Door-to-door solicitation is a Constitutional right!
The Supreme Court ruled today that "The Constitution protects the right of missionaries, politicians and others to knock on doors without first getting permission from local authorities, the Supreme Court ruled today," says the Washington Post.
The case was "Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York Inc. v. Village of Stratton, Ohio, et al., 00-1737."
Coming soon: "Sensing v. Anybody Who Knocks on His Door," which will decide the Constitutionality of slamming the door rudely in anyone's face who pesters me with unwanted solicitations.
Monday, June 17, 2002
"Lucas fatigue. . ."
. . . is how Joe Morgenstern explains Episode II's "near-terminal torpor of the movie's young lovers, the zonked banality of its dialogue, the joylessness of its robot buddies, the fatuousness of its political debates, the incoherence of its plot, the eventual tedium of its vaunted special effects."
Gee, this sounds like what I wrote back on May 21.
. . . is how Joe Morgenstern explains Episode II's "near-terminal torpor of the movie's young lovers, the zonked banality of its dialogue, the joylessness of its robot buddies, the fatuousness of its political debates, the incoherence of its plot, the eventual tedium of its vaunted special effects."
Gee, this sounds like what I wrote back on May 21.
The Saddam bomb and other musings
Lot's of good stuff at OpinionJournal today in addition to Thatcher's piece. So just go read it. Start with this piece by Khidhir Hamza, former director of Iraq's nuclear program.
Lot's of good stuff at OpinionJournal today in addition to Thatcher's piece. So just go read it. Start with this piece by Khidhir Hamza, former director of Iraq's nuclear program.
. . . while a dirty bomb is not an effective weapon of war, it remains an effective weapon of terror. A contaminated building is a different story than an explosion in the desert sands. Sure enough, I started hearing reports that Iraqi intelligence was inviting some of our nuclear chemists to inquire about how much is a lethal dose and what are the best sources of radiation. They soon realized that the best way to kill someone with radiation was not to spread it widely over a big area; a person could wander through a radiated area for years without noticeable effects. But if someone inhales radioactive materials such as plutonium dust even in tiny quantities, he will most probably be doomed to disease and death. Thus it's much more effective to release radioactive materials, not in the desert, but in a confined environment such as a building where it's more likely to poison people.
"Don't go wobbly. It's bad enough that India and Pakistan have nukes. . ."
. . . says Margaret Thatcher in todays' Opinion Journal.
As usual for the Iron Lady, this is very well said. Saddam has to go. But I don't see the Bush administration actually preparing Americans for it, or, especially, laying out the casus belli. It's there, but we aren't being told.
. . . says Margaret Thatcher in todays' Opinion Journal.
The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction has fundamentally changed the world in which we and our children will live. India's and Pakistan's nuclear arsenals have given them the power to inflict huge destruction. But neither is a rogue state. . . .
Proliferation of WMD offers far more menacing risks when those weapons are in the hands of the West's sworn enemies. We have to assume that if those who hate us are confident that they can threaten us or our allies by this means they will do so. The threat alone could transform the West's ability to intervene in order to protect its interests or to undertake humanitarian missions. In some cases we must expect the rogue states to try to go beyond mere threat.
It is still true that any such action would be irrational. There can be no doubt that response to the use of WMD against us would be massive--probably nuclear. Yet even this awesome prospect might not deter a fanatic who cared nothing for his own country or safety. We already see such a mentality at work in the suicide bombers. At the rate at which nuclear, chemical and biological weaponry and missile technology have been proliferating we must expect that at some point these weapons will be used.
This is quite simply the greatest challenge of our times. We must rise to it.
As usual for the Iron Lady, this is very well said. Saddam has to go. But I don't see the Bush administration actually preparing Americans for it, or, especially, laying out the casus belli. It's there, but we aren't being told.
Hey, hey, ho, ho! Yasser Arafat's got to go! and Sen. Daschle beats the war drum, urges tough action against Saudis
From this morning's Washington Times, a story that Sen. Tom Daschle "yesterday urged President Bush to take a tougher stance with Saudi Arabia, whom he accused of insufficiently fighting terrorism, and said Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat must be replaced. Said the senator,
I decided to contact Dr. Theodore Geisel, unfortunately now deceased, to ask him what he would say to Yasser Arafat. Dr. Geisel, more widely known by his pen name, Dr. Seuss, replied by Ouija Board that he would echo a theme he explored in his classic book about a young boy named Marvin K. Mooney:
Asked for comment by phone, Israeli prime Minister Ariel Sharon said, "I wish I'd said that."
From this morning's Washington Times, a story that Sen. Tom Daschle "yesterday urged President Bush to take a tougher stance with Saudi Arabia, whom he accused of insufficiently fighting terrorism, and said Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat must be replaced. Said the senator,
"We need to be more aggressive. We need to be even confrontational with the leadership of the Saudi government in those occasions when they're not doing enough, and when they are sponsoring this propaganda of the ilk we've seen." Mr. Daschle's comments came the same day Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah called Mr. Bush to discuss international efforts to reach a solution in the Middle East.
On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Mr. Daschle said the Palestinian movement should replace Mr. Arafat to bolster the chances of bringing about peace in the Middle East. "Sooner or later it has to happen," he said. "There has to be a regime change there. It has to happen from within the Palestinian movement. I don't think we can force it ourselves, but it's necessary in order to reach some peaceful arrangement."
I decided to contact Dr. Theodore Geisel, unfortunately now deceased, to ask him what he would say to Yasser Arafat. Dr. Geisel, more widely known by his pen name, Dr. Seuss, replied by Ouija Board that he would echo a theme he explored in his classic book about a young boy named Marvin K. Mooney:
The time has come. The time is now.
Just go. Go. GO! I don't care how.
You can go by foot. You can go by cow.
Yasir Arafat, will you please go now!
You can go on skates. You can go on skis.
You can go in a hat. But please go. Please!
I don't care. You can go by bike.
You can go on a Zike-Bike if you like.
If you like you can go in an old blue shoe.
Just go, go, Go!
Please do, do, DO!
Yasir Arafat, I don't care how.
Yasir Arafat, will you please
GO NOW!
You can go on stilts.
You can go by fish.
You can go in a Crunk-Car if you wish.
If you wish you may go by lion's tail.
Or stamp yourself and go by mail.
Yasir Arafat!
Don't you know
the time has come
to go! Go! Go!
Asked for comment by phone, Israeli prime Minister Ariel Sharon said, "I wish I'd said that."
Gambling addiction is rising and lives are being ruined
Two stories in the Reno Gazette-Journal, one from 1996 archives, the other from this month, sound the alarm about gambling addiction. First, the June 14, 2002 story:
And from 1996:
Two stories in the Reno Gazette-Journal, one from 1996 archives, the other from this month, sound the alarm about gambling addiction. First, the June 14, 2002 story:
An estimated 80 percent of adolescents gamble in some form, and those with more problems also report increased use of alcohol and drugs, researchers and addiction specialists said [in Dallas] Friday during the 16th Annual National Conference on Problem Gambling.
Teens’ prevalence rate of pathological gambling runs two to four times that of adults, Korn said in an interview. About 5 percent have severe gambling problems and 15 percent have moderate ones, he said.
And from 1996:
Experts estimate up to 7 percent of the nation’s adult population (and perhaps double that for young adults) are either at risk or already suffering from severe problems with gambling.
And in Nevada — where gambling has been legal the longest — the addiction rate could be the highest anywhere.
Unlike 15 other states, no scientifically tested survey has been conducted in the Silver State, where gambling was legalized 65 years ago. But studies have shown that where legal gambling has been available longer, the rate of gambling addiction has been higher.
Authorities also say that for every gambler suffering severe financial hemorrhages, eight others are adversely affected — particularly family members and employers.
In Reno, the ravages of compulsive gambling can be felt in the one out of five divorces that one local judge says are caused by a gambling habit gone out of control, in bankruptcies and embezzlements, in jail sentences and, possibly, suicides.
Big-city gangs and terrorism
Abdullah al Muhajir, formerly known as Jose Padilla, was a gang member in Chicago when he was growing up. Are gangs good sources for recruits for our enemies? NPR's Mary Ann Akers reports that gang experts do not believe there is a strong connection between gangs in the United States and terrorist organizations abroad.
I heard the segment on the radio yesterday, and I think that the report is correct.
Abdullah al Muhajir, formerly known as Jose Padilla, was a gang member in Chicago when he was growing up. Are gangs good sources for recruits for our enemies? NPR's Mary Ann Akers reports that gang experts do not believe there is a strong connection between gangs in the United States and terrorist organizations abroad.
I heard the segment on the radio yesterday, and I think that the report is correct.
Tom Dunne writes -
Sorry, Tom, I had never heard of your site until you emailed me. But thank you for reading and writing!
"One Hand Clapping" comes from the classic Buddhist riddle, "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" But the sound (silence) isn't the point of the riddle. The point is that to clap with one hand is futile. So that's my whimsical way of saying what my blog might really be.
However, you did name you site (but not the URL, obviously,) One Hand Clapping, so Ii guess great minds think alike! I recall that when someone signs up on Blogger for a site, the only thing it checks against is the URL, not the name. If I had tried to name my own site's URL "clapping.blogspot.com" I would have been alerted that that URL was spoken for, so try again. So that's how we wound up with two sites of the same name, but different URLs.
But I am adding your site to my links at left.
Don't know if you noticed but you've scammed the name of my weblog, also with blogger on Blogspot. It was started shortly before yours and can be found at clapping.blogspot.com. Anyway I've pretty much retired now (short career in blogging) so feel free to keep on keeping on without fear of receiving angry emails or complaints to Blogger.
I just wanted to know where you got the name for your site. If it was genious [sic] inspiration from mine I'd just like it acknowledged.
Sorry, Tom, I had never heard of your site until you emailed me. But thank you for reading and writing!
"One Hand Clapping" comes from the classic Buddhist riddle, "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" But the sound (silence) isn't the point of the riddle. The point is that to clap with one hand is futile. So that's my whimsical way of saying what my blog might really be.
However, you did name you site (but not the URL, obviously,) One Hand Clapping, so Ii guess great minds think alike! I recall that when someone signs up on Blogger for a site, the only thing it checks against is the URL, not the name. If I had tried to name my own site's URL "clapping.blogspot.com" I would have been alerted that that URL was spoken for, so try again. So that's how we wound up with two sites of the same name, but different URLs.
But I am adding your site to my links at left.
Hey, hey, ho, ho, Colin Powell has got to go!
No, Steven den Beste didn't write that, but that's pretty much what he says in this post.
No, Steven den Beste didn't write that, but that's pretty much what he says in this post.
Sunday, June 16, 2002
King Arthur or the Lone Ranger? Reflections on Fathers Day
Three years ago, Michael Kelly, editor of the National Journal, published an article called, "A National Calamity." Having just had his second child, he wrote of fatherhood -
Fathers may not realize how crucial they are to their children's entire future:
Other research shows that the most significant influence keeping teenage girls virtuous is the way they are treated and esteemed by their fathers.
In America, the phrase "single-parent household" means almost exclusively fatherless households. Today, four of every ten American children go to bed at night in homes in homes without fathers. What happens to children growing up in homes without their fathers is not good. Children growing up without their fathers are five times as likely to be poor as adults than children who grow up in two-parent homes. Boys without fathers are three times as likely to wind up in prison, and girls are twice as likely. Children whose fathers do not live in the same household are most at risk to fail in school or get fired from jobs.
Sociologists have noted the growing trend of what they call, "multiplied fatherlessness," when children grow up without fathers at home, in neighborhoods where most fathers are not living with their children. Presently only a few million children are in that category, rather than tens of millions, but sociologists warn us to look out. The number is rising, and when these children reach their mid-teens, it is expected that the crime rate will spike.
A teacher in a local school wrote that years of teaching have led her to understand, "The tragic impact of the crisis centering around the many children growing up without their fathers is too vast to be measured."
You have probably heard that half of all marriages end in divorce. That claim is derived from comparing how many people got married in a year with the percentage of married women who got divorced that year. In 1996, for example, there were an estimated two-point-three million weddings and one-point-one-two million divorces. But that does not mean that half of all marriages end in divorce because 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, and children are affected badly, even when the divorce is said to be "friendly," as if there could be any such thing. Dr. Horn wrote that it is "pretension" that divorce doesn't have negative consequences for the children. Not possible, he says.
When my wife and I got married, our parents gave us free advice. Lots of it. But the best advice was this: "The best thing you can do for your children is to have a strong marriage." Protecting our marriages and holding them inviolate is our number one responsibility as fathers (or mothers). Marriage counselors say that child-centered homes inevitably become dysfunctional to some degree. It turns out that the best way to ensure our children are nurtured is to displace them from the center of the family. This statement runs so contrary to what our culture, meaning Madison Avenue, promotes that parents recoil from it. Aren't we supposed to do anything for our children? No! Counselor after counselor agree that when the husband and wife put their children ahead of each other it sucks the vibrancy from their marriage, which harms the kids.
The fact is that what kids want is much less important than what married couples need. We need to operate our marriages at an adult level, with husbands and wives committed to one another rather than servanthood to their children.
When our children look at us, do they see a father who is firmly committed to his marriage? Fatherhood is a ministry. First and foremost, it is a ministry of presence, just being there at all. Rule number one of being a father is to stay married, living in the same home as your children.
We teach our children to be self-confident and self-reliant. We usually don't realize how uncertain of themselves they usually are, how insecure they often feel. They haven't learned what we big, tough guys have learned: to bury our frailties and insecurities under layers of routine. That means that our kids probably are more conscious than we are that to thrive in the impermanence of this world requires being anchored to something certain. This anchoring is especially important for teens, because the teen years are when our kids start to try out their own anchors rather than just hang on to the ones we plant for them.
Every anchor we give them they will haul up. They are going to do what we all did at their age, attempt to sail anchor-free. And they will succeed no better than we did, but they have to learn it for themselves. The time will come when they will have to anchor themselves to something. What anchors will they use?
Fathers are anchor makers. We should give our kids anchors that are keepers. I am trying to teach my sons (and my daughter) that the primary virtues they should develop are courage, commitment, competence, candor and compassion.
We men tend to model ourselves after two great myths deeply rooted in our culture. First is King Arthur, whose strength was his sword Excalibur. With Excalibur in hand, Arthur could overcome any enemy, vanquish any foe, win any lady, even the fair Guinevere. One of the best baseball movies ever made, "The Natural," is really a King Arthur story. Robert Redford plays Arthur with a little bit of Lancelot thrown in. Excalibur is his special bat, Wonderboy, forged from a tree struck by lightning. A superb movie, it succeeds because it blends the national pastime with the culturally deeply embedded Arthurian myth.
The other myth we try to live by comes from the Old West, the strong, silent loner. The Lone Ranger and some of the early Clint Eastwood movies are prime examples. So was the late sixties movie, "Vanishing Point," in which the hero drove a Camaro instead of a horse. The rock band Electric Light Orchestra had a hit song about this myth, called "Wild West Hero."
These two myths say men can be and should be the complete masters of their own destiny and that even though our end may be tragic it can still be heroic. These myths appeal to us because they work, up to a point. That point comes to different men in different ways and times, but when we get there we suddenly realize that we don't have an invincible Excalibur to wield, we can't just ride away from life, and guess what - we're not Robert Redford. Where and what do we turn to then?
At the end of the day, we may hope to have turned out to be simple working stiffs who loved our wives and children, who were honest, hard-working, compassionate and courageous. And that's pretty good, I think.
Three years ago, Michael Kelly, editor of the National Journal, published an article called, "A National Calamity." Having just had his second child, he wrote of fatherhood -
"This is a good job, and one of the better things about it is the nice clarity it lends to life. Fathers (and mothers) relearn that the world is a simple enough place. They discover that their essential ambitions, which once seemed so many, have been winnowed down to a minimalist few: to raise their children reasonably well and to live long enough to see them turn out reasonably okay. This doesn't seem like a great deal to ask for until you find out that it is everything to you. Because, it turns out, you are everything to them."
Fathers may not realize how crucial they are to their children's entire future:
"According to the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, the largest national survey of its kind ever undertaken, the biggest influence on a teenager's decision to engage or not to engage in high-risk behaviors is not peers, but parents. When teens have a good relationship with their parents, and report they can communicate with them easily, they are far less likely to smoke, drink alcohol, do drugs, or become sexually active than those that don't." (Health writer Dr. Wade Horn, formerly Director of Outpatient Psychological Services at Children's Hospital National Medical Center in Washington, D.C.)
Other research shows that the most significant influence keeping teenage girls virtuous is the way they are treated and esteemed by their fathers.
In America, the phrase "single-parent household" means almost exclusively fatherless households. Today, four of every ten American children go to bed at night in homes in homes without fathers. What happens to children growing up in homes without their fathers is not good. Children growing up without their fathers are five times as likely to be poor as adults than children who grow up in two-parent homes. Boys without fathers are three times as likely to wind up in prison, and girls are twice as likely. Children whose fathers do not live in the same household are most at risk to fail in school or get fired from jobs.
Sociologists have noted the growing trend of what they call, "multiplied fatherlessness," when children grow up without fathers at home, in neighborhoods where most fathers are not living with their children. Presently only a few million children are in that category, rather than tens of millions, but sociologists warn us to look out. The number is rising, and when these children reach their mid-teens, it is expected that the crime rate will spike.
A teacher in a local school wrote that years of teaching have led her to understand, "The tragic impact of the crisis centering around the many children growing up without their fathers is too vast to be measured."
You have probably heard that half of all marriages end in divorce. That claim is derived from comparing how many people got married in a year with the percentage of married women who got divorced that year. In 1996, for example, there were an estimated two-point-three million weddings and one-point-one-two million divorces. But that does not mean that half of all marriages end in divorce because 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, and children are affected badly, even when the divorce is said to be "friendly," as if there could be any such thing. Dr. Horn wrote that it is "pretension" that divorce doesn't have negative consequences for the children. Not possible, he says.
When my wife and I got married, our parents gave us free advice. Lots of it. But the best advice was this: "The best thing you can do for your children is to have a strong marriage." Protecting our marriages and holding them inviolate is our number one responsibility as fathers (or mothers). Marriage counselors say that child-centered homes inevitably become dysfunctional to some degree. It turns out that the best way to ensure our children are nurtured is to displace them from the center of the family. This statement runs so contrary to what our culture, meaning Madison Avenue, promotes that parents recoil from it. Aren't we supposed to do anything for our children? No! Counselor after counselor agree that when the husband and wife put their children ahead of each other it sucks the vibrancy from their marriage, which harms the kids.
The fact is that what kids want is much less important than what married couples need. We need to operate our marriages at an adult level, with husbands and wives committed to one another rather than servanthood to their children.
When our children look at us, do they see a father who is firmly committed to his marriage? Fatherhood is a ministry. First and foremost, it is a ministry of presence, just being there at all. Rule number one of being a father is to stay married, living in the same home as your children.
We teach our children to be self-confident and self-reliant. We usually don't realize how uncertain of themselves they usually are, how insecure they often feel. They haven't learned what we big, tough guys have learned: to bury our frailties and insecurities under layers of routine. That means that our kids probably are more conscious than we are that to thrive in the impermanence of this world requires being anchored to something certain. This anchoring is especially important for teens, because the teen years are when our kids start to try out their own anchors rather than just hang on to the ones we plant for them.
Every anchor we give them they will haul up. They are going to do what we all did at their age, attempt to sail anchor-free. And they will succeed no better than we did, but they have to learn it for themselves. The time will come when they will have to anchor themselves to something. What anchors will they use?
Fathers are anchor makers. We should give our kids anchors that are keepers. I am trying to teach my sons (and my daughter) that the primary virtues they should develop are courage, commitment, competence, candor and compassion.
We men tend to model ourselves after two great myths deeply rooted in our culture. First is King Arthur, whose strength was his sword Excalibur. With Excalibur in hand, Arthur could overcome any enemy, vanquish any foe, win any lady, even the fair Guinevere. One of the best baseball movies ever made, "The Natural," is really a King Arthur story. Robert Redford plays Arthur with a little bit of Lancelot thrown in. Excalibur is his special bat, Wonderboy, forged from a tree struck by lightning. A superb movie, it succeeds because it blends the national pastime with the culturally deeply embedded Arthurian myth.
The other myth we try to live by comes from the Old West, the strong, silent loner. The Lone Ranger and some of the early Clint Eastwood movies are prime examples. So was the late sixties movie, "Vanishing Point," in which the hero drove a Camaro instead of a horse. The rock band Electric Light Orchestra had a hit song about this myth, called "Wild West Hero."
"Ride the range all the day/ ‘til the first fading light/ be with my western gal/ ‘round the fire so bright./ I'd be the envy of friends,/ ‘cause I live to be free,/ riding into the sunset/ I wish that was me."
These two myths say men can be and should be the complete masters of their own destiny and that even though our end may be tragic it can still be heroic. These myths appeal to us because they work, up to a point. That point comes to different men in different ways and times, but when we get there we suddenly realize that we don't have an invincible Excalibur to wield, we can't just ride away from life, and guess what - we're not Robert Redford. Where and what do we turn to then?
At the end of the day, we may hope to have turned out to be simple working stiffs who loved our wives and children, who were honest, hard-working, compassionate and courageous. And that's pretty good, I think.
Saturday, June 15, 2002
I now have an additional blog
Long time readers of my work may remember that I despise state-sponsored lotteries. For the full explanation of why, just go to my "truth in lottery" site.
I now have an anti-lottery blog site, focusing on the proposed Tennessee state lottery.
Long time readers of my work may remember that I despise state-sponsored lotteries. For the full explanation of why, just go to my "truth in lottery" site.
I now have an anti-lottery blog site, focusing on the proposed Tennessee state lottery.
Is "Homeland Security" the right name? I have two other proposals.
Jeff Jarvis recognizes that many commentators don't like the name of the proposed new cabinet-level executive department. He says -
Personally, I like the Germans and loved every minute of the years I lived there (except freezing my tuckus off in winter exercises!). And I don't really object to calling it the Dept. of Homeland Security.
However, in years and wars past, the territorial USA was never referred to as the "homeland." It was called the "home front."
So how about the Department of Homefront Defense? Or the Department of Homefront Protection? ("Security" sounds a bit too Stalinist for a federal department - the KGB was, in Russian, the Committee for State Security.)
Jeff Jarvis recognizes that many commentators don't like the name of the proposed new cabinet-level executive department. He says -
I disagree with Mickey Kaus and half of Blogville already. Kaus doesn't like the moniker "Homeland Security." I do. He argues that "homeland" is too Teutonic -- too much like the Germans' "Heimat." What, so anything German is now Nazi and verboten? No hamburgers for you! (This must be the first time that PC anti-defamation finger-wagging has been done on behalf of Germans.)
I like "homeland" -- vs. the predictable "domestic" -- precisely because it conjurs up the idea of our nation, our Heimat, our land, our America. It has a patriotic undertone. That is precisely what the Department of Homeland Security should be about: protecting America.
And as for fears that "security" is too Big Brotherish: Get used to it.
Personally, I like the Germans and loved every minute of the years I lived there (except freezing my tuckus off in winter exercises!). And I don't really object to calling it the Dept. of Homeland Security.
However, in years and wars past, the territorial USA was never referred to as the "homeland." It was called the "home front."
So how about the Department of Homefront Defense? Or the Department of Homefront Protection? ("Security" sounds a bit too Stalinist for a federal department - the KGB was, in Russian, the Committee for State Security.)
The crystal ball is always cloudy
Geitner Simmons sent me a link to this piece in the Omaha World Herald (one of my favorite places since it cited me) that cautions against being optimistic that the course of the Terror War will be smooth.
It is very difficult to think about all the possible consequences of our actions, and the wider ranging the planned actions are, the more unintended consequences there will be. The crystal ball will always be cloudy.
It would be a mistake to think that at the end of the Terror War the world be be under a rainbow sky and every meal will be a banquet. Defeating al Qaeda will not ring in the eschaton.
On a related topic, I wrote back on March 29 on the OODA Loop, which explains how one retaines the initiative and how it can be lost.
About 15 years ago or so there was a popular expression among U.S. Army officers, "getting inside their OODA loop." It came from the work of former Air Force fighter pilot and fighter designer John Boyd. It stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act, now used as a paradigm in the military, business and even academia as a standard decision-cycle model. Boyd's concept basically means:
Observe what is happening. Know what is going on.
Orient on the critical elements of activity, the things that really matter. Analyze your own options for staying on course.
Decide what must be done and when.
Act to carry out the decision.
The model is called a loop because your own actions inevitably cause changes in the operational environment that call for the process to be repeated, as well as the fact that the environment changes on its own, anyway.
"Getting inside their OODA loop" meant simply that the side that was able to perform the four functions better and quicker would retain the initiative to mostly act rather than react, and overall, the competition or enemy would have to react to that side.
If we can stay inside the enemy's OODA Loop, our crystal ball will be clearer (but not crystal clear).
Geitner Simmons sent me a link to this piece in the Omaha World Herald (one of my favorite places since it cited me) that cautions against being optimistic that the course of the Terror War will be smooth.
Abraham Lincoln, in a letter during the Civil War, expressed his frustration in trying to shape the course of the conflict.
"I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me," Lincoln wrote. "Now, at the end of three years struggle, the nation's condition is not what either party, or any man devised, or expected."
Military conflicts, in other words, can easily take unexpected turns, to the frustration of presidents and citizens alike. Understanding that fact doesn't mean inaction is the preferred course. Lincoln's army, after all, ultimately prevailed because it sloughed off its initial lethargy and launched energetic offensives.
Nonetheless, Lincoln's words sound an appropriate cautionary note in the wake of Sept. 11. As the United States carries out its fight against al-Qaida terrorists, it would do well to proceed with a prudent regard for complications and unintended consequences.
It is very difficult to think about all the possible consequences of our actions, and the wider ranging the planned actions are, the more unintended consequences there will be. The crystal ball will always be cloudy.
It would be a mistake to think that at the end of the Terror War the world be be under a rainbow sky and every meal will be a banquet. Defeating al Qaeda will not ring in the eschaton.
On a related topic, I wrote back on March 29 on the OODA Loop, which explains how one retaines the initiative and how it can be lost.
About 15 years ago or so there was a popular expression among U.S. Army officers, "getting inside their OODA loop." It came from the work of former Air Force fighter pilot and fighter designer John Boyd. It stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act, now used as a paradigm in the military, business and even academia as a standard decision-cycle model. Boyd's concept basically means:
The model is called a loop because your own actions inevitably cause changes in the operational environment that call for the process to be repeated, as well as the fact that the environment changes on its own, anyway.
"Getting inside their OODA loop" meant simply that the side that was able to perform the four functions better and quicker would retain the initiative to mostly act rather than react, and overall, the competition or enemy would have to react to that side.
If we can stay inside the enemy's OODA Loop, our crystal ball will be clearer (but not crystal clear).
Friday, June 14, 2002
Harmid Karzai says he wants a free judiciary
A clip just broadcast on TV news showed Afgahn President Harmid Karzai saying, among other things, "I want a free judiciary," by which I think he meant an independent one.
Why this is difficult (but not impossible) to do within Islam is something I'll post about later. But for now -- Go Karzai!
A clip just broadcast on TV news showed Afgahn President Harmid Karzai saying, among other things, "I want a free judiciary," by which I think he meant an independent one.
Why this is difficult (but not impossible) to do within Islam is something I'll post about later. But for now -- Go Karzai!
"Thirty-five years. That is all it has taken. Half a lifetime. Things move fast now."
So ends former Army Times writer Fred Reed's posting on his website about how long and to what degree America has declined in many ways. Thanks to Bob Ballard (link at left) for the link. Warning: Fred is provocative, so expect to have some correctness challenged. But his observations about teen sex and its effects are sobering, especially to me, the father of two teenage boys.
So ends former Army Times writer Fred Reed's posting on his website about how long and to what degree America has declined in many ways. Thanks to Bob Ballard (link at left) for the link. Warning: Fred is provocative, so expect to have some correctness challenged. But his observations about teen sex and its effects are sobering, especially to me, the father of two teenage boys.
More on the federal separation of war powers
In an earlier post, I made the point that the Constitution empowers the Congress, not the president, to make war as well as declare war. (The context was whether the USA is actually at war because no Congressional declaration of war had been made.) Eugene Volokh (link at left) has written about this topic a lot, and he read what I wrote and kindly corrected me that the Constitution does not specifically empower the Congress to make war, at least not in such terms.
I somewhat sheepishly responded by email thus:
I believe that the Framers did not intend for the presidency to have the authority under the Constitution to embark on military action without prior approval of the Congress, except in emegency. But neither does the Constitution actually require the Congress to "declare" war in order for the president to conduct such operations. The Congress may authorize military action by the executive in whatever way it pleases.
Professor Volokh wrote back, "I agree with you that Congress was supposed to play an important role in controlling warmaking via the power of the purse, though the President was in charge of the other decisions." And I urge you to read this posting on his site, which seems to me to be the last word on the topic in light of the present war. He quotes Senator Joe Biden as saying,
So yes, the US is genuinely at war, and yes, the separation of powers of the Constitution has been maintained.
In an earlier post, I made the point that the Constitution empowers the Congress, not the president, to make war as well as declare war. (The context was whether the USA is actually at war because no Congressional declaration of war had been made.) Eugene Volokh (link at left) has written about this topic a lot, and he read what I wrote and kindly corrected me that the Constitution does not specifically empower the Congress to make war, at least not in such terms.
I somewhat sheepishly responded by email thus:
. . . I'll relate my historical understanding. The conduct of war (its command and direction) is the province of the executive, but Congress' enumerated powers in Art. I, Sec. 8, gives the Congress very substantial authority in military matters, especially the power of the purse over the defense establishment and the power to specify the size of the armed forces.
Again, merely recollecting readings from times past (maybe way past!) the understanding of the Framers was that the presidency would not be nearly the powerful office it became not too many years after Washington's terms. They certainly did not wish to invest the American president with the sort of powers of the English monarch to make war on his own. They thought that the president would direct the army and navy in war only after the Congress, representing the people's will, gave him the authority. For example, Federalist 44 indicates that without consent of Congress no state could "engage in war unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay," clearly indicating (I think) the principle that making war except in true emergency was reserved to the Congress.
Hamilton wrote in Federalist 69, The Real Character of the Executive,"The President is to be commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States. In this respect his authority would be nominally the same with that of the king of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior to it [emphasis added]. It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces, as first General and admiral of the Confederacy; while that of the British king extends to the DECLARING of war and to the RAISING and REGULATING of fleets and armies, all which, by the Constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature."
So I think I am standing of fairly solid ground in saying that making war as well as declaring it is a prerogative of the Congress, but I freely admit that your expertise is certainly superior to mine. I'd be interested in your other thoughts!
I believe that the Framers did not intend for the presidency to have the authority under the Constitution to embark on military action without prior approval of the Congress, except in emegency. But neither does the Constitution actually require the Congress to "declare" war in order for the president to conduct such operations. The Congress may authorize military action by the executive in whatever way it pleases.
Professor Volokh wrote back, "I agree with you that Congress was supposed to play an important role in controlling warmaking via the power of the purse, though the President was in charge of the other decisions." And I urge you to read this posting on his site, which seems to me to be the last word on the topic in light of the present war. He quotes Senator Joe Biden as saying,
Under the Constitution, there is simply no distinction ... Louis Fisher(?) and others can tell you, there is no distinction between a formal declaration of war, and an authorization of use of force. There is none for Constitutional purposes. None whatsoever. And we defined in that Use of Force Act that we passed, what ... against whom we were moving, and what authority was granted to the President.
So yes, the US is genuinely at war, and yes, the separation of powers of the Constitution has been maintained.
Here is why June 14 is Flag Day
June 14 is the US Army's birthday. According to this article available online from the US Army's Chief of Military History:
June 14 is the US Army's birthday. According to this article available online from the US Army's Chief of Military History:
On 14 June 1775 the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, adopted a resolution under which ten companies of expert riflemen would be immediately raised, six in Pennsylvania, two in Maryland, and two in Virginia. The "compleated" companies were to "march and join the army near Boston, to be employed . . . under the command of the chief Officer of that army." On the following day the Congress elected George Washington, Esq., of Virginia to be general and commander in chief "of the forces raised and to be raised in defence of American Liberty."
Today is Flag Day - fly your flag!
And you do have one, right?
On June 14, 1777, at Philadelphia, the Marine Committee of the Second Continental Congress offered the resolution which resulted in the adoption of the Flag of the United States. As new states were admitted it became evident that the number of stripes in the flag would have to be limited. Congress ordered that after July 4, 1818, the flag should have thirteen stripes, symbolizing the thirteen original states, that the union would have twenty stars, and that a new star should be added on the July 4th following admission of a new state. The permanent arrangement of the stars is not designated, and no star is specifically identified with any state. Since 1912, following the admission of a new state, the new design has been announced by executive order. The original resolution read:
June 14th, the birthday of our flag, became a holiday in New York State in 1897. In the next few years other states joined New York. But it was not until 1916 that President Woodrow Wilson established Flag Day by national proclamation.
According to the Department of State, red stands for hardiness and courage, white is the symbol of purity and innocence, and blue is the color of vigilance, perseverance, and justice.
And you do have one, right?
On June 14, 1777, at Philadelphia, the Marine Committee of the Second Continental Congress offered the resolution which resulted in the adoption of the Flag of the United States. As new states were admitted it became evident that the number of stripes in the flag would have to be limited. Congress ordered that after July 4, 1818, the flag should have thirteen stripes, symbolizing the thirteen original states, that the union would have twenty stars, and that a new star should be added on the July 4th following admission of a new state. The permanent arrangement of the stars is not designated, and no star is specifically identified with any state. Since 1912, following the admission of a new state, the new design has been announced by executive order. The original resolution read:
"Resolved: that the flag of the United States be made of thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation."
June 14th, the birthday of our flag, became a holiday in New York State in 1897. In the next few years other states joined New York. But it was not until 1916 that President Woodrow Wilson established Flag Day by national proclamation.
According to the Department of State, red stands for hardiness and courage, white is the symbol of purity and innocence, and blue is the color of vigilance, perseverance, and justice.
"We take the stars and blue union from heaven, the red from our mother country, separating it by white stripes, thus showing we have separated from her, and the white stripes shall go down to posterity representing liberty." George Washington
Geneva Conventions don't apply to terrorists . . .
. . . says Thomas Sowell in this article.
Terrorist organizations cannot operate without state support somewhere. In fact, al Qaeda has state sponsorship. One state sponsor was Afghanistan, but others remain. (Saudi Arabia is high on my list.) Thus, our terrorist enemies are conducting warfare by proxy against us on behalf of the state sponsors/ But because their methods, targets and organization and insignia fail to meet lawful criteria of the Conventions, the terorists themselves have no rightful claim to the protection of the Conventions.
Captured terrorists are not simply breakers of domestic American law. They are unlawful combatants in acts of war, and therefore may and should be properly handled in a summary manner.
. . . says Thomas Sowell in this article.
Neither the criminal law nor the rules of the Geneva Convention are suited to terrorism. International terrorism is an act of war without a formal declaration of war by the sovereign nation that is sponsoring the terrorists. Terrorism is not simply a domestic crime, even when it occurs within our borders. Nor are the terrorists soldiers, as defined in the Geneva Convention.
Terrorist organizations cannot operate without state support somewhere. In fact, al Qaeda has state sponsorship. One state sponsor was Afghanistan, but others remain. (Saudi Arabia is high on my list.) Thus, our terrorist enemies are conducting warfare by proxy against us on behalf of the state sponsors/ But because their methods, targets and organization and insignia fail to meet lawful criteria of the Conventions, the terorists themselves have no rightful claim to the protection of the Conventions.
Captured terrorists are not simply breakers of domestic American law. They are unlawful combatants in acts of war, and therefore may and should be properly handled in a summary manner.
Can a US citizen be tried by military tribunal?
Jonah Goldberg says yes in this commentary in today's Washingtion Times:
Jonah Goldberg says yes in this commentary in today's Washingtion Times:
The issue of whether American citizens could be treated as prisoners of war was settled six decades ago in Ex Parte Quirin. The Supreme Court ruled that sneaking into the United States with the intent to destroy "life or property" is an offense "against the law of war subject to trial and punishment by military tribunals."That seems pretty clear.
The case dealt with eight German agents who infiltrated the United States intending to blow up factories and disrupt transportation. Two of the agents were American citizens. Six infiltrators were executed, including one of the Americans. In response, the court ruled that being an American citizen "does not relieve" you from the obligations of the rules of war. "Citizens who associate themselves with the military arm of the enemy government, and with its aid, guidance and direction enter this country bent on hostile acts, are enemy belligerents within the meaning of the Hague Convention and the law of war," the court concluded.
Thursday, June 13, 2002
Egypt is building its own M1 Abrams tanks - and the Israelis are quite okay about it
Thanks to Geitner Simmons for telling me about this story. It seems the Egyptians build M1 tanks for themselves rather than buy ones made in the USA.
The story goes on to point out that because the manufacturing efficiency and quality of the Egyptian plant is somewhat lower than of the American plant, the Egyptian army is actually getting less bang for the buck than if it bought American-made tanks. Because the Egyptian government chose the domestic jobs their own plant offers over the greater military effectiveness of buying American, the Egyptian manufacture is really a financial boondoggle that reinforces the observation that Egypt's has no intention of war. So the Israelis are okay about it.
Thanks to Geitner Simmons for telling me about this story. It seems the Egyptians build M1 tanks for themselves rather than buy ones made in the USA.
Since the late 1980's Egypt has produced 530 of the tanks at its Abu Zaabal Tank Repair Company. The M1 tanks it produces are U.S. designed — and are among the most powerful armored vehicles in the world. It recently started on additional hundred vehicles. With all of the spare parts and equipment, the contract costs Egypt over $500 million. Why, one wonders, are the Egyptians so keen on building the tanks themselves? The answer seems almost obvious. They wanted the jobs.
Egypt's generals would surely have preferred to have their tanks built at Lima, Ohio.
The story goes on to point out that because the manufacturing efficiency and quality of the Egyptian plant is somewhat lower than of the American plant, the Egyptian army is actually getting less bang for the buck than if it bought American-made tanks. Because the Egyptian government chose the domestic jobs their own plant offers over the greater military effectiveness of buying American, the Egyptian manufacture is really a financial boondoggle that reinforces the observation that Egypt's has no intention of war. So the Israelis are okay about it.
A former missile man on protecting the control room
Steven (no last name given) writes in response to my post about protecting the control room. He says that when he was in the Air Force working missile fields, the two missile launch controllers were armed. (Actually I did know this, but for the sake of the argument I was making, I postulated a situation in which they were not.)
Steven says,
Good point Steven, and thanks for reading and writing!
Steven (no last name given) writes in response to my post about protecting the control room. He says that when he was in the Air Force working missile fields, the two missile launch controllers were armed. (Actually I did know this, but for the sake of the argument I was making, I postulated a situation in which they were not.)
Steven says,
. . .both crew members of a Minuteman site had sidearms in case one crew member went crazy, the other one was supposed to shoot him. The guns were locked in a safe in the capsule and passed from crew to crew during shift change. Don't know if they still do this. Air crews need the same thing, a gun safe in the cockpit with a .44 Special loaded with low velocity hollow points. Good stopping power and they won't go through the planes skin.
Good point Steven, and thanks for reading and writing!
Visa-granting system for foreign students is out of control
George J. Borjas, professor of public policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, has an eye-opening article in the June 17 print edition of National Review. He says that the INS issued 315,000 student visas for foreign students and that there may be a million foreign students in the country now. But the kicker is -
One of the fundamental obligations of the federal government is the security of the borders of our country. Student visas have become so popular for foreigners to get into the US because other visas are so difficult to get. Tourist visas are easy to get, but they are very temporary in duration. For genuine students or for enemy personnel, tourist visas are simply inadequate.
Permanent-residence visas, or green cards, are very difficult to obtain unless the applicant already has a relative living in the US. The government does raffle out 50,000 green cards per years, but so many millions of people enter the green card lottery that the chance of getting a green card that way is quite remote.
But there is no upper limit to the number of student visas that may be granted. To obtain a student visa, a foreigner must first be admitted to a education institution approved by the INS, which then sends the applicant a Form I-20. The applicant must enroll in the school full time, and must certify s/he is financially self-supporting.
There are about 73,000 schools that are INS-certified to hand out I-20s. The schools range form major private and state universities to barber schools, acupuncture academies, beaty colleges and the the San Diego Golf Academy. Prof. Borjas points out that because so many institutions are approved by the INS, "anyone with the money can buy a student visa to enter the US [so] America has effectively delegated the task of selecting immigrants to thousands of privately run entities whose incentives need not coincide with the national interest."
Meaning, of course, that the bottom line is, well, the bottom line. Foreign students comprise a huge percentage of students at many universities and schools, especially in post-graduate studies. Foreign students receive half of the Ph.Ds awarded in engineering, for example. Enrollment means money, and universities further exploit foreign students by using them for labor at minimum wages. Schools will scream if the INS gets its act together and starts to tighten entry requirements for foreign students because it will cost the schools altogether probably billions of dollars per year. In fact, schools already screamed when Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) proposed a six-month moratorium on granting student visas. She withdrew the proposal after colleges and universities lobbied her and her allies intensely.
But the presence of so many foreign students in America, even legitimate students, is a huge drain on the American treasury. Tuition does not nearly cover the cost of higher education; Gordon Winston of Williams College estimates that the national per-student average for subsidy at private schools is $6,400 and for state schools is $9,200, making an annual cost, borne by taxpayers or donors, of $2.5 billion per year. This cost almost certainly is greater than financial benefit the foreign students accrue to the US
The corruption the present system encourages is astonishing, but not surprising. With stakes so high, graft and bribery are certainly found. Admissions officers at major schools have accepted bribes to admit students, and professors have accepted bribes to give passing grades. Overseas, the corruption is even more severe. Prominent Chinese sell letters of recommendation or self-support certifications to applicants for $10,000 or more. Many applicants even hire professional actors to stand in for them in interviews.
We need to think hard about what benefit the United States accrues from such a boundless and effectively boundary-less student visa system. It is highly doubtful that on the whole this system is serving the national interest.
George J. Borjas, professor of public policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, has an eye-opening article in the June 17 print edition of National Review. He says that the INS issued 315,000 student visas for foreign students and that there may be a million foreign students in the country now. But the kicker is -
The program is no so large, so riddled with corruption, and so ineptly run that the INS simply does not know how many foreign students are in the country or where they are enrolled.
One of the fundamental obligations of the federal government is the security of the borders of our country. Student visas have become so popular for foreigners to get into the US because other visas are so difficult to get. Tourist visas are easy to get, but they are very temporary in duration. For genuine students or for enemy personnel, tourist visas are simply inadequate.
Permanent-residence visas, or green cards, are very difficult to obtain unless the applicant already has a relative living in the US. The government does raffle out 50,000 green cards per years, but so many millions of people enter the green card lottery that the chance of getting a green card that way is quite remote.
But there is no upper limit to the number of student visas that may be granted. To obtain a student visa, a foreigner must first be admitted to a education institution approved by the INS, which then sends the applicant a Form I-20. The applicant must enroll in the school full time, and must certify s/he is financially self-supporting.
There are about 73,000 schools that are INS-certified to hand out I-20s. The schools range form major private and state universities to barber schools, acupuncture academies, beaty colleges and the the San Diego Golf Academy. Prof. Borjas points out that because so many institutions are approved by the INS, "anyone with the money can buy a student visa to enter the US [so] America has effectively delegated the task of selecting immigrants to thousands of privately run entities whose incentives need not coincide with the national interest."
Meaning, of course, that the bottom line is, well, the bottom line. Foreign students comprise a huge percentage of students at many universities and schools, especially in post-graduate studies. Foreign students receive half of the Ph.Ds awarded in engineering, for example. Enrollment means money, and universities further exploit foreign students by using them for labor at minimum wages. Schools will scream if the INS gets its act together and starts to tighten entry requirements for foreign students because it will cost the schools altogether probably billions of dollars per year. In fact, schools already screamed when Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) proposed a six-month moratorium on granting student visas. She withdrew the proposal after colleges and universities lobbied her and her allies intensely.
But the presence of so many foreign students in America, even legitimate students, is a huge drain on the American treasury. Tuition does not nearly cover the cost of higher education; Gordon Winston of Williams College estimates that the national per-student average for subsidy at private schools is $6,400 and for state schools is $9,200, making an annual cost, borne by taxpayers or donors, of $2.5 billion per year. This cost almost certainly is greater than financial benefit the foreign students accrue to the US
The corruption the present system encourages is astonishing, but not surprising. With stakes so high, graft and bribery are certainly found. Admissions officers at major schools have accepted bribes to admit students, and professors have accepted bribes to give passing grades. Overseas, the corruption is even more severe. Prominent Chinese sell letters of recommendation or self-support certifications to applicants for $10,000 or more. Many applicants even hire professional actors to stand in for them in interviews.
We need to think hard about what benefit the United States accrues from such a boundless and effectively boundary-less student visa system. It is highly doubtful that on the whole this system is serving the national interest.
More on Muslim names and media coverage
Earlier, I excoriated the Washington Post and the American news media generally for using the English names of Muslim Americans accused of being part of our al Qaeda enemy. These men, like Lew Alcindor and Cassius Clay, adopted Arabic names when they converted to Islam. Yet the media use the Arabic names for the sports figures but not for the accused terrorists.
To which Glenn "Mac" Frazier (link at left) adds:
Excellent points. Then again, the last couple of times I heard him mentioned, they still referred to the musician whose Muslim name I can never remember as "Cat Stevens".
Reader Robert George writes:
Good observation on the press's failure to call al Muhajir by his adopted name. However, I have one quibble: It is most accurate, I believe to say that "Abdullah al Muhajir" is Padilla's Muslim name and not his "Arabic" name. It is most accurate to say that our enemies are radical Muslims, not Arabs. The man formerly known as Padilla, the man formerly known as Walker Lindh, the Abu Sayeff group in Phillipines -- they are all loosely
speaking our enemies, but they are our enemies because they have become radical Muslims ("Islamists" as Lou Dobbs points out) -- not Arabs or Arabic.
Robert, thank you for reading and writing. You make a valuable distinction in explaining the fact that our enemies are violent Islamists, most of whom are Arabs but not all. The reason I said the two American men had changed to "Arab" names, rather than "Muslim" names is this:
I mean they have adopted by Arabic-language names, not that that they have become ethnic Arabs. The Quran was written in Arabic and for centuries Muslims believed that no translation of the Quran into another language was valid. Many still do believe that still, but not all. Arabic is still the "official" language of Islam; the daily prayers, for example, must be said in Arabic (they mostly consist of repetition of Quranic passages).
Hence, one sign of submission to Allah (Islam, remember, means, "submission") for non-Arabs is to change one's name to one of the language of Islam, that is Arabic. So i said they had adopted Arabic names, not Muslim one. But for the debate at hand, it is probably a distinction without a difference.
Monday, June 10, 2002
Muslim names and dirty bombs
The Washington Post (and other media) have reported the arrest of a US citizen "with ties to al Qaeda" for plotting to set off a dirty bomb in America. Probably most blog readers know more about this story than I do since I have been in conferences all day. But this sentence from the Post's story made me blink:
Even though the Post points out that this fellow converted to Islam 11 years ago and changed his name then, for the rest of the story the Post refers to Mr. al Muhajir as "Mr. Padilla." Now, look here. The Post does not call Mohammed Ali, "Cassius Clay." The Post does not call Kareem Abdul Jabbar, "Lew Alcindor."
Why the double standard? Could it be, dare I say it, political correctness? Could the Post be using al Muhajir's former name rather than his present name because to use his self-chosen Arabic name might imply that (can it be?) our enemies are Arabs? (And yes, I know that by far most Arabs are not our enemies.)
This usage is no aberration. They also did the same thing with Abdul Hamid, whom you probably know as Johnny Walker Lindh.
The Washington Post (and other media) have reported the arrest of a US citizen "with ties to al Qaeda" for plotting to set off a dirty bomb in America. Probably most blog readers know more about this story than I do since I have been in conferences all day. But this sentence from the Post's story made me blink:
Jose Padilla, 31, who now goes by the name of Abdullah al Muhajir, was in the custody of the U.S. military and was being treated as an enemy combatant, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft said.
Even though the Post points out that this fellow converted to Islam 11 years ago and changed his name then, for the rest of the story the Post refers to Mr. al Muhajir as "Mr. Padilla." Now, look here. The Post does not call Mohammed Ali, "Cassius Clay." The Post does not call Kareem Abdul Jabbar, "Lew Alcindor."
Why the double standard? Could it be, dare I say it, political correctness? Could the Post be using al Muhajir's former name rather than his present name because to use his self-chosen Arabic name might imply that (can it be?) our enemies are Arabs? (And yes, I know that by far most Arabs are not our enemies.)
This usage is no aberration. They also did the same thing with Abdul Hamid, whom you probably know as Johnny Walker Lindh.
"Right on target" . . .
. . . is how a colonel of the US I Corps staff described my analysis that wound up in the Omaha World Herald. He said -
Thanks!
. . . is how a colonel of the US I Corps staff described my analysis that wound up in the Omaha World Herald. He said -
The Al-Qaida communication network (phones, signals, internet, banking, financial transfer, etc) is considered by many to be their center of gravity which allows them to operate in a decentralized fashion while maintaining centralized macro-operational force structure. It is this aspect that allows their C2 [Command and Control - DS] to operate effectively. You're right on target!
Thanks!
Sunday, June 09, 2002
What took Lou Dobbs so long?
Jeebus (link at left), Matt Drudge and other site have reported how Lou Dobbs said on his program Moneyline on June 6 that -
That is only a partial quote. Reports say that protest calls came in to CNN right away.
I commend Lou for his clarity. It sounds a lot like what I wrote back in September (only I called our foes Violent Islamic Fundamentalists).
This essay of mine, btw, is the one that is on the nominee list for the Blogbook Project.
Jeebus (link at left), Matt Drudge and other site have reported how Lou Dobbs said on his program Moneyline on June 6 that -
in the interests of clarity and honesty. The enemies in this war are radical Islamists who argue all non-believers in their faith must be killed. They are called Islamists. That's why we are abandoning the phrase, "War Against Terror". Let us be clear. This is not a war against Muslims or Islam. It is a war against Islamists and all who support them.
That is only a partial quote. Reports say that protest calls came in to CNN right away.
I commend Lou for his clarity. It sounds a lot like what I wrote back in September (only I called our foes Violent Islamic Fundamentalists).
This essay of mine, btw, is the one that is on the nominee list for the Blogbook Project.
Saturday, June 08, 2002
I must be an expert!
I was quoted today in this piece in the Omaha World Herald in reference to this posting. I think it was very kind of the editorialist to refer to me as a "military analyst" rather than a guy with a computer, a blog site and obviously way too much time on his hands!
I was quoted today in this piece in the Omaha World Herald in reference to this posting. I think it was very kind of the editorialist to refer to me as a "military analyst" rather than a guy with a computer, a blog site and obviously way too much time on his hands!
Americans are rich, so skin 'em!
In a followup to my dismay at how much per night the Army is spending to rent hotel room in Tsbilisi, Bob Ballard (link to his blog at left) observes that the Army is getting a real bargain:
I recall that on an exercise in Honduras in 1987, my unit landed heavy vehicles by sea at the northern port of Lempira. We contracted with a Honduran company to haul them to the Comayagua valley at a cost of $20,000 per flatbed.
In a followup to my dismay at how much per night the Army is spending to rent hotel room in Tsbilisi, Bob Ballard (link to his blog at left) observes that the Army is getting a real bargain:
When doing a seismic job offshore Moskalvo on the north end of Sakhalin Island in Sept 1999, the contractor tried to get hotel rooms for a crew change in Okha and the proprietor wanted $1,000 (cash, USD) per room per
nite with max 2 people per room (35 guys coming and going). Told 'em to go [p**s] up a rope and the plane finally showed up so we could get out of there. If it hadn't, it woulda been on the street at about 40 degrees F or pay the fare.
I recall that on an exercise in Honduras in 1987, my unit landed heavy vehicles by sea at the northern port of Lempira. We contracted with a Honduran company to haul them to the Comayagua valley at a cost of $20,000 per flatbed.
Are we really serious about surviving?
I was making notes for a posting that I would entitle, "This is total war, and we'd best act like it." But then Peggy Noonan beat me to the punch. As with everything Peggy writes, I am tempted simply to say, "Read it," and trust you will. But instead, since her thoughts parallel mine (only she is more eloquent than I), allow me this excerpt:
What we seem not to be unable to comprehend is not that the Terror War is different from all others we have fought, but how it is different. We are fighting an enemy whose fundamental motivations are different from all others we have ever fought.
In 1776, England fought not to destroy America (its colonies) but to preserve them, more accurately, its rule over them so it could continue to reap the economic benefit of colonial vassalage.
The War of 1812 was begun by mistakes on both sides with no real strategic advantages imagined or gained by its end. The Treaty of Ghent that ended the war was negotiated on the basis of the status quo ante bellum.
The war with Mexico was basically a land grab and Mexico retained its independence after US forces withdrew. We kept land that later became California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.
The Civil War was fought for southern independence on one side and preservation of the Union on the other. It was long and brutal and ended with a harsh occupation of most of the South by the US Army, but in the end, all that was lost (other than lives and treasure) by the South was its dream of independence and retention of slavery.
The Spanish-American War was an imperial war by America fought for false causes, unquestionably (IMO) the least just war America has fought (The Navy has proved that USS Maine was not sabotaged in Havana harbor). But we never threatened Spain's existence nor even threatened a raid on Spanish soil. And Spain sure never threatened America.
Americans fought World War I on lands distant from them. Our homeland was intact.
Neither Japan nor Germany seriously attempted to bring warfare to the American homeland during WW II. Japan never even planned to invade Oahu. Germany tried to develop a long-range bomber to bomb New York, but failed. German submarines sank American ships literally within sight of the coastline and landed a sabotage team in America (who were quickly captured), but the threat to America itself was weak to the point of non-existence.
The Korean War was fought to protect South Korea, not America. The Vietnam War was fought to protect South Vietnam, not America. In neither case was America itself threatened.
The Gulf War was fought to protect American interests in the Persian Gulf and to restore Kuwaiti independence. America, again, was not itself threatened.
What makes the Terror War different was not that our enemies attacked our homeland. The Germans and the Japanese would have done it if they could. (Japan tried to do so with balloon bombs.) What makes this war different is the means and motivations of our enemies.
Ho Chi Minh, classical communist dictator that he was, never considered terrorism against America as a means to his end. He used terrorism against the South, but never against America itself. Neither did Japan, Germany, Spain, Mexico or England.
Of all the enemies America has faced, terrorism is uniquely the weapon of our present enemies. They didn't invent terrorism but they are the first foreign force to use it against us. And it is their only weapon.
That fact is related to their objectives. Since the Civil War, no combat occurred on American soil proper until Sept. 11. 2001. All the enemies America has faced before used violence to achieve goals well short of destruction of our country. Japan only wanted us out of the way for them to create the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Germany didn't want to fight America at all in either world war. Spain and Mexico were not the aggressors and never could challenge American power. The English, now our staunchest ally, were the only foreign power to wreak destruction upon American soil before last summer. And they did so to preserve the status quo, not simply to kill Americans.
The present enemy is different because they have no objective they hope to accomplish by killing us. Killing us is the objective itself. The aims of Osama bin Laden and his allies are an open book. They have made their objectives explicitly clear, over and over, in their interviews, their writings and their clerics' announcements: they want to kill as many Americans as possible and destroy as many structures as possible that are most valued by Americans. That is their goal - it is their only goal. Their murderous violence is not a means to another end. Destruction is itself their end. They have said so themselves. Intelligence services and diplomats of Arab states have made it clear that if and when the terrorists obtain atomic weapons, they absolutely will use them to kill Americans.
This war can end only when the terrorists no longer have the means to strike us. There is no concession that the United States can offer to pacify them. There is no foreign policy change we can make that will satisfy them. Those things are not the things that have caused them to raise the sword. It is quite impossible for us to placate them, because we cannot culturally internalize their fundamentalist Islamism.
That's the difference. This fight is a fight for survival, and we have never done that before.
I was making notes for a posting that I would entitle, "This is total war, and we'd best act like it." But then Peggy Noonan beat me to the punch. As with everything Peggy writes, I am tempted simply to say, "Read it," and trust you will. But instead, since her thoughts parallel mine (only she is more eloquent than I), allow me this excerpt:
There is nothing the madmen would rather do than take out or disable two of the biggest, most central entities that unite us in America, the seat of our financial institutions and power and the seat of our government.
Be dire. Imagine: On the same day, New York and Washington are, say, dirty-nuked. This will cause chaos, pain and horror of almost unimaginable proportions. And yet we must imagine.
We are living in a time when it is one's patriotic duty to be imaginative. And then to imagine what we can do, now, to keep The Second Terrible Thing from happening, or to help us all survive and struggle through The Second Terrible Thing.
We are not doing this.
We are in the middle of another systems failure.
We are busy for instance debating absurdities. Such as: In an era in which certain Arab and Muslim males roughly 18 to 40 years old are taking active steps to severely damage the United States and kill Americans, is it wrong to give added scrutiny to Arab and Muslim males 18 to 40 years old as they attempt to enter America, board planes, rent charter planes and ask for maps to the nearest nuclear power plant?
How absurd and clueless do you have to be to be having this debate? You have to have surrendered all common sense.
What we seem not to be unable to comprehend is not that the Terror War is different from all others we have fought, but how it is different. We are fighting an enemy whose fundamental motivations are different from all others we have ever fought.
What makes the Terror War different was not that our enemies attacked our homeland. The Germans and the Japanese would have done it if they could. (Japan tried to do so with balloon bombs.) What makes this war different is the means and motivations of our enemies.
Ho Chi Minh, classical communist dictator that he was, never considered terrorism against America as a means to his end. He used terrorism against the South, but never against America itself. Neither did Japan, Germany, Spain, Mexico or England.
Of all the enemies America has faced, terrorism is uniquely the weapon of our present enemies. They didn't invent terrorism but they are the first foreign force to use it against us. And it is their only weapon.
That fact is related to their objectives. Since the Civil War, no combat occurred on American soil proper until Sept. 11. 2001. All the enemies America has faced before used violence to achieve goals well short of destruction of our country. Japan only wanted us out of the way for them to create the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Germany didn't want to fight America at all in either world war. Spain and Mexico were not the aggressors and never could challenge American power. The English, now our staunchest ally, were the only foreign power to wreak destruction upon American soil before last summer. And they did so to preserve the status quo, not simply to kill Americans.
The present enemy is different because they have no objective they hope to accomplish by killing us. Killing us is the objective itself. The aims of Osama bin Laden and his allies are an open book. They have made their objectives explicitly clear, over and over, in their interviews, their writings and their clerics' announcements: they want to kill as many Americans as possible and destroy as many structures as possible that are most valued by Americans. That is their goal - it is their only goal. Their murderous violence is not a means to another end. Destruction is itself their end. They have said so themselves. Intelligence services and diplomats of Arab states have made it clear that if and when the terrorists obtain atomic weapons, they absolutely will use them to kill Americans.
This war can end only when the terrorists no longer have the means to strike us. There is no concession that the United States can offer to pacify them. There is no foreign policy change we can make that will satisfy them. Those things are not the things that have caused them to raise the sword. It is quite impossible for us to placate them, because we cannot culturally internalize their fundamentalist Islamism.
That's the difference. This fight is a fight for survival, and we have never done that before.
Friday, June 07, 2002
"Let's see if we've got this straight."
Writes Washington Times editor Wesley Pruden today:
It gets better . . . or worse, I guess. Read it all. He skins Wisconsin Senator Russell Feingold alive, and for excellent reasons.
Writes Washington Times editor Wesley Pruden today:
The FBI director admits that his agents could do a better job of catching terrorists if they looked in the logical places, but they won't be allowed to look in the logical places because that might look like racial profiling. That could hurt somebody's feelings.
"I've seen indications of concerns about taking certain action, because that action may be perceived as profiling," Robert Mueller, a k a Feerless Fosdick, told the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is going through the motions of finding out why the FBI and the CIA were asleep, or worse, in the weeks and months leading up to September 11.
It gets better . . . or worse, I guess. Read it all. He skins Wisconsin Senator Russell Feingold alive, and for excellent reasons.
I hope the rooms include laundry service and mints on the pillows
According to a Fox News report I just heard, the US Army is paying $10,000 per day to rent 35 hotel rooms for special forces troops in Tbilisi, Georgia (the one south of Russia, not north of Florida). That's $285.71 per day. I mean, please.
According to a Fox News report I just heard, the US Army is paying $10,000 per day to rent 35 hotel rooms for special forces troops in Tbilisi, Georgia (the one south of Russia, not north of Florida). That's $285.71 per day. I mean, please.
The control room must be protected
Somewhere out West there is a certain ICBM missile site. There are two Air Force officers on watch. They have the firing-release keys and other necessary stuff for firing the missiles. Their control room is designed for autonomous operation. If they wish, they can launch a missile any time. The reason no watch crew has ever done so is because the Air Force is hyper-careful about screening the officers assigned to the control room. Also, the firing console is designed so that one person cannot operate all the controls needed to fire. You must have two operators, and the chance that both officers would go bonkers at the same and launch a missile is nil.
Now, let's embark upon a little thought experiment. Now, using whatever scenario you wish, imagine that al four Qaeda terrorists managed to get into the site. They elude security or kill the guards. They make their way to the control room, only to discover it is reinforced against forced entry. No problem, they knew it would be. Some plastic explosives gains entry. Once inside, they easily kill the watch officers, who are unarmed. Having trained extensively for this mission, the al Qaeda terrorists launch a missile.
Now, you ask, why were the watch officers not armed? Of all the areas of the site that absolutely had to be protected, the control room is it. No matter how much of the rest of the site the terrorists control, if they can't take over the control room, they cannot succeed. If only the two watch officers had been armed with even an automatic pistol each, they could have killed the terrorists at the door.
Now, just substitute "airliner" for 'missile site," and "cockpit" for "control room and "pilots" for "watch officers." I am hoping that this makes it clear why the option of pilots armed with pistols is essential for future security: If the terrorists cannot take over the cockpit, they fail.
Reinforced cockpit doors can be breached. Malleable but powerful explosives can be transported aboard in a way that security measures would not halt. The KGB and CIA have had deadly weapons disguised as ordinary objects for decades; their design and technology is no secret. If they really want to take over the cabin, they can. And if they want to breach the cockpit door, they will. If the door is their final barrier, they win.
But the door, on which Norman Mineta et. al. place so much confidence, is beside the point. The cockpit is the point. The cockpit must be controlled. Unarmed pilots lose every time. Armed pilots have a good chance of winning. Next time you fly, see how big the cockpit door is when you board. One at a time through the door, that's it. Easy target for the pilot or copilot. The terrorists can't use much violence in overcoming armed pilots because they need the cockpit intact to fly the plane as a kamikaze weapon. The terrorists are at a severe disadvantage in overcoming armed pilots.
Pilots know that only the cockpit really matters. One airline pilot I knew told me years ago that he never felt any stress of responsibility in flying dozens and dozens of people around at a time. "I just figure my job is to get the cockpit safely to the gate," he said, "and the rest will follow fine." I do not believe that the murder of passengers or crew can any longer convince pilots to open the cockpit door. It would be literally suicidal to do so.
The object of arming pilots is not to ensure gun battles in the wild blue. It is to make airline hiijacking's odds of success so low that terrorists find it too low to attempt. Consider what terrorists would have to consider:
That's my last word on the topic. Congress needs to pass the legislation with three crucial provisions:
No power of the executive branch to specify when and if pilots may be armed,
No power of airlines to do the same thing (they'll forbid it),
No screening of pilots other than a criminal background check. Airline pilots have already been screened psychologically and medically.
Finally, see George Wills'excellent piece on this topic which offers other justifications for arming pilots.
Somewhere out West there is a certain ICBM missile site. There are two Air Force officers on watch. They have the firing-release keys and other necessary stuff for firing the missiles. Their control room is designed for autonomous operation. If they wish, they can launch a missile any time. The reason no watch crew has ever done so is because the Air Force is hyper-careful about screening the officers assigned to the control room. Also, the firing console is designed so that one person cannot operate all the controls needed to fire. You must have two operators, and the chance that both officers would go bonkers at the same and launch a missile is nil.
Now, let's embark upon a little thought experiment. Now, using whatever scenario you wish, imagine that al four Qaeda terrorists managed to get into the site. They elude security or kill the guards. They make their way to the control room, only to discover it is reinforced against forced entry. No problem, they knew it would be. Some plastic explosives gains entry. Once inside, they easily kill the watch officers, who are unarmed. Having trained extensively for this mission, the al Qaeda terrorists launch a missile.
Now, you ask, why were the watch officers not armed? Of all the areas of the site that absolutely had to be protected, the control room is it. No matter how much of the rest of the site the terrorists control, if they can't take over the control room, they cannot succeed. If only the two watch officers had been armed with even an automatic pistol each, they could have killed the terrorists at the door.
Now, just substitute "airliner" for 'missile site," and "cockpit" for "control room and "pilots" for "watch officers." I am hoping that this makes it clear why the option of pilots armed with pistols is essential for future security: If the terrorists cannot take over the cockpit, they fail.
Reinforced cockpit doors can be breached. Malleable but powerful explosives can be transported aboard in a way that security measures would not halt. The KGB and CIA have had deadly weapons disguised as ordinary objects for decades; their design and technology is no secret. If they really want to take over the cabin, they can. And if they want to breach the cockpit door, they will. If the door is their final barrier, they win.
But the door, on which Norman Mineta et. al. place so much confidence, is beside the point. The cockpit is the point. The cockpit must be controlled. Unarmed pilots lose every time. Armed pilots have a good chance of winning. Next time you fly, see how big the cockpit door is when you board. One at a time through the door, that's it. Easy target for the pilot or copilot. The terrorists can't use much violence in overcoming armed pilots because they need the cockpit intact to fly the plane as a kamikaze weapon. The terrorists are at a severe disadvantage in overcoming armed pilots.
Pilots know that only the cockpit really matters. One airline pilot I knew told me years ago that he never felt any stress of responsibility in flying dozens and dozens of people around at a time. "I just figure my job is to get the cockpit safely to the gate," he said, "and the rest will follow fine." I do not believe that the murder of passengers or crew can any longer convince pilots to open the cockpit door. It would be literally suicidal to do so.
The object of arming pilots is not to ensure gun battles in the wild blue. It is to make airline hiijacking's odds of success so low that terrorists find it too low to attempt. Consider what terrorists would have to consider:
Once we start the hijacking, we will have to overcome cabin crew who may have a TASER, but that's no problem; we'll temporarily lose one terrorist. Then we'll have to kill lots of the passengers because they will not be passive. We may lose one or two men to the passengers, but not probably not lethally because the passengers are unarmed. But in the near term, we will lose, temporarily, half our number. All the while, the pilots are making emergency speed to the nearest airport to land. So we have to take over the cockpit right away. The problem is that the pilots have .357 magnums and only one of us can get through the door at a time. And we won't have guns ourselves because we can't count on getting guns into the plane. We can smuggle explosives aboard, but only for the cockpit door; we sure can't blow up the cockpit! So the chance of success is to low to make it worth the effort.
That's my last word on the topic. Congress needs to pass the legislation with three crucial provisions:
Finally, see George Wills'excellent piece on this topic which offers other justifications for arming pilots.
More on war powers
RG Fulton writes to add to my earlier discussion:
Good points, RG, but I wonder whether you really mean the National Command Authority which has absolute discretion, rather than "agencies and committees."
RG Fulton writes to add to my earlier discussion:
Thanks. I believe that President Bush's West Point speech - viz "pre-emptive" actions - has not received the import that it deserves. In fact, MSNBC's Chris Matthews and guest Patrick Buchanan attacked it for lack of specificity. Why on earth would he be specific? I believe both that he intended to sneak in a doctrinal change, and that he had the full support of the Congressional Defense and Intelligence Committees, in doing so. Remember: these people know more than the rest of us. [Geeze, let's hope so! - DS]
Bush's National Security advisor - Condoleeza Rice - has only recommending authority. The National Security agencies and committees have absolute discretion, under the National Security Act.
Good points, RG, but I wonder whether you really mean the National Command Authority which has absolute discretion, rather than "agencies and committees."
Lots of controversy this morning about the online Daniel Pearl video
The Boston Phoenix newspaper has a link to another website on which may be viewed the grahic videotape of Daniel Pearl's murder and beheading. I'm not posting the link, although anyone with a minimum of web savvy can find it easily.
Reports I heard on NPR this morning say that the FBI is trying to get the link removed. The newspaper says it is a first amendment issue. I think the paper is right. I wonder what law professors Glenn Reynolds or Eugene Volokh think? I have written them to ask.
The Boston Phoenix newspaper has a link to another website on which may be viewed the grahic videotape of Daniel Pearl's murder and beheading. I'm not posting the link, although anyone with a minimum of web savvy can find it easily.
Reports I heard on NPR this morning say that the FBI is trying to get the link removed. The newspaper says it is a first amendment issue. I think the paper is right. I wonder what law professors Glenn Reynolds or Eugene Volokh think? I have written them to ask.
Thursday, June 06, 2002
Move against Iraq is coming
So says Pejman Yousefzadeh in his Tech Central article, linked from his blog site. He also linked to this UPI article that says the US government is already planning for a post-Saddam Iraq, to which one can only say, "Huzzah!"
Back on May 13 I wrote:
I think the Bush administration will follow a strategy basically like this:
Tell NATO and the the other countries of Arabysmalia that the USA needs to further justification for decisive war against Iraq, is capable of conducting the war entirely on its own if need be, and is ready to start any time. But will hold off military action and join in demanding Iraq submit to the full inspection regime without delay if and only if the other nations agree that if Iraq fails to comply, a casus belli for decisive American military actions exists with no further debate. When Saddam does not comply, use their non-compliance as the centerpiece of the casus belli both domestically and internationally.
I stand by that. The only thing I'll waffle on is the timing. The political moment of opportunity will be just as important as the military one.
Move against Iraq is coming - maybe
So says Pejman Yousefzadeh in his UPI article that says the US government is already planning for a post-Saddam Iraq, to which one can only say, "Huzzah!"
Back on May 13 I wrote:
I think the Bush administration will follow a strategy basically like this:
Tell NATO and the the other countries of sure does!
"When you put on a uniform, there are certain inhibitions you have to accept."
That was what General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower said about the sacking of General of the Army Douglas MacArthur by President Truman in the Korean War. MacArthur had publicly disputed the president over the course of the war. So Truman fired him.
Accepting inhibitions is a lesson this Air Force officer seems not to have learned. Lt. Col. Steve Butler publicly denounced President G. W. Bush in writing in a civilian newspaper. He's been suspended from his duties and may be court-martialed.
Which sounds just fine to me. (Found the link at Eugene Volokh.)
If you give me a pile of feathers, don't be surprised if I make a duck
So far, I have stayed out of the blogger debate about evolution and intelligent design. I first studied the subjects a long time ago and for me the matter is pretty much settled. But in recent days the issue has arisen on Rand Simberg's site, TransTerrestial Musings, Volokh and elsewhere. Pigs and Fishes has a summary links page.
Intelligent design (ID) basically says that the universe, including life, is so overwhelmingly complex that it is reasonable to infer a designing intelligence at work behind the universe's existence. The other side of the debate (which I will simply call Undirected Evolutionism, or UE) says that ID is really religious creationist doctrine gussied up with scientific language and cannot be taken seriously. UE says that it is reasonable to conclude that the universe simply came to be and that its present form is the result of processes that were not affected by anything except other physical objects or energies, as modern scientists understand and describe such things.
Based on the evidence, they are both right. But neither position is actually scientific. The reason is because both positions move beyond the empirical to the metaphysical. Both are faith claims. ID says, the evidence shows this. UE says,no, the evidence shows that. Another way of looking at it is that UE does not need to postulate a deity-designer to do science. But neither does ID. Contrary to some breathless accusations of some UEers, adherents of ID don't explain phenomena by saying, "Oh, well, God does it." Eugene Volokh seemed to think that science would just stop if IDers were in charge: "Assuming intelligent design of the universe, or even some corner of the universe, will yield you virtually no interesting theories." Well, why not?
Actually, the modern scientific revolution was begun by deistic scientists – Isaac Newton wrote more biblical commentary than he did scientific treatises. Early modernity's mechanistic view of creation was originally proposed as a way to preserve God's agency. This view was soon supplanted by the view that knowledge about the world beyond the self was limited to what could be known through sense-perception of material things, wrote David Griffin in God and Religion in the Postmodern World. The materialism of the modern world view is its central feature. Thus, "the modern world view simply has no natural place for God in it," said Griffin.
The difference between ID and creationism is that ID attempts to account for scientific knowledge and discoveries, while creationism usually simply rejects them. Simply put, the IDers do consider the history and complexity of the universe, but creationists don't care. Yes, the IDers' leap from observing the universe's complexity to postulating an intelligent designer (God) is a leap of faith, but so what?
Most arguments in science are not about the facts, but about the inferences, theories and opinions. Almost all scientists agree on almost all the data, and the data in doubt are researched collegially. But when the question is asked, What does it all mean? the fur can fly. The reason is that science is not just a pile of facts any more than a duck is a pile of feathers. The whole objective in exploring the physical universe is metaphysical, a quest not merely for knowledge but for meaning. Massing knowledge raises questions of its use, and those are questions that science cannot itself answer. (This is very evident in medical science and issues of terminal care.) Religious communities are the central places where such discussions occur.
Ultimately, science bumps up against what Prof. Langdon Gilkey called "limit questions," those that a discipline leads to but that it cannot answer within the discipline itself. (Religion has limit questions, too. So does law, medicine, etc. Incidentally, Gilkey was the chief theological witness for the plaintiffs in McLean v. Arkansas, which struck down an Arkansas law requiring the teaching of so-called creation science. The plaintiffs asked for the law to be struck down and it was. Most people don't know that of the 21 plaintiffs against the law, 18 were ecclesiastical and included a Methodist bishop and leaders of most other mainstream denominations.)
Hence, the postulate that the universe is/was intelligently designed is an answer to a limit question. There is indeed solid science behind the conclusion, it's just that the conclusion is not per se a scientific one. The discipline of science leads to questions that science itself cannot answer.
OTOH, just as some scientists and laypeople derive religious-type conclusions from science, others place their religious faith in science itself. Scientism is faith in science. I was fortunate to have studied under Langdon Gilkey and owe to him this point. Scientism makes two major claims:
(1) only science reveals the Real and only science can discover truth;
(2) scientific knowledge of reality is exhaustive, not inherently limited, is holistic and sees reality as reality really is.
(The late Carl Sagan and Stephen Jay Gould are excellent examples of scientistic scientists.) Neither claim is provable using the scientific method. They are metaphysical conclusions, just as ID is.
A purely religious apprehension of the universe, based solely on religious texts, is indefensible in our day (thinks, "madrassas"). Such a view is dangerous to science, education and indeed, other religions. But a purely scientific understanding of nature is dubious and possibly dangerous. It objectifies nature and voids it of inward value.
Both science and religion are essential to our common life. To say that an ancient text, such as the Bible, is "scientific" is badly to misuse and misunderstand what the Bible is all about. But to say that no religious conclusions may be validly drawn from science is scientistic fundamentalism.
Wednesday, June 05, 2002
Is a declaration of war necessary for the country legally to be at war?
(Updates added at end of posting)Well, no. Eugene Volokh discusses the issue with a lawyer's mind. A reader wrote him to say that because there had been no declaration of war by Congress, the country is not actually at war. Eugene responded:
International law, domestic law, and common linguistic usage have all long recognized that a nation can be at war without a declaration of war. The law and usage both focus on what is in fact happening, and not just on whether certain magic words have been used. The U.S. was at war during the Civil War, during the Korean War, and during the Vietnam War, though to my knowledge there were no declarations of war then. There is simply no legal or linguistic rule that says the contrary.
This is an important point. Most people are surprised to learn that Congress never declared war during the bloodiest conflict in American history, the Civil War. (In fact, many southern senators and congressmen retained their seats and activity in the Congress.) The Lincoln administration's position was that the Union was suppressing a rebellion, not actually making war in the then-accepted legal sense of the word. (Ask an Antietam survivor whether he fought in a war, though.)
Because of the federal government's position, foreign powers kept their hands out of what they perforce treated as an internal American matter. But when Lincoln ordered the Anaconda Plan to be implemented by the Union Navy, he almost lost that international forebearance. Under the plan, the Union Navy blockaded southern ports. But under international customs and usage of the time, blockades were legally understood as acts of war by one sovereign power upon another - an equal, in other words. Great Britain almost recognized the Confederacy as a result of the blockade, because of the implication that the US federal government was treating the South as a de facto sovereign state. It took a major diplomatic effort by the US state department to prevent England from recognizing the South.
Also, remember that the Constitution empowers the Congress to make war, not just to declare it. But the Constitution does not require the Congress to declare war in order to make war. Warmaking is nothing other than the employment of US military forces to achieve US national objectives, involving actual combat (re. Clausewitz: "Without killing there is no war").
Employment of forces to achieve national goals without combat is within the Constitutional authority of the president as Commander in Chief. President T. R. Roosevelt sent the Navy's Great White Fleet on a world cruise. Congress opposed the cruise and refused to fund it, but Roosevelt sent the fleet anyway. There was no combat so Congress couldn't do anything about it. Roosevelt was Commander in Chief and could send the fleet anywhere he wanted to. In 1988, the communist Sandinista army of Nicaragua mounted a major incursion into Honduras. President Reagan sent a brigade of the US 82d Airborne Division plus some support units to Honduras as a national demonstration. The Democrats howled but couldn't stop it. The Sandinistas beat a fast retreat and after several days the 82d came home.
Update, late June 5
Eugene Volokh graciously wrote me, "I'm glad we generally agree, but I'm not sure whether the Constitution in fact empowers Congress to make war. My sense is that it empowers the President to make war (via his commander-in-chief power), but unless I'm missing something -- and I well might be -- I'm not sure it actually gives Congress the power to make war. Am I mistaken?"
I emailed him back, but since his expertise is certainly superior in Constitutional matters than mine, I'll await his reply before posting. He is correct (of course) that the Constitution does not specifically empower the Congress to "make" war, at least not in those words.
Update, early June 6
An anonymous correspondent writes,
Under the National Security Act, there are certain military response procedures, which are pre-approved. Neither the Executive nor the Legislative branches control day to day aspects of military operations. That is: certain legal aspects of military options are already settled. NSA protocols form effective declarations of war, which are pre-fabricated by lawmakers.
This is a good point; the president doesn't have to run over to Capitol Hill for permission to act if there is an attack on the United States. Congress has, through legislation, approved certain military responses to attack. But there has never been any blanket authority granted to the executive to conduct war. I would respectfully disagree with the correspondent that the legislation forms "effective declarations of war," because they do not grant the president authority to conduct operations other than responses. No offensive campaigns are authorized, for example, certainly no extended ones. However, presidents would probably take a more permissive view of the legislation than would Congress:
Congress: We didn't authorize that!
President: Yes, you did, it says so right here!
Globalization - going strong after 500,000 years
Sojourners Online has a historical study on globalization.
But contrary to that conventional wisdom, globalization is not a new phenomenon: It is at least half a million years old, and began when our prehistoric ancestors walked out of Africa, into the Middle East, Europe, and Asia—and eventually Australasia and the Americas. Long after that first-stage globalization, human beings gradually settled down in fixed communities and territories and began exchanging hunting and gathering for farming.
Now a new sort of "globalization" started. It was the exchange of culturally specific knowledge and things, cultivatable plants and domesticated animals, weapons and jewelry, tools and toys, techniques for casting pots and weaving cloth and shaping metals, and stories—crucial stories about who we are, why we are here, who we worship and obey, and why. This second stage of globalization, of course, is hardly new either - it had been underway for at least 15,000 to 20,000 years before Christ's birth.
There's more, of course, but I promised when I started One Hand Clapping that I'd try to keep postings shorter than they were at Gunner20.
Al Qaeda's next moves
Joe Katzman has an excellent analysis of what al Qaeda is probably up to.
Joe says that al Qaeda is intentionally trying to get a hot war going between India and Pakistan:
Al-Qaeda 3 sees 3 key benefits from continued hostility:
1. Distracts Musharraf from potentially hostile actions in Waziristan.
2. Potential regime change to a weaker or friendlier leader, either of which enhances their ability to continue operating from Pakistan as their main base.
3. If war breaks out, India can be portrayed as part of the Christian-Jewish-Hindu conspiracy against Muslims, hopefully helping to incite widespread jihad in the Islamic world.
Joe also points out that assassinating Secretary Rumsfeld when he visits Pakistan would reap al Qaeda far more upside than downside.
Revisiting artillery v. air support
Reader Steven Mitterer, a former cavalry trooper (gosh, he must be old! . . . kidding!), takes me to task for this posting:
Explain to me how exactly the Crusader would have helped in Afganistan. It's too heavy for every cargo plane in our inventory, so it would have had to have been shipped there.
First, let's remind readers that the Crusader 155-mm howitzer was only in development, not production, when Secretary Rumsefeld cancelled the program. It first fielding was scheduled for 2008. Second, Steven is correct that the Crusader system is heavy, but an Air Force C-17 would carry it. So it would not have to go by sea.
Besides, the problems you mention are command and control. It would have taken just as long to sign off on an artillery strike as for an aerial strike. If the ROE [Rules of Engagement] allowed for free fire, the response time would be the time it takes a bomb to fall from fifteen thousand feet.
Yes and no. If the troops were getting some air support in just a few minutes, that means there was no problem with clearance for those kinds of attacks. It also means that the targets were immediately dangerous to our own forces. Hence my statement that five minutes is too long and that artillery could bring steel on target in two minutes or less.
As to what to replace Crusader with, we need something that can be loaded on a C-130 and delivered anywhere in the world. Last time I looked, the RSA was producing some pretty good wheeled artillery. The Crusader is a weapon for the last war, we need weapons for the next one.
Well, we have artillery pieces that can be loaded onto C-130s. The old M-102 105 could be loaded and its replacement can be too.
The problem with lightweight artillery cannons is that they still need to be moved around, and more rapidly in modern warfare than we have done in the past. The automotive section of a artillery piece is called the prime mover. A jeep or a Humvee can tow wheeled 105 guns, but so what? You still need to carry ammunition, and ammo is heavy. 105 projectiles weigh 35 pounds each, not including propellant. And the rounds and the propellant are both bulky. So the prime mover in my 105 unit was a truck.
Larger calibers compound the problem - 155mm rounds weigh 95 pounds each; the propellant cans are larger than the rounds and weigh about 30 pounds, I think.
That means that ammo transport is the tougher nut to crack than the artillery piece itself. No matter how light the cannon is, the prime mover/ammo carrier must be hardy enough to carry a goodly amount of ammo.
In the 101st Airborne Div., the cannons and ammo are carried by helicopters. I wonder why they weren't used in Afghanistan.
Closing thoughts: it is probably true the clearance to fire for some targets was slow. And the Crusader is or was heavy, heavy, heavy. I posted other Crusader thoughts here and here.
Steve, thanks for reading and writing!
I was there versus I was really there
Sgt Stryker eloquently explains the difference between military awards and decorations.
Tuesday, June 04, 2002
Gun shows and loopholes
I have been telling my liberal friends for a long time that there is no such thing as a "gun show loophole." Now I can show them that the good Professor Reynolds, a professor of constitutional law, also says so. Case closed.
I went to the Bob Pope gun show in Tennessee last year. It recurs twice per year and is the largest one in middle Tennessee, and maybe in the whole state. I like shooting sports, as my links at left confirm, but I found the gun show boring. There were almost no sporting arms. The new guns for sale by dealers (who were fairly few) were all field models, and I suppose a hunter would have been happy. But I don't hunt, I just bust targets.
Most guns for sale were collectors guns - muzzle loaders, historical guns such as WW I Mausers or Springfields, many of which were no longer functional. By far the majority of vendors (two-thirds at least) did not even sell guns. They sold hunting items, "surplus" military clothing, flags, some knives, boots, camping gear, etc.
I didn't see any foaming-mouth militia types; in fact, most visitors looked older than me. I also did not find any new-gun dealer there who would sell you a gun on the spot that you could walk away with. They did the background check over the phone, took a deposit, your name and number and said they'd call you when the gun came in. Every new gun I saw there was for display only. Collectors' guns could be bought and taken.
One thing Glenn Reynolds did not point out was that the federal government has the final say on whether you are a gun dealer or a private seller. If the government decides that the volume of sales you make is more than what a private seller would do, you're a dealer, and you'd better have your paperwork and licenses in order and comply with federal firearms laws governing sales and transfers. As I understand it, BATF decides on the basis of volume, not profit, profit motive or the lack thereof.
What will you do after your fifth retirement?
According to a Duke University researcher, there is no natural limit on human life expectancy.
The lifespans of people in developed nations are increasing at a remarkably constant rate, suggesting that there is no natural limit on life expectancy, said a Duke University researcher in an article in the May 10, 2002, Science. Data analyzed by the scientists indicate that the maximum human lifespan will reach 100 in about six decades . . .
The researchers say that while there may be a limit to how far life expectancy can rise, it is clear that such a limit is not imminent.
A game show where you win a job
In Argentina the unemployment rate is 23 percent. So a TV game show called Recursos Humanos, or Human Resources, gives its winners a job - a real one, "with a one-year contract with full benefits, a rare luxury in a country where more than half the labor market is off the books. The runner-up is given a free six-month medical plan for his or her family."
Unlike a real human-resources office, where the best-qualified candidate takes the job, the winner here is usually the one whose individual sob story - captured through interviews with friends and relatives - elicits the most tears.
Despite its noble aim, "Human Resources" remains a gameshow with all the bells and whistles one would expect. Unlike most job interviews in Argentina, where rejection comes quick and often, "Human Resources' " selection process is far more grueling. In addition to quizzes, contestants must reveal intimate details of their personal lives during confessional interviews ñ replayed with mawkish Muzak and "slo-mo" special effects.
Candidates must also undergo an one-day, unpaid trial run at the job, where hidden cameras capture the person's ability to handle difficult "real-life" situations, such as when a pushy client insists on paying with fake pesos.
The show's cruel format has drawn flack from several commentators. "It's unemployment as soap opera," says Buenos Aires-based sociologist, Silvina Walger. "The melodrama of these peoples' lives is so striking and tragic that you can't turn away."
Worked to death, or bored to death?
According to this Reuters health news story, boring work can kill you.
People who spend more of their working lives in jobs where they have few opportunities to decide what work to do and how to go about doing it tend to die earlier than employees given more decision-making opportunities, new research suggests.
People assigned a low decision-making role in the workplace died even earlier than those in highly demanding positions, according to Dr. Benjamin C. Amick III, of the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, and colleagues.
Many jobs in which employees have little control tend to be highly repetitive with little variety in the skills they use, Amick told Reuters Health. This can prevent people from becoming engaged in their work.
"If people aren't working meaningful jobs, that affects their health," Amick said, for they are more likely to adopt risky health behaviors.
Why aerial bombing can't replace artillery
In the same Post story I referenced here, there are a couple of paragraphs about the US Army's concerns with fire support to troops in combat. Fire support includes weapons not carried by infantry or armor, such as mortars, artillery, bombing aircraft.
. . . some in the Army are examining how to fix some of the problems encountered in the offensive against al Qaeda in the Shahikot valley in eastern Afghanistan, in early March. Delays in some airstrikes were a major concern, said two officers involved in that battle. Troops engaged with the enemy always got air support within five minutes, but for other airstrikes -- such as hitting a suspected mortar position so troops could move in its direction -- the average response time was 40 minutes, one of the officers said. Some strikes took as long as four hours, he added.
The delays seemed to come from bottlenecks in the process of getting approval to hit targets. That "target clearance problem" flared into public view in November after Air Force officers complained that Central Command took so long to approve strikes that as many as 10 opportunities to hit al Qaeda and Taliban targets had been lost.
Air support within five minutes sounds quick, but any field artillery battalion that took that long would find itself with a new commander. A couple of minutes is all it should take, and some kinds of missions can be fired in less than that. Artillery fire against enemy mortars or artillery are extremely high priority; to take 40 minutes to attack them is inexcusable.
Thank you, Mr. Rumsfeld, for cancelling the Crusader artillery system. What did you have in mind to do the job instead?
US Marine Corps Hates Central Command
Which frankly is no surprise. Thanks to Geitner Simmons for sending the link to this Washington Post story:
In an official report on the first eight months of the war, the Marine Corps depicts Central Command, the major U.S. headquarters for the war, based 7,000 miles from Afghanistan in Tampa, as a distant and troublesome overseer. This command structure has been a unique feature of the Afghanistan campaign, departing from past conflicts, including the Gulf War, in which U.S. military commanders moved their headquarters closer to the battlefield.
First of all, the Marines generally just hate being under anyone else's command. There are still a significant number of Marines who don't seem quite to understand what the other services are for, except the Navy, which the Marines let take them to operations areas. As for the Air Force, the Marines say they have one (nothing bigger than a C-130, though), and they have a ground force also, obviously. I remember very well the real anger from the Marines that their part in Operation Just Cause in Panama in 1989 was limited to one battalion. Many high-ranking Marine officers said that the whole operation should have been a USMC one from start to finish. (However, there was a USMC brigadier general who publicly stated that the Marines could have done it all, but it would have had to be in daytime and there would have been a thousand casualties. Needless to say, his popularity in the Corps dropped like a rock.)
Even so, the command setup seems a bit strange, and the Post article details a few problems, as well as triumphs, that all the services identified.
Monday, June 03, 2002
It's a painful day
When I was on active duty, I injured a shoulder. I have a VA disability rating on it. Yes, I am a disabled vet - but then, most vets are to some extent. Anyway, a random intervals, the injury flares up somehow, always at night. Last night was such a night. I awakened at 2 a.m. in absolute agony. It took me six hours to bring the pain under control. I have not been back to sleep. So that's why I am not posting today, at least until much later. I hope you all have a good day.
Saturday, June 01, 2002
This is gratifying. . .
I see that the Blogbook project lists as a nominee my essay, "Why We Were Attacked: Religious Motivations for Anti-Western Violence."
I wrote it the week after 9/11. I updated it two or three times, with the last being Sept. 27. Here is what the project is all about, according to the web site:
We are accepting nominations from ANY AND ALL BLOGGERS for posts that relate in any way to September 11 and its aftermath for inclusion in a book which will present the best of blogger's work in this regard to the world. Proceeds will go to charity. We are looking for somewhere in the neighborhood of 50-100 individual essays. We have around 100 nominations already and are trying to get through them.
There is some very powerful writing nominated. Please look the site over.
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