The Redhunter

« February 2005 | Main | April 2005 »

March 31, 2005

Terri Passes

The news has just reported that Terri Schaivo has died. My thoughts and prayers are with her and her family, and that includes her husband.

At this point I urge those of us who wanted to keep Terri alive to temper our words and actions. As I wrote a few days ago, it is important that we not disgrace ourselves by engaging in over-the-top behavior.

Let us use the coming weeks and months to examine the system that caused her death, and the attitudes, morals, and ethics that made it possible. We should try to discover where we are headed as a nation, and whether it is in the right direction.

Posted by Tom at 9:56 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 30, 2005

Another Plus for John Bolton

Another reason why John Bolton should be our new ambassador to the United Nations are the reasons given for opposing him. Yesterday fifty-eight ex-diplomats sent a letter to Republican Senator Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in which they urged Congress to reject his nomination. The diplomats came from both Republican and Democrat administrations, which tells us all we need to know about why we're in our current situation.

Their criticism dwelled primarily on Bolton's stand on issues as the State Department's senior arms control official. They said he had an "exceptional record'' of opposing U.S. efforts to improve national security through arms control.

I'm not sure exactly what this refers to, but I'll tell you that in my opinion pursuing arms control misses the point. The reason why there are conflicts is due to opposing ideologies and ways of thinking, which are brought to the forefront by totalitarian and dicatatorial regimes. The best way to improve national security is to spread democracy. Now, that said, certainly preventing the spread of some weapons is beneficial. But simple pursuit of arms control does not necessarily enhance our national security.

But the former diplomats also chided Bolton for his "insistence that the U.N. is valuable only when it directly serves the United States.''

That view, they said, would not help him negotiate with other diplomats at the United Nations.

Well, good. I don't want him to "negotiate", I want him to clean up the place. The old go-along-get-along-don't-ruffle-feathers attitude is what got us into this situation in the first place. Enough of the old way. We're going from Andrew Young to Jeanne Kirkpatrick here. And just as the left screamed bloody murder when Kirkpatrick went to the UN and gave them hell, they're screaming now.

Further, the problem with the UN directly serving the United States is...?

The letter tells us all we need to know about how we got to our present situation. This is the attitude that allowed so many scandals to fester unseen. This is the attitude that allowed virulent anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism to take hold. One reason why so many hate us is because they do not respect us. We appear weak to them, and weakness breeds contempt. Children respect a teacher who is strict yet fair, while they hold one who doesn't enforce rules in contempt. They may not love us once Bolton is done with them, but by heavens they will respect us.

Tellingly, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, ambassador to the UN under Reagan, did not sign the letter (or at least I can't find that she did. However, I'm sure that if she did her name would have been mentioned in news stories. I am so far unable to find the actual letter on the Internet).

If anyone can find the actual letter please post the links in the comments section. I've searched the usual big-name blogs but can't find anything on it yet.

Posted by Tom at 11:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 29, 2005

Disposable When Broken?

I admit I've never immersed myself in the details of the Terri Schiavo saga. It's not that I don't think they're important, I do. My way of looking at this is to ask where we are and where we're headed.

If some bioethicists have their way, the future's not a pretty sight:

Wesley Smith: Bill, do you think Terri is a person?

Bill Allen: No, I do not. I think having awareness is an essential criterion for personhood. Even minimal awareness would support some criterion of personhood, but I don't think complete absence of awareness does.

Smith explains the implications of his question to the bioethicist:

If you want to know how it became acceptable to remove tube-supplied food and water from people with profound cognitive disabilities, this exchange brings you to the nub of the Schiavo case — the “first principle,” if you will. Bluntly stated, most bioethicists do not believe that membership in the human species accords any of us intrinsic moral worth. Rather, what matters is whether “a being” or “an organism,” or even a machine, is a “person,” a status achieved by having sufficient cognitive capacities. Those who don’t measure up are denigrated as “non-persons.”

Allen’s perspective is in fact relatively conservative within the mainstream bioethics movement. He is apparently willing to accept that “minimal awareness would support some criterion of personhood” — although he doesn’t say that awareness is determinative. Most of his colleagues are not so reticent. To them, it isn’t sentience per se that matters but rather demonstrable rationality. Thus Peter Singer of Princeton argues that unless an organism is self-aware over time, the entity in question is a non-person. The British academic John Harris, the Sir David Alliance professor of bioethics at the University of Manchester, England, has defined a person as “a creature capable of valuing its own existence.”

Today the person in a "persistent vegitative state", tomorow the patient with advanced Alzheimer's.

Wesley Smith: If Terri is not a person, should her organs be procured with consent?

Bill Allen: …Yes, I think there should be consent to harvest her organs, just as we allow people to say what they want done with their assets.

Harvest. As if we were talking about soybeans.

On Sunday Michelle Malkin wrote about how an Associated Press story compared Terri to "Kismet", a robot:

To understand the emotional reaction to the tapes of Terri Schiavo, one need only spend a few minutes with Kismet.

People who spend time with the robot at a Massachusetts Institute of Technology lab walk away feeling like they've made a new friend. Kismet is nothing but a mechanical head made out of metal and plastic, but it has been cleverly programmed by scientists to mimic human social interactions.

Sit down across from Kismet and it gives you a pleasant smile. Step too close and it jumps back with a startled expression on its face. Introduce yourself and it waits patiently for you to finish talking, then replies with a few syllables of speech that sounds like a higher-pitched version of the language spoken by the teachers in 'Charlie Brown' cartoons.

Kismet is no more conscious than a dishwasher or a microwave oven...

People in persistent vegetative states are no more aware than Kismet, but they retain a handful of primitive reflexes that are naturally misinterpreted as conscious behavior.

When robots break, we discard them. Are we now to do that with people as well?

Posted by Tom at 8:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Reform at the UN - or Replacement?

The other day in the paper I saw the following story about the United Nations:

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan yesterday called for an international inquiry into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, after an initial U.N. inquiry found that the Lebanese government, intelligence and police services had bungled the criminal investigation.

There may have been a time when I would have applauded this type of action, and believed that such an inquiry might get to the bottom of the matter. After all, the Lebanese police can hardly be expected to issue any report critical of Syria, the likely perpetrator. But those days are long passed.

The scandals and problems at the UN are many, so please excuse me if I miss a few;

• Oil-for-Food ('nuf said there)
• Peacekeepers in Congo, Somalia, Kosovo, and elsewhere raping and otherwise sexually abusing the very people they are supposed to be protecting
• Failure to provide relief to the victims of the recent tsunami, and then attacking the United States for forming a coalition of nations who were successful in bringing aid
• Failure to stop what is just about genocide in Sudan
• A Security Council that will not enforce it's own resolutions
• A Security Council that passes an ever-increasing number of resolutions to little or no effect on the world scene
• They put the worst human rights violators on the planet in on the UN Human Rights commission
• Iraq under Saddam was voted chair of the UN Committee on Disarmament
• A General Assembly that, in general, is virulently anti-Semitic and shows it in their actions and speech
• The World Conference on Racism, held in Durban South Africa 2001, turned into an anti-Semitic and anti-American hate-fest
• They promote fatally flawed treaties such as the Kyoto protocol on "global warming", which would have the effect of crippling the US economy
• The promotion of the World Court, whose purpose would be to prosecute Americans and Israelis, while largely ignoring third-world kleptocrats

Only in the interests of space will I stop here.

The situation has gotten so bad that even Kofi Annan has recognized that something needs to be done. As such, he has issued a 62 page proposal for reform, the text of which can be found here.

The Grand Bargain

According to the Financial Times, (hat tip Belmont Club), what Annan has in mind is a kind of "grand bargain" (the FT article is subscription only, so I'm going on what Wretchard has on his site)

Mr. Annan's officials say the package basically proposes a bargain whereby rich countries help the poor to develop, by promoting the Millennium Development Goals, while poor countries help alleviate rich countries' security concerns. In both cases, Mr Annan says, action must be underpinned by respect for human rights.

Of course this means more money from the United States, Europe, and other developed nations. Don't count on any of them to support this.

And, as Wretchard points out, by "security", Annan means the Security Council. And forget about going around it. From the text of the UN report, Annan says "The task is not to find alternatives to the Security Council as a source of authority, but to make it work better"

Without going into details, Annan proposes increasing the size of the Security Council by adding members from Africa, Asia, and the Americas. He offers two proposals, which vary by the number and term of the new seats, and whether they are permanent or rotating.

This is not a plan for action; it is an attempt to permanently prevent action. With so many competing interests on the Council, gridlock would be enshrined forever.

If would also, of course, have the effect of diluting American power. As it is today, the council would not vote to enforce their own resolutions regarding Iraq.

Even if we buy the notion of a "grand bargain", it is hard to see how and deal would work. Is Annan saying that the underdeveloped nations could attempt to "buy off" their votes each time an Iraq-like situation arose? Does anyone seriously expect such a deal to work?

Perhaps we should back up a moment. What is the purpose of the UN? In another post, Wretchard thinks that the UN can or should fill these rolls:

1. To set a global agenda that brings the principal concerns of the nations to the forefront. This is the function that the General Assembly is supposed to fulfill;
2. To keep the peace through the collective action of the Great (a function of the Security Council) and;
3. To provide essential international services, which nation-states would not provide otherwise, through specialized technical agencies.

Well, maybe. Or, put another way, "in a perfect world, yes." A global institution should do these things. Whether the UN ever will is, at this point I think, open for debate.

Wretchard proposes a electronic "moderated forum", by which I think he means web-based discussion group. Nice idea, but no one will buy it. Honest discussion is the last thing third-world kleptocrats want.

My Analysis and Recommendations

Fundamentals

The basic problem with the United Nations is that all nations are admitted as equals, regardless of their form of government or human rights records. Every country is simply a "member state". The UN is not immoral so much as it is amoral.

It is for this reason that it cannot agree on a simple definition of "terrorism", or for years a resolution remained on it's books equating "Zionism" with "racism". It is also why China, Cuba, Egypt, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Zimbabwe can be on its Human Rights Commission, and why Saddam's Iraq could chair it's commission on disarmament.

The Security Council

We need to forget trying to change the Security Council. The entire purpose of the Security Council is to prevent action. The founders set it up with a balance of power in mind that would prevent the most powerful nations from waging war with it's approval. And given that they had just finished a world war that left 52 million dead, this was hardly an unreasonable goal.

The Cold War may have been marked by stalemate, but it was a stalemate of which Franklin Delano Roosevelt would have approved. I also think that it was a good thing.

The world has now moved beyond the Cold War. Instead of containment, we are now properly trying to encourage and spread freedom throughout parts of the world (Reagan's "rollback" was nothing compared to what is happening today, apologies to the Gipper).

Stalemate is no longer acceptable, if we believe that Security Council authorization is necessary in order for war to be legal and just. One of the most unfortunate consequences of the Gulf War was the notion that only the Security Council can authorize war. Since I can think of no reorganization of that body that would make it act in a more responsible manner, and since I certainly do not accept the idea that only it can authorize war, I propose that we simply ignore it.

Let the left scream. It's what they're best at, anyway.

At this point we need to stop and point out the founders of the UN, most notably FDR, can be forgiven if they foresaw none of this. As I mentioned, their objective was to prevent another world war, and in that they succeeded.

The General Assembly

In the General Assembly all nations have one vote regardless of GDP or population. Fortunately it is also powerless. Nevertheless, it can be quite troublesome, especially when it passes odious resolutions such as the infamous one which equated Zionism with racism.

We cannot do much about this body, and although it is troublesome it is also powerless. My proposal is to let it be.

Peacekeeping

As Captain Ed has noted, the UN recommendations on ending sex abuse by it's own peacekeeping troops is nothing but a whitewash. The UN "solution" is to simply transfer responsibility to the nations that provide the troops. But this would leave the foxes to guard the henhouse. The problem at the root of the sex-abuse scandal is that the governments whose armies are involved condone, tacitly or otherwise, this type of behavior. Attempts to enforce standards of behavior are not likely to succeed given the nature of these governments.

We therefore need to require that nations who wish to send peacekeeping troops meet minimum standards of democracy and human rights within their own countries. Given that
they see peacekeeping as a moneymaking enterprise (the UN pays them much more per soldier than they cost to support) they will have every incentive to reform. They will squawk loudly at first, and there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but we can succeed if we do not blink.

Financial

I believe that it is impossible to seriously reform the United Nations. I would therefore withdraw as much monetary support as we legally can and then proceed to ignore it.

Our task, then, is to build an alternative institution or institutions. It or they need not even be permanent, but may be ad hoc, that is, designed to meet a present need, and then disbanded when it's goals have been met. This institution(s) would be built around several principles:

• Membership is dependent upon having some basic form of representative government
• Membership is dependent upon meeting basic human rights standards
• Withdrawal from the organization is an option
• The organization exists for a specific purpose, and once it has achieved its goal or met its objectives it must disband or reorganize

There are some examples of these types of bodies, already, and I have posted on them before. Two that look promising are:

• The Council for a Community of Democracies - founded in 2001, " a leader in the worldwide Community of Democracies, an inclusive transnational movement fostering democracy and cooperation among the world’s democracies and assistance to aspiring democracies in their transition through a new Democracy Transition Center;"
• The Proliferation Security Initiative - a global effort that aims to stop shipments of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), their delivery systems, and related materials worldwide. Members of the PSI are Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Spain, the UK and the US.

It is therefore my contention that while the United Nations is incapable of real reform, we are unable to totally extradite ourselves from it. We should therefore ignore it as much as possible, and work to forming alternative organizations.

Posted by Tom at 11:28 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

March 28, 2005

Overplaying our Hand

The situation with Terri Schaivo has reached the point where I believe that there are many on the "pro-life" side who are in serious danger of overplaying their hand. By this I mean squandering public sympathy by engaging in over-the-top behavior.

It was tricky enough when the President and Congress got involved. These situations are normally resolved by the family and the courts, and one can understand why some were uncomfortable when the case was taken to their level, however necessary it was.

But the actions of some of the protesters encamped around the hospital show have gone over-the top. From the San Francisco Chronical (hat tip Belmont Club)

For days, a life-size crucifix has been dominating the growing congregation of protesters outside the Woodside Hospice. Streaks of red paint symbolizing blood stained the points of the horizontal arms of the cross. On the top of the vertical arm, where a traditional Catholic crucifix bears the letters "I.N.R.I." -- for the Latin phrase "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews" -- someone had substituted a sign that read "Terri Schiavo." ...

The protesters are comparing Michael Schiavo to Judas, who betrayed Jesus to the Romans. "Betrayed by a kiss: Jesus, Terri," read one handmade poster, apparently alluding to the fact that her husband was the first man Terri Schiavo had ever kissed. "Judas = husband," read another.

Two other posters, hanging side by side from the orange plastic mesh fence that surrounded the protester pen, likened both President Bush and his brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea who allowed Christ to be crucified, citing their unwillingness to intervene more than they already have.

You get the point.

To be sure, most of those who want Terri to live are not like these protesters. But just as ANSWER definded the anti-war movement, these people are in danger of defining us. We must not allow that to happen.

People, we need to tone it down. If we overplay our hand this will come back to haunt us.

I'd write more but got a call and need to run into work early today.

Posted by Tom at 9:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 27, 2005

All But Over for Terri

For Terri Schiavo it appears to be but all over.

This should be a difficult case. If Terri had left a "living will" or something indicating her wishes, if her husband wasn't such an miserable human being, and if some on the left weren't saying such mean things, then it would be a tough one. It would be tough to see someone starve to death, alledged "persistive vegitative state" or no. It would be tough to see this happen to someone who was, by heavens, still conscious, and apparently, at least to some degree, aware of her surroundings.

But we don't know her real wishes, her husband is a miserable human, and there are so many contradictions, that I see a miscarriage of justice occuring.

If the husband was a decent upright person, and the family all agreed that the feeding tube should be removed, then we could have a debate on the issue of what to do in these cases. We could disagree but the debate would (hopefully) remain civil. More to the point, we could debate the real issues in these cases without becoming involved with personalities.

A person on death-row would be given more judicial review than Terri is receiving. Where oh where are our great civil libertarians when you really need them?

As I've said before, on the one hand I am disheartened by the multitues who seem to want to see her dead. The utter lack of compassion that some prominent Democrats showed is maddening.

On the other hand, I am heartened by the fact that so many recognize the danger of a drift towards Netherlands-style euthanasia. This case may well be the one that energizes enough people so that we examine this issue thoroughly.

The Slippery Slope

Many on the other side of this issue will dismiss this fear, but I believe it a real one. All to often in the past thirty or so years we've seen the slippery-slope effect, after having been assured by the left that no such thing will happen. A few quick examples:

Abortion - Adocates of legal abortion assured us thirty years ago that it was only for rape and incest, or for the health of the mother. Today, of course, somewhere over 90% of all abortions are because the parent(s) simply did not want a child.
Gay marriage - Twenty or thirty years ago we were told that we should "tolerate" gay people. Ok, society said. Next thing we know we're told that you're a bigot if you don't approve of gay marriage and that the Boy Scouts are one of the worst organizations on earth. And, as a recent incident at Harvard involving Jada Pinkett Smith demonstrated, if gays are allowed to marry, using the "husband" or "wife" word will become as taboo as saying "Christmas break".

Living Wills

We're told that we'd better get a "living will" so that your loved ones will know what you would want done in a similar situation. Yet as Michelle Malkin has discovered, they're not all they're cracked up to be. She links to noted scholar James Q Wilson, who last week wrote that

Some people believe that all of these issues can be resolved if everyone signs a living will that specifies what is to be done to them under various conditions. The living will is supposed to determine unambiguously when a "Do Not Resuscitate" sign should be placed on a patient's hospital chart. Terri Schiavo had not signed a living will. If she had, we would not be facing these issues.

But scholars have shown that we have greatly exaggerated the benefits of living wills. Studies by University of Michigan Professor Carl Schneider and others have shown that living wills rarely make any difference. People with them are likely to get exactly the same treatment as people without them, possibly because doctors and family members ignore the wills. And ignoring them is often the right thing to do because it is virtually impossible to write a living will that anticipates and makes decisions about all of the many, complicated, and hard to foresee illnesses you may face.

He then cites a number of examples that will cause a "living will" to be thrown out of court. A durable power of attorney is more reliable, he says, but here you're not writing out your own wishes, but trusting someone else to make good ones for you.

Judicial Tyranny

I'm just about tired of hearing that "the government shouldn't get involved. As the invaluable Tom Sowell said in a column this week; "Do they think that the judges who authorized this are not the governmen?"

And so it goes. For these people it is perfectly acceptable to have life-and-death decisions made by the courts, but heaven-forbid if representatives elected by the people get involved. Then it's denounced as "politics" and "government interference". I know, this is nothing new. The left likes rule by elites. Me, I take the William F Buckley Jr approach: I'd rather be governed by the first two-hundred people in the phone book.

The Europeans

Of course they don't get it:

The attempts by the Congress and the president to limit the damage done by a judiciary that is unresponsive, elitist, arrogant, dictatorial, self-protecting — something very much like the government of France, come to think of it — looks, to Eric Fottorino, writing in Le Monde, like proof that Bush will do anything, including rushing to the "bedside of an almost-dead person" in a "coma," to cement his relationship with the Bible-thumping, gel-haired, tele-mullahs of the right. To the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the congressional intervention was a drama of "Life, Death and Power" with a grandstanding U.S. president bestirring himself from his Crawford ranch, something the paper claims he'd never do for a crisis or a mere war. In the leftwing Independent, the slow starvation of Terri Schiavo is how the paper's correspondent describes a death with "dignity," something Americans can't get right — no doubt because of what Tony Blair described to the Daily Telegraph as the "unhealthy" American penchant for giving religion a prominent role in election campaigns. For Libération, the whole save-Schiavo spectacle was enough to merit a sneering headline on a piece or two, but nothing more.

Ok, that's it on Terri. For now.

Posted by Tom at 9:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Back to the Magic Kingdom

While caught up in the tragedy of Terri Schiavo, the War on Terror, the formation of a new government in Iraq, the threat of a war with China, and about a million other news items, let's not forget the nature of the Saudi goverment, and some Britons who deserve justice.

I first wrote about this in May of 2004, and you can find a BBC timeline here, but the short version is that in 2000 Briton James Cottle and six other westerners, who were working in Saudi Arabia, were arrested on trumped-up charges. They were charged with setting off bombs in the Saudi capital as part of a bootlegger ring. After being tortured, they "confessed" on Saudi TV. Eventually they were released, and most have filed suit against Saudi Arabia for damages. The men also allege that their governments did little to help then during their captivity.

The latest in this story, sent to me by Mary Martini, ex-wife of James Cottle and his ceaseless advocate, is that British Foreign Minister Jack Straw had agreed to meet with him to discuss his case. At the last minute, however, the meeting was called off. The meeting had been scheduled for Thursday of last week. Cottle and Martini have been urging Straw to back their case.

Their case has been working it's way through the courts, for more see this October 2004 story.

The Lesson

I said it at the time I wrote first posts on this and I'll say it again: This is the fruit of our long coddling of the Saudi dictatorship. For too long we tolerated their repressive ways as long as they sold us their oil and provided military bases. We should have put them on notice some time ago that they needed to reform. After all, at this point they need us more than we need them. They cannot not sell us oil, while we do not need them for bases - anymore, at least.

To be fair, for a long time western policy makers felt they had no other choice. They remembered all too well the "Arab Oil Embargo of 1972" all too well. Determination to prevent a recurrance drove policy. And, the Saudis did, at times, provide us with valuable military bases (the 2003 invasion of Iraq would have been much harder without them).

But while we should be sympathetic to policy makers of the past, because the public would have screamed bloody murder had the oil spigot been shut off, we must call their actions short-sighted. And one terrible result of that short-sightedness was the horror of torture that James Cottle and the other unjustly accused men were put through. Neither the British nor the American government acted with the urgency and haste that they should have to get those men out of the hands of the Saudi police.

The Saudis are themselves the victims of their own repressive past, and of their own refusal to put a stop to Whahhabi radicalism. They suffered a series of terrorist attacks within their country last year that were only put down with much effort. And many of the jihadists that have come to Iraq are Saudi Arabians (not to mention the 9/11 terrorists).

President Bush has laid out a bold agenda for freedom in the Middle East. Although our efforts are concentrated on Afghanistan and Iraq, we must keep our attention on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Posted by Tom at 8:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 25, 2005

Yemeni Journalist Freed!

I'm a bit late in posting on this but Yemeni journalist Abdul-Karim Al-Khaiwani has been freed and is at home! Congratulations to Jane Novak for her campaign to get him out of prison. (visit her blog for details if you haven't been following this case)

As she reminds us, though, the battle is far from over, as there is still no freedom of the press in Yemen, or indeed in just about any other Arab country other than Iraq (hmm, how'd that happen?)

This is just one battle in a large war, but wars are won one battle at a time. Mark one up for the good guys.

Posted by Tom at 9:13 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The View from Fallujah

Sherry at Bittersweet Me has posted a letter from one of our Marines in Iraq. He is headed home, and this is his final letter. He recently spent several days in Fallujah, which was the scene of a large battle last April. The city suffered terrible damage during the battle, yet as the Marine observes,

"... for the battle damage on all sides, the city of Fallujah had more children and a more industrious citizenry than any other I encountered here in Iraq. Almost every house had been re-occupied following the invasion, gutters cleaned of garbage, white flags flying over newly patched garden walls, “Family Inside” written in large letters in both English and Arabic. Marines control access to the city; Marines mediate civic disputes; Marines provide food, water and are protecting those who are repairing city infrastructure; Marines patrol the streets, policing both the citizens of Fallujah and the Iraqi Army who sometimes abuse their authority."

Was it worth it?

As I stood dwarfed by piles of water bottles and phone cable I realized two distinctions. The first is this: as countless millions of dollars are spent, what American citizen can truly point to the cost that this war has had on his quality of living? What a magnificent nation we live in where we can wage so massive an effort without bankrupting our citizenry in the process. The second contrast is our motive: for all the insinuations of imperialism, corporate benefit and hawkish war-mongering, the most dramatic moments I witnessed here revolved around an election not an exploitation. What other nation would spend such sums to give a people so far away self-determination? I am not advocating war. Being so far from home for so long, smelling and seeing the dead and placing Marines in harm’s way are not truly enjoyable experiences. Yet I agree wholeheartedly with the much-criticized statement by General Mattis, it IS fun to wage war against a foe who seeks only his own self-gratification, who tortures, murders and abuses the weak.

Read the whole thing.

Posted by Tom at 8:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 24, 2005

The Left Dissected

David Horowitz is one of my favorite authors. A one-time radical left-wing revolutionary, he is now a conservative. A prolific author, he not only maintains a website, FrontPage Magazine, but is the author of numerous books, including his autobiography Radical Son, Destructive Generation, The Politics of Bad Faith, and Unholy Alliance. The last of these is a must-read, as it deals with the alliance between the radical left and radical Islam.

In today's Washington Times Horowitz describes his newest project, and discusses how the mainstream media routinely refer to radical leftists as simply "liberals."

David Horowitz, a radical turned conservative author and activist, has created a Web site, DiscoverTheNetwork.org, which he describes as "a navigation tool for identifying, mapping and defining the left and its elaborate and extensive political network."

In a telephone interview from his Los Angeles home, Mr. Horowitz discussed the idea for the site:

Question: You distinguish between liberalism and "the left." Why is that distinction important?

Historically, it's very important. ... In the early '70s, Norman Podhoretz, who really qualifies as a liberal, was upset at the way his party under [1972 presidential candidate Sen. George] McGovern was opting out of the Cold War -- much as the Democratic Party today has opted out of the war for freedom in Iraq.

When Podhoretz began saying that Democrats had betrayed the tradition of John Kennedy and Harry Truman, a Marxist named Michael Harrington labeled Podhoretz and those who supported him "neoconservatives" -- that's the origin of the term. The New York Times, The Washington Post and the network news followed suit.

Soon, pro-communist leftists like Angela Davis and Tom Hayden were being referred to as "liberals" by the media, and liberals like Norman Podhoretz and Jeane Kirkpatrick were being referred to as "neoconservatives." ... So, to understand our present situation, I felt you have to try to restore accurate political labels. And that's partly what my new Web site, DiscoverTheNetwork.org, is about.

Q: You have documented the Marxist backgrounds of several leading anti-war groups and individuals. Why do you think the media have routinely ignored these connections?

A: This is the beauty of the site: On one page, you get a list of every major anti-war organization and each listing is a link to a profile of the individual group, and each group is connected to a map icon, which, if you click on it, opens up a diagram that shows all the other groups with radical agendas ... that they are connected to.

The fact that the two major peace organizations, International ANSWER and the Coalition for Peace and Justice, are headed by easily identifiable communists, was known to the mainstream media, specifically the New York Times. Because the New York Times is essentially a fellow-traveling institution of the left, it chose not to mention this fact. ...

Read the whole thing.

Posted by Tom at 11:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Bad News Today

Is it just me or was the paper filled with far too much bad news today?

Terri Shaivo's Options are Running out

Her family has appealed to the Supreme Court but it's almost certain that they will refuse to hear the case. At this point it's a matter of too little, too late.

The family of Terri Schiavo appealed to the Supreme Court last night after being turned down twice yesterday by a federal appeals court, racing against the clock to save her life.

The Florida state Senate defeated a last-minute bill aimed at preventing Mrs. Schiavo's death by starvation and dehydration.

On the one hand I'm worried about the drift towards Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. On the other hand, I'm heartened that so many people recognize the danger and are doing something about it.

Bush Decries Border Project

Ok, I understand that the president cannot come out and endorse the Minuteman Project. But then I read this:

He (Bush) said he would pressure Congress to further loosen immigration law.

We're headed in the wrong direction, folks. But as Michelle Malkin says, aren't the Minutemen simply Undocumented Border Patrol Agents?

Here's how Mexico responds to the Minuteman Project:

Mexico Accused of Abusing it's Illegals

The State Department says that the Mexican government, angry that a thousand American volunteers will begin an Arizona border vigil next month, consistently violates the rights of illegal immigrants crossing its southern border into Mexico.

Many of the illegals in Mexico, who emigrate from Central and South America, complain of "double dangers" of extortion by Mexican authorities and robbery and killings by organized gangs.

Nice. The Mexican government uses our country as their "safety valve" so that they can avoid making reforms at home. They berate us for every little alleged violation of rights of the illegans who come to our country. But heaven forbid that someone attempt to enter their country. I've also read that the Mexican government is pretty tough towards people who enter their country from the south. No surprise, unfortunately.

UN Plans to Reimburse Discredited Ex-Employee

The United Nations yesterday struggled to explain why it will reimburse about $300,000 in legal fees accrued by Benon Sevan, the discredited former administrator of the U.N. oil-for-food program

Another reason why we need John Bolton at the UN.
________

Sorry, but all this just got me down today.

Posted by Tom at 8:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Moonbats on Parade

You can find some of the best moonbat photos on the Internet here. (hat tip, DagneyT). Apparently the website is maintained by some guy who lives in the Berkley area and makes a habit of going to the local demonstrations to take photos. I guess if I lived there I'd entertain myself by doing the same. Whoever he is, he's done a great job. Check it out.

Posted by Tom at 8:29 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 22, 2005

Fake Statistics

Michelle Malkin has an excellent post on "The Myth of Black Soldier's Dying Disproportionately" in Vietnam, the Gulf War, and the Iraq War.

We've all heard the claim that black soldiers are frontline fodder in Iraq and are being killed disproportionately.

In fact, as this New York Times op-chart makes clear, the truth is just the opposite. White and Hispanic soliders are overrepresented among military personnel killed in Iraq, whereas African American soldiers are underrepresented. (Blacks account for 18.6 percent of military personnel in Iraq, but account for only 10.9 percent of military personnel killed.)

The same was true in World War II, the Korean War, and the 1991 Gulf War. In Vietnam, sometimes referred to as "a war fought by black men against yellow men on behalf of white men," blacks accounted for 12.5 percent of all combat deaths versus 13.1 percent of the young male adult population of fighting age.

I've heard this before, but it needs repeating every now and then. Kudo's to the New York Times for having the courage to take this issue on.

Check out the article on Vietnam stats, it's well worth reading. Among other things, you'll learn that

• The oft-cited "statistic" that one-in-three Vietnam vets suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is not even close to the truth (although PTSD is itself very much real)
• Suicide, homelessness, and drug abuse rates for Vietnam vets are about the same as for the rest of the population.
• The incarceration rate for Vietnam vets is lower than that for the general population.
• Two-third of those who served in Vietnam were volunteers.

Fake Statistics II

Don't believe the crap you read in the liberal-left media about the number of civilians killed in Afghanistan or Iraq. The numbers they cite are mostly false. (hat tip USS Neverdock)

The Johns Hopkins study, published in the British medical journal Lancet, claimed that 100,000 civilians were killed as as result of U.S. and coalition actions in the invasion of Iraq. This is usually used in an attempt to discredit the invasion.

Slate completely debunked this study last October, and Instapundit has more last week. Both Slate and Instupundit get into details on statistical analysis that I am not qualified to comment on, but I can read plain English. And the story in Slate spells it out:

Readers who are accustomed to perusing statistical documents know what the set of numbers in the parentheses means. For the other 99.9 percent of you, I'll spell it out in plain English—which, disturbingly, the study never does. It means that the authors are 95 percent confident that the war-caused deaths totaled some number between 8,000 and 194,000. (The number cited in plain language—98,000—is roughly at the halfway point in this absurdly vast range.)

This isn't an estimate. It's a dart board.

Some reader comments posted on Instapundit:

Are we honestly to believe that twice as many non-combatants have died as a result of the liberation of Iraq as were American combatants in 8 years of VietNam? In a war designed and fought to minimize civilian casualties with things like GPS guided bombs?

Please, you have the power to unleash the internet on this wholesale fabrication with a call to factual arms. This fraud cannot go unchallenged or in 30 days from now, it will simply be cited as irrefutable “fact” that “George Bush killed 100,000 Iraqis.”

and

There's no need to debunk the 100,000 civilian casualty figure being cited so often by war opponents. In progressive circles it's an article of faith that pre-war sanctions killed 5000 Iraqis per month. Cost of the war two years later? 20,000 Iraqi civilians saved! And counting...

Surely civilians have been killed. And, as I said in my post on Discrimination in Just War Theory, we are required to try and protect the lives of civilians. But we don't have to put up with fake statistics.

Posted by Tom at 1:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Terri Schiavo

Like some other bloggers, I've held off commenting on Terri Schaivo, partially because it's not my type of subject, partially because others have covered it better, and partially due to the constraints of time. It is a compelling story, however, and has captivated the nation for good reasons. It is a story that deserves attention, because it may portent things to come.

Wizbang sums up the Democrats attitudes nicely

Unborn Child? Kill It.

Sick Woman? Kill it.

Convicted Murder on death row? Do every thing you can do to save it!

Just to show how convoluted this has become, the Democrats are claiming "states rights" and that the federal government is overstepping it's authority as reasons why Congress should not get involved. Since when did liberals ever care about either of those?

And where, by the way, are all the disability advocates when we really need them?

As usual Tom Sowell has some penetrating observations:

The fervor of those who want to save Terri Schiavo's life is understandable and should be respected, even by those who disagree. What is harder to understand is the fervor and even venom of those liberals who have gone ballistic -- ostensibly over state's rights, over the Constitutional separation of powers, and even over the sanctity of family decisions.

Ok, enough partisanship. It's always fun to go after liberals and Democrats but I'll hold the line here.

What worries me is the direction that we're headed. We're headed down a path towards a Brave New World, and it's not clear to me that we have a road map. They've already reached the point in The Netherlands where doctors can actively kill patients that they believe are in a terminal state. Sure, there are supposed to be "safeguards", but reports that I recall are that they are routinely ignored.

So let's see where we're at. First we decided to just kill babies in the womb. At the time of Roe v Wade, we were told that abortion was necessary because of rape and incest. Turns out that most abortions today occur because a baby would be an inconvenience to the parents. Then we have the stem-cell debate. We are told not to worry, because only "unviable" stem cells will be used, and "you do want to save lives, don't you?" Well, since we kill people at the start of their lives, why not also do it at the end? Then we can just work our way towards the middle.

One reason why I think the story has generated so much attention is that the husband, Michael Schiavo, is such a disgrace, while Terri's real family, the Schindlers, is so warm and caring.

Now let's stop and I'll lay a few cards on the table. I have a living will with a "do not resusitate" clause in it. And I do not think that people who have truely experienced brain death should be kept alive by artificial means. But that's not what's happening here. Terri Schiavo is not "brain dead." She is not being "allowed to die"; she is being killed. Every member of her family except her husband want to keep her alive. Something is wrong with that.

She may or may not come back to her old self, most but not all medical opinion says no. But it just seems to me, like it does to our president, that we should err on the side of life. Is that too much to ask?

Update

Mark Steyn nails it:

America this Holy Week is following the frenzied efforts to halt the court-enforced starvation of a brain-damaged woman for no reason other than that her continued existence is an inconvenience to her husband. In Britain, two doctors escape prosecution for aborting an otherwise healthy baby with a treatable cleft palate because the authorities are satisfied they acted "in good faith". You can read similar stories in almost any corner of the developed world, except perhaps the Netherlands, where discretionary euthanasia is so advanced it's news if the kid makes it out of the maternity ward. As the New York Times reported the other day: "Babies born into what is certain to be a brief life of grievous suffering should have their lives ended by physicians under strict guidelines, according to two doctors in the Netherlands.

"The doctors, Eduard Verhagen and Pieter J. J. Sauer of the University Medical Center in Groningen, in an essay in today's New England Journal of Medicine, said they had developed guidelines, known as the Groningen protocol."

Ah, the protocols of the elders of science. Odd the way scientists have such little regard for scientific progress. It's highly likely that many birth defects - not just the bilateral cleft lips - will be treatable and correctible in the next decade or two. But once you start weighing the relative values of individual lives, there's no end to it. Much of that derives from the way abortion has redefined life - as a "choice", an option.

Posted by Tom at 12:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

"Appointment Gratification"

Mark Steyn sums up my attitude completely regarding the appointment of John Bolton as Ambassador to the United Nations, and Paul Wolfowitz to the World Bank. Check out his column, my thoughts, and the comments of the other puppies in my latest post over at Warm 'n Fuzzy Conserva-Puppies.

Posted by Tom at 12:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 21, 2005

Progress In Iraq

If the New York Times is reporting progress in Iraq, you know things are going well (hat tip Jonah at NRO The Corner):

Nearly two years after American troops captured Baghdad, Haifa Street is like an arrow at the city's heart. A little more than two miles long, it runs south through a canyon of mostly abandoned high-rises and majestic date palms almost to the Assassin's Gate, the imperial-style arch that is the main portal to the Green Zone compound, the principal seat of American power.
...

In the first 18 months of the fighting, the insurgents mostly outmaneuvered the Americans along Haifa Street, showing they could carry the war to the capital's core with something approaching impunity.

But American officers say there have been signs that the tide may be shifting. On Haifa Street, at least, insurgents are attacking in smaller numbers, and with less intensity; mortar attacks into the Green Zone have diminished sharply; major raids have uncovered large weapons caches; and some rebel leaders have been arrested or killed.

American military engineers, frustrated elsewhere by insurgent attacks, are moving ahead along Haifa Street with a $20 million program to improve electricity, sewer and other utilities. So far, none of the work sites have been attacked, although a local Shiite leader who vocally supported the American projects was assassinated on his doorstep in January.

But the change American commanders see as more promising than any other here is the deployment of large numbers of Iraqi troops. American commanders are eager to shift the fighting in Iraq to the country's own troops, allowing American units to pull back from the cities and, eventually, to begin drawing down their 150,000 troops. Haifa Street has become an early test of that strategy.

Read the whole thing.

Posted by Tom at 8:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 19, 2005

Petition to free al-Khaiwani

Jane Novak over at Armies of Liberation has been leading the effort to free imprisoned Yemeni journalist Abdulkarim Al Khaiwani. I'm a bit late helping her out with a post and link, but better late than never.

I'm asking all my readers to visit her site and sign the petition to free this journalist.

Jane is a professional columnist, having had her work appear in both regular newspapers and on-line publications.

She's got so many posts on this issue that I'm not going to link to any specific ones. Just visit her website and scroll down to find them.

Here's a summary of the situation:

Upon a quick trial held during judiciary leave, violating all definite legal texts, and after a rushed interrogation with Al Khawani, accused of press charges, during August 2004, a verdict was issued by the south west Sana’a primary court sentencing Abdul Kareem Al Khaiwani to one year in prison and closure of Al Shoura newspaper for six months. This verdict was issued against the law, and dishonored by the defense committee which filed an appeal immediately after the verdict in September 5th, 2004.a

In the evening of September 5th, Abdul Kareem Al Khaiwani is arrested by authorities in a humiliating and terrorizing way. Al Shoura news paper is closed and its editors were kicked out to the street in a step to access the verdict which could not be reversed till this moment.

Sana’a appeal court prolongs holding its sessions intentionally based on weak justifications aiming to keep Al Khaiwani in prison. It requests Al Khaiwani to court more than once handcuffed accompanying murderers and drug smuggling convicts.

After 5 months of intentional prolongation of procedures, the appeal court holds it first sessions in February 8th, 2005. The judge decides in a quick session without hearing to the defense discussions to suspend the case until verdict is issued in March 1st, 2005.
On that day, the judge postpones the verdict to March 22nd, 2005.

Al Khaiwani was attacked physically 5 times which risked his life and safety. The administration of central prison did not blink about it!

The Yemeni president and government ignores all demands and calls for the release of Al Khaiwani made by local, regional, and international organizations concerned with rights and freedoms.

The newspaper opened files of corruption, inheritance of power, and political reform as well as abuse of public financial resources. The charges against Al Khawani and Al Shura newspaper are “ publishing false topics and news that harm public order and infringes national unity. These topics support Al Huthi’s rebellion against governmental authorities which resulted in the incitement of tribal and sectarian discrimination as well as insulting the president publicly” according to the prosecutors. It is clear that the reason behind his arrest and imprisonment is opening the files of inheritance, abuse of financial resources of the country and political reform.

The political, legal and press media in Yemen is concerned about the severity of the verdict against al Khaiwani and the continuous closure of Al Shoura newspaper under political authoritative pressure and according to personal wishes against the publishing of facts.

In March 5th 2005, it will have been 6 months since the newspaper was first closed. Yet, the prosecutors office refuses to the request for reopening the newspaper’s office and republishing its issues.

Posted by Tom at 10:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Reform Party of Syria

It may not be widely recognized, but there are freedom movements for just about every country in the Middle East. Note that I don't call them "national liberation" movements, as that smacks of the communist revolutionary movements that moved countries from the frying pan to the fire.

One of the organizations is the Reform Party of Syria. I don't know much about them, and don't have time to do a lot of research other than a quick google search which didn't turn up much. I did find a November 2003 article about them in National Review which leads me to believe that they are genuine and not a front group with some nefarious purpose. You can check out their position papers on their website and decide for yourself, but they look like the real deal to me, by which I mean committed to bringing democracy Syria.

Here's one of their recent press releases:

The Syrian pullout from Lebanon is being portrayed in the Syrian press as a victory. Not only did the Syrian people receive the army with open arms but the media has not been less enthusiastic about the event.

Although the Syrian army has been stationed in Lebanon since 1976, most of its personnel are indeed happy to return home.

In line with such events, the Syrian government has tightened its grip unto the media by closing some of the operations of non-Syrian television stations and forbidding Lebanese newspapers to be distributed in Syria unless they walk the Syrian line.

For yet unknown reasons that is stoking the fires of the rumor mill, Baschar al-Assad has been in Aleppo for sometime. Some believe it is to lead the stifling of any Kurdish uprising and some have said that he has escaped Damascus because of an internal coup carried by Ghazi Kanaan, the minister of Interior. None of this buzz has been verified but the fact that it is taking place is weakening the regime. .

Syrians in general have grown accustomed to life under duress to such an extent that most see the Lebanese situation as stifling further of their own liberties. Their sense is that the Syrian regime will certainly tighten its controls to discourage any uprising. Dissidents feel that the Lebanese momentum is being stifled by two factors: 1) There is no interest by the international community, as of yet, to call for freedom in Syria and, 2) They are afraid if they take matters in their own hands, they will be subjected to atrocities such as the ones seen in Iraq in the early nineties.

A demonstration celebrating March 8, an infamous day in the history of Syria, was met with beatings by student Ba'athists loyal to the regime. Some of the people who demonstrated were Riad al-Turk, the most popular political figure in Syria. Yet, only 100 people showed up and quickly disbursed.

In addition to fear, Syrians are hopeful that events in Lebanon will lead to their freedom. But they are not ready yet to take matters in their own hands unless they know that the international community can and will support their uprising.

I am not scholar enough to verify any of this, but it all sounds plausible. Anyway, we must support organizations that want to bring democracy to Syria and other countries, and the Reform Party of Syria looks like one of them.

Posted by Tom at 9:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 18, 2005

"The Naysayers"

Once again, Victor Davis Hanson has a brilliant article in the latest print edition of National Review (to view it on-line you'll need a subscription). He takes on the whiners, the complainers, the doom-and-gloom crowd, in short, those who say that the War on Terror is lost and that"it can't be done."

What I really like about Hanson is his sense of history. His perspective is not that of the past few years, but that of hundreds or thousands of years. For some, important history began and ended with the Vietnam War. This miopic view prevents one from understanding what is really going on in the world.

To those caught up in the headline of the day, it is easy to see every setback as evidence that we are going to lose and that we better pull back now. Successes seem minimal, and losses are magnified. It is the nature, and indeed the duty, of the press to tell us of what is going wrong. But by concentrating on this we lose our perspective. For if one goes back in history and looks at any war that we have fought from the Revolution on, they are far from glorious stories of victory where we all linked arms and marched off to defeat the enemy. In reality, they are stories of how we engaged in almost endless internal squabbling and bickering, and how our own military made mistake after mistake, often to the very end of the war. Somehow, however, we won.

More importantly, the naysayers of the time are usually forgotten. How many remember that Lincoln was considered certain to lose the election of 1864 due to how poorly the war was going, and only at the end staged a comeback? How many know of the terrible losses at the Chosin Reservoir? Democrats and other naysayers would do well to ponder this aspect of history.

On with Hanson. He reminds us of how the Old Left (their term) blamed the Cold War on the United States, and that their version was taken seriously at the time:

By the late 1940s things on the ground had changed somewhat, and the blame-America-first ideology adjusted accordingly. Now it was the turn of the old Left, which castigated "fascists" for ruining the hallowed American-Soviet wartime alliance by "isolating" and "surrounding" the Russians with hostile bases and allies. The same was supposedly true of Red China: We were told ad nauseam by idealists and "China hands" that Mao really wanted to cultivate American friendship but was spurned by our right-wing ideologues — as if there were nothing of the absolutism and innate thuggery in him that would soon account for 50 million or more of his own people murdered and starved.

Ditto the reactions to the animosity from such dictators as Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro. The Left assured us that both were actually neo-Jeffersonians, whose olive branches were crushed by unimaginative Cold Warriors and who only then went on to plan their gulags. Few seemed to think it natural that a free and powerful America would be hated by fascists and Communists — much less that it should be praised rather than castigated for earning such hatred.

How quickly some forget. More on Hanson's Right Analysis here, in a post where he concentrates on World War II.

Not all, of course, is "ancient history":

We also forget now how the Left warned us of terrible casualties and millions of refugees before the Iraq war, and then went dormant until the insurgents emerged. Then the opposition resurfaced to assure us that Iraq was lost, only to grow quiet again after the Iraqi election and its regional aftershocks — a cycle that followed about the same 20-month timetable of military victory to voting in Afghanistan.

It reminds me of the Gulf War. Recall the predictions of "tens of thousands" of American casualties? We were told how the "hardened Iraqi army" would surely fight us tooth-and-nail over every square inch of land? Peace groups like the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace solemnly assured us that we shouldn't invade because if we did surely Saddam would use his WMD against us. Even after weeks of bombing, Bob Woodward assured us that air attacks were not going as well as the Pentagon had claimed.

We saw the same thing during the 2003 invasion of Iraq: The "Battle of Baghdad" that was supposed to be Stalingrad II. We were all assured that this time there would be fierce resistance. On and on it went. But being a peace activist means never having to say you're sorry.

Finally, misguided pessimists claim that the United States is alone in the world. When George W. Bush orchestrated the fall of Saddam Hussein he was said to have alienated everyone, as if our friends in Eastern Europe, Britain, Australia, and India did not matter. Yet the same was said in 1941 when Latin America, Asia, and Africa were in thrall to the Axis. Neutrals wanted little to do with a disarmed United States that had unwisely found itself in a two-front war with the world�s most formidable military powers. Indeed, the June 1941 invasion of Russia was about as multilateral as could be, with Eastern Europeans, Spaniards, Italians, and Finns all joining the invading armies of the Third Reich.

By the 1950s we seemed to have defeated Germany and Japan only to have subsequently lost Eastern Europe, as former defeated fascists became friends once-allied neutrals and Communists turned hostile. Much of Asia and Latin America deified the mass-murdering Stalin and Mao, while deriding elected American presidents. The Richard Clarkes and Joe Wilsons of that age lectured about a paranoid Eisenhower administration, clumsy CIA work, and the general hopelessness of ever defeating global Communism, whose spores sprouted almost everywhere in the form of Nasserism, Pan-Arabism, Baathism, Castroism, and various "national liberation" movements.

"You made Saddam"

Then there's the "the United States created Saddam" line. I see this one with leftie bloggers all of the time. Besides overstating matters to a ridiculous degree, it is both forgetful of history and simple America-bashing. I dealt with the history of America and Saddam in an earlier post called "History Backwards" An excerpt from what I wrote:

In order to understand U.S. policy in the 1980's we need to understand what happened in the late 1970s.

I was in my early college years when the Iranian Hostage Crisis occurred, and this is when I first really started to pay attention to politics. It was not a pretty introduction.

The sense of helplessness that most Americans felt was maddening. Here we were, a superpower, and yet we were unable to get our people back. We had just been through Vietnam and Watergate, with those humiliations fresh on our minds, and now this. Worse yet, our president was telling us that we would have to get used to a lower standard of living here at home.

I remember that my father was working in Washington DC at the time, and he'd tell us stories of the protests in the city: Protests, mind you, by Iranian "students" in support of the hostage takers. The protestors were protected by the police, whose protection they needed full well. The office workers would go out during their lunch break to observe these protests. My dad would tell us of normally calm, unsuitable men who would go ballistic at what they saw.

My point is that the anger towards Iran was intense and deep. We would have supported just about anyone who was willing to oppose the Ayatollah Khomeini and his regime.

More importantly, in the late '70s and early '80s it really did seem like the Iranians would be able to export their revolution to the rest of the area. The idea of the gulf states and Saudi Arabia falling to radical Islam was frightening indeed.

Contrary to what the left would have you believe, no one was under any illusions as to who Saddam was. We knew full well that he was a thoroughly rotten dictator.

The Lesson

We were right to support Iraq when we did, just as we were right to side with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany. The threat of the Iranian revolution spreading throughout the region was quite real, and the consequences of it doing so could be devastating to the region and to our economy.

The journalist Christopher Hitchens had a response to those who use the "we created Saddam" line. He said, and I go on memory because I can't find the link: "Assuming for argument's sake that you're right, and we are responsible for Saddam, then isn't it our responsibility to correct the situation and take him out?"

The response he said he gets is "can't we talk about global warming now?"

So let's call it what it is; most of those who use the "the United States created Saddam" line are only out to bash the United States. They hate this country and are engaged in anti-Americanism pure and simple. Don't put up with this line because it's a load of bunk.

The naysayers will always be with us. Some are honest, and some are not. Either way, we must not get caught up in the "headline of the day", but must keep our perspective.

Posted by Tom at 10:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 17, 2005

Updates

No new posts today but I do have some updates to ones I made earlier this week:

Italy Pulls Out

Yesterday I reported that Italy had announced that they would withdraw their troops from Iraq. Today Berlesconi says his remarks were "misinterpreted." I guess we'll find out over the coming months

The Looming Threat

Another blogger posted a story on China with the same title almost the same time that I did. Who says great minds don't think alike? Check out Jordan's post over at The Politicker blog "The Looming Threat".

Why I don't read the Washington Post

Hugh Hewitt reports that Washington Post Managing Editor Philip Bennett says that the Chinese "The People's Daily" misquoted him. I'll take his word for it, and shouldn't have been so quick to believe the ChiCom version. Unfortunately for Mr. Bennett, his correction doesn't really change matters.

Posted by Tom at 11:48 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 16, 2005

Italy Pulls Out

The biggest story is that Italy has announced that they will pull their troops out of Iraq starting in September.

The war has been unpopular there for some time, and Prime Minister Berlesconi has apparently decided to bow to popular pressure.

Ok, fair enought, I suppose. And if this decision had come at a random time I'd just have the same things to say about them as I did about the Spanish; that is is a cowardly decision. They'll pay for it by having been on the wrong side of history.

But why does it have to seemingly be in response to that whacko communist journalist's lies about the United States? All this does is seeminly lend credence to her insane claim that we "targeted her for assassination"?

My heart goes out to all the Italians who must now be cringing in embarrassment at the actions of their government.

Update 3-17

So are they pulling out or not? Today's story in the Washington Times casts doubt on what was reported yesterday:

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi backtracked yesterday, saying a commitment to begin withdrawing his country's 3,300 troops from Iraq by September was subject to change and could be postponed.

"It was only my hope. ... If it is not possible, it is not possible. The solution should be agreed with the allies," Mr. Berlusconi said after his remarks on Tuesday created consternation in Washington and London.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whom the Italian leader had named as concurring with his decision to withdraw, insisted in London that Mr. Berlusconi's remarks had been misinterpreted.

"Neither the Italian government or ourselves have set some sort of deadline for withdrawal," Mr. Blair told Parliament.

Posted by Tom at 12:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Looming Threat

Several times I've said on this blog that China is a threat that is lurking in the background. The situation appears peaceful now, but appearances are deceiving. The Chinese are bound and determined to take back Taiwan, by force if necessary. Right now they are laying low, stockpiling weapons and working to lay the political groundwork. Sooner or later they will likely force the situation, and I think this will occur sometime before 2015, though not for a few years yet.

Last week China passed a law authorizing the use of force against Taiwan if the latter declares it's independence. While China has since said that the law is "misunderstood" and is a "law for peace" it seems clear that they are laying the legal groundwork for military action.

Likewise, over the past ten or fifteen years China has become much more aggressive on military acquisitions. From the break with the Soviet Union in the late 50s to the end of the Cold War, the bulk of the Chinese military was oriented towards a war with Russia. They could not afford a two-front strategy in anything but name. When the Soviet Union collapsed, it's military came apart also, freeing the Chinese to concentrate on Taiwan.

For a more complete strategic analysis see my July 2004 post "China, Taiwan, and Concepts of Sea Power"

The other day China's "Prime Minister" held a press conference in which he laid more political groundwork for action against Taiwan. The PM gave the standard Chinese line on their view of history. John Derbyshire describes what the PM said

Tensions with Japan? Must be Japan's fault: "The fundamental problem is that Japan should correctly view history. ... take history as a mirror and face forward to the future. This year marks the 60th anniversary of China's victory in the War of Resistance Against Japan (1937-45). This part of history reminds us of the untold sufferings the war brought to the people in China..." Also, of course, a by-product of U.S. meddling: "The security alliance between Japan and the United States is a bilateral matter between these two countries. Yet we are concerned in China because it is related to the question of Taiwan..."

The anti-secession law? Why, the people of Taiwan want to be united with the mainland: "We have enacted this law to give expression of the will of the entire Chinese people, including the 23 million compatriots in Taiwan, their will to safeguard national unity and territorial integrity and oppose secession of Taiwan from the country." In any case, the law really has nothing to do with force or intimidation: "This law is meant to strengthen and promote cross-Straits relations."

And always, always, that self-righteous, self-pitying whine: "In the recent hundred of years, China was subjected to bullying and humiliation. Yet till now our country has never sent a single soldier abroad to occupy an inch of foreign land." (Ask a Tibetan about that.)

You would never know, unless you looked at the past 56 years of Chinese history, that the smooth-taliing Mr. Wen is front man for a gang of lawless cutthroats.

China the victim, you see, is only pursuing justice to right historical wrongs.

What exactly does China want? Derbyshire again:

What they want is regional hegemony. They want to be in East Asia — perhaps in all of Eurasia — what the U.S.A. has been in the Americas this past couple of hundred years. In their dreams, Russia will be their Canada: huge, underpopulated, cold, and not very consequential. India will be their Brazil.** Laos (say) will be their Guatemala (say). There are some holes in the analogy. The U.S.A. never had to contend with an offshore nation a tenth as populous yet ten times wealthier than itself, as China has to keep Japan in mind. Nor do the Indians look to be slipping quietly into their assigned role as providers of coffee, nuts, and salacious dances to the new superpower. Still, it is plain from their visible diplomatic strategy that the Chinese think they can pull it off

That's part of it, I'll agree. But it's not "hegemony" as a European or American would understand it. Not is is simply the pursuit of natural resources as was the Japanese goal some 80 years ago with their "Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere". It's a little of the latter, to be sure (witness the China-Philippines squabble over the possibly oil-rich Spratley Islands), but I think it's more ideology.

North Korea is the asian threat that dominates headlines, but my thoughts are that China is using them as a diversion. Tom Donnelly, writing in the Weekly Standard, seems to agree, chastising the Clinton and Bush Administrations for ignoring the problem:

In short, the United States continues to look through the wrong end of the telescope. We're thus blinded to a whole host of worrying developments that reveal China's progress as a geopolitical--and increasingly global--competitor. The Chinese "legislature" just passed an "anti-secession law" that not only "legitimizes" an attack on Taiwan but greater internal repression as well; the Beijing government sees secessionists everywhere. China is beginning to string together a necklace of client states in the oil-rich Middle East--Iran and Sudan, to name two--and even into the Americas, cozying up to Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez. Venezuela supplies about 13 percent of daily U.S. oil imports, and just as Beijing fears the U.S. Navy's ability to sever China's connection to international energy markets, China wouldn't mind being able to return the favor with Chavez's help.

Disturbing also are trends within our own military budget. The Navy and Air Force being starved to feed the hunger in the Army and Marine Corps for ground troops. While this helps us today in the War on Terror, a lack of Aircraft Carriers could come back to haunt us in the years ahead. Money is always finite and the business of policy is to make hard choices. Let's hope and push our politicians to make ones that keep the Chinese threat in mind.

Posted by Tom at 11:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Democrats Don't Learn

From the Washington Times

Democrats yesterday said they will halt all Senate business except essential operations and national defense if Republicans use the "nuclear option" to unclog President Bush's judicial nominees.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada made the threat in a letter yesterday to Majority Leader Bill Frist, who has said he has the 51 votes needed for a parliamentary procedure that would force the nominees through the Senate on a simple majority vote.

In 1996 Speaker Newt Gingrich and the House Republicans tried much the same thing. Their beef was with President Clinton's proposed budget. After walking out of talks with the administration, they let all non-essential federal government services stop functioning.

The voters punished the GOP in the 1998 mid-term elections. Although they did not lose either house of congress, they did lose some seats and were severely chastised. Gingrich himself was forced to resign.

The Democrats today seem not to have learned the lesson of 1996; don't shut down the government. I don't think it's so much that voters are enamored of their services (although fear does play a factor with some groups) as it is just disgust at the bickering. Republicans had to learn the hard way in 1996, the Democrats will too unless cooler heads prevail.

Posted by Tom at 11:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 15, 2005

Liberty on the March

Slowly but surely liberty is moving forward in the Middle East. Consider these recent developments;

Syria-Lebanon

• Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese protested yesterday in Beruit, demanding withdrawal of Syrian forces. Estimates run as high as 800,000 to 1 million participants. This was the largest political protest that has ever occurred in the Middle East. NRO's The Corner blog has some great photographs (hat tip Little Red Blog)
  
• Syrian Intelligence is pulling out of Lebanon
• Even the UN is getting in on the act, demanding a timetable for full withdrawal
• Although last week there was a large pro-Syrian rally, organized by the terrorist organization Hezbollah, they appear to have lost momentum. Trends favor complete Syrian withdrawal soon if the pressure is kept up.
• All of this could conceiveably lead to the fall of the Assad regime in Damascus, although it is premature to make absolute predictions. Tyrannies are always more fragile than they appear. It's imperative that we keep the pressure on.
  

Iraq

• Iraqis raided the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad yesterday. The were angry that "...relatives of a Jordanian suicide bomber suspected of killing 125 people in the town of Hilla celebrated him as a martyr." Can't blame them. The Iraqi government also condemned the "espressions of joy" exibited by the family.
• Chrenkoff has up "Good News from Iraq Part 23" Yes, Part 23. Check it out to find out how and why the MSM so often get their reporting totally wrong. You also might not have heard this elsewhere, but reconstruction is proceding despite attempts at sabatoge. You'll also find success stories of the new Iraqi army and police that you simply won't find elsewhere.
  
• (Hat tip USS Neverdock for both Iraqi stories)

Posted by Tom at 3:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Iraq did have WMD capability

I'd heard about this story yesterday but couldn't find the link. Thanks to LGF, I've got it now (should have checked there first).

On with the story.

The New York Times reported (or admitted?) yesterday that Iraq did in fact have the equipment to produce parts for missiles, nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons when the United States invaded in April of 2003.

In the weeks after Baghdad fell in April 2003, looters systematically dismantled and removed tons of machinery from Saddam Hussein's most important weapons installations, including some with high-precision equipment capable of making parts for nuclear arms, a senior Iraqi official said this week in the government's first extensive comments on the looting.

Advertisement