There Must Be Some Mistake:

CSPAN-3 is currently holding a conference called "Southern Writers on the Confederate Flag." Yet, somehow, my invitation seems not to have arrived.

It must be here somewhere...

[rustle rustle]

Hm.

Pity it didn't come on time. This is a rather sad display of a 'panel' with a uniform opinion. Sample quote: "Even though these young men didn't like being compared to Nazis, they did learn..."

I've only actually heard two people mention the Confederate Flag, and for one of them it was a quick aside ("When you're from Alabama, you take a lot of abuse... but I would like to point out [to the audience in S. Carolina] that we took the flag down three years ago.")

There has been much said about Southern history, diversity, and the experience of being Southern. I am not sure that any of these good people have, however, given any thought at all to the flag. Certainly they have not investigated the question of why it remains an enduring symbol, beloved by so many. The closest we get here is, "'Heritage not hate' is the cry of the thoughtful flag waver. I've always thought the walls were paper thin for them. How about 'Heritage and Hate!'"

Pity, really. There is a lot that probably should be said, if there were thoughtful writers to address it. I have spoken to Southern issues on occasion, and to Southern honor at length. I am, however, a poor writer whose attention only turns now and then to my blessed homeland, being occupied with other matters most of the time. There are surely others who are better qualified to speak to this matter, who might have been invited.

Yet if there truly be none, I would stand. I've tried to explain the Confederate flag to the crowd on Atrios' blog, after all--surely the folks at this conference couldn't have been more hostile than that.

Thanks, Gweilo!

Thanks to the Gweilo Diaries, I found this story from the Economist:

They found that a large adult head size was beneficial in preventing cognitive decline, in particular memory. At the other end of the spectrum, though, the news was grim. Those with the smallest heads had up to a fivefold greater risk of cognitive decline over this time than those with the largest.

I feel far more cheerful now than a few minutes ago. I'll just go get my size 62 hat, and whistle all the way to the train station.

A Photo Essay:

Hat tip to Oscar Jr. This is Sgt. Hook giving us some photographs of Iraq that you probably haven't seen elsewhere.

Australia:

From today's Sydney Morning Herald:

In the US's seven wars of the past century (not counting numerous and sometimes bloody military actions in Panama, Grenada, Somalia, Bosnia, Guatemala and elsewhere) - World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Afghanistan war, and the Iraq war - only Australia fought in all seven wars, and every one of them was fought far from Australia's shores.

In World War I, when the population was only 5 million, 300,000 men enlisted for duty and the majority, 216,000 of them, were either killed, wounded or captured. To put this in perspective, it was the equivalent of today's US (with 290 million people) suffering 12 million military casualties.

Minus what?

A review from Hollywood.com suggests that the new movie starring pro-wrestler 'The Rock' "is reminiscent of the Indiana Jones films-minus the xenophobic, imperialist, and misogynistic elements."

Xenophobic? My interest in learning multiple languages and studying Eastern history was spawned in part from watching those movies as a kid. Indiana Jones was xenophilic, if anyone was. The comic scenes in which he eats things like chilled monkey brains with aplomb were meant to emphasize that fact--the hero is not put off by differing customs. He speaks the language, he eats the food, he befriends the locals and attempts to understand them.

Imperialist? What can this possibly mean? Indiana Jones didn't seem to have a political agenda at all. He was an archaeologist who robbed tombs to fill a friendly museum and his pockets. He had no political affiliations, or really any notable political feelings, except that he hated Nazis.

Misogynist? The female lead of Raiders of the Lost Ark is introduced in a drinking contest, wherein she knocks down enough hard liquor to put a giant to sleep. Later, when Indiana Jones refuses to rescue her in order to keep the Ark expedition quiet, she nearly manages to escape by getting her captor drunk and pulling a knife on him. This is a misogynist's portrayal of women?

We've got to hold people to the correct use of language. Not one of these insults applies in fact, but the author applies them all brazenly and without apology or explanation.

Aaron the Slayer:

Aaron the Liberal Slayer has added me to his "Hail! Hail! Rant and Roll!" blogroll. In keeping with Grim's Hall's policy of reciprocal hospitality, his hall is now on our list.

No Evidence:

I keep being told by a certain young lady who knows who she is that there is no evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda were linked. Here's a small rebuttal to that position from TCS.

A Model:

This is the proper model for how we should protect our children from terrorists:

Bill Murphy said the Sept. 17 attack happened after he surprised a grizzly cub and its mother on a trail about 50 miles northeast of Anchorage where he was hunting for moose and sheep.
�I didn�t even have time to jump,� Murphy said.
Murphy grabbed his rifle but before he could raise it, the mother bear pinned him face-down.
It then clamped her jaws around his right shoulder and started shaking him like a rag. He said he felt teeth pressing against his skin, then a pop as they sliced through.
At some point, the bear let go, then stood over Murphy, panting and drooling onto his head. All he could think about was a bear attack over the summer near the Russian River where a man was bitten on the face and blinded.
�I just lay perfectly still and said, �God, don�t bite my head,�� Murphy said.
Finally, the bear moved away. Murphy said he got up, planning to shoot the bear, but it had broken his rifle.

Let us all be as our brother, our sister, the Great Bear.

Terrorists Aim at Schools:

Today's New York Post has an article on the threat al Qaeda poses to American schoolchildren. Pay close attention to this: there is no reason these attacks would have to happen in New York. They are more likely to happen elsewhere:

The NYPD has created a special unit to thwart terrorists who are tempted to target city schools, it was revealed yesterday.
Law-enforcement officials insisted they have gotten no specific threat against any school, and maintained that setting up the unit is part of an overall strategy to prevent another terror attack.

"Better safe than sorry," said one police source.

Earlier this year, The Post reported that al Qaeda thugs practiced storming a school, shooting children and taking hostages. The videotaped exercise took place in an abandoned school in Afghanistan.

As I recall, the videotaped exercise ends with shooting the hostages once television cameras are there to see it done, followed by a suicide-charge against police lines. It's worth remembering that these people were training to kill our kids, before the US Special Forces showed up at their campsites.

That may not be enough to stop them. The fact is that a large number of states--it may even be all of them, now--have passed special legislation making it a crime to carry weapons of any sort on school property, even if you are not a student but a teacher or staff member, and even if you are licensed to carry elsewhere. The effect of these laws has been to create "Terrorist Safe-Zones" where no one will have any tools with which to resist.

We need to rethink that. We don't want our kids carrying guns and knives to school, fine. We ought to want, though, those teachers who are willing and able to protect our children to have the training and tools with which to do it.

I have heard that in Israel, no field trip can be undertaken without at least one armed adult. It would be wise to have a few trained and armed adults in our schools, too. We ought to remember that evil men have chosen our children as targets. Up the militia.

Mongols in Baghdad:

I've been waiting for this story for quite a while. Ever since I heard that Outer Mongolia was sending Mongolian soldiers to Iraq, I've been waiting to see what kind of press they'd get.

The Iraqi and Arab press doesn't seem to have noticed them, which isn't surprising since only about 200 men are involved. Nevertheless, I was expecting something negative--I'm given to understand that the memory of the Mongol invasion is still very much alive in Mesopotamia.

Though the coverage seems to be coming from the New York Times, the story is still worth noting. It is a mark of the strangeness of the age we live in, when Mongols led by Americans join together to rebuild Iraq.

The Good Guys:

Internet Haganah fights the holy warriors on the electron frontier.

'Extraordinary Honors':

As only the navy knows how. This really touches the divide between those whose hearts are rooted in the warrior spirit, and those who aren't. For the rest of you, this probably just looks like silly grandstanding. For us, it swells the heart. The German Navy is on my short list of people who understand honor, along with the Queen of England and Her Majesty's Armed Forces:

The unexpected gesture touched the US sailors, Vice Admiral Timothy LaFleur described in an unclassified email: �From their main mast they flew our flag and they held their covers over their hearts. Needless to say, the whole crew was choked up and a few tears formed in our eyes. Both ships stayed next to each other in silence for about 5 minutes. These are the days that remind me why I joined the Navy.�

The FGS Niedersachsen and the USS Doyle are both part of NATO�s Standing Naval Force Atlantic (STANAVFORLANT), a permanent peacetime multinational naval squadron composed of destroyers, cruisers and frigates from the navies of various NATO nations.

Colonel Crockett:

The Honorable Davy Crockett speaks to socialism avant la lettre. Where did he get his keen understanding? From a backwoods Tennessee philosopher named Horatio Bruce.

Bruce is a name we've seen before in the history of our kind of government. The last time it was King Robert the Bruce, author of the Declaration of Arbroath. The Bruces of Tennessee are, of course, proud relations.

Economics:

Today at FreeSpeech there is a link to a stunning pice that suggesets that income inequality is less severe in the US than in socialist Western Europe. This remarkable claim is based on a formal study of the issue of income inequalities worldwide, The New Geography of Global Income Inequality by Glenn Firebaugh.

If this is true, the truth of which we won't know for a while, it removes the last leg of socialism. It is bad enough that socialism has hampered Europe and elsewhere so strongly that the US alone accounts for 60% of world GDP growth. If the evidence finally shows that socialism can provide neither for the general security nor the general prosperity, but in fact increases both internal violence (see below) and income inequality, we may at last see an end to that sinkhole of human energy and freedom.

Up the Militia:

Stern gun control laws fail in Britian. The comments below the post are worth reading.

Law and Afghanistan:

Parapundit has an interesting account of the problems of property law in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan:

Afgha.com looks like a good source for Afghan news. They are just collecting stories, rather than reporting--but they've got almost everything important I've seen out of Afghanistan this week, all collected on one page.

Declass'd Docs:

The Asia Times has a story on some newly declassified US documents. They relate to the Taliban and al Qaeda. The Times' story is by Mr. B. Raman, former head of RAW. RAW stands for "Research and Analysis Wing," which is a lightweight description of a heavyweight player. RAW is India's most aggressive intelligence service.

Most likely to my mind, then, this piece in the Times is Indian propaganda, designed to drive a wedge between the US and Pakistan. Nevertheless, it makes interesting reading.

Rangel on Clark:

Charles "Chuck" Rangel speaks to the Clark candidacy

"He can save this goddam nation from self-destruction," declares New York Congressman Charles Rangel, who is arranging a meeting for Clark with the Congressional Black Caucus, possibly as early as this week.

I'm going to guess that this is some of that "colorful" New York speech I've encountered on occasion. Let me just be the first to say, though, that I'll thank the Honorable Rangel to speak more kindly of my country.

Al-Qaeda/Iraq:

So what's the connection? Last week Cheney said there was a 9/11 link, and Bush said there wasn't; Cheney, of course, has been going to the CIA briefings every day for ten years, but Bush is the President. On the other hand, Bush also said that al Qaeda links to Iraq were absolutely certain, so the picture gets confused.

The Bleat has this:

I mean, there�s this:

Finally, what if any new evidence has emerged that bolsters the Bush administration's prewar case?

The answer to that last question is simple: lots. The CIA has confirmed, in interviews with detainees and informants it finds highly credible, that al Qaeda's Number 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, met with Iraqi intelligence in Baghdad in 1992 and 1998. More disturbing, according to an administration official familiar with briefings the CIA has given President Bush, the Agency has "irrefutable evidence" that the Iraqi regime paid Zawahiri $300,000 in 1998, around the time his Islamic Jihad was merging with al Qaeda. "It's a lock," says this source. Other administration officials are a bit more circumspect, noting that the intelligence may have come from a single source. Still, four sources spread across the national security hierarchy have confirmed the payment.

The entire article is here, and it�s worth reading. It�s a summation of what the Administration alleged, what they didn�t use, and what they�ve learned since the war. Here�s another taste:

Farouk Hijazi, former Iraqi ambassador to Turkey and Saddam's longtime outreach agent to Islamic fundamentalists, has been captured. In his initial interrogations, Hijazi admitted meeting with senior al Qaeda leaders at Saddam's behest in 1994. According to administration officials familiar with his questioning, he has subsequently admitted additional contacts, including a meeting in late 1997. Hijazi continues to deny that he met with bin Laden on December 21, 1998, to offer the al Qaeda leader safe haven in Iraq. U.S. officials don't believe his denial.

For one thing, the meeting was reported in the press at the time. It also fits a pattern of contacts surrounding Operation Desert Fox, the series of missile strikes the Clinton administration launched at Iraq beginning December 16, 1998. The bombing ended 70 hours later, on December 19, 1998. Administration officials now believe Hijazi left for Afghanistan as the bombing ended and met with bin Laden two days later.

If you think it�s another steaming slice of facts from the Great Pie of Minced Prevarications, fine. But it�s a plausible piece, and if you�ve read it the lied-died meme seems particularly loathsome.

I don't see any way that there could not have been links, given all we've seen. Certainly the Abu Nidal Organization ran out of Iraq all through the last ten years, and they're linked to al Qaeda. There have been persistent rumors of Qaeda/Saddam links around the Ansar al-Islam area. No evidence has emerged to the press of such links since the war--but then, the Ansar campaign was handled by USSOCOM combined with the CIA Special Operations Group, which means absolutely everything that they encountered was instantly classified. No embedded reporters got to see what they found.

Assassination foiled by militia action:

Akila Hashemi was shot today in Iraq. A member of the Iraqi Governing Council, she was ambushed in her Land Rover by gunmen.

She may yet die from her wounds. If she does not, though, she has these men to thank:

The Land Cruiser then careered down the street for about 150 yards, followed by the pickup trucks, before crashing into the front gate of a house, witnesses said. As the pickup approached, its driver and passengers shooting in the direction of the house, Hashemi's brother removed an AK-47 rifle from the Land Cruiser and began shooting at the truck. He was joined by a security guard stationed at a neighboring high school.

"If we didn't shoot back, they would have come here to kill her or kidnap her," said the guard, Feras Deen.

Coalition forces, like policemen, can't be everywhere. A handy AK-47 goes a long way to evening the score, even against a well-planned and -manned ambuscade.

FreeSpeech:

A reply to an article on terrorism at FreeSpeech:

For what it's worth, I don't agree with the assessment. I agree that they can't be deterred, exactly. I also agree they can't be appeased.

But they can be stopped. When was the last time an airliner was hijacked successfully? September 11, 2001. It has never happened again, and it never will. That old classic of terrorism is a dead letter.

Truck bombings are a serious threat. Been to the Lincoln Memorial lately? What used to be parking is now an empty zone, protected by concrete barriers. You can't get a truck of any sort close enough to bomb the thing. Important buildings can be sealed off similarly--the extra walk is good for you anyway.

What about kidnappings? Al Qaeda tapes recovered in Afghanistan show them practicing at taking over grade-school style buildings. In their practice runs, they bargain just long enough to get the TV cameras on site, then slaughter all the children for the cameras. Won't happen more than once, I guarantee you. After that, every teacher in the school will not only be permitted but required to pack heat.

The same can be said for every other terrorist endeavour. In the United States and England, citizens have the full authority that policemen have to arrest criminals and bring them before the law. In the USA, we still have a statuatory right to arms, which even the District of Columbia respects under limitations--I recently ordered a Rex Applegate combat knife that is perfectly legal under D.C. precedent and law. Without a single change to the law of any state, but only a change in the minds of the people, we're a nation of armed and honest terror-hunters. No need for "Patriot Act" police powers--just patriots.

Think all of this is going to wear us down? Just the opposite is true. Israelis are happier than Americans according to a new study. At the least, this demonstrates that exposure to terrorism doesn't diminish happiness.

I frankly suspect it increases it. Aristotle wrote that happiness is an activity, and the particular activity it is consists in the exercise of your vital functions in pursuit of arete, which translates either as "excellence" or "virtue." The first of the arete he mentions is Courage. Terrorism gives us a chance to exercise that virtue, and we are the happier and the stronger because of it.

That is what we're looking at. Armageddon? Bring it on. Ragnarock? The same. Both legendary conflicts bring on better worlds in their aftermath--check the legends, lads. There may be bloody days ahead. Steel yourself for them, learn your rights and how to exercise them in defiance of tyranny--but do not fear what is to come. Courage will stand you.

We are going to win, if only we dare.

Wow.

I owe a great debt to this post by Kim du Toit. Somehow I had missed Bill Whittle. It was my loss.

These essays are, I say without exaggeration, the best thing I've read to be composed in our new century. I urge you all to set some time aside to read them.

Start here:

Trinity part one
Trinity, part two

If your ears aren't ringing by the end of the essay, read it again. If they are, wait until your heart settles down again, and then read another one of the ones under the "High Altitude" banner. They are magnificient.

The Homecoming:

Reader S.D. describes this as "a must read", and I am inclined to agree.

On another topic, Izzy was fairly gentle out this way. Truthfully, after battening down the hatches, I slept through pretty much the whole thing.

Izzy:

Isabel is coming our way. We'll see you when she passes, Deus volente, or inshallah as you prefer.

Home:

Alas and damn it.

IDF:

The Israeli Defense force doesn't mess around. Less than an hour ago, they moved on a house in Gaza owned by a Hamas member. A gunbattle erupted straightaway--I saw the first news alert about that posted two minutes after the one about the IDF's arrival.

Now, just half an hour after that, Reuters is reporting that the Hamas activist, Jihad Abu Swerah of the Izz-el-deen al-Qassam wing, has been killed. IDF troops were backed by helicopter gunships.

9/11:

I just today saw Caerdroia's tribute to 9/11. It's worth a look, and is elegant in its way.

I MEF:

A new book is out on the performance of the First Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq.

Oratory:

National Review is trying to sell a book on Bush as a grand orator. I've always been of the opinion that Bush was indeed grand, when he was reading a prepared speech--but not when he was ad-libbing.

Jay Nordlinger makes an argument that Bush is one of the great speechmakers. It sounded like a stretch to me until I read it through. Now--well, I've listened to a lot of Bush's speeches, prepared and off the cuff. It's hard to say that Bush is great at the latter. And yet, Nordlinger makes a good case. You might take a moment to consider it.

Cold Poetry:

I raise a glass to this, which is reproduced on Mark Steyn's website.

1945 - 1985: Poem for the Anniversary
Sometimes,
walking for hours through the woods,
I don't know what I'm looking for,
maybe for something
shy and beautiful to come
frisking out of the undergrowth.
Once a fawn did just that.
My dog didn't know
what dogs usually do.
And the fawn didn't know.
As for the doe, she was probably
down in Round Pond, swizzling up
the sweet marsh grass and dreaming
that everything was fine.
***
The way I'd like to go on living in this world
wouldn't hurt anything, I'd just go on
walking uphill and downhill, looking around,
and so what if half the time I don't know
what for --
so what if it doesn't come
to a hill of beans --
so what if I vote liberal,
and am Jewish,
or Lutheran --
or a game warden --
or a bingo addict --
and smoke a pipe?
***
In the films of Dachau and Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen
the dead rise from the earth
and are piled in front of us, the starved
stare across forty years,
and lush, green, musical Germany
shows again its iron claw, which won't
ever be forgotten, which won't
ever be understood, but which did,
slowly, for years, scrape across Europe
***
while the rest of the world
did nothing.
***
Oh, you never saw
such a good leafy place, and
everything was fine, my dog and the fawn
did a little dance,
they didn't get serious.
Then the fawn clambered away through the leaves
and my gentle dog followed me away.
***
Oh, you never saw such a garden!
A hundred kinds of flowers in bloom!
A waterfall, for pleasure and nothing else!
The garden furniture is white,
tables and chairs in the cool shade.
A man sits there, the long afternoon before him.
He is finishing lunch, some kind
of fruit, chicken, and a salad.
A bottle of wine with a thin and beaded neck.

He fills a glass.
You can tell it is real crystal.
He lifts it to his mouth and drinks peacefully.

It is the face of Mengele.

***

Later
the doe came wandering back in the twilight.
She stepped through the leaves. She hesitated,
sniffing the air.

Then she knew everything.

***

The forest grew dark.

She nuzzled her child wildly.


Mary Oliver

Down in the West Texas Town of El Paso...

Maybe we should all move to Texas.

SMI:

I've been making fun of people who have been wringing their hands over a movement whose members they've decided to call "neo-Confederates." Just what might one be? Well, usually they're citing the Daughters of the Confederacy, which they astonishingly describe as "white supremicist." As far as I know from having grown up in Georgia, the DAC mostly holds tea parties and fancy-dress balls. I've never been to one, so maybe they discuss vicious things over their tea--but it's real hard to imagine them instituting a revolution.

So today I read about the Southern Military Institute on Southern Appeal. I can't help but notice two things right away: first, that their flag contains one of the Confederate National flags; and second, that the motto of SMI will be Deo Vindice. That motto, which means "God is our Defender," has been used once before, on the Great Seal of the Confederate States of America.

Now, I don't think the DAC or the Sons of Confederate Veterans actually advocate a new (that is, neo) Confederacy. SMI doesn't either, as far as I can tell. Interestingly, though, it says it will be training officers for "the National Guard of the Southern States, to help prepare young men to assume roles as officers in the Army and Air National Guard. Not the USMC? If not, why not, unless it is because your first loyalty is not to the Federal government? But then, why should your first loyalty be to the Feds? Jefferson's wasn't. I have to admit I have a love and affection for Georgia that I can't say I feel for anyplace else. Yet I also enlisted in the USMC straight out of high school, precisely out of patriotism and love of America, not just Georgia. I find it very odd that SMI isn't going to be preparing men to fight in the Marines, or even the US Army.

SMI is definitely pro-Confederacy:

SMI will sponsor programs that advance the knowledge and awareness of Southern history and culture including the honouring of Confederate Memorial Day and New Market Day, which celebrates the valor of the VMI cadets at the Battle of New Market, Virginia on the 15th of May, 1864.

I have a sense that a lot of this is a reaction to the political correctness of recent years. The Confederate flag-waving, the repeated invocation of "Judeo-Christian values," and so forth are plainly a ceremonial giving of the finger to the PC line that the Confederacy has to be viewed as an unmitigated evil; that descendants of Confederates should be ashamed of their heritage; that programs that are too physically tough for women to participate in them fully must be banned; that Christian faith must be practiced out of sight. We're hearing from SMI the voice of plain outrage over all of these challenges to the things that their founders hold dear, and to the destruction of two Southern institutions: VMI, and the Citadel.

Outrage is never pretty. I hope they get over it fast. It sounds like they will otherwise have an excellent program, one that will be both traditional and also, now, unique in America:

The concept of the American citizen soldier is as old as our nation itself. Likewise, an education in a military setting is a time proven approach to educating young men for positions of great responsibility. SMI fully supports these concepts. For those who desire an association with a formal military organization, SMI will work closely with the National Guard of the Southern states to help prepare young men to assume roles as officers in the Army and Air National Guard.

Southern traditions that have been tarnished and almost lost will live again at SMI. The concept of an officer and a Southern gentleman will be the standard, not the exception. Honesty, integrity, courtesy, and respect for all men and women regardless of race, position, or economic standing will be taught and required.

Well, hell, on those points these lads and I are positive allies. Too, I understand their outrage on the way the South is treated by the rest of the country. When a substantial percentage of the population considers the Confederates to have been "traitors," we can say that there has been a total failure of education in America as to the evolution of the Constitution and the history of our country.

But this is where I dissent with SMI. America is our country too. However improperly we've been treated, the fact is that the Yankees have been good for us. That's hard to admit to yourself, I know, but it's true. Slavery was evil. It had to go. Yes, Reconstruction was brutal and unconstitutional, yes the South was beggared for four generations, yes the South was treated as a colony of the North for seventy years. In spite of that, we are better off today because of our continuing relationship with the Yankee. We are better off simply because we are morally clean now: both Slavery and Jim Crow have been broken, and brotherhood between all Southerners is now possible and, increasingly, a fact of life. We must admit that we lacked the internal will to effect those changes.

It is also true that we have been good for the Yankees. The fact that America is not mired in European Union socialism is almost entirely due to the fact that the Solid South has kept us from being dragged into the abyss. The fact that our country has a military that is ready and able to defend her in her hour of need is disproportionately due to Southerners. America needs us. We are what keeps her true to her founding principles, as much as she remains true to them. If America is going to lead the world to freedom, she needs us to remind her what Freedom was supposed to mean.

It has never been a comfortable relationship, Southerner to Yankee. It has, however, been good for both of us. It's past time to recognize that.

Black Mail:

Reader S.D. sends this story from the Washington Post.

These authorities now understand much better the system of rewards and punishments that the Baathist regime used to keep these tribes loyal. For one thing, the tribes were given regular payments if the pipelines in their territories encountered no problems. Sabotage or other security problems in a tribe's area brought an immediate cutoff of those payments from Baghdad.

The protection funds ceased with the invasion -- and sabotage suddenly erupted. Now payments to the tribes are being restored by CPA officials, who are silently testing the theory that Sunni sheiks looking for a renewal of their customary meal ticket may have been negligent about, if not responsible for, damage to the national pipeline system. Paid town councils are also being established in Sunni areas and warned that salaries will stop if there are security problems in their jurisdictions.

I envision a critique of this policy among some of my left-wing friends. "But that's paying protection money!"

So it is. Works, though, doesn't it?

"Not in the long term. You can't expect to build a stable democracy while allowing this kind of large-scale criminality. The power of these tribal war-lords will work against both stability and democracy."

Well, as to that, do you know the origin of the word "blackmail"?

There is paid in blackmail or watch-money, openly and privately, �5,000; and there is a yearly loss by understocking the grounds, by reason of theifts, of at least �15,000; which is, altogether, a loss to landlords and farmers in the Highlands of �37,000 sterling a year. . . . The person chosen to command this watch, as it is called, is commonly one deeply concerned in the theifts himself, or at least that have been in correspondence with the thieves, and frequently who have occasioned thefts, in order to make this watch, by which he gains considerably, necessary. The people employed travell through the country armed, night and day, under pretence of enquiring after stolen cattle, and by this means know the situation and circumstances of the whole country. And as the people thus employed are the very rogues that do these mischiefs, so one-half of them are continued in their former bussiness of stealling that the busieness of the other half may be necessary in recovering.

"That kind of analogy to history is improper here. Scotland was, you yourself have argued, the font of our democracy. The most you can prove with this is that these robberies are not incompatible with the development of democracy, not that they ought to be allowed."

Fair enough. Let's skip down a bit in the same article:

The chief, even against the laws, is bound to protect his followers, as they are sometimes called, be they never so criminal. He is their leader in clan quarrels, must free the necessitous from their arrears of rent, and maintain such who, by accidents, are fallen into decay. If, by increase of the tribe, any small farms are wanting, for the support of such addition he splits others into lesser portions, because all must be somehow provided for[.]

So we're looking at a functioning social system that provides for the common welfare, albiet through actions that are not convenient for others in the state. Well, it's not especially convenient for me to pay the extortionist rate of taxes demanded by the IRS; and I am at scarcely less peril, should I try to refuse, than anyone from the day. If I will not pay, will not the IRS attempt to seize my wages? And if I hide my wages, will they not try to take my property? And if I defend my property, will they not send armed men to try to arrest me and throw me in prison? And if I defend myself from this, will they not shoot me in the street?

"It's just not the same thing at all. This is done democratically. What you're talking about is totally undemocratic. There's no legitimacy."

But I remind you that exactly this system was the root of democracy as we know it today. You would like to skip ahead two hundred years at a breath and turn tribesmen into a nation of tax-payers, and chiefs into tax-collectors and redistributionists. It can't be done, any more than Lenin could turn a nation of serfs into a post-Capitalist proletariat.

The reason that it can't be done is that these men have a fully developed understanding of what constitutes a legitimate authority. Your proposed substitute fails on all counts. You are, in other words, in just the position of the soldiers of the crown trying to effect their declarations of forfeiture on Highland chiefs:

Theoretically, in the eye of the law, the tenure and distribution of land in the Highlands was on the same footing as in the rest of the kingdom the chiefs, like the lowland barons, were supposed to hold their lands from the monarch, the nominal proprietor of all landed property, and these again in the same way distributed portions of this territory among their followers, who thus bore the same relation to the chief as the latter did to his superior, the king. In the eye of the law, we say, this was the case, and so those of the chiefs who were engaged in the rebellion of 1715--45 were subjected to forfeiture in the same way as any lowland rebel.

But, practically, the great body of the Highlanders knew nothing of such a tenure, and even if it had been possible to make them understand it, they would probably have repudiated it with contempt. The great principle which seems to have ruled all the relations that subsisted between the chief and his clan, including the mode of distributing and holding land, was, previous to 1746, that of the family. The land was regarded not so much as belonging absolutely to the chief, but as the property of the clan of which the chief was head and representative. Not only was the clan bound to render obedience and reverence to their head, to whom each member supposed himself related, and whose name was the common name of all his people; he also was regarded as bound to maintain and protect his people, and distribute among them a fair share of the lands which he held as their representative.

That's just where we are today. We have to respect that this is what people believe, and more to the point, what they want. A system that unmakes the old tribes can not, therefore, be democratic. If the state is to be really democratic, and truly Iraqi, it will have to make room for the tribes--or the tribes will make room for themselves, as did the Highlanders, by sword and fire.

The good news, such as it is, is that the answer to these concerns is organic. As capitalism becomes established in Iraq, the tribal ties will not be able to hold any more than they have held anywhere else in the world. The Highland clans ceased to exist not because they were beaten in battle or subjugated, but because it became more profitable for chiefs to have open land for grazing than large bodies of retainers. The chiefs themselves broke up the clans and drove their people off the lands and into the cities for work.

Many of the Highland proprietors, in their haste to get rich, or at least to get money to spend in the fashionable world, either mercilessly, and without warning, cleared their estates of the tenants, or most unreasonably oppressed them in the matter of rent.

So--patience. Alas, you'll get your way soon enough. In the meanwhile, this is the practical way to see that the pipelines are not disturbed. It serves that practical purpose, and also the humanitarian purpose of seeing that the people of the tribes are provided with their basic needs. It's the system the Iraqi tribesmen recognize as legitimate and proper, and is therefore a true expression of Iraqi democracy to make room for these tribes.

And, finally, it will end quite on its own. Prosperity will unmake it. By then, there will be jobs in the cities for them which do not now exist--it will be the same expansion of the economy that creates those jobs that will make the old social support system unsustainable.

Pay the black mail. It's all to the good, in the end.

I MEF:

Hail and praise, brothers-in-arms! Here follows an evaluation of the heroic First Marine Expeditionary Force. Of special note to the militia debate are these comments by Marine Corps Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, commander I MEF:

We found in the people of southern Iraq an industrious, intelligent society, very knowledgeable in the state of current affairs and very interested in what was to be the future of their country. I used to think Americans were the most impatient people on Earth. I now believe that distinction belongs to the Iraqis.

We should encourage that characteristic, however, especially as it relates to their security. We must continue to mature the Iraqi police, resource the Iraqi militia and oversee the revitalization of the new Iraqi army, so that the next time there is a transfer of authority in an historic place, like the amphitheater at Babylon, it will be between a multinational division and the people of Iraq.

Now this is just what I mean:

The Sage of Knoxville links to a story that outlines the success of the general militia, operating independently. Here it is.

Meanwhile, over at Freespeech I have a piece up on the need for an Iraqi militia. Up the Republic! Up the Militia!

Frenchmen pay Frenchmen for Libyan bombing:

Via the Rottie. I would say something about this, but I'm laughing to hard to think.

Thank God I'm a Democrat:

Who knew? I'm guessing we Southern Democrats fall on the low end of the scale, but still...

Schumpeter:

Joseph Schumpeter has always been my favorite economist. Reason magazine has a piece today that shows why his theories are important to understanding globalization.

Hat tip to Arts & Letters Daily.

Tort Reform:

One of the most important domestic issues in these United States is binding the busy hands of trial lawyers. Southern Appeal has some notes on a Texan effort.

How do we compete with this?

The Communist Party, USA, comes out in favor of whoever can beat Bush. What, I ask as a Southern Democrat, are we going to do to compete with this? There can be few better endorsements than the hatred of the Communists.

The only answer is to run on a pro-war agenda. But can any of the Democratic Party candidates do that? Ah, Zell Miller, why have you forsaken us? This ought to be your hour. Your party and your country need you.

GitMo:

Oh, to be in GitMo in the autumn. Or at least, anyplace else but Bangladesh:

Madan was a sergeant major in the terrorist organization PLA. He was trained in Bangladesh. Mani was a lance corporal in another outfit KYKL and was trained in guerrilla warfare in Myanmar It's literally a dog�s life for the 85 surrendered militants from various insurgent organisations. They were promised a good life. Instead, they have been living in the accommodation meant for police dogs for the last three years.

Insurgency tale: From hideouts to kennels�

Don't hurry home, Cynthia:

According to Best of the Web, there's a wee conference going on in Berlin. The Keynote speaker is Georgia's own Cynthia McKinney:

The several hundred people who were present believe the American government is to blame for the attack on the World Trade Center, which it either carried out itself, or else allowed others to carry out, in order to have an excuse to invade Iraq and establish world domination. . . .

One speaker described at length how the airliners had been controlled by propeller-driven aircraft that appeared in the sky near them. A British student from East Anglia University, who had started to find out about these conspiracy theories on the Internet and had helped to put up posters for the conference, said in tones in which one might describe a religious conversion, "This stuff is the truth, the real world." Nobody found my suggestion that the Americans were taken by surprise on 9/11 the slightest bit convincing.

Well, the web site has this to say about their keynote speaker:

Among the first to pose questions about what the U.S. government may have known in advance of 9/11, and when, was the Hon. Cynthia McKinney, congresswoman from the 6th District of Georgia for ten years (1992 to 2002). For raising that and other issues, she was vilified, attacked, and finally driven out of office by a flood of Republican money from outside her district.

That's not quite how I remember it. What I remember was that there was a large crossover of Republican voters inside her district. In Georgia, voters can choose to vote in either the Republican or Democratic primary, regardless of their party affiliation. Republicans in her district, so outraged by her attacks on the President just after 9/11, forwent the chance to select their own party's statewide and national candidates in order to vote against McKinney in the primary. McKinney didn't even survive to the general election, having been replaced in the primary by (now the Honorable) Denise Majette.

Not that Cynthia took it lying down. No, indeed. She staged a heavy counterattack against the "J-E-W-S," to quote her father. Her campaign swerved into inveighing heavily against Israel on the grounds that it was Zionist money trying to drive her out of office. A mysterious last minute phone campaign began calling voters across the district to warn them (falsely) that voting in the Democratic primary if you were a Republican was a felony, and that the police would be watching.

It didn't take: McKinney lost in a landslide. Now she's in Berlin, badmouthing her country and lending such prestige as she has to the cause of those who claim that the US slew its own citizens and servicemen as part of a plan to take over the world--a remarkable claim, given how visibly lacking these latter-day Moriartys were with plans for the takeover of Iraq.

Don't hurry home, Cyn. Georgia doesn't miss you.

Where are our foes?

Pro-Qaeda website Jihad Unspun has an answer: they're on videotape.

Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahari have released a brand new video tape on the eve of the anniversary of 911 which appears to be specifically timed to coincide with the memorial date.

But there is an interesting twist, Reuters reports:

A leading French terrorism expert cautioned Thursday against taking the latest Osama bin Laden video at face value, saying it was largely an edited collection of old footage and sound tracks that have already been aired. . . . Roland Jacquard, head of the Paris-based International Observatory on Terrorism, told French radio that the tape was above all a show of defiance on the eve of the September 11 anniversary by al Qaeda number two al-Zawahri.

"We have to be extremely prudent about this message," Jacquard told Europe 1 radio.

"Given that Osama bin Laden has not appeared on a video cassette for many months it's pretty incomprehensible that in the only video cassette where he appears beside Ayman al-Zawahri he doesn't speak, he just allows the latter to speak.

"The voice of bin Laden we hear in the background, thanking the World Trade Center plane hijackers, is exactly the same message that was broadcast in a video cassette by Al Jazeera on 26 December 2001," he said.

Al-Zawahri's message was also old and had been broadcast by Dubai's Al Arabiya network on August 3, Jacquard said.

September 12:

So where are our foemen? September 11 has passed and gone. Do you think they would not have struck us if they could? IF THEY COULD, AT ALL? But where are they, and their promised force of arms? Where are they?

Even in Iraq, they could muster no more than a wound. This is a lesson we learned long ago. Hiding in secret, they could lash out against our strong places and great towers: but when the President spoke to a joint session of Congress, not a month later; when all the powerful and the great men of our country were gathered in one place, where then were their jet planes, their power, their force? Where?

We have nothing to fear, and victory but to seek. We will scour the world of our foes. I defy them, and so should you. Defy them in their teeth. Dare them to seek you out, and see what comes when free men stand to fight.

September 11:

I am going to have only one post today. This is a poem I wrote two years ago today, when I could no longer stand to watch the replayed news on television. I shut off the thing, and went out into the forest, down to the creek that ran through the woods. I crossed it halfway onto an island, and sat among the stones and wrote this. It may be one of the oldest 9/11 poems, as I wrote it around three in the afternoon on the very day. It draws, of course, on Tennyson, but it is not blank verse. Rather, it is in the old alliterative style of the Beowulf.

Enid & Geraint

Once strong, from solid
Camelot he came
Glory with him, Geraint,
Whose sword tamed the wild.
Fabled the fortune he won,
Fame, and a wife.

The beasts he battled
With horn and lance;
Stood farms where fens lay.
When bandits returned
To old beast-holds
Geraint gave them the same.

And then long peace,
Purchased by the manful blade.
Light delights filled it,
Tournaments softened, tempered
By ladies; in peace lingers
the dream of safety.

They dreamed together. Darkness
Gathered on the old wood,
Wild things troubled the edges,
Then crept closer.
The whispers of weakness
Are echoed with evil.

At last even Enid
Whose eyes are as dusk
Looked on her Lord
And weighed him wanting.
Her gaze gored him:
He dressed in red-rust mail.

And put her on palfrey
To ride before or beside
And they went to the wilds,
Which were no longer
So far. Ill-used,
His sword hung beside.

By the long wood, where
Once he laid pastures,
The knight halted, horsed,
Gazing on the grim trees.
He opened his helm
Beholding a bandit realm.

Enid cried at the charge
Of a criminal clad in mail!
The Lord turned his horse,
Set his untended shield:
There lacked time, there
Lacked thought for more.

Villanous lance licked the
Ancient shield. It split,
Broke, that badge of the knight!
The spearhead searched
Old, rust-red mail.
Geraint awoke.

Master and black mount
Rediscovered their rich love,
And armor, though old
Though red with thick rust,
Broke the felon blade.
The spear to-brast, shattered.

And now Enid sees
In Geraint's cold eyes
What shivers her to the spine.
And now his hand
Draws the ill-used sword:
Ill-used, but well-forged.

And the shock from the spear-break
Rang from bandit-towers
Rattled the wood, and the world!
Men dwelt there in wonder.
Who had heard that tone?
They did not remember that sound.

His best spear broken
On old, rusted mail,
The felon sought his forest.
Enid's dusk eyes sense
The strength of old steel:
Geraint grips his reins.

And he winds his old horn,
And he spurs his proud horse,
And the wood to his wrath trembles.
And every bird
From the wild forest flies,
But the Ravens.

Even the French...

...can get behind us in hating the Communists this time. The Militant of New York reports:

French capitalism kills 12,000
during heat wave,
Paris blames �mother nature�

My. At this rate--assuming the Communists will quit killing people entirely--Capitalism could catch up to Communism in only slightly more than eight thousand years. (That is roughly one hundred million divided by twelve thousand, or 8,333 years and four months).

FreeSpeech.com:

I've been invited to join the crew at FreeSpeech, which I've agreed to do. Most of my blogging will continue here, but now and then I'll run something by there if it seems to be on the topics interesting to their readership. Keep an eye out.

A Modest Proposal:

From the Gweilo diaries. Sounds about right to me--if you can be sure. OK, pretty sure.

Not for my Lady readers:

This must be one of those neo-Confederate things I've been reading about.

Rumsfeld Today:

Today the SECDEF said some things widely being considered an outrage:

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Monday opposition to the U.S. President was encouraging Washington's enemies and hindering his 'war against terrorism'. . . .

He said if Washington's enemies believed Bush might waver or his opponents prevail, that could increase support for their activities.

"They take heart in that and that leads to more money going into these activities or that leads to more recruits or that leads to more encouragement or that leads to more staying power," he told reporters traveling with him on his plane.

"Obviously that does make our task more difficult."

There are exactly two things to be said about this:

1) He is, of course, correct on the facts. Public opposition to the war does hearten the enemy. Those who merely disagree on how the war should be fought do not, but those who believe we should really be seeking peace and avoiding war, withdrawing from the fights we are in and refusing to be drawn into more, are in fact advocating the US position that al Qaeda most desires. To the degree that these critics are loud or appear likely to succeed, the war becomes more difficult and, consequently, more dangerous to the warfighter.

2) That's just too bad. In a free society, we accept these costs. The costs are real: an emboldened al Qaeda may engage in attacks it would have avoided otherwise, and may thereby kill soldiers and Marines who might else have lived. Their lives are paid willingly, though, precisely to maintain the freedoms that--in this case--endanger them.

There are other parts of a free society that make it hard to fight war, too. Perhaps the two most prominent are: first, the fact that a large section of Federal authority is invested in the Congress, which is empty of understanding and given to political grandstanding even in a time of war; and, second, that the Executive changes every four or eight years, so that we are not able to maintain a consistent foreign policy in the long term. Thus, our allies can't depend on us to act in a predictable manner, and our enemies can hope to hold out until the next election, when policies may change and key figures be replaced.

All the same, it is this system of freedom that we are fighting for. It is precisely this, in fact, that the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines exist to defend. Mr. Rumsfeld would probably understand that in a week when he hadn't just flown from Washington to Iraq to Afghanistan and now back to Washington. We'll read jet-lag into his comments, and let them pass for now with this mild chastisement.

Liars:

A young lady I know said to me today, in response to my mentioning a piece in the National Review, "Well, they are liars. It's hard to deal with people who lie." I was a bit too shocked to give a proper reply.

Really, the Highland Southern upbringing is incompatible with (but superior to) that which is offered in the rest of the country. I guess it's not a big deal to call someone a liar these days, even if what you mean is that you find their argument so removed from reality that you don't care even to begin addressing it. I had a bit different training.

I remember when I was sixteen, and my father decided to buy a car for us to use to drive to Atlanta, where he worked and I went to school. The salesman wanted to sell us a mid-sized car at a modest price, but we decided that, as it would be only the two of us, we wanted a compact instead. Oddly, that caused the price to go up. When we asked why, he made some noise about how supply and demand was making the deluxe model cost less than the stripped-down, smaller body.

Dad asked me what I thought. I said something like, "If that's the going rate, we should pay it. Just please," here addressing the salesman, "tell down on the counter a few bills of sale that show where anyone has paid that price. If you can produce three or four of them, I'd say we were getting a fair deal." The salesman sputtered, my father made some noises that sounded apologetic, and we withdrew.

Once we came into the car to ride home, I found that my father was furious at me. "You all but called that man a liar," he said. "I would not have blamed him if he'd climbed over that counter and beaten you to death. In fact, if he had, I wouldn't have stopped him."

"But he was lying," I protested.

"It doesn't matter," Dad said, and nothing else. I didn't quite understand his wrath at the time. I do now.

"[P]erhaps the worst thing one could do to challenge someone else was to accuse him of being a liar," notes an article on the Code Duello. To call a man a liar, to one of the Old Code, is to dare him to kill you if he can, and to swear that you will slay him if he dares to try. If the Old Code has faded in the light of the modern world, it hasn't faded much in the South. My father was looking at a sixteen year old kid trying to challenge a man to fight or die to prove his honor, and he was both embarrassed at my cheek and outraged at my audacity.

A kid can't fight a duel. He has no standing to offer the insult. As a man would be a bully to accept a fight with a child, for that child to call a man a liar is cowardly. It is to attack from a position of perfect security, humiliating a man who can't reply. For a girl to do it is the same.

I am born to the Old Code, and--as this story shows--I was raised in it. I don't call men liars unless I am ready to fight them, and I won't accept it from others. Is that unsophisticated? It is certainly outside the modern, common tradition. I cannot help but look down on those who resort to deadly insults with neither the intent nor the ability to back them up. Such is the old way.

Heroes & Volunteers:

I'm still snarling about Robinson's comment, and I am not given over to wrath as a general thing. Go here, Mr. Robinson. Discuss that, if you're inclined.

Really, this is too much. Robinson is even a good Scottish name, usually from the Clan Gunn, but sometimes from my own Clan! Where has the spirit of the Poet Chief fled? At least some things are constant:

Sinclair makes it clear that the young poet chief had been 'virtuous' until he went to France, where "the aristocracy of France were then notoriously profligate and corrupt in their morals". Some naughty poems from this period caused a certain stir when his valet ultimately published them after Struan's death, and various Victorians went to great lengths to dispute them or attribute them to the influence of the evil companions. Perhaps part of this recipe was Struan's belief that only under the influence of strong drink could a poet produce his finest images.

Wise was the bard who sang the sacred use
Of the delicious grape's immortal juice,
And found no water-drinker o'er could say
He shaped a verse that could survive a day...

Steyn gets it right again:

Speaking to the subject of Bill Clinton's new version of "Peter and the Wolf," in which the wolf is set free with a friendly apology:

A significant chunk of the American people think the Democratic candidates feel the same way about the war on terror as Bill Clinton does about Peter's wolf and the New York Times does about Jessie's shark. And they reckon they know how that usually winds up. A couple of years back, a cougar killed a dog near the home of Frances Frost in Canmore, Alberta. Frost, an ''environmentalist dancer'' with impeccable pro-cougar credentials, objected strenuously to suggestions that the predator be tracked and put down. A month later, she was killed in broad daylight by a cougar who'd been methodically stalking her.

''I can't believe it happened,'' wailed a fellow environmentalist. But why not? Cougars prey on species they're not afraid of.

Poetry in the Corner:

Asks Peter Robinson, "But how does one insist that poetry remains, even at this late date, a fit topic for discussion, without seeming a trifle...sniffy?"

By Thunder, man! One recites:

Seven spears, and the seventh
Was wrought as the faerie blades,
And given to Elf the minstrel
By the monstrous water-maids;

By them that dwell where luridly
Lost waters of the Rhine
Move among the roots of nations
Being sunken for a sign.

Under all graves they murmur,
They murmur and rebel
Down to the buried kingdoms creep,
And like a lost rain roar and weep
O'er the red heavens of hell.

Thrice drowned was Elf the minstrel
And washed as dead on sand
And the third time men found him
The spear was in his hand.

Seven spears went about Eldred,
Like stays about a mast;
But there was sorrow by the sea
For the driving of the last.

Six spears thrust upon Eldred
Were splintered while he laughed;
One spear thrust into Eldred
Three feet of blade and shaft.

And from the great heart grievously
Came forth the shaft and blade
And he stood with the face of a dead man,
Stood a little, and swayed--

Then fell, as falls a battle-tower,
On smashed and struggling spears,
Cast down from some unconquered town
That, rushing earthward, carries down
Loads of live men of all renown--
Archers and engineers.

And a great clamour of Christian men
Went up in agony,
Crying, "Fallen is the tower of Wessex
That stood beside the sea."

Center and right the Wessex guard
Grew pale for doubt and fear,
And the flank failed at the advance,
For the death-light on the wizard lance--
The star of the evil spear.

"Stand like an oak," cried Marcus,
"Stand like a Roman wall!
Eldred the Good is fallen--
Are you too good to fall?

"When we were wan and bloodless
He gave you ale enow;
The pirates deal with him as dung,
God! are you bloodless now?"

"Grip, Wulf and Gorlias, grip the ash!
Slaves, and I make you free!
Stamp, Hildred hard on English land,
Stand Gurth, stand Gorlias, Gawen stand!
Hold, Halfgar, with the other hand,
Halmer, hold up the knee!

"The lamps are dying in your homes,
The fruits upon your bough;
Even now your old thatch smoulders, Gurth,
Now is the judgment of the earth,
Now is the death-grip, now!"

For thunder of the Captain,
Not less the Wessex line,
Leaned back and reeled a space to rear
As Elf charged with the Rhine maids' spear,
And roaring like the Rhine. . . .

The Wessex crescent backwards
Crushed, as with bloody spear
Went Elf roaring and routing,
And Mark against Elf yet shouting,
Shocked, in his mid-career.

Right on the Roman shield and sword
Did spear of the Rhine maids run;
But the shield shifted never,
The sword rang down to sever,
The great Rhine sang for ever,
And the songs of Elf were done.

Thus G. K. Chesterton, from The Ballad of the White Horse. If there is a man born to the English tongue who can hear that thunder, today or any day, and not tremble to his bones--he is no man at all.

Still More New Links:

I'd like to announce the addition of three new links: Blaster's Blog, an explosives-oriented fellow, and two blogs who have linked to me: Free Speech, and Tobacco Road Fogey. Welcome to the roll.

This links thing is an ongoing project. I'm still planning to add a section on sites about history and mythology. I'll let you know when it's ready.

Zabul:

The Boston Globe has a piece today on the danger of a resurgent Taliban. You, dear readers, knew of the danger on the 8th of August, and on Friday, you knew it was a particularly brilliant trap, a point which will perhaps elude the Boston Globe's readers for a month or so yet. Isn't it nice to be ahead of the curve?

Casablanca:

In reference to yesterday's post, here's an article on a new phase of Israel/Morocco cooperation:

The al-Qaeda terror bombings in Casablanca last May jolted Moroccan
officials and forced them to revisit Morocco's limited diplomatic agenda.
Morocco recognized the need to improve security measures and cooperation with other countries in combating terror. It was reported that the head of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency visited Morocco as part of the bombing investigation.

Now, Israel and Morocco have gotten along pretty well in the past, all things considered. Still yet, the Mossad is hated and feared across the region. To invite them for consultations on your security under those circumstances is no small step.

Another new link:

Kim du Toit, to the right and down, under "Other Halls." It's good to see a fellow rifleman around--sorry it took so long to notice.

Freeing Iraqi Generals:

I've been asked to mention that Chief Wiggles wants your prayers for the freeing of the Iraqi generals who ordered their troops to stand down during the Iraq war. They're still held POW by the Coalition. The Chief feels they deserve better, and maybe they do. Go read his blog, and decide for yourself.

If you do decide to act, you might want to know the following, which the Chief doesn't seem to have online. Donald Rumsfeld can be contacted here:

The Honorable Donald Rumsfeld
Secretary of Defense
1000 Defense Pentagon
Washington, DC 20301-1000

Your prayers, of course, should be addressed as usual.

The Post gets it wrong:

Here is an update on al Qaeda's war, focused on Iraq. The Post is being a little defeatist about the whole thing. If al Qaeda thinks that Iraq is the perfect place to fight us, they're screwing up in a big way.

AQ can't really hurt the US in Iraq. They can kill some of our soldiers in ambushes and suicide bombings, but probably not as many as they think. Meanwhile, our economic interests in Iraq are minimal--really, the cost of rebuilding and, to a far lesser degree, the market price of oil are the only things they can manipulate. When AQ was fighting an economic war against us, targeting air traffic, airports, and so forth, they had a real chance of beating the US--particularly if they got nuclear/radiological weapons. It appears they've been drawn into a military conflict, and they're not going to win one of those with us.

Meanwhile, the Post misstates two critical points, and leaves out a third. The first is that the bombing in Saudi Arabia didn't just cause a crackdown--it brought into the open a war that's been going on there for more than a year. Those gunbattles they mention are frequent. Saudi security services are no longer feeling like they need to keep things in the shadows, as the people of Arabia were outraged by the bombings there. Meanwhile, the Saudi government is forcing clerics inside Arabia to adopt a new, less militant line, or else.

The point the Post leaves out is that the exact same thing has happened in Morocco. After Casablanca, the media of the country turned anti-terrorist. They are wrapped up in the prosecution and punishment of those involved, and in hunting out their networks both in Morocco and abroad. This has been a source of humiliation for the UK, as London has often been a hub of such groups.

Every time AQ sets off a bomb inside a Muslim country, they poison their own wells. And that gets to the second point that the Post misstates: the Caliphate.

Yes, the Arabs are annoyed with us for occupying the historic seat of the Caliphate. However, not every Muslim is actually interested in the Caliphate. It is particularly the Shi'ites who are concerned with the Caliphate. How many Shi'ites love al Qaeda? Few to start with, since Wahabbis don't consider them real Muslims, nor even one of the protected "children of the book" faiths, but polytheists who should be killed (the reason is that the Wahabbis believe that equating the word of the Caliph with that of Allah is essentially to create a second god). That number has shrunk further since al Qaeda set off a car bomb near the Shrine of Ali. Those foreign fighters that the Post makes so much of are now looking at a reincarnated Badr Brigade which, however much it may be irritated at the Coalition, will delight in killing "Arab foreigners." One more 'victory' like Najaf, and the Badr Brigades will probably just start shooting them on sight.

We've got a rough patch ahead in Iraq, to be sure. The US isn't going to be badly hurt by it, though, as we don't really have anything at stake there. The worst we can do is fail, which would mean some humiliation, additional creeping of that evil thing called International Law, and the deaths of a lot of good men. That's bad--but our society, our economic infrastructure, the largest part of our military might would not be damaged.

Al Qaeda, by constrast, is now committing heavily to trying to fight a military conflict for which it is unsuited; while carrying out bombings that are poisoning its wells; while choosing ground on which to fight where the populace hates them with a passion, is increasingly well armed, and lusting for vengence.

The Advocate:

I am now going to occupy a position that is, ironically in this case, called the Devil's Advocate. I'm doing this in order to see that an honorable opponent is fairly treated, though I strongly disagree with the case he is making. Those of you who are no longer interested in the subject of Roy Moore or the Ten Commandments monument may skip on to other things. Those who are, but wonder what my actual position on the matter is, can find it starting here and finishing here.

With that said, I'm now going to treat Sovay McKnight's discourse on the Ten Commandments. She has a pretty good roundup of the legal reasoning behind the current Supreme Court thinking on religious symbols. She winds up:

The Alabama district court was right to rule the way it did. Any way you look at it, the law prohibits Roy Moore's Ten Commandments from being placed in the Alabama State Judicial Building in their present form. Now, you're welcome to try and repeal the Fourteenth or First Amendments, it's a free country after all, but until that's done, the courts are going to keep on ruling against Moore.

Now, I am all for repealing the Fourteenth Amendment, or rather, recognizing that it was never legally ratified in the first place. It has no place in the Constitution, having been put there illegally and improperly, and it is incompatible with the Classical Liberal foundations of this country. Unfortunately, though all of that is true, to date the people who have argued on behalf of that truth have been doing so for dishonorable reasons, with the result that the argument has become tarnished by their participation in it. Nevertheless, someday the 14th will face organized opposition from honorable men, and we will bring it down.

However, the repeal of neither the First nor the Fourteenth Amendments are necessary to Justice Moore's position. All that is necessary is a different understanding of them--and it happens that the different understanding of them is the proper understanding. I will demonstrate why, and then I will argue against her conception of Justice Moore himself, which I think is both unfair to the man, and also underestimates the danger his case poses.

First, it should be said that Justice Moore disagrees not merely with the Lemon test, but with the entire legal tradition that supports it. His challenge isn't to the US Supreme Court, but to Jefferson, as he himself says:

They have trotted out before the public using words never mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, like "separation of church and state," to advocate, not the legitimate jurisdictional separation between the church and state, but the illegitimate separation of God and state.

"Separation of Church and State" is, we all know, taken from one of Jefferson's letters on his understanding of what ought to be the way the government functioned. It is not in the Constitution, as Justice Moore correctly points out. Furthermore, it was far from a unified position among the Founders, many--perhaps even most--of whom felt that religion was not separable from government. The 1st Amendment's statement that Congress would "make no law respecting the establishment of religion" meant to most of the Founders that Congress could not establish an official state Church, the way that England, Scotland, Ireland, and generally every other nation of the day had done. It was intended to allow for the "free exercise" of all religions. Jefferson's formula, which has become our own, was unusual and has only the force of intellectual argument to defend it, not Constitutional standing. A future Supreme Court could simply decide to hold that the First Amendment means what the other Founders thought it meant; the repeal of the First is not necessary.

When Justice Moore makes his argument that the First Amendment prevents only Congressional action, and that he "is not Congress, and no law has been passed," he is invoking that alternative understanding. It has as long a history and as respectable a pedigree as the one that forms the basis of the Supreme Court's current understanding. There is, honestly, nothing except the composition of the US Supreme Court to prevent it from becoming the new law of the land. Keep that point in mind--we will return to it.

The second point has to do with Justice Moore's invocation of the Alabama Constitution:

We must acknowledge God in the public sector because the state constitution explicitly requires us to do so. The Alabama Constitution specifically invokes "the favor and guidance of Almighty God" as the basis for our laws and justice system. As the chief justice of the state's supreme court I am entrusted with the sacred duty to uphold the state's constitution. I have taken an oath before God and man to do such[.]

Here the argument against Moore is, essentially, that the Alabama Constitution doesn't count. That argument follows this form:

1. The First Amendment prevents any Federal government action from including religious content.
2. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that state government actions comply with that prohibition as well.
3. Therefore, the Alabama Constitution can't invoke God.

On first inspection, the argument against the Alabama Constitution's language seems stronger even than the argument against Justice Moore's monument. The Alabama Constitution is a law, after all, even if the Justice is not. But a Constitution isn't a law like other laws. The First Amendment can't apply to Constitutions, as it lacks the standing to tell the People what they can do; it can only apply to the people's representatives. A Constitution draws its authority directly from the people, who ratify it as the basic law of the land. It is through that process that the limits of government authority are drawn, and it is through that process that they are changed. The Alabama Constitution has been ratified by the people of Alabama, not created by the legislature of Alabama. The First Amendment speaks to Congress; even if you accept the 14th Amendment, it speaks to legislatures.

No Constitution, though, can set limits on the People. Constitutions lack the standing: all government lacks the standing. No governmental body--not a legislature, not an executive, not a court, not the Supreme Court--can tell the People what they can and can't put in a Constitution. No Constitution can set limits on future constitutions. This is because all government power is descended from the will of the People. Constitutions are only the codification of the more permanent parts of that will. The right of the People, acting as a whole, to set the powers and limits of government is the very basis of Classical Liberalism. It is the basis of the United States of America and the American way.

That is to say: if the People wish, they can invoke God in their Constitution, and no governmental body can tell them otherwise. All such bodies are bound by the fact that they are themselves creatures of the will of the People. They are not superior to the will of the People, and they can set no limits on it. A government can, and does constantly, tell an individual person what that person can do or is forbidden from doing. No government can legitimately tell the People what they can do, or are forbidden from doing. That is Classical Liberalism in "sixteen words," if you like.

Sovay says that Roy Moore is acting out of a desire for personal glory and power. I think she terribly misreads him. I think Justice Moore is acting out of a deep personal belief that the founding principles of this country are being ignored, and that his pursuit of power is a means to the end of correcting the course of American government as a whole. Yes, he has set up this Ten Commandments battle precisely in order to have a fight. The fight he wants to have, though, is not about the presence or absence of a monument, but about the nature of government itself.

I will recall the reader's mind to the statement that only the composition of the Supreme Court, not the 1st or 14th Amendments, stood between us and a reading of the law that permits Justice Moore's ideas from being accepted as right and proper. That is where this is all going. Justice Moore is positioning himself to build and lead a movement to return America to an understanding of government that he thinks is the correct one. It is not going to stop with any court ruling, and it isn't going to stop in Alabama. What you are seeing is the beginning of a groundswell that will command attention far beyond the borders of the Old South. If it is to be combatted in the long run, you can't simply tell people what the Supreme Court says the Constitution says. They know already. They disagree, and they are prepared to do what it takes to change it. If you're going to win the war of ideas, you need to be prepared to defend the Jeffersonian tradition on the merits. Remember that their tradition is just as old, and if anything had more support among the Founders than does the Jeffersonian tradition that we defend. They can't be dismissed as quacks or gloryhounds: the power and depth of their argument demand a full reply.

Furthermore, remember that their understanding of the limits of government power is not only defensible, it is correct. The government has greatly overstepped its bounds, and is therefore off balance. When this groundswell has built to the point that it is ready to challenge the orthodox reading of the First Amendment on a national scale, it is going to be very hard to combat. Much of its power will come from the fact that previous defenders of Jefferson's reading have overstretched, ignored the right and proper limits on government power, and otherwise acted against the vision of what our Republic was founded to defend: that vision of a government which draws its power from the People, and is created and in thrall to them. When these angry men come in their regiments, to challenge in Congress and from the statehouses and benches that orthodox reading, they will be powerful because, on very many questions, they will be right.

Zabul:

On the day when Jihad Unspun first announced that the Taliban had recaptured Zabul province, I speculated:

What does this mean for the coalition? One thing it could mean is that we are seeing a large-scale trap on the lines of Operation Anaconda. In Anaconda, an area in Taliban control was left safe while guerrillas gathered, then surrounded and brutally wiped out. Allowing them a province as a rallying point could cause a draining away of pro-Taliban forces elsewhere. The appearance of success could also cause the supporting ISI members to overplay their hands, making them easier to identify.

It appears that was precisely the case. Having been allowed to gather undisturbed in Zabul, the Taliban now find themselves hunted through the passes. Escape is denied them by a massive Pakistan-US joint operation to close the border. Their supporters in the Pakistani Army--and perhaps the ISI as well?--are being arrested in an FBI-Pakistan joint operation.

To the Princes who planned this operation: I salute you. It was manfully done.

Sweet and Proper:

A sign from outside a Southern military base. This demonstrates two things that I think are worth demonstrating: first and least important, that there need to be answers to these conflict-of-interest questions regarding the Iraqi reconstruction; and second, but most important, that military men are far more intelligent, thoughtful, and well-educated than is commonly understood. "We don't pay you to think" is perhaps the most common cliche in the media's depiction of the military lifestyle. Well, whether or not they're paid to think, they still do. Many of them are more properly grounded in classical education than their supposed betters in Academia.

Hat tip to the Agonist, who I've just added to the links section. This site has noted him before, often enough that it seems right to include him.

Neoconservatism:

This is a topic we've all heard about lately. But what is the test for whether someone is or isn't a neocon? Well, if that question has come to you from time to time in the last year, here is the answer: The official Christian Science Monitor "Are you a Neoconservative" Quiz.

This page is not, of course, given over to neoconservatism, or conservatism generally. This is a Classical Liberal page, which only appears conservative to many readers because it is Classical Liberalism that is the foundation of our American society, and it is therefore Classical Liberalism that most American conservatives are trying to conserve. If you are interested in how your correspondant ranked according to the quiz, however, here:

Realist

Realists�

*Are guided more by practical considerations than ideological vision
*Believe US power is crucial to successful diplomacy - and vice versa
*Don't want US policy options unduly limited by world opinion or ethical considerations
*Believe strong alliances are important to US interests
*Weigh the political costs of foreign action
*Believe foreign intervention must be dictated by compelling national interest

*Historical realist: President Dwight D. Eisenhower

*Modern realist: Secretary of State Colin Powell

Of course there was no category for Classical Liberal, just as there never is for Southern Democrat. We are a forgotten minority, albeit a well-armed one.

Afghan war:

There continue to be interesting reports from southeastern Afghanistan. One of them, at least, is almost certainly false: that Talibani beheaded six American fighters. That report is from Jihad Unspun, a pro-al-Qaeda site that normally produces falsehoods. As I note below, JUS rather remarkably scooped the rest of the world in reporting the Taliban uprising and reconquest of parts of Zabul province. It's nice to see them returning to form.

Meanwhile, Coalition forces have resumed hunting in the mountains of Zabul province, which border the tribal regions of Pakistan. Interestingly, Pakistan is making moves on the southern side of the same ridges:

Separately, at least 24 Pakistani military helicopters swooped in low over the tribal regions that border Afghanistan in a renewed hunt for fleeing al-Qaida and Taliban, witnesses said Thursday.

Government officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said several of the helicopters carried "foreign" forces, an apparent reference to U.S. troops.

The U.S. military earlier deployed an unknown number of special forces into Pakistan's rugged tribal regions[.]

DPA reports (no link):

Pakistan rushed extra troops to Afghan border on Wednesday amid speculation that a ``get Osama bin Laden'' operation was about to be launched, a news report said on Thursday.

Pakistan's foreign minister spoke to this issue yesterday, denying reports that bin Laden was in Pakistan, but saying that he felt that: "To me, time, space and options are becoming limited by the day for Osama and all those linked to him." We will see if that proves to be more than bluster. Again today, it looks like Zabul remains the most interesting place on Earth.

State Dept. Whistles Past Graveyard:

The Kansas City Star has a report from the talks on the DPRK's weapons program, entitled "US Optimistic on North Korea Talks." An excerpt:

The State Department said Tuesday a strong consensus emerged at last week's six-nation meeting in China that North Korea should end its nuclear weapons program and that more multilateral talks were needed to bring about that goal.

Spokesman Richard Boucher said Secretary of State Colin Powell was not surprised by a "belligerent" North Korean attitude at the discussions.

Now, I suppose if you're a diplomat, it's bad form to say after the first day of talks that there is no hope and the talks have failed. Couldn't we, though, at least restrain ourselves to "cautious optimism," given the DPRK's response?

North Korea has said it has no choice but to increase its nuclear deterrent following multilateral talks in Beijing.

The statement, made by a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman, also said Pyongyang is not interested in holding any more talks on the future of its controversial nuclear programme.

Scoop!

James Taranto has this today:

Our Friends the Saudis
In a report on Gerald Posner's new book, "Why America Slept," Time magazine relates this anecdote about Abu Zubaydah, an al Qaeda terrorist who has been in U.S. custody since March 2002:


When questioning stalled, according to Posner, CIA men flew Zubaydah to an Afghan complex fitted out as a fake Saudi jail chamber, where "two Arab-Americans, now with Special Forces," pretending to be Saudi inquisitors, used drugs and threats to scare him into more confessions.

Yet when Zubaydah was confronted by the false Saudis, writes Posner, "his reaction was not fear, but utter relief." Happy to see them, he reeled off telephone numbers for a senior member of the royal family who would, said Zubaydah, "tell you what to do." The man at the other end would be Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz, a Westernized nephew of King Fahd's and a publisher better known as a racehorse owner. His horse War Emblem won the Kentucky Derby in 2002. To the amazement of the U.S., the numbers proved valid.


As we noted last year, Aziz died at 43, a few months after Zubaydah's capture, part of a curious string of deaths of youngish Saudi princes.

You, good reader, got this bit of analysis on Sunday. Of course, Taranto has been on vacation, so there was a bit of a handicap. Still, it's good to get out in front sometimes.

More on Zabul:

Zabul must be the most interesting place on Earth just now. Some of this is probably true, but it's getting very hard to tell which parts:

Taliban Reinforces Fighters. This is from Reuters Asia.

Afghan Gov't Enters Separate Negotiations with Taliban. This is from the Afghan Islamic Press, but has been carried in both Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Saudi version is the most complete, and says that the Zabul negotiations may include an amnesty for Taliban. Al Jazeera, on the other hand, has the government denying such talks.

FBI Arrests Pakistani Army Officers in Zabul Province, Afghanistan. A big story if it's true. Also from al Jazeera.

Bin Laden holds Terror Summit in Afghanistan. This report is from the Scotsman, which is an uneven source. When they do original reporting by their own writers, they tend to be highly accurate and detailed. Many of their stories are just wire-stories, though, so the fact that something appears in the Scotsman doesn't make it so. This report appears to be drawing on other sources, but it is worth reading.

Zabul:

Pro-al-Qaeda website Jihad Unspun has a report from Zabul province. JUS is a very suspicious source, and indeed, mostly they report lies or outright inventions. However, they were the first to get the fall of Zabul to a resurgent Taliban, well before any mainstream news agency. Keep those two facts in mind as you read their take.

Ledeen:

Michael Ledeen writes in today's NRO about the Najaf bombing. He agrees with the CNN report that put Mugniyah in Iraq, which posits a Hezbollah-Qaeda union in Iraq. But he goes beyond that report, and places the blame for Najaf squarely on Moqtada al-Sadr, who is, he says, the head of Hezbollah in Iraq.

My sense of al-Sadr has been that he is the Jesse Jackson Jr. of Iraq, using his father's name and some semi-bogus religious "leadership" to shakedown the CPA with threats of a Shi'a uprising. It is certainly true that Najaf put al-Sadr in the #1 spot among vocal Iraqi Shi'ites. I'm not ready to condemn him yet, but there are some serious questions here he'll need to answer. It would be nice if some of those in the newly independent Iraqi press started to ask them.

From Yemen?

Via InstaPundit, two car-bomb attacks have been prevented by Iraqi police. Details are sparse, but there is one very interesting point: the drivers of yesterday's car were said to be from Yemen. That makes them exactly the kind of non-Iraqi "Arab nationals" under threat by the Najaf militia.

...and a Georgia Overdrive:

Some poetry in honor of Labor Day:

I.C.C. is a-checking on down the line.
Well, I'm a little overweight and my log books way behind.
But nothing bothers me tonight, I can dodge all the scales all right,
Six days on the road, I'm gonna make it home tonight.

Well, my rig's a little old, but that don't mean she's slow.
There's a flame from her stack and the smoke's blowing black as coal.
My hometown's coming in sight, if you think I'm happy, you're right,
Six days on the road, now I'm gonna make it home tonight.
Six days on the road, now I'm gonna make it home tonight.

The Taliban Regroup:

The Sydney Morning Herald reports on the regrouping of the Taliban in Pakistan. Last week more than eighty were killed in fighting in and around Zabul province, the one that the Taliban claim to control.