More on military uses of high-energy lasers
Larry at Before Breakfast continues his excellent, first-person expertise series on tactical uses of high-energy lasers.

by Donald Sensing, 1/31/2003 02:08:23 PM. Permalink |   

If you sent me email, patience, please!
Yesterday was a hit-meter-pegging day for One Hand Clapping - almost 7,000 unique hits, beating the previous record by almost 4,000! If you have a comment on a post, please leave a comment! I read all comments and emails, but in honesty, reader emails tend sometimes to get buried because I get a lot of email for other reasons. But comments stand out. I wish I could respond to all the comments and emails, but unfortuantely, I can't. I do read them all, though. Thank you for reading!

by Donald Sensing, 1/31/2003 02:00:52 PM. Permalink |   

Anti-Americanism is the European mainstream
Robert Kagan, who lives in Belgium, explains why the eight national leaders who signed a letter of support of US policy took a politically risky position:

In London, where Tony Blair has to go to work every day, one finds Britain's finest minds propounding, in sophisticated language and melodious Oxbridge accents, the conspiracy theories of Pat Buchanan concerning the "neoconservative" (read: Jewish) hijacking of American foreign policy. Britain's most gifted scholars sift through American writings about Europe searching for signs of derogatory "sexual imagery." In Paris, all the talk is of oil and "imperialism" (and Jews). In Madrid, it's oil, imperialism, past American support for Franco (and Jews). At a conference I recently attended in Barcelona, an esteemed Spanish intellectual earnestly asked why, if the United States wants to topple vicious dictatorships that manufacture weapons of mass destruction, it is not also invading Israel.

Yes, I know, there are Americans who ask such questions, too. We have our Buchanans and our Gore Vidals. But here's what Americans need to understand: In Europe, this paranoid, conspiratorial anti-Americanism is not a far-left or far-right phenomenon. It's the mainstream view. When Gerhard Schroeder campaigns on an anti-American platform in Germany, he's not just "mobilizing his base" or reaching out to fringe Greens and Socialists. He's talking to the man and woman on the street, left, right and center. When Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin publicly humiliate Colin Powell, they're playing to the gallery. The "European street" is more anti-American than ever before.

Kagan hints at the reason for this state of affairs. Here is why I think that this is so. Europeans have for centuries been, and still are, fundamentally anti-Semitic. At the root of European anti-Americanism is the rot of European hatred of Jews. American is not a Jewish nation, but we are the most steadfast political friend of Israel in the world - heck, probably the only political friend. Ipso facto, QED, in the Euro mind: the friend of the people I hate should also be hated.

That's not the only reason, but it is primary, in my view. The rest of the venom spewed against us is smoke and mirrors, I think: Kyoto, missile defense, etc. These are results of, not causes of their anti-Americanism. Another factor: Euro nations are statist in self-conception and law, including even Britain, which is a paler shade of "free" than we are. The idea of sovereignty residing solely in the people, not in the organs of government, is literally foreign to Europe. The Enlightenment, remember, was the birth mother of American democracy, and the Enlightenment was an English-speaking phenomenon.

by Donald Sensing, 1/31/2003 01:48:12 PM. Permalink |   

Iraqis plan trench warfare
It seems Saddam has the fantasy that American forces will batter themselves to death forcing through lines of successive trenches. But a trench is nothing more than a pre-dug grave, says Steven Den Beste. And he explains very well why. Then, says Steven,

I have no high regard for Saddam's intellectual powers, but even he isn't this stupid. It's clear that he can't possibly have any faith in these ideas, but what he may be hoping is that they'll cause our groundpounders to stop and form up for an attack, thus making themselves vulnerable for nerve gas. It won't, though; because they won't form for attack. You don't have to concentrate in order to call in airstrikes.

Well said. The US Army in the attack does not mass in order to attack an objective. Our forces mass on top of the objective. World War II this ain't and ain't gonna be. It's not even going to be a rerun of the 1991 Gulf War.

by Donald Sensing, 1/31/2003 01:24:34 PM. Permalink |   

More on human freedom, the West and Islam
Yesterday I contrasted the theological underpinning of the West's political understanding of human freedom with the theological underpinning of Islam's denial of human (hence, political) freedom, specifically in the Arab lands. In that line, I refer not to Lee Harris' thought-provoking essay, Al Qaeda's Fantasy Ideology:

Our "real" world, after all, is utterly secular, a concatenation of an endless series of cause and effect, with all events occurring on a single ontological plane. But the "real" world of radical Islam is different--its fantasy ideology reflects the same philosophical occasionalism that pervades so much of Islamic theology. That is to say, event B does not happen because it is caused by a previous event A. Instead, event A is simply the occasion for God to cause event B, so that the genuine cause of all events occurring on our ontological plane of existence is nothing else but God. But if this is so, then the "real" world that we take for granted simply vanishes, and all becomes determined by the will of God; and in this manner the line between realist and magical thinking dissolves. This is why the mere fact that there is no "realistic" hope of al Qaeda destroying the United States--and indeed the West as a whole--is not of the slightest consequence. After all, if God is willing, the United States and the West could collapse at any moment.

If you have not read his article, I urge you to do so.

by Donald Sensing, 1/31/2003 01:07:24 PM. Permalink |   

Tax reform? Here's a way.
Bill Hobbs says, "Want tax reform? Get a trustworthy government." It's specifically about Tennessee, but the points apply anywhere.

by Donald Sensing, 1/31/2003 12:58:01 PM. Permalink |   

Jeff Jarvis quotes Amiland, on Freeing Iraq:

At a ceremony on Sunday, Paul Spiegel -- the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany -- criticized the German government's position on Iraq. "One can't be a priori against war," he declared. "The concentration camps weren't freed by demonstrators."

by Donald Sensing, 1/31/2003 12:57:07 PM. Permalink |   

The draft: arguments for and against
Arguments for a draft
Rep. Charles Rangel got a lot of publicity when he introduced a bill into the House to restart compulsory military service, the draft. Herewith some analysis.

Support for a draft is minimal but cuts across political lines, with different motivations. Many political conservatives who tend to be sympathetic to a renewed draft grew up in the old draft era. They see the draft as a great social equalizer that brought young men together in difficult circumstances from all walks of life, all ethnicities and regions of the country. These men generally that kind of social mixing as desirable in itself. Such men (women were never drafted) also tend to be highly patriotic and think that military service is a basic obligation of citizenship. Except for World War II, the number of men actually drafted during the draft years was small compared to the pool of eligibles. But every male had to register for the draft (and still does) upon turning 18 and face the real possibility that he might be called up. That fact alone made young men ponder, however briefly, that freedom is not free. These things, so one side of the political spectrum says, are worthwhile reasons to reinstitute the draft. The draft would also free the services from the time and expense of recruiting.

Other folks say that whatever one's opinion of the military, it is best to have decisions made about its uses, funding and equipping made by a national leadership that has at least some familiarity with the military. Hence, they may support a renewal of the draft because they want tomorrow's leaders to be at least minimally aware of military life or capabilities. Some proponents also say that America would be better served with a population "salted" with more veterans than it is now, even if only a tiny number of veterans rise to political leadership.

Both these positions are based on a concern for the betterment of the country as a whole. They contrast with the left of center position on the draft. The liberals who support it (not all do, of course), claim some of the same concerns as the first two camps, but Rep. Rangel did not disguise his hope that a renewed draft would foment anti-military feeling and opposition to President Bush. This position is crass and calculating, being oriented on what will make his party prosper, not the nation at large.

Are these premises valid?
I think it is highly debatable that a term of military service by young men (or women) would mean that their later decisions, as national leaders, concerning war or military affairs would be better in any meaningful sense. Even with a draft like Rangel envisions, the number of elites to serve would be very small compared to the number eligible. It can't be reasonably expected that somehow military service, rendered two or three decades before, would make men or women of say, 45-60 years of age wiser heads in debating national security.

As a form of social policy intended to garner better-informed decision makers at the national level, the draft has little to commend it and much against it. Here are three arguments against it.

A draft would achieve low density results a great expense
Even if I grant that a term as a private in the Army by draftees would have a beneficial effect on national policy years down the line - and I do not think so - the number of men actually drafted would be a small percentage of those eligible, and the number of men who would rise to national leadership would be much smaller still. We could wind up spending literally billions of dollars in increased costs to garner a single draftee turned Senator. Does that make sense?

The US Census data for 2000 show that there are approximately 7,900,000 men aged 18-21 inclusive, the prime years for a draft. This number will stay fairly stable for at least a decade. Drafting a half-million men per year (I'll not address whether women should be drafted) takes only 6.3 percent of the eligibles. Of that 500,000 men, a significant number will not successfully complete their term; even in the all-volunteer force, perhaps one-fourth to one-third do not. Draftees may be expected to have a higher failure rate, call it 40 percent, charitably. That 40 percent presumably would not offer a national-class benefit later in life.

Of the remaining 300,000 men, how many would later rise to national-level leadership? No one can say. Some would, of course, but the presumption that their influence would be very great is not founded on anything, really, but the example of WW II vets - of which there were 16 million, all who served within a four-year span. I say that the experiences and contributions of that generation are historically unique: the Great Depression shaped their character as much as the war (Marine veteran William Manchester made this point in Goodbye Darkness) and after the war the G.I. Bill shaped it at least as much also. To expect that their model would hold true today is more imagination than well grounded conclusion.

A draft is a bad investment with no "payoff"
The armed forces are presently meeting their recruiting goals quite handily with volunteers. In fact, 2002 was the best recruiting year ever, according to a recent DOD release. If we revive the draft, draftees would either displace volunteers or require a larger military.

In the first case, we would have to tell would-be volunteers that they may not serve in order to make room for those who do not wish to serve. To me, this is self-evidently stupid, indeed un-American. It would not even accomplish the putative goals of a better informed citizenry in later years because no greater number of men and women would be serving than are serving now.

The second option is to increase the size of the armed forces extravagantly. There are good arguments to increase the size of the armed forces. I think they are too small myself. But the draft is no cure. In October 2001 I wrote that the anti-terrorism crusade "will take a new kind of national commitment. . . . It will require new kinds of armies, armies not of soldiers but of engineers, agriculturalists, financiers, administrators and educators." The draft won't do that. It will give us the wrong kind of force for the challenges we must face in the years to come. In fact, many of those skills are more suited for civil service than armed forces.

All these new troops would have to be trained, housed, equipped, transported and fed. Many of them would be married; more than half the enlisted force is now. Family-support costs would skyrocket. In the Army alone, the present basing infrastructure won't support such an expansion. The present unit structure won't support it. To reactivate old units whose colors are now furled would take years because those units would be useless without vehicles, ammunition, weapons and countless thousands of items of other equipment. The Air Force and Navy have similar problems concerning ships, aircraft and bases.

None of that can be manufactured quickly, unless substantial sectors of the civilian economy are converted as was done in World War II. You can bet that no proponent of the draft envisions that! A draft's startup costs alone would be astronomical and the annual recurring costs would be exorbitant also - all for the unreasonable expectation that the armed forces would be better off or would in later years make better national leaders.

The poor premises of a renewed draft
The whole move for a draft for its supposed social benefits is founded on fog: that a term as a draftee private makes better members of Congress or university presidents or cabinet secretaries or Wall Street bankers many years later. But there is no real evidence to support such a conclusion.

Draftee-level service is not training for national-level leadership.
The kind of education and knowledge needed at the national-policy level for the uses of the military either to preserve the nation or advance its goals is not the kind that will ever be learned by draftees or short-term volunteers. In the military education system, noncommissioned officers really never get training oriented toward national policy, at least not in any significant degree, and officers get none at all until Command and General Staff College - and then only concerning the structure of the national military establishment. Theory education, the philosophy of American way of war, pondering what a military is for in America and studies of the limits and uses of military power do not come until the War College and later schools. But only career officers attend those schools, and not all of them.

Veterans' records are decidedly mixed
Even veterans who actually served in combat are not necessarily better or wiser civilian controllers of the military later in life. Former Republican Senator Bob Dole and Democrat Senator Daniel Inouye are both WW II combat veterans with distinguished service. Maybe their wisdom about military affairs was enhanced by their service, but we really have no way to know. Many non-vets have proved pretty smart, too. Abe Lincoln is often offered as a foremost example, since he had six weeks of active duty, total, and spent almost all of it sitting in a tent in bivouac.

President Lyndon Johnson: can you say, "quagmire?" He was a WW II Navy veteran.

Robert McNamara: Johnson's secretary of defense was an Air Force veteran. He was the architect of America's agonies is Vietnam.

Jimmy Carter: US Naval Academy graduate, Navy officer, and architect of the disastrous Agreed Framework with North Korea in 1994, which haunts us today. The "hollow Army" also came to being during his terms as president.

Woodrow Wilson: No military experience, but during his term the United States decisively defeated Imperial German forces; it was the peace afterward that Wilson mismanaged.

Harry S Truman: An Army artillery officer and combat veteran during WW I, he saw WW II to a successful conclusion. The Marshall Plan saved western Europe under his administration, but he also let conventional forces degenerate pitifully. He mismanaged the Korean War at great cost to American blood and treasure.

John F. Kennedy: A WW II Navy combat vet, Kennedy brilliantly handled the Cuban Missile Crisis (but it was close!) but also started America's long tragic slide into Vietnam.

Ronald Reagan: Made training films in WW II, no other military experience. Materially ensured the defeat of Soviet forces in Afghanistan, masterminded the downfall of the USSR.

Overall, the national-security record of veterans in office is mixed at best, and so is that of non-vets. It's no basis for starting the draft.

by Donald Sensing, 1/31/2003 12:52:48 PM. Permalink |   

I'll be on radio Friday morning
You can listen live online at 7 a.m. Central Friday. I'll be on Teddy Bart's Round Table, the longest-running talk show in Nashville. In Nashville, the show is broadcast on AM 1160 WAMB.

I will appear with:

Rabbi Kenneth Kanter, Senior Rabbi of Nashville's Congregation Micah. He is a popular lecturer and author of books, journals, and articles that deal with the history of the Jewish contribution to American popular music.

Dr. Richard Land
Princeton and Oxford educated, Dr. Richard Land has served as president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission since 1988.

by Donald Sensing, 1/30/2003 02:27:27 PM. Permalink |   

Thanks to StrategyPage.com!
They have very kindly made One Clapping the blog of the week! Much appreciated!

by Donald Sensing, 1/30/2003 08:01:44 AM. Permalink |   

President Bush's most important sentence
I haven't read or heard any commentary about the most penetrating quote in the president's SOTU speech Tuesday night. It's this one, that came in the penultimate paragraph:

The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world; it is God's gift to humanity.

That sentence defines the chasm between the West generally, including America specifically, and Islam generally, including Arabic Islam specifically.

Islam teaches that Allah's control over events of the world and human life is total and complete. There is no human free will, there is only rebellion against Allah or submission to Allah. Yet even rebellion is, somehow, under the controlling purview of Allah. Everything that happens, without exception, is the preordained will of Allah.

Osama bin Laden bombed two American embassies in Africa killing mostly Muslim Africans by the hundreds. The Quran prohibits murder, and especially forbids Muslims from killing other Muslims. An ABC reporter subsequently managed to interview bin Laden and asked him whether he was responsible for the deaths of the other Muslims. No, replied OBL, I am a tool of Allah, and whatever I do is determined to happen by Allah. Those people would have died at that time in any event, because it was Allah's will that they die.

In Islam, Allah holds all the power marbles. Humanity has no self will or self power.

This concept of deity was prominent in Christian thought also. Classical Christian theism viewed the past and the future as equally concretized in God's knowledge. John Calvin wrote, "All events whatsoever are governed by the secret counsel of God [who] so overrules all things that nothing happens without his counsel. Events are so regulated by God, and all events so proceed from his determinate counsel, that nothing happens fortuitously." In such a scheme, human beings make no free choices. Martin Luther wrote, "God knows nothing contingently, but that he foresees, purposes, and does all things according to his immutable, eternal and infallible will. This bombshell knocks 'free-will' flat, and utterly shatters it." Luther taught that God knows what will happen next year as certainly as he knows what happened last year. Thus, God's omniscience equals his omnipotence, since "God must in fact determine every detail of the world, lest something happen that was not immutably known," as theologian Charles Cobb explained this position (not one Cobb held).

Yet in modern-day Christianity, this belief is hardly held at all. Europe can barely be termed Christian at all any more. American Christians affirm that God is in control, but even among conservative denominations this claim really serves to express and faith that nothing can shut out the God's saving power rather than claim that God micromanages every breath we take and eyeblink we make. South American and African Christianity has never embraced the concept.

Bin Laden's sort of self-justifying extremism is not the mainstream of Islam, but neither is it as far removed as we might imagine. Fatalism is a characteristic of Islam. There is no human freedom. Human liberty, especially as Americans think of it, is literally a foreign concept to Islam, especially Arab Islam.

We say that the defining idea of American liberty is "self evident:" Human beings "are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." This claim has no natural fit with Islam. The idea that humans, created by the power of Allah, could inherently possess unalienable rights of their own, which no authority may remove, would require Islam to surrender the idea that Allah enjoys meticulous control over all affairs of nature and humankind. But this notion is lethally dangerous to the defining idea of Islam itself: that Allah has all the power.

Liberty as we conceive it is at the heart of the conflict. For Muslims, the most desirable state of human society is not one that is free, in the Western sense, but one that is submissive to Allah, according to the dictates of Quran. This state of society is dar al Islam, the world of peace. Anything else is the "world of war." Hence, Islam does not use terms such as free or unfree to refer to nations, but at war with Allah or at peace (through submission) to Allah. And because of the deterministic model of Allah, any form of political repression conducted under Islam's banner is seen as Allah's will. Think Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Taliban.

Islamic countries can practice democracy. Turkey is usually offered as a prime example. Because Iraq has been mostly secularized for many decades, Islam does not present a barrier to democracy there as it would in some other Arab countries. Rooting democracy in Iraq won't be easy, but it's main barrier will probably be tribalism rather than religion. Iran might go democratic fairly easily one day, too, because the people there have pretty much had their fill of Islamic absolutism. The rest of the Arab countries will present difficult challenges.

Political liberty necessitates individual freedom and the power of self will. That means, as Mark Twain put it, that every person is free to go to Hell in his own way. But make no mistake: that concept is the very heart of our conflict with Islamists, and is the very point of contention with Arabic Islam itself.

See also my essays:

Islamic Fundamentalism Explained: The religious roots of the terror attacks against America,

The relationship between theology and American Constitutional rights.

The Soil of Arab Terrorism (PDF document).

Updates, July 11, 2003:

Lee Harris explained the metaphysics of this belief system, of which I excerpted the pertaining paragraph here.

I do not wish to give the erroneous impression that Islam formally holds that human beings are mere robots. Human free will is recognized in Islam, as are the categories of sin and virtue. The Quran teaches that at the judgment day, human beings will be judged according to their deeds. However, I believe there is a qualitative difference between the mainstream of how Christians have historically understood God's power and the way that Muslims have historically understood Allah's power.

The Jewish Scriptures show that while God's essential nature - salvation righteousness - does not change, God is significantly malleable in many respects. God repents, for example of creating humanity, bringing about the calamity of the Flood in which only Noah and his family are saved. In Jonah, God seems determined to destroy Nineveh, but clearly changes his mind when the Ninevites throw themselves at his mercy. The Gospel of Matthew (13:56) indicates that somehow the ability of Christ to do miracles in his own hometown was thwarted, or at least decreased, "because of their lack of faith."

To the contrary, nothing that human beings do or believe can affect the supreme power Allah yields. Hence, Harris is correct in assessing that at the foundation, anything that happens, whether a human deed or not, is at least permitted by Allah. The evil that men to is therefore permitted by Allah even though he could quash it at any time. Human free will, in Islam, may therefore be understood as somewhat illusory: no one can do or refrain from doing anything that Allah does not will or permit.

Christianity has struggled long and hard with this conundrum as well. If God is all-powerful, all-good, and all-knowing, how can there be evil in the world at all? The Swiss reformer John Calvin approached it from a different angle: how is it possible that so many people are undeniably resistant to receiving the Good News and do not convert to Christian faith? Calvin's development of predestination sought to solve that question. Calvin held that God's power is absolute and without limit. Therefore, God must choose who is saved and, at least by default, who is not saved. So as I showed above, Calvin and his contemporary Martin Luther both explicitly renounced the idea of human free will. But Catholicism and most of the rest of Protestantism have maintained that human free will is genuine; Methodism's main founder, John Wesley, said that the idea of predestination made mockery of God's moral commandments.

In the 20th century a great deal of theological work was done on this issue, which I made the topic of my Master thesis, using the problem of evil as a framework. You may read it online in PDF form if you wish.

by Donald Sensing, 1/30/2003 07:51:43 AM. Permalink |   

This Methodist bishop does not speak for me
According to a local TV news story, United Methodist Bishop Melvin Talbert will appear in an anti-Iraq-war TV ad campaign. The ad says that an American attack on Iraq would "violate God's law."

He says Iraq hasn't wronged the United States and that would war would only create more terrorists.

The commercial is expected to be broadcast beginning Friday to New York and Washington viewers of the CNN and Fox cable news networks.

The ad was produced by True Majority -- an advocacy organization started by Ben and Jerry's co-founder Ben Cohen. It's sponsored by the National Council of Churches.

As a United Methodist, I want to explain a couple of things:

Bishop Talbert does not speak for the United Methodist Church; by our denomination's polity, he cannot speak for the denomination. Only the General Conference may issue statements of denominational positions. It meets only every four years, with the next meeting in 2004.

The bishop recently went to Iraq (December, as I recall), where he let Saddam spin him like a top. He saw only what Saddam wanted him to see, he spoke only to the people Saddam wanted, he heard only what Saddam intended. There is no account of Talbert's visit, including his own, that he attempted to give a witness to the Iraqi people or the regime's figures of the Gospel of Jesus Christ; there is no evidence or report that he challenged Saddam's regime on its tyranny and murder; there is no evidence or report that he had any real agenda other than a barely-concealed willingness to be used a dupe by the co-winner of the Gold Medal for bloodthirstiest tyrant alive today (Kim Jong Il being the other).

It calls to mind what Stalin said about certain kinds of people being useful to Soviet communism.

The TV ad ends with the tagline: "Let the inspections work." The bishop and the others of the ad obviously didn't listen to the chief inspector, Hans Blix, Monday, because Blix's own report to the UN makes it clear that the inspections are not working. The inspections have not worked at any time since 1991 when they started.

The ad betrays an utter lack of even minimum knowledge about what the inspections are, how they function, and what they intend to accomplish. The facts have been explained in detail by many blogs and some major media: the inspectors are verifiers, not detectives. It is not their job to go on snipe hunts hither and yon, trying to find fobidden arms or research and development programs. It is their job to verify that Iraq has done what the UN has required, according to declarations and records Iraq makes available.

Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, and Kelly Motz, editor of IraqWatch.org, explained it thus:

Inspections can only do one thing well: verify that a country's declarations about a weapons program are honest and complete. It is feasible for inspectors to look at sites and equipment to see whether the official story about their use is accurate. Inspectors can rely on scientific principles, intelligence information and surprise visits to known weapons production sites to test what they are told. It is a different proposition altogether to wander about a country looking for what has been deliberately concealed. That is a task with no end.

For inspectors to do their job, they have to have the truth, which can only come from the Iraqis. As President Bush [has said], the world needs an Iraqi government that will stop lying and surrender the weapons programs. That is not likely to happen as long as Saddam Hussein remains in power.

I said more about my church's very sad record on this crisis. Please see also:

The backward thinking of anti-war religious pronouncements.

The religious fallacies of pacifism.

And here is a very good summary of Saddam's perfidy in The Washington Times regarding what the UN requires of him, and how he has defied the UN and hindered the inspectors.

by Donald Sensing, 1/30/2003 07:01:51 AM. Permalink |   

Another reason the UN is a joke these days
This headline says it all:

Iraq to chair U.N. disarmament conference

by Donald Sensing, 1/30/2003 06:58:18 AM. Permalink |   

Why I admire Prime Minister Blair
This segment says it all:

The prime minister was giving an impassioned defence of the government's position on Iraq during his weekly question time when an anti-war MP shouted: "Who's next?"

Replying to the heckle, Mr Blair said: "After we deal with Iraq we do, yes, through the UN, have to confront North Korea about its weapons programme".

"We have to confront those companies and individuals trading in weapons of mass destruction," he added.

To another cry of "When do we stop?", Mr Blair answered: "We stop when the threat to our security is properly and fully dealt with."

I think there's little to add to that. How fortunate is America that Tony Blair is the PM of Great Britain.

by Donald Sensing, 1/30/2003 06:50:56 AM. Permalink |   

Go read Lileks.
No excerpts here, just go read it.

by Donald Sensing, 1/29/2003 01:10:45 PM. Permalink |   

When does the war begin?
Austin Bay lays it all out in his usual elegant way. Hint: it already has, or did you forget?

by Donald Sensing, 1/29/2003 07:21:57 AM. Permalink |   

Bad joke break
The district attorney was stumped. A man had been arrested and had confessed to the deed, but the DA didn't know exactly what the crime was. The completely nude, dead body of a man had been found at the base of a high bridge. When the police arrived, a man standing nearby blurted, "I did it! I pushed him off the bridge!" So the police arrested him.

Even more incredible, genetic testing confirmed that the dead man was a clone of the suspect. Hence the DA's puzzle: Should he charge the suspect with murder, suicide or something else?

Finally the answer came to him. He charged the suspect with making an obscene clone fall.

by Donald Sensing, 1/29/2003 07:19:00 AM. Permalink |   

Who are the inheritors of Jeffersonian liberalism today?
Dennis Rogers answers.

I have good friends who are liberals. They don't hate this country. They don't hate Israel. They don't bring up the Israeli/Palestinian conflict when attempting to discuss any other problem in the world. They may even be Jeffersonian liberals.

This creates some cognitive dissonance on my own part (except for a growing conviction that conservatism is the true representation of Jeffersonian liberalism now). And the more I think of this narrowing view of the left and its detachment from good folks like my liberal friends and public liberals like Alan Colmes, the more I think that liberals have an especially urgent calling right now.

If liberals don't want to be on the receiving end of increasing and even more scathing charges of anti-Americanism and moral equivalence, then some outspoken liberals (channeling Alan Colmes and Josh Marshall) need to start drawing a clear – very clear – line of separation between the credible left (I know some may not believe this exists . . .) and these socialist, Marxist, communist, anti-American groups that patently hate this country and what it stands for.

by Donald Sensing, 1/29/2003 07:15:49 AM. Permalink |   

Brits start worrying more about how to tie Gulliver down
TR Fogey has a good rollup of the growing anxiety over US power in Great Britain.

by Donald Sensing, 1/29/2003 07:15:11 AM. Permalink |   

Japan loses 25 nukes' worth of plutonium
The Japanese government said yesterday that it cannot account for more than 200 kilograms of plutonium. Authorities said that it was "highly unlikely" the plutonium was stolen, which makes for some interesting possibilities.

About 5kg to 8kg of plutonium are needed to make a 20-kiloton atomic bomb similar to the one that destroyed Nagasaki in 1945.

Experts said the missing amount was surprisingly large.

There is normally a margin of error of 1 per cent or less when measuring liquid plutonium, which can dissolve into other elements.

Japan's admission comes at a time of acute sensitivity because of the threat of nuclear proliferation in north-east Asia following North Korea's revival of its mothballed nuclear programme.

I have to wonder whether Japan will later manage to find the plutonium after it somehow has been made into atomic warheads, and oh, North Korea, you are the first ones we are telling.

by Donald Sensing, 1/29/2003 07:14:03 AM. Permalink |   

Dave Barry explains Lord of the Rings II
His recent column will save you a lot of time because he has condensed the script down to a manageable level. And it's just as good.

(Scene 6)

LORD ARAGORN: Well, Legolas and Gimli, with the help of Gandalf the White, formerly Gandalf the Grey, also known as Gandalf the Beige, we have defeated the Uruk-hai in a giant computer-generated battle. Now we must make haste to the Really Big Rock of Karambador, before the forces of Ba'Zoot, led by the evil King Weltpimple, conquer the Mullions of Gneep and obtain the Remote Control Unit of Doom!

LEGOLAS: Now you're just making stuff up.

LORD ARAGORN: Well, it's not as stupid as the kung-fu trees.

GIMLI: I'm still short!

(Laughter)

Because he got a lot of hostile email from rabidly angry LOTR II fans, Dave was compelled to issue this apology.

To all of the irate Tolkien fans who were very offended by my column on the Lord of the Rings II, I just want to say, with sincerity and humility: Get a life.

Yes, Dave Barry now has a blog. Permalink that puppy! (via Legalbean.

by Donald Sensing, 1/29/2003 07:11:06 AM. Permalink |   

The coming water wars?
Legal wars, that is. Geitner Simmons explains the "hydraulic societies" of the American West, and why it's already at crisis state. The drought there may be the worst dry spell in 1,400 years.

by Donald Sensing, 1/29/2003 07:03:42 AM. Permalink |   

Why we should stop criminalizing personal vices . . .
is explained by Wendy McElroy.

The conflict between personal freedom and public policy arises when society strongly disapproves of certain moral choices, such as discriminating on the basis of race or gender. When a choice becomes widely viewed as a vice, society often tells the erring individual, "you have no right to reach this conclusion and live according to it." In other words, "there ought to be a law."

This approach assumes that personal freedom must be restricted in order to promote virtue: It assumes that the two are in conflict.

I believe the opposite is true. The freedom of individuals to choose, without intrusive state regulation, is the prerequisite of morality. A coerced "choice" does not reflect virtue, only compliance. In other words, you cannot force a person to be moral; you can only make them conform. True morality requires freedom and cannot exist without it.

Those who value virtue should be first in line to declare, "there ought not to be a law" governing vice.

by Donald Sensing, 1/29/2003 07:03:05 AM. Permalink |   

Using WMDs against US troops is a no lose move for Saddam
WMD has become the new term of art for the weapons that the US military has always called NBC, for nuclear, biological and chemical. As a battlefield weapon, bio is unsuitable because its casualty effects take too long. Bio weapons could have some utility against fixed base operations, however.

In the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam had not nuclear arms. He did have chemical weapons, but Saddam had everything to lose and nothing to gain by them in 1991. Based on the texts of the US Congress' authorization for President Bush to make war against Iraq and the text of the UN resolution calling on UN members to eject Iraq from Kuwait, Saddam knew that his regime would not be targeted. The Congress limited its war powers declaration against Iraq to reversing the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and did not authorize conquest of Iraq. For that matter, President Bush never contemplated doing that.

Knowing that his regime was not targeted, Saddam knew that his survival was practically guaranteed in advance. Thus, the only thing that could definitely cause his death or downfall would have been to use chemical weapons against allied forces. Furthermore, the just-short-of-explicit American threat to use mass-destructive weapons in retaliation, delivered to Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, also served as assurance that such weapons would be use only in retaliation. Thus Saddam knew that:

he faced an entirely conventional threat, the power of which he never actually comprehended,

his personal survival and that of his regime was assured even if he lost the battle for Kuwait,

and the only way neither of the above facts would be negated was for him to use chemical weapons.

Today, however, Saddam's survival, and that of his regime, is specifically threatened. The US Congress made toppling Saddam an explicit aim of foreign policy in 1998, and the present administration has emphasized it heavily.

So Saddam has nothing to lose by using WMD against allied troops. Their use would carry great risk that many Iraqi civilians would die as collateral damage. I once believed this consideration might stay Saddam's hand, but I don't think so any more. His single overriding goal has always been personal survival and power. He is a dictator, and dictators do not rule for the benefit of the people. Saddam has no vision for Iraq that outlives him personally. It is most likely that he would sacrifice Iraqi lives wholesale in order to hang onto life and power.

As I wrote in "Fighting a winter campaign in Iraq," American maneuver units - armor, infantry and their supporting artillery units - would make poor targets for chemical attack because they move too fast to target effectively. But the US logistic tail could be an attractive target.

Saddam's use of WMDs cannot possibly assure his victory. But sadly, that fact can't be relied on to dissuade him from using them anyway.

by Donald Sensing, 1/29/2003 07:02:18 AM. Permalink |   

How Taxes Work
A friend emailed this to me. It is purportedly by T. Davies, a professor of accounting at the University of South Dakota. Google confirms a man named Tom Davies with accounting credentials at the school; whether he really wrote this I cannot verify. But it is an interesting analogy of the tax systems and tax cuts.

Let's put tax cuts in terms everyone can understand. Suppose that every day, ten men go out for dinner. The bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this: The first four men - the poorest - would pay nothing; the fifth would pay $1, the sixth would pay $3, the seventh $7, the eighth $12, the ninth $18, and the tenth man - the richest - would pay $59. That's what they decided to do. The ten men ate dinner in the restaurant every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement - until one day, the owner threw them a curve (in tax language, a tax cut).

"Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily meal by $20." So now dinner for the ten only cost $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes. So the first four men were unaffected. They would still eat for free. But what about the other six men who actually pay the bill? How could they divvy up the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his "fair share?" The six men realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, the fifth and sixth man would end up being PAID to eat their meal. So the restaurant owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay. And so the fifth man paid nothing, the sixth pitched in $2, and the seventh paid $5, the eighth paid $9, the ninth paid $12, leaving the tenth man with a bill of $52 instead of his earlier $59.

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to eat for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings. "I only got a dollar out of the $20," declared the sixth man, but he, (pointing to the tenth) got $7!" "Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man, "I only saved a dollar too. It's unfair that he got seven times more than me!" "That's true!" shouted the seventh man, why should he get $7 back when I only got $2?" "The wealthy get all the breaks!"

"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison, "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!"

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up. The next night he didn't show up for dinner, so the nine sat down and ate without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered, a little late what was very important. They were FIFTY-TWO DOLLARS short of paying the bill!

Imagine that!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college instructors, is how the tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up at the table anymore. Where would that leave the rest?

Leave a comment on whether you think this is a valid analogy. . . .

by Donald Sensing, 1/29/2003 07:01:32 AM. Permalink |   

This you really have to see!
Yes, you do. Really! To tell you what it is would spoil it, just hit the link.

by Donald Sensing, 1/28/2003 05:31:17 PM. Permalink |   

Don't forget my essays page!
It's here. A few of the entries:

Western Law, Islamic Law and the Ordering of Society - What's at stake in the struggle with Arab-Muslim terrorists

Islamic Fundamentalism Explained - The religious roots of the terror attacks against America (I wrote this the week after Sept. 11.)

Is God the Problem? The God we worship shapes the kind of people we are.

A Brief Survey of What the Bible Says About War.

Is America Justified to Use Force?

The problem with pacifism is pacifists

An idea is not a plan! Wishful thinking passes for theological reflection nowadays

Saddam's most dangerous failure - Saddam's fundamental ineptitude as a leader is exactly what makes him singularly dangerous.

Is Christianity more user-friendly than Islam? - Why language matters

Why Iraq Will Defeat Arms Inspectors - Explained by Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, and Kelly Motz, editor of IraqWatch.org.

by Donald Sensing, 1/28/2003 04:20:57 PM. Permalink |   

New York Times column admonishes the religious Left
Reader Emily Puskar sent me the link to a NYT column that rebuts the pronouncements of the religious Left concerning potential war against Iraq. Not so fast, says Joseph Loconte:

A growing number of religious leaders have decided that Jesus would veto a war against Saddam Hussein. Back from a fact-finding trip to Iraq earlier this month, a delegation from the National Council of Churches said it harbored no doubts: "As disciples of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, we know this war is completely antithetical to his teachings." The Christian Century magazine, quoting from the Sermon on the Mount, has criticized military action by warning that "he who hates his neighbor is in danger of hellfire."

Religious liberals are making the same mistake that often bedevils religious conservatives: They're grossly oversimplifying the Bible. It's true that Jesus put the love of neighbor at the center of Christian ethics. Forgiveness, not vengeance, animates the heart of God, offered freely to any person willing to renounce sin. But the Christian Gospel is not only about "the law of love," as war opponents like to put it. It's also about the fact that people violate that law.

Loconte makes some interpretive errors, but overall he makes some good points. He does not call for war, but he does urge a some humility "among the apostles of diplomacy."

by Donald Sensing, 1/28/2003 01:24:43 PM. Permalink |   

Israelis rocket Episcopal church in Gaza
St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, located within the Ahli Arab Hospital compound, was struck by a guided missile this week. The Church sits in the center of the Ahli Arab hospital complex, all of which is surrounded by buildings flying the Red Cross and Anglican flags.

Built at the turn of the last century, St. Philip’s Episcopal Church was reconsecrated in 1996, by Bishops Samir Kafity and Riah Abu El-Assal, in the presence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. George Carey; The Presiding Bishop of the US, Edmund Browning, and thirty-four other Primates of the Anglican Communion, along with President Arafat. It’s century old stained class windows were shattered, and crystal from it’s chandeliers littered the floor. The missile entered through the roof, and left a meter wide hole in the floor. The alter was covered with plaster and a nearby hymnal pierced with shrapnel. Suhaila Tarazi, Ahli director, said “we collected money from so many individuals who supported the renovation of the Church, and in a minute it is gone.” The building was structurally reinforced with the remodeling, but it is an old building, and the walls showed numerous deep cracks.

The destruction did not stop with the Church. The Pediatric Clinics were damaged as well, with the collapse of the false ceiling and ventilation system. Throughout the hospital; the physical therapy building, the staff accommodations, the laboratory, medical records, the morgue, the library glass littered the floors, windows were broken, doors separated from their frames by the force of the blast. The damage to the hospital is extensive, and many more old buildings showed structural cracks. Boys from the neighborhood collected shrapnel.

Everyone at the Hospital today spoke about why this happened. No one could imagine it was an accident. The area surrounding the Church was covered with the wire filaments that come from guided missiles. Hospital employees pointed out that they are nowhere near other apartment buildings, government or military facilities. Consensus was that this was a precisely targeted attack, how could it be otherwise? Apache helicopters had not only fired the missile, they had returned to film the results of their attack. These were shown on early morning Israeli television.

by Donald Sensing, 1/28/2003 01:18:05 PM. Permalink |   

Rummy worries Norman
The theater commander of the Gulf War, retired Gen. Norma Schwarzkopf, says that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld worries him:

That dismissive posture bothers Schwarzkopf because he thinks Rumsfeld and the people around him lack the background to make sound military judgments by themselves. He prefers the way Cheney operated during the Gulf War. "He didn't put himself in the position of being the decision-maker as far as tactics were concerned, as far as troop deployments, as far as missions were concerned."

Rumsfeld, by contrast, worries him. "It's scary, okay?" he says. "Let's face it: There are guys at the Pentagon who have been involved in operational planning for their entire lives, okay? . . . And for this wisdom, acquired during many operations, wars, schools, for that just to be ignored, and in its place have somebody who doesn't have any of that training, is of concern."

As a result, Schwarzkopf is skeptical that an invasion of Iraq would be as fast and simple as some seem to think. "I have picked up vibes that . . . you're going to have this massive strike with massed weaponry, and basically that's going to be it, and we just clean up the battlefield after that," he says.

by Donald Sensing, 1/28/2003 01:11:18 PM. Permalink |   

Iraq promises more frustration
So Iraq promises "more cooperation" with the weapons inspectors. Well, heavy sigh of relief! Silly me, I thought that UNSC Resolution demanded total cooperation.

What was written and voted as an ultimatum has become more negotiable than a clearance price at a used-car lot.

by Donald Sensing, 1/28/2003 10:27:42 AM. Permalink |   

Oh, shut up!
I direct that to Richard Cohen for this piece of tripe.

by Donald Sensing, 1/28/2003 08:15:06 AM. Permalink |   

The Euro-American divide
Richard Heddleson emails --

Now that the boomers are running everything everywhere, we can get back to the unfinished business of the Vietnam war. That's what I got out of this article in the NYT. Why?

The boomers, or in Europe the 68 generation, were divided into two groups, those who opposed the war in Vietnam and by extension the U. S. in general and those who did not. Those who did not were further divided in the U. S. at least into those who actively supported the war and those who, while not enthusiastic about it were not prepared to oppose it. The war ended because the ranks of those who actively supported the war dwindled and those unenthusiastic grew.

In the U. S. all groups have entered every part of society. We've elected Clinton and Bush. In Old Europe (tm) it seemed, I assert without any hard evidence, that there were far more opposed to the US position in Vietnam and far fewer enthusiastic. And because of Old Europe's sclerotic social structures, the current establishment there seems to be exclusively populated with those who opposed the war and by extension the U. S. It is ingrained into their psyche and is now a default response to any U. S. action.

At the same time, the same generation in Eastern Europe was learning how evil was the alternative to an imperfect U. S. Now that they have thrown off the bonds of tyranny, they best understand what we seek to achieve in Iraq and provide support that if not substantial in weapons more than makes up for it in spirit. Look at the countries that will support us, Poland, Spain, and the other countries that overthrew dictators in the 70's and 80's and the Anglosphere.

It will be interesting to watch the French and German Generation of 68 work out its hang-ups with their history in World War II and Vietnam, their willingness to collaborate and live with the Soviet Union. I suspect we will see a lot more revisionist history, especially about WWII coming from French and especially German authors as they seek to turn it into a justification for opposing the U. S hegemony of which they are so jealous.

Interesting times we live in.

Update:The Chicago Boyz have some insights about the Atlantic Divide as well.

by Donald Sensing, 1/28/2003 07:48:36 AM. Permalink |   

More about Saddam - al Qaeda links
William Safire lays it out.

by Donald Sensing, 1/28/2003 07:42:53 AM. Permalink |   

More on why there is no shortage of oil
Reader M. Simon sent me the link to this article that explains why old oil fields have refilled, and why some fields yield three times as much as the original estimate.

Astrophysicist Thomas Gold . . . says that oil and coal deposits are too widely and deeply distributed to be a function of biological processes. He got the government of Sweden to drill a hole 6.6 Km deep in quartz rock in a search for deep hydrocarbons. What did he find? Hydrocarbons and magnetite. The significance of that is that underground bacteria are eating the oil and using the oxygen from iron ore for their energy source. Magnetite is a reduced form of iron ore containing less oxygen than your typical rust-like ores. Iron ores have the oxygen less tightly bound than sand and other rocks, so the bacteria would tend to use it first.

I remember blogging something about this before, but I can't find it now. So read this article and see what you think.

by Donald Sensing, 1/28/2003 07:36:50 AM. Permalink |   

Saddam may have nuke weapons already
Trent Telenko explains why. I heard a radio news report that a working centrifuge was sold to Iraq by a German company in the late 1980s. Centrifuges are used to produce Highly Enriched Uranium, which is fissionable material for an atomic bomb. According to the source, a now-defected Iraqi nuclear physicist who said he had seen the machine, and who headed a major research division of Iraq's atomic arms program, the Iraqis carefully documented in detail the specifications and assembly of the centrifuge when the German company installed it. The defected scientist says that Iraq probably built 30 duplicates during the 1990s. If all this is so, then it qwould be surprising if Iraq did not have a few operational nukes now, provided they could obtain the uranium. And I don't think that would have been terribly difficult for them.

by Donald Sensing, 1/28/2003 07:17:13 AM. Permalink |   

Special Ops in Iraq and elsewhere
The National Post has a good story on the new kinds of missions US Special Operations Command is charged with carrying out. And check out the photo of the latest high-tech battlefield mobility platform - it's powered by renewable natural resources! (via Geitner Simmons)

by Donald Sensing, 1/28/2003 07:07:51 AM. Permalink |   

Do not rule out all nuclear contingencies.
A guest posting from Doug Dryden, with another point of view

During our diplomatic encounters with the Iraqis during the run-up to the Gulf War, we were explicit that if Iraq used WMD, we would respond in kind. Prior to that episode, the American military did not use the term "weapons of mass destruction" - it was Soviet terminology. We had always distinguished between nuclear weapons in one category, & chemical & biological weapons in the other. Our first use of the term during this time was a lethal hint to Saddam that we would retaliate with nukes if he used chemical or biological arms. During later talks, Secretary Baker was far more precise with then-Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, whose reaction indicated that he heard the message loud and clear.

The reasoning for our response centers on the question of how to destroy enemy stockpiles of chemical & biological agents during a war. It has taken years for the US to proceed with the destruction of our own stockpiles because of the environmental concern (the Umatilla Chemical Depot in Oregon is a good example). The Iraqis, due to the virulent nature of these agents, have them stored in somewhat remote & heavily fortified areas (just like anybody else would do) and we surely have a good idea of their locations. We haven't published this information because, amongst other things, (1) we would jeopardize the lives of our sources on the ground and our means of obtaining the intelligence; (2) we would demonstrate the extent of our intelligence-gathering capabilities; & (3) it would negatively affect the plan for the operational use of the intelligence (you don't simply exploit intelligence, just as chess is not a contact sport).

The best and really only way to destroy these agents is to incinerate them. This frames the nuclear option - We cannot simply bomb their storage facilities with conventional munitions, no matter how powerful. It risks releasing unincinerated agents into atmosphere. We must be able to incinerate them completely. In an air strike, the problem is to crack the bunkers open so that a nuclear device can do its job. Because of the extreme complexity of modern nuclear weapons, they are too fragile to penetrate a bunker. As far as I am aware (I've been retired from the military for a few years now), there is no such thing as a bunker-piercing nuclear device. Just as our missile silos and command centers are designed to survive a nuclear blast, we must assume that theirs are designed to do so as well. So trying to pulverize the bunkers by exploding a warhead outside the bunker won't work. Nevertheless, there were ways to carry out deep penetration in the Gulf War, and I'm sure that we have refined our methods for the upcoming conflict.

I don't expect that we would use a pre-emptive strike on these facilities, unless we had incontrovertible proof that Iraqi WMD were about to be used. Even then, considering the refusal to accept anything said by the Bush administration on the part of, say (1) fanatic radicals here in the US, (2) the major media and academia, or (3) anybody from France or Germany, there would still be an impossible amount of political fallout for decades (I have yet to meet a World War II veteran - and I've known many - who wasn't delighted that we ended that war with atomic bombs, sparing hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of people on both sides. Yet consider how that topic is handled today.)

I fear that, should we need to exercise a nuclear strike, we will have to wait for a first strike by the Iraqis, then respond overwhelmingly against their facilities. By then, of course, some of their chemical and biological munitions would already be deployed, and we would have to handle those in other ways.

The other options would be (1) Iraq wisely does not use WMD, and we later seize evidence as proof to publish during our occupation; or (2) we must catch them in the process of deploying their weapons before they are used, and sufficiently publicize their actions to prevent their use and allow us to diplomatically prosecute our aims, but there are far too many variables for that to be a viable risk. We can only hope for (1), we cannot rely on (2), so we must prepare for the third. A strike of a few low-yield nukes in remote areas of the Iraqi desert would surely be preferable to a Götterdämmerung of Saddam's making.

My thoughts: As long as Iraq's WMDs stay in bunkers, they are no threat and can be dealt with after the end of hostilities. My guess is that known or suspected storage facilities are already under virtually round-the-clock monitoring by US forces, either by platforms suich as Predators or possibly US Army SF or British SAS teams inserted into the country. If there is a hint that the weapons are about to be removed, the bunker can be hit.

Remember that we don't need to destroy or penetrate WMD bunkers to negate the weapons' use. We need only destroy the entrances and exits. So a penetrating nuke is not really necessary, IMO. Large conventional bombs can do that job.

Deployed WMDs present a different challenege, for the reasons Doug explained: the risk or releasing the agent into the air. The cruel calculus of war is that it is better for that to happen behind their lnes than behind ours. But given Saddam's record, I would expect him to position his launchers in populated areas. If we struck them we would risk killing many civilians, scoring a propaganda coup for Saddam. It's a very difficult problem, and I imagine that the allies are intensively searching for both storage facilities and launch/emplyment units now -- D. S.

by Donald Sensing, 1/28/2003 05:58:15 AM. Permalink <a href="javascript