The Redhunter

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April 29, 2005

All the Right Enemies (and Friends!)

Victor Davis Hanson says that that United States is hated by all the right people:

At the U.N. it is said that a ruling hierarchy mistrusts the United States and that a culture of anti-Americanism has become endemic within the organization. No wonder — the Americans alone push for more facts about the Oil-for-Food scandal, question Kofi Annan's breaches of ethics, and want investigations about U.N. crimes in Africa. If we are mistrusted for caring about those thousands who are inhumanely treated by a supposedly humane organization, then why in the world should we wish to be liked by such a group?
...
In short, who exactly does not like the United States and why? First, almost all the 20 or so illiberal Arab governments that used to count on American realpolitik's giving them a pass on accounting for their crimes. They fear not the realist Europeans, nor the resource-mad Chinese, nor the old brutal Russians, but the Americans, who alone are prodding them to open their economies and democratize their corrupt political cultures. We must learn to expect, not lament, their hostility, and begin to worry that things would be indeed wrong if such unelected dictators praised the United States.

Ok but what about the Europeans? Shouldn't we want them to like us?

The EU is well past being merely silly, as its vast complex of bureaucrats tries to control what 400 million speak, eat, and think. Its biggest concerns are three: figuring out how its nations are to keep paying billions of euros to retirees, unemployed, and assorted other entitlement recipients; how to continue to ankle-bite the United States without antagonizing it to the degree that these utopians might have to pay for their own security; and how not to depopulate itself out of existence. Europeans sold Saddam terrible arms for oil well after the first Gulf War. Democratic Israel or Taiwan means nothing to them; indeed, democracy is increasingly becoming the barometer by which to judge European hostility.

Who, then, likes us?

Perhaps one billion Indians, who appreciated that at a time of recession we kept our economy open, and exported jobs and expertise there that helped evolve its economy.

Millions of Japanese trust America as well. Unlike the Chinese, who on script vandalized Japanese interests abroad in anguish over right-wing Japanese textbooks, Americans — who at great cost once freed China — without such violence urge the Japanese to deal honestly with the past. After all, the Tokyo government that started the war is gone and replaced by a democracy; in contrast, the Communist dictatorship that killed 50 million of its own and many of its neighbors is still in place in China. At a time when no one in Europe seems to care that Japan is squeezed between a nuclear North Korea and a nuclear China, the United States alone proves a reliable friend. The French, on spec, conduct maneuvers with the ascendant Communist Chinese navy.

Eastern Europeans do not find the larger families, religiosity, or commitment to individualism and freedom in America disturbing. Apparently, millions in South America don't either — if their eagerness to emigrate here is any indication.

In short, we are hated by all the right people, and liked by all the right people. We should be disturbed if it was any different

Posted by Tom at 11:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 28, 2005

Nostalgia for a Dictator?

One of the things that most perplexes Americans is the tendancy of some of those who once lived under totalitarian rule, and now live under at least some freedom, to express nostalgia for the ancien regime.

Consider two stories that were in the news recently. The first one is in today's Washington Times:

"Life has changed for the worse," said Bushra Mahmoud, 40, a mother of three who was sitting in the waiting area. "There is a creeping zealousness among men and women that is really frightening. You sit on the bus and have abuse heaped on you by the fanatics because you are not wearing the hijab [Islamic head covering]. These things never used to happen."

Intimidation of women for religious reasons has become more common in the past year, and those who do not cover themselves are often the targets of kidnappers. Salons have been bombed and the Princess Salon's chief stylist, Nazar Zadayan, says he has been threatened several times.

They go on to point out that the situation for women is better in Afghanistan, where women can take off their burkas without fear. Too many religious conservatives were elected to the new legislative body in Iraq, however. While many women ran for office, only those with conservative values were elected.

The second is about Putin's recent remarks about the "glory days" of the Soviet Union (hat tip Amy Ridenour):

Russian President Vladimir Putin told the nation Monday that the collapse of the Soviet empire "was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century" and had fostered separatist movements inside Russia.

In his annual state of the nation address to parliament and the country's top political leaders, Putin said the Soviet collapse was "a genuine tragedy" for Russians.

"First and foremost it is worth acknowledging that the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century," Putin said. "As for the Russian people, it became a genuine tragedy. Tens of millions of our fellow citizens and countrymen found themselves beyond the fringes of Russian territory.

Such words are shocking to the majority of westerners. No matter the situation in Russia, how could anyone long for the Soviet Union? Does he not remember Stalin's terror?

I do not doubt that the fears expressed by the Iraqi women are well founded. When a country has been kept under the heal of a dictator for so long, all sorts of tensions are kept underground. Ancient hatreds and prejudices do not go away, they are simply put on hold. And when the dictatorship is removed, they spring to the surface.

It has been said by many that democracy is about more than holding elections. That has never been better illustrated by the stories above.

The German Experience

Perhaps the most famous example of a people longing for a authoritarian past and rejecting democracy occurred in Germany during the 1920's. To the modern mind, it would seem obvious that the Weimar Republic was better than Prussian militarism. Yet consider the hyperinflation that struck Germany during the early days of the Weimar Republic
(Nazi Germany: A New History, by Klaus Fischer):

Germans were caught in a vortex from which there seemed no escape. the world was upside-down: a simple penny postage stamp cost 5 million marks, an egg 80 million, a pound of meat 3.2 biullion, a pound of butter 6 billion, a pound of potatoes 50 million, a glass of beer 150 million. Prices changed from day to day, prompting people to rush to the stores armed with satchels of worthless money to buy simple necessities.

To many Germans this period seemed like an economic apocalypse....We might also add that it also seemed like the end of faith in government, its good word, and its assurance that the savings of ordinary citizens would be protected.....The savings of thrifty middle-class Germans was wiped out. It was not uncommom for German savers to receive polite letters from bank managers informing them that "the bank deeply regrets that it can on longer administer your deposit of sixty-eight thousand marks, since the costs are all out of proportion to the capital. We are therefore taking the liberty of returning your capital. Since we have no bank-notes of small enough denominations at our disposal, we have rounded out the sum to one million marks. Enclusure: one 1,000,000 mark bill." To add insult to injury, the envelope was adorned by a canceled five million mark postage stamp.

It's not a wonder why people became Nazis.

The government literally was forced to take back small denomination bills and print extra zeroes on them, and them reissue them.

A Sailor's Story

When I was in St Petersburg, Russia, in 1993, one of the sights we visited was the cruiser Aurora. After paying our fee and going onboard the ship, we were met by an old man who, in passable English, offered to take us on a tour of the vessle. Knowledgeable by now as to the ways of Russia, we realized that he was not an official tourguide but just someone who wanted to make a few extra dollars by taking westerners on tours. We agreed and he did a fine job.

As always, we made it a habit to ask the people we met about their backgrounds and their opinions of various matters. We found out that this man had been a captain in the Soviet Navy but had retired several years ago, when the country was still the Soviet Union. His pension had been wiped out by inflation, and he depended on tips from westerners to make his living. He apparently talked the officials into letting him on board to do this, probably in return for a percentage of his tips. We had encountered this situation several times before and, given the man's knowledge of naval matters, had no reason to doubt his story. We gave him something like a ten dollar tip, which was an enormous sum of money in their economy.

Given this and other stories we've all heard about Russia, is it a wonder some people say that they long for the days of Stalin? There is something in us that longs for stability and predictability. And when it seems like the world is falling apart,

Nostalgia for a Dictator?

So do the people in the stories above truely long to be ruled by a dictator? I don't think so. I think it's more a desperation that comes from living in difficult and uncertain times. The Iraqi women do have good reasons to be afraid. The Russians do have cause to bemoan their reduced status in the world. The Germans of eighty years ago did have reason to think their world had turned upside down.

It's all too easy for us in the West to talk highly of freedom and democracy, when even our Great Depression was fairly mild compared to the situations described above. Success in Iraq and Afghanistan depends as much on security and the economy as it does on elections and establishment of a representative government.

Democracy is about a way of thinking, a means of peacefully resolving conflict within society. It is the establishment of common law, of civil society, of all those things that we take for granted but which takes centuries to get right, if ever at all.

So we mustn't be overly upset when we read about a people longing for days when they were ruled by a tyrant. We should take it as a warning, as a message that we have a lot of work to do. But I'm not really worried that we don't take this seriously in Iraq or Afghanistan. One of the hallmarks of American liberation, from the Marshall Plan in Europe, to MacArthur's administration of Japan after World War II, to our liberation of Iraq and Afghanistan, has been our willingness to spend billions on reconstruction. That some on the left do not seem to recognize the importance of this investment must not disuade us from our task. We can only lose this War on Terror if we want to.

Posted by Tom at 10:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Saudi Deal with the Devil

It is said that a gaff is when someone gets caught saying what they really think. If true, then the Chief Justice of Saudi Arabia certainly got caught in a gaff the other day (hat tip lgf):

"If someone knows that he is capable of entering Iraq in order to join the fight, and if his intention is to raise up the word of God, then he is free to do so," says Sheik Saleh Al Luhaidan in Arabic on the October audiotape from a government mosque, obtained by NBC News.

While Luhaidan warns Iraq is risky because "evil satellites and drone aircraft" watch the borders, he stresses making the trip to fight Americans is religiously permissible.

"The lawfulness of his action is in fighting an enemy who is fighting Muslims and came for war," says Luhaidan.

"This statement shows the real face of the Saudi government," Saudi dissident Ali Al-Ahmed of the Washington-based Saudi Institute told NBC, noting Saudi officials, including Luhaidan, publicly oppose holy war in Iraq, but send a different message in private.

"He is telling Saudis it's OK to go to Iraq and kill Americans and Iraqis and they won't be punished for doing that," says Al-Ahmed.

When a Saudi spokesman denied the authenticity of the tape, the network contacted Luhaidan himself in Saudi Arabia to play the tape.

"Yes, this is my voice," the sheik confirmed in Arabic.

But Luhaidan said he meant to convey the message that it's "not worth it for young Saudis to go to Iraq and that the Iraqis are capable of fighting on their own," according to NBC.

Yeah right.

This is the result of the deal with the devil that the ruling Saudi family has made. When the kingdom was founded in the early 20th century, the Saudis essentially told the radical Wahhibist clerics "leave us alone and we'll keep you funded."

This "worked" for some time. But eventually the radicals grew bold enough to bite the hand that fed them. The defining moment was probably the presence of American troops on Saudi Arabia during and after the Gulf War. This was what caused Osama bin Laden to decide that America and the Saudi government would be his main targets.

As a result, the Saudis have suffered a spate of terrorist attacks over the past ten years or so. The situation appeared to be getting out of hand last year, but fortunately the Saudi government took action and appear to have the terrorists on the run now.

But even so, this does not correct the essential wrong within their country; that it is ruled by a corrupt dictatorship that is resistant to reform. And as I've said many times on this blog, it is to our detriment that we supported them for so long. It is high time that we call them to the carpet and demand basic reform. Sometimes Bush appears to be doing this, but othertimes he backtracks. As of now Bush is playing nicey-nice with them trying to get them to increast production to reduce oil prices, but his efforts have been in vain. It is high time we ended this short-term policy in return for one demanding basic reform.

Posted by Tom at 9:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 27, 2005

The Near Capture of Zarqawi

It has been reported in several places that we almost caught Zarqawi in February.

ABC news has more details (Hat tip Bill Roggio)

On Feb. 20, the alleged terror mastermind was heading to a secret meeting in Ramadi, just west of Fallujah, where he used to base his operations, the official said.

Task Force 626 — the covert American military unit charged with finding Zarqawi — had troops in place to grab the fugitive, and mobile vehicle checkpoints had been established around the city's perimeter. Another U.S. official said predator drones were also in flight, tracking movements in and around the city.

A source who had been inside the Zarqawi network alerted the task force to the meeting. Officials deem the source "extremely credible."

Several points stand out.

First, the revelation that we have an agent or source "inside the Zarqawi" network is significant. Al-Qaeda is notoriously hard to penetrate. Second, sooner or later his luck will run out. His capture or death will be a tremendous psychological blow to the terrorists. Third, as a Fox News story says, we captured his laptop, which "contained valuable intelligence, including numerous photos — apparently some of which were recent pictures of Zarqawi."

Posted by Tom at 11:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

We're Winning

Oh yes we are.

The Naysayers have had their day. While much could still go wrong, we turned the corner some time ago and are on the way to wrapping this up. The terrorists will create trouble for awhile, but the prospect of their taking control of the Iraqi government is now remote.

And I'm not just talking about the success of the elections and formation of a new government. I'm talking about defeating the insurgency, killing the terrorists and/or chasing them out of Iraq.

Rich Lowry sums it up

If current trends continue, our counter-insurgent campaign in Iraq will be fit to be mentioned in the same breath as the British victory over a Communist insurgency in Malaysia in the 1950s, a textbook example of this form of war. Our counterinsurgency has gone through the same stages as that of the Brits five decades ago: confusion in the initial reaction to the insurgency, followed by a long period of adjustment, and finally the slow but steady erosion of the insurgency's military and political base. Even as there has been a steady diet of bad news about Iraq in the media over the last year, even as some hawks have bailed on the war in despair, even as Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld has become everyone's whipping boy, the U.S. military has been regaining the strategic upper hand.

Last October Lowry wrote about "What Went Wrong". His current article in National Review (subscription required to view the full article) is "What Went Right". And despite what you may hear from the msm, much has gone right.

No doubt much went wrong at first. In retrospect, it almost seems obvious that this should have been the case. When one thinks back on most American wars, from the Revolution to the Civil War (from the North's perspective) to World War II, they all follow the same pattern; initial mishaps if not diasasters, incorrect assuptions, American rethinking, and finally we get our act together and utterly defeat our enemy.

The Strategy of Public Works

We had to change our strategy:

The U.S. strategy became to use every instrument of power at our disposal (military, political, economic, etc.) to drive a wedge between the Sunni fence-sitters and the irredeemable elements of the insurgency — the criminals, the various Islamists, and the FREs. Attempts would be made to engage the Sunnis, while the other forces would be captured or killed. The strategy involved four main lines of operation — security, governance, basic services, and the economy — all of which complemented each other and had the goal of creating a legitimate Iraqi government that could look after its own security

.

It was a blending of carrot and stick. There are two ways to try to keep someone from taking $200 to attack Americans: “You can raise the cost to someone of planting an IED [an Improvised Explosive Device] by making it more likely you will kill him, but also by providing alternatives that make him less likely to want to take the risk in the first place,” says an administration official. Or as an officer in Iraq puts it, “You can’t kill or capture everybody.”

That’s why infrastructure projects and other economic-development measures are so important. Our troops became the equivalent to FDR's Civilian Conservation Corps, employing Iraqis in thousands of public works projects.

The most important thing we did was to move from "occupation" to "liberation". No matter how we saw it, many Iraqis saw us as an occupation force. Many around the world shared this view, no matter what the reality. The result was that we faced a propaganda nightmare of lies and misinformation. But whatever the truth, people act on their perceptions.

Thus we had to disband the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and hand real power over to an Iraqi government. Elections had to be held as soon as possible no matter the danger. The Pentagon, to it's credit, had wanted to do this all along. It had been held back mainly by State.

It was handing power to Allawi, then, that was the turning point. It allowed Iraqis to fight for something that was their own. The elections consolidated and confirmed this transfer.

Training New Iraqi Forces

In addition, we needed to put more effort into training Iraqi police and military forces.

The police needed more military-style preparation. “We had built it on a Western, police-force-in-a-democracy model,” says a top officer in Iraq. The training now emphasizes survival skills, force protection, IED-detection, and the use of AK-47s. More emphasis has been placed on the training of units. “Individual police are important, but they can’t stand up to insurgents,” says the officer, who invokes as a model the special carabinieri units that took down the mafia in Sicily.

The End of Sanctuaries

During the Vietnam War the enemy had many sanctuaries; Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam itself. We had allowed Fallujah to become such a sanctuary in Iraq. This had to change.

We learned that you can't fight a war on a "start and stop" basis. If you're going to go in, you have to finish the job. Start-and-stop simply gives the enemy confidence that you don't have the will to win.

This time, Iraqi forces did much better. We used them to take down sensitive targets, such as Mosques and hospitals.

Our forces performed brilliantly

The performance of the U.S. forces was spectacular. Marines got shot and kept on fighting. When the battle ended, there was a rash of reports of previously ignored wounds. “Headquarters asked, ‘Why are you reporting 35 wounded so late?’” says Natonski. “We were reporting them so late because these kids didn’t report it when they were wounded. The Corpsmen bandaged themselves up and stayed in the fight. The Marines at Iwo Jima, Chosin Reservoir, and Vietnam set the bar pretty high, and they lived up to the standard.”

All of the indicators, Lowry says, are now moving in our direction:

If the infrastructure and economy leave much to be desired, they have improved over the immediate post-invasion conditions. Iraqi security forces are better. More intelligence is available, both from tips and because Iraqi forces — more attuned to local conditions — are in the fight. Sanctuaries for insurgents have been denied in Iraq’s cities and a little progress has even been made with regard to Syria. (“The resources aren’t flowing as freely from Syria anymore,” an administration official explains. “The people who lead the insurgency are not as comfortable. They are not sleeping in the same places at night.”) Finally, the political process is on track, even if stumbling blocks remain, and it’s not clear whether the balance of Sunni fence-sitters will participate in it

All of this is encouraging, especially if you have realistic expectations.

Want More?

The latest from StrategyPage (April 25 post)

The terrorists have been losing popular support, as well as angering Iraqis to the point where many Iraqis are no longer afraid to resist the gangs that control many villages and neighborhoods by fear. The terrorists are usually Sunni Arabs who either supported Saddam, or are violently opposed to the idea of the Shia majority running the country. Most Sunni Arabs don't really care who runs the place, as long as it is done with less violence and corruption than Saddam used.

The suspects arrested in the downing of the Bulgarian helicoper a few days ago were turned in by fellow Iraqis, a trend that has been increasing as of late. It may not be that people have allegiance to the new government so much as they are just fed up with violence that is increasingly directed against them.

Thus the terrorists are caught in a quandary; if they attack American or coalition forces they are slaughtered, if they attack Iraqis they lose the support of the population. Revolutionary leaders from Mao to Castro depended on popular support for their success. Some, like the Viet Cong, were able to at least terrorize a politically apathetic population into acquiesence.

Faced with this difficult choice, they are attacking the target of least resistance; unarmed civilians. Unfortunately for them, these attacks are not

...encouraging Iraqis to support the terrorists, or reduce popular support for the government. The Americans are no longer blamed for the bombings, although it's still popular to blame the attacks on Islamic "foreigners."

Good enough for me.

You may be under the impression that the war in Iraq is all a case of U.S. forces sitting around waiting for a bomb to go off (punctuated by the occasional Iraqi raid), rest assured that while

Attacks are still staged, but often they are situations where it amounts to the attackers being ambushed. Such is the case in western Iraq, where American troops set up small bases in areas known to be full of anti-government forces. Soon, the local terrorists will stage attacks, which inevitably fail, with heavy terrorist casualties. The terrorists never seem to catch on to how many disadvantages they have. The Americans have extensive intelligence resources (especially electronic eavesdropping), night vision equipment and disciplined troops manning camp defenses.

Posted by Tom at 11:00 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

April 26, 2005

Terror in the Skies Update

and The James Woods Encounter

Last July (here, here here and here I wrote about Annie Jacobson, who's experience on Northwest flight 327 was the subject of her much-talked about "Terror in the Skies" article in the Women's Wall Street Journal.

At the time some say that she overreacted. I wondered, but thought it credible. Michelle Malkin, who has done great work keeping air safety in the forefront of her reporting, thinks so also. Joe Scarbough took it seriously enough to report on it on his MSNBC television show.

Jacobson's latest installment on the incident appeared a few days ago in the Women's Wall Street Journal. This one details a visit she got from the Department of Homeland Security, which took the incident a lot more seriously than did Transportation.

Here's what I find fascinating: while one arm of the government (the Federal Air Marshal Service) has vehemently maintained all along that "nothing happened on flight 327," the other, more muscular arm (the Department of Homeland Security) has been conducting a rather large investigation about it. Based on my 4 ½ hour meeting with the agents, I can tell you that not only have they been investigating what did happen during the flight, but they've also been investigating who botched the subsequent investigation as well as how it got botched.

(Hat tip Michelle Malkin).

Thank you, Tom Ridge.

The Homeland Security agents had called her to request an interview (they called her on her cell phone, which is of course an unlisted number. Interesting...) Anyway, four agents flew from their office in Los Angeles to her house in Chicago even though Jacobson had warned them that she was about to give birth so might not be available.

The first thing I clarified for the agents was that, prior to my experience on flight 327, I had never heard of a "probe" or a "dry run." For the record, I explained, I had never heard of the James Woods incident either. [In case you're not aware, the actor James Woods flew on an American Airlines flight from Boston to Los Angeles one month prior to 9/11. Alarmed by the behavior of a group of four Middle Eastern men, Woods summoned the pilot and told him that he was "concerned the men were going to hijack the plane." A report was filed with the FAA on Woods' behalf but, tragically, no one followed up with Woods or the men. A few days after 9/11, several federal agents showed up in Woods' kitchen. Woods can't talk about what was said -- he believes his testimony will be used in the trial of the supposed 20th hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui-- but, in an interview with Bill O'Reilly, Woods revealed that his flight "was a rehearsal [for 9/11] with four men."]

Standing in my kitchen, one of the agents said, "What I can tell you is this: Mohammed Atta

was one of the passengers on that flight with James Woods." (Apparently, this information has never been made public.) With that, the agent pulled out his chair, opened his notebook and started in with his questions for me (at which point the other three agents opened up their notepads almost simultaneously).

You have got to read the whole thing.

The New Yorker also wrote a story on the James Woods incident by Seymore Hersh. Since I don't generally trust Hersh you'll have to take it for what it's worth.

This is also another reason why I don't trust Snopes, a so-called "rumor investigating" website. Their bias on the matter shows plainly in their "investigation." Over the past few months I've seen lefties quote them in attempts to say that something or another "has been debunked by snopes". But even a cursory reading of many snopes articles reveals shoddy research and an obvious bias.

Far from being an "urban legend", as snopes would have us believe, the case is not at all closed:

The agents who sat with me all morning going over the events of flight 327 seemed sincerely committed to getting to the bottom of what happened on that flight. It seemed obvious that they believe something happened. Was it a probe? A dry run? A training exercise or an intelligence gathering mission? My sense is that the jury's still out on a hard and fast answer. But flight 327 was far from a situation involving 13 hapless Syrian musicians and a case of bad behavior.

Don't let your guard down.

Posted by Tom at 10:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Prayers for Laura

Radio talk show host Laura Ingraham has announced that she has breast cancer. From her website:

You know I hate Drama Kings or Queens, but I am asking for your prayers today and for the forseeable future. On Friday afternoon, I learned that I have joined the ever-growing group of American women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer. As so many breast cancer patients will tell you, it all came as a total shock. I am blessed to be surrounded by people who love me--my family, a wonderful fiance (if he thinks he's going to get out of marrying me because of this little blib, he's sadly mistaken!), my friends, and my church. I am absolutely blown away by how helpful and kind everyone has been--including total strangers who have experienced the same rollercoaster of emotions. The sisterhood of breast cancer survivors is inspiring. I am truly blessed. On Tuesday I will have an operation and within a few days will know more about the future. I am hopeful for a bright future and a "normal" life (well, scratch the "normal" part). Anyway, people have gone through much worse, and I know I'll obliterate this. I am thanking you in advance for your prayers. You are my family. And remember, I'll be back sooner than you think

My prayers and thoughts are with her for a speedy recovery.

Posted by Tom at 10:39 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 25, 2005

Iran Liberty Walk

Iran is going to get the bomb unless the United States takes drastic action, action that we know we are not going to take.

Some Iranian expatriates want freedom for their homeland and want to warn us of the consequences of letting Iran get the bomb. The Iran Freedom Foundation is one of those organizations. They are " made up of American and Iranian scholars, professionals, philanthropists and human rights advocates who have joined together to support the rights of the Iranian people."

Iran Liberty Walk

Dr Jerone Corsi, author of Atomic Iran: How the Terrorist Regime Bought the Bomb and American Politicians, is organizing a march from the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia to Washington DC beginning May 16.

Designed to help bring peaceful change in Iran, "The Iran Liberty Walk" will begin at the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. The walk will be broadcast into Iran via radio, television, and the Internet, featuring live coverage and interviews with those participating in the event. It is estimated that some 40 million Iranians will follow the coverage of "The Iran Liberty Walk."

Corsi, age 58, says the route from Philadelphia to DC is approximately 128 miles and will take two weeks to complete. "I am 58 years old and yet determined to walk the distance. I invite all who share our purpose to join me for as much of the walk as you can."

That "40 million will follow the coverage" seems a bit optimistic to me. Nevertheless, all freedom-loving people should wish him and his followers well. While I do not know much about the group (other than a personal reference, see below), and thus cannot vouch for them, I have read their website through and they appear to be a genuine freedom group.

On a Personal Level

One of the guys I work with is an Iranian expatriot. He and his family escaped just before Khomeini's takeover in 1979. He was kind enough to introduce me to the Iran Freedom Foundation. Over the past year I've had many discussions with him about his country and American policy. He is, as you may imagine, a supporter of President Bush's policy of spreading democracy, and was quite excited by the Inaugural address and State of the Union Speech.

I'll track the march and provide updates in future. In the meantime, check out their website and sign their petition.

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

April 23, 2005

Not One Dime

It's now about 50/50 as to whether John Bolton will be confirmed as ambassador to the United Nations. If he is confirmed, it's a step forward for reform. If he is not confirmed, the ramifications go far beyond the UN.

At this point I have to think that the GOP base is becoming upset at their Senators. As a whole they are simply not standing up for John Bolton. Even worse, they are not forcing the issue on judicial nominations like we hoped they would. "Not one Dime" - no money for the GOP - is a theme I've heard around the Internet. I don't know if contributions have fallen off or not, but I can tell you that I'm a lot more hesitant to respond to GOP fund-raising letters than I was a few months ago. And if we lose on this nomination and on judicial nominations in general, it's going to be a while before the national party gets any money from me.

And now we have Colin Powell coming out against Bolton. From what I read, it's the usual "strategic leak" campaign we've come to expect from him. Sad to say, my opinion of Powell has sunk these past few years. He was a great general, a not-so-good secretary of state, and and now is it going too far to call him a back-stabber? Ugh.

The Democrats, of course, have it all wrong on the United Nations. Their sentimentality for the institution in the face of all of it's scandals is disgusting. Bolton, however, is clear-headed about it and the role of the Secretary General

"... One should not invest excessive hope in any secretary-general. The U.N. Charter describes the secretary-general as the U.N.'s 'chief administrative officer.' He is not the president of the world. He is not a diplomat for all seasons. He is not Mr. Friend of the Earth. And most definitely of all, he is not commander in chief of the World Federalist Army. He is the chief administrative officer. Nothing less than that, to be sure, but, with even greater certainty, nothing more."

This is common sense to me. But, as Mona Charen points out,

Bolton's approach to the United Nations, which was also the approach of Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick, is anathema to U.S. liberals. During the confirmation hearing, Sen. Barbara Boxer played a tape of Bolton's frank description of the United Nations' top-heavy bureaucracy. "There are 38 floors to the U.N. building in New York. If you lost 10 of them, it wouldn't make a bit of difference," Bolton is heard to say.

Triumphant in her belief that she had caught Bolton out, Boxer declared: "You have nothing but disdain for the United Nations. You can dance around it, you can run away from it, you can put perfume on it, but the bottom line is the bottom line." Sen. Joseph Biden wondered aloud why Bolton even wanted the job.

They just don't get it. At this point any decent person can only but have distain for most of the United Nations. I'm not even going to recite all of the scandals and misdeeds of that institution, as I don't have time. That the left still wants to play nicey-nice shows how blinded by ideology they have become.

As for my side, I'm disappointed in them, and the next week will be telling. We'll see what our money has gotten us. If they don't perform, a google search for "not one dime" is going to bring even more returns than it does now.

Townhall.com Reader Poll Should the Senate proceed and vote to confirm John Bolton? [2494 votes total] Yes, right away (2354): 94% No (92): 4% Yes, after a little more debate (48): 2% Full Results Comments

Posted by Tom at 11:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 22, 2005

The Week

Apologies for the light blogging this week. Personal matters have intervened and may keep me away from the computer next week also.

If you don't see much new hear please go to my other blog site, Conserva-Puppies, where there's always a lively discussion.

John Bolton

I've read several articles about why the Democrats don't want to confirm him as ambassador to the UN and it all pretty much seems to come down to "he wasn't nice to some of his employees a few times"

It's all last-minute character assassination and we shouldn't stand for it. That RINOs like Voinovich fall for this stuff is deplorable. We need someone like Bolton to whack the scoundrels at the UN over the head and hard. Jeanne Kirkpatrick did it in the early 80's and the left hated her for it. They remember how successful she was and don't want another person like her as ambassador, which is reason enough for me that he should be confirmed.

Tom DeLay

So what exactly is it that he has done wrong? The allegations against him as so "inside the beltway" that you have to think that people around the country have no idea as to what it's all about. In fact, I can't recite them now. I'd have to look them up, which I have neither the time nor inclination to do.

The bottom line is that the Democrats are going after DeLay because he has proven to be an effective leader. They want a head to hand on their wall to go along with Bob Livingston and Newt Gingrich. It's become a tit for tat over the past ten years; first we got their Tom Foley, then they got our Newt Gingrich. We got their Tom Daschle, now they're going after our leader. Well, at least our side has real ideas and an agenda to go along with our headhunting. The Democrats are all "no, no, no" these days.

Pope Benedict XVI

Andrew Sullivan has his panties in a wad over the selection of Cardinal Ratzinger as pope. In fact, liberals in general are apopolectic. This tells me that he was an excellent choice.

I am not a Roman Catholic, so won't comment on theological matters directly. But I have seen what the adoption of leftist politics can do to church membership. As a one-time Presbyterian (PCUSA) I've seen their membership decline by 40% over the past thirty years.

Kofi Annan

Winner of the Chutzpah of the Week award, Annan claims that the Volker Commission's report exonerates him. Thankfully the Bush admistration is saying that Annan's future "is not certain", which is diplospeak for "we're mad as hell at him but can't say it directly." Too bad the Democrats seem to be missing the boat on the UN.

Rice Rocks

Is Condolezza Rice the greatest Secretary of State we've had for a long time or what? Check out these interviews (here and here) with her that Bill Rice posted on his blog over at Dawn's Early Light. Every time I learn more about her I'm the more impressed.

Posted by Tom at 9:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 18, 2005

It's not too late...

...to sign up for the next GOPUSA Issues and Action Conference

Where: Woodbridge Sheraton

When: Saturday May 14

Contact: New Jersey GOP-USA | 212-592-4176 | conference@pwrcevents.com

Long-time readers of this blog will recall that I attended one of these conferences last year when it was held in Washington DC and had a great time. If you're anywhere near the New Jersey area, please consider signing up.

Posted by Tom at 12:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Leftist Assaults on Free Speech

As anyone who's followed the blogosphere recently knows, there's been a spate of incidents recently in which leftist protesters have thrown pies and other food at conservative speakers.

Is it a big deal? Michelle Malkin thinks so:

Drudge linked last night to a story and video of Pat Buchanan getting attacked by a deranged college student while giving a speech. The assailant doused Buchanan's face completely with salad dressing. He screamed, "Stop the bigotry!"before charging within inches of Buchanan and nearly hitting him in the head with the bottle as well.

If you think this is funny, you are sick. This is madness and it is chilling. Where are all the free-speech defenders when you need them? Too busy defending loons like you-know-who and trying to suppress the free-speech rights of law-abiding citizens.

These physical attacks targeting conservatives on campus and in the public square are getting more frequent. (See Kristol, Coulter, Perle, Harris, and the conservative kid who got kicked by a left-wing nut professor, for starters.) The Left continues to snicker about it. The MSM makes light of it (CBS: "A Dressing-Down For Pat Buchanan"; NPR: "What's a little pie in the face?"). And for the most part, college administrators let the thugs get away with it.

These unhinged moonbats have more thoroughly exposed the great myth of liberal tolerance than any conservative critic could. For that, I suppose we should be grateful.

I've caught a few of her campus lectures on C-SPAN, and can tell you that the left hates her with a vengence. At the ones I've seen the campus police kept the rabble-rousers out of the lecture hall, but you could hear their chants in the background.

Some will say that this is no big deal. What, after all, are a few pies? And if that was all conservatives could point too, I'd agree. But it is really just part of a larger attempt by leftists to prevent conservatives from speaking at all.

This is not something new. In the 1980s conservative speakers were regularly shouted down on college campuses by well-organized leftist mobs.

Two friends, Barbara and Lyn La Cava got to see leftist mobs up close recently at the University of Texas when they went to hear David Horowitz speak. As is the standard practice, Horowitz would make some remarks, after which there would be a question and answer period.

The event was sponsored by the University of Texas Federalist Society. Barbara, a member of the "Middle-aged Moms" provides this description of what she saw on her blog, Quid Nimis:

The group that was apparently organized to disrupt the lecture used three main tactics: holding up aforementioned cheesy signs, shouting and interrupting verbally, and using cell phones and air horns to create noise. At various times some were hustled out by campus security, some left noisily of their own accord ("Some people can't handle the truth") and some put up a fuss so that they had to be handcuffed, which is the pseudo-revolutionary's martyrdom. You get extra points if you manage to wrest your arm away from the cop long enough to hold your fist high and scream, "Power to the peopllllle!!" Such courage, such passion, such fervor. One could almost hear the the plaintive chorus of babushka-ed garment workers singing "Bread and Roses."

Having been to several Horowitz lectures in the past, and this time her and her fellow conservatives were prepared to meet the leftists head on. Lyn La Cava tells us what happened:

There were the usual tedious, hostile rampages posing as questions during the Q & A, but no threat of shutting down the lecture. This time they almost succeeded, as Horowitz rightly refused to talk over persistent cell phone ringing, air horns, shouting and signs. Aggression from the Left is intensifying. This time I wondered if I had erred by sitting front row center, in the line of fire of a pie - or worse. Yet once the rabble attacked, our group stood up against them, adrenaline and outrage trumping anxiety. It was gratifying to toss decorum aside and shout back at these thugs to shut up, go home and grow up. When they shook their fists, we shook ours back. When one charged down the aisle sputtering and shouting, we rose against him yelling “Let Horowitz speak!” among other suggestions. When some acted victimized at being cuffed and led out by police we cried, “Whaa, baby, go home!” At one point the room erupted into a cacophony of yelling from both sides about rights, fascism and free speech.

Apparently she's made enough of an impact on her blog that a few leftists have discovered it and, dispute their description of events in the comments section. I wasn't there, so I can't authoritatively say one way or the other, but I can tell you that over the years I've read so much about situations like these that Barbara and La Cava's descriptions fit perfectly.

And, indeed, a story in the Daily Texan about the lecture backs them up:

Six people, including one juvenile, were arrested Wednesday night after protesting David Horowitz's speech at Townes Hall at the UT School of Law. The Texas Federalist Society hosted the meeting and invited Horowitz, a right-wing advocate and author of the Academic Bill of Rights, to speak.

Opposition groups were holding signs and speaking out during Horowitz's speech on Wednesday, but when they were told to stop speaking, some took out noisemakers to mark their disapproval of the speaker. Three females and three males were arrested and then jailed under charges of disrupting a meeting or procession ­- a Class B misdemeanor. The subjects were not UT students.

People who can not or will not control themselves deserve to be arrested. The invited speaker deserves to have his or her say. Occasional cheering or booing is fine, but it should not go on long enough to prevent the speaker from continuing. There is always a Q & A period, and this is the time during which dissent should be expressed. Tough and pointed questions are fine, no one has any objections to them.

According to the Daily Texan, two of the students were arrested for using an air horn, and the other four for "verbal utterances" , described as "yelling and arguing with a speaker". Again, this to me is unacceptable behavior and they deserved arrest.

But this is not all the leftists did. Again, the Daily Texan:

"Protesters chose to disrupt Mr. Horowitz's lecture by moving threateningly toward the stage, shouting at the speaker and blowing foghorns and other noise-making devices," Breloff said in a statement.

Melissa Hotze, assistant vice president of events, was sitting in the last row of the auditorium and said she was frustrated that the protesters would not sit down until the question and answer period to voice their opinions.

In other words, they refused to follow the rules and decided that they would act like spoiled brats. That's the nicest thing I can say. The worst is that they're really a bunch of fascists but are too ignorant of history to know it.

Predictably, the left views all this as "an assault on free speech"

A speech about academic freedom turned into a "violation of First Amendment rights," according to Dana Cloud, a member of the International Socialist Organization.
...
"The irony of squelching such a protest with police on a meeting on free speech is the fact that Horowitz is part of a growing trend, the new McCarthyisms - disciplining progressive faculty," Cloud said.

No, Dana, you do not have the right to shout down speakers. You do not have the right to disrupt a lecture. If you want to make a fool of yourself go outside and march around with the stupid signs you leftists usually carry. But when you disrupt speakers, I'm going to cheer when you get arrested.

Update

I have made a few minor corrections in the above text that was brought to my attention by Lyn La Cava.

We also have some commentary on the article in the Daily Texan, provided by Quid Nimis:

The Daily Texan article was apparently written by someone who wasn't there. There is no mention of the VIGOROUS anti-protest group shouting back at the Socialists/Anarchists/Totalitarian-Welcome-Wagon Leftist Frat Boys 'n Girls. Its primary source is a Leftist professor of Communications, Dana Cloud, whom the article quotes at the beginning and end, and, secondarily, the police blotter.

[Note to self : add "Communications" to list of joke majors, along with Education and Sociology.]

Turns out there were a total of six "cuffed martyrs" who got to spend about 18 hours as guests of the police department. None of them were actually students at UT (Surprise!).

Apparently the left imports professional agitators. As I said above, these people use fascist tactics whether they know it or not.

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

April 15, 2005

"Discover the Network" works

As I mentioned in an earlier post, David Horowitz has created a new website called "Discover the Network" which is a database of left-wing groups and people. It is the best single research tool for this that I have found so far.

I used it yesterday in a debate with a leftist on Dr. Sanity's website. The leftist challenged us to name "anti-America, anti-Democracy" academics. I used "Discover the Network" to list several in my reply. He (or she) was taken aback. It was, I admit, quite satisfying.

Horowitz has a new post on his Frontpagemag site in which he debates a leftist professor, who "has concerns" about Discover the Network:

FP: Prof. Timothy Burke and David Horowitz, welcome to the third and final part of our series on DiscoverTheNetwork.org. Prof. Burke, let me begin with you. What is your assessment of DiscoverTheNetwork? And can you kindly also tell us where you personally stand on members of the left who ally themselves with the enemy in our terror war?

Professor) Burke: On DiscoverTheNetwork, some of my objections have already been ably described by my colleagues. Let me mention a few of my greatest concerns.

First, I think the entire project has an almost non-existent sense of what represents a “linkage” between two separate individuals. This is the bread and butter art of intellectual or political history, the major question in the study of social networks. What is minimally needed to claim a serious or substantial connection between two people in terms of ideas they share, institutional projects they are both contributing to, influences they exert on one another? Whether you’re talking about a connection across time (some individual in the past influencing some individual at a later time) or space (some individual in one society or community influencing another), you have to define what you regard as a meaningful connection, stick to that definition, and provide evidence of it. ...

Horowitz: Professor Burke begins with a series of insults – as seems to be the norm for leftists, particularly when discussing issues with conservatives whose work they have not read. But underneath the unearned scorn poured forth in Professor Burke’s first two paragraphs lies an interesting point, in fact the only interesting point that has surfaced in the three conversations so far.

If I could rephrase this point for Professor Burke, it would be that DiscoverTheNetwork doesn’t articulate the rationale for the linkages it makes on the site in a fashion explicit enough to make clear to him and leftists like him what the rationale might be for its construction. (I notice I have received no such critiques of the linkages on DiscoverTheNetwork from conservatives of whatever persuasion. Nor have any liberals for that matter found the categories in the site suspect let alone risible.) In Professor Burke’s view – respectfully rephrased -- DiscoverTheNetwork identifies networks but doesn’t explain why anyone who shares the assumptions and prejudices of the left should take them seriously

Read the whole thing.

Posted by Tom at 9:55 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Best Non-Council Post

My post, "War with China: 2008 - 2010" has won the weekly "Best Non-Council Post" over at Watcher of Weasels."

Interestingly, the other post that won was also about China; "China's Time Bomb's" over at The Glittering Eye. Check it out.

Thank you to everyone who read my post and thought it worthy.

Thank you especially to Marvin Hutchins, who submitted my post.

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

April 14, 2005

One Year Blogging Anniversary (almost, anyway), and

Thoughts on Blogging

This week's Homespun Bloggers Symposium question comes from patterico:

How has blogging affected your life?

By an accident of timing this question comes almost exactly one year after I started blogging. My first post was April 28, 2004. I started out hoping I would be able to stick with it, which in retrospect should have been the least of my concerns. I've been planning a one-year anniversary post anyway, so I may as well use patterico's question as my lead.

The short answer to patterico's question is that I have become almost completely addicted to it. So much so, in fact, that I am now in the process of moving off of Blogger, a free service to a paid service.

A bit of background

I started blogging with a few objectives in mind:

• To help me organize and consolidate my thoughts on the issues of the day
• To make me a better writer. For years I've read books by the cartload, and had innumerable discussions with people. But it's one thing to toss an idea around in your head, and quite another to put it down on paper.
• I wanted to receive feedback and critique, which in turn would give me an opportunity to reevaluate my ideas.
• It forces me to think things through and, hopefully, make sure that my arguments are logical.
• Writing makes me a better debater. By that I don't necessarily mean "argue", although sometimes it comes down to that. Rather I've noticed that when engaged in discussion I can explain an idea better now that I've written about it.
  

All of these objectives have been met and exceeded. But more occured that I did not forsee.

If you're like me then you don't go around talking politics to everyone you meet. Certainly at work, where it seems we spend so much of our lives, I don't talk politics except perhaps with a - very - few trusted associates. And in daily life it's not something that get's discussed much, and when I do it's not in depth. Politics being as divisive as it is, and myself being so passionate about it, the last thing I want to do is to create unnecessary divisions and hard feelings.

Oh sure, there is always the occasional exception. But in general my intellectual experience has been confined to reading books and talking about them only occasionally with a few people.

With my family it's an entirely different matter. We talk politics almost everytime we meet. Everyone is a conservative, so any disagreement is usually over things like "how great a danger is Hillary?" or something like that. We're a pretty loud bunch, with everyone talking at once, kids running around, the whole bit. But we don't get together but once every month or so.

I've Found Them

So I don't talk politics or history with most people, but intellectually I know they're out there. After all, someone else must subscribe to National Review. Someone else must be buying Tom Sowell's books.

Sure, I read the Internet magazines like National Review Online and Frontpagemag. But when you can't really interact with the authors, it's all...distant. I don't want to say it's not real, but it's certainly not personal.

Blogging has allowed this interaction in a way I did not forsee when I started this project. The only blog I read when I started this was Andrew Sullivan and National Review's The Corner. Neither of these post comments, although you can send the author email. The level of interaction between bloggers and other people who simply comment was something that I did not anticipate at all and is the most rewarding part of the entire experience.

Finally, I've been able to meet people who share my beliefs - or most of them anyway - and interact with them in a way that I've long hoped for but was never able to realize. I've "met" some very interesting and smart people, and am much the better for it. I won't list names for fear of exclusion, but you know who you are.

My biggest problem now is finding time to do everything on the Internet that I want to do. I even co-blog on another site, Warm 'n Fuzzy Conserva-Puppies. I've accepted an invitation from Marvin Hutchens to co-author a "Threat Assessment" index in which we rank, track, and provide information about threats to our country.

I'd also be dishonest if I didn't just come right out and say that I'm darn proud of the work that I have done on my site. This thing has grown and changed in ways that I hoped it would and in ways I did not ancipate, but all of it has been good. I know it's not the best writing or analysis out there, but it's more than I've ever done before, and if I may say, some of it is pretty good. So there.

Thank you

Lastly, I want to thank all of you who are reading this now, and those of you who are regular readers. Thank you for stopping by and I hope to see you again.

Posted by Tom at 11:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 13, 2005

The Israeli Settlements

In the news on a periodic basis is the issue of Israeli settlements on two pieces of territory; the West Bank and the Gaza strip. Last week Israeli Prime Minister Sharon met with President Bush on the latter's ranch in Texas, where they discussed these and other issues. Sharon wants to "evacuate" settlers from Gaza, while expanding settlements on the West Bank.

Like everyting else in the Middle East, the technical, social, and historical details are unbelievably complex, but the moral issues are fairly straightforward.

Here is a map of Israel for those folks not completely familiar with the geography. One thing to keep in mind is how small the area concerned is. Look at the scale; one could drive the entire length of Isreal in two or three hours. You can stand on some hills on the West Bank and see the Mediterranian Ocean.

The (very) short version of the history of Israel as regards the settlements is that after the 1948 War of Independence Israel formed borders now known as the "pre-1967 borders". This is the light colored area in the map above.

While the reasons for the 1967, or "Six Day War", are, like everything else in that region of the world, complex, but essentially repeated provocations, including blockade of sea routes by Egypt and Syria convinced Israel that it had no choice but to "pre-empt" the Arabs by attacking first. On the morning of June 5 the Israeli Air Force wiped out first the Egyptian Air Force, then the Syrian Air Force, while they sat on the ground in a "Pearl Harbor" type raid. With the Arab air forces decimated, Israeli ground troops quickly destroyed their enemies.

During this war Israel captured four territories:

1) The West Bank (west bank of the Jordan river) captured from Jordan
2) The Golan Heights (a plateau in south-western Syria bordering Israel) captured from Syria
3) The Gaza Strip (now in west south-western Israel) captured from Egypt
4) The Sinai Desert (marked simply "Egypt" on the map above) captured from Egypt

Of these territorie, Sinai was returned to Egypt as part of the Sadat-Begin peace accords of 1979.

Shortly after occupying the territories the Israelis began to occupy them with civilians.

Again, the short version is that Israel captured these terrorities because their original borders were militarily indefensibe, and two, because some religious Jews cite historical and religious claims to the land. However, some Israelis have moved to the settlements for more mundane and practical reasons, such as tax incentives, cheap housing, etc.

The Settlements are Not the Issue

Today we hear from the Arabs that the settlements are the major obstacle to peace. And, if you read the papers, you can be forgiven for thinking that if only the Israelis would give up their settlements a peace could be quickly worked out. The solution, it is said, is to give the Palestinians a country on the West Bank, and to let (demand, really) that Israel live within it's pre-1967 borders.

This is not true for a number of reasons.

1. If the settlements are the problem today, then what was the problem before 1967? Terrorism against Israel did not begin with the end of the Six Day War. The PLO, for example was formed in 1964.
   
2. If the West Bank is such a perfect home for the Palestinians, why didn't Jordan give them this land as their country when they had the chance (i.e. before 1967)?
   
3. The fact is that Israel is willing to negotiate with the Arab countries but with the exception of Egypt and Jordan the Arab countries still refuse to recognize Israel's right to exist.
   
4. The Palestinian "right of return" must be abandoned. This is not something that you read about often (if at all) in your daily newspaper but it is one of the most important things that must be resolved. In short, during the 1948 War of Independence, some 800,000 Arabs fled the area (for reasons that are disputed). Today their ancestors demand the right to return to Israel and claim the land they left, or at least to take up Israeli citizenship. One need not be a demographer to see that these ancestors (and anyone could claim to be one as documentation would be impossible to verify) would now number in the tens of millions. They would simply flood Israel with Arabs, and, in the next election, vote the state of Israel out of existance.
   
5. In short, if the Arabs had not opposed Israel's right to exist from the beginning, had negotiated a peace, had given the Palestinians a homeland on the West Bank, stopped their terrorism, formed democratic (or at least representative) governments, the present situation could have been entirely avoided.
   
6. Further, the Security Fence that Israel is building is not preventing peace as some alledge. It is stopping terrorism, and that is a good thing. My only question is why didn't the Israelis think of it earlier. And I don't care what any "world court" has to say about it.
   

So "the settlements" per se are not really the issue preventing peace.

The Real Issues

The main issues preventing peace are the following

1. Lack of Moral Clarity. I've written on this before here. Here are two of the essential elements of moral clarity lacking in some people:
   
1. Israel is an imperfect democracy, but it is a democracy. No Arab state is a democracy. This does not mean that Israel may do anything it wishes, but it does mean that we should give them the benefit of the doubt.
2. Israeli forces practice discrimination in warfare. That is, they only attack military targets. Civilians are sometimes killed as a byproduct, but the civilians are not the target themselves. Arab/Muslim terrorists deliberately target civilians. Why this is hard for some people to understand is beyond me.
2. Lack of Democracy among the Arab States. Natan Scharansky wrote about this in his excellent book "The Case for Democracy". Simply put, democracies do not fight each other. We in the west are partly responsible for the current state of affairs, since in the past we did not pressure Arab governments to reform.
   
3. Palestinian terrorism - until the Arab states and/or the PA put and end to terrorism by organizations such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the others there will be no peace.
4. The expansion of the settlements should stop. Ok, I know I said earlier that "the settlements per se" are not the problem. And that is true. But it is also true that in my opinion Israel does not need new settlements, and by expanding them they give Palestinian extremists a propaganda message that is useful in recruiting terrorists.
   

That's my take on the whole issue, or at least all I have time to write for now. I may add to this post later.

Posted by Tom at 11:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 12, 2005

Living Wills

If you think a living will will take care of you in a Terri Schaivo-type situation think again:

For decades, we have deluded ourselves into believing that living wills would solve our caregiving problems; that healthy individuals could provide advance instructions for what to do if they became incompetent; that such a system would ensure that no one is mistreated and that everyone defines the meaning of life

for himself until the very end. But it is now clear that living wills have failed, both practically and morally.

In the March-April 2004 issue of the Hastings Center Report, Angela Fagerlin and Carl E. Schneider survey the social science data, and their conclusions are pretty bad: Most people do not have living wills, despite a very active campaign to promote them; those who do usually provide vague and conflicting instructions; people's opinions often change from experience to experience; and people's instructions are easily influenced by how a given scenario is described. These are not problems that any reform can fix. A person simply can't grasp in the present every medical and moral nuance of his own future case.

In a post a few weeks ago I wrote how James Q Wilson's research led him to conclude much the same thing.

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.

Wilson goes on to say that a living will should be backed up with a durable power of attorney. But a durable power of attorney simply transfers responsibility to another person, and it's not clear to me thatthis is a completely satisfactory solution.

I'm not sure what we can do as individuals, but this is an issue that we need to address as a society. The legal needs to catch up with the reality of our current situation.

Posted by Tom at 11:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Bolton's Battle

The Democrats have now decided that supporting the United Nations is an issue that will lead them back to majority status. As such, John Bolton is anethema and must be opposed at all costs.

This may sound rather curious. After all, aren't we talking about the same UN that is corrupt, anti-democratic, and anti-semetic? Consider this partial list of scandals and misdeeds that I posted last month:

• Oil-for-Food ('nuf said there)
• Sex Abuse - Peacekeepers in Congo, Somalia, Kosovo, and elsewhere raping and otherwise sexually abusing the very people they are supposed to be protecting
• Tsunami Relief - Failure to provide relief to the victims of the recent tsunami, and then attackin the United States for forming a coalition of nations who were successful in bringing aid
• Sudan - Failure to stop what is just about genocide in Sudan
• A Security Council that will not enforce its own resolutions
• A Security Council that passes an ever-increasing number of resolutions to little or no effect on the world scene
• Human Rights Commission- They put the worst human rights violators on the planet in on the UN Human Rights commission
• UN Committee on Disarmament - 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
• Kyoto - They promote fatally flawed treaties such as the Kyoto protocol on "global warming", which would have the effect of crippling the US economy
• World Court - The promotion of the World Court, whose purpose would be to prosecute Americans and Israelis, while largely ignoring third-world kleptocrats

To top it all off, Kofi Annan, the General Secretary of the UN, shows no sign of taking serious action. His plan for reform is instead a "get rich quick" scheme in which the developing nations would receive money from the developed ones in return for approving security operations.

The situation today is even worse than it was in the 1970's when the excreable Andrew Young was our ambassador to the UN and spent much of his time there apologizing for the United States. Jeane Kirkpatrick, Reagan's appointee, had to clean up his mess. If anything, the next ambassador faces an even bigger task than the one Kirkpatrick had to deal with.

At this point a reasonable person might say that the UN needs a good hard kick in the rear. No more nicey-nice, go-along-get-along, let's-not-say-bad-things-about-each-other.

So what are the Democrats doing? Opposing John Bolton tooth and nail. As Rich Lowry put's it, they're essentially saying "Don't be mean to the United Nations."

And as Lowry further points out, Bolton has been anything but unilateral in his past diplomacy. It's just that he actually looks out for US interests first, something that seems to enrage the left.

Because the Democrats can't find any factual evidence against Bolton, they've taken to decrying his "style". Their entire argument seems to come down to saying that he has not been "respectful" of the UN. Bill Kristol:

...the assault on Bolton has been pathetic. What does it amount to? He's a longtime U.N. skeptic--appropriate, one would think, given the U.N.'s "Zionism is Racism" history during the Cold War, and its ineffectiveness (to be kind) in Rwanda in the '90s and in Sudan in this decade. But he's worse than a skeptic, the critics say: He has been disrespectful of the august body in which he will represent us. Why, he once joked, "The Secretariat Building in New York has 38 stories. If it lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference." Well, truer words were never spoken.

But it's precisely a new style that is needed. Unless the UN kleptocrats are hit over the head they'll never get the message.

If the Democrats want to propose a policy for reforming the UN that is different than the administrations, fine. I would welcome it. But as Kristol says, this is pathetic. John Bolton may or may not be confirmed (although he probably will be), but if the Democrats want to be taken seriously they need to grow up.

Update

In case you haven't gotten your fill of UN corruption, read this piece in today's Washington Post. It's a column by a legal aid worker who went to Sierra Leone in 2003, shortly after Kofi Annan released his "zero tolerance" policy on sexual harassment.

I found abuse of a sexual nature almost every day -- zero compliance with zero tolerance, as one investigator was to write. U.N. leaders had simply not expended any effort beyond lip service to carry out this zero tolerance policy.

In fact, abuse at these camps went beyond sexual violations: Injustices of one sort or another were perpetrated by U.N. missions or their affiliated nongovernmental organizations every day in the camps I visited. Corruption was the norm, in particular the embezzlement of food and funds by NGO officials, which often left camp resources dangerously inadequate. Utterly arbitrary judicial systems in the camps subjected refugees to violent physical punishment or months in prison for trivial offenses -- all at the whim of officials and in the absence of any sort of hearing.

Read the whole thing.

Posted by Tom at 10:37 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 11, 2005

War with China: 2008 - 2010?

In an earlier post called "The Looming Threat", I wrote that China would likely attack Taiwan sometime "before 2015". In light of better information, I am revising my estimate to say that if there is a war it will occur sometime between 2008 and 2010.

I've changed my time estimate because of two factors; first, additional research has let me to conclude that the military "window of opportunity" for the Chinese will start to close in 2008, and second I have given more thought to the meaning of the 2008 Olympic Games, which will be held in the Chinese capital of Beijing.

I. Why a Chinese Attack?

Many would dismiss a Chinese attack as improbable. The point out that from a logical standpoint, China has no need to occupy or control Taiwan. By attacking China risks throwing their economy into chaos, being isolated on the world stage if not becoming an outright pariah, risking a nuclear escallation, and even if the succeded they would lose the ability to use the issue of Taiwan to whip up popular sentiment at home. And, as the outcome of war is never certain, if they lost it might spark a revolution at home that could topple the leadership. Certainly this is enough to give the pause.

At the same time that we take these objections seriously, we must remember the fallacy of "mirror image" thinking. If we have learned nothing else since 9-11 is should be that others do not share our way of thinking. What we consider logical others see as illogical. Facts we consider important are not even in other people's mental universe. Not everyone else works off of our set of assumptions.

Let us therefore consider reasons why, in light of the above objections, China might still make a move against Taiwan:

Saving Face

The Oriental concept of "face" is very important and something that we often underestimate. The simple fact is that rightly or wrongly the Chinese feel that they were embarrassed by the West in the 18th, 19th, and first half of the 20th century and that they must recover. This is no place to recite Chinese history, but suffice it to say that during this time China was colonialized by foreign powers and her people often treated quite shabbily. The Chinese also believe that they lost several territories during this time and to regain face need to reacquire them.

The "lost territories" are Tibet, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. The Chinese reacquired Tibet by force in the 1950s and Hong Kong by diplomacy in 1997. Only Taiwan remains, and by all accounts that I have come across they are bound and determined to get it back. For example, I recall an article several years ago by John Derbyshire, writing in National Review, in which he said that the one thing that struck him during a visit to China is that despite disagreement on a variety of issues, all of the Chinese people he spoke with were unanimous in their attitude toward Taiwan: "We want it back."

Isn't it the Economics, Stupid?

The biggest objection that I can find is that a military move on China, even if successful, would result in boycotts and embargoes (and maybe even a blockade) that would cripple their economy. And in normal circumstances this would keep them from attacking. However, as I will show below, there may come a time in which the leadership ignores the danger and starts to believe their own propaganda. In short, they may become overconfident.

II. Why Defend Taiwan?

It is reasonable to ask why we should defend Taiwan in the face of Chinese aggression. Some, like the libertarian Cato Institute, say that we ought to let Taiwan defend itself. This is not the place for a full treatment of Taiwan's own actions and drift towards declaring independence, so suffice it to say that I believe that we ought to defend Taiwan for the following reasons:

We have obligated ourselves to help defend the island democracy with the Taiwan Relations Act (1979). American presidents, including President Bush, have given their word that we would help to defend Taiwan. We must be good to our word or need to abrogate the treaty and speak clearly that we will not come to Taiwan's aid.

The government of Taiwan ("Republic of China") is now a democracy. We should defend democracies against tyrannies. Even when Taiwan was ruled by the authoritarian Kuomintang, it was still better than the Communists on the mainland, thus worth defending under the concept of comparative justice.

Defense of Taiwan easily meets the requirements of Just War Theory.

Taiwan will not sit still and let us do all of the fighting. They will, in fact, end up doing most of the fighting and dying. It is often forgotten, for example, that during the Korean War the South Koreans suffered more casualties than did Americans.

III. The Preparation

We are currently seeing signs that the Chinese are preparing to make a move. The preparation falls into three categories; the legal, the military, and the morale

The Legal

Last month China's rubber-stamp "National People's Congress" passed an "anti-secession law" authorizing the use of "non-peaceful means" against Taiwan. It was assumed by many analysts that China is setting the legal grounds for action against Taiwan, military or otherwise.

The Military

Under Deng Xiaoping China embarked on a modernization program. One of the "four modernizations" was the military. During the Cold War, the bulk of China's military was oriented towards the Soviet threat. When the USSR dissolved, the military threat went away also. As such, China has been free to move her forces to face new challenges. One of those is retaking Taiwan.

The Chinese are engaged in a crash program to build up their navy, the branch that would have the biggest role in an attack.

Nevertheless, as this Navy War College paper makes clear, the Chinese will not have the ability to stage a "D-Day" style amphibious invasion of Taiwan:

The most dramatic but least feasible PRC threat is an amphibious attack with hundreds of thousands of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops supported by ballistic missile barrages, aircraft, naval forces, and all manner of modified merchant ships. A host of analysts and government reports have poured cold water on this frequently discussed scenario, revealing China’s sea and airlift shortcomings, the numerous force-concentration problems associated with Formosa beach landings, and, not the least, Taiwan’s super-hardened land defenses. Piers Wood and Charles Ferguson, for example, persuasively argue that China lacks not only the amphibious assault ships to bridge the strait with enough firepower and men but also the port capacity to employ hundreds of potentially useful civilian craft.12 Their conclusion was shared by Admiral Dennis Blair, former commander of the U.S. Pacific forces, who not long ago reported that “the PLA is still years away from the capability to take and hold Taiwan.”13
By comparison, a naval blockade could bring Taiwan to its knees with relative ease and minimal international protest. A sustained interruption of key sea lines of communications would be economically disastrous for the Taiwanese economy, which relies heavily on shipping for its lifeblood trade and energy needs, some two-thirds of which are fulfilled by fossil fuel imports.14 Even a temporary closure would likely prove debilitating for the import/export-dependent economy. Shortly prior to Taiwan’s 1996 election, for example, all merchant marine traffic to Taiwan was halted for days after China fired several unarmed DF-15 short-range missiles toward the island’s two largest ports, the closest of them falling approximately twelve miles from land. Traffic into Taiwan’s northern port was similarly blocked the previous year after China lobbed six DF-15s into the strait some eighty-five miles north of the island.1

Most likely, therefore, the Chinese would force Taiwan to negotiate "at missile point" and would come away with favorable terms if not outright annexation. Amphibious invasion or airborne attack is extremely unlikely.

Another Naval War College Paper puts it in starker terms still:

Given the many weaknesses of the PLA Navy, the U.S. Navy will remain superior to the Chinese fleet for many years to come. That is not the issue. The danger, rather, is the possibility of an expansive, even bellicose, Chinese foreign policy provoking open conflict with a weaker neighboring state. Arms races and exacerbated regional tensions, on the one hand, and an entangling of American armed forces, on the other, are opposite evils to be avoided. However, the Chinese navy has markedly improved in capabilities and is clearly aiming for a blue-water capacity. It has already developed an "active defense and inshore warfare" strategy commensurate with its improving ability to deal with limited wars and regional conflicts, at the same time as the U.S. Navy is concentrating on the world's littorals in support of its own new maritime strategy. The U.S. Navy's recent white papers ". . . From the Sea" and "Forward . . . from the Sea" have changed its focus to operations near land. There is irony in the fact that while the U.S. Navy is slowly shifting away from its sea control mission, the PLA Navy is actively pursuing command of the regional waters.

Window of Opportunity

According to the authors of the first Naval War College paper cited above, the Chinese will have a "window of opportunity" that will begin to close in or around 2010:

PRC - People's Republic of China. The official name of Communist China. Typically called just "China"
PLA - People's Liberation Army. All branches of the military are referred to as the "PRC" as in "PLA Navy" or "PLA Air Force"
ROC - Republic of China. The official name for the government of Taiwan, on the island of Formosa.

...China’s military power will peak relative to that of Taiwan and the regional forces of the United States sometime between 2005 and 2008. In this w