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by Donald Sensing, 7/31/2003 07:59:00 PM. Permalink |   

More on Women in Islam
Why asking, "What do Muslims believe?" is a toss-up question.

Several comments and several emails to me point out that Muslims are not as kindly disposed toward women as I seem to imply in this post. (Of course, the comments feature is missing for the time being.)

One of the difficulties in writing about "what the Muslims believe" is that there is bound to be a a fair amount of diversity of thought in a religion that claims a billion or so adherents. Unlike Catholicism, which has about the same number of adherents, there is no hierarchical structure in Islam and no body to set official, binding doctrine. (Shiite Islam has something of such a structure, but its branch is a minority.)

Of course there is a lot that all Muslims believe, of whatever stripe: that Mohammed was the "seal of the prophets," for example, that the Quran is the actual, literal word of Allah, and that every Muslim is obligated to live out the "Five Pillars of Islam" - strict monotheism and the finality of the prophethood of Muhammad; daily prayers; giving of alms; fasting, especially during Ramadan; a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once.

Even so, there is a lot of variety with Islam because, like every religion, there is a great deal of cultural shaping of how it is practiced in different places. Hence, Muslims who live or were born in the West tend to be much more tolerant than their Arab brethren of their faith (not including, though, ghettos of immigrant, unassimilated Muslims such as France has).

In particular, I am increasingly learning that a very large part of what we have tended to think of as "Islamic" has been less religious and much more cultural. Until quite recently, in historical terms, Islam and Arab were almost identical. But today the population "center of gravity" of all Muslims in the world lies to the east of Kabul. Arab Muslims are a clear minority, worldwide, though they continue to wield enormous religious power because the Quran is in Arabic and the religion's holy sites are in Arab lands (some, though, are in non-Arab Iran).

The highly respected scholar of Arabism, Raphael Patai, sheds a great deal of light of the Islam v. culture issue in his landmark book, The Arab Mind. Not a post-9/11 book, it was first published in the late 1970s and was updated not long ago. It is a truly compelling read. In it, Patai explains how the Bedouin culture still predominates Arab societies today, and how bedouinism in many ways came to dominate Quranic teachings. In fact, they are warp and woof together.

Case in point: In the Spring 1998 issue of Parameters, Ralph Peters explained the "Seven Signs of Non-Competitive States." Says Peters:

The greater the degree to which a state--or an entire civilization--succumbs to these "seven deadly sins" of collective behavior, the more likely that entity is to fail to progress or even to maintain its position in the struggle for a share of the world's wealth and power. Whether analyzing military capabilities, cultural viability, or economic potential, these seven factors offer a quick study of the likely performance of a state, region, or population group in the coming century.

These key "failure factors" are:

a. Restrictions on the free flow of information.
b. The subjugation of women.
c. Inability to accept responsibility for individual or collective failure.
d. The extended family or clan as the basic unit of social organization.
e. Domination by a restrictive religion.
f. A low valuation of education.
g. Low prestige assigned to work.

Peters' framework for successful states or non-competitive ones is their ability to be a player in the world economy, but it is interesting to note that all seven of these factors are prominent in Arab countries, as Patai, writing 20 years prior, explains in detail. And again, these analyses were prior to 9/11/2001.

But there is nothing particularly Muslim about this list, and non-Arab Muslims around the world cannot be fairly said to share them, except perhaps here and there. So when my faithful correspondents write to respond to me, "Yes, but," or that women in a certain place are second-class citizens (or third or fourth), I reply, yes - and in other Muslim places that is not the case. Which is "really" Muslim? Answer: they all are.

And that's exactly the problems in trying to say "what Muslims believe" or what they do. There are significant differences among Muslim societies, and they all claim to be true Islam. Even so, there is a growing divide, I think, between Arab Islam and Islam of the rest of the world, especially that practiced in the West. I have posted several posts about that this month. See here, also here and here.



by Donald Sensing, 7/31/2003 04:27:24 PM. Permalink |   

Comments are disabled
Until Haloscan gets its act together, I have disabled comments. I know it's a free service, but sheesh. BTW, no comments are missing; I have simply removed the java from my template. When I return it, the comments should all be back.

by Donald Sensing, 7/31/2003 03:25:57 PM. Permalink |   

Today's Marine Moment
In honor of my son enlisting in the Marine's delayed-entry program yesterday, here is the USMC Answering Machine (1.96MB, MP3 file).

by Donald Sensing, 7/31/2003 03:02:27 PM. Permalink |   

God, pain and suffering, continued
Here is, "God on Trial," the next installment of my series of sermons on the problem of evil, or theodicy, from the Greek for "justice of God." It is perhaps the vexing problem of Christian faith.

The inquiries I have previously posted are:

God and lethal tornados

My Buddy God.

Here is an excerpt of God on Trial:

In Elie Wiesel's play of the Holocaust, "The Trial," a man named Berish is a survivor of a massacre in which most of the Jews had been killed in the village of Shamgorod. Afterward, Berish and some Jewish actors stage a trial of God, with Berish acting as the prosecutor. He speaks as witness for all the slaughtered: "Let their premature, unjust deaths turn into an outcry so forceful that it will make the universe tremble with fear and remorse!"

Berish's play is interrupted by the news that the murderers are returning to finish the job. A village priest offers to baptize Berish so he can truthfully claim to be Catholic. Berish refuses, saying, "My sons and my fathers perished without betraying their faith; I can do no less." He insists that this decision does not suggest a reconciliation with God. "I lived as a Jew," he exclaims, "and it is as a Jew that I shall die – and it is as a Jew that, with my last breath, I shall shout my protest to God! And because the end is near, I shall shout louder! Because the end is near, I'll tell Him that He's more guilty than ever!"

I hope to have the fourth and final installmment, how God answers Job, posted soon.

by Donald Sensing, 7/31/2003 02:38:54 PM. Permalink |   

Does Islam teach that women don't have souls?
This is the question asked by correspondent Marilyn:

I was taught in Sunday School that Muslims believe that women do not have souls. I have a Catholic friend, a Jewish friend and a Baptist (southern) friend who were taught the same thing. We range in age from 40-60.

No one is willing to discuss this issue. My one Jesuit friend hotly denies that this is Muslim doctrine (but he is VERY PC and left-wing). The only information I can get from various websites seem to say that this is propaganda spread by the "Church Fathers" whatever that means.

The Church Fathers were the successors to the apostles who shaped the Church until the end of the fourth century. Since Islam was n ot founded until hundreds of years later, the Church Fathers never addressed it.

Like your friend, I was raised Southern Baptist, but I was never taught that belief. Of course, I was never taught anything about Islam in Sunday School.

Acording to a Western-based Islam web site, Submission.org, women are equal to men in Islam.

Every Westerner thinks that Islam is very chauvinistic and oppressive towards women. In Islam of today as practiced by most traditional sectarian Muslims, this is very true [note the dig against Arab Islam - DS]. However, in true Islam (Submission), as revealed in the Quran, nothing could be farther from the truth.

God treats men and women as spiritual equals., Quran 3:195 tells us :

"Their Lord responded to them: "I never fail to reward any worker among you for any work you do, be you MALE OR FEMALE, YOU ARE EQUAL TO ONE ANOTHER........."

Many of the Muslim countries who claim to follow Islam are treating women as a second class citizens, and some of these women accepted this situation thinking that is what Islam (Submission in English) is advocating. As mentioned previously, God, in the Quran made a complete spiritual equality between men and women, See 3:195.

Another set of holy writings in Islam is the Hadith, basically commentary upon the Quran, but not officially considered to be the equal of the Quran. (That is, only the Quran is held to be the actual word of God.)

The Hadith is not so friendly toward women, saying at one point, "Women are naturally, morally and religiously defective." (Another problem, though, is that there seems to be no accepted "standard" Hadith, so not all Muslims consider this particular commentary to be valid commentary.)

Even so, Submission.org says the Quran states plainly:

The spiritual equality between men and women is reiterated in 4:124, as follows:

"As for those who lead a righteous life, MALE OR FEMALE, while believing, they enter Paradise; without the slightest injustice"

and again in 16:97:

" Anyone who works righteousness, MALE OR FEMALE, while believing, we will surely grant them a happy life in this world, and we will surely pay them their full recompense for their righteous works."

and yet again in 40:40,

[40:40] Whoever commits a sin is requited for just that, and whoever works righteousness - MALE OR FEMALE - while believing, these will enter Paradise wherein they receive provisions without any limits.

But there may well be a significant number of Muslims who believe that women do not enter Paradise. There is a lot of folk religion in Islam, just as there is in Christianity.

by Donald Sensing, 7/31/2003 09:14:08 AM. Permalink |   

I'd pay real money to do this
An Austrian daredevil has become the first person ever to fly from England to France without benefit of aircraft, except the one that took him to 30,000 feet over Dover, where he stepped into the void and glided to the continent. The wing is a carbon-fiber wing.



This is a lot cooler than the gliding suit Lara Croft uses in the current Tomb Raider movie. I'd love to try it out!

by Donald Sensing, 7/31/2003 08:53:22 AM. Permalink |   

Stupid signs for stupid people
Jeff Jarvis has flippin' had it with big government nannyism ninnyism both!

by Donald Sensing, 7/30/2003 07:44:09 PM. Permalink |   

Why recall Gray Davis?
California politics can be rather, uh, interesting. Today on the radio I heard Gov. Gray Davis (Democrat) explain why the successful recall drive there was another attempt of the Republicans to steal the election. Davis was returned to office last November. He said the recall drive began only 30 days later, too soon, he claimed, for his administration to have accomplished anything. He claimed the will of the voters was being thwarted.

That's somewhat disingenuous, I think. One, the state's constitution allows for recall and specifies what has to be done for them to take place. Recalls cannot take place in accordance with the will of the voters, as detailed in the constitution. Second, the voters get to decide the outcome. When they go to the ballot box their will shall be done, and who knows - they may return Davis to office.

Until today, I had never heard of Marc Valdez, who wants to be elected governor of the Bear State. His campaign's site turned up in my referrer logs. I have no idea of the state of his campaign. Just for kicks and grins, here is part of his response to the question of why Davis should be recalled:

Let me be the first to state that Gray Davis is certainly a capable politician. By far, he is the best fund raiser the state has ever seen. But ultimately, raising money is not his job. His job is to govern. His temerity in dealing with the power crisis when it first raised its ugly head in December, 2000, followed by his panic the following summer, did not give the electorate much confidence in his governing abilities. The electorate preferred Davis over Simon last year, but the simple magnitude of the budget deficit this year has really shaken their confidence.

His stance on a number of issues is here. For example: his position on public education:

The first role of education, then, is to show students different ways of thinking, beyond whatever parochial community they were born into, where the students might find fulfilling ways of life. This is a process that does not 'take a village.' When the 'village' comes calling, wondering why Johnny is reading Huckleberry Finn, the teacher must send the village away. No matter how many good people a community has, their collective impulses are usually bad for education.

Valdez also says about his sexual orientation, "Even though I like show tunes, and prance about in tights, I'm not gay."

BTW, my mention of his campaign here is not an endorsement or recommendation - it just kind of struck me as interesting. He lists only three "right" blogs on his site (plus two "left" ones): mine plus Tim Blair and Andrew Sullivan - pretty heady company for this simple Tennessee preacher.

Update: So far, 123 Californians have taken out papers to run for governor. The ballot will be in October.

by Donald Sensing, 7/30/2003 07:37:22 PM. Permalink |   

A Really Big Day
As a retired military officer, I am empowered to administer the oath to persons enlisting in the armed forces. Today I had the privilege of enlisting my son, Stephen, into the United States Marine Corps.

Click here to see a MPEG video of the event. The video file is nine MB, as small as I could get it. On a broadband connection, it'll take about a minute to load.

. . . .

Update: I took a look at the USMC web site and found a section for parents of Marines. It has this Q&A;:

Will my child be someone different when boot camp is over?

Answer: Don't worry. Your child will be the same person after boot camp, just a greatly enhanced version.

Heh!

by Donald Sensing, 7/30/2003 04:29:46 PM. Permalink |   

More on "if the Left had won the day"
Vanderleun imagines what it would be like if the Left and its protests had won the day and Saddam Hussein and his regime had remained in power.

by Donald Sensing, 7/30/2003 03:26:10 PM. Permalink |   

New site for Michael Totten
Michael Totten has new web digs. The new address is http://michaeltotten.com/. He says he will soon publish an essay on the difference between a Leftist and a liberal. It's a distinction I make myself, but I have never gotten around to writing what I think is the difference. I await Michael's post about it with anticipation.

by Donald Sensing, 7/30/2003 03:20:57 PM. Permalink |   

The Great Flag Debate
Opposing views on Public Displays of Patriotism

The real-world Air Force NCO who blogs under the name Sgt Stryker has taken serious issue with Trent Telenko's essay on what reactions to displays of patriotism reveal about the ones who react. As Stryker is responding, I suggest you read Trent first, then Stryker.

However, here is Trent's "money graf':

You can smoke out who is what by how they react to public displays of patriotism (PDP). Those who feel "threatened" or "oppressed" by "simple minded and vulgar" displays of real American patriotism are America haters. People who feel that way are against the very concept of America and American liberty. Most activist Democrats are in this group and they have a positively "vampire-to-garlic reaction" concerning PDP's. They are also, in the main, Transnational Progressives.

I think Trent's point is that there are people who take umbrage at others who openly express patriotism or non-discreetly display emblems such as flags. Trent thinks that the umbrage takers are themselves anti-American and wish to attentuate American sovereignty by enmeshing it in a web of international structures, hence, transnational progressivism, a term coined by political analyst John Fonte.

Stryker, OTOH, thinks that Trent has gone off the deep end:

I guess that makes everyone in America except Comrade Telenko and his Politburo of Patriotic Purity an America hater, including most everyone I've served with and the majority of regular Americans who went out and fought WWII.

Stryker cites the work of historian Stephen Ambrose to show that the World War II generation, especially its veterans, eschewed the kind of PDPs that Trent refers to. Wrote Ambrose, "GIs didn't like to talk about country or flag and were embarassed by patriotic bombast."

My father and my father-in-law are both World War II vets. My father-in-law saw heavy ground combat; he made eight combat amphibious assaults in the Pacific. My dad did not see combat even though he served aboard a battleship and an aircraft carrier in the Pacific theater. I would say that Ambrose's observation is pretty accurate. Both men are very patriotic, but they hardly talk about it. I don't recall that either wearing so much as a flag lapel pin on their business suits. Privately, they probably agree with the sentiment, "America, love or leave it," but they don't say it, and they don't plaster, "These colors don't run" bumper stickers on their cars.

They have already proved to themselves and to all who know them that their patriotism is bought and paid for. No symbols need be added. I knew a lot of men of their generation as I grew up. Their lack of PDP was the same.

Yes, I know these are the men who formed the American legion, the VFW, and who wear embroidered garrison caps commemorating their service. But not every day, maybe only three or four days per year. Triumphalist displays seem to bother them. I think the reason is that they saw too many men fall or knew too many who never returned - or who were maimed or returned to years of agony in VA hospitals or were never "quite right." So the men and women of my father's generation are emotionally repulsed by sentiments such as the recent hit song that that crows, "We'll put a boot in your" butt, "that's the American way."

They don't think so. Their attitude is very much like that expressed by Capt. Dick Winters in Ambrose's landmark book, Band of Brothers, chronicling a company of WW 2 101st Airborne Division paratroopers. After a fierce firefight, Winters promised God that if he got Winters out alive, he would find a piece of land somewhere quiet and live the rest of his life in peace. And that is what Dick Winters did; he lives on a farm near Hershey, Pa.

Overt flag waving does tend to make military members edgy. As Stryker explains [saltiness edited out]:

I've found that those who engage in the most "crass, shmaltzy, politically vulgar and oh so in your face partisan-patriotic" demonstrations of patriotism also tend to be all talk and little walk. They're hollow. They're the same people who'll wave the flag and spout inanities 'til Armageddon, but when it comes down to actually having to . . . sacrifice - they'll hang their head, make circles in the dirt with their toes and mumble the standard litany of lame excuses. Before you know it, they're [heading for] the horizon. If you're lucky, you might hear them say as they recede from view, "You take care of it! I'll be cheering you on from a safe distance."

I feel the same way. Yet I also grasp what Trent is talking about. One thing I have learned since retiring from the Army eight years ago is how the common assumtptions of military communties and active-duty members are not shared in the civilian world. The sense of camraderie and common purpose just isn't there. Stryker feels no need to engage in "crass" PDPs because all of his community feels as he does: we're here, what more do you want? And they are right.

But Trent has a point, too. There are some people in the wider civilian world who really do hold that America is the leading cause of the world's troubles and that supporting America is betraying the human race. And those people are offended by displays of patriotism; I wrote about their political ideology here. Yesterday, Andrew Sullivan carried an excerpt written by "Norman Geras, a Marxist who rejects the blanket anti-Western orthodoxy now prevalent on the British and American left." Why, asks Geras, do so many of ideological colleagues take such delight in every setback for American or British forces?

For some, because what the US government and its allies do, whatever they do, has to be opposed . . ."

But even so, I think that Trent overstated the case somewhat, and I would have to align myself with Stryker on this matter.

Update: Michael Williams has some pertinent thoughts.

. . . And here's the DVD . . .

by Donald Sensing, 7/30/2003 07:02:22 AM. Permalink |   

Pakistan bans Newsweek magazine
Article of upcoming book about the Quran infuriates Muslims;
German scholar says Quran was not originally in Arabic

A book called, Challenging the Quran, by a German scholar writing under the pseudonym Christoph Luxenberg is due for publication this fall. The current edition of "Newsweek" has an article about the book that has kicked up a firestorm of debate because Luxenberg contends that the Quran's text of today is not the same as was originally written. (Seeing that Salman Rushdie was sentenced to death by Muslim clerics for his book, The Satanic Verses, the German's use of a pen name seems pretty prudent.)

Lux, as other scholars refer to his pen name, contends that the Quran was originally written in Aramaic. As in Hebrew, the use of vowels in writing Aramaic and Arabic is a relatively late development. In fact, Arabic was not written at all until about 150 years after the death of Mohammed, founder of Islam. Hence, Lux claims that the original text was not in Arabic, but Aramaic, a Semitic language related to both Hebrew and Arabic.

When read as an Aramaic text, much of the Quran changes. Says Newsweek:

In a note of encouragement to his fellow hijackers, September 11 ringleader Muhammad Atta cheered their impending "marriage in Paradise" to the 72 wide-eyed virgins the Quran promises to the departed faithful. Palestinian newspapers have been known to describe the death of a suicide bomber as a "wedding to the black-eyed in eternal Paradise." But if a German expert on Middle Eastern languages is correct, these hopes of sexual reward in the afterlife are based on a terrible misunderstanding.

ARGUING THAT TODAY'S version of the Quran has been mistranscribed from the original text, scholar Christoph Luxenberg says that what are described as "houris" with "swelling breasts" refer to nothing more than "white raisins" and "juicy fruits."

But that's not the half of what infuriates Muslims who are aware of the book's premises.

Even more explosive are readings that strengthen scholars' views that the Quran had Christian origins. Sura 33 calls Muhammad the "seal of the prophets," taken to mean the final and ultimate prophet of God. But an Aramaic reading, says Luxenberg, turns Muhammad into a "witness of the prophets." i.e., someone who bears witness to the established Judeo-Christian texts. The Quran, in Arabic, talks about the "revelation" of Allah, but in Aramaic that term turns into "teaching" of the ancient Scriptures. The original Quran, Luxenberg contends, was in fact a Christian liturgical document [emphasis added] - before an expanding Arab empire turned Muhammad's teachings into the basis for its new religion long after the Prophet's death.

It's important to remember that the Quran does not occupy the same religious place in Islam as the Bible does for Christians. For Muslims, the Quran is much more analogous to what Christ is for Christians - the supreme and actual revelation of Allah.

Even so, one may ask, "What's the big deal?" The tenets of Christian faith have come under critical scrutiny - if not actual attack - for many decades now. The Jesus Seminar, for example, consists of about 70 members (only a handful are bona fide scholars, though) that claims to have refuted almost every Christian doctrine about Christ. (The Seminar's home page is here, and a critque of its methods is here.) Yet Christians haven't lit torches, grabbed pitchforks and marched off to lynch the heretics and blasphemers.

The difference is that for the Bible, textual analysis began within the community of the faithful as a way better to understand the Scriptures and how the word of God is a guide for contemporary life. The fact that the Hebrew and Greek texts were translated into other languages from the beginning of the Church made the interpretive task imperative. As I wrote in my essay, "Is Christianity more user-friendly than Islam?"

We use the language of our culture to describe God to ourselves, but we also agree that the revelation of God cannot be limited only to our own cultural context. God is greater than our culture or any other. God is present in our culture and in some way in all cultures. That means that at the heart of Christian faith is pluralism. Christianity does not hold that all religions are equally valid ways to salvation, quite the opposite. But most Christians do hold that there are many valid ways within Christian faith to encounter God.

I would also add that Christians have always held that the meaning of the Bible is mediated to the faith community. At the minimum, Christians have understood that the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, is active in leading the faithful to understand the Word and apply it to their particular circumstances. Usually, the Church is itself said to mediate the holy texts. In Catholicism, for example, the authority of the Church is equal to the authority of the Bible (a doctrine that was one of the complaints of John Calvin and Martin Luther). In my own denomination, United Methodist, the meaning of the Scriptures is mediated through discernment within human reason, the church's traditions and the experiences of both Christian individuals and faith communities. Other denominations understand mediation in different ways.

But there is no formal recognition in Islam that the Quran's text is mediated, or even can be mediated. As I wrote,

The Quran is held to be the very word of Allah. The Quran is in Arabic [at least today's version of it is, by Lux's thesis]. Even though three-fourths of the world's Muslims are not Arab, Muslim missionaries have never validated other languages or other cultures. A professor of Islamic studies at The George Washington University once told me that the Quran is the Quran only in Arabic. No non-Arabic version of the Quran is valid. Also, the five prayers per day that Muslims must pray facing Mecca may be uttered only in Arabic. Early Muslim scholars wrote that the willingness of Christianity to embrace other languages was a major defect of Christianity and was evidence of the falsification of the Christian message, a view still nearly universally held by Muslims.

That's why linguistic analysis of the Quran is anathema to Muslims: The Quran contains the actual utterances of Allah, transmitted error-free to Muhammed by the angel Gabriel. And the word of Allah was given in Arabic. It is a basic tenet of Islam that the text has been passed down since his day completely without change.

That is why even Muslims who understand Christian faith very well incorrectly think that our willingness to engage in textual crtitcism of the Bible proves that we don't really believe in it. If we really thought it was true, we would simply accept it, not dissect it. In fact, analysis of Christian and Jewish texts by Christians and Jews is used by Muslims to claim that the Bible's testaments are in fact corrupt - a tenet of Islam for many centuries, now buttressed by modern scholarship. The corruption of the biblical texts was put aright by the giving of the Quran to Mohammed.

So it is a true bombshell to claim, as Luxenberg does, that it is the Quran that is textually corrupted, and that the original text cannot be retrieved with certainty, and that a reasonable reading of a likely version of the original actually buttresses Judaism and Christianity rather than refutes them.

I will buy Luxenberg's book when it appears in English, if for no other reason that his courage must be rewarded.

Update: Austin Bay emails,

Don, I will buy Luxenburg's book as well, and read it with great interest. I studied the Quran under tutelage (early 1975). I made it through 30 surahs in some detail and received a great deal of instruction about Islam. Of course, I used an English text and was told the only true text was Arabic. One of my Muslim teachers (both Pakistanis, one with a graduate degree from Oxford) read the Quran to me in Arabic. In Arabic the Quran is mesmerizing -- a flowing lyric poetry of the highest order. I didn't understand a word but it did not matter A Quranic reading I heard in Istanbul in 1992 had the same effect, a melodic elixir. Muslims find exegesis an utter anathema because they believe Mohammed transcribed the literal words of Allah. The Aramaic proposal, however, sounds plausible. What a smack at Bin Laden and his pals.

Indeed.

by Donald Sensing, 7/29/2003 05:54:29 PM. Permalink |   

Background checks? Okay for gun nuts, not for good people . . .
. . . like reporters, right? Well, no. It seems that the Pennsylvania government requires annual background checks on reporters who wish to go onto state property to cover the happenings on the government. In Chicago, they have to undergo both background checks and fingerprints checks.

And all the sudden reporters are coming up with the same concerns that they so flippantly dismissed when the background checks didn't involve them:

"Who would have access to these background checks? It's hard for me to believe the police department will do background checks and not put that information in a file. Who will get it? An alderman with a grudge? Even if there's nothing illegal (in the background check), who knows what will show up? You should see the messages I'm getting from members. The scenarios are endless."

It's amazing how they're just now starting to realize that government doesn't always keep its promises. They're now starting to realize that having the FBI amass a great big file on you isn't as great an idea as them getting a big file on the nutcase down the street.

hat tip: Chris Noble.

by Donald Sensing, 7/29/2003 04:39:34 PM. Permalink |   

Telemarketers sue to stop "Do not call"
The American Teleservices Association, representing telemarketers natuionwide, has sued in federal court to strike down the "do not call" regulation and agencies.

"This truly is a case of regulatory overkill," said Tim Searcy, ATA executive director. "The FCC ignored its obligations under the federal law and the Constitution to carefully balance the privacy interests of consumers with the First Amendment rights of legitimate telemarketers."

Says Chris Noble (whence the link):

They have a right to try to sell their product, but to say that they have a First Amendment right to call my phone, that I pay for, to get rude and nasty because I don't want the scam of the day that they're trying to push - well let's just say that, in my opinion, their First Amendment right ends when they push the last button in my phone number.

I see Chris' point, but I am a little uneasy with using the power and funds of the federal government to block the calls, even though I hate getting them as much as anyone. It strikes me a nanny-ism.

by Donald Sensing, 7/29/2003 04:06:52 PM. Permalink |   

More on reforming Islam
Yet another Muslim voice for the reform of Islam, this one belonging to a teacher at the University of Maryland. Imad A. Ahmad is trying to show that Islam, free markets and civil liberties are quite compatible.

As I have observed before, the real vigor of Islam is found outside the Arab lands and is especially strong in the West (here and here.)

by Donald Sensing, 7/28/2003 10:11:38 PM. Permalink |   

How's this for gratitude?
L.T. Smash relates this story:

Three servicemen had just finished dinner at a restaurant in Kuwait, when they were approached by a group of local women.

"Excuse me, Mister," one of the younger women said, "My Mother does not speak very good English, but she would like to say thank you for killing Uday and Qusay."

The men were taken aback both by the uncharacteristically forward nature of these Kuwaiti women, and by the sentiment that was expressed. But they nodded politely and smiled.

The youngest of the three servicemen grinned, and replied, "Tell her Saddam is next!" She did so, and the older woman smiled, held up her hands, and cried "Inshallah!"

In other news, the number of women raped by Uday has remained at zero for six days now.

by Donald Sensing, 7/28/2003 10:02:22 PM. Permalink |   

Mel Gibson, Jesus Christ and critics
Mel Gibson's upcoming movie about the passion (suffering and death) of Jesus Christ is garnering a lot of controversy. There is a lot of buzz that the movie is at least latently anti-Semitic: "The Jews killed Jesus."

In fact, Gibson's production company was contacted by "the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Fisher's counterpart at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Eugene Korn, also weighed in. They assembled an ad hoc group of professors-- four Catholics, two Jews, all scholars of the New Testament--to review the script together with Fisher and Korn, who themselves hold doctorates." This according to respected New Testament scholar Paula Frederikson. "Shortly thereafter, at their invitation, I also joined the group." Her article originally appeared in The New Republic, but you can read it at my link without going through registration.

I do not know Paula, but I do know very well another of the reviewing scholara. Amy-Jill Levine was my New Testament professor at Vanderbilt Divinity School. When the inaccuracies of the script were pointed out, Gibsons defenders turned their guns toward A-J, as her friends call her. They singled out . . .

. . . for mention one member of our group, Amy Jill Levine. The reporter had gone to her website and indignantly pulled one of her self descriptions: "a Yankee Jewish feminist." (Lest Levine's remark be misunderstood, let the record state that she was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts and spends her summers grieving for the Red Sox.) Levine is a chaired professor of New Testament studies at Vanderbilt's divinity school and the author of prize-winning studies on early Judaism, Christian origins, and the Gospel of Matthew. Still, nothing in particular distinguished her from the rest of us except, perhaps, the humor of her self-description and her recognizably Jewish name.

I'll write more about this later, suffice it is to say that I am plenty ticked off that A-J was made a particular target. She is a wonderful person and a fantastic teacher.

Yes, I was taught New Testament in seminary by a Jewish woman. And my Christian faith is the stronger for it.

I last saw A-J in June, when she attended our Annual Conference's ordination service, having been invited by one of the ordinands, a student of hers. We discussed her returning to my church to lead another seminar, which she did a few years ago. Now I know the topic: Who killed Jesus and why?

by Donald Sensing, 7/28/2003 05:23:13 PM. Permalink |   

Quote of the day
Said a Fox News anchor on how much Bob Hope was worth: "Dick Cavett said Bob was worth $400 million, and that was twenty years ago when that was real money."

As far as I am concerned, $400 million is still real money!

It reminds me of what former North Carolina Sen. Sam Ervin Sen. Everett Dirksen once said about federal spending. "A billion here, a billion there, and before long you're talking about a lot of money." (Correction of quote source from multiple sources.)

by Donald Sensing, 7/28/2003 04:51:42 PM. Permalink |   

How Bob Hope almost made me rich
As you know, a great American, Bob Hope, died today at age 100. There breathes not a military member of the last 60-plus years who does not mourn. Bob had a solid career going as a vaudeville comedian turned movie star before he began visiting American troops in combat zones in World War II. In the 1930s, he was one of the highest-paid actors in Hollywood.

He didn't have to go to the troops, but he did. He went so far forward that his life was in danger on more than one occasion, . And he didn't stop until he was almost 90. He visited the troops in Saudi Arabia during Desert Shield and, if memory serves correctly, later went to the broken-up Yugoslavia to entertain troops there.

Bob Hope entertained the troops for so many decades that some American service members who saw him were the grandchildren of others who had seen him, a long time before. Heck, maybe even great-grandchildren.

I was assigned to Headquarters, XVIII Airborne Corps, when Bob put on a show in 1987 at adjoining Pope Air Force base for the airmen and soldiers of the two bases. I was serving as the chief of public information for the Corps and Fort Bragg. Because the show was actually to be presented at Pope, we didn't have a lot to do with staff work for getting everything ready. I didn't see the show because the word came down that the show was for the soldiers, by golly, and there better be a scarcity of headquarters staff pukes there.

My office was deluged with calls from locals who wanted to get tickets. The commanders of Fort Bragg and Pope AFB did invite some persons of local importance, but not very many. Bob Hope's folks - speaking for Bob himself - had made it very dadgum clear that he was not there to gladhand local county commissioners. He was there to entertain the troops.

I was offered some very substantial bribes honoraria by some folks of the entertainment world to get them tickets. I was called by some first-tier figures in the music and movie industry who wanted to see the show. Some of the offers were jaw dropping.

They say every man has his price, and those folks were darn close to finding mine. But I didn't have any tickets to give away, not even one for myself. But if I had possessed only a few, I could have made quite a lot of money had I been so inclined and well, so dishonorable.

Very shortly before show day, we got word that President Reagan had invited himself to the show; being the commander in chief, he got to do that. Actually, Bob had been a good friend of Reagan for a long time, and on the show day the president was already scheduled to be in the air returning from somewhere else, California, I think. So he flew in and took the stage with Bob and the two men did a little routine their staffs had worked out. Frankly, their lack of rehearsal showed! But the troops loved it.

by Donald Sensing, 7/28/2003 04:45:44 PM. Permalink |   

TypePad announcement this Friday
So I am informed by Jack White, who has been beta-testing it: "TypePad will make features, pricing, and so on over the next five days, with pricing on Friday. Check the TypePad site regularly."

by Donald Sensing, 7/28/2003 04:15:18 PM. Permalink |   

Mexican cartel "agriculture" in national forests
An American in Europe is a new blog done by an American named Craig Brelsford, who lives in the Netherlands. He writes of why camping in American national forests can be dangerous. It seems that the forests, long used by American pot growers, have been invaded by Mexican pot cartels.

by Donald Sensing, 7/28/2003 04:13:28 PM. Permalink |   

Raid on the Hussein Brothers showed a profit
The US government has announced it will pay the bounty of $15 million each for Usay and Qusay to the man who fingered them for US forces on July 22.

That makes the raid a $70 million profit maker. It seems the two men had $100 million in cash with them when they went.

by Donald Sensing, 7/27/2003 02:26:45 PM. Permalink |   

More on whether Bush is truly a conservative
I indicated here that the question was open. Another notch in the "no" belt: He's a bigger spender of your and my hard-earned coin than even Jimmy Carter was.

by Donald Sensing, 7/27/2003 02:14:22 PM. Permalink |   

God, faith, and suffering
I posted earlier about the problem of suffering, a post brought about by a news report of a man who lost his wife and children when a tree fell on their car as they traveled. That post garnered a fairly intense debate in the comments section that in my mind shows why the problem of pain, suffering and evil is one of the greatest barriers to Christian faith.

I linked then to a 1998 sermon that I preached shortly after tornados tore through Nashville and other towns, killing some people and wreaking much damage. The sermon is based on part of the book of Job in the Jewish Scriptures.

Continuing, here is a follow-up sermon on Job. It is the longest book in the Bible and no one sermon can possibly cover it. I preached a series of three sermons on Job two years after the tornados. I call it, "My Buddy God."

There are two more in my series on Job that I'll post when I get them reformatted for the Web. They are:

God on trial

The end of "happy church"

by Donald Sensing, 7/27/2003 02:02:50 PM. Permalink |   

New logo for One Hand Clapping?
Reader Alan Pratt suggests I would be interested in this graphic, for which actual instructions for making a working model can be found here.



Nice pic! However, I am not a "Zen Methodist," despite the name of my blog. When I moved this site off the Blogspot server to Cornerhost.com, I explained the origin of the title, "One Hand Clapping."

by Donald Sensing, 7/26/2003 08:02:28 PM. Permalink |   

Well, I'm not quite sure what to say about being nominated to this high office
When I returned from the trap tournament today there was an email waiting from reader Richard Heddleson alerting me to my nomination as Secretary of Defense War over at Smallest Minority. It seems there is a move afoot to get Glenn Reynolds to occupy the oval office. And people were wondering, naturally, who would be his cabinet officers and other high officials. So here is the list, so, far, of nominations of those folks.

Richard also points out that it's not too late for Glenn to establish California residency, get elected governor there this October, and be in fine position to hit the trail for the White House later.

So someone nominated me for the post formerly known as Secretary of Defense, now apparently renamed SecWar. For some reason, my ordination orders were seen as a plus for that office, don't ask me why.

I note that Steven Den Beste was properly nominated for Secretary of State. Hmmm . . . I wonder whether we'd get along better than Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld.

Well, yeah.

by Donald Sensing, 7/26/2003 04:12:09 PM. Permalink |   

A bad day at the range is better than a good day at the office
Went to the Maury County Gun Club today to shoot in a trap tournament. For those of you who may not know what trapshooting is, go here.

I didn't shoot spectacularly well, but had fun. For some reason I hit more long-range targets than short-range ones. Go figure. I was using the Beretta AL 391 Parallel Target, 12-gauge semi-auto gun that I bought last month at the Tennessee state championship tourney.

[sarcasm] And today, I was amazed - amazed, mind you - at how polite everyone was. It must have been because we were all heavily armed. [/sarcasm]

by Donald Sensing, 7/26/2003 03:55:31 PM. Permalink |   

Best read of today
If you don't read anything else today, read this (via Sparkey). It is the first-person story of a 9/11 widow who visited American troops in Iraq.

by Donald Sensing, 7/26/2003 03:07:09 PM. Permalink |   

British myths about American GIs
A British journalist who was embedded with US infantry during the Iraq campaign explodes some of the myths the Brits back home believe about American soldiers. No, he says, the GIs are not unprofessional amateurs:

I accompanied foot patrols in Baghdad as early as April 13, only days after Saddam's presidential palace was taken. The unit carrying out these patrols was also assigned to escort SAS troopers around the city. The SAS men told me how impressed they were, not just with the Americans' willingness to learn from them, but with their training and self-control.

Neither are the American troops lavishly equipped, overfed, vehicle-bound, trigger happy, immature, comfort-loving, insensitive yokels, cowboys and louts. RTWT. Hat tip: Matt Bruce.

by Donald Sensing, 7/26/2003 03:04:30 PM. Permalink |   

A brigade commander in Iraq writes about it
The Braden Files publishes a letter from the commander of 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division:

We are fighting former regime-backed paramilitary groups, Iranian-based opposition, organized criminals, and street thugs. We have stood up governing councils from neighborhood to district to city level. We have conducted humanitarian action in numerous areas to include repair of electricity, water, sewer, hospitals, and schools; created refuse collection systems; and built numerous recreational facilities (particularly soccer fields). We have cleared hundreds of tons of UXOs and weapons caches. I have already hosted Fox News, ABC, ITN, UP, Reuters, the New Yorker, and an Indian news service. On any given day I deal with the political realm of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the humanitarian realm of the NGOs, and the military realm of firefights/improved explosive devices/snipers/mortar attacks. . . .

We are doing some excellent humanitarian work, but it doesn't make the news because all the press wants to talk about is the attacks. . . .

The people we kicked out of power can't stand our success, however, and will do everything they can to try to make us fail. Thus the ongoing gun battles in the streets.

There is also a lot of organized crime here. I have flashbacks to "The Godfather" all the time. As the military commander of eastern Baghdad, I feel like Don Corleone...or maybe a ward boss on the south side of Chicago. . . .

I have a reserve MP company out of New York working for me, and they are doing a fantastic job. The company commander is a New York City prosecutor in his other life. . . .

It's 116 degrees here today . . .

by Donald Sensing, 7/25/2003 05:19:27 PM. Permalink |   

Where are Foreign Area Officers when you need them?
Today the American officials in Iraq invited some independent reporters and video crews into the refrigerated tent where they were permitted to videotape the corpses of Uday and Qusay Hussein, killed this week in a gunfight with American soldiers. The display followed the release of photos of the corpses a day ago.

For today's taping the two bodies had been cosmetically altered from the day of their deaths and from their appearance in the still photos already released. Qusay was killed wearing think beard, which he had not worn before the American invasion. His beard was present in the photos, but he had been shaved clean for today's taping.

Uday's beard had also been trimmed sharply so that it was very short, as he wore it in times before the invasion. Again, different from the photos.

But the real kicker was that both men's faces had been heavily retouched by embalmers.

Rocco Paccione, a funeral services director, said fixing up the faces was necessary to convince Iraqis the men are dead.

"You must remember that the general population of the area is accustomed to seeing them as they were," Paccione told Fox News. "What the embalmers and the military has done is to try to create the appearance that they had prior to death to convince the people in the area that's who this really is."

While the goal is admirable, there's a problem.

But while it may be common in the United States, the move is unheard of in the Arab world. That could affect Washington's efforts to quash Iraqi conspiracy theories that the bodies are not in fact those of the once powerful and hated sons of Saddam, who is believed to be still in hiding in Iraq.

One of the military specialties of the US Army is Foreign Area Officer, a specialty that requires detailed training and education in specific cultures, nations and societies. Surely burial customs are part of that training! I wonder whether the Army's commanders in Iraq consulted with their FAOs before applying embalmer's putty and makeup to the bodies.

Maybe they did and decided to go forward, anyway. "You roll the dice and take your chances," as the saying goes.

In other relevant news, Japan is ready to send troops to Iraq.


by Donald Sensing, 7/25/2003 03:43:33 PM. Permalink |   

What Arab scholars say about the deaths of Uday and Qusay
James Joyner summarizes what two Arabs scholars and one Arab newsman said. It's not a long post, so read the whole thing. What is remarkable is how they turned the topic into penetrating looks at what is wrong with their own societies and how the reactions to the Hussein brothers' death illuminates it.

I have said before (and here) that the only Arabs who feel secure enough to offer blunt critiques of Arab culture and countries are Arabs who don't live there any more. All three of these men live here in America.

by Donald Sensing, 7/25/2003 03:23:56 PM. Permalink |   

Comprehensive list of Iraq campaign dead online
I mentioned this in next post down, but thought I'd make it more explicit. CNN maintains a daily-updated list of all American British service members killed in Iraq, whether by enemy action or some other reason.

by Donald Sensing, 7/25/2003 02:56:54 PM. Permalink |   

I know my site is loading slow
And MSIE tells me that it is "Done, but with errors on the page." I have examined the site's code line by line and can't find an error, but I am no codemaster, either. Until I do find it, please accept my apology for the slow load.

by Donald Sensing, 7/25/2003 02:40:48 PM. Permalink |   

Flying Howard Johnson home - real or urban legend?
A retired Air Force major general yesterday emailed me the text of a story - not his own story - being circulated that has all the earmarks of urban legend.

I want to tell you of an experience I had last night flying home from Atlanta. The pilot came on the intercom and went through the usual announcements telling us that "we're just east of Montgomery cruising at 28,000 feet" and "you've picked a beautiful night for flying, just look at the gorgeous southern sunset out of the right side of the plane".

He then, however, said this: "Please bear with me as I deviate from the script, but I want you all to know that simply by coincidence you have been granted both the privilege and honor of escorting the body of Army PFC Howard Johnson, Jr. home tonight. PFC Johnson was killed in Iraq defending the freedoms we all enjoy, and fighting to extend those freedoms to the people of Iraq. We are also accompanied by PFC Johnson's cousin, Marine Major Talley, who has been chosen by the family to escort PFC Johnson home. Semper Fi!"

The plane quickly became very quiet, but soon erupted in thunderous applause that lasted for several minutes. It was quite moving, to say the least. As I sat there thinking about what the pilot had said, and visualizing PFC Johnson's dead body riding below me in the belly of that plane, I noticed a couple of things. Two rows in front of me sat a father holding his daughter, an infant, and they were practicing "ma-ma" and in the row behind me was another young boy, probably 2 or so, learning to count to 10. Now obviously both are too young to realize we're at war, or that one of our dead was with us, but it made me think, and this is the point: These warriors, mostly young, all volunteers, everyday are prepared to give their lives for our future, for a safer, more secure future for people they don't even know, all based on the principle that fighting and dying for this country is worth it. You all know and agree with this, but not everyone does, so I would ask that if you meet anyone that's not "on board" with this philosophy, i.e. the protesters, that you "correct the situation".

By the way, the flight ended with all of us deplaning only to line the windows of the gate house to watch PFC Johnson's body, draped in the American flag, be rolled out of the plane and into a waiting hearse that was surrounded by his family members. Please pray that our soldiers' sight is acute, their aim is true, and that as many come home as God can spare.

Possibly because I am clergy, I get a lot of these kinds of stories emailed to me. For example, the small girl whose entire insides are eaten up with a mysterious tumor and no treatment has worked and doctors are baffled and she has no hope but prayer and please, for God's sake, please pray for her and email everyone you know to pray for her and don't break the prayer chain, blah, blah, blah.

I used to email folks back not to be so gullible and refer them to the Snopes.com page rebutting their particular story, but that tended to cause hostile feelings toward me, so now I simply hit delete and forget about it.

And BTW, I never, ever, for any reason whatsoever, forward email to everyone I know.

However, I did not delete the major general's email before checking it out. One flag that went up was the dead soldier's name, Howard Johnson. I remember the urban legend of Harold Hill, a president of the Curtis Engine Company, who said that NASA scientists had found the "missing day" of the books of Joshua 2 Kings of the Bible.

Harold Hill was also the name of the con man in the classic musical, The Music Man, played to perfection by Robert Preston. As they say in the FBI, that is what is known as a clue. The legend of the discovery of the Lost Day is just that, a legend, and it has no basis in fact. But as it turns out, Harold Hill was a real man who really was president of the engine company.

So "Howard Johnson" raised a flag. And as it turns out, he really was a soldier killed in action in Iraq in the now-infamous running gun battle of the 507th Maint. Co. near Nasiriyah on 23 March, according to the daily-updated list on CNN's web site of all American British service members killed in Iraq, whether by enemy action or some other reason. And he was from Alabama.

Snopes analysis of the inflight announcement story confirms Howard's death and says that the announcement itself was "likely," since "it's not improbable that his body was carried on a commercial flight from Atlanta to Alabama, that the pilot of that flight made an announcement to that effect, and that many passengers on the flight responded to the announcement with reverence and appreciation."

But Snopes can't leave well enough alone, and plunges into acting like the New York Times, reporting opinion (it's own, in this case) as fact:

Not true: That anti-war protesters need to "correct the situation" and get "on board" with the philosophy that many young people volunteer for the military and are prepared to give their lives protecting our country. Anti-war protesters (except for fringe groups) aren't disparaging servicemen or discounting the value of their contributions; anti-war protesters are expressing their opinion that they don't believe the current situation is one for which our servicemen should be called upon to give their lives.

Sorry, Snopie, but the antiwar protesters almost without exception were doing exactly that. So who snopes out Snopes.com?

God rest you in peace, Pfc. Johnson, and I thank you for your service and sacrifice to and for the cause of freedom.

by Donald Sensing, 7/25/2003 02:37:07 PM. Permalink |   

Senile, am I? Oh, yeah? Well, take that, or, uh, something . . .
The Lone Dissenter, a cocky high school student, fer cryin' out loud, takes issue with my review of the insufferably bad movie, Leage of Extraordinary Gentlemen, aka LXG, which fails miserably on many accounts, not least of which is that its title takes too long to type.

LD hasn't been blogging much because it's summertime, and she's having fun doing whatever the heck high-school girls do in the summer, which apparently includes spending their dad's hard-earned coin to go see bad movies.

And then deigning to blog once more - for the first bloomin' time in weeks - to call her blogdad (me, since she used to draw her inspiration from me until she got all high and mighty and prissy and know-it-all, sort of like my daughter, for example); as I was saying, she called me senile because she didn't realize how really bad LXG is and in fact thinks it is pretty good.

Tell me, what does one do when one's blogdad shows serious signs of going senile? LXG gets four popcorn buckets and Pirates of the Caribbean gets eight? Oh boy. I've got some issues with that.

Senile, eh? Senile! Lemme tell ya, I make Richard Byrd look like Albert Einstein! Uh, wait, that's not quite what I meant . . . Gotta go - I need to take a break to clean the drool off my keyboard.

Update: Gullt pangs have set in and I need to point out that my daughter, 9, whose picture was taken at camp this week, is truly gift from God who enriches my life beyond measure. She is actually a wonderful, sweet, loving girl, not what I said above.

I happen to have met the young lady who writes Lone Dissenter, and wish to point out that I meant every word I wrote here, and I am sure her dad, whom I also know personally, is as thankful for her as I am for my girl.

by Donald Sensing, 7/25/2003 02:07:10 PM. Permalink |   

Boy, are the Mets desperate!
Heh! I mean, really, heh!

by Donald Sensing, 7/24/2003 08:07:17 PM. Permalink |   

Huzzah! My site is ranked 263,792nd!
Alex is an Amazon.com website ranking service that computes traffic ranking and a sitye's reach and such based on "three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users."

Today Andrew Sullivan is celebrating the fact that his site is ranked 6,469th. This is not a blog-to-blog ranking, as Blogstreet is. It is a ranking within all the web sites on the internet. At least that's the way I understand it.

I followed Andrew's link and decided to see where Alexa ranked One Hand Clapping. There I am, ranked 263,792nd!

So, just for kicks, I decided to find out the ranking for some other sites.

Let's start with Glenn Reynolds. He is 9,012. Steven Den Beste is 37,953. Sgt. Stryker is 103,230. American Digest is 529,600. My church's web site is - oops, can't rank it because it is hosted at a subdomain of the master domain of the UMC's General Board of Global Ministries. Alexa ranks only first-tier domains.

That means that no Blogspot-hosted site can be ranked because Alexa ranks only www.blogspot.com (464, BTW).

See where your favorite sites rank. Just go here and enter the URL in the search field at upper left. Have fun.

by Donald Sensing, 7/24/2003 05:39:52 PM. Permalink |   

Does George Will read my blog?
Oh, get serious, of course not. But he does write today of the same theme I explored yesterday: just how bona fide a conservative is President Bush? Will says that Bush's presidency is "disconcerting to four factions within conservatism."

by Donald Sensing, 7/24/2003 02:22:29 PM. Permalink |   

Tailgate party is up
Here's this week's Volunteer Tailgate Party.

by Donald Sensing, 7/24/2003 09:09:23 AM. Permalink |   

Blogger hits the genuine big time
Steven Den Beste authors WSJ opinion piece

Mega-congratulations to blogger Steven whose piece, "We Won't Back Down," is featured in today's OpinionJournal. Way to go, Steven!

And as for you gentle readers, read the whole thing, then cruise over to his blog.

by Donald Sensing, 7/24/2003 08:28:40 AM. Permalink |   

Today's post so far
I dropped a number of posts here in short succession, so here is today's index so far:

Around the web - stuff you should read.

"Don't they know there's a war on?" - foolish enlistment restrictions or sound policy?

Managing effort in volunteer organizations - tips from Rick Warren, who definitely knows.

Movie reviews: Bad Boys 2, Pirates of the Caribbean and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - in short, no, yes, no.

The Democrats' secret plan to win back the red states.

America's boundary lines disputed- technology calls old surveys into question

"The NY Times should know better" - as if that statement surprises anymore.

by Donald Sensing, 7/24/2003 08:16:45 AM. Permalink |   

Web-running - read this stuff
Tom Donelson on North Korea: Bush must solve the crisis and keep the peace there at the same time.

Interesting earth facts are here.

Money talks, you-know-what walks: $30 million reward for the Hussein Boys proves too tempting for homeowner to keep silence. As Richard Heddleson emailed, "People really are the same the world over." (The US government has not actually identified who will be paid the reward. There was a $15 million bounty on each of the Hussein Boys.)

Feminists target marriage.

Michael Williams writes in detail about the potential for prosperity and democracy in Africa.

I'm a little late referring (rather than simply linking) to John Hawkins' blogger poll of the 20 Greatest Figures In American History. I had the honor to be asked to contribute. My list, not far from the final poll results, was, in no particular order:

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Thomas Edison, Ulysses S. Grant, Jonas Salk, Alexander Fleming, Douglas MacArthur, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King, Jr., Henry Ford, Alexander Graham Bell, Mark Twain, Billy Graham, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and the Carter family, the Wright brothers.

I explained to John that I tried to pick persons who influenced American or world history the most, not necessarily the persons most to be admired, although I think that all 20 of these folks are pretty darn admirable.

Chief Wiggles blogs from Iraq, and all I can say is go there, start reading and scrolling.

by Donald Sensing, 7/24/2003 07:59:10 AM. Permalink |   

"Don't they know there's a war on?"
Former Army NCO Kevin Trainor emails,

Back in February, my 17-year-old daughter signed up with a local Army Reserve unit for "split option" training, which would have sent her to Basic Training at Fort Jackson this summer and to Fort Bragg for AIT next summer after graduation. Since the unit in question has detachments currently deployed to about five different places around the globe, they were pretty happy to see her, since she'd enlisted for a critical MOS which they're perennially short of.

Unfortunately, when the day came for her to ship out to Fort Jackson, they turned her around and sent her home since she was TWO POUNDS over the weight limit and 0.5% over the body fat limit.

Back in the day (1979) when life really stunk, I enlisted in the Regulars as an EW/Signal Intelligence techie. There was no body fat test back then; you either made weight or you didn't. My limit was 215. I showed up at the Baltimore MEPS weighing 225, and proceeded to ship out to Fort Leonard Wood for Basic. They sweated thirty pounds off me in Basic. Is Jackson in 2003 that much softer than Leonard Wood in 1979? Somehow I doubt it. Nobody was shooting at us back then, but they were eager enough to take me that the extra poundage just wasn't that important. Nowadays, it seems, even though they're critically short in the MOS my daughter enlisted for and there's a sizable group of her fellow soldiers already in Iraq, the extra weight is more important than having trained troops in the ranks.

Don't they know there's a war on?

That ain't all, Kevin. I previously related that my eldest son was nearing a decision to enlist in the Army or the Marine Corps. In a conversation with the Marine recruiter, he said that they can get waivers to approve enlistment if a prospect has used narcotics or smoked marijuana, has a record of repeated arrests, or, in one approved waiver, had one leg literally pinned together with steel rods.

But absolutely no waivers whatsoever are granted for a prospect who has more than six tattoos or has any tattoo that cannot be covered by the recruiter's hand. Period. It doesn't matter what the tattoo depicts - gang related, drug related, or a full-color American flag, doesn't matter.

My son has none of the above, but the recruiter wasn't kidding. While we were in his office this week he spoke to a man who had failed the marijuana urinalysis at Parris Island over a year ago. He had been immediately discharged and sent home, but regulations allow for reenlistment after a year. Now he wanted to try again. The marijuana use was no real problem, the recruiter told him, provided he was clean now. How about tattoos?

Yeah, I have one, said the fellow. He had gotten it after he left Parris Island. When the recruiter discovered how big it was he rapidly lost interest. No can do.

If you used marijuana, no problem. If you have an American flag or even a USMC Globe and Anchor tattooed on your inner thigh that the hand won't conceal, you walk.

Update: A number of comments to this post point out the apparent senselessness of the rigid enforcement of the services' weight-control standards and wonder why they are so apparently-blindly enforced.

Back in the heady, early days of detente with the old USSR, military-to-military contacts and visits between Soviet and American high-ranking officers were done a lot. At one of the dinners celebrating the lessening of tensions, as we called it, at a US Army post, a Soviet marshall pointed our jovially that the greatest difference between the Soviet army and the US Army was that in the Soviet army, the officers were fat and soldiers thin, but in the US Army it was the other way around.

The comment stung the US Army chief of staff, who was present. Thus the genesis of the Army's weight-control program.

Urban legend or true story? I'm not sure, but myself, I lean toward true story.

by Donald Sensing, 7/24/2003 07:58:10 AM. Permalink |   

Managing effort in volunteer organizations
One of the challenges in getting work done in volunteer outfits (say, churches) is that everyone is, well, a volunteer. They volunteered in and they can volunteer out. Rick Warren (no link) writes of the "Seven Principles for Every Church Project," and I think they would apply to secular, volunteer organizations as well. The principles are:

Participation: Work with those who want to work, ignore the ones who don't.

Keep it simple

Delegate

Motivate

Administrate

Appreciate

by Donald Sensing, 7/24/2003 07:09:55 AM. Permalink |   

Reviews: Bad Boys 2, Pirates of the Caribbean and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
The short review summary, in order: no, yes, no.

Truth in blogging: I have not seen BB2, but Roger Ebert has, and boy, he is convinced that this movie is bad, too.

"Bad Boys II" is a bloated, unpleasant assembly-line extrusion in which there are a lot of chases and a lot of killings and explosions. Oh, it's all done with competent technique. Michael Bay, the director, is a master of this sort of thing, and his screenplay was labored over by at least four writers, although there is not an original idea in it. Even the villain is a bargain-basement ripoff of Al Pacino's great drug dealer in "Scarface."

So that covers that that. tip: Justin Sodano).

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, or LXG, as it is shorthanded.

As Other Hand Clapping and I were entering the theater there were four women ahead of us. The ticket taker, a jovial fellow, exclaimed, "Ah! Coming to see the chick flick!" Yes, they were en route to LXG - to see Sean Connery, of course, who must be massively embarrassed at being seen in this dog.

LXG's premise actually has promise: it presents the world of 1899 as one in which the action heros of the 19th century actually lived. In this world, the novels about them are not novels at all, but factual accounts: Alan Quartermain (Connery), the Invisible Man, Captain Nemo, Dorian Gray, the Bride of Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Tom Sawyer (don't ask why he's in there).

In a nice touch, considering Connery plays the lead, these extraordinary gentlemen and the Bride are brought together by M, the head of the British Intelligence Service, and presumably a predecessor of James Bond's future boss. That moment was the high point of the movie.

It's cliche now that movie makers must persuade the audience to suspend their will to disbelieve, and accept the fictional world's premises upon which a movie rests. Usually this is no hard task, since the audience has paid its money to be persuaded of exactly that. But director Stephen Norrington fails.

The fundamental premise is at fault and the rest of the story line falls accordingly. The threat that M wants them to halt is that of the mysterious Phantom, a man of amazing technological capability who is about to cast Europe into general war.

This premise falls flat because we already know that Europe will fall into World War I anyway, 15 years later. And there is nothing in the premise that leads us to understand that by stopping the Phantom, the League will also prevent WWI, even if by unknowing accident.

So right off the bat, we don't really care about the League's mission. It doesn't help to discover near the end of the movie that the mission was bogus all along.

LXG is being marketed partly as a special-effects movie, but its special effects are nothing exceptional these days. I think this fact just shows that the state of the art is incredibly elevated now, because just a couple of years ago, the effects would have been truly impressive.

Except for Connery, the other actors' portrayals are flat. Connery is the only one who brings any passion to his part. The rest are just going through the motions. Neither are their characters scripturally developed well. We just never connect with them, even when we feel we should. Only the portrayals of the awful psychological struggle between Jekyll and Hyde draw the viewer in - and then, they are somehow resolved. Just. Like. That. What happened?

Yes, the fights are great. Yes, there are a couple of snappy one-liners. But the story is flat and flatlined. As Dorothy Parker once said of Los Angeles, "There's no there there." Bottom line: the K-Mart ad for Joe Boxer underwear that precedes the previews is more entertaining.

I give LXG four popcorn buckets out of 10.

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

Okay, get this straight: the Black Pearl is the name of the pirate ship, not a brooch adornment. POTC is the first movie ever made based on an amusement park ride, and I can confidently predict it won't be the last. How do I know? The previews included The Haunted Mansion, now finishing post-production, also based on a Disney ride.

Suffice it to say that POTC has everything is supposed to have: buried treasure, pillagin' and plunderin', swashbuckling, pirates who speak in pirate accents (Aargh!), a parrot, gunfights, outstanding swordplay, pitched battles on land and sea, and a pirate ship sailed by a skeleton crew - no fooling about that last! (Special effects are absolutely fantastic.)

No eye patches or hooks for hands, though. Darn!

Some movies such as LXG you dislike more as time passes, others you tend to like more. A day after seeing POTC I had a list of nits to pick about it, but now I think, who cares? The movie is not perfect, but it works pretty doggone good. The movie begs you to suspend disbelief immediately and you do; as Ebert says, "To take this material seriously would make it unbearable." True, and it's probably true that the movie is too long. But so what? It ends well.

Be advised, however: this is not a little kids movie. My daughter, 9, said it really scared her at times. It is a violent movie. There's no spatter, but there are numerous scenes of men being run through with swords and shot. The swordplay is often intense.

Overall, I give Pirates of the Caribbean 8 gold doubloons out of 10.

by Donald Sensing, 7/24/2003 07:07:27 AM. Permalink |   

The Democrats' secret plan . . .
. . . to win back the red states is revealed by John Cole.

by Donald Sensing, 7/24/2003 07:05:04 AM. Permalink |   

America's boundary lines disputed
Technology calls old surveys into question

Geitner Simmons explains how GPS and other modern position-locating technologies have led to serious disputes between some states over their boundaries. With burgeoning populations, the issues are resources and tax bases.

In the largest dispute, the New Mexico Senate voted in March to sue Texas over 600,000 acres along the two states' border. New Mexico says the sparsely populated land, which includes some oil reserves, was wrongly placed on the Texas side of the line in 1859 by a faulty survey.

A non-technological dispute, however, is between Maryland and Virginia over who controls the Potomac River; it goes back to 1632!


by Donald Sensing, 7/24/2003 07:04:13 AM. Permalink |   

The NY Times should know better . . .
. . . says Andrew at Apostablog:

The statement that:

The choice of that city as a hiding place by the brothers was somewhat surprising because of Mosul's location, near the Kurdish region where the Hussein family is particularly hated.

is laughable. Mosul, dominated by Sunni Arabs, has long been a breeding ground for Arab nationalism in Iraq. Mauslawi Arabs have been the backbone of the officer corps. The Kurds live nearby and in Mosul, where they are around a third of the population, but Mosul is not regarded a Kurdish city. Remember that Tikrit, Saddam's manor, is also near the Kurdish region.

by Donald Sensing, 7/24/2003 06:58:51 AM. Permalink |   

Nazi air fleet remains fully armed and fueled
Documents of the former communist government of East Germany have revealed that East Berlin's airport,, through which two million passengers travel each year, sits atop "thousands of live bombs" left over from the Nazi regime.

Not only that, "but also entire Nazi fighter planes, all fuelled and fully bombed-up, according to the Stasi" documents are entombed in bunkers below the airport.

My artillery unit was located on Schloss Kaserne in the West German town of Butzbach, about 50 kilometers north of Frankfurt. It was a Wehrmacht kaserne before and during World War II. Underneath the motor pool was buried enormous stores of weapons - rifles, machine guns, "potato masher" grenades, and who knows what else, along with a million rounds or so of ammunition.

The kaserne is back in German hands now; I wonder whether it was been cleaned up, or do the Germans much prefer to let their Nazi past remain buried.

Update: Jim Miller points out that this story "shows, yet again, just how easy it is to hide weapons." Gee, I wonder what he means?

by Donald Sensing, 7/23/2003 04:11:33 PM. Permalink |   

Democrats and liberalism
In comparison to the doubts many are raising about whether G. W. Bush truly qualifies as a conservative, a large number of commentators are claiming that the Democrats no longer really count as liberals, at least not in the sense they were liberals of their historic traditions.

Liberal blogger Michael Totten has a great roundup of what a dozen or so commentators who count themselves as liberals are saying about the Dems these days, with which Michael is basically in agreement. Read them all; I'll only include his quote of Howard Veit:

I have made the horrible observation that if you are a classic liberal you are now a Republican. . . .

I wrote last September,

Once upon a time, a Democrat President announced,

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty . . . .

And we have. And we will. (President Kennedy would never make it in the Democrat party today; he'd have to be a Republican.)

There's a lot of good stuff on Totten's blog lately, including a short but complete explanation of why the United Nations "should have nothing to do with rebuilding Iraq. . . ." And another commentary of how Tony Blair's speech to Congress put him,

. . . squarely in the same left-liberal tradition as Paul Berman. And Christopher Hitchens and Franklin Roosevelt and George Orwell, too, for that matter.

The funny thing that almost no one seems to notice is that George W. Bush is now the standard-bearer for this view. . . .

Berman is "a left-winger on the editorial board of Dissent magazine, which is many orders of magnitude to the left of The New Republic. . . ."

In fact, Michael says that despite what Bush's detractors say - that since 9/11, Bush veered sharptly to the right - in fact he veered in exactly the opposite direction.

Oliver Kamm (linked by Michel) argues that Bush is actually a Wilsonian-tradition liberal, though, who is able to meld political realism with Wilsonian idealism skillfully. He concludes, "W. Bush is truly the president, and soon once more the candidate, of the finest ideals of the liberal Left. . . ."

As for the contemporary Left, says Dr. Frank, ". . . my impression from those I know and read is that most of them are not all that into liberal democracy these days."

by Donald Sensing, 7/23/2003 03:51:49 PM. Permalink |   

Bush and conservatism
The question is being asked with greater frequency by people with the credentials to ask it intelligently: "Is George W. Bush really a conservative?"

Andrew Sullivan wrote today comparing Bush v. Reagan:

education spending was cut by 33 percent by Reagan; it has grown 27 percent under Bush; "community and regional development" saw its budget cut by 33 percent by Reagan; Bush increased it by 32 percent; transportation was down 11 percent under Reagan; it's up 16 percent under Bush. The man just can't stop spending our money.

Andrew adds sardonically, "With Clinton gone, the era of small government is over."

Columnist Tony Blankley of the conservative-minded Washington Times newspaper wrote today,

Currently, conservatives of various stripes are beginning to complain about large deficits, prescription-drug entitlement legislation, excessive regulations (including education regulations driven by Mr. Bush's No Child Left Behind legislation), weak opposition to quotas, acceptance of the Supreme Court's anti-state's right overthrowing of anti-sodomy laws and, for the substantial Pat Buchanan wing of the conservative house, what they would call military adventurism and imperialism.

So, says Blankley, President Bush should not rely merely on his war record to see him through.

National Review's Jonah Goldberg wrote,

Among conservative journalists and activists, the disappointment in the Bush administration's, and the GOP congressional leadership's, domestic policies is mounting daily.

On free trade, the President has proved less reliable than - shudder - Bill Clinton. His acquiescence (i.e. capitulation) on Medicare has been total, refusing to fight for significant free-market reforms while agreeing to shovel hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars for new entitlements.

Goldberg says, though, that the GOP's own projections show that it must solidify an appeal to America's political center or lose. But he agrees that Bush is a big spending president, and not just because of the terror war:

What will make politics very interesting in the years to come is that "big-government conservative" used to be an oxymoron. Now it means "compassionate conservative."

Yep. Conservatives used to snort that most Democrats were "tax and spend liberals." With the present president and the Republican controlled Congress, though, we seem to have "cut taxes and spend anyway conservatives."

Let's see: bigger government, more intrusiveness into Americans' privacy than before (Patriot Act), booming deficits, bigger federals budgets, international activism in Africa and elsewhere (I don't mean combat missions fighting terror), enormous welfare for the elderly in the form of prescription-drug benefits - is that the record of a conservative?

In a long piece last Sunday in the Daily Mail, Andrew Sullivan finally concludes, yes, but, "More likely, Bush's conservatism is of a type that is simply more comfortable with the power of government than conservatives usually are. "

Yeah, I'd say so.

Update: Seems James Joyner beat me to this inquiry.

by Donald Sensing, 7/23/2003 03:19:27 PM. Permalink |   

SARS and Chinese Christianity, Iraqi Christians under fire, and more
The following are from the August 2003 print edition of Pulpit Helps, a religious-news periodical.

SARS in China led to growth of Chinese churches. Christian Chinese leaders say that SARS in China has led people to Christian faith in ever-greater numbers, "tens of thousands per day" are newly confessing Christian faith since the outbreak of the respiratory disease.

Shiite persecution of Iraqi Christian intensifies. Iraqi Christians, numbering between 750,000 - one million, have been murdered and otherwise persecuted since the fall of the Saddam regime by Iraqi Shia Muslims seeking to enforce sharia, Islamic law. There are also has a very small number of Iraqi Jews, who are being similarly persecuted.

Christians in Basra in southern Iraq say that Shias there have burned more than 100 Christian-owned shops and have "raided Christian homes," threatening death to the owners. Many Iraqi Christians have left southern Iraq for the country's heartland around Mosul, where Iraqi Christians are more numerous.

Ugandan rebel group declares Catholics must be killed. Cultic figure Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda, announced last month, "Catholic missions must be destroyed, priests and missionaries killed in cold blood, and nuns beaten black and blue."

Kony is fighting to take over Uganda and converts it to his own concepts, which he claims are "biblical." The LRA has been terrorizing northern Uganda for 16 years, forcing about one million Ugandans to become refugees.

Kony's furor at the Catholics apparently was triggered by the defection of a number of his top lieutenants after they had met with Catholic leaders.

Since then, the LRA has burned, bombed or vandalized Catholic missions nine times. While Kony has targeted Christians generally for years, this is the first time he has named any specific Christian denomination as an enemy.

Catholic relief Services announces starvation looms in Ethiopia. Drought has returned Ethiopia to its worst food crisis since 1984-1985, when a million Ethiopians died from famine. Many villages have not brought in a Harvest since last November. Now, 12 million Ethiopians are in danger of starvation.

"Adding to the danger is a lack of clean water . . . along with the growing threat of HIV/AIDS, affecting 2 million adults and children in Ethiopia."

Pakistan province adopts Islamic law. Pakistan's North West Frontier Province has adopted sharia, Islamic law, as its official law. The province's chief minister, Akram Durrani, said, "Sharia will be implemented in the province and there will be no place for those who refuse to follow it."

Another measure passed on June 4 provides for the establishment of a sharia judge, as well and a Dept. of Vice and Virtue (religious police force).

However, the bill establishing Islamic law stipulates that sharia will not be applied to non-Muslims. But it also says that when there are conflicts between sharia and existing non-sharia law, Islamic law will prevail.

by Donald Sensing, 7/23/2003 11:22:35 AM. Permalink |   

Why Iraq is not Vietnam
Austin Bay explains. RTWT.

by Donald Sensing, 7/23/2003 09:09:24 AM. Permalink |   

Typepad, oh Typepad, whither art thou?
The winner of NZ bears New Weblog Showcase this week is Poison Kitchen, whose web address is http://poisonkitchen.typepad.com/. Note that the URL indicates the site is hosted by Movable Type's new Blogspot/Blogger competitor, Typepad. But if you go to Typepad's web site, the index page says Typepad is still "upcoming."

What gives?

by Donald Sensing, 7/23/2003 09:07:48 AM. Permalink |   

The corner was turned before the Husseins' deaths
The raid which led to the deaths of the two Hussein boys was the result, not the cause, of the turning of the corner in the guerrilla war in Iraq. US forces consciously decided to change tactics and objectives a few weeks ago, according to this report, and penetrated the guerrillas' networks from the lower and middle regions.

“We shifted our focus from very high-level personalities to the people that are causing us damage,” Gen. John P. Abizaid, the new commander of the U.S. military in the Middle East, said in an interview last weekend. Later, he told reporters in Baghdad: “In the past two weeks, we have been getting the mid-level leadership in a way that is effective.”

The captured Baathists provided much new detail about their organization and contacts, officials here said. Some gave information about their financing and their means of communication, they added. Others identified members of their networks. Some described the routes and contacts that fugitive leaders were using. Threats to ship the recalcitrant captives to the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay on the eastern end of Cuba were especially helpful in encouraging them to talk, officials said.

“You get a tip, you pull a couple of guys in, they start to talk,” a Central Command official said. Then, based on that information, he continued, “you do a raid, you confiscate some documents, you start building the tree” of contacts and “you start doing signals intercepts. And then you’re into the network.”

“The people are now coming to us with information,” Maj. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, commander of the Army’s 4th Infantry Division, told Abizaid in a briefing this week at Odierno’s headquarters in Tikrit, Hussein’s home town. “Every time we do an operation, more people come in.”

Nothing succeeds like success. As the Iraqis people become ever-more convinced that the dead-enders are losing, they will cleave to the American-UK side in ever-greater numbers and intensity. Remember, this is a culture that respects and fears the strong man. For the near term, it will be good the the Iraqis to respect and fear us. Later, they may come to love us, but for now we shall be quite content simply to have them ally themselves with us, no matter the reason.

by Donald Sensing, 7/23/2003 08:51:58 AM. Permalink |   

Show me the bodies
Iraqi "man on the street" interviews by Fox News' correspondent yesterday, concerning the deaths of Qusay and Uday Huessein, showed that Iraqis will believe it when they see it - more precisely, see them, meaning the bodies. They want to see the dead bodies of the two men on TV in order to be convinced.

It's an entirely reasonable request. The Iraqis have lived in an Orwellian world - or worse - where appearance was everything, substance was little or nothing. Remember, Saddam had at least two verified doubles, probably three. Who's to say his two sons didn't have doubles as well?

For the Iraqis, "seeing is believing," even though they probably won't accept it with 100 percent, ironclad certainty even then. But it's the best we can do. We should broadcast images of the bodies on Iraqi TV. Today.

Update: Apostablog says that not only must the bodies be shown, "Arguably, like Nazi war criminals, they should be buried in unmarked graves so that their resting place does not become a shrine."

by Donald Sensing, 7/23/2003 08:41:49 AM. Permalink |   

"There's no such thing as bad publicity. . . "
. . . except in your own obituary, as the saying goes. Well, silver screen superstar Mel Gibson is discovering whether that saying is true with all the controversy over his movie about the life and death of Jesus Christ.

The Jewish Ant-Defamation League has spoken strongly against the way they think the movie will portray Jews.

The influential Anti-Defamation League, which monitors incidents of anti-Semitism, has been especially critical, pointing out on its Web site the long historical relationship between passion plays and attacks on Jews: "ADL has serious concerns regarding Mr. Gibson's 'The Passion' and asks: Will the final version of 'The Passion' continue to portray Jews as blood-thirsty, sadistic and money-hungry enemies of Jesus? Will it correct the unambiguous depiction of Jews as the ones responsible for the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus?"

Mel actually held a rough-cut screening for a carefully selected audience July 21, including Jack Valenti, chief lobbyist for the MPAA, who afterward gushed that it was "the movie to beat."

What a lot of the critics and advocates of the movie may not realize is that modern New Testament scholars have argued for decades just what were the respective roles of the Jewish power structure and the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, in finally sending Jesus to his death by crucifixion.

There was even, once upon a time, an attempt by liberal scholars to deny that Jesus really was executed at all, but this notion died a complete and fairly rapid death. No one proposes that any more.

But who was mostly to blame for Jesus' execution is still debated. And Mel's movie won;t solve the question. The Gospels leave the question ambiguous; if not, the argument wouldn't be taking place at all, duh.

Mae West once said, "It's better to be looked over than overlooked." Mel will find that out, too.

Update: Matt Drudge, he of the Drudge report, saw the rough-cut preview. As a Jew, Drudge said, he "thought it was a magical film."

by Donald Sensing, 7/22/2003 07:56:35 PM. Permalink |   

Why the Army resents the Air Force
Sgt Stryker explains it well, except, of course, he's Air Force and he's gloating.

And it's pretty obvious whom he thinks offers the best operational deployments; click in order the following links:

Marines

Army

Navy

Air Force

'Nuff said.

by Donald Sensing, 7/22/2003 04:29:07 PM. Permalink |   

US to hold out carrot to North Korea?
The Bush administration is thinking about giving North Korea formal guarantees the USA will not attack it in exchange for major concessions by the communists.

by Donald Sensing, 7/22/2003 04:16:25 PM. Permalink |   

Uday and Qusay Hussein surprised to find themselves in Hell
In an videotape from The Other Side just received here at OHC Central, Uday and Qusay Hussein said they were surprised to discover that they woke up dead in Hell, surrounded by fire and brimstone rather than doted on by 72 perpetual virgins in Paradise. The two sons of Saddam Hussein were killed in a firefight with US forces on July 21.

"This really stinks," Uday said. "We'd been told that if we died a martyr's death we would be transported immediately to Heaven, where we'd each have the full attention of 72 eternal, doe-eyed virgins. Instead, we are being tortured all the time and haven't seen a virgin yet."

The rest of Uday's words turned to raw-throated shrieks, as a tusked, asp-tongued demon burst his eyeballs and drank the fluid that ran down his face.

Qusay added that their tortures were even more stressing because they can actually see Paradise from where they are condemned to spend eternity. "I mean, it's tough enough being forced through a wire screen by the callused palms of Halcorym and then having your entrails wound onto a stick and fed to the toothless, foul-breathed swine of Gehenna. But to endure that while watching the righteous drink from a river of wine? That's no fun."

"Eventually, we'll discover what our eternal punsihment will consist of," said Uday. "But for now, everyone down here wants a crack at us. Legions of fang-toothed hags will take pleasure on our shattered carcasses for most of this afternoon. Tomorrow, our flesh will be melted from our bones like wax in the burning embrace of the Mother of Cowards. The day after that, we'll be slashed by the Fallen. This weekend, Satan gets us all day. I can't even imagine what he's got cooked up for us.

"Give our regards to Dad, and tell him we wish he was here with us."

(Sharp-minded readers may recognize that this post was inspired pretty much plagiarized from this article of The Onion of Sept. 26, 2001.)

Update: The American on-scene commander, Lt. Gen. Sanchez, has issued an invitation to Saddam Hussein to give the eulogy at his sons' funeral.

by Donald Sensing, 7/22/2003 03:58:49 PM. Permalink |   

I said this would happen
Simon and Schuster, publishers of Hillary Clinton's book, Living History, announced that it is laying off staff, including editorial staff, and that its revenue numbers have worsened dramatically.

I said back on April 29 of Hillary's book, "Simon & Schuster will take a major bath on this one and the departure of its managers who laid out the money will soon follow." Further deponent sayeth not.

I also incorrectly predicted that the book would have weak legs for long-term sales, but it remains the number one non-fiction (cough!) selling book. Even so, it's absolute sales numbers remain hundreds of thousands short of the nearly two million copies needed to be sold simply to break even on the $8 million advance S&S; paid Hillary.

But in fairness, S&S;' troubles can't all be laid at the feet of Hillary's huge advance. Overall book sales are low.

by Donald Sensing, 7/22/2003 12:57:10 PM. Permalink |   

US government debating bigger US military
It's about time this debate started in earnest.

The strains on American ground forces as the Bush administration extends their global missions are prompting new debates on Capitol Hill and within the Pentagon over the question of whether the military needs more troops worldwide. . . .

The Marine Corps could also be asked to share long-term peacekeeping duties, which traditionally have fallen to the Army. . . .

At present, about 370,000 Army troops are deployed in 120 countries, from a total active-duty force of about 491,000, according to Pentagon statistics. Army reservists and National Guard members on active duty this month total 136,835, out of a force of about 550,000.

by Donald Sensing, 7/21/2003 06:41:01 PM. Permalink |   

An "unusual nexus of greed"
Mac Swift has a detailed essay on some surprising confluences of events and persons centered around Liberia strongman Charles Taylor.

Mac says there is an "unusual nexus of greed linking Pat Robertson, Jesse Jackson, Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups to Liberia through Charles Taylor's regime. The essay does much to explain the politics behind Liberia for those not familiar with its history, and especially Taylor's connections to terrorist groups, as well as political and religious leaders in the U.S.

There are two parts, hyperlinked together, of course: Part One and Part Two.

Well worth the reading!

by Donald Sensing, 7/21/2003 12:12:06 PM. Permalink |   

Iraqi hearts and minds
A special forces soldier emails from Iraq:

A bunch of bad guys used a group of women and children as human shields. The GIs surrounded them and negotiated their surrender fifteen hours later and when they discovered a three year-old girl had been injured by the big tough guys throwing her down a flight of stairs, the GIs called in a MedVac helicopter to take her and her mother to the nearest field hospital. The Iraqis watched it all, and there hasn't been a problem in that neighborhood since. How many such stories, and there are hundreds of them, ever get reported in the fair and balanced press? You know, nada.

The civilians who have figured it out faster than anyone are the local teenagers. They watch the GIs and try to talk to them and ask questions about America and Now wear wrap-around sunglasses, GAP T-shirts, Dockers (or even better Levis with the red tags) and Nikes (or Egyptian knock-offs, but with the "swoosh") and love to listen to AFN when the GIs play it on their radios.

This soldier also observes that some Iraqis don't riot of protest except "on cue when they spot a camera man from ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN or NBC." That is an old trick that 1960s American demostrators used, of course - there's no point in causing trouble if no one is there to videotape or film it. Sometimes a riot is literally caused by the presence of American news cameras. But when night comes, the media are nestled away safely in their beds. And that's when the Americans get really serious:

Our search and destroy missions are largely at night, free of reporters and generally terrifying to those brave warriors of Allah.

The only thing that frightens them more is hearing the word "Gitmo". The word is out that a trip to Guantanimo Bay is not a Caribbean vacation and they usually start squealing like the little mice they are, when an interrogator mentions "Gitmo".

I got a chuckle out of this:

And The old Ba'ath big shots are upset because they can't get fuel for their private generators. One actually complained to General McKeirnan, who told him it was a rough world.

As I wrote before, I served with Lt. Gen. McKiernan when he was a major and I was a captain. I can imagine the look on his face when Mr. Big Shot complained.

by Donald Sensing, 7/21/2003 11:39:20 AM. Permalink |   

"The well of her nightmares: the police academy in Baghdad"
Jumana Michael Hanna, an Assyrian Christian, returned recently to the police academy and broke down as she remembered her previous visit:

This is the place where in the 1990s Hanna was hung from a rod and beaten with a special stick when she called out for Jesus or the Virgin Mary. This is where she and other female prisoners were dragged outside and tied to a dead tree trunk, nicknamed "Walid" by the guards, and raped in the shadow of palm trees. This is the place where electric shock was applied to Hanna's vagina. And this is where in February 2001 someone put a bullet in her husband's head and handed his corpse through the steel gate like a piece of butcher's meat.

Hanna has come back here to help the new occupation authorities in Iraq find the men who tormented her.

by Donald Sensing, 7/21/2003 08:46:06 AM. Permalink |   

"Freedom of speech is dead in France"
Dead.

by Donald Sensing, 7/21/2003 07:28:51 AM. Permalink |   

Compassion is killing the street people
So says this piece at Philly.com, about the extremely adverse health effects of compassionate liberalism on residents and homeless people in the city of brotherly love.

Joan Schlotterbeck, the city Public Property facilities director, said it's a "daily challenge" to prevent Dilworth Plaza on City Hall's west side from becoming "one giant toilet."

"We have to make sure that our employees who pick up the 'stuff' every day have the right gloves and the right bags so that they are perfectly safe," she said. "We power-wash daily - twice daily if needed - with a detergent that removes bacteria, germs and disease. We always find big messes all over the walls." . . .

Those hardcore homeless who refuse care "may be physically incontinent or totally unaware that they are urinating and defecating in public," he [Paul Levy, executive director of the Center City District] said.

Guaranteed civil liberties prevent outreach workers and police from forcing the chronically homeless to accept shelter and services, Levy said, "but a person lying out in the street in his own urine or feces is not a person exercising his civil liberties. He's a person in desperate need of help.

Via Phildelphia-based Zogby Blog, who says that dramatically different programs are needed now.

by Donald Sensing, 7/20/2003 09:10:56 PM. Permalink |   

Do you think this is funny?
Neither did the Secret Service. Click here.

Old coots like me will recognize it as derivative of one of the most famous photos of the Vietnam War.

by Donald Sensing, 7/20/2003 08:46:22 PM. Permalink |   

The problem of suffering
Reid Stott writes of an unbearable tragedy:

He was the father. He was the husband. He was the driver.

So he blames himself. "I have to," said Brad Cunard, a week after his wife and two boys were killed when a tree fell on their SUV on an Atlanta street.

“It was my responsibility as the father to protect my family," he said, "and I failed miserably that day."

The religious term for the problem of suffering and evil is theodicy, from the Greek for "justice of God." It is perhaps the vexing problem of Christian faith, and to a lesser extent, Jewish faith. (The reason it is a lesser problem in Judaism is not because the Jews don't recognize evil and suffering - God knows they have seen enough of it - but because Christianity has historically been more triumphalist in its theology. Yet evil persists and seems to be doing quite well.)

I am finishing a long post on the subject, but in the meantime I invite you to read a sermon of mine from 1998, shortly after tornados tore through Nashville and other towns, killing some people and wreaking much damage.

Have we become so complacent toward God that we won't yell at him anymore? We just wave our hands and say, "It's God's will" or "God's ways are mysterious." With such platitudes we strip God of his personhood and we avoid facing God and encountering God fully.

I would hope that if our church got hit by a tornado, as it was hit about a hundred years ago, that some of us would have the conviction to stand in the rubble and shake our fist at the sky, yelling out the anguish of our spirits, complaining in the bitterness of our souls. At least we would be taking God at face value, as God, and not mumbling religious platitudes.

by Donald Sensing, 7/20/2003 08:36:47 PM. Permalink |   

Why your sons should play with toy guns
Well, well, well. And the story is from heavily gun-controlled Scotland, where John Lewis department store in Edinburgh staff reported that toy guns are still the store's "biggest seller by volume."

(via Braden files, who also points the way to the cold, hard facts about guns.)

by Donald Sensing, 7/20/2003 07:57:50 PM. Permalink |   

Some Brits less than impressed with Tony Blair's speech to Congress
The usual suspects in Britain are underwhelmed with Tony Blair's speech to Congress. The left-wing Guardian accuses the PM of "moral blackmail: when he said that even if WMDs are never found in Iraq, "history will forgive" him and the president because Saddam was so brutal, anyway.

This attempt at moral blackmail will not do. The issue is not whether the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein. Of course it is. It would also be a better place without Robert Mugabe, Kim Jong-il, Fidel Castro and a host of other tyrants and despots, but there is no intention of the British government to support wars in order to get rid of them.

Nor did Tony Blair call for an invasion of Iraq during the first five years of his prime ministership, when Saddam was as evil as he was last year. During that period the prime minister supported the strict enforcement of sanctions and the no-fly zone that had been the policy of the Clinton administration in Washington and the Major government in London.

I get the Guardian's point, but I also think it misses the point. Of course the world would be better without Kim Jong-il, and had Bill Clinton acted resolutely against Kim in 1994, we might have been rid of him years ago. How much better would that have been than attempting now to grapple with a nuclear-armed North Korea?

How much better off would the people of Cuba have been for the last 40 years if the Bay of Pigs invasion had succeeded, as well it might have if President Kennedy had ordered nearby carrier air wings to intervene? (Or maybe it would not have succeeded, I'm not trying to debate that event.)

What the Guardian doesn't get is that all the other bloodletting dictators it names, and all those it doesn't, are all unnecessary to world health. If they had been "taken care of" years ago, their people would be better off now.

I for one am elated that a future Guardian editorialist will never have the occasion to wrote, "If only Prime Minister Blair and the American president had taken care of Saddam before he became truly dangerous, we'd all be better off."

by Donald Sensing, 7/20/2003 03:15:28 PM. Permalink |   

Other web browsers
A couple of weeks ago I downloaded and installed a free browser called Avant Browser that I found on ZDNet. It has some nice features that are described on its web page. I really like using it, but for some reason it periodically not merely crashes, it reboots the entire computer. Very incovenient, as you may imagine.

by Donald Sensing, 7/20/2003 03:05:43 PM. Permalink |   

Dinner with Geitner
I have for a long time linked to Geitner Simmon's blog, Regions of Mind. Geitner was one of my very early readers and regular correspondents, from way back when I called my blog, "Gunner20's Blog Carnival," the name being derived from my artillery-days radio callsign.

Geitner is a staff editorialist for the Omaha World-Herald. Finally he started his own blog with the foreknowledge of his employers. Geitner is a thoughtful, careful writer and one of my top regular reads.

And he's a North Carolina native, along with his wife. The reason his blog's latest entry is dated July 3 is because he has been on vacation back to the homestead. Fear not, he is even now approaching home again.

Thursday evening he and family and dog rolled into Nashville and stayed until this morning. Very fortunately, the Other Hand Clapping and I were able to meet him for dinner. Unfortunately, his lovely wife had to stay with his young children at their hotel; we met her but were not blessed with her company for dinner.

There are certainly worse ways to spend an evening than with other brilliant bloggers, and we had a very fine time breaking bread and conversing with Geitner. AT one point, Geitner described the blogosphere as a "subculture," a thought that had never occurred to me before. I hope he writes a larger explanation of what he means.

To briefly, the evening ended. I pray he and his family reach home safely.

by Donald Sensing, 7/19/2003 01:26:37 PM. Permalink |   

Tennessee blog roundup online
Les Jones has it.

by Donald Sensing, 7/19/2003 01:04:17 PM. Permalink |   

Where's the Liberia debate?
Judging from news accounts and opinion pieces today and yesterday, it looks like people on the left and right side of the political aisle have already accepted that the US will send troops to Liberia. Joe Galloway of Knight-Ridder, for example, wrote that the Army will commit 5,000 soldiers there.

Now matter what President Bush and Congressional leaders call it - "humanitarian assistance," "support" or something else - it will be a combat mission tantamount to an invasion of a foreign country. Our troops will kill and be killed.

Anybody heard from Noam Chomsky about this? Bishop Melvin Talbert? Teddy Kennedy? Jesse Jackson? (Oh, wait, we have heard from Jackson, haven't we?)

But the silence is deafening, as they say. Where's the debate?

by Donald Sensing, 7/19/2003 10:28:30 AM. Permalink |   

Hey! I was just minding my own business . . .
. . . and - whack! (scroll down slightly)

by Donald Sensing, 7/19/2003 09:05:59 AM. Permalink |   

US Army agonistes
Increasing the Army's size does not increase its capability for a long time

Joe Galloway reports that one of the reasons - maybe the only one - the 3rd Infantry Division has been extended in Iraq is because the Army is "struggling to find replacement troops" for them.

(Galloway is the only reporter to be awarded the Bronze Star Medal with V device for valor in combat in Vietnam. The fight concerned was in 1965 at the Ia Drang valley, the battle from which was made the movie, We Were Soldiers. Galloway's credibility level is very high.)

The Pentagon is scrambling to find enough fresh troops to begin an orderly rotation program that would bring home some of the 147,000 soldiers spread thinly across troubled Iraq. . . .

The need for replacement troops is putting great strain on both the active and reserve forces already stretched thin meeting obligations in Iraq as well as in Afghanistan, South Korea, Bosnia, Kosovo, the Sinai - and a brigade-sized force of up to 5,000 troops expected to be deployed to peacekeeping duties in Liberia.

With only ten active duty divisions the 480,000-man U.S. Army has been stretched almost to the breaking point by the Iraq deployments. While Defense Secretary Donald L. Rumsfeld and his top civilian aides have talked in the past of chopping another two divisions out of that Army, some in Congress have begun urging an increase in the active Army by as much as 25 percent.

But new brigades aren't made easily. We can increase the size of the Army fairly quickly, but we can't increase the Army's capability very quickly at all.

Individual skill training of new soldiers takes eight weeks of basic training plus several more weeks of specific military-occupation training - call it four months altogether. Equipping them in units and building them into coherent teams from squad to battalion level takes several more months. In 1988-1989 I was a staff officer of 3rd battalion, 27th Field Artillery (MLRS), a new unit formed from scratch at Fort Bragg, NC, in XVIII Airborne Corps Artillery. It took almost a year to bring online the headquarters battery and the three firing batteries. It was peacetime, of course, and it can be done quicker, but it would still take at least six months, probably closer to eight. Infantry and armor battalions would take longer because the skill set is so different.

One of the key factors in pacing the formation of new units is arranging the production of new equipment - tanks, howitzers, trucks, tankers, you name it - to synchronize with the assignment of new soldiers. You don't want the troops waiting for their unit's equipment. If they are, that means you brought them onto active-duty too soon, wasting money and other resources.

It's okay for new equipment to wait on the troops, but not for long. If so, then you have screwed up the overall production process somewhere, and that almost always means that somewhere else troops are waiting for equipment.

Combat systems simply cannot be manufactured very fast. Modern combat vehicles are complex and highly computerized. And they are expensive. They can't be built any faster than the Congress votes the money, and I see little evidence that expanding the armed forces is much on their minds. It sure isn't on President Bush's mind.

by Donald Sensing, 7/19/2003 05:34:53 AM. Permalink |   

Links updates
Michael WIlliams has a new home. So does TR Fogey. So does Zogby.

by Donald Sensing, 7/18/2003 10:12:41 PM. Permalink |   

Crucifixion - read all about it
Andrew Sullivan, in discussing Mel Gibson's movie, "The Passion," links to two articles about crucifixion. One is mostly historical, the other was originally printed in the Journal of the American Medical Association and deals with the medical aspects of crucifixion. The latter specifically discusses the medical causes of the death of Jesus, particularly why he died on the cross relatively quickly.

by Donald Sensing, 7/18/2003 09:50:00 PM. Permalink |   

Careers to end over 3rd Infantry Division's soldiers' complaints
I posted Wednesday about the very bitter complaints made to ABC News, on camera, by some soldiers and noncommissioned officers of the 3rd Infantry Division in Iraq. One soldier even said Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld should resign.

Now the whale stuff is rolling downhill onto the division.

The retaliation from Washington was swift.

"It was the end of the world," said one officer Thursday. "It went all the way up to President Bush and back down again on top of us. At least six of us here will lose our careers."

If true, I wonder which six. The company commander(s) of the soldiers concerned is a goner, probably his battalion commander, too. Kiss the public affairs officer goodbye as well: bad press is always his fault.

It seems an anonymous email had been circulating a couple of days before the ABC broadcast, claiming to be from "the soldiers of the Second Brigade, Third ID."

"Our morale is not high or even low," the letter said. "Our morale is nonexistent. We have been told twice that we were going home, and twice we have received a 'stop' movement to stay in Iraq."

The message, whose authenticity could not be confirmed, concluded: "Our men and women deserve to be treated like the heroes they are, not like farm animals. Our men and women deserve to see their loved ones again and deserve to come home." . . .

The brigade's PAO said that griping went with the territory of being a soldier, and that all the troops were combat ready and loyal.

Yet several U.S. officers said privately that troop morale is indeed low. "The problem is not the heat," said one high-ranking officer. "Soldiers get used to that. The problem is getting orders to go home, so your wife gets all psyched about it, then getting them reversed, and then having the same process two more times."

As Sgt Stryker pointed out, the real problem here is not the troops, it is their leadership. And as I said in my earlier post, the leadership problem goes all the way up to Rumsfeld.

by Donald Sensing, 7/18/2003 05:11:02 PM. Permalink |   

What we got heah is a failure to communicate . . .
An old joke dating back at least to the 1950s, now an urban legend still making the rounds - a radio conversation between a US naval ship with Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland:

CANADIANS: "Please divert your course 15 degrees to the south to avoid a collision."

AMERICANS: "Recommend YOU divert your course 15 degrees to the north to avoid a collision"

CANADIANS: "Negative. You will have to divert your course 15 degrees to the south to avoid a collision"

AMERICANS: "This is the captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course"

CANADIANS: "No, I say again, you divert your course"

AMERICANS: "This is the Aircraft Carrier USS LINCOLN, the second largest ship in the United States Atlantic Fleet. We are accompanied with three Destroyers, three Cruisers and numerous support vessels. I DEMAND that you change your course 15 degrees north. I say again, that's one-five degrees north, or counter-measures will be undertaken to ensure the safety of this ship."

CANADIANS: "This is a lighthouse. Your call."

Never happened, of course, but it is funny. The following did happen (pretty close), and is pretty funny, too.

During the Vietnam War, USS Turner Joy, a destroyer with 5-inch naval guns, spotted a target off the coast of North Vietnam. Assuming it friendly, a radio call was put out:

"This is the USS Turner Joy, Please identify yourself."

No response.

Signal lights were used:

"This is the USS Turner Joy, identify yourself, friend or foe."

No response.

Signal lights again:

"This is the USS Turner Joy, identify yourself or we will commence firing"

Answer: "This is battleship USS New Jersey, you may fire when ready!"

The captain of New Jersey, J. Ed Snyder Jr., says what really happened was this: the other warship was not Turner Joy, but a smaller vessel commanded by a lieutenant. There were two inquiries by signal light from the smaller craft, both of which New Jersey ignored. Synder later wrote,

My policy was not to release messages without my personal O.K. My OOD [officer of the deck] ignored the first two messages from the small naval vessel since they had her on radar and the visual call sign identified the sending ship but when the flashing light message saying "unknown vessel identify yourself or we will open fire" my OOD called me right away. The reason I had our signalmen use the 24 inch searchlight is that I was slightly ticked that the other naval vessel (the sending ship) should have been able to tell the difference between a Battleship on radar and a north Vietnam gun runner or fishing boat.

I was in the habit of not signing messages with our name since the message always had a heading telling who sent it and to whom it was addressed. I admit my reply was rather tense and not in the best naval tradition but we on the New Jersey felt nothing could hurt us and the crew enjoyed my reply which was, "OPEN FIRE WHEN READY. FEAR GOD. DREADNOUGHT." (DREADNOUGHT having a double meaning, i.e., fear not and the name the British gave to the first large battleships.)

So the retelling is pretty close to the original. No cosmic wisdom here, folks, just something I ran across wile looking for stuff about lighthouses for my sermon. Here's another lighthouse joke:

A few decades ago two men tended a lonely lighthouse. The day was stormy, with heavy seas. Through the fog they saw a small boat making its way toward them, with a sole occupant. Suddenly a wave capsized the boat and tossed the man into the water. The two men on shore sprang into action. Hurriedly they launched their own craft and fought their way through perilous and treacherous waters to reach the man. At last they got him aboard their boat.

"It's a good thing you rescued me," the dripping man said gratefully. "I’m from the IRS and there’s a problem with your tax returns.”

by Donald Sensing, 7/18/2003 03:50:57 PM. Permalink |   

Restoring democracy in Sao Tome
A place you may never have heard of, but Bill Hobbs has it covered (start here and scroll down). It is an island nation well off the west coast of Africa, sharing large oil fields with Nigeria, with which it has a joint-venture arrangement for oil exports. But just a couple of days ago, Sao Tome military officers deposed the democratic government there.

The Bush administration is working diplomatically to restore democracy. But Bill Hobbs sardonically observes,

It's worth noting that many of those in the political arena who are calling for the U.S. to intervene in Liberia, which has no oil and is not of any real strategic interest to the United States, are not calling for U.S. intervention to restore democracy in Sao Tome.

Well, I explained that already (and here).

by Donald Sensing, 7/18/2003 02:01:26 PM. Permalink |   

Thin, thinner . . . thinnest?
I already said that America's armed forces are stretched thin. Now Phil Carter explains it very well - the Pentagon will activate two brigades of National Guard soldiers for occupation duty in Iraq. But there are problems: of the regular Army's 33 total combat brigades, 21 are deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan, South Korea and the Balkans. "Three more brigades are in the process of modernizing and can't be sent abroad. That leaves nine brigades -- or 45,000 troops -- to relieve all of the Army forces deployed around the world," according to a Wall Street Journal report (subscription required; Phil cites it).

So, says Phil, "This is going to be a challenge."

America's National Guard has already been stretched thin by consecutive homeland security deployments since Sept. 11, known as Operation Noble Eagle. In the California Army National Guard, nearly every combat arms unit has already deployed once. The units which have deployed have returned in deplorable condition, with most soldiers opting to leave the Guard. There are a number of National Guard units which have been left alone for homeland security, and these are the likely units to deploy to Iraq. However, even that is a finite supply. If America is to stay in Iraq for the long hall, this solution won't work.

No, it won't. It's long past time for the Army to get bigger.


by Donald Sensing, 7/18/2003 01:50:54 PM. Permalink |   

A teddy bear and an AK rifle
Here is a recent photo of what the civil war in Liberia is doing to children. Note this boy's equuipment: a pink teddy-bear backpack and what appears to be an AKM combat rifle.



The photo is found on the web page about this crisis of the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR), which has been active in Liberia for a long time. There is a UMC-sponsored hospital there, Ganta United Methodist Hospital, that has suffered severe war damage. UMCOR is prepared to resume health services at the site.

Your emergency support for the crisis in Liberia is especially needed. To make a gift at this time, simply . . .

Call UMCOR toll-free at 1-800-554-8583 or

Go to UMCOR's website and make a secure online donation or

Mail your gift directly to UMCOR, 475 Riverside Dr., Room 330, New York, NY 10115 or

Deliver it personally to any United Methodist church in your area.

Please designate your support for the Liberia Emergency Advance #150300

by Donald Sensing, 7/18/2003 01:09:32 PM. Permalink |   

"Hath No Fury" Dept.
A news broadcast just now said that wives of 3rd Infantry Division soldiers are about to organize a letter-writing campaign to President Bush to bring the division home.

Understand, military dependents are not governed by the Uniform Code of Military Justice and there are no laws or regulations that restrict their political activities. But I doubt that the Army's leaders are much prepared for activist wives. I imagine the wives of senior officers, master sergeants and sergeants major are wondering how to get a handle on this through the organized wives' clubs. If it is going to be quashed, the senior leaders' wives will quash it.

by Donald Sensing, 7/17/2003 05:31:22 PM. Permalink |   

My own Best of the Web Today

How Google may change what "publishing" means for researchers.

Tom Donelson offers some lessons of the Reagan polices for today.

A fine essay on the Korea situation at The Imperialist Dog.

Winds of Change has an excellent post about the Coming Christian Schism between the churches of the First World and the Third.

Les Jones offers "a collection of links and quotes from Chuck Hawks, Massad Ayoob, Robert Kagan, and Jeff Cooper."

Reader Joe Lancaster has impressive professional credentials in military interrogation and he highly recommends "The Devil in The Demographics, How Youth Bulges Influence the Risk of Domestic Armed Conflict 1950-2000," by Henrik Urdal, presented 24-27 March 2002, as it relates to my recent essay, The Soil of Arab Terrorism. Both are PDF documents and you must have the free PDF reader software installed to read them.

by Donald Sensing, 7/17/2003 05:17:31 PM. Permalink |   

Not much free ice cream for now
I am swamped with vocational obligations through Sunday afternoon, so posting will be spotty until then.

by Donald Sensing, 7/17/2003 05:00:38 PM. Permalink |   

Well, I'm honored . . .
. . . to be this new blogger's first citation.

by Donald Sensing, 7/17/2003 04:59:00 PM. Permalink |   

Should Rumsfeld resign?
3rd Infantry Division will be unready for combat after it returns home, but there are no plans to bring it home.

Some troops in Iraq think so. I don't think he should resign, but he should learn to shut up.

"The 2nd Brigade [of the 3rd Infantry Division, in Iraq] is - the plan is that they would return in August, having been there something like 10 months," said Rumsfeld.

He added: "The services and the Joint Staff have been working with Central Command to develop a rotation plan so that we can, in fact, see that we treat these terrific young men and young women in a way that's respectful of their lives and their circumstances."

Solid words from a solid source. Soldiers called their families. Commanding officers began preparations. . . .

But as it turns out, Rumsfeld was writing checks he can't cash. The soldiers of 3rd InfantryDivisionn have learned there is no timetable to bring them home, and the 2nd Brigade has been there 10 months.

"If Donald Rumsfeld were sitting here in front of us, what would you say to him?" I asked a group of soldiers who gathered around a table, eager to talk to a visiting reporter.

"If he was here," said Pfc. Jason Punyahotra, "I would ask him why we're still here, why we've been told so many times and it's changed."

In the back of the group, Spc. Clinton Deitz put up his hand. "If Donald Rumsfeld was here," he said, "I'd ask him for his resignation."

But here is the critical observation:

They say they will continue to do their job, but they no longer seem to have their hearts in the mission.

"I used to want to help these people," said Pfc. Eric Rattler, "but now I don't really care about them anymore. . . .

"Well it pretty much makes me lose faith in the Army," said Pfc. Jayson Punyhotra."

Once 3ID does come home, it will be pretty much worthless for many months, perhaps a year, maybe even more. Already it seems evident that the troops' morale is lower than a snake's belly in a wagon rut. Morale is critical in the military to a degree that civilians almost never comprehend.

When the troops stop personally investing in their mission, they start taking shortcuts. They get sloppy and careless, and in Iraq that will cost lives. Thecontinuingg lethality of the region will mitigate much of that problem, but not all of it.

Once the division returns, here is how it will become ineffective for future mission for those months or more.

I would say that a majority of the troops have close to two months' leave accrued. Leave accrues at the rate of 2.5 days per month, so they have each added 25 days to their leave balance in the 10 months they have been in theater, and almost all soldiers try to keep at least three weeks leave on balance all the time. At the minimum, expect the officers and troops to be given 30 days leave. If the leaves are rotated so that not everyone is gone at the same time (the usual practice, but there is no real reason for it in this case) then it could easily take three months just to work through the leave periods.

Reenlistments will drop like a rock, especially among the privates first class and specialists (pay grades E3 and E4), who have only three years invested in the service. Many of them enlisted for education benefits in the first place and would separate anyway, but most of the rest would ordinarily re-enlist. Not now. Neither will reenlistment rates for sergeants and staff sergeants be very good. Lieutenants and young captains will also resign in much higher numbers than the personnel system anticipates.

Much of the division's equipment will be coded out as unfit for further service. Especially its support vehicles such as trucks and wreckers are being used up. Many of them probably won't even be brought back to the States - we dumped countless trucks into the ocean after the Gulf War because they wereirreparablee and there was no point in paying for shipping them home. Even serviceable vehicles will likely be left behind for follow-on units, saving on shipping costs.

That means that the division will come home very much unequipped. Producing and fielding replacement gear will take a long time.

The medical unreadiness of the veterans will go high. Most will return to health, but there will be a great deal of psychological dislocation among the troops for a long time - not mental illness, understand, just impairedperformancee due to lingering issues. The divorce rate among married soldiers will rise, perhaps dramatically. The soldiers will come back changed men or women, and their spouses will be changed, too.

The result? Expect that within six months after its return, the division will be manned by a very high percentage of new soldiers, assuming it is kept at full strength, operating new equipment, under new commanders. To return it to the pre-war readiness state will take at least another year after that, because it will take that long to get all its maneuver brigades through the National Training Center (if it can be done that fast.)

A small number of division troops have redeployed, mostly an artillery battalion and the division band.

by Donald Sensing, 7/16/2003 02:50:17 PM. Permalink |   

Blogrunning - good stuff
Here are some excellent posts around the blogosphere that I highly recommend.

Sgt Stryker has an extremely "revealing" post on the difference between the Marines, Army, Navy and Air Force - photo-illustrated, no less! - and asks, "Who would you deploy with?"

Bill Hobbs writes why a military coup in Sao Tome & Principe, a tiny island nation off the west coast of Africa, has big implications for the United States and deserves a lot more attention than it is getting.

He also explains why I made a serious error in judgment when I bought my Epson printer.

Steven Den Beste says we are about to "seriously confront the Saudis."

And now we no longer need the Saudis. We've withdrawn our forces, and we no longer need the command center which is there. With Iraq's oilfields back online, a disruption in Saudi crude shipments (no matter why) will no longer threaten to make the world economy go into spasms. And that means we no longer have to treat them with kid gloves.

Actually, Iraq's oil fields are not yet fully back online, and won't be for some time yet. A recent study found that

Getting Iraq's oil fields to pre-1991 production levels will take at least 18 months and cost about $5 billion initially, with $3 billion more in annual operating expenses. . . .

So while I think there are excellent reasons to confront the Saudis, I think that Steven's prediction is premature.

Is Jeff Jarvis having an identity crisis? I don't think so, but what about you?

Jim Miller explains why humanities professor have to publish gibberish or perish. Joanne Jacobs happens to write about gibberish as relates to "film theory."

by Donald Sensing, 7/16/2003 01:59:18 PM. Permalink |   

Top Methodist leaders commend President Bush
Yesterday top mission leaders of The United Methodist Church sent President George W. Bush a letter commending him for making AIDS prevention and treatment a major priority on his early July tour of Africa.

We are grateful for the $15 billion program of U.S. assistance to combat AIDS in Africa outlined earlier in the year by your Administration. We are hopeful that your tour will have positive impact upon the U.S. House of Representatives in allocating the full three billion dollars you have requested for this year.

President Bush is a member of the United methodist Church and was previously severely criticized by denominational leaders for the Iraq campaign.

by Donald Sensing, 7/16/2003 09:49:11 AM. Permalink |   

Jesus says Deion doesn't have to pay!
I mean, really. Must be nice to have the Second Person of the Trinity managing your auto repairs!

Update: Deion strongly denies that Jesus has entered the fray. He says that the auto-repair shop owner deceived him.

by Donald Sensing, 7/16/2003 07:32:41 AM. Permalink |   

Islam's worst enemy
An Muslim in England said in October 2001 that Islam had become its own worst enemy.

The struggle against violence in the Muslim world is much more than a struggle against murdering fanatics like the Taliban. Or despotic leaders like Saddam Hussein and Mahathir Muhammad. It is also a struggle against the Islamic movements whose simplistic and virulent rhetoric often ends up sanctifying the fanatics and demonises everything else in the absolutist, unquestioning terms of all totalitarian perspectives.

A self-described "unhappy American Muslim" (whence the link) says that

. . . one of the biggest problems in the Muslim world [is] the total inability to deal with any kind of criticism of Islam or its practices, no matter how kindly or sincerely it was intended. The legitimacy of any criticism is denied; either the criticizer, Muslim or non-Muslim, is part of the plot to destroy Islam, and/or working for Satan, the "Jewish/Zionist conspiracy," or whatever nefarious organization dedicated to destroying Islam, and/or condemned as heretical/apostate. Whatever is said is "lies" and "slander" and "hate" regardless of its veracity.

It's no coincidence that these criticisms are being made by Western or West-based Muslims. It was here, after all, that the phrase, "question authority" was formed. Muslim absolutism does not have much of a future here, except in immigrant communities. But American-born converts are and will reject it, except for a few.

Other posts dealing with this line of inquiry:

More on the struggle for the soul of Islam,

Muslims killing Muslims,

Western Muslims' despair of the Muslim world

Islam's internal conflicts


by Donald Sensing, 7/16/2003 07:23:12 AM. Permalink |   

Liberia: In search of America's national interest
Howard Dean and his ideological allies have proposed that American send troops to Liberia, which is in a deadly, chaotic state. I earlier used the proposal as a case study of why the Left is willing for America to employ the armed forces only in cases where America's national interests are not at stake. I did not address whether Liberia itself constituted a national interest worthy of armed intervention, although I did (and do) hold the issue in severe doubt.

Austin Bay (whom Glenn Reynolds called, "really smart") wrote that entering Liberia would be "a snap, militarily." He describes how the US Marines could take care of the job in short order; he also emailed me that devoting a Marine Expeditionary Unit to the operation would not stretch America's military. But with respect to Austin, whom I greatly admire, I think he falls far short of justifying intervention in the first place. He says that intervention is justified because of Liberia's "American historical connections," being founded by freed slaves returned to Africa. Well, I think that was a great thing, but would I want to see my son die because of it? No.

Austin also says intervention's upside is "saving thousands of innocent lives. That's another reason to intervene." Well, what about the Congo? Nigeria? Sudan? There are many places where the US Marines could save thousands of innocent lives, but no one proposes that intervene in them, and the historical fact that Liberia has unique ties to America does not make the case.

Michael Totten cites a New Republic article by Ryan Lizza (subscription required) that says we should send in the marines because Charles Taylor (Liberia's murderer in chief),

. . . personally met with a senior Al Qaeda operative now listed as one of the FBI's 25 "Most Wanted" terrorists. He is the single greatest threat to the stability of one of the most important oil-producing regions in the world. . . . If the Bush administration decides to send a peacekeeping force to Liberia, in other words, it will be safeguarding not only humanitarian concerns but national security ones as well.

Lizza goes on to make a really big deal out of al Qaeda's ties to Taylor. In fact, that is pretty much the only reason Lizza thinks we should intervene (along with saving lives, of course). I find it pretty amazing that the liberal wing (I don't count New Republic as bona fide Left) is using these supposed contacts as justification for invading a foreign country when it denounced the Bush administration's claim of contacts between Saddam's regime and al Qaeda as spurious, uncertain and unproved.

Even if Taylor did meet with al Qaeda figures, his regime is on the brink of collapse whether the US intervenes or not. Whatever he may have done for al Qaeda before, he can't do it now. Besides, if Taylor really was aiding al Qaeda, he needs to be captured and put on the docket, not allowed to go into comfortable exile as he has offered to do, and to which the Bush administration did not object.

So here is the sum total of all the arguments I have seen in favor of American troops to enter Liberia:

The humanitarian crisis there,

Liberia has historic ties to the US,

Charles Taylor is at least sympathetic to al Qaeda and has met with some of its key figures,

Continued instability there threatens the wider stability of the region, and it is in America's interests for that not to happen.

Of the four arguments, I find only the fourth one even remotely compelling. W. James Antle III wrote of intervention,

It is impossible to escape the conclusion that the United Nations, the European Union and all those the Hudson Institute’s John Fonte characterizes as “transnational progressives” don’t object to American power in principle as long as it is being used for their purposes, as opposed to something like those pesky American national interests. Transnational progressives are as willing to use the U.S. military to reshape the world as neoconservatives, but they differ as to who should be in control of that force. Unlike the latter, transnational progressives don’t want it to be America. Like hired help, they want the Americans to come in and do the heavy lifting, but under conditions set by the so-called “world community” and according to what they are told.

I'll take a look at America's wider interests in the region in another post.

by Donald Sensing, 7/15/2003 06:05:56 PM. Permalink |   

Biden: North Korea is a "clear and present danger"
On TV news just now, Sen. Joe Biden (D.-Del.) said that North Korea constitutes a "clear and present danger" to the United States. He also said that the Bush administration has no real policy for dealing with North korea. I think he's right on both counts.

by Donald Sensing, 7/15/2003 05:18:02 PM. Permalink |   

Army's report on 507th Maint. Co. is online
The El Paso Times presents what it says is the Army's full report of the Army's report on the battle fought by Jessica Lynch's unit, the 507th maintenance Company, in which 11 US soldiers died and Lynch and six others were taken prisoner, out of a total unit strength of 33. Of the 22 soldiers who survived, nine were wounded in action.

The first page, the executive summary, says,

Over a period of 60-70 hours with little rest and limited communications, human error further contributed to the situation through a single navigation error that placed these troops in the presence of an adaptive enemy who used assymetric tactics to exploit the Soldier's willingness to adhere to the Law of War.

The whole first page reads just like that. Presuming that this report is legit, and it seems to be, this page is one of the finest examples (or worst, take your pick) of bureaucratic crudola I have ever read, and I've read a lot of it (written some, too).

The whole summary could have read, "The convoy lost communications, took a wrong turn and got shot up by the enemy. But they performed well, considering what they were up against."

The body of the report itself, though, reads pretty clearly, once you get used to the military's style of writing. The full report is detailed and tracks the movement of the convoy minutely, providing the larger context of the operation. (Interestingly, this page has a image of the Rules of Engagement card issued to soldiers; it's worth a look.)

Of all the units engaging the enemy during the campaign, the only report of weapons jamming consistently through the whole unit is from the 507th Maint. Co. As I wrote here, that fact smells of a breakdown in leadership and training. If the core problem was with the lubricant used, as some claim, then we would expect to hear of rifles jamming all over the campaign area. But we don't. We just hear of this one unit's jamming problem. In fact, the full reports says, "Most of the soldiers in this group report that they experienced weapons malfunctions. These malfunctions may have resulted from inadequate individual maintenance in a desert environment." There are several pages that detail persistent jamming of many different weapons, and types of weapons: rifles and light and heavy machine guns.

Translation: the troops did not keep their weapons clean.

As Phil Carter pointed out,

Our Army needs to embrace the warrior ethos in all units -- not just the combat arms -- and it needs to ensure that every unit can fight its way out of an ambush like this one.

In the end, none of this may have made the crucial difference and saved the convoy. War is chaotic, and bad things happened to good units who do everything right. But commanders strive to set their units up for success; to do everything possible to make the fight an unfair one -- for the enemy. Training, maintenance, pre-combat checks, pre-combat inspections, and fieldcraft are what enable good units to execute when the time comes on the battlefield. The 507th Maintenance Convoy failed in these areas, and the effects were devastating.

I hope the Army does understand that. (hat tip: CPO Sparkey)

Here is a PDF map showing the disposition of the convoy's vehicles and the general flow of the fight.

by Donald Sensing, 7/15/2003 04:54:41 PM. Permalink |   

Amazing new, low-cost Air Force weapon
Sgt. Stryker has a photo of a new aerial weapon so simple that you wonder why no one ever thought of it before!

by Donald Sensing, 7/15/2003 01:21:25 PM. Permalink |   

Mass murder any minute, now
BOTW Today pointed the way yesterday to this absurd headline in The Olympian newspaper about the Washington state trap shooting championship:

Shooters practice safety, civility
Despite presence of guns, friendliness abounds at state championships

And the lead graf is even more foolish:

People with guns can afford to be outgoing. When everyone has them, things stay pretty darn polite.

As opposed to Tupperware parties, where the women beat each other to death with plastic containers.

The bias of the reporter seems clear: the shooters there are really latent mass killers, and it is only the fact that so many other latent mass killers are present that they don't start blasting away.

Trap shooters (I compete regularly myself) are no more polite than golfers or tennis players. Why don't golfers cave each others' heads in with a three iron, or tennis players forehand an opponent's face? Because that's not the kind of people they are. Their clubs and rackets are mere tools of the sport, not implements of destruction.

So it is with shotguns on the trap range, a fact that the reporter seems unable to comprehend. Trap shooters don't shoot one another every few minutes because that's not what the guns are for. The guns are the tools of a challenging sport, not engines of mass murder. And trap shooters are inherently no more prone to violence than, well, Tupperware hostesses.

But the media bias against firearms is deep and wide.

by Donald Sensing, 7/15/2003 08:08:39 AM. Permalink |   

Rumsfeld then and now
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday that the number of American troops in Iraq is likely to go up soon, and he warned that US forces would suffer more deaths fighting insurgents.

As recently as Wednesday, in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Mr. Rumsfeld had agreed with Gen. Tommy R. Franks, who recently stepped down as the commander of troops in the region, that the overall number of foreign troops in Iraq would stay about where it is for the foreseeable future.

This flip-flop indicates to me that the administration has now come to understand the guerilla war is accelerating. It may well be, as Austin Bay first pointed out, and as David Warren explains, that

The sore thumb of the U.S. occupation — and it is a sore thumb equally to Baathists and Islamists, compelling their response — is not a mistake. It is carefully hung flypaper.

If Willie Sutton robbed banks because "that's where the money is," the dead-enders in Iraq are attacking our troops in Iraq because, well, that's where the Americans are, at least the Americans whom they can get to.

The critical task in defeating them is to separate them psychologically from the Iraqi people, who from accounts are aiding them passively by declining to cooperate in identifying who and where they are.

Last February Rumsfeld declined to estimate publicly how many troops would be required in postwar Iraq. He said as well that the cost of the war and occupation could not be predicted in advance. But he did state clearly that, "the idea that it would take several hundred thousand U.S. forces, I think, is far from the mark."

Last Sunday Rumsfeld said the occupation was costing about $4 billion per month. There are just under 150,000 US troops in Iraq now.

by Donald Sensing, 7/14/2003 10:40:08 PM. Permalink |   

Is Iran creeping into Iraq?
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said last week that there are reports that Iran has moved several of its posts along the Iraq border several kilometers into Iraq and this was "not acceptable."

Appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Rumsfeld cited ''recent reports of Iranians moving some of their border posts along about a 25 kilometer stretch several kilometers inside of Iraq.'' . . .

The United States believes Iranian-trained agents have crossed into southern Iraq and are working to advance Iranian interests. Iran is dominated by Shiite Muslims and the administration fears that Iraq's long-suppressed Shiites might move to set up an Iranian-style Islamic republic.

Reader Fredrik Nyman points out that this assertion has gotten very little media play. I wonder why.

by Donald Sensing, 7/14/2003 09:49:56 PM. Permalink |   

More kids gambling than ever
This is not good news. The rate of compulsive gambling problems for children is more than twice that of adults.

by Donald Sensing, 7/14/2003 09:40:18 PM. Permalink |   

Date of Saddam's fall to be Iraqi holiday
Reports the Tennessean:

A group of 25 Iraqis from diverse political, ethnic and religious backgrounds stepped onto a stage and declared themselves a ''governing council'' yesterday, taking the first step to define the country's political future by accepting an offer of limited power-sharing from the U.S.-led occupation authority.

In a very symbolic first public action, the council set April 9 — the day Baghdad fell to U.S. forces — as a national holiday and banned celebrations on six dates important to Saddam Hussein and his Baath party. And the act was announced, significantly, by a prominent Shiite cleric. Shiites, long oppressed by Saddam, now dominate the 25-member council.

by Donald Sensing, 7/14/2003 09:35:18 PM. Permalink |   

UN will not command US troops in Liberia, Bush says
President Bush said today that if America sends its forces to Liberia, they will not fall under United Nations command.

"We would not be blue-helmeted," he said after meeting with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Instead, Bush continued, "we would be there to facilitate (an international force's entry) and then to leave."

Bush said American involvement would be in the form of assistance to the Economic Community of West African States. "It may require troops, but we don't know how many yet," he said.

It sounds like a done deal to me. The only questions are when and how many.

by Donald Sensing, 7/14/2003 09:20:49 PM. Permalink |   

Blogger eats posts
For some reason blogger popped up a window just after I spell checked a post, asking me whether I wanted to save the post before exiting. I didn't want to exit at all, but blogger was determined to do so. So I click to save and the window closed. Now I can't find where the saved post was saved to. Anyone know?

by Donald Sensing, 7/14/2003 09:13:04 PM. Permalink |   

Is speeding a sin?
A lot of people showed interest in the matter of driving fast (see next post down). I had a lot of comments and some email on the subject, including a man whose pastor flatly insists that driving faster than the speed limit is a sin.

Our pastor has emphasized complete obedience to the law under all circumstances, and that breaking the speed limit is sinning. He's harped on this a few times recently, and yesterday after the service we asked him about it. We used the civil rights protesters who broke the law, or the Founders of the US, who broke English law by rebelling, to see if he believed that those acts of defiance were correct.

His answer was essentially that since the Lord anoints the leaders, we should always obey the law unless it clearly violates God's law, even if by staying at the speed limit, we cause accidents.

Well, harrumph. This is a rule-based ethic, of course. I might respond that it is an ethic of Law, not of Grace. Nonetheless, my correspondent's pastor was likely referring to Paul's letter to the church in Rome, chapter 13, verse 1-5:

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.

For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience.

What this passage means has been the subject of more heat than light. Within the last century, a century of unspeakable horror, says New Testament scholar N. T. Wright, "these seven verses have been struck out of the canon, vilified, and blamed for untold miseries. They have enabled whole generations of critics . . . to leap-frog over Paul onto what looks like the high moral ground. This is always a deeply satisfying pastime." Indeed. Wright goes on to catalog the four main ways this passage has been interpreted:

(1) This passage is a general statement about ruling authorities. It applies to all legitimate authorities all the time. It is based on a general belief in the desire of the creator God for order within all societies.

(2) It is a particular statement about the Roman Empire, based on (a) Paul's belief that it was in some sense God-given, and (b) his experience of sensible magistrates protecting him from persecution, and looking (c) for the safety of the Jewish and/or Christian community in Rome at this historical moment.

(3) It is a very particular statement about the specific moment in the Roman Empire when, with a new, fresh emperor in the throne (Nero's early years were as promising as his later years were terrible), Paul believed there was at least a moment when the church should trust Rome and live content within its world.

(4) It is a statement of something that is now true as a result of the victory of Jesus over the powers of the world in his death and resurrection.

Wright says the last one is unwarranted and requires an entirely non-contextual reading of the passage. I agree. It seems likely to me that Paul was explaining an old Jewish precept (Paul was a well-trained Pharisee) that God requires order in the world, not chaos. Hence, the principle of human governance is a divine principle. But Paul makes no positive comment about the Roman government itself, nor any other government. He is endorsing government in general, but not endorsing any specific government.

Justice was a high virtue of Jewish thought, and the prophets emphasized that one of the cardinal responsibilities of rulers was to preserve justice, the right ordering of the relationship between the state apparatus and the people. Especially were rulers responsible for protecting the poor and defenseless against the predations of the rich and the aggressive. One of Paul's themes in this chapter and the previous one is that "justice is served not by private vengeance but by individuals trusting the authorities to keep wickedness in check. Knowledge that the authorities are there to look after such matters is a strong incentive to forswear freelance attempts at "justice" (Wright).

Paul's advice to the Christians in Rome is for them to understand that God's justice is not yet fully established. It's coming, it is being realized, Paul is saying, in the spreading of the Gospel so that finally (his hope is implicit) all rulers will pledge their first allegiance to God rather than the state. The Roman church must not therefore try to establish itself as a "para-state" organization, but remain under Roman authority even while they work for the Kingdom of God. Says Wright,

God does not intend that Christians should become agents of anarchy, which would replace the tyranny of the officially powerful with the tyranny of the unofficially powerful. The ultimate overthrow of pagan power comes by other means. . . .

Which is to say, the regime change of the ungodly is done by converting them. "For just as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners," Paul wrote in Romans 5, "so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous."

So does a Christian have a positive duty to obey a speed limit, even when it seems clear that the speed limit is ridiculous? I think Paul would say yes, but then, he never tried to drive along I-40 through Knoxville, Tenn. Also, Paul had no experience with a democratic form of government. If the government authorities are in office by consent of the governed rather than divine appointment, what then?

To answer that question, I fall back on the biblical injunction against chaos. Let me propose a continuum whose one end is chaos - total disorder - and the other end is total control. A fully authoritarian state would be there, such as North Korea or Iraq until this year. (Plato's Republic would probably qualify, too, as well as More's Utopia.)

Freedom is found between the ends, of course. (See my essay on God, life and liberty for thoughts along that line.) Let me propose (discuss in the comments, if you wish) that freedom for the people is found when they push as close as possible to the chaos end rather than the authoritarian end. They can't push all the way over, of course, because community and justice require some ordering of the common life.

Rules were the foundation for the ethical theories of Immanuel Kant, one of the most influential philosophers of the modern era. If your mother ever asked you, "What if everyone did what you want to do?" then you can understand Kant's ethic. His two main ethical works were The Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), in which he said he was seeking the "establishment of the supreme principle of morality" and The Critique of Practical Reason (1787). His ethical theory is called deontology, the study of duty. Kant wrote that the primary ethical imperative is, "Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."

So now I would phrase the question this way: Is driving faster than the speed limit unacceptably chaotic?

I say no. And I also say yes.

No because from my experience, people are indeed following Kant's ethical imperative behind the wheel. Those who adhere to the speed limit are doing that which they wish would be universal. Those who drive faster than the speed limit are "voting" in a manner that the limit should be higher so everyone could drive faster who wishes to - and an awful lot of people are speeding!

Is speeding sinful? Maybe, but not because of what Paul wrote in the book of Romans. The answer is, "It depends."

Myself, it is very rare for me to exceed the limit by more than four mph. I set the cruise control on 74 on the interstate. I know from working with cops for many years (I'm a chaplain for the county sheriff's department) that ticketing drivers for plus-four mph is practically unheard of. As I said earlier, I wish the limit was about 85 (and I would drive 89) but it isn't.

But people who drive 80-85 in a 70 zone don't bother me. IMO, that speed is not unacceptably chaotic and is not sinful, unless the driving is also reckless or careless rather than merely fast. But then, of course, the problem is recklessness, not speed qua speed. We have over the years developed a popular convention on the interstates that plus-10-15 mph is socially acceptable, though not legally so. Society has thus decided that 80-85 in a 70 zone is okay.

But I think that to go much faster than that is not acceptable. One hundred mph, for example, is so much faster than social convention accepts that cars going that fast endanger others simply because of their speed. Few drivers going 70-80 are consistently looking out for cars going 20 or more mph faster. The overtaking problem is serious enough (I've seen it happen) that just a few cars going so much faster do indeed introduce unacceptable chaos onto the roads.

Other considerations: My son suffered a very serious injury when he was five. He was bleeding profusely from the head very close to his eye. My wife wrapped a towel around the wound and we jumped into the car. Richard Petty could not have beat me to the emergency room. Was my speeding sinful? Only if God is an unfeeling, uncaring tyrant. I don't know that God.

by Donald Sensing, 7/14/2003 08:30:55 PM. Permalink |   

Stay out of my way!
Via Glenn Reynolds, a NYT story about studies that show that higher interstate highway speeds to not cause higher death rates among the young and the middle-aged. But they "do increase the death rates of women and the elderly. The scientists can't agree on the reason for this discrepancy. . . ."

Like most Americans who have lived in Germany (1983-1986 for me), I think that America's traffic laws and practices are idiotic. I bought a 1976 Mercedes-Benz 280S in a few months after I arrived there; this was an S-Class model, the big sedan, with an inline six-cylinder as smooth as Teflon. I routinely drove it at 125 mph on the autobahnen; my wife wimped out and usually drove 110-115 or so.

There is more to driving at high speeds safely than just going fast. The autobahns are better built for that purpose than American interstates, and much better maintained. The pavement there is very smooth, while it's quite common for ripples to infest the interstates.

Ripples don't matter at 70 mph, but they matter a great deal at 120.

In Germany, trucks above a certain weight (say, anything much bigger than a pickup truck) are speed limited to 70 mph. Cargo trucks may not pass on the autobahn, period. They must stay in the right lane, no matter how pokey the truck in front of them is going.

Drivers are very lane-disciplined and always signal their intentions. Driver education and certification in Germany is no joke as it often is here.

I don't support emplacing unlimited speeds on our interstates, but I do think the speed limits should be (a) completely at the discretion of state governments, not the feds, and (b) should be raised significantly, at least here in Tennessee. The limit here is 70 now, and I think that 85 would be better.

An acquaintance of mine remarked recently that if they raised the speed limit to 85, then everyone would really drive almost 100. To which I replied, "That's okay by me, as long as they get out of my way when I want to pass!" He didn't crack a smile. Some people just have no sense of humor, I guess.

Update: Bill Hobbs discusses driving in Montana at 110 mph - legally, in the good old days.

by Donald Sensing, 7/14/2003 07:55:25 AM. Permalink |   

More on the struggle for the soul of Islam
Jim Hoagland wonder why Muslims seem often to hate one another with as much deadliness as many Muslims hate America. Earlier this month, Sunni Muslims in Pakistan murdered 53 Shia Muslims. So, says Hoagland, if American pundits were asking why do they hate us, we wonder, "Why do they hate them?"

Instead of asking with embarrassing, self-referential introspection why they hate us, American politicians and pundits should be pointing out that the first, most important line of this battle must be fought by Muslims in the battle for the soul of Islam.

The key to winning that battle lies in the mobilization of a revitalized Islamic mainstream that will reassert and protect itself from the extremists. Islam, like other great religions, has periodically had to rescue itself from movements that would hijack an entire faith. This is such a moment.

I explained here why the phrase, "struggle for the soul of Islam" is inapt; "soul" is a Western-Christian metaphor, not an Islamic one, but nonetheless the point is that what is really contended among Muslims is whose practice of Islam will dominate, religiously speaking, and who will rule politically as the result. So, says, Hoagland,

The key to winning that battle lies in the mobilization of a revitalized Islamic mainstream that will reassert and protect itself from the extremists. Islam, like other great religions, has periodically had to rescue itself from movements that would hijack an entire faith. This is such a moment.

Indeed. BTW, Zahir Janmohamed had earlier explained in the Washington Post the roots of Muslim sectarian violence in Pakistan.

Early last year I pointed out, as many others have also, that we tend to speak of the "Muslim world" as a monolith, but it is not. At the minimum, we should distinguish between the Arab-Muslim countries and the rest of the countries where Islam predominates. It is no accident that the Sept. 11 terrorists were Arabs and not, say, Malaysian Muslims. (See my online paper, The Soil of Arab Terrorism, Acrobat Reader required.) As a Business Week article pointed out,

The roots of Islamic extremism [almost all of which is Arab - D.S.] lie not so much in religion but in repressive societies with economies too anemic to provide livelihoods for their fast-growing populations. Despite much talk of reform, most Arab countries remain museums of state capitalism. There's no sign of a leader who could shake things to the core. "Those who expect a new, reformed Islam are asking the wrong questions. We don't have a Luther. We don't have a Calvin," says Tahseen Bashir, a former Egyptian presidential spokesman and diplomat.

I suspect that there is more going on to chart Islam's future than we are able to glean. Unfortunately, the moderates are literally outgunned. The extremists are not merely willing to kill their enemies, they are eager to do so. The moderates, of course, don't want to kill anyone - that's what makes them moderates.

by Donald Sensing, 7/13/2003 09:07:08 PM. Permalink |   

More on the Left and interventionism
I posted Friday that the Left is primarily motivated by anti-Americanism, and that the reason figures of the Left may advocate American armed intervention in places like Liberia is because no significant American national interest is served by such intervention. I said that the Left maintains "that America is bad for the world" and therefore using the military to serve America's interests is impermissible.

Well, they say great minds think alike. Comes now Peter Beinart in The New Republic, observing that the far Left (specifically, ANSWER), is dismissive even of Liberia, having raised barely a syllable of protest over the brutalities there.

How can the leaders of the global left--men and women ostensibly dedicated to solidarity with the world's oppressed, impoverished masses--not care?

The answer, I think, is that the left isn't galvanized by victims; it's galvanized by victimizers. The theme of answer's upcoming protest, after all, is "Occupation and Empire." In a recent essay, [Arundhati ] Roy explained that "the real and pressing danger, the greatest threat of all, is the locomotive force that drives the political and economic engine of the U.S. government." In other words, imperialism, what she elsewhere calls "a super-power's self-destructive impulse toward supremacy, stranglehold, global hegemony."

So there you have it. However, says Beinart, "By any reasonable assessment, in fact, Africa's post-cold-war disaster zones suffer not from too much U.S. imperialism but from too little."

by Donald Sensing, 7/13/2003 08:11:07 PM. Permalink |   

Liberia: Armed intervention as fantasy ideology
Charles Krauthammer neatly disassembles the Left's jerkiness on the use of American armed forces to intervene abroad. Basically, Charles says that their guiding, uh, principle (led by Prez hopeful Howard Dean) is simply never to intervene when intervention would serve America's interests, and to intervene only when no such interest is served.

The only justified interventions, therefore, are those which are morally pristine, namely, those which are uncorrupted by any suggestion of national interest.

Hence the central axiom of left-liberal foreign policy: The use of American force is always wrong, unless deployed in a region of no strategic significance to the United States. [emphasis original]

I would submit that such a policy, if it can be called that, is really a leftist fantasy ideology. Lee Harris described what constitutes a fantasy ideology in his landmark essay on the subject, "Al Qaeda's Fantasy Ideology." A fantasy ideology is one in which people use others as a theater in which to act out their preconceptions for their own self-aggrandizement. A fantasy ideologue manipulates . . .

. . . political and ideological symbols and tropes used not for political purposes, but entirely for the benefit of furthering a specific personal or collective fantasy.

As Krauthammer points out, there is no American national interest in pacifying Liberia, yet the Left, led by Dean, wants America to wade in, guns blazing and jets screaming, to do so. Why?

That those calling for such action are actually much concerned with the poor Liberians is too incredible to believe. There are millions, literally tens of millions, of people around the world who suffer as much. (Can anyone say, "North Korea"?) yet Dean & Co. do not call for their liberation or succor. So why Liberia?

There is a strong streak of cynic in me that would like to accuse Dean of pandering to the American black vote by urging Bush to send in the Marines. In this version of what may be Dean's fantasy ideology, the Liberians are merely a prop to further Dean's own cause. Even Dean must know that America's armed forces are badly stretched,that the war against terror must take center stage for some long time to come, and there is no way that Bush can responsibly order Liberian intervention. Hence, Dean's call for intervention can be seen as a crass use of Liberian blood to gain more support among black American voters. Maybe. And maybe not.

Yet, as Harris points out, such manipulation requires a pre-existing milieu in which to dwell:

There must first be a preexisting collective need for this fantasy; this need comes from a conflict between a set of collective aspirations and desires, on one hand, and the stern dictates of brutal reality, on the other - a conflict in which a lack of realism is gradually transformed into a penchant for fantasy.

The question is, what is the Left's "set of collective aspirations and desires" that result in the sharp dichotomy - if not separation - between the use of armed force and the dictates of national interest?

I think it is the Left's belief, no longer subject to empirical analysis, that America is bad for the world. Actions, whether military or not, that enhance America's national self interests are therefore anathema. If old "Engine Charlie" Wilson's motto was, "What is good for General Motors is good for America," the Left's motto runs perversely: "What is good for America is bad for the world."

When scratched, leftists bleed statist blood. Leftism elevates the state apparatus and denigrates the individual. There is no greater offender to this notion than America, where individual rights are elevated and are indeed guaranteed in our founding documents, in fact, ordained by God himself. Hence, the Left's history of attempting to degenerate American sovereignty with inventions such as the International Criminal Court, the Kyoto Treaty, and the notion that the UN Charter somehow trumps the American Constitution.

In their mind, America is an imperialist nation, imperialist in many forms - economic, cultural, linguistic and especially militarily. If America's gross transgressions are to be corrected, then America's national power must be turned away from promoting America's national interests. Hence, America's armed forces can be used only for reasons that do not serve its interests.

Yet this belief is itself a fantasy ideology; the notion that either America or the world will be better off if we intervene willy-nilly in places such as Liberia is fantastic. For those who doubt, I have one word: Somalia. A purer example of altruistic military intervention can hardly be found. Yet in less than a year, America was conducting open warfare against Somali factions. In the now-infamous Battle of Mogadishu alone, US forces killed about 1,000 Somalis.

Good for America? Good for Somalia? Good for the world? No, no, and no.

by Donald Sensing, 7/11/2003 08:53:58 PM. Permalink |   

My vote for NZ Bear's Showcase
I vote for Econopundit, and hope you will, too. Just place this hyperlink on your blog before July 13.

Bill Hobbs says that "EconoPundit is a good, solid, right-thinking economics blog," and he's right.

by Donald Sensing, 7/11/2003 07:40:44 PM. Permalink |   

A quick note
I am back a half-day early from Lake Junaluska, and I noticed I am getting a lot of hits today from Jim Geraghty's column on National Review Online, Fatalist Blockbusters.

Jim cites a January 30 post of mine in which I compared how the West understands the relationship between God and human freedom, and how Islam does, especially Arabic Islam. Having studied the subject more in the past six months, I tried to post an update to that post, but for some reason blogger will not update the archive, even though it tells me that the publishing was successful. And I can't find a way to force republishing the archives; I recall that the "new, improved" blogger doesn't let me do that.

After several attempts, I have to go on to other things. If you are inclined, please read the original post, and then the following, my attempted update:
---------------------------------

See also my essays on God, life and liberty, and The Soil of Arab Terrorism, the latter is a PDF document, so you need to have the free Acrobat reader installed on your machine.

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, 7/11/2003 12:01:12 PM. Permalink |   

I'm outta here!
I am on sabbatical until late Friday evening at the United Methodist center at Lake Junaluska, NC, where I am attending a retreat. Since I don't have a notebook computer, I will not be online until after I return. Neither can I receive email for that time. Next postings will be Saturday, July 12, at the earliest. Please visit the fine blogs listed in the left column. Thank you!

by Donald Sensing, 7/7/2003 08:11:45 AM. Permalink |   

Quote of the day
"International opinion, for what it's worth, always follows power and success." Historian T. R. Fehrenbach in his seminal history of the Korean War, This Kind of War.

by Donald Sensing, 7/6/2003 10:03:26 PM. Permalink |   

"Every man thinks meanly of himself . . . "
I explained earlier how my eldest son, about to begin his senior high school year, is close to enlisting in the delayed entry program with either the USMC or the US Army as an Abrams tank crewman (here's one reason why he decided to be a tanker).

Now Armed Liberal's 19-year-old son, a student at the Univ. of Virginia, is contemplating signing up for ROTC when he returns this fall. AL's son wants to be an Air Force para-rescueman.

AL says he is surprised, frightened (as the dad) and proud. Yep.

BTW, the rest of the quote is, "Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or a sailor with hard service at sea." (Samuel Johnson).

by Donald Sensing, 7/6/2003 09:53:24 PM. Permalink |   

Thank you, readers and linkers
For the first, this blog is now ranked in the top 100 on N.Z. Bear's Blogging Ecosystem. As of this posting I am at no. 98. This makes me a "playful primate," quite a ways up from where I started, "insignificant microbe." So to all the new bloggers out there - keep on plugging! And thanks to everyone for your support!

by Donald Sensing, 7/6/2003 08:33:40 PM. Permalink |   

Howard Dean, nominee
Dean Esmay has a very good essay on the implications of Howard Dean winning the Democratic nomination, even if he loses as badly as McGovern lost in 1972.

by Donald Sensing, 7/6/2003 06:26:14 PM. Permalink |   

Saddam found!
And I want my $25 million! He's spinning platters at Pro-American.com's free music page:



by Donald Sensing, 7/4/2003 10:52:45 PM. Permalink |   

Recent entries index

Stalinists rule at Cal Poly

What to say and not to say to the grieving

Terminator 3- a short review

Revolution in military supply

Disassembling Howard Dean

"Undisciplined freedom"

Marines v. Army - recruiting

God, life and liberty

by Donald Sensing, 7/3/2003 05:55:21 PM. Permalink |   

Stalinists rule at Cal Poly
Mnavarre at Bad State of Gruntledness writes of the Stalinist state of affairs at California Polytechnic State University , where a white student was persecuted by the university for racism - for posting a flyer inviting students to attend a speech by a black speaker.

Student Steve Hinkle's crimes, explicitly detailed at the hearing he was forced to endure, were (a) being white, (b) blond, (c) blue-eyed, and (d) publicizing an appearance by a conservative black author, Mason Weaver. Moreover, the fact that he lives at all is intolerable:

Authorities at Cal Poly say it was not the content of Hinkle's flier, but rather his very presence that was "disruptive."

Sadly, although this kind of ordeal is unusual in American universities, it is not very unusual. The complete destruction of most American post-secondary education is almost accomplished.


by Donald Sensing, 7/3/2003 05:48:36 PM. Permalink |   

What to say and not to say to the grieving
I got an email today from a friend telling of the sudden death of his college roommate this week. I can't respond by email because my email service is non-working. But the email prompts me to repost an essay on what to say and what to avoid saying to those grieving a loved one's death.

I have had a lot of experience with funerals and people in mourning, both as one whose kin have died and in ministering to the bereaved. Here is a short course in what to say to the next of kin of the deceased.

What not to say
Do not attempt to explain the death. Comments such as, "This is all part of God's plan," or "There is some purpose served here that we don't understand" are not helpful. Just skip them. Grieving parents, widows or widowers are not looking for cosmic wisdom or theology. No matter how helpful you think such things are, or how intensely you believe them, they do not help.

Do not minimize the impact of the death. Deaths of loved ones are consequential, and must be regarded as such. A woman I knew had to bury her three-day-old baby girl. A woman of her church told her, "At least it wasn't a boy." In the recent death of my elderly and long-term ill mother-in-law, several people said to my wife and me, "At least she isn't suffering anymore." These kinds of comments are cruel, not helpful.

Do not talk about the unfairness of life or make the deceased and the family a victim of circumstances. Comments such as, "I don't see why the doctors could not have done more," or "Your wife was such a good woman, I don't see why she had to die" or the like harm rather than help. The deaths of loved ones create chaos in the mental and emotional states of the families. Often, they wonder whether they could have done something more to save the deceased. Don't say anything that could reinforce these feelings.

What to say
Express sympathy and offer support. Be a friend. Be brief and sincere. Here is a template you can use either verbally or in writing a sympathy card:

I am saddened to hear of your loss. Please be assured that my prayers are with you. I know these days are difficult for you. You have many friends who will support you and who are eager to give you aid and comfort. We pray that you will be strengthened through God's grace, and come to find rest and peace. Sincerely, [name].

It is not inappropriate to offer, "If there is anything we can do, let us know," but not many next of kin will let you know. If you truly want to offer more than moral support, just do it. Offer to take their car to be washed before the funeral. Offer to do their laundry or house sit or visit to answer the phone. Be imaginative in discerning what routine tasks you can perform for the bereaved; those are the tasks that tend to be left undone. Never force yourself on the bereaved, of course, but usually a doer is gratefully welcomed while a mere promiser is forgotten.

If the death was tragic (that is, premature, suicidal or violent) then you should understand that support will be needed for many weeks, not just a few days. The level of support required will decrease, but do not expect that after only a week or so the bereavement will just end and the bereaved will get on with life. "Getting over it" is something that may never happen for the families of those who died tragically. Parents who lose children, for example, never get over it emotionally although after a time their routines may appear normal. But they always grieve, even after decades.

Anniversary dates can be particularly difficult. For those who lose spouses, the next Valentine's Day can be very difficult. A card or bouquet on that day will be very helpful. A phone call on wedding anniversaries or birthdays of the deceased will be much appreciated.


by Donald Sensing, 7/3/2003 05:31:23 PM. Permalink |   

Terminator 3- a short review
I took the teenage hands clapping to see Terminator 3 - Rise of the Machines last night. So, a short review.

I have always thought that if a movie isn't worth seeing twice, it isn't worth seeing once. So would I pay my hard-earned scrip to see T3 again? Yes, but only because the Other Hand Clapping wants to see it, and couldn't go last night. So she and I will go later. But I probably would not go see it again with another.

For some reason I was disappointed at the end - but my disappointment is with the ending itself, not because its technical achievements were less than advertised (they weren't).

Obviously, I can't give away the ending here, so I won't. But be forewarned, this is a grim movie, a deeply pessimistic movie. And the first two were not. Thus, the ending was out of synch with the series. I found it jarring. (It's also an extremely obvious setup for Terminator 4, which had darn well better be made because to end the series now would be a travesty.)

That being said, T3 is an amazing piece of movie making. The main chase sequence is a definite contender for the best automotive chase sequence ever; IMO it wins hands down. (I say "automotive" chase because more than cars are used.) The sequence is long, paced just right, exciting and the integration between live action and computer scenes are absolutely seamless.

Arnold S. is back in fighting trim; during final credits a teenage girl in front of us said, upon her mother telling her Arnold is 55, ""He looks fine for 55!" Kristanna Loken as the T-X terminator (terminatrix?) performs the role extremely well, although truth be told, there ain't a lot of acting required of her; she utters maybe six sentences in the movie. The rest of the time she simply pursues Arnold, John Conner and Kate Brewster with stolid implacableness. Having a "female" terminator does work just fine.

Kate Brewster, played by Claire Danes, is John Connor's love interest, although they don't so much as hold hands during the movie. As for her place in the story line, well, you'll have to see for yourself.

At first, I didn't take a shine to Nick Stahl playing John Connor, but before long I changed my mind. He turned out to play the role well.

Finally, Arnold plays the T-101 as, well, only he can. As he explains to Connor shortly after they meet, he is an entirely different machine than the one who saved Connor's bratty skin years before (in T2, Judgment Day, 1991). Unlike in T2, Connor and the T-101 in T3 never "bond" as they did (sort of) in T2. In fact, in T3, Connor tells the T-101 that his predecessor was the only real father figure he ever had - man, Connor led a really screwed up life!

Perhaps because of that, and the fact that sparks never fly between John and Kate, the movie seems mechanical. Okay, it's a movie primarily about two robots, but I'm not a robot and I want humanity for my money. The cast just seemed to be going through their parts like they were following a machine program; I kept waiting for some intensity and depth but it never arrived.

The one exception is Earl Boen's reprise portrayal of Dr. Silberman, he the tormenter of Sarah Connor in T2, the psychiatrist who disbelieved her wild story and confined her to a mental institution indefinitely. But then the two terminators came to the institution, one to kill her, Arnold to save her, and Reality with a Capital R took place right before his eyes.

Well, Silberman is back, and the few minutes his role takes are nearly worth the price of admission by themselves.

Overall, I give T3 six bags of popcorn out of 10, but I give it that many mainly because I really liked the other two, and I like Arnold, too. Otherwise, the whole movie cries out Marlon Brando's famous line in On the Waterfront: "I coulda been a contendah!" So close, and yet so far.

by Donald Sensing, 7/3/2003 04:52:03 PM. Permalink |   

Revolution in military supply
Trent Telenko explains the near-future quantum leap in the capacity and capability of the way America ships, handles, keeps track of and sends to its users the supplies needed for military operations.

As the old (but true) cliche goes, amateurs talk about tactics, professionals talk about logistics. All tactics are dependent on supply. It does little good to produce a revolutionary leap in war-fighting capability if there is no corresponding leap in supply.

As Trent shows, the Army's role is especially important because the Army is responsible for all logistics on the ground at theater level, no matter which service is the ultimate user.

by Donald Sensing, 7/3/2003 04:03:43 PM. Permalink |   

Disassembling Howard Dean
Geitner Simmons does a pretty good job of it. Interestingly, Geitner shows why Dean is in fact a solid establishmentarian, not the bold, innovative thinker he tries to project.

by Donald Sensing, 7/3/2003 03:55:09 PM. Permalink |   

My email is iffy
Comcast's email service has gone to blazes the past few days. If you sent me email, Ihave either seen it but have been unsuccessful in responding or I didn't get it yet. It's frustrating.

Thank you to the gentleman who dropped $25 into my PayPal tipe jar (see button at left!) and the the recent contributors to the Amazon tip jar as well!

by Donald Sensing, 7/3/2003 02:03:07 PM. Permalink |   

"Undisciplined freedom"
I am making my way through Thomas Ricks' 1997 book, Making the Corps, the story of how the USMC reinvented itself during the 1980s and why.

Ricks explains how then-Secretary of the Navy James Webb and Marine Commandant Gen. Al Gray had remade the Corps into what it is today, back in the 1980s. Webb was a Marine Vietnam veteran, badly wounded and highly decorated, who authored a best-selling novel about that war and society, Fields of Fire. At one point in the book, a middle-aged man observes of the elites who dodged the draft,

These people have no sense of country. They don't look beyond themselves. . . . We've lost a sense of responsibility, at least on the individual level. We have too many people like Mark who believe that the government owes them total, undisciplined freedom. If everyone thought that way, there would be no society. . . . people seem to have forgotten that a part of our strength comes from each person surrendering a portion of his individual urges for the common good.

I only read that part of Ricks' book this morning, but it struck me how it neatly summarized what I said in my posting on God, life and liberty,

. . . human freedom is found somewhere between the limits of what must not be done and what must be done. . . . Without obligations there is no justice. Without prohibitions there is no community. When either individuals or societies attempt to ignore either prohibitions or obligations, bondage results.

When Ricks interviewed Webb for Making the Corps, Webb told him,

The problem of the eighties and nineties isn't that corporate America abandoned the people, but that the elites have decided to pick up their pieces and protect each other at the expense of everyone else. The greatest problem in this country is the lack of a sense that we're all sharing the same problem.

Do you think Webb was right, six years ago? Do you think he's right now, post 9/11? Leave a comment!

by Donald Sensing, 7/3/2003 08:41:05 AM. Permalink |   

Marines v. Army - recruiting
This week my eldest son, Stephen, my wife and I talked for two hours with two Marine recruiters. We had already talked with the Army recruiter. There is no question which made the deepest impression on Steve - and on us. As my wife said after the Marine recruiters had left, "If I wasn't forty-five, I'd join the Marines myself!"

There is an old cliche about salesmanship, "Don't sell the steak, sell the sizzle."

The Army recruiter talked about steak, and the Marines talked about sizzle. The Army talked about money - enlistment bonuses, GI Bill, College Fund, pay and allowances. The Marines talked about character, devotion, commitment, service, achievement. After almost two weeks, the Army recruiter has not phoned as a follow up. The Marines scheduled the time for a follow up before they left.

Steve hasn't made up his mind yet, but it's pretty clear who is ahead, way ahead.

One anomaly. Every prospective enlistee takes a battery of tests called the ASVAB, Armed Services Standard Vocational Aptitude Battery. It is scored in percentiles, with 99 being the highest. The Army recruiter told me that his enlistees average about 67, the Marines told me their enlistees average in the high forties. That doesn't click.

Steve's score was 99. The Marine recruiters told us they had never seen a 99 before.

Please, no profanity in the comments; I just delete comments that use it.

by Donald Sensing, 7/3/2003 08:23:12 AM. Permalink |   

Alternative fuels - not!
There's an old cliche: "Everyone has a great idea that will not work." Alternative sources of energy is just such an idea, except on a very small scale. Steven Den Beste explains why biomass fuels, including ethanol, just won't cut it in replacing present energy sources.

I had said a couple of weeks ago that I would post an analysis of John Kerry's energy-policy speech, ans still hope to. In the meantime, Steven's essay gives us a clue.

by Donald Sensing, 7/3/2003 07:20:45 AM. Permalink |   

God, life and liberty
"The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time. The hand of force may destroy but cannot disjoin them." These words were penned in 1774 by Thomas Jefferson in his essay, A Summary View of the Rights of British America. This sentence was used by American composer Randall Thompson as the first movement of his 1943 chorale for the University of Virginia, Testament of Freedom. (You can listen to it online at the link, but the quality of the recording is not very good).

The men's quartet at my church, of which I am one, sang that movement last Sunday, the day we observed Independence Day. Setting aside whether Randall's composition is very good, I want to explore Jefferson's thoughts from a theological perspective.

Editorialist James Freeman wrote in 2000 that based on the standards of our day,

. . . Thomas Jefferson was a religious nut. . . .

Jefferson was a big believer in religious liberty, but he certainly wasn't shy about mentioning God in official proceedings. In the final paragraph of the Declaration (available at http://www.constitution.org/usdeclar.htm), Jefferson asks twice for God's help in creating the country. And the Declaration was not the only work of Jefferson's in which he gave credit to a higher power. . . .

In his Notes on Virginia of 1782, Jefferson writes: "Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God?"

So, by modern standards, this guy sure seems as if he's a Bible-thumping fruitcake. And one great thing about the USA is that you're free to call him a Bible-thumping fruitcake. Jefferson would definitely approve. On his tombstone he wanted it recorded that he wrote the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom.

Still, if you toss out his religious faith, that does leave a pretty big hole in his philosophy and a difficult question for us: Where do our rights come from? Jefferson's crazy religious ideas, shared by crazy representatives from 13 crazy colonies, are the reason we have a United States and the reason that We the People are in charge.

Patrick Henry wrote,.

It can not be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

I am not one of those who claims that America is a Christian nation; we are perhaps a Christianistic nation. Henry's statement seems intolerant today because there is a great diversity of religions in America now. But Henry's statement nonetheless make a a crucial point: America's founding sprang from a specific kind of religious faith, not just some feelings of a generic spirituality.

continue reading God, life and liberty

by Donald Sensing, 7/2/2003 04:04:41 PM. Permalink |   

"Right to privacy" - does it cover eating, or just sex?
A couple of headlines caught my eye today, and impelled a synergistic look at a societal trend. First, we have the announcement by Kraft Foods that it seeks to head off lawsuits blaming it for consumers' obesity.

The world's largest food manufacturer, Kraft Foods Inc., yesterday said it will reduce fat and shrink portion sizes in its products to fight global obesity and avoid falling victim to a wave of obesity-related lawsuits.

Next was Paul Greenberg's commentary, "Privacy's rebirth," in which he said,

Last week the Supremes decided homosexual relations belong behind closed doors - and there's no reason for the all-seeing, all-knowing state to come peeking and prying around.

Now I want to knowwhetherr my right to privacy extends to what I eat. The reason is that I heard a radio news report recently relating that a police officer in New Jersey had been fired because he smoked off the job. (I can't find a link; does anyone know about this case?)

The department's rationale was that smoking was a health risk and that the department had a right to control health-insurance costs by prohibiting employees from smoking. The report said that more and more employers across the country are using cost-control rationales to forbid smoking and other behaviors claimed to be high risk.

Obesity won't be far behind, and that means that before long some bean counter for some employers will prohibit employees from eating certain foods on the basis that they raise costs of company-provided health-care.

But don't I have a Constitutionally-protected right to privacy regarding what I do in my own home? Better yet, I could buy a Big Mac - heck, a whole sack of Big Macs - take them home, go into my bedroom, and claim privacy forbids any inquiry into what I do there.

The idea of employers monitoring their employees' behaviors repels me, but it is not new. In 1914, Henry Ford more than doubled the prevailing daily wage for factory workers, from $2.34 per day to $5. But there were strings attached. The extra $2.66 was conditional. It began to be paid after six months on the job (no problem there), but also if they "lived right," and Ford had definite ideas about what living right meant.

Ford assumed that a sound home environment produced an efficient worker. If the worker were living in an "unsound" home environment, he would bring bad habits and attitudes to work. So Ford used the extra $ as a (strong) incentive for altering the habits and behaviors of his workers. . . .

How did Ford determine if a worker was living right and should get the full $5? He set up the sociological department (which Upton Sinclair calls the "Social Department") which sent investigators into all of the workers' homes to observe how they were living and ask a lot of questions, particularly about alcohol use, marital relations, and spending habits.

The investigators were looking for evidence of the following: thrift, cleanliness, sobriety, family values, and good morals in general. The head of the sociological department, S.S. Marquis, said "Nothing tends to lower a man's efficiency more than wrong family relations." Henry Ford thought thrift was a very important quality because to him it indicated that a person had self-control, self-respect, responsibility, and would work steadily and diligently. Good morals and family relations held a particularly middle class (or "bourgeois") definition by which the workers had to abide.

Ford dropped the incentive program after a few years because it cost too much and a labor shortage forced him to raise the basic wage, anyway. He then turned to factory spies and informants to monitor behavior.


by Donald Sensing, 7/2/2003 02:58:38 PM. Permalink |   

Light blogging this week
Free ice cream here at OHC will be light and somewhat irregular this week. I am trying to drain the swamp in other things that I have to take care of and, well, you know how that goes!

by Donald Sensing, 7/1/2003 08:19:13 PM. Permalink |