Was Christ a pacifist?
Instapundit provides a link, via a reader, to a January 2002 column by David Warren, who says that

It is almost universally held, that "Christ was a pacifist", when he was no such thing; that his more memorable remarks about "turning the other cheek", etc. must apply automatically to states, if they apply to individuals.

That Christ was no warmonger, either, should go without saying. Once again, he left no record of any view at all on war and peace, unless one plays dishonestly with passages of metaphor and prophecy, such as, "I bring not peace but the sword." He addresses the individual soul, consistently. Even St. Paul, writing to leaders of the early Oriental churches, speaks directly to their individual souls. Likewise the Fathers, Doctors, and Saints of the Church, down the centuries, have been very shy about addressing the abstract Caesar.

The essay is not long and worth the read.

Interestingly, Jesus directed people to stop committing all sorts of sins, but he never told soldiers to stop being soldiers. Instead, he told them to be just in their duties:

Luke 3:14
14 Then some soldiers asked him, "And what should we do?" He replied, "Don't extort money and don't accuse people falsely - be content with your pay." (NIV)

But not, "Lay down your arms."

A non-edifying comment on my blog
. . . is what blogger Max Sawicky emailed me about my posts on pacifism. His own posting is a rebuttal, observing (incorrectly) that I seem to think that

"political support for war is testament to one's personal courage, whereas a rejection of it bespeaks cowardice. This is baffling. If anything, in the current climate rejection of Administration policy is more socially and occupationally risky than otherwise."

No, that is not what I said and not what I meant. Political support for the war can be just as cowardly as not. What testifies to courage is whether you put your body at risk. My accusation that the great majority of pacifists are cowards is not based on their politics; I have very favorably cited John Paul Lederach elsewhere, for example, and he sure is no right-winger. What he did was pick up his cross and follow Christ where he understood Christ was leading, even though it almost cost him his life, more than once. What I wrote about almost all self-proclaimed pacifists nowadays was: "With few exceptions, they do not put their bodies where their mouth are." They cry that we should "wage peace" but when I start counting peace wagers, they aren't around.

I have absolutely no doubt that some significant number of the flag wavers and slogan shouters yelling for the US to bomb them back to the stone age are personally too cowardly to enlist and help that be done. No doubt about it. And I wish they would shut up, too. But they don't presume to have a superior religious character or morality to the rest of us, as do the most of the members of the religious left. (Yes, I know religious elitism and snobbery is found on the right, but it's far more prevalent on the left.)

The claim that "in the current climate rejection of Administration policy is more socially and occupationally risky than otherwise," is what is baffling. Who has lost their job because they rejected administration policy? Whose friends have shunned him or her? Just what is the "current climate," anyway? Within my community, war news doesn't get all that much attention any more. And when it does come up in local gatherings of different venues and political affiliations, people express what they think, for or against, and everyone's fine. Sorry, this line is just standard left-wing rhetoric: "Help, help! I'm being oppressed! Come see the violence inherent in the system!"

Max, I don't mind you disagreeing with me and your politics are your right to have. But I'd appreciate it if you would actually be accurate about what I write.

But thanks for reading and for writing!

Major volumes of email on the topic of pacifism . . .
My postings on pacifism, kindly linked to by Glenn Reynolds, Steven den Beste, Joe Katzman and many others, have garnered more email to me than any other topic. Please be patient, as I do not deal cursorily with your email.

"I'm going to drive it until it falls apart . . ."
. . . is what I said 10 years ago when I bought a new Volkswagen Eurovan. I still have it; it has 117,400 miles on it. It's also sitting in pieces inside the service bay of the nearest VW dealer for the third time in a year.

The problem is knowing when your car has fallen apart. You don't park your car for the night, then come out the next morning to discover it has crumbled into a heaps of ruined parts. After many years of use, a car does not write you a note on the windshield, "Hey, boss! I have fallen apart! Get a new car!"

You only figure out your car has fallen apart about a year after it really did. The VW fell apart last summer, but only now have I realized it. I know it because I am spending good money to fix the same thing over and over. It's air conditioner does not want to condition the air. In the American Deep South, this is a real problem with a family of five, especially when we want to go on vacation to Florida and other states two days from now.

But we aren't going on vacation two days from now because the VW has fallen apart. I have spent major, major wampum fixing the air conditioner since May of last year. This week it was blowing hot air. When is enough, enough? When you spend good money to correct a bad problem that doesn't get corrected.

The pity is that automotively, it is in outstanding condition. It drives as well as ever, no shimmy or shake in the wheel, tracks straight as a ruler, handles like it's German (wait, it is German!). But it is environmentally brutal for four months of the year. And it isn't being fixed. I have no real confidence that the VW dealer has a clue what is wrong. They told me today that the condenser is bad. Well, buddy, the condenser is brand-spanking new!

"Uh, okay, uh. . . it's the compressor!"

The compressor is new, too.

"It's the left-threaded kanootin valve! Yeah, that's it! The left-threaded kanootin valve don't kanoot!"

Ka-ching! Ka-ching!

The other problem with driving a car until it falls apart is that when it falls apart, it has no value. You won't fix what's broken because it makes no economic sense to do so. If it did make sense, you'd fix it and be happy. But remember, cars that have fallen apart cannot actually be fixed any more; what's broke stays broke. You just get a little reprieve when it seems to work.

So to replace a fallen-apart car, you have to know up front that you will get practically nothing for it. With car prices being what they are, this makes buying a new car or a reasonably late-model used car a daunting prospect, especially for someone who abhors carrying debt as much as I do. Right now, I have no debt except my mortgage. No car payments. No credit-card bills (heck, I have no credit cards, and because I have no debt, I don't need one). No store charge accounts. Nothing but the house. And now I have the prospect of having to borrow a few thousand to replace the fallen-apart van, and I really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really hate the idea.

Options are limited for a vehicle that will carry two adults, three children (of whom two are 6-foot-plus teenage boys) and all their baggage. The Eurovan did so with ease. A Chevy $uburban or Ford Excur$ion will do so with ease, but no other SUV will. No van on the market today will do so, except maybe a Honda Odyssey.

I don't want any of them. I want my VW van to work.

But it won't. I drove it until it fell apart.

"You have the coolest blog title ever"
. . . is what Eric Raymond of Armed and Dangerous emailed me. Which is an awfully kind compliment that I much appreciate. However, honesty impels me to point out that my OHC was not the first. The prior one, inactive since May 30, is listed at left. Its author emailed me awhile back and wondered whether I had ripped him off. The answer is no. The URL to his blog is "clapping.blogspot.com", while mine is "onehandclapping.blogspot.com." As blogspot users know, the blogger.com software checks only to make sure the URL you want to use isn't already in use, which mine was not. Blogger does not check duplicate blog title names, so I never heard of his OHC until I got his email.

Self knowledge and self-critical thinking are required these days . . .
. . . seems to be the thrust of what Joe Katzman writes, using the Wimbledon tournament as a springboard. It seems a Muslim Pakistani's partner is an Israeli Jew. They are winning, and the Paksitani is taking some heat from his countrymen. There's a lesson here, says Joe.

The Spectator (UK) also says al Qaeda is gasping its last
The old saying may be true: "Great minds think alike." ;-) Now The Spectator has joined the chorus of people, including yours truly, who think that al Qaeda has been pretty much put out of action:

Here’s what we know about al-Qa’eda: the Number One and Two guys haven’t been heard from since December; Number Three, Mohammed Atef, is dead; Number Four, Abu Zubaydah, is in US custody; so are hundreds of others, 80 per cent of them Saudis captured in Afghanistan. Not all Osama’s lieutenants are dead or in detention, but intelligence reports have spotted surviving individual members of his elite personal bodyguard in various spots around the globe, which would appear to suggest that they’ve been reassigned to other duties: there’s no point being a bodyguard when the body’s no longer in a state worth guarding.

Al-Qa’eda has always been a decentralised organisation, but under a snooty all-Arab officer class. Now the misfit conscripts have been promoted way beyond their natural ability: the network’s dependent on incompetent street punks like Jose Padilla, the ‘dirty bomb’ guy captured in Chicago, and Richard Reid, the damp squib of a shoebomber, purely because they travel on respectable passports. The alleged Suleiman Abu Ghaith had nothing to boast of in his audio statement except the attack on a synagogue in Tunisia that killed 14 German tourists. ‘This operation was carried out by al-Qa’eda network,’ he said proudly. ‘A youth could not see his brothers in Palestine butchered and murdered ...while he saw Jews cavorting in Djerba.’ But that’s pretty pathetic, isn’t it? Some ‘network’: it can kill barely any more people than a novice schoolgirl suicide-bomber acting out of Cherie Blairite desperation.

Yes, indeed. Thanks to Rand Simberg for the link.

Another opinion that al Qaeda was unprepared for war
From an article in The New Yorker, (sorry, no link):

According to an unnamed intelligence officer, the attacks on the US were not expected to be as catastrophic as they turned out to be. 'They were expecting a reaction,' the intelligence official said. "But they thought it would be a Clinton-type reaction. They didn't anticipate the kind of revenge that occurred."

Citation: "The Assassins," by Jon Lee Anderson, New Yorker, June 10, 2002, p.75.
See my earlier post on this subject

Elvis bin Laden
. . . is how Photodude describes the latest theories of where OBL is. Check it out.

. . . it may just be that they're not making pacifists like they used to . . .
. . . is Glenn Reynolds' observation in response to Steven den Beste's post about pacifism, which is turn was in response to mine (and I'll stop the chain of links right there because I already covered them there).

Glenn may be exactly right. I think there is a big difference between the self-proclaimed pacifists today and those such as Pvt. 1st Class Doss (see den Beste's post) in World War II or Cpl. Alvin York in World War I. (York applied for conscientious objection status and was turned down. He was drafted, went to France and earned the Medal of Honor as an infantryman.)

In those cases, and many others like them, their rejection of violence was a matter of personal piety. But they did not, as a matter of universal principle, claim that under no circumstances are nations to resort to armed force, even in self defense. That was something they accepted as a bitter necessity in some circumstances. Neither did they expect their freedoms to be maintained purely at the risk and blood of others.

Moreover, they affirmed that their country, however flawed and imperfect it is, was something worth preserving, and worth personally risking themselves to do. Hence many pacifists in the Great Wars accepted service as medics or clerks or dock workers or what have you. They sacrificed their livelihoods and for many, their lives, even while maintaining their renunciation of violence. They knew that however much they abhorred war, the world would not be better if America was defeated. They knew that patriotism and pacifism were not contradictory ideals or practices.

I do not sense that same intellectual integration in the self-described pacifists I have talked with. They seem to share the same fundamental scorn and disdain for American ideals and the American way of life that is so typical of the comfortable classes of the American left. One woman actually confessed to me that she thought her philosophical allies of the left (she readily admitted to being a leftist) actually "loathed" America (her word). And then she said something quite astonishing: their loathing of their country was actually a displaced emotion; what they really loathed was themselves. She wondered whether that was true of herself as well.

I cautiously broached this idea with a couple of way-liberal friends of mine, and was surprised to see how readily they agreed. They also affirmed that the left, on the whole, simply despises America, and that's that. If this is so - and I think there is a lot to it - then it explains why, as Richard Aubrey wrote me, that pacifists cannot bring themselves to denounce the violence of the FMLN or the Sandinistas (or the Palestinians or al Qaeda) with fervor equal to the vitriol they reserve for America alone. The others are justified, we are not, even after murderous fanatics drive airplanes into our buildings, killing more than 3,000 of us.

American religious pacifism has a rich history going back to the early days of the republic, but its adherents also sought ways to serve their country in times of war. They did not shirk from sharing the risk of preserving freedom even though they refused to take up arms in their own hands.

They don't make pacifists like they used to. On the whole, American "pacifist" ranks have been filled with white men and women of privileged backgrounds whose primary motivation seems mostly anti-American. Hence, they refuse to share the risks of preserving America, even in non-combat roles, perhaps because they don't see America as something worth preserving.

Pacifism feedback, round two
Christopher Buxton writes:

I recently read your description of pacifists, and really didn't appreciate the generalization of them all being cowards. I consider myself to be a pacifist, and certainly don't consider myself [a coward].

I can see, however, why you have that opinion. Often, when people are expected to demonstrate their convictions, their zeal tends to fade. If confronted with exposing myself to danger in order to demonstrate my pacifism, I'd refuse. Not out of cowardice, but out of logic. Zones of war are for soldiers, not political zealots. To hope that my idealism would stop bullets would be idiotic: I'm a pacifist, not an idiot.

Pacifism is a political ideal, not a military position. Being an American, I am well aware of, and thankful for the bloodshed that occurred that have given me the freedom to pursue my political ideals. I will continue to promote my ideals within the political spectrum, and leave the fighting to professionals.

Which is a point similar to what Richard Aubrey made in another email to me:

. . . your view of taking care of Afghanistan by not killing is false: It is not hard to kill thousands and thousands of unarmed people who are not even ducking. There seems to be no number beyond which some people are sated. See the Holocaust, The Gulag, The Killing Fields. They can manage you without too much difficulty. Unless, as with the Germans, some of the administrative resources devoted to killing were required for war. But they did pretty well, considering what they had left over.

So, being irrelevant in your peaceful invasion of Afghanistan, you do not stop the violence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The benefit of your efforts is to get a Gold Star in the pacifists' yearbook. In the world of reality, the violence continues unchanged. In addition, your evangelistic efforts may be so overwrought as to draw in some of the unwary who end up looking like another Children's Crusade, with about the same chance of accomplishing anything.

Well, I did say that an evangelizing invasion of Afghanistan as I described it might result in the deaths of up to 20,000 evangelists, so I am not guilty of failing to acknowledge the lethal risks in such a plan.

I was trying to make, perhaps hyperbolically, two points:

Self-described pacifists do not generally risk anything to hold that position. In America, one is free to be a pacifist only because non-pacifists maintain that freedom by defensive violence. Certainly, as Christopher understands, there is a difference between accepting risk for one's religion or politics, and committing idealistic suicide. For Chris or me or anyone else to go now to Baghdad and do a Jonah act would be rather less successful than it was for Jonah. But that leads me to my second point -

The forces of violence, such as terrorists and armies, are organized and trained for violence. But pacifists are neither organized or trained. Individualized rhetoric is pretty much all they have. Churches are organized mostly for self-sustainment and perpetuation, not for waging peace. (With apologies to Will Rogers, I might point out, "I am not a member of any organized religion; I am a United Methodist.")

This organizational vaccuum means that when a crisis hits, pacifists are helpless. They have no structure for effective non-violent pre-emption or intervention; neither are they trained or equipped for it.

Pacifism, to be effective, would take huge amounts of money, material, organizational discipline and personnel. Such an organization would also have to be operational in peaceful times, deployed and working; that is when its most effective work would actually be done. But pacifism's history in Christianity stems mainly from strains of personal piety. It has almost always been a matter of individual conscience. Hence, it has hardly ever been effective.

Pacifism feedback, round 1
Reader Richard Aubrey writes:

As you may know, the PC(USA) has approved what they call "humanitarian intervention". They don't use the "f" word (fight) or the "k" word, (kill), or the "d" word (die) in their document, but with sufficient nagging, they will admit that the circumstances for peace must sometimes be imposed. And, to avoid having to solve major problems, they think we need to intervene upstream, as it were, of the manifestation of the problem. There goes non-violence and respect for national sovereignty. There being no communist regimes left to inconvenience, it appears this is okay.

Isn't intervening upstream part of the new Bush doctrine, pre-emption? I have not seen the PC(USA) document. (PC(USA) is the Presbyterian Church of the USA), but on the face of it, I don't see what is objectionable in what Richard is talking about. I wonder whether this document is it or is related to it.

If so, the thrust of this resolution seems appropriately non-violent, but Richard is correct that it does tend to re-write some standing customs on respecting national sovereignty. However, its context is oriented toward genocide and humanitarian catastrophes (Africa over the last 20 years comes to mind). I recall that Tony Blair said much the same thing in his first major address to Parliament after 9-11.

We found out in Somalia that peaceful intervention isn't possible if the "intervenees" aren't peaceful themselves. When the Hutus slaughtered a million Tutsis in 1994 in Rwanda, the Great Powers did nothing to stop the killing. Even if we should have, we would have been able to stop the killing only by killing. The Hutus would not have placidly lay down their arms just because the 82d Airborne's parachutes filled the skies.

But the military recruiters are not having much luck in the seminaries. I have wondered if a clergyman's OER, at least for staff positions, requires a certain (high) minimum score in the hypocrisy box. Perhaps integrity is as much a handicap in hierarchical promotions as in trying to reach the top of certain hot new corporations. I give everybody the benefit of the doubt until they prove I shouldn't. Except for clergy for whom the reverse is true.

I don't see why serving as an armed forces chaplain requires hypocrisy. (All chaplains occupy staff positions, btw.) Steven den Beste just posted a link to the Medal of Honor citation of Father Joseph O'Callahan, Catholic chaplain of the US Navy. Is that what you mean by hypocrisy, Richard?

In Operation Just Cause in Panama, the 82d Airborne's chaplain jumped in the combat parachute assault along with the troops. Hypocrisy? Am I missing something?

Den Beste also offers the story of Pvt. 1st Class Desmond T. Doss, a devout Seventh Day Adventist who enlisted in the Army to become a medic and refused all weapons training. He was not clergy, but was he a hypocrite? Read his story and decide for yourself.

At one time or another, I have said to pacifists (who could never bring themselves to commend non-violence to the FMLN or the Sandinistas, for example) that I wished there were Someplace soldiers and their families could go and pull up the ladder. As long as we could watch what happened after that. People got nervous, finding their guard dog might be going on strike. Interesting to watch.

Tom Hayden is supposed to have said that the failure of the American left was its inability to wave the flag. American pacifists appear to be unable to pronounce moral distinctions between those who use violence to oppress or attack (i.e., almost all the Arab world, especially the Palestinian Authority, and al Qaeda) and those who use violence to defend or liberate (i.e., us). I would be much more respectful of pacifists' pronouncements if only a significant number of them served as PFC Doss did. With few exceptions, they do not put their bodies where their mouth are.

Richard, thank you for reading and for writing.

No nukes!
Tom Cohoe's email got me to thinking about more than the technical practicality of using atomic weapons against, say, Iraq. I think the chances of President Bush directing it are nil, but I also recall that during the early days of the air campaign against the Taliban, two US Congressmen called for nukes to be used against al Qaeda caves there.

Here's why I strongly oppose their use:

The political consequences of using such weapons would be enormously destructive to America's alliances and coalitions. NATO always accepted, very reluctantly, the potential use of nuclear weapons if invading Soviet forces threatened the actual survival of a NATO member state. But no present enemy, even Iraq, can mount that threat. For America to use nuclear weapons would engender such harsh reactions from our NATO allies that the alliance would probably dissolve.

Other nations around the world would run away from alignment with America as fast as they could. Our forces based overseas would likely be ejected by their host nations. American efforts to promote democracy in Asia, Africa and South America would lose all credibility. American citizens abroad would be subjected to the rule of the mob in many countries. No longer would America be a "shining city on a hill" for the rest of the world to emulate.

Morally, using atomic weapons except in true extremis (which we will not reach in the Terror War) would be wholly unjustifiable. Atomic weapons inherently cannot be used in a way that discriminates between enemy personnel and innocent Afghans. Potential downwind effects could kill or make ill infants, adults, the elderly, the helpless, livestock and crops and would likely extend into neighboring countries. Surrounding peoples would be thrown into panic, creating the worst refugee crisis in history. All these results would be morally bankrupt; they could never be excused and would never be forgiven.

Historian T. R. Fehrenbach wrote in This Kind of War, "You may fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it, pulverize it and wipe it clean of life - but if you desire to defend it, to protect it, to keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman legions did, by putting your young men into the mud. The object of warfare . . . is not to destroy the land and people, unless you have gone wholly mad."

Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) effects; nuclear bunker-busting
Tom Cohoe, who won my last contest by making up the word Arabysmalia, wonders about the physics of EMP. Well, my nuclear training was in target analysis, not warhead design, so all I can do is point Tom and other interested people here.

Tom also writes,

Concerning bunker busting, my idea is that you could go as deep as you wanted by "drilling" with a series of conventional bombs all aimed and timed precisely so that they work on the same hole. Some of the bombs would be designed to penetrate deeply, others would go off before penetration in order to blast away the debris already in the air. There are many variables that I can think of, such that I good deal of thinking or computer modeling would have to be done to disprove the idea. Off the top of my head, though, it seems that you could drill a pretty deep hole using conventional bombs.

I am thinking that if you have bombs that could do what you describe, and can penetrate as deeply as you say, then you don't need a nuke to knock out a bunker. Just keep bombing. During the Gulf War, the Army and Air Force jointly developed a deep penetrating bomb that could penetrate at least 60 feet of earth and reinforced concrete. After the war, it was much improved.

The article I read suggested that nuclear bunker busters would be no good because there is no way to prevent leaking of radioactive debris through the surface causing widespread contamination, so that you couldn't bust a bunker under a city without killing more civilians than is currently acceptable. Closely related to the idea in the previous paragraph is the idea that you could drill a hole for a nuke using conventional bombs, and then using more conventional bombs, bury the nuke sufficiently deeply that there would be no leakage to the surface.

Couple of points. Bunkers don't have to be exploded from the inside to be defeated. If their access to the surface is destroyed, the problem is pretty much solved. This can be accomplished through conventional bombing. According to the Geneva Conventions, the presence of civilian structures at the target does not protect the bunker from attack. In fact, the onus is on the other side not to locate military facilities is places that would endanger civilians if the facility is attacked. So say the conventions.

(Photodude discusses this in this posting.)

Bombs big enough to drill as deep as you imagine would make a very big crater, so nearby civilians would be killed anyway. Bombs don't dig a shaft, they make big holes. After the first one hits, the smoke and dust from its explosion would obscure the crater from target designation systems. A GPS-guided bomb would not be affected by smoke and dust, but would not hit exactly, either. So there would still be widespread destruction in the area even before the nuke hit. Multiple hits on the same crater would not dig as deeply as one might think, because more and more ejecta would be retained in the crater, and fall back in.

To seal the nuclear detonation from contamination by using conventional bombs after the nuke is launched is highly problematic. It would require a delayed fuzing of the nuke so that the nuke would not detonate until after it had been buried by the follow-on bombs. But that would expose the nuclear bomb to potential destruction by the "burying" bombs. Far too risky. Even if the nuke was undamaged, the rubble over it would be loose and would not contain the detonation. Large amounts of earth would be irradiated and expelled into the surrounding area or atmosphere. Far more damage from blast and cratering would be done to the city from the nuke than from conventional bombing.

But nukes aren't needed anyway. Here's why.

Several responses to my post on pacifism, will post Friday
My usual habit when posting your email to me is this: If you are writing in response to one of my posts, I generally just post your response, maybe edited for length, usually not, and let my readers decide the merits. I try to refrain from doing a point-counterpoint with emails, even when you don't agree with me. I don't mind being disagreed with.

Interestingly, two correspondents on different sides of the spectrum vis-a-vis my post actually coincided in one point, that perhaps the main reason pacifists are so relatively inactive is less cowardice than realizing their helplessness in the face of large-scale violence. I'll see where I can go with that, not sure I really agree, but it's thought-provoking.

Men also don't marry because they get a bum rap if their divorce?
Joe Katzman writes in response to my post about the economics of marriage:

Men are indeed getting married later. The reasons you describe are some of it. You left out a major factor: divorce laws whose implementation is stacked against men. Which has the logical consequence of making men very, very careful about whom they propose to. It's not just that sex is available, because for many the singles scene is unpleasant. There's also a very large risk-mitigation component... wait, be sure, and if that means getting married later then so be it.

Which brings up another issue: why do so many men (and women, too) get married half-expecting their marriage will end in divorce? isn't that common expectation a recipe for failure?

I have never bought into the shibboleth that "half of all marriages end in divorce." When I last researched the topic, I discovered that this "fact" is derived from comparing the number of marriages in a given year with the number of divorces.

In 1996, for example, there were an estimated 2.3 million weddings and 1.1 million divorces. Ergo, "half of all marriages end in divorce," right?

Well, no. There are far more couples already married in any given year than there are couples getting married. So the claim that half of all marriages end in divorce is almost certainly not true. That's the good news. The bad news is that more than a million divorces per year is a lot.

I wonder whether the fact that so many married couples both have careers adversely affects the quality of their relationship. Having an enduring marriage takes work! But husbands and wives are tired (sleep deprivation in America today would make a topic for another post), they are busy with the jobs or professions, and their kids live the kind of Type A life that I never could have imagined when I was growing up. (I know my kids do.) When do the man and woman have the time to nurture one another?

A small toot of my own horn
In this post, three days ago, I said, in regard to President Bush's speech on the future of the Palestinians:

I give a greater than 50 percent chance that reactions to Bush's speech in the West Bank will result in an internecine war among the Palestinians. When it sinks in that Arafat is now irrelevant in Western eyes, the stuggle to fill the vaccum will not be peaceful. I think a civil war in the West Bank is a real possibility.

It's not often I scoop the New York Times. Consider, though, this morning's op-ed by George Will: (link requires free registration):

Palestinian patriots may find that the only way to statehood requires civil war. The majority of residents of Gaza and the West Bank dream of a peaceful and productive life in a free country. They are denied this today not by Israel nor by America, but by the minority of terrorists among them who want totalitarian control of all Palestinians as well as Jews.

Pacifism
Ranting Screeds has a history lesson, thanks to Instapundit for the link. Relapsed Catholic has a digest of recent links on the issue.

Al Qaeda Cyber-Attacks Planned?
Goes beyond hacking, instrusions may be blood-shedding weapons themselves
According to the Washington Post, al Qaeda intrusions and probes into critical US computer systems are really ominous:

Some of the probes suggested planning for a conventional attack, U.S. officials said. But others homed in on a class of digital devices that allow remote control of services such as fire dispatch and of equipment such as pipelines. More information about those devices -- and how to program them -- turned up on al Qaeda computers seized this year, according to law enforcement and national security officials. . . . some government experts conclude that terrorists are at the threshold of using the Internet as a direct instrument of bloodshed. The new threat bears little resemblance to familiar financial disruptions by hackers responsible for viruses and worms. It comes instead at the meeting points of computers and the physical structures they control.

U.S. analysts believe that by disabling or taking command of the floodgates in a dam, for example, or of substations handling 300,000 volts of electric power, an intruder could use virtual tools to destroy real-world lives and property. They surmise, with limited evidence, that al Qaeda aims to employ those techniques in synchrony with "kinetic weapons" such as explosives.

Designating foreign groups as "terrorist" is unconstitutional
According to the Washington Times,

A U.S. law authorizing the State Department to designate groups as "terrorist" and which allows those who support them to be prosecuted has been declared unconstitutional by a federal judge, throwing U.S. anti-terrorism strategies into disarray.

A U.S. official who has been dealing with the issue said yesterday there will be "serious problems" if the decision stands on appeal. The U.S. government could no longer use the existing law to prosecute those who give "material support" to groups on the list such as Hamas, al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah.

Small administrative error on my part
Most of my posts yesterday had my old Gunner20 byline attached to them rather than "Donald Sensing." The reason is that I have an old test blog that I use to try stuff out (formatting, messing around with the template, etc). It goes back to my G20 days, and I see that I made some posts when I was logged on under that login rather than the login for my real name login.

Bummer - I meant for the posts to be under my real name. But I can't delete them and repost without changing the permalink.

The link to Glenn Frazier's site is now corrected. . .
. . . and you should go read his stuff!

The problem with pacifism is pacifists
I hardly know where to begin on the topic, which has become a blog-carried controversy recently. Let me suggest that you, dear reader, time-deficient as we all are, do take the time to read Glenn Reynolds' post about Christian pacifist Professor Stanley Hauerwas of Duke University.

Then, visit my citation of a recent statement from an al Qaeda spokesman on why they want to kill four million Americans.

Then, from another posting on Instapundit, read Carraig Dare's comparison of Hauerwas' statements with those of al Qaeda.

Finally, read Prof. Telford Work's essay on the Hauerwas issue.

Go ahead, now, I'll wait.

I'll begin my own comments with an excerpt from Prof. Work:

The point needs to be made that Jesus' disciples are not called to fight American wars. Even just ones. This is not because war is wrong or because nation-states should never be waging wars, but because the Church has been called to something else, a battle that no nation-state should wage.

Now, I completely agree with that. The problem is not that this ideal is deficient. Is it that the Church isn't doing it. And most especially, those who call themselves Christian pacifists aren't doing it, with rare exceptions.

Around my parts, I have discussed this issue with many, many men and women who boast about their pacifism. Let me try to be polite in my opinion of them:

They are all cowards.

The problem with pacifism is pacifists. Almost all of what passes for "pacifism" these days, including the kind Prof. Hauerwas espouses, is that it is what I call, "tut-tut" pacifism.

"Tut tut, we should not bomb Afghanstan."

"Of course terrorism isn't justified, but, tut tut, neither is warfare in response."

"Tut tut, we are just breeding conditions for a new generation of terrorists who will hate us just as much."

So, I asked, if not bombing the training grounds of the terrorists who want to kill as many Americans as they can, what should we be doing?

Silence. Then pablum responses such as, "We should work for peace with justice." "We should establish economic equity in international relations." "We should brings the offenders to the law." "We should pray for forgiveness from those whom we have oppressed."

Trust me: I heard every one of those statements at various venues.

The problem is that for 99 percent of the so-called pacifists I have conversed with, pacifism is either --

a matter of personal convenience that enables the claimant to dodge dealing with the hard issues of nihilistic evil and is a shield that excuses them from risking their own mortal, precious bodies to protect the lives of others, or,

is just a matter of personal piety that reinforces their sense of moral superiority to others who don't have the purity of soul they do.

What their brand of pacifism decidedly is not is a self-risking position on which they are willing to risk their lives in mortal danger to bring peace through non-violent means. They don't go anywhere, certainly not anywhere dangerous. They just stay at home and tut-tut their way through the war. Then, after having had their freedom preserved through the sacrificial, blood-letting exertions of others, they congratulate themselves on what a splendid religion they have and how morally superior they are.

There are exceptions for whom pacifism is a cause they risk their lives. Mennonite missionary and teacher John Paul Lederach is one, and he should get a Pacifism Medal of Honor. But his sort is very, very rare.

So what should Christian pacifists do? Below is how I concluded my sermon on Oct. 7, 2001, which coincidentally and ironically was both World Communion Sunday and the day America began bombing al Qaeda and Taliban targets in Afghanistan.

Julia Ward Howe wrote, "As [Christ] died to make men holy, let us die to make them free." I am imagining, I'm just imagining, invading Afghanistan with about ten thousand in the first wave. They'll all probably die. So we'll send another ten thousand and they may die, too. But I volunteer. I will go in the first wave.

We may die, but we will not kill. We will not be armed with weapons of war, but with implements of peace. We will carry Bibles. We will preach the Gospel of the peace and love of Jesus Christ. We will baptize and consecrate and share the Eucharist. We will heal the sick, comfort those who mourn, care for orphans, and liberate the women.

We'll be hungry, cold, tired and thirsty. They will hunt us down and bomb us. They will capture us and line us up against a wall. They will hang us.

But we will bless in Christ's name those who curse us, and we will do good to those who hate us. And with our dying breaths we will say, "We are disciples of the Gospel of Jesus Christ by the call of God, for the sake of the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus. Receive grace and mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord!"

Jesus said, "Whoever comes to me and does not hate . . . even life itself, cannot be my disciple." Are there 9,999 other Christians who will go, also? Or shall only murderous fanatics be willing to give up their lives for their god?

Any takers?

In November, at my Conference's School of Ministry, I asked my colleagues in ministry who would go with me. None volunteered, pointedly including those who cried the loudest for pacifism.

This issue just rips me up. I am sitting here writing this with tears falling because I am not doing what I think Christians should be doing. I succeeded as a man of war, an artillery officer, until I retired from the Army and now, wanting to be a man of peace, I fail.

I can do the theology and the Bible studies. I have a theological degree from Vanderbilt University. But I have no defense. I am a failed pacifist. And perhaps, to my shame, I am now a coward also. May God forgive me.

"Gun control" means hitting what you aim at
Carrying a firearm may become a true necessity according to Rand Simberg, who cites this Village Voice article with some disturbing information:

An e-mail recently making the rounds of military and law enforcement circles describes a captured Al Qaeda training tape said to reveal the group's expertise in small arms and close commando situations in urban settings like New York, Washington, and Chicago. The people seen training are skilled at handling rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, and at making quick attacks and retreats. . . .

In [terror] scenarios, terrorists rappel down the side of a building from the roof, move through tunnels or sewers, carry out drive-by kidnappings, and blow up guard houses to get into the main building lying behind. Drive-by killings can be executed on motorcycles, with the shooter standing on rear pegs with arms extended over the driver, firing as the bike races down the street.

For bigger raids, terrorists carry concealed weapons into a building, say a school or a financial institution, then in a swift show of violence take over the room, marching people up to the roof. TV reporters and photojournalists are allowed in. The kidnappers then begin to execute prisoners one by one in front of the cameras. The tape suggests planning several simultaneous raids to gain maximum exposure. The key point is that absolutely no one is left alive—men, women, children, all are killed.

Well, maybe. Personally, I doubt that this threat is very likely. Al Qaeda recently said they want to kill four million Americans, and the sort of tactics described in the Village Voice article won't do that.

But Rand is right - if such an attack does occur, even once, you can stop paying dues to Handgun Control, Inc. (or whatever they call themselves now). The gun controllers will have to get a real job. "Gun control" will never again mean, "don't have guns." It will mean, "hit your target."

Federal Judge Alfred T. Goodwin rules Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional; here is his phone number
No fooling. This is the number announced today by Fox News, which encouraged viewers to call him and let him know what you think, "good or bad." Okay. It is 415-556-9800.

Strategic transport
Joe Katzman has some good points and links.

Is al Qaeda already finished?
Some commentators are wondering whether al Qaeda isn't pretty much kaput already. See, for example, this Christian Science Monitor opinion piece that says al Qaeda's size and capabilities have been overrated all along.

The 9-11 attacks showed a impressive technical capability, but even so, the Monitor piece has some good points. For several weeks now various figures in the US government, including Vice President Cheney and Congressional leaders, have warned us that more attacks are on the way, and that they may be as terrible as 9-11, or perhaps worse, what with dirty bomb plans found in al Muhajir's possession, etc. I have heard more than one news commentator point out that bin Laden's organization plans their attacks up to two years in advance, and it has been only nine months since 9-11. So they say that the next attack's operatives are already in America, waiting for their pre-determined strike date to come up.

I demur. I think al Qaeda really is on the ropes. Here's why.

It is important to remember that until Sept. 11, the US and other Western governments treated acts of terror as crimes, with law-enforcement and judicial procedures as the preferred remedy. Therefore, Western military action against al Qaeda was, until 9-11, rare, and when it was done it was weak, erratic and ineffective.

From the beginning, the West's legalistic response to terror inculcated al Qaeda that it would not pay a meaningful price for their acts, and that the West, especially America, would actually shrink from confronting al Qaeda. Look at the record of al Qaeda's attacks and the Western (mainly US) response:

1988: abduction of 16 western tourists in Yemen that resulted in four deaths. Response: none.

1992: Attempted attack on US troops in Yemen. Response: none

1993: Training and material assistance to Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid, whose militia killed 18 US soldiers, wounded many more and destroyed two helicopters. OBL claimed this action in 1997 during an interview broadcast on CNN. Response: US withdrew its troops two weeks later

1993: Truck bombing of the World Trade Center that killed six people and injured scores more. Response: FBI investigation, indictments and some convictions. No action outside US borders.

1996: Bombing of Khobar Towers, an American military barracks in Saudi Arabia, in which 19 American service members died. Response: US requested Saudi cooperation in an investigation. Saudi's refused. No action taken by US.

1998: Bombing of American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, killing more than 200 people, most of them Muslim Africans. Response: US launched about two dozen cruise missiles at Afghanistan and Sudan. Al Qaeda undamaged both places; civilians killed in Sudan. No other action taken.

2000: Suicide boat attack on U.S.S. Cole while docked in Yemen in 2000, killing 17 US sailors and injuring 39 others. Response: None. US terminated use of Yemeni port facilities

With a record like that, why would OBL and his high command believe that American response would ever be any different? For the attack just before 9-11, against USS Cole in 2000, all the Clinton administration did was vow to track down the attackers. Yet by ancient definition, at attack upon a nation's warship is de facto an act of war. We did nothing.

Thus emboldened, OBL decided to carry out attacks America itself. Some sort of plan to attack America itself was in the works before the attack on USS Cole; hijacker boss Mohammed Atta entered the US with a tourist visa the first half of 2000, and petitioned for a student visa in June of that year. Yet the almost purely rhetorical response of the United States to repeated attacks certainly convinced OBL that the way was clear to a massive action within the United States itself.

But al Qaeda did not expect and was not prepared for America to go to war after Sept. 11.

That OBL expected some aerial strikes against Afghanistan after 9-11 is indicated by al Qaeda's abandonment of older camps and facilities just before 9-11. But I do not think he expected the US to do anything much more severe than launch some cruise missiles and maybe a day or two of bombing by fighter-bombers. They were unprepared for a campaign of the intensity and duration that began the first Sunday in October.

There is no doubt that al Qaeda was entirely unprepared for America to send ground combat troops to Afghanistan. American special operations forces (SOF) especially surprised them. The speed and agility of SOF in linking up with the Northern Alliance and SOF's deadly coordination of air power, especially heavy bombers, was something for which al Qaeda gives no evidence of ever having foreseen.

The one time they tried to stand and fight, during Operation Anaconda, they suffered severely. According to statements of U.S. Army officers, al Qaeda fighters were competent to operate their weapons in a reasonably skilled manner and defend static positions. But when confronted by considerably more skilled American soldiers, who know how to do a lot of things, they got killed "by the bucketloads," as one American officer put it.

Think about it - remember those recruiting video segments that CNN and other news networks played in the weeks following 9/11? Mostly, they showed guys dressed in black running an obstacle course or shooting up a cinderblock room, neither of which are terribly complex tasks. US troops saw little that showed al Qaeda actually knew how to conduct integrated-arms operations or successfully conduct mobile operations.

They also had little idea of the sophistication and capabilities of American technology and weapons, or of the enormous destructiveness of our weapons. They adapted poorly, at best, to the pervasiveness and effectiveness of American sensors and target acquisition systems. They never got time to rest, recuperate or refit because they were neither equipped nor organized to do so. The record shows that after only a few days of active resistance, all they could do was hunker down, try to hide, and take our pounding.

In short, they were entirely unprepared for the level and intensity of the attacks America's armed forces made against them.

That does not mean that al Qaeda is entirely helpless. It does mean that their primary base of training and support, Afghanistan, has been removed from their use. I do not think they thought this would happen. Since 9-11, no other deadly acts have been carried out against the United States, although there have been two bombings in Pakistan and one in Tunisia that likely have links to al Qaeda.

The attacks on 9-11 were terrible, but they were also the worst that al Qaeda was capable of doing. If they could have done worse then, they would have. If they could detonate a nuclear warhead in Washington, they would. If they could explode a "dirty bomb" or unleash bio- or chemical attacks, they would. I don't think they can. I think they shot their best shot on 9-11, and had no follow-on attacks planned because years of experience had shown them that they did not need to hurry.

I do not predict that al Qaeda will neither attempt nor succeed in deadly attacks inside the US again. I do predict that they will not be able to mount an attack approaching the magnitude of Sept. 11's. They have been hurt too much in personnel losses and interruption of their command and control.

Al Qaeda was much more fagile than we thought. We have to keep up the pressure overseas and improve our security procedures at home. And Iraq and Iran must be dealt with. But al Qaeda is on the ropes and has been hurt hard.

It was not a speech about the path to peace, but the path to war
That's what Steven den Beste says about the Bush speech in his latest posting about it:

This wasn't a speech about peace; it was preparation for war. It wasn't a peace plan, it was a plan to cease efforts at peacemaking. It wasn't engagement by the US, it was a decision by the US to disengage.

I'll not excerpt any more because it's all excellent.

Today's "Well, duh!" story
The Washington Times reports this morning,

Men won't commit to marriage because they enjoy a sexually active single life in a social climate that doesn't push them to marry, a new report says.

Young men are indeed "commitment phobic," which is bad news for young women who want build a family before they get too old, said researchers Barbara Dafoe Whitehead and David Popenoe, who run the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University.

"The median age of first marriage for men has reached 27, the oldest age in our nation's history," Mr. Popenoe said.

There are several specific reasons for why young men are avoiding marriage . . . Primarily, young men are enjoying a sexually active single life — often with a live-in girlfriend — and "are in no hurry" to marry, the researchers said.

The blunt truth is that women's chastity before marriage is what convinces men to marry. Even St. Paul realized this when he advised unmarried Christians in Corinth, ". . . it is better to marry than to burn with passion" (1 Cor. 7:9b). Work by psychobiologists has yielded insights into why marriage exists at all, about which more further down. But it seems unrebuttable that marriage as an institution is in trouble in America today.

Nationwide, the marriage rate has plunged 43 percent since 1960. Instead of getting married, men and women are just living together, cohabitation having increased tenfold in the same period. According to a University of Chicago study, cohabitation has become the dominant way men and women begin their relationships, not courtship and marriage. More than half the men and women who do get married have already lived together.

The pattern of cohabitation is dangerous. Most women agree to cohabit thinking it will lead to marriage, but most men ask women to live with them so they don’t have to marry them. Forty of every hundred cohabiting couples never marry one another. Repeated research shows that of the sixty cohabiting couples who do marry one another, forty-five divorce within ten years.

The Time cover story of Aug. 21, 200, reported -

Danielle Crittenden, author of What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us, argues that women have set themselves up for disappointment, many putting off marriage until their 30s only to find themselves unskilled in the art of compatibility and surrounded by male peers looking over their Chardonnays at women in their 20s. "Modern people approach marriage like it's a Bosnia-Serbia negotiation. Marriage is no longer as attractive to men," she says. "No one's telling college girls it's easier to have kids in your 20s than in your 30s."

Michael Broder, a Philadelphia psychotherapist and author of The Art of Living Single, decries what he calls the "perfect-person problem," in which women refuse to engage unless they're immediately taken with a man, failing to give a relationship a chance to develop. "Few women can't tell you about someone they turned down, and I'm not talking about some grotesque monster," he says. "But there's the idea that there has to be this great degree of passion to get involved, which isn't always functional. So you have people saying things like, 'If I can't have my soul mate, I'd rather be alone.' And after that, I say, 'Well, you got your second choice.'"

In evolutionary terms, marriage developed as the means by which women could guarantee to a specific man that the children she bore were his. In biological terms, men can sire hundreds of children in their lives, but this biological ability is limited by the fact that no one woman can keep pace. Siring kids by multiple women is the only way men can achieve high levels of reproduction, but women also have an extreme interest in the process, too.

Their is no adaptive/survival advantage for women in bearing children by men who are simply trying to sire as many children as possible. During the latter stages of pregnancy, women are disabled to some significant degree - perhaps not for office work, but certainly for food gathering and for protecting or caring for their other children. For a single mother, as our own culture's experience shows, child-raising is a resource-intensive, years-long business. Doing it alone is a marked adaptive disadvantage for single mothers and their children.

So the economics of sex evolved into a win-win deal: women agree to give men exclusive sexual rights and guaranteed paternity in exchange for their sexual loyalty and enduring assistance with child bearing and child raising. For the man, this arrangement lessens the number of potential children he can sire (although it can still be up to a dozen, at least), but it ensures that his kids are, well, his kids, not another man's. (In folk lore and literature, the cuckolded husband is one of the most pathetic figures there is). The only way women could guarantee paternity was to remain chaste until she and a man had agreed to this arrangement. For the woman, the man's promise of sexual loyalty to her meant that he would expend his labor and resources supporting her children, not another woman's.

Without guaranteed paternity, no man would ever have significant certainty that the child he was supporting carried his genes. Avoidance of genetic extinction is, many biologists say, the defining motive of human and animal behavior. That doesn't mean that every man or woman is inexorably impelled to have children - evolutionary biologists focus on groups, not individuals.

But what if women discontinued to guarantee paternity? What if the majority of men of a society discovered that they could enjoy sexual relations with women without promising sexual loyalty in return? That is what has happened in America since the invention of The Pill. The impulse toward pre-marital chastity for women was always the fear of bearing a child alone. The Pill removed this fear.

Over the last four decades, men have discovered that marriage is no longer the sure way to sex. Women have discovered that men's sexual and emotional commitment to them isn't usually gained by giving men sex before marriage. As the old saying goes, "Why buy a cow when milk is so cheap?" If most women offer men sex apart from marriage, then the need for men to commit to sexual loyalty to a particular woman is greatly lessened, even eliminated. Then women look around and wonder why so many men they know all seem to be rotters who aren't interested in marriage.

Ultimately, both men and women discover that the married life is both easier and more sexually fulfilling than singleness, and ultimately most men and women discover that they want to bear children. Repeated studies show that married men and women enjoy sexual relations far more frequently than singles and no one has ever discovered a better arrangement for children than being raised by both natural parents. For most singles, the effort and care that must be taken in gaining another or semi-enduring sex partner, along with the devotion to avoiding pregnancy, are draining. Unfortunately, by the time they realize this and decide to do somethjing about it, they have lost too many youthful years. There is a big difference between marrying in early 20s and having kids in mid-20s, and doing both in one's 30s or even 40s, not only for the parents, but for the children.

American post-secondary schools are storefronts for entry visas
Yes, I know I already wrote about this, but now the mainstream media have discovered it, too.

Yeah, it's such a love-in now. . .
Headline from today's Fox News web site, Cavuto page (page changes daily):

Could President Bush's Middle East peace plan trigger a wave of Arab resentment against the U.S.?

Here is the obligatory link . . .
. . . to Steven den Beste's analyses of Bush's speech on Palestine and Israel, which are the best I've seen. There is more than one posting, so this link is to the latest one, as of my writing.

The triumph of hope over experience . . .
. . . is one way I would describe President Bush's speech today. It has high ideals, but he asks the Palestinians to surrender the only thing that really matters to them: the "right of return" to the places they, or their parents or grandparents, lived before Israel was established in 1948.

I wrote about this on my old Gunner20 blog site:

The PA insists that the Palestinians have the right of return to their 1947 homes. Although the right of return is not actually addressed in UNR 242, it is likely that something like it was envisioned because in 1948 the UN adopted Resolution 194, which said in part,

...that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practible date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.

Little Green Footballs supplies the link to a sermon by Arafat's appointed Mufti Dr. Ikrimah Sabri. He says that the right of return cannot be negotiated at all, by anyone, period. The link takes you to the State Department's translation. The sermon was carried live on June 21 by Ramallah Voice of Palestine, official radio station of the Palestinian Authority. Sabri preached at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem (three days before Bush's speech).

"O Muslims, O brothers in faith everywhere. We must also affirm that the land of Palestine is an Islamic endowment and that the refugee who does not want to return or cannot return has no right to obtain any compensation for his house or land. His property returns to all Muslims. Therefore, there is no shari'a solution to the refugee issue except by their return to their homes and lands. They will not lose their right no matter how long it takes."

Sabri basically told the Palestinians now living in the Transjordan and Gaza that they are going to emigrate to Israel (or as Sabri puts it, "return" there) whether they want to or not. So much for the will of the people.

That may be one reason Bush called for new leadership for the Palestinians. Arafat et. al. have proven they are in it for themselves, for their own personal self-aggrandizement and privilege.

Arafat and Sabri and other high PA officials know full well that the right of return means the end of Israel as a Jewish state. That is what they want - but maybe not, because they know that the right of return is the one thing that Israel can never accept. Dennis Ross, who personally knows Arafat very well, said that Arafat has no vision for a Palestinian state at all. All he knows how to do is fight. All he wants to do is fight.

For Arafat and his cronies, continuing the war is itself the only objective. The Palestinians are suffering because they will not permit them to choose their own destiny. The sooner the Palestinian people realize this, the better off they will be. It may be that the "belly full of war" Israel has been giving them will prod them to making a new future with new leaders. Let's hope.

Update: The nub of the problem is this: how propagandized are the Palestinians? The evidence suggests, "very." The desire of the ordinary Palestinian man or woman to "return" may well be high; in fact, I think it is. This dream may die a hard and even violent death.

Civil War in Palestine? An out-on-a-limb prediction: I give a greater than 50 percent chance that reactions to Bush's speech in the West Bank will result in an internecine war among the Palestinians. When it sinks in that Arafat is now irrelevant in Western eyes, the stuggle to fill the vaccum will not be peaceful. I think a civil war in the West Bank is a real possibility.

Earning a living . . .
. . . for the rest of the day, so please see my late Sunday posts as well:

Americans are still isolationist at heart . . .

Why looteries, I mean, "lotteries," cause higher taxes

More on the threat of Islamic-Arabism

"Save yo' Confederate money, boys. The South gonna rise again!": What my daughter has to do with General Lee.

Text of "Why We Fight America" by al Qaeda spokesman Suleiman Abu Gheith
MEMRI has the text of this statement, referred to in my earlier posting. He claims the right to kill four million Americans, half to be children, and injure millions more, with any weapon, including chemical and biological.

The Entire Earth Must Be Subjected to Islam

"How can [he, the true Muslim] possibly [accept humiliation and inferiority] when he knows that his nation was created to stand at the center of leadership, at the center of hegemony and rule, at the center of ability and sacrifice? How can [he] possibly [accept humiliation and inferiority] when he knows that the [divine] rule is that the entire earth must be subject to the religion of Allah - not to the East, not to the West - to no ideology and to no path except for the path of Allah?…"

Part III: The Islamic Justification for Al-Qa'ida's Jihad Against the U.S.

"The religious arguments on which we base ourselves in our Jihad against the Americans - the explanations that inspire us with confidence in the triumph of our religion, our belief, and our faith - are many, and this is not the place to enumerate them, as they are included in the books of the sages."

"In this article I will present one explanation that suffices [to wage] Jihad against the Americans, the Jews, and anyone who has gone in their path…"

"Allah said, 'He who attacked you, attack him as he attacked you,' and also, 'The reward of evil is a similar evil,' and also, 'When you are punished, punish as you have been punished.'"

"The words of the sages on these verses are clear.

"Anyone who peruses these sources reaches a single conclusion: The sages have agreed that the reciprocal punishment to which the verses referred is not limited to a specific instance. It is a valid rule for punishments for infidels, for the licentious Muslims, and for the oppressors."

Islamic Law Allows Reciprocation against the U.S.

"If by religious law it is permitted to punish a Muslim [for the crime he committed] - it is all the more permitted to punish a Harbi infidel [i.e. he who belongs to Dar Al-Harb 'the domain of disbelief'] in the same way he treated the Muslim."

"According to the numbers I noted in the previous section of the lives lost from among the Muslims because of the Americans, directly or indirectly, we still are at the beginning of the way. The Americans have still not tasted from our hands what we have tasted from theirs. The [number of] killed in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were no more than fair exchange for the ones killed in the Al-'Amiriya shelter in Iraq, and are but a tiny part of the exchange for those killed in Palestine, Somalia, Sudan, the Philippines, Bosnia, Kashmir, Chechnya, and Afghanistan."

We Have the Right to Kill 4 Million Americans

"We have not reached parity with them. We have the right to kill 4 million Americans - 2 million of them children - and to exile twice as many and wound and cripple hundreds of thousands. Furthermore, it is our right to fight them with chemical and biological weapons, so as to afflict them with the fatal maladies that have afflicted the Muslims because of the [Americans'] chemical and biological weapons."

"America knows only the language of force. This is the only way to stop it and make it take its hands off the Muslims and their affairs. America does not know the language of dialogue!! Or the language of peaceful coexistence!! America is kept at bay by blood alone…"

Why do they hate us? Because we're not Muslim fundamentalists, that's why.
David Horowitz extensively cites an al-Qaeda statement that fully answers the question many Americans (mostly anti-American leftists) asked beginning about 10 a.m. Sept. 11.

This is not a war about land in the Middle East or the structure of a Palestinian state, or a U.S. military presence in the Arabian peninsula. It is a war about redemption. In this it exactly parallels the Communist threat from the past. In the eyes of the Communists, America stood in the way of heaven – a socialist paradise in which racism, sexism, and economic inequality would vanish from the earth. In the eyes of radical Islam, America -- the Great Satan -- stands in the way of Islam’s rule, and thus of human redemption and it is for this reason America must be destroyed.

Thus, the al-Qaeda proclamation:

"America is the head of heresy in our modern world, and it leads an infidel democratic regime that is based upon separation of religion and state and on ruling the people by the people via legislating laws that contradict the way of Allah and permit what Allah has prohibited. This compels the other countries to act in accordance with the same laws in the same ways … and punishes any country [that rebels against these laws] by besieging it, and then by boycotting it. By so doing [America] seeks to impose on the world a religion that is not Allah’s…"

Americans are still isolationist at heart . . .
. . . seems one implication of what Armed and Dangerous (link at left) says in Part Three of his postings about the real nature of the real enemy.

Americans have always had the odd parochial habit of assuming that, down deep underneath, everyone is basically like us -- sharing our historically peculiar mix of pragmatism and idealism; valuing honesty and fair dealing; tolerant, materialistic, freedom-loving, open-minded, tempting to value comfort and success over ideology. We reflexively believe that everyone can be reasoned with essentially in our own terms. Most Americans don't understand fanaticism and violent evil. We have a tendency to be `fair' by assuming that in any dispute there must be some right and some wrong on both sides. It's telling that we use `extreme' as a political pejorative.

Since at least the end of World War II, this parochialism has become so acute that it has almost blinded us to serious threats. While more of the left-liberals who shilled for the Soviets and Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh and Pol Pot during the Cold War were closet Communists than is yet publicly admitted, a good many were honest dupes who simply couldn't believe that Communists were actually motivated by the sinister craziness of hard Marxism, and therefore assumed that America must somehow be at fault. Conservatives apologizing for unsavory pro-American strongmen mostly weren't closet fascists, either; a good many of them had obvious trouble seeing caudillos as more than cigar-chomping CEOs running a particularly tough business, and never mind the gold braid and funny hats.

The see-no-evil tendency in American folk psychology created fertile ground for the rather less benign dogmas of multiculturalism ("all cultures present ways of living that are equally morally valid") and postmodernism ("there is no objective truth"). Originally constructed by Marxists (and one ex-Fascist) as part of a program to ideologically disarm the West against the radical evil of Communism, these dogmas have both outlived their original ends and seeped into American pop culture. Their effect is that many of us can no longer bring ourselves to think of any political movement, religion, or culture as radically evil unless it is safely part of history (and, for political correctness, was run by dead white European males when it was alive and kicking).

This was a relatively harmless form of self-delusion between 1992 and 2001, the decade of self-indulgence bracketed by the fall of the Soviet Empire and 9/11. No longer. We are at war. Western civilization is under attack by a foe that revels in the wholesale slaughter of civilians, one that proudly announces its intention to bring a second Holocaust of fire and blood down upon us all.

If our civilization is to survive, we will need to recover the moral judgment needed to recognize radical evil, the language in which to condemn it, and the determination to act.

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

Why looteries, I mean, "lotteries," cause higher taxes
Michael Heberling, president of the Baker College Center for Graduate Studies in Flint, Michigan, wrote in The Independent Review, Spring, 2002:

The ephemeral infusion of lottery dollars always results in prodigal spending, which, in turn, forces state legislators to raise taxes in order to shore up the budgetary shortfalls that develop when lottery revenue sags.

Legislators keep their fingers crossed and hope that nobody remembers that the lottery was supposed to have made additional taxes unnecessary. Obfuscation about proceeds earmarked "for the children" will also keep people from asking probing and potentially embarrassing questions such as "What happened to all the education money that was in the general fund?"

A study by Money magazine found that from 1990 to 1995 taxes grew three times faster in lottery states than in non-lottery states. In 1971, Governor Thomas Meskill of Connecticut successfully lobbied for a lottery by arguing, "Giving people the choice to raise money purchasing lottery tickets will let your state hold the line on taxes." In 1991, however, Connecticut legislators enacted the state's first income tax even though lottery sales had reached $671 million in the previous year.

More on the threat of Islamic-Arabism
On a blog found via linkmeister Instapundit, Tonecluster has this to say about the topic in his essay, "It's the culture, stupid."

I do not think that arabia can live peacefully or coexist with non-arabs. . . . I am left with the conclusion that the problem is with arab culture. (Recognizing the logical leap that I am making here). I dont really take islam at its word -- history has proven that doing so is foolish. But, again, for the sake of argument. If islam is peaceful what explains the depravity of the arab world? To me, it is arab culture that uses islam (after all, arab culture created it) to achieve power and suppress "non-believers" and to a lesser extent its constituents.

More and more people are coming to realize that the terrorists who attacked America on Sept. 11 and who are attacking Israel today are not aberrations of Islamic-Arabism; they are the logical result of it.

As I wrote in my long essay, Precision Weapons, Abject Defeat, and Reshaping Societies:

Saudi Arabia is a paradigm. According to Prof. Fouad Ajami of The Johns Hopkins University, Islam has been "the handmaiden of the state" since the beginning of the modern Saudi realm, resluting from "an alliance between a desert chieftan, Muhammed bin Saud, and a religious reformer named Muhammed ibn Abd al-Wahhab. This partnership anchored the kingdom. The House of Saud defended the country and struck bargains with world powers, while the descendants of the Wahhab family dominated the judiciary and an educational system suffused with religion.
. . The real enemy of Western civilization today is not Islam. It is arabism: a system of political and social authoritarianism in Arab lands using Islam as a handmaiden, as Prof. Ajami put it. (Remember, most Muslims are not Arabs.)
. . Our task is therefore over the long term to bring home to these nations, at every level of their societies, the fact that Japan had to face: the times, they are a-changing. These nations must come to realize at every level that they cannot successfully continue with business as before. They must transition into democratically based insitutions with free-market systems and individual freedoms. The question is, can these reforms be brought about either non-violently or will this change require profound suffering by their peoples?

Tonecluster continues -

It seems to me that until Western governments become serious about pressuring arab governments in reforming the way arabs view the world (I tend to think that western culture will ultimately achieve this goal -- the problem is whether it happens before a nuke goes off in some western or hindu city), our war against terrorism (really a war against Saudis and Iraqis and Yemenis and Palestinians, etc...) will continue and it is about cultures. The west can, to a large extent, tolerate theirs. But it seems that islamic arabs cannot tolerate anyone else. Until that changes, how can we see islam as practiced and funded by arabs (saudis) as nothing more than a totalitarian code of life that is the ideological center for conquest against our country.

Exactly. See my explanation of what is at stake. It's called freedom.

"Save yo' Confederate money, boys. The South gonna rise again!"
What my daughter has to do with General Lee.
This afternoon my wife, daughter and I went to Rippavilla mansion, an large antebellum home dating from 1851. It was built by the Cheairs family (pronounced, "chairs"). The home is located in Spring Hill, Tennessee, where Confederate General John Bell Hood's army failed to stop Union Maj. Gen. John Schofield's army from slipping away to the north on the night of Nov. 29, 1864. Schofield took up strong defensive positions the next day in Franklin, on the south side of the Harpeth river.

The guide at Rippavilla described what happened the next morning. Hood, furious at Schofield's escape, was hardly able to eat the breakfast Mrs. Cheairs served him and his staff in Rippavilla's dining room. Absorbing Hood's unbridled fury and accusations of dereliction, incompetence and even drunkenness was Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, the only American general ever to have a price put in his head by his enemy (by Union Gen. William T. Sherman, who offered a bounty of $10,000 for Forrest).

Also present was a corps commander, Lt. Gen. Stephen D. Lee, no relation to Robert E. Lee. It was S.D. Lee who had ordered South Carolina batteries to open fire on Fort Sumter, the opening shots of the Civil War.

My wife and I gave the name Lee to our daughter as her middle name. It was my grandmother's middle name; she was named after her uncle, whose first name was Lee. He was born during the closing weeks of the Civil War. His father, my great-great-great uncle, had served with Gen. S.D. Lee throughout the war. He named his son Lee in the general's honor.

I explained this lineage to my daughter, and pointed out that she was standing in the room where her distant namesake had received his orders to pursue Schofield's army. Hood's Army of Tennessee attacked the Yankees at Franklin late that afternoon. The Battle of Franklin was a catastrophe for the Confederacy. Hood's army suffered thousands of casualties in just five hours, more than either side had suffered in two days' battle at Shiloh. The Confederate dead was greater than the number of dead Grant had lost at the infamous battle of Cold Harbor. Two weeks later the Army of Tennessee was annihilated at the Battle of Nashville and the Civil War in the west was over.

Gen. Lee was wounded at Franklin. After the war, he was a member of Mississippi legislature and the first president of the Mississippi Agricultural and Mechanical College. He was an early campaigner for women's rights. He died in 1908.

But for a few moments this afternoon, Lee was right there with us.

A postscript: My wife's maiden name was Stephens. Her great-great-great uncle was Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy. My great-great grandfather and his two brothers fought as members of the 11th Tennessee Regiment; one brother was killed at the Battle of Murfreesboro. Another g2-grandfather was a Union officer in the 16th Pennsylvania who had a leg shot off at Chancellorsville, where Union General "Fighting Joe" Hooker didn't live up to his nickname.

Yet another g2-grandfather was a CSA soldier who was captured by the Union and imprisoned in Nashville. He may be the only American POW whose wife busted him out of prison. She, in turn, was sexually assaulted in her own kitchen by a Yankee soldier. A proper Southern lady, she defended her virtue with great vigor by taking a very large, oak rolling pin and slamming him on the head. He dropped like a rock. As he fell, she shoved him out her back door onto the porch. Later, two of his buddies took him away, whether dead or alive Grandma never learned.

My mother still has the rolling pin. Grandma smashed that Yankee so hard the rolling pin cracked from one end to the other. It is a treasured heirloom

Oh, sure, now Arafat wants to make a deal!
Steven den Beste dissects the latest phony gambit by the Palestinian Authority with surgical skill.

Now that the Palestinian Authority has ceased to be important, suddenly it is trying to be reasonable. This report says that the Palestinians have finally give up the "Right of Return", the biggest stumbling block to any peace deal with Israel.

It's a shame they didn't do this about six months ago; then it might have made a difference. In fact, it's a shame they're not doing it now. The reporter is seeing something that isn't there, and hoping that there's more to this than there actually is.

The Palestinians are not giving up the right-of-return. Partly that's because the Palestinian Authority doesn't actually speak for the Palestinians anymore. (No single voice speaks for the Palestinians anymore.) What they actually said is that instead of the right-of-return being non-negotiable, now they're willing to talk about it.

See also my post of April 5 which addresses the right of return, and also explains why this latest gambit is baloney.

Our "friends" the Saudis
Photodude eloquently talks about them. Good stuff.

My email seems to be out. . . .
. . . so if you have emailed me recently, I probably didn't get it. Don't re-send; I should get it when service resumes.

Interesting quote
Reader Brian (no last name given) makes this observation in response to my essay on the comparison between Western law and Islamic law:

"They" just aren't like us ... and it is terribly frustrating and not a little terrifying to appreciate that there are very many in our own country assume that the old axiom "Come, let us reason together" is a useful way to approach Islamists.

How do you get committed people to change their minds (both Islamists and our well meaning but misguided citizens)?

"Once a commitment is made, the nature of thought changes. The committed heart is not so much interested in a careful evaluation of the merits of a course of action, but in proving that he or she is right." (A. Pratkinis (1995) "How to sell a pseudoscience", Skeptical Inquirer, 19:20-25.

Excellent point, Brian. Thank you for reading and for writing!

Muslim scholar warns West of Muslim goals
Thanks to Little Green Footballs for the link to a UPI report of a Muslim professor of political science named Bassam Tibi at Goettingen University, Germany.

"First, both sides should acknowledge candidly that although they might use identical terms these mean different things to each of them. The word 'peace,' for example, implies to a Muslim the extension of the Dar al-Islam -- or 'House of Islam' -- to the entire world," explained Tibi, who is also a research scholar at Harvard University.

"This is completely different from the Enlightenment concept of eternal peace that dominates Western thought, a concept developed by (18th-century philosopher) Immanuel Kant."

According to Tibi, the quest of converting the entire world to Islam is an immutable fixture of the Muslim worldview. Only if this task is accomplished -- if the world has become a "Dar al-Islam" -- will it also be a "Dar a-Salam," or a house of peace.

Child killers
This VodkaPundit posting brought back some bitter memories. Here are the guts of it, a quote from PittsburghLIVE.com.

A McKeesport man with a history of child abuse allegations told police he threw his girlfriend's 16-month-old baby into an empty tub and shook him, slamming the child's head, because the baby had soiled his diaper, Allegheny County detectives said Thursday.

James M. Ferree, 41, is now in the county jail on a charge of criminal homicide after little James Walsh Jr. died in UPMC McKeesport hospital from his injuries.

When I was chief of public affairs of US Army Criminal Investigation Command (CID), my unpleasant duty every morning was to read the worldwide Army crime report. CID only deals with felony offenses; misdemeanors are handled by the military police.

One morning there was a ROI (Report of Investigation) of a dead baby case. A young soldier had stopped on the way home after getting off duty for a few beers. He got home both late and looped. His wife was also a soldier, on a different duty schedule. Husband's tardiness caused her to be late reporting for duty, a very serious thing in the Army. As soon as husband got home, wife was out the door. She couldn't leave before then because they had a baby son nine months old (or so; the child was still in a crib).

Baby started crying by and by, and drunken father got mad. He picked his baby son up by his ankles and quieted him by slamming his head against the wall several times - which killed him, of course. Then, father took the corpse to the balcony of their third-floor apartment and hurled it to the ground three apartments away.

Then there was the case of three-year-old Andrea McKinney, who was so brutally killed that you wouldn't believe me if I wrote it, and I just don't want to write it anyway. She died at the hands and other organs of a total stranger who kidnaped her from her bedroom about 4 a.m. So even though I wrote earlier that I am skeptical of the reported facts of the Elizabeth Smart case, I also have uneasy feeling that poor Elizabeth is lying dead somewhere after suffering more horribly than any of us would like to know.

VodkaPundit says that the case he cited is basically prima facie justification for capital punishment. I have worked to oppose the death penalty in my state, but honestly, I have a hard time finding mercy in my heart for anyone who murders or abuses a child.

Take the political compass test
Go here and find out where you are on the political graph. Pretty interesting! Thanks to War Now! for the link.

Another suggested name for Palestinian murder-suicide bombers
Andrew Sullivan says that one his readers suggested that the Palestinian murder-suicide bombers be called, "Islamikazes."

I know that people have been searching for a handle for these murderers who take their own lives in the process, and Islamikaze has a catchy ring to it. But for some reason I can't bring myself to adopt it. I find myself reacting, incredibly, that it tarnishes the image of the Japanese kamikaze pilots of World war II.

All of Japan's kamikaze pilots were properly enrolled members of the national armed forces of a legitimate nation-state. They wore regular uniforms. They did not attack by deceit, but openly. They attacked only completely legitimate military targets - American ships - and so all the casualties kamikazes caused were military casualties. When the Japanese surrendered, there were no rogue kamikaze pilots who continued to attack. When ordered to cease, they ceased. They picked up their lives as best as they could, and lived in peace with the American occupiers.

Compared to Palestinian murder-suicide bombers, the Japanese kamikaze pilots now seem positively noble.

So I can't use "Islamikaze." Compared to the Palestinians, the Japanese kamikazes seem like straight-up guys.

-- Andrew also linked to a "gripping piece" in the Toronto Star. He's right. It's a kind of analysis of the bombings I haven't seen in any US media.

Somebody's dirty in the Elizabeth Smart kidnaping
I am skeptical about that Elizabeth Smart was snatched from her home by a guy acting alone, unaided by someone related to her or her family by blood or friendship. Kidnaping of children by strangers is rare, as crimes against children go (between 200-300 kids per year are kidnapped by a non-relative, most in public venues). Dr. Loren Brooks was interviewed by Bill O'Reilly June 10. She is a kidnapping expert with the Leadership Consulting Group, a firm specializing in threatening situations and potential violence. According to Brooks, the motives of such kidnappers are almost always sexual predation or a desire to integrate the child into their own families. Ransom demands are rare.

O'REILLY: OK. How unusual is it for somebody to just to break into somebody's house and snatch a child, particularly a 14-year-old child, you know, and Danielle Van Dam was 7? These kids can put up a fight. They can scream.

BROOKS: Yes, it's quite rare. You know, there are about 800,000 individuals that go missing each year, and of those, about 85 to 90 percent are juveniles. And of those, about 200 to 300 are stranger-abducted, sometimes taken off the street. But the out-of-the-home abduction only occurs about 45 to 65 times a year, so it's a low-frequency event, but it's extremely traumatic, of course, for families and communities.

So a case like Smart's happens, but very rarely. And in this case, something doesn't click in the facts of the case as they have been revealed to the public.

Remember Susan Smith? She was the South Carolina mother who strapped her two small children into the back seat of her Mazda and drove the car into lake. They drowned. She claimed a black man had hijacked her car with the kids in it at a traffic light. She finally confessed to the crime; the car was recovered with the bodies still inside.

As it turned out, the investigators were privately convinced from the first that Smith was complicit in the disappearance of her children because certain details of her story could not be true, and the cops knew it. I was on the staff of US Army Criminal Investigation Command at the time, not as an investigator. I got quite an education from CID's highly trained investigators. An accomplished Army polygrapher never bothered with the Smith case's details. He watched Smith's appearance on The Today Show in my office and said, "She's lying. She killed them. When you have examined as many liars as I have, you can tell."

According to ElizabethSmart.com, the girl was kidnapped by a man with the following description, supplied by Elizabeth's nine-year-old sister: caucasian man, 30 to 40 years old, 5' 8" to 5'10", dark hair, hair on arms, hair on back of hands, light jacket, light golf hat or English driving hat, dark shoes. Another description released by police adds that he held a small gun and was wearing tan pants and dark shoes.

It's the description that bothers me.

The sister saw the man enough, at night, to note such details as hair on his hands and complete details of his clothing, but she says she did not see his face. And yesterday police said that the sister waited two hours before telling her parents, a new revelation.

And the garage door was left unlocked that night, so I recall - by accident, natch.

Sorry, this whole thing smells. It just smells, and when it smells like that, something is almost always rotten.

Yesterday, Salt Lake City Police Chief Rick Dinse said the investigation was "concentrating on the central area around the house and the people associated with that house. . . . We believe that this person may be a trusted person in the neighborhood or in the community. [It] might be someone ... that had reason to be here, that had reason to come across the family."

Well, in for a penny, in for a pound: this strikes me as an arranged disappearance, not a home-invasion kidnapping as we usually think of it. What motive there is I cannot fathom. This wasn't random. Someone close to Elizabeth Smart isn't clean in this. I don't know who.

And I could be wrong.

But it still smells.