Some facts about the Stinger missile

(See updates, below.)

Here are some facts about the Stinger missile from its Army PDF fact sheet.

Description and Specifications

Stinger is a fire-and-forget infrared/ultraviolet (IR/UV) missile system. This missile homes in on the heat emitted by fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and other targets. Stinger uses an eject motor to propel the missile a safe distance away from the gunner; a flight motor then ignites and propels it to the target. A proportional navigation system enables it to fly an intercept course to the target. The Stinger program has evolved from the Redeye, to Stinger Basic, followed by Stinger Post, to the Stinger Reprogrammable Microprocessor (Stinger-RMP). The Block I software and hardware changes to the Stinger-RMP missile provide a greatly improved capability to engage advanced cruise missile and UAV threats.

Guidance: Passive infrared and ultraviolet homing
Speed: Supersonic
Navigation: Proportional with lead bias
Weight: 34.5 lbs
Diameter: 2.75 in
Length: 60 in
Prime Contractor: Raytheon (Tucson, AZ)

Updates
The pursuit speed of a Stinger is classified, but is reportedly as fast as Mach 2.2.

For a good photo of a Stinger hitting a F-14 Tomcat fighter in a test, click here.

What all these specs and system upgrades mean is that if a Stinger locks onto your airplane, you're screwed, especially if your plane is a slow-moving airliner. The only redeeming fact is that the Stingers the CIA sent to the mujahideen to use against the Soviets, back in the 1980s, are old models and not nearly as capable as the present ones. Even so, they scored a 79 percent kill rate, downing more than 270 Soviet aircraft.

Compared to earlier AA shoulder-fired missiles, including the older Soviet-era SA-7, the 1980s-legacy Stingers advantages are:

It is faster and is an "all aspect" weapon, meaning it can home in on an aircraft from any angle - front, side, rear. The others could only home in from the rear.

The Stinger's warhead is more powerful.

Update, June 4
I meant to post this update earlier, but events intervened. Steven den Beste, back at the helm of USS Clueless after a vacation break, adds:

It is true that the Stingers given to the Mujahadeen had a good success rate (though I'm not sure I believe any 79% kill rate especially in the hands of unskilled users) but the majority of them were being fired at helicopters and those are much easier to hit than jets.

The 79 percent kill rate came from a West Point research paper. The Stinger shooters were not exactly untrained; they got training in Pakistan by CIA. And if their targets were mostly Soviet helicopters (Steven is correct here), then a high accuracy rate isn't so incredible.

. . . the Stinger has a ceiling of about 5,000 feet. If you're higher than that, it isn't capable of climbing high enough to reach you. It's also got a limited horizontal range but I don't know what it is; probably no more than three or four miles.

According to a US Marine Corps fact sheet, the Stinger's ceiling is 10,000 feet, and it's slant range is up to eight kilometers (just under five miles).

our military aircraft now have detectors for incoming projectiles, and when such are detected they drop flares. The flares are brilliant and extremely hot, and a heat seeker will prefer them. Also, they dump a bunch of them at once, and the aircraft gets lost in all the heat noise that is created. Here's a picture of an AC-130 doing it:

http://denbeste.nu/images/ac_130.jpg

Once the Soviets knew that the Mujahadeen had Stingers, they were able to reduce losses of cargo planes at Kandahar to nearly nothing by routinely dropping flares during takeoffs and landings.

Yes, the flares are pretty effective. I am sure that the Special Mission aircraft flying out of Andrews AFB are so equipped - Sgt Stryker would know for sure, since he just left duty at that wing, but his lips are no doubt sealed. Obviously, civilian airliners don't have the flares.

Military helicopters have also used infrared jammers for many years. These are heat emitters of the right frequency, usually located behind the engine pod on top. They work by scattering infrared radiation in random directions away from the chopper. Hopefully, the missile's seeker will reject the scattered infrared as a valid lock and will keep seeking elsewhere.

The Stinger made a really big difference in the 1980's. But the ones that the Mujahadeen had then are not only old and relatively primitive, but it's virtually certain that any remaining ones are nonfunctional now. The components decay with time; batteries wear out, and the propellent in the rockets goes bad unless it's properly stored and maintained.

This is really the key point. Shoulder-fired missiles are manufactured in other countries, Nork Korea, for example. While only the US makes Stingers, I am not so certain that 1980s-era Stingers could not be maintained by other countries. Iran certainly knew how to store and field Stingers during Operation Earnest Will. Would Iran or North Korea be able to make batteries and other components? Maybe, maybe not. My guess is that Steven is right and that the missiles are pretty much inoperable. But we do not know.

Steven, thanks for reading and writing and welcome back online!

Are we winning the war?

Rand Simberg has a good posting about why in January, 66 percent Americans thought we were winning the war, but now only 40 percent do.

Fox News's report of the wounded lieutenant and airline security stupidity

Earlier today I reported on a story I had heard on my radio while driving. Here is Fox News' report of the incident. (I got the officer's name wrong; I said it was John Miller, but it was Greg Miller.)

Some SA-7 anti-aircraft missiles were built for self-activated firing

The media are reporting that the Bush administration believes that al Qaeda may have smuggled SA-7 and/or Stinger anti-aircraft missiles into the US, although the White House says there is "no evidence" that such missiles are actually within our borders.

(So why the alert?)

The SA-7 Strela-2 (NATO nickname, Grail) is a first-generation Soviet-era missile, a blatant copy of the American Redeye, which was replaced by the Stinger. The Grail was not terribly effective against American aircraft in Vietnam. It has a small bursting charge of RDX/AP explosive; it was not unusual for single-engine fighters to survive a Grail hit and fly home. SA-7s home in on the engine heat of airplanes, but the Grail's seeker system was crude. A Phantom pilot I knew told me he threw several off track by flying straight toward the sun. Once the track is lost, SA-7s don't easily re-acquire. They can only acquire a target from the rear. They have a range of about 4.7 kilometers (about three miles).

I think a large airliner (B-737 or larger) could withstand a hit by a SA-7. Not that it would be fun, but probably the worst that would happen would be the loss of an engine, a problem for which airline pilots are well trained. Because the Grail is short range, an airliner would be close to an airport (taking off or landing) when hit. Onboard fire-control systems would hopefully manage the engine fire until the landing.

The Soviets developed a special version of the Sa-7 for use by the special operations forces, the spetznaz. It was called the Strela-Blok. It was an automatic missile, designed to be emplaced before hostilities near an enemy (i.e., NATO) air base. A timer would be set for it to become "active." Afterward, a directional microphone, aimed at the air base, would detect the sound of aircraft engines. The mike was linked to a frequency filter, a Doppler sensor. The Doppler sensor was connected to the firing mechanism through the power module.

Usually, the mike was designed to aimed at the end of the runway, at a 45-degree angle upward. It would detect all aircraft noise from ground level to 12 degrees past vertical in the sky.

When an aircraft passed overhead, the Doppler sensor would compute when the Doppler curve began to decrease, indicating that the closest approach had just been passed. It would send an electrical signal to the firing mechanism, which would confirm an infrared lock on the target. The rocket would then fire, sending it toward the aircraft at 1,600 kilometers per hour (about 1,000 mph).

A Strela-Blok missile would be a real danger in the US. It could be emplaced in darkness, days ahead of time, and the terrorists would be miles away when it fired.

Civilian airliners would surely not be the primary targets. From Andrews Air Force Base fly Air Force One and all Air Force Special Air Mission aircraft (VIP flights). What about security operations on the ground around the base out to three miles?

Enemy SAMs in America?

Multiple news reports say that the terrorists may have smuggled shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles into the United States. It is said the missiles are either Russian-made SA-7 missiles or American-made Stinger missiles left over from the Afghans' war against the Soviets in the 1980s.

We know not all the Stingers we sent to the Afghan mujahideen were expended or returned. When the United States began American-flagging oil tankers in the Persian Gulf in the late 1980s as part of Operation Earnest Will, we sent specially equipped Army aviation units of the 18th Aviation Brigade to the Gulf to protect the tankers from Iranian gunboats.

I played a small role in that operation. I remember well a briefing to the major general who was the deputy commander of XVIII Airborne Corps, the superior headquarters to the 18th Aviation Brigade. An operations officer was dismayed to report that they had discovered the Iranians had Stingers. Where did they get them? They were trying to find out.

The general, whose name I forget, snorted and said of course the Iranians bought the Stingers from the mujahideen. "The CIA was handing the missiles out like candy and you can bet these things will turn up around the Middle East for years to come," he said. How prescient he was.

So maybe some Stingers are here, in the wrong hands. Sometimes the Law of Unintended Consequences comes fully into play.

Holding a mirror to Islam

Muslim author Ayhan Ozer says that Christianity and Judaism face "circumstantial problems that can be corrected with common sense." However,

Islam's problems are more fundamental and structural, it takes hard work and a long time to even identify them, for there will be debates, discussions, even wars for daring to find fault in Islam; the corrective measures may never make the agenda.

Thanks to TransTerrestial Musings for the link.

Forget the Alamo!

While trying to get more details by listening to the same radio station cited in my post about Lt. Miller, below, I heard a report that the PC police in Texas are trying to remove from public school curricula the story of the heroic stand of Tennesseans and Texans at the Alamo during the Texan War for Independence. They say that history is offensive to the many Mexicans (former or current) who live in Texas and send their children to school there.

I just report it, I don't make it up. How was it that George Orwell put it? "Down the memory hole?" Something like that.

Why airliners are still not secure

In the car today I heard on radio news of the story of Lieutenant John Miller, an active-duty military officer (Army, I think), who was awarded the Purple Heart for wounds suffered in combat in Afghanistan. He was wounded in the face and jaw, and as part of his treatment his jaws were wired shut. He was given a small set of dental wire cutters to use in case he had an emergency (nausea, for example).

Well, this American hero - truly - was sent home on convalescent leave. He landed at the Air Force base and went to the nearest civilian airport to take a flight home. Lt. Miller was stopped at security and his dental wire cutters were confiscated as a potential weapon.

(How many of you thought that was what you would read before you read it? Most, I'll bet. Does that tell us something about what we think of security at airports?)

The newscast said that after some time, the cutters were returned and Lt. Miller proceeded. An airport spokesman was reported as attributing the event to a "misunderstanding."

No, sir, there has been no misunderstanding. We understand perfectly well that airport checkpoint procedures are idiotic to the extreme. That is why an El Al security analyst said that America does not have a system for airline security; it has a system for harrassing passengers.

To treat every passenger as an equal threat is so unspeakably foolish that I cannot find the words to describe it. Lt. Miller is a serving military officer. He is a wounded veteran of combat against the terrorist enemies who struck us Sept. 11. But he was treated by the "security" apparatus as a real danger to the airliner - because he was carrying dental wire cutters issued to him as part of his treatment.

More words fail me. If anyone has any more details on this, such as which airport, please email them and I'll post them.

Jed Babbin says war is in fact imminent and unavoidable between India and Pakistan

"Some wars are avoidable. It appears that the coming war between India and Pakistan over the disputed Kashmir region is not," he says. Here's the rest.

Why aren't India and Pakistan already fighting?

Today's news reports say that at least one million troops are massed by India and Pakistan along the disputed lines of control in Kashmir and adjacent areas. There have been cross-border artillery fires in recent weeks that have killed Indian civilians - this month there was an attack on an Indian base that left 34 dead, mostly women and children . So why aren't the two nations at war already?

The history of the subcontinent is not one of calm deliberation over such provocations as each side accuses the other. I think there are some new wrinkles that are staying the hand on both sides.

Unquestionably, the number one deterrent to open warfare is that both countries are nuclear powers. Both nations realize full well that nothing gained from war can possibly outweigh the destruction that a nuclear exhange would yield. Who owns Kashmir is inconsequential compared with the prospect of losing hundreds of thousands or even millions of citizens, and both sides know it.

Pakistanis are pretty clearly the overall aggressor, but that does not mean the Pakistani government is. The Musharraf government makes the same territorial claims that its predecessors did, but Musharraf is not controlling the cross-border terrorism by Pakistani or Pakistani-sponsored terrorists. (This morning the British government, though, gave India a diplomatic victory by stating, from the mouth of British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw,

"President Musharraf has already had enough time [to contain cross-border terrorism]. It is vital he recognizes the urgency of the situation," Straw explained. Straw appeared to dismiss assertions made by Musharraf in a televised speech on Monday that infiltration across the border into Indian Kashmir had stopped. "The test is by action and not words. The international community looks to Musharraf for full implementation of the promises made by him," he said. . . . Straw said that he would "reiterate that the United Kingdom stands with all civilized governments, particularly India".

India probably realizes that Musharraf may be driven from office by war, and his successor, whomever it might be, would be more inimical to India, not less.

The presence of tens of thousands of American citizens in the region, plus the presence of powerful American military forces, may well be staying the hand from the trigger.

The Indian government realizes that a nuclear exchange, even if limited, would probably lead to its fall.
The problem is that non-governmental militaries, that is, terrorists, are numerous, devoted, and well armed. They also enjoy significant support from many sectors of the population and from some military agencies. It will be an iron task for Musharraf to clamp down on them, for they will fight back violently. Actually, they already have fought back:

[In] early 2001, the Pakistani Interior Ministry issued instructions for all religious militant groups fighting in Indian Kashmir to close their offices in Pakistan. The backlash was swift and fierce. There was strong resistance within the senior echelons of the military leadership, as well as in the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), at that time headed by Lieutenant-General Ahmed Mehmood. The move was brought to an abrupt halt the very next day, and a smear campaign was begun against the interior minister. However, he refused to admit defeat and publicly warned that the militant groups would have to change their behavior or one day face the music.

The post-Taliban era has helped [Pakistani Minister of the Interior Moinuddin] Haider realize his warning to the militants and to push forward with an aggressive agenda to establish a civil society, even though his brother, Ehetesham, was shot dead in Karachi. [citation]

The situation is indeed serious. But overall, I think that the threat of civil war within Pakistan, or at least much escalated guerrilla war, is actually more serious than war between India and Pakistan. If that comes to pass, India may contemplate intervening in some way to preserve the Musharraf regime rather than risk control of Pakistan's nukes by Islamic radicals.

The Saudis are not our friends

I have said it before, but it bears repeating. Now Michael Barone lays it on the line in his essay, Our enemies the Saudis.

Getting back on course in the Terror War

I don't know about you, but I have had a nagging feeling for some time now that the Bush administration is acting as if it is lost in a fog on what to do next in fighting the Terror War.

Today I found an editorial in the Asia Times that brings my unease into focus. Titled, "Give War a Chance," it was written Feb. 1 in response to President Bush's State of the Union address. Here are some key parts.

One may also agree - though few nations even among America's allies now do - that it is necessary to extend the anti-terrorism campaign to "rogue" states in possession of weapons of mass destruction and with the possible present or future intent of passing such weapons to terrorist groups.

But it is far from clear what sort of course Bush is charting when he speaks of having "a great opportunity during this time of war to lead the world toward the values that will bring lasting peace", or of taking "the side of brave men and women who advocate these values around the world, including the Islamic world ..." Is the war on terror, already pretty open-ended and - perhaps of necessity - without a precise exit strategy, to be converted into a "war of liberation"? Is Bush declaring Leon Trotsky-style "permanent revolution" in which wars afford the opportunity of speeding up the liberation process? On Tuesday, did we witness the birth of George W Bush the revolutionary?

Well, tell us it is so, George! Tell us that the US henceforward will shun alliances with rotten regimes if somehow that suits the national interest. Tell us that the very definition of the American national interest and purpose forecloses making rotten compromises not just with Iraq, Iran or North Korea, but also with the likes of Abdullah's Saudi Arabia or Karimov's Uzbekistan. Yes, George, in that sense, give war a chance.

The problem is that the administration does not seem to be giving the Ammerican people regular status reports on the progress of the war. We have instead received assurances that more terrorist atacks are "inevitable," which is hardly heartens one that significant progress has been made.

So it would be nice for the administration to explain how much damage have we done to terrorist organizations and networks. I don't mean just giving us a body count, but how much have we decreased their ability to war against us? What is the broad outline of our national objectives for the next year? Five years?

We need to be clued in better.

Sgt Stryker explains why the departure of US forces from the Philippines is entirely appropriate. It's because we won. Let's see whether the media play it that way in days to come.

When did the teen years begin?

The flying fingers of Glenn Reynolds have spun across the keyboard to produce an opinion piece at Foxnews called, "Teen Sex and Media Hype."

Basically, Glenn says that teenagers today are "infantilized," meaning they are treated as children who tend to display some adult vices. He suggests that the teen years stop being seen as an extension of childhood and the beginning of adulthood. So teens should bear adult-level responsibilities, such as holding down real jobs.

It's an interesting idea, and one I strongly endorse. What we think of as the teen years are really an invention of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Jobs were so scarce that the federal government encouraged businesses to employ only primary breadwinners of households. Most teens then worked, and they found themselves unemployed. Married, working moms were sent home, too.

It was from this enforced idleness that the teen years became socially and culturally distinguished as a sandwich time between childhood and adulthood, and "teenagers" were seen as a distinct group with a special psychology, requiring special care. This didn't happen right away, but it was firmly in place by the end of the 1950s.

Today, among the middle classes at least, the years of grades 7 -12 are consumed with organized sports, organized recreation and activities hoped to enhance college admission. It's not the lack of gainful employment that I bemoan, it is the regimentation of teen's lives. There is so little room for spontaneity in their lives. My peers, parents of teens as I am, seem sometimes to be wholly impassioned with making sure their kids' calendars are crammed. It is a pit I find myself falling into also. This is bad for the kids and bad for the parents.

The effects of nuclear weapons

As you know, the media have been talking a lot about the possibility of nuclear war between India and Pakistan. The US Army in its infinite wisdom decided I needed the skill of nuclear target analyst, for which I was duly trained at Fort Sill, Okla., in 1982. The course was called the Nuclear and Chemical Target Analysis Course (abbreviated NCTAC, pronounced "Nicktack"). It also qualified me to be a chemical target analyst, but that was really a joke because the Army possessed almost no chemical weapons.

NCTAC was a mind-searing course. It was the only military course I ever took or heard of in which a score of 99 percent was a failing grade. The standard to pass each test was to score 100 percent, and no tests could be failed and still pass the course. It was extremely technical. In 1982 there were no personal computers, so we didn't have laptops or even programmable calculators to do the calculations. We did all the arcane calculations with slide rules, table data, pencils and paper.

The course was self-paced. It would have been impossible to teach it lockstep; with the passing grade set so high, every student had to be fully ready to take each test, and not everyone learns at the same rate. All you had to do, schedule-wise, was make progress according to certain benchmark dates, and even those dates were usually about three days duration each. Instructors monitored your progress and gave you individual tutoring if you needed it, but not a lot: if you could not intuitively grasp the course material going through the instructional materials, the Army wasn't very anxious to send you out with a credential that you didn't self-competently earn.

You had to come to class each day, but once you signed in, your time was your time. We went on break whenever we wanted and could leave for the day when we wanted. We just had to make the benchmarks. There was more than one day when I went home before noon because my brain had turned to what we called, "NCTAC mush."

Of course, all the material was pretty highly classified, so there was no homework, and no study materials could be taken out of the building wing the course was held in. Its whole floor was actually a highly secure vault.

Anyway, with the media beating the drum of potential nuclear war - and the imminent release of The Sum of All Fears, in which Baltimore gets nuked, I thought I'd offer a short primer about the effects of nuclear weapons.

Nuclear weapons' effects are achieved by blast, thermal radiation (heat) and nuclear radiation. Blast waves are attenuated by mountainous terrain, but are multiplied by fairly flat terrain. This is because in any air burst, the blast wave moves both down and away from the explosion. The downward blast wave then reflects out, away from ground zero. This reflected ground blast wave is called the "mach stem." When the mach stem crosses the other, laterally moving blast waves, the blast effects are amplified. This effect is greatly reduced by mountainous peaks and valleys. (Air bursts are more damaging than surface bursts, and air bursts do not produce fallout. US policy for decades has been not to produce fallout.)

Thermal radiation works only when there is something to burn. Thermal radiation does not penetrate the ground and would not affect contents of caves under mountains. Thermal radiation moves in a straight line only. It can be reflected under some conditions, but it doesn't turn corners.

There are four components of nuclear radiation. From least worrisome to most:

alpha particles can be stopped by a piece of paper

beta particles can be stopped by a sheet of tinfoil.

gamma waves and free neutrons are lethal, but even a well-constructed foxhole blocks gamma excellently and neutrons quite well. As for many meters of granite or limestone, as in a cave, forget it.

There are other effects of nuclear detonations, such as electro-magnetic pulse (EMP), but they are not considered militarily significant.

Blast effects get all the special effects work in movies and media attention among the chatterati, but in our planning criteria, we hardly considered blast as militarily significant, nor thermal much. It's radiation that we planned for. The relative vulnerability of human beings to nuclear radiation, based on their shelter or cover, is well known, as is the lethality of different radiation doses. (We had a saying, "Thirty days hath September, and a man with 500 rads," a "rad" being a "radiation absorbed dose," roughly comparable to a roentgen.)

Atomic weapons inherently cannot be used in a way that discriminates between valid enemy troops and innocent others, unless the enemy troops are very isolated - unlikely to occur in either India or Pakistan. But even if such an isolated formation was found, there are other concerns. Potential downwind effects could kill or make ill infants, adults, the elderly, the helpless, livestock and crops and would extend into neighboring countries. The peoples of Pakistan, India and nearby nations would be thrown into panic, creating the worst refugee crisis in history.

"These are the facts, Arabs. What are you going to do about them?"

That's the question Muhammad Omar Al-Amoudi asks in this article in Arab News, which touts itself as Saudi Arabia's first English daily newspaper (the story was linked at Instapundit).

Here are the facts - and remember, these facts appear in an Arab newspaper:

Israel’s GNP exceeds $100 billion while the oil revenue of all the Arab countries combined is barely $113 billion. The average annual income of an Israeli is about 17 times higher than that of an Arab. The Arab’s average annual income is $1,000 while the Israeli average is $17,000. Twelve percent of Israelis are employed in agriculture and another 12 percent in business while the remaining 76 percent are employed in the industrial sector. The average spent on scientific research per year per person in Israel is $110. The Arab world, in contrast, spends a pathetic $2. Israel’s leading electronic industry manufactures several times more than all the Arab countries combined produce. Israel exports $7.2 billion worth of IT products annually and aims to push it up to $12 billion in a decade. As a proportion of its total population, Israel boasts the highest number of engineers and scientists in comparison to any other country.

There is more, but that's the guts of it. What Al-Amoudi wants to know is, what is the future going to be for Arabs? Their economies are stagnant or shrinking.

However, the question he asks about the facts, "What are you going to do about them?" is not altogether heartening. If the Arabs feel marginalized by Israel, or even inferior to Israel, one solution would be to work hard, pull themselves up by their bootstraps and equal of surpass Israel's accomplishments.

But the other solution is just to destroy Israel. And like Al-Amoudi, we are very interested in what the answer will be.

Not news, but still in the news

Joe Katzman, blogmaster of Winds of Change is harnessing the power of the blogosphere in a good cause. He writes:

On May 7, we saw a crushing example of how far our campuses had fallen, courtesy of the near-riot at SFSU [San Francisco State University] against a pro-Israel rally. While a pro-Palestinian crowd trapped raly participants against a wall and shouted "Get out or we will kill you" and "Hitler did not finish the job," administration officials on the scene did nothing. Even the police would not enforce the original security arrangements for the march.

In response to the SFSU near-riot a Blog Burst has been launched, despite Blogger's outages last night and today. Lots and lots of good materials and follow-up, all indexed here:

The events at SFSU should make all real Americans ill. Thanks to Joe for compiling this "blogburst."

The rise and fall of the Bush conspiracy trio

Today's Washington Times has an excellent op-ed that summarizes the scurrilous indictments by Senators Daschle and Clinton and Congressman Gephardt, who each accused President Bush of knowing in advance that American would suffer a severe terrorist blow last September.

The accusations were not merely false, they magnified the worst tendencies of the Democrat leadership to "go partisan" when the chips are down. But they had to beat a miserably humiliating retreat when absolutely everyone rightfully refused to believe them. Just this past weekend,

Under a heartless grilling from "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert, Mr. Daschle was reduced to explaining that he had been misinformed about the facts: "Well, we were told on that particular morning that the president had received [the] facts." The word "told" was Mr. Daschle's way of saying he saw it in the morning papers and TV. In fact, Mr. Russert pointed out and the pained senator admitted, as an ex-officio member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mr. Daschle himself had had access in August to the same information provided the president.
Hillary's defense was, essentially: I was just reading the morning tabloid on the floor of the Senate, on behalf of my millions of constituents. I wasn't suggesting anything, Heaven forfend.

American deserves better. It's time for these three clowns to deliver it.

What would Clausewitz say?

Geitner Simmon writes to point out -

". . . the hashish-using Assassins operated out of Iran and came up with ingenious murder methods that terrorized the elites in many Islamic countries. It seemed like the Assassins couldn't be stopped. But when the Mongols rolled across Southwest Asia, they hunted the Assassins down and shattered their organization. Of course, the Assassins were headquartered in a castle fortress in Iran; when the Mongols destroyed the fortress, the Assassins suffered a huge setback. Al-Qaida, in contrast, is an explicitly decentralized institution.

The Western way of war for the last two centuries has been heavily influenced by the work of the German military theoretician Carl von Clausewitz, whose seminal work, On War is still studied in military schools around the world.

Clausewitz emphasized finding the enemy's "center of gravity," which he defined as, "a centre of power and movement . . . on which everything depends; and against this centre of gravity of the enemy, the concentrated blow of all the forces must be directed."

Geitner's point raises the question, "What is the center of gravity of our terrorist enemy?" The destruction of the Taliban/al Qaeda field forces in Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan was not the destruction of the terrorists' center of gravity. (However, the Taliban are probably through, but the Taliban were not, in themselves, our chief enemy.) The reason is that a field force was never the bin Laden's means of attacking the West.

Clausewitz says more about where lies the enemy's center:

. . . in a confederacy, it lies in the unity of interests; in a national insurrection, in the person of the chief leader, and in public opinion; against these points the blow must be directed. If the enemy by this loses his balance, no time must be allowed for him to recover it; the blow must be persistently repeated in the same direction, or, in other words, the conqueror must always direct his blows upon the mass, but not against a fraction of the enemy.

Interestingly, von C. understood that not all military actions would be directed solely against field armies, although he did emphasize such operations as "the surest commencement" to success.

What is it that is al Qaeda's sin qua non for continued operations? Against that we must direct our main efforts. This is in keeping with the principle of war of economy of force, which holds that the main effort must be directed against the main objective, and peripheral efforts, even if important, must be "economized." That is why most the Terror War's operations against al Qaeda are not and will not be overtly military. In fact, over time I expect that military operations will decline in frequency and intensity.

The Black Crab Syndrome

No, not a new ailment. My friend Dan Miller explains:

In his book "Rich Dad, Poor Dad," Robert Kiyosake tells the story of the Hawaiian Black Crabs. If you go down to the beach early in the morning you can find black crabs. You can put them in your bucket and continue walking on the beach. Now those crabs start thinking, "We are bumping around in this little bucket making a lot of noise but going nowhere." Eventually, one crab looks up and thinks, "There's a whole new world up there. If I could just get my foot up over the edge, I could get out, get my freedom and see the world in my own way." So he stretches up, pushes a little, and sure enough, gets one foot over the edge. But just as he is about to tip the balance and go over the edge - a crab from the bottom of the bucket reaches up and pulls him back down. Instead of encouraging him and seeing how they could help each other get to freedom one by one, they pull anyone attempting to get out back down into that confining bucket where death will come quickly.

Unfortunately, many of us live around a bunch of black crabs, ready to ridicule any new idea we have and just as eager to pull us back down to their level of performance. I have found that one of the key characteristics of successful people is that they hang around people who are performing at the level at which they want to perform. There will always be naysayers and whiners; avoid them. Find winners and spend time with them!

Wandering around with historical amnesia

Don Feder's op-ed piece in today's Washington Times explains what has happened to American history education in public schools:

Schools are so busy telling everyone else's story, there's no time for our own. At its 2001 convention, the National Education Association passed resolutions supporting multicultural education and global education. Absent was any suggestion that students should receive an American education.

When they absolutely must teach something about the United States, educrats prefer niche history — the experiences of African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans.

The idea of e pluribus unum (out of many, one) is anathema to them. Teaching American history — our common story — as opposed to group-identity history, is rejected as ethnocentric and jingoistic.

This mindset was displayed at a forum of the National Council for Social Studies, as reported in the Weekly Standard of May 6. The council represents 26,000 teachers of history, social studies and related subjects.

To a teacher who said that in the wake of September 11, her students wanted to know more about their nation's past, a panelist responded: "We need to de-exceptionalize the United States. We're just another country and another group of people."

Ronald Reagan warned, "If we forget what we did, we won't know who we are." (We'll be like amnesia victims wandering aimlessly about, wondering what it all means.) Mr. Reagan charged "the eradication of American memory" will inevitably lead to "an erosion of the American spirit."

I don't think that Mr. Feder's criticisms are equally valid for all schools. In my son's middle school Tennessee history is taken in 7th grade. Every student must complete a major project about Alvin C. York, to whom Marshal Ferdinand Foch declared, "What you did was the greatest thing accomplished by any private soldier of all the armies of Europe."

On the other hand, this is also a school where a history teacher decided that the way to study ancient China was to put a videotape of Mulan in the VCR, turn down the lights and leave the room. And another history teacher declared - not as a debatable proposition but as a matter of fact - that Andrew Jackson was no different than Hitler. (If you don't know why then there is hope for you yet. If you do why, then maybe you . . . well, I won't say it.)

Come to think of it, Feder is probably right pretty much across the board.

What makes a hero?

(I first posted this on March 27, but it seems apt again for Memorial Day.)

I once compared notes to a Navy acquaintance who was attending a joint-service school with me. It turned out that soldiers and sailors spend about the same amount of time away on deployments, but the sailors' absences come in much larger chunks. I would go away for periods lasting from a few days to a several weeks, but I only had one six-month deployment.

For some reason, the scenes on the TV make me think of some heroes I have known. Both were World War 2 vets who were members of my church.

Bob had been a B17 pilot in 8th Air Force. He flew 16 complete combat missions over Nazi Germany. He only flew half of number 17, because a Focke-Wulfe fighter got him. He and the crew bailed out, but two crewmen didn't survive. He landed safely, near his copilot, who broke his leg upon landing. Bob stayed with him and shortly a farmer came out. Bob said he didn't try to resist. He and the copilot were deep in the heart of Germany and he knew that Nazi police or troops would surely be coming for them soon. The farmer took them on a horsecart to his house. He spoke no English, but his wife began to prepare them a large dinner. After awhile, a 15-year-old girl bicycled up. She spoke some English, having taken it in school.

Bob and his copilot wound up staying the night. The next morning the Luftwaffe took them into captivity. Bob always spoke warmly of the German family who was so hospitable to them even though they were the family's enemies. Bob was a POW for 10 months. He stretched the camp rules as far as he could go. POWs were required to salute German officers of equal or greater rank. So Bob grew a toothbrush mustache like Hitler's and every time he encountered a German officer he snapped to rigid attention, glared straight forward, clicked his heels together and threw his right arm up and out in an exaggerated Nazi salute. Then he would shout, "Guten morgen, Herr Offizier! Eet giffs me grosse happiness to greet you!" or some similar line.

Needless to say, the Germans were not amused. After awhile they pinned him down and told him he would be severely punished if he didn't shave off the mustache and stop the mockery.

Henry was an airplane armorer, a ground crewman, in the Pacific. He serviced the machine guns and bombs of B-25s. He told me one Easter morning that it was on Easter Sunday, 1944, that his unit landed on an island, I imagine he told me which one, but I don't remember. The battle for the island was still going on. In fact, the airfield wasn't yet secure. His commander took Henry's crew to the edge of the runway and pointed across the way to a natural depression in the ground.

"I want you to set up the bomb pit in that hollow," said the CO. "First, clear all the Japanese out of it."

Henry said that they looked at one another, gulped hard, took their Garands and grenades and attacked. They killed or drove away all the Japanese without suffering loss. Then they went to work setting up the bomb pit. By the next day the battle had moved away and B-25s were coming in.

These men, and countless others like them before and since, were heroes. Yet they never thought of themselves as such. After Saving Private Ryan was released, Bob and I talked about it some. He said he had never really realized what the ground troops had gone through in the war. "Boy," he said, "those guys really had it rough."

Here was a man who had flown 16 times through the worst Germany had to offer. He had lost three crewman to enemy fire (two when they were shot down, one on a previous mission). He had seen his friends blown to pieces by flak and had watched other bombers collide in foul weather, killing all aboard. Finally, he had bailed out of a burning plane. He had endured 10 months of captivity. And what did he say about the infantry? "Those guys had it rough."

I think that the real mark of a hero is thinking that the real heroes are the other guys.

I changed the template, will repost links

The old template changed colors, but it was supposed to. It was written that way. A few people emailed me to say they thought there was a browser compatibility problem, and the color changing irritated me also. (I selected that template because it enabled the viewer to customize the font and font size, which I think is a nice feature.)

Anyway, I think this template will work better. I'll get the links back up ASAP. I probably won't try to re-template the two pages of archives, though.

In the meantime, here are my other web sites:

My first blog, not on blogspot, is still available at www.gunner20.com. You can reach my essays from there, and all the archives are accessible.

My truth-in-lottery site is www.thelotteryandyou.com.

Combat trauma and pastoral response

This is a long article I wrote in 1997. I think I did a good job of explaining what soldiers go through in combat, and how it affects them. It is oriented mostly on helping aging combat veterans cope with combat-related issues that surface late in life.

[Soldiers] cope with death in three broad categories. First, they struggle to accept that it is possible (even likely) that they might die. Second, they wrestle with the death of close friends due to enemy action, accident or disease. Finally, many veterans carry the burden of having killed other human beings, sometimes in carload lots.

Several World War II veterans have indicated to me that as their twilight years approach some of these issues are resurfacing. Even the youngest World War II veteran is more than 70. In addition to the common issues of aging and loss that elderly parishioners face, some of them (mostly men, but not exclusively) are now struggling with combat trauma again.

Look at these photos and read these names

The ever-amazing Photodude has posted photographs and the names of Americans killed fighting in the Terror War. This is a fitting tribute for Memorial Day, and every American should take a moment to think about their sacrifice.

I am reminded of an anecdote from World War II. A company commander asked an infantryman, "Are you willing to die for your country?"

"No, sir!"

"You're not?!"

"No, sir, I am not willing to die for my country. But I am ready to die for it, unwilling."

That's all we can ask, and it's what these men did.

A few links for the morning

Lots of good stuff in this morning's Washington Times. First up, an article about the shrinking ranks of veterans.

America's military veterans are dying at a rate of 1,849 per day, and about 1,100 of those are World War II veterans, said Department of Veterans Affairs spokesman Jo Schuda. Department of Defense officials estimate the military conducts about 1,800 military funerals a day.

The article discusses in detail the difficulties of getting a military honor guard for funerals of veterans. There afre too many dying for the active-duty military to send a detail to each one. Also, most vets today die far from a military post.

Sen. Daschle retracts Bush accusation

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle yesterday recanted his May 16 charge that President Bush had advance warning of the September 11 terror attacks, the latest example of a top Democrat backing off from such a claim.

"We were told on that particular morning that the president had received a particular set of facts that he may or may not have received. He has denied having received that information. And we accept that," the South Dakota Democrat said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Mr. Daschle added: "If he says he didn't receive it, I'm not going to challenge that. What I'm going to say is, why didn't he receive it?"

Tom, maybe it's because Mr. Bush's predecessor in the White House gutted American intelligence-gathering capabilities and never paid close attention to the threat.

One of the best speeches in American history: Douglas MacArthur's address to cadets at West Point

I won't even try to excerpt MacArthur's speech about duty, honor, country. Jsut read the whole thing.

I do recall, though, that Machiavelli said that a nation's military is always the final depository of the nation's virtues. When the national character is so corrupted that the military is no longer virtuous, then the end of the nation is near.

God, freedom and evil

Thanks to Joe Katzman at Winds of Change for a short posting about an essay by Howard Owens on the relationship between God and evil and freedom.

Owens says that our present enemies hate us because we are free. I would add that the freedom hated is not simply political freedom, but theological freedom. The foundation of the present war is not basically political, as we understand politics. It is religious, but in the minds of the radical Islamists we are fighting, there is no strong distinction between the religious and the political. For a fuller explanation than I care to post here, please see my long essay, Why We Were Attacked: Religious Motivations for Anti-Western Violence.

However, even without al Qaeda there is still evil in the world. The theological term for the problem of evil in Christian and Jewish theology is "theodicy," literally meaning, "judging God." The term comes from the book of Job, in which Job, suffering radically for no just reason, demands the right to judge God's dominion over creation.

I think most Christians would be surprised to learn how much of our understanding about God actually springs from Greek philosophy rather than the Hebrew of Jewish scriptures. Augustine (354-430), the most important theologian of the first millennium, was thoroughly Platonic. Thomas Aquinas (~1225-1274), still considered by the Roman Catholic Church as the foremost theologian of all, was strongly influenced by Aristotle's writings.

(The works of the ancient Greeks were discovered by Europeans in the Near East, ironically having been preserved by the Muslims. In fact, the Muslim scholar Avicenna (ibn Sina), 980-1037, is still considered by many Aristotelians to be one of the leading expositors of Aristotle.)

In the 16th century, Martin Luther used Platonic categories to argue against the Catholic church, which by then was heavily Aquinian.

Classical theism

In classical theism, God "is believed to have created the entire universe, to rule over it, and to intend to bring it to its fulfillment or realization, to ‘save it'"(1). Classical theism draws on "intuitions and assumptions of Greek philosophy as much as biblical images," says Tyron Inbody (2).

Catholic Scholasticism developed Aristotelian formulations of God "as absolute, changeless, eternal being or actuality" (3). This idea of impassive immutability remained in the Reformation, though the Reformers emphasized God's sovereignty as unchallenged, absolute power, wholly righteous and gracious. God was understood to have "absolute priority and decisiveness" in divine election. Always known as powerful in the Jewish and Christian traditions, God was now understood as absolutely omnipotent, able to do anything God chose. "The concept of God's omnipotence is located at the center of classical theism" (4), and so is at the heart of theodicy problems.

Theism's Breakdown in Theodicy

Daniel Howard-Snyder observed that theism is the "view that there is an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good being"(5). In theodicy issues these qualities are often highly problematic. Gregory Boyd tells the true story of Zosia, a little Jewish girl in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation, to illustrate why. Zosia had beautiful eyes which caught the attention of a German soldier.

"I could make two rings out them," he said, "one for myself and one for my wife. Let's see whether they really are so beautiful. And better yet, let's examine them in our hands." A witty soldier proposed they take the eyes out. There are screams from the mother and child and laughter from the soldiers. Whom will God hear first? What happens next is that the fainting child is lying on the floor. Instead of eyes two bloody wounds are staring. The mother, driven mad, is held by the other women. Later, the Nazis found it necessary, of course, to eliminate the blind child (6).

Such horrors present classical theism with its greatest challenge. Boyd says, "Assuming (rightly) that God is perfectly loving and good, and assuming (wrongly, I hold) that divine omnipotence entails meticulous control, the problem of evil . . . becomes simply unsolvable." With God's power and goodness both claimed to be unlimited, John Hick says evil "is a problem equally for the believer and the nonbelieiver. In the mind of the latter it stands as a major obstacle to religious commitment, whilst for the former it sets up an acute internal tension to disturb his faith and to lay upon it a perpetual burden of doubt"(7).

This problem was the subject of my Master thesis at Vanderbilt. I'll post more over time.

Bibliography:
(1) Langdon Gilkey, "God," in Christian Theology, an Introduction to Its Traditions and Tasks. Edited by Peter C. Hodgson and Robert H. King, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), 90.

(2) Tyron L. Inbody, The Transforming God, an Interpretation of Suffering and Evil. (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1997), 37.

(3) Gilkey.

(4) Inbody.

(5) Daniel Howard-Snyder, "The Evidential Argument from Evil," in The Evidential Argument from Evil. ed. Daniel Howard-Snyder. (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1996), xi.

(6) Gregory A. Boyd, God At War. (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 33-34.

(7) John Hick, Evil and the God of Love. (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1977), 3.

What to say and not say to the grieving
I have had a lot of experience with funerals and people in mourning, both as one whose kin have died and in ministering to the bereaved. Here is a short course in what to say to the next of kin of the deceased.

What not to say
Do not attempt to explain the death. Comments such as, "This is all part of God's plan," or "There is some purpose served here that we don't understand" are not helpful. Just skip them. Grieving parents, widows or widowers are not looking for cosmic wisdom or theology. No matter how helpful you think such things are, or how intensely you believe them, they do not help.

Do not minimize the impact of the death. Deaths of loved ones are consequential, and must be regarded as such. A woman I knew had to bury her three-day-old baby girl. A woman of her church told her, "At least it wasn't a boy." In the recent death of my elderly and long-term ill mother-in-law, several people said to my wife and me, "At least she isn't suffering anymore." These kinds of comments are cruel, not helpful.

Do not talk about the unfairness of life or make the deceased and the family a victim of circumstances. Comments such as, "I don't see why the doctors could not have done more," or "Your wife was such a good woman, I don't see why she had to die" or the like harm rather than help. The deaths of loved ones create chaos in the mental and emotional states of the families. Often, they wonder whether they could have done something more to save the deceased. Don't say anything that could reinforce these feelings.

What to say
Express sympathy and offer support. Be a friend. Be brief and sincere. Here is a template you can use either verbally or in writing a sympathy card:

I am saddened to hear of your loss. Please be assured that my prayers are with you. I know these days are difficult for you. You have many friends who will support you and who are eager to give you aid and comfort. We pray that you will be strengthened through God's grace, and come to find rest and peace. Sincerely, [name].

It is not inappropriate to offer, "If there is anything we can do, let us know," but not many next of kin will let you know. If you truly want to offer more than moral support, just do it. Offer to take their car to be washed before the funeral. Offer to do their laundry or house sit or visit to answer the phone. Be imaginative in discerning what routine tasks you can perform for the bereaved; those are the tasks that tend to be left undone. Never force yourself on the bereaved, of course, but usually a doer is gratefully welcomed while a mere promiser is forgotten.

If the death was tragic (that is, premature or violent) then you should understand that support will be needed for many weeks, not just a few days. The level of support required will decrease, but do not expect that after only a week or so the bereavement will just end and the bereaved will get on with life. "Getting over it" is something that may never happen for the families of those who died tragically. Parents who lose children, for example, never get over it emotionally although after a time their routines may appear normal. But they always grieve, even after decades.

Anniversary dates can be particularly difficult. For those who lose spouses, the next Valentine's Day can be very difficult. A card or bouquet on that day will be very helpful. A phone call on wedding anniversaries or birthdays of the deceased will be much appreciated.

Adelman says there is cause to attack Iraq
Ken Adelman takes a different tack than I on the subject of military action against Iraq. Adelman discounts reports that 9/11 chief hijacker M. Atta did not meet Iraqi intelligence operatives in Prague (with some reasons he states) and then insists, "Other reasons exist for us to attack Iraq — and soon — besides any direct involvement of theirs in Sept. 11."

I grant everything that Adelman says. In my post of May 22, my main point was not that no reasons exist to bring down Saddam, because there are reasons. I said then and still say now that the Bush administration has not made the case. Adelman is making it, but he's not in federal service. It's Bush, not Adelman, who needs to persuade us.

What I see happening, though, is a variation on the "trial balloon" method of making policy that goes on all the time in Washington. I am convinced there are no near-term plans in the administration to attack Iraq. But there is time to put a finger in the wind now to see how to lead America toward greater willingness to confront Saddam. For the nonce, Bush is content for journalists and other private-sector writers or analysts to compile the bill of particulars for a casus belli. Eventually, the cases they make will become well accepted in media and public opinion. They will be pretty much self-justifying, no longer challenged by the chatterati. Then the administration will adopt the cases as its own, with a minimum of debate and fuss.

We'll see.

I'm back in town, but slow posting this weekend
The funeral went very well, and my wife stayed to help her dad. I'm baching it with three kids. Also, I'm working today, it's Memorial Day weekend, so posting will be slow until Tuesday, and probably mostly linking until then.

The high cost of tort trials is paid in more than money.

There are surgeons who will refuse to undertake a high-risk procedure where the patient's chances are slim to begin with simply to avoid a malpractice lawsuit. This is not good news for any of us. Doctors specializing in obstetrics and gynecology have been hit hard with malpractice suits. Now, fewer doctors are delivering babies. If you are looking at a $200,000 premium for malpractice insurance added on to what Uncle Sam will be taking, you would probably be better off as a truck driver.

"Bombing wave" on the way in Israel.

Waves of suicide bombers are waiting in the wings to carry out attacks, Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer warned yesterday shortly after a stroke of luck averted a catastrophe at the Pi Glilot fuel storage facility between Tel Aviv and Herzliya.

"We are facing waves of suicide bombers, men and women, and believe me that when I say waves I know what I'm talking about," Ben-Eliezer said. His comments came just hours after Palestinian terrorists narrowly failed to blow up the giant facility.

Going out of town, be back Friday
No more posts until Friday night. Have a good week, all!

Bush has not made a case for war against Iraq
Joe Katzman on Winds of Change has been wondering lately whether the US actually intends to confront Iraq militarily. John Deryshire on NRO says the answer is definitely not. This morning Joe cites a Times (UK) story that attempts to explain President Bush's coalition-building strategy among the Europeans.

The US media have seemed certain that the US intends to confront Iraq militarily and decisively. Various media have said the Second Iraq War will begin anytime from late summer 2002 to the spring of 2003. I personally think it will be later rather than sooner. I also don't think that going to war again with Iraq is a certainty. It may not occur, although it definitely seems much more probable than not.

I do not think that President Bush has yet made a case for another war against Iraq.

Do you remember all the rumor mongering in the media and government circles about supposed meetings between head 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence operative in Prague? Now it turns out that the meetings never happened. (I first wrote about the unlikelihood of collusion between Iraq and al Qaeda only a week after the attacks, though not on a blog site.)

While there could be a tie between 9/11 and Saddam's regime, I don't think there is. The violence by bin Laden and his allies against America is not principally a clash between political systems. It is a clash of incompatible world views and irreconcilable ways of understanding the nature of reality itself, springing from extreme Islamic fundamentalism. Saddam and bin Laden, despite their mutual hatred for America, have probably not found common cause, so far, anyway. Iraq, despite Saddam's depravity, is culturally maybe the most highly westernized Arab country. In fact, bin Laden has criticized Saddam Hussein's regime for not being truly Islamic. Bin Laden's fundamentalism doesn't fit comfortably in Iraqi culture. This culture became acquainted with western thought long before the rest of the Arab world and has become deeply embedded with scientific epistemology. Yet al Qaeda has not targeted Iraq, probably because they know that Saddam would be merciless in taking vengeance, and al Qaeda may yet hold out hope that they can use Saddam for their own purposes.

So the question the present Bush administration needs to answer before any action against Iraq is this: What is the present justification for a military campaign against Iraq?

I grant, of course, that Saddam is a bloodthirsty, unstable tyrant whose crimes can hardly be enumerated. But this was true before 9/11. And complicity by Saddam in the attacks of 9/11 seems remote now. So what changed between 9/11 and Jan. 29, when President Bush named Iraq as a nation of the Axis of Evil?

Remember that during his State of the Union speech, Bush did not tie Saddam to 9/11. As the BBC recalls, Bush then summarized his case against Saddam in only one paragraph, with four main issues:

Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror.

The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade.

This is a regime that has already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens, leaving the bodies of mothers huddled over their dead children.

This is a regime that agreed to international inspections, then kicked out the inspectors. This is a regime that has something to hide from the civilised world.

All these things are true, but they have been true for many years. It seems the administration is just taking for granted that the American people somehow intuitively know that Saddam is bad enough to plunge America into a conventional war - a Gulf War replay, although one hopefully with a truly decisive American victory. It is true that polls since 9/11 have shown a very large majority of Americans say they support such action.

But I still say that President Bush has not made the case for war against Iraq. Before the US takes any action, Bush should -

explain fully to the American people what the reasons for war are, and

seek an actual declaration of war against Iraq by the Congress, not just an "authorization."

The campaign in Afghanistan does not offer a model for a campaign against Iraq. The Northern Alliance was an intact political and military opposition to the Taliban regime. But no such thing exists in Iraq to oppose Saddam. The Iraqi National Conference has no military capability to speak of. The northern Kurds just want to separate from Iraq, not take it over. If Saddam is to relinquish power from non-natural causes, it will have to be by revolution within or invasion from without.

Revolution within is extremely unlikely. Saddam has a true iron grip on the security apparatus, and the key positions are held either by blood relatives or tribal members. Furthermore, he killed the likely revolutionists long ago. The men in potential revolutionary-leadership positions are time servers and bootlickers who got there not from talent, but from a reputation for political reliability. They're sheep, not wolves.

That leaves invasion from without as the only other recourse. Despite the fact of Saddam's evil, President Bush must make a case for war. He hasn't done so.

Footnote:

The fact that the administration is not making a case now buttresses my belief that military action won't take place until next year. There is considerable preparation of both military personnel and materiel needed before the US can mount a campaign of 100,000 - 250,000 troops in Iraq.

Also, there are existing UN conditions for unfettered inspections of Iraqi military and military-related facilities. These UN demands go back to the end of the Gulf War. Needless to say, they are not being done. I think the Bush administration will follow a strategy basically like this:

Tell NATO and the the other countries of Arabysmalia that the USA needs to further justification for decisive war against Iraq, is capable of conducting the war entirely on its own if need be, and is ready to start any time.

But will hold off military action and join in demanding Iraq submit to the full inspection regime without delay if and only if the other nations agree that if Iraq fails to comply, a casus belli for decisive American military actions exists with no further debate.

When Saddam does not comply, use their non-compliance as the centerpiece of the casus belli both domestically and internationally.

Arafat's speaking podium in Jenin blown up by Palestinians
So reports Samir Ragab, editor of the Egyptian-government-owned paper, Al-Gumhuriya ("The Republic"). Ragab is a close confidant of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Here are some things Ragab wrote after Yasser Arafat’s May 15 speech to the Palestinian Legislative Assembly, in which he promised to reform the Palestinian Authority, courtesy of World Press Review. Ragab's words are in boldface, my commentary is in italics.

Everyone knows that America insists on applying a policy of double standards in its unconditional support for Israel.

No, America has one standard: true democracy, not the sham kind practiced by your close confidant, Mubarak, also practiced by Arafat. When will you learn that "one man one vote - once" is not democracy?

In Israel, if the people decide that Sharon has to go, he goes. Arafat promised an election, then took the promise back. The Palestinian people have no more choice than Cubans do.

So it's clear that there is no alternative to yielding to the will of the world's only superpower, to whose whims and desires we are all subject.

Well, duh! America is a country at war. As Clausewitz explained, the object of war is to compel the enemy to do your will, whether he likes it or not. Giving our enemies "no alternative" is exactly our objective.

When he went on his first tour after having been released from confinement, Arafat found that his people, who had sympathized with him deeply during his ordeal, gave him a cool reception. He scrapped a visit to the devastated refugee camp of Jenin when someone attempted to blow up the podium where he was supposed to sit.

That's the first I heard of blowing up the podium. Does anyone know whether this was reported in the American press? Is it significant that it wasn't (if it wasn't)? I think it is significant - that it happened at all, and that it wasn't reported in the US.

Arafat . . . must have concluded that the majority of the Palestinians resented the deal to end the 38-day standoff at the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem.

Gee, ya think? And they resented a lot more than that, such as their basic impotence when the Israeli army mounted its offensive. One thing the Arab world does not forgive is losing, and Arafat has lost once too often.

The deal involved the banishment of 13 Palestinians from their homeland.

. . . which does not strike the average Palestinian as a good deal at all.

And the deal did trigger an important question: How can Palestinians struggle for their homeland when their legal representative comes along and approves of exiling those fighters who did everything to return [to Palestinians] their land and their honor?

Or in other words, the Palestinians are starting to realize that Arafat is either incompetent or impotent or both.

Arafat's statements [urging reform of the PA] have spawned many predictions. Some see them as tantamount to Arafat quitting, while others predict that he will eliminate his opponents inside the PA. A third group, mostly loyal to Sharon and the United States, say that Arafat's statements were meant to pull the wool over their eyes. They add that he has made similar promises in the past to fight corruption, but didn't keep them.

Regardless of how things will end up, I think that the United States and Israel have managed to create an inter-Palestinian rift. Should the promised overhaul of the PA come to pass, it would not be to everyone's satisfaction. If the promises go unfulfilled, then the Palestinians will descend into squabbles among themselves, and devote less energy to their fateful conflict with Israel.

It was neither the US nor Israel that has created an intra-Palestinian rift (not inter-Palestinian rift). What has created that rift is the fact that Palestinians, including many of the most important ones after Arafat, are beginning to de-link their future from Arafat because Arafat is a political and military loser. He is becoming personally ever more irelevant.

In his address, Arafat said that peace would remain the Palestinians' strategic option.

Isn't it astonishing that a would-be national leader sees peace as merely an option rather than the primary imperative of a nation's welfare?

But who will fulfill this peace? In my personal view, it will be neither Arafat nor Sharon.

He is probably right.

New ATM machine scam - this is a new one
Nashville and other police departments are disseminating warnings about a new way thieves steal money from ATMs using customers cards and PINs.

They insert a plastic sleeve into a drive-up ATM's card slot, then retreat a distance to watch through binoculars. Someone drives up and inserts his ATM or debit card. Since drivers find it difficult to block the keypad from others' view, the thieves can usually see the PIN being punched in.

The sleeve prevents the ATM from reading the card. After three unsuccessful attempts, the ATM keeps the card. The customer drives away. The thieves go up and pull the sleeve out with the card inside. They use your card and PIN to withdraw the maximum. After repeating this routine many times during the day, they are thousands of dollars richer.

Prevention: feel the card slot of the ATM before inserting the card. If there is a plastic ribbon drive away and notify the branch. Cover the keypad when you enter your PIN. And it's best not to use drive-up ATM at all.

Education: the 15 percent solution
My friend Dan Miller sends out a really good weekly email newsletter called Career Link. You can subscribe, too on his web site, 48Days. Dan is president of The Business Source, in Brentwood, Tenn., and specializes in creative thinking for personal and business development. He believes the most effective life plans are achieved by integrating natural gifts, unique personality traits and one's own values and passions. Anyway, here a nugget from his newsletter:

I recently met Dave Anderson, founder of Famous Dave's restaurants. So yesterday Joanne and I drove up to the new location in Nashville. We were greeted enthusiastically, taken to our table and wowed by the young lady who would be our server. She explained that she would be checking on us continually to make sure our experience there was a memorable one. Then the manager came by. We commented on the atmosphere and the attitude of all the staff. He grinned and explained, "If they aren't smiling, I send them home." The rest of the duties are secondary to that one simple requirement.

A Yale University study shows that only 15% of a person's success is due to technical skill, intelligence, degrees, ertification, etc. - those things we can measure. 85% is due to personal skills - attitude, enthusiasm, tone of voice, honesty, smile, etc.

Hey, here's a complicated theory -- If you want a raise or better job opportunities, try smiling more.

Another question about not arming airline pilots
The administration's decision to forbid airline pilots to use firearms as a last resort to save the plane makes less sense the more I think about it. They want the aircrew and the cabin crew to use non-lethal means. My question is: why do we insist that terrorist hijackers survive an attempt to take the plane?

Suicidal terrorists are obviously not dissuaded by the threat of death. But they are disssuaded by a significant chance of failure. They may be determined to take over the plane or die trying, but if the chances of dying trying are pretty high, they are much less likely to try at all - best to find a different target with a greater chance of success.

Now, though, the Bush administration has decided that "die trying" will never even enter the picture. This means that hijackers' odds of success are considerably better. The decision to leave pilots helpless makes hijackings more likely, and that means flying is more dangerous with unarmed pilots than armed ones.

Oh, the Transportation Dept. says that armed sky marshals on airliners have all the deadly force needed. Sure, of course - when the sky marshal corps becomes the size of the Marine Corps. Right now it is so small that only a tiny fraction of flights are covered, and no plans have been announced (that I am aware of) to expand the sky marshals' numbers.

I am flying to another state tomorrow, and I and my fellow passengers will be just as helpless as those of Sept. 11.

George Lucas is aging, and it shows
And I can sympathize with him, because he is not much older than I. But my point is that the last two Star Wars movies lack the youthful exuberance of the first three. Lucas is a Big Name now, with a Big Business to maintain. Life is much more serious for Lucas now than 25 years ago.

That is the chief shortfall of episodes one and two. Lucas took them too seriously. In episodes four - six, Lucas was out to have fun, push the envelope of movie-making and make a pile of dough. He succeeded an all three counts. But in episodes one and two, all he's done is make a lot of money.

The comparitive shortfalls even of episode two, Attack of the Clones, is stark when you do as I did - see the movie one day and put Return of the Jedi in the VCR the next day. AOTC does not have the "snap" and bon vivant of ROTJ or its predecessors. The characterizations of Solo, Leia, Luke, Chewie and Lando are like nothing so much as frat brothers out to save the universe, sort of like "Luke and Leia's Excellent Adventure." And Darth vader is truly menacing. When he arrives at the behind-schedule Death Star in ROTJ, he tells the commander to get back on schedule because the emperor is not pleased, "And the emperor is less forgiving than I am." Chills run down your spine.

But the younger Obi Wan is plodding and robotic. The barely-shaving Anakin in AOTC is just a spolied brat. Murderous, yes, but not menacing. Vader is cold and calculating, always in control. He's a planner who looks ahead and who takes real risks to achieve his ends. Vader is an accomplished warrior, but generally lets others do the combat when the time for fighting is right. But Anakin is hot-headed and tempestuous. His planning horizon is maybe to this afternoon. He lives only in the "now." He rushes to fight Dooku when the smart move would have been to follow Obi Wans's lead. He slaughters the Tuscan raiders for the death of his mother, but Vader would not have done that. Vader is beyond revenge; he would not waste his time on non-essentials.

How will Lucas show the transition form a immature, spoiled and slight-of-build Anakin to the self-controlled, commanding and hulking Vader? That is the major task for episode four, that and showing how Leia and Luke came on the scene, and what happened to Padme and Anakin. And along the way, George, have some fun and quit making social statements. Okay?

Transportation Dept. sides with terrorists
A spokesman for the US Dept. of Transportation said today that Secretary Norman Mineta would officially announce within a week that pilots of commercial airliners would not be allowed to be armed in flight. The department has opted for "non-lethal" means to halt terrorists and for making the cockpit door penetration proof.

The problem with non-lethal devices, such as sprays or stun guns, is, well, that they are non-lethal. They are not guaranteed effective. And I doubt that cockpit doors can be made truly penetration proof. Al Qaeda has a lot of money and can do a lot of research into how to get through such doors, and will probably have the assistance of one or two national governments in the research and testing.

Typically, the government sees the question as either-or instead of both-and. Why must there be a choice between reinforced cockpits with non-lethal devices in the cabin, and firearms in the cockpit? Why not all of the above?

Also, the government has, as usual, dealt with the issues on terms of absolutes. "No, you may not be armed," as compared to, "Yes, you must be armed." Why not rule that pilots may be armed at their own discretion? (I am recalling a sign on a country store out west: "Attention, burglars. A live rattlesnake is left loose in this store three nights per week. You pick the night.")

Announcing that pilots are helpless can only encourage our enemies. If I were an airline pilot, I'd go armed anyway. If a terrorist broke through the cockpit door I'd shoot him. Do you think I'd get in trouble?

Blogspot is down
And republishing is supposed to fix it.

And it's about time!
Have you, like millions and millions of other Americans, wasted your hard-earned paychecks buying Powerball or state lottery tickets in the forlorn hope if bv becoming a multi-gazillionaire, just like their ads promised you would? Are you a gambling addict, seduced by the blatant lies and otherwise deceptive advertising of the lottery industry?

Fear not! You may yet strike it rich! The Hartford Courant newspaper reports -

FARMINGTON -- One of the first state attorneys general to sue the tobacco industry told a problem gambling conference Thursday that the gaming business will be the next target for lawyers seeking compensation for addicts.

As gambling continues to expand in Connecticut and across the country, "somebody is going to sue somebody," former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger told participants at the New England Conference on Problem Gambling.

Harshbarger, now president of the citizens' lobby group Common Cause, told a mixed gathering of industry executives, gambling critics and researchers that "there is a dramatic public health cost, there is a dramatic social cost."

Lottery advertisers are liars, pure and simple. I do not play the lottery, I have never played the lottery, and I never will play the lottery. And lottery players need to wake up and do some math.

Lord know I would not like to encourage lawyers to do what lawyers do, but someone needs to hold the gambling industry to account. Governments aren't doing it because state legislators in 37 of 50 states are bought a paid for by the gambling lobbies.

So go lawyers, go!

Why I am boosting Southwest Airlines
My wife's mother, 87, became critically ill last week and was hospitalized. Sunday at midday my wife got a call to come immediately, as her mother had little time left. I logged onto Southwest.com and booked a flight for that night - the first one that had vacancies. Later, my wife wondered whether she could get on an earlier flight by going to the airport and taking a chance that someone didn't show up.

So I called 800-I-FLY-SWA to see whether there had been a cancellation on an earlier flight. The lady on the phone said there was a vacancy on a flight just two hours hence. With all the security stuff in place nowadays, we'd have to leave right away to make it. The SWA lady switched the reservation and emailed new confirmation documents within three minutes. I printed them out, and we were out the door.

That is customer service at its best. It is intelligent use of technology. And that is why Southwest gets my unsolicited and uncompensated endorsement.

More terrorist attacks are certain
So say the leaders of our nation. FBI Director Mueller has even said that suicide bombers will strike inside the US.

Notice to Saddam, Khameini, Assad, et. al.: Watch the news coverage of the first suicide bomb attack on al Jazeera, then stand up, bend over, place your head between your knees, and kiss your butt goodbye. 'Cause it's your death warrant.

A few years ago Madeleine Albright asked General Colin Powell, who was still the Joint Chiefs chairman (and resisting a Yugoslavia mission), "What's the point of having this superbly trained military if we don't even use it?" Stay tuned, Madeleine. School will soon be open.

College president baffled at the fruits of "higher learning"
According to OpinionJournal, civil discussions have all but disappeared at America's institutions of so-called higher learning, to be replaced by name calling and insults. Academics pretend to be confused why. So when the Jews at San Francisco State University were told, "Hitler should have finished the job," to which:

The school's president, Robert Corrigan, was also perplexed: "In my 14 years as president of this university, I have never been as deeply distressed and angered," he said. "Strong, even provocative, speech is not the problem, nor are strongly held opinions on highly charged topics. Rather, it was the lack of civility and decency."

Hello? Get a clue, Bobby! College freshmen today arrive on campus, and the first thing you and your fellow profs and administrators teach them during orientation is who is favored, who is protected, and who is fair for attack. You give them a list of arcane rules and regulations about what they may say, and to whom, and what they may not say, and to whom. Then you proscribe gestures and other means of self expression.

The problem is, prof, that college students are not mature. Their morals are incompletely formed. They have an seriously inflated sense of their own wisdom. But students are clever and they know that you are far from impartial. So they play you like a Stradivarius, and you just smile about it - until now.

Sorry, Dr. Frankenstein, but the monster you made is awake and roaring.

CBS finally gives election to Bush!
CBS News has finally given George W. Bush the credit for winning the 2000 presidential election fair and square. With gritted teeth, Dan Rather told Geraldo Rivera today, "Yeah, Bush won, and I want a plane ticket to Kazakhstan. Alec Baldwin is already there."

CBS news executives felt so bad about avoiding the truth for 18 months that to compensate they decided to award Bush two extra years in office, beginning his term in 1998. This compensation allowed them to shift blame for the 9/11 attacks away from Clinton-GORE to Bush. Hence, the CBS News web site informed the world today that Cinton-GORE were not in office when the first intelligence briefings about potential kamikaze attacks were given:

The Washington Post said Saturday that a top-secret briefing memo presented to President Bush in 1998 focused on efforts by Osama bin Laden to strike at targets in the U.S.

So CBS has admitted Bush won, but they have proved once again that around every silver lining, there's a cloud.

Halo around sun means debt forgiveness
People of Miami, Fla., saw a halo around the sun today that caused many to wonder whether the end of the world was near.

'One guy said, 'It's Armageddon,' '' said Sydelle Engel, a customer at the Flashback Diner in Hallandale Beach, a place that suddenly emptied as word spread and people flocked outside. ``Another guy said, 'Good, I don't have to pay my bills.' ''

At the Flashback Diner? Yeah, Acid Flashback Diner! However, the world still turns, and the calendar still flips, so my guess is that the electric company still wants a check.

Readers should be aware, however, of other important biblical precepts for personal management:

Volcano eruptions give you three extra days to return a Blockbuster videotape.

Tsunamis excuse you from wearing clean underwear the day they hit.

Blue moons allow you to sing syrupy romantic songs without having old shoes thrown at you.

Solar eclipses anytime in October give you one more night of Halloween.

Planetary alignments give you a free date with Lara Croft at the nearest Chuck E Cheese's.

Arafat explains relationship between new elections, pigs and Mohammed
Due to translation errors, news reports this week said that Palestinian Chairman Yasser "that's my baby" Arafat said he would call for new elections "when the occupation ends." That was an incorrect translation of the Arabic phrase, "ali abba eden obi wan kenobi yoda vader leia solo, yo gotta nok, nokon wud, gudi gudi too shooze.".

In fact, the obscure Arabic phrase should have been translated, "when pigs emerge from Mohammed's butt," or, colloquially in English, "when pigs fly." All major news media regret the error. Well, okay, they don't regret it, but at least they admit it.

Why Anakin Skywalker Went Bad
Was it because Obi Wan was "holding him back," as he claimed in SWE2? Nah. Was it because the Tuscan raiders kidnapped his ma? Nah.

He went bad because everbody insisted on calling him Annie! "Annie, what's wrong?" asks Padme. "Annie, use the force." "Annie, don't be so headstrong." "Annie, get your gun."

Cripes, was he sick of being called a girl's name! Who wouldn't take a light saber to every living creature in sight! Yep, he's just held his beaten, thrashed, raped and tortured mom in his arms while she gasped her last, which was, "Anni, I love . . . ." That was it by joe! No more! AAHHH! KILL! KILL!

Well, my Daddy left home
when I was three,
and he didn't leave much
to Ma and me,
Just this old light saber
and an empty bottle of air.
Well I don't blame him
that he run and hid
but the meanest thing
that he ever did
was before he left
he went and named me Annie.

The Blame Game
There are two ways Washington can approach the issue of who knew what about terrorists' potential attacks before 9/11. One way is the fix the problem first and fix the blame, if any, later. The other way is the fix the blame now and pretend that's fixed the problem. Some cosmetic systemic changes will be made but no real corrective actions.

Guess which way Washington has decided to do?