The Redhunter

January 26, 2012

State of the Union 2012: What is Tax Fairness?

Consider this from Obama's State of the Union address Tuesday night:

We don't begrudge financial success in this country. We admire it. When Americans talk about folks like me paying my fair share of taxes, it's not because they envy the rich. It's because they understand that when I get a tax break I don't need and the country can't afford, it either adds to the deficit or somebody else has to make up the difference, like a senior on a fixed income, or a student trying to get through school, or a family trying to make ends meet.

That's not right. Americans know that's not right. They know that this generation's success is only possible because past generations felt a responsibility to each other, and to the future of their country, and they know our way of life will only endure if we feel that same sense of shared responsibility. That's how we'll reduce our deficit. That's an America built to last.

What is "fair share?" What does that even mean? Obama seems to assume that we all share his vision of a steeply "progressive" tax whereby those who have money over a certain amount are obligated to pay whatever amount he deems necessary to fund the government programs that he thinks necessary.

But there's no reason that should be so.

What is "Wealthy?"

First, how do we even define "the wealthy?" Is it someone who makes over a million dollars a year? Half a million? One hundred thousand? Is it measured in total income or in total net worth? Does it matter whether you get your income from salary, investments, playing the stock market or the horses at the track?

I'm not saying that there's no such thing as "wealthy," just that we all have our own concept of what that is, and my observation is that it's nearly always somewhere greater than our own personal situation. However much money or holdings anyone has, that person will almost all of the time point to someone else as truly "wealthy."

Further, what constitutes paying your "fair share?" Once again, Obama talks as if it's obvious. But there are no stone tables carved in the sky outlining any of this. It's all subjective.

Half Pay No Federal Income Taxes

Worse, almost half (46.4) of all Americans pay no federal income tax. This is terribly unfair, and for a number of reasons.

One, if you're going to consume services you need to pay something somewhere for them. When you have to pay for something, no matter how little, you develop the mentality of having a stake making sure it works well. When you get something for nothing, you don't care, and want more and more and more and more... and demand that someone else keep paying more and more and more for it.

Finally, if Obama's going to talk about us all being in it together and benefiting from our history, previous generations, and government a then fine. But if according to him we all share in the benefits, we all must share in the costs.

So I don't care how little someone makes, everyone should pay something in federal income taxes every year, even if it's only $10. A symbolic payment of something, just to inculcate the attitude of responsibility.

You want tax fairness? Fine; then fair is when everyone pays something.

Speaking of Fairness...

John Hood explains why "those who defend Buffett's false claim about the undertaxed wealthy are either ignorant or dishonest."

The wealthy pay a significant higher share of their income in taxes than the middle class or the poor do. If you combine federal, state, and local taxes together and divide by income, the top quintile of U.S. households pay about twice as much in taxes as a share of their incomes as the bottom quintile does. Because government spending disproportionately benefits lower-income households, the progressivity of government's fiscal structure is even more steep than the tax data alone would show.

If you want to defend this level of progressivity, fine. If you want to argue that the system ought to be even more punitive at higher income levels, go for it. But denying that the wealthy already pay a disproportionate share of taxes is an act of gross irresponsibility.

Why Do Democrats Want Higher Taxes on the Wealthy?

So why do Democrats and liberals like higher taxes those they consider to be wealthy?

Punishment is a large part of it. Liberals believe that people who they see as wealthy got that way because they cheated, stole, exploited the poor, or got lucky.

Political intimidation is a large part of it too. "Get on board and support our policies or we'll tax you more" is the clear message. You can bet that if Mitt Romney was pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, and supported Obamacare there wouldn't be any talk about where he got his money or whether he was paying the right amount of taxes.

So when I hear politicians rail at "the wealthy," who don't pay their "fair share of taxes," you can be sure that they're simply demagogues using all the threatening power of the state to extort money for government programs that they deem are worthy.

Posted by Tom at 7:00 AM | Comments (12) | TrackBack

June 14, 2011

Book Review - The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth, and Power

We all know the madness of our age: People who enjoy the comforts of the West and would live nowhere else yet vilify their own societies. Widespread belief in the most crazy of conspiracy theories. Militant atheist scientists who insist that religion is at odds with reason yet whose own theories are anything but reasonable. A widespread campaign to delegitimize Israel, while excusing or ignoring every Islamic/Arab tyranny and atrocity. The new religion of Global Warming, which by definition cannot be proved wrong and all deniers castigated rather than debated.

Truth is presented as a lie, and lies are presented as the truth. Right and wrong are inverted, those who preach the gospel of tolerance are themselves intolerant, victim and aggressor switch places.

The result is a West unable to defend itself against things like the "creeping sharia" of Islam because it does not believe it itself is worth defending. We have abandoned the successful uniting of religion and reason and traded it for atheism and irrationality.

British journalist Melanie Phillips writes about all this in her must-read book The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth, and Power.

Book Summary

Unlike some books, The World Turned Upside Down is not just a list of leftist outrages sprinkled with commentary. Phillips examines the historical ideas that have led us to where we are today, and grapples seriously with the problem of how we have gone astray by betraying the promise of the Enlightenment.

Cults and Conspiracies

Oddly, the more "advanced" we become the more likely people are to believe the most outlandish things. Cults and conspiracy theories are more popular than ever before. "Wicca," which would have been laughed out of existence a few generations ago, is now the fastest growing religion in America. UFO and Area 51 fanatics, "chemtrails," Truthers and Birthers are prevalent.

The Myth of Environmental Armageddon

Liberals (and most on the right) right laughed when Harold Camping predicted the Rapture would occur on May 21, 2011. When of course it didn't happen, he was rightly ridiculed and/or deemed a false prophet.

Yet leaders in the environmental movement have been predicting the end of the world (or close to it) for decades, their predictions have not come true, and yet they are let completely off the hook. Perhaps the most notorious is Paul Erlich, whose 1968 book The Population Bomb warned of mass starvation in the West in the 1979s and '80s due to overpopulation. But others, too, continually make similar predictions. What is interesting is that no matter how wrong Erlich and others like him are, they are still taken seriously.

In the 1970s we were told that surely an Ice Age was just around the corner, now those same publications insist that global warming will kill us all. This time they've added a new twist; it's our fault, specifically, that of the West. At least the climate scare-mongers of old thought it was good old mother nature.

The evidence for Anthropogenic (man-made) global warming is sketchy, contradictory, and disputed by many. The theory is full of holes, and the University of East Anglia email scandal has shown that at least some prominent scientists are willing to lie to promote their cause. There is no scientific consensus, yet the proponents of AGW insist that governments take drastic action that would have significant effects on the world economy and liberties of people.

Worst of all is the vilification of anyone who disagrees with AGW. Intelligent debate was not to be allowed, skeptics were branded as heretics and dealt with in harsh fashion. Although the tide is perhaps starting to turn, for years any environmental scientist who wanted to publish, or even keep his or her job, had to buy into AGW dogma.

The Iraq War

We know the chant: "Bush Lied, People Died." If only cranks believed this line, we need not pay it any attention. But sad fact is that otherwise intelligent people actually believe that President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair knew that Saddam Hussein's Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction yet told the world he did.

Phillips does not attempt to argue that the invasion of Iraq was the right call, or that it wasn't. Her focus is solely on the charge that "Bush lied."

The amazing thing is that the charge is easily proven wrong. Every study commissioned by the US and British governments, every congressional and parliamentary inquiry, has found that while serious misjudgments were made (of course), no one deliberately deceived anyone.

The fact is that Saddam Hussein had a history of deceit about his WMD program, and there was good reason to think he had not been forthcoming about all of his programs and stockpiles. Time and again the UN teams in Iraq in the years immediately following the Gulf War found the Iraqis lying about their programs, and Saddam completely ceased cooperation in 1998. If he didn't have WMD, he certainly did everything he could to give the appearance of having them.

The Misrepresentation of Israel

Of all the instances where reason, facts, and logic are stood on their head, the worst is directed at Israel. Phillips says that "Israel sits at the epicenter of the West's repudiation of reason," and further, that

There is no other world conflict that is so obsessively falsified. Where Israel is involved, truth and reason and totally suspended. Irrationality and hysteria rule instead.

One's view of the Middle East is a sure guide to their view of the world. If someone believes that Israel, despite her faults, is generally on the side of what is right, good, and true, and that the Palestinians and Arabs are mostly at fault, that person can be counted on to have a rational view of the world. If, on the other hand, they see Israel as the oppressor, equate it's policies with apartheid, and see the Palestinians as victims, they are almost always "moral and cultural and relativists who invert truth and lies, right and wrong over a wide range of issues, and are incapable of seeing that their beliefs do not accord with reality."

Contrary to what so many think, Israel was not created by the West as a way of redeeming their guilt over the Holocaust. Europeans Jews were not transplanted there as foreign invaders, and did not drive out the Arabs. And no, giving the Palestinians their own completely independent state on the West Bank and Gaza would not make them happy.

Phillips goes through each of these and shows why they are false. The Jews have an historic claim to the land of Israel, including of course the ancient ancient kingdom. More, from then until modern times Jews have maintained an unbroken presence there, and this claim was recognized in things such as the Balfour Declaration by Great Britain in 1917 and the Palestine Mandate by the League of Nations in 1922.

If anything, it is the "Palestinian" claim that rests on shaky ground. Until the modern nation of Israel was established, the Arabs in Palestine did not consider themselves "a people" distinct from other Arabs. Before that time local leaders insisted they did not want a separate state.

Israel is not engaged in any "illegal occupation" of the West Bank, nor does it engage in apartheid. The area in question is not and has never been land assigned to any one nation, it is rather an unallocated part of the British Mandate, and, perhaps alone among states, Israel does not have any official borders anywhere. The false allegations go on and on.

Scientific Triumphalism and the Secular Inquisition

Not too long ago I saw a story in The Huffington Post which illustrates almost perfectly the attitude the scientific elite have towards anyone who does not buy into their version of Darwinian evolution. "Deniers" must not simply be shown to be wrong, they must be written out of society.

In the Middle Ages the church stamped out heresy through the death penalty or forced conversion. Liberals achieve the same goal of controlling though by ostracizing dissenters to the point where they cannot publish or get or hold jobs in their profession. Questioning AWG is made to be equal to questioning the Holocaust.

Militant atheist scientists and thinkers such as Richard Dawkins and Francis Crick, Carl Sagan and Peter Atkins are not merely nonbelievers in God, they see religion (especially Christianity, of course) as a positive danger to be stamped out. To make their case, however, they fall back on a series of dogmatic assertions, the proof of which is in the dogma itself. What we end up with is a sort of "scientific triumphalism" of circular reasoning in which "science is what science says it is."

To the militant atheist scientist, reason and religion are incompatible. Phillips shows that not only is this not true, but reason and science are dependent on religion. Indeed, if one wants to argue that several popular scientists such as Hawking, and Sagan say that science led them to atheism, one can counter by pointing to any number of scientists who say that it was precisely their discipline that led them to faith. The more this latter group learn, the more they conclude that there must be a master or guiding intelligence behind existence.

More, there is a reason why the West was the first to pursue and accepted science and other cultures did not, and that reason is our Judeo-Christian heritage. While ancient Greek thinking played a strong role, it would have died had medieval Christian and Jewish thinkers not reconciled it with their faiths. Science is founded on a concept of order and understanding that is found in Judaism and Christianity but not other faiths.

The Islamic Threat

In Phillips' 2006 book Londonistan she wrote about how Muslim immigrant radicals were changing Britain for the worst. "Londonistan" is the name given to the British capital by French security officials outraged at the British refusal to extradite Algerian terrorist Rachid Ramda, claiming he could not get a fair trial in France(!) It took the French 3 requests and 10 years before they finally got their man. During the 80s and 90s, it became well-known among the security forces of Europe that the UK was becoming a terrorist haven. Time and again they warned the British, who did nothing. The inevitable came about in July of 2005 whem Muslim terrorists bombed the London Underground.

There is currently a jihad against Western freedom, and the paradox is that many in the West are going along with it, all in the name of multiculturalism. While of course not all Muslims are radicals or want anything to do with any of this, the fact the ones calling the shots in their community in Britain are the radicals.

There should be a give-and-take between a host people and immigrants. The host nation gains new words, some culture, and cuisine, and the immigrants agree to accept the legal and social mores of the host country. This is not happening with Muslim immigrants, who are trying to bring their sharia into Britain and other European countries and are not accepting Western legal and social mores.

Islamic, Western, and Christian Jew-hatred

Sadly, we still live in a world in which antisemitism is gaining strength. Phillips disputes the notion that it is due to or a by-product of anti-Israeli feelings.

Muslim extremists don't attack Israel in their writings so much as they attack "Jews." Islam has had a problem with Jews from the beginnings of their religion, and it has not let up. They don't want to live side-by-side with Israel, they want to kill all the Jews period.

It is unsurprising that Islam and most Muslims are antisemitic. What is more disturbing is the resurgence of these attitudes among Christians and secularists on the West. Part of this is the result of Muslim immigration to the West, but much of it is also inherent.

Of all countries in the West, Great Britain has the dubious distinction of leading the way in the antisemitic attitudes of it's citizens. Majorities or large pluralities believe the old tripe about Jews being more loyal to Israel than their home country, having inordinate control over the banking and media sectors, and control U.S. foreign policy. Worst of all while it used to be that Israelis were only equated with Nazis in the Arab press, this has now spread to the West as well.

Much of the Antisemitism is defended as simple criticism of Israel. But attacks on Israel go far beyond attacks on any other country, and her actions are scrutinized like that of no other nation on earth. Israel is held to higher standards, and her every action is assigned the worst possible motivation. On the other hand, the terrorists who attack her are held to no standards, and their every claim reported as if it was true.

Perhaps the oddest result of all this is a new "Red-Black-Green-Islamic Axis" in the West. Leftists, fascists, environmental extremists, and Muslims have found common cause against the West in general and the Jews in particular.

That the far right is allied with Islamists is perhaps not surprising. But given that the left presents itself as the home of "tolerance," "multiculturalism," and "secular humanism" it is strange that they would ally with a religion that is opposed to all three of those values. Yet this is just the case. I myself witnessed an instance where I live where a noted gay activist used his sympathy for Islam to attack Christianity.

Finally is the resurgence of Christian antisemitism. It has become de rigueur for "progressive" Christian churches to spill much ink criticizing Israel while ignoring the very Islamic terror and extremism which threaten it. Worse, they engage in a disgusting moral equivalency. Several churches have divested themselves of companies who do business with Israel; again while happily investing in companies who business with the world's dictators and rogues. Other churches have attempted divestiture (Presbyterian Church USA, for example) and only walked back from actually doing it because of outrage from their members.

The Quest for Redemption

"Millenarianism" is the quasi-religious belief that mankind and society can be perfected on earth. Part of this is a secular version of Christian salvation, whereby we can redeem ourselves from past sins if only we do x and such.

The religious version of millenarianism is found today in Islam, which actively seeks to establish itself as the ruler of the earth. While one can say that Christians want all people to follow their religion too, the difference of course is that each uses dramatically different means towards their ends.

Communism and fascism were and are Western secular millenarianist ideologies. Although both are still around, they have mostly been replaced with an earth-worshiping environmentalism, a valueless multiculturalism, an anti-Western post-nationalism, and other similar ideas.

Interestingly, most of these movements are cultural rather than political in nature. To be sure, they do contain concrete policy objectives, but they're quasi-religious in that they incorporate the evangelical, dogmatism, fanaticism, and desire to crush dissent that any medieval religion would be proud of.

They also all share the same concept of secular sin; mankind (personkind?), especially the West, has been criminally wrong and we must return to the true faith. If we would only follow their prescriptions, we can create a world with no war, no racial or ethnic strife, no persecution, tyranny, etc.

The Enlightenment Unraveled, Reason and the Bible

Phillips spends a lot of time discussing the concept of reason and how it relates to religion. She walks the reader through the Enlightenment (A 17th and 18th-century philosophical movement) and shows us what really happened.

The fairly tale version goes like this; during the Dark Ages we were a bunch of ignorant superstitious hillbillies who where kept that way by the Catholic church. Along time a bunch of smart guys who used reason to "enlighten" us and release us from the grip of religion so that we could live happily ever after.

The reality was more complicated. The Enlightenment was not opposed to religion, indeed it could not have taken place without a Judo-Christian foundation. Most enlightenment thinkers were Christian, and more wanted to release the church's grip on government and society than replace it.

Further, although in some countries the Enlightenment produced liberal thinking and institutions, in places like France it took a decidedly authoritarian turn. French philosophers elevated "reason" to the same status as religion, quite in contrast to their colleagues in other countries.

The immediate effect of these new French ideas was the Revolution and Terror, the long term is the rejection of religion by the "enlightened" today.

The cause is that "reason" cannot exist by itself. Religion and reason go hand in hand: Isaiah 1:18 "Come now, let us reason together," is more than just a verse. "Reason" as an abstraction leads to authoritarian or totalitarianism.

The Great War (World War I) and the Holocaust shook European confidence to it's core. Sure, Europe had seen big wars before and had experienced massacres, but nothing on these scales, and never before for seemingly no purpose. These shocks had two effects; the first was that the people lost their traditional values and beliefs, and second they started to believe in all manner of crazy things (see above).

The result is a postmodermism that rejects reason. Truth is not all about perspective, not absolutes. Values became relative to where the "noble savage" is is not primitive or backward but every bit as good if not better than us in the West. Facts are made to serve ideology, not vice versa. Traditional concepts of "tolerance" have been replaced with an intolerant "rights" agenda. "Nature" is pure and holy, and humans are the enemy of the planet.

If individuals wish to be atheists, all fine and good, but when it becomes a mass movement, it's promoters need to face up to the consequences of their philosophy. They want religion to disappear, but want to continue enjoying Western liberties as if the two are not related. They seem not to realize that it is precisely those Judeo-Christian values that have brought us our concepts of morality and liberty. Nietzshe at least understood the risk.

Why Britain is in the Forefront of the Madness

The madness is most concentrated in Great Britain. While continental Europe as a whole has rejected religion, family structures remain strong and social pathologies low.

Unfortunately, the US and UK* share many negative trend rates as compared to continental Europe. Both have the highest rates of single parenthood and the highest crime rates.

The differences between the US and UK are in the culture. Political correctness reigns supreme in the UK. In the US most of us at least acknowledge we have problems, in the UK they seem determined to continue the slide downhill.

But why is this so? Both the continent and the UK suffered the horrors of the Great Was and Holocaust, and the resulting destruction of what seemed a stable 19th century world order. But the UK also lost it's empire, and as such it's sense of self and purpose in the world. Add to this the replacement of traditional religion with all sorts of wild ideologies and belief systems, unassimilated Muslim immigrants, the general unraveling of the culture, and a free-for-all spirituality and you have a recipe for disaster.

* yes I know the UK and Britain are not quite the same thing, but I've used the terms somewhat interchangeably.

My Take

Perhaps it is because Phillips is British that she is so attuned to the madness going on around us. And madness it is. Don't hold me to each and every phrase or idea put forth in the book, but I do find myself in agreement with her almost all of the time.

My liberal readers should note that Phillips has no problem with any specific policy that the left offers. The book is not an attack on ObamaCare, Keynesian economics, Roe v Wade, stem-cell research, or any of the rest of it. It's also not an attack on atheism per se. Nor does she celebrate any particular policy of George W Bush or Tony Blair.

Instead examining micro-policy, the book is about the way a certain type of person, increasing in number, looks at the world. It's not about whether you are religious, agnostic, or atheist, so much as where that leads you in the rest of it. Nor again is it about whether you are politically conservative, or, for the most part, liberal. There are many agnostics and atheists who are quite reasonable. There are many liberals (I know many) who, while I disagree with them on this or that policy, do not hold whacky views. And sadly, there are religious conservatives who do (Birthers, for example).

But it is accurate to say, as she does, that most of the craziness comes from the militant atheist left.

Phillips strength is her ability to dismantle the conventional wisdom of the elites and the fads that pass as serious movements. The quasi-religion of things like global warming, multiculturalism, and Darwinian evolution deserve to be skewered.

Yes the problems Phillips describes in her book are real, and not something we can ignore. But that does not mean all is lost, or that there is not another side to the story. The West is still the strongest fore on the planet, and sets the tone politically, economically, morally, and, of course, militarily.

It was, after all, easy to conclude after reading books such as Witness (1952) by Whittaker Chambers, Suicide of the West (1964) by James Burnham, or How Democracies Perish (1983) by Jean-Francois Revel and conclude that we should not have lasted as long as we have.

But sooner or later all great civilizations decline and fall. The boy who cried wolf may have been wrong or joking a few times, but eventually the wolves did show up. Further, we may yet recover our senses and save ourselves. If we do, Melanie Phillips will be one of those our descendants will thank for sounding a timely warning.

Melanie Phillips blogs at The Spectator

Posted by Tom at 8:00 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 6, 2011

Resign, Weiner, Resign

I'd say "unbelievable," but I guess these days nothing is

Rep. Weiner admits tweeting lewd photo of himself
The Washington Post
By Jason Horowitz
Monday, June 6, 9:16 PM

In an extraordinary reversal at an extraordinary news conference, Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York admitted Monday afternoon that he had repeatedly lied to his constituents and the country in denying that he had sent a lewd picture of himself to a college-age woman on Twitter. In a tearful admission, he said that he had in fact sent multiple inappropriate messages to multiple women but that he had done nothing illegal and would not resign.

"The picture was of me, and I sent it," said Weiner (D), who called it "a very dumb thing to do," "a hugely regrettable mistake" and "destructive."

"I am deeply ashamed," said Weiner, his jaw clenched.

Soon after Weiner finished speaking, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who he said had urged him to tell the whole truth, called on the House ethics committee to conduct an investigation into his case.

For Weiner, a seven-term congressman who was seen as a leading candidate to become the next mayor of New York, the collapse is all the more stunning in light of the heights he had reached in his party and as a spokesman for its liberal wing. In the aftermath of his mea culpa, Republican leaders mostly stood back and watched the public self-immolation of one of their sharpest antagonists.

The much- attacked (by the left, anyway) AndrewBreitbart has been vindicated:

and

Update

Just so we're all clear, what happened was this; Rep Weiner has a Twitter account, and sent several of his young lady followers explicit photos himself. He has admitted to "six inappropriate relationships over the past three years" using Twitter and "other media," probably Facebook. Who knows what the real total is.

Now, this used to be called "sexual harassment," and it used to be feminist liberals who prided themselves in leading the charge against this sort of behavior.

Yesterday I had a conversation with two liberal colleagues at work about the matter. They were both of the opinion that this scandal is not a reason for him to resign, nor a reason to cease their support of him (and presumably their vote if they lived in his district). The reason, they said, was that there was "a line" between private and public life, and that as long as he didn't lie about a governmental matter or steal money it was all ok. "Are their no limits to personal behavior?" I asked. I got what I expected, the classic reduction to the absurd: "Well, if he killed someone...."

Ah yes, let's bring it out to a level that's completely unrealistic so that we can avoid the hard moral issues.

What's also interesting is that both readily admitted that if it had been a Republican he would have been forced to resign long ago.

At this point work interrupted and we were not able to continue our conversation. Too bad, because I had more questions for them along the lines of "Weiner didn't lie about one indiscretion, or one instance of consensual sex. He lied repeatedly and boldly, and made false accusations about others. If he will do this, even if it's "only about sex," can you really trust him on governmental matters? What does this say about his overall trustworthyness?" and, getting back to my other point, "Isn't this sexual harassment, and aren't liberals supposed to be against that?"

No, I'm not saying all liberals are like my friends at work, so don't anyone get their panties in a wad and say that I'm engaging in the fallacy of generalization. Most liberals I know in my county are good folks and I'm sure are appalled at Weiner and want him to go immediately. What I am saying, though, is the attitude by my co-workers is much more prevalent among liberals than conservatives.

Liberals can hate Michelle Malkin all they want, but she gets it right in her post titled

Feckless feminists wimp out on Weinergate; Plus: Weiner's lingering underage girl problem; Updated: 17-year-old gets cop visit; Pelosi doesn't seem to care

Yup. The old double standard that my friends at work acknowledged is in fill swing. One of the few liberal women who is outraged and not afraid to show it is Fox News contributors One outlier Kirsten Powers:

What I find distinctive about what happened with Anthony is that it wasn't an affair, it wasn't, you know, a one-time event, it was predatory behavior. And it was behavior that was done in his official capacity. He wasn't doing this as an anonymous person. He was doing this where you have people who saw him on TV or thought he was a good Congressman or whatever going to him and saying, "Oh, you're such a great fighter for Democrats, Congressman Weiner." And then he was using that position to, sort of, being predatory on the internet and I can't remember which woman said it. She said, "I just want to talk politics," and then it started getting creepy. So he's using his official division, he's not doing this, as much as he wants to say it's in a private capacity, I highly doubt these women would have been talking to him if he wasn't a Congressman.

The sending the picture to the girl, to me it's like sexual harassment. He's a Congressman, she's a student. He has tons of power. She looks up to him.

I can tell you as a woman who has received very inappropriate things from people who have more power than me, it's very intimidating. And you often don't even tell anybody because you're so frightened of what this person could potentially do to you. And so, there's a kind of harassment predatory aspect to this.

"Predatory behavior"

"done in his official capacity"

"sexual harassment'

"intimidating"

"harassment"

Yes, I'd say Kirsten has it just about right.

Posted by Tom at 9:45 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May 25, 2011

Benjamin Netanyahu Takes Washington by Storm

On Tuesday, May 24, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed joint session of Congress, which gave him several standing ovations. via Powerline:

We're proud in Israel that over 1 million Arab citizens of Israel have been enjoying these rights for decades.

Of the 300 million Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, only Israel's Arab citizens enjoy real democratic rights.

Now, I want you to stop for a second and think about that. Of those 300 million Arabs, less than one-half of 1 percent are truly free and they're all citizens of Israel.

This startling fact reveals a basic truth: Israel is not what is wrong with about the Middle East; Israel is what is right about the Middle East

You got that right, Mr Prime Minister

Full text here.

More key excerpts:

In an unstable Middle East, Israel is the one anchor of stability. In a region of shifting alliances, Israel is America's unwavering ally. Israel has always been pro-American. Israel will always be pro-American.

My friends, you don't have to -- you don't need to do nation- building in Israel. We're already built.

You don't need to export democracy to Israel. We've already got it.

And you don't need to send American troops to Israel. We defend ourselves.
...

This path of liberty is not paved by elections alone. It's paved when governments permit protests in town squares, when limits are placed on the powers of rulers, when judges are beholden to laws and not men, and when human rights cannot be crushed by tribal loyalties or mob rule.

Israel has always embraced this path in a Middle East that has long rejected it. In a region where women are stoned, gays are hanged, Christians are persecuted, Israel stands out. It is different.
...

Now, we've achieved historic peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, and these have held up for decades.

I remember what it was like before we had peace. I was nearly killed in a firefight inside the Suez Canal -- I mean that literally -- inside the Suez Canal. I was going down to the bottom with a 40- pound pack -- ammunition pack on my back, and somebody reached out to grab me. And they're still looking for the guy who did such a stupid thing.

I was nearly killed there.

And I remember battling terrorists along both banks of the Jordan.

Too many Israelis have lost loved ones, and I know their grief.

I lost my brother. So no one in Israel wants to return to those terrible days.
...

I recognize that in a genuine peace, we'll be required to give up parts of the ancestral Jewish homeland. And you have to understand this: In Judea and Samaria, the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers.

We're not the British in India. We're not the Belgians in the Congo. This is the land of our forefathers, the land of Israel, to which Abraham brought the idea of one God, where David set out to confront Goliath, and where Isaiah saw a vision of eternal peace.

No distortion of history -- and boy, am I reading a lot of distortions of history lately, old and new -- no distortion of history could deny the 4,000-year-old bond between the Jewish people and the Jewish land.
...

You see, our conflict has never been about the establishment of a Palestinian state. It's always been about the existence of the Jewish state. This is what this conflict is about.

In 1947 the U.N. voted to partition the land into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jews said "Yes." The Palestinians said "No."

In recent years, the Palestinians twice refused generous offers by Israeli prime ministers to establish a Palestinian state on virtually all the territory won by Israel in the Six-Day War.

They were simply unwilling to end the conflict.

And I regret to say this: They continue to educate their children to hate. They continue to name public squares after terrorists. And, worst of all, they continue to perpetuate the fantasy the Israel will one day be flooded by the descendants of Palestinian refugees.

My friends, this must come to an end.
...

I say to President Abbas, "Tear up your pact with Hamas, sit down and negotiate, make peace with the Jewish state. And if you do, I promise you this: Israel will not be the last country to welcome a Palestinian state as the new member of the United Nations. It will be the first to do so."

My friends, the momentous trials of the last century and the unfolding events of this century attest to the decisive role of the United States in defending peace and advancing freedom. Providence entrusted the United States to be the guardian of liberty. All people who cherish freedom owe a profound debt of gratitude to your great nation.

Among the most grateful nations is my nation, the people of Israel, who have fought for their liberty and survival against impossible odds in ancient and modern times alike.

I speak on behalf of the Jewish people and the Jewish state when I say to you, representatives of America, thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for your unwavering support for Israel. Thank you for ensuring that the flame of freedom burns bright throughout the world.

May God bless all of you, and may God forever bless the United States of America.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.

He speaks words of wisdom that we should all take to heart.

Posted by Tom at 12:45 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

March 20, 2011

The Fragility of Complexity

What would happen if all electricity and communications went out in a sizable area? No power, no Internet, no radio, no home or cell phone, and your car won't start. There are many things that might cause this, electromagnetic pulse being one. But forget the cause and play along with the scenario.

You have have no way of knowing how widespread the problem was. Was it just your town? You can't travel far on foot so you have no way of knowing. You'd search the sky for airplanes, and worry would increase if none appeared.

For the first few days everyone would stay near their homes, visit with their neighbors, nervously assure each other that things would be set right before long. But what if nothing changed? How long before people would raid the food stores?

Ok, that's an extreme scenario. More likely is something like what happened in Japan; a powerful earthquake coupled with a tsunami. The crisis at the nuclear plant is only one of many things that could have gone wrong.

What type of societies are the most resilient in the face of disaster? Complex ones like in the West, or more simple ones like those in Third World countries? And among those in the West, which of those would fare best?

You might think I'm strange for pondering such things, but there are larger issues than the "news of the day." It's all very fine to write about Libya, health care, the Federal budget and all that, but sometimes it's good to examine more fundamental issues.

This is one reason why Richard Fernandez' blog The Belmont Club is one of my favorites (Neo-neocon is another in this genre, please check her out too). Introspective and educated, he talks about the issues of the day, but at a level beyond what most bloggers achieve (including this one). This most recent piece of his is typical, and I'm posting it here in it's entirety:

What Could Go Wrong?
by Richard Fernandez

When some fragile item may be damaged by a fall the best place to put it is on the ground. There it can fall no more. Since the "spontaneous evolution of an isolated system" tends to disorder and things fall apart, the most stable place to be is where things must come to a stop. Because "once the system eventually reaches equilibrium and stops evolving, its entropy becomes constant." That's to say things can't get any worse. Something on the ground or at the center of a gravitational mass has nowhere left to go and stays there.

The enormous effort required to keep complex systems full of useful energy is at the heart of Victor Davis Hanson's observation that Japan is an example what happens when a complex system experiences a disruption.

Japan is a place where thing must happen just in time. Miss a connection and the consequences ripple on. It is like a watch; exquisite but dependent on a windup or battery charge to keep going. Let it run down and it stops. Dr. Hanson argues this is precisely the kind of society which planners -- the smart controllers of all stripes -- want to construct: complex, ordered, surveilled and refined. For Japan, complex systems were required for survival. For America, complex systems were required, not by need but the imperative to power; ambitious men who hankered after ant-heaps because they were born bureaucrats.

Japan's high density, central planning, mass transit, demographic uniformity, and a culture of mutual dependence allow millions to live humanely and successfully in quite crowded conditions (in areas of Tokyo at 6,000 persons and more per square kilometer). And compared to other Asian and African cities (Mumbai or Lagos) even Tokyo is relatively not so dense, though far more successful. Yet such urban societies are extremely vulnerable to the effects of earthquakes, tsunamis, "man-caused disasters" and other assorted catastrophes, analogous in nature perhaps to tightly knit bee colonies that have lost their queens.

I don't know quite why many of our environmentalists and urban planners wish to emulate such patterns of settlement (OK, I do know), since for us in America it would be a matter of choice, rather than, as in a highly congested Japan, one of necessity. Putting us in apartments and high rises, reliant on buses and trains, and dependent on huge centralized power, water, and sewage grids are recipes not for ecological utopia, but for a level of dependence and vulnerability that could only lead to disaster. Again, I understand that in terms of efficiency of resource utilization, such densities make sense and I grant that culture sparks where people are, but in times of calamity these regimens prove enormously fragile and a fool's bargain.

But catastrophe has a way of killing ants in ant-heaps more easily than when they are spread out over the ground. Then all the supposed disadvantages of unsophisticated America vis a vis "planned systems" become reversed for two reasons. The first is that subsidiarity -- the ability to addresses some needs at an individual or local level -- is more survivable than centralized systems. Dispersed housing, individual transportation, armed citizens and a tradition of community stop becoming "urban sprawl", "wasteful driving", "gun-toting" and "bigotry" and become objects of envy to helpless people cowering in their high rise, foodless apartments. Subsidiary forms of social organization are sustainable at greater levels of national disconnection. They can work, if need be, by themselves. It is an argument which Leo Linbeck III has been making about governance and health-care, but that is another story.

The second reason is that subsidiary systems are more adaptable. Complex societies are often locked into their adaptation. They can function only when enabled by a larger system. An Ipod is just a paperweight without a network and a power source. In a crisis world you would trade a Bugatti Veyron for a pickup truck. The Veyron is a specialized babe-magnet. The pickup truck does lots of other things. But even pickup trucks have become more complex over the years. In the old Willys Jeep a lot of things could be fixed with a screwdriver, Vise-grip, a few socket wrenches and a file. Today very little can be fixed without the help of "they". "They" is a term coined by Victor Davis Hanson to represent that faceless, anonymous source of help without which we are powerless to go on.

This fragility of complexity has especially bothered me the last 80 days, well before the tragedy in Japan. Some random experiences: I am teaching one morning a week at Pepperdine for the spring 15-week semester, each week alternating between flying and driving. One week in January, the power at terminal one in LAX just went out -- no explanation, no rhyme or reason, no notice when or if it would return. Thousands of travelers were rendered helpless -- no running water, bathrooms, overhead lights. All flights delayed or cancelled, as mobs packed flight counters or simply walked out of the darkened halls to the curb. Then abruptly later it went back on -- again, no explanation. The attendants at the counter simply shrugged and said "they" must have fixed it. To paraphrase those in the Wild Bunch, who are "they"?

"They" is who we are going to call if we break a leg or an intruder is at the door. "They" are who we ask to help us when we are lost. "They" are the ones who are going to enforce the "nuclear free zone" in Berkeley and the no-fly-zone in Libya. "They" are the guys who provide the physical basics, the hard power who the kings of "soft power" are destined to command. There was a time, not so long ago when "they" for the most part meant "us"; because we knew how to supply at least some of these things for ourselves. Knew how to punch out those who bullied us without having to carry the scars of trauma into the Oval Office. But no longer.

The complexity of modern pickup trucks is emblematic of our complex, interelated world. We need each other far more than is safe. Already Chinese factories are slowing down because of disruptions of deliveries from Japan. What do you do in a just-in-time production system when the shipment from Yokohama doesn't turn up? Only hope "they" will fix it. And what do you do when the oil disruptions threaten in the Gulf, the bond markets look scary and unemployment looks like it will never ever go down. You hope "they" will fix it.

At the highest political level of our complex world "they" means people like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. These were the final "fixers" of the system when something went wrong. Of late they seemed to be capable of very little. Why? Because their power to fix depended on the systems they were supposed to control. Their "smarts" were judged by their ability to manipulate the system through which they rose. Once the system itself began fraying at the edges their true quality became evident. They were not very smart and not very adaptable.

There are signs that our complex world is running out the enough "useful energy" to keep its welfare, entitlement and physical systems together. Perhaps as important, the ability of people like Obama and Clinton to understand what is happening may be decreasing correspondingly. This happen ironically because they think they are smart. Their blinkered minds will tend to draw the wrong boundaries around the emerging system in order for it to be comprehensible to their mental models. In the process they thereby increase entropy. When they "smooth" the system to conform to their ideological biases it creates a loss of knowledge which eventually adds to the problem.

People who know all the answers are the worst offenders of all. Their ideological solutions and "investments" make things worse. One way to minimize the effects of imperfect understanding is to shorten the feedback loop. By frequently updating our understanding of a changing system the amount of "error" introduced is smallest when they are drawn at the most subsidiary level. The greatest and most catastrophic errors are created when an monolithic regime clings for too long to an old paradigm. When forced to change, it draws the new paradigm around a bigger volume of enclosed space thus maximizing the error. Here again the simpler system has its advantages. As observed earlier, highly complex systems are less adaptable, less subsidiary. Ideologically driven complex systems, like Europe and the proposed Hope and Change are least adaptable of all.

In history the cumulative process of failing to adapt is called a Revolution. Writers have usually ascribed such upheavals to the personal failings of wicked kings. But at least part of it may be due to the system trying to reach a new equilibrium while the ancien regime stands in its way while they wait in vain for "they" to come and fix things. But things are never fixed; and something else always comes instead, something only dimly glimpsed in the present and fully visible only when it finally arrives. As Forrest Gump once put it, "My momma always said, 'Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.'"

Try telling that to those who know what we should get and what we should think.

In retrospect the desire for one world, a master energy plan and single health care system will be recognized not as imperatives of the human system, but the requirement of bureaucratic ambition. It may also be seen as one of the key blunders of the current political system. It emerged at a time when elites believed history had ended and all that remained was to freeze the 20th century welfare systems in place and etch their faces on Mount Rushmore. But reality proved too hard for them to handle. They would do well to recognize their limits.

Do you agree that complex societies are less adaptable, and that ideologically-driven bureaucratically centralized societies the least adaptable of all? Hopefully, of course, we'll never find out.

Posted by Tom at 9:00 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

January 22, 2011

The South Koreans Respond to Pirates the Right Way

The South Koreans respond to piracy the right way; by killing the pirates. The Somali pirates, at least, will have second thoughts before seizing any more ROK (Republic of Korea) flagged ships, or in seizing any ships at all when the South Korean military is in the area.

SKorea storms Somali pirates to rescue ship crew
January 21, 2011
Fox News/Associated Press

South Korean special forces stormed a hijacked freighter in the Arabian Sea on Friday, rescuing all 21 crew members and killing eight assailants in a rare and bold raid on Somali pirates, South Korea said.

The military operation in waters between Oman and Africa, which also captured five pirates and left one crew member wounded, came a week after the Somali attackers seized the South Korean freighter and held hostage eight South Koreans, two Indonesians and 11 citizens from Myanmar.

"We will not tolerate any behavior that threatens the lives and safety of our people in the future," South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said in a brief televised statement, adding that the rescue was a "perfect operation."

The successful raid is a triumph for Lee, whose government suffered harsh criticism at home in the weeks following a North Korean attack in November on a South Korean island near disputed waters. Critics said Lee's military was too slow and weak in its response to the attack, which killed two marines and two civilians.

With a South Korean destroyer and a Lynx helicopter providing covering fire, South Korea's special navy forces stormed the hijacked vessel in a pre-dawn rescue operation that left eight of the pirates dead and five captured, Lt. Gen. Lee Sung-ho told reporters.

The captain of the ship was shot by a pirate and taken by a U.S. helicopter to a nearby country for treatment, but the wound is not life-threatening, Lt. Gen. Lee said. The 20 other crew members were rescued unharmed, he said.

"This operation demonstrated our government's strong will to never negotiate with pirates," the general said.

Storming a ship held by pirates is rare and navies tend to avoid it because of the risk of harming hostages, who are usually kept below decks out of sight. So rescues are not normally attempted once the pirates are onboard the ship unless the crew is locked in a safe room -- often called a "citadel" -- with two way communications.

Authorities did not immediately give details on the location of crew members during the rescue.

The 11,500-ton chemical carrier Samho Jewelry was sailing from the United Arab Emirates to Sri Lanka when it was hijacked. It was the second vessel from South Korea-based Samho Shipping to be hijacked in the past several months.

In November, Somali pirates freed the supertanker Samho Dream and its 24 crew -- five South Koreans and 19 Filipinos -- after seven months of captivity.

It's tempting to say that they only responded with force this time because South Korean President Lee Myung-bak felt he needed to look tough to his constituents after the North Korean artillery attack on Yeonpyong Island last November. And that was probably part of it. They may also have been embarrassed over the seizure of the other South Korean ship alluded to above.

More, as the article relates, the South Koreans did not just up and respond in knee-jerk fashion to the seizure of the Samho Jewelry, risking the killing of the hostages, but apparently made sure that the situation on the ship was favorable before proceeding with the rescue.

The Israel Analogy

Just recently, Malaysian naval commandos also freed a ship seized by Somali pirates. As Richard Fenandez quips that the Malaysians and Koreans had a secret "wonder weapon" that led to their success was that "they were neither European nor American."

Its the same mentality that leads the international left to want George W Bush in the dock at the International Criminal Court than Fidel Castro or Robert Mugabe.

Sad but true. If we'd carried out such an attack our press would have fretted for months over whether we'd given negotiations long enough to succeed, and if a Republican was in the White House you can guess that the more leftist members of Congress would talk of possible war crimes. On our part, that is.

People who live in tough neighborhoods tend to become tough themselves. It's a matter of sheer survival. Likewise, when an otherwise peaceful country has militarily aggressive or terrorist neighbors, it tends to take far tougher actions than do countries what are far away from the danger.

South Korea has been the victim of dozens of attacks by the communist North Koreans for over 60 years. The list of border incidents precipitated by the North is staggering.

It's therefore easy for Americans or Europeans to say that the Koreans or Israelis are "overreacting." Other than 9/11, our homeland has never really been attacked. Western Europe hasn't seen serious military action since World War II. While these are very good things, they do seem to breed a softness in dealing with threats.

The Somali Piracy Situation

The map on Somali Piracy from the Wikipedia:

Googling around, it's hard to say exactly if the situation is getting worse or at a plateau. The Wikipedia article is extensive but doesn't directly answer the question.

Certainly the long-term solution is a single, stable, government in Somalia that is perceived as legitimate by the majority of the people there. But the Somalians don't seem to have the desire or wherewithal to come to their senses, and the "international community" isn't about to take any serious action to install one either.

Using naval ships is for the most part like using a sledgehammer to swat flies. Most modern ships were built to deal with more sophisticated threats, and so most of their weapons are not even applicable. More, since the end of the Cold War the combined navies of the world are a lot smaller. What is needed off Somalia is a lot of low-tech ships that can provide something as simple as gunfire and a floating base for a small team of commandos, not a handful high-tech ships capable of sinking nuclear subs or shooting down supersonic anti-ship missiles.

In Piracy - The Simple Yet Impossible Solution and Piracy - The Simple Yet Impossible Solution Part II I wrote that Steve Shippert's idea of arming the merchant ships themselves with .50 cal machine guns would solve the problem in short order. And indeed I believe it would. But it'll never happen because right now it's cheaper for the shipping companies to pay the ransom, the sailors would for some reason I don't get rather run the risk of being taken hostage or killed rather than train for their own self-defense (the anti-gun mentality, as near I can tell), and everyone knows that the so-called human rights groups would much rather have Western capitalists and politicians in the dock than the pirates themselves.

So we'll stumble along as we are now, with everyone acknowledging that piracy, from Somalia and elsewhere, is a problem, but with no one doing much of anything about it. In the meantime, hats off to the Malaysians and South Koreans for showing us the way, even if we do not follow.

Posted by Tom at 12:45 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

January 13, 2011

One More Post on The Gabrielle Giffords Shooting and the Question of Blame

Unless there are major new developments this is going to be it about this incident and then we're moving on.

No, I did not watch President Obama's speech last night, nor do I plan on watching it or reading the text. Most conservative commentators that I trust said 1) His speech was very good,he said the right things and hit the right notes, and 2) the festival-campaign atmosphere with all the whooping and hollering and cheering was entirely inappropriate.

Assuming these commentators have it right, it speaks well of our president but poorly of his supporters. Given liberal behavior this week, I am not surprised.

I first heard of the shooting while at the gym. I saw it on the TV and thought to myself, what a terrible tragedy. We'll have to put up with some calls for more gun control, but that's standard operating procedure for the Sarah Brady bunch and we'll get through it. I had no idea that the left would unleash such a torrent of hate.

Let's start with this amazing video of Pima County Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik:

Now, I'm no lawyer, nor do I play one on TV, but even I know that it's evidence first, conclusion second.

The tragic shooting of Rep Giffords taught us a lot about our political scene, it just isn't the "heated and threatening rhetoric" that the media is now talking about. The left unleashed a torrent of hate against Sarah Palin, the Tea Party movement, Fox News, and conservatives in general almost immediately after the shooting, and well before any of the facts about the motives of the shooter were known. And by "left," we're not just talking about obscure bloggers, but media people in print and on TV, and politicians.

The shooting taught us about the monumental level of raw hate that the left has for Sarah Palin and the lengths they will go in attacking her. The idea that she is to blame because of some ad that used crosshairs is insane. Reaction is summarized around the Internet, but two good pieces are at Powerline: A Disgrace to Nuts Everywhere and A Disgrace to Nuts Everywhere Part 2.

Before the motives or political affiliation of the shooter were known, a full scale assault was mounted on Palin, the Tea Party movement, conservative talk radio, and Fox News.

Throughout the first eight years of this decade conservatives listed to the left issue the most vile statements about George W Bush; "selected, not elected," "Bush lied, people died," a billion references to Bush as Hitler, usually in the form of something like "BusHitler" or "ChimpyMcHitler." Assassination chic, films about his assassination, and all manner of over-the-top statements were all the rage.

And let's be clear; the hateful, overheated, and sometimes even violent imagery in the rhetoric didn't just come from obscure bloggers. Democrats in Congress and media commentators were guilty as well.

Would you like evidence? Two quickies: Michelle Malkin has put together a progressive "climate of hate:" An illustrated primer, 2000-2010. The Washington Times editorial Taking advantage of tragedy: Hate crimes are down, but liberals use violence to target conservatism provides examples of some pretty big-name Democrats and liberals using rhetoric with some awfully violent rhetoric in it.

Last August James Jay Lee took three people hostage at the Discovery Channel building in Montgomery County, just outside of Washington DC. After a four hour standoff, a tactical squad shot and killed Lee after he pointed his pistol at a hostage. Lee specifically said that he had been inspired by former Vice President Al Gore's documentary "An Inconvenient Truth." Fortunately in this case no one else was killed, but they could easily have been.

Did we see a media campaign to urge environmentalists to "tone down the rhetoric?" Stop their hysterical claims that "the earth has a fever" and that there was "a planetary emergency?" Anyone tell Al Gore to apologize? Of course not. In fact, the reaction of the right was to NOT exploit this, but rather to say "if this had been the other way around the left would exploit it." Sure enough, they have.

Conclusion

What happened in Tucson was that a lone nutcase went on a terrible rampage and killed a wounded many people. Maybe we need to ban the extra large magazines, I'm actually sympathetic to that, although that's a knee jerk reaction that won't prevent diddly.

We've got to find a way to identify and isolate mentally ill people, and keep them from buying guns, but that's a complex issue. Besides what's mentioned in this article on the subject, the other issue is that if someone doesn't want to go to treatment you can't make them. I'm no lawyer, but even basic research shows that you can't incarcerate people against their will most of the time. And anyway, what constitutes mental illness, and who makes the determination? It all seems to obvious after one of these incidents, but there are genuine civil rights concerns.

My heart goes out to the victims of this tragedy. I do hope they knew God so that they are in a better place. You never know when your time will end. Have you said all the things you need to say to your loved ones? Have you gotten in good with your maker?

Finally; what is going on here is clear: The left is mad that they lost the Nov 2010 elections and is trying to get even. They want to shut down conservative talk radio and Fox News, and marginalize the Tea Party movement.

It won't work.

Posted by Tom at 8:30 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

January 9, 2011

The Gabrielle Giffords Shooting and the Question of Blame

This is going to be a very short post because I don't have much time and for reasons I'll explain below the fold I'm more interested in reader comments than anything else.

As we all know three-term Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ-8) and several othe3rs were shot in a Safeway in Tucson, AZ yesterday. She was holding her first "town hall," when Jared Lee Loughner, age 22, shot Giffords in the head. He shot 20 people total in his rampage before he was stopped. Six have died and 14 were wounded, including the congresswoman.

Now, who is to blame for this?

From what I've seen in the past day or so, the left has decided that Fox News and right-wing radio talk show hosts are at fault. The Washington Post even links on their front page to a Financial Times story titled Can a gun-crazed society lead? I guess we don't have to guess what their agenda is.

And of course the left is using this incident to go after Sarah Palin. How boringly predictable, yet also how revealing.

To me it's all pretty obvious; the guy who did it is to blame and that's the end of it. People who drag in Fox News, talk radio, the Tea Party, and others on the right are exploiting the murders for their political agenda.

Further, people who are now saying "we should all tone it down" are also just playing politics. They're basically just using the incident to silence the opposition. After all, most of the same folks who are saying this now were riding the "Bush Lied! People Died!" bandwagon not too many years ago. More, whenever someone on the left says something outrageous, the right objects, they issue dark warnings about a "chill on the First Amendment."

Last September James Jay Lee took two hostages at the Discovery Channel building just outside of Washington DC. He said that former Vice President Al Gore's documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" was one of the things that inspired him to commit his crime.

None of the conservatives I listen to on the radio or read in print blamed the enviros for this incident (not saying there wasn't one somewhere...). All, in fact, made a point of saying how absurd it would be to do so, but that if the situation was reversed the liberals would not hesitate to exploit the incident. Predictably they were right.

I'm done. Google around if you're not sure what I'm talking about here and need examples of how some on the left are exploiting this (see this great piece in Slate, for example).

This type of story really isn't my thing, as I'm far more happy talking about Iran, Chinese v American military power, or for that matter even something like national health care policy. In fact, I'm keeping most of this story below the fold for the very reason that I'd rather have you read my story about the new Chinese fighter aircraft.

But for now we've got to get past this silly debate.

Posted by Tom at 9:00 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

November 29, 2010

The Latest Wikileaks Release and What We Should Do About It

The emotional reaction to all of the "document dumps" by Wikileaks is to send a group of specially trained people over there to kill Julian Assange and his cohorts. Or hire someone or some group of whatever reputation. Maybe we should just tell Sweden, where I think he he is now, to hand him over, shoot him themselves, or we'll make life in their pipsqueak country miserable.

But of course we can't do that. Assange has a special spot in hell reserved for him anyway, though I can't figure out exactly where that will be. Dante famously divided hell into nine circles, some of which are divided further.

The ninth circle, the lowest before getting to Satan himself, would seem appropriate, as this is for those who have committed acts of treachery. Dante seemed to have in mind personal acts of one person to another, so I don't know if that's quite right.

But it does satisfy to think of Assange trapped in the ice for all eternity.

Perhaps better is the 6th Bolgia of the 8th circle. The 8th circle is reserved for "the fraudulent--those guilty of deliberate, knowing evil."

The 6th Bolgia of the 8th circle is for the hypocrites, who walk along listlessly "wearing gilded lead cloaks, which represent the falsity behind the surface appearance of their actions - falsity that weighs them down and makes spiritual progress impossible for them."

Assange is a hypocrite because he would not want his private correspondence made public, nor that of anyone at Wikileaks. After all, as Victor Davis Hanson points out, would we not need to see the internal communications of the board of directors at Wikileaks in order to assess the "context" in which they released the documents? "Context" is one reason they give for releasing our secret documents.

OK, Let's Get Serious

The Obama Administration is suitably alarmed:

Moving full bore to contain the damage from the latest WikiLeaks document dump, the Obama White House on Monday ordered a top-down review on safeguarding classified data while Attorney General Eric Holder announced a criminal investigation into the website and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton moved to soothe ruffled feathers abroad.

Describing it as no laughing matter, Clinton suggested any hurt feelings or embarrassment from the release may blow over. Saying "nothing laudable" came from WikiLeaks' action, she recalled that one counterpart told her, "Well don't worry about it. You should see what we say about you."
...

"This disclosure is not just an attack on America's foreign policy interests. It is an attack on the international community -- the alliances and partnerships, the conversations and negotiations that safeguard global security and advance economic prosperity," Clinton said.

Well no, it's an attack on the United States, but never mind. We expect our public officials to say these types of things because it's what the wine, cheese and PBS crowd want to hear. And if that's what it takes to move us to action then so be it.

More seriously, the Administration knows how much harder diplomacy is going to be going forward.

The Media, or at least the New York Times

Long gone, apparently, are the days when liberals snickered when the New York Times revealed something classified about what the Bush Administration was doing. Hey, that's our guy in the White House now! You can't do this to him!

But of course the liberal press, or at least the Times, is in fact undermining the Obama Administration by publishing the purloined documents. This is a matter of high principle, you see. Undermining the government of the United States is always a matter of principle of the highest degree.

We know this because when the Times refused to publish the Climagegate emails the excuse was that "The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won't be posted here."

So what is the excuse then, for publishing the illegally acquired Wikileaks documents? The Times explains that they "serve an important public interest, illuminating the goals, successes, compromises and frustrations of American diplomacy in a way that other accounts cannot match."

Huh? So publishing illegally obtained documents is ok in one instance but not in another, because only in the latter the served "an important public interest?" Anything that might make the global-warming crowd look bad is apparently not an important public interest, but embarrassing the United States is.

Got it.

Max Boot adds this important observation

One can understand if the editors of the New York Times, Guardian, and Der Spiegel have no respect for the secrecy needed to wage war successfully -- especially unpopular wars like those in Afghanistan and Iraq. These are, after all, the sorts of people who, over a few drinks, would no doubt tell you that diplomacy is far preferable to war-making. But it seems that they have no respect for the secrecy that must accompany successful diplomacy either. That, at least, is the only conclusion I can draw from their decision to once again collaborate with an accused rapist to publicize a giant batch of stolen State Department cables gathered by his disreputable organization, WikiLeaks.

So What Should We Do?

Bill Krystol has some of the best advice for what to say - nothing:

From now on, a policy of no comment about anything in any of these documents should be the absolute rule. No apologies, no complaints, no explanations, no excuses. No present or former government official should deign to discuss anything in these documents. No one in the executive branch should confirm or deny the accuracy of any document. No one should hasten to reassure any foreign leader of anything, or seek to put any cable in context. No one in Congress should cite anything in these documents to make a point about any issue. The entire American government and political class should simply go about its important foreign policy business, and treat these leaks as beneath contempt, and beneath comment.

Krystol goes on to recommend "criminal prosecution or covert action or cyber-warfare against WikiLeaks." But as for a public position, I'd say he's just on target.

James Carafano has two good and in my mind common-sense suggestions:

First, it can embrace a foreign policy that our adversaries fear and our friends respect. Nobody gets more cooperation than a winner. For starters, the president should dump the New START treaty -- its one-sidedness makes the U.S. look like a lousy negotiator in the eyes of the world... and a patsy in the eyes of the Russians. He should also reject out of hand calls to gut the defense budget and just flat out declare that America will stick it out in Iraq and Afghanistan until the job is done. And while he's at it, he could stand up to China and stop extending the hand of friendship to regimes interested in a world without freedom or America.

Second, the administration can hunt down any American connected with these leaks, try them for treason, and seek the death penalty. They deserve nothing less. Ordered liberty rejects the notion that any one citizen can jeopardize lives and give away America's secrets -- just because they feel like it.

Good ideas all and let's pursue them.

Posted by Tom at 10:00 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

November 9, 2010

Why Government Handout Programs and Affirmative Action Must be Scaled Back or Ended

Writing in the Washington Post, Anne Applebaum makes an argument that you often hear from the left:

In Alaska, a preview of the GOP's future By Anne Applebaum Tuesday, November 9, 2010

...For whatever the reason, the hypocrisy at the heart of the (Republican)party - and at the heart of American politics - is at its starkest in Alaska. For decades, Alaskans have lived off federal welfare. Taxpayers' money subsidizes everything from Alaska's roads and bridges to its myriad programs for Native Americans. Federal funding accounts for one-third of Alaskan jobs. Nevertheless, Alaskans love to think of themselves as the last frontiersmen, the inhabitants of a land "beyond the horizon of urban clutter," a state with no use for Washington and its wicked ways.
...

Poor Boehner must feel pulled in two directions, particularly because so many Republicans - and so many Americans - don't practice what they preach. They want lower taxes, higher defense spending, more Social Security and, yes, balanced budgets. They want the government to leave them alone, but at the same time they aren't averse to the odd federal subsidy.

Harde har har! Those hypocritical Republicans! They criticize government programs yet they take money from them!

And it 's just this sort of attitude from liberals that is the very reason we must end these programs now.

We see a similar argument used against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas; he was the beneficiary of affirmative action at Yale, yet now he opposes said benefit, ergo he is a hypocrite.

A Liberal Plot?

If I didn't believe in conspiracy theories then I would say that the entire purpose behind extensive government handout, welfare er, "benefits" programs and quota, racial preference, I mean "affirmative action" is to ensnare people so that they are not allowed to protest.

Let's run through how liberals think:

• Massive government benefits and affirmative action programs are good
  
• The best way to win an argument is to disallow your opponent from making theirs
  
• If you receive a benefit you are not allowed to protest it
  

The solution, eureka!, is to make sure that

1. The benefits are so widespread and part of the fabric of the economy that unless people are willing to live as recluses they must participate in them
   
2. Structure the programs so that no one can really be sure if they are a direct beneficiary or not, and thus cannot really opt out
   

Applebaum is a hack liberal making a shallow argument, but there are a lot of those in the pages of the Washington Post (Richard Cohen and Eugene Robinson come to mind). That every-day liberals take their cues from these people is what's truly disturbing.

If liberals wish to debate the merits of this or that "benefit" or "affirmative action" program then fine, state your case. But this insanity of creating huge programs that everyone is more or less forced to participate in (think Social Security) and then attacking anyone who dares speak a word against them has got to stop.

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October 14, 2010

The Dependency Culture

For a thoroughly depressing experience, go to your local county board of supervisors/aldermen/city council when they have the annual public input session before they vote on next year's budget. You'll be treated to a parade of government workers and contractors who plead that not only if their particular program is cut the world will come to a screeching halt, but they need additional monies.

If you choose to speak and object that in the current economic downturn the government simply cannot afford programs it could in the past, you'll be told that au contraire, spending more on government programs boosts the economy. This is the case, you see, because businesses don't care about taxes but services, and more money for everything from education to gardening means more business which equals prosperity. And yes, where I live we spend money to teach rich suburbanites how to garden. Really.

Never mind that your local government body may be running a large deficit, or that unemployment or foreclosures are rising. Once a government program is started, it must never be cut, only increased. This is enforced through a built-in constituency; those who are dependent on the program for their incomes can be counted on to demand higher taxes no matter what the economic climate.

And if you sit there and listen most programs do sound important in and of themselves. But then you add them up and they total more than your revenues.

I was reminded of our annual budget hearings where I live when I saw this editorial in today's paper. Although it's about Federal programs and not local ones, it's really the same problem, just at a different level. Following are enough excerpts to make the point:

The political danger of a rising dependent population
The Washington Times
By William W. Beach
Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Every passing year sees significant growth in the mass of Americans dependent on the federal government for life's necessities, from basic nutrition to shelter and health care.

This implacable trend -- long a concern of economists and political scientists -- is beginning to alarm ordinary citizens as well. They rightly sense that growing dependency drives the explosion of federal spending and public debt. They are connecting the dots between out-of-control spending and the public debt crisis here and abroad. They are guessing, again rightly, that every passing day makes controlling dependency more and more difficult, perhaps even more dangerous.

Signs of growing reliance on government -- the antithesis of the traditional American value of self-reliance and self-determinism -- emerge with alarming frequency.
...

Why the increase? Well, for one thing, dependency-creating programs keep offering Americans more and more benefits. Government support for dependent persons has grown from $7,293 per person in 1962, to $31,950 last year (both figures expressed in 2005 dollars). That's a more than fourfold increase in the richness of the benefits, making dependence on government an ever-sweeter deal -- one that gets harder and harder to walk away from.

Another reason is that fewer and fewer people pay for the richer benefits. All adult Americans can vote, but not all voters pay taxes. In 2008, more than 132 million Americans paid no income taxes. That's nearly half -- 43.6 percent -- of all Americans, more than three times the percentage that prevailed just 25 years earlier.

Spending on dependency-creating programs has increased by 49 percent since 2000. But last year alone it jumped a whopping 13.6 percent. Programs experiencing the greatest increase were: Health and welfare, 22 percent; food support, 20 percent; and housing support, 15 percent.
...

Unsustainable growth in dependency programs is at the root of every public debt crisis around the world. While the global recession was the trigger that pushed Greece, Spain and other countries into bankruptcy, the underlying financial problem was unsustainable spending on dependency-creating programs.

Politically involved Americans sense that the pension riots in Greece or the retirement street actions in Paris could come home to the U.S., when the federal government is forced to reduce dependency-related spending. That day could come soon, and the growing connection between financial crisis and political instability has many worried.

Rather than toy with this prospect, Congress needs to address the deep reasons for its excessive spending. That means examining the drivers of dependency and reducing the magnifying utilization of dependency programs. The longer policymakers delay acting on this fundamental challenge, the greater -- and graver -- both the political and economic stakes will become.

It's a problem when only half of the people pay taxes. Their incentive is to take even more money out of the pockets of the "wealthy" to put in their own.

Note please that I'm not really talking about poverty programs here. True poverty programs are necessary. This is as much about "middle-class welfare" as anything.

Yes, Congress needs to address the issue. But this simply begs the question as to what is their incentive? Up until recently, their incentive was to expand dependency programs because it created more dependency and thus the built-in voting constituency that I discussed above.

But the situation has come to a head, so there may well be a way out. George W. Bush and Republican leaders like Denny Haskert and Trent Lott lost conservatives, who had only voted for them in 2004/06 because the Democrats were so much worse. Bush spent a lot, but Obama is Bush on steroids when it comes to spending. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have disgusted not just ordinary Americans but many in their own party as well.

The Tea Party movement is not by itself the answer, but perhaps it represents the answer. First we'll see how well the GOP does in November, and then whether they do as they say once elected. The Tea Party folks say they'll hold them accountable, and I believe they will.

We're not going to overturn the dependency culture in an election or two, but with any luck we can make some dents in it. The alternative is national decline of a sort that will result in a much worse world. The planet needs a strong United States to stand against the dictators. We must not fail.

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September 10, 2010

Don't Upset the Religion of Peace!

Because I've been so crazy busy with various projects, I haven't had the time to post I've wanted to. I was going to post about Rev Terry Jones' plan to burn Korans on Sept 11; and now that I've got time he's decided to reconsider or suspend the burning. It doesn't change anything I was going to say, though.

Don't upset the Religion of Peace, or they may become, you know, violent.

Even though Jones hasn't burned any Korans so far, and may not end up burning any at all, that certainly didn't stop a British Muslim activist has called for an international "Burn the Stars and Stripes Day."

Of course I think that Terry Jones is an idiot and that it's wrong to burn Korans. It is also right and good for us to denounce him.

This said, what interests me much more than Jones is the reaction to him, especially from Muslims, and the insane double standard that is applied to these things.

We're all required to say by the politically correct crowd that Islam is a religion of peace. Just don't offend Muslims because they'll become violent. Just ask Imam Rauf, the man promoting the Cordoba House-Ground Zero mosque. He told MSNBC's Soledad O'Brien that moving the facility would cause Muslims to become violent.

Is that analysis or a threat?

A stupid preacher in Florida says he'll burn Korans, and egged on by the media Muslims around the world go nuts. Michelle Malkin calls Islam the Religion of Perpetual Outrage, and I swear she has a point. If it wasn't outrage and rioting over Terry Jones it'd be something else. When you've got a chip on your shoulder and are looking for an insult they're not hard to find.

On Wednesday CNN's Soledad O'Brien interviewed Imam Rauf, the front man for the Cordoba House-Ground Zero mosque. Of course, the issue of Rev. Terry Jones came up.

O'BRIEN: You've heard about this pastor in Florida, Terry Jones, who is proposing burning Korans on 9/11. What do you think of that?

RAUF: I would plead with him to seriously what he is doing.

O'BRIEN: Why?

RAUF: It's going to feed into the radicals of the Muslim world. It's dangerous. General Petraeus has said that. It is something that is not the right thing to do on that ground.

O'BRIEN: Do you think he has a right to do it?

RAUF: And more importantly -- and more importantly -- well, we have freedom in this country, freedom of speech. But with freedom comes responsibility. And a famous saying to shot fire in a crowded theater. This is dangerous for our national security, but also it's the un-Christian thing to do. Jesus Christ didn't teach us to do that. We Muslims have a -- we look to the example of our prophet. Many Christians say what would Jesus do? Jesus taught us to turn the other cheek. Jesus taught us to love your enemy.

We are not your enemies. But this is what Jesus taught us to do. And I would like to suggest that, you know, we all have to live by the highest principles of our faith traditions. As I mentioned, it's important -- I want Christians to live -- to be perfected Christians and I want Muslims to be perfected Muslims and Jews to be perfected Jews. If we don't do that, if we judge each other by the worst of the other's behavior and by the best of our own, where are we going?

Of course the good imam doesn't suggest that maybe, just maybe, he and other Muslim leaders could speak to their fellow believers and tell them "don't react violently to this provocation."

But then, this is the way most of these Muslim leaders are.

Imam Rauf is blackmailing us. Let us build the mosque or there will be violence.

If we give in to his sort of implied threat, then we only encourage more of them.

Americans are required now to fall all over themselves denouncing the Koran burning. You hear this time and again on all media outlets, even ones that don't normally even talk about this sort of thing.

Muslims are rioting Gen Petraeus says that the Koran burning will put our troops at risk. He's right, but the proper response is not to be on the watch for moreTerry Jones', but to demand that Muslims grow up and stop being violent when they're insulted.

Where are the Muslim leaders urging their people to stay calm? Where are the Muslim leaders denouncing the rioting, or decrying the fact that some Muslims may attack American troops over the incident? That's right; they're the same ones demanding democracy, women's rights, and secular governments in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc. They're the ones denouncing the attempt by the Organization of the Islamic Conference in the UN to push through something called the "Combating the Defamation of Religion," a resolution which would have Western nations, including the United States, curtail freedom of speech.

While we're at it, where are the Muslim leaders explaining how much better it is to live in the West, where they are not persecuted for their brand or sect of Islam? I'll tell you; they're the ones doing most of the complaining.

And tell me this; where are the rioting Christians when they burn Bibles in Saudi Arabia or Iran? Every now and then some eager Christian missionary will try and sneak into a Muslim country. Those who are caught have their Bibles confiscated and I am certain destroyed. You have to go onto evangelical websites to even know about these things, or be a member of an evangelical church.

For that matter, where are the rioting Jews and/or Israelis when newspapers in Muslim countries publish some of the most vile antisemitic cartoons? Or show the most insane antisemitic on their TV?

Did Christian extremists riot when Bill Maher's movie Religulous came out? Or when Christopher Hitchens' book God is Not Great? Or Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion? Although most of these do take shots at Islam, they are mostly anti-Christian works. We protested when martin scorsese's movie The Last Temptation of Christ was released (before, even), but riots? No.

Oh, and can we please stop bringing up the Crusades and Inquisition as something we're supposed to feel guilty about?

The Spanish Inquisition (there were four, the Spanish being the "big" one) took place from 1478 to 1834. In the 350 years of this Inquisition 3-5,000 people were killed. Tragic, yes. Pardon me if I can't get excited though over less than one person per month being killed. And no, the Inquisition was not all torture and execution of innocents. Indeed there are many examples of people petitioning to have their cases moved from civil to ecclesiastical (i.e. Inquisition) courts because the latter were perceived to be more fair.

I've dealt with the Crusades before, and suffice it to say that the idea that the poor innocent Muslims were sitting around minding their own business when the Christians attacked them is laughable.

Then there's this absurdity; we as a nation denounce Terry Jones for threatening to burn Korans, yet our own government burned Bibles sent to Afghanistan.

Tell you what; I'll apologize for the Crusades when Muslims apologize for conquering Christian north Africa, ruling all or parts of Spain for over 750 years, invading France, invading India, Invading Italy and Sicily, destroying the Byzantine Empire, invading Austria....

Perhaps most importantly, are we now to restrict our First Amendment rights because Muslims may become violent? As Bruce Bawer relates in While Europe Slept, the native Europeans themselves called for self-censorship in the wake of the "cartoon jihad" of early 2006.

And what is it with the term "moderate Muslim" anyway? Do we feel the need to apply it to members of any other religion?

When someone defends a Muslim as being moderate, they are saying "don't worry, he won't blow you up."

Anyone ever hear of Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddists, or Sikhs described this way? Of course not.

Insane double standards like what I have described contribute to civilizational collapse. It is fashionable and tempting to think that "we've been through worse before, we'll get through this one," but that's false logic. Running through speeding traffic 5 times without getting hit does not guarantee success the sixth time. We nearly lost the country in 1860, 1941, or at times during the Cold War. History is littered with once-strong civilizations that collapsed, often quite suddenly. We are not immune.

Not to worry, critics, because yes I do understand that there are true reformers within Islam. I've profiled them here before, just click on "Islam" under "Categories" at right.

Update

Here we go, all it took was a report by Press TV, the Iranian-run satellite news channel that a Koran had been burned in Florida, and there has been massive violence in Kashmir. The police shot 18 protesters dead and a policeman was killed too.

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June 23, 2010

Afghanistan: McChrystal Out, Petraeus In

We've got a new top dog in Afghanistan:

President Obama said Wednesday he feels no "personal insult" from Gen. Stanley McChrystal but accepted his resignation as the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan because he couldn't abide scathing comments by McChrystal and his aides that appeared in an article out this week in Rolling Stone magazine.

"The conduct represented in the recently published article does not meet the standard that should be set by a commanding general. It undermines the civilian control of the military that is at the core of our democratic system. And it erodes the trust that's necessary for our team to work together to achieve our objectives in Afghanistan," Obama said.

In Rose Garden remarks, Obama nominated Gen. David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command and the former commanding general in Iraq, to replace McChrystal. Petraeus' confirmation hearing in the Senate could come as early as Thursday.

The president said he had no disagreements with McChrystal's policy or conduct in the war in Afghanistan, and the change in personnel does not mean a change in policy. He said the two were on the same page in terms of war strategy, but no "diversion" to the mission was acceptable.

President Obama absolutely did the right thing. We simply cannot have the military publicly criticizing their civilian bosses.

Yesterday, in Yes, Gen. Stanley McChrystal Should be Fired, I wrote that Obama should fire him but probably wouldn't. This is one instance in which I am glad I was wrong.

The most famous incident in which a president fired a general was, of course, when Truman dismissed Douglas MacArthur. The general had criticized the president's limited war strategy, particularly his desire to avoid involving China.

Forty years ago, in another incident that caused much controversy at the time, President Carter fired General john Singlaub over comments the latter publicly criticized the President's decision to withdraw troops from Korea.

More recently, in 2008 President Bush essentially fired Admiral William Fallon, commander of CENTCOM. Fallon had made comments to a reporter from Esquire in which he indicated that if it wasn't for him Bush would be at war with Iran. The story that came out was that Fallon retired, but there is no doubt that it was a case of "retire or be fired."

In all three cases the president did the right thing. Whether the general or admiral was right in some existential sense is irrelevant.

In the case of Afghanistan, the war effort will be in good hands with Petraeus. If anyone can put us on the path to victory, it is him.

To be sure, most liberals and liberal media outlets are being completely hypocritical about generals who criticize their president. But of course.

All in all, I'm in agreement with Rich Lowry that Obama hit a home run:

I'm not sure how Obama could have handled this any better. He was genuinely graceful about McChrystal and his explanation of why he had to go made perfect sense. He called for unity within his adminstration in pursuing the war and sounded quite stalwart about both the war and about the strategy. More importantly, his choice of Petraeus as a replacement for McChrystal is a brilliant move: He gets a heavy-weight, an unassailable expert in this kind of warfare, and someone who presumably can step in pretty seamlessly. He also picked someone who has expressed (very diplomatic) misgivings about the July 2011 deadline and who will have the clout and credibility to tell the president that he can't afford to go down in troops when July comes, should circumstances warrant. (It should also be noted that this is a step down for Petraeus and he can't relish directly managing another war -- that he will do so speaks to his selfless patriotism.) In short, Obama has made the most of a rotten situation.

There, can't say I never said anything good about our president.

Posted by Tom at 9:30 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 22, 2010

Yes, Gen. Stanley McChrystal Should be Fired

An excerpt from excerpts from the Rolling Stone article

Even though he had voted for Obama, McChrystal and his new commander in chief failed from the outset to connect. The general first encountered Obama a week after he took office, when the president met with a dozen senior military officials in a room at the Pentagon known as the Tank. According to sources familiar with the meeting, McChrystal thought Obama looked "uncomfortable and intimidated" by the roomful of military brass. Their first one-on-one meeting took place in the Oval Office four months later, after McChrystal got the Afghanistan job, and it didn't go much better. "It was a 10-minute photo op," says an adviser to McChrystal. "Obama clearly didn't know anything about him, who he was. Here's the guy who's going to run his [expletive] war, but he didn't seem very engaged. The Boss was pretty disappointed." ...

One aide calls Jim Jones, a retired four-star general and veteran of the Cold War, a "clown" who remains "stuck in 1985." Politicians like McCain and Kerry, says another aide, "turn up, have a meeting with Karzai, criticize him at the airport press conference, then get back for the Sunday talk shows. Frankly, it's not very helpful." Only Hillary Clinton receives good reviews from McChrystal's inner circle. "Hillary had Stan's back during the strategic review," says an adviser. "She said, 'If Stan wants it, give him what he needs.'

McChrystal reserves special skepticism for Holbrooke, the official in charge of reintegrating the Taliban. "The Boss says he's like a wounded animal," says a member of the general's team. "Holbrooke keeps hearing rumors that he's going to get fired, so that makes him dangerous."

Certainly inappropriate and impolitic, but not as big a deal as some of the stories would suggest. That said, ifPresident Obama fired McChrystal I'd support the decision

The President will meet with the general tomorrow, and has said that he won't make any decision until after they talk: "I think it's clear that the article in which he and his team appeared showed a poor -- showed poor judgment, but I also want to make sure that I talk to him directly before I make any final decisions."

The most famous incident in which a president fired a general was, of course, when Truman dismissed Douglas MacArthur. The general had criticized the president's limited war strategy, particularly his desire to avoid involving China.

Forty years ago, in another incident that caused much controversy at the time, President Carter fired General john Singlaub over comments the latter publicly criticized the President's decision to withdraw troops from Korea.

MacArthur and Singlaub deserved to be fired. McChrystal's offense is different, but he deserves to be fired nonetheless. However, my guess is he'll probably survive with a reprimand. Most likely the story we'll hear is that McChrystal offered his resignation and the President refused it. Obama will calculate that he simply cannot afford for things to go any more wrong in Afghanistan.

Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit said that:

McChrystal's greatest crime is speaking the truth -- that the White House is unserious about this war, and that its foreign policy team isn't up to the job. And if he were saying this about a Republican administration, the press would be hailing him as a great hero, speaking truth to power.

Nonetheless, serving generals aren't supposed to speak this way about their civilian masters, and so if the Rolling Stone reports are true, he should probably be sacked.

Exactly correct. Singlaub was right and he still deserved to be fired. Truman was right with regards to China. Whether McChrystal is right or not is irrelevant because we simply cannot have generals criticizing their civilian bosses in public. The editors of National Review make the point that firing McChrystal will not advance us towards victory in Afghanistan. Undoubtedly true, and also irrelevant.

That said, Reynolds makes another point that is dead on correct:

Under a Republican President, it's listen to the generals. Under a Democratic President, it's all about civilian control of the military.

As always, Victor Davis Hanson has wise things to say, so I'll close with him:

Many have commented on the unfairness of it all, and made good points:

a) Obama, having demagogued the Iraq war, and campaigned on a "let me at 'em" in the "good" war in Afghanistan, has done his best to renege on his 2008 chest-thumping (e.g., not meeting with McChrystal for months; setting arbitrary withdrawal dates that turn the war into a "wait them out" process; publicly rebuking in embarrassing fashion the Karzai government; insulting the British enough so that they and other European countries will soon be leaving -- not wishing to stay on when they also know we're going to pack it up soon, and so on).

b) McChrystal has not said anything more defamatory than what Obama himself, as a U.S. senator, said about the surge or Predators, and nothing that approaches the slanders of a Sen. Durban, Kerry, or Reid.

c) We don't always fire generals who mouth off -- especially those so closely identified with the current efforts at the front. Patton was given several chances; Arleigh Burke was saved by Truman despite his campaign against the Pentagon's civilian head.

d) Obama is in a terrible dilemma. If he doesn't fire McChrystal after a second indiscretion, he perhaps looks weak. If he does, it endangers the current effort in Afghanistan and looks like he's silencing an officer for having legitimate worries.

e) The howling media is hypocritical. Yesterday's officers who took on Bush in the "revolt of the generals" were deemed courageous. Today's critics are slandered as near-treasonous when they dare reproach Him.

f) It would be very frustrating for a gifted and devoted general like McChrystal to work for Obama, given the latter's indifference, contradictions, and clear anti-war stance as a senator.

No matter, nonetheless. The issue is not whether McChrystal is a great officer (he is), but one of judgment. One does not openly criticize civilian overseers to the press, however justified (and there are plenty of justifications). Nor does one allow a climate in which subordinate officers feel emboldened enough that they loosely trash an administration to the press. If one really wishes to warn the public about a growing crisis in Afghanistan brought on by ignorance, egos, and duplicity in the administration, one surely does not talk to the likes of Rolling Stone. The proper way is to send warnings in private channels up the chain of command to the Pentagon and then to the White House. And when one feels the level of ignorance is overwhelming the chances of success, then one resigns and goes public to warn the nation. One cannot otherwise have it both ways.

No one wants to see McChrystal go, but senior officers and their staffers simply cannot ridicule civilian overseers, even if casually and in jest. We don't know all the details or the veracity of the journalists involved, so it would be foolish to rush to judgment, but something will have to be resolved within the next 48 hours or so.

Posted by Tom at 10:00 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

June 4, 2010

Let There Be No Doubt...

... as to where I stand

This shouldn't surprise any of my neighbors, who from yard signs know I'm a conservative Republican. And generally I'm not "in your face" about things, and I don't bring up politics at work or when around people when I'm not familiar with their sympathies. I take candidate bumper stickers off my car when the election is over. But there come certain issues where the situation is so out of hand that you have to take a stand and let everyone know what you see as right and wrong. Now is one of those times

Posted by Tom at 7:45 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 2, 2010

Israel and the Big Lie of the "Peace Flotilla"

This was predictable:

U.S. urged Israel to use caution and restraint with aid boats heading to Gaza
The Washington Post
By Scott Wilson and Glenn Kessler
Thursday, June 3, 2010; A01

The Obama administration said Wednesday that it had warned Israel's government repeatedly to use "caution and restraint" with half a dozen aid boats bound for the Gaza Strip before Israeli commandos raided the flotilla this week in an operation that killed nine people.

"We communicated with Israel through multiple channels many times regarding the flotilla," P.J. Crowley, a State Department spokesman, said in a statement issued in response to a question from The Washington Post. "We emphasized caution and restraint given the anticipated presence of civilians, including American citizens."

Yes yes, Israel must "exercise restraint." You could have written this before anything had ever happened. Israel must always "exercise restraint." No one ever asks the terrorists Palestinians or their terrorist enabling supporters to "exercise restraint."

Richard Fernandez' post at the Belmont Club seemed to sum up the moral confusion of the anti-Israel crowd nicely:

Never mind what the press or the diplomats say happened, the above is what happened. The Times Online reports that "Security Council members, who had broken off from their spring holiday to hold an emergency session prepared a draft document calling on Israel to lift its blockade and immediately release the ships and hundreds of international activists arrested on board them. " That some of the "peace activists" were members of the Islan Haklary Ve Hurriyetleri Vakfi, itself an organization of ill-repute, is irrelevant. Nothing must get in the way of the narrative, the facts least of all. But the reason anyone should care about the gap between reality and conventional wisdom has nothing to do with what one may think of Israel. The main reason to worry is that it illustrates the Western addiction to fiction, an addiction which sooner or later will have practical consequences. That addiction was also being pandered to on the other side of the world. ...

As a result, any moderately well informed individual knows that there is no Islamic extremism, nor even terrorism. There are only man made disasters. Everybody knows that we can borrow our way out of debt, that the welfare state is the sustainable wave of the future; that Egypt has no border with Gaza through which it can provide supplies if it wanted; that the UN has kept Hezbollah from importing hundreds of missiles into Lebanon; that the thought of a handful of Jews has kept hundreds of millions of oil-rich Muslims from attaining prosperity; and that Global Warming is the main danger facing the planet Earth. That these assertions are untrue hardly matters; that they are indisputable is what seems to count. For who shall dispute them?

Reality might. And therein lies the problem.

Here's what is going to happen with one hundred percent certainty. All of these lies will explode with considerable force in the faces of political establishment. Nothing can prevent it. Just as reality eventually exposed the hollowness of the financial bubble and showed that nothing was "too big to fail," eventually it will demonstrate to our extreme cost, that no lie can be maintained forever. That is the real reason anyone should really care about what happened on the "peace flotilla." We are as corrupt as a preacher in a whorehouse. It ain't what we don't know that will hurt us, it's what we know that ain't so that will drive the dagger into our hearts.

Indeed they will all be exposed as lies sooner or later. I just hope not too much damage is done before they are.

Call me biased if you will, but I'm going to take the rest of this post with videos and commentary from the website of the Israeli Defense Forces. Just as I would take commentary from the Allies over the Nazis during World War II.

Video Footage: Flotilla Activists Getting Ready to Attack IDF Soldiers

02 June 2010 , 22:17

The Mavi Marmara's security camera recorded a video displaying the "peace activists" getting prepared to welcome IDF soldiers.

While the soldiers of the Shayetet Naval Special Forces are approaching the Mavi Marmara ship, the "peace activists" are getting prepared to welcome them. In this special video recorded by the ship's security camera, we can see the way they equip themselves: clubs, pipes, glass and metal bottles. This was recorded a few minutes before they started attacking the IDF soldiers in a violent and uncontrolled way.

Breaking Footage from Mavi Marmara interception

02 June 2010 , 14:53

Video shows what took place as IDF soldiers intercepted the Mavi Marmara ship and were attacked by its passengers

Video footage shows Shayetet Naval Special Forces attempting to intercept the Mavi Marmara ship which is part of the Gaza flotilla. Passengers on board are seen throwing chains, metal pipes and a stun grenade at the soldiers while attacking them with water hoses. The passengers later use the same metal pipes to beat the soldiers who boarded the Marmara. The soldiers can be seen armed with paintball guns, to be used as a means of riot dispersal.

Five other ships arrived to the area with the flotilla, however IDF interception took place with no incident. The passengers on board these other ships cooperated nonviolently with IDF soldiers and there were no injuries

Hamas Refuses to Allow Flotilla Aid into Gaza Strip

02 June 2010 , 20:42

CoGAT reports that Hamas did not allow today the transfer of the cargo brought on the flotilla to Gaza's residents

As of right now, the State of Israel has loaded 25 trucks with various types of aid found onboard the flotilla. Expired medication, clothing, blankets, some medical equipment and toys were among the aid found on the ships. Some humanitarian aid is still waiting at the port of Ashdod. The CoGAT is acting in coordination with international aid organizations operating in the Gaza Strip which are waiting for the transfer of the cargo on the other side of the border.

Unfortunately, the Hamas terror organization is unwilling to accept the cargo and the trucks filled with humanitarian aid have not been allowed to enter the Gaza Strip. It appears that Hamas is in fact stopping the transfer of the humanitarian aid. Hamas did not explain his opposition to the transfer of the aid.

The Ministry of Defense and the IDF allow the crossing of goods and equipment in a routine and frequent manner, and enable the transfer of people for medical, religious, welfare, business or diplomatic reasons. About a hundred of trucks containing aid are delivered everyday by the IDF. In the first quarter of the year 2010, 95,000 tons of supplies and 1068 tons of medicines and medical equipment were transferred in about 4,000 trucks. Also, at the time of swine flu epidemic fear, three Israelis hospitals were designated to treat patients from Gaza and 44,500 vaccinations were delivered into the Gaza Strip.

The State of Israel seeks to achieve regional stability and protection of her citizens. It is not in the interest of Israel to harm the people of Gaza and the state does its utmost to assist aid efforts, so as not to harm the quality of life for the residents of Gaza. Hamas, in its continued efforts to smuggle weapons into the Gaza Strip, harms the people of Gaza and undermines further development. Despite these ever-present security threats, the IDF continues to allow the transfer of commercial goods, building materials, and medical equipment into Gaza.

Supply of weapons discovered on board Mavi Marmara ship

01 June 2010 , 01:15

After passengers on board the Mavi Marmara departed the ship at the Ashdod port, security forces began checking the boat and found a cache of weapons on board.

Arnon Ben-Dror

After IDF soldiers succeeded in stopping the attack against them by passengers on board the Mavi Marmara ship, the ship was brought to the Ashdod port and arrived in the late hours of Monday evening (May 31). Flotilla participants were brought off the ship and taken for questioning.

Once the activists left the ship, security forces began a thorough search and found a supply of weapons, including knives, Molotov cocktails, detonators, wood and metal clubs, slingshots and rocks, large hammers and sharp metal objects. In addition, gas masks were found, pointing to the prior intention of the ship's passengers to use violence against IDF soldiers who would then be forced to use riot dispersal methods.

The IDF has gotten a lot better over the past few years with it's information campaign. They did lousy in the war against Hizbollah in 2006, but much better in 2008-9 against Hamas in Gaza. This time they've added much more video, and to anyone interested in the truth the effect is devastating. Sadly, much of the world prefers a lie.

Posted by Tom at 10:00 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

"Humanitarian" Relief Flotilla My Foot

The "international condemnation" of Israel's stopping the "humanitarian relief flotilla" is driving me nuts. There is nothing that so illustrates the moral bankruptcy of so many people as just about any confrontation between democratic Israel and terrorist-jihadist Muslims.

I've been so busy I haven't had time to blog much, but a few quick notes are in order because this situation is so insane.

This situation, like so many others, was a no-win for Israel. If they had not stopped the ships, it would have been portrayed as a victory for Hamas by all those who hate Israel. Even if these first six ships weren't carrying weapons, the next ones would be. But since they did stop the ships, there is an "international outcry" against Israel's use of "disproportionate force" blah blah blah.

One of the primary organizers behind the "relief ships" is the Turkish organization Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH, must be Turkish initials). Among other things, the IHH was identified by the CIA in 1996 as being tied to terrorism through linkis to Iran. French magistrate Jean-Louis Brugiere determined that the IHH played an "important role" in the 1999 Los Angeles "millennium plot" organized by al Qaeda that thankfully failed. But you've read all this elsewhere by now so none of that is a big surprise.

You've also read that there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which is quite true. Israel allows anyone who wants to send humanitarian supplies to Gaza if they simply dock their ship in Israel, allow the goods to be inspected, and then sends them to Gaza by truck.

But of course these six ships weren't about relief. They were about the destruction of Israel. The goal was to delegitimize the state of Israel by creating the no-win situation described above.

Thankfully, most Democrats as well as Republicans in the United States see this for what it is, a shameful attempt by Islamists so destroy Israel. In January 2009 both houses of Congress issued strong bipartisan statements of support for Israel in their current war with Hamas. I'm sure President Obama will support Israel. A few on the far left and far right will say otherwise, but they're in the minority.

Unfortunately we cannot say the same for many in the rest of the world. They seem to be afflicted with either outright anti-Semitism, moral blindness, or both.

A few quick excerpts from various articles and then I've got to run off to work. First up is a post over at Powerline that's got some great links:

Those manning the Turkish Hamas flotilla seeking to run the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza were no fools. They knew exactly what they were doing -- see Jonathan Schanzer's "The terror finance flotilla" -- and they accomplished their mission in part.

The fools weren't on the ship. The fools are on dry land, as can be deduced from the ship-of-fools quality to the response to Israel's encounter with the flotilla. See Wesley Pruden's "A shocking story of Israeli survival" and Caroline Glick's "Ending Israel's losing streak." See also Mona Charen's "Flotillas and falsehoods" (query: "Don't members of the press ever resent being so used?") and David Hornik's "World regrets death of jihadists, vilifies Israel." For a footnote involving the New York Times, see Seth Lipsky's "Mavi Marmara and the Exodus."

Claudia Rosette has more on the Turkish IHH:

For details on what led a French magistrate in the 1990s to explore IHH connections to terrorist organizations, including al-Qaeda, a piece of required reading is a working paper released in 2006 by the Danish Institute for International Studies: "The Role of Islamic Charities in International Terrorist Recruitment and Financing." The entire report is illuminating, but for the section on the IHH, scroll to pages 10-14. When this report was written, the IHH was active in providing "charitable donations" to what were then "rebel-dominated areas of restive Sunni central Iraq."

Not too long ago I naively thought that Turkey could lead the way, or at least play a role, in the reform of Islam that is so desperately needed. But the Turkey of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk is going, going..... It is dying a death of demographics (his secular supporters in the cities are being out-babied by those more inclined towards radicalism) and the general rise of Islamism around the Muslim world.

Victor Davis Hanson has more:

The virulent worldwide reaction to Israeli's handling of the Gaza flotilla has been quite instructive. The bankrupt Greeks, for example, are taking a holiday from railing at the Germans to demonstrate in solidarity with the Turkish-organized Gaza effort, which puts them on the same side as those whose government supports the occupation of much of Greek-speaking Cyprus and its divided capital.

No one in Europe worried much about the constant shower of missiles from Gaza in the past. No one in Europe said a word when North Korea torpedoed and slaughtered South Koreans on the high seas. No one objected when the Iranians hijacked a British ship and humiliated the hostages.

We ourselves seem to be getting a sort of novel pass for executing scores of suspected terrorists -- and anyone in their vicinity -- in our new, stepped-up Predator drone assassinations.

But the Western and Islamic worlds have a preexisting furor at the Jewish state that can be tapped at will by almost any pro-radical-Palestinian group clever enough to do proper P.R. after a desired asymmetrical confrontation. The fallout from Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount, the distortions around the 2002 terrorist storming of the Church of Nativity, the 2006 Lebanon war -- over time, these incidents do their part, in weird fashion, to incur hatred for a liberal democracy while creating sympathy for a theocratic thugocracy like Hamas.

What explains this preexisting hatred, which ensures denunciation of Israel in the most rabid -- or, to use the politically correct parlance, "disproportionate" -- terms? It is not about "occupied land," given the millions of square miles worldwide that are presently occupied, from Georgia to Cyprus to Tibet. It is not a divided capital -- Nicosia is walled off. It is not an overreaction in the use of force per se -- the Russians flattened Grozny and killed tens of thousands while the world snoozed. And it cannot be the scale of violence, given what we see hourly in Pakistan, Darfur, and the Congo. And, given the Armenian, Greek, and Kurdish histories (and reactions to them), the currently outraged Turkish government is surely not a credible referent on the topic of disproportionate violence.

Perhaps the outrage reflects simple realpolitik -- 350 million Arab Muslims versus 7 million Israelis. Perhaps it is oil: half the world's reserves versus Israel's nada. Perhaps it is the fear of terror: Draw a cartoon or write a novel offending Islam, and you must go into hiding; defame Jews and earn accolades. Perhaps it is anti-Semitism, which is as fashionable on the academic Left as it used to be among the neanderthal Right.

Perhaps there is also a new sense that the United States at last has fallen into line with the Western consensus, and so is hardly likely to play the old lone-wolf supporter of Israel in the press or at the U.N.

At this point, it doesn't much matter -- as this latest hysterical reaction reminds us, much of the world not only sides with Israel's enemies but sides with them to such a degree as to suggest that, in any existential moment to come, the world either will be indifferent or will be on the side of Israeli's enemies.

Quite frightening, when you think of it.

Indeed. I feel a big war coming on in the Middle East, one that will make the recent ones against Hizbollah and Hamas look like small potatoes. No matter how it starts or proceeds, the "international community" will be against Israel. Any U.S. president will support Israel, but whether he does so strongly or tepidly remains to be seen. Even Reagan criticized Israel for it's 1981 attack on the French-built nuclear power plant in Osirak, Iraq, even though it should have been clear at the time that Saddam Hussein was going to use it to build nuclear weapons.

I have relatives of Greek extraction, and they are very worried about Turkey, a worry that wasn't quite as intense not too many years ago. The forces of evil are aligning in a very malign way. The growing influence of radical Islam in Europe, Ahmadinejad's bogus reelection and the coming Iranian bomb, Hugo Chavez' consolidation of power in Venezuela, the Turkish-Brazilian-Iranian nuclear agreement, even the incessant Chinese military buildup seem part of an aligning of forces against the United States and Israel. Is it 1939 again?

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March 13, 2010

The Manhattan Declaration: A Christian Call to Arms

A Facebook post the other day on The Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience by a friend of mine reminded me that I'd wanted to blog about it for several months but just never got around to it.

An explanation, from the website:

Christians, when they have lived up to the highest ideals of their faith, have defended the weak and vulnerable and worked tirelessly to protect and strengthen vital institutions of civil society, beginning with the family. It was in this tradition that a group of prominent Christian clergy, ministry leaders, and scholars released the Manhattan Declaration on November 20, 2009 at a press conference in Washington, DC. The 4,700-word declaration speaks in defense of the sanctity of life, traditional marriage, and religious liberty. It issues a clarion call to Christians to adhere firmly to their convictions in these three areas.

It will be easy for some to dismiss this out of hand as a propaganda piece of the far right, aimed at denying the civil liberties of gays, atheists, agnostics, and others. To those who would, bear with me for awhile.

The progressive view of history is that we are always moving forward, or at least should be, and are always improving our lot. All or most programs enacted in the past hundred and fifty years have improved society and everything is thus getting better. Jeff Bergner, writing in The Weekly Standard, calls this "The Narrative:"

The Narrative is the official story about America. It is a story composed by the political left, which entered American public life with the progressive movement in the early 20th century and was elaborated in the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s and '40s.

The story runs like this. America was founded on the ideal of equality, though that ideal at first was barely put into practice. The story of America is one of progress toward the fulfillment of the ideal of equality. The end of slavery and the achievement of women's suffrage are landmarks in this story. All fair enough. So is--less plausibly--the federal income tax, originally established to fund the government but later used to redistribute wealth and tax advantages among Americans. Then came the many programs of direct payments to individuals, the so-called entitlements, beginning with Social Security and extending to Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, aid to dependent children, farm subsidies, and myriad others. And today the health care reform bill before Congress takes its place in America's advance toward equality. Each and every policy that aims to level distinctions between Americans has found its place within The Narrative.

As Bergner says, surely many things labeled as reforms have improved out lot. The end of slavery, universal suffrage, and the civil rights revolution stand out. I've have had conversations with many older conservative women who have no hesitation in telling stories of how they could not get jobs despite having advanced degrees in areas like law and business. Again, all fair enough.

But we're not getting better as a society everywhere, and in some areas are moving backwards. I'm not going to run through the numbers, but I think we should be pretty clear that things like the divorce rate and single parenthood are at all time highs. We're forever hearing that political discussion is meaner and worse than ever. The Playboy culture is upon us, and what you see in the Victoria's Secret window is unimaginable even a generation ago. Who can say that the Bratz series of dolls are really good role-models for girls? The sexualization of our children accelerates in a whole series of areas, from dress to books to what you see on TV shows and in the movies.

I am not arguing for a return to some "golden era" for there never was one. Go back fifty years and all you are doing is trading one sin for another, lack of civil rights for more modesty in dress, for example. No, what I am doing is rejecting the progressive view of The Narrative and the idea that such things as LBJ's Great Society programs were an unmitigated good. So that yes, I am happy that some of the social restrictions of the bad old days are gone, but am unhappy that it has led to the "hook up culture."

The Authors of The Declaration

Robert George Professor, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Princeton University

Timothy George
Professor, Beeson Divinity School, Samford University

Chuck Colson
Founder, the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview (Lansdowne, VA)

A quick look at list of religious leaders who have signed makes me think it's pretty ecumenical, though I'm no expert.

What is The Declaration All About?

From the summary page

We are Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christians who have united at this hour to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good, and to call upon our fellow citizens, believers and non-believers alike, to join us in defending them. These truths are

(1) the sanctity of human life,
(2) the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife, and
(3) the rights of conscience and religious liberty.

Inasmuch as these truths are foundational to human dignity and the well-being of society, they are inviolable and non-negotiable. Because they are increasingly under assault from
powerful forces in our culture, we are compelled today to speak out forcefully in their
defense, and to commit ourselves to honoring them fully no matter what pressures are
brought upon us and our institutions to abandon or compromise them. We make this
commitment not as partisans of any political group but as followers of Jesus Christ, the
crucified and risen Lord, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Sanctity of Life

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. Genesis 1:27

I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. John 10:10

The authors here are not only concerned with abortion, but with euthanasia, research using human embryos, so-called "therapeutic cloning," as well as international issues such as "ethnic cleansing," neglect of children, the exploitation of workers, the sexual trafficking of girls, and other issues.

Pope John Paul II described abortion as "the culture of death," but the term also applies to those who casually dismiss those who are concerned about human embryo research and "therapeutic cloning" as religious nuts. It is the casual acceptance of these trends, or the rationalization of them, that disturbs the authors.

The chief objection to this "culture of death is that it promotes "the belief that lives that are imperfect, immature or inconvenient are discardable." It all started with abortion, and now continues into other areas. How long before we leganize euthanasia as they have done in The Netherlands? How can this possibly be good?

Critics often call conservatives hypocrites for failing to oppose the death penalty, to which I say "I'll trade you abortion for the death penalty." Given that there are 1.37 million abortions a year and approximately 52 executions, this is a trade I'll gladly make.

Dignity of Marriage

The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man." For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. Genesis 2:23-24

This is a profound mystery--but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. Ephesians 5:32-33

If a man can marry another man, and a woman another woman, why can't a man marry 600 other men?

Once you remove traditional and/or religious guidelines, then marriage and all other social institutions become subject to the whims of politicians and judges, who will respond to whatever pressure group screams the loudest.

The problem goes well beyond "gay marriage." As the authors point out, "perhaps the most telling--and alarming--indicator is the out-of-wedlock birth rate. Less than fifty years ago, it was under 5 percent. Today it is over 40 percent." Most social pathologies, among them poverty, delinquency, drug abuse, crime, and incarceration, can be directly tied to single parenthood.

Just because the straight population, Christian or not, can't keep it's act together is no reason to compound the problem. The authors point out that "the impulse to redefine marriage in order to recognize same-sex and multiple partner relationships is a symptom, rather than the cause, of the erosion of the marriage culture." Too many today are morally confused, lacking clear guidelines, and do not understand the reasons and societal benefits of traditional marriage.

The idea that we could allow same-sex marriage and everyone else would continue on their merry way is not tenable. The proponents of same-sex marriage want nothing less than to force its acceptance in society. They want it taught as perfectly normal in our schools and to eliminate discussion of the subject in the marketplace of ideas, and indeed to end the tax-exempt status of any church who dares object to the new regime.

Religious Liberty

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners. Isaiah 61:1

Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's. Matthew 22:21

At first glance this may not seem to be a problem, as there is no Roe v Church seeking to overturn the First Amendment. But we see a weakening of religious liberty in other, less obvious, ways taking place.

There is a movement afoot to end conscience clauses for medical personnel in hospitals where abortions are performed. Some even want to force pro-life hospitals to perform abortions or lose their funding and/or licenses. Ditto for same-sex marriage; institutions and businesses will be forced to accept such "marriages" or face punitive legal action.

The Biblical admonition to respect and obey those in authority can be found in Hebrews 13:17, among other places:

Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account. Obey them so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you.

So indeed we are generally prohibited from subverting our government (assuming it is not Nazi or communist or some such, then it gets more complicated).

But you don't have to go far to find stories justifying civil disobedience in the Bible either. There are many, but the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in Daniel 3 comes to mind. They refused to pray to the golden image built by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, and were thrown into the fiery furnace as a result. They, of course, were saved by God, but the point is that one may refuse to obey wrong laws as long as one is willing to pay the price.

Did I Sign It?

Of course I signed it. No the document does not discuss every injustice in the United States. The wider one casts that net, however, the more disagreement you'll generate. Best to keep it short and simple.

So I agree with the principles of the document, and think it a worthy basis for action and belief.

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March 11, 2010

Book Review - Whose Ethics? Whose Morals?

I listen to a lot of Christian radio, mostly music during the day and talk at night. Of course, I also listen to Laura, Rush, Dennis Miller, and others too. But I can't go a whole day without some time with God, and radio is part of His ministry.

Like any other genre, some Christian talk radio is good and some is bad. Spare me the fire and brimstone. Bring on insightful, intellectual, and intelligent commentary. Of the latter, Christian Research Institute Chairman Hank Hanegraaff is one of the best. I've listened to him long enough to know that he didn't earn the moniker "the bible answer man" by accident. Check your local radio listings for availability.

Hanegraaff has published a number of works, and one day I'll buy more of them. My time for reading being somewhat small, I decided to start with one of his smaller ones, Whose Ethics? Whose Morals? The Best of the Christian Research Journal. At 95 pages, it's not a long read.

The book is a collection of short essays; one by Hanegraaff, and 5 by other authors. My conclusion; there are a few good sections, but in general it was a letdown. Partially this is just me, because any reader of this blog knows that while I am pro-life, I don't spend much time on the subject. Ditto with other hot-button social issues such as cloning and stem cell research. If the details of these subjects interest you, you'll probably find the book more useful than I did.

In the first part of the book Hanegraaff poses a series of everyday moral questions, and addresses them from a Christian perspective. "What's the problem with pornography" and "What should Christians think about global warming" are two typical ones. You can guess his answer to the first, the second is a bit more complicated. Global warming, climate change, or whatever you want to call it, is a scientific issue which is on the surface removed from Christian thinking. However, there is more to it than that. God has called us to be good stewards of the earth, so we must pay attention to environmental matters. On the other, the environmental movement has a strong quasi-religious aspect to it, and we must avoid falling into this trap.

The best essay is "Dispelling False Notions of the First Amendment: The Falsity, Futility, and Folly of Separating Morality from the Law" by Michael Bauman. There are those who argue that "you can't legislate morality," which is usually a prelude to "keep religion out of government/the/law etc." Bauman presents a convincing case that all law is ultimately based on moral and ethical judgments.

For example, one can justify environmental laws on pragmatic grounds by saying that clean air or water benefits us all. But the simple idea that more people leading healthy lives is itself a moral judgment. Speed limits can be justified on pragmatic grounds by saying that they save lives and we benefit economically and that "cleaning up" wrecks is expensive. Again, the idea that saving lives is good and that cost is a factor is itself a moral judgment. It is therefore foolish to think that law can be made on a strictly pragmatic basis.

Right now we are in a stage whereby vice-type laws are being removed, and more and more moral prohibitions relaxed. A quick look at the supermarket magazines and the cover of Cosmopolitan, or the window of you local Victoria's Secret, makes the point. And that's before turning on the TV for the evening sitcoms. Even the most cursory look at all of the social indicators; divorce rate, single parenthood, etc show a downward trend in the past 40 years, and every serious study out there shows these conditions lead to poverty. The cause-and-effect / chicken-and-egg is complicated, but if "pragmatism" was the basis for our law we'd make divorce and single-parenthood illegal. Neither I nor Bauman are saying these things should be illegal, just pointing out that pragmatism isn't the basis for our legal system.

More, vice-laws have more effect than many people want to admit. Prohibition didn't stop drinking but even after it ended, alcohol consumption was considerably less than before it was enacted. Before prohibition the average American drank 3 gallons of alcohol per year. After it was lifted it was at 1 gallon for the next 10 years, and took 40 years to return to pre-prohibition levels.

Obviously not all sins can or should be legislated, and Bauman makes this explicitly clear.

I don't want to say there is a "worst" essay, but unless you're interested in reading about the ethics of abortion in excruciating detail, you'll find the two essays on abortion tedious. The authors take on seemingly every imaginable "pro-choice" argument, including many I'd never heard of before. They not only take you through the biology of conception and pregnancy step-by-step, but address the very issue of "what does it mean to be human?" I'll admit that in a way it is interesting and indeed important, but it's just not my personal hot-button topic.

Before too long, though, we as a society are going to have to face all the hard questions about "what it means to be human" that we can now see but are just over the horizon. The debate over embryonic v adult cell research is all the rage now, but other issues will be at the forefront soon. Before too many years human cloning will not only be possible but cheaper and easier. Even the Brave New World scenario whereby babies are "grown" test-tubesin baby-factories is not too far off as our technology advances. We'll have to answer the question; just because something is technically possible, do we want to do it? Should these things be legal, illegal, or regulated? These questions are not my cup of tea, but in the end I'll be affected by them as much as anyone.

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February 4, 2010

President Obama Calls for Civility

No joke. From the Washington Post:

Obama pleads for civility, cooperation in politics

By BEN FELLER
The Associated Press
Thursday, January 28, 2010; 11:57 PM

TAMPA, Fla. -- Trying to bury a year of polarization, President Barack Obama on Thursday escalated his appeal for politicians and voters alike to settle differences without tearing each other apart. His plea: "Let's start thinking of each other as Americans first."
...

Coming one day after his State of the Union address, and one day before meeting with House Republican leaders with whom he continues to battle, Obama's emphasis on civility was a nod to political reality. He needs Republicans more than ever to get his agenda passed, and he is getting saddled with more public blame for the partisanship he promised to change.

Even the AP reporter couldn't report this one with a straight face.

It's a typical Democrat/liberal ploy. Attack, vilify, and slander, then as soon as you suffer a setback demand "civility" from the other side.

The level of hypocrisy is stunning, even for Obama

A call for civility from the party that spent 6 or more years saying "Bush Lied!" at every opportunity, and otherwise savaging him in all manner of ways. This from the party whose senators (John Kerry and Chuck Schumer) have started to use the vulgar term "teabagger" to describe the Tea Party movement. Of course anyone who criticizes Obama too effectively risks being labeled a racist, something we saw quite often during the campaign. And this from the movement of a zillion "Bushitler" and "ChimpyMcHitler" references.

Barack Obama himself is hardly civil, treating anyone who doesn't agree with him as worthy of contempt.

Finally, there was the insane level of attacks on Sarah Palin and her family.

It just like the schoolyard bully; tough and mean when he's on top, but the first to cry foul when he's received a good knock on the head.

But don't Republicans attack and vilify their opponents, you ask? Yes we do. But with rare exceptions we don't then demand civility when the tables are turned.

Also, don't suddenly call for civility when you've been out of power and then win the White House, as Democrats did after Obama won. After years and years of "Bush Lied!" and all the rest of it, I'm in no mood to listen to such hypocrisy.

Look, political discourse is what it is. Yes each side does bad things. But don't be a hypocrite about it and suddenly demand civility from the other side when you suddenly the tables are turned.

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January 3, 2010

Tiger Woods, O.J. Simpson, and Michael Vick

It struck me recently that the Tiger Woods saga reminded me of one of the most famous and loved black Americans of the previous generation; O.J. Simpson. Before their troubles started, both were not merely admired or loved but absolutely adored and held up as idols and role models.

O.J. was the guy everyone loved. He combined what seemed to be a winning personality with sports performance in a way that few could match. Who can forget him vaulting over barriers in airports in those Hertz commercials? His charm and wit seemed transcended race. Unlike a Jesse Jackson, who made his blackness the essence of his being, O.J. was a star first, and only incidentally black. For awhile he had a relatively successful film career, and to this day I remember him in Capricorn One and The Towering Inferno.

Then, of course, there was his arrest on murder charges, and it became immediately clear to everyone that he was guilty. That the jury found him not so was more farce than justice. That he was found guilty in the civil trial somewhat satisfied the vindication many people wanted.

Suddenly the public realized that O.J. was not the man we thought he was. Far from being the warm, charming, good guy that we saw on TV, he was mentally disturbed in some way, even if we couldn't quite put our finger on the diagnosis.

The saga of Tiger Woods follows this same general path, even if we're not quite at the point of writing him off entirely.

As with O.J., Tiger wasn't just a star athlete, he broke records and made it look easy. They were "in another league" as the cliche goes.

And as with O.J., Tiger seemed to have a winning personality. Finally, he, too, transcended race. He was a black man (or "Cabalasian," with a diverse ethnicity) in what was traditionally a white person's sport. But no one cared, because he was good and he was cool. Tiger made golf popular again.

When we first heard the news of his weird car accident outside his house, most people figured that odd as it sounded some rational explanation would emerge. Over the next few days, as as we learned the truth about his numerous extramarital affairs, it became clear that Tiger was not the man we thought he was. Tiger has taken a break from golf, and many sponsors have dropped him.

Tiger did not have just one or two extramarital affairs, but with at least 14, probably many more, and he did this to a wife whom most people would regard as strikingly attractive.

Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Michael Vick has resumed his football career partially because he seemed truly repentant for his crimes, and also because before them his personality was not known, and wasn't a household name. He fell from mid-level, whereas O.J. and Tiger fell from Mount Olympus. Vick is therefore somewhat of the odd man out in this trio, both because prior to his troubles he was nowhere near as famous as the other two, and because he has somewhat rehabilitated himself.

It was clear from the beginning that O.J. never would, regardless of the outcome of his criminal trial. O.J. denied his guilt, internalized, and became the dark psychopath the brutal murders would suggest. He only added to the bizarreness with the release of If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer, with the "If" reduced in size. Tiger may as yet rebound, but I think the key is whether he is truly repentant and tries to make up for the harm he did through charitable works, funding marriage-counseling programs, or the like. On the other hand, if he internalizes what he did and only makes pro-forma statments of apology, his days as an American hero are over.

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November 7, 2009

"Undermining Sri Lanka"

One of the most infuriating things about the modern left is that they spend almost all of their time criticizing democratic governments on their conduct of military action, while letting the most blood-thirsty murderous terrorists and insurgents off scot-free. We've seen it with the recent Israeli wars against Hezbollah and Hamas. The Goldstone Inquiry on Israel's Operation Cast Lead, for example, is an absolute travesty.

Some months ago the forces of the Sri Lankan government finally defeated the Tamil Tigers insurgency. It was difficult and bloody, but they did it. In the end the people of Sri Lanka are much better off. Leave it to idiot leftists in the U.S. Congress to engage in their usual moral equivalence:

Undermining Sri Lanka

America takes the wrong side in anti-terror fight

Sri Lanka is joining Israel as a country facing a war crimes investigation for effectively fighting back against terrorism. America should support the Sri Lankan government or keep its nose out of Colombo's business.

Last week, Stephen Rapp, U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues, filed a report to Congress on incidents during the recent conflict in Sri Lanka that "may constitute violations of international humanitarian law or crimes against humanity." The report focuses in particular on January to May 2009 when, after 12 years of conflict, the Sri Lankan military surrounded and destroyed the major armed formations of the Tamil Tigers and killed the terrorist group's leaders.

The report chronicles allegations of war crimes by both Sri Lanka and the Tamil Tigers. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat whose subcommittee on the State Department and foreign operations requested the report, is calling for "a full and independent investigation" so those responsible can be "held accountable."

The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights joined in the call for an investigation of Sri Lanka's war, saying there are "too many questions" left unanswered. U.N. Human Rights Spokesman Rupert Colville drew a direct comparison to the Gaza Fact-Finding Mission overseen by South African Judge Richard Goldstone. Sri Lanka and Israel are both pursuing internal investigations and have rejected the idea of international involvement in the process.

The Rapp report is not comprehensive, more a list of allegations than a fully documented indictment. Most of the offenses listed are either directly attributable to the Tamil Tigers, such as forcibly recruiting children to fight for them, or the consequence of terrorist activities, such as Sri Lanka shelling hospitals being used by the Tigers as command posts.

The tone of moral equivalence in the Rapp and Goldstone reports is most objectionable. War is by its nature violent, complex and tragic. Rules exist to mitigate war's suffering but can never eliminate it. Terrorist groups like the Tamil Tigers, Hamas and al Qaeda do not consider themselves bound by the rules of war and violate them as a matter of doctrine by targeting noncombatants, using civilians as human shields, torturing and executing prisoners, and by using hospitals and religious sites as headquarters and sniper platforms.

Any war against such an enemy will impose a degree of tragedy on people who under other circumstances would be spared war's horrors. But this is part of the terrorist tool kit, and reports such as these play into their hands. By placing the terrorists' systematic offenses against human dignity on par with the unintentional or otherwise regrettable actions of the regime trying to defeat them, such reports level a moral playing field that by rights the terrorists have no right even to set foot on.

Mr. Leahy should control his zeal to pursue what he views as justice in Sri Lanka. Any objective comparison of Sri Lanka's war against the Tamil Tigers or Israel's offensive against Hamas to America's struggle against al Qaeda would cast the United States in the same light, and elevate our enemies to a status they do not deserve. It hands the enemies of freedom unearned victories even as they are being defeated.

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October 9, 2009

Obama's Ridiculous Nobel Peace Prize

So President Barack Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize. We're supposed to be happy for him and for our country. Sorry, but I'm not.

If you can stand to watch it, here are his remarks this morning upon learning of the award

From his remarks

I am both surprised and deeply humbled by the decision of the Nobel Committee. Let me be clear: I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations.

To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who've been honored by this prize -- men and women who've inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace.

But I also know that this prize reflects the kind of world that those men and women, and all Americans, want to build -- a world that gives life to the promise of our founding documents. And I know that throughout history, the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement; it's also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes. And that is why I will accept this award as a call to action -- a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st century.

He's actually right on some of these: The award is not about his accomplishments because he has none, he does not deserve to be in the company of most of the recipients, and

Where he's wrong is that he does deserve to be in the company of some of the more recent recipients, and the current Nobel prize does most certainly not reflect the promise of our founding documents.

Given that Obama has done absolutely nothing to advance peace, and in fact has made the war far more likely, you may be wondering why he got the prize. The Norwegian Nobel Committee clears that up:

Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama's initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.

Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population.

It's all bullcrap, of course, but the meaning is clear: we hate a strong United States that takes firm action against the dictators and troublemakers of the world and want one that give up it's sovereignty to international institutions and prefers endless meaningless talk to action.

More, they admit that Obama has done nothing of substance. They base their entire decision on the idea that he has "created a new climate" and "given its people hope."

If there was once any doubt, it should be clear by now that the Nobel Peace Prize is a complete and utter farce. It is nothing but a political statement by a bunch of leftists.

Once upon a time, the winners were at least deserving. Consider these examples:

1906 - Theodore Roosevelt

1919 - Woodrow Wilson

1944 - The International Committee of the Red Cross

195 - George Marshall

1962 - Linus Pauling

1978 - Anwar Al-Sadat and Menachem Begin

1979 - Mother Teresa

1983 - Lech Walesa

1986 - Elie Wiesel

All of these are men, and one woman and organization, of solid achievements. They and most of the others are deserving.

However, more recently the award has gone off the rails with these winners:

1990 - Mikhail Gorbachev

1992 - Rigoberta Menchú Tum

1994 - Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin

2001 - The United Nations ( U.N.) and Kofi Annan

2002 - Jimmy Carter

2004 - Wangari Maathai

2005 - International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Mohamed ElBaradei

2007 - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr.

Gorbachev is an unrepentant communist who would have kept the Soviet Union around if he had his way, Menchu invented most of her biography, Arafat was a terrorist, the UN is a harbor for human rights abusers, Annan refused to take action that would have prevented the Rwanda massacres and presided over the Oil-for-Food scam, Carter is an anti-Semite, Maathai thinks that AIDS was created in the West to kill black people, the IAEA useless and ElBaradei a moral idiot who thinks Israel the greatest threat to peace, the IPCC is a political outfit and Al Gore a nut who rants that "the earth has a fever."

No one in their right mind would want to be in the company of these losers.

If you look at the timeline on the Nobel Committee's website, you'll see that the deadline for submission of candidates is February, 1 (12 days after he took office), in that month and in March the committee shortens the list, in March and August advisers review it, and in October the winner is selected.

So if you think nine months in office is a rather short time to garner such an award, know that someone thought him worthy a week or two after his inauguration. This alone boggles the mind.

But in the intervening months the committee was no doubt impressed with Obama's world "apology tour." They must have salivated over how he bashed his own country, and George W Bush in particular (if only by implication).

They gave him the awared because they see him as standing above America, not as part of it. He is "post-American." Obama doesn't see himself so much as an American as a "citizen of the world," something he called himself last July in a speech he gave while in Germany.

The whole thing was meant as a repudiation of GWB, and to a lesser extent I think Reagan. After all, this is the org who gave the prize to Jimmy Carter but not RR.

It is an encouragement for him to continue his polices of appeasement : cutting our military, not using our military except in the most multilateral fashion and then only tepidly, signing all manner of international treaties and agreements, ignoring problems such as Islamic extremism

It was also meant as, or will certainly have the effect of, dissuading him from sending a significant number of troops to Afghanistan. Anti-war types in the Democrat party and media will no doubt use this to persuade him to scale back our effort there.

But what if he does send a significant number of troops, a "surge" along the lines recommended by General McChrystal? How will the Nobel committee view that?

Finally, as if to sum up the current administration's attitude, in a display of utter classlessness State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said today that

From our standpoint, you know, we think that this gives us a sense of momentum ... when the United States has accolades tossed its way, rather than shoes

Ha ha.

Better get your laughs in now, because where we're going with Obama in charge there won't be much to laugh about.

Update

In case there was any doubt, the Democrats have officially gone nuts.

We are all now required to sing the praises of Obama, says DNC communications director Brad Woodhouse

The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists--the Taliban and Hamas this morning--in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize. Republicans cheered when America failed to land the Olympics and now they are criticizing the President of the United States for receiving the Nobel Peace prize--an award he did not seek but that is nonetheless an honor in which every American can take great pride--unless of course you are the Republican Party.

That "dissent is the highest form or patriotism" went out the window fast.

Posted by Tom at 9:40 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 8, 2009

The Moral Bankruptcy of the United Nations - Part 12,874,372

Watch this, if you can.

Warning: Put all throwable objects out of reach first.

Eye on the UN via TWS

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October 6, 2009

The Moral Bankruptcy of the International Atomic Energy Agency

Victor Davis Hanson over at NRO

Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency Mohamed ElBaradei is a living metaphor for all that is wrong with post-Western society. He now proclaims that Israel -- democratic and constitutional -- is the "number one threat" to the Middle East. That he made this comment from Tehran -- after his hosts have serially promised to wipe Israel off the map, and after his own agency missed an entire weapons facility run by an autocratic theocracy -- says it all.

ElBaradei, who was educated in the West, and much of whose family lives in the safety and prosperity of the West, has made a career of appeasing Iran, lecturing Westerners about their assorted sins, and saying nothing about the dictatorship in Egypt (for which he once worked). Indeed, beyond Egypt, he has said nothing about the Middle East's self-induced pathologies -- from tribalism, gender apartheid, and statism to dictatorship and religious intolerance -- which are a far more significant cause of the region's economic stagnation than is Western colonialism.

That ElBaradei has been showered with awards from Western governments and universities -- among them the Nobel Prize -- reveals how well he understands the West's timidity and lack of principle. He knows that he and his family are safer and freer outside Egypt than they are inside Egypt, and he knows that Israel is not going to nuke its neighbors or announce that it would like to wipe Syria or Egypt off the map. He also knows that elites in the West like to be chided by Westernized non-Westernizers about their assorted sins -- it allows those Western elites to alleviate their guilt at very little cost.

In short, if ElBaradei didn't exist, he would have to be invented.

Posted by Tom at 10:05 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

September 25, 2009

Obama v Netanyahu at the United Nations

United States President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu each gave major speeches at the United Nations this week. One was a profile in moral cowardice, the other in courage.

Profile in Cowardice

Obama's speech was, or should be, a national embarrassment. The man is stunningly naive, with a child-like view of the world that is breathtaking. He insults his own country again and again. He is more narcissistic than any politician I've known. And he is a moral coward because he hides behind politically correct pieties and refuses to address, let alone acknowledge the villains and evil nations in the world.

A few excerpts

I took office at a time when many around the world had come to view America with skepticism and distrust. Part of this was due to misperceptions and misinformation about my country. Part of this was due to opposition to specific policies, and a belief that on certain critical issues, America has acted unilaterally, without regard for the interests of others.

I'm disgusted with him already. Lucky I didn't see him on TV or I'd have thrown my shoe through it.

Now, like all of you, my responsibility is to act in the interest of my nation and my people, and I will never apologize for defending those interests. But it is my deeply held belief that in the year 2009 -- more than at any point in human history -- the interests of nations and peoples are shared.

"more than at any point in human history" any point? More than at any time in thousands of years of recorded history? The ignorance is staggering.

On my first day in office, I prohibited -- without exception or equivocation -- the use of torture by the United States of America.

We never tortured, you pathetic excuse for a president. And thank you for giving our enemies a propaganda point that they will use against us again and again.

We've also re-engaged the United Nations. We have paid our bills. We have joined the Human Rights Council. (Applause.)

Of course they're applauding, you idiot. The UN Human Rights Council serves to protect dictators and human rights abusers. Sitting on it now are among other human-rights -abusing countries China, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Bahrain, and the Russian Federation. They're on the council so they can prevent it from condemning and taking action against abusers such as themselves. The council spends most of it's time bashing Israel. Who in their right mind thinks that this council is capable of anything good?

The cooperative effort of the whole world. Those words ring even more true today, when it is not simply peace, but our very health and prosperity that we hold in common. Yet we also know that this body is made up of sovereign states. And sadly, but not surprisingly, this body has often become a forum for sowing discord instead of forging common ground; a venue for playing politics and exploiting grievances rather than solving problems. After all, it is easy to walk up to this podium and point figures -- point fingers and stoke divisions. Nothing is easier than blaming others for our troubles, and absolving ourselves of responsibility for our choices and our actions. Anybody can do that. Responsibility and leadership in the 21st century demand more.

What meaningless drivel.

In an era when our destiny is shared, power is no longer a zero-sum game. No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation. No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed. No balance of power among nations will hold. The traditional divisions between nations of the South and the North make no sense in an interconnected world; nor do alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long-gone Cold War.

The time has come to realize that the old habits, the old arguments, are irrelevant to the challenges faced by our people. They lead nations to act in opposition to the very goals that they claim to pursue -- and to vote, often in this body, against the interests of their own people. They build up walls between us and the future that our people seek, and the time has come for those walls to come down. Together, we must build new coalitions that bridge old divides -- coalitions of different faiths and creeds; of north and south, east, west, black, white, and brown.

Unreal. As I said, a staggering level of naivete.

But if the governments of Iran and North Korea choose to ignore international standards; if they put the pursuit of nuclear weapons ahead of regional stability and the security and opportunity of their own people; if they are oblivious to the dangers of escalating nuclear arms races in both East Asia and the Middle East -- then they must be held accountable. The world must stand together to demonstrate that international law is not an empty promise, and that treaties will be enforced. We must insist that the future does not belong to fear

Really? And what exactly will you do when they ignore your words and forge ahead with their nuclear programs? The most you're going to get Russia and China to agree to is to ban the export of number two lead pencils to Iran. The truth, Obama, is that you don't do a blasted thing. You'll give more fine speeches but "the world" isn't interested in stopping Iran or North Korea.

These principles cannot be afterthoughts -- democracy and human rights are essential to achieving each of the goals that I've discussed today

Oh but it most certainly is an afterthought, coming at nearly the end of the speech.

I've had enough. On to a man of courage.

Profile in Courage

It took the leader of one of the smallest nations in the world, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, to speak the truth. His was the speech Obama should have given Excerpts:

Yesterday the President of Iran stood at this very podium, spewing his latest anti-Semitic rants. Just a few days earlier, he again claimed that the Holocaust is a lie.

Last month, I went to a villa in a suburb of Berlin called Wannsee. There, on January 20, 1942, after a hearty meal, senior Nazi officials met and decided how to exterminate the Jewish people. The detailed minutes of that meeting have been preserved by successive German governments.

Here is a copy of those minutes, in which the Nazis issued precise instructions on how to carry out the extermination of the Jews. Is this a lie?

A day before I was in Wannsee, I was given in Berlin the original construction plans for the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Those plans are signed by Hitler's deputy, Heinrich Himmler himself. Here is a copy of the plans for Auschwitz-Birkenau, where one million Jews were murdered. Is this too a lie?

This June, President Obama visited the Buchenwald concentration camp. Did President Obama pay tribute to a lie? And what of the Auschwitz survivors whose arms still bear the tattooed numbers branded on them by the Nazis? Are those tattoos a lie?

One-third of all Jews perished in the conflagration. Nearly every Jewish family was affected, including my own. My wife's grandparents, her father's two sisters and three brothers, and all the aunts, uncles and cousins were all murdered by the Nazis. Is that also a lie?

No they are not lies, Mr. Prime Minister. But I'm sure that many in the room listening to you think that they are. Anti-Semitism has a home at the United Nation.

Yesterday, the man who calls the Holocaust a lie spoke from this podium. To those who refused to come here and to those who left this room in protest, I commend you. You stood up for moral clarity and you brought honor to your countries.

But to those who gave this Holocaust-denier a hearing, I say on behalf of my people, the Jewish people, and decent people everywhere: Have you no shame? Have you no decency? A mere six decades after the Holocaust, you give legitimacy to a man who denies that the murder of six million Jews took place and pledges to wipe out the Jewish state. What a disgrace! What a mockery of the charter of the United Nations!

Truth. The emperor has no clothes.

Perhaps some of you think that this man and his odious regime threaten only the Jews. You're wrong. History has shown us time and again that what starts with attacks on the Jews eventually ends up engulfing many others.

This Iranian regime is fueled by an extreme fundamentalism that burst onto the world scene three decades ago after lying dormant for centuries.

Indeed those who think that it's a small terrorist problem of al Qaeda that we can solve through police type actions and "international cooperation" are dead wrong. Radical Islam will consume us all unless we recognize it for what it is and take action to stop it.

That is why the greatest threat facing the world today is the marriage between religious fanaticism and the weapons of mass destruction, and the most urgent challenge facing this body is to prevent the tyrants of Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Are the member states of the United Nations up to that challenge? Will the international community confront a despotism that terrorizes its own people as they bravely stand up for freedom?

A real challenge, unlike the PC nonsense Obama spouted.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the jury is still out on the United Nations, and recent signs are not encouraging. Rather than condemning the terrorists and their Iranian patrons, some here have condemned their victims. That is exactly what a recent UN report on Gaza did, falsely equating the terrorists with those they targeted.

Yes, and the real problem with the UN is not that it won't address "climate change," as Obama said, but because it will not call evil for what it is and take firm concrete action. Instead of taking action against Iran and North Korea for their nuclear programs, they spend their time condemning Israel.

But it gets better

For eight long years, Hamas fired from Gaza thousands of missiles, mortars and rockets on nearby Israeli cities. Year after year, as these missiles were deliberately hurled at our civilians, not a single UN resolution was passed condemning those criminal attacks.

We heard nothing - absolutely nothing - from the UN Human Rights Council, a misnamed institution if there ever was one. In 2005, hoping to advance peace, Israel unilaterally withdrew from every inch of Gaza. It dismantled 21 settlements and uprooted over 8,000 Israelis. We didn't get peace. Instead we got an Iranian backed terror base fifty miles from Tel Aviv. Life in Israeli towns and cities next to Gaza became a nightmare.

You see, the Hamas rocket attacks not only continued, they increased tenfold. Again, the UN was silent. Finally, after eight years of this unremitting assault, Israel was finally forced to respond. But how should we have responded? Well, there is only one example in history of thousands of rockets being fired on a country's civilian population. It happened when the Nazis rocketed British cities during World War II.

During that war, the allies leveled German cities, causing hundreds of thousands of casualties. Israel chose to respond differently. Faced with an enemy committing a double war crime of firing on civilians while hiding behind civilians - Israel sought to conduct surgical strikes against the rocket launchers.

That was no easy task because the terrorists were firing missiles from homes and schools, using mosques as weapons depots and ferreting explosives in ambulances. Israel, by contrast, tried to minimize casualties by urging Palestinian civilians to vacate the targeted areas. We dropped countless flyers over their homes, sent thousands of text messages and called thousands of cell phones asking people to leave.

Never has a country gone to such extraordinary lengths to remove the enemy's civilian population from harm's way. Yet faced with such a clear case of aggressor and victim, who did the UN Human Rights Council decide to condemn? Israel. A democracy legitimately defending itself against terror is morally hanged, drawn and quartered, and given an unfair trial to boot.

By these twisted standards, the UN Human Rights Council would have dragged Roosevelt and Churchill to the dock as war criminals. What a perversion of truth! What a perversion of justice!

Delegates of the United Nations, will you accept this farce? Because if you do, the United Nations would revert to its darkest days, when the worst violators of human rights sat in judgment against the law-abiding democracies, when Zionism was equated with racism and when an automatic majority could declare that the earth is flat.

A devastating indictment of the UN.

I believe such a peace can be achieved. But only if we roll back the forces of terror, led by Iran, that seek to destroy peace, eliminate Israel and overthrow the world order. The question facing the international community is whether it is prepared to confront those forces or accommodate them.

For all Obama's strong words today about Iran's secret enrichment facility the way things are going now it's going to be accommodation.

In an normal world Netanyahu would have received the applause and Obama the silence. Of course it was just the opposite.

Netanyahu has moral courage for speaking the truth. Obama is a moral coward for refusing to do so.

Posted by Tom at 11:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 9, 2009

President Obama's Big Health Care Speech

Ok, so President Obama flattered himself by giving a big speech to a joint session of Congress tonight on one of his signature pieces of legislation. Since no one is going to read a post about Iran or the cost of energy anyway I may as well do the obligatory post.

Text of speech here.

Text of Republican response here.

The short version is that Obama told one whopper after another. He told so many that I simply don't have the time to set up links swatting all of them down. Let's go through some of them.

I am not the first President to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last.

Please. If Obamacare passes every president and congress from now until eternity will fiddle with health care. But he's probably arrogant enough to think that if his bill passes it will take care of us from here on out.

We are the only advanced democracy on Earth the only wealthy nation that allows such hardships for millions of its people

Who cares what they do in other democracies? Every other democracy on the planet denies their citizens their natural law rights to own firearms mostly unencumbered by government regulation. I don't' want to emulate Europe or anyplace else for that matter.

There are those on the left who believe that the only way to fix the system is through a single-payer system like Canadas, where we would severely restrict the private insurance market and have the government provide coverage for everyone. On the right, there are those who argue that we should end the employer-based system and leave individuals to buy health insurance on their own.

I have to say that there are arguments to be made for both approaches. But either one would represent a radical shift that would disrupt the health care most people currently have. Since health care represents one-sixth of our economy, I believe it makes more sense to build on what works and fix what doesnt, rather than try to build an entirely new system from scratch. And that is precisely what those of you in Congress have tried to do over the past several months.

No, you have tried to completely revamp our system. And as I pointed out a few weeks ago, you do indeed want a single-payer system. You just lie about it now.

Here are the details that every American needs to know about this plan:

First, if you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have. Let me repeat this: nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.

Lie. His plan creates incentives designed to move people off of their work plan onto his government option.

And insurance companies will be required to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies - because there's no reason we shouldn't be catching diseases like breast cancer and colon cancer before they get worse. That makes sense, it saves money, and it saves lives.

Preventative care might be a good idea, but the idea that it saves money has been disproven.

Under this plan, it will be against the law for insurance companies to deny you coverage because of a pre-existing condition. As soon as I sign this bill, it will be against the law for insurance companies to drop your coverage when you get sick or water it down when you need it most.

Presto, free ice cream for everyone! Hope he doesn't hurt his elbow patting himself on the back.

The power of government to regulate is a fearful thing. Amazing how the same people who freaked out over the Patriot act see no problem with the president issuing such regulations. All for your own good, of course.

Now, even if we provide these affordable options, there may be those - particularly the young and healthy - who still want to take the risk and go without coverage. There may still be companies that refuse to do right by their workers. The problem is, such irresponsible behavior costs all the rest of us money. If there are affordable options and people still don't sign up for health insurance, it means we pay for those people's expensive emergency room visits. If some businesses don't provide workers health care, it forces the rest of us to pick up the tab when their workers get sick, and gives those businesses an unfair advantage over their competitors. And unless everybody does their part, many of the insurance reforms we seek - especially requiring insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions - just can't be achieved.

That's why under my plan, individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance - just as most states require you to carry auto insurance. Likewise, businesses will be required to either offer their workers health care, or chip in to help cover the cost of their workers.

You either believe in freedom and liberty or you don't. Obama and the liberals don't. It is flat out wrong to force people to take part in such a program. I don't even think people should be forced to take part in Social Security. There should almost always be an opt out.

He has no business telling people that they must buy health insurance. This line about "otherwise we all pay for it" is a crock because it's not their real argument. The motivation is not cost accounting, it's the arrogant "we know what's best for you so listen to your betters you dumb little people!"

People must be free to make dumb decisions. Not wearing a seatbelt is dumb, but you must be free to take that decision. If you get in an accident and are hurt where in a situation where you'd otherwise be fine then it's your problem. Am I a meanie? No, I'm in favor or personal responsibility.

Now, I have no interest in putting insurance companies out of business. They provide a legitimate service, and employ a lot of our friends and neighbors. I just want to hold them accountable.

Breathtaking.

Some of people's concerns have grown out of bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost. The best example is the claim, made not just by radio and cable talk show hosts, but prominent politicians, that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens. Such a charge would be laughable if it weren't so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie, plain and simple.

Actually, the charge is true. Universal coverage always means care gets rationed. And what they'll do is start denying treatments to old people with stage four cancer, and stop allowing the most expensive treatments in situations when they figure you're going to die in a few months anyway.

There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false - the reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.

Lie. There are no provisions to verify citizenship. Democrats voted down amendments offered by Republicans that would have incorporated verifications. If there is nothing to verify whether you're a citizen or not, of course illegals are going to sign up. I would if I was an illegal, and so would you.

And one more misunderstanding I want to clear up - under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place.

Sigh. Obama just repeats the same old falsehoods again and again. Even Factcheck concludes that the house bill "would allow both a "public plan" and newly subsidized private plans to cover all abortions."

Despite all this, the insurance companies and their allies dont like this idea. They argue that these private companies cant fairly compete with the government. And theyd be right if taxpayers were subsidizing this public insurance option. But they wont be. I have insisted that like any private insurance company, the public insurance option would have to be self-sufficient and rely on the premiums it collects

Lie. If you believe that the government won't subsidize the "public option" so as to drive private insurance companies out of business I've got a bridge to sell you.

But by avoiding some of the overhead that gets eaten up at private companies by profits, excessive administrative costs and executive salaries, it could provide a good deal for consumers.

Profit is what is left over after overhead expenses are met, you idiot. But I guess this is what happens when you spend your entire life living off of the taxpayer dole and not being involved in making a real living.

First, I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits either now or in the future.

My g_d he really does think we're stupid if he expects anyone to believe this. YOU CANNOT INCREASE DEMAND AND HOLD PRICES DOWN... unless you plan on withholding care. I.E. rationing. It's that supply and demand thing we're supposed to have learned in high school.

Second, we've estimated that most of this plan can be paid for by finding savings within the existing health care system a system that is currently full of waste and abuse.

I don't believe any politician who says they'll save money through introducing efficiencies, because they never comes to pass. This applies to Republicans as well as Democrats.

In fact, I want to speak directly to Americas seniors for a moment, because Medicare is another issue that's been subjected to demagoguery and distortion during the course of this debate.

Demagugue? Stop talking about yourself so much.

he only thing this plan would eliminate is the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud, as well as unwarranted subsidies in Medicare that go to insurance companies subsidies that do everything to pad their profits and nothing to improve your care.

There's a name for bashing the profits of companies that don't do the government's bidding.

Finally, many in this chamber particularly on the Republican side of the aisle have long insisted that reforming our medical malpractice laws can help bring down the cost of health care. I don't believe malpractice reform is a silver bullet, but I have talked to enough doctors to know that defensive medicine may be contributing to unnecessary costs. So I am proposing that we move forward on a range of ideas about how to put patient safety first and let doctors focus on practicing medicine.

In other words, no tort reform.

I will not waste time with those who have made the calculation that its better politics to kill this plan than improve it. I will not stand by while the special interests use the same old tactics to keep things exactly the way they are. If you misrepresent whats in the plan, we will call you out.

Gee that sounds like a call for bipartisanship. Guess what? We'll call you out too.

Everyone in this room knows what will happen if we do nothing.

Another lie to insinuate that conservatives want to do nothing. Google around for "Republican health care plans" or some such if you're some lib who actually believes Obama. If you don't like Republican or conservatives plans fine, but don't lie and say that the other side isn't proposing anything.

Conclusion

A very partisan speech. it was full of threats and attacks on conservatives for allegedly misrepresenting Obamacare. If he thought he was going to bring in any Republicans he's going to be sorely disappointed. Sure, he'll get an Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins, but I hardly count them as Republicans anyway.

So the battle lines are drawn. His main problem is holding his own party together. With a 60 - 40 lead in the Senate and 256 - 178 advantage in the House, they should be able to pass whatever they want. That they can't shows how incompetent Obama, Pelosi, and Reid are.

We now come off of August recess, after all the rucus over the town halls, demonstrations and such. It's clear that at least Obama doesn't think they were representative of the majority of the American people. I think otherwise, and hope I right. Obama may get his proposals through Congress mostly unscathed, and it may well doom his party.

Posted by Tom at 10:45 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 24, 2009

The Glenn Beck Boycott and Whole Foods

So in addition to boycotting Fox News in general the left has taken after radio talk show host and Fox News host Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck returns to Fox News Channel on Monday after a vacation with fewer companies willing to advertise on his show than when he left, part of the fallout from calling President Barack Obama a racist.

A total of 33 Fox advertisers, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., CVS Caremark, Clorox and Sprint, directed that their commercials not air on Beck's show, according to the companies and ColorofChange.org, a group that promotes political action among blacks and launched a campaign to get advertisers to abandon him. That's more than a dozen more than were identified a week ago....

e was actually on another Fox show July 28 when he referred to Obama as a racist with "a deep-seated hatred for white people." The network immediately distanced itself from Beck's statement, but Beck didn't. He used his radio show the next day to explain why he believed that. He would not comment for this article, spokesman Matthew Hiltzik said.

ColorofChange.org quickly targeted companies whose ads had appeared during Beck's show, telling them what he had said and seeking a commitment to drop him. The goal is to make Beck a liability, said James Rucker, the organization's executive director.

"They have a toxic asset," Rucker said. "They can either clean it up or get rid of it."

The insane hypocrisy of the left knows no bounds.

Whether Beck's comment was over the top of not is not the issue. I disagree and I don't think Obama is a racist, but he certainly has no problem associating with anti-white and anti-Semitic racists. He did, after all attend Trinity United for 20 years, all the while admiring Jeremiah Wright, and only left when it became politically expedient to do so.

After almost decade of listening to "Selected, not Elected, "Bush lied, people died, "impeach Bush," "Bushitler," "Chimpy McHitler," and about a zillion other comparisons of George W Bush to Hitler and Republicans to Nazis, I am in no mood to sit back and listen to liberals whine about something a radio and TV talk show host said.

Here we have Keith Olbermann call Bush and Republicans Fascists, and the anti-religious hatemonger Bill Maher spewing his venom, all the while egged on by the left, and I'm supposed to be upset about Glenn Beck? Please. Given all that we on the right have had to put up with everyone from Olbermann and Maher to Roseanne Barr and Janeane Garofalo, Beck's comment was about as unremarkable as it gets.

And we all know that the same leftist idiots who want to throw Beck off the air and shut down Fox News would be the first to scream that their First Amendment rights were being violated if the shoe was on the other foot.

So to claim that Beck is so over-the-top that he should be taken off the air is liberal lunacy pure and simply.

Speaking of boycotts, the left is engaged in yet another boycott, that of the trendy leftie Whole Foods chain. Whole Foods founder and CEO had the temerity to - gasp - go against the leftist party line in an editorial published in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago. Now the lefties are all up in arms and are boycotting his stores.

Andrew Breitbart hits another home run today in his editorial in today's Washington Times, so we'll just quote in in full:

Boycotting the boycotters

Andrew Breitbart

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

John Mackey - the founder, CEO and marketing genius behind Whole Foods - finds himself in an organic, unsustainable mess with his carefully cultivated affluent, liberal customer base after penning an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal titled, "The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare."

For starters, Mr. Mackey opens with a line from known-liberal-allergen Margaret Thatcher that features the dreaded "S" word: "The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money." Then he goes on to provide eight sensible free-market solutions gleaned from his company's well-regarded employee health care program.

Mr. Mackey, a free-market libertarian, is now at the mercy of an unforgiving grass-roots mob intent on destroying his company. More than 25,000 people have signed on to a Whole Foods boycott on Facebook.

"Whole Foods has built its brand with the dollars of deceived progressives," the online petition reads. "Let them know your money will no longer go to support Whole Foods' anti-union, anti-health insurance reform, right-wing activities."

A complementary Web site, WholeBoycott.com, features unintentionally comical video testimonials from aggrieved former customers. The mainstream media have picked up on the story and fanned the flames.

The success of Whole Foods is largely built on Mr. Mackey's understanding of the liberal mind. It wants the good life - but with instant absolution for the sin of conspicuous consumption. Whole Foods is marketing at its best. Iconography and slogans throughout the store - not unlike those Barack Obama used to win the presidency - tell the shopper they are saving the planet in large and small ways.

The product is so good even conservatives and skeptics are willing to play along.

But Mr. Mackey missed the key ingredient of modern liberalism: intolerance to the ideas of nonliberals. And this miscalculation may prove to be devastating to his multibillion-dollar business.

Everywhere one looks these days, the intolerance of self-avowed liberals is on display. Especially since Mr. Obama came to power.

The purportedly open-minded and empathic among us who now run everything - save for NASCAR and Nashville - openly wage war against those who dare disagree.

Witness Steny Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi's joint-penned editorial in USA Today in which the House's two top Democrats describe those publicly questioning Mr. Obama's proposed health care system overhaul as "un-American."

One need not go back too far in the political time machine to recall a time when the same people were claiming that the term "un-American" was being tossed at liberals for opposing the Iraq war, and that Republicans were stifling free speech.

Examples were rarely, if ever, given. It just was. And we were told this was a very, very bad thing.

The Dixie Chicks brilliantly used this sob line to become a Rolling Stone magazine cover staple, a blue-state crossover and an international cause celebre. A chorus line of would-be liberal celebrity martyrs took a similar marketing tack proclaiming McCarthyism was again afoot - as conservative Hollywood kept its collective mouth shut knowing that support for President Bush or the war was an instant career-killer.

Yet amid the cries of "dissent is patriotic" - a phrase seen on the bumper stickers of cars in the Whole Foods parking lot - the antiwar movement grew and grew, unfettered by the war's supporters or by the party in power.

As the Hollywood Left churned out antiwar film screeds, it was creating a narrative of its victimhood as it victimized Mr. Bush and his administration with the false accusation that dissenters were being persecuted. But now that they are in power, Democrats are brazenly wielding punitive weaponry against dissenting Americans and are using the power of the state to shut up citizens.

The Democratic leadership - and its friends in the mainstream media - seem determined to brand opposition to the president's legislative agenda as illegitimate, even racist in origin. Individuals and grass-roots organizations are helping the statists' cause by advocating boycotts and other means of stifling dissent.

The strategy is clear: Intimidate people from speaking up or from attending public protests by telegraphing that anyone can be made a demon for standing up and exercising basic, constitutional rights.

To call these people hypocrites would be a grave insult to those who fail to live up to their own standards. Liberalism has never been about establishing a universal standard. Liberalism is simply intellectual cover for those wanting to gain political power and increase the size of the state.

For free-speech principles to be reinforced and free-market ideas to win the day, more people are going to have to stand up and be heard.

Mrs. Pelosi and the Whole Foods boycotters are on the wrong side of history.

The way to stand up to them is to go to "tea parties," raise a ruckus at health care debates and - buy organic garlic, herb fresh goat cheese and three-bean salad with quinoa at your local Whole Foods store.

This time, you really could be saving the planet.

• Andrew Breitbart is publisher of the news portals Breitbart.com and Breitbart.tv. His latest endeavor, Big Hollywood (http://bighollywood.breitbart.com), is a group blog on Hollywood and politics from the center-right perspective.

Posted by Tom at 9:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 17, 2009

Alinsky's Rule 12: Destroy the Individual

RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)

Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

Hillary Clinton used to complain about "the politics of personal destruction," but the Republicans of the 1990s had nothing on the radicals of today. Other than the occasional observation by Rush that Chelsea Clinton wasn't going to win any beauty contests, she didn't have to worry about her child or extended family.

But these liberals today are something else. For almost eight years they say that George W. Bush is another Hitler, and then whine when anyone compares their healthcare plan to the German plan under the Nazis. We heard one despicable attack on George W. Bush after another, and all the time the media stayed silent. But anyone says anything about their messiah Obama, or puts up an offensive poster, and you'd think the world had come to an end if you watch the liberal news.

Speaking of news, these liberals can't take any dissent. On the left side of broadcast media you have CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, and PBS. There's a grand total of one on the right, Fox News, and they can't stand the idea that it even exists. Sure, for decades conservatives have lamented liberal bias in the news. But I never saw the sheer hatred toward any network that I see for Fox. They want it off the air, and over at Democrats.org they're actually getting some companies to drop their advertising.

To this day they attack every single member of Sarah Palin's family with apparent impunity from criticism from the media.

We saw how after the defeat of Proposition 8 in California the brown shirts of the "gay rights" movement attacked Mormons, storming their churches and issuing the most vile slanders and attacks.

Carrie Prejean gave one of the most unoffensive and nice answers I've ever heard to a question on gay marriage, yet was subject to the most vile and insane attacks from everyone from hollywood media types to Keith Olbermann.

Even Anderson Cooper, supposedly a "serious" CNN anchor, made "tea bagging" "jokes" with his guests, referring to a gay sex practice too disgusting for me to explain here.

And all of this is considered quite normal for liberals, from what I can tell. Olbermann and Cooper are still employed at their respective networks.

As Sister Toldjah asked last week, "Since when the hell did the MSM ever give a damn about Hitler comparisons?"

Andrew Breitbart nails all this and more in his column today in The Washington Times, which I am reproducing in it's entirety:

George W. Bush-by-proxy syndrome
Andrew Breitbart

There is an extensive body of writing from both sides of the political aisle that has analyzed the extraordinary depths of hatred leveled at former President George W. Bush.

His birth into a wealthy and politically connected family is where a lot of the animus starts. His rejection of his Connecticut roots and adoption of a rugged Texan persona naturally riled his birth-constituency. His disjointed speaking style also alienated many others - especially those who covered him in the Northeastern media. Naturally, some of his initiatives were controversial. His allies say he didn't do enough.

But all presidents make mistakes, pursue unpopular ideas, possess off-putting personality traits and don't do enough to appeal to their core supporters. Something far more insidious was at work in the hatred of our most recent former president.

Now that Mr. Bush is quietly going about his retirement, this strain of rage - the GWB43 virus - has spread like wildfire, finding unsuspecting targets, each granting us greater perspective into what not long ago seemed like a mysterious phenomenon isolated only on our 43rd president.

The first person to catch the virus was Sarah Palin, whose family also was infected, including, unforgivably, her children.

Then it was Joe the Plumber, for asking a question.

Next were the Mormons.

Then it was Rush Limbaugh - who hit back.

Next, tax-day "tea party" attendees were "tea bagged."

Then there was a beauty contestant.

And a Cambridge cop, too.

And now we have town-hall "mobs."

Smile ... you've been "community organized."

When put on the media stage, these individuals and groups have been isolated for destruction for standing in the way of a resurgent modern progressive movement and for challenging its charismatic once-in-a-lifetime standard-bearer, Barack Obama.

This is their time, we've been told. And no one is going to stand in the way.

The origins of manufactured "politics of personal destruction" is Saul Alinsky, the mentor of a young Hillary Rodham, who wrote her 92-page Wellesley College senior thesis on the late Chicago-based "progressive" street agitator titled, "There Is Only the Fight."

Mr. Obama and his Fighting Illini, Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, have perfected Mr. Alinsky's techniques as laid out in his guidebook to political warfare, "Rules for Radicals." In plain language, we see how normal, decent and even private citizens become nationally vilified symbols overnight - all in the pursuit of progressive political victory.

"Rule 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)"

With the complicity of the mainstream media and abetted by George Soros' money and netroots nation, Mr. Bush never stood a chance.

But the more the virus spreads, the more we study it and, perhaps, find the cure. The repetitive use of the same technique against anyone who would dare stand up and oppose the progressive movement and especially its leader has exposed the game and rendered its tactics less effective.

In fact, one could make the argument that the Republican Party, usually slow on the uptake, has finally figured it out. There are no major Republican targets out there opposing Mr. Obama and his aggressive agenda. The conservative movement appears leaderless, but perhaps for the best.

Maybe that is the strategy: Standing back and letting the Obama machine flail in its pursuit of its next victim.

A grass-roots movement of average Americans has stood up, making it extremely difficult to isolate and demonize an individual.

Mr. Alinsky noted in "Rule 12" that it is difficult to go after "institutions." And attacking "tea baggers" and "mobs" has only created more resistance and drawn attention to the left's limited playbook. Even Americans expressing their constitutionally protected right to free speech are open game.

Now that many people are Googling the Alinsky rule book and catching up with the way Chicago thugs play their political games, Mr. Obama and the Fighting Illini are going to be forced to create new rules - or double down on the old ones.

Worse yet, as his approval ratings descend rapidly - Rasmussen has him at 47 percent, the lowest of his presidency - angry citizens may be turning the tables on him, using Mr. Alinsky against him.

They won't have to "freeze" and "personalize" him either. He's got 3 1/2 years left with the klieg lights focused on him. And if Mr. Obama can't get the economy rolling and continues to demonize everyday folks for his failures, he will be further isolated from sympathy and even ridiculed.

Yes, it's cruel - and effective.

Ask Mr. Bush, the magnanimous guy who gave the new president a heartfelt hug the day he took office. He knows.

Boy, I wish I could see his famous smirk right about now. I always loved how much they hated that.

The Democrats made a classic error after the last election by overestimating their mandate. A majority of voters wanted the Republicans out, and thought they'd give the Democrats a chance. But they didn't buy into the entire socialist-left Democrat agenda, and they're finding this out the hard way now.

In the end, I think Andrew might be right; the left has overplayed it's hand. The American people are waking up and we're seeing it at the town halls. More, the town halls are showing that liberal-left tactics of intimidation aren't working anymore.

Posted by Tom at 9:30 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

August 3, 2009

Is Health Care a Right?

Is heath care a right? Short answer; no.

Consider our Bill of Rights

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment II

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.

Amendment III

No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment V

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Amendment VI

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

Amendment VII

In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Amendment VIII

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Amendment IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

Did you read it? I hope so.

Now consider Franklin Delano Roosevelts' proposed Second Bill of Rights, sometimes called his "Economic Bill of Rights"

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

Thankfully this was never formally adopted. Unfortunately some of it it has been adopted in practice, which was Roosevelt's intent. He was not one to let the Constitution stand in his way.

The difference between the two is striking. The first tells us what the government cannot do to us, the second what it should do for us. The first simply requires it to stay out of the way, the second to proactively interfere in our lives. The first describes what the government must do in cases where it wishes to charge a citizen with a crime, the latter what it must do to make us happy.

Today we are told by the left that health care is a right. The government may or may not have an obligation to provide it, but it most certainly is not a right as properly defined.

Theodore Dalyrymple has some thoughts in his piece in last week's Wall Street Journal that are well worth pondering.

If there is a right to health care, someone has the duty to provide it. Inevitably, that "someone" is the government. Concrete benefits in pursuance of abstract rights, however, can be provided by the government only by constant coercion.

People sometimes argue in favor of a universal human right to health care by saying that health care is different from all other human goods or products. It is supposedly an important precondition of life itself. This is wrong: There are several other, much more important preconditions of human existence, such as food, shelter and clothing.

Everyone agrees that hunger is a bad thing (as is overeating), but few suppose there is a right to a healthy, balanced diet, or that if there was, the federal government would be the best at providing and distributing it to each and every American.

Where does the right to health care come from? Did it exist in, say, 250 B.C., or in A.D. 1750? If it did, how was it that our ancestors, who were no less intelligent than we, failed completely to notice it?

If, on the other hand, the right to health care did not exist in those benighted days, how did it come into existence, and how did we come to recognize it once it did?

When the supposed right to health care is widely recognized, as in the United Kingdom, it tends to reduce moral imagination. Whenever I deny the existence of a right to health care to a Briton who asserts it, he replies, "So you think it is all right for people to be left to die in the street?"

When I then ask my interlocutor whether he can think of any reason why people should not be left to die in the street, other than that they have a right to health care, he is generally reduced to silence. He cannot think of one.

Moreover, the right to grant is also the right to deny. And in times of economic stringency, when the first call on public expenditure is the payment of the salaries and pensions of health-care staff, we can rely with absolute confidence on the capacity of government sophists to find good reasons for doing bad things.

The question of health care is not one of rights but of how best in practice to organize it. America is certainly not a perfect model in this regard. But neither is Britain, where a universal right to health care has been recognized longest in the Western world.

Not coincidentally, the U.K. is by far the most unpleasant country in which to be ill in the Western world. Even Greeks living in Britain return home for medical treatment if they are physically able to do so.

The government-run health-care system--which in the U.K. is believed to be the necessary institutional corollary to an inalienable right to health care--has pauperized the entire population. This is not to say that in every last case the treatment is bad: A pauper may be well or badly treated, according to the inclination, temperament and abilities of those providing the treatment. But a pauper must accept what he is given.

Universality is closely allied as an ideal, ideologically, to that of equality. But equality is not desirable in itself. To provide everyone with the same bad quality of care would satisfy the demand for equality. (Not coincidentally, British survival rates for cancer and heart disease are much below those of other European countries, where patients need to make at least some payment for their care.)

In any case, the universality of government health care in pursuance of the abstract right to it in Britain has not ensured equality. After 60 years of universal health care, free at the point of usage and funded by taxation, inequalities between the richest and poorest sections of the population have not been reduced. But Britain does have the dirtiest, most broken-down hospitals in Europe.

There is no right to health care--any more than there is a right to chicken Kiev every second Thursday of the month.

Posted by Tom at 9:41 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

June 7, 2009

The Speech Obama Should Have Given in Cairo

Last week I eviscerated President Obama for giving a pretty awful speech to Muslims while in Cairo. Doctor Zero, posted at Hot Air the speech Obama should have given:

I am honored to be in the timeless city of Cairo, and grateful for your hospitality. I will honor you in return by addressing you directly. I came here to speak to you, not to European leaders or American media commentators. I hope you will forgive my frankness, but we have much to talk about, and some of what I came here to say will not be easy for you to hear.

I will not waste your time by carefully selecting quotes from the Koran, in a misguided attempt to tell you what your religion means. I am here to tell you what membership in the community of civilized nations means. Your faith is your own affair, but it ends where the rest of our lives begin. It is fashionable among the Western elites to say that we have much to learn about the Muslim world, but the truth is precisely the reverse. One of the bedrock principles of Western democracy is that we don't need to understand, or even like, a particular religion in order to respect its faithful and their rights. There are some things the West is long overdue in teaching its Muslim neighbors, however. Let us begin with dismissing the notion of a "Muslim world." There is no such thing. There is one world, made increasingly intimate by the easy movement of people, resources, and ideas. We are all in the process of learning how to live with our fellow men, and while the West is far from perfect, we are much further ahead in our studies than the nations of the Middle East. Our security, and yours, will be greatly enhanced if we can lend you some of the wisdom we have accumulated.

We did not come by this wisdom easily. We learned by taking incredible risks... and making terrible mistakes... magnified by the power of Western military tradition and technology. The people of the Middle East have never known anything to compare with the industrialized slaughter of the two World Wars, in which millions of lives were lost to decisively settle the question of what makes a government just and legitimate. You have never watched five thousand of your sons die on a single day, to secure a beachhead against the forces of genocidal fascism - a battle we commemorate on the sixth of June every year. Your fighting men have not faced anything like the battle for Okinawa, where American Marines faced an eighty percent chance of death - and did not waver. You have not sacrificed half a million soldiers to destroy the evil of slavery, as America did during its Civil War. You have not spent blood and treasure around the world to save other nations from the savage darkness of communism. You have no leaders to equal the Founding Fathers who pledged their lives, and sacred honor, to win America's independence from imperial domination.

You have not burned and bled for freedom, as we have. We would spare you that pain, if we could. We are willing to burn and bleed for you - and we have been doing so, for eight long years. Instead of indulging in foolish paranoid fantasies about crusaders and oppression from America, open your eyes and look to the mountains of Afghanistan, where over a thousand Coalition troops have died to overthrow the Taliban, after their despicable complicity in the murders of September 11, 2001. We did not have to send those troops into harm's way, to avenge the slaughter at the World Trade Center. We could have eliminated all life in that region, in a matter of hours. If we followed the standards of our enemies, we would have. We sent our best and bravest into battle because of who we wished to spare, not who we wanted to kill.

Open your eyes and look to Iraq, where we allowed thousands of Iraqi troops to lay down their arms and go home, instead of killing them where they stood. We paid an awful price for this act of mercy, as many of those men went on to join the brutal terrorists who dreamed of keeping the Iraqi people enslaved. Some in America and Europe find it politically expedient to draw moral equivalency between American soldiers and the terrorists they fight. I ask you to show me the al-Qaeda "equivalent" of Private First Class Ross McGinnis, who climbed down into an armored vehicle and smothered a grenade to protect his crew, when he could easily have leaped from his gunnery hatch to safety. Show me an "insurgent" who can match the valor of Sergeant First Class Paul Ray Smith, who flung himself into an impossible battle against odds of a hundred to one... to save the lives of a hundred wounded men. These two soldiers are among those who have won the Congressional Medal of Honor for their sacrifices in Operation Iraqi Freedom. No one on the other side is worthy of such an honor. I say this to you because keeping silent - whether from misguided modesty, self-loathing, or the desire to avoid offending your vanity - is an insult to your honor, and an injury to your future.

We have made a fetish of "tolerance" in America, and it has curdled into poison. I am here to tell you what the civilized world is no longer prepared to tolerate. We will not stand silently by while women are enslaved, brutalized, or murdered. We will no longer hypnotize ourselves with self-criticism over gay rights, while you bury gay men and women under piles of jagged stone. We will not swallow our tongues for fear of offending Islam, when Islam oppresses all other religious beliefs within its borders. We know you can do better. We also know that nothing will improve unless we demand you do better... and we do demand it. The world has turned, and the old days of totalitarianism and pillage are done. There is no more place in it for barbarians. Believe what you will, follow your customs, honor the holy writings of your Prophet, and strive to understand God's will through prayer, music, and scholarship. You will find nothing but honest respect and admiration from the West. But when you stand among civilized people, you will be civilized people. When you are shown respect, you will answer with respect. As the West reveres and protects the life of your innocents, so you will revere ours.

I speak to you as the democratically-elected leader of a great republic, which has earned the right to walk tall and proud through the halls of history. It is a right earned on battlefields... but also at humanitarian relief camps, pharmaceutical laboratories, civil-rights marches, and field hospitals. It is a right earned by rebuilding shattered enemies after terrible wars, by tearing down the statues of tyrants and building schools for the children of their liberated victims. Ours is a hard-won glory that can be seen in six men raising a flag on Mount Suribachi, or one man planting that flag in the dust of the moon... or millions of men and women stepping into voting booths. Look at the free people of Iraq, with their fingers proudly covered in purple ink after they vote, and know that America is eternally eager to share her glory. Indeed, we believe we can only render it proper honors by sharing it with all of our brothers and sisters around the world. But also remember this: the Middle East stands at a crossroads, and the heavy responsibility of reconciling faith, tradition, and the demands of the modern world rests with you. You must choose between old hatreds and new possibilities. You must choose between murder and prosperity. I have come here today to tell you clearly, and without reservation, that you cannot have both. May the next leader chosen by the American people stand in my place someday, to congratulate you on a wise choice.

Posted by Tom at 9:42 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

June 4, 2009

President Obama's Speech to the "Muslim World"

Early today President Barack Obama delivered a major address to the Muslim world from Cairo, Egypt. The transcript is here. Following are excerpts and my observations. And yes I'll try and be fair.

All indented text is President Obama, except at the end under "other opinion"

The relationship between Islam and the West includes centuries of co-existence and cooperation, but also conflict and religious wars. More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations. Moreover, the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam.

Oh for pete's sake. We're only in the second paragraph and this train is going off the rails. I've read more than a little world history, and I don't recall "centuries of co-existence and cooperation" between the Islam and the West. I'm not even sure it adds up to a few decades.

More fundamentally, we're off into victimology. Obama seems to be saying that the problems in the Muslim world are the fault of the West.

He is right, though, in that modernity is seen as a threat by many Muslims.

I know, too, that Islam has always been a part of America's story. The first nation to recognize my country was Morocco. In signing the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796, our second President John Adams wrote, "The United States has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims." And since our founding, American Muslims have enriched the United States. They have fought in our wars, served in government, stood for civil rights, started businesses, taught at our Universities, excelled in our sports arenas, won Nobel Prizes, built our tallest building, and lit the Olympic Torch. And when the first Muslim-American was recently elected to Congress, he took the oath to defend our Constitution using the same Holy Koran that one of our Founding Fathers - Thomas Jefferson - kept in his personal library.

Heavens. This is either ignorant or a deliberate misrepresentation. Islam has been a minuscule part of American history.

But that same principle must apply to Muslim perceptions of America. Just as Muslims do not fit a crude stereotype, America is not the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire. The United States has been one of the greatest sources of progress that the world has ever known. We were born out of revolution against an empire. We were founded upon the ideal that all are created equal, and we have shed blood and struggled for centuries to give meaning to those words - within our borders, and around the world. We are shaped by every culture, drawn from every end of the Earth, and dedicated to a simple concept: E pluribus unum: "Out of many, one."

This is good and I'm glad he said it. Here he is on solid ground, and this is just what the rest of the world needs to hear. It gets even better with this:

Moreover, freedom in America is indivisible from the freedom to practice one's religion. That is why there is a mosque in every state of our union, and over 1,200 mosques within our borders. That is why the U.S. government has gone to court to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab, and to punish those who would deny it.

Great stuff. Unfortunately it's not followed up with "and there is no religious freedom in the Muslim world and this needs to change." But of course Obama didn't say this. President Bush's Freedom Agenda is dead as far as this administration is concerned.

We also have this curious part

Much has been made of the fact that an African-American with the name Barack Hussein Obama could be elected President. But my personal story is not so unique. The dream of opportunity for all people has not come true for everyone in America, but its promise exists for all who come to our shores - that includes nearly seven million American Muslims in our country today who enjoy incomes and education that are higher than average.

There is the grating bit about only he is allowed to use his middle name when it suits his purposes, but how dare anyone else.

There are nowhere near seven million Muslims in the United States. Daniel Pipes cites two studies saying that the true figure is probably closer to 3 million (here and here), and maybe less than that.

This is a difficult responsibility to embrace. For human history has often been a record of nations and tribes subjugating one another to serve their own interests. Yet in this new age, such attitudes are self-defeating. Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail. So whatever we think of the past, we must not be prisoners of it. Our problems must be dealt with through partnership; progress must be shared.

For the most part this is boilerplate drivel, and I was tempted to pass it off as such until I reread it and a phrase in the middle jumped out at me

any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail

If Obama has his way then we have come to the end of American Exceptionalism.

Sorry, Mr. President, but there are differences between nations and peoples, and as currently constructed some are better than others. Some nations and cultures are better than others. Cultures that tolerate stoning are bad. Cultures that subjugate their women are bad. West Germany was better than East Germany. South Korea is better than North Korea. Taiwan is better than mainland China. And Israel is better than Gaza. Of course I write not of genetic, racial differences, but of culture, legal, and governmental practices.

As I have written time and again, the entire problem with the United Nations, and what makes it such a terrible institution, is that by it's nature it sees all natiions as equal. It makes no distinction between democracy and tyranny.

Barack Obama is either a moral idiot, steeped in relativism, or he can't say what he really means. If we take him at his word, he has no preference for America. We are just one of many nations, with nothing special about us.

Throughout the years the United States has been seen as a beacon of hope for many. Economic, religious, and political freedoms have never been perfect here, and often in need of great reform. But even our imperfections have never prevented people from coming here to seek a better life. More, our example has inspired millions around the world to better their own countries.

The situation in Afghanistan demonstrates America's goals, and our need to work together. Over seven years ago, the United States pursued al Qaeda and the Taliban with broad international support. We did not go by choice, we went because of necessity. I am aware that some question or justify the events of 9/11. But let us be clear: al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people on that day. The victims were innocent men, women and children from America and many other nations who had done nothing to harm anybody. And yet Al Qaeda chose to ruthlessly murder these people, claimed credit for the attack, and even now states their determination to kill on a massive scale. They have affiliates in many countries and are trying to expand their reach. These are not opinions to be debated; these are facts to be dealt with....

We also know that military power alone is not going to solve the problems in Afghanistan and Pakistan. That is why we plan to invest $1.5 billion each year over the next five years to partner with Pakistanis to build schools and hospitals, roads and businesses, and hundreds of millions to help those who have been displaced. And that is why we are providing more than $2.8 billion to help Afghans develop their economy and deliver services that people depend upon.

All very good. Unfortunately in between all this we find this statement

The Holy Koran teaches that whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind; and whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind. The enduring faith of over a billion people is so much bigger than the narrow hatred of a few. Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism - it is an important part of promoting peace.

As Robert Spencer points out, this is utter nonsense. The idea that Islam is part of "promoting peace" flies against what one reads in the daily papers. Islam as currently practiced in much of the world is part of the problem. It is a religion for the most part stuck in the Middle Ages that desperately needs real reform. That President Bush also spun us with the "religion of peace" line is no excuse.

Let me also address the issue of Iraq. Unlike Afghanistan, Iraq was a war of choice that provoked strong differences in my country and around the world. Although I believe that the Iraqi people are ultimately better off without the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, I also believe that events in Iraq have reminded America of the need to use diplomacy and build international consensus to resolve our problems whenever possible. Indeed, we can recall the words of Thomas Jefferson, who said: "I hope that our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power the greater it will be."

Here we go again, back to his serial apologies. He just has to remind everyone that he that he opposed the war in Iraq, the clear implication being "we're sorry." Absolutely disgraceful.

How about other countries being asked to apologize to us for a change? For that matter, instead of us trying to understand the rest of the world, how about they try to understand us?

On to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people - Muslims and Christians - have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than sixty years they have endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily humiliations - large and small - that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own.

As the invaluable Melanie Phillips reminds us "The Palestinians have been offered a homeland repeatedly - in 1936, 1947, 2000 and last year. They have repeatedly turned it down. The Arabs could have created it between 1948 and 1967, when the West Bank and Gaza were occupied by Jordan and Egypt. They chose not to do so. They could have created it after 1967, when Israel offered the land to them in return for peace with Israel. They refused the offer. The Palestinians have suffered because they have tried for six decades to destroy the Jews' homeland."

But if we see this conflict only from one side or the other, then we will be blind to the truth: the only resolution is for the aspirations of both sides to be met through two states, where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security.

This is relativism at it's worst.

Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It's a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end. It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered.

Yes the Palestinians must abandon violence, but comparing their situation to that of black people is absurd. It implies an equality of justice that simply is not there. The Palestinians are in their current situation not because they have been mistreated by the Israelis, but because 1) they have been mistreated by their fellow Arabs, and 2) they have taken a bad situation and made it infinitely worse by their own behavior.

Now is the time for Palestinians to focus on what they can build. The Palestinian Authority must develop its capacity to govern, with institutions that serve the needs of its people. Hamas does have support among some Palestinians, but they also have responsibilities. To play a role in fulfilling Palestinian aspirations, and to unify the Palestinian people, Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, and recognize Israel's right to exist.

He's certainly right that the Palestinians need to switch their energies from building rockets to building industry. And yes Hamas needs to do the things he outlines, and maybe one day pigs will fly.

At the same time, Israelis must acknowledge that just as Israel's right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine's. The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.

I'm not a fan of the settlements either, but they're not the problem. I guess he figures he has to say this though to appear even handed.

Moving to Iran, we have this

This issue has been a source of tension between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran. For many years, Iran has defined itself in part by its opposition to my country, and there is indeed a tumultuous history between us. In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically- elected Iranian government. Since the Islamic Revolution, Iran has played a role in acts of hostage-taking and violence against U.S. troops and civilians. This history is well known. Rather than remain trapped in the past, I have made it clear to Iran's leaders and people that my country is prepared to move forward. The question, now, is not what Iran is against, but rather what future it wants to build.

With Obama, every criticism of the Muslim world has to be met with an equal criticism of the United States. So before he can talk about Iranian transgressions, he has to apologize for something the United States did - as if there is an equality. We had to put up with this moral equivalency all throughout the Cold War from the anti-anticommunists and it looks like that attitude is alive and well in the White House today.

Next the president moves to the issue of Iran and nuclear weapons. Much of what he says is standard dipomatic drivel, but we do have this which is of note

I understand those who protest that some countries have weapons that others do not. No single nation should pick and choose which nations hold nuclear weapons. That is why I strongly reaffirmed America's commitment to seek a world in which no nations hold nuclear weapons. And any nation - including Iran - should have the right to access peaceful nuclear power if it complies with its responsibilities under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. That commitment is at the core of the Treaty, and it must be kept for all who fully abide by it. And I am hopeful that all countries in the region can share in this goal.

Several points.

First, this business about how "no single nation should pick and choose which nations hold nuclear weapons" is again just so much moral relevancy. A gun in the hands of a policeman is good, while a gun in the hands of a bank robber is bad. Nuclear weapons in the hands of France or the United States is good, nuclear weapons in the hands of the Soviet Union or Iran is bad.

Second, energy concerns do not justify Iran's nuclear program.

Third, the idea of a world without nuclear weapons is a childish fantasy. I know, I know, Reagan said it too. All politicians say it. And it's silly coming from any of them. For some reason though they all feel compelled to repeat it.

Next the president addresses democracy. Or at least how he doesn't think it particularly important.

I know there has been controversy about the promotion of democracy in recent years, and much of this controversy is connected to the war in Iraq. So let me be clear: no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other.

That does not lessen my commitment, however, to governments that reflect the will of the people. Each nation gives life to this principle in its own way, grounded in the traditions of its own people. America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, just as we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election. But I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn't steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. Those are not just American ideas, they are human rights, and that is why we will support them everywhere.

The best reading of this is that he wants everyone to live in liberty but the exact structure of that government is left to the people. One wonders if he knows or cares that after World War II we imposed systems of government on Japan and Germany.

Again fine words, but not backed up by the needed challenge to the Muslim world; "you need to reform because there is precious little liberty in your part of the world."

Next the president addresses religion

Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance. We see it in the history of Andalusia and Cordoba during the Inquisition. I saw it firsthand as a child in Indonesia, where devout Christians worshiped freely in an overwhelmingly Muslim country. That is the spirit we need today. People in every country should be free to choose and live their faith based upon the persuasion of the mind, heart, and soul. This tolerance is essential for religion to thrive, but it is being challenged in many different ways.

The idea that "islam has a proud tradition of tolerance" is so insanely at odds with reality I'm speechless.

Likewise, it is important for Western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practicing religion as they see fit - for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear. We cannot disguise hostility towards any religion behind the pretence of liberalism.

I hardly see religious tolerance in the West as a problem.

Next we come to women's rights.

I know there is debate about this issue. I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal, but I do believe that a woman who is denied an education is denied equality. And it is no coincidence that countries where women are well-educated are far more likely to be prosperous.

Can he actually believe that the veil is anything less than a symbol of subjugation?

Now let me be clear: issues of women's equality are by no means simply an issue for Islam. In Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia, we have seen Muslim-majority countries elect a woman to lead. Meanwhile, the struggle for women's equality continues in many aspects of American life, and in countries around the world.

As if there is an equivalence between the struggle by women for equal rights in the West and in the Muslim world. Two hundred years ago women had it better in the West than they have it in much of the Muslim world today. Obama had a chance to demand women's rights and he blew it.

In his final comments President Obama discussed economic and scientific cooperation, but it was all boilerplate and as such of little interest.

Conclusion

Islam needs to be challenged to reform, and Obama dropped the ball. Yes I realize that it all must be couched in diplo-speak, but even so.

The Muslim world does not need our "understanding." It needs liberty for its people.

One problem with not standing up to dictators is that this is used by those leaders to squash dissent in their countries. Former political prisoners Natan (Anatoly) Sharansky (gulag, Soviet Union) and Armando Valladares (Cuba) have spoken and written about this. What they say is that obsequiousness by a US president is shown to dissidents and political prisoners and they are told "see, the US president doesn't care about you!" On the other hand, when a US president calls out the totalitarians, word eventually makes it to even political prisoners, whose morale is boosted. Sharansky, for example, tells of being told of Reagan's "evil empire" speech while in the gulag and being greatly encouraged.

The bottom line: President Obama had an opportunity to challenge the Muslim world to reform and adopt principles of liberty and he failed.

Dissidents across the Middle East are weaping.

Other Opinion

The Washington Times:

Respect is a two-way street. Recent polls suggest that about half of Americans hold negative views of Islam, and this is not merely blind bigotry. If they want respect, Muslim states must seek active ways to improve relations with the United States

Melanie Phillips

So in conclusion, yes, there was some positive stuff in this speech - but it was outweighed by the United States President's shocking historical misrepresentations, gross ignorance, disgusting moral equivalence between aggressors and their victims, and disturbing sanitising of Islamist supremacism.

In short, deeply troubling.

Angelo Codevilla

Just imagine: After a thousand years during which Islam and Western civilization have trod opposite paths in philosophy, science, and the most basic attitudes toward relations between the sexes and the role of work in life -- and after a half-century during which Muslims have murdered Western ambassadors and Olympians, to the cheers of millions of their own -- suddenly a young American seems to believe he can conjure up a "new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world." How could anyone imagine he possesses such a "reset button"? The answer only starts with Yuppie hubris.

Dr Zuhdi Jasser

As long as this administration ignores ideology and focuses only on superficial public relations, the Islamists will continue to advance the ideas of political Islam while we sleep. It is time for a comprehensive, public domestic and foreign strategy against Islamism. It is time for Muslims to lead this effort with real American support and not just lip service.

Mansoor Ijaz

The architecture of President Obama's speech was brilliant -- it certainly addressed the most burning issues facing Muslims around the world today.

Atmospherically, he hit it just right. His recitations from the Koran, his greeting to the gathering in Arabic, and even the respect he showed by saying "Muhammad, peace be upon him" when referring to Islam's Holy Prophet, all demonstrated an abiding respect for Islamic traditions...

Where he failed in Cairo was to delineate the overarching fact that Islam's troubles lie within. It is not that America is not at war with Islam. It is that Islam is at war within itself -- to identify what this religion and system of beliefs is in the modern age. Osama bin Laden and his Egyptian sidekick Ayman Al Zawahiri want to take us all back to the Stone Age because they have nothing better to offer their followers than hate-filled preaching. Why didn't Obama say that?

Islam's worst enemies are within it. If wealthy Gulf Arabs want peace for Palestinians with Israel, why don't they take a fraction of their profligate spending (in nightclubs in Geneva, at bars in London, at boutiques in Milan) and redirect it to rebuilding Palestinian enclaves with schools, hospitals, food-production facilities, and manufacturing plants? We might then have durable peace possible in the Middle East. Why didn't Obama say that?

Charles Krauthammer: "Abstraction...self-absorption...vapidity...moral equivalence"

Wesley Pruden

He told the Cairo audience that "to move forward we must say openly the things we hold in our hearts," but he wasted the opportunity to forcefully instruct Muslims that respect and appreciation must be mutual. While conceding the mote in American eyes, he said almost nothing about the beam that blinds Muslim eyes. He enumerated the "sources of tension" between Islamic countries and the West and never mentioned terrorism. He chided the West for its harsh view of Islamic treatment of women - "I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal" - and suggested that denying education to women is the gravest Muslim sin against women. He could have denounced "honor killings," forced marriages and how women in Muslim countries are flogged on the pretext of minuscule violations of eighth-century Sharia law.

Posted by Tom at 10:25 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

June 3, 2009

Book Review - Defending Identity

Identity - Merriam-Webster; he distinguishing character or personality of an individual. The Free Dictionary; The set of behavioral or personal characteristics by which an individual is recognizable as a member of a group. Answers.com; The collective aspect of the set of characteristics by which a thing is definitively recognizable or known.

What is your identity? How do you see yourself?

There's personal identity; father, mother, Little League coach, Girl Scout leader. Some people see their identities through what they own; a fast car or a multitude of electronic gizmos. Others see it through their work; teacher, lawyer, business executive, construction supervisor.

These identities are important but they're not what Sharansky has in mind. In Defending Identity: Its Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy, Natan Sharansky is more addressing group identities; political, ethnic, religious and national. His thesis is that for the most part these identities are good, and in fact are vital the success of democracy. Attempts to suppress these identities will not only fail, but are counterproductive to the success of free societies.

Before I read this book this book identity is not something I've thought much about, and after reading it I have come to realized that it is far more of a complicated subject than I had realized. But before giving my own thoughts on the matter, a summary of the book is order.

Time in the Gulag

Some say that strong identity and democracy are incompatible. Many intellectuals insist it it so. Sharansky is convinced that this is false and that just the opposite is true. Identities, he says, vitally important to us not only as individuals but as democratic nations. The main message of Defending Identity is that identity is the ally of freedom, not it's antithesis.

Authoritarian regimes repress ethnic and religious identities not in accord with those prescribed by the state. Democracies allow multiple identities along these lines to flourish. The Chinese totalitarians are threatened by the Falug Gong and Tibetans, whereas the tolerant Indians do not persecute any of their minorities (the issue of the "Untouchables" and the problem of caste is somewhat different).

The formative experience in Sharansky's political life that has formed the basis for much of his thought was the nine years he spent in the Soviet Gulag. The gulag, he says, was a laboratory where he discovered truths and tested ideas against the harshness of the prison system. His time there convinced him that identity and freedom were inseparable.

In prison Sharansky discovered, or rediscovered, his Jewish identity. In it he found the strength he needed to get through his time there. Far from dividing him from non-Jewish prisoners who also had strong identities, it enabled him to join them in a common struggle. Most of these identities were religious; Pentecostal, Catholic, Baptist, or national-ethnic; Crimean Tatar, Ukrainian. It wasn't the details of their particular identities that mattered, just that they were strong ones. It was those with weak identities who had the most trouble adjusting or adapting to prison life.

Further, the various identity groups didn't 'come together' to defend each other's goals. Far from it, for each acted in it's own interest. They defended each other not because they believed in each others causes, but rather because they came to realize that if the government could persecute one group for it's beliefs, it could persecute any of the others as well.

Trouble in Europe

Many or most native Europeans have lost most sense of identity. Christianity is dead or dying. Nationalism is perceived as a throwback and the cause of world wars. Guilt over real or perceived historical injustices has caused the crisis of confidence, resulting in a loss of identity. Identity in Europe must be uniform, and everyone must have the same identity, which is to say no identity. The loss of identity in Europe has helped lead to the erosion of democracy. It's a long subject, but for example they do not have freedom of speech in most parts of Europe as we have it in the United States. The structure of the European Union is also such that it has become a rule by bureaucracy, not elected leaders.

The Muslim immigrants who have swept into Europe in the past few decades have no crisis of confidence. They have very strong identities and are not shy about them. In many or most cases, their values and identities are in fact antithetical to Western notions of liberty and tolerance.

The result is a clash; the natives want democracy without identity, and the Muslim leaders want identity without democracy. As a result, identity and democracy are seen as opposites. In reality, he says, you can't have democracy without identity.

Assaults on Identity

There have been two major assaults on identity since the start of the 20th century; Marxism and post-modernism. The Marxists wanted to subjugate all identity that was separate from their own vision of the communist utopia. The post-modern movement inherits much from Marxism, but while the goal of the latter is to strengthen class consciousness as the only acceptable identity, the former seeks to weaken all identity, especially one's own.

The post-moderns see the wars and assorted social problems of the 20th century as stemming from nationalism and religion. Their solution is to transcend these identities and merge everyone into a global community. In this view, since identity causes problems, eliminating them would result in a world without conflict.

The problem, of course, is that you can't get rid of all identities at once. If just a few aggressive ones are left, they will dominate, sometimes to the point of eliminating democracy. We are seeing the start of this in Europe, where the natives are helpless against the strong identity of an aggressive, radical, Islam.

Multiculturalism is a form of post-identity. Unfortunately, the muliculturalists (along with "diversity," and uber-tolerance it's twin sisters), favor some identities over others, which adds to the problem. Western nationalism is bad, but third-world national movements are good. Christianity is frowned upon and only tolerated if it of the left-wing variety, but the most fundamentalist Islam is just another lifestyle choice.

One problem with the post-modern liberals is that when they look at problem areas of the world, such as the Middle East, they "look for explanations not in ideology but in grievances because the belief in absolute values is rejected and the idea of Western guilt plays a central role." As a result, post modern thinkers see the solution as an end to settlements and the establishment of a Palestinian state rather than in changing the ideology of the jihadist mindset of Fatah or Hamas.

Types of Identity

Sharansky opposes the attempt by the French government to ban the wearing of the veil in schools because it contradicts their "enormous tolerance toward the coercion and repression that daily transpires in many Muslim areas within that country." In other words, rather than oppose all coercion, they are being selective, with the result that they are preceived as opposing a Muslim expression of identity. And no democracy, Sharansky says, should repress identity unless it is harmful to that democracy.

He also does not object to the use of hyphens by immigrants to describe themselves. While it is popular on the right to criticize the use of "Italian-American," "Arab-American," or "African-American," he sees it as a positive expression of identity that compliments rather than threatens democracy.

Just as ethic identity does not threaten democracy, neither does religious identity. In our current age the secular left is doing everything it can to remove religion, or at least Christianity, from the public square. But if religion is to be an identity, it cannot be banished in this manner. Indeed, all of American history shows that public expressions of religion compliment, and do not threaten, democracy.

Again, this is not to say that all identities are acceptable. Mormons were made to disavow the practice of polygamy in order for Utah to be accepted into the Union. Giving this up reduced or changed a part of their identity.

Where we have failed in America is to incorporate Native Americans and African American identities. On the other side, surveys universally show that Muslims in America feel their identity is more respected than those in Europe.

The Special Case of Israel

Because Israel is a state created out of nothing (no the land wasn't stolen), it is a unique laboratory with which to study the subject of identity and democracy. Further, the Jews who emigrated there from Europe were naturally quite traumatized, so it would be interesting to see how they handled the subject of identity. Would they embrace their historic Jewish identity, or abandon it?

The surprise answer - to me, anyway - was that they abandoned it. The question of identity was an aspect Israeli history that I'd never considered. I'd always assumed that Israeli Jews were, if anything, even more cognizant of their history and traditions than those of the diaspora. It turns out that at least for the first thirty or so years of Israel's history nothing could be farther from the truth.

It wasn't supposed to be that way. Theodore Hertzl, the Austrian Jew who founded the modern Zionist movement, envisioned an Israel that embraced classic Jewish heritage. Although he himself was mostly secular, he envisioned an Israel of diverse Jewish beliefs and cultures, but all rooted in the past.

The actual founder of Israel and it's first president, David Ben-Gurion, had a completely different vision. A socialist, Gurion had little use for religion. His socialist ideal "was of a person who disconnects himself from his past - a past that is seen as two thousand years of humiliation and slavery - and takes fate into his own hands." It all very much paralled the "New Soviet Man" concept. Ben-Gurion's equivalent was the Sabra, or "new Jew," borne of the "Jewish dust." The past was mostly meaningless, and a new identity for Israeli Jews would be forged. Not just words, this ideology was taught in the schools as state dogma.

This started to change when over one million Jews emigrated from the Soviet Union, mostly in the 1970s. Having been deprived of their identity in their former communist country, they were anxious to get back to their Jewish roots, and not about to adopt another "new man" as an identity. It was this group to which Sharansky belonged.

Long story short, the new immigrants kept their Jewish identity and changed Israel in the process. Rather than segregate themselves, they became fully part of Israel. The result is an Israel structured more along the lines of the "mosaic" of identities envisioned by Hertzl rather than the "melting pot" of multiple identities into one. According to Sharansky, it has all been a huge success.

Defending the Nation-State

Israel is important because "for the believers of post-identity, Israel has become equated with the colonial sins they are intent on expiating." Almost thirty years ago, I remember a college professor tell us that Israel was illegitimate because it was founded on Judaism, a concept that according to him was anachronistic in the modern world. Without realizing it I had run into my first post-identity thinker.

The worst and most important of the post-nationalist and post-Zionist thinkers are Eric Hobsbawm and Edward Said. Most arguments against nationhood and Israel can be traced back to one or both of them.

Zionism, nationalism, and identity are for Sharansky tied closely together. All three are for the most part good (there are always unhealthy exceptions) and combined produce democracy. Weaken one and Israel collapses. For other countries, weaken the other two and democracy collapses. The concept of the nation-state is itself vital in establishing identity. As discussed above, a weakened sense of statehood is one reason why Europe is in trouble.

The justification for a Jewish Israel is that that's what the majority of Israelis want. This does not mean that the rights of minorities cannot be protected. Further, it does not mean a theocratic state per se, but rather one that embraces a Jewish heritage, a somewhat different concept.

Further, the survival of Israel as a predominantly Jewish state is crucial not just for it but for the entire world. Israel is an island of democracy in a region of dictators, religious fundamentalists, and terrorists, and a sense of Jewish identity is vital to its own survival. As a democracy surrounded by totalitarian neighbors it is a beachhead of freedom, something we should want to spread. Therefore it is vital that Israel survive as a Jewish state.

Peace or War

For life to be of any value it must be lived freely. The peace of slavery is no peace worth having. To live freely you must be able to have your identity. It is this freedom, then, that liberates, not simply the absence of war.

As mentioned above, many in the West today see identity as the cause of war, they thus seek to suppress it in the name of peace. Four hundred years ago John Locke wrote in "A Letter Concerning Toleration" that the attempt to impose one religion was what was leading to wars in Europe, and his recommendation was to let everyone believe what they wished. His views were adopted, but today we have come full circle.

Weaking identity may seem to lead to a happy society of no conflict between identity groups, but in reality leaves it defenseless against anti-democratic groups with their own strong identities. People without strong identities tend to be sheep and not resist when a group with a strong one comes into town.

Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the so-called "peace process" born of the 1993 Oslo Accords. As Sharansky tells it

The so-called Oslo peace process took place between two societies moving in directly opposite directions in terms if identity. Israeli society was being pushed in the direction of cosmopolitanism. Palestinians, under Arafat's corrupt dictatorship, were going through a crash course in hatred of Jews, Israel, and Zionism and making the rejection of the Jewish-Israeli identity the basis of their own. The hope for peace became predicated on a rejection of Israeli identity and a rejection of Palestinian democracy. On one side stood democracy without identity. On the other stood identity without democracy. The explosion was inevitable.

And indeed not only has the so-called peace process gone nowhere, but Palestinian society has not become any healthier.

Many people do not take radical Islam, or other such movements, seriously. We're told that ok they can blow up a few buildings, but the idea of them taking over Europe or the West is preposterous. "They'll integrate peacefully" is the line we've all heard.

Part of the problem is that most of those who believe this are of the post-modern mindset who have no identity themselves. "Multiculturalism," "diversity," and "tolerance" are not identities. As such, these people have a hard time understanding the power that strong identities can have on others. The result is that they think that if only Israel will stop building settlements the Palestinians will abandon all that talk about jihad. They don't understand that it is not issues that motivate them, but an ideology driven by a strong identity.

My Take

I'm not sure that Sharansky has it all right, or that he's thought through every nuance or complication as well he might of. Further, I'm not certain that the experiences of his own life, or that of Israel, are directly transferable to the United States or the rest of the world.

But the book has caused me to rethink my own assumptions about identity. It is fashionable for us on the right to criticize the use of a hyphen when describing one's identity; "Italian-American," Irish-American," African-American" and the like. This is a debate where I am sympathetic to both sides. I suppose the hyphen business is all a matter of degree and emphasis, and whether it's used for identity or to seek political advantage.

Malcolm X is not someone who gets much sympathy from conservatives. And there is much to criticize in his life. But in recent years I have become quite sympathetic to his adoption of "X" as a last name. After all, his African heritage had not only been stolen, it was quite ignored in the public educational system and culture at large. It was quite acceptable for those with Irish heritage to have a St. Patrick's Day parade, but how dare you think there was anything about Africa to celebrate.

Let's be honest, we all have a tendency to think that our own identity is good and certain others are bad: those crazy fundamentalist Christians, or those gay people and the way they dress, or maybe why does he have to wear his business success on his sleeve? Sometimes it's ethnic, sometimes religious, and sometimes political. But I think we all tend to view certain identities as good and others as bad.

Further, there is much about identity that Sharansky does not address in the book. What are proper and improper expressions of identity? Good v bad identities are also barely expressed. It 's one thing to have your own identity, but to what extent is everyone else expected to publicly acquiesce to it? For example, if a religious minority within a country wants their holidays off work with no penalty, that's one thing. It's quite another though if they insist everyone else recognize it also and government and business close down.
How far do concessions go?

In the end, though, this is not a scholarly tome It is a 232 page treatise that serves it's purpose well. Sharansky has a powerful life story, and Israel is at the center of the conflict between democracy and tyranny, between modernity and fundamentalist Islam. As such, his is too important a voice to ignore.

Posted by Tom at 9:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 18, 2009

An Insurgency Ends

The war in Sri Lanka between the government and the Tamil Tigers isn't one I've followed. Truth be told that before I started to write this I probably knew about as much about it as I did the one in northwestern Africa between the Polisario Front and Morocco. As such, I'll be careful. Nevertheless, it would seem that given our involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq it may hold a few lessons.

Dead: Velupillai Prabhakaran, leader of the Tamil Tiger rebels

A quick summary of the situation from Fox News

Sri Lanka declared Monday it had crushed the final resistance of the Tamil Tigers, killing the rebel group's leader along with his son and other commanders, according to reports.

The death of Velupillai Prabhakaran came as the government claimed to have seized control of the island state for the first time in 26 years, ending Asia's longest-running war...

Sri Lanka's army chief, Lt. Gen. Sareth Fonseka, said on television that his troops routed the last rebels from the northern war zone Monday morning and were working to identify Prabhakaran's body from among the dead.

News reports on Sunday had the Tigers admitting defeat, so this is not just hot air from Fonseka.

A useful timeline is also on the Fox website. Depending on where you date the start of the conflict, it lasted somewhere around 26 years.

What of it, and why should we care?

The most obvious lesson is that defeating even large insurgencies with military force can be done. We therefore should not be demoralized that after 7 1/2 years in Afghanistan we don't seem close to victory. We should also be proud that we were able to mostly defeat the insurgency in Iraq in less than 6 years (though I will be the first to admit that we're not out of the woods just yet).

Richard Fernandez has the scoop at the Belmont Club

...it may be the manner in which Colombo (the largest city and former administrative capital of Sri Lanka) finished the Tigers that is the real news. UN and Western appeals to the Sri Lankan government to halt the fighting were disregarded; it also barred the Western Media from the battlefront and paid scarce attention to 'international world opinion'. The New York Times reported, almost bitterly that Colombo had the temerity to win in violation of all the rules:

Assertions about fighting and casualties in the Sri Lanka war cannot be verified because the government severely restricts access by independent journalists. Several, including two from The New York Times, have been prohibited from entering the country, and one who flew late Sunday to Colombo, the capital, was ordered to leave on a return flight. ... There is no doubt that Mr. Rajapaksa's government appears poised to achieve what none of his predecessors managed in 25 years: to rout the Tamil Tigers, who controlled nearly a fourth of the island, and destroy their ranks as a conventional army. As the war's climax approached, both sides had rebuffed repeated calls from the United Nations and several foreign countries to spare civilians caught in the war zone. The United Nations estimates that at least 7,000 have died since January.

A corollary is that we should not listen to those who insist that insurgencies can only be defeated by political means. In most cases, it takes both military force and political action. While the military can deal fatal blows alone it cannot work. The lesson of Iraq, and as elucidated in Field Manual 3-24 (see below) is that one must first use the military to secure the population, then political and economic action is required to win them over. In this regard, Sri Lanka 's victory over the Tamil Tigers seems something of an aberration. But maybe over the years they were able to divorce the Tigers from their ethnic Tamil base, I don't know.

Contrary to what some would have you believe, it was never our policy in Iraq or Afghanistan to win by military means alone.

Third, it usually takes an awful long time. 26 years is 1/3 of the average lifespan in the West, and no doubt a bit more in Sri Lanka. I know I've quoted this exchange many times (lastly in Afghanistan and the Long War), but it is useful to do so here again.

In a 2007 interview Lt. Col. (Dr) David Kilcullen stunned Charlie Rose:

DAVID KILCULLEN: There has never been a successful counterinsurgency that took less than 10 years.

CHARLIE ROSE: Less than 10 years?

DAVID KILCULLEN: Successful.

It doesn't come across as well in print. Watching it, you see Rose lean forward and in utter amazement say "Less than 10 years?" with special emphasis on "10 years."

He had Kilcullen on for a reason; he's arguably the worlds foremost expert on the subject. A retired Austrailian Army officer, he was a contributor to then Lt. Gen. David Petraeus' U.S. Army / Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual 3-24, the book that outlined the strategy behind what was popularly called the "surge." In 2007 he served as Senior Counterinsurgency Adviser to Gen. Petraeus. After that he went on to become a special adviser on counterinsurgency to Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. You don't have to agree with him on everything, but he knows what's what.

Meanwhile, the European Union demonstrates its complete irrelevancy by demanding a war crimes investigation:

Foreign ministers from the 27-nation EU said allegations that international humanitarian and human rights laws were violated had to be investigated, but did not say by whom.

"Those accountable must be brought to justice," they said in a statement.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said there have been "very grave allegations" of war crimes on both sides of the conflict and "they should be properly investigated."

Glad these guys weren't around in 1945. The EU moralists dither while the Sri Lankans did what they had to do. The website of the British D-Day Museum says that "Between 15,000 and 20,000 French civilians were killed, mainly as a result of Allied bombing." Wonder what they'd have to say about that?

Don't get me wrong; I've no doubt that bad things were done by both sides in Sri Lanka. The casualties are no doubt horrific. Nor do I think we should just wink at everything. It's more that the chattering classes seem positively obsessed with the subject. Can they not also see that not taking harsh action against insurgents might also be a human rights violation? One of the least humanitarian things is to let wars drag out.

But wait, it gets worse. From the Times of London (h/t Belmont Club)

Now that their military hopes are dashed, the fear in western capitals is that the Tamil Tigers will again turn to terrorism. If the Tamil leadership goes ahead with their threats of suicide will there be anyone left to negotiate with?

Folks, you just can't make this stuff up. And to think that these are the folks we're counting on to help us in Afghanistan and the War on Terror er, "Overseas Contingency Operations."

Posted by Tom at 9:00 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

April 21, 2009

Carrie Prejean: True Character

Here is the exchange that started it all

Perez Hilton: "Vermont recently became the 4th state to legalize same-sex marriage. Do you think every state should follow suit. Why or why not?"

Carrie Prejean: "Well, I think it's great that Americans are able to choose one or the other. We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. And you know what, in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that's how I was raised and that's how I think it should be between a man and a woman. Thank you very much."

Myself, I can't see what all the fuss is about. Her answer was polite and non-confrontational. She did not denigrate or insult anyone. All she did was state her belief, and can hardly be accused of "forcing her morals" on anyone.

But of course it did raise a fuss.

Demonstrating that he us utterly without class, Hilton called Perjean a "dumb bitch" in an interview following the incident. Here's the video blog he made where he says it, if you can stand to watch

What a guy.

But if this was just one loser asking a question then making a video about it we could let it go and I wouldn't be posting this. But it goes farther. A lot farther. Fox News reports this

In an exclusive interview with Pop Tarts on Monday night, Miss USA contestant Brooke Werner said that she was shocked by Miss California's controversial response on Sunday evening.

"Everyone has the right to their own actions," Werner said. "But I totally disagree with Carrie. I have a very different perspective on gay marriage and I would never have said what she said."

The remaining 45 pageant princesses watched the competition from backstage and after Prejean's anti gay marriage answer, apparently the room fell pretty silent.

"A lot of people were shocked," the Vermont beauty queen said. "We were all kind of giving each other those eyes, we couldn't believe it."

And even though Prejean herself as no regrets about her answer, Werner said the pressure of the moment probably made her speak before thinking things thru thoroughly.

"Under the stress, you can't answer at a level you normally would, it is a lot of pressure," she added. "But I thought it was a great question, its a very hot topic right now and was totally appropriate."

"Shocked?" Have we gotten to the point where even politely stating that you personally believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman is "shocking?"

And the condescending statement from Werner that Ms Prejean was under stress so didn't answer as she normally would is pretty revealing about the hollywood mindset.

But it gets better

Keith Lewis, who runs the Miss California competition, tells FOXNews.com that he was "saddened" by Prejean's statement.

"As co-director of the Miss California USA, I am personally saddened and hurt that Miss California believes marriage rights belong only to a man and a woman," said Lewis in a statement. "I believe all religions should be able to ordain what unions they see fit. I do not believe our government should be able to discriminate against anyone and religious beliefs have no politics in the Miss California family."

Apparently we have gotten to the point where for the liberal Hollywood types at least, no dissent on this issue is allowed.

As for Ms Prejean, she's sticking to her guns

In an exclusive interview with FOXNews.com's Courtney Friel, Miss California says her phone has been ringing off the hook with people offering her support after she took on a question about gay marriage on Sunday night's Miss USA telecast.

"I have no regrets about answering [judge Perez Hilton] honestly," she said in one of her first interviews following the show, where she answered that she was against gay marriage becoming legal in California. "He asked me for my opinion and I gave it to him. I have nothing against gay people and I didn't mean to offend anyone in my answer."

In her interview, Prejean talks about being "tested" by God, the outpouring of support, and the first thing she and her family did after the show. (Hint, it involves ketchup and mustard.)

FOXNews.com: How are you feeling today?

Carrie Prejean: Honestly, happy. This happened for a reason. By having to answer that question in front of a national audience, God was testing my character and faith. I'm glad I stayed true to myself.

Read the whole thing.

I say God bless Carrie Prejean. Let me explain why

This is about resisting the forces of political correctness that seek to enact their policies by eliminating debate. It is about standing up for decency, for your beliefs in a society where the mockers get the headlines.

What's going on here is a full fledged frontal attack on traditional values. What they're trying to do is make certain subjects undiscussable. We saw the attacks on the Mormon Church in the wake of the defeat of Proposition 8 in California. We are not at all there yet, but we are moving in the direction of the soft-totalitarian state taking shape across the pond.

Some years ago I saw an editorial in one of our local newspapers, congratulating a young man for "standing up" to then-Senator George Allen over the issue of gay rights (or marriage, I forget). The editorial lauded the person for his "courage" in the matter.

At the time I thought, "courage?" About the least courageous thing you can do in America today is speak out for gay rights or marriage in a public forum. You're guaranteed favorable press coverage, and will be extolled by almost all of the talking heads on TV. Speak out against the gay agenda, however, and watch out. You'll be denounced as a bigot, homophobe, on and on.

Carrie Prejean has courage. Real courage. The type of courage we need a lot more of.

I harbor no animosity towards gays themselves. No I do not believe you are automatically going to hell if you are gay (it's not for me to decide anyway. Only God gets to make that judgment). I'm all for tolerance as properly defined; no legal penalties, government discrimination, or personal insults. I'm against gay marriage and having it taught in our schools as an equal lifestyle, that's all.

Political correctness and attempting to end debate are what it's mostly about, but it goes farther. It's about what you do in your daily life. It is not just about big public events/interviews or even political issues.

It's about resisting peer pressure from workmates who want to to go to the bar and have a dozen drinks after work and look at you like you're weird when you demur. It's about situations like when you're on a business trip, and some of the guys want to go to a nudie bar, and having the courage to stand up and say no, that does not comport with your values. It's about standing up when a mocker makes fun of Christianity or tells a dirty joke.

I am sure that Carrie Perjean is the type of person who would stand up when challenged in a personal situation as well.

Not that I've always done the right thing in these circumstances. Like all of us I am a fallen creature, so if you want to make the charge of hypocrisy, then I plead guilty. Peter denied Christ three times after promising not to do so, and likewise I've failed to stand up for things I've believed in at times. But I try, and do think I'm getting better. As with Peter, I'm confident that I'll be reinstated.

Many are blogging about this, but some of the better posts are by Jason over at The Western Experience andProfessor Donald Douglas at American Power. Be sure and pay both a visit.

Posted by Tom at 10:30 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

April 19, 2009

Doctors Without Borders: Running Cover for Terrorists

Years ago I gave substantial amounts of money (for me, anyway, these things are of course relative) to Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres. They seemed to be doing good things in extremely bad parts of the world and supporting them seemed the natural thing to do. In recent years I've given a lot less as I've changed where I send my charitable dollars, but still send them enough for them to send me their booklet/magazine once or twice a year.

Despite what I'm about to write, I want to make clear that they are still doing good things in extremely bad parts of the world.

But despite that, I'm not giving them any more money, and the reason is that this is what I saw in their recent "Alert" booklet (it's also on their website):

Gaza: A Devastating Disregard for Civilians

Attacks on the Gaza Strip by the Israeli army during three weeks in December 2008 and January 2009 made medical action extremely difficult. The vulnerability of civilians sparked humanitarian outrage and widespread criticism.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) works in some of the most conflict-ridden areas of the world, but in most cases, civilians have the ability to flee to safer areas. Inside the locked-down borders of Gaza, one of the world's most densely populated areas, there was no way out. From December 27 to January 19, the number of wounded people grew to 5,450 and the dead totaled 1,300, according to the UN agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA). Shelling destroyed an estimated 17,000 homes and reports spread about bombing of locations considered safe zones and used for shelter by civilians....

..."Despite official statements from the Israeli government, there are serious obstacles to providing humanitarian aid and, specifically, medical aid. Bombs and bullets do not spare ambulances, hospitals, or health workers," said Dr. Marie Pierre Allie, president, MSF France, during a January 16 press conference. MSF attempted several times to reopen its pediatric clinic in Beit Lahia to relieve Kamel Edwan Hospital. But each time, the attempt was cut short; a January 1 bomb attack forced the MSF team to suspend its work only two hours after starting. Two MSF clinics for post-operative care, where patients from Al Shifa hospital are usually referred, were empty: patients in Gaza City could not reach the clinic, and no one could enter the south of the territory from the north after the Israeli army effectively cut the 140-square-mile Gaza Strip in two....

The safety of medical facilities, protected under humanitarian law, was not respected, according to Dr. A: "Buildings near Al Shifa hospital were hit with missiles. And when a building is bombed, the neighbors are immediately affected. The hospital windows that were broken in the explosions caused cuts and wounds, mainly to the children who were sleeping." Over three weeks, 34 facilities were destroyed or damaged, including 8 hospitals, according to the WHO....

MSF expressed strong criticism of the Israeli army's assault on Gaza and of the international community for standing by while the incursion continued for 22 days.

"How far can the Israeli army go before the international community mobilizes to stop it?" asked Cécile Barbou during a press conference on January 16. "It's hell here. Even people carrying white flags are being shot at. It's high time for the international community to organize, position itself, make decisions, and take the measures required to stop this conflict. This passive stance is unbearable, intolerable! This has got to stop. We are outraged."...

"Today, 1.5 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip--almost half of them children--are the victims of incessant shooting and bombing," said MSF head of mission Franck Joncret. "How can anyone believe that such a steamroller attack would spare civilians, who are prevented from fleeing and are crowded in a densely-populated enclave?

The idea that Israel exhibited a "disregard for civilians" is outrageous and insane.

I urge you to give no more money to this organization, despite the good work that they do around the world. The piece cited above makes accusations completely out of touch with reality.

Of course Israel does not do everything right, and I've said this time and again on this blog. But if one adds up the moral scales the difference between Israel and Hamas is that of the United States and Nazi Germany. We were wrong to fire bomb Dresden as we did in February of 1945, but that didn't change the moral calculus of that war either.

I first began to question the integrity of Doctors Without Borders in the immediate aftermath of our invasion of Afghanistan after 9-11, when I heard one of their officers testify on Capital Hill. He was objecting to U.S. Military airdrops of food aid, saying that only private organizations such as his should do such things. I forget his exact reasoning, but it struck me as pretty specious at the time.

But Doctors Without Borders has gone too far this time. I was able to forgive their earlier transgressions, but not this one. This article (and probably others) whitewash the situation in Gaza to the degree where they are effectively acting as a Hamas propaganda agent. I looked on their website for a section on Israel, but the country is not even mentioned as an area of concern. Because Israel does such a good job at protecting it's citizens, they are not worthy of aid. The Palestinians, on the other hand, deliberately put their people in harms way hoping they will be killed, the better to use them as propaganda. This is bad enough, but organizations such as Doctors Without Borders should not be assisting them in crafting their message.

Sample Previous Posts on the subject of Israel, it's 2007/8 war with Hamas, and Moral Clarity:

Of Moral Idiots and War Crimes
The Israeli War on Hamas and the Moral Bankruptcy of the "International Community"
The Israeli War on Hamas and Personal Responsiblity

August 19 2009 Update

Apparently I wasn't the only one who criticized them, because now we see this on the same page:

Editor's Note
To our Supporters:

It has been brought to our attention that a number of our supporters were upset by the article, "Gaza: A Devastating Disregard for Civilians," on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict published in the spring 2009 edition of the Alert newsletter.

At Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), we pride ourselves on transparency and accountability to our donors and to an open and constructive dialogue with those who believe in supporting the principles of providing assistance to victims of violence and disease regardless of political, religious, or economic affiliations.

Upon further reflection, we recognize the legitimacy of the concerns expressed that the Alert article was too one-sided in its presentation of the Gaza conflict. The article, as it was written, did not sufficiently contextualize the Israeli incursion into Gaza as a response to the longstanding and indiscriminate rocket attacks being launched by Hamas from the Strip into Israel. In no way was the omission of the broader context intended to diminish the suffering caused by these attacks on Israel. Human suffering is deplorable in all its magnitudes.

As MSF, we pride ourselves on a constant reflection of our medical humanitarian action and speaking out. This is a daily engagement playing out in our headquarters and among our field teams around the world. As our supporters, you are a vital part of this reflection. Just as MSF is an association composed of medical and non-medical field staff from across the globe, bound by independent, impartial, and neutral medical action, we are a movement supported by millions of individuals like you.

We thank you for the vitality of your engagement in our collective endeavors, and in difficult economic times need your continued support more than ever. Please continue to challenge us, in all aspects of our work, in the days ahead.

I'll give them credit for this, and most of these organizations wouldn't have even gone this far. They still don't take back the most offensive and factually incorrect charge, that Israel showed a "a devastating disregard for civilians."

It's not clear whether they live in a fantasy world whereby a military can act with fewer civilian casualties, whether they don't realize that Hamas deliberately puts Palestinian civilians in harms way hoping they'll be killed so they can be exploited for propaganda purposes, or they're pacifists who don't believe in any military action no matter what. Annoyingly, they don't address these hard issues.

As such, I'm still not giving them any money.

Posted by Tom at 10:30 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

March 9, 2009

Obama's Unlimited Stem Cell Research - No Ethics Allowed

Today the Obama Administration reversed President Bush's ban on certain types of stem cell research. It was done by executive order, and you can download it here.

The key in my first sentence is "certain types." If you don't know why, don't worry, for many in the media don't appear to know either.

The issue is that there are two types of stem cells, embryonic and adult. Too many people on the left talk about "stem cells" as if that's all there was to it.

I'll give you my bottom line up front; I think that embryonic stem cells, like embryos in the womb, are individual, separate, human beings and as such should be protected by law. As I oppose abortion, I oppose creating and killing embryonic stem cells. As you'll find out below, I'm sure about embryos in the womb, but not 100% on the embryonic stem cells.

My reasoning is simple; killing a life to save a life is immoral. I think that in fact this is a point we can all agree on. If you believe that embryonic stem cells, like embryos in the womb, are not individual, separate, human beings, fine. But lets avoid irrational statements and name calling while discussing the issue.

Here is a summary of the dispute, taken from Wikipedia. Yes I know, it's not always a good source, but this article is not flagged as "the neutrality of this article is disputed" so what we get is I think is probably pretty accurate:

There exists a widespread controversy over human embryonic stem cell research that emanates from the techniques used in the creation and usage of stem cells. Human embryonic stem cell research is controversial because, with the present state of technology, starting a stem cell line requires the destruction of a human embryo and/or therapeutic cloning. However, recently, it has been shown in principle that adult stem cell lines can be manipulated to generate embryonic-like stem cell lines using a single-cell biopsy similar to that used in preimplantation genetic diagnosis that may allow stem cell creation without embryonic destruction.[34] It is not the entire field of stem cell research, but the specific field of human embryonic stem cell research that is at the centre of an ethical debate.

Opponents of the research argue that embryonic stem cell technologies are a slippery slope to reproductive cloning and can fundamentally devalue human life. Those in the pro-life movement argue that a human embryo is a human life and is therefore entitled to protection.

Contrarily, supporters of embryonic stem cell research argue that such research should be pursued because the resultant treatments could have significant medical potential. It is also noted that excess embryos created for in vitro fertilization could be donated with consent and used for the research.

The ensuing debate has prompted authorities around the world to seek regulatory frameworks and highlighted the fact that stem cell research represents a social and ethical challenge.

Read on and you quickly find that the entire issue is horribly complicated. As such, I'll be the first to tell you that I don't understand it all and take much of my position on this issue from people I trust, like these folks, who have investigated the matter in detail.

I think that serious people on both sides of the debate will admit that it's not a simple matter. Further, most I think will agree that we don't want to leave all decisions to scientists. At the very least, if they want our money for their research, not to mention their salaries, they must listen to our opinions.

Yes we all want to save lives. Yes, we on the right are in favor of research that results in cures for the dread diseases that we hope we never get. But please, those of us who object to embryonic stem cell research are not just a bunch of religious kooks, as too many on the left want to paint us. Religion can and does form our world view, including that of protecting the unborn. It is a sad day when this in and of it self is said to be invalid. I would simply comment that the left has no problem with religion when it's used to promote government spending on the poor, or when it's part of the antiwar movement (note that I don't have any problem when it's used that way also. I just disagree with the theology and reasoning).

We're told, insistently screamed at, that we must have unlimited stem cell research. It will save lives, they say.

Undoubtedly some cures will be found through such research. But there's the nagging suspicion, confirmed by the most elementary google search, that the promise has been wildly exaggerated. Another basic google search returns many articles stating that recent scientific advances render embryonic stem-cell research unnecessary. But increasingly facts don't matter, because we must have research. It all reminds one of Al Gore and his global warming adherents.

No doubt that just as with global warming, many proponents of unlimited stem cell research are sincere good people. In these matters I try to give the benefit of the doubt.

But there are many, especially although not exclusively in the pro-abortion, er, "pro-choice" movement, whose motives are... less than honest.

You see, it's only partially a scientific debate. At its heart, the stem cell debate is really part of the controversy over abortion. Where you come down it all depends on where you think life starts. Or whether you just want to go out, have sex with whomever you like, and not worry about the consequences.

It's all part of what Ramesh Ponnuru was talking about in The Party of Death. These are the people who are not just happy with abortion and all manner of scientific research and how-dare-you-bring--up-ethics, they're pushing us to accept things such as cloning and assisted suicide.

If such things do not at least give you pause, you need to start wondering about yourself. If you think that George W. Bush, or any serious person on the right is callous with regard to Afgani or Iraqi civilian deaths, you're not intellectually honest. If you think we haven't at least considered whether support for the death penalty might not contradict our pro-life position, you're poorly informed.

The notion that science must be unfettered from all moral and ethical concerns is seen in the Washington Post story on the matter, the headline of which is "Obama Aims to Shield Science From Politics." Sigh.

The Post uses the term "politics" because they want to disparage those of us who want restrictions. Despite its fairly bland denotative meaning as simply "The art or science of government or governing," the term has taken more a more sinister connotative meaning in everyday speech. The Post doesn't want you to think that there might be legitimate ethical concerns.

It is not, after all, "politics" or "political ideology" to believe that that embryonic stem cells, like embryos in the womb, are individual, separate, human beings and as such should be protected by law.

Further, let's consider that there is legitimate debate over the use of animals for scientific research. There is growing awareness, I think, that there should at least be some sort of restrictions. Certainly there is a large movement, mostly on the left, that supports much restriction if not outright bans on animal testing. I think it safe to say that these are usually the same people who on abortion call themselves "pro-choice" and who today celebrate Obama's decision.

However one comes down on animal testing, it is only the callous few who insist that "anything goes" in the name of saving human lives. To be sure, I value human lives more than animal, and if at least some testing is beneficial, so be it. But the point is that those who support restrictions do so because they understand that no, scientists cannot be allowed to do whatever they want unfettered by moral and ethical concerns.

Which brings us to President Obama and his executive order.

What's noticeable about it is its complete lack of acknowledgment that their might be an ethical debate. Download the executive order linked to above and read it yourself if you don't believe me. Obama sees not restrictions on science at all as valid.

At least when President Bush announced his policy he went on national television and explained it to the nation. He admitted it was a "complex and difficult issue," and one he had arrived at only through much study and reflection.

Obama shows no such concern. During the signing ceremony he remarked that

This Order is an important step in advancing the cause of science in America. But let's be clear: promoting science isn't just about providing resources - it is also about protecting free and open inquiry. It is about letting scientists like those here today do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it's inconvenient - especially when it's inconvenient. It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda - and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology.

To Obama, any restrictions at all are "manipulation or coercion" and "ideology." This is amorality at it's worst. Apparently, as part of the new regimen; we are to serve science, not the other way around. It's the attitude of science uber alles, and those of us without the proper degree need to just shut up and listen to our betters. And keep the cash flowing.

During the campaign I tagged Obama as "the pro-abortion candidate" because of his extremism on the matter. Since becoming president, his policy decisions confirm what I wrote. People like him, who voted against the Illinois Born-Alive Infants Protection Act and then lied about why he did it, are callous with regard to all life. We saw it in his executive order, and I fear we'll see more.

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February 4, 2009

If You take the King's Shilling, You do the King's Bidding

We knew this was coming:

Obama Caps Executive Pay Tied to Bailout Money

President Barack Obama on Wednesday imposed a $500,000 cap on senior executive pay for the most distressed financial institutions receiving taxpayer bailout money and promised new steps to end a system of "executives being rewarded for failure."

Obama announced the unusual government intervention into corporate America at the White House, with tax cheat Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner at his side....

The pay limit comes amid a national outcry over huge bonuses to executives who head companies that seek taxpayer dollars to remain afloat. The demand for limits was reinforced by revelations that Wall Street firms paid more than $18 billion in bonuses in 2008 amid the economic downturn and the massive infusion of taxpayer dollars.

The limit would apply to top-paid executives at the most distressed financial institutions that are negotiating bailout agreements with the federal government. It also would apply to other banks that receive aid, but they could get around the limits by publicizing to shareholders plans to exceed the salary cap.

This is exactly why bailouts are so bad. Once you take aid from the government, you are beholden to them.

These business executives are playing right into Obama's hands. What idiots. The left pretends to be outraged, but I think many are secretly happy as it gives them the excuse they need to set a "maximum wage," something they've wanted for decades.

We've all seen the stories. Bonuses paid to executives of companies who are losing money and laying off employees. Expensive trips, private airplanes, manicures and spas seem to be the rule.

The situation on Wall Street has gotten so bad that even the pro-business Washington Times editorialized that these "business excesses are disgraceful."

I've run into conservatives who say Obama is violating property rights on this matter. But that's only true in cases where he tries to impose these things on businesses that are not taking government money. More to it, this is about greed, which I also remind conservatives and Christians is also a sin, there being many passages about it in the Bible. To paraphrase Justice Potter Stewart, I may not be able to define greed, but I know it when I see it. And the American public knows what it sees.

If you come to me complaining that you can't pay your mortgage, and I loan you a few thousand dollars, I had better not see you going out to the movies or taking a vacation until you've paid me back.

Right now executive pay is only being capped for companies that take bailout money. As with most things government, I think it'll slowly spread. Once the left gets there way here, they'll come up with other reasons to cap pay all across the board, regardless of whether the company takes bailout money or not. For example, next they'll say that any company that gets a government contract must cap executive pay. Then...who know where this will end.

And years from now, they'll look at the corporate executives who paid themselves bonuses and such while their companies were failing, and say "It is you who are to blame."

Saturday Feb 7 Update

That didn't take long. Financial Week reports that House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank wants to set pay caps for all corporations:

Congress will consider legislation to extend some of the curbs on executive pay that now apply only to those banks receiving federal assistance, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank said.

"There's deeply rooted anger on the part of the average American," the Massachusetts Democrat said at a Washington news conference today.

He said the compensation restrictions would apply to all financial institutions and might be extended to include all U.S. companies.

Give these guys and inch and they'll take a mile.

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January 17, 2009

Of Moral Idiots and War Crimes

Note: I wrote this before the cease-fire was announced. I'll have more to say about it later tonight.

Now we have "senior UN officials and human rights groups" accusing Israel of war crimes. The charge is that the IDF engages in "reckless and indiscriminate" shelling of civilian neighborhoods in Gaza. To add grotesqueness to an already idiotic charge, they charge that IDF soldiers are using "Palestinian families as human shields."

Just because I had to see the idiocy on display for myself, I went to the website of the UN Human Rights commission, and found their latest missive on how "the violence must stop." It is a model of moral neutrality. Read it for yourself. If you were completely unfamiliar with the players, you would never know from anything this commission said that Israel was a democracy that had been the subject of terrorist attacks for years, and that the other was a fascist jihadist terrorist entity.

But no, they couldn't do that. The article in the Guardian exposes the moral idiocy of the UN and that of these so-called human rights organizations in all their macabre glory. Or gory.

The UN's senior human rights body approved a resolution yesterday condemning the Israeli offensive for "massive violations of human rights". A senior UN source said the body's humanitarian agencies were compiling evidence of war crimes and passing it on to the "highest levels" to be used as seen fit.

Some human rights activists allege that the Israeli leadership gave an order to keep military casualties low no matter what cost to civilians. That strategy has directly contributed to one of the bloodiest Israeli assaults on the Palestinian territories, they say.

John Ging, head of the UN Palestinian refugee agency in Gaza, said: "It's about accountability [over] the issue of the appropriateness of the force used, the proportionality of the force used and the whole issue of duty of care of civilians.

Who said terrorism doesn't pay?

One of the things Israel is accused of doing is the illegal use of "white phosphorus," particularly in the form of what are called M825 Felt-Wedge projectiles. The claim is that the IDF is illegally using this and similar weapons in densely populated areas, and that this is illegal.

To be sure, White phosphorus can be nasty stuff. So can suicide vests, but the UN and so-called human rights groups can't be bothered with them. Might get death threats, you know.

John Noonan, writing at The Weekly Standard, explains

The problem in the UN's argument, as with most of the arguments against Israel's use of force in Gaza, is that it rewrites international treaties on warfare to better fit an anti-Israel narrative. White Phosphorous -- or 'Willy Pete' -- has been used for decades to create large smokescreens for troop cover and target illumination and is not -- despite any claim to the contrary -- an incendiary weapon (nor is it proscribed under any law on armed conflict). Article one of the treaty banning incendiaries says as much:

Incendiary weapon means any weapon or munition which is primarily designed to set fire to objects or to cause burn injury to persons through the action of flame, heat, or combination thereof, produced by a chemical reaction of a substance delivered on the target. (a) Incendiary weapons can take the form of, for example, flame throwers, fougasses, shells, rockets, grenades, mines, bombs and other containers of incendiary substances.

(b) Incendiary weapons do not include:
(i) Munitions which may have incidental incendiary effects, such as illuminants, tracers, smoke or signalling systems.

That's not to say Willy Pete is without collateral effects. There have been several documented cases where WP has injured or killed civilians, as the illuminant burns slowly at extremely high temperatures. But like with other legal conventional munitions such as artillery shells and guided bombs, the responsibility for incidental death and damage lies with Hamas and any other combatant which uses human shields to mask its operations.

International war crime statutes were written to prosecute those who fill mass graves with the bodies of noncombatants, the Hitlers and the Milosevics, not those who use legal illuminants in small, localized conflict. If a treatise on armed conflict can no longer differentiate between the use of military smoke shells and deliberate rocket attacks on civilian populations, the effect is to doom such treaties to irrelevance.

It's the last paragraph that's important. There is a type of "internationalist" and human-rights type who can no longer distinguish between a terrorist entity that deliberately puts it's own civilians in harms way hoping they will be killed so they can be used for propaganda, and a democracy fighting a defensive war imperfectly.

Balance of Outrage

What gets me is that the outrage over atrocities, real or imagined, is so far out of balance. No one would say that Israel, or the United States for that matter, is above reproach. If you want to say we should not use this or that weapon, fine, make your case.

But shouldn't you also spend just a little bit of time criticizing terrorists? If you want to ban cluster bombs ok, make your case, but why can't we have one banning suicide vests as well? Of course, we know why such a treaty doesn't exist; the UN and human rights organizations don't care, and the Muslim nations would object. They'd say that singled them out (as if banning cluster bombs doesn't single us out) or insist on an exemption for "wars of national liberation" (like they do for a simple definition of terrorism).

I've heard all the excuses about how we must maintain the moral high-ground, how it would be useless to ban something like suicide vests, or how two wrongs don't make a right so what does it matter? I don't buy any of them.

Melanie Phillips, as always, cuts to the heart of the matter and asks the right questions:

One final question: when Foreign Secretary David Miliband, UN Secretary-General Ban-ki Moon and a zillion others in the west lament the 1000 in Gaza whom the Israelis have killed, are they lamenting the killing of the 75 per cent-plus of that total who were Hamas terrorists, whose purpose in life was to annihilate Israel and exterminate Jews? Are they lamenting the killing today of the key senior Hamas leader Said Siyam, said to have been a radical close to Iran? Would they have preferred that all these individuals remained alive to continue pursuing their genocidal project? Are they saying that no-one should be killed in war and that therefore there should never be war? And if so, when will we hear Miliband similarly lament all those Taleban who have been and are still being killed by British forces in Afghanistan, along with al Qaeda in Iraq?

I'm not sure about the first three, but the answers to the last two are yes and that's probably next.

Double Standards

If the "world community" is so upset about civilian deaths in Gaza, why aren't they as concerned about what's going on in the Congo? A story in Pajamas Media, using at it's source a Ugandan news outlet, says that "over 1,000 civilians have been killed by a Ugandan rebel group since Christmas."

Terrible that so many of the horrors that take place in Africa go unreported.

Sunday Evening Update

Mona Charen adds more to our list of horrors ignored by those oh-so-concerned by Gaza:

Since the start of 2007, 16,000 civilians have been killed in fighting. Not in Gaza, so you may have missed it. It was in Somalia, where an Islamist movement is fighting Ethiopian troops. This is the 18th year of civil strife in that country.

In Sri Lanka, some 70,000 people have perished in a civil war that has flared on and off since 1983. The regime in Burma has killed thousands and forced an estimated 800,000 into involuntary servitude.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), 45,000 people are dying every month. Nearly 5.5 million have died since 1998 in a conflict that grew out of the violence in Rwanda and spread. Half of those deaths were of children under the age of five, according to the International Rescue Committee. The violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has caused more human devastation than any conflict since World War II.

In Darfur, Sudan, more than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million made homeless by violence.

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January 8, 2009

The Israeli War on Hamas - Not Nessarily a Left-Right Divide

While I think it's accurate to say that that most on the right support Israel, and most on the left at least oppose what Israel is doing even if they're not outright pro-Hamas, this is not always the case.

Republican Congressman Ron Paul reveals his moral bankruptcy when says that "we should be on neither side; this is a conflict that has been going on for a long time"

You can see why he didn't make any headway in the primaries.

Pat Buchanan isn't any better. Here's an excerpt from what he wrote on Dec 30:

About Israel's right and duty to defend its border towns, there is no dispute. When Hamas permits Gaza to be used as a launch pad for rockets, it must expect retaliation. Nor can Hamas claim some right to dictate the limits of that retaliation.

Yet the wisdom of so savage a retribution for rockets that killed not one Israeli is open to question. And crass Israeli politics seems to be behind this premeditated and planned blitz....

The moderate Palestinian Mahmoud Abbas, who has been talking to Israel, testifying to her good faith, has been made to appear the puppet and fool. A new intifada spreading to the West Bank, with suicide attacks inside Israel, is now possible.

Moderate Arabs, who have recognized Israel or backed peace, will now be seen by the Arab street as appeasers impotent to stop the public suffering of the Palestinian people....

Whatever Israel decides, we support. For eight years that has been the most reliable guide to U.S. Middle East policy.

Buchanan's statement that Israel has a right to defend itself is clearly a throwaway line. Where all his Arab moderates are is a mystery to me. None of this is a big surprise, though, because as far back as 1991 William F Buckley Jr concluded that Buchanan was an anti-Semite.

On the other side, consider this blog post by a guy who styles himself "Truth101." I ran into him over at American Power, where we usually disagree, but was pleasantly surprised to find him taking Israel's side. Here's an excerpt from his post "The Left isn't always Right"

One of my fellow lefties at Newshoggers posted some nonsense about Israel and the Gaza Conflict. He was trying to make a case that Israel was occupying Gaza and was overreaching or something.

Lefties: the people of Hamas are not your friends. They are lying, sniveling pricks that have no interest in peaceful coexistence with anyone. Let alone Israel. Once the Left and the world accepts these jokers for the no good terrorist, innocent women and children killing pricks they are, we will all be better off and ready to fight a real war on terror. Not the make Halliburton and Blackwater lots of money war Bush has waged.

In the comments section I wrote that my hat was off to him for his clear thinking on this issue.

No matter what Israel does the so-called international community disapproves. The good news is that unlike during the 2006 war in Lebanon, Israel is holding its own in the propaganda war, and setting the record straight as soon as Hamas propaganda hits the news. I'll go out on a limb and sai that I think Israel is going to win this one, much the the chagrin of the internationalists.

Posted by Tom at 9:00 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

January 7, 2009

The Israeli War on Hamas and the Moral Bankruptcy of the "International Community"

Nothing so illustrates the moral bankruptcy of the so-called international community," and indeed of so many others both on the left and on the right, as does the Israel-Palestine issue.

Consider this letter to the editor published in today's Washington Times. A brief excerpt:

This is a call for women of the world to unite with peace-loving men to stop the terrorist tactics used by both parties in the Israel/Palestine confrontation. It is nonsense for one group to say they are fighting terrorism when they themselves are using terrorist tactics....

Is the main reason for using weaponry today so that those in positions of power can keep their power? Our present State Department can only mouth one-sided views having to do with "our allies."

This attitude tries to make us afraid and to urge us to fight "an enemy." The truth is that we are the people of one world, and when we harm others, we are harming ourselves and the whole earth.....

BETTY CYPSER

Katonah, N.Y.

If queried about her letter, my suggestion to Ms Cypser is for her to say that she was drunk at the time so didn't really mean what she wrote.

Unless Israel is perfect and kills absolutely no civilians it is condemned by folks like her and the "international community," while the actions of Hamas are ignored or excused. Don't believe me? Do as columnist Mona Charen did and google for "international condemnations of Hamas" She's right, no such condemnations come up, even if you fiddle with the wording. On the other hand, google for "international condemnations of Israel" and you get quite a bit.

Lest anyone think that I'm just reprinting a crazy letter to the Times and doing a google search to make the point, Charen points out that

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, "strongly condemned Israel's disproportionate use of force," as did Brazil. Indonesia called on all countries to "sever all forms of diplomatic and business ties with Israel." French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who currently holds the rotating chair of the European Union, did call upon Hamas to halt its rocket attacks but also censured Israel's "disproportionate response."

We've all seen the articles. There's no need to go on. We see this every time Israel responds to terrorism. After the failure of the 2000 peace talks at Camp David, Yassir Arafat launched an intifada against Israel, sending suicide bombers into Jewish cafes and pizza parlors. Israel responded with a security fence. Who did the international community condemn? Israel.

Israellycool get's it about right in what is unfortunately only a half-parody:

In other news, Hamas executed 6 suspected collaborators with Israel (leading to widespread condemnation by "human rights" organizations and "peace activists"), France's Channel 2 have once again shown their true colors, and an ex-aide of Saddam Hussein has gotten all Baghdad Bob on us.

The "international community" has been intent on pushing for a cease-fire from the moment Israel launched what they call Operation Cast Lead. They apparently actually think that if such an agreement was hammered out Hamas will honor it's side of the deal, all past experiences to the contrary. Nowhere have I found any proposal from anyone to stop Hamas from launching it's terror rockets.

Even if such a promise was to be made, Israel would be justified in rejecting it based on history. In 2005 the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1559, which demanded the disarming of Hezbollah. To this date Hezbollah has not been disarmed because it refused to relinquish it's weapons and no one has the will to do it by force. Countries do not send troops on UN peacekeeping missions if they think there is a chance of serious fighting.

Even so, it is important to note that despite the chatter, many Muslims and Arabs are not taking Hamas' side. They make the standard denunciation of Israel, but one gets the impression it's just for show. They're angry at Hamas for interrupting what they saw as a "peace process" that might actually get somewhere (I don't think so, but that's for another day). They also realize that Hamas basically had it's own country, and did itself no good by provoking a powerful foe into attacking. This is good, and Israel senses it.

What's really disturbing is when the Bush Administration joins in the international chorus. To be sure, they've kept the UN Security Council from passing egregious resolutions (see eye on the UN website) but why do they have to join everyone else in calling for a cease fire? Why can't they just say one time it would be good if Israel destroyed Hamas? We expect others to back our attacks, but we can't back Israel?

I'm sure that privately we are telling Israel to "go for it" but I get tired of the two-facedness of it all. Condi Rice has proven to be a terrible Secretary of State, her 2007 peace conference in Annapolis being ill-planned and achieving nothing. The good news for the Obama Administration is that they can hardly do worse. Knock on wood.

Saturday Evening Update

On Thursday, Jan 8, the UN Security Council Resolution passed Resolution 1860 calling for a ceasefire. It's all a lot of hooey. Here are a few excerpts

Expressing grave concern at the escalation of violence and the deterioration of the situation, in particular the resulting heavy civilian casualties since the refusal to extend the period of calm; and emphasizing that the Palestinian and Israeli civilian populations must be protected,...

Stresses the urgency of and calls for an immediate, durable and fully respected ceasefire, leading to the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza;...

Calls on Member States to support international efforts to alleviate the humanitarian and economic situation in Gaza, including through urgently needed additional contributions to UNRWA and through the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee;

The document expresses the moral equivalency the UN has been so famous for. All states are equal, and no blame is assigned. At least the US abstained, though we should have vetoed it. I know we abstained instead of exercising our veto power so as not to fray relations with states like Turkey and Jordan, but it was still a cowardly act.

The good news is that the Olmert government seems to have more backbone than we do. According to this AP story, they may even be escallating the war

Israel dropped bombs and leaflets on Gaza on Saturday, pounding suspected rocket sites and tunnels used by Hamas militants and warning of a wider offensive despite frantic diplomacy to end the bloodshed.

Good. Hamas is a cancer that needs to be cut out and killed. Although they were foolish enough to vote them into power, the real benefit would be the Palestinian people themselves.

Sunday January 18 Update

An editorial in today's Jerusalem Post hits the nail on the head. Money quote:

Israelis are told that no matter the provocation, we are "too quick" to resort to force. As if negotiations with Hamas were an option; as if eight years was too quick.

And if we've acted so "disproportionately" in our brutal march to triumph, how come the enemy is still standing and declaring victory?

To the morally obscene charge that we've committed "genocide" in Gaza - does anyone seriously doubt that were genocide our goal, heaven forbid, there would be 500,000 dead Palestinians, and not 1,000?

What other army drops warning leaflets and makes automated warning calls prior to attacking? Why is it ethical for Hamas to fire from a mosque or over the walls of a UN facility, but unethical for our citizen-soldiers to save themselves by responding with heavy weapons?

The truth is that no Western country faced with a similar set of circumstances - fighting an enemy that principally targets non-combatants while hiding behind its own civilians - would comport itself with higher moral standards than the IDF.

Sophomoric ideals about wartime morality are barely tolerable in Philosophy 101. When mouthed by leaders and pundits who should know better, they reflect intellectual laziness and dishonesty.

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January 5, 2009

The Israeli War on Hamas and Personal Responsiblity

Once again, here goes another post on the Middle East in which I have to check the "Moral Clarity" category box as well.

Of all the issues around the world, the Israeli-Palestine one is the absolutely most frustrating from this standpoint. It generates more moral confusion than any other. And let me be clear on this; I'm not talking about whether it was wise for Israel to attack Hamas, or Hezbollah in 2006. One can be morally clear on the issues and simply believe that there was another way to deal with the problem.

Here is a typical news story, this one from the AP

Israel ignored mounting international calls for a cease-fire Monday and said it won't stop its crippling 10-day assault until "peace and tranquility" are achieved in southern Israeli towns in the line of Palestinian rocket fire.

They never call for a cease fire when it's only Israel getting hit. Nor do they call it a "crisis", a word you see all over the news now that Israel is shooting back.

I could pick any of a hundred anti-Israel posts, but Glenn Greenwald, writing at Salon, is typical when he goes after pro-Israel blogger Michael Goldfarb of The Weekly Standard:

One should be clear that this sociopathic indifference to (or even celebration over) the deaths of Palestinian civilians isn't representative of all supporters of the Israeli attack on Gaza. It's unfair to use the Goldfarb/Peretz pathology to impugn all supporters of the Israeli attack. It's certainly possible to support the Israeli offensive despite the deaths of these civilians, to truly lament the suffering of innocent Palestinians but still find the war, on balance, to be justifiable.

Those who favor the attack on Gaza due to that calculus are certainly misguided about the likely outcome. And many war supporters who fall into this more benign category are guilty of insufficiently weighing the deaths of Palestinian innocents and, relatedly, of such overwhelming emotional and cultural attachment to Israel and Israelis that they long ago ceased viewing this conflict with any remnant of objectivity.

Greenwald is nicer than most of his sort in saying that it is "certainly possible to support the Israeli offensive despite the deaths of these civilians," but there's one big problem with his thesis.

The Palestinians aren't as innocent as he says they are.

A Brief History

Fist we need to set the stage.

In January of 2006 the Palestinians voted Hamas into power in the elections for the Palestinian Parliament, Hamas winning 75 seats to Fatah's 45. The electoral system is a bit complicated (see here), as some of the seats are awarded by proportionality and some by district. While because of these peculiarities (follow the link) Hamas didn't have quite the level of support the results would indicate, in the end a significant amount of people voted for Hamas.

In June of 2007, Hamas took complete control of Gaza in a bloody coup, killing who knows how many Fatah members and civilians (websites vary). They created their own government in Gaza, basically splitting the Palestinian Authority in two, with Fatah (nominally) in control in Judea and Smaria (the "West Bank").

Caroline Glick describes the run-up to the war in an interview with K-Lo over at The Corner

The fighting in Gaza today started about three weeks ago when Hamas renewed its rocket, mortar, and missile assault against Israel. Last June, Israel foolishly agreed to a six-month ceasefire with Hamas. Hamas used the time to have Iran double the size of its missile arsenal and double the range of its missiles, and to build up its Iranian-trained, armed, and financed Hezbollah-style army of 20,000 men. Hamas called its renewed offensive "Operation Oil Stain." On December 17, Hamas attacked Israel with more than 80 missiles, rockets and mortars. It took Israel ten days to finally respond to Hamas's assault, which for the first time put Israeli major cities like Ashdod, Yavne, Beersheva, and Gedera under assault.

Who is Responsible?

To varying extents, a people bear responsibility for their government. If it is a dictatorship, the people are only responsible to the degree that they try and resist it. I realize it's all very easy to talk about resisting tyranny from the safety of one's keyboard and from the perspective of the United States in 2009, but it's true nonetheless.

Certainly, though, if you vote that government into place you bear responsibility. And the fact is that when given the chance, Palestinians voted for Hamas. They got what they wanted. And let's be clear, Fatah isn't that much better. Their Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades are their terrorist wing, as they have been designated by the U.S. Department of State since 2002.

Here's the point - If you vote for terrorists as your government, and then they terrorize your neighbor, you have no legitimate reason to cry foul if your neighbor strikes back.

At least the Germans and Japanese had the decency not to pretend that they were the victims when we bombed and occupied their homelands.

Strangest of all, it is in the best interests of the Gazans that Hamas be destroyed. Ever since Israel withdrew from Gaza in August of 2005, they have basically had their own country. Not much of one, to be sure, and one beset with huge social and economic problems, but a country or homeland of sorts. They had a golden opportunity to show everyone that they could be a responsible self-governing entity. And they blew it.

Among other things the Gazans inherited in the wake of the Israeli withdrawal were more than 3,000 greenhouses, which could have been used to grow valuable flowers for export to Europe. American Jewish philanthropists even paid $14 million to save them from destruction by Jewish settlers so the Gazans could have them. And what happened? Many were damaged or destroyed by looters that the Palestinian authorities were helpless to stop, often because their security forces stood idly by.

They got their homeland, and they have made the worst of it.

Discrimination

This said, it is still incumbent upon nations to not directly target civilians. It is an integral part of Just War Theory. Now, I don't think that traditional JWT is completely applicable to our modern world. It needs updating. But the principal of discrimination, which basically says you cannot directly target civilians, is accepted by all civilized nations.

The whole issue gets complicated, and I urge readers to follow the links and read the whole thing themselves, but the salient point here is that Israel does not target civilians and Hamas does. Just because civilians are killed while attacking military targets does not mean that "Israel is killing civilians," because such a formulation implies that Israel is doing so deliberately.

In the end, the Gazans therefore bear some responsibility for what is happening to them. Critics need to stop pretending that they are totally innocent bystanders.

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December 28, 2008

Israel Hits Hamas in Gaza

I thought about titling this "Israel Hits Hamas," but in our modern age of moral confusion that wouldn't do. Israel isn't "attacking Gaza" any more than they were "attacking Lebanon" two years ago. Apologists for whichever terrorist faction being hit like to make it appear that Israel is attacking the whole country, civilians and all. Unfortunately, too many seem to buy into this story line. As such, I find myself including "Moral Clarity" as a category for all of my posts on the Middle East.

Starting yesterday, Saturday Dec 27, Israeli jets have struck Hamas positions in Gaza in Operation Cast Lead. This in response to unrelenting Qassam rocket attacks by Hamas and it's associated factions/groups into Israel. One wonders what Hamas was thinking. Surely they knew that the Israeli strikes were bound to happen.

Most likely Hamas was looking for a replay of the July-Aug 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon. It is thought by most that because Israel did not succeed in neutralizing Hezbollah or it's ability to launch rockets, the latter won. Hamas has been provoking Israel, hoping for a retaliation, and calculating that they will survive. The mindset of the terrorists is that if they survive somewhat intact they win, an in a way they're right. That hundreds or thousands of of their own fighters, never mind innocent civilians may die helps all the more, as photos of dead bodies shown on TV around the world make for good anti-Israel propaganda. A Reuters report has it that Hamas is not allowing the wounded to cross into Egypt for treatment.

Israeli motivations, of course, are different. Their stated intention, as taken from a story on the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) website:

"Our intention is not to arrive at a ceasefire; it is to destroy Hamas' motivation and intention to fight," explained IDF Spokesperson, Brig. Gen. Avi Beninyahu. "The IDF's goal is to create a different reality along the Gaza periphery; to create a safe and secure environment that will be long lasting." In addition, Brig. Gen. Beninyahu expressed complete confidence that IDF forces are acting with caution and intention: "We know exactly what we need to do and what needs to be done. We will continue to act in order to decrease the terror coming from the Gaza Strip."

Ok, but I'm not exactly sure what this means. On the one hand it's possible this is just a short-term attempt to quell the rocket attacks. The government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is not a strong one, and the PM himself caught up in many scandals and criticized for many things, including his handling of the 2006 war in Lebanon. His popularity is low. As such, it's hard to have much faith that this will be a better thought out war than the last one.

But people do learn, and anyway Gaza is not Lebanon. It and Hamas are smaller than Lebanon and Hezbollah. Olmert may be determined to carry through until Hamas cries uncle or has truely suffered to the point where they are not even much of a political entity anymore. Unlike in Lebanon, where Hezbollah had an open supply line from Syria, Hamas can be much more easily cut off.

Seen from it's most cynical perspective, it's possible that the Israeli government is doing this for purely political reasons. There will be a general election this Feb 10, and according to this scenario Olmert just doesn't want to look weak going into them.

The last possibility is that Olmert will follow air strikes with a ground assault and will not only reoccupy Gaza but will go all out to end Hamas' existence. This would take time and would be difficult, and so is not likely.

It's impossible to say how long Israel has been planning this. The reason is that they no doubt constantly monitor Gaza, Lebanon, etc, so keep their target lists updated daily. It's probably more a matter of arranging air schedules and flight paths than anything else. My guess is they can "pull the trigger' with very short notice.

Before we go farther, here's a useful timeline I found at Fox News

-- June 1967: Israel captures the Egyptian-controlled Gaza Strip during six-day Mideast war. An Israeli census put the population at 380,000, at least half of whom were refugees from Israel. Today the population stands at about 1.5 million. The U.N. lists just over 1 million as refugees and their descendants.

-- December 1987: A clash in the Jebaliya refugee camp sets off Palestinian uprising, which lasted until 1993 and claimed the lives of more than 2,000 Palestinians and 192 Israelis. The militant Islamic Hamas is formed early in the uprising.

-- September 2005: Israel withdraws its troops and all of its 8,500 Jewish settlers. It retains control of Gaza's airspace, coastal waters and border crossings.

-- June 2007: Hamas violently seizes control of Gaza after routing forces loyal to rival Fatah faction of President Mahmoud Abbas.

-- June 2008: Hamas and Israel reach truce to halt the cross-border rocket attacks and end Israeli offensives in Gaza.

-- November 2008: Palestinians resume rocket and mortar fire into Israel after Israeli incursion.

-- Dec. 19, 2008: Hamas formally declares the truce over, rocket fire on Israel intensifies.

-- Dec. 27, 2008: Israel launches a fierce air offensive, killing more than 200 Palestinians in the first day.

As of this writing, a story on the IDF website says they've hit some 210 target locations in Gaza. Hamas has fired some 110 rockets and mortar shells into Israel since Operation Cast Lead began.

Moral Clarity, Please

Whenever Israel strikes back at terrorists you can count on stories like these to appear:

The Telegraph: Israel launches more air strikes as UN calls for ceasefire

The United Nations Security Council called for an immediate ceasefire as there was growing evidence of Israeli plans to increase its military operations.

Jerusalem Post: Israel defends Gaza op to UN chief

President Nicholas Sarkozy of France, who holds the rotating European Union presidency, said he "firmly condemns the irresponsible provocations that have led to this situation, as well as the disproportionate use of force," according to an e-mailed statement.

The EU itself has also urged an immediate halt to Israeli air strikes and Palestinian attacks in and around Gaza and the lifting of Israeli blockades in the area, saying in a statement that the 27-nation bloc "condemns the disproportionate use of force" from both sides. "There is no military solution in Gaza," the EU statement said, urging a lasting truce.

The EU statement also urges the "reopening of all checkpoints and the immediate resumption of fuel and humanitarian aid deliveries."

Washington Post: Israeli Airstrikes on Gaza Strip Imperil Obama's Peace Chances

Israel's airstrikes on Gaza yesterday, in retaliation for a nonstop barrage of rocket attacks from Hamas fighters, raised the prospect of an escalation of violence that could scuttle any hopes the incoming Obama administration harbored of forging an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.

Terrorist groups can fire rockets at Israel for years with no "international condemnation", yet everyone calls for an immediate cease fire when Israel responds.

Israeli response to terrorism must be "proportionate." Yet these same moral pontificators are quick to condemn "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" thinking.

And of course there is the "peace process" that must be preserved, even when it is obvious to anyone with eyes that it is all process and no peace. We could only make peace with these terrorists if only those dastardly Israelis would stop defending themselves.

Israel isn't perfect. I wish they'd stop growing the settlements in Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank"). Sometimes I wonder if bulldozing homes, even those of terrorists, is really the best response.

Of all the criticisms leveled at Israel, the one that their response is not "proportionate" is the most ridiculous. Don't get me wrong; I very much know that proportionality is part of Just War Theory. Follow the link and you'll see that I wrote quite a bit on the subject a few years ago.

Suffice it to say for now that the requirement for proportionality does not mean "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." After all, our own response to Japanese attacks on U.S. forces at Pearl Harbor, Wake Island, and the Philippines was hardly proportional as measured by this standard. We invaded and ended their government, while they never had plans to even attack the continental United States, much less march into Washington D.C.

So of course Israel's response is greater than Hamas' rocket attacks. If the schoolyard bully pushes you, you don't push him back, you knock his block off. The point is not to engage in tit for tat, but to end the rocket attacks. Just as the bully won't push you anymore if you show that you will go all-out to defend yourself, Hamas will stop if it becomes convinced that it's very existence is threatened. If not, then Israel ends it's existence.

More later. For now check out the live blogging of the war over at Israellycool.

Posted by Tom at 9:30 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

December 4, 2008

The Cluster Bomb Treaty

This is maddening

OSLO, Norway (AP) -- Ninety-three countries signed a treaty banning cluster bombs Thursday, as diplomats accepted the wishes of victims who begged them to bar the weapons that kill and maim civilians long after the conflicts end.

Some of the world's top military powers -- including the U.S., Russia and China -- refused to attend, arguing cluster bombs have legitimate military uses, such as repelling advancing troop columns.

"We're of course disappointed by the states that did not show up here in Oslo," said Steve Goose, the arms director of Human Rights Watch. "They're on the wrong side of history. Some of them are clinging to what is now a widely discredited weapon."

Under the accord, negotiated in May, signatories agreed not to use cluster bombs, to destroy existing stockpiles within eight years, and to fund programs that clear old battlefields of dud bombs.

Grrrrr

They may has well just call it the "Screw the United States Treaty" for what it amounts to.

What I want to know is after they're done here if these brave souls will push for a ban on suicide bombers. Call me crazy, but I'm not going to hold my breath for that one.

These people suffer from a case of serious moral confusion.

It's all so typical. Here we have the mad mullahs of Iran working feverishly to obtain nuclear weapons, and when they get enough of them they'll probably nuke Israe. We have terrorists the world over building heaven knows how many suicide vests and car bombs to kill thousands of innocents. Fidel Castro wannabe Hugo Chavez seeks dictatorial powers, is arming himself to the teeth with Soviet weapons, is tied to the FARC terrorists in Columbia, and is cozying up to Iran. Hugo Chavez wannabe Evo Morales would make himself a dictator if he could. Pakistan is turning out terrorists by the thousands from it's madrassas, and the Saudis sending forth cadres with zillions of dollars to take over and radicalize Mosques the world over, China wants to take over Taiwan and seeks hegemony in the south-west Pacific. The Russians seem not to know the Cold War is over as they continue to modernize their ICBMs and develop modern warheads. They're doing business with Iran and want their empire back. Did I miss anything?

Yes I did; the United Nations has no agreed upon definition of "terrorism."

It's true. You'd think terrorism would be pretty easy to define. We all know it when we see it. So why can't we get a definition that will satisfy everyone? Eye on the UN has the story:

The definitional impasse has prevented the adoption of a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism. Even in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 the UN failed to adopt the Convention, and the deadlock continues to this day.

The prime reason is the standoff with the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). It seeks to insert into the Convention: "The activities of the parties during an armed conflict, including in situations of foreign occupation....are not governed by this Convention." Or, as the Pakistani delegate describes the standoff on behalf of the OIC, there is a need "to make a distinction between terrorism and the exercise of legitimate right of peoples to resist foreign occupation." In October 2007 the Coordinator of the informal negotiating meetings which had been organized "to move the process forward" circulated a document in which she named the outstanding issues. The OIC demand was on the top of the list, namely, "the importance not to affect the exercise of the right of peoples to self-determination."

The Arab Terrorism Convention and the Terrorism Convention of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) define terrorism to exclude armed struggle for liberation and self-determination. This claim purports to exclude blowing up certain civilians from the reach of international law and organizations. It is central to interpreting every proclamation by the states which have ratified these conventions in any UN forum purporting to combat terrorism.

in other words, they want to be able to claim that Palestinian is not terrorism. In fact, I think they want to be able to claim that any Muslim terrorism that suits their purposes is not terrorism. And no doubt they want a definition that allows them to brand Israel, and, when it suits them the United States, as terrorist countries.

But no, to this bunch it's much more important to go after a weapon that is important to the United States.

The group behind it all is one called the Cluster Munition Coalition. From their website, here are the ones who have signed

Albania, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Chad, Chile, Comoros, Republic of Congo, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Côte d'Ivoire, Croatia, Czech Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Fiji, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Holy See, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Lao PDR, Lebanon, Lesotho, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia (FYR), Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Malta, Mauritania, Mexico, Moldova, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Portugal, Qatar, Samoa, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sudan, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Togo, Uganda, United Kingdom, Uruguay, Vanuatu, Venezuela and Zambia.

Here's the bottom line; when all hell breaks lose somewhere no one is going to rely on any of the nations listed above. Please don't bring up the UK or France; they couldn't even take care of Bosnia/Kosovo by themselves. Their military's are a hollow shell of what they were during the Cold War, and they were pretty small them.

No I am not saying that just because we're the United States we can do whatever we like. What I am saying is that treaties to ban specific weapons usually miss the point, and this one strikes far from the mark.

First, it's usually not the weapon but who's using it and how. Just as there are responsible and irresponsible use of firearms in the home, there are responsible and irresponsible use of cluster munitions. The US military only uses them to stop an advancing army. Israel, who also refused to sign, uses them because to lose a war means 6 million dead Jews. Further, we have worked hard to reduce the dud rate, which seems to be the biggest concern for those pushing this ban.

Therefore, if they wanted to set rules as to how cluster munitions could be used, or set an upper limit on their dud rate (and every weapon has a dud rate) that would be one thing, and that's an approach I agree with. We have rules with regard to civilian use of firearms; when you can use them in self-defense, and we ban certain types of guns like automatic weapons. We can do likewise with cluster bombs.

Second, of all the world's problems and things that ought to be banned cluster bombs falls pretty far down in my book. It's typical of the mindset that promotes this treaty to go after the United States and Israel (which is what they are doing), because they know we're law abiding nations. They won't go after nations that send forth terrorists because they know those nations will tell them to get lost. Oh, and direct some of the terrorists their way.

Look at the nations who refused to sign; the United States, Russia, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, and Finland.

These are all nations that have to take war seriously. Most the nations that signed don't, and the rest I think just wanted to stick their thumbs in the eyes of the great powers. That Finland refused to sign may strike one as odd, but as their defense chief told the Washington Times, "we would have risked having a significantly weaker and more expensive defense." He explained that without cluster munitions defending their border with Russia would exceed $1.2 billion, more than they could afford. Those who are unsure of why the Fins are so sensitive about this need only read about the "Winter War," when Stalin invaded their country in 1939.

I'm still waiting on the treaty to ban suicide attacks. I'll settle, though, for a meaningful UN definition of terrorism.

Posted by Tom at 9:00 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

October 20, 2008

"Freedom of Speech in Jihad Analysis: Debunking the Myth of Offensive Words"

About time someone said this.

From a story in today's Washington Times written by the invaluable Bill Gertz:

A U.S. military "Red Team" charged with challenging conventional thinking says that words like "jihad" and "Islamist" are needed in discussing 21st-century terrorism and that federal agencies that avoid the words soft-pedaled the link between religious extremism and violent acts.

"We must reject the notion that Islam and Arabic stand apart as bodies of knowledge that cannot be critiqued or discussed as elements of understanding our enemies in this conflict," said the internal report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times.

The report, "Freedom of Speech in Jihad Analysis: Debunking the Myth of Offensive Words," was written by unnamed civilian analysts and contractors for the U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for the Middle East and South Asia. It is thought to be the first official document to challenge those in the government who seek to downplay the role of Islam in inspiring some terrorist violence.

"The fact is our enemies cite the source of Islam as the foundation for their global jihad," the report said. "We are left with the responsibility of portraying our enemies in an honest and accurate fashion."

I hope these guys keep their resumes updated, because they're going to need them if Obama's elected in November. The political correctness on this is bad enough with GW Bush, but it will be absolutely out of control with Obama.

You can download the report from the Times website at the link above. If that disappears, you can go here.

The reason why it is important that we use words like jihad, takfir, Islamist, and the rest is that we need to be clear as to who we are fighting. We need clarity on the nature of the enemy, who he is, and his historical roots. While we must understand that no, not all Muslims accept the idea of violent jihad, we must also understand that all too many do, and that they are the ones currently in control of the umma.

Of course, any "Red Team" is not the end-all-to-be-all. Their job is to provide the "counter" or "alternative" analysis, the purpose of which is to challenge assumptions. It's just that in this case I think they're right.

Read the whole thing, but here is an excerpt from the Executive Summary:

There are a growing number of USG documents that suggest that we stand in danger of (if we have not already) demonizing Islam and/or associating all Muslims with violence simply by invoking the Islamic identity, or Islamist goals, or a particular extremist group. While there is concern that we not label all Muslims as Islamist terrorists, it is proper to address certain aspects of violence as uniquely Islamic. This does not imply that all violence is Islamic, or even that all violence perpetrated by Muslims is uniquely Islamic. The fact is that our enemies cite the sources of Islam as the foundation of their global jihad. We are left with the responsibility of portraying our enemies in an honest and accurate fashion.

There are a lot of problems in our current approach, but one of them is not "demonizing Islam." President Bush and virtually all other Western leaders have gone out of their way to do the opposite.

The problem, rather, is with those who want to define our problem as narrowly as possible. Many do not even want to use the term "war," but rather see it through the lens of law enforcement. They generally see the problem as only al Qaeda and only in Afghanistan. This must end, and we should label our enemies as they are: Jihadists, Takfiris, and Islamists.

Posted by Tom at 9:30 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

October 19, 2008

Joe Biden, Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle, and When a Gaffe is not a Gaffe

Oct 20: Updated at bottom with today's Biden gaffe

And to think that they crucified Dan Quayle because he spelled "potato" wrong.

Unless they do the same to Joe Biden, the media and late night talk-show hosts who made so much fun Dan Quayle need to send him a letter of apology.

Anyone who follows politics knows that Senator Biden is a walking gaffe machine. Consider this small collection of his wit and wisdom:

If you're not sure, Roosevelt was not president when the stock market crashed and TV hadn't been invented in 1929.

And then we have his debate with Alaska Governor Sarah Palin:

" When we kicked -- along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, "Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don't know -- if you don't, Hezbollah will control it."

Now what's happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel."

Huh?

"Pakistan already has nuclear weapons. Pakistan already has deployed nuclear weapons. Pakistan's weapons can already hit Israel and the Mediterranean."

Pakistani missiles barely have the range to get halfway to Israel, much less hit anything in the Mediterranean.

We could go on and on listing Biden's gaffes, see here and here for material. Joe Biden says stupid things every single week. The man is an absolute walking gaffe machine. But listing them is not my purpose, and would take too long.

The True Story of the Potato

Did you know that the reporters who were in the room with Quayle when he misspelled "potato" didn't know how it was spelled either? It's true. Not only that, but the school had prepared flash cards with the words that were used in the spelling exercise, and the one for the word in question had it spelled as "potatoe"

Bet you didn't know that, either.

In fact, when Quayle noticed the discrepancy between the flash card and the way the student spelled it, he showed the card to the other adults standing with him, and they nodded in agreement that the student had spelled it wrong.

That little fact wasn't reported by the media either.

The true story of what happened can be found in many places, but perhaps the most comprehensive is by Quayle himself in his 1994 memoir Standing Firm. He devotes an entire chapter to the incident.

I'm not going to do a book review here, but suffice it to say that if you think that Quayle uses the book as an opportunity to settle scores, lash out at the media, or engage in bitter "I didn't deserve it," you'll be disappointed. Quayle is the opposite of the stereotypical politician; humble, candid, and amazingly hard on himself.

When Is a Gaffe not a Gaffe?

So why is it that Joe Biden does not suffer the same fate as Dan Quayle? Why is it that Sarah Palin is seemingly held to a higher standard than other Biden? These are not easy questions to answer, but let me take a shot at it.

One is simply how you look and come across. Joe Biden looks and sounds like a senator or professor. He also looks his age. Dan Quayle has a boyish look that chronological age will never wear away. Sarah Palin sounds like a midwestern "everywoman," and makes no attempt to act or talk Washingtonese.

Another is how you handle the aftermath. Quayle admits that he screwed up the press briefing that immediately followed the incident. At this point neither Quayle or anyone in his entourage knew anything was amis (recall that no one in the room challenged the "e" and many thought it correct). When a reporter slyly asked "so how do you spell "potato" again?" he should have realized his earlier mistake and made a joke about it. Unfortunately, he was caught off guard and unsure what the reporter was talking about. It was this "deer in the headlights" part of the incident that made a small mistake into a career defining event more than the incident itself.

All this, remember, according to Quayle himself. I told you he was hard on himself in the book.

The media is on the lookout for anything Sarah Palin might say that is slightly wrong. Rest assured that if she said that "jobs" was a three letter word it would be the subject of late-night jokes for the rest of her life.

Biden, on the other hand, seems to skate along making gaffe after gaffe without anyone other than us nasty right-wing bloggers seeming to care. There is no aftermath for him to deal with because most of the press simply ignore his gaffes.

Therefore, another part of the reason for the disparity of treatment is that Joe Biden is a liberal and Dan Quayle and Sarah Palin are conservatives. The media and comics are overwhelmingly liberal and use their platforms to push their cause, and this means highlighting gaffes by people they don't like and ignoring those of people they do like.

So in the end, I conclude that there are three reasons for the disparity in treatment. Not in order of importance, they are: Image and how you present yourself, how you handle the aftermath, and media bias.

Monday Evening Update

No sooner do I write the above post than Senator Biden proves the case. Via ABC News (H/T NRO)

"Mark my words," the Democratic vice presidential nominee said at a Seattle fundraiser Sunday, "it will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

Wait a second. I thought that with the ascendancy of The One the rest of the world would all like us again? Isn't that why we are supposed to elect him?

But now "the world" will test Obama with an "international crisis, a generated crisis"? Why would they generate a crisis, if he's the one we've all been waiting for?

But wait, it gets better. Biden continues:

"I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate," Biden said, including the Middle East and Russia as possibilities, "and he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you - not financially to help him - we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right."

What in the world does that "not gonna be apparent initially...that we're right" bit mean? That he's going to screw it up initially?

Don't leave me yet, there's more:

"Gird your loins," Biden told the crowd. "We're gonna win with your help, God willing, we're gonna win, but this is not gonna be an easy ride."

Do what?

The garrulous Biden...

or rather, "The blithering idiot"

...said that he's "forgotten more about foreign policy than most of my colleagues know, so I'm not being falsely humble with you."

Oh yes that was certainly humble of you.

"I think I can be value added, but this guy(Obama) has it. This guy has it. But he's gonna need your help. Because I promise you, you all are gonna be sitting here a year from now going, 'Oh my God, why are they there in the polls? Why is the polling so down? Why is this thing so tough?' We're gonna have to make some incredibly tough decisions in the first two years. So I'm asking you now, I'm asking you now, be prepared to stick with us. Remember the faith you had at this point because you're going to have to reinforce us.""

Or maybe he'll be down in the polls because people will come to their senses and realize that he has no idea how to handle international crises, and that his blithering idiot of a vice president is of no help whatsoever.

Posted by Tom at 8:45 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

October 9, 2008

Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, and a Tale of Two Americas

John Edwards gained a lot of political traction with his "Two Americas" schtick. Economics may be one way to divide Americans, but it's not the only way.

For a number of years liberals have told us that we should elect their candidates because they are "smarter" than conservatives. This usually, but not always, takes the form of citing university degrees. They tend to denigrate conservatives, most famously Ronald Reagan and George W Bush as "stupid" and "anti-intellectual.

We see this now with their characterizations of Senator Barack Obama and Governor Sarah Palin.

One argument that Obama's followers make as to why we should elect him is that he was once president of the Harvard Law Review, and later taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School. Palin, on the other hand, is mocked as a rube who "only" has a Bachelor of Science degree in communications-journalism from the University of Idaho.

Imagine, if you will, an audience that consists of two groups of people: One, the faculty of Harvard University. The other, Americans from the small towns of the mid-west. Suppose they hear the following speech given by General of the Army Douglas MacArthur (ret) (originally given to the corps of cadets at West Point). A brief excerpt will make the point:

Duty, Honor, Country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn....

But these are some of the things they do. They build your basic character. They mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the nation's defense. They make you strong enough to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid. They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for actions, not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm but to have compassion on those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future yet never neglect the past; to be serious yet never to take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength. They give you a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of an appetite for adventure over love of ease. They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and the joy and inspiration of life. They teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentleman.

Upon hearing these words, which group will think "yes, these are ideals to which I aspire but may never reach, and which part will snicker?

And when the audience hears this part...

The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule.

...which group will think "yes, sadly there are those of that type in our country too" and which will sit upright and think "wait, he's talking about me" ?

If later a bugle plays taps for our fallen troops while an honor guard stands erect and proud, which group will salute and put their hand over their hearts, tear in eye, and which will roll their eyes?

And if at the end a flight of F-15s flys overhead in a "missing man" formation, which will thrill at the sight while understanding its meaning, and which, uncomprehending the significance of the maneuver, will simply snear that "it was all just part of the military-industrial complex"?

You ask me, I take the William F. Buckley Jr. approach to government. He famously once said that he'd "rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University."

Before all you liberals get your panties in a wad, no I am not ascribing all of the worst aspects of the Harvard crowd to Barack Obama. If he was in our audience, in good Clintonian fashion he'd put on a good show. Heaven only knows his true feelings, but his radical background and associations are not encouraging.

So go ahead, all you liberals, denigrate Sarah Palin as you wish. Go on, mock her winks, her manner of speaking, her lack of elite eduction, that she has five children, that she - gasp - hunts and fishes, whatever amuses you.

Me? I'll take her alone any day over the entire faculty of Harvard when it comes to running this country.

Posted by Tom at 9:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 7, 2008

Why Ayers and Wright Matter

I haven't written very much about Senator Obama's questionable associations, but when I have I've made my thoughts pretty clear. I find it hightly objectionable that we should have a candidate from a major party who consorted with figures such as Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers. That he may well become president is disturbing.

There are two questions; how well did he know these figures, and what does it matter? I've answered the former in previous posts such as this one of a few days ago.

The reason why Obama's association with Ayers and Wright is important is that it goes to his judgment. Obama tells us that we should elect him because of his superior judgment. He bases this largely on one thing; his opposition to invading Iraq. The issue, then, is not Obama's character.

For purposes of argumentation lets ignore whether it was wise to invade Iraq.

What does it say about a man's judgment when he associated with Ayers and Wright? The Obama camp would have us believe that Obama didn't know that Ayers was an unrepentant terrorist, or that it was ok to associate with him because he had denounced Ayers, or that because Ayers' terrorist activities took place when Obama was a child.... I never did get that last one.

Where was Obama's vaunted judgment during all of this? If it was so superior, shouldn't have have caught on quickly as to who and what Ayers was? Why did he praise Ayers book on education, for example?

Lets also get over the notion that Obama is somehow excused because he was a child when Ayers was a terrorist. This is so completely irrelevant that it boggles the mind. The question is not how old Obama was when Ayers was committing his terrorist acts, the question is whether Obama knew, or should have known, of Ayers terrorist past during their relationship.

If Obama wants us to believe that his judgment is so superior then he should have been able to figure out who Ayers was pretty quickly. Either way Obama loses; if he didn't know it exibits bad judgment for not being able to evaluate other people (something critical in a president), and if it did it shows bad judgment because no one in their right mind should associate with an unrepentant ex terrorist.

For example, on his very website it still says that "Obama supports tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions." If his judgment with Ayers was so poor, why should we believe he will be able to size up Ahmadinejad any better? Recall that Obama actually used the example of the 196_ Kennedy-Khruchshev summit as a reason to meet with foreign dictators. One reason why the summit turned out so disasterously for Kennedy was that he had failed to size Khruchshev up correctly before meeting him, whereas Khruchshev had correctly judged that he would be able to bully Kennedy.

As for Wright, lets be clear what didn't happen. Obama did not attend Trinity United for a short period 10 or 20 years ago. He didn't just start to attend recently. Wright isn't just some preacher who endorsed Obama. Wright is not just a preacher that Obama went out and got his endorsement. Obama went to Trinity United for 20 years, and heard sermon after sermon. He described Wright as his "spiritual mentor." He only left when it became politically inconvenient to stay.

For that matter, what does it say about Obama's judgment that he attended the Million Man March? If his judgment is so superior, why didn't he figure out who and what Louis Farrakhan was before the event?

Finally, let's not pretend that Ayers and Wright were Obama's only questionable associations. The list goes on. Frank Gaffney, writiing in The Washington Times, goes over more, including Frank Marshall Davis, a Stalinist communist who admired the Soviet Union, Madeline Talbott of ACORN, Don Warden, (who converted to Islam and changed his name to Khalid al-Mansour). "Mr. al-Mansour has worked closely to advance the influence operations in America of one of Saudi Arabia's most insidious royal billionaires, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal." Worse still is Rashid Khalidi, who was

...a former colleague of Mr. Obama's at the University of Chicago and now a professor at Columbia. Mr. Khalidi is an enthusiastic supporter of the Palestinians, fervent critic of Israel (which he calls a destructive "racist" state), an admirer of suicide bombers and a driving force behind the Arab American Action Network (AAAN). This so-called pro-Palestinian "community organization" in Chicago is another beneficiary of the largess of the Obama-Ayers team at the Woods Fund and promotes an agenda that would horrify many of Mr. Obama's Jewish supporters.

If you want to question McCain's judgment over the Keating Five scandal, fine. The investigative report showed that McCain portrayed "poor judgment" and it is a mark against him. I do think you're stretching to compare that, though, to association with an unrepentant terrorist and a racist kook preacher. One can even say that McCain tried to make up for the whole affair with his McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill. Obama, of course, has no legislation to his name.

A Thought Experiment

To all of you liberals who see no problem with Obama's association with Ayers, or don't even think that he "associated" with him, consider if the shoe was on the other foot.

What would you think if John McCain had had the exact same relationship with abortion-clinic bomber Eric Rudolf? Can you honestly say that you'd have no problem with the situation?

For that matter, consider if John McCain had sat in a church for 20 years and listened to a white supremacist.

I know liberals will scream at this, but I do think in all honesty that if McCain had done either of these things we on the right would have purged him from our ranks long ago.

Update

The invaluable Andy McCarthy discusses Obama's radical past and concludes that

What Obama is about is infiltrating (and training others to infiltrate) bourgeois institutions in order to change them from within -- in essence, using the system to supplant the system. A key requirement of this stealthy approach (very consistent with talking vaporously about "change" but never getting more specific than absolutely necessary) is electability. With an enormous assist from the media, which does not press him for specifics, Obama has walked this line brilliantly. Absent convincing retractions of his prior radical positions, though, we should construe shrewd moves like the ostensibly reasonable Second Amendment position as efforts make him electable.

This is why Ayers is so important: it is a peek behind the curtain of Obama's rhetoric. When he talks about "education reform," that sounds admirable and, given the state of the schools, entirely reasonable. But when you look at what the Obama/Ayers program really tried to do to the schools (see, e.g., Stanley's work on this), it is radical. With a guy who speaks in euphemisms -- "change," "social justice," "due process," etc. -- it is vital to have concrete examples of how these concepts are put into action.

I have spoken with several undecided voters who tell me that they see Obama as a moderate, not much different in his positions than McCain. It's all I can do not to let my jaw hit the floor when I hear this. My conclusion is that one, the McCain campaign in general, and Senator McCain in particular, have done a poor job at communicating who and what Obama is. Two, the media are so in the bag for Obama that they're doing as good a job of investigating him as they did with John Edwards. This does not portend well.

Posted by Tom at 9:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 30, 2008

A Childlike View of the World

David Gelernter knocks it out of the park with a piece in The Weekly Standard that will leave youngish yuppie liberal types seething.

His thesis is that the generation who grew up after the 60s Cultural Revolution know little about recent history, and most of what they do know is wrong. Recall Obama actually using the Kennedy-Khrushchev summit as a reason why he should meet with Ahmadinejad.

He calls them "gen-CR", and his indictment is stinging

We know what to expect of gen-CR. Unless they have grown up in regions or families with an unusually strong grasp of tradition, patriotism, and reality, gen-CR'ers tend to have a fuzzy view of history, an unconditional belief in tolerance and diplomacy, and contempt for the military and war-making. Their patriotism (such as it is) tends to focus on the "global community" or "the planet" or some other large, meaningless object. (Beyond a certain point, patriotic devotion spread too thin simply evaporates-which is a good way to get rid of it if you are, say, an English intellectual trusting to the European Union to eradicate this primitive emotion.)

Ouch.

To be sure, not everyone in a particular generation fits to type. After all, not all baby boomers burned their draft cards and protested the war in Vietnam. But there are certain general characteristics (dare we call them "stereotypes"?) of each generation.

On to some history:

His (Obama's) announcement that he would meet Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions shows exactly why a president must not merely know history but have a decently nuanced view. It was wrong for Chamberlain to meet Hitler and foolish for JFK to meet Khrushchev, but right for Begin to meet Sadat and for Churchill to make repeated long, dangerous journeys to meet Stalin.

We've all read leftie blogs gleefully point out that we were supposedly "allied" with Iraq during the Iraq-Iran war, and how in 1983 Reagan-envoy Donald Rumsfeld traveled to Baghdad and shook hands with Saddam, and how these supposedly illegitimized our 2003 invasion.

Never mind that we weren't really "allied" with Iraq. For awhile I tried to point out that we were very much allied with Stalin's Soviet Union, and yet as soon as the war ended fought a Cold War against them for 40 years, so did our onetime alliance with them illegitimize that too? Eventually I grew weary and gave up. Too many on the left today lack the moral clarity to understand the difference.

But other than racism, sexism, or the new one, "homophobia", Hemingway points out that "Gen-CR recoils from the idea of enemies." Last night I was listening to Dennis Prager on the radio say that when he spoke with Europeans they told him that what they didn't like about America was that we spoke about good and evil. Anecdotal to be sure, but it rings true.

Start with a given: An Obama administration might still bring about defeat in Iraq; speeded-up troop with-drawals might weaken this new democracy and bring on its collapse like a burnt-out log into a blaze of terrorist violence. But if it did-if the left's policies proved tragically mistaken-Obama's supporters would never know it. What would the collapse of America's noble project in Iraq look like in the funhouse mirrors of the New York Times, NBC, Time and Newsweek and NPR and the rest of the establishment media? "In the end, Bush policy plunged Iraq into chaos, but Obama was smart enough to pull out before more American lives were lost." And that's what Democrats would "know" about Iraq.

It would all just be another excuse to blame George W Bush and from which to seek political advantage, the better to put us all under the rule of the EPA.

Members of the CR generation who had mainstream, establishment educations have been trained like pet poodles to understand where romping is allowed and where it is forbidden. The permissible range of thought on such topics as protected minorities, protected species, protected psychosexual deviations, et al. is clearly spelled out from kindergarten onward.

Yup. I see more intolerance among the "tolerance" and "diversity" crowd than anywhere else. The push for gay marriage is about a lot of things, but marriage isn't one of them. Their real agenda is to force everyone to accept and approve of the gay lifestyle whether they want to or not. Anyone who deviates from correct thought will be severely punished.

You doubt me? Consider the fate of Harvard President Harry Summers, and before the incident that got him in trouble he was considered a right-thinking liberal:

To understand this generational shift in the making, consider the resignation of Harvard president Lawrence Summers in 2006, under attack for having said that, just possibly, the far greater number of male than of female scientists might have to do with innate differences between men and women-something that a large majority of working scientists (male and female) almost certainly take for granted (whether or not they are willing to say so). But Summers had expressed a forbidden thought, and (despite his abject confessions and apologies at the Harvard show trials) was duly banished. In the gen-CR age now approaching, such embarrassing accidents will no longer happen. Forbidden ideas simply won't occur to the Harvard presidents of the future.

The Obama generation in action.

Posted by Tom at 9:30 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

September 7, 2008

Proving Malkin Right

Michelle Malkin calls it like it is in her editorial today. Here's an excerpt:

There's something about outspoken conservative women that drives the left mad. It's a peculiar pathology I've reported on for more than 15 years, both as a witness and a target. Thus, the onset of Palin Derangement Syndrome in the media, Democratic circles and the cesspools of the blogosphere came as no surprise. They just can't help themselves.

Liberals hold a special animus for constituencies they deem traitors. Minorities who identify as social and economic conservatives have left the plantation and sold out their people. Women who put an "R" by their name have abandoned their ovaries and betrayed their gender. As female Republican officeholders and female conservative public figures have grown in number and visibility, so has the progression of Conservative Female Abuse. The astonishing vitriol and virulent hatred directed at Alaska's Republican Gov. Sarah Palin is the most severe manifestation to date.

As if to prove her right, several liberals left some rather unhinged comments. Here are a few

By: petemurray

1. Ms. Palin has rushed to make political capital from her Down's syndrome child. However, as Alaskan writer and herself a mother of a Down's syndrome daughter, and Democrat, Mary Mullen points out, all the programmes onwhich Alaskan parents of special needs children depend to assist them in helping their children maximize their potential were put in place under Democrat administrations and were opposed tooth and nail by the Republicans.
2. The political wedding of her pregnant 17 year old daughter is nothing less than child-abuse in the cause of political respectability. To pressurize this pregnant child into marriage at this age is to ignore the statistical fact that 95% of such marriages fail with sad personal consequences to all concerned. This child was impregnated when she was 16 and in most advanced societies "Levi" would not be preparing for marriage. He would be preparing his defence to charges of statutory rape.
3. Imagine what a field day Ms. Malkin and the other attack-dogs of the extreme right-wing press would have had if Chelsea Clinton had got herself pregnant at 16 rather than exercsing restraint and growing up a credit to herself and her parents.
4. Is feckless teenage parenting and the equally feckless failure of parents to inculcate decent values in their teenage children now off the agenda for conservative pundits?

September 7, 2008 at 3:35 p.m. | Mark as Offensive

By: SDindependent

It is Sunday, McBush has Palin sequestered, she is not allowed to take a singe question from anyone. According to the lobbyist that runs his campaign, Rick Davis she will not be interviewed until she is ready..... "READY". What the hell is this. She is not READY to answer a question from a reporter but she is READY to step in and take over the presidency.

This has got to be the most ominous scam on the American public since the Bush-Cheny Iraq War on WMD's claim.

September 7, 2008 at 2:18 p.m. | Mark as Offensive

By: kc

More spittle for Cons to lick up. Ms.hatelibs selling some of her wonder spittle for the gullible Cons to swill down. Drink it up and feel empowered by hate. Nothing more liberating in the world then being given permission to hate. Lick it up. Feel the power.
September 6, 2008 at 9:52 p.m. | Mark as Offensive

You can see that when Malkin wrote Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild, she had no lack of material to draw from.

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May 21, 2008

Senator Ted Kennedy

As I think we all know by now, Senator Edward Kennedy has a malignant brain tumor. The prognosis is not good.

I wish him nothing but a speedy recovery. He and his family are in my prayers.

Much as I may disagree with him and other liberals on policy matters, I wish none of them personal misfortune. It is time to put all of the aside right now as he and his family go through this difficult time together.

Posted by Tom at 7:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 16, 2008

Bush in Israel and the Democrat Melt Down

Well well, so Senator Obama and a whole slew of Democrats are all bent out of shape over what President Bush said in Israel. Here's the part of his speech before the Knesset yesterday that has them all in a tizzy:

Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history. (Applause.)

Note, of course, that no Democrat is actually named. If the currently outraged Democrats had been thinking, they would have issued statements that went something like this:

"One thing all Americans agree on is that appeasement doesn't work. As president, I will engage in tough, principled, and direct diplomacy just like Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan before me. And of course, no American president will engage with terrorists, least of all those who seek to destroy our stalwart ally, Israel. I look forward to celebrating the 65th anniversary of Israel's independence."

But nooooo, they had to all go off and through a big hissy fit.

Senator Obama showed why he'll never be qualified to be president:

I'm a strong believer in civility and I'm a strong believer in a bipartisan foreign policy, but that cause is not served with dishonest, divisive attacks of the sort that we've seen out of George Bush and John McCain over the last couple days

and

That's exactly the kind of appalling attack that's divided our country and that alienates us from the world

"Divisive"? This from a senator who's party wants to force "gay marriage" on us through the courts; the most undemocratic branch of government? That is in bed with Movon.org, one of the most "divisive" groups out there? That panders to the nutroots crowd who regularly deride Bush and Cheney in the most vile terms?

Mark Salter nails Obama's M.O.

We have all become familiar with Senator Obama's new brand of politics. First, you demand civility from your opponent, then you attack him, distort his record and send out surrogates to question his integrity. It is called hypocrisy, and it is the oldest kind of politics there is.

Rich Lowry lists Obama's "rules", and what is "off limits"

He can't be called a "liberal" ("the same names and labels they pin on everyone," as Obama puts it); his toughness on the war on terror can't be questioned ("attempts to play on our fears"); his extreme positions on social issues can't be exposed ("the same efforts to distract us from the issues that affect our lives" and "turn us against each other"); and his Chicago background too is off-limits ("pouncing on every gaffe and association and fake controversy").

Should we on the right take Obama up on his stated desire to have an oh-so-clean campaign?

We could take Obama's rules in good faith if he never calls John McCain a "conservative" or labels him in any other way. If he never criticizes him for his association with George Bush. If he doesn't jump on his gaffes (like McCain's 100-years-in-Iraq comment that Obama distorted and harped on for weeks). And if he never says anything that would tend to make Americans fearful about the future or divide them (i.e., say things that some people agree with and others don't).

Oh, and he would have to stop lying about the meaning of Senator McCain's "100 years in Iraq" statement.

Obama's not alone, though, in his whining. Michael Goldfarb, blogging at The Weekly Standard, has usefully compiled a list of reactions. Here's one

(Senator Joe) Biden again did not mince words when discussing Bush's remarks, accusing the president of engaging in "long-distance swiftboating" with his speech in Israel. Biden also cited numerous examples of the Bush Administration reaching out to unfriendly regimes in Libya, North Korea and Iran, arguing that Bush's insinuation that the Democrats were soft on terrorism was "truly delusional ... and truly disgraceful."

The Democrats can sure dish it out but they can't take it.

So What of Appeasement?

The Democrats claim that they're not appeasers of dictators and terrorists. Are they?

Since Senator Obama is the one in the limelight, let's look briefly at his record:

Senator Obama: yesterday "George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists..."

Senator Obama November 1, 2007: "I would meet directly with Iranian leaders. I would meet directly with Syrian leaders. "

A quick look at the relevant website for the State Department confirms what we already know

Iran remained the most active state sponsor of terrorism....

Since Syria's 1979 designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, it has continued to provide political support to Palestinian terrorist groups.....

What really is the difference between meeting with Hamas, Hezbollah, and the leaders of those who sponsor them? Neither group could survive were it not for their sponsors.

Want more? Here's Obama at one of the Democrat debates last year:

Asked if he would be willing to meet separately "without precondition" during the first year of his administration with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea, Obama said, "I would."

Here he is again:

"The notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them...is ridiculous," Sen. Obama said in a debate last year. "One of the first things that I would do in terms of moving a diplomatic effort in the region forward is to send a signal that we need to talk to Iran and Syria."

What's ridiculous is the notion that such a meeting will not be trumpeted as a victory by the Jihadists. What Obama does not seem to realize is that the United States is not just an average run-of-the-mill nation. The President, Democrat or Republican, is not called "the leader of the free world" for nothing. Simply meeting with the President will be interpreted as lending legitimacy to regimes that are illegitimate and worried about it. Dictators, by their very nature, have no real legitimacy. The pseudo-elections in Iran and Venezuela (they probably have them in Syria, Cuba, and North Korea too) change this not at all.

So even if nothing is decided at these "talks", they will be portrayed as a victory by the other side. We can say all we want that no, they're not a victory for Iran/Syria/Cuba/North Korea/Venezuela, but it won't matter. The propaganda organs of our opponents will be out in full force, and in one of Bush's biggest failings he hasn't beefed up ours, so there won't be much of a response.

Not Just Obama

It's not just Sen. Obama who is an appeaser. Kathryn Jean Lopez has helpfully compiled a list of other Democrats the President could have been talking about, such as

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, freelance diplomat, who in December 2007 said: "the road to Damascus is a road to peace."

Or, perhaps he meant Speaker Pelosi in April 2007: "I believe in dialogue. As my colleagues have said over and over again, unless you communicate, you cannot understand each other. You cannot reach agreement."

Or maybe he meant recent Obama endorser and former North Carolina senator John Edwards, who, according to his own press release in February of last year, believes "the U.S. should step up our diplomatic efforts by engaging in direct talks with all the nations in the region, including Iran and Syria."
...

Or former Democratic presidential candidates and senators Chris Dodd and John Kerry, who met with Syria's al-Assad and said: "As senior Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee, we felt it was important to make clear that while we believe in resuming dialogue, our message is no different: Syria can and should play a more constructive role in the region ...

Liberals typically bring up the fact that U.S. presidents from Roosevelt to Reagan met with Soviet leaders. This is true, but misleading. These were meetings well scripted out in advance, with little being left to chance. Reykjavik in 1986 was the exception, not the rule.

Further, Obama seems blissfully unaware that unscripted high-level meetings are highly risky. As often as not they backfire. Reykjavik backfired on Gorbachev. Khrushchev sized up Kennedy as a "weakling" in their initial meeting, prompting the former to believe he could get away with sneaking nuclear-armed missiles into Cuba. It's widely thought that Stalin snookered Roosevelt at Yalta. If nothing else, Obama should read Khrushchev's rants at Eisenhower or Nixon during some of their meetings. That alone would give him second thoughts.

So should we not "talk" with these regimes? I hate to sound Clintonian, but it depends on what you mean by "talk". A meeting with an Iranian representative in the back room of the Canadian embassy in Madrid? No problem. President-to-President talks surrounded by thousands of reporters? Hold your horses.

Lastly, in fairness I will say that President Bush's tough talk hasn't extended to the Saudis, who's export of Wahhabism is designed to destroy the West. Also, our dopey Secretary of State has been "pressuring Israel to meet with Hamas representatives". Side

On the upside, Senator John McCain tells it like it is

If Senator Obama wants to sit down across the table with the leader of a nation that calls Israel a stinking corpse--what is it that he wants to talk about with him?

Nothing.

Meaningful negotiations could take place if they stop sponsoring terrorist organizations...those are the preconditions for sitting down with the Iranians.

Exactly right.

Update

This is the guy who wants to negotiate with the dictators of Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, and Cuba (h/t Dagney's Rant)

I'm sure they'll all take him very seriously after he destroys our ability to respond to anything militarily.

What we need to do is spend more money on weapons, not less.

Posted by Tom at 8:00 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

March 27, 2008

The Global Patriot Incident

On March 25, the American Forces Press Service issued the following:

A ship on short-term charter to the U.S. Navy's Military Sealift Command fired warning shots at a small boat approaching the ship as it was preparing to transit the Suez Canal last night, military officials reported.

There were no reports of casualties from the ship, the Global Patriot.

Officials said several boats approached the Global Patriot while it was preparing to transit the Suez Canal. The boats were hailed and warned by a native Arabic speaker on the Global Patriot to advise them to turn away. Other warning steps, including a signal flare, were used to caution the boats.

One small boat continued to approach the ship and received two sets of warning shots 20 to 30 meters in front of the boat's bow. All shots were accounted for as they entered the water, officials said.

Here's the same story with video

The initial report of no casualties, however, turned out to be wrong. The next day the AFPS issued this

U.S. 5th Fleet officials today expressed regret for the death of an Egyptian citizen who died the night of March 24, an apparent result of warning shots fired at a small boat approaching a ship chartered by the U.S. Navy.

"We express our deepest sympathies to the family of the deceased," Vice Adm. Kevin J. Cosgriff, 5th Fleet commander. "We are greatly saddened by events that apparently resulted in this accidental death. This situation is tragic, and we will do our utmost to help take care of the family of the deceased."

The U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet Command continues to work cooperatively with Egyptian authorities, including the Suez Canal Authority, through the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, officials said. A full investigation into the incident is under way....

Oh boy, I thought, here we go again. Will we get the same reaction from the left as we did in early January when several small Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats zoomed around 3 US Navy ships?

This blog doesn't get many comments, but I did get one on the post that I wrote about the incident from some leftist who wrote that "So, WHY was it that the Iranians threatened the US? Funny stuff, eh pal? Some jokester on the CB airwaves! The Pentagon once again has mud on its face." Over on his own blog he took great delight in mocking the administration. I heard much the same from commenter "anon" over at the most excellent DowneastBlog (I can't find the exact post).

The incident with the Global Patriot hasn't received the same coverage, but the Internet being what it is I felt sure that someone else was blogging about it. I checked the Daily Kos and Huffington Post to see if they had anything. To their credit, I have only been able to find straight-up news reports on those two blogs. So unless I'm missing something they're not engaged in any wackyness on this one. There is a long thread about it over at the Democrat Underground, but other than the usual talk about "mercenaries" not much of note.

You don't have to go far on Google, however, to find posts on "Global Patriot". This guy titles his post "Global Patriot Lied: Egyptian WAS Murdered", so you know where he's coming from. Another says that the incident proves that we're "ignoring sovereignty". His theory is that we're trying to paper over the affair because "It's just some Egyptian guy", but if it is was an Australian "the papers would go beserk!" There are more but these came up on page 1.

Now, I'm sure that many leftists are being responsible about this incident, as my search of the Daily Kos and Huffington Post showed. And no doubt the right has it's share of nutty bloggers as well.

I just rather thought I'd use this post to discuss this from a larger perspective. Because if the left isn't going nuts over the incident with the Global Patriot, the one in January with the Iranian speedboats showed that too many will rush to see anything as another Gulf of Tonkin Incident, just as every spike in violence in Iraq is seen as portending another Tet Offensive.

My friend (ok I've only met him once) Steve Schippert was writing the other day over at National Review's The Tank blog about an incident in Iraq, but his words apply here as well

There are things beyond our control in Iraq. And there are mistakes we make. But there are far more things that we simply are not aware of because we are not omniscient or omnipresent. Or, you can believe that we are a torturous, imperialistic force of bad actors and worse actions. Take your pick.

Anyone who has read this blog at all knows that I take the former position.

With regards to the Global Patriot, any one of a number of things may have happened. Our guys may have simply miscounted the rounds as the hit the water and not realized that one hit the Egyptian. Or the rounds may have skipped along the water (yes this really happens) and then hit the Egyptian. The contractors simply assumed that the rounds went into the water.

Another possibility is that Egyptians may really be members of a Jihadist organization like al Qaeda and killed their own guy to stage an incident (kind of like a suicide bombing but for purely propaganda purposes). It's also possible that the contractors lied about the incident.

Maybe we'll never know.

The question is, what is your initial reaction? If it's to give our side the benefit of the doubt then you possess moral clarity. Yes, let's pursue a vigorous investigation. But as with Schippert, it annoys me to no end that there are those who's first reaction is to assume that the American government is lying, misleading, racist, on and on.

And please, lets not have any tripe about how we all need to "question authority". That's not what this is about. It's about a knee-jerk leftism that lives in the past and wants every American military venture to become another Vietnam.

The bottom line is that bad things happen by accident. You can take every imaginable precaution and you will still have incidents of this sort. And it doesn't matter whether a conservative Republican or liberal Democrat is in the White House.

This said, we do need to be aware that incidents such as this one will be exploited by the anti-American and Jihadist media to their fullest extent. As I have written many times, we are engaged in a War of Ideas as much if not more than one involving bombs and bullets. We need to do all that we can to keep these incidents from happening. We also need to do all that we can to put our own media in place so that when they do we can get out our side of the story quickly and efficiently.

I think that the responsible position is to simply wait for the results of the investigation. If we don't think the investigation was honestly done, then let's say so. If the results of the investigation are such that we need to change our procedures, fine, let's do so. If we even need to prosecute people let's do so, though this seems unlikely. But it's at best irresponsible to judge before the facts are in.

In the meantime, though, can we please give our side the benefit of the doubt?

Posted by Tom at 9:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack