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Thursday, April 29, 2004
Errors in American History
Some have suggested that I believe the United States to be perfect. This is, in fact, far from the truth. The Untied States has made serious mistakes in its history: it’s just that the real mistakes are not the ones commonly identified by America’s opponents. The problem is not that America is too aggressive, too bullying, or too imperialistic: but that it is insufficiently all of those things. Mistakes by American leaders are, to a great degree, responsible for creating the world in which we live. It’s just that the mistakes are not the ones we commonly identify.
I’m going to restrict myself to the years since the middle of the 20th Century, since the mistakes made during the end of the Second World War in Europe (and in the immediate aftermath of the war) are already widely recognized. But there are some that are not. The first mistake of which I wish to speak occurred in early 1951. This error was made, as the worst typically are made, by men with the best of intentions. In the fall of 1950, as the United Nations forces approached the Yalu River which separates North Korea from China, the Chinese Communists had intervened in the Korean War, launching a massive offensive using hundreds of thousands of troops. Thus was the conflict, in which North Korea had been almost totally defeated, transformed into what the Supreme Allied Commander, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, deemed an, “entirely new war.” The Allied forces were hurled back by human waves of crazed Chinese communists. The UN forces often fought gallantly (in the retreat from the Chosin Reservoir the 1st Marine Division, in one of the epic battles of history, shattered ten Chinese divisions) but they were forced to retreat even from the South Korean capital of Seoul. Eventually, under the command of General Matthew Ridgeway, American forces managed to advance once more to the north (recapturing Seoul in the process) but the war rapidly became one of static attrition. One major reason for this was that the Chinese were allowed the unimpeded use of their home territory from which they were able to bring both supplies and reinforcements. Fearing that any attack on China proper would bring Soviet intervention, Truman refused to allow any attacks on Chinese soil. To win the war, General MacArthur declared, he would require the freedom to launch a naval blockade of the Chinese coast, to use the 500,000 Chinese Nationalist troops on Taiwan, and to launch air strikes into China itself. Such strikes would have included the use of nuclear weapons which were, according to one proposal, to be dropped on the fifty largest Chinese cities. President Truman refused to authorize any of these steps. Despite the large disparity between the American and Soviet nuclear arsenals at the time (while the United States had hundreds of bombs and modern delivery systems, the Russians had only a handful of weapons and obsolete B-29 knock-offs with which to deliver them against the Continental United States). Instead, he proposed to negotiate a peace with the Chinese and North Koreans. When General MacArthur (in an admitted act of insubordination) sabotaged these moves, he fired him. The result of all of this was that the Korean War degenerated into a stalemate and lasted for another two years before both sides accepted what was, in essence, a cease-fire in place. The aggressor was not punished, nor was Communist China. Worse still, the war created the modern precedent for the waging of a “limited war” by the United States with the full might of the US armed forces held by for political reasons. Even more dangerous (in the long term) a golden opportunity to destroy Red China was lost. The stalemate in Korea can be viewed as the direct antecedent of defeat in Vietnam. Imagine if Truman had followed MacArthur’s advice! Given the actual state of the Soviet Union at that time, it strikes me as doubtful that they would have actually gone to war with the United States over the issue. Stalin was many things- he was not stupid. He authorized the North Korean attack only because he felt it could be successful. He was not going to risk the Soviet Union for the sake of either the Koreans or the Chinese. Even if he did, given the nuclear balance at the time, he’d have been destroyed (with a low cost in American lives) and the Cold War would have ended forty years ahead of time. As for the Chinese, while I don’t deny that their losses would have been extreme: but that’s what the Chinese deserved for intervening in Korea. To those with greater concern with the actual toll in Chinese lives, I point out that even a nuclear attack that destroyed fifty Chinese cities with 1951 weapons would have probably killed fewer people than the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. What concerns us more today is that such an outcome in Korea would have continued the Second World War precedent: total victory in war. In such a world there would have been no Vietnam, no aborted Gulf War. Had a Vietnam War come, it would have ended sometime not too long after the fall of Hanoi and the nuclear destruction of key points along the Ho Chi Minh trail. The alternate Gulf War would have ended in Baghdad. Of course, I doubt that in a world where the United States behaved such a way, Saddam Hussein would have ever invaded Kuwait. The second error came in 1956, when the United States used its diplomatic influence to end the joint Franco-British attack against Egypt during the Suez Crisis. The foolish denunciation of the invasion by President Eisenhower (which, because it set off a run on the British Pound and the United States refused to provide loans until the British and French withdrew, forced an end to the assault) greatly damaged both French and British credibility and rapidly led to the diminishment of British influence in the Middle East. In the Summer of 1956 Egyptian President Nasser had nationalized the Suez Canal (which was owned by the Anglo-French Suez Canal Company) in response to a refusal by the West to provide loans for the construction of the Aswan Dam. In response, the British and French developed a covert plot in collusion with Israel. The Israelis would invade Egypt and seize one side of the Canal. Then, on the pretext of an intervention to “save” the endangered canal, British and French forces would strike into Egypt. Additionally, the British had by this time resolved to overthrow Nasser (who would soon turn his country into a Soviet proxy). Once more the error which occurred came from the heart. Where President Truman had made his in the pursuit of peace (where intensified but victorious war was the better alternative) Eisenhower made his in defense of the principle of national self-determination (and in opposition to what he and his advisors saw as a neo-colonialist adventure which would drive the Arab world into the Soviet sphere). The ultimate consequences, however, were equally disastrous. Without American support, the invasion was impossible and so the British withdrew, thereby forcing the French to withdraw as well. British credibility in the region was destroyed and they soon withdrew all forces from East of Suez. Eisenhower’s main fear (that Egypt would become a Soviet client) was realized anyways. Imagine the consequences had the invasion been allowed to proceed. With Nasser gone, the British would presumably have proceeded to install some sort of puppet regime. Such a move would have aborted the 1967 war (and therefore the 1973) and therefore would probably have avoided many of the more disastrous consequences of those occasions. The principal flaw in American power is aversion to the use of that power for coercion- not the overuse of it. Either American power is not sufficiently used (as in the case of Korea) or it is used to restrain well-meaning allies. This is as silly as it is dangerous. For our world to be bettered this must become the age of American Empire. This will mean the use of force. It will mean the necessary subjugation and domination of peoples. It will mean death. But it will all be worth it in the end. America will make mistakes in the future just as it has in the past. What is most notable about these errors, as grave as they are, is that they are all ultimately recoverable and redeemable. Shouting “American!”
My attitude towards the forthcoming election has soured somewhat in recent days. Frankly, I think that the chances of another Liberal majority government are higher than they were if the election had been called a month ago (I’d say that there’s a one-third chance of a Liberal majority, a one-third chance of a Liberal minority, and a one-third chance of a Conservative minority). The balefulness of my mood has increased with a new insight into the Liberal campaign playbook that was revealed to me a few days ago.
The Liberals today are a lot like the segregationists of the old South. When they are secure they are free to hide their latent nastiness and campaign on platform which promise infrastructure and social spending. However, when their power is threatened, they are capable of sheer demagoguery on a grand scale. On an average day, segregationism would be cloaked in the rhetoric of “state’s rights” (a deplorable gambit which has tarred by association many legitimate defenders of the rights of the states under the Constitution). However, when in trouble, the segregationists would resort to less temperate language and images. In 1970, when he faced a strongly-contested primary in the race for Alabama Governor, Wallace distributed flyers which depicted young black men hovering over a white pre-teen girl, warning of what would happen were his opponent re-elected. Wallace won. Now that the Liberal’s power is threatened, I fully expect them to unleash equal nastiness upon the Canadian people. Watch for the common use of the word “American” as an epithet in the coming campaign. Were I advising the Liberals, I’d strongly encourage them to refer to pretty much everything the Conservatives propose as being “American-style” and hope that the media picks it up (which, of course) they will. Warn that the Conservatives want “American-style” tax cuts which will force “American-style” health care while at the same time they will send your children off to die in “American wars.” You don’t have to walk past the massive displays of the traitor Michael Moore’s anti-American scribblings in virtually every bookstore in the country to tell you that such a gambit would have a very high chance of success. In fact, there’s an example of just such a strategy being put into practice. After his government fell to a no-confidence vote in 1963, John Diefenbaker ran a campaign based almost entirely upon anti-Americanism which came very close to success despite the fact that the Progressive Conservatives were in disarray and his Cabinet had collapsed. We don’t even have to look back forty-one years to find out that such a strategy has a good chance of success: German Chancellor Gerhardt Schroeder used anti-Americanism to come from behind in the polls and win re-election in 2002. People who really care about Canada’s relations with the United States are going to vote for the Conservatives anyways. But, by suddenly becoming the leading proponents of anti-Americanism the Liberals have a strong chance of peeling away both soft New Democrats and the United Empire Loyalist faction of the Conservative Party. If I were a Liberal advisor, I’d tell Paul Martin to run this election against George W. Bush instead of Stephen Harper. I’d send out some of my mid-level surrogates to say negative things about the United States until some major conservative commentator down there says something about Canada in turn. Then I’d make sure that their anti-Canadian comments got as much play as possible and that any links between that commentator and the Conservative Party (there are bound to be some) are heavily played up. This is a brilliant strategy because it works against both opposition parties. I suspect that anti-Americanism is one of the main reasons for the rise of the NDP. However, many hard-core anti-Americans could be seduced away by the promise of a government with anti-American policies versus that of an opposition party able only to shout anti-American slogans in the House. It would hurt the Conservatives even more dearly for the very obvious reason that a great many Conservatives are pro-American (and, more specifically, pro-Bush and pro-Republican) at a time when the United States, George Bush, and the Republican Party are rather unpopular among the Canadian public as a whole. The only thing Conservatives can do is fight back as hard as we can and on as many fronts as we can. Perhaps we shall yet carry the day. If not, well, then it we not be the fault of those of us in the West and it will be time for us to consider other options. Tuesday, April 27, 2004
Germany Calling
“The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not "insurgents" or "terrorists" or "The Enemy." They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow -- and they will win.” These are not the words of Al Jazeera, or the ravings of some fanatical Moslem Sheik. They are the words of Michael Moore, Oscar-winning filmmaker, best-selling author, and ostensibly an “American.” There is only one word which can be used to describe such a man: traitor.
Based upon the success of his movies and the sales of his books, it’s fair to call Michael Moore the leading anti-American propagandist in the world today. He is widely admired in Canada, France, Germany, and virtually every foreign nation opposed to the United States. He is, in all probability, the single most popular American in any of those three countries. To put it another way: he is the leading American creator of seditious propaganda which is used by the enemies of the United States to defame the nation of his birth. In wartime, there is only a single fate deserved by traitors and seditionists: death. Now, I’m not calling for anyone to go out and kill Mr. Moore on their own or without judicial sanction. There are laws for this sort of thing. It’s written right into the Constitution. “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.” That’s from Article Three, Section Three of the Constitution of the United States of America. Look it up. Look at Moore’s words and look at their effect. Is he adhering to the enemies of the United States? He’s comparing them to the Minutemen and, in fact, denying that they are enemies at all. I’d say that’s a check. Is he giving them aid and comfort? “They will win,” sure sounds like aid and comfort to me. This, of course, is taking only this single incident into account. When you consider the complete body of Mr. Moore’s recent book: his excreable film Bowling for Columbine which denounces the United States in every possible way, and his books Stupid White Men and Dude, Where’s My Country?, it must be conceded that no one has done more to advance the cause of anti-Americanism through the world. This, my friends, is treason in wartime. Michael Moore reminds me of William Joyce, universally known as Lord Haw-Haw, the British fascist whose propaganda broadcasts from Germany were widely listened to during the Second World War. Believing that the war was the fault of “international Jewry”, Joyce used his broadcasts from Berlin to spread Nazi propaganda and undermine British morale. Some might say to me, “well, Michael Moore is just doing what he thinks is right.” And so he probably is. But that doesn’t excuse it or justify it. Joyce thought he was doing the right thing as well. To the very end, he tried to warn the British people that they were being manipulated by the Jews, among other things. The sincerity of his absurd beliefs didn’t justify them or his actions. Theoretically good intentions are not a reason for evading the consequences of one’s actions. Joyce broadcast from Berlin because the British were sensible enough to, on the commencement of hostilities, round up all potential subversives and intern them for the duration of the war. Michael Moore broadcasts freely because naively we have not. But their crimes remain basically the same. Joyce sought, as Moore still does, to undermine the morale of his own nation and to promote the victory of its enemies. Both give courage to those enemies (Joyce’s broadcasts were the most listened-to in Berlin), convincing them that the morale of their opponents is less strong than it actually is, thereby prolonging resistance and causing more death. After the war British soldiers captured Joyce, who suddenly insisted that he couldn’t be tried for treason because he wasn’t a British citizen. That didn’t matter too much to the British who, using a technicality of the law, executed him anyways. If the nation itself were not permeated with traitors and subversives whose objections would be nearly impossible to overcome, then perhaps we would be able to do the right thing. Michael Moore should share Lord Haw-Haw’s fate: he should be charged with treason, convicted by a jury of his peers, and then taken our and hanged by the neck until he is dead. Treason must be punished in such a way as to deter others. To those who claim that such an extreme act would only inspire resistance, I point to the very good example set by Ben Butler when he was the Military Governor of New Orleans- surely a more difficult task than any we face in dealing with treason today. Shortly before Butler arrived in the city a frenzied mob tore down and desecrated an American flag which had been prematurely flown over the mint. A minor violation to be sure, but one to be taken seriously: minor rebellions precede major ones. Butler responded by ordering a search for the culprits. When a man named William Mumford was found still wearing a piece of Old Glory he was through a drumhead trial and hanged. Resistance by the men of New Orleans promptly ceased. Butler knew how to deal with traitors. A woman who laughed at the funeral of a Union officer was sentenced to two years in prison. When women persisted in refusing to show proper respect for the soldiers of the United States, Butler issued his famous order declaring that, “when any female shall, by word, gesture, or movement, insult or show contempt for any officer or soldier of the United States, she shall be regarded and held liable to be treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation.” I don’t expect that anyone will take my advice any time soon (though I wish they would!). Of course, after our enemies manage to launch a nuclear or biological attack, they may very well do so. Frankly, if I were Michael Moore or someone like him, I’d have plans to make my way to Paris after a nuclear attack and to do so quickly for, under such circumstances, the justice system probably wouldn’t even get a chance to deal with him. Of course, we all may take comfort from the fact that, whatever happens to traitors in this life, they all share the same fate in the next. Some time, be it next year or be it decades from now, Michel Moore will join his comrades-in-treason amid the lowest circle of hell. Sunday, April 25, 2004
Dealing with the Chinese Menace
The greatest long-term threat to the United States is not the challenge of Islam, but the danger of a rising China. As things stand, if China can maintain its present rate of growth, its economy should overtake the United States economically some time towards the middle of this century (and perhaps much sooner). China’s military ascendancy will take a little longer but, even as things stand today, the People’s Liberation Army is probably powerful enough to defeat any other nation in its home region and Chinese power as a whole is sufficient to utterly destroy any neighbouring nation in the region, probably including Taiwan and Japan.
I’m not even sure if the United States, as things stand today, could beat China in any plausible war. A repeat of the later stages of the Korean War, with hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops fighting alongside the North Koreans, would be much bloodier and more difficult than the last and, while the United States probably has sufficient naval power to defend Taiwan from invasion, I strongly doubt if the American people (in their present condition) would tolerate the loss of one or more Aircraft Carriers in the defense of a small Asian island. This is not to say that I expect to see Chinese military aggression in the immediate future: that, in fact, is part of the problem. The Chinese are too smart to allow their rise to be forestalled by the taking of a premature aggressive military action. When they move, they will move with overwhelming and irresistible force. When the Chinese come for Taiwan, they will be in a position where they are assured of victory. The longer China is allowed to grow in peace the more likely it becomes that, before the century is out, Chinese power will be greater than that of the United States and that, commensurate with that revolution in world affairs, Chinese civilization will replace Western civilization in this world. Chinese, not English, will be the lingua franca of the world, as Chinese commerce and culture supplant American. As China’s military power grows, America will not be able to act without its consent. Chinese boots will be those to set foot on far-away worlds as a wealthy Chinese superpowers uses its fortunes to fund an aggressive program of space exploration and (more importantly) colonization. A Chinese superpower will, in other words, play America’s role in the world only without the sort of restraint sadly shown by the United States. Now some will respond to this by saying: well, you might be right, but what’s wrong with China being more powerful than America? You’re just being a racist! To these individuals I say this: call me what you like, but I do not consider it tolerable that the generations that come after us shall live in a world ruled by the Chinese! That they shall grow up speaking Chinese and, over time, that they shall lose the three thousand year heritage of liberty that is peculiarly ours in the West. Ours and ours alone. Others can join us: but we shall never join them. Silly white men with guilt complexes like to assuage themselves by saying that it doesn’t matter who runs the world or what language they speak, or what culture they come from- but anyone with a lick of sense knows that it does. What, then, is to be done about China? How are they to be stopped? I’ve laid out this program before: there is only one option short of all-out nuclear war which can acceptably retard China’s progress. The Chinese state must be subverted, the Chinese economy must be sabotaged, and a program of covert action must be developed and implemented with the ultimate goal of fracturing the Chinese nation into a number of weakened, unstable, and perpetually warring states. Subversion: Our work begins with spies. A nation as large as China is bound of have plenty of discontent individuals, both within the government and without. Many of these are likely to be sympathetic to the West and looking to emulate it. This instinct can be successfully exploited. An all-out espionage assault must be our first step in the undermining of China. Agents should be recruited as rapidly as possible. It doesn’t matter too much if they’re well-placed, at least at first, because the higher goal is subversion, rather than the collection of information. Some will be sacrificed over time. Others will be closely guarded and later allowed to defect to great acclaim to serve as examples to future recruits. I don’t believe that the Chinese have gotten over all of their Maoist instincts quite yet. Agents recruited who prove to be of little use could be deliberately exposed to other agents (preferably in Chinese counter-intelligence) in order to boost the credibility of said agents to allow them to make covert (and false) accusations of treason against other individuals. Given Chinese standards of justice, such false accusations seem much more likely to be successful. Then, in turn, the counter-intelligence officers recruited to serve as agents could be exposed as spies themselves, thereby increasing Chinese paranoia. With a little luck, we might even be able to set of waves of purges and other types of fascist unpleasantness among the Chinese elite. Of course, mind games alone will be of limited utility. When it comes to slowing the Chinese juggernaut, warm lead and cold steel will be substantially more useful. Massive covert subsidies could be made available to Falun Gong followers. Not, of course, out of any love for that weirdo cult- but for the very reason that the cultish nature of the group makes it useful for sowing disruption in China. As thing stand, there are millions of Falun Gong followers in China- some of whom have even resorted to mass suicide as a form of protest. I’m not really all that sure of what exactly they’d do with massive financial support (and perhaps weapons as well), but I don’t imagine it would be all that pleasant for the Chinese people as a whole. Another major program would be the covert financing (and equipping) of Islamic terrorists in Western China. Moslem fanatics in some areas of China would be eager to take up arms against their Communist, atheist, oppressors and could be provided with aid through some convenient conduit. While it is true that such a policy has the possibility of blowback, I imagine that it would take quite some time to manifest itself. In any case, I take the same attitude here many took to the conflict between Iraq and Iran: I hope that they both lose. Quite frankly, it’s time to make China bleed a little bit. To this end, violent resistance should also be encouraged (and funded) in Tibet. While I do not imagine that a few bands of armed fanatics will be able to make all that great an impact, I’m sure that a steady “drip-drip” of body bags flowing out of that region couldn’t exactly hurt. Perhaps we could even return previous Chinese favours by equipping some of these people with weapons that China originally sold to Iraq. I’m sure the return of these valuable items would be deeply appreciated. An additional step is obvious to me: the covert proliferation of nuclear weapons to Taiwan. These may deter a Chinese invasion of that island. It would certainly make it infinitely more expensive. Given that Taiwan is a friendly nation, I see no reason whatsoever not to encourage this step without any delay. After all, everyone else in Asia (North Korea, China, India, Pakistan) who really wants nuclear weapons seems to already have them, I don’t see why the nations on our side shouldn’t. Sabotage: Equally important in slowing China’s ascendancy will be the use of all forms of economic sabotage. While at an earlier point I suggested the repudiation of all US debts held by the Chinese, this is an extreme measure which should be resorted to only under emergency conditions. Rather, we might begin by spreading false and malicious rumours about various Chinese commercial products. The FDA could be convinced to recall some sort of Chinese-made food product on the grounds that it is fatally poisonous. Such a move would, presumably, trigger a similar reaction all across the world. This sort of “fake recall” should be specially targeted towards infant Chinese industries or those that operate on the margins, with the hope of driving them out of business and leaving their workers unemployed. Similar warnings might be issued about various Chinese commercial products, with the attendant hope of damaging those industries. War: Of course, there is no guarantee that any of this will work. If worse comes to worse, better to let the missiles fly and hope for the best than live in a world ruled by the Chinese. This isn’t as crazy as it sounds either. China’s nuclear arsenal is much smaller than that of the United States as well as much less advanced. China lacks any strategic defenses nor is it likely to acquire any in the near future. I do not propose an American “bolt from the blue.” However, let us consider the following scenario (proposed by John Derbyshire). China invades Taiwan. The US prepares to move forces to the region. China threatens the United States and the United States initially refuses to back down. Finally, in exasperation, the Chinese Ambassador says, “how many cities are you willing to lose over this? We ourselves are willing to lose three.” The natural inclination in that scenario would be for the United States to back down. However, consider: with each passing day China grows stronger. If China is willing to resort to nuclear blackmail at this early stage, what will they want in ten or twenty years? What will they want when they’ve got their own defenses and a nuclear arsenal the size of that of the United States? Tribute? If China is prepared to resort to nuclear blackmail at this early stage then we must be prepared to resort to nuclear weapons. A sufficiently well-executed first strike might well be able to prevent a single Chinese warhead from reaching an American city. In any case: if China is willing to behave in such a fashion now, when they are weaker than we, do we really want to take our chances in a world where they are stronger? If they give us the chance we need to hit them: hard. A good target in an all-out war would be the Three Gorges Dam, the largest in the world. While massive and seemingly well-constructed, I don’t imagine that it would hold up all that well against a nuclear bomb or two. The resultant floods would be both spectacular and crippling. I don’t advocate a land war. Nor do I advocate war as the first course of action. But we should be prepared and, more than that, we should be alert. The Chinese threat isn’t going away. It’s growing with each passing day. It is high time that we wake up to this awful menace to Western Civilization and do something to destroy it. Saturday, April 24, 2004
Are We Depleting Our Genetic Stocks?
All humans are indeed created equal by their creator, but they are not endowed with the same abilities. This much should be self-evident to any person who is not self-evidently delusional. While the precise quantification of human intelligence and skills as yet remain beyond the grasp of science, our simple powers of observation inform us that some humans are born smarter than others, some are born stronger than others and, to use a controversial word, some are born better than others. While it is certainly true that a sufficiently determined individual can, from time to time, seemingly overcome the limits that the God of nature has imposed upon them it is equally true that the limits to our talents are, ultimately, contained entirely within us.
This fundamental truth is the elephant in the room of modern society. It is the desire of the powers that be that all people should be equal in practice, as well as in theory. How else could one explain an education system which seeks to teach essentially the same thing to our brightest and our stupidest? How else does one explain a culture that ridicules intelligence as a virtue and instead promotes all things base and crude? Now, of course, people will throw the example of President Bush into my face. “How can you cite the value of intelligence,” they will say, “when your hero is an idiot?” The answer, of course, is that he isn’t one. No actually stupid person (all political invective aside) has ever been President, nor is one likely to hold the office. There are too many people who wish to be President and too many traps along the way to ever allow someone with a second-rate intellect to ever be elected to the office. So far as I can tell, the entire case for George W. Bush being “stupid” revolves around the fact that he occasionally mispronounces words and he got some C’s at Yale roughly forty years ago. “Stupid” is simply one of the four Republican archetypes that the media likes to present to the public: the “stupid” person who appeals to the masses because they’re all “stupid” as well (see: Ronald Reagan), the cold and blue-blooded “Elitist” Republican who is out-of-touch with average Americans (see George HW Bush), the “Evil” Republican whose intelligence is too hard to deny (see Newt Gingrich and Richard Nixon), and the “good” Republican who spends most of his time making trouble for his own party (see John McCain, Lowell Weicker, Bob Packwood, Mark Hatfield, etc.). So let’s forget about all of that for now. The question before us is this: by failing to recognize the differentiation in human talents, are we doing severe damage to our society? It seems obvious to me that the answer to that question is a resounding, “yes.” Now some will claim that intelligence is not an entirely genetic phenomenon and that it is societal in origin. This is true, to some extend. The full development of intelligence depends upon the socialization and education of a child. But the natural capacity of an individual in this area is, in all probability, fixed and innate. A computer with a 2.4 Gigahertz processor and one with a 120 Megahertz Pentium can probably run Windows 3.1 with equal efficiency- however only the 2.4 Gigahertz can run the newest games and software. Simply put, we cannot expect people with greatly differential abilities to perform the same tasks. So why do we try? By cramming all of our twelve year-olds into the same Seventh Grade class, we’re either going to be moving too fast for the slow students or too fast for the bright ones. Why would we do that? Merely to hold true to some egalitarian piety? Another Reason to Hate Modern Canada
Apparently, homosexuality can be used as a reason to make a refugee claim in Canada. Worse still, in the words of this charming article, many of the gays we let in have HIV/AIDS. I wonder who picks up the tab for them, hmm?
Simply disgusting. Thursday, April 22, 2004
The Japanese Internment, the Constitution, and Our Present Predicament
While it was largely forgotten in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, in recent decades the internment of Japanese-Americans during that war has become one of the most regularly discussed (or, at least, one of the most regularly taught to students) issues related to the war. It is often used by individuals of a certain temperament and character to prick the balloon of “good war” mythology which has sprung up around World War Two.
Some have gone to somewhat insane lengths to make this point, for reasons that are there own. One suggested “lesson plan” for High School teachers suggests that they have their students, “create a chart comparing Japanese-American internment and Nazi concentration camps. ” While it is certainly possible that such an exercise could be extremely useful in contrasting relatively benign American actions with horrific Nazi ones, knowing what I do about the state of present-day public schools, I very much doubt if that is the intent. It is my belief that the internment of Japanese-Americans during the War was Constitutional in principle, but that it was often conducted in an extra-legal and extra-constitutional fashion, the excesses of which are only partially mitigated by the war situation as it existed at the time. This was also, as it happens, roughly what the Supreme Court ultimately decided. Ruling in Ex Parte Mitsuye Endo 323 U.S. 283 (1944) the Supreme Court declared that: A citizen who is concededly loyal presents no problem of espionage or sabotage. Loyalty is a matter of the heart and mind not of race, creed, or color. He who is loyal is by definition not a spy or a saboteur. When the power to detain is derived from the power to protect the war effort against espionage and sabotage, detention which has no relationship to that objective is unauthorized. I’ve cited these words before, in discussing the corrective power of American democracy noting that, “once the emergency had passed, (the system) corrected its abuses .” This, however, makes a second point, one which is of even greater importance: the court explicitly did not rule that such detentions were, in principle, unconstitutional but rather that these specific detentions had been carried out in such a manner which exceeded the powers of the War Relocation Authority. In fact, in ruling upon the case, the court explicitly declined to take up the Constitutional issues which had been raised by counsel for Mitsuye Endo, noting that, “in reaching that conclusion we do not come to the underlying constitutional issues which have been argued. ” Naturally, some will find it to be particularly alarming that I, the descendent of people who were actually interned during the war (though, admittedly, in Canada and not the United States) would defend these actions in any way. In modern textbooks the Japanese internment is often used to indict American “racism” and to condemn the United States (or Canada) in general. We too often look upon the past from the security of history. The Allies, after all, ultimately won the war so we are now free to regard any decision they made which, with the benefit of hindsight, as unnecessary to that victory as a horrible and condemnable excess. I, for one, am not prepared to offer that judgement from on high. There was, in 1942, at least some reason to consider suspect the loyalty of some Japanese-Americans. This was a serious enough concern to warrant action by the Federal Government. While I disagree with the nature of that action, it would not be desirable to deny them the right to take some action in such a circumstance. “War Measures”: It is generally accepted that, under the Constitution, the Federal Government (especially the Executive) are endowed with certain unenumerated powers which they can use in times of war or national emergency. For example, the Constitution makes the President the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. What this means, in effect, is that the President possesses authority to do anything which is not explicitly forbidden by the Constitution. Read from a sufficiently loose point of view (or an excessively legalistic one) this logic could even be extended to conclude that the Armed Forces have no obligation to, for example, respect the First Amendment since the First Amendment merely enjoins Congress against establishing a state religion or abridging the freedom of the press. Were it necessary for the military to do so, as a war measure, it would be perfectly legal or at least acceptable. This was the principle used by President Lincoln in formulating the Emancipation Proclamation. It would have been, in my opinion, plainly unconstitutional for the President to simply order individuals recognized as American citizens stripped of their property (whatever that property might be) during peacetime. However, in war, the President has special authority to authorize actions which might be necessary to further the war effort. The War Powers of the Government are necessarily broad. In Kiyoshi Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81 (1943) the Supreme Court cited former Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, in writing that: The war power of the national government is 'the power to wage war successfully'... It extends to every matter and activity so related to war as substantially to affect its conduct and progress. The power is not restricted to the winning of victories in the field and the repulse of enemy forces. It embraces every phase of the national defense, including the protection of war materials and the members of the armed forces from injury and from the dangers which attend the rise, prosecution and progress of war. Thinking along similar lines, Alexander Hamilton argued in The Federalist No. 23 that: (U)nless it can be shown that the circumstances which may affect the public safety are reducible within certain determinate limits; unless the contrary of this position can be fairly and rationally disputed, it must be admitted, as a necessary consequence, that there can be no limitation of that authority which is to provide for the defense and protection of the community, in any matter essential to its efficacy that is, in any matter essential to the formation, direction, or support of the NATIONAL FORCES There is, in other words, a fairly broad and long-standing consensus that the Federal Government possesses powers beyond those enumerated in the Constitution during wartime. The question then, of course, becomes one of words. What measures are “necessary”? What limits, if any, exist upon the powers of the government in an emergency? The Necessity of Relocations: Given this, the question then becomes: are relocations of this sort ever, “essential”? I contend that, at times, they are. The reason why I am so reluctant to declare internments of any sort unconstitutional, even recognizing that a great injustice was done to my own family by them, is the simple fact that I recognize that it is entirely possible that such steps will need to be take again in the future. We should not shrink from taking necessary measures simply as a result of some half-remembered “lesson” from history. In 1941 there were good reasons to question the loyalty of Japanese-Americans. Many had maintained constant connections to their homeland, belonged to groups which supported the Emperor of Japan, and had other links which would draw their reliability as citizens into questions. Others were not even citizens of the United States, but resident aliens: it was entirely possible that spies or saboteurs dispatched by the Government of Japan where sheltered among those numbers. It would have been foolish and risky for the Federal Government to take no action. Secondarily, there was also some degree of necessity in removing Japanese-Americans from the Pacific Coast as a measure to protect their own safety. As absurd as it sounds in retrospect, many believed in 1941-1942 that some sort of Japanese attack against the Pacific States was a very real possibility. In such a situation, it seems to me to be a virtual certainly that violence against Japanese-Americans would have occurred. This was a very real fear among the internees themselves, as may be demonstrated by their reaction to the news, delivered in 1944, that the Federal Government was now planning on sending them home. Suppose that there were to be, tomorrow, a nuclear attack launched against the United States by al-Qaeda. Is it not inevitable that, in the aftermath of such a situation, some sort of internment of Muslims within the United States would occur? Not that I am even necessarily advocating such a step, mind you: I’m merely saying that it likely. I can think of no other way to roll up al-Qaeda cells which would be as satisfactorily fast and effective. I realize that this is an unpleasant discussion: but it is also a necessary one. Too often today we, as Herman Kahn once put it, need to, “think the unthinkable.” What if there was a nuclear attack which destroyed New York City and killed five million Americans? How would people react? How could the network of Islamists within the United States be instantly removed? In such a situation, I am quite certain; the evacuation of Muslims from certain areas would be demanded and granted. By facing this reality, by understanding it, and planning for it we can avoid the excesses which marked the Japanese internment. Principles for Future Evacuations: What rules might allow a smooth forced evacuation of a group of people to take place in the future? Allow me to suggest five: 1) An evacuation will only take place when the threat posed by members of the group is imminent and constitutes a significant danger to the public safety. 2) One will occur only in the absence of an effective alternative method of rapidly separating the loyal and disloyal members of the group is available. 3) All individuals evacuated will be rapidly personally assessed and those determined to be loyal will be immediately freed: with fair compensation. 4) All property of member of the evacuated group will be protected by the Federal Government and those determined to be loyal will be fully compensated for any damages or other financial losses that they sustain. 5) Such an evacuation, undertaken as a war measure, will be conducted by military authorities and will only last so long and be undertaken in those areas where military necessary or the public safety warrants it. Conclusion: The Japanese internment, as it was conducted, was wrong. The most notable wrongs were the lengthy blanket detentions of individuals who had done nothing wrong and the confiscation of the property of those individuals. These are wrongs that are properly condemned. However, we have to be careful not to confuse “immoral” with “unconstitutional.” These are entirely separate concepts. Moreover, we must accept that moral wrongs are often, to some degree, necessary in the service of a higher cause. Monday, April 19, 2004
The Jordan Chemical Plot
When the history of the Iraq War is ultimately written the major criticism of President Bush may not be that he moved too soon, but that he waited too long. He had the best of intentions, of course. Prime Minister Blair and Secretary Powell, among others, thought it was best to go through the UN. So did American public opinion. So did opposition Democrats and much of the American foreign policy establishment. There was no need to, “rush to war,” the opponents of conflict repeatedly assured Americans. But they were wrong.
After David Kay, the former head of the Iraqi Survey Group (the organization charged with leading the search for Saddam’s weapons) resigned and declared that he was unable to find any weapons of mass destruction, the media jumped all over his remarks to discredit the Bush Administration and imply that the weapons were nothing more than the fabrication of a “neo-con cabal.” What they very scrupulously ignored were Dr. Kay’s remarks as to what he thought had happened to at least some of those weapons: they were transferred to Syria. Dr. Kay told Britain’s Daily Telegraph that, “we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD programme.” According to some reports, Iraqi WMD crossed over into Syria at the Al Qaim border crossing in January and February of 2003. We didn’t move too soon: we waited too long. Our greatest fear in this war is that rogue states will combine with terrorists, providing them with weapons of mass destruction. It has happened. Last month Jordanian security officials rounded up an al-Qaeda cell which was preparing to launch a mass-casualty attack against the capital city of Amman. The arrests occurred after the terrorists crossed the border from Syria with explosives and other raw material for the attack. Had they not been stopped, they would have launched the worst terrorist attack in the history of the world, murdering up to 20,000 people. Reports suggest that the chemical agent to be used in the attack was VX Nerve Gas, perhaps the most deadly of all such weapons. The main attack planned would have involved four trucks: three filled with high explosives and one filled with Nerve Gas. All four would have been destroyed in a massive explosion but, because nerve gases survive at high temperatures, it would have generated a poisonous cloud which would have killed thousands or tens of thousands of people. Where would this Nerve Gas have come from? I waited to write about this until someone stated the type of gas: some chemical weapons are almost comically easy to make. VX is not one of them. A state apparatus is required to make such an agent. Two nations in the Middle East are known to have possessed such capabilities at one time: Syria and Iraq. However, the exact abilities of the Syrians remain a mystery. Those of Iraq do not. It was VX that the Iraqis used at Halabja in 1988 to murder more than five thousands Kurds. Additionally, even if the Syrians possessed VX nerve gas, why would they allow their own stockpiles to be used to launch an attack against Jordan? An attack which, even if it were successful, certainly result in an American invasion of their nation? The answer: they wouldn’t. But, is there a chance that they might allow Iraq’s former weapons to be transported through their country for such a purpose? There certainly is. After all, such a move could probably be pulled off by individuals within the Syrian military and terror apparatus, without the knowledge or authority of the Syrian leadership (who, I presume, keep close control of their own WMD arsenal). This makes sense. Think about it for a moment. What other scenario is there to explain the absence of weapons of mass destruction in post-war Iraq? We know that these weapons existed at one point: they were actually used, both against Iran and against Iraqi civilians. They existed in 1991, after the war, when some quantity of them was actually turned over to United Nations inspectors. What happened to the rest? It cannot be, as some have suggested, that Iraq simply stopped its program of its own accord. The programs were too big, too massive. Even if they were “stopped”, some residual trace of them would exist. Yet almost no such traces have been found. No misplaced shells, no talkative scientists. This program hasn’t simply been allowed to atrophy: it’s been scrubbed from existence in a fashion that only totalitarian dictatorships are capable of. Just as “enemies of the people” were erased from Soviet records, so too were the weapons of Saddam erased. In totality. So what happened? Did Saddam get rid of his weapons and simply not tell the world? Why would he do that? If he’s going to tell the world he had weapons, then he might as well keep them. Was he deceived by his own scientists? Impossible: we’d have already learned of it by now. Any secret known by more than a handful of people will rapidly become public knowledge, especially in a place like post-war Iraq. And “faking-out” Saddam would have required the involvement of hundreds of people: people who would have had far more to gain from ratting out their friends to Saddam than they would have gained from keeping quiet. It’s simply impossible. What then? Where did they go? The answer is obvious: Iraq’s reduced arsenal was moved somewhere and hidden for safe-keeping and most of those involved in this project were killed afterwards. The actual size of these chemical munitions is actually rather small: they could have been trucked somewhere and hidden by a relative handful of people. It’s entirely possible that the people involved could have even been deceived as to the true nature of their cargo. Why would Saddam do this? Isn’t it obvious? He thought America was weak and would be unable to stand up to the rigors of combat. In retrospect his strategy was obvious. Forget about fighting open-field battles with American tanks like in 1991, then fight like hell for Baghdad. Make it into a Stalingrad-style battle and then wait for the peace movement, the United Nations, Europe, and everyone else to force Bush to abandon the war. It’s not even a bad strategy, if he’d had the forces to fight it. If the Special Republican Guard and Republican Guard units detailed for Baghdad had fought as well as a First World army, how many American dead would there have been? Hundreds? Thousands? How many Iraqi civilian dead, especially if Saddam were to (as he surely would have) cruelly use his civil population as fodder? Tens of thousands? More than a hundred thousand? It could have turned into a fiasco, with panicky, limp-wristed Republicans abandoning the President, Democrats attacking, and some sort of settlement forced. Why wouldn’t Saddam have used his chemical weapons, instead of hiding them? The answer to that seems obvious as well: it would have ruined his plans. The Iraqi use of chemical weapons would have stiffened US resolve and possibly helped to unite much of the rest of the world. Moreover, in 1991, Secretary of States James Baker warned the Iraqis that, if they used chemical weapons, the United States would respond with nuclear ones. Surely Saddam remembered this as well. His strategy depending upon winning the good will of the terror-appeasing world and their friends in America and any use of weapons of mass destruction would have undermined that. To make things even more interesting, the plot was reportedly hatched by Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, the senior al-Qaeda official in Iraq. I thought that Ba’athists and Islamists could “never” work together? Never mind. That’s just one of those quaint media perennials, like the pre-war predictions of a “humanitarian crisis” and their cries about the “fierce Afghan winter” and the “unbearable Iraqi summer.” Frankly, I’m convinced that the media fully believes that anyone in danger of being deprived of instant access to French cuisine is in the throes of a horrible humanitarian crisis and that any weather hotter or colder than a mild autumn day in New York City is so inhospitable as to make our Armed Forces useless. The need to strike Iraq was manifest. We may excuse that President Bush delayed action, given the circumstances: but we must not forget. If we’d invaded Iraq in the fall of 2002, the odds of catching their weapons and stopping their spread would have been much higher. Tyrants do not work on the schedule of the United Nations or, for that matter, that of the Congress. As Democrats screamed for America not to “rush to war” Saddam rushed his weapons from his country. We must never forget. If Syria is complicit in this, it is time to teach them a lesson. The forces for an invasion and occupation of Syria might, at the present time, be unavailable- but that doesn’t mean that we can’t blow up a lot of stuff, kill a lot of people, and fund the internal subversion of the country. It is worth remembering that Britain didn’t bother conquering or colonizing every little African or Oriental despotism that annoyed it and neither should America. There’s no need for an occupation when a few days of terror raids will do. Destroy the Syrian governing complex, burn the homes of their leaders, and destroy their (valuable to them) Air Force. Then arm any Kurds who want to make trouble in that country. That ought to be sufficient. But don’t wait until the UN says that it’s ok- don’t even bother asking them to comment. Forget about what John Kerry will have to say: if it were up to John Kerry, Saddam would still be in charge of Iraq today and al-Qaeda would be growing as they laughed away American subpoenas and Grand Juries. Attacking Iraq and al-Qaeda will (and has) brought retaliation and death, but inaction would have eventually brought death beyond imagination. They are forced into operating together because they are both weaker and they are desperate. It is worth remembering that the highest casualty tolls of the Second World War came at the end, as the German and Japanese homelands were assaulted, and not at the beginning. Similarly, the greatest losses of the Civil War occurred not in the months after Fort Sumter, but during Grant’s campaign to crush the Army of Northern Virginia. The horrible losses of August 1914 were later dwarfed by the horrors of the Somme. One of the prices of defeating an enemy is loss, terror, and destruction. However, to not confront that enemy merely postpones the date of battle. In our war against the terrorists each day on which the terrorists could have lived in relative peace was a day for them to grow stronger. Each day that Saddam remained in Baghdad was a day for the sanctions to fail a little more, for Saddam to recover his power a little more, and for the danger to grow a little more. Remember, it is we who shall be blamed now if something does happen. John Kerry will not let fear of being accused of hypocrisy get in the way of, following an attack on Jordan, blaming President Bush for not acting to destroy Saddam’s weapons. The media, of course, will report any such charges seriously and credulously. We are in command. We must act. Will everything go right? Of course not. But the worst possible consequences of action are preferable to the worst possible results of inaction. Those busy criticizing how things have gone in Iraq are working from the mythical assumption that, somehow, everything in war (or in life, for that matter) can go right. Of course, the sensible see the folly in this. Intelligence can’t always be right. Actions will not always have the predicted result. Forget what the media says, forget what your half-informed friends say, forget what Republicans eager to win the plaudits of the left say: we are winning in Iraq and will go on winning so long as we maintain our resolve. Our forces are unstoppable by any means which are in the possession of our enemies. We can only be defeated if we defeat ourselves. Kick Michael Moore’s Ass
Today I stumbled upon Books for Soldiers (www.booksforsoldiers.com) an excellent program which links Americans serving overseas up with books and other materials. While I admire this program, I was shocked to see that Michael Moore is using this opportunity to ship thousands of copies of his books and DVD’s overseas to propagandize American servicemen, apparently in an effort to destroy their morale. I can’t imagine that anyone sitting in the Mesopotamian desert could read Dude, Where’s My Country? and come out feeling good about themselves or their service (that being, if they take Michael Moore seriously). This is an utterly low and loathsome practice- the deliberate dissemination of treasonous material to America’s fighting forces in a combat zone.
So, let’s hit back: let’s make sure that we can get some conservative reading material overseas to our embattled heroes. I’ve already put up for offer the following: 2 Copies of "Red Storm Rising" by Tom Clancy 2 Copies of "The Third World War: August 1985" by General Sir John Hackett 1 Copy of "Arc Light" by Eric L. Harry 1 Copy of "The Way Things Ought to Be" by Rush Limbaugh 1 Copy of "Fatherland" by Robert Harris 1 Copy of "Starship Troopers" by Robert Heinlein 1 Copy of "Democracy in America" by Alexis de Tocqueville 1 Copy of "A Hymn Before Battle" by John Ringo 1 Copy of "Without Remorse" by Tom Clancy And I’m going to go out to the local used book store in the next few days to find some more stuff along similar lines. Will you join me? Let’s make sure that solid, entertaining, and patriotic material can reach our fighting men and women. Saturday, April 17, 2004
The Brave Members of the Religion of Peace
John Kerry wants the UN to take over Iraq? This should give him pause.
Essentially, some female American police officers got into an argument with some fellow UN Police officers about Iraq while in Kosovo. So what did these brave, steadfast, and honorable Moslem men do? They shot them. Yep. Gas Taxes and AIDS
In the least few weeks Andrew Sullivan has developed something of an obsession with raising the Federal Gas Tax by something like 400% (he wants to raise it by a dollar a gallon or thereabouts). Mr. Sullivan, who freely admits that he does not even know how to drive (let alone own a car) thinks that this would be an admirable “personal sacrifice” on the part of individuals (except, of course, for himself).
In this, Mr. Sullivan joins the ranks of those other deficit-obsessed conservatives who seem unable to comprehend that, if one wishes to deal with the deficit, the best way of doing it is to cut spending- not to strangle the economy with hateful taxes. Thrown into this is just a little bit of the sort of sixteen year-old boy who refuses to learn to drive because he can, “ride his bike anywhere” and who, because of this feeling, develops a sort of strange contempt for the eminently sensible drivers and owners of automobiles. I’m already on the record as suggesting that worrying about a few billion in deficits while doing nothing about the long-term costs of Social Security and Medicare is a lot like cleaning your driveway in anticipation of a flood, but still I’ll meet Mr. Sullivan in his game of “we all must sacrifice.” (In the interests of full disclosure, I should add that I’m opposed to a rise in the Federal Gas Tax because I consistently fill my tank on my regular forays into northern Washington, thereby realizing a considerable savings for myself). Sullivan doesn’t drive, so he’s not sacrificing a damned thing by calling for higher gas taxes. So, let’s have him chip in, shall we? While reading up on the gas tax, I came across an interesting coincidence. The annual revenue generated by the present Federal tax on gasoline is about $20 billion a year. Guess how much the Federal Government is planning on spending on AIDS in the next year? Almost exactly twenty billion dollars. Frankly, I think we could do away with all of that and save $20 billion for the purposes of deficit reduction. That’s something like $200 billion over the course of a decade: enough to pay for half a year’s defense budget or a war the size of the one in Iraq. That’s an awful lot of money for the sake of a bunch of people who require constant medical care to survive and who largely contracted the disease that is killing them as a result of their own actions. In fact, if President Bush really wants to win a few votes with a few Federal Dollars, he could propose the elimination of all Federal AIDS funding and use the funds (with a few billion cut from other programs) to eliminate the Federal Gas Tax altogether. Frankly, the odds are that all of the people who care enough about AIDS to vote on the issue are going to be voting for Democrats anyways whereas people who care enough about the price of gas at the pump to vote on it could easily be pushed into the GOP camp. I mean, let’s face it, present-day talk of an AIDS “crisis” in America is nothing less than a hoax. The CDC reports that there were 26,424 new cases of HIV in the United States in 2002. 16,819 of these cases were the result of gay sex or injection drug use. 5949 occurred in women as a result of heterosexual contact. It is fair to presume that a fair number of those six thousand cases were the result of gay men (or drug-injecting men) having sexual contact with unknowing women. In short, only a tiny percentage of new HIV cases occurred among people who were not fairly obviously at fault for their own infection or the victims of people who were. HIV/AIDS in the United States today is not “everyone’s disease”, it’s a disease largely contracted and spread by gay men and drug users whose irresponsibility costs the taxpayers as much as they fork out to the Federal Government in gas taxes every single year. The climate of fear created with regard to the spread of HIV/AIDS between innocent heterosexuals is a great deal of nonsense. So far as AIDS is not a “gay disease” it is because gay men spread it beyond their own ranks. Those who disagree with me on this point should read Randy Shilts’s book And the Band Played On, a wholly pro-gay account of the early years of the AIDS crisis. It confirms what we all know: there’s a reason they originally named the disease GRID. Instead of grossly and unfairly burdening hard-working Americans who want to drive a few miles, let’s take a look for some expensive programs that subsidize personal irresponsibility. Here’s a good start. Thursday, April 15, 2004
The Deficit Hoax
Those who are throwing a fit over a few billion in spending by the Bush Administration (and who are not, as many Democrats are, deathbed converts to the concept of fiscal responsibility) are missing the point. A few billion here and there are nothing in the face of the fact that, according to the non-partisan Concord Coalition, the unfunded Social Security and Medicare liabilities of the Federal Government are (in present-day dollars) somewhere in the neighbourhood of 24.1 trillion dollars and this number is growing with each passing day, each birth, and each expansion of the span of human life. Twenty-four trillions dollars twelve times the present Federal Budget. The entire accumulated assets of the United States are estimated today are estimated at a mere thirty-nine trillion dollars. That debt is, in essence, simply beyond the means of the Federal Government to pay in any fashion acceptable to the American people. Given this, it’s hard not to see the present-day spending by the Federal Government as little more than a pre-bankruptcy credit card spending spree.
If the Federal Government will have to, in the future, pay trillions and trillions of dollars in other obligations, then what’s a few billion today? It really won’t matter at all unless something is done to combat the larger problem of entitlement reform. Now, these liabilities won’t have to be paid out all at once. But, with each passing year, they will increasingly begin to strain the ability of the Federal Government to pay. As a result, one of four things will have to happen: 1) Benefits will have to be drastically curtailed in order to allow them to be met by present revenues. This would involve both the extensive use of means testing and, in all probability, actual and substantive cuts in the benefits paid out. 2) Taxes will have to be raised massively, perhaps even doubled, in order to meet the obligations of the system. In a society (such as might exist in the year 2040) where the average human life-span is ninety years, this is a much more real possibility than it would initially appear. There will simply be a lot more old people to vote themselves higher benefits (or to shield themselves against benefit cuts). 3) The Federal Government will, through some combination of blindness, incompetence, and intransigence, be simply allowed to go bankrupt. 4) Some demagogue will come along and propose some bizarre panacea “X solution” which, while economically impractical, will have great emotional appeal. Included among these solutions might be the printing of fiat money combined with wage and price controls, the nationalization of all privately held pension funds to create a single (and well-capitalized) “national pension”, or whatever other nonsensical “solution” may be dreamed-up and sold. Naturally, all four of these solutions might be attempted, or any combination thereof. Of course, expecting the Federal Government to do anything about any of this before they absolutely must is probably unrealistic. Frankly, you’d probably do well to horde various assets in view of making a real killing during the Second Great Depression which, odds are, will arrive some time in the next twenty to forty years. The only real chance we have is to get to work now on entitlement reform. The first (and most obvious steps) are entering market elements into both Medicare and Social Security. That, in my opinion, is the only real justification for the prescription drug benefit: it managed to finally put a real market element into the socialized mess that is Medicare. The same must be now done for Social Security. What must be done over the next decade or so is to quietly gut these programs in ways whose scale will not become apparent for some period of time (preferably when the other party is in power). Very few would put up with an open emasculation of these entitlements, but I’m sure that there are enough clever Republican lawyers up there to pull it off softly and in such a way that, even if the Democrats raise a fuss, it will be largely incomprehensible to the public. After all, every time the Republicans try to make any change to Social Security or Medicare the Democrats like to scream that they’re, “destroying X entitlement!” As a result, they’ve become a little like the Boy Who Cried Wolf: when we really come for these programs, no one will believe them. This, of course, demonstrates the absurdity of the claims of those who are planning on voting for John Kerry for President this fall to ensure “divided government.” The only spending which really counts, when it comes to the long-term fiscal health of America, is this entitlement spending: everything else makes a difference mostly on the margins. Democrats will not move an inch on entitlement spending, so we must go with the GOP. The strategy to me is obvious: there’s already a strong contingent of Republican fiscal conservatives on the Hill, but they’re essentially in the minority. The reason why Republicans are so seemingly impotent in their control of the Congress is that the present Republican “majority” is as illusory as the Democratic “majority” that existed for forty years. In those years, for much of the time, the effective majority in the Congress consisted of Southern Democrats and minority Republicans. A look at the behavior of the Senate over these past years shows that the effective majority is between the Democrats and liberal Republicans. While most successful votes have been on issues where the majority of Republicans have been joined by moderate or conservative Democrats there has been virtually no movement on areas where the liberal Republicans and the Democrats are in agreement. Combined, they can block virtually any item on the President’s agenda if they so desire. Hence the bills which, while they originate from a conservative ideal, become bloated, liberal, trash by the time they become law (No Child Left Behind and the Drug bill being the prime examples). The Republican majority must be increased to the point where liberal Republicans can be purged from the party. At this point they have virtually zero support among mainstream Republican voters anyways. One by one liberal Republicans from conservative states can be picked off, along with “moderate” Democrats from conservative states, eventually leading to an actual majority of conservative Republicans. Divided government promises gridlock. This may be a good thing in times of peace and prosperity. I doubt its value in the face of a war and a looming economic crisis. And Here’s to You, Mrs. Robinson
I know that one is not supposed to delight in the misery of others, but some days it just gets to be too hard. Yesterday we saw the much vaunted (Hot) “Air America” radio network fall flat on its face after just two weeks in operation, leaving angry Democrats muttering about Rovian conspiracies and shouting about the need for the “Fairness Doctrine” and today we’ve seen the fall from grace of the most loathsome man in Canada who is not incarcerated (yet, at least) or fourteen.
In all honesty, it couldn’t have happened to a better man (or, more accurately, “man”). Svend Robinson, MP for Burnaby-Douglas is one of the most despicable figures in Canadian life. A member of the socialist New Democratic Party, Robinson is Canada’s first gay Member of Parliament, a fact which has essentially been the focus of his entire life and public existence for the last decade or so (he officially “came out” in 1988, but has been an MP since 1979). He’s also Canada’s foremost friend of terrorists (he’s an open and extreme advocate of the “Palestinian” cause, for one) and one of the leading anti-American voices in the country (in breach of all Parliamentary decorum, he once heckled President Ronald Reagan as he made a special address before the House). Today, Svend announced that he was “suspending” his political career. Why? Well, you see, he stole a ring valued at $50,000 during an auction last weekend. You might think it amusing that Canada’s leading homosexual would revolve around expensive jewellery. You might very well think that. I could not possibly comment. Many, of course, are already prepared to forgive Robinson his sins and are already dragging out the various offences of innumerable conservatives in his defense. Of course, I would argue, that there’s a rather substantive difference between Rush Limbaugh’s abuse of prescription painkillers and grand larceny. As to those who are claiming that, well, the fact that Svend came forward to the RCMP and returned the ring on his own should be a credit upon him, I’ll merely point out that his theft was reportedly caught on tape and that, from what I know of the handling of any item of such substantial value, certainly the theft would have been noticed before the end of the day (or at the end of the day) last Friday. In all probability, the rightful owner of the ring used his tapes to ascertain Robinson’s guilt and then, in some fashion, had him confronted with the evidence. Caught, Robinson was allowed to pull the stunt he pulled today as a face-saving measure. I do not know this to be true, but it seems impossible to me that the rightful owner of a ring with such substantial values could let something go missing without noticing or that, upon noticing it was missing, would not check their security tapes and call the police. This is all especially interesting in light of the fact that, during an NDP leadership campaign two years ago, people close to Robinson are reported to have tried to smear a leadership candidate, Lorne Nystrom, by reviving the story of how, a decade and half ago, he was tried (but not convicted) for inadvertently shoplifting a box of pain medication from a Drug Store. Look, I’m all for forgiveness for minor sins and even not-so-minor ones. Congressman Barney Frank let his male “companion” use his home as a brothel, and I’m willing to let that slide (of course, whether Frank knew the exact details of what was going on is debatable). Members of Congress of both parties wrote dozens of bad cheques in the House Bank scandal. Dozens of major celebrities have suffered from various drug problems. Everyone (or, most everyone) is human and everyone makes mistakes. Of course, there’s a matter of the scale of a mistake and the scale of atonement. Someone with a private drug problem should seek treatment and, upon recovery, return to their previous life as best as they can. Someone who commits adultery should work things out with their family and, if they’re in a position of public trust, apologize to the public (and mean it). And so forth. Of course, we have to admit that there’s a rather quantifiable difference between forgetting you have a bottle of Tylenol in your pocket and pocketing a ring whose value roughly equals that of 10,000 bottles of the stuff. Punishment must be proportional to the scale of the crime and so must contrition. Svend is trying to blame this on “stress” and claim that it’s the result of a “health problem.” I’m sorry, but that’s nonsense. It is shameful that someone, under such circumstances, should remain in the House of Commons and continue to draw a public paycheque even while not fulfilling his duties (Robinson claims that he’s going on “medical leave”). An honourable man who was sincerely sorry would not only have declined to run in the next election, but also immediately resigned his seat. If, after a suitable period of time, he’d managed to get his life in order and pay his debt to society (either by spending time in jail or through reaching some sort of private accommodation with the jeweller) and he wants to run for Parliament again, then more power to him (not that I’d ever like to see him anywhere near the levers of power again). But, please, don’t try to hoodwink us with the “emotional stress” nonsense. That might work for booze or pills or women (or even men), but it’s not going to fly for grand larceny. You can’t steal something worth more than the average Canadian makes in a year (you know, those average Canadians that you claim to care for so deeply) stammer out an, “I’m-sorry-I-was-stressed,” and then skip along your merry way. Of course, perhaps I’m being too hard on poor Svend. After all, he was merely putting what his party preaches into practice. It wasn’t larceny: it was socialism in action! But no, I don’t think that will do either. So, here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson. Jesus loves you more than you will know. This is advice that, I hope, the individual in question shall take to heart in the days ahead. Perhaps this all might turn out to the great good of Mrs. Robinson (it has already turned out to the great good of the people of Canada), who may now examine how his impulse-control problems when it comes to dealing with pretty things may be universal and not just confined to fancy jewellery. Wednesday, April 14, 2004
Millions for Deportation…
Those who question my unwavering belief that the deleterious effects of modern liberalism have turned Canada into a putrid cesspool of sin and a haven for terrorists should examine the case of the Khadr family. They are, by the admission of one of its members, an “al-Qaeda family.” The father, Ahmed Said Khadr, was the one of the terrorist group’s top financers and a senior member of its leadership. His eldest son, Abdullah, ran a terrorist training camp and is believed to be in hiding along with other al-Qaeda fighters. Another son, Omar, killed an American solider in Afghanistan and is being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The third son, Abdurahman is apparently the only morally decent member of the family and is the only one who, in a just world, would be allowed to live- he turned on the rest of his family and worked for the CIA against al-Qaeda. A fourth son, Abdul Karim, was wounded in a skirmish with Pakistani security forces which killed his father. He and his mother were recently allowed to return to Canada and, in fact, were issued new passports for that very purpose. It is they with whom we must be most seriously concerned today.
For you see, poor Abdul Karim was wounded very badly while fighting alongside his fellow al-Qaeda members (though, to the lasting shame of the Pakistanis and to our inconvenience, he was not wounded quite badly enough). At the moment he is paralyzed from the waist down. Now, due to the nature of his injuries, there is indeed some hope for his recovery if he is allowed to receive sufficiently sophisticated treatment. This treatment, of course, is unavailable anywhere in the series of Third World trash heaps which, together, make up was is laughably referred to as “Islamic Civilization.” Given this young Abdul’s mother, Maha el Samnah, who just a month ago was busy praising the September 11th attacks, suddenly recovered her love of the infidel West. This should hardly be surprising. After all, Canadians are often told that their health care system is the “envy of the world.” “Canadian Health Care: #1 With Moslem Terrorists,” might make a catchy slogan during some future series of public service announcement. Reports assure us that, because Abdul Karim has been away for so long, he will have to wait a full three months before he becomes eligible for Canada’s fully state-paid health care system. In the meantime his family will have to pay. Luckily for him Canada’s organized Islamic community (who, peaceful as they are, seem to have yet to meet a terrorist they don’t fall in love with) is already banding together to pay for the three months before he becomes a responsibility of the Canadian taxpayer. Given young Abdul Karim’s injuries, I imagine that his hospital stay and need for health care will greatly exceed three months and probably extend to years. And, of course, we have no guaranteed that, even if we manage to restore young Abdul Karim to health, he will not be back for more treatment in another few years after being killed somewhere while trying to spread the benevolent words of Muhammad (“Peace” be upon him) with a gun. Additionally, Dalton McGuinty, the Liberal Premier of Ontario, has informed us that Mother Khadr will be eligible for welfare as well. Naturally. Glad to know it. I don’t think a single cent of taxpayer’s money should go to assist in the medical recovery of one of the enemies of our civilization. This isn’t about the dollar figure itself. At the most, Khadr’s treatment might cost a million or so dollars. I’d be happy to see the government pay ten times that amount to have them physically removed from the country and modify to the laws to specifically deny them and those like them admission. Frankly, I’d be ecstatic to see these scum dealt with in a much better way: I’d even cut a cheque for the rope, needle, bullet, or electricity and then personally administer them. Of course, I suppose I’d have to wait in line for that. I know that various terrorist apologists, a small fraction of them well-meaning, will come back at me and say, “They’re Canadian citizens and haven’t been convicted of any crime. They have rights.” To that I say this: I don’t care. Members and supporters of al-Qaeda, whatever some piece of paper might say, have no fundamental human rights which any other person is bound to respect. They’re subhuman trash which are due less regard than a cockroach. They’re all slime. No, they’re worse than that. They are the lowest form of life in existence on this entire planet and no regard or effort should be made on our part to preserve their comfort, their health or their lives, save a negative effort. In a just world we wouldn’t even have had to have this argument. In the old days the British, or whichever other colonial power was left to deal with this mess, would have simply left Abdul Karim and his mother to rot in Pakistan or, were they somehow forced into their hands, dealt with the mother by dumping her at the first convenient point and with Abdul Karim by just and expedient measures involving a rope and the nearest sturdy tree. Now, obviously, I’m never going to get a majority behind what I’ve just mentioned and, in any case, I’m not much interested in having to go to jail on account of some Untermenschen trash. So, let’s do what we can within the realm of the possible. Revoke the Khadr’s citizenship, remove them from Canada, and hope that a just God will see to it that some people in some other part of the world have them rapidly dispatched to a well-earned eternity in Hell. Monday, April 12, 2004
An Interesting Note
Take a look at this map of Bush and Gore counties in 2000.
Then, take a look at this map which shows the geographical distribution of AIDS cases in 1993. Notice anything? I provide this without comment. Hollywood Stupidity
Frankly, I’d like to know what exactly the executives at the Walt Disney Corporation who approved The Alamo were thinking. The film, produced for about one hundred million dollars, managed to rake in just a pinch more then $9 million in its opening weekend. To give you an idea as to just how poor a performance this is, Fox’s The Girl Next Door, produced for about $20 million, managed to pull in over $6 million. This total, in general, is considered a disappointment. However, with those numbers, by the time everything is said and done (and the DVD release has been completed) I’d expect it to earn a modest profit whereas the Alamo, when all costs are considered, will probably lose something like $50 million. When you’re $100 million movie performs about as well as a poorly-reviewed sex comedy (and comes in behind two movies which were previously released) you know you must be doing something wrong.
The really stupid thing about it is that Disney must have known that this movie was going to tank. There have already been plenty of movies made about the Alamo. Why make another? Why not make a movie about some other battle? Because, of course, this version of The Alamo isn’t meant to be a patriotic romp or a traditional war movie, it’s meant to serve as a deconstructionist piece. Meaning, the main point of this movie is to try and shatter the legend which surrounds what happened at the Alamo and to remove the lustre from the heroes who fell there. Surely whoever approved this movie must have known that such a film wouldn’t be able to draw in the crowds or to justify its budget. Why was it green-lighted then? The only reasons I can think of are ideological. Whoever approved it couldn’t miss a chance to slander some American heroes. I can think of no other rational explanation. This is especially true, I think, in light of the pre-release publicity which emphasised the revisionist approach the film too to history. I’m a regular movie-goer. I’ll typically see about four movies at the theatre in an average month. Sometimes I’ll see as many as six or so and I’m one of those desired customers who will pay to see a movie in the theatres more than once (I live within walking distance of a cheap, second-run theatre, though some I will see again at regular prices). Working from memory, so far this year, I’ve gone to see The Passion of the Christ, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and The Girl Next Door twice (the latter I saw in a preview screening about a month and a half ago). I’ve also see Jersey Girl, The Ladykillers, Eurotrip, Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! (love that exclamation mark), Dawn of the Dead, and Return of the King. I’m sure I’ve seen at least one or two others, but I can’t really recall which ones at the moment. In addition, I’m sure that I’ve gone to see pretty much every major war or historical film released in the last half dozen years. I bring this up simply to note that I, as a regular consumer of Hollywood fare, am not the typical conservative who hasn’t seen a movie in fifteen years ranting about the excesses of Hollywood Babylon. Nor am I convinced that everything made there is trash. There have been some truly good movies made in the last few years. But that doesn’t mean that they couldn’t do better or that they haven’t made a number of consciously stupid decisions. People have looked too much at the religious angle to explain the success of The Passion of the Christ. Certainly, it was heavily promoted by Churches and other religious groups. However, in my opinion, the key element of the marketing plan was advanced by the conservative media. Rush Limbaugh has twenty million listeners a week. If he tells them to go see a movie, and just one in five of them listen, that movie will sell at least $40 million tickets as a result (and more than that, when you consider that those people will then take along others). A lot of the success of The Passion can be attributed to just how heavily it was promoted by conservative columnists, talk show hosts, and commentators. A movie which heavily appealed to 10 million American conservatives enough to draw them into a movie theatre would make $100 million. Many of these people, I might add, probably don’t see much of Hollywood’s current crop of films. Think about it for a second. Last year CBS spent a lot of money to make its telefilm The Reagans that caused so much trouble. The reason they did it the way they did was obvious to me: to bash Ronald Reagan. Given the number of people who angrily responded to an anti-Reagan film, just how do you think people would respond to a well-made pro-Reagan film? Imagine this for a second. Peter Schweizer’s Reagan’s War, an excellent recent book on the 40th President, is optioned and made into a film. It tells the story of Ronald Reagan from that moment he stepped onto the stage to make his national speech in support of Barry Goldwater in 1964 (not where the book actually begins, but the perfect moment to pick up the story in my opinion) and ends with him triumphantly leaving the White House in 1989 (or with the public revelation of his illness in 1994). The movie is modestly well-budgeted (say $50 million) but very well made. In the months before its release it is shown to virtually every important conservative in America and those conservatives then go out and tell their viewers, listeners, and readers that this is a must-see movie for the right. Anyone want to guess how much money that movie makes? North of one hundred million would be my initial guess, especially when liberals started showing up on television to scream about the movie’s “white-wash” of history. Here’s another one: Chosin, the story of the First Marine Division’s brilliant retreat under fire from the Chosin Reservoir, during which they inflicted nearly 100,000 casualties upon a Chinese army and managed to bring every man home. Made as a simple, patriotic film in the style of an older war movie. Again, it is pre-screened for conservative spokesmen. Care to wager how much money that one makes? Another question to ponder: why were the Left Behind books made into nearly zero-budget films in spite of their obvious appeal as movie properties (given the sales of the book) and what sort of treatment do you think will be given to the film version of the Catholic-bashing Da Vinci Code? Would a high budget Left Behind film, cast with major stars and with a huge effects budget, been a hit? I’m not promising that any of these would be a success, far from it. But I’d be willing to bet that they’d do a fair sight better. Nor am I really proposing to make films ideologically except in the sense I am suggesting that there are a huge number of potentially money-making films which are not being produced for ideological reasons that ought to be made. There’s a huge untapped reservoir of cash out there for the first Hollywood studio that decides it would rather make money than be popular at fashionable night spots. Saturday, April 10, 2004
Widen the War
Just who is backing Moqtada al-Sadr? Is he backed by a groundswell of Shiite opinion? Hardly: all media whining aside, there are no signs of a true “mass uprising” among the Shiite population of Iraq. If there were, the “civilian” dead in Southern Iraq would number in the thousands or tens of thousands and the pictures would be being played around the clock on television. In fact, when given their chance to voice their opinions democratically in the form of local elections, the Shiites of Iraq have repeatedly and consistently opted for secularists over Islamists. Who then is backing al-Sadr and his al-Mahdi “Army”? It almost certainly isn’t the Ba’athists for, while they may work together from time to time, the remaining Ba’athists have little interest in an Islamist Iraq run by Shiites. Who then? Iran.
Sadr has travelled to Iran and he has been supplied with money, training, spiritual support, and probably arms. Iran is spending nearly a hundred million dollars a month on operations in Iraq and is reported to have trained over a thousand members of the Sadr’s militia in guerrilla tactics. Hezbollah, which is supported by Iran, is directing terror attacks in Iraq, working with Sadr’s forces. Members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards are also reported to have entered Iraq to join the fight against the United States. Iran is also sheltering a number of senior al-Qaeda figures, including one of Osama Bin Laden’s oldest sons, Saad, who has emerged as a senior leader of the terror group. According to several accounts, these leaders are planning al-Qaeda operations within Iraq under the shelter of Iran. In other words, in Iraq, Iran is waging war against the United States. The leaders of Iran have American blood on their hands and for their crimes they should be made to pay a price a thousand times that they have extracted from the West. In assaulting the United States, the Iranians have interfered with the primordial forces of nature and for this they must be made to atone. I do not propose an invasion of Iran, at least for the time being. Occupying Iran would, without a general mobilization of all Reserve and Guard forces, require virtually the entire remainder of the active United States Army. Moreover, an invasion of Iran would require several months of mobilization, meaning that it would have essentially zero short-term effect on events with Iraq. What I propose instead is a “show of force,” a reprisal if you will. Several days of massive and unrestrained air strikes might prove sufficient to force Iran to back down and, even if they do not, would serve as an objective lesson to those who would dare to oppose American power. If Iran persisted after the initial attacks, one or more re-strikes would remain an option. Note, I say “unrestrained” air strikes and I mean what I say. Forget surgical strikes against military bases: the Iranian military is mostly useless in any case and would be destroyed in open battle. The minds of those who lead the Islamic world understand only brutal force, so let us send them a message that we can comprehend. Certainly, those air defense sites which must be neutralized for the safety of American air crew should be destroyed. As well, this would serve as an excellent opportunity to strike Iranian nuclear and missile sites. However, the primary target of any reprisal strike should be the homes of senior Iranian leaders. In fact, such a warning strike could be conducted without risking American aircraft (if that is the fear). A half-dozen surface warships could launch two hundred Tomahawk missiles, two each at the homes of one hundred senior anti-American personalities in Iran. After all, these people don’t really have the same sense of nationalism that we do: the best way to strike at them is through family and tribal loyalties. Sure, the United States would be condemned for “assassination” and the like but, let’s face it, among our “target audience” (the Islamic world) the United States is already condemned for these things anyways. The result is the worst one possible: the people believe that the United States engaged in such activities and hates us for it, but we don’t get the advantage of actually killing senior enemy leaders and frightening some of them into submission. To a Moslem world already subjected to daily tales of (fabricated) American atrocities, the destruction of the homes of some terrorists would hardly be overly shocking or traumatic. But to those at the centre, those who have grown used to a sort of quiet immunity, it would be very shocking indeed. Of course, as I see it, this should be simply one element of an impressive “show of force” designed to frighten not only Iran, but the entire world as well. The question then is this, without giving prior warning, just how much damage could the United States do to a country in a day or two? The obvious answer is this: a lot. Iran possesses a small and fairly weak Navy. The United States already, in 1988, sank a great deal of it. US Submarines and Aircraft should now be tasked to sink whatever is left of it. Given the extreme weakness of the Iranian Navy I imagine this could be pulled off without casualties. Or, rather, without any casualties that count. The only potential danger might come from the Kilo Submarines that Iran bought from Russia a few years ago. However, I imagine that, given the potential danger these could pose, they are constantly tracked by American forces and could, if necessary, be destroyed within minutes. In any case, there are serious questions as to how seaworthy those Kilos are and the odds are that they’re rusting away at some dock somewhere. Iran possesses large quantities of Chinese-made Silkworm anti-ship missiles, so I suppose it would be best to keep surface ships away from the coast if possible. Air strikes could also be launched against government buildings in Tehran, with the goal of levelling them on worldwide television. As well, if there is any Iranian infrastructure with a particularly high value, it could be targeted and destroyed as well. Of course, it is possible that Iran might respond to such strikes by ordering its Army to strike into Iraq, but I would suggest that the possibility of such a development is minor. After all, the Iranian Army proved incapable of defeating the Iraqi Army that the United States destroyed in 1991. Several Iranian Corps trying to cross into Iraq would probably be scorched from the face of the Earth by American air power and, surely, the leaders of Iran know this. They might also increase their support of anti-American terrorism, however, by most accounts the resources they can devote to terrorism are already stretched to their limits. They could be further impoverished by the imposition of a US Naval Blockade of Iran. We cannot let those who would support terror against American forces get away without paying a price. Those responsible for the death of a single American should pay for their crimes not only with an eternity spent in Hell, but also with their own blood and the annihilation of everything they hold dear in this world. If God wishes, he may show mercy upon their wretched souls, but we should not. Friday, April 09, 2004
One Hundred and Forty Years of Treason
Our enemies have not initiated the present, ongoing, battles in Iraq with the goal of defeating American forces in battle. They know that they are not capable of doing so. Rather, they are seeking to defeat the United States on the battlefield of the mind. They want to break the will of the average American and, in so doing, force a Coalition withdrawal. This must be kept in mind with every step taken along the way: if what the enemy is doing makes you nervous or oppose the President then you are doing nothing less than the bidding of the enemy. They are not fighting to beat our forces: they are fighting to beat us, you and I. Even if they were to be attacked by an army of a million men, the men and women of the First Marine Division would fight on. They would fight for the last scrap of land and they would fight to the last man. If possible they, in the proud tradition of the Marines at Chosin, would make a brilliant fighting retreat, claiming the lives of tens or hundreds of thousands of the enemy. Even if cornered and destroyed, they would kill hundreds of thousands of our enemies in the process. The leaders of the “resistance” and their terrorist allies know this. Therefore, their attacks aren’t mean to beat the Army of Marines: they’re meant to beat you and I.
We have arrived at a decisive moment in American history. Those who wonder if this election will be more like that of 2000, 1996, or 1988 have short memories. To look for an election which will resemble the one at hand, we have to look back one hundred and forty years to that of 1864. In that year, amid the tumult of the Civil War, the people of the United States were asked to choose between a candidate who promised to carry the war to a victorious conclusion and one whose promises on the war were uncertain, whose abilities to prosecute it were questionable, and whose most ardent supporters were pretty much open about their hopes for the defeat of the nation. There is another aspect in all of this to note. By 1864 it was clear that the Confederacy was never going to truly defeat the North upon the field of battle. Their armies were depleted, much of their territory conquered, and their people demoralized. While, for a time, they proved capable of holding off the armies of Grant and Sherman, they had no plan (or ability) to eject them from Southern soil. So long as the war went on, and the Union remained resolute, it was certain that eventually Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia would be crushed and that Sherman would sweep away those forces in front of him and take what was left of the unoccupied South. Hopes for a Southern military victory had died on the third day of Gettysburg. So why, then, did the South fight? While some were diehards, determined to fight to the Yankee invader to the death regardless of the circumstances, many others fought because they were convinced that a prolonged and bloody war would bring about the defeat of President Lincoln in the election and result in a new Administration which would seek some sort of compromise which would end the war on terms favourable to the South. In other words, by buoying Southern morale, those individuals who wished to seek an end to the war as a result of their aversion to killing may have, ultimately, brought about more of it. The same, I fear, holds true today. Reports are filtering out of the Middle East and Europe that many governments there are holding off making important decisions with regard to the United States because they believe that, if they wait ten months, they might find a new Administration in Washington. An Administration willing to give them a better deal. Much as they have today, the Democrats of 1864 used a number of ruses to hide their actual position on the war. Aside from a tiny minority which favored simply granting independence to the South (the Dennis Kucinich faction of that day), the position adopted by the Democratic National Convention called for an immediate truce followed by a peace conference. Since the Confederate government had already declared that it would accept peace on no terms except Southern independence their proposal effectively meant the end of the Union, even if they couldn’t quite bring themselves to admit it. For their leader in 1864, the Democrats selected a man whose background they hoped would disguise their weakness on the issue. George B. McClellan, the former commander of the Army of the Potomac, was expected to act as a shield for the rest of the Democrats. After all, they couldn’t be supporting treason it the Young Napoleon was their leader, now could they? Naturally, McClellan tried of have things both ways on the war issue. While denouncing Lincoln, he also spoke out against the Democratic platform on the war, leaving one uncertain of exactly what he believed. In 1864, as in 2004, the Democrats were especially worked up over the President’s decision to lead the nation towards victory in a way that they contended had nothing to do with the war itself. In 2004 that issue is Iraq. In 1864 it was Emancipation. In fact, had that war been fought with the modern media in place, it is very easy to see the Democrats of 1864 fuming that, “Emancipation has nothing to do with the War Between the States. In fact, by his action, President Lincoln has made us less safe because he has provoked greater resistance among the South.” The residents of the 1864 version of Democratic Underground would point towards lists of prominent Republicans who had been members of Abolitionist organizations or supported abolitionist causes before the war and mutter darkly about a conspiracy. One of Lincoln’s advisors would have been called before an official inquiry to reveal how Lincoln had spoken to him of possible emancipation even before the start of the war and how he’d tried to push him into concluding that freeing slaves would undermine the Southern war effort. A noted Democratic Senator would cry that the war had been, “hatched in Illinois.” Of course, pretty much all of that did actually happen. Much as Democrats today insist that they support the War on Terrorism (and supported the campaign in Afghanistan) the Democrats of that day were fond of insisting that they supported the war, but not emancipation. As they do today, the Democrats missed the point: Emancipation was central to victory in that war just as Iraq is central to our victory in that war. The Emancipation Proclamation made foreign intervention in the war nearly impossible and provided a guiding moral purpose to the war. The invasion of Iraq has demonstrated the resolve of America to the people of the Middle East, opened up a new front in the battle against al-Qaeda, and has helped to turn the tide of the war: America is on the offensive. If 1864 is to be our guide, we can expect this to be the nastiest election in recent memory. It was during that campaign that a pair of New York Democrats charmingly invented the term “miscegenation” as part of an effort to smear Republicans (they did it in the form of a pamphlet, designed to appear as a Republican appeal for support, which advocated the deliberate mixing of the races). That’s the shoe I’m waiting to see drop, actually, the Democratic playing of the race card. I’m sure that, in this year of all years, they’ll find a particularly nasty way of going about that. Thursday, April 08, 2004
John Kerry is On the Side of the Enemy
Wednesday morning, on NPR’s morning addition, John Kerry denounced the Coalition Provisional Authority’s shut down of Moqtada al-Sadr’s al-Hawza newspaper, complaining that, “They shut a newspaper that belongs to a legitimate voice in Iraq.” Senator Kerry is either stupid, being deliberately deceptive, or he is misinformed. That newspaper which belonged to that “legitimate” voice was used to print lies in order to incite violence against Americans. It claimed that a February 23rd car bombing, which claimed the lives of fifty-three Iraqi police recruits, was actually a missile attack by an American Apache helicopter. And what of that “legitimate” voice, for which al-Hawza provided an outlet? Why, his al-Mahdi “Army” has been busy spending the last few days tying to kill Americans (and managing to kill twelve Marines). This, apparently, is John Kerry’s idea of a “legitimate” voice.
Now, I know that Kerry supporters will be quick to point out that he “corrected” himself shortly thereafter. To which I say: not really. What Kerry then said was, “Well, let me... change the term legitimate. It belongs to a voice — because he has clearly taken on a far more radical tone in recent days and aligned himself with both Hamas and Hezbollah, which is a sort of terrorist alignment.” A “sort of terrorist alignment”? The man’s forces have killed close to twenty Americans in the last few days. Is this John Kerry’s idea of a “sort of” terrorist? In reality, John Kerry is simply uncomfortable condemning those who kill Americans. After all, during the Vietnam War, he was perfectly happy to convey the demands of our enemies and he was even wiling to leave the release of thousands of that “band of brothers” who he now claims to cherish so dearly at the discretion of the communist North Vietnamese. He was happy to, as a civilian, sit at the table with officials of a country which was, at that very moment, trying to kill Americans. That’s the sort of man John Kerry is. That’s his character. Now, of course, his supporters and their fellow travellers will simply dismiss all of this as another in an endless series of “flubs.” But this just doesn’t wash, so far as I’m concerned. These people are still writing books about words that George W. Bush mangled in 1998, but it’s perfectly alright with them if John Kerry tells us that a man who is leading forces which are, at this very moment, seeking to kill American solders is a “legitimate voice.” If the media probed John Kerry and his supporters with even half the fervour that searched after President Bush’s National Guard history, something would quickly become apparent to the decent, average American: John Kerry, and most of his supporters, are on the side of our enemies. They don’t view it that way, of course. But that’s the simple truth here. It isn’t so much that they care about whether our enemies achieve their goals or not: it’s that, if George W. Bush can convince the American public of the existence of a threat and that he can beat it, they will support him and his party. The Democrats have no plan to destroy our enemies, so they have only one option: to try and sow doubt about both the nature of the threat and the ability of Bush to stop it. To this end, they’re dancing a careful two-step. First they deny that any real threat even exists (that can be stopped by military action, at least) and then, when that fails, they’ll attack the President. It goes like this: Liberal Democrat: You have to understand, terrorism isn’t a problem which can be stopped by military force along. It’s a problem rooted in poverty and resentment. By fighting terrorism we’re simply creating more resentment, more hatred, and intensifying a horrific cycle of violence. We need to work at a cooperative solution, together with our traditional allies, both to stop acts of terrorism and to ameliorate their causes. Conservative Republican: That’s nonsense: most of the leaders of al-Qaeda come from wealthy and privileged backgrounds. The terrorists don’t have poverty-relief in their hearts, they’ve got the restoration of Islam to its former state and beyond. These people are totalitarians, and they have to be stopped: and President Bush is stopping them by taking military action in Afghanistan and Iraq. Liberal Democrat (Shrieking): Where’s Osama? Mission accomplished!?!?! Chickenhawk! Ahhh… (Sputters) PNAC!!! (Faints). This isn’t to say that the Democrats have no strategy for dealing with terrorism: they do, they just don’t want to tell the American people what it is. That’s because the point of their strategy isn’t to make the American people safer, it’s to protect Democratic political fortunes. The last few years have made something very clear: tough rhetoric on terrorism is much more popular than tough actions. The more tough rhetoric you use, the more popular you become. The more tough actions you take, the more your popularity falls. Therefore, a Democratic Administration will constantly seek to talk tough on terrorism while not actually doing anything about it. In order to compensate for a lack of apparent follow-through (and to deflect conservative attacks) a Democratic Administration will constantly leak false or inflated reports of their “covert” successes in the war to its many willing sycophants in the press. Within a few months, various columnists and commentators will begin to talk about how much they’re hearing about how the “quiet war” of the Kerry Administration is achieving so much more than that of the Bush Administration. If a minor terrorist attack occurs on American soil, they’ll respond with some token military action and plenty of leaks about how their efforts “prevented a much bigger attack” and about how “covert action is being stepped up.” If a really big attack occurs on their watch, they’ll blame the Bush Administration and use it to advance their own domestic agenda (be vigilant for radical environmentalist measures disguised as “energy security”). This policy might be described as, “Talk loudly and drop your big stick.” Wednesday, April 07, 2004
Futureyoshi
Someone in the comments linked this picture. It looks so much like an older version of myself (sans beard) that I just have to post it:
That's the "President for Life" of Turkmenistan, FYI. Noam Chomsky: Traitor
(I know, I know: what else is new?)
This repellant troll has started a blog. Here, he discusses the "positive effects" of Pearl Harbor: All opponents of the invasion of Iraq -- at least, all those who bothered to think the matter through -- took for granted that there would be beneficial effects, as is often the case with military interventions: the bombing of Pearl Harbor, for example, which led to the expulsion of Western imperial powers from Asia, saving millions of lives. If we ever do have to round up the traitors, this alleged man ought to be one of the first to end up behind barbed wire somewhere in Nevada. Tuesday, April 06, 2004
“We are Losing Iraq…”
In the next few days we’re going to hear a lot from both war opponents and a variety of nervous twits who are ostensibly on our side about how we’re “losing” Iraq. This will be patent nonsense, of course, but it will get very good play in the media. “Iraq is in chaos,” various correspondents will intone to the very concerned and proper nods of the anchor back in New York or Atlanta. The timid among the Congress (meaning: about eighty member of the Senate) will all suddenly become convinced of their own strategic genius, along with all of the various “military experts” invited to talk on every network. When this is all over it will be quickly forgotten and the bizarre predictions made during this time will be washed away by a willingly forgetful mainstream media acting in alliance with a confused and bored American public.
We need to understand the truth of what is going on in Iraq: a combined group of Baa’thist and al-Qaeda hold-outs have stumbled into a desperate battle against US forces while, at the same time, a rag-tag militia assembled by a petulant and radical Mullah who is upset that he was excluded from the government is attempting a minor and, militarily, largely aimless uprising. This is not a fight in which “the Iraqi people” are joining. How do I know this? Simple: if this “uprising” were generalized, thousands or tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians would have died today. They didn’t. The average Iraqi in the affected areas is huddled up in his home. He isn’t joining the mob, he’s waiting for the Americans to come and shoot down the mob or, in the worst case, he’s staying away from them because he knows that they Americans are going to shoot them down. Some people are treating this like it’s the fall of 1950 and the Chinese are pouring across the Yalu. Most reports suggest that Al-Sadr’s forces consist of little more than a few thousand irregular, Iranian-armed, militia. In fact, by the standards of what the Coalition has already faced, they’re not much of a long-term challenge at all. If these people were smart, they’d have opened their “offensive” with a series of suicide bombings and other, similar, attacks. That they didn’t suggest that they lack the skills to do so (or they’re taken with some insane notion that they can beat American forces in open battle). In any case, the odds are very high that most of them will have fled (or be dead) within a week, along with a large number of terrorists in Fallujah. I do not mean to say that the United States has not made mistakes in the occupation of Iraq: this is to be expected in war. The creation of a new and effective Iraqi Army has been far slower than it ought to have been. More importantly, the United States has hesitated to take tough measures in too many cases for fear of being accused of treating Iraq as a colony (which, at the present time, is exactly what it essentially is). In particular, the United States has been too reluctant to crack down upon the political annoyances which have sprung up in post-war Iraq and too slow to resort to force when force is called for. In their colonial administrations the British knew well enough to, for much of the time, “let the Wogs alone,” (as any of a number of Victorian soldiers might have put it) but they also knew when to remind them that, “whatever happens we have got the Maxim gun, and (you) have not.” There are things which could be improved in Iraq, but I’ll tell you two things that shouldn’t be: the number of troops and the date of the transfer of sovereignty. The people making the arguments for modifications in both of these aren’t really all that serious; they’re simply looking for a way to criticize the Administration on Iraq without seeming weak on terror. The transfer of sovereignty from the Coalition Provisional Authority to an Iraqi provisional government is an almost entirely symbolic exercise: it is merely another step on the road to Iraq’s recovery. The sooner some sort of sovereign Iraqi government is up and going, the sooner we’ll have a relatively legitimate Iraqi President and Foreign Minister to make our case for us on Larry King Live. Beyond that, the only other compelling reason for a transfer of sovereignty is to change the terms of debate. Starting on June 30th the US Government should object to any reference to the American “occupation” effort in Iraq and instead speak in the language of “securing the freedoms of our Iraqi allies against terror.” Do that for a little while and, eventually, the use of the negative-sounding (to many) word “occupation” will cease in the mainstream American media. I don’t understand what rational reason exists for demanding a change in the date of the transfer of sovereignty: there’s going to be a surge of attacks around that date, whatever it is, as the holdouts, the terrorists, and those left-out make a last push. Why should we desire to put that off? The faster we have a new Iraqi government to parade about the better. Those arguing for a change of date now are merely playing a childish game of “gotcha!” with the Bush Administration, seeking to publicly force them to change their stand on the issue as a way of shifting political momentum. As for the “more troops” mantra, once more we have a case of a called-for measure which is never intended to be seriously enacted, but rather to make the person making the call sound tougher on terror than they are. First of all, substantial numbers of additional troops (unless you want to send the 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions to Iraq) won’t be able to arrive in-theatre for a few weeks or months, long after they could have been of any use in combating this “uprising.” John Kerry says he’d like to deploy another 40,000 troops (or about two Divisions) to Iraq. For what purpose? I ask him: for what purpose? Does Senator Kerry really believe that we’re going to need additional heavy forces to face down the T-80’s and Hind Attack Helicopters which will soon be magically gifted to Sadr’s mob? There are already enough regular forces in the theatre to deal with any conceivable military threat. It would be useful to have a few extra troops in theatre during the next week or so, simply for the sake of caution, but that’s already being accomplished through the Pentagon’s strategy of delaying the exit of troops that are due to be rotated out. By the time any other plausibly available units are sent to Iraq the present need for them will have evaporated. In the long term, the presence of a large number of additional US troops on “occupation duty” in Iraq would be, if anything, injurious to the American cause. Think about it for a second. What is the primary cause of US casualties in Iraq? The answer is obvious: terrorist action, notably in the form of roadside bombs and other similar devices. More US troops in Iraq means more convoys to attack, more helicopters to crash or be shot down, and more soldiers to kill in sniper attacks. No one is arguing that the US lacks sufficient combat power to hunt down and kill the enemy in Iraq. What we are primarily lacking is intelligence information and patience. Additional regular US forces in Iraq would simply mean more targets for the terrorists, especially if dispatched on the scale being advocated by Senator Kerry and other faux “tough on terror” Democrats (and, I am very sorry to say, a few Republicans as well). We’re not losing Iraq: we’re steadily winning it in spite of the efforts of our opponents to undermine our confidence and despite the hysteria of a chicken-little media and Washington establishment who, to meet the demands of a twenty-four hour news cycle, spend much of their time inventing and managing largely-fictional crises. In fact, I think we’re winning far more than we know about. Behind the scenes, unknown to all but a select few, a shadow war is being waged. Frankly, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that the Iranian-backed Sadr has chosen to rise now in an effort to take American pressure off his masters in Tehran. We now know that American Special Forces operated in Iraq for some time before the war while the world remained, on the whole, blissfully unaware. I wouldn’t be at all shocked to find that the serious upheavals going on in both Iran and Syria were partially the work of hard-edged Green Berets. The same, I suspect, is true of insurgency-era Iraq as well. We are not losing. We, in fact, cannot lose: not unless we beat ourselves. This must be remembered. There is only one way to dishonour the ultimate sacrifice of more than six hundred Americans, there is only one way to ensure the revival of terror, there is only one way to take the pressure of the regimes in Damascus and Tehran, and there is only one way to doom the Iraqi people to a future of misery and despair: the election of John Kerry. So long as President George W. Bush is in the White House, we can rest assured that the War on Terrorism will be carried through to a successful conclusion. The Democrats know this. The terrorists know this. The Mullahs in Iran know this. Hamas knows this. The media knows this. That is why, for the rest of the year, these disagreeable and often discordant groups will be on the same side. And it is also why the ultimate victory in this war depends on the triumph of George Bush this November. Every dollar sent to John Kerry and every ballot cast for him is the functional equivalent of a dollar to al-Qaeda and a bullet fired at an American GI. My, are People Jumpy (Or are They?)
Instapundit is talking about how the Justice Department is looking into resuming Federal Prosecutions for obscenity. Naturally, he's opposed (and so is most of the rest of the Blogosphere). I could care less on what I believe to be the very sensible grounds that, whatever the merits of such a thing, it's never going to come off anyways.
Of course, if one actually reads the article you'll find that we are not, in fact, on the verge of having Penthouse ripped from the shelves by Federal Agents: The department's most closely watched case involves "extreme" porn producer Rob Zicari and his North Hollywood company Extreme Associates. The prolific Zicari is charged with selling five allegedly obscene videotapes, which he now markets as the "Federal Five," that depict simulated rapes and murder. Frankly, I'm not too worried about the rights of people to get off on watching "simulated rapes and murders." Of course, we then get the typical letter from the "former Bush supporter" which reads as follows: I voted for Bush and donated to his campaign and have been looking for reasons to support his reelection. But when I saw your post, I snapped. I just made a small donation to the Kerry campaign...and, living in Massachusetts, I have no reason to be thrilled about Kerry. Somebody commented somewhere on the Web that never had he seen a President so contemptuous of his supporters as GWB. While Bush is my first choice to prosecute the war (on terror, not on pornography), McCain's comments reassure me that Kerry would do an adequate job. Yah huh. Sure thing buddy. Whatever you say. People are so very gullible these days, I think. Monday, April 05, 2004
“Uprising” in Iraq
The Bush Administration has been predicting an upswing in violence in Iraq during the months leading up to the transfer of power on June 30th. It should, therefore, hardly be a surprise to see that this upswing has arrived. The forces we face in Iraq are not growing stronger overall, but rather weaker. They are desperate, damaged, and disintegrating with only a single, final, hope.
In the last day the internet has been abuzz with stories of a “coup d’etat” in progress in Iraq, discussing how followers of Shiite Cleric Moqtada al-Sadr are taking to the streets in the “tens of thousands.” This is all nonsense. Moqtada al-Sadr, a man with support from no more than a tiny fraction of the Iraqi population, is not about to overthrow the Coalition Provisional Authority. In all likelihood, if he is behind a rising on the scale that is being claimed in some quarters, he is, along with many of his followers, about to be dispatched to Hell. We have, in the West, an exaggerated image of what “people power” can do on its own. Rag-tag militias, armed with AK-47’s, die in great numbers when they attempt to move against well-armed and trained troops. When people discuss the Battle of Mogadishu they focus on the eighteen US Army personnel who were killed. They forget that, in losing their lives, those isolated (and nearly unsupported) soldiers managed to kill about five thousand Somalis. By my reckoning, that’s a kill ratio of about 277:1. Let’s not kid ourselves. If these people really get out of hand, we won’t hesitate too long before we simply shoot them down. There isn’t going to be a revolution in Iraq. Neither is there going to be a civil war. There may be some degree of internecine fighting, but I’m not even really sure if that’s such a terrible thing. After all, if Shiite and Sunni radicals busy themselves with killing eachother and eachother’s friends and families, they aren’t going to have much time to spare for killing Americans. In fact, by killing off their most aggressive leaders, such violence might be regarded as somewhat beneficial to both the United States and to the Iraqi people as a whole. Contrary to what most war opponents seem to think, the Iraqi people as a whole are not stupid. They understand that there’s no real point in resisting the United States. They also understand that they are great potential benefits in collaborating with the coalition. One of the so-called “grievances” voiced by people of Fallujah was that they were not receiving a fair share of reconstruction aide (which they, on account of their hometown being a Saddam-supporting cesspool, they justifiably are not). This, to put it mildly, is hardly the sort of grievance to provoke anyone to revolution. Alas, “international reconstruction and development aid or death,” is a slogan likely to inspire few potential martyrs. The violence going on in Iraq is not violence being perpetuated by a group which is fighting to win. The so-called Iraqi “resistance” has been reduced to leaving bombs at the sides of roads, murdering the people they claim to defend, and hoping that John Kerry will be elected President. Yes, you can kill American soldiers by destroying their Humvees: but you can’t beat any army with a few dozen bombs a month, most of which end up defused. You couldn’t beat the Ethiopian Army with that, let alone the United States Army or, for that matter, the United States Marine Corps. Forget the doom and gloom of the media. Instead, let us review what we have accomplished in Iraq in the period of just a single year: the dictator is gone. His torture chambers, rape rooms, and child prisons are no more. Economic conditions in Iraq today are notably better than they were a year ago. The knock-on effects of the invasion have driven Libya, once a leader of the terrorist bloc, into the Western camp. As a result of the invasion the US has been able to take a firmer line with Saudi Arabia which, in concert with the after-effects of al-Qaeda operations in that Kingdom, has resulted in a serious increase in the House of Saud’s effort against terror. Precious al-Qaeda resources are been drawn into Iraq, thereby preventing their use elsewhere. The political turmoil caused by the invasion has destabilized the regimes in Damascus and Tehran. None of this would have happened had we not gone into Iraq. It is obvious that we are winning in the ground in Iraq. The only large-scale force which our opponents there are capable of assembling is a mob, and we know how to deal with those. As it becomes increasingly clear that Iraq will likely end up with some form of democratic government, a growing economy, and robust security forces the incentive grows for already-inducted recruits to quit the “resistance.” When spend your life fighting for the lost cause of a deposed dictator? There are some, of course, who will keep on fighting no matter what: all of these people will ultimately have to be killed. But they will, if it is clear that they are going to lose, have an increasingly hard time finding recruits. In fact, I would argue that there’s only one thing keeping them alive at the present time: John Kerry. Consider, for a moment, the election of 1864. By the middle of 1864 it was clear that the South had lost the war on the battlefields. Much of the South lay under Northern occupation and, however slowly, the armies of the Confederacy were being destroyed by the forces under the command of Grant and Sherman. Why, then, did the South fight on? While it is true that some of those who fought on were fanatics determined to resist to the death, many continued the fight because it was widely believed that, as a result of severe Northern losses, President Lincoln would be defeated in the November election and replaced by a Democrat more willing to accommodate the South. The perception is, all over the world, that increased American dead will result in the defeat of President Bush in November. This is the great hope of the resistance in Iraq: they believe that John Kerry will, using whatever political cover he can find, eventually withdraw from Iraq and leave them to take charge. I think (all claims by some about how “tough” Kerry would have to be aside) that they are right. Now, of course, Kerry wouldn’t order a withdrawal on his first day in office. Instead, he’s use the international good-will which would exist in the first few months of his term to withdraw some of the US forces in the country and see the remainder placed under UN command. Once Kerry was in office, of course, the media would stop focusing on events in Iraq. A year or so after that, once people stopped paying attention to Iraq altogether, he would pull out and, a little while after that, some thugs would take charge. When that happened, he’d blame it on George Bush. The Iraqi “resistance” knows this. Therefore, every bump in John Kerry’s support in the polls gives courage to our enemies, leads to increased Iraqi resistance, and therefore leads to more American dead. We are beating back our enemies. We are using the triumph to advance the war abroad. Nothing can stop us now. Except, of course, for John Kerry. Sunday, April 04, 2004
DNC and the Daily Kos
Yep, the Democratic National Committee is still advertising on that site. I've got a screen capture to prove it. Click here to see.
Saturday, April 03, 2004
Markos Zuniga: Traitor
Did you know that the Democratic National Committee is sponsoring, to the tune of hundreds and perhaps even thousands of dollars, a man whose response to the killing and mutilation of four American security contractors in Fallujah was, “Screw them”? Perhaps the phrase can enter the lexicon of this year’s Democratic insanity, along with Howard Dean’s scream and John Kerry inanely intoning, “Bring it on,” over and over again. Two hundred people were murdered by terrorists in Spain? “Screw them.” After all, they brought it on themselves by opposing al-Qaeda’s just and right desire for the restoration of the medieval Kingdom of Andalusia. Twenty Israelis were blown apart by a Palestinian savage? “Screw them.” They deserve it, for occupying the land on which Arafat’s future state (which will run straight from the Jordan River to the Sea) will flourish. It’s already the hidden Democratic mantra, the invisible meme which infects Democratic thinking on this war that we are in. If a Westerner anywhere is murdered by a foreign monster, “Screw them,” they probably deserved it.
The influence of political blogs is certainly on the rise. Major political campaign run paid advertisements of the sites and some have even managed to snag the occasional mention in the mainstream press. A few weeks ago, the Daily Kos even managed to get a mention on CNN (from former Dean Campaign Manager Joe Trippi in the CNN Presents film True Believers). Markos Zuniga, the proprietor of the Daily Kos, can fairly be referred to as a figure of some note on the left. The great advantage of the blog for the reader is that it provides near-instant commentary on events and, therefore, can be revealing as to the evolution of thinking on any given issue. Blogs can also be entertaining because bloggers themselves are, by the very nature of their trade, gaffe prone. Now, when I bring up the matter of the “gaffe” here I refer not to misspellings, grammatical errors, or the like. Rather I refer to “gaffe” in the political sense meaning, “when someone tells the truth or says what they really think.” Mr. Zuniga made just such a gaffe a few days ago. On hearing of the horrific murder of four Americans (which, as we all know, was followed by the savage, Satanic, and inhuman defiling of their bodies) his full was as follows, “I feel nothing over the death of (sic) merceneries. They aren’t in Iraq because of orders, or because they are there trying to help the people make Iraq a better place. They are there to wage war for profit. Screw them.” The latest defense for the indefensible, from some at least, is that Zuniga is in the right because these individuals were “mercenaries.” To which I say: so what? They were courageous men, American citizens, all of whom served honourably in the nation’s armed forces. After they were discharged, having rendered loyal and faithful service, they elected to serve their nation further in a private capacity. Were they paid for this? You bet they were. Did they deserve to be paid well? You bet they did. Look, unless you want to eject all private enterprise from Iraq you have to accept that someone will have to guard those enterprises. Who shall do it? Should we detail away Army units to guard every private contractor? What would the left say of American soldiers killed protecting a Halliburton convoy? It therefore follows that, for day to day effort, private contractors will have to provide their own security. From this it follows that they will hire people to provide that security from the best qualified pool of available personnel: former American special forces personnel. What, exactly, is wrong with this? Someone has to provide that security, and who better to do it? Some are now trying to tie this in to the rest of the “war as a corporate conspiracy” theory by charging that the hiring of these people is a “rip-off” of the American taxpayer. This, to say the least, is a dubious assertion. The pay of these “security contractors” ranges between $100,000 a year and $300,000, largely trending towards the latter. Let’s suppose that the average is $250,000 a year. Presumably, from this money, the individual employees pay for their own housing, food, and such. These people are performing duty which, otherwise, would require the services of US Army units on a dedicated basis. Even assuming that ex-Special Forces operators could be adequately replaced by anyone other than serving Special Forces is a stretch. Since all of the Special Forces soldiers in Iraq are already needed for duty, some would have to be deployed to Iraq from somewhere else or, given how stretched they are, newly recruited and trained. What, exactly, do you think that the real cost of deploying a single Green Beret Sergeant with a family back home to Iraq for a year would be- including salary, benefits, housing, training, and all other costs. Do you think it would be more or less than $250,000 a year? I’m willing to bet that it would probably be about the same or more: and with that would come increased strain on America’s serving forces. Repeat that to yourself, “Screw them.” That’s his reaction to the murder of Americans who were trying to protect food convoys for civilians. “Screw them.” Ladies and Gentlemen, there is only one word to describe a person who reacts so to the savage killing of four of his countrymen: traitor. There’s simply no other word which will do. This is a word that is thrown around too much these days. I, for one, am aware that I certainly over-use it. But there is no other word which will do here. There is no stronger term of censure available. We are engaged in a war against the enemies of our civilization. Those enemies killed four of our people and then mutilated their bodies. “Screw them,” is all Markos Zuniga had to say about those men, those heroes who died while trying to create a better Iraq and, yes, to earn a few dollars for themselves along the way. “Screw them.” In this war against the terrorists you are, as President Bush declared, either with us or against us and Markos Zuniga is against us. However much some will seek to spin this, I don’t believe that this was a “gaffe” because Mr. Zuniga said something, perhaps out of temporary anger or emotion, which he really didn’t mean. I think that this is a “gaffe” in the sense that, in a burst of emotion, Mr. Zuniga decided to tell us the truth, to speak from the well of treason and sedition which is hidden beneath the surface of the modern left. I think that Markos Zuniga looked at his television and said, “I can’t believe that they’re going to hail these baby-killers as heroes,” and then he sat down to type. When he wrote, he gave voice to those people who make up the base of the modern Democratic Party: those people for whom the Iraqi “resistance” are heroes, Israel is the primary villain in the world, and private enterprise is at the root of all evil. These are the “heart” (such as it is”) of the modern left. They are the people of whom Ann Coulter likes to say that, if the American people knew what they really believed, they would have them boiled in oil. This nation has enemies both at home and abroad. They cannot be reasoned with, dealt with, compromised with, listened to, or even respected: they must be wiped from the very face of the Earth for all time. Markos Zuniga is one of those people. While God will ultimately see that he is consigned to Hell for his sins, we must now seek to make his life here an Earthly form of hell. We need to make our dear friend Markos the poster boy for Democratic seditionists and traitors this campaign season. When, during the last Administration, a few on the fringe right pushed theories that Bill Clinton had left a trail of bodies in his wake, including those of Vince Foster and Ron Brown, their views were held up to endless mockery. Why, then, have we yet to hear of a much more serious issue: Democrats who want our enemies to win the war? You can’t argue that Markos Zuniga is simply “some guy” on the internet. Howard Dean’s website featured him as a special guest. At least one Democratic Congressman actually bought ad space from him as have many other potential members of Congress. As of Saturday night he was running paid ads for Jane Mitakidies, a Democratic House candidate from Ohio, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic National Committee, and the Minnesota House Democratic Caucus. The various ad spaces sold go for anywhere between $700-$2000 a month, according to Blogads, the site which serves as a broker. These ads are specifically bought and placed. Did you get that? The Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee are paying thousands of dollars to an alleged man whose response to the savage killing of those Americans was, “Screw them.” Given the controversy that this has generated there is essentially zero chance that they have not heard of this. Is, “Screw them,” now the official response of the Democratic National Committee to the murder of four brave Americans? Thursday, April 01, 2004
"Hot Air America"
Ralph Nader has given the network a perfect nickname. Read this (via Daily Kos).
Click here to download the thing in MP3 format. It really has to be listened to. “Voter Turnout” Silliness
Everyone shouldn’t vote. One of the things which annoys me the most at election time are the inane discussions about the importance of voter turnout and the goofy ads and pleas for non-voters to show up at the polls (“it doesn’t matter who you vote for, but make your voice heard,” a typical such ad script will read). The idea that high (or universal) voter turn-out is somehow desirable strikes me as bizarre. As Winston Churchill liked to point out, the best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter. To me, at least, it would appear that if people can’t be bothered to spend the hour or so it takes to vote every few years then it’s probably a good thing to have them absent themselves given that they probably don’t know enough to vote anyways.
In fact, in all honesty, I can’t think of a single reason why universal suffrage is a good idea. A recent Pew poll showed that more voters between the ages of 18-29 get their campaign news from Saturday Night Live and the Daily Show than do from the internet. Do we really want people whose primary source of political information is Jon Stewart deciding elections? Think about that one for a moment. I remember how, when I was in high school, there was an ESL teacher who was a radical leftist. The walls of their room were covered with posters from Amnesty International and other disreputable organizations. For one assignment, this teacher had their students put together timelines of “milestones in Canadian voting rights.” These timelines included not only the moment when women got the vote, but also (on equal footing) the moment when the same right was granted to the mentally retarded and the incarcerated. I passed it for a few days, shaking my head every time, before I finally went into the classroom to have a discussion about this subject with the teacher. It was offensive, I told them, to equate the granting of the vote to generally worthy groups (women, Asians, Indians, etc.) with the absurd court-ordered granting of the vote to clearly unworthy groups. The teacher took great offense at this suggestion, yammering on about how all people are equal and deserve an equal voice. Nonsense, I said, a criminal is not the equal of a police officer, and a retard is not the equal of a genius (or even an average person): these people shouldn’t have a say in how society is run for they lack the competence to make an informed decision on the matter. We were right, during the last century, to broadly expand the franchise. There was no rational reason to keep the vote from all women and many minorities. But we have expanded suffrage too far: by simply letting everyone vote (and making it very easy for them to do so) we threaten to leave the idiots at the wheel. As a general rule, stupid people are for whichever left-wing party is about- but the number of stupid and uninformed voters is so large that conservatives must trick a large number of them to win. All are made guilty of this by the system. The truth is that politicians today are too much like Brutus and Antony before the mob, winning and losing their affections by turns. No one meant to create a “democracy” here in America. The Founding Fathers sought to create a Constitutional Republic, a very different thing. The whole point of the American system of government was to channel, temper, and dissipate the passions of the mob. By letting every fool, knave, and yokel vote on terms equal to that of the most upstanding citizen we place ourselves in a situation where the concerns of the foolish (like the woman who worried that Barry Goldwater would take away her TV) sit on standing equal to those of the noble, who seek to guard the nation. Now, I doubt if people would ever put up with a property qualification or something similar as a prerequisite for voting rights, nor do I think such a limited qualification would be desirable. However, it does not seem out of the question to me that we might begin by stripping away the franchise from those who are receiving unearned benefits from the state (read: welfare). No one likes people on welfare anyways, and their few defenders are shrill and generally despised. A good argument can be made here: people receiving unearned benefits from the state can be bought by a party or candidate promising to increase the money which they will be allowed to extract from taxpayers in a vampire-like fashion. Therefore, given that these people can (in essence) be directly bribed, they are a potentially corruptive influence in political affairs and should not be allowed to vote so long as they are collecting such benefits. This, however, would be little more than a symbolic step. I doubt if more than a handful of welfare recipients actually vote and, in any case, their numbers are mostly concentrated in areas which are… electorally uncontested. We need to go further. While I do not think that a property qualification is plausible or desirable, there is another old method of restricting the franchise whose revival would be a positive step: the literacy test. A hundred question test on the basic facts of American history could be put together (and revised on a regular basis) by the Federal Elections Commission and each state required to administer it to anyone who wishes to vote in a Federal Election (states and localities could use the results of the tests if they like, or not). The test wouldn’t be overly hard- something that most High School Graduates would be able to pass, especially if they brushed up before hand, but something that would take an hour or two to do. Registrations would have to be renewed periodically. People who failed the test would be allowed to retake it as many times as they like. What’s the point of this? Simple: to make voting harder. I, and pretty much everyone else reading this, would be more than willing to sacrifice a Saturday afternoon every four years in order to vote- but a lot of people wouldn’t and, in my opinion, those people have no business voting. It’s time to reclaim the state from the hands of the mob. As Enoch Powell reminded us, one of the supreme functions of statesmanship is to warn against preventable evils: the state of mob rule which exists in the Western democracies today is just such an evil. We can see it, and we can do something about it. Adam's Book Club
I'm going to start periodically offering a glimpse into what I'm reading (and watching) and make some recommendations. I'll make this, perhaps, a monthly feature.
Today I picked up (and read about half of) James Mann's The Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet. I've been waiting to read this book since it was excerpted in The Atlantic Monthly last month. Basically, it's a biography of Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Armitage, and Condoleezza Rice, telling where they came from and how they came to be in the places they are today. I look at the Amazon listing shows it selling alongside a lot of the hysterical anti-Bush books, but it hardly belongs in that company (a further look also shows that people who bought it bought Rumsfeld's War, Why America Slept, and Of Paradise and Power, all of which I own- so I suppose this is one of those rare "bridge" books). Rather, this is a serious study which advances the propostion that the Bush Foreign Policy team belongs alongside the two other famous teams of this century- the "wise men" of the Early Cold War (Dean Acheson, Paul Nitze, etc.) and the Vietnam-era "Best and Brightest." There's some really interesting stuff here. Mann goes into the entire Leo Strauss thing without descending into weirdo Tim Robbins-eque kookery. Wolfowitz, he explains, actually only took two classes with Strauss (who actually retired before Wolfowitz even finished graduate school). More interesting, Wolfowitz studied closely under Allen Bloom, author of The Closing of the American Mind and my favorite homosexual. Hmmm...
I'm watching To Play the King this evening. One of my favorite films, I strongly recommend it to all of you. The murders aside, Francis Urquhart is a stand-up fellow.
On a semi-related note, any ideas on where in Vancouver I could get some good Beef Wellington? Or am I going to have to buy a roast and make it myself? |
