Well, the immigration bill is back. The fact that like 70% of Americans across the electorate hate it? That means nothing to those elected to, er, represent Americans.
BloodSpite, who has been leading a charge against the bill, has a new post on the subject. I'll just say this: I can't support any bill of this sort. I can see why we might want to allow Mexican immigration to continue at roughly the same levels we've seen -- we can't afford a failed Mexican state, and US cash is propping up its economy. Even by the lowest estimates, we're talking billions of dollars.
It's enough money, and enough of an influence, that former President Fox regularly referred to the same people we call "illegal immigrants" as "heroes."
The problem is that these amnesty bills don't recognize that our real reason for allowing this isn't a desire for immigrants, but a desire not to see Mexico collapse and have to deal with the fallout. As a result, any bill dealing with the issue needs to address that reality:
1) We need strong border controls. This is partially to ensure that we do have control of the border, which is the duty of a sovereign state. It is also a hedge against the possibility that Mexico fails in spite of our efforts to float them; and to deal with the criminal gangs already flourishing because of Mexican government weakness.
2) We need any "Z" type visa to permanently forbid the holder from ever pursuing US citizenship.
The reason for this is that we're allowing essentially unrestricted movement, in order to protect Mexico from collapse. In return for allowing them to export their poorest to us, and receive large sums of hard currency in return, we should be able to recognize that what we are doing is not "immigration as usual" but an emergency aid program.
That's fine -- I don't really hold it against anyone that they snuck across the border for work to feed his family, any more than I would hold stealing bread against a poor man. Somewhat less, in fact, since the guy is ready to work and work hard for the bread.
However, we're accepting them at a speed and level that we can't assimilate. In return for being allowed to come here and get the work they want and need, they should be willing to declare that their alliegiance remains to Mexico, and forgo voting in US elections. We should also change the law addressing citizenship to undo "birthright" citizenship, and instead do what almost all other nations do, and restrict citizenship to the children of citizens, plus those who lawfully nationalize.
If we do that, the immigration problem becomes a lot more tractable. We can start to address the real issues underlying the problem, without the fear and worry that makes up so much of the debate. Americans are worried, quite understandably, that their nation is being overrun, and will be deeply changed at the ballot box by people who came here in violation of the law. They don't want new citizens who felt no obligation to obey the law and the social contract from the start.
That seems reasonable to me. Make those changes -- seriously secure the border, and remove the path to citizenship -- and the rest we can talk about.
Not Dead Yet
In praise of geeks
I don't pay attention to what Sock Puppet says either, but since it made InstaPundit:
Glenn Greenwald gets around, eventually, to making two points, One is that I'm a geek, whose interest in Western culture's retreat from traditional ideas of masculinity is thus silly:I've got two things to say about that. First, Sock Puppet is an "any stick" kind of guy. If you complain about it, it's silly because you're a geek, and he thinks geeks aren't manly. If I complain about it, he'd say, "But Grim is a gun-toting right-winger who actually wears a cowboy hat. Of course he thinks the country is going too soft."Glenn Reynolds -- who, by his own daily admission, devotes his life to attending convention center conferences on space and playing around with new, cool gadgets in the fun room in his house, like a sheltered adolescent in his secret treehouse club -- to fret: "Are we turning into a nation of wimps?"But, see, that's the point. I'm a geek. I I notice it, it's probably real. It would be like Greenwald complaining that the country was going overboard in hatred of Bush.
Second, maybe SP needs to meet another Geek I know. Could be he's not operating with all the necessary information.
mmm
Ground hog burgers. Sounds great to me too, Huck.
And what do you mean, man, that you were 'awoken' at noon? Even my wife is out of bed by eleven. :)
USMC MA
There's obviously been a change in focus since I last looked into military martial arts. I mean, who ever expected to hear a Marine sergeant say something like this:
I am proud to be part of a program that teaches people of all ages and backgrounds how to protect themselves in a non-lethal way from the enemy.Nonlethal? I thought that meant you were doing it wrong.
It's not just the Marines -- the army has switched to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu as its martial arts form, in order to cut down on training injuries. The reason it cuts down on training injuries is that it's a form of jujitsu that was redesigned for tournament fighting. It is, in other words, safe -- for your opponent as well as yourself.
There might be reasons, of course, why you'd want to take someone alive -- particularly in COIN warfare. I understand that.
Still...
Master Ken Caton, formerly USMC Sergeant Ken Caton, was my teacher of jujitsu; he studied under Wally Jay, who turns 90 this year. I remember clearly something he told his students, who eventually became my students:
"What we're doing here is shorthand," he would say. "We can't do everything in the dojo that you need to do in real life. This art was designed by samurai, though, who never intended to leave an enemy alive.
"If you're ever out there and you get someone in an armbar lock, break their arm. If you get them in a wrist lock, break the wrist. That won't be enough, though -- it's just to buy a second to finish them. Break the arm, then go for their throat, for here or here. And remember: everything striking technique we do with the hands was originally designed to be done with a knife or a sword. If you have one, use one."
There is a philosophy underlying this, a moral ethic. You should not fight except to kill, because you should never fight except when killing is justified. If it is not, you should not fight at all.
If it is, if it truly is, fall on like a thunderbolt.
Outbreak
You probably saw this on Drudge, but... Reuters says that "U.S. voters may face outbreak of campaign fatigue."
Next week's headline: "U.S., Europe face outbreak of low infant mortality."
Campaigns are not meant to go on forever. It's unhealthy if they do. For one thing, politicians always in campaign mode never stop thinking about the political angles of their every word and action. A politician not in campaign mode might, just occasionally, do something because it was right rather than because it resonated with this-or-that constituency.
Ladies and gentlemen of the political class, let's have our campaigns in 2008. For the rest of 2007, why don't you just try to do what's right for the country -- not for your political futures.
An interesting report from PJM begins:
From his secret base Abdullah Mohtadi commands a small armed force inside Iraq and a vast clandestine network inside Iran.You might wish to read it.
“I didn’t believe in the so-called critical dialogue with Iran. We are for regime change, no matter what the Europeans or even the United States says,” Mohtadi tells me.
Cap Contest
For Marine wife Sly, who sent me the photo:
"The warning label said I shouldn't drink beer while I was in the hot tub, so I figured -- 'If I'm going to break the rules, why not break 'em all at once?'"
Waverly
From Sir Walter Scott's classic:
[O]ur hero set forth with a fowling-piece in his hand, accompanied by his new friend Evan Dhu, and followed by the gamekeeper aforesaid, and by two Wild Highlanders, the attendants of Evan, one of whom had upon his shoulder a hatchet at the end of a pole, called a Lochaber-axe,38 and the other a long ducking-gun. Evan, upon Edward’s inquiry, gave him to understand that this martial escort was by no means necessary as a guard, but merely, as he said, drawing up and adjusting his plaid with an air of dignity, that he might appear decently at Tully-Veolan, and as Vich Ian Vohr’s foster-brother ought to do. ‘Ah!’ said he, ‘if you Saxon duinhe-wassel (English gentleman) saw but the Chief with his tail on!’We've spent the weekend at the Blairsville Scottish Highland Games, attending to the distress of an old friend. In spite of the which, it's been a fine weekend. Most of the old "Wild Highlanders" are bikers from way back, which is to say dangerous men of the gun-and-blade type.
‘With his tail on?’ echoed Edward in some surprise.
‘Yes — that is, with all his usual followers, when he visits those of the same rank. There is,’ he continued, stopping and drawing himself proudly up, while he counted upon his fingers the several officers of his chief’s retinue; ‘there is his hanchman, or right-hand man; then his bard, or poet; then his bladier, or orator, to make harangues to the great folks whom he visits; then his gilly-more, or armour-bearer, to carry his sword and target, and his gun; then his gilly-casfliuch, who carries him on his back through the sikes and brooks; then his gilly-comstrian, to lead his horse by the bridle in steep and difficult paths; then his gilly-trushharnish, to carry his knapsack; and the piper and the piper’s man[.]
It's good to have friends, brothers and sisters. It's a bad world, as my old friend John Ryan of Freemantle, Australia used to say. It hasn't gotten any better; so perhaps we should get a bit worse.
Choosers
A poem, by a young lady who has reason to know.
Wagner got it wrong, you know.
There are no winged horses,
no gleaming breast plates
no long blonde braids flying
over a pristine battlefield.
The Valkyrie doesn’t gleam
Sticky carbon residue
from years of burnt jet fuel
paints her metal raven dark.
Red dyed hydraulic fluid
pumps through her veins
instead of oxygen enriched blood.
Though, truth be told, her cabin has been washed in both.
This dual bladed, semi-rigid, underslung raven
slows. Her circling wings beat the air staccato.
She and her crew of wolves,
have followed the concussive silences,
the stench of fear and sulfur,
here.
To where men lie in ragged pieces
or crumpled around themselves
their body fluids leaking onto the ground.
Even during the battle’s rage
through the smoke
and the bullets pinging on her fuselage
the raven and her wolves choose:
slain, unslain.
The Valkyrie lifts the ones she’s chosen
and carries them to her hall of healing,
guarded by her wolves from further harm
until next time.
How can you tell blood from hydraulic fluid?
Blood dries tacky.
Hydraulic fluid makes you slip.
© 2007 by Kacey Grannis
One of the more interesting books I've read recently is John Grigsby's Beowulf & Grendel, which takes a comparative mythology and archelogical approach to reconstructing ancient Indo-European religions. Or, I should almost say, "'the' ancient Indo-European religion," as it appears to have had strong resemblances in every place practiced -- much in the same way that philologists can speak of a single Indo-European language, which lies behind Greek and English and many other tongues.
The Valkyries have strong parallels in the Keres of ancient Greece, and the Morrigan of the Irish stories, and many others. Grigsby devoted a chapter to the subject of how these various goddesses were seen across Europe, and how they had both bright and dark sides. Like a human woman, who can be the sweetest thing in the world, and the source of the greatest pain in life, these goddesses were loving and murderous, even to the same man.
It makes for interesting reading, should any of you be curious about the topic.
Some Posts
Sorry I haven't been around much this week. I did make a few posts at BlackFive, which may interest some of you:
An interview with Brigadier Gen. Holmes, DDO CENTCOM. We spoke primarily about information operations and operations other than war in CENTCOM.
Another, with Brigadier General Phillips and Iraqi chief of police Khalaf. We talked about the improvements of the Iraqi police and justice system, especially the new police academy.
A comparison of Bill Roggio and Doc Russia, who are saying the same thing each in his own way.
MONTGOMERY, AL -- State Sen. Charles Bishop hit Sen. Lowell Barron on the floor of the Senate this afternoon.
Heroine
Would you like to meet a lady who did more good than most people can imagine? Meet Irena Sendler.
The attention tires Irena Sendler sometimes. She never sought credit for smuggling 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto anyway. Not for risking execution to save other people's children, or holding out under torture by the Nazis, or enduring decades as a nonperson under the communist regime that followed.Thank you, ma'am.
Grim was right
That's the title of a new post by Cassandra. For some reason she rejected my suggested title, "Grim was right all along," but it's a fine post all the same. :)
MRMP&M
Well, really just me and a pony who isn't even mine -- his name is Leo.
Leo's a gelding, not yet fully grown -- we expect him to put on a couple more inches in height, and more length also. He was cut late, so he's not entirely sure he's a gelding. Here he is meeting my second favorite filly, a young lady named Tansy. (The wild tansy, those of you may know who have heard of the Victorian language of flowers, was a declaration of war.)
After which, I put him to work on the lunge line. No pictures of that, because the dust is so bad here that you couldn't make anything out anyway. It's been shockingly dry this summer.
Wrong racket
First there was the CMU ethics survey; and now this.
The issue of whether the toilet seat should be left up or down after use seemingly generates a lot of passion among the parties concerned, however, scientific inquiries into the matter are almost non-existent. Notable exceptions are Choi (2002) and Harter (2005).So, there have been three separate scientific inquiries into toilet-seat behavior in the last four years? And this, by academic standards, is the mark of 'almost non-existence'?
That does it. Eric, get us a grant.
(H/t: Fark.)
Sunday Ethics
Via InstaPundit, I found this ethical survey from Carnegie Mellon University. I'm not terribly interested in their results, for reasons that will become clear, but in the survey itself.
If you provide contact and demographic information, they ask you a series of questions about whether you consider a particular thing unethical, and if so, to what degree. Then, they ask you if you have ever done that thing, and if so, how often.
If you don't provide them contact information, they only ask the questions about whether a thing is unethical; that suggests they're interested in breaking down the second part demographically, and don't want to cloud the data. I assume they have some way of tracking answers to the first type of question so as to separate out the "nondemographic" responses.
Some of the questions are about behavior (stealing expensive items, for example). However, quite a few are not about behavior, but about whether it is unethical to have a desire. What interests me is whether the folks at CMU have understood the distinction between "It's wrong to do," and "It's wrong to want to do..."
I'd like to think that they have, and are testing precisely for that. I wonder, though, because some of the questions are so poorly constructed as to be useless.
For example: "While an adult, [to what degree is it unethical to have] sexual desires for a minor[?]" The problem is that "minor" covers both the 17-1/2 year old and the 5 year old; and "desire" presumably includes a feeling you don't act upon in any way, but merely experience. This means that the reader is left to decide if the question means, "Is it unethical to find yourself sexually interested by a 17-1/2 year old girl playing tennis, even if you don't act on it and turn away?", or if it means, "Is it unethical to fantasize about having sex with little boys?"
If you asked those two questions separately, it would be shocking if you didn't get widely different answers. Indeed, they're wholly different ethical propositions. The teenage girl is sexually mature even if she is not legally so; an initial sexual response to looking at her is chemical rather than ethical, and normal rather than strange. The ethical question is what you do with the sense of being aroused by someone whom you should not have.
In the scenario involving a little boy, presumably the chemical process is the same -- but it is not normally natural. Imperial Chinese grandees may be able to avail themselves of children without suffering for it, but in a democracy, what is normally-natural tends to find its way into the law and the general culture.
It may be that we ought to grant the same exception to paedophiles that we do to everyone else -- that it's OK to feel however nature makes them, so long as they don't act on it. That ethical debate, however, is swallowed by the question that is asked. Since the two scenarios are combined into one question, and you don't know which of the two scenarios the reader was thinking of when he or she answered, any data collected from the survey question is useless.
For that matter, we even draw strong lines between the cases for someone who did act on the impulse. A seventeen year old girl, though a minor, is over the age of consent (at least in Georgia, where it is 16). There is no legal penalty for having sex with her; and in fact, the man who does is even protected by the law from having her father beat him with a stick. (This unfortunate innovation in the law should probably be reconsidered).
A child is formally protected, however, and the man who rapes one is punished -- not as harshly as he deserves, but harshly by the standards of our society.
In any event, I don't think the CMU survey is capable of dealing with the subtleties of these questions well enough to produce useful data. I'm sorry to say that, as a survey of ethics, it won't be interesting.
That said, it does raise an interesting question to be more fully considered. Is it unethical to have fantasies of doing things that it would be unethical to actually do?
This is really two questions.
1) Is it wrong to experience the thought/fantasy?
Most people are under the impression that they are in charge of what they think. This is not actually so. If you test it, you will find that you have almost no control over what enters your mind.
This is the "don't think of an elephant" problem, but it's deeper than that. The clearest example comes from practicing Zen meditation, which requires that you not-think. It instructs you to develop 'a mind like clear water,' and understanding just what is meant by that requires not merely argument, but practice. So you sit in zazen, breathe, and let everything go.
Do you stop thinking? Of course not. Your mind continues to produce one thought after another. You have to train yourself to recognize and release each thought, but they keep arising, one after another, not merely unbidden but uncontrolled. It is only when the breathing exercises move you into another brain state (science has found that your brain wave pattern actually changes at this point) that you experience the empty-mind that was described.
Being in this state for a while influences your brain activity even out of it. Even so, you can't stay in it. Going about your business, you will find that your brain brings things up -- and you aren't always sure why.
As such, merely having a thought is of absolutely no ethical consequence. Ethics requires that you choose something, and thoughts arise from somewhere beyond the structure of choice.
From where? That is fundamentally unclear. What is clear is that we are not in charge of what enters our mind. The mere fact that a dark thought or fantasy should arise, then, is of no concern to ethics; what matters is what you do with it. A Zen master has dark thoughts too; he just trains his mind so that they flow out without leaving a trace.
2) Does ethics then require that you let these thoughts flow out, or can you play with them?
I assume the survey questions about pornography, fantasies of rape, and so forth are of this type. Here there is room to dispute.
Many traditions hold against entertaining dark thoughts -- Zen is not alone here; Catholicism also strongly asserts that you should not entertain evil fantasies. The common thread among this line of ethics is that entertaining evil allows it to take root in your mind or soul; this is the way in which you are contaminated.
There is a great deal of truth to that position. It is indeed important to recognize that evil thoughts have consequences to your self. However, I would make a counterargument -- not to reject, but to modify the proposition.
The surest way to have a problem take root in your mind and soul is to dedicate yourself to fighting against it. This can lead to serious distortions of the mind. Consider the crusader against racism, who begins with a simple desire to right injustices and treat people fairly -- and yet comes to see racism everywhere, in every issue. Racism is embedded in his consciousness, so much so that it affects his perception of the world even where it is not actually present. This can prevent him from actually solving real problems that aren't particularly related to racism; it can also cause him to create new problems for himself and others.
The same is true for any evil. That is not to say that it is wrong to resist evil -- it is right. It is to say that one must be cautious not to wrap one's mind around any particular evil and obsess over it. The obsession is as dangerous as the evil itself.
As noted above, we aren't really sure where thoughts come from. Some of them, though, seem to come from the chemical and physical structures of the body. If you are the sort of person whose structures lead you to have dark thoughts of a particular type on a regular basis, it may be the best thing to do is to play with them in fantasy, and thereby release whatever energies are welling up from within yourself. If you set yourself up to squash them every time they arise, you'll spend even more of your life dealing with them.
The real key is not to worry about fantasies that remain fantasies. Like the Zen master, let them go. If playing with them first lets them then pass away more easily, and stay gone for longer, then so be it. Just let your play be play in truth; laugh them off, and don't worry about them. The more you worry about them, the more of a hold they'll take.
This is not license to obsess over playing with evil impulses, either. The point is that what arises naturally is not your fault; but if you find it bothersome, you want to minimize its impact on your life. For some people, that may mean playing with it a bit first, so they can get it out of their system, or learn to feel in charge of their fantasies rather than scared of the evil within.
Everyone has some evil within; it's how we were made. The discipline that matters is the discipline of learning not to let it control you, but rather to pass away so that 'the water is clear.'
3) Should we accept natural impulses that are not normal, or only ones that are relatively common?
This is closely related to the last question. Most people consider "natural" things to be at least somewhat ethical, but "unnatural" things to be always wrong. The problem is that what is unnatural for us may not be for everyone else. Insofar as a person's evil impulses arise from natural structures, the impulse itself is no less natural for being unusual.
For example, relatively few people experience or can even imagine paedophilia -- when we look at a child, there is an absolute absence of sexual feeling. It's just not there at all. This is obvously not true for some people.
At some point in the future, we may be able to alter that -- to find a way to make people who have paedophilic urges no longer have them. That would almost certainly be a kindness to them, and certainly to the children who might have encountered them.
Until such time as it is, I think the ethical consideration has to be this: as long as a fantasy or impulse remains purely a fantasy or impulse, we should consider it in the terms of point 2. A paedophile who acts on his paedophilia should be killed; one who never does should be left alone.
This extends into the realm of pornography, in the fashion that I gather the SCOTUS decided: child pornography involving actual children is illegal, period. Child pornography that involves only written words or drawings, but in which no actual children were ever involved, is protected speech.
4) Some concluding remarks --
Take this as an opening argument, if you'd like to join it. I'm willing to be persuaded that I'm wrong on the ethics. The part of ethics I most enjoy is the disputation and examination; so if you think I'm wrong, let's hear why, and examine the question.
Sushi
The tale of sushi begins most interestingly, in this piece from Vanity Fair:
It looks like a samurai sword, and it's almost as long as he is tall. His hands are on the hilt. He raises and steadies the blade.
Two apprentices help to guide it. Twelve years ago, when it was new, this knife was much longer, but the apprentices' daily hours of tending to it, of sharpening and polishing it, have reduced it greatly.
It was made by the house of Masahisa, sword-makers for centuries to the samurai of the Minamoto, the founders of the first shogunate. In the 1870s, when the power of the shoguns was broken and the swords of the samurai were outlawed, Masahisa began making these things, longer and more deadly than the samurai swords of old.
The little guy with the big knife is Tsunenori Iida. He speaks not as an individual but as an emanation, the present voice, of the generations whose blood flows in him and who held the long knife in lifetimes before him, just as he speaks of Masahisa as if he were the same Masahisa who wrought the first samurai sword, in the days of dark mist. Thus it is that he tells me he's been here since 1861, during the Tokugawa shogunate, when this city, Tokyo, was still called Edo.
Iida-san is the master of the house of Hicho, one of the oldest and most venerable of the nakaoroshi gyosha, intermediate wholesalers of tuna, or tuna middlemen, if you will.... His long knife, with the mark of the maker Masahisa engraved in the shank of the blade, connects not only the past to the present but also the deep blue sea to the sushi counter.
Memory 1LT
Miss Ladybug celebrates the life of a lieutenant who was her neighbor. He was a cavalryman by the name of Kile West. He was still a young man, a hunter, and an athlete.
Modified KG
From the Assistant Village Idiot, a helpful suggestion for upgrading Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.
People get in less trouble if they are doing something constructive.
Victims have to be protected and bullies have to be contained.
You can make people share community property, but it’s not fair to make them share their own: not their lunch, not their clothes, and not the drawing they carefully colored.
No one cares for community property unless you make them.
People like giving things, but not having them taken.
Natural rewards build self-discipline. Bribes undermine it.
You have to learn justice before you can understand mercy.
Boys and girls are not always the same.
Don’t encourage show-offs. Remove their audience, don’t add to it.
Not everyone who speaks has something to say.
Everyone’s got an excuse.
Jealousy leads to cruelty.
These rules hold up for governments and politics and ecology, too.
Yeah, they do at that.
Open Top
In reference to this story, another. My father once told me of a trucker my grandfather knew at his service station, which was located on I-75 in Knoxville. The guy had recently had a similar encounter, with very similar results.
He notified his employer (and presumably resigned) with a telegram, which read:
Couldn't stop.
Now you have
an open-top.
I didn't hear if the more recent driver composed any poetry, though given the circumstances, he'll need to be at least as inventive to explain the "accident."
Crime teams
So there's this story from the AP:
A violent crime spike in four cities led the Justice Department on Friday to dispatch additional teams of federal agents to combat guns, gangs or surging murder rates in Mesa, Ariz.; Orlando, Fla.; San Bernardino, Calif., and San Juan, Puerto Rico.All a long way from here. But let's consider the general tactic. The story sheds some light on the problem of Federal officers butting into local business.
The report, released Friday by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine, warned of problems with federal crime-fighting task forces. It concluded the teams duplicate efforts and compete for help from local authorities while failing to communicate among themselves. The poor communication, in particular, resulted in three so-called "blue-on-blue" cases where federal agents mistook each other for criminals.Let's be honest here: I'd rather have the crime. Nonviolent criminals cause me no trouble to speak of; violent criminals, encountered in the course of their felony, may be shot. Either way, I'm entirely prepared for any problems that may occur.
Those incidents, which the report found "put officers' safety at risk," included:
_An undercover ATF agent and informant in Chicago bought a loaded gun from an informant working for the FBI's Safe Streets task force.
_FBI Safe Streets agents in Atlanta pulled over a member of a U.S. Marshals Service fugitive task force whose car matched the description of a suspect both teams were looking for.
_ATF agents working an undercover sting at a Las Vegas gun show arrested a suspect for illegally buying firearms. The buyer turned out to be an informant working for the FBI — even though the ATF had taken steps to make sure there would be no overlap between federal agencies.
Fine's inspectors studied task forces in eight cities: Atlanta, Birmingham, Ala., Camden, N.J., Chicago, Gary, Ind., Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia. Nearly 130 task force members in the cities reported working on at least 45 duplicate investigations.
Federal agencies running around engaged in entrapment, arresting each other, and so forth -- that's a separate problem for which there is no easy solution. A man may deal with all but the most organized crime himself. Few men have the resources to deal with the government, when one of its mistakes enwraps him. It seems to make sense, then, to restrict Federal involvement to only organized-crime matters of the first order.
The rest are better dealt with locally, or personally.
UPDATE: This, on the other hand, is what the Federal government is for.
Heh.
Actually, my term for this is "fashion victim".
It seems that the Marine Corps agrees somewhat. (via Blackfive.)
You want a tip for an investment opportunity? Tatoo removal technology. I figure it ought to be big business a few years from now.
WASHINGTON, May 30, 2007 – The fifth and final brigade of the troop surge has arrived in Baghdad and should be fully operational by mid-July, the deputy director for operations on the Joint Staff said here today.
So, operational by mid July, which means we ought to have a good idea whether this whole thing is yielding results by September.
New Scam Targets Military Spouses
"The scam involves a person with an American accent calling a military spouse, identifying herself as a representative of the Red Cross, and telling the spouse that her husband was hurt in Iraq and was medically evacuated to Germany. The caller then says that doctors can't start treatment until paperwork is completed, and that to start the paperwork they need the spouse to verify her husband's social security number and date of birth."
I figure that most military spouses have more on the ball than to be taken in by this, but one never knows.
- 1,200 additional Category I (CAT I) Mine Resistance Ambush Protected (MRAP) Low Rate Initial Production (LRIP) vehicles: $623 Million.
- Navy Multiband Terminal (NMT): $20 Million.
- Long lead items in support of the production of Vertical Takeoff and Landing Tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (VTUAV): $13.6 Million.
- Repair of up to 250 AGM-88 High Speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM) guidance and control sections: $8.6 Million.
- Non-Recurring Engineering (NRE) for Phase II of the T-45 Hot Section Reliability Improvement Program: $7.2 Million.
- Supplies in support of the Navy's Ships Stores Program: $33 Million.
- Eight Universal Modular Mast (UMM) Systems: $6.5 Million.
- Maintenance, repair, and operations supplies: $107 Million.
- AH-64D Apache Longbow Fire Control Radar Programs: $28.8 Million.
- PATRIOT engineering services: $13.8 Million.
- Construction of Permanent Party Barracks: $13.5 Million.
- System technical support for the Abrams Tank Program: $11.5 Million.
- Contract to upgrade, fabricate, assemble, integrate, test, and deliver the Air and Missile Defense Planning Control Systems to the 32nd Army Air and Missile Defense Command: $8 Million.
- Chameleon Phase VI Program: $5.4 Million.
- C-17 Automated Test Equipment : $12.5 Million.
- Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) Launch Capability (ELC) contract: $9.5 Million.
- Global Broadcast Service (GBS) program: $7.5 Million.
- 74 embedded Global Positioning/Inertial Production Units (Installs) for the CH-47F (700 and MH-47 (4) platforms, 4 Mounts for the MH-47 platform, 3 Spares for the F/A-18 platform, and 167 Contractor Depot Repairs (CDRs) for the H-1W (67), CH-47F (25), HH-60J (5), and F-15/F-16 (70) platforms: $7.4 Million.
- Form-fit-function for obsolete subassemblies in the F-15 Avionics Intermediate Shop (AIS) Antenna Test Station (ATS) and Enhanced Aircraft Radar Test Station (EARTS): $5.5 Million.
- LHA 6 Amphibious Assault Ship: $2.4 Billion.
- Long-term contract for support of 44 weapons systems of the T/AV8B Harrier aircraft: $258 Million.
- P-3C sustainment, modification and installation program: $133 Million.
- Nine Extremely High Frequency (EHF) Satellite Communications Follow-On Terminal Communication Groups and 17 ship Antenna Groups: $27 Million.
- Supply and distribution of food and non-food products: $2.8 Billion.
- Sole source items on engine lines: $10.9 Million.
- Fuel: $6.5 Million.
- Wide area surveillance platform: $12.2 Million.
- Light Aircraft Missile Protection (CELAMP) system: $9.8 Million.
Most capable Army, Navy & Air Force in the history of Civilization: Priceless.
Gone
I am headed to Fort Mountain for the evening. I should be back tomorrow.
I was on the DOD's "Blogger Roundup" call again today, with generals discussing the handover of the Kurdish region to local control. It was a very interesting, and rather hot, call -- once the transcript is up and I can verify some details, I'll post my thoughts on it.
Blood & Folk
Concerning whether a new tribalism is possible, this item:
Rules 'hiding' trillions in debtNone of those promises will be kept, once we pass a threshold level. Anyone who is expecting the American government to fund their retirement will be disappointed, unless they die young.
Liability $516,348 per U.S. household
By Dennis Cauchon
USA TODAY
The federal government recorded a $1.3 trillion loss last year — far more than the official $248 billion deficit — when corporate-style accounting standards are used, a USA TODAY analysis shows.
The loss reflects a continued deterioration in the finances of Social Security and government retirement programs for civil servants and military personnel. The loss — equal to $11,434 per household — is more than Americans paid in income taxes in 2006.
"We're on an unsustainable path and doing a great disservice to future generations," says Chris Chocola, a former Republican member of Congress from Indiana and corporate chief executive who is pushing for more accurate federal accounting.
Modern accounting requires that corporations, state governments and local governments count expenses immediately when a transaction occurs, even if the payment will be made later.
The federal government does not follow the rule, so promises for Social Security and Medicare don't show up when the government reports its financial condition.
Bottom line: Taxpayers are now on the hook for a record $59.1 trillion in liabilities, a 2.3% increase from 2006. That amount is equal to $516,348 for every U.S. household. By comparison, U.S. households owe an average of $112,043 for mortgages, car loans, credit cards and all other debt combined.
Unfunded promises made for Medicare, Social Security and federal retirement programs account for 85% of taxpayer liabilities.
Who will take care of the elderly, when these pensions, Social Security and Medicare die? We will, of our own, as well as we can. And we can look for no help, but what kin and friend provide.
Kinship and fighting bonds
Daniel and I have embarked, below, on a discussion that requires some background information. Many Americans today aren't really versed in the heroic tradition of Northern Europe, except for having read Tolkien -- an excellent introduction, but one that leaves out some of the harder concepts. One of these is the breaking point between the duty owed to kin, of whom one is really considered a part, and the duty owed to those who have befriended you.
Americans generally consider family to be disposable, and friendship important -- older relatives can be deposited in homes, cared for by the state (Medicare and Social Security); younger relatives who are a drain on the finances rather than self-supporting can be tossed out to sink or swim. This is very different from the old way, which hampered heroes in many respects: and yet, if you reflect carefully upon it, you see that you really are only an outgrowth of your kin. Indeed, the echoes of the family are so powerful that, at times, you may wonder if you aren't just your father or grandfather reborn -- or, as I have heard many a lady lament, if they haven't begun speaking with their mother's voice. The old view posed serious problems, but it was firmly rooted in the reality of the thing. Blood kinship is important, more important than we often think today: in a time before genetics, they knew that nature is the thing that sets the limits on what nurture can do.
I'd like to quote a passage from the Hollander translation of The Saga of the Jomsvikings, as an introduction to the difficulties of the old system.
Before the passage begins, King Harold has gotten a bastard son on a woman he pretends not to have known. That woman lives in the household of a man named Palnatoki, who trusts her word as to the father, and raises the son -- his name is Svein -- as he would have raised a son of King Harold who had been sent to foster with him, as was often done in those days. Harold is furious, but Svein grows to be a strong warrior, and with Palnatoki's help, raises fleets of vikings so strong that Harold has to deal with him. At first Harold tries to buy him off, but finally he leads a fleet of his own to destroy Svein. The King's fleet traps Svein's, blocking the mouth of a river where Svein's fleet is sheltering.
Palnatoki shows up at this point with a fleet of his own, to help Svein. Palnatoki goes ashore and finds where the King has camped, and shoots him dead with an arrow wrapped in gold wire. The next morning, Palnatoki and Svein join forces and, capturing the King's fleet between them, force it to submit and accept Svein as their new king.
Somewhat after, Svein holds the arvel to assume his inheretance. Palnatoki attends:
Palnatoki with all his followers entered the king's hall. The king [Svein] welcomed Palnatoki cordially and bade him and his men take the seats he had assigned them. And then the banquet began....Questions for discussion:
A man called Arnodd, one of the king's attendants, was standing near the table. Fiolnir handed him an arrow and bade him carry it to all the men until some one woiuld acknowledge it. Arnodd went first to the center of the hall where the king sat, then toward the door. Then he returned toward the center and stood before Palnatoki and asked him whether he perchance recognized the arrow.
Palnatoki said: "Why should I not know my own arrow? Let me have it, it is mine."
Deep silence reigned in the hall, to hear someone acknowledge the arrow as his own.
The king said, "You, Palnatoki, where did you part with this arrow, the last time you shot it?"
Palnatoki replied: "Often I have been indulgent to you, foster son, and so it shall be this time: I parted with it from my bowstring the time I shot your father through with it."
The king said, "Stand up, my men, at once, and lay hands on Palnatoki and his followers. They shall be killed, all of them. There is now an end to the good relations between us."
Thereupon all the men in the hall leaped to their feet. Palnatoki then drew his sword and cut his kinsman Fiolnir in two. He and his men gained the door, because every man there was so much his friend that no one wanted to harm him.
1) What are Svein's three conflicting duties? Which is most important?
2) What are Palnatoki's? What justifies his killing of his kinsman?
3) The men who allowed Palnatoki to escape -- are they serving the king well, or badly? Are they praiseworthy or blameworthy for acting in this way? Is there a way in which they are protecting him, or are they putting their own friendship ahead of their sworn duty as members of the king's company?
Ejectia
Bill Whittle wants to build a new Athens (don't forget to read part two as well).
The idea is of an online city-state for those interested in the ancient virtues -- courage, justice, temperence, and their companions. That is obviously the sort of thing I would like to see also.
Pathetic
In the words of Hank Williams Jr, I'd like to catch those bastards with my .45.
I hope the Sheriff's office is able to catch some of them; although I think the local Vigilance Committee would be better suited to administer justice.
Goodbye, Lady
Once, a long time ago, I wrote the only thing I've ever written about Cindy Sheehan:
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.Others felt otherwise, and took her for a ride now ending.
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.
I have endured a lot of smear and hatred since Casey was killed and especially since I became the so-called "Face" of the American anti-war movement. Especially since I renounced any tie I have remaining with the Democratic Party, I have been further trashed on such "liberal blogs" as the Democratic Underground. Being called an "attention whore" and being told "good riddance" are some of the more milder rebukes.... I am going to take whatever I have left and go home. I am going to go home and be a mother to my surviving children and try to regain some of what I have lost.I don't have anything bad to say about Cindy Sheehan. Those of you who used her, though, as long as her grief was a useful weapon to you -- you ought to be ashamed of yourselves. She deserved, as does any mother of a fallen Marine, better than she has had.
UPDATE: The commenters at BlackFive point out that I misremembered Casey Sheehan's branch of service. He was a soldier, not a Marine; but the mother of a fallen soldier is due the same courtesy.
Memorial Day
Happy Memorial Day. I hesistate to link to any of the great posts around the internet today, for fear of accidentally missing others. For that cause, I will only send my greetings to your and your families, and my particular respects to those of you who are in the service or are veterans. Let us remember together.
UPDATE: John Donovan has decided to attempt the roundup post. Here's his majestic effort toward getting it all.
Pentecost
Today is Pentecost in the traditional calendar, a feast that celebrates the fiftieth day after Jesus' resurrection, when the Holy Ghost is said to have descended upon the Apostles. I imagine most of you did not know that; I had to look it up myself. I will tell you, though, what I did know about the Feast of Pentecost:
WHEN Arthur held his Round Table most plenour, it fortuned that he commanded that the high feast of Pentecost should be holden at a city and a castle, the which in those days was called Kynke Kenadonne, upon the sands that marched nigh Wales. So ever the king had a custom that at the feast of Pentecost in especial, afore other feasts in the year, he would not go that day to meat until he had heard or seen of a great marvel. And for that custom all manner of strange adventures came before Arthur as at that feast before all other feasts. And so Sir Gawaine, a little tofore noon of the day of Pentecost, espied at a window three men upon horseback, and a dwarf on foot, and so the three men alighted, and the dwarf kept their horses, and one of the three men was higher than the other twain by a foot and an half. Then Sir Gawaine went unto the king and said, Sir, go to your meat, for here at the hand come strange adventures.It was also at the feast of Pentecost, according to Sir Thomas Malory, that the quest for the Grail began. Malory's version of this is the later version, in which Sir Galahad wins the Grail through spiritual perfection. The depiction of Galahad is almost blasphemy by Catholic standards, as he is shown as a man without sin. His purity is such that he can actually deserve to come into the presence of the Grail, whereas other worldly knights cannot.
There was an older tradition, in which it was Sir Perceval who achieved the Grail, though at first he was judged unworthy. Before he could become worthy, he lost everything of which a man might rightly desire, lost his mother and his home, passed by the love of a fine lady and the good things of the world that she offered him. In Malory's version, Galahad was worthy from the beginning, and the adventures he undertook were only to show his excellence. Yet, having achieved the Grail and the presence of God, he finds he has only one desire: that he might choose to die.
I mention all of this in reference to the debate, below, on the subject of Chesterton and faith. The Grail tradition shows that the Medievals felt that faith was dangerous, past a point. The pursuit of perfection was destructive to a man, even a very good man. A man to whom it was given to be Lancelot du Lac would find no joy in the search for the Grail, but only hardship, misery, and the constant sense of failing to meet the standards of Heaven.
Chesterton speaks of religion as being like a monastery with walls; and because the walls are there, the faithful can play within them without fear. Yet pass beyond the walls, or knock down the walls, and you found a perilous world in which no joy was possible.
The American experience of faith is easy, like that monastery: in churches across the country, you are invited to confess your sins and donate to the offering plate, and then relax and enjoy the promise of Heaven. The Medieval church was likewise easy: confession and penance, or even the purchase of an indulgence, permitted you to carry on more or less as you like. A man could be merry in the garden, could drink and fight and still achieve a happy end.
There was no reason, then, to go on mortifying quests after perfection. No reason but that, having felt the presence of the divine, the knights wanted to bask in it -- but so unworthy are even the best of men Christianity holds, men who sin in every thought and deed, that "becoming worthy" is far beyond their strength. So they departed on a quest born in love of God, and therefore died alone and terribly. Few enough came again to Camelot, those few as failures.
La Nef produced a two-volume opera called Perceval: La Quete du Graal (volume II is here). It is a beautiful and haunting piece when heard all together, as befits its subject.
Back
I returned late last night, from the trip to Indiana.
This morning, I had a teleconference with David Kilcullen and others, on the subject of Iraq and the current counterinsurgency project. My full notes are available at the link.
I see a young man of eleven has had a memorable week down Alabama way. You have to wonder what goes on in Alabama.
An aside -- Stephen Dillard, formerly "Feddie" of the now-retired blog Southern Appeal, sends information on his current project. Some of you may be curious, as one of my co-bloggers is an SA alumnus, and several of us used to read the place regularly.
It was noted recently in the Hall that when Christopher Hitchens took part in a debate about religion, he and his opponent were mismatched.
That observation was brought to mind when I ran into a book review on Hitchens' book, provocatively entitled God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.
The book review--actually, a criticism of a book review, coupled with a review of the book--was done by Robert Miller, one of the many scholars who write at the First Things blog.
Miller holds that Hitchens has gotten in over his head on the subject of religion. He also holds that the book reviewer--working for the prestigious New York Times--has done the reading world a disservice, by failing to note the many ways in which Hitchens has ignored learning the elementals of the philosophy of religion.
I will confess that I determined to ignore Christopher Hitchens when I learned the title of his book. A book which gives away both its central attitude and its concluding thought in the title is probably not a book which needs too much attention.
Hitchens' book (and the review, and the book-and-review review) do raise questions. Has the study of philosophy--or the philosophy of religion--become so unpopular among scholars that non-specialists are unaware of its existence? Is there a special animus against religious belief among scientists?
Is such an animus typical in certain branches of science, or is it an occasional thing?
One more (partly humorous) question arises: given Hitchens' statements in debates and writings in the book, what would G.K. Chesterton have said about this?
Off to Arvel
I will be away this week, attending to family matters. This is the first funeral I will have seen from my wife's family, so I know little of what to expect. My grandfather's funeral, though, was much in the old fashion:
Now it was the custom in those days that a high born man, before he could take possession of any inheritance left to him by his father, should hold an arvel, or inheritance feast. King Sweyn was at this time preparing to hold such a feast before taking possession of the Danish kingdom, so it was arranged that Sweyn and Sigvaldi should make one arvel serve for them both, and Sweyn sent word to Sigvaldi inviting him with all his captains and chosen warriors to join him in Zealand, and so arrange it that the greatest possible honour should be done to the dead.It was the first time I had seen many of my family in years, as well as others I had never met, and the last time I saw many of them in this life. In most respects, it was as fine a feast and gathering as I ever saw. So we honored him, who deserved the best from us.
Sigvaldi accordingly left Jomsburg with a large host of his vikings and two score of ships. Among his captains were Olaf Triggvison, Kolbiorn Stallare, Bui the Thick of Borgund holm, Thorkel the High, and Vagn Akison. It was winter time, and the seas were rough, but the fleet passed through the Danish islands without disaster, and came to an anchorage in a large bay near which now stands the city of Copenhagen. King Sweyn welcomed Earl Sigvaldi and all his men with great kindness.
The feast was held in a very large hall, specially built for the reception of guests, and ornamented with splendid wood carvings and hung about with peace shields and curtains of beautiful tapestry. King Sweyn was dressed in very fine clothes of purple, with gold rings on his arms and round his neck, and a band of burnished gold, set with gems, upon his head. His beard, which was as yet but short, was trimmed in a peculiar way -- divided into two prongs -- which won for him the nickname of Sweyn Forkbeard. The tables were loaded with cooked food and white bread; sufficient to serve all the great company for three days. The ale and mead flowed abundantly, and there was much good cheer in the hall. Many high born women were present, and the guests sat in pairs, each man and woman together. Olaf Triggvison had for his partner the Princess Thyra, sister of the king.
An old but excellent piece
Linked to today by InstaPundit was a piece on why government does not solve, and often makes worse, every problem delegated to it. The rules it posits for bureaucracies, and particularly government bureaucracies, are remarkable in their predictive power.
I missed this one the first time around. If you did too, you may find it enlightening.
Op KUDZU
Former Special Forces blogger BloodSpite has a suggestion for those concerned about immigration, as well as a parable. The parable will be immediately comprehensible to anyone who has lived in, or passed through, the Deep South.
A Death in the Family
My wife's father is dead, having passed away in a peaceful sleep while sitting in his favorite chair. I have mentioned him here from time to time, but I would like to give him a proper eulogy.
He joined in the Army in 1946, as a young officer and navigator on bombers. He served in the Army Air Force and then the Air Force. He was stationed in Germany at the beginning of the postwar period, when the Werewolves were still active. He was charged with guarding the payroll for his unit, a perilous duty at the time.
Later he was stationed in Libya, where he and his unit fought bandits attempting to raid military supplies. He left the military in the 1950s, and became an aerospace engineer for General Motors' defense contracting sections. During that time he worked on numerous secret programs, and was one of the designers of the Stealth program.
He took the usual oaths to keep our country's secrets, and kept them faithfully. Even in his seventies, talking to me in our occasional chats on national defense and policy, he never revealed any of the secrets -- many long obsolete -- that he had promised to keep.
In his youth he had fierce red hair and an Irish temper, and sailed the Carribean as an officer of the United States' Power Squadrons; in his age, his hair had turned to white, and to me he was always a perfect gentleman. When I asked for his daughter's hand, he smiled and told me he had no objections, but that he had raised her to make her own decisions.
I liked him and I'll miss him. He was a fine man.
3G PIII
The last article is from Noel, authored by Harvey Mansfield, and titled "The Founders' Honor." It attempts to explore what honor meant to the Founders, who were willing to fight and even to die for it. Mansfield begins, though, badly.
Yet the biggest recent events in American politics make sense only when seen as motivated by a sense of honor. When President Clinton was impeached, he refused to resign, one could say, for reasons of both honor and self-interest. But the Democrats in public office who supported him could have done so only for honor. They did not want to give in to those prissy, self-righteous Republicans, who would have crowed in triumph at his fall. In refusing to sacrifice their tainted champion as self-interest would have dictated, the Democrats paid a price. Their candidate Al Gore, chief among Clinton loyalists, suffered from "Clinton fatigue" (or Clinton disgust) in the electorate, and he lost a close election he probably would have won if Clinton had resigned and had taken his bad odor with him, leaving Gore to run as a relatively unembarrassed incumbent.Whatever the Clinton saga was about, it was not about the honor of politicians -- except just one politician, Clinton, who had no interest in fighting for his honor. He swore an oath to tell the truth, violated it, got caught, and then shrugged it off as a matter of no importance.
The Republicans for their part might have been well advised by self-interest to leave well enough alone, and not insist on impeachment in the House or a trial in the Senate. But they were overcome by their outrage. They felt it necessary to uphold law and propriety against a liar who had, at long last, been caught in his lie. So the Republicans refused to "move on" and diminished their advantage from Clinton fatigue because they seemed too eager for his removal.
Those who supported him did so in large part because they agreed with him. The argument was that the perjury was on a matter of no real importance, having only to do with a sexual liason with a girl who was past the legal age of consent. Indeed, as I recall, there was even a legalistic argument that the offense did not rise to perjury at all, because even though he had lied under oath, it was about a matter that was not legally material to the subject at hand. That there was a point of honor -- that a man keeps his oaths, or is no man at all -- was simply not something they believed to be true.
There were some on the pro-impeachment side who were motivated by this principle of honor. They were chiefly among the citizenry, not the political class. The reason that the price Mansfield cites was paid by Republican politicians is because they were guilty -- not of pushing too hard, but of hypocrisy. There are few in Congress who are fit even to say the word "honor." It is so obvious in their conduct, that the People of the United States were disgusted to see them parading around under its flag.
From there, Mansfield makes another serious error -- one caught, in the comments below, by our friend and co-blogger Major Joel Leggett. Mansfield argues that revulsion against the duel that killed Hamilton ended dueling as a political force in America. Joel responds:
That statement is absolutely historically inaccurate. Andrew Jackson’s duel with the Benton brothers in May of 1813, nine years after the Hamilton/Burr affair, had significant political ramifications through out the Old Southwest (The Southeast today) and ultimately contributed to Jackson’s national reputation, which in turn propelled him to the White House.Quite right. In the South, dueling and its honor-based culture continued to be a very important political force through at least the Civil War. The caning of Sumner, for example, was very much a part of the duelist culture. The reason it was a caning and not a duel was only that Sumner was thought unfit for the honor of a duel. A gentleman duels only with equals. The duel, indeed, is principally about finding a way for the gentleman who has received offense at the hand of an equal to affirm their equality, and thus restore the balance on which the society depends. Normally this is done through the exchange of letters among the seconds; but if it comes to it, the willingness to face each other's fire fairly restores and affirms that these men are equals.
The failure to understand that is another critical error in the Mansfield piece. The Hamilton duel was deeply flawed by the point that Mansfield praises: Hamilton's intent not to fire his piece. The point of the duel is a radical affirmation of respect: you allow your opponent a chance to kill you, and he allows you the same. To refuse to fire is to assert that you are not equal to your opponent, but either better or worse than he is.
Hamilton showed faith and fidelity to his Christian principles, but not enough to refuse to attend the duel -- he cared for the accolades of this world enough that he could not refuse to participate in the institution. He showed some fidelity to the culture of honor, but not enough to participate fully in its rituals either: the duel would have been unsatisfactory even if he had survived.
His refusal to fire would have been another insult. Rather than resolving the feud, as was the purpose of the duel, it would have furthered and deepened it.
The real lesson of the Hamilton duel is that you should either fight, or not fight; you should choose pacifism, or else to fight for justice in the world. A priest or a pacifist can get by on his principles, which are widely respected, even though he must rely on others for protection.
A fighting man must fight, in his own defense and others'. This is necessary, and it is proper. The priests of the world depend upon him.
3G PII
The second piece is by Christina Hoff Summers. It is called, "The Subjection of Islamic Women and the fecklessness of American Feminism."
The subjection of women in Muslim societies--especially in Arab nations and in Iran--is today very much in the public eye. Accounts of lashings, stonings, and honor killings are regularly in the news, and searing memoirs by Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Azar Nafisi have become major best-sellers. One might expect that by now American feminist groups would be organizing protests against such glaring injustices, joining forces with the valiant Muslim women who are working to change their societies. This is not happening.I will leave aside the particular fights she undertakes with the leadership figures of American feminism -- on genital mutilation v. elective cosmetic surgery, on comparing Islamic regimes that hang gays with Christian social groups that are disgusted by them. I am interested, however, in her overarching point: that women are actually, really being subjugated in the Islamic world in a way the Christian world never considered -- and that those who claim to care about women ought to devote their energies to supporting those women above all.
If you go to the websites of major women's groups, such as the National Organization for Women, the Ms. Foundation for Women, and the National Council for Research on Women, or to women's centers at our major colleges and universities, you'll find them caught up with entirely other issues, seldom mentioning women in Islam. During the 1980s, there were massive demonstrations on American campuses against racial apartheid in South Africa. There is no remotely comparable movement on today's campuses against the gender apartheid prevalent in large parts of the world.
It is not that American feminists are indifferent to the predicament of Muslim women. Nor do they completely ignore it. For a brief period before September 11, 2001, many women's groups protested the brutalities of the Taliban. But they have never organized a full-scale mobilization against gender oppression in the Muslim world. The condition of Muslim women may be the most pressing women's issue of our age, but for many contemporary American feminists it is not a high priority. Why not?
The reasons are rooted in the worldview of the women who shape the concerns and activities of contemporary American feminism. That worldview is--by tendency and sometimes emphatically--antagonistic toward the United States, agnostic about marriage and family, hostile to traditional religion, and wary of femininity. The contrast with Islamic feminism could hardly be greater.
This past November more than 100 Muslim lawyers, scholars, and activists from 25 countries gathered in New York City for the express purpose of supporting the modernization of Islamic jurisprudence and reviving the spirit of ijtihad, a once vibrant Islamic tradition of independent thinking and reasoning about sacred texts. The organizing group, the Women's Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equity (WISE), plans to launch an international shura, a consultative council of Muslim women leaders who will advise religious and political leaders on women's issues. They are also establishing a scholarship fund for the training of gifted female students to become Koranic scholars, or muftia. These women would be licensed to render fatwas, religious judgments that, while nonbinding, drive custom and practice in Islamic societies.This is an interesting argument for two reasons. First, it points to exactly the sort of "economic/social engagement rubs off" method that was described below. Second, it points also to a domestic American feminism that was once healthier than the type we have today -- and also far more successful, because it could appeal to men and traditionally-minded women as well.
The WISE participants were a who's who of Muslim women lawyers, writers, and rights advocates. Perhaps the most affecting speaker was Mukhtar Mai. She is the Pakistani woman who, in 2002, was gang-raped by four men because of crimes allegedly committed by her brother. After the rape, which was sanctioned by an all-male village council, Mukhtar Mai was expected to preserve the "honor" of her family by killing herself. Instead, she and her family went to the police, even at the risk of being charged for the "crime" of being raped. A local imam, outraged by her treatment, denounced the attack in his Friday sermon. Reporters soon appeared, and Mukhtar's case became a cause célèbre.
The conference participants varied widely in their politics and their relation to Islam. Unlike the present American feminist movement, which has no place for traditionally religious women, Islamic feminism is inclusive. Some of its proponents wear the veil, others oppose it. Some want egalitarian mosques, others don't mind traditional arrangements where men and women are separated. Even a few non-Muslims were present. What unites them in feminism is their commitment to the universal dignity of women. They are all vehemently opposed to such practices as forced marriages, honor killings, genital cutting, child marriage, and wife-beating. They are passionately dedicated to the educational, economic, legal, and political advancement of women.
The feminism that is quietly surging in the Muslim world is quite different from its contemporary counterpart in the United States. Islamic feminism is faith-based, family-centered, and well-disposed towards men. This is feminism in its classic and most effective form, as students of women's emancipation know. American women won the vote in the early 20th century through the combined forces of progressivism and conservatism. Radical thinkers like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Victoria Woodhull, and Alice Paul played an indispensable role, but it was traditionalists like Frances Willard (president of the Women's Christian Temperance Union) and Carrie Chapman Catt (founder of the League of Women Voters) who brought the cause of women's suffrage into the mainstream.
I asked Daisy Kahn, executive director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement and organizer of the WISE conference, how Americans can help. Her answer was simple: "Support us. Embrace our struggle." That is already happening, though mostly outside feminist circles. There are scores of independent organizations--groups like Freedom House, Global Giving, the Independent Women's Forum, Project Ijtihad, Equality Now, and the Initiative for Inclusive Security--that have begun to work in effective ways to support Muslim women. Such groups, both liberal and conservative, may not identify themselves as feminist, but they embody the ideals and principles of the classical, humane feminism of Stanton, Anthony, and Willard.Though I am no feminist and never have been one, I admit that I find the possibility both pleasant and even exciting. I am, as Sir Walter Scott put it, "a friend to the weaker party." In Islamic societies, that is women, whose case is worse than it has ever been in the West -- even in ancient Greece, where women were treated as permanent children, it was not quite so bad.
Those "First Wave" reformers made history. Their classical "equity" feminism was predominant in the United States long before the current band of activists and theorists transformed and debased it beyond recognition. Their understanding of equality was never at war with femininity, never at war with men, or with family, or with logic or common sense. It is alive again in Islamic feminism.
But then, I belong to the movement Summers says is already supporting these women: the one that believes in human liberty above all. Freedom House is a name I know and support. It's no surprise to find myself, again, on the same side.
3 Good Pieces
Two via Arts & Letters Daily, and one via our friend Noel of Sharp Knife and Cold Fury. I'll post each of them separately.
The first is another piece by Mr. Luttwak. It is an argument for ignoring the Middle East. I post it for three reasons: because it strikes me as something that may somewhat redeem Mr. Luttwak's standing in the eyes of our Eric Blair; because it is well reasoned and contains interesting information; and because I almost agree with it.
Luttwak argues, correctly, that there are four basic mistakes intelligence and security analysts make with the Middle East. First, they assume that it has some actual power because its nations maintain large conscription armies; but in fact, all of these armies are effectively worthless.
[T]he [overestimation] mistake keeps being made by the fraternity of middle east experts. They persistently attribute real military strength to backward societies whose populations can sustain excellent insurgencies but not modern military forces....I dissent with Luttwak on one point: the modern insurgent fights what is principally an information war. If "the publicity is excellent" to the degree that his aims are achieved in the political realm, the insurgent has won regardless of the facts on the battlefield.
[When calling Iran dangerous a]ll the symptoms [of that mistake] are present, including tabulated lists of Iran's warships, despite the fact that most are over 30 years old; of combat aircraft, many of which (F-4s, Mirages, F-5s, F-14s) have not flown in years for lack of spare parts; and of divisions and brigades that are so only in name. There are awed descriptions of the Pasdaran revolutionary guards, inevitably described as "elite," who do indeed strut around as if they have won many a war, but who have actually fought only one—against Iraq, which they lost. As for Iran's claim to have defeated Israel by Hizbullah proxy in last year's affray, the publicity was excellent but the substance went the other way, with roughly 25 per cent of the best-trained men dead, which explains the tomb-like silence and immobility of the once rumbustious Hizbullah ever since the ceasefire.
Similarly, the American forces have won every single engagement at the platoon level or larger since 2003; yet there are many idiot politicians and unthinking citizens who have let the insurgent propaganda war convince them that we are losing. If that conviction continues to the point that those politicians and citizens move to withdraw our forces, we will in fact have lost the war -- by choosing to surrender to a foe who never won a single engagement.
The second mistake Luttwak speaks of is the mistake of assuming it is easy to change these societies. This speaks both to those who thought that force would do it, and those who think that diplomacy and concessions will do it. "Backwards societies must be left alone," Luttwak states.
Which is almost right. In 2003, I wrote a piece called The Black Mail, which argued that change can come only slowly, and because these societies choose it for themselves. What is necessary, however, is to create conditions whereby the tribal/older societies engage with the modern world -- so that the natural tendencies of capitalism and liberty will destabilize and force changes over time.
That leads us to a middle position between Luttwak's "leave them alone" and the fierce and continual engagement and meddling advocated by both the hawkiest hawks and the doviest doves. Neither invading nor negotiating with Syria is necessary, for example; what is necessary is to win in Iraq, since we are there, and let them rub against it.
This was an argument made in the runup to the Iraq war, and one on which the principled could fall on either side. The pro-invasion argument was that, if we could begin to see democratic changes in Iraq, the consequences of seeing it and having contact with a democratic Arab state would spread through the whole region. That would reduce the likelihood of further wars in the future, and bring the whole region (slowly) into alignment with the wider world.
The other argument would be that, if this principle can work, invasion should not be necessary at all -- only further, deeper economic engagement. Though slower, there would be no need to fight a war at all. Thus, this principle would not justify an invasion.
I believe Luttwak would make that point, which is quite right. Insofar as the process may be speeded by war, yet that can only be a side benefit for war, not a justification for war. If a war is justified, it must be on other grounds.
Meanwhile, concessions and negotiations with a given autocratic regime can be justified only if they permit the increased economic/social engagement. If the concessions are only being used to prop up an existing regime's credibility or stability, they are not justified. For example, no concessions to North Korea are justified. The regime should be isolated and allowed to collapse, because it cannot be meaningfully engaged. The government refuses to allow it.
In the Middle East, that is not the case. Even in Saudi Arabia, there is some economic/social interaction, and Muslims (particularly Muslim women) are drawing from the ideas they find in those interactions. The society is changing in positive ways, if slowly.
The last mistake Luttwak discusses -- I am combining his "first" and "fourth" into an overarching "third" -- is the mistake of assuming that what happens in the Middle East is important. By this, he explictly means "including the Israel/Palestine conflict." I've always agreed with this posture: the idea that this conflict is overriding in its implications for the world is simply wrong. That it is widely believed does not change the fact that it is wrong, as Luttwak demonstrates.
The late King Hussein of Jordan was the undisputed master of this genre. Wearing his gravest aspect, he would warn us that with patience finally exhausted the Arab-Israeli conflict was about to explode, that all past conflicts would be dwarfed by what was about to happen unless, unless… And then came the remedy—usually something rather tame when compared with the immense catastrophe predicted, such as resuming this or that stalled negotiation, or getting an American envoy to the scene to make the usual promises to the Palestinians and apply the usual pressures on Israel. We read versions of the standard King Hussein speech in countless newspaper columns, hear identical invocations in the grindingly repetitive radio and television appearances of the usual middle east experts, and are now faced with Hussein's son Abdullah periodically repeating his father's speech almost verbatim.Quite right on every point. What does it all mean?
What actually happens at each of these "moments of truth"—and we may be approaching another one—is nothing much; only the same old cyclical conflict which always restarts when peace is about to break out, and always dampens down when the violence becomes intense enough. The ease of filming and reporting out of safe and comfortable Israeli hotels inflates the media coverage of every minor affray. But humanitarians should note that the dead from Jewish-Palestinian fighting since 1921 amount to fewer than 100,000—about as many as are killed in a season of conflict in Darfur.
Strategically, the Arab-Israeli conflict has been almost irrelevant since the end of the cold war. And as for the impact of the conflict on oil prices, it was powerful in 1973 when the Saudis declared embargoes and cut production, but that was the first and last time that the "oil weapon" was wielded. For decades now, the largest Arab oil producers have publicly foresworn any linkage between politics and pricing, and an embargo would be a disaster for their oil-revenue dependent economies. In any case, the relationship between turmoil in the middle east and oil prices is far from straightforward. As Philip Auerswald recently noted in the American Interest, between 1981 and 1999—a period when a fundamentalist regime consolidated power in Iran, Iran and Iraq fought an eight-year war within view of oil and gas installations, the Gulf war came and went and the first Palestinian intifada raged—oil prices, adjusted for inflation, actually fell. And global dependence on middle eastern oil is declining: today the region produces under 30 per cent of the world's crude oil, compared to almost 40 per cent in 1974-75. In 2005 17 per cent of American oil imports came from the Gulf, compared to 28 per cent in 1975, and President Bush used his 2006 state of the union address to announce his intention of cutting US oil imports from the middle east by three quarters by 2025.
Yes, it would be nice if Israelis and Palestinians could settle their differences, but it would do little or nothing to calm the other conflicts in the middle east from Algeria to Iraq, or to stop Muslim-Hindu violence in Kashmir, Muslim-Christian violence in Indonesia and the Philippines, Muslim-Buddhist violence in Thailand, Muslim-animist violence in Sudan, Muslim-Igbo violence in Nigeria, Muslim-Muscovite violence in Chechnya, or the different varieties of inter-Muslim violence between traditionalists and Islamists, and between Sunnis and Shia, nor would it assuage the perfectly understandable hostility of convinced Islamists towards the transgressive west that relentlessly invades their minds, and sometimes their countries.
We devote far too much attention to the middle east, a mostly stagnant region where almost nothing is created in science or the arts—excluding Israel, per capita patent production of countries in the middle east is one fifth that of sub-Saharan Africa. The people of the middle east (only about five per cent of the world's population) are remarkably unproductive, with a high proportion not in the labour force at all.Emphasis added. This has been the central problem with the model I advocate, that of change-through-economic involvement, particularly in Saudi Arabia. Many have no need to work because of oil revenue, and the government's use of that revenue to prop up the institutions of the existing tribal society. That has not prevented change, but it has slowed it to a remarkable degree.
I still endorse it, however, as slow change is better than no change at all; and better than fighting a region-wide war. We have committed to Iraq, for reasons beyond the reason of changing their society; and we must continue it for as long as necessary to win, because there is no set of options in defeat that is as good as the worst option that comes from success. America, having begun a war, must win it.
Luttwak here is on far more stable ground than in his last piece. His policy prescriptions are close to what I would advocate, even if I think he is drawn into error on a few points. I await your thoughts with interest.
Of course they're terrorists
I steadfastly oppose using laws passed to address terrorism to prosecute crimes of other sorts. Terrorism really isn't a law-enforcement matter anyway -- they should be treated as members of groups of brigands or pirate companies, which is to say, as outside the protections of society and subject to the rules of customary international law, which allow the officers of any nation to execute them on capture.
So, what about ELF?
Prosecutors want Judge Ann Aiken to declare the group terrorists — something defense attorneys argue has never happened in 1,200 arsons nationwide claimed by Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front.Are ELF/ALF terrorists? What is a terrorist?
The defense argues that branding their clients terrorists is more about politics than sentencing.
"The Government has Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' political agenda to advance with this case, and nothing else to lose if the Court declines to impose the enhancement," wrote attorney Terri Wood, who represents Stanislas G. Meyerhoff.
A) A group that is organized for the purposes of using violence to effect social or political change, and
B) Directs that violence primarily against noncombatants or economic infrastructure necessary to the normal operation of civilian economies, and,
C) Wears false or no uniforms, and obeys none of the customary laws of war, and,
D) Is not part of the authorized military forces of any nation.
Groups that meet A-C but not D are spies, but not terrorists; not that it matters, since the laws of war permit you to shoot spies summarily as well. Groups that meet A and C but not B and D are guerrillas, whose status is usually better under the laws of war. Groups that meet A, C, and D but not B are unlawful combatants, but not terrorists. Groups that meet all four tests are terrorists.
So, does ALF/ELF meet all these tests?
The fires targeted forest ranger stations, meat packing plants, wild horse corrals, lumber mill offices, research facilities, an SUV dealer and, in 1998, Vail Ski Resort. No one was injured, the defense notes in legal motions.ELF and ALF are organized to set these sorts of fires (ELF alone claims 1,200 arsons), as a means of forcing social or political change. They are, then, devoted to the purpose of using violence and destruction for those purposes. That's test A.
The case, known as Operation Backfire, is the biggest prosecution ever of environmental extremists, and has turned on its head the prevailing idea that arsonists have generally acted alone, said Brent Smith, director of the Terrorism Research Center at the University of Arkansas.
"We thought these people operated for the last 15 years under this kind of uncoordinated violence approach, just like the extreme right was doing — leaderless resistance," Smith said. "That's why this case is so very different."
Prosecution filings argue that though the defendants were never convicted of terrorism, they qualify for the label because at least one of the fires each of them set was intended to change or retaliate against government policy.
They direct the fires not against soldiers or police, but primarily against civilian economic structures. The ranger stations are the sole exception, possibly, depending on whether the rangers are peace officers or fire watch officers -- both types of officers sometimes use the title "ranger." That's test B.
They wear no uniform. That's test C.
They are part of no military force. That's test D.
So, yes, they're clearly terrorists. They should be subject to the laws of war. The government has (unwisely) chosen to subject them to civilian law, as if they were part of rather than enemies of the society from which those laws and protections arise. That is a needless generosity on the part of the Federal government. That said, they are certainly entitled, if they are going to insist on treating this as a criminal matter, to prosecute it using laws against terrorism.
Hitchens/Sharpton
Ouch. Hitchens seriously outclassed Sharpton. I think the fault is Sharpton's for not being up to his standard. It's a shame that G. K. Chesterton wasn't there to take the field against him instead.
The Media Are Fools
A great truth -- the global media has simply refused to stop and consider the question of whether they are being used by terrorists as weapons. Today's example: this story from the AP, entitled, "Extremist taunts his victims from prison."
The article explains that Eric Robert Rudolph, against whom I have a particular grudge because I lost a bet about him, has been writing pointless screeds and mailing them to a friend. The friend has a website, run in the name of the so-called "Army of God" group Rudolph claimed to represent; and the existence of that website has been tormenting the victims of Rudolph's bombings.
Here's the problem:
Nobody remembered that the so-called "Army of God" existed. Nobody was looking for the website. Nobody would have read the articles.
Thanks to the AP's story, many people will see these rants who would otherwise have been totally ignorant of their existence. The AP story says that one of the victims "is worried that Rudolph's messages could incite someone to violence against abortion providers."
Well, the odds of that just increased from "nearly zero" to "quite possibly." Those perhaps-inspiring-to-a-lunatic rants have just been drawn to the attention of millions.
Terrorist groups cannot survive, and certainly cannot win any of their goals, without the media oxygen on which they depend. The media, if they are a responsible group of people with any love for civilization, need to learn this lesson.
They need to stop being the real weapon of terrorists. They're free -- the 1st Amendment protects them. They've got to choose to stop. I don't know how to say it any plainer.
Getting Older
Today I settled down to clean out my safe, the bottom shelf of which had become clogged with loose ammunition. After returning from the gun range, I sometimes just dump the unused ammo into the safe (to keep it secure) without taking the time to sort it by caliber and return it to the proper boxes. Quite a bit of it had accumulated over the years, so I finally got around to putting it all back where it belonged.
While doing so, I came across something interesting: a Viking dragon belt buckle, made by an old friend of ours at the Crafty Celts. I had no memory of buying it, or even thinking about buying it. It's just the sort of thing I'd like, though.
So I went to my wife, and asked if she'd bought it. She said she had no idea at all. The matter was a little puzzle for a while, until we checked the receipt and discovered that she had bought it back in October. Apparently, it was intended as a birthday present for me, or possibly a Christmas present.
So I got in May. Well, it's still nice. I can't say a thing about her forgetting my (birthday? Christmas?) present, though -- it's already the case that it seems wholly explicable to me. I'm not even all that old. But I'm old enough to understand.
Deepthought South Hate Crime 2
Deep Thought has updated his famous piece on the South and hate crimes, in the wake of last week's uproar involving Fort Pillow. He's a little angry about the rhetoric that was reflexively directed at Southerners just because some Congressman decided to quote a Civil War general, on the subject of military tactics.
I think the people who reacted so badly about the reference to Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest probably only know two things about him: that he was commanding at Ft. Pillow, and that he founded the KKK. They probably don't know that there are conflicting historical claims about what happened at Ft. Pillow, and they certainly don't know that Forrest ordered the KKK to disband when it stopped being about resisting Northern domination, and became about punishing blacks. He also was the first white man to address the Pole Bearers association, an early civil rights group, during which address he made a point of endorsing black civil rights, including voting rights.
In any event, he was a natural cavalryman -- and it's hard not to have some respect for a man who had more than thirty horses shot out from under him and kept riding into battle all the same. If you are talking about warfighting, as the Congressman was on this occasion, it's proper to cite him. The man knew something about it.