I originally wrote this essay in 2002 in response to another blogger’s dismay that the Bush administration was defending in federal court the Second Amendment as protecting the right of individual Americans to own firearms. Its original title was, “Civilization, Violence, Sovereignty and the Second Amendment: Why the right to keep and bear arms is the fundamental right of a sovereign people.” The other blogger held keeping guns away from ordinary people was “the dividing line of civilization.” I’ve herein removed references to the other blog and offer it now simply as a reflection on what’s at stake regarding the right of individuals to keep and bear arms. This edit springs from Joe Katzman’s essay at Winds of Change, “Zimbabwe Changed My Mind: Guns Are A Human Right.”

I think the fundamental dividing line is whether sovereignty resides in the people or in the government. I wrote about this a long time ago, as blogs go. It was so excellent ( that I’ll repeat part of it:

Sovereignty means the source of authority in the state. Americans see the people as the only legitimate source of political legitimacy. In the United States, the state’s authority lies in the voters. In America, the state apparatus grants no rights at all to the people because the government has no rights to grant. All rights reside in the people to begin with. The American founders understood that human rights are simply a fact of human existence.

Therefore, in America, the people grant powers to the government, but no rights. Yet, sadly, I still hear in conversation with my fellow Americans statements such as, “The First Amendment gives us free speech.” In fact, the First Amendment, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution as a whole give or grant no rights at all: all rights automatically are always held by the people in the first place. The Bill of Rights was intended to restrict the power of the government — to make darn sure that government apparatchiks didn’t step on the rights of the people.

That is as clear a “dividing line” of civilization as is ever going to be found. If indeed the ultimate authority of the state is to be found in the people (as a condition of nature, as the Founders understood), then the people must also have the ultimate power to protect their sovereignty. That means, bluntly, the power of coercion. And coercion necessarily includes the use of violence.

In fact, civilization’s very existence rests on coercion. Mahatma Gandhi explicitly recognized this fact. His struggle was not whether the state (that is, Britain) should use force, but whether it was justly using force. Christian philosopher-ethicist Jacques Ellul in writing about violence observed (go to bottom of linked page):

Violence is to be found everywhere and at all times, even where people pretend that it does not exist. . . every state is founded on violence and cannot maintain itself save by and through violence.

Ellul disagrees with the the classic distinction between violence and force: it’s lawyers who have
invented the idea that when the state uses coercion, even brutally, it is exercising “force” and that only individuals or nongovernmental groups use violence. All states are established by violence. A government stays in power by violence or its threat and the threat is meaningless unless it can be and is employed. “Everywhere we turn,” writes Ellul, “we find society riddled with violence. Violence is its natural condition, as Thomas Hobbes saw clearly.”

If you don’t believe this, try not paying your taxes. The government will treat you with violence. We obey the law because fundamentally the state compels us to obey it with violence or the threat thereof.

When sovereignty resides in the people, there is a self-check on state power. Sometimes this self-check does not seem very strong, but in the end it always prevails unless the people surrender their sovereignty. (Remember, the Germans elected Hitler dictator, and it was the last decision they got to make for many long, bloody years.)

The Founders clearly understood something: a people armed are much less likely to surrender their
sovereignty than otherwise. If necessary, an armed people can defend their rights by wielding the ultimate power of sovereignty, violence. It may be defense against a foreign invader (which in the Founders’ day was a quite real threat) or it may be against a sovereignty-grabbing domestic government, which the Federalist Papers show was of even greater fear to the Founders than foreign invasion. In either case, the ability of the people themselves to exercise the ultimate state power was crucial. That was why the 2A insists that the people are the militia: an armed people are the sovereign state.

Of course, we have come a long way since a yeoman farmer could grab old Betsy off the mantle and go redcoat hunting. The threat of foreign invasion is nil, although the threat of terrorism in the US by foreign powers is real. Even so, few kinds of potential terrorist acts here will likely be the kind that armed citizens will be able to stop. Many Israeli citizens go armed, but terrorism there continues. So the present crisis does not, in my view, buttress much the argument for the right of individual citizens to be armed, except perhaps obliquely.

A much greater and more insidious threat to popular sovereignty is the swallowing of sovereign authority and power by the federal, state or local governments. This danger remains real (heck, it’s going on!) but it is a topic for another post.

It has been said that the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. There is a third way for the people to surrender their sovereignty. It is by failing to resist those who act destructively toward the common welfare of the people. In terms of the founding documents, there are people among us who deliberately damage the ability of the people to pursue happiness, live their lives in liberty, “form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility . . . promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty” for themselves and their posterity.

We call them criminals. Many are violent. If the sovereign people surrender their freedom to live in peace, pursuing happiness by peaceful, lawful means, they have surrendered their sovereignty. They are no longer free. Only if the people are armed can this surrender be avoided. This a lesson that Great Britain and Australia are bitterly learning now. Having disarmed their people about five years ago (because the people there are subjects, not sovereigns), they now discover that criminal violence against persons and property is way up. (See here and here and here. )

Twenty-six percent of English citizens — roughly one-quarter of the population — have been victimized by violent crime. Australia led the list with more than 30 percent of its population victimized. The United States didn’t even make the “top 10″ list of industrialized nations whose citizens were victimized by crime. (citation)

Do not count on the police to maintain domestic tranquility in the final analysis. Their role is certainly important in enforcement, but they are reactive. They do not generally stop criminals; they apprehend them. But no criminal actually believes he will be caught, else he would not commit the crime.

Furthermore, there is no moral difference between the homeowner who protects his life or
property with a gun and one who does not but summons a police officer. If the police arrive on time (problematic), they use violence or its threat to protect the law-abiding. The unarmed homeowner has merely “contracted out” his wielding of deadly force or the threat of it.

Let me repeat: There is no moral difference between arming oneself for self defense and forming, arming and using a police force. Using arms for self defense is an act of protecting the sovereignty of the people.

I have heard this point in rebuttal to Second Amendment rights: I don’t understand why anyone
would want to own a gun. Guns are not fun; they are not macho . . .

Well, I have just explained keeping arms is a fundamental right of sovereignty and the means of
retention thereof, including for self defense. Self defense is a very powerful incentive to want a gun. As the old western saying went, “God made some men big and some little, but Colonel Colt made them all the same size.” Hence the original six-shooter’s nickname, The Equalizer. However, guns are also implements of sport. Rifle, pistol and shotgun shooting are Olympic events. And shooting sports are, well, sports. See this post, for example.

“Guns are not fun, they are not macho. . .” No, toys are fun, and guns are not toys. That’s why I never permitted my kids to play with toy guns. “Toy guns” is an oxymoron. But a basketball is not “fun,” either; it is the basketball game that is fun. Similarly, a sporting firearm, by itself, is not fun, but shooting sports are fun - not the laugh-out-loud, clap-your-hands- kind of fun, but the fun that comes from honing a physical skill and performing it expertly. Some people don’t enjoy shooting sports, but millions do. Shall the gun-control curmudgeons have the right to deny me my sport?

I have heard some of my friends tell me yes. Only they put it this way: “No one really needs a gun.” Well, that’s false; re-read what I wrote above. But more frightening is the notion that we should define our freedoms based on what we think someone else “needs” to do. One lady told me, “No one needs an AK-47 to hunt deer.” Well, yes, that’s true, and in fact an AK-47 would be a rather miserable hunting gun. But freedom is not about what we “need,” is about being able to do what we want. And if someone wants to hunt with an AK-47, then as misguided as that is, gun-wise, he should be able to do so.

Look at it this way: no one needs a BMW or a Cadillac. A Chevy will do just as well. People buy a luxury auto not because they need it over a Chevy but because they want it. No other reason.

As for the “macho” bit, this is a non-sequitur. Personally, I don’t feel more manly on the firing range. If manliness was the issue, I would not be teaching my wife and daughter to shoot, lest their skills threaten my macho image (and my wife is a good shot).

But maybe there are some men who doubt themselves, who think that a gun compensates for their perception of lack of manliness. So what? The issue is not what they think of their firearm, or what it may do to their self-image, but only - only - whether they use it safely and lawfully. There is no other issue involved. “Machismo” as a criticism of gun ownership is a patriarchal argument anyway, since it inherently fails to account for ownership of guns by women.

Let me make this point again. It’s important. The freedom of a sovereign people does not spring from having or doing only what they “need,” but being able to do and have what they want.

The “need” of a gun for self defense is real and legitimate, more so for some people than others. But my “want” for a gun for recreation and sport is also legitimate and cannot be obviated without making me less free.

Another criticism: “guns are dangerous. The kill people.” I am reminded of Robert Heinlein’s observation, “There are no dangerous weapons, only dangerous men.” (Yes, women, too.) Guns are not dangerous. Criminals are dangerous. Terrorists are dangerous. People handling firearms unsafely are dangerous. And guns commit no crimes nor accidents. I have, as a sheriff’s department volunteer, been to many fatal scenes of auto accidents, but I do not say, “look what the cars did,” because the car didn’t do it. The drivers did.

It is a legitimate concern that others who own guns handle them safely. Yet this concern needs to be put into context with other risks we all run every day. According to the NHTSA,

— 4,739 pedestrians were killed in motor vehicle accidents in 2000, and another 78,000 were injured. On average, a pedestrian is killed every 111 minutes, and one is injured every seven minutes.

— In 2000, there were 5, 915 occupational fatalities, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

— In 2000, there were 600 accidental gun deaths, according to the National Safety Council (cited in Sports Afield.) This number was “25% fewer than in 1999, reflects a 58% drop since 1990, and is the lowest number of fatalities reported since records were first kept in 1903.”

My question is this: how are firearms themselves fearful? Guns are not fear-worthy, only shooters are. An average American is 10 times more likely to die on the job than from an accident involving his neighbor’s guns - or anyone else’s. In fact, according to the NSC tables, a person has one chance in 1.92 million of dying by a handgun this year (including by murder, not just accident) which is 2.5 times less than dying from taking a bath. From the accident and safety standpoint, firearms ownership is one of the safest things Americans do. The chances of dying by means of long guns are several multiples lower than by handgun.

If a person fears the possibility of gun accidents, then that person should consider why the fatality rate from firearms continues to decline:

“Much of the credit,” notes Bob Delfay, president and CEO of the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), “goes to the thousands of volunteers in hunter safety education, the National Rifle Association, Boy Scouts and 4-H firearm safety instruction who are making a positive contribution to increased safe ownership of firearms and enjoyment of the shooting sports.”

Those who fear gun accidents should consider aiding this effort. They should become safety
certified by the National Rifle Association and teach firearms safety. Or they can coordinate with their sheriff’s department for a deputy to teach classes in various venues. I think that firearms safety should be taught in middle school - a mandatory class, with alternate-year refresher sessions through high school.

In general terms, I think that most of the opposition to keeping and bearing arms by ordinary citizens springs from non-rational bases. I didn’t say irrational, as in crazy, I said non-rational. The desire to eliminate firearms from American’s hands is for many people a emotive reaction rather than a thoughtful one. Education and experience will overcome this, just as education and experience overcame the non-rational fear people used to have of AIDS and AIDS victims.

But I think that others, mostly the various gun-control groups, really just can’t stand freedom
exercised by others. They want to live their lives a certain way and make sure that everyone else does, too. They seek a highly ordered, regimented society made up of people just like them. This desire to control others is pernicious and dangerous. They are “invincibly ignorant” in their campaigns because the actual facts about guns in America mean nothing to them. They simply do not want you or me to own a gun, period, no matter for what reason. They do not want us to be free and sovereign.

As for licensing and basic government control — I oppose licensing and basic government control because — am I getting the message through here? — I am sovereign in America, not the government, and I do not permit the government to regulate my sovereignty.

Experience in Britain and Australia proves that “licensing and basic government control” don’t
prevent firearms murders. All three nations have draconian firearms restrictions and controls, but in the first two nations, illegal gun violence has risen directly as legal gun ownership has been oppressed.

[Note from Donald Sensing - the author, John Krenson, has extensive overseas military experience in eastern Europe going back well into the 1990s. He is also a veteran of the Afghanistan campaign. I am proud to call him my friend and welcome him as a contributor. I have included some biographical information at the end of the post.]

Debate rages over the two traditional roles of the Guard – the war time mission and the civil defense/natural disaster mission. In wartime should the Guard be relied upon for combat forces or for support forces? Should the civil defense role of the Guard be expanded to or even limited to border security of the Homeland? Yet not many know that a third mission has developed quietly - and yet not quite so quietly – over the last dozen years that has had unforeseen significant impact on the War on Terror.

Some Background

The long term role of the National Guard has long been and seems even more today to be of considerable debate. Before examining this role three historical points come to mind including recent history and current events.

The National Guard has made up a significant percentage of forces used in nearly every major war or conflict with the exception of Vietnam. Consider the following numbers:

Civil War – 96% of Union troops provided by state militias; 80% of Confederate troops from state militias.

WW I – Nearly 400,000 National Guard/Reserve troops served.

WW II – Almost 300,000 National Guard/Reserve troops served.

Since then:

And since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the National Guard has provided 352,000 personnel for active duty.

During the Gulf War of 1990-1991, combat maneuver units of the Army National Guard were held and “recycled” through training over and over again and were not deployed. A National Guard brigade was finally certified as combat ready at the National Training Center (NTC) in California on the last day of combat in the Gulf War after spending nearly four months at NTC (note that active duty combat units spent 7 to 8 months training in the deserts of Saudi Arabia before engaging in combat). However over 235,000 Guard and Reserve troops served in varying capacities in the Gulf War including tens of thousands in Saudi Arabia and later Kuwait.

It has been widely reported that Guard and Reserve forces now make up nearly 40% of US forces in Iraq alone and these include multiple Guard combat units from combat Divisions on down to independent support Companies.

(For an interesting history of the Guard from 1980 through 1999 see here.)

Regardless of the debate for the future of the Guard and Reserve it is clear both in history and current operations that the United States has relied heavily and successfully on the Guard and Reserve in times of significant war and conflict, including all three main types of units, combat units, combat support and combat service support organizations.

One of the primary roles of the Guard during the Cold war was to provide strategic depth as a deterrent to the Soviet behemoth. The elimination of that strategic need as much as any other reason has led to the debate of the future role of the Guard and Reserve. So what is the mission of the Guard in particular?

The Roles

Traditionally the Guard has two missions, which can be easily gleaned from, say, the standing missions for a National Guard Military Police Battalion:

a. The battalion’s federal-service mission is to provide command, control, and coordination for combat, combat support and combat service support operation of all Military Police elements assigned or attached.

b. The battalion’s peacetime State Mission statement is to conduct operations in support of the protection of life and property and the preservation of peace, order and public safety as directed by the Governor of the State and the Adjutant General.

I seek here neither seek to frame nor resolve the debate over the future priority of these two roles or how they are carried out, nor even address the proposed role of using the Guard to exclusively protect the nation’s borders (another debate indeed). I wish to inform readers of what has developed over the last 12 years as a non-traditional role or mission of the Guard as an instrument in improving interoperability between United States and “partner” nations’ forces. The United States has come to rely upon the National Guard for aiding in the development of foreign armies - particularly those of the former Soviet Bloc in Europe and Central Asia. And this has been going on since 1993. Surprised?

Who Knew?

Here is a basic summary of the history of this involvement:

The National Guard State Partnership Program was established in 1993 in response to the radically changed political-military situation following the collapse of Communism and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Authorities questioned how the National Guard, having provided the United States with strategic credibility during the Cold War, could continue to be relevant in an era when defense of the Fulda Gap was no longer the driving force behind America’s national defense strategy.

Mindful of the uniqueness and strengths of the Guard’s citizen-soldiers, the National Guard Bureau foresaw a unique opportunity to make a lasting contribution to solidifying the newly established peace. Our response was the State Partnership Program (SPP). Elegantly simple in concept, the SPP sought to link the National Guards of the States of the United States with Ministries of Defense of the emerging democratic nations of Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia in cooperative activities of mutual benefit. In no way seeking to replace the bilateral relationships appropriate to national level diplomacy, the SPP aimed to enhance those connections by bringing “Hometown America” onto the international stage through personal, sustained relationships. These associations would build a “Bridge to America,” establishing and nurturing bonds of mutual understanding at the grass roots level.

What is particularly interesting is that NATO determined a similar need and thus established the better known Partnership For Peace program in 1994 - a year after the establishment of the SPP. Since then the SPP has become the primary means of US support to the PFP program and consists of 41 State National Guard programs plus those of Guam and Puerto Rico. This map displays National Guard states and their partner nations:

Primary objectives include -

— familiarizing partner nations with our equipment, tactics and training methods,

— the crucial role of our noncommissioned officers corps,

— demonstrating the importance and success of suborning the military to civil authority.

A significant purpose of this program is also to provide humanitarian aid, the injection of economic aid through the money spent on exercises and by US National Guard troops on the local economy while serving there, and the development of relationships and trust between the two nations – the US and the respective partner. Exercises often include a healthy dose of cultural activities designed for the expenditure of money and the social interaction between soldiers as they learn to trust one another, to develop an appreciation and respect for one another’s culture, and to learn how to interact breaking through cultural, ethnic, and language barriers. The impact on the local citizenry is positive and important as well.

A High-Payoff Target

The payoff has been significant and I can at least anecdotally attest that my experience as a Tennessee Army National Guard officer in nearly a dozen SPP exchanges – both in Bulgaria and with Bulgarians visiting Tennessee – helped me immensely in working successfully with an international staff during my service in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom. I have heard the same from frontline Tennessee Guard soldiers who participated in previous PFP/SPP exercises in regard to their work with Iraqi and other Coalition soldiers during Operation Iraqi Freedom. As a result of our work in PFP/SPP the Coalition environment was not strange and unfamiliar to us and actually caused us to look forward to working with soldiers of other nations.

The relationships developed and nurtured through SPP with Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan have also been instrumental in our success in Afghanistan. The integration of new US allies from the former East Bloc – significant OIF troop contributors such as Poland, Ukraine, and Bulgaria – has been smoothed by years of the SPP/PFP relationship with National Guard states. It is through the SPP that these soldiers have learned how to work with US soldiers, tactics, and equipment whether those units be from their partner National Guard states or from the active component.

SPP has also prepared our troops – the limited number exposed to SPP in the National Guard – for working with soldiers of other nations and cultures. While active forces have trained for years in and along with other nations, the National Guard is leading the way for real coalition integration with our new allies.

I am certain the debate over the Guard and Reserve will rage on. Whether to cut reliance on combat units in the Guard or to shift our mission to a glorified border patrol there will be those in the bowels of the Pentagon and at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE)/NATO who will keep a sharp eye on preserving the ever increasing important role of the National Guard in mentoring and improving the interoperability of our new partner nations – the partners who also just happen to be the nations who’ve stepped up to the plate in recent years. They are truly partners for true peace.

Maj. John Krenson is a Tennessee Army National Guard officer and independent civilian businessman – a true traditional Guardsman. He is a veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom having served as the Chief Intelligence Liaison Officer between US Coalition Forces and NATO Forces in Kabul, Afghanistan. He was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for exceptionally meritorious service there and now serves as the Operations Officer for the 168th Military Police Battalion, Tennessee Army National Guard. Maj. Krenson has been involved in PFP/SPP programs since 1996 having visited Bulgaria four times and having received Bulgarian officers in Tennessee nearly half a dozen times. He is currently the lead US planner for the largest SPP event in the history of the program.

Long ago Mark Twain wrote of the German language,

German ought to be gently and reverently set aside among the dead languages, for only the dead have time to learn it. … an average sentence in a newspaper is a sublime and impressive curiosity that occupies a quarter of a column; it contains all 10 parts of speech-not in regular order, but mixed; it is built mainly of compound words constructed on the spot, and not to be found in any dictionary.

So reported Rick Atkinson in his article, “Ignoring Marktwainsgermanwarning” in The WaPo in 1994. The WaPo piece appeared when I was stationed at the Pentagon. For a long time afterward, the paper ran letters occasionally on the topic of “Marktwainsgermanwarning,” generally about the syntactical idiosyncracies of Deutsch.

I wrote one such letter which was, alas, never printed. Somehow, it has survived on my computer to this day, despite the fact my present computer is at least the fifth since then. I stumbled across it and discerned immediately what Yoda’s major malfunction is: he’s really German!

Here’s the text of my letter to the Post 10 years ago:

A shortcomment on this ongoingdebate I have. In German biglongwordsthatcontinueforeverwithnoendinsight there are. Bigdeal. Two biggerproblems there are. First, in the Germanlanguage, verbs at the end of sentences or clauses go. In normalconversation, which is a question or which is a declarativestatement vocalinflection indicates. But in the writtentexts, only at the endofsentences with a period or a questionmark when you the difference can tell isn’t it? Second, negatives the noun not verb modify.

What the ruleimpact of this in English try to imagine would be. We ever where until there we got would we know are going? Many famoussayings notmemorable would be: “Before you leap look,” “Notcart before the horse put,” two examples are. Richard Nixon would have said, “I a notcrook am.” Connie Chung to the Newtmother would have said, “Why not you to me girltogirl it whisper?”

If you the Billandhillaryclintonhealthplan indecipherableandhardtounderstand as it written was think, it not according to germanizedbureacraticliterarystyle with all the verbs at the endofsentences be glad written was! Otherwise, we Harryandlouiseprotest would have had to hear, “To this listen! They my choice away take! I my notchoice to keep get! And this muchminemoney will cost! This stinks!”

And letterstotheeditor really, really no sense with Germanrules would make.

Truly yours I am,

Donald M. Sensing

This letter like it by Yoda sounds written was. So that his problem is. Great mystery solved. I congratulated should be!

Before commenting, please remember Rule No. 6!

That’s Hugh Hewitt’s advice to the spin doctors at PepsiCo. He says that he didn’t think he’d get a lot of feedback but,

I was wrong. Lots and lots of outrage pouring in, and I will open the radio show with a discussion. Seems a lot of people who dug deep for tsunami relief and who have watched hundreds of their country’s soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines die to bring the January 31 elections to Iraq don’t want to be lectured on how America is too often seen as “scratching our nose and sending a far different signal” to the world.

The amount of feedback in both comments and email I have been getting since my critique of Indra Nooyi’s commencement address Columbia University has been very high, including texts of letters or emails sent to PepsiCo by both consumers and shareholders.

Time is running out, says Hugh.

[D]Well, definitely don’t wait. Get the CEO, Stephen Reinemund, on Nightline, O’Reilly, any show that asks, and especially on talk radio. The blunder is the corporate equivalent of Marburg’s, and it needs to be contained. Abject apology followed by abject apology. Decide right now whether Indra Nooyi matters more than a lasting black eye. Think about how P&G is still dealing with the satan nonsense. Think about the brand.

Two hours ago I asked my producer to call PepsiCo and see who would come on. My guess is that they declined the interview, but who knows, they might have someone who sees the pulse.

Hugh also cogently observes,

The graduates certainly got a commencement lesson worth remembering: When you represent a consumer products company, it is best not to insult the largest market in the world, not to mention your home team.

Yep. When you make $5 million per year in direct compensation - making you one of the 12 highest-paid CFOs in America - you’re supposed to be able to craft your words carefully enough not to have to do damage control by insisting you were “miscontrued.” And you can’t pretend you can leave your professional position behind to give a speech. She may as well have “Pepsi” tatooed on her forehead, for if it’s true that “the personal is political,” it’s also true at Ms. Nooyi’s rarefied altitude that the personal is the corporate.

I previously recommended the milblog Andi’s World to you. Andi is an Army wife - “the toughest job in the Army” goes the old saying - and emailed me with a tip that Linda Foley, president of the 35,000-member Newspaper Guild asserted Friday that U.S. troops deliberately are killing journalists in Iraq. Blogs Andi,

Easongate all over again.

Echoing a claim that led to CNN executive Eason Jordan’s resignation, the president of the 35,000-member Newspaper Guild asserted U.S. troops deliberately are killing journalists in Iraq.

According to a tape of her remarks, Foley said: “Journalists, by the way, are not just being targeted verbally or … ah, or … ah, politically. They are also being targeted for real, um … in places like Iraq. What outrages me as a representative of journalists is that there’s not more outrage about the number, and the brutality, and the cavalier nature of the U.S. military toward the killing of journalists in Iraq.”

Foley continued, “They target and kill journalists … uh, from other countries, particularly Arab countries like Al -, like Arab news services like al-Jazeera, for example. They actually target them and blow up their studios with impunity. …”

Will they ever learn? Time to get the blogosphere cranking on this. More later.

Democracy Now! features links to audio of the speech and streaming video, which should tell you something. I have unsuccessfully searched for the text of the speech.

The “Easongate” reference is about the controversy over CNN’s chief news executive, Jordan Eason, who said in a public forum at the January 27 World Economic Forum that U.S. forces had deliberately targeted journalists. Eason resigned his position on Feb. 11.

Update: La Shawn Barber tried to call Ms. Foley but the Newspaper Guild isn’t answering the phone (their answering machine claimed - no fooling - that they are the victims of a calling conspiracy). Editor and Publisher says that Ms. Foley is already claiming her speech has been “distorted.” But E&P also includes the verbatim text of what she said relevant to this controversy:

“Journalists are not just being targeted verbally or politically. They are also being targeted for real in places like Iraq. And what outrages me as a representative of journalists is that there’s not more outrage about the number and the brutality, and the cavalier nature of the U.S. military toward the killing of journalists in Iraq. I think it’s just a scandal.”

“It’s not just U.S. journalists either, by the way. They target and kill journalists from other countries, particularly Arab countries, at news services like Al Jazeera, for example. They actually target them and blow up their studios, with impunity. This is all part of the culture that it is OK to blame the individual journalists, and it just takes the heat off of these media conglomerates that are part of the problem.”

But let us not bother with minor things like evidence. E&P also includes this tidbit:

When asked if she believed U.S. troops had targeted journalists in Iraq, she said, “I was careful of not saying troops, I said U.S. military. Could I have said it differently? There are 100 different ways of saying this, but I’m not sure they would have appeased the right.”

Seems she never heard the adage, “when you get to the bottom, stop digging.”

The Newsweek scandal brings media bias into sharper focus

Saith today’s Best of the Web Today, regarding the Newsweek scandal:

Glenn Reynolds gets it right:

If [Newsweek] had wrongly reported the race of a criminal and produced a lynching, they’d feel much worse-which is why they generally don’t report such things, a degree of sensitivity they don’t extend to reporting on, you know, minor topics like wars. . . . People died, and U.S. military and diplomatic efforts were damaged, because-let’s be clear here-Newsweek was too anxious to get out a story that would make the Bush Administration and the military look bad.

Journalists have to make myriad judgment calls, and this is far from the first time a news organization has jumped the gun and reported information that turned out to be false-though usually the consequences aren’t so bloody. But it’s fair to say this is an example of “adversary” journalism getting out of control. Reporters are not agents of the government, but it wouldn’t hurt if, at least during wartime, they were restrained by some sense of patriotism.

As I said, insitutionally, Newsweek wanted to believe the story that American interrogators had flushed the Quran down a toilet.

I’ve been saying it now for at least a year: it is too much to expect that media organizations and their coverage will be unbiased. It’s not even really possible, anyway.

No, as I have pointed out over and over, the real question facing Newsweek and all other media, including bloggers, is which biases shall they/we adopt, and why?

Media managers need to ponder very deeply one over-arching question when considering how to cover stories related to the war on terrorism:

One way or another, what you print or broadcast, what stories you cover and how you cover them, what attention you pay to what issues and how you describe them - all these things mean that you will support one outcome over another. Which will you choose? How will you support it? These are the most important questions of your vocation today. But you are not facing them at all.

Roger Simon is right: this war is war at its most basic: “It’s about civilization versus a death cult. Make a choice!”

Der Spiegel interviewed British historian Frederick Taylor, whose latest book argued that the destruction of the ancient city of Dresden by British and American bombers in February 1945 was not the unjustified slaughter it is now mostly said to be. Slaughter it was indeed, but Taylor says, “Dresden had war industries and was a major transportation hub.” That doesn’t mean he thinks the bombing was altogether justified, though.

The bombing of Dresden began at night by the Royal Air Force and was continued by day by the 8th US Air Force. It was one of the the most lethal bombing raids against any German city. The air raid was the brain child of British Air Marshal Arthur “Bomber” Harris.

In 1945, Arthur Harris decided to create a firestorm in the medieval city of Dresden. He considered it a good target as it had not been attacked during the war and was virtually undefended by anti-aircraft guns. The population of the city was now far greater than the normal 650,000 due to the large numbers of refugees fleeing from the advancing Red Army.

On the 13th February 1945, 773 Avro Lancasters bombed Dresden. During the next two days the USAAF sent over 527 heavy bombers to follow up the RAF attack. Dresden was nearly totally destroyed. As a result of the firestorm it was afterwards impossible to count the number of victims. Recent research suggest that 35,000 were killed but some German sources have argued that it was over 100,000.

Controversy still obviously swirls concerning the destruction of most of the city, one of the oldest and most architecturally unique in Europe. One aim of the bombing was to destroy hubs of lines of communication - roads and rail lines - that converged on the city. This would hinder the ability of the Germans to defend against the advancing Soviet army advancing from the east. But an internal RAF memo also said explicitly in January 1945 that the destruction of the city would “show the Russians when they arrive what Bomber Command can do.” After all, as 1945 opened it was clear to all the allied powers that victory was certain; the British much more than the Americans were already pondering the postwar balance of power with the Soviets.

After the war, Air Marshal Harris said,

I know that the destruction of so large and splendid a city at this late stage of the war was considered unnecessary even by a good many people who admit that our earlier attacks were as fully justified as any other operation of war. Here I will only say that the attack on Dresden was at the time considered a military necessity by much more important people than myself… .

These excerpts from this British site, which has more.

One of the less-examined aspects of Allied strategic aims against both the Germans and the Japanese is the the destruction of enormous numbers of civilians and urban areas was a deliberate, planned war aim. I covered this topic in 2002, but here is a pertinent excerpt that follows my explanation of the American myth of “precision bombing:”

The Americans rejected terror bombing, but not for long. As the war went on and on, and German and Japanese resistance failed to slacken, President Roosevelt decided that the German and Japanese peoples must realize after the war that not only had their armed forces been defeated: the entire nation, as a nation, had been beaten. He and Churchill were well aware that German militarism had survived World War I because its apologists had successfully propagated the myth that the Kaiser’s army had not really been defeated, it had been “stabbed in the back” by disloyal factions at home.

Hence, said, Roosevelt,

It is of utmost importance that every person in Germany should realize that this time Germany is a defeated nation. . . . The fact that they are a defeated nation, collectively and individually, must be so impressed upon them that they will hesitate to start any new war.

(Roosevelt’s policy seems not far from Civil War Gen. William T. Sherman’s observation of the Confederate States, “War, and war alone, can inspire our enemy with respect, and they will have their belly full of that very soon.”)

So, according to historian Richard B. Frank in his award-winning book, Downfall, the End of the Imperial Japanese Empire:

Viewed in this light, massive urban bombing complemented the aim of unconditional surrender. It was not just a handful of vile men who flaunted vile ideologies; whole populations imbibed these beliefs and acted as willing acolytes. Unconditional surrender and vast physical destruction would sear the price of aggression into the minds of the German and Japanese peoples. No soil would be left from which myths might later sprout that Germany and Japan had not really been defeated. These policies would assure that there would be no third world war with Germany, nor would Japan get a second opportunity.

One notes that Japan and Germany have been well behaved since 1945. But we also have to note that massive, destructive bombing was alone not the reason. It was simply impossible for either country’s armed forces to claim that they had prevailed, or at least held their own, on the field of battle. German and Japanese orphans, widows and grieving parents were in almost every other household, and a lie that their armed forces had not really lost could not possibly have found legs to stand on.

No doubt the controversies over the conduct of the war will continue. Historian Taylor gets the last word here, responding to a question of whether Dresden was the “Holocaust” of Allied bombings.

Half a million Soviet citizens, for example, died from German bombing during the invasion and occupation of Russia. That’s roughly equivalent to the number of German citizens who died from Allied raids. But the Allied bombing campaign was attached to military operations and ceased as soon as military operations ceased. But the Holocaust and the murder of all those millions would not have ceased if the Germans had won the war. Bombing is ruthless war making, but to use the word Holocaust to describe ruthless war making is to confuse two entirely different things.

Today at church I had the pleasure to meet retired Air Force pilot Ed Yeilding, who honored us by attending before he headed home to Alabama. He said he had seen me on The O’Reilly Factor on April 4. In Nashville for a couple of days, he looked me up, which was very kind.

Ed was an SR-71 “Blackbird” reconnaissance aircraft pilot for several years. When the plane was retired from service in 1990,

an SR-71 (972) accomplished history on a record breaking flight from Los Angeles to Washington, DC Pilot Ed Yielding [sic] and RSO Joseph T. “JT” Vida made the flight in 64 minutes, 54 seconds, averaging 2,144.8 mph, setting the coast- to- coast world speed record. On that historic event, aircraft 972 was turned over to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum at Dulles International Airport. [link]

Ed Yeilding, right, with co-crewman J.T. Vida

As you may imagine, it is fascinating to talk with Ed in person. There are only about 100 SR-71 pilots, according to Ed, and about that many navigators. It’s a very exclusive club! Many thanks to Ed and all his comrades for their invaluable service for well over two decades of the Cold War.

Nature.com - “the best in science journalism” - reports,

Reductions in industrial emissions in many countries, along with the use of particulate filters for car exhausts and smoke stacks, seem to have reduced the amount of dirt in the atmosphere and made the sky more transparent.

That sounds like very good news. But the researchers say that more solar energy arriving on the ground will also make the surface warmer, and this may add to the problems of global warming.

Well, I am so intent on ending global warming that I think I’ll go buy a new SUV and rip out the catalytic converter.

As Chesty Puller’s landing boat churned toward the Inchon shore in 1950, he turned to a reporter near him and motioned to the F4U aircraft overhead firing rockets at North Korean positions.

“See that?” Chesty yelled over the noise. “Every plane here flew off the decks of the carriers out in deeper water. So much for the experts who said after the last war that carriers are finished.”

One notes that 55 years later, the US has the largest carrier fleet in the world. But Chesty need not have referred to aircraft carriers to find spectacularly wrong predictions:

“I predict that large-scale amphibious operations will never occur again.” — General Omar N. Bradley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, October 1949

“We’ll never have any more amphibious operations. That does away with the Marine Corps. And the Air Force can do anything the Navy can do nowadays, so that does away with the Navy.” — Truman’s Secretary of Defense Louis A. Johnson, to Admiral Richard L. Connally in 1949

The “end of this or that” crowd is still practicing, only this time the predicted death concerns tanks. Writes Austin Bay,

In the original Rumsfeld program, heavy armor, like the M1 tank, was a “legacy system” — an archaic technology. Rumsfeld’s Whiz Kids weren’t the only ones who thought the tank passe. An Army buddy tells the story of a could-be Democratic appointee he escorted through DOD briefings. The pipe-smoking pontificator kept saying, “The tank’s dead.” My infantry pal finally turned to him and said: “Yes sir, the tank’s a dinosaur, but it’s the baddest dinosaur on the battlefield. You face one.”

In November’s battle in Fallujah the Army provided most of the tanks and the Marines most of the infantry. One Marine battalion commander wrote that everyone wanted more tanks. When the Marines came up against an enemy strongpoint in the city, they waited until a tank or two came up. Within five minutes, the commander said, that little firefight was over. But sometimes they couldn’t get tanks in time, so they had to go in the old-fashioned way. That’s when the Marines suffered almost all their casualties.

This could ruin your whole morning.

Strategy page also has some dope on a new Air Force bomb called HardSTOP,

… designed to destroy the inside of target buildings, without damaging adjacent buildings. HardSTOP is a GPS guided half ton cluster bomb. The GPS and computer in the bomb control the dispersal of 54 smaller bomblets, that are designed to penetrate the roof of a building and explode inside. The bomb software can be programmed to distribute the bomblets in an area as small as 20 feet in diameter, or up to 110 feet. When the bomblets go through the roof, they explode. Some of the bomblets can be programmed to go through one or more floors before exploding. With HardSTOP, the risk of damage to nearby buildings is minimal. Actually, the building the bomblets hit won’t be damaged much, as the small explosive charge in each bomblet is designed to kill people, not destroy a building. In effect, HARDStop puts 54 large hand grenades inside a building, allowing nearby friendly troops to quickly move in and take possession.

Sort of the conventional equivalent of the “neutron bomb,” I guess.