Muslim prayers and mine in the current troubles
Little Green Footballs summarizes some prayers and sermons by Near East Muslim religious leaders. One example:

A sermon on official Syrian radio:

The imam devotes the second part of the sermon to a prayer for the success of the President in his work for the wellbeing of the country. He also prays: "O God, help our people in Palestine and the Golan. O God, annihilate the Zionists and make them destroy themselves."

This posting brought forth some interesting commenting on LGF's site. Bob (no last name) says in part:

While I agree that these comments are offensive and ludicrous at best, I can't help but wonder if you'll be posting updates to this thread every time an American minister goes on TV to pray for our victory in Iraq, or to ask God's help in defeating our own fascist, Islamist, death-loving enemies.

This comment led M. Upton to reply:

I've heard of prayers (from US religious leaders) to protect our soldiers and bring a swift, bloodless victory, but I have never heard of public prayers that God would destroy the Muslims.

In fact, in most preceeding wars the US was involved in we never wanted to see the enemy totally destroyed, just beaten enough so they would not threaten us. Do you honestly think the Palestinians would send financial aid and rebuild the Israeli economy if they defeated the Jews?

I think that the readers of my blog know that I am not a pacifist, though I do try to and want to be a man of peace. But here is the prayer I led for my congregation shortly after the 9-11 attacks, and have prayed since then. I made it the closing section of my essay, "Is America Justified to Use Force?"

Dear Lord of grace and love,
we ask for you to open our minds to your wisdom
and our hearts to your mercies.
You are a God who judges the nations with justice and righteousness.
You are a God who breaks the weapons of war
and shatters the spirit of hostility.
We pray for your spirit to inform the actions of our leaders.
We pray for your spirit to guide the affairs of nations.
We pray for every our nations leaders. Fill them, O Lord,
with godly purpose and intentions.
Let their decisions be those you inspire
and their words be those of your own mouth.
We pray, O Lord, for those who attacked us.
Turn their hearts from hardness
and their minds from evil.
Fill them, O God, with the Holy Love
of a righteous God.
Bring them to knowledge of Christ
and overcome their hatred with love.
Make them our brother in Christ.
We pray, O Lord, for the Afghan people
and all who suffer under tyranny.
Hear their cries of oppression
and deliver them to freedom.
Give us wisdom O God, to know your will.
Give us courage, O God, to do your bidding.
Let your justice and peace be established among all peoples;
let your kingdom embrace every person.
In the saving name of your Son, Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.

I sold it 38 percent up
Now that I am fabulously wealthy I am moving to Monaco.

I am up 40 percent
Worldcom's stock price has not moved fopr the last couple of hours or so except very fractionally. I bought at .10 and it shot to north of .16, then down to .12 or so, and appears to have stabilized at .14.

So, do I sell now or hold and see what happens tomorrow?

Maybe term limits should apply to government staffers, not elected officials
James Durbin at Seeking Truth responded to my posts about the competency of the Bush administration (here and here).

I'm a technical recruiter, and a good portion of my clients have limits on how long they will allow contractors to work at a company. It's based on a ruling for Microsoft. The unintended consequences of the rule is to force a steady infusion of new blood and new ideas into the company.
This also prevents stagnation with current contractors, as the IT staff has to remain current, and continue to provide value - because they will be looking for a new position in a few years. . . .

Maybe 6-7 years limits on the amount of time one is person is allowed to serve consecutively in a department. Than they would have to have two years where they worked in the private sector before serving again.

It would be tough to manage, James. What civilian company would be willing to make the investment to hire someone they knew would only be around for two years? I don't think the comparison you make is entirely apt. While Company A might limits Contractor 1 from serving them more than six years, Contractor 1 gets other clients and its contract personnel still work for Contractor 1. But requiring civil servants to leave the service altogether after seven years puts them jobless- why would they agree to work for the government to begin with?

And if the government helped them find a job, before long the revolving door" problem would be bigger than ever.

I think the solution is a fairly ruthless personnel quality-control system.

I am now up 70 percent - click here.

"Buy on the rumor, sell on the news" - why I bought WorldCom stock this morning
That's the way one investor explained how the stock markets acts. He meant that the market moves on rumors and news both; the rumors cause speculation which leads many investors to try to get in on the ground floor of whatever stock move is expected. The hard news about a company ends all the "what-iffing" and causes sell-offs.

Sometimes it's the other way round: sell on the rumor, buy on the news. The rumor of Worldcom's (WCOME) bankruptcy has been alive for quite awhile and helped fuel the massive selling of its stock by stockholders. Friday it closed at 9 cents. Sunday the rumor was laid to rest when the company actually filed.

Well, how low can it go? Even under bankruptcy, the company still has value. A friend of mine who used to be in trhe telecom industry said that even selling Worldcom's physical assets is worth many dollars per share; he said that in his opinion he could see Worldcom being bought out for $12-$15 per share. (I can't say whether that is reasonable or not.)

So I put in a order before market open today to buy. I wound up paying 10 cents per share. As of now, I am up 50 percent. Gee, I must be a regular Warren Buffet!

Of course, the other part of the problem is knowing when to sell, isn't it?

BTW, I didn't spend a lot of money on this; it is more of an experiment than an attempt to make real money.

UpdateI am now up 60 percent.

More indications the Swedes don't get it
The "centrist" Swedish paper Dagens Nyheter responded to President Bush's speech calling for a democratic Palestinian Authority led by ABA (Anybody But Arafat) thus:

The rest of the world can now confirm what they have long suspected: President Bush's support for a Palestinian state is conditional on Arafat's departure. A new Palestinian leadership is needed to bring about peace, security, and—ultimately—an independent Palestine. This is a humiliating treatment of a democratically elected leader.

But freezing out Arafat risks becoming counterproductive. Many Palestinians who have already been humiliated will chose to stand behind a leader that they would prefer to see step aside, rather than accept an American dictate.

Isn't is amazing how the left (for which "centrist" Swedish papers qualify) is so concerned about the "humiliation" of the Palestinians but sheds not a tear over the fact that Israeli babies and teenagers get blown to bits by murder-suicide bombers?

Other responses by the world's news organs to Bush's speech can be found here.

Are the Danes are a bunch of racists?
At least, that's what a headline in Swedish newspaper wondered in connection to a story about Denmark's new immigration restrictions.

Ever since Nov. 20, when a center-right coalition defeated the reigning Social Democrats, and the anti-immigration Danish People’s Party (DPP) took 12 percent of the vote, curbing the influx of asylum seekers and immigrants, who are joining their families, has been high on the legislative agenda.

Apparently there is a reral hissing contest between the Danes and Swedes over the issue. The Swedish government fears Sweden may be stressed by emigrants turned away by Denmark. Buit Danish Prime Minister Anders Rasmussen "was quick to counter such accusations by declaring that 'Danish immigration policy is carried out in Denmark, and the Swedes should not get involved.'”

What is happening in Demark is a bellwether of what will happen in most of the rest of western Europe, I think.

Stock market troubles were set up during Clinton years
Stock holders have been getting a shellacking the past few weeks as the Dow and other indices have dropped like a rock. As this article points out, the accounting "irregularities" by Enron and other companies began long ago.

. . . perusing the details underlying the scandals demonstrates beyond doubt that the genesis of these scandals occurred during the Clinton-Gore administration. . .

which it then proceeds to detail.

Ordinary Americans in the age of terror
I found an article by science fiction writer David Brin, entitled, The value - and empowerment - of common citizens in an age of danger. Quite interesting.

Thanks to Poet and Peasant for the link!

The ICC is not really about justice, but tyranny
So concludes Steven den Beste:

. . .the problem with the ICC [is that the] whole point of it is to create a body of law which applies to those who don't agree to it. The whole point of it is that there is no consent, because "criminals" as such clearly will never consent to the laws that are applied to them. The process by which those laws will be made is liable to corruption and subversion, and there are no checks on the power of the process. The makers of the law will not face those to whom the law applies on a regular basis for reaffirmation; the trials will not be based on juries, and there is no judicial nullification. This is lawmaking by a star chamber without any limits, and it claims universal jurisdiction.

In short, it is tyranny.

The process by which the body of law which will be associated with the ICC will be made doesn't satisfy American legal norms. . . .

So it's not so much that we think we're "above" the law of the ICC, as that we don't acknowledge that there's really any law for us to be above. There's something that people will be calling "law", but it isn't really law by our standards.

As you are no doubt aware, in April the UN-sponsored International Criminal Court was declared in effect. Jurisdiction began July 1. The ICC claims authority to try individuals accused of the "most serious crimes of concern to the international community - war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, and, eventually, the crime of aggression," according to a UN fact sheet.

The Clinton administration enthusiastically supported the ICC and Clinton signed it. But the US Senate never ratified it. That doesn't let the US off the hook, though, since the UN considers it in effect by any nation that ratifies or accedes to it. (And since half or more of the UN member nations have done so, it is considered binding on every nation, signatory or not.)

Columnist (and blogger) Geitner Simmons called it, "A court US critics will like":

. . . as a State Department spokesman explained, the new court will be able to second-guess the judgment of national governments and pursue "politically motivated investigations and prosecutions."

Under the treaty (which the United States Senate never ratified), the court alone will have the final authority to decide when a national prosecution, or the lack thereof, is "adequate."

A defendant brought before the new court would face restrictions on his legal rights not allowed against American civilians under principles set down by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Individuals can be brought before the new court not just for "genocide" and "crimes against humanity" but also for far more vague and indeterminate offenses such as "outrages against personal dignity" and even "serious injury to mental health." Such language provides obvious potential for abuse.

"Potential" for abuse hardly describes the problem. The problem with an international court (of any kind) is that there is no international agreement on what constitutes justice. In most of the rest of the world, the protections for the accused that Americans take for granted are absent. Only England's legal codes approximate America's. Not even the other European nations' codes generally protect the rights of the accused nearly as well as America's and Britain's.

As for the rest of the world, "fuggidaboutit." Innocent until proven guilty is not the norm by any means (or even found everywhere in Europe). The old naval-gun timing shanty, "He's bound to be guilty or he wouldn't be here," is a real norm. Religious law and civil law are often hopelessly intertwined.

A very good analysis of the procedural problems of the ICC is found in the Cato Institute's 1998 paper, "Reasonable Doubt: The Case against the Proposed International Criminal Court," including a right-by-right comparison between the ICC rules and American protections.

None of these legal shortcomings are revelations to the UN staff or the representatives of the member nations. Thus, I find myself concluding that the real goal of establishing the ICC cannot really be to bring forth justice. As Geitner points out:

Supporters of the court say it is intended to go after only the most egregious human rights offenders, not against the United States. But that claim has been undermined by recent history. In 1999, the prosecutor for the ad hoc international tribunal concerning the Balkan conflict launched an investigation of the NATO air campaign in the former Yugoslavia, saying the bombing may well have qualified as war crimes. She filed no indictments only because she indicated she wouldn't have been able to collect sufficient evidence to bring charges against high-level officials.

Most of the rest of the world's power hierarchy sees the worst "aggressor" in the world as the United States. They see the US as the chief threat to their regimes. "Justice" is therefore whatever inhibits American influence or actions overseas. I see the ICC's establishment as another brick in the pro-tyranny, anti-freedom wall of shame the UN has been building for many years now.

Fortunately, the ICC will almost certainly prove to be as toothless as other UN agencies. The ICC charter thankfully makes no provisions for enforcement. So it will turn out to be just another venue for providing third-world layabouts and western elitist boobs with sinecures when they might otherwise have to find a real job, and for verbal attacks on the US. But there are so many platforms for doing that now that with any luck, they'll just get lost in the noise.

Victor Davis Hanson and the Gospel of Matthew
Mr. Hanson has an intriguing essay at NRO called, The Parable of the Weed - Attacking terrorism at its roots. He tells of his grandfather's California vineyard, which was beset by johnsongrass, a weed so pernicious that

. . . entire vineyards used to be swallowed by johnsongrass. In those lost fields, the weeds could reach a height taller than the vines as the grass sucked out all the water and nitrogen from the beleaguered host vineyard, diminishing grape production by as much as a third and making harvest almost unworkable. Sometimes it was impossible to distinguish the host vine from the rogue weed, as the grass grew right up through the trellises and wires — weed and vine so intertwined you would almost have to destroy both to get at the pest. Desperate farmers who had let their vineyards grow rank had no choice but to continue to water and fertilize as before, in hopes that the strangled vines could at least draw off some nutrients from their rapacious intruders.

Hanson wrote more about johnsongrass (the point of which in a minute); I found his illustration so compelling that I adapted it for my sermon today on the parable of the wheat and the weeds in Matthew 13:

24 He put before them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; 25but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. 26So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. 27And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, “Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?” 28He answered, “An enemy has done this.” The slaves said to him, “Then do you want us to go and gather them?” 29But he replied, “No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. 30Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.”’

The problem for both Hanson and Jesus is, What to do with the weeds?
Hanson likens johnsongrass to international terrorism and cauitions that lopping off the leaves that show above ground won't be effective; the weed will just sprout elsewhere. I don't use that analogy in my sermon because in the Teror War we are concerned with what to do now, while Jesus' parable is eschatological in nature.

So, Hanson says

We can chronically trim, dig, and cut back - preventing the terrorists from sprouting, seeding out, and spreading. Or, as with embracing the costly but systematic Roundup, we can decide now to blow apart its very roots, which are intertwined and so deeply entrenched in the very soil of the Middle East. Our efforts need not be solely military, but may be political and idealistic as well: working for democratic reform in the Gulf; explaining to the Syrians, Libyans, and Iranians that we consider them all captive peoples, who, like Eastern Europeans, suffer under the yoke of tyrannies and thus are deserving of our support for democratic revolution. We should seek out more liberal members of the Saudi royal family and explain to them that democratic reform alone can now prevent the collapse of their entire regime.

The latter systematic choice in the short-term - the ending of Saddam Hussein; ultimatums to Syria and Iran to cease their succor to Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad, or else; a reckoning with the terrorist enclaves in Lebanon; a gradual dissolution of alliances with the autocracies of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan; subsidies to democratic reformers throughout the Middle East - is both unorthodox, frightening, and easily caricatured. But, in the long term, it offers the only hope of destroying weeds like al Qaeda for good. Anything less and we are simply pruning back a perennial pest.

Which sounds very much like what I wrote back in October:

For this campaign to succeed, we must understand the true sources of the conflict. In responding to the attacks, we should minimize taking actions that reinforce hatred of us among other peoples, even though their motivations seem bizarre and their facts are twisted. That doesn't mean that we must conform our policies only to those approved by Muslim governments or peoples. It does mean we should take care whenever possible not to provide nutrients for soils from which future generations grow to despise us. We should therefore respond strategically in unexpected ways, designed to make it more difficult for hostile states and peoples to sustain their view of us as threatening.

We need to understand how the terrorists operate and sustain themselves. Al Qaeda is not like any enemy we have ever faced and therefore our national responses will be unlike any we have ever given. While Al Qaeda is obviously capable of great violence, it may be likened to a virus that has already infected the world's systems of commerce, travel, finances, politics and communications. Our countermeasures must be specific to those environments. We should consider that we are healing the world of terrorism rather than simply destroying terrorism, lest our actions perversely sustain the environment in which viral terrorism reproduces and flourishes.

This means that while current members of terrorist networks must be brought to justice -- or justice brought to them, as President Bush put it -- we need to find ways to make Al Qaeda's recruitment of replacements unsuccessful. But this will be a very long process.

Finally, we may learn from the outstanding successes of the Marshall Plan in post-World War II Europe and the pacification of Japan under General Douglas MacArthur. Billions of dollars of US aid and work in Europe halted the westward march of communism by rebuilding the infrastructure and providing direct aid in the form of fuels, foodstuffs and other goods.

In Japan, MacArthur eliminated Japanese militarism first by emplacing a democratically-based constitution and second by liberating Japanese women from centuries of patriarchal oppression. He gave women the rights to vote and to serve in democratic assemblies and government offices, steps MacArthur saw as essential to ending Japanese military aggressiveness. America also bore the brunt of rebuilding Japan's economy and infrastructure.

Almost everywhere in the world where international terrorism grows we find poverty and human oppression, especially toward women. Tribalism and ethnic hatred also remain strong. We Americans are more free of these oppressions than almost any other people. We and our western allies must lead the way out for those people. It will take a new kind of national commitment. It will cost a fortune. It will require new kinds of armies, armies not of soldiers but of engineers, agriculturalists, financiers, administrators and educators.

It will take decades and there are no guarantees. But the alternative is to fight culture and religious wars generation after generation.

However it comes about, the weeds gotta go. The question is how to get rid of them without the removal hurting us too much.

I think the blogger permalinks on this site are working again
So I will cease duplicating OHC postings on my other web space.

Flawed air strategy killed hundreds of Afghan civilians, says New York Times
A report in the New York Times says that hundreds of Afghan civilians were killed by American bombs and other aerial weapons due to faulty targeting and intelligence procedures, and an unwillingness to send American troops into ground combat.

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 -

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.

On the other hand, what was the problem with the visa express?
World traveler (literally) Bob Ballard warns against histrionics in the matter of the visa express.

I've traveled much of the world in the last 30 years in the oil business. In all that time, the only Visa I've HAD to appear in person to get was to Myanmar in 1996 and 1997. Beyond that, I did show up in person to take advantage of the 'one hour' visa service for China in Hong Kong a couple of times. EVERY other time for Visas to China, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Qatar, Dubai, Azerbaijan, UK, Morocco, Venezuela and many others were ALL obtained through a visa service of some sort.

All of a sudden this is a big deal? Yes, I know, things have changed. That's true. I just want to let folks know that this type of thing has been a common courtesy among countries for years. If it needs to change then so be it. Just understand how it's really been historically and for what reasons before you engage in the histrionics.

Now, this is a good point. I have lived in or visited 19 other countries myself and I never had to appear in person to get a visa to enter any of them. To be fair, I went to many of them as part of a US troop deployment (Egypt in 1987, for example) when individual visas were not issued at all. (Once, when entering France from Germany in my own car, my wife wanted her passport stamped by the French. This because in all our travels in Europe, the only countries that had stamped it - or even asked to see it - were Switzerland and the UK. So at Strasbourg, France, we pulled off and I went into the customs house. When I explained I wanted our passports stamped, the customs agent was incredulous. He gave me one of the Gallic "another crazy American" looks and rummaged through three drawers before he found a stamp.)

The tempest about the visa express has been political from the beginning. Most of the 9-11 terrorists were Saudis. What I have not seen anyone's writings, including Joel Mowbray's, is how making the visa applicants appear in person before a consular officer is going to make the USA more secure. Maybe it will, but I'd like to know how just as a matter of interest.
I support ending the visa express program, though, because the visa system as a whole is broken. If the threat of taking visa authority away from State serves to shake the system toward true reform, that's good. And if some Saudis are inconvenienced in the meantime, tough toenails.

Now I'm mad
My blogger permalinks still don't work, but when I got to other blogger-hosted sites, theirs do work. This is great for them, but very inconvenient for me. I have republished all my archives numerous times to no avail.

Anyone got other ideas? I'd be grateful! Please email them to me.

I have working, manually-constructed permalinks below for posts back a few days.

If Powell can get it, why can't Bush?
Colin Powell got a blinding glimpse of the obvious pretty quickly when he understood that the Congress was about to chew him up over the visa express issue (see next post down), so he ended it, pre-empting Congress' wrath.

My question is, why is President Bush more clueless about the congressional mood than Powell? According to Newsweek earlier this month (sorry, no link) the White House was blindsided by the lopsided vote in the House to arm pilots. Now the bill is gaining momentum in the Senate, where it will probably pass by a very large margin.

Despite the obtuseness of his own secretary of transportation, "Underpeformin'" Norman Mineta, who has set his feet in concrete opposing the idea, when the act reaches his desk, Bush cannot veto it without paying a heavy political price. It has as much bipartisan support as anything done by Congress in Bush's term.

Bush cannot alienate congressional Republicans over this issue. He needs them to continue to push his agenda forward. A veto of this bill, which has massive Republican support, will cast a long shadow on November's elections because it will cheapen the worth of the president's endorsement of candidates - a terrible outcome when the GOP seeks to regain control of the Senate.

A veto would give big ammo to the Democrats, too. The Dems are already trying to make hay out of accusing Bush of unilateralism in foreign and domestic policies. What stronger evidence could they hope for than a president who stiffs even his own party?

The White House surely has read the tea leaves by now, let us hope. I think Bush's strategy will be work backchannel with congressional Republicans to give him some breathing space to "study" the issue. Look for the new chairman of the Transportation Security Agency, retired Admiral James Loy, to be the administration's point man in its about-face on the issue. He'll somehow determine that proper regulation, supervision and training of arms for pilots can be implemented to fulfill the congressional intent. Mineta (most likely through his spokesman) will "accept" Adm. Loy's recommendations, plowing the road for Bush to charge out front and urge the Senate to vote to give airline pilots the means to protect the airplanes as a last resort.

Stay tuned.

Note: Please use this permalink, not the blogger-generated one

Colin Powell finally gets it, ends Saudi visa express
Bowing to pressure from Congress, Secretary of State Colin Powell ended the "visa express" program for Saudis that enabled most Saudi visa applicants to gain a US-entry visa without a State Dept. employee ever laying eyes on them.

The Washington Times reports,

The State Department yesterday said that as of today it is ending its "Visa Express" program in Saudi Arabia and will require those seeking visas to apply in person and be interviewed. The program is being terminated in response to criticism from Congress that it has allowed terrorists to enter the United States, a senior State Department official said.
"Beginning Saturday, which is the start of [the Saudi Embassy] workweek, all visa applicants will be interviewed except for children under 12 and Saudi diplomats," the official said yesterday.

It is certainly the right decision, and I think that Colin saw the writing on the wall pretty clearly. There is a strong move to take the visa function away from State altogether and give it to the yet-to-be-formed Dept. of Homeland Security. There is nothing like that kind of threat to make government functionaries come to righteousness. Turf protection is the strongest urge of bureaucracies.

Note: Please use this permalink, not the blogger-generated one

I am posting here while Blogspot is broken

As you know, Blogspot's permalinks don't work. Now their servers are glacially slow; it takes forever to post new posts. Until they fix the system, I am posting on a non-blogspot site. This link will direct you to my current page. Thank you for reading!

Now Sen. Boxer supports arming pilots
Thomas Sowell reports that Sen. Barbara Boxer has decided that airline pilots should be armed after all.

Although Mrs. Boxer is a staunch supporter of gun control, on this particular issue she clearly understands it is better to have an armed pilot than to have to order a military plane to shoot down one of our own commercial airliners, full of innocent people, because hijackers have taken it over and are ready to do a repeat of last September 11.

The House of Representatives passed a bill permitting pilots to be armed. It is now in the Senate. Contact your Senator and tell them to pass it!

Meanwhile, the Bush administration's obtuseness on the issue remains the same:

When asked by Rep. Don Young, Alaska Republican, "Do you really think that 9/11 would have happened if our pilots had been armed, as they should have been armed?" a spokesman for the Transportation Department replied: "Our position remains unchanged." It was reminiscent of that famous line: " 'Shut up,' he explained."

Note: Use this permalink, not the blogger one

Okay, here's the deal
I am double-blogging now because blogspot's permalinks don't work. I will post something on this site and, like the post immediately below, it will have a link to another web site where the same post will be posted, except, of course, that the link to that place will actually work. That's the best I can do for now.

An Open Letter to the Archbishop of Wales
Important note: the permalink at the end of this post does not work. Use this link instead, where this text is posted at my ISP-provided website.

Eradicating the dangers posed by malevolent dictators and terrorists can be achieved only by tackling the root causes of the disputes. Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Wales, et. al., according to the BBC.

Dear Dr. Williams:

Do you have any idea just how ridiculous that sentence is to people who are actually capable of critical thinking? Please stop offering us tired, slogan-driven, left-wing politics disguised as Christian theology.

I suppose I should be gratified that you at least recognize that "malevolent dictators and terrorists" pose dangers - that's real progress since the left usually calls them freedom fighters driven to regrettable but understandable violence by the harsh, oppressive imperalism of the United States.

But the danger posed by malevolent dictators and terrorists cannot be eradicated by "tackling" the root causes of the disputes" because - please read carefully - the root cause of the disputes is that they are dictators and terrorists to begin with.

Saddam Hussein did not become a dictator because there was some "root cause" of a "dispute" that was not being "tackled" somewhere. He is a murdering, lying, bloodthirsty tyrant because he lusts for power, because he is evil personified. There is no root cause of a dispute with Saddam other than Saddam himself.

You also wrote,

It's deplorable that the world's most powerful nations continue to regard war, and the threat of war, as an acceptable instrument of foreign policy.

You are mistaken. The United States and I am sure, Great Britain, do not regard war as an "acceptable" instrument of foreign policy. We regard it as the very regrettable necessity of our foreign policies because the US was suddenly and viciously attacked by terrorists on Sept. 11, killing many Britons as well as thousands of Americans. Don't you remember? (Or do you truly care?)

On Sept. 11 the US was at peace. We were pursuing peaceful diplomacy about many matters. You may recall that a few months before, the Chinese illegally attacked and seized a US Navy aircraft flying in international waters. In response, did the US decide that war with China was "acceptable?" No, we negotiated the release of the plane and the crew peacefully. Only a year before the terrorist attacks the US government had come closer than anyone had ever come to resolving the Palestinian problem - through displomacy, not war - failing only because the terrorist Yasser Arafat would not accept 97 percent of his demands being granted, against the advice and counsel of every one of the other representatives of the Palestinian Authority. Then he went home and commanded a new terror campaign against Israel.

The terrorist enemies of the USA and the UK have said, in writing, that they want to kill four million Americans, half of whom are to be children. That's two million dead children al Qaeda wants to kill, Dr. Williams. Two millions kids.

Does that disturb you? Do you have any idea how to prevent it? Can you offer us any actual concrete suggestions for how to proceed apart from war? What should the US do tomorrow that protects its citizens' lives and "tackles the root causes" of the "dispute?" Can you tell us specific, concrete actions our governments should take?

No, of course you can't. But you can spout leftist slogans and call it sophisticated theology. That's just pathetic, Dr. Williams. The UK deserves better, and so does the Church.

I will use a new site later today
I have been expecting blogger to fix the permalink problem, but they haven't. I have to go to work now, but when I get back I'll post new stuff on my old blog site, Gunner20, with working permalinks. I'll post the link to it when I get a new page back up. Thank you for your patience!

Blogger's permalink problem is suppressing posting
And not just my own posting has slackened. Almost every blogspot-hosted blog site I have visited in the last couple of days has a much lower level of new posts. In case you just fell off a turnip truck and don't know what the issue is, it is that the permalinks for each posting on a blogspot site don't work. Permalinks are server-side additions to each post that provide a unique URL for each post. They are the only means by which other sites can link to a specific post on a blog site. Permalinking is what makes the blogosphere go round, and now that permalinking is inexplicably impossible, blog authors, including me, are a little reluctant to devote our precious spare time and effort to post something that can't be linked to.

I assume blogspot is working on it. In the meantime, some bloggers are bailing for other systems, just as Glenn Reynolds presciently did awhile back. Joe Katzman has said he is transitioning to a non-blogspot site, for example.

As for me, I blog as a hobby, but it's not a hobby I care to spend extra money on, since I have something else I want to spend it on.

Suicide bombers driven by hope, not despair
Conventional wisdom (that is, that which is promulgated by the left) is that Palestinian murder-suicide bombers are living in such despair and hopelessness by the cruel Israeli oppression that they kill themselves and any convenient Israeli in a rage.

Charles at Little Green Footballs documents why that is just pure baloney.

Where are the doctors going?
A medical degree no longer promises respect and guaranteed income. So many doctors are leaving medical practice and returning to school to learn new disciplines. "The level of cynicism doctors have is enormous," says Paul Franke, 40, a student in a Johns Hopkins MBA program. "There's a negative feeling that legislators, trial lawyers, insurance carriers, they're all out to get us."

An M.D. degree once guaranteed a lifetime of above-average income and stability. Now, doctors say, it guarantees instability and flat or declining incomes. Many are looking for new career paths, including business, church or non-profit work, or new academic pursuits.

Source: USA Today 7/5/02

Contemporary violence
"There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence . . . activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. . . . The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful." Thomas Merton

Three cheers for the Canadians!
Our neighbors to the north have given us many reasons to be thankful for them since Sept. 11, but here is a good one. A Canadian warship in Arabian Sea Saturday night chased down a 26-foot craft with al Qaeda terrorists aboard, captured them and handed them over the the Americans.

The suspects were among about 25 people in one of three small, motorized boats spotted by a Canadian military aircraft late Saturday in the Gulf of Oman.

When a Canadian destroyer attempted to close in, the three smaller boats scattered at high speed, said Commodore Eric Lerhe, commander of Canada's naval task group in the north Arabian Sea.

The HMCS Algonquin gave chase along with several other coalition ships and aircraft and eventually tracked down the 26-foot boat.

Capt. Gary Paulson said the suspects appeared "agitated." The two, described as being in their mid-20s to early 30s, were held overnight on the Canadian vessel before being handed over to U.S. naval authorities. Their names were not immediately released.

Warships from the anti-terrorism coalition have been patrolling the Arabian Sea — due south of Afghanistan and Pakistan — looking for members of Usama bin Laden's organization.

Maj. Tony White, a Canadian Forces spokesman at U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla., said the capture at sea of Al Qaeda suspects is believed to be the first of its kind by any of the coalition forces.

Lerhe said Canadian and other allied ships have checked more than 15,000 vessels in the past eight months.

The Canadians haven't gotten a lot of coverage in the US press, but they should. Their deployment to Afghanistan was the largest ground force combat mission the Canadian army has mounted since the Korean War. And their troops did some outstanding work, especially their sniper teams.

So to our good friends to the north, I say thank you and three cheers!

Jesus on the use of force - pacifism then and now
In this post yesterday, I posted Doug Dryden's comments, relative to Christian pacifism, about Jesus being quoted in the Gospel of Luke as saying, "if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one." I promised to revisit this passage and a related one later in Luke. So here it is.

The quote appears thus:

Luke 22:35-38
35 Then Jesus asked them, "When I sent you without purse, bag or sandals, did you lack anything?" "Nothing," they answered.
36 He said to them, "But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.
37 It is written: 'And he was numbered with the transgressors'; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment."
38 The disciples said, "See, Lord, here are two swords." "That is enough," he replied. (NIV)

This passage appears in a part of Luke that is a transition from Jesus' ministry to his arrest, trial and execution. Luke is clear, overall, that the powers of evil are closing in on Jesus. Jesus has just inaugurated the Eucharist, or the Last Supper.

Buit the disciples are a little dense. Throughout the gospels, the disciples are not presented very flatteringly; they don't understand what Jesus is doing, they argue among themselves. In fact, immediately after the Last Supper, the disciples start to argue which of them is the greatest. Talk about thick!

Jesus brings them back on course by pointing out, "The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors. But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves."

Jesus attempts to explain that the times, they are a-changing. He reminds the dsicples that he had sent them out on their missions in earlier days without anything - not a coat, not a bag, not even a sack lunch. The disciples admit that even so, they lacked nothing because their needs had been supplied by God's providence.

"But now," says Jesus, things are different. Now they should equip themselves with the standard sort of kit that all travelers carried. They should take money and luggage if they have them and a sword, even if they have to sell their cloak to buy one.

As Doug correctly points out, the advice to obtain a sword must be seen in the light of Jesus' following comment that he is to "be numbered among the transgressors," that is, he will be accused of religious apostasy; he will be persecuted. The command to obtain a sword is a command to be ready for persecution, not revolution.

But two of the disciples already have a sword (meaning that they disobeyed Jesus's earlier orders), which they hurriedly produce. Once again, they don't get it. They didn't get the meaning of the Last Supper, and they are deaf to all that followed except the imperative to arm themselves. Their rapid production of the swords seems to take the wind out of Jesus. He replies, "Hikanon estin, which is translated as, "It is enough," but which can also be translated as, "That's enough." Jesus is not saying, I think, that two swords are ample. He is indicating that he has heard enough of the disciples' obtuseness. It's time to move on. And they do, to Gethsemane, where one disciple attempts to cleave the head of the chief of the posse sent to arrest Jesus; he missed and sliced off the man's ear. Jesus commanded his disciples to cease armed resistance, then healed the injured man. Then they hauled Jesus away and his disciples abandoned him.

There is no record anywhere else in the rest of the New Testament of any apostle or follower of Jesus using armed force for any reason. Swords are nowhere mentioned as part of the apostolic kit.

But even so, did Jesus intend to convey that armed self defense would be justified for the disciples henceforth? I think that is an open question. He stopped them from using force to save him from arrest, true, but it also needs to be considered that Jesus had expressed, more than once, a determination to be handed over to the authorities as a transgressor, knowing that their victory over him would be short-lived (only three days, in fact).

I cannot imagine the apostolic ministries proceeding anything like they did if the apostles had used armed force to defend themselves. (All but one died violently.) Until the rise of Constantine, the weakness of the Church was its very strength.

BUT -- and this my critical point -- the weakness of the early Christians was their strength only because they, as a group, were willing to risk everything, even their lives, to evangelize the Roman world. Hence, their pacifism was strong because they were courageous. Followers of my discussions about Christian pacifism will recall that my severe critique of modern American Christian pacifists is precisely that they, as a group, are not courageous and seem willing to risk nothing. They just sit on the sidelines and carp. There are exceptions, but not many.

Christians will prevail as pacifists only when we are as willing to sacrifice our all as our soldiers are in comparable numbers. But I don't expect this any time soon. (It is actually much the same point Dietrich Bonhoeffer made about the German churches during the rise of Nazism.)

New blogs added to links list at left column
I have finally updated my links list. I have added Geitner Simmons blog, Regions of the Mind, which deserves to be well read, and Kieran Lyons' site, Carraig Daire. Drop by!

Pakistan court finds Daniel Pearl's kidnappers guilty . . .
. . . and the sentence will be --

they will be shot.

they will be hanged.

their sisters will be raped.

The Greens and the Islamofascists
Andrew (no last name supplied) sends the following food for thought:

Green Party Statement on the War, October 26, 2001:

A sound legal case must be made and brought to federal and international courts for arrest and extradition as necessary. American declarations of war inhibit rather than promote this international cooperation. Attempts to unilaterally seek redress through bombs and missiles, rather than a court of law, will undermine international law, and set back recent international successes in bringing those who have committed crimes against humanity to justice.

Now, says Andrew, compare that to this Arab News article of July 10, 2002, entitled, Bin Laden No Longer Exists, Here's Why:

The fifth element that made Bin Ladenism possible was the West's, especially America's, perceived weakness if not actual cowardice. A joke going round the militant Islamist circles until last year was that the only thing the Americans would do if attacked was to sue the attackers in court. That element no longer exists. The Americans, supported by the largest coalition in history, have shown that they are prepared to use force against their enemies even if that means a long war with no easy victory in sight.

So, Andrew concludes: "Say no more, say no more say no more, Squire!" Ah, a little Monty Python does sometimes help top bring clarity, does it not?

Read this blog!
My good friend Geitner Simmons has his own blog now, called Regions of the Mind, and he's very good. I will add his link in the left column next time I update my template.

I volunteer to fill Instapundit's shoes while he's gone
Yes, I will step into the breach while Glenn Reynolds is on vacation. It's a tough job, but someone has to do it. So all the people who normally send Glenn stuff, just send it to me, and I'll fill the gap while he's gone.

More on Christian pacifism
Navy Commander Douglas Dryden (ret.) wrote,

I'm catching up on what is becoming my favourite 'blog.' I noticed your post of 29 June makes reference, during your on-going superb handling of the pacifism discussion, of the passage from Luke which addresses the question from 'soldiers' as to what they should do. I almost hate to point it out, at the risk of seeming to quibble, but it was not the Christ which provided the answer, but John the Baptist.

First, thank you for your compliments! Second, I am massively embarrassed at the mis-quotation I made (the quote was correct but I incorrectly and inexcusably attributed it to Jesus instead of John the Baptist). I mean, that was really bad.

But, I will go on to say that Luke evidently considered John's point to be in accordance with Jesus' teachings - why else include it? "All text has intention," according to my exegesis professors. The Gospels are not neutral narratives and do not present themselves as such.

I am in agreement that Jesus was not a pacifist as the Left would define the term, & would point to Luke 22:35-38 as rather more germane to the question.

Which is:

Luke 22:35-38
35 Then Jesus asked them, "When I sent you without purse, bag or sandals, did you lack anything?" "Nothing," they answered.
36 He said to them, "But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.
37 It is written: 'And he was numbered with the transgressors'; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment."
38 The disciples said, "See, Lord, here are two swords." "That is enough," he replied. (NIV)

Douglas continues:

Here is a situation wherein Jesus answers the question posed above. He states that he is to be 'numbered amongst the transgressors' - a reference to Isaiah foretelling His coming death. This is scriptural shorthand for "You now know who I am & what will happen to me. If this can happen to me, imagine what can happen to you." Where before He has assured His disciples of what they will need, here He tells them to sell what they can & buy a sword. When they reply that they already have two swords, He replies "That is enough." When I bring this up in discussions about Christians & war, I will occasionally hear that Luke did not understand what Jesus was trying to say, or declare that Jesus was really speaking of spiritual swords (These people have a higher source?), but typically they will squirm & say something like "Well, that's a very controversial passage." I look at them quietly for a few more beats, but they are always unable to pursue the question beyond wishing that the passage did not exist, or simply dismissing it, à la the Jesus Seminar.

Defense of yourself is justified, up to a point. Defense of others perhaps more so, which forms the basis of the Just War doctrine. Other examples can be used (we have only one cheek to turn; Caesar must be rendered unto; 'blessed are the peacemakers' [not peacekeepers]), but I find that this has been the most satisfying for me.

Like you (I suspect), I have had a military career (a former Marine, then transferring to the Navy doing essentially the same thing, retiring as a Commander), & I pursued this question for some time. It is a topic which I do not take lightly, & I appreciate your extensive comments on the subject.

Regards:
Doug Dryden

Doug, thank you for your thoughtful post. Yes, I am a retired Army officer. People truly desperate for something to do may read by bio.

I will post again on pacifism, having had a response to my earlier posts by Prof. Telford Work, which has spawned some other thoughts in my head. Some Christian theologians have held that self-defense never justifies violence, but defense of others may. I think Thomas Aquinas was in that camp.

I'll also attempt an exegesis of the Luke passage you cite. Off the top of my head, if this passage indicates that armed force is at least sometimes justified, then we also have to consider John 18:36, in which Jesus (correct ID this time!) tells Pilate, "My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place." I think a justifiable reading of this exchange is that if Jesus' followers were "of the world" (that is, still entrapped in the same fallen world systems as everyone else), then they would use force. But since they are naturalized citizens of "another place" they will not.

Also, Luke records:

49 When Jesus' followers saw what was going to happen, they said, "Lord, should we strike with our swords?"
50 And one of them struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his right ear.
51 But Jesus answered, "No more of this!" And he touched the man's ear and healed him.
52 Then Jesus said to the chief priests, the officers of the temple guard, and the elders, who had come for him, "Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come with swords and clubs? (Luke 22:49-52 NIV)

Here is the only time Jesus' disciples actually asked for Jesus' license to use violence, and Jesus replied, "No more of this!" Then he repaired the damage done by the violence. He mocked the way the Temple police (Luke calls them "a crowd")had come to arrest him, that is, the fact that they were heavily armed while Jesus' party had only two swords, and Jesus had just forbidden their use.

So the question of pacifism is a tough one.

"The world is like high school, but with money"
A U.S. Air Force AWACS officer, Capt. Lamar B. Settlemires, wrote:

After reading a post on FoxNews.com, I followed a link, and another, and another until I stumbled upon your site. I am very impressed and proud there are still those voices crying in the wilderness. Since I only had time for a few of your articles, I look forward to reviewing them all from home.

I am a weapons officer onboard the E-3A AWACS stationed with NATO. The different views you expressed between Europeans and Americans are evident every day. The Europeans seem to actually enjoy when America stumbles, since it makes their faults not look as bad. A Danish colleague related, "From school age we learn the best music, movies, technology, ideas, etc., come from America. Sometimes we just get tired of you being so good."

I think the world is like high school, but with money. There was always that one guy who was great in sports, smart in all classes, had the hot girlfriend, and volunteered with the elderly! On top of all this, he was genuinely a nice guy, not fake, but the real deal. Some people admired him and wanted to be like him. Others hated him and would look for flaws. "He MUST be cheating." "He's not THAT good looking." "He's fakes being nice, he's actually very stuck-up." Etc., etc., etc. The United States is the best in the world (not perfect, just best) and too many people on both sides of the pond want to minimize this fact.

My family is originally from Corinth, MS, and we run the Corinth Gun Club. If you are ever in the area, please call or stop by. You have a free Trap or Skeet round waiting on you!

LAMAR B. SETTLEMIRES, Capt, USAF
Executive Officer
NATO E-3A Logistics Wing / US Senior National Representative

Lamar, thank you for your service to our country! The AWACS is a great system, and you are truly serving at the tip of the spear for us. We are grateful!

Thank you for the offer for a free round of trap; I need to set my course to Corinth! BTW, check out this post on the subject.

Mail Call - Volkswagens as spawn of the devil and a few kind words
Thanks to all who wrote me while I was on vacation.

Kieran Lyons comments on the problems I had with my 1993 VW Eurovan before we left:

VW's are the spawn of Wagner after he was abused by the devil. My particular demon was a '66 Bug.

My van was the second, and probably last, VW I have had. Then other was a 1995 Jetta that got caught on a wet road coated with agricultural-chemical wash off in 1998. Only I was in the car and it spun out at less than 30 mph (nearly new tires) and broadsided a tree or telephone pole - I don't know which because I was knocked out when it impacted the driver's door. I spent two days in hospital for that. It only had about 42K miles.

The van gave me nine years of good service. Unfortunately, I owned it for 10 years. I ransomed it from the repair shop July 2, determined that I would not spend another repair dollar on it again. So rather than wait for it to break again, then replace it, I went ahead and replaced it immediately. On July 4 we bought a 1999 Chevy Venture LS. In the past 10 days we have driven it 1500 miles and it's going great so far.

BTW, Kieran coined a new term, Muslimplosions, for Palestinian murder-suicide bombers. Hmm, it's clever, but the bombers don't implode, they explode.

Richard A. Heddleson wrote simply, "Thanks for taking time out from your vacation to log in. I enjoy your posts. Get back to the kids and beach. We'll wait."

Richard, kind words are always appreciated! Thank you for reading and for writing!

Resuming my vacation now
My family and I are leaving soon for another destination, and I must leave this borrowed notebook computer behind with its owner, my present host. No internet access next stop, so I will be back online this weekend, perhaps as early as Friday night, when we return home.

Thank you for reading!

How to get your recent permalinks to work
Blogspot-hosted sites have had a problem the last couple of days, at least, with dead permalinks. The solution is to republish the archive containing the dead permalinks. Don't just republish the post, republish the whole archive from the archive control panel.

Is al Qaeda now simply looney?
Photodude thinks so. In a post that is both amusing and perceptive, he explains why bloviating hot air seems to be all that al Qaeda is able to do.

The terrorists will attack again, but nothing counts as terrorism!
On the one hand, we keep being told that new terrorist attacks are pretty much inevitable. On the other, when an Egyptian Muslim shot up an El Al ticket counter the FBI et. al. quickly claimed that there was no reason to believe it was terrorism.

Color me confused and losing confidence rapidly.

Marines in Basra! Oh, my!
Because I have been reading blogs in the past few days without writing (on vacation), I don't recall where I read some things, such as the supposed obsolecence of the US Army because the Marines were the first ground forces into Afghanistan, not the Army. Let's look at a little history. It was not so long ago (10 years maybe) that the chatterati and commentati were saying that the Marines were obsolete and it was the Army that was obviously the leaner, meaner, more deployable and more adaptive force. To wit:

The USMC's total contribution to Operation Just Cause (invasion of Panama in 1989-1990) was a single battalion, included because it was already in the country on a training mission. All the other troops, several battalions worth, were Army except for some Navy Seals. No Marine airpower participated, only Air Force. The Marine lobby was beside itself after the operation, but the fact was that the Marine Corps was neither equipped nor trained to conduct such an operation.

Marines played no role in the unopposed invasion of Haiti in 1994. Army units flew off aircraft carriers to land in Haiti while the USMC again watched from the sidelines. This one really hurt the Marines' feelings because a seaborne invasion of a small island is what the Marine Corps has specialized in since the 1920s.

The first units to deploy to Saudi Arabia in 1990 for Desert Shield were Army, not Marine. For Desert Storm, the Marines had to buy M1 tanks from the Army (they had none of their own) and asked for and got an Army armor brigade to spearhead their breakthrough of the Iraqi line when the ground war began.

Yes, those were then and this is now. But consider: the Marines' entry into Afghanistan was really a classic Marine mission. The Marine amphbious force was already deployed at sea when the "go" order was given. They secured the critical base of operations in the country but conducted no offensive combat operations, which were done by the Army later. The pattern of the Marines securing a base for the Army's use is no strange thing in American military history - even the fabled battle for Guadalcanal fit this mold. The Marines landed in August 1942 (and were promptly and shamefully abandoned by the Navy) but by November most of the combat ops were being done by the Army, and by January all combat ops were done by the Army, when the battle was far from over.

The Marines unique capability for the A'stan incursion was its logistics over the shore operations. They had the equipment and training to beach-land troops and supplies on the Pakistani beaches at night and have them gone by day - a very important political consideration for the Paks. When airheads were secured inside A'stan, this capability receded in importance.

Despite the hand wringers' cries, the Marines and the Army are not in mission-competition. Both bring unique capabilities to the operational area.

I'd write more, but I'm going to the beach with my daughter now.

War plans and the public media - the more they print, the better off we are
While sitting in the beach house, overlooking the sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean, I am using a friend's notebook computer to peruse my morning reads and make this posting. One would think that I would sleep late on vacation, but alas, my Army-trained self-waking mind programming has never changed to accommodate the civilian lifestyle. I still spontaneously awaken about oh-dark-thirty every morning. On very rare occasions, I sleep late - all the way to 6:30 a.m., and then feel as though I have wasted half the day.

I recall that a few days ago there was a some dismay among some bloggers that the NYT and some other papers had published "war plans" of the US against Iraq. I am undisturbed by such publication. For one, whenever those kind of things get published (this isn't the first time) they are always very broad and hazy. They contain nothing of real value for Iraq to use. As I recall, for example, the Reuters report of US "war plans" against Iraq basically said that the US will use lots of warplanes, lots of ground troops, lots of special forces, will strike at command and control facilities, and will come from different directions.

Good golly, Miss Molly! Can't let the Iraqi high command know that! I am sure that they thought we would send Boy Scout Troop 137 to Baghdad. Warplanes! Ground troops! Multiple targets! My, my, my, who'd a thunk it?

All the stuff the NYT and its kind print about war plans are (A) unofficial and therefore (B) wrong and (C) extremely general in scope. These facts combine so that (D) they are of no use to the enemy. In fact, sometimes just the opposite.

Case in point: In 1990 the 82d Airborne Division and some units of XVIII Airborne Corps were the first units sent to Saudi Arabia in response to Saddam's invasion of Kuwait. There was much hoopla in the press about the obviously impending plans to conduct an airborne assault to seize the Kuwait City airport. Only a very few reporters understood that that 82d was sent because it had a standing deployment mission and was the division that the Army could get there quickest. But it was far too light in firepower and far too slow on the ground once it arrived to play a major combat role.

Once heavy armor units arrived, the media refused to let go of its self-conviction that the 82d would take down the airport, and learned-sounding talking heads from renowned think tanks assured John Chancellor and other network anchors that the airfield seizure was defintitely planned, why else would the 82d be there? Parachute assaults is what airborne divisions do, so that must be what the division was there for.

Just for the record, there were no parachute assaults in the Gulf War and the 82d's combat mission in Desert Storm was to screen the left flank of the 3rd Army.

Similarly, the media were mostly convinced that the Marines would invade Kuwait from the sea, and said so many times. No such seaborne invasion was ever contemplated, but Centcom took advantage of the stereotype by bobbing a major Marine unit out in the Gulf for the whole war and mounting deception raids by Seals along the Kuwaiti coast, tying down two or three Iraqi divisions.

The recent Reuters article said quoted a "senior defense official" as saying, "Right now, we're at the stage of conceptual thinking and brainstorming. We're pretty far along."

Well, the unnamed source is not very senior because that stage is preliminary, not advanced. So it's all baloney.

BTW, whenever government officials, whether a GS-7 hack or a deputy secretary, do not want to be quoted by name, the established practice is for reporters to cite them as "a senior (fill in the blank)." When I was stationed at the Pentagon, I was cited a couple of times as "a high-ranking Army officer familiar with" whatever the issue du jour was, and I was a major, not very high-ranking in the Pentagon.

Anyway, my take is that whatever you read about US war plans in the media, wait for us to do something else in the fact.

Still on vacation . . .
. . . But I saw today that Lt. Gen. (ret.) Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., died at age 89. He was the pioneer of the Tuskegeee Airmen and the first black general in the Air Force. A true American hero.

Stacked helicopters - no, make it stacked UAVs
This is a repost of my original posting of this story. Joe Katzman, who linked to it from his TechCentralStation article on urban warfare, asked I post it on this site. BTW - there's loads of other great stuff at the original site!

I knew an infantry battalion commander in Germany in the mid-1980s who had been a platoon leader in Vietnam. He enjoyed the unique distinction of having received a Silver Star medal and an Article 15 for the same firefight. (The Silver Star is a serious war-hero medal, and an Article 15 is a non-judicial punishment procedure, named after its governing chapter in the Uniform Code of Military Justice.)

Lt. Jerry was trying to fight his platoon out of a meeting engagement and doing fairly well. Then his company commander got on the radio and started to tell him which way to move his squads. before long, the battalion commander got wind of this and flew over in his Huey helicopter. He started to tell the company commander which way to move his platoons and for good measure, started telling Lt. Jerry which way to move his squads, too, sometimes countermanding the company commander's orders.

Since Army officers are trained to ride, or fly, to the sound of the guns, and Jerry's fight was the only one around at the moment, the brigade commander hies over in his helicopter and begins second guessing the battalion commander, who was second guessing the company commander, who was second guessing poor Lt. Jerry.

Now, there's Lt. Jerry on the ground, getting shot at, taking casualties, and he has three voices belonging to successively higher-ranking officers, all telling him what to do and usually not agreeing with each other. And Jerry discovers he is spending more time talking to all of them on the radio than he is fighting the war. What to do? What to do?

Jerry was nothing if not bold and decisive. The next time the brigade commander walked on his radio net, telling him which way to move squads, Jerry found a way to rid himself of all three nuisances. He picked up the mike of his AN/PRC-77 radio and told the brigade commander, "Why don't you just f--- off and let me take care of business!" or words to that effect, but definitely using the profane word indicated.

Shocked silence followed. The brigade commander seemed to have been stunned into sensibility, remembering that full colonels don't have any business trying to command squads from a helicopter. Lt. Jerry completed the firefight successfully and gallantly, for which he was awarded the medal. But since the Army can't have lieutenants telling brigade commanders to perform anatomically impossible acts, he was also given an Article 15 for disrespect to a superior officer. Its terms were just a tap on the wrist really, intended, as the French put it, for l'encouragement d'autres.

This story came to my mind when I read TechCentralStation's story by Melana Zyla Vickers, "Listen Up, General!" (linked at Winds of Change). Melana discusses UAVs in Afghanistan:

Operation Anaconda's grunts have suggested the pilotless planes that fed video back to headquarters were nothing short of exasperating nanny cameras hovering but offering no help, reporting action imprecisely, and inviting counterproductive meddling from higher-ups.

Any soldier on the ground can easily see how realtime video link might lead to second guessing, especially since one Predator's video can be received by a theoretically unlimited number of other headquarters. The issue is what soldiers in battle have been trying to to since the day of the Sumerians -- see over the hill. But it's a fine line between such meddling as Melana describes and genuinely useful assistance. It's one thing for a ground commander to be told by a CENTCOM staff officer, "Predator video shows thirty enemy troops a kilometer to your east," and another thing for the staff officer or a remote commander to go on to say, "So pull a platoon off and send them up the draw at grid 162535 to bring enfilade fire on them." The former is really good to know, but the latter is meddling.

Predators are neither true tactical systems nor true strategic ones, although they embody capabilities of both. (Its sister plane, Global Hawk, is much closer to a strategic platform.) But they are what we have. They are too slow and unresponsive for tactical use, since the realtime video isn't received by the on-the-scene commander (although I assume it could be, if the decision was made to make it so). Also, the ground commander doesn't fly the thing; its combat information is for him accidental rather than systemic.

Fortunately, there are much smaller aerial recon devices in the pipeline that solve this problem. There are very small, hand-launched recon planes that send video back to a laptop computer or even a smaller device. Some are fixed wing and ideal for use in open terrain, others are little helicopters and will serve very well in urban environments. They can literally fly up stairwells in buildings or hover to peer into windows. Ground-traveling recon devices are being developed, also, some of very small size that could be driven through drainage pipes to get across roads or fields.

Some devices are being developed that can be dropped by aircraft well in advance (in both space and time) of the arrival of US forces, monitoring enemy traffic into and out of areas, with a downloadable summary available to the US force on command.

The great thing about these kinds of devices is that they are truly tactical. They belong to the on-the-scene commander and are controlled by him - down to platoon level, maybe lower. This capability will give a huge advantage to US forces over those not so equipped.

I am on vacation and posting will be infrequent

I will be back online regularly on July 13.

I am tempted to do something like Sgt Stryker did with his Beers Across America, but I won't. We rescued the van last evening, but the rescue party paid dearly. There is nothing wrong with that van that a dose of trinitrotoluene won't cure.

May all Americans have a safe and happy 4th of July, and may those of our allied nations and neighbors stay safe also!

Read this Victor Davis Hanson essay . . .
. . . on why Saudi Arabia is the real enemy of the USA. I have never seen it stated more clearly or more thoroughly.

I have said before, Saudia Arabia is much more a family-run business than a true nation-state. (And it's a Gambino-like family at that. . . .)

Jeff Jarvis is sad; here's why
A moan of lament from Jeff -

It's getting lonely. First, Matt Welch announced he was taking a hiatus to go commune with cacti or some such. Next, Glenn Reynolds tells us he won't be posting for a week because he's going on vacation. Good God, this means he is human. Now Ken Layne is exploring the Amazon and he won't be around for awhile.

Hey, Jeff. I'm still here! You can read why.

Made by the Al-Aqsa Manufacturing Company . . .
. . . would explain a lot about the problems with repairing the air conditioner of my VW van. In an email with Joe Katzman, I mentioned that I hope to ransom it from the repair shop today. Joe replied,

Donald, you know that once you start paying ransoms, the demands never stop. Next time, try to buy an air conditioner not stamped "Al-Aqsa Manufacturing".

And that has been the only humorous thing I have found in this whole affair. I am on day two of my vacation, and you will notice that I am still posting, so guess where I still am?

Quote of the day
"It's not what nationality they are. It's that they're stupid enough to start a fire." Kelvin Beach, on the arrest of an Apache man in the Arizona wildfire.

Humor break
Job interviewer: If you could have a conversation with anyone, living or dead, who would it be?

Applicant: The living one!

This is the Great Divide between Europe and America
Steven den Beste has an outstanding essay on why the Europeans just don't get it when it comes to matters such as the International Criminal Court, chemical weapons treaties and so forth.

Again and again, in international treaty negotiations, the Europeans would come up with some grand idea for a treaty clause which had the slight flaw that it violated the US Constitution. They'd then apply pressure to the US to agree to such clauses, and US negotiators would refuse, and the US would get denounced for being stubborn, unilateralist, not a team player. Never mind that stupid Bill of Rights; it's just a piece of paper. National charters are a thing of the past, obsolescent; we're moving past that into postmodern internationalism and trying to form a world confederation, and the only way we can do it is if every country gives up its own sovereignty and becomes part of that process. Now, are you going to play along, or what?

. . . the BBC comments:

To its European and other critics, United States opposition to the Court seems to be based on a fundamental unwillingness to limit American sovereignty in any way.

It's more than that: the government of the US doesn't have the power to do so. That's one of those things that we citizens didn't give it permission to do. This is not just a small issue for us; it's the most important thing there is. We govern ourselves; we do not grant governing power to the world or any part of it.

This fact - where resides the sovereignty of the state - is the fundamental difference between Europe, including England, and the United States. As I wrote on March 20,

Here is the real difference between the American and European political philosophy: where does national sovereignty lie? Sovereignty means the source of authority in the state. In Europe, state authority lies in the state apparatus, in other words, the government. It was the Sun King of France, Louis XIV, summed this view up perfectly when he said, "L'etat c'est moi," the state is me. The continental Europeans have never outgrown this view. Whether working class or elites, they alike see the government as the source of political legitimacy. The people enjoy only the rights that the government grants them.

Americans, on the other hand, see the people as the only legitmate source of political legitimacy. In the United States, state authority lies in the voters. Hence, we have in our political lexicon the phrase, "popular sovereignty," popular here meaning not, "well-liked," but, "of the population." In America, the state apparatus grants no rights at all to the people because the government has no rights to grant. All rights reside in the people to begin with. The American founders understood that human rights are simply a fact of human existence; human beings are "endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights," as the Declaration of Independence puts it.

Therefore, in the American system, the people grant powers to the government, but no rights. Yet, sadly, I still hear in conversation with my fellow Americans statements such as, "The First Amendment gives is free speech." In fact, the First Amendment, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution as a whole give or grant no rights at all: all rights automatically are always held by the people in the first place. The Bill of Rights was intended to restrict the power of the government -- to make darn sure that government apparatchiks didn't step on the rights of the people.

As Steven explains well, the Euros don't get it. Compared to American democracy, euro democracy is a pale ghost. American democracy strides forward with the strong cadence of a brigadier; European democracy simpers along like a chimpanzee with a parasol.

As I pointed out in some detail in this post, we the people will remain free as long as we jealously guard our sovereignty. I identified three ways we can lose our sovereignty:

foreign invasion,

being victimized at or above a certain level by criminals, which is what has happened in England and Australia,

voluntarily surrendering our sovereignty to government organs. This could be on purpose, in the same way the Germans elected Hitler, or by creeping default, as government bureaus and agencies claim more power in small increments.

I think we have little to fear from the first two, but I am not nearly so sanguine about the last. Here is a good piece by Thomas Sowell that explains the danger, using the context of the Pledge of Allegiance court ruling.

Pacifism and Purgatory
Merrijane Rice writes:

I was extremely touched by [your] post, "The problem with pacifism is pacifists." It reminded me of a story I love from the Book of Mormon [that is] particularly fitting and illustrates your point about how a true Christian pacifist might behave. The original story can be found here.

It's about a group of people who are converted to God, who in the past have been guilty of many murders. They make an oath that they will never shed blood again. When some of their former associates start a war against them, they choose to suffer death rather than defend themselves. By the end of the encounter, however, more people have been converted than were slain.

Marrijane's email reminds me of the TNT movie Purgatory, which is set on the Old West. Its premise is a town called Refuge in a remote valley is the purgatory where murderous Wild West men and women go to prove to "the Creator" that they can live in peace with one another. Refuge seems normal in every respect; the people have weapons but must by dint of will refrain from using them. When one passes the test, a stagecoach takes him or her to heaven. Whomever fails is escorted by an Indian-chief figure to the cemetery, where they disappear - in what manner is a story secret revealed at the end, so I'll not tell it here.

Into this place somehow ride a gang of outlaws in flight. After some time they discern that the unarmed sheriff is Wild Bill Hickock, whom they thought was dead. Doc Holladay and Jesse James are also there, also unarmed, as are other famous gunfighters of years past, all unarmed. When the desperadoes discover that they can terrorize the town without opposition, the residents are thrown into moral anguish. Being terrorized is unendurable, but to resist violently means damnation.

Finally, they decide to . . . well, don't want to spoil it for you. Watch or tape the re-broadcast on Aug. 5 and see how the townspeople resolve the issue, and how the Creator reacts to their resolution.

It's really a very good TV movie.

The most powerful political words ever written
OpinionJournal's Brendan Miniter has a good essay on how the Christian faith undergirded and shaped the deliberations of the Constitutional Convention at the dawn of our republic.

In the 1770s, morality and religion played a crucial role in the founders' thinking as they built a free republic. In many ways religion was the philosophical starting point, for without God, man does not have a fundamental claim on his freedom. He's forced to rationalize on utilitarian grounds why he should be free. . . .

The founders well understood that law requires a moral component--a king could make tyranny "legal"--so morality was built into the legal structure. That was a driving force in the writing and adoption of the Virginia Declaration of Rights--the first bill of rights ever written into a constitution. The section on religious liberty reads: "All men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each other." You needn't be a Christian to live in America, but Christianity offers the moral basis for civil society.

He goes on to say that Muslims who have aspirations of prosperity, freedom and dignity "might consider studying America's founding documents and the sermons of the Great Awakening."

Well, I would encourage every citizen of the planet to read them, but I am not sure I agree that for Arab-Islamists to read those documents would have the effect Mr. Minister hopes, even though I wrote back on March 27 that the most powerful political words ever written were those that open the Declaration of Independence. I concluded, "We need to repeat them over and over to the populations whose regimes are, truly, evil."

But the sermons of the Great Awakening would probably not have a salutary effect. They are religious but not Islamic. Therefore, their contents would at best be thought corrupted and more likely would thought of as Satanic.

I must be an expert, part two!
Joe Katzman's TechCentralStation article on Urban Warfare is now online, and he cites me twice. Thanks to Joe, and now everyone go read it!

Is Islam evil in itself?
Tom Cohoe thinks so:

. . . the Muslim equivalent of Thomas à Kempis and "The Imitation of Christ" cannot exist. Any honest attempt to imitate Mohammed would have to concern itself with violent conversion.

Vis-a-vis historical Moslem civilizations, once the conquering was done and the conquerors moved away from fundamentals, real civilization under Moslem rule was possible. I remember reading that Akbar, the greatest Mogul ruler, wouldn't clearly commit himself to the Moslem faith at all and got much amusement from the consequent exasperation of the Moslem spiritual leaders of his time. In other words, the Moslem civilizations may have been more like true secular civilizations, but of predominantly Moslem faith. Content faith.

But Islamic fundamentalism, it seems to me, is always going to be ugly. Fundamentally, Christianity and Islam are as different as night and day. We have the bin Ladenites versus the Mennonites or the Amish. Since there is no real Moslem civilization today, the fundamentalists are back, raging, trying to imitate Mohammed, dangerous and ... evil.

Although "fundamentalist" is an inexact term when describing Muslims, Tom has a good point. Except for the Sufi strain of Islamic mysticism, which Joe Katzman has explored rather well, the practice of Islam is universally aggressive. I think it was Paul Johnson who said that Islam is tolerant only at the edges of its influence; once it becomes dominant, it simply crushes the religious competition by coercion and force of law.

It's very revealing that when Muslims try to persuade us how tolerant their religion really is, they reach back to the 500 year span ending about 1250, when Arab-Islamic civilization flowered and Jews and Christians were treated with high regard. But between then and now - a blank slate.

Christian fundamentalists are not committing mass murder. If anything, it's been the other way round: remember Waco?

Reader feedback on the pacifism controversy

From Beryl Gray:

Prof. Work said:

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

I say: But Jesus disciples were not called to write technical manuals (as I do) or hostess at resturants (as my wife does) or any of a myriad other things. These things are how we carry on while we do the things that Jesus calls us to.

A few years ago I was asked to join the staff of my home church as Director of Communication. It did not make me a better witness or more authentic Christian to be on the Church's payroll. I did not cease being sanctified when I left that position later.

The "Church" has not been called to fight the war. "Christians" have been called, and will be called as long as the Republic stands, to place themselves "between their lov'd homes and war's desolation."

Thanks for the effort you put into you blog.
Beryl Gray (former SP4, 2nd Inf. Div.)

Beryl, I also served in the 2d US Infantry Division. It was from 1977-1978.

From a reader who gave his name but requested it not be published:

I will tell you why pacifists smack of hypocrisy. It isn't that they don't want to fight or put there own safety at risk. The fundamental problem with the current breed of American pacifists is that extol the moral high ground to the masses confident that nothing will really change. I am in full support of pacifist's ideals but when they use those ideals to present themselves as a better human being then myself I have a problem. I am one of those whom ensure that they can occupy the moral high ground.

Kevin Gowen wrotes:

I've been reading and observing "Christian pacifists" for over 20 years, and you know what I've found? Scratch one of these guys and surprise, out pops a leftist. Go back to the Cold War in the 80s and you'll find that a lot of those "peace" groups who ran interference for communist thugocracies in Nicaragua and Cuba were staffed with dreadfully earnest Quaker and Mennonite types, full of their own piety and sanctimonious as all get-out. Just like Malcolm Muggeridge reported that in Russia in the 30s, the biggest enthusiasts of those horrid May Day parades where the commies would truck out all their military hardware to impress the proles, were these same American Quaker/ Mennonite "pacifists" who would ooh and aah and applaud as each tank and missile went by. They made fools of themselves and of the church they claimed to be serving.

Of course, these hypocrites howled all throughout America's involvement in Vietnam. But when we finally went home and the real slaughtering by the North Vietnamese commenced, the silence from the pacifists was deafening. I do not have any respect for these pious left wing creeps.

I'm sure none of this is of any news to you. But I long ago wrote off Christian pacifism as just another excuse for leftists to push their leftist agenda. It actually did me good to hear about "old time" pacifists who served as medics and in other ways and put their lives on the line rather than mouthing pious platitudes about violence from the security and comfort of an American college campus.

The worst-governed state in the Union . . .
. . . must be my own state of Tennessee. Here's why.