Oh, that's right, now I remember

With all the crap that passes for news and opinion these days, I find that - about once a month - I need to remind myself of some facts:

Before our invasion -

1. Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, started two wars

2. Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons
2a. We know this because Saddam used these weapons against his own people.

3. Iraq had an advanced nuclear weapons program in 1991

4. Iraq never accounted for all the WMD that they possessed

5. Iraq ceased cooperation with the U.N. weapons inspectors

6. Iraq was in violation of the cease fire that ended the Gulf War.

7. Iraq was in violation of 14(?) U.N. Security Council Resolutions

8. If you include the combat casualties in the two wars he started, Saddam Hussein is responsible for the deaths of around one million people.

9. The government of Iraq was giving money, arms and training to various terrorist organizations, including Al Qaeda.

10. Iraq subverted the U.N.'s oil-for-food program and spent money meant for food and medicine on weapons and palaces.

11. When Saddam passed from the scene, his criminally insane sons could have taken over a country that possibly possessed WMD.

Have I missed anything? Probably. But, that's enough I think.

See? What'd I tell ya?

I just returned from running an errand. Dry and thirsty work it was, too. Thus, as I returned, I staggered in to an establishment where caring professionals were able to rehydrate me with a beverage of English manufacture. Whilst recovering my chemical balance, I chanced to glance up at the television where to my horror I observed Wolf Blitzer - a CNN minion - interviewing George Clooney on the situation in Darfur, Sudan.

Will someone explain to me exactly what in Mr. Clooney's resume qualifies him to issue pronunciamentos on foreign affairs or humanitarian assistance? Admittedly, any moron capable of forming a coherent sentence could say what needs to be said about the atrocities taking place in Darfur, but, Mr. Clooney's presence means that someone with real foreign policy or humanitarian relief experience didn't get heard today on CNN.

This episode only further cements my position that since the advent of the television, the line between journalism and entertainment has blurred to the point where, today, journalists interview each other and tell us it's expert testimony. Journalists now think they make the news. How many stories have you heard - out of Iraq - about journalists in harm's way? These people think THEY ARE the story.

We've got to get a grip, people. We really do.

I shouldn't admit this, but...

Oh, well, I guess I shouldn't be surprised at my feelings. I've recently realized that I'm now living in the country formerly known as the United States of America.

The sad truth is that I sometimes wish that Al Qaeda had detonated a nuclear bomb in New York. If that had happened, we wouldn't be having any discussion today concerning what the President knew about Iraqi WMDs; or how well treated the detainees at Gitmo are, or whether the CIA is sending people to other countries to have them tortured, would we?

No.

We would be more united than at any time in our history and we would be making God damned sure that ANYONE representing even the remotest threat to us was killed or put someplace where they could be closely monitored.

I am now convinced that we, in this country, have become too rich, too well fed and too educated to long survive.

When college educated Americans call our treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay 'torture', they literally re-define the word. Only someone completely and willfully ignorant of history could call it that.

But you can't argue with these people. Not only can't they argue - lacking any facts, they WON'T argue. No matter how many facts you give them, they refuse to be educated. They have convinced themselves that their feelings are facts and as such - are incontrovertible.

After years of demonizing the people who are trying to keep us safe, the left (stuck in a 1968 mindset) looks like it has convinced enough people that it will be put back into power here. Thus, I fear I may get my wish. When you combine the Main Stream Media, Hollywood, Academia and the Democratic Party - you have a sure-fire recipe for 9/11 the sequel

God save the Republic. (With apologies to Col. Jeff Cooper, USMC (ret.) for stealing this tag line)

1981...take two!

While it is not outside the realm of the possible that the U.N. will take meaningful steps to curb Iran's quest for nuclear weapons, I wouldn't put any money on it.

And, because of a fifth column in this country 500 miles wide, the odds that even the titanium-spined George W. Bush will take military action to stop Iran are very small.

Many in the chattering class have attempted to get out ahead of the news by making arguments downplaying the danger of a nuclear Iran. In their 'figuring' they've decided that neither the U.N. nor the U.S. has the political will to do anything about Iran, so it's a done deal - Iran will go nuclear.

Not so fast. There is one player for whom national defense is not an abstract philosophical argument interwoven with divisive politics: Israel.

Israel will (as it has always done) watch the situation and take action if and when IT decides it is proper.

If I were a betting man, I would place a large wager that the U.N., the E.U. and the U.S. will dither and procrastinate until Israel finally acts to destroy the Iranian nuclear facilities on its own. Then the whole world will angrily wag its finger at them and say, "What'dya do that for?" while secretly heaving a huge sigh of relief.

The pusillanimity and political cravenness of this are incalculable. I expect that from the E.U. and the U.N. but not from here.

This may be the end

If, five years from now the world says the same things about Darfur that were said about Rwanda, I believe that the world will lose every last tiny shred of respect for - and belief in - the United Nations.

If the United Nations does nothing to stop the genocidal atrocities which are at this moment occurring in the Darfur region of Sudan, it will cease to exist - in any meaningful way - as an international organization dedicated to peace and human rights.

Let's understand what is happening:

-Nations with business ties to Sudan are preventing the U.N. from taking any action for fear that they could suffer economic harm.

-Islamic nations are preventing the U.N. from taking any action because they actually approve of the slaughter of non-muslims.

-The U.N. refuses to allow arms to get to the people of Darfur so that they can defend themselves. Instead, they obscenely pontificate that "small arms cause instability".

By my estimation the U.N. has less than two years. After that it will be too late for Darfur - and the U.N. If the U.N. fails to take action in Darfur while it continues to hamstring our efforts to defend ourselves and promote democracy, the United States will, I believe, have little choice but to withdraw from the U.N., expel it from New York and establish something like a league of democracies.

If that happens The United Nations will be an historical artifact - like the League of Nations - within ten years.

I hope the U.N. gets its act together, but that's not the way to bet.

And another thing...

How dare the government "investigate" the oil companies for windfall profits when these firms' ability to make money, indeed their ability to run their businesses at all, is utterly hog-tied by Congressionally imposed red tape!!!

The hypocrisy is so titanic that I can only shake my head in admiration of the chutzpah.

God save the Republic!

Why things are as they are

So, why is it that we yell and scream about the deficit and shriek about fiscal irresponsibility when any representative or senator who doesn't bring us home the bacon gets shit-canned after one term?

Why do we tell them we want spending restraint, then cuss them out when they cut our pet projects?

We are the problem!

God save the Republic!

Some unpleasant facts

The recent spectacle of a North Philadelphia father telling his daughter in open court, out loud, not to say anything - to claim she can't remember anything - about a drug gang-related shooting that claimed the life of a ten-year-old bystander is a tragic exposition of just how bad things are in some areas of Philadelphia and by extension, inner-city America.

Here are some facts and situations that must be accepted before anything is going to improve in the inner city.

We see in this incident the intersection of political philosophy and the real world. "The People" are the law. The police and district attorney are the hired help of "The People". If the residents of a city will not assist the police or the legal system, then they have retrieved for - and reserved to - themselves the enforcement of the law. The residents of North & Southwest Philadelphia have essentially fired the police and DA. Knowingly or not, they have renounced America's generally accepted social contract.

Historically, societal development has proceeded from isolated homes to small family enclaves to small communities of families - on up to cities. The operative force which allows for growth is: Community. Community is the force which brings people together to look out for the safety and convenience of all residents in a particular area. As people move closer together they help each other because they realize that they are helping themselves.

In North & South West Philadelphia this process has unraveled and reversed course. We have a situation in which people not only do not assist the authorities, they do not look out for their neighbors. Thus, they see no safety themselves. The difference between this situation and the one that existed in the West 130 years ago is that in the frontier west no one had an expectation of assistance or of safety.

That is the disconnect, the dysfunction that afflicts the inner cities of America. Residents of North Philadelphia will not help those whom, ostensibly, they have hired to maintain order. Neither will they help themselves. Yet, they demand order and a resolution to the trouble they have.

A large part of the problem is that the people in inner-city America have been taught, indoctrinated, over the course of the last 70 years, that they cannot help themselves; only the government can help them. But better than most in our country they’ve seen the excesses and abuses that the power of the state makes possible. They’re caught in a classic catch-22: Only the government can help you, but the government is against you.

Additionally, laws passed to make things safer have disarmed and disempowered the people so that they cannot help themselves even if they want to.

I am not surprised or disappointed by the actions of the father in that Philadelphia courtroom. If his daughter testifies, because the residents of his neighborhood both will not and cannot help the police or their neighbors, there is no protection for her or him or his family. The gangsters who have capitalized on the dysfunction of the neighborhood will have no hesitation to firebomb his house, because they have no fear - of the police, or the resident. It is a very sad situation.

What is, in my mind, unavoidable is a re-evaluation of social order and a re-establishment of community - which will necessarily retrace the historical steps of community building. Proponents of collectivism and social engineering have absolutely nothing to offer the residents of these neighborhoods in the way of help. Big-government can only stand in the way and prolong the agony. This movement will necessarily be a bottom-up process.

The first step will be a banding together of the people for communal safety. This will result in a period of vigilantism – toward which the police and DA would do well to turn a blind eye. Once the gangs are banished and the bad guys are scared of the people again, the people will revisit the idea of policing their neighborhoods. My belief is that, due to past abuses, the current system will not work in places like the South West and North Philadelphia. A new system will have to be devised. Once crime is reduced to a manageable level, poverty can be addressed. I wish to emphasize the order in which it will happen. Crime causes poverty far more often than poverty causes crime.

An unintended, but positive result of this will be that once this happens, the people of these neighborhoods will realize that they don’t need the government as much as they’ve been told they do.

As I’ve said repeatedly: Make no mistake, things will get much worse before they get better.

Well that didn't take long

Context rears its head again.

Another "fact" about Iraq that gets tossed around is:

"It's been three years and they haven't formed a government yet."

Yes, that is true. However, here is some context:

- We declared independence in 1776, but our constitution did not go into effect until 1788 and was not officially adopted until 1791.

- Many African nations have been free for almost 50 years, but have made virtually no progress in establishing a workable government.

-Both Germany and Japan took several years to form workable democratic governments after WWII.

We need to occasionally ask ourselves if we're demanding more than is reasonable.

Commonsense Gun Control

Since 99+% of all guns used in crime originate from a legal purchase, the way to stop gun crime is this:

Only sell guns to college educated white people who live in upscale suburban communities. Since these people and their communities are statistically the safest and have the lowest crime, they should be the only ones to get guns.

What's that? Not fair, you say? But if the idea is to stop the killing, then what other considerations matter?

I'll tell you this much - if we did it that way, those communities wouldn't stay safe for very long. Why is that, you ask?

I weary of saying it, but people still don't seem to understand it, so here I go again:

Where there is demand, there WILL be supply. That is a law of economics and it is as immutable as the law of gravity.

Reduce the demand and you reduce the supply. The only way to reduce demand is culturally. Bill Cosby is the one speaking truth to power these days. We need more like him. Re-introduce a reverence for life and a respect for the law to the inner city and things will improve. There is no other way to do it.

Read my lips: NO. OTHER. WAY.

The Congress could pass a law tomorrow banning the private ownership of all firearms and it wouldn't have any noticeable impact on the high crime areas of this country. NONE. Well, actually that's not true - things would get worse. Much worse.

Don't believe me? Ask a Londoner what his gun crime rate is. They banned the sale and private possession of hand guns and confiscated them all in 1997. Check out their gun control utopia.

Gun control is just mental masturbation posing as action.
But, Mike Bloomberg and John Street look like they play with it - a lot.

Context? We aint got not context...

One of the most penetrating and trenchant insights of the last five years was by Douglas W. Kmiec in a 2004 review of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911 in National Review.
Mr. Kmiec writes,

“…Moore's political fulmination offers up a nominal truth so shorn of context as to be rendered utterly false.”

The brilliance of this is that it forcefully points out something that many, who like to comment on current affairs, either never knew, have forgotten or are purposely ignoring - namely, the importance of context in a discussion of “facts”.

This ought not be a tricky idea, but for people with an agenda, context which could diminish (or, on the other hand amplify) the emotional ‘punch’ of a particular statistic can be discarded to suit the ends of whoever is talking.

A large factor in this, sadly, is that the American people’s attention span is such that there is frequently no time for context in the fifteen or thirty-second sound bites which today pass for reasoned discourse.

Nevertheless, without context there can be no understanding - and without understanding, there can be no good decisions.

A brief example: If I tell you that Mrs. Smith died today, leaving four children - you may respond with sadness and even shock at this tragedy. If, however, I then tell you that Mrs. Smith was 108 years old, had been in ill health for several years and that her children are all in their seventies, you would likely have a different response than your first one.

Now if you read the newspaper or watch the news you’ve no doubt heard certain people say we need to get out of Iraq. When queried as to why this is, they will often make the statement, “We’ve lost 2000 soldiers in Iraq!”

Is this true? Yes. Is this bad? Yes. But without context you will never know how bad. Without knowing how bad, you cannot make an intelligent decision regarding a proper course of action. Its weight and import as a fact are dependent on its context.

So, what is the context that we’re missing? Is it the weather we had at the time these soldiers were lost? (NOTE: I use "soldier" as a generic term, I am not ignoring or downplaying the efforts and sacrifices of marines, sailors or airmen) Is it the color clothing they were wearing? Is it their political affiliation? No. The only context that makes any sense is the military and historical context of their deaths. Only by comparing their loss with similar losses in similar situations can we measure ‘how bad’ these losses are.

To that end, please consider some other facts which can reasonably be compared to the one at issue in order to give us the proper context:

We’ve lost two thousand soldiers in three years of combat in Iraq.

-We lost 116,000 soldiers in under a year during WWI.

-We lost an average of around 12,000 soldiers every month during WWII.

-We lost 2,500 soldiers in just eight hours at Normandy in 1944

-We lost 19,000 soldiers on Okinawa in three months in 1945

-We lost over 13,000 soldiers a year during the Korean conflict.

-We lost an average of 5,000 soldiers per year for the ten years from 1964 through 1973 in Vietnam.

-We lost roughly 3,000 civilians in about three hours as a result of the 9/11 atrocity.

-We lost about 5,000 soldiers during training accidents between 1981 and 1989


When these facts are placed side-by-side with the fact of our losses in Iraq, it becomes quite clear that, while tragic as every lost life is, we are doing damned well at keeping our people safe over there.

We are not suffering catastrophic losses and while we should constantly strive to improve the safety of our people, we can and should stay there as the Iraqis pick themselves up and put their country back together.

"Facts", devoid of context are just statistics. And we all remember the old saw that there are, "lies, damned lies and statistics". Just piling up statistics to support an argument is not sound logically.

There are gravely important issues to resolve. We do ourselves no small disservice by just tossing out statistics without considering them thoroughly.

I consider this such an important topic that as time goes by I'll revisit it whenever the "discussion" of an issue seems to lack important context.

From BDS to MOS

Recently, I posted about Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) and how it is causing our national discourse to veer into the irrelevant and how that results in a diversion of attention from our very important work in Iraq.

But BDS did not manifest itself in a vacuum. There is another, much older ‘syndrome’ at work – and it is perhaps more dangerous because it has crept up on us over decades; so slowly that we don’t really notice it. What I am talking about is a malady I refer to as Microwave Oven Syndrome or MOS.

Thirty years ago, we were only too happy to stick a Swanson Hungry Man Salisbury Steak (mmmmmm! Salisbury Steak) dinner into our gas or electric oven and wait 45 minutes (or 60 if you wanted the cherry cobbler to come out right) to eat. After years of worries about waist level radiation killing our sperm and eggs - in about the year 1980 the microwave oven gained wide acceptance in the U.S.

Thus, in 1976 we thought that 45 minutes for our dinner was a miracle – while in 2006, if we don’t have our dinner in 4 minutes, 30 seconds we’re scratching at the glass of our 1000 watt, designer colored microwave ovens, whining that we’re sooooo hungry.

It should not take an Einstein to make the connection between our culinary expectations and our overall level of expectations in today’s world (or our waistlines). We want what we want…NOW!!!

Viewed at a distance, our dependence upon technology is very like the addict’s dependence on his drug of choice. When we can’t get it (whatever ‘it’ is) when we want it, or when it doesn’t provide the satisfaction we expect, we frequently lash out at whatever we deem responsible for our delayed gratification. The realities of any situation in which we are denied our God-given right to timeliness are not to be brooked.

Think about it: When someone gets sick and dies, or a child is born with grave defects, what is the likelihood today that someone will get sued? Modern medicine should be able to fix it we say, so somebody’s responsible for our unhappy outcome.

Now we have done this to ourselves by trumpeting the advances we have made and portraying them as perfectly normal, everyday phenomena.

The cult of modern marvels has led us to demand perfection – immediately.

While this syndrome pervades our entire society, the context in which I wish to discuss it is, of course, politics.

The 1991 Gulf War was a textbook example of how technology was portrayed as our saviour. Watching it unfold on television, more than a few of us had the feeling we were watching a video game. And just like in a video game, we saw no real blood, heard no real screams of agony, smelt no real burnt flesh.

The failures of that war were buried under an avalanche of images of a tidy, anti-septic, ‘operation’ which achieved its goal with a minimum of ‘coalition’ casualties and very little “collateral damage”. We thought, “Great! No more Vietnams or Koreas, just victory where everyone - or almost everyone - comes home safe and sound. Huzzah!”

But then, in 2001, we were hurt, badly. We demanded that something be done. And so it was. When, reminiscent of 1991, we took out the Taliban and deposed Saddam just like it was a practice military maneuver we all cheered. But, when the reality of the job we had to do ran into our ingrained notions of neat and tidy warfare resulting in immediate victory, we were dumbstruck. “How can this be? There isn’t supposed to be any blood, maiming, death. We’re not supposed to lose soldiers. We’ve been there a year, why haven’t we won yet?!” When victory was not ‘timely’ we decided somebody was to blame. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Halliburton, neo-cons, Israel, etc. Someone fix this, NOW!!!!

So now we see that for many of us, if we can’t get what we want immediately - or almost immediately – we don’t want to keep trying - we just want to quit.

It is not inaccurate or unfair to say that many in this country who currently hammer our efforts in Iraq would be crowing about our achievement had everything gone our way originally. So our aims and goals are noble, but we don’t want to pay any kind of price for them. We want a great victory immediately with no cost associated? Is that what I’m hearing? What kind of society produces people who think like that?

How many of us would put in the time and energy to go buy fresh ingredients and do the chopping, paring, blending, mashing boiling and baking necessary to make a fantastic meal – when you’ve got a Stouffers’ in the freezer? My guess is, including myself, not too many. But, if you did start it, you wouldn’t just walk out and get a burger with a casserole in the oven at 400 degrees, would you?

The good news is, as any accomplished cook will tell you, when you put in the effort and see to it that it’s right, the result is light-years beyond anything you’ll get in the supermarket’s freezer section.

We need time to help the Iraqis sort themselves out and stand up for themselves and organize a workable government. We cannot just walk away from a hot oven in a kitchen filled with kindling.

“Time is the essence of the culinary art.” So it is the essence of statecraft.

Banging on the glass demanding it be done ‘now’ is not helpful.

The Iranian Question

I know I'm not the sharpest pencil in the box, but I can't help thinking that the "Iranian problem" is not a big deal. In fact, I consider it a no-brainer.

We have all around us still the painful lessons of Iraq. These pointed lessons should prod us quickly into the right course of action.

The only problem, I guess, is that so many people have not learned the lessons - or worse, learned the wrong lessons about our efforts vis-à-vis Iraq.

See if you're with me on this.

Because China, Germany and most of the Security Council was circumventing them, not only did the sanctions regime against Iraq fail, but Saddam Hussein was emboldened enough to play "fuck-fuck" with the U.N. arms inspectors. Result? We didn't know what weapons Iraq did or did not have. Thus, the people who should have taken our concerns seriously, namely the U.N., did not do so and the United States was forced to invade Iraq to ascertain the exact nature of the threat Iraq posed and to make sure that threat was removed. Then, because we swatted the Islamo-fascist hornet’s nest, the situation in the Middle East became and remains, at least in the short term, tumultuous and people are rightly worried about an increase in terrorism.

With that as preface, let us consider Iran:

Perhaps a letter could be sent...

Dear U.N.,

In regard to Iran, we want you to be perfectly clear on this point: Whereas Iran is the greatest state sponsor of terrorism on the planet, we will not permit that nation to acquire nuclear weapons. To stop them there are two routes – diplomatic and military. While we always prefer the diplomatic route, by now you certainly know that we will not shrink from the military option. However, if memory serves, you were not overly enthusiastic about our choice in Iraq; so, if you would rather us go the diplomatic route, you will need to do the following:

1. Place a comprehensive and serious set of sanctions on Iran

2. unswervingly and vigorously maintain said sanctions in place, until the government of Iran capitulates

3. Closely monitor member-nation compliance with sanctions and sternly impose severe penalties on those states which violate the sanctions.

4. Demand, as proof of compliance with the will of the U.N., free, unfettered and unannounced access to any site the U.N., or its arms inspection committees deem appropriate for as long as it takes to be absolute certain that Iran is non-nuclear.

This will not be easy for any of us, especially since they’ve got a lot of oil, but, unless you want to see stealth bombers over Tehran, bite the bullet and do the right thing here.

Sincerely,

Uncle Sam

Wouldn't that be great? Now as unlikely as it seems that the U.N. might actually do something helpful, their fear and hatred of the U.S. might just goad them into enforcing a sanctions regime with teeth - if only to thwart what they consider our military ambitions.

Hey, whatever works.

The scourge of BDS

Anyone who claims that President George W. Bush lied about Iraq's WMDs and deceived us into going to war is guilty of the exact crime of which they accuse the President: namely, cherry picking intelligence to conform to a pre-determined result.

This hypocrisy - and the gnashing and baring of teeth by the political left which has accompanied it - has recently been recognized as a form of mental illness.

While not yet in the DSM-IV, BDS or "Bush Derangement Syndrome" is a debilitating illness which can quickly reduce normally intelligent, logical people to ranting, foaming-at-the-mouth, hate-filled lunatics.

BDS now afflicts most of the Main Stream Media, all of Hollywood and about 90% of Academia.

It stems from an erroneous belief which is persistently and obtusely maintained about one event: our invasion of Iraq.

Looking back on it, it is clear that there was a dearth of hard, accurate intelligence about Iraq in 2002 during the lead-up to OIF.

The CIA had conflicting intelligence about whether Iraq possessed WMDs, or programs to develop them. The CIA had sources in the Iraqi military that said they did, and other sources who said they did not. We know now that many Iraqi military officials, who thought they knew the situation, didn't really know the truth because other officials, fearing his wrath, told Saddam what he wanted to hear, rather than the truth.

It is quite possible then that in 2002 no single person in Iraq could have accurately answered the following questions:

1. What kinds of chemical, biological and/or nuclear weapons does Iraq have?
2. How many of these weapons does Iraq have?
3. What is the location of these weapons?
4. What is the status of Iraq's WMD development program?
5. Where are these programs located?

When even Iraqis at the highest levels of the military didn't know the truth, how could we have been expected to?

Now it is a fact that the administration of W.J. Clinton believed that Iraq possessed both WMD and programs to develop them. Further, in 2002, the Director of the CIA informed the current administration (as he had the former) that in his opinion, Iraq possessed WMDs.

So, the President, faced with conflicting information had to make this decision: Do we give Saddam Hussein the benefit of the doubt?

Given Saddam's history, given the assistance which he had previously provided Al Qaeda, given the destructive power of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and given the seeming ease with which terrorists were able to enter our country and carry out attacks - the only sane answer was:

HELL NO !!!!

Once in Iraq we discovered that there were no stockpiles of WMDs. But we did not know that in March of 2003 when we went in. To say “you should have known” is to demand of the President supernatural powers of perception and insight. Such demands are often associated with psychosis. To use information that only became available in 2004 to second guess Presidential decisions made in 2003 is not just unfair, it is quite simply irrational.

BDS is spreading rapidly, but fortunately, truth will both cure and inoculate against it.