Filling the mommy slot
Retired Navy veteran Boyd Garrett has some choice observations about some of the discipline problems in the US military, in responding to a WaPo piece about military vaccinations. For example, Airman Jessica Horjust refused to obey orders to receive anthrax vaccinations.

"I have a kid to take care of," said [Airman Jessica] Horjus, 23, the mother of a 2-year-old, who lives with her daughter in military housing at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro, N.C. "The Air Force can always fill my slot with someone else, but who's going to fill the mommy slot?"

Get that? The Air Force can always fill her slot with someone else. There's devotion to duty for you, yessir. She needs to become a civilian PDQ.

Update: Andrew Olmsted has some pointed observations. And also read his collection of "The Reasons Why" people serve in the military, or at least why they should be serving.

by Donald Sensing, 3/31/2004 10:10:00 PM. Permalink |

With whom are we at war?
Keith Berry emailed to ask me, "Who do you think the enemy is in the current war?" I presume he was responding to my post on soft power. Who is the enemy? Here's a start:



This outrage happened today in Iraq, reports the AP:

Jubilant residents yanked the bodies of four foreigners - one a woman, at least one an American - out of their burning cars Wednesday, dragged the charred corpses through the streets, and hung them from the bridge spanning the Euphrates River. Five American troops died in a roadside bombing nearby.

The brutal treatment of the four corpses came after they were killed in a rebel attack on their SUVs in the Sunni Triangle city about 35 miles west of Baghdad ... .

This atrocity was done, according to Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, who spoke to reporters a short time ago, by Baathist diehards who hope to establish a Baathist restoration movement.

I'll post more about just who is our enemy and why later.

by Donald Sensing, 3/31/2004 08:28:00 AM. Permalink |

What happened politically in the Clarke testimony
Dick Morris says that what the televised testimonies of the 9/11 investigative commission have really done is keep Bush's strongest issue - terrorism - before the public, and that's bad news for Kerry. Kerry's public positives on terrorism are so far behind Bush, says Morris, that even the hearings have been positive for Bush on the whole.

But that's not the whole problem for Kerry. Bush's ads against him have proven extremely effective. However,

Kerry's rebuttals have been late and ineffective. To counter the charge that he plans to raise taxes by $900 billion, Kerry just says it ain't so and highlights his support for "middle income" tax cuts. On Bush's charge that Kerry wanted to raise gas taxes by 50 cents per gallon, the Democrat makes no reply. And none of Bush's attacks on terrorism and homeland security get a word of rebuttal, just footage of Kerry on combat duty in Vietnam.

Kerry says that he has learned the lessons of Mike Dukakis - to always answer negatives. But his lame performance so far indicates that he has much to learn.

Yesterday the news shows showed Kerry, clad in a white shirt, tie and no jacket (to help you recall the clip), excoriating Bush on rising gasoline prices. Kerry said, "If gas prices go any higher, Bush and Cheney will have to car pool to work every morning!"

The audience did not respond to what seemed to be a - what? A throwaway line intended to garner some snickers? An attack line intended to raise rousing applause? The line just left the people flat. I cite it because apparently the media thought it was either the most memorable or cleverest bite from his whole speech, even though it laid an egg.

Update, 04-01: A WashTimes story's lead confirms why the hearings are turning out to be good for Bush after all:

Republicans are pleased that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice will testify about September 11 because it keeps the presidential campaign focused on national security — President Bush's strong suit.

The Republican Party believes Democrats are repeating their blunder of the 2002 elections, when they demanded prolonged discussions about Iraq from Mr. Bush, who obliged and led Republicans to historic victories. Even some Democrats are becoming alarmed by the similarities between the two campaigns.

Does Mae West's line apply? "There no such thing as bad publicity?" No, not really, but ISTM that the American electorate isn't buying that Bush's eight-month stewardship of the nation's anti-terrorism programs, such as they were, was worse that Clinton eight years.

by Donald Sensing, 3/31/2004 07:21:00 AM. Permalink |

"A bland, complaisant achievement machine"
That's what David Brooks says a typical high school senior has been made into.

by Donald Sensing, 3/30/2004 10:18:00 PM. Permalink |

French toleration
It sure isn't what it used to be.

by Donald Sensing, 3/30/2004 09:37:00 PM. Permalink |

Why Tommy can't read
Tommy Atkins, that is, the Brit equivalent of GI Joe. Joanne Jacobs reports that a new study by the Brits about the educational attainments of their soldiers discovered that half of the army's new infantry recruits have the reading and writing skills appropriate to 11-year-olds. The Telegraph saw the problem:

. . . Within the next 10 years, the Army will be issued with equipment that will require all frontline soldiers to be computer literate and numerically literate if they are to fight and survive on the battlefield. They will also need to be able to read and understand ever-more complicated training manuals.

Actually, the manuals for both the British army and the US Army are likely to become less complicated, not more. As the machines get smarter themselves, operation, diagnostic and repair procedures become simpler. Be that as it may, soldiering in technological armies is becoming evermore intellectually and educationally demanding. The reason is that as computer and communications technology become more and more pervasive at every level, for everything, the human mind must work faster to integrate and analyze information.

Higher levels of critical thinking skills and analytical abilities are being required at ever lower echelons of the ranks. The reason is that technology enables faster and faster operational tempos. Faster tempos means that the old-style supervision become less and less that privates got from sergeants and sergeants from lieutenants and lieutenants from captains - and right on up the chain of command. More and more autonomy becomes not merely possible, it becomes required.

The most computerized US artillery system, for example, is the MLRS rocket system. It is what I call a "computerated" unit - the marriage of highly automated and highly computerized systems. As the result, a lieutenant in an MLRS unit has command-and-control problems and responsibilities that rest upon captains in traditional cannon units.

Back the Brits. Richard Heddleson emailed, "It has always been my understanding that while the Brits might not have the equipment or logistics of their richer cousins they made up for it in the quality of their soldiers. Does this fit with your experience of the average Tommy?"

The British army is extremely high quality, let there be no doubt. But that doesn't really "make up" for material deficiencies. So the question is a little of the apple and orange variety. That being said, I have no firsthand experience with the British army. Sorry!

by Donald Sensing, 3/30/2004 07:32:00 PM. Permalink |

Soft power
James Joyner posts about Joseph Nye's piece in the WaPo about "soft power." Says Nye,

Soft power is the ability to get what we want by attracting others rather than by threatening or paying them. It is based on our culture, our political ideals and our policies. Historically, Americans have been good at wielding soft power. Think of Franklin D. Roosevelt's Four Freedoms in Europe at the end of World War II; of young people behind the Iron Curtain listening to American music and news on Radio Free Europe; of Chinese students symbolizing their protests in Tiananmen Square with a replica of the Statue of Liberty. Seduction is always more effective than coercion, and many of our values, such as democracy, human rights and individual opportunity, are deeply seductive. But attraction can turn to repulsion when we are arrogant and destroy the real message of our deeper values.

Overall, Nye, who served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs during the Clinton Administration, suggests that we spend way too little on soft power programs in relation to hard power (i.e., military) programs.

Some observations. I agree in principle with what Nye is saying; America's appeal abroad has always been based on the idea of what America is rather than its hard-power projection. But I think he glosses over some important details and draws too sharp a distinction between the two aspects of national power. (His WaPo piece is admittedly too short to draw fine distinctions.)

the fact is that America's soft-power has always been buttressed - indeed, relied on - our hard-power capability. It's true that FDR's Four Freedoms speech of January 1941 resonated strongly with the Congress to whom it was delivered. Yet the outlining of high ideals occurs only during the last third of the speech. The first two-thirds covers strategic and military matters. FDR said explicitly that the freedoms' existence would be ensured not by high idealism, but by force of arms.

Armed defense of democratic existence is now being gallantly waged in four continents. If that defense fails, all the population and all the resources of Europe and Asia, Africa and Australia will be dominated by conquerors. ...

As a nation we may take pride in the fact that we are soft-hearted; but we cannot afford to be soft-headed.

FDR then outlines three bulwarks of national policy: an "all-inclusive national defense," "full support of all those resolute people everywhere who are resisting aggression" and, very sugnificantly,

... the proposition that principle of morality and considerations for our own security will never permit us to acquiesce in a peace dictated by aggressors and sponsored by appeasers. We know that enduring peace cannot be bought at the cost of other people's freedom.

Please note, again, the words of the most pre-eminent member ever of the Democratic party: "Enduring peace cannot be bought at the cost of other people's freedom."

But, moving back to Nye's piece. He says that American spending on soft power is

... equal to one-quarter of 1 percent of the military budget. No one would suggest that we spend as much to launch ideas as to launch bombs, but it does seem odd that we spend 400 times as much on hard power as on soft power. If we spent just 1 percent of the military budget, it would mean quadrupling our spending on soft power.

Nye does not call for the military budget to be reduced by ¾ percent, he just wants soft-power spending quadrupled. Again, all well and good. But it would be helpful to know more details of what programs he thinks should be buttressed.

Of course, this piece is not Nye's only comment about the subject. In a speech in January 2003, Nye pointed out that America's soft power includes pop culture, for example.

From Hollywood to higher education, civil society does far more to present the United States to other peoples than the government does. Hollywood often portrays consumerism, sex and violence, but it also promotes values of individualism, upward mobility and freedom (including for women). These values make America attractive to many people overseas, but some fundamentalists see them as a threat.

Well, yeah, they are threatening, but not because they are merely offensive (many Americans find our pop culture offensive, too), but because of what they symbolize: political and social freedom. These are anathema to the Islamist who war upon us. Nye concluded,

The lessons for those in the Pentagon who want to enhance America's soft power is that it will come not from military propaganda campaigns but from greater sensitivity to the opinions of others in the formulation of policies. They should heed Teddy Roosevelt's advice. Now that we Americans have a big stick, we should learn to speak softly.

Is this back to multilateralism? Multilateralism, like unilateralism, is neither to be sought or shunned for its own sake. Being more "sensitive" (a pop-culture psychobabble word) to other nations for its own sake runs as much chance of being soft weakness As it does being soft power. If Nye thinks that enhancing America's soft power relies on "greater sensitivity to the opinions of others," then perhaps he and we might remember, "This is war. It's not an encounter session."

What really gives American soft power its strength is the realization by real or potential enemies that our hard power is really hard, but that the alternative to it is not merely one step better, it is magnitudes better. Unfortunately, the people who most need to understand this fact are the ones least likely to act on it - Kim Jung Il, for example, or the Iranian mullahs. In fact, Iran is a good test case for Nye's hypotheses because the Iranian people are mostly strongly pro-democracy, even pro-American. But they still live in tyranny because American soft power alone will not liberate them.

What I wish Nye had written, either in the Post or elsewhere, is that in wartime (such as when FDR enumerated the Four Freedoms, or today) soft power's successes spring from hard power's use or its potential use. And the heart of American soft power is American justice and fair play. There is a reason that tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers surrendered, without fighting, to the allies in both wars with Iraq, but no allied soldier surrendered to the Iraqis even in extremis, although some were captured when wounded or surrounded with no more means to resist. Mark Steyn, I think, wrote about a year ago of a small; detachment of British soldiers in the Iraq war who died fighting rather than submit to capture. They knew, he said, what captivity would be like in Iraqi hands.

The transition from hard to soft power or vice-versa is not always very clear cut. Pop quiz: when Libyan dictator Moammar Qadaffi opened his WMD programs to UN inspection and destruction, was it because of soft power (diplomacy and international institutions) or hard power ( the potential use of American hard power against him)? After all, Qadaffi said that he had seen what happened to Saddam Husein and didn't want to suffer the same fate. Hard power or soft power? Or does the distinction kind of blur?

What I haven't seen in Nye's work is the realization that there is an enormous amount of soft power built into the American defense budget. Billions of dollars have been spent by the armed forces in Iraq building schools, roads, clinics, the economic infrastructure and constituting democratic institutions there. This kind of work by the US military is nothing new. When I was stationed in Honduras in 1989, the Army and Air Force carried out major civil engineering programs there, including an interstate-quality roadway from the northern port area into the interior. We treated countless thousands of Honduran people medically and dentally, both at the Army clinic we ran and on medical/dental missions into the remotest areas of the country.

These kinds of missions were and are carried on around the world, but their budgets fall under what Nye counts as military expenditures.

by Donald Sensing, 3/30/2004 05:49:00 PM. Permalink |

Rice and rope-a-dope
I wish I had been able to follow to 9/11 commission's hearing more closely, but alas, work hasn't let me tune in much. But I have been tuned in enough to know that the commission's members, especially the Democrat members, have been insistent that National Security Advisor Dr. Condoleeza Rice give sworn, public testimony - despite her four hours of non-public testimony already. And until today, the White House has said no on the basis of executive privilege. Then suddenly, the White House appears to take a powder.

We await her testimony eagerly. But I wonder - was the White House more clever in this flop than we give it credit?

What this does is give President Bush essentially the last word in the public mind on the whole issue. Pretty much every figure from the Clinton administration of significance has already testified. Richard Clarke has shot his bolt, and slowly (real slowly) the gaping holes in his record are becoming more known.

What will happen, I think, is that Dr. Rice's statement to the commission will essentially do three things:

give a more comprehensive chronology of what the Bush administration did about the terrorist threat to the US than the administration has ever offered,

offer direct rebuttals to the testimony of Richard Clarke in major points as well as a more pointed criticism of the Clinton administration than the Bush White House has ever indicated,

detail the role Congress played in hampering the opening months of the administration's efforts by reminding the commission of the stonewalling the Senate did in confirming appointments to many key positions until mid-summer.

Others have remarked that whatever this White House's strengths, managing political adversity doesn't appear to be one of them. I tend to agree. Even postulating that Dr. Rice's appearance could garner benefits to the president as indicated above, I find it dismaying that the president flipped so quickly about executive privilege.

The White House stood on principle - or at least appeared to - and then caved at a curiously opportune time. Even if sending Rice to testify is politically astute strategically, it seems tactically blundered.

I wonder why the White House didn't tell the committee, backchannel, that Rice would testify as requested, but only last, and that if the commission made a stink about it, the White House would simply claim executive privilege and withhold her until it wanted.

Of course, maybe that's what they did.

by Donald Sensing, 3/30/2004 02:48:00 PM. Permalink |

Turning 50 is bad for you!
As I am bumping up against the half-century mark myself, I was shocked - shocked, I tell you! - to see what the years have done to Oprah Winfrey.



Alas, poor Oprah, we knew you when you were a sprightly 49, but one birthday too many has taken its toll.

by Donald Sensing, 3/30/2004 07:56:00 AM. Permalink |

Been away all day
I have spent the day reahearsing an Easter offertory that I wrote and our music director - an enormously talented man - set to music. When I wasn't doing that I was configuring a new computer. I spentg hours trying to migrate my app files and data files from my old computer to the new one, without success. It's a long story why no luck - please, no emails telling me to try something else. There's a hard driver problem on the old one and it's going to Phoenix Computer Services tomorrow.

Anyway, that's why I've been non-blogging. I hope to get something back up tonight, but can't promise. Than you to all who've been reading!

by Donald Sensing, 3/29/2004 06:32:00 PM. Permalink |

Richard Clarke said it was "silly" to think a comprehensive anti-terror strategy could be developed
Armed Liberal has posted a facsimile of a letter, on Congressional letterhead, from US Rep. Christopher Shays to Richard Clarke, dated July 2000, in which Shays tells Clarke that his classified testimony to Shays' subcommittee was "less than useful."

Shays also was unhappy with Clarke's assertion in his testimony that it was "silly" to think a comprehensive strategy could be developed to combat terrorism. And when Clarke was asked in the testimony how spending priorities were established, he "responded by providing a list of terrorist organizations."

So, Rep. Shays asked, "Why is there no integrated threat assessment?" And he had other pointed questions as well. Read it all.

by Donald Sensing, 3/26/2004 05:43:00 PM. Permalink |

Close, but no cigar
Christopher Kremmer, writing on Australia's SMH.com.au almost gets the root causes argument about terrorism right. He correctly discounts the Islamist cause as "fantasy hogwash," which seems to align pretty well with Lee Harris' exposition of Al Qaeda's Fantasy Ideology. Says Chris,

Like a lot of hogwash, this fantasy has its roots in reality. The Islamic world is a once great civilisation that has fallen prey to the West. We do manipulate its politics and demand the free flow of its principal resource, oil. But the people who enfeebled the Islamic world were the mullahs who by the 12th century had equated science, art and literature with the devil's work. Their contemporary counterparts advocate that it remain in the Dark Ages.

So far, so good. But here he starts to veer off course:

Endemic violence in their homelands, lack of jobs, dispossession, disenfranchisement, diaspora and foreign occupation are the engines driving it. The cycle of violence may last for generations.

The current Western responses to fundamentalist violence are failing to take into account how our actions are perceived in the regions where youth holds the key to the future. From Indonesia to Iran, and Pakistan to Iraq, our actions are bolstering fundamentalist thinking.

(hat tip: Brendan Slattery) Now, I don't actually disagree very much with anything I've cited so far - except that Kremmer apparently thinks that "lack of jobs, dispossession, disenfranchisement" exist for no reason. They just are, all on their own. But instead of asking just why these conditions prevail in the terrorism-spawning lands, Kremmer puts on the brakes and falls back into the safe territory of blaming the West:

The war on terrorism, as our leaders have configured it, is a dead end. One could hope our leaders would admit their mistakes and pledge a new direction, but it seems unlikely. It might require a change of leadership to achieve that.

Bin Laden and his ilk are symptoms of a much deeper pathology. We need to address the root causes of terrorism, and acknowledge that the way the West plays politics is a significant element in the equation.

What Kremmer cites as "root causes" of terrorism are actually the symptoms of deeper pathologies, as he hints. So why didn't he name them? They are not hard to identify:

Political oppression and lack of liberty: except for Iraq, every Arab country is an authoritarian state ruled by an oligarchy, monarchy or dictator. The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, explained it just this week:

Contrasting western democracy with Islamic societies, he said: "Throughout the Middle East and North Africa we find authoritarian regimes with deeply entrenched leadership, some of which rose to power at the point of a gun and are retained in power by massive investment in security forces.

"Whether they are military dictatorships or traditional sovereignties, each ruler seems committed to retaining power and privilege."

Lack of economic opportunity: free-market capitalism does not exist on a macro level. All economies are controlled by the central government.

Intellectual stagnation (which Kremmer does mention): Last fall in the opening speech of the Islamic Summit' in Malaysia, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad stated the Islamic world's intellectual status thus:

The early Muslims produced great mathematicians and scientists, scholars, physicians and astronomers etc. and they excelled in all the fields of knowledge of their times, besides studying and practising their own religion of Islam. ... The Europeans had to kneel at the feet of Muslim scholars in order to access their own scholastic heritage. ...

But halfway through the building of the great Islamic civilisation came new interpreters of Islam who taught that acquisition of knowledge by Muslims meant only the study of Islamic theology. The study of science, medicine etc. was discouraged.

Intellectually the Muslims began to regress. With intellectual regression the great Muslim civilisation began to falter and wither. But for the emergence of the Ottoman warriors, Muslim civilisation would have disappeared with the fall of Granada in 1492.

The early successes of the Ottomans were not accompanied by an intellectual renaissance. Instead they became more and more preoccupied with minor issues such as whether tight trousers and peak caps were Islamic, whether printing machines should be allowed or electricity used to light mosques. The Industrial Revolution was totally missed by the Muslims.

Indeed. Now, all of these pathologies will be alleviated if the political and social structures of the countries can be liberalized. That doesn't mean there will be no murderous Islamist fanatics. It does mean that the soil from which they grow will be much less fertile.

I invite you also to read my essay about the problems of science and Islam.

Update: What about patriarchy?

Update 2: Glittering Eye makes the excellent point that another analysis to peruse along these lines is Ralph Peters' article in Parameters, the journal of the US Army War College, "Seven Signs of Non-Competitive States." He's right.

Peters characterizes the problems of non-competitive states:

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

So go read Peters' article, too!

by Donald Sensing, 3/26/2004 12:22:00 PM. Permalink |

Identify the good guys!
But this isn't one of them

Phil Carter reports of a Seattle company breaking the law regarding the release from active duty of one Cpl. Dana Beaudine -- "an Oregon National Guardsman who fought in Iraq, was wounded by a mortar attack, and diagnosed with some residual disability." When Dana was called to active duty, his company of employment was called Argus, which employed Dana on the basis of a contract Argus had signed with the federal government. While he was deployed, Securitas bought out the contract. In vilolation of federal law, Securitas refuses to give him back his job or an equivalent one.

The Dept. of Labor has advised Securitas that it is in violation of the law. The company does not care. Observes Phil,

I personally hope that Securitas gets slammed by DOL with an enforcement action that costs them thousands of dollars in legal fees and many more thousands in damages. I find this company beyond contempt for its actions -- how dare it serve as government contractor, taking taxpayer money, profitting from our national security budget, when it can't deign to treat a reservist fairly and lawfully upon his return from combat?

In the wake of this event, and Phil's posting, Robert Macaulay emailed Phil, myself and several other bloggers:

I want to ask you to help, and to have you ask your fellow bloggers to help identify private sector companies that do a GOOD job of treating returning service members. Once they are identified, I want us to publicize their names and get people to patronize their businesses.

I'm starting out at my local newspaper, but you guys have a broader reach than I do. Please help me make a project of rewarding the good guys.

I am all for that. Please post on your sites what companies are supporting our troops and send me the link. Or if you don't have a blog but know of one, email me the company name and location.

by Donald Sensing, 3/26/2004 11:26:00 AM. Permalink |

"Wishy-washy" Christianity driving old-line Britons to Islam
Al-Jazeerah news reports, "Thousands of British elite embrace Islam."

According to the first authoritative study of the phenomenon, carried by the Sunday Times on February22 , some of the country's top landowners, celebrities and the offspring of senior Establishment figures have embraced Islam after being disillusioned with Western values.

The new study by Yahya (formerly Jonathan) Birt, son of Lord Birt, former director-general of the BBC, provides the first reliable data on the sensitive subject of Christians' reversion to Islam.

He uses a breakdown of the latest census figures to conclude that there are now14,200 white converts in Britain. ...

"I have received letters from people who are put off by the wishy-washy standards of contemporary Christianity and they are looking for a religion which does not compromise too much with the modern world," said [Charles Le Gai] Eaton, author of Islam and the Destiny of Man.

(HT: Orthodoxy Today) I've been writing for months and months that the traditional mainline Euro-American churches are in large measure promulgating political ideology dressed up in Godtalk. The Church of England was founded for political reasons, but even so had a long period of vigorous missionary activity (usually accompanied, 'tis true, by naval cannon and army muskets). Yet it, along with Left-dominated American churches, is in serious and perhaps irreversible decline. As the last religious census of the United States shows, theologically conservative churches are growing, not liberal ones.

Political liberalism is not the only reason for their decline, but it's a big part of it. A lot of people are tired of having left-wing politics gussied up with Bible talk and presented to them literally as the Gospel truth.

Reinforcing this point is religion researcher George Barna's January 2004 survey, "Only Half Of Protestant Pastors Have A Biblical Worldview."

Based on interviews with 601 Senior Pastors nationwide, representing a random cross-section of Protestant churches, Barna reports that only half of the country's Protestant pastors - 51% - have a biblical worldview. Defining such a world view as believing that absolute moral truth exists, that it is based upon the Bible, and having a biblical view on six core beliefs (the accuracy of biblical teaching, the sinless nature of Jesus, the literal existence of Satan, the omnipotence and omniscience of God, salvation by grace alone, and the personal responsibility to evangelize), the researcher produced data showing that there are significant variations by denominational affiliation and other demographics.

"The most important point," Barna argued, "is that you can't give people what you don't have."

Now, I would quibble with how Barna defines "biblical world view," but if we grant it purely for the sake or argument, we can see why its lack was said by Eaton to be wishy-washy and in compromise with the modern world. When people go to church they expect to encounter God, some sense of contact with the transcendent, the holy - not political litanies, pop-culture psychobabble or rock n' roll entertainment. Yet all three of these things are quite prominent in many worship services today.

I addressed some other concerns in my post, "The metrosexual Jesus" - Would you trust your eternity to this guy? Neither would I."

The question, though, is whether there are enough people in the West who are both substantially disillusioned with the churches and looking for religious anchors to the point where they will embrace Islam. And if significant numbers do, will Islam change them or will they change Islam? There is another impediment to such conversions, too. As Mr. Birt observed, "The image of Islam projected by political Islamic movements is not very attractive."

Update: I should also point out that as left-leaning churches have decided that religious faithfulness means adopting reflexive antii-American ideology oritented toward state socialism, here in America some denominations have gone the other way. Many conservative American churches promulgate a theology that seems awfully cozy with lassez-faire, I-got-mine capitalism, fairly blind to America's transgressions either domestically or abroad. Thus, at one of the spectrum are churches that think America is mostly condemnable, and at the other end is "My country, right or wrong - and it's not wrong."

by Donald Sensing, 3/25/2004 11:28:00 PM. Permalink |

Oh, now they are constitutional constructionists
You may recall that last November the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, by a 4-3 vote, discovered that the state's constitution made it illegal to permit men and women to marry one another, but prohibit men from marryingh men, or women, women. So certain was the one-vote majority that it directed - nay, commanded - the Massachusetts Legislature to enact legislation legalizing same-sex marriage May 16.

The idea that the constitution's framers, the state's legislators and the people of the state themselves had the slightest inlking of such a guarantee when they wrote, enacted and voted the constitution into effect seemed never to have been a matter of the majority's concern. It simply did not matter to the court what "marriage" meant back in the dark ages of the state's founding. All that mattered was that activist judges personally wanted to legalize same-sex marriage and they decided to do so with the stroke of a pen.

Now, however, the high court has decided that maybe the original intent of the legislature does matter, and that the strict letter of the law prevails over nonsense like emanations and penumbras and included relationships and the such. It seems that the law prohibiting incest does not include stepparents.

In the narrow ruling handed down Monday, the court said the Massachusetts incest statute bans intercourse between people related by blood or through adoption. The court was acting on a case in which a 60-year-old man was accused of having sex with his teenage stepdaughter.

The majority opinion, written by Justice Robert Cordy, stated the wording of the incest law "cannot be stretched beyond their fair meaning."

But the constitution can - when it suits, you see.

by Donald Sensing, 3/25/2004 10:18:00 PM. Permalink |

Video from inside Iran
Here is video broadcast on PBS's Frontline that was smuggled from Iran. There are four clips, about 23 minutes total. Click here.

by Donald Sensing, 3/25/2004 08:47:00 PM. Permalink |

Israelis rescue boy bomber
A 16-year-old boy who was rescued from a suicide bombing mission said his Palestinian recruiters told him would enjoy sexual paradise with 72 virgins if he carried out the attack.



Israeli soldiers became suspicious of the boy at a checkpoint and ordered him to remove his outer garment. He did, revealing the bomb belt beneath. The boy said that he agreed to carry out the attack because he felt like no one liked him.


The Israelis had him remove the bomb belt, which they retrieved and detonated elsewhere. So the Palestinian terrorists are not merely recruiting children (they had already tried to use a five-year-old, to bomb unawares), they deliberately seek out the most insecure boys to promise them fantasy rewards. Teenagers in the West Bank, like teenagers everywhere, want deperately to fit in. This boy felt marginalized and excluded.

Enter Hamas or Hezbollah or whomever, who actually want him. They need him. They brainwash him that he can be a warrior, a martyr in fact. He will be rewarded with an eternal, literal sexual heaven (as if a 16-y/o wouldn't be interested in that).

The depravity of Islamist terrorists really shouldn't surprise us any more, but just when we think there is no new low for them to sink to, they do.

by Donald Sensing, 3/25/2004 04:41:00 PM. Permalink |

Time magazine shreds Richard Clarke
Time gets the knives out and wields them like a Ginsu chef, with the hapless meat being Richard Clarke. Go read.

by Donald Sensing, 3/25/2004 03:03:00 PM. Permalink |

But aren't the Germans peace-loving?
Then why would Islamists want to assassinate German President Johannes Rau?

by Donald Sensing, 3/25/2004 07:40:00 AM. Permalink |

Don't you love it when a plan comes together?
You may recall that when Richard Clarke's book was released, Time Magazine published a piece he wrote in which he said,

... maybe we should be asking why the terrorists hate us. If we do not focus on the reasons for terrorism as well as the terrorists, the body searches we accept at airports may be only the beginning of life in the new fortress America.

This is back to the old "root causes" argument, an argument that says that Islamic terrorism will continue to flourish until its root causes are resolved.

This argument was prominent among members of the anti-American Left (sorry for the redundancy) immediately after 9/11. Of course, the root causes that compelled 19 well educated Arab men of substantial means to kamikaze into American buildings lay in America itself, not in their native lands. Why do they hate us? Because America is oppressive, imperialistic and rapes the rest of the world for resources and cheap labor. The exploited poor of the rest of the world are becoming ever more miserable because of ruthless American capitalism. Lee Harris explained this view in great detail, so I'll not belabor it any more except to point out the obvious: it's false. See also "Goodbye, All That: How Left Idiocies Drove Me to Flee ," by self-described "anti-materialist liberal Democrat" Ron Rosenbaum.

(In fact, I have compiled a brief list of highly read-worthy articles and essays by other writers, many of which address related topics.)

Yet asking the question, "What causes Islamist terrorism?" does not make one a de facto leftist by any means. In fact, that was exactly the question that the Bush administration started asking on Sept. 12, 2001. How it is framed and answered reveals the sharp divide between those who claim the Iraq campaign was a diversion from the War on Terror and those who claim - as I do - that the Iraq war was absolutely essential to succeeding in the WOT.

You remember the old saying, "It's hard to remember that your job is to drain the swamp when you're up to your waist in alligators." The "it was a diversion" side wants to do nothing, really, except kill alligators, as long as they appear. The other side says that killing alligators must be done, but it's urgent to remove the gators' nesting places unless you want to fight alligators down to the fortieth generation.

With the release of Clarke's book slamming the Bush administration, this philosophical division is clearer than ever. Glenn Reynolds links to Reason's piece by Michael Young that probes the rationale of the Iraq campaign's relationship to the WOT.

As far as the Bush administration was concerned, a democratic Iraq at the heart of the Arab world could become a liberal beacon in the region, prompting demands for openness and real reform inside neighboring states. ...

Iraq always was essential to the anti-terrorism battle precisely because victory there was regarded as necessary to transform societies from where terrorists, spawned by suffocating regimes, had emerged. One can disagree with the practicability of such a strategy, but it is difficult to fault its logic.

Which means that the root causes of Islamist terrorism lay inside Islamic countries, not inside America. (I am not claiming that America's foreign policy regarding Araby has been spotless, not at all. But I do say that the main root causes by far rest within Arab countries themselves - see my PDF paper, The Soil of Arab Terrorism for 17 pages of exposition thereof.)

That being so, coupled with the absence of evidence of close ties between al Qaeda and Iraq, it was practically a gift to us that Iraq had been at war with the United States since Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. Had we not had casus belli against Saddam's regime, the transformation of Araby from oppressive, socialist societies into reasonably free and free-market ones would be extremely difficult, and for sure isn't a cakewalk now. But Iraq is America's beachhead into those societies. We now literally occupy the key terrain of the entire Middle East.

Hence, as more and more people are coming to realize, there was not only a clear legal case for invading Iraq - Saddam had defied UN resolutions for 12 years and had deliberately concealed the nature of his weapons and weapons programs - there was also a comprehensive rationale for the Iraq campign that was much greater than simply Iraq itself.

At the risk of sounding immodest, I have been pointing this out since shortly after the 9/11 attacks. I rolled it up last October in The Big Picture:

The short-term objectives of the Iraq campaign: topple Saddam, then force al Qaeda et. al. to show themselves in Iraq. Then kill them. The enemy's infiltration of foreign jihadis into Iraq also presents intelligence opportunities that can be exploited to determine who is directing al Qaeda, from where and by what means.

This is called the flypaper strategy, which Austin Bay also explained very well.

The intermediate objective in both Afghanistan and Iraq is to establish reasonably democratic institutions and governments there and prove America’s enduring commitment to the well being of the ordinary people. Again, this objective is just and good in its own right.

Iraq formed an advantageous confluence of events and circumstances that no other Islamic country offered:

A. It is strategically important both for its geographic location and its oil reserves.

B. The casus belli against Saddam’s government was clear.

C. The people there had suffered under Saddam so severely that they were willing even to accept American invasion and occupation as a preferable alternative to continuing their status quo

D. Of all the Arab countries, none is more amenable to democratization than Iraq, which has been organized as a secular (though totalitarian) state for decades.

4. The truly long-term objective in toppling Saddam and democratizing Iraq is what forms the fundamental rationale for doing so. That rationale is to attempt (there are no guarantees) to inculcate far-reaching reforms within Arab societies themselves that will depress the causes of radical, violent Islamism. This task shall take a generation, at least; President Bush has said on multiple occasions that the fight against terror will occupy more presidencies than his own. I wrote in October 2001,

It will take a new kind of national commitment. It will cost a fortune. It will require new kinds of armies, armies not only of soldiers but of engineers, agriculturalists, financiers, administrators and educators.

It will take decades and there are no guarantees. But the alternative is to fight culture and religious wars generation after generation.

Folks, if we don't drain the swamp, the alligators will eventually win.

BTW, see also my essay, Historic Economic Development of the Middle East the and West: why the West is free and prosperous and the Middle East is not.

by Donald Sensing, 3/24/2004 10:44:00 PM. Permalink |

British still living under tyranny
Best of the Web Today reports of,

... an Englishman [who] has been sentenced to eight years in prison for minding his own business. Twenty-five-year-old Carl Lindsay of Salford, near Manchester, "answered a knock at his door . . . to find four men armed with a gun. When the gang tried to rob him he grabbed a samurai sword and stabbed one of them, 37-year-old Stephen Swindells, four times." Swindells died, and Lindsay, who should be hailed as a hero, was convicted of manslaughter.

In Britain, it is illegal to defend yourself against home invaders. If you resist and either injure or kill an attacker - even one armed with a deadly weapon - you will be sent to prison, as Lindsay and another hapless victim, Tony Martin, discovered. If you don't resist, you will lose property and possibly suffer injury or death.

Either way, the average Briton is at the mercy of either the state or the attackers, and if that's not tyranny, nothing is.

Update: Okay, it turns out the Lindsay case was a drug deal gone bad. But two facts remain: first, read the Tony Martin case, linked above. to see why my basic point is true, that Britons are legally defenseless against violent criminals and that if they resis they are prosecuted for it. Second, posession of firearms in Britain is strictly forbidden except under extremely limited and tightly defined circumstances. Yet these criminals were so armed. Well, you know what they say about how if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have them.

I invite you to read my May 2002 post, "Civilization, Violence, Sovereignty and the Second Amendment: Why the right to keep and bear arms is the fundamental right of a sovereign people."

by Donald Sensing, 3/24/2004 05:36:00 PM. Permalink |

Bomb found on French train track

French authorities have disarmed a bomb half buried under a train track near the city of Troyles. The track runs from Paris to Switzerland. No one has claimed tresponibility for placing the bomb - nor will they. After all, who wants to claim credit for a failure? This was the second bomb found along French tracks in recent days.

by Donald Sensing, 3/24/2004 05:13:00 PM. Permalink |

Richard Clarke: Bush team increased anti-terrorism effort fivefold from Clinton administration - before 9/11
Clinton administration's plans handed to Bush team dated from 1998

Retired counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke, whose new book, Against All Enemies, blasts the Bush administration for its handling of anti-terrorism, praised the Bush team to reporters in August 2002. In fact, Clarke said that in March 2001 President Bush dramatically changed the "strategic direction" for dealing with al Qaeda "from one of rollback to one of elimination."

According to the transcript, Clarke said -

. "... there was no plan on Al Qaeda that was passed from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration."

the Clinton administration's anti-terrorism strategy dated from 1998. There was no plan or strategy newer than that date.

In January 2001, "the incoming Bush administration was briefed on the existing strategy. They were also briefed on these series of issues that had not been decided on in a couple of years." "At that time" - January 2001 - "the Bush administration decided" to "vigorously pursue the existing policy, including all of the lethal covert action findings. ..."

In February 2001, the Bush administration "decided in principle ... to add to the existing Clinton strategy and to increase CIA resources, for example, for covert action, five-fold, to go after Al Qaeda."

The five-fold increase in funding and other strategic measure were confirmed after the Congress confirmed the principal officials. This was done by mid-summer, 2001.

This is key:

And then changed the strategy from one of rollback with Al Qaeda over the course of five years, which it had been, to a new strategy that called for the rapid elimination of Al Qaeda. That is in fact the timeline.

This from the mouth of Richard Clarke, now the administration's chief prosecutor in the court of public opinion. Yet only 19 months or so ago he had this to say about President Bush:

When President Bush told us in March [2001 - DS] to stop swatting at flies and just solve this problem, then that was the strategic direction that changed the NSPD from one of rollback to one of elimination.

So what changed? Well, maybe no publisher was interested in a book that said the administration was doing well in the war or terror.

by Donald Sensing, 3/24/2004 03:58:00 PM. Permalink |

Move, shoot, communicate network
I posted last May that bandwidth is everything in modern combat, including a blurb about how Microsoft chat software is used for tactical communications on the battlefield. I elsewhere cited Time mag's quotation of an Iraqi Republican Guard colonel who complained that the Iraqi high command (especially Saddam), "forgot that we are missing air power. That was a big mistake. U.S. military technology is beyond belief."

Now Trent Telenko takes the ball and runs with it in describing the networked force. American military forces, especially the Army, have begun an era of hyper-communications that no other force in the world can match, not even NATO allies.

Mobility, lethality and communications have been the tripod that holds up military success since the Greeks fought the Trojans. Almost without exception, armies that have been able to do these things better than their enemies have prevailed.

Trent explains how the American military is becoming immersed in flexible, comprehensive, computerized and reliable communications at every level, from the individual soldier up to theater commanders.

But here is the key point:

I am of the opinion that this phenomenon is a logarithmic progression that the American military is only just beginning to climb. The reason we are light-years ahead the rest of the world in conventional military power is that we have invested enough in people and technology that we have gotten past an inflection point on the military effectiveness curve for the use of modern information systems [italics original].

I wrote another post last May that there is much more to America's military capability than technology, and the rest of it is even more important. Other advantages the US military brings to the fray are not shared by any other military force in the world, not even Great Britain's or Israel's, impressive as their forces are. They are, in no particular order:

Funding and equipping,

Training and training facilities

A horizontal organization

Read that post to learn more. American military technology is practically at the Buck Rogers level, so let other potential enemies stand in awe of it. 'Tis good they do so. But if they think that technology is the main thing we have going for us, so much the better. They'll focus only on ways to counteract our technology and remain vulnerable to the rest of our strengths.

by Donald Sensing, 3/24/2004 03:05:00 PM. Permalink |

Site has been transferred
Thanks to all who emailed to let me know my site was down earlier today. I changed the domain name server yesterday from Cornerhost.com to Navmonkey.net, and the changeover got propagated while I was away. So I have just finished republishing the blog to the new server, and on my browser it works fine. Please let me know if you see any glitches.

by Donald Sensing, 3/24/2004 02:35:00 PM. Permalink |

UMC Bishops respond to Damman verdict
As background, UMC pastor Karen Dammann was acquitted in a church trial last Saturday. She had been,

... accused of violation of church law proscribing "self-avowed practicing homosexuals" from serving as United Methodist pastors. In February 2001, she sent a letter to her bishop, Elias Galvan of Seattle, telling him she could "no longer live the life of a closeted lesbian clergyperson." She also disclosed that she was living in "a partnered, covenanted homosexual relationship."[link]

The denomination's canon law, called the Book of Discipline, is crystal clear about this matter. But no matter, the jury acquitted here in what is acknowledged by an increasing number of UMC pastors to have been a show trial intended by all concerned to end exactly as it did. The UMC news service from start to finish is here.

Now Bishop Larry M. Goodpaster, supervising the church's Alabama-West Florida Conference, has sounded off.

I am absolutely astounded by the announcement of a verdict of not guilty in the case of Karen Dammann in Washington. I am deeply disturbed that a group of United Methodist clergy has placed themselves above the law of the church and has clearly ignored specific statements and declarations in The Book of Discipline.

Let me remind all of you that Paragraph 304.3 is very exact and definite: "Since the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching, self-avowed practicing homosexuals are not to be accepted as candidates, ordained as ministers, or appointed to serve in The United Methodist Church." That is what our United Methodist Church has affirmed, and is the principle by which we are to be guided.

The efforts of the jury to explain away their disregard for the order of The United Methodist Church and their standing over against the decisions of General Conference is frustrating and disappointing. Their public statement places them in direct contradiction of both the letter and the spirit of past General Conferences and The Book of Discipline. I know that there are some within our denomination that disagree with the statements as contained in The Book of Discipline, and would like them changed. However, that does not mean that anyone can set the Discipline aside in favor of their own preferences.

Bishop Mike Watson and Bishop Lindsey Davis also released a statement:

The Discipline is the connecting covenant within our Church. We support The Discipline and on this issue we believe that The Discipline is clear. We are profoundly disappointed in the recent church trial court decision in the Seattle Area. It is a clear sign of rebellion when a group chooses to flagrantly ignore The Discipline, substituting their own perspective for the corporate wisdom of the General Conference. While we as bishops have neither voice nor vote at General Conference, we call upon elected General Conference delegates to go to Pittsburgh in April prepared to discuss this situation and to consider an appropriate response which will respect our connectional covenant.

The church's General Conference convenes next month. the GC is the only body that can set denominational doctrine on this or any other matter. It meets only once every four years. We expect something of a battle royal. (But the bigger issue will be the state of the church's finances.)

by Donald Sensing, 3/23/2004 07:41:00 PM. Permalink |

Domain switching
I have changed Domain Name Servers, so if you see an interruption of service is accessing the site, that's why. It should be brief. The name and web address of the site are not changing. All your links will work the same.

by Donald Sensing, 3/23/2004 07:01:00 PM. Permalink |

Admin work
I am switching host servers this week because my site is now running about a gig of bandwidth per day. My present host, Cornerhost.com, will start charging me more than $100 per month for that starting next month! Sorry, no can do. So I am switching to NavMonkey, which fortuitously is running a Blogad on the upper-right of my site. I opted for the "Magic Monkey" account, giving me 30 GB of bandwidth per month and 500 MB of server space. I bought six months for the price of five. I'll let you know how it turns out. I am working to switch the DNS over tonight, so probably no posting. I've been gone all day anyway, so have other catching up to do.

In the meantime, I found this piece pretty interesting - seems there are 1993 Iraqi documents that verifies collaboration between Saddam's regime and Osama bin Laden.

by Donald Sensing, 3/23/2004 06:51:00 PM. Permalink |

Married Roman Catholic priests - yes, there are some
Commenter Seamole points out something I sure didn't know:

Beginning in 1980, under a special pastoral provision, the Catholic Church has let traditionalist Episcopal parishes convert en masse, minister and congregation both, to Catholicism. The minister becomes a Catholic priest who is allowed to remain married. A special liturgy was created, the Anglican Use, to service the congregations, and they were allowed to keep their 1940 Episcopal hymnals.

I find that fascinating. It needs to be recognized that of all American denominations, the Episcopal Church is closest to the Roman Catholic Church in theology and liturgy. The Episcopalians are basically the "American wing" of the Anglican church, which itself was formed from political rebellion by Henry VIII against the pope. But the apple didn't fall far from the tree.

by Donald Sensing, 3/22/2004 09:34:00 PM. Permalink |

"Education" lottery puts schools in red
The "education" lottery that Tennessee voters fell for in 2002 will cost state-supported colleges and universities millions of dollars in overhead, money that by law cannot be paid from lottery proceeds.

Bob Adams, vice chancellor of the Tennessee Board of Regents, which oversees the schools, said the schools,

"... will just have to reallocate some of their tuition income to setting those positions up.

Adams said the entire TBR system would probably have to add 40 full-time positions. The $1.2 million necessary for the administration of lottery scholarships includes part-time and graduate assistants’ positions.

That's just this year; salaries and office costs will have to be paid every year. But wait! There's more! Dr. David Foote, an assistant professor for management and marketing at Middle Tennessee State University, saad,

... because all the [lottery-paid] scholarship funding is going to tuition support and does not change the university's income, MTSU would have to come up with the additional money to hire staff for the scholarship program administration.

The lottery requires that students receiving a scholarship maintain a 2.75 GPA in the first semester and a 3.0 GPA in consecutive years.

"[This] means somebody has to keep up with their … scholarships and what their GPAs are and those falling below the required level and so forth,” Foote said. "It’s going to take extra people working in both the business office and in the records office in order to track all this information that’s needed to make sure that the right students have the scholarships and those who have fallen out of the standards dont continue to get the scholarships and also people just to do the bookkeeping that's associated with the funding."

Guess where the money to pay higher overhead costs is going to come from? Can you say, "higher taxes?" We told 'em, we told 'em we told 'em, but did they listen? Noooooooooooo. . . .

Why can't the new overhead costs be paid from lottery sales? Because the voters actually amended the state's constitution to bring in the lottery. Now the constitution itself specifies what the lottery's revenues can be used for, and these costs are excluded.

by Donald Sensing, 3/22/2004 08:54:00 PM. Permalink |

D-Link computer gear is la crapola
And the company stinks, too

I've spent an inordinate amount of time attempting to install a wireless internet connection in my home, using a D-Link DI-524 wireless broadband router. In fact, I've used two of them., with no success.

Just to set the scene, connecting up a wireless router is very simple. You connect the power to the router, unplug the ethernet cable from the 10/100 card in your computer and plug it into the WAN port on the router. Then you take a new ethernet cable and plug it into a port on the router and the other end into the computer's 10/100 card. Voila.

Then there is some configuration work of the router done through your web browser (the router has an IP address to access it) and - in theory - that's it.

Problem is, neither of the D-Link routers I installed ever recognized the fact that they were connected to the cable modem. The WAN-connection light never lit. I repeated the installation steps more than two dozen times, never with any different outcome. I punched the router's reset button. Nothing worked. the routers never detected the cable modem's presence through the 10/100 cable. Yet the cable worked fine when plugged into the 10/100 card and internet access was super.

So I called D-Link's 24-hour tech support number. Toll free, I'll give them credit. But their entire telephone tech support for this equipment consists of a recording telling you to look it up on their web site. Click.

So back it goes to Best Buy, again. I don't have the time for engineering. If it doesn't work out of the box, I'm done with it. But it'll be a cold day in a hot place before I buy another D-Link product.

by Donald Sensing, 3/22/2004 08:10:00 PM. Permalink |

Arafat pronounces The Passion of the Christ "not anti-Semitic"
Reuters reports,

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat watched Mel Gibsons's controversial "Passion of the Christ" at a private screening on Saturday and said it was not anti-Semitic, officials said.

He watched the film -- which Jewish groups say may foment anti-Semitic attacks -- with Palestinian Muslim and Christian leaders at his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

"The president did not feel the film was anti-Semitic," said Hanan Ashrawi, a prominent Palestinian Christian who watched it with him