9/11

9/11/05:

Four years ago today, I shut off the television in the middle afternoon, and walked out into the forests of Georgia. Crossing onto an island in the middle of a creek, I sat down and thought about what we had seen, and what was to come, and wrote "Enid & Geraint."

The first four years have been quite a bit easier than I would have imagined. In spite of the occasional passion, such as we saw in last year's elections; in spite of the occasional horror, such as we saw in Beslan; yet the enemy has proven incapable of fighting war on the terms it has so often threatened. I feel much more peaceful about the future now than I used to, because of the experiences of these last several years. I think that, with time and the continued application of leverage, we shall have something of the revolution we dreamed of seeing in the unfree places of the world -- in Iraq and Afghanistan, certainly, but also in those places which have been inspired to freedom in part by the experiences of those nations. We are seeing democracy strengthened from Malaysia to Lebanon, to name just two places recently unfree and oppressed, where a hopeful glow has emerged.

There is much left to be done, but I think it lies within our power. We must still accomplish more on securing the former Soviet weapons; encouraging nonproliferation; resolving the problem of North Korea, which is particularly difficult; and undermining the enemy in his home through a combination of encouraging democracy and punishing tyranny. There are still plenty of problem areas -- Thailand's south is one I spend a lot of time thinking about -- but we have made some great strides, too.

At home, there is still quite a lot to accomplish. Perhaps the most important matter is the completely unsecure border to our south, followed by the large degree of smuggling on the border to our north. The events of the last few years have also proven that our system is inadequate when it comes to holding the powerful responsible for their actions. Internal partisanship is making it harder to reform the system: one side will name Sandy Berger and certain Senators as being particularly guilty of bad faith; the other side, Wolfowitz and Brown and the President himself. The result has been that no one is punished for anything they do or say, no matter how destructive the effect on national security or the health of the Republic.

It is interesting that, four years on, we should find that we have more problems at home than abroad, but I think we have. The internal tensions of the Republic are now where the most danger lies, from the politics of elections to the Court, and from the securing of the border to the vast increase of government secrecy. It has always been the case that the American political system was our point of greatest vulnerability in this war, even as it is our greatest pride and the thing we are most devoted to defending. We need to be able to keep up the pace and pressure of our actions abroad -- both military and diplomatic -- while pursuing reforms at home.

In order to accomplish that, we need to lower the heat of the political atmosphere so that we can reason together. Encouraging and reinforcing Federalism is surely a major part of that, so that neither Red nor Blue America needs to fear for its way of life. For the same reason, it is important to encourage a Supreme Court that respects Federalism and defers to legislatures when there are no blatant violations of the Constitution. With two vacancies on the Court now, we have an unusual opportunity for influence.

That, at least, is how it seems to me four years on. I don't feel inclined to poetry today -- my own heat is much lower than it was four years ago. Now is the time for rational thinking, to consider how the Republic is changing in the face of the war, and to apply ourselves to ensuring that the changes are healthy rather than destructive for the liberty that is our government's primary purpose.

Guns

Guns in New Orleans:

Adam asks, below, what the proper way to deal with police officers attempting to illegally disarm you would be. I answered him at some length, but let's look at an actual case study. This is how it's really being done, and we can examine it to see what some of the difficulties are.

Here is a video showing California Highway Patrol officers, who have volunteered to help with the forced evacuations, tackling an elderly woman in order to disarm her.

Now, the CHP officers and the newscaster both seem quite sympathetic -- but they are willing to use real physical violence, even against someone who is frail, to enforce the surrender of all weapons.

That's not constitutional under the Louisiana state constitution. It's just not -- the constitution says that the right to bear arms shall not be abridged, though it makes provision for bearing concealed weapons. But this woman's weapons were plainly displayed, not brandished in a threatening manner, and not being carried outside of her home.

The cops were wrong to do what they did, but I doubt they understand why they were wrong. In California, the state recognizes no right to bear arms at all; they won't have known that the LA constitution is more civilized. They are probably accustomed to dealing with drug smugglers and the like as a more regular thing, and simply lack training or experience in these matters, as well as lacking an understanding of the legal context.

The lady herself was wrong to resort to screaming curses and other things that would let them view her as irrational.

If it comes to a confrontation, you must be polite and professional, explain the law, and then -- if they still insist upon it -- get everything on the record. Make them provide a receipt for everything they take, their badge numbers, etc. Make clear at the time that they're going to be called to answer in court for what they are doing.

Recognize what we're up against here. Neither the police nor the media have any conception that the Second Amendment or its mirrors at the state level protect a right that really exists. The cops and the reporter all felt that "she had a gun" explains why they can do whatever they feel they need to do in order to disarm her.

We have to prove that this understanding is wrong, and that can only be done in court. The battle has already been won, in most states, at the legislative level -- the law supports us. It's only the courts now that refuse to apply the law that already exists. Get everything on the record, don't do anything illegal, and then fight it in the court. The law is on our side -- we will win this battle, eventually.

Do look up your own state laws, to see what changes you would like in them. It's a good time to do it now, while there isn't a disaster in your own community, but people's minds are fixed on the possibility that there might be one someday.

Guns & NO

The Lawyers and New Orleans:

Small comfort to the people who have been disarmed at gunpoint by armed bandits the New Orleans police, but the lawyers are indeed prowling over whether this action is either legal or Constitutional. Volokh hosts the debate, which is carried on by Dave Kopel (arguing that it violates even the Louisiana emergency act) and Orin Kerr (arguing that it may not violate that act, though it still may violate the Louisiana constitution, the US constitution, etc).

There is little to be done for the citizens of New Orleans until the courts resume their activity, except to write your Senators and ask them to join in the protest against this business. But there is important work to be done in your own state: take a look at the emergency laws operating where you live, and then speak to your state legislators about them. It seems to me that the Second Amendment prohibits this sort of conduct on its face. However, it never hurts to have a few extra ranks of legal spears between us and those who care nothing for the rights of men, and who are willing to leave them and their families defenseless in a wilderness.

This is an issue to be watched. If you see any posts out there about the emergency laws of the several states, or further posts from lawyers about the issue in contention in NO, mention them in the comments and we'll keep an updated list.

EBfs

Eric Blair's Tour to the Stars:

There's a new section of links called "Eric Blair's Favorites" over on the sidebar. It's between "Easy Company, MilBloggers" and "News." He picked a number of things that interested him, and which I didn't already have on the links bar.

Some of the choices will be familiar to regular readers of blogs, but there are others that will be a surprise. One of the two biggest surprises for me was Cronaca, a remarkable site with some fascinating posts from the world of archaeology.

The other big surprise for me was the Countercolumn, formerly "Iraq Now." It was a surprise only because I was sure I'd always linked to Captain von Steenwyk's site. I was quite surprised to go over my links bar and find that, indeed, it wasn't already there.

I apologize for its long absence, because it is certainly a worthy read. I'll take the opportunity now to commend it to those of you who don't already read it.

Hmm

Hmm...

Apparently Eric was right about that:

Waters were receding across this flood-beaten city today as police officers began confiscating weapons, including legally registered firearms, from civilians in preparation for a mass forced evacuation of the residents still living here.

Police officers looking for survivors today in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans.
No civilians in New Orleans will be allowed to carry pistols, shotguns or other firearms, said P. Edwin Compass III, the superintendent of police. "Only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons," he said.

I have never had the first minute's trouble with any law enforcement agency, beyond the odd traffic ticket from my wild and misspent youth. Still and all -- if any law enforcement agency ever lets me down the way the NOPD has let down the people of New Orleans, prepare to be very disappointed when you ask for my guns.

But that order apparently does not apply to hundreds of security guards hired by businesses and some wealthy individuals to protect property. The guards, employees of private security companies like Blackwater, openly carry M-16's and other assault rifles. Mr. Compass said that he was aware of the private guards, but that the police had no plans to make them give up their weapons.

And no capability to do so, either. Blackwater would hand them their hats. I've had occasion to work with the gentlemen, via a mutual friend.

...

But there were still signs of confusion and uncertainty over government plans. FEMA's director, Michael D. Brown, had said his agency would begin issuing debit cards, worth at least $2,000 each, to allow hurricane victims to buy supplies for immediate needs. More than 319,000 people have already applied for federal disaster relief, and many evacuees began lining up at the Astrodome, in Houston, early today in hope of getting cards.

Two thousand dollars, eh? So that's, eh, five hundred bucks to replace the firearm with something suitable, and the rest for Raman noodles and a couple suits of clothes until you can find a new job.

Somewhere else.

I used to think the Atlanta city government was corrupt and mismanaged. Apparently, they were rank amateurs.

Heh.

I'm thinking this fellow isn't going to be on the Huffingtion Post too much longer. (via Instapundit)

Make sure you read his bio.

Oh, and speaking of political humor, the Anarchist Pogo Party in Germany has taken advantage of the 'equal time' law by broadcasting what sounds like a very curious politcal commercial.

Reminds me of the Dadaists and Surrealists of the 1920's and 30's. Politics as theater. We're getting enough of that lately. And finally, as an antidote to that, Dennis the Peasant has a whole lot of things to say. Just keep reading. Accountants are sensible people.

CP

Code Pink:

Code Pink has apparently accepted SMASH's challenge to help raise funds for the Katrina disaster. You might want to help out.

Bloodstripes

Bloodstripes:

Congratulations to "Da Grunt," son of our own frequent commenter JarHeadDad, who has made corporal. Semper Fi.

Paladin

Paladins:

Up the militia! Even, one supposes, the hastily assembled and fairly ignorant militia:

It's been a terrifying nine days for the four, scrambling for food, water and gasoline for their generator and an arsenal of weapons they feared they would need if complete lawlessness broke out in the historic neighborhood of renovated 19th century homes. The neighborhood having survived the storm without flood damage, Pervel and Harris, both former presidents of the Algiers Point Association, worried that looters and others seeking high ground would invade the community.

Yet they have not had to fire a shot.

And that's a good thing for them. They were not sure if any of the borrowed weapons even worked.

This isn't the best way to go about fulfilling your Second Amendment rights and duties. It's best for a militiaman to have his weapons ready, to be familiar with their operation, and prepared to serve at a moment's notice in the cause of the Republic.

Doc has a comment on the topic, which ends: "Have gun. Will travel." And that, my friends, is the the mark of a Paladin.

Not the ballad I'd pick for myself, but a worthy one.

Wang

A Letter from China:

Wang Jisi is a classic figure from the Chinese landscape: a scholar with influence at the court. He is, in fact, dean of the school of International Studies at an important Chinese university (which in Chinese is DaShui, lit. "Big School"). But more important than that is his position at the Central Party School of the Chinese Communist Party.

Dr. Wang has produced a paper for the journal of the Central Party School, which was revised and expanded for publication in English. It appears in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs, and can be read here. It is an interesting document in several respects.

The first thing that is interesting about it is its circumstances. The paper, in its earlier Chinese form, will have been read and debated at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party. That they desired to see it "revised" and then issued in English is notable. It purports to be a piece of analysis from a respected scholar; it is in fact a letter from China's rulers as a whole. Dr. Wang is just far enough from the halls of power to let them speak without making formal promises; yet he is so close to those halls that we cannot doubt that they gave their blessing to his words.

Wang begins:

The United States is currently the only country with the capacity and the ambition to exercise global primacy, and it will remain so for a long time to come. This means that the United States is the country that can exert the greatest strategic pressure on China. Although in recent years Beijing has refrained from identifying Washington as an adversary or criticizing its "hegemonism" -- a pejorative Chinese code word for U.S. dominance -- many Chinese still view the United States as a major threat to their nation's security and domestic stability.

He is telling us that China has been trying to be friendly. But he also is giving us the formula, so we will understand what follows. Throughout the piece, Wang writes according to this formula: without formal reference to "hegemony," in friendly terms that play up the need for cooperation rather than competition, but explaining why China might reasonably view the United States as a threat.

That formula is followed precisely. When he speaks of US policy, it isn't "hegemony," but a "global security policy." He explains his understanding of US interests, so we will know that he is sympathetic:

Further bolstering U.S. primacy is the fact that many of the country's potential competitors, such as the European Union, Russia, and Japan, face internal problems that will make it difficult for them to overtake the United States anytime soon. For a long time to come, the United States is likely to remain dominant, with sufficient hard power to back up aggressive diplomatic and military policies.

From a Chinese perspective, the United States' geopolitical superiority was strengthened in 2001 by Washington's victory in the Afghan war. The United States has now established political, military, and economic footholds in Central Asia and strengthened its military presence in Southeast Asia, in the Persian Gulf, and on the Arabian Peninsula. These moves have been part of a global security strategy that can be understood as having one center, two emphases. Fighting terrorism is the center. And the two emphases are securing the Middle East and preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

The greater Middle East, a region stretching from Kashmir to Morocco and from the Red Sea to the Caucasus, is vital to U.S. interests. Rich in oil and natural gas, the region is also beset by ethnic and religious conflicts and is a base for rampant international terrorism. None of the countries in the area is politically stable, and chaos there can affect the United States directly, as the country learned on September 11.

On the nonproliferation front, the United States' main concerns are Iran and North Korea, two states that are striving to develop nuclear technology and have long been antagonistic toward Washington. In 2004, the United States carried out the largest redeployment of its overseas forces since World War II in order to meet these challenges.

Note particularly the list of 'potential US competitors': "European Union, Russia, and Japan." The absence of China from that list is not an accident, but a statement -- even an invitation.

We all know that China is grieved, and concerned, with the US military bases in central and southeast Asia. Wang brings them up early in his list of places where the US is exerting power, and recognizes the strength of the position. But he defuses it from being an issue between us and them: "These moves have been part of a global security strategy that can be understood as having one center, two emphases. Fighting terrorism is the center. And the two emphases are securing the Middle East and preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction."

This is part of the mindset of classical China, which influenced much of Asia in the days when they were ascendant. Social harmony requires "a beautiful mask" to cover "the ugly truth." Politeness, a central duty of everyone, means upholding that mask to prevent the webs of social harmony from being disturbed. It is not that anyone actually believes it -- it is that everyone adheres to it, that harmony can be maintained in spite of everything.

Here we are given that mask as a gift. China's Communists are making us an offer. They are willing to pretend to see our actions in that context, if we will pretend that that is the only context for them.

The rest of the piece is much the same. It is a fascinating read because it lays out how China is prepared to meet us halfway on the great issues of the day. Iraq, Asia, economics: from first to last, with one exception, we are being offered an understanding for mutual benefit. That one exception of course is Taiwan -- it is the condition on which all this is laid.

History has already proved that the United States is not China's permanent enemy. Nor does China want the United States to see it as a foe. Deng Xiaoping's prediction that "things will be all right when Sino-U.S. relations eventually improve" was a cool judgment based on China's long-term interests. To be sure, aspirations cannot replace reality. The improvement of Chinese-U.S. relations will be slow, tortuous, limited, and conditional, and could even be reversed in the case of certain provocations (such as a Taiwanese declaration of independence). It is precisely for this reason that the thorny problems in the bilateral relationship must be handled delicately, and a stable new framework established to prevent troubles from disrupting an international environment favorable for building prosperous societies. China's leadership is set on achieving such prosperity by the middle of the twenty-first century; with Washington's cooperation, there is little to stand in its way.

Should we accept the deal that has been placed on the table? Much depends on how much we trust the Communists to keep their word. Yet the offer is backed, not merely with promises, but with reason. The explanations for why the United States and China have aligned interests are compelling. Having lived in China, too, I sense that they will adhere to the mask once they don it -- so long as we do also. If we accept what is offered, it will become in their mind a matter of honor to uphold the masks that protect the greater harmony.

The deal is much starker when it is viewed the way Americans like to view things. We prefer the ugly truth, and here it is: Taiwan for peace. If we will do that, speak more kindly of them, pretend that our interests are what they have described them to be -- they don't care if we change our policies a whit, just how we talk about them -- then we can have peace, and all the benefits that are laid out before us in the document. Yet it contains, plainly but softly, the threat of war if we do not accept.

It is a kingly document, courtly and well-spoken. Every word of it is structured and considered, and every word -- in its fashion -- is meant. We must think carefully what answer to make, and where our interests lie.

Vikings

Viking Ships:

When I got home last night from the feasts, although it was after nine o' clock, I discovered the the grandparents whom we are visiting down here in Georgia had not put the boy to bed. Three-year-old Beowulf was sitting up watching television with them.

When I came through the door, he lept up happily and came racing over to me, dancing with every step. "Wow!" I thought to myself. "He's never been this happy to see me. I guess having me and his mother gone all day has made him extra glad to see us, and..."

So much for that train of thought. It turned out that the grandparents had bought him a present that afternoon, but told him he couldn't have it until Daddy came home.

He went racing off into their bedroom, and then came out with this huge blue box under his arm. The thing was so big that "under his arm" could be accomplished only with great difficulty, and he was dragging the thing along the floor rather than carrying it. "You gotta open this!" he said.

I picked it up to look at it. It was a fine gift indeed.

"Get your knife out!" Beowulf shouted, dancing in place with anticipation.

So I did. What a happy boy.

RN F

Evenings in Ellijay:

Ellijay is the seat of Gilmer County, Georgia, the apple-growing capital of... well, the world, as far as I know, but they claim only to be the Apple Capital of Georgia. Apples were the crop they settled on to avoid the destruction of the boll weevil, when it destroyed the major part of the economy of Georgia in the 1920s. Georgia had an economy based on what social scientists call "monoculture farming," which is to say that the whole economy is based around a single crop -- like coffee or sugar in some places today.

In Georgia, it was cotton, until the boll weevil. The people then had to figure out something else to grow, and start from scratch. Meanwhile the financial machine made things worse: all the banks crashed because they weren't getting payments on their agricultural loans; everybody lost their lands when the banks seized it and tried to sell it to cover the loans; and so on. It took about ten years to get it sorted out, which was just in time for the Great Depression to smash everyone equally. That means that, for Georgia, it was really a twenty-year depression.

Nevertheless, people got by. First they grew subsistence crops on the land, and eventually they managed to develop new forms of agriculture. These days, pine trees are the major crop up in the north of the state -- short needle pines, which are easily made into pulp that can be used to make paper. There are also the apples, and peaches, soybeans somewhat further south, and many other things as well. And, of course, these days we can grow cotton again too.

After yesterday's meal at the Pueblo Grill, I encountered a flyer for a local festival. I transcribe it below. I promise that I have typed it in accurately; or, as Dave Barry says, I am not making this up.

1st Annual
"REDNECK FESTIVAL"
Think we're kidding? Just be there!
Ellijay Music Park
September 9 & 10, 2005

Friday
7:00pm Karaoke Contest
With Southern Entertainment
BIGGEST BEER BELLY CONTEST

Saturday
10:00am REDNECK PARADE
...
11:00am Hot wings cookoff
3:00pm RIDING LAWN MOWER RACE
...

Saturday Special Events:
Flea Market (Call to Reserve Space)
"Redneck Truck Show"
Redneck Horseshoes with Toilet Seats
Tobacco Ring Jeans Contest

For the Kids:
Remote Control Hunt
Mudpit Belly Flop
Water Balloon Fight

So, out of tragedy and hardship came a people with what appears to be a very good sense of humor. They don't mind if America laughs at them by calling them Rednecks and assigning all these stereotypes to them. They just want to laugh along.

MM

Many Meetings:

Today Grim pulled his great viking ship up on two high shores, and held feasts among the wrack. It was a very pleasant day, the best I've had in quite a while. I'd like to thank everyone who came out.

The first feast was held with the crew of Del's FreeSpeech, an Atlanta area blog. Del's a libertarian blogger, whose editorial philosophy has always been to give out guest accounts to anyone who felt like they had something to say. It's an interesting place to drop by.

We met at the Pueblo Grill, which is surely the finest Mexican restaurant in the mountains of North Georgia. A good time was had by all, I think I can report.

Later in the evening, we held a second feast at the Applebee's in Buford, Georgia, whose location proved to be more difficult to triangulate than anyone expected. Nevertheless, it ended well. JarHeadDad and his gracious and lovely bride came out to dine with us, and we ate well of the best that the house had to offer. Those of you who have been worried about him lately can stop worrying: he seems to have recovered nicely from the knock he took from Thor's hammer.

It was a pleasure to meet a number of readers, and to eat and drink and hold council. Thank you, everyone who came out. I am glad to have known you all.

You can just feel the frustration.

Over at Countercolumn, Jason van Steenwyk is ripping Bob Herbert and the NY Times a new one.

Not that I think they're going to notice.

But I'm hopeful others will. I see that Instapundit noticed too.

Right

A Challenge From the Right:

There have been two pieces recently charging that the American Right, and particularly the Republican party, is splitting. The first of these was Jonathan Rauch's, "America's Anti-Reagan isn't Hillary Clinton, It's Rick Santorum." The second is in today's Opinion Journal, where Cass Sunstein has a piece called "John Roberts, Minimalist."

Now, I'm a Southern Democrat, which is to say that I have no obvious home in the politics of modern America. I'm a Classical Liberal rather than a conservative, and a Democrat of a very old type rather than a Republican of the modern strain. Still, most people would locate me on the Right, and I suppose that qualifies me to consider the topic.

Rauch posits a divide between conservatives who believe in the modern concept of Freedom, versus those who believe in the original American concept of Liberty. As he writes:

In Santorum's view, freedom is not the same as liberty. Or, to put it differently, there are two kinds of freedom. One is "no-fault freedom," individual autonomy uncoupled from any larger purpose: "freedom to choose, irrespective of the choice." This, he says, is "the liberal definition of freedom," and it is the one that has taken over in the culture and been imposed on the country by the courts.

Quite different is "the conservative view of freedom," "the liberty our Founders understood." This is "freedom coupled with the responsibility to something bigger or higher than the self." True liberty is freedom in the service of virtue -- not "the freedom to be as selfish as I want to be," or "the freedom to be left alone," but "the freedom to attend to one's duties -- duties to God, to family, and to neighbors."

The Sunstein piece suggests that there is a similar divide between the judicial/legal thinkers on the right:

Minimalist conservatives insist that social change should occur through the democratic process, not through the judiciary. They do not want to extend the liberal Supreme Court decisions of the 1950s and '60s. On principle, they prefer narrow decisions and small steps, nudges not earthquakes. When confronted by contentious issues, minimalists focus on details and particulars, and are prepared to rule in ways that run contrary to their politics.

Fundamentalist conservatives do not believe in small steps. They think that in the last 50 years, constitutional law has gone badly, even wildly, wrong. They want to reorient it in major ways. They oppose Roe v. Wade, of course. But they also reject the right of privacy itself, arguing it lacks roots in the Constitution. They do not hesitate to use judicial power to strike down affirmative action and to protect property rights. They are entirely prepared to restrict the authority of Congress by invalidating laws protecting the environment, campaign finance reforms or gun control restrictions. They also have an expansive view of presidential power.

In many areas, then, fundamentalists welcome a highly activist role for the federal courts. Consider a remarkable fact: Since 1995, the Rehnquist Court has struck down over 30 acts of Congress, including parts of the Violence Against Women Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. Fundamentalist conservatives generally approve of these decisions, and would like to see more of the same.

I've been thinking about these splits and/or divisions, and the truth is, I don't think they'll turn out to be very serious. The simple reason I feel that way is this: I can't see any path that works except the road between them.

In the case of the first split: Sure. Liberty is meant to be put in the service of virtue. And it's very important to make that argument. Aristotle pointed to happiness as the point of ethics; but he defined happiness as "Rational activity in accord with excellence or virtue." That's an ancient, correct understanding for how life ought to be lived.

On the other hand, there's no way to have a free society in which you dictate what excellence or virtue means. People who aren't free to decide that aren't free at all.

So, there's no way forward except persuasion. Santorum's crowd is right this far: you have to be making the argument that people should use their liberty in pursuit of duty and virtue. You shouldn't leave that unsaid. But they are wrong to any degree that they think that it can be dictated or legislated. If it isn't freely chosen, it isn't free; and Americans in general will rebel against anything you try to shove down their throats.

You end up having to take both sides, which is to say that you choose the road between. You have to argue for virtue and also you have to argue for your particular conception of virtue. You can't use the government to enforce either.

As for the judicial philosophy, it looks the same to me. Should you take the path of moderation, respecting the decisions of the democratic branches? Yes, of course -- as long as they can point to the part of the Constitution where they get the authority to do what they are doing. If they can do that, the courts should stand aside. The attempt to find judicial solutions for problems yields the necessity of finding judicial solutions to every problem, which is more weight than the courts can bear.

On the other hand, if a decision or a law is plainly unconstitutional, you should always overturn it. Otherwise, what's the point of the Constitution? It's not a book of suggestions.

So, am I in favor of liberty or freedom? Yes.

Am I in favor of minimalism? Yes. Of fundamentalism? Yes.

And I guess I'm opposed to them all, too.

Asian news

Asian News:

Reading newspapers is rather like developing a taste for a regional cuisine. You have the British newspapers, which are so brash and over the top. You have the French newspapers, which are outrageously leftist in their every thought. You have the American newspapers, which pretend to an objectivity they neither desire nor feel. And then you have the Asian newspapers, which... well, see for yourself.

From The Independent of Bangladesh:

Maulana Fariduddin Masud, a former director of Islamic Foundation, who was arrested from Zia International Airport on August 22 for his suspected links to August 17 bombings across country, is now undergoing treatment at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of Suhrawardi Hospital after he reportedly fell sick during interrogation.

Ah, yes, that will happen. Poor fellow -- sick enough to need visit the ICU for six days, as the article goes on to explain.

He must have been terribly ill when he got on that plane. Lucky he got arrested, so he could get the care he needed at the state's expense.

Ga.stories

More Georgia Stories:

It's now halftime for the season's opening game of the Georgia Bulldogs. It's been too long since I had a chance to sit down and watch the Bulldogs play. And what a game! Six turnovers, 24-0 Bulldogs going into the second half. And that against a team, Boise State, that was the single most top-scoring college football team over the last ten years.

During the game, the press was talking to the father of one of the BSU players, who had flown in from Iraq to see the game. He has been over there training the Iraqi police. Apparently, Georgia fans had taken up a collection to buy his ticket, even though he was related to a BSU and not a Bulldog player. Apparently, the NCAA made him refuse the money for some reason, but he got here anyway.

They took a moment to interview him about the game and how glad he was to be home to see it. Then, the lady doing the interview said, "Since you are just back from Iraq, can I ask you how it's going there?"

You could tell he was taken aback by the question, and it took a minute for him to sort out what she'd asked -- he was obviously focused on the football. But what he said when he had thought about it was this:

"As long as America's sons and daughters are there, we'll be fine. They're doing a great job."

That was all there was time for, because the play clock was running out.

Well, its a problem now, isn't it?

After reading the 'guest author' over at Winds of Change, I can't say that I'm really impressed. It reminds me of one of those late night Art Bell radio show tirades about the end of the world.

The Belmont Club, as usual, is more measured, but there's a lot of turmoil in the comments. People seem to think that a magic wand can be waved and it will all be better. Sorry, it doesn't work like that.

Jason van Steenwyk at his 'Countercolumn' blog has a number of excellent posts on the logistics involved.

Another note: East-West travel across the Gulf coast has been disrupted heavily. Most relief is going to have to come North-South due to so many bridges and roads being wrecked.

The Anchoress, (via American Digest) has an excellent post "100 hours after Stormfall" on what has happened and what is being done. The picture she links to of the drowned school bus motor pool says more about the administration of New Orleans, and its emergency planning, than any 1000 words could. In fact, if the news report that this "Powerline" post points to is correct, then the only reason New Orleans even began to evacuate was because the President begged the Mayor and Governor to order it.

But I suppose dwelling on that would be doing what has Dennis the Peasant mightily annoyed.

He may have a point.

Katrina

Katrina Analysis:

The best I've seen lies behind these two links:

Winds of Change has this reading on the final scale of the disaster. Minimum projection: forty thousand dead, nine cities lost. If you think that's too high, read up.

The Belmont Club has an analysis of preventative measures taken for the hurricane. They were designed to stop a Cat. 3 hurricane. They were not designed for a Cat. 4 or 5, because the technology needed to save New Orleans from one won't exist for decades.

Both blogs have other impressive pieces on topic. But those two should be required reading.

Contact

Contact Info:

Greyhawk sends. Distribute to anyone who might need it.

Official DOD page on contact information for military families displaced by Katrina.

Site for Guard families impacted by Katrina.

Information for getting Guardsmen in touch with lost family members who may have been displaced by the hurricane.

Gifts

Gifts:

While helping my father clean out a room in the old family house, I noticed a ribboned medal atop one of the pieces of furniture we were moving. When we had shifted it to its new room, I picked the thing up to look at it.

"What's this?" I asked.

He glanced at it, and said, "I'm glad you saw that! I've had these things here for you for years. Your uncle sent them to you."

My uncle, his brother, was the elder of my grandfather's two sons. Unfortunately his own son is a tragic case, and so he has sometimes sent me things that he had intended to give his son when my cousin was old enough to get them.

The ribbon proved to be a World War II Victory Medal. It's interesting in that, on the reverse side, it is engraved with the famous "Four Freedoms," which were so capably illustrated by Norman Rockwell.

There were a few other items.

He had come across several General Officer stars, I couldn't guess where. There have certainly never been any Generals in my immediate family -- although Patton is a distant relative of ours, it is quite a distance. He had also an old Nazi mess-kit utensil. I'm no collector of Nazi things, but I recognized the crest on the back of it.

There was also a pin. It was black, engraved on the back with the number D-22; and on the front it bore a pair of crossed arrows and a dagger, and this motto:

"De Oppresso Liber."

My uncle was in Korea with the Air Force Security Police, who at that time were a very impressive bunch. This was when the Security Police was the last-ditch force for preventing the world's only nuclear weapons from falling into enemy hands, should a base be overrun or infiltrated. These were the early days of the Cold War, when the stakes were high and nowhere on earth seemed safe from covert action. The Security Police were trained in all manner of deadly combat, and understood that they were to die in place if called to do so. I gather from the occasional adventure onto an Air Force Base that the standards have changed since then, but the Security Police of the 1950s were a brave and dangerous band.

I don't know where he got this pin -- the insignia has existed since 1960, so it's possible that it was traded to him by someone he knew in Korea. It's been many years since I've spoken to him, but I'll have to write to ask where he got it.

Lawless

Lawless:

I warn you that what follows is not pleasant, and you may wish to skip this entry entirely if you do not wish to consider unpleasant thoughts at this time. I will hardly hold it against you, for this is a deeply unhappy time, and we have all had enough misery. Still, it is important to think things through plainly.

Probably what has been shocking people most about the hurricane damage is the chaos in New Orleans. We must remember the state of New Orleans before the disaster: a background crime rate that was one of the highest in the country; police forces, and indeed a political structure, that were notoriously corrupt. It is of no surprise that, having failed on every normal day to achieve their basic tasks, the city's government failed to achieve what would have been a heroic undertaking even for the most disciplined and efficient of governments.

There is another reason, though, that the chaos has been as bad as it has been. Reuters found someone from Sri Lanka to articulate it:

Not a single tourist caught in the tsunami was mugged. Now with all this happening in the U.S. we can easily see where the civilized part of the world's population is.

Well, properly, one can see where it is not. It is not in New Orleans.

The same argument was voiced in a dire prediction from the ground, which was carried by InstaPundit. Law Professor Bill Quigley wrote:

[T]he problem for New Orleans is that everybody who had their health, had money and had a car, they left. Okay, so we have probably 100,000 people trapped in the city right now, maybe 50,000 or 60,000 people in the Superdome who are there without electricity, without flushing toilets, without food, without water. And they are people who had to walk over there or take a bus, because they didn't have a car to get out.

There are people in nursing homes, there's people in these little hospitals all over the place.... So who's left behind in New Orleans right now, you are talking about tens of thousands of people who are left behind, and those are the sickest, the oldest, poorest, the youngest, the people with disabilities and the like, and the plan was that everybody should leave.

That is to say that only two kinds of people remain in New Orleans in any numbers: the underclass, among whom the predatory criminal population is vastly higher than among any other class of people; and those too frail or poor to move, which is to say, those who are naturally easy prey. All the elements of society that normally restrain violence and chaos have been stripped away by the evacuation.

This was not the case in the tsunami, because it fell instantly upon the people. Everyone was there -- militants in their jungles, tourists in their hotels, the poor and the rich and the people of every class. If this had been an earthquake instead of a hurricane, the chaos would be far lower in New Orleans. But we have left the worst predators, in a city where they are already accustomed to running rampant, alone with the most vulnerable possible prey. It is natural, and unavoidable, that hideous things should follow.

Our society does not rely for its order on our police forces, our National Guard, or indeed very much on the government at all. We are not a security state, like China, with uniformed servants of the state posted everywhere to enforce order. By and large, order is kept in America by middle-class Americans. In those parts of the inner cities where poverty is rampant and there is no middle class to speak of, there is always serious disorder -- the background murder rate for New Orleans, say, or the rate in much of Washington, D.C.

But we must institute such a security state in New Orleans for the duration, because American society is no longer there to restrain its criminals. Everyone with a stake in American society and also the power to help enforce its norms has been removed from the city. There will now be no order except by main force.

That would be a tremendous task even if those people given over to instituting that force did not have to deal with flooding, and the engineering challenges that go with it. Yet they do have to deal with it, which means that the application of force must be that much more stern.

That is the only way to protect any of the vulnerable peoples left in the area. The predators have been turned loose, by the evacuation as much as by the disaster. Civilization was packed up and removed from what was once a city, but which is now a jungle as dark and perilous as any in imagination.

Trip down

Down Georgia Way:

I flew down today, passing up my airline's invitation to become a Federal felon. When I went to check in my firearm, I declared it and presented it to security, unloaded and sealed in a locking case. "You want to check this firearm?" the officer of the airline asked me. Misunderstanding her intention, I said politely that yes, I did, and that the regulations for doing so were posted on a large sign right behind her.

"But you don't have to check it," she said. "You can carry it on the plane."

"Um, what?" I asked.

"Yes, we carry on firearms now. If you want to do that, that will be fine."

I insisted on checking it as baggage, because I knew that was legal. It turns out, I realized at the end of the conversation (after the firearm case was already on its way through the TSA scanners, properly declared and sealed) that she had been under the misapprehension that I was a law enforcement officer of some description. Well, I was traveling through Dulles, so it's perfectly sensible she might have thought so. I imagine they come through all the time.

I got to Atlanta in the early afternoon, and found the city unusually quiet. I took MARTA through town. The parking garages at the terminal ends of the line were packed to capacity, which is apparently highly unusual. The gas panic seems to have produced real expectations of shortages here, with the result that there actually were several gas stations that had sold out their tanks to local consumers.

It will be interesting to see whether I can get home, too.

Everywhere I've been, television screens are constantly focused on the hurricane. Even on MARTA -- unlike the D.C. Metro, they've now got televisions on MARTA trains. Great, just what I wanted. Another place where there's a constant TV presence.

Katrina has gotten people's attention in a big way. There's been quite a bit of talk today about how this may change behavior in the long term. We'll see if it plays out, of course. The big question is the refineries, as I see it; we can buy extra oil if we need it, but the refineries are the choke point. We can't make more gas than we can make, and we can make less now with the gulf refineries offline.

Still, it honestly wouldn't take much belt-tightening to overcome the shortage, if it is widespread. I saw that Bush had suggested to all Americans that they should not buy gas if they didn't need to do so. It certainly appears to be the case that the folks in Atlanta are buying all the gas they can get, but also trying to cut down on use of gasoline. Even a small savings in terms of personal use, if it is adopted by millions, will probably ease the shortage enough that it will be just a memory in a little while.

If so, the dire projections I've been hearing and reading about today probably won't ever come to pass. But, at least for the moment, there are people thinking seriously about questions of how far they really want to commute to work; how big a car they need; and how many cars. The sudden spike in gas prices has caused people to reflect on their personal budgets.

This is not to say that the talk today has shown a basic selfishness, or self-interest. People are emotionally involved in the tragedy, of course. But there is nothing that the emotional involvement can accomplish; other than mourning it, and giving to their favored charity, there honestly isn't much to be done. There really does come a point where everything to be said about the tragedy has been said; and then you think of other things, and right now, these other things also weigh heavily on peoples' minds.

I have a few more stories, but it's almost one AM and I've been up since five AM, so they'll have to wait.

Travel

Traveler:

I'll be traveling for a week or so, down to Georgia and back. Should make for some good stories. I'll share the best ones with you.

Disaster

Days of Disaster:

The hurricane has been a terrible blight on the American South, with economic tremblings that are traveling north. My father informs me that the main gasoline pipeline from the gulf to Atlanta was destroyed in the storm, with the result that the entire city will run out of gas in a few days. How long will that last? Who knows?

But I find that my heart goes out instead to the families of Iraqi pilgrims, who have suffered today the greatest tragedy to befall them for several years. I was once in a crowd that got spooked, and remember it well. It was in the early 1990s, the year the Atlanta Braves first got to play in the World Series. There was a parade downtown, and probably the whole city came out to see it. The Braves had been the worst team in baseball for so many years that, in addition to the pleasure of seeing the home team within reach of the top prize, there was a feeling of great wonder and joy at seeing so complete a reversal. I could not guess how many people were packed into those streets, but I know that they overran the barricades and were pressed so tightly together in places that it was impossible to move.

At one point the crowd began to become aware of the peril of that situation, and several drunken fools began to exploit it. They shouted, and shoved, and tried to panic people: and many in the crowd, for some were frail and easily frightened, did panic. They began to scream, and try to get out: but there was nowhere to go. So they shoved, and the crowd began to sway, back and forth, pressing together so tightly that you felt that you would have to lose your feet in the crush, first forward, now backwards.

At last some people near a side street gave way. Then it turned into a rout, with the whole crowd pushing and shoving and exploding into that space. I remember that some folks broke in the door to a parking garage -- wisely! -- and a part of the crowd escaped up into it, avoiding the chaos below.

I don't know if anyone was hurt, but surely they must have been. I remember hearing that someone had been stabbed, though I don't know if it was true. Still, I understand something of what it is like to be caught in a crush, and I pity and mourn for those who have died in Iraq today.

The bitter irony, of course, is that no suicide bomber or team of such bombers could have killed so many people. Nor, in fact, did the enemy have to so much as lift a finger to kill all of these people: the rumor of their coming was enough. Though they could never have killed so many had they set themselves to it with their fullest might, yet the fear of them did it with a terrible ease.

See here, and learn, how very deadly that fear is. It is the true weapon of the enemy. It is what we must all first learn to overcome.

I wish I knew words to comfort the people of Iraq. There are no such words, of course.

King James

King James:

I found this to be a fascinating story. It's about a man, an early Mormon leader, who decided to make himself king of an island in Michigan. The United States sent a boatload of Marines and US Marshals to correct his behavior, but having arrested him, lost the trial! He was acquitted on every charge they could name against him, and ended up... well, see for yourselves.

It's one of those grand old stories from America's history, the sort of things that you almost can't believe really happened. Judge Roy Bean is another of that sort: even after you've filtered out all the legendary material, and have only the plain facts before you, you just have to shake your head in amazement and wonder at the extraordinary stories America has produced.

Hmm..

Maybe They're On To Something...

If it weren't for the fact that I know that Thaksin Shinawatara is a former telecom guy, I would have suspected a hoax in his plan to buy cable television for all coffeeshops in Muslim southern Thailand. Yeah, sure... the kids will be so busy watching soccer that they'll forget to jihad.

Hm. Maybe they're on to something after all:

In the wilds of southern Thailand, where people believe Islam first took root in Southeast Asia, plans to dish out cable TV with free English soccer to quell ethnic Malay unrest have not gone down well.

"The kids will just watch TV and leave the Koran and their school books behind," said Haji Mustafa Bin Haji Abdul Latif of Ban Sawo Hilir in Narathiwat, one of three provinces rocked by 20 months of violence in which more than 800 people have died.

"I don't think it's a good idea," he says, taking a long drag on a hand-rolled cigarette at his run-down tea-shop in the exclusively Muslim village deep in the jungle.

Around him, a handful of customers give similar verdicts on the proposals by Interior Minister Kongsak Wantana to use Thai TV, karaoke stars and European soccer to wean Muslim youths away from violence.

The plans, they say, illustrate clearly the lack of cultural sensibility from Bangkok's Buddhist government which critics say is fuelling resentment in the far south, where 80 percent of the population are Muslim, ethnic Malay and non-Thai speaking.

Well, it may not be "culturally sensible," but as I reflect on it, it does have a certain history behind it. The Romans kept the mob of Rome from rising up against them through a combination of bread and circuses. Free soccer? Every day? Could be just the trick.

Or, as Bill Waterson said, Karl Marx hadn't seen anything yet.

YSTC

"Yes, sir. Take cover, sir."

An excellent example of how to explain things to general officers.

Hat tip: BlackFive.

Marines

Mostly for Military Readers:

Count the ways that this inspection differs from the way that we do it. Better, or worse? Discuss.

4th

Tribalism & Victory:

I have a post on that topic over at the 4th Rail.

Chimps

On Chimps:

Our friends at Southern Appeal are a bit worked up over the London Zoo story. I assume you saw it?

"Warning: Humans in their Natural Environment" read the sign at the entrance to the exhibit, where the captives could be seen on a rock ledge in a bear enclosure, clad in bathing suits and pinned-on fig leaves. Some played with hula hoops, some waved.

Visitors stopped to point and laugh, and several children could be heard asking, "Why are there people in there?"

London Zoo spokeswoman Polly Wills says that's exactly the question the zoo wants to answer.

"Seeing people in a different environment, among other animals ... teaches members of the public that the human is just another primate," Wills said....

"A lot of people think humans are above other animals," he told The Associated Press. "When they see humans as animals, here, it kind of reminds us that we're not that special."

Emphasis per Southern Appeal author MJA, who objects on theological grounds.

It reminds me of a comment I read over at Althouse's blog, which link of course came from the Sage of Knoxville. Althouse was talking about sex-differences research on chimps. One commenter added this:

I read a book a couple of years ago called "the Third Chimp" or something thereabouts. Its point is that genetically, we are close enough to them to be considered the same genus, but different species.

In the end though, the author pointed out that under standard methodology, they should probably become part of genus "homo" instead, as we were scientifically named before they were.

In other words, isn't it really species arrogance that lets us separate the other two species of our genus into a different one?

I think the fellow has a good point. We should re-examine this issue out of the glare of species arrogance.

I suggest we invite a panel of the best chimpanzee biologists, from the top chimpanzee universities, to meet with us to discuss the issue. We can compare their system for cataloging, researching and understanding all forms of life to the one we have separately developed. Then, we can see if this sheds any new...

...oh, right. Well, maybe we're a little special after all.

Gates of Fire.

Michael Yon has another report from Mosul.

This one had me on the edge of my seat. That battalion will miss it's Colonel.

Bathing

Bathing in Blood:

An unexpected confluence arises in two stories of two very different men. The story of Lieutenant Cathey's family contains a tale of a promise made that could not be kept:

James Cathey received his officer’s commission three years ago and had been deployed in East Timor and twice to Okinawa before going to Iraq. He graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder in May 2004 with a degree in history and another in anthropology after three years. He married Katherine on June 23, 2004.

His family said he had been named Marine of the Year in the division and was on the Super Squad for his battalion twice.

Katherine quoted a card her husband bought before he left July 21 for Iraq with the unit he joined in April.

"He said, 'I'll promise you one thing: I will be home,'" she said. "'I have a wife, a new baby to take care of and you guys are my world.'"

There is no doubt that he meant every word of it; but there are powers in the world stronger than a man's heart. One such power met up with another man, unlike Cathey in every way except that both were Americans:

When Timothy Treadwell, a boyish-looking minor eco-celebrity, went on Letterman in 2001 to tell the world how he spent a substantial portion of his time living in the Alaskan wild, an arm's length from foraging grizzly bears, Dave asked the obvious question. "Is it possible we'll open the paper one day and see you've been eaten by these bears?"

The audience roared. Treadwell looked genuinely taken aback by the suggestion.

"No," he stammered.

At the end of his 13th summer among the bears, federal park rangers found the majority of Treadwell, and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard, in the gastrointestinal tract of a male grizzly.

They are alike, I suppose, in one other way: both believed what they promised. And perhaps in one more way: both were, each in their fashion, brave men.

He camped between fox dens; we see the docile pups perpetually pawing at his tent and running away with his hat. When the bears start sniffing at him he gently pushes them and growls. They lumber away.

The author of the National Review piece means to scorn Treadwell as a madman, or a fool. It is true that Treadwell lacked understanding of a central point, one Cathey surely understood, and which was laid out plainly by G. K. Chesterton. Yet the NR piece does not understand the principle either.

Nature worship is natural enough while the society is young, or, in other words, Pantheism is all right as long as it is the worship of Pan. But Nature has another side which experience and sin are not slow in finding out, and it is no flippancy to say of the god Pan that he soon showed the cloven hoof. The only objection to Natural Religion is that somehow it always becomes unnatural. A man loves Nature in the morning for her innocence and amiability, and at nightfall, if he is loving her still, it is for her darkness and her cruelty. He washes at dawn in clear water as did the Wise Man of the Stoics, yet, somehow at the dark end of the day, he is bathing in hot bull's blood, as did Julian the Apostate.

Catholicism addresses the problem by swearing itself to the light. It warns its members to avoid the darkness. Yet it is aware of this truth, as all wise faiths must be: both natures are real. Catholicism chooses one side; other faiths embrace both. But only the fools deny either part. Treadwell was not a fool to believe that he could play with grizzly bears. He was a fool only because he thought they would always only play with him.

The NR piece is just as foolish, in the other direction.

It's easy to dismiss knee-jerk environmentalists as dopey because of this — as easy as it is to laugh at Timothy Treadwell, or hold him in contempt, as many did. It's less easy to contemplate the possibility that your doting little Terrier, the one you make kissy sounds at every day, would eat you if it got hungry enough.

It is not so. Nature is no more cruel at base than she is kind. She is each at turns. Consider:

Demonstrating his loyalty, another Border stood guard over his dead master for days after the shepherd died while in the hills with the flock.

Or this story, from Japan:

The people from the hospital, upon hearing of his death, where not able retrieve the body for over three hours due to the dogs loyalty to its master. In the end the body had to be retrieved through a window to a vehicle. The faithful dog showed its loyalty by attacking anyone who came near his master and did not partake of food or drink. Even after the body had been taken away, the dog laid on the masters bed for over 3 days without food preventing intruders to enter. The neighbors who had witnessed the event of the dog’s loyalty were moved to tears and considered the dog to be better than human. This Baekgu has once again displayed the superiority of the Jindo dog.

Or, if you want to think on cruelty, consider Buddy:

Buddy, the dog that stole Alaska's heart, had made international headlines in March when he led search parties to the body of his dead master Bill Hitchcock, 45. Bill had been killed by a falling tree, and for 12 days the grieving Labrador stayed by the man's body in the remote wilderness of Knight Island.

Buddy was killed by us, not nature. His adopted owner found him aggressive and, after the dog bit him, had him put down.

One last example, from our nearer neighbors. Jane Goodall awoke the world to the nature of the apes with her work, finding them kind and gentle giants in their forests. That was the case during her long time with them -- until one day, when they suddenly and purposefully began a genocide.

It began as a border patrol. At one point they sat still on a ridge, staring down into Kahama Valley for more than three-quarters of an hour, until they spotted Goliath, apparently hiding only twenty-five meters away. The raiders rushed madly down the slope to their target. While Goliath screamed and the patrol hooted and displayed, he was held and beaten and kicked and lifted and dropped and bitten and jumped on. At first he tried to protect his head, but soon he gave up and lay stretched out and still. His aggressors showed their excitement in a continuous barrage of hooting and drumming and charging and branch-waving and screaming. They kept up the attack for eighteen minutes, then turned for home, still energized, running and screaming and banging on tree-root buttresses. Bleeding freely from his head, gashed on his back, Goliath tried to sit up but fell back shivering. He too was never seen again.

So it went. One by one the six adult males of the Kahama community disappeared, until by the middle of 1977 an adolescent named Sniff, around seventeen years old, was the lone defender. Sniff, who as a youngster in the 1960s had played with the Kasekela males, was caught late on November 11. Six Kasekela males screamed and barked in excitement as they hit, grabbed, and bit their victim viciously--wounding him in the mouth, forehead, nose, and back, and breaking one leg. Goblin struck the victim repeatedly in the nose. Sherry, an adolescent just a year or two younger than Sniff, punched him. Satan grabbed Sniff by the neck and drank the blood streaming down his face. Then Satan was joined by Sherry, and the two screaming males pulled young Sniff down a hill. Sniff was seen one day later, crippled, almost unable to move. After that he was not seen and was presumed dead.

Three adult females, Madam Bee, Mandy, and Wanda, at one time had belonged to the Kahama group, along with their offspring. But Mandy and Wanda eventually disappeared, as did their young, while Madam Bee and her two daughters, Little Bee and Honey Bee, were beaten by Kasekela males several times. Then in September 1975, four adult males charged the old female, dragging, slapping, stomping on her, picking her up and hurling her to the ground, pounding her until she collapsed and lay inert. She managed to crawl away that day, only to die five days later. The assault on Madam Bee, incidentally, was watched by the adolescent Goblin and four Kasekela females, including Little Bee, who had become associated with Kasekela by then. Four months after Madam Bee was killed, her younger daughter, Honey flee, also transferred to Kasekela.

By the end of 1977 Kahama was no more.

The truth of this world is that the darkness is real. But the light is also real. Both joy and murder exist. In every second of your life, either one can reach out to touch you.

You must be prepared for either, at every moment. The best kind of man will be prepared for both.

It is not wrong to play with grizzlies: it is glorious. Yet you must be prepared to deal with them when they have done with playing. If you are going to live boldly, you must love to swim in clear water, yet not fear to bathe in blood.

This will not save you, for death is the one certainty. Yet it might let you live wisely and well, and defend for a while the things that you love.

And it may be that, after you are gone, men will remember.

76.
Cattle die, kindred die,
Every man is mortal:
But the good name never dies
Of one who has done well.

77.
Cattle die, kindred die,
Every man is mortal:
But I know one thing that never dies,
The glory of the great dead.

The road of the hero leads only to the grave. Yes, that is true.

Show me the road that leads elsewhere.

2/2

2nd Lt. James J. Cathey:

Longtime readers will know that Grim's Hall's adopted unit -- because of JarHeadDad, whose son "da Grunt" belongs to it -- is the 2/2 Marines. I regret to report the death of one of 2/2's officers, Lieutenant Cathey. The DOD press release is here.

USMC SOCOM

Speaking Of...

...Marine "Special Forces," Military.com has an interesting interview on the possibility that the USMC may finally send some Marines to work with SOCOM. "Special Operations Capable" is not a new concept for the Corps -- it has whole MEUs that are rated for special ops -- but working with SOCOM is something that the Corps has long resisted. The interview is insightful as to why, and covers some developments that have arisen in the terror war.

Good work

A Report from Abroad:

Here's an AP report by press writer Pauline Jasudason.

Malaysian marine police seized a ship, believed to have been stolen three years ago, in a nighttime operation that ended with commandos rappelling up its side and detaining 20 Chinese crew members, an official said Wednesday.

The police tracked MV Paulijing for 17 hours before boarding the ship off Malaysia's southern Kukup island in the Straits of Malacca before dawn Tuesday, Marine Police Cmdr. Abdul Rahman Ahmad said.

He said police received information that the vessel, which had passed through the central Malaysian port of Klang Monday morning, closely resembled cargo ship MV Natris that was hijacked near Indonesia's Batam island in November 2002.

A patrol boat went up to the ship and ordered the vessel to stop, but the captain ignored the command. Instead of chasing the ship and taking action in the busy waterway, police told officers in Johor, where the ship was headed, to intercept it, he said.

"We could not chase or force them to stop because in that crowded, busy port, that could have endangered other vessels," he said. "So we laid our plans, flew in our special forces south to Johor and waited for the ship there."

Abdul Rahmad said 45 marine special forces and police commandos in four patrol boats surrounded the ship off Johor at 3.15 a.m. Tuesday, before it could enter the waters of neighboring Singapore.

Twelve officers boarded the moving vessel, and the crew surrendered without a fight, Abdul Rahman said.

The captain and mates, all Chinese national aged between 20 and 45 years, were being investigated for the possession of a stolen vessel. Abdul Rahman said authorities are yet to confirm that the ship - carrying soybeans and vinegar and heading from India to Vietnam - is the stolen MV Natris, registered in Panama.

"The verification is in progress, it will take a few days to confirm," he said.

The police were tipped off by the International Maritime Bureau, a watchdog that had been monitoring the vessel for nearly six months, said Noel Choong, head of the Bureau's piracy watch center in Kuala Lumpur.

We shall see if these "marine special forces" were right or not to apprehend this vessel. But what really strikes me about the article is how they can rappel up the side of a ship! These Malaysian commandos are good!

lawyers

Law Quotes:

I'm sorry for the slow posting today and yesterday, but there has been quite a bit of "business" my way the last little while. To make it up to you, I offer some truly hilarious quotes from America's courts. My favorite one is the one that begins, "Now, doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep..."

Enjoy.

Dancing

Propaganda Wars:

I guess this is understandable, but I have to laugh at the foolishness:

An al-Qaeda linked-group has launched what it calls a media jihad, or holy war, to "terrorise" United States-led forces in Iraq and their families by bombarding them with e-mails and by posting gruesome photos online.

You carry on with this, if you dare. Here you will find men just like you. "Not a businessman after all. Just a man. An ancient race... The future doesn't matter to us."

UPDATE: The above was edited for clarity, but I have also some additional remarks.

On re-reading this post many hours later, I realize it may not be clear to people who haven't recently watched Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West. The movie is about a woman who inherits, because her new husband and his family are murdered, a plot of land that appears to be without value. It turns out, however, that it is sitting on the only ground in a patch of Arizona which has enough water to handle steam trains -- and the railroad line is coming.

As a consequence, a businessman named Morton had hired a terrorist named Frank to run off the family. Frank, it being his nature, found it easier to kill them ("People scare better when they're dyin'," he says. Firefly fans will recognize that a far gentler form of the sentiment was on display in Jayne Cobb: "Pain is scary.")

The two villians of the movie are symbolic, Frank of what Leone saw as the bad Old West, and Morton of what Leone saw as the bad New West. Morton is a businessman, and Frank thinks he wants to be one too -- rich, powerful, and cold hearted. The time of Franks is almost over, and he thinks he can become a Morton. In fact, he cannot. When he attempts to doublecross Morton, Morton bribes the members of Frank's gang to turn coats. Frank would have been killed in the ensuing ambush, except for the intervention of the movie's protagonist, a mysterious gunfighter who wants to kill Frank himself.

Morton is himself destroyed by his use of Frank. Frank's terrorist tactics include the use of false flags, by which he attempts to blame a famous local outlaw gang for the murders of the family. That gang, when it learns of the identity of the real killers, descends on Morton's encampment and wipes out everyone. It is their form of justice.

These are forces which are at work, which are bigger than and stronger than the villians. The bad actors bring on their own destruction, not from the legal system, but from each other. Frank is killed by the mysterious gunfighter, who turns out to be the brother of one of his victims. Morton is killed by the outlaws. The leader of the outlaws, himself, later dies from wounds he suffers in the fight. At last, all the violence spins itself out, and what remains are only the folk who wanted to build and run a railroad.

Of course, some of them are also outlaws -- members of that same bandit gang, who are put to work. They can have a new future in the world of honest work. They can make the transition to the new economy and way of life that comes with the railroad.

But not the gunfighter, who must simply ride off. "The future doesn't matter to us," he tells Frank before they shoot it out. What he has come to do is bring justice: to make sure the widow has her land and profits from it, to make sure that Frank gets what is coming to him. When that is done, he leaves. He does not care for the new world, or the old one. There is nothing in it for him.

There are many parallels between the movie and the current war, one in which we are also trying to bring justice to a barren place by building it, not just a railroad but a whole economy. We are also facing the violence of bad men, who turn on each other in their attempts to come out atop the situation.

It remains to be seen if the engine of progress will be strong enough to pull through the situation, letting the violence spin out around it without -- to extend the metaphor -- coming off the rails. It very well may; I think, in fact, that it will. I think it is likely that many of those Sunni tribal fighters will find themselves pulled into the new economy as they find that they have a stake in it.

There are also men like Frank -- hardened, terrorist killers who finally don't really care about the economics. They are not businessmen, not even in the business of insurgency. They do not want and will not be satisfied with a statelet; unlike most successful insurgent movements, they have no goals which might be granted them in negotiations. There is no "West Bank" to give them. They do not want territory, or wealth, or power over some piece of land. Like Frank, they can't get over "the fact that you're out there," and therefore they have no future. They must fight until they die.

In doing so, they are creating their own enemies. We have often heard it said that American policy is creating terrorists, but few reflect on the degree to which terrorist "policy" is creating anti-terrorists. When you kill a man and torment his family -- as they mean to do, with both American and Iraqi families -- some of those families will come back to haunt you. Not only their blood kin will come, but their families as extended through nationalism or patriotism.

The future won't matter to those men, either. They will only be thinking of you.

japan

A Samurai Epic:

So is described the upcoming Japanese elections, in the Asia Times. The author compares current prime minister Koizumi to one of Japan's most famous samurai, apparently a role model of Koizumi's from an early age.

It's an interesting piece, full of haiku, history, and colorful language. Of course, Koizumi's moves are only "just like" these battles in a metaphoric sense: his 'burning down the temple' will not kill thousands of innocents, and his "assassins" are actually just candidates standing for office.

Still, good journalism can use imagery to make a point. If you wanted to know what the story is on these snap elections, this is a good and entertaining article to read.

A Good Idea

Lawyers Catch Up:

Today's Arts & Letters Daily has a piece entitled "The Dread Pirate Bin Laden." It argues that law, and particularly international law, should treat terrorism as a crime analagous to piracy. Existing law on pirates and piracy is the most useful model for analyzing terrorism.

Great idea. I wrote about it about a year ago in my manifest for a new "Jacksonian Party."

In foreign policy: we should recognize that international terrorist organizations actually are subject to an existing international law: the law of the sea. Precisely like the roving bands of brigands and pirates of the 1600s and 1700s, they are organized against civilization, travel through multiple jurisdictions and through lawless areas alike. They are not combatants of any state, and are protected therefore by neither the Geneva Conventions nor the rules of war. Like pirates, they are subject to summary execution by the officers of any nation that comes into control of them; or by interrogation and some more merciful response, if we prefer and at our discretion. This brutality on the part of civilized men is justified for the exact reason it was justified of old: the threat these bands pose to the transportation infrastructure is a dagger at the heart of civilization. We cannot maintain our cities, our populations, our ability to combat disease or famine, or our relative freedom from total war over resources, without the massive but fragile transportation capacity we have developed.

This is not idle or of small importance. A small increase in transport costs kills at the margins--for example, aid to Africa is reduced as it is more expensive to transport, but resources are fixed. A large increase threatens civilization itself. Our cities do not contain enough food to feed the populace for more than about three days. That is no problem; more food is coming. But if the ability to transport that food is severely harmed--starvation, and in many regions of the world, disease. A serious disruption could unleash a resource war by nations that see mass starvation if they don't capture food, oil, and other needful things. Such a disruption is possible if these terror groups continue their infiltration of the West, and come into possession of WMD.

For that reason, the reform of terror-sponsor states is paramount. So is the reform of failed states that are not necessarily terror-sponsors, but where terrorists are able to travel freely due to bribes of local officials or through outright lawlessness. So long as we can do so while maintaining an all-volunteer force, the United States ought to feel free to act on these places one by one. This has the practical matter, for a Jacksonian party, of bringing liberty and strength to the poor and unfree abroad exactly as we wish to do at home.

Nice to see the lawyers coming around. Next, the politicians -- and we may yet get our Jacksonian Party.

AB

Another Beauty:

On the heels of yesterday's wonderful story about New London charging the Kelo plantiffs five years' back-rent, we have this story from Texas:

A decorated Marine enrolling in college was shocked to learn his Texas driver's license, car registration and bank records weren't enough to get the lower resident tuition rates.

Carl Basham said officials at Austin Community College recently told him that he lost his Texas resident's status because of the years he spent out of state on two tours of duty in Iraq.

Not having the in-state designation would mean paying around $2600 a semester in tuition, instead of about $500.

Oh, yeah. You're a citizen of Iraq now, Carl. (Apparently those people charging us with imperialism were righter than they knew!)

Kim du Toit kindly provides some useful phone numbers:

Director of Admissions & Records
Linda Kluck
(512) 223-7503; Fax (512) 223-7765

Governor of Texas
Rick Perry
Citizen's Assistance Hotline: (800) 843-5789
[for Texas callers]
Citizen's Opinion Hotline: (800) 252-9600
[for Texas callers]
Citizen's Assistance and Opinion Hotline: (512) 463-1782
[for Austin, Texas and out-of-state callers]
Office of the Governor Main Switchboard: (512) 463-2000
[office hours are 7:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. CST]
Citizen's Assistance Telecommunications Device
If you are using a telecommunication device for the deaf (TDD), call 711 to reach Relay Texas
Fax
Office of the Governor Fax: (512) 463-1849
Mailing Address
Office of the Governor
P.O. Box 12428
Austin, Texas 78711-2428

Delivery Address
Office of the Governor
State Insurance Building
1100 San Jacinto
Austin, Texas 78701

Might want to give them a little call today.

Notes

Notes:

Kim du Toit notes that absolutely everything the British police claimed was true about the Brazilian they shot dead, was in fact not true at all. Video records work both ways. I defended them before the fact, even -- one has to shoot suspected suicide bombers in a way that will neutralize their central nervous system. It's nothing personal -- it's a gamble, where you bet the moral responsibility you don't want to have for killing an innocent against the moral responsibility you don't want to have for not stopping a guilty man from killing a hundred innocents.

All the same, the cops here seem to have given us an entirely false picture of their experience. They must answer for that, as much as for the shooting itself. If you are trusted with the power of the law, you must answer honestly when challenged.

UPDATE: Reader and blogger Karrde says that he thinks this was an application of the "Garbage In, Garbage Out" principle.

I join Greyhawk in celebrating Mrs. InstaPundit's graduation from cardiac rehab classes. Good luck, ma'am.

Necktie

Yes, I Know...

...that the Senate of the United States of America recently apologized for its history on lynching, and I know that lynching has normally been a horrible thing in American history. But can't we all agree that there are exceptions?

Kelo:Adding Insult to Injury

The City of New London is now claiming that the affected homeowners (those who fought the taking of their property in court) were living on city land for the duration of the lawsuit (which started in 2000) and owe back rent.

Surely we can make just this one exception, to a generally accepted rule?

1900 meets 2005

“All we can decide is whether we shall meet them in a way that will redound to the national credit, or whether we shall make of our dealings with these new problems a dark and shameful page in our history. To refuse to deal with them at all merely amounts to dealing with them badly. We have a given problem to solve. If we undertake the solution, there is, of course, always danger that we may not solve it aright; but to refuse to undertake the solution simply renders it certain that we cannot possibly solve it aright. The timid man, the lazy man, the man who distrusts his country, the over-civilized man, who has lost the great fighting, masterful virtues, the ignorant man, and the man of dull mind, whose soul is incapable of feeling the mighty lift that thrills "stern men with empires in their brains"—all these, of course, shrink from seeing the nation undertake its new duties;” - The Strenuous Life by Theodore Roosevelt.

The entire essay is worthy of the time spent reading it. It’s poignant because the essence addresses the same problem we are dealing with now; do we pull out immediately from Iraq, or do we stay and finish the job right?

To hear the ranting of the left, a great number of which have gathered a scant 200 miles away from me in Crawford, we should pull out immediately and adopt an isolationist mentality, at best, or become the hand that feeds the world, at worst. I simply find that attitude unacceptable. Our responsibility is to America, over all else. If another sovereign state is a threat to us, then we should remove the threat; by whatever means prudent and available. If one American life is taken, we should inflect pain and suffering on a level as to make taking American lives no longer worth the effort.

We need more men with ‘empires in their brains’.
-Daniel

NAD

National Airborne Day:

Who knew that there was a "National Airborne Day"? Well, the fellows in the maroon berets, I guess -- never have gotten the whole "beret" thing, but whatever.

Doubtless, the lads deserve it. I join Marine Sgt. B in his toast:

May your chutes always deploy correctly, may your PLFs be flawless, and may your fights be short, decisive, and victorious.

Airborne! All the Way!

Gentlemen: I raise a Guinness.

rn

Reader Notes:

JarHeadDad has had a particulary interesting accident, the details of which I won't go into. They aren't mine to share. But send him your get-well wishes, and keep him in your thoughts.

Sovay passed that longhaired German Shepherd dog right on to me, and he's sleeping on the floor of my office. His name is Finn, after the Irish hero Finn mac Cumhail. Sovay participates in a regional dog rescue charity. Every time I see her, she's got a different dog -- or two, or three.

I don't normally take in strays, because the ones I take in have a way of never leaving. Still, the girl needed some help, so after they still hadn't found a place for this beast by ten at night, I agreed to take him for a couple of days.

Good dog, really. Slept right on the floor by my bed all night, didn't even chew up my moccasins. He's smart, but a stray who is not used to being with people, so he doesn't know to listen for commands. Once I convinced him that he needed to be listening to me, he almost instantly learned to heel and is learning to sit. I think he'll make someone a good pet.

Anyway, there are some notes about a couple of your fellow readers, good people who could use a kind thought and word. Also, if any of you are in the D.C. region, and want a decent dog -- this one or another one, they've got plenty -- you might pipe up in the comments as well. I'm sure Sovay will be happy to talk to any interested parties.

UPDATE: Another reader note -- I see from her blog that Lornkanaga has suffered a devastating loss due to a plane crash. Grim's Hall offers its deepest condolences.

OP VAL II

Operation Valor IT:

I'm going to be traveling today, so I won't be around to post. However, I gather that there will be some interesting posts up about Op. Valor IT. You can read some background on it here, and find out how to help here, or go directly to the donation page.

This idea apparently got its start -- I gather from the emails -- with MilBlogger Chuck Ziegenfuss ("TCOverride"). His own injuries in Iraq prompted him to think of how to help other injured servicemen, and his status as a blogger gave him the means to reach out to all of us.

The Donovan reports on his "coalition building" efforts. Apparently he's even trying Daily Kos, although I hope no one is moved by the particular terms of his challenge.

Those of you on the Left who read this site are made of better stuff, I know from talking to you each and all. I understand that you share the outrage at seeing our young men wounded, and that you also want to help. Like me, you've probably been angry at seeing how our government's military health care system doesn't take care of everything it should. If you've been angry about their plight, you can help them out here. Soldiers' Angels, which is doing the lifting on this, has a proven track record and an excellent reputation among MilBloggers. I have faith in them.

So, it's up to you from here. Do what you will.

Sheehan

Cindy Sheehan:

I'm always late to chime in on social issues. For one thing, I spend so much of my time reading foreign newspapers, I rarely read domestic ones -- I have used up all my energy for newspaper reading. So I only find out about things when they begin to appear on blogs (which may be before or after the newspapers get them).

For another thing, I always tend to assume that the latest social uproar will simply vanish. I assumed the Schiavo thing would cease to be of interest long before it was. The absence of television from Grim's Hall probably contributes to this -- I never know when something has gone into a 24/7 cycle. I can only judge a story based on its merits, and the merits of these stories are often rather thin.

I knew of Sheehan a week or two ago -- I'm not sure which -- because Sovay mentioned it to me in a telephone call. I made a note of it because it seemed important to her, but I didn't follow up.

Well, we've gotten to the point that it is obviously a social phenomenon now. Winds of Change has a roundup. I suppose I'll chip in, too.

Cindy Sheehan is a grieving mother. I sympathize entirely with the motivation. I cannot imagine what the loss of my son would do to me; I would be grateful to the world, I think, if it refused to judge any action I took for at least a year or two afterwards. And so, applying the Golden Rule, I shall refuse to judge her.

I hope she finds the peace she needs. I have no use for those who are using her to further their ends -- nor those who are so heartless as to speak ill of her, in the depth of her pain.

Yes, I know she was a radical before the war began. That means nothing. She is a Gold Star mother, and so she is due a full measure of kindness from us. May she find her peace. May those who are trying to use her get what they deserve. As for those who have sneered at her character -- no one asks you to approve of her, or what she thinks, or how she feels. All I ask is that you let her rage, and pass on, without judgment. That, at least, is only what we should want for ourselves if, under an evil star, we should find ourselves brought to her fate.