La Posta di Falcone

La Posta di Falcone:

If any of you saw Kingdom of Heaven, a movie I disliked the first time I saw it, but like better on each subsequent viewing, you saw a bit of genuine Medieval swordwork:

"Genuine Medieval," but not for the time shown: This type of sword was not used in the Crusading period. It is true that the "Italians" called the guard "la posta di falcone" -- at least, we know that one of them did.



Philippo Vadi of Pisa was an Italian student of arms, who thought much of how to maintain social harmony through training in arms. He begins his work with a call to be careful whom you teach:

This way he, with a generous heart, who sees my work should love it as a jewel and treasure and keep it in his heart, so that never, by means, should this Art and doctrine fall into the hands of unrefined and low born men. Because Heaven did not generate these men, unrefined and without wit or skill, and without any agility, but they were rather generated as unreasonable animals, only able to bear burdens and to do vile and unrefined works.

My experience has been that the 'unrefined' folks are that way out of laziness rather than in-born character: as you can lead a horse to water but can't make him drink it, so you can lead them to a "jewel and treasure," but you can't get them to perform the rigorous practice and thinking necessary to internalize it. With this as with other defensive arts of more modern use, there is little to fear: Colonel Coopers' letters are freely available online, but the criminal class carries on not training itself in the fine points of the weapons they misuse. They are not interested: the arms are only the means to a momentary satisfaction of a passing desire. If they had what it took to master the arms, they would not need to be criminals.

In fact, if you can find one whose interest in these skills is strong enough that he does show some willingness to develop newfound discipline and dedication in order to learn them, by all means teach him. Whatever peril there is in his learning the use of arms, there is also at least that much hope in his learning self-control. The first use of the sword is against yourself: to cut away the parts that are lazy, that are cowardly, that are overly aggressive, that are unjust and unforgiving. It is not for no reason that a man who has taken the time to master the sword -- as Vadi -- turns his thoughts more and more to the business of peace.

It is these men who make the peace, and it is the training that makes the men. It also fulfils a mystery:

And with these documents often it happens that a man weak and of small stature submits, brings to the ground and conquers one large, strong and valiant, and the same way the humble conquers the haughty and the unarmed conquers the armed; and many times he who is on foot conquers a horseman. Since it would be very unbecoming that such a noble doctrine should perish and fail by carelessness, I Philippo of Vadi from Pisa, having practiced this Art from the years of my youth, having searched and traveled many different countries and lands, castles and cities to learn from many masters perfect in the Art[.]

Last summer in Iraq, we pushed out of our strong places of fortification, intending to move out among the people and live with them. We built many smaller fortifications, less imposing and easier to reduce. We put more people out on patrol. Our soldiers and Marines spent more time outside the wire.

We said that we knew this would bring worse casualties, but it would be a risk that soldiers would run in order to protect the people. What happened instead -- which we did not expect -- was that our own casualties declined as well:



We should not have been surprised. The chief thing is being willing to meet the danger.

What allows 'the humble to conquer the haughty' is a heart willing to encounter the danger, combined with a mind that is awake and ready to learn. Both of these things can be brought out of a man's character only through training and self-discipline.

If he has them, though, he has learned the 'high guard' -- the posture of the falcon, which surveys all the world and decides how to deal with it.

Moral of the story

The Moral:

My father sends:

The teacher gave her fifth grade class an assignment:

Get their parents to tell them a story with a moral at the end of it.

The next day the kids came back and one by one began to tell their stories.

'Tony, do you have a story to share?'

'Yes ma'am. My daddy told a story about my Aunt Karen.

She was a pilot in Desert Storm and her plane got hit. She had to bail
out over enemy territory and all she had was a flask of whiskey, a pistol, and a survival knife.

She quickly drank the whiskey on the way down, knowing it
would shatter and go to waste otherwise and just then her parachute
opened and she landed right in the middle of twenty enemy troops.

She shot fifteen of them with the gun until she ran out of
bullets, killed four more with the knife, till the blade broke, and
then she killed the last enemy with her bare hands.'

'Good Heavens' said the horrified teacher. 'What kind of
moral did your daddy tell you from this horrible story?'

'Stay far away from Aunt Karen when she's drinking.'

Sadly, the JAGs had to put her away for the violation of General Order #1.

Sometimes, Even Before:

H/t: Euphoric Reality.

Back again, Mike?

Back Again, Mike?

Looks like old-time Milblogger Mike the Marine is back out Anbar way. He and I appear to have almost overlapped in Iraq, briefly: they probably got the better of the trade.

"That flag means a Marine Corps for another 500 years."
- Navy Secretary James Forrestal

Which means we'll outlast the Church of Global Warming. By a lot.
Screw you, Time.
- Mike the Marine

Good luck, lad.

Hawk

Greyhawk at Home:

Hawk is home again, from recent wanderings. He has some thoughts, in his usual form. I've met a few milbloggers, but I suspect that he and I have one thing in common: we are, in person, the least like you'd suspect us to be. We're both country boys, the kind of folks Barack Obama would have you believe 'cling' to guns and religion because we can't understand our real frustrations; and he isn't joking to say that we spent a part of our time together in Baghdad talking horses. Another thing we talked about was this piece, the day he wrote it:

I'm walking to the gym. Under my feet: four inches of gravel pave the way. Concrete t-wall sections form unbroken fortress walls on either side of my path. It's early in the morning, so the shadow of the wall on my left is shading that half of the road. A breeze is blowing, and in the shade in the moments just after dawn that breeze hits me in my shorts and t-shirt and chills me just enough that I take a few steps sideways and into the sun.

And then it hit me - I'd been walking in the shade because that's what I - and everyone else here - had done throughut the 120 degree summer and on into the merely 90 degree days of early fall. And while the change has been gradual, it was only today that I noticed it, as I broke a time-worn habit and passed from the too-cool shadows into the glowing warmth of the morning desert sun.

"I didn't intend anything symbolic in that," he said. Yet it was a perfect symbol for the time, the moment we were in there in Iraq: where enemies had broken and fled before us, and no soldier of our Division had fired his rifle in anger in some time.

What is coming in Iraq is going to be a tense period of negotiation -- and "negotiation" in Iraq can mean some serious violence. Yet this moment couldn't have come without that one: and better moments to come need that we pass through this. The people of Iraq are worth it. I don't know quite how to say that except to say it: at least the ones I met, who were self-selecting in that they they were engaged vigorously in trying to make Iraq a better place. One of them, a kind hearted, round-faced man, took a bullet to the head trying to win a new life for his country. He survived the ambush -- his bodyguard, an American, did not -- and was back to work as soon as he could move from his bed.

Whatever we've "sacrificed" or "spent" or "lost" in Iraq, they have done that, and more. If we are men, we ought to support them.

Hawk is, anyhow. I feel about him like Alfred felt about Mark, the man of Rome, when he sought his aid against the invader:

Long looked the Roman on the land;
The trees as golden crowns
Blazed, drenched with dawn and dew-empearled
While faintlier coloured, freshlier curled,
The clouds from underneath the world
Stood up over the downs.

"These vines be ropes that drag me hard,"
He said. "I go not far;
Where would you meet? For you must hold
Half Wiltshire and the White Horse wold,
And the Thames bank to Owsenfold,
If Wessex goes to war.

"Guthrum sits strong on either bank
And you must press his lines
Inwards, and eastward drive him down;
I doubt if you shall take the crown
Till you have taken London town.
For me, I have the vines."

"If each man on the Judgment Day
Meet God on a plain alone,"
Said Alfred, "I will speak for you
As for myself, and call it true
That you brought all fighting folk you knew
Lined under Egbert's Stone.

"Though I be in the dust ere then,
I know where you will be."
And shouldering suddenly his spear
He faded like some elfin fear,
Where the tall pines ran up, tier on tier
Tree overtoppling tree.

But, as I've warned you before, I'm no Alfred. Chesterton would have made me Colan of Caerleon: "His harp was carved and cunning, his sword prompt and sharp, and he was gay when he held the sword, sad when he held the harp."

But when is a man ever happier, than when in song and ale and love and wrath the tears run down his cheeks? If there is a fitter tribute for a world such as this, for friends made and friends lost, I have not met it.

The Pope 2

Touching Lives:

The Pope's speech to Americans, which talked about the other day, had the power to move hearts. Even hearts that began in a very different place.

I wasn’t quite prepared for the opening salvo of our Holy Spirit, coming in the Pope’s words at the White House:

“Freedom is not only a gift, but also a summons to personal responsibility. Americans know this from experience — almost every town in this country has its monuments honoring those who sacrificed their lives in defense of freedom, both at home and abroad.”

These words crushed me.

How could the Pope repeat United States propaganda, and express admiration for US bloodshed? I racked my mind for ways to interpret his words in another way, but I couldn’t. Not in that context. Not at the White House with the President standing next to him. Not as the Iraq war rages on. The Pope meant what he said, but not as propaganda. He spoke sincerely. He marvels at American monuments and sees those who “sacrificed their lives defense of freedom”. Pope Benedict looks at our country and sees . . . goodness. When I look at our country, I see . . . evil.

And then:

After a great deal of reflection and prayer, my heart has moved, my neck has bent. I have seen something startling: we live in a society where “defense of life” and “nonviolence” are mostly mutually exclusive, and because the defense of life must take priority over a commitment to nonviolence, most Christians are duty-bound to defend life with the least amount of violence possible....

I am not suggesting that violence is good, or even Christian. I am suggesting, however, that the circumstances of our society require us to choose defense of life over nonviolence. In other words - if the only way I can defend life is to use a gun, then I must use a gun....

Boycotts will not save us from a bullet to the head. Strikes will not stop robbers from breaking into our homes. Nonviolent communication will not stop those who do not wish to communicate. We have no nonviolent alternatives to police forces or militaries. We have no nonviolent alternatives to courts and prisons. Nonviolent means of defending life are mostly confined to idealistic exhortations to “love your enemy and trust in God’s grace to work miracles.”

Nonviolent means of defending life must be reasonable, passing the common sense rule, being as readily available as the gun in Target, or a call to 911. To criticize those who use violence to defend life when there are no other ways to defend life is . . . well . . . possibly scandalous.

You may wish to read the rest.

Tax Week

Tax Week

So I've seen a lot of people angry about their taxes this week. I'm not very happy about mine, either. I haven't done the math, but I'll bet it's not that different from this:



The Geek with a .45 is in a foul mood about the whole thing (his response to Michelle Obama is too rude to reprint). He's sharing Rachel Lucas' pain about it (actually, since she paid eleven grand and he paid almost FIFTY GRAND, she and I really have little to complain about by comparison).

I also pay what Lucas calls "the Extra Special Just For Those Who Don’t Work For Someone Else Tax." The fully-15%-of-everything-you-brought-in "self-employment" tax really is painful, because you pay it on income before you get to take your deductions, exemptions, credits, etc. And then, the government charges you income taxes on half of it again, as if you'd ever seen it instead of just sending it straight to them.

So, in other words, the government takes 15% of your income off the top as a "special tax"; and then it charges you income tax NOT on the 85% that is left, but on 92.5% of that original sum. That 7.5% you never had, because you sent it straight to Uncle Sam, you pay income taxes on that too.

That's the sort of thing that will make a man, oh, what's the word? "Bitter."

There are three kinds of Americans: those who are paying the freight, those who are not paying the freight, and those who are so rich that they can't tell the difference. Michelle Obama appears to belong to the last category.

Changes

Changes:

Yesterday, Cassandra posted a short photo essay called How We Have Changed, relevant to Joel's post, below. As we also mentioned Sir Baden Powell yesterday, perhaps you'd like to see a couple of other things I ran across while looking for that piece on canoeing.

"These Boy Scouts Like Knights of Old," The New York Times, December 17, 1910.

"Sees in Boy Scouts an Asset to Nation," The New York Times, December 13, 1910.

This last features a man identified as "Colonel Theodore Roosevelt," a year after he was President Theodore Roosevelt. That it was deemed proper to refer to him by his rank rather than as "former President Roosevelt" is another departure; or, perhaps, part of the same one.

"I know it when I see it".

American Digest takes a look at...well...something I am finding hard to describe. I'm no stranger to "unconventional" (a neutral enough a word) notions of conceptual art--I am mostly amused by it and typically mock it unmercifully (you probably don't want to be around me in an art museum, and I and some like minded friends nearly got tossed out of the National Gallery once) mostly because its all been done already and more competently, by people who had much better reasons to be unsatisfied at conventional society than anybody does nowadays.

I can't really add anything to the commentary over at American Digest, other than to concur that yes, there is no bottom, and the abyss is real, and be careful how close you get to the edge.

UPDATE:
American Digest has noted that Yale is announcing the whole thing was a hoax. "Performance Art" if you prefer. Well, for my part, I think that there are easier ways of announcing to the world what a miserable wretch one is, than the method employed by Ms. Shvart.

ERODING OUR FREEDOMS ONE CRISIS AT A TIME

ERODING OUR FREEDOMS ONE CRISIS AT A TIME

I am about thirty pages from finishing Jonah Goldberg’s fascinating book Liberal Fascism and I have to say that this book is one of the most important books I have read in probably the last 10 to 15 years. If you have not read this book you should put down whatever book you are currently reading and run, not walk, to your local book store and buy this book.

In Liberal Fascism Mr. Goldberg points out that one of the traits both the jackbooted fascists of yesterday share with their kinder gentler cousins among today’s liberals is the regular use of so called “crises” to mobilize the masses and centralize power. Furthermore, the responses to these crises are often described in martial terms, such as a war on poverty.

A perfect example of Mr. Goldberg’s point was on display this morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe with Joe Scarborough. Today Mr. Scarborough interviewed Rick Stengel, Managing Editor of Time Magazine. Mr. Stengel unveiled the cover for Time’s forthcoming environmental issue which will feature the historic Iwo Jima flag raising photo with the American flag replaced with a tree. The cover story will be “Winning the War on Global Warming.” Mr. Stengel explained how Time magazine in this issue would eschew a merely descriptive approach towards reporting on global warming in favor of a prescriptive approach. In short, the issue will be one big editorial promoting various environmental schemes.

I have a problem with all of this. Aside from the poor taste in doctoring an iconic Marine Corps image of heroism I am troubled by the description of the theory of global warming as not only an irrefutable fact but as a crisis of the same magnitude as war. First of all, there is no consensus in the scientific community as to the existence of global warming or, assuming it exists, what causes it. Furthermore, there is a wide divergence of opinion as to what, if any, long term impact global warming might have on the planet. Consequently, what is needed is more research in this area, not fear mongering.

However, a prudent and measured approach to the issue of global warming is the last thing the environmental activists of the left want. They want government action, lots of it, right now. That is why they want to describe the issue as a war that must be won. I have no doubt that framing the issue in this way is intended to frighten/motivate the citizenry to acquiesce to a whole host of new regulations and laws that will erode our freedoms and diminish the sphere of individual choice.


UPDATE: Here is the cover of the Article and a link to an atricle covering the reaction from Iwo Jima veterans. Needless to say they are not happy. Semper Fi

Chivalry and Women

Two citations today, to inform our recent discussion. The first one is from the invaluable book The Archaelogy of Weapons: Arms and Armor from Prehistory to the Age of Chivalry by Ewart Oakeshott. The quote is from pp 186-7.

The inevitable development of what we might call the official knightly attitude towards women began to take hold in the middle of the twelfth century. It was given impetus by the poets of southern France, particularly after Eleanor of Aquitaine (one of the most glamorous women of the Middle Ages, who later married Henry II of England and became the mother of Richard Lion-Heart and John) came from Provence to Paris to become for a while the Queen of Louis VII of France. The mingling of the tongues of "oc" and "oui" in overseas expeditions strengthened it.

["Oc" and "oui" here refers to two major dialects of Middle French, in which the word for "yes" was pronounced one of two different ways. This was not the only difference, of course, just the one chosen as an easy symbol. In Ivanhoe, Richard the Lionheart offers to sing "a 'sirvente' in the language of 'oc,' or a 'lai' in the language of 'oui,'" but ends up singing a ballad in the English at the request of the Holy Clerk of Copmanhurst, that is, Friar Tuck. -Grim]

Henceforth the influence of women dominates chivalry, and religion and feudal loyalty take second place. Only war, a glorious and exciting pastime and a stimulating way of winning wealth, kept its high place as a gentleman's most cherished occupation; but the influence of love as the mainspring of warlike aspiration gave a much lighter rhythm to it, and to literature and life itself. Poets sing now only of their ladies' perfections, crave their pity and strive to merit their grace. The knight fights as hard as he ever did (he was not to be deprived of his business or his fun) but it is to win his lady's favors, and the word amoureux comes to mean more than it does today, for it covers the entire range of knightly virtue. The idea has prevailed that:

Hee never were a good werryoure
That cowde not love aryghte

"He who loves not is but half a man" and "pour l'amour des dames devient li vilains courtois."

The "influence of women" which "dominates" chivalry is not an oppressive influence. It liberated women and gave them a powerful voice in society, without either demeaning men or making them resentful of feminine power. Just the opposite: It is one embraced cheerfully by men of the sort who can tame horses and ride them to war.

Unlike the culture war of today, the situation provoked by Eleanor's court was a genuine improvement of the relationship between men and women -- one that, from the distance of the twelfth century, still inspires us, and seems almost to glow across the ages. It may mark the high point of the relations between the sexes in all human history.

That said, Eric is not wrong to say that the 19th century made a great deal out of this period, and a lot of our understanding has to do with what we inherited from them. Here is something you probably have not seen before: Sir Baden Powell's likening of life to the task, familiar to Scouts, of paddling a canoe in rough waters. Women represent a rock in the river: not a bad thing, as it adds to the beauty of the river and the glory of navigating it, but a hazard that has to be considered with a clear mind:

You will, I hope, have gathered from what I have said about this Rock "Women," that it has dangers for the woman as well as for the man. But it has also its very bright side if you only manoeuvre your canoe aright.

The paddle to use for this job is CHIVALRY.

Most of the points which I have suggested as being part of the right path are comprised under chivalry.

The knights of old were bound by their oath to be chivalrous, that is to be protective and helpful to women and children.

This means on the part of the man a deep respect and tender sympathy for them, coupled with a manly strength of mind and strength of body with which to stand up for them against scandal, cruelty or ridicule, and even, on occasion, to help them against their own failings.

A man without chivalry is no man.

I would strongly suggest that "sexism" is a false star. Navigating by it leads us into errors and anger with one another that are needless and pointless. What is wanted is not that men and women should be treated as if they were exactly the same: no one wants that, not the most sincere feminist, who at least believes that women have something special to offer. As indeed they have!

Women should always be treated with chivalry, with "deep respect and tender sympathy." Equality of opportunity aside, women and men are not the same -- it is good that a man should understand how they are different, and take pains to make women feel welcome and valued. He should showcase his valor in the way of the knights and poets of old: so that, in him, the entire range of knightly virtue is expressed through love.

Ave, Pope

Ave!

Let us hail the Pope on his visit to America. This particular pope is a serious and careful thinker, and agree with him or disagree, you have to be impressed with the quality and clarity of his thought.

Although not a Catholic myself, having spent a fair amount of time studying Medieval history I've learned a great deal about the history and teachings of the Church. It is at its best a highly admirable institution that purifies what was already good.

At its worst, it is a human institution, which no worse than other things of Men -- yet, as Chesterton said, the more blameworthy for that, for its business is to be better. So too we might say of our nation, which hosts him today.

"God bless America," said Benedict robustly, to cheers from the excited throng.

Amen.

UPDATE: Here is video of his remarks.

A Small Admission:

I am really enjoying this moment where Senator Clinton tries to win on the votes of Southern white men. I'm neither shocked nor especially upset by Obama's "bitter" comments -- as has been noted elsewhere and often, it is really the standard Marxist reading of economic determinism. Given his education and associations, it's what I'd expect him to believe; no doubt he does believe it.

For that reason he shouldn't be President; but I won't chide a man for saying what he really thinks is true. However much I disagree with his analysis, his methodology, and his worldview, I do appreciate his honesty. I just wish the pair of them would be as straightforward all the time.

For more on the South and the Democratic Party, newer readers might enjoy this post from 2004. For some more current advice from Tennessee, try this.

More sexism

More Sexism:

At the Corner, where they note:

Tag is a game "of intense aggression," according to one McLean, Va., school.

(This, Senator Obama, is how you create bitter people.)

And Cassandra finds another example.

Wunderbar. When the possession and use of Eyeballs (or more specifically, Evil Men's Eyeballs) near children has been made a felony offense, only The Bad People will have them and violent crime will magically vanish from the face of the earth.

Of course, this sort of "sexism" is anti-male sexism. So what?

I think it would be wise to simply accept that what we call "sexism" is a permanent feature of human society: men and women instinctively treat each other differently, and furthermore, want to be treated differently. There are benefits and hazards for both sides: Hillary can cry on stage and see her poll numbers shoot through the roof with women without hurting her numbers with men, for example. A man who cried on stage, unless it was for his dog, would see his poll numbers crash with both sexes.

On the other hand, a man's laugh is unlikely to drive voters away from him as a candidate: though, in the case of Hillary's laugh, what's so awful about it isn't so much the sound of it as the way she uses it. 'Conflict of interest? HAHAHAH! How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?' (Apparently at least eight hundred thousand dollars' worth.)

If the laugh was merry, rather than a bald and scornful way of suggesting that these issues can't apply to her, it probably wouldn't be bothersome.

Sexism?

Sexism?

We've heard that older feminists were angry about Senator Obama's pushing aside of Senator Clinton as presumptive favorite. Now, Slate says that younger feminists are feeling the same way.

And yet, as Lossia wrote in a recent e-mail, "I've been really bothered by what I perceive as sexism [among some male Obama supporters] and have spent hours defending [Clinton] ... A lot of guys just can't stand Hillary, and it's the intensity of their irritation with her that disturbs me more than their devotion to Obama."

I only mention the issue at all because I had a sergeant in Iraq say exactly this to me. I asked him what he was planning to do come election day, and he said, "I could vote for Obama or McCain [which is to say, given the distance between the men's positions, that the sergeant's decision is not at all based on policy or politics. -Grim]. But the thought of having to listen to that woman's voice for the next four years..."

Now, he's a good lad, and doesn't seem to have any problem with women in general -- neither does he treat them disrespectfully, nor show difficulty working with them, nor taking orders from them (his unit commander, in fact, is a female major). So I'm not sure sexism is really the issue here.

It may just really be her. And, er, that voice. And laugh. And the fact that she will look you in the eye and tell you she landed under fire in Bosnia without shame or apology.

Now, what is plainly sexism in the sergeant's comments was that he didn't say -- as did the "young progressive man" cited by the article -- that her voice made him want to punch her in the face. I suppose he might have said it about a man: like with most sergeants, I didn't get the sense that he was opposed to punching people under the right circumstances.

That sort of "sexism" is something I'd like to see more of in our society. Any young man who gloats about wanting to punch a lady in my company, whether Senator Clinton or any other, will not leave off thinking he was speaking well and cleverly.

I certainly believe that the sex of a person is a relevant factor in how you should treat them, or act around them, and that certain protections and courtesies should apply to women especially. I prefer the old fashioned term, chivalry, but if you insist on calling that sexism, so be it. I still believe it.

words to live by

More Words to Live By:

"Close Air Support covers a multitude of sins."

To whit.

Beer song

Hark, the Bold Milboggers Sing:

"Beer is the cure for everything."

WELL. This is just plain fascinating.

Memeorandum, at 10:20pm EST on April 12th.

Senator Obama has, as the saying goes, stepped on his training aid; and reveals that he really does not have a clue. Either that, or he's just not experienced enough to act in the Kabuki theater that American presidential election politics has become lately.

And you know what else? I still think he's going to get nominated by the Democrats.

Now, as in wars, those who make the fewest (or maybe the smallest) mistakes typically win. McCain at this point just basically has to not make any big mistakes like this, and he's going to get elected President.

"You need to know where you stand with them at all times."



Not quite as good as 'More cowbell', but still.

Scenes from Savannah

Scenes from Savannah:

I'm still very busy.



Oh, I found out a secret. Cassandra's opened a store down here.



Think I'm making that up? Check out the store's T-shirt for the final, clenching proof:



The prosecution rests.

Thanks, Chuck.

Requiescat in pace.

...“You probably have time to put on pants, Sir.”

LT G relates his and his platoon's experiences during the recent Mahdi army 'revolt' in Iraq.

I want to send SSG Bulldog more milkbones.

world Tour

Grim's World Tour:

Almost home. One more flight. I've been several places lately.

Friday:



Saturday:



Sunday:



But the sight I want most is waiting at the end of this next flight: my wife and little boy. Months of longing, days of debriefings, and now I'm at Reagan waiting for the last flight.

You may not hear from me for a little while. I should be back around the 15th.

By the way, I want to congratulate my fellow bloggers. I put the blog through John Donovan's cuss test:

That's outstanding. Thank you all for helping to make this a place for the exchange of ideas in the best traditions of the West.

Goodbye

Goodbye, Iraq:

Sir, said she, leave your horse here, and I shall leave mine; and took their saddles and their bridles with them, and made a cross on them, and so entered into the ship.... and so the wind arose, and drove them through the sea in a marvellous pace. And within a while it dawned.

Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte D'Arthur

Reality intrudes.

I encounter an enormous and growing number of people who have no frame of reference to the whole world, and everybody and everything in it, except that which they learned from watching, listening to, or reading entertainment. But unlike the elderly I mentioned, they are not using the TV to remind them of a world they have already participated in. They are deriving their reality from the flickering screen. Every single thing they say or do is filtered almost entirely through the lens of movies, teleplays, and magazines --paper or virtual-- things that use reality only as a veneer, if that, and simply to lend verisimilitude to wholly fictitious inventions.

(via American Digest)

...And I saw a leg.



The Onion scores again.

(via OPFOR)

McCain Misspeeak Reminder

McCain's "Misspeak" - a small reminder

There’s plenty of commentary around on Sen. McCain’s recent statement about Iran assisting al-Qaeda. I’m not going to write about whether he was right the first time –- as others have -- but I am concerned about the idea (which seems to be behind some of the commentary) that they couldn’t work together because of ideological or religious differences. I remember similar ideas from the beginning of the war – from people who assured us that Saddam’s “secular” Ba’athist regime could never work with Islamist terrorists, as it could and did.

Of course, it’s good to know the difference between Shia and Sunni, between Ismaili and “Twelver” Shia, between Salafi/Wahabi and other Sunni, between the schools of Islamic jurisprudence, and more besides; I fervently wish that more of our leaders and commentators had a good basic grounding in these things (and I hope to keep improving my own, which is far from perfect). But in getting this knowledge, don’t let’s forget some of those basic truths about politics and strategy and strange bedfellows that continue to apply. Everyone knows the Assassins were a radical Shia sect; not everyone knows they allied variously with the Sunni Sultan Saladin – who had supplanted the last Shia Caliph – and with the Christian crusaders. As some say, the Arab Revolt of WWI may have been considerably exaggerated, yet it still amounted to Sunni Muslims allied with Christian westerners against Sunni Turkey – whose ruler was also the Sunni Caliph. Many have remembered the U.S. giving support to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war; not as many, I think, remember that Israel supplied arms to Iran during that same conflict. Some commentators have noted that, per the 9/11 Commission Report (scroll to “Turabi sought to persuade”), Iran did train al-Qaeda in the early 1990’s. Ideological purity doesn’t survive warfare any better than it does electoral politics. This is as true of the religious as of the secular kind. 1 Maccabees 2:32-41.

Pron

Grim's Hall: Your Home for PR0N!

I see that Magic Island Technologies, which provides the private internet service to Camp Victory, has banned the entire Blogspot system as "a pornography site" -- I can still get to Blogger to post, but not to Grim's Hall. I expect it was our Holy Week series that did it, or possibly Joel's writings on Rules of Engagement (just the sort of thing you'd want to keep soldiers from reading).

Since I figure there's no hope of convincing the Army to reconsider, I suppose I'll just have to live down to their expectations. Here follows "The Ballad of Lily and Sam," by The Limeybirds.

A bonny young lass fresh and wholesome
was married to a much older man:
Listen close to this tale we will tell you
'tis the ballad of Lily and Sam.

When he comes home in the evening
Lily sat a nice table for two.
Sam says he's already eaten,
and then heads right on up to his room.

She followed him happy and hopeful
dressed in her best lingerie,
and there he's high up on the bedposts
sound asleep, much to Lily's dismay.

She tried and she tried O to tempt him;
Sweet nothings whispered in his ear.
Sam pushed her off and he shouts up,
"Speak up girl, you know I can't hear!"

Lily slipped him one night some Viagra;
She didn't know what else to do.
But from that day on they were happy
and soon they were no longer two.

Many years later when Sam died
Lily she moaned and she cried;
We heard that old Sam had been found
Wearing naught but his socks and a smile.

So if your lover is older
Don't worry, there's hope for you still:
Just think of Lily and her Sam,
and trust in the little blue pill!

There, that ought to do it. Plus -- I swear I am not making this up -- I just received an email from "Erica Blair" advertising penile enhancements. That should really cement our status.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

The LT G post that Eric linked to below is very troubling. That post appears to demonstrate a real lack of understanding of some important concepts within the rules of engagement (ROE). I want to stress the word “appears” because I am not currently deployed to Iraq and I do not know what guidance and/or instruction LT G may have received concerning the ROE. Furthermore, I was not there and did not see the situation develop. This post is not intended to be a critique of LT G. What follows is intended to address what I believe is a real misunderstanding of key concepts of ROE that is shockingly widespread.

LT G described a situation in which members of his unit observed individuals low crawling towards a road at midnight pushing a box. He then describes the hard decision making process he went through before telling his soldiers to flash a light at these individuals and fire at them if they ran. LT G’s order was overruled by his captain who forbade the soldiers from firing at the low crawling individuals unless those individuals fired first. The box turned out to be an improvised explosive device (IED).

As I understand the ROE, and as I instructed my Marines in Iraq, all of the above was unnecessary unless done for some other reason than simply complying with the ROE.

Let me start with some concepts and definitions. Under the Joint Chiefs of Staff Standing Rules of Engagement armed force is authorized to deter, neutralize, or destroy individuals or organizations committing hostile acts or demonstrating hostile intent.

A hostile act is defined as “an attack or other use of force by a foreign force or terrorist unit (organization or individual) against the United States, U.S. forces, and in certain circumstance, U.S. citizens, their property, U.S. commercial assets, and other designated non-U.S. forces, foreign nationals and their property. It is also force used directly to preclude or impede the mission and/or duties of U.S. forces, including the recovery of U.S. personnel and U.S. government property.

Hostile intent is defined as “the threat of imminent use of force by a foreign force or terrorist unit (organization or individual) against the United States, U.S. forces, and in certain circumstances, U.S. citizens, their property, U.S. commercial assets, or other designated non-U.S. forces, foreign nationals and their property.”

Long story short, if someone is attacking or threatening to attack you or your unit you have the right to use armed force to deter, neutralize, or destroy the source of the attack or threat.

Unlike hostile act (everyone can tell when they are being attacked), hostile intent is a broad concept can be hard to describe with specificity. What constitutes a threat can change from situation to situation. What is or isn’t a threat will depend on enemy techniques, tactics, and procedures in an often fluid environment. Consequently, I can’t provide a bright line rule that will clearly define hostile intent in every situation. However, the individual grunt does not want that. The concept of hostile intent needs to be broad in order to allow the individual soldier, sailor, or Marine to exercise personal judgment based on his knowledge of the situation and the enemy. For that very reason I would tell my Marines that if they could explain in basic commonsense terms why they thought someone was a threat then they had nothing to worry about.

Now back to the scenario presented by LT G. In the above situation two individuals low crawling toward a road at midnight pushing an object that could be an IED are, at the very least, demonstrating hostile intent. I would argue that IED emplacement, in and of itself, is a hostile act. Consequently, the individuals could be engaged with deadly force for the actions described. However, LT G wanted to flash a light at these individuals to see if they fled and use their flight as the reason to engage with deadly force. This is precisely the wrong criteria to use. Running away from coalition forces is not, in and of itself, a demonstration of hostile intent. At any rate, you don’t have to wait. As stated above, the individuals could be engaged as soon as they are observed low crawling towards the road with the box. Furthermore, there are any number of additional variables that might indicate hostile intent long before flight becomes an issue.

I used to use a much less clear scenario than that described above to instruct the Marines of my battalion that if they caught insurgents emplacing an IED that they could kill them if they believed that was what the situation required. I did this because I wanted my Marines, both officer and enlisted, to clearly understand that they could use deadly force to defend themselves and their fellow Marines. There may be any number of reasons why they may not want to shoot the insurgents, i.e. intelligence gathering, etc. Nevertheless these are tactical decisions that are separate from what is permitted under the ROE.

One of my greatest concerns is that individual soldiers, sailors, and Marine will be confused about the ROE and that this confusion will cause them unnecessary hesitation in life or death situations. It does not have to be this way.

Ah, Tony McPeak:

Of course I respect the service of retired Air Force General Tony McPeak, who gave his country thirty-six years of his life. I nevertheless disagree sharply with him on his ideas about warfighting.

Longtime readers of Grim's Hall will remember that we discussed McPeak's vision for war in 2004, when he was for the Kerry campaign what he is now for the Obama campaign.

McPeak was all in favor of bombing Iraq to ruin, and then leaving it as rubble -- in spite of the fact that the majority of the people of Iraq were not part of Saddam's violence; in spite of the fact that failed states are as big a challenge to security, in the age of terrorism, as tyrannies. To replace a tyranny with a failed state is small advantage -- you may cut off a source of funding or diplomatic support to terrorist groups, or weapons, but you give them a haven in which to operate. The failure of Pakistan to control its northern provinces today shows how dangerous this is.

If we "do it right," McPeak said, we'd have to stay for a hundred years (or fifty years -- he seems to have simply meant, 'a really long time'). So he advocated doing it wrong:

The man who headed the U.S. Air Force during Desert Storm will tell you, over black coffee in a Lake Oswego cafe, that the potential attack on Iraq is "the fight you dream about, a wonderful kind of war to have."

The former fighter pilot calls the conflict a "no brainer," pitting the U.S. military machine -- with precision-guided munitions that he conceived -- against a nation whose gross national product is dwarfed by what the Air Force spends each year.

"Everybody's going to get decorated out of this thing," says Tony McPeak, a four-star general who retired to Oregon in 1995. "Everyone comes home. It has a lot of appeal to me."

But what to do when the war is over? The Air Force can't do the work of occupying nations that need rebuilding, but that's OK, as McPeak is against it:

Airstrikes would wipe out Baghdad's communications system again, McPeak says. "If we go in there and occupy the place for 50 years, which is my prediction, we'll have to rebuild it."

Kerry's actual position was different from McPeak's, so it wasn't clear that he was paying any attention to what McPeak was saying -- he just wanted a General Officer on his team, to give him credibility.

In Obama's defense, so to speak, he seems to feel the same way: McPeak's stated positions and preferences are not apparently related to Obama's positions. We've been talking about this at the Politburo. The discussion is too long to reproduce here, but the point is that Obama's "brigade or two a month" position seems to be one that he is presenting as a "moderate, responsible" pace. In fact, a single brigade represents a massive amount of combat power, and geographic control -- and equipment! Pulling out "one or two a month" would be taxing our logistical systems; it would represent the most rapid withdrawal of forces we could actually, physically manage without simply abandoning our equipment and marching to the sea.

I'm not suggesting Obama is being deceptive -- presenting a shocking, sudden withdrawal as a 'relaxed, easy' pace. I'm suggesting he probably lacks the experience to understand just what a Brigade Combat Team is. There's no reason he should be expected to have the experience -- he was never in the military, has spent little time at the Federal level, and mostly has served in minor state or city functions. There's nothing that would suggest he's had occasion to learn what a Commander in Chief would need to know to formulate a plan of the type he's proposing.

That though, is why you have advisors. Nobody has all the experience a potential President might need. So you get people who do on your team. The problem is, Obama's statements on the Quadrenniel Defense Review are at such odds with McPeak's own preferences that I can't take away any sense that McPeak is really a "military advisor." He's a showpiece -- which, given that I disagree with his ideas entirely, is fine with me.

But it makes an issue of Obama's experience. It makes it clear that he's going on his own, and on his own, he really doesn't have a capacity to understand the issue.

The only thing McPeak has ever said that harmonizes with what others in the Obama campaign have said is his position on American Jews and their support for Israel. The piece linked there is a hit piece -- I'm not sure how McPeak's "affinity for alcohol," which is surely no business of the public's so long as he suffers no more DUI arrests, is meant to be linked to his ideas about Israel -- but they're right about his general thinking on what he considers the problem of American Jewish support for Israel, as it affects American defense policy.

Unless Obama either harmonizes his own views with McPeak's, or gets another (and hopefully a wiser) advisor, it will be hard to take him seriously. It's plain he doesn't really know what he's talking about. It's plain he isn't listening to the people he's pulled in because they know more about the subject than he does himself.

That's reason for concern.

Rules of Engagement.

In which, LT G appears to finally decide that asking forgiveness is a better choice than asking permission.

It's no fun being in charge.

High Adventure

Let Me Tell You Of The Days of High Adventure:

Easter / Merlin

On Ostara, Easter, Beowulf, Odin, Merlin, and Coifi:

This Easter, I would offer a lengthy meditation on some powerful legends, and how they have intertwined.

I watched the Beowulf movie recently. The story is wholly unlike that of the poem, but not in the usual Hollywood rewrite. It is, I have to say, inspired -- but inspired by what, we shall have to discuss.

Beowulf confronts Hrothgar, who tells Beowulf that Grendel's mother is indeed the last of the monsters. Unferth apologizes to Beowulf for having doubted him, and offers his sword Hrunting for use against Grendel's mother.

Beowulf and Wiglaf seek out the flooded cave of Grendel's mother. Beowulf enters the cave alone to find it filled to the ceiling with treasure. Grendel's mother appears to him in the form of a beautiful woman, offering him fame and power if he will give her another son. She also asks for the Dragon Horn of Hrothgar, with the promise that Heorot will be safe as long as it is in her possession. Beowulf gives in to her temptations.

Beowulf returns to Heorot, claiming to have slain Grendel's mother. He brings back Grendel's head as proof of his deeds. He says that he lost Unferth's sword and Hrothgar's horn during the battle. In private, Hrothgar points out inconsistencies in Beowulf's story and asks if he did indeed slay Grendel's Mother. When Beowulf doesn't give a straight answer, Hrothgar knowingly says that with Grendel's death, he is no longer the cursed one. King Hrothgar names Beowulf heir to the throne. Hrothgar then leaps from the balcony to his death to the surprised horror of everyone. Beowulf is crowned king, and takes Wealtheow as his wife....

Wiglaf prepares a Viking funeral for Beowulf. As Wiglaf watches the burning boat that serves as Beowulf's funeral pyre, he sees Grendel's mother kissing the corpse. Grendel's mother then appears in the water in human form and beckons to Wiglaf.

Whether they know it or not, the filmmakers have restored the original water/earth goddess ritual to nearly its precise form. I will yield to John Grigsby's Beowulf and Grendel for a full description of the archeological and historic evidence on the point -- including hundreds of recovered bodies of high-born victims of the human sacrifice. The short version is that the ritual was a way of joining the seed of the corn god, who was symbolized in the king, with the earth/water goddess, who brought forth prosperity (as symbolized by the female capacity for childbirth). The corn god was, at the proper point in the cycle, cut down and replaced by another, who joined with the goddess in his place. This was how "good kingship" was established in the land: the king became one with the "land," symbolized by a priestess, giving his "seed" (in the movie, Grendel's mother strokes Beowulf's sword, and it dissolves to nothing -- how's that for symbolism?); and when it was time for him to be replaced, he gave his blood instead, as the land must be fertilized.

Grigsby thinks, and there is strong evidence to suggest, that the ritual existed symbolically from Egypt to ancient England and Greece; but that it was acted out physically, including the actual sex and actual murder, in Denmark. He believes the Beowulf story is the story of the end of that cult -- not by Christianity, however, which was yet to come to that land.

So who, then, went into the earth to win the secret of creation? Well, what does "Beowulf" mean?

According to Grigsby, it means "barley-wolf" -- one of the beserkers of the cult of Odin, who stole the old "mead of inspiration" that could drive men mad, and make them poets. According to Tolkien, it means "bee-wolf," that is, "bear," a raider of the bees' flocks: an animal also connected to the beserker, whose name means "bear-shirt."

How did an Odhinnic beserker become a symbol of the Christian success over pagan human sacrifice? Easily enough: for the cult of Odin, like Odin himself, prefers to go masked. Odin has over two hundred kennings for his name, most of which imply disguise: "broad-hat," "masked," "hooded," and so forth. He went about, according to legends, wearing a broad-brimmed hat, and a beard, and a spear.

Remember the man who called himself Coifi, mentioned a few days ago? He presented himself to King Edwin of Northumbria as a heathen priest, one who could not use weapons or ride horses -- that is, a priest of Freyr. When he took the cross, though, he rode forth to Freyr's temple and cast a spear into it -- and then burned it to the ground.

Coifi means "wearing a coif," or, "hooded." Whether the priest, or the god himself afoot, he had no problem taking the cross. In Iceland, some hundreds of years later, "the Wolf's Cross" combined Odhinnic and Christian symbols overtly, as men described themselves as "of dual faith." This was also called the Hammer Cross, as dual followers of Thor and Jesus also used it.

The question is, was the cross only another mask?

The myths that involve Odin suggest that he moves easily between worlds, more easily than the other gods. Tacitus said he was like Hermes, but Tacitus never went to Germania in person. Had he gone, I think he would have found Odin to be more like Dionysus. Like Dionysus, Odin's cult dealt in maddening drink; and like Dionysus, whose followers believed he was the greatest god though other Greeks did not, we have poems and songs that place Odin as the All Father -- yet the archaeology suggests his cult was small, even when it was most powerful. It was inspirational to poets and warriors, even if the most of the population preferred Thor.

To return to Grigsby -- he suggests that the Beowulf poem is a Christian gloss on a story celebrating Odin's victory over the old Freyr/Freya cult. The Christian monk viewed Grendel's mother as a horrible monster, because she loved blood; but the view of the movie is just as accurate. The old cult saw her as beautiful, impossibly beautiful: the sort of woman to whom a man, even a king, would willingly devote his life; the sort to whose knife or cord he would offer his throat, rather than live when she was tired of him.

The victory over that is the breaking of the cycles of the earth. Chesterton said that the pagan religions believed in the cycle of life: what was important about the cross was that it was the only thing that broke all circles. On Easter, when Christ is said to have risen from the dead, the earthly order was overturned. Ostara, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of Spring, had only represented the fertility part of the cycle of life-to-death. Easter promised the end of that cycle, and a hope of eternal life.

Odin accomplished much the same thing, offering his friends the life they loved until the end of the world -- drinking and feasting by night, fighting by day. Though they died to this life, they would be saved from hell, and brought instead to that warrior's paradise. And they were brought there for a purpose: "because the grey wolf watches the abode of the gods," that is, because the army he raised in that way was a hedge against evil forces pitted against the gods.

It would be easy to replace one of his cult with a Christian: the early Christian mystery cult involved similar themes of death and resurrection, and having suffered and survived execution by being hanged on a tree. As with Coifi, the Odinnic cult saw no need to contest for control of the outward symbols -- indeed, as mentioned, they preferred the mask.

I think this shift began to happen early in England, where "Woden" had come with the Anglo-Saxons and been braided into the legends around a certain Celtic prophet. Odin has great similarity to Merlin as we have inherited him, not only in appearance and magic. He likewise had to do with magic swords that bestowed kingship on the man who could draw them -- see the Volsung saga, versus the Sword in the Stone. Merlin also went into a cave with the Lady of the Lake: but the legends remember him losing the contest, and having his power stolen by her.

The question, I said above, was whether or not the conversion was only another mask. There is one piece of evidence to offer: the instinct of a poet, for Odin was always a special friend to poets.

J.R.R. Tolkien imagined a powerful wizard, a wanderer who went far and wide in a mission similar to the one Merlin and Odin both set upon: to raise up great kings, as a means to ward off a terrible evil. He likewise fell into the depths of the earth to battle a demon, in order to save kings. He likewise passed through death, and return stronger. Tolkien imagined him as the greatest servant of 'the light,' the most faithful one, the one who never abandoned his mission.

He called him Gandalf: "...and if you have heard one quarter of what I have heard of him, and I have heard but a little of what there is to tell, you would be prepared for any sort of remarkable tale."

Tolkien wrote much about the power of myth. Our culture has broken the Beowulf, and set Freya free in her own beautiful and terrible form. Odin, in his old hat but with another new name, speaks with eagles and raises kings.

What does that mean? I will leave you to seek that for yourselves. Easter, the day when the cycles renew and circles are broken, Easter is the day to think on these things.

GEORGE WILL, ENEMY OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT

GEORGE WILL, ENEMY OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT

George Will has written an article decrying the bureaucratic abuses of government officials in Pinal County, AZ. It appears that grasping county supervisors want to fine the owner of a Western themed steakhouse and saloon $5,000 every day that anyone dances in the saloon’s outside dance area. Apparently there is a statute that requires dancing to be done in an enclosed structure.

The aforementioned fine, as well as other nitpicking harassments from the county supervisors, has drawn Mr. Will’s ire. I agree with Mr. Will that the government officials in question appear to have acted in a harassing manner. I will even go so far as say that in this case the law is an ass. However, I can’t go along with Mr. Will in his broad indictment of local government and promotion of judicial activism. Since Ed Whelan over at National Review online has adequately addressed Mr. Will’s comments on judicial activism I will address his indictment of local government.

Mr. Will states that “governments closest to the people are — never mind what sentimentalists say — often the worst. This is because elected tyrants can most easily become entrenched where rival factions are few.” Whereas there is some truth in these statements they are only half truths and, therefore, not complete. The other side of the argument is that governments closest to the people are, due to their proximity, easier to petition than governments situated in distant capitals. It is also easier to participate in such governments. If the local politicians are tyrants then it is easier to leave and relocate because such jurisdictions are local and smaller in size.

As a conservative I understand that, human nature being what it is, man cannot create a perfect system of government. There is always be grasping politicians that seek to abuse their power for all sorts of illegitimate reasons. Since we can’t create heaven on earth we must be guided by sound principles that will help us make the best arrangement possible. One of those principles is that political power should be situated as close as possible to the people upon which it will be exercised. Under such an arrangement it is, as stated above, easier to petition and participate in government affairs. Furthermore, it is easier to escape the tyrants of small local governments than it is to escape tyrants at the state or national levels. Relocating to another county is far easier than relocating to another state, let alone another country.

By separating and diffusing power between the local, state, and national government you prevent the centralization of power. It is precisely the centralization of power at the larger ends of the jurisdictional spectrum (state and national) that creates the greatest risk of abuse by the sort of petty bureaucrats Mr. Will describes.

It is true that local governments are just as able to produce bureaucratic bullies as the national government. However, there is nothing magical that occurs to politicians when they achieve federal office that makes them more high minded or more concerned about individual citizens. To the contrary, the further a politician is removed from his constituents and the larger his jurisdiction the less inclined he or she is concerned with the mundane everyday issues of individual citizens. Whereas the Washington based Senator or Representative may only make infrequent visits back to his home state or district the local politician is just as likely to be your neighbor or someone you see at the store. Consequently, if I have to deal with a politician I would rather deal with one that might have to face me at my kid’s little league games. Hat tip to Southern Appeal.

The Limits of Imagination

Limits of Imagination Query -

The recent tributes to the late and rightly-admired Arthur C. Clarke lead me to think of imaginative fiction, and its limits. I may post a thought or two related to this, but first I am interested in your answers to this question:

Think on all the science fiction, fantasy, "weird tale" fiction, and other imaginative literature you know that featured non-human, intelligent beings, be they aliens, gods, fantasy races, or what have you. Which ones struck you as the most convincingly non-human? I am interested in appearances, motives, and psychology.

A Remarkable Lapse:

Stephen Hayes responds to a Pentagon survey of 600,000 documents captured from Saddam's intelligence service. He finds it contains hundreds of incidents of support of terrorist groups as an instrument of state policy, including this --

This IIS document provides this description of the Afghani Islamic Party:

It was founded in 1974 when its leader [Gulbuddin Hekmatyar] escaped from Afghanistan to Pakistan. It is considered one of the extreme political religious movements against the West, and one of the strongest Sunni parties in Afghanistan. The organization relies on financial support from Iraq and we have had good relations with Hikmatyar since 1989.

In his book Holy War, Inc., Peter Bergen, a terrorism analyst who has long been skeptical of Iraq-al Qaeda connections, describes Hekmatyar as Osama bin Laden's "alter ego." Bergen writes: "Bin Laden and Hekmatyar worked closely together. During the early 1990s al-Qaeda's training camps in the Khost region of eastern Afghanistan were situated in an area controlled by Hekmatyar's party."

The Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) issued fake passports to members of terrorist groups; financially supported such groups from Palestine to Afghanistan to the Philippines; provided safe haven for terrorists to hold conferences; and much more.

So, he asks:

How can a study offering an unprecedented look into the closed regime of a brutal dictator, with over 1,600 pages of "strong evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional and global terrorism," in the words of its authors, receive a wave-of-the-hand dismissal from America's most prestigious news outlets? All it took was a leak to a gullible reporter, one misleading line in the study's executive summary, a boneheaded Pentagon press office, an incompetent White House, and widespread journalistic negligence.

Read it all.

Obama speech

The Obama Speech:

This was a tremendously good speech. Read it, for speeches are better to be read than heard, as you can more easily separate the ideas from the rhetorical ability -- and it is the ideas that matter.

Let's talk about it. I think the core question is here: what, to judge from the speech, is the role of the American nation in Obama's view?

It is his starting point: "to form a more perfect union." He declares that he intends to be on the side of "the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag."

He has hard words only for one group: corporations. Here, too, he invokes an American patriotism of a sort -- he says he will punish companies that might ship jobs to non-Americans.

He very carefully avoids mention of immigration, eliding "Hispanics" into his section on health care and education in a way that makes clear he is talking about American citizens. He denounces the view that people should worry about their jobs being taken by someone who doesn't look like them, but again in terms that are not about immigration.

By phrasing it in terms of 'other Americans,' he avoids what I think may be a difficult problem: addressing the question of why Americans should hate corporations that ship jobs to Mexico, but be unbothered by illegal immigration that likewise replaces American workers with Mexican ones. As far as I can tell, the effect on the American worker is the same, except for the fact that illegal immigration requires those workers who do still have jobs to pay higher taxes that support the 'health care' and 'education' of the illegals.

The rule, then, is that America is meant to bring us all together: everyone in America, citizen or not, legal or not.

This is isolationism. Everyone in America is "in" -- the rest of the world is "out," and will be treated as such.

Iraqis are out -- we should bring the troops who fight together home, and forget the cause they fought for.

The third world is out -- sorry, Kenya -- for they are the primary beneficiaries of outsourcing, and access to the American market. Since the only way to preserve those jobs in America is to apply punitive tariffs on African or Indian goods, the poorest of the poor will lose.

Not all outsiders will lose; we know he wants to have talks with Iran and North Korea without preconditions. Iran, indeed, is apt to benefit greatly from a combination of American withdrawal from Iraq, and easy talks on their nuclear program. As in Africa but writ large, the brutal who are strong enough to take what they want will prosper.

With one exception. China loses, although his promised cuts in American defense -- and with it, any hope of containing an expansive China -- are a bonus for them. Yet the danger to their economy from punitive tariffs is such that it could cause a genuine social collapse. China's rapid economic expansion has left them with high expectations to meet, yet those expectations are really based on American-Chinese trade. This week's riots in China will be a tiny taste of what would happen if the Communists could suddenly no longer provide the growth and hope that the Chinese have come to expect.

A destabilized China and Middle East -- with Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey tugging at a failing Iraq -- is the legacy of such a policy. An Africa suffering from redoubled poverty and the murderous wars that accompany it there is another.

Will it buy a few more years of internal comfort and self-righteousness, before the twin crises of Social Security and Federal pensions come due? That I cannot say; but if Europe, which seems to be the model, is any indication -- yes. People are very good at being self-absorbed. We can be, too.

Or we can try to help mankind. America is rich; much has been given to us. Much is expected. Walking away from that responsibility would create a whirlwind that would, indeed, reshape the world.

An Experiment:

In fairness to Wright and his mentors, consider this post at a Catholic website. The post is simply an American flag, with the words of "God Bless America." The comments...

UPDATE: Feddie, the original author of the post, links to some followups by co-bloggers. In any event, the point is that hatred of America is not unique to Wright's church.

It is, however, uniquely embedded in that church's basic theology; which is something of a problem for a man who, after 20 years' attendance, wants to be President of the United States. I think many Americans will also be bothered by the basic disrespect for God that is likewise embedded in that theology.

Wow

Wow:

An alternative vision of the proper view of enemies in religion, courtesy of Obama's preacher of 20 years' service.

Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community ... Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.

The law that Jesus set out to correct taught that the Israelites were a specially chosen people, and God might favor them so highly as to wish that they annihilate other nations, root and branch, woman and child. Some have said that the Book of Joshua made them stop believing in God:

Joshua took Makkedah on that day, and struck it and its king with the edge of the sword; he utterly destroyed every person in it; he left no one remaining … Then Joshua passed on … to Libnah … He struck it with the edge of the sword, and every person in it; he left no one remaining in it … To Lacshish … He took it on the second day, and struck it with the edge of the sword, and every person in it … Gezer … Joshua struck him and his people, leaving him no survivors …To Eglon … [They] struck it with the edge of the sword, and every person in it he utterly destroyed that day....

It has not made me stop believing in God, but it has made me stop believing that the ancient Jewish priestly class was honest with their worshippers about what God wanted. I think I'm right to say that this was a large part of Jesus' message: that the priests as a class appear to have used their position for their own good, and for the good of the rich and powerful, rather than being honest with their flock about what the faith required or implied. I leave aside that there were doubtless individual good priests as well; and that the bulk of Israel were people not of that class, as good or bad as any people. Nevertheless, the priestly class of Israel was -- I cannot help but believe -- faithless with their charge.

Obama's preacher apparently has adopted the "kill 'em all" aspect of the Book of Joshua -- again, "Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy." But he has made it one degree worse than the falsest of the false keepers of the Old Testament were ready to do: for they at least believed that God might righteously punish the nation for failure to hold to the bargain that made them the Chosen. If they taught that God wanted Israel to wipe out even the children of the Ammonites, they at least also taught that God could hold the nation accountable for some sort of sin (even if it was only the sin of making graven images to worship -- i.e., the sort of thing that might imperil the power of the priests).

Mr. Wright appears to believe that the deal works the other way around: that it is the business of men to "kill Gods" who will not abide by the bargain that the men prefer.

Frankly, this is more atheism than religion -- it takes as its roots Nietzsche's doctrine that men create Gods and may kill them, rather than any belief that a Creator exists who ordered the world in a particular way, for a particular reason. It is a cynical use of the part of the soul that exists to be filled with the search for religious truth, a conscious and willful bending of it to fill a selfish desire.

Finding a Home

Finding a Home:

It is Easter week. I want to offer two pieces on Christianity and warriors. The first is from Robert Graves, describing both the knights of King Arthur and the world of Sir Thomas Malory. It shows several of the ways in which Western warriors are oddly placed within the sphere of Christendom:

[Arthur] was annointed king by an archbishop and wore a cross on his shield, yet his sponsor was Merlin the Enchanter, begotten on a nun by the Devil himself, and according to Taliesin poems in The Red Book of Hergest, "erudite druids prophesied for Arthur." .... [W]hile the seigneurial class consented to fight for the Cross as an emblem of Western civilization, the ascetic morality preached by Jesus did not appeal to them in the least. Jesus' grave warning that 'he who lives by the sword shall perish by the sword' was read as a joyful reassurance to the true knight that if he always observed the code of chivalry, he would die gloriously in battle and be translated to a Celtic Paradise in the twinkling of an eye. Moreover, the Western conception of personal honour could not be reconciled with humility, turning the other cheek, and leaving God to avenge injuries.

The concept of knight-errantry would have made poor sense in Israel. I recall no distressed damsels in the entire Bible, the heroes all being national deliverers, not individuals adventurers. When an ancient Israelite fought in God's name, he fought ruthlessly: thrusting women through the belly with his javelin, dashing the little ones against stones, and smiting non-combatants with the edge of his sword -- churlish behavior for which an Arthurian knight (unless engaged in a blood feud) would have had his spurs lopped off by the hangman. And the Israelite was realistic about yielding to superior force in allowing himself to be led away captive; not so the true knight.

The second is from G. K. Chesterton, who thought that Western warriors belonged very naturally in Christendom -- because, for him, Christianity was big enough to welcome true warriors and also pure pacifists.

Joan of Arc was not stuck at the cross-roads, either by rejecting all the paths like Tolstoy, or by accepting them all like Nietzsche. She chose a path, and went down it like a thunderbolt. Yet Joan, when I came to think of her, had in her all that was true either in Tolstoy or Nietzsche, all that was even tolerable in either of them. I thought of all that is noble in Tolstoy, the pleasure in plain things, especially in plain pity, the actualities of the earth, the reverence for the poor, the dignity of the bowed back. Joan of Arc had all that and with this great addition, that she endured poverty as well as admiring it; whereas Tolstoy is only a typical aristocrat trying to find out its secret. And then I thought of all that was brave and proud and pathetic in poor Nietzsche, and his mutiny against the emptiness and timidity of our time. I thought of his cry for the ecstatic equilibrium of danger, his hunger for the rush of great horses, his cry to arms. Well, Joan of Arc had all that, and again with this difference, that she did not praise fighting, but fought. We know that she was not afraid of an army, while Nietzsche, for all we know, was afraid of a cow.

Chesterton returns to this theme later in Orthodoxy.

The Gospel paradox about the other cheek, the fact that priests never fought, a hundred things made plausible the accusation that Christianity was an attempt to make a man too like a sheep. I read it and believed it, and if I had read nothing different, I should have gone on believing it. But I read something very different. I turned the next page in my agnostic manual, and my brain turned up-side down. Now I found that I was to hate Christianity not for fighting too little, but for fighting too much. Christianity, it seemed, was the mother of wars. Christianity had deluged the world with blood. I had got thoroughly angry with the Christian, because he never was angry. And now I was told to be angry with him because his anger had been the most huge and horrible thing in human history; because his anger had soaked the earth and smoked to the sun. The very people who reproached Christianity with the meekness and non-resistance of the monasteries were the very people who reproached it also with the violence and valour of the Crusades. It was the fault of poor old Christianity (somehow or other) both that Edward the Confessor did not fight and that Richard Coeur de Leon did.

Both Chesterton and Graves are correct. There are those men for whom "live by the sword, die by the sword" is more a promise than a threat: and Christianity has room for both. Jesus had room both for Jewish priests who could see that his overturning of the moneychangers was an act of righteousness, for their alleged moral order had become wicked; and even Coifi, which means "Hooded one," could ride to the temple of Freyr and cast a spear into it. If such a one as Coifi can strike a blow for Christianity, then Merlin is just as welcome.

The interesting thing about Christianity is the degree to which it accepts men as they are: the Christian law is not the Ten Commandments, but the Great Commandment: "Love each other as you love yourself; forgive everything." If I am to love a man, I must love him as he is; yet if I am to love him as I love myself, then I may fight with him to the degree that I would fight myself. I may even kill him, if there are things I would rather kill myself than be guilty of having done.

If I can but forgive his soul, I am doing all that is asked in the Lord's Prayer: "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." If I can do that, then we may fight each other as hard as needs be -- and we may even love the chance to strike a blow for what is right, best, just. Even the most wicked man is therefore lovable, insofar as he gives us the greatest opportunity to create good in the world. Even our own capacity for sin is lovable, for the same reason.

This is the meaning of the poem at the sidebar:

How white their steel, how bright their eyes! I love each laughing knave,

Cry high and bid him welcome to the banquet of the brave.

Yea, I will bless them as they bend and love them where they lie,

When on their skulls the sword I swing falls shattering from the sky.

The hour when death is like a light and blood is like a rose, --

You never loved your friends, my friends, as I shall love my foes.

In that way there is room in the house for knights as well as friars, for troubadours and Templars, poets and enchanters.

Abort. Democ.

A Fascinating Discussion:

Via Southern Appeal, an example of blogging at its best. The initial proposition is well-formed, and the debate is serious and considered. Please read On Being a Pro-Life Democrat, especially for the quality of the comments.

FBI

The FBI and Lawlessness:

Those who are charged with enforcing the law on others have a special obligation to obey the law themselves. The FBI did not, and we should demand accountability from them.

FBI headquarters officials sought to cover their informal and possibly illegal acquisition of phone records on thousands of Americans from 2003 to 2005 by issuing 11 improper, retroactive "blanket" administrative subpoenas in 2006 to three phone companies that are under contract to the FBI, according to an audit released Thursday.

Top officials at the FBI's counter-terrorism division signed the blanket subpoenas "retroactively to justify the FBI's acquisition of data through the exigent letters or or other informal requests," the Justice Department's Inspector General Glenn Fine found.

The revelations come in a follow-up report to Fine's 2007 finding that the FBI abused a key Patriot Act power, known as a National Security Letter. That first reports showed that FBI agents were routinely sloppy in using the self-issued subpoenas and issued hundreds that claimed fake emergencies.

Emphasis added.

I hate to send a man to jail -- to turn a free man into a prisoner seems to me worse than killing him. Still, that is the law we have, and these high FBI officials have broken it after being specially charged, and taking a special oath, to uphold it. The lot of them who signed such documents should go to prison, if convicted.

GUILT BY ASSOCIATION

GUILT BY ASSOCIATION.

As I was eating breakfast this morning I watched Joe Scarborough and his co-hosts on Morning Joe discuss the inflammatory, hateful, and racist statements made by Sen. Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright. While Mr. Scarborough and company were quick to denounce these statements and predicted problems for the Obama campaign they relentlessly restated over and over how they were sure that these statements did not reflect the beliefs of Sen. Obama himself. They were also quick to say that it would be unfair to infer any guilt by association regarding Obama’s relationship with Mr. Wright. Commentators on other news shows were also quick to dismiss Mr. Wright’s hate speech as simply the statements of a passionate preacher.

I cannot object strongly enough to the reactions described above. When we as citizens are asked to evaluate candidates for public office we are under a specific duty to examine the people a candidate surrounds himself with, the people he seeks out for advice. This gives us an insight into the candidate’s judgment, and possibly even his philosophical outlook. Since we can’t look into the man’s heart we must take note of his actions as well as the company he keeps to gain a sense of the man. A man can’t pick his family but he can pick his advisors, and he has absolute discretion over which church he joins, what pastor he chooses to expose his wife and children to.

Mr. Wright tells us a lot about Sen. Obama. If you go over to Michelle Malkin’s sight you can access videos that show Mr. Wright damning America from his pulpit, accusing the government of purposely creating HIV to infect black children, and a host of other shockingly vile comments. This is the man that performed Sen. Obama’s marriage, that baptized his children, that provided the inspiration for his book. Apparently Sen. Obama had no problem taking his family to that house of hate to have his children instructed by this man. If Sen. Obama found the hate speech of Mr. Wright as disgusting as he should have he should have ended any association with that church and Mr. Wright the first time such garbage was uttered. He didn’t. He did make this man a member of his campaign and designated him as his spiritual advisor. NOTED!

Consequently, I find the argument that such guilt by association is unfair to be absolutely unconvincing. Candidates for office always parade a never ending line of celebrities, scholars, and statesmen to vouch for the candidate’s competence and superior electability. Candidates do this to benefit from their association with such luminaries. Just the other day on TV I saw several retired generals appear with Sen. Obama to vouch for his competence to be the next Commander in Chief. He has appeared with the former SgtMaj of the Marine Corps, SgtMaj Estrada, for the purpose of establishing his credibility on national security issues. Sen. Obama certainly wants to use his association with these retired military men to bequeath a certain gravitas. Well this works both ways. I find his long and close relationship with Mr. Wright far more revealing than a momentary stage appearance with a retired general.