Successes in counterinsurgency are hard to come by. It took months and months to capture Saddam, who for so long seemed invisible to our best intelligence and finest troops. Then, one day, he was dragged out of a septic tank, rank and ragged.
Today is another such day. Follow the link, and read CENTCOM's official announcement.
First, congratulations, CENTCOM.
Second, notice that it was the Iraqi Police who were first in on the ground here. Even in such a sensitive operation, CENTCOM trusted them to secure the area. That says a lot about how far they've come. General Casey said, "Iraqi forces, supported by the Coalition, will continue to hunt terrorists that threaten the Iraqi people until terrorism is eradicated in Iraq." That is not just rhetoric. The Iraqi forces were the first in.
Also read this, from Greyhawk. Even al Anbar province is coming under Iraqi government control.
Third, there are some important comments by Rumsfeld and Hayden on the subject.
It's days like this when it becomes easier than ever to visualize what victory will look like. Everything is coming together, even though there are foes who continue to fight against us. The wicked cannot hide forever. The brave men of Iraq are standing up and taking increasing control of their domain. We shall win.
UPDATE: MilBlogs has a whole lot more, including posts on "roll up" operations being conducted in rapid succession this morning, the finalization of Iraq's ministries, and more.
Zarqawi
Creed
JarHeadDad, in the comments to a post a Milblogs, pointed to the difficulties of the war for the families and the fighters. He then said something I thought you should probably all read.
It all boils down to belief I guess.I think I agree with almost every word of that.
I believe the mission is golden.
I believe the American military is the finest fighting force the planet has ever seen.
I believe the level of honor and integrity of our warfighters has never been seen in history.
I believe Gen Mattis should be seen in history standing shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Chesty Puller.
I believe Gen Hagee is one hellova' Marine.
I believe politics have invaded every nuance of warfighting.
I believe half this country is made up of spoiled self-righteous pantywaists.
I believe the squad leaders on the ground hold the key to beating an insurgency.
I believe the current ROE were made up by people afraid of votes.
I believe each and every young man and woman in this military is the finest America has to offer.
I believe each and every warfighter deserves the benefit of the doubt.
I believe we are asking of our young men and women something that has never been asked of them before. For better or worse.
I believe in our abilty but not our will.
I believe in our honor regardless of the actions we are required to make.
I believe we are fighting a war on evil with one hand tied behind our backs.
I believe you cannot support the troops without supporting the mission.
I believe we better ALL figure out what side we are on or it will be too late.
I believe our government has run amuck in all directions.
I believe it is time to vote each and every member of Congress out on their collective butts.
I believe it is time for a third party.
Zeps
So says The Scotsman. I've been expecting this for some years -- I think there's a market for "cruise ship" style Zeppelins that would "sail" across country, either in the US or Europe. That's not what they're using them for in Africa, though.
H/t Eric's "FARK" page.
I've been meaning to ask Grim to add these.
Memorandum: Find out what everybody in the blogosphere is talking about. I check this everyday now. It is very, very curious to see who is commenting on what.
Protein Wisdom: Jeff Goldstein is a smart ass. But he's an entertaining and thoughtful smart ass. The comments are often "Internet Performance Art".
Flares into Darkness: An intriguing group blog. Always worth a look.
Mystery Pollster: This guy is smart.
FARK: News of the wierd, mostly. Florida has its own category. Sarcastic commentary galore. Sometimes it's even deserved.
Confederate Yankee pretty much sums it up:
"Mr. President, if you really think I care about gay marriage right now, you’re out of your ever-lovin’ mind."Jeebus.
What the hell is he thinking?
Back
We made it to Georgia. I can report that the boy loves to camp. No surprises there.
The Blue Ridge Parkway is a long road and a slow, but it's well-worth it if you find yourself with a few days. We camped in the George Washington Forest the first night, the Pisgah Forest the second night, and traveled the full length of the Shenandoah National Park as well. We've now driven on every inch of the Blue Ridge Parkway except a few feet near Roanoke, and a few miles right at the end -- we turned off and went down into the Cherokee Border Lands instead of heading into the GSM National Park.
The military did, in fact, get its act together and get the contract paperwork sorted out while I was camping. Well, for the twenty-day extension. Not for the "real" contract, which is still in the no-word-about-it department.
So, all is well. Hope you've had a pleasant few days.
The Worm Turns
Women now earn the majority of diplomas in fields men used to dominate -- from biology to business -- and have caught up in pursuit of law, medicine and other advanced degrees.
Federal statistics released Thursday show that in many ways, the gender gap among college students is widening. The story is largely one of progress for women, stagnation for men.
"Women have been making educational progress, and the men are stuck," he said. "They haven't just fallen behind women. They have fallen behind changes in the job market.".
Does It Hurt To Be This Stupid?
Top ten signs you should not be allowed to wade into the gene pool:
1. You passed your 40th birthday without acquiring enough common sense to realize that birth control only works if you use it all the time:
I am a 42-year-old happily married mother of two elementary-schoolers. My husband and I both work, and like many couples, we're starved for time together. One Thursday evening this past March, we managed to snag some rare couple time and, in a sudden rush of passion, I failed to insert my diaphragm.
...and your husband failed to use a condom. And you both failed the impulse-control test. Big time.
2. You compound your initial error in judgment with further acts of blithering stupidity:
The next morning, after getting my kids off to school, I called my ob/gyn to get a prescription for Plan B, the emergency contraceptive pill that can prevent a pregnancy -- but only if taken within 72 hours of intercourse. As we're both in our forties, my husband and I had considered our family complete, and we weren't planning to have another child, which is why, as a rule, we use contraception. I wanted to make sure that our momentary lapse didn't result in a pregnancy.
In other words, you wanted to preserve the delicious thrill that comes from taking risks, while absolving yourself of the messy consequences that so often result. Doubtless this explains why, though you were sure you wanted no more children, you didn't have a tubal ligation as I did at 23 when it became obvious my husband wanted no more children. I'm sure this must also be why your husband didn't have a vasectomy.
3. Last time I checked, hope was not an effective family planning strategy:
The receptionist, however, informed me that my doctor did not prescribe Plan B. No reason given. Neither did my internist. The midwifery practice I had used could prescribe it, but not over the phone, and there were no more open appointments for the day. The weekend -- and the end of the 72-hour window -- was approaching.
But I needed to meet my kids' school bus and, as I was pretty much out of options -- short of soliciting random Virginia doctors out of the phone book -- I figured I'd take my chances and hope for the best.
Hmmm... have an unwanted abortion, or miss the kids' school bus one day? It's the choices in life that kill you. And after that, the rest of the day was completely shot. Letting your fingers do the walking is so time-consuming.
4. And they say denial is a river in Egypt:
Weeks later, the two drugstore pregnancy tests I took told a different story. Positive. I couldn't believe it.
5. I've always heard it said the best defense is a good offense. Don't get mad. Just blame someone else:
I knew that Plan B, which could have prevented it, was supposed to have been available over the counter by now. But I also remembered hearing that conservative politics have held up its approval.
Perhaps if you find the idea of having an abortion so upsetting, you should have thought ahead. This is what adults do:
In most states, the morning-after pill is available only by prescription. Also, it is important to note that some pharmacies may not stock the medication. Because the pill works best when taken quickly after unprotected intercourse, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists encourages women to get an advance prescription — to have on hand, just in case.
6. And once again, a self-absorbed woman who can't be relied upon to take responsibility for her own reproductive destiny is pissed because the law wants to protect underaged girls... such as, perhaps one day, her own daughter:
My anger propelled me to get to the bottom of the story. It turns out that in December 2003, an FDA advisory committee, whose suggestions the agency usually follows, recommended that the drug be made available over the counter, or without a prescription. Nonetheless, in May 2004, the FDA top brass overruled the advisory panel and gave the thumbs-down to over-the-counter sales of Plan B, requesting more data on how girls younger than 16 could use it safely without a doctor's supervision.
Apparently, one of the concerns is that ready availability of Plan B could lead teenage girls to have premarital sex. Yet this concern -- valid or not -- wound up penalizing an over-the-hill married woman for having sex with her husband. Talk about the law of unintended consequences.
The truth of the matter is that the FDA was concerned about the medical effects of unsupervised, repeated use of Plan B by young girls who might misuse the drug. They were also worried because there have been no clinical trials on adolescents:
Advocates argue that women know better than to use the morning-after pill often, so there is no risk of over-use of this high-dose drug. Yet, in the label comprehension study submitted by Barr Labs to the FDA, a full one-third of adult women who read the instructions for Plan B did not understand that the morning-after pill is not to be used as a regular form of birth control. The number increased among those with low literacy and less than high school education. Over one-third did not understand the need to take the second pill at 12 hours after the first.6 The chairman of the FDA Advisory Committee that reviewed the comprehension study called it an “overall failure.”7 The maximum safe dose for levornorgestrel (the active ingredient in Plan B) has not been determined by scientific study, or the effects of overdose.8 It is unknown whether there is a maximum safe daily dose, monthly dose or yearly dose. The health risks for those who may use Plan B repeatedly (ranging in age from menarche—as young as 9—to women in their 50s) at one time or over years are unknown.
While advocates brush away concern over repeated use, stating that women will use it only in “emergencies,” experience shows that, when easily available, the morning-after pill is relied upon often. In fact, promoters of the morning-after pill describe “emergencies” as suspected contraceptive failure or “any time unprotected sexual intercourse occurs.”9 Repeat use is only discouraged based on its insufficient efficacy as a birth control method, not due to safety concerns.10 Dr. Ben-Maimon of Barr testified at an FDA Advisory Committee hearing: “Well, I think that there is no question that the data suggests that women who have emergency contraception use it more frequently.”11
I suppose it is understandable that a 42 year-old mother of two who hasn't figured out how to prevent conception, get an advance prescription, or use the Yellow Pages in a time-sensitive situation might not possess the critical thinking skills to see how children might fail to exercise good judgment if OTC morning after pills were available. Birth control pills are not dispensed except by prescription and under a doctor's supervision, yet a high-dose birth control pill is supposed to be available OTC to anyone - even children - who wants to buy it.
No problem - you have needs too. The hell with worrying about what a frightened or irresponsible child or a marginally literate woman might do to her own health. It's more important to protect affluent adults from the inconvenience of having to deal with their own irresponsibility.
7.
To this day, I don't know why my doctors wouldn't prescribe Plan B -- whether it was because of moral opposition to contraception or out of fear of political protesters or just because they preferred not to go there.
In any event, they were also partly responsible for why I was stuck that Friday, and why I was ultimately forced to confront the decision to terminate my third pregnancy.
To this day, apparently you still have not figured out that it was a combination of your own cluelessness beforehand and laziness afterwards that caused your predicament.
8.
Calling doctors, I felt like a pariah when I asked whether they provided termination services. Finally, I decided to check the Planned Parenthood Web site to see whether its clinics performed abortions. They did, but I learned that if I had the abortion in Virginia, the procedure would take two days because of a mandatory 24-hour waiting period, which requires that you go in first for a day of counseling and then wait a day to think things over before returning to have the abortion. Because of work and the children, I couldn't afford two days off, so I opted to have the procedure done on a Saturday in downtown D.C. while my husband took the kids to the Smithsonian.
Ending a human life can be so inconvenient. Embarrassing too. Interesting how "the procedure" became "termination services" when you were shopping for doctors (something you didn't have time to do on Friday when it mattered) and "abortion" when you called Planned Parenthood.
9. ...and worst of all, they treated me just like some clueless teenager who'd been knocked up by her baby-daddy:
I arrived shortly before 10 a.m. in a bleak downpour, trusting that someone had recorded my appointment. I shuffled to the front door through a phalanx of umbrellaed protesters, who chanted loudly about Jesus and chided me not to go into that house of abortion.
All the while, I was thinking that if religion hadn't been allowed to seep into American politics the way it has, I wouldn't even be there. This all could have been stopped way before this baby was conceived if they had just let me have that damn pill.
After passing through the metal detector inside the building, I entered the Planned Parenthood waiting room; it was like the waiting room for a budget airline -- crammed full of people, of all races, and getting busier by the moment. I was by far the oldest person there (other than one girl's mom). The wait seemed endless. No one looked happy.
10. But every cloud has a silver lining. If all else fails, simply blame the BushReich:
The procedure itself took about five minutes. I finally walked out of the building at 4:30, 6 1/2 hours after I had arrived.
It was a decision I am sorry I had to make. It was awful, painful, sickening. But I feel that this administration gave me practically no choice but to have an unwanted abortion because the way it has politicized religion made it well-nigh impossible for me to get emergency contraception that would have prevented the pregnancy in the first place.
They prevented you from getting an advance prescription as recommended by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists?
The White House prevented you from discussing this in advance with your doctor?
The President's religion prevented you using birth control in the first place, or from having your own "Plan B" in case it failed? Perhaps it broke your dial-y finger so you couldn't contact another doctor that Friday? Oh yeah. The school bus was coming.
If only it had been the Clue Bus.
cross-posted at VC
The first is this post entitled "Was Tarawa necessary?" I'm not really going to debate that issue, (feel free to, though, in the comments) but rather the last paragraph caught my eye:
"...My interest is in examining the expectations of how the assault would go versus how it really went down. Tarawa happened early enough in the Pacific War as to be an "initial encounter" for a particular type of operation: the opposed beach landing against an island. The casualties it produced were shocking at the time, even by WW2 standards. There was outrage in the US, and calls for Nimitz's resignation. Sound familiar?"
Not to bring up those retired Generals' carping again, but gee-wiz, what were they really expecting? Perfection? A plan that worked flawlessly? C'mon. In the end, as the saying goes, hindsight is 20-20, and the decisions made by the US in Iraq are going to be fodder for debate for longer than anybody reading this will be alive.
The second is this post about "An Army of One"
"As societies the world over come to value the individual, military systems have been evolving to follow suit. In Western-oriented armed forces, casualty management is not good enough: The goal of many current battlefield tactics and supporting technologies is casualty avoidance. The evolution of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; battlefield networks; stand-off, precision fires; and electronic warfare are all examples of how modern militaries exploit the skill and value the life of each individual warfighter. Every friendly casualty is viewed as a failure on some level. Some see this as a weakness. I see it as a strength, one that is entirely consistent with the relationship between a society and its military.
It must be frustrating - and maybe quietly terrifying - to face an enemy who expends money rather than lives to kill you."
This idea isn't entirely new, as the cartoonist Bill Mauldin made a similar observation in his book "Up Front" about the US Army in Europe in WWII, willing to expend munitions instead of men.
But it is definitely more necessary these days. No longer, it seems, are people willing to be conscripted to fight. Therefore, militaries are going to depend on those willing to serve, (for whatever reason), and this 'warrior class' (or whatever you want to call it) cannot be 'bled white' or suffer undue (or maybe any) attrition.
However, this might change my mind.
"A new military parachute system which fits wings on soldiers could enable them to travel to 200 kilometres (124 miles) after jumping, Jane's Defence Weekly defence magazine said Friday."
I can't see it working with like, a battalion of paratroopers though. Can you imagine the confusion that would ensue?
But I could see SF types using something like this. I say mount missles on it too.
HT:Fark
Window Contractor
Most readers know by now that I work on contract for the DOD. For the last three years, I've been working on a contract that has operated on "extensions" from the original contract, which ended (I gather) three years ago. The military decided not to renew it at that time, but rather to do a full competition process for a five-year contract. That was, as I mentioned, three years ago.
Since then, we've operated on one last-minute extension after another. This is because "the contract" was always coming through -- just two more weeks, DOD says. Ok, we need another month. Well, the holidays are coming up -- we'll make this one a two-month extension. Actually, we've decided to rethink who will be in front of this process -- six months. We've made the decisions, but we just couldn't get the paperwork done. Thirty days. Ok, another thirty. Maybe we should rethink the RFP -- let's give you another six months.
Etc.
Today, at midnight, it will be six months from the last six month extension. I am told that the contract is "almost finished!", but in fact not finished; so, to make sure this work doesn't go on hold, they wanted to give us a twenty-day extension.
As of close of business, they... er... hadn't finished the paperwork. But it's no problem, almost done, we'll surely get it tomorrow.
I love the military.
Anyway, I'm unemployed as of Midnight Romeo. Talking about government efficiency, by the way -- another government agency, which shall remain unnamed but with which I work through the military contract, cut off my access to their computer systems yesterday at midnight. No problem if y'all can't read a calendar: just remember that childhood ditty, "Thirty days hath May." Right.
So, I'm going on a brief vacation -- first one I've had in quite a little while. I've seasoned my camp dutch oven and grill, packed up my kit, and off I go for a few days on the Blue Ridge Parkway and the mountains thereby. Be back online by Sunday, or thereabouts, when I'll be blogging from the Great State of Georgia. I'd say, "I should be under contract again by then," but we'll just have to see.
Gentleman co-bloggers (and Cassidy, if she's a mind), feel free to entertain yourselves. You have the run of the hall.
Names of Campaigns
John Derbyshire wrote, a while ago now:
The Santorum business brought to the fore an outfit called "The Human Rights Campaign." You would never know from its name that this is a homosexualist lobbying organization. I have no problem with HRC's existence — homosexuals have as much right to organize and lobby as the rest of us — but I do have a problem with that name — viz., it's dishonest. The name of an organization ought to give some clue as to what the organization is for. Why don't they call themselves "The Homosexual Rights Campaign," or "The Campaign for Tolerance of Alternative Sexuality," or something like that? If they want to be a little more in-your-face, they could go for something with a defiant or humorous twist: "The Sodomite Sodality," perhaps. Don't they understand that this straining at bland respectability just makes them look shifty?As to which, Southern Appeal kindly points us to this story:
Readers, I have decided to launch a movement for the legalization of dog meat as a marketable foodstuff. My movement will be named: "The Campaign for Truth, Justice, Harmony and Peace." Everyone OK with that?
Dutch pedophiles are launching a political party to push for a cut in the legal age for sexual relations to 12 from 16 and the legalization of child pornography and sex with animals, sparking widespread outrage.I'd lampoon it, but it's been done three years in advance. Thanks, Derb.
The Charity, Freedom and Diversity party said on its Web site it would be officially registered Wednesday, proclaiming: "We are going to shake The Hague awake!"
Marines = Doctors
That's the lesson I'm forced to draw from Doc Russia's first post since becoming a doctor. It's a list of twenty-one lessons (or twenty-two) that he got in Med School which were the same as the lessons he learned in the Corps.
Number three is my favorite.
Especially one who puts the lie to the old saying about bringing a knife to a gunfight.
Yowza.
Memorial Day II
I want to wish everyone a fine, reflective Memorial Day. I encourage you to visit MilBlogs and BlackFive to enjoy the tributes there.
As for me -- I'm working today. :) So, my Memorial Day tribute will be to do my duty as a contractor, in service to the men in the field. My respects to them all, and those who have gone before.
A Memorial Day
Deuddersun came by in the comments below to warn us about an anti-Marine Corps site, posing as a tribute. Be warned.
Grim,Be warned. I suspect that the Marines will be the subject of more such in the near future. We should be on guard.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news on Memorial Day, but so be it. I recently visited my blog and while checking out my referrers (from my counter) I came across a url that begins with http://blog.myspace.com/index.cf...g.view&friend...
Following that link led me to a blog on mypace that appears to be a tribute to the Marine Corps. Every sentence or gif is linked to a site involved with, in some way, the Corps, whether they be Left or Right. Each link refers to one of our sites, yours, mine, Mike the Marines, fox news, even the Corps own official site. Each link also contains a nasty virus or worm. I cannot tell you how many hours I spent cleaning my machine. I notified myspace asap and threeatened legal action if they didn't remove the blog immediately. The sick bastard who built that site is neither Left nor Right, he/she just hates Marines. I suggest you check your own list of referrers, but DO NOT click on any link starting with the url I posted above. Just going to the site releases a nasty worm called Byte-Verify/execute. I don't know what else to do, but I do know that anyone visiting this site will be directed to ours and susequently infected. I have notified the Corps and sent them the entire url with a warning not to open it unless they can handle the havoc it unleashes. Likewise I will notify Mike the Marine.
It turns my stomach that some piece of shit would do this on Memorial Day. If you or any of your readers know of any other way to deal with this, please let me know. I'm not blogging much these days, too busy working, but my email works and comments can be left at my site under my last post.
I am sorry to have to make you aware of this on Memorial Day.
Best to you and yours. As always, I remain
Semper Fidelis
Always Faithfull
d.
Confront your shame and honor the heroes
The following articulates something I've sensed out of a lot of people over the past few years, and even 20 years ago when I enlisted.
There is something deeper, though. I think we resent the all-volunteer military. It is a constant rebuke to those of us who might have done more for our country, but decided not to. When the heroes are draftees, we can honor them for having risen above the misfortune of their low draft number. They lost the lottery, and still they thrived. The draftee is not different from us in the choices he made, he simply made the most of his bad fortune. We imagine we might have risen to the same challenge.
When our soldiers are volunteers, however, many of us are both mystified by the decision that they made and embarrassed that we did not make the same decision. We are ashamed by their heroism, because it reminds us of our own self-indulgence. We then compound the insult by not recognizing our own weakness and honoring the heroes in spite of it.
People do what they do for their own reasons, of course. It may not be weakness or self-indulgence. But then it just might be those things too.
Update: I confused Tigerhawk with Iowahawk. All fixed now.
Is this for real?
The Respect MP George Galloway has said it would be morally justified for a suicide bomber to murder Tony Blair.
I just don't have words vile enough to describe this sort of behavior.
Expectations
Soldier's Dad at MilBlogs has a short but outstanding post on what things were like in what are now the world's trouble spots when he was a soldier.
We are all confident that America's fighting forces are good, and on balance bring good to wherever they go. I've rarely seen it so concisely demonstrated, however. There is a chain of events in the region starting with the collapse of the USSR and leading through the Gulf War, 9/11, and our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. A great deal of the extraordinary positive change has been brought about by US involvement. It's easy, in the daily noise of our enemies and the negative press, to forget just how far we have come in a generation.
Hummingbirds
Purely a link for nature-lovers. My mother, believe it or not, sends. ("Why even Father Lonergan had a mother." "What'd you expect?!?")
Birth of a hummingbird. Be sure to click "Next Page" as you watch it.
Congress Gone
I'll buy some of these, too. What a disgrace. Is there a good way to turn out every single member of Congress, without electing anyone else to take their place?
On Dogs
I talked to Sovay a bit ago. She was complaining about James Dobson (sp?), whom she says is among the most important people in America.
"He said he had a dachshund pup who was sleeping by a warm radiator," she told me, "and he'd told the dog to move. But it was 'defiant,' so he picked up a switch and whipped it for an hour."
I'm not sure who this Dobson fellow is, but I hope he never comes down Georgia way if that story is true. Doing violence to a dog where I come from is the sort of offense that will get you in serious trouble.
Sovay was telling me about going to the dog park -- this is a nifty idea they have in Maryland that we should do more in various places, where you have in a public park a fenced-off section where the community's dogs can get together and run and play -- and a guy thought his dog was being knocked around by another. So he walked up to the other fellow's dog, picked it up, and threw it through the air.
"We all just left," she said. "He hasn't been back. Nobody was willing to deal with him after that."
I told her that, where I came from, if you picked up a man's dog and threw him through the air, you'd probably get yourself shot.
Sovay said she wouldn't murder anyone over such a thing.
"Not murder," I replied. "Where I come from, dogs are a part of the family."
Well, I suppose what matters in the end is that you achieve a common peace. If people understand the rules and abide by them, most of the time, I guess you've got what counts out of civilization.
All the same, I like our way better. You pick my dog or my child and throw him through the air, you'd best have your insurance paid.
But that's probably just me. I still think we should re-legalize duels.
Heroic Flags
We'd be better off if more folks thought like this:
Arriving early for my flight, I found myself grumpily grumbling about the hassle of airline security and as I struggled to get my metal-studded western belt back through those damned harder-to-reach loops and pull my boots back on, the thought blossomed in my brain momentarily, that given the opportunity, I would gladly don the uniform once again and join the mission to seek out and take out some of the terrorist bastards who were causing me this too early-in-the-day aggravation. As I proceeded down the concourse, I indulged myself with the thought of laying the sight blade of an automatic weapon on some Muj and sending his raggedy butt smoking off to Paradise for causing me to be sent through all this airport security: not exactly a balanced trade-off, I know, but hey, they started it.In response to Steve Schippert's excellent piece on fighting and politics, "Clint" wrote in to say:
While you may believe that the country has changed, the truth is that as the world becomes smaller, our perspective has become more broad. No longer are we restricted to the one-sided, self-preservating view of the world that you seem to admire.Damn right I admire it. The alternative to the 'self-preservating' view used to be called "suicide."
It is the ultimate and absolute evil, the refusal to take an interest in existence; the refusal to take the oath of loyalty to life. The man who kills a man, kills a man. The man who kills himself, kills all men; as far as he is concerned he wipes out the world. His act is worse (symbolically considered) than any rape or dynamite outrage. For it destroys all buildings: it insults all women. The thief is satisfied with diamonds; but the suicide is not: that is his crime. He cannot be bribed, even by the blazing stones of the Celestial City. The thief compliments the things he steals, if not the owner of them. But the suicide insults everything on earth by not stealing it. He defiles every flower by refusing to live for its sake. There is not a tiny creature in the cosmos at whom his death is not a sneer. When a man hangs himself on a tree, the leaves might fall off in anger and the birds fly away in fury: for each has received a personal affront.Every man is born to a flag. He ought to defend it, if it is a good flag; or destroy it, if it is a bad one. This business that 'we must understand that our flag isn't better than any other' is nonsense. It is our business to make it better than any other, or to rend it out of the world. That is the heroic life.
Why MacBeth
Blackfive, reaching out to try and understand a troubled young man.
There must be a word in Latin
Perhaps our Eric Blair can help us sort out the puzzle that Mark Steyn lays before us:
Meanwhile, Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, in a quintessentially McCainiac contribution to the debate, angrily denied the Senate legislation was an "amnesty." ... He has a point. Technically, an "amnesty" only involves pardoning a person for a crime rather than, as this moderate compromise legislation does, pardoning him for a crime and also giving him a cash bonus for committing it. In fact, having skimmed my Webster's, I can't seem to find a word that does cover what the Senate is proposing, it having never previously occurred to any other society in the course of human history.I think it occurred to Vortigern. I'm not sure, however, just what he called his policy of providing bonuses to Saxons who would "do the work Britons do not wish to do."
Bird Flu
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist says to make sure your will is up to date. On the other hand, Doc Russia says it's just a good time to check your emergency supplies. Both -- as of this weekend -- are medical doctors (Congrats, Doc!).
By coincidence, Kim du Toit has reposted his grab-and-go bag advice. And here's Doc's, on a first aid kit for lifesaving.
I am, myself, unconcerned with such things as living and dying. I have a son -- so long as he lives on after me, good enough. Still, I supply this information as a service to the readers.
GHMC: P-Wagon disc
There is, in retrospect, way too much to talk about with this movie. Anything you folks want to discuss, I'll be more than happy.
I'm just going to go into one aspect of the film: the way that the prophecy comes to pass, and what it says about the film's ideas on sin and virtue.
This is a question worth considering, because the film is steeped to a surprising degree in Christian ethics. It assumes an audience -- 1968 was almost the last time you could assume it -- that is equally familiar with the details of Christian ethics, and that will share the farmer wife's shock at the idea of a woman having a husband whose name she did not share. In addition, at the end the film resolves all the moral issues it raises in favor of the accepted mainstream Christian ethics of the day. In other words, it's not poking fun at Christianity. It's taking it quite seriously. Christianity isn't the joke: Christianity is the context that makes all the movie's jokes funny.
No-Name City's doom is foretold by the Parson, shortly after his arrival. He sees all the departures from mainstream Christian virtue (to name a few: polyandry, drunkeness in the streets, prostitution, gambling, Sabbath-breaking, etc). He arrives on the veranda of Ezra Atwell's hotel and gives his prophecy:
No-Name City!That is, of course, precisely what happens.
No-Name City!
The Lord don't like it here!No-Name City!
No-Name City!
You're reckoning day is near!No-Name City!
No-Name City!
Here's what he's gonna do:Swallow up this town,
And gobble it down,
And good-bye to you!
However, the first person to "sink into the pit!" is the Parson himself (although he finds Ben Rumson there to greet him -- "Welcome to hell!"). The two men have to escape from the bull while the city collapses around them, and the prophecy is re-sung with enthusiasm. The Parson's eventual fate is not shown -- he is last seen in a collapsing building -- but Ben Rumson escapes the chaos, afloat in a bathtub with one of the ladies of the evening.
Why would the Parson suffer a worse fate than Ben Rumson, who is among the chief sinners ("Go pray outside, Parson, where the Lord can hear you better")? There's nothing to indicate that the Parson is a hypocrite, which is the usual crime of religious figures in movies. He really seems to believe all the things he says. He really acts on the beliefs. He has the gift of prophecy; the Lord does indeed, in the film, carry out his threats.
It seems to be the case that the Parson is just damned annoying in his certainty.
That is to say, he is possessed of the sin of Pride. This is (so the Medievals thought) the worst of the deadly sins. Ben Rumson is without pride: he covets his own wife, but not so much that he won't share her with another husband. He loves to drink and fight and gamble, but he is wholly honest about the fact that he is a sinner -- his early conversation with Pardner lays out his sins as honestly as could be desired by the Biblical admonition to "confess yourselves to one another."
The Parson is virtuous, but sure of his virtue; and Ben Rumson is sinful, but honest about his sins ("A man has his creed; and mine is all greed," he sings, although in fact he's most generous with Pardner at every point). He does have some virtues -- he works hard, he faithfully keeps his bargains with Pardner and his wife. He honors the contract of marriage (according to his own understanding of it as "mining law") and also his proposed terms of partnership.
Is that why?
Or, alternatively, is it a restatement of the problem of the Book of Job: that virtuous living is no guarantee of success in this world? That suffering belongs to all men, even the best men, and that success or punishment in worldly affairs is not proof of the Lord's favor or disfavor in a larger sense?
Just like the Book of Job, the movie ends on a contradictory note. Rumson rides off into loneliness and the certainty of despair (his occasional "melancholy," as he calls it, he says is "a disease common among mountain men" -- as I can attest myself). Pardner, the best man in terms of traditional ethics, gets all the rewards, just as Job finds at the last that he is given rewards to more than make up for all his suffering.
The movie, if it is echoing Job, echoes it very well. We must not expect virtue to be rewarded and vice punished; and yet, virtue is rewarded and vice is punished. Yet there is no sense of hate or disdain for the honest sinner: Ben Rumson rides off, "pushing on to another wilderness," beloved by all he leaves behind.
Yeah, it's a grand, rollicking comedy. At times it celebrates vice and sin gleefully. Yet it presents us with a picture of genuinely moral men, within the real confines of human limitations. There's not an evil character in the entire film: not though they kidnap, brawl, booze, wench, steal, and eventually witness the divine destruction of their city.
HAHAHA
From Chinese Aggression Watch:
China has no covert agents in the United States trying to buy military gear on its behalf, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Thursday.Oh, that's beautiful! I'm wiping the free-running tears from my eyes, I'm laughing so hard. Outstanding joke! Well done!
"The so-called allegations that China is conducting intelligence collection on military or science and technology in the United States are purely fictitious," spokesman Liu Jianchao told a regular news conference.
Prosecution of Journalists
Attorney General Gonzales says that we may soon begin prosecuting journalists for revealing classified material. The vehicle is the Espionage Act of 1917, says the article, although in fact that law no longer exists as such, having undergone major revisions -- an oddly sloppy bit of writing. I wonder if it is intended to elide the laws which do exist today (18 USC 793 and 794) with the disreputable history of the actual Espionage Act, in order to color the debate about this.
That tendency to "color debate" through selective reporting and releases of secret information is, of course, the reason we've come to the point of considering prosecutions. The government has long winked at this sort of thing, recognizing that the American people are suspicious of attempts to crack down on the free press. Yet the tendentious reporting on GWOT efforts since 9/11, particularly in Iraq, has worn out the patience of many Americans. It appears that many journalists are willing to print anything that will help them color the debate to their desired shade, without regard for the damage to our national interest or the number of our fighting men who might be killed over it.
That said, I'm against these prosecutions, and won't -- should I be called to serve on a jury, which of course I shall not be -- agree to convict any journalist on these sections of the USC. I agree that we need to be cracking down on this business, but we need to be cracking down on those doing the leaks, not those doing the reporting.
There are two reasons for this.
The minor reason is that the Attorney General's reading of the law would make it a capital crime to publish information about troop movements.
Whoever, in time of war, with intent that the same shall be communicated to the enemy, collects, records, publishes, or communicates, or attempts to elicit any information with respect to the movement, numbers, description, condition, or disposition of any of the Armed Forces, ships, aircraft, or war materials of the United States, or with respect to the plans or conduct, or supposed plans or conduct of any naval or military operations, or with respect to any works or measures undertaken for or connected with, or intended for the fortification or defense of any place, or any other information relating to the public defense, which might be useful to the enemy, shall be punished by death or by imprisonment for any term of years or for life.Now, we all know that the enemy reads the newspapers. You could argue that it's not your intent that they should read what you write, but you know perfectly well that they'll read it. An application of this law to journalists would not simply target bad writing about the war -- which is the problem -- but almost all writing about it.
This includes the very best writing: the kind that supports the fighting men. Consider Michael Yon's calls of alarm from Afghanistan, which criticize government policy from the point of view of a man who desperately wants us to succeed. A lot of what he's written in the past concerns the "condition" or "disposition" of US forces -- as a term of law, that could mean his piece Gates of Fire, one of the finest pieces of war journalism to come out of Iraq. Yet it confirmed, if the enemy wished to know it, LTC Kurilla's injuries.
That's a capital crime, if Gonzales' reading of the law is correct.
Is it? We as citizens are entitled to form our own readings of the law -- indeed, it is a duty, and is itself a part of the lawful process. That's why we have juries in the first place: to determine whether the government is fairly applying the rule of law, and to prevent the law's misuse.
This brings us to the second reason. Gonzales' defense of his potential prosecutions is incoherent:
Yesterday, Gonzales said, "I understand very much the role that the press plays in our society, the protection under the First Amendment we want to promote and respect . . . but it can't be the case that that right trumps over the right that Americans would like to see, the ability of the federal government to go after criminal activity."Speaking as an American citizen with an interest in preserving or recapturing the rights endowed to free men by their Creator and secured by the Founders, that is not correct. If the free exercise of the press is a Constitutional right, then that exercise can't be criminal activity. It can be immoral, destructive, wasteful, hurtful, and bad, but it can't be against the law. The First Amendment doesn't say that you have a right to do things, unless they're illegal. It says Congress lacks the authority to make laws about those things at all.
It's a pre-emptive strike.
The kind of speech that the Founders most wanted to protect was political speech -- which includes the right, however deplorable the practice, to color the debate through bad reporting or slanted terms. Journalists can say whatever they want. Even if I think they should be beaten with sticks for it.
Not buying it? Consider this post at Euphoric Reality, called "Terrorism in South Texas." Now, I find the style of journalism here to be hideous -- consider the quick slide from "dirty bombs" to "IEDs," though "IEDs" being set off in America should be enough to convice you that it's serious; or consider the music that they play when they show the patch jacket. I don't like journalism that pitches at emotive responses instead of giving you the facts.
Nevertheless, I think this report is the "flip side" of the NSA report. Yet it's really only different from the NSA report in its intent. This intends to shore up a hole in US security; the NSA report intended to create one. Otherwise, they are not distinguishable.
The journalists in this case are guilty of a crime under Gonzales' reading of 18 USC 793, punishable by up to ten years in prison. They transmit the contents of classified US government documents relating to homeland security:
Whoever having unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted, or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it.... Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.Why would they do this? They do it to show us that there's a problem that needs attention. That there is a problem the government won't tell you about. A serious problem.
That's what the First Amendment is for.
Go after the leakers. The press is free. It needs to do its job better, but it isn't the function of the prison system to make it do so. You'll have to wait on the market.
Andersen Air Force Base & Apra Harbor, Guam;
Balad Air Base/Camp Anaconda, Iraq;
Bezmer Air Base, Bulgaria;
Diego Garcia, British Indian Ocean Territory;
Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba;
Manas Air Base, Kirgizstan
I note the following DoD press releases announcing the closing of logistics installations in Europe:
Bettembourg, Luxembourg
Hythe, United Kingdom
Eastcote and West Ruislip, United Kingdom.
Eygelshoven, Netherlands.
As the Roman Empire shifted troops off the Rhine to points east after the 1st Century AD in response to changing situations, so is the US shifting too.
Look for more of this in the coming years.
Lordi, the Finnish Heavy Metal band, has won the Eurovision song contest.
Heh.
Anybody know whatever happened to GWAR?
I say again, Heh.
Modern artillery. For Sale. In the USA.
Is this a great country, or what?
Rice Beer
Who'd have thought a German protest could improve my opinion of Budweiser?
IT IS brown-gold and alcoholic but, then, in the scathing verdict of German beer fans, so is paint thinner.Captain Ed joins in the condemnation of "Budricer," but -- not so fast, says I.
The Germans are furious that Budweiser will be the official tipple for the World Cup, which starts next month. The American lager has secured a near-monopoly of beer sales inside World Cup stadiums and within a 500m radius of the grounds, supplanting more than 1,270 domestic breweries.
And what most upsets the fans is that Budweiser — advertised as the “King of Beers” in the US — fails to meet the ancient German standards for purity, which stipulate that beer can be brewed only from malt, hops and water. Budweiser uses rice in its production process and therefore does not qualify as a beer in the German sense.
When I lived in HangZhou, China, we bought beer the way you used to buy milk: the local store had a fresh shipment from the local brewery every day, and you returned your used bottles and got the day's supply. They gave you a deposit back on the bottles, and took them back to refill them for tomorrow. The water wasn't clean, so you either drank (imported) bottled water, or local beer. The poor had to boil their water to get by, but the real problem wasn't biologicals, it was pollution -- and that you can only get out by filtering, which is part of the process in producing a lager.
(An aside -- we bought milk, too, but China largely doesn't "do" refrigeration. Thus, meats are usually either fresh-killed or, more often, dried or otherwise preserved; and the milk was powdered. I used to buy a kind that had a picture of a Holstein cow on the front, and advertised in their best attempt at English: "Free contaminated milk.")
Every city in China has its own local brewery, and the local brewery in HangZhou makes what is called XiHu Pijiu -- that is, "West Lake Beer," named after the lake by the city where Song dynasty poets and Emperors would lounge. This stuff was made not just partly, but largely with rice (and what would you expect?).
The first time I had it, I thought it was horrid.
The second time, not so bad.
But by the end of our several months there, I'd come to like it quite a bit. I'd buy it today, if it were shipped overseas at all.
I haven't had a Budweiser (as opposed to Bud Light, which I drink sometimes) in quite a few years. I might have to give it another shot.
Idiot
What kind of an idiot could actually believe that Marines were begging for food in Iraq? We've seen a lot of evidence of a complete breakdown in connection between the military life, and the so-called "elite" of the Blue states. I've never seen a clearer example than this, though.
Our fighting men may be tired, lonely, oppressed by media hostility and regulations that govern their every move, but they aren't hungry. If anything, we go a little overboard in the other direction. At I MBC, I listened to Specialist Mike Moriarty of the War Tapes talking about guarding a convoy that turned out to be refrigerated trucks of ice cream and cheesecake. "I love ice cream. I love cheesecake," he said. "But if it means guarding fewer convoys every month..."
Curses
People use the term, "he cursed him out" only in the informal modern fashion. We tend to forget that it has a real, formal and ancient meaning.
Doc Russia calls a formal curse on the head of a former Marine. You won't see this often.
Tal Afar
An Iraqi mayor stood before troops lined up on the lawn at Fort Carson on Friday morning and said only two words in English.Hat tip Andi at MilBlogs. Speaking of hats, check out the Stetson on the Colonel.
But those two words brought the crowd to its feet.
"Thank you."
It was a telling gesture from Tal Afar Mayor Najim Al Jibouri, who spoke for about 20 minutes in his native tongue praising the 3rd Armored Cavalry for saving his city from certain ruin....
"Are you truly my friends?" he asked through a translator. "Yes. I walk a happier man because you are my friends. You are the world to me. I smell the sweet perfume that emanates from your flower of your strength, honor and greatness in every corner of Tal Afar. The nightmares of terror fled when the lion of your bravery entered our city."
Trophy Pic
I've spent part of the week cutting stumps out of the ground with a mattock and an axe. I've only had my free (i.e. non-work, non-blogging) time to devote to this, and my little boy has been "helping me," but in spite of those problems I've managed to cut out six stumps in the last couple of days.
The boy did finally find a way really to be helpful, which was to haul off the smaller stumps in his Radio Flyer wagon. His mother thought it was so darling she had to get a picture. I don't trouble you with boy pictures much, but I was proud of him. So, here he is, working with his father. Still only three, and hauling stumps around like a lumberjack.
MM
FbL, standing in at Villanous Company, reminds us that Merchant Marine day is coming up on Monday, 22 May. In honor of Grim's Hall friend JarHeadDad, I'd like to pass on the celebratory wishes.
Also, the song in comment #2, which is outstanding.
Heave Ho! My Lads! Heave Ho!I've never heard this song, but I can tell it's a rollicking piece by the look of it. Maybe JHD will sing it for us, and I'll put it up as a Grim's Hall podcast.
VERSE
Give us the oil, give us the gas
Give us the shells, give us the guns.
We'll be the ones to see them thru.
Give us the tanks, give us the planes.
Give us the parts, give us a ship.
Give us a hip hoo-ray!
And we'll be on our way.
CHORUS
Heave Ho! My Lads, Heave Ho!
It's a long, long way to go.
It's a long, long pull with our hatches full,
Braving the wind, braving the sea,
Fighting the treacherous foe;
Heave Ho! My lads, Heave Ho!
Let the sea roll high or low,
We can cross any ocean, sail any river.
Give us the goods and we'll deliver,
Damn the submarine!
We're the men of the Merchant Marine!
GREAT COUNTRY MUSIC
While I am making music recommendations I will also mention Dale Watson’s newest CD, “Whiskey or God.” This CD is also a must have. This is another CD without a bad song. If you buy this CD you are getting more than your money’s worth.
Do yourself a favor and check out these artists.
MilBlogs
Greyhawk at the Mudville Gazette is the founder of the MilBlogs Ring. He's started a new group blog which he describes as "The Corner" for MilBlogs. It's almost certainly needless to say it, but the reference is to National Review's charter blog, where their writers chat and present ideas in a boozy less formal way than their lengthy pieces.
I gather from Mrs. Greyhawk's comments that they're aiming at keeping up that "less formal" spirit.
PYW Confirmed
Apparently I'm not the only one who would enjoy watching this movie again. How's this weekend sound for everyone? Is that enough time to see it, and aim for a discussion on Monday?
Grim's Hall Movie Club
I believe it's time for another movie. Unless anyone has a better suggestion -- which has happened -- I'd like to propose Paint Your Wagon. Although a comedy (and a musical!), it is an insightful movie about the human condition. Starring Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood as gold miners on the Western frontier, it treats the rise and fall of civilization, the problems of men and women, marriage and polygamy, sin and virtue, and a number of other topics.
In addition to which, it's a tremendously funny movie. It can inspire serious thought -- I wrote about it once in regard to insurgent propaganda -- but it will also inspire a few good laughs. That might be just the ticket, this time. Our last two choices have been serious, heroic movies, and perhaps we need a break.
I'm glad to entertain alternative suggestions. One of the movies we'll have to do soon, I think, is Tombstone.
France M Perfidy
All you need to know about France, ever, from the Ministry of Minor Perfidy.
AL Karpins
AL at Winds of Change had lunch with Janice Karpinski. He wrote me beforehand to ask if I had any questions I wanted asked, kind fellow that he is. I have to admit I had little useful advice to offer -- he seemed to know what needed to be asked before he turned up at my door.
He did good, too. If you haven't seen his post, you'll want to see it.
2FR
What no enemy could do, the Pentagon has done. 2nd Force Recon is standing down.
I never thought I'd live to see that. It proves the objection made against JF Kerry's campaign promise to increase special operations forces, though: there are only so many men who can live up to that standard. To make a new SOCOM unit, even the USMC had to resort to cannibalism.
Immigration
I have only two comments on Bush's major address on immigration, neither of which are very enlightening. Still, for what it's worth:
1) Bush is right to say that securing the border is a primary duty of a nation. If we cannot control the border, we have no right to the territory. We can, of course; it's just a question of how. More Border Patrol is part of it, but I think we also need to engage the citizens more. We are seeing that, both in the Minutemen and in the use of the civilian posse. These are trends that I think will continue, and increase, and that the government will have to learn to accept -- and ought to learn to embrace.
2) As regards illegals being offered amnesty-lite: Bush said one thing that I thought was insightful. Normally, when we use the phrase "pay your debt to society," it's purely a figure of speech -- indeed, a very misleading one. There is nothing in going to prison that pays your debt to society. Just the opposite: society is harmed again by having to feed you, house you, pay for your medical care, and pay for professional guards to watch you. Going to prison doesn't pay your debt to society at all. You leave prison owing society more than ever before.
This is one reason I totally oppose the idea of restoring felon voting rights, which seems to be an idea being touted in certain circles. They haven't paid their debts to society by serving their time. They haven't paid at all.
Now, an illegal immigrant who has avoided prison -- who has paid his taxes, or can and will pay up on his back-taxes -- who has not otherwise caused trouble -- that's a case of someone who might be in a position to "pay his debt" for breaking the law. It might make sense to accept that idea -- if the punitive measure Bush proposes is real enough, and assuming he does go to the "back of the line" behind those who've obeyed the rules.
All that said, point #1 is the first order of business.
FT Iran
I'm a little discomfited by finding all these MSM reports agreeing with me on the subject. Nevertheless, I can't see where the analysis is wrong.
WTF Hyde?
What would we tell a member of a foreign legislature who said that Bush should be blocked from giving a state speech in their nation, because he visits Arlington?
The controversial visits of Junichiro Koizumi to Yasukuni shrine may jeopardise a planned inervention by the Japanese prime minister to Congress during his upcoming visit to the United States. An American MP has asked Koizumi for assurance that he will stop visiting the shrine as a pre-condition for making a speech to a joint session of Congress at the end of June.It's true that Tojo is honored there, but the Yasukuni war shrine is hardly a shrine to Tojo alone. It's a shrine to all Japan's fighting men who have died in her wars since the Meiji restoration in 1867. A visit to the shrine isn't a celebration of Pearl Harbor, but a necessary civic function: honoring those who have believed in your nation, and upheld her cause. Any nation must be able to do that, if it is to be a healthy nation. A people should be able to mourn the destruction of war, while honoring the courage of their fighters and the sacrifice of those who served.
The request was made by Henry Hyde (82) in a letter addressed to the Speaker of the house, Dennis Hastert. “Without this assurance, the visit of Koizumi to Capitol would dishonour the place where Franklin Roosevelt made his famous ‘Day of Infamy’ speech, the day after the surprise attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbour (December 1941).” Hyde said “a speech by Koizumi to Congress is welcome because it is made by a representative of the one of the most loyal allies of the United States”. But, he added, “for the generation that remembers Pearl Harbour, a visit by Koizumi to Yasukuni after his speech to Congress would be an affront”. One of the war criminals venerated there is Hideki Tojo, who was prime minister when Japan attacked the United States. Hastert has not yet replied to the MP’s letter.
It would be as if Germany refused to let Bush address their legislature because he visited Arlington, where a few men are buried who partook in the firebombings of Dresden. Do not five decades of peace and friendship soothe, at last, these wounds?
We have fought and beaten both Japan and Germany, and that was long ago. We have also raised them up, and helped them to their feet; and they have been, for more than a generation, allies. Their political systems, once authoritarian, are ever greater democracies -- even the Japanese system, still dominated by a single-party, seems to be approaching the point that a multi-party system will break through. It will not happen in this election, but it seems likely to happen soon.
If we insist on eternal shame from these nations -- if we will not let them honor their patriots, because some among those patriots were our enemies -- how will they ever be capable allies? We carry the main part of the burden of defending the free world. Partly that is because Germany remains ashamed, and its institutions and culture look on the military with horror. Japan, too, is only now beginning to recover its spirit. Even limited to "self-defense" forces legally unable to protect themselves, it has provided loyal friends and support troops in Iraq.
It seems to me we may need allies in the years ahead, with the spirit to fight a new war. We may yet need to defend the ideas of democracy. Iran's letter said that "Those with insight can already hear the sounds of shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic systems." If they are not indeed to shatter and fall, men must hold them up. American men and British men fight together in that cause, though the British still wear the red coats in their dress uniforms. Japanese men should also be allowed to honor their fighting ancestors, though they were sometimes our foes. We should be able to shake hands with the descendants of the samurai, put aside past differences, and meet our common enemies.
It is time to bury old disputes. There are enough new fights in the world, and the thing that really divided us from Japan and Germany -- the difference between democracy and fascism -- is long gone. Let them honor their war dead, and perhaps remember the virtues as well as the vices of those who went before.
Wrechard III
This continues to be a discussion I want to bring back to the front. Karrde mentions that he wonders how long it will be before the catastrophic collapse of the surviving models finally happens. When will it be unavoidably obvious that we cannot continue? No one knows.
There is another matter at least as important, however: where the next models will come from. Daniel and Wretchard point directly to the answer. They come from tradition.
Wretchard's quote -- from 1 Kings 19 -- is more telling than mine on this particular point. It's not just that Elijah was in need of a vision. It's that he went back to the beginning to find it. He went back to the place where his tradition began: the place where the Ten Commandments were handed down. The answer to the question, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" is never given by the man himself: but it was a good question. Why have you returned to the beginning of things?
At Gettysburg, Lincoln returned us to the beginning: "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." He went with us back to the beginning. What he found there was new strength, but also a new charge that was not imagined by the Founders.
I wonder what we will find there.
This New NSA Story
I've been thinking about this for some time, having first read the Froggy pieces and the piece by Kim du Toit. This is my understanding of the issues involved. I'm happy to invite anyone to explain why I'm wrong, as I am not a lawyer (but several of you are), nor a privacy activist (though at least one of you seems primed to become one soon).
1) The Fourth Amendment protects the right of the people to be secure in their "persons, houses, papers, and effects" from unreasonable search and seizure.
2) However, a person is free to turn over their papers, etc., if they wish.
3) The state of the law has been updated with the times to reflect new technologies, including telephones.
4) The right being protected, however, remains a personal right. You have a right to be free from such searches as regards things you own. You own your telephone, and you own the words you say into it. These things are protected, and the government cannot "search" them without lawful processes.
5) You do not own the records of your phone calls. That is proprietary information of your phone company. Somewhere in your user agreement, their right to collect such information and their ownership of same is explained.
6) The government is not asserting that it has a right to that information. It is not ordering anything be handed over. It is merely asking the phone company if they would mind if they, the government, looked at their proprietary information.
7) As per point 2, the company is free to turn over its papers if it wishes. Many companies have wished to do so, on the grounds that it's usually a good business decision to comply with government requests if you don't have a pressing reason not to do so.
8) Therefore, there is no possibility that this program is either illegal or unConstitutional. It violates no one's Fourth Amendment rights, and it does not violate privacy either because a person -- by agreeing to the collection of the information, even though the terms were 'in the fine print' -- has no reasonable expectation of privacy.
9) However, if it bothers you, you are free to negotiate a different agreement with a different company. Internet service providers already exist whose claim to fame is that they don't keep records and/or will otherwise protect your secrets. There's no reason phone companies can't exist on the same terms. Such plans will probably cost more, as the company is letting to of a valuable piece of property in return -- its marketing abilities based on the collection of that data -- but you get what you pay for.
Is there any point in that reasoning chain that is wrong?
A revelation
I remember reading of Tolkien that he thought Shakespeare marked the point at which the English language was ruined. I always thought that was one of those charming stories that couldn't possibly be true -- that even if Tolkien had said it, he was probably joking -- until I took a moment to examine my bookshelves tonight. I was looking for something to read on an evening when I've decided I've done as much work as I can.
I do not own, I realized to my shock, a single work by Shakespeare. No, not even a textbook from college. I don't own any movies or recordings of his plays or poetry. I've seen quite a few of Shakespeare's plays in my time, and I've always liked them. Somehow, though, I never wanted any.
Now, probably lots of people don't own books by Shakespeare -- nothing wrong with that. Lots of people probably prefer detective stories, which I can certainly understand. But here are some things I do own, and have read:
1) The entire surviving corpus of Old English poetry, and most of the corpus of Old English period, mostly in translation but much of it in the Old English as well. These are accompanied by Old English grammars and dictionaries, to help me sort through it.
2) Several collections of Middle English poetry. These are in the original Middle English, which I can read just fine.
3) Several collections of Old Norse poetry and sagas, mostly in translation some in the original Norse. With grammars and dictionaries, per 1.
4) The histories of Saxo Grammaticus and Snorri Sturlason, in translation.
5) The histories of Bede and Geoffrey of Monmouth.
6) Copies of both the Caxton and Winchester manuscripts of Sir Thomas Malory's Arthurian writings.
That's just a start. Yet Shakespeare didn't make the cut. I do have a copy of the King James Bible, which is from the same period, but in a high version of early Modern English. In any event, maybe Tolkien really did believe it. It's a prejudice I guess I share, without having noticed it until now.
Whispers
Jordan asked what I meant by the post below, responding to Wretchard. I am moving my response to the front page, because it probably deserves to be here.
That [i.e., her assertion that dialogue is increasingly futile] is part of it: that we've come to a point at which we are, both sides, wasting our breath. But why should it be so?There are many other breaking models of this type. I suspect more will occur to you.
The way the human mind thinks about complicated, complex problems is that it attacks them in stages. It is very difficult to sit down and think out a solution to, say, the problem of terrorism; or of how to achieve relatively large degrees of international peace and stability. These aren't questions you solve over your morning coffee.
What most people do is that they first study generalized models that have been developed by recognized experts; then they study the history and current events surrounding the problem; and then they try to fit the modern event to the historic model. If you're thinking about the problem of international peace, you might study a few different models that have been developed and choose between them, or try to synthesize them: say the Kissenger model, and the UN model.
I believe we're coming to a point at which our models are breaking.
Take the UN model. I think a lot of people are deeply, emotionally committed to the idea. They either refuse to see the flaws in it, or they assert that they are flaws of execution: that the UN could be reformed, improved. The real problems are basic.
1) The UN proposes to outlaw war except in self-defense, which means that only the worst sorts of wars can be "legally" fought -- wars where your enemy has been allowed to prepare, and you have counter-prepared.
2) The UN assumes a moral equality of states, and that states -- and not individual people -- are the creatures with rights that must be protected. Both propositions are fundamentally wrong. They cannot be rescued.
3) The UN requires, at the level of the Security Council, unanimity to act. Such unanimity has never been achievable. It creates negotiation death-spirals on every problem, which means that every problem worsens over a period of months or years until someone finally "breaks the rules" and deals with it.
So the UN model is broken; what replaces it? And how do you convince the people who are so deeply tied to it that it must be abandoned -- that they must start anew, looking for new ways to think about these problems?
Take another example, so you'll see that I'm talking about a major chain problem rather than an isolated problem. Consider the question of whether al Qaeda-type organizations should be treated as combatants, or criminals.
The argument of the criminal-method say that they feel treating terrorists under the Geneva Conventions does them more honor than they deserve; that they are not deserving of status as soldiers (which the Conventions do not assert -- yet this is a deep-set misunderstanding that will not be easily removed) nor even combatants, but that they are "mere" criminals.
Advocates of the alternative position point out that "mere" criminals have a huge host of rights and protections; and that criminals are a different order and type of problem anyway. A criminal may be a parasite, but he's at least attached to the civilization on which he is parasitic.
The terrorist seeks to destroy the civilization. It is nonsense to treat the two problems as if they were the same, or to extend the protections of civilization to people who will only use those protections as part of a war against its foundations.
Yet there are legal structures in place that make it difficult to even have the conversation, or to make necessary changes. For one thing, many states (not the US) have signed a later addition to the Geneva Conventions, one that actually does extend many POW protections to terrorists and other militants. That means that making an attempt to treat terrorists "under the Conventions" won't fix the problem at the international level -- and the international level is indispensible to the fight against these kinds of groups.
Meanwhile, within the US, the SCOTUS has ordered that all such things be handled through the Federal Courts where such courts operate. Fixing that requires a new SCOTUS ruling, or a Constitutional amendment. Either requires moving the whole society to a point of consensus on the issue -- one that isn't going to come through argument, because people are arguing based on the old models to which they remain attached.
These models are broken. They don't speak to the problems we face. They can no longer serve us. Their proposals do not aid us; the understandings of issues that they suggest are wrong. They move us away from the truth, and the things we need to be able to think and say and do.
This is what I mean by the poetic reference. These models are like the ghosts of the old kings, who "grew greyer and greyer, less and less." Yet we grasp at them wildly, for our whole understanding is based on them.
When that breaks, at last, there will be a time beyond words. 9/11 was such a time for some of us: a time when we looked at the smoke, and realized that everything we thought we understood about the world was wrong.
It is increasingly clear that most people did not have that experience. Another such event will be needed -- increasingly, it looks like it will be the Iranian bomb. It might be something else. We will cling to the old models until a heavier blow breaks them. Words are wasted, because even the arguments being had between advocates of models, NEITHER of which apply.
This is what Wretchard means when he points out that the people who are accustomed to trafficking in thought are disrupted. The thoughtful ones see that the models on which their very thoughts are based have ceased to serve them. But no new models exist.
Under those circumstances, words are wasted. We must act as we can, using only the facts, and whatever weapons we find to hand.
We are, for the moment, in a time without models. We have no old kings to guide us. We must simply fight for the ground on which we stand, and wait for the vision to come.
Weapons
The New York Review of Books has an excellent piece on the development of nuclear weapons by various countries. Israel's program offers particular insights for our current difficulties with Iran:
In the late 1950s, with French assistance, the Israelis had begun to construct a large reactor in the Negev and a facility for processing the fuel rods needed to make plutonium. Then, in 1959, De Gaulle became president of France and said French assistance could continue only if Ben-Gurion gave public assurance that the reactor would be used solely for peaceful purposes. This he did, while knowing full well that the reactor was going to be used to make plutonium for nuclear weapons. The reactor was completed in 1963. During this time the Israelis and the Americans engaged in a kind of theater of the absurd. The Americans demanded inspections and the Israelis came up with one ingenious maneuver after another to avoid them. For example, the Americans were informed that the nuclear complex at Dimona was a textile factory. Before he was assassinated, President Kennedy and his experts came close to a finding that a nuclear reactor was being used to make plutonium. The Israelis went on maintaining the fiction that they had not manufactured nuclear weapons. What brought an end to this farce was the testimony of an immigrant Moroccan Jew named Mordechai Vanunu.The piece also looks at a number of more recent nuclear programs, and says that the one central fact about all of them is this: they all went undetected by intelligence services.
In 1977, after a short course in the essentials of atomic weapons production, Vanunu got a job as manager in the graveyard shift at the nuclear plant, working between 11:30 PM and 8:00 AM. Vanunu's clearance gave him access to all levels of secure sites at the plant, including those in which materials that might be used for a hydrogen bomb were manufactured. Vanunu was a political activist who attended rallies at which both Communists and Arabs were present. He was warned not to involve himself in such political matters, but he kept on doing so until 1985, when he was fired. He went to London with his story of Israel's nuclear program and photographs to back it up. These were published in the London Sunday Times and created a sensation. Vanunu was lured to Rome by a young woman, an Israeli agent, and kidnapped by the Mossad; he was taken back to Israel where he spent the next seventeen years in prison, partly in harsh solitary confinement. He is now living under tight security in Israel. It was clear from what he revealed, Richelson writes, that Israel, which has been making nuclear weapons for decades, has a very considerable and varied nuclear arsenal.
Who Are They
Heidi's got a movie she'd like you to see, called "Who are they?" It examines the lives of some remarkable men, who crossed the border in searing heat, to do jobs that others don't want to do.
How's that new pistol working out, Heidi?
Changes
Wretchard has a warning and a prophecy.
The foliage, sounds, the shift in airs, scents -- all of these -- spoke to them as directly as words in a book, though I scarcely imagined how. Later I discovered that psychologist Julian Jaynes had advanced the theory of the bicameral mind, which helped explain what I'd seen. His book, the Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind suggests that our ancestors were instructed by voices and visions. They understood through a process of unconscious thinking as perhaps the Mangyans still do. Nature spoke to them, and they heard....It is true what he says. I have felt it myself. I think there is an ending of things, which the bumper sticker of the post below makes clear: a point at which thought can carry us no farther. When it seems rational to make such a claim, as it increasingly does to increasing numbers, we may be coming to a time beyond words.
My own hunch is that in the last two or three months there's been a change in the tone of the blogosphere. Nothing definite, simply a change in atmosphere in proportion to the degree of abstract tendencies of the blogger. Authors who trafficked in ideas and concepts have altered the most.... The old play is ending and yet the new one has not yet begun. And this bothers abstract intellectuals far more than it does the men in the field. A soldier can write with perfect conviction that "the world was a slightly better place every time I pulled the trigger" because he lives in a world of specificity, but the agonized thinker can find no such comfort in cold abstractions; abstractions now in need of repair under the weight of experience.
Wretchard ends with the Old Testament, as he prefers to do. I shall end as I prefer, with the Ballad of the White Horse.
And the great kings of WessexSo it is, in the time between whispers. Yet, in the ballad as in the Bible, that was only the beginning: the vision was set to come.
Wearied and sank in gore,
And even their ghosts in that great stress
Grew greyer and greyer, less and less,
With the lords that died in Lyonesse
And the king that comes no more.
Bumper Stickers
Here's one I saw driving around northern Virginia the other day.
Germans Supported Their Troops, Too.Obviously?Good Germans supported their troops--and their President--until the end of the war. Any similarities? This, like all our other NO RIBBON items, aren't against American soldiers, obviously...
What seems obvious to me is that the sticker suggests that American soldiers are like Nazis... and those who support them, are also Nazis.
There are words fit to reply to such an assertion, but they aren't suitable for a family website.
Well, at least the sticker makers are clear about their sentiments:
The best liberal, democratic, and fun political bumper stickers, buttons, badges, magnets, t-shirts, goodies, and toys anywhere!You think that's fun? Is that how it seems to you?
Indy * Iran
A couple of updates on the developing situation there:
From the Voice of America, and...
From The Australian.
It's not clear why the Indonesian proposal for a 'more representative' world body makes sense. Precisely why should countries which have not managed to work out the science on nuclear power be involved in the discussion of who should have nuclear power? Why should nations which have not worked out the basics of human rights be permitted to do so?
Well, as the Iranian president says, "If somebody points weapons at your face and tells you to speak out, will you do that? Some countries have bad ethics, and of course they are very arrogant."
I think Iran's in a wholly defensible position, refusing to cooperate with us because we are negotiating under the threat of force. That's perfectly understandable. I don't like to be threatened either.
Nevertheless, the threat remains. We can not accept a nuclear Iran. They must, then, choose: surrender, or fight. I'll respect them if they make the decision to fight, but we're still going to have to fight.
A Funny Joke
Joatmoaf responds to a Cassidy post with one of the best jokes I've heard in ages:
Moishe Reads an Arab NewspaperI think we can all appreciate that joke, these days.
A Jewish man was riding on the NY subway reading an Arab newspaper. A friend of his notices this strange phenomenon. Very upset, he approaches the newspaper reader.
"Moishe, have you lost your mind? Why are you reading an Arab newspaper?"
Moishe replied, "I used to read the Jewish newspaper, but what did I find? Jews being persecuted, Israel being attacked, Jews disappearing through assimilation and intermarriage, Jews living in poverty. So I switched to the Arab newspaper. Now, what do I find? Jews own all the banks, Jews control the media, Jews are all rich and powerful, Jews rule the world. The news is so much better!"
DB Kim
Kim du Toit has an excellent post on how massive databases are developed and used. I hadn't realized he was such an expert on the topic, but he is. It's a good read, to go with the posts by Froggy two items down.
There's quite a debate in the comments of Froggy's second post, by the way. That's good, although I'm a little astonished at Allan's remarkable suggestion that former-SEAL/Special Agent Froggy is part of UBL's fifth column. OSO has some interesting objections that are worth reading.
At this poing in the debate, reading these things is important not to verify what you already believe, but to inform yourself for the slog forward. There are three separate questions, and if you read these posts you'll be in a better position to think about all of them:
1) How, and how well, would such a system work?
2) What rights and protections apply to each part of the process?
3) Is the program legal, and if not, should it be?
You'll be smarter about all of that if you read those links.
Lawn Mowing Prop
Here's an idea I have to reduce American reliance on oil, reduce air polution, reduce noise polution, and generally improve American life. Let's ban gasoline lawn mowers.
A small engine may not use much gas to mow your lawn, but consider how much gasoline it takes to mow every lawn in America. If we saved all of that gasoline, it would produce a small but noteworthy drop in American fuel consumption. Reducing demand, we'd reduce the price of gasoline at the pump.
More, the lawn mowing needs doing mostly during the summertime. That's when gas prices are usually highest. So, this ban would improve pump prices at the most critical moment.
Similarly, gasoline lawn mowers are very noisy, and spew foul-smelling vapor. All those problems, solved at a stroke! American neighborhoods would be quieter, happier, and better-smelling.
There are two objections I can think of: first, won't mowing with a manual rotary mower be a pain? And second, what about the landscaping industry? Wouldn't this destroy them?
In answer to the first point, I can say that I used a manual rotary mower last year, and found it to be as good as any power mower. It takes just a little more physical effort, and the blades do have to be sharpened on occasion, but the cut is as clean as or cleaner than you get with a 4.5 horsepower mower. The process of mowing is more enjoyable, because your arms aren't being vibrated off, and you don't have to wear hearing protection.
In addition, the slight increase in physical effort would help address our obesity problem here in America. Not to mention any names, but I can think of a few people who would't be hurt by a slight increase in their physical exercise.
As to the landscaping industry, we would have to give a moment's thought to its protection. I suggest a buy-back program for their gasoline mowers, whereby we provide them with a small number of rotary mowers based on the size of the mower they're turning in. Yes, this would be expensive the first year, but after that we'd be free of the gasoline lawnmower menace forever.
The landscapers, meanwhile, would find that those people who weren't willing to undertake the slight extra work would provide them with new clients, thus increasing the size and power of their industry. More jobs, too!
We could have all these social benefits for only the small cost of helping the landscaping industry retool. Less dependence on foreign oil, lower gas prices, less air polution, less noise pollution, less obesity, and more jobs! That's quite a list of things we could get in trade for the evil lawn mower -- who knew it was such a parasite on our culture?
Well, now you know. Write your representatives today.