Dictators to teach at Boston University
New program aims to have dictators teach American students about government;
Robert Mugabe still possible for lecture - No this is not a joke posting

Just read this on The Compleat Iconoclast and weep over the sorry state of American post-secondary education.

3,000 dead is no big deal, I guess
Sniveling foreign leaders still don't have a clue

A WaPo piece on the evaporation of foreign support for the US in the past year includes this gym:

"We still have an administration that is looking at the world just through the prism of the campaign against terror," said Arturo Sarukhan Casamitjana, chief adviser to Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda. "I think we're in for a rough ride."

Flippin' idiot! Moron! Three thousand people murdered, more injured, billions of dollars of property damage- and we're just supposed to shrug it off! Try this out, Arturo: how 'bout we bomb a couple of your embassies overseas, sink one of your warships and machine gun all the illegals coming across the Rio for a couple of months, then see what that does to your prism!

What the various other nations of the world bemoan is the fact that after the 9-11 attacks, they were holding their hands out, eager to aid and comfort the USA, provided we signed on to their pre-existing agenda. Cooperation and closer ties for them meant that they could use the terror attacks to get us to do what they always wanted us to do. Hence, you have:

Sept. 11 "was a moment to be seized and was not," said Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher. "This sort of Dallas syndrome -- with us or against us -- is not helpful."

I don't even know what "the Dallas syndrome" means. What this dimbulb is saying is that after 9/11 we should have seized was the wholsesale adoption of the Arabs' desire to destroy Israel, in exchange for very inconsequential "help" in fighting the terrorists.

Administration officials, by contrast, see an envious world clamoring for attention from the only superpower, which they say has embarked on a dramatic effort to eliminate great power rivalries and usher in freedom around the globe. "We've got influence, power, prestige and clout beyond any nation in the history of the world," Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage said. "It brings forth a certain amount of envy."

And an awful lot of stupidity. Note: the USA has " embarked on a dramatic effort to eliminate great power rivalries and usher in freedom around the globe." I bloody well hope so! But the Post says that as if it is a bad thing.

What the British are for
The real role is moral

The Brits contribute significant, though not decisive military forces. Military force is not their main value these days. I think that the main role the British are playing in the current unpleasantness is to work in the background keep the American backbone sufficiently rigid. The Iron Lady told Bush the elder, "Don't go wobbly, George." I don't think that PM Blair need be so blunt with Bush the younger, but as a nation, they seem to turn out to be Old Reliable. And we need that more than their excellent, but small, military forces. So I say, Hail Britannia!

Why soldiers are reluctant to go to war

World War II cartoonist Bill Mauldin drew a cartoon in which Willie and Joe are sitting on the sidewalk of an Italian town far behind the battle line. They are leaning against a building, bewhiskered, utterly exhausted from combat, their clothes torn and filthy. Striding past them is a clean-shaven, well-groomed young trooper who obviously has a chip on his shoulder. His fists are clenched and his jaw is set in obvious anger. As he goes by, Willie says to Joe, "That cain't be no combat man - he's lookin' fer a fight!"

After the Civil War General William T. Sherman became so disgusted at the rhetoric of glory being used to describe the war's campaigns that he fired off a verbal barrage in opposition. In a graduation speech at the Michigan Military Academy in 1879, Sherman said, "War is at best barbarism. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell!"

This is a very key point
Iraqi people won't try to save Saddam, Iraqi army can't; here's why

TNR's Michael Rubin explains why an invasion of Iraq won't be a quagmire:

Some U.S. commentators worry that when American invaders show up in their capital, even anti-Saddam Iraqis will rally around the dictator. But that likely underestimates the depth of hatred most Iraqis feel toward their leader. Close to one in every five Iraqis, after all, lives in exile-having fled Saddam's regime-and more than 700,000 have perished in wars or government purges since Saddam formally assumed Iraq's presidency in 1979. That means most Iraqi families have a murdered or exiled family member or friend. And the victims are not merely Kurds and Shia. Roughly 400,000 Iraqis have taken refuge across the border in Jordan, the vast majority of them Sunni Arabs like Saddam himself. And last week's attack on the Iraqi embassy in Berlin was the work of Sunni Arabs as well. . . .

Iraq's army now is just one-third the size it was when it invaded Kuwait in 1990. Even the Republican Guard units are understaffed and underequipped. On December 31, 2000, for instance, Saddam presided over a four-hour Baghdad military parade. Reuters described how "the parade displayed sophisticated surface-to-surface and anti-aircraft missiles, artillery and more than 1,000 modern, Russian-made tanks as well as infantry units." But Michael Eisenstadt, a military analyst for The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, watched footage of the parade and made a startling observation: Some of the showcased vehicles were actually captured Kuwaiti equipment repainted by the Iraqi army (the Kuwaitis purchased a variant of the t-72 tank that the Iraqis had not). Far from being the new, refurbished army Saddam sought to portray, the showcase of decade-old captured Kuwaiti armor highlighted how decrepit Saddam's military really is. Equipment not looted by Saddam's government was little better. "Most of the vehicles on display appeared to be old, beat-up Iraqi inventory," says Eisenstadt. "You could see the wear on the road wheels and fenders in the close-up shots." And if Saddam's troops lack equipment, they also lack training. As Patrick Clawson, editor of the forthcoming study Iraq After Saddam, comments, "Urban warfare is a specialized skill which takes a lot of training to learn. And I know of no evidence that Saddam has allowed Iraqi soldiers into the cities to practice this skill. Indeed, given how paranoid Saddam is about allowing his troops anywhere near Baghdad, I would be surprised to see Iraqi soldiers practicing how to fight street by street." Egypt's former Chief of Staff General Salah Halaby put it more bluntly earlier this month: "The Iraqi army has no chance whatsoever to stand steadfast and will fall like a castle of sand."

Massive numbers of American casualties being unreported
Jihadi press says scores of US troops killed

Fred Pruitt at Rantburg reports the "Gee, don't we wish" extravagancies coming from some Muslim press organs.

A humble porter of Shaheen Cargo confirmed the story at the time: he complained that his shoulders were sore because he had spent the night carrying coffins to a transport plane.

Yah, sure, you betcha. Problem is, as Fred points out, the US armed forces don't contract out recovery and transport of their dead. Ever.

Bush still has not made a case for war with Iraq

That's what David Hackworth just said on Fox News. I agree, that having been my position for, well, 11 months.

VP Cheney's speech in my hometown of Nashville this week was coherent, consistent, and compelling. Problem was, it was from the VP, not the P. Until and unless The Big Man himself lays out the case to the people, it won't have been made. Proxies don't count no matter how highly placed they are, except as warm ups.

I think that the administration, from Bush on down, realizes that there is actually no actual casus belli for war with Iraq. They think that, as Cheney said the other day, "the risks of inaction are greater than the risks of action," but the whole issue is filled with unkowns and imponderables. They do not know what Saddam might do in the future, but the risk of waiting to see is just too high to accept.

Or, on the other hand, they intend to try to bring about a regime change through unconventional means, and the war talk is just a smokescreen.

Baseball will go on!

Players and owners reach agreement. Story here.

Why Islam Can't Change Soon
Even "liberal" Muslims are absolutist
A repeat posting from March 22

I explained in an earlier post that even relatively liberal-minded Muslims in Islamia are fairly absolutist about the truth of the Quran and Islam. I read an article in the Feb. 11 edition of Business Week that reinforced that point. (It also agreed with my earlier post's point that Islam is not inherently more accommodating of terrorism than other religions: "The roots of Islamic extremism lie not so much in religion but in repressive societies with economies too anemic to provide livelihoods for their fast-growing populations.")

A few Islamic voices have called for critical self-examination:

"It is up to the Islamic world to return to its senses and assess the damage [Osama bin Laden] has caused," wrote Khalil Ali Haider, a specialist on Islamic groups, in the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Watan [quoted in the Business Week article].

But the number and influence of such voices is small. The odds of widespread, systematic, serious, self-critical thinking in Islamia is even smaller:

Despite much talk of reform, most Arab countries remain museums of state capitalism. There's no sign of a leader who could shake things to the core. "Those who expect a new, reformed Islam are asking the wrong questions. We don't have a Luther. We don't have a Calvin," says Tahseen Bashir, a former Egyptian presidential spokesman and diplomat. Instead, they have suicide bombers. . . .

It is also unlikely for Islamic reformers of the caliber of Luther or Calvin to arise because Islamia's economic systems are not robust to grow them. By the 16th century in Europe, the time of the Christian reformers, feudalism had long disappeared. The basic economy of Europe had been transformed from manorial farming into a manufacturing and trade economy, primarily of textiles made from wool. The economy of Europe became a proto-factory one.

With the subsequent rise of capitalist systems, wealthy business owners and merchants became power centers in their own right, further serving to limit the power of the state. Capitalism began as simply the search for maximum efficiency of using resources in societies mostly ordered for personal freedom with property protections, and this it basically remains. There is no single political or economic center in capitalist societies, meaning that both errors in efficiency and their corrections are continuous and multitudinous. It also means that the article's characterization of Arab countries' economies as "state capitalism" is an oxymoron. Command economies may have some capitalist features, but free markets are a sine qua non of capitalism.

Yet Islamia generally (and the Third World generally), does not enjoy property protections near what Americans take for granted. Without property protections, capitalism is not possible. According to Hernando de Soto, founder of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy in Lima, Peru:

Capitalism requires the bedrock of property and other legal institutions, yet most people outside the West have no solid property rights. This means they are excluded from capitalism, because without property no one can really be certain who owns what; addresses cannot be systematically verified, descriptions of assets are not standardized to facilitate transactions, people cannot be made accountable for their debts. As a result, buildings and land cannot be used to guarantee credit, and businesses cannot be divided and represented in salable shares. In fact, without property law, the instruments that store and transfer capital, such as home titles, shares, patent rights and bonds, cannot be created. (Washington Post, Jan. 6, 2002, p. B02)

It's not a precise fit to say that the economies of Islamia are feudal in nature, but it's not a bad fit, either. The basic social structure of most of these lands are of a tribal nature. Relationships among clans or tribes are the overwhelmingly important factor in social, religious, business and family matters. Exclusive of oil, the GDP of Arab countries is extremely low. The oil and its wealth are basically the private property of a few families: the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia, the Emir of Kuwait in that country, for example. In fact, Saudi Arabia is much more a family-run business than a true nation-state. (And it's a Corleone-like family at that. . . .)

The vertical arrangement of political power, flowing from the top to the bottom, is not to be challenged by the masses because the masses have no economic freedom. The concentration of wealth and the concentration of political power are in the same hands, unlike the late medieval West, where wealth was increasingly concentrated in the hands of those who had no inherited political position.

There are no economic centers to challenge the ruling despots because the depsots are the economic centers. The Muslim clergy depend on the despots for sustenance; after all, state religions are the norm in Arabislamia, and the civil codes are sometimes indistinguishable from religious law. Separation of mosque and state is a concept that most of Islamia doesn't even understand. (In fairness, though, the religious law, Sharia, is not applied with equal force or fervor everywhere throughout Islamia.) So the near-term chances of internationally significant self criticism of Islam, by Muslims, is pretty much nil.

Okay, maybe I'll do a little posting
Watching my alma mater play footbal on TV anyway

My wife like to watch HGTV so she can think up further damage to do to our checkbook. In the interests of domestic tranquillity, I wind up retreating to my home office where I can watch TV on the computer, which is equipped with an ati ALl in Wonder video/TV card. So as long as I am sitting here at the computer anyway I thought I'd do shrink the picture to ther corner and do some blog reading.

This is a mistake, because for a blog writer to read blogs is to want to write on his own blog. But I refuse to write, right now. So herewith are some worthy links around blogland that I commend to you.


Greenpeace gets "poverty preservation" award from third world reps: Sometimes real justice does occur.

the Asia Times has had some of the best coverage of the Iraq situation, so read this piece that says, "Much of the [media] coverage has been based on two assumptions: first, that the administration has yet to make a decision to go to war with Iraq; second, that if it does decide in favor of war, there will be a measurable deployment of forces to the theater a la Desert Shield in 1990. Both assumptions are wrong."

Yep!


If you have not read Joe Katzman's guest-blog series about Sudan, you should.


Mark Steyn writes good stuff about multiculturalism.


Rand Simberg links to this site which tells the story of a group of hiking PETA members beign mauled by a bear in Yellowstone Park. Which reminds me of a joke:

Once upon a time there was a man who went hiking through the Rocky Mountains. He took a turn off the main trail and came upon a steep hill. He climbed the hill and just as he was pulling himself over the last cropping of rock a huge bear met him nose to nose. The bear roared fiercely. The man was so frightened he lost his balance and fell down the hill with the bear chasing him. When he stopped rolling his leg was broken. Escape was impossible. The bear was only a few yards away, charging with its jaws gaping wide. The man had always been religious, so he prayed, "O God, please, please make this bear a godly bear." Suddenly the bear stopped! It turned its face toward the heavens! Then it knelt on its hind legs and raised its front paws, folding them in front of its face! The man was elated. Surely he was witnessing a miracle! Then he heard the bear pray, "Lord, I thank Thee for this meal which thou hast provided. Amen."

Orson Scott Card has another essay posted.


The Compleat Iconoclast also has a good essay.


Geitner Simmon writes about how Southerners are the only "ethnic group" is the country today that it is okay to stereotype and mock.

AC Douglas explains why the saber rattling against Iraq is not working.

I've got to take a break

Sorry, good people, I have to take a break. Too much real work now, so I will be offline until Tuesday, Sept. 3.

If you have sent me email, be assured I have read it. But it is not possible for me to post or respond to every message. In addition to your feedback, which I value, I get a lot of work-related email that I have to answer or tend to.

Have a great Labor Day weekend!

Some late night quotes

"Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstance." John Barton

"In the long run you hit only what you aim at. Therefore, though you should fail immediately, you had better aim at something high." Henry David Thoreau

"Thousands of people have talent. I might as well congratulate you for having eyes in your head. The one and only thing that counts is: Do you have staying power?" Noel Coward

"If you are going to let the fear of poverty govern your life....your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live." George Bernard Shaw

Some Brits are mad
and they're not going to take it anymore

Geitner Simmons points the way to this new UK Daily Telegraph series about how the British people have lost their freedom.

The answer to the OGE problem is becoming clearer
One of three solutions now seem likely

Serious target shotgun shooters discover sooner or later that they face the "OGE Problem," the One Gun for Everything puzzle. Because each kind of target course presents its targets differently, target shotguns tend to be highly customized at the national and international competition level.

Sport courses consist of five different courses:

• Trap
• Skeet
• Five stand
• Sporting clays
• Wobble (couldn't find a link, it's a variation of trap)

The main difference among the courses is how the clay target is presented - its speed, direction, where it comes from, and whether it rises or falls, and how. Sporting clays also uses different size targets, which makes it a greater challenge.

Custom skeet guns aren't worth much shooting trap. Pure trap guns offer drawbacks on five-stand and sporting clays. I won't go into all the details why, it would take too long. But many shooters like to shoot more than one kind of course for their recreational shooting. (Really serious competitors practice and compete in only one kind of shooting.) Hence the problem: which gun is most suitable for all the events, knowing that no gun will be excellent for all of them? That's what I am trying to work out.

I won't consider field (hunting) model guns, even though a lot of shooters use them for target courses. I do too. My present shotgun is a Beretta AL 391 automatic field model. It's a great gun, but doesn't have the target features I would like. These include a wide sighting rib, enhanced sight beads, backboring, and a longer barrel for a longer sighting plane.

Generally, shooters try to solve the OGE dilemma by settling on a sporting clays model. Unless you are willing to part with really major moola (for me, anything over $1,000), that means you'll basically get a field gun that has been tricked up to competition status by adding certain features. Only a few makers actually make their sporting models as competition guns from the barrel out. Beretta's Sporting AL 391, for example, is identical to mine except it has a wider rib, a mid-bead sight, a 30-inch barrel rather than 28, and a better recoil pad. That's about it.

But Franchi's 612 Sporting Automatic has several enhanced features that includes a backbored barrel with a four-inch forcing cone, which means that the chamber is wider than the standard 12-gauge width (not by much) and gradually tapers inward over four inches to the standard width. This helps prevents shot deformity and promotes a shorter shot string. Fewer deformed shot pellets means that more arrive at the target area. The shot string is the length of the shot column from front to rear; the less this distance, the greater chance you have in hitting the target as the shot column intersects its flight path (hopefully at the same place and time).

The impetus toward auto guns is economic. They don't cost as much as over-and-under guns (OUs). Side-by-side (SxS) guns are not used because the sight plane runs between the barrels and is distorted by heat. Sport shooting results in very hot barrels! Also, SxS guns's barrels are not parallel; their line of fire converges. That means the sighting line and the shot line are angled rather than parallel, and that means you miss more often.

There are a lot of pretty good target OUs selling for just a few hundred dollars more than a target auto. But a few hundred bucks buys a lot of ammo for practice. That's why I'm staying below $1,000, hopefully well below. I don't have a shooting sponsor to offset the cost of ammo and buy me a gun. Almost every major competitor does have sponsorship. That's a big reason why they use OUs, not automatics. The other reason is that until just the last few years ago, automatic guns were neither hardy nor reliable enough to shoot 25,000 - 30,000 rounds per year, which is what first-tier competitors shoot. And not many autos are now. But some are, such as the the Beretta. I read an article written by a Beretta auto shooter who said that he had fired 80,000 rounds through it without a hiccup.

Target OUs are out of reach for me. I have shot a fair amount of trap with a Beretta 686E Sporting, which I have already written about. It is a fantastic gun. But it lists for more than $2,000 and the least expensive one I have found is $1,400.

OUs that cost about the same as good auto target guns are field guns. But I want a target gun. However, there is an inexpensive OU target model called the IZH-27 Sporting. It is made by Baikal in Russia and imported by European American Arms. I found a dealer in New York who sells it for $439.

Well, you say, you get what you pay for. Cheap prices usually mean cheap-built guns. That's true, but not in this case. I inspected the standard IZH-27 just today, and it's as solid as a tank. I read that it is basically a clone of the Browning Citori, which is one of the best non-custom-made OUs there is. Also, the price for Baikal guns is depressed because the dollar is very strong against the ruble. The Russians are trying to improve their foreign trade, so I wouldn't be surprised if Baikal is getting a subsidy incentive from Mr. Putin's government. Besides, labor costs in the city of Baikal aren't too high. I have read a lot of user reviews and professional reviews, and no one talks down about it except to say it's aesthetically attractive (true). One owner said, "This gun is so ugly it would make a train take a dirt road." On the other hand, he said he once saw a Citori owner drop his gun onto a gravel driveway. "I thought he was going to sit down and cry," he said.

The best advice I got when I was new to the sport was from the NCOIC of the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit. He advised me to buy the least expensive gun that both fit was had acceptable quality. Fit is everything for target shooting. Brand means nothing except as an indicator of reliability. Another very experienced shooter said to spend a year shooting an acceptable gun, during which time I should decide on the gun I want to buy to shoot forever. Learn the techniques, he said, save up for the ideal gun, then buy it and never shoot anything else. That's why I am leaning toward the Baikal.

As for fit, the Franchi 612 fits me almost perfect, and like almost every high-end auto, the stock is user-adjustable for cast (roll left or right) and pitch (adjusts up and down). The Beretta's is too, but even after adjusting my field 391 to the max, its fit is not very close. The Baikal fits better than the Beretta, but OU stocks are not user adjustable; they must be bent with heat and oil by a pro - not cheap.

So right now the best compromise between cost, fit and features is the Baikal.

The only gun I have not yet looked at is the Winchester 1300 Sporting pump, but they are hard to find. Remington also makes several target models, especially of the famous 1100 line, and also a Wingmaster pump contoured for trap shooting, which is attractive. Problem is, Wingmasters don't fit me, and the stock is not adjustable.

So the OGE problem is still alive and well, but is closer to resolution.

Dr. Heimlich sues hospitals
Inventor of life-saving maneuver demands royalties

Apparently motivated by big-lawyer suits against gun manufacturers, tobacco companies, McDonalds (sued by fat people) and the trillion-plus megabuck suite against Saudi Arabia, Dr.Henry Heimlich is suing major hospital chains for as-yet unspecified damages and punitive amounts.

Heimlich's attorney, a senior partner of the firm Dewey, Cheatham and Howe, said that health-care professionals are obligated to pay Dr. Heimlich a royalty for each time they use the now-famous anti-choking move he invented, called the Heimlich Maneuver.

Full details are here.

Which Colossal Death Robot Are You?

Joe Katzman is back online
Server problems solved

Just give us the money!
A fair chance won't suffice, we want the dough

William Raspberry shoots holes in the demand for reparations.

Blogspot's archives are all screwed up again
Almost a daily occurrence now

A rant against "separation of church and state"
Non-constitutional principle is widely mis-understood;
church people among most unaware of its meaning

The phrase, "separation of church and state," is nowhere found in the US Constitution. Yet many people, including a lot of church people, use it in conversations as if it has some specific, well-codified or indeed Constitutional meaning.

I believe in the separation of church and state. The long process by which the West broke civil law and religious law apart was a chief reason the West is now free, diverse and prosperous compared to most of the rest of the world. In contrast, the union of civil law and religious law into one over-arching code gives you something like Saudi Arabia, one of the least free, most oppressive regimes in the world.

In my presentations as I have spoken against the proposed Tennessee lottery, I have discovered that most of the electorate is unawarer of the actual meaning of separation of church and state. And church people lead that charge.

People have expressed this lack of knowledge expresses itself in two main ways:

1. Because I am an ordained minister, no political issue is properly my concern. I should focus on eternal salvation and conversion. I call this the "above the fray" position. This is the stance that many church people take. A lot of church people I have talked to have indicated that as a minister, I am supposed to be above the fray of what they perceive as a political issue. I (and the institution of the church itself) should not be concerned with temporal matters, but only with questions of eternity. Therefore, while they admit that I may have my own private opinion on political issues and vote like everyone else, I should not overtly participate in political processes at all. I should not take sides on any issue because I am "the church."

2. People who do not affiliate themselves with a church take a slightly different approach that I call the "outside the fray" stance. They claim that because of the "separation of church and state," I have no right to attempt to influence any political issue at all. As a minister, I am supposedly de facto, if not quite de jure, excluded from politics.

The former position is theologically erroroneous. The latter is simply un-American.

The First Amendment states that the government may not establish a religion. It may not favor any religion over another, nor prohibit the free exercise of religion. The Constitution also says that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States" (Art. VI ). Other than those two instances, the Constitution is silent about religion.

At the risk of sounding pedantic, I need to lay a very basic foundation of American civics.

Americans see the people as the only legitimate source of political legitimacy. In the United States, state authority lies in the voters. Hence, we have in our political lexicon the phrase, "popular sovereignty," which means the people are sovereign. In America, the government grants no rights at all to the people because the government has no rights to grant. All rights reside in the people to begin with. The American founders understood that human rights are simply a fact of human existence; human beings are "endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights," as the Declaration of Independence puts it.

In the American system, the people grant only powers to the government, but no rights. The government has no right, it has only the authority to exercise specified powers on the people's behalf. All rights automatically are always held by the people in the first place. The Bill of Rights was intended to restrict the power of the government and preserve the rights of the people from government encroachment.

Hence, we have a government of delegated powers which are limited by the specifications of the Constitution.

It is crucial to understand that the Constitution's restriction works only one way. It limits what the government may do regarding religion. It does not limit or restrict what religious people may do regarding politics.

My rights of free speech, free press and free exercise of religion remained intact when I was ordained. As an American, I have the same right as any other to speak out on political issues from whatever basis I wish, including a religious basis. No one has the right to silence me. They may only ignore me or attempt to counter my arguments.

One person accused me of "forcing others" to vote as I want and "bending others to my will." The very idea that I or any other minister enjoys this power is simply laughable! If I had that kind of power, be assured that everyone in my congregation would tithe, I would have a parsonage with a tennis court and pool and be given free country club membership to boot! Not to mention the Mercedes Benz! Please . . . .

It is un-American to claim that ministers or other religious people should remain silent on political issues, or that they should not offer religious perspectives on political issues. Others may reject my arguments, or counter them, but I have the same right as anyone else to make them.

Politics is how we define how we live together under law. Politics is how we grant or take away the power of the government to tend to the common weal. Politics is how we collectively decide on how we can form a more perfect union and provide for the general welfare. Such issues are inherently intertwined with Christian faith. Jesus never taught that we should be so heavenly minded as to be of no earthly good (to borrow C.S. Lewis' expression). Jesus stood firmly within the mainstream of Jewish prophecy, which was often overtly political.

The central concerns of Christian faith include justice, peace, stewardship of resources and the comity of the community. These are also the central concerns of government. Surely 3,500 years of Jewish and Christian tradition can valuably inform us in those concerns! And surely when those issues arise in our political processes they are also, at some level, matters of religious concern.

Methodism's founder John Wesley said, "There is no religion but social religion, no holiness but social holiness." The communal forms of faith in the Wesleyan tradition not only promote personal growth; they also equip and mobilize us for mission and service to the world. The United Methodist Book of Discipline says, "Scriptural holiness entails more than personal piety; love of God is always linked with love of neighbor, a passion for justice and renewal in the life of the world. We insist that personal salvation always involves Christian mission and service to the world" (para. 60, emphasis added).

There is no right relationship with God unless there is right relationship with other people. Any Christian who claims, "Politics does not matter; I just have to be right with Jesus" is, in my opinion, in eternal danger. No one can be right with Jesus who is unconcerned about the larger community in which he or she lives. I think that is as clear a teaching of Scripture as can be found. All the commandments, said St. Paul, "are summed up in this one rule: 'Love your neighbor as yourself'" (Rom. 13:9). There is no such thing as a purely personal relationship with God!

In my opinion, bad governance is a religious issue. Bad public policy is a religious issue. So is unjust taxation (which is what a lottery is). So is the corruption of children by luring them into addictive, destructive behavior, which is what the lottery does. Not everyone agrees, which is okay with me. It's not okay with me when they attempt to silence me because I am, you know, religious.

Lottery opponents will state their case, some parts of which may be explicitly religious and some not. Those who favor it will state their case. Then the people vote. That's how America works. And I am part of America.

Bush advisors say he can war against Iraq on his own
No further authorization necessary; lawyers Claim 1991 resolution still applies

Again from the Washington Post:

Lawyers for President Bush have concluded he can launch an attack on Iraq without new approval from Congress, in part because they say permission remains in force from the 1991 resolution giving Bush's father authority to wage war in the Persian Gulf, according to administration officials.

At the same time, some administration officials are arguing internally that the president should seek lawmakers' backing anyway to build public support and to avoid souring congressional relations. If Bush took that course, he still would be likely to assert that congressional consent was not legally necessary, the officials said.

I think the assertion that the 1991 resolutions authorize an invasion, of whatever size, of Iraq 11 years alter, sparked by an event 10 years later, is simply not credible. Yesterday's NYT column by James Baker warned how costly in lives and treasure toppling Saddam is likely to be, why an occupation of Iraq is necessary and why the whole job there will likely take many years to finish.

Whatever the White House decides about its obligations under the War Powers Resolution of 1973 . . .

If the Bush administration follows the lead of every other president since 1973, Democrat or Republican, it will simply ignore the War Powers resolution. No president has ever referred to it when committing troops to battle.

I have said all along and still say that specific congressional authorization for war against Iraq should be sought by the president before committing the nation to the campaign. While I would prefer an actual declaration of war by the Congress, I know the constitutionally, a congressional authorization and a declaration are indistinguishable.

But a declaration is clearer. Warmaking resolutions are usually murky and too vague.

Eleven years ago the Congress authorized war against Iraq, but did not declare war. Now, two presidents later, the administration claims that those resolutions authorize a much broader and greater national commitment than Bush 41 asked for or the Congress then envisioned. This unnecessary and counter-productive dispute will tie up the nation's dialog for months. While Iraq builds weapons, we debate technical points of the law. This is just insane, but it's a bed we made and now we must lie in it.

Unless the Congress now does its duty and actually declares war. Then there will be no dispute about the national commitment, the national goals, or the national will. Years from now there will be disagreement about what Congress intended, dissipating the nation's will and harming the national purpose.

The president and the Congress have a duty to history, to the Constitution and most of all to the American people to make public the reasons for war, if reasons there are, and to declare, nor merely authorize war, if war there is to be. Anything else is dereliction of duty.

Understatement of the year
yeah, it might help . . . .

Slugline on the WaPo's web site this morning on the possible Iraq war: "Some officials see congressional support as politically helpful."

Gee, ya think?

The People's Republic of California
State wants to arrest home-schooling parents;
says they have "no credentials" to teach kids

I do not home school my children. I know a couple who do but I also know that their children are receiving a miserable education. Other home-schooled kids get a good education.

But now California's semi-marxist government is threatening home-schooling parents with arrest and jail unless they have teacher certificates.

More than 1.2 million children now call mom and dad their controlling educational authorities. Their overwhelming success - in academic competition, on national tests and in college - poses a mounting threat to the government-run education monopoly and to the public school teachers' unions. . . .

Mocking home schoolers as fringe radicals and religious extremists, meddling with their teaching materials, and forcing them to beg public school officials for permission to educate their own children wasn't enough to defeat the growing movement. So now California's educracy has adopted a new motto: If you can't beat 'em, criminalize 'em.

Iraq linked to al Qaeda
Pentagon says it has details of Iraq's ties to terrorism;
document details WMD program

The Washington Times reports -

The Pentagon is circulating a detailed assessment of Baghdad´s nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs, and has briefed key allies and lawmakers privately as the White House weighs whether to strike Iraq.

The military also is working on a document that purportedly will show links among the al Qaeda terrorist organization and Iraq, its security forces and government-run businesses. Those documents have not yet been widely distributed within the government, officials said.

Administration officials call the weapons briefing "educational" and say it talks of all threats from weapons of mass destruction, not just Iraq´s. But they also acknowledge it will help to make the case for invading Iraq should President Bush give the order.
"It´s compelling," one official said.

Not everyone who received the briefing agrees.

Sen. Thad Cochran, Mississippi Republican, declined to discuss the briefing´s specifics. "It dealt with all threats," said Mr. Cochran, adding that the briefing was attended mostly by Republican senators and lasted about one hour. Mr. Cochran said he is not convinced that Iraq´s weapons programs justify a U.S. invasion.

"People wring their hands over an invasion of Iraq," he said. "I don´t think we´re going to invade Iraq. That´s a personal opinion. There´s no clear and present danger to the United States we know of right now. If there were, we would take action to prevent an attack against our country."

You think visa-express lines are bad?
Saudi complains about waiting in line for visa;
Carraig Daire insists that ain't nuthin

Says Carraig:

These poor Saudis also suffer from a lack of experience with our efficient bureaucrats.

Outside the embassy, 42-year-old Ali Hassan was full of understanding when he arrived to apply for a visa to travel to Orlando, Fla.
"I don?t mind waiting. I don?t like it, but you have to understand the global situation," said Hassan as he settled into line.
But after waiting more than eight hours for a two-minute interview with a consular officer, he said he had changed his mind.
"I thought the whole thing would take maximum three hours," he said. "But nine hours? That?s not only humiliating. It also doesn?t make any sense."

Try renewing your tags at the DMV pal.

Memo to Europe: Grow up on Iraq

Read this Andrew Sullivan essay. Now.

Now James Baker agrees with me
Former secretary of state says that only decisive victory can solve Iraq problem

Back on March 25 I posted the first part of a two-part essay entitled, "Precision Weapons, Abject Defeat, and Reshaping Societies," the second part coming on April 2. I combined both parts into one long essay and posted it on my essays page, which is where the link takes you. In it I said that if America fights Iraq, we must win decisively. In fact, I recommended four national strategic objectives:

1. the destruction of Iraq's capability to use nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, or further to develop them,
2. the destruction of Iraqi capability to launch conventional attacks beyond its borders
3. the final end of Saddam's regime.
4. the emplacement of a democratic, constitutional government in Baghdad.

Accomplishing anything short of these will not solve the problem, and will leave soil from which future confrontations will grow. We should not make the mistake of ridding Iraq of Saddam, only for him to be replaced with another despot who simply seems benign toward the United States. I think that democracy can be inculcated in Iraq, but not easily. The American people need to understand that the democratization of Iraq will be a long-term commitment.

Saddam must die or be captured. The destruction of Saddam's regime must include the death or capture of Saddam himself. Even if he is rendered politically and militarily impotent, he will not be seen as defeated unless he is dead or in custody. No exile should be allowed. Personally, I think a Nuremberg-style trial would serve our interests well and enable the Iraqi people to learn the murderousness of the regime.

Iraq's armed forces must be destroyed. I see no way around the necessity of utterly destroying the Iraqi armed forces. The Iraqi military must be completely wrecked as an operating entity. That means that all of its units will either have to die or be surrendered to the US armed forces. We must not permit soil to remain from which may grow the claim that Iraq's military was not truly beaten. America must not simply be victorious; our victory must be blindingly obvious to the Iraqi people and other nations. This result will also serve as a vital warning to others: there will be no weakness in the American prosecution of war, if war you choose. To fight the United States militarily is to see the destruction of your armed forces.

That means, I think, that an American land invasion of Iraq is unavoidable. It may be that the Iraqi National Congress can serve as a proxy government some day, but not as a proxy army. Its military effectiveness is much less than the Afghan freedom fighters who fought the Taliban. And this time we must stay. Occupation seems unavoidable while we inculcate democracy; if done in done in consort with other nations, fine, but if not, we must go it alone.

Comes now the honorable James Baker, writing in the New York Times about the Iraq problem:

The only realistic way to effect regime change in Iraq is through the application of military force, including sufficient ground troops to occupy the country (including Baghdad), depose the current leadership and install a successor government. Anyone who thinks we can effect regime change in Iraq with anything less than this is simply not realistic. It cannot be done on the cheap. It will require substantial forces and substantial time to put those forces in place to move. We had over 500,000 Americans, and more soldiers from our many allies, for the Persian Gulf war. There will be casualties, probably quite a few more than in that war, since the Iraqis will be fighting to defend their homeland. Sadly, there also will be civilian deaths. We will face the problem of how long to occupy and administer a big, fractious country and what type of government or administration should follow. Finding Saddam Hussein and his top associates will be difficult. It took us two weeks to locate Manuel Noriega in Panama, a small country where we had military bases.

Some other points where Baker says what I said, with the corresponding post of mine linked in:

The United States should advocate the adoption by the United Nations Security Council of a simple and straightforward resolution requiring that Iraq submit to intrusive inspections anytime, anywhere, with no exceptions, and authorizing all necessary means to enforce it� . .

We cannot allow our policy toward Iraq to be linked to the Arab-Israeli dispute. . . .

If we are to change the regime in Iraq, we will have to occupy the country militarily. [I said that above].

Beware vacation scams!
I got one in the mail;
NY Times aricle says watch out!

This NYT article about vacation scams is timely. I got a super-sounding free vacation mailing from Ramada Plaza Resorts for a free vacation that included a Disney area hotel stay, a Bahamas cruise, free rental car, the works.

Ever the skeptic, I went to Consumeraffairs .com and discovered what a gigantic ripoff this scam is.

there. You are warned!

Personally memorializing the anniversary of 9/11
Red, white and blue campaign

A correspondent sent me this email:

September 11, 2002 is soon approaching. On that day, please wear red, white and blue to work or school to show your support for those who lost their lives on 9/11/01 and to honor the heroes who worked to save them and the families left behind.

At noon your time on September 11, 2002, no matter where you are or what you are doing, stop, put your hand on your heart, and say the Pledge of Allegiance out loud or to yourself and say a prayer for our nation.

If all of us do this together in every time zone around the world, we will have a powerful chain of thoughts surrounding us. Please keep this going to your friends and family. By September 11, 2002 hopefully enough people will have read this and will join together in unity. God Bless the U.S.A.

Why the Army didn't get the A-10
Air Force didn't want it, and neither did the Army

This post got a lot of commentaria. The subject was whether the US Army and the US Air Force should be reunited into one service.

One commentator asked whether the Army and Air Force had signed a memorandum of understanding that transferred Air Force tactical aircraft to Army control after the Gulf war .

The answer is no. There had been some very unofficial discussions (speculation, really) about transferring the A-10's to the Army. The USAF didn't want them any more. The Army didn't want them either; it wanted the USAF to keep them and fly them. But the Gulf War made the whole thing moot.

The Gulf War actually made the USAF cling to tactical air assets more tightly than ever. Had the war not occurred, the USAF would have almost certainly retired the A-10 and relied exclusively on the F-16 for close-support ground attack. The problem was that the A-10 was low-tech and not very sexy. They claimed that the F-16 could do the same job better; not coincidentally, the F-16 is a zoomy airplane to boot.

That sounds cynical, but I insist that it's the reason. Despite the reams of quantitative analyses the USAF used to bolster its case, the real bottom line was that the A-10 was not a fighter pilot's kind of fighter plane. Strategic bombing or air-to-air combat has always been the Air Force's first (and only) loves. The Warthog did neither. It really had been an orphan from the time it rolled out the factory door.

But there is one thing the Air Force loves more than zoomy airplanes. It's funding, for anything, anytime. (Same with the other services.) The Gulf War suddenly made the A-10 popular in the press and Congress, so, "about face!" Just that quick it became an essential Air Force asset, and everyone else, keep your mitts off it. And that's where things stand today.

First the electric force field, now this
New technology breakthrough will give US troops key advantage

It's simply astounding what scientists can do!

We are losing the main war
Mark Steyn explains the defeat of freedom: a "lemming-like rush to cultural suicide

From cross the big pond, Mark Steyn's comments in England's The Spectator on the lunacy of the moral relativism of the western elite, using the NEA's latest anti-American polemic as his springboard. Apparently, things are no better in Britain:

Last 11 September, my neighbour Rachel went to school and was told by her teacher that, terrible as the unfolding events were, the Allies had killed far more people in Dresden. The interim pastor at my local Baptist church warned us not to attack Muslims, even though finding any Muslims to attack would have involved a good three-hour drive.

And so this 11 September, across the continent, millions of pupils, from kindergarten to high school, will be studying such central questions as whether the stereotyped images on 1942 War Bonds posters made German-Americans feel uncomfortable. Evidently, they made German-American Dwight D. Eisenhower so uncomfortable that he went off and liberated Europe. But I don't suppose that's what the NEA had in mind.

I don't think the teachers' union are "Hate America" types. Very few Americans are. But, rather, they're in thrall to something far craftier than straightforward anti-Americanism - a kind of enervating cult of tolerance in which you demonstrate your sensitivity to other cultures by being almost totally insensitive to your own. The NEA study suggestions have a bit of everything in them: your teacher might pluck out Roosevelt's Four Freedoms; on the other hand, she might wind up at the discussion topic about whether it was irresponsible for the media to show video footage of Palestinians celebrating 11 September as this allegedly led to increased hostility toward Arabs. Real live Arab intolerance is not a problem except insofar as it risks inflaming yet more mythical American intolerance. . . .

The war isn't with al-Qaeda, or Saddam, or the House of Saud. They're all a bunch of losers. . . . it's clear that the real enemy in this war is ourselves, and our lemming-like rush to cultural suicide. By "our," I [mean] all the people who shape our culture, who teach our children, who run our colleges and churches, who make the TV shows we watch - and they haven't got a clue.

George W. Bush had a rare opportunity after 11 September. He could have attempted to reverse the most toxic tide in the Western world: the sappy multiculturalism that insists all cultures are equally valid, even as they're trying to kill us. He could have argued that Western self-loathing is a psychosis we can no longer afford. He could have told the teachers' unions that there was more to the second world war than the internment of Japanese-Americans, and it's time they started teaching it to our children. A couple of days after 11 September, I wrote in these pages, "Those Western nations who spent last week in Durban finessing and nuancing evil should understand now that what is at stake is whether the world's future will belong to liberal democracy and the rule of law, or to darker forces." But a year later, after a brief hiccup, the Western elites have resumed finessing and nuancing evil all the more enthusiastically, and the "compassionate conservative" shows no stomach for a fight at least as important as any on the battlefield. The Islamists are militarily weak but culturally secure. A year on, the West is just the opposite. There's more than one way to lose a war.

Please, please, please read the whole essay.

Islamic quote of the day
Gruesome death to opponents of Allah!

"The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His apostle and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement" [EMQ 5.33].

Source: the previously cited Islamic web site Al Muhajiroun. However:

Matthew 5:43-44
43 "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' 44 But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,

Romans 12:21
21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

1 Peter 3:9-14
9 Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.
10 For, "Whoever would love life and see good days must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from deceitful speech.
11 He must turn from evil and do good; he must seek peace and pursue it.
12 For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil."
13 Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good?
14 But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. "Do not fear what they fear; do not be frightened."

1 Peter 3:17
17 It is better, if it is God's will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil.

3 John 1:11
11 Dear friend, do not imitate what is evil but what is good. Anyone who does what is good is from God. Anyone who does what is evil has not seen God.

Four US soldiers killed by friendly fire (Developing)
Islamic site reports deaths

The Islamic web site Al Muhajiroun (The Voice, the Eyes & the Ears of the Muslims) is reporting,

Four US soldiers were killed and many others wounded by the Afghan police in what is described as "friendly" fire near Gardez, reports reaching here [wherever "here" is -- DS]suggest. According to the reports a contingent of Afghan police had setup a picket for search of vehicles on a road near Gardez. During the routine night checking, they signalled a vehicle but the vehicle crossed the picket without even slowing down.

The police officials fired on the vehicle and the vehicle stopped at a distance. When the police approached the vehicle they found their bosses in the vehicle. The incident created tension among the occupying US forces and the local police authorities.

Guard Killed

The security at the US base at Kandahar killed a fellow Afghan guard when he indicated his colleagues that he was looking for a ripe moment to kill Americans. The report says that the fellows of the reengage guard asked him to surrender the weapon immediately. The guard resisted and brief exchange of fire took place leaving the guard in the pool of blood. . . . . Source: Balochistan Post

I am looking for more information from other sources, and will post when/if I get it.

"Let's not upset the sheep"
Networks will barely rebroadcast 9/11 destruction on anniversary shows

Bill Quick responds to TV networks' plans not to use the footage of the attacks and aftermath "unless absolutely warranted" on the first anniversary broadcasts. Says Bill:

Let's not upset the sheep. They frightened us badly with their rage when the 9/11 massacre occurred, and threatened to stampede off the nice, safe, liberal reservation of the mind we've so carefully constructed over the years.

Update: Dave Does the Blog has some more excellent comments.

Anti-Americanism rises in South Korea
Korean War memories fade;
more people there see USA as big bully

The fringe that always resented the US is not so fringe now.

Update: Read Andrew's comment (first one so far). He offers some intriguing thoughts about the future of the US-Korea military commitment. I think he makes good points.

Muslims mad at Franklin Graham
Heir apparent to Billy Graham says Muslims cleric should apologize

During a tour promoting his new book, "The Name," Billy Graham's son Franklin drew the ire of Muslims and some Christians by remarking that "Muslim clerics should apologize in the name of their for the massacre of September 11, and rebuke their radicals who preach Islamist jihad," according to the Washington Times.

Others, including Christian churchmen and secular pundits, have applauded his remarks, made in newspaper and television interviews.

Muslim spokesmen say there will never be an apology because their religion was not to blame for the September 11 attacks, in which more than 3,000 persons died.

Faiz Rehman of the American Muslim Council says 400 to 500 Muslims died at the World Trade Center and notes that many Muslims attended prayer services and vigils near ground zero.

"But most of the media didn't show us going there," he said. "Apologizing means owning it. Why would we apologize? Why do our American fellow citizens expect us to apologize for the acts of a few criminals? Most of the Muslims in this country felt terrible about it. Mr. Graham comes up with this stuff whenever he wants to promote a book. Since he claims to be on a higher moral ground, let him apologize for slavery and Ku Klux Klan crimes and the Crusades and for the crimes against Jews in the Holocaust and other things done in the name of Christianity. Then we'll think about it."

That is a non sequitur, because prominent Christian leaders and organizations have indeed apologized for sins done by long-dead people. Graham's own denomination, the Southern Baptists, apologized a few years ago for Baptists' role in slavery. Pope John Paul II apologized to the Jews for the church's acquiescence to the Holocaust, and two years ago he apologized "for all wrongs done by Catholics, including participation in the Crusades, a bloody attempt to seize the Holy Land between the 11th and 14th centuries."

I wrote a little bit about the responsibility of Muslims toward this issue in my post, "Islam is what Muslims do: Non-violent Muslims need to wake up; Islam's soul is being murdered."

But the unfortunate ethic of Arab Islam is summed up in the Middle East saying, "Me against my brother. My brother and I against our cousin. The three of us against the world."

The number of Muslims, especially prominent Muslims, who will publicly and repeatedly condemn Islamic terrorism is very, very small.

Time to re-unite the Army and Air Force into one service
Austin Bay says the Crusader's cancellation illustrates the reasons;
Air Force is nothing but artillery now, anyway

For those who don't follow the details of defense procurement projects, the Crusader howitzer was an $11 billion program for a new medium howitzer system that SecDef Rumsfeld canceled last spring. Just this month the final termination actions were completed.

Respected military analyst Austin Bay shows what the real issues are with the system's cancellation. He makes the quite correct observation that support of ground troops has always been an orphaned mission in the Air Force. (I am a retired artillery officer; here is a post about the inadequacy of close air support as a substitute for artillery in Afghanistan, with a followup here.)

Austin says that once enemy air defenses and air forces have been taken out, all combat aircraft are really just flying artillery. Because there is not now any air force that can seriously challenge the USAF, why not make the Air Force and Army one service again? They were a single service until 1947.

Reuniting the Army and Air Force is an old idea. It doesn't appeal to the brass, but so what? On the modern battlefield, everybody is in the air-space management business, from the rifleman to the B-52 pilot. The Army's new medium brigade concept looks a lot like the ground element of one of the U.S. Air Force's air expeditionary forces -- it's air-transportable, armored, agile and digitally linked. And Crusader's too heavy for the medium brigades.

Make the Army and Air Force one again. That'll make it easier for air and mud to stick together.

As Air Force blogger Sgt Stryker put it:

Yeah, we got the A-10 and it's your best friend. Perhaps your Generals could do some of that General [stuff] and acquire some A-10's of your own. The Air Force has been claiming for years that we don't need them anymore, so maybe your guys can put the squeeze on somebody and get them from us.

But it will never happen.

Airport security guard confiscates pocket knife, ignores rifle

This is a true story of airport security, as related on page 62 of Sept. 2002 Reader's Digest (not online yet). I have typed it verbatim:

On a business trip, my father approached a security checkpoint at the airport. The National Guard shift was rotating, and a guard, in full uniform, was in line in front of him. As with everybody else, the soldier was ordered to go through the metal detector. Before doing so, he handed his M-16 rifle to security personnel along with other items such as handcuffs and a flashlight. Still the alarm sounded when he walked through. Further inspection revealed a Swiss army knife inside one of his pockets.

"Sorry, sir," security said to the soldier, "but this item is prohibited."

Taking the knife away, the airport worker handed him back the M-16.

It's time to join Glenn Reynolds' campaign to impeach Norman Minteta. I also called for his removal on Aug. 6, when I wrote:

The airline non-security system . . . requires guards to be mentally dull. All the terrorists have to do is be more inventive, more imaginative and more mentally agile than the guards, which can't be hard to do. I'll add that not all the blame for this lunacy can rest on the guards' shoulders. They are working within a system dictated to them that is designed this way on purpose. And that proves a frightening level of ineptitude at the top.

Americans won't stand for any more of this stupidity after the next airliner goes down, if one does. . . . There needs to be a serious house-cleaning at the Dept. of Transportation, starting with Secretary Mineta. The way I see it, President Bush can send them home now, or wait until the next hijacking and then send them to prison for criminal negligence.

Yes, mum's the word

Noted author Austin Bay sent this brief response to my posting about disinformation and public affairs:

I appreciate your comments on military PAO. My experience is that same as yours -- the folks who know don't talk.

Mr. Bay has several books published and is the co-author, with James Dunnigan, of the three editions of The Quick and Dirty Guide to War. Austin's syndicated columns may be found at The Strategy Page, which I have added as a link on the left column of this page.

Austin, thank you for reading and for writing!

My reservations about the Ten Commandments
The drive to post them in schools is flawed

Here's why.

Iraq won't be a special ops war
Marine commandant says military situation too different from Afghanistan to be done same way

Interviewed by the Washington Times, Gen. James Jones said that the special forces operations that worked so well in Afghanistan would not work against Saddam's government.

"Afghanistan was Afghanistan. Iraq is Iraq, and it would be foolish, for example, if you ever committed to going into Iraq to think that the [special-operations forces] principles that were successful in Afghanistan would necessarily be successful in Iraq," said Gen. Jones, a member of the six-member Joint Chiefs of Staff. "In my opinion, it would not."

As, once again, I said on May 13:

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.

Don't talk above your pay grade
Marine commandant illustrates my point

I said in this post that one of the principles of public information in the defense establishment is, "Don't talk above your pay grade," meaning that officers or officials don't discuss their boss' business, just their own. A perfect example of this is in this morning's Washington Times' interview with Marine Corps commandant Gen. James Jones:

Gen. Jones said as a senior military leader he did not want to discuss the policy issues related to Iraq "except to say that as a service chief, it's my responsibility to make sure that the forces that are committed to support the commander in chief of both the European Command and Central Command are properly prepared, organized, trained and equipped to do what is required."

National policy is not commandant business. It's president business. So Jones properly deferred.

Like I said - no war this year
Bush says he is patient

CRAWFORD, Texas (AP)-- President Bush, confronting skittish allies overseas and naysayers at home, asserted Wednesday that ousting Iraq's Saddam Hussein ``is in the interests of the world'' but indicated the United States is in no hurry.

``I'm a patient man,'' Bush told reporters on his Texas ranch.

``The president has made no such decision that we should go into a war with Iraq. He's thinking about it,'' along with economic and diplomatic measures for eliminating any threat from Saddam, Rumsfeld said. [link]

At the risk of sounding pedantic, I have been saying since May that there will be no large-scale military action against Iraq this year - cripes, so many times that I'm not even going to show the links. I'll even add that no action that seriously threatens Saddam will take place, either, not by US forces. The only way there would be is if Iraq does something really, really stupid. Which they may; their track record is not very good about smartness.

But they've kept a low profile with us for many months.

Do the cool people like you?
If they do, you can literally get away with murder

Orson Scott Card has a long essay on trust and honesty and culture. If you think the barbarians are at the gates, he says, you're wrong. The barbarians are inside the gates, shaping the morals of society. Where does this lead?

Under Bill Clinton, America dropped bombs all over Serbia, killing hundreds or perhaps thousands of civilians and accomplishing almost nothing, but nobody held him -- or us -- responsible, because hey, we're the World's Only Superpower, so who's going to stop us? But Israel dropped a bomb that blew up a murdering terrorist, and because that terrorist chose to hide out in an apartment building full of families, some innocent people died -- and Ariel Sharon is being attacked like a war criminal.

Sharon has killed far fewer civilians in his desperate effort to defend Israel from murderers than Clinton did in his desperate effort to distract attention from the impeachment vote and hearings on his high crimes and misdemeanors.

But under the current rules in America, if the cool people like you, you can do no wrong and you are held responsible for nothing, while if the cool people despise you, then even when you do right, you are ripped to shreds for it.

That's not civilization. That's junior high. . . .

One thing is certain. A nation never has a better character than the vast majority of its citizens.

If we're a nation of barbarians, then our national and foreign policies will, sooner or later, be barbaric.

So much good stuff around the blogosphere
. . . and so little time to read it

Warning, blogging is addictive! Even more so if you also write a blog rather than just read them. And I do -- three -- blogs!

First, read this email from Dad (not mine).

Then, read this essay about how the Saudis will come crawling back to us and why.

Both the above found at Tonecluster

Linking to a post that Glenn Reynolds has linked to is really sending coals to Newcastle, but I will anyway.

A little late for me to post it, but if you have not heard about a real, sure-enough force field for armored vehicles, you should. Today's science fiction is tomorrow's science.

No, we don't do disinformation
The military's ethic punishes lying

A correspondent writes, "Do you think all these 'leaks' are really disinformation?"

Before I answer, I must offer this disclaimer: I was a public affairs officer at the Pentagon for three years. I have detailed, first-hand, true insider knowledge about how the media work there and what the rules are for releasing information to the public. I arrived at the Pentagon a few months before Iraq invaded Kuwait, so I witnessed all the media frenzy about how the US would respond.

With that experience, I can tell you this: The people who really do know what is being planned don't talk about it. In fact, there have not actually been many leaks about potential war plans, maybe only one, and I'm skeptical about it.

In fact, the word, "leak" has little meaningful content. It implies that someone covertly contacted the media to reveal information that was not authorized or ready for release. I can tell you this almost never happens. At worst, someone who is legitimately being interviewed by a reporter runs away at the mouth, dazzled by his own brilliance. (I have personally seen that happen.) But that is pretty rare. There really is practically nothing that a defense or armed service official or officer tells a reporter that is not already kosher for public release.

Release of information to the public has been governed by one overriding directive since Casper Weinbrger was the SecDef. He issued a directive on the principles of information that DOD was to abide by. It has been reissued by every SecDef since. It says:

"It is Department of Defense policy to make available timely and accurate information so that the public, the Congress, and the news media may assess and understand the facts about national security and defense strategy. Requests for information from organizations and private citizens shall be answered quickly. In carrying out that DoD policy, the following principles of information shall apply:

"Information shall be made fully and readily available, consistent with statutory requirements, unless its release is precluded by national security constraints or valid statutory mandates or exceptions. The Freedom of Information Act will be supported in both letter and spirit.

"A free flow of general and military information shall be made available, without censorship or propaganda, to the men and women of the Armed Forces and their dependents.

"Information will not be classified or otherwise withheld to protect the Government from criticism or embarrassment.

"Information shall be withheld when disclosure would adversely affect national security, threaten the safety or privacy of U.S. Government personnel or their families, violate the privacy of the citizens of the United States, or be contrary to law.

"The Department of Defense's obligation to provide the public with information on DoD major programs may require detailed Public Affairs (PA) planning and coordination in the Department of Defense and with the other Government Agencies. Such activity is to expedite the flow of information to the public; propaganda has no place in DoD public affairs programs."

My guess is that most readers won't believe that this directive really is honored. But most readers have no acquaintance with the military culture. Instead, they have been fed a steady diet of Hollywood conspiracy theories. The entertainment media, left wing as they are, love to present federal executives as lying, self-centered, manipulative egotists who are interested in anything but actually governing the country according to its founding principles. Remember Three Days of the Condor? Enemy of the State? And the revealingly named, Conspiracy Theory? I rest my case. The portrayal of military officers is often similarly unjust and untrue.

In truth, US military officers have a very simple moral ethic: "An officer does not lie, cheat or steal, nor tolerate those who do." This is the formal ethic of the US Military Academy but is also inculcated firmly in ROTC programs. The other services also live by that code. The institutional demand for honesty is not something that civilians can easily appreciate. I knew personally another officer, an artillery battery commander, whose career was ended simply because he told the battalion commander that a certain truck's canvas top had been replaced when it had not. When that was discovered, the battalion commander reported the dishonesty of the captain to his own commander, a colonel, who directed an independent investigation. It showed the captain had indeed lied. The division commander relieved the captain of command, a fatal blow to any officer's career. And it was just. Indeed, it was mandatory. The lie was out of character for this officer; it was an exception, but it was unforgivable. All of us who knew him bitterly agreed that his relief was called for.

Honesty is the very foundation of military service because soldiers depend on one another for their very lives. There can be no trust like that if there is any doubt about another's honesty. The standard is rigorous. Skewing the truth or selectively relating it is considered dishonest. Officers who do this are ruined personally by their peers and professionally by their superiors.

Because of this ethic, no military officer will "leak" classified war plans to the media. It would be treasonous and place their comrades' lives at risk. Nor do they tell the media a phony war plan. To do so would be lying.

I can hear the screams of protest already. What about all those plans such as invasion from the south, invasion from the north, the small war plan, the big war plan, the inside-out plan, blah blah blah. Go back and look the coverage up. Those fantasies didn't originate from people who really have a clue and their source is never actually identified anyway. Such "scenarios" are dreamed up all the time by self-employed Washington "analysts" or think tankeries who make money from publicity. I said a lot more about this, and the uncritical willingness of many reporters to accept their pronouncements, in this post.

The number of war plans that we were told were sure fire, insider, secret, real-deal plans that appeared in the media before Desert Storm was amazing, but not one such "leaked" plan was even close to the plan that was actually implemented.

Remember that everyone with access to classified information must have the necessary clearance for it. Gaining clearance is no casual thing. For my top secret clearance, I had to fill out an FBI form that asked everything about me but my underwear size. The investigation done to grant clearance is is exhaustive. If the clearance needs to be ungraded the forms are worked again and the investigation is done again.

There is a difference between disinformation and deception. Deception is concealing one's capabilities and intentions from the enemy and/or leading the enemy to make wrong conclusions about them. Deception is directed toward the enemy and is oriented toward protecting one's own force and enhancing success in battle. Deception is a legitimate and necessary part of warfare, practiced by every army in the world.

But disinformation is deliberately lying by a government to a mainly domestic audience in order to prop up the regime. Disinformation was perfected by the Soviets, who had an entire government agency devoted to it. Disinformation relies on outright lies, gross distortions and denying the plainly obvious. Its target is mostly domestic rather than an enemy because disinformation's real goal is sustainment of the regime rather than deceiving an enemy. (Example: the USSR's public proclamations of better living and working conditions across the board under Brezhnev when in fact life expectancy was decreasing and productivity was falling. It was not the USA they wanted to believe the lies, it was their own people.)

Within DOD, the assistant secretary of defense for public affairs routinely publishes public affairs guidance (PAG) for the services on all manner of topics. PAG spells out the rules for public release of information, who may speak about certain issues, and when DOD intends to make public announcements. Generally, the public affairs rule for the services at every level is this: "Don't talk above your pay grade." For example, corps commanders are three-star generals, but they don't publicly evaluate or announce the policies of the Army Chief of Staff, a four-star. The Marine Corps' director of operations does not discuss the workings of the Joint Staff. The secretary of defense does not announce national strategy because that prerogative belongs to the White House. Army spokesmen don't talk about aircraft carriers. Marines don't talk about the B1 bomber fleet.

The services cooperate in arranging interviews with commanders or subject-matter experts on their staffs. These men or women are familiar with the PAG for their specific areas and abide by it. PAG is actually permissive rather than restrictive, with only a few exceptions. That is, PAG states what is off limits for public release, but does not inhibit discussions about other information within that area. In other words, we could talk about anything that wasn't forbidden, rather than talking about only what was permitted.

It is very rare for any such interview to be private, with no one present but the reporter and the interviewee. The reason is that most officers and civil service officials are very concerned that they will be misquoted or selectively edited by broadcast media. It's the "Sixty Minutes Syndrome." So almost without exception there will be a public affairs officer present for the interviews. Reporters don't object, because they know that PAOs are the gatekeepers of access to everyone else. Reporters cannot afford to hack off a PAO! Also, there are always follow-up questions and inquiries to interviews because notes are invariably imperfect. The senior military officer or defense official isn't going to spend half his day re-explaining the subject to a reporter. It's the PAO's job to help the reporter tie up loose ends and to give him more context and factual information about the subject at hand. And the PAO can't do that if he is not present for the interview in the first place.

So to believe that the Pentagon is a sieve of classified information is ludicrous. Not only is the inherent ethic a huge barrier against it, the idea also requires us to believe that someone doing the leaking has nothing better to do after a routine 12-14 hour day than call up reporters late at night. If you believe that, you never worked in Washington! The notion also requires us to believe that the FBI's security investigations are worthless.

And most foolish, it requires us to believe that the men and women who make the most critical decisions about war and peace and life and death are of little virtue and honor, and that their corruption is condoned or covered up by the services' officer corps, whose standard of truth and honesty is unyielding - because their lives depend on it.

Cynthia McKinney (D. - Saudi Arabia) is history
Hallelujah! Photodude has details

Saudis pulling money out of US
Protest or precaution? $100 Billion or more leaves US banks

The Financial Times reports that between $100-$200 billion dollars have been withdrawn from US bansks and investment houses in past months.

As part of the fight against terrorism, the US and Saudi authorities have been monitoring the accounts of dozens of Saudi companies and individuals, a move that alarmed Saudi merchants. Youssef Ibrahim, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations working on a project re-examining US-Saudi relations, said Saudis had withdrawn at least $200bn from the US in recent months. He said the move has been driven by hawkish US commentators' calls for the freezing of Saudi assets.

The trend, he added, can be expected to accelerate with last week's trillion-dollar lawsuit by relative of the victims of September 11. The lawsuit accuses several Saudi institutions and charities and three members of the royal family, including the defence minister, of financing terrorism.

Details of Saudi investments in the US are sketchy but financial analysts believe they range between $400bn and $600bn. The funds are invested in private equity, the stock and bond markets and real estate. The figures include investments by members of the royal family.

Lottery vending machines draw kids
Indiana's stand-alone ticket dispensers are a kid magnet

Ann Bennett sends a link to this story in the Indiana Star newspaper. The state has vending machines to sell lottery tickets. No attendants are required to operate them, so anyone can use them, including children.

Therein lies the rub.

Foes of legalized gambling complain that free-standing machines are too handy for kids. The more available gambling is, the greater the risk for some children to become problem gamblers before they're out of high school.

"They're very attractive lures. They're supposed to be," said John Wolf, a retired minister and coordinator of the Indiana Coalition Against Legalized Gambling.

Indiana retailers are bound by their contracts with the state not to sell tickets to children under age 18. But critics say the proliferation of machines and their locations make sales difficult to monitor.

The state already operates about 650 scratch-off ticket machines in high-traffic retailers, including supermarkets. Last month, the Hoosier Lottery ordered 500 machines that dispense pull-tab tickets -- 460 new ones and 40 replacements.

Ticket machines "are one step from child's play to commercial gambling. They are cultivating tomorrow's customers," said Durand Jacobs, a professor at California's Loma Linda University Medical School. 

Jacobs has researched juvenile gambling for decades and concludes that:

o Children start gambling around age 10.

o By age 12, children and the majority of their peers have gambled for money.

o In the late 1980s, one in 10 children reported serious gambling-related problems. By 2000, the number increased to one in seven children.

o In the late 1980s, about 45 percent admitted gambling for money during the previous year. By 2000, that figure had jumped to 66 percent.

Jacobs traces the rise in juvenile gambling to the growth of state-run lotteries.

If you concentrate exclusively on victory, with no thought for the after effect, you may be too exhausted to profit by the peace, while it is almost certain that the peace will be a bad one, containing the germs of another war.
B.H. Liddell Hart

The Millennium Challenge tempest in a teapot
Press screwed it up again, some bloggers swallowed it

I have not closely followed the ridiculous furor over the foolish controversy of how the simulated exercise Millennium Challenge was "rigged" to prevent certain outcomes.

Well, duh. It was supposed to be. If it hadn't been it would have been a colossal waste of money.

This issue is a tempest in a teapot, stirred up by reporters who don't know jack about the subject. And unfortunately, some of my fellow blogegrs have been taken for a ride, too, without a glimmer of the healthy skepticism that they seem to show for most other claims in the press.

So why was the blogosphere so willing to believe all the nonsense about Millennium Challenge. I'll come back to that in a moment.

This exercise was over-sensationalized in the press, as usual. At first I smelled a rat in the person of a retired general named Van Riper, who was falsely reported to have resigned in the middle of the exercise because he didn't get to play it his way. As if . . .

However, today Marine Lt. Gen Peter Pace, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, corrected the record with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld standing by his side at the Pentagon press conference.

Pace: Actually, I have talked with General Van Riper. He did not resign. He stayed through the end of the exercise. In fact, at the end of the exercise, he submitted a 21-page classified document to General Kernan, the exercise director. . . .

But the fact of the matter is that he has in fact participated all the way through. And again, when you try to have a free-play exercise that has free will versus free will going on at the same time that you have an experiment going on, something has to give occasionally. And I have not seen the report. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of analysis done. But it is reasonable that reasonable men looking at the same criteria or same data from a different viewpoint could come up with, initially, a different conclusion. And they're going to take this data - "they" being Joint Forces Command, who conducted the experiment and the exercise, and they will digest it all to include General Van Riper's, I'm sure, very reasoned and very well thought-out recommendations. And they'll
make adjustments for the next one.

(Thanks to Richard Heddleson for identifying the pertinent passages in a long transcript.)

Someone emailed me what I thought about all this and I replied:

During conceptual development phases, such simulations are supposed to be highly structured and rulebound. It's the only way to establish controls for later development. True free play exercises are end products, not developmental products.

I think that pretty close to what Lt. Gen. Pace said.

Now, back to the first question: why did bloggers suspend their willingness to disbelieve what the press was saying? Examples, which I will not link to in a desire to protect the guilty:

Having read this, go back and read DeAtkine's thoughts today in "Why Arabs Lose Wars". NOW do you see why those cultural traits are so deadly to armies? I hope the Pentagon has learned something from this experience. I hope their next exercise is more honest. And I'm happy as **** that Van Riper is on our side.

The implication being that the other officers of the exercise are not on our side?

Marines actually seemed interesting in finding out what works and how an intelligent enemy might respond. Sadly, that ethos doesn't seem to have permeated the higher levels of the Pentagon.

Yes, those stupid, uncaring men in the Army, Air Force and Navy don't really care. I can't imagine how they managed to utterly destroy the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe in western Europe or sweep the Imperial Japanese Navy from the seas.

You know the old World War II joke: President Truman read the official Marine Corps history of the war and then called in his chief of staff. "Draw up legislation to disband the Army and Navy," he ordered. "According to this report, they're not necessary."

The so-called story broke in the Army Times, which despite its name is a private newsweekly., not an Army publication. When I began active duty, the Army Times was a solid newspaper, but about 1987 or so it changed dramatically and for the worse (new owners). Its credibility is a little south of National Enquirer.

To be fair, Charles Watson did post this observation:

. . . my gut feeling is there is less to this than meets the eye, and I think Van Riper's ego is getting in the way. In most large scale war games, there is more to being red commander than doing your best to win. It is also testing out tactics against those the enemy is probably going to use. The scenario controller has an obligation to reign in commanders who stray to far from the objectives of the exercise if it just results in chaos. Another point: just resetting the script isn't "cheating" . You can be damn sure that Van Riper's tactic that sank the fleet before it got to launch the attack is being studied to death. But what was the controller supposed to do? Tell everybody "OK, Red won on day one, he's smarter than we are, the rest of the exercise is canceled. Everybody go home?". That's nuts. These multi-service exercises are expensive, both in $ and more so in time and coordination. You want to get the most out of them you can. So you "refloat" the fleet, carry on, and see what else you can find. No big deal, unless you have a big ego.