's liberation came because of interventionism, and most of America has not forgotten. We are our brothers' keepers. Ironically, the universal catechism of the Catholic Church states that free people have a moral obligation to liberate the oppressed. To that end, in no sense is a muted United States preferable to today's vocal one. The counter to America's loudness is not for opponents to call for her silence, but is instead for them to cease their own quiet tolerance of the intolerable. (And could someone explain to me why the Pope suddenly forgot his long-standing stance that the authority to decide whether a war is justified resides in a nation's authorities, for "it is not the role of the Pastors of the Church to intervene directly in the political structuring and organization of social life." I suspect the Church ignored its own position simply so it would not lose Tariq Aziz as one of its donors.)
Also consider how the first Gulf War never ended. If Saddam had done what the United Nations told him to do, then France (until they sold out), Great Britain and the United States would not have dropped bombs on Iraq every day for over 10 years to enforce the 'no-fly zones.' The fact that the war was already going on was a pretty good reason for taking the decisive actions the Coalition did to end it. That same action will be responsible for saving an estimated 565,000 Iraqi lives within four years, and the war itself received a touch of praise from the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and Human Rights Watch for efforts in avoiding civilian casualties and for removing "a government that preyed on the Iraqi people and committed shocking, systematic and criminal violations of human rights." Of course, this does not take into account the feelings of liberation, or ongoing commentary from Iraqi bloggers.
Saudi Arabia comes up a lot, too, despite her responding to pressure to reform. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on September 11, 2001 were Saudis, so it is pretty obvious that the House of Saud did not do all it could to stamp out terrorism in the kingdom. The Saudi flights a bit later also caused a fuss (see older but more detailed info here). Of course, the nationalities of the hijackers are only one factor relevant to confronting threats to national security. The majority of them also lived comfortably above the poverty line, had Western educations, and spent money on decidedly non-Islamic strip clubs and gambling, meaning they also fit the noticeable pattern of Islamic terror coming from middle-class, European-based weirdoes.
There are plenty of bad guys in the world. Removing them from circulation is a security goal worth perpetuating. But limited resources means prioritizing the order in which even the most appropriate actions must take place. Among the issues are which of these actions are most 'do-able', as well as those that offer the most benefits. Saudi Arabia is an American ally, but it has long turned a blind, or at least blurry, eye to terrorism (though the 9/11 Commission did clear Saudi Arabia of the most popular and dangerous accusation), but for the U.S. to put meaningful pressure on the House of Saud to crack down, a few things had to occur: First, a consolidation of forces outside Saudi Arabia, in this case by facilitating the removal of the S.A.-U.S.'s joint military deterrent against Iraq, subsequently reducing training personnel inside S.A., and placing a sizable military force nearby; second, if tensions flared, a large alternative source of oil would be needed to prevent economic collapse in those countries dependent on Saudi oil; finally, an example must be set of what happens when key security issues are insufficiently resolved, so as to dissuade all parties from inviting a deadlier conflict. Thus...
David Frum, one of the architects of the Bush Doctrine, notes that "the operation in Iraq was a tremendous success--and an indispensable prerequisite for what comes next. One crucial thing we must do is pressure Saudi Arabia to cut off the flow of funds from its citizens to terrorists. So long as the world's second-biggest oil producer was, in effect, an international outlaw, Saudi Arabia's ability to get away with a two-faced policy on terrorism was magnified. Iraq is now rejoining the international community. Soon its oil will be flowing. And Saudi Arabia will find itself much less immune to American pressure to cut off the terrorists' funds."
Barring the occasional deadly thrashing as we pull the sharks from the water, the Iraq war really is a success. Thanks to the Iraq intervention, considerably more light has been shed on the weapons programs in Libya and Pakistan and Iran and North Korea and... The Arab League finally condemned attacks within Israel's legal territories and called for democratic reform... The likes of Seif al-Islam Gadhafi and Hossein Khomeini endorse Bush's Middle East policy... We now know that individuals at the United Nations and the World Bank were making a sizable profit from letting Saddam Hussein starve children, and that the UN really is the Enron on the East River (and worse: "Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures: A True Story from Hell on Earth")... We now know that Iraq was bribing and blackmailing hundreds of major public personalities, and subsequently recognize that Russia and France are unparalleled in Western political corruption... We now know that several media organizations, including CNN, downplayed or outright ignored atrocities in exchange for access and exclusives with the Butchers of Baghdad... We now know that the suggestion that Saddam Hussein & Sons be pressured into exile so the United Nations could oversee bringing Iraq into compliance would have resolved all of the outstanding issues with little to no bloodshed, but was refused because populist obstructionism against the United States has more socio-political value than any genuine attempt at a pro-peace solution... And so we now know who our real friends are.
Plus, if this backfires, there is always Plan B.
As for the legality? Whether the Bush Administration's arguments for the Iraq War apply under Chapter VII, Article 51 of the United Nations Charter may be debatable, but all of the justifications are consistent with Chapter VII, Article 42 and the history of that article in relation to Iraq (e.g., Operation Desert Storm, the responses to the 1993 assassination attempt on President George H.W. Bush and Iraq's attempt to re-invade Kuwait in 1996, the no-fly zones, and Operation Desert Fox).
The United Nations is not a judicial or representative authority, but a bureaucracy; manned not by objective judges or moderated lawmakers, but by highly partisan diplomats. The organization approved things that were against international law, and rejected things accepted by international law. Its key value is that it provides a resource for multinational debate, such as in 1962 when the organization allowed the last two remaining superpowers a mechanism to sidestep an escalation to nuclear war. It gives smaller nations voice, and the controversial veto system prevents solutions like the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The organization is unparalleled in drawing up constitutions and other civil services. The United Nations can provide a hammer better than any other. But not every problem is a nail. And the United Nations means even less to France, Germany, Russia, et al., those countries that actively ignored and undermined the enforcement of international law in Iraq for 12 long years. As an Iraqi Foreign Minister succinctly put it: "[T]he Security Council was divided between those who wanted to appease Saddam Hussein and those who wanted to hold him accountable... The United Nations as an organization failed to help rescue the Iraqi people from a murderous tyranny that lasted over 35 years, and today we are unearthing thousands of victims in horrifying testament to that failure."
The French delegation in particular showed utter contempt for U.N. processes, allowing for no negotiation and thus, as promised would happen in such an event, finding itself deferring to an "ad hoc" Coalition supported by more countries than supported the liberation of the Kuwait, backed by four of the Group of Seven, backed by 11 of the 19 members of N.A.T.O., backed by 13 of the 25 members of the expanded European Union, and backed by all but one of the major Asia-Pacific economies. As for the U.N. itself, there was no U.N. resolution or action, not a statement from individuals or governments, condemning or attempting to bar the Iraq War. Countries can hardly defy the United Nations if the United Nations makes no legal attempt to restrain them. And since this may be unfair considering how the United States has veto power on the Security Council, please note that I would also consider a draft or General Assembly resolution for this exercise. But the opposition amounted to nothing more than a public relations campaign. It is no surprise that mainly opponents of the war are still profiting from Saddam's mass-grave playset.
As for the WMD themselves, see that and more here. Opponents of the intervention also claimed Iraq had WMD (the only real debate in the Security Council was whether an assertive Coalition was preferable to a lackadaisical Axis in verifying Saddam's disarmament), so we must not make the factual error of suggesting that Bush made his decision in a vacuum. And even though it is easy to pin the blame on him because he took controversial but solid steps to do something about it, one still might forgive Bush for thinking that the possibility of the lunatic dictator having these weapons qualified as A Very Bad Thing. The worst scenario is that the Iraq War is a justified mistake, in the same sense that a man confronted with a thief pointing a gun-like object at him is excused for concluding that it is a gun, saying that it is gun, and acting in response to such a threat. That it turns out to be a candy-bar is tragic but irrelevant to the logic of his response. Indeed, if the man thought it was a joke and was wrong, the situation could have been much worse.
The Bush Administration repeatedly emphasized that a reason for going into Iraq was to prevent Iraq from becoming an immediate threat, the logical extension of Winston Churchill's Gathering Storm policy, and a policy supported by recent events. They, at least, presented the war as a preventive strike (as well as a punitive strike and humanitarian intervention). Despite popular misuse of the term, 'preemptive strike' is an attack intended to prevent an imminent attack, but President Bush said, "Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option." It remains quite clear that while Iraq was not an imminent threat, it would have inevitably become one. The fact that the U.S. was willing to wait months after authorizing war before actually going to war should be a clear indicator that 'imminent threat' never entered into it. If the threat were immanent, America would not have wasted time with the United Nations. President Bush called it a 'continuing threat,' in which the treat was not significantly less or worse than it was before, but intolerable to endure. It did not help that the evaluation of that threat put excessive faith in the world's intelligence services, that is true, and George Tenet's surprise resignation was not so surprising when one considers that virtually all of the President's great woes had (or have) root causes in the letters C, I, and A--still bearing in mind that intelligence flaws also go the other way, as they did in the '90s when several agencies, Hans Blix's team among them, erroneously declared Iraq free of any intent to possess nuclear weapons. (So do forgive me for being relieved that Iraq intelligence estimates erred toward being too liberal rather than too conservative; if we will make mistakes regarding anti-proliferation, then overstating disarmament goals is surely a preferable way to screw up.)
Bush did speak of urgency, but always qualified by "our intelligence" and in regard to Saddam's failure to fulfill his end of our bargain, which included verifiable destruction of his WMD-related activities. It was not evidence of the presence of weapons of mass destruction that formed that basis of the war, but the absence of evidence of disarmament. Worldwide assessments suggested that Saddam did indeed have banned weapons, and Bush bolstered his argument using those cases, but that bolstering did not change the Administration's primary justification for the war: Iraq was in material breech of our armistice agreement. Donald Rumsfeld summed it up: "If the Iraqi regime had taken the same steps Libya is now taking, there would have been no war."
So we get streams of public whining without a single convincing response to the question, "How would keeping Saddam Hussein's regime in power have benefited the world?" Anti-intervention groups overestimated the number of casualties, overestimated the number of refugees, overestimated the terrorist retaliation, were wrong about the effects on anti-Americanism in the Middle East, were wrong about the Coalition being unable to capture Saddam, underestimated the dangers Saddam posed to the region, forgot that even non-Coalition allies like Saudi Arabia and Germany still provided resources for the invasion (others, like France, offered conditional support), and otherwise indulged in gross appeasement and hysteria. And then there are those who said, "I'd support it for humanitarian reasons, but Bush isn't doing it for humanitarian reasons," a thought process that, like the "Not In Our Name!" mob, relies on group-think, rather than that wise notion of individualism that says you don't have to support anything for someone else's reasons. There is absolutely no inferential path connecting "Bush lied" and "The Iraq War was unjustifiable."
Maybe it was just me, but I found the revelation that there are no longer weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to be A Very Good Thing. Saddam wasn't trustworthy with a Lawn Jart, and having him removed and finding that we need not worry so much about someone going the "Sum of All Fears" route with his programs is a spectacular achievement, especially under the circumstances. Not a single weapon of mass destruction appeared in Nazi Germany, recall. The closest the Nazis came was the horrifically successful use of common household pesticides against human beings. But the U.S. intelligence agencies, General Marshall, and Albert Einstein all thought the Nazis were building an atomic bomb, when Hitler was nowhere near achieving his goal. Then again, if a corrupt Nazi weapons program enabled the German Werewolves to easily develop an atomic bomb, either on their own or by passing the stolen/bought intelligence to an industrious third party, then the threat to Europe during World War II would have been more precarious. Likewise, there was a bigger threat from even the known programs in Iraq precisely because the system actually was—undeniably--a mess. The most vulnerabilities and least predictable threats come from systems that the systems' owners will not or can not control. So did the U.S. government exaggerate the Nazi threat to justify its aggression against Germany? After all, Adolf Hitler had as much to do with the bombing of Pearl Harbor as Saddam Hussein had with 9/11. The Nazis were not a threat to the territorial integrity of America, there were no resolutions or agreements to provide legal cover, and Congress only authorized military action against Japanese forces. The US and the UK also did many things during this period that make their military actions today look like jamborees. Yet, somehow, few doubt that US was right to help overthrow Hitler. Like Saddam, Hitler ruled over a brutal, inhuman kleptocracy. They were the weapons of mass destruction, as cliché as that now sounds.
Of course, there was that old shell with enough Sarin to kill thousands of people, contained only because it was misused. How about the mustard gas confirmed to have come from Iraq, but that was never disclosed as required by the terms of the ceasefire agreement? How about this? And nobody searched Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, where Iraq reportedly paid Syria $35-$50 million to hide materials in February 2003. Still, we already have plenty to show Iraq was indeed a threat--we found illegal weapons, we found illegal programs, we found clear evidence of illegal efforts, but we did not find the promised stockpiles. Three out of four is hardly an embarrassment.
Weapons of mass destruction were among the many legitimate reasons for the intervention. I never cared much about the weapons, to be honest. As an anti-totalitarian, I supported going in and toppling a genocidal sociopathic regime on the basis of going in and toppling a genocidal sociopathic regime. Saddam's regime was unfinished business that needed a resolution before the U.S. could move on. It needed to go; the when, where, why and how are incidental. (I already dislike Bush, so even if the "Bush Lied!" crowd's rants were reflected by reality, it would still leave me saying, "And?") It hardly matters whether there were banned weapons in Iraq at the time of the invasion. They were there in the past, we didn't know they were gone forever, and Iraq was obligated to let us know either way, verifiably. The burden of proof was always on Saddam, who failed to comply with the ceasefire agreement and a multitude of U.N. resolutions--not only those sections regarding WMD--for more than a decade. There was little evidence to suggest that the Weapons Inspector Clouseau answer to the WMD question would in fact be a solution, quite a bit suggesting it would confuse matters, and no doubt that other outstanding crimes were ignored in favor of fools from both sides of the fence massaging their egos over that one question (while saying they are looking out for the best interests of the Iraqi people, as though the oppressed people of Iraq were more concerned about American foreign policy than Saddam & Sons' unique methods [caution: video contains graphic violence]).
Ad hominem attacks continue with Bush's "open corruption' being the target. Sadly, the staggering thing is that a guy can ask about the latest corruption scandal and still have to specify whether he means one in the U.S., Russia, France, Italy, England, China, the United Nations, Egypt, etc. Corruption happens everywhere (and, given the age of the United States, America has comparatively little experience at it). While suggestions of impropriety may be accurate, they remain unproven, and do not address individuals who donated large sums of cash to Bush yet received nothing more than a thank-you card, if that. Nor does it take into account that President Bush has thrown the likes of Kenneth Lay to the wolves, and that John Ashcroft's anti-corruption witch-hunt may be going to the opposite extreme, having somehow found Martha Stewart guilty of lying about committing a crime federal prosecutors could not prove she committed.
I leave you, and hopefully those you know who most ought to read it, with a little perspective from American history, courtesy of a famous dead guy:
A Word Of Encouragement For Our Blushing Exiles
...Well, what do you think of our country now? And what do you think of the figure she is cutting before the eyes of the world? For one, I am ashamed. [Extract from a long and heated letter from a Voluntary Exile, Member of the American Colony, Paris.]
And so you are ashamed. I am trying to think out what it can have been that has produced this large attitude of mind and this fine flow of sarcasm. Apparently you are ashamed to look Europe in the face; ashamed of the American name; temporarily ashamed of your nationality. By the light of remarks made to me by an American here in Vienna, I judge that you are ashamed because:
1. We are meddling where we have no business and no right; meddling with the private family matters of a sister nation; intruding upon her sacred right to do as she pleases with her own, unquestioned by anybody.
2. We are doing this under a sham pretext.
3. Doing it in order to filch Cuba, the formal and distinct disclaimer in the ultimatum being very, very thin humbug, and easily detectable by you and virtuous Europe.
4. And finally you are ashamed of all this because it is new, and base, and brutal, and dishonest; and because Europe, having had no previous experience of such things, is horrified by it and can never respect us nor associate with us any more.
Brutal, base, dishonest? We? Land Thieves? Shedders of innocent blood? We? Traitors to our official word? We? Are we going to lose Europe's respect because of this new and dreadful conduct? Russia's, for instance? Is she lying stretched out on her back in Manchuria, with her head among her Siberian prisons and her feet in Port Arthur, trying to read over the fairy tales she told Lord Salisbury, and not able to do it for crying because we are maneuvering to treacherously smooch Cuba from feeble Spain, and because we are ungently shedding innocent Spanish blood?
Is it France's respect that we are going to lose? Is our unchivalric conduct troubling a nation which exists to-day because a brave young girl saved it when its poltroons had lost it - a nation which deserted her as one man when her day of peril came? Is our treacherous assault upon a weak people distressing a nation which contributed Bartholomew's Day to human history? Is our ruthless spirit offending the sensibilities of the nation which gave us the Reign of Terror to read about? Is our unmanly intrusion into the private affairs of a sister nation shocking the feelings of the people who sent Maximilian to Mexico? Are our shabby and pusillanimous ways outraging the fastidious people who have sent an innocent man (Dreyfus) to a living hell, taken to their embraces the slimy guilty one, and submitted to indignities Emile Zola - the manliest man in France?
Is it Spain's respect that we are going to lose? Is she sitting sadly conning her great history and contrasting it with our meddling, cruel, perfidious one - our shameful history of foreign robberies, humanitarian shams, and annihilations of weak and unoffending nations? Is she remembering with pride how she sent Columbus home in chains; how she sent half of the harmless West Indians into slavery and the rest to the grave, leaving not one alive; how she robbed and slaughtered the Inca's gentle race, then beguiled the Inca into her power with fair promises and burned him at the stake; how she drenched the New World in blood, and earned and got the name of The Nation With The Bloody Footprint; how she drove all the Jews out of Spain in a day, allowing them to sell their property, but forbidding them to carry any money out of the country; how she roasted heretics by the thousands and thousands in her public squares, generation after generation, her kings and her priests looking on as at a holiday show; how her Holy Inquisition imported hell into the earth; how she was the first to institute it and the last to give it up - and then only under compulsion; how, with a spirit unmodified by time, she still tortures her prisoners to-day; how, with her ancient passion for pain and blood unchanged, she still crowds the arena with ladies and gentlemen and priests to see with delight a bull harried and persecuted and a gored horse dragging his entrails on the ground; and how, with this incredible character surviving all attempts to civilize it, her Duke of Alva rises again in the person of General Weyler - to-day the most idolized personage in Spain - and we see a hundred thousand women and children shut up in pens and pitilessly starved to death?
Are we indeed going to lose Spain's respect? Is there no way to avoid this calamity - or this compliment? Are we going to lose her respect because we have made a promise in our ultimatum which she thinks we shall break? And meantime is she trying to recall some promise of her own which she has kept?
Is the Professional Official Fibber of Europe really troubled with our morals? Dear Parisian friend, are you taking seriously the daily remark of the newspaper and the orator about "this noble nation with an illustrious history"? That is mere kindness, mere charity for a people in temporary hard luck. The newspaper and the orator do not mean it. They wink when they say it.
And so you are ashamed. Do not be ashamed; there is no occasion for it.
S. L. CLEMENS.
Foremost among the complaints is the "Bush Lied, People Died" meme. Ignoring that this means Kerry/Edwards are just as guilty (both senators voted to invade, and Edwards called the threat of Saddam Hussein 'imminent,' a notion President Bush countered in his State of the Union address), it is true that we have a right to expect politicians to be perfectly truthful.
We also have a right to expect the nations of the world to come together, join hands, and live in peace and harmony forever. But tabulate not thy pre-partum fowl. A politician saying he is right and his opponent is wrong is a common occurrence, even though there are usually valid facts on both sides (in most American discourse, at least). Accusing a politician of over-selling his position is like ticketing Indianapolis 500 racers for reckless driving.
I expect politician to have strong character and reason. Other traits are negotiable. During the Blitz, Prime Minister Churchill and others made public shows of defiance by strolling outside at the height of bombing fears, never letting on that intercepted Nazi communications often enabled them to know when those walks were safe. They deceived the world. But would you argue it was an inappropriate deception? At the opposite end of the spectrum, what do we make of those anti-war leaders who were on Saddam's payroll?
President Bush ran a campaign that trashed the Democratic doctrine of interventionism and nation building, and for a while as president he edged the U.S. toward his promised isolationism. After September 11, 2001, Bush reassessed that doctrine. Regardless of whether one agrees with that reassessment, acting on new information is a legitimate and responsible act of civil service. His father did the same thing with "Read my lips: No new taxes!" Clinton did it. I cannot think of a politician that has not done it. Politics are fluid, and the most dependable situations can still change. Not only must we consider that politicians must sell policies, we must also consider that they are no better at predicting the future than us. What anyone says may be entirely valid at the time he says it, but not so much at a later date. So we are back to character and reason.
We can extend this to the Iraq War. If pre-war information was believed to be reliable, and Bush, Blair, Howard, etc., rationally concluded that invasion was an appropriate response to that information, then they are in the clear. One cannot prove or disprove the justification for an action after the fact. If I hear a window break, I make sure it is not because of a burglar or rabid animal; if it proves to be a stray baseball that does not mean I was unjustified in taking action because I thought it might be something else. The leaderships' understanding of information was either reasonable, or it wasn't. People can only act on what they know.
Likewise, I am fascinated by the number of people who believe justification hinges entirely on statements, resolutions, motives, or finds. We could say we invaded Iraq because we wanted to steal Saddam's collection of erotic art, and while that would speak poorly of our motives, it has zero relevance to whether the war was justified. It is fun to debate the politics, as I do regularly here, but the reality is that people, institutions, and governments frequently do the right thing for the wrong reasons. What someone says is not anywhere near as important as what they do, and in Bush's case any American downfall will likely have more to do with his reckless spending (he is a bit of a socialist in a capitalist's job, but here the Democrats promise to be even worse [Kerry will pilfer more money out of American pocketbooks so he can cover it, naturally]).
Another popular ad hominem attack is that America has not exactly been pure in its international relations, an argument that is undoubtedly true, but irrelevant to the former Iraqi regime breaking its mandatory acceptance of United Nations resolutions. Guantanamo Bay invariably pops up in discussion, although Camp 22 in North Korea speaks better for the failings of American foreign policy:
Witness from Gitmo: For two or three days I was confused, but later the Americans were so nice with me, they were giving me good food with fruit and water for ablutions before prayer.
Witness from Camp 22: I witnessed a whole family being tested on suffocating gas and dying in the gas chamber. The parents, a son, and a daughter. The parents were vomiting and dying, but till the very last moment they tried to save the kids by doing mouth-to-mouth breathing.
America confuses an inmate for a few days, feeds him too well, and then takes an insufferable amount of time to sort the details. Shameful legal maneuvering receives more press than ongoing weapons testing on families. And of all the prisons in Cuba, the one most unlike Castro's gulags--where cockroaches offer every prisoner company, show trials are the norm, and biological waste often ends up as bedding--completely dominates most discussions. Some people's priorities are screwed.
Yes, America once supported Saddam (though nowhere near as much as others) against Iran, much like America worked with Stalin against Germany. All the more reason America needed to atone for its past action by removing Saddam. Also consider America's relationships with numerous Latin American nations throughout the 1950s-80s, that mostly fall under the "oops!" category ('mostly' because some regime changes, like in Grenada and Nicaragua, really did lead to improvements), in an effort to undermine communism? For all of the differences, there is at least one key similarity between American support for Stalin, Saddam, as well as the criminals closer to home: All took actions against the more serious threats at the time. These alliances, even the Latin American fiascos, were based on a degree of altruism as well as national security. That America has a history of being more fearful of third-world leadership by middle-class industrialists than spoiled militarists is not the result of flaws in policy, but a repeated flaw in execution. In politics, it is unfortunately better to appear reckless than weak.
But using "you hypocrites!" logic one must concluded that nobody should do anything about anybody. We could just as easily ask about the brutal repression of civilian populations actively supported by the United Nations over the decades, right up to the present day, and conclude that the United Nations should stay out of the Israel-Palestine issue since it has done little of merit about Turkey's power plays in Cyprus, Russia's grab of Japanese islands, Lebanon being made into Syria's puppet, Britain's continued hold over Gibraltar, or France's not-too-distant annexation of what used to be Germany territory or even her truly unilateral intervention in the Ivory Coast. At least the U.S. never vouches for Syria to help keep the world safe from the likes of, well, Syria.
America, Britain and, yes, Australia are the only three countries with a military force capable of responding to major/multiple threats. Many nations cower simply because they have no fortitude to do otherwise, a vile few cast themselves as bystanders, while the rest would as soon cheer the equal distribution of oppression than any unequal distribution of freedom. These wafflers, these self-interested wimps, these moral equivocators are telling America (and others) to make the Genovese Syndrome foreign policy? I subscribe to the view that those who have the resources to make a difference, the spirit to reach out, and the humility necessary to understand that we live in a global community should act like it.
Americans kept to themselves many times before, as during the crisis in Rwanda, and always ended up lectured for not interfering. Likewise, whenever America pulls troops out of a place in response to shouts of "Yankee go home!" the slogan shortly thereafter, from many of the same people, is invariably "The Yankees abandoned us!" It does not matter what happens, it is always America's fault. This thinking extends to other arenas. Polls in England and France conclude that a major problem is that Americans are too religious, while polls in Mexico and Turkey conclude that a significant fault is that Americans are too secular. It doesn't matter what Americans actually believe, they simply must be wrong. Australians say the United States is taking advantage of their nation's resources, while South Africans want to know why the United States is not doing more to take advantage of their resources. It rarely matters how America lends support, for it is never the right support. There is no policy that will enable America to satisfy the world, and it is foolish for America to even try to find one. So let me propose that America stands for neither isolationism nor imperialism, but should pursue interventionism, as is consistent with her essential values:
We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness--That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed; that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.
America's liberation came because of interventionism, and most of America has not forgotten. We are our brothers' keepers. Ironically, the universal catechism of the Catholic Church states that free people have a moral obligation to liberate the oppressed. To that end, in no sense is a muted United States preferable to today's vocal one. The counter to America's loudness is not for opponents to call for her silence, but is instead for them to cease their own quiet tolerance of the intolerable. (And could someone explain to me why the Pope suddenly forgot his long-standing stance that the authority to decide whether a war is justified resides in a nation's authorities, for "it is not the role of the Pastors of the Church to intervene directly in the political structuring and organization of social life." I suspect the Church ignored its own position simply so it would not lose Tariq Aziz as one of its donors.)
Also consider how the first Gulf War never ended. If Saddam had done what the United Nations told him to do, then France (until they sold out), Great Britain and the United States would not have dropped bombs on Iraq every day for over 10 years to enforce the 'no-fly zones.' The fact that the war was already going on was a pretty good reason for taking the decisive actions the Coalition did to end it. That same action will be responsible for saving an estimated 565,000 Iraqi lives within four years, and the war itself received a touch of praise from the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and Human Rights Watch for efforts in avoiding civilian casualties and for removing "a government that preyed on the Iraqi people and committed shocking, systematic and criminal violations of human rights." Of course, this does not take into account the feelings of liberation, or ongoing commentary from Iraqi bloggers.
Saudi Arabia comes up a lot, too, despite her responding to pressure to reform. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on September 11, 2001 were Saudis, so it is pretty obvious that the House of Saud did not do all it could to stamp out terrorism in the kingdom. The Saudi flights a bit later also caused a fuss (see older but more detailed info here). Of course, the nationalities of the hijackers are only one factor relevant to confronting threats to national security. The majority of them also lived comfortably above the poverty line, had Western educations, and spent money on decidedly non-Islamic strip clubs and gambling, meaning they also fit the noticeable pattern of Islamic terror coming from middle-class, European-based weirdoes.
There are plenty of bad guys in the world. Removing them from circulation is a security goal worth perpetuating. But limited resources means prioritizing the order in which even the most appropriate actions must take place. Among the issues are which of these actions are most 'do-able', as well as those that offer the most benefits. Saudi Arabia is an American ally, but it has long turned a blind, or at least blurry, eye to terrorism (though the 9/11 Commission did clear Saudi Arabia of the most popular and dangerous accusation), but for the U.S. to put meaningful pressure on the House of Saud to crack down, a few things had to occur: First, a consolidation of forces outside Saudi Arabia, in this case by facilitating the removal of the S.A.-U.S.'s joint military deterrent against Iraq, subsequently reducing training personnel inside S.A., and placing a sizable military force nearby; second, if tensions flared, a large alternative source of oil would be needed to prevent economic collapse in those countries dependent on Saudi oil; finally, an example must be set of what happens when key security issues are insufficiently resolved, so as to dissuade all parties from inviting a deadlier conflict. Thus...
David Frum, one of the architects of the Bush Doctrine, notes that "the operation in Iraq was a tremendous success--and an indispensable prerequisite for what comes next. One crucial thing we must do is pressure Saudi Arabia to cut off the flow of funds from its citizens to terrorists. So long as the world's second-biggest oil producer was, in effect, an international outlaw, Saudi Arabia's ability to get away with a two-faced policy on terrorism was magnified. Iraq is now rejoining the international community. Soon its oil will be flowing. And Saudi Arabia will find itself much less immune to American pressure to cut off the terrorists' funds."
Barring the occasional deadly thrashing as we pull the sharks from the water, the Iraq war really is a success. Thanks to the Iraq intervention, considerably more light has been shed on the weapons programs in Libya and Pakistan and Iran and North Korea and... The Arab League finally condemned attacks within Israel's legal territories and called for democratic reform... The likes of Seif al-Islam Gadhafi and Hossein Khomeini endorse Bush's Middle East policy... We now know that individuals at the United Nations and the World Bank were making a sizable profit from letting Saddam Hussein starve children, and that the UN really is the Enron on the East River (and worse: "Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures: A True Story from Hell on Earth")... We now know that Iraq was bribing and blackmailing hundreds of major public personalities, and subsequently recognize that Russia and France are unparalleled in Western political corruption... We now know that several media organizations, including CNN, downplayed or outright ignored atrocities in exchange for access and exclusives with the Butchers of Baghdad... We now know that the suggestion that Saddam Hussein & Sons be pressured into exile so the United Nations could oversee bringing Iraq into compliance would have resolved all of the outstanding issues with little to no bloodshed, but was refused because populist obstructionism against the United States has more socio-political value than any genuine attempt at a pro-peace solution... And so we now know who our real friends are.
Plus, if this backfires, there is always Plan B.
As for the legality? Whether the Bush Administration's arguments for the Iraq War apply under Chapter VII, Article 51 of the United Nations Charter may be debatable, but all of the justifications are consistent with Chapter VII, Article 42 and the history of that article in relation to Iraq (e.g., Operation Desert Storm, the responses to the 1993 assassination attempt on President George H.W. Bush and Iraq's attempt to re-invade Kuwait in 1996, the no-fly zones, and Operation Desert Fox).
The United Nations is not a judicial or representative authority, but a bureaucracy; manned not by objective judges or moderated lawmakers, but by highly partisan diplomats. The organization approved things that were against international law, and rejected things accepted by international law. Its key value is that it provides a resource for multinational debate, such as in 1962 when the organization allowed the last two remaining superpowers a mechanism to sidestep an escalation to nuclear war. It gives smaller nations voice, and the controversial veto system prevents solutions like the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The organization is unparalleled in drawing up constitutions and other civil services. The United Nations can provide a hammer better than any other. But not every problem is a nail. And the United Nations means even less to France, Germany, Russia, et al., those countries that actively ignored and undermined the enforcement of international law in Iraq for 12 long years. As an Iraqi Foreign Minister succinctly put it: "[T]he Security Council was divided between those who wanted to appease Saddam Hussein and those who wanted to hold him accountable... The United Nations as an organization failed to help rescue the Iraqi people from a murderous tyranny that lasted over 35 years, and today we are unearthing thousands of victims in horrifying testament to that failure."
The French delegation in particular showed utter contempt for U.N. processes, allowing for no negotiation and thus, as promised would happen in such an event, finding itself deferring to an "ad hoc" Coalition supported by more countries than supported the liberation of the Kuwait, backed by four of the Group of Seven, backed by 11 of the 19 members of N.A.T.O., backed by 13 of the 25 members of the expanded European Union, and backed by all but one of the major Asia-Pacific economies. As for the U.N. itself, there was no U.N. resolution or action, not a statement from individuals or governments, condemning or attempting to bar the Iraq War. Countries can hardly defy the United Nations if the United Nations makes no legal attempt to restrain them. And since this may be unfair considering how the United States has veto power on the Security Council, please note that I would also consider a draft or General Assembly resolution for this exercise. But the opposition amounted to nothing more than a public relations campaign. It is no surprise that mainly opponents of the war are still profiting from Saddam's mass-grave playset.
As for the WMD themselves, see that and more here. Opponents of the intervention also claimed Iraq had WMD (the only real debate in the Security Council was whether an assertive Coalition was preferable to a lackadaisical Axis in verifying Saddam's disarmament), so we must not make the factual error of suggesting that Bush made his decision in a vacuum. And even though it is easy to pin the blame on him because he took controversial but solid steps to do something about it, one still might forgive Bush for thinking that the possibility of the lunatic dictator having these weapons qualified as A Very Bad Thing. The worst scenario is that the Iraq War is a justified mistake, in the same sense that a man confronted with a thief pointing a gun-like object at him is excused for concluding that it is a gun, saying that it is gun, and acting in response to such a threat. That it turns out to be a candy-bar is tragic but irrelevant to the logic of his response. Indeed, if the man thought it was a joke and was wrong, the situation could have been much worse.
The Bush Administration repeatedly emphasized that a reason for going into Iraq was to prevent Iraq from becoming an immediate threat, the logical extension of Winston Churchill's Gathering Storm policy, and a policy supported by recent events. They, at least, presented the war as a preventive strike (as well as a punitive strike and humanitarian intervention). Despite popular misuse of the term, 'preemptive strike' is an attack intended to prevent an imminent attack, but President Bush said, "Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option." It remains quite clear that while Iraq was not an imminent threat, it would have inevitably become one. The fact that the U.S. was willing to wait months after authorizing war before actually going to war should be a clear indicator that 'imminent threat' never entered into it. If the threat were immanent, America would not have wasted time with the United Nations. President Bush called it a 'continuing threat,' in which the treat was not significantly less or worse than it was before, but intolerable to endure. It did not help that the evaluation of that threat put excessive faith in the world's intelligence services, that is true, and George Tenet's surprise resignation was not so surprising when one considers that virtually all of the President's great woes had (or have) root causes in the letters C, I, and A--still bearing in mind that intelligence flaws also go the other way, as they did in the '90s when several agencies, Hans Blix's team among them, erroneously declared Iraq free of any intent to possess nuclear weapons. (So do forgive me for being relieved that Iraq intelligence estimates erred toward being too liberal rather than too conservative; if we will make mistakes regarding anti-proliferation, then overstating disarmament goals is surely a preferable way to screw up.)
Bush did speak of urgency, but always qualified by "our intelligence" and in regard to Saddam's failure to fulfill his end of our bargain, which included verifiable destruction of his WMD-related activities. It was not evidence of the presence of weapons of mass destruction that formed that basis of the war, but the absence of evidence of disarmament. Worldwide assessments suggested that Saddam did indeed have banned weapons, and Bush bolstered his argument using those cases, but that bolstering did not change the Administration's primary justification for the war: Iraq was in material breech of our armistice agreement. Donald Rumsfeld summed it up: "If the Iraqi regime had taken the same steps Libya is now taking, there would have been no war."
So we get streams of public whining without a single convincing response to the question, "How would keeping Saddam Hussein's regime in power have benefited the world?" Anti-intervention groups overestimated the number of casualties, overestimated the number of refugees, overestimated the terrorist retaliation, were wrong about the effects on anti-Americanism in the Middle East, were wrong about the Coalition being unable to capture Saddam, underestimated the dangers Saddam posed to the region, forgot that even non-Coalition allies like Saudi Arabia and Germany still provided resources for the invasion (others, like France, offered conditional support), and otherwise indulged in gross appeasement and hysteria. And then there are those who said, "I'd support it for humanitarian reasons, but Bush isn't doing it for humanitarian reasons," a thought process that, like the "Not In Our Name!" mob, relies on group-think, rather than that wise notion of individualism that says you don't have to support anything for someone else's reasons. There is absolutely no inferential path connecting "Bush lied" and "The Iraq War was unjustifiable."
Maybe it was just me, but I found the revelation that there are no longer weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to be A Very Good Thing. Saddam wasn't trustworthy with a Lawn Jart, and having him removed and finding that we need not worry so much about someone going the "Sum of All Fears" route with his programs is a spectacular achievement, especially under the circumstances. Not a single weapon of mass destruction appeared in Nazi Germany, recall. The closest the Nazis came was the horrifically successful use of common household pesticides against human beings. But the U.S. intelligence agencies, General Marshall, and Albert Einstein all thought the Nazis were building an atomic bomb, when Hitler was nowhere near achieving his goal. Then again, if a corrupt Nazi weapons program enabled the German Werewolves to easily develop an atomic bomb, either on their own or by passing the stolen/bought intelligence to an industrious third party, then the threat to Europe during World War II would have been more precarious. Likewise, there was a bigger threat from even the known programs in Iraq precisely because the system actually was—undeniably--a mess. The most vulnerabilities and least predictable threats come from systems that the systems' owners will not or can not control. So did the U.S. government exaggerate the Nazi threat to justify its aggression against Germany? After all, Adolf Hitler had as much to do with the bombing of Pearl Harbor as Saddam Hussein had with 9/11. The Nazis were not a threat to the territorial integrity of America, there were no resolutions or agreements to provide legal cover, and Congress only authorized military action against Japanese forces. The US and the UK also did many things during this period that make their military actions today look like jamborees. Yet, somehow, few doubt that US was right to help overthrow Hitler. Like Saddam, Hitler ruled over a brutal, inhuman kleptocracy. They were the weapons of mass destruction, as cliché as that now sounds.
Of course, there was that old shell with enough Sarin to kill thousands of people, contained only because it was misused. How about the mustard gas confirmed to have come from Iraq, but that was never disclosed as required by the terms of the ceasefire agreement? How about this? And nobody searched Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, where Iraq reportedly paid Syria $35-$50 million to hide materials in February 2003. Still, we already have plenty to show Iraq was indeed a threat--we found illegal weapons, we found illegal programs, we found clear evidence of illegal efforts, but we did not find the promised stockpiles. Three out of four is hardly an embarrassment.
Weapons of mass destruction were among the many legitimate reasons for the intervention. I never cared much about the weapons, to be honest. As an anti-totalitarian, I supported going in and toppling a genocidal sociopathic regime on the basis of going in and toppling a genocidal sociopathic regime. Saddam's regime was unfinished business that needed a resolution before the U.S. could move on. It needed to go; the when, where, why and how are incidental. (I already dislike Bush, so even if the "Bush Lied!" crowd's rants were reflected by reality, it would still leave me saying, "And?") It hardly matters whether there were banned weapons in Iraq at the time of the invasion. They were there in the past, we didn't know they were gone forever, and Iraq was obligated to let us know either way, verifiably. The burden of proof was always on Saddam, who failed to comply with the ceasefire agreement and a multitude of U.N. resolutions--not only those sections regarding WMD--for more than a decade. There was little evidence to suggest that the Weapons Inspector Clouseau answer to the WMD question would in fact be a solution, quite a bit suggesting it would confuse matters, and no doubt that other outstanding crimes were ignored in favor of fools from both sides of the fence massaging their egos over that one question (while saying they are looking out for the best interests of the Iraqi people, as though the oppressed people of Iraq were more concerned about American foreign policy than Saddam & Sons' unique methods [caution: video contains graphic violence]).
Ad hominem attacks continue with Bush's "open corruption' being the target. Sadly, the staggering thing is that a guy can ask about the latest corruption scandal and still have to specify whether he means one in the U.S., Russia, France, Italy, England, China, the United Nations, Egypt, etc. Corruption happens everywhere (and, given the age of the United States, America has comparatively little experience at it). While suggestions of impropriety may be accurate, they remain unproven, and do not address individuals who donated large sums of cash to Bush yet received nothing more than a thank-you card, if that. Nor does it take into account that President Bush has thrown the likes of Kenneth Lay to the wolves, and that John Ashcroft's anti-corruption witch-hunt may be going to the opposite extreme, having somehow found Martha Stewart guilty of lying about committing a crime federal prosecutors could not prove she committed.
I leave you, and hopefully those you know who most ought to read it, with a little perspective from American history, courtesy of a famous dead guy:
A Word Of Encouragement For Our Blushing Exiles
...Well, what do you think of our country now? And what do you think of the figure she is cutting before the eyes of the world? For one, I am ashamed. [Extract from a long and heated letter from a Voluntary Exile, Member of the American Colony, Paris.]
And so you are ashamed. I am trying to think out what it can have been that has produced this large attitude of mind and this fine flow of sarcasm. Apparently you are ashamed to look Europe in the face; ashamed of the American name; temporarily ashamed of your nationality. By the light of remarks made to me by an American here in Vienna, I judge that you are ashamed because:
1. We are meddling where we have no business and no right; meddling with the private family matters of a sister nation; intruding upon her sacred right to do as she pleases with her own, unquestioned by anybody.
2. We are doing this under a sham pretext.
3. Doing it in order to filch Cuba, the formal and distinct disclaimer in the ultimatum being very, very thin humbug, and easily detectable by you and virtuous Europe.
4. And finally you are ashamed of all this because it is new, and base, and brutal, and dishonest; and because Europe, having had no previous experience of such things, is horrified by it and can never respect us nor associate with us any more.
Brutal, base, dishonest? We? Land Thieves? Shedders of innocent blood? We? Traitors to our official word? We? Are we going to lose Europe's respect because of this new and dreadful conduct? Russia's, for instance? Is she lying stretched out on her back in Manchuria, with her head among her Siberian prisons and her feet in Port Arthur, trying to read over the fairy tales she told Lord Salisbury, and not able to do it for crying because we are maneuvering to treacherously smooch Cuba from feeble Spain, and because we are ungently shedding innocent Spanish blood?
Is it France's respect that we are going to lose? Is our unchivalric conduct troubling a nation which exists to-day because a brave young girl saved it when its poltroons had lost it - a nation which deserted her as one man when her day of peril came? Is our treacherous assault upon a weak people distressing a nation which contributed Bartholomew's Day to human history? Is our ruthless spirit offending the sensibilities of the nation which gave us the Reign of Terror to read about? Is our unmanly intrusion into the private affairs of a sister nation shocking the feelings of the people who sent Maximilian to Mexico? Are our shabby and pusillanimous ways outraging the fastidious people who have sent an innocent man (Dreyfus) to a living hell, taken to their embraces the slimy guilty one, and submitted to indignities Emile Zola - the manliest man in France?
Is it Spain's respect that we are going to lose? Is she sitting sadly conning her great history and contrasting it with our meddling, cruel, perfidious one - our shameful history of foreign robberies, humanitarian shams, and annihilations of weak and unoffending nations? Is she remembering with pride how she sent Columbus home in chains; how she sent half of the harmless West Indians into slavery and the rest to the grave, leaving not one alive; how she robbed and slaughtered the Inca's gentle race, then beguiled the Inca into her power with fair promises and burned him at the stake; how she drenched the New World in blood, and earned and got the name of The Nation With The Bloody Footprint; how she drove all the Jews out of Spain in a day, allowing them to sell their property, but forbidding them to carry any money out of the country; how she roasted heretics by the thousands and thousands in her public squares, generation after generation, her kings and her priests looking on as at a holiday show; how her Holy Inquisition imported hell into the earth; how she was the first to institute it and the last to give it up - and then only under compulsion; how, with a spirit unmodified by time, she still tortures her prisoners to-day; how, with her ancient passion for pain and blood unchanged, she still crowds the arena with ladies and gentlemen and priests to see with delight a bull harried and persecuted and a gored horse dragging his entrails on the ground; and how, with this incredible character surviving all attempts to civilize it, her Duke of Alva rises again in the person of General Weyler - to-day the most idolized personage in Spain - and we see a hundred thousand women and children shut up in pens and pitilessly starved to death?
Are we indeed going to lose Spain's respect? Is there no way to avoid this calamity - or this compliment? Are we going to lose her respect because we have made a promise in our ultimatum which she thinks we shall break? And meantime is she trying to recall some promise of her own which she has kept?
Is the Professional Official Fibber of Europe really troubled with our morals? Dear Parisian friend, are you taking seriously the daily remark of the newspaper and the orator about "this noble nation with an illustrious history"? That is mere kindness, mere charity for a people in temporary hard luck. The newspaper and the orator do not mean it. They wink when they say it.
And so you are ashamed. Do not be ashamed; there is no occasion for it.
S. L. CLEMENS.
Thursday, October 28, 2004
Thursday's Quote
The Washington Post: Beside the box, a magazine had been opened to reveal a picture of the presidential balls... FBI forensic testing would later confirm the balls' authenticity. (Via OxBlog)
Wednesday, October 27, 2004
Monday, October 25, 2004
Monday's Poetry Corner
Wolves, by Louis Macneice:
I do not want to be reflective any more
Envying and despising unreflective things
Finding pathos in dogs and undeveloped handwriting
And young girls doing their hair and all the castles of sand
Flushed by the children's bedtime, level with the shore.
The tide comes in and goes out again, I do not want
To be always stressing either its flux or its permanence,
I do not want to be a tragic or philosophic chorus
But to keep my eye only on the nearer future
And after that let the sea flow over us.
Come then all of you, come closer, form a circle,
Join hands and make believe that joined
Hands will keep away the wolves of water
Who howl along our coast. And be it assumed
That no one hears them among the talk and laughter.
I do not want to be reflective any more
Envying and despising unreflective things
Finding pathos in dogs and undeveloped handwriting
And young girls doing their hair and all the castles of sand
Flushed by the children's bedtime, level with the shore.
The tide comes in and goes out again, I do not want
To be always stressing either its flux or its permanence,
I do not want to be a tragic or philosophic chorus
But to keep my eye only on the nearer future
And after that let the sea flow over us.
Come then all of you, come closer, form a circle,
Join hands and make believe that joined
Hands will keep away the wolves of water
Who howl along our coast. And be it assumed
That no one hears them among the talk and laughter.
What's Going Right In Iraq
The Los Angeles Times looks at the biased reporting on Iraq...
Even as some media gurus accuse journalists of naively accepting officials' positive spin on the war, the sweep of coverage suggests that Iraq's occupiers have turned post-invasion chaos into a hellish nightmare and perhaps a quagmire — and the consensus is that matters will only grow worse.
From the beginning, of course, there has been a counterpoint from those who are encouraged by what they see — often expressed via the Internet. "As I head off to Baghdad for the final weeks of my stay in Iraq, I wanted to say thanks to all of you who did not believe the media," Ray Reynolds, an Iowa Army National Guard medic, wrote in an e-mail forwarded to the Los Angeles Times. "They have done a very poor job of covering everything that has happened." His e-mail cited a litany of positive changes in Iraq since the invasion, from increased immunizations and educational opportunities for children — including, notably, girls — to reopened hospitals, ports and improved delivery of drinking water and telephone service.
Even as some media gurus accuse journalists of naively accepting officials' positive spin on the war, the sweep of coverage suggests that Iraq's occupiers have turned post-invasion chaos into a hellish nightmare and perhaps a quagmire — and the consensus is that matters will only grow worse.
From the beginning, of course, there has been a counterpoint from those who are encouraged by what they see — often expressed via the Internet. "As I head off to Baghdad for the final weeks of my stay in Iraq, I wanted to say thanks to all of you who did not believe the media," Ray Reynolds, an Iowa Army National Guard medic, wrote in an e-mail forwarded to the Los Angeles Times. "They have done a very poor job of covering everything that has happened." His e-mail cited a litany of positive changes in Iraq since the invasion, from increased immunizations and educational opportunities for children — including, notably, girls — to reopened hospitals, ports and improved delivery of drinking water and telephone service.
Saturday, October 23, 2004
The Debates, Part III
I know this is late, but the scatological brilliance of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog's debate coverage still has me in awe.
And be sure to view the fun at JibJab!
And be sure to view the fun at JibJab!
They Didn't Have A Leg To Stand On
After 18 pages of legal opinion, it stands to reason that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is from another planet:
If Congress and the President intended to take the extraordinary step of authorizing animals as well as people and legal entities to sue they could and should have said so plainly.
'Cause, you know, Penelope ought to be able to sue Pepe le Pew for sexual harassment.
Makes you wonder why the dolphins don't just say, "So long, and thanks for all the fish," eh?
If Congress and the President intended to take the extraordinary step of authorizing animals as well as people and legal entities to sue they could and should have said so plainly.
'Cause, you know, Penelope ought to be able to sue Pepe le Pew for sexual harassment.
Makes you wonder why the dolphins don't just say, "So long, and thanks for all the fish," eh?
Friday, October 22, 2004
Republicans Vs. Democrats
Richard Rushfield tried being a partisan Democrat in Republican territory, and a partisan Republican in Democratic territory. Result? Stares from Reps, and obscenities from Dems. His experiment touches on one of the reasons I will vote for Bush: Far too many anti-Bush forces have been behaving violently and shamelessly, and Senator Kerry has done little to denounce them. Heck, expert prevaricator Michael Moore received a seat of honor at the Democratic National Convention, right alongside the depressingly senile President Carter, and Kerry himself engages in desperate fearmongering (including the daft "Bush = draft"). I voted straight ticket Democrat in the last election, but with Kerry being a major letdown--to the extent that he must scrape the bottom of the barrel to round up enough votes to so much as tie his opponent during the media's polls--making one exception on my ballot this year strikes me as the wisest option. Count me among the ranks of split ticket voters.
Ein Ende Zum Unsinn
German author Heinrich Maetzke takes his homeland to task over her prevailing views on Iraq, Bush, and America in general. (Via David's Medienkritik)
A Lesson
Thanks to Tamas for sending this my way...
One day a farmer's donkey fell down into a well. The animal cried piteously for hours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do.
Finally, he decided the animal was old, and the well needed to be covered up anyway; it just wasn't worth it to retrieve the donkey. He invited all his neighbors to come over and help him. They all grabbed a shovel and began to shovel dirt into the well.
At first the donkey realized what was happening and cried horribly. Then, to everyone's amazement he quieted down. A few shovel loads later, the farmer finally looked down the well. He was astonished at what he saw. With each shovel of dirt that hit his back, the donkey was doing something amazing. He would shake it off and take a step up. As the farmer's neighbors continued to shovel dirt on top of the animal, he would shake it off and take a step up. Pretty soon, everyone was amazed as the donkey stepped up over the edge of the well and happily trotted off!
Life is going to shovel dirt on you, all kinds of dirt. The trick to getting out of the well is to shake it off and take a step up. Each of our troubles is a steppingstone. We can get out of the deepest wells just by not stopping, never giving up! Shake it off and take a step up.
Remember the five simple rules to be happy:
1. Free your heart from hatred - Forgive.
2. Free your mind from worries - Most never happen.
3. Live simply and appreciate what you have.
4. Give more.
5. Expect less-------- NOW --------
Enough of that crap. The donkey later came back and bit the shit out of the farmer who had tried to bury him. The gash from the bite got infected, and the farmer eventually died in agony from septic shock.
MORAL FROM TODAY'S LESSON: When you do something wrong and try to cover your ass, it always comes back to bite you.
One day a farmer's donkey fell down into a well. The animal cried piteously for hours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do.
Finally, he decided the animal was old, and the well needed to be covered up anyway; it just wasn't worth it to retrieve the donkey. He invited all his neighbors to come over and help him. They all grabbed a shovel and began to shovel dirt into the well.
At first the donkey realized what was happening and cried horribly. Then, to everyone's amazement he quieted down. A few shovel loads later, the farmer finally looked down the well. He was astonished at what he saw. With each shovel of dirt that hit his back, the donkey was doing something amazing. He would shake it off and take a step up. As the farmer's neighbors continued to shovel dirt on top of the animal, he would shake it off and take a step up. Pretty soon, everyone was amazed as the donkey stepped up over the edge of the well and happily trotted off!
Life is going to shovel dirt on you, all kinds of dirt. The trick to getting out of the well is to shake it off and take a step up. Each of our troubles is a steppingstone. We can get out of the deepest wells just by not stopping, never giving up! Shake it off and take a step up.
Remember the five simple rules to be happy:
1. Free your heart from hatred - Forgive.
2. Free your mind from worries - Most never happen.
3. Live simply and appreciate what you have.
4. Give more.
5. Expect less-------- NOW --------
Enough of that crap. The donkey later came back and bit the shit out of the farmer who had tried to bury him. The gash from the bite got infected, and the farmer eventually died in agony from septic shock.
MORAL FROM TODAY'S LESSON: When you do something wrong and try to cover your ass, it always comes back to bite you.
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
Over Seas From Coast To Coast
I am listening to Westlife's "Unbreakable: Greatest Hits 1" album. And enjoying it.
Sample:
So I say a little prayer
And hope my dreams will take me there
Where the skies are blue
To see you once again, my love
Over seas from coast to coast
To find the place I love the most
Where the fields are green
To see you once again
Am I normal or nutty? I report, you decide.
Sample:
So I say a little prayer
And hope my dreams will take me there
Where the skies are blue
To see you once again, my love
Over seas from coast to coast
To find the place I love the most
Where the fields are green
To see you once again
Am I normal or nutty? I report, you decide.
Wednesday's Quote
Unnamed former Bush Administration official: The objective in staffing is never to assemble the best possible team. It is to assemble the best possible team that supports the president. (Via The Volokh Conspiracy)
Having the best possible team, period, including "neutrality and independence," is what best supports a president. This is especially true in wartime, as Winston Churchill knew when he loaded his war cabinet with political opponents. An interesting test for Kerry would be to ask whether he intends to fill key cabinet posts with Republicans, as a real "uniter, not a divider" in a time of war. Given that he has yet to attack Bush on this, I rather doubt it. Shame.
Having the best possible team, period, including "neutrality and independence," is what best supports a president. This is especially true in wartime, as Winston Churchill knew when he loaded his war cabinet with political opponents. An interesting test for Kerry would be to ask whether he intends to fill key cabinet posts with Republicans, as a real "uniter, not a divider" in a time of war. Given that he has yet to attack Bush on this, I rather doubt it. Shame.
Sunday, October 17, 2004
Back Away From The Truck
If you thought Hummers were bad, see this new truck allegedly built as a service vehicle, but destined to tenderize, chop and pulverize roadkill (and pretty much anything else that gets in its way). Not exactly environmentally friendly, either. But one of these might be able to fight it.
Thursday, October 14, 2004
Thursday's Quote
It is late, and the words are familiar, but it is a statement worth remembering (from a story worth reading)...
Cpl. Dante Ruiz: If you stay in the past, you'll never get anything done.
Cpl. Dante Ruiz: If you stay in the past, you'll never get anything done.
You Grandson Of A Gun!
A few clarifications on this post...
One basic assumption is that there is a 'gun problem.' It is true, if you mean it in the same sense as deadlier item like motor vehicles (43,354 incidents in 2001, accounting for 1.8% of all American deaths that year, compared to 28,663 firearms, or 1.2%, including criminals legally killed through law enforcement or self-defense) give rise to a 'car problem.' Those same vehicles accounted for 44.3% of all accident fatalities in the United States, whereas firearms accounted for 0.8%. For comparison, liquids such as hydroxyl acid (and I drink this stuff all the time!) killed 3,842 people, about 3.9% of all accidental deaths.
If the numbers of guns deaths were higher, one would still have to weigh them against the lives saved by guns, or consider how a gun could have prevented situations like this recent tragedy. Here in Memphis, an 80-year-old woman threatened by a known felon managed to protect herself and end his criminal career from a safe distance, thanks to a little handgun that was all her dainty hands could handle. (Why support making the elderly defenseless? The most avid gun buyers in the United States are senior citizens. We need not worry, unless they are Hell's Grannies.)
It’s been suggested that guns entered homes after a gun owner made others so threatened they felt they also had to own guns, but the more likely scenario is that the threat already existed and the gun filled the need for a tool to combat it. After all, a gun is an amoral, inanimate object. It has no innate wickedness, or inherent ability to commit evil. A gun can work as well as a collectable paperweight as a thief's tool of the trade, just as a knife in the hands of a gourmet chef brings wonder while the same knife in the hands of a serial killer brings horror. Guns do not pull their own triggers. We need more criminal control, not more gun control.
Much about anti-gun activism builds an aura of 'forbidden fruit' around guns that is both unnecessary and dangerous, a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. I lost a friend in elementary school when he, intrigued by responses that he should not attempt to learn more about guns, accidentally shot himself in the belly after he decided to do his own research. A supervised exploration of an unloaded weapon would have avoided the tragedy.
Firearm deaths go down with more gun education. Most criminals become less inclined to be criminals in areas with more guns, too, leaving only the deranged and desperate to engage in such sad pastimes as gang wars and drug cartels (Memphis' high murder rate pools deeply in such drug-infested neighborhoods, where even stricter gun control would be as successful as the stricter drug control supposedly already in place). Example: Rapists typically disapprove of any increased probability of getting their heads blown off by bellicose females opposed to being violated. Strange, but true! At the opposite end, Brazil started a ban on carrying a gun on one's person in July, and now the bad guys of Brazil are bolder and deadlier. In September, a criminal first for Brazil occurred as four locals--with illegal guns, natch--robbed a bus carrying 46 unarmed men, all policemen, before driving away. Targeting guns for cultural censorship works, but usually for the wrong people.
Finally, when I quote Lincoln on maintaining a 'revolutionary right,' I am not doing so in reference to head-to-head combat (since it has been noted that few rebels survive against superior firepower) but seek to emphasize the deterrent effect. Dictators are no doubt aware that many a coup occurred because of "weekend wannabe warriors," and take lessons even from hopelessly out-gunned revolts like America's own Whiskey Rebellion. There is also the opposite matter of giving Government a helping hand. I am not calling for everything a government owns to be made available to the public--though I could definitely live with citizens having military firearms, provided the owners were well-trained, licensed and evaluated--but am calling for recognition that the People are captains & guards of their own destinies.
One basic assumption is that there is a 'gun problem.' It is true, if you mean it in the same sense as deadlier item like motor vehicles (43,354 incidents in 2001, accounting for 1.8% of all American deaths that year, compared to 28,663 firearms, or 1.2%, including criminals legally killed through law enforcement or self-defense) give rise to a 'car problem.' Those same vehicles accounted for 44.3% of all accident fatalities in the United States, whereas firearms accounted for 0.8%. For comparison, liquids such as hydroxyl acid (and I drink this stuff all the time!) killed 3,842 people, about 3.9% of all accidental deaths.
If the numbers of guns deaths were higher, one would still have to weigh them against the lives saved by guns, or consider how a gun could have prevented situations like this recent tragedy. Here in Memphis, an 80-year-old woman threatened by a known felon managed to protect herself and end his criminal career from a safe distance, thanks to a little handgun that was all her dainty hands could handle. (Why support making the elderly defenseless? The most avid gun buyers in the United States are senior citizens. We need not worry, unless they are Hell's Grannies.)
It’s been suggested that guns entered homes after a gun owner made others so threatened they felt they also had to own guns, but the more likely scenario is that the threat already existed and the gun filled the need for a tool to combat it. After all, a gun is an amoral, inanimate object. It has no innate wickedness, or inherent ability to commit evil. A gun can work as well as a collectable paperweight as a thief's tool of the trade, just as a knife in the hands of a gourmet chef brings wonder while the same knife in the hands of a serial killer brings horror. Guns do not pull their own triggers. We need more criminal control, not more gun control.
Much about anti-gun activism builds an aura of 'forbidden fruit' around guns that is both unnecessary and dangerous, a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. I lost a friend in elementary school when he, intrigued by responses that he should not attempt to learn more about guns, accidentally shot himself in the belly after he decided to do his own research. A supervised exploration of an unloaded weapon would have avoided the tragedy.
Firearm deaths go down with more gun education. Most criminals become less inclined to be criminals in areas with more guns, too, leaving only the deranged and desperate to engage in such sad pastimes as gang wars and drug cartels (Memphis' high murder rate pools deeply in such drug-infested neighborhoods, where even stricter gun control would be as successful as the stricter drug control supposedly already in place). Example: Rapists typically disapprove of any increased probability of getting their heads blown off by bellicose females opposed to being violated. Strange, but true! At the opposite end, Brazil started a ban on carrying a gun on one's person in July, and now the bad guys of Brazil are bolder and deadlier. In September, a criminal first for Brazil occurred as four locals--with illegal guns, natch--robbed a bus carrying 46 unarmed men, all policemen, before driving away. Targeting guns for cultural censorship works, but usually for the wrong people.
Finally, when I quote Lincoln on maintaining a 'revolutionary right,' I am not doing so in reference to head-to-head combat (since it has been noted that few rebels survive against superior firepower) but seek to emphasize the deterrent effect. Dictators are no doubt aware that many a coup occurred because of "weekend wannabe warriors," and take lessons even from hopelessly out-gunned revolts like America's own Whiskey Rebellion. There is also the opposite matter of giving Government a helping hand. I am not calling for everything a government owns to be made available to the public--though I could definitely live with citizens having military firearms, provided the owners were well-trained, licensed and evaluated--but am calling for recognition that the People are captains & guards of their own destinies.
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
You Son Of A Gun!
One of the joys of the US Constitution is that it is a living document, subject to interpretation, and alterable should American society deem it appropriate. It succinctly tells the government what to do, and leaves everything else to the States or the People. Compare to the European Union's Constitution--a pre-fossilized behemoth that tells the People what to do, and regulates practically everything down to how many dustbins should be in a schoolroom.
The Second Amendment reads: A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.
Anti-gun control lobbyists tend to ignore "a well-regulated Militia", and gun control lobbyists tend to ignore "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed." Both operative phrases are subject to interpretation, hence the debate. But George Mason pithily clarified, "I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials." All of the Second Amendment's originators and supporters were adamant that "the Constitution shall never be construed... to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms."
For my part, I support gun ownership on the same basis that I support gay equality, by following the traditional American ethos that Government is best suited for, and should therefore stick to, Government business. Is there a more striking example of personal freedom than the Pink Pistols?
Those who try to peg support for gun ownership on the Religious Right may have a point, though. Jesus Christ also supported weapons in the home, observing in Luke 11:21 that "When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are safe."
But the Son of God makes a rational argument.
As Patrick Henry put it, "Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own self-defense?" James Madison similarly remarked, "Americans have the right and advantage of being armed, unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust people with arms." More recently, conservative guru Mark Steyn wrote what may be his best perspective on the issue here. And of course an amusing example of this perspective appears in a Japanese admiral's (possibly apocryphal) explanation of why his country did not invade the US mainland after Pearl Harbor. "We did indeed know much about your preparedness," he said. "We knew that probably every second home in your country contained firearms. We knew that your country actually had state championships for private citizens shooting military rifles. We were not fools to set foot in such quicksand." The bottom line is that gun-crazy American citizens save lives, not by firing their weapons, but by simply being gun-crazy American citizens. It is also worth adding that many of these gun-toting loonies are gentle souls who collect modern weaponry as a hobby, in a mold related to those who collect ancient swords, medieval maces, or build catapults.
The curious thing is that stricter gun control tends to create more violent crime. In 1999, the tight gun controls in Washington, DC permitted 69 murders per 100,000, a death rate worse than American troops experienced in the Iraq War. The same year, Indianapolis' weaker gun controls resulted in 60 fewer murders per 100,000. And look overseas, where, apparently inspired by the long-time gun control in Northern Ireland (because, you know, it worked so well at preventing the IRA from hurting anyone...) British Prime Minister Tony Blair pushed a "total ban" on home gun ownership, the result of which has been a startling increase in violent crime every year since, with Birmingham's New Year bloodshed in 2003 an especially sad example. The year before, the United Nations revealed that England now has the dubious honor of having the highest crime rate of the world's 20 leading nations. Why? Well, there is the obvious fact that criminals are not likely to stop being criminals because the government bans guns, and those criminals are in fact rather happy that the government opened the door for an entire underground industry devoted to the buying, selling and manufacture of illegal weapons. Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, an expert on this matter, called such gun control "the best thing you can do for crooks and gangsters."
And despite scaremongering from the likes of Michael Moore, America has a rate of gun violence actually on par with, if not less than, Canada in terms of demographic percentage. Drug-related crime is an oft-marginalized factor, for one, as most homicides are drug-related and, quite frankly, America's War on Drugs functions with the same effectiveness as the UK's War on Guns (and for many of the same reasons). Firearms remain the most effective means of self-defense, particularly for women, and self-defense deters crime. After recently easing its gun control laws, New York recorded its lowest murder rate since the 19th century.
The punchiest argument for guns everywhere is protection from corrupt governments. "The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in Government," wrote Thomas Jefferson. Or as Abraham Lincoln put it, "This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." His observation bookends nicely with the fact that every descent into fascism in the modern age was accompanied by the implementation of gun control, and one of the most successful champions of gun control, Adolf Hitler, cleverly noted that "the most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing." Indeed, as a Washington University Law Quarterly article notes, none of the dozens of major genocides of the past 100 years, including China's democide under Mao, occurred against an armed population. And look at efforts against genocide by citizens with firepower, as in the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt. It is sadly worth remembering that many gun control laws in the US tended, and still tend, to have racist connotations. Consider the New York State Sullivan Act, originally created with the ulterior motive of keeping guns out of the hands of Italian-Americans.
All of this is especially frightening to consider in view of a United Nations effort to internationally overturn sovereign laws such the Second Amendment, with the UN Secretary-General, facing ever-mounting evidence that an armed populace decreases rather encourages crime (and even if there were an increase, surely it should be weighed against the benefits such as prevention of invasion, tyrannical government and genocide), intends to disarm the world's populace.
But the biggest issue in the US is not gun ownership, but what kind of gun ownership. Fully-automatic and military weapons are rightfully banned and will remain banned, but a ban on 'assault weapons' recently, and rightfully, expired. The ban had no effect on crime, as the criminals simply bought the stuff in unregulated alleyways rather than regulated gun shops. Another claim, more popular nowadays, was that terrorists could use the semi-automatics against Americans, ignoring that terrorists prefer fully-automatics, because a semi-automatic Uzi with one 25-round magazine is no deadlier than a handgun used with three 10-round magazines, but *real* assault weapons like the outlawed fully-automatic Uzi do have questionable merit as a method of home defense ('overkill'). Which brings to point how the ban was entirely arbitrary in its selection: How is a rifle with a 'pistol grip' more dangerous than a standard rifle? How are semi-automatics--which, by the way, cannot "spray bullets"--the toughest guns on the market when big game hunters actually prefer .30-06s and .375 H&Hs? The ban included bayonet mounts, but a long kitchen knife and some duct tape works around that (except for those hobbyists forced to hide some of their World War II paraphernalia), and who exactly anticipated a rash of crimes committed by bayonet charge?
Motor vehicles kill more people than guns, and are used more often in fatal crimes... but we allow people to own and use motor vehicles... however, we require that people pass standardized tests in owning and using motor vehicles... so perhaps a solution is to require people to know how to handle a gun before owning one? This is consistent with the Constitution, and in fact Richard Henry Lee once said, "To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them." We trust 16-year-olds with difficult-to-learn, two-ton mechanisms that average over a million lbs. of energy per foot, so the rabid paranoia over an easy-to-learn, lightweight mechanism that exerts 250 lbs. of energy per foot simply baffles me.
The Second Amendment reads: A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.
Anti-gun control lobbyists tend to ignore "a well-regulated Militia", and gun control lobbyists tend to ignore "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed." Both operative phrases are subject to interpretation, hence the debate. But George Mason pithily clarified, "I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials." All of the Second Amendment's originators and supporters were adamant that "the Constitution shall never be construed... to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms."
For my part, I support gun ownership on the same basis that I support gay equality, by following the traditional American ethos that Government is best suited for, and should therefore stick to, Government business. Is there a more striking example of personal freedom than the Pink Pistols?
Those who try to peg support for gun ownership on the Religious Right may have a point, though. Jesus Christ also supported weapons in the home, observing in Luke 11:21 that "When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are safe."
But the Son of God makes a rational argument.
As Patrick Henry put it, "Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own self-defense?" James Madison similarly remarked, "Americans have the right and advantage of being armed, unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust people with arms." More recently, conservative guru Mark Steyn wrote what may be his best perspective on the issue here. And of course an amusing example of this perspective appears in a Japanese admiral's (possibly apocryphal) explanation of why his country did not invade the US mainland after Pearl Harbor. "We did indeed know much about your preparedness," he said. "We knew that probably every second home in your country contained firearms. We knew that your country actually had state championships for private citizens shooting military rifles. We were not fools to set foot in such quicksand." The bottom line is that gun-crazy American citizens save lives, not by firing their weapons, but by simply being gun-crazy American citizens. It is also worth adding that many of these gun-toting loonies are gentle souls who collect modern weaponry as a hobby, in a mold related to those who collect ancient swords, medieval maces, or build catapults.
The curious thing is that stricter gun control tends to create more violent crime. In 1999, the tight gun controls in Washington, DC permitted 69 murders per 100,000, a death rate worse than American troops experienced in the Iraq War. The same year, Indianapolis' weaker gun controls resulted in 60 fewer murders per 100,000. And look overseas, where, apparently inspired by the long-time gun control in Northern Ireland (because, you know, it worked so well at preventing the IRA from hurting anyone...) British Prime Minister Tony Blair pushed a "total ban" on home gun ownership, the result of which has been a startling increase in violent crime every year since, with Birmingham's New Year bloodshed in 2003 an especially sad example. The year before, the United Nations revealed that England now has the dubious honor of having the highest crime rate of the world's 20 leading nations. Why? Well, there is the obvious fact that criminals are not likely to stop being criminals because the government bans guns, and those criminals are in fact rather happy that the government opened the door for an entire underground industry devoted to the buying, selling and manufacture of illegal weapons. Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, an expert on this matter, called such gun control "the best thing you can do for crooks and gangsters."
And despite scaremongering from the likes of Michael Moore, America has a rate of gun violence actually on par with, if not less than, Canada in terms of demographic percentage. Drug-related crime is an oft-marginalized factor, for one, as most homicides are drug-related and, quite frankly, America's War on Drugs functions with the same effectiveness as the UK's War on Guns (and for many of the same reasons). Firearms remain the most effective means of self-defense, particularly for women, and self-defense deters crime. After recently easing its gun control laws, New York recorded its lowest murder rate since the 19th century.
The punchiest argument for guns everywhere is protection from corrupt governments. "The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in Government," wrote Thomas Jefferson. Or as Abraham Lincoln put it, "This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." His observation bookends nicely with the fact that every descent into fascism in the modern age was accompanied by the implementation of gun control, and one of the most successful champions of gun control, Adolf Hitler, cleverly noted that "the most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing." Indeed, as a Washington University Law Quarterly article notes, none of the dozens of major genocides of the past 100 years, including China's democide under Mao, occurred against an armed population. And look at efforts against genocide by citizens with firepower, as in the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt. It is sadly worth remembering that many gun control laws in the US tended, and still tend, to have racist connotations. Consider the New York State Sullivan Act, originally created with the ulterior motive of keeping guns out of the hands of Italian-Americans.
All of this is especially frightening to consider in view of a United Nations effort to internationally overturn sovereign laws such the Second Amendment, with the UN Secretary-General, facing ever-mounting evidence that an armed populace decreases rather encourages crime (and even if there were an increase, surely it should be weighed against the benefits such as prevention of invasion, tyrannical government and genocide), intends to disarm the world's populace.
But the biggest issue in the US is not gun ownership, but what kind of gun ownership. Fully-automatic and military weapons are rightfully banned and will remain banned, but a ban on 'assault weapons' recently, and rightfully, expired. The ban had no effect on crime, as the criminals simply bought the stuff in unregulated alleyways rather than regulated gun shops. Another claim, more popular nowadays, was that terrorists could use the semi-automatics against Americans, ignoring that terrorists prefer fully-automatics, because a semi-automatic Uzi with one 25-round magazine is no deadlier than a handgun used with three 10-round magazines, but *real* assault weapons like the outlawed fully-automatic Uzi do have questionable merit as a method of home defense ('overkill'). Which brings to point how the ban was entirely arbitrary in its selection: How is a rifle with a 'pistol grip' more dangerous than a standard rifle? How are semi-automatics--which, by the way, cannot "spray bullets"--the toughest guns on the market when big game hunters actually prefer .30-06s and .375 H&Hs? The ban included bayonet mounts, but a long kitchen knife and some duct tape works around that (except for those hobbyists forced to hide some of their World War II paraphernalia), and who exactly anticipated a rash of crimes committed by bayonet charge?
Motor vehicles kill more people than guns, and are used more often in fatal crimes... but we allow people to own and use motor vehicles... however, we require that people pass standardized tests in owning and using motor vehicles... so perhaps a solution is to require people to know how to handle a gun before owning one? This is consistent with the Constitution, and in fact Richard Henry Lee once said, "To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them." We trust 16-year-olds with difficult-to-learn, two-ton mechanisms that average over a million lbs. of energy per foot, so the rabid paranoia over an easy-to-learn, lightweight mechanism that exerts 250 lbs. of energy per foot simply baffles me.
Tuesday, October 12, 2004
Stem Cell Block Tango/Clone On The Range
I recently engaged in a solid discussion on stem cell research and cloning. Many others are far more informed than me, but here are my thoughts, for whatever they are worth...
As a BBC story about a legally blind American who regained some of his sight through stem cell therapy illustrates, stem cell therapy has a role in the United States. The therapy is legal, as are both forms of stem cell research, adult and embryonic. But there is a ban (S. 723; do a bill number search at Thomas) on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research beyond the existing lines approved by Congress. Privately-funded embryonic stem cell research still occurs, but the narrow focus of the federal funding make obtaining grants considerably more difficult, leading to complaints about the Bush Administration and Congress retarding research. The Bush Administration and Congress were the first to approve the use of American tax dollars for embryonic stem cell research: Many feel it is not enough, and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation is hosting a petition to expand stem cell research; others regard the controversy as a distortion, and point to related but less contentious procedures.
The President's past remarks on stem cell research also draw attention to the issue of cloning. Human and therapeutic cloning is still legal in the US, except in states that chose to enact blanket bans themselves. Remember, in order for a US federal law to go into force it must gain a majority in both chambers of Congress, and then either be signed into force by the President or be approved by a two-thirds Senate majority. The US Senate refused the House of Representatives' 2001 cloning ban, the bill (H.R. 534; again, see Thomas) that the House passed in February 2003 is dead in the water, and a Senate bill (S. 245) is still under review by the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
Notably, it was Michigan Democrat Bart Stupak who spearheaded the 2003 ban, arguing even more strongly than the bill's co-sponsor, Florida Republican Dave Weldon. "The human race is not open to experimentation at any level, even the molecular level," Stupak said. That rules out a large swathe of medical research, doesn't it? Do human trials in drug tests count? How about taste tests? And you cannot tell me that Stupak never 'experimented' in college...
Of greater concern is a United Nations resolution to ban all forms of cloning worldwide, which is also one of the few UN issues where President Bush has wholehearted support from the Vatican. I oppose human cloning--it is high-risk, and there is more than a whiff of Master Race eugenics in the concept--but the benefits of therapeutic cloning stand a healthy chance of outweighing the dangers. France slapping down a US initiative could actually be a good thing this time 'round.
Update: Another topic that briefly arose was the existence of laws that circumvent the rule that you cannot be arrested for doing something in another country, unless it is illegal in both places. These laws make it illegal to travel, or conspire to travel, to another country to commit certain acts that would be illegal in the citizen's homeland, regardless of the legality where the acts occurred. They cannot arrest you for what you did, but they can arrest you for leaving the country to do it.
My feelings on these kinds of laws are mixed. They prove useful in taking sexual predators out of circulation, for example, but there may also be something intrusive, perhaps even fascist about such legal work-arounds. The libertarian (in the American sense) within me does not like it...
As a BBC story about a legally blind American who regained some of his sight through stem cell therapy illustrates, stem cell therapy has a role in the United States. The therapy is legal, as are both forms of stem cell research, adult and embryonic. But there is a ban (S. 723; do a bill number search at Thomas) on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research beyond the existing lines approved by Congress. Privately-funded embryonic stem cell research still occurs, but the narrow focus of the federal funding make obtaining grants considerably more difficult, leading to complaints about the Bush Administration and Congress retarding research. The Bush Administration and Congress were the first to approve the use of American tax dollars for embryonic stem cell research: Many feel it is not enough, and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation is hosting a petition to expand stem cell research; others regard the controversy as a distortion, and point to related but less contentious procedures.
The President's past remarks on stem cell research also draw attention to the issue of cloning. Human and therapeutic cloning is still legal in the US, except in states that chose to enact blanket bans themselves. Remember, in order for a US federal law to go into force it must gain a majority in both chambers of Congress, and then either be signed into force by the President or be approved by a two-thirds Senate majority. The US Senate refused the House of Representatives' 2001 cloning ban, the bill (H.R. 534; again, see Thomas) that the House passed in February 2003 is dead in the water, and a Senate bill (S. 245) is still under review by the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
Notably, it was Michigan Democrat Bart Stupak who spearheaded the 2003 ban, arguing even more strongly than the bill's co-sponsor, Florida Republican Dave Weldon. "The human race is not open to experimentation at any level, even the molecular level," Stupak said. That rules out a large swathe of medical research, doesn't it? Do human trials in drug tests count? How about taste tests? And you cannot tell me that Stupak never 'experimented' in college...
Of greater concern is a United Nations resolution to ban all forms of cloning worldwide, which is also one of the few UN issues where President Bush has wholehearted support from the Vatican. I oppose human cloning--it is high-risk, and there is more than a whiff of Master Race eugenics in the concept--but the benefits of therapeutic cloning stand a healthy chance of outweighing the dangers. France slapping down a US initiative could actually be a good thing this time 'round.
Update: Another topic that briefly arose was the existence of laws that circumvent the rule that you cannot be arrested for doing something in another country, unless it is illegal in both places. These laws make it illegal to travel, or conspire to travel, to another country to commit certain acts that would be illegal in the citizen's homeland, regardless of the legality where the acts occurred. They cannot arrest you for what you did, but they can arrest you for leaving the country to do it.
My feelings on these kinds of laws are mixed. They prove useful in taking sexual predators out of circulation, for example, but there may also be something intrusive, perhaps even fascist about such legal work-arounds. The libertarian (in the American sense) within me does not like it...
Sunday, October 10, 2004
Voice From Mesopotamia
Alaa tells America to listen up.
Again, be sure to read all of Charles Duelfer's ISG report, which Michael Barone pointedly summarizes here.
Update: Since Michael Barone mentions Iraq's terror connections, here are a few related links...
February 23, 1998: World Islamic Front Statement
November 4, 1998: Bin Laden, Atef Indicted in U.S. Federal Court for African Bombings
February 6, 1999: Saddam link to Bin Laden
February 13, 1999: Bin Laden reportedly leaves Afghanistan, whereabouts unknown
1999: ABC News Reports
April 30, 2001: Overview of State-Sponsored Terrorism
Late 2001: Interview with Sabah Khodada
February 23, 2002: Bin Laden uses Iraq to plot new attacks
April 02, 2002: Iraqi funds, training fuel Islamic terror group
March 30, 2003: September 11 Mural
April 18, 2003: Iraq regime linked to terror group
June 25 2003: Document links Saddam, bin Laden
October 20, 2003: Officer: Saddam trained al-Qaida pre-9-11
October 21, 2003: Saddam's Terror Ties
November 2003: Case Closed
November 19, 2003: The Saddam-Osama Memo
December 22, 2003: Second 9/11 Hijacker Tied to Abu Nidal, Iraq
February 6, 2004: Saddam's Real WMD Was Terrorism
April 18, 2004: Oil-for-Terror?
May 11, 2004: The Saddam-9/11 Link Confirmed
June 4, 2004: The New Defeatism
June 16, 2004: Administration vindicated. Press buries the lead.
June 17, 2004: Iraq & al Qaeda
June 20, 2004: Our suicide mission
June 20, 2004: What the Bush Administration Said
June 25, 2004: Iraqis, Seeking Foes of Saudis, Contacted bin Laden, File Says
July 22, 2004: 9/11 Commission releases report
October 11, 2004: CNSNews.com Publishes Iraqi Intelligence Docs
Update II: Glenn Reynolds has some great comments on the Oil-for-Fraud scandal at Instapundit, and at his MSNBC blog.
Update III: Having made a conservative argument for John F. Kerry, Michael J. Totten now offers a liberal argument for George W. Bush.
Again, be sure to read all of Charles Duelfer's ISG report, which Michael Barone pointedly summarizes here.
Update: Since Michael Barone mentions Iraq's terror connections, here are a few related links...
February 23, 1998: World Islamic Front Statement
November 4, 1998: Bin Laden, Atef Indicted in U.S. Federal Court for African Bombings
February 6, 1999: Saddam link to Bin Laden
February 13, 1999: Bin Laden reportedly leaves Afghanistan, whereabouts unknown
1999: ABC News Reports
April 30, 2001: Overview of State-Sponsored Terrorism
Late 2001: Interview with Sabah Khodada
February 23, 2002: Bin Laden uses Iraq to plot new attacks
April 02, 2002: Iraqi funds, training fuel Islamic terror group
March 30, 2003: September 11 Mural
April 18, 2003: Iraq regime linked to terror group
June 25 2003: Document links Saddam, bin Laden
October 20, 2003: Officer: Saddam trained al-Qaida pre-9-11
October 21, 2003: Saddam's Terror Ties
November 2003: Case Closed
November 19, 2003: The Saddam-Osama Memo
December 22, 2003: Second 9/11 Hijacker Tied to Abu Nidal, Iraq
February 6, 2004: Saddam's Real WMD Was Terrorism
April 18, 2004: Oil-for-Terror?
May 11, 2004: The Saddam-9/11 Link Confirmed
June 4, 2004: The New Defeatism
June 16, 2004: Administration vindicated. Press buries the lead.
June 17, 2004: Iraq & al Qaeda
June 20, 2004: Our suicide mission
June 20, 2004: What the Bush Administration Said
June 25, 2004: Iraqis, Seeking Foes of Saudis, Contacted bin Laden, File Says
July 22, 2004: 9/11 Commission releases report
October 11, 2004: CNSNews.com Publishes Iraqi Intelligence Docs
Update II: Glenn Reynolds has some great comments on the Oil-for-Fraud scandal at Instapundit, and at his MSNBC blog.
Update III: Having made a conservative argument for John F. Kerry, Michael J. Totten now offers a liberal argument for George W. Bush.
Sunday's Quote
Douglas Kern: Disgusted by the indolence and vacuity of my Sims, I hearkened back to Jonathan Edwards, and turned my game into Simmers in the Hands of an Angry Doug. I smote my Sims with psychotic neighbors, grease fires, and starvation. I was a cruel, tyrannical deity, you say? Not so; my homicides were acts of mercy. Absent the intervention of fire, electricity, or hunger, Sims live forever, locked in an eternity of self-improvement and false materialism and the dubious merits of pastel carpets. Yes, my little Sims shrieked and panicked as the flames from the kitchen drew closer, but secretly, I think, they embraced the soothing oblivion of sweet death.
What a great game!
So I hear.
What a great game!
So I hear.
The Crusades, Revisited
There are people who call the War on Terror yet another chapter in the Crusades. And they are correct, though not necessarily in the way they mean it.
Several Islamic communities in Memphis, USA established themselves without incident, but try establishing a Southern Baptist community in Memphis, Egypt. A woman with a burqa in a predominately Jewish neighborhood need not worry too much about her safety, but try being a woman with a Star of David in a predominately Islamic neighborhood. After the Crusades, Christians and also Jews learned from the horror, yet the Islamists (not to be confused with progressive Muslims) did not. Their ideological descendents declared Vienna, of all places, as a future terrorist target because of its role in pushing back Islamic imperialism. You never see Chinese nationalists blowing up London schools as retaliation for the Opium Wars, but there are forces out there still fighting the Crusades, and they fully intend to win this time.
One of the best writers on the WOT is Canadian conservative Mark Steyn, and two of his best articles appear reprinted on Free Republic (it is the Republican equivalent of Democratic Underground, so you may want to stop reading before you reach the comment sections). His most important observation is that These Guys Want to Kill Us Anyway, though he also cautions readers to Place Blame Where It Belongs.
There are Muslims trying to make a difference for the better. And more outspoken moderates like them would go a long way toward easing tensions.
Another major issue--the key issue, some say--is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Historian Victor Davis Hanson touches on this several times in the September Question Log on his site. Scroll down to see his response to an Arab-American's question about America's policy toward Israel.
You know, can't we all just get along?
Several Islamic communities in Memphis, USA established themselves without incident, but try establishing a Southern Baptist community in Memphis, Egypt. A woman with a burqa in a predominately Jewish neighborhood need not worry too much about her safety, but try being a woman with a Star of David in a predominately Islamic neighborhood. After the Crusades, Christians and also Jews learned from the horror, yet the Islamists (not to be confused with progressive Muslims) did not. Their ideological descendents declared Vienna, of all places, as a future terrorist target because of its role in pushing back Islamic imperialism. You never see Chinese nationalists blowing up London schools as retaliation for the Opium Wars, but there are forces out there still fighting the Crusades, and they fully intend to win this time.
One of the best writers on the WOT is Canadian conservative Mark Steyn, and two of his best articles appear reprinted on Free Republic (it is the Republican equivalent of Democratic Underground, so you may want to stop reading before you reach the comment sections). His most important observation is that These Guys Want to Kill Us Anyway, though he also cautions readers to Place Blame Where It Belongs.
There are Muslims trying to make a difference for the better. And more outspoken moderates like them would go a long way toward easing tensions.
Another major issue--the key issue, some say--is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Historian Victor Davis Hanson touches on this several times in the September Question Log on his site. Scroll down to see his response to an Arab-American's question about America's policy toward Israel.
You know, can't we all just get along?
Saturday, October 09, 2004
Weapon Of Choice
Christopher Walken finally gets his star (correction: leaves his mark!). Well done! Not only is he a terrific (and often terrifying) actor, he can also groove like a wild man. (Unlike this guy.)
Taking Things On Faith
The Question of God
Works by Michael Behe
Works by Peter Kreeft
Scientific Tenets of Faith by Stephen C. Meyer
Planet with a Purpose by Robert Wright
Did I Misrepresent the Views of Dan Dennett? by Robert Wright
Works by Michael Behe
Works by Peter Kreeft
Scientific Tenets of Faith by Stephen C. Meyer
Planet with a Purpose by Robert Wright
Did I Misrepresent the Views of Dan Dennett? by Robert Wright
Ads Added
Google AdSense came to my house and told me that if I did not put a source of revenue on my site (namely, advertising space) he would tattoo "Bernard Herrmann Sux" on John Williams' forehead. For the sake of film history, music appreciation and my own love of film music, I caved in to his demands.
Fortunately, I will receive a penny or two on successful ads here. Unfortunately, my posts have AdSense's artificial intelligence thinking in a manner inconsistent with what little purpose this site offers. Therefore, I offer the following poem in an attempt to mess with his results...
O, gentle bovine
whom Hindus call divine,
release to the world your calf!
Nay, not a wombat or giraffe,
crocodile or alpaca,
or a lion that'd attack ya!
Never have a bat or sharkor cat, or dog that'll bark!
Do not birth an elephant,
never mind a porcupine!
Your offspring should be heaven-sent
and, like you, bovine!
John Barry should be setting that to music.
Update: My effort failed! Leslie Bricusse is getting jealous, though.
Fortunately, I will receive a penny or two on successful ads here. Unfortunately, my posts have AdSense's artificial intelligence thinking in a manner inconsistent with what little purpose this site offers. Therefore, I offer the following poem in an attempt to mess with his results...
O, gentle bovine
whom Hindus call divine,
release to the world your calf!
Nay, not a wombat or giraffe,
crocodile or alpaca,
or a lion that'd attack ya!
Never have a bat or sharkor cat, or dog that'll bark!
Do not birth an elephant,
never mind a porcupine!
Your offspring should be heaven-sent
and, like you, bovine!
John Barry should be setting that to music.
Update: My effort failed! Leslie Bricusse is getting jealous, though.
Quote Of The Day
George W. Bush: I own a timber company? That's news to me... Need some wood?
Now, read it again in the style of Clint Eastwood.
Now, read it again in the style of Clint Eastwood.
The Debates, Part II
It seems President Bush did better in last night's debate than he did in the first debacle. Big deal. I am still waiting for Senator Kerry to improve. This time, Kerry did not seem aware that he and the rest of the Senate unanimously rejected Kyoto, so Bush couldn't have signed it into law even if he wanted to (and I am now convinced that Kyoto is a quick-fix gesture rather than a workable solution). Taking a line from Michael Moore, Kerry spoke about parents sending their children to war, apparently unaware that America's volunteer armed forces are for people over 18. The senator did outmatch Bush's awful "It's hard work" refrain with "I have a plan," but I prefer elaboration beyond simply uttering that phrase or, at best, sharing the sort of ideas one assembles in preparation for creating a plan. This, on top of their better-publicized nonsense.
A candidate with John Edward's looks, Dick Chaney's experience, George Bush's optimism, and John Kerry's international cred would be a start. I want that, or a higher-end model, in stock by 2008.
If we sacrifice looks, how about John McCain vs. Dick Gephardt? I prefer Joe Lieberman as a Democratic contender, but he has the dangerous flaw of being a censor, and his effect on the Middle East Peace Process™ could be 'interesting.' I am open to suggestions.
A candidate with John Edward's looks, Dick Chaney's experience, George Bush's optimism, and John Kerry's international cred would be a start. I want that, or a higher-end model, in stock by 2008.
If we sacrifice looks, how about John McCain vs. Dick Gephardt? I prefer Joe Lieberman as a Democratic contender, but he has the dangerous flaw of being a censor, and his effect on the Middle East Peace Process™ could be 'interesting.' I am open to suggestions.
Jonah Goldberg Flips Out
"Shame, Shame, Shame," he says: How could Bush think he could pull this thing off? I mean, knowing as he did that there were no WMDs in Iraq, how could he invade the country and think no one would notice? And if he's capable of lying to send Americans to their deaths for some nebulous petro-oedipal conspiracy no intelligent person has bothered to make even credible, why on earth didn't he just plant some WMDs on the victim after the fact? If you're willing to kill Americans for a lie, surely you'd be willing to plant some anthrax to keep your job.
And speaking of the victim, if it's in fact true that Bush offered no rationale for the war other than WMDs, why shouldn't we simply let Saddam out of his cage and put him back in office? We can even use some of the extra money from the Oil-for-Food program to compensate him for the damage to his palaces and prisons. Heck, if John Edwards weren't busy, he could represent him.
I'm serious. If this whole war was such a mistake, such a colossal blunder, based on a lie and all that, not only should John Kerry show the courage to ask once again "How do you tell the last man to die for a mistake?" but he should also promise to rectify the error. And what better, or more logically consistent, way to solve the problem Bush created? Kerry insists it was wrong to topple Saddam. Well, let's make him a Weeble instead. Bush and Saddam can walk out to the podiums and explain that his good friend merely wobbled, he didn't fall down. That would end the chaos John Kerry considers so much worse than the status quo ante. And if the murderer needs help getting back in the game, maybe the Marines can cut off a few tongues and slaughter a couple thousand Shia and Kurds until Saddam's ready for the big league again. That will calm the chaos; that will erase the crime.
Cheap shots! Low blows! Unfair criticisms!
So what are you waiting for? Read the whole thing.
And speaking of the victim, if it's in fact true that Bush offered no rationale for the war other than WMDs, why shouldn't we simply let Saddam out of his cage and put him back in office? We can even use some of the extra money from the Oil-for-Food program to compensate him for the damage to his palaces and prisons. Heck, if John Edwards weren't busy, he could represent him.
I'm serious. If this whole war was such a mistake, such a colossal blunder, based on a lie and all that, not only should John Kerry show the courage to ask once again "How do you tell the last man to die for a mistake?" but he should also promise to rectify the error. And what better, or more logically consistent, way to solve the problem Bush created? Kerry insists it was wrong to topple Saddam. Well, let's make him a Weeble instead. Bush and Saddam can walk out to the podiums and explain that his good friend merely wobbled, he didn't fall down. That would end the chaos John Kerry considers so much worse than the status quo ante. And if the murderer needs help getting back in the game, maybe the Marines can cut off a few tongues and slaughter a couple thousand Shia and Kurds until Saddam's ready for the big league again. That will calm the chaos; that will erase the crime.
Cheap shots! Low blows! Unfair criticisms!
So what are you waiting for? Read the whole thing.
Friday, October 08, 2004
Cricket Snuff Pics & Centipede Porn
Jeff in Korea recently offered a photo perspective on blogging about one's pets.
Thursday, October 07, 2004
The Report On WMDs In Iraq
Read it. Read all of it.
Update: From Mickey Kaus: If a man says he has a gun, acts like he has a gun, and convinces everyone around him he has a gun, and starts waving it around and behaving recklessly, the police are justified in shooting him (even if it turns out later he just had a black bar of soap). Similarly, according to the Duelfer report, Saddam seems to have intentionally convinced other countries, and his own generals, that he had WMDs. He also convinced much of the U.S. government. If we reacted accordingly and he turns out not to have had WMDs, whose fault is that?
Update: From Mickey Kaus: If a man says he has a gun, acts like he has a gun, and convinces everyone around him he has a gun, and starts waving it around and behaving recklessly, the police are justified in shooting him (even if it turns out later he just had a black bar of soap). Similarly, according to the Duelfer report, Saddam seems to have intentionally convinced other countries, and his own generals, that he had WMDs. He also convinced much of the U.S. government. If we reacted accordingly and he turns out not to have had WMDs, whose fault is that?
Thanks And Fatwas
Online Journalism Review offers a virtual roundtable discussion with military and Iraqi bloggers that is well worth reading.
Meanwhile, the Middle East Media Research Institute reports a chilling reminder of what we are facing.
Meanwhile, the Middle East Media Research Institute reports a chilling reminder of what we are facing.
Thursday's Quote
From the comments on this post about Dick Cheney resembling Darth Vader:
Then George Bush would be the Emporer?
It would be cool to see him kill terrorists with lightning bolts from his hands!
If Bush did that, even my brother might vote for him.
Update: I'm guessing Karl Rove is Boba Fett? And Kerry could be C-3PO.
Update II: Or Donald Rumsfeld is Boba Fett. Colin Powell must be Lando Calrissian.
Then George Bush would be the Emporer?
It would be cool to see him kill terrorists with lightning bolts from his hands!
If Bush did that, even my brother might vote for him.
Update: I'm guessing Karl Rove is Boba Fett? And Kerry could be C-3PO.
Update II: Or Donald Rumsfeld is Boba Fett. Colin Powell must be Lando Calrissian.
Wednesday, October 06, 2004
Canada Deploys Troop To Iraq
CNW Telbec: A Canadian Forces senior officer deployed on October 2, to serve with the United Nations (UN) as an advisor for the Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) in Iraq.
Lieutenant-Colonel Alan Smith, currently employed as a Canadian Forces Attaché with the Canadian Defence Liaison Staff in Washington, D.C., will fill the post for one year.
Better late than never, I guess. But note how 'troop' is singular? And all the girlies say Canada's pretty shy for any ally...
Lieutenant-Colonel Alan Smith, currently employed as a Canadian Forces Attaché with the Canadian Defence Liaison Staff in Washington, D.C., will fill the post for one year.
Better late than never, I guess. But note how 'troop' is singular? And all the girlies say Canada's pretty shy for any ally...
Monday, October 04, 2004
Today's Best Quote
Glenn Reynolds: Personally, I'd be delighted to live in a country where happily married gay couples had closets full of assault weapons.
These guys already know.
These guys already know.
So Realistic, Dude!
If you use a pop-up blocker but miss the high-octane excitement of unprotected web surfing, try the Internet Simulator!
Sunday, October 03, 2004
We Just Can't Win
Babe: Pig in the City
Just watched this movie again, on one of the Starz channels. Many people seem to fault it for being an offbeat family film, but why? Because it is sometimes creepy? Some psychological bruises are part of growing up, every bit as much as that bump from falling off the monkey bars at school, and that is one reason why youngsters tell ghost stories or play football (both of which I find considerably more disturbing than Babe: Pig in the City). Is it because the film treats characters in a mature fashion? Children that find certain sequences upsetting probably already know why they disturb them, and would receive more protection through acknowledgment and discussion of those issues than through denial.
Count me among those who rank this sequel right alongside the original. It is dark, delightful, provocative, uplifting, a sugar rush of imagination, and a film for families that assumes its viewers are aware of their world deserves such praise.
Count me among those who rank this sequel right alongside the original. It is dark, delightful, provocative, uplifting, a sugar rush of imagination, and a film for families that assumes its viewers are aware of their world deserves such praise.
Saturday, October 02, 2004
More Dire Deals At The East River's Enron
For some reason, the same three UN Security Council members keep causing trouble...
Congressional investigators say that France, Russia and China systematically sabotaged the former United Nations oil-for-food program in Iraq by preventing the United States and Britain from investigating whether Saddam Hussein was diverting billions of dollars. . . .
The paper also accuses the United Nations office charged with overseeing the program of having "pressed" contractors not to rigorously inspect Iraqi oil being sold and the foreign goods being bought. The program office, headed by Benan Sevan, who is also under investigation by a committee appointed by the United Nations, turned a blind eye to corruption charges, the paper says, because it apparently saw oil-for-food "strictly as a humanitarian program." (Via Instapundit.)
Congressional investigators say that France, Russia and China systematically sabotaged the former United Nations oil-for-food program in Iraq by preventing the United States and Britain from investigating whether Saddam Hussein was diverting billions of dollars. . . .
The paper also accuses the United Nations office charged with overseeing the program of having "pressed" contractors not to rigorously inspect Iraqi oil being sold and the foreign goods being bought. The program office, headed by Benan Sevan, who is also under investigation by a committee appointed by the United Nations, turned a blind eye to corruption charges, the paper says, because it apparently saw oil-for-food "strictly as a humanitarian program." (Via Instapundit.)
I'd Like A Small Government, Please
Mark Steyn: The silliest thing Dick Cheney has ever said was a couple of weeks after 9/11: ‘One of the things that’s changed so much since September 11 is the extent to which people do trust the government — big shift — and value it, and have high expectations for what we can do.’
Really? I’d say 9/11 vindicated perfectly a decentralised, federalist, conservative view of the state: what worked that day was municipal government, small government, core government — the firemen, the NYPD cops, rescue workers. What flopped — big-time, as the Vice-President would say — was federal government, the FBI, CIA, INS, FAA and all the other hotshot, money-no-object, fancypants acronyms. Under the system operating on that day, if one of the many Algerian terrorists living on welfare in Montreal attempted to cross the US border at Derby Line, Vermont, and got refused entry by an alert official, he would be able to drive a few miles east, attempt to cross at Beecher Falls, Vermont, and they had no way of knowing that he’d been refused entry just half an hour earlier. No compatible computers.
On the other hand, if that same Algerian terrorist went to order a book online, amazon.com would know that he’d bought The Dummy’s Guide to Martyrdom Operations two years ago and their ‘We have some suggestions for you!’ box would be proffering a 30 per cent discount on The A-Z of Infidel Slaying and 72 Hot Love Tips That Will Have Your Virgins Panting For More. Amazon is a more efficient miner of information than US Immigration.
Really? I’d say 9/11 vindicated perfectly a decentralised, federalist, conservative view of the state: what worked that day was municipal government, small government, core government — the firemen, the NYPD cops, rescue workers. What flopped — big-time, as the Vice-President would say — was federal government, the FBI, CIA, INS, FAA and all the other hotshot, money-no-object, fancypants acronyms. Under the system operating on that day, if one of the many Algerian terrorists living on welfare in Montreal attempted to cross the US border at Derby Line, Vermont, and got refused entry by an alert official, he would be able to drive a few miles east, attempt to cross at Beecher Falls, Vermont, and they had no way of knowing that he’d been refused entry just half an hour earlier. No compatible computers.
On the other hand, if that same Algerian terrorist went to order a book online, amazon.com would know that he’d bought The Dummy’s Guide to Martyrdom Operations two years ago and their ‘We have some suggestions for you!’ box would be proffering a 30 per cent discount on The A-Z of Infidel Slaying and 72 Hot Love Tips That Will Have Your Virgins Panting For More. Amazon is a more efficient miner of information than US Immigration.
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