Texas Terrorism:

There is a report on the wires today that terrorists are targeting Texas. The FBI is being cagey, as usual, as to what their sources are. They say there is not a credible threat, but that they've heard some things that make it possible, etc, etc.

Well, of course there was the recent lad from Texas who proved to be an al Qaeda member. But also, about three weeks ago Jihadunspun.net had a post claiming a successful Qaeda attack on a Texas oil refinery. JUS has pulled it, but the original text is below:

[S]ome American sources mentioned that a huge explosion took place in the main oil refinery in Texas. According to Lieutenant Paul Limoin from Niches police station, the explosion fires spread from 300 to 400 feet vertically in the air that could be seen and heard from miles. The explosion was so strong that it resulted in very strong pressure in the area.

The local American TV station KFDM was the only one to transmit the incident live on Tuesday the 20th of May at about 11 PM. KFDM attributed the incident to a tough explosion in a natural gas tube line at Jefferson district.

Lieutenant Limoin was among a number of officers who closed high ways 347 and 336 for several hours because people from neighboring areas and hundreds of cars moved to watch the incident which jammed the traffic and hindered all kinds of communication by phone and the radio was the only thing that worked.

An eye witness said that that she heard the explosion of the tube line that was very tough to the extent that she saw the orange flames in the sky, yet the inhabitants of the area stayed as they were because they trusted the efficiency of the firemen.

Ronda Vize a KFMD employee said that policemen confirmed that after 15 minutes, the flames disappeared from the sky. Nevertheless, she doubts what the policemen said because even hours after the explosion she still could see the fire in the area. However, Paul Limoin said that the blows lasted for 10 minutes or more but there were no injuries among the residents of the area which raised doubts about the police attempts to hide the incident. Police sources added that the explosion is attributed to an electric sparkle that hit one of the oil tankers, but this story contradicts what some eyewitnesses said.

It turned out to be nothing of the sort--an explosion at a SUNOCO gas pipeline near a loading station. But I thought you'd like to know, Texas readers--al Qaeda is thinking of you.

Things to remember:

When reading news stories from certain foreign countries that purport to tell you how "the man in the street" feels, keep in mind this enlightening news story from the Pakistan Observer:

A staggering majority of the Americans want US President George W Bush be impeached for launching Iraq war on false pretexts and flimsy grounds. �Official Poll� reported on June 11 that more than 94.7 per cent of the US citizens were in favour of Bush�s impeachment, the report claimed.

It published its poll with the question: �Should George W Bush be impeached?� A staggering number 94.7 per cent of those polled said: �Yes, the President of the United States of America should be impeached for what appear to be untrue statements to the US Congress and the American people.�

Under US law, lying about the reason for a war is an impeachable offence.

We probably remember from 1998 that US law doesn't really go into any detail about what is or isn't impeachable. But really--94.7%? Why didn't they just report that we HAD impeached him? I mean, if you're going to just make stuff up, why not go hog wild? (Oops--accidental cultural insensitivity there. Sorry, Muslim readers.)

Update to Special Operations piece:

Strategypage is reporting that there will soon be a new commando unit in the US Military, drawn exclusively from the United States Marine Corps. It's certainly right and proper that this should be the case. The Marines, whatever else you may wish to say about them (e.g., that they're obviously superior to the Army in every way, and better looking as well), have a signal advantage over the other services: they are paid out of the President's funds rather than Congress'. The Corps is the President's to use as he sees fit, regardless of what jackass was currently on the Senate floor filibustering against the rescinding of aloe vera subsidies.

Not that I'm opposed to legislative oversight. I think the Congress ought to be the leading branch of the government. It's just that, first, we'll have to elect some leaders to it.

Mercenaries for Peace:

This is an excellent idea. Mercenary peacekeepers: I like it.

Pay in Iraq:

Students of history will recall that one of the early troubles for the American republic was occasioned by the nonpayment of veterans' pensions. George Washington almost failed to put an end to the mutiny, as the veterans were rightly outraged at the government's failure to provide promised funds that were necessary, in many cases, to care for their families. Washington's speech failed, but his vision carried the day: that is, his literal vision. He had to produce eyeglasses to read the notes he had from the government, which surprised many of the soldiers who had served with him. His remark, which I quote from memory, was to ask them to excuse him, "for I have grown grey in the service, and now grow blind." The veterans, remembering common struggles and sacrifices, chose then to heed him.

There is no George Washington in Iraq. Therefore, it is wise of the American government to put the payment of Iraqis in the hands of his heirs, who are very capable men: I MEF.

Mark Steyn:

"Damn, Mark," I keep saying as I read his stuff. If there is a more insightful man than Mark Steyn writing today, I haven't run across him. Cross-cultures are no problem for him: he gets it.

Sartorially, Jordanian politics seems to be the opposite of American: in the New Hampshire primary, smooth, bespoke, Beltway types who�ve been wearing suits and wingtips since they were in second grade suddenly clamber into the old plaid and blue jeans and work boots, and start passing themselves off as stump-toothed inbred mountain men who like nothing better than a jigger of moonshine and a bunk-up with their sister. Evidently, in rural Jordan the voters are savvy enough not to fall for such pathetically obvious pandering.

Or so I thought. But when the campaign aides pressed an 8x10 glossy of their man on me and I asked them where he stood on the issues, they hadn�t a clue. In rural Jordan, a candidate runs on his Rolodex. He�s the guy with high-level contacts in Amman who can use �em to bring home the bacon, or the pork, or whatever the Muslim equivalent is. That�s the message of the suit. If the plaid in a New Hampshire primary is supposed to signal that the guy�s one of us, the Savile Row get-up in Azraq is supposed to send the opposite message: this guy�s one of them � in a suit like that, there�s no reason why you couldn�t find him sitting across the banqueting table from Queen Rania. That�s the man your tribe or village needs in Amman.

Straight talk on WMD and Iraq:

Here it is, courtesy of the good lads at the Star Tribune:

Does the failure to find WMD mean we were handed a sack of lies?

Nope. The administration was clear from the get-go: Iraq was part of the Axis, and the Axis had to go down. Each part would be sundered as circumstances permitted. The destruction of the fascist regime in Baghdad would be the object lesson for the region, the proof that America had a new mission: Extirpating the flaming nutballs and the societies that nurture them.

Of course, that was not how the war was sold. Because the administration sought U.N. approval, the issue became enforcement of U.N. resolutions -- and those had to do with disarmament. Because the Bush team sought a greater moral legitimacy, it also phrased the war in terms of liberation, and removing a government with ties to terrorism. . . .

In the long run, it's not what we don't find in Iraq. It's what doesn't happen.

No more mass executions. No new prisons for children. No bonus checks for the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. No Terrorism 101 classes at Salman Pak. No electrodes applied to the daughter of a man who talked to CNN. No daily potshots at allied aircraft. No sudden sluice of fear in the hearts of the Kurds when the government trucks appear on the horizon. No miserable thuggish satrapy in the middle of the Middle East, thumbing its nose at the United Nations and the United States.

Come election time 2004, the Iraqi oil proceeds will not be going to secret Swiss accounts named Chick Daney and Ronald Dumsfeld. They'll be going to the people of Iraq. We won't be arguing about losing the peace in Iraq.

We'll be arguing about losing the peace in Iran. But that's another story. For another presidential term.

Revolutionary Ideal:

Democracy according to the classical liberal tradition is the last true revolutionary ideology in the world. It is also the only one that has worked: predating and surviving Marxism, Fascism, and managing to erect free societies while the ideologies of unfreedom drew darkness over their lands.

PBR Watch:

My grandfather's beer, at $4 a bottle.

Grim Loses A Bet:

Eric Robert Rudolph, neither dead nor in Boliva. Win some, lose some.

The Corner:

Wow--Rich Lowry over at National Review Online published an email from me in The Corner. He'd asked for letters about the soon-to-expire Assault Weapons Ban, and I wrote this:

RE: ASSAULT-WEAPONS BAN [Rich Lowry]
E-mail:
"Dear Sir:

I'll leave aside the usual (and truthful) complaints about the AWB, as you'll get them from others. I want to address instead a current argument in favor of extending the ban. The Violence Policy center has put out a press release on the AWB that states that 41 of the 211 police officers slain between 1998 and 2001 were killed by assault weapons.

The argument is that these weapons therefore present a clear danger, and need tighter rather than looser regulation. There are several things to be said about this. I'll say three of them:

1) The VPC's definition of an assault weapon seems to be any semiautomatic longarm. This is actually a more coherent definition than the AWB uses, as it seems to look at cosmetics instead of function. As you will hear at length from others, there are many functionally identical weapons for sale on the market that, because of a plastic stock instead of a wood one, are banned by the AWB. The VPC is at least consistent in wanting to ban all weapons capable of similar function. The VPC report should be read, "41 of 211 dead policemen were killed by semiautomatic longarms."

2) But isn't that astonishing, given that longarms are used in such a tiny percentage of crimes? Well, not really. It's true that longarms are uncommonly used in criminal activity--I seem to recall it is something like two percent of gun crimes that involve longarms, but you'll want to check that number.

However, the statistic here is cops killed, not cops wounded or shot at. Longarms are (a) more accurate than sidearms, and (b) generally capable of defeating body armor. If the statistics were compiled in such a way as to show all occasions in which policemen were shot at, the percentages would be much smaller.

3) But so what? We're obviously ceeding the point that longarms are much more dangerous than handguns to serving police officers, right? Well, yes, obviously they are. They aren't particularly useful for crime, however, because they can't be easily concealed or carried (thus the tiny percentage of crimes which involve them). They certainly are a danger, but so are baseball bats. You don't ban everything that's dangerous.
Longarms are the weapons most useful for hunting, for home defense, and for militia service if--as it is no longer impossible to contemplate--a terrorist organization manages to create an emergency on a scale such that the militia would need to be raised. They are not useful for crime as a rule, though when they are used for crime their deadly nature does take a toll on serving policemen. As a rational matter, though, the VPC's position desires the banning or tight regulation of the least criminally-useful class of firearm: that is to say, it is a very far reaching proposal indeed."

"Task Force Viking":

Apparently led by US Special Forces, Task Force Viking uncovered that mobile bio-lab in Iraq. More to the point, though, they were the first forces on the ground in the north. A story about them, and the search for WMD, in the London Spectator.

Chechnya:

Some thoughts and rumors about the recent bombings, from the Moscow Times.

Cool if True File:

An alleged plot between the United States and Iran to limit Hezbollah terrorism.

Looting and Violence in Iraq:

Shoot to kill looters? That was last Wednesday's story, one which sadly proved not to be true. It is necessary to get a handle on the chaos in Baghdad if anything positive is to come out of the business. However, there is no clear evidence that the US Army forces are going to take the steps necessary to command the city. Time is running out, as forces from Afghani mujahedeen to Iranian militants are occupying the city. The New Republic reports that Hezbollah has entered the city as well. The Army seems remarkably calm about all this. An official speaking anonymously said "`We have about a month to get that under control; after that, it will be too late.''
But a month seems to me a remarkable estimate.

It need not be this way: the emerging recovery of Mosul demonstrates that the looting can be stopped, although admittedly Mosul's commander had the advantage of using Force Recon Marines backed by a MEU (SOC). (An aside--you'll recall that a MEU (SOC) is a Marine Expeditionary Unit, Special Operations Capable. See the archives of this blog if the concept isn't familiar to you: I did a piece on special operations forces on 24 April. MEU (SOC) is pronounced "Meew-sock," as if it were a cat toy instead of a horde of deadly warriors.) Something on that order needs to be dispatched to Baghdad, the rules of engagement need to be changed to permit the use of emphatic force, and it would be a good idea to see that Bremer has the authority he needs to command the military forces as well as the diplomatic efforts.

Recent Bombings:

The bombings in Saudi Arabia demonstrate the degree of freedom of movement al Qaeda enjoys in that, their home, country. After a firefight on 6 May, and a week-long manhunt for nineteen specific fugitives by Saudi authorities, al Qaeda seems to have employed that same cell to carry out these suicide attacks. The Saudi government reports, through the AP, that at least some of the nineteen men they have been seeking were involved, and may have been killed, in the attacks.

The Saudi soldiers who fought off the suicide bombers at length deserve praise: the short firefight seems to have been the reason for the low death toll, as it alerted sleeping families to the danger and allowed them time to fly. The intelligence and investigative wings of the Saudi government, though, are largely nonfunctional.

Far more important in the war on al Qaeda are the two recent bombings in Chechnya. The first bombing in particular was a crippling strike to Russian efforts in the region. Directed against the intelligence service tasked with leading the war against terrorists in the region, the strike destroyed their headquarters and killed at least fifty-nine people. A similar attack in Lebanon in the 1980s killed only a handful of CIA officers, but because they were the men with decades of experience in the region, the men who knew everyone and everything, operations never recovered from the loss. We don't know who was killed in this strike, as to whether they were the top men or not. At the least, massive amounts of documentation, computers and files have been lost. If they got some of the leading officers as well, it may ruin the Russian offensive.

The Russian government has linked that bombing to the one in Arabia, without direct evidence but for good cause. They were not perfectly coordinated, but al Qaeda's ability to coordinate internationally appears to be degraded. Meanwhile, we know that al Qaeda is heavily involved in the Chechen cause, which has for many years been both a recruiting tool and a training ground for them. With the destruction of Afghanistan, it is reported that Qaeda camps have been erected in Chechnya. The Center for Defense Information puts the number of terrorists trained there at about 350.

The Chechens are more likely than al Qaeda to use woman mujahedeen, as in this morning's attack. You will remember that the Russian theater seized by Chechens saw the use of women militants as well: in fact, it was originally reported to be a team solely composed of suicidal women guerrillas, come to die to avenge their fallen husbands. The fight in Chechnya has been especially ugly, and has generated large numbers of women (and men) who have suffered rape and other forms of "shaming" at the hands of Russian soldiers. Dying in battle cleans such shame as nothing else: as Alexandre Dumas wrote in The Count of Monte Cristo, "Blood washes away dishonor."

The opportunity for the United States is to offer help to the Russian government, conditionally. With their intelligence capacity blunted, and the situation destabilizing, they may be willing to accept. In return for a strong policy against rapes and other shaming attacks, and a commitment to a form of Chechen autonomy and the protection of their rights, we could offer to share intelligence resources and even commit special operations troops operating from Afghanistan to the elimination of al Qaeda and other militant camps in Chechnya. Right now al Qaeda has a free hand in the area, which is protected by its ownership by a weak former superpower: strong enough that we can't invade without permission, but too weak to deal with the threat alone. In return for seeing the Chechens treated decently, we ought to help the Russians eliminate our common foes.

A shocking admission:

From the C.I.A.'s Center for Intelligence Studies. This comes as part of a long article called "The Intelligence Community: 2001-2015."

Now we are facing the same reality that confronted the Soviets: technology is, and has always been, ideologically neutral. It benefits anyone with access and means. This simple fact now represents an enormous challenge to US intelligence.

The technology used by the Intelligence Community has become antiquated. New solutions remain undiscovered and new funding will take time to have an effect. This is a strange and unprecedented condition for the United States, long accustomed to having technology as an ally.

How has it happened that the CIA has lost its technological edge? Since so much of the intelligence budget is hidden, we can't really know if it is underfunding.

It is likely, though, that the real problem has been bureaucratic overload. Intelligence is best run on a venture-capital model, which rewards risk and encourages innovation at all costs. The CIA's culture was originally heaviliy influenced by its founder, "Wild Bill" Donovan. But Wild Bill is long gone, and the American intelligence community is now flush with bureaucrats who have never been field operatives (cf. See No Evil by R. Baer). Bureaucracies make change difficult and ponderous. That's fine if you're trying to work a field that benefits from a reliable approach. Intelligence, though, demands high risk in order to reap its rewards, and there is nothing more risk-averse than a bureaucracy.

Therefore your end is on you, is on you and your kings:

Ere the sad gods that made your gods
Saw their sad sunrise pass,
The White Horse of the White Horse Vale,
That you have left to darken and fail,
Was cut out of the grass.

-G. K. Chesterton, "The Ballad of the White Horse"

Denuclearization on the Subcontinent:

This is an astonishing story. Pakistan has offered to surrender its nuclear arms if India will do the same. In fact this makes perfect sense: if you and your neighbor each had a gun pressed to the other's head, you'd be only too happy for someone you felt you could trust to come along and take away both guns. This is especially true if you know yourself to be quick-tempered, and you know your neighbor is, too.

The Bush doctrine is probably inspiring as well. Pakistan is a key ally in the terror war, yes. On the other hand, it is an open secret that elements of their intelligence service, the ISI, have ties to al Qaeda and other Islamist groups. In addition to which, there are wide swaths of the populace that are uneducated except by the Islamist scholars funded by Saudi Arabia. Their world view is deeply anti-American as a result. For President Musharraf, the future has to look rather uncertain. Even if he can maintain control, an American invasion remains possible if he can't reign in terror-supporting elements in his own government. If he can't, an American invasion--at least to seize the nuclear materials--is nearly certain. Removing the nukes would lower the temperature in Pakistan and offer a buffer against American intervention.

Still, it's amazing given that Pakistan has put such national pride in its nuclear program:

In each of the major cities of Pakistan, you can find a strange monument depicting a saw-toothed mountain and a poised missile.

The mountain is a peak in the Chagai Hills, in whose granite depths Pakistan conducted its first nuclear tests five years ago. In the Islamabad version of this tableau, which sits on a traffic island amid a congestion of garishly ornamented trucks, three-wheeled taxis and donkey carts, the mountain is bathed at night in a creepy orange light, as if radioactive. The camouflage-dappled missile is called the Ghauri, and it has a range of about 900 miles. If the chronic tensions along the border between Pakistan and India should ever escalate to a nuclear war, the Ghauri would try to deliver at least one of Pakistan's warheads onto New Delhi. Lest anyone miss the point, the missile was named for a 12th-century Afghan warrior whose most memorable accomplishment was conquering part of India.

Mugabe watch:

Meeting with opposition leaders scheduled in Zimbabwe, apparently to work out plans for the power transfer.

Mugabe to step down?

An expanded investigation into the rumors, from the Economist.

Poetry / The Lost Castle of Glyndwr:

From the Medieval Welsh Poem Goddodin:

Gododin gomynnaf oth blegyt.
yg gwyd cant en aryal en emwyt.
a guarchan mab dwywei da wrhyt
poet gno en vn tyno treissyt.
er pan want maws mvr trin.
er pan aeth daear ar aneirin.
nu neut ysgaras nat a gododin.

Gododdin, I make this claim on your behalf
In the presence of the throng boldly in the court:
And the song of the son of Dwywai, of high courage,
May it be manifest in the one place that it vanquishes.
Since the gentle one, the wall-of-battle, was slain,
Since earth covered Aneirin,
Poetry is now departed from the Gododdin.

I'm now worried about those tourists:

InstaPundit, sage of Knoxville, has been concerned for some time about the disappearances of (now more than thirty) foreign tourists in the south of Algeria. It's been one of those Bermuda triangle stories, which became fascinating recently when a band of Bedouin nomads rode into one of the cities in Algeria and reported finding a secret complex of tunnels in the desert. Since then it has come to appear that the tourists are being held hostage by Islamists who have sought them as hostages against Western involvement in Algeria.

The Algerian government is now responding, and so it is just now that I'm becoming worried. The Algerian government, you see, is rather French. El Moudjahid, an Algerian newspaper, presents the account of the government's reply:

. Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Pr�sident de la R�publique, a re�u, mercredi au si�ge de la Pr�sidence, M. Juergen Chrobog, secr�taire d�Etat aux Affaires �trang�res de la R�publique f�d�rale d�Allemagne et envoy� sp�cial du chancelier f�d�ral, M. Gerhard Schro�der.
L�audience s�est d�roul�e en pr�sence du ministre d�Etat, ministre des Affaires �trang�res, M. Abdelaziz Belkhadem et du ministre d�Etat, ministre de l�Int�rieur et des Collectivit�s locales, M. Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni, ainsi que de l�ambassadeur de la R�publique f�d�rale d�Allemagne � Alger, M. Hans-Peter Schiff.
M. Chrobog est porteur d�un message du chancelier f�d�ral au Pr�sident Bouteflika.

Got that? The whole first paragraph is nothing but: The President met, at the President's seat, with the German Secretary of state for foreign affairs and a bunch of other ministers whose ranks and titles are recited at great length. Did they do anything? Yes! The German brought a letter and gave it to the President and ministers. That's what the whole paragraph says.

And what did the letter say? Only this: "L�Allemagne satisfaite des efforts d�ploy�s par l�Alg�rie pour retrouver les touristes disparus." That is, "Germany is satisfied with the efforts to recover the lost tourists." Doesn't Germany have a Marine Corps? Maybe they'd like to borrow ours for a few hours?

Corruption in Forsyth County:

Alleged corruption, anyway. I've recently been introduced to this site on the subject of "Local Organized Judicial Crime" in Forsyth County, Georgia--I'm guessing that's a euphamism for corrupt public officials. Makes for interesting reading.

Poetry:

Poetry is dead, writes Bruce Wexler in Newsweek. Why?

Anyone can write a bad poem. To appreciate a good one, though, takes knowledge and commitment. As a society, we lack this knowledge and commitment. People don�t possess the patience to read a poem 20 times before the sound and sense of it takes hold. They aren�t willing to let the words wash over them like a wave, demanding instead for the meaning to flow clearly and quickly. They want narrative-driven forms, stand-alone art that doesn�t require an understanding of the larger context. I, too, want these things. I am part of a world that apotheosizes the trendy, and poetry is just about as untrendy as it gets.

Well, we have come again to "rolling back the 20th century." The kind of poetry Wexler means is the kind he mentions by name in the article--�I Knew a Woman� by Theodore Roethke, Eliot�s �Prufrock." This 20th century poetry is surpassingly arrogant. It demands that your read it twenty times to begin to appreciate it with all the self-surety of an archbishop presenting his ring.

Not so the older forms, especially the epic forms. Highly developed poetic forms rest upon strength of imagery, the ability to grab you and move you viscerally. The arcane twists and turns of such forms--skaldic kennings, for example--arise only because the forms themselves are so enticing. People read Homer twenty times, a hundred times, not because they want to appreciate Homer. They read and reread him because they do appreciate Homer. From the first time you hear it read, the old oral epics grab you by the throat. The Iliad describes the hunger of the Myrmidon's, Achilles' heroes, as they enter the war at last:

Hungry as wolves that rend and bolt raw flesh, hearts filled with battle-frenzy that never dies--off on the cliffs, ripping apart some big-antlered stag they gorge on the kill till all their jaws drip red with blood, then down in a pack they lope to a pooling, dark spring, their lean sharp tongues lapping the water's surface. . . .

So the Myrmidons, arranged as they were about Patroclus, Achilles' friend and doomed to die.

High Roller:

Bill Bennet, author of multiple books with titles like The Book of Virtues, turns out to be a high stakes gambler. Good for him! I never could take him seriously before, but now I may go out and read some of what he has to say. Never trust any man who wants to talk about virtue, but has cultivated no vice. A cultivated vice is the frank recognition of the imperfectability of mankind. Without that recognition, no serious discussion of morality is possible.

Patriotism Watch:

The link off WashingtonPost.com today reads: "Ellen Goodman: America's Gift to the World." Now, that could suggest that Ms. Goodman is America's gift to the world, if you didn't already know that Ms. Goodman is a regular columnist for the Post.

But even if you did know that, the link proves to be misleading. I lept onto her column, eager to read her expressions of patriotism, which for her would have been remarkable and rare. Surely she was finally giving in to her patriotism because of the war in Iraq, or our rebuilding and education efforts in Afghanistan, one of the places where American soldiers were endangering themselves to bring food, freedom, or peace.

Nope. When you get to the article, the real headline proves to be: Smoking: America's Gift to the World. True to form, alas.

More Bad Thinking:

Opening up a CIA domestic intel service. The FBI and the CIA are separate entities not by accident, but for cause. The two methodologies are necessary to make sure that American liberties are protected.

Urrah!

Hutchison Whampoa is out of the bid to buy Global Crossing telecommunications. GC ran a number of sensitive US Federal programs. Hutchinson Whampoa is owned by a subject of the People's Republic of China, and reputed to enjoy close ties to the People's Liberation Army. Our national security is a bit safer without our communications passing through a PRC-owned company.

A little life left in it:

I've recently held that racism was effectively dead in Georgia. Apparently there are still a few holdouts. Link via Drudge.

The Lost Castle of Glyndwr:

Readers of the previous article know that this was described in heroic verse by the poet Iolo Goch. I have looked in vain for a translation of the poem on the internet--it was most recently translated in a 1993 work by D. Johnston, and as such is still in copyright. In its place I give you this poem by Medieval Welsh poet Dafydd ab Gwylim, his ode to May, into whose bounty we enter:

MAY.
Many a poet in his lay
Told me May would come again.
Truly sang the bard - for May
Yesterday began to reign!
She is like a bounteous lord,
Gold enough she gives to me -
Gold such as the poets hoard -
'Florins' of the mead and tree,
Hazel-flowers, and 'fleurs-de-lis.'
Underneath her leafy wings
I am safe from treason's stings;
I am full of wrath with May
That she will not always stay!
Maidens never hear of love
But when she has plumed the grove.
Giver of the gift of song,
To the poet's heart and tongue.
May! majestic child of heaven,
To the earth is glory given,
Verdant hills, days long and clear,
Come when she is hovering near.
Stars, ye cannot journey on
Joyously when she is gone!
Ye are not so glossy bright,
Blackbirds, when she takes her flight;
Sweetest art thou nightingale
Poet, thou cans't tell thy tale
With a lighter heart, when May
Rules with all liner bright array!

Archaeology:

Two more big discoveries announced this week. In Wales, archaeologists have discovered the lost castle of Glyndwr. And in Egypt, a high priest's chamber.

Thanks to Wren's Nest for these links.

Arts & Sciences:

In response to my contention that psychology is not a science (see Monday's log), I've been asked to read Our Inner Conflicts by Karen Horney, M.D. Dr. Horney was one of the founders of psychoanalysis, both a friend and competitor to Freud, and compiled the basis of psychology's theories of neuroses. One of psychology's defenders asked me to consider her work at length before I made up my mind that psychology was not a science. I have now completed my study of the work, and am ready to report.

Dr. Horney's work has several things to be said in its favor. In particular the vision of sanity she presents is appealing, and in fact almost perfectly echoes G. K. Chesterton's vision of sanity from Orthodoxy. Chesterton, of course, was not a psychologist, but a Catholic: his thoughts on why men departed from sanity did not hinge upon theories of psychological conflict, but sin. Yet the two visions of sanity are almost perfect copies: each is a vision of wholeheartedness, coupled with responsibility and an ability to respond to things genuinely and without pretense. Both visions are powerful, appealing, and deeply human. Either, or indeed both, could be correct.

Both are empirical. Neither is scientific. Understanding why psychology is not science requires a short examination of what science is. The religious view is not in any danger of being taken for science, as it has no pretenses in that direction. The religious view takes its authority from faith, which is ultimately not testable beyond the confines of one man's heart. But psychology partakes of studies, not prayer; it holds conferences, publishes journals, engages in peer review and debate: how can I hold that it is a thing more like religion than like physics?

Science requires that all principles be not only testable, but falsifiable. Newtonian physics felt, at the turn of the 20th century, that it had basically solved all but a few straggling problems, and was remarkably close to a complete explanation of how the universe worked. It still viewed atoms as unsplittable, and had no knowledge of quarks or quantums. When the "new physics" came along, it undermined the entirety of the discipline as it existed. Everything had to be cast out or reexamined: a resolution is still out of reach.

Psychology's bedrock claims are not similarly falsifiable. Behavioral psychology claims that the mind is an illusion of the brain: its evidence is that it can explain behavior by reference only to chemical properties of the brain, and therefore a mind is unnecessary. That kind of argument is a logical fallacy known as argumentum ad ignorantiam, that is, the argument from ignorance. The fact is that behavioral psychology cannot show that there is no mind, any more than it can show that there is. At the last, it is engaged in an act of faith, upon which principle no scientific inquiry is possible.

Behavioral psychology is not alone: all psychology ultimately is based upon unscientific principles which must be accepted, or not, on faith. Freud's Oedipal complex, for example, was meant to exist in all men; if analysis showed something consistent with it, the psychologist said, "Aha! The Oedipal complex at work!" If analysis failed to show anything consistent with it, the psychologist replied, "Aha! You are repressing your Oedipal complex." The fact that the complex might not exist was not possible, therefore it could not be the case. Jungian psychology similarly posits a "collective unconscious," and it is ultimately your acceptance of the existence of that collective unconscious which qualifies you to practice Jungian analysis. You can't be a Jungian and not accept the collective unconscious. Cognitive dissonance theory posits that the human mind (or brain) can't accept two mutually exclusive propositions without feeling agitation to resolve them. I have occasionally debated this point with cognitive therapists, and found that evidence against this central proposition is finally dismissed. It has to be, as the central principle can't be proven, nor can it be disproven: it must be accepted on faith.

Yet psychology retains the respect due only to real sciences, and with it the force to legally deprive a man of his freedom, his job, or certain rights which are available only to those held to be "mentally competent" to exercise them. Psychology's ability to maintain this illusion is due to its empiricism--that is, to the fact that it bases its conclusions on real-world examples, which gives it the flavor of science. Empiricism, practiced by Aristotle, was indeed the precursor of science. I said that Dr. Horney was empirical, and she is. She really has done a lot of research, and a lot of analysis, and a lot of thinking about the examples she has met. Empiricism is not science, however. That is another way of addressing the line of questions which takes the form, "But if (e.g.) behaviorists can in fact explain all human behavior without reference to a mind--if they can really do it--does that not show that they are right?" The answer lies with the Greeks.

Ancient Greek navigators developed a complex mechanical device for navigation, called the Antikythera mechanism. It aided navigation by predicting where certain stars should be in the sky at given times of the night, at given points of the year. The Greeks thought that the earth was the center of the universe, however, which should pose a problem for correct prediction of astral movements. When they encountered those problems, though, they just thought around them:

The Greeks believed in an earth-centric universe and accounted for celestial bodies' motions using elaborate models based on epicycles, in which each body describes a circle (the epicycle) around a point that itself moves in a circle around the earth. Mr Wright found evidence that the Antikythera mechanism would have been able to reproduce the motions of the sun and moon accurately, using an epicyclic model devised by Hipparchus, and of the planets Mercury and Venus, using an epicyclic model derived by Apollonius of Perga. (These models, which predate the mechanism, were subsequently incorporated into the work of Claudius Ptolemy in the second century AD.)

Epicycles were able to correctly account for the movement of astral bodies without discarding the core--and inaccurate--principle of the earth's centrality. The development of epicycles is an astonishing, indeed a magnificient, human accomplishment. It is a beautiful piece of human artifice. Its only flaw is that it fails to be correct.

Psychology is in just this position. Insofar as it simply wishes to guide a given ship to a given port (say, an unhappy person to that vision of sanity) it may serve as a perfectly useful model. So long as it is applied to that, and only that, it may be functional. The problem arises when you start making wider judgements based upon its core principles--for example, what sort of people ought to enjoy freedoms, or ought to hold jobs. If the core principle is wrong, you could end up making very bad, hurtful judgements.

Ultimately epicycles were set aside because they partook of the realm of physics, and better methods of observation allowed us to see plainly that the earth was not the center of the universe. Psychology is a different animal because its core principles are finally untestable, unfalsifiable, and unscientific. There is no evidence that can be brought to bear, either today or conceptually in the future, that could really put an end to the question of whether or not we have minds separate from our brains; or whether "inner conflicts" yield "disorders" from some kind of normality, rather than simply informing the development of a unique person who wasn't meant to be anything other than what they are. These things at last can't be tested.

I have nothing against people making decisions in their personal life on the basis of psychology, if they feel inclined. I don't mind them choosing this thing over that thing on the basis of Tarot card readings, for that matter. I have said that arts are the noblest of human endeavors precisely because they are the most human. Psychology is an art. It should be proud of it. It must also, however, discard the false authority that it has laid claim to under the guise of being a science. People can--should!--choose to build their lives around the mastery of some art that is particularly appealing to them. No government or corporate entity, though, should make decisions involving fundamental liberties on the basis of signs and portents, the readings of seers, or the analysis of a psychologist.

May Day:

Although the Washington Post lists the story as "World Marks May Day," it's really mostly a few crowds of communists and the remnant of the hard-left labor unions. The exceptions are in Germany, where this seems to have turned into an annual riot-for-fun-and-profit day among the youth; and Russia, oddly enough:

In Russia, pro-Kremlin parties and trade unions stole the show from the fading Communist opposition by organizing a rally in central Moscow that drew an estimated 25,000 people. The peaceful, flower-waving crowd cheerfully marched down Moscow's main thoroughfare, joined by the city's mayor Yuri Luzhkov and former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.

More Bad Thinking:

Textbooks are heavily censored--we wouldn't want to teach the wrong lessons, right? Even Plato talked about that in the Republic. It's a lesson holders of education degrees take seriously:

What do dinosaurs, mountains, deserts, brave boys, shy girls, men fixing roofs, women baking cookies, elderly people in wheelchairs, athletic African Americans, God, heathens, witches, owls, birthday cake and religious fanatics all have in common? Trick question? Not really. As we learn from Diane Ravitch's eye-opening book "The Language Police," all of the above share the common fate of having been banned from the textbooks or test questions (or both) being used in today's schools.

I always thought it was odd that Plato made Socrates the mouthpiece for this idea when it was presented in the Republic. Socrates' life was one of searching out and examining all ideas, everything he could, though in the end it meant his death to carry on. I have never understood why Plato felt it was appropriate to make Socrates an advocate for censoring what children encounter in order to control the development of their minds and attitudes. Socrates' approach was the opposite: to encounter widely, but think it through.

But the panels making these decisions were obviously not taught to think things through. Rather than introducing textbooks and tests that would expand student's horizons, they try to restrict the horizons as much as possible to avoid testing them on unfamiliar concepts:

Stranger still, a story about a heroic blind youth who climbed to the top of Mt. McKinley was rejected, not only because of its implicit suggestion that blind people might have a harder time than people with sight, but also because it was alleged to contain "regional bias": According to the panel's bizarre way of thinking, students who lived in non-mountainous areas would theoretically be at a "disadvantage" in comprehending a story about mountain climbing. Stories set in deserts, cold climates, tropical climates or by the seaside, Ravitch learned, are similarly verboten as test topics, since not all students have had personal experience of these regions.

What exactly do they teach at education school?

Link via Arts & Letters Daily.

Pakistan: Ally?

Reports are mixed, but this report in Pakistan's Daily Times is encouraging. The US government considers them a key ally, and reports that Pakistan is third in the world in the seizure of terrorist assets. The first two governments are the US and Switzerland, for reasons that will be obvious. Pakistan is surely third in part because of the massive number of terrorists operating out of, or through, its offices. Still, the fact that they are so heavily involved in seizures indicates that terror groups do not enjoy the full backing of the government, but only of elements within it.

Anti-Terrorism:

First, the good news: six members of al Qaeda have been arrested in Pakistan, including Tawfiq bin Attash. The other five look like small fish, but Tawfiq has in the past been named by the CIA as one of the leaders of the Cole bombing and the attacks on our African embassies.

Now the bad news: The United States has signed a ceasefire with a terrorist group. The group in question is the People's Mujahidin, an Iranian organization that we were bombing just fifteen days ago.

There are two things about this which are of concern. The more important is, what standing does a terrorist group have to enter into formal negotiations with the United States? The willingness of the government to negotiate with them gives them a legitimacy that they, being in fact a band of brigands, do not deserve. We will certainly regret this.

The second area of concern has to do with the image of the United States in terrorist-producing regions. It was precisely the image of weakness after Somalia, we now know, that inspired the Cole and embassy bombings; and the weak response against those was central to the planning of 9/11. For now, it looks like the response is muted: the Balochistan Post reports the story under the headline, "United States signs deal with terror group: Big terrorist seeks help of small terrorists." The story reads like pragmatism rather than cowardice on our part, as the People's Mujahidin are opposed to the current government in Iran. This looks like it is part of a US effort to undermine the Iranian government, and perhaps it is.

Speaking of terrorism, the dispute between the IRA and Northern Irish groups has managed to derail the power-sharing elections again.

A great career awaits:

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the Iraqi information minister may still be alive. According to the report, he's tried to turn himself in to US forces, but they don't think he's important enough to arrest.

Derbyshire:

John Derbyshire's column today is remarkable on several occasions. Here are two, but the whole column--indeed, the whole body of his political writings--deserves reading when leisure permits:

It is easy to think of very large and disastrous social consequences that have followed from private sexual activity. There is, for example, the great explosion of illegitimacy that followed the sexual revolution of the 1960s, and that has wreaked such havoc on our society. There is also the dreadful AIDS epidemic, spread in the USA mainly by private sexual activity, which has killed tens of thousands of people. There is of course a great deal more to be said on both these topics, and room for plenty of opinions about the proper scope and authority of the state in these things. I am only pointing out that the proposition: "Society at large has no legitimate interest in citizens' private sexual activities" is so obviously false as to be, well, infantile. And yet, amazing to say, a lot of grown-up people seem to believe it.

And the second:

The Santorum business brought to the fore an outfit called "The Human Rights Campaign." You would never know from its name that this is a homosexualist lobbying organization. I have no problem with HRC's existence � homosexuals have as much right to organize and lobby as the rest of us � but I do have a problem with that name � viz., it's dishonest. The name of an organization ought to give some clue as to what the organization is for. Why don't they call themselves "The Homosexual Rights Campaign," or "The Campaign for Tolerance of Alternative Sexuality," or something like that? If they want to be a little more in-your-face, they could go for something with a defiant or humorous twist: "The Sodomite Sodality," perhaps. Don't they understand that this straining at bland respectability just makes them look shifty?

Readers, I have decided to launch a movement for the legalization of dog meat as a marketable foodstuff. My movement will be named: "The Campaign for Truth, Justice, Harmony and Peace." Everyone OK with that?

Al Qaeda in Iraq:

A terrorist is captured in western Iraq. Administration officials quickly point out that they don't know if he had any connection to the Iraqi government. I'm always amazed by how cautious the Bush administration is with its pronouncements, in view of their public image as outrageous cowboys.

A Mythic Day:

...in the Corner. Thanks to them for these links, one to a magnificient archaeological find that may be the tomb of Gilgamesh. Also, there is a link to this article on dragons.

Caves in Afghanistan:

U.S. Special Forces find 80 metric tons of high explosives and 124 metric tons of small arms ammunition hidden in Afghan caves. But that's not all:

Earlier this month, Romanian soldiers discovered thousands of rockets and more than 1 million rounds of ammunition in what the US military then described as the largest weapons cache discovered by US-led forces in Afghanistan.

The find near Qalat, capital of southern Zabul province, included 3,000 107mm rockets, 250,000 rounds of 12.7mm machinegun ammunition, about 1 million rounds of small arms ammunition and other ammunition and mines.

Afghan forces earlier this month also discovered about 18 caves full of ammunition and weapons near Maimana.

Each cave was 15 metres by five metres by four metres high, Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali said when he announced the finds.

Those weapons appeared to have been stockpiled during Afghanistan's 1992-1996 civil war, however, not a Taliban or Al Qaeda arsenal.

US special forces also uncovered six smaller caches of weapons including 400 107mm rockets and machineguns in the Madr valley north-east of Bamiyan in central Afghanistan.

Link via the Agonist.

Now I know what to get as a wedding gift:

Minnesota passes a "shall-issue" law on concealed firearms. Maybe I'll spring for a pistol for Kevin, my sister's suitor.

The "Ban that Polarized a Nation":

Foxhunting in Scotland. Really, though, outright banning of traditional liberties should always polarize a nation--preferably into the camp in favor of voting out the scoundrels who did it, and camp composed of only the scoundrels themselves.

Great, if true:

Mugabe to step down?

Progressing right back...

Earlier this week, I said:

Progressive--I like that. Let's progress right on past the wasteland of modernism, exactly by returning to the old values of classical liberalism. It was, after all, the classical liberal who first propounded the idea that all men were created equal, and that some rights were endowed inalienably.

From The Nation, an article by William Grider:

ROLLING BACK THE 20th CENTURY

...The movement's grand ambition--one can no longer say grandiose--is to roll back the twentieth century, quite literally. That is, defenestrate the federal government and reduce its scale and powers to a level well below what it was before the New Deal's centralization. With that accomplished, movement conservatives envision a restored society in which the prevailing values and power relationships resemble the America that existed around 1900, when William McKinley was President.

I'm not aware of being part of any movement, but it sounds like I may have some allies out there. If they want to stop at 1900, though, they're pulling up short. I say we keep right on rolling to, say, 1787. If we get to pick our period of values and power relationships, I'll take the Washington administration.

PBR Watch:

My grandfather's beer, and my favorite American beer, has apparently reached the apex of coolness. Jonah Goldberg of NRO mentions it today, and even links to the PBR Homepage. Always did like the stuff--good to see it getting its due.

Mr. Powell blows smoke:

Today's NY Times article on the DPRK negotiations includes this gem from Colin Powell:

Mr. Powell said the North Koreans had not threatened during the talks to begin testing nuclear weapons. They never "used the word test," he said.

Did they use the word "is"? Or was it just that we can say they didn't use the word "test," as the statements were written in Korean?

The DPRK has, in the past, signed specific treaties and then broken them immediately. The State Department is now trying to read things into their choice of words in nonbinding negotiations? This is akin to a judge deciding to let a career criminal go unpunished, not because he promised not to rob any more banks, but because, describing his plans to visit the bank next week, he didn't use the word "rob."

Antagonistic?

An offer from the DPRK hinges upon our abandoning our antagonistic policy toward them. What policy would that be? Forswearing war at every opportunity?

Arts & Sciences:

From the beginning of a piece on failed civilizations:

In particular many of the so-called hard scientists such as physicists or biologists, don't consider history to be a science. The situation is even more extreme because, he points out, even historians themselves don't consider history to be a science. Historians don't get training in the scientific methods; they don't get training in statistics; they don't get training in the experimental method or problems of doing experiments on historical subjects; and they'll often say that history is not a science, history is closer to an art.

Historians often say that history is not a science because history is not a science. One of the central problems with modern society is its increasing inability to tell the difference between what is a science, and what isn't. This is directly related to the prestige that has come to be associated with the label of "science" during the 20th century.

In part because of the tremendous material advances brought us by science, the concept of science enjoys considerable standing. The best way to make sure that your ideas are put into practice is to convince others that they are scientific: to say that something is scientific is commonly thought to be the same as saying that it is true beyond the possibility of counterargument. Psychology (from the Greek, psyche-, or "spirit/soul," and -ology, or "study of"), which claims to be the science of the mind, has so convinced the majority of Westerners that it is scientific that a psychologist's testimony alone can strip a man of his freedom, serve as reason not to hire him, or to fire him from a job he already has. A man can be subjected to forced injections of drugs and imprisonment based on nothing more than a psychologist's assessment.

This all rests upon a misunderstanding of just what science is. Science is one kind of inquiry, a particular kind that rests upon two general principles: the method of making no assertions that cannot be tested and falsified; and the complete transparency and open debate of all assertions being made, none of which are ever to be taken as invunerable. Science is indeed a great thing; it is indeed powerful.

It isn't -everything-, though, and it isn't all powerful. There are some endeavors that are not, and can not be, science. History is one of them. So, as it happens, is "psychology," which would be more honestly called philopsyche, after the fashion of philosophy. Anything which involves the working of the human mind isn't and cannot be a science. This is simply because the human mind isn't observable, and therefore, it is not testable. Regardless of how cautiously you design your tests, the fact is that you are simply guessing about the why of a given decision. You can't really observe the process of decision making.

Stripping these so-called "social sciences" of the notion that they are sciences is one of the greatest services we could do for our culture. There is nothing more noble than art, exactly because there is nothing more human than art. We ought to be proud to be performing the arts, practicing the arts. There are too many, though, who are unwilling to compete in a fair and open atmosphere. They wish to hide behind the authority of science, even if they must do so illegitimately.

And they must: science was never about stifiling debate, but always about enforcing it systematically. Psychology, sociology, and the rest do not--as history does--recognize honestly the fact that their methods simply cannot be scientifically tested, cannot be falsified, cannot be proven nor disproven. As such, all of their assertions deserve a healthy scepticism. That scepticism should be the healthier for the fact that these so-called disciplines will not admit the truth about their methods. They are a blight upon our way of thinking, and of conceiving the world.

Still--

This article from the Policy Review deserves special mention.

Arts & Letters Daily:

My favorite of all similar sites, Arts & Letters Daily is one I rarely link to because I'd feel the need to speak to almost every piece. If you don't make a habit of reading it, you might wish to reconsider.

On which topic:

Babbin today:

There were several night missions aimed at capturing Saddam last week. The Marines and spec ops guys searched several caves and tunnels near Tikrit. Some had been recently occupied, but neither Saddam nor his sons were found.

A Very Merry Un-Birthday:

To Saddam, who is surely dead--or soon to be. One almost hopes he is alive, just so he can enjoy a birthday celebration in constant expectation of the arrival of Marine Force Recon.

Libya's chairmanship of the UN Human Rights Commission:

Even Le Monde can't let it go any longer.

Les choses avaient mal commenc�, cette ann�e, avec l'aide regrettable de la France, par l'�lection malencontreuse � la pr�sidence de la repr�sentante de la Libye, et elles se sont mal poursuivies. . . .
Cette commission est devenue une parodie d'elle-m�me et la majorit� des 53 Etats membres se satisfont de cette situation.

My French is what it is, but that's roughly, "Things began badly, this year, with the regrettable aid of France, with the election to the presidency of Libya's representative, and they have continued badly. . . . This commission has become a parody of herself, and the majority of the 53 member-states are satisfied with this situation."

Arab Conspiracy Theories:

From Albawaba.com.

A Compromise?

The White House is said to be backing a bill making it a crime to harm a fetus while assaulting his mother. The NOW has made noises of opposition to the concept, on the grounds that they fear giving legitimacy to the notion that a fetus is a person deserving of legal protections.

Well, we've had this discussion, and it's going nowhere. How about a compromise? Can we just modify the law to double the range of all penalties for violent crimes against pregnant women? If it works well, we can include children under twelve and the elderly in this blanket protection.

Chechnya:

This article from the Washington Post treats the establishment of an armed, Islamist camp in Chechnya. The article is skewed by its timeframe, however. It focuses on the development of the Chechen rebellion since 1999, but pays insufficient attention to the period just before and after the fall of the Soviet Union.

The Soviet period was not uniformly brutal, but rather especially brutal in the areas occupied by unfavored minorities (as indeed, the Chinese state is today with its Muslims in East Turkestan, which the PRC calls Xinjiang, "New frontier"). There has been constant fighting since the collapse of the Soviet union. The Russian army found a number of the cities of Chechnya held against them. When they finally broke the last, it was by advancing street by street with infantry and armor, and blasting any buildings held by foes with rocket propelled grenades.

The Russian reconquest has been extrodinarily brutal as well. The rape of both Muslim women and Muslim men by Russian soldiers has been part of the official policy for breaking resistance. It is no wonder that the mid-late 1990s saw the incursion of al Qaeda into Chechnya, which turned into both a rallying cause and training center for the Islamists. Our Mr. Moussaoui ('the 20th hijacker") spent time fighting and training in Chechnya about 1996. When he was arrested in the United States, it was in company with a young American Muslim who claimed Moussaoui recruited him to fight in Chechnya.

A British Funeral in the Republic:

Rest in peace, Lance Corporal Malone. Interested readers will find my poem for this fallen Irishman in the archives.

Wild Life:

I'm thrilled to see that Aidan Hartley, correspondant to the London Spectator from Kenya, has a piece in the magazine this week after a long absence. I've missed his column, which used to run weekly. After the tragic murder of a close friend, he dropped out for quite a while. I hope he's making a return to regular correspondance.

Close, but not quite:

This letter to the editor in the NY Times today is on IRA disarmament:

Sir John Stevens's report that the British Army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary colluded with Protestant paramilitaries to kill Catholics in Northern Ireland in the late 1980's confirms what many observers have suspected for some time.

Can there be any wonder that the Irish Republican Army is reluctant to give up all its arms?

The I.R.A. has sustained its cease-fire since 1996, but clearly, it feels that it and the Catholic community would be vulnerable to more attacks if the I.R.A. disarmed unilaterally.

The Good Friday Agreement calls for the general demilitarization of Northern Ireland, so the onus of disarmament should not fall on the I.R.A. alone.

All paramilitary groups in the province should disarm simultaneously, the British Army should withdraw, and the Northern Ireland police must be reformed so that the Catholic minority can trust them.
T. W. HEYCK

The IRA keeping its guns until the Protestants give up theirs is not the answer; and it certainly isn't the answer for the IRA to hang onto an arsenal until the British military withdraws. What do cached guns do for Catholics--even IRA members--that the Ulster paramilitary men want to kill, with or without British help?

The IRA should disband, but their guns should be divided among the Catholic population. The people of Ireland, and Northern Ireland, ought to enjoy a free man's right to self defense and the bearing of arms. It isn't through threats of future IRA reprisals that the power of terror can be broken. It's by the certainty of law-abiding self defense. Denying that right to the peoples of Ireland, Protestant and Catholic, prolongs the conflict and keeps the illegal armies ensconced in the shadows of power.

DPRK to test bomb?

This blog, 21st March: "Earlier this week I was discussing with a close friend a theory I had that they might test a weapon underground, thereby creating more fissible material on the instant as well as announcing that they were a nuclear state."

Today's Economist: "A further worry is North Korea�s threat at the talks, according to the Americans, that it might test one of its weapons, which would greatly escalate the crisis on the Korean peninsula"

We have no money going down the mountain:

The new "Parents: the Anti-Drug" page has this to say about marijuana use:

According to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University, teens who use drugs are five times more likely to have sex than are those teens who do not use drugs. . . . Kids need to hear how risky marijuana use can be.

Oh, yeah. Just what I'll tell my teenage son. "It makes it five times as likely that you'll have sex!" Good God.

I may win my Tikrit bet yet:

From Babbin's Warblog today:

In the flood of small news yesterday, one report caught my attention. A Fox reporter searching the offices of Mohamed al-Sahhaf, aka Baghdad Bob the Saddamite propaganda minister, said his crew had found a handwritten note to Bob from Saddam dated 30 March. If the note is genuine, it would show that Saddam survived the first "decapitation strike" and was still in command ten days before Baghdad fell. British Defence Minister Geoff Hoon said the other day that Saddam is alive, and probably still in Iraq. If he is, the hunch is that he's in the area near Tikrit, his home town. Oliver North is also there, with the Fourth I.D. If Saddam is found, I know one old Marine who will move heaven and earth to be there when the Ace of Spades in the Doomsday Deck is taken down.

Two from the British Papers:

Mark Steyn's piece on the UN in the London Spectator; Theodore Dalrymple on the question of SARS in Britian in the Daily Telegraph. The Telegraph may require free registration.

Special Operations:

Special Operations forces are not created equal. In fact, "special operations" is too loose a category to be meaningful. Spend time with military men, and you will invariably hear some bootless debate about whether the Navy's SEALs or the Army's Special Forces are better: in fact, there can be no comparison, as they serve different functions, and are therefore trained differently. Here's a quick guide to the special operations forces in the news just now, what they are for, and what they're not.

"Airborne": In the US Army, the "Airborne" designation originated in WWII, when it referred to paratroopers. These days, the 101st Airborne and 82nd Airborne are not really that--although we did see the first major deployment of paratroopers since WWII when the 173rd Airborne took an airfield in northern Iraq. Airborne units are now "air assault" units, generally capable of paratrooper operations, but more likely to be air-mobile infantry backed with attack helicopters like the Apache. In theory, this makes them fast-moving ground forces. In practice, the sandstorms in Iraq grounded the 101st for several days, while the traditional mechanized infantry units advanced at pace. Nevertheless, Airborne units tend to have had advanced training beyond the standard infantry school, to include paratrooper training in many cases. In the US Army, they are allowed to wear maroon berets.

Army Special Forces: The famous "green berets," these men are primarily trained for insurgency/counterinsurgency operations. They are generally proficient linguists, selected in part because they have an ability to pick up new languages quickly. They are meant to train guerrilla forces for proxy wars, or train armies in the methods of hunting and eliminating guerrilla forces, though they can of course function as guerrilla/antiguerrilla forces themselves. This made them the natural choice for the Afghan campaign, where their language skills let them pick up local Pashtun dialects to coordinate with Northern Alliance forces. This allowed the American air assets to function smoothly with an alien army. The Special Forces' small, capable teams are also good at commando attacks.

Army Rangers: The Army Rangers used to be designated by a black beret, but these days wear a khaki one becaue the black beret is now standard-issue for all GIs. Rangers are highly trained light infantry. They practice mostly the standard infantry skills, but to a greater degree of proficiency; in addition, they are trained in unusual methods of insertion and movement--for example, being flown in while dangling from a helicopter by a rope (SPI roping), or rappelling. They aren't really meant to function independently of the main Army forces, unlike the Green Berets, but to act as supplementary forces for particularly dangerous operations or difficult terrain. They are also used for reconnaisance missions, though the Army maintains scout units as well.

Delta Force: The Delta Force does not exist. It doesn't do anything, because it does not exist. One hears rumors from time to time--for example, that the Delta Force was hanging around Baghdad, keeping eyes on Baathist leaders--but these must be lies, since we are assured that it does not exist. If it did exist, though, it would be drawn from the best commando units the US military has to offer, and would be intended to be deployed for such commando raids as were most perilous and least likely to be survived. It was, rumor says, originally intended to combat terrorist groups.

Marine Corps Recon / Force Recon: Marine Recon normally is just that: a unit trained in reconnaissance and forward observation. They are remarkably stealthy, and meant to operate behind enemy lines, getting a picture of what the enemy is about. "Force" Recon units are more heavily armed, and intended to operate deep behind enemy lines, as well as to take on commando-style attacks. Force Recon is occasionally rumored to be involved with black operations--assassinations, for example--but there is no evidence to support these assertions. Whether this is because the assertions are untrue, or because Force Recon are utter professionals, is left to the reader to judge.

Marine Corps Scout Snipers: Their name explains what they do. They operate in pairs--a sniper, and a spotter. They can be sent forward to scout, as they are masters of concealment and camoflauge; or, they can operate with larger units to provide them with the very finest in sniping capabilities. In Vietnam, they frequently operated on hunter/killer missions behind enemy lines, at which they were so successful that the North Vientamese instituted a heavy bounty on the heads of any Sniper killed.

Marine Corps MEU (SOC): MEU stands for "Marine Expeditionary Unit," and (SOC) stands for "Special Operations Capable." The MEU is one of several MAGTFs (Marine Corps Air/Ground Task Forces). A MAGTF is a grouping of no set size, consisting of a group of Marine Corps infantry, possibly with attached armor or other mechanized assets, linked to a group of Marine Corps Air. The largest of these MAGTFs is the Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF), which is at least a reinforced division of Marines coupled with a full wing of Marine Air. The MEU is smaller than the MEF. SOC means that the entire MEU, every last member down to the cooks and postal workers, are trained in special operations procedures, and tested according to standards even more rigorous than USMC standard--which is, it ought to be remarked, a standard already far higher than the Army's. An MEU (SOC) is really an army that can be deployed anywhere, at any time, instantly: and, having arrived wherever it wants to be, is possessed of sufficient firepower to hold off whatever forces may be directed against it until such time as it can be relieved. They aren't commandos, and they aren't intended for sabotage missions. They are, themselves, a second front, to be opened anywhere the President wants them.

Navy SEALs: The SEALs, it is well known, got their start as underwater demolition teams (UDTs) in WWII, destroying mines to clear harbors. They have since evolved into a commando unit, probably the most technology-oriented of US commandos. They are especially skilled at insertion/extraction, which means that they can come and go without anyone knowing they were there. The SEALs, particularly the notorious SEAL Team Six, are used in much the same way that the Delta Force would be used if it existed. They are sent to rescue hostages, bring people out of hostile countries, or destroy facilities behind enemy lines. Their training in technology gives them remarkable flexibility--I've never met a SEAL who wasn't capable of flying a plane or jumping out of one, operating a remarkable range of underwater gear, and of course expert in firearms and small unit tactics. The SEALs aren't, however, selected for linguistic/training abilities, like the Green Berets: they are pure commandos, intended to operate either independently or as a wing of a larger campaign, but not intended to raise and train guerrilla forces or stay around long enough to learn the local tongue.

British Special Operations: The British have deployed three sets of special operations forces in Iraq: the Royal Marine Commandos, the Special Air Service, and the Special Boat Squad. It's useful to think of the RMCs as being similar to Marine Force Recon, and the SBS as very much like the Navy SEALs; but the SAS is quite its own thing. It is probably the finest commando force in the world, but it also selects for linguistics and other skills that one expects to see in the Green Berets. There are persistent rumors that the SAS has spent much of the last thirty years cutting its teeth on murder raids in the Republic of Ireland against IRA targets. We know it was employed in Afghanistan during the Tora Bora battle. However, most of the SAS's activities are still hidden in secrecy. Even its dead, posthumously awarded Britian's highest medals, are not named.

Kurtz:

In The Corner today, Stanley Kurtz speaks at some length (and with additional links to previous articles) to the Santorum debate.

Mark Steyn on Bush:

I'm getting around to Mark Steyn rather late this time around--some ten days late, in fact. His profile of Bush is worth reading, though, if (like me) you missed it the first time out. The most interesting part of the piece to me is this:

Bush doesn't see why children in Mosul are so different from those in Crawford: why shouldn't they have the same freedoms? You can mock this if you wish. It seems very odd that the Left, which routinely bemoans the injustice of Barbara Bush's son having greater opportunities than the son of a crack whore in the inner city merely because of an accident of birth, then turns around and tells 20 million Iraqis that they have to accept their lot and live in a prison state forever. Julian Barnes, Iowa's Democratic Senator Tom Harkin and a zillion others continue to feel this way - even after Saddam's fall.

Whether or not Mr Bush can succeed in his most ambitious objective - to democratise the Middle East - it is surely hard to deny that, next to the shriveled condescension of Barnes and co, his is the progressive position - adopted in the teeth of cynical opposition, not least from his own State Department.

Progressive--I like that. Let's progress right on past the wasteland of modernism, exactly by returning to the old values of classical liberalism. It was, after all, the classical liberal who first propounded the idea that all men were created equal, and that some rights were endowed inalienably.

The Founding:

When I suggest that a federal system in Iraq which permits Sharia law would be "like what America looked like at the founding," I mean that more or less literally. It's often forgotten that, in spite of the 1st Amendment, religious liberty at the founding was a patchwork of tolerance and intolerance. Some states were quite liberal about what they would accept, and some quite illiberal. Georgia, for example, at its founding pointedly refused to accept Catholics (as well as lawyers and slaves), but went to some trouble to settle Jacobite Presbyterians (and probably a quiet Catholic or two), German Lutherans, and Jews. In fact, George Washington addressed the Jews of Savannah during his visit to the city. The debates between Bostonians and the denizens of "Rogue's Island," more commonly known as Rhode Island, provide a similar play. States founded by Puritans tended to support religious liberty for Puritans, but no one else; Rhode Island tended toward a radical form of Calvanist determinism which argued that, since we were all predestined anyway, we might as well enjoy ourselves.

The 1st Amendment's declaration of religious liberty, then, really touched on only the Federal government. As the Supreme Court Historical Society notes,

Madison would have accomplished at the Founding, at least in part, what the Supreme Court was destined to hold 160 years later. Madison crafted his second proposal very simply: "No state shall violate the equal rights of conscience." The proposal, I hasten to add, went on to protect the freedom of the press and the right to trial by jury in criminal cases; it was not devoted 'exclusively to religious freedom.

Nor should it go unnoticed from these two measures that Madison entertained a bifurcated notion as to governmental power to establish religion: under his two proposals Congress clearly could not establish a national religion, but the States, in contrast, could establish their own state religions, at least if they did not infringe upon "the equal rights of conscience."

This too, upon reflection, is unexceptional. For at that time 5 of the 13 States maintained establishments of religion, the last of which, Massachusetts, was not dissolved until 1833.

It took the Civil War, and the 14th Amendment, to change the nature of the Bill of Rights from restrictions on the Federal government alone to restrictions on state governments as well. But this is just what I am after. The Civil War is the story of wealth and power collecting in the liberalized areas of the nation, and then turning to bring the countryside to heel. Following the Civil War, during the long period after Reconstruction, we see a second collection of power and wealth in the cities of the South, whose relative liberality allowed them to for the basis for (admittedly segregated) prosperous black communities, out of which in turn grew the Civil Rights movement. The key is to let liberalization happen organically. We need to focus on keeping the framework for such liberalization stable, while keeping friendly ties to the Islamic leaders so that they will side with us instead of terror groups. That means giving the conservative elements a stake in Iraq's government, perhaps even a controlling stake at the level of local provinces.

Making Peace:

The NY Times today confirms Amir Taheri, arguing that the Iranian government is trying to destabilize the creation of a secular state in Iraq. Apparently Iranian agents are there, working to stir up the Shia Muslims in favor of an Islamist state. Michael Ledeen offers his advice on dealing with the Shia Muslims here.

I will reiterate my thoughts, which are that a stable state will require giving these clerics a stake in the power. It is necessary that we establish a free, and classically liberal, state in Iraq. It won't look like America, though, if it's going to be a stable state. It will look more like what America looked like at the founding: a constitutional federation of smaller states, each with local autonomy over certain questions. We may have to accept Sharia law in some of these local states in order to have a fully stable Iraq with a secular Baghdad.

This is ok, because power and wealth will accumulate in the liberal areas. In time, they will wield that power to liberalize the backcountry on their own. For the United States, there are just two concerns in Iraq: 1) to provide a stable framework for the gradual transformation and liberalization. This requires giving everyone a stake, provided only that they will forswear terrorism as a method of getting their way. 2) Ending the support of terror groups from within Iraq. This requires keeping friendly ties open with the Islamic leaders, rather than driving a wedge between ourselves and them. Give them local-states of their own, and they will become involved with the running of those states. Appoint ambassadors with knowledge of Islamic culture to those states, and keep a friendly dialogue open with regular gifts--provided that they, in return, help us ferret out al Qaeda and other terrorist infiltrators. Such groups are making it easy for us by targeting Shia holy sites and clerics for destruction. The cooperation of the 82nd Airborne in preventing that most recent attack is worth a division of State Department ambassadors.

It's a long haul, but I think it can be done, and done well. Of course, there are still those who would prefer letting the French take charge, as they are doing in the Ivory Coast. The French-backed "reconciliation government" in la Cote d'Ivorie reports great success in ending the troubles there, excepting those three hundred killed in yesterday's fighting.

Gays and the Presbyterian Church:

Gays don't get a lot of play on my blog, because of my disinterest in (and, let's be honest, distaste for) gay issues and culture. However, today we'll have two items on them, this one via Wren's Nest. It treats a Presbyterian minister who is marrying gays, which is against church law and, I suspect, state law. The fellow's church is apparently given to appointing actively homosexual decons in violation of church rules, which require chastity among unmarried lay leaders. In spite of these violations, the church has limited its punishment to a gentle chiding.

It reminds me of the old joke we used to tell:

Q: How can you tell a Baptist from a Methodist?
A: The Methodist will share his beer with you.
Q: How can you tell a Presbyterian, then?
A: The Presbyterian will run the church bus by the liquor store.

The minister in question plans to appeal even the gentle chiding on the grounds that he thinks the rules against gay marriage go against Scripture. This is a new one on me--I've heard of Scriptural interpretations that suggested that the crime of Sodom wasn't homosexuality but a failing of hospitality, but I have never heard of any Scriptural argument in favor of homosexual marriage. As I am interested in comparative religion, though, I'll be glad to hear the argument if any of my readers know what it is. Let me know, if you hear anything about it.

Gays & Polygamy:

Another Republican Senator is in trouble for his mouth. You'd think Republicans would just stop speaking in public. This time it's the Honorable Rick Santorum, who said this:

If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything.

There are three things to be said about this. First, bigamy is perhaps the most improperly used word in American jurisprudence. It comes from the Greek, and does indeed mean "two-wifed." However, bigamy was the practice of having a second wife after the death of the first one, not the practice of having two wives at once, which was (and is) polygamy. American legislatures have always gotten the semantics wrong, which is irritating to those of us who like having words for each concept instead of confusing the concepts.

Second, Santorum here seems to be echoing Stanley Kurtz of the National Review, who has made this argument at great length. See his pieces "The Coming Battle," "The Real Issue" and "Gay Marriage Endgame". He's written more about it, most of which can be found by following the links contained in his articles. Stanley Kurtz and Andrew Sullivan have maintained a running fight about this for months. The Senator is just abbreviating Kurtz's points, with which he apparently agrees. It's unfair to call for his removal for participating in political discourse--that's what we expect of Senators, after all, it's what they are for.

Last, I find the Kurtz/Santorum argument astonishing. It takes this form: "Gay marriage should not be allowed because it would necessarily allow polygamy, and polygamy would mark the real destruction of marriage as an institution." But polygamy has been the main way in which marriage has been practiced for all of human history. It is specifically permitted in the Torah, which gives rules in Exodus for taking a second wife; when Jesus speaks to adultery in the New Testament, he clearly leaves open the traditional polygamist way of Jewish marriage; Mormonism obviously permits it in their scripture; and as for non-Judeo-Christian marriage, there isn't a religion among them that forbids polygamy. All of them have traditions of polygamist behavior historically, and many--Islam for example--have scripture to support the taking of extra wives.

No culture, however, has ever allowed gay marriage. The Kurtz/Santorum argument is perhaps the most extrodinary case of cart-before-horseism I've seen in my life. Polygamy, though problematic, would represent a return to roots, and indeed there are strong arguments in its favor in an era in which traditional families are crumbling and divorce rates are skyrocketing. Gay marriage is a complete departure from everything marriage has ever represented.

Guns & Free Men:

The Washington Post today prints this letter explaining why no one stopped a man from being beaten to death in Maryland. The short answer is this:

But I also understand the reluctance of unarmed bystanders to confront a large man in a homicidal rage. This is called "disparity of force," and it provides legal justification for the use of deadly weapons in self-defense.

Unfortunately, because of Maryland's strict gun control laws, no bystander was likely to be armed.

Police officers cannot be present at all violent crimes, but victims, by definition, always are. Without weapons, the weak will always be at the mercy of the strong.

Maryland's gun control laws--I've had occasion to look into them lately--are far more stringent than the norm for the United States. There is no "shall issue" permit for carrying a firearm, but rather permits are issued only if the state police agree with your reasons for going armed (apparently, "because people are getting beaten to death" isn't a good enough reason). Even if permits are issued, the fees are shockingly high--some seventy dollars even to consider the permit, which is good then only for two years, and must be renewed at fifty dollars a year thenceforth. In Georgia, the fee is three dollars a year, just to cover the administrative costs of the background check. Further, the permit is "shall issue," which means that the state is obligated to give you the permit unless they can prove you are disqualified under the law. They can't turn it down just because they want to.

But Georgia is a backwards Southern state, right? Well--it's a Southern state, but it looks to be ahead of the trend. All but 18 states now offer "shall issue" permits, with crime rates dropping in all such states after the change in the law, and by a more or less uniform percentage. Guns in law abiding hands seem to limit crimes, for just the reasons cited in the letter above.

Of course, if Maryland is bad, the situation in D.C. is far worse. However, that may be about to change.

(Full disclosure: I'm no utilitarian--I believe in the right of free men to keep and bear arms as a point of honor and tradition. I would back it even if it increased crime rates, simply because the right to bear arms is indivisible from the actual fact of being free. A man who is forbidden arms is not free, not only because he is prohibited from exercising a traditional liberty, but also because he must thereafter be at the mercy of the strong, or the many.)

Aussies Consider the DPRK:

The Aussie press seems to have decided that the US is going to take out North Korea. The Sydney Morning Herald ran this article titled Secret U.S. File: Oust Regime in Pyongyang. Meanwhile, the Advertiser has a piece called US Blueprint to Bomb North Korea. It suggests that we have a plan to strike the Yongbyon reactor and the DPRK's artillery positions on the DMZ line in the event of active reprocessing at Yongbyon.

The Pentagon hawks believe the precision strikes envisaged in the plan would not lead to North Korea's initiating a general war it would be certain to lose. The US would inform the North Koreans it was not aiming to destroy the regime of Kim Jong-il, but merely to destroy its nuclear weapons capacity.

No word on what kind of weapons would be used in the "precision" strikes on DPRK arty, but the positions they are talking about are extensive and fortified. The US military's precision strike weapons are impressive--this Iraq business has made that clear--but my own impression is echoed by John Derbyshire's article Night Thoughts:

The logic all points one way: to nuclear weapons. The only way to put North Korea out of business without South Korea�s co-operation is by attacking their emplacements along the DMZ with neutron bombs (�enhanced radiation weapons�). Nothing else does the job without precipitating an invasion of South Korea.

I have to agree. I don't think we have any other option that allows us to neutralize the artillery positions quickly enough to prevent them turning lose devastation on Seoul. The use of nukes will not pass as "precision strikes" in anyone's book, and I don't think there is any friendly message that Bush can send to talk Kim out of a reply. Once we go to guns on the DPRK, we're committed to a real war. There should be no joking around about this. It may be the right thing to do--I'm increasingly convinced that it is, though I am willing to see how the China talks develop. It should be understood, though, that we are not talking about precision strikes this time, nor a cost-free bombing run to solve all our problems.

Of course, these Canberra sources seem to be drawing on Pentagon and DoD sources. The State Department may have other ideas.

My Favorite American Beer:

Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer is apparently enjoying a renaissance among the young and hip. It was my grandfather's beer, and the one I took up when living in Hangzhou, China, on those occasions when I wanted beer not cut with rice wine. It's actually very good--leaving aside the microbreweries and specialists, probably still the best American beer. Glad to see it making a comeback. (Story via InstaPundit).

Guns in Iraq:

The Corner at NRO today has this post from Dave Kopel:

Although British troops in Basra have been urging residents to voluntarily turn in their guns, American forces in the middle-class Baghdad suburb of Hay al-Qudhat are doing no such thing. Instead, they are simply ordering people not to carry guns in public. Neighborhood residents have been defending their homes from looters. Said one resident, "We all have guns, but we don't want them. We just want peace and stability." The neighborhood is home to many doctors, lawyers, and other professionals.

Right. A free man has the right to bear arms. As this page has advocated before, arming and empowering the liberal elements in Iraqi society is the surest first step to creating a liberal, but free, Iraq.

Pax vobiscum:

A funeral for one of our own. Semper Fidelis.

From the Economist:

An article on the development of international relations.

Iraqi Shias:

Analysis via Orders of Battle.