The Journal of Winston Smith

Janeane Garofalo: Communist Party Comedian

2009-10-25T12:51:00.000-04:00

SHOCKING! Janeane Garofalo once did comedy gigs for the American Communist officials in Los Angeles! So naturally this is the woman who says that all Tea Party protestors are dumb "Rednecks." Well, it'd say little ole Janeane should know all about the color RED and STUPID.

Garofalo officially began her career in stand-up comedy in the late 1980s during the pre-grunge era. Her appearance was often in line with late 1980s style: disheveled with thick black glasses and unkempt hair. Her comedy is often self-deprecating; she has made fun of popular culture and the pressures on women to conform to body image ideals promoted by the media.

Garofalo's Leftist oriented comedy shows involve her notebook, entitled, "I Love Socialism And Hate The United States," which is filled with years' worth of news article clippings from The New York Times and random observations she references for direct quotes during her act. Garofalo has said that she does not tell jokes as much as make observations designed to get laughs from a mostly Leftist audience who are easy to please. She was part of the Communist Party comedy scene in Los Angeles in the early 1990s, appearing at The Worker's Club and other venues.

ARTICLE HERE

The True Story of Clinton's Assassin

2008-08-02T11:12:00.001-04:00

March 5, 2000 – Billy Cox - FLORIDA TODAY

NO CRUELER TYRANNY

Last December, on the day President Clinton swung into Orlando for a fund-raiser, a man convicted of threatening to gun him down was getting a more dubious red-carpet treatment.

Escorted by four federal suits, 52 year old Ronald Barbour spent an all expense paid evening in a downtown Holiday Inn, with supper and breakfast billed to Uncle Sam. Talk about VIP privacy – Barbour's hosts blocked off the entire fifth floor, just for him.

But there were a few nonnegotiable strings attached. Barbour couldn't go anywhere. He couldn't make long distance phone calls. He was required to sleep with his bedroom door open. Furthermore, the Army veteran had to watch his mouth about the man he loathes.

"What did I say?" repeats Barbour, when asked to retrieve the exact words that put him in prison for four years. "Well, after all these years I can't recall my exact words concerning Clinton, but they were to the effect that he was a draft dodger and whoremonger. I would note that I was merely repeating what was said about Clinton by a high-ranking military officer who was forced out of the service for saying them."

Barbour's words coupled with a trip to Washington, D.C. in 1994 with an allegedly loaded gun have earned him an active file in the Secret Service's list of potential assassins. As a consequence, the former retired Army career soldier and right wing political activist is being watched by the Treasury Department's crypto-agency, which knows virtually every move he makes.

The Secret Service won't say how many people like Barbour it tracks: This much is certain: If all the world is a stage, the former Army Intelligence officer has the role of a lifetime. "In terms of Shakespeare, I feel like Hamlet, being stalked by the King and his men."

Now living in Orlando, about two years into a three-year probation, Ronald Gene Barbour's rendezvous with infamy has a number of potential origins. Maybe it started when he was a kid, growing up in Huntington, W..Va., reading books such as THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH, THE FIRST CIRCLE, FAHRENHEIT 451 and NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR. Maybe it started with his Cold War under cover intelligence duties in Berlin.

So far as the government cares, it started on January 29, 1994, when a neighbor secretly and illegally tape recorded a conversation Barbour and his brother was having over beers. The neighbor, Stacy Harris, said he did it after hearing Barbour allegedly talking about an attempt to assassinate President Clinton.

Harris was later given a $100,000 reward by the Federal Government for his tape recording. In May 1994, a federal jury in Orlando heard excerpts from the tape. Barbour later challenged the admissibly of this recording on the fact that it lacked a chain of custody (The recording was made on January 29, 1994 - Yet it was not turned over to the Secret Service until a week later) and that it had been edited. Barbour notes that anyone can be made to say anything after a tape recording has been modified.

Hence, the jury heard Barbour's alleged graphic antipathy toward Bill and Hillary Clinton: "And Hillary," the tape has Barbour saying, "You know, I never thought about beating a woman before, but I had this vision, of just stomping her to death. I'd go for her throat and try to break her neck real quick because she's a little thing, and then finish the job by stomping her body with hobnail boots." A few moments later, Barbour allegedly told Harris to get his autograph, because "I'll be the guy who shot Clinton."

Barbour thinks that this portion of the nearly three hours taping by Harris (Only several minutes were turned over to the Secret Service) related to a joke to his brother concerning the punishment of his pet dog (a female) who had a problem with making messes in the house. In regards to the alleged threat about Clinton was a "cut and paste" job done by the Secret Service, because in the original recording transcript no threat against President Clinton is recorded.

Secret Service agents who interrogated Barbour without reading him the Miranda Warning said that Barbour was allegedly drinking heavily and depressed in the winter of 1994. At that point, feeling that life was slipping away and that he had nothing to lose and that he had a political score to settle, Barbour drove north to Alexandria, Virginia from Orlando, Florida and checked into a motel. The Secret Service agents said that Barbour was armed with a Colt .45 caliber automatic pistol and more than 100 rounds of hollow point ammunition. While at the motel for a week, the Secret Service thinks that Barbour made at least six trips into Washington, D.C. looking for President Clinton's jogging routes, so that he could set up an ambush. After learning that the president was in Russia, Barbour returned to Florida without the accomplishment of his "mission."

Barbour relates a different account of his January 1994 trip to Washington, D.C. "Bill Clinton was the last thing on my mind. At that time I was a limo driver for Mears Transportation. I took a week's vacation to visit Washington, D.C. to check out the job opportunities for a person in my line of work. I also wanted to visit the memorial to those who died in service of their country during the Vietnam War. I have a few friends named on that memorial. Yes, I did have a weapon with me for personal protection, but it remained locked in the trunk of my car and unloaded. In regards to me not knowing that Clinton was in Russia during the week I spent in the Washington, D.C. area, all I can say is that I'm a news hound – Of course, I knew he was in Russia! However, as I've said before, I was not interested in harming the president."

Despite the obvious weaknesses in the Government's case against Barbour, a federal jury in May 1994 convicted him of 18 U.S.C. 871, formally known as "Threatening the Life of the President of the United States," a felony that carries a five-year sentence with a possible $250,000 fine, although rejecting 18 USC 1751 known as "The Attempted Assassination of the President" which would have carried life.

Barbour points out that the Government committed major constitutional violations in his case: Perjury, suborning perjury, deception, falsification of official documents, unlawful modification of an audio tape used as evidence in court, intimidation of witnesses by federal agents, obstruction of justice, violation of Writ of Habeas Corpus and other criminal violations. Also, no witnesses observed him on the Mall or near the White House.

When asked in reason for the jury's decision against him Barbour thinks that it was based on emotion, "The U.S. Attorney's attitude, and one that he was successful in selling to the jury, was so what if the case against Barbour was far from perfect, he was going to assassinate the President. In other words, he couldn't prove it, he just said it and that was good enough for the jury."

Barbour spent four years and three months in various federal prisons. He walked out on June 26, 1998, unchastened and insisting that his conviction was politically motivated. The U.S. Supreme Court disagreed and denied his appeal in 1995.

STAR CHAMBER JUSTICE

"Our system of justice has many ominous parallels with the star chamber of yesteryear: Decisions are made behind closed doors and the average citizen isn't entitled to know anything about the process," Barbour charges, "For instance, after numerous Freedom of Information requests I cannot find out anything on how the Secret Service determines who constitutes a threat against the presidency. If you're able to discover anything will you let me know? I've been trying to find out for years."

Replies Secret Service spokesman Jim Mackin in Washington: "That not something we share. We don't talk a lot about protective intelligence."

But on February 9, 1994, an inadvertent glimpse of insight came from agency psychologist Margaret Coggins.

Lecturing at the University of South Florida's Mental Health Institute, Coggins told listeners the Secret Service had three classifications for threat assessment. Those in Class I, she said, are discarded as no threat. Class II involved suspects who were investigated and determined not to pose a threat. Class III types, Coggins said, are considered legitimately dangerous.
At that time, there were 120 Class III suspects in America. Ronald Barbour was not one of them. Coggins didn't mention Barbour's name in her lecture, but she spoke of a Florida man who had been questioned by Secret Service agents on February 3, 1994 — the same day that Barbour was contacted by the authorities.

"The subject went to the Mall every day for six days waiting to shoot the president," Coggins told the audience. "He hoped that if he shot the president, he would be shot dead himself. Fortunately, the president was overseas at the time."

Coggins, whose remarks were printed in the St. Petersburg Times, informed listeners the suspect had been interviewed and eliminated from Class III consideration. So, what happened between then and February 17, 1994, when Barbour was indicted on federal charges by a Grand Jury?

Mackin said Coggins wouldn't be available for comment, "We're, uh, well aware of that article," he says, "I'm not sure she knew members of the news media were at the Conference."
Furthermore, threat assessment evaluations are privileged information. "It goes to our methods and means," he says. "We receive cases involving threats on a rather consistent basis, and we investigate them all to the fullest. If a defendant knows how it's done, they might be able to manipulate the process."

Barbour thinks that President Clinton got directly involved with his case. He cites a reference in the Government's Sentencing Memorandum to a meeting Clinton had prior to the indictment with then Secret Service Director Ron Noble.

"Well, what else could it be but political?" says Barbour who has requested the minutes of that meeting under the Freedom of Information Act, so far, to no avail. "The State of Maryland prosecutes Linda Tripp for illegally taping Monica Lewinsky, but the guy who does the same thing to me gets off scot-free. Come on – give me a break."

Clarence Counts, who represented Barbour at the District court trial and Appeals to the Federal District Court and the United States Supreme Court, states that Stacy Harris' taping was a felony under the Florida Statutes, which mandate a five-year prison sentence for a violation.
The prosecutor of Barbour, former U.S. Attorney James Glazebrook, appointed by President Clinton to the office of U.S. Magistrate Judge for the Middle District Court in Orlando recalls prosecuting Barbour and doesn't dispute Count's point concerning the Harris tape. "It was a very interesting case," he says.

"I remember, at that time, feeling 100 percent confident that no state attorney would think of prosecuting Harris for turning over a tape that might have saved the life of President Clinton," Glazebrook says. "The court completely and properly rejected the defense arguments, because Harris was a Patriot."

Barbour thinks that both Harris and Glazebrook are about as patriotic as Benedict Arnold.

INCRIMINATION

Barbour says that the Secret Service investigators were unable to produce eyewitness accounts to build a case of presidential stalking. Therefore, they tricked him into incriminating himself, in an interview done without benefit of the Miranda Warning, by walking him through a series of hypothetical questions like, "What advice could you give the Secret Service to enable it to better protect the president?" He says that never in the course of the five-hour interrogation did he tell investigators that he planned to assassinate President Clinton.

Without knowing the particulars of the case, ACLU executive director Greg Nojeim in Washington, D.C. says that it's difficult to know where Barbour crossed the line from First Amendment rights to a deadly threat.

As for the Secret Service's classification procedures, Nojeim says: "Good luck. Your only hope of finding out how he went from Class II to Class III is to file under the Freedom of Information Act and wait a few years and hope you're satisfied with the results, because they're usually not satisfying."

With the Linda Tripp analogy in mind, Tim Lynch, spokesman for the Cato Institute, a Libertarian think tank in Washington, D.C. says, "Prosecutors have an extraordinary amount of discretion. You can take any two cases in the country and say, ‘Why this and not that?' And because there is so much discretion, cases like these do raise legitimate questions of oversight involving the legislative branch over the executive."

Having exhausted all legal recourse, those discussions are a moot point for Barbour, now, but given his background in military intelligence, Barbour wonders whether he'll be on the government's "Watch List" for the rest of his life, "Can you believe it? The Secret Service considers my military career a negative factor in my case."

MILITARY CONNECTION

The adopted son of a World War II veteran who landed in France at Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, Barbour joined the Army after high school in 1966. He served tours of duty in Europe, Southwest Asia, Southeast Asia and Alaska before being assigned covert "spy duty" in West Berlin working a cover electronic surveillance mission against Russian forces in East Germany from a radio tower.

In the late 1970s, Barbour was assigned to the very secret National Security Agency at Ft. Meade, Maryland where he worked the ELINT mission, which was the intercept and analysis of Russian and Chinese telemetry and radar systems. In the early 1980s, Barbour was assigned to the Canal Zone in Panama to monitor Cuban and Russian signal traffic to and from Central America. Barbour retired from the Army in 1986, after his last assignment at Patrick USAF Base, Florida.

THE FEDERAL PRISON SYSTEM

Barbour says he pulled time at four federal prisons. The most memorable was a year spent at Butner, North Carolina, in 1994 where he meet Jonathan Pollard, convicted of spying for Israel and Keith Idema, convicted of fraud and a self styled "Soldier of Fortune" who alleged that his conviction was a frame up by the federal government who wanted his information concerning portable nuclear weapons. Barbour's impression of Pollard was that he was an honest man sorry for his offense against national security. In contrast, Barbour thought Idema was a liar and phony who had puffed up his resume in Special Forces and lied about his experiences in the former Soviet Union. Barbour notes that Idema spent most of his time at Butner in Segregation because of his many problems interacting with guards and fellow inmates.

Barbour says that he was assaulted twice by fellow inmates while incarcerated, but says that his injuries weren't serious. Barbour also states that he was closely monitored by prison authorities, subjected to endless interrogations by Secret Service agents, and that prison authorities encouraged fellow inmates to spy on him.

When freed in 1998, Barbour says that, "I had always been a free man in my mind, so a readjustment to life outside prison was extremely easy for me."

THE BARBOUR CASE: IMPORTANT QUESTIONS NOT ANSWERED

"In the present case, Barbour "was not just making idle threats." Hines, 26 F.3d at 1474. Less than two weeks prior to his threats, Barbour was in Washington, D.C., with one hundred rounds of ammunition, waiting to assassinate the President. He failed to carry out his plan only because the President never arrived where Barbour was waiting, and he returned home only after discovering the President was out of the country. Barbour never deviated from his plan to kill the President; he was just denied the opportunity. Thus, when Barbour made his threats after returning home, there was every reason to conclude that he intended to act on those threats and that he was likely to do so. Because the record supports the district court's determination that Barbour had evidenced an intent to carry out his threat, the six- level enhancement pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 2A6.1(b)(1) was properly applied." - Federal Curcuit Court Judge Kravitch.

This reporter would like to ask the following questions to Judge Kravitch after careful examination of more than 1,000 pages of pictures, tapes and court records relating to this case:

1. If indeed this account is true then why was Barbour not tried in Washington, D.C., the site of the alleged assassination plot?

2. Why the Government could produce no witnesses or pictures to place Barbour anywhere near Clinton's jogging routes where the alleged assassination was to take place?

3. Why does Judge cite "100 rounds" of ammunition and gun ownership come from when it was proven in court that Barbour owned no guns or ammunition at the time of his arrest?

4. Finally, Clinton was not in Washington, D.C. and on a tour of Russia during the alleged assassination attempt, so how could have he been harmed by Barbour in Washington, D.C.?

NO CRUELER TYRANNY: THE INJUSTICE OF THE BARBOUR CASE

This reporter thinks that a great injustice was done to Barbour. Please consider the facts of the case that were exposed in court:

1. The information that Barbour had attempted to assassinate came from a confidential informant not trusted by law enforcement agencies because the information he provided to authorities was not reliable and used to settle personal disputes with others.

2. The agents discovered in the course of their investigation that Harris had produced a recording that was clearly illegal under federal and state statutes and should not have been admitted in court, because it lacked a chain of custody, but was allowed by the District Court based only on the testimony of Harris of its accuracy.

3. President Clinton was briefed by Ronald Noble, the current Director of the Secret Service, on or about February 4, 1994 concerning the arrest of Barbour for an assassination attempt. The repeated attempts made by Barbour to secure the minutes of his meeting between Clinton and Noble from the White House have been denied the citing National Security.

4. Barbour was denied his right to WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS for a period of two weeks --February 3, 1994 to February 17, 1994-- despite several attempts by Barbour to secure the attention of the federal judiciary.

5. The District Court ignored perjury on the part of Secret Service agent John McKenna who first interviewed Barbour at the VA Clinic in Orlando. Barbour has testified that he was not read his Miranda right to remain silent, and Barbour’s testimony is supported by the Director of the VA Clinic in Orlando who overheard the conversation from another room. The agents also failed to record Barbour's alleged permission to answer questions or to obtain his signature on a waiver; yet both agents testified that they had these items available in their government vehicle.

6. The decision of the District Court should have been reversed by the majority Circuit Court of Appeals on any of these grounds, which are gross violations by the government of a citizen's rights under the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th and 14th Amendments, violation of Writ of Habeas Corpus, and indications of a conspiracy to convict an innocent man that may reach into the highest office in the land.This reporter can only conclude from his study of the facts of the case that the federal justice system underwent a meltdown in the Barbour case. In the words of Montesquieu, "There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of justice." It is chilling that some of those individuals responsible for this injustice still occupy positions of authority in the federal criminal justice system.

A TALE TOLD BY AN IDIOT

"I was there at the party where Ron was taped by that Stacy Harris character and I heard the tape in court, and I can tell you my brother never said those things about killing Clinton and an assassination attempt," says Jack Barbour. "And I told that to the court. My brother got screwed big time by Bill Clinton. Everyone knows he uses the courts to get people who don’t like him! Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives back in 1998 for perjury and obstruction of justice. There is not a doubt in my mind that either Bill Clinton or one of the lackeys got my brother sent up the river. Did Ron tell you he lost everything: his military pension, his apartment, his car, his bank account...EVERYTHING? And for what? Telling the truth about that degenerate and traitor, Bill Clinton. I detest Bill Clinton. I hate Hillary Clinton. I think the Democrats are filthy lying leftist elitist scum and the main enemies of the Republic. So send me to prison for four years too!”

"Ron is not a physical threat to anyone, says Scott Ellis, Brevard County Commissioner, I’ve known Ron Barbour for years. He helped out in my Congressional campaign in 1986. Barbour is politically astute enough to know that shooting the president doesn't effect political change. I think this injustice shows how a corrupt president can bend the federal court system and the Secret Service to do his will. Did a conspiracy exist between Ron Noble, the Director of the Secret Service and Senior Special Agent John McKenna to put Ron Barbour in prison at the orders of President Clinton? I understand that while Clinton was Governor of Arkansas his enemies were sometimes hauled into court on bogus charges. I well recall that in 1995 or 1996 that Rush Limbaugh’s radio studio was raided by the Secret Service because Limbaugh was alleged to have threatened Clinton and they were looking for an audiotape to prove it. The Secret Service found nothing and Limbaugh was not charged.”

“I was a juror in Barbour’s trial at the Federal Courthouse in Orlando in late May 1994,” said Shelly Jackson of Altamonte Springs, “There were two counts on his indictment: The first was U.S.C. 1751 – the attempted assassination of the president; the second was U.S.C. 851 – threat against the president. We found Barbour guilty of the second charge, which carried a five-year sentence. This happened because one juror – the Foreman – wanted to find Barbour guilty of both counts and the rest of us thought he was innocent, so this was a compromise. The deliberations went on for nearly three days and the best reason the Foreman who thought Barbour was guilty could come up with was that Barbour would not have been charged by the government with this crime if he was not guilty. At least Barbour was spared the worst fate in our verdict because conviction on U.S.C. 1751 would have carried life in prison.”

“I was Ron Barbour’s attorney in the trial and wrote both his appeals,”says Clarence Counts,” I have been an attorney for more than 20 years and handled dozens of clients and have forgotten most of them; however, the USA v. Barbour is one case I’ll never forget because of arrogant abuse of power and obstruction of justice on the part of the U.S. Secret Service which resulted in sending an innocent man and honorable decorated professional soldier to prison for more than four years. I remember thinking several times during the trial of Barbour that what was happening to him had an ominous parallel with the oppression of political opponents of the Communist regime in Soviet Russia like Nobel Prize winning author Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Did Ron Barbour attempt to assassinate President Clinton? The facts of the case indicate he did not; therefore, the Circuit Court majority opinion by the very liberal and Democratic appointed Judge Kravitch in the denial of Barbour’s Appeal is a tale told by an idiot.”
Comments -

painfulpuptent4anncoulter said...

That's an interesting article Ron. Your case is a very troubling example of prosecutorial over-reach. I can't believe they found you guilty and you had to go to jail. Shit, you didn't do anything. Somebody simply thought you 'might' do something and wham, with the help of an agressive prosecutor and a careless judge you're in the clink. Wow.

You've put up with a lot of shit and yet you still love this country. You a big man to be able to move on, a helluva lot bigger than those who prosecuted you.

January 07, 2006 12:53 AM

Ronald Barbour said...

Thanks for the kind words!

Like Nietzsche said, "That which does not destroy us makes us stronger."

February 19, 2006 7:21 PM

VOLK said...

That was pretty supportive of Ronbo. A few CYA moments, but pretty supportive overall. Having been in law enforcement, it isn't a stretch to understand how the SS feels that Ronbo is the mother of all bad guys (after all, they couldn't be wrong, right?), and it makes sense that some in the SS will choose to make bagging Ronbo again their life goal.

I find it to be abusive at best though, when someone has "paid" the full penalty for a conviction, and still has to live with a government microscope up his ass years later.

I like Ronbo. I buy his side of the story. Even if he shot his mouth off in the wrong place, at the wrong time, I can't picture him as a presidential assassin. There are a couple of reasons.

First, his track record over the years is extreme (as fits the forum), but he supports rule of law. Shooting a president is plain wrong, as even in the case of Clinton, he was elected by the people, and if you happened to be on the losing side, you bear with it until times change. Murder isn't an acceptable response to losing an election. Politics is what it is, but it isn't a capital offense to have more people support you than the other guy, even if many of the people who support you are pretty much a sackfull of ignorant morons, as was the case with Clinton . Murdering a president of any party is to deny the basic foundation of the rule of law in the US, and there is no way to justify such an act as a 'positive' event in our history.

My second thought is that any attempt on the life of a US president would end up offering the party of the president a great boost at the expense of the minority party. Clinton is a lot of things, but he isn't the whackiest member of the US communist party. Most of the real whacky members of that party are in the Senate. They would have filled the void, and used the murder to gain public support for years to come. In that case, the US would be busy picking up where the CCCP left off, even faster than it is today.

Unless Ronbo suffered from a bout of insanity at the time, I think his political acumen is such that he would never go through with such a fucked up plan.

March 15, 2006 11:11 PM

Apache said...

Nice write up Ronbo!

I keep getting asked by other bloggers why I don't start my own blog and occasionally I think about it but having to write about something semi-deep and relevant while being entertaining and sometimes funny all at the same time just seems like something too close to work to me.

Besides, I would much rather read what everyone else here has to say.

To me that is far more interesting.

Also, what puts the hand cuffs of social correctness on some of these other bloggers is there very own success that they seek. Then their blog takes off and becomes profitable then they start worrying how they appear to others on their next MSNBC interview, or if their advertisers will freak and stop advertising and so they worry more and remove all of their links to places like this that are not that different from when they started out.

By now I understand and I find it funnier than it hurts me, but now I understand.

It like their blog is growing up and they are leaving home in a way; it's a sign of success and that is something I ultimately wish for everybody.

March 15, 2006 11:18 PM

Anonymous said...

To put it in Monty Python terms: Barbour is a loony.

March 15, 2006 11:28 PM

Ronald Barbour said...

Loony?

This is hard one to disprove -- after all, how do you define "sanity?" Certainly many people have said Bill Clinton is totally insane, yet he was twice elected president. Many believed Ted Kennedy was totally loony when he killed that woman back in 1969. What about Howard "Rant" Dean? If indeed I am insane I'm certainly very clever because I fooled the U.S. Army Security Agency into giving me a security clearance well above Top Secret for a number of years. I also fooled everyone in my chain of command in the Army for many years into giving me promotions, letters of achievement and decorations. Ditto four years in prison. Ditto eight years outside prison.

The truth is that I'm about as insane as HAMLET. A classic story that has many parallels with events in my life.

In my case from the very beginning in early 1994 it was the goal of the Secret Service to have me judged insane -- but even the BOP doctors at FCI Butner could find nothing wrong with me other than mood swings -- someetimes I'm happy and sometimes I'm sad. Very strange indeed.

After my release from prison I talked the VA into another mental analysis and the results were the same: I am sane. This was the same result of the analysis by a court appointed doctor before my trial.

Therefore, I was sane before the trial, sane during my prison experience and sane today.

It is interesting that the U.S. Secret Service treated me the same as political prisoners were treated by the KGB during the glory days of the Soviet Union. It must be admitted this is a very effective tactic in the area of public relations, because the MSM immediately jumped on the bandwagon and used this canard as an effective way to destroy a conservative.

I would compare my case to the Dreyfus Affair in France.

In case you're wondering the Secret Service considers me still a "Class III" suspect and I have a Case Officer who follows me all over the Internet reading what I post.

I understand the S.S. worries that a veterans' group, conservative group, or conservative publication/personality will take up my cause and force this injustice back into court.

My most recent encounter with the S.S.

So in conclusion fellow citizens, soldiers, patriots and veterans: After reading the articles pro and con about Barbour: vote on it!

1."Barbour insane?" Yes or No.

2. "Barbour guilty of the attempted assassination of President Clinton?" Yes or No.

3. "Barbour should get a DE NOVO review of his case?" Yes or no.

4. "The Government should release all documents regarding Barbour's case?" Yes or no.

March 15, 2006 11:41 PM

Luckygear said...

Saying your going to do something is not the same as doing it. If you did't do it, your not guilty.

Basically, this man, suffering from severe stress, made threats to stop what he supposed was the leader of a degenerate population of people who ruined his country.
The corrupt system wanted to prove to itself that it controls everything and everyone, to allow itself to feel secure despite its burden of guilt and the intense hatred it knows it deserves from the non-system population.

Therefore, despite the man having mental problems, it seems he was not placed in an institution for the insane, but PRISON, because the system felt that despite his insanity his intended actions were in effect perfectly sane and to be expected. Thus the system is aware of its guilt, but is itself sociopathic and only considers itself clever for continuing its criminal (and un-Constitutional) actions unchecked. That's a fair definition of evil.

He may be crazy, but at least he has some patriotic thoughts about saving his country, unlike these SF mercenaries who get paid to play the tough guy, going to foreign lands to kill untrained civilians for money and glory.

And if you really believed he was insane, why would you be so defensive about it, reaffirming how elite you are on a messageboard while discrediting him?

I'd guess you don't believe he is insane, just made threats to a system that calls you elite and glorifies you, and that really seems to piss you off.

Kinda like cops who seize guns from citizens so they can feel needed, when they are really the enablers of the legions of petty and serious criminals that stalk our cities.

If you do believe he's insane, then you must also be insane to feel threatened by his remarks. If you become an accomplished person outside of institutions like the military, you will realize an inner worth that needs no artificial support structure provided by a berets, uniforms, lingo, credos, tats, and medals.
With such confidence, you will not feel threatened by people who cannot control their emotional extremes, and you will become empowered to control yours.

March 15, 2006 11:50 PM

LEADERLESS RESISTANCE

2008-01-30T07:38:00.000-05:00

The concept of Leaderless Resistance was proposed by Col. Ulius Louis Amoss, who was the founder of International Service of Information Incorporated, located in Baltimore, Maryland. Col. Amoss died more than fifteen years ago, but during his life was a tireless opponent of communism, as well as a skilled Intelligence Officer. Col. Amoss first wrote of Leaderless Resistance on April 17, 1962. His theories of organization were primarily directed against the threat of eventual Communist take-over in the United States. The present writer, with the benefit of having lived many years beyond Col. Amoss, has taken his theories and expounded upon them. Col. Amos feared the Communists. This author fears the federal government. Communism now represents a threat to no one in the United States, while federal tyranny represents a threat to everyone .The writer has joyfully lived long enough to see the dying breaths of communism, but may, unhappily, remain long enough to see the last grasps of freedom in America.

In the hope that, somehow, America can still produce the brave sons and daughters necessary to fight off ever increasing persecution and oppression, this essay is offered. Frankly, it is too close to call at this point. Those who love liberty, and believe in freedom enough to fight for it are rare today, but within the bosom of every once great nation, there remains secreted, the pearls of former greatness. They are there. I have looked into their sparking eyes; sharing a brief moment in time with them as I passed through this life. Relished their friendship, endured their pain, and they mine. We are a band of brothers, native to the soil gaining strength one from another awe have rushed head long into a battle that all the weaker, timid men, say we cannot win. Perhaps...but then again, perhaps wean. It's not over till the last freedom fighter is buried or imprisoned, or the same happens to those who would destroy their freedom.

Barring any cataclysmic events, the struggle will yet go on for years. The passage of time will make it clear to even the slower among us that the government is the foremost threat to the life, and liberty of the folk. The government will no doubt make today's oppressiveness look like grade school work compared to what they have planned in the future. Meanwhile, there are those of us who continue to hope that somehow the few can do what the many have not. We are cognizant that before things get better they will certainly get worse as government shows a willingness to use ever more severe police state measures against dissidents. This changing situation makes it clear that those who oppose state repression must be prepared to alter, adapt, and modify their behavior, strategy, and tactics as circumstances warrant. Failure to consider new methods and implement them as necessary will make the government's efforts at suppression uncomplicated. It is the duty of every patriot to make the tyrant's life miserable. When one fails to do so he not only fails himself, but his people.

With this in mind, current methods of resistance to tyranny employed by those who love our race, culture, and heritage must pass a litmus test of soundness. Methods must be objectively measured as to their effectiveness, as well as to whether they make the government's intention of repression more possible or more difficult. Those not working to aid our objectives must be discarded or the government benefits from our failure to do so.

As honest men who have banded together into groups or associations of a political or religious nature are falsely labeled "domestic terrorists" or "cultists “and suppressed, it will become necessary to consider other methods of organization--or as the case may very well call forenoon-organization. One should keep in mind that it is not in the government’s interest to eliminate all groups. Some few must remain in order to perpetuate the smoke and mirrors vision forth masses that America is a "free democratic country “where dissent is allowed. Most organizations, however, that possess the potential for effective resistance will not be allowed to continue. Anyone who is so naive as to believe the most powerful government on earth will not crush any who pose a real threat to that power, should not be active, but rather, at home studying political history.

The question as to who is to be left alone and who is not, will be answered by how groups and individuals deal with several factors such as: avoidance of conspiracy plots, rejection of feeble minded malcontents, insistence upon quality of the participants, avoidance of all contact with the front men for the federals--the news media--and, finally, camouflage (which can be defined as the ability to blend in the public's eye the more committed groups of resistance with mainstream "kosher “associations that are generally seen as harmless.) Primarily though, whether any organization is allowed to continue in the future will be a matter of how big a threat a group represents. Not a threat in terms of armed might or political ability, for there is none of either for the present, but rather, threat inters of potentiality. It is potential the federals fear most. Whether that potential exists in an individual or group is incidental. The federals measure potential threat in terms of what might happen given a situation conducive to action on the part of a restive organization or individual. Accurate intelligence gathering allows them to assess the potential. Showing one's hand before the bets are made, is a sure way to lose.

The movement for freedom is rapidly approaching the point where for many people; the option of belonging to a group will be nonexistent. For others, group membership will be a viable option for only the immediate future. Eventually, and perhaps much sooner than most believe possible, the price paid for membership will exceed any perceived benefit. But for now, some of the groups that do exist often serve a useful purpose either for the newcomer who can be indoctrinated into the ideology of the struggle, or for generating positive propaganda to reach potential freedom fighters. It is sure that, for the most part, this struggle is rapidly becoming a matter of individual action, each of its participants making a private decision in the quietness of his heart to resist: to resist by any means necessary. It is hard to know what others will do, for no man truly knows another man's heart. It is enough to know what one will do. A great teacher once said "know thyself." Few men really do, but let each of us, promise ourselves, not to go quietly to the fate our would-be masters have planned.

The concept of Leaderless Resistance is nothing less than a fundamental departure in theories of organization. The orthodox scheme of organization is diagrammatically represented by the pyramid, with the mass at the bottom and the leader at the top. This fundamental of organization is to be seen not only in armies, which are of course, the best illustration of the pyramid structure, with themes of soldiery, the privates, at the bottom responsible to corporals who are in turn responsible to sergeants, and so on up the entire chain of command to the generals at the top. But the same structure is seen in corporations, ladies' garden clubs and in our political system itself. This orthodox "pyramid “scheme of organization is to be seen basically in all existing political, social and religious structures in the world today from the Federal government to the Roman Catholic Church. The Constitution of the United States, in the wisdom of the Founders, tried to sublimate the essential dictatorial nature of pyramidal organization by dividing authority into three: executive, legislative and judicial. But the pyramid remains essentially untouched.

This scheme of organization, the pyramid, is however, not only useless, but extremely dangerous for the participants when it is utilized in a resistance movement against state tyranny. Especially is this so in technologically advanced societies where electronic surveillance can often penetrate the structure revealing its chain of command. Experience has revealed over Andover again that anti-state, political organizations utilizing this method of command and control are easy prey for government infiltration, entrapment, and destruction of the personnel involved. This has been seen repeatedly in the United States where pro-government infiltrators or agent provocateurs weasel their way into patriotic groups and destroy them from within.

In the pyramid type of organization, an infiltrator can destroy anything which is beneath his level of infiltration and often those above him as well. If the traitor has infiltrated at the top, then the entire organization from the top down is compromised and may be traduced at will.

An alternative to the pyramid type of organization is the cell system. In the past, many political groups (both right and left)have used the cell system to further their objectives. Two examples will suffice. During the American Revolution “committees of correspondence" were formed throughout the thirteen colonies.

Their purpose was to subvert the government and thereby aid the cause of independence. The "Sons of Liberty", who made a name for themselves dumping government taxed tea into the harbor at Boston, were the action arm of the committees of correspondence. Each committee was a secret cell that operated totally independently of the other cells. Information on the government was passed from committee to committee, from colony to colony, and then acted upon on a local basis. Yet even in these bygone days of poor communication, of weeks to months for alerter to be delivered, the committees without any central direction whatsoever, were remarkable similar in tactics employed to resist government tyranny. It was, as the first American patriots knew, totally unnecessary for anyone to give an order for anything. Information was made available to each committee, and each committee acted as it saw fit. A recent example of the cell system taken from the left wing of politics are the Communists. The Communist, in order to get around the obvious problems involved in pyramidal organization, developed to an art the cell system. They had numerous independent cells which operated completely isolated from one another and particularly with no knowledge of each other, but were orchestrated together by a central headquarters. For instance, during World War II, in Washington, it is known that there were at least six secret Communist cells operating at high levels in the United States government (plus all the open Communists who were protected and promoted by President Roosevelt), however, only one of the cells was rooted out and destroyed.

How many more actually were operating no one can say for sure.

The Communist cells which operated in the U.S until late 1991 under Soviet control could have at their command a leader, who held a social position which appeared to be very slowly. He could be, for example, a busboy in a restaurant, but in reality colonel or a general in the Soviet Secret Service, the KGB. Under him could be a number of cells and a person active in one cell would almost never have knowledge of individuals who are active in another cell. The value of this is that while any one cell cane infiltrated, exposed or destroyed, such action will have no effect on the other cells; in fact, the members of the other cells will be supporting that cell which is under attack and ordinarily would lend very strong support to it in many ways. This is at least part of the reason, no doubt, that whenever in the past Communists were attacked in this country, support for them sprang up in many unexpected places.

The efficient and effective operation of a cell system after the Communist model, is of course, dependent upon central direction, which means impressive organization, funding from the top, and outside support, all of which the Communists had. Obviously, American patriots have none of these things at the toper anywhere else, and so an effective cell organization based upon the Soviet system of operation is impossible.

Two things become clear from the above discussion. First, that the pyramid type of organization can be penetrated quite easily and it thus is not a sound method of organization in situations where the government has the resources and desire to penetrate the structure; which is the situation in this country. Secondly, that the normal qualifications for the cell structure based upon the Red model does not exist in the U.S. for patriots. This understood, the question arises "What method is left for those resisting state tyranny?" The answer comes from Col. Amoss who proposed the "Phantom Cell" mode of organization. ,which he described as Leaderless Resistance. A system of organization that is based upon the cell organization, but does not have any central control or direction, that is in fact almost identical to the methods used by the Committees of Correspondence during the American Revolution. Utilizing the Leaderless Resistance concept, all individuals and groups operate independently of each other, and never report to a central headquarters or single leader for direction or instruction, as would those who belong to a typical pyramid organization.

At first glance, such a type of organization seems unrealistic, primarily because there appears to be no organization. The natural question thus arises as to how are the “Phantom cells" and individuals to cooperate with each other when there is no intercommunication or central direction? The answer to this question is that participants in a program of Leaderless Resistance through phantom cell or individual action must know exactly what they are doing, and how to do it. It becomes the responsibility of the individual to acquire the necessary skills and information as to what is to be done. Thesis by no means as impractical as it appears, because it is certainly true that in any movement, all persons involved have the same general outlook, are acquainted with the same philosophy, and generally react to given situations in similar ways. The pervious history of the committees of correspondence during the American Revolution show this to be true.

Since the entire purpose of Leaderless Resistance is to defeat state tyranny (at least insofar as this essay is concerned), all members of phantom cells or individuals will tend to react to objective events in the same way through usual tactics of resistance. Organs of information distribution such as newspapers, leaflets, computers, etc., which are widely available to all, keep each person informed of events, allowing for a planned response that will take many variations. No one need issue an order to anyone. Those idealist truly committed to the cause of freedom will act when they feel the time is ripe, or will take their cue from others who precede them. While it is true that much could be said against this type of structure as a method of resistance, it must be kept in mind that Leaderless Resistance is a child of necessity. The alternatives to it have been show to be unworkable or impractical. Leaderless Resistance has worked before in the American Revolution, and if the truly committed put it to use for themselves, it will work now.

Leaderless Resistance leads to very small or even one man cells of resistance. Those who join organizations to play "let’s pretend" or who are "groupies" will quickly be weeded out. While for those who are serious about their opposition to federal despotism, this is exactly what is desired.
From the point of view of tyrants and would be potentates in the federal bureaucracy and police agencies, nothing is more desirable than that those who oppose them be UNIFIED in their command structure, and that every person who opposes them belong to a pyramid type group. Such groups and organizations are an easy kill. Especially in light of the fact that the Justice (sic) Department promised in 1987 that there would never be another group that opposed them that they did not have at least one informer in. These federal "friends of government" are intelligence agents. They gather information that can be used at the whim of a federal D.A. to prosecute. The line of battle has been drawn. Patriots are required therefore, to make a conscious decision to either aid the government in its illegal spying, by continuing with old methods of organization and resistance, or to make the enemies’ job more difficult by implementing effective countermeasures.

Now there will, no doubt, be mentally handicapped people out there who, while standing at a podium with an American flag draped in the background, and a lone eagle soaring in the sky above, will state emphatically in their best sounding red, white, and blue voice, "So what if the government is spying? We are not violating any laws." Such crippled thinking by any serious person is the best example that there is a need for special education classes. The person making such a statements totally out of contact with political reality in this country, and unfit for leadership of anything more than a dog sleigh in the Alaskan wilderness. The old "Born on the fourth of July" mentality that has influenced so much of the American patriot’s thinking in the past will not save him from the government in the future. "Reeducation" forenoon-thinkers of this type will take place in the federal prison system where there are no flags or eagles, but abundance of men who were "not violating any law."

Most groups who "unify" their disparate associates into a single structure have short political lives. Therefore, those movement leaders constantly calling for unity of organization rather than the desirable unity of purpose, usually fall into one of three categories.

They may not be sound political tacticians, but rather, just committed men who feel unity would help their cause, while not realizing that the government would greatly benefit from such efforts. The Federal objective, to imprison or destroy all who oppose them, is made easier in pyramid organizations. Or perhaps, they do not fully understand the struggle they are involved inland that the government they oppose has declared a state of war against those fighting for faith, folk, freedom and constitutional liberty. Those in power will use any means to rid themselves of opposition. The third class calling for unity and let us hope this is the minority of the three, are men more desirous of the supposed power that a large organization would bestow, than of actually achieving their stated purpose.

Conversely, the last thing Federal snoops would have, if they had any choice in the matter, is a thousand different small phantom cells opposing them. It is easy to see why. Such situation is an intelligence nightmare for a government intent upon knowing everything they possibly can about those who oppose them. The Federals, able to amass overwhelming strength of numbers, manpower, resources, intelligence gathering, and capability at any given time, need only a focal point to direct their anger. A single penetration of a pyramid type of organization can lead to the destruction of the whole. Whereas, Leaderless Resistance presents no single opportunity for the Federals to destroy a significant portion of the Resistance.

With the announcement by the Department of Justice (sic) that300 FBI agents formerly assigned to watching Soviet spies in the US (domestic counter intelligence) are now to be used to “combat crime", the federal government is preparing the way for a major assault upon those persons opposed to their policies. Many anti-government groups dedicated to the preservation of the America of our forefathers can expect shortly to feel the brunt of a new federal assault upon liberty.

It is clear, therefore, that it is time to rethink traditional strategy and tactics when it comes to opposing a modern police state. America is quickly moving into a long dark night of police state tyranny, where the rights now accepted by most as being inalienable will disappear. Let the coming night be filled with thousand points of resistance. Like the fog which forms when conditions are right and disappears when they are not, so must the resistance to tyranny be.

"If every person has the right to defend--even by force--his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support common force to protect these rights constantly." ---TheLaw. Frederick Bastiat

THE STUDY OF REVENGE

2008-01-25T06:53:00.001-05:00

"The Study of Revenge" blog has been deleted and I'm wondering if the Islamists had a hand in it. I know they did get Google to label it a "hate" website.

THE BEST IMAGES:

The Souls Of The Democrat And Republican Parties

2008-01-11T05:39:00.000-05:00

This is perhaps the most wide-open presidential primary race in living memory.

It is a race with no incumbents, no heirs apparent, and (to the Clinton campaign's surprise) no "inevitable" candidates. Walking political almanac Michael Barone captures the flavor of it when he observes "I wrote a few days ago that there were 60 scenarios for the Republican nomination"—but after the New Hampshire result, "I think we’re down to about 52."

There are a number of reasons for this bewildering flux. Eight years ago, George Bush's decision to choose as his running mate Dick Cheney—a man with no future ambitions for the nation's highest office—deprived the Republican Party of any prospect for a clear political succession. Meanwhile, the steady compression of the primary schedule, as more and more states have moved to earlier dates—requires voters across the nation to choose among a crowded field all at once on Super-Duper Tuesday, with little chance for candidates to build momentum or knock rivals out of the race prior to these votes.

(That, incidentally, is why poorly performing candidates such as Fred Thompson and John Edwards are stubbornly staying in the race. They're all willing to bet on the wild card of Super-Duper Tuesday.)

But the main reason for the unexpectedly protracted primary struggle we are likely to witness is the indecision of parties themselves. Each of the major political parties is deeply divided in a battle over its soul.

Let us start with the Democrats.

Iowa shattered the idea of Hillary Clinton's "inevitability," but New Hampshire (where Clinton did much better than expected, managing to win by a few percentage points) ended the prospect of a swift collapse of the Clinton campaign. Barack Obama, who did about as well in New Hampshire as the polls predicted—which is much better than he had been doing before his Iowa win—is certainly not out of the race, and he has just secured a crucial union endorsement for the next Democratic primary, in Nevada.

Horse-race types are now speculating that Clinton and Obama could trade victories in upcoming primaries, emerging from Super-Duper Tuesday still evenly matched, with no clear decision until later primaries tip the balance.

This is not what was supposed to happen. The primaries were supposed to be a Bambi versus Godzilla conflict.

Obama was considered inexperienced and naïve—he's been dubbed "Obambi" by his detractors—and with some justification. He is a "hothouse liberal," nurtured in the protective environment of local Chicago politics, which is dominated by the left, so that he has never faced a serious ideological challenger. (He practically walked into his Senate seat when the Illinois Republican Party sabotaged its candidate, then replaced him at the last minute with the marginally sane Alan Keyes.)

In this scenario, the Godzilla expected to crush him was the allegedly fearsome Clinton political machine, run by two seasoned political operatives with a large staff of political professionals schooled in the use of dirty tricks and backed up by a vast network of Democratic Party insiders and cronies.

But something odd is happening. Obambi is arguably beating Clintzilla.

The reason is not hard to discern: it is Obama's fresh, earnest idealism. The root of his appeal is that the damned fool actually means it: he puts forth every liberal bromide as if it were still 1960. He has inspired many comparison to JFK, with some dubbing his campaign "Obamalot," after the conventional view of the first years of the Kennedy administration as an idealized "Camelot." As I put it earlier this year, when Obama first emerged as a major candidate: "The left has always longed for a young, charismatic leader who will present the illusion of the left as a realm of bright-eyed, progressive idealists—an illusion that hides the tired, corrupt old ideas at the movement's core. They want JFK as they remember him—not the portrait of Dorian Gray represented by his brother Teddy. Obama restores that illusion for them."

But the problem of Obama's naiveté isn't just a smear thrown out by the Clinton machine; it is real and substantial. He demonstrated that when, in the early Democratic debates, he promised to solve the world's problems by inviting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez for tea at the White House—and then, in a hasty bid to make himself look like he could still be a tough guy—clumsily followed up with a proposal to unilaterally invade the lawless tribal regions of Pakistan. It was a policy that was incoherent at best.

Last fall, he proposed to solve the sub-prime mortgage crisis with a massive bail-out of over-extended mortgage holders, paid for by massive fines on the lenders—a proposal perfectly calculated to reward foolish behavior by the "little guy," while increasing the panic in the financial markets, discouraging lenders from ever extending another mortgage loan.

These proposals demonstrate an utter ignorance of both economics and foreign affairs. Voters could justifiably conclude that a President Obama would get taken for a ride by America's enemies abroad, while he carelessly mucked about with the economy at home.

Hillary Clinton, by contrast, is more sophisticated and hence more cautious and prudent. In responding to Obama's promise to meet with Ahmadinejad, for example, she was entirely correct to warn about the danger of granting free propaganda to anti-America rabble-rousers. Or consider her statements at a recent Democratic debate about an American withdrawal from Iraq.

I think we're in vigorous agreement about getting our troops home as quickly and responsibly as we possibly can, serving notice on the Maliki government that the blank check they've had from George Bush is no longer valid. We're going to have to have intensive diplomatic efforts in the region. I don't think anyone can predict what the consequences will be. And I think we have to be ready for whatever they might be.

We have to figure out what we're going to do with the 100,000- plus American civilians who are there working at the embassy, working for not-for-profits or American businesses. We have to figure out what we're going to do about all the Iraqis who sided with us, you know, like the translators who helped the Marines in Fallujah whom I met, who said they wouldn't have survived without them. Are we going to leave them?

You know, this is a complicated enterprise, so it has to be done right.

Translation: "We'll withdraw from Iraq, except that our responsibility to protect Western civilians and friendly Iraqis will require us to keep all of our troops there."

This, alas, is the style of Senator Clinton's superior sophistication: the art of embracing two opposite policies at once. She is, of course, either lying to the far left when she tells them that she intends to withdraw from Iraq—or she's lying to the center when she assures them that she will be responsible about protecting America's assets and allies there. Or she's lying to both.

It is no surprise that many Democrats—particularly younger ones—have chosen the plain-spoken idealist over the calculating, triangulating pragmatist. But Obama's naivete and his idealism are inseparably intertwined—as is Clinton's experience and cynicism. They are flip sides of the basic dilemma of the contemporary Democratic Party.

Jack Wakeland hit the essential issue in 2004 when he commented on the eve of Barack Obama's speech Democratic convention, the moment that launched Obama as a nation figure:

"He speaks without a shadow a moral doubt, as if the moral ideal of socialism had never been put on trial, found guilty, and destroyed as the system of government for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. He speaks as if the socialist ideal were a new and untested plan that promises a bright future for the world."

Yet it has been tested, and more than four decades of experience have discredited the left's ideals. Collectivist central planning was discredited by the failure and collapse of the Soviet Union. The welfare state was discredited by the nightmare of the public housing projects, as the names of progressive idealists like Mother Cabrini and Robert Taylor became indelibly associated with the squalid, crime-ridden government-run ghettoes named after them. Even voluntary forms of egalitarian socialism have largely been discarded, as witnessed by the decline of the Israeli kibbutz, whose dead-end lifestyle has attracted fewer and fewer young recruits despite enjoying the dutiful admiration of a whole nation.

A foreign policy of negotiations and détente was discredited by Jimmy Carter, who presided over the final great expansion of the Soviets' tyrannical empire—and by Ronald Reagan, whose dose of hawkishness precipitated that empire's collapse. And the idea of the criminal as a hapless "victim of society" who deserves our sympathy was put to rest with finality by—well, by Rudy Giuliani.

In the face of this history—all of which he has lived through—Barack Obama's idealism has to be maintained through a naiveté that is carefully cultivated and zealously guarded.

Bill and Hillary Clinton, by contrast, have learned from experience—in their own way. Bill Clinton first came to prominence as a champion of the "New Democrats," who promised to moderate traditional liberalism (embracing welfare reform, for example) in light of the disastrous experiences of the previous decades.

But what the Clintons learned was not to reject liberal ideals, but to dissemble about them. They learned to promise the right that "the era of big government is over," while ceaselessly plotting to enlarge government—and to promise the left that America will withdraw from Iraq, while acknowledging that it would be irresponsible to do so. The Clintons call it "triangulation"; most of us would just call it "hypocrisy."

Hence the battle for the soul of the Democratic Party. It is a choice between the only options available to a movement based on discredited ideals: naïve, stubbornly blinkered "idealism," and cynical, calculating, hypocritical "realism."

Take your pick as to which is worse.

But notice that the battle among the Democrats is less over the substance of the party's soul than over its style. Some critics have faulted Barack Obama for clinging to woozy generalities in his speeches rather than taking clear stands on the issues. But what would be the point of that? Obama has little to say on the substance of his policies that would actually differentiate him from Senator Clinton. What they differ on is not so much the content of what they say, but the freshness and sincerity with which they believe it.

This is not the case for the Republicans. The battle for the Republican soul is on much more substantive, profound, and irreconcilable issues. The Republicans are not battling over style, but over the party's basic beliefs and priorities.

The battle among the Democrats is less over the substance of the party's soul than over its style. This is not the case for the Republicans. The battle for the Republican soul is on much more substantive, profound, and irreconcilable issues. The Republicans are not battling over style, but over the party's basic beliefs and priorities.

The essence of the dilemma on the Republican side is that "fusionism" is coming un-fused.

Historically, the modern conservative movement was created by forging an alliance between religious traditionalists, pro-free-marketers, and foreign policy hawks. The idea that held this coalition together was the theory of "fusionism," championed by National Review. Fusionism was the idea that these three wings of conservatism could not only find common cause but could cobble themselves together into a semi-integrated ideology. The theory was that the religionists would defend traditional American culture, which would provide the cultural support for the ideals of limited government and American patriotism.

But the current election has prompted a lot of concern, particularly at National Review, that this arrangement isn't working. Jonah Goldberg, for example, worries that "Huckabeeism"—the combination of religious politics with populist anti-capitalist rhetoric—"threatens to unfuse fusionism." David Freddoso frets that "A two-way knock-down-drag-out fight between Huckabee and Giuliani could completely destroy the coalition that Ronald Reagan built by combining social and economic conservatives with anti-Communists."

They are right to be worried. The current primary campaign is a threat to fusionism. But it is not the candidates' fault, nor is it the voters'. The problem is the inherent instability of fusionism itself.

For a while, Rudy Giuliani was considered the main threat to the conservative coalition. As a pro-choice hawk campaigning on a pro-free-market platform, he was seen as trying to run on two wings of the coalition while driving away the third. But the more powerful threat to the conservative coalition has come, not from a secular politician like Giuliani, but from the leading candidate of the religious wing.

Mike Huckabee is splitting apart fusionism by pushing for the whole agenda of the religious conservatives while standing for pro-welfare-state, anti-free-trade economic populism. He is citing his religion, not only as the basis for banning "gay marriage," but also as the basis for what Jonah Goldberg has called "compassionate conservatism on steroids."

Huckabee is the main driver of the dissolution of the "fusionist" coalition. But each of the other major candidates is undermining fusionism in his own way.

There is no doubt about John McCain's credentials as a foreign policy hawk. He advocated the "surge" in Iraq before President Bush did, and at a campaign event last year he famously invoked what I call the Beach Boys Doctrine, replacing the lyrics of the Beach Boys' "Barbara Ann" with "Bomb, bomb, bomb—bomb, bomb Iran." But McCain has a history of antagonism toward the religious right dating back to the 2000 primaries. And McCain cannot by any stretch of the imagination be described as pro-free-market—not when he opposed President Bush's tax cuts and has been a tireless promoter of the global warming hysteria with its demand for massive new energy rationing. (Conservative writers are just beginning to draw attention to this fact.) You can't campaign as a pro-free-marketer when you propose to ban the incandescent light bulb, force everyone into hybrid cars, and put a legislative cap on the nation's energy production.

Ron Paul is not a major candidate and arguably is not even a genuine Republican. (He is a political opportunist who last ran for president on the Libertarian Party ticket.) But he chips away at fusionism in his own small way, adding a distinctive twist: in economic policy, he campaigns for the gold standard and the abolition of taxes, while in foreign policy he adopts the blame-America-first pacifism of the far left.

In answer to all of this, Rudy Guiliani has just come out with a proposal for "the biggest tax cut in American history," accompanied by "a 5 to 10 percent reduction in spending at federal agencies." It is an attempt to establish himself as the staunchest pro-free-marketer in the race—but one who is unacceptable to many on the religious right.

(Interestingly, while Huckabee has captured the heart of many in the Republican base, Giuliani has captured the party's brain. He long ago won the "pundit primary," the contest for the endorsements of the right's professional intellectuals. This is partly because many of the pundits live in New York and are personally grateful to Giuliani for making their city livable again—but it is also because these intellectuals are accustomed to thinking in terms of secular arguments rather than Biblical citations and are thus more open to a secular candidate.)

There are only two candidates who could be considered examples of "fusionism." Fred Thompson can make a plausible claim to be acceptable to all elements of the conservative coalition—but he has run such a low-energy campaign that he has not earned the enthusiasm of any of them.

The other remaining fusionist is Romney—but nobody believes him. He is not credible to the religionists because he was pro-choice when he ran for governor of Massachusetts; he's not credible to free-marketers because he sponsored that state's scheme for government-mandated, government-controlled, government-subsidized health insurance; and he's not especially credible to hawks because he has no record or history on foreign policy.

So consider the line-up: if you're a pro-free-marketer, you've got Rudy—but you can't trust Romney, you know McCain is dangerous, and Huckabee denounces you as a member of the "Club for Greed." If you're a hawk, you've got Rudy and McCain and maybe Romney—but Huckabee sounds too much like Jimmy Carter. And if you're a religious conservative, you're thrilled with Huckabee, but you're suspicious of McCain, you don't trust Romney, and Rudy is at best barely tolerable.

There's no fusion here. There is certainly an intersection between the hawks and the pro-free-marketers—but there is no intersection that joins them to the religionists.

This is not an accident. There is no such intersection in this election because the secular and religious concerns of the right are, in fact, incompatible.

Fusionism is failing because its basic premise—that the moral foundations of free markets and Americanism can be left to the religious traditionalists—is false. For five decades, conservatives have ceded to the religious right the job of providing the moral fire to sustain their movement. But they are discovering that the religious right does not have a strong moral commitment to free markets. In fact, with Huckabee as its new spokesman, the religious right seems to be working on its own version of "fusion"—with the religious left.

The reason is that religion cannot support the real basis for capitalism and a strong American national defense: a morality of rational self-interest. Christianity is too deeply committed to a philosophy of self-abnegation, a destructive morality that urges men to renounce any interest in worldly goods and to turn the other check in the face of aggression. The early Christian saints, for example, abandoned all material comforts and lived in caves—which is to say that their closest contemporary disciples are the radical environmentalists. As for foreign policy, St. Augustine spent a fair bit of his massive apologia for Christianity, The City of God, explaining to the Romans that being sacked by barbarians was good for them because it taught them the virtue of humility and cured them of their attachment to material wealth.

I'm not sure what answer you would get if you asked "what would Jesus do" if he were alive today. But I'm pretty certain the answers would not include: "seek venture capital for a high-tech start-up," "negotiate an import deal for Chinese-made flat-screen TVs," or "manage a hedge fund." Which is too bad, because these are the activities that achieve, in reality, what the loaves and the fishes never could.

We live at the end of two centuries of evidence for the triumph of capitalism. From the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in England, to the rise of the "Asian Tigers," to the impact of global capitalism in India and China—everywhere capitalism has spread, human life has been radically transformed for the better. And we live at the end of a century that amply demonstrated the failures of socialism. As I pointed out yesterday, the left has never learned the moral lessons of this history—but neither has the right. Tricked by the fusionists into outsourcing moral questions to the guardians of religious tradition, the right has never been able to properly develop the moral case for rational self-interest—which means they never developed the moral case for the profit motive, property rights, and the free market. Many on the right are implicitly sympathetic to capitalism, sensing its virtues—but, thanks to "fusionism," unable to articulate them. And this means that they have never been able to turn the defense of free markets into a moral crusade.

Even worse, the "fusionists" turned away the one intellectual who could have helped them do so. National Review made a special effort to expel Ayn Rand and her followers from the right because her atheism threatened their fusionist agenda—even though she was the most powerful advocate for the morality of free markets.

The result of this failure is that we're entering a presidential election that is likely to revolve around three main issues: the War on Terrorism, socialized medicine, and massive new global warming regulations. Yet rather than rallying around a candidate who will effectively oppose the left on all of these issues, the Republicans are fragmented in a battle between their religious wing and the pro-free-marketers. And that battle may yet produce a candidate who can out-quote the Bible to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama at a prayer breakfast, but who will "me-too" the Democrats on environmentalism and the welfare state.

To escape this dilemma in the short term, the Republican Party's best bet is to nominate Rudy Giuliani rather than Mike Huckabee. To escape it in the long term, the intellectuals of the right need to devote much more time and attention to the secular moral case for liberty and capitalism—which would finally allow them to stand on their own two feet ideologically, without feeling the need to be "fused" to a religious movement that has shown itself incapable of offering a foundation for these ideals.

The Pakistan Weimar Republic

2007-11-07T04:36:00.000-05:00

In declaring a "state of emergency"—in essence, a personal dictatorship—weak Pakistani strong man Pervez Musharraf has not made war on the Islamists who are poised to take over the country. Instead, he has made war on Pakistan's liberals, particularly its politically active lawyers, who have been protesting for civilian government and the rule of law.

The New York Times article linked to below describes the lawyers' protests and the government's crackdown, as well as Benazir Bhutto's potential role as the leader of a liberal protest movement in Pakistan—if she has the nerve to attempt it. Another leader of the movement is suspended Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, who is calling for an uprising against Musharraf.

"Pakistan Attempts to Crush Protests by Lawyers," Jane Perlez and David Rohde, New York Times, November 6 Angry protests by thousands of lawyers in Lahore and other cities on Monday demonstrated the first organized resistance to the emergency rule imposed by the Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf….

At one point, lawyers and police officers clashed in a pitched battle, with lawyers standing on the roof of the High Court throwing stones at the police below, and the police hurling them back. Some of the lawyers were bleeding from the head, and some passed out in clouds of tear gas….

Ms. Bhutto, a former prime minister and the leader of the country's biggest secular political party…insisted that a rally planned by her party would go ahead on Friday in Rawalpindi. It would be staged as a protest, she said in a telephone interview from Karachi.

"We decided this would be a protest meeting where we would protest the imposition of military rule," she said. "This protest movement will continue until the Constitution is restored."…

[M]ore than 100 lawyers demonstrated outside Islamabad's main court complex on Monday. The lawyers in black suits and ties shouted "Musharraf dog" and "A baton and a bullet will not do."…

Feisal Naqvi, a Lahore lawyer, and other lawyers said they believed that the battle against the government could not be won on the streets. Rather, they said, the fight should focus on undermining the newly constituted courts from inside the courthouses.

One goal of the lawyers, Mr. Naqvi said, is to paralyze the new courts. "The fundamental point is not to allow the Supreme Court and the High Courts to operate," he said. A monitoring system was being considered under which lawyers would patrol courts and urge their colleagues not to appear before the new judges. "There should be no acceptance of the new judges," he said.

New Propaganda Posters In Oceania

2007-11-05T05:59:00.000-05:00

The Algore Nobel Prize And Other Friday News

2007-10-12T17:37:00.000-04:00

I almost cancelled today's article altogether rather than be required to report that Al Gore has won the Nobel Peace Prize—which now apparently has nothing to do with world peace and is simply an all-purpose vehicle for promoting leftist causes. So Gore has the distinction of being recognized as a moral hero by the Nobel Committee—the day after he was scolded by the London High Court for distorting and inventing facts "in the context of alarmism and exaggeration."

I was pulled back from the brink of despair on reading a perfect response from John Berlau of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which has been the best and most effective conservative opponent of environmentalism. Berlau points out how Gore's crusade contradicts the mission of the Nobel prizes. Here is the central passage of Berlau's excellent article:

In direct contradiction of Alfred Nobel's last will and testament, the selection of Gore essentially means the Peace Prize can no longer be said to be an award for improving the condition of humankind. Looking at Gore's writing, it's far from clear that Gore even believes that humanity is his most important priority….

Rather, his stated desire is to stop human activity that he sees as ruining what he calls the "ecosystem." Awarding the prize to Gore in 2007 is the equivalent of honoring the Luddites who tried to stop the beneficial technologies of Alfred Nobels's day.

A common theme of selection for the Nobel Peace Prize and the other Nobel awards has been the use of science and technology to overcome problems afflicting humans such as starvation and disease…. In creating the annual prizes for physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and the promotion of world peace (roughly the same five fields for which Nobels are awarded today), Nobel stated the desire in his will to honor "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind."

According to Alfred Nobel: A Biograpy by Kenne Fant, an earlier draft of Nobel's will stipulated that prizes in all categories should be "a reward for the most important pioneering discoveries or works in the field of knowledge and progress."

But for Albert Gore, Jr. the fields of knowledge and progress are suspect, and so are many types of technology with benefits to mankind.

This is the real, essential issue, and Berlau's piece captures the essential perversity of giving a Nobel Prize of any kind to an avowed enemy of technological progress.

In other news, a federal judge has blocked a draconian new effort by the Bush administration to appease anti-immigration conservatives by forcing employers to fire workers who cannot be verified in the Social Security database. The problem:

The plaintiffs convinced the judge that the Social Security Administration database includes so many errors—incorporated in the records of about 9.5 million people in 2003 alone—that its use in firings would unfairly discriminate against tens of thousands of legal workers, including native-born and naturalized US citizens.

More disturbing than the practical effect of these potential firings is the principle behind them: that workers would be forced to obtain express legal permission from the government before they could seek work or remain in their jobs.

This case is revealing because it demonstrates the evil of the anti-immigration laws by showing us the oppressive measures actually required to enforce them. The measures pursued by the administration would be have made all employees and employers guilty until proven innocent.

Anti-immigrationists claim that they merely want to preserve America's culture—but I can't think of anything more un-American than this kind of nativist police state.

In war news, the New York Times provides a blockbuster: the same strategy used in Anbar Province to turn the population against the insurgents is now being successfully used, not only against al-Qaeda, but now against Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. The Times reports:

In a number of Shiite neighborhoods across Baghdad, residents are beginning to turn away from the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia they once saw as their only protector against Sunni militants. Now they resent it as a band of street thugs without ideology….

In interviews, 10 Shiites from four neighborhoods in eastern and western Baghdad described a pattern in which [Mahdi Army] militia members, looking for new sources of income, turned on Shiites….

Among the people killed in the neighborhood of Topchi over the past two months, residents said, were the owner of an electrical shop, a sweets seller, a rich man, three women, two local council members, and two children, ages 9 and 11.

It was a disparate group with one thing in common: All were Shiites killed by Shiites. Residents blamed the Mahdi Army, which controls the neighborhood.

“Everyone knew who the killers were,” said a mother from Topchi, whose neighbor, a Shiite woman, was one of the victims. “I’m Shiite, and I pray to God that he will punish them.”…

Shiite sheiks, the militia’s traditional base, are beginning to contact Americans, much as Sunni tribes reached out early this year, refocusing one entire front of the war, officials said, and the number of accurate tips flowing into American bases has soared.

This is another major turning point in the war—and you can expect that General Petraeus will exploit it as effectively as he exploited the Sunni tribes' uprising against al-Qaeda.

Indeed, our armed services are already beginning to treat Iraq as if it has been won—so that the Marines are now seeking to take over the US counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan as a reward for their success in Anbar.

Happy 50th Birthday, ATLAS SHRUGGED!

2007-10-12T14:31:00.000-04:00

October 10, 2007 was the 50th anniversary of the publication of Ayn Rand's classic novel Atlas Shrugged, so in the coming week we can expect to see a flurry of articles about the novel—many of which will, unfortunately, offer highly inaccurate descriptions of the novel's meaning and significance.

A recent New York Times article about the influence of Atlas Shrugged among businessmen and Fortune 500 CEOs, for example, contained one confused businesswoman's opinion that "Rand's idea of 'the virtue of selfishness' is a harsh phrase for the Buddhist idea that you have to take care of yourself." It is hard to see how Buddhism—a philosophy of mystical asceticism—can be seen as equivalent to a philosophy of rational self-interest.

Some distorted views of Ayn Rand's masterwork will be motivated by spite. (In the Weekly Standard, for example, Andrew Ferguson dismisses the novel's readers as a bunch of neurotic adolescents—but he does so, ironically, by adopting exactly the kind of puerile derisiveness one would expect from such an insecure adolescent. Read it at risk to your sense of good taste and intellectual seriousness.) Most inaccuracies, however, are merely the result of the reporters' awkward unfamiliarity with Ayn Rand's ideas.

That's a shame, because Atlas Shrugged is a novel that everyone ought to discover and grapple with, because it succeeds at something too few artists and intellectuals have had the courage to do.

The purpose of art and philosophy is to show us truths about human nature, about the nature of the world and our place in it. Philosophy names these truths explicitly, in literal terms; literature dramatizes these truths in concrete terms, revealing its insights through the actions and statements of the characters created by the novelist. A philosophical novel, like Atlas Shrugged, is supposed to do both of these things.

But too often both the philosophers and the artists have failed us as seekers of truth. Rather than convey truths they have learned first-hand through observation of the world, they simply repeat or project their own prejudices and pre-conceived notions.

The most important event of the past two centuries, with which artists and intellectuals ought to have come to grips, is the rise of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution—a social revolution that has radically transformed human life for the better. Free markets and industrialization have produced a previously unimagined wealth, which is enjoyed not only by captains of industry but by the common man, who is able to afford luxuries—large homes, automobiles, air travel, everything down to his caffe latte at the corner coffee shop—on a scale that could not even have been conceived in earlier centuries. Capitalism has also afforded the individual a degree of personal independence and unlimited opportunity that has fully liberated men from the stultifying tyranny of previous aristocratic and feudal systems.

Human nature is timeless and universal, but the evidence for human potential is not. That evidence is provided by actual human actions and their results. No one could have conceived of the achievements of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution before they happened—and these new events required a radical re-evaluation of conventional ideas. Yet the intellectuals failed to perform such a re-evaluation.

Regular readers of may be familiar with my own favorite example. In 1816, at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, a group of Britain's best young literary minds—including Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (who later became Mary Shelley)—gathered together to explore their new school of literature, which they called "Gothic" because it took its inspiration from the mysticism of the Middle Ages. In that spirit, they challenged each other to write the best ghost story, and Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein—a story which portrays the quest for scientific knowledge as a kind of dangerous madness.

Just as capitalism was propelling us forward into a technological future that would, among other advantages, double the average human lifespan, the intellectuals were looking backward to the Middle Ages and predicting that all of this new science and technology would bring disaster. (They're still doing it, except that now they conjure up the bogeyman of global warming in place of Frankenstein's monster.)

A few decades later, a German intellectual named Karl Marx gave one of the most influential accounts of the new capitalist system—and he got everything wrong. An Industrial Revolution driven by scientific and technological advances springing from the minds of a few extraordinary individuals, he would describe as the anonymous, collective product of brute physical labor; an economic system of liberty, he would describe as a system of oppression; a system built on the right to property he would describe as a system based on expropriation—and then he would propose actual oppression and expropriation as the solution.

This has been the pattern of the artists and intellectuals in dealing with the most significant phenomenon of our age. While the world was transformed around them, they refused to grasp the real meaning of these events, choosing to ignore or denigrate the forces that were rapidly improving human life.

In this context, we can see the widest significance of Ayn Rand's literary and philosophical achievement. She was the first thinker and artist to fully grasp the meaning of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution and to give them expression both in literature and in philosophy.

The most radical aspect of Atlas Shrugged is that it is a sweeping, serious novel of ideas that is based in the business world, the last place mainstream intellectuals would have thought to regard as the inspiration for epic drama or profound new ideas. What makes Ayn Rand distinctive is that she found drama, heroism, and profound philosophical meaning in the achievements of the entrepreneurs and industrialists who were reshaping the world.

Atlas Shrugged was written in an age of creeping global socialism. Extrapolating from the trends of the day, Ayn Rand projected a future in which most of the world's nations are collapsing into the poverty and oppression of socialist "people's states," while America itself is collapsing under the weight of increasing government takeover of the economy.

She saw the dramatic potential in asking a single question: what would happen if the innovative entrepreneurs and businessmen—after decades of being vilified and regulated—started to disappear? What if the men condemned as parasites who somehow grow rich by exploiting manual laborers—the whole Marxist view of the economy—what if those "exploiters" were no longer around? The disappearance of the world's productive geniuses provides the novel's central mystery, both factually and intellectually.

Factually, the story follows Dagny Taggart, a woman in the then-unconventional role of operating vice-president of a transcontinental railroad, as she struggles to keep her railroad running in the face of strangling government regulations, while trying to solve a series of mysteries: a promising young railroad worker refuses a promotion and takes up a menial job instead; a spectacularly talented heir to a multinational copper company abandons his work to become a flamboyant playboy; a genius who invented a revolutionary new motor abandons his creation in the ruins of a derelict factory.

The factual question is: where did all of these people go? Why did they give up their work? Is there someone or something that is causing them to disappear?

The philosophical question raised by this plot is: what is the role of the entrepreneurs and innovators in a society? What motivates them, what are the conditions they need in order to work, and what happens to the world when they disappear? The factual mystery is integrated with the novel's deepest philosophical question: what is the moral status of the businessman and industrialist? Capitalism had been transforming the world for the better for more than a century, yet until Ayn Rand no one had taken a serious, original, first-hand look at this question, and no one had had the courage to challenge the conventional answers.

Capitalism unleashed an extraordinary burst of scientific and technological innovation and of human creativity—yet this had largely gone unrecognized as a phenomenon with any moral or intellectual significance. Ayn Rand was the first to celebrate the accomplishments of the James Watts and Andrew Carnegies and Thomas Edisons and to recognize in their productive energies an example of moral heroism.

Literarily, she recognized the romanticism in the extraordinary feats of these business innovators. In Atlas Shrugged this is perhaps best captured in repeated references to the legend of Nat Taggart, the swashbuckling young adventurer who founded the railroad for which Dagny Taggart works—a character based, in part, on the real-life swashbuckling of Commodore Vanderbilt's early career.

Or consider this passage, from an early chapter of Atlas Shrugged, in which steel tycoon Hank Rearden reflects on the process by which he invented a revolutionary new metal alloy.

He did not think of the ten years. What remained of them tonight was only a feeling which he could not name, except that it was quiet and solemn. The feeling was a sum, and he did not have to count again the parts that had gone to make it. But the parts, unrecalled, were there, within the feeling. They were the nights spent at scorching ovens in the research laboratory at the mills—

—the nights spent in the workshop of his home, over sheets of paper which he had filled with formulas, then tore up in angry failure—

—the days when the young scientists of the small staff he had chosen to assist him waited for instructions like soldiers ready for a hopeless battle, having exhausted their ingenuity, still willing, but silent, with the unspoken sentence hanging in the air: "Mr. Rearden, it can't be done—

—the meals, interrupted and abandoned at the sudden flash of a new thought, a thought to be pursued at once, to be tried, to be tested, to be worked on for months, and to be discarded as another failure—

—the moments snatched from conferences, from contracts, from the duties of running the best steel mills in the country, snatched almost guiltily, as for a secret love—

—the one thought held immovably across a span of ten years, under everything he did and everything he saw, the thought held in his mind when he looked at the buildings of a city, at the track of a railroad, at the light in the windows of a distant farmhouse, at the knife in the hands of a beautiful woman cutting a piece of fruit at a banquet, the thought of a metal alloy that would do more than steel had ever done, a metal that would be to steel what steel had been to iron—

—the acts of self-racking when he discarded a hope or a sample, not permitting himself to know that he was tired, not giving himself time to feel, driving himself through the wringing torture of: "not good enough…still not good enough…" and going on with no motor save the conviction that it could be done—

—then the day when it was done and its result was called Rearden Metal—

—these were the things that had come to white heat, had melted and fused within him, and their alloy was a strange, quiet feeling that made him smile at the countryside in the darkness and wonder why happiness could hurt.

This is a view of the innovative entrepreneur as a kind of crusader, driven by a profound commitment to moral excellence.

More than a century earlier, one of the most honest and insightful observers of America, Alexis de Tocqueville, had recounted the extraordinary exertions and risk-taking of American merchant sea-captains and concluded that "the Americans put something heroic into their way of trading." But Tocqueville never really took this idea seriously or followed its consequences. Ayn Rand did.

When she followed the consequences of this idea, it led her to two crucial philosophical identifications that Atlas Shrugged introduced to the world.

Atlas Shrugged is famous for its characters' philosophical speeches, even though its primary means of expression is dramatic, not didactic; ninety percent of the novel, after all, is action and dialogue. Yet the speeches are a crucial part of the novel's drama and suspense. The central mystery of the novel is not merely what the characters are doing, but why. This sense of philosophical intrigue is heightened by the fact that the central characters turn out to be motivated by radical new moral and philosophical ideas—ideas that challenge centuries of received wisdom and lead these characters to act in unexpected and unconventional ways.

Atlas Shrugged is a "novel of ideas" in the truest sense: the philosophical issues it explores are indispensable to the drawing of its characters and the suspense of its plot.

The central philosophical theme of Atlas Shrugged is Ayn Rand's demolition of the intellectuals' dichotomy between the high-minded pursuits of the intellect and the allegedly grubby, un-intellectual world of business and industry. Ayn Rand's answer to this is provided early in the novel by her character Francisco D'Anconia. A flashback shows us Francisco and Dagny as teenagers combing through the machinery of a junk yard, to the disapproval of a friend of the family:

Once, an elderly professor of literature, Mrs. Taggart's friend, saw them on top of a pile in a junk yard, dismantling the carcass of an automobile. He stopped, shook his head and said to Francisco, "A young man of your position ought to spend his time in libraries, absorbing the culture of the world." "What do you think I'm doing?" asked Francisco.

Later, Dagny's observations about the motors of a railroad locomotive provide a deeper explanation of this view of the products of industrial capitalism as testaments to the power of the human mind.

For an instant, it seemed to her that the motors were transparent and she was seeing the net of their nervous system. It was a net of connections, more intricate, more crucial than all of their wires and circuits: the rational connections made by that human mind which had fashioned any one part of them for the first time.

It is a measure of the success of Atlas Shrugged that this message may not seem as radical today as it did 50 years ago. With the discrediting of Marxism and the rise of the "information age," it is now commonplace to recognize that knowledge is the engine of production—that ideas, more than physical labor or raw materials, are the primary source of wealth. Yet Ayn Rand originated this idea during the old industrial age, when the brute muscle power of union workers was still widely put forward as the source of America's industrial might.

It may be easier to recognize the central role of the mind when looking at advances in high technology. But Ayn Rand grasped the role of the mind in all aspect of business. Late in the novel, Dagny Taggart observes the reign of Cuffy Meigs—a kind of railroad czar empowered as chief regulator of the industry—and surveys the havoc that his arbitrary decrees wreak on the rational planning of private businesses.

She knew that no train schedules could be maintained any longer, no promises kept, no contracts observed, that regular trains were cancelled at a moment's notice and transformed into emergency specials sent by unexplained orders to unexpected destinations—and that the orders came from Cuffy Meigs, sole judge of emergencies and of the public welfare. She knew that factories were closing, some with their machinery stilled for lack of supplies that had not been received, others with their warehouses full of goods that could not be delivered. She knew that the old industries—the giants who had built their power by a purposeful course projected over a span of time—were left to exist at the whim of the moment, a moment they could not foresee or control. She knew that the best among them, those of the longest range and most complex function, had long since gone—and those still struggling to produce, struggling savagely to preserve the code of an age when production had been possible, were now inserting into their contracts a line shameful to a descendant of Nat Taggart: "Transportation permitting."

That the central "planning" of government actually consists of the disruption of rational planning by millions of private individuals is a point that had already been made by pro-free-market economists like Ludwig von Mises. Ayn Rand grasped that these economic principle were not dry, academic abstractions, but dramas played out in the real world—that the laws of economics are a matter of life and death, of triumph or tragedy. Here, for example, is one episode of the tragedy that plays out in the novel's later pages:

Six weeks ago, Train Number 193 had been sent with a load of steel, not to Faulkton, Nebraska, where the Spencer Machine Tool Company, the best machine tool concern still in existence, had been idle for two weeks, waiting for the shipment—but to Sand Creek, Illinois, where Confederated Machines had been wallowing in debt for over a year, producing unreliable goods at unpredictable times. The steel had been allocated by a directive which explained that the Spencer Machine Tool Company was a rich concern, able to wait, while Confederated Machines was bankrupt and could not be allowed to collapse, being the sole source of livelihood of the community of Sand Creek, Illinois. The Spencer Machine Tool Company had closed a month ago. Confederated Machines had closed two weeks later.

The people of Sand Creek, Illinois, had been placed on national relief, but no food could be found for them in the empty granaries of the nation at the frantic call of the moment—so the seed grain of the farmers of Nebraska had been seized by order of the Unification Board—and Train Number 194 had carried the unplanted harvest and the future of the people of Nebraska to be consumed by the people of Illinois. "In this enlightened age," Eugene Lawson had said in a radio broadcast, "we have come, at last, to realize that each one of us is his brother's keeper."

Atlas Shrugged is about more than capitalism, and Ayn Rand carried her observation about the role of the rational mind beyond economics into art, family life, and yes, even sex—where she rejected brute materialism just as thoroughly as she did in economics. To understand fully the lessons of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution, she grasped, required that one understand the validity and life-sustaining power of reason in human life.

The passage I quoted above also hints at a second philosophical theme that remains the novel's most revolutionary idea. Altruism—the notion that "each one of us is his brother's keeper"—is still regarded as practically synonymous with morality. Yet Atlas Shrugged concretizes the destructive impact of a moral code based on sacrifice and shows us the virtues of selfishness.

Throughout most of mankind's history, moralists have warned that individuals driven by "greed" and left free to pursue their self-interest would plunge society into a destructive war of all against all, a system of brutality, plunder, and exploitation—precisely the qualities Marx projected onto the new capitalist system. Instead, capitalism produced a system of freedom, independence, prosperity, and super-abundant creative energy—while the societies most thoroughly dedicated to the sacrifice of the individual to the collective, the 20th century's Communist regimes, were guilty of the greatest crimes ever recorded.

The lessons of this history were not lost on Ayn Rand, who had escaped from the Soviet Union to America in the 1920s, experiencing in a brief span the most complete contrast between opposing social systems. In one of the novel's most powerful metaphors, a character describes the collapse of the 20th Century Motor Company, a once-prosperous firm that descended into rancor, petty tyranny, and economic squalor after its employees voted to adopt a "bold experiment" in egalitarian socialism. The tale's narrator concludes, "This was the end of the 20th Century." Literally, he is referring to the fate of the company; symbolically, Ayn Rand uses the story to sum up the moral catastrophe of 20th century socialism.

As her own answer, Ayn Rand offered a morality of self-interest in which the individual's central moral goal is the pursuit of his own happiness. As one of the novel's philosophical speeches expresses it:

For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those who claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to your neighbors—between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of incompetents on earth. And no one came to say that your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it.

Yet Ayn Rand's radical idea is not merely her defense of self-interest—others have grudgingly accepted self-interest as a necessary evil, a "private vice" that makes for "public virtue"—but rather her redefinition of the moral meaning of self-interest.

Most intellectuals have accepted the old altruist caricature of self-interest as brute criminality, as if the only choice we face is between forms of sacrifice: sacrificing ourselves for the sake of others or sacrificing others to ourselves. Yet this caricature is thoroughly refuted by the history of capitalism, in which the most self-interested men are not looters or vandals, but creators who built railroads, steel mills, and computer networks. The philosophy of altruism gives us a choice between two moral models: Mother Theresa or Al Capone. Yet where is the room in this philosophy for a Bill Gates, a Thomas Edison, or any of the thousands of other figures who populate the history of capitalism, building their own fortunes through the creation of new ideas and products?

For the first time, Ayn Rand recognized the reality and significance of these men and drew a profound moral lesson: that genuine self-interest means, not the short-range conniving of the brute, but the creative thought and productive effort of the entrepreneur.

These philosophical insights were radical and new—but they were the only genuine, honest response to the evidence provided by the achievements of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution. Ayn Rand's detractors sometimes dismiss her novels as "unrealistic," but it is today's mainstream intellectuals who seem like they are wandering around in a fog of unreality. Stuck in a battle between two pre-conceived conventional notions—the religious traditionalism of the right versus the secular collectivism of the left—they have missed the monumental lessons of two centuries of history.

The era of encroaching global socialism—the dominant trend when Atlas Shrugged was written—has since given way to an era of global capitalism. But the deepest meaning of capitalism and its achievements has still not been widely understood and embraced. Capitalism is beginning to transform the lives of billions of people across the globe, from Eastern Europe to India to China. But there is virtually no one to help them understand what it is, its deepest personal meaning for their lives and values, and why it is good.

And that is why Atlas Shrugged is, if anything, even more relevant and more necessary today than it was when it was first published five decades ago.

SOURCE

The National Security Agency Of The Nanny State

2007-10-05T19:48:00.000-04:00

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH LIMBAUGH: Michael Graham today has a column in the Boston Herald, and it's fascinating. Not being a parent, I have not encountered this. It's what happens when you send your kids to the doctor and what the doctor starts asking the kids about you. "They're watching you right now," begins Michael Graham. "They counted every beer you drank during last night's Red Sox game. They see you sneaking out to the garage for a smoke. They know if you've got a gun, and where you keep it. They're your kids, and they're the National Security Agency of the Nanny State. I found this out after my 13-year-old daughter’s annual checkup. Her pediatrician grilled her about alcohol and drug abuse.

Not my daughter's boozing. Mine. 'The doctor wanted to know how much you and mom drink, and if I think it's too much,' my daughter told us afterward, rolling her eyes in that exasperated 13-year-old way. 'She asked if you two did drugs, or if there are drugs in the house.' 'What!' I yelped. 'Who told her about my stasher, I mean, "It's an outrage!"'I turned to my wife. 'You took her to the doctor. Why didn't you say something?' She couldn't, she told me, because she knew nothing about it.

"All these questions were asked in private, without my wife's knowledge or consent. 'The doctor wanted to know how we get along,' my daughter continued. Then she paused. 'And if, well, Daddy, if you made me feel uncomfortable.' Great. I send my daughter to the pediatrician to find out if she's fit to play lacrosse, and the doctor spends her time trying to find out if her mom and I are drunk, drug-addicted sex criminals. We're not alone, either. Thanks to guidelines issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics and supported by the commonwealth, doctors across Massachusetts are interrogating our kids about mom and dad's 'bad' behavior. We used to be proud parents. Now, thanks to the AAP, we're 'persons of interest.' The paranoia over parents is so strong that the AAP encourages doctors to ignore 'legal barriers and deference to parental involvement' and shake the children down for all the inside information they can get.

"And that information doesn't stay with the doctor, either. Debbie is a mom from Uxbridge who was in the examination room when the pediatrician asked her 5-year-old, 'Does Daddy own a gun?' When the little girl said yes, the doctor began grilling her and her mom about the number and type of guns, how they are stored, etc. If the incident had ended there, it would have merely been annoying. But when a friend in law enforcement let Debbie know that her doctor had filed a report with the police about her family's (entirely legal) gun ownership, she got mad. She also got a new doctor. ... Of course doctors have a choice. They could choose, for example, to ask me about my drunken revels, and not my children. They could choose not to put my children in this terrible position. They could choose, even here in Massachusetts, to leave their politics out of the office. But the doctors aren't asking us parents. They're asking our kids. Worst of all, they're asking all kids about sexual abuse without any provocation or probable cause. The American Academy of Pediatrics has declared all parents guilty until proven innocent. And then they wonder why we drink."

Now, you know, you want to listen to a little quotation here from Orwell? (interruption) What is it, Mr. Snerdley? Just stick with me on this. That is why I wanted people to watch the movie The Lives of Others, the German Academy Award winner. This is exactly what happened in East Germany. This is really not new, in terms of happening in human civilization. But here's a little quote, this is an excerpt from 1984 by George Orwell. "'Are you guilty?' said Winston. 'Of course I'm guilty,' cried Parsons with a servile glance at the telescreen. 'You don't think the party would arrest an innocent man, do you?' His frog-like face grew calmer and even then took on a slightly sanctimonious expression. 'Thought crime is a dreadful thing, old man,' he said, 'it's insidious, it can get hold of you without you even knowing it. Do you know how it got hold of me? In my sleep. Yes, that's a fact. There I was working away trying to do my bit, never knew I had any bad stuff in my mind at all, then I started talking in my sleep. You know what they heard me saying?' He sank his voice like someone who is obliged for medical reasons to utter an obscenity. 'Down with big brother. Yep, I said it, over and over again, it seems. Between you and me, old man, I'm glad they got me before it went any further. Do you know what I'm going to say to them when I go up before the tribunal? Thank you, I'm going to say, thank you for saving me before it was too late.'

"'Well, who denounced you?' said Winston. 'It was my little daughter,' said Parsons. 'She listened at the keyhole, heard what I was saying, she nipped off to the patrols the very next day. Pretty smart for a nipper of seven, eh? I don't bear her any grudge for it. In fact, I'm proud of her. It shows I brought her up in the right spirit, anyway.'" This is from 1984 with the kid ratting out a parent saying "down with big brother." Now, Michael Graham writes this in what is a humorous way. But this is right in keeping with this movie, The Lives of Others, that I have recommended that you see. If we end up with state-run health care, this could be required. This could end up being just like it has been here in Massachusetts, children informing on their parents about their activities and their lifestyles. I haven't seen the list of questions, but I will bet you that none of the questions asked by the Massachusetts doctors are about any politically correct lifestyle choices. Like I'll bet they're not asked, "Does dad have boyfriends?" I'll bet there aren't questions like that on this test.

When you socialize medicine, doctors can't help but become socialists themselves. This is the one angle of socialized medicine that I don't think we think about enough. Who's going to pay the doctors and what's going to be in it for them? Who will their bosses be? Federal government, state government, that's who they'll work for. Doctors won't tell parents when their 13-year-old is going to have an abortion, for crying out loud. Right now doctors are not allowed, if they find out, to tell the parents. But you get socialized medicine in there, and those people who run it, à la Mrs. Clinton, want to find out what you're doing at home. The best way to do it is to require the doctors, as part of an examination of your kids, to find out from them, and then they'll know. In this case, the instance of a mother whose daughter told the stories about guns in the home, all legal, they got the attention of the authorities with this.

END TRANSCRIPT

SOURCE

Big Brother Conquers Airstrip One

2007-09-30T04:26:00.001-04:00

Government and Councils to spy on ALL our phones

By The Green Arrow

Back to the future

Officials from the top of Government to lowly council officers will be given unprecedented powers to access details of every phone call in Britain under laws coming into force tomorrow.

"One of these days, though Winston, Syme will be vaporized, he sees to clearly and speaks too plainly..." George Orwell - 1984

The new rules compel phone companies to retain information, however private, about all landline and mobile calls, and make them available to some 795 public bodies and quangos.

The move, enacted by the personal decree of Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, will give police and security services a right they have long demanded: to delve at will into the phone records of British citizens and businesses.

But the same powers will also be handed to the tax authorities, 475 local councils, and a host of other organisations, including the Food Standards Agency, the Department of Health, the Immigration Service, the Gaming Board and the Charity Commission. The initiative, formulated in the wake of the Madrid and London terrorist attacks

of 2004 and 2005, was put forward as a vital tool in the fight against terrorism. However, civil liberties campaigners say the new powers amount to a 'free for all' for the State snooping on its citizens.

And they angrily questioned why the records were being made available to so many organisations. Similar provisions are being brought in across Europe, but under much tighter regulation. In Britain, say critics, private and sensitive information will inevitably fall into the wrong hands.

Records will detail precisely what calls are made, their time and duration, and the name and address of the registered user of the phone.

The files will even reveal where people are when they made mobile phone calls. By knowing which mast transmitted the signal, officials will be able to pinpoint the source of a call to within a few feet. This can even be used to track someone's route if, for example, they make a call from a moving car.

"There will be no love, but the love of Big Brother. No laughter, but the laughter of triumph over a defeated enemy. No art, no science, no literature, no enjoyment, but always and only, Winston, there will be the thrill of power. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever."

Files will also be kept on the sending and receipt of text messages.

By 2009 the Government plans to extend the rules to cover internet use: the websites we have visited, the people we have emailed and phone calls made over the net.

The new laws will make it a legal requirement for phone companies to keep records for at least a year, and to make them available to the authorities. Until now, companies have been reluctant to allow unfettered access to their files, citing data protection laws, although they have had a voluntary arrangement with law enforcement agencies since 2003.

Many of the organisations granted access to the records already have systems allowing them to search phone-call databases over a computer link without needing staff at the phone company to intervene.

Police requests for phone records will need the approval of a superintendent or inspector, while council officials must get permission from the authority's assistant chief officer. Thousands of staff in other agencies will be legally entitled to retrieve the records once the request is approved by a senior official.

The new measures were implemented after the Home Secretary signed a 'statutory instrument' on July 26. The process allows the Government to alter laws without a full act of Parliament.

The move was nodded through the House of Lords two days earlier without a debate.

It puts into UK law a European Directive aimed at the 'investigation, detection and prosecution of serious crime'. But the British law allows the information to be used much more widely to combat all crimes, however minor.

The huge number of organisations allowed to access this data was attacked by Liberty, the civil liberties campaign group. Other organisations allowed to see the data include the Royal Navy Regulating Branch, the Atomic Energy Authority Constabulary, the Department of Trade and Industry, NHS Trusts, ambulance and fire services, the Department of Transport and the Department for the Environment.

A spokesman for Liberty said: 'Hundreds of bodies have been given the power to look at this highly sensitive information. It is yet another example of how greater and greater access is being given to information on our movements with little debate and little public accountability.

'It is a free for all. There is a lack of oversight of how and why public bodies are using these records. There is no public record of what they are using this information for.'

Tony Bunyan, of civil liberties group Statewatch, said: 'The retention of everyone's communications data is a momentous decision, one that should not be slipped through Parliament without anyone noticing.'

Last year, the voluntary arrangement allowed 439,000 searches of phone records. But the Government brought in legislation because the industry did not routinely keep all the information it wanted.

Different authorities will have different levels of access to the systems. Police and intelligence services will be able to see more detailed information than local authorities. And officials at NHS Trusts and ambulance and fire services can obtain the records only in rare cases when, for example, they are trying to save a patient's life.

"The thought police would get him just the same. He had committed—would have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper—the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you."

The new system will be overseen by the Interception of Communications Commissioner, who also ensures security and intelligence services' phone taps are legal.

The commissioner, Sir Paul Kennedy, reports to the Prime Minister and already carries out random inspections of some agencies legally allowed to see phone records under the existing voluntary scheme. Last year inspectors visited 22 councils already making 'significant' use of their powers' to access phone records. A report said the results were 'variable', but within the law.

"And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'"

Privacy watchdog the Information Commissioner, which has responsibly for protecting personal information and policing the Data Protection Act had virtually no role in the new laws.

A spokeswoman said its only function was to ensure 'data security' at the phone companies, adding: 'We have no oversight role over the release of this information.'

The Home Office said there were safeguards to ensure the new law was being used properly. Every authority had a nominated senior member of staff who was legally responsible for the use the phone data was put to, 'the integrity of the process' and for 'reporting errors'.

A spokesman said: 'The most detailed level of data can be accessed only by law enforcement agencies such as the police. More basic access is available to local authority bodies such as trading standards and environmental health who can only use these powers to prevent and detect crime.'

A spokesman for the Local Government Association, which represents councils across England and Wales, said: 'Councils would only use these powers in circumstances such as benefit fraud, when the taxpayer is being ripped off for many thousands of pounds.'

He added that it was 'very unlikely' the powers would be used against non-payers of council tax or for parking fines 'as the sums involved are not sufficient to justify the use of this sort of information or the costs involved in applying it'.

"Underneath the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me. They lie here, and here lie we, 'neath the spreading chestnut tree."

But some of you readers will still vote for the Tri-Axis parties that are now almost one in their unity to destroy Our Country and Our Freedoms. Why? Will just one of you tell me why?

"Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they they have rebelled they cannot become conscious."

SOURCE

Jena 6 - Racism On The March

2007-09-22T05:28:00.000-04:00

Racism should, at all times, be condemned. However, the black students are (no longer) the victims in this case. They turned themselves from victims into aggressors and they should be punished for it. Was it an attempt to murder the victim? I don’t know, it’s not likely. Second degree battery? Quite more likely.

The Jena six are no martyrs for the cause of Civil Rights. They are no heroes. They’re a bunch of cowards who don’t dare take on someone that can actually fight back. Instead of fighting against six others, they singled out one white and beat him. Would Martin Luther King Jr. have supported their crime? I don’t think so. He advocated non-violence, not beating up a single individual with a group of six.

Racism should be fought against, and Jena obviously has some major problems. Excusing the outrageous behavior of criminals, however, isn’t the way to do so.

The Jena Six Affair is nothing more than a disgusting display of Black Racism On Parade that is led by degenerate race baiting poverty pimps like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson who approve of the assault of whites by blacks and are supported by the Elite Leftard Media that totally ignores the recent murder of two whites at the hands of Black Racists in Tennessee.

*CLICK TO ENLARGE

A Revolting Story of Black Racism Ignored By The Leftard Media

The bottom line to this sorry Jena Six Affair and the Black Racist Murders in Tennessee is that the Leftard Media and Establishment in America has given its stamp of approval of all criminal acts by blacks no matter how terrible as long as the victims are white. I wonder how soon American whites will have to lock themselves in their homes in fear of black criminals who are allowed to rape, rob and murder by a criminal justice system afraid to hold them accountable? In South Africa we see a perfect example of what happens when the criminal justice system looks the other way. Do we want this for America? If not, this country must address the very real problem of Black Racism that targets whites as victims who should not be protected by law.

Video: Sean Hannity At Fox News Discusses Black Racism

THE LIBERATION OF IRAQ

2007-09-14T09:09:00.000-04:00

It's a hard life being an Evil Imperialist Running Dog American Stormtrooper. I mean everyone in Iraq hates you and wants to kill you. The children run from you as soon as they hear the approach of American combat boots. Iraqi mothers tell their children: "Honey, be nice or I'll send the Americans after you!"

The whole shocking story of American soldiers running amok against the most innocent in Iraq -- The children.

Yes, folks -- These Evil American Stormtroopers are even turning the Innocent Children Of Iraq...Into...SHOCK! RUSH BABIES!!! THE HORROR! THE HORROR! Don't believe me, Infidel? Well just click on the picture and read the little yellow sign.

THE LIBERATION OF IRAQ (Video)

General Petraeus Reports To The Republic

2007-09-11T12:50:00.000-04:00

Anyone tuning in to David Petraeus's congressional testimony earlier today hoping for an exciting showdown would have been a bit disappointed. The general's delivery was low key and more than a bit monotonous; one of his favorite phrases is "This chart shows…."—and if C-SPAN's cameras had briefly cut away from their close frame around Petraeus and actually shown us the charts, I'm not sure whether it would have made the presentation more lively, or less.

There is a deeper reason why today's testimony was less than exciting: most of the content of that testimony was already known and expected beforehand. General Petraeus was merely repeating facts which have already been well-publicized and which have already had a decisive impact on the debate.

This is not an accident. Petraeus has gone to a lot of trouble to make sure that those facts were known and repeated. NRO has an interesting little article on Petraeus's deliberate engagement with the media as another front in the war, which has led him to be very active in bringing reporters to places like Anbar province to see the evidence of our progress there. The far left is screaming, of course, that Petraeus has therefore been "manipulating" the media to make it look as if there has been more progress than there really is. They don't like this because their job is to manipulate the media to make it look as if everything is hopeless—and he has thwarted their efforts.

Perhaps all of this is why the style of General Petraeus's testimony is so deliberately low key and restrained. He has already won the media battle, so why seem to be trying to hard to push his viewpoint?

His testimony had only one line with a distinctively sharp political edge to it. Democratic leaders in Congress had spent the past week describing Petraeus's report as the "Bush report" and slandering the general as a subservient mouthpiece for the administration. So he began his testimony with this: "At the outset, I would like to note that this is my testimony. Although I have briefed my assessment and recommendations to my chain of command, I wrote this testimony myself. It has not been cleared by, nor shared with, anyone in the Pentagon, the White House, or Congress." Well, that ought to clear that up.

For the record, here are the key points of Petraeus's testimony.

The first point was actually phrased somewhat better in the general's recent letter to his troops (the link is to a PDF), in which he stated that "we have achieved tactical momentum and wrested the initiative from our enemies." In his opening statement to Congress, he used the somewhat less expressive words "substantial progress" and described the progress this way:

[T]he military objectives of the surge are, in large measure, being met…. Coalition and Iraqi forces have dealt significant blows to Al Qaeda-Iraq. Though Al Qaeda and its affiliates in Iraq remain dangerous, we have taken away a number of their sanctuaries and gained the initiative in many areas.

We have also disrupted Shia militia extremists, capturing the head and numerous other leaders of the Iranian-supported Special Groups, along with a senior Lebanese Hezbollah operative supporting Iran's activities in Iraq….

Additionally, in what may be the most significant development of the past 8 months, the tribal rejection of Al Qaeda that started in Anbar Province and helped produce such significant change there has now spread to a number of other locations as well.

Based on all this and on the further progress we believe we can achieve over the next few months, I believe that we will be able to reduce our forces to the pre-surge level of brigade combat teams by next summer without jeopardizing the security gains that we have fought so hard to achieve.

Beyond that, while noting that the situation in Iraq remains complex, difficult, and sometimes downright frustrating, I also believe that it is possible to achieve our objectives in Iraq over time, though doing so will be neither quick nor easy.

He said a little bit more about the coalition's success in convincing the Sunni tribes to switch loyalties and fight al Qaeda, but he did not have to say much because this story has already been widely reported. That's the advantage of having events on the ground on your side.

The upshot of the testimony was that Petraeus is using the current success to buy at least six more months. At the current rate of success, he told Congress, the US should be able by next summer to reduce its forces back to the number that were deployed before the surge began. Beyond that, he said, the goal was to go from "leadership" to "partnering" to "overwatch"—that is, to go from US troops leading the fight against the insurgency, to our troops sharing the work equally with Iraqi forces, to the US merely supporting and supervising Iraqi forces. This would mean further reductions in our commitment of troops to Iraq. But on this issue Petraeus was very firm.

Force reductions will continue beyond the pre-surge levels of brigade combat teams that we will reach by mid-July 2008; however, in my professional judgment, it would be premature to make recommendations on the pace of such reductions at this time. In fact, our experience in Iraq has repeatedly shown that projecting too far into the future is not just difficult, it can be misleading and even hazardous….

In view of this, I do not believe it is reasonable to have an adequate appreciation for the pace of further reductions and mission adjustments beyond the summer of 2008 until about mid-March of next year. We will, no later than that time, consider factors similar to those on which I based the current recommendations, having by then, of course, a better feel for the security situation, the improvements in the capabilities of our Iraqi counterparts, and the enemy situation.

Translation: I just bought another six months to fight the war. See you again next March.

The only really interesting new aspect of Petraeus's testimony was the full extent to which our military leaders—and, presumably, their civilian superiors—now see the war in Iraq as a Cold War style proxy battle with Iran. Petraeus confirmed what I have suspected—that, as we win against al-Qaeda and the Sunni insurgency, US forces will increasingly turn their attention to the Shiite militias—and he described that conflict in the following terms.

In the past six months we have also targeted Shia militia extremists, capturing a number of senior leaders and fighters, as well as the deputy commander of Lebanese Hezbollah Department 2800, the organization created to support the training, arming, funding, and, in some cases, direction of the militia extremists by the Iranian Republican Guard Corps' Qods Force. These elements have assassinated and kidnapped Iraqi governmental leaders, killed and wounded our soldiers with advanced explosive devices provided by Iran, and indiscriminately rocketed civilians in the International Zone and elsewhere. It is increasingly apparent to both Coalition and Iraqi leaders that Iran, through the use of the Qods Force, seeks to turn the Iraqi Special Groups into a Hezbollah-like force to serve its interests and fight a proxy war against the Iraqi state and coalition forces in Iraq.

On this issue, US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker added more detail, particularly about the consequences of a congressionally mandated American retreat from Iraq:

I am certain that abandoning or drastically curtailing our efforts will bring failure, and the consequences of such a failure must be clearly understood by us all…. Undoubtedly, Iran would be a winner in this scenario, consolidating its influence over Iraqi resources and possibly territory. The Iranian president has already announced that Iran will fill any vacuum in Iraq.

So yes, our leaders are aware that Iran is the real, long-term enemy we're fighting in Iraq—even though they have so far decided that we will fight Iran only piecemeal and indirectly. Crocker did at least take an effort to undo one bit of damage caused by his superiors at the State Department. Condoleezza Rice has authorized multiple meetings with Iranian envoys in an attempt to convince them to "help" in stabilizing Iraq. Crocker burst any fantasy that this is likely to happen, stating flatly that "Iran plays a harmful role in Iraq." Well, of course it does.

For his part, General Petraeus concluded his testimony by reminding Congress that if we want to win a war, we have to be willing to commit to it for the long haul: In describing the recommendations I have made, I should note again that, like Ambassador Crocker, I believe Iraq's problems will require a long-term effort. There are no easy answers or quick solutions. And though we both believe this effort can succeed, it will take time.

As I said, none of this is a great surprise for anyone who has been following the news out of Iraq. It has all been widely reported and discussed over the past few months, and it has already had a powerful impact on the political debate. The result is that when Democratic leaders returned from Congress's August recess, they found they had lost all political momentum to end the war and they did not have enough votes to cut off funding for the surge.

The desperation of the anti-war left can be seen in the fact that they have had to resort to character assassination of Petraeus. The anti-war group MoveOn has gone so far as to take out an ad in the New York Times—to be published on September 11, no less—denouncing America's top battlefield commander with the slanderous moniker "General Betray-Us." And the same politicians who, as House Minority Leader John Boehner reminds us, used to lecture about the need to "listen to the generals" have declared their refusal to listen to our top general in Iraq.

It is a foolish political strategy, especially given the respect Americans have for the officers of the world's most professional army. Indeed, public opinion polls show that 68% of Americans trust military officers to make decisions about the war—far more than trust the US Congress to do so. In a political battle between the Democratic leadership of Congress and General Petraeus, Petraeus will win—and the Democrats have decided to fight just such a battle.

But this foolish decision is just a small part of the Democrats' problem. Their bigger problem is that they have become "invested in defeat," to use a phrase that we are starting to hear frequently. Because they have declared so loudly and for so long that the war is hopelessly lost and all that we can do is organize an orderly retreat, any evidence of American success in Iraq will discredit them. They need a total failure in Iraq in order to survive politically.

This puts them fundamentally at odds with the American character and sense of life. Americans don't like to lose wars. As we have seen, they will turn against President Bush if they think he's losing the war—but if it looks like we're winning, or at least that we have regained some momentum toward victory, they will support the person who offers them the prospect of victory.

That's what General Petraeus has done—and in doing so, he has achieved as important a turning point in the battle for Washington, DC, and he has in the battle for Anbar province in Iraq.

The War On The War

2007-09-07T05:00:00.000-04:00

I will offer only a short issue today with a few paragraphs of observations and embedded links to news articles.

Part of the reason I'm working on administrative tasks today is because next week will be very busy. It will be the climax of the domestic political battle over the Iraq War. General Petraeus will give his report on the progress of the surge—a report that is almost certain to argue that the current counter-insurgency strategy is working and needs to be allowed to continue. The Democrats and the left-leaning media will then attempt to ignore, twist, or discredit that report.

I don't think they will succeed—but that won't stop them from trying. In fact, the press is already preparing the ground. The Washington Post has been particularly obvious in its campaign for defeat, filling every issue this week with a long article attempting to explain away any evidence of success in Iraq. One such article, for example, dismisses as a "Potemkin Village" an outdoor market in Baghdad that had been deserted a year ago and is now bustling with commerce after al-Qaeda fighters were routed from the neighborhood. Kimberly Kagan answers that dishonest argument here.

In a similar vein, the Democratic Congress released its own report on Iraq, critiqued here, which analyzes the progress of the surge according to standards engineered to guarantee the conclusion that it has failed.

But I don't think any of this is going to override the testimony of the top commander in Iraq—so the Democrats have now stooped to attempting to smear General Petraeus. The Washington Times reports on the Democrats' attempt to dismiss Petraeus as an unscrupulous mouthpiece for the Bush administration. How can they contradict the judgment of the top commander in the field? Easy: according to Nancy Pelosi, "The facts are self-evident that the progress is not being made."

The Democrats ran last November on a platform of defeat—and the party's leaders are staying loyal to that goal. But attacking Petraeus strikes me as a desperate expedient, and one that is likely to backfire. If this is what they're counting on, I think the Democrats are going to lose.

And remember that the stakes in this conflict go well beyond Iraq. A self-inflicted defeat in Iraq would be so demoralizing that it would quash any effort to assert our military power against the Iranian regime. But if we persist in our counter-insurgency strategy, further success might free up the military and political resources for a confrontation with Iran.

In fact, that process has already begun. As they begin to feel that they are once again backing a winning cause in Iraq, commentators on the right are emboldened and are beginning to focus more effort on, for example, advocating the bombing of terrorist training camps inside Iran.

Islam Critical Cartoon Banned In America

2007-08-25T19:46:00.000-04:00

Note to Opus readers: The Opus strips for August 26 and September 2 have been withheld from publication by a large number of client newspapers across the country, including Opus' host paper The Washington Post. MORE HERE

Berkeley Breathed, the raving Bushophobic Leftist cartoonist is banned by his own Neo-Commie pals in the Mainstream Media. Hmmm? What should we do? Since the Democommie Ministry Of Truth won't touch this cartoon, then how about a Rightist Blogburst that will surely get the attention of the World Hordes Of Unwashed And Always Pissed Off Muslims who will surely go crazy, run amok, riot, burn American flags and an embassy or two, and have an Imam somewhere to issue a Fatwa against Comrade Breathed.

Mo Toons Redux?

Is America's Future Islamic?

2007-08-25T17:54:00.000-04:00

Is America's future Islamic?

It’s the nation's fastest growing religion, based on noble traditions and compassionate principles, yet Islam can still be tainted by mistrust and misunderstanding. Here Winston Smith argues that an Islamic America would be a better place.

The noise from the expectant crowd hushed to a murmur as an open-backed lorry that had driven slowly up the Washington Mall – known since the Islamic revolution of 2050 as The Way of the Martyrs – nudged its way through the thousands gathered in Mohammad Sidique Khan Square in Front of the Capitol Building. On the lorry, two masked guards held a young man, black hood over his head; a quiver running through the material suggested he knew what was coming.

The lorry halted by the plinth that had once held the statue of George W. Bush – long since removed as an insult to Islam – and was now the place of public execution. A rope noose attached to a wire cable hung from a mechanised hoist. The main doors of what had been the U.S. Supreme Court were flung open and an Imam walked down the steps of the new Institute of Islamic Jurisprudence, opened only a week before by Sultan William Clinton III, Prince of Islam and protector of the faithful in America.

The official executioner placed a stepladder against the plinth. The lorry pulled up and the young man was pushed out, then forced up the ladder. The noose was forced over the condemned man’s head. The crowd chanted ‘Allahu akbar’ (God is greater than everything).The hoist driver put his finger on a green button …

Okay, not really – that’s a hysterical, right-wing nightmare of a future Muslim America : where an cruel alien creed is forced on a liberal country. A society where women are second-class citizens, same sex relationships a crime and Sharia law enforces terrible public disfigurement and death. But the reality is a long, long way from this dark vision.

According to the 2000 census there are 2,500,000 Muslims living in the USA. The majority of Muslims live in the east of the nation and by 2012, CAIR estimates that the Muslim population will be over six million. There are plans afoot (though no formal application has yet been submitted) to build the USA's biggest mosque – capable of welcoming 40,000 worshippers on the site of Ground Zero for 9/11 where the World Trade Center once stood, a move which has prompted predictable outrage from some quarters. Consequently, Muslim disillusionment with a reactionary and often ill-informed press is at an all time high.

But rather than fear the inevitable changes this will bring to America, or buy in to a racist representation of all Muslims as terrorists, we should recognise both what Islam has given this nation already, and the advantages it would bring across a wide range of areas in the future.

Public health

On the surface, Islamic health doesn’t look good: the 2000 census showed that 24 per cent of Muslim women and 21 per cent of Muslim men suffered long-term illness and disability. But these are factors of social conditions rather than religion. In fact, Islam offers Americans potential health benefits: the Muslim act of prayer is designed to keep worshippers fit, their joints supple and, at five times a day, their stomachs trim. The regular washing of the feet and hands required before prayers promotes public hygiene and would reduce the transmission of superbugs in America's hospitals.

Alcohol is haram, or forbidden, to Muslims. As America is above the world average for alcohol-related deaths in males, with 17.6 per 100,000 people, turning all the nation's alcohol bars into juice bars would have a massive positive effect on public health. Forbid alcohol throughout the country, and you’d avoid many of the 52,000 alcohol-related deaths and the $7.3 billion national bill for alcohol-related crime and disorder each year.

Ecology

‘The world is green and beautiful,’ said the prophet Muhammad, ‘and Allah has appointed you his guardian over it.’ The Islamic concept of halifa or trusteeship obliges Muslims to look after the natural world and Muhammad was one of the first ever environmentalists, advocating hima – areas where wildlife and forestry are protected. So we could expect more public parks under Islam, but halifa also applies to recycling: in 2006, 12,000 Muslims attended a series of sermons at the Tampa Bay Mosque in Florida explaining the theological evidence for a link between behaving in an environmentally sustainable way and the Islamic faith.

Education

Presently, Muslim students perform less well than non-Muslim students. In inner Dearborn, Michigan 37 per cent of 16 to 24-year-old Muslims have no qualifications (the figure for the general population of the same age and location is 25 per cent). When it comes to university education the picture is equally gloomy: 16 to 24-year-old Muslims are half as likely to have degree level or above qualification than other inner Dearborn young people.

Again, social factors rather than religion have led to this state of affairs. Young Muslims in Dearborn are often of south Asian origin and therefore more likely to live in households where English is not the first language, more likely to encounter racism (both intentional and unintentional) during their education, and more likely to suffer from poverty and bad housing conditions.

But Tahir Alam, education spokesman for the CAIR, claims Muslim children do better in their own faith schools than in the mainstream state sector: ‘Muslim schools have their own distinct ethos. They use the children’s faith and heritage as primary motivators to provide the backdrop for their education and behaviour. This ethos is consistent with the messages that children are getting at home, so it is a very coherent operation between the home and the school.’

If Islam became the dominant religion in America,the same ethos could be applied to schooling across swathes of underprivileged and deprived areas of the city. This could have a revolutionary effect on educational achievement and, perhaps just as importantly, general levels of discipline and self-respect among America's young people. While controversy rages over faith schools, there are 37 Muslim schools in the USA. As of 2004, only five were state schools, but there is growing pressure to bring more into the state sector which, according to Alam, will ‘help raise achievement for many sectors of the Muslim community. Many private Muslim schools are under-resourced and if they can be brought into the state sector this valuable experience can be extended to more children.’

Food

Application of halal (Arabic for ‘permissible’) dietary laws across America would free us at a stroke from our addiction to junk food, and the general adoption of a south Asian diet rich in fruit juice, rice and vegetables with occasional mutton or chicken would have a drastic effect on obesity, hyperactivity, attention deficit disorders and associated public health problems. As curry is already Dearborn, Michigan's favourite food, it would be a relatively easy process to encourage the adoption of such a diet. Not eating would be important as well. The annual fasting month of Ramadan instills self-discipline, courtesy and social cohesion. And Americans would benefit philosophically and physically from even a short period when we weren’t constantly ramming food into our mouths.

Inter-faith relations

In an Islamic America, Christians and Jews – with their allegiance to the Bible and the Talmud – would be protected as ‘peoples of the book’. Hindus and Sikhs manage to live alongside a large Muslim population in India, so why not here? Although the USA has a long tradition of religious bigotry against, for instance, Roman Catholics, it is reasonable to assume that under the guiding hand of Islam a civilised accommodation could be made among faith groups in America. This welcoming stance already exists in the capital in the form of the City Circle (see Yahya Birt interview), which encourages inter-faith dialogue and open discussion.

Arts

Some of the finest art in the USA is already Islamic. The Jameel Gallery at the V&A houses ‘ceramics, textiles, carpets, metalwork, glass and woodwork, which date from the great days of the Islamic caliphate of the eighth and ninth century’ up until the turn of the last century. Or take a free daily tour of the Addis Gallery of Islamic art (at the Smithsonian). Dearborn-based Nasser David Khalili, an Iranian-born Jew, has amassed what is considered to be the world’s largest private collection of Islamic art. Islamic influences have also flourished in other areas of the arts, with novelists, comedians (Birmingham, Alabama-born Shazia Mirza was an instant hit in Hollywood), and music (from rappers Mecca2Medina on, to the less in-your-face Yusuf Islam).

Social justice

Each Muslim is obliged to pay zakat, a welfare tax of 2.5 per cent of annual income, that is distributed to the poor and the needy. If the working population of the USA, 152.5 million, was predominantly Muslim this would produce approximately $3.5 trillion each year. More importantly, everyone would be obliged to consider those Americans who haven’t shared their good fortune. The USA would become a little less cruel.

Race relations

Under Islam all persons are equal. Once you have submitted to Allah you are a Muslim – it doesn’t matter what color you are. End of story.

Of Islam And Christianity

2007-08-24T18:54:00.000-04:00

Since it's Friday, I'll just offer a short commentary drawing your attention to two recent articles I found very interesting.

I have heard some people call for a Muslim "Reformation," implying that Islam needs to go through the same process Christianity went through when the Protestants undermined the authority of the Catholic Church. But I have always found the analogy to be deeply flawed. The great Protestant reformers—men like Luther and Calvin—were religious fanatics who wanted to back to the "old-time religion." They were not advocates of religious liberty, and they ushered in more than a century of religious wars. So if there is a Muslim Reformation today, the closest equivalents of Luther and Calvin are probably Ibn Wahab and Sayyid Qutb—the founders of modern Islamic fundamentalism.

That is the argument offered in an excellent article in the Washington Post.

There have been those who have argued that modern Christianity is just as dangerous as Islamic fundamentalism and even that America is in imminent danger of collapsing into a Christian theocracy. As a corrective to this wild exaggeration, I offer a fascinating overview by Christopher Hitchens of how he was received an a book tour for his best-selling anti-religious screed God Is Not Great—a tour that deliberately took him deep into the Bible Belt and uncovered a deeper reserve of secularism than many of us might have suspected. After an appearance in Little Rock, Arkansas, he observes: "At the end of the event I discover something that I am going to keep on discovering: half the people attending had thought that they were the only atheists in town."

One of the things Hitchens notes is the generally polite reception atheists are given by religious believers. I have noticed this, too. I have gotten death threats from environmentalists, but when I upset Christians, they mostly tell me that they are going to pray for me. They are almost annoyingly nice.

Yes, the influence of religion is rising, relatively to its low point at the middle of the last century. But thankfully we have a very long way to go to get to that theocracy.

We Are Winning In Iraq: LET'S QUIT!

2007-08-24T05:36:00.000-04:00

President Bush on Fire at VFW; Vietnam Comparison Angers Libs

August 22, 2007

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Boy, the president was on fire today at the VFW convention in Kansas City. By the way, for the Hollywood liberals out there, VFW, Veterans of Foreign Wars, are soldiers -- rapists, murderers, barbarians, in your eyes. He has ticked off the Democrats. We're working on the sound bites of the speech even now, ladies and gentlemen. Even after the program has begun, we continue working for you, and, of course, ourselves. But he essentially said, "All right, you want to compare Iraq to Vietnam? Well, then let's compare Iraq to Vietnam," and he went on a tear about the millions of people who lost their lives, innocent people, when we left Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. He quoted the New York Times columnists who were saying the problem with America in the world is America's presence, particularly in Vietnam. It was a Vietnam-era column. He gave a history lesson. It was almost like this show. He went around the world. He described how the defeatists said the imperial Japanese government would never, ever be a democracy, we were silly to think that that could ever happen. He cited all the pessimists, he quoted them, and then he cited history and reality as it is today to show that they were all wrong. Soviet Union, South Korea, North Korea, you name it, he was just on fire.

Of course, it's got 'em all upset out there on the left. The text of the speech was released in advance. He even went after Carl Levin, not by name. He said, (paraphrasing) "Look, the Iraqis are a functioning democracy. It's up to them to decide who their leaders are, not a bunch of politicians in Washington." This is because Levin came back after he toured Iraq and said Maliki's gotta go, the prime minister of Iraq, Nouri al-Maliki, gotta go, and Bush said screw you, bud. By the way, Maliki has said the same thing, which is also terrific. He lashed out at US criticism saying no one has the right to impose timetables on his elected government and his country can find friends elsewhere. Mr. Prime Minister, you don't have any friends in the Democrat Party in this country. You have friends in certain Americans. You have friends in the White House. In the text of the president's speech he links withdrawal from Vietnam to the rise of the murderous Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia and asserts that the American pullout caused pain and suffering for millions. He said, "Whatever your position in that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like boat people, reeducation camps, and killing fields."

Well, "Those assertions are already being criticized by Democrats, including the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, and at least one historian, Robert Dallek, a biographer of presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. Both said Mr. Bush was ignoring fundamental differences between the conflicts. Citing Cambodia in particular, Mr. Dallek said in an interview that the mayhem under the Khmer Rouge 'was a consequence of our having gone into Cambodia and destabilized that country,'" which is exactly what Bush said today, he said what they're going to say, and they are saying it. When I had my meeting with him, he was on fire about this. I had a sense something was up. I just got a sense that the gloves were about to come off here, but I didn't want to speculate on that because it was just a perception. But he took me around the world and gave me a current events lesson as to what's happening in various capitals and countries. He told me he was meeting with some leaders at NATO or European Union people. He had a couple of them come up to him and say essentially here what Dallek is saying: The problem with the world is the US goes too many places, and our interventionism destabilizes all these places that otherwise would be full of peace and tranquility. And Bush told me, "I looked at him right in the eye and I said the American people and the United States government are the solution. We are not the problem." And that's what he was saying today. That was the theme of this speech.

He also said that the Iraqi legislature's passed 60 different pieces of legislation and the creation of a budgeting process that would distribute oil revenue despite the lack of an oil revenue sharing law, which is one of the key benchmarks that Congress had set for the Iraqi parliament to meet. Congress had set the benchmark. They set these benchmarks in a way that would be almost impossible, which gave them the cover to start running around now talking about the political process. But did you see the headline in The Washington Post today? "Democrats Refocus Message on Iraq After Military Gains. Criticism Shifts to Factional Unrest." A coordinated effort here between the Drive-Bys and the Democrats. Listen to this opening line -- and you know this because I have told you this weeks ago before the Congress went on recess. "Democratic leaders in Congress had planned to use August recess to raise the heat on Republicans to break with President Bush on the Iraq war. Instead, Democrats have been forced to recalibrate their own message in the face of recent positive signs on the security front, increasingly focusing their criticisms on what those military gains have not achieved: reconciliation among Iraq's diverse political factions."

Folks, they have to stay invested in defeat right now for the sake of holding Congress. The kook base that they think determined the outcome of the '06 election (it's not the case, but that's what they think) their kook fringe lunatic base is going to force them to continue this position. They're going to try to recalibrate with the help of the Drive-Bys. They're going to try to have it both ways so that they can be supportive and acknowledging of the success everybody admits is occurring on the military side. But it doesn't matter in the end. We should still get out.

"And now the Democrats, along with wavering Republicans, will face an advertising blitz from Bush supporters determined to remain on offense. A new pressure group, Freedom's Watch, will unveil a month-long, $15 million television, radio and grass-roots campaign today designed to shore up support for Bush's policies before the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, lays out a White House assessment of the war's progress. ... The leading Democratic candidates for the White House have fallen into line with the campaign to praise military progress while excoriating Iraqi leaders for their unwillingness to reach political accommodations," that Democrats in Congress demand that they make. We need benchmarks for the US Congress, folks. They're not doing anything, which is good. It's great when they don't get anything done, but they are little ankle biters. They're out there harassing the president, trying to do all these investigations.

One more reference to the president's speech, because they did release the text early. This was in the Los Angeles Times. "Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, criticized Bush's speech, saying the president 'continues to play the American people for fools. The only relevant analogy of Vietnam to Iraq is this: In Iraq, just as we did in Vietnam, we are clinging to a central government that does not and will not enjoy the support of the people.'" The people elected them! "Unless the president acts on that lesson from history and works toward a federal solution in Iraq, there is no prospect that when we leave, we will leave anything stable behind." Then they quote this historian again, Robert Dallek. "It just boggles my mind, the distortions I feel are perpetrated here by the president. We were in Vietnam for 10 years. We dropped more bombs on Vietnam than we did in all of World War II in every theater. We lost 58,700 American lives, the second-greatest loss of lives in a foreign conflict. And we couldn't work our will."

What the Democrats don't like, and what the left doesn't like, is they want the Iraq-Vietnam comparison all to themselves. They want to be able to be in control of the narrative of that comparison, and they want to be able to say, "See, we lost in Vietnam because we had no business being there. We destabilized the region, and we have no business being in Iraq. The president lied to us and people have died because the president lied," blah, blah. So when the president gives a speech and says, "Okay, you want some comparisons? Here's the one that counts." They just erupt and they have conniption fits.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We have some President Bush sound bites ready to go here, and I really want to you hear these. I've asked Cookie to put together a couple of more from where he was quoting all the doomsayers, particularly in the media, during the Vietnam era. He cited a New York Times article or column. He didn't name the reporter. I'm having her dig that up. It was a powerful moment. I want you also to hear some of the things he said about Japan and how, after World War II, people said, "You're crazy! You're not going to make them a democracy. It's not going to happen. The Japanese don't have it in 'em." His point was that the doom-and-gloom crowd is consistent, and they've been consistent throughout history, and they've been consistently wrong, and yet they are still considered the "experts." He kept throwing that word around, with little quote marks in his voice: "Experts." You could tell he clearly disdains the "experts" that are cited by the other side. Here is one of his explanations of what happened after we left Vietnam and why we should not repeat it.

THE PRESIDENT: Many argued that if we pulled out, there would be no consequences for the Vietnamese people. The world would learn just how costly these misimpressions would be. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge began a murderous rule in which hundreds of thousands of Cambodians died by starvation and torture and execution. In Vietnam, former allies of the United States and government workers and intellectuals and businessmen were sent off to prison camps, where tens of thousands perished. Three decades later there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left. There's no debate in my mind that the veterans from Vietnam deserve the high praise of the United States of America. (applause)

RUSH: Right on. Right on. Right on. We cut the applause here in the interests of time, brevity being the soul of wit. Here's bite number two.

THE PRESIDENT: There's another price to our withdrawal from Vietnam, and we can hear it in the words of the enemy we face in today's struggle, those who came to our soil and killed thousands of citizens on September the 11th, 2001. Osama bin Laden declared that the American people had risen against their government's war in Vietnam, and they must do the same today. Bin Laden has declared that the war in Iraq "is for you or us to win. If we win it, it means your disgrace and defeat forever." Iraq is one of the several fronts in this war on terror. But it's the central front. It's a central front for the enemy that attacked us and wants to attack us again, and it's the central front for the United States -- and to withdraw without getting the job done would be devastating. (applause)

RUSH: Democrats are just out there fuming over this. They think they own the comparison to Iraq and Vietnam. By the way, I hasten to add that they've failed to make it. They're out there having to backtrack. They've been outmaneuvered again. This Washington Post story: "Democrats Refocus Message on Iraq After Military Gains," they just opened the door right into their nose again before they had a chance to go in the doorway. So now they're going to "recalibrate." They want this kind of flexibility, and the Drive-Bys give it to them. The Drive-Bys will never make them stick to a position. "Oh, oh, surge is doing well! Dingy Harry and Pelosi, you've gotta come up with something! Recalibrate, here, so you can have it both ways. We'll help you out. We'll keep your base for you, and you can get on board with this thing because reality is reality. You can't sit there and deny that." But they've tried. Everything the Democrats and the Drive-Bys have done the past three and a half, four years, has been to create negative public opinion about the war. It's turning around, and it's gotta be disappointing to them that this has happened and it has failed, their efforts failed, now that they're clearly seen on the side of defeat. We're not going to let 'em. On this program, we're not going to let 'em get back on this side, folks. They may try to "recalibrate," but it ain't gonna work here. Our disgronificator will not let their calibration equipment succeed. It ain't going to happen here.

These people own their position on this program and we are going to continually play you audio of what they said in the past four months, six months especially. Especially if you go back to April, March, when the whole surge idea was first floated, they have been opposing it. They have said it can't win. They said it's already defeated, blah, blah, blah. Just yesterday, the surge just finally hit full force, in terms of manpower. So they're out there trying to recalibrate. One of the things they tried to do was to say that this administration's the equivalent of Nixon and Watergate, with all this corruption and all this executive privilege and all these things going on that nobody knows about, like the immigration bill the Democrats were in charge of. Nobody knew about that, and when we found out about it, it was toast. They tried to say that the Iraq war is just Vietnam, a quagmire, we're going nowhere -- and, why? Because they want us to lose, and they were happy we lost in Vietnam. What they've forgotten is, after they succeeded in pulling off the loss in Vietnam by de-funding it, they nominated a guy like George McGovern who lost in a landslide to the -- at the time, hated and despised -- Richard Nixon. Yet they still go back to that era and look at it as an era of glory for them, and they seem hell-bent on emulating it. So, president comes along, destroys their comparison between Iraq and Vietnam, and puts it in his own words and now they're running around fulminating and they're getting all these historians to speak, too, saying that Bush is out of his mind, doesn't know what he's talking about, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here's a little bite giving an interesting idea here of how many terrorists we are killing.

THE PRESIDENT: Day after day, hour after hour, they keep the pressure on the enemy that would do our citizens harm. We've overthrown two of the most brutal tyrannies in the world and liberated more than 50 million citizens. (applause) In Iraq, our troops are taking the fight to the extremists and radicals and murderers all throughout the country. Our troops have killed or captured an average of more than 1,500 Al-Qaeda terrorists and other extremists every month since January of this year. (applause)

RUSH: How about that? How about that? You know, ever since Vietnam, we don't get enemy casualty figures. You remember [General William] Westmoreland got sued over that because everybody said he was making them up. The Cronkites of the world were out there saying, "Ah, these battle figures and these enemy casualties, why, we don't necessarily believe this." So for policy reasons, those figures, exact figures are not announced. Now, since he said this... He told me this when we had a little meeting before dinner, and he gave me the monthly stats for July. I'm not going to repeat those. I mean, it's his province to do that, but he's said 1500 average a month captured and killed. He didn't give me the captured and kill total. He gave me the kill total. But that's still his province to talk about. Anyway, quick time-out. We've got a few more of these, followed by a brilliant bite by John Kerry -- who served in Vietnam, by the way -- to put all this in perspective.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Three more bites here to go, two of the president and one of John Kerry. This is the president reassuring the VFW members he's not going to abandon Iraq or the surge.

THE PRESIDENT: Today our troops are carrying out a surge that is helping bring former Sunni insurgents into the fight against extremists and radicals, into the fight against Al-Qaeda, into the fight against the enemy that would do us harm. As they take the initiative from the enemy, they have a question: Will their elected leaders in Washington pull the rug out from under them just as they're gaining momentum and changing the dynamic on the ground in Iraq? Here's my answer: We'll support our troops; we'll support our commanders, and we will give them everything they need to succeed. (applause)

RUSH: Right on, right on, right on, right on, right on, right on, right on. Now, you know, Carl Levin came out yesterday and said (summarized), "Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has gotta step down. The guy's incompetent. They're not meeting the political benchmarks. Yeah, the surge is working, I saw it with my own eyes, but this guy's gotta go," and Bush decided to reply to that in these remarks today.

THE PRESIDENT: Many are frustrated by the pace of progress in Baghdad, and I can understand this. As I noted yesterday, the Iraqi government is distributing oil revenues across its provinces, despite not having an oil revenue law on its books, but the parliament has passed about 60 pieces of legislation. Prime Minister Maliki's a good guy, good man with a difficult job, and I support him -- and it's not up to the politicians in Washington DC to say whether he will remain in his position. That is up to the Iraqi people who now live in a democracy and not a dictatorship! (wild applause)

RUSH: And they came to their feet in Kansas City with that remark! So with all this in perspective, the president laying out the genocidal scope of death in Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia after we left Vietnam. Unfinished business. Back on July 19th of this year, C-SPAN's Washington Journal hosted Senator John Kerry (who served in Vietnam) and he got a caller from Lubbock, Texas, on the Democrat line. The caller said, "I remember the horrible killings after Vietnam and the boat people coming over here, and I'd really hate to go off and leave our allies over in Iraq and I'm concerned about that."

KERRY: Let me just say to the first part of your question with respect to boat people and killing, everybody predicted a massive bloodbath in Vietnam. Uh, there was not a massive bloodbath in Vietnam. There were reeducation camps, and they weren't pretty and, and, and, you know, uh, nobody, you know, likes that kind of outcome. But on the other hand, I've met lot of people today who were in those education camps, who are thriving in the Vietnam of today.

RUSH: Well, let's come out for reeducation camps! I mean, if you're thriving in Vietnam after a reeducation camp, let's try 'em here! That may be what the Democrats can secure their future with is reeducation camps. If your kids, after 12 years of school and then college still don't get how wonderful liberals are, just send them to reeducation camps. Those were communist-run reeducation camps! He never met a communist he didn't want to defend. These people don't criticize communists. Talking about these reeducation camps, "They weren't pretty," he said. "You know, nobody likes that kind of outcome, but, on the other hand, I met a lot of people, they really went well through those things, and thriving well in Vietnam today." Everything is an either/or, BUT... There's an "and" or something. Yeah, nobody wants that, BUT... He just can't come out and say what they did was wrong. You know what this guy was saying when he got back from Vietnam. We don't have to go through that again. There wasn't a massive bloodbath in Vietnam? (sigh) I don't know. It's revisionist history. I think these people try to revise history. In the process of reviving it they end up believing the lies they are using to revise the truth of history.

RUSH: This is Andrew in San Diego. Andrew, greetings sir, you're on the EIB Network.

CALLER: Mr. Limbaugh, it's a pleasure to talk to you. I've been listening to you for about 14 years, which puts me in seventh grade, I think, when I began.

RUSH: A Rush Baby.

CALLER: A Rush Baby, proud one. I just wanted to thank you for inspiring me to teach high school a few years ago and you've also inspired me to join the military.

RUSH: Wow.

CALLER: So my point is, I guess, if there's any.... My mother and I woke up this morning and were reading the newspaper and we saw The Washington Post's article there on the Drudge Report. I said, "You know, mom, if there's any question left about the Democrats' patriotism and their willingness to play politics with my friends and, you know, your son eventually, when I go over to fight, there is no question left. They're willing to do anything and everything to remain in power," and I said, "So if you call them 'unpatriotic,' mom, it's okay." She said, "Well, but they'd get really offended at that," and I said, "Well, the truth is offensive most of the time to most of the people," but it's just absolutely ridiculous to me to watch these people, because I live right outside of DC now. I'm just visiting my family in San Diego. But to watch these people play games with my friends' lives and the lives, and the blood of the American people, I just don't understand it anymore.

RUSH: Yeah you do. You understand it.

CALLER: Eh.

RUSH: You may not want to believe that it's true, because it is so deeply disturbing and offensive. You understand it. You nailed it: They're playing politics with the lives of American troops.

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: They want to be able to "recalibrate their message." They want to be able to shift their message and have the media promote whatever the new calibration of the message suggests, so that they are able to stay on the offensive about this in whatever message they want. They're not being held accountable. The Drive-Bys give 'em a pass on this. People like you notice it. This would not have happened 18, 20 years ago. People like you notice it, so do the guys that you're going to serve with.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: They know all this is happening, and while this may not have demoralized the troops, it certainly has encouraged the enemy.

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: That is also unconscionable. It's also true that this bickering in Washington has led to some problems -- a Democrat even admitted this -- in the political solution moving forward.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: That's right. There was no massive bloodbath in Vietnam, no massive bloodbath in Cambodia, no massive bloodbath in China, no massive bloodbath in Soviet Union, Cuba, Rwanda, you name it! The tolerance for bloodbaths in the Democratic Party is stunning. Of course, they love the people, folks! They love the people more than we do -- because they tell us all the time, don't they?

END TRANSCRIPT

Rudy Giuliani Would Continue The Bush Foreign Policy

2007-08-23T09:25:00.000-04:00

Rudy Giuliani's campaign for the Republican presidential nomination is based on one big issue: his image as someone who will be tough in fighting the War on Terrorism. That is the issue that he hopes will be so important to Republican voters that they will agree to back a twice-divorced pro-choice candidate who wants to keep his religious views private, arguing that "My religious affiliation, my religious practices, and the degree to which I am a good or not-so-good Catholic, I prefer to leave to the priests."

I have been very sympathetic to his candidacy for precisely this reason. As an advocate for the "secular right"—a political viewpoint that favors free markets, a strong national defense, and strict separation of church and state—I think it would be terrific if Republican voters chose to regard the war as a higher priority than the agenda of the religious right.

But I have also noted that Giuliani's reputation as a "hawk" is based largely on his rhetoric and on his local leadership in New York City following the September 11 terrorist attacks. Yet he has not discussed in much detail either his foreign policy "grand strategy" nor the details of what he would do (and do differently) as president.

Now Giuliani has begun to do so, in a long article in Foreign Affairs.

The article clearly reveals Giuliani's appeal to the "hawks." The overall theme that emerges from the article is: peace through strength. Following up on the article's title, "Toward a Realistic Peace," Giuliani writes:

The first step toward a realistic peace is to be realistic about our enemies. They follow a violent ideology: radical Islamic fascism, which uses the mask of religion to further totalitarian goals and aims to destroy the existing international system. These enemies wear no uniform. They have no traditional military assets. They rule no states but can hide and operate in virtually any of them and are supported by some.

Above all, we must understand that our enemies are emboldened by signs of weakness. Radical Islamic terrorists attacked the World Trade Center in 1993, the Khobar Towers facility in Saudi Arabia in 1996, our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and the USS Cole in 2000. In some instances, we responded inadequately. In others, we failed to respond at all. Our retreat from Lebanon in 1983 and from Somalia in 1993 convinced them that our will was weak.

This is a good analysis of the nature of the enemy and how he was emboldened to attack us—with one glaring error. When Giuliani says of the Islamofascists that "they rule no states," he is forgetting Iran. (President Bush has done somewhat better; in a speech about a year ago, he described the Iranian regime as the equivalent of al-Qaeda taking over a large nation.)

I will return shortly to this issue of what to do about Iran, but Giuliani continues to do an excellent job of sketching out the consequences of defeat in our current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan:

We cannot predict when our efforts will be successful. But we can predict the consequences of failure: Afghanistan would revert to being a safe haven for terrorists, and Iraq would become another one—larger, richer, and more strategically located. Parts of Iraq would undoubtedly fall under the sway of our enemies, particularly Iran, which would use its influence to direct even more terror at US interests and US allies than it does today. The balance of power in the Middle East would tip further toward terror, extremism, and repression. America's influence and prestige—not just in the Middle East but around the world—would be dealt a shattering blow. Our allies would conclude that we cannot back up our commitments with sustained action. Our enemies—both terrorists and rogue states—would be emboldened. They would see further opportunities to weaken the international state system that is the primary defense of civilization. Much as our enemies in the 1990s concluded from our inconsistent response to terrorism then, our enemies today would conclude that America's will is weak and the civilization we pledged to defend is tired. Failure would be an invitation for more war, in even more difficult and dangerous circumstances.

Strength is also the issue on which Giuliani closes, invoking the disastrous policy of appeasement from the 1930s.

The 9/11 generation has learned from the history of the twentieth century that America must not turn a blind eye to gathering storms. We must base our trust on the actions, rather than the words, of others. And we must be on guard against overpromising and underdelivering. Above all, we have learned that evil must be confronted—not appeased—because only principled strength can lead to a realistic peace.

So what does Giuliani propose to do, specifically, to make the US strong and to put us "on the offensive" against terrorists? Among other things, he proposes to increase the size of the US military.

For 15 years, the de facto policy of both Republicans and Democrats has been to ask the US military to do increasingly more with increasingly less. The idea of a post-Cold War "peace dividend" was a serious mistake—the product of wishful thinking and the opposite of true realism. As a result of taking this dividend, our military is too small to meet its current commitments or shoulder the burden of any additional challenges that might arise. We must rebuild a military force that can deter aggression and meet the wide variety of present and future challenges. When America appears bogged down and unready to face aggressors, it invites conflict.

But the big question is: will this expanded military be used to go on the offensive against Iran? Iran is now clearly revealed as our central enemy, controlling an "Islamist Axis" with tentacles from the Mediterranean to the Himalayas. So what would Giuliani do about it?

It is revealing that his answer comes under the heading "Determined Diplomacy," in which he argues for the need to use diplomacy, but to make sure that diplomacy is backed by the credible threat of force.

America has been most successful as a world leader when it has used strength and diplomacy hand in hand. To achieve a realistic peace, US diplomacy must be tightly linked to our other strengths: military, economic, and moral. Whom we choose to talk to is as important as what we say. Diplomacy should never be a tool that our enemies can manipulate to their advantage. Holding serious talks may be advisable even with our adversaries, but not with those bent on our destruction or those who cannot deliver on their agreements.

Iran is a case in point. The Islamic Republic has been determined to attack the international system throughout its entire existence: it took US diplomats hostage in 1979 and seized British sailors in 2007 and during the decades in between supported terrorism and murder. But Tehran invokes the protections of the international system when doing so suits it, hiding behind the principle of sovereignty to stave off the consequences of its actions. This is not to say that talks with Iran cannot possibly work. They could—but only if we came to the table in a position of strength, knowing what we wanted.

The next US president should take inspiration from Ronald Reagan's actions during his summit with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavík in 1986: he was open to the possibility of negotiations but ready to walk away if talking went nowhere. The lesson is never talk for the sake of talking and never accept a bad deal for the sake of making a deal. Those with whom we negotiate—whether ally or adversary—must know that America has other options. The theocrats ruling Iran need to understand that we can wield the stick as well as the carrot, by undermining popular support for their regime, damaging the Iranian economy, weakening Iran's military, and, should all else fail, destroying its nuclear infrastructure.

This is a disappointment. In short, what Giuliani is offering is pretty much the same policy as the Bush administration: to engage in diplomatic negotiations in an attempt to convince Iran to drop its nuclear weapons programs and to stop supporting insurgents in Iraq—backed by the eventual threat of economic sanctions and air strikes. Giuliani brings to the issue of Iran no heightened sense of urgency, no need to rapidly accelerate our efforts to undermine the Islamic Republic.

The use of a Cold War analogy—Reagan's summit with Gorbachev—is revealing. Giuliani would continue to confront Iran on the slow, plodding Cold War model favored by the current administration: through proxy battles and the brinksmanship of diplomatic standoffs.

That's why "peace through strength" is the best way of summing up Giuliani's theme. He wants to fight our conflict with Iran while avoiding a "hot" war that would directly topple the Iranian regime. Instead, he wants to increase America's military and diplomatic strength and persist in our proxy wars against Iran in Iraq and Afghanistan, in the hope of collapsing the Iranian regime through indirect economic and military pressure, the way we did with the Soviet Union.

So why is Giuliani not more hawkish against Iran? A big clue is his repeated use of a phrase that constitutes another, largely implicit theme of the article. Throughout his essay, Giuliani repeatedly refers to "the international system." Here are a few examples:

"Civilization itself, and the international system, had come under attack by a ruthless and radical Islamist enemy."

"The second [key foreign policy challenge] will be to strengthen the international system that the terrorists seek to destroy."

"The purpose of this fight must be to defeat the terrorists and the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and to allow these countries to become members of the international system in good standing."

"A lasting, realistic peace will be achieved when more effective diplomacy, combined with greater economic and cultural integration, helps the people of the Middle East understand that they have a stake in the success of the international system."

"NATO should dedicate itself to confronting significant threats to the international system from territorial aggression to terrorism"

The stressed repetition makes it clear that "The international system" is not a mere stock phrase, and at several points Giuliani also refers to "the international state system" or "The sovereign state system." Giuliani never explains these phrases or defines exactly what they mean, but these formulations have the sound of specific catchphrases or "terms of art" taken from a larger theory of international relations.

And that is exactly what we find. A little digging reveals the origin and meaning of this appeal to "the international system"—and what it implies for Giuliani's foreign policy grand strategy.

So why is Rudy Giuliani not more hawkish against Iran? A big clue is his repeated use of a phrase that constitutes another, largely implicit theme of the article. Throughout his essay, Giuliani repeatedly refers to "the international system."…

The stressed repetition makes it clear that "the international system" is not a mere stock phrase, and at several points Giuliani also refers to "the international state system" or "the sovereign state system." Giuliani never explains these phrases or defines exactly what they mean, but these formulations have the sound of specific catchphrases or "terms of art" taken from a larger theory of international relations.

And that is exactly what we find. A little digging reveals the origin and meaning of this appeal to "the international system"—and what it implies for Giuliani's foreign policy grand strategy.

Recently, I posted a link to a brief profile of Yale professor and former diplomat Charles Hill, who has signed on as Giuliani's chief foreign policy advisor. Professor Hill is the source of Giuliani's new talk about the "international state system."

A quick search of the web turns up a 2005 essay by Hill in the Yale Israel Journal which explains what he means by "the international system" and how he applies that concept to the War on Terrorism. The title indicates we've hit paydirt: "The Islamist War on the International System."

Hill argues that there is "one big thing" our diplomats need to remember:

[T]he international order, the foundation on which world affairs have been organized and conducted for more than three centuries, is based on a system of sovereign states. Having forgotten this lesson of history, in recent decades we have allowed our international state system to be ignored, abused, and stretched dangerously out of shape. Nowhere is the decline of the state system—and the urgent need to revamp it—more significant than in today’s Middle East, where states across the region are threatened by militant Islamist radicals bent on destroying the current system and replacing it with an entirely different one. The extent to which these Islamists will be kept from reaching their goals and the chance that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be resolved peacefully ultimately depend on our ability to strengthen and reinvigorate the international system of states.

So what is the "international state system"? In slightly opaque academic style, Hill briefly sketches out that system.

[T]here is general acknowledgment that out of the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War and the subsequent Peace of Westphalia in 1648 a new state system was born: the world of Christendom transformed into a world of states….

The elements of the state system are conceptually clear and few in number, yet profound in their effect. On the most fundamental level, there is the state itself as the building block of international affairs. International law—which also emerged from the Thirty Years’ War by way of Grotius’ De Jure Belli ac Pacis of 1625—international conferences, and the organizations they spawn are all features of the system, while norms, an unattractive word for a precious achievement, have provided the vital, substantive fluid for the system. Finally, in order to control the religious sources of the terrible European wars of the seventeenth century, the system required that relations between states be conducted on a secular basis.

Of these, the one that is least spelled out is what Hill means by "the state itself as the building block of international affairs." From what I can tell, he is describing the premise that every area of the world should be under the control and sovereignty of a particular state, which is answerable for what happens there; as we shall see, this is the opposite of the anarchic concept of Islamic rule. The other "elements" of the "international system" are international law or "international norms"—that is, basic standards of expected behavior by states—and the concept of states as secular rather than religious institutions.

Typically, when you hear a career diplomat talk glowingly of the "international system" and describe it as the answer to all of our problems, you can bet that he is talking about the UN and urging the US to harness itself to the edicts of UN commissions and the Security Council—organizations that have proven to serve the interests of the tyrants and dictators who wield votes there, rather than the interests of the free world. But Hill is more ambiguous in his view of the UN, which he regards as having failed to serve its intended function of maintaining the "international system." (As for Giuliani, we will see his views on this subject in a moment.)

Reflecting the occupational hazards both of a diplomat and of an academic, Hill's style is a bit overly formal and stilted. He tends to express his ideas in vague, general, and formulaic terms. He is a little more lucid when talking extemporaneously, so a quote from the American Spectator profile is a little more comprehensible.

To Hill, one of the biggest challenges we face in fighting terrorism is that the international mechanisms that we have established to deal with past threats are not applicable to it. This is one of the key differences between the War on Terror and the major ideological conflict of the 20th century.

"The Cold War was of course a long war," Hill said. "It was an ideological war being waged against the international system by a communist ideology that opposed every element of the international system, starting with the state. But the communists did in some sense participate within the system. They did conduct diplomacy. They did have embassies. They did have a professional military. What we are facing today is a war being waged on us by an ideology that is just as virulent, just as vitriolic as communism, and maybe more so, in its views of the international system, and its determination to undermine it and to destroy it and to replace it. But it has none of the attributes. It does not conduct diplomacy. It doesn't apply by the laws of war. It has no professional army. It regards the state as an abomination. It regards democracy as an abomination."

What is needed, said Hill, is "an adjunct to the established international system that will deal with enemies, or combatants, that simply don't fit the kind of mechanisms that have been developed for decades and generations to deal with international conflicts."

Here is how Hill expresses the same point in writing:

Into the vacuum created by faltering or failed state authority [in places like Somalia and Afghanistan] has come an adversarial system: Radical Islamism and associated forces who oppose the state and state system, or who seize it for their own purposes. The Islamism discussed herein should be distinguished from Islam the religion in general as a violent and radical revolutionary ideology committed to destroying virtually all aspects of the international system and replacing it with a new “Islamic” order.

For some years it has been clear from the fatwas of Osama bin Laden and other prominent Islamists that they regard the concept of the state as an abomination. To them, the very idea of a state is un-Islamic. They envision the revival of a traditional form of pan-Islamic rule, the Caliphate, which would have no place for the state. In remote stateless parts of the world, from the southern islands of the Philippines to Afghanistan to Somalia to the Paraguay-Brazil-Argentina tri-border area, that they plan, train, and launch their operations….

What we are now witnessing is nothing short of a civil war in the Arab-Islamic world. On one side are those who, on the basis of Islamist beliefs, reject the international system of states, international law and organization, international values and principles, and diplomacy as a means to work through problems.

On the other side of this civil war are those regimes in the Arab-Islamic world that, however much they may have appeased, bought out, or propagandized the terrorists, have recognized that they are members of the international system of states and must find a way to reconcile Islamic beliefs and practices to it….

The state and its fate are at the heart of nearly every major issue in the Middle East and around the world…. From the global perspective, the stakes are enormous. If the Islamists can defeat the Middle Eastern states that seek to reform and work with the international system, we will be faced with another world war.

There is a significant element of truth to this view. It is similar to an observation I recently made in arguing that we have to learn how to fight and win counter-insurgency wars.

Consider how the threat of radical Islam differs from the old Middle Eastern threat of Arab nationalism. Arab nationalism was a blend of Communist and Fascist ideology that envisioned a united Arab dictatorship led by a military strongman—the role coveted by a succession of dictators, from Nasser to Saddam Hussein…. [N]ote that this old dictatorial vision was one of large armies, masses of bureaucrats, and the conventional conquest of Middle Eastern lands to be controlled by an organized, all-powerful state.

For all their talk of an Islamic "caliphate," today's Islamists do not really have such an organized vision. Their ideology is not taken from Lenin but from Mohammed—a cruder, more primitive source. It is a charter, not for a modern state, but for tribal gang warfare, and the rule of the Islamists has been dominated by the capricious whim of holy warriors, usually without much pretense of scientific organization or the rule of law.

This can be seen in many of the societies where Islamists have risen to power: their model of the ideal society has been on display in Somalia, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Gaza, and Waziristan. It is best described as anarcho-totalitarianism: total control over the individual, not by an organized state, but by roving criminal gangs of religious zealots.

But in looking back at those comments, I realized I should have made it clearer that there is one big exception to this general trend. Iran is the one place where Islamists have managed to combine their tyrannical rule with the trappings of traditional, organized state power—though Iran still chooses to fight us by supporting terrorist insurgencies elsewhere in the Middle East. Because Iran is a conventional state with a conventional military power, I advocate a conventional military confrontation with Iran (even as we use the unconventional tactics of counter-insurgency war to wipe out Iran's agents and allies in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere).

Curiously, however, Iran seems to be a major blind spot in Professor Hill's world view. In his entire article on the War on Terrorism, Iran is not mentioned at all. Why? Because it is a state within the "international state system"—and thus regarding it as the central enemy in the War on Terrorism would undermine his argument that the "strengthening of the international system" is the fundamental issue of the war.

I mentioned above that one of the occupational hazards of diplomats and academics is an opaque style of writing. The other occupational hazard is the substitution of process for substance. They say that when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The tools of diplomats are the protocols of international conferences and the etiquette of international "norms." The biggest issue is how states talk to one another—not the substantive goals which those states are organized to achieve. The professional diplomat is tempted to imagine that all of the world's problem could be solved if only leaders accepted the negotiating process managed by the diplomats.

But the "international system"—to the extent that such a system exists and to the extent that it is valuable—is simply one means to a far more important goal: protecting free nations by limiting the power of dictatorships. And the fundamental evil of "rogue states" like North Korea or Iran is not that they "defy the international community," but that they do so in order to preserve and export tyranny.

Judging from this article, Professor Hill's process-focused ideas about the "international system" do not provide the framework we need to identify and defeat the enemy in this war. After all, his theory does not allow him to identify the conclusion that is obvious from the facts on the ground: the central role of Iran in supporting Islamic terrorism and Islamist insurgencies in the greater Middle East. To make that identification requires an outlook that focuses on the substantive goals of states, rather than just the process by which they wrangle with one another at international conferences.

There is, however, one issue on which Hill does begin to grasp the importance of a government's substantive values. Remember that one of his "elements of the state system" is the requirement that "relations between states be conducted on a secular basis." He argues that the "international state system" has its origin in the end of the Catholic-versus-Protestant religious wars that ravaged Europe in the 17th century. He returns to that observation in the final paragraph of his essay.

In recent years there have been many signs that the international system is nearing collapse. The most ominous sign has been the return of religion—in the present case, Islamism—as a cause of major warfare. The lesson of history that must be recalled today is that the modern age began with an international system that enabled states to cooperate without the non-negotiable pressure generated by differing religions. International affairs have been conducted within such a system ever since. A thousand years of confrontation and conflict between the Islamic world and Christendom was followed by more than a century of intra-Christian warfare that produced an essentially secular international system for Europe, and over time that system was adopted and worked well throughout the world. The system is far from perfect, and international thinkers have longed to replace it. But it is all that we have at present, and history teaches that we should shore it up, defend it, and make it work as best we can. A solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict depends on it, as does the stability and future of the rest of the world.

The idea that relations between states should be secular in nature, and that an imperial religious agenda has no place in the international system, is a vital concept that certainly ought to be applied to the current conflict. The answer to Islamofascism is precisely the concept of secular government, which we should seek to export and enforce throughout the Muslim world. It is also an issue that we might expect to resonate with a leader like Giuliani, who is essentially a secular politician who regards his religious convictions as a private matter.

And that leaves us with one final question. How deeply is Giuliani influenced by Charles Hill's theory of the "international state system" as the fundamental issue in the War on Terrorism? How does that theory influence Giuliani's own foreign-policy ideas, and to what extent are his views better than Hill's?

How deeply is Giuliani influenced by Charles Hill's theory of the "international state system" as the fundamental issue in the War on Terrorism? How does that theory influence Giuliani's own foreign-policy ideas, and to what extent are his views better than Hill's?

Giuliani's Foreign Affairs essay lays out his "grand strategy," a term that refers to a nation's highest-level foreign policy agenda, a strategy that integrates our military, diplomatic, and political strategies across the globe.

While Professor Hill tends to fall into the usual diplomatic error of focusing on "the international state system" rather than the kinds of states within that system and their goals, Giuliani does somewhat better. He accepts one of the biggest good ideas that President Bush has brought to America's grand strategy: the idea that America's national security is served by the promotion of liberty throughout the world.

At the core of all Americans is the belief that all human beings have certain inalienable rights that proceed from God but must be protected by the state. Americans believe that to the extent that nations recognize these rights within their own laws and customs, peace with them is achievable. To the extent that they do not, violence and disorder are much more likely. Preserving and extending American ideals must remain the goal of all US policy, foreign and domestic.

Giuliani's only concession to the current political backlash against President Bush is to say that the "idealism" of the Forward Strategy of Freedom must be "balanced" by "realism." Yet he explicitly refuses to embrace the old "realist" school of foreign-policy—the kind that dismissed the moral character of foreign governments as irrelevant and sought instead to achieve a pragmatic "balance of powers" within the international system. By contrast, Giuliani says,

A realistic peace is not a peace to be achieved by embracing the "realist" school of foreign policy thought. That doctrine defines America's interests too narrowly and avoids attempts to reform the international system according to our values. To rely solely on this type of realism would be to cede the advantage to our enemies in the complex war of ideas and ideals. It would also place too great a hope in the potential for diplomatic accommodation with hostile states.

All that Giuliani takes from the "realists" is the notion that we "cannot achieve peace by promising too much or indulging false hopes"—in effect, Giuliani's acknowledgement of the critics of President Bush's foreign policy, which assumed that a free society would rise in Iraq quickly after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and with little need for military support from the United States.

This does involve one substantive difference between Giuliani and Bush. Where Bush emphasizes "democracy," Giuliani emphasizes "good governance." Here is how he puts it:

America has a clear interest in helping to establish good governance throughout the world. Democracy is a noble ideal, and promoting it abroad is the right long-term goal of US policy. But democracy cannot be achieved rapidly or sustained unless it is built on sound legal, institutional, and cultural foundations. It can only work if people have a reasonable degree of safety and security. Elections are necessary but not sufficient to establish genuine democracy. Aspiring dictators sometimes win elections, and elected leaders sometimes govern badly and threaten their neighbors. History demonstrates that democracy usually follows good governance, not the reverse….

The election of Hamas in the Palestinian-controlled territories is a case in point. The problem there is not the lack of statehood but corrupt and unaccountable governance. The Palestinian people need decent governance first, as a prerequisite for statehood. Too much emphasis has been placed on brokering negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians—negotiations that bring up the same issues again and again. It is not in the interest of the United States, at a time when it is being threatened by Islamist terrorists, to assist the creation of another state that will support terrorism. Palestinian statehood will have to be earned through sustained good governance, a clear commitment to fighting terrorism, and a willingness to live in peace with Israel.

All of this is good. The Bush administration has too often regarded "democracy" as a magic solution that can bypass the need for "sound legal, institutional, and cultural foundations." And Giuliani's application of his ideas to the Palestinians is particularly apt. The big news from this section is that Giuliani formally disavows the goal of creating a Palestinian state, instead calling for the creation of "decent governance" first—though he provides no answer to the question of who, other than the Israelis, would be capable of creating such a government there.

In this respect, he is significantly better than Hill. In his 2005 essay, Hill argues that "negotiations [between Israel and the Palestinians] have not made significant progress, despite some apparent high points, because there has been no state partner to sit across the table from Israel." He then goes on to laud the Bush administration's "road map" because "It provides for the establishment of a Palestinian state, not at the end of the negotiations, as in the Oslo process, but in the middle of the effort. That means there will be a state partner for Israel to negotiate with."

By contrast, Giuliani declares that "The problem there is not the lack of statehood but corrupt and unaccountable governance" and declares that the US must not "assist the creation of another state that will support terrorism."

Giuliani also adopts another worthwhile adjunct to the Forward Strategy of Freedom: a policy of free trade. I have called this the Forward Strategy of Capitalism—the idea that we can spread our values to other nations, not only by encouraging representative government, but also by encouraging global capitalism. Here is what Giuliani has to say on this:

Economic development and engagement are proven, if not fail-safe, engines for successfully moving countries into the international system…. Other nations have found that following the US model—with low taxes, sensible regulations, protections for private property, and free trade—brings not only national wealth but also national strength. These principles are not ascendant everywhere, but never has it been clearer that they work….

Foreign aid can help overcome specific problems, but it does not lead to lasting prosperity because it cannot replace trade. Private direct investment is the best way to promote economic development. The next US president should thus revitalize and streamline all US foreign-aid activities to support—not substitute for—private investment in other countries….

Today, we need a similar type of exchange with the Muslim countries that we hope to plug into the global economy. Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates are pointing the way by starting to interpret Islam in ways that respect the distinctiveness of their local cultures but are consistent with the global marketplace. Some of these states have coeducational schools, allow women to serve in government, and count shopping malls that sell Western and Arab goods side by side. Their leaders recognize that modernization is their ticket to the global marketplace.

So Giuliani's goal is to encourage as many states as possible to "plug into the global economy," giving them an incentive to "modernize" by "following the US model" of government.

So the "international system," as Giuliani means it, includes a system of free international trade and global capitalism. But what about the standard diplomats' meaning of the "international system"—the system of conferences, negotiations, and "peacekeeping" efforts managed through the bureaucracy of the United Nations?

I mentioned before that Hill seems to be equivocal on the role of the UN. Giuliani is markedly less enthusiastic. Relegating the UN to the very end of the section titled "Strengthening the International System," he notes:

The organization can be useful for some humanitarian and peacekeeping functions, but we should not expect much more of it. The UN has proved irrelevant to the resolution of almost every major dispute of the last 50 years. Worse, it has failed to combat terrorism and human rights abuses…. International law and institutions exist to serve peoples and nations, but many leaders act as if the reverse were true—that is, as if institutions, not the ends to be achieved, were the important thing.

This is Giuliani's clearest repudiation of the implication, in Professor Hill's theory, that the process of the international system takes precedence over the substance of the values on which governments are based.

So in place of the UN, Giuliani proposes that the "international system" be led by a consortium of free nations, in the form of an expanded, global NATO.

America is grateful to NATO for the vital functions it is performing in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Yet NATO's role and character should be reexamined. For almost 60 years, it has been a vital bond connecting the United States and Europe. But its founding rationale dissolved with the end of the Cold War, and the alliance should be transformed to meet the challenges of this new century. NATO has already expanded to include former adversaries, taken on roles for which it was not originally conceived, and acted beyond its original theater. We should build on these successes and think more boldly and more globally. We should open the organization's membership to any state that meets basic standards of good governance, military readiness, and global responsibility, regardless of its location. The new NATO should dedicate itself to confronting significant threats to the international system, from territorial aggression to terrorism.

We are seeing, in these passages, a greater emphasis on the idea that only free nations are good long-term allies of the United States, and a proposal to gather these nations together in a new global alliance that seems intended to bypass the UN.

So where is the influence of Professor Hill's belief that "strengthening the international system" is the fundamental issue in the War on Terrorism. Has Giuliani taken his advisor's catchphrase, but not the theory behind it?

First, remember that Iran was Professor Hill's blind spot. In talking about the War on Terrorism and the Palestinian terror war on Israel, Hill neglected to mention Iran at all, even though it is one of the prime movers supporting terrorism in Iraq and in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. Since Hill wants to maintain that terrorism is primarily a result of the collapse of the state, he does not recognize how it also serves as the tool of a state with imperial ambitions in the Middle East.

And as I observed before, this helps explain why Giuliani does not make confronting Iran a more urgent priority, and why he seeks to do so primarily with diplomacy, saving military force as a longer-term threat used to support diplomacy. And Hill's views also influence Giuliani's proposal to commit a much larger portion of America's resources to "nation-building."

Giuliani is famous for cracking down on crime in New York City by relying on the "broken window effect." The idea was that vigorous law enforcement against minor crimes would send the message that the police, not the criminals, were in control of a neighborhood, which would deter other, more serious crimes. In his Foreign Affairs essay, Giuliani argues for what I have called a "broken country effect."

In this decade, for the first time in human history, half of the world's population will live in cities. I know from personal experience that when security is reliably established in a troubled part of a city, normal life rapidly reestablishes itself: shops open, people move back in, children start playing ball on the sidewalks again, and soon a decent and law-abiding community returns to life. The same is true in world affairs. Disorder in the world's bad neighborhoods tends to spread. Tolerating bad behavior breeds more bad behavior. But concerted action to uphold international standards will help peoples, economies, and states to thrive. Civil society can triumph over chaos if it is backed by determined action.

To implement this idea, he proposes a kind of international flying squad for nation-building:

[S]ometimes America will be compelled to act in those parts of the world where few institutions function properly—those zones that lack not only good governance but any governance—and in states teetering on the edge of conflict or recovering from it. Faced with a choice between leaving a troubled zone to anarchy or helping build functioning civil societies with accountable governments that can serve as bulwarks against barbarism, the American people will choose the latter.

To assist these missions, the next US president should restructure and coordinate all the agencies involved in that process. A hybrid military-civilian organization—a Stabilization and Reconstruction Corps staffed by specially trained military and civilian reservists—must be developed. The agency would undertake tasks such as building roads, sewers, and schools; advising on legal reform; and restoring local currencies. The United States did similar work, and with great success, in Germany, Japan, and Italy after World War II. But even with the rich civic traditions in these nations, the process took a number of years. We must learn from our past if we want to win the peace as well as the war.

I am not opposed to "nation-building" as such, though I believe it should be done very selectively, where the US has vital interests, and not as a kind of international altruist "meals on wheels," with US troops leaving Iraq, for example, in order to deploy to Darfur. Giuliani, however, seems to have a more expansive view.

So what is the final result from this overview of Giuliani's foreign policy? We get a mixture. We get rhetoric about refusing to appease terrorism or ignore gathering storms, and we get an attempt to bypass the UN and to promote free societies while opposing dictatorship. That is mixed with rhetoric about the importance of the "international system," advocacy of diplomacy as our primary approach to Iran, and a greater emphasis on the use of American power for potentially altruist "nation-building."

So on Iran, for example, we can expect to see a President Giuliani pursue a diplomatic strategy centered, not on the UN, but on our European and NATO allies—which is pretty much what President Bush is doing right now. We can expect to see a President Giuliani persist in fighting terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan, while claiming that he is doing so for the well-being of the people in these countries and to "strengthen the international system"—which is pretty much what the Bush administration is doing now. And we can see a President Giuliani holding back on endorsing a "road map" for Palestinian statehood until a Palestinian government can be formed that provides "good governance" (a development that is not likely to happen any time soon)—which is slightly better than our current policy.

In other words, we can expect a foreign policy that is pretty familiar. We can expect strong rhetoric about defeating terrorism and dictatorship and some acts of American self-assertiveness—combined with lip service to the "international system" and the frequent bogging down of American action in a morass of diplomacy.

The disappointment in Giuliani's foreign policy is that it is not much better than that of the current administration. It is not much stronger or more clear in its grasp of America's vital national interests.

I will probably still back Giuliani, if he gets the nomination, because he is still far better than his likely Democratic opponent. I will back him for the same reasons I backed Bush, but without the reservations about Bush's domestic religious agenda.

Unfortunately, it looks as if we will have to back Giuliani with the same enthusiasm—or lack thereof—with which we have had to support the current administration. We will still be backing a mixture of egoism and altruism, of American assertiveness and timid "multilateralism," and we will still have to hope that the mixture is just good enough to muddle through to victory in an unnecessarily drawn-out Cold War against Islamism.

Iraq: A Battle We Cannot Lose

2007-08-22T05:09:00.000-04:00

Toppling and disarming Saddam Hussein was accomplished quickly in 2003, and if that were all that were at stake, we could have packed up and returned home by now. But that is not all that is at stake.

America has long since demonstrated that it has the military power to quickly topple any hostile regime in the Middle East--but we have not demonstrated the persistence and moral certainty necessary to do the work that is not quick: the work of establishing a new regime to replace that dictatorship. This is the task that requires American to find the moral and intellectual fortitude to endure through a long conflict.

This task is not optional, and in fact a self-imposed failure at this task will cripple America in the War on Terrorism.

The opposition to the war on the right is the opposition that really matters, since it will require Republican votes in Congress to pass any legislation mandating a retreat from Iraq. That opposition to the war has been growing among those who believe we should never get involved in a counter-insurgency war. This is the type of conservative whose central foreign-policy principle is opposition to the use of the US military for "nation-building" (an opposition President Bush stated, ironically, in his first presidential campaign).

But "nation-building" has always been a false issue. It was the conservatives' indirect way of opposing altruistic military missions in places where the US had no vital interests at stake, such as Bosnia. But the conservatives did not dare to reject altruism as such, so instead they chose "nation-building" as an artificial stand-in--focusing on a non-essential as an excuse to evade the essential one.

In fact, the propriety of "nation-building" depends on what nation you are trying to build, and why.

In Iraq, the need to create and support a new government there--one that is not likely to be a threat to the United States--flows directly from the decision to invade. After all, there is no point in toppling the regime of Saddam Hussein, only to see it replaced by an equally hostile rival--whether al-Qaeda in Iraq or the Iranian-backed Mahdi Army.

Thus, the shifting goal of the Iraq war should be no surprise. We invaded to pre-empt Saddam Hussein's acquisition or use of chemical and nuclear weapons--but we had to stay to avoid handing Iraq over to the control of our other enemies. And that involved creating and defending a new government, which turned out to require a "nation-building" counter-insurgency war.

As I hinted at in the first part of this article, the greatest proof that the Bush administration did not invade Iraq primarily to spread "democracy" is the fact that they made no preparation to use military force to achieve that goal. The invasion was designed only to topple Saddam Hussein's regime, with the assumption that a relatively free society would simply emerge on its own in the absence of a tyrant to suppress it. And the administration assumed that this new liberal society would require only our diplomatic and political support--since that is the only real support it offered.

Even as late as 2006, when we were beginning to use counter-insurgency techniques in Iraq, the overall military strategy (now usually referred to as the "Rumsfeld-Casey strategy") was simply to keep the insurgents suppressed until we could goad the Iraqis into achieving a grand political reconciliation. The handover of sovereignty to the interim government, the drafting of a new constitution, the Iraqi elections in 2005 and 2006--all of these events were supposed to create that political breakthrough, on the assumption that a political reconciliation would cause the insurgency to wither away. It was assumed that purely political means could be used to win a military conflict (an illusion that still holds sway among many members of Congress). It is only now that General Petraeus is attempting to implement a unified political and military strategy against the insurgency.

Fighting this kind of counter-insurgency war is unavoidable because an insurgency is the strategy our enemies have chosen--and they chose it because it hits us directly at two of our crucial weak spots.

America's two crucial weak spots in war are the pragmatism and moral timidity of the right--and the active Western self-loathing of the left.

The first weak spot, for example, causes such strategic errors as the belief that we could fight a war narrowly within Iraq, without fighting a larger regional conflict against Iran and Syria. That decision allowed those two dictatorships to create and support the insurgency with impunity.

The second weak spot furnishes the left with a moral fifth column, a wide cultural movement within the West that will seek to exploit any errors and setbacks in the war as proof that we are morally unfit to fight it and must surrender. (And when the left can't find evidence of our moral unfitness, they will fake it.)

A terrorist insurgency is perfectly aimed at these two weak spots. The right's timidity will prevent it from taking decisive action against the sponsors and supporters of the insurgency, causing the war to drag on longer than it needs to--and the longer the war lasts, the more the culturally influential left will chip away at public support for it.

Our enemies know that these are our weaknesses, because we have proved them again and again, in Somalia, in Beirut--and particularly in Vietnam. These are the examples they look to in pursuing this strategy.

Insurgency war is not only aimed at our weak spots; it is also well suited to our enemies' capabilities. It is an inexpensive war to maintain in terms of manpower, weapons, and technology. It requires, not massive armies and fearsome warships, but a few thousands car bombs and a few hundred suicide bombers. This is a war our enemies know they can sustain. They are short on military and economic power--but long on ideological indoctrination and religious fanaticism, precisely the resources called for by an insurgency.

But there is one final, broader reason why an insurgency war is a strategy peculiarly suited to the advocates of modern Islamic totalitarianism. I used to grumble about the use of the term "War on Terrorism," citing the objection that terror is a tactic, not an enemy. But I eventually accepted the term, in part because terrorism is a tactic that is distinctive to our enemy and describes his particular methods and goals. The same applies to an insurgency, which is a terror bombing campaign writ large.

Consider how the threat of radical Islam differs from the old Middle Eastern threat of Arab nationalism. Arab nationalism was a blend of Communist and Fascist ideology that envisioned a united Arab dictatorship led by a military strongman--the role coveted by a succession of dictators, from Nasser to Saddam Hussein. Nasser's ambitions were thwarted forty years ago in the 1967 Six Day War against Israel, and Arab nationalism further withered with the defeat of Saddam Hussein in the 1991 Gulf War. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 killed Arab nationalism definitively. But note that this old dictatorial vision was one of large armies, masses of bureaucrats, and the conventional conquest of Middle Eastern lands to be controlled by an organized, all-powerful state.

For all their talk of an Islamic "caliphate," today's Islamists do not really have such an organized vision. Their ideology is not taken from Lenin but from Mohammed--a cruder, more primitive source. It is a charter, not for a modern state, but for tribal gang warfare, and the rule of the Islamists has been dominated by the capricious whim of holy warriors, usually without much pretense of scientific organization or the rule of law.

This can be seen in many of the societies where Islamists have risen to power: their model of the ideal society has been on display in Somalia, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Gaza, and Waziristan. It is best described as anarcho-totalitarianism: total control over the individual, not by an organized state, but by roving criminal gangs of religious zealots.

This can also be seen in a far more organized society which still holds the principles of Islamism in its black heart: Saudi Arabia. I recently came across an eye-opening article about the Saudi religious police, who enforce its strict Islamic law. I had assumed that these religious police were endowed with some kind of formal legal authority under the direct charter of the Saudi rulers. It turns out this isn't true. The Saudi government's only constitution is the Koran--literally--and the religious police are simply vigilantes who cite the Koran as their authority to use force against Saudi citizens. (The article, incidentally, is about attempts to subject these religious police to legal scrutiny and some rudiments of the rule of law.)

You can see how a terrorist insurgency is suited to this nihilistic vision. The insurgency in Iraq primarily seeks to sow chaos--which is all that its kidnappings, revenge killings, and car bombings can actually achieve.

So these are all of the reasons why we have to learn to fight and win a counter-insurgency war: it is the kind of war that is best suited to the goals and capabilities of the enemy--and best calculated to hit us at our weaknesses. Conservatives are correct that withdrawal from such a conflict will convey weakness to our enemies, but it is not just a generalized weakness. It is a specific weakness: the unwillingness to fight and win a counter-insurgency war. In ratifying this weakness, we will be telling our enemies: here is where and how to strike us, if you want to defeat us every time.

Let's say, for example, that we were to withdraw from Iraq now--then set out at some later point to topple the Iranian regime. Don't you think the remnants of that regime--even if they were defeated in a conventional conflict or faced an uprising from their own people--would have every incentive to turn Iran into another terrorist "quagmire," replicating the model that succeeded for them in Iraq? That would be the message of a successful Muslim insurgency in Iraq: that the US may always win on the conventional battlefield--but the Islamists will always win in the unconventional battle that follows.

The enemy's incentive to use this strategy against us is far too strong. We're going to face it again and again until we demonstrate that we have learned how to break a Muslim terrorist insurgency. And on that issue, Iraq is a test we cannot fail.

Surrender in Iraq would validate the terrorist insurgency as an infallible winning tactic. It would validate that tactic far more thoroughly than our previous retreats from Somalia and Beirut, and losing this time would make it ten times harder to demonstrate our ability to win a counter-insurgency war in the future.

On the positive side, facing down this insurgency and defeating it provides us with an excellent opportunity to discredit the cause of Islamism. The Islamists share one crucial characteristic with the old Arab nationalist strongmen: they promise their followers strength. They promise victory and conquest as a balm for the deep-seated Muslim sense of inferiority and humiliation. Bin Laden described the theory behind his international terrorist crime spree as the "strong horse" theory: the people will support his cause because they regard it as successful, while they see the enemy as weak.

Winning in Iraq would have a unique power to discredit the view that the terrorists are the strong horse. The terrorists already know that they can't win in a conventional, stand-up fight. A victory in Iraq would tell them that they can't win an insurgency, either. The Islamists would come across, to their supporters and sympathizers in the Arab and Muslim world, as just another group of posturing failures who promised greatness and delivered humiliation.

There are two things we ought to do to win the counter-insurgency war. The first is to follow the new counter-insurgency strategy employed by General Petraeus within Iraq, a strategy based on intensive study of previous counter-insurgency wars. The second is one that is not being tried: to starve the insurgents of funding, training, weapons, and support by toppling the regimes outside of Iraq who are supporting the insurgents.

But there is one prerequisite that makes these other measures possible: we have to stay in Iraq and keep fighting.

The Greatest Story Of The 20th Century

2007-08-10T10:22:00.000-04:00

Part 1

In the calm between storms, I thought that it would be something of a relief to once again be able to argue about policies instead of people, and to step away from this immediate contest and look more broadly at the larger trends that set the context for today's events, and at the means by a which a culture changes over a longer term.

I have commented that the great story of the second half of the 20th century is the non-collapse of civilization.

In order to understand why the absence of a civilizational collapse is such a big story, it is important to remember the first half of the 20th century. During those years, civilization was collapsing. It was collapsing culturally, with such trends as the rise of incomprehensible, non-representational Modernist art, unintelligible Modernist literature, and the screeching dissonance of Modernist music—all of it a precipitous collapse from the high achievements of 19th-century art and literature. But most of all, it was a political and economic collapse, with two World Wars, the Great Depression, and the rise to power of two totalitarian movements, Fascism and Communism.

So it should be no surprise that writers and intellectuals of the era were pre-occupied with the threat of a general collapse into war, dictatorship, poverty, and mass death. You can see this reflected in such famous dystopian literature as George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Wikipedia provides an extensive list of dystopian literature, and you will notice that Ayn Rand wrote two of the novels listed. Her 1937 novella Anthem projects life under a perfectly consistent collectivist society, while her 1957 masterwork Atlas Shrugged depicts the collapse of the American economy under a statist political system.

Depictions like this were not alarmist. They were a straightforward projection of the trend of current events, including, in Ayn Rand's case, her own experiences in Soviet Russia in the 1920s and her observations of the political atmosphere of the Great Depression in America in the 1930s.

For some decades into the second half of the 20th century, the same trend seemed to be continuing. In the 1960s, the rise of the New Left and the "counter-culture" rebellion against civilization, logically accompanied by race riots and violence on university campuses, confirmed a sense of cultural decay and collapse. Meanwhile, the Soviet dictatorship seemed to be on the offensive, expanding its influence into Africa, Latin American, and the Middle East, while America floundered in a period of malaise and retreat following the Vietnam War. An observer might still have been justified in fearing that America was following the same path as the Roman Empire before it—that our society was decaying from within and was about to be overrun by a new barbarian invasion.

This conclusion would have been reinforced, not just by an observation of historical trends, but by an examination of the basic cultural causes at work. All of the ideas that had made possible the rise of the West—reason, individualism, the subordination of government to individual rights—were under attack by the most prominent intellectuals of the era. If these intellectuals were the ones steering the culture and setting the direction for the future, then we were doomed.

Then something remarkable happened: civilization did not collapse.

From about 1980 to today—a period of a quarter century, too long to be a mere blip or historical detour—it was the enemies of civilization who collapsed. And more: civilization has not merely avoided a collapse. It has grown and expanded. It is thriving.

The evidence for this began to appear, in earnest, in the 1980s, as both Britain and America pulled back from their headlong plunge into socialism, adopted moderately more pro-free-market policies, and were rewarded with an enormous economic boom and unprecedented progress in the development of high technology.

In retrospect, however, we can observe that the trend had its beginnings even earlier, in the post-World War II establishment of representative governments and free-market economies in nations like West Germany and Japan; in the post-war trend toward free international trade; in the slow but steady spread of free markets and free societies across Southeast Asia, in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea—all of the "Asian Tigers."

But it was in the 1990s that the trend became truly global and its full significance began to be noticed. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, war has collapsed: the number of armed conflicts across the globe, and the number of people killed in them, has dramatically decreased.

The nations of Eastern Europe moved rapidly toward political freedom and have continued to move steadily toward relative economic freedom. The move toward political freedom culminated in the past few years with rebellions against corrupt semi-authoritarian systems in the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Ukraine, while the trend toward economic freedom reached a kind of high point recently when the former Soviet vassal state of Latvia was ranked by the Wall Street Journal as the fourth freest economy in the world, ranking well above the United States.

Over the past thirty years, Communism has undergone a slow-motion collapse in China. By a complex series of ideological evasions, the Communist Party gutted Marxism as a philosophical foundation for its political rule. I have been following this trend closely, and regular readers of my blog are familiar with the details: China now has the four largest shopping malls in the world; the Chinese government recently awarded the "workers vanguard" medal to NBA star Yao Ming, along with a group of Chinese businessman; the Chinese leadership has been debating over a sweeping reform that would formally recognized property rights in Chinese law; and a growing number of courageous Chinese lawyers, judges, and intellectuals are beginning to argue for free speech, individual rights, and the rule of law.

And the trend keeps on going. The "Asian Tigers" were followed by the "Celtic Tiger," as Ireland liberalized its economy and experienced a prolonged period of rapid economic growth. The same thing has happened in Chile, the freest economy in South America.

The latest sensation—and it is a big one—is India, which is finally experiencing an Industrial Revolution, at the same time that its large population of engineers and computer programmers takes advantage of the information age. This is the result of a process of economic liberalization that began in the summer of 1991, when India responded to a fiscal crisis—and to the collapse of the Soviet Union—by sweeping aside much of the "license raj," a Byzantine system of business licensing laws that sought to impose centralized economic planning.

There is now a new culture beginning to rise in India, whose symbol in my mind is a young man described by pro-free-market columnist Gurcharan Das in his 2001 book India Unbound:

The commercial spirit is not limited to the cities. The smallest village has found it. On a visit to Pondicherry from Madras a few years ago, I stopped at a roadside village café where fourteen-year-old Raju was hustling between the tables. He served us good south Indian coffee and vadas. Raju told us that this was his summer job and it paid $11.50 a month—enough to pay for computer lessons in the evenings in the neighboring village. For the next summer, his aunt in Madras has arranged a job for him in a computer company.

"What will you do when you grow up?" I asked. "I am going to run a software company," said Raju. He had decided this when "I saw it in TV, where this man Bilgay has a software company, and he is the richest man in the world."

By my count, somewhere on the order of three billion people—about half the world's population—are currently on a path toward political and economic liberty, and toward enjoying all of the things that liberty makes possible: a vibrant, innovative culture, a "First World" lifestyle of opulent wealth, and the benevolent sense that success and happiness are the hallmarks of a "normal life," so that a fourteen-year-old boy in rural India can reasonably believe it is possible for him to become the next Bill Gates.

In short, it is not just that civilization did not collapse. It is the vision of civilization as being on the verge of collapse that has collapsed—or at least, it ought to have collapsed.

The problem for Objectivists, unfortunately, is that our intellectuals, who ought to be in the best position to observe and explain this phenomenon, have generally not done a good job of recognizing the non-collapse of civilization. For the most part, they are still too busy worrying over the imminent collapse of civilization to notice, study, or explain the actual trends in the other direction.

For as long as I can remember, the typical final paragraph of any review of the state of the world by an Objectivist writer or speaker has gone something like this—which was aptly paraphrased in a recent note from a reader who had noticed the same pattern: "Western civilization as it exists today is doomed to destruction; I only hope I don't live to see its fall. Only then can a new future be built upon the philosophy of Objectivism." Over the years, the pattern has become so reinforced that I see it everywhere, in posts on Objectivist discussion groups, and in letters like the one I received recently from another reader, who lamented that Twenty-first century America is still riding on the historical momentum of the Enlightenment, which rested on a strong (though flawed)…foundation. What is the health of that foundation today?...

What happens to a society over time as its leading intellectuals and, in consequence, the general public, increasingly abandon reason and respect for reality? My answer, gleaned from the literature of Objectivism, is as follows. Faith and force inevitably fill the void that reality and reason should have occupied…. Faith and force, united together, become the ruling doctrine of the society (which then collapses altogether if or when it runs out of subservient producers to sustain it).

I grant you that there is room for debate as to how far down that path America has come. But I find the trend ominous, particularly so in other countries.

I have to admit that this approach has held sway in The Intellectual Activist as well. For most of its history, the theme of my blog's political coverage has been to show how our leaders' failure to embrace the right ideas is leading to disaster. This coverage was true and valuable—but it did not tell the whole story, because too little coverage was spared for evidence of any trend that was not a disaster. As just one small example, while putting together the bound volume of my articles from 1979 through 1991, I noticed that the early issues provided extensive coverage of the crises of rising crime and runaway inflation. Subsequent issues devoted no coverage to the process by which inflation was brought under control and the crime wave was broken.

When it came to the most important event of the era, the Fall of Communism, I wrote an article that provided a worthwhile and largely correct analysis of the cause of Communism's collapse. But it ended with the admonition that "if you hear that Russia and her former satellites are struggling valiantly to become capitalist countries, don't believe it. Some of them are taking baby steps forward, but none has the desire (or knowledge) necessary to go even half the distance." There is some truth to this warning, when it is applied to Russia and a few of the former Soviet Republics. But it is flat wrong when applied to most of Russia's former satellites: Poland, Latvia, Estonia, the Czech Republic, and so on.

To gauge the state of those societies, consider a recent article with the ominous title "Communist Retro Sweeps Eastern Europe." It turns out that this article describes, not a political movement, but rather a kind of middle-aged nostalgia among Eastern Europeans for the brand names and soft drinks of their youth—all of which are now produced for profit by private companies.

I don't blame Objectivist intellectuals for not seeing the signs of these more positive trends, because the impending collapse of civilization was the trend of the first half of the 20th century, and it is only in the past few decades that an opposite trend has clearly emerged. But it is important to begin to recognize that this new trend does exist, and to ask what makes it possible.

The current global spread of free markets, political freedom, and an industrial-technological civilization is too large a phenomenon to be explained as the mere "inertia" of a previous, better era. Indeed, the cultural "momentum" of the second half of the 20th century was the momentum of the era immediately preceding it, an era whose predominant direction was toward chaos and destruction. The story of the last fifty years has been the story of a reversal of cultural momentum.

I do not mean to imply that this trend is permanent and inevitable. I do not deny that there are ideological and political forces, such as the Muslim world's rebellion against civilization, that threaten to slow down and even reverse the recent progress that has been made in the world. But precisely for that reason, I think it is imperative for us to discover what is causing the good things that are happening in the world.

The most urgent question of our era is: what went right?

In the coming installments of this series of articles, I will put forward my own preliminary answers to this question, but the first step is simply to recognize that the question has to be asked, and that new evidence may require new answers and new theories about the role of ideas in history

Part II

http://journalsmith.blogspot.com/2006/11/what-went-right.html

The Truth About DigitEyes

2007-07-01T04:26:00.000-04:00

DigitEyes Corporation was formed when Mirabilis bankrupted a company called Focus Solutions, Mirabilis was of course entitled to the assets because they owned primary share in the company. Once Focus Solutions was bankrupt they took the assets and opened DigitEyes Corporation. When all of the publicity about Mirabilis' legalities came to light a group of Mirabilis employees started a new holding company named Stratis Authority and took over DigitEyes Corporation along with the other companies who were under the security arm of Mirabilis Ventures. (EVEPS and Gibraltar Integrity as well) I’m not sure if there is a shown transaction for this transition but you are able to view all of these companies on the Mirabilis website archives.

Former Mirabilis Employees/Current Stratis Authority Employees

Kevin Billings-President Stratis Authority Congo Drama ...Rogue Secret Service Agent

Jim Vandevere-Chairman Stratis Authority Here

Jack Walser-VP of Business Development-Stratis Authority

Joe Robinson-Unnamed Consultant-Who has since “resigned” and is now in the process of obtaining a high level position in the Orlando City Government. Listed as Chief Investigator on the Gibraltar website. Here

Being a totally separate holding company (with the same employees) Stratis was free to act as if they had no relationship with Mirabilis. If you look at the archived Mirabilis website you will see DigitEyes Corporation as one of their affiliates, much like the newly redesigned Stratis website.Here

Stratis is still making excuses to current and former employees regarding their back pay and their current payroll. All DigitEyes employees have resigned for not being paid and now Stratis is trying to keep the name alive in order to keep the high profile customers that DigitEyes Corporation has under their belt

There were a couple of reasons for their inability to make payroll. The first is that Stratis was using the same PEO as Mirabilis—Common Paymaster. Stratis then switched to Paysource, also used by Mirabilis. This of course caused a delay. In order to separate themselves from Mirabilis, Stratis sent letters to all of their employees stating that the employees would no longer be paid by Paysource but would now be paid directly by Stratis Authority. No one has been paid since the letters were issued. This is also why MDI employees were late on their March payroll. MDI is currently making their own payroll and I’m guessing that they are also paying the loyal few who are still working for Stratis Authority. The second reason they have given is that they are still trying to "get funding" for Stratis Authority's payroll and to push through the Learnsafe/Worksafe initiative. They have been saying this since they stopped paying employees three months ago.

Stratis has moved to Lake Mary in order to avoid being involved with the back money owed on the lease downtown. They have moved all of their companies to this location including DigitEyes Corporation. If you call they will answer as Stratis Authority, if you ask for DigitEyes Corporation they will state that they are DigitEyes Corporation as well and transfer you to the Stratis Authority accountant who knows absolutely nothing about security. Gordon M. Adkins was president of DigitEyes Corporation until recently. Mr. Adkins, tried his hardest to make sure his employees were taken care of but Stratis hindered him from paying the employees. It might be interesting to call Stratis (877-859-0398) and ask for Mr. Adkins just to see what their response is. I know that Mr. Adkins will have nothing to do with them at this point.

"The Environmentalist Party Line Has Changed, Comrade Smith"

2007-06-30T21:57:00.000-04:00

As is well known, working in The Ministry of Truth is quite confusing at times for those of us who have not yet mastered "Doublethink," for instance, just this morning Comrade Julia asked me:

"What country is Oceania at war with today, Euraisa or Eastasia?"

So I don't always like it when articles in my blog are proven right by events—especially when they are about ominous trends toward civilizational self-destruction—but I just came across two such examples. Today, Charles Krauthammer's column cites an excellent new example:

The senator was vexed. The US auto companies were resisting attempts by her and other Senate well-meaners to impose a radical rise in fuel efficiency by 2017. Why can't they be more like the Chinese, she complained. Or, to quote Sen. Dianne Feinstein precisely: "What the China situation, or the other countries' situation, shows is that these automakers, in all of these countries, build the automobile that the requirements for mileage state. And they don't fight it, they just do it."

Yes. That is how things work in Oceania.

But the article below is a particularly sweet example of being proven right—and in this case, I think it's perfectly acceptable to have no sympathy for the victims.

As is well known, Environmentalists have systematically turned against every form of "renewable energy" they once touted as an alternative to coal, oil, and nuclear power. They pushed for hydro-electric dams—and then campaigned to breach them. They championed wind power—and now they tilt at windmills.

According to the article below, that trend it beginning to claim its next victim: "bio-fuels."

While Congress is preparing more subsidies for ethanol—which is why I feel no sympathy for the hawkers of bio-fuels—environmentalists are beginning to complain that all of the corn that has to be planted to produce that ethanol is ravaging the environment. This is yet another piece of evidence that the real agenda of the environmentalists is to oppose industrial civilization as such, by seeking to cut off any supply of fuel that can be used to power it.

"Biofuels Stamped 'Damaging the Environment'," Paul Eccleston, Daily Telegraph, June 29 The rush for biofuels is causing massive environmental damage and must be halted, a campaign group claims.

Whole ecosystems are being destroyed and hundreds of thousands of people are being thrown off their land to make way for the crops needed to make biofuel, it alleges.

The charity Grain says there has been a stampede towards biofuels—an alcohol-based fuel made from crops and trees planted on a large scale—as a "greener" alternative to fossil fuels….

For its hard-hitting report Grain claims it has gathered material from around the world and concluded that the rush to biofuels is causing enormous environmental and social damage, "The numbers involved are mind-boggling. The Indian government is talking of planting 14 million hectares of land with jatropha.

"The Inter-American Development Bank says that Brazil has 120 million hectares that could be cultivated with agrofuel crops; and an agrofuel lobby is speaking of 379 million hectares being available in 15 African countries. We are talking about expropriation on an unprecedented scale," the report states.

Grain claims even the term biofuel is wrong and misleading and should instead be called agrofuel in that it is being taken over by big business and exploited as another commodity.

"The Way To Stop Discrimination Based On Race..."

2007-06-30T21:49:00.000-04:00

Well, we're now getting a feel for the new conservative majority on the Supreme Court, which ended its latest term with a bang, issuing a ruling that blocks government schools from overtly attempting to assign students positions in public schools on the basis of their race.

This followed another one of those "split decisions"—decisions that are split, not just in the vote, but in their reasoning. The conservative majority struck down an anti-trust rule that barred manufacturers from setting minimum retail prices for their products. But it did so in a way that arguably makes the law less objective, not more.

The ruling leaves in place the whole structure of the antitrust laws, which ban "restraint of trade" by restraining the trading practices of private businesses. More important, the antitrust laws provide no objective standard to determine what is or is not "anti-competitive," and for more than a century such decisions have been made by the courts ad hoc and after the fact.

The new ruling won't change that. In the words of Justice Kennedy's decision for the majority, "Vertical agreements establishing minimum resale prices can have either pro-competitive or anticompetitive effects, depending upon the circumstances in which they are formed." So we're back where the Sherman Act put us in the first place: no businessman can know if his actions are legal or not until after he is prosecuted.

The court seems to have done rather better with its last decision, whose essence was summed up in another memorable one-liner from Chief Justice Roberts: "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."

"Justices Limit the Use of Race in School Plans for Integration," Linda Greenhouse, New York Times, June 29 With competing blocs of justices claiming the mantle of Brown v. Board of Education, a bitterly divided Supreme Court declared Thursday that public school systems cannot seek to achieve or maintain integration through measures that take explicit account of a student’s race.

Voting 5 to 4, the court, in an opinion by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., invalidated programs in Seattle and metropolitan Louisville, Ky., that sought to maintain school-by-school diversity by limiting transfers on the basis of race or using race as a “tiebreaker” for admission to particular schools….

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” he said. His side of the debate, the chief justice said, was “more faithful to the heritage of Brown,” the landmark 1954 decision that declared school segregation unconstitutional….

In a separate opinion that could shape the practical implications of the decision and provide school districts with guidelines for how to create systems that can pass muster with the court, Justice Kennedy said achieving racial diversity, “avoiding racial isolation” and addressing “the problem of de facto resegregation in schooling” were “compelling interests” that a school district could constitutionally pursue as long as it did so through programs that were sufficiently “narrowly tailored.”…

As a matter of constitutional doctrine and practical impact, Justice Kennedy’s opinion thus placed a significant limitation on the full reach of the other four justices’ embrace of a “colorblind Constitution” under which all racially conscious government action, no matter how benign or invidious its goal, is equally suspect….

“If our history has taught us anything,” Justice Thomas said, “it has taught us to beware of elites bearing racial theories.”

The Revolt of The Right On Immigration

2007-06-30T21:43:00.000-04:00

The Senate has killed the immigration bill, and there will not be a second try—not until we have a new president. It won't happen because the anti-immigration activists are the right's answer to the "angry left": a wing of the right that has become irrational and unhinged on a single issue.

Although the immigration bill was a normal, god-awful Washington compromise, I have no sympathy for the anti-immigration advocates who demanded that it be killed, not improved. As I have argued before—and as some of them have admitted—every argument they make against illegal immigration is an argument against immigration as such.

Below, pro-immigration conservative Linda Chavez offers bitter congratulations to the angry right for their victory.

Note, also, how much energy and grassroots mobilization the right has poured into this issue, while we are facing crucial deadlines in the demands for withdrawal and surrender in Iraq—a fact nicely captured in a new cartoon by Cox & Forkum.

"A Pyrrhic Victory," Linda Chavez, Jewish World Review, June 29 Immigration reform is dead. But before conservatives who killed this bill start popping champagne corks, they ought to consider the following.

Our borders will be less secure, not more. Employers who want to do the right thing and only hire legal workers won't have the tools to do so. The 12 million illegal aliens who are here now will continue to live in the shadows, making them less likely to cooperate with law enforcement to report crimes and less likely to pay their full share of taxes. In other words, the mess we created by an outdated and ill-conceived immigration policy 20 years ago will just get worse.

But you won't hear this if you tune in to talk radio over the next few days or read conservative blogs. There will be lots of gloating over having killed "amnesty." There will be claims that senators finally "listened to the people." And, no doubt, some conservatives will be emboldened to consider the next step in their war against illegal immigration, namely to deport those now here illegally….

The United States creates 1.5 to 2 million jobs every year, but without immigrants—legal and illegal—we'd have a hard time filling all those jobs…. Not enough young Americans are studying engineering, science and mathematics to fill all the jobs that require those skills. And Americans are over-educated to fill the jobs at the lowest end of the skills spectrum.

But none of this matters to the radio talk show hosts who encouraged their millions of listeners to shut down the congressional phone system with calls protesting "amnesty."…

Meanwhile, the real majority of Americans will have to wait for genuine immigration reform. And Republicans who believe this is going to help them at the polls in 2008 may well find themselves sitting on the back benches for years to come.

Britain Cannot Withdraw From WW III

2007-06-30T21:37:00.000-04:00

Tony Blair's successor, Gordon Brown, took office Wednesday and subsequently reshuffled the British cabinet. Disturbingly, Brown pointedly signaled an impending cutoff in British support for the Iraq war by appointing David Miliband, an opponent of the war and an advocate of appeasement of Hezbollah and Hamas, as his foreign secretary.

(In Miliband's previous office, Denis Boyles points out, he was too politically correct to cull badgers. If the man can't stand up to the badger lobby, how is he supposed to stand up to Iran?)
The switch turns out to have been bad timing, because the new cabinet was greeted by reminders of the same old war: a new terrorist plot targeting London's night life with not just one but two car bombs discovered and defused—so far.

I believe it was George Orwell who said, "You may not be interested in war—but war is interested in you." Gordon Brown's new government may contemplate withdrawing from the war against radical Islam in Iraq—but it cannot withdraw from the war radical Islam has declared against Britain.

"Britain's Brown Picks a War Critic for New Cabinet," Al Webb, Washington Times, June 29 New Prime Minister Gordon Brown named a Cabinet yesterday that included a critic of the Iraq war as foreign secretary—a clear signal of a shift in British policy toward the unpopular conflict….

[T]he most eye-catching new name was rising political star David Miliband, who at 41 becomes the youngest British foreign secretary in 30 years, and potentially one of the most controversial, given his discomfort over the Blair government's policy on Iraq.

Mr. Miliband voted along with much of Parliament to go to war in Iraq four years ago, but he is reported to have later become quite skeptical about the decision to send in British troops….
Mr. Miliband also expressed dismay over Mr. Blair's refusal to call for an immediate truce during last summer's war between Israel and the Hezbollah militia in southern Lebanon.

That decision provoked a party revolt against Mr. Blair and helped drive him to his decision to step down as prime minister.

The New Communism Is Environmentalism

2007-06-29T09:33:00.000-04:00

Czech President Vaclav Klaus, drawing on his memories of Soviet oppression, recently declared that the global warming hysteria had replaced Communism as "the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy, and prosperity."

The environmentalists continue to do their best to prove him right.

In making the parallel to Communism, President Klaus cited the use of environmentalism as a justification for global central planning. But it is not just the vast scale of the controls proposed by environmentalists that is so revealing; it is also the detail. There is no aspect of life too trivial or intimate (as Sheryl Crow infamously reminded us) to fall outside of this new ideological regimentation.

A bit of the flavor of the coming environmentalist police state is provided by a new Australian television show titled "Carbon Cops." In a bizarre inversion of the typical American home improvement show, the experts in this show descend on the hapless homeowners to measure their "carbon footprint," the amount of fossil fuels involved in the manufacture and use of every item in their house. The "carbon cops" are shown rummaging through a family's smallest household items, searching for global warming contraband—and then scolding them for "polluting" the atmosphere with carbon dioxide. According to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald:

Each week they don their orange monogrammed shirts to cordon off the toxic home of an Australian family. They arrive with energy-auditing gadgetry, sobering statistics, and lips and eyebrows curled in withering admonishment. They rate these people, shame them, then challenge them to do better.

And what sort of things are these people supposed to be ashamed of? One family, the Barries, are scolded for their overuse of light bulbs, "Dad's overseas business travel, their swimming pool and boat," while the Lane family is taken to task for their "six TVs, three DVD players, five or six computers, 12 freshly laundered towels a day."

In case you don't get the message, the author of this report sums it up for you: "Taken together, the case studies are not about individual scapegoats as much as an indictment of Western affluence, negligence, and self-obsession." Ah yes, the inexcusable self-indulgence of wanting to bathe with freshly laundered towels. How can we live with ourselves?

The victims on this television show are voluntary, the only weapon used against them is social disapproval, and the whole thing could be laughed off—if not for the fact that our political leaders are preparing the way for the real carbon cops who will enforce the "carbon taxes" and impose the "cap and trade" rationing scheme needed to meet the environmentalists' goal of constricting the world's energy use. Australia's "carbon cops" may be fictional, but they are the harbinger of a real attempt to use the power of the state to strip us of the accoutrements of prosperity: our light bulbs, our cars, our televisions, our freshly laundered towels.

Part of what Vaclav Klaus was sensing—what gives this all the faint whiff of totalitarianism—is the global warming alarmists' eagerness to reach into the smallest details of our private existence and re-arrange our lifestyle to fit the austere requirements of their political ideology. A recent article in the Sacramento Bee captures the paternalistic fervor in the California statehouse:

Besides the light bulb bill [a de facto ban on the sale of incandescent light bulbs], the Assembly voted this month to require toilets that use less water, ban restaurants from using trans fats, and to create a $250 million program to subsidize sales of solar water heaters costing $6,000 apiece. The Assembly considered, but rejected under pressure from the auto industry, legislation designed to benefit the environment by assessing a $2,500 surcharge on the sale of gas-guzzling vehicles to fund rebates for fuel-efficient models.

But those with a lust to control every detail of human life are not content merely to control what we do. They also want to control what we think.

We have seen in recent decades the largest peacetime outpouring of government propaganda, all devoted to convincing us that human emissions of carbon dioxide are causing a global warming catastrophe. The German government, for example, has begun paying authors to inundate Wikipedia with articles boosting "renewable resources." So much for the Internet as the ultimate free marketplace for ideas: now one cartel will be supported by government subsidies.

Along with the campaign to subsidize government-approved speech, there always comes an attempt to suppress speech that challenges the official line. The designation of those who challenge the global warming scare stories as global warming "deniers"—smearing them as the equivalent of Holocaust deniers—has introduced the hard edge of dogmatism and character assassination to the public debate. The implications of this phrase were made clear by another Australian. (Apparently Australia, like Britain, is a few steps ahead of America in how seriously it takes its global warming dogma.) Referring to a British historian who was jailed for denying the existence of the Holocaust, leftist Australian journalist Margo Kingston growled: "David Irving is under arrest in Austria for Holocaust denial. Perhaps there is a case for making climate change denial an offense—it is a crime against humanity after all." (This quote appears at Kingston's former blog; see item #8.)

Kingston is a leftist provocateur and has gone beyond what the mainstream of the left has so far contemplated—but only a little beyond. Back in the United States, the left is still gingerly working to prepare the ground for green censorship, with Al Gore branding right-wing dissent an "assault on reason" that has "broken" the marketplace of ideas—which requires government intervention to fix. The fix is now being prepared in the form of a regulatory assault on right-leaning talk radio, among other initiatives.

For those seeking to justify this kind of all-encompassing government control, global warming is the best candidate to come along since the collapse of Marxism. Like Marxism, environmentalism steals the "scientific" aura of an established field—but in this case it has invaded the "hard sciences," which carry greater prestige than economics. And unlike previous environmentalist crusades, global warming is a threat that is global in scope and total and all-encompassing in its detailed application to human life. Other pollution scares—DDT, acid rain, the ozone layer—required only the banning of a single product or control over a single industry. None was big enough to require control of the entire economy over the period of a century, nor could any claim to be so urgent as to make dissent an "irresponsible" act that is not to be tolerated.

Global warming provides a basis for all of these claims: urgent action is needed, we are told, or the catastrophic effects will be irreversible. But to reverse global warming will require massive reductions in our use of power, requiring a total restructuring of the economy—and the deployment of the "carbon cops" to police every parsimonious detail of our everyday lives.

And this global warming police state has one big advantage over Marxism: it makes a virtue of the chronic shortages and privation that were such a mortal embarrassment to Communism. This time, the left won't have to explain away the lines at the stores, the decade-long waiting lists for tin-can automobiles, even the scarcity of decent toilet paper. These are not failures of the system: they are the goal of the system. They are all necessary to reduce our "carbon footprint."

A perceptive reader suggested to me recently that when left claims that "the science is settled" in the global warming controversy, what they really mean is that the political science of the issue is settled. The global warming hysteria reinforces all of their settled anti-capitalist prejudices—and it provides an open-ended justification for the central, dominant, overpowering role they think government ought to play in the individual's life.

No, we haven't arrived at a green dictatorship—we're nowhere near it. But with all of the environmentalists' talk about the long-term consequences of our actions decades or centuries from now, we should subject their agenda to the same scrutiny. What ideological direction are they taking us, what kind of political and economic system are they seeking to impose—and what will happen to our liberty and prosperity, the day after tomorrow?

Communism Held In Contempt By Chinese Students

2007-06-28T03:27:00.000-04:00

While we fight a new struggle against Islamism, it's nice to take a break for one of those articles that provides a little victory lap celebrating the defeat of Communism. This article looks at the still-mandatory classes on Marxism in Chinese schools—and the boredom and contempt they evoke in students.

On a more serious note, observe that everyone admits that the collapse of Marxism leaves the Chinese state with no ideological foundation. And on a more ominous note, observe the attempts to adopt environmentalism as a replacement for Communism—following the lead of the Western left.

But a more hopeful note comes, inadvertently, from an education ministry official who says of China's young people, "They don't believe in God or communism. They're practical. They only worship the money." Unfortunately, too few young Chinese know that capitalism, properly understood, represents a philosophy and a benevolent moral code—and that this is the new ideological foundation China needs.

"Marx Loses Currency in New China," Mitchell Landsberg, Los Angeles Times, June 26 Professor Tao Xiuao cracked jokes, told stories, projected a Power Point presentation on a large video screen. But his students at Beijing Foreign Studies University didn't even try to hide their boredom.

Young men spread newspapers out on their desks and pored over the sports news. A couple of students listened to iPods; others sent text messages on their cellphones. One young woman with chic red-framed glasses spent the entire two hours engrossed in "Jane Eyre," in the original English. Some drifted out of class, ate lunch and returned. Some just lay their heads on their desktops and went to sleep.

It isn't easy teaching Marxism in China these days….

"It's not the teacher," said sophomore Liu Di, a finance major whose shaggy auburn hair hangs, John Lennon-style, along either side of his wire-rim glasses. "No matter who teaches this class, it's always boring. Philosophy is useful and interesting, but I think that in philosophy education in China, they just teach the boring parts."

Classes in Marxist philosophy have been compulsory in Chinese schools since not long after the 1949 communist revolution….

It seems an understatement to say that there's a disconnect between reality and what the students are learning about Marx and Mao, who held that capitalism would inevitably and naturally give way to communism.

"Compared to my normal opinions about the world…it's something like fiction," said Du Zimu, one of Liu's classmates….

Daniel A. Bell, a Canadian who is the first Westerner in the modern era to teach politics at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China's most elite educational institution, wrote in the spring issue of Dissent magazine of his surprise at how little Marxism is actually discussed in China, even among Communist Party intellectuals.

"The main reason Chinese officials and scholars do not talk about communism is that hardly anybody really believes that Marxism should provide guidelines for thinking about China's political future," he wrote. "The ideology has been so discredited by its misuses that it has lost almost all legitimacy in society…. To the extent there's a need for a moral foundation for political rule in China, it almost certainly won't come from Karl Marx."…

"The students I know generally don't accept Marx as the best ideological foundation for modern China," said one student at a prestigious Chinese university. "Marx in China is only a flag used by different kinds of persons. Then, what is the ideological foundation for modern China? I think no one can give a satisfied answer."…

[At] a model junior high school in Beijing,…students are participating in a pilot program to learn the fundamentals of environmentalism, as part of a "values" class that used to contain a strong dose of Marxist ideology.

American British Friend Is Gone!

2007-06-28T03:20:00.000-04:00

Alas Tony Blair stepped down today as prime minister of Britain. He leaves office as widely loved in America as he is widely hated in Britain, and for the same reason: because he has been America's best friend among foreign leaders—alas.

As much as I appreciate Blair's support for the war in Iraq and the political price he paid for it, Blair's support has also given him the influence to ask for key concessions from the US, such as the long, drawn-out charade of seeking UN support for the invasion of Iraq.

Unfortunately, I suspect that this aspect of Blair's role will be emphasized in his new job as a special envoy working to help create a Palestinian state—through the hopeless method of trying to bring freedom, prosperity, and the rule of law to a society run by terrorists.

Though he is known in America mostly for his foreign policy, any mention of Blair's legacy should include his economic policy, reviewed here, which largely consisted of a ratification from the left of Margaret Thatcher's pro-free-market reforms—the source of Britain's current economic vitality.

"Mediators Appoint Blair Mideast Envoy," Christine Hauser and Taghreed El-Khodary, New York Times, June 27 Tony Blair, who stepped down today as the prime minister of Britain, has been appointed a new senior peace envoy for the Middle East, working on building the framework for a Palestinian state, officials said today….

Mr. Blair, who handed his office over to Gordon Brown in London, becomes a senior envoy for the “quartet,” diplomatic shorthand for the four leading outside forces working on peace efforts between Israel and the Palestinians—the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations.

A State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, said Mr. Blair would spend significant time in the region “working with the parties and others to help viable and lasting government institutions representing all Palestinians, a robust economy and a climate of law and order for the Palestinian people.”…

President Bush welcomed the appointment today.

“Tony will help Palestinians develop the political and economic institutions they will need for a democratic, sovereign state able to provide for its people and live in peace and security with Israel,” he said in a statement.

Fred Thompson Surges In Presidential Polls

2007-06-28T03:12:00.000-04:00

Fred Fits Despite not having officially entered the race, actor and former Senator Fred Thompson has just made his first appearance at the top of one of the polls for the Republican presidential nomination, beating Rudy Giuliani for the first time. Look for the Rasmussen poll results, and note in the graph on this page the strong recent surge in Thompson's poll numbers, which has come at the expense of every other candidate.

There are a number of reasons for this, including Thompson's appealing personality. I was struck by the audience reaction to him in a recent appearance on Jay Leno's show: people like and trust Thompson, regarding him as a serious and honest man (this reputation for sincerity may explain why he is trouncing Hillary Clinton in a general election match-up).

There is also another reason for these results. I have backed Rudy Giuliani because I like the idea of Republicans choosing the war as their top priority, while subordinating the agenda of the religious right. But Thompson—who is by no means a holy roller, but who opposes abortion and is more "conservative" on a number of issues, like immigration—does not ask Republicans to make this choice.

He allows them to choose a candidate who is relatively strong and forceful when speaking about the war, but who is also a better "fit" for the party's conservative base. But that doesn't mean that Thompson is a shoo-in for the nomination. With less experience, particularly in an executive position, he has not been extensively tested for the stamina, quick decision-making, and management skills required to win a campaign—and to fulfill the responsibilities of the presidency.

"Rudy Amid the Evangelicals," Alex Koppelman, Salon.com, June 27 The conventional wisdom is that Rudy Giuliani's bid for the Republican presidential nomination will be in serious trouble without the support of evangelicals and social conservatives. It is still early in a wide-open race. But with his campaign appearance on Tuesday at Regent University, the school founded by conservative televangelist Pat Robertson, the former mayor of New York City showed that he was still struggling with a strategy for social issues important to the party's conservative base.

When the first question from an audience member came in two parts, Giuliani embraced the chance to avoid dealing with social issues altogether. He was asked how to appeal to Muslims who are not religious extremists and how to "get Judeo-Christian values back in our government"—conservative code for issues like abortion and same-sex marriage. Giuliani went off on a rambling answer about Islam that took him to the streets of Saudi Arabia and into the politics of the Soviet Union, before skipping on to the next question from an audience member.

When pushed for clarification at a press conference later in the day, Giuliani said he had simply forgotten to answer the latter half of the audience member's question. "You can't possibly describe Judeo-Christian values in one lesson or two or three, but if there was one, it would probably be Jesus' admonition that you would be judged based on how you treat others, and I would try to exemplify that in the way that I governed as president," Giuliani explained. "I think that Judeo-Christian values are so much a part of America that if you run a government responsibly and honestly and peacefully, you're reaffirming Judeo-Christian values." He never mentioned abortion or same-sex marriage, intelligent design or prayer in schools….

Rather than pander to the base and risk looking like a flip-flopper, he implicitly acknowledges the differences between him and evangelical voters on social issues and moves on—while continuing to emphasize his image as "America's mayor," the one many Americans remember from 9/11 as a strong, decisive leader. That, the campaign wants voters to think, is the most important quality to look for in a president this time around, because of Islamic extremism and the war in Iraq….

"Don't expect you're going to agree with me on everything," he had told the audience, "because that would be unreasonable. Even I don't agree with myself on everything," he said. "It's not about one issue -- it's about many issues."

Nevertheless, he added that if the election did come down to a single issue for voters, then it should be about the one thing that the former mayor has made a signature issue: the fight against terrorism….

"I wouldn't even consider voting for him," [Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention] said in an interview Tuesday…. Land, who has recently made supportive statements about Thompson, says he believes Giuliani's support among evangelicals has mostly come out of a sense of pragmatism, a fear of Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton becoming the next president and a desire to see the most electable candidate become the Republican nominee….

Charles Dunn, the dean of Regent's Robertson School of Government, thinks otherwise. He divides the evangelical leadership into two camps, "purists" like Dobson and Land, and "pragmatists" like Robertson. And he thinks the pragmatists will win this fight. "What I'm sensing in the rank and file on this," Dunn says, "in the evangelical Christian and conservative Catholic audiences, is that you have a high percentage of pragmatists among them, and they're willing to give Giuliani a serious look."

Republican Senator Stabs Military In The Back

2007-06-28T03:07:00.000-04:00

While our soldiers fight in the field, they can always depend on the politicians back home to watch their back—and look for an opportunity to stick a knife in it. In an ominous sign, these congressional advocates of defeat and surrender now include a growing number of "centrist" Republicans.

The most influential to join that list is Senator Richard Lugar, who has pronounced the "surge" a failure, even though it has only barely begun. Historically, this is bad news: we did not retreat from Vietnam until Republicans joined Democrats in opposing the war.

"Key GOP Senator Says Iraq Plan Is Not Working," AP via New York Times, June 27 Sen. Richard Lugar, a senior Republican and a reliable vote for President Bush on the war, said that Bush's Iraq strategy was not working and that the US should downsize the military's role.

The unusually blunt assessment Monday deals a political blow to Bush, who has relied heavily on GOP support to stave off anti-war legislation.

It also comes as a surprise. Most Republicans have said they were willing to wait until September to see if Bush's recently ordered troop buildup in Iraq was working.

''In my judgment, the costs and risks of continuing down the current path outweigh the potential benefits that might be achieved,'' Lugar, R-Ind., said in a Senate floor speech. ''Persisting indefinitely with the surge strategy will delay policy adjustments that have a better chance of protecting our vital interests over the long term.''

Only a few Republicans have broken ranks and called for a change in course or embraced Democratic proposals ordering troops home by a certain date. As the top Republican and former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Lugar's critique could provide political cover for more Republicans wanting to challenge Bush on the war….

However, [Lugar spokesman Andy] Fisher said the speech does not mean Lugar would switch his vote on the war or embrace Democratic measures setting a deadline for troop withdrawals.

The American Offensive Rolls In Iraq

2007-06-28T03:01:00.000-04:00

As I observed last week, all previous commentary about the "surge" in Iraq and any evaluations of whether it was working yet were grossly premature. The US was merely building its forces and preparing the ground up to now—and the current massive operation is the real surge that we have only just begun to launch.

Ronbo sent me a link to an excellent, must-read overview of the new counter-insurgency strategy by one of General Petraeus's advisors. I won't excerpt this article, because it is too good and too informative to condense into a few quotes. But if you want to understand the "big picture" of what we are doing now in Iraq, and the reasoning behind it, go read this article.

For my excerpts, I chose a Los Angeles Times article that offers much less analysis but gives an on-the-ground "feel" for the nature of the campaign. Note particularly the anecdote about the young widow of an insurgent sniper who describes how she begged her husband to quit the fight because "doing the things he was doing can only end in death." That is precisely what we want the enemy's supporters to conclude.

The New York Times also has an interesting report that gives a feel for the scale and house-flattening destructiveness of the new campaign.

Unfortunately, al-Qaeda has also mounted one successful counter-attack: a bomb attack that killed Sunni tribal leaders who had allied themselves with the Iraqi government against al-Qaeda. We'll see whether this makes the sheiks afraid to oppose al-Qaeda—or whether this hardens their opposition to the terrorists.

"Militants' Baqubah Fiefdom Is Liberated," Alexandra Zavis, Los Angeles Times, June 26 For more than a year, hundreds of masked gunmen loyal to Al Qaeda cruised this capital of their self-declared state, hauling Shiite Muslims from their homes and leaving bodies in the dusty, trash-strewn streets.

They set up a religious court and prisons, aid stations and food stores. And they imposed their fundamentalist interpretation of Islam on a population that was mostly too poor to flee and too terrified to resist.

US and Iraqi soldiers last week pushed into this city that has been the heart of the Sunni Arab militants' fiefdom, in a campaign to bring three lawless neighborhoods under government control. What they found was a chilling indication of the ability of Sunni Arab insurgents to run a rival state, even as US troops prepared to wipe them out….

US Army Col. Stephen Townsend, who commands the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, based in Ft. Lewis, Wash., said the assault had denied the insurgents a major bastion and helped secure this city of about 300,000 residents.

"There ain't no capital of the Islamic State of Iraq anymore," Townsend told reporters Monday at a base on the city's northern outskirts….

Among the dead was a suspected sniper believed to have killed at least one US soldier. When the Americans visited his house, the man's aging father said he had disowned his son and persuaded two younger sons to quit the movement. The man's young wife said she had pleaded with her husband to do the same.

"I told him he has a family now," she said, trembling slightly as she sat on the kitchen floor, cradling a baby boy and answering the soldiers' questions. "Doing the things he was doing can only end in death, and that is what happened."

The Coming Collapse of The Iranian Economy

2007-06-28T02:52:00.000-04:00

Americans are understandably fed up with the "incompetence" of the Bush administration—though I attribute Bush's failures, not to incompetence, but to his mixed premises: his desire to stand up for liberty against the threat of totalitarian Islam, on the one hand, versus his conventional pragmatism and altruism on the other.

But whatever George Bush's failings, we can take comfort in the fact that they are nothing compared to the failings of our chief enemy in the War on Terrorism: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Since coming into office on a promise to spread Iran's oil wealth to the masses, Ahmadinejad has instead nearly collapsed the Iranian economy.

Now one of the world's largest producers of oil has begun to ration gasoline—an extraordinarily unpopular decision that has led to rioting in the very same poor neighborhoods where Ahmadinejad claims to have his base of support. See the story linked to below, and also another report at CNN.

This highlights the glaring weak spot of the Iranian regime and points the way for a very effective strategy to further collapse our enemy's economy by blockading its gasoline imports (a strategy recently recommended in USA Today and also hinted at by presidential hopeful Fred Thompson).

Unfortunately, the Bush administration shows few signs of moving against Iran, and now John Bolton is openly criticizing the administration for clinging to diplomacy in dealing with Iran and evading the need to topple the regime.

Still, it is good to have a reminder of how weak our enemy is. Victor Davis Hanson puts it nicely in a somewhat rambling NRO article that is worthwhile just for this one observation: "Theocratic Iran is not exactly as 'empowered' as is generally alleged, but [is] in the greatest crisis of its miserable existence."

"Iran Fuel Rations Spark Anger, Rioting," Reuters via MSNBC, June 27 Angry Iranian motorists lined up for gasoline for hours on Wednesday after the world’s fourth-largest oil exporter imposed fuel rationing, sparking chaotic scenes and the torching of at least two pump stations.

One Iranian news agency, Fars, said 12 gasoline stations were set ablaze in Tehran after the government’s announcement late on Tuesday, but only two could be independently confirmed.

Some drivers had scuffled while waiting to fill up their tanks before the rationing started at midnight. Others openly criticized President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government, which came to power vowing to share out Iran’s oil wealth more fairly.

“We are swimming in oil and all they do is just put pressure on people,” said taxi driver Hasan Mohammadi.

Despite its huge energy reserves, Iran lacks refining capacity and must import about 40 percent of its gasoline….

One fuel station in Pounak, a poorer area of the capital, was set alight while another in eastern Tehran was partially burnt, two of its pumps destroyed by fire, witnesses said….
“I cannot tolerate more economic pressure,” said teacher Hasan Sanjari. “My monthly salary is $300. I have three sons.”…

But he said Iran had no choice but to curb consumption because of the burden on state coffers. All fuel, whether imported or domestically produced, is sold at heavily subsidized prices, encouraging waste and smuggling.

Leftist Smear Campaign On Global Warming

2007-06-26T03:29:00.000-04:00

The global warming juggernaut has just begun to start moving, and the ground is being cleared for it by a smear campaign against global warming "deniers." But those "deniers" are proving hard to get rid of. In fact, as the global warming hysteria builds, more and more such "deniers" are beginning to raise their voices.

In today's Times of London, a prominent oil executive points out the sheer mathematical and scientific absurdity of the claim that "renewable energy" will be able to replace oil and coal without requiring a massive sacrifice of human prosperity, especially in the emerging industrial economies of what used to be the Third World.

Ronbo directed my attention to an interesting article about a Swedish scientist who is a distinguished expert on measurement of sea levels—who denounces as a "falsification of the data" the claim that global warming will cause rising sea levels.

Below, I link to yet another article by a scientist claiming that the data actually shows—unsurpisingly—that global temperatures are determined by the intensity of radiation coming in from the sun. Note that this article also has a list with links to a long series in Canada's Financial Post showcasing the views of scientific opponents of the global warming hysteria.

All of this leads a commentator in the Washington Post to wonder whether the global warming scare campaign has over-reached and will be "brought low" by the failure of reality to live up to its over-hyped predictions. If we do win the global warming battle, I expect that this is how we will win it. Just as Communism collapsed when it lost all pretense to economic credibility, so environmentalism will collapse when it loses its pretense to scientific credibility.

"Read the Sunspots," R. Timothy Patterson, Financial Post, June 20 Politicians and environmentalists these days convey the impression that climate-change research is an exceptionally dull field with little left to discover. We are assured by everyone from David Suzuki to Al Gore to Prime Minister Stephen Harper that "the science is settled."…

The fact that science is many years away from properly understanding global climate doesn't seem to bother our leaders at all. Inviting testimony only from those who don't question political orthodoxy on the issue, parliamentarians are charging ahead with the impossible and expensive goal of "stopping global climate change."…

Climate-change research is now literally exploding with new findings. Since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the field has had more research than in all previous years combined and the discoveries are completely shattering the myths. For example, I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of all energy on the planet….

My research team began to collect and analyze core samples from the bottom of deep Western Canadian fjords….

Using various coring technologies, we have been able to collect more than 5,000 years' worth of mud in these basins, with the oldest layers coming from a depth of about 11 metres below the fjord floor. Clearly visible in our mud cores are annual changes that record the different seasons: corresponding to the cool, rainy winter seasons, we see dark layers composed mostly of dirt washed into the fjord from the land; in the warm summer months we see abundant fossilized fish scales and diatoms (the most common form of phytoplankton, or single-celled ocean plants) that have fallen to the fjord floor from nutrient-rich surface waters. In years when warm summers dominated climate in the region, we clearly see far thicker layers of diatoms and fish scales than we do in cooler years. Ours is one of the highest-quality climate records available anywhere today….

Using computers to conduct what is referred to as a "time series analysis" on the colouration and thickness of the annual layers, we have discovered repeated cycles in marine productivity in this, a region larger than Europe. Specifically, we find a very strong and consistent 11-year cycle throughout the whole record in the sediments and diatom remains. This correlates closely to the well-known 11-year "Schwabe" sunspot cycle, during which the output of the sun varies by about 0.1%. Sunspots, violent storms on the surface of the sun, have the effect of increasing solar output, so, by counting the spots visible on the surface of our star, we have an indirect measure of its varying brightness. Such records have been kept for many centuries and match very well with the changes in marine productivity we are observing.

In the sediment, diatom and fish-scale records, we also see longer period cycles, all correlating closely with other well-known regular solar variations. In particular, we see marine productivity cycles that match well with the sun's 75-90-year "Gleissberg Cycle," the 200-500-year "Suess Cycle" and the 1,100-1,500-year "Bond Cycle."

Our finding of a direct correlation between variations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate indicators (called "proxies") is not unique. Hundreds of other studies, using proxies from tree rings in Russia's Kola Peninsula to water levels of the Nile, show exactly the same thing: The sun appears to drive climate change….

Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth. Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the Little Ice Age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world, especially Canada.

The Democommie Anti First Amendment Movement

2007-06-26T03:26:00.000-04:00

The articles linked to above discuss one of the greatest threats to freedom of speech today: controls on political speech, in the name of keeping "corrupting" money out of politics. This is the only bi-partisan threat to freedom of speech today. Most of the other substantial threats hail from the left, which has increasingly come out as an enemy of freedom of speech.

In a good column in the Washington Post, George Will uses a case in California, in which "hate speech" provisions were used to suppress the views of religious conservatives, to highlight the threat of attempt to revive a federal "hate speech" law used to suppress conservatives. The left wants to ban "hate speech" in the hope that it can then define "hate speech" to mean the expression of any ideas that the left finds to be objectionable.

But the most imminent threat in Congress is an attempt to revive the unfair "Fairness Doctrine," a measure being pursued with the explicit goal of punishing and suppressing right-leaning talk radio shows.

"Unfairness Doctrine," National Review Online, June 25 A new blueprint for a government takedown of conservative talk radio comes from the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, founded and run by former Clinton White House chief of staff John Podesta. In a report entitled, “The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio,” the Center outlines a plan that would, if implemented, do enormous damage not only to conservatives on talk radio, but to freedom of speech as well.

Surveying 257 stations owned by the top-five commercial station groups, the report’s authors found the unsurprising news that 91 percent of total weekday talk programming is conservative, and just nine percent “progressive.” Rather than attribute that imbalance to the generally conceded superiority of conservative programming—most radio professionals would tell you that Rush Limbaugh is simply better at what he does than any of the liberal opponents who have tried to compete with him—the report finds a deeper, more sinister case. “The gap between conservative and progressive talk radio,” it concludes, “is the result of multiple structural problems in the US regulatory system. “ According to Podesta’s Center, those structural problems can only be solved by government action.

First, the report proposes new national and local limits on the number of radio stations one company can own. Second, it recommends a de facto quota system to ensure that more women and minorities own radio stations. And finally, it says the government should “require commercial owners who fail to abide by enforceable public interest obligations to pay a fee to support public broadcasting.”…

In addition, the report claims that the Fairness Doctrine—the government rule that, before it was repealed in 1987, required broadcasters to present opposing viewpoints on controversial public issues—might not really be dead, and thus might not have to be reestablished by Congress. Instead, a new administration might simply decide to enforce it again. That point is highly debatable, but it wouldn’t be surprising if President Clinton, President Obama, or President Edwards were to give it a try.

The Supreme Court Rules For And Against Free Speech

2007-06-26T03:19:00.000-04:00

Two important First Amendment cases were decided today in split decisions by the Supreme Court. It is not just the votes that were split—5-4 in both cases—but the reasoning. The court made rulings that were proper, but very narrow in scope.

Some time ago, I asked readers to watch out for several suits that would address whether a citizen has "standing" to sue the government over infractions of the separation of church and state. In a case in which a secularist group had sued to block presidential "faith-based initiatives," the Justices ruled against the plaintiffs, but on narrow grounds: that a citizen cannot claim to be damaged by a government action merely because he pays taxes.

But this ruling will not effect most church-state cases, and the justices explicitly refrained from overturning the precedent that allows most such lawsuits to go forward. That's a good thing, because preventing individuals from filing suit in the courts to enforce the separation of church and state would make the First Amendment a dead letter.

In another case, detailed in the report below, the Supreme Court properly ruled that "issue advertisements" that mention individual candidates are permissible during an election. Of course they are: how can a nation claim to have freedom of speech, if activists are barred from discussing the candidates' position on the issues during an election?

But the court did not strike down the overall principle, in the McCain-Feingold campaign finance "reform" act, of the government's authority to restrict campaign speech during an election season. So the court conceded the principle of controls on political speech—while blocking the worst implementation of that principle.

"Justices Loosen Restrictions on Campaign Ads," David Stout, New York Times, June 25 The Supreme Court today loosened the restrictions on what companies and unions can spend on television advertisements just before elections, and in so doing may well have affected the thinking of political strategists for the 2008 elections.

By 5 to 4, the court ruled that an anti-abortion group in Wisconsin should have been allowed to broadcast ads before the 2004 race for the United States Senate in that state. In its ruling today, the high court opened a significant loophole in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, familiarly known as the McCain-Feingold law, to curb donations to campaigns.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said that, when regulating what can be said in a campaign and when it may be said, “the First Amendment requires us to err on the side of protecting political speech rather than suppressing it.”…

The 2004 ads in question mentioned Senators Russell D. Feingold and Herb Kohl, both Wisconsin Democrats, and urged viewers to contact them and urge them to oppose their Democratic colleagues’ opposition to some of President Bush’s judicial nominees. The ads directed viewers to a Web site critical of Mr. Feingold, who was up for re-election….

Today, the Supreme Court majority concluded that the special judicial panel was right in holding that the ads should have been allowed. “Because WRTL’s ads may reasonably be interpreted as something other than an appeal to vote for or against a specific candidate, they are not the functional equivalent of express advocacy,” the majority said, using the term for ads that urge a candidate’s election or defeat….

In defining what qualifies as “express advocacy,” or ads zeroing in on a candidate to promote or denounce him, “the court should give the benefit of the doubt to speech, not censorship,” the majority said.

Chief Justice Roberts wrote the opinion upholding the special court. Siding with him were Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr., Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas, although the last three jurists would have gone further and declared the pertinent section of the law unconstitutional.

Muslim Palestine: Gone With The Wind

2007-06-26T03:14:00.000-04:00

In the years after America's Civil War, the defeated Southerners used to wax poetic about the nobility of "our lost cause." Of course, the cause for which they had fought—preserving the institution of slavery—was anything but noble. But you could tell that they had been defeated, because they at least described it as a "lost cause."

Israel may finally achieve peace with its Arab neighbors when they similarly lose hope for the Palestinian "cause." While US and Israeli actions are not, alas, offering new evidence that the Palestinian cause of destroying Israel is lost on a practical level, the article below shows that the Palestinian civil war may be undermining the moral legitimacy of "the cause," with some Arab commentators going so far as to declare that the Palestinians "are adolescents who cannot and should not be trusted to run institutions of state or any other important matters."

"Arabs Losing Faith in 'the Cause'," Youssef M. Ibrahim, Jewish World Review, June 25 Why is America trying to pour new money and more weapons into Palestinian Arab hands barely days after the Gaza debacle?...

America and Israel may want to wait for what may turn out to be a changing of the guard: Arab voices, both expert and popular, are rising in vociferous denunciations of the once sacrosanct Palestinian Arabs….

"Palestinians today need to be left without a shred of a doubt" as to what other Arabs think of them, a widely read opinion commentator for the Saudi daily Asharq Al Awsat, Mamoun Fandy, thundered on Monday. "We need to tell them the only thing they have proven over 50 years is that they are adolescents who cannot and should not be trusted to run institutions of state or any other important matters."…

For its part, the Egyptian press has become unhinged, spewing vile denunciations of what is universally known as "the cause"—support for the Palestinian Arabs—and describing it as dead….

Kuwaitis, who have harbored contempt for Palestinian Arabs ever since they allied themselves with Saddam Hussein's occupation in 1990–91, also dropped all restraint. "Palestinians are neither a modernized nor a civilized people," Ahmad Al Bughdadi wrote Monday in Al Siyassah, an influential Kuwaiti daily. "They are not statesmen. If what happened in Gaza is what they do without a state, what then shall they do when they get one?"

If there could be an editorial coup de grace, it surely was delivered by no less than Abdelbari Atwan, undoubtedly the Palestinian Arabs' most influential and respected journalist and a familiar face on both Western and Arab television.

Writing in the London-based Al Quds International, his painfully felt commentary, "Yes, We Have Lost the World's Respect," argued that "the cause" may have lost its legitimacy.

The Endless Cycle of Islamic Appeasement

2007-06-26T03:03:00.000-04:00

Ronbo noted to me the other day that he had noticed a certain fatigue among the better commentators: they are visibly getting tired, because they are saying the same things over and over again, and no one is listening or acting on the arguments they are making. Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it—and those who cannot convince their fellow men to learn from history are doomed to repeat themselves.

But forget about learning from history—our leaders aren't learning from the present. They haven't learned from last year's Hezbollah assault on Israel, and they are not learning from the latest Iranian summer offensive. The issue on which our leaders are most steadfast in their refusal to learn is the case of the Palestinians. As the article below makes very clear, the "new" strategy of supporting Arafat's old Fatah faction has been tried again and again—and it always makes things worse.

"A Bad Week for the Good Guys," Tom Rose, Weekly Standard, June 22 The past week has been a good one for terrorists. The birth of the world's first truly terrorist state in Gaza was quickly followed by a Western response that, if sustained, all but guarantees that terror state's survival.

While there are plenty of examples, past and present, of states that encourage, fund and even practice terrorism, no nations have ever been created explicitly for the sake of terrorism. Not even the Taliban. Hamas was built upon the terrorist edifice created by the organization it recently supplanted—the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), or "Fatah" as it is has become more recently known. The PLO was created in 1964, three years before the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, not to create the world's 22nd Arab state, but to destroy its only Jewish state. Hamas overthrew the PLO in Gaza not to change the PLO's dream, but to fulfill it.

What, then, is Washington's answer to Hamastan in Gaza? Why, another bailout of the one organization responsible for the entire debacle in the first place—the PLO. After 45 years of ground work preparing for Hamas' takeover by radicalizing Palestinian society through blood-curdling terrorism, mind-boggling corruption, and world-class inefficiency, the US and Israeli governments have announced their gratitude to Fatah with a billion dollar emergency aid package….

Palestinian society cannot be transformed by reviving the group responsible for its degradation. How does one fight terrorism by rewarding those who invented it?...

It might be one thing if a policy of saving the PLO had never been tried. But it has been tried, and it has failed, not once, not twice, but three times. It was tried and failed in 1970 when President Nixon pressured Jordan's King Hussein to let the PLO decamp to Lebanon after the PLO failed to destroy Jordan. It destroyed Lebanon instead. In 1982 the United States again came to the PLO's rescue by arranging its exit from Lebanon during the Israeli invasion. The third, most damaging resuscitation came with the Oslo Peace Accords in 1993, this time not at American hands, but at Israel's.

Iraq War=Regional War With Iran

2007-06-26T02:54:00.000-04:00

The big story of the past two years is the way in which the War on Terrorism has clearly emerged as a regional war with Iran—clearly, that is, for those who are willing to see it. Below, I link to a particularly clear-eyed analysis by Walid Phares of how Iran is advancing on all of its fronts.

See a similar analysis in the Wall Street Journal, which I particularly like because it acknowledges the inevitability of the drift toward war and most of all, because it regards Iranian aggression as a "miscalculation," based on the history of confrontations between free societies and expansionist dictatorships: the free societies always seem weak in the beginning—and they always triumph in the end.

But there is always a disastrous cost for the delay in confronting evil. Right now, Iran's leaders are cracking down on dissent inside Iran in what some are describing as a campaign similar to China's Cultural Revolution. At the same time, Iran is shipping missiles to Syria that will allow it to strike at Israel if Iran is attacked.

Iran's minions in Lebanon are now attacking UN peacekeepers (who are, of course, utterly unable to keep the peace), while an update on the analysis linked to below points to new claims—from the Palestinians—that Iran exercised direct "command and control" in the Hamas takeover of Gaza.

Iran wants war, and it is moving forward on all fronts. The longer we delay the showdown, the higher the cost we will pay.

"Phares—Lebanon, Gaza, the Broader Syro-Iranian War," National Review Online, June 21The latest dramatic military and terror events in Gaza and Lebanon can be viewed from a regional geopolitical perspective: A Syro-Iranian axis offensive on its (their) primarily western front stretching along the Mediterranean coast.

.. In previous analyses I have argued that the Tehran-Damascus axis is involved in a regional campaign to seize as much physical terrain and score as many victories across the Middle East in order to consolidate their strategic posture before 2008; the year they believe Americans will limit—perhaps diminish—their moves because of the US presidential campaign season….

Following are the main fronts:

Eastern Front: There have been multiple reports and much evidence of arming and supplying neo-Taliban and other Jihadi forces in Afghanistan in order that they may engage US-led NATO forces and provoke chaos across the country.

Central Front: The axis has intensified its actions against US and coalition forces, as wells as Iraqi civilians in an attempt to create more sectarian tension, with the greater objective of disrupting “surge” operations in particular, and generally eroding US and allied efforts in Iraq.
Western Front: The axis has unleashed two blitzkrieg-like offensives—one on the upper western front (Lebanon). The other within the lower western front (Gaza).

In Lebanon, the Tehran-Damascus axis has had as its goals to crumble the Seniora Government, cripple the Lebanese Army, and crush the Cedar Revolution….

The axis has also been involved in Gaza where they surprised observers with their decision to throw Hamas fully against Fatah and the PA in the enclave. The plan to seize control of Gaza was projected a long time ago. But the timing was at the discretion of the Syro-Iranian war room, which funds and strategically controls Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

The heavy fighting in Gaza represents an important decision made by the regional masters: The acceleration of the axis offensive so that by the end of summer, four battlefields will be fully ignited against the US, its allies and regional democracies: Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Gaza (Palestinian territories). But just as important is the fact that an entire Taliban-like zone has been established on the eastern Mediterranean under Hamas control and with Syro-Iranian backing. Our expectations are that, short of a large-scale counter-operation aimed at dislodging the "coup" in the enclave, the area will become a massive terror base of operations….

The Jihadi strategic mind is in its full offensive mode in the region.

Frank Amodeo and Mirabilis:"I knew Frank Amodeo In Prison"

2007-06-25T09:23:00.000-04:00

This from an Email:

Amodeo, "A clever psychopath" in the words of a fellow inmate at the Federal "Club Fed" white collar minimum security prison at Lewisburg was the creator of "AQMI (pronounced "Acme") Strategy Corporation" situated on the 28th floor of the SunTrust towerin Orlando, Florida that along with the other elements of the "Amodeo Web" that includes Mirabilis Ventures Inc. and Nexia Strategy Corporation.

Thus Amodeo at the ripe old age of 45 became the Emperor of a world wide empire of corporate private military establishment that employs thousands of former policemen and soldiers as mercenaries engaged in "black bag" projects like the 2006 attempt to overthrow the government of the Congo.

But life was not always a bed of roses for Amodeo. The highly intelligent son of a lawyer, Frank P. Amodeo, and some would say "amublance chaser" --- Amodeo The Younger grew up in a middle class household in Orlando, and attended college at the University of Central Florida before moving to Atlanta to attend the Emory University of Law. He started his law practice in 1988. It only took six years after starting his practice of law for Young Amodeo be disbarred by the Georgia Supreme Court: It would appear that The Young Man in A Hurry" engaged in fraud and dishonesty in the state of Georgia, in that he stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from mostly senior citizen clients, and wrote checks on closed checking accounts.

Like many other discovered crook, the now disbarred lawyer Amodeo decided to head south to Florida, back to Orlando in early 1994, where he had roots and family. He obtained new employment in real estate as a "liquidation agent" -- a person who aided troubled businesses in going out of business. Then the criminal problems began for him: In 1995, Amodeo was arrested and jailed for forgery and grand theft. He dodged the bullet on that one and charges were dropped. This was not to be the case in 1996, when the IRS filed claim to $83,000 in back taxes. In 1997, Amodeo was to claim bankruptcy and only $500 to his name. His personal Gotterdammerung happened the next year in 1998 when Amodeo was sentenced to three years in federal prison and three years parole, a very light sentence for one engaged in this type of criminal activity, for a fraud case that happened in his lawyer days in Atlanta.

"I remember Frank from our days imprisoned at Lewisburg minimum security prison, which is a cage for white collar criminals," said a former inmate friend of Amodeo, he continues, "We were both assigned duty as ground keepers at the prison, a job we could knock out in a couple of hours in the winter, so we had lots of time to chat. Frank never did talk about the details of his case, in fact, none of us did because of the problems with informants, however, he talk in general terms about how stupid he had been in what he'd done. I understood that he wasn't the least bit sorry about his crime, but only of getting caught. I recall one day talking about Bill Clinton and how he appeared to heading our way (This was during the impeachment process in 1999) and Amodeo remarked. 'Clinton will never do a second of prison time: He's too well connected with law enforcement and the ultimate Mr. Big with millions in the bank. You and I are locked up because we are little crooks who have to take the fall; the big operators like Bill Clinton always go free.' I understand Amodeo has become a Mr. Big since leaving prison, " the former inmate and friend of Frank concluded.

The Return of Jack Idema

2007-06-25T08:53:00.001-04:00

Jonathan Keith "Jack" Idema is many things to many people, but to me, someone who has actually met this controversial individual and spent many hours in conversations with him, Idema will always remain a contemporary version of the character portrayed by Dustin Hoffman in 1970 -- The latter day "Little Big Man."

Now that Idema has been released from prison in Afghanistan, I can't wait to read the book and see the movie version of Idema's adventures in life starring Idema that is written and directed by Idema that features scenes in Russia, Afghanistan and prison where the "Jack Idema The Super Patriot" shares scenes with many modern day players in current events like Osama bin Laden.

Notes and links:

I Love Idema

I Love And Hate Idema

I Hate Idema: Operation Desert Fraud

Veterans: Idema is Crazy and a Poser

"24" Secret Agent Jack Bauer, the fictional character who Idema models himself on even to the point of changing his first name to "Jack."

The Real Deal On Idema

Excellent Background On The Idema Saga: Review of Robert Young Pelton's book, Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror