Linkagery for 2-28-05

Some "things you won't see on CNN." Interesting stuff!

Thousands of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles are missing, mostly old Soviet SA-7s, but also a substantial number of American Stinger missiles. When I was on the staff of XVIII Airborne Corps in the mid-1980s, we sent an aviation brigade to support Operation Earnest Will, a right-of-passage operation in the Persian Gulf, oriented against Iran, which was threatening oil tanker. We recovered some Stinger missiles from Iranian hands and quickly determined they had been provided originally to Afghan mujahedin fighting the Soviets.

Color photography was invented by the Lumieres of France in 1903, and here's a page of a number of color shots made in World War One. Fascinating! HT: R. Heddleson.

Norm Geras probes the problems with the concept of international law, and there are many.

An extremely idiotic essay of such profound witlessness that it almost beggars description: "Iraq, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, And The Couch Potato’s Burden: A Muscular Centrist Attack On The Pro-War Position," Copyright © by Dan Schneider, 2/25/05. It's hard to critique this haphazard ramble on reasonable grounds because it has such little reason beind it.

For my fellow United Methodists, Locusts and Honey provides a weekly roundup of what Methodist bloggers are blogging.

The Chicago Boyz explore "The Left and Evolution."

Superficially, leftists appear to embrace evolutionary theory to such an extent that most creationists believe that evolutionary theory is itself just a pseudoscientific construction of the Left -- used to advance their political power, social authority and intellectual dominance. It is easy to see where they get that impression. For the last 150 years, the Left has used evolution to undercut the authority of religion and tradition. By attacking the fundamental cosmology of religion they have sought to drive religious authority from the public and intellectual spheres. Once religion and tradition are discredited, the only source of answers for life dilemmas is -- surprise, surprise -- the secular intellectual.

However, the Left's embrace of evolutionary theory begins and ends with its utility as a materialistic explanation for the origins of humanity. In every other aspect they violently reject evolutionary theory as having any explanatory power. One need to look no further than the savaging of Harvard president Larry Summers to see this hypocrisy in action.

Interesting point, and an essay worth reading.

Steven Weiss emails about www.CampusJ.com, "aiming to provide comprehensive coverage of Jewish news on campus, as well as training and opportunities to a new generation of Jewish journalists. It works by having a network of students running individual blogs for their specific campus, as well as a main blog meant to cover campuses we don't have and direct readers to larger items and themes across our site." Check it out!

Persecution of Christians in Eritrea: "More than 100 children aged between two and 18 were rounded up by a group of policemen as they were in their Christian classes, a UK-based human rights charity group reported Wednesday."

Chuck Simmins has completed his three-part essay entitled: "China:What the Future May Hold." Part One; Part Two; Part Three.

Labels: Science

by Donald Sensing, 2/28/2005 08:48:00 PM. Permalink |

The invention of air forces
A joint post with son Thomas Sensing

About seven weeks ago I wrote an essay about the invention of air-to-air combat during World War One, intending to post it here. My son, Thomas, read it and mentioned that one of his class assignments was to write an essay on a historical event or development of the twentieth century. He decided to springboard off my essay, so I withheld posting it.

They turned out to be related, but with different emphases. First is Thomas' essay, then mine. A little of the material is duplicated, but not much.
------------

From Possibility to Necessity: Airpower of World War I

On 17 December 1903, a momentous occasion took place that proved to forever change to way the world would look at warfare: Orville and Wilbur Wright flew the first mechanical aeroplane successfully. Though the flight lasted only twelve seconds and traveled a mere 120 feet, it was an eye-opener for the world. The possibility of mastering a heavier-than-air machine might have seemed too supernatural or inconceivable to some. Yet it need not have been, given the period of huge industrial and technological advancement.

The Wright brothers could never have foreseen the uses of their radical invention in the conflict that became known as the Great War. They thought the airplane would prevent nations from warring with one another. In actuality, it only added another dimension to the battlefield. The idea of using the aeroplane for military purposes was prophetically expressed by Brigadier General Arthur Murray, chief of the Army’s coast artillery, who said, “War on land and sea will find in the aeroplane a valuable means of reconnaissance and possible carnage.” At the onset of the First World War, the belligerent nations had barely tapped into the offensive capabilities of the airplane, whereas the pressures of the war itself caused aircraft weaponry to dramatically improve, and created the opportunity for many young pilots to gain national fame.

Much to the Wright brothers’ disappointment, their invention did not take flight in any sort of government or military installation until 1907. On 1 August 1907, the Aeronautical Division of the United States Army Signal Corps was established, with the purpose of “[studying] the flying machine and the possibility of adapting it to military purposes.” Yet this almost proved to be too little too late. Europe had already jumped at the prospects of an airplane. France already had a specifically-designed military aircraft by 1908. Congress called for bidders of a flying machine with the following specifications: a minimum speed of forty mph in air, with a ten percent penalty per one mph less and a ten percent bonus for every mph over the original forty. The airplane was required to carry two passengers weighing a total of 350 pounds for 125 miles, and be able to fly nonstop for one hour.

To no one’s dismay, the Wright brothers were awarded the contract of $25,000 in February 1908, their first sale to any country. The first Wright brothers’ Army airplane weighed 1,360 pounds, had a 25-horsepower engine, and two wide-blade pusher propellers (meaning that the propellers were situated behind the pilot and therefore “pushed” the plane). It had parallel skids – no wheels – and required a 1,500 lb counterweight and launching track to lift off (Cooke 5).

The survival of the Aeronautics Division in the United States looked bleak. By the summer of 1910, it consisted of only 11 men, who at times had to pay for gasoline out of their own pockets in order to fuel their solitary airplane. The Army’s lack of enthusiasm was well be summed up by the view from Capitol Hill: “What’s all this fuss about an airplane in the army?” one Congressman reportedly grumbled. “I thought we already had one.” The United States made only marginal military use of the airplane. During the Mexican Revolution that began in 1911, the United States military stationed one plane at the border to perform reconnaissance and collect intelligence.

While the United States was retarding its efforts in the field that it had founded, European countries were charging ahead. An event in 1911 proved, even to skeptics, that the airplane was here to stay. Italy was in a war with the Turks, and for this war, it utilized the airplane. On November 1, an Italian pilot named Lt. Gavotti flew over Arab positions and dropped by hand two bombs in the world’s first-ever bombing run. Before long, Europe had far surpassed the United States in quantity and quality of aircraft. As of 1911, among the main soon-to-be belligerents of the First World War, the number of certified pilots per country was thus: France 353, England 57, Germany 46, Italy 32, Belgium 27, and the United States coming in last with 26.

In the early stages of World War I, there were no aircraft that could be considered fighter planes. Airplanes were used to fly between headquarters as couriers and to conduct reconnaissance over enemy lines. Any aerial fighting between opposing sides was accidental, since reconnaissance pilots would always try to avoid enemy contact. On 30 August 1914, a German plane dropped four bombs on Paris in the war’s first bombing raid. It was only an annoyance to the French, but served to accelerate the competition of combat aircraft among the powers. Several primitive weapons were experimented with, such as the French flechette, which was literally a dart that the pilot threw overboard by the handfuls, hoping to score a direct hit on troops or German Zeppelins or balloons. No offensive technique provided either efficiency or effectiveness, so designers looked to a new combination with the machine gun.

The race to master the skies began in earnest. Some pilots had already been taking guns with them when they flew, but their handheld firearms required both hands to shoot, as did the plane to fly. handheld firearms were never practical. A way was needed for the pilot to be able to aim the gun simply by flying the plane; yet there was also a problem with this concept. For every tractor plane (meaning that the propeller was in the front instead of the back), the propeller was directly in the pilot’s line of sight. If he were to fire a gun through his line of sight, he would hit the propellers and promptly tumble out of the sky. A Frenchman named Roland Garros attempted to solve this problem by attaching angled steel plates at all possible points of impact, so that if a bullet were to strike the propeller it would zip off at an oblique angle. Garros and his plane were later captured by the Germans, who took the plane to the war’s premiere aviation genius, the Dutchman Anton Fokker. Fokker had offered his services to the Allied powers at the start of the war, but was turned down. He then offered his mechanical brilliance to the Germans, who eagerly employed his inventive propensity. Fokker examined Garros’ plane and promptly dismissed the plated-propeller solution. As Fokker himself related:

The technical problem was to shoot between the propeller blades, which passed a given point 2400 times a minute, because the two-bladed propeller revolved 1200 times a minute. This meant that the pilot must not pull the trigger or fire the gun as long as one of the blades was directly in front of the muzzle. Once the problem was stated, its solution came to me in a flash.

Three days later, Fokker had churned out an interrupter gear, which was the key to combining the machine gun and the plane. In essence, it allowed the plane to fire the gun, for as the pilot held down the trigger, the interrupter gear stopped the gun from firing every time the propeller blades passed before it. This amazing, yet simple, invention led to the time when Germany ruled the skies and Allied planes became known as “Fokker Fodder”.

Historian Tom Pendergast wrote, “Powerful weapons like the machine gun and poisonous gas rendered individual heroics almost obsolete. But in the air, pilots of newly designed bombers and fighters became World War I’s glamorous heroes.” At the opening of World War, the term “ace” was popular to describe anyone who excelled in a given field. The French pilot Adolphe Pegoud was the first pilot to be acclaimed as a flying ace after he shot down five German planes in 1915. Garros was also acclaimed as an ace. The British, and later the Americans, adopted the usage. Lanoe Hawker gained fame in Great Britain for destroying a shed that housed German Zeppelins. In 1915, he shot down two planes and grounded a third, for which he became the first pilot to earn the Victoria Cross. In all, Hawker had seven victories, making him Great Britain’s first ace, before he was finally brought down by Manfred von Richthofen in November 1916.

Von Richthofen was better known as the Red Baron because he had painted his plane red. This served two purposes - it warded off any friendly and satisfied his ego by allowing for any observer on the ground who witnessed a victory to properly attribute it to the Red Baron. His squadron followed suit, painting their own planes various colors and earning them the nickname the “Flying Circus.” Over the course of the war, the Red Baron brought down a staggering total of 80 planes. Von Richthofen was hailed by Germany’s national and military leaders. He wrote inspirational messages to the troops at the front, and when he was finally brought down (probably by Australian ground fire) in April 1918. His enemies buried him with full honors.

The dream of flight, dating back to mythology, was realized and made possible by the invention of the Wright brothers. The possibility of flight was made a necessity by the furnace of war. For the 11 years before First World War, advancements in aviation came nowhere close to the four years of the war. Roland Garros, captured by Germany in 1915, escaped before the war ended in 1918. Still famous for his victories of 1915, he found that the airplane had changed so much that he had to be retrained in order to fly again. (Garros was killed in action in October 1918.)

The war brought all military roles of the airplane to maturity – reconnaissance, air-to-air combat, and ground attack. It also added a new and literal dimension to the battlefield that was made an equal partner to armies and navies – war on land, sea, and finally in the air. Ever since, airplanes have become commonplace and affect the everyday lives of today’s population in a way that none could have imagined in the Great War.
--------------------------

Here is my text:

How air forces became necessary

The Wright brothers made air forces possible when they made and flew a powered airplane in 1903. Only five years later, the US Army's Signal Corps bought the service's first airplane, a Wright Flyer. In Europe, airplanes were being developed by such pioneers as Louis Bleriot, who flew solo from Calais to Dover in 1909. In Holland a young man named Anton Fokker turned 21 years old in 1911. He had a certain gift for airplane design, having built an plane he called the Spin I the year before. He built a small airplane factory in Wiesbaden, Germany, in 1912.

Spin I and Spin II were unsuccessful designs; Spin I never flew more than 100 meters at a time. Spin II flew quite well but no buyers were interested. Spin III in 1913 impressed the Germans enough to make inquiries but nothing came of them.

When World War I erupted in August 1914, Fokker offered his services to both sides at the same time (rather mercenary of him, literally). France and England declined, but the Germans snapped him up. Fokker started selling airplanes to the Kaiser?s government. In short order he took German citizenship.

The two sides began using aircraft for reconnaissance right away. By September 1914, British and French forces had been pushed to south of the Marne river in France. German commander Alexander von Kluck was ordered to encircle Paris from the east. French aerial recon sorties spotted German formations making this movement. The flyers' report reached the French commander, Gen. Joseph Joffre, who sent forces to attack the Germans. The result was the First Battle of the Marne, which marked the end of mobile warfare in the west until summer 1918, after the Americans arrived. (Year before last I posted a thought experiment of what our world would be like today if the Germans had won) the battle.

By 1915, a French flyer named Roland Garros became determined to shoot down German recon planes photographing French positions. For a long time pilots on both sides had been taking pot shots at each other with pistols and rifles, but such shooting was symbolic rather than lethal. Garros wanted to shoot at German planes from the air lethally.

Garros had come to flying by chance. He had been studying to be a concert pianist until he went to the Reims air show of 1909, where he became a total convert to aviation as his vocation. He flew from Tunisia to France in 1913 (about 500 miles) and was ironically teaching military aviation in Germany when the war broke out. He flew a plane at night to Switzerland and then made his way to France, where he joined a military squadron.

Garros knew that to bring down German recon planes required machine-gun fire that was both aimed and sustained. Both sides possessed two-seat aircraft in which the rear crewman manned a machine gun that could be fired across an arc toward the rear. But aerial victories using such guns were unobtainable. It was impossible to maneuver a plane to get in front of an enemy plane, much less long enough to shoot several hundred rounds at him. Nor would the enemy pilot cooperate by flying straight and level, of course.

Garros decided that the attacking plane had to approach the target plane from the rear by stealth. He mounted a machine gun in front of his plane's cockpit. To avoid shooting the propeller, Garros angled the gun upward. But he found that he could not effectively aim the gun and determined that the pilot's line of sight had to be parallel to the gun's line of fire. Aiming the gun would thus be done by flying the plane, simplifying the pilot's work load.

Because Garros was flying a monoplane, the gun would have to be mounted directly in front of him, where he would use its sights and could reach its trigger. The problem was that now the propeller was in the line of fire. Garros knew that because both the gun and propeller operated at high speed, most bullets by far would miss the propeller. But only one bullet could shatter the propeller, permanently ending Garros' project. In fact, it would permanently end Garros himself. So Garros decided to take advantage of the propeller's curved shape. He affixed steel plates to the propeller's rear surface, facing the gun. The plates would shield the prop from the bullets and deflect them away from the plane.

Perfecting the idea through ground testing, Garros finally developed the right thickness and shape of the deflecting plates. He took to the air. In only two weeks in March 1915, Garros gunned five German planes from the air.

Needless to say, German fliers were less thrilled than the Parisian press with Garros' new capabilities. But Garros' run of success didn't last long. Just the next month Garros' plane's fuel line was severed by German antiaircraft fire. Garros was forced to glide to land behind German lines. The Germans captured him and his plane before Garros could destroy it.

Re-enter Anton Fokker. Garros's plane was turned over to him with orders to duplicate the deflector plates for mass installation on German planes. Fokker examined the plates closely and immediately rejected the whole notion. He knew that plates or no, the wooden propellers then used would eventually shatter from repeated bullet strikes.

In only 48 hours Fokker devised and installed on a Fokker E-1 plane (the Eindecker monoplane) a simple, cam-driven mechanism that linked the propeller shaft to the trigger mechanism of a Parabellum machine gun Fokker mounted on the plane. The gun would fire as long as the pilot was pulling the trigger. But every time the propeller passed in front of the gun, the cam would interrupt the firing. Once the prop passed, so did the cam and the gun resumed firing. The pilot would never know the difference.

Ironically, the French airplane designer Raymond Saulnier had been working on a similar design before the war. Garros consulted him before using the deflector plates. Saulnier, however, had abandoned his research chiefly because the Hotchkiss guns the French used fired too erratically to be practical or safe for aerial use. Saulnier assisted Garros in developing the deflector plates together.

The German Parabellum gun Fokker used for his proof-of-concept design proved unsuitable for mass modification to the design, but it did prove Fokker's design of an interrupter gear would work. The proof, however, was made only with difficulty to skeptical German officers. They told Fokker that he would have to shoot down a French plane with the Eindecker. Fokker took off and found a lumbering French observation plane. But in disgust he turned away, landed, and told the Germans to shoot down a plane themselves.

On Aug. 1, 1915, Lieutenant Oswald Boelcke shot down a plane using the Eindecker Fokker had modified. At that, the German air force placed orders for many Eindeckers equipped with Fokker?s interrupter gear. When the aircraft began flying combat missions they were so successful in shooting down British and French aircraft that the next several months became known as the Fokker Scourge. In fact, though, the Eindecker was not a very good airplane. Fokker had actually designed it by copying the French Morane-Saulnier plane, but the French plane was still much better. Fokker's interrupter gear was far from perfect, too. Oswald Boelcke's gun actually did shatter his propeller during a fight; he lived to fly another day.

The allied air forces reacted quickly. The Eindecker's demise as the king of air combat was brought about by four allied planes. Three were British "pushers," with rear-mounted engines; their props pushed rather than pulled the planes. This design completely eliminated the problem the interrupter gear solved because the propeller was behind both gun and pilot. The fourth plane was the French Nieuport 11 biplane. It carried a gun mounted on its top wing, firing over the propeller.

Air-to-air combat was thus born. Later the allied air forces perfected an interrupter gear themselves and true fighter aircraft dominated the skies. The invention of the airplane made air forces possible, but the invention of the interrupter gear made them compulsory. It was air-ro-air combat that defined the air forces' missions and budgets during the war, even though ATA combat was (and remains) a secondary mission of supporting aerial reconnaissance and ground attack.

by Donald Sensing, 2/28/2005 08:13:00 PM. Permalink |

Back online tonight
I've been too busy with other work and obligations to post since Thursday, but will be online tonight. Thanks to those who have sent me links; I'll at least post them tonight and hope to comment on some as well.

Labels: Science

by Donald Sensing, 2/27/2005 01:23:00 PM. Permalink |

US is negotiating with Iraqi insurgents
Time magazine reports that "back channel" negotiations between American military authorities and Baathist insurgent leaders have been going on for some time.

Lieut. Colonel Rick Welch, the senior special-operations civil-military affairs adviser to the commanding general of the 1st Cavalry Division in Baghdad, put word out that the military was willing to talk to hard-liners about their grievances and that, as Welch says, "the door is not closed, except for some very top regime guys." Welch, a reservist and prosecutor from Morgan County, Ohio, told TIME, "I don't meet all the insurgent leaders, but I've met some of them." Although not an authorized negotiator, Welch has become a back channel in the nascent U.S. dialogue with the insurgents. Insurgent negotiators confirm to TIME that they have met with Welch.

Note that the insurgents are not Islamists, they are secular "dead enders" from Saddam's political apparatus. In fact, Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi's al-Qaeda in Iraq organization has vowed to kill any Baathists who abandon the insurgency. This vow has probably slowed the process of negotiations, for there appears to be a lack of will to continue the fight on the part if the Baathist insurgents.

What do the insurgents want? Top insurgent field commanders and negotiators informed TIME that the rebels have told diplomats and military officers that they support a secular democracy in Iraq but resent the prospect of a government run by exiles who fled to Iran and the West during Saddam's regime. The insurgents also seek a guaranteed timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal, a demand the U.S. refuses. But there are some hints of compromise: insurgent negotiators have told their U.S. counterparts they would accept a U.N. peacekeeping force as the U.S. troop presence recedes. Insurgent representative Abu Mohammed says the nationalists would even tolerate U.S. bases on Iraqi soil. "We don't mind if the invader becomes a guest," he says, suggesting a situation akin to the U.S. military presence in Germany and Japan.

These are all opening gambits, and if the negotiations ever bring the Baathist insurgency wing to a halt, it won't be soon.

However, the newly elected Iraqi government is not at all inclined to barter with the Baathists.

"The voters gave us a mandate to attack these insurgents, not negotiate with them," says Humam Bakr Hammoudi, a political strategist for the dominant SCIRI party. U.S. negotiators say they believe the new government will eventually realize that only a political settlement will subdue the insurgency--which may soon direct its wrath at the new Iraqi rulers if it believes its interests are being ignored.

Of course, some will argue that neither the US nor the Iraqi government should negotiate with the Baathists. Many of the newly elected members of the government were persecuted when the Baathists were in power. Those memories will die hard.

Yet negotiating the end of the Baathist insurgency may be the best chance for defeating our main enemy, Islamism. Baathism is a form of socialism, not Islamism, and as socialists the party could have a place in new Iraqi politics - if it in deeds, not mere words, renounces violence as its instrument. That's a mighty big if, of course, but we should be encourage that the Baathists seem to have concluded that they cannot win militarily against the United States, and are convinced that America's will is strong enough to see the fight through to victory.

A negotiated end to the Baathist insurgency would also have the salutary effect of isolating the Islamist terrorists even more. The Baathists are under no illusions that they and al Qaeda are actually allies. Their joint operations are marriages of convenience; they each actually despise one another. Nor are the Baathists unaware that al Qaeda in Iraq is not fighting there in order to return the Baathist party to power. Al Qaeda is fighting to seize power, and if they do (not very likely) their first deadly purge will be directed at the Baathists.

In a statement of Feb. 11, 2003, broadcast on al Jazeera TV, Osama bin Laden said,

Socialists are infidels wherever they are. . . [but] it does not hurt that in current circumstances, the interests of Muslims coincide with the interests of the socialists in the war against crusaders.

I wrote in September 2003:

But bin Laden’s goal in Iraq is not to save Saddam, it is to kill Americans so that they will leave. If al Qaeda can fight the Americans there while gaining an ever-stronger presence in Iraq, they believe they will be in a position to establish a pure Islamic state in Iraq when the Americans leave. Whether Saddam is presently alive or dead does not matter to al Qaeda. They are not fighting for him to retake the reins of government there, but so that they can do so.

Substitute "Baathism" for "Saddam," and it's just as true today. Another advantage to negotiating with the Baathists is that they surely have much invaluable information about the Islamists. Let me repeat: our main enemy is Islamism, not Baathism, even though we certainly should consider Baathism a threat until its surviving adherents in Iraq prove otherwise.

But there are many, many hurdles, the most difficult doubtless being the question of amnesty. It is not simply terrorist acts of insurgency that Baathists have committed. They have a history of murder and terrorism as government policy going back at least until the 1970s. Yet the Baathists will surely never lay down their arms without some form of amnesty. Before the present Iraqi government and the Iraqi people are willing to grant some level of amnesty to the Baathists, the violence tragically may have to get much worse.

by Donald Sensing, 2/24/2005 08:49:00 PM. Permalink |

Link parking
Here are some references that I want tyo write about, and insallah will do so soon. In the meantime, read 'em!

Janet Dalety writes in the UK Telegraph, "Freedom? Why Europe's not bothered." Also read an unintentional 2003 companion piece by Father Raymond J. de Souza, a Canadian, "Rising Up From Flanders Fields: Where you stand depends in part on where your soldiers lie." Both tips via email from Thomas Holsinger.

Wretchard writes about the discussion that liberalism is out of ideas. But this is the part that caught my eye:

dogmatism is rooted in relativism more than in the belief that real truth is discoverable. For as long as the truth is believed to be "out there"; it will be sought. When its existence is doubted none will venture into the dark.

Hmm.. Not sure I agree.

There's so much good stuff on Austin Bay's blog that it would be useless for me to list it. See also Belmont Club's comments on Austin's analysis of al Qaeda's plans for southeast Asia and region.

Some notes about how society shapes technology - and one would assume vice-versa.

Dennis Prager writes about Liberal Feelings vs. Judeo-Christian Values.

Steve Chapman says that the media have gone too far in the Plame case.

Labels: Science

by Donald Sensing, 2/24/2005 03:47:00 PM. Permalink |

A tsunami miracle?
Did God save 400 Christians of Meulaboh?

A friend emailed this report to me. I was skeptical at first, since it sounds like an email-driven, urban legend in the making.

We know that 80% of the town of Meulaboh in Aceh was destroyed by the Tsunami waves and 80% of the people also died. This is one of the towns that was hit the hardest. But there is a fantastic testimony from Meulaboh.

In that town are about 400 Christians.

They wanted to celebrate Christmas on December 25th but were not allowed to do so by the Muslims of Meulaboh. They were told if they wanted to celebrate Christmas they needed to go outside the city of Meulaboh on a high hill and they can celebrate Christmas there. Because the Christians desired to celebrate Christmas the 400 believers left the city on December 25th and after they celebrated Christmas they stayed overnight on the hill.

As we all know, in the morning of Sunday, December 26, 2004, there was the earthquake followed by the Tsunami waves destroying most of the city of Meulaboh and thousands were killed. The 400 believers were on the mountain and were all saved from destruction.

Now the Muslims of Meulaboh are saying that the God of the Christians punished them for forbidding the Christians from celebrating Christmas in the city. Others are questioning why so many Muslims died while not even one of the Christians died there.

Had the Christians insisted on their rights to celebrate Christmas in the city, they would have all died. But because they humbled themselves and followed the advice of the Muslims they all were spared destruction and can now testify of God's marvelous protection.

The email was purported to have come from Bill Hekman, pastor of Calvary Life Fellowship in Indonesia. Snopes says the report is false and recounts other, similar stories of the tsunami sparing Christians for one reason or another. However, Snopes did confirm that Bill Hekman is the pastor of the Fellowship.

But the web site of the Calvary Life Fellowship in Indonesia confirms the report. (It seems the site is hosted and maintained here in the States.)

We have confirmed the story via phone and email with Bill Hekman and through an Indonesian pastor who has heard the story from several persons with firsthand knowledge, as follows:

This is the account from the believers in Meulaboh. The 400 believers involved are from the Roman Catholic Church, GPIB Church and HKPB Church. They had requested permission from the District Leader (Camat), Police (POLRES) and DANDIM (Army) to celebrate Christmas in Meulaboh. They were told that since Meulaboh is under Sharia Islamic law it would better to go somewhere where there are no Moslems. So the believers left the morning of Dec. 25th and walked about 5 kms to a hill area. They were accompanied by some members of the Marine Corps who were also Christians. They celebrated Christmas the afternoon of Dec. 25th and stayed there for the night at a "Retreat". They had brought food, etc. to camp there for the night. The tsunami took place the morning of the 26th of Dec. These believers are now refugees living in Aceh Jaya.

But the part about the "members of the Marine Corps who were also Christians" makes me pause. Of course, there were no US Marines in the disaster area until well into January. There is an Indonesian Marine Corps, though, who worked with US Marines to mount relief operations. So I assume the marines who went with the worshipers to the hilltop were Indonesian.

The site also links to an account of the events written in the local language (Bahasa?).

So, what to make of this report? Snopes says one reason to be skeptical is that it has taken so long for the report to surface. But Meulaboh was accessible only by helicopter for a few weeks after the tsunami. The survivors there, including the Christians no doubt, were much more interested in getting food and water than getting word of their salvation to the international media. The Indonesian-language report was posted on Jan. 18, but of course I can't verify its narrative. An English account is dated Jan. 27 (Word doc online).

So here's the tally: Snopes says "false," but admits it hasn't spoken to anyone on the scene. The US-based affiliate of the Fellowship says it confirmed the account with Pastor Hekman, whom all agree really is the man on the scene.

It seems to me that Snopes was a bit hasty to write this one off, perhaps in its urge to retain a reputation for skepticism, especially toward anything "miraculous," and especially again if it taints of religion. Yet, while at least some of the Fellowship's members do think the story recounts a miracle, on the face of it there is nothing supernatural.

The bare facts - what religious scholars like to call the "historical analysis" - seem to be these: After permission was denied from the government to celebrate Christmas inside the city's limits, the 400 Christians of Meulaboh went on Christmas morning to a hill about three miles from the city. They stayed there overnight - remember it is summertime in the southern hemisphere - for a spiritual retreat. The earthquake and tsunami struck that night, virtually annihilating the city, but sparing the Christians on the hilltop.

This is an entirely unobjectionable account. What makes it seem dubious is all the religious emendations overlaid it: that the Christians were spared because "they humbled themselves" and "can now testify of God's marvelous protection." Also that the Muslim survivors say that "the God of the Christians" punished them for refusing the request for in-city worship, etc.

Yet these are interpretations of the events, not accounts of the events themselves. The bare facts remain. Whether it counts as a miracle or not if for you to decide.

by Donald Sensing, 2/23/2005 07:43:00 PM. Permalink |

"The artillery lends dignity ..."
... to what would otherwise be a mere, vulgar brawl." Attributed to Frederick the Great

Chuck Pelto, this is for you!

Update: Speaking of cannons:

Hunter S. Thompson, the "gonzo journalist" with a penchant for drugs, guns and flame-thrower prose, might have one more salvo in store for everyone: Friends and relatives want to blast his ashes out of a cannon, just as he wished.

"If that's what he wanted, we'll see if we can pull it off," said historian Douglas Brinkley, a friend of Thompson's and now the family's spokesman.

Thompson, who shot himself to death at his Aspen-area home Sunday at 67, said several times he wanted an artillery send-off for his remains.

Well, it's different, I'll grant you that. HT: Max Jackson via email.

by Donald Sensing, 2/23/2005 07:36:00 PM. Permalink |

Try the Methuselah Diet!
We're fat because we go on diets

Methuselah ate what he found on his plate,
And never, as people do now,
Did he note the amount of the calorie count.
He ate it because it was chow.
He wasn’t disturbed as at dinner he sat,
Devouring a roast or a pie,
To think it was lacking in granular fat
Or a couple of vitamins shy.

He cheerfully chewed each species of food,
Unmindful of troubles or fears
Lest his health might be hurt by some fancy dessert,
And he lived over 900 years.

Prof. Ann Althouse is blogging over at GlennReynolds.com. Today she writes that Fat is sinfully complicated, with the thesis that, as Mireille Guiliano argues in French Women Don't Get Fat,

... we're fat because of our American attitude toward food. Instead of fearing the sin of overeating and atoning with dieting, we should, like the thin Frenchwoman, eat a joyous array of delectable, elegant foods. In fact, why don't you start seeing yourself as sinful because you fail to appreciate the beauty of life – you lack the French joie de vivre?

(Ann says that Jessica Siegel argues, however, that the French are thin because they smoke like fiends - which they do.)

Anyway, I can't solve the French problem, one way or another. Lord knows, the Brits have tried for lo these many centuries and they never solved the French problem, so I don't have a chance.

My contention is that Americans who try to reduce but regain the weight they lost, as most people seem to do, fail because they go on a diet.

Believe me, I know. After I retired from the Army I started seminary within four weeks. I was a fulltime student, worked full time also, and tried to make sure my three young children and wife remembered what I looked like, too. Something had to give, and what gave was PT. My daily diet slipped, too. The result is what anyone might expect: I gained weight, far too much.

I tried Atkins, I tried low fat, I tried the Type II diabetes diet a relative's doc had given him. And other diets, too. Sure, I lost weight - for awhile. Then it came back, and usually more. It took me a long time, but I finally realized that the reason I was unsuccessful was because I was on a diet.

The problem with diets is that they put certain foods off limits, at least for a time, such as breads, pasta, desserts of every kind, some kinds of meats, and so on. And they make you measure and weigh foods, not to mention weighing yourself (and who wants to do that?). But here is the real truth: there are no bad foods, there are only bad meals.

I found success when I decided that I would not weigh portions or myself. I would not measure portions to make sure I didn't eat a single pea more than a half cup. I would not place any food of limits, including ice cream and cake when, say, birthday parties came around.

I made only one vow, which proved surprisingly easy to keep. It was to ensure that the meal I was about to consume was a correct meal in nutrition and balance and portions (eyeballed, not weighed or measured). I did not give up snacks, I just changed what I snacked on. For the first two weeks I drank a small juice glass of orange juice whenever I wanted to snack. It satisfied the urge and gave me a flavor surge, but not empty calories. I drank a lot of orange juice in that time, but after two weeks or so the urge abated for OJ or anything else. And I did not embark on a PT program, either.

The result? I never got hungry and in six weeks I dropped one and a half shirt sizes and five inches in trouser size. I had to take my dress suit to Men's Wearhouse to get it cut down; it took six days and by the time I went back to pick it up it was too large again. I never found out how much weight I lost because I never weighed myself; it wasn't relevant to me. I measured success my an improved sense of well-being and by steadily wearing smaller clothes.

In honor of the anonymous poem at the beginning of this post, I call it the Methuselah Diet. Try it - it's free!

Labels: Science

by Donald Sensing, 2/23/2005 05:55:00 PM. Permalink |

Would public flogging be appropriate?
For this?

Labels: Science

by Donald Sensing, 2/23/2005 05:21:00 PM. Permalink |

The Combat Non-Infantry Badge
[See update at end] This isn't exactly new news, but the Army has just authorized an award for soldiers involved in direct combat who are not infantrymen. The award is called the Close Combat Badge. Infantrymen have had their own, unique (and highly coveted) "proof I was there" award since World War II, the Combat Infantry Badge, CIB.

Therein lies the rub. The CIB was created as a way visually to distinguish between infantry combat vets and everyone else, including infantrymen with no combat experience. In WW2, infantry troops accounted for something like 80 percent of all Army casualties. For them, all combat was close combat. For most other soldiers, service in a combat zone usually didn't involve actually getting shot at.

However, the criterion for awarding the CIB slipped in subsequent wars. I knew a CIB wearer in the early 1980s who had earned his CIB by guarding a PX in Saigon. Never fired a shot and never ducked one. An 82d Airborne Division paratrooper told me he'd received his CIB for stepping off an airplane in Grenada, sitting on the tarmac for an hour, then flying back to Fort Bragg. He said infantry commanders were rushing troops down and back because when 80 percent of an infantry unit's infantrymen wear the CIB, the unit can be designated a "combat infantry" company or battalion or whatever size unit it is. A special streamer is authorized for the flags or guidons of such units and they are quite prestigious within the infantry community.

There was a Bill Mauldin cartoon in which the company clerk is explaining to the company medic - a beaten, bedraggled, unshaven, exhausted man with months on the front line - "The reason you don't get combat pay is because you don't fight." Being a medic assigned to an infantry unit has long been recognized as perhaps the most hazardous assignment in the Army. For that reason the Army authorized the Combat Medic Badge, awarded to medical personnel who were assigned to or attached to a medical detachment of the infantry.

Then came Iraq, when the old, familiar front lines disappeared. Support soldiers had always had some risk of direct combat, but in Iraq close combat became routine for everyone; the bad guys attack all kinds of units, not just infantry. Not only that, but many non-infantry units in Iraq were assigned the same kinds of missions that infantry units were assigned, such as patrolling to root out insurgents, area security operations and direct attack. The support troops have taken many casualties conducting these missions.

Hence the creation of the Close Combat Badge, denoting non-infantry soldiers who engage in direct combat. But not all non-infantry soldiers.

The Army will award the CCB to Armor, Cavalry, Combat Engineer, and Field Artillery Soldiers in Military Occupational Specialties or corresponding officer branch/specialties recognized as having a high probability to routinely engage in direct combat, and they must be assigned or attached to an Army unit of brigade or below that is purposefully organized to routinely conduct close combat operations and engage in direct combat in accordance with existing rules and policy.

The CCB will be presented only to eligible Soldiers who are personally present and under fire while engaged in active ground combat, to close with and destroy the enemy with direct fires. (link)

So the truck drivers who fought their way through roadblocks are excluded.

IMO, the Army has gotten carried away with combat recognition. Any soldier who serves in a designated combat zone is authorized to wear the unit patch of his/her assignment on the right shoulder forevermore. Now, in addition, we have three different badges to denote exposure to enemy fire (plus the Purple Heart, which sort of proves the case). We are salami-slicing the character of service among our soldiers too thinly. I say keep the right-shoulder patch tradition, ditch all the badges and when any soldier of any specialty engages in direct combat, do what the Marines do - give 'em a combat action ribbon, and let it go at that.

The principal eligibility criterion is that the individual must have participated in a bona fide ground or surface combat fire fight or action during which he was under enemy fire and his performance while under fire was satisfactory.

Why we need anything more complicated than that, I don't know.

Update: I knew an infantry first sergeant who had been awarded the CIB for Vietnam combat. He always wore the Expert Infantry Badge instead. The EIB is the same as the CIB, but has no wreath. The top said that he wore the EIB because it was harder to earn and denoted true infantry expertise. Does he have a point? Here's a Fort Bragg Paraglide article on what is required to earn the EIB, and for the truly detail oriented among you, the US Army infantry web site has a 90-page, Word 97 document that tells you everything you need to know.

I have always had the suspicion that the CIB is so highly coveted because it is a very attractive, handsome badge and stands out on the class A uniform. I bet that if the Army took the wreath away from the CIB and gave it to the EIB, the prestige pecking order would change, too.

Update 2: Reader Max J. emails:

I'm sure you've heard this from other infantrymen before, but I was far more proud of my EIB than I was of the CIB. Every infantry soldier was awarded the CIB for time in country (in Afghanistan that was how I understood it. I may be wrong but our injured mail-man "earned" one). So regardless of combat experience or skill they were authorized to wear a badge that should be the mark of ultimate respect. The EIB (in my opinion) designates far greater achievement than the CIB. Unfortunately, the CIB trumps the EIB on the uniform, and there is no distinction for those individuals who were capable of mastering all of the skills required of the infantry.

Having been an artilleryman, I don't have a personal dog in the CIB/EIB hunt, but I still say the Army has gotten too badge happy overall.

by Donald Sensing, 2/22/2005 07:49:00 PM. Permalink |

"A Company of Soldiers"
I just got an email reminding me of this Frontline show:

The film A COMPANY OF SOLDIERS will be broadcast tonight (February 22) on PBS at 9 PM EST (check local listings). It is the soldiers' story of fighting in Iraq - a month in the life of the 1st Battalion of the 8th Cavalry stationed in South Baghdad. It was shot last November during one of the most dangerous times for that unit.

FRONTLINE reports from inside the U.S. Army's 8th Cavalry Regiment stationed in Baghdad for an up-close, intimate look at the dangers
facing an American military unit in Iraq. Shot in the weeks following the U.S. presidential election, the film tracks the day-to-day challenges facing the 8th Cavalry's Dog Company as it suddenly has to cope with a dramatic increase in attacks by the insurgents.

More details on Frontline's web page.

by Donald Sensing, 2/22/2005 07:32:00 PM. Permalink |

Grave of the Apostle Paul found?
Stones Cry Out reports,

The Vatican will make a public announcement soon that archeologists have positively identified the tomb of St. Paul the apostle, according to Catholic World News.

Catholic World News reports,

A sarcophagus which may contain the remains of St. Paul was identified in the basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, reports Giorgio Filippi, an archeology specialist with the Vatican Museums. The sarcophagus was discovered during the excavations carried out in 2002 and 2003 around the basilica, which is located in the south of Rome. Having reached what they believe is a positive identification of the tomb, Vatican experts will soon make a public announcement of their discovery.

SCO's writer is not at all convinced that the discovery is a good thing, religiously speaking, even if it is incontrovertible. Interesting points, and good ones.

by Donald Sensing, 2/21/2005 10:30:00 PM. Permalink |

School kids send soldiers vicious letters
The NY Post reports that some soldiers in Iraq received school kids' letters "strewn with politically charged rhetoric, vicious accusations and demoralizing predictions that only a handful of soldiers would leave the Iraq war alive." Pfc. Ron Jacobs got one.

One Muslim boy wrote: "Even thoe [sic] you are risking your life for our country, have you seen how many civilians you or some other soldier killed?"

His letter, which was stamped with a smiley face, went on: "I know your [sic] trying to save our country and kill the terrorists but you are also destroying holy places like Mosques."

Most of the 21 letters Jacobs provided to The Post mentioned some support for the armed forces, if not the Iraq war, and thanked him for his service. But nine of the students made clear their distaste for the president or the war.

The letters were written as a social-studies assignment [of a middle school class].

The school's principal responded to queries thus:

"While we would never censor anything that our children write, we sincerely apologize for forwarding letters that were in any way inappropriate to Pfc. Jacobs. This assignment was not intended to be insensitive, but to be supportive of the men and women in service to our nation."

So why wouldn't he censor? The assignment was to write "supportive" letters to troops. Presumably, the teacher read what the children wrote as he would read any other assignment. So did the writers of the vicious letters get a failing grade for not being supportive? Why were those letters mailed? This is pretty ratty.

Labels: Science

by Donald Sensing, 2/21/2005 10:15:00 PM. Permalink |

The conversion collision
Blogging was light earlier this evening because I spent hours trying to convert three long WordPerfect 10 documents to Words 2003. Here are steps that do not work:

1. Attempt to open the WP file with Word. A WordPerfect conversion utility is not native to Word. Word cues you to place the Word CD in the drive so it can load it. It lies. The file needed is STD11N.MSI, which does not exist, even on the Microsoft's Word support web page. Word utilities for converting WordPerfect only extend through WP's version 5.6, which as I recall was a DOS-based version of WordPerfect.

2. Save the WP document as a Word document. WP10 only offers a "save as" utility up to Word 2000, which is naturally no problem for Word 2003 to read. But if you have document features like footnotes, footers and changed text formatting, don't count on those features exporting cleanly. Mine didn't.

3. The old fashioned way - copy and paste. I eventually wound up copying the WordPerfect's text into Notepad, then recopying that into Word. That way none of WordPerfect's format codes got dragged along - Word seriously dislikes WordPerfect codes. This method was very slow, especially since I had to manually restore the footnotes.

If you're really interested in this, here's a former MS-Word technician who explains it in gory detail.

Frankly, I hate Word passionately. I wrote in 2003 why - agreeing with Glenn Reynolds that I'll give up WordPerfect when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers. And as I linked then, Word buries user data inside the document that can be retrieved by others. WordPerfect is simply a superior product.

by Donald Sensing, 2/21/2005 09:44:00 PM. Permalink |

Blog focusing on the UN
Peter Daou has started a new blog called UN Dispatch.Via email, he explains,

[T]here's a very narrow range of UN-related content on blogs, virtually all of it associated with controversies such as Oil-for-Food. There's little discussion of the wide range of humanitarian work performed by UN bodies, everything from measles initiatives to Tsunami relief to global environmental issues to women's rights.

Helping children in need, working for a healthier environment, leading disaster relief efforts around the globe, these are not partisan issues, and I believe that stepping up to defend the UN's works in these areas is the right thing to do. I'm aware that UN Dispatch will be the target of criticism by opponents of the UN. I welcome a vigorous debate, and invite everyone on this list to be part of the discussion.

You can see from the UN Dispatch blogroll - which will continue to expand - that this is not about "discrediting conservative critics," as the above-mentioned sources allege, but about engaging in a wide-ranging and productive debate. The blog was launched earlier this month and will soon be open for reader comments.

Drop on by and see what you think. (Hint to new blog writers: if you email bloggers asking them to publicize your new blog, it would be a good idea to put them on your Blogroll before asking.)

by Donald Sensing, 2/21/2005 05:57:00 PM. Permalink |

Linkagery, 2-21-05

Frontline has an excellent online series called, "Al Qaeda's New Front," posted less than a month ago. The online videos are very good, expecially the one about the ideological base. Chilling.

A blogger using the nom de blog of USMC Vet notes,

Though not many bothered to take note, the potential impact of MSNBC’s Connected Coast to Coast was there for anyone to see - even before it went to air on its first broadcast day this past Tuesday. After an eight-broadcast, four-day premiere week, however, more and more media observers are beginning to take note: Connected Coast to Coast is a catalyst to a sea change in broadcast media news coverage.

And he explains why.

Pro-Bush demonstrations are being organzied In Mainz. Germany, in preparation for Bush's visit to Germany. To no on'e surprise, David Kaspar is in the middle of it. The flyers organizers are distributing call for renewal of German-American friendship. Example (PDF).

Thomas Friedman:

The fact that the extremists and autocrats have had to resort now to unspeakable violence shows how much they have failed to win the war of ideas on the Arab street. But the emerging progressive forces still have to prove that they can build a different politics around united national communities, not a balance of sects, and solidarity from shared aspiration, not a shared external enemy.

The Washington Post explores the bleak future of traditional newspapers and other print news media.

"Print is dead," Sports Illustrated President John Squires told a room full of newspaper and magazine circulation executives at a conference in Toronto in November. His advice? "Get over it," meaning publishers should stop trying to save their ink-on-paper product and focus on electronic delivery of their journalism.

HT: Bill Hobbs.

Spirit of America is advertising to fill some important, high-powered positions. Maybe one of them is for you!

Charles Simmins, famous for updating the tsunami stingy list, has a three-part series on China's future. Says Charles, bleakly, "My thesis is that China must go to war. It's current economy and the "Middle Kingdon" thinking of its rulers do not permit any other solution."

College Tree Publishing says,

We contacted hundreds of university and college conservative and liberal groups, political science departments, and university news papers and requested essay submissions from people in the 17 to 25 year old age group on political and social issues. The end result was What We Think: Young Voters Speak Out, which was put out nationally in late October. The book was meant to be a running forum for political expression of America's youngest voting demographic, and in that regard has been a success. Since the book was published in October, the book has already received national press on CNN, MSNBC, an hour long special on CSPAN-Book TV and has been nominated for the Franklin Award.

We are a non-partisan company possessing a Republican, Democrat and Libertarian leaning editor, trying to give fair and equal voice to all ideologies present among college age youth. We are currently accepting submissions for our next two books, What We Think 2 and What We Think About God and looking to increase the number of well written pieces. Our goal is to receive 10,000 submissions from now through summer, and to publish the top 200 to 300 in late third quarter.

If you are 17-25, send 'em an essay!

Labels: Science

by Donald Sensing, 2/21/2005 05:12:00 PM. Permalink |

Hot deal on LCD monitors
While in Staples today shopping for school supplies, I discovered that the Proview 913S, 19-inch LCD monitor is $150 off for Presidents Day. This is a no-rebate sale price, which means you don't to wait forever to get the discount and don't pay sales tax on the full-retail price. Here in Tennessee, that's matters - we have a 9.25 percent sales tax rate.

The specs look good - .297 dot pitch (pretty much the standard for 19-inch models) and .16ms refresh, up to 75 Hz. I think those specs are somewhat better than the usual for 19-inchers. Anyone who watches DVDs on the computer should pay attention to the refresh rate. Longer than 16ms is considered too slow for DVDs, from what I have read.

Proview is made by the same company that makes MagInnovision.

There's also a great deal on Amazon for an Acer AL1912, 19-inch monitor, too - $312 including shipping.

Prices on this size LCDs have really dropped - CompUSA had a 17-inch model on sale for $149 after rebates, but the offer was good for only six hours yesterday.

Labels: Science

by Donald Sensing, 2/21/2005 04:44:00 PM. Permalink |

This blog for sale
I am now accepting bids for the sale of this blog. Based on the number of unique visitors here last month, the minimum offer I will entertain is $1,150,000. Here's why.

by Donald Sensing, 2/19/2005 10:15:00 PM. Permalink |

Hillary Clinton: Iraq is "functioning quite well"
Junior New York senator also says suicide attacks are sign the insurgency is failing

Austin bay, an Army Reserve Iraq veteran and syndicated columnist, offers much deeper insights than I can. It's not what Hillary said that he focuses on so much as how right she is, and why.

Saddam’s buddies and Zarqawi’s klan were actually weak enemies –"brittle” is the word I used to describe them at a senior planning meeting. Their local power was based on inimidation–killing by car bomb, murdering in the street. Their strategic power was based solely on selling the false impression of nation-wide instability– selling post-Saddam Iraq as a dysfunctional failed-state rather than an emerging democracy .

Read the whole thing.

by Donald Sensing, 2/19/2005 05:27:00 PM. Permalink |

Fallujah battle film online
A soldier-produced video of the Battle of Fallujah is online. It was compiled from photos and videos taken by soldiers actually fighting the battle, the troops of the Army's Task Force 2-2 Infantry. I found in on Armor Geddon, whose Iraq-stationed author Redsix adds,

The soldiers of Avenger Company collected this footage with their digital cameras. Sometimes I just held my PVS 14s [night-vision scope - DS] up against the lens of the camera for the night footage. In his free time, SPC [Ronald] Camp has assembled the footage and the mp3s into this collage of carnage.

There is a music soundtrack overlaid on the entire video, which Redsix names as,

Sepultera(I think that's how you say it or spell it)
Crystal Method: Trip Like I Do, Name of the Game
Fatboy Slim/Steppenwolfe: Magic Carpet Ride

The video is 6:57 long and is engrossing. Download instruction via Torrent (I highly recommend using it) are here.

Endnote: For non-military readers, a task force is a battalion-size unit under the command of a lieutenant colonel, so called because its component units are assigned based on the mission, or task, the commander is assigned to accomplish. TF 2-2 Infantry means that the commander and the majority of the sub-units are permanently assigned to 2d Battatlion, 2d Infantry Regiment. Typically, an infantry task force will have two companies of infantry, one company of tanks and platoons or detachments of other specialties as necessary, such as engineers. There will also be a headquarters company for the staff and support. Task forces are organized within brigades, so the third company of infantry permanently assigned to 2-2 Infantry will be tasked off (sometimes called, "sliced") to a tank battalion. Hence there will be armor-heavy task forces and infantry-heavy task forces. (NB: I retired from the Army 10 years ago, so there may be four fighting companies per battalion now rather than three, but task organization still works as I described.)

by Donald Sensing, 2/19/2005 04:52:00 PM. Permalink |

Where Iraqis would not smoke or drink, and why
Lt. Col. Mark Smith, USMC, commanding in Iraq, writes about the aftermath of election day there in his forward operating base (FOB):

[H]undreds of the Iraqi election officials were aboard our FOB, St. Michael, as we achieved election set. We closed our chow hall and turned it into a lounge for them. Something occurred in that lounge that you all MUST know about. The Iraqis, as is their custom, set about drinking sodas, smoking cigarettes and talking in the loud and demonstrative tones they are accustomed to. Except for one spot. There was one spot in our chow hall where they would not smoke, they would not drink, they would not talk. There was one spot where all they would do is stand in silent reverence. That spot...our memorial table with the pictures of our heroic fallen. No, at this spot, they showed nothing but respect and honor! This was not something they were told to do, it was something that came natural to them.

I have asked myself many times why that is, and I have come to this undeniable conclusion: for they were bound with those Marines who gave their last full measure of devotion on the battlefields of Iraq not by religion, not by race, not by color, not by creed, not by custom, not by culture, not by anything one can think of save one thing: they were bound with those Marines as FREE MEN AND WOMEN. And, you see, FREE MEN AND WOMEN can disagree, but cannot hate! In this simple truth is the cause of Operation Iraqi Freedom. In this simple truth, we press on. In this simple truth, Cpl Brian Prenning, Cpl Robert Warns, Cpl Nathaniel Hammond, Cpl Peter Giannopolous, LCpl Branden Ramey, LCpl Daniel Wyatt, LCpl Richard Warner, LCpl Shane O'Donnell, PFC Ryan Cantafio, and PFC Brent Vroman gave their lives. That in bringing freedom to the world, hate will vanquish, and YOU, the ones the loved so dear, will live on free: free of fear, free of opression, free of tyranny and God Almighty in Heaven willing, free of War!

Nothing more to say.

by Donald Sensing, 2/18/2005 09:03:00 PM. Permalink |

Speaking of Marines . . .
... here's one starring in a MasterCard commercial gone wrong (and how).

Labels: Science

by Donald Sensing, 2/18/2005 09:02:00 PM. Permalink |

Today is anniversary of Iwo Jima invasion
On this date in 1945, US Marines landed on a volcanic rock of only eight square miles, Iwo Jima. It was the first home island of Japan to be invaded, being in Japanese law actually part of Tokyo. The island's dominating terrain was the volcano, Mt. Suribachi, where Marines clawed their way to the top and raised a flag.



As most history buffs know, this famous photo by UPI photographer Joe Rosenthal is a shot of the second flag raised on Suribachi. The first flag stayed aloft only a short time. It was replaced with this much larger flag because the first flag was too small to be seen well across the island and because the Marine regimental commander wanted to protect it for the regimental archives; he said at the time that if he didn't retrieve the first flag, it would wind up in the secretary of the Navy's office.

The Marines landed in mid-morning of Feb. 19 local time (the 18th in the US). For an hour the Japanese held their fire, then pounded the beach with all manner of arms from machine guns to mortars to light and heavy artillery. The volcanic soil was too loose to dig foxholes; the sides would collapse after only a few inches of depth. In a short time, the beach was a scene of carnage. Casualties were heavy.



There was no cover from Japanese fire which rained down on the landing force from Suribachi and the rest of the island. Death was literally in the air.

"Easy Company started with 310 men. We suffered 75% casualties. Only 50 men boarded the ship after the battle. Seven officers went into the battle with me. Only one--me--walked off Iwo." Captain Dave Severance, Commander of Easy Company, whose Marines a corpsman raised the flag.

Constantly under heavy fire, the Marines moved inland by dint of pure courage.



The objective in assaulting the island was to seize its airfield. Many long-range B-29 bombers battle damaged over Japan and their crews were being lost in the sea on the return trip. Iwo was to be an emergency landing strip and a fighter base for escorts. By the war's end the strip had saved the lives of 30,000 airmen, more men than the 6,891 Americans killed and 18,070 wounded taking the island. The first bomber to use the airfield landed on March 4 while the battle still raged. So primitive was the airfield at the time that the B-29 had to be refueled by using Marines' helmets as buckets. There was no power refueling rig on the island yet.

The Japanese commander, Lt. Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi, was probably the most respected officer in the Japanese army. He had been educated in Canada and had toured the United States extensively. He was one of a tiny number of military officers ever granted an audience with Emperor Hirohito.

Kuribayashi's tactical plan was a dramatic departure from previous Japanese practice. He forbade desperate banzai charges (the only banzai charge on Iwo, March 26, took place after Kuribayashi's death). The general also renounced giving open combat. By D-Day, he had masterminded the construction of 1,500 rooms into the volcanic rock. These were connected with many miles of tunnels. There was even a completely-equipped, underground hospital. The Japanese would fight from underground.

Artillery pieces on Suribachi were mounted on light rails behind steel doors recessed will into the mountain. After firing, the guns were wheeled back into their caves, practically impervious to American return fire.

Kuribayashi also assigned his soldiers a quota. He actually forbade them to die before they had killed either 10 Marines or one tank. He and all his troops knew they would not survive the battle, but they aimed to make American victory as costly as possible. In this they succeeded all too well.

The fighting was bitter to the end. By March 11, organized resistance ended, but fanatical Japanese soldiers fought in small teams on their own until they died. Of 22,000 Japanese on Iwo Jima, only 212 survived the battle.

Kuribayashi radioed an apology to the emperor about that time for failing to defend the island successfully, then took his own life in a cave overlooking the sea. His body was never recovered. The nighttime banzai charge of March 26 killed a number of Army Air Corps pilots in their cots, but otherwise was crushed by the Marines with their superior firepower. It marked the effective end of the fighting.

Labels: Science

by Donald Sensing, 2/18/2005 07:39:00 PM. Permalink |

A Muslim scholar looks at Islamism
Khaled Abou El Fadl, professor of Islamic law at UCLA's School of Law, wrote a fascinating and highly illuminating article, "Islam and the Theology of Power," on Islam for Today. IMO, it is a must-read for anyone seriously interested in the threat facing America today.

He relates that the classical period of Islamic civilization, culminating in the 11thy century, was marked by a high degree of discourse, a tolerance for disputation and a firm grounding in moral philosophy and principled thinking. Terrorism in classical Islamic jurisprudence was unconditionally condemned: "Regardless of the desired goals or ideological justifications, the terrorizing of the defenseless was recognized as a moral wrong and an offense against society and God." But classical Islam has disappeared. Continues Prof. El Fadl,

Much has changed in the modern age. Islamic civilization has crumbled, and the traditional institutions that once sustained the juristic discourse have all but vanished. The moral foundations that once mapped out Islamic law and theology have disintegrated, leaving an unsettling vacuum. More to the point, the juristic discourses on tolerance towards rebellion and hostility to the use of terror are no longer part of the normative categories of contemporary Muslims. Contemporary Muslim discourses either give lip service to the classical doctrines without a sense of commitment or ignore and neglect them all together.

There are many factors that contributed to this modern reality. Among the pertinent factors is the undeniably traumatic experience of colonialism, which dismantled the traditional institutions of civil society. The emergence of highly centralized, despotic and often corrupt governments, and the nationalization of the institutions of religious learning undermined the mediating role of jurists in Muslim societies. Nearly all charitable religious endowments became state-controlled entities, and Muslim jurists in most Muslim nations became salaried state employees, effectively transforming them into what may be called "court priests." The establishment of the state of Israel, the expulsion of the Palestinians and the persistent military conflicts in which Arab states suffered heavy losses all contributed to a widespread siege mentality and a highly polarized and belligerent political discourse. Perhaps most importantly, Western cultural symbols, modes of production and social values aggressively penetrated the Muslim world, seriously challenging inherited values and practices, and adding to a profound sense of alienation.

El Fadl says that Islamism is at its core a,

... supremacist puritanism that compensates for feelings of defeat, disempowerment and alienation with a distinct sense of self-righteous arrogance vis-à-vis the nondescript "other" -- whether the other is the West, non-believers in general or even Muslims of a different sect and Muslim women. In this sense, it is accurate to describe this widespread modern trend as supremacist, for it sees the world from the perspective of stations of merit and extreme polarization.

Read the whole thing. It's eye opening.

by Donald Sensing, 2/18/2005 07:15:00 PM. Permalink |

Top 100 gadgets of all time
MobilePC has a list.

by Donald Sensing, 2/18/2005 01:45:00 PM. Permalink |

Egyptian democracy? Well . . .
Joseph Braude emailed me the link yesterday of his new piece in The New Republic on whether real democracy is likely in Egypt in the foreseeable future. The Bush administration is pushing president-for-life Hosni Mubarak to permit free elections. But, says Jospeph, Mubarak "would probably lose."

His recent arrest of a liberal contender for the presidency on trumped up charges is symptomatic of his abysmal human rights record. His excesses have embittered many Egyptians, while his establishment press routinely parrots anti-American and anti-Jewish canards. Yet the U.S. government has maintained its support for Mubarak, paying out tens of billions of dollars in aid to his regime over the last few decades. The Bush White House has also made use of the regime's "special talents," outsourcing the interrogation of terror suspects to Cairo.

Joseph rebuts the argument that Islamists are not popular enough in Egypt to win an election, an argument made by Maz Boot, for example, in the LA Times. But,

As most scholars of modern Egypt acknowledge, the Muslim Brotherhood, though banned from official political activity, dominates Egypt's influential professional associations and maintains the strongest grassroots organization in the country besides the ruling party.

That's not all about the Muslim Brotherhood, either: it was actually the first Islamist party to be born in the 20th century. Egypt is the birthplace of modern political Islamism.

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna, a 22-year-old elementary school teacher, as an Islamic revivalist movement. Al-Banna emphasized that Islam was a comprehensive way of life. Over the next twenty years the Brotherhood’s ideology came to encompass religion, education and politics. It became terrorist inside Egypt not long after its founding and was outlawed. A Muslim Brother assassinated Prime Minister Mahmud Fahmi Nokrashi in December 1948. Al-Banna himself was killed by government agents in Cairo in February, 1949.

The Egyptian government legalized the Brotherhood again in 1948, but only as a religious organization; it was banned again in 1954 because it insisted that Egypt be governed under sharia, or Islamic law. The brotherhood attempted to assassinate Nasser four times and four of its members assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981.

The Brotherhood’s slogan is, “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Quran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” The Brotherhood served as a model for subsequent revivalist movements and is theologically aligned with Saudi Wahhabism. The terrorist group Hamas in Palestine is an outgrowth of the Muslim Brotherhood.

As Joseph said, the rise in political power in Iraq of Shia Islamists is not nearly as alarming as the prospect of powerful Egyptian Islamism. For one, Iraqi Shia Islamists are not wholly anti-American; they "began making conciliatory gestures toward the United States months before the invasion of Iraq." Nor are the Iraqi Shias terrorist Islamists. The Iraqi terrorists are almost all Sunnis, whether Baathist holdouts or linked to al Qaeda.

There is much more to Joseph's piece, so read the whole thing. And James Joyner's comments, with a much more optimistic view.

Also check out Joseph's excellent blog, with much readworthy material.

by Donald Sensing, 2/18/2005 11:16:00 AM. Permalink |

Airbus subsidies may be issue for Bush visit
I posted a couple of times about the introduction of the Airbus A380, a super-sized airliner that cost the Airbus consortium $12 billion worth of Euros, most in government subsidies (euphemistically called "launch aid").

Comes now an email from Mr. Michael Hartt, sending information of the Office of the United States Trade Representative.

As anticipation of President Bush’s upcoming trip to Europe builds, pending U.S.-EU trade issues will likely receive increasing levels of attention. The most consequential trade dispute currently pending, between Boeing and Airbus regarding the “launch aid” subsidies that Airbus receives from several European Union governments, could become a topic of discussion during the President’s meetings with European leaders.

In the event that you raise this issue with your readers, we wanted to provide you with some background on the dispute, as well a fact sheet drafted by the USTR that explains the United States’ position on this issue. We encourage you to link to the USTR piece on your blog if you so choose; it is available [here].

Below, please find additional information on the trade dispute to use for background purposes if you choose to bring this issue forward on your blog. Also attached, please find two documents with quotes from U.S. leaders and EU leaders who have spoken out on this issue that represent the different approaches that each side takes to “launch aid” and this trade discussion.

One of the documents Mr. Hartt sent is entitled, "Europe Speaks on Airbus Subsidies." Two highlights:

As a result of […] launch aid, Airbus is today in a position where it can take over leadership of the large aircraft market from Boeing in the United States. That would be tremendous for British manufacturing and for European industry."
--Tony Blair, British Prime Minster, in the British House of Commons, July 9, 2003

“We will give Airbus the means to win the battle against Boeing”
--Lionel Jospin, French Prime Minister, in the French Assemblée Nationale, Reuters, 8 March 2000

I've put this document online as well as a document of bipartisan quotes from Americans.

Update: I had originally posted that Michael Hartt was employed by the USTR. However, he emailed me to let me know he is not. My error.

Labels: Science

by Donald Sensing, 2/17/2005 08:35:00 PM. Permalink |

Fantasy ideology in action
More suppression of speech

Via email, Derek King pointed me to a web site called, "Steal the Magnets." These dimbulbs think it's a good idea to

Steal any pro-war oriented magnets off the back of cars.

Tape appropriate literature in the magnet's place (optional but recommended, see links).

Report the number of magnets you have stolen to stealthemagnets@gmail.com. Continue to e-mail additional numbers as your collection grows. Pictures or links to video are also encouraged. Possible image gallery soon.

The ideological bankruptcy of this "organization" is doubtless evident. And imagine the outcry if a right-winger urged people to rip off the bumper stickers of antiwar people and replace them with pro-Bush propaganda.

But this outfit claims it really does support the troops and provides a link to a compendium of charities supporting the military. Ironically, one of the charities listed is Adopt-a-Sniper, now called American Snipers, which raises funds to buy supplies for Army and Marine snipers. Heh! as they say.

by Donald Sensing, 2/17/2005 07:26:00 PM. Permalink |

It was awful! They used ... satire.
Glenn Reynolds links to a news story on The Times (UK) that tells of how Greenpeace's best-laid plans aft gang aglay:

WHEN 35 Greenpeace protesters stormed the International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) yesterday they had planned the operation in great detail.
What they were not prepared for was the post-prandial aggression of oil traders who kicked and punched them back on to the pavement.

“We bit off more than we could chew. They were just Cockney barrow boy spivs. Total thugs,” one protester said, rubbing his bruised skull. “I’ve never seen anyone less amenable to listening to our point of view.”

Another said: “I took on a Texan Swat team at Esso last year and they were angels compared with this lot.” Behind him, on the balcony of the pub opposite the IPE, a bleary-eyed trader, pint in hand, yelled: “Sod off, Swampy.”

Honest, this is a legitimate news story, not a, uh, Monty Python skit. One Greenpeace member reported,

I decided to open a high class club for the gentry on the trading floor, for them to enjoy when they took a break. International cuisine and cooking and top line acts, and not a cheap clip joint - that was right out, I deny that completely.

Then last week in came the worst oil trader of all - Dinsdale - with a couple of big lads, one of whom was carrying a tactical nuclear missile. They said I had bought one of their fruit machines and would I pay for it? They wanted three quarters of a million pounds. I thought about it and decided not to go to the Police as I had noticed that the lad with the thermonuclear device was the chief constable for the area.

So a week later they called again and told me the cheque had bounced and said... I had to see... Doug.

Well, I was terrified. Everyone was terrified of Doug. I've seen grown men pull their own heads off rather than see Doug. Even Dinsdale was frightened of Doug. He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor, bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious.

Said the chief inspector of Scotland Yard when he arrived at the scene of the bedlam: "'Ey! Wot's all this, then?"

by Donald Sensing, 2/17/2005 12:30:00 PM. Permalink |

Airline gate access okayed for military families
The TSA has published a directive that permits immediate family members of military passengers to go to the embarking or debarking gate at US airports. A Marine Corps news release has all the details. Family members must get a pass from the airline gate and then pass through the same security checks as ticketed passengers.

However, Military.com says the pass system applies only to "a government-organized flight or charter," and apparently not a commercial airliner.

Either way, this is great news!

Labels: Science

by Donald Sensing, 2/16/2005 03:53:00 PM. Permalink |

Well, I told you so
Kurt Andersen has a piuece in New York Magazine titled, "When Good News Feels Bad - After Iraq’s vote, New York liberals are in a serious moral-ideological-emotional bind. And the only way out is to root for Bush’s victory."

The success of the [Iraqi] elections poses a major intellectual-moral-political problem for people in this city. The cognitive dissonance is palpable. ...

Of course, for all but a nutty fringe, it is not a matter of actually wishing for an insurgent victory, but rather of hating the idea of a victory presided over by the Bush team. ...

Each of us has a Hobbesian choice concerning Iraq; either we hope for the vindication of Bush’s risky, very possibly reckless policy, or we are in a de facto alliance with the killers of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians. ...

I don’t mean to suggest, in the right-wing, proto-fascist rhetorical fashion, that every good American is obliged to support all American wars. But at this moment in this war, that binary choice of who you want to win is inescapable and needs to be faced squarely ... .

Read the whole thing. It's in part what what I said on Feb. 9 and in May 2004.

by Donald Sensing, 2/16/2005 11:30:00 AM. Permalink |

Linkagery, Feb. 5
I've been smitten with a bad ear infection, so posting will likely be pretty light for a few days. Here are some read-worthy links:

Bill Hobbs says this is ironic. "Liberal bureacrats who have long pushed for regulations designed to get people to drive more fuel-efficient cars are now whining that the more people drive fuel-efficient cars, the less gasoline tax revenue the state will get for building roads. And their proposed solution is awful."

Joe Gandelman comments on the hoax blog, "Libertarian Girl."

West Point instructor Robin Burk emails, "Thought you all might enjoy some photos from the new Afghan military academy, passed along by a US Army colonel who’s been helping them get set up."

Dexter Van Zile has some pointed questions for the the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, USA – PC(USA) – which "voted to initiate a process of divestment from companies doing business in Israel." And they are tough questions, too.

Paul Prince writes about the tough case of US Marine Lieutenant Ilario Pantano, who has been formally charged with two counts of murder for his killing of two Iraqi terror suspects who charged him in a combat zone. More here, also at Michelle Malkin and Power Line.

Robert Hayes announces the Blogger News Network, "consolidating breaking news and analysis from bloggers in one site." He''s looking for contributors, too.

North Korea Zone says that a statement broadcast in North Korea on TV and radio on Feb. 10 "suggests that the DPRK leadership is now highly committed to nuclear weapons in terms of its domestic legitimacy and ideological framework, and that it now would be quite difficult to abandon this unifying theme after having announced it so loudly and clearly to its own population."

Joseph D'Hippolito writes about, "Jihadism in Retreat." "Iraqis reject jihadism not only because they refuse to submit themselves to more civil terror after emerging from Saddam Hussein's persecution. They also recognize Islamism as religious Nazism, a genocidal force that destroys everyone in its path." See also the long analysis by Dan Darling at Winds of Change.

Labels: Science

by Donald Sensing, 2/15/2005 08:17:00 PM. Permalink |

Free entry for active duty military to Busch Gardens, Sea World
Busch Entertainment Corporation is offering complimentary admission for active duty military, including the Guard and Reserves, and/or up to three direct dependents. They did this back in 1991 after the Gulf War, also.

Labels: Science

by Donald Sensing, 2/15/2005 06:15:00 PM. Permalink |

Denzel Washington supports the troops
Actor Denzel Washington visited Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio.

They have buildings there called Fisher Houses. The Fisher House is a hotel that soldiers' families can stay at, for little or no charge, while their soldier is staying in the hospital. BAMC has quite a few of these houses on base, but as you can imagine, they are almost filled to the brim most of the time.

While Denzel Washington was visiting BAMC, they gave him a tour of one of the Fisher Houses. He asked how much one of them would cost to build. He got his check book out and wrote a check out for the full amount right there on the spot.

According to Snopes.com, citing Fisher House Foundation officials, Washington didn't donate the entire amount for a new house, but he did make a very large donation. Over the holidays enough additional money was collected to pay for a new house.

Fisher Houses serve much the same purpose for military hospitals as Ronald McDonald houses do for civilian hospitals - inexpensive accommodations for family members of seriously ill patients.

The Fisher House Foundation was started by Mr. Zachary Fisher and his wife in 1990. Fisher was one of the wealthiest real estate developers in the country. He gave $20 million to start the foundation that bears his name. I met him and his wife at the dedication of the house built for Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC. They were astoundingly generous philanthropists, especially to the military, a fact all the more impressive because Fisher never served in the armed forces.

Fisher was also the founder of New York City's Intrepid Museum Foundation that saved the historic aircraft carrier USS Intrepid from the scrap yard. The Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum in New York City is now the world's largest naval museum.

Labels: Science

by Donald Sensing, 2/15/2005 05:50:00 PM. Permalink |

Coffee for the troops
You can buy roasted coffee online and the roaster will send it to the troops in Iarq and Afghanistan.

With your order, we’ll send a full bag of premium ground coffee in a flavor-seal bag to a unit serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. This isn’t generic store-brand coffee… this is a premium roast made from some of the finest coffee beans in the world! Our troops deserve nothing less.

You can also include a personal message to the recipients.

Labels: Science

by Donald Sensing, 2/14/2005 06:57:00 PM. Permalink |

New US Air Force aircraft carrier unveiled
No surprises here!



by Donald Sensing, 2/14/2005 06:48:00 PM. Permalink |

Jihad's personal benefit and Islamism's rationale
Haverford College's Prof. Mark Gould has performed an invaluable service with his article, "Understanding Jihad," in Policy Review Online. Prof. Gould explains how violent jihad is no aberration of Islamic thought and is actually deeply rooted in the Muslim eschatology - the final judgment of Allah on every person.

Unlike Christians, Muslims, untainted by original sin, believe themselves, with God’s guidance, capable of acting in ways meriting salvation. In Islam, God gives men the will to act for good or evil, but he predetermines the outcome of their actions. I contend that the requirement to act in accordance with God’s decrees, possible but nonetheless difficult to fulfill, thus attaining salvation, may be short-circuited when fulfilling the religious obligation of jihad. There, either one accomplishes good works (as decreed by God) or dies a martyr; if the former, one enhances one’s chances of being sent to heaven at the Last Judgment; if the latter, one goes directly to heaven.

Thus, I argue that there is an authentic Islamic tradition that partially explains the predisposition to the use of force, in jihad, that is diffused widely among contemporary Muslims.

So for a jihadi it is a win-win situation: death in the service of defending or expanding the territory of Islam is so meritorious that by itself it gains the jihadi eternal paradise. And if the jihadi merely fights but does not die, then the merit of that deed is so great that the jihadi's chance of being granted eternal paradise is vastly improved.

Gould's explanation of the why the Christian doctrine of Original Sin points out the critical difference between Christianity and Islam. (His explanation of Christian theology at this point is a bit muddled, but not much, so I'll leave it be.) As Gould says, the Christian emphasis is on divine salvation, the Muslim emphasis is on divine judgment. In Christian thought, salvation is the free gift of God that cannot be earned by good deeds. Good deeds by Christians are the result of the saving acts of Christ on the Christian's behalf; good deeds certify one's Christian identity and devotion but themselves contribute nothing toward eternal life. (There really is no single Christian doctrine of Original Sin - see my essays, A Short History of Original Sin, The Burden of Inherited Evil and, for that matter, my sermon yesterday on forbidden fruit.)

In Islam, however, good works are not ultimately futile, they are ultimately determinative.

In Islam, God’s messengers, and most especially his last and final messenger, Muhammad, have told believers how they must act to be saved. God has requested nothing that believers cannot do. If they follow God’s commandments (as enunciated in the Koran and the Sunna, the tradition), on the Day of Judgment God will judge them fairly, weighing the good against the bad. ...

According to the Koran, “humans have been created with a sound nature and provided by God with a true religion that enables them to have fullness of life through close communion with God in this world and the next. Each human is a religiously grounded person, created and endowed with a fitra, a ‘sound constitution’ that acts as a kind of internal guidance system and way to God. That is our ‘natural’ birthright.”8 God’s revelation to Muhammad and Muhammad’s words and actions, as gathered in “authenticated” Hadith,9 provide rules of correct action; unlike in Christianity, where original sin precludes salvation without God’s grace, here man’s nature enables him to act in ways that merit God’s grace. While not easy to follow, the rules do not demand anything that people are incapable of accomplishing through their own capacities; the rules guide men to paradise.

But the correct way of living in the way that leads to Allah judging one for paradise rather than Hell is in a society ruled by Islamic law, sharia. The purpose of sharia is to order society so that the right life has the best chance of being lived by the greatest number of people. It is a sort of religious utilitarianism.

Islam rejects the notion of redemption because human beings are directly responsible. Adam and Eve sinned, but humankind has not inherited their guilt. No human action makes the slightest personal difference to God; the moral quality of each individual’s choices turns on their ultimate benefit to the human race. It is not God, therefore, but the individual who decides his or her own final destiny.”

Here is where jihad comes in.

The doctrine of jihad articulates the duty of Muslims to expand the Muslim umma, “to bring as many people under its rule as possible. The ultimate aim is to bring the whole earth under the sway of Islam.” “The most important function of the doctrine of jihad is that it mobilizes and motivates Muslims to take part in wars against unbelievers, as it is considered to be the fulfillment of a religious duty. This motivation is strongly fed by the idea that those who are killed on the battlefield, called martyrs . . . , will go directly to Paradise.”

As I explained, using Muslim sources, in my essay, A Short History of Jihad,

Hence, for Muslims to wield weapons in a war in which Islam itself is defended is literally an act of worship. The Muslim jihadi has the right to expect reward proportionate to his sacrificial worship. In military jihad, the ultimate sacrifice is to die, which deserves the ultimate reward, immediate entry by the slain jihadi's soul into Paradise. This belief springs from the words of Mohammed himself, who during the battle of Badr told his soldiers,

"I swear by the One in whose hand Muhammad's soul is, any man who fights them today and is killed while he is patient in the ordeal and seeks the pleasure of Allah, going forward and not backing off, Allah will enter him into Paradise."

Prof. Gould also explains that the point of Islamic conquest of infidel lands is to institute sharia across the whole fabric of the conquered society so that the conquered people will derive the benefit of living under sharia. Ultimately, the whole world is to be brought under sharia because the fullness of a proper Muslim life can be lived only within a sharia society.

"Muslims [wrote Frederick M. Denny in Islam and the Muslim Community] believe that they have been called by God to establish a righteous human political and social order on earth” nd this political order is essential to enhance each Muslim’s chance at salvation. Thus, many Muslims believe that they are obligated to impose this order.

Modern Islamists therefore are following a course that is no aberration if Islam, although their brand of violent Islamism is not necessary for Islam, either. As Arthur Chrenkoff pointed out, the Islamists see themselves as reformers, leading the Muslims back to what Mohammad intended.

by Donald Sensing, 2/14/2005 02:29:00 PM. Permalink |

Yesterday's sermon is online
It's my non-literalist interpretation of the story of Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit.

Labels: Science

by Donald Sensing, 2/14/2005 01:36:00 PM. Permalink |

Meme war!
Conformist thinking of the left side

Glenn Reynolds:

But maybe the emails I get from Oliver Willis, accusing me of thinking that everyone to the left of Joe Lieberman is a traitor, reflect a broader view rather than, as I assumed, just Oliver.

Gee, ya think? That's what a commenter - not Willis - said about me in response to this post.

What, do these guys email each other with the latest rapier wit and repartee? "Hey, here's a good one! Let's say that Reynolds and Sensing and all those guys think that anyone who's left of Joe Lieberman is a traitor/anti-American/far Leftist whacko, and so on! It's a killer, really!"

So, here's a rejoinder: "You think that anyone to the right of John McCain is a religious nut/imperialist pig/warmonger/stooge of Karl Rove, and so on."

It's a meme war, folks! Pile it on!

"Left of Lieberman!"

"Right of McCain!"

Nyah, nyah, nyah!

Endnote: I wonder whether the "left of Joe Lieberman" accusation really reveals the accusers' opinion that Lieberman is not liberal enough for their tastes.

by Donald Sensing, 2/12/2005 05:16:00 PM. Permalink |

"Great minds think alike"
So observes Best of the Web Today in response to the latest tape by al Qaeda's Iraq number two man, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Citing a new report,

Implicit in Al Zawahiri's speech was an acknowledgement that the United States is now actively competing in the war for hearts and minds in Muslim countries--leaving Al Qaeda no choice but to engage America at the level of politics and ideas. The irony, however, is that Al Zawahiri seemed in his speech to be entering the realm of politics precisely to make clear what Al Qaeda won't do politically: namely, countenance the entrance of Islamists into the democratic arena.

Well, that's closing the barn door after the horses have escaped. As I wrote in "Iraqi elections a rope-a-dope?",

This war is a war of ideas and wills that cannot be finally decided by force of arms, either our arms or the terrorists'. America's central idea is simple and was re-emphasized by President Bush on Jan. 20.

We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul.

It is this idea that will send Iraqis streaming to the polls, that and the fact that the Islamists have no competitive ideas.

And nothing in the new tape indicates they have come up with any since Jan. 30, when they were whipped like a borrowed mule at the polls by Iraqi voters. It's a pretty neat trick to lose an election when they weren't even on the ballot, but they managed.

by Donald Sensing, 2/12/2005 10:57:00 AM. Permalink |

WARNING! US Marines!
So says "an impromptu sign designating an area for the 1st Marine Division." Heh, as they say.

Labels: Science

by Donald Sensing, 2/12/2005 10:46:00 AM. Permalink |

Missing the point on FMA and everything else
Having never before read anything by PittsburghLive commentator Dimitri Vassilaros, I must say that his column on divorce and the Federal Marriage Amendment doesn't make me want to seek his other writings. It's a highly unserious take on a very serious subject.

If social conservatives really wanted to protect marriage, the Marriage Protection Amendment would prohibit divorce.

In his State of the Union address, President George W. Bush said he would support the constitutional amendment to "protect the institution of marriage."

Well, let's look at Bush's whole quote. Here is everything President Bush said about the FMA in his state of the union address on Feb. 3:

Because marriage is a sacred institution and the foundation of society, it should not be redefined by activist judges. For the good of families, children and society, I support a constitutional amendment to protect the institution of marriage.

Yes, this is a muddled sentence pair, but the president's intention is clear: he wants judges to keep their hands off defining what marriage is. Back to this in a moment, but now back to Dimitri.

Divorce, by definition, is the threat to the "sacred" institution. So let's use that in a counterattack. Let's put those who would deny Americans that most basic civil right, on the defensive. Let's see if marriage really is a sacred cow or just something to be milked politically

So, says he, a Constitutional amendment should spell out "a ban to its only threat, D-I-V-O-R-C-E (as Tammy Wynette would have called it)."

The problem is that it's obvious Dimitri doesn't really think that; the tone of his piece is too mocking, too smugly cocky to take his words at face value. His real point is to scoff at President Bush and backers of the FMA, and then all "social conservatives," as he terms them, at large.

But the president's objection to liberal-activist judges redefining marriage on their own seems to have slipped by him. Yet Bushy's words are so unmistakable that Dimitri's ignorance of them can only be willful. So his column is unserious, even as satire, for it dismisses the actual core of the issue for Bush and the "social conservatives" Dimitri derides.

"The question," I wrote a year ago, "is which is to be master." As I quoted Thomas Jefferson:

"... our Constitution a complete felo de se [act of suicide] [if] intending to establish three departments, coordinate and independent, that they might check and balance one another, it has given ... to one of them alone the right to prescribe rules for the government of the others, and to that one, too, which is unelected by and independent of the nation. ... The Constitution on this hypothesis is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please."

Here is the text of the FMA that Bush apparently endorses. I say apparently because Bush didn;t actually say he supported this amendment, but an amendment. However, this amendment is the only one proffered at the moment:

"SECTION 1. Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution or the constitution of any State, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.

There is a disconnect between what Bush said he wants to do and what this proposed amendment does. No doubt Bush believes that marriage is and ought never to be defined as anything but "the union of a man and a woman." But his emphasis is on stopping judicial usurpation. For that purpose, the second sentence alone serves quite well.

However mockingly he does so, Dimitri is correct that divorce is a serious issue in Amerca today. I have written quite a bit about it, enough to fill five Google search pages, in fact. On a related topic, see my OpinionJournal piece on how The Pill radically and permanently changed marriage. See also my essay on why marriage can only be the union of a man and a woman.

Update: James Joyner blogs that Massachusetts' supreme court will "will hear a challenge to the court's ruling that legalized same-sex marriage." James explains why the court's prior ruling was indeed "activism":

[T]he Massachusetts SC overturned an understanding of marriage that predates the existence of the Republic by centuries and the expressed will of the people as expressed by their legislature via a reading of the Massachusetts Constitution that had theretofore been considered absurd. Indeed, that rather defines "activist."

But he sees little chance the court will overturn itself.

by Donald Sensing, 2/12/2005 09:28:00 AM. Permalink |

Linkagery, 2/11/05
Only now have returned home for the day, so another "back to the swamp" post (this one on Intelligent Design) I hoped to publish this evening will appear another day, tomorrow, I hope.

So rathyer than try to pixelize something original, herewith some choice links. Go have fun...

Everything at American Digest is always worthwhile. Gerard has the full text of CNN's Eason Jordan's resignation letter, followed by a heavily satiric "clarification of their previous clarification" by CNN.

Speaking of Jordan's downfall, Glenn Reynolds has a bunch of links, as you might expect.

Joe Gandelman says that Pakistan is paying off al Qaeda, but it's a loopy situation.

Some Singapore university students are conducting an online blogging-ethics survey, take about 20 minutes.

Roger L. Simon suffered acute chest pains and went straight to the hospital (perhaps he had read my post on the subject?). Hs heart was fine but he's still sick - gallstones.

Austin Bay offers a look back at a prescient piece published only about two weeks before the towers fell.

Arthur Chrenkoff says that people who desire an Islamic Reformatin (like me) are misguided. What's needed is an Islamic Enlightenment. Excellent points, and he probably right.

Labels: Science

by Donald Sensing, 2/11/2005 10:09:00 PM. Permalink |

North Korea has nukes!!!!
It surely this North Korean announcment is no surprise:

North Korea boasted publicly for the first time Thursday that it has nuclear weapons and said it will stay away from disarmament talks... .

As Chad Evans headlined, "North Korea Announced it has Nukes . . . Again." As he recounts, the DPRK announced in April 2003 that it possessed atomic warheads and were thought long before that to possess enough plutonium to produce them. Just lately we learned that the they had supplied the enriched uranium to Libya for its atomic weapons program.

The N. Korean's announcement that they are done with disarmament talks means nothing because they never actually participated in such talks to begin with. Oh, they showed up, but their presence was never anything but temporizing while their nuclear program continued apace.

Today's claim may not even be true; the Dear Leader's government is the world's leader in mendacity and prevarication. No Western intelligence service doubts that the DPRK has the techonology, the scientists, the engineers and the fissile material needed to produce atomic warheads. But there is no certainty, there is no "slam dunk" on this matter simply because the North Korean government is the most insular in the world.

The real question is just how much further along this announcement moves nearby countries to militarize in arms or in spirit. Two years ago Japan announced that it would militarily pre-empt North Korean aggression against Japan. In fact, Japan may have a covert atomic-weapons program all its own. Analyst Phar Kim Beng wrote a year ago that Japan could be an atomic power within months. Japan openly owns more than a sufficient amount of plutonium for dozens of nukes. In fact, 25 months ago, at the brewing of the last atomic crsis with North Korea, ago Japan announced it had somehow misplaced more than 200 kilograms of plutonium, enough to make 25 atomic warheads (leading Scrappleface to write that "N. Korea Offers to Return Japan's Lost Plutonium." However, the loss occurred incrementally since 1987 and the International Atomic Energy Commission concluded "that the root of the problem was imprecise measurement and sampling techniques').

I don't often agree with NYT columnist Nicholas Kristoff, but yestderday's column offers food for thought. Claiming that "the most dangerous failure of U.S. policy these days is in North Korea," Kristoff goes on to say,

In fairness, Mr. Bush is paralyzed only because the alternatives are dreadful. A military strike on North Korea's nuclear sites might have been an option in the early 1990's, but today we don't know where the plutonium and the uranium are kept, so a military strike might accomplish little - but trigger a new Korean war. To fill the time, Mr. Bush has pursued six-party talks involving North Korea, but they have gotten nowhere.

So what would work?

The other option is the path that Richard Nixon pursued with Maoist China: resolute engagement, leading toward a new "grand bargain" in which Kim Jong Il would give up his nuclear program in exchange for political and economic ties with the international community. This has the advantage that the best bet to bring down Mr. Kim, the Dear Leader, isn't isolation, but contacts with the outside world.

Yet Kristoff himself admits that this idea is attractive only because all other options are either not feasible or much worse than this one. Would such ties as Kristoff proposes do any good? The cynic in me replies that these kinds of ties haven't done any good in loosening up Cuba.

But I don't have better ideas. And the nightmare scenario isn't nuclear-tipped, North Korean missiles, anyway. As I wrote in August 2003 in "Balance of power against North Korea,"

Our first atomic weapon needed the largest bomber the Air Force had to fly it to Hiroshima. The present state of the art enables equally destructive weapons to be manufactured as a kit that can be smuggled in pieces into the United States and reassembled. Yes, smuggling the radioactive fission material would present a challenge. However, consider this scenario: All the other pieces would be smuggled in first, received by al Qaeda sleeper or others ideologically allied with them, and then the fission material is sent. In fact, more than one fission warhead is sent, maybe several - North Korea has a robust processing capability. They could well send a dozen fission sets to be smuggled into the country. Care to bet we would intercept them all? I wouldn't.

North Korea is certainly evil enough to do swuch a thing. The great unknown is whether they are stupid enough, and that just can't be answered.

What to do? I don't know, and from all I can tell, neither does the Bush administration.

Endnote: Kristoff also explains why pinning this all on Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and the Agreed Framework doesn't hold water.

Labels: Science

by Donald Sensing, 2/10/2005 09:35:00 PM. Permalink |

Bloggers on PBS tonight
Glenn Reynolds notes that he, Wonkette, Joe Trippi and Andrew Sullivan will be on the Charlie Rose Show tonight on PBS. For some reason, Nashville's PBS affiliate doesn't carry the show.

Labels: Science

by Donald Sensing, 2/10/2005 03:54:00 PM. Permalink |

Sauce for the goose?
Blogging exposes cut both ways it seems. Libereal blogers have uncovered the fact that Jeff Gannon of Talon News is really one James Dale Guckert, registry holder of "online domain addresses with sexually provocative names."

Gannon/Guckert is the man who was admitted as a reporter to a presidential press conference last month.

He has been under scrutiny since asking Bush how he could work with Senate Democratic leaders "who seem to have divorced themselves from reality." The information about Gannon was posted on the liberal sites Daily Kos, Atrios and World o' Crap. ...

Markos Moulitsas, a San Francisco liberal who writes the popular Kos site, said of Gannon: "He has been extremely anti-gay in his writings. He's been a shill for the Christian right. So there's a certain level of hypocrisy there that I thought was fair game and needed to be called out."

Asked if digging into someone's personal and business activities was proper retaliation, Moulitsas said: "If that's what it took to really bring attention to him, it's one of those unfortunate facts of reality in the way we operate today. It's sex that really draws attention to these things."

But Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit said,

... the tactics used against Gannon "seem to me to be despicable.

"If I were a member of the White House press corps, I'd be really worried," Reynolds said. "If working for a biased news organization disqualifies you, a lot of people have a lot to be worried about. If being involved in a dubious business venture is disqualifying, I suspect a lot of people have a lot to be worried about. I guess I don't see what all this has to do with his job."

If the info reported in the Post is accurate, I'm less disturbed by this development than Glenn. On the other hand, if Guckert's only real offenses, by his opponents' lights, are that he concealed some other activities and had an agenda, then Glenn is probably right: where would that witch hunt stop in the WH press corps or the media at large?

Labels: Science

by Donald Sensing, 2/10/2005 06:34:00 AM. Permalink |

Back to the swamp: liberals, Leftists and the Iraq war
I posted a couple of days ago about a certain set of questions posted at Winds of Change addressed to "political progressives," as the writer there said. My point was that the questions were based on the false assumption that as a group, the progressives and the questioner shared a common goal and common values regarding Iraq. But they don't. I'll not recount the rest of the post here, go read if you wish.

I will again point out, though, that I continue to make a distinction between the Left and liberals, a point I have made a couple of times before. So does, for example, Michael Totten, who says he is a liberal/progressive. Christopher Hitchens, certainly not a member of the VRWC, has distinguished between liberals/progressives and the Left, going so far as to say that today the Left has swung to the status of reactionary, not progressive or forward thinking. As I concluded, along with others who have addressed, the topic, "In a nutshell, liberals affirm while the Left despises the idea of America."

Joseph Marshall objected to my claim that the Left opposes democracy in Iraq and the non-left opponents of the Iraq war (not all of whom are liberals) are indifferent to it. In his essay, Democracy Begins at Home, Joseph objects to my tarring him and other liberals as anti-democratic because he worked to elect a county commissioner here in America.

Democracy in action. How come I see so little on your blogs which is part of that debate? Out here on the Left we have plenty to say about it. Out here on the Left we do believe in democracy enough to actually participate in it.

Democracy begins at home. Democracy is what you do with your freedom to participate in the political process. You are what you do.

It's interesting for Joseph to claim that it is the Left (as he uses the term) who believes in "democracy enough to actually participate in it" when his candidate of choice last November received three million fewer votes than the winner. Not being liberal, I can't understand that kind of math. Whatever.

But Joseph missed the point in any event. It is not a liberal's devotion to democracy at home that is the issue. It is their indifference to it in Iraq. And Joseph's post's title says it all: "Democracy begins at home." And as for the brown people, who cares? Joseph will protest that this is not what he is saying, but I beg him to explain why not. Joseph's position is basically isolationist. Which is okay with me, but his protests are disingenuous.

Then we come to a commenter who decides that I am Joseph Geobbels reincarnated, charging that I, "as an apparent man of the cloth, to use and promote the same manner of techniques so beloved of the likes of Goebbels is despicable indeed." Ah, yes, the old canard: "How can you as a minister ... ?" (And not just politics; I was asked the same kind of question about my non-support of the "theory" of Intelligent Design.) Well, friend, it's called speaking truth to power, and power almost never likes it. The implication here is, of course, that as an ordained minister of a generally liberal denomination I should be liberal, too. I don't expect this commenter to provide any actual credentials to qualify him to attack my ministerial faithfulness - funny how he can say I'm the one "tarring" others when all I've done is describe their positions. Well, as we used to say down on the farm, "hit cats howl."

But my charge stands and I make it more strongly now than before: The Left is anti-American and is anti-democratic. Yes, I, like Michael Totten and Richard Baehr, admit that the term, "the Left," is less than precise. After all, Prof. Norman Geras, an English Marxist, supports the Iraq war . (But how surprising is it, really, that a Marxist supports the overthrow of a fascist?)

Regarding the Iraq war and the subsequent democratization in progress there, there are only five possible positions from which it can be opposed: Ideological, Strategic, Partisan political, Isolationist, Moral/religious.

Ideological. This is the position of the Left, a reflexive opposition to any display of American power. Nelson Ascher explained this very well.

Those whom the fall of the Berlin Wall had left orphans of a cause, spent the next decade plotting the containment of the US. It was a complex operation that involved the (in many cases state-sponsored) mushrooming of NGOs, Kyoto, the creation of the ICC, the salami tactics applied against America’s main strategic ally in the Middle-East, Israel, through the Trojan Horse of the Oslo agreements, the subversion of the sanctions against Iraq etc. I’m not as conspiratorially-minded as to think that all these efforts were in any way centralized or that they had some kind of master-plan behind them. It was above all the case of the spirit of the times converging, through many independent manifestations, towards a single goal. Nonetheless we can be sure that, after those manifestations reached a critical mass, there has been no lack of efforts to coordinate them.

And so, spontaneously up to a point, anti-Americanism became the alternative ideology that came to fill in the vacuum left by the failure of traditional, USSR-based communism and its Maoist or Trotskyite satellites. Before 1989, the global left had something to fight for: either the strengthening of the communist states or the correction of what they called their bureaucratic distortions. To fight for something is simultaneously to fight against whatever threatens it, and thus, the leftists were anti-Western and anti-Americans too, anti-capitalistic in short.

Now, whatever they wanted to defend or protect doesn’t exist anymore. They have only things to destroy, and all those things are personified in the US, in its very existence. ...

This newly ever-growing Western left, not only in Europe, but in Latin America and even in the US itself, has a clear goal: the destruction of the country and society that vanquished its dreams fifteen years ago. But it does not have, as in the old days of the Soviet Union, the hard power to accomplish this by itself. Thanks to this, all our leftist friends’ bets are now on radical Islam. What can they do to help it? Answer: tie down America’s superior strength with a million Liliputian ropes: legal ones, political ones, with propaganda and disinformation etc. Anything and everything will do.

The destruction of America Ascher refers to is not necessarily physical destruction, but functional destruction. And this is anti-democratic because its focus is on removing state sovereignty from the shoulders of the American people and investing it in unelected, unaccountable supranational institutions, of which the UN is only one.

Strategic. The administration laid out a lengthy and detailed strategic case for toppling Saddam by invasion, based significantly - but not exclusively - on Saddam's WMD programs. But, as I explained in my essays, "The Big Picture," and "Iraq is the Opening Act," the strategic rationale for the invasion goes well beyond merely toppling one murderous regime.

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.

President Bush himself made this crystal clear on Nov. 6, 2003:

The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution.

Some opponents of the Iraq war supported the Afghanistan war, John Kerry for example. But this position is strategically shortsighted. The national-security imperative of the United States is not simply to kill or capture and disable al Qaeda, the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks. It is to suppress and (we hope) to eliminate the causes of Islamist terrorism itself. I published "A Short History of Arab Terrorism less than two months ago (PDF). Although bin Ladenism does represent a sea change in Islamist terrorism, it was not a matter of creatio ex nihilo in the history of Arab and Islamist terrorism.

Any strategically-based opposition to the Iraq war - actually to be strategy - needs to explain how the totality of Islamist terrorism could have been suppressed and hopefully eliminated by leaving Saddam in place. That is, how would maintenance of the status quo in the Middle East served American security interests better than changing it? Remember, too, that the question in 2003 was not whether to make war against Saddam; the United States had been legally and literally at war against Iraq since 1991. The real question was how to end the war that was already in progress.

Merely pointing out the real or perceived flaws of the administration's policies in Iraq, or flaws and mistakes of its conduct of the war, does not count as a strategically-based opposition. That is a tactics discussion, not a strategy discussion. Strategy focuses on outcomes, usually long-term outcomes, tactics focuses on how those outcomes are achieved. (In between strategy and tactics there is "operational art," the process by which strategic goals are made concrete for tactical processes, but I'll not get into that here.)

I have not yet seen any opponent to the Iraq war base his/her argument on strategic grounds. The closest one I have seen is one I cited here, but it finally concluded,

. . . anyone who opposes U.S. military action to dethrone him has a responsibility to suggest how he might otherwise be ushered out the backdoor of Baghdad.

The authors had no solution and again, assumed that everyone was agreed that Saddam had to go. But, as I have demonstrated above, this was not the case.

Partisan political. Opposition to the Iraq war is found among political ideologues whose loyalties lie with the party to the point they oppose any display of power by the Republican president. They are easily identified by their unending litanies of fault-finding with the administration's actions. They almost never offer alternative courses of action that would address the nation's security issues, and then in only the most vapid, empty phrases, "more international cooperation," being a favorite. Before the war it was, "let the sanctions work" and then, "more time for UN inspectors." But such statements are not plans and serve only as hooks upon which to base their partisanship.

Isolationist. Pat Buchanan is a prime example of an isolationist. Being of the far Right, his isolationism is more insular than that of liberal isolationists. Rightist isolationists basically believe that what happens in other countries - democracy, tyranny or genocide - if of no concern to the United States except when overt acts of aggression have been made against us. Then, the solution is massive retaliation. That this is a morally bankrupt position I hope needs no explanation.

Liberal isolationists take a different tack. They eschew massive retaliation and instead pin American security on international order, treaties, the fiction of international law, the United Nations and their faith that reason and restraint are universal human virtues. Grievances of foreign governments or terrorist groups are generally understood as justified in the light of America's selfish, oppressive foreign policies. Hence, America's proper role in the world is to pull itself back, assume a lower profile internationally and follow rather than lead.

There is no clear distinction, often, between liberal partisan opposition and liberal isolationist opposition. English Methodist minister Richard Hall's response to my earlier post encapsulates their partial overlap rather well:

Here’s the thing. America – actually, its present government – comes in for the most critiscism [sic], the most scrutiny, because it is the most powerful institution in the world. ....

So, America needs criticism because it is the world's superpower, and this administration is needs it most of all. But criticizing power simply because it is power ignores the larger moral universe. Power does not exist in a vacuum. The issue is not the fact of America's power, but whether American power in Iraq is being exercised in a good cause or bad, justly or unjustly. If the cause is good and the exercise is just, then support must be given, yes?(He does say of the Iraqi elections, "I truly hope it represents a new start for the Iraqi people.")

Moral/religious. In the light of hundreds of thousands of corpses found in Saddam's mass graves since May 2003, it's hard to argue with (Marxist) Prof. Norm Geras:

There was no persuasive moral case against the Iraq war. There were creditable moral reasons for entertaining doubts about it; and some people have articulated such doubts in a creditable way; but this is something different from a compelling case that the war was wrong. Speaking from my own experience of the debates, both before and since the war the majority of those who opposed it, or at least the majority of its most vocal opponents, opposed it in anything but a creditable way.

Whatever subsidiary reasons could have been - and in fact were - given for the war to get rid of the Saddam Hussein regime, the most powerful reason in its favour was a simple one: the regime had been responsible for, it was daily adding to, and for all that anyone could reasonably expect, it would go on for the forseeable future adding to, an immensity of pain and grief, killing, torture and mutilation. It's been said before, including by me, and so I won't labour the point too much here; but this was not merely an unpleasant tyranny amongst many others - it was one of the very worst of recent times, with the blood of hundreds of thousands of people on its hands, to say nothing of the lives torn and wrecked by it. Other things equal, there is no other moral option than to support the removal of such a regime if a removal is in the offing.

Other things, though, are of course rarely altogether equal, and nor were they in the case of Iraq. But in the scales against what I shall henceforth here refer to simply as this immensity (of pain and grief, killing, torture and mutilation), there needed to be put, for a persuasive moral case against the war, something rather substantial. ...

The sole convincing moral case against the war would have had to demonstrate, either for a certainty or else as being highly probable, that the consequences of a regime-change war by the coalition of the willing - a coalition that could, it should be noted, have been bigger but for the opposition to the war - must be a state of affairs even worse than the one the war was supposed to remedy.

Despite the ongoing murders by Baathist and Islamist terrorists, it is impossible to say with moral sensibility - especially since Iraq's election of Jan. 30 - that the state of affairs today is worse than "the one the war was supposed to remedy," especially in light of the strategic rationale for the war I explained and linked to, above.

Be that as it may, I addressed "The Pacifist Fallacies" back in Nov. 2002.

Update: Consider this paragraph by Pamela Bone in The Age:

Dislike of George Bush's foreign policy has led to an automatic support of those perceived to be his enemies. Paradoxically, this leaves the left defending people who hold beliefs that condone what the left has long fought against: misogyny, homophobia, capital punishment, suppression of freedom of speech. The recent reaffirmation by Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie has been met by virtual silence; as has the torture and murder in Iraq of a man who would be presumed to be one of the left's own - Hadi Salih, the international officer of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions. The hard left these days is soft on fascism, or at least Islamofascism.

Hat tip to Gerard Van der Leun, who has some more observations.

Update: NYT journalist Thomas Friedman:

[T]hose who suggest that the Iraqi election is just beanbag, and that all we are doing is making the war on terrorism worse as a result of Iraq, are speaking nonsense.

Here's the truth: There is no single action we could undertake anywhere in the world to reduce the threat of terrorism that would have a bigger impact today than a decent outcome in Iraq. It is that important. ...

HT: OOTB.

Update: Ross Terrill writes in the Boston Globe that liberalism has generally abandoned its historical devotion to democracy, and that between liberals and conservatives democracy has had a "switch of partners."

by Donald Sensing, 2/09/2005 05:01:00 PM. Permalink |

A Palm deal

I just took delivery of a new Palm Tungsten E. As handhelds go, the TE is at the lower end of capability - no camera, no Bluetooth, no hard keyboard. It does what Palms set out to do: keep track of calendars and contacts. It can do more than that, of course, but that's pretty much what I use it for. Well, I also have the NRSV Bible loaded along with a few utilities.

But the point of this post is this: on Palm's ordering and checkout pages there is a block to enter a discount or promotional code if you have one. I got to that point, codeless, and immediately though, "Google."

This is hardly a blinding insight, I know, but when I Googled for a Tungsten discount code I found one that got me $40 off. Not bad for three minutes work.

Palm delivers free and their package includes a free MP3 kit with earbuds and a 128MB SD card. As for the code, it has now expired, but I found it on justdiscounted.com, where there are all sorts of other discount codes for many different products.

Labels: Science

by Donald Sensing, 2/08/2005 06:52:00 PM. Permalink |

Gunner Palace premiers
Remembering that I was a battery commander in 2d Battalion, 3d Field Artillery Regt. (the "Gunners"), Matt at Blackfive emailed the link to his post about the premier of the documentary movie, "Gunner Palace." The movie was filmed in Iraq by Mike Tucker, who lived with the battalion, whose base of operations was a palace once owned by Uday Hussein - hence the title. The wide release of the movie will begin March 4.

Getting ready to go to the theater, my wife asked me what I thought the movie would be like. I had an idea from the trailers, videos, web diary and the email conversations with Michael Tucker.

"Not anti-war or pro-war. It'll show that war is beautiful and that war sucks...it really, really @#$%ing sucks."

I was right. And I loved every single minute of the movie. ...

If you're looking for an open, honest and hugely un-biased look at what has been happening in Iraq and what our Soldiers think about it, Gunner Palace won't disappoint you. It will be well worth your time to see the movie.

Trailers are available on the film's web site. Not long after Tucker left Iraq, he posted an abbreviated, but still long, version of this film on his site. If there was ever a "you are there" movie, this is it.

The film is a stunning insight into the mind and manners of American soldiers in a hostile zone. The unit's tour was post-invasion in 2003; it lost four soldiers killed while there. Because operations at that time were oriented on security and stability, the Gunners found their artillery was not needed. The battalion was assigned missions that historically have been carried out by infantry or military police units.

While, as Matt says, the movie does not make a deliberate political statement (Tucker is a veteran himself), any movie that presents war truly is, IMO, anti-war by definition. (As one of my ministry colleagues once said, "Being pro-war is like being pro-Hell.") You'll have to search long and hard to find combat veterans who are actually pro-war. I've never met one myself.

Nonetheless, one must recognize that widespread, intense combat didn't occur during the Gunners' tour. (At the personal level, of course, even one bullet whizzing by your ear is intense!) So its impact is of a different kind than John Huston's powerful (and censored) WW2 documentary, "The Battle of San Pietro," which showed among other things full-facial views of killed soldiers being zipped into body bags and buried in a long trench. That scene is grotesque, horrifying, repulsive and compelling all at the same time.

But the Gunners were fighting a different kind of war. Hence another viewer wrote,

Most scenes are impactful simply for their ordinariness—the boredom and repetition that come from keeping the peace and trying to rebuild a nation who, for the most part, doesn't want your help. While the work can be intense, it is also slow and steady, done by many who are just out of high school and outside of their hometown for the first time in their lives. ...

What you don't see on the television news is the soldier's perspective. We all talk about educating ourselves on what is happening in Iraq to our men and women in service; well, here is your chance.

My only advisory is that I wouldn't take a sub-teen to see the movie. It is rated R principally for very rough language - these troops weren't following a script. In the already-classic line from the movie, Spec. Richmond Shaw, locks and loads his rifle, looks straight into the camera and scoffs: "For y'all, this is just a show, but we live in this movie."

Update: USA Today has an article on the Iraq- themed movies Hollywood is preparing to make or release.

by Donald Sensing, 2/08/2005 06:14:00 PM. Permalink |

Ward Churchill is impossible
On Ward Churchill: "He is incarnated impossibility of his own analysis." This from Marc Cooper, a self-described "leftie" and a contributing editor to The Nation magazine, citing Swarthmore history professor Timothy Burke.

Best essay on the Churchill kerfuffle I've seen.

Labels: Science

by Donald Sensing, 2/07/2005 09:00:00 PM. Permalink |

Eason Jordan
I haven't weighed in on the Eason Jordan kerfuffle because, well, I can't write about everything. Jordan is the CNN journalist who asserted at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that US military forces deliberately targeted reporters in Iraq, killing 12.

The session was taped, but curiously, no transcript has been posted on CNN's web site.

But there were plenty of witnesses, including some members of Congress such as Rep. Barney Frank and Sen. Christopher Dodd, both Democrats. Sen. Dodd's spokesman told Michelle Malkin that the senator was "outraged by the comments."

Need I say that the accusations - for which Jordan admitted he had no evidence - are slimy beyond description? But with very rare exceptions, Jordan's professional peers have been silent, leading Hugh Hewitt to write, "You can't blast heroes as killers and walk off the field to a cocktail parties in Davos and pretend nothing happened."

Well, as Gerard Van der Leun answers, yes you can. And he explains why that is so. His is the best piece about this I've seen. And that's all I have to say about that.

Labels: Science

by Donald Sensing, 2/07/2005 06:13:00 PM. Permalink |

Questions for the Left
"Cicero," blogging at Winds of Change, has a short list of questions for the Left about the war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. (He says the Qs are for liberals, but I thinks that's mistaken - Michael Totten, Jeff Jarvis and Christopher Hitchens are all certainly liberal, but all saw the necessity of dealing decisively with Saddam.)

I think these are excellent questions. I have blogged about similar ones myself. But his first question reveals a foundational misunderstanding:

What would have been the best, most legitimate way for Iraq to achieve democratic elections? Can it be applied to Burma, North Korea, Iran, and other dictatorships?

What Cicero seems not to realize is that the Left does not support democracy and in fact is inimical to it. So right off the bat the question assumes that the Left and the rest of us have a common regard for democracy that is not actually there.

In the months before the war began, the Left proved its sole purpose was to foil American policy, not to save the Iraqi people from Saddam. Asking the Left how it would have freed the Iraqi people is like asking the NFL how its going to save the rest of the hockey season. The NFL doesn't care whether hockey is played or not, and the Left didn't care whether Saddam was thrown down. If anything, the Left preferred for Saddam to stay in power.

Mass graves, torture rooms, rape as a state punishment, child executions, maimings - the Left simply is not bothered by these things when what is at stake in their minds is an expansive United States (or Great Britain, to a lesser extent).

Because the rest of Cicero's questions basically depend on this one, the Left will be equally unengaged by them, too. All depend on a basic mistake: that the Left is pro-democracy. But it isn't.

Nonetheless, it is true that some Americans who are not Leftists did and do oppose the war. And to them these question might make some sense. But again, Cicero's basic error is assuming that (as a group) they share the same goals as Cicero or the Bush administration. The first question again:

What would have been the best, most legitimate way for Iraq to achieve democratic elections?

And a non-Lefist war opponent might answer:

"We were told that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and that the threat was imminent. Democratizing Iraq was not said to be a war aim. Because there were no WMDs and no imminent threat, there was no basis for the war."

This is in fact nearly verbatim what the administration's opponents have been saying. My point is that freeing the Iraqi people from brutal tyranny was never their goal and is not today. That doesn't make them anti-American, as the Left so rabidly is, it is to say that the honest answer to Cicero's question is simply, "We don't care whether the Iraqis ever achieved democracy."

This position is really not liberal, of course. It is isolationist and a stance on which the not-quite-Left and the far Right find they have in common, though for different reasons. (Though the foreign military adventures of Bill Clinton didn't garner criticism from not-quite-Left side. In this the far Right is at least consistent.)

Anyway, some thoughtful liberals have already pondered and written about Cicero's questions, though wording them differently. I wrote two years ago about Sojourner's editor Jim Wallis's dilemma as a pacifist. He understood the urgency of the crisis but also more:

I oppose a widening war that bombs more people and countries, recruiting even more terrorists, and fueling an unending cycle of violence. But those who oppose bombing must have an alternative.

But Wallis is a man who is pro-democracy; his opposition to violence included Saddam's state violence. That is what Cicero is asking for - enough honesty from the opposition to admit the dilemmas of their own position, or enough honesty to admit that their opposition is really partisan political, not principled.

by Donald Sensing, 2/07/2005 04:50:00 PM. Permalink |

Blogging duo have lunch
Ry Jones lives in Moscow, Idaho. Today he is not quite halfway through a 7,500-mile trip through the nation's heartland. As he headed south from Indiana and Kentucky, he stopped here in Franklin, Tenn. to have a bite of lunch. I met him at PF Changs, a Chinese resaturant (note: not buffet!) where we spent a pleasant three hours in conversation. He's an interesting fellow, somewhat younger than I, whose American-heartland journey is one I wish I could go on. Alas, the encumbrances (Heck, I couldn't even afford the gasoline!).

He's also blogging his trip as he goes.

Update: Ry has posted )gasp!) photos!

Labels: Science

by Donald Sensing, 2/07/2005 04:04:00 PM. Permalink |

Well, bummer
The Diplomad says,

Well, friends and foes of The Diplomad, the time has come; it's time to say thanks and good-bye.

And the site only started last August. I know that a gazillion blogs come and go over any six month period, but it's unusual for a popular blogger (810K hits, ranked 50th as of now) simply to just quit. He insists that the State Dept. had nothing to do with it.

As the Bard put it, "Out, out, brief candle."

Labels: Science

by Donald Sensing, 2/07/2005 10:39:00 AM. Permalink |

"It's fun to shoot them"
The Marines have always prided themselves in focusing on combat first and always. "Every Marine a rifleman" is their eleventh commandment.

Unlike the other services, Marine recruiting has always emphasized that combat is central to their sense of identity and mission.

Maybe that's why US Marine Lt. Gen. James Mattis, speaking of fighting the enemy told a conference in San Diego Tuesday,

"Actually it's quite fun to fight 'em, you know. It's a [----] of a hoot. It's fun to shoot some people. I'll be right up front with you, I like brawling," said Mattis.

"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil," Mattis said during a panel discussion. "You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a [----] of a lot of fun to shoot them."

Incredibly, there seems to have been some expectation in some quarters that the general would be reprimanded for these remarks. The commandant of the Corps, Gen. Michael Hagee, felt he had to comment on Mattis's remarks.

"While I understand that some people may take issue with the comments made by him, I also know he intended to reflect the unfortunate and harsh realities of war," Hagee said.

"I have counseled him concerning his remarks and he agrees he should have chosen his words more carefully," Hagee added.

Counseled him? For what? Hagee chickened out; comes from living in Washington too long. He should have remembered what the Marine Corps exists to do and, when asked about Mattis's speech, simply replied, "Seems about right to me."

"Americans simply will not face up to what war is all about. They want it to be nice." -- US Marine Chesty Puller, who entered the Corps as a private and retired as a lieutenant general after earning five Navy Crosses.

James Joyner observes,

It's unfortunate that so few people have a sense of humor these days. What Mattis said was funny and the spirit of what he said was true. Professional soldiers don't enjoy killing but they do feel good about fighting in a cause so obviously just as removing the despicable Taliban from power. Off-color humor and demeaning the manhood of the enemy is as old as warfare.

This is sure enough, and it's best to have generals who remember it.

Update: All you sniveling boo-hooers who are so shocked at what LTG Mattis said and that I would defend him - read what Ralph Peters has to say.

by Donald Sensing, 2/04/2005 06:02:00 PM. Permalink |

Not bowing any more - the Iraqis own their country now

"A slave's life you understand; but, never having tasted liberty, you cannot tell whether it is sweet or not. Ah! Had you known what freedom is, you would have bidden us fight for it, not with the spear only, but with the battle-axe." - Two Spartan nobles to Hydarnes, a Persian noble, recounted by Herodotus.

Sunday was not merely an election day for the people of Iraq. It was the day on which for the first time ever they took ownership of their country. Now they are "plank owners" of Iraq, to borrow a nautical term from sailing days for the first crew assigned to a new ship, the crew who finishes its fitting out and makes sure it is seaworthy.

The people of Iraq now own a stake in their country. That is the real significance of the ink-stained fingers so many voters proudly displayed to the camera.

It's telling that before the Iraqi people became country owners, this kind of thing never happened:

Citizens of Al Mudhiryiah (a small town in the "death triangle") were subjected to an attack by several militants today who were trying to punish the residents of this small town for voting in the election last Sunday.

The citizens responded and managed to stop the attack, kill 5 of the attackers, wounded 8 and burned their cars.

Three citizens were injured during the fire exchange. The Shiekh of the tribe to whom the three wounded citizens belong demanded more efforts from the government to stop who he described as "Salafis".

Iraqi blogger Ali, who posted this account, commented,

[I]t shows that Iraqis are no longer paralyzed by fear from the terrorists and are able to organize themselves and defend their town when it's necessary. I believe that this is one of the good outcome of the revolution that took place in the great Sunday. Iraqis realized at that day that they're much stronger than this bunch of psychopaths that are standing in our way to democracy in freedom.

Anyone who still insists that American forces there are an occupation army since Jan. 30 (cough Ted Kennedy, cough) needs to ponder the meaning of what the citizens of Al Mudhiryiah did.

There is an armed resistance movement in Iraq, all right, only this time it is constituted by the free citizens of Iraq. This is what free people do. This is what sovereign people do. Underneath it all, that's why Todd Beamer told his fellow passengers aboard Flight 93, "Let's roll," and why they did.

What man or woman, tasting freedom, would choose to be enchained again? After decades of slavery, just a few days of freedom is enough to make one risk death to keep it.

The ancient Greek historian Herodotus related the war between the free Greek city-states and the Persian empire, under successive rule of Darius, then Xerxes. The dictatorship of the Persian emperor, known as the Great King, was absolute. As Xerxes' army started to cross the Hellespont,

... Pythias the Lydian, dreading the heavenly omen and encouraged by the gifts given to him by Xerxes, came up to Xerxes and said, "Master, I wish to ask a favor of you, which would be a small favor for you to render, but would be a great favor for me to receive." Xerxes, thinking that he knew everything Pythias could ask for, answered that he would grant the favor and asked him to proclaim what it was he wished. "Master, it happens that I have five sons, and they are all bound to soldier for you against the Greeks. I pray you, king, that you have pity on one who has reached my age and that you set free one of my sons, even the oldest, from your army, so that he may provide for me and my possessions. Take the other four with you, and may you return having accomplished all you intended."

Xerxes flew into a horrible rage and replied, "You villainous man, you have the effrontery, seeing me marching with my army against the Greeks, with my sons and brothers and relatives and friends, to remind me of your son, you, my slave, who should rather come with me with your entire household, including your wife! You may now be certain of this, that since the spirit lives in a man's ears, hearing good words it fills the body with delight, when it hears the opposite it swells up. When you at one time performed well and promised more, you had no reason to boast that you outperformed your king in benefits; and now that you have turned most shameless, you shall receive less than what you deserve. You and four of your sons are saved because of your hospitality; but one of your sons, the one you most desire to hold your arms around, will lose his life!" Having answered thus, he commanded those charged to accomplish this to find the eldest of Pythias's sons and cut him in half, and having cut him in two to set one half of his corpse on the right side of the road and the other on the left side, and between these the army moved forth.

There was another occasion Herodotus related, when a factotum of Darius court fell from favor. At table after a dinner, Darius called for a basket to be brought to the official and placed before him. The official opened the box to discover it held the head and hands of his son. "Do you now understand the nature of the meat you ate for dinner?" asked Darius. The official was a slave, of course, as was every other inhabitant of the Persian empire. Being a slave, he had learned the slave's submission since birth. "Yes, majesty," he replied, "and whatever pleases the Great King pleases me also."

No habits of slavishness were found among the Greeks when Persia marched against them. Xerxes sent heralds to the city-states of Greece demanding tokens of earth and water as symbols of submission. Some of the northern states were small and weak. Knowing they would be crushed they threw themselves on Xerxes' mercy, such as it was.

The stay of Xerxes in Pieria lasted for several days ... At this time the heralds who had been sent into Greece to require earth for the king returned to the camp, some of them empty-handed, others with earth and water. ...

King Xerxes had sent no heralds either to Athens or Sparta to ask earth and water, for a reason which I will now relate. When Darius some time before sent messengers for the same purpose, they were thrown, at Athens, into the pit of punishment, at Sparta into a well, and bidden to take therefrom earth and water for themselves, and carry it to their king. On this account Xerxes did not send to ask them.

But later the Spartans (in Greek, "Lacedaemonians") regretted treating Darius' emissaries so roughly; treating diplomatic personnel then as today was a breach of practice and considered criminal.

Then the Spartans were troubled; and, regarding what had befallen them as a grievous calamity, they held frequent assemblies of the people, and made proclamation through the town, "Was any Lacedaemonian willing to give his life for Sparta?" Upon this two Spartans, Sperthias, the son Aneristus, and Bulis, the son of Nicolaus, both men of noble birth, and among the wealthiest in the place, came forward and freely offered themselves as an atonement to Xerxes for the heralds of Darius slain at Sparta. So the Spartans sent them away to the Medes to undergo death.

Nor is the courage which these men hereby displayed alone worthy of wonder; but so likewise are the following speeches which were made by them. On their road to Susa they presented themselves before Hydarnes. This Hydarnes was a Persian by birth, and had the command of all the nations that dwelt along the sea-coast of Asia. He accordingly showed them hospitality, and invited them to a banquet, where, as they feasted, he said to them:-

"Men of Lacedaemon, why will ye not consent to be friends with the king? Ye have but to look at me and my fortune to see that the king knows well how to honour merit. In like manner ye yourselves, were ye to make your submission to him, would receive at his hands, seeing that he deems you men of merit, some government in Greece."

"Hydarnes," they answered, "thou art a one-sided counsellor. Thou hast experience of half the matter; but the other half is beyond thy knowledge. A slave's life thou understandest; but, never having tasted liberty, thou canst not tell whether it be sweet or no. Ah! hadst thou known what freedom is, thou wouldst have bidden us fight for it, not with the spear only, but with the battle-axe."

So they answered Hydarnes.

And afterwards, when they were come to Susa into the king's presence, and the guards ordered them to fall down and do obeisance, and went so far as to use force to compel them, they refused, and said they would never do any such thing, even were their heads thrust down to the ground; for it was not their custom to worship men, and they had not come to Persia for that purpose.

Free people bow to no one. Let us pray that no more shall the people of Iraq do so. The certainly weren't doing much bowing in Al Mudhiryiah. May it ever be so.

by Donald Sensing, 2/04/2005 02:24:00 PM. Permalink |

Too cool for fiction
I understand this is all over the place now, but Justin Katz let me know. It's a game-winning basketball shot at the buzzer from underneath the other basket. Video here. Pretty cool.

by Donald Sensing, 2/04/2005 02:07:00 PM. Permalink |

The SOTU speech - analysis and predictions
Knowing that everyone is breathlessly awaiting my insights on the president's SOTU speech last night, let me say only this: I didn't see it. I was away on business and by the time I got back the speech was nearly over. So I watched my alma mater, Wake Forest, beat Duke, which is always a good thing. Good game, Wake led almost all of it and it stayed in contest until the end.

I have scanned the text of the speech, though, and herewith offer predictions on whether his proposals and policies will become reality. (This doesn't include every proposal, but it does include most):

I will send you a budget that holds the growth of discretionary spending below inflation, makes tax relief permanent, and stays on track to cut the deficit in half by 2009.

All good, no probs here.

My budget substantially reduces or eliminates more than 150 government programs that are not getting results, or duplicate current efforts, or do not fulfill essential priorities.

It begs credulity that a mere 150 federal programs fit this description. He could eliminate ten times that number and not make a real dent in the problem. No bold move here at all, unless I consider that I don't recall the last president who said he'd eliminate any programs. Prediction: some programs will be eliminated, but not 150.

...we must free small businesses from needless regulation and protect honest job-creators from junk lawsuits. ... I urge Congress to pass legal reforms this year.

Ain't. Gonna. Happen. The vast majority of members of Congress (MCs) are lawyers, in case he forgot. It's true that the Trial Lawyers Association is a bulwark of the Democrats, but don't expect the Republicans to line up to take them down a peg, either. Prediction: not much will happen with this, and any reforms passed will be more symbolic than substantive. Lawyers' lobby is far more powerful than small-business owners.

Health care: a single paragraph that no one can argue with (well, not much) on either side of the aisle. Prediction: most of this will be legislated.

To keep our economy growing, we also need reliable supplies of affordable, environmentally responsible energy. (Applause.) Nearly four years ago, I submitted a comprehensive energy strategy that encourages conservation, alternative sources, a modernized electricity grid, and more production here at home -- including safe, clean nuclear energy. My Clear Skies legislation will cut power plant pollution and improve the health of our citizens. And my budget provides strong funding for leading-edge technology -- from hydrogen-fueled cars, to clean coal, to renewable sources such as ethanol. Four years of debate is enough: I urge Congress to pass legislation that makes America more secure and less dependent on foreign energy.

All great stuff (can you say "drill in ANWR"? I knew you could!). There will be huge fights over this. Prediction: anything that involves expanded exploitation of domestic oil fields or construction of new refineries (badly needed) will be fought tooth and nail by the left side of the aisle. Nuclear energy? Fuggedaboutit.

I've appointed a bipartisan panel to examine the tax code from top to bottom. And when their recommendations are delivered, you and I will work together to give this nation a tax code that is pro-growth, easy to understand, and fair to all.

Oh, do we not devoutly hope and pray! IMO, anything other than a flat tax will disappoint, and that has no chance. Prediction: not a lot of movement here because MCs of both parties are too wedded to using the tax code to reward or favor special-interest groups and/or constituencies. All that will result is some simplification of the present code, which is too bad because the present code needs to be dumped overboard and completely replaced.

America's immigration system is also outdated -- unsuited to the needs of our economy and to the values of our country. We should not be content with laws that punish hardworking people who want only to provide for their families, and deny businesses willing workers, and invite chaos at our border. It is time for an immigration policy that permits temporary guest workers to fill jobs Americans will not take, that rejects amnesty, that tells us who is entering and leaving our country, and that closes the border to drug dealers and terrorists.

The Republicans will fight him on this, not the Democrats. And only some Republicans at that. Prediction: Some floor fights but this will pass pretty close to what Bush wants. Which is too bad, because Bush is almost entirely wrong about this.

Social Security reform through establishment of personal accounts: Bush wants this very badly, and so do almost all Republicans in the Congress. This is the domestic centerpiece of Bush's second term. Prediction: Democrats are already howling, but this one will go through close to what Bush envisions.

Because marriage is a sacred institution and the foundation of society, it should not be re-defined by activist judges. For the good of families, children, and society, I support a constitutional amendment to protect the institution of marriage.

A throwaway line, but Bush isn't going top spend a lot of political capital on it. Prediction: won't happen.

Our government will continue to support faith-based and community groups that bring hope to harsh places. Now we need to focus on giving young people, especially young men in our cities, better options than apathy, or gangs, or jail. Tonight I propose a three-year initiative to help organizations keep young people out of gangs, and show young men an ideal of manhood that respects women and rejects violence.

Prediction: the legislation will be passed with little conflict.

War on terror: Most of this part was a rehash and re-emphasis of existing policies. This was new:

To promote peace in the broader Middle East, we must confront regimes that continue to harbor terrorists and pursue weapons of mass murder. Syria still allows its territory, and parts of Lebanon, to be used by terrorists who seek to destroy every chance of peace in the region. You have passed, and we are applying, the Syrian Accountability Act -- and we expect the Syrian government to end all support for terror and open the door to freedom. (Applause.) Today, Iran remains the world's primary state sponsor of terror -- pursuing nuclear weapons while depriving its people of the freedom they seek and deserve. We are working with European allies to make clear to the Iranian regime that it must give up its uranium enrichment program and any plutonium reprocessing, and end its support for terror. And to the Iranian people, I say tonight: As you stand for your own liberty, America stands with you.

Prediction: expect a toughening of US policy toward Syria, but no military action. We just can't take on another war and occupation. On Iran, I think we will covertly sponsor and support a political insurgency there to clean the mullahs out. But the Syrian people are not in opposition to Assad's regime as the Iranian people are to the mullahcracy.

At the recommendation of our commanders on the ground, and in consultation with the Iraqi government, we will increasingly focus our efforts on helping prepare more capable Iraqi security forces -- forces with skilled officers and an effective command structure. As those forces become more self-reliant and take on greater security responsibilities, America and its coalition partners will increasingly be in a supporting role. In the end, Iraqis must be able to defend their own country -- and we will help that proud, new nation secure its liberty.

Recently an Iraqi interpreter said to a reporter, "Tell America not to abandon us." He and all Iraqis can be certain: While our military strategy is adapting to circumstances, our commitment remains firm and unchanging. We are standing for the freedom of our Iraqi friends, and freedom in Iraq will make America safer for generations to come.

Prediction: what he said.

Labels: Science

by Donald Sensing, 2/03/2005 06:26:00 PM. Permalink |

Marines fall short
For the first time in 10 years, the US Marine Corps has failed to meet its monthly enlistment quota.

The Marines missed their January goal of 3,270 recruits by 84, less than 3 percent.

Just as one robin does not make a spring, so one blip every 10 years does not make a crisis. But if this shortfall is repeated soon, then there probably is a problem.

But not necessarily, as some are wont to think, caused by the ongoing combat in Iraq, even though Marine Brig. Gen. Walter Gaskin, the head of the Marine Corps Recruiting Command, admitted that Iraq and Afghanistan have an impact on recruiting. The improving economy is also to blame since good civilian job prospects causes some potential enlistees either to postpone enlistment or cancel it altogether. There is always a "hard core" of young men and women who will join the military no matter what the economy is doing (my son was in that category), but very many of the recruits have to be seriously sought by recruiters and sold on the idea. Although the services haven't lowered their standards, an upward economy makes recruiting harder because every employer or college wants the same men and women the services want.

Typically, the services meet this challenge by offering more money in the form of enlistment bonuses (think "signing bonus") or more benefit money for education.

For almost 30 years, naysayers have been predicting the demise of the all-volunteer force. This blip too shall pass.

Labels: Science

by Donald Sensing, 2/03/2005 03:55:00 PM. Permalink |

The Medal of Honor is not "won"
A pet peeve that probably most present and former military types share: military awards and decoration are never properly referred to as won. They are earned or awarded. Army Sgt. 1st Class Paul Smith will receive the Medal of Honor posthumously next month. But he will not be a Medal of Honor "winner." Combat decorations are not like lottery tickets or raffles. This and other medals are not won, they are earned.

One who holds the MOH is a Medal of Honor recipient, the same rule holding true for other decorations.

SFC Smith will be awarded the medal, but because he was KIA, his wife will be presented with the medal on his behalf. One may also correctly say that SFC Smith will receive the medal.

Those who have received decorations, including the Medal of Honor, may be said to hold or wear them.

But they are never, never, never "winners" of the medals. This protocol matters to military folks and it should matter to those who write about them, too.

Labels: Science

by Donald Sensing, 2/03/2005 02:24:00 PM. Permalink |

Trustworthiness
American Digest has this little gem about trustworthiness.

ONE OF FIVE THINGS HE LEARNED FROM WARREN BUFFET
3. Be Trustworthy

This may be a minor point that Mr. Buffett was trying to make, but he told a simple story that affected me greatly. He told of the Founder of the Nebraska Furniture Mart, one of his companies, and how she came from a poor Jewish family and couldn't read, write or speak English. She was had survived the Holocaust, spent 16 years bringing her family to the U.S. (at $50 per person), and grew the Nebraska Furniture Mart from a $500 initial investment to do $350 Million annually from a single location in Omaha.

She told Warren at one point that the way she evaluated people was simple: She simply asked herself, "Would they hide me?" What a great way to judge your instincts about whether to trust someone or not.
-- Darren Johnson at Stuff I Think : The Wisdom of Warren Buffett

Makes you think, doesn't it?

Labels: Science

by Donald Sensing, 2/03/2005 02:22:00 PM. Permalink |

Army NCO to be awarded Medal of Honor
An Army sergeant first class who sacrificed his life to save his soldiers during fighting in Baghdad will be awarded the Medal of Honor by President Bush, probably next month.

Sgt. 1st Class Paul R. Smith fought attacking Iraqis with a heavy machine gun atop a disabled personnel carrier on April 4, 2003,

... going through several boxes of ammunition fed to him by 21-year-old Pvt. Michael Seaman. As the battle wound down, Smith was hit in the head. He died before he could be evacuated from the scene. He was 33.

A detailed account ofd the engagement is here. The MOH is the nation's highest award for valor. Sgt. 1st Class Smith was leading a detachment of 16 soldiers when they were attacked by at least 100 enenmy troops. His actions enabled his badly outnumbered soldiers to withdraw to safety and almost certainly saved a nearby medical detachment from attack as well.

Labels: Science

by Donald Sensing, 2/02/2005 01:17:00 PM. Permalink |

How to save your own life
Update, Feb. 3: I've been asked to take down the photos that I originally posted here. This post explained the events of my dad's heart attack early Saturday morning, Jan. 29. The keys to his survival and now-excellent condition were these:

Speed is everything. The faster you get to an emergency room the much better your chances. Even with the great advances made in recent years in emergency treatment, about one-third of persons having their first heart attack do not survive it. Which means that ...

The default answer is yes if you wonder whether you are having a heart attack and should go to the emergency room. If you are unsure, then go. The worst thing that can happen is that you live.

Heart attack symptoms differ from one man to another, and women usually display symptons different from men's. The American Heart Association offers a PDF file, "What Are the Warning Signs of Heart Attack?" Generally, they are:

Uncomfortable pressure, squeezing, fullness or pain in the center of your chest. It lasts more than a few minutes, or goes away and comes back.

Pain or discomfort in one or both arms, your back, neck, jaw or stomach.

Shortness of breath with chest discomfort.

Break out in a cold sweat, nausea or lightheadedness.

I emphasize again: speed is everything. The AHA says that half of all people suffering a heart attack wait more than two hours before getting help. Even that is too long by far.

There is some debate going on, apparently, among doctors whether one should go to the nearest hospital, period, or the nearest hospital capable of performing cardiac catheterization, the procedure by which blocked arteries (i.e., a myocardial infarction heart attack) are cleared from the inside. According to an article in Medscape, "Patients With Acute Coronary Syndromes Should Be Taken to the Closest Hospital," sent me by reader Lawrence Barnes,

Patients with acute coronary syndromes should be taken to the closest hospital, even if that hospital does not have a cardiac catheterization laboratory, according to the results of a multinational study published in the Jan. 21 Online First issue of the British Medical Journal.

Comparing almost 29,000 patients treated, of whom 77 percent were treated at CC-capable hospitals,

... the risk of early death was not significantly different between patients in hospitals with or without catheterization facilities, after adjustment for baseline characteristics, medical history, and geographic region ... .

At six months, the risk of death was significantly higher in patients first admitted to catheterization-capable hospitals ... as was the risk of bleeding complications in the hospital ... and stroke ... .

The ellipses in the excerpts indicates where I omitted the statistical cites. The article is available online, but requires a registration/membership. I expect that more papers will be forthcoming about this topic. Bottom line, though, is this: any trained medical care is better than none. So get to the emergency room!

by Donald Sensing, 2/01/2005 07:07:00 PM. Permalink |

Linkagery for 2/1

As some claim that the Dems need to move away from the Michael Moores of the party, and the Reps need to move away from the James Dobsons, so some evangelicals are wondering whether to distance themselves from the Rev. Joel Osteen. Fascinating, if you're into ecclesiology.

Bill Roggio says that the Iraqi election day proved the fundamental impotence of the insurgents, and that with the success of the elections, the American Left's at-bats is now 0-6.

Here is what the commanding general of the US 1st Marine Division told his troops in Iraq after election day.

American GI held hostaqe by jihadists? "Media outlets such as MSNBC and the Associated Press relayed the claims of the terrorists for two hours before they were shown to be false."

Sorry, no. This is really GI Joe - you know, the doll - being held hostage. More here and here.

Labels: Science

by Donald Sensing, 2/01/2005 05:17:00 PM. Permalink |