The Liberal Conspiracy - Satire, Informed Commentary and 9-11 Research

A Tale of Woe:

I see that over at the Liberal Conspiracy, there's a post called "Sovay Can't Win":

I flew all day on Wednesday and managed to miss the State of the Union address. "Ah well," I thought to myself, "At least I won't be reminded of politics today." What two airports did I fly through? Reagan National and George Bush Intercontinental Airport. Haha, very funny life. Next time, fly me through Kennedy, will ya?

You can fly through Kennedy if you go to New York. Since you're spending February in Hawaii, however, I'll just remind you of the sign posted in my office.

BLACKFIVE

More Cultural Illiteracy:

This time, it's not Arab culture, it's warrior culture. I am of course thinking of the case of the bloodthirsty Marine, er, that is, General Mattis. BlackFive suggests a quiet drink after work with the Commandant; Doc Russia calls for him to be elected President.

All I have to ask is, did you think we were kidding about this stuff? That link is to a little song called "the Recon Cadence," which is to my knowledge drilled into every Marine recruit. You can read the words, and a whole lot more, right here.

I'm with Doc. Put our General on the ticket in 2008. I'll vote for him, either party. Here's a man who hasn't forgotten how to live the lessons the Drill Instructors still today teach to the men who will serve under him. He's a Marine, by God!

Ooh-rah!

Catch the Wave: Sgt. Rock and the Men of the Easy Company Collection

Easy Company, MilBloggers:

I bow to Eric B.'s knowledge of G. I. Joe action figures. Apparently I'm nominated to serve as "Wildman," which appears to be rather appropriate:

Originally a soft-spoken history teacher, Private Shapiro had a tendency to go off when pushed to the limit, earning him the nickname "Wildman" amongst his teammates.

I'm not sure if "soft-spoken" is an adjective that has often been used to describe me, but the rest of it more or less fits.

Greyhawk has outdone himself.

Mudville Gazette

MilBloggers Spring Into Action!

What I wan to know is, where did he find a soldier action figure with a full beard?

The Spectator.co.uk

Neither Fear Nor Respect:

The London Spectator has an interview with Lieutenant Colonel Jim Stockmoe, the senior Military Intelligence officer in Tikrit. He's a jolly fellow:

"Here's a funny story. There were three brothers down in Baghdad who had a mortar tube and were firing into the Green Zone. They didn't have a baseplate so they were storing the mortar rounds in the car engine compartment and the rounds got overheated. Two of these clowns dropped them in the tube and they exploded, blowing their legs off."

Abandoning the lifeless carcasses and smouldering wreckage of the car, the third brother sought refuge in a nearby house. The occupants were less than impressed, related Stockmoe, slapping his thigh. "So they proceeded to beat the crap out of him and then turned him over to the Iraqi police. It was like the movie Dumb and Dumber."

There have been so many examples of such incompetence that Stockmoe, who leaves Iraq this week after a year as the US army's 1st Infantry Division's senior military intelligence officer, has been doling out unofficial Darwin Awards in honour of the most side-splittingly useless insurgents.

Created in 1993 by a Stanford University student, the official Darwin Awards commemorate those who "contribute to the improvement of our gene pool by removing themselves from it in a really stupid way". According to Stockmoe, Iraq's gene pool is in better shape each day.

With a few more examples of 'an increasingly hapless insurgency,' the article explains the reason:

Stockmoe has a serious point, and a close look at insurgent attacks since the Fallujah offensive in November reveals that while the numbers might have increased, they are becoming less effective. The nine election-day suicide bombers averaged about three victims each, a strike-rate so bad that Allah might soon start rationing the virgins to show his displeasure.... The gap between the rhetoric and the actions of Abu Musab al-Zarkawi, the Jordanian Salafist who leads the most brutal strand of the insurgency, has grown ever wider since he lost his base in Fallujah and was largely restricted to the Sunni corridor that runs from Mosul to north Babil.

Fallujah not only deprived Zarqawi of his base, but broke the alliance that Newsweek is reporting in this week's edition.

There was bitter dissent when Zarkawi and other insurgent leaders fled Fallujah and left their underlings to fight. Fear of betrayal has led to smaller cells operating ever more independently, preventing an overall insurgent strategy from developing.

Remember the dissent to the invasion of Fallujah? "So what if we attack the city and kill a few local boys. The leaders will just escape."

Right. But here again, war critics are involved in cultural illiteracy. A Western military expects its generals to fight from the rear, to slip away behind the rear guard to fight another day. This holds for Western-style guerrillas as well as regular forces:

Crimson the roadside, the prison wall, the cave,
Proof of their valour! Go sleep in peace ye brave!
Comrade tread lightly, you're near a hero's grave,
Proud die the soldiers of the Rearguard.

Not so tribal braves, who expect their heroes to fight from the front -- or, at least, not to abandon their soldiers to die. Zarqawi's flight places him, not in the Legion of the Rearguard, but in the league of General John Cope.

Cope sent a challenge frae Dunbar,
Sayin "Charlie meet me an' ye daur;
An' I'll learn ye the airt o' war,
If ye'll meet me in the morning."

When Charlie looked the letter upon,
He drew his sword and scabbard from,
Come, follow me, my merry men,
And we'll meet Johnnie Cope in the morning....

When Johnnie Cope he heard o' this,
He thocht it wouldna be amiss,
Tae hae a horse in readiness,
Tae flee awa in the morning.

Fye now, Johnnie, get up an' rin,
The Highland bagpipes mak' a din,
It's better tae sleep in a hale skin,
For it will be a bluidie morning.

When Johnnie Cope tae Dunbar cam,
They speired at him, "Where's all your men?"
"The de'il confound me gin I ken,
For I left them all in the morning."

Now Johnnie, troth ye werena blate,
Tae come wi' news o' your ain defeat,
And leave your men in sic a strait,
Sae early in the morning.

What the Redcoats may have thought of this, the Highlanders were not impressed. They would have thought less yet, should one of their own have done the same. When Charlie left the field, it was because his army had been shattered at Culloden. The leaders' flight before the storm wins no hearts in old Fallujah.

Guardian Unlimited | Arts features | Classical music could even become the new rock'n'roll

Precisely Right:

Sometimes, even the London Guardian gets it right:

At the start of the 21st century, we can see what went wrong more clearly. What went wrong was western European modernism.

Just so. And not only on this particular topic.

SavannahNOW | Hunting amendment introduced at Capitol - 02/01/2005

Georgia Hunting Amendment:

Via the NRA's ILA news service, I see this article from the Savannah Morning News:

Senate Republicans on Tuesday introduced a proposed change to the Georgia Constitution that would protect hunting and fishing from being outlawed, a move some Democrats say is a political ploy to win the GOP votes in the 2006 elections.

Senate President Pro Tem Eric Johnson, R-Savannah, said the constitutional amendment is needed to prevent Georgians from losing a way of life that is essential to those who hail from outside urban areas.

"As Georgia gets more and more urbanized and Atlanta gets bigger and bigger, I think you've got more and more people that don't understand hunting and don't understand the birthright that Georgians feel about it," Johnson said. "We want to make sure that animal-rights activists or liberals in the General Assembly can never take away Georgians' rights to hunting and fishing."

Back when I lived in Savannah, Eric Johnson was my Senator (or maybe he was a representative in those days -- it's been a little while). I worked on a campaign for an opponent of his -- longtime readers of the Hall will remember that Grim is a Southern Democrat of the Zell Miller school -- but I always respected the man.

His opponents point out that there's no danger of hunting being outlawed in Georgia just at the moment:

Sen. Regina Thomas, D-Savannah, on Tuesday called the amendment unneeded and suggested Republicans are angling to give a boost to GOP candidates in 2006, when voters will cast ballots for all statewide officers including governor, lieutenant governor and the commissioners of agriculture, insurance and labor.

"They are determined they are going to take every constitutional officer in the state," Thomas said of the GOP. "I don't think we need a constitutional amendment on (hunting). I think there are more important things that affect and adversely impact the lives of the people of this state."

Johnson rejected such criticism, saying his resolution isn't about winning votes.

Beth Brown, spokeswoman for the Wildlife Resources Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, said she was not aware of any existing state proposal to outlaw hunting or fishing in Georgia. And while the department supports the amendment, it doesn't intend to lobby for its passage.

It may very well be true that this is, in part, a ploy to win votes. Certainly it is likely to win them.

But I don't think it's only that. Even in Savannah -- almost perfectly isolated from Atlanta's growth spurts -- the effect of this increased urbanization/suburbanization has been felt. The only public shooting range within an easy drive of the city closed five years ago. Run by a former Marine, it had been operating on land just across the Savannah river for decades. It had an excellent setup and safety record. Land speculators bought land surrounding it -- knowing perfectly well there was a firing range there -- then proceeded to build subdivisions, and sue to close the range down. Since there was no grounds for a safety complaint given its fine record, they sued instead on the grounds that it was too noisy.

The same is true across Georgia. My father recently sent me a videotape of giant bulldozers plowing down the forest where my dogs and I used to go hiking as a boy. He sent it because my son, his grandson, loves construction machinery. Indeed, the boy loved watching it, but I did not.

This kind of thing is a direct result of the changes Johnson mentions. This isn't really a party issue -- Johnson is a Republican, but in Forsyth County, it's the Republicans on the county commission who are the miscreants. They rushed this project through because the state had passed legislation making it illegal to do what they were setting out to do, so it had to be done before the new year. That county commission was elected by the kind of immigrants Johnson means, people new to the state, without understanding of local issues, who vote Republican in local elections simply because that's how they intend to vote in the national elections.

All of this is driven by the city of Atlanta, whose booming economy has steadily expanded its suburbs, satellite cities, and their suburbs. Over the last two decades, they've advanced outward along every major highway, expanding past the "perimeter" of I-285 through traditional satellites, over and past farmland, past cattle country, and are now cutting down the timberland to make more room for suburbs.

So no -- it's not "just" a plot to get votes. It's a necessary first step toward protecting the heritage of the state. In fact, I suggest that it's a wise model for amendments in similar places across the country: the first of many, perhaps, to protect traditional ways of life against urban sprawl.

"Urban sprawl..." Now, what does that remind me of? Seems like here's an issue for those of you hoping to move a certain national party back to the center, and make inroads into exurbs and rural areas where the party is weak.

Google Search: Shushupe

Peruvian Blue:

Here's a story hot off the wires. No link yet.

LIMA, Peru (AP) A key witness against a man U.S. drug authorities say is Peru's most notorious drug trafficker was shot to death in prison, officials said Wednesday.

Jose Maria Aguilar, known as "Shushupe'' a type of deadly snake in Peru was shot to death Tuesday in his prison cell in the jungle city of Pucallapa, 305 miles (490 kilometers) northeast of Lima.

Aguilar had told authorities that Fernando Zevallos, the founder of the country's now defunct national airline, Aero Continente, used his company's planes to smuggle drugs into Colombia, El Comercio newspaper reported.

Aguilar was shot twice in the face allegedly by a prisoner already serving time for murder, said officials with the National Institute of Prisons. The inmate was not identified.

Peru's director of prisons, Wilfredo Pedraza, said Wednesday investigators do not believe this was simply a fight between inmates.

"This was a planned act, organized from outside, premeditated and executed by a person who already had a record of committing murder for hire,'' Pedraza told reporters in Pucallapa. "Aguilar's murder was planned by a third party ... (whose identity) the police investigation will have to determine.''

In a television interview on Peru's Canal 2, Zevallos denied any involvement in Aguilar's death.
"It would be very stupid to do that,'' said Zevallos.
Zevallos, 47, is currently on trial for drug trafficking. In his interview, he again denied the charges against him.

"I'm a businessman,'' he said. ``I'm not a criminal. I'm not a drug trafficker.''
Zevallos has been the subject of more than 30 investigations by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and has been tried in Peru on charges of murder-for-hire, trafficking in cocaine and money laundering. But he has never been convicted of a crime.

The Bush Administration added Zevallos to Washington's international "drug kingpin'' list in June, freezing his U.S. assets and prohibiting U.S. citizens from commercial dealing with him or any of his businesses.

There are a lot of questions about this story. The answer to all of them is, "Because it's South America."

So just what was this supposed to mean?

I came across this wierdness today via instapundit. I'm still trying to figure out if the original website was a joke or what.

But if it was not, and if the whole incident can be turned into a running joke, (just follow the links), what does that say about the terrorists now?

Economist.com | Nepal�s emergency threatens South Asia

It's Important, But Nobody Cares:

Nepal's government is dissovled by its king, who cuts off the nation's communications with the rest of the world. The Economist explains why this could sow chaos throughout South Asia.

But it is bigger even than that. The Maoist rebels in Nepal have expanded their operations across China's borders. A collapse of order in Nepal could bring two nuclear powers -- India and China -- into conflict at the roof of the world.

Keep watch.

TSUNAMI IMPACT: Ethiopia's Rastas See the 'End Times'

We're In Trouble Now:

As foretold:

When news of the Indian Ocean tsunami filtered through to Africa the day after Christmas, Gladstone Robinson was playing Bob Marley's 'Natural Mystic'.

''It's the prophecy!'' shouted the 75-year-old Rastafarian, shaking his knotted stringy beard and grey dreadlocks, over the din of the CD player.

''Marley's song says it all: 'Many people would die, many would have to suffer and many more would have to cry','' said Robinson in his husky voice. 'Brother, I'll tell you Babylon is going to fall.''

Uh-oh. All that Rapture talk was one thing, but when Bob Marley turns on you...

FoD

Friends of Democracy on C-SPAN:

Those of you with access to such things can see Friends of Democracy on C-SPAN from 2-4 PM, EST. Grim's Hall is not wired for television, so if any of you do watch, let me know how it goes.

The Adventures of Chester

Honor:

The Adventures of Chester has a roundup of some Iraqi responses to the vote.

Ali's thoughts at Free Iraqi:

This was my way to stand against those who humiliated me, my family and my friends. It was my way of saying," You're history and you don't scare me anymore". It was my way to scream in the face of all tyrants, not just Saddam and his Ba'athists and tell them, "I don't want to be your, or anyone's slave. You have kept me in your jail all my life but you never owned my soul". It was my way of finally facing my fears and finding my courage and my humanity again.

...

Iraqi blogger Hammorabi has this to say:

Today is the day in which the souls of our martyrs comforted!

Today those who were killed in Iraq or wounded among our friends from the USA and other allies, who helped us to reach this day, are with us again to inscribe their names with Gold for ever!

From Friends of Democracy:

Q: Ms. Alaa Rabih, what is your feeling on elections?

A: My feeling is a feeling of nationalism and revolution. For the first time, we feel secure and stable, we will have a new constitution and live in a peaceful Iraq.

Q: Mr. Ahmad Salman, what is your feeling on Election Day?

A: A good feeling, a feeling of a revolution happening.

Not for the first time, the "Friends of Democracy" remind me of another band, with a similar name. But they are not the only revolutionaries in Iraq. "The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution," once feared as a link to Iranian militancy, also has a statement:

Mr. Sadr Ad din al Qabanji... said, "The elections are the battle for freedom against despotism and independence against occupation,” and on those viewing the Iraqi scene as being a secular-Islamic, Shiite-Sunni, Arab-Kurdish competition, well their reading is marginal and imprecise. As Al Qabaji says, “The real competition is that between peace and terrorism. All the Iraqis are in the peace and law trench."

Today's Washington Post has an article which asks, "Is Democracy Un-Islamic?" They might have simply waited a day.

Grim's Hall

Cultural Illiteracy:

Reports on negativity about the Iraq elections appear at Belmont Club and a blog called "Think Things Through" (I often use a variant of that phrase when speaking to my son). The usual suspects are involved. There is an irony here.

Both Robert Fisk and Juan Cole are regular participants in the "Americans are culturally illiterate about Arabs" school of foreign policy studies. Among other places, Cole has lamented alleged American illiteracy here and here. Fisk needs no introduction to any reader of blogs.

The irony is that both of these writers, and all of their ilk, have completely misunderstood the Iraqi cultural reaction to the elections. American soldiers and Marines, whose warrior culture is far closer to the Arabs' than is any academic or journalistic one, understood the truth from the beginning. The problem for soldiers has only been learning to think about how they would feel if the circumstances were reversed. The problem for these proud intellectuals has been something more arcane, like demonology, trying to grasp drives whose rules they have written down, but which remain totally alien and finally not understood.

In the debate -- I have had it a dozen times in as many places, and read variants of it in far more -- this school has held that the threat of violence over the elections would make them illegitimate because it would depress turnout, and even among those who came to vote, would through intimidation influence them to make false choices. Until security was certain, there could be no free election.

The thing these debaters never understood was this: in an "honor and shame society" (to use the intellectual term for it), there is great honor to be gained when there is a threat hanging over your actions. It is the same power which drove warriors of the Algonquin Nations to count coup on the enemy.

Far from depressing turnout, the insurgents inspired it.

Wretchard wrote:

[Cole]'s appreciation was totally wrong. Think of what it means for anyone to dare vote in Fallujah at all, despite the penalties prescribed by terrorists, some of whom are certain to be kinsmen. And when was the time, at any Faculty meeting, that the halt and the blind tramped in to vote (cars are banned from approaching the polling precincts for security reasons) at the risk of death?

This is correct. And if it is to be understood in its cultural context, one must recognize what a personal act of heroism means in a warrior culture. These people -- including the young and the old, the men and the women, "the halt and the blind" -- have counted coup, to bring honor to themselves and to their project. Anyone who speaks of that project, or writes about it, must show it the honor that the Iraqi people have won for it.

To do otherwise -- to try and dismiss the results or the government that forms from them -- is to fail to understand the culture and its conception of honor. It is to put personal preference above reality, to do just the thing that the Coles and Fisks of the world accuse the American warfighter of doing. Thinking Things Through has a good laugh on the point: "[Fisk] might as well be claiming dragons are flying over the southern marshes."

Wretchard asks, "Did we win?" and answers, "Who knows? But many Iraqis think they did." Indeed, they did. Remember what they won, which by their lights as by mine is honor and glory. Remember how they will expect you to treat a people who have risen from despair to do honorable and glorious things.

* I end with an aside. If this was the maximal effort of the insurgents, the assault on Fallujah was a pure success. The insurgency remains capable of brutal and murderous attacks, but not many at once. This demonstrates clearly The Myth of the Guerrilla. I wrote about this at length in "Clausewitz & The Triangle", which looked at the Iraqi insurgency from the perspective of military science.

One of the primary tools of the guerrilla is the ruse of appearing more dangerous than he really is.

Hit and run attacks, sniper attacks, bombings and the like give the appearance of a foe who is everywhere, when in fact his numbers are limited.

The guerrilla, because he chooses the place and time of combat, can appear to be everywhere at once -- and therefore a universal feature of the landscape, even when his numbers are limited. But the election, if you know what to look for, showed that tactic for what it is: an illusion.

Today, the insurgent couldn't control the battlefield. In order to remain credible, he had to create not just one ugly incident, but widespread disruption across the country.

If the insurgents had the capability, they would have hit every polling station in the country, and they would have hit hard. At many of these stations, it would have been easy to create carnage because of the massive turnout.

In fact, they managed only about two dozen deaths nationwide. Time was -- when Fallujah was in their control, and there were safe havens for planning these things and building multiple car bombs -- that they managed to kill more than twice that many at a blow. Remember the forty children blown apart at a sewage treatment plant's opening ceremony? Terrorist attacks are down 40% since Fallujah was taken by the Marines, and that's just measuring the numbers of attacks. As you can see from today's maximal effort, the power of the attacks has also weakened.

As mentioned above, the fact is that the insugency wasn't able to put an end to voting even in Fallujah itself, where there remain sufficient numbers of closet guerrillas to kill people who voted in coming days. Last April, there was much fretting that Iraq was being lost as a surge of guerrillas and Mahdi army fighters claimed sections of nine cities across the nation. Now, the elections took place in every last city, even in the teeth of the enemy heartland.

Have we won? Not yet; there is still the hard business of setting up a government, and making it run. We will be needed for some time yet to help out in that regard. That will allow the guerrilla to rebuild his illusion; once again, he can choose one target every day or few days, and appear to be everywhere and all powerful.

But remember what it looked like when the curtain was pulled away for a moment. We are winning. We will have the victory. Time and leverage are all we need. We have plenty of the latter.

Iraqi elections

The Election:

There are several things I might blog about today. All of them pale in comparison to the importance of the Iraqi election.

I therefore request you take whatever time you might have spent here, and visit the Friends of Democracy. They are the only group covering the elections from the Iraqi grassroots.

I hope for all the best for Iraq.

Arts & Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate

The Rise, or The Decline

Arts & Letters Daily links to a feud between Matthew Parris of London and Victor Hanson of California. The topic? Whether America is about to collapse, or whether she's just getting started.

I won't try to summarize the arguments, which are well constructed and worth hearing. I do have some context to provide, however. I would like to point out that the feud takes precisely the form of the claims of Marx and Joseph Schumpeter. Marx outlined what he saw as structural problems with capitalism, and projected its inevitable demise. Schumpeter, while agreeing that capitalism was doomed in the long term, explained that Marx failed to grasp the robust nature of the beast.

Marx thought that the trends of capitalism he observed in his day were not reversable. The trend toward monopolization, for example: the growing powers in each industry would continue to eat up smaller businesses until they had swallowed them all, and then the giants would clash. Projecting from that clash of giants, he saw the ruin of titans of industry, cast down into the proleteriat, where they would become disaffected leaders of rebellion...

Schumpeter explained that the situation was more complex. There are external factors that prevent the Gotterdammerung that Marx believed he foresaw. The main one, Schumpeter explained, was new ideas. Big corporations have trouble enacting them, as they are tied to existing products and ways of doing things. In the largest, there are whole wings staffed by people whose continued success depends on doing things just as they are now done. The institutional resistance to change makes them vunerable to smaller, faster, young companies, who can -- in the fashion of a barracuda -- strip chunks of the flesh off the giants, perhaps until there is nothing left. It is this ability to assimilate change that is the deciding factor.

Parris and Hanson occupy the same positions. Parris is attempting to demonstrate that American power can grow no further, and that rising powers are approaching the ability to strike at the United States' economic structure. Hanson points out that there are external factors Parris fails to consider:

China and India are the new tigers, but their rapid industrialization and urbanization have created enormous social and civic problems long ago dealt with by the United States. Each must soon confront environmentalism, unionism, minority rights, free expression, community activism, and social entitlements that are the wages of any citizenry that begins to taste leisure and affluence. China is fueled by industrious laborers who toil at cut-rate wages for 14 hours per day, but that will begin to moderate once an empowered citizenry worries about dirty air, back backs, inadequate housing, and poor health care. The infrastructure of generations–bridges, roads, airports, universities, power grids–are well established and being constantly improved in the United States, and so there is a reason why a European would prefer to drink the water, get his appendix out, or drive in San Francisco rather than in Bombay, Beijing, Istanbul–or Paris or Rome.

America, like capitalism, is more robust than the straight-line projections would suggest. It is robust because it has a system unusually well develpoed for absorbing and reacting to change in the world. The statist EU, China, and the rest are tied into formal decision making processes that, like the corporations of Marx's day, place decision making power in the hands of vested bureaucracies. Not so in America.

I suspect that Hanson has the better of this argument, as Schumpeter did with Marx. However, I would caution Hanson to beware the doom that Schumpeter foresaw for capitalism, which may yet befall America.

Schumpeter believed that capitalism would be destroyed by its successes. Capitalism would spawn, he believed, a large intellectual class that made its living by attacking the very bourgeois system of private property and freedom so necessary for the intellectual class's existence.

These people are the enemy of us all. Literally enough: they not only work against the underpinnings of the world, as Schumpeter warned, but they even wish us ill.

Winds of Change has more on the "large intellectual class," which is not quite as intellectual as it might seem. And the Belmont Club has more as well.

Testosterhome

On Boys:

An interesting blog called Testosterhome, run by a mother of four sons, was brought to my attention by The Corner. I enjoyed this story, which I think conveys a useful lesson society would do well to learn:

The thing about boys, I'm discovering, is that the fight is usually over by the time I hear about it. Our home is more or less tattle-free, but the lack of narking is compensated by random moans and wails off in the distance.

When someone fills me in on 'what is this all about?,' the affected parties are generally back to work building their lego ship, or amassing an arsenal of tinker-toy weapons.

I told my mom the other day that I sometimes feel obligated to make a random comment, force an apology, because that's my job. But it seems that more often than not, the boys seem to handle it in the age-old spirit of hand-to-hand combat. I'd like to train them to quietly shake hands or hug, but am realizing that would just be dragging something out that they already take care of quickly and with no strings attached.

Trial by combat: an idea whose time has come again.

The Jakarta Post - U.S. Navy to stay in Indonesia as long as needed: Captain

One Could Almost Cry:

It's so touching. A genuine, good and kind article about the United States military, from the French news service AFP.

"U.S. forces will be here through the relief effort and as long as the Indonesian government needs us to stay," USS Abraham Lincoln skipper Captain Kendall Card told reporters late Wednesday.

Skipper! They've even learned a bit of the lingo. But it gets better.

He did not say when the mission would now end, adding the U.S. forces would be ready to help Indonesia even after the emergency phase was over.

"I think the relief effort is coming to a close and now we're going towards the reconstruction phase. Our helicopters will be here to help the Indonesian government in the reconstruction phase (if asked)," he said.

Catch that? The AFP added two words, to make clear that the US' intentions were honorable.

Not, "'...our helicopters will be here to help,' the military officer said, raising fears of permanent hegemony or the establishment of unwanted US military bases." That's what I usually expect from AFP.

I once heard someone say, "In this world, justice is too much to ask for. The best you can ask is the occasional lapse in injustice." Well, if that's the best we can ask, let's make sure and mark it when we see it. Thanks, AFP, for a kind word.

Telegraph | Arts | What are we thinking of?

The Great Cold:

A book review in today's Telegraph asks "What are we thinking of?" It concerns a new book warning of environmental collapse based on historic models:

Some of the case-histories make this point convincingly. The early Norse settlers in Iceland, for example, came close to rendering the island uninhabitable, but veered from the brink just in time. (It took them a while to discover that although the green and wooded landscape resembled that of Scandinavia, the soil on which it was based was something quite unlike their native earth: a layer of fine volcanic ash, held in place only by a thin web of vegetation, and easily blown away once that vegetation was cleared.)

Their counterparts in Greenland, on the other hand, never learned from their mistakes: they cut down whatever they could burn, dug up huge areas of turf to make insulating walls, over-grazed the scanty grassland, and fought against the local Eskimos (whose ingenious methods for surviving in this environment they never bothered to copy). After several hundred years of frost-bitten subsistence, the two Norse colonies on Greenland succumbed to fighting and starvation.

How seriously should we take the idea that the failures of Norse Greenland, Easter Island and other such societies constitute warnings for our societies today?

The facts about Norse Greenland are a bit different than the book presents. The environmental change that mattered most had nothing to do with human activity, but a mini Ice-Age:

Sea ice off the coast of Iceland nearly vanished for three centuries. The effects seem to have spread to North America, where in AD 900 Eskimos settled Ellesmere Island at the usually frigid northwest corner of Greenland....

Then a chill set in. Slowly at first. People didn't want to believe it. Farmers were reluctant to give up their new fields. Settlers on Greenland held on for as long as possible. But the steadily expanding cold was irresistible by the 1200s. Unspeakable hardships began to take hold in much of the world. In Iceland, extensive grasslands that had supported sheep, goats, and cattle from AD 874 had receded by 1200. Farming became so difficult that Icelanders turned to fishing and the hunting of seals to support themselves. The population fell sharply....

By 1700, Iceland was surrounded with sea ice that made commerce with the rest of the world hazardous. And in faraway China, citrus groves that had survived for centuries froze in Jiangxi province.

There's a lesson here, yes. Just not the one the author intended.

Mudville Gazette

The Business of Iraq:

Over at the Mudville Gazette, Mrs. Greyhawk -- whose continued hard work and devotion to her soldier husband are inspirational to observe -- has a couple of important roundups today. The first is on the upcoming elections. I would like to remind you also of the Friends of Democracy project, which is collecting grassroots-level news from the Iraqi provinces. Because FoD is staffed by Iraqis, the whole of the country is open to them: election-hating thugs may not like them any better than us, but they're harder to identify.

The other article at Mudville concerns the HEROS Act, which concerns aid for widows and orphans of servicemen. The bill is sponsored by Joe Lieberman and Jeff Sessions, making it a bipartisan effort to care for the families of the fallen. Should it pass, it will be retroactive to October 2001, so that all the families of men killed fighting in the terror war will be supported.

ARMOR GEDDON

Milblogger News:

Via BlackFive, I see that Eric's favorite Milblogger, RedSix of ArmorGeddon, has been awarded the Silver Star.

Naturally, RedSix didn't mention it.

Read more here.

Jihad Watch

...And Another Bawdy House!

Jihad Watch has the latest statement from our self-described "virtuous" opponents in Iraq. This is from a leader of the Ansar al-Sunnah group, the ones who recently set off a suicide bomb inside a mess hall tent, coupled with a mortar attack from a civilian area that was timed to kill rescue and aid workers responding to the blast.

Along the way, he offers a description of how he sees us:

Cowboys, drowning in sin, corruption and pornography.

This, naturally enough, put me in the mind of the famous (and probably, the only) musical starring Clint Eastwood, Paint Your Wagon. It details the rise and fall of a frontier settlement among gold miners. It's a rollicking and tongue-in-cheek portrayal, but it actually has a number of the details right: for example, women being so rare on the frontier. In one scene, men rush in droves to see one, and one of the miners offers fifty dollars in gold dust to hold her baby for a few minutes. In fact, I've seen an illustration from a newspaper of the day, which accompanied a story describing how men would offer gifts of up to a hundred dollars' worth of gold dust just out of gratitude for the sight of a woman.

The movie examines the life of "cowboys, drowning in sin, corruption, and pornography." A review of some quotes from the movie will give you the notion: everything from drunkeness, prostitution, gambling and thievery, to the corruption of family values. Indeed, one of the main plot lines is about a pair of partners, played by Eastwood and Lee Marvin, who both marry the same woman, at the same time. "You show me in them commandments where it says a woman cain't have two husbands," Marvin says. (Actually, there proves to be a real theological question here, as a Googling of "polygamy" and "Bible" will demonstrate. People come down solidly on both sides of the matter, those opposed citing the fact that the singular tense is used in certain relevant passages, while those in favor point to the rules for taking a second wife in Exodus, and the parable of the five virgins).

It is a comedy, not intended to be a source of serious conclusions about life or anything else. The movie, made in 1969, still takes pains to wind up all of its threads in a way that confirm traditional morality. Not so the extras who made it: "Hippies were big on authentic Western costume and could supply their own wardrobe right down to the guns (yes, these hippies were armed to the teeth). They came with wives, kids, big dogs and bigger trucks and settled in for the summer, fall, winter, spring, and...I believe...a second summer. Everything you see in this movie is REAL...the poker game in the background, the French whores (imported from Paris, and yes, they plied their trade on the set and in hotels in Baker), the antiques, the long hair and handlebar moustaches. The opium den and bootleg liquor. All real and functioning."

Where did they go, these extras of 1969? American society, though condemned by Ansar al-Sunnah, has not become awash in such things as compared to the late Sixties. If anything, the opposite has occurred: the hippies got old, most of them took what used to be called "straight jobs," and they raised "straight" children. The price of human freedom has not been high: in return for not suppressing the radicals of 1969 with the religious violence favored by the Islamist, what have we suffered?

Something, surely; I expect readers will provide answers, and indeed I can think of a few myself, though also some benefits. On balance, I think we are to the good for this transaction. Human liberty has costs, but they are not so very high when you consider the alternatives. It also has benefits, which prove to be pure profit.

That train of thought proves to be a call for genuine tolerance. That call puts me diametrically opposed to Ansar al-Sunnah: and using that as my landmark, the principles of land navigation suggest to me that I'm right where I should be.

UPDATE: Given the snow, I've had a little time to think quietly while I clear the road and drive with shovel and broom. The metaphor of land navigation is good, but not complete. You really need two navigational points to be sure of your location, and this is only one.

The other navigational point has to be excessive secularization. If complete intolerance of religious variance is one point, the other has to be complete intolerance of religious expression. If one point is a demand for conformity to one view of Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, or the like, the other must be a demand for a rejection of all such things.

The middle ground -- a tolerant, but vibrant and religious, society -- is surely the right place to be. It's a happy thing that America's traditions reach their best expressions in just that place.

And in taking those navigational measurements, I find a third beacon unsuspected, right in the center of the place I seek to inhabit. It is joy. The movie I started with is an expression of glee almost from beginning to end. There is nothing of joy in the scorn of Ansar al-Sunnah, nor in the raving of atheists who list the Vatican as a 'hate site.' This is the ground on which we can be happiest. Happy, all of us, even the psychotic and the radical atheist, who find their highest joy in railing against the rest of us.

The Sun News | 01/20/2005 | Gear gathered for Iraq horses

Tack for Iraq:

You may have seen the 1st Cavalry, Horse Detachment in coverage of yesterday's military festivities honoring the inauguration. This is the last horse-mounted unit in the Army, still wearing uniforms dating to the glory days of "yellowlegs" riding across the West. (Those of you in the MILSCI project may enjoy this short but interesting overview of the uses of cavalry in combat.)

In any event, you might have gotten the idea that this 1st Cavalry, Horse was a purely ceremonial unit. Not so! Part of the unit is deployed in Iraq, caring for the remains of the Iraqi National Herd of Arabians. Sadly, more than eighty percent of the herd -- and all of their tack -- was destroyed by a Tomahawk missile during the air raids on Baghdad.

The Soquili Equine Center is taking up tack to send to 1st Cavalry, in order to help repair some of the damage done. The Iraqi people, as is often the case in an Arab nation, revere their national herd. The loss of those horses was a heavy blow to them, but the work done by American soldiers, and especially the attention of private American horsemen, have overwhelmed their expectations and made some real friendships across the oceans.

If you're interested in helping out -- whether you have old tack, or wish to make donations of other sorts -- you can contact "Tack for Iraq" here.

DoD News: Statement from Pentagon Spokesman Lawrence DiRita on Latest Seymour Hersh Article

Hold those Horses!

It isn't all that often that the Pentagon goes after a journalist. Probably it should happen more often than it does. But it's satisfying to see.

By his own admission, Mr. Hersh evidently is working on an “alternative history” novel. He is well along in that work, given the high quality of “alternative present” that he has developed in several recent articles.

This is an official statement of the Department of Defense, remember.

Notes

Changes & Projects:

Please note that The Adventures of Chester, a blog by a fairly insightful Reserve officer of Marines, has moved to a new location. I've adjusted the links accordingly. If you're not familiar with Chester, you might enjoy his writings.

Grim's relative slowdown in blogging may or may not end soon. My current contract is keeping me very busy, and I've had less time to think lately -- and therefore, less to talk about.

However, blogging done well is a conversation, not a lecture. It's good to have friends and companions who drop by to comment, or send emails. I got a couple of those from our friends at Spirit of America. They're gearing up on several projects, and asked me to help let you know about them.

One is Friends of Democracy, which describes itself as "ground-level election news from the Iraqi people." They're putting together a grassroots correspondents' network in Iraq's 18 provinces, and also networking with Iraqi bloggers and via email with Iraqis who are online. The hope is to provide more of an unfiltered look at what the Iraqi people themselves think and say about the process.

SoA is also still working on the Arabic-language blogging tool, Viral Freedom.

Finally, they're planning to do some coverage of the Iraqi elections themselves. They wanted me to help them find some folks with skills they need. Here's what they want:

We need an site editor/producer for the English language Web site.
That position is described here.

And, we are looking for people who can develop election coverage
graphics for the FoD website and Jan 30th event. People with
experience developing graphics for the web and for broadcast would be
especially helpful.

I think that some of you may fit that bill, if you're interested. As you can see from the site design here, Grim is not an expert at such things.

Grim's Hall

On the Boxer Story:

Jeff Jarvis administers a beating to the New York Times. Grim is one of those bloggers who met the brothers, and blogged about it. If the Times is properly humiliated by the poverty of their reporting and wants to do a follow-up, I'll be glad to receive questions.

Rich Lowry on Zell Miller on National Review Online

Zell Was Right:

So say national Democratic Party leaders, according to this piece:

'What I was telling them was right and correct, if only they had listened to it,' says Miller, who recently retired from the Senate. Democrats are essentially saying these days that they want a party in which someone like Zell Miller can feel comfortable. Alas, they used to have one. But, as someone once put it, today's Democrats are a national party no more.

It's not too late -- if they have the guts to make the necessary changes.

Commentary - Americanism--and Its Enemies

The Faithful:

Commentary magazine runs this month a piece by a Yale university professor of computer science, David Gelernter. Dr. Gelenter argues that Americanism is a religion in fact, not just in form:

Many thinkers have noted that Americanism is inspired by or close to or intertwined with Puritanism. One of the most impressive scholars to say so recently is Samuel Huntington, in his formidable book on American identity, Who Are We? But my thesis is that Puritanism did not merely inspire or influence Americanism; it turned into Americanism. Puritanism and Americanism are not just parallel or related developments; they are two stages of a single phenomenon.

The argument he makes is an extended one, well informed and resonant. I am not, myself, familiar with a number of the sources and documents he cites, particularly the early government and church documents from the Founding. Even so, I can see that there is a great truth hidden here. I recommend the piece to you all.

Thanks to Arts & Letters Daily.

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall

Social Security:

Monomaniac Joshua Micah Marshall has turned his laser-beam focus on the issue of Social Security reform. Well, actually, he's turned his focus on the issue of putting a stop to any attempt to have Social Security reform.

This is not surprising. Social Security is the strongest bastion of socialism in America. With Welfare reform having taken place, it is the one program left to satisfy someone whose political preferences run toward European-style "social democracy." If you lose this ground, you lose it all.

It happens that Grim is an enemy of the whole "social democratic" program. Aristotle notes that 'a proper upbringing' is necessary to having the correct understanding of arete, a word that encompasses both "excellence" and "virtue" in the modern English. Social democracy, because it redirects responsibility and power from the individual to the state, produces the exact opposite of a proper upbringing. It produces a set of expectations about how the world should work that undermines the qualities necessary in a free man.

This objection stands regardless of the practicality of the program -- it is an objection to a welfare system that works, as much as to a welfare system that is broken. Arguing that the program works well doesn't change the fact that what it does so very well is ultimately unhealthy.

However, this philosophy does have exceptions at the margins, and Social Security happens to occupy one. Programs to care for the aged offer little threat to the character of the nation or her citizens, as the character of a man of sixty-five is largely formed. We've observed that there is still some threat in this regard ("Where'd you get all the money?" "The government. I didn't earn it, I don't need it, but if they miss one payment, I raise hell!"). Still, if that is taken into account and adjustments are made to lessen the effect, this is a place where some government involvement can do more good than harm. Social Security reform could be meaningful simply by instituting a strict means test. Only the truly poor elderly would get money, in the medium future; in the near future, we would have a declining scope of payments, so that those who have been relying on Social Security would not be let down.

The needy elderly can thereby be cared for, but the percentage who rely in some fashion on Social Security will be low enough that it won't produce a large faction prepared to vote itself largess from the public treasury, as Sir Alexander Fraser Tyler warned us at the outset of this adventure. Expenditures for caring only for the needy will be far lower than current expenditures, which are outrageously high because the program is structured to make Social Security the "right" of all Americans.

The alternative route -- private accounts, so that "social security" money becomes instead privately owned assets -- is also satisfactory. It addresses the needs of the elderly, prevents the voting of largess from the public treasury, and preserves the principle of individual responsibility and power. It doesn't do it as well as simply leaving the money in the hands of the people to start with, naturally, but it seems a reasonable compromise position. As with any compromise, neither side is really satisfied. The democratic socalist will find the whole thing less satisfactory than guaranteed payments from the treasury; the individualist will find the paperwork and hassle of working with the government to manage his account frustrating, and wonder why he can't just please manage his own money without interference. Those of us who feel that society has a duty to care for the elderly will be satisfied, though, regardless of whether we feel the government should be the agency fulfilling society's responsibility.

All that said, there is one part of this discussion that I find astonishing. The debate seems to be focusing itself on defining the precise moment at which Social Security becomes insolvent. Advocates of the maximum position say that it won't be for decades; advocates of the minimum say that, in just five years, the program will stop producing more revenue than it expends, and it's all downhill from there. This is a cynical way to argue, on both sides.

The minimal position is correct to say that the "watershed moment" is nearby, and that this will require certain measures to be taken by, say, 2042. The longer we wait, the sterner the measures have to be. But words like "crisis" derail the whole point of this argument, which is that we don't have to have a crisis if we address the situation now.

The maximum position wants to make only half of that last argument: 'we don't have to have a crisis.' That is not true unless we undertake reform in the near future. You can't have only half the argument.

It is no good to argue that a crisis is "decades away" when you are talking about a retirement plan. Those are meant to be planned decades in advance. Informing someone of the age of twenty that there won't be a crisis until they are at least 62 years old is not encouraging. That's just when they are going to need to avoid a crisis.

Pushing the crisis date back a few years, if it can be done at that point, really only makes things worse. For a thirty year old today, hearing that the money may run out when you're 72 should be alarming. That will be when you're good and retired and have no real option of returning to work should the money run out. Hearing that it may not happen until you are 75 is not very comforting; indeed, the only comfort to be derived from this argument is the hope that you might manage to die before the crisis arrives.

dallasobserver.com | Pants on Fire | 2004-12-30

A Lesson in Politics:

Via Samizdata, I found this story from the Dallas Observer. It provides a useful reminder of the nature of politics, and politicians.

The D magazine special edition goes on and on about the recreational amenities the Trinity River project will create: '...the Trinity River will accommodate small sailboats and paddle boats,' the magazine tells its readers. 'More interestingly, a reverse-flow lake is planned with a 17-foot drop where it curves back to the river, creating rapids and a perfect whitewater course for winter kayaking competitions...

'But the most visible benefit will be on the Oak Cliff side, which will have easy access to downtown, great views and--most important of all--along the levee, direct entry into the country's largest urban park.'

All of this is a lie.

How does he know? Why, the real plans were contained in the "executive summary" document:

Here's the point. And remember, in months of preparation, reporting and interviews, there is no way that somebody at D magazine did not know this: There is no white-water kayaking, no waterfalls, none of that in this plan. The exact word in the document is "none."

And what if the city were able to come up with another $110 million[?] ... Dallas Mayor Laura Miller is quoted in the magazine as saying the extra $110 million, for which she is willing to recommend a tax hike, will "put all the bells and whistles" on the project. So how much white-water kayaking will "all the bells and whistles" include?

None. We don't get white-water rafting until we come up with the additional $700 million.

...

Maybe you weren't sure a minute ago, by the way, what a "reverse-flow lake" is. Please let me explain. Right now all of the water in the Trinity River is "effluent" or doo-doo water from upriver sewage treatment plants, some of which don't meet minimal EPA standards. It's not safe to swim in. I have spoken to experts who have said it would be unsafe to go sailing on top of this water unless you were wearing a HAZMAT suit.... What we are getting instead is a stagnant rainwater lake with groundwater pumps that somebody hopes will keep the lake a little bit wet during the dry season.

Boating? Well, sure, if you want to park downtown and carry your boat across the levees and down through the ticks and chiggers to the stagnant water. The levee-top roads and the park access roads shown in all the fancy graphics for this project are not in the plan.

Neither, by the way, are the recreation terraces, the amphitheater or the concession and event facilities. They're not in the basic plan. They're not in the $110 million plan. They're in your dreams.

This little example from Dallas can be replicated by glancing at any spending bill passed by Congress. Dave Barry was exactly right when he said:

We must always remember that, as Americans, we all have a common enemy - an enemy that is dangerous, powerful and relentless. I refer, of course, to the federal government.

I agree entirely. And I'm a patriot, fierce as they come. I believe in the Republic, just not in Republicans. Like Chesterton,

Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my old childlike faith in practical politics. I am still as much concerned as ever about the Battle of Armageddon; but I am not so much concerned about the General Election. As a babe I leapt up on my mother's knee at the mere mention of it. No; the vision is always solid and reliable. The vision is always a fact. It is the reality that is often a fraud. As much as I ever did, more than I ever did, I believe in Liberalism. But there was a rosy time of innocence when I believed in Liberals.

My father was right: politicians should be allowed to serve as long a term as they want in government, just so long as they immediately after they lose their first election, they serve an equal number of years in prison.

Laksamana.Net

Ingeld & Christ:

An interesting story from Laksamana.Net underlines both the differences of Southeast Asian Islam, and the age of the region's cultures.

Majelis Mujahedeen Indonesia, or "Indonesian Council of Holy Warriors" (MMI), is a radical group founded on all too familiar principles: the founding of an Islamic state where there is now Indonesia, a state under Islamic law. It holds all the vaguely Wahabbi strictures about life. The Front Pembla Islam, or "Defenders of Islam Front" (FPI) is a vigilante group designed around enforcing those same strictures. It does things like attack and destroy cafes that serve alcohol in Jakarta during the fast of Ramadan.

These groups, linked to Saudi Arabia's vast school-funding movement, will hold no suprises for the Western reader. But there is one part of Indonesia that is actually under Islamic law (sha'riah): Aceh province. And there is a separatist movement in Aceh province which has been fighting for the full independence of Aceh from the Indonesian government. The Free Aceh Movement (GAM) is a name you will probably get to know in the next few weeks, as they spar with the Indonesian military around our Marines and sailors.

Here's the twist, for those of you who have not heard of Aceh before now: GAM has demanded the expulsion of MMI and FPI from Aceh province.

"The government of Aceh in exile... deplores the arrival in Aceh of members of the thuggish so-called Islamic Defenders Front and the terroristic Indonesia Mujahidin Council. The introduction of these organizations into Aceh at this most critical time squanders scarce resources by the Indonesian government which is better allocated to the victims of the recent tsunami," said the statement.

"The FPI and MMI are not welcome in Aceh and have never been supported by the Acehnese people, nor has their presence been requested. The FPI has been involved in sectarian killings in Maluku and Central Sulawesi and illegal attacks against non-Muslims and others in Java and elsewhere."

The statement said MMI is the "umbrella organization for groups such as Laskar Jihad, Laskar Jundullah and the FPI" and has "the explicit aim of turning Indonesia into a non-democratic fundamentalist Islamist state".

"The actions and words of both the FPI and MMI are against the teachings of the Holy Qur'an and the Hadith and contradict the tolerance and faith of Acehnese Muslims. Neither the FPI nor the MMI has any credentials or skills in disaster relief, and their presence is clearly intended as a provocation to the people of Aceh. Their intervention in Aceh is therefore counter-productive and is not wanted," it added.

GAM is an indigenous people's movement defending, in their way, the traditional culture of Aceh. Precisely because it is a genuinely traditional movement, it frowns on Islamist/Wahabbi rhetoric and practices of the sort that has become popular in the urban areas of Indonesia among groups such as FPI and MMI. Islamists are enemies of traditional cultural practices, such as the famous Indonesian shadow puppets, which aren't directly related to Islam -- in fact, they have their roots in Hindu culture, though they are now an important feature of life in Aceh province.

It was in just this way that early Christian saints deplored the traditional culture they were trying to supplant: you may remember Alcuin's famous diatribe against traditional Germanic hero poems, "What has Ingeld to do with Christ?"

Very early in the life of Grim's Hall, I wrote a piece suggesting that the relationship between Ingeld and Christ was the way to break the Islamist movement. I still think that it is, as the Aceh case may demonstrate. What has Wayang to do with Islam? To the people of Aceh, they are as father and mother.

Musings of The GeekWithA.45

Royal Marines:

The GeekWithA.45 tells a story, pertaining to the selection of a military sidearm:

'As regards to calibers, I once had a Royal Marine tell me, over Guiness in a London pub: 'The 9mm is, you see, a round invented in Europe for shooting other Europeans.

'Being civilized, we fall down when shot, and wait for the chaps with the red cross armbands to carry us off.

'You yanks, on the other hand, keep getting into arguments with disagreeable sorts who insist on trying to kill you after they've already been shot, so naturally you think you have to blow great bloody holes in them. Quite right, really.'

I'm not sure if he means that it's "quite right" that we favor the big guns, or that these folks keep insisting on trying to kill us. Hard to tell with the Brits. That dry sense of humor, you know.

It's worth noting that the Texas Rangers were early adopters of the five-shot Paterson Colt revolver, which fired a lightweight round of .36 caliber, with even lighter calibers available. They used it to great effect in the constant skirmishes, and occasional battles, with the Commanche. The heavy Walker Colt was designed later on the recommendations of one of the most famous of the early Rangers, Captain Sam Walker. Among his innovations was an increase to .44 caliber. Although this weapon was designed by a Ranger for the needs of Rangers, many didn't like it because of the heavy weight and massive concussion. They stuck with the Patersons.

So it's an old debate, really, even among Americans.

Philstar.com - The Filipino Global Community

Incitement:

If you want to interrupt a festival, this is how serious people do it:

"Had we not recovered these bombs and arrested these people, the procession could have turned into a bloodbath," said Senior Superintendent Elmer Jamias, chief of WPD Station 5 which covers Ermita.

The place is the Philippines, where suicide bombers linked to Jemaah Islamiyah and a local mosque were planning to infiltrate a Christian parade, on the feast of "the Black Nazarene."

Tens of thousands of barefoot Roman Catholics take part in the annual Jan. 9 procession in which the centuries-old ebony statue of Jesus is taken from Quiapo church and paraded around the district.

Among the most prominent regular participants is Vice President Noli de Castro.

"The scenario is, there would be suicide bombers in the feast of the Black Nazarene," Jamias said.

"They would rig their bodies with bombs, join the procession, and blow themselves up. God made sure this would not happen," Jamias added.

No one could be sure that the police caught all the bombers, or recovered all the explosives. In spite of that, the largest crowd ever came out to the Quiapo Church. The vast turnout slowed the procession, such that suicide bombers could have easily decimated the crowd. Bombs in such a crowd would be brutal, but less so than the stampede and the crush which would follow. Supporters seemed unafraid:

Despite concerns that the procession might be attacked by militants, hundreds of thousands of devotees thronged to see the ebony statue of Jesus Christ, which is believed to have miraculous healing powers, as it was paraded through the sidestreets of Quiapo district.

"We were not bothered by the reported plot to bomb the procession. But if anything happens, at least we are in the presence of the Nazarene," said market vendor Mario Dignos....

"I’m not scared of anything, even bombs," added Zenaida Gutierrez, a housewife. "I am with the Lord."

This is the spirit of the true martyr, unlike the twisted form of the word which has come to grace the lips of the cruel. It reflects in any number of ancient texts, but still has the power to astonish. We have seen it before, but never become accustomed to it.

It is this kind of radical hope and faith which alone can defeat the enemy. We see similar courage in the hearts of men and women standing in line to vote in Afghanistan, and we shall see it in Iraq. We saw that kind of courage, once, in Tienanmen Square. We see it in our heroes and volunteers.

These men and women have met with different fates. The pilgrims of Quiapo pass unmolested; the students of Tienanmen were driven under with tanks and bayonets. The voters in Afghanistan suffered but little, and gained much; there is no doubt that the voters of Iraq will suffer more, for the enemy is more powerful in their nation. And as for our own fighting men, they contest from behind the strongest armor and most deadly firepower we can devise. Our medical skill is second to none, and the injured can be transported to safety for the length of his recovery. But it would be folly to say there is nothing to fear:

Thus ended the memorable field of Ashby-de-la-Zouche, one of the most gallantly contested tournaments of that age; for although only four knights, including one who was smothered by the heat of his armour, had died upon the field, yet upwards of thirty were desperately wounded, four or five of whom never recovered. Several more were disabled for life; and those who escaped best carried the marks of the conflict to the grave with them. Hence it is always mentioned in the old records, as the Gentle and Joyous Passage of Arms of Ashby.

Yet they go, each in their turn. In their courage, the world has hope. It falls to us to be worthy of them: and to go ourselves, if Fate should call.

Monday

Kurdistan:

Every twenty years
Comes to us a gambling man
To stake our country and culture
And resources and rivers
And trees and fruit
And men and women
And the waves and the sea
At the gambling table.

That poem, written by the late poet Nizar al-Qabbani, is quoted as part of an article in the Kurdistan Observer, entitled "Of Arab Political Culture, the Kurds, and the Falsehood Called Iraq." It provides a genuine, independent assessment from a Kurdish point of view.

The author obviously feels a great weight on his shoulders in trying to provide such a view. He feels it necessary to reject, by name: Al Jazeera, John Kerry, Al Quds Al Arabiyah, Edward Said, Saddam, the CIA and Mossad but also anti-Zionist forces in Arab culture, a former professor at the US War College and a top Arab writer named al-Obaidi. It isn't all negative: The New Yorker comes in for some high praise.

[A]t a time when even the United Nations was acting like nothing had happened at Halabja, it was magazines like the New Yorker and journalists like Goldberg who forced the truth upon the consciousness of an indifferent world. Yes, some of these writers were Jewish; yes, some of these writers are people with dual citizenships. But to claim, as al-Obeidi does in his piece, that much of what Mr. Goldberg has written about Halabja is not a representation of what actually had happened but rather the product of some sort of a conspiracy by a man of "Israeli/American citizenship" is to reveal a deep-rooted commitment to a culture of lies and bigotry. Mr. Goldberg is capable of telling the truth about Halabja because intellectual honesty prevents him from doing otherwise. Mr. al-Obeidi is incapable of telling the truth about Halabja because, being the brainchild of Arab political culture, he is not accustomed to intellectual honesty.

Having thrown off so much of the worlds' weight -- that is, the Arab World's and the Western World's -- the author is finally sufficiently unencumbered to explain his own view. The poem he closes with is telling, but no less than the argument that preceeds it. If you wanted an independent assessment of the situation in Iraq, here it is.

MILSCI:

Hi everybody! Hope everyone had a nice holiday(s) and all. I've not been about due to some work related matters, but I think that may be easing up some.

So, I was going to contrast the Army's Field Manual 100-5, Operations, with the Marine Corps' Warfighting manual, but I just stumbled across this blog which I think will demonstrate the Army's current way of fighting in a way 'not so dry' as the manuals can be.

The author is a 1st Lieutenant in an armor regiment, and is writing up his experiences from the battle of Fallujah. I give you Armor Geddon.

AIM Column - Muslims vs. Muslims: The Untold Story - January 4, 2005

Muslims v. Muslims:

Accuracy in Media has a story today that targets the notion that Americans are insufficiently protective of Muslim holy buildings. The author argues that the real story, if you want to talk about the destruction of Muslim holy sites, is the story of other Muslims doing it.

Ironically, however, during the same month that thousands of Pakistanis took to the streets in a furor over what America was doing in Iraq, zealots with the backing of the Pakistani police stormed the Ahmadiyya mosque in Nakhalpara, Pakistan, to remove books deemed offensive to Islam and banned by the government. The Ahmadiyya sect of Islam has had its mosques attacked and reduced to rubble and their creeds erased from the front of mosques. This sect is singled out as heretical because it is dedicated to non-violence and opposes terrorism....

Giving Pakistan a run for their money, though, is the astonishing scope of destruction of Islamic sites in Saudi Arabia. Historic tombs, landmarks, mosques and battle sites, all central to the Muslim faith, have either been destroyed or been ordered to be destroyed. The birthplace of Mohammed, founder of the Islamic faith, was razed over and turned into a public restroom.

These clashes within Islam -- clashes over how it should be interpreted, and by whom -- have always been more important than the clashes between Islam and the outside world.

Jeremy Black of the University of Exeter wrote a piece for last year's Orbis called "The Western Encounter with Islam." For most of Islam's history, he argues at length, Islam was only barely interested in the West at all, even during the occasional wars with Christendom.

The West’s primary concern with the relationship between Christendom and Islam appears to be underlined by the traditional world map, with its depiction of an Islamic world stretching into the Balkans and the Western Mediterranean. However, if the conventional map— an equal-area cartogram— is replaced by an equal-population cartogram, then a very different perception of Islam emerges. It becomes a religion not primarily of the Arab world but of South Asia: Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, and Iran....

In every century of its history, more people have been killed in the Islamic world in conflicts among Islamic powers than in conflicts between Islam and the West. We tend to think that the major external problem has always been Western power. But from an extraordinarily early stage, Islam fractured between a large number of polities, some of which were linked to religious and/or ethnic divides. These divisions were much more important in many senses than what took place on the margins.

Thomas Friedman argues today that these divisions are the very challenge we face in Iraq:

This is a tough call, but I hope the elections go ahead as scheduled on Jan. 30. We have to have a proper election in Iraq so we can have a proper civil war there. Let me explain: None of these Arab countries — Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia — are based on voluntary social contracts between the citizens inside their borders. They are all what others have called "tribes with flags" — not real countries in the Western sense. They are all civil wars either waiting to happen or being restrained from happening by the iron fist of one tribe over the others or, in the case of Syria in Lebanon, by one country over another.... [U]nlike in Eastern Europe -- where a democratic majority was already present and crying to get out, and all we needed to do was remove the wall -- in Iraq we first need to create that democratic majority.

This seems to be the evolving consensus. But it is not complete.

In fact, there is a democratic polity in Iraq. There is a large section of the population that is urbane, and that identifies itself first as "Iraqi," and only second or third as "Shi'ite" or "Sunni," or a member of this sect, or a follower of that traditional clan of imams. Both LtCol Couvillon, and Omar and Mohammed of Iraq the Model spoke about that group, and how large it is. Both Omar and Mohammed are members of the group -- witness Mohammed's new year's poem about the "Sons of Iraq." The Colonel said that his experience holding local elections suggested a turnout that neared one hundred percent, and was certainly ninety percent, of all eligible voters.

There are universities and students, professionals, and tradesmen -- even Communist-oriented unions. The "tribes with flags" still do exist in Iraq. Primarily they are out with the insurgency, but some -- for example, the Kurdish Peshmerga -- are fighting on our side. These tribes exist alongside the polity Friedman says we need to create. But to a large degree, those tribes which are participating in the process are being drawn into it, and thereby transformed into members of the democratic polity:

In Kirkuk... I could sense that there's an alliance between the Arabs and the Turkmen to balance forces with the strong Kurdish alliance. Many Kurds have demanded to postpone the elections of the city board as they felt that it's not easy to compete with the Arabic-Turkmen alliance. Still, this demand didn't include the general elections as Iraq is considered one electoral region and local alliances that are limited to a certain spot will not have an effect on the big picture.

In the south, the tribes decided to contribute to the IP and the army efforts in protecting the electoral centers within their regions and this was agreed on after a meeting for the higher commission with the tribes' heads in Hilla and Nasiriyah.

Compare the attempts to use democratic politics to "balance" ethnic tensions in Kirkuk with the story from Georgia of yesterday. Consider the tribal warriors, serving alongside the Iraqi Police and the National Guard to protect polling stations from insurgents. Remember the democrats, the Omars and Mohammeds, going back and forth about the country even in this time of chaos, talking about democracy, manning polling stations, organizing parties, teaching the tribes.

There is the civil war Friedman says he wants.

CNN.com - Sheriff posts snipers�after firings - Jan 4, 2005

Bad News From Georgia:

A headline you generally don't want to see in your local paper: "Sheriff posts snipers after firings."

On his first day on the job, the new sheriff called 27 employees into his office, stripped them of their badges, fired them, and had rooftop snipers stand guard as they were escorted out the door.

The move Monday by Clayton County Sheriff Victor Hill provoked an angry reaction and prompted a judge to order him to rehire the employees.

The Sheriff had a few words to say in his defense:

"A lot of people are under the impression that the sheriff's office is under civil service laws," he said. "But my research shows the employees work at the pleasure of the sheriff." ...

Hill said the manner in which he fired the workers -- including taking some deputies home in vans normally used to transport prisoners because the deputies were barred from using county cars -- was necessary.

He cited the assassination of Sheriff Derwin Brown in neighboring DeKalb County in 2000. Brown was gunned down in the driveway of his home three days before he was to be sworn in. Former sheriff Sidney Dorsey was found guilty of plotting to kill him and sentenced to life in prison.

"Derwin Brown sent out letters to 25 to 30 people letting them know they would not be reappointed when he took office," Hill said.

CNN reports a "racial overtone" to the firings. I'm normally suspicious when the media finds "racial overtones" in anything, but this time it's hard to avoid agreeing:

Hill was among a spate of black candidates elected last year in the county once dominated by rural whites. The county seat was the setting for the fictional plantation Tara in "Gone With The Wind."

The fired employees included four of the highest-ranking officers, all of them white. Hill told the newspaper their replacements would be black.

Georgia is a large state -- the largest east of Big Muddy. I've lived most of my life inside her borders, and there are huge swathes of the state I've only visited once or a few times. Clayton County I've only been through, travelling from my family's home in the mountains to Savannah on the coast. As a consequence, I don't have anything much to say about the place. It's in classic plantation-cotton country, unlike the mountains to the north or the lowlands to the south and on the coast.

Population changes in Georgia have outpaced the nation for decades now, but there remain pockets of old Southern families, who have lost control of their local governments due to the heavy immigration from the rest of the country. That's undone all the traditional social systems, which will tend to inspire violence and chaos in any culture. It's probably a measure of the relative civilization of the United States that it hasn't been worse than this: with Iraq and Afghanistan in the rearview mirror, one doesn't have to think hard to imagine what can happen when the balance of power between vaguely hostile ethnic groups is changed. And really, both of those places have been fairly gentle examples themselves: for the real story, look to Daurfur, or remember the Japanese invasions of Asia.

Likely it will work itself out peacefully, through the courts and the county commission. Still, it's a reminder of how fragile are order and peace. Even in the greatest civilization of our day, one can wake to find the police posting snipers against their former officers, for fear of assassination.

The Diplomad: More UNreality . . . But the Dutch Get It

End the UN:

The Tsunami has been the blow that even Iraq was not. The thing is utterly worthless: indeed, insofar as it provides legitimacy to the corrupt, it has only negative worth. It's past time to put an end to our participation in this fiasco, and send them packing to higher ground. Switzerland, say.

But not Holland. The Dutch are pretty irritated with them, too.

China e-Lobby

China:

The China e-Lobby has decided to cease publication of its email newsletters, and become a blog. Welcome to the blogosphere, and good luck.

YONHAPNEWS WORLD SERVICE::ENGLISH NEWS

Yeah, Good Idea:

The title of the article speaks for itself: "Kim Jong-Il Urges Increased Rice Output This Year." Well, never let it be said that the Communist system can't identify its problems. Fortunately, they have the leadership of Kim to guide... no, I won't even type it out. The DPRK is immune to sarcasm. Next week, I could be reading in Yonhap, "American MilBlogger praises Kim Jong-Il's wise leadership."

Mudville Gazette

Advice to Reporters:

Greyhawk has some advice to reporters covering Iraq. I think they're pretty much already following it, though.

China

China: Lessons Learned

There have recently been some excellent translations out of the Chinese and Japanese, on the subject of the lessons learned by the Chinese military while observing several recent wars. The Iraq war is one of these, and the NATO action in the Balkans, and the Gulf War.

Due to their length and the lack of an "extended entry" capability at Grim's Hall, I've posted these over at Del's Free Speech site. They are rather long, but rewarding.

The translations, which are from the Eurasia Research Group's Global Geopolitics Group, provide some real insight into the Chinese military approach and mindset. If any of you are interested in thinking about China and the Chinese military, this is a hearty serving of useful information.

Grim's Hall

Canis:

For reasons entirely unrelated to my intentions, I spent the majority of the day with dogs. Dogs, and one noble cousin.

I was supposed to have dinner with a business associate, but on the way she was diverted to assist in an emergency with a dog charity group for whom she does volunteer work. This is All Breed Rescue and Referral. The dogs, it seems, were escaping, and they needed help fixing the electrical fence.

Just why they called her for this is not immediately clear to me. She's a wonderful, good-hearted and cheerful young woman. She isn't, however, a country girl -- a fact that became immediately clear at the feed & seed on the way out to the kennel, where she was trying to buy parts for the electrical fence. It's no dishonor to have grown up in the suburbs and not know anything about electrical fences; and she was therefore not dishonored.

Still, by coincidence she happened to be with me when the call came in, and I've worked on plenty. I grew up in North Georgia's cattle country. My family had an electrical fence; my neighbors had them; our friends had them. So, I figured we could pick up the needed supplies on the way and a pair of blue jeans for me, as I was wearing my office clothes -- but also cowboy boots, so no need for extra shoes -- and fix up whatever the trouble was in about an hour.

The "about an hour" thing didn't work out. I won't go into the details, but it took at least four hours to take care of all the details involved in the exercise, and that isn't what I wanted to write about anyway. What I wanted to write about was the wolf.

His name is Tundra. His back is as high as the top of my hip, and his head stops about the top of my armpit. He is a pure white, as are the white wolves of the high tundra. I don't know that he is an arctic wolf, though; he could be an Eastern Timberwolf with a rare coloration. He has the yellow eyes characteristic of his kin.

I was warned on the way in that I might have to fight him off. Apparently he can be aggressive. In fact, he tried to knock me down twice as I walked in, once from each side. The first time I knocked him down; the second, I just nudged him off. After that, he was perfectly peaceful. He followed me much of the afternoon, just at the heel, and often licked at my hand and let me pet him when I wasn't working.

This gives the lie to almost everything I've ever heard about wolves. I don't know if he is an exception, or if I've simply been misinformed. I've always heard that wolves in captivity are quite dangerous and a little unstable, being wild animals. And it's true that the head of the rescue organization warned her assistant a time or two to keep him separate from some of the other animals, lest he kill them.

Even so, what a fine beast, and what noble eyes. It is easy to see how we came to befriend them, once upon a time in the morning of the world.

The Diplomad

Disaster Relief:

The US military's response to the disaster in PACOM has been magnificent. The Diplomad has more.

The Blogger's Tsunami Challenge | Loaded Mouth

Challenge Update:

The Blogger's Tsunami Challenge has decided to up its goal from five thousand to ten thousand dollars, after receiving $4,900 in one day. I had a feeling that the five thousand wouldn't prove too hard to come by. I won't even be put out that none of the donors has requested any poetry from me, which reluctance is finally quite understandable.

Coffee drinkers among you may also wish to consider buying Sumatran coffee. I've always liked the stuff, which is flavorful but not very acidic.

Arts & Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate

God & Tsunami:

Arts & Letters Daily has picked up on the latest echo of an eternal debate. It arises each time there is a natural disaster of particular magnitude. The debate forms around the question, "If God exists, and is both all powerful and good, how can evils such as this disaster occur?"

The technical term for this, in philosophy and theology, is theodicy. Partisans of atheism generally argue that the disaster in question proves the nonexistence of a benevolent, all-powerful God; partisans of theism generally argue that the question is misstated. Arts & Letters Daily has collected arguments on all sides: An anti-God argument from the UK Guardian (which is to be expected), a pro-God argument from the Wall Street Journal (likewise), and also arguments from the India Telegraph and Australia's Sydney Morning Herald, which is by the way one of the world's finest newspapers.

The Journal piece points out that Voltaire made the same argument in 1755, following an earthquake off Lisbon. It is, as I said, an eternal debate.

And yet, that very fact astonishes me. It seems to me that the Bible itself addresses the question directly and at length, in a fashion that is largely set aside by theists and apparently ignored by atheists. This very question is the subject of the Book of Job.

Then answered the LORD unto Job out of the whirlwind, and said,
Gird up thy loins now like a man:
I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me.
Wilt thou also disannul my judgment?
Wilt thou condemn me, that thou mayest be righteous?
Hast thou an arm like God?
Or canst thou thunder with a voice like him?
Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency;
and array thyself with glory and beauty.

It seems to me that the proper argument from a belief in the supernatural is to assert the supernatural. Indeed, this answers not only the crisis posed by the question of earthquakes, but that posed by the sciences:

The vulgar metaphysics we all carry round with us includes the vague idea of a self, an “I,” imagined as a little homunculus crouched inside our heads an inch or so behind the eyes, observing and directing all that goes on in our lives. It seems probable that this is as false as the medieval notion of the sky being a crystal sphere. Yet if the self is indeed an illusion, then what is to prevent that dissolution of all values foreseen by Nietzsche? .... The deconstruction of self is not a new thing, of course. It has been 250 years since David Hume, by the rigorous application of pure reason, concluded that neither the inner world of the self nor the outer world of physical matter could possibly exist. Hume then turned and laughed at himself and at what he had accomplished: "This sceptical doubt ... is a malady, which can never be radically cur'd, but must return upon us every moment, however we may chace it away ... Carelessness and in-attention alone can afford us any remedy. For this reason I rely entirely upon them; and take it for granted, whatever may be the reader's opinion at this present moment, that an hour hence he will be persuaded there is both an external and an internal world..."

Although the neuroscientists are chasing the self through ever narrower and darker passageways of the brain, they have not caught it yet, and there are good reasons to believe they never will. Roger Penrose’s book about fundamental physics offers one of those reasons. Physicists have been pursuing matter for much longer, and with much more fruitful consequences, than neuroscientists have been pursuing mind, yet still the nature of physical reality eludes us. What is the physical world composed of? If you make it through the 1,000-odd pages of Penrose’s book, through the explanations of tensor calculus, Clifford algebras, spinors, twistors, Riemann surfaces and Feynmann propagators, you may have an inkling, but that is all you will have. If you can’t hack all that heavy-duty math, you won’t even have an inkling, ever.

The point is not that science is wrong, but that human wisdom is limited: what science cannot find is not untrue, but beyond human understanding. The "hour hence" restores belief in the external and internal worlds for the same reason described by Edward Abbey, himself no friend to religion:

In metaphysics, the notion that earth and all that's on it is a mental
construct is the product of people who spend their lives inside rooms. It is
an indoor philosophy.

Try it on the mountainside, or by the angry sea.

But if science cannot answer these questions, what remains except religion? In these great mathematics and terrible physics, we have girded ourselves up like men. We cannot answer, now or ever. In that yawning gap, faith forms: and we have no answer, no more than Job was answered by the whirlwind, or Loddfafnir by Odin:

It is best for man to be middle-wise,
Not over cunning and clever:
No man is able to know his future,
So let him sleep in peace.

Sleep in peace. Happy New Year.